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dana-chan-the-control-brain · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on, Invader Zim Quarterly: Holiday Special

WEEEE WISH YOU A MERRY JINGLY WE WISH YOU A MERRY JINGLY!

Ahhhhh It’s out! I’m so excited!

But I always get excited when it has my man Membrane and my man Eric Trueheart involved with the comics.

Also santa.. Tbh, I was excited and nervous about this quarterly.

Excited because it has Membrane santa backstory...

But I was nervous because that it means they might bring back the santa-blob monster from the Holiday special on the TV... and The Christmas special is one of my least favorite IZ episodes... I mean... I rewatch it occasionally, and it’s fun, but I’m just kinda used to IZ having more BITE in it’s satire if you know what I mean? The Christmas Special in the IZ universe doesn’t really say anything about the capitalism of Christmas... it’s not like IZ hasn’t made fun of capitalism before. (that’s the whole show) The Christmas Special in the show just kinda fell flat of my expectations of what an Invader Zim episode should be....

The only thing I respect the Holiday Special for, is that it goes down the “Santa isn’t real” route in a kid’s show and sticks to it. (there’s no “real santa” that shows up and “solves everything”) All of the “Santa’s Helpers” confused the Santa mythos with the Christianity Jesus mythos. (”waiting one day for his return”) Which makes sense, since IZ is like dystopian future Suburbia Hell. I just kinda like that there’s no “real santa” that interfered to “fix everything” and that Zim himself ended up CREATING Santa when he didn’t exist previously. Like I find that kinda cool...

Other then that, I just kinda wanted something else from the Hoilday special then what I got. (It taking priority over scrapped episodes like “the trail” and “Ten minutes to doom” and “mopiness of doom” does not help it’s case in being one of my C-tier episodes...)

So maybe this quarterly will fill the void of what I wanted out of a Holiday special? Well, let’s see.

SPOILERS FOR THE QUARTERLY BELOW THE CUT

Ways to get Dana off-board immediately: Monster Santa is canon.

I always never liked to view the special as canon for ways that it fell flat before.

And I had the excuse of saying that the snowman was an unreliable narrator and I could adapt it down the line in my fic as a different story.

I just didn’t like the idea of Monster-horror-blob santa... Like... Cool design... but he just kinda represents everything I disliked about the special... (including the major inconsistency of when Tak’s ship got fixed...)

But then again.. I need to remember IZ’s lore isn’t as consistent as I think it is sometimes...

Okay, fine. Monster blob santa real... what else you got for me, Holiday special?

FACE HUGGER SANTA! FACE HUGGER SANTA! I AM NOT INTO IT!

WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?! NO. DANA HATES THIS!

Okay, kinda into it because this means that ZIM CREATED SANTA in this mythos... I am dying.... wait.. this takes place in the future then...soo...?

haoFhaGHAOhfgg

It was all a dream?!

GOOD.

my heart couldn’t take it if horror-santa was real...

Also... that nightcap and bed... Does this mean we’re going to have an Invader Zim Christmas Carol?!?!?! I know that’s been adapted a schmillion times but I would be so into that....

Also... Flying... hamm...

Good ol’ Zim... Repressing those memories...

Also this being the THIRD ETF reference in a quarterly, It can be very safe to say the Quarterly issues take place after the events of ETF.

Clembrane exists in the Quarterly, Membrane has robot arms, Zim remembers this (kinda) Yeah this is definately ETF verse and it’s here to stay.

Christmas Carol?! I’m down for this... and I can’t help but notice their claws look familiar

OH HOLY HELL I WAS RIGHT! THESE GUYS! I LOVE THESE GUYS?!

Why are you here tho?

I’m a bit lost on why these guys wanta take over the earth, but they’re hilarious so I’m just glad they’re here.

Also... The Christmas Special is Schrodinger's Christmas... did it happen, or was it a dream, or the tales of a lunatic snowman... I guess I’ll never know.

The issue goes on for an IZ Christmas Carol parody (heck yea) and the visions are all hilarious and I’m not gonna spoil them here... but...

Eric.... this is terrifying..........thanks I hate it.

TINY DIB THOUGH! GHAOGHAHGAHAHA

THIS IS GREAT

THE MORE DIB SUFFERS THE MORE I LOVE IT!

“Though I am Dib and sickly father”

I’m dying XDDDDD

Also... What the fuck is Zim’s reaction here...

I find it funny that Zim has put Dib into simulated realities before... (in the show and comics) and in the show, Dib is all powerful and in the comics, Dib is just himself and Zim is his brother..

But seeing a simulated Dib all weak and pathetic and chronically ill BOTHERS ZIM?!?!

That’s... well that’s interesting.

Thought he’d laugh at this honestly, but he seems greatly annoyed...

I CHANGED MY MIND! THIS IS THE BEST THING!

(those who know me know why I’m dying over this)

YES!!!

ZIM DOESN’T LIKE WHEN PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR HIM OR PITY HIM!

(which confirms like a lot of my hcs and adds spicy kindling to my au much mad respect)

This I find interesting... Zim complepative over his lonely/abandoned grave. It’s like he really doesn’t know how to feel. It’s more of a numbness then a sadness. Or he noticed how empty his life is...

He feels lonely and empty about it... which tracks considering how Zim’s greatest fear in the Trial was to be deleted and never be remembered by anyone.

I don’t know... This panel makes me feel things...

Johnen: Haha. Zim’s not that deep a character.

Eric: Hey for the Christmas special, let’s have Zim parody a Christmas carol and feel lonely staring at his own empty grave when he realizes no one cares about him or misses him.

Johnen: Cool. Do it.

What are you two assholes doing to me, man?! I have feelings!

AND ONCE AGAIN!

Zim hates pity and people feeling bad and sorry for him.

Man this makes me so sad... And it really feels like this issue looked into my brain again, cause I have some plans relating to Zim not wanting sympathy or pity from anyone later down the line (okay I’ll shut up about my au. We’re talking Zim here)

And of course, Zim breaks everything like he usually does. (this time on purpose)

Also nice callback that Zim remembered that Dib said he liked his boots one time in the Poop-wizard issue.

Also, it ends? I guess this quarterly has a few shorter stories this time... which I’m fine with.

Also, Zim should consider Green and Blue like D-list friends at this point and just invite them in for some fundip or something (come on, Zim, it’s Christmas.....)

GASP!?!?!

LITTLE MEMBRANE!!!

AND GRANDPARENTS CONFIRMED!!!

Wait... so his Parents are scientists too? Is that why he always wanted to be a scientist?

But then wait.... If Membrane inherited Membrane Labs from his parents... Why is HIS FACE the brand of the Company?..... There’s so much Membrane-face brand merch in the show. (it decorates his home..)

Like even if they were dead, if his parents founded Membrane labs, I feel they’d still be the face. of the company... (that’s how a lot of corporate faces are these days... they show some old dead guy who made the company as opposed to the son who inherited the Company.... Like everyone knows who Walt Disney/Mickey Mouse is, but unless you pay close attention to that kinda thing, not everyone knows who the current chairman or CEO is in the modern age....)

I just find that a bit odd.

Anyways... I feel people can still do what they want with Membrane’s parents and get away with it. I’m not changing my “his parents were farmers” headcanon. Sorry comic..

BUT I LOVE THEIR DESIGNS.

I love how Membrane looks a lot like his mother, and his father is just BUFF GAZ with a pipe.... Truely legends.

GASP!!!

COLLEGEBRANE COLLEGEBRANE COLLEGEBRANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOOKOUT DIB, THIS IS YOUR FUTURE!

I FUCKING LOVE HOW OILY HE LOOKS.. AND IT ADDS UP CAUSE...

The Membrane Men when they don’t shower or bathe in months.....

Someone help these two.

(thank god Membrane got better at personal hygiene.)

Also Teenbrane STILL has his human arms and not his robo-arms.

This means he loses his arms later in life... YUSH HORRAY FOR HEADCANNONS BEING VALIDATED!

He didn’t lose his arms in a shark accident when he was a KID! It happened WAY LATER!

NICE!

OH MY GOD HE IS BABY!

HE IS SO SHY AND ACKWARD! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

I LOVE HIM!

He is just... all sweat and hiding his work but also very passionate and spiteful.

Like you can see who he grew up to become, and you can also see how a kid like Dib came out of a man like him...

But I love social anxiety awkward early twenties/late teens Membrane... He is a baby!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

MEMBRANE ;w;

Basically, Membrane knows that Santa isn’t real, but he doesn’t want to be mad at his parents so he harbors a grudge on Santa instead... THAT’S SO SWEET I’M CRYING TTmTT

LIKE THAT IS SO SWEET AND I’M CRYING!

(also I love how me and Ceph understand Membrane’s character too well that the gesture he does in the 2nd panel here are reminisant of our fic so many times... Like we have his mannerisms down and I love when the mask slips from Membrane and we get to see a real person... augh soo good)

WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO MAKE MY MAN THIS SAD?! ONLY I CAN MAKE HIM SAD!

MEMBRANE TTMTT

AUUUGHH

Also probably guessing the parents are dead... I’m just laughing at their designs...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Yes you are, Professor Membrane... Don’t let anyone tell you different. (actually, please do) Well, I mean, At least you’re trying and get progressively better.

(also... this probably means everytime Dib has asked his Dad for a dangerous weapon to fight Zim with, Membrane just gives it to him no questions asked and I’m doing a MAJOR concern about this man’s parenting skills... get help please good sir!)

Also, Dib really saved the day again here (like he did in Dib’s big day)

Dib called about destroying santa when Membrane was in one of his lowest points... He hides it really well... Especially from his children..

Ah.. I loved that one.

But I’m a huge Membrane Simp though.

I did find the stuff about Membrane’s parents a little weird... like I said regarding how Membrane’s face is the brand of Membrane labs...

Could be true that they were other scientists and that Membrane founded Membrane labs later... but that seems highly unlikely...

Also... Why does the house look that hug when in the christmas special, it looked kinda like...well... just not that, and kinda more humble from the interior and not some big rocket lab...

So yeah... AMAZING character building for Membrane (which I eat up)

Hilarious Grandparent Designs. But I still prefer @esthyradler ‘s Grandparents. The superior Grandparents.

Anyways... The Quarterly was GREAT!

I kinda find it funny the Zim story is the weaker one of the two again... But I honestly blame the Christmas Horror blob connection and the Christmas Carol parody.

Or maybe my Membrane Bias is clouding my mind here. I do have Zim bias but sometimes Zim can frustrate me. There’s just so many times Zim can do and say the same things you know? Zim is my baby, but sometimes his denial and annoyance with everyone can be very predictable at points. Zim was just way more fun in the last quarterly than this one.

With Membrane it’s more of a blank slate what to do with him cause he ony started really mattering as a character since ETF. Yes, I do love show Membrane, but I admit he wasn’t exactly a character then. More of a presence and excuse for why Dib had access to lab equipment. With Dib’s Dilemma and this Hoilday special, the Quarterly folks seem determined to turn him into a fully realized character with the rest of the cast and I’m extremely excited to hear that!

(Computer issue/backstory WHEN?!)

I don’t really have ratings or systems for these but hope you liked my thoughts.

Merry Christmas everyone.

#Invader Zim #invader zim quarterly #IZ comics #IZ comics Spoilers #danachan's rants #Professor Membrane

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heraldofzaun · 3 years ago

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//Still lurking.

Some thoughts below the cut. A little melancholic. A little ranty. Many thoughts on how Viktor is perceived by the fandom at large. It got away from me.

I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I have followers here and this is also a Viktor blog... I think it would be nice if people stopped making fun of Viktor’s accent - I saw T/BSkyen’s (I think that keeps me out of the tag) shorts video on Viktor, and it was disheartening that he chose to make fun of Viktor’s accent several times throughout a one-minute video. No other character with a hammy, over-the-top accent, as far I know, receives this treatment. No one makes fun of Caitlyn’s British accent in character analyses of her. No one makes fun of Fiora’s French accent in character analyses of her. (I just checked his videos on them, actually, and guess what - no mocking their accents by doing them! Although Fiora’s accent does get mentioned, at the least.)

Just... stop doing it? We know the accent is cartoonishly bad and not accurate to actual Russian accents at all. But why, specifically, are people - T/BSkyen, in this instance - compelled to make fun of Viktor by putting on an accent and saying “Get reed of all emotions“ and “GLORIOUS EVOLUTION” and “BEEP BOOP ROBOT BRAIN”? (The misspelling in the first is not mine. It is in the actual subtitles for the video.)

I mean, we all know that the answer is the fact that American (and other countries, but we can focus on America for now) media spent the Cold War convincing Americans that Russians and Eastern Europeans were mindless followers of ideology and/or Crazy Insane Scientists, instead of like... people with diverse thoughts and feelings who may or may not agree with their government, but like... I have to ask the rhetorical questions here because no one else is going to apparently. Anyways it’s 2021 stop conflating people and the governments they live under, I guess.

Anyways, also very disheartening that I just checked the pinned comment on that video and he is now saying that Viktor’s endpoint is the Battlecast universe, which is not a canon fact even in current lore. It’s an assumption. I can’t even say that Full Machine Viktor is Viktor’s endpoint, because that was retconned into being a janitor skin that randomly breaks into Spanish in the skin bio for a... “joke”? (Because that’s a cool thing to do. I’d ask how that got past anyone, but that’s a pointless question.) But Battlecast is not stated anywhere to be the end result of canonical Viktor, as far as I know. I suppose it’s not stated to not be the result, but... Like, what other character gets an AU skinline that people then say has to be their canonical endgoal when it is not said to be their canonical endgoal by any official source?

Quothe the loremaster... “The endpoint of Viktor's quest is the Battlecast universe. In case y'all forgot. Read between the lines of his stories even a little bit before stanning him, I'm begging you.”

The entirety of the pinned comment is frustrating. It is frustrating not only because it clashes entirely with the funny comical tone of the minute-long short, which also decides to yet again conflate transhumanism with being trans (we have heard my thoughts on this before. Please stop doing this), but because it is unfortunately true in aspects about current Viktor. He is really not a good man, even though you may be able to argue that Riot’s biased narrator choices mean that a canonical version of the Viktor-Jayce fight does not exist. (Because both lores tell their sides of the story. Biasedly.) But as the story stands, his character getting filled out didn’t make him more morally ambiguous than his original counterpart. The ambiguity that existed originally was due to us not knowing a lot about him and thus being able to interpret things the way we wished. (I’m sure that there is still room for interpretation in the new lore, but it seems lesser to me. Also, his color story is framed atrociously. It’s going for warm and fuzzy when the content of it is giving a kid drugs but this is a long enough post already...)

Riot does not know what to do with Viktor. They’re content to portray him as a Russian mad scientist and buffoon in LoR and in some other media, because... [gestures at the struck-out paragraph above]. But then they have his lore which... could be interesting, maybe, if it weren’t convinced that the way to tell a morally grey story is to have narrators more unreliable than a pull-start lawn mower. Like, they just don’t know what to do with him.

Any analysis of him needs to come with that caveat, not someone deciding that the best way to spent a minute of analysis is to make multiple jokes about Viktor’s accent being stereotypical via... feeding into it being stereotypical... and saying that transhumanism is related to trans rights in any inherent way.

Also, T/BSkyen says that Viktor only has an augmented hand and the third arm, which conveniently ignores the fact that Prototype is probably supposed to be taken as semi-canonical considering its name and the fact it was made when backstory-related skins were a more common thing. (And also because it hasn’t been retconned into being a janitor.) It also conveniently ignores the fact that Viktor’s lower legs clearly don’t look like armor on his model, but this is a side tangent that doesn’t really matter, so...

Whatever, right? I’ve clearly put more thought into this than League’s local loremaster put into that video and subsequent “no guys he really is a baddie stop stanning him and grow critical thinking skills” comment. Sorry if I sound jaded here or am taking this far too seriously or whatever, it’s just... man, it’s a lot. It makes trying to do my take in any public capacity feel kind of like shit, because it’s clear that the general perception of Viktor is currently 1) Haha Funny Accent Man, 2) Trans Rights!1!, and/or 3) He’s Evil :(, and it sucks. I already am writing for a niche audience who will accept a Viktor who never went to Piltover and who exists in old Zaun. I know that that’s niche. I’m okay with it being niche, I think.

But it sucks to build up all this character and do all this writing and try to... I don’t know, present a nuanced view of someone, and then just get another fucking joke about his accent or his design tropes or about what transhumanism is. Especially when those jokes are what people remember, right?

Sorry. This got whiny. But I think it explains why I’ve lost so much steam on writing our favorite Machine Herald, because stuff like this just keeps kind of... happening.

Thank you to the folks that send in anons about my analyses or who like my posts about my artistic endeavors or just... well, interact in general. It does mean a lot to me that you guys are invested enough to hang around and read 2k words of me doing the Pepe Silvia scene from Always Sunny as I connect dots that might not have been meant to be connected. It’s just hard to keep doing it, sometimes, and I guess this is one of those moments.

#out of augments

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pauldron-pieces · 4 years ago

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Rumon 'Crushjaw' Thaerskaine's Backstory: Rearmed

Fandom: Dungeons And Dragons (5E)

Pairing: N/A, Crushjaw-centric

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: This is a hypothetical scenario featuring original characters in a world created by my Dungeon Master. As usual, this is non-canon and I own nothing aside from intellectual properties specifically attached to Crushjaw. This installment is mechanically unsound in a multitude of ways and ignores certain important lore facets. Trigger warnings are listed inside. Enjoy!

Taglist: @sporadic-fics and @cookiethewriter!

Inspired By: Black Hill: Low Force

[Crushjaw is a level zero barbarian, and his appearance can be found here.]

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains multiple triggering scenes including semi-graphic depictions of gore and mentions of bile/vomit. Reader discretion is advised. Stay safe!]

He would have loved to claim he had been goaded into it. Would have loved to say that it wasn't his fault or explain that it hadn't happened like he remembered. Except Rumon knew all too well that responsibility didn't work like that. His memory may be faulty, but the proof was in Krae's testimony.

Himself and his childhood friend Krae had both been interested in the same individual from a neighboring clan, the two of them butting heads over the object of their affections more than once. So of course when Krae came to him with news of an enormous ogre that had set up its stomping grounds near one of their trade routes, Rumon fairly leaped at the opportunity to fight the beast and claim victory over it. After all, what better way to prove his worth and earn a name from the clan leader than with an act of heroism?

Krae naturally came along, saying that he feared the ogre may be too tall an order for even Rumon to handle. This just made Rumon all the more determined to manage the creature single handedly.

They set up camp near where Krae claimed to have spotted the beast, the two goliaths joking and swapping drinks from a canteen of strong spirits. Truly, until both of them had set their sights on the same person, they had been brothers in all but blood. Rumon still regarded Krae as such, trusting to a fault, and thusly he missed the shifty glances the older goliath kept aiming at the treeline while the sun set.

"Come, Rumon! The moon is high. With its light, surely we shall find the ogre." Krae had cajoled after Rumon was fairly drunk, "unless, of course, you are afraid of a night hunt?"

"I fear nothing!" Rumon had boasted, "the gods are with me this night. You shall witness my triumph, Krae!"

Bold words. His grandmatron had always said that pride went before a fall.

Rumon recalled very little of the hunt after that, his memory muddied with drink. Despite Krae's insistence that the moonlight was sufficient, Rumon's recollections were oddly dim. He vaguely remembered stumbling around beneath the thick spruce canopy, his warhammer clumsy in his hands.

He remembered swinging with all his might and striking something that gave under the assault, the liquor Krae had plied him with steeling his ringing blows to something that rivaled even Varandur's mountain shapers.

He remembered when the weight of his weapon suddenly vanished, and there was a rancid gust of seethingly-hot air that blew his hair to the side. The roar was strange to his ear, far-off and faded. Emptiness rang too loud for him to hear as he wondered where his weapon had gone.

Rumon remembered realizing that he was flat on his stomach on the ground.

Where the memory became razor-sharp once more was when he tried to push himself up onto his elbows, and found his body woefully unbalanced. The goliath searched for the source of the problem and quickly located it, the sight of what was left of his mangled right arm more than enough to jerk him back to stark sobriety.

It had been severed at the elbow, though the term was a bit too kind for the injury. The appendage looked more as though it had been crushed with something that might have had an edge at one point.

Rumon had raised his eyes, mind grinding to a halt when he spotted his warhammer several yards away with his right hand still gripping the haft. Past that, along a trail marked by shattered tree trunks, slumped an enormous ogre clutching a slab of a sword. It seemed closer to a chunk of masonry than a true weapon, and Rumon's stomach had churned as he realized what had happened.

Mercifully, the agony had struck him and he promptly vomited before losing consciousness.

×+×

Gods only knew how long he had slept after that. It was a miracle he had even made it back to their healer; apparently Krae had all but carried him home. The embarrassment from that instance alone would have been enough to kill Rumon, never mind the fact that his dominant arm was now nothing but a bandaged stump.

The grandmatron would have none of it though, her craggy face somehow even more stern when Rumon managed to finally rouse himself.

"You have been named Crushjaw, little pebble. A worthy title." Her tone was icy. "I have gone through much trouble to save you. I am indebted to our chieftain."

Crushjaw. Rumon's face fairly burned with shame. "The ogre-?"

"Krae slew the beast. He brought one of its tusks back as proof. The chieftain was quite flattered by his offering, praising Krae for his accomplishment and naming him Tuskclaimer. As for his name for you..." The matron bowed her head, her expression one of grief.

"Grandma…"

"Don't you grandma me, little pebble!" The elderly goliath erupted, glaring fiercely at Rumon. Her eyes filled with tears as she went on, "you are anathema now, dear Rumon. Once you are able to walk, the clan leader has declared that you are to leave. I am no longer your grandmother. This place is no longer your home."

"'Leave'?" Rumon repeated stupidly. It felt as though everything was crashing down around him, his mind racing to comprehend. Their clan hadn't had an expulsion in his entire lifetime, wariness and confidence found too equally amongst their ranks. Compounding his confusion was the claim that Krae had killed the ogre. Rumon had been certain... "I understand." He said finally. "I am unworthy of your kindness. Thank you."

He couldn't comprehend why his grandmother wept harder at his acceptance. This was the way it had always been.

×+×

Crushjaw.

It certainly felt as though he was being crushed to death. Loneliness was a miserable traveling companion.

Rumon, very nearly unable to fend for himself, resorted to setting small game snares in the uncharted wilds. It was a child's way of hunting, but he was too hungry to be bothered by the prick to his already-bruised pride.

The few people he did encounter seemed overly wary of him. After all, a one-armed, exiled goliath would be the type to resort to petty theft.

But he wasn't a threat. He had never been a threat before, aside from just being large. Rumon couldn't understand the sudden shift in demeanor; he couldn't possibly fathom the air of desperation that his injury gave off.

It began to get easier when the weather cooled, the bulk of the thick cloak from his grandmother concealing his missing arm. The wound had not healed prettily, but Rumon knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. He hadn't died. That was all he could hope for.

He wandered alone for most of the cold times, his only companions the booming pines that fractured from the weight of the ice and snow. His thoughts had a habit of straying to Krae, and he wondered what had truly transpired that evening more than he would care to admit. Had he imagined killing the ogre? Was his mind that addled by the strength of the drink they had shared?

Surely Krae wouldn't have lied. Nothing good ever came of lying or taking the credit for someone else's accomplishments. Rumon eventually settled on the assumption that his memory must have been faulty.

After that, the whole world seemed a gray and unforgiving place, and the goliath could feel himself fading into something of the same type. Something ragged and harsh, no longer a proud warrior but a lamed animal with a crushed jaw.

That is, until the day he encountered an old elf hanging by the leg from his horse's saddle.

"You there!" The elven man shouted once he seemed to notice the large individual sauntering up through the trunks of barren maples. "Don't suppose you'd be able to lend me a hand?"

Rumon, for whatever reason, found himself throwing his mantle back over his shoulder to reveal the stump of his arm. "Good thing you only need one hand, sirrah. It's all I have to offer." He remarked.

The elf nearly died of laughter, already beet-red in the face from being stuck hanging upside down for so long. To Rumon's shock however, when he circled around the horse to help the elf dislodge himself, he realized that the leg that wasn't caught in the stirrups was severed at the knee. The fellow's pant leg was neatly pinned at the joint, padding sewn into the area as if to mimic a kneecap.

Before Rumon could say anything though, the wiry elf explained, "I lost my leg a few miles back, and this damned animal dragged me along until she got bored. Don't suppose you can accompany me a little ways until I relocate it? Thing is worth its weight in gold."

The goliath easily hefted the older fellow into the saddle before his words caught up with him. "You...lost your leg?" Rumon blinked, his brow furrowed in confusion. "I was unaware that elves could regrow limbs."

The elf looked at him a little sideways, muttering something about still waters running deep before he just shook his head and laughed, "no son, it's a genuine Chuck original. A fake leg."

A fake leg. Rumon seized the horse's bridle, desperation giving his voice a new level of gravel as he begged for more information. The elf shrewdly bargained with him: in exchange for help in reclaiming his prosthetic, he would gladly share what information he had.

"My name is Shawell." The elf introduced himself. "And you are…?"

Rumon hesitated for a moment. "Crushjaw." If people were to know his name, they would serve as a reminder of his foolhardy pride. A constant warning to heed in the future.

"Pleasure to meet you, Crush." Shawell tugged on the reins, turning his mare back in the direction he had come from. "We'd better hurry. We'll lose the daylight."

Crush. Rumon cracked his first smile in months, positioning himself on the elf's left side to steady him in the saddle.

#rumon 'crushjaw' thaerskaine #crushjaw #dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e #I play one type of character #the friend who can help #goliath character #dnd goliath #dnd character #he's going to love his friends A Lot #canon-typical violence #I can't wait for this #dnd barbarian #barbarian backstory

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Cruella: Does Every Villain Need a Sympathetic Origin Story?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Clearly this isn’t your parents’ Cruella De Vil. This isn’t even your Cruella De Vil. However, there is something fiendishly charming about seeing Emma Stone charge into a ballroom and light her black and white dress on fire, revealing a chic red number beneath that would do Scarlett O’Hara proud. If fashion is a statement, Cruella is here to say the villain has just arrived!

Yet one can’t help but shake the certainty that by the time we actually learn the plot of Disney’s Cruella reimagining, Cruella will be in anything but black and white, or fiery red. Rather Cruella is obviously posturing to take a sideways approach to an old classic. But then again, that increasingly feels like the only direction these Hollywood redos know: the sympathetic origin story for an iconic villain.

To be clear, we’ve only gotten a glimpse of Stone as the new Cruella, and she looks absolutely fabulous in a black leather coat and cane, purring, “I’m only getting started, darling.” There’s a wildness about this interpretation befitting our current era where Harley Quinn is the hero of her own story, and Wade Wilson now leads a Disney franchise. Nevertheless, when I watch Cruella on the edge of tears in the trailer, barking defiantly that she is CRUELLA—and seemingly embracing an unfair reputation that other characters may be placing on her—a nagging question persists in the back of my head: Do we really need a sympathetic Cruella De Vil?

The trend of supervillains getting intellectual property-expanding sob stories is nothing new, be it at Disney or anywhere else in Hollywood. Maybe 25 years ago when folks liked their villains big and outlandish—think Glenn Close in Disney’s previous live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians—it was novel to see the antagonist become a tragic protagonist. But like everything else with modern blockbusters, that all changed a long, long time ago with something called Star Wars.

Back in 1977 when the original Star Wars movie was released, many audience members left the theater giddy about the world George Lucas created. In a galaxy far, far away, every pop fantasy of the mid-20th century—Wizards! Knights! Princesses! Samurai! World War II ace pilots!—was thrown into a massive cauldron that seamlessly blended these elements.

Luke Skywalker’s galaxy felt like a real place of exotic, lived-in locales, all of which captured that dirt-under-the-fingertips, tactile quality so rarely seen in fantasy stories. Sure the characters might be archetypes, but they came with histories which gave their fantasy space battles human density. Old Ben Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars with Luke’s father Anakin, who was “a gifted pilot.” But what exactly was a clone war? And why was there more than one of them? Also, what did a Jedi’s “more civilized age” look like for Luke’s papa?

For more than 20 years, no one knew the answer to those questions, which made them all the more intriguing, and the “lore” of this fantasy evermore mythic. Then came Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first modern blockbuster prequel devoted to filling in the gaps left by a beloved classic’s mysteries. That movie’s problems are numerous, but at its core the most persistent, lingering issue may still be the reveal that Darth Vader was once a blonde haired little boy with the emotional range of Beaver Cleaver. Of course everyone knew in the abstract sense Vader was once a child… but did they ever really want to see it?

Additionally, did anyone really want to learn Anakin Skywalker’s reason for turning to the Dark Side is because of a bratty streak that followed him into adulthood? Probably not.

Nonetheless, all three Star Wars prequels made massive amounts of money and rather than becoming cautionary tales of what happens when you attempt to explain away all the mysteries of a beloved character, they were the first steps toward a modern staple of media regurgitation where seemingly every mug, pug, and thug would get their own sympathetic redo.

Since then, we’ve learned on screen that Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis Venom, is really a well-intentioned bloke caught in a bad romance (with his alien space buddy), Batman’s arch-nemesis the Joker is really just a Travis Bickle clone with mommy issues, and Maleficent, the reigning empress of badassery in the Disney Villain canon, was really just a woman scorned by Sleeping Beauty’s toxic father. Even Hannibal Lecter became a victim in Hannibal Rising, and the Wicked Witch of the West starred in the most popular Broadway musical of all time… where it turns out she was the hero in a conspiracy with the Scarecrow to pull one over on Dorothy.

To be clear, some of these spinoffs and reimaginings work quite well. Even if I personally am a bit chagrined at Todd Phillips’ Joker being nominated for Best Picture, Joaquin Phoenix’s sad sack killer clown created the space for a riveting performance that reminded mainstream audiences that movies can still be for adults. In another comic book movie, Magneto’s heartbreaking backstory in the Holocaust was expanded in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, which made an already relatively complex supervillain just that much more compelling in Michael Fassbender’s hands.

Overall, however, this approach has left something to be desired. And to get back to Cruella, her remix as a misunderstood tragic heroine appears to owe most of all to Maleficent. In 2014, Disney made a killing when they cast movie star Angelina Jolie as their very best big bad, a character so evil in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty that she was willing to knockoff a princess simply because no one sent her a party invite. That’s cold. And it’s wickedly entertaining. Hence why Maleficent scared and captivated generations of children.

Some characters are just too good at being bad.

The marketing of Maleficent leaned into this with a melancholic cover of Sleeping Beauty’s Tchaikovsky-inspired theme song, “Once Upon a Dream.” Now in a minor key, the new version sung by Lana Del Rey promised a scarier, more menacing version of the story, which was then confirmed by Jolie’s wonderfully devilish laugh. The big bad was finally going to have her day at the ball.

But when the movie actually came out, we learned that Maleficent was an enchanted fairy who’d been wronged. In the end, she didn’t hate Elle Fanning’s Princess Aurora. In fact, she loved the little royal and tried to save her from the curse she herself cast in a fit of justified anger. Ultimately, the sorceress adopts Aurora as the daughter she never had after disposing of her now abusive father. That’s certainly an interpretation. I guess.

It also proved massively successful in the short term, opening at a staggering $175.5 million in its opening weekend worldwide, and grossing $758 million total. Those numbers also exclude merchandising and home video revenues. If you want to know why we’re getting the punk rock Cruella, look no further.

However, did a lot of folks really like Maleficent? It made all the money in the world based on that devious marketing campaign that promised a shocking tell-all about Disney’s closest approximation to Lucifer, but by the time a sequel limped into theater five years later, relatively few seemed to still care about the misunderstood, freedom fighting warrior fairy Jolie played. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ostensibly continued the good fight but flopped at the box office with a cume of $491.7 million, barely more than half of what its predecessor made. (Don’t cry for Disney though, as Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King in the same year made Maleficent 2 look like a clerical error.)

What this whole sputtering franchise reminds us though is that some characters are better left bad, and the mystique of the unknown is an end unto itself. While I enjoyed Phoenix’s take on the Joker, there is little argument the character was even scarier with a PG-13 rating when he manifested out of thin air, like Beelzebub, in The Dark Knight. Or to take a step away from just villains, was Han Solo really any cooler when you learned how he got his name in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Or could you have gone your whole life without knowing thanks to The Hobbit movies that Gandalf and Galadriel were kind of, sort of, just maybe friends with benefits?

The allure of Cruella De Vil is right there in her name: She’s a cruel devil. How could she not be when her entire ambition in Disney’s classic 101 Dalmatians is to skin puppies for their fur coats? Finding out she used to fight the power before hoarding it may make a lot of money, but it doesn’t make her necessarily more compelling.

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sparkmender · 4 years ago

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE: MUN & MUSE

Fill out & Repost ♥ This meme definitely favors Canons more, but I hope OC's still can make it somehow work with their own lore and Lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multimuses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

Tagged by: @ifthearmorfits -- thank you opo!!

MY MUSE IS. canon / oc / au (...in-canon au, because transformers) / canon-divergent / fandomless

(I will be getting into spoiler territory with this, but given that you all are following this blog, you’ve probably stuck around long enough to already see what’s up haha.)

is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO.

is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? WELL… / NO / IDK. (evidently a lot of people have it bad for the nerd but I don’t do NSFW on tumblr, so lol)

is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

are they underrated? ��YES / NO.

were they relevant to the main story? YES / NO.

were they relevant to the main character? YES / NO.

are they widely known in their world? YES / NO.

how’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. (Given Rung’s quantum forgotten status WHO KNOWS)

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON?

Putting it bluntly: Functionist alt. dimension Rung has a whole lot of plot holes. Swiss cheese boy. I’ve made liberal changes here and there so that he can play with a majority of muses in the MTMTE/LL community, but I’ve also taken a lot of free reign giving Rung’s general lack of backstory in-between spoiler/plot beats :P

SELL YOUR MUSE! (aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutual.)

Rung is a very rare type of character, being an ostensibly ‘masculine’ character (in regards of a human binary lens) who prides himself on empathy, understanding, and caring for others’ physical and mental wellbeing in ways that often linger in more ‘feminine’ realms (again, in approx. to the human binary); it interests me to be able to explore such concepts in a territory where, considering lore and implied history, there’s no societal concept of (human ideal culturally-imposed) gender. He’s a creator ‘deity’, he literally produces souls, but nothing about his design is meant to emphasize a human sense of reproduction/fertility/etc. Most people would never look at him and conclude who and what he is. There’s also the fact that he’s been methodically documented, experimented on, taken apart, and then tortured for approx. 2 million years and yet he refused to let that break him. Rung is unflinchingly kind, willing to reach a hand out to anyone who needs a shoulder to lean on even when he has nothing of his own to offer. Hell, he studied medicine and philosophy so he could build the foundations for the Cybertronian method of behavioral psychology because even without memories of being Primus, Rung wants to take care of his creations. ...And then you add in how absolutely adorable it is to watch this old man dodder about with his puzzles and models and big googly glasses and I love him so much okay--

NOW THE OPPOSITE! (list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?)

To be honest, Rung can be kind of a Mary Sue/over powered character in some people’s eyes. Like, what, this random character who’s new to the franchise and made specifically by the author is actually Transformers God who suffered amnesia? And is friendly and polite to everyone but also has a streak of keeping a grudge and survives literal untold horrors because his body can just heal itself?? And he spits out crystals that make up sparks??? OH AND HE’S MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD AND DID I MENTION HE’S GOD SOMEHOW AND THEN HE STRAIGHT UP JUST DIES TWICE IN CANON, WOW

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE?

H,,,, Him round,,,,,,,, No really I just loved his design that much. Him round. Also both my mom and my granddad are shrinks so I have, like, a basic grasp on psych stuff after reading through their textbooks and watching my granddad’s old research films and study tapes, so it was familiar territory I settled on writing Functionist!Rung in specific because I sympathize with having weird + painful medical shit inflicted on you all the time and because the idea of someone so genuine and careful being the core of a revolutionary movement is really,,, makes my heart squeeze.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING?

hell if I know I’m just kinda here forever lmao

SOME MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN.

do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO. needs more weird eldritch tech woogies but I’m terrified of alienating people

do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO. (mostly as they get yoinked by the fandom at large and then my notifications break my phone)

do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO.

do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES (to an extent because I write a lot of different muses and I’m constantly making/doing/playing something to keep my hands busy, so it’s inevitable) / NO.

are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO.

are you confident in your writing? YES / NO.

are you a sensitive person? YES / NO.

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL?

Criticism is the best way to grow as a creator, tbh, but I will say I think the biggest complaint is just how goddamn slow + forgetful I am hahaha,,

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER?

Sure! I have a tags specifically for weird Cybertronian biology quirks and for Rung just rambling about things, and it’s fun to get to reveal bits and pieces of the backstory I’ve created for him.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?

........I mean lmao you can tell me why you disagree but at the end of the day this is my personal portrayal of a specific version of a character who only shows up for like three issues of a 70+ issue long comic series.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT?

There are several other fantastic Rung writers out there each with their own interpretations and understandings of the character, so like. Godspeed. Go, find the god your heart desires, and whatnot.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT?

Do you hate my portrayal of Rung, or just Rung in general?? I know a few people who just straight up dislike any version of Rung at all, so there’s that.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?

English hard, hebrew and yiddish and spanish and romanian and german only. More seriously I was raised in an extremely weird house where English was the primary language but I was being taught by older people who never remembered which language they were using at the time. My first word was Mickey Mouse. I don’t know what’s happening. I went to art college. Please be gentle with me, sir.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN?

Oh most likely. There’s only like... one or two things I will go out of my way to discourage or avoid + I’m generally just kinda here to make other people happy haha

#ooc|moon above

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citialiin · 4 years ago

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: @forseenclade thank you ! man i am so bad at doing memes. tagging: @blossomingbeelzebug @zhrets @lupichorous @dansiere yayayayayayayaya

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated [ z/iggy stardust is DEFINITELY not my original character, but 683 is, and every single part of how i rp ziggy from his backstory to his personality was made up by me. that being said, ziggy is still a character that exists in media. ]

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ im pretty sure ziggy is tied with the thin white duke as one of b*wie’s most famous fictional personas? ]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES ? / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK. [ maybe a little overrated ]

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [ celebrity rock god of limitless talent vs inevitable overrated washup. most celebrities are polarizing anyways ]

How strictly do you follow canon? — there isnt much canon to go off of i think? the album barely even states if ziggy is an alien and b*wie himself got really wishy washy about it (sometimes saying z is a human who was contacted by aliens, he was an alien himself, etc). i dont think we know anything about him besides what he looks like (red hair / weird eyes / pale / “well hung” lmao) and he has a band called the spiders from mars, he plays the guitar left handed, he’s bisexual + androgynous, and he’s charming and popular with the teens but inevitably is a victim of his own ego. and he dies. that too. but that’s literally it! we know Nothing else about him. so i filled in all the gaps because my brain has worms. theres a little bit of the story that verges on fantasy (that he’s some sort of messiah messenger for “the infinites,” whatever the fuck THAT means, david) so i nix that because i prefer hard scifi. and theres one BIG part that i just ... deleted out of his canon, in that the world is ending in 5 years in his timeline, and he’s like ... aware of this ? but that’s dumb and confusing. i legit dont care anymore. my OC now.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — im so embarrassed i know i could be genuine and actually try but i have brain blockajjolajlakala33lak33klak333ak3jka3akjj323j3 i guess it’s like ... ziggy is truly the ultimate expression OF humanity because he reveals everything both wrong and right about the human condition, he literally embodies the best of humanity and the worst at the same time, he’s a really interesting critique on the idea of genuineness/earnestness vs commercalism in art, the perils of fame, and also how humans are so inherently corrupting? a lot of thematic stuff i like exploring is like what is innate to humans vs what is learned behavior, what are things that humans do naturally that ziggy mimics out of his desire to be like us? i think he has a really good story arc -- he went from being a literal nameless CLONE in a society full of pragmatic forward thinking science-oriented people to a sell out rockstar celebrity in a society of people that value individualism and self expression and art, but in the process completely lost his mind and himself and gave into the worst that humanity has to offer like rampant selfishness, drug abuse, self destructive tendencies, etc. characters changing is always interesting and ziggy truly changes for the worse -- but he is never just black and white, he was never good and then suddenly evil, he just was always the same person putting on different facades and trying to be himself by constructing an identity that maybe was who he wanted to be versus who he actually is. i dont know what im talking about. hes just an alien trying to be too hard to be human in all the wrong ways. i just like how “gray” ziggy is. he isnt good or bad, he can be very nice and he can be very mean, he’s overtly showboating confident but at the same time deeply afflicted with self-consciousness (why tf else would anyone be So obsessed with how they present themselves?). hes an icon of individualism but also commercialism. he’s freakishly alien but is almost more human than humans themselves. he struggles as lot in his head -- which makes for interesting writing, i guess !! Im so emabrrased im not going to go back and read what i wrote so if i typoed dont look at me

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — i think ziggy comes across as really mean and nothing else. his horrible bitchy rudeness comes across as hee hee hoo hoo sassy isnt he a rascal when it’s supposed to be more like ... he’s so far gone into the celebrity delusion he’s conflated aggressive rudeness with charmingness because no one told him otherwise and everyone worships him to the point where he’s just given into the delusion that he can do no wrong. i think theres the general simplification problem that happens with a lot of fictional characters, it’s easy to see him as just a whacky sassy glittery quirky rockstar when i guess it avoids the inherent tragedy of like ... everything else about him. his totally fake and false sense of identity built up from superficial things like fame and labels and stardom. maybe my version of ziggy is just too weirdly depressing and sad when i know his original iteration wasn’t quite so ... grim. im not very sure tbh.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — hmmm ... a lot of things! i just really got into b*wie stuff in early 2019, i’ve ALWAYS loved aliens and sci-fi, and i was really shocked that db sets up such great visual storytelling potential but does it through music. i just really liked ziggys “story” and i like any chance to think about aliens so i just got invested into piecing together a little backstory for him using, like, the cumulative knowledge of literally every other piece of science fiction ive ever consumed in my life. this was summer 2019 when i was making initial pitches for my thesis film, and so i just randomly decided to pitch “animated version of ziggy stardust” as one of the potential ideas. shockingly everyone liked it a lot and so did my professor who thought it was really cool, and then i just ended up sticking with the character and working on him for an entire year. ziggy became my hobby but also my homework. he was such a fun character because everything about him was interesting to me and i had just enough source material to have a starting point but so much room to take him in any direction i wanted to.

What keeps your inspiration going? — honestly, yooooou guyssssss. i have some really amazing fwends that ive met thru here .... and some of our dumb stupid stories have literally become NOVEL length. it just self generates inspiration because you realize the limitless amount of stories you could tell with this one single character when your character enters his story or he enters their story and etc. etc. ive drawn endless amounts of comics and stuff for him ... ziggy is just so endlessly interesting ... cringe be cringed bro but recently (i know this sounds dumb bear with me or die.) ive kind of realized a lot of how i rp z comes as some metaphor for the experience of being an asian immigrant/being asian in the US -- his home “culture” is a lot stricter than the rampant selfish individualism of the usa (he only lives in the uk and usa, so he thinks the whole planet is like this), he’s dissuaded from standing out from his community and his selfishness becomes a community burden rather than a personal flaw, and when he does come to earth, he goes through such awful culture shock, literally nothing makes sense to him and everything is Different. and while some things are different in a Nice way, something things are different in an Awful way, and he’s given the option between losing his true personal identity as an atominan and giving it up to be a human. the allure of being a human is a little too much but losing yourself like this is traumatic, in a way. obvs like ... a little silly and definitely not something that i actively intended to put into his story arc, its just something that fell into place cuz i guess i worked so closely with my own personal experiences and feelings of “alienation” (pun intended) to try to understand how he would feel being a literal alien an shid. its cathartic to write about him. but he also has a lot of my own personal interests just thrown in -- 70s fashion, scifi, science, tryhard implications about human nature, art history, whatever dumb nonsense i get into

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / SOMETIMES?

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO [ i would prefer information to spring up organically in the story but cuz threads always get dropped i end up just telling people outright. i didnt want anyone to know his home planet/his old name but barely anyone writes enough with ziggy to get to that point to reveal it (i legit managed to do it organically Once) so i just had to write it in a post lmao orz ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO [ wrote a ton of drabbles ! drew a ton of comics! ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / I DUNNO?

Are you confident in your writing? YES / HAHA NO.

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO. / IDK ?

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — definitely! like i said ... my version of ziggy ended up being the protag of my thesis film and for 1 yr straight his characterization, backstory, design, and even how i wanted to animate his fucking movements (ziggy stardust timing charts.) were beaten to death in a classroom environment, torn apart and rebuilt into something better. had i stayed with what i originally wanted to go with, ziggy would be so different than how i write him 2day. amazingly my pre production professor is a literal two time emmy award winning storyboard artist and animator so he definitely helped me design him (my version of ziggy is meant for ... a cartoon, obviously, not real life) and give him a better backstory? and my post production professor is a retired disney animator who worked on hercules and a bunch of old disney channel shows? had i gone wah wah wah i dont want to hear ur critiques i wouldnt have made him better. if you ever think ziggy seems inconsistent or poorly written ... tell me !! i literally major in ... animation. cartoons. entertainment. my job is to entertain you. if you are not entertained, there is a problem. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED ????

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — I LOVE QUESTIONS? i love ... answering questions ... if you ask me something ill come kiss you.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — sure! i dont know why that would happen, though, because i mean ... he’s an OC. but i gues someone could be like “i feel like this is incongruous to things you’ve previously established in his character” or somethin

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — i feel like a lot of b*wie stans would find my version of ziggy weird but i mean thats fine! i guess my goal is to have a well written character, not necessarily an accurate version of ziggy

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — if you hate MY version of ziggy thats fine but if u hate ziggy stardust in general (like the bowie concept) then u need some taste what the fuck is cooler than a egomaniac genderless bisexual rockstar alien with red hair? nothing. go back to watching your CW shows you dirty filthy normie

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — yes! dm me though. dont clown me on the dash like that. i usually write your replies 12 AM - 4 AM so it’s expected.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — hmmm ... maybe! i do like to talk to people and i am VERY nice, trust me, if youre ever sad ill do everything i can to make you feel better. but im quiet! i dont really reach out to people and i tend to just keep to myself. im not very social or extroverted at all haha i barely can make ooc posts without feeling like god’s coming to beat my head in with a brick. im sitting here at 5:30 AM with this meme feeling like if i post it i will die (BUT I MUST)

#a lot of it is under the readmore because these always get so long and mine is long long long long long long long long long long long #ooc #KEEP YOUR 'LECTRIC EYE ON ME ; queue #and thakn you for tagging me ! i like to mkae Words

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wafflewarriors · 5 years ago

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Quality FanFiction Recommendations!

Quarantined? Bored? Itching to read? I have just the thing for you. I have around 100+ fanfic recommendations with descriptions!!! Yay!

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Disclaimer: None of what is below is mine. Not even the descriptions. :)

I have read all of these though and I can promise they are very good!

WARNING = Possibly triggering. Rather be safe than sorry, but you can certainly ignore these.

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Fics for Superwholock, Supernatural, Doctor Who, Avengers, Merlin, Sherlock and Miscellaneous below.

Superwholock (and Variations)

Second Chances: When Sam Winchester finds himself stuck in New York City with new abilities he doesn’t know how to use and a recent life-changing event he can’t remember, the last thing he expects is to find friends and allies in the city’s resident heroes. But Sam isn’t the only new arrival to New York: the supernatural world doesn’t want to let Sam go, and their plans extend beyond just Sam and the city. Sam is going to have to bring together every hero he can to save New York—and maybe along the way, he can save himself, too.

New York City has been referred to as the City of Dreams, but for Sam Winchester, it’s more than that—it’s also the City of Second Chances. (VERY VERY GOOD AND STILL UPDATING; I’M STILL READING IT)

Breaking the Cycle: The TARDIS materializes at the Broward County Mystery Spot on a Tuesday.

The Other Loki: There’s a new Trickster in town. Tony and the other Avengers aren’t sure what to make of him.

The Tomato in the Mirror: Loki body-swaps with Sam. Later, things get weird.

Don't Blink? No Problem: Castiel meets a Weeping Angel. It's not a fair fight.

Supernatural

Road Song: Dean attempts to calm the reader with a drive in the Impala after a night filled with nightmares.

WARNING Cabin Fever: When you’ve been cooped up with the Winchesters for too long your plan to get an hour away from them takes a terrible turn for the worse.

Cold as Ice: After an accident, Dean and the reader find themselves stuck in the woods during a storm.

Counting the Days: The world was overrun by the Croatoan virus, Sam said ‘yes’ to Lucifer, and Dean hasn’t talked to his brother in five years. One of these things is not like the others.

WARNING You Bleed, I Bleed: Dean confronts you, and tells you that from now on, anything you do to yourself, he will do to himself. Because he just can’t stand to see you hurting, alone in your pain.

Imagine Winchester Saving You From Jack Frost: (no description) “Ice crystals blossomed across your skin, growing and claiming your body as it’s own. You were glistening, the frost reflecting the evening sun like millions of stars. The beauty of winter dominated your body, sprouted from your neck, your neck that had gelid fingers curled around it.”

Tired and Scared: So, backstory is that the reader is doing some sort of a quest and it’s doing bad stuff to her, sort of like Sam and the trials.

I Think I Might Need You: Dr. Jade Thorpe is a strong, independent woman. It’s how she defines herself, the lens through which she views the world. So when everything she knows and has drops out from under her, she has nowhere to turn but to three men who she’s never met, who she will grow to know as, “the f****** Winchesters and that goddamn angel.”

NSFW All Your Pretty Lies: The first time you meet Dean Winchester he almost kills you. Don’t all healthy relationships start with attempted murder?

WARNING You are the Blood in my Veins: You’ve been dealing with self harm for years, the brothers don’t know yet and you don’t know how much more you can take.

Long I Stood: [Endverse!AU] After his phone call with Dean in “The End,” Sam is exhausted. Still recovering from his near-relapse when hunters Reggie Hull and Tim Janklow tried to force him to drink demon blood and unwilling to fall into bed because Lucifer is waiting in his head, Sam sets off running.

He runs straight into the end of the world, where Zachariah tells him that this is where his choices will inevitably lead him unless he plays his part. Sam finds unexpected allies in the survivors at Camp Chitaqua, and maybe―just maybe―there’s still reason for hope. Maybe they won’t always wind up here. Not if Sam has his say.

When Summoning, Please Watch the Wording: (A strange crossover of Supernatural and Good Omens. I don’t even know if it’s canonically correct but it was very entertaining.)

Find the Light: This is the first part of a series! Sam and Dean discover Y/N as a victim of a Djinn.

In the Quiet Moments: Being stuck in your own horrible inner thoughts is hard. It’s even harder to when those thoughts feel more and more real. Sometimes, you need someone to pull you back to reality and remind you of your worth.

Waiting: The reader is seriously injured on a hunt. Sam and Dean take you to Bobby’s so he can patch you up. Dean is freaked to Hell.

WARNING Chink in the Armor: Dean Winchester, in the years following Sam’s departure for college, was not a very stable individual.

WARNING Trust Us: You get kidnapped by the two mass murderers you’ve seen on TV, Sam and Dean Winchester. But are they as bad as they are made out to be?

Heavy Sleeper: Imagine Sam and Dean finding the reader asleep in the impala after a long hunt.

Period Pains: The reader has her period worse than usual and Dean takes note, taking care of her in anyway he can. (so cute)

Headache: Reader has a migraine and Sam and Dean don’t realize it and are annoying.

Through the Dark: You finally go on your first hunt, accompanying Sam and Dean. The experience leaves you haunted and Dean does his best to comfort you.

WARNING Be Free: AU from end of Southern Comfort. Sam takes Dean’s words to heart, his mind throwing in its own two cents. Believing it is what will make Dean happy, Sam runs and becomes untraceable until it is almost too late. Dean calls in any help he can to find his brother, including angelic assistance. But finding someone with the knowledge Sam has, and who doesn’t want to be found, the remaining members of Team Free Will better pull out all the stops, and fast.

Imagine Falling Asleep While Watching TV with Dean One Shot: Exhaustion. That was the sign of a hunt well done.

Finding Out You Made a Crossroad’s Deal to Save Him: (no description; preference)

Selfish Motives: Imagine taking a bullet for Dean and he gets emotional while patching you up.

WARNING Reflection: A dark time from the reader’s past comes to light.

Shattered: “The one you shattered? I can fix it.” He said, hand already hovering over your hip. It wasn’t the first time you’d had this conversation, you had the unfortunate feeling it wouldn’t be the last. (tooth-rotting fluff)

Protection Detail: “You’re okay, you’re safe.” The man driving spoke softly. Something about the deep timbre of his voice sounded familiar and strangely comforting. You’d heard it before, but couldn’t for the life of you figure out where or when. There was sincerity in his tone- he truly believed what he was saying. Safe. Too bad he’s wrong. He couldn’t possibly know who you were running from or what they’d done to you. Even worse, what they’d do to him for getting in the way. He was in far over his head and it would only get him killed.

WARNING If Anything Happened to You: After jumping in front of the gun one too many times, the Winchester’s are wondering if there is something more to it than just saving them.

He Isn’t Heavy, He’s My Brother: What happens when the boys are stranded and one of them becomes violently ill? (it’s dean)

You Can’t Rule with a Broken Upper Hand: Successfully killing Lilith and keeping Dean out of Hell has the brothers ready for a good, old-fashioned, hunter-on-demon brawl. It’s time to get back to the basics, back to the way things used to be, when monsters got ganked and that was the end of things. That said, they are not ready for a new kind of creature to appear in the middle of their fight, covered in blood and begging for mercy they aren’t supposed to give.

Meanwhile, Castiel is panicking. He’s been tortured senseless for four decades straight, and now he’s been thrown down in front of two hunters. If he thought his brothers were bad… well, all angels knew how cruel hunters were… and Castiel has no idea how to convince them he doesn’t need to be, in the shorter one’s words, ganked.

Forgotten: Sam and Dean are working a case in Wyoming, but are distracted by news of a dangerous angel called “Castiel” who they can’t remember ever having heard of before. The name seems a little bit familiar, but neither of the boys is sure why. (THIS ONE IS SO GOOD)

Bronco: Reader goes on a hunt alone and hides more serious injuries from Sam and Dean. She heads to Bobby’s to recover only to have the boys show up shortly after. (I love this one)

WARNING We As Human: Sam has been struggling with depression since Stanford. Well, not really struggling. Excelling. He’s been excelling at depression since Stanford, and it’s only gotten worse since he started hunting again. Unfortunately, the relapses from John’s death and Dean’s trip to Hell were bad, but they had nothing on the downward spiral triggered by Sam starting the Apocalypse.

But Sam has never come clean before, and he isn’t about to start. He’s self-medicating, he’s suppressing, and he’s handling things in the Trademark Winchester Way. He can do this. He can totally do this.

Spoiler: No, he can’t.

WARNING Stop the Clock: Being cooped up in the bunker with the Men of Letters archive at your fingertips, you’re now the go-to person for help with lore. But having so many hunters depend on you is overwhelming. You don’t have enough time for yourself and you’ve reached a breaking point. (Dean holding you after a panic attack and comforting you.)

WARNING Chance Encounters: You are running. As a hunter, it seems like you are always running. Whether it be toward an enemy or away. You find yourself in a bar and are saved by Sam and Dean. As Dean gets curious about you, you start to fall for him. With all that is going on with the boys, you offer to help.

Come Hell or Highwater: Oneshot where the reader is stranded on a little boat in the middle of the ocean with one of the boys, and has a super repressed fear of water.

Blood and Tears: The reader is having really bad period cramps, and Dean doesn’t know how to help. (vulgar)

Deep thoughts: When the Winchesters find her, strung up and tortured by a demon, they realize she’s something more than an average human. Sam’s curious, Dean’s apprehensive, and Elise knows everything - because she can hear their thoughts.

Walkie-Talkies: The reader and Dean have to wait out a blizzard at a motel. Question is: will things heat up or not?

Ruination: The night Dean kicks him out of the bunker, Castiel has to find shelter from the rain. But he unwittingly stumbles across a monster’s lair and is caught…and as far as he knows, no one’s looking for him. Meanwhile, Sam’s not buying Dean’s story about why Cas left, and he won’t be satisfied until he finds some answers. Assuming the ex-angel lasts that long.

One Saved Message: After a hunting accident puts Sam out of commission for a couple of days, Dean decides to surprise his brother with a new phone, since his old one is toast. Even better is when he finds that he’s been able to save all of Sam’s old information and restore it to his cell. That’s when he discovers an old voicemail that Sam has kept saved for the last two and a half years… (Voicemail fix-it)

Stargazing: Sam used to want something for himself. Voicemail and amulet fix-it.

Desolation Angels: She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt. // AU starting at the end of AHBL Part One. (An exercise in character study.)

Lullaby: Imagine TFW finding out that the sleeping pills you take every night don’t stop the nightmares; they just keep you from screaming.

Worth It: Tag to Plucky Pennywhistle’s. When they get back to the motel room, Dean discovers Sam’s been hiding his injuries.

Avengers

Fallen Hero: A five part story of Peter and Tony’s relationship beyond what we’re shown in the MCU. If you’re into having your heart shredded and crying yourself to sleep, this is for you.

Five Times Peter Said ‘Sorry’ to Mr.Stark: …and the one time he didn’t have to.

Marvel Masterlist: This Masterlist includes Avengers and the Hell’s Kitchen Boys (Defenders and Punisher).

WARNING Dumb Luck: Having a panic attack during your flight wasn’t part of the plan. Lucky for you your seatmates are there to save the day.

Identity Theft: An organically developed, platonic slow-burn of Avengers-fam dynamic with a heavy hand of Irondad & Spiderson. Throw in an overdose of whump, a couple of cunning villains and a big-bad hiding in the shadows, and you got yourself this hot mess.

WARNING The Homes We Make: Peter Parker isn’t the type of boy to run crying to Tony Stark because he can’t handle a punch. Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds aren’t the type of friends to ignore Peter’s rapidly declining health. Eugene “Flash” Thompson isn’t an idiot.

Division of the Heart: Tony Stark is sick. Surely that’s not going to be a problem? When he doesn’t tell the team a normal cold is a little more complicated with the Arc Reactor, things get a little out of hand.

Doctor Who

WARNING Reasons: The Doctor comforts his companion when she sees a familiar face, a face she wishes she could forget.

Time to Let Go: ANGST ANGST ANGST :)

Flowers for Words: This is a little… darker than my usual. There’s kinda graphic descriptions of bloody things, so this ain’t for the squeamish.

WARNING Trust: After running away from your abusive father, you find yourself in the dark and all alone. That is, until a strange man approaches you.

Stolen: The Doctor left Rose in the other universe with the Meta-Crisis Doctor to give her a chance at a normal life. Now he’s come back to get her, and the knowledge of what she’s been put through will drive him temporarily mad.

Vision: (no description but I can tell you it’s good)

Waving Through History: The Doctor will never see her again, but that doesn’t mean she can’t see him again. // Seven times Amy and Rory visit the past Doctor and one time Amy sees the future Doctor. Post-Angels, 1930-1988.

Trapped in an Elevator: You are late for work when you become trapped in an elevator with the Eleventh Doctor.

The Curious Case of the Doctor and the Cat: Master of the Seven Blocks Rusty Grr'wa is a cat, a Good Boy with a simple life. He must protect and patrol his Seven Blocks, generously let select People pet his incredible fur, and look after the Stacy, the Mum, and the Dad. Then he runs into not-People the Doctor and the Doctor’s Clara Oswald. And then they must all deal with the Sky-thing. (crack)

Afraid of the Dark: It was quiet. That was the first thing that truly caught your attention.

Reality: A more realistic story of a whovian getting stuck in the “Doctor Who” universe. This isn’t the typical “Yay, I met the Doctor” story. If you suddenly found out the Doctor was real, wouldn’t you be a little scared? That would mean all the monsters were real too!

WARNING Psycho Savior: A young woman contemplates suicide by power steering fluid. An attempt to subvert the fan cliche in which the Doctor talks someone out of suicide.

Cold Comfort: The Doctor had his back turned, so he didn’t see how badly Rose’s hands shook as she wrapped them around the thick mug.

Human: The doctor decides it’s not safe for you to travel with him anymore, so he tries to push you away.

Pretty Girl: (no description) “I’m not beautiful,” you say one day.

WARNING: Knock Three Times: Two perfect strangers wake to find themselves being held in adjacent prison cells with no memories of who they are or how they got there. It isn’t until they are faced with agonizing trials that push the limits of self-sacrifice to new horrific heights, that they realize just what they’re facing and how much they will need to trust each other in order to survive.

WARNING Better Now: (no description)

Stellar Storytime: (no description)

Merlin

Deep in the Diamond of the Day: What if Merlin was the one to sustain the mortal injuries during the Battle of Camlann, not Arthur? Will the Once and Future King be able to save his friend? More importantly, will he WANT to after finally discovering Merlin’s secret? A fix-it fic for the series finale, which shattered my soul.

Allow One to ‘See’: When the King is attacked in his tent on patrol and falls into an unending sleep everyone is worried. What they don’t know is that Arthur is fine. In fact he is standing right here next to them, watching them all fret over his prone body. To stave off the boredom whilst a cure is found Arthur takes to wandering the castle and soon discovered a hidden side of Camelot he never knew about.

Or: Arthur’s soul gets trapped outside his body and takes to following his servant around. He gets an interesting insight into Merlin, his servant’s life and just how much Camelot needs the man.

Peace for Our Time: Merlin froze for several seconds before squinting at Arthur across the table. “I feel like I’m definitely misunderstanding the situation here.”

Arthur sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I really don’t think you are.”

“You want me to learn magic?”

In a Name: In the middle of some quest or another, Merlin, Arthur and the knights find themselves stuck in the middle of a shrine being told that, if they wish to proceed unharmed, they need only speak their true names and titles. Straight-forward enough, right? Wrong. Merlin really hates the Old Religion sometimes.

Sherlock

WARNING Write Love on Her Arms: (no description)

Spiderman Into the Spider-verse

Ground Zero: Basically, the plot of Spider-Man; Into the Spiderverse if they all got sent to Peter B.’s universe instead of Miles’

Stranger Things

Bleeding: Hopper confronts Reader seven weeks after she left Hawkins.

Timeless

All These Tears I’ve Cried: A snapshot of Lucy’s nightmares, and the aftermath of each. Loosely set between 2x05 and 2x06.

Detroit: Become Human

Skip-able NSFW Leap: Amanda thinks she’s won, but Connor has one last trick up his sleeve. He’s determined to find someone who can fix him and get rid of CyberLife’s influence once and for all. And of course that person is a human woman, the owner of a small android repairshop in downtown Detroit. And she’s not happy about the deviant android who’s just broken in, but necessity dictates she help CyberLife’s most sophisticated prototype escape his chains. With her help, Connor soon discovers what fills the void between the lines of his code.

The Good Doctor

Do No Harm: Shaun is a doctor. He heals the sick and injured, and he takes care of people that need his help. He made this vow in full, understanding the responsibility he was taking on. So, when the bus swerved, when it crashed and flipped, it came as second nature to him. Despite his pain, and despite his injuries, he still pushed himself to do as much as he could for those around him. And he did. Without hesitation, he tried to save as many people as possible. And in doing do, he wasn’t able to save himself.

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

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Comparing Season 6 and Season 10 - which one do you think makes more sense as a whole, which one better pulls of seeming like what happened/was revealed at the end of the season is what was supposed to happen/was planned all along?

I may be biased, but for me, season 6 by miles. And almost all of that is Edlund desperately cramming everything that had happened so far into something that either made sense or handwaved why it didn’t make sense in an effectively emotional enough episode that by the end of TMWWBK you sort of feel like you’ve actually got your answers and Cas has been completely honest and open with YOU at least, making it that much easier to handle what was going on.

I think for me season 10 was poorly handled in ways that weren’t particularly well addressed and the only offered explanation ever was “oh it was Amara after all” which in the context of season 11 gives us some more characterisation to begin to pull things together, though without addressing everything. Still if we’re dealing with things as a whole, season 10 doesn’t have an episode that scrapes everything together in the post-Edlund era and what we get only within the confines of season 10 is extremely unsatisfactory, even if later canon eases it a little bit, along with just… not being actively in SPN season 10 as it airs :P

Going off my memories of being in the fandom at the time, we had a lot of issues with things like

Dean’s incomplete demon reversal (so far as in 10x02, written by Dabb who invented the cure repeating the correct steps, then in 10x03 Buckleming not following through with them)

“the river ends at the source” “never mind I was screwing with you”

Did Cain still have the Mark after 9x11? lasting drama until 10x14, and still debated afterwards especially by people who had thought he didn’t have the Mark and had passed it entirely to Dean now being very confused

What the fuck was this about Lucifer having the Mark and how did that last minute addition affect everything?

the Colette parallel being wildly mis-applied by fandom but also issues with the show’s fear to explore it leading to “we are all the colette” episodes with lasting drama until 10x22, where Charlie, Sam and Cas all variously and persistently seemed to be suggested to be capable of being a team effort to pull Dean out of the darkness. 10x22 also wasn’t enough to stop Dean, and the final confrontation was with Sam, I think a general consensus was - especially again with season 11′s help - that the memory of Mary drew him back/unleashed Amara metaphorically who unleashed Mary literally - it wasn’t a great note to end on without season 11 context (as a whole, so, like, a whole YEAR later) that Sam had “won” the battle to bring Dean back from himself where Cas had failed, and the subtext and show and fandom most of all had made SUCH a huge deal out of Colette, after 9x11 over-told her story instead of retelling Cain & Abel, that it was set up with the expectation that saving Dean was a romantic quest, not a brotherly one. 10x14 sort of helped set things to rights with the list, but the fighting about what it all meant at the time was AWFUL, and though I think I was right and the show bore that out and these days I type it all with confidence, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of buried wank about it that could be dragged out if we want >.>

the fact there wasn’t really an overarcing Mark of Cain plot except “Dean is suffering” with the only 3 actual plot points they could do with it being demon!Dean, kill Cain, and remove Mark. Because of that, everything else is literally set-dressing to fill the time and add drama in between, but these were played with poorly and there wasn’t any subterfuge we weren’t in on (i.e. sam stealing the book) vs Cas betraying both the Winchesters and US. The only retcon offered in the end was Death’s exposition about the Darkness.

people literally forgetting which order episodes came out in and being very confused about why Amara wasn’t released when Dean was 14 in 10x12 even though he didn’t kill Cain for 2 more episodes (like, within weeks of 10x14 airing, I swear)

the understandable disappearance of Cole but bizarre application of that hunter called Rudy who popped up in his place and featured in 10x23 along with Cas for Dean’s guilt trip. Even if Cole and TAW sucked ass, it’s much easier to understand the emotional impact of what happened to Rudy if you assume he has the exact same backstory as Cole and the same nonsense happened to Dean twice in the same year :P

Pre-season hype about Rowena made a huge deal out of the Grand Coven, and for a brief moment it seemed like there might be a witch plotline, including new lore dumps about different types of witches in 10x07, characters like Olivette the Hamster, etc, but they squandered her first season and 10x19 was as close as we got to any pay off to her actual storyline

Then Oskaar happened and that was like ??? Okay just introduce him in the second to last episode and throw us into that emotional situation

the entire cure coming out of nowhere as a random last minute macguffin instead of having been anything they put together over the season - even though the book of the damned thing showed up in 10x11 it changed substantially from the clue Charlie left with (a less than 100 year old book with a library reference number found on an antique rare book website, based on a real book, which we all picked over and were left wondering if the plot was to be about some sort of occultism thing as a result) to a much different lore. Then there were a few episodes dealing with it and the codex, the actual spell had no real struggle, and Crowley delivered all the pieces while Cas stood around scowling and Rowena stood around in chains eye-rolling. Compare season 13′s pacing with Sam and Dean cobbling together what they needed from halfway through the season, and being on the mission to get to the AU from episode 9, with relatively little of the endless sitting around googling and being frustrated of past seasons but ESPECIALLY season 10 where Sam was futilely trawling the results of googling “mark of cain” from mid-late season 9 through to like, 10x18 when an actual brief plot appeared around it directly.

I think all of it points to a problem of working forwards from where they were instead of backwards to tidy up what was left. In season 6 Edlund took as many loose plot threads, from how Sam lost his soul, what was up with Crowley and Cas, the angel war, explanations for Sam and Samuel working together, why eve happened, everything, and put it all together to explain the elements of the season so far in a new light. Despite how disastrous that season was, PRETENDING you knew like you meant to do it all along glosses over inconsistencies in Samuel’s story or Cas and Crowley’s 6x10 interactions, and makes them relatively inconsequential when most of the details add up.

The same thing works with the Lucifer as Sam’s vessel storyline, in the sense that while Azazel’s plan is fucking ridiculous in its over-complex bizarre attempt to find a worthy true vessel that Heaven had fated, comparing season 1-2 to season 5 head on is bad, each season explains itself from the last in enough of a way and with enough knowledge of what already happened that really despite vast inconsistencies in the lore, by 5x22 we are pretty much all on board to accept the way it all played out because they use what was previously written to build up Sam’s arc, and little details thrown in towards the end like Brady and then Lucifer revealing ALL of Sam’s closer rando peeps had been demons, tidy up more and more loose ends and there’s left with plausible deniability about a lot of the issues.

In season 10 they kept on introducing elements instead of working with what they had already established, and also discarded what seemed like major plot hooks for Rowena and Cole, one annoyingly, one completely metatextually understandably and fuck TAW, I’m glad the show never brought Cole back as soon as rumours of him groping fans appeared, and it makes me genuinely trust that the SPN set is a safe place. But yeah.

Things they set up and could have worked with, were the Cas’s grace arc, which was resolved to a small personal satisfaction to Cas without any major plot impact except we could stop worrying about when Cas would get sick and die from bad grace, or steal more.

The demon!Dean issue was bad writing from Buckleming re: was he still a demon or not, but given Dean was supposed to be struggling with succumbing to darkness the season actually kept him almost completely level without any significant relapses, even after killing Cain. The sense of needing a functional Dean Winchester to keep hunting monsters and prop up the show as both the carrier of the mytharc, the emotional core, and the go-between between Sam and Cas even when the show was trying to figure out if Sam and Cas could function without Dean, it was all still so much about Dean that in 10x21 when they’re doing the cringeworthy “for Dean” thing and Rowena rolls her eyes like “I barely know the man”, I was actually applauding Buckleming snark thinking they maybe briefly had a handle on how ridiculous Dean’s position in the narrative was. (Listen, this was the last 10 minutes of my innocence about how awful Buckleming could be, leave past!me alone. She’s sweet and precious and not bitter :P) In any case, a more effective season would have utilised him more to slip and slide between light and dark and explore it in much deeper detail, but balancing that with a procedural formula doesn’t work as well and they were lacking enough philosophers on staff. I think the Dabb era writing team could handle it, because Yockey, Perez, and Glynn especially, who seems to have a psychology background based on her writing, all have a sharp attention to the exact things in emotional arcs that would have made it work better, even just as it was. Since this was a weaker writing team where Robbie, Bobo and Dabb episodes were little islands of excellence and the motw were fun but more shallow even with strong foreshadowing themes, it just didn’t pay off.

I think the biggest waste of time was “the river ends at the source” which was either Buckleming trying to introduce a concept and hoping someone else dealt with it, or an agreed plot hook which never materialised, or Metatron literally spoke the truth, that the line had only ever been written to mess with us. However 10x23 could have actually included more of a “river ends at the source” sort of slant and had Death confirm it in so many words because Amara really did sort of seem to be the answer to the question. In 10x10 it seemed like they knew where the season was going, but by 10x17 it was obvious they DIDN’T, and it was during 10x18 that the plot actually got hashed out and Robbie was handed heavy revisions to make to change the Stynes to end of season villains and the Book of the Damned was going to be used how it was. I think this is really weak plotting, as someone who always puts in fun lines and then attempts like crazy to pay off on them. My first novel has the line “you can’t talk to me yet” and I play through that the whole book until they CAN talk and make it a major motif, goal and in the end try to explain it as best I can about how it’s all plot relevant and why using that for tension to put off the explanations and such was a valid thing to throw at my main character, and then the springboard to more adventure when she was ready for it. I literally do not understand putting a portentous line into your story, and not becoming desperately eager to answer it or twist something into revealing how it all fits at the end, if not basing your entire story off of it. Sam and Dean seemed wildly uncurious about how to apply that or what it means.

In season 6 one of the more frustrating things is the “it’s all about the souls” line because Dean fails to investigate until someone or other rolls their eyes and makes it all clear to him. But we get a few more reminders in Cas’s presence, until we find out his plan, and Crowley repeats that line in 6x20 when making his sales pitch to Cas, if I’m remembering rightly (I hope so :/) and so despite Dean’s infuriating lack of investigation (not that he had a great deal of leads, but still - you could build a plot around it by GIVING him a lead, he’s the fictional character and you’re the writer :P) at the very least they repeat the motif in at least 6x17 and 6x20 to my memory, before the souls thing becomes a lot more obvious about Cas taking the purgatory souls and we’re allowed to actually discuss what he’s up to instead of the vague hints Atropos and Rachel give that they know his plans. 6x07 also hints early on that Purgatory is full of monster souls if you add it all up - the writers knew they were doing SOMETHING with this even if it took to the end of the season for it to all come together. (And that’s something that’s clearly and overarcing plot that Gamble oversaw because she wrote 6x11 and the line then appears in multiple episodes around the place, so that’s not just something Edlund tidied up but an actual effort to write the season well.)

Throwing aside the “river ends at the source” line is wildly frustrating because it wouldn’t have been too hard to apply it thematically and even keep Metatron being a douche while giving the viewer a pay off anyway for our own satisfaction, by showing it had been a theme all along anyway. You CAN squint at season 10 and analyse it through that lens but it’s exhausting when the show doesn’t give us the themes on a platter. It also shows that the plotting is careless and they’re experimenting, and rather than working with what they have, this is in a path of episodes where they’re discarding some plotlines, and we’re beginning to have end of season plotlines hastily pasted onto the end of the season, but they make very little of any of the work already done to build up the season as we’d seen it so far.

Add onto that Charlie being murdered for manpain to motivate some things into action and all the random elements being used, and the sense that Crowley, Cas and Rowena all abruptly ran out of a plotline that had been intended to utilise them and put on a side character duty away from Sam and Dean, the season is extremely messily and carelessly written, and without any real attention to detail to its own themes and characters and plotlines. Even if they’d gone into the season not particularly expecting where to go, they brought a lot to the table early on but then quickly wiped a lot of it off, and brought a lot more stuff to the table instead, which makes season 10 a really wonky, unfinished feeling product as a thing on its own, and the overall story is scrappy and carelessly plotted.

And that is speaking just about the easy plot stuff without getting into the absolute mess of speculation from the Destiel side of fandom wondering wtf was going on with the seeming build up to crypt scenes, colette, the grace cure, etc, that made up the bulk of the speculation but makes actually analysing expectations vs presented product completely impossible to evaluate on that side of things because as always Destiel speculation really overshoots what is expected and was really running wild at that point. I mean, not being judgemental because that was the year I was right in the thick of it. 3 years clear of it now, some of it seems really silly, but those 3 things all seemed clearly built up to our eyes, and we got the reverse crypt scene we’d been expecting since before the season started, and we got the Colette reference which slotted Cas firmly into place as a reminder of how Cain’s peeps lined up against Dean’s, as well as Cas asking Dean to stop, which satisfied the terms and conditions of Dean resisting walking in Cain’s footsteps with the overall set up of the scene. With the way Cas got his grace back and then some other rando cure popped up where Rowena of all people made the sacrifice, I really can’t help feeling like the conspiracy theorist who knows they were right but with the way it all shook out, only people who knew the conspiracy would understand how it didn’t happen and it’s very hard for me to look at that and say that some non-Cas-related cure was coming all along, given the conspicuous dropping of one plotline sort of day of picking up the next >.> But I’ll cede that from my position I might be a bit compromised on that one.

Anyways. To me season 10 is a disaster that only season 11 really justifies, while season 6 has some truly low points but in the end the actual writing skill hauls it through so that it creates the illusion that there was consistency, if you ignore everything outside of the text suggesting it may have been as poorly planned as season 10. Planning isn’t everything - it’s what you do when confronted with the unplanned wire tangle in front of you that really marks how well they were written, and just shoving it under the table and putting a new wire tangle down vs actually unpicking it and making them as neat as possible? Gamble slam dunks Carver :P

#Asks #season 10 #we don't talk about season 6

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tf2community · 8 years ago

Text

@a-virtuous-pyromaniac submitted:

The Administrator, the Debt and the End: A Theory From Reddit

Hello! I saw this on r/TF2 and I don’t think it’s made its rounds on Tumblr. It’s well written and well-thought-out, so I thought I’d share.

THIS IS NOT MY ORIGINAL WORK. IT BELONGS TO REDDITOR AVTHEMARSUPIAL.

Original post can be found HERE.

*******

HUGE SPOILERS FOR ISSUE #6. SERIOUSLY, GET OUT IF YOU AIN’T READ THE COMIC YET.

Issue #6 of the post-MVM comics has come out, and boy, what a doozy.

Over the last five years since Blood Brothers and the Mann vs. Machine update, we’ve had lore trickle out at us in small pieces at a time. I’ve got some theories on what’s gonna happen next, but to get a handle on things, let’s recap.

I AIN’T KIDDING, MAN. SPOILERS AFTER THIS. THE COMIC’S LONG. IT’S WORTH IT. GO READ IT. YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID.

Our story starts on September 2nd, 1822, with the birth of the Mann Triplets to wealthy landowner Zepheniah Mann and Bette Mann (née Darling) during the Great Eagle Scourge of London.

One of the triplets, Grey, is a genius. The other two, well, are not. Grey is abducted by an eagle, and Redmond and Blutarch are raised to believe they are the only sons of Zepheniah Mann.

Over the next twenty-eight years, Zepheniah remains wealthy and successful, presumably by selling munitions across the British Empire.

In 1849, Grey resurfaces, and threatens to blackmail Zepheniah for all his Australium.

Around 1850, Zepheniah, Redmond, and Blutarch traveled to the United States, where they had purchased large areas of land in New Mexico hoping to expand the munitions business. Zeph contracts an incredible amount of sicknesses, and dies shortly after.

After his death, his Last Will and Testament is read.

Elizabeth, Zeph’s maidservant, was left the entirety of the Mann Estate, including what was left of his fortune.

Barnabus Hale, grandfather of Saxton Hale, was left complete control over Mann Co.

Redmond and Blutarch were left the lands of New Mexico to split evenly between themselves.

Finally, Elizabeth was left the entirety of Zeph’s “miracle gravel”, or as it was really known, Australium.

The Brothers Mann immediately begin fighting over the land, each hiring a team of 9 mercenaries to seize the land from the other, beginning a century long stalemate.

Barnabus Hale took over Mann Co. and even got into the coal mining business thanks to the Mann Brothers selling him a coal mine for 5 cents.

As for Elizabeth, that’s where things get tricky.

In 1890, Blutarch Mann hires Radigan Conagher to build him a machine to prolong his life indefinitely.

Radigan goes back to his workshop, where a mysterious woman is waiting for him. We’re never told who the woman is, but an obvious conclusion is that she has some connection to the present day Administrator Helen, and Zepheniah’s maidservant Elizabeth. The TF2 Wiki, going off of an old “printing” of Loose Canon names this woman as Emily, differentiating her from both Elizabeth and Helen. The Catch-Up comic, however, names this woman as Elizabeth, although with a different appearance than the previous Elizabeth. For purposes of simplicity, I’ll continue to call this woman Emily.

Emily gives a halfhearted attempt at convincing Radigan to not build the machine, and when that fails, attempts a counter-offer. Since 1880, Emily has been hunting down 100 pounds of Australium, which she offers to Radigan if he’ll build a second machine for Redmond Mann as well. Radigan accepts, naturally.

The 1st Life Extending Machine (LEM) is finished on July 17th, 1894 for Blutarch.

The 2nd LEM is finished on August 3rd, 1894 for Redmond.

But as we know from Loose Canon, Radigan built a 3rd LEM, which he finished April 14th of an unknown year.

Blutarch tells Dell that he’s had possession of Radigan’s notes for 60 years, so its assumed that some time around 1900, Radigan dies and is buried with his notes, only to be exhumed by Blutarch.

Time marches on, and the brothers hire a new team of mercenaries to fight, the Classic Mercs, presumably one of many teams hired. After a time, the modern day mercs are hired and organized under the team name of FORTRESS, to continue the same fight that has been going on since the 1850s.

Then everything changes when Grey Mann shows up, killing both Brothers, forcing Saxton Hale to give up his company, and forcing Helen to run away.

Grey, having discovered that the Mann Co. vault containing 200,000 pounds of Australium is empty, hires the Classic Mercs to hunt down the Fortress Mercs and lead him to Helen.

Miss Pauling goes on a mission to reassemble Team Fortress, burning Helen’s geneology records along the way, while Saxton Hale goes to see about getting his company back with the help of his old friend Maggie, and Charles Darling.

Darling, upon meeting Hale, requests Australium in exchange for getting Mann Co. back, and tells Hale that the Administrator has been “playing two old gravel magnates against each other, establishing thousands of shell companies, filling entire coal mines with bodies, and over the course of a hundred and fifty years, stockpiling the largest supply of Australium in the world.”

The Administrator later meets with Pauling, telling her that there are 89,000 tonnes of Australium in existence, and she has been collecting all of it in the six months since Grey took over Mann Co.

Engineer has been revealed to be in hiding with the Administrator, keeping her alive with the use of a LEM, one much more modern than even Grey’s.

The model on her arm is nearly depleted, and Engineer replaces it with a newer one, which he believes can run on a quarter of the Australium that the previous Mark 4 did.

Dell then confesses that they’re just kicking the problem down the road, and that when the Australium in the Mark 5 runs out, the Administrator will likely die for good.

She dismisses it, claiming

Your family has already given me more time than any of us deserves, Mister Conagher. I don't need much more. Just enough to settle an old debt.

The Classic Heavy then betrays Grey Mann, who confesses to Miss Pauling;

Whatever despicable things you think I would have done with that power…you’re right.

And I promise you, what she’s planning is worse. Stop her.

Grey’s deathbed confession makes little difference to Miss Pauling, and she continues on with the mission regardless.

After Heavy and the Cheavy fight, Grey Mann’s LEM is destroyed, and Cheavy becomes a weak, frail looking old man before he dies, presumably due to Australium withdrawal.

The Administrator, recovering from being dead, is informed by Engineer that only a small vial of Australium remains on Earth. The Administrator dismisses this, simply vowing to find more.

Engineer explains that due to the Mark 5, even the small vial of Australium can give the Administrator six months of life, but that her life, and her plans to settle her debt, are at an end.

Administrator makes peace with this, and uses the entirety of the remaining Australium to reverse her aging, giving her only an hour left to live, which is where Issue #6 ends.

Now that we’re done with the backstory, let’s get on with the theory.

The TF2 lore really begins with Loose Canon, and it’s incredibly weird that Blutarch just has possession of Radigan’s notes for the greater part of the 20th century before he decides to call up Dell and ask him to fix his LEM. We know that the Mann Brothers were born on September 2nd, 1822, that Blutarch recieved his LEM on July 17th, 1894, and then dug up Radigan and his notes sometime around 1900, in his late 70s.

Blutarch goes onto say that he’s “barely cheated death out of a half-century” which would put his first Death at around 1910, which makes sense, since Blutarch is nearly 150 years old by 1968.

But we know that Emily and Helen have been working to keep the War going, so why allow Blutarch to get the original notes at all?

We know that RED and BLU are subsidiaries of TF Industries, founded by Redmond and Blutarch.

At some point, the properties of the Mann Estate not given to Barnabus Hale or Redmond and Blutarch were turned into TF Industries. It seems incredibly likely that RED and BLU were initially founded off of Elizabeth's generosity and Emily continued that practice by keeping Redmond and Blutarch alive, with Helen continuing the work of her mother and grandmother to keep their perpetual stalemate going. This type of grand strategy isn’t uncommon historically, with the best example being the Carolingians, who slowly take control over Western Europe over four generations, and fictionally, the Lannisters and the Tyrells of A Song of Ice and Fire, who plot for their grandchildren to eventually become Kings in their own right.

The Administrator family has a vested interest in keeping the Mann Brothers alive, if only to be subservient to them. Blutarch obtaining the notes in secret has to be something that would tip the balance in his favor, and allow him to end the War.

I think the Administrator knew but didn’t care, and that’s where the story kicked off.

Like we’ve said, the Mann Brothers are idiots. Blutarch tells Dell outright that Radigan’s notes have been the bane of his existence for sixty years, and Dell seems to be the only one who can do anything with them.

Had Dell fixed Blutarch’s LEM without fixing Redmond’s, it’s likely that Redmond would have died before Blutarch, ending the war. The solution then was simple. Much like her mother did, Helen would hire Radigan’s grandson to fix Blutarch’s LEM, but to also fix Redmond’s.

What about the Australium, though?

From Loose Canon, we know that Dell looked over Radigan’s papers and found a list of Australium caches.

Dell seems really interested in the Australium, and even though he could try and get to the caches without alerting anyone, given the reach and the influence that Helen has, I doubt he could get far without her killing him. Instead, it makes much more sense to hire Dell to work for her in secret, allowing him access to the Australium in exchange for keeping her alive by upgrading the third LEM, built by Radigan for the Administrator family before his death.

In Blood Brothers, we see that Dell must have succeeded in his task, and upgraded the Brothers’ LEMs.

These Mark 2 LEMs are sleeker, portable machines, unlike the large bulky Mark 1 that Radigan built.

Now, in Blood in the Water, we learn that the Mark 5 only uses up about a quarter of the Australium that the Mark 4 did.

In The Naked and the Dead, Dell says that the small vial of Australium left on earth is enough to get Helen anywhere between five to six months of life.

Helen however, decides to use the Australium to reverse her aging, presumably to her 20s or 30s, cutting her down to only an hour of life.

So if we extrapolate on this, we can guess that each later iteration of the Life Extending Machines used less Australium than the model before it. If we take the Mark 4-5 transition as a benchmark, the Mark 5 would only need 1 pound of Australium to do what the Mark 1 needs 256 pound to do.

That is, in my professional opinion, a metric shitton of Australium being lost for no real benefit.

Helen says there’s only 89,000 tonnes of Australium in existence, and that she owns all of it by 1972.

Grey and the Australians have some in their bodies, but besides them, there’s no more Australium left on the planet, presumably because most of it was all used up to keep two idiots alive.

So if Australium is so necessary to stockpile, as well as incredibly limited, why the hell would you waste it keeping two idiots alive to babysit, when you could kill both of them and spend your time elsewhere?

The Brothers really don’t contribute anything to the intellectual fields of society, and the gravel fields they’ve been fighting over are useless. The only thing of value the Brothers did inherit, the coal mine, was sold to Barnabus Hale for five cents. The graveline that powers the world’s steam engines is coming from the Hales, not the Manns.

Speaking of Barnabus, he and Elizabeth aren’t shown to have any real interactions, but given how the only thing Mann Co. does is sell guns and mine coal, if Elizabeth and her descendants are the true antagonist, there’s no real benefit to killing Barnabus and the Hales.

The only things the Mann Brothers have managed to achieve are founding RED and BLU, and as I’ve assumed, Elizabeth helped them start their companies anyway. The Mann Brothers really don’t need to be kept alive, but there’s no real point to getting rid of them either.

What’s the Administrator’s Deal?

Helen clearly has the same reason most humans would in wanting to live forever, but there’s also a second component. She tells Dell that extending her life isn’t just for her, referring to the “old debt” she’s been settling.

When Dell tells her that her life is at an end, Helen says

I’ve tried to keep this going as long as I could. I…

I even thought I was done once.

I still crave it…as much as I did when I was a little girl.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting it. It’s become…everything.

But you’re right. It’s over. And if I’m going to call an end to all of it…well…

Well.

Why not look my best?

This is incredibly cryptic. The obvious guess is that she’s referring to immortality, but I think it means something more than that.

Zepheniah Mann, a man of a prominent English family, was married to the daughter of William Darling, esquire, another man of a prominent English family.

We don’t really know anything about Bette Darling, but given that a man who fights with cougars for fun like Barnabuscries over her death, she must have been quite the charming lady.

On the other hand, Zepheniah seems like kind of a dick to his wife, ignoring his wife’s death in favor of hearing about his children. It doesn’t sound like a very warm marriage, and Bette would probably get tired of Zeph fairly often.

In England, a lady-in-waiting, or maidservant, was typically a noblewoman or a relative who would be part of a royal consort or noblewoman’s court.

Bette Darling, being from a prominent family and married to Zepheniah Mann, would most likely have her own lady-in-waiting to provide her with some much needed companionship. Given how Zepheniah seems to not care about Bette, who better to serve as a companion than her sister, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth as Bette’s sister makes a lot of sense. We know that Zepheniah ends up partitioning his assets off to her, and it sounds like Elizabeth ends up getting the biggest inheritance out of the recipients. Redmond and Blutarch are idiots, sure, but at the very least Zeph could have left his inheritance to Barnabus if he was that worried about things. After all, Barnabus did manage to run Mann Co. fairly successfully after buying the Brothers’ coal mine. Giving the bulk of his Legacy to a random maidservant makes a lot more sense if that maidservant is actually his dead wife’s sister.

So after Bette’s death, Elizabeth stays on in Zeph’s service, probably as a favor to her sister and her nephews. Then Zeph dies, and Elizabeth is left with a fairly substantial fortune, as well as a cache of Australium that her brother-in-law entrusted to her to keep away from his son.

Elizabeth could have walked away from the Mann Family Drama at any point, but out of loyalty to her sister, she ends up overseeing the conflict between Redmond and Blutarch in order to keep her idiot nephews alive.

And then Elizabeth dies.

So wait, what’s all this shit about genealogy?

Helen’s statement that she’s been stockpiling Australium for 150 years as of the late 1960s suggests that Helen has been alive since around the 1820s, coincidentally close to when the Mann Triplets were born, but the timeline here doesn’t really make sense.

Elizabeth looks to be in her 40s to 60s around 1850, and we know that smoking and age contribute heavily to infertility. Emily looks to be roughly the same age range in 1890, and Helen (who cheated) looks to be roughly the same age in 1970.

Here’s where I’m going to take a guess and say that Elizabeth is 100% dead, and that the old woman we see in the Naked and the Dead is actually her granddaughter Helen.

But in true fashion, I’m gonna go on a tangent to do it.

When Cheavy gets Grey’s LEM ripped out of him at the end of The Naked and the Dead, he looks old. Like, unreasonably old.

According to the Catch-Up comic, the TFC mercs were hired in 1930, and they look to be around their 20s to 40s by this time.

So if we guess on that, and say that Cheavy was born in 1890, he looks great for being 82 in 1972, which is to be expected for a man of his physique. Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in 1947, and he also looks great for being 69 years old.

So why does Cheavy go from looking like the picture of health to Ebenezer Scrooge not five minutes later? Australium withdrawal.

Australium is pretty special. Regular exposure to the stuff can extend your life and increase your vitality, and enough of it can reverse your aging entirely.

We know from Blood in the Water that Australium withdrawal is an actual thing, and that Australians who aren’t exposed to it become pretty normal. The reason the Australian soldiers don’t look like they belong in the grave is because they actually are in the peak of their lives, and aren’t keeping anything at bay by being exposed to Australium.

Cheavy, on the other hand, is basically coming back from the dead to fight Heavy. The Australium is the only thing keeping him alive after Heavy did quite a number on him.

Helen is the second person we’ve seen using Australium to sustain her youth and vitality, and the Australium is definitely taking a toll on her. When it isn’t being used to keep her looking young, she looks every bit the old crone she should be.

So coming out of that tangent with all this information, there’s just no way Elizabeth and Helen can be the same person, and that Elizabeth is 100% dead.

Elizabeth looks to be in her 50s by 1850, and would be at least 94 by the time the third LEM is built. Factoring in all of the smoking, Elizabeth’s body would probably about as healthy as a 150 year old’s by 1895. Even if Radigan could build the LEM in time to deliver to Elizabeth, Australium isn’t meant to prolong life. Helen, a woman who looks to be either 100 years old, or on the wrong side of 80, is able to punch a solid glass window and then shrug it off.

Speaking of the timeframe, Dell keeps making improvements to the LEMs, making 4 different models in total between 1968 and 1972, each more efficient than the last. When we get to the Mark 4, Dell replaces it with a more efficient model, ostensibly because the supply of Australium is slowly running out.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason. After all, there isn't that much improvement between the two, so why bother?

I think that the more you try and prolong your life, the harder it gets to rejuvenate your body, and the more Australium you need to do so. Australium exposure clearly screws with your biology in a massive way, and a 94 year old Elizabeth would be lucky to even survive the surgery necessary to install a LEM, let alone use it for 150 years.

So if Elizabeth is definitely dead before Radigan even builds the LEMs, we need to figure out the time-frame for the three generations of Administrators.

Guesstimating, we can assume that Elizabeth was born around the same time as Zepheniah Mann, probably around 1800. Even if Elizabeth became pregnant with Emily as late as 1850, that would make Emily around 40 years old in 1890, and anywhere from 45-50 when the third LEM is commissioned.

If Elizabeth is definitely dead sometime before or around 1880, that would give Emily the decade she needs to “acquire” her Australium without having to dip into her inheritance.

The third LEM then, is built for Emily.

So if Elizabeth is born around 1800, and Emily is born around 1850, the next logical leap is that Helen is then born around 1900. That’d make sense, as Helen would be in her 60s-70s as of 1972, but she definitely doesn’t look that way.

The answer lies in Australium withdrawal. If we assume that Emily and Helen are different people, and that Elizabeth lived until her 80s, Emily most likely voluntarily died around 1940 after a half-century of watching over the Mann Brothers and not wanting to deal with their shit anymore after a century of life. We’ll give her an extra decade for good luck, giving Helen possession of the LEM and her inheritance around 1950.

Even if Helen didn’t start using the LEM until 1968, that’s still 4 years for her to be constantly exposed to Australium, and if she uses it to reverse her aging just a small amount, she’d probably end up feeling the effects of 6-8 years of exposure.

Going back to the timeline, Elizabeth is dead by 1880, and Emily steps in to fill her mothers shoes, when Blutarch decides he wants to live forever.

Emily then contracts Radigan Conagher to build three Life Extender Machines for her and the Brothers. Radigan dies, and Blutarch takes possession of Radigan’s notes, but can’t do anything with them.

Emily lives through the Second World War, and then decides to pass the torch to her daughter, Helen.

Helen takes over TF Industries, and hires Dell Conagher in 1965. To keep the stalemate going, she hires 8 other Mercs plus Dell and assigns them to fight in the Brothers endless war, probably against other merc teams.

Then Grey Mann resurfaces after nearly 125 years, claiming Mann Co. and killing his brothers for being idiots.

At this point, Helen’s failed her grandmother and grandaunt. Bette Darling’s sons are dead, ironically killed by their own brother. The only duty Helen has left is to continue her grandmother’s job of protecting Zepheniah’s Australium from Grey, and she does a damn good job of it.

Enter the Darlings.

In Unhappy Returns, Saxton’s clearly at a low point, willing to deal with his old rival in order to get his company back, and Charles only wants one thing in return, Australium.

But how does Charles FUCKING Darling know about Australium?

Charles and Helen apparently have history, since Darling clearly knows more about what the Administrator actuallydoes than seemingly anyone else connected to the Mann Brothers and the Gravel Wars.

We know from Bidwell’s Big Plan that Charles Darling and Helen not only have history, but that the two don’t like each other.

If Bette Darling was really friendly, and the Administrators are at the very least, capable of expressing emotions, Charles Darling is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Charles Darling, by all accounts, is fairly sadistic. We see in Unhappy Returns that Darling plans to gather every animal on Earth and put them in a zoo. Oh yeah, and he makes nearly extinct animals stand on boxes in a wall all day. For fun.

The man is also arrogant, too. The next time we see him after his introduction, he’s standing in his rather large manor, reading a book he published with his face prominently displayed on the back, standing underneath an incredibly large portrait of himself, which he helpfully labelled with a golden plaque bearing his name. Did I mention this is his own house?

Charles explains that he wants Australium to keep his animals alive forever, and Saxton seems rather fine with this. After all, he’s got 200,000 pounds of the stuff back at Mann Co., what’s a few thousand pounds here or there? Darling tells Saxton that all of the Australium is gone, and that the Administrator was the one who took it, questioning what the purpose of doing so is.

Except, there’s no reason Charles should know what the Administrator’s been up to, let alone the existence of Australium at all.

Darling isn’t Australian, he isn’t part of the Mann Family, and he’s wealthy enough in his own right that he presumably doesn't need Australium, so what’s the point of gathering it?

Grey Mann tells us that whatever Miss Pauling thinks he was going to do once he had beaten the Administrator, she’s right. He then goes on to say that what the Administrator’s planning on doing is worse. That still leaves Darling, though. If Helen can hire Miss Pauling and Dell Conagher to work for her and have them apparently be fine with what Helen’s doing, can it really be that bad?

Back to the point, in Pyromania we get a hint of who Helen is, and what she’s capable of.

Not only is Helen clearly capable of blatantly stealing the entire United States Australium supply, she goes before the United States Senate and basically ignores them, until we get to the really juicy bit, after which she simply excuses herself.

Speaking of the juicy bit, we don’t learn much from it. Piecing all of the lore together, we learn the opening sentence, and that’s about it.

Very well. For one hundred-fifty years I have been stockpiling Australium to… Helen reveals that she’s trying to prevent something, in order to do something, and her plan involves eighteen perfect idiots.

We know that she’s carrying out her plan in order to fulfill her old debt, and that at the very least her plan involves the nine mercs, but that’s the best guess we can make. Given how in the comics, there are only nine Fortress mercenaries, we still need nine more perfect idiots.

In this scenario, there’s still no indication of what the plan is, but Charles Darling seems like he’s being set up as the main antagonist to our favorite chain-smoking protagonist, by virtue of being the only contender left.

Redmond, Blutarch, and Grey are all dead, meaning that Helen has no obligation to keep the Brothers alive, or defend the Australium from Grey, and the only thing Saxton seems to care about is being able to fight things, leaving only Charles Darling. Oh, and Olivia.

Olivia, in her first appearance, looks remarkably similar to Helen as a child. Olivia is presented to us as Grey’s daughter, but I don’t think that’s true, given how Grey is nearly a hundred and fifty years old by then. What makes a lot more sense is that Olivia is Charles’ daughter.

Grey and Charles could easily set up an alliance of convenience, at least until their mutual enemy Helen is out of the way. Charles could allow Grey to use his daughter to win control of Mann Co., and Grey could allow Charles to take control of some Australium.

Of course, this would break down when the two would have to split the world between themselves, but given that Grey is dead, the point is moot. Grey’s death also leaves Olivia and Charles in a really great position. Olivia, as the supposed daughter of Grey Mann, would inherit Mann Co. with Grey’s death. If Charles really is Olivia’s father, the main Darling branch is well on their way to inheriting all of the Mann Legacy.

Helen, as the granddaughter of Elizabeth Darling, who is the sister of Bette Darling, is a relative of Bette.

By 1971, Helen controls both the original third of Zepheniah’s Legacy that was partitioned to Elizabeth, as well the third shared between Redmond and Blutarch under TF Industries, since Grey seemingly has no interest in the worthless gravel pits, leaving only the Hale’s third independent under Saxton.

If Elizabeth really is Bette’s sister, and Helen is Elizabeth’s granddaughter, this means that two-thirds of the Mann Family Legacy is under the control of the Administrator’s branch of the Darling Family.

If Helen is a Darling, she’s the only one standing in the way of Charles inheriting the entire Mann Estate, and apparently control of the entire planet’s governments under RED and BLU, respectively. To keep the Mann Family Legacy (and the world) out of the hands of the Darlings, I believe that Helen is going off to confront Charles Darling, and presumably kill him and Olivia.

With Charles and Olivia dead, the Mann Legacy would be entirely reunited under Helen, at least until she gives Saxton his company back. Mann Co. can continue on as just a regular company, and Helen’s death will finally bring an end to the Gravel Wars.

TL;DR / RECAP;

Zepheniah Mann married Bette Darling, died, and gave his Estate and Australium to his wife’s sister, Elizabeth Darling.

Elizabeth, her daughter Emily, and her granddaughter Helen have spent the last century repaying Bette and Zepheniah by financially supporting Redmond and Blutarch, keeping them alive, and keeping Zepheniah’s Australium out of the hands of Grey Mann.

Grey killed Redmond and Blutarch, and allied with Charles Darling and his daughter Olivia to take control of Mann Co.

Originally, Helen planned to simply outlive Charles, outwit Grey, and keep the Brothers alive indefinitely, but Blutarch hiring Dell to fix his life-extending machine caused her to include Dell in her plans. The arrival of Grey and murder of Redmond and Blutarch, disrupted these plans, and forced Helen to have to devote all of her resources to keeping the Australium out of Grey’s hands.

With Grey and the Darlings working together to bring her down, Helen is overwhelmed, and has to flee to a remote location, bringing Engineer along to keep her alive until she can defeat Grey and the Darlings.

Grey ends up ironically being killed by his own employees, so control of Mann Co. passes to his “daughter” Olivia, giving the Darlings control over one-third of the Mann Legacy.

Helen, having failed to keep the Mann Brothers alive, succeeds through a pyrrhic victory in keeping Zepheniah’s Australium out of Grey’s hands.

On her deathbed due to the worldwide exhaustion of Australium, only Helen stands in the way of Charles Darling inheriting the entire three parts of the Mann Legacy, as well as control over the entire world with the resources of TF Industries.

In order to finally bring the conflict started in 1850 to a close, Helen has to use her considerable resources to kill Charles and Olivia before she herself dies at the end of Issue #7.

*************

#holy cow #this is very impressive #i'm speechless #I could very well see this happening #like this is a lot of well-thought out effort on Av's part #ty for sharing it with me #she better not touch my baby olivia #edited only to clean up links #it is still linked in the post #urls just bug me on something like this #otherwise untouched #because who would mess with this pure australium gold of a post #long post #keeping it out of the tags because of length #tf2 comic #submission

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manandmachines · 3 years ago

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@sovietsylph asked “5, 17, 20, 21″

Ask the mun about writing || Accepting!

5. How important is backstory and lore to you?

Very important. Backstory and lore can really help explain why characters say do and act the way that they do. It helps provide a whole new perspective on a character. Lore and backstory’s are so important to me, in fact, that if there is very little backstory to a character I take it upon myself to fill in the blanks. I look at a character’s behavior and think what could’ve happened to make them this way, then do my best to fill in the blanks, and adjust it as much as I can to make it seem as canon as possible.

17. Does writing energize or exhaust you?

I’ve found the writing really only tends to exhaust me when I’m writing something I don’t want to. So I try to stay aware of how writing a thread makes me feel. Just because I can’t a reply done today, doesn’t mean I won’t do it ever. If I make myself sit there and write something I want to write and didn’t enjoy writing it, I’m not gonna have much fun writing anything else with giving myself burn out. If I stay on a streak of writing threads I actually enjoy writing, I have plenty of energy to write more and get more writing done.

20. What inspires you to write?

Writing makes me happy. I like seeing people’s reactions to the stories I write. I’ve been writing since I was a kid. Before I could draw, I would write all the time. All my notebooks and spirals were filled with stories I wanted to turn into comics someday. My theatre and history teachers are the most to thank for this. They were the ones most excited in my life to read my papers and see my comics. So I guess I’d say the people. My partners. I’m an entertainer. I want to entertain people with my writing.

21. What inspires you to write this muse?

Put under read more because this part gets deep.

They’re my comfort characters, really. I relate to Rocket because like him I’ve sent my life wanting to be one thing, and people around me thinking I’d be better off being something I’m not. I relate to his anger, his frustration. His struggle with wanting to let people in with how many people have hurt me, people I trusted. He was a therapy animal who helped out his patients back on Halfworld, and to someone who’s struggled, still is struggling with mental health currently, having been baker acted three times, my most recent time being in October of last year, I hold Rocket close to my heart. He’s my therapy animal.

With Scott, I never really had a dad. My old man passed away due to his own struggles with mental health, and the dad after him was abusive, as well as his family towards me, and the one after him, well he’s no prize either. With Scott I get to write the dad I only had for a little bit, and he makes people happy with how much of a dad he is, and that in turn makes me very happy. I also want to make Scott to be a kind of role model for how dads should be. Your dad should be supportive, kind and caring. He should listen to you when you’re having issues, and you shouldn’t be afraid to express your own thoughts and feelings in front of him. Your dad should support you and believe in you, like mine did in the time I knew him. And on top of that he’s just an ordinary man wanting to help by doing the extraordinary, and I find that to be the most uplifting thing ever.

With Bucky, I can’t help but relate heavily towards. I relate to him being tired of fighting and just wanting what everyone else has, yet still fighting regardless, because really, it’s all either of us knows. Just like how he thought he was done fighting for a minute, I too thought I was done and headed on a path of normalcy, until it all came violently crashing down. Yet despite us fighting very different battles, he and I are both out fighting still despite just how tired we are, because honestly, what else can we do? What other options are there but to keep going? Really we’re just taking it one day at a time, trying to do better, be better, feel better. I’ve done some shitty things in my past that I’ve done out of anger and I’m still trying to make up for that, and I can relate to Bucky wanting and trying to do the same. Granted, for different reasons. I can also relate to being the oldest sibling and having to help out with my younger siblings for various reasons, and the time you lose on yourself doing that.

Really they’re all just, special to me. I couldn’t find better heros for someone like me to write.

#「 It's an old code Skipper I can't make it out || Asks 」#abuse cw #「 alive ahaha fuck || ooc 」#sovietsylph

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pauldron-pieces · 4 years ago

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Destrier Revel: For Leofore

Fandom: Dungeons And Dragons (5E)

Pairing: N/A, Leofore-Centric

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: This is a hypothetical narrative boss battle scenario featuring original characters in a world created by my Dungeon Master. As usual, this is non-canon and I own nothing aside from intellectual properties specifically attached to Destrier Revel. This installment is mechanically unsound in a multitude of ways and ignores certain important lore facets. Trigger warnings are listed inside. Enjoy!

Taglist: @sporadic-fics and @cookiethewriter!

Inspired By: Fire Emblem: Three Houses OST: The Apex of the World (Rain) and Written By Wolves: To Tell You The Truth

Destrier Revel’s Backstory: Burn The Wicked

[Leofore is a human Oathbreaker/fallen paladin, and his appearance can be found here.]

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains multiple triggering scenes including vivid descriptions of gore, emotional/physical duress and character death. Stay safe!]

When we last left our party, Knight-Commander Leofore was believed to be dead, a casualty of the war. To the shock and dismay of the party, Leofore returned on the eve of their most ambitious push against the Urgals, their former friend and mentor twisted nearly beyond recognition and wearing a strange mask. Leofore proceeded to berate the King's Elite for their inaction before kidnapping both the prince and the queen and escaping into the night. The party has tracked him down in an effort to rescue the queen and prince, and possibly, Destrier's mentor as well ...

He knew they had arrived before they even entered the portal. Thranrok was always so loud .

The sound of their voices filled him with melancholy he did not entirely understand. Leofore's mind seemed to be in a fog, a daze that stole the strength from his very spirit. Was this what being undead was truly like?

The queen was still secured beside the throne, her regal poise maintained throughout the ordeal. Frail hands trembled ever so slightly as his gauntlet wrapped around her bound wrists, but other than that she gave no indication of her fear while she was pulled upright. King Jonathan's wife had always been the picture of composure, whether dealing with unruly nobility or Urgal hordes.

Leofore offered her a smile devoid of warmth. "It would seem your salvation is at hand, your Majesty. Better late than never. Unfortunately though, you will not live long enough to be rescued."

"I pray that your friends will be able to rescue you from the inky depths you've sunk to." The queen replied softly. "The Leofore I knew would never surrender so easily, would never stoop so low as to condone murder and kidnapping."

The torches lining the room suddenly flared bright, no doubt in reply to Thranrok's talents. A forlorn fondness swept the paladin when his old friends were revealed in the rising torchlight, his dagger moving without his input to slit the queen's throat.

Leofore couldn't remember why that caused him such distress, his thoughts clouded and confused while her hands weakly pawed at his blackened breastplate. He shoved her body away gracelessly, opening his arms in greeting instead. "My friends!" The paladin said gladly.

"Why the hell would you do that?!" Thranrok squawked, the sorcerer already bristling.

Naero advanced cautiously, his attention obviously split between concern for the queen and wariness for Leofore. " Easy big guy, we did what you asked for. We're here. Your negotiating skills could use a little polish, but whatever gets the job done."

Leofore could hear the judgement in his quiet words. Naero had always been good at reading him.

Knight Revel silently gathered the queen in his arms and Leofore's gaze was drawn to the large shield strapped on his back, identical to the one he himself had carried. The knight passed the rapidly fading woman off to Ganymethios, who looked as grim as a dragonborn could while he began to softly murmur a spell that would no doubt steal her back from death.

Pity they never afforded you such courtesies.

Leofore paid the queen's removal no further mind, predatory focus shifting to the two who now stood at the foot of the dais. The elf at least had the wherewithal to keep his expression neutral, but Destrier… "It is good to see you again." Leofore announced, his smile all bared teeth and false pleasantries. "How I wish that I had been able to see you all one last time before I died. Alone on the battlefield, eyes fixed to the horizon where I expected my aid to come from."

Died rang hollow in his head. He knew it was wrong , but he was unsure why. Why would that be wrong? He had perished.

Right?

The spectral grip at the nape of his neck tightened, phantom fingers digging in like iron talons. Right . "Would that we could meet under happier circumstances," The paladin mused.

"The feeling's mutual, trust me." Thranrok muttered.

Argon already looked ready to tear Leofore limb from limb, the werebear sampling the air briefly before affixing those beady little eyes on the paladin atop the dais.

He will be a problem. Get rid of him. That cold voice in his head again, the claws digging deeper. Leofore shook off the sensation, straightening his shoulders. "After you all so callously abandoned me to die , really, what was I to do?" He asked no one in particular, clasping his hands behind his back as he surveyed the room.

Destrier's voice cracked when he spoke up, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Knight-Commander. I had never seen King Jonathan weep so openly before that day, the day that he gave us the order to march on the main encampment instead of dividing his senior officers."

Leofore glanced at the young man he had trained and he was perturbed by the expression Destrier wore. The blond looked like someone had ripped the soul from his chest. And the idea of his dear friend King Yokam ordering the battalions forward with tears streaming down his face...it was-

Exactly what you wanted! He abandoned you, let him suffer!

Bitterness soured his mouth.

"We grieved for you, we mourned your loss!" Destrier continued when he did not comment, his fists clenched at his sides. "And when Gany told us that he may be able to return you to your former state-"

"I needed some time to work on the spell and gather resources, but yeah. We weren't letting you go without a fight." Gany inserted himself into the one-sided conversation, placing a hand on Destrier's shoulder to quiet him. "Thranrok and I aren't one hundred percent sure on what's going on, but for you?"

"Of course we would try!" The hairless dwarf chimed in. Leofore's throat tightened. "Leaving you behind-- none of us agreed with it! They called us heroes, honored your memory, but without you there…"

"An inescapable void in our team where our compatriot used to be." Naero paused, sharp eyes meeting Leofore's own steadily. "All the poetic words in the world won't cure the horror your lost soul must feel, therefore I won't bother with them."

Despite their relative proximity, Leofore suddenly felt as though there was a bottomless pit between himself and his stalwart brothers in arms.

Destrier raised his lance in a knightly salute. "You will never die alone again, my friend. We will lay you to rest as many times as it takes. I swear it." He promised fervently. "Whatever power dragged you from your grave, we will dismantle it and grant you the peace you deserve."

"I think all this is pointless." Argon rumbled bluntly. "He's not just gonna' lie down no matter how much you idiots talk at him. Even if he wasn't all screwed up, this is Leofore ."

"Too true, my ursine friend!" Leofore agreed with another smile, genuine this time. It was good to see them all again-

The angry mask of his helm slammed down without warning, the ability to control his own motions entirely removed.

What am I doing?

A terrible oath in Urgal left the mouth he did not own and then a pinpoint of black flame tossed itself lazily into the center of his former allies. Fick was the only one quick enough to sidestep the attack, the elf having the audacity to look bored.

What am I doing? Stop!

Knight Revel and Ganymethios were unable to avoid the hellfire explosion and were thrown back from the throne dais, the knight striking a pillar sickeningly hard and the wizard tumbling across the floor with a loud clatter of scaled limbs.

Stop!

His lance felt unwieldy and clumsy in his hand. Leofore advanced on the individuals he had fought beside so many times, his attention fixed on Argon. Argon, First General, was the largest and strongest of the group, the werebear towering head and shoulders over even Knight-Commander Leofore himself.

Get rid of him or he will cause trouble.

Thranrok struggled to help Gany rise, the sorcerer hurling angry verbiage in Dwarvish at Leofore. With those two preoccupied, Leofore was free to attack Argon uninterrupted. The werebear stared him down, then opened his mouth and let out a fierce roar of challenge.

An arrow sang through the air, Leofore dodging the shot to the face with a speed he did not possess. Fick grunted something that sounded like a swear under his breath and Leofore knew he was supposed to hear it, simply because the Spymaster didn't speak for his own benefit even when he was frustrated.

The familiarity was ice cold down his spine. He would have to kill them. Argon would feint left, then strike right. Destrier would use the haft of his lance to knock him off balance before going in for the kill. Ganymethios was the wild card, but even he had predictable routes. Thranrok would attack from the air, and Naero-

Gods help me. I will end up killing them.

But then, Argon bolted right . Leofore was caught off guard, unable to get his lance up in time to fend him off and the werebear grappled him with massive paws. Claws raked through his armor and Leofore snarled, words foreign to his tongue imbuing his lance with a terrible power. He pulled his arm back as best as he could to strike, to stagger, to kill -

He had forgotten about Destrier, more was the pity. "Garuda denies it!" the blond man barked sharply, his hand outstretched to render Leofore's spell null. The Knight-Commander was not even allowed the time to be irritated as Argon proceeded to maul him. Or try to, anyway. The blood hunter was certainly making quick work of his armor! Leofore was strangely lighthearted about this turn of events. Argon had factored in that he knew their methods inside and out. To change such tried and true strategies mere moments before battle-!

Revel was abruptly inches from his face and Leofore blinked, unsure if he had hallucinated the curled onyx horns he had seen briefly on either side of Destrier's pale visage. The younger man's lance roared like a bonfire when he struck Leofore, pinpricks of strange light arcing around his form.

The dark-haired paladin was then subjected to an ethereal weapon colliding with the side of his mask, catching the barest glimpse of a glassy obsidian battleaxe--no! A double-bladed spear, laced through with stars and flanked by those horns. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. Since when could Revel do that?! That was also a variable. It seemed Argon was not the only one who had adapted his strategies! Bittersweet pride surged in Leofore, seeing the determined look in those familiar brown eyes.

Please, my friends, stop me. I am lost to you, please stop me.

Kill them all, you insolent fool!

The decaying bodies of his men rose from the shadows beside the pillars, shambling corpses heading for the recovering wizard and unconscious queen. Thranrok flew into the air, fire whirling to life and immolating their would-be attackers. The stars that began shimmering around his bald pate warned Leofore that he was about to have much more than the angry First General werebear, his fierce Knight-Captain and their potshot-taking Spymaster to endure.

Get rid of Argon, before it's too late! He is the largest threat!

Leofore struggled wildly against Argon's grip, his lance puncturing the blood hunter over and over in a frenzy. Argon held on doggedly while the necrotic energy seared his flesh, one enormous paw swiping at the mask.

Destrier had entirely abandoned any pretense of composure, his attacks little more than frantic swings until Argon yelled at him to focus on the damn mask, Revel! Instead of stabbing his deadly lance through Leofore's head like a sane man would have, Destrier spun the weapon around and rammed the blunt end of it up into the underside of Leofore's chin.

Colors exploded across his limited field of vision and Leofore feared for a moment that Revel had shattered his jaw. The older paladin tasted blood in his mouth, viscous liquid spattering down his breastplate when he gasped for air. Argon's hold on him tightened even further, grim blackened pauldrons creaking in warning; another arrow glanced off the mask, chipping the bridge of the nose.

"Keep him still , will you?" Naero complained.

" Look Fick, he's hellbent on making me into a damn pincushion-- will you knock it off?! " Argon interrupted himself to pound a furry fist into the side of Leofore's head, the blood hunter sounding more like he was berating a child than fighting for his life.

Destrier abandoned his lance in favor of fumbling with the smooth edges of the mask, the knight swearing a blue streak when Leofore jerked his face up out of reach. "We are here to help you, Leofore!" He cried, clearly distraught. " Stop! "

Leofore silently bent his legs at the knee and planted his black sabatons in the center of Revel's chest, using the solid wall of Argon to his advantage so he could knock Destrier flat on his back. A mote of pure starlight struck Leofore squarely in the temple and he heard a loud crack as the mask lost a small piece from the forehead.

"Ha!" Thranrok sounded pleased, which boded poorly-

You stupid fool, kill him now!

Another Urgal spell left his lips and paralysis rippled across the battlefield. Thranrok tumbled helplessly to the ground, the dwarf landing hard beside Ganymethios and the queen.

Leofore wordlessly flipped his lance around and thrust it into his own stomach. His plate and chainmail shrieked in protest before giving way and the pain from his wounds (which had been a far-off, dreamy sort of thing), rushed to clarity. Radiant energy cut him to the quick and he choked down his yell, shoving the lance through himself and into Argon.

The werebear roared at the explosion of power and loosened his grip, finally allowing Leofore to tear free.

The man dropped heavily to the stone floor, another mote of starlight crashing into the mask and knocking him onto his hands and knees. Leofore was dimly aware that he was slavering as he clawed at the mask, beating a fist into the ground in frustration when it would not budge.

He scrabbled frantically at his belt for his dagger, drawing it and feeling bile surge up his throat when he realized the blade was still stained with the queen's blood.

Leofore then jammed it under the edge of the mask, trying desperately to pry it off. Fight it, Leofore! That was Thranrok's voice in his head, concerned, loudbright , grounding him in reality. Knight-Commander Leofore, leader of the King's Elite, reduced to this?

The dagger cut into his cheek while he struggled, the paladin digging and scraping like a rabid animal until the blade suddenly snapped with a sharp pang!

I warned you, thrall. Now, kill Argon.

" No! " Leofore screamed, slamming his face into the floor one last time and then staggering upright against his will. The chainmail covering his stomach was slick with blood; Leofore could feel it trickling into his greaves. He pressed a hand to the wound and gripped his lance even tighter, his breathing coming in harsh, liquid gasps.

The werebear lay still on the flagstones several feet away, badly bloodied. First one foot, then the other, Leofore slowly advanced the prone blood hunter.

"Don't make me do this." The paladin whispered, fighting for control with every step. "Gods, don't make me do this." The icy fingers dug deep into the nape of his neck, making him grimace.

You have no choice.

Destrier grabbed his lance arm, the knight digging in his heels when Leofore tried to shake him off. " I won't let you! " Destrier raged, his voice hoarse from yelling as he roughly dragged the larger man back a step.

On the opposite side, Thranrok wrapped his entire body around the paladin's other arm, the stocky sorcerer slowing him down even further. "Gany, get it off him!" Thranrok exclaimed urgently. " Hurry! "

The dragonborn's talons sank into Leofore's face before he could even think about dodging, Gany not even attempting to remove the mask so much as he was skinning it off of him. A crack formed down the center, the mask giving out under the strain.

No!

Thank you, my friends .

Pain shot through his veins, fever-hot and furious. Leofore couldn't help but cry out, a weak shudder of agony rocking his battered body. Ganymethios carried on with his grisly task and Leofore finally felt something at the nape of his neck snap off with a dull crunch.

/x\

Leofore collapsed face first, mere inches from his intended target.

Destrier couldn't keep from dry heaving at the sight of the bloody mask Gany now held, the dragonborn shooting him an apologetic grimace before stating, "Nasty stuff, but it had to be done."

Naero sauntered forward, already putting on his gloves. Destrier gripped his lance tightly while the elf reached down, two fingers tapping on the side of Leofore's neck in habitual search of a pulse. He wasn't sure what on earth Naero hoped to find, Leofore was-

Fick's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "He's still circulating, boys."

"What? But I thought that he was undead!" Thranrok voiced what they were all thinking, scratching where his sideburns would be.

Destrier hardly cared, digging his gauntlets in at Leofore's sides so he could roll him over onto his back. He glanced to Gany, opening his mouth to ask for help, but the dragonborn was already muttering theories to Thranrok. The two of them were scrutinizing the inside of the mask pieces in the torchlight, holding the objects gingerly between them. Better not to interrupt if I can do it myself.

Destrier gave his healing freely, the hole in Leofore's stomach and his mangled face knitting themselves back together at a glacial pace. Revel's abilities may be able to keep himself alive in battle, but Ganymethios would forever be the better healer. Destrier's help had always been more akin to filling a pond by flooding it.

The Knight-Commander was breathing, the blond realized in stunned silence, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Destrier leaned forward, resting his forehead on Leofore's breastplate so he could feel the steady motion of his breath. " Please ." He implored softly, not sure of entirely who or what he was even asking for. He felt Naero's hand on his shoulder, the elf giving it a brief squeeze between pauldron and gorget.

Argon groaned, sounding more annoyed than pained. "Excuse me, senior officer over here? Guy who did all the work? Anyone want to give me a hand?"

Gany chuckled, absently tracing a well-worn sigil in the air. "Relax, Argon. We wouldn't leave you out in the cold."

The werebear grumbled at the quip, slowly moving to sit up after a moment or two. "So is he alive or what?" He asked. Destrier was uncertain who he had addressed, the Knight-Captain still slumped with his head bowed against Leofore's chest. Gany's healing spell washed over them all, but even after that Leofore did not stir.

"He breathes, anyway." Naero answered. "We should also make certain her Majesty is safe, and sweep the room for any further threats."

A gauntlet fumbled to grasp the back of Destrier's neck heavily. "Are you alright?" Leofore rasped, his voice barely audible. The younger knight was not particularly proud of how loud his sob of relief was, turning his face against his own shoulder in a futile attempt to muffle the pitiful noise with his tattered mantle.

"And lo, our sleeping beauty awakens." Fick said dryly. "The real question is, do we have to have Argon knock some sense into you again or will you behave this time?"

"I offer no promises." Leofore's laugh was a shadow of its former glory, the sound ragged. "I feel like death warmed over. Help me sit up, boys." Gany assisted Destrier with shifting their Knight-Commander into a sitting position on the stairs to the dais, Leofore nodding his thanks to the pair before glancing around the room. "What has happened?" He asked worriedly.

"We were hoping you could tell us." Fick replied. "This is lich business, after all. And someone didn't do their required reading the last time we dealt with one!"

"Hey! I can only apologize for not knowing about phylacteries so many times!" Thranrok protested. "Lich books are always so damn dry ."

"Well the one who reigned here was so damnable proud of his phylactery, he practically put the thing in my hands." Leofore shook his head. "That may have been the worst part of this whole endeavor, removing the reign of this lich while languishing under the tyranny of the previous one! That blasted mask-"

"Won't be able to do anything ever again." Thranrok interjected. "Gany and I will see to that."

"I thank you, my friends." Leofore sighed. "Near as I can recall, the prince is secured beneath the throne. The queen..."

"Already acquired. She lies over there, unconscious but alive." Ganymethios assured as Naero bolted for the throne.

"We must convene with Jonathan, discuss how to approach dealing with that other lich." Leofore rose slowly, clearly still weary from their pitched battle. He extended a hand to help Argon up from the floor, and was nearly toppled for his trouble.

The blood hunter grinned toothily, slapping the man on the shoulder. "We'll save you coming to my rescue for some other time, eh troublemaker?"

"Aye, I suppose we shall." Leofore paused for a moment, then turned to Thranrok. " Please tell me you can teleport us out of here, something . I am ready to be rid of this nightmare."

Thranrok looked offended. "Ex- cuse me, Leofore? Do my ears deceive me, or do I detect a hint of doubt in your tone?" A scroll was drawn from one of his many pockets. "The nerve of you, thinking that I wouldn't be prepared!" The sorcerer blustered.

"Wait, wait, we definitely shouldn't go directly to the castle." Naero called, hauling the prince's unconscious body out of a small cell beneath the elaborate throne. "King Jonathan is likely to slaughter us first and ask questions later if we just appear with his unconscious family and Dread Knight Leofore in tow."

"Too true!" Thranrok tapped his chin in thought, then snapped his fingers. "I've got it! Grab her Majesty, Gany."

"Wait, perhaps we should-"

Whatever Leofore was about to suggest was cut off as Thranrok enthusiastically rattled off the power words written on the parchment in his hands and the party was unceremoniously teleported away.

The familiar storage room of Maplecrest solidified around them and Destrier realized a split-second later that a wicked-looking cudgel was being swung at his head. His shield came up on instinct, deflecting the blow and making the metal ring loudly. "Illeria!" He said gladly, not really caring that she had come remarkably close to taking his head off.

The diminutive innkeeper dropped her weapon, her eyes wide in the dim light of morning. "Destrier! And--oh. And...Prince Timothy. Is that the queen? " She hissed, starting to hastily smooth out her skirts and apron.

She halted when she noticed Leofore and Revel reached out a steadying hand, certain that the young woman was preparing to grab her cudgel again. "It's alright, Illeria." He soothed.

Thranrok sidled to the main door of the inn, quickly scrawling a sign on a spare piece of vellum and then tacking it to the outside of the door. "We're buying you out for the day, Illeria. Y'know, for the trouble." The dwarf explained, the tips of his ears tinged slightly pink.

Illeria nodded dumbly, yanking on Destrier's arm. The knight allowed himself to be dragged into her living quarters, caught between laughing and crying when she whirled on him. "What the hell is going on, Revel?! You all-"

"I know. I can't even tell if I'm dreaming or not." Destrier confessed. "We had thought Leofore was lost to us, but he was working under the influence of a threat we believed we had destroyed."

"What, more Urgals?" She asked incredulously.

"Something akin to that, yes." Whatever Illeria muttered was decidedly uncharitable, the young woman holding her head in her hands. Destrier hesitated, then opened his arms. "Would you-?"

She tucked herself into his embrace without another word. The knight rested his chin on the top of her head, feeling a peace he had not known since Leofore had vanished.

"It is good to be home again." Destrier whispered.

"Home?"

"Aye. Home ."

/x\

Leofore stood in front of King Jonathan, his body language pensive. He still wore the blackened armor, stating that he felt unworthy of his gold and white plate, so he made quite the bedraggled sight. Once the king was done squeezing the breath out of his wife and son, he turned a stern look to the Knight-Commander.

"Fallen Knight Leofore."

Destrier grimaced at Leofore's wince. They had known this would come, but it still hurt. Leofore dropped to a knee, his shoulders rigid. "Your Majesty." He replied evenly.

King Jonathan meandered off the throne dais. Naero elbowed Destrier in the ribs, pointing surreptitiously at Jonathan's hands. More specifically, at the gauntlets he now wore. Destrier's brow furrowed in confusion, since when did his Majesty…?

Jonathan bade Leofore to rise, placing his right hand on the taller man's shoulder. Before anyone could react (though Destrier suspected Leofore knew the punishment was coming), he balled his left gauntlet into a fist and slammed it squarely into Leofore's nose.

Argon huffed out a breath that sounded suspiciously close to a snicker. Ganymethios was taken by a sudden coughing fit, Thranrok slapping him as high up on the back as he could reach.

Leofore staggered back with a grunt, cupping his face. Jonathan looked a fair bit pained himself, shaking off the impact of the blow. "Return to your duties, Knight-Commander Leofore. There is much work to be done." Despite his fierce expression, the king's eyes fairly danced with good humor. "It brings me great joy to have you back, my friend."

"Aye, the feeling is mutual." Leofore replied with a rueful smile, wiping the blood from his nose off his upper lip. "We bring news of enemy plots, my liege."

"Naero has informed me. We will tackle this topic ere the morn. Tonight, we feast." The king clapped Leofore's shoulder once again. "The queen and prince have returned, as well as the brave Knight-Commander we thought had been slain and the rest of the King's Elite. I would say that is cause for celebration!" He gestured a manservant forward, distributing tankards of fine ale amongst the adventurers before raising his own goblet. "A toast, my friends, for the new era! An age of peace shall finally dawn."

"For Leofore!" Prince Timothy exclaimed, saluting the Knight-Commander who waved it off with a quiet chuckle.

" For Leofore! " The King's Elite echoed, and there was the sudden snap of leather straps giving way as Destrier's shield flung itself off his back to hover at his side.

"You...gods, really? " Argon sighed.

Destrier rubbed the back of his neck, clearing his throat awkwardly. "It had to be a phrase I would remember." He tried to explain, feeling thoroughly embarrassed. "I wanted it to serve as a reminder of what we fought so hard for and why we fought as hard as we did."

"Well spake, my flushed friend!" Timothy teased, knuckling the other man's shoulder. "But come, we have a feast to prepare and drinks to indulge in!" Leofore's expression was unreadable when Destrier dared to glance over, and the younger knight feared that he had offended him.

Leofore approached him once the festivities were truly under way, asking for Destrier's presence while he circled the grounds. "It is very loud here, but I do not wish to be alone." He said by way of explanation, blue eyes strangely mournful.

Destrier agreed and the two of them made their way to the ramparts, walking at an easy pace and making inconsequential conversation.

Once there, Leofore ran a hand along the rich buntings that bore the kingdom's colors and insignia, his gaze far away. " Wars are not won or lost, merely ended ." He mused. "I know not who coined that phrase, but I have always found it to ring true." The dark-haired man leaned against a parapet and fixed Destrier with a calculating look. "Have we won this war, Revel? Or are we simply ending it?"

"Does it matter overmuch?" Destrier replied pragmatically with a question of his own, fixated on the bonfire in the courtyard far below crackling merrily away. "History will remember us as the victors and the people will recover with our help. Our work will not be over when the fighting is, you know that."

"Aye," Leofore nodded. "About the shield, Destrier…"

"I can change it." Revel rushed to assure him but Leofore waved him off.

"It brings me comfort to know that you would hold me in such high esteem." Then, "do you think Argon will forgive me for trying to turn him into a kitchen sieve?" Destrier tried to stifle his laugh to no avail. Leofore grinned at him, the older knight mussing his hair teasingly before returning to staring out toward the horizon. "Many things have changed, and yet even more stay the same. I will not be so foolhardy this time." He promised solemnly.

"I do not think we would be able to carry on with this new era if you were absent, my friend."

"Surely you jest. The strength I witnessed from all of you, the tenacity? I feared I would burst with pride. I understand your sentiment, though. I shall not go looking for my death, nor rush headlong into danger."

"Not alone, anyway." Destrier amended. "That is all I can ask for, Knight-Commander." He extended his hand and they clasped forearms in the typical knightly fashion. Leofore searched his eyes for a long moment and then nodded, seeming to have found whatever he was looking for.

"You have changed as well, Knight-Captain Revel. For the better, I would wager."

Part Three: Light And Home

#destrier revel #leofore #fallen paladin #dnd #dungeons and dragons #I loved the character of leofore so much #I'm sure my DM is sick to death of hearing me yammer about Leofore #but I am a simple man #angst #character death #conquest paladin #paladins #all paladins #of liches and those who fight them #NPC ruminations #a paladin and his mentor

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Tenet Is Christopher Nolan’s Unofficial James Bond Movie

https://ift.tt/3xRimZi

This article contains Tenet spoilers.

Throughout the Daniel Craig era of James Bond, the influence of Christopher Nolan has been hard to miss. A year after Nolan reinvented Dark Knight mythology with Batman Begins, and created the industry term of a “reboot” in the process, 007 had his own back-to-basics reset in Casino Royale. And following The Dark Knight’s praise for reconfiguring its iconography again for a post-War on Terror world, Skyfall would receive similar acclaim a few years later for its chilly, realpolitik tone.

But no matter how many developments in the Bond canon end up attributed to Nolan’s influence, it should be recognized that Bond influenced him first. That fact is almost inescapable after watching Tenet, which just premiered on HBO Max. It’s the filmmaker’s latest time-bending thriller, and the one that most resembles a 007 flick. With its smoothly dressed secret agent hero, its allusions to British intelligence, and its plot about a megalomaniacal Russian seeking to destroy the world, it’s a wonder John David Washington never once drained a dry martini.

More than any of the films before it, Tenet crystallizes that Nolan has always been chasing James Bond. And with this new film, the Memento director finally went ahead and remade that character in his coolly nonlinear image.

For more than a decade, the 50-year-old filmmaker has not been shy about his admiration for the Bond movies that captured his imagination as a child. At the 2010 London premiere of Inception, he even celebrated the similarities between his work and the Bond oeuvre.

“The Bond influence on the film was very intentional because, for me growing up with the Bond films, they’ve always stood for grand scale action,” Nolan said (via BBC). Those early 007 films from his youth, starring Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore, all “stood for the promise of being taken some place bigger than you could have imagined.” In an Empire print interview from the same year, he confessed, “I’ve been plundering ruthlessly from the Bond movies in everything I’ve done, forever. They’re a huge influence on me.”

And you can see it in every action film he’s made since 2005, beginning with the groundbreaking Batman Begins. While his origin story for the Dark Knight might have influenced how grounded Bond producers took their own 007 reboot less than 18 months later, the Bond influence on Nolan’s vision of Batman was there from the outset. It’s even in one of the key appeals of all three of Nolan’s Batman movies: his desire to open Bruce Wayne’s world up and depict him as a jetsetting crusader living in a larger global community, as opposed to in a contained Never Never Land version of Gotham City. The desire to show exotic locales like Iceland (doubling as the Himalayas) and Hong Kong visibly came from Eon Productions’ depiction of Bond as an adventurer always on the move.

More specifically, Nolan’s reinvention of the Lucius Fox character (played by Morgan Freeman) was modeled wholly after Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, the gadget-making quartermaster and occasional sidekick of 007 across nearly 40 years of Bond movies. Similarly, the focus on the chic habits and hobbies of the ultra-rich in those films (and many others of Nolan’s films, actually) likewise stems from 007.

As the Batman sequels continued to heighten the tension throughout The Dark Knight Trilogy, the influences of Bond also became only more pronounced. With each new film, the villain of the piece got a table-setting prologue action sequence that acted in a similar fashion to Bond movies’ famed pre-title sequences, and Bane’s aerial hijacking of a CIA plane over Scotland in The Dark Knight Rises is particularly a much more sophisticated riff on the same concept that starts License to Kill (1989).

Similarly, Batman kidnaps a Chinese national out of Hong Kong in The Dark Knight by holding onto him as an airplane grabs a cable tethered between the superhero’s back and a balloon floating in the sky—thereby yanking both into the air. Lucius Fox says he got the idea from “a program the CIA had back in the ‘60s called Skyhook.” And it’s true, that program existed, but Nolan almost certainly got the idea from the 1965 Bond movie, Thunderball, where Sean Connery and Claudine Auger (or at least their stunt dummies) are yanked out of the Caribbean and into the wide blue yonder.

Even the third act twist of The Dark Knight Rises, where it’s revealed that Tom Hardy’s dastardly Bane is actually subservient to (and in love with?) the woman Bruce thought he cared for is taken more or less from the underrated Pierce Brosnan Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (1999).

Eleven years ago, Inception was simply more brazen about these lifts, with its finely tailored heroes never needing to don superhero threads, and with a third act in large part focused on a ski and snowmobile raid of a fortress taken right out of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), which Nolan just happened to call his favorite Bond film. At the time of Inception’s release, he also called the dream-based actioner “absolutely my Bond movie.”

Nevertheless, with Inception’s structure being more derived from heist thrillers than spy movies, and its hero being a family man haunted by past mistakes instead of an international man of mystery, the filmmaker’s thoughts on that being “my Bond movie” have softened over the years. In 2017, he told Playboy (via Business Insider) that he’d “definitely” consider doing a Bond movie one day.

One might assume Tenet is that movie, or as close to it as possible.

In both Nolan’s Batman movies and Inception, the filmmaker grafted Bond inspirations onto the existing structures of superhero lore and heist movie conventions. Yet with Tenet, Nolan finally embraces the spy movie’s form… while still situating those conventions within his own distinct obsessions and narrative sleights of hand.

Excluding the most recent Bond movies starring Craig, the 007 of the screen has always been defined by his impenetrable ambiguity. Connery’s Bond never talked about his childhood or parents, Moore’s Bond never had any lingering attachments to friends or lovers beyond the current adventure he was already in, and the only acquaintances in their lives were work colleagues like Q, M, Miss Moneypenny, and poor hapless Felix Leiter from the CIA. With two notable exceptions, we never even saw the inside of Bond’s flat for the first 50 years of cinematic exploits.

Tenet thus takes that idea of a mysterious presence as the lead character to its extreme. Washington’s protagonist is even rather cloyingly named just that: the Protagonist. He has no family, friends, backstory, or even 007’s defining vices of vodka and sex. All we know is the Protagonist came up through the CIA before being recruited into the Tenet organization, and he doesn’t like it when colleagues are killed—well, that and he’s more inclined to drink a Diet Coke than a martini.

Still, he nestles into 007’s world neatly throughout the film. When he’s scolded by a marvelous Michael Caine for wearing a Brooks Brothers suit to a meeting at a London club so snooty that you’re chided for not addressing your betters by their titles, the Protagonist quips, “You British don’t have a monopoly on snobbery, you know.”

“Well not a monopoly,” Sir Michael smirks. “More of a controlling interest.”

In essence, Washington’s Protagonist is an interloper infiltrating the rich and privileged world most 007 actors are depicted as walking through as if it were their birthright. While there was a roughness around the edges to Connery’s original (and best) Bond, the character’s smirk implies he was born with the silver spoon, only no one realized it until he took it out of some other less deserving aristocrat’s mouth.

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We likewise see Washington slowly assume that identity throughout Tenet, intentionally irritating the stuffiness of Sir Michael’s club, or joking about hot sauce in a high-end restaurant frequented by billionaires. Nonetheless, he assumes all the Bond airs smoothly and with minimal effort as the film progresses. After Michael’s condescension about his suit, the next time we see the Protagonist he’s wearing a tailored three-piece gray number which doesn’t look that far removed from Connery in Goldfinger.

And when he sits down to match wits with the film’s villain, a man named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), he Protagonist acts like Connery: a fella who claimed the privilege that was mistakenly denied at his birth. When the Protagonist is asked if he’s slept with the villain’s wife, the way he so subtly smirks while saying, “No. Not yet,” would do Connery proud.

But then Sator, perhaps even more so than the Protagonist, is what makes Tenet a near full-on Bond movie. Following in the grand tradition of British actors adopting bad Russian accents to play heavies, Branagh’s Sator lives the life of a super-evil megalomaniac on his yachts and high on his vices.

Those trapping may be more sophisticated than the Bond movies’ often comic book-level depictions of wealth and power—hollowed out volcanoes and swimming pools filled with sharks—but for all of Sator’s musings about the paintings of Goya and Freeport tax havens, or the F50 foiling catamaran sailboats he flaunts in front of the Protagonist, he’s still a Bond villain who wants to conquer/destroy the world. In his case, it’s because of the complicated science fiction methods of a future generation wanting to wipe us out. Still, Sator’s function is all so much fodder for a third act monologue.

Where this becomes most apparent is his relationship with his wife Katharine (Elizabeth Debicki). A woman trapped in a toxic abusive marriage by literal blackmail, Debicki’s Kat is intended to be more developed than a typical Bond girl (not to mention many of the leading roles for women in Nolan movies). We see her twisted relationship with Sator strictly from her point-of-view as a mother living under duress, with her husband threatening to send her to prison if she ever attempts to leave with their son. In fact, he twists the knife further by saying he’d only allow her to leave if he kept the child he doesn’t even care about.

However, the Protagonist trying to get to the supervillain through the manipulation of his lover is Bond movie plotting 101. The Dark Knight might’ve borrowed the Skyhook concept from Thunderball, but Tenet lifts the central romantic triangle conflict in total, with the hero pressuring a woman to spy on and undermine a villain who’s essentially middle management for the bigger threat (SPECTRE in Thunderball, vengeful future generations in Tenet).

There’s more complexity to Kat than Thunderball’s Domino, and she nor the Protagonist need a romantic rendezvous under the sea for her to turn. She’s already ready to do that long before the Protagonist shows up. However, she is still, at least in one scene, the damsel in distress who must be saved, and the woman who’s also tortured and beaten by the man who keeps her under constant surveillance.

At least, also like Domino, Kat gets to kill the villain by shooting him on a yacht. Kat’s victory over Sator is more satisfying, too, since she does it to quench her own thirst for revenge and not to save the hero.

“I’m not the woman who could find love for you even though you scarred her on the inside,” she says, drawing the gun. “I’m the vengeful bitch you scarred on the outside.”

For all of Tenet’s confusing misdirections and head-spinning discussions about introverted entropies, paradoxes, and parallel worlds, it is in essence a spy thriller right out of the 007 template. But does that make it better or worse? The answer might be somewhere in the middle.

Like all of Nolan’s spectacle films, there is something to be said about Tenet’s fidelity to in-camera stunts and action. Nolan’s seen enough Bond movies over the decades to know the images that stay with you and hold up many years later are the ones where actors (or stuntpeople) are doing it for real. So original death-defying imagery, such as when the Protagonist and Neil (Robert Pattinson) bungee jump upwards and above a Mumbai high-rise, or a third act climax in which filmmakers simultaneously shoot vehicles moving forward and backward, is thrilling stuff. (The movie finishing in a third act siege is also taken from Thunderball and numerous other Bond movies, by the by.)

But personally, one of the greater appeals about Bond movies is their unapologetic desire to have fun. With few exceptions, the atmosphere is relatively lighthearted in each 007 adventure, or at least playful. Tenet, like all of Nolan’s films, has a somber earnestness about it, which makes the slipperiness of its protagonist harder to hang onto, and the motivations of its villain less credible in a story about our descendants trying to wipe us out over climate change.

In many ways, Tenet is denser and less mischievous than any of Nolan’s brooding Batman efforts or Inception, which is a picture where the central protagonist is a grieving widower. It’s one of the reasons, I suspect, Tenet has left a lot of viewers cold. So if this really is the closest Nolan ever gets to doing a 007 movie, maybe it’s for the best.

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