#jaded protagonist

[fictionalnormalcy]

A/N: After over a year of not uploading, FINALLY. 

Ch. 35: Unanswered Texts

The Boy with a Strange Name 

WC: 116,149 Rating: Mature Fandoms: Fusion of the How to Train Your Dragon books and animated franchise Summary:  Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III has lived nearly seventeen years of life. In the span of those years, he’s moved twelve times. Five of those years his mother was alive. Then a tragic accident left Hiccup in the sole care of his father, Stoick Haddock. Berk was where he had been born. That much he knew.  Over every, single, move his father put him through, it wasn’t until he reached sixteen years old that Berk was the city in which the father finally decided to plant roots. At least, that was what he claimed. After years of being victimized at each school he attended, Hiccup was determined to keep a low profile at Berk High. His past is intent on preying upon him, deciding that Berk was perfect place to come back into the light. However, like all good things that came to him, there was always something to drag him back down into the pit of despair. A dormant secret, tied into his family history, was ultimately brought into the light when Hiccup settles on Berk. A secret tied with guilt and tears, and it all goes downhill from there. He discovered what his father truly did those long stretch of years, and finds he has a gift that had been nonexistent for centuries.

[wraithdolll]

you should drawing turtle. please. or peril <3 the sillies

turt

[ninoxwof]

Tsunami the Seawing (Revisited)

Been over a year since I started this blog and there are some designs I want to freshen up a little bit so here's a bit of a new design for Tsunami!

[Image Description: A digital drawing depicting Tsunami from Wings of Fire. She is a blue slightly muscular seawing dragon with a light sky blue underbelly and a deep blue neck, nose bridge and forehead. She has swept back curled lighter blue webby fin that goes from her forehead to her tail, they resemble slightly like tidal waves. She has similar webby fins on her chest, a tail fin, and ears that are similar to fish fins. Her offwhite bioluminescent scales are shaped like wave markings and teardrops and they're notably on her shoulders knees tummy, tail and brow. She also has swirl bioluminescent markings on her fin like wings to signify she is of seawing royalty. On her chin, she has two long barbels similar to her father's and then two more barbels that are similar to a shark's pectoral fin. She also have shark like fins on her elbows and on the bottom part of her tail. She has a little bit of yellow on the side of her belly, on her upper eyelids and on her esca. Her horns are a deep dark blue that resemble the tip of a conch shell. Her left eyebrow has a scar that runs vertically through it and her eyes are green. She is standing giving a toothy smile. In the second image she's shown to be wearing a purple pearl necklace, and two fin rings on her tail fin. /.End ID]

[characterswithcolorsnamesfight]

Prelim Poll 5

Propaganda here

[tangledinink]

this is really stupid but like.

... is there anyone else in this fandom whose twin has died? am i the only one?

[graciecatfamilyband]

The Info-Dumpers who Love Characters Website is totally sleeping on the best Info-Dumping Character of All Time:

Jade Daniels, the 17 year-old half-indigenous girl from Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw.

In everyone’s defense, character-driven slow-burn literary fiction that is also a slasher (stab stab 🔪🔪🩸) is a hard genre to sell. Many of us who love one part of this equation don’t love the other.

But Jade has captured my whole chainsaw ♥️, and I CANNOT be normal about it. Jade has never met a person at whom she wasn’t willing to spout random facts that they have exhibited no interest in. She can bring ANYTHING back around to connect to her hyperfixation which is, coincidentally, slasher movies. And she is the most vivid, alive, real-to-me protagonist I have ever encountered. Because of the way she hyperfixates and info dumps, not in spite of it. (Which surely says something about me but again, I am among friends on this webbed site!)

Jade makes completely normal, totally hinged choices like:

(When we the audience are first introduced to her) Going up to a group of construction workers having a trash fire in the middle of the night and being like, “If we were in a slasher right now, this is what the plot line would be. Also, have some random slasher movie facts.” (Their response: Are you okay? You seem like you are not okay.)

Writing extra credit essays for her history teacher about the tropes and conventions of the slasher genre. For four years. Not what he asked for, but what he got. (These essays are included in the book and are a godsend for those of us who are not already slasher fans! They literally help the reader understand the story beats as they unfold, while simultaneously giving life to Jade’s voice and helping us understand what makes her tick.)

Deciding the New Girl At School has all the qualities of a Final Girl, the slasher film trope in which there is one girl left alive to confront the killer and stop the slasher cycle.

Trying to warn the New Girl At School that she is going to be The Final Girl, by putting a VHS copy of the 1971 slasher Bay of Blood and all of Jade’s slasher extra credit essays in her mailbox. With a note. A note that says that she is going to be The Final Girl in a slasher cycle that seems to be starting up. (Jade is just trying to help! So helpful.)

Of course, the core of this novel is: What is going on with Jade? After all, she actually wants a slasher cycle to start in her town. (She also wants the slasher cycle to be stopped at the proper moment, to ensure that the vengeance of the slasher is balanced by the justice of the Final Girl.) She does not see herself as a possible Final Girl, but she is willing to help the richer, prettier, more appropriate classmate who she thinks is that girl. Why, why, why?

To be clear, the novel does not posit that something must be wrong with a person to be intensely, obsessively interested in something or for that thing to be horror- even slashers! But Jade’s behavior is, like I said, not entirely hinged, even for a slasher fan. Something must be up.

The novel gives us all the clues we need to peel back the layers of what’s really happening, and when truths are revealed, everything just *clicks.* Themes are introduced and then reinforced on multiple levels. There is a bear. 🐻 (The bear is the not the slasher.)

And throughout, Jade gets to be fully-human and fully seven-fucking-teen. Even though she is on the cusp of adulthood, she is still a child, and a wounded one at that. (Her wounds in no way fucking diminish her.)  Her judgment is often impaired. Her actions are often questionable. Her hair-dye jobs gets so bad, even she thinks its gross. She is so alive, and so deserving of love. 🥹 

I love her.

I would fight for her.

I desperately want to make soup for her, and let her tell me about the Scream franchise (I do not care about the Scream franchise), and give her a safe place to sleep. Even if doing so makes it way more likely that I’m about to get murdered.

Jade Fucking Daniels. My chainsaw-hearted, info-dumping hero protagonist. I salute you, my final girl.

[hornkerling]

As you wish, @jadesabre301

My fics for stray gods mostly come in sapphic, particularly Calliope/Persephone because they're so angry and messy and delightful and writing Calliope soothes my inner menace. The first I ever wrote was Kore Enterprises, filling in the missing scene of Persephone visiting Calliope's apartment.

I expore Calliope and Persephone first getting together in Firewater, which probably still has one of the better opening paragraphs I've managed recently.

Calliope is used to Persephone on the edges of things. A cautionary tale for late night drinks and the bluer days of late autumn, when the city parks are full of crows fighting over the night’s scraps amongst raw and jagged trees, their final leaves are just the shed skins of their livelier, younger selves. A fragile song through tiny bones.

I wrote You caught my voice and listened as a response to @kshaar's Earworm, which is such a good drabble istg. Everything they write is incredible, whether for stray gods or dragon age, you should read all of it. But Earworm was the one that had me seeing if I could remember enough Greek to mangle some Sappho. It's also, like most of my fics for these characters, full of extravagant eidolon lore.

I have one Calliope x Grace, Calliope x Persephone, eventual ot3 everyone lives AU called Sing all your questions to sleep, which was quite fun. Comes complete with a rant about The Symposium!

The two fics I'm probably the most proud of, however, are The seed that grows without the sun (complete) and Monsters of the old world (one chapter to go).

Monsters of the old world came about because Hephaestus's fate in the game haunts me. He is one of my favourite Greek gods, and because I'm me I was tangled up on the crip potential of it all, and also the idea of Medusa on a very particular rescue mission. I'm trying to close off the final chapter, but it keeps running away from me because I get caught up in the absolute mess that is Aphrodite's choices re: Venus. But it's nearly done!

Hephaestus is blowing glass the first time he hears about the snake-haired bitch in the compound. It is only training and muscle memory that stops him from swallowing and ruining this body’s throat, and frankly the body is built more for war machines drawn up in CAD than the construction of delicate, physical parts. But Hephaestus has always worked better with a prototype, and while you can take a smith, lock him in a server room with a wall of screens, and he’ll make do, he’s always preferred to bother his captors with these specific, ‘old fashioned’ demands. A workshop. Bronze and coal where they want radium. Glass blowing, when a single wrong move would fuck his lungs beyond repair. Even he’s got to live, and showing the bastards just how much their discards can do is some extra stolen joy. When Hephaestus has to pass on, the higher ups throw the infirmary at him. Why waste an able fighter on the crippled god? Hephaestus’s eidolon tends to lead to injury, and well—that path is a dark one. But he is sure the tales of Medusa’s arrival are something he’s dreamed up in a crucible, and it’s not till he’s in the compound’s refractory and a hooded, writhing figure is shoved into a chair opposite him that he believes it can be true. Medusa stares at him, eyes hectic and flaring in a single, surprised moment before she ducks her head, the snakes around her face extending flickering tongues into the air between them. Chains hold her arms at her sides, and a corporal slams a bowl down, glaring at Hephaestus as the known quantity. “You feed her,” he snaps. “Not like the snakes will get you.” For a moment, Hephaestus and Medusa, two who have not spoken in millennia and rarely even then, meet each other’s eyes in perfect accord, amazed that this child-human thinks snakes are the problem

Seed is...it's about Persephone meeting the woman she would become in the late 1940s. It's one of the most personal stories I have ever written, despite being in a time and place I have not lived.

If you read any of them, read this one.

“—I can help with that.” Chastity wipes sweat from her eyes and blinks at the woman leaning against her gate. She’s seen her around. Hard not to, when there’s only one good place for bread in the village—though if there’s any more rationing or prices go up again, she’ll have to start making that, too, and God only knows where she’ll find the flour.  But that’s future, and presently Chastity has a stocky, slouching stranger smiling at her, and she’s got a spade. And the spade's not covered in rust like the one Chastity found in Sal’s shed. Hers has an edge to it, and Chastity, a married woman for nearly a year and imagining it cutting through the dirt she’s barely managed to scatter, is pretty sure this is what lust feels like. Turns out, Sister Immaculata was wrong.

[shinigami-striker]

Kelly Hu | Tuesday, 02.13.24

Same voice actress, different TV show characters - featuring Kelly Hu.

Happy birthday! 🎂

2007

Stacy Hirano - Phineas & Ferb (TV series & movies) (2007-present)

2011

Jade Nguyen (Cheshire) - Young Justice (TV series & video games) (2011-2022)

2013

Hamato Miwa/Karai - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) (TV series & video games) (2013-2017)

[tomlivingspace]

misogyny was still rampant in the first series but its interesting how much it was also a part of the plot. bluestar had to give up her kits in order to be deputy because a nursing mother wouldn't have been fit to be leader. yellowfang is blamed by starclan for being brokenstar's mother despite him never even knowing she was. it's just interesting how much the tragedy of how misogyny manifests within the clans in the first series is present and just kind of goes away. there's still misogyny but most of it isn't an intentional flaw of clan culture. the flaws of clan culture are focused more on forbidden romance romance crap

[chaosallstar]

Bianca Belair & Jade Cargill

[asurrogateblog]

the tune from incarceration of a flower child is also in 4:50 AM (going fishing) from pros & cons which is leading me to theorize that the dream in that song is actually a continuation of the jasmine and jade fantasy and once you listen to it with that in your head it is. upsetting.

[fictionalnormalcy]

The Boy with a Strange Name Ch. 36: The No-show

WC: 118,137 Fandoms: Fusion of How to Train Your Dragon books and animated franchise

[justakidicarus]

I’m actually really tired of most AU’s in certain niche’s rn on Ao3

Just like, super tired of specifically the “Jaded Protagonist” trope.

You see it in every single Deku travels through time (or in every time travel AU period)

You see it a good deal of Varian in/during Season 2 AU’s

You see it in most Tommy SBI found family books.

The Jaded Protagonist has just gotten too edgy to me. When every time the character is just biting the heads off everyone else and striking out on their own despite everyone trying to understand and help them, who ch tends to be most of the drama and often leads to OP characters (Especially with Deku) its just not enjoyable to read for me. I understand that this might just not be for me and other people may enjoy these more serious characterisations but it just makes the book feel more bogged down and hard to get through, as the sheer amount of miscommunication these jaded characters bring is the main driver of conflict

I am especially talking about the countless Jaded Izuku fics.

Miscommunication in general has just become so overused and stale to me that it makes a boring plot. X character keeps saying ominous things like “You couldn’t change anything anyway even if you did know so I won’t tell you,” and then we find out that if the characters did know then they absolutely could have helped. It makes me mad at the characters for their decisions and a bit mad at the writer for choosing this of all things as their main plot drivers.

I want more X character time travels to the past but instead of being an edgelord they are a dork who keeps forgetting key details not for plot reasons but because they aren’t relevant in their time and it stresses everyone out.

For example:

Adult Izuku (ArsenAll) on the bus ride to the summer training camp with class 1-A just chilling and chatting happily with the Dekusquad about funny little anecdotes when he mentions Yuga doing an underground mission and suddenly startles so badly from his seat he nearly falls out but Uraraka catches him. The entire bus looks at him as he whirls around and starts profusely apologising to Yuga. No one can tell what exactly he’s apologising for but Yuga is getting steadily more pale.

“Yuga I am SO sorry I completely forgot about the whole- y’know THE THING I mean it really hasn’t come up or been relevant since like- first year but that’s really no excuse and you’ve probably been super stressed about it and I haven’t even mentioned it or thought about it and I can’t even really fix it rn cause it’s a pretty private matter and I don’t really want to share personal details with everyone but you kinda really need to know and argh I am Super Duper Sorry!”

Just like, funny stuff like that instead of angsty going of on his own and destroying every threat with zero help. Enough of the Jaded Protagonsit, bring some light into this dark and dreary atmosphere and environment. We should aim to make our readers laugh not groan in agony from our characters emo attitudes.

[ninoxwof]

Tsunami the Seawing

[Image ID: A deep blue seawing dragon named Tsunami. She has fin-like ears, horns that curl out like coral, and gills on her neck. Fins are all over her body and they look like ocean waves. On the side of her body, she has a yellow horizontal stripe that meets her light blue underbelly. She has a small esca on her head and two small barbels, as well as a small scar on her brow. She is giving a determined face. On one image of her, she is wearing a necklace of pearls on her neck and on her wings that are shaped like giant fins. /.End ID]

[waitineedaname]

the dashboard osmosis has zapped your blorbos into my subconscious bc despite not having read a word of svsss last night I dreamed about a musical adaptation of it. thought you should know. (the dream musical kind of slapped btw)

OH MY GOD??? that sounds incredible holy shit now all I can think about is which scenes would make good songs. this is amazing omg I'm so glad my dashboard osmosis powers were strong enough to do this to you

[djsherriff-responses]

I think we should write fanfics of Jade having incredible sex experiences and surviving the canon events with at least one hottie by her side, as a treat