#i think that could be an interesting triad of power you know

[quietwingsinthesky]

Jack resurrecting archangels? Post canon.

First is Michael, partly for the sake of getting a newly resurrected Adam to stop threatening to tear the universe apart to get him back and partly because he was the last killed and easiest to bring back, and in his wake, Raphael soon follows, on his request, and they reunite in what looks like silence to human eyes, foreheads pressed together and eyes shut, but, under the watching gaze of Jack and Amara and Death Itself, is a symphony of love.

Death and Amara are there to supervise the work of the new God-Child, to guide Her nephew and Its new colleague in His power, and together, They bring Gabriel back as well, though he doesn't stay long after that for more than a thank you.

Jack struggles to bring back Lucifer, against His own fear and anger, against the choking hold Chuck once gripped his favorite son with, against the simple and devastatingly complex sequence He must complete to revive Lucifer, until he's standing before Them, pulled from the Empty, and given a chance to be something new without his father's interference.

[ansheofthevalley]

Cersei and Dany have more parallels than Cersei and Sansa yet Sansa always gets compared to Cersei whilst Dany gets to stand on her own :/

(Sorry for taking ages to answer this.)

The way I see it, GRRM actually wants us to see and compare the three. To see them, in a way, as a triad:

It's no secret that George loves to use the rule of three (I talk about it a little bit here.) The way I see it when it comes to Cersei/Dæny/Sansa is to compare their ruling styles, especially since they're the strongest candidates to wield power by the end of the series (I'm talking exclusively about book canon, but we can take show canon into consideration since they are the last three big female characters wielding power by the final season.)

At first, Cersei and Dæny are foils, in a way. Cersei calls herself Queen (which she is, first Queen Regent/Dowager Queen, by being Robert's wife, then Queen Mother by being Joffrey and Tommen's mother). Dæny, however, in the beginning, rejects the title of Queen, saying that she's a Khaleesi. As the series progresses (specifically since she's -at least to her knowledge- the last Targaryen), she uses both titles: rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Khaleesi. So, this would be where the contrast stops working when it comes to these two ladies: they both call themselves Queen, but most importantly, they seek that title because they're motivated by power and the desire to have the Iron Throne. Sure, their motivations are not exactly the same, but they can be boiled down to one word: survival.

(I've spoken about characters motivated by power in the quest for the Iron Throne and what the narrative does to them in show canon, but I can't find the posts, so I'm sorry.)

Now, what part does Sansa play in all of this? Well, we're told in the first book that she's meant to be Queen. After all, she was promised to the prince of the Seven Kingdoms. And she wants to be Queen... until Joffrey orders the execution of Ned. Then, we notice a change in Sansa: she's not interested in the games of intrigue, in the subterfuge. It can all be encapsulated in this quote: "If I am ever Queen, I'll make them love me."

Cersei thinks the best way to rule is to make the people fear you more than they could ever fear the enemy. And that's precisely what she does during her time in power. So, she rules by fear.

Dæny is benevolent to those suffering injustice. But she's also severe regarding those she disagrees with or thinks have interests that go against hers. She is not forgiving. In my eyes, she also has a fatal flaw - she's not interested in the day-to-day tasks that come with being a ruler, as shown in her stint in Meereen. She also relies on her dragons and the Targaryen legacy to instill fear in those who don't want to submit to her. She rules by good faith when it comes to the marginalized and outpowering the powerful with her dragons and armies. So, she rules by power and, to some extent, fear.

Sansa is benevolent with people. She knows what is expected of her as a Lady while in King's Landing. In the Eyrie, she learns to run a household and the day-to-day tasks that come with running a Great Keep like the Eyrie. But that's not all she learns throughout the series. She understands the importance of politics and how to exercise that power. She also understands people's importance; let them be Lords, Ladies, Common Folk, or bastards. She sees their value regarding of station. Also, since the end of the first book, she doesn't get fooled by the nobility; she's more distrustful of their true intentions, and that distrust makes her read each person she encounters more carefully, which, in time, will make her a keen politician (all in all, and this is what sets her apart from Cersei and Dæny, she's not actively seeking to rule. And, when it comes to the rule of three, the last link is the one that differs from the other two and, for that reason, is the successful one.) Sansa is compassionate with those deserving of compassion and sometimes with those who are not, but she's never cruel like Dæny can be or vengeful like Cersei is. This is not to say that she bends to the will of others because she doesn't. She stopped doing it back in King's Landing, starting with small acts of defiance. In the Eyrie, she's on a journey to finding her voice. So, she rules by compassion and observation.

Now, how does the rule of three apply in this instance? Let's first define what the "rule of three" is:

The rule of threes is a writing principle that suggests that three elements, such as events or characters, are more humorous, satisfying, and effective than other numbers. Audiences of texts in this format are also more likely to retain the information conveyed to them. This is because having three entities minimizes the amount of information needed to create the pattern, combining both brevity and rhythm.

By giving us different styles of ruling/approaches to power in threes, GRRM is making sure those ways stick with the readers. He's making it known that the approaches to power and ruling are important for the endgame: this factor will contribute to who ends up in power at the end of the story.

One could argue that the use of the rule of three in comparing Cersei, Dæny, and Sansa is rhetoric: he's comparing three different ruling styles, and we, as the readers, can decide who might be better suited for the title of Queen based on the rhetoric the characters present. (I speak about the difference between Dæny and Sansa - and Jon - as figures of authority here and here. Keep in mind that those metas explore the dynamics of the characters in the show.)

Cersei doesn't give a shit about anyone but herself and her family. She rules with an iron fist and doesn't hesitate to annihilate anyone threatening her power. She rules alone.

Dæny cares about people and uses her power (her dragons) to achieve some of her more altruistic goals, but at the end of the day, those goals are not entirely altruistic since they also serve her. She also uses that power to intimidate and cause fear. To top it all off, she relies heavily on the power that her dragons represent, even though she tries to use politics as a more subtle way to solve problems, but she realizes that if she wants to change the world as she wishes, she needs brute force. She needs her dragons. She uses both power and fear in any situation, whether it is good or bad. She, too, rules alone, even though she has people giving her counsel. (Though that can be explained with Targaryen exceptionalism, in a way. But that's a whole other thing, and this has gotten too long already)

Sansa, on the other hand, is more surgical in her approach. She sees the value in relationships and working together. She sees the value of people and the importance of day-to-day tasks. She relies on her powers of observation and what she's learned in court to solve problems. She rules by understanding: by understanding that she has to work together with people in areas she's lacking and by understanding the potential of each person around her. She rules by working together with those around her.

In conclusion, Cersei and Sansa have always been foils to each other, and that's been set from the get-go. You could say the same about Cersei and Dæny, too. But, as the series progresses, the lines dividing Cersei's style of ruling from Dæny's start to blur, leaving this triad somewhat like this:

[little-songbird-sings]

Hades/Persephone/Orpheus/Eurydice could be such a fucked up polycule. Here's my argument:

○ Hades/Persephone: I'm sorry but this is unworkable. They're incompatible. They despise each other's interests. They're condescending and contemptuous toward each other. He kidnaps her for half the year. It's just not gonna work. They won't even like each other in an explosive fucked up way, they just hate each other.

○ Orpheus/Eurydice: They have marital problems, but it's very workable. She shows him who he's fighting for, and he shows her why it's still worth fighting. Sure, he needs to learn to do some chores rather than just playing music in his man cave, but I think he'll have learned his lesson after all that, don't you think?

○ Hades/Eurydice: imo this one is the gold mine. They'd be attached at the hip. They'd be so fucked up. Hades wants someone who can appreciate him, and Eurydice is clearly infatuated with both his power and him as a person. She probably has some childhood trauma she's working through but you know what that's okay because Hades is an authoritative figure desperate for someone who actually likes and appreciates him as a person. If Hades can get his head out of his ass long enough to see her making puppy dog eyes at him, he'll get infatuated right back. They're perfect for each other. Eurydice wouldn't complain about the foundry, she'd just be touched that he went and made one for her. Yes, he would be abusive and possessive and treat her like a pet he can bestow fine trinkets upon. But look--that's hot.

○ Orpheus/Persephone: this one's sweet, I think. They both like to sing and dance and have fun in nature. She needs hope that things can be better, he needs to not have to do any more work than picking a ripe apple off the tree. They both like to make people feel better. They'd have such a good time holding hands and skipping through fields of flowers.

○ Hades/Orpheus: They want to hatefuck so bad. It's similar to the Hades/Eurydice except they have the fixation without any positive attachment. Hades is pissed that that twink almost destroyed his beautiful town and Orpheus is more passionately pissed about the town than Persephone is. Also, Hades stole his girl and he's not letting that grudge go anytime soon. They're obsessed with each other. They want to kill each other. They want to fuck each other. It would be so much fun to watch them tear each other apart~

○ Persephone/Eurydice: They don't really interact much, but... there's not really any chemistry there. They feel like metamours that exchange polite nods and can hold a conversation over a drink, but they won't really be interested in each other. They're polite acquaintances, and they're perfectly fine with it that way.

The only workable configuration is a Hades/Eurydice/Orpheus triad and then some Persephone/Orpheus on the side.

In conclusion, Orpheus is extremely fuckable.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I was thinking, perhaps too deeply, about The Man Who Would Be King and October. This because both seem, to me, to have one very important aspect in common: at the beginning there is a clear relationship that is central, and possibly romantic, but is later deplaced by a completely different one (yet, the first one still holds some importance, enough to cause some jealousy or friction). Because in The Man Who Would Be King there is an obvious interest, at the beginning, to explore the relationship between Tom and Lily. I wasn't sure if it was to be a romantic one, and if it was from the beginning is arguably the slowest slow burn imaginable (since Lily has to forego her ideals, forgive Tom murdering and being responsible for the deaths of friends and her husband, as well as some other issues). Yet, while that potential romance has not died entirely, it has been replaced by one I prefer and find more interesting, this time the one between Tom and Alphard.

And, here is the thing, it made me think of October. Where you were very blatant about being a Tomarry fic on the author notes, yet, the fic itself made it very clear the most important romance was between Lily and Tom. Harry, or Azrael, slowly lost relevancy, and became far more antagonistic and less, well, passional. Their romance seem to dwindle a lot, even if both of them accepted it as something inevitable (as they were both immortals).

And is an interesting parallel for both fics to have, because I'm not sure it was intentional for neither. After all, while Alphard did appear on the fic quite early, he was a background character until the assassination attempt, after that he stole the readers' hearts. And while I see Tom, as Alphard does, having an oblivious crush on Lily, I also feel like the inclusion of Alphard did make the fic change its focus from Lily and Tom potential romance to the one between Alphard and Tom. Mostly, because the romance is more viable (for the characters, at least), since the one between Lily and Tom requires a huge transformation of character from them both, while the one between Tom and Alphard seems already finding some soil to stand on (although I'm very well aware there is a lot to be done before they get together for real, if they ever do).

There is, however, an interesting contrast between the two fics: Tom. Tom is completely different in both fics. In one he neve gains political power, and stops doing things that could be considered evil. On the contrary, he is a very reputable citizen, or would be of it wasn't for his lack of status and because he married his 40 years younger student. While on the other fic Tom is Voldemort, has killed willingly and repeatedly, and showed little to no remorse about it. The Lily romancing October's Tom and The Man Who Would Be King's Tom are completely different women. But it begs the question, perhaps, how different would October be if you got to rewrite it or to write it now? Because I strongly suspect Alphard would be a part of it, and the whole romance dynamic of the fic would change entirely. It would be, at the very least, more angsty and chaotic for sure. Yet, it does make me wonder how it would go.

Now, given what I know of your and Vinelle's fic repertoire, it could be possible this time it could end up as a poly. An impossible thing on October (not just because of the incest, but also because neither Harry/Azrael nor Lily would ever allow it), but scaringly likely on The Man Who Would Be King. After all, the romantic tension between Tom and Lily is there, as well as a potential betrothal between Alphard and Lily has been discussed. Of course, I feel like Alphard is gay on his entirety, not bisexual, so I see the poly being more of a V kind of relationship rather than a true triad if it ever came to happen.

All of this to say, I'm very curious about what is going to happen with the three of them on the fic. I must admit, however, that Alphard won my heart so strongly I prefer him over the other two, which surprises me since he is barely canon to begin with. I guess it does speak of how good you write him, since he is very dear to my heart (not only on this fic, I also love him on Amulette d'Amour).

Maybe this is a very mistaken analysis, but I wanted to share it nonetheless, just to hear what you think (of course, I do recognize that some aspects of this analysis involve predictions, so I understand you not expanding on those points because of spoilers).

In an unrelated note, the mystery aspect of the fic is really good, and all my theories end up being proven wrong at some point, or in some manner. I'm seriously intrigued by how the mystery (or mysteries) is going to be solved, at the end.

October by me and The Man Who Would Be King by me and @therealvinelle

Very interesting analysis, anon! I don't think I'm going to confirm or deny anything (not the least because of potential spoilers).

Look, @therealvinelle, a lot of praise!

[roadandruingame]

RaR Musings #24: The Pillars, and Foundations

I wrote this like seven times and then a power failure killed it, so now I get to do it again! And keep it brief!

I watched a PointyHat youtube video on Why Travel Sucks in DND, where he outlines such issues as lack of creativity, excessive bookkeeping, random tables, and failing the non-combat pillars of DND, while he presents an alternative he'd worked on for two years and was quite happy with.

It sucks.

It's nothing against PointyHat, or his system, no; it's good that he has fun with it, and that it presents some better, stronger harder faster more reliable and predictable patterns to help structure campaigns that take place on the road.

It simply sucks, in that it is attempting to utilize the three 'pillars' of Dungeons and Dragons, being Combat, Roleplay, and Exploration, which has always been less of a triad, and more of a single, enormously looming single pillar that more resembles flipping the bird to the other two.

Dungeons and Dragons commits some >80% of it's rules and character-building options to combat. If you rolled a bunch of dice, to randomize combatants and equipment, initiative order, attack rolls and damage inflicted, you could still qualitatively read those numbers to determine who had won the combat, the human fighter with the axe, or the goblin with the shortsword. The "order" of the mechanics for combat allows this to occur. "Roleplay" and "Exploration", however, both cap out their rules at "roll a d20 and add your proficiency modifier, if whatever imaginary scenario we're pretending is happening calls for it, and if the number is high enough, You Win."

A system simplifying travel to "a number of events per distance" presents the same mechanics as what a hexgrid entails, just without the risk of player agency and going off-road, because, truthfully, the biggest threat to a good story is the players themselves. A DM might have spent hours, days, weeks, months, or even years curating a perfectly constructed narrative, but all it takes is for one wayward die roll or a player saying "nah, I'm not doing that", and the DM suddenly requires expect-level improv, comedy, literary novelist, and "know it all" expertise that rivals the likes of McGuiver himself to pull a satisfying narrative out of thin air. Preventing player choice from entering the matter of "what direction do we go" might lessen the load of the DM, but it puts the entire experience on rails, tourists at a fantasy-land theme park of the DM's creation, here to ride the rides, and then get out.

A system that neglects provisions and supplies renders those unusable as storytelling elements, when food, supplies, a bath, and good rest in a town are often what propels characters to those locations, on their way to a greater destination, and without them, there's no need to have towns at all. PointyHat himself uses clips from Avatar: The Last Airbender in his video, a series that spends more than half the runtime somewhere out on the road, complaining that they have no food, no money, need a bath, medicine, or some other side objective that requires them to make detours or stops along the way.

But, all of this did manage to pose an interesting question to me, even beyond "what mechanics SHOULD be used for Roleplay and Exploration":

What are the pillars of TTRPGS themselves? If a game has no combat, what replaces it? Is roleplay a universal element to ttrpgs? If PointyHat's system "recommends tying events between locations together with story", but otherwise has no mechanics for how to actually do that, then clearly that's an important element as well, but what defines Exploration? If there is combat, does defeat end in death, some other consequence, or no consequence at all, and if there are variable consequences, who decides what they are, and if there are no consequences, then what's even the point?

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that ttrpgs consist of three pillars, that I'm calling the Three R's:

RELATIONSHIPS - Rather than exclusively between people, Relationships can also be called Story; that is, anything that ties consequence and causality to the experience. Falling off a cliff, and taking damage from the fall, is a relationship, the same as failing to deliver a package and losing a merchant's trust is a relationship, or being able to translate runes, that leads you to a secret room that's filled with treasure. This element is singularly ignored by most tabletop RPGs, instead putting more work into a box of tools that you can use to Cause, or help bandage up after an Effect, but very little that actually ties one thing to another in a way that forms a story.

REALISM - Also called predictability and reliability, these are facets of the game that can be trusted to work the same way every time. Need one scrap of food per day, and travelling for seven days? That's seven pieces of food. Fire burns, water douses, grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and fighters hurt people. This reliability is the bulk of 'eurogames', and heavily prioritize player skill over randomness like 'ameritrash' does. Predictability and consistency is necessary in a fantasy world especially, in order to communicate to the players what kind of moves are even possible to do, so that the fighter doesn't think they can 1v1 a five-tonne dragon. This is also the element of resources, where a resource spent or lost consistently has predictable consequences and effects: using a bandage stops bleeding, for example.

RANDOMNESS - Also called chance, and statistical probabilities, this element ends up bearing the brunt of most dice- or card-oriented games, though the extent of the randomness gives rise to manipulation of odds, without ever fully eliminating them. This 'gamble' means players who understand the odds, who can alter them with certain variables, and who understand and covet the value of success, however slim the chances, can take a plunge, and still be surprised at an outcome. This is also the element of excitement.

What's important about these pillars, and what makes them different from DND's, is that none of them exist independently. They are each of them intermingled and entwined with the other: a story that carries no risk of failure or too much reliability is boring, and a random dice throw with no promise of lasting, cascading consequences, or resource lost or gained, becomes a game of Snakes and Ladders, randomly generating values until someone is declared the winner.

And so, if you were to boil these three pillars down again, into a singular equation for what makes a ttrpg what it is? How do players engage with the game, that makes the activity different from, say, chess, or monopoly, or a game of snakes and ladders?

"A roleplaying game is about inventing theories, that are then proven, or disproven, by dice, that have their outcomes manipulated by previously-occurring characters and events."

This is it. This is all DND is, and all any other ttrpg will ever be.

Returning again for a moment to the title of this piece, there is one other element of ttrpgs that is, generally, indisputable: the role of a Game Master.

Granted, there are other GM-less games. But in every circumstance, there is someone who took the player's potential actions in mind, and constructed a hypothetical where that player's theorized action either succeeded, or failed, and effectively hallucinated a world into being that would be affected by said attempt. In the case of "choose your own adventure" games, players are presented with predetermined choices, that then lead to predetermined outcomes, written by a writer, who takes the role of the GM in such a case.

Where there are the Three Pillars of Relations, Realism, and Randomness, there is also the foundation of what holds those pillars up: the contributions of the players themselves, the willingness to contribute, and the acceptance of the result.

Time and again, I've seen ttrpg tables collapse into juvenile bickering, as a result of one of these four elements. That the story is weak, or the characters don't matter, or that the rolls are too random, or not random enough, that the GM fudges dice, that resource-tracking is boring, or that there's not enough consequences for those resources or the player's actions. And somehow, all of this responsibility tends to fall squarely on the GM's shoulders, the sole Atlas carrying the entire production on their back. If the GM falters, or fails to appear, there simply is no game. It's over. Some players help pick up the slack, take on responsibilities to lighten the load, but the load is always and forever the GM's.

We end up in situations like PointyHat's two-year experiment with travel mechanics, and while he cleaves closely to the three pillars above, he still defaults to the three DND pillars in the end. His usage document spews dozens of great storytelling-based examples for each of the Combat, Exploration, and Roleplay event types, and mixes of the two, but in the end, it's still JUST HIM coming up with these story narratives out of whole cloth. Remove him from the scenario, and you wind up with players who are incapable of playing the game on their own.

It's part of why, now more than ever, I feel like ttrpgs need to turn toward game mechanics that, at least in part, bring the players in to the responsibilities of running the game, and that can reliably produce certain results without some kind of dice-addled soothsayer reading the knucklebones like the portents of the gods in the hopes of producing an experience that players will reliably want to actually DO, over other entertainment alternatives like a videogame or movie. Or, indeed, any other medium that doesn't require them, the consumer, to contribute whatsoever to the betterment of their own experience, content to remain lax, and demand their personal dancing monkey for the evening pick up the pace and put a little more energy into it.

I'm personally pretty proud of Road and Ruin's Story Roster system; about as proud as PointyHat is about his, at any rate. But I'm proud of it as a system that aims to completely replace some GM responsibilities altogether, not just act as a series of instructions that ultimately ends in a need for GM creativity itself. I'm a ways away from it being done, and still hesitant about whether it should include example items and prebuilt characters for every single card in the Roundtable Deck, but at the very least, I feel like I've gotten closer to the core of what a ttrpg needs to be than in other products I've seen.

[redstringraven]

an excruciatingly long ramble about the ‘03 turtles and the enneagram 🐢💜 pt4

[ intro + disclaimers post ] [ pt 2 - raph ] [ pt 3 - leo ] [ pt 5 - mikey ]

don, 5 with a 4 wing

addendums: [ 1 ]

intro

alright, donnie-bear, it’s your turn in the spotlight. which i know you hate, so i’ll try not to keep you too long.

don doesn’t really get to have like… a season-wide growth or 'arc' of sorts (leo’s is a main focus of season four and raph’s is more of a subtle thing you can notice as the series progresses). what’s interesting is, in some ways, being a 5 could explain that. IF we wanted to be charitable and say never addressing the wild shit don goes through was intentional. but i know that’s more self-indulgence or wanting to gently take the writers by their shoulders and shake them on my end.

please, flying spaghetti monster, get these boys some goddamn therapy.

let’s begin.

bare basics of the 5

5s are one of the three withdrawn types (along with 4s and 9s), and they’re members of the head triad (made of 5s, 6s and 7s).

the withdrawn types lack differentiation between their conscious self and their unconscious, unprocessed thoughts, impulses and feelings. their unconsciousness constantly wells up into consciousness through daydreams and fantasies. all three of the withdrawn types respond to stress by moving away from engagement with the world around them and into an “inner safe haven” in their imagination. in other words, they have a habit of “zoning out”.

the head triad may also be referred to as the ‘thinking’, ‘reason’ or ‘fear’ triad. members of this triad are concerned with anxiety; they carry a great deal of fear and are driven by it. they feel they experience a lack of support and guidance, and because of this they often engage in behaviors they believe will enhance their safety and security. they take in and relate to the world through the mind, and they tend to think and plan carefully before they act. 5s externalize it, 6s internalize it, and 7s forget it.

a 5’s basic fear is that of being helpless, useless, overwhelmed or incapable

their basic desire is to be capable and competent

they believe they’ll be okay so long as they have mastered something

childhood take-aways

as you likely expect, we return to the quote from master splinter in things change (s1ep1):

“your path in life will not be an easy one. the outside world will not be a friendly place for you. you four are different in ways the surface dwellers would never understand. to survive, you must master these skills i teach you: the powers of stealth and secrecy. you must become kage, shadow warriors, and you must never be discovered by the outside world.”

young 5s tend to be quiet children who occupy their time with books, collecting insects or plants, learning a musical instrument, using a computer, or playing board games or with chemistry sets rather than participate in play with their peers. anxious parents might find themselves coaxing their young 5 into basic activities--joining a sports team or going to a playground--in an effort for their child to be more ‘normal’; these efforts are often met with intense resistance from the 5. the 5 will sometimes feel overwhelmed by their protective figures, and they'll seek out other ways to feel secure and confident.

as children, 5s see the world around them with startling clarity. they elaborate on it in their minds, which will have repercussions later on for better or for worse. these types value independence--or, more accurately: non-intrusion. early on, 5s learn to believe that by not asking much from you, you won't ask much of them; through that, 5s attain safety and a feeling of control. as a way of defending themselves, they learn to cut themselves off from nurturance--any painful feelings of need and longing--by staying in their minds.

something i find interesting about the lesson (s3ep13) in retrospect of the enneagram is what don and leo choose to focus on when teaching a young casey. now, i know in some way the choices were kind of narrative jokes (as well as poking fun at the fact they’re like eight-years-old and trying to teach something complex like martial arts) but i think, in don’s case, there’s a bit more going on.

leo, who in his older years more focuses on strategy, went for meditation as his starting point (likely remembering where his own ninjitsu training might have begun and wanting to do it 'right') whereas don went for strategy as HIS starting point.

one could argue that out of the four brothers, don is the ‘weakest’ fighter (in terms of technique and natural skill, NOT physical strength; i will get to that). rather than focus on where his ninjitsu training began and giving casey the chance to see if his own physical abilities can develop, don goes right into where he knows HE’S capable: the thinking aspect. planning.

splinter says “to survive, you must master these skills”, and here is a young don already recognizing that out of the four of them, he needs to rely on something more than just ninjitsu skills alone.

don’s best tool in an actual confrontation at this point--what would keep him capable and ‘not useless’--would be navigating a battlefield strategically and keeping himself one step ahead of his opponent.

in flashbacks from tales of leo (s1ep19), we can see don’s built himself a little robot car. this, obviously, will serve no form of protection or security in an actual fight or time of emergency; it’s a toy. he’s a child with a still-developing brain and knowledge of the craft. there's no context to if this story takes place before or after the events of the lesson, but it's evident he's already pursuing other areas to (hopefully!) master outside of ninjitsu that could aid him later.

don as a 5

5s can sometimes be nicknamed: ‘the thinker’, ‘the innovator’, ‘the observer’, ‘the sage’, ‘the specialist’, ‘the radical’, or ‘the expert’.

more than any type, 5s want to find out why things are the way they are. behind their relentless pursuit of knowledge is a deep insecurity about their ability to function successfully. 5s feel that they do not have an ability to do things as well as others. they believe in the safety and security of their own minds.

5s are highly motivated by a desire to understand. to them, gathering knowledge and mastering information are keys to survival. 5s collect and horde information like dragons to gold; they want to know at least a little bit about every obscure topic. they don’t want to appear foolish or uninformed, or be humiliated by not having the correct answer. while don’s physically present at the hockey game in the golden puck (s2ep18), he’s got his nose in a book about the sport's history. this could not only be his 5’s desire to collect information, but also an attempt to understand something casey (and maybe by proxy, raph) is interested in.

5s have a presentational or lecture-like “talking style”; if you ask them what they feel, they’re more likely to tell you what they think. due to this, they tend to respond to problems rather than react to them. it’s this ability that helps don stay as the level-head out of the four brothers. like 9s, 5s are able to remain neutral and see both sides of a conflict. but where a 9 might be worried about hurt feelings, a 5 will look at the situation objectively and shoot straight with you (a contributing reason to why raph might respond better to don calling him out than leo or mikey; don is always going to be straight-forward with him, something 8s, as we covered, value). raph and leo, being on the gut-triad, have a tendency to react to their instinct, and mikey doesn’t always slow down enough to exercise his 5 (it’s his security number, and we’ll get to that).

from a narrative/’tope’ standpoint, you could look at don having 'random' knowledge outside of his usual science and engineering expertise as him filling his narrative role as “the smart one”, but his 5 could also serve as an explanation for why he just… can either read or recognize an italian phrase in the darkness within (s3ep14) or why he has a pigeon puppet in search for splinter (s1ep25) that my bird-loving ass continues to be DELIGHTED over to this day. a 5 never wants to be put in a position where they have to depend on others to take care of them. the idea of losing their independence and self-reliance terrifies them. so, they gather all sorts of information and ideas and resources they deem potentially useful later.

and semi-due to this, the average 5 has a bit of a scarcity mentality. they’re careful to measure how much time they’re spending with others in comparison to time they spend honing their abilities to master something or expand their knowledge. this might lead to them hoarding their space, time, and even affection. it’s common for a 5 to have a space that is THEIR space. this could be as small as a specific chair they always retreat to for reading (that they get a little territorial about should you find yourself sitting in it one day), a corner of the garage, or a larger space such as a study or work-room. don, of course, has his lab which seems to be a (questionably) repurposed subway car for the majority of the series. i don’t know how he got it in the lair… that’s a question for another day. and given a 5’s secrecy and independence it, frankly, wouldn’t surprise me if no one knows how he got it in there. we'll touch on that more in a bit.

don’s wing was probably the hardest for me to pin down out of the brothers. i remember on the same site i saw raph being labeled as an 8w9, don was a 5w6. it took a lot of thinking, a lot of reviewing, but i’ve decided i disagree.

it’s possible he might reach for the 6’s influence from time to time, but i decided on 4 for two key reasons:

5s with a 6 wing tend to be more argumentative and will even actively antagonize people who disagree with them and their views (gives me more stockman energy than it does don; not saying stockman is a 5, tho), and

when mikey’s talking about the different freedoms they all have due to leo shouldering most of the responsibility in samurai tourist (s4ep13), he says don’s free to ‘dream’.

mikey’s insight and that word choice are important. again, i can’t help but wonder if the site’s decision to give don a 6 for a wing was to fully put him on the thinking triad rather than give him a foot in the feeling triad.

the 4’s influence brings with it the more surreal and fantastical; 5w4s are more creative and often seek niches unexplored by others, able to tap into the imaginative side of their brain rather than only the analytic. i think it goes without saying that several of don’s inventions are outside the norm and incredibly creative and innovative. the tunneler, whose existence would even be the undoing of the shredder in another world, is a fantastic example of this. additionally, don's limited access to resources forces him to think and problem-solve more even creatively, and i wouldn't be surprised if that fueled and developed his 4 more than his 6.

5s with a 4 wing are sometimes nicknamed ‘the iconoclast’. they’re creative, sensitive, and empathetic. they’re not always sure what to do with their feelings and prefer to process them in solitude. these 5s are more prone to experiencing melancholy, but they’re less emotionally guarded around others and tend to be better at being kind to themselves. they tend to be more creative than the other sub-type; their tinkering with familiar forms, ideas and concepts can lead to startling innovations. they’re often drawn to the arts, and their curiosity and perceptiveness combine with the desire to express their unique and personal visions.

stress & security numbers

don’s stress number is a 7, so in times of high stress and low spirits he’ll begin to express the negative traits associated to 7s. stressed 5s hoard and cling more tightly to things, make their world smaller and smaller, and will turn their attention away from the needs of others. in worst-case scenarios, they might refuse to help at all or even become hostile to the suggestion, as it would require them to use their valuable time, energy and resources that keep THEM safe. they might become frivolous, disorganized and distracted to the point of not being able to complete tasks and stop thinking about the consequences of their behavior. they’ll begin feeling even more inadequate, feel sorry for themselves, and do whatever they can to avoid pain.

these 5s become more impulsive, their minds speed up--restless and agitated--and they feel more compelled to distract themselves. under extreme stress, they might even become aggressive and insensitive in their pursuit of… whatever it is they want at the time.

examples of don’s 7 showing up could include:

his outburst at his brothers at the start of return to the underground (s2ep13), his frustration with himself for not being able to find a cure for their friends below, and remaining confined/isolated to his lab while his brothers continue to go about their lives and other activities

straight up ripping professor honeycutt’s head off in worlds collide pt1 (s3ep5) because he panicked. funny as it was, mikey’s right… that was kind of extreme. aggressive, impulsive, and insensitive, one might even say

we get a glimpse of one of don’s workstations in bad day (s4ep8) and it's a complete mess. it’s possible that leo’s shift in attitude is wearing don down internally. he’s not taking care of his spaces, and he might not be taking care of himself much, either.

in dragons rising (s4ep10), when leo’s hanging off the back of a truck and mikey’s sliding on the hood of the battleshell, there's a pair of dragons in a truck behind them. those dragons rear-end the battleshell, and don doesn’t hesitate to shoot a fucking missile right into the driver’s seat. had those dragons not thought fast enough to bail, they'd be off the census.

also in this episode, after don tries to look on the bright side (saying they stopped half the convoy) and leo snaps at him, he’s turned away from leo for the rest of the scene--he’s even cut out of the frame in one shot. boy has: completely withdrawn from the ‘conversation’ while the others remain engaged and listening.

don’s security number is an 8, so when mentally and spiritually healthy he’ll begin to adopt the positive traits associated with 8s. with the influence of their 8, 5s become more spontaneous, outspoken and physically present. they get energetic, confident, and much more talkative. the difference can be quite striking to people, leading to playful questions like “what’s gotten into don today?”.

secure 5s become more willing to participate rather than just observe. they feel empowered to take on major challenges, and some will even pursue or assume leadership roles. rather than fear the loss of the abilities or expertise that they’ve been careful to cultivate in isolation, they harness those skills strategically and constructively. they come out of their own heads and embrace a deeper contact with their vitality and physicality. they can take on a whimsical or dark sense of humor, and take delight in puns and wordplay. a more mischievous, lively and elfin side of them begins to show through. a 5 who wants to experience the abundance of life without worrying about what they can afford to lose is one on the high side of an 8.

examples of don’s 8 surfacing could include:

whenever we see him engaging in play with his brothers; he’s not only choosing to be present and share his time with them, but he also seems to--pardon the pun--come out of his shell a bit more. examples could include darkness at the edge of town (s1ep6), reflections (s2ep9), space invaders pt 1 (s3ep2), nobody’s fool (s3ep11), and time travails (s3ep17)

in the king (s1ep16) when the champions all battle cry and rush into the fight, he joins them. battle cry and all. fucking dweeb.

suggesting they all go get ice cream in the ultimate ninja (s2ep10); it’s small, but don’s choosing to not only remain present but to leave the lair and do an unplanned activity with the others

any time he exercises that gentleman’s snark of his, but i’m going to choose a class favorite: “nighty night, dragon-boy” from cousin sid (s4ep1)

how giddy and talkative he is at the start of return of savanti (s4ep20).

don’s 8 is subtle, but it breaks his habitual patterns. people who aren’t that familiar with him might think this is just him behaving ‘normally’, but those who do know him understand that he prefers being left to his projects, studies, and ideas. when he chooses to not only be present in the moment and spend his valuable time with his loved ones, it’s him leaving his safe spaces, risking to use up those resources he so carefully maintains and allowing himself to feel good and be confident in areas he’s normally not. his 8’s a little difficult to spot, but it’s there if you know how to spot a 5 dipping their toe into gremlin-mode. and it is highly endearing.

just don’t tell sam regiel that, he lives 24/7 in gremlin-mode, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, none of us are safe--

cardinal sins - 5 and greed

much in the way that raph’s cardinal sin wasn’t a surface-level explanation, neither is don’s. because i can already hear some folks protesting in regard to how generous and selfless he is. i hear you, and you’re correct. materialistically, 5s can be extremely generous. … however, as the greediest greed to ever greed once said:

“you humans think greed is only about money and power. but everybody wants something they don't have.”

remember that the thinking and head triad can also be called the ‘fear’ triad, and that types in this triad struggle with and are driven by fear. fear makes 5s shrink inward, and avarice makes them hoard whatever minimal resources they have around them. their greed, their avarice, focuses on their inner resources, their energy, and their time. they’re greedy for knowledge and improving their expertise, and they can easily feel intruded upon and learn to protect themselves by emotionally withdrawing from people.

5s want to conserve their energy and resources in order to avoid needing others too much, trying to take as little from the environment and those around them as possible. they feel as though there is not much of them to go around, and the needs of others can deplete or exhaust them. don even laments in his official profile that he longs for the day he can be left alone to explore his interests, and that maybe someday "he'll have the time he needs".

in new blood (s3ep12) don 'cheats' at their game of ninja hide-and-seek by using nightvision goggles to quickly find his brothers. he's both making up for, in his mind, his natural skill at the game, and he's possibly looking to speed things up a bit so he can return to what HE wants to use his time doing. i think it's also worth noting that in city at war pt3 (s2ep16), don’s the one who asks karai what’s in it for them should they agree to help her. in exchange for the valuable resources the turtles will give to help karai (their time, their energy, their literal safety), what do they get in return?

it’s also important to recognize that 5s consider information a resource. due to this, 5s are extremely private and secretive people. it’s rare for any one person to know everything about a 5; each colleague or friend might have a part of a 5’s story, but no one person or even group of people will have the whole story. 5s might even go out of their way to not introduce certain circles of friends to each other due to an underlying fear that they all might talk to each other and be able to piece together what information about the 5 they have. that information--their lives and experiences--is THEIRS. keeping that hidden away, not sharing that resource, is a method of security.

i think we get a fair amount of glimpses into this aspect of don throughout the series, and the first is quite earliy on, but small. when they meet april (s1ep3), don’s not the one who introduces himself as the tech-wiz in the group. mikey’s the one who talks him up, and don even tells him to ‘cut it out’ (even if he says this playfully or humbly, this is not technically mikey's information to share).

the way mikey reacts to don's pigeon puppet suggests this is the first time any of them have seen the silly thing. as far as we know, he never tells his brothers about the events of the king (s1ep16) or that he got tortured by triceratons (s3ep3)--FOR information, at that!--or about where he went in same as it never was (s3ep21). and the whole time he’s sick in the latter half of season 4, he keeps brushing it off as just a bug bite and then a cold. he’s probably in a lot more discomfort than he ever lets on, but… eh, no one needs to know that. it’s probably nothing. this is both HIS information… and, also, leans into the 5’s negative trait of neglecting their own health in stressed states and minimizing their own comfort. they don’t want to have to rely on anyone for anything.

as with raph and leo, let’s also peek at the other cardinal sins associated with don: with his 4 wing, 7 stress and 8 security, the others in his circle would be envy, gluttony, and lust respectively.

SaiNW and don straight up disappearing

a gentle content warning for mention of death in the last paragraph of this section. i know it’s kind of a ‘dead dove, do not eat’ situation with this being sainw and all, but just so you know it’s coming.

as i mentioned in an earlier section, don’s 5 aids him in being the level-head in the family. sainw!mikey even remarks on this in the episode (that "they really needed that level-head of his"). i mentioned in that same section that mikey does have access to the 5, with it being his security number, but… given the environment of sainw, i think it’s fair to say that all of the turtles would have been in the most unhealthy state of their core number. this would mean mikey’s 5 is closed off, and he’d be leaning more into his 1. they, as a team, had lost their links to any of the positive influence that could have come from the 5’s respond over react nature.

don’s disappearance is left vague, not only to us as the viewers but also to his family. he just disappeared. and when his brothers finally see him again thirty years later, it’s not even their don. they're just as in the dark as we are, meaning there was no big fight or blow up or otherwise ‘obvious explanation’ as to why don would have left without a word.

i discussed leo and raph's types at their highest and lowest points, so let's pause to take a look at don's real quick. at their healthiest, 5s can be described as: participating and visionary, observant and perceptive, focused and innovative. at their unhealthiest, they become: nihilistic and eccentric, horrified and delirious, oblivion seeking and self-annhilating.

the series itself is officially twenty years old, and sainw is one of the most utilized episodes when it comes to the creation of fanworks, so i’m sure just about every reason under the sun has been either touched upon or hinted at or explored to explain why don vanished the way he did. and, sadly, thanks to don’s 5, they could all work in my opinion. it’s painfully simple.

5s, due to their need for independence as well as their reluctance to talk about themselves, are the types of people who will leave the house without a word. if they realize the house coffee supply is running low, they’ll grab their keys and head out to the store. they have a library book that's due soon, so rather than go directly home after work like they usually do they'll detour to drop it off. maybe they just feel like taking a walk; out the door they go. no “hey, i’m heading out, be back in ten!”, no text, no post-it note, nothing. it’s not a reflection on how they feel about you or anyone else, it’s just how they are.

it wouldn’t surprise me at all if don was guilty of this. maybe in the middle of a project he realizes he needs something from the junkyard, flings his duffel over his shoulder and just heads out to go grab it real quick. if no one happens to cross his path between his lab and the garage door, he won’t go out of his way to tell anyone where he's off to or that he's leaving at all. they probably won’t know unless one of them text or call him (rip leo and raph’s stress-o-meters). there’s, of course, a chance his family has caught onto this habit and requested he let SOMEONE know, but… that also means don would have to comply to that. be it intentionally ignoring this request or maybe just being too wrapped up in his work or creative excitement to get what he needs and continue making progress that he just plain forgets to say something, who knows.

sainw!don likely did the same thing, and his exit would have likely been paired with a more unhealthy and stressed state of being. for some reason, a reason we’ll never have, he left their hideout and all dialogue/evidence points to no one happening to cross his path on his way out to learn where he was going.

maybe he just needed air. maybe he was trying to get supplies. maybe he got captured and/or killed while he was out there. maybe there are details surrounding casey and/or splinter’s death that we don’t have that caused him to actually want to break off from the others and go on his own (the 7 in him stopping him from being attentive to the needs of others and withdrawing in full, hostile to helping). maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a genuine, unrelated accident cost him his life and no one knew where he was or even to go looking for him when he never came back. we don’t know and we never will. it's another layer to the tragedy of the episode.

[ryan bergara voice] what happened to sainw!donatello will always remain… unsolved.

i’m sorry, if i don’t meme at least once in this section i will be depressed for the rest of the day, let’s move on.

brains and brawn? you mean don.

this has been commented on in the fandom a handful of times over the years: don’s probably the strongest, physically, out of the brothers. yeah, stronger than raph. there’s evidence not only in-series, but if you consider the enneagram aspect of don and his 5, it opens another perspective into some of the things we might not get to see on screen.

take don’s independence for example. the fact he doesn’t ever want to have to rely on anyone else. sure, yeah, being in danger out on the field--he’s aware of when he needs help and will ask for it in that aspect, as he has recognized that ninjitsu is not the ‘skill’ he has mastered or has aimed TO master… but he’s not going to ask his brothers for help moving things around in his lab (especially given that his lab is one of HIS spaces). he’s going to do it himself, even if he has to spend two days building a one-use pulley system to make it happen. this is the enneagram type who just flat out leaves the house without telling anyone anything. you think he’s gonna wander out of his lab and ask someone to help him move a giant tire if he can figure out a way to do it himself? hell no. god forbid.

think about all the shit don has to move on a day to day basis to build and fix and modify the stuff he does. the average weight of an eight-cylinder car engine is between 400 to 700 pounds (that’s 181kg to 317kg). and the original battleshell wasn’t just a van, either, it was an armored car they ‘borrowed’ from the purple dragons (s1ep1). we see that he has a car engine removed and suspended while he fixes it in lone raph and cub (s1ep24) and it's fucking huge. it’s so funny to think that raph is over here like “i’m gonna be so strong [works out in his free time]” and meanwhile don’s out beside some abandoned car somewhere with the hood propped open like “hmm… i COULD call one of my brothers and ask them to help me strip this engine out and get it home… but i could also not do that [proceeds to not do that and gets it home himself]”.

i acknowledge that some of these can be dismissed as "cartoon physics", but humor me for a paragraph.

given that everyone else was busy fighting, don had to've dragged stockman's robotic arm--which is bigger than him--from inside the building to the outer edge all on his own in return to new york pt3 (s1ep23) so he can cover raph from the roof. we’ve seen don single-handedly lift a metal beam off his person (s2ep20), we’ve seen him stop an underwater fan with his staff and force it to stay still (s3ep9), we’ve seen him jam his staff into solid fucking cement cement (s2ep14), when everyone was getting sucked into the portal at the end of the battle nexus it was traximus--the eight foot triceraton--THEN don keeping the chain anchored to the ground (s2ep26), he’s thrown triceratons around with his own two hands--lifted one out of a vehicle even (s2ep4), he dragged two of his unconscious brothers toward the pedestal in april’s artifact (s2ep21), he and raph are both bearing the brunt of the weight of a slab of roof after the foot’s training building collapses in city at war (s2ep15), he’s been at the top of the turtle chain at least twice in the series when they’re hanging off of something (s1ep2 & s3ep26) which means he’s holding up roughly 720 pounds with just his own damn hands and arms.

in his pursuit to master mechanics while being fully independent in doing so, not needing to rely on his brothers to help him move things from the junkyard to his lab to the final piece, he’s unknowingly made himself the team muscle, too. my brother in bushido, do you even lift? yes.

anyway the entire point of this section is to say that whenever i see 03 don written as the physically weak one because he’s the nerd and not the most skilled fighter, i’m immediately yeeting myself out of the conversation. he’ll scrap with you in the vacant lot behind the arby’s and win.

yet another section about the first half of season 4

since we talked about raph and leo’s perspectives in this area of the show--and since i plan on dedicating a section for mikey in his post--don deserves a lookover as well.

if you were to ask me who was probably coping the worst with the outcome of exodus, it’d obviously be leo. duh. but if you were to ask me who was coping the worst aside from leo, i would place my money on don. the series doesn’t allow him to process like it did with leo, and if you zoom out a bit and look at season 3… there’s not a lot of time, we can assume, between sainw and exodus. narratively, there are three episodes, but two of them (the real world parts 1 and 2) take place on the same day as sainw. in both sainw and exodus, don is the last man standing at the end of the fight. in sainw he defeats the shredder after his brothers have perished. in exodus, master splinter and his brothers are all downed. leo and raph are even lying beside each other again. the whole thing had to’ve been too close for comfort on a variety of levels. a slap of deja-vu he didn’t ask for and that no one else in the room is going to understand.

we don’t get to see a lot of don directly engaging with leo’s shift in attitude throughout the earlier half of season four and, maybe while not purposeful by the writers, i think at least some of that could be contributed to his 5 dipping into his 7. where raph is challenging leo’s attitude shift and starting to push him away by becoming hostile (as a way of protecting himself), don is just straight up not engaging with leo at all if he can help it. in his head, he doesn’t have the energy or capacity to deal with this right now. his own inner resources are low, he’s still healing from sainw and exodus on his own, and not only does he not want anyone to know about that, he just can’t deal with leo’s needs at the moment.

his shared glee with raph over mikey having to do a rematch with kluh (s4ep6) could even be attributed to his 7’s desperate and scattered need for a distraction--a change of pace--oh, thank god, not only will this keep leo’s attention off ME and he’ll stop dragging me into training, but maybe it’ll humble mikey enough to get him to stop antagonizing raph for a day because the air around here is already too tense.

when we get to the opening of samurai tourist (s4ep13), don points out that raph’s right in recognizing leo’s shift in behavior is getting worse, but he does so in a way that's uncharacteristically removed for him.

“leo’s gotten really intense. ever since our final showdown with the shredder, he just seems so… angry."

like... this is an extremely surface level observation for the same guy who noticed that they very well could have been in nano’s position had master splinter not been a good person (s2ep11), or who pointed out to mikey that he shouldn’t call the undergrounders ‘monsters’ when to most people they are ALSO monsters (s1ep14), or who connected the dots that if it hadn’t been for the shredder they never would have become mutants (s2ep9), or who didn’t hesitate to give zog a breathing aid because he knew oxygen was poisonous to him (s2ep19)--just to name a few instances.

don has consistently throughout the series been empathetic and aware of the experiences and emotions and needs of the people they encounter. now, one of the people he knows better than anyone else on the planet has drastically changed, but all he can say is that he seems angry. don isn’t in a healthy enough place to feel secure in using his inner resources to spend on leo. they’ve all likely been focused inward and on keeping himself afloat, keeping his own struggles invisible and minimized, keeping his head down while tensions rise between raph and leo.

again, i wish so badly that the series had taken the time to explore the ripple effect of leo’s damage as well as any healing that the other brothers needed to do rather than simply saying “they’ve all healed, but you, leo, have not”. because i just don’t believe that. i do like that the brothers seem to be responding in their own ways to leo’s shift, with don and raph being on the unhealthier end of that and mikey being on the healthy side, but… yeah. wish we had a half season to explore all of them. guess that’s what fanfiction’s for.

conclusion

as mentioned in part 1, the two books i referenced and heavily pulled from in the more enneagram-focused sections of this project (the parts where the enneagram itself is explained rather than how it applies to the turtles) were:

the wisdom of the enneagram by don richard riso & russ hudson

the road back to you by ian morgan cron & suzanne stabile

oh my god, i can’t believe i only have one post left in this series to do. after over a year of working on this thing to finally see it come to a close is kind of wild. honestly, it was getting to the point i was wondering if i’d do it at all (which is why i just FORCED myself to post the disclaimer post as a way of holding myself accountable jfdkls).

anyway, i’m very excited. mikey’s the last one to go, and--as i had a reason i chose to cover raph first--i have a reason i chose to cover mikey last. the reason might be evident if you’ve been paying attention, too. but i’ll elaborate on that a bit more once we get into the post itself. u-u/!

thank you so, so much for reading yet again, and i hope you enjoy the warm drinks and snacks i set out for you. see you in the next one!

[anime-addictt]

Enneagram 6

Need: To find security, and support.

Belongs to:  Head triad. The compliant head triad that searches, creates, or works with a support system that would help them survive.

Sixes are extremely misunderstood . Mainly because the coping mechanisms are so different for each of the subtype. In addition, because people tend to type based on a given list of features explained in books, and in other sites, a lot of 6s are always mistyped.

6s want security. They want a dependable source that'd provide them with the necessary resource when they fail to come up with a solution. They have to tendency to be over-prepared compared to 7s because they prefer knowing what they have to deal with, rather than escaping from it. They are more realistic than a 5 would ever be, because they understand that not all problems can be solved by themselves, and withdrawing and theorizing about the problem doesn't make it go away.

One interesting thing about 6s is that they are not exactly loyal in the way you assume them to be. The main object of a 6 in any situation is to make sure that they have security. Anything that provides them security, is a dependable source to rely on. So therefore, 6s are loyal to anything that can support them. This can be their ideals, religion, particular person, or a community. And they won't question it's choices. Until they start feeling unsafe in it. And once they do, the 6 wouldn't hesitate to walk away from it.

The reason why 6s are so hell-bent on attaining a support system is because of the lack of trust in themselves, and in their external environment. Somewhere in their life, 6s were made aware that they can't rely on themselves. So they tried to rely on an external environment and also realized that...it isn't really safe. So now, they just keep switching back and forth, trying to figure out the safest, and the best option for them in that particular moment.

Wings

6w5: A 6 with serious trust issues. They would much rather come up with a self-support system than seek for it externally. w5's fear of being incompetent can also make this 6 extremely learned, resource-focused, and more of a survivalist. They can be very anti-social, fearing that they might trust the wrong person, and ruin their security.

6w7: A 6 with anxiety-issues. They have a lot of trouble trusting themselves, and their thoughts regarding a particular situation. Is more prone to "if everyone is doing it, I don't see why I can't". Doesn't have trouble sticking to groups, and moving on from them once the security is no longer being met. More friendly than w5s.

Subtypes:

Sp: 6 that understands that gaining resources provides them security. They go about with it by avoiding unnecessary trouble, which can make them come off as being warm, friendly, and nice. I think the primary reason for this is that these 6 also fear that they don't really have the physical or mental resources to stand up for themselves, so they would much rather avoid a situation that would put them in that position, than directly engaging. They are also more likely to stick to a particular person, or an ideal that would help them attain their resources in the safest way. eg: Ussop, Chopper, Armin Arlert.

So: This subtype would more likely focus on creating an environment or a community where everyone together could guarantee each other's security. This makes them look like So 1, however the primary driving force behind this action is the need for security and protecting, and not anger. Furthermore, So 6 would do everything in their power to protect this environment, since they depend on its existence. Eg: Suguru Geto, Floch Foster

Sx: This is an interesting one. This subtype makes 6 to move towards the problem and solve it, contrary to how 6s should work. The reason behind this is that, despite the fear, the intensity and the need to merge with security is far exceeding. So, they end up having this mindset where they think being the more aggressive or powerful one would reduce the impact of the problem. They tackle problems head on, come off as aggressive to the point that you might consider them being 8s. However, deep down they are scared that they're lack of aggression would let others take advantage of them. Furthermore, once they realize that they are no longer in danger, they lose the aggression and pretty much go back into being like the other two subtypes. eg: Eren Jeager, Kyo Sohma.

Common Mistypes: Pretty much all types.

[rjschoicesstuff]

Musical Chairs game at the start of Book 1 + final 3some scene at the end of Book 2. How would those be different for Rippy + her Gabe and Cas? I think I remember you doing some drawings for the musical chairs some months back but still

Musical chairs scene:

I like the scene as it is because it gives you the choice whose lap to sit on + who to show interest to and I think that works best for Choices I guess. + I think it's funny with them both wanting to be chosen and getting pissy at each other and stuff and having that power in the scene. (Tho I think it could also work with mc sitting down and the choices are more about how you'll let mc react)

Howeverrr I do feel like Ripley would be like 'okay I'll join in' and sit down herself. Both due to being more into letting people come to her and show their interest and because she wonders if Cas will just back off if he has to play like that (he doesn't). I also like how Gabriela would act extra nervous while Cas is kinda just circling Ripley like she's prey lmao. When Gabe sits on her lap she's just comfortable and they're both rly giddy and stuff, acting a bit silly, Cas is definitely rolling his eyes at them. While when Cas sits in her lap she gets shy and a bit nervous and he'd tease her for it lol. I think it'd be so funny like everyone is just having fun while those 2 r just in a whole competition over who gets to sit in Ripley's lap. Tho it's only really about Ripley for Gabe, at that point in Time Cas is just trying to keep Gabe away from her because he can't stand seeing her with other people.

Linking the artworks of the scene again cuz they apply here hehe

3some scene:

(Note that due to my version being written before book 2 being out, when I speak about book 2, I just go with the canon lore and backstories and just reimagine the scene if I feel like it'd be different with Ripley and stuff)

Ok bye the cut didnt work but stop reading here if u dont wanna see nsfw ish talk:

So like I like this scene and I think they gave The People what they wanted lol. And it felt like a sign like ok these 2 rly have Accepted that mc loves them both and can love them both at the same time + they have accepted each other too now, u kno? Like by the end of book 2 they have become a package deal to me.

But ok that said, I like to imagine it wouldn't have been a 3some. Like it'd still be too soon for Cas and Gabe and instead it's mainly just heated kissing and caressing and stuff. And everyone, including Ripley is still sorta figuring out how to do this whole thing with 3 people. It'd be awkward, I think they'd kinda be in each others way sometimes and stuff. But they'd all be like rly giddy abt it lol, they're having fun and that's what matters. And cuddles and talking afterwards.

It's like that too in my version when they get more intimate as a trio for the 1st time, I honestly don't know if they'd ever have a 3some until becoming a triad, because I think they'd both just wanna throw themselves on Ripley, but Ripley feels a bit like a fish out of water when she's mainly on the receiving end? So she prefers just one on one until then. I think part of the fun for her is seeing them Together too. I like the idea of maybe one tipsy 3some that happens before becoming a triad where the next day everyone is just like 😳🤭😳 u know which emoji is Ripley. Maybe they never even rly have that talk like ok we're a triad now lol im derailing so bad im calling it quits now LOL.

[ms-erin-kallus]

I’m of the thought that Peridea is Mortis. Hear me out.

When there are aerial shots as they fly around Mortis in CW, you see tall, scattered towers in the distance. In Ahsoka, they fly through a field of similar structures on Peridea.

When it’s day on Mortis there is sunshine and lush, numerous plants but at night it all dies. I know that it’s not actually said, but it could be construed that day was aligned with the Daughter and night with the Son because when she died the tree behind her changed. It didn’t look like it died, but something definitely happened to it. Peridea is dead. It’s grey, there’s no sun and there’s very little vegetation. The Daughter’s statue at the end is partially destroyed, it’s probably not related, but again, it’s Filoni so who knows. Also, the Son was the only one of the three that wasn’t stabbed by the dagger. Anakin got him with his lightsaber. The Father could hold a saber’s blade with his hand and Star Wars characters love to survive being stabbed in the abdomen. I dunno.

Now the fun part, a few lines from CW.

‘[…] I don’t even know if we’re in our own galaxy.’ Maybe ya weren’t?

‘An intersection like I’ve never felt before.’ The end credits are a visualization of numerous paths that eventually intersect through Peridea.

‘A conduit to which the entire force flows. An amplifier and a magnet.’ Baylon notes several times that something incredibly strong is going on there and that he’s drawn to it, so much so that he literally bails on his Padawan, that he obviously cares about and claims to have been training as something more than ‘a Jedi’, the second he doubts her dedication to ‘his’ cause.

Speaking of our silver fox, ‘the Jedi archives spoke of this place,’ and, ‘a land of dreams and madness, children’s stories come to life (interesting wording). Stories of the galaxy are considered folk tails of ancient past, long forgotten.’ Anakin tells the Father ‘the Jedi have never spoken of this’ and he answers ‘few still know of our existence.’

When the Daughter takes Obi Wan to the alter for the blade that can control her brother, it’s surrounded by suspiciously familiar green flames and when he takes it, it looks an awful lot like blades created/wielded by Nightsisters. Ya know the people that had been there ‘since before days were counted’. The Father admits that the three of them immigrated there. Later it’s mentioned of the Nightsisters, ‘perhaps they flee a power stronger than their own.’ Maybe they left when the first group of ‘Ones’ showed up and they realized ‘nope’ and ducked out.

It’s made more than clear that the Ones are not immortal which means they couldn’t have been the only triad. This brings me to the picture. Looks reeeeal familiar. Even one of the hands appears to be positioned similar to the Daughter’s, it’s also on the same side as hers. The other is hard to make out but obviously is not the same. This is a stretch but I think the map was in the indentation in the middle figure and perhaps the Nightsisters took it with them when they left in case they ever wanted to go back? Could explain how Morgan knew about it, the Mothers told her. Also, the lines on either side don’t match up so it could’ve been clawed out?

So, if there have been more than one trio and they were both on Peridea, (and we haven’t seen the whole planet to see if there could’ve possibly been more) then it could explain when Obi Wan told Anakin ‘the planet is the force’.

This kills me. It was one of the portals in Rebels when Ezra was in the WBW. Those figures on the top look awful familiar and those look like howlers on the sides. If Filoni had been cooking this up since then, can you imagine what we could’ve had if they hadn’t cancelled it? Ahsoka should’ve been animated to continue it. I digress… There was a mention of a ‘pathway’ in the show. I thought that word choice was interesting because it was never used in regards to the whales….

There’s also that hypothesis that Baylon is looking for the WBW to stop ‘the cycle’.

Worth noting, the Father told Anakin ‘this place is strong with the force. Darkness has no hold here.’ I don’t think it’s an insinuation that the light side does solely, but, rather, that neither does/can/should. It’s only been ~30 years since they died. I doubt there was another group on standby, so the force is probably in a bit of disarray, especially if the Son could still around in some way. If Baylon really wants to try to ‘stop the cycle’, then this is the perfect time to do it because the force is basically unguarded. We all know that doesn’t happen, but he doesn’t.

This got chaotic. Be gentle, I’m no SW expert and I cry easy.

[notmoreflippingelves]

"Would you ever write": 1) a narumitsu story (doesn't need to end well *smirk* Sorry I am mean XD ) 2) an Ace Attorney/Elena of Avalor crossover 3) a Krisnix fix-it ?

Yes and No

What I mean by that is that. No, I would never write a story where narumitsu is the exclusive and only focus. I'm not even sure that I could write a Phoenix & Edgeworth gen platonic story. I'm just not invested in their dynamic enough to want to center a fanwork about it.

However, I would be open to writing a story that incorporates narumitsu provided that it isn't the main/only focus. For instance, I might write a krisnix that has past narumitsu, unrequited narumitsu, or future narumitsu, but in those cases, krisnix would still be the "main" ship and the narumitsu would stay in the background. Even if the narumitsu is "endgame," I would absolutely imply that Phoenix will always be more than a little in love with Kristoph.

I would also be open to writing Phoenix and Edgeworth as part of a poly ship with someone else. I made a post a few days ago about how the introduction of nearly any third party into the Nick & Miles dynamic is somehow able to make me care about narumitsu. I think the most likely candidates for the 3rd member of the triad would naturally be Kristoph, followed closely by Lang. But I admit to also being curious about Lana or Blackquill. So who knows where it might go.

2. Maybe

I already have way too many works-in-progress/plot bunnies for both fandoms (plus a few other fandoms) to think seriously of adding to them. So I don't think it's particularly likely that I would write an AA + EoA crossover. However, I have actually put some considerable thought into how exactly a hypothetical crossover might work. (If I ever find a way to make my blorbos from each fandom interact in a way that makes sense, this could definitely change).

In the series finale of EoA's sister show Sofia the First, we are teased with the idea of multiple-dimensions/alternate universes existing within canon. The Ever Realm (where EoA and StF take place) is specifically identified as being in a distinct universe from NeverLand and the existence of NeverLand implies the existence of London. And given that London is the setting of the both the Ace Attorney/Layton crossover and the Ace Attorney prequel, we can assume that this universe would be compatible with the wider Ace Attorney franchise.

So due to ambiguous magical shenanigans (maybe involving Esteban's teleportation staff?) , the cast of Elena of Avalor could hypothetically dimension-hop into the same universe as the Ace Attorney characters. I think a crossover might work best if it was set primarily in Kingdom of Khur'ain from Spirit of Justice. It would still be quite an adjustment but definitely less of a culture shock than having the EoA crew land in modern-day Japanifornia.

I have thought a bit as well about some of the character interactions that I would love to see.

Esteban would not get along with Minister Inga, as he would remind Esteban of the worst aspects of himself (pompous, arrogant, ambitious). Nahyuta would also remind Esteban a lot of himself, in the sense of being , once-idealistic-but-grown-more-jaded as a result of being trapped from a young age under the thumb of a very powerful, cruel, and dangerous tyrant , being forced to do terrible things as a result but nevertheless clinging to their humanity through it all and trying to use what little influence they have to protect their family and country. I really think that they could really help each other heal. I also feel like Esteban might develop a crush on Dhurke Sahdmadhi, but he absolutely would not recognize it as a crush. He would just be all "he's so tall and mysterious and manly. like a hero from a storybook. I want him to think I am cool and smart and interesting too." (This is also how I head canon that Esteban hypothetically views Antonio Agama in universe--an actual crush that he mistakes for a very long time as being a man crush/hero-worship due to him being a very closeted, very repressed and even more oblivious distinguished disaster bi.)

Athena has the potential to develop some really powerful bonds with both Esteban and Elena. Elena's emotion dress magic and Athena's emotional-hearing + Widget provide an interesting point of commonality on discussing how they feel and process emotions in themselves and others--as well as how to cope when the strength and intensity of their feelings overwhelms them. Esteban, meanwhile, would not easily be able to hide his loneliness, guilt, and insecurity from Athena's super-hearing, nor from her compassion. Hear heart would go out to him and she would work on helping him see the good in himself/build himself back up as well as reminding the other characters to show him the affection, attention, and validation that he's always needed.

I feel like Mateo and Apollo would not get along. This is probably a combination of me projecting my Mateo apathy onto Apollo and the fact that Apollo is in general fairly prickly, hot-tempered, and judgy. They would squabble and I would live for it.

Klavier would absolutely flirt shamelessly with everyone. Gabe and Esteban just roll their eyes and Mateo and Elena would be oblivious. But Naomi...he would absolutely rub Naomi up the wrong way and she would bond with Ema over it. She eventually comes around to him, especially when he turns down the playboy persona and is a bit more genuine. I also feel pretty sure that Klavier and Prince Alonzo would start out as bitter rivals, abruptly become besties, and then maybe something more?

Ema and Isabel would absolutely talk each other's ears off about science, and thanks to Ema, Isa would probably enter her "forensics" era for awhile and spend a lot of time using science to play detective.

I feel like Trucy might exchange sleight-of-hand tricks with the Delgados. She would also be fascinated by Elena's scepter and Esteban's staff and would spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the "trick" worked.

Haven't really thought much about Phoenix, the Feys, Edgeworth, Larry, Blackquill, Ziska, Gumshoe, or any of the others. But I think there's potential there. Maybe particularly in having Maya or Pearl channel Alacazar as well as Elena's and/or Esteban's parents.

3. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I actually have a few plot bunnies/works-in-progress (albeit very much on the backburner) that have elements of "krisnix fix-it-fic."

One of them is a post-canon, angsty mess but that ultimately will have elements of getting back together and Kristoph receiving mental health care.

Another is a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend AU in which madcap screwball romantic dark comedy shenanigans ensure that Kristoph never actually kills anyone, undoes a lot of the damage he's already done/takes accountability for his actions, and ends up with a relatively happy ending (even if I'm not entirely sure whether he'd end up with Phoenix ,alone or with one of the alternate love interests.)

The third is a time-travel AU scenario. The DLC case of SOJ supposedly includes elements of time-travel but are later revealed to be faked/misinterpretations. This fic would presuppose that in the process of investigating the case, Phoenix discovered that time travel really does exist. In exchange for successfully convincing everyone else that it doesn't, the Time Travel Bureau will allow Phoenix to make a few changes to the past, provided that they don't disrupt the wider timeline too much. After his first choices of saving Mia and Gregory Edgeworth are rejected (as their deaths have too great an impact on events), Phoenix is permitted to "save" Kristoph by preventing him from committing the murders (as it's gauged that Zak and Drew Misham would've died of natural causes soon afterwards anyway). Phoenix has to be *very* careful in terms of not letting anyone know what he is doing and only making the slightest changes. He will still lose his badge and spend 7 years without it, Zak will still abandon Trucy, Kristoph's forgery will still be revealed and he'll be disbarred and sent to prison for it--though fortunately he doesn't have murder on his conscience/sentence. But Kristoph will eventually get out on parole, live a much happier life (I'm thinking he ends up working in the marketing department for Ariadoney), and possibly get back together with Phoenix.

Send me an ask that says “Would you ever write…” and continue the sentence. I’ll respond with yes or no and give an explanation as to why if I want to.

[phoenixcatch7]

Fic idea collection: sephiroth reincarnates into mdzs.

Now I've been rotating this in my mind for a while, but it went through several iterations before I was happy with it. Feel free to expand on or even use any of them!

Sephiroth reincarnates into lwj. Straightforward, pretty 1 to 1, we get lovely white v black and anime swordsmen and a bewildered love at first sight gay panic that goes differently to but about as well as canon. Room for gorgeous scenes and lots of angst. Wings, war heroes, on a pedestal, etc. Becoming a new person vs cycles of trauma. Devil you know etc. Problem: I don't like writing romance, I don't particularly want to one true soulmate wwx with someone who isn't lwj, and should wwx still die (pretty inevitable) the issue abruptly becomes sephiroth grieving for his brutally defamed and murdered One Love and not going on a genocidal spree about it. Lsh is not enough of an deterrent when the jianghu wants the kid dead too.

Sephiroth reincarnates into lwj and lxc in a split soul/mind situation, and they 'both' fall in love with wwx. I loved this, but the logistical issues (particularly the war) clashed with anything to do with the canon plot, and again it didn't fix the other romantic issues.

Sephiroth reincarnates into just lxc and that would have very little bearing on the wwx centric plot, so maybe a romance with jc? Again, cute, but sephiroth is pretty much the polar opposite of lxc and that'd mess up so much. They could work a grumpy (cold, uncaring) with a grumpy (hot, cares so very much) dynamic, I think they'd work pretty well under the right circumstances, but that combined with the fact I don't really ship them (sorry!) put me off expanding it further.

The one I finally decided on:

Sephiroth as... nmj! The combination of the special sabers and their resentment, the war leader role, the reputation, the kid brother abruptly foisted on him, it really struck me! I really like the idea of nmj slipping NHS some of his dna as a baby (qi covering for hojo science in this case) and the compulsive consequences of that. Feeling like NHS only really cares for him because of the s cells mind control. Having to take care of him like those egg/flour bag baby projects to teach kids empathy and responsibility but with a real human kid brother.

Nmj letting NHS slack even if he hates it because his subconscious will protect him in an emergency. If you've seen the scene in ff7 rebirth of cloud with the soldiers you'll know what I mean (it was SUCH a good scene. Ice cold). Imagine NHS of all people getting in trouble (like in the live action) and suddenly like a switch is flipped turning into a merciless murder machine.

I feel like they'd bond a lot in their own way, with NHS both thinking the world of and being sibling scared of him, them thoroughly enjoying battles of wits like weiqi but having no/few shared interests outside of that. Nmj honing NHS' observation skills, ruthlessness, quick thinking (and unwittingly, acting skills lmao). Sephiroths total inability to comprehend NHS' want to be lazy and indulgent with his own childhood of being genetically made to be a high functioning child soldier and then having to lead the sect and raise a kid from a young age, but having no real reference for how a normal childhood would look.

It'd be really interesting to see how it'd affect the war efforts, with someone well versed in large scale conflict, with sephiroths own overwhelming power. Wwx wouldn't be the sole ace, and how would that affect his own motivations and reputation if he wasn't as necessary?

And of course!! The venerated triad!! How would sephiroth take lxc and jgy, so much like his old genesis and angel? Would the experience of crisis core prepare him for those two, or for betrayal and distrust? Without the threat of degradation, would he find himself clinging to them? Would he notice lgys betrayal or underestimate him? Would he feed him his dna and pull an uno reverse??

And should he die, there's no way his corpse is going to be normal. Like, at all. (And poor NHS would sense it, react to it, part of his mind and cells getting ripped out, shut down, the warmth and love of his brother.) Would it constantly try to revive? Would its presence cause mania or mood swings, hallucinations, nightmares? Would people exposed start picking up habits or beliefs he had while alive? Would it be cut up to try and weaken it? Would its eyes track lgy until he hides it away? Would he start oozing green?? And don't even start on what a temple scene would look like in this situation, oh man. It'd be Bad. I think he'd claw his way back to full consciousness out of pure homicidal refusal. He's clawed his way back from total annihilation far too many times to let some conniving POLITICIAN do him in for good.

Nmj staunchly returning from the dead to take up being a Co sect leader again because now he's actually unkillable and NHS is not about to let this happen without shoving as much work as possible back onto him lmao (so he can't leave). And befriending wen ning. The white hair and blank eyes with the iron grey skin and black/gold would be striking.

Basically nmj would be ripe for really good canon divergence and character analysis and growth but even if you keep canon the exact same there's still plenty of room during and after for anything ranging from hurt/comfort to fluff to pure crack (we're putting Sci fi dystopia allegory man in Chinese High Fantasy it's not going to go completely smoothly. And this man does not have experience with raising a child).

There is, also, the option of split mind nhs/nmj sephiroth, in which one body takes the brawn and the violence and the attention and the other keeps the brain and the secret longing for safety and comfort and leisure, acting as though two separate people to allow this space to rest and heal and learn to be human in the way a child soldier or orphaned teen sect leader isn't allowed. It'd mean NHS and nmj would have to be twins, and thus full blooded, but that could be rectified by nmj just being the youngest of the trio and NHS being a few years behind in classes so he's in the same year as the other clan heirs (and wwx) like canon. He'd also be a lot, lot harder to kill and if jgy did anyway sephiroth would quite brutally extract revenge immediately for killing his other body and that means no happy ending for wwx (or a lot of people tbh).

So which idea is your favourite?

[deadrayg2mf]

Entranced by the Basilisks (Monstrous Matches #3) by Lillian Lark

I know I've said it many times about many authors... But Lillian Lark is for real one of my favorites. I think she is my final addition to my top five, so I'll have to start saying top ten after this. Her writing? Immaculate. Her characters? Interesting, funny, relatable. Her plots? Full of depth, romance, and a little bit of angst. Not to worry, we always get our happy ending. The world she has built around this love bathhouse universe is one that I am deeply in love with. Of the three books I've gotten to read (que me desperately figuring out how to get my hands on the lake monster and werewolf ones) not one has left me wanting for anything but more, more, more!

This is the third of the monstrous matches series in the love bathhouse universe. It follows Emilia, who we first met in the second book Deceived by the Gargoyles, the restoration expert of the library that holds the supernatural worlds Archive. Following the traumatic incident of her being kidnapped, Emilia is now aware of the supernatural world that her best friend, Grace, is a part of. If it's not enough to find out that the things that go bump in the night are real and your best friend is a witch, Emilia gets thrown into dealing with her own supernatural troubles as an innocent touch to a serpent kin book leads to her getting cursed. Now with snakes for hair and a stony stare, she is desperate to find out how to get back to normal.

Luckily for Emilia, her boss just so happens to be a basilisk. Limited but capable due to his bloodline, Jasper, who has always had an eye for Emilia is there to help immediately when Emilia accidentally turns her coworker to stone. Jasper decides, despite the rejection he slapped on him the other night, to request help from his long-time fling, Ari. After another incident with Emilia's mother, we end up with Emilia, Jasper, and Ari all living under the same roof so that Ari can help Emilia train her new powers while they all search for ways to try and reverse her "chosen" condition, as Ari calls it.

Of course, with a chosen around now, Ari is determined to lock them into a triad as he knows this is exactly what he needs to get Jasper willing to mate with him... falling in love with Emilia is just a step along the way. Though charismatic and fun, Ari is a skilled player when it comes to manipulating the game board to get what he wants, which is why his tight lips and strategic plan is exactly what ends up getting the triad into trouble when Emilia finds out he has been lying to her.

The romance is delightful, I have to say, I think this is absolutely my favorite in the series so far. Each character had their own unique qualities and inner conflict which had me binging the whole book in a day. Emilia with her anxious yet quiet determination trying to figure out if she's okay with what she's become and the world she lives in. Jasper with his cold aloofness but underneath desiring nothing but to be wanted and needed. Finally, Ari, who desperately wants to keep those he loves but internally doesn't know if he can do so without lying to them yet also knowing that keeping his secrets will lead him to nothing but trouble, hurt, and regret.

The smut is... by far my favorite of anything I've read... Is that crazy? Well, then call me nuts. And it's plentiful... Like, really plentiful for 370 pages. It's basically full of every single way these three could have gotten down and dirty. Plus... snake men. (Sue me, I've got a thing for the scaly guys... but then, you pry do too if you're here :))

This is a fun and flirty romance embroidered with a little manipulation, some angst, one happy ending, and a whole lot of three-way positions. Lillian Lark is an excellent writer who brings her world to life through her relatable (sans being anything but human) main characters and their struggles in life and love. I highly recommend the love bathhouse universe and hope you enjoy it as much as I do. 9/10

Also, if you were wondering, between when I saved this draft at my lunch break and finished it off after work <(￣︶￣)> I got the lake monster and werewolf paperback books ordered.

Would I read again? Yes, and I already want to, and I just finished it a couple days ago!

Would I recommend? 100%, please check out this series it deserves all the love

[avulleonastick]

what abt S and T?

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

Oh hummmmmmm. I'm not sure I super have headcanons, tbh? Like... I sometimes take ideas and build fics and stuff around them, and sometimes I reuse those a lot, but I don't feel super attached to them? Maybe that's what a headcanon is?

Anyways...

For Naruto, I have "all ninjas are bi and poly" from the fic I never stop talking about and "orochimaru, tsunade and jiraiya were a triad before everything went to shit".

For RWBY, I have "Ruby is trans" because like 90% of the RWBY fic I've ever read was trans-Ruby fanfic and it's actually the greatest idea.

For Supergirl, I have... "Supergirl is transfemme" because like... it makes the shows everything so much more interesting! Like, the girl is so Rah Rah Girl Power, which I've personally found to be moderately poison as a trans woman. Like, how does being "Supergirl" make Kara feel? Like, the skirt and lipstick and the Everything Everything of that? Does she feel she needs to do that to not be subsumed into her (male) cousins shadow? Does she like those things? She is so Strong Strong Strong which is such a male-coded thing, and I feel like the show really leans into the Girl Power aspect of that but if Kara is trans than maybe she has weird feelings about that? She eventually switches to pants and ends up in basically the same suit as Superman, which is so very something! The way everyone in the fandom (and probably also in-universe, lbr) Thirsts for her arms and shoulders is also something that I think she would feel ways about! I could really go on forever >.>

Misc: "Chloe is important to Adrien because she was his first friend",

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Hmmm. Does "Shadow Weaver abused Adora, too" count? Because I have some Strong feelings on that.

"Ruby RWBY is trans" and "Catilyn Arcane is trans" I consider mostly canon and will read every RWBY and Arcane fic from that lens unless I am provided with extremely strong evidence counter to that. (The joke is that there is no evidence strong enough to dissuade me from these points.)

Oh, I know! "Catra has a horrible cat tongue, and her body is completely covered in fur." I will fight people on this. I have been known to (internally) call people cowards for not drawing/writing her furry.

Yes, let's go with that last one.

Pay attention to me!

[acacia-may]

Hi again! I was checking your fanchildren post (that's an amazing list of kiddos) and I'm very interested in the post-apocalypse / dark triad wins AU, please tell us more about it! :D

Hi there! Thank you for the ask and for checking out my fanchildren chart. It's kind of a mess, honestly, so I just hope it made sense. 😅

That AU is honestly a little out there (my sister and I made it up for (angsty) kicks & giggles a long time ago), so I doubt it'll ever come to be anything concrete, but I will try my best to explain. (Since it breaks off from the canon after the Spade Arc, I'll put my explanation below the cut to avoid spoilers and also because it's kind of dark. Just warning you there's a lot of things that are wrong with this one...but it’s really not meant to be taken too seriously...)

Alright so the premise of the AU is that the magic knights succeed in rescuing Yami and William in Spade; however, they don't manage to close the gate. The demons (in league with the Dark Triade) run amok in the world and kill off most of the population. The Heart Kingdom is completely destroyed, and the Diamond Kingdom is completely taken over and given over to Morris who runs human experiments there. The few surviving Clover Kingdom magic knights manage to hold a portion of the Clover Kingdom safely and end up pushing back the Dark Triade and the demons back into Spade. What's remaining of Clover is a completely fortified and walled in area, but the survivors attempt to rebuild there and a select few of the magic knights (more often than not led by Yuno) will occasionally go out into the world to try to figure out what in the world they're going to do about the Spade problem.

Asta and Noelle survived in the post-apocalyptic world for a while. They were a big part of the efforts to rebuild, but, unfortunately, eventually both perished [Asta in a mission and Noelle by being assassinated] shortly after their daughter was born. Nozel named her after Noelle, but he didn't think he was equipped to raise her so he gave her to Yami and Charlotte who aren't in a romantic relationship but have merged what was left of their squads. Little Noelle (Elle) wants to be a magic knight, but Charlotte and Yami have mostly forbidden it because it's too dangerous (under normal circumstances they probably wouldn't be so protective but almost everyone has died here so they're naturally pretty concerned), so they get her a job as a secretary to William Vangeance instead.

William Vangeance has left what's left of the Magic Knights to work in the government (in what I suppose is a "Wizard King"-esque position). He has an adopted son named Langris (Ris) who he rescued from a lab in the Diamond Kingdom as an infant. Langris Vangeance has extremely powerful spatial magic that allows him to travel through time, and his "Uncle Yuno" is particularly insistent that if he'd only train harder and apply himself, they could use his power to go back in time and close the gate thereby stopping the apocalypse. To Yuno's annoyance, however, Ris would much rather use his power to slack off, have fun, and get snacks (like churros which are his favourite food).

Langris Vangeance doesn't know his origin story, and he's not the brightest so he mistakes Rill and the since-deceased Charmy as his parents, thus the "Pappitson" part of his name. [Lisa is a defective but sentient clone Gauche made of Vanessa, and Ris bonded with her because she is "warm and motherly," so he has added "Lisa" to the end of his name as well in her honor]. Langris Vangeance [Pappitson Lisa]'s parents are actually Vanessa and Finral, though everyone thinks that they're long dead. At the end of the Spade Battle in this AU, there was an earthquake that separated Finral, Vanessa, Secre Swallowtail, and Langris Vaude from the rest of the group (and everyone just kind of assumed they all died). Langris died saving Finral's life, and Secre sacrificed herself for her friends (it didn't actually end up killing her though but rather turned her into a bird permanently again, but no one knows that. Bird Secre watches over Elle and Ris, however).

Thinking they were the only survivors and feeling she had no other options, Vanessa brought a badly wounded/half-dead Finral back to the Forest of Witches where she bargained with Her Majesty to save his life. Recognizing the potential of combining Vanessa's fate magic with spatial magic, the Witch Queen saved Finral on the condition that he and Vanessa stay in the Forest of Witches and have a child with the power to travel through time (and therefore prevent the apocalypse). As it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland out there, they didn't really have much of a choice but to stay. They weren't planning to give in to Her Majesty's demands, however, but as time passed, they actually came to love each other and accidentally had twins they named after Langris and Secre.

When the twins were still infants, the Dark Triade and their demon army attacked the Forest of Witches. Her Majesty perished, and they brainwashed Vanessa who took over as Queen in her place and allied with the corrupt Spade. During the chaos, Vanessa pushed Finral and baby Langris through a portal, and they managed to escape before Finral was knocked unconscious and Ris was stolen by the Diamond Kingdom. Finral was rendered permanently comatose due to head trauma but was, luckily, found and taken in by Henry, Grey, and Luck who are living in the woods (and also thought they were the only survivors post-Spade). Little Secre (Re) has been raised in the Forest of Witches with her brainwashed mother, who is a surprisingly good parent for being a villain. The brainwashing modified and sealed away a lot of Vanessa's memories so Re doesn't know anything about her father or twin brother. Eventually, a particularly jaded Gauche finds his way to the Forest and becomes Queen Vanessa's right-hand man and Secre's uncle.

Were this story ever to be written, the bulk of this AU would take place when Elle, Ris, and Re are all teenagers and would mainly consist of them trying to save the world. It would likely start with Elle and Ris running away from home to journey to the Forest of Witches to try to make an alliance with the Queen (who they don't know is brainwashed or actually Langris Vangeance's mom). However, it's such a convoluted mess of a plot and an idea that I doubt it'll get written. It's kind of fun to think about sometimes though, and I've also made a couple of doodles I can share below...

The first image is William with a little bitty Langris Vangeance and their bird feeder. The second image is an older "Little Noelle" and Langris Vangeance (with churros and Rouge who ends up saving his life at one point).

[delta-pavonis]

How about 🤡, ✨, 🎶, and 💖 for the writer asks?

Thanks for the questions @tj-dragonblade!!

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

OK, I am going to give two, one recent, one older:

Hob also learned that Dream’s form in the Waking, human though it may appear and human though it might respond to Hob’s touch, was not human at all in its hunger for pleasure. He had seen hints before, in the months since Dream had revealed his true nature to Hob, that the vastness of his being was not always well-contained in human form. This was no different, Dream bleeding away from his humanness the further entangled they became.

The short of it was that, in the shockingly brief time it took his dick to rally an interest in the proceedings again, Hob had been so filled with semen you could have mistaken him for a navy ship. -- from Chapter 3 of high enough (you got me good)

(Context for the next one is that it is an OC of mine, Mett, who is nonbinary and uses primarily he/him pronouns in the Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds universes. This is part of how he and Ash Tyler shack up. They end up in a committed triad with Chris Pike in a 48k+ fic I haven't finished yet. Whee!)

They collapsed on the couch, Ash’s full weight on Mett, who wriggled in delight, a wholly dopey smile on both their faces. Ash sighed, his nose buried in the back of Mett’s neck. “I think that went well.”

Mett giggled and then whimpered as Ash shifted out of him the last bit. He reached back to pat Ash on the hip. “Baby, if you think I am even halfway done with you after that performance…” Mett rolled his hips back and Ash gasped. “I’ve got some of my own tricks. Which I will gladly show you. Once I gather a few more brain cells back together.”

Ash laughed and rubbed his still-hard cock along the crack of Mett’s ass. “I am ready when you are.”

“Jesus. You…” Mett rolled his hips again to confirm. “Fuck, you’re still hard.”

“You’re welcome.” 

Mett snorted. After a beat, “Sorry about your shirt.”

“No you’re not.” Ash’s voice was amused and light. “I’m certainly not.”

“Good.” Mett rolled his shoulders back and started to push up. “Gotta pee. Shove off or you’re gonna get wet.”

Ash stood and stretched, hands brushing the ceiling of the room. “Eh, not my kink.” 

He felt a hand patting his hip. “We are gonna get along just fine.”

“Because we weren’t already?” Ash quipped... -- from Chapter 2 of Sagitta

(this last one from Sagitta isn't that funny, but it tickles me pink, so there.)

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

JFC, I am ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE AT THIS. <Stitch eye-pulling GIF> OK, I am really really fucking happy with how a wrote first-person POV for Hob in i had a dream (i got everything i wanted). That is the first time I have ever felt really PROUD of my own fiction writing.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

Usually not, although I have a few songs that specifically have inspired (very vaguely) fics. The one I am working on right now has its home in Veruca Salt's Seether, one of my favorite songs of all time.

💖 What made you start writing?

*shakes cane* Back in my day...

No, really, somewhere in the depths of some external hard drive are the fics that I wrote 100% for myself in middle and high school. Never published, ever ever, and will never see the light of day. These were places I explored my identity as bisexual and how I preferred power dynamics in relationships.

I have put fic up on AO3 when I have been truly inspired by some source. Episode 6 of The Sandman absolutely hit that button HARD for me. And then I got into the fandom, my first venture back into fandom since the early MCU, and YOU PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING SUPPORTIVE AND AMAZING AND IT IS WONDERFUL. There was a HUGE response to my first less than 400 word Dreamling ficlet on AO3 and the Sandfam support just pushed me from there.

[slimeywooper]

Labmas AU - Unintended Consequences

Chapter 15 Part 2 - Friendship

Sunday was another depressing slog, playing games most of the day to try and dull the emotional pain you were feeling, and keeping your mind off the darkest musings your imagination could muster. There was a brief moment you thought about sneaking down to see Kudari again, but on top of the threat of running into Colress, you worried your sour mood would contaminate him, and ruin his day. The alarm that wakes you on Monday morning is almost a relief, until you realize another confrontation with Colress is inevitable. Moving at a Snorlax's pace, you begin to get dressed. You'll power through the difficult interactions with him to spend more time with Kudari.

After disembarking from the elevator, you spy Colress in the reception area. He's waiting for you, as usual. Seeing him causes your breath to hitch. When he makes eye contact with you, you avert your gaze. Approaching cautiously, he stashes his tablet in his lab coat and addresses you gently, "(Y/N), I know this is awkward, but I must apologize for my behavior the other day. Here, let's go ahead into the laboratory, we'll continue our discussion as we walk." Scanning his badge, he beckons you to follow through the door. Entering the hallway where he shoved you a few days ago, he begins, "It was not my intention to lose my temper in such a way. I want to assure you I'm not mad, though I must admit, I'm perplexed. Never in all the years I spent raising Nobori, did I ever think anyone would see the potential for a romantic partner in him, so forgive me for my brash response at discovering your… mutual interest in each other. I can't stop you from doing anything reckless, just don't be a distraction, that's all I ask. It would be a shame to lose another assistant so soon." Arriving at the other elevator, you both enter, Colress pressing the button to descend to the third floor. "Nobori seems to be really taken with you. I don't know what you can see in something like him. Similar to his brother Kudari, he does not perceive things as we do. It's always skewed or distorted."

You aren't sure how he could possibly know that, but you would gladly see things in the same way as the hybrids, over experiencing them in the awful, cruel way Colress does. It's also not lost on you how he refers to Nobori as 'something'. Attempting to ease his concern, you inform him, "You can stop worrying. I don't think I can be with someone who does… what he does."

Colress looks dumbstruck, though you can't tell if he is being serious or exaggerating. "Surely you wouldn't stop a relationship just based on something he has no control over? It might seem to him as if he was being strung along. Besides, Kudari isn't the only one with a temper. Nobori is much more level-headed, but he has the ability to hold a grudge like no human can. I only wish I could match the vitriol that he is capable of spewing."

That seems like projection on Colress' part. Only when you first met him did he bother attempting to hide his nasty disposition. The elevator doors open, and you both exit, walking a few paces before stopping by the kennels. Pulling out his tablet, he begins typing.

A good portion of the weekend was spent wondering about the specifics of Nobori's job, and why Colress chose him to do it. It would be for the best if you let it go, but the question escapes your lips before you can stop yourself, "I have to ask… why? Why would you make someone, who you've helped raise, kill people? Does it not weigh heavily on your conscious?"

Looking up, he shrugs, giving you a blank expression. "Not at all," he replies. "Certain things need to be done, and we choose the best candidates to do them. Though, if you're suggesting I personally taught him how to do it, you would be mistaken. That task was given to the Shadow Triad."

Now you know he is fucking with you, a 'Shadow Triad'? He must really take you for a fool. The silent look you give him must have been enough of a hint that you weren't buying it.

"I'm not teasing you or jesting," Colress assures you, wearing a serious look on his face. "The Shadow Triad are enforcers that work for one of the highest people in Team Plasma. When I told him the things that Nobori was capable of, he was very intrigued. He sent them to train him to be the best he could possibly be."

"Are you talking about how he can communicate with spirits? And exactly what kind of training did they put him through?" you inquire. How could he let these people manipulate a child into doing such reprehensible things, leaving that child to grow up unable to discern how wrong it is?

"Ha ha ha, you don't actually believe that, do you? No, no, nothing like that. Nobori can teleport. He's very good at hiding in the shadows. On top of his Ghost type abilities, he's also able to use Fire type moves. I guess you were correct when you described him as a 'jack-of-all-trades', though I'm sure that's not the way you intended it. As for the process of his training, and what it entailed, that was not revealed to me. I can only assume they helped hone his more clandestine talents."

That explains how Nobori got into your room the other night. It also reveals how he was able to sneak up on you and Colress when you were being manhandled by him. Though you've seen him use a Fire type move to free you from some webbing, you have yet to actually witness a Ghost type, only being told by Kudari that they each have different abilities. Looking for any rebuttal, you rationalize, "Well, surely this Shadow Triad can go on these missions instead of Nobori?"

Shaking his head, he explains, "They aren't under my command, they only work for one person, and take orders from him alone. Unfortunately, some people know of them, so in the event they are seen, it would immediately be linked back to their leader. Nobody outside of the most trusted grunts in Plasma headquarters are aware of Nobori's existence. His aforementioned abilities give us the benefit of the doubt on whether someone seeing him is actually in their right mind, or hallucinating."

"So it has to be Nobori," you relent. "But what about his life? Wouldn't it be better for him if he could learn to feel things like a normal person? To start to be independent from Team Plasma, and form his own opinions on things?"

He gives you an incredulous look, "No, why would I want that? Nothing can jeopardize his missions, and that kind of thinking would definitely cause… complications."

Everything you say winds up a dead-end. Maybe he can better explain the victims he chooses, and the supposed unforgivable things they do. "You tell him the targets are bad people. What constitutes 'bad people'?"

Growing impatient, he attempts to answer you, "It can be something as simple as a blog with only a few viewers. If I deem it to be a problem, he takes care if it. Any and everything could potentially cause issues for us. Obviously people who are extremely important are off limits, just to be safe. But most everyone else, is fair game. As long as the general populace doesn't look too closely at our activities, they should be fine."

This proves your initial idea correct, that the targets aren't really bad, Colress is just telling that to Nobori so he won't question the awful things he's ordered to do. Switching to another topic, you try asking about the terrible news you learned, "Well then, what about the hybrid's life spans?"

His jaw tightens. "What of them?" he lets out through clenched teeth.

The topic clearly puts him on edge, but you persist with the same line of questioning, "Is it true they won't live for very long compared to the average human?"

Arm faltering, his tablet now at his side, glare fully focused on you, he answers, "Yes, that is correct."

"And there's nothing that can be done?" you urge him, feeling desperate.

You can tell he's trying to hold back the ill emotions that are rampaging through him, before he responds, "There isn't. I've debated this topic with myself since the day they were born, I don't need to hear about it from someone with no knowledge on the subject. Now quit interrogating me over things you could never understand so we can get to work."

He must hide his feelings until they can't be ignored. Or he just bottles them up until he gets to take them out on Kudari, or anyone else unfortunate enough to be near him at the time. Either way, there's something very wrong with him. If he knew from their birth that they were going to have short lives, why didn't he ever tell them? Kudari said it was he and Nobori that estimated the amount of time they had left. Who could think withholding such information was acceptable?

Lifting the tablet back to eye level, he begins with the task for today, "Now, moving on, I've noticed that the laundry has been accumulating rather quickly for some reason. I'm certain you worked on it last week, but the volume must be too high for you to catch up. So, Kudari is going to help you today, though I feel it to be a great waste of time for two people to be doing such a simple job. But, perhaps it's for the best. Anything more elaborate and he's likely to ruin it." He starts walking in the direction of Kudari's room without looking up from his tablet.

Biting your tongue, you silently follow. You'll get to work with Kudari today, after all, and when the job is done you can spend time with him.

At his door, Colress informs him, "Kudari, it's time for work. I know you're ready, come on," before entering the passcode into the wall panel. The door opens, and Kudari comes out with a large grin on his face. He's wearing a striking red colored dress shirt, which accentuates the fresh scab that's on his throat.

Spotting you standing behind Colress, he claps his hands and approaches. "Hello, my friend! I am so happy we are getting to work together again!"

Colress rolls his eyes, "Yes, Kudari, I'm sure you are. For today, finish all the laundry in the wash room. This is excruciatingly easy stuff. I expect all of it to be done. There's no reason any should be left over with two people working on them." He raises his eyebrows at Kudari, then turns to leave.

Speaking at a low volume, so Colress doesn't hear, you say, "Let's hurry up and get this done, then we can hang out."

"Okay! I can't wait! We are going to have so much fun!" he proclaims, fidgeting in place from excitement.