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mach-speed-extra · 1 year ago

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I made this because I lost a bet

If I won, my friend would’ve had to make a Tumblr account and write superwholock crossover fanfiction. If I lost (which is what happened based on the title), I had to go over Lily Orchard’s simple writing tips. Then we did double or nothing, where if I won he’d have to double the length of the fic (from 15 to 30 pages) and if he won, I’d have to make a second post talking about High Guardian Spice. For context, the bet was on who won a game of Mario Kart on the Switch played with the leg strap and motion controls

So I’ll begin with Lily Orchard’s writing tips. At least I get to add my own thoughts to this. I am writing this introductory paragraph before looking at her writing tips, so I don’t know how much I’ll agree or disagree (also I didn’t know anything about her until a few minutes ago when I did a quick Google search and if what I read was true, then what the fuck). At least I’ll be (probably) shitting on her. Also, it seems the original thread was deleted (or Twitter just sucks) but the tips were recorded on google docs which is what I’ll be using

Written after I finished: I didn’t need to add “(probably)” in the last paragraph

tw: rape mention

1. Don’t worry about spoilers: There is some truth to this in that good stories are still enjoyable on rewatch/ reread, but certain things are more enjoyable the first time. Reading a murder mystery is fundamentally different the second time because it goes from using the pieces to find a solution to analyzing how the pieces actually led to it. It’s like solving a math problem vs seeing someone else do it and following it step by step

2. The middle is the best time to put couples together: I don’t give a shit about romance in fiction. At best, a relationship is believable and developed enough that it serves as character motivation. As someone who has never tried (and likely never will) to put romance in his stories, couples usually get together off screen before the story starts. I then build the relationship like I would a close friendship or family bond, where the point of the couple is to have characters that care deeply about someone else

3. Friends to lovers is better than enemies to lovers: Refer to the point above. Also, fandom jokes about Negan slipping his dick down Rick’s throat and being thanked for it (actual line from The Walking Dead) are fucking great and one of the best things about the later parts of that show

4. Abuse victims healing does not equal redemption arc: I agree that they’re not synonymous, but she uses Zuko as an example which kinda defeats her point. Whatever the cause of a character being evil, a redemption arc is a character arc that leads to them no longer being evil. I don’t understand what she’s getting at

5. Heroes refusing to kill villains is bad: I’ll be using Rick Grimes as an example again. One consistent thing with Rick is that outside of times when his sanity is questionable, he’ll avoid killing villains if possible. He’ll do it if he has to, but that scene where he tells the Governor and his forces that if they stand down, he’ll happily take them in to his community is a perfect example of it (followed by them opening fire and all of the Governor’s men dying except for the one that stood down). Now, there is a difference between not killing and not punishing, but Lily doesn’t make that distinction

6. Lesbian enemies to lovers present in one scene in the finale sucks: I agree with this. She then says it’s “fetishized abuse and violence.” It certainly is sometimes, but I would not say this is an inherent (or even general) thing

7. Revealing information on Twitter instead of the story itself is bad: Depends. Hiro Morita revealing character ages on Twitter? Fine, because the actual ages aren’t relevant to the story. Just Kidding Rowling going on Twitter to say wizards shit their pants? What the fuck. Character birthdays being revealed in outside media (tie-in guide book, spinoff video games, etc) is fine if its not relevant to the story. Not revealing important information in the work itself sucks, but I don’t see it done often enough to warrant this take

8. If a character kills more than 10,000 people they’re not redeemable: Kill count is relevant to redeeming villains, but not the sole factor. This varies from person to person, but I say the most important thing is whether the villain is willing to put in the work to be redeemed. Do they put one foot forward and say “I’m gonna make this right?” I’d also factor in the cause of the killing (mind control or demonic possession for example). Were they aware of what they were doing? I wouldn’t say the titular protagonist from Ender’s Game is irredeemable because of his kill count when he didn’t know he was actually killing anyone. And 10k seems like such an arbitrary number but I’ll assume she just means “a metric fuck ton of people”

9. Tip 8 does not apply to characters if their villainy was character assassination: Huh? I genuinely don’t know what she’s trying to say here

10. Everything in a story is a decision made by the creator and justifying problematic elements with worldbuilding doesn’t work: At face value she’s right. Considering who it’s coming from I doubt her examples are good, but she does have a point

11. Don’t pair adults with minors: I have 2 things to say about this. The first is that Lily Orchard is not the right person to talk about this. The second is that it assumes all pairings are meant to be liked by the audience. Lolita wasn’t written with the intent of making readers like the romance. Toxic relationships exist in fiction for more reasons than I can count, and this tip is reducing fictional relationships to such a narrow, simplistic narrative purpose that it shouldn’t be said by anyone that ever took a literature class in high school

12. Don’t sexualize teenagers: I could be pedantic and say “um akshually nineteen year olds are fine,” but that would be worthless. Now, there are ways to make sexualized teenagers work, but it’s rare enough to see it pulled off well that I will give Lily a pass here. (As for how to do it well, that’s for another day but basically, teenagers fuck irl, and realistic depiction does not mean glamorization, though glamorization happens more often than it should. Also, don’t actually cast minors for fucks sake you pedo-ass fuckers behind Cuties)

13. Don’t use “actually a 6000 year old demon” to justify point 12: I don’t have much to say here that wasn’t said in the last few points. But the idea of an adult that looks like a child and faces issues specific to that context is an interesting story premise (ex: a 25 year old who magically reverses her body’s age on accident but not her mind and has to navigate her adult life while everyone treats her like a child)

14. Metaphors for queer characters is inferior to actually having queer characters: Depends on the story’s setting. A story set in Los Angeles in 2030 likely wouldn’t have queer character treated the same way as in 1930, so unless you do some worldbuilding to explain what cultural shifts happened until 2030, it’s not something you can realistically show. Then, a metaphor works better. Alternatively, a setting where queer characters are accepted but the metaphor is not (or vice versa) which serves to point out how arbitrary the distinction between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” minorities is

15. Confining queer representation to non-humans in a story where humans exist sucks: If I have a story about a bigoted human group that flies off into space to establish their own world (kinda like a metaphor for the Puritans) and they meet an alien race where queer people are accepted, it makes sense to confine queer representation to the aliens. I admit that premise is specific enough to not apply to many scenarios, but it shows how this rule can be easily broken with a scenario I came up with within 2 minutes of reading the tip

16. Fuck having the only gay man in your story be a “faupish diva:” I am currently writing a story about a guy that got a reputation for being extremely violent and decided to play into it because he’d rather have people be scared and stay away from him than deal with their shit. It’s fairly easy to make a gay character that actively plays into certain stereotypes because it prevents him from dealing with other people’s shit. All that you need is a setting where gay characters are kinda accepted but not fully (which isn’t that hard to make)

17. Fuck having the only lesbian be abusive, angry, and have a codependent relationship with the protagonist: Doesn’t the codependent relationship require at least 2 lesbian to be present in the work? Also, refer back to point 16

18. Fuck having the only enby be a non-human shapeshifter: Refer back to point 15 about a setting where [group] isn’t accepted by humans but is by other non-human societies

19. Fuck having the only autistic character be an “ethically-challenged number fetishist:” Refer back to point 16

20. Fuck having the only black character play into the “scary black man” trope: Refer back to point 16

21. Fuck having the only woman get barely any screen time and just be fetishized: I’d expand this to say “any character” rather than “only woman,” because this applies everywhere. It being the only woman is bad, but just because there are multiple women it doesn’t make much better

22. Fuck having the only trans woman be a drag queen: How many times will I say “refer back to point 16?” Also, a society that accepts gender nonconformity only as a performance (viewing gnc identities as characters the actors play) isn’t that hard to come up with

23. Fuck making a woman kiss her abuser: Me when villains to evil things [surprised Pikachu face]. Also, “acting like I’m in love with my abuser to keep up appearances in a setting where I’ll be demonized for stepping out of line so I force myself to throw away my dignity for survival” isn’t a bad protagonist idea

24. Fuck sidelining every poc character to focus on a white guy’s redemption arc: At face value it makes sense but how often does this happen to warrant an entry? I’m actually asking since redemption arcs happen for characters that were antagonists so it’d mean sidelining the protagonists which I don’t see very often

25. Fuck justifying horny designs with “sexual agency” and refer back to point 10: What? I’ll refer to one of my own stories, where a woman actively sexualizes herself after realizing that letting go of society’s notions of sex makes life in general more enjoyable. The entire point of it is exploring the possibility of a “sinful” life while maintaining morality, and how it’s very much possible. This argument also assumes the only reason to include horny designs is to get off to it, ignoring the fact that the exploration of human sexuality is an actual thing fiction can do

26. Fuck justifying horny designs by saying “I’m horny:” This isn’t even about writing

27. Don’t worry about planning. No writer actually plans everything: I literally do. I create what I call “the encyclopedia” where I list out everything. Every character, their relevant information, relationships, etc. It also includes things like maps of cities (real or fictional), the layout of buildings, the make and model (and mods when applicable) of the main character’s car, and more. Not every writer does this, but many do (and if you make it up as you go along, please review it because it’s likely an unpolished first draft that needs revising)

28. Don’t try to be Avatar: I don’t even know what this means. Now, I take inspiration from other works. Every writer does. Just don’t try to replicate someone else’s work. Every writer has their own style, and combing your own style with your inspiration is what makes a work good

29. Low stakes interpersonal conflict is more engaging than high stakes: Why not do both? An interpersonal conflict that escalates until it becomes high-stakes isn’t exactly a rarity. Now I’m gonna plug in a JoJo reference and say that Jonathan and Dio’s relationship in part 1 is a perfect example of what I mentioned. And I can look at The Walking Dead and say that the interpersonal conflict involving Maggie and Negan in season 11 is nowhere near as engaging as the Saviors arc from the second half of season 6 to the season 8 finale. That’s because the interpersonal conflict mainly stagnated and we spent a lot of time with the conflict neither escalating nor deescalating, while the tides of the Savior War were constantly changing and there were many moving parts

30. Choose either comedy or drama and stick to it: You can have both a comedic episode and a serious episode as long as you set up the plot well enough. It’s really not a problem. Going back to JoJo, the episodes with Boingo are comedic, but the Vanilla Ice fight certainly isn’t. Or for a more condensed moment, Lisa Lisa’s backwards cigarette. We see Caesar die, Joseph cry, and Lisa Lisa light a cigarette stoically. Joseph then points out she has it backwards, prompting a light chuckle from the audience before we collectively go “oh” at the realization that she’s so distraught she can’t even light a cigarette properly

31. Don’t overdo it on worldbuilding: I understand that pulling away from the action to focus on worldbuilding can be boring. I also tend to include a glossary of fictional terms at the end of my stories detailing the information that isn’t relevant to the story itself (ex: the sci-fi story has a spaceship. The glossary goes over the history of the design and its notable uses)

32. Characters come before anything else: Well written characters push the plot forward in interesting and engaging ways. A well written plot forces the characters into situations that either cause them to progress or give us (the audience) more insight into a character. Characters are dependent on the narrative elements around them to function

33. The protagonist should not be a vessel for the antagonist to hog the story: I’m not sure what she means by this. She mentions villain protagonists but I don’t see what she means by “a vessel for the antagonist.” I guess it’s about sidelining the protagonist in favor of the antagonist? Even then, a protagonist being used to make the antagonist more interesting isn’t bad

34. Fuck not having perspective shifts: I don’t know if she means characters (which is easily countered through first-person stories like memoirs, diaries, etc) or if she means thematic perspective (which is countered by the fact that static protagonists who change those around them exist and aren’t inherently bad)

35. Writers, and not story boarders, should write: Yeah, and the actors should act, the director should direct, and the sound designers should design sound. She’s not wrong, but this advice is completely worthless

36. Fuck will-they won’t-they: Agree, but I give negative 2 shits about romance anyways

37. Making a romance tropes gay doesn’t improve it: I’ve never seen anyone say it makes it better

38. “We need more lesbian noncon” is a bad take: Huh? I don’t see the point in this piece of advice. Is this an actual thing that is common enough to include here?

39. Fuck women who fetishize abuse in media: Relationships are narrative tools that don’t have any inherent morality to them. I admit fans can be annoying as hell, but that’s not something the creator should be concerned about (unless it’s your job and that’s how you pay rent)

40. Don’t listen to abuse fetishists: I’ll take this a step further. Ask yourself why do you write. I write for myself, for the catharsis of exploring different parts of the human experience. If someone doesn’t want to read that, they don’t have to, but I won’t stop writing. If you write to engage an audience, then you do what you can to engage the audience. It comes down to purpose (writing as a hobby for myself vs writing as a job and you need to sell books vs writing as a hobby to share with the world). Some purposes let you alienate readers. Others don’t

41. Never write rape victims as villains: I made a villain protagonist who was a rape victim. His story is that he tracked down the woman who raped him and killed her, but realized that didn’t cause his trauma to go away. So he doubles down and starts murdering anyone who he suspects of being a rapist (even when there’s no evidence other than a hunch). Is there an issue with this? Because I find the idea of a victim who becomes a villain due to the lack of a proper support system to be more about the failures of our system than about the villain himself

42. If straight men hate a character but lesbians love them, they’re a great character: Not writing advice and also pulled out of her ass

43. Fire any writers who have a certain take on Infinity Train: I never watched Infinity Train so I can’t respond

44. Solve love triangles with polyamory: Or don’t have love triangles if you can’t make them work

45. If a male character is called a simp for respecting women, they’re great: Refer back to point 42

46. Disregard “Mary Sue” criticism: The term “Mary Sue” is so loosely defined that criticism using it is about as useful as “it was bad.” Still not writing advice. I have made attempts at defining “Mary Sue” but eventually came to the conclusion that writing a paragraph explaining why a particular character is bad is better than using a vaguely defined buzzword

47. Emotional vulnerability doesn’t make a female character antifeminist: Do people really claim otherwise? She’s not wrong, but I don’t think this needs to be said (but I don’t use Twitter so idk)

48. Goblins are inherently anti-Semitic: I took all of 10 seconds to come up with a subversion of it. Picture a fantasy world where Jews are discriminated against and goblins exist, with anti-goblin groups comparing goblins to Jews (which then raises questions with Jewish discrimination and how it’s so acceptable in the setting that the characters don’t bat an eye because they’re used to it). This idea can be expanded upon to other groups. Using a real life example, “transgenderism is a mental illness” is rooted not only in transphobia, but also in ableism, and this story idea lets you tackle multiple forms of bigotry at once

49. Making bigoted tropes “work well” is missing the point: Metacommentary on bigoted tropes isn’t missing the point. It’s literally pointing out the issues with them in the first place, while often showing how/why these tropes can be seen in reality (whether it be selection bias, a self-fulfilling prediction, or otherwise). Most bigoted tropes can appear to be true irl on the surface, and being able to look at what makes the bigotry superficially convincing while pointing out its deeper flaws that aren’t immediately visible is certainly not a bad thing

50. Writing a relationship around a particular dynamic or trope is bad: She’s right but only if you confine yourself to that trope or dynamic. It can be used as a springboard for something great. Understanding established tropes and playing around with it is what led to Don Quijote

51. Don’t tone police criticism: Not writing advice

52. Don’t tell your fandom to stop fighting: Not writing advice

53. Don’t say every headcanon is valid: I’ll do you one better. Never interact with your fandom. Most of it is probably shit. Also not writing advice

54. Speak up against toxic people in your fandom: Refer back to point 53

55. Forget about fanservice: Agree. Just fucking write and ignore what readers think (assuming it’s a hobby and not your income. If it’s your income write whatever pays the bills)

56. If your fandom is dominated by shipping, it means your character dynamics are the most interesting part: Don’t look at your fandom. Ever. Fuck your fandom

57. If there’s “too much negativity,” there’s a root cause for it: Again, fuck your fandom

58. Cancel culture isn’t real: Didn’t Johnny Depp lose roles because of false allegations? And, reiterating this yet again, fuck your fandom. Also not writing advice

59. Own up to mistakes and don’t make excuses: Fuck your fandom. Actually. Ignore their existence. Also not writing advice

60. Forced diversity isn’t real criticism: Outside of historical context, forced diversity is a meaningless term. And yet again, fuck your fandom

61. Never include reclaimed slurs: My faggot ass made a character who always says ��my faggot ass” and the story was better for it. “I dragged my faggot ass to the middle of bumfuck nowhere" is a good line of dialogue because of how it reflects the character and his views on things

62. Oppressed groups fighting back aren’t villains: They’ve been heroes in a thousand stories and villains in a thousand others. This is such a broad concept that you can have them fall anywhere on the hero-villain spectrum and make it work. What about an oppressed group being taken advantage of through misinformation telling them they’re fighting against their oppressors and not for them? That’s a cool idea I might use

63. Heroes who don’t kill being indirectly responsible for future villain acts is an interesting story idea: It is interesting but based on the previous 62 tips, I would not trust her to write it

64. Fuck not having poc in a fantasy work: Every element that deviated from the real world needs worldbuilding. Anything that doesn’t have worldbuilding tied to it should align with reality, so by all means include poc in historical periods they weren’t in. Just say “alternate history migration,” but address it. As a bonus, a vague fictional migration that isn’t detailed enough to be put under real scrutiny will, at worst, amount to nothing, and at best make readers appreciate your fantasy world a little bit more. If it’s a completely different setting from reality (like the galaxy in Star Wars) you don’t even need to address it. So outside of historical contexts, Lily is right here

65: Sexual tension and chemistry are not the only things in a relationship: Agree. The primary factor in a fictional relationship is what each character is willing to do for the other (which makes “my partner’s safety/ happiness/ etc” into a character motive)

66. Best potential romantic partner is the best friend: Hard disagree. Friendships irl aren’t “romance waiting to happen,” Platonic relationships exist, and both in my works and irl are some of the strongest I’ve had (granted, my stories lack romance so I don’t have the best sample)

67. “I don’t want the character to be defined by relationships” is stupid: When your character only exists in relation to others that’s not a character. That’s an extension of other characters. What is their relationship with themselves? That question should come first. Then you ask about relationships with others. Put simply, I, as a person, am not merely “[my dad’s name]’s son,” or “[my brother]’s brother.” I am those things, but those descriptors don’t define me

68. If you don’t want a character remembered by a romantic subplot, don’t make it the finale: If you dedicated time to a subplot and don’t want it to be greatly remembered, don’t include it in the first place

69. Slow burn doesn’t mean taking forever to get together: Refer all the way back to point 36

70. Sexual awakening is not a character arc: Hard disagree on the basis that, going back to point 25 where I mention one of my stories, a woman’s sexual awakening being the catalyst to break free from societal ideas to become a happier person is a character arc

71. Fuck boob armor: Boob armor is stupid from a practical perspective, but a character saying “I use it because I like the look” is a good enough justification for its inclusion. And in some ways it adds realism because if I could wear boob armor irl I certainly would

72. Bow and arrow are strength weapons, not dexterity weapons: True, even if not very relevant for writing as a whole. But I will say, Soul Knight’s 40m Long Blade requires more strength to wield than most bows

73. Avoid tokenism by having multiple characters: If you need a band-aid solution for tokenism, your story has deeper issues

74. Increase diversity by only one having straight, one white, and one cis character (or one character that’s all three): If you need this tip for diversity, your story has deeper issues

75. Don’t be afraid of failure and backlash: I agree. Fuck your fandom

76. Poc and queer characters can exist without the story talking about bigotry: She’s right, but this is one of those basic things that I wouldn’t call writing advice

77. Wanting the audience to have fun is good: If you write as a job, yes. As a hobby, you choose why you want to write. Personally, I don’t think about the audience at all when writing, but that’s just me

78. Slice of life is more popular than action/ adventure: Look up the wikipedia list for top grossing movies of all time. And for best selling manga of all time. This is blatantly wrong and also not writing advice

79. Don’t cram every idea into your story: Agree, and it’s a genuinely good tip for beginner writers

80. D&D alignment charts don’t work outside of D&D: Any game will simplify it’s character creation for the sake of being playable. It’s not just D&D. Though alignment charts aren’t bad as long as they’re paired with more things to make the character

81. Fuck Rocky Horror Picture Show: I don’t know enough about the creator of it to confirm nor deny her claims that it was made by a terf. Either way, not writing advice

82. Don’t call queer character queer: My faggot ass is queer, and when I make a queer ass faggot character, their faggot ass is also queer. Get over it

83. Rape is unforgivable: Irl? Definitely. In fiction? Write your world with its rules. What are the laws in it? Social norms? How do characters feel about it? If we have a dystopian world where rape isn’t considered bad and a character engages in it because they’ve been told their whole life it was ok to do, how accountable should we hold the rapist vs the system? That’s yet another cool story idea that explores how we should address large cultural issues and hoe responsible any one individual is for reinforcing the system. And if you can’t blame any individual, who do you hold accountable?

84. Sex scenes are unnecessary: Going back to the woman with the sexual awakening, the sex scenes are important. It’s her indulging in so many things she were taught were wrong and realizing how much happier she feels afterwards while also growing spiteful of the people who spent years keeping her down

85. Vulnerability is not a character flaw: Who ever said it was?

86. “Peak tv” means “addiction-fueled misery porn:” Huh? What? Also not writing advice

87. Addiction-fueled storytelling relies on keeping audiences hooked on what happens next: Audiences only care about what happens next when they’re invested in the story already. The Walking Dead lost a fuck ton of viewers after the season 7 opener, despite it starting off one of the storylines that relies the most on twists and turns in the series. Viewers cut their losses

88. Game of Thrones and Steven Universe were only as long as they were because of sunk-cost fallacy: Not writing advice and also pulled out of her ass

89. Continuity isn’t the most important thing: Consistency matters. Consistency is what keeps the illusion that is a story from shattering in front of our eyes. We know fiction is fake, but we’re happy to pretend it’s real while we read, watch, or play it. But we can only pretend as long as consistency is present

90. “Too political” isn’t real criticism: Agree, but this goes back to fuck your fandom

91. Little Mermaid and Cinderella are more feminist than Beauty and the Beast: Not writing advice, and I don’t have any of these movies in my recent memory so I can’t comment on this unless I rewatch them

92. Change a trans character’s pronouns the moment they realize they’re trans: Not a bad idea, but not the only one that works. First-person narration for example is a notable exception. One other exception in my works includes a trans woman who the narrator refers to with she/her pronouns in scenes when she’s alone but uses he/him pronouns in public until she comes out and the narrator switches to exclusively using she/her

93. You don’t have to justify story decisions unless it’s harmful or bigoted: This is true assuming writing isn’t your job. I still justify every story decision because I want everything to have an underlying reason, but that’s just my style

94. Vampires and werewolves aren’t queer-coded and work better as metaphors for the aristocracy: You can make vampires and werewolves anything-coded and with some effort make it work fairly well

95. Some of the best stories were written out of spite: True, but not writing advice. The Divine Comedy (specifically Inferno) is just Dante going “ha, I’ve portrayed you as the soyjack and me as the Chad” except “soyjack” is replaced by “damned soul punished in hell.” Don Quixote is Cervantes doing the equivalent of shitting on the MCU nowadays. But spite alone won’t make writing good. Both Dante and Cervantes are masterful writers whose greatness comes from a number of factors, not only spite

96. No government system is inherently good or bad: In fiction, I agree. Any decent writer can make any system good or bad within a story. She uses irl examples but that’d be getting into my political beliefs of inherently bad government systems and that’s not what we’re here for

97. Lesbian being on good terms with ex boyfriend from before coming out is a cute trope: Yeah, it can be. Again, any decent writer can make this cute, creepy, happy, terrifying, etc.

98. There is functionally no difference between a close platonic and a romantic relationship: I won’t go into detail about my love life, but hell no. Touch some fucking grass

99. Normalize friends saying “I love you:” This can work when done by a skilled writer

100. If you write a 100-tweet long writing advice (debatable) thread, go outside and touch grass: I swear I didn’t read this before writing my response to point 98

Conclusion: Lily Orchard either lacks critical thinking skills or assumes her audience does. Either way, don’t take her advice. If this is the best she can do, she’d fail any literature class I took in high school. She should learn Spanish if she hasn’t already and meet my 12th grade Spanish literature teacher. She’d fail the class but she’d hopefully learn something

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o1dmoney · 4 years ago

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–––––– multimuse by darcy. highly selective. low activity. muse list. rules under cut.

introduction. welcome to o1dmoney, an independent and highly selective female multimuse. i have been in the tumblr rpc for about four years now and have had a multi off and on for about as long. you may recognize me/have followed me from previous multis i've had in the past, of which there are....many.

interacting. for me, it is crucial that we plot before we jump into things. as soon as i follow back, i will hop into your ims and we can figure something out. if this isn't your speed or if you aren't actually interested in writing, i suggest not following. after plotting, i adore getting and sending memes! please spam me! i ask that you specify a muse when you send those in or like starter calls. i will either contact you about which muse you would like it from or not answer it at all.

please reblog from the source and not from this blog! that includes aesthetics, memes, musings, etc. please do not like or reblog my threads if you are not apart of them. non-rp blogs will be blocked on sight. if you have a roleplay sideblog, let me know.

selectivity. i practice high selectivity on this blog for the sake of my own sanity. i absolutely adore crossovers and ocs. please respect my banned fandoms list. i will not interact with muses from the following: book of mormon the musical, southpark, abrahamic lore, anime fandoms or steven universe. you will be hardblocked if you ignore this rule. i can tell if people haven't read my rules prior to interacting. i will likely not follow if you don't have a rules page or have some information about your muse on your blog whether that be a google doc, carrd, about page, etc. i don't know everything about every muse!

formatting. my formatting is quite simple nowadays. i do not expect you to match my style. if this doesn't work for you, let me know and i will adjust as necessary. i use a variety of psds. all icons, edits, etc. are made by me. do not steal them.

triggers. triggering content will be tagged as “[trigger] tw." i tag common triggers and the ones you'll find on this blog (list below), but if you have something specific you need to be tagged, please im me about it or make note of it in my interest checker. triggers present based on my muse will be: murder, death, child abuse, homelessness, neglect, suicide, war, and physical assault. please tag political discourse, current events, and sexual nsfw content.

nsfw/shipping. i love shipping! i much prefer to discuss romantic ships before getting into things. if you ship it, let me know! i'm probably down! i'm also a big fan of all sorts of dynamics! give me friendships, give me enemies, give me found family. there may be some nsfw topics mentioned, but it will never be written out as it makes me uncomfortable.

final. i'm darcy (she/her; 18+). i'm a full time student and work part-time. i am here to have fun and make connections with people! please don’t be afraid to reach out if we are mutuals! i absolutely love rambling about our muses/plots! it's one of the best parts of this hobby for me. discord is available upon request for mutuals. i'm much more active over there and easier to reach!

#dni.

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gummysharksupremacy · 4 months ago

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Pinned Post: AU Masterlist

Hello everyone! My name is Charlie and I am gummysharksupremacy on AO3! I mostly write for Five Nights at Freddy's, although I used to write for BioShock. I made this blog forever ago but never actually got around to using it. Hopefully that'll change now! Below is a masterlist of all the AUs my co-author/editor and I have for FNaF. Please feel free to ask us about any of them if you're interested—we would be more than happy to share our thoughts and ideas! These are all going to be written eventually, and we’ve already started on several of them and are excited to share when it’s time! These are just the main ones I'm focused on right now (trying to write at least the first chapter of each by the end of the year, just to get them out there!), but there are a lot more I have planned on the linked Google Doc if you want to see!

AU MASTERLIST

Co-Parent AU: The one I'm currently writing! Evan survives the Bite of '83, and Michael and his friends (the Masked Bullies) kill William after he threatens his own kids and confesses to murdering other children. After they kill the man (nearly going through with a plan of torture), they get caught and have to go through the courts to prove it was self-defense while also navigating new family dynamics and a world without their abuser.

Redeemed Dad AU: Following the events of both FNAF 6 and Security Breach, William and Cassidy have been trapped in UCN for the past seven years. Cassidy would never admit it, but she’s getting bored, and Henry’s constant pleas to give it up and get some rest are starting to sound really tempting. So when William makes her an offer—let him go, and he’ll somehow bring them all back—she’s willing to at least hear him out. Of course, it becomes very apparent very quickly that neither of them have any idea what they’re doing, and William realizes that for once, he is in way over his head. (Or, William gets relentlessly mocked and bullied by every ghost in the vicinity for an entire fic—as he SHOULD.)

Good Dad AU: Evan survives the Bite of ‘83, and in the aftermath William realizes just how terrible of a parent he is. Resolving to step up and become better for the sake of his sanity and the wellbeing of his kids, whom he actually loves in this AU, he decides to get them all some fucking therapy. His wife and kids have no idea what the fuck is happening to him, but as he takes more of an active role in their lives, they all help each other adjust to life after The Incident. They come to actually realize that they’re actually excited about this unexpected change, and so the kids are confused but hesitantly enthusiastic about the future. Bonus: William confronts his own trauma!

Ghost Evan AU: Inspired by the FollowVictim theory (which I don’t personally believe but it is interesting), this AU follows the events of FNAF from 1-5 with Mike as the security guard hunting down his father and Evan as his “sidekick” of sorts. Evan can’t do much, being a ghost, but he can make sure his big dumb brother is taking care of himself and he’s more than happy to help take their father down after all that he’s done. This would likely be a one-shot, but I’m still excited to write it.

Role Reversal AU [Puppet Michael]: Instead of Charlie being the child murdered outside of the diner, it’s Michael. After his friends blame him for the death of his brother and lock him outside in the pouring rain, William comes along and sees his chance at revenge for Evan. Before he was locked out, Charlie gave him her security bracelet so she could sneak off to see her friends. This means that the Puppet comes to him instead of her, laying beside his corpse and allowing him to possess it. Unfortunately, his friends managed to catch the tail end of his murder, which means they need to be dealt with as well. Instead of the MCI, his three friends are possessing the main animatronics. Charlie and Elizabeth take his place in the narrative and work alongside Henry Emily to stop William.

#five nights at freddy's #fnaf #fnaf au

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o1dmoneyarc · 4 years ago

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–––––– darcy's female multimuse. highly selective and low activity. does not follow first. featuring: daisy buchanan, allie nelson, cosette fauchelevent, ellen marie truman, sylvie st. james, and nancy kensington. other muses may be requested with heavy plotting. rules under the cut.

INTRODUCTION. welcome to o1dmoney, an independent and highly selective female multimuse. i have been in the tumblr rpc for about four years now and have had a multi off and on for about as long. you may recognize me/have followed me from previous multis i've had in the past, of which there are....many. at the moment, i'm focusing on some newer muses that i'm very excited about. however, a few of my old muses are also available by request. links for my main muses can be found just above and the link to my request muses is next to them.

INTERACTING. for me, it is crucial that we plot before we jump into things. as soon as i follow back, i will hop into your ims and we can figure something out. if this isn't your speed or if you aren't actually interested in writing, i suggest not following. after plotting, i adore getting and sending memes! please spam me! i ask that you specify a muse when you send those in or like starter calls. i will either contact you about which muse you would like it from or not answer it at all.

SELECTIVITY. i practice high selectivity on this blog for the sake of my own sanity. i absolutely adore crossovers and ocs. please respect my banned fandoms list. i will not interact with muses from the following: book of mormon the musical, southpark, abrahamic lore, anime fandoms or steven universe. you will be hardblocked if you ignore this rule. i can tell if people haven't read my rules prior to interacting. i will likely not follow if you don't have a rules page or have some information about your muse on your blog whether that be a google doc, carrd, about page, etc. i don't know everything about every muse!

FORMATTING. my formatting is quite simple nowadays. i do not expect you to match my style. if this doesn't work for you, let me know and i will adjust as necessary. i use a variety of psds. all icons, edits, etc. are made by me. do not steal them.

TRIGGERS. triggering content will be tagged as “[trigger] tw." i tag common triggers and the ones you'll find on this blog (list below), but if you have something specific you need to be tagged, please im me about it or make note of it in my interest checker. triggers present based on my muse will be: murder, death, child abuse, homelessness, neglect, suicide, war, and physical assault. please tag political discourse, current events, and sexual nsfw content.

NSFW/SHIPPING. i love shipping! i much prefer to discuss romantic ships before getting into things. if you ship it, let me know! i'm probably down! i'm also a big fan of all sorts of dynamics! give me friendships, give me enemies, give me found family. there may be some nsfw topics mentioned, but it will never be written as it makes me uncomfortable.

WARNINGS. triggers will be tagged as: "[trigger] tw". there will be dark subjects featured on this blog such as child and marital abuse, mental illness, some horror themes ( think stranger things ). i make an effort to tag everything. if you need anything else tagged, let me know! please tag nsfw posts, current events, and political discourse.

FINAL. i'm darcy (she/her; 18+). i'm a full time student and work part-time. i am here to have fun and make connections with people! please don’t be afraid to reach out if we are mutuals! i absolutely love rambling about our muses/plots! it's one of the best parts of this hobby for me. discord is available upon request for mutuals. i'm much more active over there and easier to reach!

#dni with this post.#blogroll is just @ cagefreed

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nyasialiveshere · 2 years ago

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Summary

So I made this blog for a paticular reason that reason has become null and void at this point. I figured some things out and it was time to move on. But I still made the blog. I usually just leave it rot in the ether of the internet but twitter is...I can’t talk that much and I talk alot. Also it’s quieter here. So I be busy and my brain is like..lots of ideas live in there and they do not pay rent and refuse to be evicted so I literally have no choice but to do something with them. Now because I am four years older than 18 my mind basically that of an old person now so I must write everything down. Everything. Or else I will return here and not know what in the world I planned on doing so for the future me and my sanity and whoever comes on here and finds anything interesting and is like hmm that is intriguing but what else is there like what will this person write about next. Well okay I will put here a detailed list of all the posts I plan on creating. Most are already written or drafted out in my google docs because I pre plan almost everything I can’t help it. This can change depending on how I think the format fits. Also since most of these are still in draft/research stage some ideas from years ago I may not even subscribe to the belief anymore but I still put in a lot of work so maybe it will interest somebody. So in no particular order

#Atlantagate (kai and blackness there’s a lot to unpack)

Jongin dance analysis

Batman v superman analysis

Kai the first album analysis

Jongin: actual fallen angel? Analysis

Avatar/Avatar the way of water analysis

Kai and Taeyong analysis//

Kai behavior analysis// this one has to be broken down into several including attachment style, body language, hypers2xuality, behavior towards men v women, and major childhood events.

Comparing Lee sooman and Johnny Kitagawa

Abusive practices in kpop that are openly accepted/laughed at and why this is the new normal_ but this can be tired into other theories

Rover Film Analysis _obviously not done yet

Kai and dispatch a long history. Why he’s their go to boy

Why aang is the best avatar in existence

Jongin music analysis: this is the last one I’m putting no this isn’t me analyzing his music but the music he’s listened to for years and how I think it reflects a lot of things about him. I actually jotted down notes about his taste in music and after doing more research pretty much everything I thought about him was true. His taste in music and movies is so revealing because he’s such a transparent person. He is secretive yet at the same time wants people to know certain things. Some of those things are true and some aren’t.

LAST ONE whew. Kai is a method actor. Like a serious method actor. I learned that watching Andante you know what. Andante analysis.

So yeah I’ll try and see what’s the best to do first but like if anybody anywhere wants anything specific just say it cause if not I’ll just whatever whenever. I say this because as much as I love just reaffirming my own beliefs I’m always open for correction or broader thinking or just a good conversation. I hate petty arguing it’s so pointless to me and I much prefer to actual talk it out with people.

so yeah that’s it for now

#kpop theory #dcu #avatar 2 #aang #jongin

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mysterycharacterbracket · 6 months ago

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As someone who ran a tourney with 300 characters with two lives a piece, the key is indeed patience. And preparation.

Set it up as if you have a much smaller tournament, and then simply adjust it so that you're almost running multiple tournaments at once.

I started this tournament in May of last year. Here's how it went:

First, I randomly assigned each character a number (because it was a mystery bracket). Then I went to work:

Round 1: a preliminary round with 100 polls of 3, split into 8 batches of 11 and one batch of 12

Round 1.5: a tiebreaker round between characters tied between tiers 2-3 and 3-4 listed below:

100 poll winners

28 wild cards (the top losers by vote count across all 100 polls)

84 byes (the next best losers by vote count across all polls)

88 first round competitors (the worst losers by vote count across all polls)

Once these tiers were set up, and all ties between tiers had been broken, I randomly seeded each character within the tiers. The top two tiers were combined to make a 128-character winners bracket, all tier 3 characters received a first round bye in the losers bracket, and all tier 4 characters had to compete in the first round of the losers bracket. Then I started a pair of brackets (2 characters in each poll after this):

Round L1: 44 polls in 4 batches of 11 (losers were eliminated)

Round L2: 64 polls in 8 batches of 8 between the winners of L1 and the first round byes

Round W1: 64 polls in 8 batches of 8 (losers move to round L3)

Round L3: 64 polls in 8 batches of 8 between the winners of L2 and the losers of W1

Then I simply repeated the last three steps over and over with half the characters each time, continuing until only one character was left.

Other things:

L denoted the losers bracket, whereas W denoted the winners bracket.

Losers from the losers bracket got eliminated, while winners moved on to the next round. Because this was a mystery bracket, I revealed each character as soon as they got eliminated.

Winners from the winners bracket moved on to the next round, while losers moved on to the next losers bracket round.

Because this was a mystery bracket, I randomly gave each character a number and referred to them exclusively by their number and description.

I made each poll last a week, except for tiebreaker polls which lasted a day. This was for the sake of my own sanity: if each poll lasted a day, I simply wouldn't be able to keep up with that hectic of a schedule.

I used a Google Sheet to keep track of the brackets and a Google Doc to keep track of all the character descriptions. In order to see how many votes a particular character had, I used the following formula in the Sheet: =round(C2*0.5,0), in which C2 was the cell where I had the total number of votes for the poll, and 0.5 was the percentage of votes (50%) that particular character received. To check my math, I would put the sum of all the numbers within that poll in B2.

I also used printyourbrackets.com and MS Paint to create the brackets, as you see here. For the losers brackets, I deleted large chunks where a character from the winners bracket came down. I originally denoted these spaces with a W as a placeholder.

EDIT: I also used a "Master-Master-Post (which I pinned to the blog) as a way to help my voters keep track of what was happening. I edited the post constantly to keep readers up-to-date. I've linked the championship round version of that post here. (Note that I had so many polls, I had to create smaller masterposts for each batch of each round, which are listed below the cut. That's why I called this the Master-Master-Post.)

I set it up to automatically reblog each post at certain intervals. At the beginning, each post was reblogged at 3 days and 12 hours, and at one day. Later I moved to reblogging each post at 5 days, 3 days, and 1 day. And in the last few rounds I reblogged each post every 24 hours it was live. I also reblogged each post whenever I noticed that someone reblogged it with propaganda.

I staggered the posts, so that for example, one batch might start on Friday, while the next batch started on Monday, and the next batch might start on Wednesday. To give myself a break, I made sure to never start a batch on the day after another one started. But whenever I had time to post a batch is when it went up. But I made sure to keep at least one batch open at any given time. I also staggered the rounds in the same way so that, for example, the last batch of a losers round might go up on Wednesday, while the first batch of the next winners round might go up on Sunday or Monday.

Because I was staggering rounds like this, I decided it would be easiest to make each character stay in the same numbered poll in each round. So for example, a character who entered round L2 or W1 in poll 47 (in batch 6 of 8) would be in poll 47 again in round L3, and poll 24 (in batch 3 of 4) in round L4 (with 32 total polls that round).

The only exceptions to the staggering rule were in between the first round and the tiebreaker round, between the tiebreaker round and the bracket phase, and in between rounds when we got down to 8 polls per round or less and the characters from one round had to go directly into the next round. In the first two cases, I let the polls expire and immediately posted the next ones, but in the later rounds I waited a day in between rounds.

When I found out that I messed up, I went in and fixed the situation as soon as I could. I had to get creative once in a while -- for example, there was one poll that I accidentally posted twice because Tumblr kept telling me it failed to post. By the time I figured out what happened, both polls already had several votes. I decided to keep both polls up and count each vote as a half vote. Other times when that happened, I decided to delete one post entirely and move all the votes to one poll.

This tournament did take a LONG freaking time. I started the tournament in May of last year. Round 1 lasted a month on its own, and one character who competed in early round 1 won their poll and didn't even show up again until the end of round W1 in September. That was the longest gap any character experienced for the whole thing. The entire tournament wasn't finished until March.

Even though my second bracket looks to be much smaller than the first, I plan to follow a similar format because that one worked so well.

Speaking of which, I will be closing submissions for this tournament this evening CDT. As of this post, you have approximately 12 hours to submit! Link below:

And if any of you reading this have any other questions about handling an insanely large tournament, don't hesitate to reach out to me! I'll be happy to answer any questions about it!

Help, how do you run a tourney that's twice as big as your last one?

believe me i still don't know

(best advice I can really give is pace yourself and don't rush. Also; if your saving stuff like pictures on a laptop/computer, use a USB Stick)

#mystery character bracket #mcb2 #tournament format

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sparkle-twink · 2 years ago

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SLBP Write-up Masterlist

Do you love Samurai Love Ballad Party but wish you could read more of the official content?

Did you miss a story event of your favourite character, or just want to reread their content without using your precious love passes so you can get their voice right for a fanfiction?

Well, do I have the masterlist for YOU!

Under the cut is a stupidly long post of about 2 years of my collecting story events, main stories and various special bits, all written up in Google Docs and now open to your wonderful eyeballs. Some notes are also there if you care, if not just click some links and enjoy, send this to someone who might find it useful and/or check out my fanfics (sparkletwink on AO3) if you want to support the ridiculous amount of effort I put into it. Thank you.

Mid-way through my SLBP play I’d started writing a load of fanfic for it and wanted references, so started this collection with the vague intention of eventually sharing it with anyone who might have missed old story events, or for having to enjoy when the servers eventually go down. I don’t write up everyone any more, because it takes a LONG time, so I’m sorry if any of your faves are missing.

If you have any epilogues that you’d like to donate free free to send me a link and I’ll tack them on when I have time. An asterisk in the title of the Doc means I have the epilogue but haven’t written it up yet.

[Ep] refers to a story event including its epilogue, [POV Ep] includes an epilogue from the lord/ninja’s point of view. My MC is called Arekkusu Yuri. I adjust the spellings to British English for my own sanity (sorry ‘Murica) and fix any obvious errors in the writing, but leave any indecipherable nonsense from confusing translation. However, if you notice any mistakes other than that, just leave a comment in Docs to let me know.

(Note: I won’t be giving trigger warnings for questionable behaviour from the characters because I just don’t have the brainpower to check every single story for potential triggers. If you’re in the fandom you probably already know the writing can get dark, e.g. abusive/controlling relationships, death of loved ones, lack of informed consent, unchecked mental illness. Go into anything you read carefully and don’t hurt yourself for the sake of a dumb story.)

NOW. LET THE LIST BEGIN.

—

Nobunaga

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Heat Wave

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

Noble Hearts Exposed

The Promises of Stormbound Lovers

Tributes of the Divine Bride

Mitsuhide

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

My Love was the Summer

Noble Hearts Exposed

Tributes of the Divine Bride

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Yukimura

Permanent

Main Story [Act 2]

Main Story [Act 2] (Fates Ending)

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine

Heat Wave

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

My Love was the Summer

Noble Hearts Exposed

The Promises of Stormbound Lovers

Tributes of the Divine Bride

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Saizo

Special

Birthday stories

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine [POV Ep]

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

Noble Hearts Exposed [POV Ep]

The Promises of Stormbound Lovers

Tributes of the Divine Bride

Masamune

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

Noble Hearts Exposed

The Promises of Stormbound Lovers

Tributes of the Divine Bride [POV Ep]

Kojuro

Event Stories

Anarchy of the Divine

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain

Noble Hearts Exposed

Tributes of the Divine Bride

Hideyoshi

Event Stories

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Celebrations of the Divine Bride

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Heat Wave

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

Secrets of Desire

The Lovers of Nagahama

Toshiie

Event Stories

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Celebrations of the Divine Bride

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire

Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss

My Love was the Summer

Secrets of Desire [Ep]

Ieyasu

Permanent

Main Story [Act 2]

Main Story [Act 2] (Exalted Ending)

Event Stories

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Celebrations of the Divine Bride [POV Ep]

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Secrets of Desire

The Misrule of the Broken

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Mitsunari

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)

Event Stories

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Celebrations of the Divine Bride

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire

Heat Wave

Secrets of Desire [Ep]

The Lovers of Nagahama [Ep]

The Misrule of the Broken

The Vows of Stormbound Lovers

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Kenshin

Permanent

Main Story [Unification]

Main Story: [Unification] (Divine Lover Ending)

Main Story [Unification] (Noble Hero Ending)

Special

Kenshin Interview

Event Stories

Claim Me at Last

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire [POV Ep]

Celebrations of the Divine Bride

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Secrets of Desire [Ep]

The Vows of Stormbound Lovers

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Shingen

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Destiny Ending)

Event Stories

Blossoms Borne of Sorrow

Celebrations of the Divine Bride

Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire [POV Ep]

Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace

Heat Wave

Secrets of Desire

The Misrule of the Broken

The Vows of Stormbound Lovers

Young Love for the Festival of Dolls

Nobuyuki

Special

Birthday stories

Shigezane

Event Stories

Heat Wave

Kageie

There’s nothing here. :(

Jinpachi

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)

Event Stories

Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain

Sakuya

Event Stories

Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace

How to Love a Ninja

Longing for Moonlight

Of Snow and Moonbeams

Secrets of the Heart [Ep]

Sins of Eventide

Sasuke

Event Stories

Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace

How to Love a Ninja

Of Snow and Moonbeams

Secrets of the Heart

The Moon’s Holy Kiss

Yearning for Moonlight

Hanzo

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)

Main Story [Act 1] (Shadow Ending)

Special

Birthday stories

Event Stories

Along Moonlit Paths; Where Shadows Lie

Closely Guarded Secrets

Consummate Moonlight

How to Cherish a Ninja [Ep]

Moonbright Tales

Of Steam and Moonbeams

Tempted by the Moon

The Moon’s Holy Kiss

Upon a Moonlit Night [Ep]

Yearning for Moonlight

Genya

Event Stories

Closely Guarded Secrets

Consummate Moonlight

How to Cherish a Ninja

Moonbright Tales

Of Steam and Moonbeams

The Moon’s Holy Kiss

Yearning for Moonlight

Hotaru

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)

Special

Birthday stories

Event Stories

Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace [Ep] [POV Ep]

Consummate Moonlight

How to Love a Ninja [Ep]

Longing for Moonlight [Ep]

Of Snow and Moonbeams

Secrets of the Heart [Ep]

Sins of Eventide [Ep]

Tempted by the Moon

Kyoichiro

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)

Event Stories

Closely Guarded Secrets

How to Cherish a Ninja

Of Steam and Moonbeams

Sins of Eventide

Yearning for Moonlight

Kaede

Event Stories

Closely Guarded Secrets

How to Cherish a Ninja

Longing for Moonlight

Shima

Permanent

Main Story [Act 1]

Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)

Event Stories

Of Steam and Moonbeams

The Moon’s Holy Kiss

Yoshitsugu

Special

Innocent Hearts; Hidden Encounters

Event Stories

Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain [Ep]

The Lovers of Nagahama [Ep]

Kanetsugu

Special

Innocent Hearts; Hidden Encounters

Masanori

Event Stories

The Lovers of Nagahama

Kansuke

Event Stories

Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain

Split Routes

Event Stories

Finding Love on Paths Divided

Ieyasu/Kiyohiro [Ep]

Kenshin/Kanetsugu [Ep]

Nobuyuki/Jinpachi

Love’s First Kiss

Yukimura/Saizo

Masamune/Kojuro

Nobunaga/Mitsuhide

Oh Brother!

Kanetsugu/Yoshichi

Masamune/Kojirou

Toshiie/Toshihisa

Yukimura/Nobuyuki

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bestworstcase · 3 years ago

Note

I read your giant rwby narnia post and I found it very very interesting! It was a pleasure to read. I had a question which I think you discussed but didn't directly answer, unless I missed it--so I figured I'd ask here: Do you think Penny is coming back? I'm sorry if you actually did answer that and I just read your post wrong. (If that's the case, do you mind pointing me towards where you answer my question?) Thank you, and I hope you have a good day!

anon i promise if i’d really gotten into the weeds with penny’s deaths and the penny resurrection theory in the narnia post you would probably still be reading it on account of it being… a lot. A LOT!! longer than it already is fskjdkl

in brief,

no.

if she does, it won't be through the doors the penny 3.0 crowd are watching, because

the only narratively coherent way to bring penny back involves aligning the heroes with salem against the gods.

and relatedly,

i'm not a fan of how...not all but a considerable number of penny 3.0 theorizing reduces penny to just, ruby's love interest, and i'm really over the dismissiveness of the same cohort towards penny's friendship with winter.

if the rwby narnia post was a marathon, this one’s a goddamn triathlon. i hope you like to read.

table of contents (😐)

1. rwby's approach to death and grief 2. the three deaths of penny polendina 3. penny, winter, & the battle for personhood 4. pyrrha, penny, & passing the torch 5. ozlem as a cautionary tale 6. regarding various yes-resurrection theories … a. suicide and the glorification thereof … b. why even bother then? … c. narrative loose ends … d. crwby broke the fandom’s trust … e. the screaming void … f. the breaking of jaune’s aura … g. why gold instead of green? … h. taking “i’ll be a part of you” literally … i. but rwby is hopepunk! … j. but nuts and dolts! 7. the thematic case against resurrection 8. the logistical case against resurrection 9. (but here's how penny 3.0 can still win)

GOOGLE DOC VERSION FOR YOUR HEALTH & SANITY

1. rwby’s approach to death and grief

i’m going to open by quoting from the letter ruby writes to yang in 4.12, because it might as well be rwby’s thesis on its own central themes:

It’s been hard on all of us, and I’m not just talking about the monsters we’ve fought out here. Every step we made took us further and further away from the things we knew, and every morning we woke up wondering if just over the next hill would be something good, or something terrible. It’s scary not knowing what’s going to happen next, and the things we do know now, just how bad it can get, almost makes it all worse. You told me once that bad things just happen. You were angry when you said it, and I didn’t want to listen, but you were right. Bad things do happen all the time, every day. Which is why I’m out here, to do whatever I can, wherever I can, and hopefully do some good. We’ve all lost something, and I’ve seen what loss can do to people, but if we gave up every time we lost, then we’d never be able to move forward. We’d never have a chance to see what beautiful things the future might have waiting for us. We’d never have the strength to change, whether it’s ourselves, or the world around us. And we’d never be there for other people who might one day be lost without us. This is what we were training for, Yang. To become huntresses. To become the ones who stand up and do something about all the bad in the world, because there are plenty of people out there who are still lost, and even more who will try to gain everything they can from their sorrow. Believe me when I say I know it can feel impossible, like every single day is a struggle against some unstoppable monster we can never hope to beat, but we have to try. If not for us than the people we’ve already— than for the people we haven’t lost yet.

rwby is, and has always been, a show about love, loss, and the ways fear and hope shape how people act in grief and in love.

consider salem.

the root of salem’s suffering is the utter absence of hope. that is the essence of the curse the gods inflict on her in 6.3: that she will never find relief, never get a reprieve from the pain of grief. in making her immortal they tore away her hope and promised her an eternity of suffering, and each time she tried to change that fate she got dragged in deeper and deeper—until she gave up, surrendered to despair, and became the monster she is now. salem is pain and misery and destruction incarnate—trapped in grief, mired in agony, unable to heal or move on. so she stews, and stagnates, and externalizes all of her pain as cruelty.

in contrast, ruby’s deepest strength is her ability to hold on to hope and inspire that hope in others. she knows loss and fear and pain and she refuses to flinch away—and because her nature is to love fiercely and stubbornly and without reservation, ruby finds herself surrounded by people who reflect this strength back at her, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her in a war with hopeless odds, and who, like her, choose to hope anyway. she’s not alone—none of the heroes are alone. and when they lose someone, whether to death or to darkness, they reach out for each other to mourn and support each other in their grief; they don’t stop, they don’t look back, they don’t get stuck in their pain. they move forward. they heal. they honor the fallen by carrying on their legacies. they keep trying.

that is what sets them apart from salem and her ilk. think of hazel, who in betraying salem also rejects her model of grief and adopts the heroes’ instead.

the essence of rwby’s approach to death is this: it hurts, but you have to keep going. there’s still hope—there is always hope. there is light and love and beauty and goodness in the world, and those things are worth searching for, worth cherishing, and most of all worth defending. grief hurts, but even worse than the pain of loss is the agony of letting it fester.

life belongs to the living, and you have to live.

2. the three deaths of penny polendina

i. penny as a character exists in this tension between her purpose—she was quite literally created to be the ultimate weapon against the grimm—and the reality that she is, by any metric, just a person with a metal body. when pietro describes how penny came into existence in 7.7, he explains that ironwood challenged him and several colleagues to “find the next breakthrough in defense technology,” and that out of all the proposals submitted to answer that challenge, ironwood chose penny.

which is to say: penny’s father received military funding to develop advanced technology for the sake of fighting the grimm, and instead he made a little girl with a piece of his own soul.

penny is a child soldier who was built and programmed to be a weapon, but she has a soul—and she was a person, and she wanted to be free, and then cinder fall murdered her on live television to make a statement.

This is not a tragedy. This was not an accident. This is what happens when you hand over your trust, your safety, your children, to men who claim to be our guardians, but are—in reality—nothing more than men. Our academies’ headmasters wield more power than most armies, and one was audacious enough to control both. They cling to this power in the name of peace, and yet… what do we have here?

there is a reason cinder fall chose penny as her victim, and it goes well beyond the convenience of exposing her robotic nature in order to stoke fear of atlas. because—while everything cinder says in this speech is calculated to sow division and distrust—one of the reasons it is so effective is that it does contain a genuine kernel of truth about atlas and about the institution of hunters and huntresses generally.

it’s a truth that cinder—raised a slave in atlas, brutally tortured at the whims of her owner, trained by a mentor who never lifted a finger to rescue her but turned on her the instant she defended herself—knows intimately.

and it’s a truth that penny embodies. she’s just a kid who wants to have a life and friends and for everyone to be okay—but she is also a living weapon, a perfect soldier, a symbol of atlesian strength and a cog in the machine of the atlesian military.

one idea i’ve seen expressed a couple of times is that penny’s death at the end of vol3 was meant to represent a loss of innocence—but i submit that with penny’s first death rwby was actually doing something quite a bit more complex than that; revealing something about cinder, something about penny, and something about the authoritarian rot that is hollowing atlas out from the inside, by symbolically connecting the innocent child who became cinder fall to the innocent child penny wants so very much to become. (does that first part of cinder’s statement not describe the very essence of the atlas arc?)

the first time penny polendina dies, it is because cinder fall makes of her a tragic symbol of all that has gone wrong in atlas since its very inception.

ii. pietro loves his daughter.

her death is senseless and unfair and cruel, and her dad, who loves her so much that he can’t bear to lose her, tears out another piece of his soul and uses it to bring her back.

but the thing about bringing penny back is this: he can’t only revive penny the kind-hearted child who just wanted the freedom to be herself. he has to also bring back penny the child soldier trapped in the jaws of the atlesian military, and no matter how much pietro loves her, he can’t save his daughter from that.

when we meet penny again in vol7, it seems at first like she’s come into her own. she’s confident and happy, surrounded by her friends, and content to fulfill her purpose as the protector of mantle… but it doesn’t take long for the fascism rotting atlas from within to begin to seep through the widening cracks in the façade, and a conflict between following orders and doing what is right emerges, tilting with penny as its fulcrum.

(she’s a weapon and a tool and the face of atlesian authority. she’s the helpless pawn watts uses to light the kindling of tensions between impoverished mantle and high, untouchable atlas. she’s a child who just wants, with all her heart and all her soul, for everyone to be happy.)

penny tries throughout vol7 to navigate this ever-more fraught conflict by balancing her duties with the demands of her conscience and her heart; until, in 7.13, she’s forced to choose.

fria, addled and exhausted on the brink of death, offers the power of the winter maiden to penny—contrary to ironwood’s design—and penny accepts. she does it to save winter’s life, but nevertheless by that one simple act she tears herself violently out of the atlesian machine. she subverts ironwood’s orders, defies his will, and in the eyes of atlas steals something that does not rightfully belong to her. she flees from atlas with her friends, all fugitives now, as the rift between atlas and mantle is wrenched open into an uncrossable divide.

becoming the winter maiden separates penny from atlas, but it cannot make her free, nor can it save her from the tyrant who sees her and that power as his weapon to wield however he chooses. precious few of ironwood’s choices afterwards are truly about fighting or fleeing from salem. besides the attempt to bomb the grimm whale, every significant action he takes from this point forward is a ploy to force penny back in line. the blame. the manipulation. the guilt he piles onto her shoulders. the devil’s bargain he makes with watts, the virus. the bomb and the ultimatum.

the second time penny polendina dies, it is because the ruthless indifference and all the cruelties and injustices of the atlesian regime killed her; all the ugly little truths hidden in the statement cinder made of penny’s first death, rendered now in real time, in clear, horrific detail.

iii. think about that death. all technicalities and loopholes aside, it ends with penny watching her own body tear itself apart. she sees the life fade from her own eyes. she witnesses the disintegration of her corpse. her friends love her—her friends try so fucking hard to save her, and this is the best any of them can do.

this is a horror story.

and think about the child who became cinder fall, tortured and tormented by the madame and her daughters. the closest thing she ever had to someone who cared for her was a hunter more concerned with protecting the status quo than protecting an innocent child, and when she tried to save herself in the only way she could he treated her like a monster.

this is a horror story.

the thing about cinder fall and penny polendina is that they are not the same but they could have been so, so easily. if cinder had been truly loved and led by that love into the soul-crushing military pipeline of atlas academy, if pietro had been cruel instead of kind. cinder had nothing and no one to shield her from the brutalities and degradations of atlesian society, and it crushed her into the ground; she has never known anything but war.

and penny had love—penny was so loved, by almost everyone who knew her—but she was made to serve atlas, and atlas chewed her up and ground her down and took and took and took from her until she had nothing left to give. atlas stripped everything away from penny except for the only things it couldn’t: her humanity, and the love of her friends.

and so: unarmed, unarmored, with nothing left but her human soul, penny walks into battle barefoot and vulnerable, and there she dies.

the third time penny polendina dies, it is because cinder fall—broken and desperate and acting out echoes of the violence atlas inflicted on her long ago, unable to escape atlas even as it falls in part by her hand—is the one who murders her. one victim of atlesian exploitation slaughtered by another victim of its violence.

it’s a tragedy. it’s a horror story. and it has always, always been about how atlas tears people apart.

3. winter, penny, & the battle for personhood

one idea i’ve seen expressed time and again is that the struggle to define herself as a human being in spite of her robotic nature is a major pillar of penny’s character arc—and i think that is 1. not true and 2. missing the forest for the trees.

when her robotic nature is revealed in 2.3-2.4, penny is scared that ruby will perceive her as “not a real girl” and reject her for it, but she also states outright that she is capable of generating an aura—meaning, she has a completely ordinary human soul. and, once she’s cleared that hurdle of fearing rejection, the question of whether penny is or isn’t “real” ceases to matter altogether. she knows she’s a person, and so do her friends, and so does her dad, so does everyone whose opinion matters.

“does the sentient robot count as a person?” is a question rwby asks and answers, with an emphatic YES OF COURSE, in the space of about thirty seconds straight out of the gate and then never revisits because it doesn’t need revisiting. it’s a non-issue.

however.

penny exists in a fascist dictatorship, and that is what gives rise to the struggle for individuality and humanity—not just for penny, but for everyone caught up in the atlesian machine. winter, all the ace-ops, may marigold, willow and whitley schnee—even ironwood himself. one of the core themes of vol7-8 is how people keep or find or lose their humanity amidst a storm of rising tyranny and inescapable fear.

that one of them also happens to be a robot is beside the point.

segueing into the real meat of this section, i’m going to quote what i said in the narnia post: penny and ironwood spend vol7-8 in a pitched battle for winter’s soul, and penny wins.

to expand a little on this thought: one of the key threads developed throughout vol7 is the parallel relationships between penny and winter, on the one hand, and oscar and ironwood on the other; wherein penny and oscar serve as voices of conscience for winter and ironwood respectively. she succeeds. he does not.

and… i’ll just quote all the relevant conversations upfront.

in 7.7:

OSCAR: Well, I can tell you what I think. The path you’re heading down—where you’re the only one with the answers, where you do the thing you think is right no matter the cost—it’s not going to take you anywhere good. IRONWOOD: …We have to stop Salem. Nothing matters more. OSCAR: Some things matter more, I think; keeping our humanity. It’s what makes us different from her. IRONWOOD: Sometimes I worry that’s her greatest advantage.

in 7.8:

PENNY: Are you okay? WINTER: I’ll be fine. I just let my emotions get the better of me. PENNY: What do you mean? WINTER: You wouldn’t understand. PENNY: …Oh. Right. WINTER: Oh– no, no, what I mean is—this place holds a lot of memories for me specifically. I thought I was in control, but… well, you heard me. I sounded like a petulant child. PENNY: I thought you sounded fine. You were just speaking from your heart! WINTER: And that is precisely the problem. I should have just stayed in line. PENNY: I guess you’re right. I don’t understand.

in 7.9:

IRONWOOD: I… I tried to keep the kingdom safe, and now we’re losing everything. OSCAR: General? Earlier, you asked for my advice. IRONWOOD: I wanted Ozpin’s advice. OSCAR: And his advice probably would’ve been to keep your secrets. When we first got here, you already knew that wasn’t the right course. You had a new plan. IRONWOOD: It’s time to give up on that plan. It’s all falling apart. OSCAR: The panic you were worried about? It’s already happening. The secrets you’re keeping, they’re about to be in the open anyway. It’s time. Tell the truth.

in 7.12:

PENNY: The General is leaving Mantle to perish? WINTER: He’s saving Remnant. We can’t let the relics fall to Salem. PENNY: But all those people we just protected—they won’t survive. WINTER: We don’t have time to— PENNY: That doesn’t bother you? …What about your sister? Our friends? WINTER: My personal feelings don’t matter. We have orders. I’m to retrieve the power of the winter maiden so we can access the relic; you’re here to ensure my safety. Now come on. We’ve already lost enough time. PENNY: It should matter. WINTER: Penny… the General is making hard choices so we don’t have to. For the good of all, not just a few. PENNY: I do not see what is good about any of this. WINTER: …On that we can agree.

and:

PENNY: You said your personal feelings do not matter. WINTER: They won’t change my actions. What I’m committed to. The power of the winter maiden and the relic must be kept from our enemies; even if it means she dies. But… yes, Penny, we must still acknowledge our personal feelings. Wrestle with them. It ensures us that we’re on the right path. It’s… what makes us human. PENNY: I think… I think I understand.

in 7:13:

IRONWOOD: You still think I’m afraid. OSCAR: We all are. It’s what we do in our fear that reveals our— IRONWOOD: That’s easy for you to say! You can label me whatever you’d like, but the fact of the matter is I was right! The minute I softened, let my guard down, that’s when Salem had her opening. OSCAR: If you abandon Mantle, you abandon our best chance of reuniting the world—you abandon Remnant, leaving millions to fend for themselves so a few can survive! What kind of— IRONWOOD: All excellent philosophical points that won’t matter if Salem wins! OSCAR: Listen to me— IRONWOOD: No, you listen! I am done letting others’ inability to see the big picture get in the way of doing what’s right! Robyn, the council, this kingdom—even you. OSCAR: Then you’re as dangerous as she is, James. IRONWOOD: …James is what my friends call me. To you, it’s General. [He shoots Oscar, point blank, off the edge of the vault.]

and:

PENNY: She’s… gone. WINTER: N–no. She’s a part of you now. [beat.] I suggest you all surrender and comply with the General’s orders. WEISS: We can’t do that. WINTER: Then—I suggest you run. WEISS: No, you’re hurt! I’m not going to leave you like this— WINTER: You’re not leaving me! I’m giving you a head start!

i want to highlight all of these because i think, taken as a whole, they illustrate why penny could reach winter but oscar couldn’t do the same for ironwood. both penny and oscar are very blunt in expressing their disagreement and disappointment when winter or ironwood refuse to change course—but penny also seeks to understand winter’s perspective, while oscar leads with the (not incorrect) assumption that ironwood is acting out of fear.

penny ends the conversation in 7.8 by acknowledging that she doesn’t understand winter’s reasoning. she questions winter in 7.12, pushing her to articulate what she truly means—pushing winter to engage in a mutual conversation about the ethics of what they’ve been ordered to do and whether or not their personal feelings should be allowed to influence their decisions.

and, thus, winter confesses to penny that she, too, feels that ironwood’s decision to abandon mantle is not good, that her heart is at odds with her sense of duty, and that emotions do matter—that even if winter holds to her commitments, she needs to wrestle with her feelings instead of blindly following orders, or else risk losing her humanity.

ironwood is so lost to fear that he’s begun to think of humanity as a weakness, of salem’s indifference as her greatest advantage; and winter—his protégé and his most trusted deputy, the woman he hand-picked and molded into the perfect obedient vessel for the power of the maiden—winter tries so hard to emulate his cold, unflinching ideal, but penny’s earnest efforts to not just listen to her but hear her pierce straight through every layer of conditioning and abuse winter has endured to drag out the truth that winter knows she is in danger of losing herself, and even more importantly, that that matters to her.

and, mere minutes after this final conversation, winter schnee defies her general for the first time.

the situation is thus: fria is dying in penny’s arms. cinder breaks through the ice and, realizing what’s about to happen, lunges at penny in a desperate rage; and winter bursts through the ice to stop her by cutting off the grimm arm.

then, while cinder is writhing and incapacitated by pain, winter takes a moment to assess the situation. she sees penny holding fria, sees that fria is about to die, and—just as cinder did—she realizes that penny is about to become the winter maiden.

winter has two choices at this point.

cinder is incapacitated; winter is out of aura, but penny is in perfect fighting condition. winter could have rushed to switch places with penny, accepting the maiden power from fria while penny kept cinder at bay—just as ironwood ordered.

but she didn’t.

winter cares about fria, and she loves penny. seeing fria on the brink of death and penny cradling her, afraid and confused, crushes her—and winter allows herself an instant to feel that sorrow…

…and then her resolve hardens, and she focuses on cinder, bracing herself and—metaphorically if not physically—putting herself between cinder and penny. even with her aura broken, even knowing she doesn't stand a chance, even with ironwood’s orders directly to the contrary—when push comes to shove, winter chooses to protect her friend instead of following orders.

this scene and oscar’s last confrontation with ironwood are played against each other, and that juxtaposition underscores how important it is that winter makes the choices she does; because ironwood, her mentor, is similarly presented with a choice between his humanity and his authority, and he makes the opposite choice.

this is the moment where his path and winter’s diverge.

she isn’t ready to walk away from atlas altogether, not yet. but just as penny’s acceptance of the maiden powers irrevocably separates her from atlas, so too does winter’s decision to see and accept penny as the new maiden set her on a course away from ironwood’s control. when her sister and ruby arrive on the scene, she tells them to run; she calls for medical assistance and reinforcements, but omits enough details to allow ruby, weiss, and penny a clean escape.

it’s one small step. it’s a start.

and penny is the one who helped her get there.

and it really couldn’t have been anyone else but penny, because the thing is: both of them are trapped. both of them have been conditioned and dehumanized and treated like pawns, and—

okay.

i have read… a lot of discussion to the tune of winter being, in penny’s mind, just a backup plan because she believed ruby was dead, but i submit that it’s actually the opposite: when penny suggested that ruby kill her to circumvent the virus, she intended to pass the maiden power on to ruby only because—as far as any of them knew at that point—winter was still loyal to ironwood.

(if penny had been thinking pragmatically when she chose whom to bequeath the magic too, she would’ve chosen weiss. penny had no way of knowing whether or not winter could get to the portals in time to save jaune and weiss from cinder; giving the maiden power to winter meant risking her friends’ lives.)

because winter would always have been penny’s first choice. as much as penny vibes with ruby, and as close as they are, winter is the one who’s been through it all with penny. for penny’s sake, winter threw herself on cinder’s sword without a second of hesitation; and only moments before that, penny risked sacrificing both the maiden power and the relic to save winter.

penny, a literal machine created with so much love that she had a real soul, real feelings, real humanity that could never be overcome by her programming even as atlas sought to make her into a weapon; and winter, who grew up with an abusive father and tried to escape but found herself entangled in the violence of the atlesian military instead, broken and molded into someone who believed down to her core that her life and feelings didn’t matter, that she existed to follow orders and nothing else.

winter has been down in the trenches with penny in the atlesian war against their humanity since the beginning. and penny! the machine! is the first person to truly see and understand what has been done to winter and say no, that isn’t right. to say i do not see what is good about any of this.

ruby and the others are penny’s friends, but winter is her family.

and that is why penny chose winter: because they’re family, and because together the two of them are the face of resistance against the dehumanization of the atlesian fascist machine, which seeks in the name of safety to crush individuality and instill loyalty above all else. no questions, no thinking, just shut up and do as you’re told—they’re not banning art like pre-war mantle did, but that blueprint is still there, written inescapably into the fabric of atlesian culture, and it victimizes both winter and penny—both of them pressed and bent and sculpted into cogs of the war machine—and it’s the power of the winter maiden, the maiden of creation, that gives each of them a chance to escape.

and i think this is what they’re both getting at, when they say their goodbyes:

WINTER: You were always the real maiden at heart. I was just the machine—just… following orders. PENNY: You were my friend.

that’s what winter is going to carry forward. that’s the part of penny’s legacy she will become the standard bearer for, the dismantling of everything atlas stood for and creation of a new way of living where no one gets crushed down or asked to sacrifice their personhood on the altar of peace and security—a new world where everyone is free.

because that’s what the power of the winter maiden always represented for both of them.

4. pyrrha, penny, & passing the torch

penny’s third death is a direct echo of pyrrha’s.

both of them are murdered by cinder fall, who steals the power of the fall maiden from pyrrha and attempts to steal that of the winter maiden from penny. both of them are, in their final arcs, trapped in a tragedy from which they cannot escape.

moreover, penny is—in a way—the pyrrha to winter’s jaune, in the sense that both she and pyrrha embodied the qualities winter and jaune needed most: penny’s relentless love and stubborn insistence on following her heart and conscience above all, and pyrrha’s unflinching compassion, courage, and dedication to helping wherever she was needed, in whatever way she could.

and they were both so, so loved, so deeply and by so many people. they are and will be mourned. they are and will be missed, keenly and fiercely by everyone who cared for them.

we’ve already seen how the characters grieved for pyrrha.

jaune sloughed away what little still remained of his ego and bravado in favor of committing himself to quietly doing whatever needed to be done—even if it wasn’t glamorous, or heroic, or something that win him admiration or esteem. he picked up the torch of pyrrha’s kindness and kept it burning just as brightly as it had done while she lived.

and the others, too, drew strength and inspiration and comfort from her example, even though it hurt to be without her.

we’ll see them grieve for penny in the same way. winter has already begun; reawakened to her feelings by penny’s friendship and having cast off the shackles atlas bound her with. she made an implicit promise to penny to use the maiden power as penny would have—in accordance with what she believes in, what she feels, what she thinks, rather than blindly following orders.

it’s sad—of course it’s sad—it’s unfair and senseless and tragic. but part of the responsibility of grief is to keep the fires burning. to pick up the torch and carry on, because that is how the memories and legacies of the fallen are honored and preserved and kept alive.

5. ozlem as a cautionary tale

one of the most interesting things, to my mind, about the phenomenon of the penny resurrection discussion is how closely and… from what i can tell unwittingly the prevailing theories for how penny can be revived again mirror but don’t acknowledge the arc of a canon storyline about a young woman fighting to bring her loved one back from the dead.

like—it is absolutely astounding to me how much penny 3.0 theory-posting just straight up does not mention salem at all.

you know, salem. the woman who lost the love of her life and begged the gods to bring him back; the one they cursed with immortality for spite so she could never be with him again; the one whose anguish rocked the whole world to its foundations, because she refused even then to give up trying and incited a rebellion against them?

the one whose grief and rage they punished by slaughtering everyone on the planet and leaving her to rot on a world abandoned by its own creators as nothing but a pitiful failed experiment—the one who loved so fiercely and deeply that she lived long enough to see humanity evolve anew and submerged herself and was changed by the pool of grimm and yet still clung to her capacity for love afterwards, the one who endured unfathomable suffering without hope of reprieve for millions of years and did not break until the one she loved rejected her?

LIKE—COME ON.

when she lost ozma, salem did exactly what the yes-resurrection crowd want the cast of heroes and ruby in particular to do, and the gods punished her for it with quite literally apocalyptic brutality. all of humankind was obliterated in the blink of an eye in retaliation for her defiant grief—and her immortality twisted her into an unrecognizable monster, and ozma has spent god only knows how many thousands of years being shunted from host to host, unable to rest, bearing the sole responsibility for redeeming humanity in the eyes of the omnicidal gods upon his shoulders, buried alive under the threat that they will destroy everything if he fails.

(salem was right to call them monsters.)

team rwby knows all of this.

in and of itself that does not preclude their trying to bring penny back anyway, but any quest to do so will and must be carried out in the full knowledge that they are walking down the same path salem followed all those years ago, and that these are the consequences that hang over their necks should they fail.

6. regarding various yes-resurrection arguments

i have read… a lot of penny resurrection theory-posting and while i find it all, across the board, not really persuasive, for the sake of thoroughness i do want to at least touch on a few specific lines of reasoning.

a. suicide and the glorification thereof

alright.

describing penny’s final death as a suicide at all is absurd. y’all. cinder impaled her. through the chest. five times. that’s– that’s murder! cinder killed her!

“but jaune tried to heal her and she stopped him!” look

in 5.11 cinder runs weiss through with a spear, through the right side of the torso, close to the bottom of the ribcage—approximately, a clean pierce straight through the liver. as thoracic impalements go that’s one of the better case scenarios: no major arteries were severed, the spear did not pierce the heart, lungs, or any portion of the digestive tract, the spine was not damaged, and the liver happens to be the only visceral organ capable of tissue regeneration.

even if jaune hadn’t been there—even if his semblance hadn’t manifested!—it is likely that weiss would have survived that injury regardless. assuming that every scene in 5.12 and 5.13 happens in sequence—i.e. that the scenes with raven and cinder in the vault do not happen concurrently with what’s going on topside—then roughly fifteen minutes elapse between the time of the injury and the arrival of the mistral police force. within twenty minutes of being impaled, weiss could have been rushed to the nearest hospital for medical treatment.

(it’s also possible that the spear pierced her right lung. that weiss faints immediately following the injury suggests to me that her gasping afterwards is symptomatic of shock, but it might also be a sign of lung collapse. this is a more serious injury but the point stands; an open pneumothorax is dangerous but not rapidly fatal, and the odds for weiss to survive on her own long enough to receive proper medical care remain pretty high.)

jaune’s semblance manifests in 5.12 at 06:55 and he maintains it through the end of the episode (13:58). 5.13 opens (at 01:30) exactly where 5.12 left off, and from that point jaune continues to use his semblance until some point between 06:30 and 08:00.

again assuming that the scenes in the vault are not concurrent with topside scenes, jaune spends roughly 12-15 minutes using his semblance in order to heal weiss—or the more conservative estimate of roughly 8-12 minutes if we assume the vault scenes are concurrent.

so… what this tells us is that on average, it takes about ten minutes for jaune’s semblance to facilitate the healing of one serious, but not immediately life threatening, stab wound to the torso.

why am i harping on this?

in 8.14, cinder punches several holes into penny’s torso: one on the left side of penny’s abdomen, just beneath her ribcage, and four spaced high across her chest, just under the clavicle. the upper set of injuries missed the heart but certainly punctured both lungs and may have ruptured the aorta; the lower wound would have hit either the stomach or the top of the large intestine. these are much more serious injuries than the one weiss suffered.

for illustrative purposes let’s assume there is a hospital just outside the portal. if jaune scoops penny up immediately after cinder lets go and rushes her to that hospital, there is still a tremendous chance that penny will die. both of her lungs have collapsed. she’s likely bleeding from the largest artery in the human body. depending on whether cinder hit her stomach or her intestine, she’s leaking either digestive acid or fecal matter into her abdominal cavity.

penny needs immediate, intensive medical intervention in order to have even the slightest chance of survival.

with that in mind, let’s recall that jaune’s semblance is not healing—rather, he supercharges the recipient’s aura.

aura has a natural healing factor; we’ve seen it close minor superficial wounds in a matter of seconds, and when weiss impales hazel in 5.13, he’s able to shrug it off courtesy of his semblance, which enables him to just ignore the pain, plus the abnormally fast regeneration of his own aura.

thus, for people with active auras, there are two kinds of life-threatening wound:

1. severe traumatic injury that will kill you in a matter of minutes, before your aura has time to repair the damage.

2. serious injury that will deplete your aura faster than your aura is able to repair the damage.

in 5.11-5.13, weiss suffers the second kind of injury—her natural reserve of aura is not deep enough and doesn’t replenish itself fast enough to outpace the physical damage inflicted by cinder’s attack. the actual mechanism by which jaune “heals” her is just giving her more aura to work with, either by directly linking his own, much deeper aura to hers or by burning his aura to fuel the rapid regeneration of hers.

in 8.14, on the other hand, penny suffers the first kind of injury. both of her lungs are collapsing and her aorta is probably ruptured; she has a few minutes, if that.

what i’m getting at is, bluntly: i don’t think jaune could have healed penny. because the danger, for her, isn’t running out of aura.

it’s running out of time.

as discussed, it takes about ten minutes for aura-healing to fully repair a single best case scenario thoracic impalement, and penny, in all likelihood, does not have ten minutes.

but for the sake of argument, let’s say she did.

penny has ten minutes before she bleeds out. if jaune activates his semblance immediately after she hits the ground and maintains it for ten minutes, her aura will be able to rapidly heal enough of the damage to at least stabilize her, saving her life.

the only people remaining in the between-space of the portal are penny, jaune, weiss, and cinder fall. everyone else has already exited to vacuo and are unable to re-enter, meaning there are no reinforcements coming.

cinder’s foremost goal is to kill penny, but weiss attacks her, forcing her to release penny and engage weiss instead.

jaune and penny are non-combatants—penny because she’s grievously injured, and jaune by necessity because he must stay by penny’s side and concentrate in order to maintain his semblance. if his semblance lapses before penny has stabilized, she will most likely die.

(remember that in 5.11-5.13, nora stands guard over jaune and weiss until jaune deems that weiss is fully stable, meaning he could stop what he was doing in order to defend himself if someone were to attack them without endangering weiss by interrupting the healing process at a critical stage.)

it takes cinder just under one minute to disarm weiss and knock her to the ground (09:07-10:03). at most a few seconds later (10:09), she advances to strike a killing blow.

in canon, it’s at this point—10:09, slightly more than one minute after penny is injured—that jaune ends penny’s life. his anguished cry when he does it interrupts what would have been the blow that killed weiss instead.

what happens if jaune tries to save penny?

option 1: jaune ignores penny’s refusal and tries to heal her. cinder kills weiss, then turns right around and knocks jaune off the platform with a blast of fire—because he can’t fight and maintain his semblance—leaving herself alone with a dying, defenseless penny. she siphons the remainder of the maiden powers and walks away clean with both the staff and the lamp.

option 2: jaune grabs penny and sprints for the exit portal while weiss duels cinder. if he’s even fast enough to make it out, which is unlikely, cinder kills weiss and turns around just in time to see him rush through the portal. jaune and penny emerge into a crowd of terrified refugees, in the middle of a sandstorm, under attack by a horde of grimm—and, seconds later, cinder’s there, too.

every combat-capable person in that crowd has to make a choice between protecting thousands of innocent people from the grimm, or protecting jaune and penny from cinder. and while cinder is badly outnumbered, the onslaught of grimm, her ability to explode bystanders by the dozens, and the fact that she can turn the sandstorm into a cyclone of serrated glass will all work to her advantage here.

and if that wasn’t enough, cinder also has the staff of creation.

maybe she’ll manage to steal the power and maybe she won’t, but the heroes are going to suffer steep casualties no matter what. between the panicking refugees and the dearth of fighters, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that this battle becomes a massacre.

option 3: jaune leaps into the fight alongside weiss, hoping to overpower cinder. best case scenario? penny dies of her injuries and bequeaths the maiden powers to weiss, evening the odds and allowing them to survive. worst case? cinder swiftly dispatches both weiss and jaune, then rips the maiden powers out of penny.

option 4: jaune tries, and succeeds, at wrestling the staff away from cinder before penny bleeds out, hoping to pause time long enough to save her. however:

1. because healing is a temporal process by its very nature, aura healing might not even work outside of time.

2. jinn suggests that she can choose whether or not to answer if she senses that someone has summoned her without intent to use the relic for its true purpose. it’s quite likely the spirits of the other relics have similar flexibility, and even if ambrosius—not being omniscient—can’t sense jaune’s intentions ahead of time, nothing stops him from simply returning to the staff right away in a huff if he doesn’t appreciate this trick.

3. when ruby tried this with jinn, she bought herself about thirty extra seconds. jaune needs ten uninterrupted minutes.

4. jaune could probably stall for that long if he used the staff for its intended purpose but got very, very pedantic about what he wanted… but that will cause the bridges and portals to collapse, dooming everyone inside except for cinder. (in canon, it takes a mere forty seconds from the time cinder uses the staff to the total collapse of the portals, and jaune doesn’t even have enough time to run from halfway up the last bridge to the exit; when penny dies, everyone’s fighting on a landing somewhere near the center of the between-space, much further away from any of the portals.)

5. and all of this depends on jaune having the presence of mind to even think of this plan, while panicking, in the sixty or so seconds he has to make a decision before cinder kills weiss and turns on him.

even assuming he can get the staff from cinder—which is a long shot in and of itself—this scenario has way too many points of failure to be truly viable.

penny is smart and hyper-analytical. she can calculate and prepare for half a dozen plausible outcomes of a given combat situation in a matter of seconds (a la 7.5 “i will plan for six different outcomes!”). when she says, “there’s not enough time to heal me,” it’s because there’s not enough time to heal her. there is no plausible scenario where penny walks out of this situation alive.

she recognizes that, and she tells jaune not to try.

that’s not… suicide.

that’s just an acknowledgement of reality.

and given that reality—penny is going to die no matter what—the choice she makes is the optimal one.

cinder has both the relics. neither weiss nor jaune can overpower her and will likely die if they stay much longer. no reinforcements are coming. penny is dying and cannot be saved. the battle is lost.

the one piece still in play—the one uncertain variable here—is the maiden powers, which will either go to a person of penny’s choosing (if penny dies) or to cinder (if penny lingers long enough for cinder to kill her protectors).

if jaune tries to heal penny, he’ll keep penny alive long enough for cinder to kill weiss, then him, and then rip the powers out of penny via shadow hand.

if jaune does nothing, or tries to fight cinder, he might be able to stall her long enough for penny to bleed out, but that’s a gamble.

if jaune gives penny a quick death now, he and penny can guarantee that the power will go to someone who isn’t salem’s most important lieutenant.

that jaune chooses option number three doesn’t make him penny’s killer, and penny’s consent doesn’t mean she committed suicide! neither of those things would have happened if she weren’t already dying! cinder killed her! that was murder!

you can’t glorify suicide by having one character murder another character! just– just an ounce of critical thinking—

and yes, there’s a content warning at the top of the episode and a link to the national suicide hotline in the description, because the whole scene is emotionally intense and for someone who is already struggling with depression and suicide ideation it could be very triggering, yes! absolutely! i’m not arguing that—a depressed suicidal brain could easily fixate on penny asking jaune to end it now and spiral into crisis because mental illness is not rational and doesn’t care about context. there’s nothing wrong with putting a content warning on something tangential out of an excess of caution!

but the fact remains—look.

hazel knew with absolute certainty that salem would kill him if he fought her and he put himself between her and the kids anyway, and then he grabbed her and set himself on fire and told oscar to blow them both up.

was that suicide?

was that glorifying suicide?

no.

and neither was penny’s death.

b. why even bother then?

i’ve seen this sentiment expressed in… various ways, all of them flatly infuriating. why even bother bringing penny back if they were just going to kill her off. why even bother giving her a human body. why even bother developing her character. why bother putting her in any scenes at all!—as if dying rendered her character totally pointless, as if any role she played, any importance she had, any meaning she could have brought to the narrative was retroactively expunged by the fact of her death.

as if—not to name names about the specific fans who do this, or anything—the only value penny has as a character is to be alive and available for ruby to date.

full offense, but fuck you.

c. narrative loose ends

along similar lines, another recurring sentiment is that penny must be coming back because her character arc feels “unfinished” or she died without fulfilling her fundamental goals or only a few characters witnessed her death while the rest are in the dark—or it being odd for her to die after pietro expressed his fears about her dying—or various other arguments which, in my opinion, boil down to:

1. a failure or refusal to understand that sometimes characters do die in the middle of their personal arcs, and

2. grasping at straws for anything that could be construed as “evidence” that penny’s story isn’t properly over.

but… well, two things. the first is that some characters do just die without first reaching a clear end point in their personal arcs, and indeed characters often die before their fundamental goals come to fruition. this is, in fact, one of the essential tools a writer has when it comes to constructing a tragic death.

but the second and i think more salient point is that penny’s death is not merely tragic but the natural culmination of a character arc that is constructed as a classical tragedy.

briefly, a classical tragedy involves:

1. a noble, heroic character

2. who suffers a change of fortune from good to bad

3. as an inevitable but unforeseen result of their hamartia—a single tragic mistake.

(there are other characters in rwby besides penny whose arcs follow the trajectory of classical tragedy; pyrrha and salem both spring to mind, and while it remains to be seen what precisely happened to summer rose, what we do know of her story seems to be pointing in this direction as well.)

the suitability of penny’s character to play the role of a tragic hero is… obvious, given her endless compassion and kindness and desire to help people; she is good, unreservedly and unquestionably good, and that is the basic qualification for the tragic hero.

her hamartia occurs in 7.13 when she accepts the powers of the winter maiden—not because that was the wrong choice, that isn’t what hamartia means, but rather because it is this decision that puts penny on the inescapable path to death.

penny accepts the powers of the winter maiden because that’s what she must do to save winter’s life, and she cares more about winter than she does ironwood’s orders. in so doing, she locks ironwood out of the relic’s vault, thereby preventing him from using the staff to raise atlas beyond salem’s reach…

…which leads first to his effort to manipulate her into obedience, and second to him accepting watts’ suggestion of installing a virus to force her to do as he demands…

…which leads to penny’s fall from amity and to schnee manor, where her friends first defend her from salem’s hound and then aid her struggle against the virus…

…until they’re able to concoct a plan to save her from it altogether, by removing her soul from her original body and giving her a flesh-and-blood replacement…

…which, being squishier than her original body, leaves her comparatively defenseless in a fight where having the maiden power painted a target on her back.

moreover—though this part is speculation—i don’t think penny ever learned how to shield herself with aura, simply because she never needed to. it’s stated in 5.4 that learning how to raise a defensive aura is difficult in and of itself, and that mastering the skill to the point where it isn’t physically and mentally exhausting requires intense concentration and considerable practice; for most fighters, of course, the steep upfront cost of learning is more than paid for by the protection and safety a strong defensive aura can offer. but… for penny, a defensive aura only offers a tiny bit of extra protection relative to the natural durability of her metal body. simply put, she doesn’t need one, and it doesn’t feel like a stretch to think that learning more than the basics might’ve been considered a waste of time for her.

when penny stops a truck with her hands in 2.3, most of the skin covering her palms is sheared away to reveal the metal interior, without any sign of her aura breaking. likewise in 3.9, there’s no visible reaction from her aura before she’s torn apart by her own wires. and in 7.10, a goliath whacks penny hard enough to stun her and fling her several blocks—she lands in a crater of shattered pavement—without even a shimmer of aura, though her standby button does flicker. nor do we see penny’s aura break during the fight in 8.14, not even when cinder impales her five times through the chest; we do, however, see the characteristic shimmer when penny’s aura is agitated by jaune’s semblance.

and… if that’s true, penny was more than “comparatively defenseless.” she was uniquely vulnerable: stuck in a new and weaker body with unfamiliar limits, no armor, no defensive aura, and thrust into a battle where she had to improvise replacements weapons out of magic on the fly while cinder targeted her specifically. this is her downfall.

and all of that, as i mentioned, points unerringly back in time to that single act of accepting the winter maiden’s power.

rwby is not penny’s story—thus the ending of penny’s story is not the ending of rwby, and her death will reverberate loudly throughout the remaining narrative. of course there are loose ends to tie up; jaune and winter and weiss still need to deliver the news of penny’s death, and her father still needs to find out that he lost her again, and everyone who loved penny still needs to grieve. in that sense, the story of penny is far from over.

but her character arc? penny’s own story? it’s finished. it was a meticulously crafted classical tragedy and it ended the way all classical tragedies do, and must.

and it’s okay, it’s natural to feel sad, it’s okay for it to hurt! penny’s death provoked grief and anguish because those are the feelings a classical tragedy seeks to inspire; the heart of a tragedy is its sorrows!

and tragedy—i really need people to understand this—tragedy does not equal bad writing. it’s just a genre and a particular form of narrative structure, and that’s it.

which segues us into

d. crwby broke the fandom’s trust

leaving aside the issue of the kind of PARASOCIAL NIGHTMARE RELATIONSHIP you’ve got to have with the creators of a story in order to feel personally betrayed by a creative decision you don’t like—

no.

they didn’t.

rwby has been dealing with themes of death and grief since day one. the first shot of the first trailer is ruby visiting her mother’s grave; summer’s disappearance and presumed death is first discussed in 2.6 and the gravitational pull of that loss on her children’s lives has only grown since. the show’s first use of classical tragedy occurred in vol3 and culminated in pyrrha’s death in 3.12. the backstory portions of 6.3 likewise follow the arc of a classical tragedy—with the twist of the tragic hero being cursed with immortality, and surviving her downfall only to be warped into a monster by her suffering.

the point being that nothing about crwby’s handling of penny’s arc in vol7-8 was new. it didn’t break without warning from the story’s established tone. neither the use of classical tragedy in a character arc nor the violent, sudden death of a major character were unprecedented. (pyrrha and penny were even murdered by the same person.)

a story should establish expectations appropriate to the story—and rwby did that. rwby devoted three volumes to slowly and steadily building up to the tragedy of pyrrha nikos. it spent the next several volumes raising the stakes and building tension one piece of information at a time until it had all its dominoes lined up—and then we hit atlas, and it flicked the first one down, and we’ve had two volumes of an intensifying downward spiral. rwby has been as upfront as a story can be about the possibility that major characters may die and the heroes may suffer catastrophic losses.

writers do not owe it to you to not write tragedies. they don’t owe it to you not to utilize tragic tropes. you are not owed a happy ending for your favorite character. you are not owed avoidance of genre conventions that you don’t like.

crwby has zero obligation to appease their audience. penny’s death was a narrative choice, not a cruel personal attack that they need to “make right.”

get a grip.

e. the screaming void

these next few items are things i’ve seen presented as evidence of there being something unusual about penny’s death, which i want to touch on for the sake of completeness and because i think they’re silly. first:

there’s—apparently—some disagreement on the subject of the big scream in 8.14, which has led to speculation among the yes-resurrection crowd that it might be related to penny’s death or her connection to the staff of creation itself; that she’s a product or byproduct of the same magic that formed the bridges and portals, that perhaps the void itself is angered by the spilling of her blood.

and… nnno.

the order of events is this:

at approximately 13:10, winter knocks the staff of creation out of cinder’s grip and it falls onto the circular platform immediately above and behind the big platform leading to the exit. in this screenshot, taken at 13:12, we can see cinder hovering high above both platforms:

the staff is circled in light blue at the low center-left of the frame. jaune and weiss, circled in red, are visible at the high center-right, where they are just stepping onto the exit bridge—weiss injured, jaune supporting her. in this shot, we see cinder glance at the staff, then up at jaune and weiss.

at 13:16, cinder launches a volley of flame at jaune and weiss, which compels winter to rush to their defense.

13:17-13:18, jaune hears the approaching fireball, turns, and throws his… forcefield grenade thingy into its path. the hard-light shield catches the fireball but explodes on impact. the aftershock of that smaller blast knocks jaune and weiss to the ground…

…which cinder superheats in large radius beneath them at 13:20 and then detonates in a massive blast at 13:24.

jaune’s aura seems to absorb a lot of the force of this explosion; he’s thrown by the blast and skids a foot or two before coming to a stop, and his aura breaks. weiss—without a massive aura to protect her—is launched what appears to be hundreds of feet into the air and falls into the void. winter dives after her in a futile effort to save her.

at approximately 13:35, winter realizes that she’s too late and too far away to catch her sister and halts her descent, hovering in midair for a moment in horror before flying slowly back up to the exit platform, where she collapses to her knees, overwhelmed by grief.

then, between 13:46 and 13:47, winter’s sorrow transmutes into rage, and she lifts her head. this happens:

the focus of this shot is on winter, but we can clearly see cinder—circled in red—descending to land on the circular platform behind her and reaching down to retrieve the staff. then—

in the next shot, at 13:50, cinder straightens up, holding the staff, and turns around. her hair is blown back—as if by a breeze—and she grins as winter gets to her feet, prepared to fight.

between 13:52 and 13:57, the void screams, the bridges and platforms shake, and the portals flicker. what happened?

cinder uses the staff immediately upon picking it up. we see the exact moment she activates it—at 13:50, when she grins and that breeze ruffles her hair. (watch closely when weiss uses the staff in 8.12; that same little breeze moves her hair at the moment when ambrosius emerges from it.)

the staff pauses time for whoever uses it, but not for anyone else, and in that shot at 13:50 we’re seeing cinder from winter’s point of view. thus: we don’t see ambrosius, and we aren’t shown what cinder asks him to create.

what we do see, and hear, is this wrenching shriek and collapse of the portals. specifically, my thought is that the scream is a result of cinder having used the staff while inside ambrosius’ last creation—the staff must be removed before the deconstruction of the last and creation of the next can properly begin; hence why the collapse doesn’t start until after cinder has flown back through to atlas.

but regardless of the specifics, the order of events and the line of causation is very clear, and there’s no correlation between the scream and penny’s death almost four minutes prior.

f. the breaking of jaune’s aura

way back in vol1 we learned that jaune has an extraordinarily deep reserve of aura, and that is borne out in the sheer endurance he demonstrates when using his semblance—for example he’s able to amp weiss’ aura long enough to heal her from a full thoracic impalement and top her off so she can use her semblance immediately afterwards, all without so much as a twinge of visible strain—and in the fact that prior to 8.14 his aura had never broken.

like the screaming void, this has given rise to wild speculation in yes-resurrection circles that jaune may have done something to penny using his semblance, in the forty or so seconds he had to work with, which burned through most of his aura reserve and somehow prevented penny from truly dying.

but, friends. y’all.

cinder exploded him!

she blew up a chunk of the ground as wide across as jaune is tall, directly underneath him and weiss. just– for god’s sake just LOOK AT IT!

those teeny tiny smoke trails—THAT’S WEISS AND JAUNE. THOSE ITTY BITTY LITTLE SPECKS. LOOK HOW TINY THEY ARE COMPARED TO THE BLAST.

THIS EXPLOSION COULD’VE WIPED OUT A CITY BLOCK.

AND THEY WERE SITTING RIGHT. ON. TOP. OF. IT.

look at the different trajectories there. jaune caught less than half the height and way less distance than weiss did—because his extraordinarily deep aura reserve absorbed significantly more of the explosion’s force than hers.

this thing is orders of magnitude worse than any hit we’ve seen jaune take before sO OF COURSE HIS AURA BREAKS WHEN HE HITS THE GROUND CINDER EXPLODED HIM

his aura is extraordinarily deep—not infinite!!

everyone has a limit. it just took us eight volumes and one very pissed off fall maiden for us to find out what jaune’s is.

FURTHERMORE. it’s symbolically relevant that jaune’s aura breaks when it does. jaune’s semblance manifested for the first time in response to his pure desperation not to lose anyone else; jaune was TERRIFIED for weiss, TERRIFIED that cinder was going to kill another person he loved, and the strength of that terror and the love it sprang from awoke his semblance and granted him the ability to heal her.

and symbolically, the reason jaune’s aura breaks after penny dies? it’s because jaune couldn’t save her, because his aura, his semblance wasn’t enough to save her—and the exact thing he was so scared of happened. cinder fall killed his friend, and once again, jaune couldn’t do anything to stop her.

and that broke him.

g. why gold instead of green?

when penny bequeaths the maiden powers to winter in the white void, the flow of energy is pale gold, rather than green. this is incongruous with the transfer of powers from fria to penny, wherein the flowing energy was pale blue to match fria’s aura. which—again—has prompted a lot of speculation from the yes-resurrection crowd.

i will acknowledge that this one is something of a mystery.

it could simply be an oversight. rwby is meticulous about its use of color and symbolism, but it’s not immune to error, so i wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the animators just… made a mistake? stranger things have happened.

that said.

i do have my own theory.

to begin, we have a sample size of three: amber → cinder, fria → penny, and penny → winter. each one is anomalous in its own way, which makes them a bit tricky to compare—the first was violent (and animated with different software), the second was voluntarily initiated by the maiden herself, and the third occurs in the white void.

with that in mind, take a look at this. in all of the on-screen transfers, we’ve seen both the color of the giving-maiden’s aura and a bright glow occurring when the magic passes to the receiving-maiden. what we’re looking at here is:

1. amber’s aura - a medium mustard-yellow.

2. the colors of the glow - white and pale gold.

3. fria’s aura - a medium-light icy blue.

4. the color of the glow - pure white.

5. penny’s aura - a dark foresty green.

6. the colors of the glow - white and pale gold.

7. a side-by-side comparison of the glows from the amber-to-cinder and penny-to-winter transfers. the hue and saturation of both are roughly the same, although the amber-to-cinder glow is a little bit darker.

next, consider the different circumstances of each transfer:

amber → cinder: using the aura pods, ozpin initiates a transference of amber’s aura into a new vessel, pyrrha. we see amber’s aura flow through the machinery and surround pyrrha—and then cinder shoots amber in the chest with an arrow. amber’s aura pours rapidly back into amber, and the instant it’s all back in her body, a bright white-and-gold ball of light explodes out of her—shattering the glass screen on the front of the pod—and flows into cinder, who begins to glow as she absorbs it.

fria → penny: fria states that she’s ready to pass on the maiden powers and sinks into penny’s arms. as fria dies of purely natural causes, she asks if penny is the one ironwood chose to receive the magic. penny hesitates, but after a moment—because fria is on the brink of death and cinder is seconds away from killing winter—takes fria’s hand to accept the transfer. we see fria’s blue aura shimmer, engulfing both her hand and penny’s, as small jots of blue light begin to rise out of it. then there’s a brilliant flash of pure white light that blots out the screen and it’s over.

penny → winter: penny dies thinking of winter. her soul and winter’s soul are drawn together in the white void, which seems to exist outside of time. they say goodbye. penny takes winter’s hands, and as a shimmering white-gold light engulfs both of their hands, swirls of small green sparks—the color of penny’s aura—appear and float away. penny’s soul fades slowly to white, and the transfer is completed with a brilliant burst of pale gold light.

lastly, think about what we know about the maiden powers and how they’re transferred.

when a maiden dies, the magic leaves her body and flows into a new host—always a young woman, preferentially whichever young woman the maiden thinks of as she dies. the salient point, for the purpose of my theory, is the actual mechanism by which the maiden powers attach to each new host: namely, by anchoring themselves to the young woman’s aura.

thus the logic behind the aura-transference pods: if you take the aura of a living maiden and put it into a new vessel, the magic tethered to that aura should be brought along for the ride. (since this is how it works for oz—his aura and his magic are linked, and the magic follows him from one host to the next—it’s probably safe to assume this line of reasoning is correct.)

that is also, explicitly, NOT what happens in the natural passage of the maiden powers from one host to the next. in the natural process, the magic leaves its dying host—i.e., detaches from her aura—and then seeks a new one.

now—putting all these pieces together, my theory is this: the white-gold light we see in the amber-to-cinder and penny-to-winter transfers is the maiden power itself, separated from its last host but not yet attached to the next. further:

1. every transference of magic draws the souls of the old and new hosts together into the white void, but—because these encounters are spiritual in nature and occur outside of time—the transfer appears instantaneous to an outside viewer.

2. the green sparks that appear during the penny-to-winter are fragments of penny’s aura, scattered by the separation of the magic from her aura—very much like the scattering of aura sparks when a defensive aura is shattered.

3. every transference of magic appears, to the outside viewer, as a brilliant flash of white-gold light bursting out of the dying host and into the new one. if the old and new hosts are not in the same location, i presume that this light will appear to burst from the old host and dissipate, and appear around the new host as a spontaneous flash of light.

4. if, however, the old and new hosts are touching at the moment of death, there is no visible burst of light—the magic simply flows through the point of physical contact.

5. when cinder uses her shadow hand to draw the maiden powers out of other maidens, she’s doing more or less what the aura-transference pods are meant to do—ripping out bits of aura that the magic is tethered to—which is why the color of energy flow in these cases matches the victim’s aura. (while grimm cannot use aura, the CFVY books do establish a precedent for them being able to absorb or siphon it, so cinder draining aura through the shadow hand is not out of the realm of possibility.)

thus, for each of the onscreen transfers, i submit that all the visual discrepancies are a result of the point of view through which we see them occur:

amber → cinder: the outside perspective from beginning to end, from ozpin’s, pyrrha’s, and jaune’s point of view.

fria → penny: the perspective of the receiving-maiden, penny, up until her soul is drawn into the white void (that’s the white flash)—at which point the perspective shifts to the outside, from cinder’s point of view.

penny → winter: the inside perspective from beginning to end, from winter’s point of view.

of course—this is just a theory. it’s hard to draw certain conclusions with only three examples, and i might be wrong! how…ever, i find my theory much more convincing than the penny-resurrection-something-weird-happened speculation simply because… well, mine doesn’t rely on “something”s.

mine is based on specific observable evidence interpreted through the lens of what knowledgeable characters have to say about the mechanics of the maiden powers and their transference. there’s also a well-established precedent for magical events occurring outside of time—the relics—including one example of us seeing the instant a character experiences an outside-time event without our being shown the event itself—when cinder uses the staff.

my theory explains every visual dissimilarity between all three onscreen transfers without requiring any assumptions about the existence of information being withheld or secret circumstances or narrative sleight-of-hand during the moment of penny’s death. its weakest link is the slight difference in value between the pale golds of the first and third transfers, but that difference can be explained by 1. the different animation software and 2. the former being color-picked against a very dark background while the latter was color-picked against a very light one.

by contrast, the penny resurrection speculation tends to focus only on the fria-to-penny and penny-to-winter transfers and largely amounts to: this is weird, did jaune do something? did penny figure out something about jaune’s aura? did jaune’s aura evolve somehow? did jaune drain his aura to do something odd to penny? does it have something to do with ambrosius?

and… maybe? who knows! it’s not impossible! but this whole line of reasoning seems to be a significant pillar of the broader theory that penny will come back again—i think out of every argument i’ve read, this one pops up the most—and… i mean, “did something weird happen here that will bring her back?” isn’t… a compelling piece of evidence. it’s not even truly a theory. it’s just a question mark in the margins of the narrative being treated almost like absolute proof that penny has to come back.

h. taking “i’ll be a part of you” literally

this is in reference to this dialogue:

WINTER: Thank you, for trusting me with this. When you’re—gone… PENNY: I won’t be gone. I’ll be a part of you.

which the yes-resurrection crowd likes to take literally as some sort of hint that penny’s going to stick around somewhere in winter’s brain a la ozpin and oscar or—honestly i don’t have a lot to say about this one.

we know that isn’t how the maidens work. cinder doesn’t have amber in her head, and penny didn’t have fria in hers.

practically every single character who has ever died in any story ever written has some variation of this exact sentiment expressed about them unless they were Literally Evil. like—come on.

it’s they’ll be a part of you or they’ll live on in you or they aren’t gone so long as we keep their memories alive or they’re here in our hearts—or however else you want to articulate the concept that people who we’ve loved and lost still linger in our hearts and minds long after they’re gone. in penny’s case she is also directly and doubtless deliberately echoing what winter said to comfort her when she was distressed about fria’s death.

it’s said of pyrrha, too. not in the same words, but:

JAUNE: She should be standing here. PYRRHA’S MOM: She is.

the same feeling.

it’s not literal.

i. but rwby is hopepunk!

this is a sentiment i’ve noticed being tossed around in penny resurrection discussions from time to time with the reasoning that rwby is hopepunk, therefore the characters can, will, and must fight to bring penny back from the dead, and they can, will, and must ultimately succeed in that endeavor, because hopepunk meansrefusing to accept bad things. i’ve also seen the argument that penny… symbolically embodies or represents the idea of hope, and therefore she must come back because … hope.

both of these ideas are flatly ridiculous.

the essence of hopepunk is that terrible things can happen, do happen, and it is worth it to keep trying anyway. that you will be knocked down again and again and you’ll stand up every single time. that the war may be long and difficult and painful but you don’t have to fight it alone, because all around you there are other people who will stand up and fight with you, because fighting for a better world is worth it. the essence of hopepunk is that happy endings are not guaranteed and change is hard and kindness is important and caring about people is not only right but necessary. it’s about resistance and resilience—and it’s about the clean-burning fuel of rage against injustice.

it’s about holding on to your humanity as hard as you can, even in the darkest night, the bitterest winter, the bleakest and most dire circumstance—because without your humanity you have nothing.

it’s about hope, which is antithetical to denial.

you want hopepunk? ruby rose is fucking hopepunk:

OSCAR: I’m… scared. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. Than I ever thought was possible. I always knew that I wanted to be more than a farmhand, but… this? Who would ask for this?

RUBY: We all went to Beacon because we wanted to help people, but… you’re right. None of us asked for this, either. We just have to press on and—

OSCAR: How can you be so confident? People have tried to kill you. The world’s about to go to war all over again! How are you okay with any of this?!

RUBY: …When Beacon fell, I lost two of my friends. Penny Polendina and Pyrrha Nikos. I didn’t know them for very long, but that doesn’t change the fact that they were two of the most kind-hearted people I’d ever met. But that didn’t save them. Pyrrha thought that, if there was even the smallest chance of helping someone, then it was a chance worth taking, and because of that, she died fighting a battle she knew she couldn’t win. And Penny was killed, just to make a statement.

OSCAR: I’m… sorry.

RUBY: I am scared. But not just for me. What happened at Beacon shows that Salem doesn’t care if you’re standing against her or not. She’ll kill anybody, and that scares me most of all. Pyrrha… Penny… I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t hurt, that I didn’t think about them every day since I lost them, that I didn’t wish I had spent more time with them! If it had been me instead, I know they would have kept fighting too, no matter how dangerous it was. So that’s what I choose to do. To keep moving forward.

hope and grief can coexist—

and, thus, so too can hope and tragedy.

(hope does burn ever in the blackest night.)

j. but nuts and dolts!

i’m sorry half your ship died. try fanfiction?

7. the thematic case against resurrection

so.

having said all of this.

it is self-evidently not impossible for rwby to bring a dead character back to life in some way. ozpin died at the end of vol3 and reincarnated as a voice in oscar’s head in vol4, and of course pietro rebuilt and reanimated penny after she was killed in amity arena. summer rose has been presumed dead by the characters, but the narrative itself is building toward some kind of reveal involving her and it’s not out of the question that she might turn out to be alive after all. all of these things occur within the context of a show whose central themes include grief and healing after death, which means that theme alone is not enough to say with certainty that penny polendina is not coming back to life.

however.

both times a character has died and come back, they did so separately from the core cast, and their reintroduction to the core cast came as a welcome surprise. with a singular exception, we have never seen a heroic character try or even consider trying to resurrect a fallen loved one—and that exception was salem, and her trying destroyed her and dragged the whole world into ruin.

when pyrrha died, her friends mourned her and emulated her and supported each other and kept moving forward. the first time penny died, her friends grieved for her and remembered her and tried to move on. thematically and narratively, rwby has affirmed and continues to affirm that this is the right way to answer loss, that part of taking care of yourself means refusing to sink into your pain and stagnate there, that the way forward lies through acceptance and healing and focusing one’s efforts on the ones who are still here.

it would be a drastic, egregious deviation away from that theme to make penny an exception to that rule—not the least because she wasn’t an exception last time—and likewise it would be pretty dramatically out of character for everyone involved except pietro.

rwby is better than that.

8. the logistical case against resurrection

but let’s assume for the sake of argument that penny is an exception, this time, to the established patterns of grief. maybe her death is ruby’s final straw; maybe the fact that she came back once represents a temptation too irresistible for her friends to resist; half of them are trapped on a bizarre magical island, after all, and lotus dreams are hardly out of the question.

how do they do it?

i think—at this late stage in the game, and for something as huge as bringing a dead character back to life—that whatever mechanism by which resurrection occurred would need to be something that we, the audience, have enough clues to piece together into a concrete guess. it needs to be genuinely PLAUSIBLE for penny to be brought back again.

ozpin’s surprise return worked with minimal foreshadowing because it happened relatively early in the story, at a time when we were still learning the rules of the setting. penny’s surprise return at the beginning of vol7 worked because—well, was it really a surprise? as shocking and sad as her sudden death was in 3.9, i know i’m not the only one who had that little voice in the back of my head saying: “oh, but she’s a robot; they can rebuild her. it might take a while, but she’ll be okay.”

but then, in 7.7, rwby made a specific point of explaining that penny’s run out of get-out-of-death-free cards, so to speak. her dad built her by tearing out a piece of his own soul, and to bring her back he had to tear out another, and he simply doesn’t have enough left to do it a third time.

someone else could rip out part of their soul and put that in a robot to create a being like penny, sure, but that new person wouldn’t actually be penny. penny’s soul came from pietro. you can’t just– you can’t grab a bit of whatever soul’s available and stick it in a vessel and expect to get penny! souls aren’t interchangeable! even ozpin and oscar are distinct characters—so much so that salem instantly sees through the ruse when oscar pretends to be ozpin in 8.4—and their souls are explicitly so alike in nature that they’re gradually fusing together!

in a similar vein, it has been shown quite clearly that the souls of former maidens do not inhabit the new hosts along with the magic itself; cinder doesn’t have amber in her head, and penny didn’t have fria in hers. it has been six volumes and six separate maidens since the concept of the four maidens was introduced to us, and never once has the narrative so much as hinted otherwise. winter does not and will not have penny in her head.

and “jaune maybe did something” isn’t a theory or speculation so much as it is a question mark with a lot of hope behind it. it’s perhaps a data point to bear in mind as we see whatever vol9 has in store for us, but on its own it’s not something we can extrapolate any meaningful clues from. (also, as discussed, i think all the pieces of evidence in favor of the idea are adequately and better explained in other ways.)

we know that ambrosius cannot retrieve people from the afterlife, either because he is forbidden from doing so or because it’s beyond his capability; also, the staff is presently in salem’s possession, which at least in the near term takes it off the table for any possible resurrection schemes.

one possible avenue that i’ve seen proposed a lot is the aura-transference pods, which have thus far made two major appearances with a near-miss on using them each time. this is beyond chekhov’s gun; this is chekhov’s nuclear bomb. absolutely, sooner or later someone is going to use these pods and we are going to see it. that said—

the aura-transference pods have never been portrayed as good or even neutral technology. pyrrha was horror-stricken when she learned what they’re for. glynda agreed with her that their intended purpose is intrinsically wrong, and so did ironwood, although he felt leaving things to chance would be even worse. ozpin—who has thousands of years of direct personal experience living with two souls in a single body—shows extreme hesitance to actually use the machines, and palpable guilt when circumstances force his hand. even winter seemed to feel apprehensive about using them, stating that she hoped fria wouldn’t feel any pain.

and—if the way pyrrha screamed in agony when she and ozpin tried to give her amber’s soul is any indication—the process itself is indeed very painful.

it’d be odd, to say the least, to devote all this time building up the aura-transference pods as a horrific last defense against the maidens falling under salem’s control—a last defense that might not even be worth the cost!—only to turn around and use them to bring a beloved character back to life.

i am very confident that when chekhov’s nuclear bomb finally detonates it is going to be bad.

moreover, while it’s very likely that whatever technology pietro used to tear out a bit of his soul in order to make penny works via the same mechanism as the aura-transference pods—both penny and the pods were developed in atlas, under the auspices of the atlesian military, and the end result of taking a soul in whole or in part out of its original vessel and storing it in a new one is near-identical—the aura-transference pods are limited by the souls they have available, i.e. there still remains the problem of retrieving penny’s soul from the afterlife, a feat that has hitherto only been accomplished by the gods, who are stridently against resurrecting the dead for any reason besides Tormenting Salem.

the one big uncertainty is the mysterious island-in-the-void. we are undoubtedly going to learn more information on that island that will deepen our understanding of magic, the relics, the gods, or possibly the grimm or salem herself, or some combination thereof. it’s… possible but i think unlikely that we’ll get any reveals about wholly new concepts, because it’s getting to be pretty late in the story for that, but there’s plenty of room in the extant categories for new information to change the calculus vis a vis the viability of resurrecting penny.

as it stands now, though, with the information we have to hand as of the ending of vol8, i don’t think there’s a mechanically viable path to penny coming back to life that doesn’t require violating any established rules of the setting.

9. (but here’s how penny 3.0 can still win)

but.

if you’ll recall, at the top of this absurdly lengthy post, i said this: the only narratively coherent way to bring penny back involves aligning the heroes with salem against the gods.

in 6.3, when salem’s history is revealed, the narrative invites us to sympathize with her. she is very much framed as the tragic hero of this story; the lonely girl locked in the tower, rescued by a kind and noble knight who falls every bit in love with her as she does with him. they should have gotten a happy ending together—but they didn’t.

the gods took a grieving, heart-broken young woman whose only wrongdoing was asking for their help and squabbled over her and her dead lover like toddlers fighting over a toy—literally played tug-of-war with ozma’s soul while he died and came back in her arms over and over again—and when she lashed out and called them monsters, they cursed her to an eternity of pain. and when she raged and rallied an army against her tormentors, they answered with an extinction.

team rwby saw all of this.

eons later, salem has long since shattered. she’s every bit as monstrous now as the gods who made her that way—but she is still, beneath all the evil she’s embraced and atrocities she’s committed, deeply human in her pain. still entangled in this conflict with ozma; still thinking of the family she loved and lost and found again and then destroyed and lost forever; still a victim of the gods’ unspeakable cruelty.

and if the heroes set out to bring penny back from the dead, they’ll step onto the very same road that led to salem becoming what she is now.

i think, thematically, narratively, if rwby were to build a pathway to penny coming back again, this is the only route that makes sense: for it to happen hand-in-hand with the heroes reevaluating what jinn showed them in 6.3 and coming to the realization that what the gods did to salem was wrong.

they don’t need to forgive her. they don’t need to work with her. they don’t need to stop fighting her, because the depth of her tragedy doesn’t make her present agenda any less heinous; and salem herself doesn’t need to undergo an arc of moral change in any form in order for the heroes to change the way they think of her. (although for the record, regardless of whether or not penny comes back, i think it’s at least not implausible for her to do so.) what would need to happen is for the heroes to approach bringing penny back from the dead as an act of ideological war against the gods—because fundamentally that’s what it is—and prepare accordingly, because it’s looking pretty certain at this point that the gods are going to come back to remnant before the story ends, and when they do—one way or another—the heroes are going to have to argue hard on humanity’s behalf.

so: if penny comes back—and to my mind that’s a very, very big if, because again i’ve yet to see a persuasive explanation for why penny should be the exception to the way the heroes grieve—i don’t think it’s going to be until very close to the end of the story, and i don’t think it’ll happen through the heroes finagling the laws of reality like they did to save her from the virus. i think it’ll be because the heroes convince the gods that they were wrong to treat salem as they did, and penny’s resurrection will come as a symbol of that ideological triumph.

10. secret bonus section for winners or, “for the love of god farran how long is this post?!”

it’s fifteen fucking thousand words long i am not sorry

#rwby #HELLO EVERYBODY I COME BEARING BRAIN WORMS

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ihopesocomic · 3 years ago

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(Feel free to delete if you feel like this question is dumb) You guys probably got this quite a few times, but your comic/analysis review has got me thinking about making my own story. I've wanted to do so for years, but I never made it past just dreaming and plotting about it. If it's not too much to ask, how do you guys get the motivation to do things, and how do you stick to plans? Really appreciate you guys and everything you do, and your comic of course~

First off, I think you should absolutely do this!

My advice would be to just start. Piece the story together in a google doc, or at least things you already have in mind that you want to include (you can always organize your thoughts later, what's important is to write things down) talk to people about it who share your enthusiasm, who can help you brainstorm ideas.

Some other advice I would give can be dependent on how you want to go about it, by like doing a comic or a book, but I think universally just having a realistic goal in mind can be helpful.

My comics don't normally go for longer than a year of production, so IHS as of right now if the biggest comic I'm currently doing. But I make sure to not overwork myself and only work on it, when I feel the drive to and not longer. It helps me to get a schedule going that suits me. Once you figure out a schedule, work on it like X amount of days a week or for X amount of hours a day. Don't overdo it or burnout will happen.

Planning out your story will help you figure out how to pace yourself, including how long you feel like its appropriate to keep your project going, but also having a clear end in sight so you have something you're working towards. (It also helps you figure out if anything needs to be condensed for the sake of your own sanity haha)

I hope this is helpful! And thank you for enjoying the comic and thank you for your kind words. We also love to be kept posted on others' stories they do! So if that's something you vibe with, keep in touch haha - Cat

#ask #ask us stuff

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t4t-lumpygrab · 3 years ago

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okay but me and @imagine-lumpygrab have had so many funny convos on discord about Lemongrab1′s internet presence and computer habits. Some choice hcs:

-banned from twitter for promoting cannibalism. Wrote a letter to Pb asking her to restore his twitter account with her political power.

-has like... 50 puppet accounts that he uses to follow himself and like all his own terrible posts.

-only posts about kids shows. Cyberbullies any child that disagrees with him about thomas the tank engine. Like he’s one of Those People.

-Lemongrab online arguing. Don’t need to say anymore, you can picture it. The threads he would make...

-there’s a 10000000000002299 pages long google doc callout post compiling everything he has ever posted on the internet. It’s all stuff like “Lemongrab tweeted “I’m enjoying season 1 of Backyardigans so far” when everyone knows that Backyardigans is INDRECIBLY PROBLEMATIC” until the final point which is just “oh yeah also irl he is a cannibal ig.”

-has posted an Lg2 cringe compilation at least once. He mostly just recorded himself chasing them with a knife and mocked any artwork they’d made. “BROTHER CRINGE COMP #FUNNY #MEME #TASTY #FOOD” it has 50 likes (from his puppet accounts)

-I think he’s written callout posts before simply bc like I can imagine it. It fits too well with the way he talks. Replace unacceptable with problematic and I think he’d be a hit. But it’s probably like... “Callout post for user @ cannibalismbaby. They are a disgusting liar who has never actually cannibalised a baby. When I messaged them “how did the baby taste :v3″ they responded “you are fucking insane” and blocked me. This is cultural appropriation of cannibal-” I can’t finish this sentence bc it would deplete my sanity but you understand what I mean. He would do this.

-Also tried his hand at being one of those terrible politics youtubers. Some video titles from his youtube: Lemongrab DEBUNKS communism. Lemongrab EXPLAINS why POOR PEOPLE deserve to DIE. Lemongrab HATES WOMEN. His videos have 50 likes each (from his puppet accounts)

#ask to tag #cannibalism mention #idk?#abuse mention #bezzy mate

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thecrimsonjaguar · 4 years ago

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A Short List of Adventure Time AUs

So I got a google doc of adventure time aus I’ve made over the past two or three years. Here are some of my favorites (and also the ones I came back to and edited)

If you’ve got ideas for an au or ideas to add onto the preexisting ones I’ve got here, please tell me! I’m always up for some au discussion.

1.) Jermaine AU: Jermaine comes to live at the treehouse after his house blows up. This, unlike canon, happens rather early in season 3. The rest of the series mainly stays the same, except this time there's three brothers instead of two. He's a kinda anxious dude with demon hunting expertise and a painting hobby. He sometimes wonders if he made Dad disappointed by letting all his work explode. Finn and Jake help him out, and he helps them. Despite this, Jermaine is the only one with a brain, and Finn and Jake share exactly one (1) braincell that they trade every so often. Jermaine is tired. (Jermaine is the only one who tries to clean regularly, and he's also the one to keep Neptr, Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant, and a few others company. He's a bit of real wisdom the early series Finn and Jake needed.

2.) Melted Ice AU: Mid season two, IK is hit with something that de-ages him. He turns six. Maybe this mystery de-aging thing blows up the top of the ice mountain, who knows. Maybe he wakes up in the snow, with no memory of how he got there or why. No memory of the last one thousand years. Finn and Jake don't know about his backstory since that happens in season three. Simon is carried by a snowman out of the ice kingdom where he breaks down in the plains. Finn, of course, finds him and is ecstatic to meet another human. Completely missing the fact that this small child is, in fact, the Ice King, Finn declares to help this boy no matter what. That promise soon becomes difficult when people hear about the second human in Ooo, and whatever effect that's keeping him young starts to wear off. (Marceline comes to visit and has a heart attack)

3.) Adventure Falls AU: AT x GF baybee!! Seventeen year old Stanley Pines hops on the Stan O' War and sets sail when he's kicked out. Unfortunately, that boat is nowhere near sea worthy, and all it takes for him to go overboard is one sudden (magical) storm. But, miraculously, Stan doesn't die. He washes up on Ooo, the island of misfits. Where there's daddy issues galore and punching things and getting gold is a legitimate career. He's found on the shore by none other than Finn, who asks if he's okay and if a dungeon adventure would soothe his worries. Stan accepts, because that sounds awesome, and they maybe date. For the next ten years, Stanley is a professional hero. He travels with Finn, he lives in a tower with tons of gold, he's respected, adored, and has made a family for himself. Ooo has a habit of forcing traumatic therapy onto to people, so Stan gets (read: is forced) to work his issues out. And then, somehow, he gets a postcard from his brother.

4.) Young Pups AU: Jake's kids grow up fast- but not that fast. He stays with lady for a few episodes being Dad and when the Pups are old enough, go visit Finn and Jermaine. Also Jermaine is there when the pups are born that always bothered me in canon like what the fuck. This whole AU results in Jake the Dad being a better father than in canon, because he actually has time to make mistakes and learn from them. He sometimes shapeshifts into one of those baby carriers but suited for five kids instead of one. Finn and Jermaine fight for best uncle privileges. Finn is considerably more awesome but Jermaine's got magic junk and juicy stories about Jake. So far the votes are: FINN: Jake Jr, T.V. JERMAINE: Kim Kil Whan, Charlie. Viola remains undecided.

4.) Evilgreen AU: Evergreen was evil. His idea to make the crown to stop the comet was actually a cover story to take control of all the elements and freeze everything. Of course the same thing happens here as it did in canon, Gunther gets the crown and wishes to *be* evergreen. This is bad. Very bad, so bad in fact, that things get FUnKy. A couple eons later, Simon gets the crown as per canon, and then things start to slide downhill. Since the crown is significantly worse, Simon tries to get rid of it. No amount of magic pull is going to get him to put on the eldritch hat. It teleports back. When things go to shit, the crown tells him he's got two options: He can either live, or he can live unwillingly. This all coalesces in super angst and mild horror as Simon has to fight off evil urges and somehow keep both he and Marceline safe. Things start looking up, though, when he summons Hunson Abadeer.

5.) Nightmare Therapy AU: Simon, now himself post canon, has some funky nightmares. Problem is: he's due for a visit from the cosmic owl due to some mystical bureaucratic bs. If that were to happen, Simon's dreams of Golb and Orgalorg and the world ending and everyone dying and maze would come true, without the veil of metaphoric junk dreams are known for (also due to bureaucratic bs). So, Simon gets a dream therapist. An OC, probably, that would fight off his nightmares when they came and talk to him about his issues.

6.) High School AU: Except they're all still magic and crap. Finn's a jock that's part of the LDnD club(Literally Dungeons and Dragons), Jake's got a job at a pancake place and hosts the Card Wars clubs on Wednesdays, Jermaine's in college and their parents were still detectives/demon hunters. PB is preppy/nerdy girl with weird fucking family and is absolutely a mad scientist. Marceline is still a demon/vamp (vampire biker gang, they all died, deaths pending) and her uncle is Simon. Simon is a history teacher whose ex wife might be an eldritch abomination (the students wonder, but there are no answers)((simon says cryptic things every so often that are the subject of much ridicule, but he's a nice guy)). Ooo High has all of the AT characters in some shape or form. Tree trunks is the lunchlady, Mr Pig is a janitor. Lemongrab is just there. LSP(Q?) is a teacher because that's hilarious. Hunson is dead along with Marceline's mom because fuck hunson. Magic Man is a hobo that snuck onto campus and can't be chased off (his brother is the superintendent, Glob). there's a lot more but that's for a different word doc.

7.) Back to the Future AU: So PB fucks around with time travel, right? For science. She gets sent back in time a thousand years, before the war. Now, she's a pink lady who can shoot jelly beans from her hands, of course needs to lay low. And of course she needs to get home, but she's in a Futurama situation where she only has one type of time machine; the one that can go into the past. Not to mention her own time machine got busted on her way there, so she's double screwed. But, she remembers something. There is an individual (two, actually) that knows about time travel in this time period. She knows him, and he's likely to help her if she plays her card right. She needs to find Simon and get back to her own time, preferably without dooming herself in the process. (perhaps she tries to steal the notes Simon has, and Simon's completely oblivious, except Betty can smell trouble from a mile away and immediately notices some pink woman trying to steal books and she goes ham. Perhaps she goes ham in such a way that Simon doesn't notice. Perhaps this goes on for seven acts.)

8.) Bread and Butter AU: Bella Noche during the episode Betty creates a huge black cube that engulfs all of Wizard City. This box acts as a cage and prevents Wizards from escaping the magic purge. Simon is unable to bring Betty back from the past, and he's fading fast. In a desperate attempt to stop things from escalating, Simon chugs a bottle of anti-magic like a fucking god. He gets through the cube that surrounds Bella Noche and knocks their lights out. He passes out, and when he comes to, the anti-magic he consumed as merged with him. This is because of a simple rule: Magic sticks to magic, anti-magic sticks to anti-magic. And since humans have always had just a little bit of anti -magic present within them, humans and anti-magic go together like bread and butter (badumtish) ((I have actually written a fanfic about this, you can find it here))

9.) Swapped AU: Through various shenanigans Ice King's and Magic Man's powers gets swapped. These shenanigans somehow land them in space as well. This happens before Magic Man's trial. The swapping of their powers results in Simon getting his memory back. It also gives Magic Man the Ice Crown, unfortunately for him though, it seems to hate him. Simon's glad to back, but quickly realizes one issue: He's still crazy. So the pair try to make it back to Ooo. MM needs his powers to swap himself with some other shmuck so he doesn't croak when his trial comes, but Simon's made it clear he isn't giving his powers up without a fight. The pair starts off rocky, neither trusting the other, but space trouble forces them to work together. Simon's a nice enough guy he wouldn't leave someone to die and MM really needs Simon alive so it works out. A weird friendship forms, and they learn get along. Just a couple of crazy space wizards. Then the crown is destroyed. MM is freed from the crown's control, and he's freed from magic. He gets his sanity back, just in time for his trial.

that’s all I’ve got for now!

#at #adventure time #adventure time au #adventure time aus #Finn the Human #finn #jake the dog #jake #marceline #princess bubblegum #pb #simon petrikov #betty grof #ice king #magic man #au #aus

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jcmorrigan · 3 years ago

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Hey, do you still take requests of your headcanons? If yes, then maybe you have a thought about Taylor's and Albert's everyday life in college? Or those things when doc goes 'I have a PH. D. in Marine bioligy, I' ll explain to you your biology homework, god damn it!' XD

This sounds fun so LET'S DO IT. For simplicity's sake this will take place in the same universe as this post. (Also, if I mess up any pronouns, please forgive, as it is an accident.)

-Yes! Albert ABSOLUTELY tries to explain Taylor's biology homework to them!

-But also sometimes is like "Give me that" and tries to DO their homework for them.

-Here's the problem. Albert grew up on encyclopedias, books by Ph.D.'s, and handwritten reports. Taylor is using laptops, email, and research databases. This confuses the heck out of Albert. He can use a word processor and send basic emails and that's about it. He keeps trying to pick up a book published ten years ago and Taylor's just "THAT'S OUT OF DATE. USE GOOGLE, COWARD."

-He also tries to help them out with their social life. For instance, if Taylor mentions that there's this asshole in their class who keeps showing them up, Albert will immediately yell "YOU'RE GETTING AN ARCHNEMESIS? AT LONG LAST? I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU" and Taylor's like "Not...not every pair of people who hate each other are you and Vincent, man"

-I see him crashing school events like dances. Taylor will be chilling out at a dance and then suddenly see him leaning against the wall and waving at them and they're just "OH MY GOD WHY"

-Except that particular night, no one wanted to dance with Taylor, so Albert was their partner for the slow song and twirled them and taught them to waltz and they basically made a scene

-"Is that your dad?" "I don't know how to introduce him anymore. He's my Albert. Just to make this less confusing you can say dad I guess, or annoying older brother type. Also I guess he's literally my therapist."

-I still believe that in his own RMU days, Albert started out a psych major because his dad pressured him into it and switched to marine bio halfway through once he found his own footing. (Vincent didn't know he switched to marine bio until after they reconnected and could SWEAR he was a psych major. Victor knew, though.) So Albert also tries to help Taylor with studying for psych. Except he is SHIT at actual psychology, he's just trying to show off in a discipline he REMEMBERS VERY LITTLE ABOUT

-Taylor is an undecided major for their first two years and Albert encourages them that this is absolutely fine; you don't want to be like him and lock yourself into something you'll lose favor for

-He tries to pack them lunches and they're just "It's college. They have a cafeteria. I don't need you to pack me a lunch." (But he's a great cook so sometimes they take the food along anyway)

-Dream Eaters with flash cards!

-He really stands by flash cards as a whole (you know, since his Sanity Check revolves around them in the first phase)

-Taylor: "So I'm using an elective credit for art - " Albert: *CANNOT CONTAIN EXCITEMENT*

-He just stands there in the same room as Taylor while they draw. Staring. Not saying a word. They've learned to pretend he's not there.

-Immense praise when a piece is finished, but also nitpicks on some of the little details that falter

-Keeps offering to kill people for Taylor, though.

-"Yeah, Professor Shaw is a real bitch and I don't know how I'm gonna pass this class" "Well, you would definitely pass if she were...removed from staff" "ALBERT DO NOT KILL MY LIT PROFESSOR"

-He kills the lit professor anyway. Taylor pretends to be horrified but is secretly relieved. The replacement gives them a passing grade.

-In fact, replacement professor says something like "I just knew you'd come through; I saw it in a dream!" And for a moment Taylor must wonder: "Did...did Albert invade their dreams and influence them to give me a better grade?"

-"Albert, did you invade my professor's dreams - " "NoIdidn'twhatareyoutalkingaboutohlookit'sdinnertime"

-He also orders the Dream Eaters to guard Taylor's brain from nightmares the night before finals

-Vincent: "WHERE WAS ALL THIS SUPERNATURAL AID WHEN I WAS IN CLASS" Victor: "You two supposedly hated each other back then, remember? But I guess this just proves that 'supposedly.'"

-I still am not sure myself what major Taylor chooses, but when they make undergrad, I know they hug all the guys after the ceremony but Albert gets the longest hug

-It's not lost on Taylor that their greatest mentor and cheerleader through this time period once tried to kill them and/or make them into one of his pet monsters. But when you live in Revenge House you don't question this stuff too deeply. It only leads to confusion.

#taylor lee #albert krueger #set in the blakeworther cinematic universe

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salty-ironstrange-shipper · 4 years ago

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Hi. I will now be answering fic writing questions from this post instead of reblogging it and waiting for you to ask me some so that I can just answer the ones I want. Legally, no one can stop me.

2. Favorite piece overall?

I narrowed it down to four (completed) - So what if we grow old together?, being known is being loved, A Strange Wedding, From the Top

3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

Probably Paint It Black. I had a lot of ideas I wanted to squeeze into one fic and I’m still not 100% on how it turned out.

8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?

Oof. I think the love confession at the end of A Strange Love, chapter nine of From the Top, chapter 13 of Stay A Thousand Years. (I could add to this if The Pace Between Rage and Serenity was finished ...... but that’s spoilers)

9. Favorite character to write?

Stephen Strange. He’s such a bitch but also kind of vulnerable and capable of being caring.

10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written

ok I realized after looking for this it is not “““dialogue””” but live with it

He went through ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million futures, and none of them were good. Even the ones where the prevented Thanos’s genocide resulted in mass casualties when they tried to prevent it.

Except for one.

Just one, one out of more than fourteen million, but it would work. Thanos would be defeated with the least casualties of any future he’d seen, they’d be able to bring back almost everyone—

But not Tony.

As he watched his husband die in his arms, surrounded by victorious allies, he remembered the Ancient One’s words. "It's not about you."

He was a sorcerer of Kamar-Taj, a Master of the Mystic arts, and it was his sacred duty to protect the Earth and the Time Stone and the universe at any cost, and none of it mattered if Tony wasn't with him. The oath to protect the world wasn’t the only vow he made.

Please, he thought to the universe, thinking of Tony and his smile and the life together they’d envisioned. Not Tony. You have already had your fill of him. This whole world has. You’ve had his mind and his heart and his health and his sanity. You’ve had his family, his friends, you’ve had me. He’s almost sacrificed his own life to you a dozen times. Just this once, please . . . let him be safe and let him be mine.

He kept looking.

14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?

I was talking about this with my family a few weeks ago. I said if I had infinite money I would buy Marvel and make all the characters gay. I stand by that.

Other than that though, I don’t know if I’d want to write for something that big that was someone else’s creations. If I was going to work on a book/show/movie, I would want it to be my original idea.

....

Actually, I’d write the series finale to Supernatural and make it good. That’s one. I know their lore better than the writers, I could handle it.

15. Does font matter to you when you're writing a draft?

I am very particular about my writing. With fic, I always have the same layout - Verdana, size 11, add a space after every paragraph, white text on a black background.

I have a process and it relaxes me.

18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?

Probably Paint It Black. That one always felt kind of off to me in terms of quality.

19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?

I make up scenes pretty much all the time. If I have my phone with me, I’ll usually take it out and add them to an outline on google docs. My phone broke and I didn’t have one for like, 3 months or so. So I would just be lying down trying to sleep, suddenly get a scene idea, and have to get my laptop out and wait for it to load, then write it out. The things I do for fanfiction. (I also have various journals and notebooks I write it, but those can be irritating because once I write it down, I can’t rearrange things and put them in order.)

#incorrect-ironstrange #asks game #it me #writing #fanfiction #my fanfiction #fanfiction writing

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dittomander · 4 years ago

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A Comprehensive Guide to Magic in Elena of Avalor

With Elena of Avalor coming to a close, I decided to compile a guide to every spell, enchantment, potion, magical creature, and artifact that appears in Elena of Avalor, including use cases, limitations, and other facets of magic. Some notes on notation:

italics - formal name and presumably canon spelling for an incantation. Spellings are based off how things are spelled in the iTunes subtitles except where noted

[transcription approximate] - cases where the subtitles were either vague, incomplete, or absent and I had to make my best guess based on other standard spelling conventions used in the show

“quotations” - spells that had backfiring or incorrect results, where its unclear if it’s truly a unique spell that just wasn’t intended to be used or just a mispronunciation of the actual spell in question

I’ll be updating the spell list as the last few remaining episodes air. Currently up-to-date through Día de las Madres. Spells are listed in order of appearance, with Elena and the Secret of Avalor being treated as episode 0. Follow the link to the Google doc or go below the Readmore to see the spellbook.

Let me know if you notice any obvious absences and I will update accordingly.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xbylfktNY2clqLpLadPALaK4RxBL0-vpwyhRpLtjWj0/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT JANUARY 3 2021: The spellbook is now complete, at least in terms of content, all the way up through the finale. I’ve also corrected some spellings and added a few more miscellaneous magic descriptions. I’m still trying to sort out some updates for readability and organization, as well as approximate translations, but verion 1.0 is effectively done.

SCEPTER OF LIGHT SPELLS

Blaze - Blasting spell. Can destroy objects completely. Has the capacity to kill (or at least trap someone inside the jewel of its sister scepter) but not its primary function. Can be sustained with concentration.

Glow - Creates a bright light that can temporarily blind others, and banish magical darkness and creatures that thrive in magical darkness.

Reveal - Allows the caster to see through walls. The viewport is one-way. With additional concentration, can see through multiple walls at once.

Envision <noun> - Illusion spell. Projects an image of the stated noun that requires concentration to maintain. Can create multiple images at once, and even moving images.

Illuminate - Reveals invisible text. Requires concentration to maintain.

Waili telitsli la wheili y cawea senyowoh tonamit - [Transcription approximate] Ritual spell to seal away the Jewel of Maru. Requires the Scepter of Light.

Farsight - Scrying spell. Can view people or places from a distance when concentrated on. Assumed that it can be used on someone the caster has never seen but has not been confirmed.

Vanish - Invisibility spell. Can turn objects and people invisible. The last Level 1 scepter power that Elena learns.

Bloom - Creates a beam of light that when maintained, causes plants (and coral, which technically isn’t a plant but actually an animal composed of colonies of identical polyps) to grow. Possibly a Level 2 power, since it isn’t brought up until after Elena learns vanish, which Quita Moz states to be the final Level 1 power.

Magic deflection - Extra ability of the Scepter of Light after being powered up by the crystal forge of Takaína. No incantation required; simply striking the scepter against the incoming magic will deflect it. Unclear if this works on any spell or simply on offensive magic.

Truesight - Shows a projection of a past event to reveal the truth. Nicknamed “tattletale vision” by Flo. A rare case where the name of the scepter power is not the same as the incantation used to evoke it. Instead, it is activated by asking a question or saying “show us.” Extra ability post Takaína.

Seal it - Creates nearly indestructible crystals while maintained. A sword cannot break through them but the Moyacu’s jaw strength can. Notably the one spell that doesn’t seem to have an obvious connection to light. Extra ability post Takaína.

Ignite - Starts fires. Only used post Takaína, but unclear if this is a new scepter power or just a Level 2 standard power.

SCEPTER OF NIGHT SPELLS

Demolish - A blasting spell, but apparently not the Scepter of Night’s equivalent of blaze.

Inferno - Creates dark fire. Can be counterspelled by blaze, though it seems to be more the equivalent of ignite. The Scepter of Night’s most powerful ability, but dramatically drains the user’s strength.

Obscure - Temporarily blinds targets with cloud of red smoke. Likely the Scepter of Night’s equivalent of glow.

Chaos - Temporarily disorients and confuses the target.

TAMBORITA SPELLS

Illuminara <Name> Wayohel - Summons the chanul of the named individual. Apparently only requires the individual’s first name. Possibly requires a degree of concentration on the specified individual, since although the name ‘Alacazar’ is reasonably unique, I find it hard to believe there’s only one ‘Mateo’ in the entirety of Avalor.

Tlahcuilolli apartad, Tlahcuilolli apareced, Tlahcuilolli vivid - Ritual to reverse the enchantment that sealed Francisco, Luisa, and Isabel inside a painting. Chanted while striking a tamborita in a rhythm.

Vetzi - Basic knockback spell. Strong enough to cause damage to terrain but causes no lasting damage when used on a living creature.

Llévaluq/llevaluq/levaluq - Levitation spell. Can be used to lift one or more people and/or objects. Requires concentration. Also used to catch falling people and/or objects and lower them gently to the ground. A note on spelling: the former two are the ones used in the subtitles, but the spell is consistently pronounced as if it starts with one ‘L’ instead of with the Spanish ‘Ll’. The root word of the spell can’t be reliably used to determine the appropriate spelling, either, since both ‘llevar’ (to carry) and ‘levantar’ (to lift) could make sense in the context of a levitation spell. For the sake of my sanity and consistency with Fanon spellings, I’ll be using levaluq for the rest of this document.

Mortoloz jaquirando - Mortoloz appears to be the standard prefix for illusion spells, since it’s used in tandem with other words later. This specific variety conjures one or more sparkly images of jaquins.

Akatok - Petrification spell. Turns the target into a stone statue, and they remain unaware of events around them until the spell is reversed. Supposedly permanent after the next sunrise following the spell being cast, but can be reversed after an indefinite amount of time with the Maruvian Spellbreaker potion. When cast improperly, produces an ecatuul like effect, for some reason.

Ximocu - Shielding spell. Creates a deflective barrier around or in front of the caster that can reflect magic and physical hazards.

Bajaluq - A lowering spell. The opposite of levaluq. Unclear what the specific use cases are since it’s established that levaluq can also be used to carefully lower things.

Meyázami - A spell to bring the targeted object to the caster. Exclusively used by malvagos.

Canaza - A spell to bring the targeted object to the caster. Exclusively used by good-aligned wizards. It’s never explained why this spell in particular has a good and evil version.

Boqato - A knockback spell. Appears to be a more concentrated blast than vetzi. Presumably meant to be the malvago equivalent of the spell, but Mateo casts it once while offscreen in “The Jewel of Maru.” We don’t get to see if the spell works for him or not, though.

Solaza - A blasting spell. Treated as a wizard’s rough equivalent of blaze. Can destroy objects or blast holes, but appears to be less destructive than blaze since it doesn’t destroy the weathervane it makes contact with in “Nothing But Blaze”. Unclear what its effect on living creatures would be, since so far it has only made contact with objects, unless you count water spirits as alive, because that guy got obliterated.

Talact - Completely immobilizes target. Unclear if they are aware while immobilized. Can be reversed by zanamo, but unclear if this is the only way to undo it or if it would wear off after a certain amount of time.

Zanamo - Standard reversal spell. Dispels magical effects set by the caster. Olivia claims that it doesn’t work on other people’s magic, but Mateo once tried to use it to dispel Chiloya’s magic, and was confused when it didn’t work. In the context of that episode, it’s stated to have not worked because the enchantment on Chiloya’s ship prevented the use of any other magic, but the fact that Mateo still tried it implies that he expected it to work, despite someone else having cast the spell he was trying to dispel. Seeing as that was still in season 1, it was possible he just wasn’t an experienced enough wizard to realize it wouldn’t work regardless. As an additional discrepancy, it’s used in the spell to reverse someone’s malvago transformation, despite the initial spell being cast by someone else.

[Unknown Aesthetic Spell] - A wordless spell that changes background for a song in “Navidad.” Seeing as other characters are also able to change the background without use of magic, it’s possible that this was just done for flavor and is not an actual spell.

Nochecer - Creates a dome of magical darkness. Can be dispelled by glow.

Chihufeti - Creates a controlled burst of fireworks. Apparently an “advanced spell.”

“Chihuleti” - The mispronounced version of chihufeti. Creates an uncontrolled burst of fireworks. Unclear if this was just a result of chihufeti backfiring or if chihuleti is its own spell.

Yotzi - Spirit spell. Necessary for making a yotzi potion for banishing spirits. Unclear what it does beyond that.

Mocachi - Abundance spell. Used to create more of the liquid it’s cast on within its container. Unclear if it exclusively affects liquids.

“Moyotzi” - Conjures a water spirit when cast on well water. Unclear if this is a spell in its own right or just a backfiring effect from Olivia mixing up the abundance and spirit spells. Unclear what its effect would be when cast on other materials.

Desparci - Vanishing spell with a limited strength. Not powerful enough to banish a powered up water spirit. Just punches a hole through it instead.

Conglari - Freezing spell. Freezes a target solid, provided the target is not more powerful than what the caster can manage. Reversible by some means, but we’ve never seen it reversed on screen. Possibly zanamo would work? When cast improperly, it picks up the fire effect of the anchimon and ricochets it around, for some reason.

Mortoloz imagenar - Displays a sequence of illusory images in a magical viewport. Presumably the images displayed are controlled by the caster via concentration.

Mortoloz chihimagenos - Creates an illusory adversary that can be dispelled by contact.

Mortoloz cahuimatla - Creates an illusory timer in the shape of an hourglass.

Cachoa - Generates a gust of wind. Can be sustained without direct concentration, or can be just a short burst. The sustained variant can be dispelled by zanamo.

Latopo - Similar to chihufeti, creates a burst of fireworks.

Grandeluq - Enlarging spell. Works on objects and on people. Possibly doesn’t work on food, since Mateo apparently needs to make a potion to enlarge apples, anoki berries, etc.

Esfumarse - Dispels the illusory images of Victor and Carla Delgado. Unclear what this spell actually is. Possibly the way to dispel mortoloz variant spells? Possibly another generic blasting spell? We may never know.

“Hualaca” - [Transcription approximate] A wake up spell. Turns the twin xolo statues into actual giant dogs. Apparently bears verbal similarity to a speed up spell.

Nitla abrax conzaportil - An unlocking spell. We never get to see it in action.

Quittiz - Reveals invisible text. Similar to illuminate, but the text remains visible even without active sustainment of the spell.

Zapota - Opens the sealed doors of a Maruvian temple. Unclear how it interacts with locks.

[Unknown Light Spell] - Nonverbal spell to light torches, but since it’s cast during a musical number, we don’t get to hear what the incantation actually is, and it hasn’t been used since.

Boqata/poctaka - Unclear if it is a vanishing spell or a teleportation spell, but it creates a cloud of smoke that renders the caster and those standing near them not obviously present. A note on spelling: the former spelling is used when Fiero casts it in “The Race for the Realm”, the latter used when Victor casts it in “Song of the Sirenas”. Seeing as the effect is the same, they’re being treated as the same spell despite the drastically different spellings.

En cualani en malvago, en acualli en malvago, en catzacti en malvago - Ritual to transform someone into a malvago. First case of a “double hit” spell, though the concept of those types of spells isn’t introduced for several more episodes. Can be reversed by a wizard using the same incantation but ending with zanamo. Unclear if the target has to be willing or if this could forcibly transform them. The transformation includes: creating a tamborita, even in the absence of a chispa, a clothing upgrade, and (presumably) bestowing dark magic that operates in some sort of fundamentally different way than standard wizard magic, since there are curses that require dark magic to undo. Despite the unorthodox creation of the tamborita, the tool itself is apparently not the source of dark magic, since Mateo briefly threatens Victor with Victor’s own tamborita in “Naomi Knows Best”, but was unable to simply use a malvago tamborita to undo the sealing curse on Ixlan in “The Lightning Warrior”; rather, a malvago was a specific requirement to undo the spell. However, the malvago tamboritas are not utilized by the good-aligned characters at any point after the capture of the Delgados, even when the spare standard tamboritas are destroyed and new ones are needed, so there’s likely still some magical taboo against a wizard using a malvago tamborita.

“Hualoa” - Makes horses and coach run in rapid circles. Unclear if this is a spell in its own right or if this was just a backfiring effect from a mispronounced mualoa.

Mualoa - Speed-up spell.

Calooz - Dispels mualoa.

Ecatuul/ekatuul - Creates a powerful tornado that disappears after a short time. Its direction can be directly controlled, or it can be allowed to fly off on its own.

Oncholoz - Some sort of levitation or flight spell. Only used once, by Fiero, during his fight with Mateo in “Song of the Sirenas.” Not the malvago equivalent of levaluq, since Ash uses that spell later in the series.

Cepayák - Conjures a snowstorm that can rapidly spread across large distances.

Cepayák yamanák - Dispels a snowstorm. A double-hit spell. If cast incorrectly, it causes the snowstorm to worsen and spread even further.

Anahun - Imprisons creatures (or evil vases) in the Creature Compendium created by Alacazar. Requires a potion to reverse.

Clausanda - A shielding spell that puts up a large protective barrier around an area and prevents exit from said area. Presumably prevents entry into the area as well. Can be dispelled by another repetition of clausanda, even by another spellcaster. Notably discovered on a page from a spellbook describing Orizaba and the Eye of Midnight.

Doblecazán - Duplication spell. Creates an identical copy of the targeted object. Unclear if there are size or material restrictions on the spell. Unclear how it would affect living creatures.

Calterra - Used to dispel a possession spell that was afflicting King Joaqín. Possibly the spell that was used to control him in the first place, but we never see that cast. Unclear what the degree of direct control the caster has over the target while the spell is active. The possessed speaks in a monotone and has awkward, stilted movement, but still has their own handwriting.

Bilicú - Immobilization spell. Differs from talact in that the target is still obviously aware of what’s happening around them and can still speak. Also, their body can be physically manipulated by others, such as lowering their arms or taking things out of their hands, which does not seem to be the case with talact.

Emenari - Causes the target to emulate the motions of the caster, at least from the waist down, so that as the caster walks away, the target walks with them. The target is still able to move their arms freely.

Despoloz - A destruction spell, similar to solaza. Destroys the jewel from the Scepter of Night, which not even the high-powered blaze that destroyed the rest of the scepter could do.

Contali - A powerful blasting spell that proves fatal if it lands a direct hit. Dissipated enough to be non-fatal if blocked with a tamborita, but destroys the blocking tamborita (though not irreparably) in the process.

Macaquentia - Takes the clothes of the targeted person and puts them on the caster. Size and body shape differences do not seem to be an issue.

Cochimoc - Sleeping spell. Puts the targeted person to sleep, and can affect multiple people at once. Duration unclear.

Talazia - Throws the targeted person or object. Can act like a powerful knockback spell or be used to lift and throw an object.

Quamoti - Creates a barrier wall that prevents passage through it. Presumably does not require active concentration to maintain, and only lasts for a brief amount of time.

Calanía - Another speed spell. Dramatically speeds up an individual or targeted group, to a degree presumably controlled by the caster. On the small scale end, can speed up an individual horse. On the large scale end, capable of allowing a group to cross oceans in a matter of seconds.

Pesari - Creates trail of fake footprints for an indeterminate distance.

[Unknown Animation Spell] - Animates a suit of armor to attack a nearby adversary. Unclear if it is acting entirely on its own, on a simple instruction, or being directly controlled, although the latter seems unlikely since Mateo is mid-musical number at the time he casts it.

Siletzi - Silencing spell. Covers the mouth of the target. It’s dispelled by the caster snapping, however it’s unclear if this is built into the spell or if that was just a nonverbal cast of zanamo.

Cahua - Shielding spell. Creates a single pane barrier that dissipates magic rather than reflects it.

Huyacalli - Enlarging spell. Unclear what the distinction between this and grandeluq is, but there must be something going on there since Mateo insists he would’ve needed a potion to achieve this same effect prior to learning this spell. Possibly intended exclusively for edibles?

Pantoto - Changes one kind of bird into another kind of bird. Unclear if the resulting bird is random or if the caster selects it.

Quixcapa - Flips a person upside down, except then it flips them right side up again and seems to function like levaluq after that point until dispelled.

Ixotaz - Reveals the Dalia Salida on its bush.

Vetzilli - A powerful knockback spell. Based on the root of the word, it is likely the next level up from vetzi.

Portaliz - A blasting/knockback spell. Fairly nondescript.

Cascamo - Covers the ears of one or more people and prevents them from hearing anything.

“Reversamo” - Spins the caster (or their tamborita) around. Unclear if this is an actual spell or just a backfiring effect from an improperly formed spell.

Reveloa - Presumably, a revealing spell. Clears the roots blocking the doors of Chatana’s sealed chamber and the water blocking the Shadow Gateway.

Tlalt-ilitzli - Some sort of showy levitation spell. Unclear what the distinction is from levaluq or quixcapa. It might also conjure music?

Ayamín - Blocks an area or group of people from being scryed on. Duration unclear.

Quicana - Removes bindings. At the very least, removes bindings made of spiderwebs. Some of these spells have excruciatingly specific use cases so it's entirely possible it’s limited to that.

Levoltario - Levitation spell, similar to levaluq. Unclear why there’s a distinction. Regional dialects of magic, perhaps?

Flotamío - Levitates someone to the ground, similar to bajaluq.

Velatzi - A pushing spell, likely similar to vetzi. We never actually get to see it.

“Levatzi” - A vanishing spell of some kind. It’s unclear if the affected area is invisible or gone completely. Likely the former, since it can still be struck by spells. Also unclear if this is an actual spell or just a backfiring effect.

“Colarci” - Color changing spell. Creates a polka-dot pattern on the affected area. Unclear if the color can be specified by the caster, or if this is even an actual spell rather than a backfiring effect.

“Mongarki” - Unclear what this spell does. Something gross and unpleasant to look at, apparently. Unclear if this is an actual spell or a backfiring effect.

“Vicarsi” - Turns the target into gingerbread. Powerful enough to affect the palace and everyone inside it. Unclear if this is an actual spell or a backfiring effect.

“Vamoosi” - Distraction spell. Creates a puff of smoke and sparkles. I filed this under the “possibly not an actual spell” notation because I’m pretty sure it’s just supposed to be a joke, but there definitely was a magical effect so it still made the list.

Choctli quatic - Creates one or more tamboritas by fusing a chispas with the physical drum-wand. Unclear if a specific shape is required or if a chispa could be fused with anything, or at least with any drum-like object. It’s possible regular drums can be used, since the very first chronological use of tamborita magic in the series is actually done with a drum rather than a drum-wand, though it’s still referred to as a tamborita.

Mitzomo ticarsi - The reversal spell to turn something back from gingerbread into its normal material. Unclear if this is the only use case for this spell or if it can be used to restore things from other materials as well.

Cahuetzi quicaniz - A dark magic spell that reverses dark magic encasing spells. Repeated three times for the whole ritual, though the tamborita is only struck once.

Campatic - Opens and holds the mouth of the Moyacu. Unclear what the generic intended effect is. Must be maintained by the caster, and requires obvious physical effort to do so, which is rare for tamborita magic.

[Unknown Light Spell] - Produces a generic glowing effect that swirls around in front of the tamborita for a second or so.

Quitanzi - Similar to farsight. It projects an image of a faraway scene, and though it can work around the cloaking spell that impedes farsight, it does not include any sound. Shows a more ¾ view of a wide scene rather than farsight’s eye-level viewport.

Pitzini. Coyoni. Cehualli. Yohalli. - Ritual to open the Shadow Gateway and free the Shadows of the Night. A multi-hit spell, although unclear how many times the tamborita must be struck. The words are chanted 3 times, and the tamborita is struck at least 5 times over the course of the chant.

Malatza - Rapidly spins the target around like a top, to the point where they can spin away.

Ayahut - Imbues the targeted object with a paralysis effect, so that anything it strikes is held completely in place. Unclear if it wears off after a certain duration or a certain number of strikes.

Hui tlalli yot - A triple hit spell designed to banish creatures to the Spirit World. Possibly the spell that wiped out the Maruvians long ago. Has a chance of backfiring and banishing the caster and their allies instead. Apparently difficult to maintain, this is the rare case of a tamborita spell taking a physical toll on the caster.

WAND SPELLS

Vadisima - Destruction spell that completely obliterates target. Capable of destroying the barrier conjured by ximocu, but cannot blast through it. Fatal on contact with a human, barring intervention by magical amulets.

[Unknown Youth Spell] - A nonverbal, topically applied spell that removes wrinkles and age spots at the place touched.

Obscura - Darkness spell that covers the sky in storm clouds.

POTIONS

Akatok reversal potion - A potion to reverse the effects of the spell akatok. Must be used before the next sunrise to be effective. Only a drop is required to undo the entire effect, allowing a single batch of the potion to be enough to restore an entire room of people. Contains extract of whistle weed.

Yotzi potion - Banishes spirits. We never see it used. Requires the spell yotzi to be cast on it. Won’t solve your mouse problem.

Potion to break El Guapo curse - Breaks the possession curse on the sword of El Guapo, at least insofar as allowing the afflicted person to release the sword. Does not completely destroy the curse on the sword. Apparently takes hours to brew.

Enlarging potion - Makes fruits bigger when poured on them. Makes creatures bigger when consumed. Unclear how it affects other items, but apparently has distinct use cases from spells like grandeluq. When made improperly, it shrinks things instead.

Reversal potion for enlarging potion - Restores an enlarged creature to normal size when consumed. Presumably not the same as a shrinking potion, since a normal-sized object doused in it does not seem to be affected.

Human shapeshifting potion - A horrible smelling potion that when consumed, changes the physical appearance of the drinker, including their clothes. Does not last for an indefinite amount of time and wears off gradually, with the drinker’s appearance slowly turning back to normal. The effect does not fool mirrors.

Ensmalling potion - Shrinks creatures on contact.

Disappearing potion - Causes creatures to vanish on contact. Unclear if they’re just invisible or if this functions like desparci where the creature is intended to be vanished to… somewhere else.

Maruvian Spell Breaker - Can reverse the effects of the spell akatok, even after an indefinite amount of time. Unclear if this is supposed to be the same potion as the original akatok reversal potion and the writers just forgot about the time limit (which seems like a weird thing to forget given that it was such a significant plot point in its introduction episode) or if it really is something distinct.

Jaquin shapeshifting potion - Transforms someone into a jaquin of a conveniently similar color scheme to their own when poured on them. They remain transformed for an apparently indefinite amount of time until the spell is explicitly reversed by another potion. Fools mirrors, unlike the human shapeshifting potion.

Jaquin shapeshifting reversal potion - Reverses the effects of the Jaquin shapeshifting potion and restores the affected person to human form.

Releasing potion - Frees a creature (or evil vase) from the Creature Compendium when dripped onto the corresponding page. Thankfully doesn’t seem to soak through to other pages when poured in large quantities or “Movin’ On Up” would have been a much more challenging episode.

Ungilding potion - Reverses the effects of the noblin’s golden touch when poured on an affected object or creature.

Book spell reversal potion - Reverses the spell that sealed Alacazar’s spirit inside of a book to restore him to human form. Requires jaquin eggshell, mist of butterfrog breath, an indeterminate amount of other presumably common ingredients, and a petal of the Dalia Salida. The ingredients must be placed in a pouch and shaken in a rhythm while the associated spell is chanted.

A potion to magically inspire magnificent singing - Spreads a curse that compels people to break out into spontaneous song and choreography with no discernable music source, with the exception of whoever drinks it. Contains spidervine sap, McGuffin oil, and a lock of the caster’s hair, and then must be consumed. Unclear if the resulting effect is the intended one of the potion; Mateo points out that Armando messed up in making it, but doesn’t clarify if the potion was made incorrectly and thus produced a result different from what Armando expected, or if Armando misinterpreted what the potion was for in the first place.

Reversal potion for singing potion - Breaks the spontaneous musical curse. Contains spidervine sap, and is activated when the caster of the original curse sings. Rather than being consumed or poured, the potion just absorbs the curse back into the bottle.

Smoke cloud potion - Creates a cloud of smoke that dissipates after a short time.

Color changing potion - Changes the color and pattern of the creature it’s used on. Unclear if it’s completely random or if the pattern is decided by the brewer.

EMOTION MAGIC

Happiness - Yellow dress. Possible effects include: conjuring butterflies, growing flowers, compelling others to sing and dance, bringing inanimate objects to life, conjure rainbows

Anxiety - Purple dress. Possible effects include: making objects spin, creating rockslides, bringing paintings to life, making people run around fast (after consuming magical chocolate, specifically), bringing statues to life, breaks objects, making people dance ballet

Anger - Orange dress. Possible effects include: making objects fly around, bringing inanimate objects to life, turning a faucet to spray someone, cause dreams to manifest, summons aggressive vines, summons Esteban, lift large chunks of the ground

Calm - Cyan dress. Possible effects include: calming enraged creatures, restoring anxiety-activated magic to normal

Love - Pink dress. Possible effects include: calming enraged creatures, restoring anger-activated magic to normal, conjuring flowers, shape hedges

Sadness - Blue dress. Possible effects include: turns fountain spray into rain, conjure localized rain, compel others to cry

Self-doubt - Grey dress. Possible effects include: shrinking surrounding area

Forgiveness - White dress, gold detailing. Possible effects include: Reversing the magic of the Four Shades of Awesome

ESTEBAN STAFF MAGIC

Teleportation - Transports a person or object from one place to another. There are a few variants on how this ability works. Tapping the staff on the ground transports the user and surrounding people to an alternate location, typically not within view, and if the user has poor control, they can end up in random locations nearby. It can also be used by pointing the staff at a person or object and then pointing to the desired new location. Has a limited range, but with two people using it, it can even reach the Spirit World.

Farsight-esque - Scrying spell. Presumably, similar requirements and restrictions as the Scepter of Light’s farsight power apply.

Canaza-esque - Likely just the teleportation power again but it seems weird that an otherwise instantaneous teleportation effect would result in a magical beam battle, so this gets a separate listing. Presumably more powerful than canaza, seeing as it was also dragging Mateo across the ground.

NONSTANDARD SPELLS

“I wish to be small” - A power of the Amulet of Avalor that Elena bestowed upon Sofia during the events of Sofia the First. Shrinks Sofia down and is reversible upon her command. Still works even after Elena is freed from the amulet.

Shapeshifting into mermaid - A power of the Amulet of Avalor that Elena bestowed upon Sofia during the events of Sofia the First. Transforms Sofia into a mermaid on her request.

Ritual to free Elena - Wrapping the Amulet of Avalor around the wand that was used to seal Elena inside of it, and then placing it upon “The Crown of Aziluna” raises the statue of Aziluna from below the water (though not permanently) and frees Elena from the amulet. Unclear if the statue is specifically required or if Aziluna himself could have reversed it.

Nonverbal, wandless spell to change writing - A quick hand gesture to add a small piece of writing to a document. Unclear what the restrictions are on the length of the writing, the duration of the addition, or other factors, but can at least add a five-letter word. Unclear if there is an associated incantation for casting with a tamborita.

Mázico quitemo pok - Cast with a mázico to forcibly send someone to the Spirit World. The caster presumably has no control over where the target ends up.

Mázico místico más - Cast with a mázico to bestow the target with spirit guide stripes and all their associated powers, including the ability to traverse between the spirit and human world and locate the people they’re meant to guide. Unclear what would happen if cast on something that isn’t a spirit.

Purun - Forces the target to dance. Cast with a feather. Unclear if this is also a valid tamborita spell.

Assorted Chiloya spells - Chiloya can also use his feather to dispel purun and cause items to vanish.

The immortality spell - Enchanted the Alegría so that all those on board remain immortal. Once a year, the ship can pick up new crew members that also fall under the spell. No other magic works on board the ship except for that of the Captain. Unclear if it’s possible to ever leave the ship once the spell has taken hold.

“Magic from the great beyond, turn this stone into a wand” - The incantation to turn a magic-infused gemstone into a usable magic wand. Fails if the stone does not have enough power in it.

Amaláy’s conjurings - Despite being a ghost, Amaláy can still make use of magical abilities; although it could be that these abilities are due to her being a ghost. It’s unclear which. She performs magic to conjure a windstorm and manipulate floating masks, and both these spells are unspoken.

Coyo mote tozaza - Reveals hidden writing on Commander’s Rock and opens (and closes) the door, provided a jaquin paw is in contact with the switch stone outside.

Nonverbal, wandless silencing spell - Briefly seals the mouth of the target so they can’t speak, although they can still make noise. Possibly a variant on siletzi.

Vaya raya mística - A spirit guide spell to transfer one’s spirit guide stripes to another spirit. Requires contact between the two spirits.

Regresa raya mística - Spirit guide spell to reclaim one’s spirit guide stripes from another spirit. Requires contact between the two spirits.

Cuan metzli alza el atl, mocentlalia mágica de cihupilli a mi - Incantation for a ritual to siphon away another’s magic. Performed by holding the jewel from the Scepter of Night over the spell’s victim at moonrise. The incantation is repeated at least twice for the full ritual, and the jewel must be exposed to the moonlight. Unclear if this ritual would only work on Elena or if it would work on other magical individuals or creatures as well. Potentially fatal to the target of the ritual. Unclear if the magic is siphoned into the caster or into the jewel.

Assorted Zopilote magic - Zopilote can shapeshift at-will into a vulture, summon items to him without a wand, and shoot blasts of magic without a wand. It’s unclear if these are abilities specific to Zopilote or if he is simply casting non-verbal magic. He does use a tamborita later to perform at least the latter two abilities.

Caja coyó hina loyá - [Transcription approximate] The incantation associated with the use of the book spell reversal potion.

Nahua cencama momaquá - Old Maruvian releasing spell to break magical seals. Translates to “magic word escape.” Can be cast with a tamborita, but can also be cast by just reciting the words. It’s unclear which situations necessitate a wand to be used with the incantation.

Nahua cencama cazá - Old Maruvian disempowering spell that both removes the Chiki-Chiki’s ability to curse others and reverts the curses it had already cast. Unclear if this disempowering spell is specifically designed for the Chiki-Chiki or if it would work on other magical creatures as well. Does not require a wand to cast.

Nahua cencama quazicá - Old Maruvian sealing spell to imprison creatures. Does not require a wand to cast. Unclear why this is different from just closing the door to the shrine it was cast on.

Chatana summoning rituals - “Legs of spider black as the night, wings of an eagle, a web woven tight, fast as the wind, sharp as a bite, conjure a creature to give them a fright.” Conjures arañaguilitas. “Jellyfish, grow kraken size, with mighty wings and opal eyes.” Conjures a giant jellyfish. “Tiburón teeth and dragon fire-” Presumably would conjure a shark-like creature. Presumably all require Chatana’s diadem to cast, but unclear if anyone else would be able to replicate this effect even with the diadem. Chatana can also shoot generic blasts of magic.

Assorted Bronzino effects - Bronzino produces multiple magical effects, often without a tamborita, making it difficult to gauge which are spells, which are sleight of hand, and which are just flavor for the musical number, so they’re all grouped here for simplicity’s sake. These effects include: conjuring flowers, appearing in a puff of smoke, voice throwing, conjuring and dispelling conjured lions, growing muscles, conjuring a tea set, conjuring a flying shark, turning a flying shark into flowers, conjuring money, conjuring a crowd of people, conjuring a horse, and making a fountain spray water in patterns.

Coyo nahua kalikwah - Old Maruvian revealing spell to expose a magically disguised passage.

“Toktlee choktlee hekuppah” - Likely supposed to be toctli choctli hekupa, given other standard spelling conventions. Restores a withered chispa plant to a healthy state.

Tlaso tonatu, tlaso mestli, tlaso tipak - Ritual to supposedly create a circle of peace. Chanted while pacing in a circle and shaking a bundle of herbs. Unclear if there’s an actual magical effect.

MAGICAL CREATURES/ENTITIES

Jaquins - Flying jaguars capable of speech that are native to Vallestrella. They lay eggs to birth their young and seem to have a consistent, species-wide preference for the taste of anoki berries. Young jaquins can fly and speak in simple sentences shortly after hatching. Jaquins are specifically the only creatures that can open the gateway between Avalor and Vallestrella, but it’s unclear if they have any specific supernatural abilities beyond that.

Chanuls - A type of spirit that acts as a guide to humans, providing them with advice when they’re struggling. Wizards can conjure and speak to their chanuls with a spell. Each chanul has multiple humans that they’re tasked to guide, but it’s unclear if there is a cap on the amount. Chanuls must train before they are granted the magic stripes that let them pass between worlds to advise their humans.

Noblins - Small, purple, bipedal creatures capable of speech and at-will shapeshifting into dogs. They can also blow large gusts of wind and turn objects and living creatures to gold with a single touch. This effect is not reversible by the noblins themselves, but can be reversed by other means.

Rocadors - Large creatures that appear to be made entirely of stone and live near volcano peaks. They have some sort of bond with their volcano of residence such that they can cause it to erupt when their tempers flare. They can also cool their bodies by calming themselves. Unclear if the species as a whole is prone to struggles with anger management or if it’s just a wacky coincidence that the two rocadors we’ve met had that problem. Unclear what the status of a rocador’s volcano is once it moves out.

The Yacalli - A very polite and powerful giant that guards the bujitos of Cordoba. He wakes up when their homes have been endangered. Unclear if he has any supernatural abilities beyond existing.

Duendes - Mischievous elves from another world that can turn invisible at will for an unclear duration. Three especially significant ones can use their jewels to form a key that opens the portal to their world. Speak in a jabber.

Marposas - Bright purple dolphin-like creatures that lay eggs on the shore and have very devoted parent/child relationships.

Orizaba - A moth fairy that lives in the spirit world and gains the ability to cross into the human world during a total solar eclipse. She is only able to stay as long as the sun is blocked, and light harms her by burning holes in her wings and stifling her powers. Her powers include flight, shooting blasts of magic, and conjuring swarms of moths, which can be used to bind others, snuff out torches, and form shapes.

Troyo - A talking coyote with super speed.

Zanies - A group of especially eccentric spirits that live in the Loop of the Spirit World. Prone to making random strangers their rulers.

Water Spirit - Large, humanoid entity made entirely of water. Grows stronger by absorbing more water and can shoot blasts of it at adversaries. Unclear if this entity was created or summoned from a different world.

Butterfrogs - Brightly colored frogs with butterfly wings native to Vallestrella.

Velociervos - Brightly colored, exceptionally fast deer native to Vallestrella.

Peabunnies - Brightly colored rabbits with peacock tails native to Vallestrella. They have an elaborate friendship ritual involving dancing.

Flaringos - Brightly colored, remarkably relaxed flamingo-giraffe hybrids native to Vallestrella.

Sunbirds - Large and powerful feathered serpents that live for centuries and have an assortment of supernatural powers, including shapeshifting, projecting illusions, and restoring power to magical items. At least one has proven capable of divination, and can listen to the flames to see visions of the past and predict the future. One other was reportedly a powerful magical healer, such that even a statue of him can break powerful magical curses.

Marimonda - A forest sprite with powerful nature bending magic. She can create vines, trees, flowers, and other plants at will and in large amounts. Very agile.

Chonopos - Mischievous creatures said to come out from the underground during thunderstorms after three consecutive lightning strikes. They play pranks on people, like stuffing mud in their socks, stealing their food, or putting rocks in their pillow. Unclear if they’re real creatures or not, since they’re never seen in the show.

Sirenas - Aquatic humanoid people with fishlike tails and the power to sing a hypnotic melody that lures sailors into crashing their ships. Certain sirenas can turn their tails into legs when they go on land, based on their parentage. They only eat seaweed and kelp. Unclear what their relationship is to the mermaids that exist in other parts of the EverRealm.

Cuco & Ocho - A talking hippocamp and octopus, respectively. Unclear if they have any supernatural abilities beyond that.

Malandros - Talking, shapeshifting river dolphins. Whatever they shapeshift into seems to always have the purple color scheme of the malandros.

The Macoco - A two headed, talking sea beast. A powerful swimmer, and also capable of walking on land.

Kupi-Kupi - A creature capable of cursing people so that they run backward for an indefinite amount of time. The curse is cast via eye contact. Very agile, and speaks in a jabber.

Anchimon - A small, fiery imp that starts fires wherever it steps. A powerful jumper. Speaks human language, but only in small, broken phrases. Created by Chatana.

Chatana - A winged sorceress with the power to create magical creatures of varying degrees of sapience. Gains her power from a golden diadem that she wears. Unclear what she is capable of without it. Unclear how others would be affected by wearing the diadem themselves, but presumably it’s usable only by Chatana, since otherwise there would have been no reason for Ash to recruit her once she had the diadem in her possession.

Dragallos - Fusion of a lizard and chicken that can eat disproportionately large amounts of food very rapidly. Capable of treating even typically inedible material, like rocks, as edible. Native to Vallestrella, and a rare case of a Vallestrella creature not speaking human language, instead just communicating in a jabber. They can move at fast speeds by rolling up.

Alpacamundis - Fusion of an alpaca and a coatimundi. Native to Vallestrella.

Snurtles - Fusion of a turtle and a snail. Very slow. Native to Vallestrella.

Chiki-Chiki - A small blue gnome created by Chatana that curses people with a never-ending laughing fits when it touches them. Can be rendered harmless by a disempowering spell, at which point any already cast curses break as well.

Pili - A talking weasel conjured by Chatana with the ability to spit small bursts of fire.

Sea Nymphs - Humanoid women with nature bending powers, specifically over water. They can raise and lower precise sections of it at will, even in areas where they themselves are unable to reach. They can also create and destroy barriers that can imprison other sea nymphs, along with magical, concealing fog.

Tziloco - A magical, talking bat with the power to shapeshift into other creatures. He can also use his wings to detect when he or someone near him is being scried on.

Arañaguilitas - Baby spider eagles created by Chatana. They fly in swarms and shoot entangling webs.

Kizin - A giant created by Chatana. Capable of speaking, but uses babyish speech patterns. His skin deflects magic, with the exception of a small patch on the bottom of his left foot.

The Moyacu - A giant sea beast that guards La Isla de Yalcatura. Large enough to eat small ships whole and has a strong enough bite to break the crystals conjured by seal it, making it the first thing we’ve seen powerful enough to break them.

Giant Jellyfish - A giant jellyfish created by Chatana. Has a powerful, electric sting and can float through the air.

The Four Shades of Awesome - Formerly known as The Shadows of the Night, this group of four powerful magical entities destroyed the civilization of Maru long ago before the Jewel of Maru was used to seal them away. The specific entities are detailed below.

Vuli - The Chaos Shade. With a single touch, he can cause the targeted creature to behave erratically. The affected creature seems to still have awareness and control of their actions, but their perceptions are skewed in such a way that they may attack their allies or take other abnormal actions.

Yolo - The Animal Shade. Can shapeshift at will into another animal or forcibly shapeshift another creature into another animal by firing a ball of blue magic at it. Implied that the resulting creature is random, even to Yolo, but that may be a choice on his part. His powers can affect the other Shades as well.

Hetz - The Weather Shade. Can conjure powerful, localized thunderstorms, and can be destroyed by his own power.

Cahu - The Time Shade. The most dangerous of the shades. She can slow down time in a localized area by turning her hourglass on its side, and she can freeze an individual or an object in time in the form of a stone tablet by striking them with a sand grain.

Grand Macaw - The eccentric ruler of the dark side of the Spirit World. Has a fondness for parties, olaball, and ambiguous promises. The only spirit that can allow a mortal that has fallen through the Shadow Gateway to return to the human world.

MISC

The Amulet of Avalor - A powerful Maruvian relic with an assortment of powers. It can draw its wearer inside of it to protect them, trap others inside as a prison, dole out powers and curses based on the will of someone contained inside of it, or acts as a more general wish granting artifact when someone is not inside. Bestows magical powers upon someone trapped inside for a long duration.

Wand - A type of arcane focus usable by certain spellcasters. Made from gemstones that have already been imbued with magic. Spells are cast by pointing the wand at the target and saying the corresponding word or words, but apparently there is some additional factor required to use one. Certain spells can be cast wordlessly.

Tamborita - A drum wand used by Avaloran and Maruvian wizards. Made from a variety of materials. A regular wizard’s tamborita gets its power from a gem called a chispa, but a malvago tamborita gets its power from another malvago casting a ritual on it. Spells are cast by pointing the wand, striking the drum, and saying the corresponding word or words. Some spells take multiple hits to cast. Presumably, a skilled wizard can cast certain spells without a verbal component.

Scepter of Light - A Maruvian arcane focus created by Amaláy, the final Royal Wizard of Maru, and powered up by a dip in the magical well of Takaína. In its original state, it could control light in all its forms, and had a finite list of spells revolving around that principle. Unclear what the extent of its powers are in its new state, but can now manipulate physical matter as well by creating crystals. Capable of destroying the Scepter of Night, but apparently not the scepter’s jewel. Only channels ‘good’ magic. Glows when in contact with someone with powerful good magic. Spells are cast by just pointing the scepter and saying the corresponding word or words.

Scepter of Night - A Maruvian arcane focus considered equal and opposite to the Scepter of Night. Never explicitly stated to have also been created by Amaláy, and depicted as being wielded by an unknown spellcaster on the walls of Tepet Muul. Presumably, it can control darkness in all its forms. Capable of damaging the Scepter of Light, but is ultimately destroyed by it. The pieces can be safely separated and put back together, but the parts are inert while separated, save for the jewel, which can be used in other dark magic rituals. Spells are cast by pointing the scepter and saying the corresponding word or words.

Magic cell bars - Enchanted, glowing green bars used to imprison the Noblins under Shuriki’s rule. Unclear what benefit they provide over regular prison bars, since they vanished upon Shuriki’s defeat.

Fountain of Youth - A magical spring located on the vanishing isle of Santalos. Drinking the water makes the drinker younger, presumably in rough proportion to the amount of water consumed. The effect occurs in fairly abrupt stages and does not kick in immediately after drinking.

Aging flower - A magical flower located on the vanishing isle of Santalos. Eating petals of the flower makes the consumer older, presumably in rough proportion to the amount consumed. The effect kicks in much faster than the effect of the water from the Fountain of Youth.

Enchanted journal - A notebook formerly owned by Alacazar that has been enchanted to reveal clues that lead to the discovery of the hidden Codex Maru. Each clue is revealed as the former is solved, with the exception of the first, which is revealed by the Royal Wizard asking the book where to find the Codex. Probably a good thing it was Mateo that ended up in the position.

Eye of Midnight - A powerful Maruvian jewel that can freeze a solar eclipse in place when the jewel is placed atop the Sun Stone in the park. It can be destroyed by glow, and once destroyed, the frozen eclipse will end.

Alchemy - A process that seems to be somewhere between chemistry and potion making. Capable of turning liquids into solids and back without temperature changes. A beginner's form of magic, but unclear what its practical uses are.

Invisibility spell/potion - Something is used to turn the statuettes in Realm of the Jaquins invisible, but we never see if it is a spell, potion, or some other kind of magic. The objects themselves are rendered invisible, though they still leave shadows.

Quita Moz’s magic jars - Enchanted jars used to contain magical creatures. Anything that partially enters one is sucked inside and trapped when the jar is closed. It can be freed by opening the lid.

Cursed gecko statuette - A small golden gecko statue that transforms anyone who takes it from its pedestal into a giant gecko. The curse can be broken by returning the statue.

Coza Kex - An enchanted fire opal used by the Maruvians to punish wrongdoers with a “dose of their own medicine.” The curse is inflicted by contact with the stone, and undone by reversing the action that the stone deemed inappropriate. The stone can adjudicate these wrongdoings and curses on its own, without any input from a spellcaster.

Enchanted masks - A trio of full-head masks shaped like a bird’s head, a crocodile’s head, and a bull’s head. When worn, they partially transform their wearers into the creatures they depict. The curse is broken by removing the masks. Unclear if more of these masks exist.

Jewel of Maru - Supposedly, the most powerful magical jewel in the Kingdom of Maru. Powerful enough to drive back the forces of darkness that escaped from the spirit world, but also completely wiped out the Maruvians in the process.

Cursed sword of El Guapo - A sword that once belonged to a General that called himself “El Guapo”, and now contains his disembodied spirit. When held, Guapo’s spirit hijacks the wielder’s body and exercises a limited amount of control over it. He can control it in totality for unclear periods of time, but if the host’s and Guapo’s objectives are not aligned, they fight for control of the body, with Guapo having varying degrees of control over different body parts. The sword also returns to the new wielder’s hand regardless of measures taken to contain or dispose of the sword until the curse is broken. The curse can be broken with a special potion, though it only removes the spirit from the host body, not the sword.

Nico Quixo - A large, magical, Maruvian hammer than when held, hammers whatever is in front of it automatically. Can drag its user roughly around if they aren’t strong enough to control it.

Milagra - A special type of seaweed that acclimates people to the water. When wrapped around a person’s torso, it allows them to breathe underwater, and when wrapped around their legs as well, it transforms them into a sirena. The sirena transformation does not become permanent until the tail stops glowing.

El Escudo - A shield enchanted to block magical attacks. Operates like the spell cahua, where it stops the magic short rather than redirecting it.

Red Avari blossom - A plant that when eaten, can reverse a sirena transformation, provided that the transformed sirena’s tail has not stopped glowing yet. Grows on Isla Botigua.

Vidaflor - A dandelion-like plant with seeds that can temporarily restore youth to someone by blowing the seeds onto them. Very rare.

The breath of life - An enchantment obtained by touching the forehead of the statue of Aziluna. It manifests as a glowing orb of light that can restore life to the dying when they inhale it.

Grotto Metamo - A cavern in Vallestrella that contains a magical tree, capable of forcibly transforming people that come into contact with its roots. To transform a creature, one must say the name of the desired creature, and the next thing to come into contact with the roots is transformed permanently unless the one who called the transformation decides to turn them back. Direct contact is not necessary; simply coming into contact with water that the roots are in can also cause the transformation.

Sunbird Temple Curse - A chamber of a Maruvian sunbird temple enchanted to curse the people inside it if anyone raises their voice too much. The curse in question shrinks the occupants, and can be reversed by a simple enlarging spell.

Crystal forge of Takaína - A well of magic crystals underneath a temple in Tepet Muul. The crystals hold immeasurable power, and reportedly contact with just one is enough to grant a person powerful and potentially dangerous magic. Falling into the well grants an enormous magical boost, along with a costume change. The Maruvians made all their magical artifacts at this forge. Presumably can’t be teleported into.

Fire stones - Some type of magical reagent found only in Paraíso. Unclear what their specific use is.

Salma - A silver guitar that places people under a trance when they hear music played on it, with the exception of the one playing. The affected can be distinguished by an eerie blue glow washing out their regular eye color. While under its spell, they perform any orders given by the one playing, even to the point of attacking their allies.

Bolagro - A bag that’s enchanted to fit anything inside, regardless of size. The bag stretches around whatever it is trying to contain, and then shrinks back down to its regular size. Implied to only be able to hold one thing at a time.

Ixlan’s gloves - A set of gloves enchanted with powerful lightning magic that drastically enhance the power of the wearer’s blows. Unclear if they only work for Ixlan or if another wearer could utilize their full power.

Quita Moz’s closet - A pocket dimension used for storing magical artifacts like the crystal tamborita and sending people on Wonderland-esque quests. Either contains a myriad of magical creatures living in the pocket dimension, such as golden noblins, a talking jaguar, and tiny glowing ghosts, or just conjures elements as needed for the quests. Likely the latter given the presence of Peaches the guinea pig and the grumpy butterfrog.

The Shadow Gateway - A portal to the Spirit World located under the ocean just outside of Nueva Vista. A sigil on the wall of Nueva Vista lights the way to it. The portal is specifically used to trap the Shadows of the Night within the Spirit World, and a mortal entering through the Shadow Gateway can only be returned to the human world with permission of the Grand Macaw.

Potion-holding arrows - Arrows designed to hold small amounts of potions in the arrowheads, so that the potion can be activated on the arrow’s contact with a target.

#elena of avalor #eoa #disney #eoa spellbook project #praying that the readmore works bc this post is a doozy and it's my first time using one #this started as a personal reference but I got lost in the sauce #ditto original

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