#fuck it he's a minor character who dies soon after being introduced
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Okay this is funny
Because that means it was actually probably Nautilator
#if that was his name#mtmte nautilator#fuck it he's a minor character who dies soon after being introduced#mtmte megatron#oh it makes sense 'ilator would proceed to use his voice that's uncannily like megs's to profit#comic reading
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liveblogging the aubreyad 1: Master & Commander
ok so. i'm going to liveblog my reread of the Patrick O'Brian Jack Aubrey series of books, in potentially more or less detail, because it's something to do and it's funny. Starting with book 1, Master & Commander, copyright date 1969, which I definitely first read in like 1991 when I was waaaaay too young to understand approximately half the references. There will be spoilers. There may or may not be an accurate representation of the entire contents of the series. We'll see how long I keep this up. I wish I could write it in the entertaining style of my Wee Precious Flower Prince Geralt Witcher 3 playthroughs of yore but those were written under 1) quarantine confinement, 2) incredible amounts of gin, 3) after collaborative sessions, and I just can't make that happen solo.
But I will do my poor, reduced, older and more sedate best. I promise that while these books are not quite as dramatically crack-addled as Witcher 3, they are weirder than you think, which is critical.
OK so. We start off swinging with the meet-ugly. In fair Port Mahon we lay our scene, in the year 1800 (or 1801?? we also start off swinging with never quite having the tiny details quite laid down), we meet our fair hero Jack Aubrey, a six-foot, well-built, yellow-haired lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a cheerful high-spirited cove who immediately pisses off the unpleasant little man sitting next to him at this chamber music concert by singing along to the music. Relatable reaction by the unpleasant little man, to be sure. Aubrey is having a bad time, thoughâ he has not been promoted and he doesnât have a ship so he has nothing to do but get in trouble, and his spirits are too low to get into a fight with the unpleasant little man, though he briefly considers it. We soon find out that the sole bright spot in Jack's life is that he's fucking his bossâs wife, which seems like a bad idea but who are we to judge. But lo! He gets back to the inn where heâs staying only to find a letter informing him that he has been promoted! He is now the master and commander of his very own ship, which we are informed is a sloop. Also throwing us into the deep end of Listen Baby Itâs Just Vibes. The nautical language and technical shit comes fast and thick and if you just sort of roll with it you figure it out. Donât Worry About It. There Will Be Context Clues.
Now that Jack is professionally fulfilled he is happy, and so the next morning when he happens to see his unpleasant little man from the previous night, he shows his true colors: he immediately bounds across the street and wholeheartedly, unreservedly apologizes for being a dipshit, like the golden retriever he really is at heart. The unpleasant little man is so shocked by this that he loses all his unpleasantness, has a really nice conversation with Jack, and immediately gets distracted by the sighting of a rare bird. Stephen Maturin is now successfully introduced, exactly as he means to go on as well. He is a physician, but his patient died and he's stuck without money to get home, literally sleeping rough because no one will answer his letters and he's out of cash. Jack meanwhile has a ship with no surgeon on it, and a vacancy, and they like one another, so it seems a simple solution. And so Stephen shall go to sea.
I suppose, really, thatâs the genius of this series. The characters are round, complicated creatures, with obvious and consistent surface qualities but also equally consistent, apparently-contradictory, deeper qualities. Even minor characters sometimes possess this level of depth. Even the cartoony-awful little shit Harte (sometime captain, then admiral, the boss whose wife Jack has been fucking but in Jack's defense so is everybody else) has depths. Unpleasant depths, but he's got reasons and motivations and you do really believe in him; this pays off in book 8 in particular.
We meet Jack's first command, the Sophie, the loveliest tiniest little ship ever, staffed by a pack of utter weirdos. TOM PULLINGS makes his first appearance (he is my favorite supporting character throughout the series, so he will be capitalized henceforth) along with his delightful henchman (the other senior midshipman) Mowett who is James in his first and last appearances and most of the others but for some reason becomes William for a while in the middle, most notably in book 8, and has thus passed into the movie as William. Those are our master's mates, or senior midshipmen. In O'Brian's typical fashion we don't get really concrete physical descriptions of them in the normal sense, but instead get really evocative but nonspecific ones. TOM PULLINGS is "a big shy master's mate", elsewhere specified to be sort of gangly, long and thin, young, with a country accent and foremast-jack antecedents (i.e. started out as a regular sailor and was promoted, instead of the more normal approach where a family of means sends a son to sea as a midshipman), who absolutely blossoms under Jack Aubrey's leadership-by-enthusiastic-example, and we will see him through most of the rest of the series continuing on this trajectory with great competence and charming humbleness.
James Mowett gets a great introduction. He's had a few lines prior to this, mostly repetitively described as (and shown to be) cheerful and generally enthusiastic about things, running around and getting to be the one to fetch Stephen from the shore, and later we find out that he is a prolific writer of somewhat-terrible poetry, which we'll get plenty of excerpts of over the course of the series. But his first real description is:
âJames Mowett was a tubular young man, getting on for twenty; he was dressed in old sailcoth trousers and a striped Guernsey shirt, a knitted garment that gave him very much the look of a caterpillar."
There are also the youngsters. Meet my beloved son William Babbington, a miniature midshipman of between eleven and thirteen who has every venereal disease and gets drunk a lot. He also cries and swears a whole lot, mostly while sober. I love him immoderately and we will see him in several more of the books. He never gets much taller or less obsessed with womanizing. Adolescence was hard in the Georgian era. (Yes, this is the Georgian era; the Victorian era does not begin for another thirty years.)
â'I suppose you grow used to living here,' [Stephen] observed, rising cautiously to his feet. 'At first it must seem a little confined.' 'Oh, sir,' said Mowett, 'think not meanly of this humble seat, Whence spring the guardians 'of the British fleet! Revere the sacred spot, however low, Which formed to martial acts an Hawke! An Howe !' 'Pay no attention to him, sir,' cried Babbington, anxiously. 'He means no disrespect, I do assure you, sir. It is only his disgusting way.â
Throughout this series, O'Brian so so so vividly shows and describes the many phases of awkwardness that young men go through especially in military settings. It's incredibly vivid; the breaking voices, the smells, the idiotic capers, the weeping, the complete lack of foresight, the incredible cruelty and also loyalty and bravery, the sheer adolescent enthusiasm coupled with shocking laziness.
We also get some insight into contemporary social mores through the introduction of Marshall, the sailing master (a warrant officer)-- 1) he's gay and 2) Jack Aubrey is extremely his type. Different people's different attitudes toward this unspool throughout various points of the book, but the critical point is that Jack Aubrey himself has absolutely zero gaydar and while he has heard the rumor about Marshall's tendencies, he doesn't care about that stuff, studiously avoids enforcing any of the regulations against it, and he absolutely never at any point relates this to himself, and never ever realizes why the man is so driven to excel at his job. Not even when an injury to his head and face gives Jack a horrible haircut and worse appearance, and Marshall is horrified and dispirited about it; Jack never twigs just what's amiss.
To be fair to Jack, many many many of the men aboard also respond to him in a similar, though crucially different, way. This is a common thing in this kind of cooped-up little setting; you have a guy who's in charge and gives you positive feedback and like, immediately you'll die for that guy, which is kind of how the military works because you may in fact have to literally die for that guy and it's easier if you're intrinsically motivated in some way. And Jack is very, very good at this in most cases, at taking the measure of the people under his command and getting them to respond to him.
(We can return to Mowett for an explicit example: â'You may light up the sloop, Mr Mowett, and show her our force: I don't want her to do anything foolish, such as firing a gun - perhaps hurting some of our people. Let me know when you have laid her aboard.' With this [Jack] retired, calling for a light and something hot to drink; and from his cabin he heard Mowett's voice, cracked and squeaking with the excitement of this prodigious command (he would happily have died for Jack), as under his orders the Sophie bore up and spread her wings.â)
Anyway so back to the plot summary: a very good side plot throughout is that the ship's first lieutenant, James Dillon, is an Irishman, and he and Stephen Maturin were both involved in the Irish rebellion in 1798. When they meet, James recognizes Stephen, and cautiously sounds him out about having met before, and Stephen very coolly replies we've never met but you must be thinking of my cousin who looks just like me but uglier, *so* ugly, he has the face of an informer, and everyone hates an informer and james is like Ah. You Are Absolutely Correct Sir We Have Never Met. This subplot develops into a delicious meditation on divided loyalties and the agony of staying true to oneself while doing what one must do. Highly recommended, A++. Begins to give us some insight into the various depths of Stephen, who doesn't understand tides or wind and hasn't the sense to come in out of the rain but has a deep and complicated history and identity and above all an incredible capacity for ruthlessness, absolutely none of which Jack understands.
Stephen and James in dialogue when they're finally in privacy enough to discuss it (Stephen is the first speaker, James the second):
âI speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have -for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.'' "Patriotism will not do?'' "My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile." ''Yet you stopped Captain Aubrey playing Croppies Lie Down the other day.â "Oh, I am not consistent, of course; particularly in little things. Who is? He did not know the meaning of the tune, you know. He has never been in Ireland at all, and he was in the West Indies at the time of the rising. [...] But as for that song, I acted as I did partly because it is disagreeable to me to listen to it and partly because there were several Irish sailors within hearing, and not one of them an Orangeman; and it would be a pity to have them hate him when nothing in the manner of insult was within his mind's reach.â
uhhhhhhh but meanwhile: Jack Aubrey and the Sophies wreak havoc in the Mediterranean and make a lot of money and enemies, to the point that the local merchants band together to commission a fairly serious ship expressly to fuck them up. They meet this ship unsuspectingly, manage just in time to disguise themselves, and Stephen hails the ship and asks them in bad Spanish if they know anything about treating the plague, could they send a doctor over, could they spare any medicine. This scares them off and they go away. But now the Sophies know what this ship looks like and what armament it has. So the next time they meet it, they fight it, and so the tiny 14-gun Sophie with 82 men and boys aboard manages to capture the 32-gun Cacafuego with 319 men aboard, and it's very gallant and dashing and probably should not have worked, but it does.
And a little later, the Sophie accidentally meets a pair of very powerful French ships and gets taken in return despite doing some really heroic evasive manoevers.
The French are super nice to them, and we meet a French ship captain named Christy-Palliere who becomes a recurring character, who has English cousins and speaks great English and is both charming and nice, saying things like gather ye rose pods while ye may and being generally gallant. Until some even more powerful English ships heave into view, and the tables turn, but even then Christy-Palliere remains gallant and well-behaved.
We end the book with the court-martial. Any officer who loses his ship for any reason has to go before a court of sea captains to ascertain whether he did everything in his power to avoid losing his ship. So all the officers of the Sophie, including the midshipmen, including the surgeon, have to testify about this. (I feel like the other warrant officers should also have had to testify? but they weren't there and i'm not sure why. TOM PULLINGS is also not mentioned in the scene which he absolutely should be present for, so it's possible that they were just omitted for time.)
âThey had each received an official notification the day before, and for some reason each had brought it with him, folded or rolled. After a while Babbington and Ricketts took to changing all the words they could into obscenities, secretly in a corner, while Mowett wrote and scratched out on the back of his, counting syllables on his fingers and silently mouthing. Lucock stared straight ahead of him into vacancy.â
Spoiler: the jury decides that there's not really anything more a 14-gun sloop could have done against two French ships of the line, so they exonerate Captain Aubrey for the loss of his sloop, and thus ends the book.
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And now that Pride Month's over, Let's Talk About Pratchett.
The companies have taken down their flags. The marches and rallies are fading away. Rainbow colours are melting back into grayscale. And now that all the hubbub is dying down, let's talk about an author who did perhaps more than any other to introduce gender-and-sexual minorities to the public (and not just as a cute oddity to be cooed at from a distance, either).
Let's talk about an author whose works are perhaps the most representative, hard-hitting, and wholesome, in all of well-written English literature.
Let's talk about Pratchett.
Before we dive into the lovely little nitty-gritties, I want to just take a quick look at what Pratchett's writing really is, and what makes it so very exceptional. It's pretty simple, really.
He's funny.
That's the "secret" formula to Terry Pratchett's success across the global; he's funny everywhere, everywhen, across multiple generations and multiple decades and multiple geopolitical borders. You don't have to read Discworld with a lot of effort, thinking deeply after every line about the message the author is trying to convey. You don't have to analyze every character and every situation to see how the author is sculpting a crystal-clear mirror and holding it up to the face of Society. When I'm feeling down (cause college and life and pressure and dreams) and wanna start gouging out my forearms with my nails, I can just curl with one of my comfort books (like Men At Arms, or Unseen Academicals) and laugh and chuckle and just feel better. You can just enjoy it.
Now, I think, I can get to the fun stuff; analysing all of my favourite characters and the roles that they represent in mirroring Pratchett's view of People. (I should mention at this point that I am mainly going to be focussing on the Sam Vimes novels, and what I will be writing are my own thoughts and opinions. Anyone who knows more - or has just read/interpreted the books differently - is of course free to add their own musings.)
Fred Colon: Sergeant Colon is that rarest and yet most typical of things: Fred Colon is an ordinary person. He is no hero, or genius, or leader. He is not evil or even mildly malicious. And that is the very point that needs to be understood. People (most people) are not deliberately evil; they are, on the whole, fairly decent people who treat their friends well and try not to make enemies. It is just... petty selfishness, petty prejudices, petty apathy... all summated in every single member of the populace, and suddenly everyone knows that dwarfs are just money-grubbing bastards who'd bite your kneecaps off for a copper coin and trolls are dumber than the rocks they're made off but they'll as soon smash you to pulp as look at you and you can't trust a vampire cause they're too dead to be alive and-
Carrot Ironfoundersson: Captain Carrot is a clichĂŠ. Captain Carrot is a clichĂŠ wrapped inside a trope hidden in a Mary Sue, all turned on its head. Captain Carrot, rightful heir to the throne of Ankh, leader of all manner of beings, man who once beat Detritus in a fistfight... is not the hero of this story. In any other series, the story would have been of a brave new cop (who is also the king) standing up to the corruption and lawlessness of the Patrician while taking advice from his grizzled old half-drunk commander who dies four chapters into the first book with some vaguely portentous words that the hero remembers at the very last minute to give him the tools/strength/motivation necessary to keep fighting. But this is Pratchett. And the hero of the story, if there is one, is very much the grizzled old commander. Two other points have also always struck me about Carrot. The first is the matter of identity. Biologically, Carrot is very much a human, but in all other ways that matter he is entirely a dwarf - his name is Kzad-bhat, and even the deep-down dwarfs do not question his dwarfishness - and yet that does make him any less a human. In this is reflected the multiplicity of identity (not just of gender, which is what most people immediately jump to, but all identities). The second point is of the relationship between Carrot and Angua, which seemed to me a representation of a healthy dom/sub relationship. Unlike the twisted shit we find on ao3 (and in some published books that I don't feel that I need to name), Angua is at no point portrayed as lesser, weaker, incapable, dependent, or deferent. She is her own person, and the two of them just happen to have this kind of chemistry.
Samuel Vimes: Ahhhh. His Grace, His Excellency, The First Duke of Ankh, Blackboard Monitor Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch. The protagonist, if not quite the hero, of the series. He is not perfect, not even close. He is casually discriminatory (species-ist?) and thoughtless in most of what he says. his saving graces are that his discrimination is universally applied at all beings living and dead, and that he has never, not even once, allowed his personal feelings of prejudice stand in the way of justice (which is at times, all that separates him from Fred Colon). Does that mean that it's all okay, and everything is now fine and dandy and hunky-dory? No. Not even fucking close. Words matter and actions matter and even how you feel deep inside - all of it matters. Prejudice is prejudice, and it is always wrong. there are no mitigating circumstances, no 'yes, but...' that can make it acceptable. But only an idealistic idiot would say that it is not better than the alternative. And this is the reason that Vimes is one of my favourite protagonists; he is not a hero. He is real.
Leonard of Quirm: A parody of the public perception of a genius (perhaps of Roundworld's Tesla and da Vinci), I have loved Leonard as a character ever since I realised he was gay. Allow me to elaborate. As I was recently re-reading Jingo, I noticed a line that went something like 'He started drawing how The-Going-Under-The-water-Safely-Device could be improved, piloted by a muscular man who was not overdressed'. And just like that, a couple dozen other off-hand comments slotted into place and I realized the homosexual truth. And I love this portrayal of homosexuality, because most books or movies or tv shows or fanfictions with a gay MC (or even sidekick) tend to have a storyline roughly equivalent to 'hey my name is [insert name here] and I'm GAY and I have a destiny to save the world and my family and my GAY boyfriend whom I'm dating cause I'm GAY and before I go outside I have to pick my outfit really carefully better go with salmon-rose-flutter pink cause I'm GAY and now I'm outside and I'm not very popular and this is my tragic backstory cause a lot of people don't like me cause I'm GAY and-' Yeah. This is not good writing. By barely mentioning anything, Pratchett somehow still managed to emphasise that a) homosexuality is one of your identities, not all of them and b) just because a story has a character who is gay doesn't mean that the story becomes about a character being gay.
Trev Likely: One sentence. Just one sentence. 'Hating people was too much work.'
If you actually made it this far, you are obliged to reblog. I'm sorry, but I don't make the rules. (Please?)
#terry pratchett#gnu terry pratchett#discworld#pride month#lgbt pride#queer pride#humour#men at arms#unseen academicals#fred colon#sergeant colon#philosophy#captain carrot#carrot ironfoundersson#ankh morpork#cliches#angua von uberwald#sergeant angua#dom/sub#sam vimes#samuel vimes#commander vimes#leonard of quirm#trev likely#jingo#well this was a long one
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on Aelwyn Abernant, the Reformed Villain Squad, and redeeming teenage antagonists
an analysis on antagonist character development in Fantasy High. spoilers through sophomore year and (mildly so) the most recent roll20 oneshot. essay under the cut bc i am very long winded
the turnaround with Aelwyn in s2 is handled so well  i cant get over it. she was such a major antagonist in the first season and just. despicable. she had no pathos. we hated this bitchy older sister who tried to kill Adaine and her friends and raise an evil dragon, and when she gets knocked on her ass and thrown in jail, we cheer.
and then s2 fucking starts saying âhey sheâs in jail still if youâd like to look into thatâ and pursuing that thread ends up being almost as comedic an idea as it is a reluctant one; itâs also quickly shunted to the background as soon as more pressing leads present themselves, to the point where we almost forget about her until Adaine is kidnapped and then the first time you see her itâs just. viscerally upsetting.
sheâs bad. she did evil. she got what she deserved.
but she already got what she deserved. last season.
she got her ass handed to her by a bunch of 14 year olds including her little sister (how embarrassing!). her plans were thwarted. she got punched in the face and made fun of. she already got her punishment.
it justâŚâŚimmediately registers as over-the-top Wrong to be told âhey, remember that antagonist you beat last season? sheâs still being punished for that, except itâs way worse than just going to mumple.â
and thereâs that reminder that likeâŚthis is a teenager. a child. who has been manipulated and abused. which is a really fascinating look at this character we used to see pretty much unilaterally as a one dimensional bitchy villain.
i mean we got a more in depth look at Penelopeâs and Bizâs motivations in s1 (Penelope being the popular rich girl sorceress obviously hungry for power and the alllure of the high school clout that is being prom queen, but also we know that her having to turn on her best friend Sam Nightingale as part of the scheme was something she was reluctant and not happy to do; and Biz being that predatory incel creeper type dude besides just a nerd with computers and a lack of social graces). and they were as much willingly active in the plot as Aelwyn was. yet in s1 they really never do bother to explore Aelwynâs motivations. i remember after watching s1 but before s2 that was one of my biggest lingering questions: why tf was Aelwyn involved?
well. she was manipulated and abused. her terrible parents raised her in an awful environment that conditioned her to Listen and Obey and Behave and Be Perfect, and then Kalina helped cinch the noose around her neck with threats and coersion into the KVS Kaper and the NMK crown debacle. she doesnât freely choose any of it; sheâs coerced, manipulated, abused.
and she already got justifiably punished for her bad actions in s1. the torture is almost literal overkill. itâs justâŚâŚthereâs this immediate turnaround in sympathy and view of the character. on first watch, itâs viscerally upsetting to see her getting so brutally punished for actions she already faced consequences for, and on rewatch, it makes your skin crawl to know sheâs being tortured for terrible things she had little choice in carrying out. and tortured by some of the very same people who coerced her to behave terribly in the first place, to add insult to injury.
and itâs still fucking frustrating when they rescue her and her memory gets reset and she goes back to her parents because itâs like âwell shit, sheâs evil again, and we just wasted all that effort for nothingâ but itâs also sad cause we know sheâs running back to her abusers and she isnât happy about it but doesnât feel like she has a choice. and itâs sadder still that what eventually inevitably gets her to turn to good for good (i.e. away from her parents) is just. a full dissociative mental breakdown.
(but then she survives and itâs gonna be good!!! until Adaine dies in her fucking arms. which is. almost funny. sheâs been through so much shit and that isnât something that Brennan would have just. preplanned. like a written in plot point. no, that was just an unpredictable consequence of the battle. what a juicy fucking moment. sheâs been through All That Shitâ˘ď¸ and has finally turned to fight for good and her sister just fully dies in front of her. yeowch)
and she turns out okay in the end. she comes out the other side alive and whole and supported by her sister and her friends, with the hope of a future and recovery. there is an acknowledgement that A) she can and will grow from her mistakes and damage, B) itâs going to be really hard, and C) the post-s2 one shots both prove that sheâs doing okay now. hell, she has a whole squad now of other former-teenage-villains-turned-good-guys. she has friends now, Ragh and Zayn, with common ground, and a secret handshake and everything. theyâve all grown from the mistakes of their past into better, happier, healthier people
and about Zayn and Ragh. weâve seen a lot of characters, protagonist and antagonist, teenage and adult, PC and NPC do some really fucked up shit and get punished for it. but why do they get happy endings? why are Aelwyn, Ragh, and Zayn the only members of the RVS and not someone else like Biz or Penelope or Dayne?Â
well, the latter two are dead by then; but then again, Biz and Ragh were also killed by the Bad Kids in s1, and subsequently resurrected. (Zayn died too, but was neither killed nor revived at the Bad Kidsâ hands, so iâll get to him in a sec.) and there are plenty of adult antagonists the Bad Kids face who are killed and left that way by the Bad Kids without second thought: Johnny Spells, Coach Daybreak, Captain Wicklaw, the Abernant parents (presuming Arianwen doesnât survive in the forest for very long, which i doubt). why do some characters get second chances while others donât?
in the case of Zayn, his death was pretty much out of the Bad Kidsâ hands, and they later found out he was manipulated by Daybreak into being bad anyway because of his sad living situation. he was a pretty minor antagonist in the scheme of things, and when we re-meet him as a ghost in the s1 epilogue, heâs pretty obviously remorseful for his actions. and dying seems like a steep enough punishment to me for the shit he did to contribute to the KVX caper; returning as a ghost, free from the trappings of his unfortunate living life, he now has the room and freedom to grow into a better person.
in the cases of Daybreak, Spells, Wicklaw, and the Abernant parents: these are bad people who should know better. these are fully grown adults who actively choose to do evil. whether they think itâs the right thing to do or not (in Daybreakâs case), whether they think it will benefit them and donât care about anyone else (in the Abernantsâ case), or whether they donât care much at all and are just doing shit because they feel like it (in the cases of Spells and Wicklaw), these are all adults who consciously make the decision to do terrible things and hurt other people. of course Johnny Spells, who is generally a punk thief and thug, is not on the same level of bad as Angwyn, who kidnaps and tortures his own daughters for political gain, but the point remains. these fuckers should know better. theyâre grown ups. they had their chances to be good and they chose not to heed them. their minds are set on bad actions and they are a continued danger to other people as long as they are alive. when they die, the Bad Kids do their damndest to make sure it stays that way.
now, in the cases of Penelope and Dayne: these are teenagers who actively chose to participate in an evil plot. Penelope, Dayne, and Biz were all fully cognizant of what they were doing trying to raise KVX back to his former power. why? well, to some extent, we can only speculate. i suspect Penelope was just one of those Regina George bitches who is rich and popular and powerful and obsessed with power and popularity within high school as if thatâs the end-all-be-all of existence (which, like, when youâre currently in high school, is a somewhat understandable worldview i think). Dayne being her boyfriend and a musclehead jock probably falls into a similar line of thinking. they are actively and willingly trying to cause harm, and teenager or not, must be stopped. theyâre killed, anyway, during the Climactic Battleâ˘ď¸ anyhow; itâs not like the Bad Kids were going to gain anything at that point by keeping them alive.
now, Biz: Biz is the creepy Nice Guy incel type, sees woman as a prize he deserves to win, yadda yadda. he does, like Penelope and Dayne, actively choose to help KVX. there might be something to be said about his motivation the Bad Kids discover after the arcade battle by detecting his thoughts (that being to upload the captured maidens from the palimpsests to âcall the shotsâ himself) is an altered memory; whether this was his original motivation from the start or not, iâm not sure. but the Bad Kids do kill him â and then resurrect him for important, time-sensitive information. and they beat it out of him â he gets two of his fucking fingers blown off. and Riz reattaches them once they have their info, and they realize his memory is altered. of course, the Bad Kids donât know at this point that the altered memory was something he, Penelope, and Aelwyn had planned and agreed on and done to themselves, but this points to something important in my opinion: the Bad Kids, and the narrative/show as a whole by extension, acknowledge that external manipulation affects how guilty someone is in a crime.
which brings us to Ragh. Ragh, introduced from episode 1 as the meathead jock. Ragh the archetypical one-dimensional high school bully. Ragh who works with the harvestmen in effort to (ostensibly) end the world/provoke international war. Ragh, whose low intelligence but high loyalty and internalized homophobia led him to be fully swayed and blindly led by his coach and captain, who have actively chosen to do evil. Ragh who is killed in combat by the Bad Kids and resurrected for information, not Daybreak. Ragh, who the Bad Kids realize was probably not aware of exactly what he was being made to do and how bad it really was. Ragh, who by their kindness in sparing his life and directing him on a better path, becomes a well-rounded character and an active ally to the Bad Kids during and after prom, an invaluable companion during their quest in sophomore year, and overall a really good friend and person.Â
(it might also be worth considering the case of Jawbone here, too, who started out a very minor antagonist in a fight but ended up becoming a major NPC because the Bad Kids talked to him, found out he came from an unfortunate situation and set of circumstances, and showed him kindness in offering the school guidance counselor position, a kindness that isnât really owed but given anyway and ends up changing his entire life for good.)
and then, Aelwyn, whose case is already discussed above. so, why is the RVS what it is, why them but not others?
if youâre familiar with Avatar: the Last Airbender, youâre probably familiar with Zukoâs character arc, and how itâs often lauded as a masterful example of developing a villain into a hero over the course of a narrative. what makes Zukoâs arc so well done and exceptional is that he starts out as a kid in a bad situation under the influence of bad adults seeking to do bad deeds, but he later realizes the error of those ways, actively removes himself from that situation despite the difficulty and danger in doing so, goes through a lot of shit and reflects on his past mistakes and learns from them, and then actively chooses to fight for good in the end with the help of close, trusted friends, found family.Â
this, i believe, is the same in the case of Fantasy High and its treatment of the RVS. its members, like Zuko, are all teenagers who came from shitty situations and were manipulated by evil adults to do bad. they are punished for their bad actions, and they learn from their errors and mistakes. with the kindness and help of good people, friends and chosen family, they are able to escape their abusers and bad situations and grow into their own people. and they actively choose to improve themselves with that help and fight for good.
Fantasy High, through the arcs of Jawbone, Zayn, Ragh, and especially Aelwyn, asserts that it is not your fault if you come from a bad situation and are forced to behave badly as a result. it does not pretend that you are absolved of any responsibility for those actions; quite the opposite, as even though they were externally manipulated into their evil actions, all of those mentioned characters face tangible consequences for their actions and later express remorse for their mistakes. but Fantasy High also asserts that even if you have made great mistakes in your past, even if you came from a bad situation beyond your control, even if you were manipulated and abused, with care and love and support and a hell of a lot of work and effort, you can improve your situation and find good, happiness, peace, you can thrive. evil adults who should know better donât get redeemed. teenagers who arenât coerced but actively choose evil donât get redeemed. but abused kids deserve another shot at happiness. with enough work, and some love and help along the way, they can get there, even from the lowest imaginable point, from rock fucking buttom. itâs possible.Â
#fantasy high#fantasy high spoilers#dimension 20 live#dimension 20#fantasy high sophomore year#fantasy high freshman year#d20#dimension 20 live spoilers#brennan lee mulligan#aelwyn abernant#zayn darkshadow#ragh barkrock#sasha reviews#hello tumblr. tonight i bring you a 2.3k word essay. tomorrow? who knows#i'll just throw myself into the nearest river if this doesn't show up in the tags this is fine#this one's for y'all in my notes i see u and i love u here's some content#the first half of this is mostly copy pasted from my discord ramblings#i didnt intend for this to be as long as it got but yknow. i never do and it always is#so thats why the first part of this is written differently from the rest of it lol
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You might've answered this already and I just didn't find it, but one thing that always perplexed me about Duke was how old he was in comparison to the other Batkids. It's obvious he's younger than Dick and Babs, and I pretty sure he's younger than Jason and Cass, and older than Damian, but I cannot tell if he's meant to be Tim and Steph's ages, younger, or older. Could you help me?
Youâre all kinds of good here, anon!!! I answered a similar ask abt the Order of Adoption but didnât dive into specific ages on that post BECAUSE well they didnât ask lmaooo but ALSO:
Comic ages are very fluid usually! While Yearsâ˘ď¸ might pass in the canon proper, or while time seems to slow to a crawl, having a characterâs age outright stated is something that occurs very rarely for most characters, if at all!
Because itâs always much easier to have a floating age range to work and play around in! Itâs easier to keep a character Perpetually 12 or 16 or 25 or mid-40s or- you get the idea. SO, with that in mind. Letâs do our Best to Break Down What Age Duke Might Be Currently A N D how it might interact with the Other Batkids!
(Warning for a Very Long Post, lots of issue citations, and a LOT of comics terminology regarding specific runs/events/continunity. Iâm gonna try to keep it as clear/concise as possible ofc but plz keep these things in mind! If youâre not at least marginally familiar with Bat-Comics, you might find yourself feeling a little lost here!)
So from the Zero Year arc we see a common Trend that plays out pretty consistently with Batfam comics: a Life-Changing Event Occuring while the protag is Youngâ˘ď¸.
(Batman (2011) #30)
With how Duke is drawn in these particular issues, and given the trends of the past, Iâd place him in the 8-12 range. The historic precedent being ofc that that is the same range that canon usually places both Bruce and Dick at for their Tragediesâ˘; the more benign reason being that he... just very much Looks to be drawn in that Range. Heâs very clearly an Older/Prepubescent child here.
Fast Forward to his Next Appearance in the Endgame arc and-
(Batman (2011) #37)
Heâs definitely older! Heâs wiser! And heâs giving Batman a fistbump lmao. Again, no strict age given here BUT, since they condensed each Robin to a Year or Two tops with Bruce (its n52 and its fucked up is what it is), we can assume itâs been at least 4-5 since Zero Year (which would mean if we go off the age range I proposed for that year, then theoretically he could be anywhere from 12-16 here, and I think that tracks pretty well. Not Perfectly and Certainly Not so well with Pre52 continuity ofc, but Iâll talk about that later!)
In We Are Robin, while its not stated Directly In The Text, it IS given as an Informational Tidbit that Duke is 16 (specifically this can be found at the end of issue #4)! (Sweet sweet canon confirmation FINALLY)
We know that WAR takes place Fairly Soon after Endgame (almost immediately, give or take a month or two given that Dukeâs been placed in a few foster homes at this point and has racked up Quite A File) now, again id like to remind yâall that while this is a NICE starting point to have, keep in mind that comics are fluid and this may be retconned slightly/ignored in later stories bc Keeping Duke 16-ish is in DCâs Best Interest at the moment. (Having Relatable Teen Characters afterall is a Good Marketing strategyâ˘ď¸. And the longer they can Keep them Young, the Better)
With that in mind letâs take a moment to Highlight the fact that Duke and Damian have crossed paths at this point AND the storylines that have occurred during this year that were meant to be in conjunction with one another!
Because Prior to Endgame, Damian had Died! And just a year (in real, meat-space time) before We Are Robin, he was resurrected and had begun his âYear of Atonementâ in the Robin: Son of Batman maxiseries. Midway through both this series and WAR (and, we can assume, midway thru this âYearâ for Damian) the Robin War begins/ends and we see at least one major Moment between these two boys who will soon call one another brothers:
(Robin War #2)
Given that R:SoB is followed up VERY quickly by Teen Titans Rebirth (in which Damian celebrates his 13th birthday), we can conclude that Damian would be 12 during this time (well, 12 and 1/2 to play it safe lmao). That being said, this Confirms about a 4yr gap between Duke and Damian! (One Batkid down at least! but heâs the key to the others so put a pin in him!)
As We Are Robin draws to its conclusion, DC was releasing another arc that would eventually flow into the Rebirth Era, by the end of which, Bruce would approach Duke with an Idea (which involves Bruce becoming Dukes temporary guardian & as he states Many Times âTrying Something Newâ with Duke).
And thus the Rebirth Era begins, and Duke began his Year of training (most directly encapsulated by the Cursed Wheel arc in the All-Star Batman run:
(All-Star Batman #1 (back-up story))
Bruce introduces Duke to a training regimen that Alfred has named âthe Cursed Wheelâ. It encompasses all the training Bruce and the other bats have undergone and condenses it down into color-coordinated segments that will take Duke a Year to Complete.
It can be assumed that by the End of this Year Duke will somehow miraculously still be 16, despite, again, an entire ass year passing.
Thereâs one story that takes place mid-year in All-Star Batman, and the Cursed Wheel is meant to be capped off by Dukeâs first Official Day as the Signal (in the titular Batman & the Signal ofc) BUT, near as I can tell after this story, Dukes age is not brought up again. So until they DO bring it up either in Batman & the Outsiders or whatever future run Duke becomes involved in, we can assume DC will be working with the idea that heâs meant to be in that 16-18 range from here on out (ie still a minor).
But, dear anon, you might be saying âokay, thatâs cool, but how does that relate to my question abt how he falls in with the other Bats?â Youâll have to be a little patient with me here, but I think I may have cracked the code!
Keep in mind Iâm gonna be addressing both the Post-Crisis to Flashpoint Continuity (ie mid-80s to 2010 in comics history) and the N52-slash-Rebirth Era (2010-Today). Its generally agreed by fandom and DC alike that these points of rebooting &/or Major Events constitute the era of âModernâ comics, and that everything from the 80s-on might more or less be canon on some level, even if not All of it is.
(Plus, most of fandom usually likes to borrow elements from both eras and much more rarely from stories before it, SO-)
Lets do a quick rundown of how everyone whoâs Closer to Dukeâs Age, Relates to each other first, age-wise:
Given that Jason was 15 when he died, in A Lonely Place of Dying its established that Bruce had become increasingly reckless since his death, and by the end of the story, Tim has stepped in to fill Robinâs shoes (he states that heâs 13 during this story btw). Pretty soon after, Stephanie Brown is introduced & established to be about a year older than Tim (wish I could pin-point a specific issue BUT, i unfortunately havenât read any Tim OR Steph-involved comics that predate No Manâs Land... Besides the aforementioned Lonely Place and Young Justice technically, but im working on remedying that soon!)
NOW, during the No Manâs Land event, Cassandra is introduced, and pretty soon into her Batgirl run, its revealed that sheâs around the same age as Jason (or at least how old he Would Have Been, had he not died.) Now, given that Jay has an August bday and Cass has a January one, fandom sometimes likes to play around with the idea of one being older than the other (OR even speculating/placing them in an AU as twins/siblings, given that Lady Shiva (Cassâ mom) was a Possible Candidate to be Jasonâs biological mother but thatâs a Whole Other Thing i wont get into here.)
The point being, Cass, in this era of comics, IS slightly older than Tim and Steph. At Timâs start as Robin, their ages could either line up like: Tim-13, Steph-14, Cass-15 (being a few months âbehindâ Jay), then Jason at 15/16 (depending on how soon Tim filled the role after Jay died in April) OR Jason-15/16, Cass-16/17 (in this case sheâd be a few months âaheadâ now instead)
So brief detour to talk New 52, however! Because Tim, Steph & Cass all got switched around from where DC originally left them prior to the reboot! Now I havenât read much of them in this era, other than Batman & Robin: Eternal, so my Understanding of their current ages is Spotty at Best. The general consensus seems to be that while before N52, Stephanie had been attending her first year of College (& doing VERY WELL i might add), with the reboot she was set back a few years alongside Tim to a vague Late-Teen state (so 16-18-ish, instead of a Very Clearly Established 18/19). Cass is probably the worst off for this reboot, given that B&R:E basically constitutes her new origin for the new continuity, and does nothing to confirm her age (all I really know is that sheâs a Vague Late-Teen too... Probably? Maybe?), given how much they infantilize her, and subsequently how fandom in turn has taken to infantilizing her too, theres a semi-popular fanon that places her Younger that Tim and Steph. And I, for one, propose that we ignore that bc its Weak Sauce my dudes.
Some fans chose to ignore N52 continuity due to this vagueness, and will stick to the ages established before the N52/Rebirth reboots. But its something to keep in mind regardless bc weâre all obviously going to pull from whatâs most familiar to us!
But WHERE could we place Duke with regards to them, then? Because them being âLate Teensâ is certainly much too vague to work with!
This is Where Damian is the key!
Because Damian is one of those rare exceptions to the Reboot Rule. His story flowed almost seamlessly over from before to after. While he was made a Robin at the age of 10, he continued to grow and learn even after the universe was being rewritten to suit the whims of DC editorial.Â
If we choose to ignore how everyone elseâs ages and origins were swapped around, and stick with the growth that was presented before the reboot, then we can draw some interesting conclusions!
Firstly, though Stephanie also had Died and subsequently Returned, she hadnât lost much, if any time, from the Ordeal. At the start of her Batgirl run, she is enrolled at a Gotham university and making headway with a more firm foot in the Batfamily (even to the point that she and Damian spend a few issues bonding. At this point in time, Damian is definitely 11, and again, Steph can be assumed to be 18/19 during the course of her run. Weâll assume 18 for clarityâs sake.)
So, then when Damian is 11, now our line up is as Follows:
Dami - 11, Steph - 18, Tim - 17, Cass 19-21 (the range depending again, if you subscribe to Cass being either older/younger than Jason).
WHICH MEANS, If during Robin War Damian is 12 (and a half) THEN Weâve got an age line-up that Potentially looks Like This:
Dami -12(and 1/2), Duke - 16, Tim - 18, Steph - 19, Cass - 20-22 (And Obvsly Jason, Babs & Dick at their varying Older Ages than everyone here)
and im just now realizing i Didnt include Harper in this line-up, but thats bc sheâd also throw a big wrench in all this. Iâd personally throw her in with being Stephâs age, but Iâm pretty sure she was supposed to be either that, or between Steph and Cass (again, since its N52, i believe Cass was/is assumed to be Younger than Steph, but that contradicts the assumed following of pre52 canon that we have for the above line-up, obvsly, and so we ignore that lmao)Â
All this to say, however, that canon and fandom is what you make of it, and if you want to wiggle these ages around a little, youâre more than allowed! God Knows i usually like to skew the Tim-Steph-Cass age group to be a tad older than this in my own fic writing, and I like to have Duke start as a Robin at 14/15 instead of 16, but thatâs just bc I like the dynamic potential it could bring with them being Definitively Older that him, and thus in a more secure place to be Mentoring him right alongside Bruce & the others.
But you might see these age ranges and want to do something Different (say, making Tim, Steph, Cass, & Duke all the Same Age at 17 instead! And that very well tracks with how current comics kinda looks right now!) and youâre absolutely valid to do so! Because again, comic characterâs ages are meant to be fluid, not fixed!
And at the end of the day, its all about wanting to see these teen heroes kick serious ass haha
#duke thomas#guest starring:#batfamily#damian wayne#tim drake#stephanie brown#cassandra cain#randywrites#randys meta#meta#asked and answered#anonymous asks#this was A LOT and i tried to throw some humor where i could#but uhhhh yeah!!! i hope this helps anon!!!#also just realizing its TWO AM WHERE DID THE TIME GO#ah well. Worth It
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one of the weirdest things in this fandom for me is people claiming that characters âdeserve betterâ, like completely seriously, as if theyâre real people that mxtx personally murdered or something. i get that people connect with characters and everything, i do too, but at the end of the day theyâre just constructs in a story? idk itâs strange to me to act like the author owes characters or the audience anything
Hi anon,
Iâm sort of on the middle with this one. Especially with things like franchises and tv series, where there might not have a clear arc already decided for the different characters or for where the series will go, we can encounter characters who have been underutilised or who have been treated dirty by the creators (in western tv shows that seems to happen with disturbing regularity to characters of color or queer characters). As well, works of fiction may also make the characters do things that seem completely incoherent with their characterisation, character growth or their motivations, which can make you feel like the character deserved to be treated better by the creatives. And this can be pretty frustrating not only because you like a character, but because the work of fiction seems to be lesser for not having utilised this characterâs potential or for having ruined their stories. Generally, these criticisms will be able to pinpoint how that character is underutilised compared to other characters, how the characterâs potential that was set up by the story were never explored or resolved or how the fate of the character ultimately contradicts what was set up at the beginning and throughout the story without providing the audience/reader a sense of diegetic logic for that contradictory fate. It is never about saying, in isolation, that âcharacter diedâ or that âcharacter sufferedâ or that âcharacter is a minor characterâ although it can be things along the lines of âthis is the only character who died so soon after being introduced, most other characters survived for at least a season and they just so happened to not be white how weirdâ or âwhile most characters are made to suffer, this is the only character that the audience is invited to be a voyeur to long, drawn-out torture sessions that are disturbingly framed in an almost erotic mannerâ. âBad things happen to characterâ on its own is not sufficient because, uh, itâs fiction and fiction requires a minimal amount of conflict and tension which means that characters suffer and die all the time.
I agree with you that, a lot of time, when people clamour that a character âdeserves betterâ all they mean is that nothing bad should have happened to them and that they would have gotten their own version of a happily ever after. And there is inherently nothing wrong with that sentiment: growing to care for a character is one of the ways that fiction can be effective, that it can move us. Weâre supposed (if all goes well!) to come to care for the fate of at least some of the characters, whether it is a comedy or a tragedy. Itâs also totally normal to see a minor character, enjoy them, and wish to see more of them even if in that particular story they were only there to play a minor role. Both of these things are part of what draws people to transformative works. Itâs all fine! That being said, it starts to annoy me when people use these things as baseless attacks against a creative, especially when they display a profound misunderstanding of how storytelling and characters-as-constructs work in the process, or sometimes simply a profound misunderstanding of the story they are seeking to criticise. Itâs one of the reason I wrote my MianMian meta because so many people, based only on the fact that MianMian appeared more often in the story, argued that CQL had treated her character better when, if you stop to think about it--about who the character is, what she means, what role she plays in the story--a lot more care was put into her character in MDZS even if her appearances were fewer (hell, even her agency is indirectly better since MDZS didnât include a scene where she meets Wangxian before they rush to a scene of danger but she stays behind because gets told by Hanguang-jun to stand back in her home and protect her daughter--CQL really did invent feminism). In a way, I find it difficult to take seriously the claim that a âcharacter deserved betterâ when it comes from someone who didnât even do the work of understanding the character and its place in the story to begin with.Â
Iâm not saying that people need to have complete deference to the canon or the creatives that gave us a work, but I think it is a simple courtesy to not get incensed at a creative just because some of their characters are *gasp* minor characters, or to at least give them the benefit of the doubt when you feel a death is âpointlessâ: mayhaps check once more whether there could have been something about the story you missed or misunderstood. Also to understand that just because a character is their little cinnamon roll or whatever that they might not be portrayed that way in the narrative and as a result might not be given a perfect, hallmark-card happy ending. In other words, you can write as many fics about JYL staying alive or JYL being a âbamfâ (because a female character only has value that way apparently) or about JC ending up the most happy and fulfilled and recognised person with everything he could possibly want (since he sooooo earned it in the narrative by growing and learning from his mistakes and atoning for them....), but maybe reconsider having the summary be: âCharacter A deserved so much better, so Iâm taking shit into my own hands, fuck MXTXâ. If only for the fact that it is very cringe.
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The first text I made was over 2,000 words so Iâll try to summarize it.
First I'm going to talk about what I think is Bury Your Gays and poor writing of minorities.
For me, Bury your gays is when certain productions kill the lgbt character for the sake of shock value, often in the most stupid ways possible. A famous example of this was what happened to Lexa in the 100. When it feels like the character only died because he is gay.
And for me, poor writing for minorities (poc, lgbt, people with disabilities ...) can be characterized as:
1. Productions that want to portray the image of progressives and put a poc or lgbt character (which are the most common cases) without personality, unimportant, without development ... Character that are just there for decoration
2. When they even create an interesting character but soon create a reason to kill him to shock the audience. Kill them because they are poc.
And for me having a poc or lgbt character (since these are the boxes where I identify with) interesting, important ... this is the word: Important! whether it is important directly in the plot as a protagonist who carries the story or a supporting role with a good role on the story and a good development, it is much more significant than a character forced only for certain productions not to be accused of racism, sexism or lgbtphobia.
Of course, each case is different. I will now comment briefly on Atomic Blonde, The Last of Us part II and The Legend of Korra.
In Atomic Blonde we have the death of Delphine, a lgbt character who has generated some discussions about being a "bury your gays". I don't particularly agree because I believe that if she were a man or straight, she would die anyway. Since the protagonist's other love interest had died in the beginning and he was a heterosexual white man, and because the character of Delphine, despite being a spy, did not belong in that work or life style . Something even commented by herself. She was an inexperienced agent in the worst possible scenario to be one . But i now understand and why some people still think It was bury your gays.
In The Last of Us part II I saw many people complaining about the death of Jesse, Yara and how Lev was just a supporting character. The Last of Us part II .... a game that is not afraid to kill loved characters without any ceremony simply because in that world, one mistake can cost your life. Regardless of gender, sexuality, age, skin color ...
Jesse and Yara played Asian American characters and died. Mel, Joel, Owen ... were Caucasian, cishet characters who died too. None of them die because they are asian american or caucasian, they die cuz that world is fucking ruthless.
And about Lev not being important just because he is an supporting character... First that he is for Abby what Dina is for Ellie, both of them are extremely important support for the protagonists and Interesting characters with their own internal struggles and development. I think it is very unfair to throw this away with the argument like: "ah, but he is not the protagonist so it is not important"
And still about The Last of Us part II we are talking about a game and for those who do not know the gamer community is toxic, full of sexism, racism, lgbtphobia ... And the game developers had the balls for not only make two protagonists women outside the steryotype of femme fatalle or defenseless love interest(still very present in games) and one of them a lesbian, but also introducing an important trans character in a mainstream high-budget game.
People, until recently the only image we had of women in games was that of a busty model running around, made purely to please male players, good and important black, asian and lgbt characters was really rare or just didnt exist at all.
And today we have characters like Ellie, Lev, Kassandra (AC Odyssey), Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield who were reimagined more humanely in the remakes of Resident Evil, Lara Croft herself in the 2013 Tomb Raider remake, Max and Chloe(Life is Strange), Lee and Clementine(TWD from telltale), Marcus (Detroit Become Humam ), Connor (AC3) ... I know, there is still a long way to go until we have achieved the equality and representativeness that we want in the world of games but we are advancing. They may be a baby step but they still are steps forward. We should continue to support this initiatives and demand better representation.
Now about The Legend of Korra ... Reading the comments in the post i get the feeling that people were much more angry with Bryke for being cishet than with questions related to the narrative.
It bothers me the fact that it seems that whoever made the posts (originally from twitter) did not watch avatar or simply watched without paying attention. It was NEVER about Korra needed suffering but about finding Meaning in suffering. And yes, they are two different things.
When in the end Korra is talking to Tenzin, about understand the why she had to go through all that , for them be abble to be more compassionate of others. That shit is real. When you have a panic attack , for exemple, you become more abble to help someone who also suffers from that. Or when some people lose someone for a disease or acident and choose to become a doctor to help others, wanting no other person had to go through that pain... In this case, the person didnt have to lose someone to be a doctor but maybe after saw all the fight that the doctors put in to save someone and the pain of losing someone may have made the person spend the rest of his life saving people. Get It?
And in Avatar, both TLA and TLOK, people have suffer.
Aang: Cast aside by his friends when people discover he was the Avatar. Runaway and lose all of his people. Had to see the devastation for himself and find the bones of his friend and possible father figure. Almost die a few times. For many years had the weight of been the last of his people. And in a part of the journey, lost Appa.
Sokka and Katara: Lost their mother. Their dad leave to fight and possible die in the war. Sokka was only a teen when he was the man responsable for his tribe. Katara had the weight of being the only waterbender of her tribe and be the only one that could calm Aang once he was in Avatar State.
Toph: as a blind kid, her parents think of her as someone unable to do anything. Had to choose between save Appa or save the others in some point of their journey
Zuko: When i start with him?
Azula: oh Boy...
Iroh: Lose is only son. Had to see his brother burn Zuko's face. And Zuko betrayed him, kind of, in the end of book2.
Asami: Her mom was murdered , maybe even in front of her. Her dad was a evil genius. She probably suffered with Korra in those 3 years.
Mako and Bolin: They grow up as orphans on the streets...
I could go on and on, dude, even the cabbage man had suffer from losing his cabbages over and over.
But all of the sudden, Korra now had to have plot armor or else Bryke is wrong and are terrible people.
Everybody loves to talk about how perfect Zuko's arc and development is. Zuko, who was one of the characters who most have suffered in the show. But for him all was necessary, had meaning, perfect storytelling and structure but with Korra.... "She cant suffer cuz she is brown"
And its not like Bryke was making something up outta nowhere just to torture the character. All she face it was a consequence direct or indirect of her actions and actions of other people.
Amon and the Equalists? Aang didnt kill Yakone nor put him in prison for life, just took his bending. Yakone was a terrible father, and one of the reason Amon hate bending (even himself been a waterbender) so much to the point of him do what he did. The same to Tarrlok. He turn his sons into monsters. And the triads only help them, because they use their bending to rob the non benders.
Vaatu? Look up The Beginning epsodes because this one is more complex.
Unalaq? Look, the worst villain of Avatar. But he took advantage of things that happen as consequences of the ending of book1
Zaheer? Direct consequence of that happen in the finale of book 2.
Kuvira? Direct consequence of things that happen in book 3
Again, i could go on and on and go deeper on all that. But this is already getting to big.
But what pissed me off most is ... Look im years in this fandom. As a Brazilian i saw and read stuff from the fandom here in my country and the fandom here in Tumblr. And in those years i read so much about how Korra journey help people overcome their struggles with ptsd, anxiety, depression...myself included. How much Korra was important to lesbians and bissexuals girls, especially girls of color.
And them we have those few people throw shit on all this and "cancel" you for not agree with them...
The Legend of Korra ended 2014, 6 years ago and still is so loved, so important to so many people, for the most diverse reasons.
For a cishet, Bryke did a amazing job creating this amazingly beautiful universe. With the most diverse inspirations, coming from places that are forgotten on western media. But i guess its easier criticize, and cancel them and the show than do what they did.
I know that sometimes we just wanted a scape from our difficult reality but seriously, if you Just want a movie/tv show/book...100% happy, rainbow and sunshine with no suffering at all, stick with the fanfics because even romcons sometimes have their among of "i you make you cry and suffer" kind of shit.
Suffer is present in our life and what a lot of movies/tv shows/games/books...try to do is bring our struggles and our suffering into them. Why? Its easier have simpathy for characters who look like us, characters who had been through the same stuff as us.
Is so difficult talk those things in another language. I always feel like i didnt express myself right. And im really sorry if i offended anyone, it wasnt my intention.
#the legend of korra#korrasami#asami sato#avatar korra#korra#mako#avatar#bolin#legend of korra#tenzin#the last airbender#zuko#azula#avatar aang#katara#sokka#toph#unclr iroh#the last of us part II#ellie#dina#lev#yara#jesse#atomic blonde
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When one of my favourite fic writers was asked why she doesnât like brienneâs POV she said that sheâs a minor character looking for two major characters whose location we already know, they lack suspense and itâs hard to see why theyâre there :( I feel like a lot of people feel this way, but what do you think is the purpose of brienneâs chapters in the grand scheme of things?
well, thereâs a lot to unpack here, but:
the fact that brienne is defined minor already says all because no, sheâs a pove character. she can be a secondary or not one of the main ones, true enough, but minor character? yeah, nope. she has POVs. minor characters donât have povs unless you count throwaways with just one, but then again, melisandre has one pov and youâd never say she was a minor character, would you? yeah, exactly;
also, âbrienne is looking for sansa and we already know who she isâ: yeah, except that itâs not about sansa whatsoever, itâs about lady stoneheart and brienne herself and their rship with jaime, which means that if youâre reading brienneâs chapters wanting to find stuff on sansa youâre already approaching it wrong because ofc we know where sansa is, but brienneâs arc in affc is about sansa as much as sansa is a pretext to show you a lot of things that grrm couldnât do otherwise.
specifically, we have two main things: worldbuilding and brienneâs character development. in order:
worldbuilding:
now, whatâs happened for the first three books? people went to war and it apparently ended (in westeros) with an unlawful massacre. all of our povs until now until davos have been from nobles/economically privileged people who have mostly survived the war. we had some inklings of how it went through a) the riverrun chapters in acok where you learn that edmure had let his people in, b) the cat chapters in general, c) something from davos because he has the not-noble perspective, but did we see how the war actually devastated the entire country? no. what do brienneâs chapters offer? brienne and pod going around one of the most war-torn areas of westeros (near where the red wedding had been) and showing you exactly how much it hurt the real people living it, and sorry but if grrm, a well-known conscience objector during the vietnam war who feels about the consequence of war and pacifism very deeply, has said in an interview that his favorite scene to write in the whole of asoiaf is brienne and maribald talking about how ptsd destroys soldiersâs lives in war and war ruins people, sure as hell Iâm going to assume he thinks those povs were important enough to warrant their presence;
also, you get introduced in a very subtle but effective way to a lot of future key players. as in, randyll tarly is currently on the small council or should be soon, but we donât see him first in a sam chapter, we see him in brienneâs affc chapters where heâs presented as being basically the asshole version of stannis who told her to go back home and find a husband when he technically saved her from the bet in renlyâs camp, we find out sandor is alive (!!! THE QUIET ISLE!!!), we find out where the fuck gendry ended up, we find out where the bloody mummers have scattered, we have found out where the brotherhood ended up etc, and oh wait lady stoneheart shows up and scuse me but catelyn was a major character with a shitton of povs and youâre telling me itâs a coincidence she shows up with her purpose and all in the chapters of the female character she shared a bond with, that was sworn to her and whoâd have fucking died for her even after cat herself died and itâs a coincidence? like, i know this fandom hates catelyn dead or alive but sheâs important, deal with it;
this also means that through brienneâs chapters grrm deals with a lot of his favorite themes to touch in a general setting without going into character-specific things, specifically:a) war, the consequences of war on who fought it, which are all negative and peace being always the best choice over it;b) those same consequences on people who suffered it without fighting (ie: have a bunch of orphans being slaughtered by bandits because their parents died!)c) the fact that the people in power donât give a single fuck about itd) justice and how itâs dealt (randyll tarly and his exemplary methods /sarcasm)
okay, all good, you say, and then why did brienne have to do it, couldnât it have been anyone else?
no, it couldnât have been anyone else, and this is where we touch the other point, as in, brienneâs character development. as in:
now, george is a good writer. he also knows that if you have to set a character up for something at the peak of the series, you have to build it up before (ie: if he knew that theon was gonna save jeyne and jump from that window after regretting he didnât die with robb, he had to start working on it since his acok chapters which he did, but you couldnât have told that would be his storyline reading acok, right...?) which means that you need to make sure the reader has a background and knows what the hell is going on with them and why they tick the way they tick. I have previously ranted about how you can guess a lot of things about brienne if you read just acok/asos when I explained why sheâs important as a literary character and I refer to that for it, but until you get to asos, since you donât have her pov, other than âsheâs not conventionally attractiveâ, you can only go insofar as:a) at some point she was in love with renly enough sheâd die for himb) sheâs a very morally sound person who really believes in her knightly oaths to a point thatâs maybe unhealthy sometimesc) sheâd die for whoever she trustsd) she will change her mind if she misjudged someone but she needs to have proofe) she doesnât trust people easilyf) she can fight pretty damn well and possibly best than any other man in westerosg) everyone thinks sheâs a joke for wanting to be a knighth) she has conflicts about wearing dressesnow, thatâs not little. but still, itâs not enough for what I think george has in plans for her. now, rewind a moment, because we need to establish another point, as in...
grrm has made A Damned Point in these books of deconstructing the concept of chivalry/knighthood and pointing out how people who are seen by others as perfect knights/Good People To Boot are actually anything but and people who tried to actually do knightly things arenât seen as such for hypocrisy or because society sucks or both (jaime and sandor vs gregor vs jaimeâs old kingsguard vs the gold cloaks etc) and heâs been pretty damn going at it with a flamethrower. what you know is that at the point in the narrative westeros is at knighthood is a corrupted institution, no one believes in it (or almost), no one fits the definition of what a true knight should be or if they do other people donât see it, and not counting the above (sandor because he doesnât see himself as one and he loathes it because the moment gregor got knighted he got his worldview of it tainted forever, jaime because he tried and he wanted to be it and all he got was the kingslayer name) no one in these books is a darned true knight and recognized as such. now, Iâll bring up the goddamned dunk and egg books again because in those books we have a) the actual knightly oath, b) an actual true knight, as in duncan, who is/was recognized as such by the entire damned realm and actually was one. now, the oath is:In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women....now, Iâm gonna drop the question: who, while going around westeros with a *valyrian sword* she doesnât think she deserves handling and duncanâs actual shield that she takes because there was a similar one in the armory while being on a quest to save a princess:- shows bravery at every other corner (no chance and no choice guys)- dispenses justice as much as sheâs allowed to (the bloody mummers and most likely lady stoneheart later) because she kills people who did horrible things- defended the young and innocent (pod and the kids in the inn, again, no chance and no choice)- protected women (sheâs out to find sansa and most people in the inn were girls and if you want to rape someone rape me)?answer: brienne of tarth. yes, brienne. no, no other. and no one else could have done that, because, and here we go to the last two points...
we knew what we knew about brienne, but the moment we go into her head we find out exactly all the reasons why she does what she does, we find out what she thinks about her life, jaime, catelyn, pod, the situation sheâs in and whatnot, we find out what drives her, we find out why she was going to die with renly, we find out that her core problem (other than hating that people see her as ugly) is that she canât reconcile being a lady and a knight and she hates disappointing his father and that sheâs been subjected to a really damn crappy time in her life on account of her looks, which means that we saw her as a young girl who was about to get herself killed over renly and finally finds a woman who doesnât laugh at her in cat chapters, we saw her as what jaime sees her as ie someone who gets him/changed his mind about him/a paragon of knightly strength and vows-upholding, but we hadnât seen her from inside her own head.from where we find out that sheâs a human being with very human issues, that sheâs actually not a fluke in the sense that yes sheâs that good of a person, yes sheâs that nice, no she doesnât care for glory or money or fame beyond ending up in songs where sheâs celebrated as beautiful and strong and not called names like in real life, no she doesnât have some hidden agenda to fuck things up for someone, yes she really believes in knightly vows, yes she really cares for the people she swears herself to that much, yes she suffers over catelynâs death forreal, yes she really is gone over jaime that much, yes her self-esteem is crap, no sheâs not gregor clegane.and sheâs also duncanâs direct descendant, even if george isnât dropping that bomb on her yet. (and her brotherâs name is galladon like one of the fairest knights in legends and wait, in arthuriana the perfect knight is galahad of which brienne is a deconstruction in herself.)now, not to presume anything, but if I was writing a series in which I 100% deconstruct knighthood in every possible way - as an institution and as âwhat people thinks a knight has to look likeâ - and I was planning to have as a plot twist to have a person who doesnât look like a proper knight according to the audience and the other characters in the narration actually be officially hailed as The Best Knight In This Entire Fucking Realm Iâd probably give them POV chapters instead of having them always be seen by someone else, because you canât know if that person is deserving of the title until itâs always other people talking about it. the moment youâre in their head you know if they have what it takes for the job or not...
which means that the brienne chapters are there because from the moment she gets them and separates from jaime she starts on a journey which ends with her having to face her worst fears about her own shortcomings and put her in front of enormous moral and ethical choices (ie jaime - the man she loves - or stoneheart as in her former liege lady gone mad, also her mission for sansa vs saving the girls at the inn because if sheâs dead she canât find sansa... but no chance and no choice) which until now have about broken everyone who has faced them (even good people at heart ie jaime and sandor got their lives turned on for the worst when knighthood ideals and vows failed them) and guess what the entire point is that while everyone else couldnât coherently live up to those ideals and vows, brienne most likely will because sheâs exactly everything a true knight TM should be, and the moment she gets over it sheâs going to get the results, and since I doubt grrm wanted anyone to say that if she got that he had written an overpowered mary sue who can fight anyone and take the moral high ground without being conflicted most of the time, heâs showing you where she comes from, that sheâs hella conflicted and she has a hell of a lot of issues which still donât stop her from pursuing her dreams.
and sorry but if sheâs being written to become that (and the fact that sheâs duncanâs direct descendant seals it nvm the knighting in the show which Iâm 99% sure is one of the three book canon things they might have done this year because like hell dnd would have cared for knighting her before kingsguarding her, theyâd have forgotten it as usual) then she canât not have povs because then she really would look like your usual mary sue just not standard attractive, but then again you donât get how much that hurts her or weights on her until you read her chapters. then it hits you in the face. like, reading it really cemented for me that she was top three for me and my favorite female character in existence, if it stuck at asos I donât know if iâd have gotten it that much.
also, giving a pov to the only goshdarned canonically not attractive woman who stays not attractive with her experiences and background that ever graced mainstream literature has (for me and a lot of others I know) meant that for the first time we saw someone with our darned crappy childhood self-esteem destroying experiences being the protagonist of one storyline and believe me that didnât hurt either, and most surely grrm also meant her as that specific rep, and that would be enough of a reason if he felt like it, but nvm that.
tldr: the purpose of brienneâs chapters is showing you that war sucks and make you understand that brienne is The Knight That Was Promised and theyâre there so when sheâs knighted and hailed as the best one since her ancestor and most likely even better than him you donât go like âwhat the hell where did that come from she has no pov Iâve barely seen her in these books how am I supposed to buy itâ, never mind that sheâs fundamental to the conclusion of catelynâs storyline whichever it is, and catelynâs coincidentally an extremely major character in these series and one grrm also really obviously cares about. and grrm is doing the work now so no one falls off the chair gaping and wondering what the hell was her deal in ADOS. so if anyone thinks the purpose in those chapters is finding sansa theyâre imvho very far off the mark. sansa being actually the purpose of the quest happens next book after the stoneheart situation is solved, then we can discuss it. but for now, itâs not what these chapters are about - theyâre about brienne and her relationships and her quest and knighthood and the worldbuilding and about how war devastates the places it happens in always, and the fact that people read those chapters and then think âyes but what about sansaâ and/or âyes but what was the pointâ is imvho a self-showing proof that itâs exactly why they need them: because like that, they them and only think about the other main characters or the overachieving plot or immediate gratification when grrm wants the reader to stop and think for five minutes about what heâs telling you and heâs pointing neon lights at brienne like âhey SHE is the one you need to keep an eye on because She Is The Quintessential Good Guyâ. but the fact that I see people dismissing her chapters as useless and boring on principle because no plot gratification and âsheâs boringâ about says everything that has to be said imvho, and that was my tea for today, thanks for coming to my ted talk.
#brienne of tarth#asoiaf meta#gotbrienneoftarth#janie writes meta#*shrug*#long post for ts#I said what I said#Anonymous#ask post
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Okay listen I really really enjoyed The Wonderland/Birthday Wonderland a LOT but thereâs definitely like. Huge chunks of stuff that are missing from the plot that I would have loved to see;; SPOILERS AHEAD BEWARE
First of all let me say that this movie definitely would have worked better as a TV series. Why? Because the world itself is MASSIVE. Thereâs so much worldbuilding shit going on that they only got to touch a little bit of each section, and left so many things open ended. And then thereâs the fact of the plot itself that leaves a lot of holes behind and unanswered questions.
Rest is under the cut so yaâll can avoid spoilers if you so desire:
What the fuck happened with the sweater contest? They make it out to be such an enormous, important part of the plot that literally ends the moment Akane hands the sweater over. We see her protectively guarding it the entire journey to the city, and yet itâs never even touched upon if the sweater wins the contest or not. What happened bruh?? I want to know if it won, a lot of unnecessary screentime went into the development and story of that sweater! Donât leave me hanging!
âOur world is dyingâ, Hippocrates says, as the majority of the land is still thriving pretty okay from the looks of it. Aight. Thereâs lots of gorgeous visuals in this film that are made clear through the gift of water that theyâre living--and apparently there isnât even enough water to go around for humans to drink. At that point literally everything else would be dried up, right? There is literally a giant pond--GIANT! With koi fish right outside the city. They just gotta learn to distribute their water better;; itâs a shitty system tbh lmao I mean thereâs plenty to go around. They just donât bother to try spreading it evenly, which is why some places are flourishing while others are not. They really should have spent more time showing how people are suffering from this rather than showing the remaining gorgeous parts of the land--that would have made the impact of saving that world that much stronger, made the stakes so much higher. If Akane had seen how bad it really got without water, maybe that would have driven her character development earlier on, and made it more significant.
Akaneâs change. It felt...really...anti-climatic. Or maybe just rushed. It was a sudden, minor sort of thing that when I realized I was like âOh, okay, sheâs already come to the conclusion that she can be strong on her own, but I wanted to see that?â They didnât execute it super well. It feels like weâre missing an entire scene where Akane finally breaks through her fear to gain courage and make her own choices. There was definitely a bit of that right before she made her grand speech to Zangu, but there was nothing that prompted it. The whole movie is a coming of age story for her, building up until the moment where she has her great breakthrough and is able to be confident with herself. But...they donât show that. We donât get to see that moment. I donât know why, because itâs the most important thing of the entire film? They really could have handled that better.
I really wish they touched more on Midoriâs involvement;; she was so minor I almost didnât catch the connection between her and the previous Goddess of the Green Wind. I like that Akane feels closer to her because of this, but we never really get anymore information than that. How did Midori end up in Wonderland so many years ago? Was she a reluctant hero type like Akane, or was she determined to save the world? Did she meet Hippocrates way back then, or was it a different alchemist that lead her on an adventure? Was something wrong with the prince at the time which required her presence in order to make sure the drop rain ceremony went well, just like Akane? I donât know! I want to know!
The ending was SO abrupt and short. Literally right after Akane and Chii get back thatâs it bam roll credits movie over! Iâm like. Whiplashed by it. I wanted to see how they were affected by the journey (besides Chii immediately going to take a nap which fandjksad MOOD), and how theyâve changed from their adventures. We obviously see a huge change in Akane at the end, but how does this affect her life in her own world? Does she start treating her friends differently? Does she ever make up with the girl she abandoned in order to be in the popular group (which is another huge thing they never came back to). Is she more determined to do things now, to be confident? Is this a change her mother notices? At least show the impact of what they went through;;
Halfway through the movie weâre introduced to a London-type city thatâs really...not so fun looking. Dark, gloomy, and depressing, with obvious signs of poverty, where everyone looks angry all the time. Itâs a very very clear outlier in the colorful Wonderland. Iâd love to have seen more history on this city...why is it so different from the rest of the world, and so dark? Why do all the people seem so unfriendly, when those outside of its walls are generous and kind? How did this city come to be? Itâs such an enormous mystery that they never talk about, besides hinting that this was where the prince had ended up once before he became Zangu.
Speaking of the lovely prince. I know we got kicked in the face with his backstory (and that shit hurted, this poor baby who also kinda deserved it but not to THAT degree), but I would have liked to see even more. Maybe Iâm biased because he became my favorite character the instant his identity was revealed, idk. (And, to me, he feels way more fleshed out and rounded as a character regarding his development than Akane does, which is another reason why I like him best.) But while we were given his motivations in becoming Zangu, the personality difference between Zangu and his regular princely self is IMMENSE. I really donât think the prince would have ever committed such acts--he may be a little shit and have a lot of anger issues (which, valid, I mean his parents died and he suddenly has all these huge expectations on his shoulders and heâs. Heâs just a kid man, that HAS to be traumatic) but I really donât think he would ever strike against his own people or openly threaten them. Sure, heâs definitely shown to be prone to angry outbursts, and is fond of pushing everyone who cares about him away, but heâs not purposefully malicious. And as soon as Akane transforms him back, he calms down immediately and becomes immensely selfless and heroic. So: why the enormous change of heart? I think something that could be canon that they never really mentioned is that, when he was transformed into Zangu, he became sort of a puppet. A lifeless doll without any real empathy, and the only emotions he could feel were a burning anger and a desire for revenge to those that wronged him and made him feel pressured to perform the drop rain ceremony. Being trapped inside a body like that probably just made those feelings escalate, resulting in all of the crimes he committed and all of the people he hurt. (And maybe they did touch on this but I just donât remember since my memory is garbage lol)
Going off of that, I know this is the type of story where we follow the hero characters, and as soon as Chii and Akane made it home that was it, we werenât allowed another peek into the Wonderland. But...what if we were granted that opportunity? Could we have gotten the chance to see how things changed after they left? Perhaps the prince began a journey traveling to all of the towns and villages he terrorized, and apologizing to the people. Maybe Ron starts to train under Hippocrates just like Pipo. Maybe the rain washed away all of the sorrow in that lonely city, which caused people to start to change it and make it brighter. Change, change, change! I want to see proof of Akaneâs help!Â
Why the fuck did the other alchemist/sorcerer (I forget his name and thereâs no info on him anywhere MDAKMASD Iâll update this when I find out later) do that to the prince?? That was SERIOUSLY fucked up. âOh yeah, to punish this child for being naughty and angry after his parents died, which is actually perfectly reasonable, letâs turn him into a doll where he canât MOVE OR SPEAK and let him sit there in absolute torture until I feel like setting him free again, instead of trying to find an alternative way to confront him about his anger issuesâ. Dude;; No wonder he was so fucking angry and bitter when Ron finally allowed him to speak again. I would be too! Trapping children in naughty doll prison is not the answer!
Iâm trying to think of more but I think I covered most of it :â) If yaâll have anything to add, please do!
Like, overall, the movie was GREAT. It would have been even better if they didnât shove so much information into it that ended up becoming irrelevant later on. It felt as if they were trying to cram a TV series into a movie, trying to cover all of their bases but failing. Thereâs just so many things they left open-ended and unanswered;; and you know me, Iâm a slut for lore like this so I want to know EVERYTHING. And I only got little bits and pieces of it. I really would kike to know if they just cut out large portions of the movie to fit the time limit and the budget;; because that would make a lot of sense, because it feels as if I was handed a puzzle without all the puzzle pieces.
#Basically Shima goes off about everything she wanted to know about this movie#The Wonderland#Birthday Wonderland#Long post#ăăźăšăăźăťăŻăłăăźăŠăłă#Shima speaks#Spoilers
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Part One: Dreams Do Come True
Disneyland is said to be 'The Happiest Place on Earth'. I guess it could be if you weren't stuck inside the Pluto suit, posing for pictures, in 104 degree weather, and your break wasn't two hours away.
Oh look honey, Pluto!" Another eager mom shouts as she rushes to get her over-heated, annoyed child to me. "Pluto, could you spare a moment of your time for a picture? You're his absolute favorite character!" Her child's face says otherwise and of course they all say you're their favorite until they run into Cinderella or Flynn Rider. One hour and fifty three minutes till break though, I guess posing for the overzealous mother and bored child wouldn't kill me, right?
As much as I'd rather snap my own neck than stand in this heat any longer for pictures (that will probably sit in the album on her phone for three months before finally being uploaded to Facebook), I shake my head yes and wave my arms around before placing them on the young boys shoulders and crouching down. He throws on a fake smile to please his mother and she snaps a few pictures before asking a stranger to take a few with her in them. As they walk away I wave to them and make my way to Peter Pan's rock. It's almost story time, which means the kids who aren't on rides or in lines, are listening to the amazing adventures of Tink, Peter, and Hook. And it also means I can stand in the shade of the tree behind the rock, take a somewhat breather before it's over and I'm back in the heat.
Once I make it to the rock, 'Peter' hops on top of it and points to me, "Ahh, it seems as if Pluto has found his way to his favorite shade tree!" I would love to retaliate by shooting a bird, but I act bashful and wave and move off into the shade from the tree. I settle in against the trunk and wait for his story to begin.
Colby and I have always been great friends. We moved from Kansas to California three years ago with another friend, Sam, hoping we would get somewhere. We tried YouTube and for a while it worked for us. Unfortunately, it wasnât enough to bring in an honest living wage. We wandered around the state in a bit of a depression, torn between couch surfing or just going back home. Colby suggested we just take a break and visit Disneyland, no harm done, right? Wrong. While waiting in line for one of the rides, a kid had started losing his shit. I didnât blame him. The lines were long and there wasnât much to keep you distracted. I felt bad as his parents tried anything and everything to get him to calm down. Lucky for the kid (and his parents), Colby knew a lot about Disney and began to tell him some wild story involving Peter Pan. Apparently someone high on the casting committee had heard him and Colby was offered a job on the spot.
A back up Peter. He alternated with the main guy for a few months before the poor dip was rushed into the emergency room. Opiate overdose. They saved his life but he was fired on the spot. Imagine almost losing your life and the first thing Disney hits you with is a big fat termination and a get well soon card signed by your replacement. Colby felt like shit about it for weeks.
Sam and I, on the other hand, had tried to stay away from Disneyland. I just couldn't see myself in tights, parading around making up nonsense. And Sam refused to work for the âevil mouse corporationâ. Unfortunately for us, finding a job in California proved to be a lot harder than expected. Colby talked to his boss about our situation and he agreed to give us a position.
Thinking I would get something easy like, Prince Charming, or maybe John Smith, I strutted into the casting room like I owned the place. Colby failed to tell me that the only thing they had open was a mascot position. I was doomed to the unfortunate Winnie the Pooh outfit for five months! Sam lucked out as a cashier in a retail spot. After the five months, some poor unfortunate soul (pun intended) took it over for me, and I was then upgraded to Pluto. Sam lucked out again and was offered the main role of Kristoff.
After Peter's story was finished, he and the rest of Neverland's crew posed for many pictures, while I enjoyed my last few minutes of shade time. Finally, the crowd cleared out and Colby dusted off his tights. He passed by me and wished me luck in the heat. I saluted him and made my way towards the break room hoping by the time I actually made it there it would be closer to time and I could get out of this fucking heat trap.
No more kids asked to have a picture with me and the park actually started clearing out as the heat seemed to rise. I tried to find another shady spot before collapsing from heat exhaustion. One of the park managers made her way to me and told me to take the rest of the day off. I thanked her about a thousand times before using the last of my energy to race to the closest break room and tear out of my costume.
I dropped Plutoâs lifeless body in the laundry bin and made my way to the tunnels so I could easily make it back to my room for a shower. I bumped into a few of my fellow workers, some calling out, and others in a rush to get somewhere and if it was to get into an ice cold shower, I didn't blame them.
"Jake, wait!" A voice shouted out. I stopped and turned to see who was calling out to me. My new friend, Andrea, came racing towards me. "Hey, I thought I'd miss you, get off early?"
"Yeah, Alexandria told me to take the rest of the day off; I would have anyway even if she hadn't told me too."
Andrea smirked and shoved me a little, "Liar."
"And it wouldn't have been just the rest of the day either, would have been the rest of my life. I'm sure if I had spent five more minutes out there, I would have died from a heat stroke."
Andrea laughed a bit. "I feel so terrible for you, itâs gotta suck."
"Nah, I don't sweat it." She laughed and shoved me again.
"You and your stupid puns."
We were passing by another changing room when something caught my eye. I stopped in my tracks and watched as a girl fumbled with a locker before finally getting the lock off. She dropped it and looked around embarrassed. Luckily, she didn't see Andrea or I in the door.
"Who's she?" I asked.
"New chick. Gwen was fired last night, distribution of alcohol to minors. This chick is taking her place. I can't remember her name though."
I watched her fumble again with the locker, trying to pry it open. I was about to help her out when I remembered that I was drenched in sweat. Sheâs cute and thatâs not how you make a first impression. I quietly left the room, already thinking of ways to introduce myself before Colby or Sam had the chance to get to her. Something about their blue eyes always got them the girl, but not this time.
#sam and colby#colby brock#jake webber#tfil#sam golbach#andrea russett#disney#story preview#what do you guys think?#yes/no
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Who Tells Your Story?
Pairings: Platonic/Rivals Prinxiety; Royality into MoRoLo (aka Roman has Two Hands); Minor Creativsleep; Remceit; Platonic Moxiety Warnings: Major Character Deaths; Infidelity; Whole Lotta Angst; guns;Â Â Word count: 6,785 Contributions: @potestessemagishomosexualitatis @mariniacipher
This was initially inspired by a snow day and @the-pastel-peachâs wonderful commission of a Logince Ham/Burr Duel. Then it got angstier
Read on ao3
Edit to add: want to cry more? Listen to this wonderful edit of Dear Theodosia that @notveryglittery sent me đ
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How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar?
This is a story about Roman Hamilton.
Roman, who has grown up surrounded by people who lived and died without anything, without leaving anything behind but a mourning family and an empty job that'd be staffed soon enough. Roman, hearing about people who were Grand, who were Great, who were Powerful, who left a Legacy of themselves impressed into this world, and he wants. He yearns to be one of those men. The wish, the dream, it swallows him whole, becomes all he can think about, and he reads everything he can get his hands on and writes as much as he can. But when his mother grows sick, he stops, he cares for her, until he grows sick too, and when she dies, he cries and weeps, and it feels like the entire world must have fallen apart because his did.
But the world kept on spinning.
His mother's death left nothing but a mourning son and an empty job that'd be staffed soon enough. And, he knows, with absolute certainty, that he wants, needs, to be more than that. Starts writing non-stop, to get out, get away, rise up. No matter the cost.
When he finally makes it to New York, he falls in love with politics. He also falls in love with men.
Roman, who is charming and beautiful and scrappy as hell. Roman, who's more than a little desperate to prove himself as more than his upbringing. Roman, who walks right into a gorgeous heir to a wealthy man.
The young Mr. Sanders is far too aware of his social status and social responsibilities, the context in which he must act. He's far brighter than anyone gives him credit for, and delights in the revolution because of the new ideas and theories it has introduced into the colonies. He is far too aware of the optics of falling in love with a penniless soldier.
He is also far too aware of how goddamn beautiful Roman Hamilton is. And when Roman and Logan collide - it is sparks. They match each other perfectly, twin burning flames of candlelight dancing in circles.
But then, Logan sees his best and oldest friend. The one he refuses to admit heâs been in love with for years. Patton, the sweet one. Patton, who would never ask Logan to give up anything on his account. Patton, who is helpless.
And Logan is far too aware of all the dynamics involved. Roman can socially climb with Patton just as well. Patton is the second son of the wealthy Mr. Schuyler, so the connection is less important. And Logan... Logan never could deny Patton anything. Not for the one person in the world he is positive is the best person he could ever know. Not for the person he loves best. And so Roman is introduced to Patton with a gallant bow and a witty quip, and now they're both helpless and besotted.
Logan is an excellent friend. He supports their marriage, quietly advocates to Pattonâs father on Roman's behalf⌠And he gives a wonderful toast at their wedding.
~~~~~~~~
Roman's burning need to be more doesn't lessen when he's married to someone as wonderful as Patton. If anything, it makes the need even stronger. He has a family now, even more need for a legacy. He will prove himself, or die trying. He will be whatever the Revolution needs.
And Patton tries to understand, he does. But... he doesn't pretend to know. He wants to be a wonderful husband, and he is. He wants to be a wonderful father, and thanks to the multitude of revolution orphans, he is that too. He adopts their first child Thomas when Roman is out on the front lines. Roman is sent home to be a father, but chafes the whole time at being separated from the fight.
"Roman, look around - look how lucky we are to be alive right now. Alive, and in love, and becoming parents."
"But Pat- the war's not done."
"I know, Ro. But as long as you can stay alive... that would be enough, for me. We don't need a legacy, my love. We can be enough." He takes Roman's hand in his as Thomas is between them, sleeping in his crib. "Together we can be enough."
Those words will haunt them both.
Roman promises to be careful, and even is. He survives the war, at the General's side. He comes home with the news, flush with excitement. He picks Pat up and spins him, he carries Thomas around on his shoulders. Patton finally feels the tension melt away. He's home, finally. The war is done, finally. Now he'll be satisfied, and they can be a family.
The day Roman gets a letter from the President asking him to join the convention, and then the administration - it's the first time Roman and Patton fight.
"I need to do this! I'm being asked to serve my country!"
"You just got home! Could you stay here for a second?"
"Pat, you don't understand-"
"No, I really don't! I don't understand why you want to run away from us the minute you have an excuse?"
"I need to make a difference, Pat!"
"You've made a difference in my life, Roman. And in Thomasâ. Can't that be enough?"
Patton's last question hangs in the air as Roman refuses to respond, refuses to even make eye contact.
Roman was about to leave for the capital when a letter arrived. It was from Logan, a long letter written in his steady hand, in his normal flourish-less prose.
"Roman, I'm leaving for England tomorrow. My father found a wealthy sponsor who will help elevate our family. He's... not particularly smart, or clever. No one could match you in that regard, in any case. So please - don't stop writing. Don't stop writing letters to me, don't stop thinking the brilliant thoughts that this country needs. I am happier when I hear from you. All my love to you and Patton [added later:] and Thomas, Logan"
Logan, leaving? Across the sea? Where letters will take weeks and weeks to reach other? Roman almost directs the driver to divert their path. He could go to the wharf, get Logan to stay somehow. Is there something he can do?
âPat, I⌠Itâs Logan. Would his father marry him off? Are we going to lose him?â
Patton reads the letter silently. âI⌠I donât know. I hope not. Heâs always been there, I canât even imagineâŚâ
Roman reaches out for Pattonâs hand. âMy dearest⌠what if I asked him to stay?â
âWith you?â
âWith us. With both of us.â
Pattonâs eyes grow wide as a smile stretches across his face. âYou would? Youâd be okay with that?â
Roman smiles. âI would love nothing more.â
When Logan does leave for England, to study and to work under an accomplished mentor, he does so with a ring on his finger and uncharacteristic butterflies in his heart. He leaves knowing that he will always return, because no matter where he goes, his home will always been wherever Patton and Roman are.
~~~~~~~~
Virgil Burr knew every day of his life that his parents were amazing and impressive and peerless. And then they both died at the peak of their careers, leaving him with just the overwhelming weight of expectations. So yes, of course he hesitates. He has so much to lose. Anything he does could tarnish the Burr legacy. Any wrong step could bring down himself and his parents' good name too. And he admires Roman, even as he's utterly confused. How can be act so brashly? How can he be so sure in himself to not hold back?
And Virgil, well, he doesn't have the best luck in anything. He gets passed over for promotions and assignments because he's so scared of putting himself out there.
And then he falls in love. And of course, that's not easy either.
Emile Picani is beautiful and brilliant and soft. He is also married to a British officer in Georgia. But Emile is beloved by men and women alike and he loves Virgil back. So how could Virgil do anything but wait for him?
Roman and Virgil find themselves in their favorite bar after Romanâs second wedding, when Logan and Patton are off entertaining other guests and old friends of both their families. Virgil confesses that he's been sleeping with Emile, despite the other's marriage.
Roman is baffled. "Virge, if you love this man, go get him! What are you waiting for?"
"I... I can't risk it, Ro. And I'm willing to wait for it."
"But, why? Why not risk it, when the reward is so high?"
"There are just too many factors, so many things that can go wrong. I am the one thing in life I can control."
They don't and never will understand each other, not completely. But they share a need, that burning desire to prove themselves, to belong. Roman, to belong to a family, to have a purpose that can't be replaced. Virgil, to his family, to be an heir they wouldn't be disappointed in. And so their methods will never be fully aligned.
But, at least it works out for Virgil. Emile's husband does get sent back to England and Emile stays. They get a divorce, and Emile at long last becomes Virgil's. They have a son together, named Emile too. He joins them within months of Thomas coming home to Roman and Patton. Roman and Virgil write to each other with a new level of awe they could never have imagined before.
"Pride it not the word I'm looking for - there's so much more inside me now," Roman tells his oldest friend and rival. He quotes his husband, too: "I don't have the vocabulary to describe what I'm feeling inside."
Virgil writes back "When he smiles, he knocks me out - I just fall apart. And we both thought we were so fucking smart."
~~~~~~~~
Even with two loves now bound to him, even with a son who amazes and delights him, Roman cannot bear to stay at home, not when there is work to be done. Rushing back into politics brings Roman back into contact with his favorite and oldest rival, who continues to just not get him. Roman and Virgil clash like an angry cat meeting a dog determined to play: neither really gets why the other doesn't understand their reactions. And yet they move in the same circles, and both have the same undercurrent driving their every move, their every decision: "Prove yourself." Roman needs to prove he can be more than the transient, interchangeable kid he used to be on that tiny island. Virgil needs to prove he is not a disappointment to his parents' memory. He can't be the weak link. And his fear of doing the wrong thing paralyzes him more often than not, even as his ideas and thoughts rival Roman's.
The fights and tension Roman has with other members of the Cabinet are amazing. He feels more alive, just like in the revolution. He has a goal, he has obstacles/enemies, and he knows he has the ability to overcome. It all just makes sense, and it electrifies his blood to be able to be right where he needs to be.
Except, well. There are other places that also need him.
One place that also needs him is London. He does as Logan asked, and keeps writing. They debate the ideas he's bringing to Congress and the Cabinet, they make Shakespeare references constantly, and finally, now, they have the space to tell each other that they love each other. Every letter, every post-script. Pattonâs letters are filled with endearments and compliments, just as Logan and Romanâs are insults that weave themselves right into declarations of affection.
Roman has a home office that he practically lives in, those days he's not in the actual office in New York. So Patton knows where to find him when he needs his husband to come be a human downstairs.
"It's Thomas' birthday, Ro. And we know it's a little unorthodox, but he actually has a gift for you!"
Patton beatboxes as Thomas starts to rap and sing, bursting with excitement.
And Roman hears his son singing to him, so proud of the words he wrote himself. Taking after Roman in his musical sense and his uncanny ability with language, taking after Logan in his impeccable timing and rhythm, taking after Patton in his pure delight and sunny nature. And Roman just melts.
"Our son is.... our son is pretty great, isn't he?" he asks his beaming husband, tearing up as he smiles.
"Yes he is," Patton says, hugging Thomas. His insides fill with fuzzy sunlight as he sees Roman sit with Thomas and listen, really listen about all his adventures and the French he's learning, and how hard but rewarding piano is.
"Darling, I know you've been working so hard - don't you think you deserve a break? We're going to my father's house for the summer, all of us. All the children: Thomas and Valerie and Joan and TalynâŚâ
Roman hesitates. "Work is so busy, there's so much I want to do..."
"Oh but Ro, when I say the whole family, I mean the whole family." Patton takes a letter out with brightness in his smile. "Logan is coming too."
Roman grabs the letter and kisses Pattonâs cheek. âWeâll all be together?â
âWe will, my dearest. At last.â
And Roman does mean to take a break. He earnestly does.
When Logan arrives off the boat from England, he and Patton immediately embrace, exchanging soft kisses. They've been together since they were children, and they always come first for each other. Always. But then Logan turns and sees Roman and... he's not a hugely expressive man. His face is usually inscrutable to all but those who know him the very best. Patton, however, knows him the very best. He sees the stars swirling in Logan's eyes and he hears the warmth in his loveâs normally stoic voice. Hears how Roman, his famously, obnoxiously loquacious husband, is reduced to a single word: "Hi."
His heart is alight, seeing the two men he loves most take each otherâs hands, unable to look away from each other even to kiss. No jealousy burns his skin, not even at the edges. It gives him only joy, to know that his husbands love each other so very much, as much as he himself loves them. Theyâre a family, a balanced triangle. And finally, they can all be satisfied.
Which is why it's so gutting when it turns out, no, it's still not enough. Roman just keeps saying "I can't stop until I get this plan through Congress..."
Patton's and Logan's hands immediately find each other's, just like when they were young. The mutual heartbreak is palpable as they stare back at Roman from the coach taking them away upstate, surrounded by all Patton's and Roman's kiddos.
Is Patton surprised? He is, actually. He thought if he wasn't enough, then he and Logan surely would be. He doesn't think he'll ever be surprised again, though.
If only Roman had just taken a break.
~~~~~~~~
We may never know for sure that it was a plan, a joint scheme between Remy Reynolds and his speculator husband Daniel Reynolds. We may never know if it was perfectly staged for Daniel to be gone from home when Remy collapsed on Roman's doorstop, begging for help.
Between his overpowering sense of chivalry, the ease with which his ego is stroked, and how fucking exhausted he's made himself... Roman isn't quite powerless to resist, but it's close. Roman almost pulls himself away but Remy suddenly has this look that reminds him just too much of his husbands. Who are gone, together, and itâs his own fault heâs not with them, but he misses them both, so much.
And then the letter arrives. The extortion letter. "Dear sir, I hope this letter finds you in good health and in a prosperous enough position to put wealth in pockets of people like me down on their luck - you see, that was my husband you decided to...."
"How could I do this? Why didn't I say no? What am I doing?" Roman despairs, but... where can he go now? He's already done it, and both Reynolds know. The only way this could be worse would be if Patton knew. If Logan knew. So Roman pays. Nobody else needs to know.
~~~~~~~~
Life doesnât stop when Romanâs morals do. And Virgil Burr is still alive and kicking.
And he finally comes to a decision point when he realizes that Roman's just executed the most ambitious compromise in the nation's history. Compromise is Virgil's thing. Roman has always rolled his eyes at him for wanting to find middle ground between sides, the 'safe' option. And now he turns around and has invented the treasury and placed the capital city all at once? And no one can say exactly... what happened, there. How they got to that point. And Virgil wasn't part of it.
It hits him like a thunderbolt: he wants to do this. If huge accomplishments can happen even through compromise, then he can do it too. This can be how he finally lives up to his legacy. He's sitting in his study when Roman bursts in, furious.
"You just unseated my father-in-law in the Senate? Since when the fuck have you been a Democratic Republican?"
"What the hell, Roman?"
"No, what the HELL, Burr? What were you thinking?"
Virgil is confused. "I finally did what you keep bugging me to do. You know, actually do something for once instead of hesitating."
"But Senator Schuyler? Why him?"
"You're not exactly the most popular dude around, Roman. The connection was what made him weaker."
"I've always considered you a friend, Burr."
"Thanks, but why would that change? This isn't about you. This is about opportunity. Don't let your pride get the way of common sense, yeah?"
Others see the rift forming, and bring Virgil in on a plan to undermine Roman's even bolder plans. They have.... information. Why did it appear just now? Perhaps because there were murmurs that particularly rich senators and cabinet members looking for dirt on one Treasury Secretary.
Roman Hamilton has always, always been a great writer. It's what he's known for, what he's proud of. And thanks to his eloquence and overwhelming prolificacy, it's gotten him out of a lot of narrow spots and dead-ends. So when his political rivals, now supported by Virgil, approach him in an attempt to blackmail him with the info from the Reynolds....
Well, obviously, he's going to write his way out.
Roman figures that the power of blackmail is the target's shame. And the insinuations that he used the money for speculation, that he took funds from the government, when the treasury is his one crowning glory so far? Speculation rumors are clearly going to be more dangerous than the truth for his professional life . Better to get in front of the wave.
The Reynolds Pamphlet hits without warning. Roman, impulsive, dumbass, short-sighted Roman, didn't imagine how huge the uproar could be. He's immediately alienated out of the public sphere, all his influence and credibility shot.
Virgil has lost Emile, in the meantime. Sickness overcame his love, and he and young Emile were left on their own. It makes it all the more baffling when he sees Roman's missteps: how could he possibly risk a love as wonderful as what Virgil had with Emile? How could he even think of such a thing?
Romanâs political career is dead. His dirty laundry is aired to the public. No one will make any deals with him, not when they can just say "well the adulterer supports the opposing position" and walk away the victor. His public life is empty, and his private lifeâŚ
There was no warning. None at all. Not even a single heads up, even once the pamphlet had been published. His husbands didn't even find Roman's article on their own. Thomas did.
Thomas is in shock and disbelief. How could Dad do this to Papa and Father? Dad is a good man, there must be some mistake, right?
Patton knows there hasn't been. Patton is... devastated, but not surprised. He wishes he could be surprised. Does that make him a terrible husband, that he already thought so little of Roman and still stayed? He finds himself wishing, in a weird, backwards way, that the affair had at least been someone he knew. Then at least, he might know how it could be that he and Logan were both missing something that Roman could only find elsewhere.
Logan, on the other hand, is furious.
His face is a glacier, his blood is ice, and Roman can practically feel the frost sprouting off his lips as Logan glares at him, spitting out, "I'm no longer here for you. How self-absorbed, how selfish do you have to be to think that I would possibly take your side in this?"
The time following the publication sees an angry Logan who refuses to listen to Roman's pleas, who ignores every explanation, who stonewalls every attempt of Romanâs to talk.
"Itâs not that itâs another man, you idiot. Weâre a polyamorous marriage. No, Iâm pissed that you honestly thought that your goddamn ego and reputation mattered more than actually talking to us. Because Patton takes this personally. Our husband is the best person in the world. He is kind, he cares about others' feelings, and he has raised six children to be compassionate young adults. In short, he is everything you're not. So congratulations, Roman. You've done what you always wanted: become famous. Created a legacy that will never die. And that legacy is for inventing a new stratosphere of stupid. I love Patton more than anything in this life, and I have chosen his happiness every time I could. I have chosen it, I will choose it, and I choose it now. I'm back in America to stay, for him and him alone. You took the best thing life could have given you, and you ruined it. So well done, Roman. Congratulations."
Patton does not lash out. There is no reflexive anger or reaction dragged out of him. No, instead, his response is calm, collected. He looks at Romanâs actions and says to himself, "I have seen exactly what you've done and I refuse to give you room to hurt me further."
Yes, he's a storm of hurt and final betrayal. Â He has never hated anyone before. But all those years ago he said he'd never be surprised. And he isn't, now. Just disappointed, that he was right all along. He couldn't be enough.
And now he's free. Free to stop trying. Free from trying to drag Roman into being a father to their kids. Free from having to try not to see the glances from other men (and women). Free from having to be a pseudo-widower, who'd lost his husband to politics. Now he decides on his own: Roman is exiled from his half of the house. He can stay in his home office. He can avoid dinners. That's what he did before, didn't he? Patton will stay with his children and remaining husband. Logan and Thomas and Valerie and Joan and Talyn and Terrence and Brittany. All his kiddos. They can be a family on their own. They could never be enough for Roman, but they're enough for each other.
~~~~~~~~
The eldest children are... dealing. Valerie has inherited her Papa's temperament, and throws herself into taking care of her younger siblings. Joan latches onto Father and they follow him everywhere.
Thomas is still in shock. And disbelief.
And he, more than any of the others, has inherited Dad's temperament, and maybe more than a little of Fatherâs. And he has a strong sense of privacy - no one should be gossiping about this if they're not actually affected. Thomas is on his university campus when he hears of speech publicly disparaging his Dad, saying he's without any redeeming qualities, calling him dumb and unintelligent and both a philanderer and a traitor the the country.
The young man is already burning with anger, and then the speaker throws in a last little gem:
"What more could we possibly expect from a man like that? Of course he was going to show his true nature eventually. Look at his âhusbands.â"
Now, this man has implicated not only Dad, but Papa and Father, too. And now that patented Hamilton rage is spiking. Thomas walks up and slaps him with a glove, trembling with anger. The ancient call to a duel. The man looks like he just stepped in something slimy, but accepts, naming a time and place.
Thomas walks away and immediately begins to panic. He can't fight! He doesn't even own a gun! But when he pictures trying to withdraw the challenge or back down... he can't do it. Not unless that @%#%$ apologizes.
He runs to his Dad. He's been the only child regularly talking to him ever since the pamphlet, so Roman can't immediately tell something's wrong. But then he sees the familiar fire in his eyes and realizes sadly that it turns out Thomas really is his son after all.
He counsels Thomas (his little Tommy, how is this happening?) to fire in the air to show he's been satisfied of his complaint.
âDon't risk taking a life, son - it's not worth it. Promise me, Thomas. Don't give your Papa another heartbreak."
"Okay, I promise."
"Come back home when you're done. Take my guns. And Thomas,â he hesitates, wanting to tell him to run, hard and fast. He wants to tell him to back down. But the set of Thomasâ chin tells him he may as well tell the boy to fly. â...be smart. Make me proud, son."
Shaking with nerves and anger, Thomas meets the rude man the next morning. He's still polite, following all the etiquette. And then his opponent fires on the count of seven. Of all the times to find out the bigoted speaker from your college is also a marksman.
Roman arrives at the doctor's still panting from the sprint over. It's all his fault. He knows it is. Thomas is pale, too pale, and the bandages around his middle are not.
"Hey, Dad," he says weakly, coughing. "I... I did just as you said. I did just what I promised."
"I know, I know, Thomathy. Shhh, save your strength."
"Why did he still fire, Dad? I was aiming for the sky, I was..."
"I know you were, Tommy. I know. You did everything right, just rest easy, okay?"
Logan takes care of all their children so that Patton can get to the doctor, too. He sprints, and he is already crying the minute he enters. He makes eye contact with Roman, heartbroken, guilt-ridden, definitely-responsible-for-all-this Roman, and glares.
"Who did this, Roman? What did you know about it?"
Thomas interrupts before Roman can answer. "Papa - I'm sorry..."
"Thoma-llama, no, nonono, it's not your fault," Patton says, immediately at his side, gentle and soothing, holding his hand tight.
"Do you... do you remember piano lessons, Papa?"
"Of course I do, kiddo. You always changed the melody, because you liked it more." He smooths the boy's hair. He is still a boy. Only 19, barely out of college, so sheltered, and now....
Thomas laces his fingers through Patton's, the way they did when he was 6 and still learning how to reach the keys. He hums the tune they always played, and Patton hums along, his voice breaking in his throat. Roman stands off to the side. He can't interfere in this moment. Patton was the Papa who mattered - actually there for their children when they needed him. Actually a father. Roman never spent enough time and now... he's out of time.
Patton holds Thomas tight, long after his time is gone. If he can just hug him tight enough, it won't be real. How can he believe this is real? It's... it is unimaginable.
~~~~~~~~
Roman and Patton move numbly through life. Logan is not emotionless, no, but he powers through. He helps the family move from the house where Thomas was born, relocating further uptown. Hiding from the shadows, and the memories.
Roman is utterly and thoroughly a broken man. He ruined his career, his hurt both his husbands, he's burned his friendships, and his family is shattering. He shuffles around the city in a daze. He accompanies his remaining children to school and lessons. He eats mechanically at the dinner table. And all it takes is the slightest reference to Thomas for him to fall apart.
Patton is too connected to the children to shut down, and they know him well enough to not expect the same happy pappy Papa. He's just a little bit colder. A little bit sharper around the edges. More easily startled. Valerie, who was always the closest with Papa, climbs into his lap all the time. She knows he needs affection the most right now. The younger kids make crafts for him, and they sing his favorite songs. If only his favorite songs hadn't been Thomas' favorites, too.
One night, after the children are asleep, Roman finds Patton staring blankly into the distance in the living room.
"I... I know I don't deserve you, Patton. But could you just... listen, if you will let me? Just knowing you can hear... that would be enough."
Patton doesn't turn or nod, but his eyes shift. He can hear. He's not moving away.
"If... If I could spare his life, Pat. If I could trade his life for mine, he'd be here now, and you would be smiling and... that would be enough for me. I know there's no way that can happen - we can't replace what we've lost, but... if you could just let me stay here, in this house. At your side. That would be enough."
The refrain might have broken Patton's heart, if he had enough left to break. But instead, without looking, he takes Roman's hand in his. He might not say it now, or ever, but he needs every family member now. That's enough to forgive him.
Patton needs both his loves. And Logan can understand that, can forgive Patton for forgiving Roman. But he hasn't let go of his anger with their husband. Not yet. Logan blames Roman a little more than Patton does, even though he knows it's unfair. but casting blame is easier than looking inwards, at his own flaws, at where Thomas might have gotten his stubbornness and hotheadedness.
It seemed like there would be years to be mad at him, for Roman to prove he'd changed, to learn to forgive. Patton knew Logan was beginning to come around, as Roman rededicated himself to his family. Seeing Roman so gentle with Patton and the children, Logan starts to feel the seed of something there again. But not all seeds are destined to grow. And some donât grow fast enough.
~~~~~~~~
Even in the face of hearts shattering and families breaking, the indifferent world keeps spinning. Even in the face of personal devastation, the thrum of politics doesnât quit.
Virgil is running for president in a crowded primary, against one of Roman's most antithetic rivals. But he won't take any positions. Too nervous about being rejected, he continues to hedge, and compromise, and avoid hard stances. He's learned how to hide behind a charming mask. He talks to people, and smiles and laughs, and buries his nervousness behind bluster (Who is he modeling his bluster after? The former prince of pride, of course). He's openly campaigning. It's new. And honestly, it's more than a little draining.
But the convention comes to a dead tie, and the only person left in the party who's able to weigh in is Roman. Despite his numbness, he's never forgotten why he cared so much about wanting to help his country. He still believes in its people and its promise. So after the 20th letter asking for his opinion... he declares publicly that he supports Virgil's opponent.
"What the fuck?"
"What?"
"You supported him? Over me? Really?"
"He had positions. And beliefs. I don't know what yours are."
âAt least I have morals.â
The rage simmers, hot and itchy below his skin. Who is Roman of all people to act better than him? To casually derail his biggest ambition? He asks for an apology, and acknowledgment, anything. Roman responds with a literal list of issues on which they've disagreed, "any one of which I could use as equal basis to oppose your candidacy."
The barbs fly back and forth, neither man backing down, apologizing, or conceding a point. Virgil, for the first time, feels entirely compelled to act, the quiet voice telling him to 'wait' strangely absent.
âI'll see you at Weehawken, at dawn, Mr. Hamilton. Bring your pistols."
Roman wakes Patton by accident that morning, sitting at his desk, writing.
"Ro, come back to bed, please?" his wonderful husband asks sleepily. "What are you writing?"
"Nothing you need to worry about yet, love. I just... I have an early meeting. In New Jersey. I'll... see you later, okay?"
Patton nods and is snoring again by the time Roman's walked to the door. He takes a look back, and returns to the bed to softly kiss Patton's temple. He walks past Loganâs bedroom, too. Heâs not yet been allowed back, even as Patton spends as many nights there as with Roman. But knowing what heâs about to do, he stops and steps in, quietly.
Logan is so much softer when he sleeps, and Roman's heart fills as he sees the slight smile. He carefully, softly, so gently it can't be felt, places a kiss on Logan's cheek. He can't wake him, can't ask for forgiveness beforehand. That would be leaning on guilt and fear, and he would never manipulate his love in that way. So he just writes a letter.
He doesn't address it with a name, but leaves it in the kitchen where both Patton and Logan will find it. On the outside of the folded letter, in Roman's bold hand, is one phrase for both his hearts:
âBest of husbands, Best of men"
~~~~~~~~
Staring at his one-time friend in the cold, misty air, Roman tries to remember the vigor he used to feel. The fire of wanting to defend himself. The burning passion of being right. He can't find it in himself anymore. But he recognizes it in Virgil's eyes.
Virgilâs anger has changed from a cold weight in his chest to a fiery stream spewing from his mouth and pen, the fire before the smoke of his pistol. He is driven by his age-old hunger, yes, but by another need, too: that this man will not make an orphan of his son.
Is it a selfish need? Of course. Roman's children will lose a father. But they'll have two left over if he falls, while Emile, Jr. would be utterly alone. And even if his pride lets Virgil concede, his love for his son won't.
For once in his life, Roman thinks and reacts a bit too slowly. Both combatants follow the proper steps, but he doesn't decide where to aim his pistol until the count has already reached 9. And Virgil is shaking with anger still when the his finger depresses the trigger on 10.
Of all the times not to miss.
Just as he fires, he sees Roman lift his gun up, and up, and it's pointing towards the sky and WAIT!
The one time he should have hesitated more, and he didn't. He was too young and blind to see that Roman's approval would never have been enough, that his disapproval wasn't why he didn't feel accepted. The world could have been wide enough for both of them.
And now, history will remember him as just... a villain. He will always be remembered for what he destroyed, not what he made. He will always, always be the bad guy. The worst part is he agrees. He thinks he deserves it. He shouldnât have tried to act decisively, shouldnât have gone against his regular actions
Patton and Logan canât help resenting him. Politics isolates him. And just in case the universe wasnât clear enough that his actions have consequence, he loses Emile. Again.
His son dies at sea not two years later, and Virgil is left alone.
~~~~~~~~
Imagine, if you will, Logan and Patton drying their eyes and taking the remaining Hamilton children to Washington, D.C. Logan and Patton continue to campaign for the end of slavery, for President Washingtonâs monument to be completed. Logan brings the policy, Patton brings the heart. Logan shows how feasible it could be. Patton shows why itâs necessary.
By the time old age claims Logan, Patton is stronger, more able to live on his own. His children have grown, and he has too. Logan is buried next to Roman, back in New York, and Patton will join them one day. Them and Thomas, in the family plot.
But Patton looks at the world and asks, âWhat more can I do?â
He and Roman wouldnât have been so well matched if he didnât understand that need to help, to do more, to make a mark on the world around him. Patton and Logan would never have loved so deeply if Patton didnât understand what it took to make real change happen. Pattonâs mark just never had to be a huge, sweeping legacy. The smallest change in someoneâs life could be enough.
Romanâs biggest weakness was never feeling like he was enough- because he never fit in. He never felt truly at home. So Patton looks at the children of the city and says, âI will build you a home.â
Patton visits Romanâs grave each year, and one year brings pictures
âRoman, love, can I show you what Iâm proudest of?â
The orphanage.
âI established the first private orphanage in New York City. I help raise hundreds of children, and dear one- I get to see them growing up. In their eyes, I see you, Roman. I see you and your hunger, I see Thomas and his optimism, I see Logan and his brilliant mind. I see us, all of us. I see our family and our love.â
And thereâs yet so much more he can do.
~~~~~~~~
Virgil draws back from the public life, invests in public libraries, and tries to do what he can to create scholarships and opportunities for young people like heâd been. Like Roman had been. One day, when heâs aged and grey, he gets a knock on the door of his New York home.
âHello, pardon me, are you Virgil Burr, sir?â
âI, Uh. Depends whoâs asking?â
âOh sure, sir. My name is Patton Hamilton. Iâve been looking for you.â
Patton knows that no one, no one spent as much time with Roman on the intellectual side. No one knew his political approach quite so well. Virgil spent so much time studying it, trying to understand, and he knows every aspect. So when Pat wants to enshrine his husbandâs political legacy, he knows who he needs to talk to.
If thereâs one thing Patton is good at, it is forgiveness. And Virgil has needed it for so very, very long. He helps publish the book of Romanâs writing, his letters and treatises. He helps build the Hamilton library. He consults on the business side of the orphanage.
And Patton, at his annual gravesite visits, tells Roman. One year, Virgil comes with, once heâs finally convinced he wonât be interfering. He stares at the gravestone, throat tight, eyes full.
Finally, he manages to say, âIâm sorry, Ro.â
He leaves a quill at the base of the stone. And parchment to write on. He never visits again, but he doesnât need to. He knows thereâs nothing more to say.
~~~~~~~~
As Patton ages, and knows heâs reaching the end of his life, his only true regret is wondering, âHave I done enough? Will the world remember us, and you? Will they tell our story?â
But ultimately, thatâs not what matters. What matters is that he has done his best, and that one day soon, he will see them all again. Logan, and Roman, and Thomas⌠itâs only a matter of time.
~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
General writing taglist: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice  @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby @sparkly-rainbow-salt @astral-eclipse @thelowlysatsuma @adorably-angsty @max-is-tired @almostoveranalyzed
#hamilton au#Roses Writes Fanfic#angst ahoy#Luluvely Wife#Helena#writing from discord#angst#roman angst#patton angst#logan angst#virgil angst#morolo#roman has two hands#royality#logince#logicality#remceit#emxiety#Creativsleep#i'm so sorry#major character death#Roses Kills Thomas (Again)#roman sanders#logan sanders#patton sanders#virgil sanders
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Symphogear, EP. 2
Last time, on Symphogear!
An adorable little girl, stood up by her date for a reasonable explanation, jams it out with her favorite pop duo, caught unawares that they are also a monster-fighting syndicate experimenting with the power of sound (the power to make you dizzy) to activate an ancient historical relic. Shit goes south as the jams prove to be too powerful, guaranteeing tragedy amidst an otherwise baller concert. Hibiki is rescued by The Bigger Of The Lesbians before she self-destructs to make sure the entire threat is neutralized, leaving The Smaller Lesbian sad, yet still incredibly gay. Years pass as our protagonist goes to Music School, for Music, to bunk it up with her girlfriend as she tries to figure out what the hell happened. Her prayers are answered when she tries to rescue a little girl and is promptly cornered, activating the same outfit The Bigger Lesbian that saved her had on. Gungnir Dattos all around, The Smaller Lesbian loses her shit as everything goes downhill from there.
Now, where were we?
...right. The piss beacon.
And the person taking the piss.
Hibiki has nary a clue what to do. Symphogears donât actually come with manuals, you see. Theyâre sort of a âclose your eyes and wing itâ kind of experience. In Tsubasaâs case, itâs quite literal.
âFUCK that was COOL AS SHIT, tight as FUCKING HELLâ
Take pity on this face. This is the face of someone whoâs last memories will be a confused lady wondering why she is suddenly part machine.
âimma save you widdle kidâ
Something to note about this show is that all the fighters sing while fighting. Hibiki is no exception, even after being confused about what the hell sheâs doing. It helps that her voice actress is a professional singer.
It helps that every voice actress here is some sort of professional singer.
This picture basically summarizes why Hibiki is cool despite being so goddamned dumb. Sheâs angry, and sheâs gonna protect some kids even if she dies doing it. Kanade would be proud, if she wasnât too busy being dead.
No shit!
Have you ever watched the original Sam Reimiâs Spiderman? Like, the very first one? You know all those awkward scenes about Spiderman learning how his powers work? Hibiki basically does that under crunch time. Thereâs a long segment about how sheâs forced to figure things out while protecting a kid and Not Dying.
Itâs going pretty great.
I canât believe sheâs secretly Steve Urkel.
âcannot FUCKING believe that girl my girlfriend saved managed to GET HER HANDS on her FUCKING CLOTHES that I WANTED to ENSHRINE IN A MEMORIAL to her how the FUCK did she do that cant BELIEVE i have to SAVE HER IDIOT ASS because she just CANT EVEN DO THAT-â
Tsubasa, preparing herself as a contender for the Worldâs Angriest Lesbian, barrels through the Noise in her motorcycle...
...which she smashes directly into the Noise. It does nothing.
Tsubasa has many a motorcycle to smash. Itâs a testament to her dedication following her aesthetic.
She fueled the tank completely before smashing it in.
Tsubasa... is petty.
As Tsubasa t-poses to assert dominance (a woman ahead of her time, this first aired in 2012), she comes down ready to kick some ass and vent some frustrations. And frankly? Sheâs all out of ass.
âoh my god sheâs even hotter up close i cant believe itâ
âfucking knock-off outfit looks like it came out of a bootleg flea marketâ
You donât need to know what happens next, because you already know what happens when someone shows up with a fucking sword ready to sing about their dead girlfriend and the conflicting feelings about seeing her armor pop up again on someone else.
Murder.
Lots... and lots... of murder.
âweâre so fucking useless why do we even existâ
After Tsubasa finishes what could only be described as a massacre, weâre treated to how people clean up the aftermath.
âhey, you know, make fun of me all you want, but at the end of the day, im the one holding the vacuum cleaner, and youâre literally turned to dust, soâ
Even this little girl knows shitâs about the go down. Got the tea and everything.
This is one of the minor characters of the series. She works for the 2nd Division. Who is the 2nd Division? Youâll find out soon.
âi didnt die! fuck yeah. todayâs a good day.â
âOH WAIT NO-â
Hibiki learns that her outfit unsets after a while, like bideo game. Who catches her mid-fall?
Her new best friend, of course. Donât be fooled by this look. Tsubasa tragically suffers from resting angry face syndrome. It is, unfortunately, incurable.
âi hate how cute she isâ
Hibiki reminds her that this is technically the second time Tsubasa has saved her, which in the large scheme of things, seems incredibly innocuous for someone who escaped a major tragedy many years ago. Unfortunately, time doesnât move forward for Season 1 Tsubasa. Not for quite a while...
The funny part is it doesnât even hit her initially. She never actually saw Hibiki personally during that moment, so she actually doesnât even have a clue what she means.
Look at her. Look at this clown. How could you hate her. Look at that smile.
All the survivors are always forced to write NDAs about what they saw. This grows to comical levels at times, given the scale of what happens eventually. It might as well be the worldâs biggest open secret by now.
âaight homies looks like i gotta go home, the wifeâs gonna be lonely an-â
Oh.
âsorry holmes but youâre going to gay baby jail like the rest of us singersâ
Hibikiâs face is riddled with guilt. The guilt of someone who just saved a little girl. How dare you, Hibiki. This is what you get for doing The Right Thing.
And so sheâs taken to âjail.â
âsorry pal but you literally turned into a huge weapon and you have no idea how to use it so!â
And so, Hibiki was never seen again...
Alright, so she really isnât going to jail. She is genuinely being taken into custody, though. To be honest, this kind of handcuff procedure is sort-of ridiculous for someone who literally just saved children, and you could probably bribe her to join them with a 10 piece chicken dinner, but hey, fuck it. 2nd Division has protocols, and that is to arrest people.
âi cant believe i was a fan of a narc all this timeâ
The school has a giant elevator that goes deep into the Earth. Also, look at that symbolism. Hibikiâs the only one looking at her own reflection. Deep.
Thanks, Tsubasa.
The interior decorator for this elevator is wild.
Tsubasa forbodes where theyâre all going as some ominous, strange, and evil place where joy and happiness die. Where good feelings and innocence are destroyed, and hope is crushed and ripped at the seams.
As it turns out, Tsubasa is just an angsty piece of shit.
So hereâs the situation:
The 2nd Branch, which are the people in charge of poking relics until they glow with the power of music to study and harness the power of as weapons to kill the Noise, live in a several mile deep high tech basement of an all girlâs boarding school dedicated to music. This is because, for the record, that the girls recruited to this school have the habit of being a little bit attuned to these relics. Hibiki, a newly christened Gear user, is now being recruited into this organized by Genjuro.
âi never got this kind of party when i was recruitedâ
âthats because nobody liked you, hansâ
âim skipping my soaps for thisâ
âfucking hate my twin brother hansâ
âshe?????? gets a party??? SHE. gets a party. I DONâT GET A PARTY. SHE... GETS A PARTY? and i dont get a fucking party. i was literally BORN into this job. NOBODY gives me a damn party. this MORON who CLOWNS AROUND with her SUBPAR SONGS. gets a party. oh my god. oh my GOD. FUCK. FUCK!â
âif this is what its like to get arrested i gotta be gayer and do more crimesâ
âIâm not actually surprised. Iâm just pretending to be. Iâm just really not good at pretending to be surprised.â
âfucking hate this family, im gonna eat all of hibikis cake and cry in my roomâ
Remember: This show first released in 2012. Ryoko? Trendsetter.
Ryokoâs screen is very dirty and foggy. Donât ask why. Donât even remember why I pointed this out. Just forget this point completely.
Hibiki understands that handcuffs just arenât fashionable.
Genjuro casually explains that theyâre the fictional japanese equivalent of the NSA, all while doing magic tricks. Truly a man of many talents.
Tsubasa is already plotting how to vent about all this in her diary, which she addresses as letters of Kanade every time she writes in it.
Genjuro and Ryoko introduces themselves as everyone else apologizes to her, except Tsubasa.
Ogawa also intro- yes, Iâm recycling a picture- introduces himself. Heâs pretty cool, too, and serves as Tsubasaâs ninja bodyguard, butler, and all around mentor. We never get a backstory on him, and likely never will. Itâs best to keep it that way; it only adds to the mystery of who the hell this guy is.
âweird flex but okayâ
Hibiki realizes sheâs being recruited, after being told sheâs being recruited. Given some brain cells remain in her head, she asks the obvious and wonders what the hell happened to her.
âryoko, care to explain?â
âwell, itâs simple. youâre the protagonist now.â
Ryoko, who has no sense of boundaries, subjects Hibiki to a medical inspection. As creepy as her tone is, its to inspect the state of Hibikiâs newly formed gear.
Sheâs finally freed from that long winded event and returns home to her wife.
âbuddy you smell like shit. and french fries.â
âhibiki. youâre not dead, hibiki. come on, get up. i just cleaned this floor, hibiki. hibiki, please. this is genuinely unbecoming of you. hibiki, oh my god.â
âmiku please i learned how to kick ass and im tired and please let me enjoy this nice floorâ
Tsubasa does the thing real life Symphogear and all related products never actually bother to do.
âgod sheâs so gay for her but i know sheâd never cheat on me soâ
Hibiki ruminates on the day sheâs had. This is where the really dumb angst comes in. You see, Hibiki canât tell anyone about what happened, and Miku, now a civilian in her eyes, cannot know about her alter ego Symphogear antics. Hibiki feels bad about this.
ây u no trust me. y u no tell me troof. im wife.â
After a brief heart to heart Hibiki smiles and snuggles her girlfriend.
Theyâre gay.
âim gonna marry her knowing full well sheâll sleep through the ceremony. god.â
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Cat Out of the Bag
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
Chapter 1: Prologue & The Encounter
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
Neko!Hank Anderson x Artist/Author!Connor
Genre: Angst, Fluff
Warnings: Swearing (assume thisâll be in all future chapters as well lol), A tad of Violence, Panic attack similar to my own, Blood/Injury Mention
Word Count: 9,453 (I have no clue how to write short chapters/fics lol)
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
Synopsis:
  âI ainât some starvinâ, twink cat that you can just bring home and teach how to trust and love or whatever the fuck else books try to say. Hell, Iâm not even a Persian or Maine Coon cat with those bushy, pale tails like people always love to give us bears. Iâm just an old, fat calico.â
  âI personally donât agree with the stereotypes as well. But as I offered before, youâre always welcome to leave. The front door is right there, Iâm not keeping you trapped here... If you wanted to stay, though, I can make you breakfast? You can watch me make your breakfast, or you can make it yourself if you want.â
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
~> Next
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
            Growing up, Connor was always stuck in the worlds he fabricated in his mind, and he wasnât ashamed of it like his family tried to tell him to be. Even when he would introduce himself to people since middle school, he would always say his name then state that he had an uncontrollably active imagination, and if they ever are speaking to him and he doesnât appear to be actively listening that they should try to not be offended. He just simply found inspiration and was committing whatever it was to memory to come back to later, or has laid out a simple plot to follow along later. He really meant no harm or disrespect to them.
  Letâs just say that, among the schoolâs nerds, jocks, or other cliques, âCrazy Connorâ did not fit into any social group, and regularly gained more bullies than friends. He never minded too much, though. He always lived vicariously through his characterâs lives which he created, and they always had plenty of friends and allies they could turn to when in trouble. Thatâs all he needed, or at least, thatâs what he always convinced himself so he wouldnât become swallowed by loneliness.
  By his first year in high school, he wrote an entire book, and by the end of his first year, he wrote another, longer one. For his second year in high school, he was âgently persuadedâ into taking an art class for whatever reason the school offered (he wasnât listening on purpose that time), and he discovered he had a natural gift in the subject. With the encouragement of his art teacher and his one and only friend, Markus, he started posting his artworks on a blog he created just for this purpose, that way he didnât flood his normal social medias with the unusual content. Soon after, he bought himself the equipment to start doing digital art and quickly switched to that for any piece that wasnât a graded assignment.
  By the end of Connorâs second year, an online social media influencer found the one fanart of them he madeâ and his blog and all of his other works by extensionâ by pure chance. After some talking and interactions, they asked if they could commission him to do a small line of t-shirt merch designs. Of course, Connor said yes. They loved it, and so did the customers and fans who looked at and bought the t-shirts. He still knows to this day that he is more than extremely lucky to have had this chance.
  After designing the merch, his art blog started gaining more attention, and by christmas break of his third year in high school, he was making more money each month than any student he knew with a job. He got donations from very generous people just for sharing his art and little comic scenes, and he regularly got commissions from people, and was even asked to create pin and more t-shirt designs for that same online influencer. Connor never gave up writing, however, he simply never posted it anywhere public. Although, as soon as he turned 18 early in his Senior year, he immediately self-published the first book he wrote after doing some heavy editing (it was an actual cringefest trying to read through it), and made it well known on his blog that more were coming in the somewhat-near future.
  It didnât do too well, to say the least. A world where nekojins and inujins donât exist, especially for the sake of not making certain things in the plot happen conveniently and provide crude or perverted humor? It doesnât fly for most people. He didnât give up, though, of course not. He expected this book to not do well at all, so he wasnât put off in the slightest. He self-published his next book during his final new yearâs break of high school, which ended up doing much better than his first, considering it was a fantasy adventure genre and had a nekojin as one of the main characters. Looking back on it now, this is probably where his career in writing first started.
  Up until this point, Connor was convinced heâd be stuck at a nine-to-five office job for his entire life, since he couldnât see himself doing what he loved due to the lack of publisher and author connections and, as much as he loves art, thatâs not where his true passion lies. He knew that heâd eventually get burnt out if it were his job and only source of income. Although, he also couldnât imagine doing something he actively disliked because he would rather rip his hair out than be an accountant or anything of the sort like what his family wanted. However, this second book made him realise that it could be possible to do what he wanted full time.
  As Connor very soon found out, nekojins and inujins werenât popularly a main character in books or any media for that matter, and if they were, the book almost always had a forbidden love type of plot or the partial-human was a slave of some sort of one of the other main characters. The fact that Connor, a high schooler, wrote a book with a kick-ass nekojin who gives no fucks and takes no shits as a main character with a pure human lover/sidekick was decidedly open minded and extremely controversial.
  At one point, an encounter with a reporter brought up the question of how he found the courage to make such a bold statement. Connor felt somewhat guilty when he admitted that this story idea had just been in his head for so long and it just had a bad-ass nekojin as the main character. He put no thought into what people would think about it or what kind of statement it could possibly give. Itâs just what the story always was, so he made it how it is. Simple as that.
  And apparently that was an open minded answer. The fact that he hadnât even thought about what the public might think and didnât care whatsoever that the main character was a nekojin proved that in his head was a world that easily existed where partial humans and pure humans lived in perfect equality. The writers of those articles werenât exactly wrong, but Connor still didnât like how every single one of his artworks and writing pieces were soon heavily criticized and people looked far more into them than even Connor himself thought was possible. It was almost intriguing how people could pull such in-depth ideas and conspiracies from works that were made simply because he thought âOh, this kind of pose looks cool for this characterâ and âWow, these colors look cool with it so weâll smash them together like thisâ and âTa Da! I did it! I made a thing! Look guys!â.
  By the time he graduated, he was in the midst of self-publishing a third book that Connor carefully picked because the story line didnât have anything blatantly controversial in it. His fourth or fifth ones didnât have anything especially attention-grabbing in them either. Although, thatâs just how he planned them in his head. Yes, he did have other titles deemed more risky and controversial, but he didnât release them only because he didnât want that kind of attention on him again yet. Eventually, all the controversy surrounding Connor had died down once people began realising that such a large statement from him was likely going to be a one time deal. All that was left behind from the ordeal was a sudden spike in interest and income from the people who found his work because of the fuss.
  Yes, he hated that partial human slavery still existed, and no, he never planned on getting one of his own and helping the economy of those types of businesses, but he couldnât gather the bravery needed to make any grand statements on his blog and march along with the groups of people trying to make things equal. He had morals and human decency, but they apparently didnât run deep enough to make him less terrified of the mass of negative attention he once faced, so he supported the protesters in spirit for doing what he canât with minor guilt.
  He still feels that way even now at 32 years old. Heâs lucky enough to no longer be a starving artist, and he moved out of Markusâ and Simonâs shared apartment to live on his own a couple years ago. He still mainly does digital pieces when creating art, but he took inspiration from Markus and his father and started using different types of traditional medias again. Although, somewhere down the line, art stopped being the larger source of his income, and started being extra cash he put into savings and funding for larger luxury itemsâ such as trips across America for more experiences that he could use in his art and books.
  He no longer has to self-publish anymore, yet he still occasionally does under an alias when his agent, a good friend of his by the name Luther, wants him to change too many aspects of a book to make it more commercialized. He has told Connor in the past that he comes up with other manuscripts to pitch quickly compared to the other writers he works with, so he doesnât worry too often about Connor self-publishing something he didnât accept. He understands that, to Connor, these arenât just books, these are tiny pieces of himself in written form. Though, Luther always goes into detail about what parts he doesnât like and why because there are times where Connor decides that the world in his head would be made better with the changes Luther wanted.
  Connor is currently heading home after one of said moments. He just got done with a meeting to pitch his next potential book, and Luther had suggested that he change the time travel portion in it to make it a trilogy and expand on some characterâs backstory and development. Connor, not understanding why he hadnât written a series of any kind yet, since most of his books are rather long, quickly and happily agreed to go home and edit large chunks of it to make it work.
  He wonders if he can somehow convince Luther or the publishing company to hold off on publishing the books until all three are completed. Connor hates waiting months for sequels and much prefers having all of the books in a series so he can binge them, and he knows that heâs far from the only one who feels this way. They probably wonât stall until all 3 books are fully completed, though. Heâll just have to somehow work quicker than usual without getting burnt out, or pitch a different book from his list of ideas to work on in the meantime.
  Connor blinks out of his head to pause and take in the scenery around him. Connorâs lucky to live in a more suburban area. Heâs always been an extremely light sleeper, so he could never get much rest when he lived in the city with his family. The nearest area like that is just far enough away that the only evidence of it being there are the skyscrapers in the distance and the fact there are precisely 14 stars on a clear night sky, and on the nights that arenât clear, the clouds over the downtown area have an enchanting glow to them.
  In the area Connor lives in now, most of the roads are all one lane per direction, with the exception of the main roads with the stores and sloppy grids of traffic lights. This is where Connor is right now, walking along the strangely empty sidewalk. He lives in one of the apartment buildings in the area, and the rumble of cars and occasional shrieks of emergency vehicles are enough to make him want to move back to Markusâ quieter area, despite there still being five more months left on his two-year lease. Looking off to the side where his apartment building should be, Connor decides that he should start hunting for other apartments if he really wants to move somewhere else.
  Connor pulls out his phone to take a picture of the serene scene heâs just been greeted by. The setting sun casting the sky in a brilliantly beautiful gradient of rich orange and gold. He has to shove the small sense of guilt away for thinking something that air pollution has caused is gorgeous, because thatâs exactly what it is. The small trees that are planted in the middle of the wide sidewalk on the other side of the road look like a black void is trying to rip and glitch its way into swallowing the sky whole, yet is always coming up short. The road he walks along is empty for now due to the traffic light glowing red behind him, which gives him a chance to get an unobscured picture.
  This is the perfect scene to paint back at home. Maybe itâs just the thing to finally get him out of his art block.
  Connor quickly snaps several pictures at varying levels of brightness and contrast before the light turns green. He quickly puts his phone away and continues on his way home. Honestly, Connor should have taken an Uber or something instead of walking, but he isnât regretting it quite yet. He probably will in a few minutes, though, when the only light will be from the moon and the occasional street light. He supposes he can always call an Uber now, but heâs currently only a fifteen minute walk away from his apartment complex if he doesnât take the shortcut through the trees, closer to ten minutes if he does.
  Besides, the air is nice and cool for once, if not a bit on the humid sideâ but thatâs just what happens when you live along the east coast, you get non-stop humid air. On top of the air being nice, Connor really needs to get more of it from outside, rather than the stale air inside. The last time he left his apartment (besides hopping into his car for grocery, work, or mail related journeys) was probably a little under a year ago, maybe a little over. Sure, once in a while heâll open his windows, but that isnât the same as being outside, feeling the sun on his skin and slight breeze in his hair.
  Huh, that could make a cool land in his series. A place where no matter where a person stands within the small civilization, there is always wind to be felt. They could remain protected and unspotted with the use of a force field of sorts that spreads itself over the town. Maybe that could be because they are a true neutral civilization and donât want any part in the warâ
  A thud of something hitting metal immediately followed by a quiet groan of pain interrupts Connorâs wandering train of thought. He probably wouldnât have even heard it if he hadnât retained his habit of somehow being alert to his surroundings while zoned out from back when he was in school. He doesnât even know where the painful sounds came from, but that doesnât matter because he wouldnât just jump in to other peopleâs problems. What if there isnât anything happening at all and that was just someone who tripped and fell?
  So he checks the time (for evidence purposes, just in case) and keeps walking straight, hyper aware of every little movement and sound around him, yet never turning his head. That is, until he jumps at the abrupt sound of sharp laughter coming from behind the boutique thatâs closed for the night.
  âThe fuckerâs weak and already passing out! Who wouldâve guessed! Ha!â a nasally voice taunts. Connor freezes against both his will and better judgement.
  âShould we call some place to pick âim up? We could get some extra cash?â a woman asks.
  âHell no!â a masculine voice shouts, âWho the hell do you think would want an old, fat neko like him, anyway. Weâd be doing everyone a favor by just killing it.â
    That gets Connor moving silently into the narrow alley towards the voices. He may be socially awkward and loathe conflict, but he grew up training in different types of combat and self-defense. If someoneâs life is in danger, he damn sure will fight, and as long as none of these people have a gun, he will win.
  âUh, I didnât fuckinâ sign up for murder.â the nasally voice says uneasily, âI just wanted to go out and have a good time.â
  âUgh, itâs not like weâd get caught. And even if we did for some reason, we would get a slap on the wrist at most.â
  âAre you actually that fuckinâ stupid, Damien?â the woman snaps. âIf we kill him, that will be seen as worse than killing an animal. Even Iâm not stupid enough to think that weâd get away with something that in a place out in the open like this. Someoneâs gonna have to take out trash, and evidence of us being here is everywhere.â
  Connor finally lets himself fall still, ceasing his silent shuffling towards the corner. He presses against the wall in hopes to lower the chances of being spotted, and promptly rests his back on something sticky. He jumps forward just slightly, but not enough to be seen.
  âWhat was that?â the first guy asks.
  But is apparently loud enough to be heard.
  Connor braces himself for a fight, tensing up and getting into positionâ
  âDude, youâre being paranoid. Letâs just get the fuck out of here. Iâm bored, anyway, and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.â The supposed ringleader persuades, his boots thumping on the concrete as he walks away. Connor lets himself relax, thankful that nothing more is going to happen for now.
  âSame. Câmon.â The woman starts following him if the sound of clacking heels is anything to go by.
  Thereâs a relieved sigh, then one last set of footsteps walking away. Luckily, based off of the sounds of scuffling and skateboards from around the corner, thereâs another way to get in and out of that place besides the one Connor is hiding in. He stays completely still and silent for several minutes after theyâre gone, just to make sure they wonât come back. When he finally feels that itâs safe enough to look at the time on his phone, only twelve minutes have passed since he last checked it.
  Taking a deep breath, he moves himself out of his hiding place. He spots the large nekojin laying against a dumpster in the alley and can immediately tell that the 911 emergency responders wonât do much, if anything, for him because thereâs no collar around his neck and no obvious lethal wounds. The poor guyâs got blood in his hair, which is grey with age, and thereâs a bit of blood on the ground and dumpster where he was presumably knocked down. His wrist is also zip tied to the back handle of the dumpster, so his arm is raised high above his head and Connor can see where the zip tie is digging into his skin. He watches as the man takes a small breath with a small sigh of relief.
  That seems to make something in Connor click, because heâs suddenly dropping to his knees to check for any less obvious injuries. First thingâs first, Connor removes the zip tie from the manâs wrist by jamming his fingernail between the latch and tail slowly undoing the loop. He carefully puts the manâs arm down by his side. Connor only knows so much about first aid and injuries from past, admittedly extensive research for his books and comic scenes, but he does remember how to spot the signs of various broken bones. He also knows that wonât be enough to make sure heâs actually okay.
  Therefore, he yanks his phone out of his pocket and texts his friend, Kara, who is some kind of doctor, hoping that sheâll be kind enough to come and look this guy over herself. Itâs not like Connor wouldnât pay her for her expertise, after all.
        Connor Child Today at 19:28 (7:28)
Hey, are you busy right now?
  Connor doesnât even have time to repocket his phone before it vibrates in his hand. She mustn't be busy, if she responded so quickly.
        Best Mom Friend Today at 19:28 (7:28)
iâm free. whatâs up
        Connor Child Today at 19:29 (7:29)
You know how youâre a doctor? Are you, like, a general doctor, or are you specialized in something? And is there a difference between pure and partial humans medically/biologically?
        Best Mom Friend Today at 19:30 (7:30)
Weâll call it a general one. and no there arenât major differences besides the tail and ears and heightened senses and all that jazz.
werenât you just with luther? what happened?
        Connor Child Today at 19:20 (7:30)
I was, but I found an injured Nekojin that was beat up by these three assholes while walking home. It doesnât look life threatening, but Iâm not a doctor and I also have no way of getting him to my place.
  When Kara doesnât respond immediately, Connor carefully lifts up the large manâs shirt, carefully avoiding touching his white, tan, and black blotched tail thatâs draped protectively across his chest before he passed out. He notes that thereâs a lot of bruising, which could mean a few things, some worse than others. Heâs taking even breaths instead of short, sporadic ones, though, which could be a good sign. After checking a few other things tenderly and carefully, Connor decides that itâs probably okay to carefully lay the stranger down so he can check his back.
  Itâs immediately apparent that they jumped him from behind. The entire back of his shirt has blood all over it, and some blood on the wall and dumpster where he was leaned against them. After a solid twenty seconds of processing what heâs seeing and choosing what to do about this first, Connor finally forces himself to tenderly lift the back of his shirt up. He notices that none of the cuts should be deep enough to do any lasting damage beyond scars. He doesnât even think blood loss should be a problem, since the blood wasnât even visible for the most part until he was rolled over. That doesnât account for any possible internal bleeding though, and for the fact that Connor still isnât a doctor.
  At that thought, Kara finally messages back with perfect timing.
    Best Mom Friend Today at 19:34 (7:34)
first of all, where are you?
second of all, you shouldnât bring strangers into your home.
third of all, you should take him to a hospital anyway.
    Connor cringes at his phone at the last suggestion, then begins typing.
        Connor Child Today at 19:35 (7:35)
We both know he wonât get proper care at a hospital, especially since he doesnât appear to have a collar or a way of contacting someone who will pay off the debt for the stay. Also, Iâve already thought about every other option besides bringing him to a hospital and they all end with him getting abandoned and/or hurt again out here. I donât wanna leave him like that.
   Itâs then that Connor realizes that he likely has most of the things needed to take care of these types of injuries at home in his jumbo first aid kit. Markus bought it for him on his birthday as a jab at how clumsy he is, but itâs come in handy multiple times since then and none of his friends let it die.
    Connor Child Today at 19:36 (7:36)
Besides, I think I have everything needed to clean him up at my apartment, Iâm just not sure about any internal injuries or how to move him.
    Oh god damn it, apparently Connorâs going to be one of the dumbasses who brings injured strangers back home. He canât just leave him out here and he canât trust anyone else in this areaâ state, evenâ to not abuse this guy as soon as Connor is out of sight, though. He gently feels around the strangerâs head, carefully avoiding his tan and black ears, for any obvious injuries as he works things out in his head.
  Maybe he can call Markus to come over to help keep watch just in case? No, he and Simon are out in New York on vacation until Monday, and todayâs Thursday. He canât ask Carl or Luther to come over, since Carl is old and wheelchair bound and, as well as Luther can act and despite his massive size, he does much worse with conflict than Connor does. Heâd be on edge from being around a wild card for the night, then stressed for days after. Connor knows Kara would come help him out, but she doesnât get enough sleep as it is, with the weird hospital hours and helping with taking care of Alice. She doesnât need to be more involved in this than she already is, anyways.
  This is either going to end surprisingly well or very badly, and Connor has a feeling of which itâs going to be. That is decidedly not a good sign, but Connor elects to ignore it anyway.
    Connor finds a rather large knot on the right side of the manâs head where the majority of the blood in his hair is, which is probably the same injury that pretty much knocked him out in the first place. He doesnât even know if thereâs a way to check for concussions when the person is unconscious.
    His phone finally pings an alert for a new message.
        Best Mom Friend Today at 19:37 (7:37)
fine, you win. tell me where you are and iâll bring you guys to your place. whoâs staying with you, cause it isnât going to be me or luther.
        Connor Child Today at 19:37 (7:37)
Thank you so much!! Iâm at the boutique near my apartment complex! And I have a friend that Iâm going to message!
Youâre the best!!
    Connor rolls the stranger into what he hopes is a more comfortable position, then finds a place where heâll be able to watch the parallel parking lanes in front of the boutique and the unconscious nekojin at the same time. His phone chimes again, and he doesnât bother opening it for the simple three letter in the message notification.
        Best Mom Friend Today at 19:41 (7:41)
Omw
    With that taken care of, all there is left to do is wait for Kara. He moves and sits down in his spot, and just a bit over ten minutes later, she pulls up. Connor glances back at the old stranger, making sure he wonât die or something in his absence, then quickly steps out of the alley so Kara will see him. She does and parks her blue SUV in the spot closest to where Connor is waiting.
    âKara! Youâre a lifesaver, really!â he calls after Kara steps out of her car.
    âI know, I know,â She shuts the door behind her, âWhereâs the guy?â
    âHeâs back here. I didnât want to move him too much.â
    She nods in approval and silently follows him to the old nekojin, then starts looking over his wounds. She decides that the cuts on his back arenât as bad as they could be and the bleeding has already slowed down a bit. At her request, Connor retells everything he knows. After a few more minutes of checking, she states that the stranger no doubt has a concussion and will need plenty of rest and another check up once heâs awake. Thankfully, she doesnât think his wrist is dislocated or fractured or anything, and his ribs seem fine. Together, they carefully lift the unconscious man into the back of the SUV, and Connor climbs in the back to sit with him.
    They reach Connorâs apartment complex in just over two minutes (he swears he isnât staring at the clock in the car), then fight to awkwardly lift the man out of the car and up the flight of stairs to Connorâs apartment. Once inside, they lay him on the bed in the guest room. Kara makes a comment about the sheets not making it through unscathed, but Connor disregards her with an obvious lie about needing new sheets anyway.
    Kara then washes the manâs back and arms then carefully tends to his plentiful superficial wounds with Connorâs help, since there was apparently glass in some of his cuts. By the time theyâre finished with that and the man has a light blanket draped over him, a couple of hours have gone by. Kara leaves once Connor promises (lies) that the person he texted about staying over will be on their way very soon and isnât there now because they have a shift at the grocery store.
    Now that Connor is completely alone and is starting to feel the nerves from having a large, presumably strong stranger unconscious in his home, he doesnât quite know what to do. Normally when things get stressful or unusual, heâd write a short story depicting a character going through something that would make them just as uncomfortable and stressed as he is and post it on his Patreon, but he doesnât want the click-clacking of his keyboard to mask any noises that the man might make.
    After a bit of thinking and standing around, he decides to paint the sunset he took a picture of earlier.
    He goes down the short hallway that connects his room, laundry room, and bathroom to the rest of the apartment. He opens the closet on the right side of the room and grabs a canvas and various paints and brushes. Going back out to the area of life, as Connor calls it (since the kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one large area, with the living room sectioned off by couches and the kitchen by a counter island and tiles on the ground), he sets up his stuff on his small, square table. He makes sure heâs facing the doors to his and the guest rooms with his back to the front door and the sliding door to his balcony/patio thing.
    He pauses in his painting every 45 minutes to an hour so he can check on the nekojin. When the sun finally rises in the morning, Connorâs finished two sellable paintings and is starting a third. He has officially reached the level of exhaustion where he no longer feels tired as long as he ignores the pressure behind his eyes and the headache starting to form. Sometimes his insomnia-like-symptoms flare up until he gets to this point, so he isnât worried.
    After checking on the man yet again, Connor decides to fix a breakfast sandwich using his near-expired bacon and a tube of premade biscuits. He makes enough eggs and bacon for only one person, not knowing when the nekojin will wake up and if he even eats eggs or meat.
    Heâs in the middle of putting his food on a plate when thereâs a slight and distant creak. If he were alone, Connor would have been able to convince himself that it was the building settling or something of the like, but he isnât. He quickly turns around and is relieved to see nothing behind him. He hastily scoops the last bit of eggs onto his plate before cautiously walking through the living area towards the guest room. He pauses right at the door and listens for movement, just in case the man woke up and is trying to do something stupid and/or dangerous.
    Connor may be trained in various types of combat and self defense, but heâs not stupid enough to think that makes him invincible. Especially against someone who is as large as that man was, and thatâs excluding the chances that this stranger has training in some kind of combat as well.
    After a couple of seconds of complete silence, Connor hesitantly opens the door just wide enough to slowly peek half of his head through. He immediately sees that the man is no longer in his bed. Heâs barely able to open the door wider to step inside before a heavy weight barrels into him from the side. Next thing he knows, heâs pinned to the wall by a furious nekojin, with his ears pinned to his head and fangs sharp as needles. Itâs already getting hard to breathe and Connor, as predicted, canât move the arm thatâs pushed against his throat. Trying to move his right arm and both legs is useless because the man also has them pinned enough to where he canât make any effective attacks on him.
    He must have some kind of training in combat as well, or has learned from personal experience. Connor is completely screwed if this man decides he is too much of a threat or isnât worth his time.
    âCause any trouble and I make your life painful, ya hear?â the man snarls lowly, and if Connor wasnât already used to being pinned against walls and threatened, heâd probably be panicking right now. Connor rapidly nods as calmly as he can (which isnât nearly calm enough) while being in this situation. âWho the fuck are you?â
    âConnorâ he rasps painfully, âIâmâ no harm. Pleaseââ
    The older man hisses, and it sounds nothing like when cats do it. When cats hiss, it almost sounds like an air leakage from a pipe; high pitched and more breathy than anything. This hiss, though, is not unlike what demons sound like in horror movies. Itâs lower and almost growlish and absolutely terrifying enough to make up for the lack of a small, agile body.
    It shuts Connor up to say the absolute least.
    âWhere the fuck did you bring me?â
    âMyââ Connor coughs and gasps painfully, âapartment.â That must have been the wrong answer because the pressure on his throat increases. Since moving the arm is impossible, he starts patting it to try to signal the stranger that he really needs air.
    âI can fuckinâ see that, dumbass. I meant where the fuck is this place?â
    âNotâ far, fr-from⌠alleyâŚâ Huh, so the darkness not only invades from the sides of your vision, but the focus of it also dims too. And nobody ever mentioned in the books he read about how much pressure is building in his head right now, like itâs going to explode soon. Aw great, now heâs starting to mildly dissociate. Just what he needs.
    The nekojin is trying to say something to him, but the only things he can make out clearly from the sudden white noise are âyouâ, âbetterâ, and âpunkâ. Connor doesnât want to agree to something preposterous, but he also doesnât want to try to ask for clarification or anything like that and make the man angrier. He suddenly has a fleeting thought of dying here, and his mind just as suddenly latches onto it and wonât let go. God heâs so fucking stupid. He knew this was a horrible idea, and he still fucking did it. Why doesnât he ever listen to anyone?
    Just as Connor tries to reach his left arm up to damage the manâs face somehow and force him to let go, heâs abruptly released.
    Connor barely avoids dropping to the ground and instead leans against the wall because his legs want to function more like jelly than anything remotely solid. He coughs and gasps but locks his knees so heâs less likely to fall over into a more defenseless position. He distantly recognizes that the nekojin is trying to talk to him again, but heâs too preoccupied with getting air into his lungs and not falling over to even try to decipher it. Thankfully, whatever he said apparently wasnât super important because nothing happens when Connor doesnât give any kind of response, and nothing continues to happen until heâs breathing normally and standing up on his own again.
    âYou said I wasnât far from the alley,â the nekojin spits out, âHow close is it?â
    Connor blinks the tears from his eyes. âFive minute walk, maybe.â he answers quietly, throat hurting.
    âWhere are your roommates?â
    âDonât have any.â
    âYou live completely alone?â he asks, an eyebrow raised in suspicion.
    Connor silently nods.
    âWhyâd you bring me here? Think you could tame some fuckinâ stray to be your personal pet? âCause youâre very wrong.â he ends in a growl. It sends shivers up Connorâs spine and he can feel the sweat on him beading and rolling down. If this comes to blows again, thereâs no way Connor will be able to win, especially not like this.
    âNo. Youâre hurt.â he says more sure, finally lifting his head to meet the otherâs eyes.
    âYou honestly expect me to believe that you brought an old, stray nekojin home just because he was a little hurt?â
    Connor nods. âDidnât know if you were bleeding out or notââ
    He shuts his mouth with a click and braces himself for another attack when he sees the stranger move. Itâs barely a shift to the side, but itâs enough to send Connor back into highest alert. The guy must realise this because he shifts backward a step.
    âWhat do you get outta patchinâ me up?â
    â...technically nothing?â
    âNo one does anything without any reward, so fuckinâ spill it.â he spits.
    âA clear conscious, maybe?â Thereâs no bite in his words, only the underlying fear of giving the wrong answer. When the older man doesnât immediately shoot another question, Connor continues. âLook, I just donât like it when peopleâre in pain. I wanted to help, so I did.â
    âPeople.â When Connor stares blankly in return, he continues. âIâm not people. Wonât ever be, thanks to the ears and tail.â
    âYou should be people.â he breathes. âA lot of others agree with me, nowadays.â
    âAh, so youâre one of those activists? You realise you guys are going to get killed before anything substantial changes right?â
    âIâmâ uh, Iâm not really an activist? I donât like all the attention.â Connor forces himself to loosen up a little, more to prove that he isnât a danger to the wild card in front of him and less because he actually wants to. âIt makes me nervous.â
    âYet you supposedly bring home a dangerous stranger from the streets into your own home just for the sake of patching up a few scratches.â
    Connor stands at full height once more, his voice sharp, âYou also have severe bruising and a concussion. And the hospital wouldnât have done much for you because it wasnât immediately life threatening and you donât have a collar.â
    âIf it wasnât fucking life threatening then you should have left me out there! To hell with your hero dilemma or whatever the fuck you have!â the man snaps, waving his arms in wide, angry gestures, âHow the hell did you even know where to find me, if you really arenât with the fuckers who did this to me?â
    âI was walking home from work and heard someone get hit, then voices threatening murder. I just stayed until they left in case I needed to jump in and stop them.â Connor says gravely.
    The man sighs. Connor can feel his exhaustion from that one breath alone, but holds his ground. He doesnât know what is genuine and what is an act to get him to lower his defenses. Heâs suddenly aware that heâs shaking.
    âAnd how the fuck did you get me here?â His tone is slightly less angry.
    âCalled a friend with a car. Sheâs the one who patched you up âcause sheâs a doctor.â Connor tries to slow his trembling, and, to his surprise, itâs kind of working.
    The older man eyes him, âAnd why the fuck did she help?â
    âShe thought someone else was staying with me last night so I wasnât alone with you.â Connor blurts before reassuring, âNo one else is here, but she doesnât know that. She has her own things to worry about. I donât want her involved.â With that, he stops his breathing exercises, confident he wonât start panting or hyperventilating.
    âAnd you donât have one?â he can almost hear the raised eyebrow accompanying the nekojinâs question.
    âNot really.â He doesnât really want to talk about this, especially not to someone he doesnât know.
    âNothinâ to lose by taking in a stranger, huh? Self destructive much?â
    âNotâ not exactly.â
    Thereâs a few moments of tense silence. Connor still refuses to move a single muscle from earlier and itâs starting to get strenuous now, but he wonât lower his guard until he knows this nekojin isnât a threat anymore.Â
    â...Youâre not gonna try to name me or some shit?â the partial-human asks warily and, if Connor isnât wrong, with a hint of timidity.
    That⌠was not at all what Connor was expecting out of the gruff man after what has been going down. He didnât even know that people did that to partial humans. It sadly makes sense, though, considering history. Animals have always been renamed with little issue, and back in the day, people used to do just the same to partial humans too. Connor thought that kind of thing died decades ago, though.Â
    âNo? I didnât even fully realize that was a thing people still didâŚâ
    âAnd none of these drawers have clothes of my size in them?â
    âIâ No! Check if you want butââ
    Connor falls silent when the other man suddenly turns to the single dresser in the room and opens the first drawer. Every drawer after that was opened and reshut with great haste. Finding it all empty, he moves on to the closet and goes through the small shelving unit in there. He once again finds nothing, and shuts the closet with an obvious breath of relief. He sharply turns back to Connor. The man must see something in Connor because he sighs and shuffles towards where heâs still sitting against the wall.
    âYou really donât want any ownership over me?â The man sounds less angry and more skeptical.
    âIf you donât believe me, then you can always leave. I donât want to trap you. But youâre still hurt.â Only silence follows, so Connor tries again to make this man trust that he wonât slap a collar on him. âIâve never been interested in getting a nekojin. I hate what you guys have to endure, and Iâve always pretty much seen everyone as equals. It actually got me a bit of unwanted attention when I was younger.â He adds after a split second of hesitation.
    The stranger huffs in what seems like a mocking manner. Connor can understand why.
    âYou sure youâre not an activist? Going out and parading and getting arrested by plan?â
    Connor fights the urge to squirm in shame and apprehension and shakes his head. âIâve always been too shy for anything like that, and I donât like a lot of attention focused on me. Itâs stressful.â
    The man takes two steps closer to Connor, who instinctively tenses, not realizing that he ever relaxed just the slightest bit in the first place. The other pauses, then shuffles back half a step, putting his hands in his pockets in a way that makes it obvious that heâs forcing himself to do so, rather than keep them ready for a fight and out in the open.
    âHow do I know you arenât with those three brats and are gonna try your shot at taming my fugly mug into something sellable? Hm? How do I know that no oneâs waiting to catch me if I try to leave like you offered?â
    Connor speaks without thinking. âYouâre not fugly, just in need of a shower and new clothes.â Connor hates the tense silence that immediately follows, so Connor quickly moves on and fills it, âAnd, Iâ uhâ I guess you donât? I mean, I donât know how to prove it? That I donât think itâs a good idea to âtameâ anyone? I mean, donât you need those life skills? To like, survive and stuff in our current society?â
    The nekojin only gapes at him as if heâs said something completely absurd, and knowing himself, he probably did without realizing it. When it becomes obvious that Connor isnât going to continue, the stranger shakes his head incredulously.
    âDo you know how many people would call a nekojinâs feral state âlife skillsâ? Even the damn activists have their own ideas about how our sanity should be managed. Are you fucking insane?â
    Connor winces at his tone. âUh⌠I mean, you donât seem feral to me, as such⌠But I know Iâm socially awkward and Iâve been told Iâm denseââ
    âI canât tell if youâre shitting me or if youâre really trying hard to get me to not fucking hate you.â He suddenly sniffs the air and his expression becomes darker. âSomething is burning. What the hell are you cooking?â
    Burning? Connor thinks, sniffing the air. He canât really smell anything. A partial-humanâs sense of must be substantially stronger than a pure humanâs; a single truth within the many lies of the internet.
    âI was making a breakfast sandwich before you woke up⌠It might be the biscuits that you smell burning?â
    He should really go pull them out of the oven, but heâs still afraid that this guy will pounce on him again if he tries to make an unannounced move for the door, and he doesnât want a repeat of that whatsoever. On another note, there is absolutely no way heâs going to have his back turned to an aggressive stranger for any amount of time, especially because this one has claws and fangs.Â
    âFine, I smell the eggs and bacon too, but Iâm gonna go sit out where youâll be cooking so I know where you are and what youâre doing.â He straightens up and crosses his arms defiantly. The post is practically begging Connor to refuse the guy so he can do something about it. Too bad Connor doesnât want to.
    âThatâs fine,â Connor pauses, then tries something bold at the last moment, âAs long as you tell me what to call you.â The other startles at that, âIâm tired of calling you âstrangerâ and ânekojinâ in my head.â Connor relaxes his pose just enough to seem like he isnât ready to spring into any kind of action still, even though he definitely still is. âIâm Connor.â
    He scrutinizes the younger man, then sighs and untenses just a tad. âFine. Lead the way, then. Iâm Hank, and thatâs all youâre gonna get outta me.â
    âI didnât expect anything else.â He attempts a smile that he suspects looks more like a grimace.
    Now that Connor is somewhat confident that the strangerâ Hank isnât going to pounce on him the moment his back is turned, heâs able to exit the door and walk to the kitchen area without looking alarmingly tense and uncomfortable. Connor hears a door close as he finds and pulls on a pair of oven mitts. Connor still keeps a mental map of where Hank is by the sound of his footsteps as he grabs the pan of moderately burned biscuits out of the oven.
    He sets the pan on the counter so the cooked-to-dark-brown biscuits can cool so the trash bag doesnât melt when he throws them away. Then he swiftly pulls out a stool from the kitchen island and takes the smoke alarm off of the ceiling, then deactivating it right as it begins beeping with the timing and grace of only someone who has done this a million other times can achieve. He gets down and puts the stool back. He moves back to the oven and turns it off all while avoiding having his back completely to Hank, whoâs standing in his living room.
    Thereâs complete silence in the room that makes Connorâs nerves bristle. Connor glances over to the knife block next to the fridge, knowing that he would never actually use them to harm anyone, but he likes to believe he could bluff his way out of a dire situation. Although, now that heâs thinking about it, maybe he couldnât. Hank would probably be unfazed or get angrier after everything heâs experienced in his lifetime, and thatâs if he somehow believes that Connor would actually use said knife after everything heâs said and done.
    Connor jumps when Hank starts speaking.
    âEverything good now? Youâve been standing there starinâ at nothinâ like a lunatic.â
    Connor says nothing, choosing to just nod instead as he casually crosses his arms and leans against the counter next to the oven in a strained act of nonchalance.
    Hank studies him carefully. âWhy are you helping me, really?â
    Connor canât help but silently sigh. He may have already said this once or twice before, and he may not blame the guy in the slightest for not believing him, but still. Itâs not like his answer is going to change from when he asked earlier. Although, that may be why heâs asking again, as some form of test or something.
    âLike I said before, I donât think Iâll get anything tangible out of this. If you really need something, then maybe self-satisfaction or a clean conscious for helping someone in need, but nothing tangible like money.â Hank shoots him a blank look that he hates. He sighs. âI justâ My gut told me that you needed some real help, and I was going to give it whether you were a pure human or partial. Itâs just that after finding out you had cat ears and a tail, I knew that no hospital in the area was going to give you proper care so 911 was essentially useless. I generally have good intuition when it comes to people, so I trusted it and brought you home instead of leaving you tied down in that nasty alley.â What Connor doesnât mention aloud is how heâs been regretting not leaving him bandaged up in the cleaner part of that alley ever since he couldnât see the other man in the guest roomâs bed earlier.
    His last statement catches Hankâs attention, who then turns his head to look away from Connor for the first time since being awake and looks out a window. He clears his throat, cutting off Connorâs growing panic. The guyâs head is down and his shoulders are slumped, but itâs still obvious that heâs still on edge and wary of his surroundings and Connor. When he speaks, it sounds like he has to force the sound from his lips.
    âLook, Connor, Iâm sorry for snapping at you, even if I donât entirely regret protecting myself like that. But I still donât trust or like you, got it?â
    âYeah. The sentiment is kind of the same right now, no offense.â
    âNone taken,â Hank pauses and straightens up, âDo you at least get where Iâm coming from, though?â he takes a step forward. âLike, according to society, I am an untamed animal or slave, and I wake up in a strange room and am getting checked on every god damned minute by a complete stranger when the last thing I remember is getting kicked around and beat with broken bottles.â He shakes his head and looks away.
    âI ainât some starvinâ, twink cat that you can just bring home and teach how to trust and love or whatever the fuck else books try to say. Hell, Iâm not even a Persian or Maine Coon cat with those big bushy tails like people always love to give us larger people. Iâm just an old, fat calico.â
    Hank suddenly stiffens upon saying that last word, but Connor ignores it and lowers his head.
    âI personally donât agree with the stereotypes as well. But as I offered before,â Connor raises his head to meet Hankâs eyes again, âyouâre always welcome to leave, The front door is right there. Iâm not keeping you trapped here, and thereâs not anyone after you or anything that I know of, soâŚâ Connor shrugs.
    For the first time this morning, Hank looks more uncomfortable than anything else, and Connor doesnât really have the energy to unpack that. He starting to feel tired because of the lack of adrenaline in his system, so heâll probably need some caffeinated tea soon. Maybe a new breakfast to go with it, too; his stomach is starting to hurt with hunger because he forgot dinner last night.
    Still, Hank hasnât responded, so Connor takes this opportunity to give him the explicit option to stay because heâs already given the nekojin multiple outs and, as stupid as Connor knows he can be, he doesnât think Hank should be left on his own quite yet. Besides, he really doesnât think that Hank will do any harm for no reason. His anger and violence earlier were understandable at the least, and neither of them seem to want a repeat of that any time soon. Connor doesnât think heâs making the wrong decision by doing this since Hankâs already here in his apartment, anyway. Emphasis on think.
    âIf you wanted to stay, though, I can make you breakfast? Or you can watch me make your breakfast, or just make it yourself if you want. I mean, because Iâm willing to bet that you havenât had anything decent in a while, yeah?â He chuckles awkwardly. It almost works to make the atmosphere less heavy. Almost.
    Hank stares him down, obviously still skeptical and wary of Connor. The creator tries to not do anything that could be taken as suspicious, but that in of itself could be suspicious in a way. A few more seconds pass like this in tense silence before Hank finally sighs and relaxes his shoulders the slightest bit.
    âWhat the fucking hell is my life anymore.â He mumbles, then raises his voice to a normal speaking level âAlright. Iâm gonna sit on that stool,â He points to one of the two the kitchen island, âAnd Iâm gonna watch you so you donât poison my food. And then you can hear me if I even so much as shuffle, so youâll know I wonât attack you from behind.â
    âOkay.â He watches as Hank moves with a slight limp in his left leg and sits with a poorly concealed wince. âDid you⌠did you want to maybe redress your wounds? I have over the counter pain meds if you want, but I doubt youâd trust that.â
    âYouâre right. I donât trust that a single fucking bit. This ainât nothinâ I havenât gone through before, so you can quit your worryinâ.â Hank hesitates, then continues, almost meeker. âAnd you donât need to worry about allergies. Iâll eat anythinâ.â
    Connor simply nods in response, already getting used to Hankâs vulgarity and irritation. Itâs probably not healthy why heâs already getting used to it, considering itâs mostly due to questionable parenting choices and plenty of childhood bullying, but no one really has the time or patience to unpack that right now (or ever, if Connor has any say in it). Therefore, he does what he does second best, and instead of slowly unpacking that box of troubles and sorting through it like any healthy person should, he simply tapes that box shut tightly with three layers of duct tape and shoves it to the back of his mental storage unit while he takes out his pan cleaner to wash off the remnants of his food before starting Hankâs.
    As he gathers ingredients and tools to the island so Hank can see exactly what Connor is doing at all times, he never once looks up at Hank. The why from earlier tries to rear its ugly head again, but he shoves and forces it down again with practiced ease. Unlike what it has to say about the damnable why, his gut is telling him that Hank isnât really a bad person, that heâs just been dealt a shit hand in his life. Itâs right about people much more often than itâs not, and Connor can only hope that this isnât one of those times where itâs not.
    He finds himself almost wanting to like Hank, to show him that the world isnât completely filled with stupid assholes, only mostly full.
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
~> Next
â˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘ââ˘
A/N: Hey guys!! I hope you didnât mind the wait too much, but I ended up changing the plot to this story last minute and rewrote this chapter, like, 3 and a half times now? So, yeah, thereâs that. This chapter was a bit angsty and I still kinda really hate it, but!! But!!! I am moving on because Protective Hank⢠will be making an appearance next chapter!! The next chapter of The Drift Between Us may not come for a couple of weeks because I have to update the EXO x Reader Iâm writing on a blog I share with my friend that I have been neglecting lately Lol. So, thatâs pretty much it! Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you have a pleasant day/night! đđ
#hankcon#hank x connor#hank anderson x connor#hankcon fanfiction#hankcon fanfic#hankcon au#hannor fanfic#hannor fanfiction#hannor au#hannor#neko hank anderson#dbh neko hank#cat out of the bag#chapter 1
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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 2: Germ Free Generation (Annual, #117-120)
Hello all you happy mutants! And welcome back to my look one of my faviorite runs of one of my faviorite super teams by one of my faviorite comic book writers!
For those of you just joining us.. itâs been a while. I did the first instalment of this retrospective back in early January as a present to my friend for christmas, as he had never read E is for Extinctoin and what with this run being vital to the current, utterly brilliant Krakoa era of X-Men. But with both Black History Month and Valentineâs day, February had no real room for this one and march ended up being just as crammed with me doing essentially the entire della arc of ducktales in one month. I didnât mean for this retrospective to get pushed so far back, but since I gave up doing weekly coverage of Final Space I had some room on the schedule so this retrospective is back with a vengance with two entries this month and hopefully at least one a month afterword to keep it at a decent clip.Â
Last time I covered the background of this run and didnât really find much for the issues after, so I wonât have to spend as much time on background.Â
So since iâts been a few months, a refresher is probably in order
PREVIOUSLY, ON X-MEN:Â Our merry mutants enterted a marvelous new era. As Charles redidciated to the dream with new equipment and a new uniforms our hero encounter a new villian: The Mysterious Cassandra Nova, a powerful telepath who used an uwitting patsy from the trask family and a defucnt sentinel factory to slaughter the mutant nation of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants in the most horrific act of genocide against mutants ever known. And the fact there has been more than one genocide against mutant kind MIGHT, just MIGHT be the reason they blackmailed for peace with life saving drugs instead of helping willingly and freely in the current comics. Just maybe.Â
Cassandra was captured by the X-Men soon after but escaped and nearly got a hold of Cerebra only to be stopped thanks to a combination of former enemy, genoshan resident at the time of the genocide, and that bitch Emma Frost who snapped her neck and Charles himself who uncharacteristically shot Cassandra in the head. That night Charles took a bold step over that would change the X-Men forever and told the world on live tv:
While all of this was going on we got caught up on the teamâs personal struggles, currently consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast and Wolverine with Emma joining as of the issue weâre about to cover. Beast is grappling with a secondary mutation that makes him look like Aslan, the jesus of narnia and all lions. Meanwhile Scott and Jean are grappling with their non existant sex life as Cyclops possesion by Apocalypse shortly before this story has severely rattled him and caused him to close himself off emotionally.Â
So thatâs where we pick up. Our heroes are now no longer hiden saftely in the shadows from a world that hates and fear them but are out front and center with the world watching. And weâll see both how that helps their cause and how it puts them directly in the cross hairs under the cut. Content Warning: This review discusses Transphobia and a scene involving a school shooting. If either of these are a trigger for you or something you do not want to read about please skip this part of the retrospective for your own well being. Thank you and have a lovely day.Â
The Man From Room X:
We have three stories today: an annual that introduces our final team member and the main villians of our next arc, a one off that moves the main plot for the first 12 issues along, and a three part arc about said villains. Before we get into the Annual, I have to talk about itâs weird gimmick: The issue is entirely sideways. I donât mean itâs bad though some parts are problematic I mean when bought itâd be on itâs side and in my trade I have to flip the whole thing over on itâs side to read it. Itâs just a .. weird choice. Not the weirdest thing about this issue somehow but not unexpected from Grant as they like to play with the formula.Â
We open in said Room X, a location in China where a mutant named Xorn is kept and showed off to a mysterious group of dickweeds in suits representing âMr. Sublimeâ. His jailer, General Aao Jun,, shows him off as most bad guys would : By undoing his helmet and thus disntegrating two innocent children just by looking at them. Sublime says they have a deal.Â
Meanwhile also in China the X-Men are there for a funeral and Emma and Scott trade insulting questions back in forth: She mocks him about his lack of sex with Jean lately and he brings up her criminal past. As for why Emmaâs still with the x-men.. itâs out of pragmatisim. WIth Genosha gone, the x-men are the saftest faction to throw in with.Â
As for why the X-Men are in China, Charles has rapidly expanded his operations now heâs public by setting up X-Corps, a multinational humantarian aid organization dedicated to helping mutants in need wherever they sprout up. Heâs set up offices in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Mumbai and Melborne.Â
Heâs also half assed it, at least for the Hong Kong office and only gave them two employees: Domino, who those of you not as familiar with the comics may remember from deadpool and Risque.. who I honestly had never heard of before New X-Men and frequently forget existed. I just looked her up for the first time and sheâs a minor mutant who was an associate of X-Force and Warpathâs love intrest. She could compress matter causing it to implode. My assumption here is that Morrison simply picked a minor mutant at random for the job.Â
But yeah naturally with only two mutants charged with, according to domino âAll of asiaâ went horribly and the x-men are there for Risqueâs funeral and to find out what happened. Unsuprisingly itâs tied into our cold open: Risque had found evidence of a mutant trafficking operation and died fighting them off and Dom is naturally f eeling in over her head since said operation involves the chinese goverment, who according to her exccute most mutants at birth and John Sublime and his cult.Â
We soon see a press confrence from this asshole and find out what his deal is: Sublime is the head of the U-Men, a group that belivies they are a âthird speciesâ of mutants trapped in human bodies that deserve to have the surgery to make them into mutants, and thus wear weird suits until the world is pure and allows them to have surgery for it.Â
Yeahhhh this.. this is really fucking uncomfortable and is going to be present throughout todayâs piece so letâs just go ahead and rip that band-aid off:Â The U-Men come off as HIGHLY transphobic. They use terms similar to trans people call themselves trans species and are trapped inside a body they donât belong in. Itâs VERY uncomfortable to read as a result and something that hadnât really sunk into till thsi reading but once it had.. oh god does this not age well.Â
The one thing that keeps this from runing the run and Grant Morrison as a whole for me.. is that I do not think for one second it was intentional. Grant themself is genderqueer, nonbinary and a cross dresser. None of this means they CANâT be prejudice, being Queer does not magically make you immune to being prejudiced. But before this Grant had the genderqueer sentient street Danny the Street over in doom patrol and a trans main character in his book the invisibles, Lord Fanny. And given New X-Menâs biggest flaw as a whole is clumsy early 2000â˛s unforutnate implications such as a good chunk of the things about Cyclops affair with Emma, weâll get to that at the right time, Angel in the next arc and Dust, who was introduced as from afganastan wearing an outfit not seen in the country and speaking a language not spoken in the country. Grant didnât make these mistakes TWICE, itâs why I still have respect for them, and this wonât be the first or last comic iâve forgiven for being stupid for itâs time. But I will still call Grant out when I see it. Just because I respect an author just because they changed my life does not mean I wonât call them out when they fuck up. And if they prove to be truly vile, have harmed someone or what have you I will cut them the fuck out of my life. Iâve done it with JK Rowling, Warren Ellis, Brad Jones and Joss Whedon. I would do it with Grant if I truly belivied they were transphobic and instead didnât just write something very stupid without thinking the metaphor through 20 years ago.Â
So anyway back to the comic book bollocks as Wolvie and Dominio prepare for an infiltration and flirt a bunch. We also find out Jun is a mutant himself with a power only Grant could dream up: his skin, hair and what have you that falls off him turns into a naked golem for a bit before expiring. And if you hadnât read this issue before reading this review, yes that actually happened. While the first arc had a BIT of Grantâs trademark batshit insanity, the series REALLY starts to pick it up from here: This issue has a mutant with functioning star for a head, a poorly thought out bucnh of sci fi new age organ theives, and a general whose power is âmakes naked clones out of his dandruffâ. Oh and his fondest wish?
I just... I donât know how to respond to that. I donât know how you respond to an old manâs weird murder fetish that he tells a somehow even creepier cult leader while said cult leader is paying him to buy a star man, and their both surronded by the creepy old guyâs skin golems that weirdly look like mudokons. Look iâve read Grantâs entire utterly bonkers run on doom patrol. Iâve seen a man who looks like a question mark use a bicycle that makes everyone high like their on LSD for president. And THIS is what breaks me.Â
So while.. THIS is going on, Dom and Wolverine plan to do it all night long on the professorâs credit card, no really he gives all his professors carte blanch to use school fun, and inflitrate, Dom through the elvator this horrorshow just took place in and Wolvie james bond style. Also I gotta say I REALLY love how Morrison writes Domino. Sheâs wittiy, entertaining and her power is as awesome as always, super luck if you didnât know. Itâs a real shame he didnât add her to the team: She wasnât on any other x-teams, with X-Force having been rebranded into X-Statix by this point. She wouldâve been a fun addition to the cast.Â
Naturally wolverine is found out.. but that was the entire plan, for him to serve as a distraction then cut his way to domino while she steals something from the vault. As for the rest of the X-Men, Cyclops, Beast and Emma are all downstairs in the parking garage and find a secret entrance. Jean is not on this trip and thatâs a major plot point for this run. This is where Risque died.. and it only getâs worse when Hank goes inside, finding a bug like child, basically htink a giant caterpillar but with tons of human arms inttead of legs with her wings cut off.Â
Thankfully as Logan and Dom escape above, the U-Men are dumb enough to storm down bellow.. and while they incapacitate beast with some launched tiny knives, designed to incapcicate but leave them in tact for harvest, Emma beats the shit out of them and get the info out as only she can....
Granted she couldâve just turned back to normal and used her telepathy.. but what fun would that be? Plus they have blockers and you know CUT UP A FUCKING CHILD. SO yeah fuck them, let emma have her fun.Â
Thanks to her they find out the U-Men are a front for illegal organ harvest, and while they canât prove sublimes attached Emma suggests killing him. Good idea but Scott suggests the lighter approach and we find out what Dom stole, a key, something Emma can psychcially scan. She warns it might take her a bit to get something.. only to be flooded instantly and we find out who the man in the box was. Shen Xorn... iâll let emma tell you more herself.Â
Itâs stuff like this why, despite some serious flaws like the U-Men debacle and some stuff to come, some I mentioned above other thatâs just with the plot that i love this run. Morrison just gets how to really tell an x-men story and the real tragedy of being a mutant. That just for being diffrent, you get shut out, or in this case thrown into a box when you couldâve and shouldâve been something more. As emma turns herself to diamond to deal with the psychic backlash, Beast has some solemn words to share.Â
That night Scott rests in his bedroom while presumibly hearing some truly horrific and sexy things next door while talking to jean before clocking out.. only for Emma to head in in a sexy dress with champagne. What happened? Well we wonât know for sure for most of the run.Â
The next day the U-Men prepare to load and we get some scrap of what the idea was supposed to be: John talks to Ao Jun about his procedures. We see wings crudely sewen to his back and his throat implaants hurting âBut one day I will flyâ. THe IDEA is their supposed to be lunatics, people who envy mutantkind but donât actually respect their culture or their sense of personhood. Itâs not the worst idea and had Grant not used trans termnology for htis, it wouldâve been a great one. I think he INTENDED for them to be coopting the idea of being trans and what not to maks their true intentions.. which is problematic due to debates like the ones on bathrooms where a lot of transphobic asshats make the bad faith argument a bunch of people are going to pretend to be trans to assault people.Â
Weâre.. we;âre not even to the main storyarc yet.Â
But things soon go wrong as Xornâs starhead starts to collapse into a black hole, with no solution as the x-men took the key to his helmet.. and assault the compound. Turns out the star collapse thing is Junâs revenge on humanity for lockig him down here and he gets his neck snapped. Scott has a solution though.. and itâs stuff like this why I fucking love Scott Summers and get annoyed when people call him âboringâ: He realizes Xorn is comitting sucicide.. so heâs going to talk him out of it. Not just for everyone else but he deserves to live. And while Emma points out only logan among htem knows chinese and she canât get through to Xornsâ head due to the way his brain works, Scott has a simple workaround: Use the nearest chineses speaker to teach Scott chinese. So.. with that he talks to Xorn.Â
And that my friend is Scott Summers. A man who faced with powerful man whose given up, whose lost all hope... convinces him he can still go on. That livingâs better than dying.. and that it does get better. The issue closes with Xorn basking in the sunlight for the first time in decades while Domino sweats having an extremley powerful unknown mutant out in the world. Scottâs already thought of that.. and signed him up with the x-men. Granted it wonât be until our next article that he actually fully joins the team, but wâell get to that next time.Â
This issue is great... while the U-Men stuff is pretty bad and isnât going to get better, the tale of xorn is excitiong, Aao Jun is an intresting antagonist and the sideways gimmick suprisingly works. So now weâve finshed our apitizer letâs get on to the main course.Â
Danger Rooms:
We open in well.. the Danger Room with Beast training a new student.Â
This is Beak. Beak is my faviorite character Morrison came up with and one of my faviorite X-Characters. Beak is a bird like boy who can fly, itâs just a struggle and due to looking diffrent and not having the most impressive power has very low self esteem. Itâs also part of something Morrison took a concerted effort to do: introduce more mutants with genuinely odd apperances and drawbacks. Like we saw with Ugly John last time and Aao Jun in the previous issue, Morriosn really likes adding weird mutants but he also uses it to give a genuine downside to being one. While this isnât NEW to x-men, Morriosn upped the scale and number of characters like this with weird powers and apperances. We see a bunch of human passing ones too but the backgrounds just jammed with all sorts of unique designs and students. Itâs also the point where the school became far more crowded like the movies, a good call on my part both to help those coming in from the movies, and to help sell the mutant baby boom going on. After all it wouldnât make sense if the school was just about 5-7 students and a bunch of grown adults doing superhero stuff like usual would it.
But we get to see that Hank is a good teacher, as he reminds the boy that heâs getting better and wonât be an x-man overnight, and worries about him to the professor, wanting the boy not to slip through the cracks, figuratively, and not to feel like an outcast.. especaily here. But Hank dosenât feel blue for long, metaphorically he was blue long before he became the lion minus the witch and the wardrobe, as he has a date to night.. and so does Charles.Â
Or rather he did.. his girlfriend trish, a long time love intrest of his and a reporter.. breaks up with him. Over voice mail. While in washington. And the reasons she gives are not great
Yes Hankâs transformation is radical.. but not only was it not his choice... sheâs being a coward, sending the message itâs okay to dump someone because hteir a mutant or because they happen tobe diffrent and that efffects your career. Again itâs moments like this that make the run soar over the more awkward bits.Â
Meanwhile Loganâs off doing logan stuff, i.e. gazing at a deer. Wow. Jean followed him. Both notice a space ship: Despite recently outing himself as a mutant, leading to an increased number of students and a bunch of rioting morons at the gates, Charles has decided NOWâS a good time to take a vacation to the Shiar empire. As for why Jeanâs really out here, her marriage to Scott isnât doing so good and while Logan encourages her to stay itâs just not that simple: Her telekenisis is coming back, stronger than ever. She feels the most alive sheâs been while heâs shutting her out and feeling his deadest. She tries to turn to logan for comfort but he shuts her down. Just wait two decades jean... heâll open up to a threesome. In all seriousness though having Jean try and come onto Logan .. will backfire slightly on later storylines. But weâll get to that eventually.Â
In the basement Hank is studying Cassandra or rather a virtual version of her since her body is naturally in storage. And heâs found out something disturbing: Sheâs Charles Genetic Twin.. oh and it gets way worse. The Professorâs weird behavior? Barely staffing the hong kong office, leaving suddenly with rioters t the gates, outing himself? About that...
Cassandra tourtures Hank with the possiblity heâs devovling and then tries to mind controlli him into cleaning himself with his diploma when Beak enters. The good news is this allows hank to shake off her control and tackle her, showing off why hank mccoy is fucking awesome in the process.Â
That is the Hank McCoy I know, love.. and miss dearly. The one weâll probably never get back sadly after what others did and what Percyâs had to do to reconclie with all they did.Â
Unfortunately beak being around means cassandra can force him to beat beast into a coma with his bat. She plans to tear Charles dream down around him and make him watch.. and cryptically says he tried to kill her. She then cheerfully leaves Jean in charge.. and talks about just how much damage one could do with an entire interstellar empire in the wrong hands....
This issue is also excellent and sets up the next two arcs nicely while giving us a nice peak in hankâs head. Great stuff. The artist also hid the word sex in a lot of the images see if you can find them.Â
Germ Free Generation Issue 1:Â
So now we get into our main story for today. This story and the one before it were drawn by Ethan Van Sciver whose a talented artist.. but also highly contrversial for being a conservative. I myself.. donât know what heâs said or did, though calling himself âCanceld Superstarâ on twitter really isnât a good sign. So I really canât comment on it but I also know someone would mention it if I didnât bring it up and if you know what he did please enlighten me.Â
So we open with a school shooter who also scooped out a guys eyes and is part of the U-Men. He get shot by the swat team while making his speech> itâs an effective opening but one thatâs become more uncomfortable to read with each passing day due to school shootings going up and up in number. And mass shootings in general and I... I need a second. I need something to relax me
Thank you Stoopy. Your doing Oddâs Work.Â
So the news reports on this and we soon see how Jean watches the news.. by using Cerebra to read the minds of every person on the planet. Neat. Everyoneâs talking about them. We also get a hint for later as we hear on the suicide of one martha johanson who wrote the note in her own blood. Sheâll be important later.... and I mean that both in the context of this retrospective and for the fact sheâll go on to be part of x-men in perpetuity.Â
This is also where another great concept of Morrisonâs pops up: Mutant culture. After all mutants are a minority, they should have their own culture. Itâs something Hickmanâs era has taken and ran with, but itâs a damn good idea and one that it shoudlnât of taken almost 20 years for someone else to use given Decimation was undone way back around 2012 in Avengers Vs X-Men, aka that event half hte articles on the mcu around the fox sale used as either their image for the article or asked about happneing. And yes that is a pet peeve of mine: while I do think like Civil War AVX could use a movie version to make it better, I donât think itâs an event that could be done right away and would have to be almost entirely redone anyway given the context for AvX is entirely couched in decimation i.e. something NO ONE wants in any x-adaptation.Â
So it turns out while watching the news in a next level way Jean is also talking to Logan. âStay out of my personal fantasiesâ. Yeah I .. I donât think your ready for a hairy canadian dry humping a transformer.. specifically killbison. And yes.. that is an actual transformer and why yes, I have been waiting to bring him up.Â
And he is , and I am not making any of this up, part of a group of decpticons known as the breastforce. Your life is better for knowing that and you are welcome.Â
Anyway as youâd imagine a genocidal old woman in her brothersâ body leaving the X-Men to fend for themselves after having a teenager bludgeon one into a coma after publicly outing them with a rabid bunch of bigoted morons at the gates has not gone great. Henry is still out and despite the short staffing Jean needs logan to stay where he is as heâs close to an emerging mutant and within range to go get her.Â
Emma of course has never been so fucking irate in her whole life and is plotting various forms of psychic tourture with the help of her proteges the Stepford Cucokoo, 5 teenage mutants who functoin best as a unit and are easily some of MOrrisonâs most prominent additions to the x-cast. Unlike a lot of the x-kids, theyâve been featured prominently in every era of x-men after this including the current one.Â
Jean decides for a less âMake them hate us even moreâ approach, but no less pissed off, opening the gates and going out directly to chew out the assembled bigoted morons, pointing out the ones carrying âMutants Go Home!â signs are especailly dumb as this IS her home. And while she dosenât point this part out, itâ the same for all of them: most of the mutants are either adults who choose to live here, teenagers who along with their parents choose to live here, or in the majority teens who have no where else to go due to either being abandoned by their families or it being way to dangerous for said families for them to stay due to bigoted assholes like the ones holding mutants go home signs.Â
A member of the press asks if sheâs willing to talk to the media and she refutes most of his bullshit allegations: He asks if their building an army, she and Scott respond they are not and are simply educating mutants and protecting them. When he counters with the fact their living weapons and wearing uniforms... she counters with the fact sheâs wearing them to protect herself, rightfully, from people like her, and the x-men are an aid orginzation going where needed to protect the world and while asshole points out no one apointed them.. jean shuts him down by pointing out there are no mutants in goverment and a genocide just happened, so someone has to do the job. Another random asshole tries to pipe up with âGenosha declared war on usâ and Emma senses this is just going to go round and round and round and simply presses the assembled mobâs âbliss buttonsâ in their brains to knock them out. Non violent but honestly warranted: A dangerous part of bigoted assholes is theyâl bring up racist bullshit to try and couch it like an actual conversation. None of these complaints really hold water if you looked at the x-menâs history for more than 5 minutes. Yes Charles is training them to fight and yes hte ingial class was an army but every class since has only been trained for self defense: they still got into adventures and what not, but it was usually by their own choice or because they were thrust into them by circumstance. Xaviers is exactly what jean said and endudgling these morons, while good on paper, only makes them seem legit.Â
Jean retreats to the infirmary where sheâs on the verge of breaking down from the sheer weight of everything. Cyclops proves that despite not being the best husband right now... he still loves his wife, offering to go look into Sublime with Emma and hoping Hank wakes up. Turns out his mind for now is a big blank room.
So she canât get any info off his skull, and neither of the two think what happened with Beak adds up. Something is up here. Their also coming down with colds which will be important later. And just as important.. Magneto is becoming a symbol among people and merch sales with his image are on the rise. We then get this.Â
So Jean is trying to be a supportive, honest wife, and while the questions incredibly insulting.. his answer is equally so. Spoilers, as mentioned we do get an answer long after this.. and they did not. So Jean is wrong to be suspcious, at this point, but is at least trying to be polite about it and gave him the benifit of the doubt.. and Scott basically said he slept with her without actually saying it despite not having to. You couldâve said âno we did not have sex, we simply talked all nightâ. Itâs not ENTIRELY better given the horrible state of their relationship right now, but itâs still better than HEAVILY implying he rocked her body to the break of dawn for no damn reason.Â
So we meet our next major addition to the cast Angel Salvador, an abused teen who is a mutant.. and whose abusive and molesting step dad beats her and throws her out over this. The sceneâs a bit overdone, coming off like an after school special.. but itâs what happens AFTER thatâs truly heartwrenching.Â
A poor scared teenager clutching herself, finding herself homeless alone and desperatly wishing she wasnât what she was. Itâs just a striking image and shows how well Grant uses the mutant metaphor. I could easily see myself in that position had my parents not been good peopl and had I come out far sooner as bi. The idea of desperatly hoping your not what you are simply becaus eof what hell it brings, despite all the joy it can bring too. . itâs heartbreaking to hear.Â
Naturally though things donât get much better as the next morning the U-Men have found her, calling her a freak and successfully kidnapping her.. if only because while she uses acid spit to escape, she flies into a power line.Â
We then get Sublimes meeting with Emma and Scott and a BETTER use of teh u-men as while Grant made the horrible mistake of calling them âtranspeciesâ, seriously what the fuck were you thinking, the way sublime frames it here is a MUCH better, much less accidently bigoted concept.Â
The idea isnât bad: A group of humans jealous of the mutants powers, blatantly ignoring the horrible downsides and mountain of persecution that comes with being one. Grant just made the mistake of couching in in Trans metaphors, clearly trying to have the U-Men steal from Trans People too as a way to make themselves seem legit. And I say if you want superpowers.. fine.. wanting to be a superhero or a mutant is fine, the issue with the U-Men is their copoting a culture, trying to be part of mutantkind without having any of the drawbacks and by actively butchering them. Itâs why the concept HAS shown up elsewhere; itâs not TERRIBLE, Grant just made a bad creative choice thatâs only gotten worse as Transphobia has ramped up further and further.Â
Sublime denies it when our heroes bring up Hong Kong.. but naturally heâs simply just keeping them talking long enough to bring out his trump cards, an army of u-men and a brain in a jar he uses to incapacitate them.. and announces his plan to use the school as an organ farm for his third species.Â
Meanwhile Logan finds the U-Men in their truck preparing to rip angel apart.. and given he snikitâs soon after.. iâts very clear whose REALLY about to get ripped apart.Â
Germ Free Generation Part 2:Â
Part two begins wth Sublime monologoging about how Mutantkind are just cattle to them and reveals the brain is marthaâs, her sucicide having been faked and her brain currently being controlled to use as a weapon.Â
So while Johnny monlogues we find out what happened with Wolverine last issue he didnât cut up the guys yet as they fired their little flichete guns at him... it was about as useful and effective as youâd expect and the massacre you were expecting occurs. Though in a nice bit of reality the fact wolverineâs soaked in blood and just killed a bunch of blood shockingly does not make the already frighttend teen feel heâs safe and she spits acid on him. Logan pours some stuff on the acid, figuring rightly a black ops murder farmacy would have something to counteract it and tells her sheâs safe now .. and tells the guy behind him not to try it. Heâs stupid and does anyway and likely gets a claw to the head off panel.Â
They go to a diner to eat and find a local asshole who threatens them with a shot gun to leave once angel uses her power to digest and goes on a rant about how he snapped his own sonâs neck to prevent him being born a freak. Just.. fucking hell this arc is not good for my depression. We get some more angst from Angel and whiel her dialouge is not the best, iâts a too bit mark millar flavored edgelordy for my taste and if I wanted that iâd go read Ultimates or Ultimate X-Me, her pain is real and Logan helps her through it.Â
Back at the Mansion the U-Men are on their way to strike, whlie Jean unaware continues to buckle under the weight of all the shit sheâs had to deal with, feeling SOMETHING is making them weak with the colds and something worse is going on and thus tries going to Beakâs mind instead and gently helps talk him through it, showing her grace and empathy.. and in return finding out Charles was the one responsible. The alarms flair up and Jean tries calling the police now thatâs an option.. but it goes exactly how youâd expect.Â
Also a second artist took over for this issue and the next Igor Kordey. Heâs fine, but not nearly as good as Quitely or Van Sciver and it shows. Meanwhile Beast awakens and heads for the body drawer with Cassandraâs body, and professorâs mind in it.Â
However Jeanâs finally had enough and got her second wind. Sheâs outgunned, outmanned and left to her own devices. And sheâs fucking fed up with it. She steels herself and assembles the students. This is obviously a last resort.. but some of them can defend themselves and their going to need to. But today they wonât be learning.. theyâll be teaching and as the U-Men call them defensless Jeans simply asks âAre you sure about that?â
Germ Free Generation Part 3:
So we come to the finale of this arc. Angel is once again an ungreatful brat to logan and he opts to just leave her there if shâes going to be like that pointing out being a mutant sucks, itâs going to keep sucking.. and she needs to deal with it instead of lashing out at him and herself over it.Â
We get back to the U-Men, one of whom is utterly flabergasted they want to him to cut of Cyclops head... only for Emma to awaken.. and take back her regular form meaning she has her telepathy back. The only reason they were able to get her ealier is she was in diamond mode which is stronger but lacks that, a nice way to check and ballance her new powers. She quickly takes them out and disables Martha.Â
Back at the school we get one of Jeanâs definting moments for me and a true chance to show how badass she can be. Before this while Morrison wrote her well, and his versionâs still my favoirite, she didnât really get to do much and was motly in the background. This arc has been her time in the limelight, having trouble grappling with all the stress of running this place by herself.. and emerging from it stronger, more capable and ready to kick some racist weirdo ass. She tries a few diffrent tactics first, having a mutant with a voice power project it to make them think their san invisible army and having the cuckoos fuck with their heads but when both fail, Jean REALLY gets to show off. Thier blade ammo gets turned into a cool looking 3 dimensioinal shape with her telekneisis, and in a cool moment and a wise use of something gross makes the only one of them with useable powers throw up, before issuing a badass boast, wreathed in flames all while she crumples their guns into uselessness. and tears open their suits.Â
Bad ass.. and logan and Angel arrive just in time for the cecendo as hte u-men flee in terror
The Phoenix has been Reborn. Jean Grey has risen from the ashes and returned to full power.Â
Meanwhile Sublime is pankcing.. and it gets worse when Emma shows up, fully enraged after all of this and has some words for him.Â
Iconic. Emma prepares to drop him out of a building but Scott rightly tries to get her to back off, pointing out the pr nightmare itâd create and the fact that they have enough evidence ot shut him down. Martha however has other ideas and gets him to let go of his own accord, falling to his death.. but given heâd aranged a stunt for the press apparently this gives our heroes deniability and Martha her revenge.Â
So we end this three parter as Jean revels in her new power, and Beast returns with an announcment:
Final Thoughts for Germ Free Generation: This arc is pretty good if forgetable. The struggle of Jean to run the school herself and her rising from the ashes of her own pain at the end with the power of the phoenix at the end is fantastic, finally both giving her a chance to shine.. and a worrying sign for her friends given what her phoenix force copy whose memories she has a copy of, long story, did is awesome. The other parts are okay and ehhhhhhhhh though. Scott and Emmaâs investigation into the u-men while having a really good climax, is pretty standard x-men stuff, and Wolverinâes trek with angel is just okay with Angel being highly intolerable during this arc, with Morrison trying a bit TOO hard to make her a ârealisticâ teen instead coming off as horribly unplesant. Sheâs supposed to just be lashing out but comes off obnxious as a result. That said this arc does furhter a lot of Morrisons best idea and introduce more, and is a great setup for our next arc, which weâll get to in two weeks. Soooo
Next Time On X-Men: We find out just what the hell Cassandra Nova is, what her plans are, and what happened with her and charles as our heroes come down with a cold as the might of the shiar empire bears down on them. Itâs IMperial in two weeks.Â
Next Time ON This BLog: Speaking of long Delayed Projects, I finally return to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as a young Scrooge starts his prospecting career, learning the ins and outs from a rich new mentor, and finding the price tag striking it rich comes with. Raid a copper hill with me tommorow.Â
If you liked this review, subscirbe for more, join my patreon, and if thereâs a comic youâd like me to cover suggest it in the comments or outright comission a review from me via ask. See you at the next rainbow
#new x-men#grant morrison#cassandra nova#shen xorn#beast#hank mccoy#jean grey#cyclops#scott summers#wolverine#logan howlett#angel salvadore#beak#barnell bohsk#the stepford cuckoos#the u-men#john sublime#marthan johanson#ethan van sciver
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More on the RvB Warriors AU
((other characters I forgot about/failed to mention earlier as well as Flyoming lore that includes important events))
Freckles: After Spitestar (Church) died, Heavyheart (Caboose) found an injured pitbull in the woods. He helped nurse the dog back to health, and eventually returned home with the canine. The entire clan lost their collective shit, but no one could really talk Heavyheart out of keeping him, so... he stays. Heâs picked up a handful of words, but he canât speak full cat yet. When the twolegs invade the BGCâs territory, Freckles ends up protecting a majority of the clan cats, staying behind with Thunderspot to fight off the twolegs. Heâs thought dead (or captured) for a bit, but returns later on to help defeat Felix and Locus.
Lopez: Another dog, this one being much more aggressive towards everyone in the clan (heâs a mutt that was found as a puppy in the woods, abandoned by his owners). Crimsonfur claims to have âtamed himâ but everyone knows thatâs bullshit. Heâs been known to actually help a few times, but he typically just scares off intruders and hangs out around camp. Heâs learned to do a majority of the repairs around camp, so all the dens are in perfect condition when heâs around. Currently MIA, but heâll come back... he always does.
Sheila: A kittypet that occasionally visited the BGCâs territory, acting as an occasional confidant/mother figure to anyone who needed her. Eventually she passes away, having been incredibly old.
((I think thatâs all the characters I havenât covered that I know about (save for people from rvb14 and onward) but Iâll add more later probably))
MORE LORE UNDER CUT THAT I FEEL LIKE WRITING RIGHT NOW
- The shit that happens with Owlfur is Wild and Iâm about to get into it (as well as get into Flowerstar and Owlfurâs relationship). - Iâm Flyoming trash, so that ship still sails in this AU, but Iâve had to do some minor tweaking to the timeline since I made Tucktail Flowerstarâs son. (An easier solution would be to just take that out but Fuck That I love the âTucker is Floridaâs kidâ theory). - Before PFL fell apart, Flowercreek became Very Aware that Jaggedstar was a dangerous individual, and he feared for his life. On top of that, he fell pregnant (heâs trans) and feared that Jaggedstar would kill his kits, as Flowercreek is the unofficial medicine cat of Motherclan, and although he never had proper training, he was worried it would still be considered inappropriate for him to have children. - At this point, Flowercreek had been secretly mated to Owlfur for several moons, so Owlfur was well aware that Flowercreek was pregnant and was excited for the kits to arrive. However, he also didnât trust Jaggedstar to not harm his children, and agreed to help Flowercreek get the kits away from the clan once they were born. - The birth went badly. Flowercreek and Owlfur left the clan for the night once Flowercreek went into labor, and although Owlfur and him tried their best, two out of three of the kits perished, while the last one- the runt- barely survived. - Still, they had to get the poor kid to safety. After naming him Tuckkit, Flowercreek set out alone with the kit to find him a new home. Heading deeper into the woods, he ran into a young warrior; Crimsonfur. - Crimsonfur went to attack him, but upon realizing that this intruder had a kit, he begrudgingly stopped, and after having a long conversation with Flowercreek about his situation, he agreed to take Tuckkit with him back to the BGC clan. - After all of this, Flowercreek and Owlfur were absolutely Devastated, but life continued on. Several moons later, PFL finally fell apart. Flowercreek missed the entire fight, and came home to an empty, blood soaked camp, and no sign of Owlfur anywhere. - Depressed, Flowercreek left, and soon ran into another clanâs patrol... that included his beloved son! He recognized him right away, although the then Tuckpaw was unconvinced at first that this was his father. Still, the patrol agreed to bring Flowercreek back to camp with them for shelter. - It took a long while, but Tuckpaw soon accepted that Flowercreek was indeed his father, and once convinced he bombarded his dad with questions; who was his other parent? Where were they? Whatâs their name? Flowercreek answered vaguely, which frustrated Tuckpaw to no end and created a rift between them. - Despite knowing that they were related now, Tuckpaw struggled to build a relationship with Flowercreek. Even after his dad became leader, Tuckpaw could never really connect with him. - After Flowerstarâs death, Tucktail was left feeling guilty for not bonding with his father while he was alive, and also frustrated that he Still didnât know who his other parent was.
Owlfurâs Lore
- During the PFL battle, Owlfur was badly injured by Losteye. He escaped in the midst of the infighting, running off to twoleg place. - He lived as a rogue for a long while, surviving off scraps and fighting off anyone who came too close. He mourned the loss of his mate- who he believed to be dead- but refused to give up on living. - He eventually ran into Cinderstalk and Losteye, and he attacked them both on sight. Despite Cinderstalk and Losteye working together, Owlfur managed to do fairly well, even killing Losteye in the process. Cinderstalk immediately chased him into BGC territory, where she delivered a blow she believed had killed him. This would not be the case. - Cinderstalk left Owlfur out to rot, but he miraculously survived. Later that same day, Fixcoat was foraging for herbs, only to find a mangled Owlfur. Feeling bad for the rogue, he dragged an unconscious Owlfur back to camp under the cover of night (as he knew this was Cinderstalkâs doing) and set him up in a concealed nest at the back of the medicine den, a curtain of leaves and vines keeping him hidden from sight. - One day while visiting the medicine den for something mundane, Tucktail heard a distinct coughing. He went to the back of the den to investigate, only to find a barely conscious cat. Deciding not to tell anyone that he knew about this strange rogue (not even Fixcoat), Tucktail began visiting Owlfur nightly. - At first, Owlfur refused to answer Tucktailâs rambling through the curtain, but after a long while, he decided to talk back. It started as small talk- where was he from? Whatâs his name?- that soon turned into deeper conversations. - Very soon, Owlfur realized Tucktail was his missing son, and his behavior changed entirely. He became much friendlier with Tucktail (heâd previously been very short with him), and began asking about his lineage. Hearing that the previous leader- Flowerstar- was his father only cemented Owlfurâs theory. - Unfortunately, this didnât last. Owlfur soon recovered and left the clan without saying goodbye (he didnât want Cinderstalk to find out he was alive and try to finish what she started). Tucktail was disappointed, but not overtly so (he had no idea at the time that Owlfur was his other father). - Rumors of an elusive white cat with black paws being active near the clan soon circulated through camp, and Tucktail was happy to hear it, just glad that Owlfur was still alive. - After Tuckkit Jrâs birth, the sightings ceased, and Tucktail assumed Owlfur had moved on (a shame really; he wouldâve loved to introduce his kit to him, as Owlfur had acted almost fatherly to him in the past and Tucktail wanted the experience of showing his offspring to his parents). However, that quickly changed. - Out of seemingly nowhere, Tuckkit began wandering off a lot at night. This deeply worried Tucktail, as he didnât want his child to get hurt. However, when Tuckkit began telling his father about âa nice white cat in the woodsâ, Tucktail relaxed, believing that Owlfur was watching over his kit. - Cinderstalk soon found out about Tuckkitâs ânew friendâ while out on a night patrol, where she spotted a very much alive Owlfur chitchatting with an incredibly excited Tuckkit. She pounced, slashing Owlfur across the muzzle before picking up Tuckkit and taking off back to camp. - Once home, Cinderstalk forced Spitestar to call a clan meeting, where she explained who Owlfur was and why he was incredibly dangerous, and she warned her clanmates to keep a close eye on their borders. The news devastated Tucktail, and he quickly began resenting Owlfur, believing that the elderly cat was after his son. - For a long while, things were quiet; Tuckkit stopped wandering off at night, no one had seen Owlfur in awhile, and Tucktail began to feel like his son was safe again... that is, until Owlfur finally struck. Late at night, he attacked alongside the remnants of the AI clan (the only ones who came were Pigeonfeather (Gamma/Gary) and Lizardstrike (Omega/OâMalley)) and stole Tuckkit from the queens/kings den. - The clan devolved into chaos, where a lot of people were injured. In the end, it was Spitestar, Tucktail, and Cinderstalk left conscious to fight off the three intruders. Spitestar managed to lose a life due to Owlfur attacking him, which triggered Tucktail to go all out, pinning Owlfur to the ground. (By this point, heâs learned that Owlfur is his other father, as Owlfur had told Tuckkit he was, in no uncertain terms, his biological grandfather. Besides, while still being cared for by Fixcoat, Owlfur had admitted to Tucktail that he was once in a romantic relationship with Flowerstar). - Although it killed Tucktail inside to do so, he bit into Owlfurâs throat, snapping his neck and killing him in order to protect his kit and clan (before killing Owlfur, he whispered something along the lines of âsorry, dadâ or âtell dad I love himâ into his ear). - After Owlfurâs death, Pigeonfeather revealed why Owlfur had tried to kidnap Tuckkit; Tuckkit has been blessed by Starclan, and therefore is bound to have some sort of magical powers (think the Big Three in the 3rd arc of the Warrior Cats books). Not only that, it had already been revealed by Fixcoat that this was true, so everyone in the clan believes that Tuckkit is destined to become the clanâs future leader/protector. - Suddenly, Lizardstrike attacked, killing Pigeonfeather (as he wanted the kitâs powers for his own personal use). He then attacked the other cats, who he badly injured. Scooping up Tuckkit, he began to go on his merry way. - Realizing that he was being separated from his father, Tuckkit began to cry, and out of seemingly nowhere, it began to rain. While staring up at the sudden downpour, Lizardstrike was unprepared as a bolt of lightning hit a nearby tree, sending it crashing down on top of him. - Seeing the tree falling, Cinderstalk used the last of her strength to spring forward and knock Tuckkit out of Lizardstrikeâs mouth, smacking the kit away before the tree could hit him, too. - Once the dust settled, Cinderstalk and Lizardstrike were dead, crushed underneath the tree. The threats to Tuckkitâs safety gone, the downpour stopped, and Tucktail quickly ran and comforted his son, mourning the loss of so many lives in one night, including his other father.
((Thatâs pretty much all I got right now... stick around for more bullshit lore at some point in the future))
#rvb#warriors#warrior cats#rvb warriors au#i originally only wanted to talk about the characters i missed... then this happened#sorry y'all i got carried away#i just... really love this au
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Headcanon: Reinhardtâs childhood and family
(Wordcount: ~1500 what the fuck)
//This...got a lot longer than expected when @clericallis prompted me to write something serious (Light, I blame you as usual and you donât have to read the whole thing omg). Here is my take on Reinhardtâs past growing up in Friege, his relationships with his parents, sister, and Ishtar, and how this all affects his motivations and character. Obligatory readmore and apology to mobile folks here.
~
I donât think it actually states this anywhere in the game, but I like to think that part of the reason Kempf (a minor noble of Friege) hates Reinhardt so much is because Reinhardt has become so famous for all his achievements and titles despite not being a noble. Kempf and Reinhardt were both stated in-game to have become generals rather young, but Reinhardt is more well-known and also holds the position of personal bodyguard of the heiress (later Queen) of Friege, Ishtar. Itâs no doubt a very high honour to be personally entrusted with her safety and well-being.
This leads me to his parents--I imagine his father was a Mage Knight of Friege as well, albeit a lower-ranking one. His mother was a mage from a reasonably well-off family, and thanks to her husbandâs position within the castle she managed to secure a post there and eventually become a Mage Knight as well. Both of them were rather adamant social climbers--constantly looking for opportunities to curry favour and impress the right people to increase their own connections and social standing.
This didnât change after Reinhardt was born, in Gran Year 747. His mother likely hired a nursemaid and later a tutor so that she could continue her duties (and mingling with the castle folk). As Reinhardt began to grow a little older, his parents began asking him to demonstrate to them what heâd learned, rebuking him if heâd gotten anything wrong, and interjecting with their own lessons every now and then.Â
These lessons quickly grew to become cherished parts of Reinhardtâs early life, because they were some of the few times his parents would devote their time and attention to him. While not outright neglectful of him, their attitude towards him was rather distant, and their standards were high. Affectionate words or touches were nearly unheard of, and praise was sparse and hard-earned, only appearing when he was absolutely perfect.
Despite his young age, Reinhardt quickly displayed a natural talent for both magic and swordplay. His life was laid out for him at the start--it was clear that Reinhardtâs parents expected their son to follow in their footsteps and take a position at the castle--the higher, the better. Of course, they didnât expect a child not even in his teens to jump straight to a high-ranking post, but they still expected him to be diligent in both his studies and his training in order to develop that natural talent further and hopefully impress one of the higher-ups when the time came to enlist.
When he was 11, Reinhardtâs younger sister, Olwen, was born. Again, a nursemaid was hired, and later a tutor, but it was clear that Reinhardtâs parents favoured their eldest child, especially after Olwen turned out to not be the same kind of child prodigy that Reinhardt had been. That isnât to say she wasnât talented, but their parents definitely didnât put the same amount of energy into molding her into the ideal Mage Knight of Friege when their son already looked to be well on his way there.
Thus, she often turned to her elder brother whenever she had questions, and he quickly found himself taking on the role of her mentor. As mentioned in canon, she adored him, followed him around, and wanted to be just like her perfect, admired older brother. Reinhardt, for his part, greatly enjoyed spending time with his precious baby sister, the first person to love him unconditionally.Â
He didnât think about it at the time (or any time after, really), but his parents only âlovedâ him when he was useful to them--and he wanted their approval very much, so he did indeed try his hardest to fulfill their expectations and the roles he was given.
As Reinhardt entered his teen years, some higher-ups indeed began to take notice of promising new recruits. In part due to his parentsâ bragging about him and in part due to his natural talent, Reinhardt was hand-selected alongside a few other knights in training to be introduced to the young heiress of Friege, Ishtar. Her parents had decided that they wanted someone who was, of course, old enough to be a competent fighter, but also young enough that they would ideally befriend and grow attached enough to Ishtar to give them an additional motivation to protect her with their life.
Eventually, Reinhardt was chosen, both for his skills and how he got along with Ishtar, and he started being groomed into becoming the ideal devoted bodyguard. He and Ishtar were encouraged to spend time together, to better foster his attachment. He was very formal at first, mindful of his parentsâ expectations, but young Ishtar wanted to see him as a friend, and soon encouraged him to be a bit more relaxed with her.Â
His parents were, of course, immensely pleased by this--to have their son in a position so close to the royal family was a large achievement indeed. They actually did praise him for this, although at the same time pressured him to be the perfect bodyguard and to not mess this chance up. (Of course, they bragged about how the son they clearly raised well accomplished this to anyone who would listen.)
Some time after Thraciaâs conquering of the Manster District in Gran Year 762, (maybe ~Gran Year 765?) the Kingdom of Grannvale invaded the Thracian Peninsula and annexed the Manster District. Reinhardtâs parents both died in this conflict, being part of the reinforcements sent by Friege to aid their Grannvalean allies. This left Reinhardt (age ~18) as the sole guardian of Olwen (~age 7). If anything, this only increased his protectiveness of her, his only family left. Due to the 11-year age gap between them, he eventually began to feel a little parental in addition to brotherly, which is why even with her being 18 years old when FE5 takes place, he still thinks of her as a child, the little sister still following in his footsteps.
(As a side note, I also imagine that Olwenâs youth at the time of their deaths was the reason she didnât grow up as rigidly formal and duty-bound as Reinhardt, since she wouldnât have been influenced by their parentsâ emphasis on fulfilling oneâs role and serving the royal family for her entire childhood like her brother.)
As Ishtar entered her teen years, Reinhardt (now a General in his early twenties) started taking more care with how he acted around her again. Despite the lack of romance between them, he eventually became aware of the rumours that sprung up around the castle about their relationship, and didnât wish to fuel them by acting inappropriately familiar with her.Â
I imagine Hilda also assumed Reinhardt had romantic feelings for her daughter, but other than warning Ishtar strictly not to act on them (bastard children would be shameful) and to dismiss him if he ever acted on them, she turned a blind eye to the assumed attraction. This was simply because if Reinhardt was in love with Ishtar, then that would only mean heâd probably try even harder to protect her.
By the time FE5 begins, in Gran Year 776, Reinhardt (age 29) has become a General famed for his dependability and exploits in battle, and has also become a close confidant of Queen Ishtar, who is engaged to Prince (and then Emperor) Julius of Grannvale. Despite the lingering whispers about their relationship, Reinhardtâs devotion to Ishtar is purely platonic, but runs very, very deep. Perhaps the closest thing he has to an actual friend, despite the difference in rank separating them, Ishtar is as precious to him as Olwen is. This, of course, eventually leads to his downfall in chapter 22 of the game at the River Thracia, when he is unable to choose between the two most important people in his life.
~
The takeaway from this is that, although Reinhardtâs actions (and failures to act) in FE5 are his own decisions, I wanted to create a feasible backstory to explain why his priorities and motivations are the way they are. In particular, why he initially treats Olwen like a child, why heâs so fixated on being useful and fulfilling his duties correctly, and why he devotes himself to people so deeply.Â
This also helps explain my headcanon of how he is deeply taken aback by affectionate gestures, and though he is used to graciously accepting praise as a famed General, he doesnât really expect it from someone close to him, particularly if itâs something that has nothing to do with his ability to be useful. Heâd also probably cry if someone told him they love him and wouldnât REALLY believe it until much later.
Anyway...itâs past 4 in the morning and if anyone actually read this monstrosity, 1) I'm sorry, 2) I love you, 3) I hope this provided a believable explanation for my portrayal of Reinhardt on this blog. Thank you.
#duskwrites#long post#rein: hcs#v: that brings back memories#//watch this all be tossed out the window in a thracia remake#i wouldn't even be mad tbh i'd kill for a remake#obviously you don't have to agree with all or any of this it's just a headcanon!#let's post this now when the dash is dead so i don't murder anyone's dashboard#i was going to talk about dire thunder being exclusive to the family too but this is long enough as is lmao
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