#just a little one. don't look at the massive collateral damage

[goddesstrolls]

nerizo got in a lil fight

[revelboo]

Hello! I usually don't post much here in these ask Boxes, but seeing your writing style made me have thoughts about ..... I don't know if you saw TFE(earthspark) but if so, can you write something about megatron?? 😘👍😔💅 (I'm literally addicted to everything you post)

Haha I do adore Rory McCann’s lovely, growly voice.

Give Up/Give In

TF Earthspark Megatron x Reader

• That mad laughter rings in his processor as he transforms and reaches, only to find Skywarp already gone. Weapon fire slamming into his back right before Starscream slams into him, driving him down to the ground. He’s dimly aware of brakes squealing, something colliding with his ped. Humans screaming and running from the fire fight, but there’s no time to lure the Seekers out of the middle of town. They’re darting away before he can bring his canon to bear. The three clever enough to know that he’s stronger, but they’re faster. All they have to do is keep moving. Servos tightening into a fist, he bares his denta at Skywarp. “Come on then!” He roars in challenge.

• They came from out of nowhere, Cybertronians fighting. Sure you’d seen this sort of thing on TV, but it was always a distant horror. Something that didn’t happen in your town. Slamming on the brakes, you hear tires squealing before another driver slams into your sedan, caving in the driver’s side door as pain sears through you and then your head is snapped back when the airbag goes off. From far too close, those massive aliens are brawling, and you watch the gray one step on an abandoned car flattening it and not even noticing. Clawing at your seatbelt, you see the guy who hit you stagger out of his truck. “Help! I’m stuck!” You scream at him and he hesitates. For one brief moment you think he’s going to actually come over, then something explodes and he’s running away. Leaving you.

• There’s guilt there in the back of his processor as he fights his former allies. His followers who believed in him. Needed him to be their rallying cry for change. For a better life. Understands their hatred and how they see his actions as betrayal. But he can’t let the weight of his failures cripple him now. A blow to the back of his head. A kick to his shoulder. Weapon’s fire to the face. Staying out of reach, because they know as well as he does if he gets his servos on them it’s over. And just like the last two times in as many days, the attack stops. The trio warping away without any clever words or sneering. Looking for weaknesses. Testing him. Baring his denta with a snarl, he steps back and something crunches under his ped, a ragged noise of pain freezing him.

• The ruin of your car tips up slightly as that massive foot steps on the hood. It’ll step back any minute, crushing you and never even noticing. Then that foot moves and he’s crouching down. Megatron. How many times have you seen this one on TV? The reformed warlord. Huge fingers grip the roof of your car and just pull it away so easily. Glowing red eyes staring down at you as he frowns. “Easy, little one,” he says and that low, growling voice rolls over you. When he wrenches the door from the car frame, you become aware of the pain and the wetness at the same time, a ragged scream tearing from your throat.

• There’d been no time to worry over the humans and, if he’s being honest, he hadn’t spared them any thought at all. While he protects Dorothy and her family, the rest have never actually mattered to him. Just more collateral damage of the war. The little human’s screams taper off to a panicked wheezing as he breaks the seatbelt and lifts them free. The red blood making him remember Dorothy hurt, bleeding out and still trying to fight. Defiant. You’re not her. Trembling in his servos, eyes wide and terrified as you look up at him. “Please,” you whisper and he’s frozen. Because you need him and he isn’t sure what to do.

Next

[beautifulpersonpeach]

BPP I'm so exhausted and heart broken over this NewJeans mess. Funny thing is I got into the group after seeing you talk about them late last year, I fell in love with Ditto and started watching them closely. I saw how MHJ would treat them and smile at them in candid shots like the Lolla show, and felt at ease that they would continue to succeed with her managing them.

But since this issue started when I try to express why I'm uneasy with HYBE controlling NewJeans, I'm downvoted to negatives on reddit and qrted to hell on Twitter. Army friends have unfollowed me even though I've said I'm against the hate on BTS. I don't even stan NewJeans the way I do BTS, but because I'm critical of Hybe and siding with Ador, I'm called all sorts of names and yesterday Armys tried to suspend my account. Even BigHit's former choreographer has come out in support of Ador, other idols have publicly come out in support of NewJeans and N Capital came out to refuse Hybe's claims that MHJ met them to take Ador out. I feel things are not as Black and White as Armys are saying about this issue, and that NewJeans is under risk if MHJ leaves.

Everybody is calling me crazy and on one hand it's whatever. I know how kpop stans are in general so I'm not surprised, but I'm truly starting to worry. I started writing this ask 3 times before settling on what I've written now, because I kept getting choked up. I know its just kpop and I shouldn't be this attached, but I'm so scared BPP. Those girls are not even 2 years old as a group and their future is already looking so bleak when at the start of this year, their future was so bright. I remember you said they might technically even get a Grammy nomination this year. I feel sad and angry but I'm unable to express myself freely in all the fandom spaces I usually spend time in.

What should I do? How can I handle this? If it were you, what would you do? Sorry if this ask is super whiny but you always have good advice and I need some right now.

***

Listen, you already know what you should do. You just seem to lack the will to do it, at least that's what it seems like.

ARMY is the largest fandom in k-pop and they've deemed NewJeans as persona non grata. Most other HYBE fandoms also aren't looking too keenly on NewJeans and with how obsessive k-pop stans are in everything they do, this will be a long-term problem for NewJeans and their fandom. If Bunnies were a bigger fandom it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but they aren't, so the lifetime of the group is already halved.

If you only got into NewJeans six months ago and you're already this attached, you need a cold turkey break. Things are looking grim given the girls have expressed support for MHJ, and it's very unlikely HYBE will lose this case. Those girls are more or less done, so I'd say you should cut your losses and start detaching from them now to spare yourself more heartbreak later. Also, block the 'ARMY friends' who are downvoting, quote tweeting, and otherwise harassing you. You're in fandom to enjoy a community about the things you love, not to get stuck in never-ending arguments with people who have little else going on in their real lives.

The primary danger of k-pop, is getting sucked in. A lot of people here are fully, irredeemably sucked in. On both sides of this matter, ARMYs, Bunnies and kpoppies alike, the majority of this crowd is people who think they are normal but have lost any real semblance of perspective on what this industry is and of their place in it. You need to cut loose because you seem to already be in a somewhat fragile state, and what this space does is pervert that hurt you feel into a tribal sort of resentment.

I can't really say what I would do if I were you, because I don't feel attached to NewJeans the way you do. It's a shame the girls have become collateral damage, but given how quickly they became massively successful in this industry, this is unfortunately a more expected outcome for them, than not. It's sad, but that's the nature of things here. I like BTS, but like I've said many times before, I don't see myself as having any significant influence over their careers and choices. Whatever they choose to do with HYBE or whatever is their business, I simply keep supporting them for as long as I like them and the music they make.

This mess with HYBE is peculiar (and different from the 50-50 case) because NewJeans and ADOR are saying they don't want to leave HYBE (yet), while HYBE is punishing them as though they are asking the courts to let them leave HYBE. It's created a situation such that even if NewJeans stays or leaves, they are in a sense doomed, to be blunt. And you need to make your peace with that.

Some ideas to help:

A cold turkey break is very needed. The way you're talking about this group doesn't seem healthy. It wouldn't seem healthy if you were talking about BTS either. It might be a good idea to block anything related to k-pop for the next two weeks. Things will only get messier because the stakes are high, and HYBE has shown they have no problem going low. For your sanity, I really think you should stay away cold turkey and tightly curate your online spaces when you return.

Consider stepping away from Twitter and Reddit. I'm less familiar with Reddit but for Twitter, you have the option of making your account private, blocking the ARMYs harassing you, finding more sensible Bunnies to commiserate with, using lists to keep up with topics and accounts, etc.

Consider spending more time on Phoning. After taking some time to cool off, use NewJeans' app to connect more directly with the girls to show them love and support.

Try to focus on the music. NewJeans will have comebacks on May 24th and June 21st. The best way to support those girls now, is to focus on their music and support that. Personally, I've already ordered full sets of their albums since this might be the last ones we see with Min Heejin's creative direction. (Also, they might become collectable lol). Of course I hope that's not the case, but supporting their music is the most direct way to support the girls right now, in my opinion.

I'm sorry you're in this state, I'm even more sorry that the girls are in this state, but you need to detach and remember they have their own lives, are making their own choices, and that has nothing to do with you.

Good luck.

[baelpenrose]

Nihilus Rex 35: Escalation

Nils crosses one of his first major lines here. That plan about swatting a hate church comes to fruition. TW for gun violence. Also we're gonna repeat the disclaimer that we feel increasingly obliged to as Nils keeps escalating. Especially since this is probably one of the few actually imitable atrocities he commits. Hey, I know I harbor a massive hate for evangelical churches but don't do this in real life. It's awful, and just like in this chapter? It will hurt innocent people. Afterverse Studios does not endorse anything with this kind of collateral damage. The hate preachers may deserve it, the families they're brainwashing don't. Do not do this. If the morals don't convince you, the legal rammifications might. You will get caught. Nils & Co. have villain protagonist powers, you don't.

Co written by @canyouhearthelight.

Do you believe in God?

Written on the bullet

Say yes to pull the trigger

Do you believe in God?

Written on the bullet

And Cassie pulled the trigger

“Cassie”, Flyleaf

Nils

It was a few days after the party, and the preparation for the SWAT attack was ready. Gray had been in constant contact as we’d prepared the attack to turn the churchgoers against the government, give the Christians an actual persecution to be afraid of - and escalate the armed contingent against the police.

Now, I sat in our little abandoned mall, behind a wall of VPNs, and prepared to ignite something that set fire to my veins with an excitement I couldn’t believe I felt at what I was about to do.

Shot up gay clubs. Kids kicked out of their homes. Kids committing suicide because of peers and parents who couldn’t accept them. People dying, the word “faggot” or “dyke” or “tranny” the last they’d ever hear.

Today, retribution. 

Somewhere, some spoilsporting part of my mind recognized that I was about to cause a mass shooting, and I could hear a voice that sounded suspiciously like Father Rivera’s speaking that old proverb. Something about how those who make use of the devil's tools shall, by degrees, come to serve his ends.

They should have listened to you then. Today their tools are mine. 

I keyed off the bot that started the SWAT call. Pre-recorded. A hostage situation in the church. Then another. Another. VPNs would cluster the calls as coming from that area. After about four or five, with more and more 911 calls that rapidly hung up, I terminated the bot, and waited, my eyes on the screen.

“Keep an eye on online chatter, everyone. Things are about to get real exciting.”

The church’s own livestream let us watch what unfolded. SWAT burst through the doors, and the pastor found himself interrupted. A fanatic right wing pastor who had spent years swearing the deep state would eventually come for Christians, who swore up and down that Trump would save them. A gun toting flock, allowed to carry in church. Cops charging in, keyed up to fight.

I didn’t see who fired the first shot. I don’t know that anyone did. I don’t know that history ever would know, as we never figured it out.

What mattered was that in minutes, the screen was consumed with a brutal firefight between an armed SWAT squad and dozens of armed church goers. Before anyone was doing more than reacting to the chaos,  three of the dozen armored officers and a score of the churchgoers were down, some silent and some thrashing and screaming, blood covering them. As the Evangelicals were diving behind the pews and shooting, they began catching other churchgoers in their shooting, randoms getting it in the backs, the legs. A flashbang caught a section of pews on fire, and the pastor caught a round high in the chest, gore spattering the wall behind him.

Lash looked away, turning so she couldn’t see the feed from even the corner of her eye.  She hunched over her laptop, pointedly focusing on online chatter.  “Mass shooting reported… Nothing about SWAT, which is wild.”

I didn’t take my eyes away from what we’d - I’d - done. “Give it a sec. News will have to break the story. Bishop - what are you seeing? And can you seed anything? Ghosts of Ruby Ridge, maybe?”

Gray’s voice came over the call. “No need. Already there. Bunch of people screaming about how this is why they need guns in church, government coming after worshippers. There’s already a few militia types moving towards that church to fight SWAT if they can get there in time.” His voice was smug. “I thought you were full of shit, but you weren’t kidding. The perfect gambit to give the right what it needed to finally decide playing nice with police was making them weaker, not stronger.” 

My attention snapped. “Bishop, monitor police bands.” This was gonna get real good, real fast.  At this point the SWAT team was falling back toward the exit, though it was apparent that more damage had been done in the church by its defenders than by the SWAT team - something that would be left out by the online reports - the ones that would be believed by Gray’s crowd, the side we were going to be using for our muscle.

Bishop snapped up. “Police closing on location, more SWAT, normal officers.”

I took a breath. “We may have brought more fire that we intended on this one but no sense in stopping now. Drop away from live feed - follow comments. We don’t need to draw attention to the fact that we were paying attention.” I disconnected from the live feed and switched to news coverage - it was supposedly a “breaking story” and CNN was already scrambling to fill the air with as much talking-head-speculation as they could to draw eyeballs for ratings while they waited for reporters to get to the scene and for facts to come in.

“Left wing chatter is coming down pretty harshly.  The kindest thing I’m seeing is ‘thoughts and prayers’, escalating all the way to ‘how are those guns in churches working for you’ and ‘at least no one will protest these funerals’,” Lash updated from her view. “The trolls are out in force.”

Gray snapped. “Better than the lack of guns at most left-wing gatherings usually go, apparently.”

“Not really. This entire plan relied on undisciplined shooters in the crowd starting a firefight, which wouldn’t have worked in a left wing crowd.” Bishop said, mildly.

I listened to the arguments among them for a second, then snapped back. “Police are reporting they had multiple localized calls about a hostage situation in the church and are already looking into this. They state they are still looking into who fired on them.”

Gray smirked. “Of course. That’ll do them a world of favors in a community that believes the government lies like it breathes and knows most mass shootings are false flags. Who just survived a government attack on a place of worship. Them being told a terrorist who hates them took advantage of their weapons to get them to fight the police, and that it wouldn’t have worked out if they’d been unarmed? They’ll just believe that’s obvious government attempts to manipulate them into disarming. Thanks for the suggestion, Bishop.”

Lash smacked her headset to mute it and started muttering in at least two languages I didn’t understand.  I was still pretty sure she was either swearing profusely or wishing a lot of ill on Gray.

I muted myself and turned to Lash. “Okay, that keeps our pawns in line, but this is gonna keep the FBI on us, or on our general direction - this is the second time police and right wingers have fatally drawn down because of some kind of digital manipulation. FBI lady is gonna come around here again. We need to have Weasel trussed up and ready for her when she gets back. And we need to be ready for whatever bullshit she’s gonna pull on either of our families. Let the skull collecting enthusiast worry about the gun nuts for a minute.”

She turned to me. “We still haven’t solved for how we are planning to frame or hack the ‘King of Icebreakers’.”

“Socially, at a guess. Behold, our mark: A single, college age man, who would be a reasonably attractive twink but for his repulsive personality and lack of personal hygiene. Technically brilliant. We have multiple instances of stochastic terrorism in the last few months - and by right wingers who spend too much time online. Some of whom clearly acted out of a sense of personal despair and a desire to make a mark on the world. What other instances of stochastic terrorism does this sound like?” 

“Elliot Rodger,” she answered, immediately realizing where I was going with it. “It’s Isla Vista all over again.”

“Right. Now, with shit this high profile, especially if they didn’t already get us for the banks, the higher levels of the Bureau are probably looking for a way to close the case - that whole thing with the Anthrax back in 2002, when there was no way to figure it out but they needed an answer. It got pinned on a dead man inside the Bureau who no one liked, despite the fact that weaponized Anthrax was a closely guarded Soviet secret that American intelligence never quite reverse engineered. And, wouldn’t you know it, Weasel’s icebreaker was used for the bank job. We just need to socially hack him through some other means to get him to stick his neck out, a little, in a place where FBI lady might see it. The rest takes care of itself. Weasel’s a coward - he’ll dust himself in a panic when the fibbies come for him. Guilty party dead, no further attacks, peace and victory in our time. We’ll lay low and launch more attacks later - and they won’t be looking for the same pattern.”

Lash drummed her fingers, thinking. “While we lay low, we should take the time to expand our network to other countries.  Keep doing small hacks here - the kind of stuff we did before that just didn’t hit the radar - but also scale so they don’t seem as connected.  You got anyone overseas?”

“Uh…One in Japan, one in the Netherlands, two in India, a German, and I had one in Algeria but haven’t heard from her in ages.” I left it at that, leaving unsaid that anyone in this business who suddenly went silent in most of the colonized world had probably been caught and wouldn’t be back.

“North Africa, Mumbai, Philippines, and China.” She offered in a distracted tone. “Clean water initiatives invite those types, surprisingly.”

“The German and Japanese guys are both ‘ethics in tech’ types who really wanted to work on preventing surveillance technology. Both Indians were people who liked the stuff I was doing with education access - neither originally came from money. Side note, whatever we do here still needs to get enough notice we can keep recruiting - I need on the ground left wingers so our eventual plays here have people who answer to you, so we’re not just stuck with minions who break shit for Gray.” 

“Keeping that in mind and already have feelers out.” Shaking her head to snap out of her daze, she looked at me with laser focus. “Pronatalists, yes or no? We need to decide that early on, because they are growing in non-religious tech spaces.”

“Of the ‘people should have resources to reproduce instead of being barred from doing so because of poverty’ type, sure, of the ‘I need 80 children for my ideology, religion, race, or whatever so that my particular neurosis can be soothed or politically dominant’ not only no, but no in a phrasing that implies we think everyone doing that should be sterilized.”

“We’ll have to closely vet them… if you throw a rock in a Pronatalist crowd, you’ll hit one of each.  Probably the same person, to be honest.”

Bishop groaned as he stretched. “Advocating for access to housing and resources to have big families is going to draw them in.  You’re going to get them either way.”

I grunted. “Same bucket as Gray’s goons, I suppose. Problem for tomorrow.” 

I slapped my headset. “New shit, Gray?” 

“I’m already playing. Check the boards.” 

I groaned internally and pulled up the boards Gray frequented. Same trick - new accounts. One account was clearly meant to be the idiot - playing up the heel leftist, who was mocking the victims for being stupid enough to have guns in a church.

Another was playing a conspiracy theorist who was claiming that he’d heard a left wing terrorist had done this as a false flag to get the right and the government to fight each other because the heavily armed church would shoot at the cops and the cops would shoot back. A third person was already arguing with that, pointing out that the government was already auditing that church’s taxes, and the deep state had never liked pro-Trump churches. 

A fourth guy was saying the police were sick of the right getting wise to false flags and were going to try to make up a ‘false flag’ narrative for them to buy into that would end in them seeing guns as an exploitable weakness. Unsurprisingly, this was the most popular comment - a bunch of responses about how already they’d heard rumors that a terrorist had tried to set up the fight to get cops and churchgoers killed. 

I seethed for a minute that he’d gambled on that - then reflected that it had worked. Using nothing more than something that would be counted as wild speculation in court, plus police reporting, he’d turned the crowd’s hostility back on the government.  I was surprised it was working, on one level - you’d think they’d go in on ‘cultural Marxists used us and the government against each other’ but then I realized why they wouldn’t. Not one of them would ever accept that they’d been fooled or tricked. 

And I was perfectly happy to see Gray making himself useful. Making the truth a joke but in a way that would make these people useful to us. Picking up enough momentum we could hijack these people and make them ours. Beginning the countdown to retire himself from relevance. I was perfectly aware that keeping him around too long increased the risk of this whole plan going wrong, of him corrupting our goals, and I needed to make sure he was dealt with well before things really got going.

“Alright. Fibbies next.” 

Bishop shook my shoulder and gestured at the newsfeed. “Hey, Nihilus,” he said, carefully emphasizing my handle as though to remind me to tailor my reaction. Gray was still listening. “Prelim casualty figures.”

I looked at them. 

Sixteen dead, thirty-three injured. One of the dead and eight of the wounded were children.

“Oh, God,” I heard Lash gasp.  “They were babies.” Before I could say anything, she was on her feet and out the door, all equipment left behind.

I felt like I was falling, but I forced myself to not react. What had we done?  What had we just done?

[serenephenix]

So, I think enough time has passed to maybe tentatively look at Trigun Stampede in relation to the manga and some issues with the pacing that I did notice over the course of the past weeks, especially considering the story elements that have been shuffled around for the most recent episode.

For anyone here to have a good time and cry in tears of agony about this show: Power to you and have fun! Anything you don't wanna read is under the cut!

Also, massive spoilers ahead for the Trigun manga if you haven't finished it yet!

First of all, Trigun Stampede brings a lot of good things to the table, like the score that really sets the mood and breathes life into the scenes, to the almost looney-tooney animation elements that really give it some of the charm the manga has, the gorgeous flashback sequence we got today, the incredible effect of twisting the music/visuals just as Wolfwood's body and mind get twisted in the experiment, as well some worldbuilding that had only been hinted at in the manga.

I really like Trigun Stampede but it is, unfortunately, produced at a time where the market has deluded itself into thinking that less than 20 episodes is the best option for marketability and that it will cut them losses if they need to cancel any show for any inane reason.

The parts that I want to focus on here, is the decision to have Livio introduced this early into the series and the... let's call it "lack of understandable motivations" behind his attack on Vash on the Sand Steamer.

I was curious to see why exactly Livio would appear here in the first place.

In the manga, Livio only appeared after it became clear that Wolfwood had defected and deceived Knives, the Gung-Ho Guns and the Eye of Michael. He was sent to eliminate Wolfwood and lessen the risk of him interfering with Knives' plans in any remarkable manner.

And what had made the encounter between Wolfwood and Livio heart-breaking in the first place, was that Wolfwood for his part had believed him to be safe back at the orphanage, away from all the bloodshed and monstrosity.

To Nick, it had almost been a sort of cruel, twisted punishment for his perceived sins - one of the reasons why he then tried to confront Livio all by himself in his last battle.

And in that context, Livio's appearance in the story and his impact makes a lot of sense.

Him being on the Sand Steamer now and attacking Vash, makes little to no sense on the other hand, unless the Eye of Michael itself has been torn up into two factions - one that follows Knives every command and one that thinks that Vash is too great of a risk to the heralded promised day and want him eliminated.

I hope they do explain it a bit more in the future because right now, it doesn't add up.

I also have to admit that, what Stampede has not yet been able to really establish and drive home to the audience, is how much of a vindictive and downright sadistic pleasure some of the Gung-Ho Guns take in making others suffer for the heck of it. How little they care about humanity and are willing and even excited at causing as much collateral damage as possible.

While the church sub-plot puts a lot of actions into perspective for Stampede and makes it easier to explain why characters like Rollo come into being and can ease new viewers into understanding Legato's mindset - at this point - they will not have any perspective on how much the Gung-Ho Guns just love to mess with people because they can. Because Knives has put them in a position to do so.

Because, as someone who knows the manga, I know that Legato has no qualms in extending Vash's journey even against Knives' wishes, because nothing brought Legato more pleasure than seeing the man in Knives way suffer over and over. That became apparent from the very first moment they both had their first exchange in the manga.

An insight into Legato's motivations that we did not get from the short dialogue between him and Wolfwood (although I must say that I really enjoyed the twist of Wolfwood having this kind of very personal beef with the man).

As a newbie, I'd have no idea what even is going on anymore except for the part with Wolfwood and Livio (on a surface level).

Heck, when Legato and Zazie showed up, I was sure they were there to collect Livio because he had acted upon Razlo's wishes to find a worthy opponent. The episode could have, very honestly, done well without them. It was already packed full.

I'm also somewhat saddened by the fact that they cut away the whole plot about the Sand Steamer and Kaite. For me, at least, it was an important part of establishing that, despite what we saw in the manga so far, the people on this planet are complex characters driven by all sorts of motivations and that they can have a change of heart. It made them all more human to be honest.

And it would have been fun to actually have Wolfwood and Vash interact with him. If it had played out in a similar manner, with Vash ending up drugged, it would have been a rather interesting thing to see him and Wolfwood arguing about how he is taking way too many needless risks.... but I digress.

So, I'm still excited for the next episode but I hope, deep in my bones, that they not just... not address any of this.

[grison-in-space]

You know, before I got bit, everyone told me that werewolves were uncontrollable killing machines. My Nana always said you shouldn't believe everything you hear, of course, but it's not like I was just taking the word of the creepy fortune teller lady at the traveling carnival or something. I've read the peer reviewed articles and the historical documentation. I've done my research.

I mean, it was three weeks after I got bitten by the werewolf that got loose. It's not as if I didn't have time. I understand that the first bite of lycanthropy always takes longer to heal, the slow virus of it crawling from muscle to neuron up to my spinal cord, making itself at home in my nervous system. For me, mostly that meant my field season was unceremoniously over. It's a shame, because I have to teach during the long semesters and therefore can't get time to collect samples and take recordings for my research over the regular school year, but shit happens. Remind me to tell you about what happened to Dimitri's first field season with the voles, one of these days.

Right. The werewolf.

I would have liked to ask the werewolf about the change ahead of time, but. Well. They shot her. Tranquilizers don't work well on werewolves — something about the warping of the opioid receptors, and the less said about ketamine the better — so protocol for an escapee is to aim for the center of mass with lethal ammunition, so that you can minimize the collateral damage. Yikes. No, thanks, I'll lock the bars on the cell that the nice people from the CDC came to install for me like a good little egghead. I'm still using the contents of my skull, thanks, and it's hard to do that if you get spattered across the wall by trigger-happy commando wannabes dying to get to take all their military LARPING gear out for a spin.

Anyway. So I had some time on my hands, waiting for my mangled calf to heal up. There's a vaccination for being a werewolf, but I didn't manage to stumble into town fast enough for it to be effective, so. Well, it's not like I haven't dealt with shit before. You get used to tucking things under your hat, you know? There's no room for weakness in this dog eat dog field.

Wolf eat dog? Dog eat wolf? Whatever, I'll workshop that one later. Anyway, if you're having a migraine day, there's nothing for it but grit your teeth and power on through if you want to get anything done. And I always want to get things done.

So I did a lot of reading while I waited for the moon to change. I wanted to be prepared and work according to best practices, you know? Fuck knows I've been around the block long enough not to trust an expert to actually be an expert on my body, so knowledge seemed like the best avenue for control.

Still, I wasn't entirely expecting it when I opened my eyes after the hair had finished coming in and my pelvis had cracked itself into a new shape and my hands curled into claws....

... And I still more or less just felt like me. Sure, I had one bear of a headache, and the raw meat I had carefully packed into a series of puzzle toys beforehand smelled considerably better than it had any right to, but look, that's not even close to the weirdest thing I've ever put up with.

I hadn't really expected to be bored, though. The next day I tucked a couple of journal printouts when I went downstairs to change, and then a couple more. Dissociation isn't that bad, as strategies to cope with suddenly having massively disoriented sensory signals go. I was able to puppet myself around the room just fine when I relaxed enough to try.

It turns out, by the way, that the finger oils people leave on the keypad make it really easy to tell which numbers go into a given pass code. Did you know that there are only 64 permutations of a four-digit password? Really made it easy to get out.

It turns out that you can cover quite a ways if you're eight foot tall and you can move equally well on two feet or four. It looks like I might get to finish that field season after all, tell you the truth...

"Oh no, this goofy monster virus mutates you into a gnarly beast with an insatiable hunger for human flesh" and then the goofy monster protagonist is able to master their cannibalistic impulses not because they have superhuman willpower or special genes, but because prior to being mutated they were the most repressed human being alive.

[sweettsubaki]

Girl, you guys are too sensitive when it comes to Buck. NO ONE is bashing him, it's all about feeling sympathetic towards Eddie and the position he's in / his point of view. But then again there's always been a MASSIVE favoritism towards Buck over anyone in the fandom, leading you guys to become misogynistic and apologists of tbh shitty behaviors. Like Taylor? Yeah I never liked her at all, but that shit that Buck pulled with her? Fuck no. Season 1 Buck? Fuck no. Buck has really grown as a person, we love him, but the majority of you have a favoritism that's always been based on attraction and it shows on the way you speak and showcase your opinions.

Usually starting a sentence by "you're too sensitive" is very much used to gaslight someone so, heads up, I'm likely not gonna take what you say afterwards very seriously. Especially since you're on anonymous. Also I'm known for a lot of things but sensitivity isn't one of them...Kinda the opposite even. But I am easily frustrated and I did vent, which as far as I'm aware shouldn't matter to you.

"no one is bashing him it's all about feeling sympathetic toward Eddie".

Ok so either you haven't seen the numerous posts I'm talking about and you took it upon yourself to speak for everyone or you don't know what bashing is. Either way not the best look for you but I have seen many (stopped counting at around 50 posts) talking about how Buck is an ass for daring to say that to Eddie. Not "poor Eddie's been rejected" but very much "Eddie deserves better than someone who doesn't appreciate him" posts (I've literally seen at least a dozen variation of this sentence), often followed by people using that as a proof that Buddie is toxic actually. And just generally very little critical thinking involved and changing the whole scene to mean what they want.

There might be favoritism toward Buck. Probably, most likely tbh. I mostly follow buddie blogs with either a buck or Eddie focus and other more general blogs with no focus at all. Buddie's the most engaging part of the fandom and the funniest for me in general. Because I follow Eddie girlies as much as Buck ones I don't see the difference and I generally don't venture too far away 'cause Chim is my favorite and I've seen too much racism when wanting to look for him so I stopped venturing too far off the fun people who make meta that seem a bit too much but are still enjoyable.

Now even if I personally didn't witness it because I've curated my own experience on Tumblr and don't interact about 911 on any other social media, he's the young White Adult in a fox procedural. So I'm not surprised there'd be favoritism towards him in a mostly American/western fandom. I've just been talking about this specific situation because it managed to hit my recluse corner which is a feat in itself.

Now that also doesn't matter in this case. Like there being favoritism in general doesn't change that there has been bashing here. If you don't care about it or feel vindictive about it then good for you but that's clearly not my case. That's why I avoid it in the first place.

Now I'm probably biased because I've curated my experience but as far as I'm aware, most people don't like season 1 Buck ? Never seen someone who loved this side of him. Because he was the youngest and most immature, it's easy to focalize on him if you like long ass development, but that's it. And most ppl who talk about s1 talk about it in a "look how much he grew" way so I have no idea why you're bringing it up?

As for TK, you can despise her without it being related to Buck. I personally found her appealing as a character, but the same way I find villains appealing. I very much loved to hate her. The woman does not care about others and will step on them to get what she wants even if she violates all moral ethics and loved ones to do so. You can dislike what she did to Buck without caring for Buck, like in a collateral damage way. But I get people absolutely hating her (I draw the line at mysogynistic behaviors which I luckily mostly avoided but I don't doubt they were there). Buck was an ass yes but he felt guilty about it and also learned and grew from it ...still is learning from it actually. That's a huge difference in my book and probably others. There are no unproblematic characters, just characters willing to be better and those which aren't (relatively speaking since it depends on what the writers find problematic). I mean Hen cheated on Karen (which I still do not comprehend in the slightest), Bobby is linked to the death of his kids, Eddie abandoned his child for years. Chim is the one who did the least problematic thing in general because he's the one with the most empathy and the closest thing I can think of is punching someone he loves when distressed and panicking about someone he also loves. And I've heard Chim got a lot of racist shit from it and while I have no doubt it's true, my curated experience means I didn't have to deal with it.

As for your last point, I happen to be aroace and I'm the kind who only understand what attraction means as a very abstract concept. (I especially don't think muscles are all that interesting but I'm happy for the people who like thirsting over big muscles).

And so like...yeah I've seen people thirst over the actor (as much as Eddie's), but thinking that people who are basically just talking about media literacy and "how the fuck are there enough posts that they ended up in my circle that's usually undramatic as fuck", are doing so just because they're attracted to the actor seems a bit bad faith.

So maybe the bashing only happened in this corner I thought would prevent me from seeing character bashing and needless drama, but it's still happened and it went from funny memes (which I liked and still have queued) to literal tirades of how Buddie is toxic and Buck is the worst. That wasn't me exaggerating, they literally said stuff like that. Which is a terrible take, like how do you even get to this point. So I vented and you thought it was a good idea to come to my inbox to ...I'm not even sure what this is for...warn me ? Annoy me? Insult me? Something else?, well whichever, I'm just using it to vent some more...because holy shit have I seen dumb takes in the past few days.

[hrodvitnon]

Heh, yeah, he probably didn't think Goji being that small would be a problem.

Alright, moving on-I have another little scenario cooked up: it regards Godzilla and his family needing to deal with all of the incarnations (minus Earth) that I mentioned in previous posts suddenly being teleported (along with those they cherish) to the Abraxasverse, and how they need to coexist with one another lest it ends up like this fic:

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12783256/1/Godzilla-Battle-of-the-Ten-Kings (Ignore the outcome that Heisei won)

I also have a pretty good idea how this might affect the routes (don't worry, I won't let you describe how you can't speculate yourself yet-I'll do it myself for this.)

In the Coexistence Route, there's going to be a lot of chaotic confusion regarding around 10 or so versions of Godzilla running around and possibly starting to rampage in response to being taken from their home dimensions; MV!Goji and his family have their hands full trying to stop/talk with the other Gojis to stop rampaging & explain where they are now. Showa might be the most reasonable and will likely help them out, especially with the likes of Kiryu Saga!Goji & GMK!Goji who will resist and try to fight back against those who they see as impostors until Showa & MonsterVerse Godzilla put them in their place and get them to listen. The 2000 twins might accept since they do have equal levels of sapience to Showa!Goji, it's the bigger Godzillas that might pose a problem-with Heisei & Final Wars probably getting into a large & intense fight if they ever met & cause massive collateral damage in the process-not to mention another version of Shin who wouldn't have the same personality or empathy as his Abraxasverse counterpart and will be hostile to anything and everyone around him-including his counterpart because he sees Abraxas!Shin as weak due to his empathy. The Titans & humanity will need to work together to corral and get Heisei, Final Wars, and 2016!Shin to stop and listen to reason (though 2016!Shin possibly will need to be frozen again)-and it might end with all Godzillas agreeing to stop fighting (on certain conditions) , but they need a place to live that is isolated enough to be at peace (GMK will be left out and probably be either killed or vanquished to the Hollow Earth for Kong to finish him off with his axe); with a version of Monster Island to be used as a new home for the Godzillas (with Minilla, Minya, & Godzilla Jr to accompany their respective fathers there). It would end with a wobbly, but peaceful Coexistence.

In the Genocide Route however, things will not go so well....

Because here-the Godzilla incarnations are teleported while MV!Goji is in the process of wiping out humanity-the Titans start to become frustrated & very wary of these other Gojis as they start to pick fights with each other and, whether accidently or not, kill more humans in the process. Of course, MV!Goji will quickly sense the presence of these other Godzillas and immediately try to attack them as a result of his hallucinations blinding his judgement and common sense-resulting in some of the Gojis (Heisei especially) having a bone to pick with him after the fact. It might all culminate in a final showdown after some warmup battles in (very ironically) Tokyo-where all the Gojis show up, destroy the city to get themselves ready-and start to battle one another for the right to be the one true King of the Monsters!(of course, this is actually just to get rid of the competition)

The Titans & MV!Goji's family then watch with bated breath as the 10 Kings duke it out and slowly start to permanently kill each other as the fighting and stakes get higher and higher-with Kiryu Saga!Goji being the first one to die before the others, 2016!Shin does some creepy stuff that might disturb his counterpart, the original 1954 Goji is also in the fight and gets beaten up a lot, and all the smaller Gojis are killed off before the night ends. The larger Godzillas start to unleash their true power as the fighting gets even more intense, a great many beam-lock wars are had-& then the slaughter begins-Shin ends up being the first to die as the other 3 Gojis gang up on him after he potshots them too much, and then, you will likely be surprised-Heisei is then offed. How so? Let me describe:

• Despite their respective powers-Final Wars and MV!Goji (if the hallucinations briefly go away) will recognize Heisei!Goji as having a lot of potential to kill either of them (my interpretation) and team up to take him down-resulting in a complete decapitation to permanently kill him (heh, how's that for irony?).

The former two are the last ones standing-and fight the last fight for their lives. Everyone watches in anxiety and Godzilla's family, despite what he has recently done, pray that he wins this last fight. At first, MV!Goji has the upper hand, having gone feral & finally stopped holding back, and is seemingly very close to killing his counterpart-only for him to reveal he was also holding back and turns the tables on the natural Godzilla, tossing him around-beating him senseless & utterly wrecking him. Everyone watches in understandable horror as Final Wars!Goji then begins to charge up his spines....and they flash crimson red as he then impossibly throws MV!Goji high up into the sky.

Having had enough, Godzilla's family rush to stop what was about to happen....but it's too late.

Final Wars!Goji unleashes his Burning G Spark Heat Ray into his counterpart (here he doesn't need Ozaki's boost to gain the ability), who initially tanks the attack-but it slowly becomes too much for his body to handle....and after a few seconds, he lets out one, final agonized roar before exploding into a fiery ball of light & chuncks of flesh. His family, and the Titans can only watch in silenced shock as their Godzilla bit the dust and was now gone forever......

Meanwhile, Final Wars Goji roars in victory before immediately going to the sea to rest after winning. The only ones happy with MV!Goji's demise is humanity, who sort-of praise Final Wars!Goji as a hero of sorts and slowly start to rebuild what Godzilla destroyed. On the Titan perspective, the other Titans are initially very hesitant to accept Final Wars Godzilla as their new Alpha/King, but after he demonstrates his abilities and power-they submit and look to him as the new ruler of Earth, the only ones who outright rejected his rule were Kong, Tiamat, Barbra, Dagon, Scylla, and Rodan-with the now deceased MV!Goji's family going into hiding in the Hollow Earth to grieve the death of their Godzilla.

Mothra is in complete anguish and despair after the death of her mate, Shin & Junior are in similar states and become depressed, Leo, Manda, & Keeta are mostly unaware of what's happening but do their best to comfort their peers since they can easily detect their sadness, but the one who was affected the most was Monster X, with Viv trying to deny the fact that Godzilla was gone, and San trying anything to comfort her. Kong visits every now and then with Jia to act as emotional support to the grieving family and generously lets them stay in the Hollow Earth as a temporary home until they recover enough to head to the surface.

Mothra heads to an isolated island to be alone after she justifiably rejects FW!Goji as her king, Shin & Junior go with her along with Leo and Manda, Keeta is taken back to his adoptive father, and Monster X starts to develop a bitter grudge against FW!Goji and wants revenge for MV!Goji's death; but even Viv'n'San know that trying to take on the one who killed the other Gojis wouldn't end well for them-so they teeth-clenchingly 'coexist' with FW!Goji until they find a way to get their revenge.....even if they themselves die or it would be for nothing.....

Just to inform you, I can understand if you don't like the Genocide branch-off scenario, so you can simply react to the Coexistence one if you like.

But overall, what do you think of the second long post that I wrote?

Yeaaaaaah, not a fan of the Genocide branch-off... plus I wasn't a fan of the whole Everyone Beats Up MV!Goji thing from previous asks, it's all kinda, well, sus.

...though I'd like to bring up something that Monster X themselves state in Abraxas Chapter 17: They can be good, but can also be a terrible (if necessary) evil, true to their namesake. In this instance, I'd picture them flatly rejecting FW!Goji out of rage and hate because he basically killed what Vivienne saw as a mentor/god, and this cat-faced bastard expects submission from them? Fuck that. He'll get in their face about it like, "I'm your king now. Kneel."

But Monster X just stares at him with the same cold hate they gave to MaNi before mauling and killing him. "KNEEL!" FW!Goji demands. Monster X doesn't even blink. "Even kings kneel before the executioner." FW!Goji scowls at them with fire in his eyes. "You better not be threatening me, you little freak. You saw how I put down that rabid animal you're being such a whiny bitch about."

"Oh no," Monster X says with thinly-veiled contempt, "Certainly not. Just making a historical observation. I'm the Executioner... and no king's reign lasts forever, Usurper." Then they have the balls to turn their back on him and move to the Hollow Earth, knowing that even if FW!Goji wants to throw hands he has no real reason to (unless he wants to be an asshole) and FW!Goji has some measure of reason. Implied Death Threat aside, they never explicitly challenged him and attacking them just for disagreeing with him (when MV!Goji left Kong alone after he refused to submit) will only make him look like a tyrant.

---

For the Coexistence Chaos, I wouldn't consider 2016!Shin to be actively hostile to everything around him; in his home film it's noted that "behaviorally it just moves," he's basically a confused animal that doesn't know what's going on and simply reacts (see also the lyrics to Who Will Know), and he only explicitly reacts with violence once he's met with violence (namely gaining his atomic breath after GBU-57s were dropped on him), so he'll be hostile purely out of self-defense.

Also, regarding the Genocide branch off, let's not forget 2016!Shin's 5th form (the army of small humanoid Shin Godzilla's literal seconds away from branching off from his tail); because 2016!Shin is constantly evolving in a way to combat the threats he faces, it's not out of the question that he'd just spawn the 5th forms so they can scurry off and go into hiding while the other 9 Gojis are ripping each other apart.

[racke7]

"Amity Park is a black-hole for background-checks, so obviously nothing is happening there." Boring.

"Amity Park is an exporter of Violent Criminals and anyone from there should probably be arrested preemptively." Exciting!

Amity Parkers are constantly annoyed by cops suddenly charging into their "friendly greetings" and waving guns around. They don't mind people waving guns around, but like... it's kind of rude to just interrupt you know?

The Heroes are all very confused about them. "They tried to kill each other moments ago, why are they not at all hostile towards each other?"

The Heroes are suspecting mind-control of some sort, but nothing meant to "deprogram" them actually seems to work? There are no drugs, no weird trigger-based traumas, not even any magic spells or anything-...

Well, there's a little bit of magic. Like. Something that stops them from swearing? Which they claim is from some kind of genie-wish made in their hometown?

So, whatever is causing this? The Heroes clearly need to investigate Amity Park.

They don't know if they're expecting a cult, or some magical shenanigans or what. They just want answers for why seemingly normal people would suddenly try to murder each other for seemingly no reason.

Meanwhile? The GIW was disbanded years ago at this point, and Vlad had to deal with the consequences of this.

Not with dismantling their bases or whatever. No. He was an investor. He put a LOT of money into that organization. Purely as a way to screw over Danny (it was a lot of fun, having a government kill-squad ready to aim at his arch-nemesis at a moment's notice).

And now they're not around anymore. So he's basically wasted all of that money. Poured it all into a black-hole.

Which wouldn't be an issue, because he could always just steal more. Is what he would've said before he revealed himself as a half-ghost to Danny.

He can't rob people anymore, because Danny will know. And not only will he openly mock him for being so "shit at business" that he needs "outside help", he'll also break Vlad's nose if he catches him in the act.

And Danny has the exact kind of luck where he'll always catch Vlad in the act. (Read: the other ghosts like Danny better, so they tattle.)

This is especially a problem because Amity Park is run on a shoestring-budget at the best of times. And with all of the collateral-damage from the ghost-attacks? They're pretty much shit out of luck.

Now, Vlad could just cut his losses and move back to Wisconsin. But Jack at one point volunteered to be "the next mayor", so Vlad can't leave. Leaving would mean admitting that Jack beat him at something. He can't let that happen. He has to win.

And the only way to win is to somehow (impossibly) make this budget work.

So Vlad decides to cheat.

Ghosts are willing to work for peanuts (or boxes). So he just needs to sell "friendly government-employed ghosts" to the masses.

Which... is a smash-hit? Vlad somehow becomes "the savior of the town" because he convinced the ghosts to stop attacking the living and start being employed.

Vlad is quick to rub this in Danny's face. Danny breaks his nose.

Now. Obviously. Ghost employees? Not exactly the golden standard for work-ethics. They're more likely to "fuck around" than "do the job", and everyone knows it.

So nobody is really worried about "losing their job to ghost-immigrants", but they're very worried about ghosts running around without supervision.

Which causes a kind of buddy-system to form, where Vlad basically only has to pay one person to have two workers. And that helps a LOT with his budget, and also with employee-satisfaction. For some reason.

SO. When the Heroes finally arrive in Amity Park?

They find it overrun by ghosts. Ghosts everywhere. Doing jobs. Hanging out. Fighting. Making friends.

Aaaaand suddenly? It's starting to make a lot more sense why Amity Parkers are so violent. Look, they're in the middle of a massive culture-exchange with a species who considers "stabbing" to be a "friendly greeting".

And... they might be contagious? With "ectoplasmic contamination"? And nobody will explain what "ectoplasm" is except for "it's the green stuff. can't miss it".

The Heroes are now very sincerely considering putting Amity Park into an enforced quarantine away from the rest of the world. Because what the fuck?

Paulina was walking home from her little self-care date~ when she noticed a familiar figure, she slowed, double checked to make sure it wasn't some random civilian, grinned and-

threw her knife!

Wes caught it, because of course he did cautious bastard. And yes she realises this now that fighting on the street was not the smartest move but it was a long time since she saw her friends from Amity and they got along fairly well with Weston.

So they had a good time, she managed to nip him on the cheek with her knife (after taking it back) he left her with a new bruise (it will be gone by tomorrow noon) and then they were both taken in by the police...

And now she has to explain why she did what she did to the GCPD and Ancients help probably Batman as soon as she gets back to her apartment. Who could've guessed that having a friendly brawl would be so taboo in Gotham? (who is she kidding of course it's suspicious it looked like they were trying to kill each other to any normal person!)

and she's not sure how much she should say!

[spidori]

Brain is still going on about this. Adding outfits, combat styles, and a couple of drabbles for funsies.

Val as a red lantern: Val has next to no change in her standard outfit, to the point where I'd honestly be surprised if her outfit (and possibly character too) wasn't actually inspired to a notable extent by the red lanterns. She's already got the exact right color scheme of black on red, with a space for an emblem in the right spot on her chest and everything. The only mod to her suit is to add the emblem of the corps to it, but I am going to argue that Val wouldn't accept being forced to wear a badge on her chest for an organization she didn't choose to join; she does NOT seem like the type to just tale something like that, and Technus did help her get super user permissions... So instead of wearing the logo of the red lanterns on her chest, I'm going to say she integrates it more subtly into her helmet, she's willing to acknowledge where she's drawing extra power from, but never proclaim herself a member of the corps, especially not once she learns how every member besides the leader, Atrocitus, is essentially turned into a mindless rage zombie serving only the whims of the leader.

What does change significantly is Vals combat style as a result of her new toys. For one thing, she can fly now, she doesn't exactly *need* a hoverboard. Is she going to stop using it? Oh hell no! That's an iconic part of the Red Huntress look she's not changing that, but she'll change the board a little bit. How? Well, and this may be a bit of a deep cut, but does anyone remember Toa Lihkan?

For those who don't remember or never had the joy of playing with Bionicles, Lihkan was an old one with a hoverboard that split into two massive swords. Of course Val would love having massive fuck off greatswords on principle, but it's also practical; constructs are great and all, but so is redundancy, especially when you're dealing with something as unpredictable as ghosts can be. I can also see her installing an extending handle on the back of her board to turn it into a gigantic great axe when she needs just that little bit more stopping power.

Despite how fun the sword board is though, let's not forget how powerful and flexible a lantern ring is. Normal red lanterns apparently don't get the standard hard light constructs associated with lantern rings, but again, super user permissions here. Val can summon guns, cannons, and what have you out of shaped ectoplasm, although she'll primarily use it for three things. One, she'll summon blasters to supplement her barrage attacks. Two, she'll throw up shields around civilians, and even property when she can; her dad lost her job because of collateral property damage, if she can avoid putting someone else through that she's going to. And C, she came up with a new finisher/area clearing move...

See, I mentioned that normal red lanterns can't do hard light, what they get instead is their blood replaced with corrosive boiling red plasma-like fluid (which, just gonna point out, that sounds a lot like Ecto that's turned red because it's saturated with rage) that will burn through their enemies of they get splashed, this makes red lanterns terrifying melee fighters, since any injury is more dangerous to the foe if their "blood" splash makes contact. For Val, I'm envisioning her being able to imbue this blazing hot and corrosive property onto her constructs, something she takes fierce joy in doing as a finisher by summoning thousands of tiny brightly glowing red blade constructs and blasts them outwards shredding everything in the vicinity. With those who know her she calls it her "Thousand black rose petals dragon twister" and if you are also weeb enough to get all three references you might just be able to convince her to be friends instead of killing you for knowing her secret.

Tucker as an Orange lantern: For the most part, Tuck is always going to be most comfortable as the guy in the chair, and the Orange lantern and ring are satisfied by this since it also includes him constantly searching for and obtaining new knowledge; thirst for knowledge counts as avarice. So he becomes a little more of a support in the day to day, with an outfit that does have armor elements but is more focused around the detailed integrated ops display visor and multiple monitors with tactile input via what looks like orange Nintendo Power Gloves, but he's also one of the team's heavy hitters when the chips really have to go down. Why? Well remember, the orange lantern corps only ever has one wielder at a time because they go into a avaristic frenzy and take each other's rings and power... oh, and also souls. Yeah. Souls. Which the wielder of the ring can then summon as constructs.

Honestly, this has a lot of overlap to PD, with his army of thralls. And, well, Danny may have inherited them when he accidentally took the crown, but we both know that boy would hate having thralls, even if he couldn't release them for reasons ranging from esoteric legalese to not wanting people who would sell their souls for power like that running free. So he gives em to Tuck instead. His best bud used to be a Pharaoh, and already has an army in the hundreds, what's a few quintillion more (there's a lot of lives in the multiverse, ok) for Tucker to have at his command?

Um... a lot, Danny. That's a lot. Especially When Tucker can comfortably equip each and every one with an orange lantern ring as they're now an extension of himself. So Tucker may tend towards a non-combatant role, but when he feels the need to he will go full IRL-RTS on you and zerg rush your ass, except each and every one of his zerg also wield a lantern ring, one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, so like a zerg rush where every single zergling was a max level primal Kerrigan.

Yeah, remember what I said about all the gods not being enough to help you if you so much as look at his PDA? Starting to see why?

Dan the Yellow lantern: Unlike the first two, for Dan it's the fighting style that doesn't change much. He's always been a calculated brawler through and through, not to mention part Danny with the neverending grab-bag of powers that entails, what's a few more that largely amount to a more solid and complex shaping of ecto that he could already do.

What does change is his look. Not so much his outfit (although that does get some nice gold and glowing highlights as well as the emblem for the corps as the clasps for his cape on each shoulder) but more him in some subtle Eldritch ways. At first, nothing would seem different, which is intentional on his part, but the longer you look at him the more you start to notice things are not normal. Like, how many eyes did he have again? Or limbs for that matter? Can those actually be called limbs? Did he just rearrange the holes on his face? Or is his normal and yours was rearranged and you forgot about it? Oh shit, you're pretty sure not-limbs aren't supposed to bend like that? Are they even bending? Is the space bending? Is he smiling, with those many many "mouths?" All over his "body?" Is that blood or brain matter trickling out of your "nose?" From trying to comprehend what you're looking at?

Yeah, usually he'll just beat up his opponent, but when Dan really doesn't like someone there's a lot of horrified screaming and then they tend to be eerily quiet for as long as the life support can keep them alive.

Danny the Green Lantern: Much like his big brother Dan, Danny's suit stays pretty much the same. He gets some green highlights, but eschews the logo on the chest because hell no is he trading *his emblem* for the logo of a cop, especially once he learns about even a few of the more unsavory parts of the guardians' history now associated with that logo. What he does do is incorporate the glow that lantern rings give with his own ghostly aura, surrounding himself with an aurora effect, and adding a solid green circlet inset with tiny shards of space in place of the floating rime-bound cracks in reality which previously made up his crown.

His fighting style doesn't undergo any major changes either, save also adding more and stronger barriers and the occasional construct weapons just like Val. It is worth noting that Him and Val team up as the team's front line now. Danny will leverage his insane durability and use his quips to draw ALL THE AGRO, while Val dishes out the DPS and prevents escape using her greater comfort with ranged attacks. It also helps that Danny can throw up a barrier to contain her blade storm to a desired area in an emergency. Is this hinting at GrayGhost? ...maybe. But I still don't have time to write it, so...

Jazz the blue lantern: Jazz is one of the only ones to actually take on a uniform which would normally go with her ring. There was a piece of fan art floating around of Jazz as a fully outfitted blue lantern which was actually what kicked off this whole part of my continuing brain rot, but I can't find it atm. If I see it again, or if anyone else has it, let's try to get it attached to this so the artist can get their well deserved credit.

As to fighting, Jazz, like most blue lanterns, tends more towards a support role, but I also say let's give our girl a supercharged Fenton Peeler. Does the blue ring amplify the green Ecto her parents primarily work with? Absolutely! And I also can't imagine a world where her dad didn't tinker with his little princess's favorite weapon over time to give it more features. At the moment it has the normal blast, charged blasts, FlashBang shot, shotgun mode, sniper mode, Gooooooop (crowd control via ectoplasmic glue, and also a Ben 10 reference), various elemental attacks, a lightsaber bayonet, a healing beam like the TF2 medic, and *Three* bottle openers. Danny probably still has her best for sheer number of tricks he can pull out his ghostly butt, but Jazz is giving him a run for his money.

And then there's her scariest ability, so power that she's only ever used it once, and only told Dan, who now has a *very* healthy respect for his older sister. First thing that needs to be understood for this is that all the Amity lanterns have been so saturated with Ecto/emotional energy due to their proximity to Danny and the portal and all their various misadventures over the past five years or so since the portal opened, that they had to master it or be destroyed by it, and they had to do so without the aid of a ring to offload a lot of the focus and strain on to. The ring just gave them a tip tier tool to focus and amplify the control over ectoplasm/emotional energy which they'd already mastered. Each of them is at least as skilled with their ring as the top echelons of their respective corps, and Jazz, is no exception. And while the blue lanterns are all about being hope amidst the atrocities inflicted by others, they've never needed punishments for terrors inflicted by themselves.

So when Sinestro sent his men, they didn't find themselves a fight. And Dan rushed in to find only Jazz. Jazz standing, tired, but satisfied she did her duty. Bent in weariness from a mind filled with memory of what she'd just done, in room filled with husks devoid of hope...

It's honestly a good thing Dan was the one who knew to go first since his yellow ring gave him a heads up that there were other yellow rings approaching. His ability to break people with fear is similar enough that he can understand the nuance of Jazz's ability to literally and permanently suck all of the hope out of an enemy. He doesn't judge her for it either, both because him, and because he knows she was defending herself in an ambush. It means she has someone to talk to about this ability which reminds her uncomfortably of spectra but several orders of magnitude worse. Honestly, it makes for a great bonding experience for the two, with Jazz getting to be the one being taken care of for once in her life, and Dan getting to both ensure he doesn't lose her again to this and to be the bringer of peace instead of fear and destruction.

Sam the Indigo tribe member: Indigo ring-bearers' outfits are typically canonically described as looking hand made; does anyone here seriously believe that Samantha "ultra-recyclo-vegitarian" Manson *doesn't* make her own clothes already? Maybe she adds a *little* more indigo as underlayers to her usual black. And sure, underlayering indigo into her hair goes well with her look already, so she'll do that. What's that you say? She can get her corps emblem tattooed and her parents won't be able to do a damn thing about it because they're "blue-line" folks and they think the indigo tribe are also space cops because they work with the green lanterns and sam never bothered to correct them? And the indigo tribe scout would be happy to do it for her as she's already proven she's one of the strongest members in the corps, and clearly embodies their ideal with her activism even before she got the ring? She wants TWENTY!

The real highlight of Sam's outfit is her staff though. All of the indigo lanterns have a staff they wield. And for this headcanon, Sam is also a bit of a weeb (as are Danny and Tucker, and Jazz to a lesser extent, it just didn't come up in their sections) so she leans into it when making her staff. She GROWS (because the indigo ring awakens the dormant Ecto left after the undergrowth incident) a wooden copy of Hagoromo Ōtsusuki's staff with one key added detail. Each of the six rings on one end contain one of the other lantern corps emblems, with the central ring being the emblem of the indigo tribe with a glowing indigo orb in the center.

As to fighting, Sam really isn't a combat oriented member in this tale; her role is more of an ambassador. Her team makes sure there's a world at the end of the day, and she'll work through even the darkest of night to make sure their sacrifices mean something by using the chances they give to make the world better one speech or reformed villain or assassinated power hungry asshole at a time... ok, so maybe she does do combat, just usually not the same flashy large scale combat as her teammates.

What really gets interesting is when some of those power hungry assholes start catching on to their suddenly increased risk of fatal nightshade poisoning and start hiring some surprisingly skilled bodyguards. Note that I said skilled, not effective. These ninja looking fuckers aren't able to *stop* Sam, but they actually slowed her down by several whole seconds, she's impressed. What organization did the asshole brag he'd hired them from before she tore through them again?

And now Sam is head of the league of assassins. Ras is very much no longer the Demon's head, as it's quite a difficult title to hold when one doesn't have a head of their own anymore, and she's probably banging Talia on the side.

And then there's the Violet Lanterns: Which yeah, I'm going with Vlad, Jack, and Maddie all got a violet ring, because I choose VIOLENCE. They don't though, they're all lovers, not fighters, now. Yes there are multiple ways of interpreting that statement. Yes they're all correct.

The throuple's antics aside though, they mostly work in the lab now. They provide all kinds of tools and weapons for their kids and occasionally the hero community at large as an expression of their love.

And as a last note, I'll leave you with this. For anyone who's seen the Violet lantern corps (also called the star sapphires) uniform, well, you know what it looks like. For anyone else, go look that up and come back.

Did you look it up?

Good.

Now.

Live with the mental image of the throuple in that and constantly flirting with each other.

I warned you I chose the violent option for the violet lanterns.

Due to his unrelenting determination to keep his town safe, Danny is bestowed a green lantern ring. Which on one hand: Yay! He gets to explore space full time. But on the other hand: Ew! he's a space cop now.

He had to rectify this immediately or he would never hear the end of it from his ghost friends. Or his regular friends for that matter. Sayyy, it'd be a shame if he.... bent a few rules. Maybe even broke some of them every now and again. And it would surely be a tragedy if say.... random pranks started happening around Oa?

[dgcatanisiri]

I don't get it myself. Like, yeah, okay, he blows up the Chantry, which is the oppressive symbol of injustice throughout Thedas, which sure, gets a few points in his favor, but... The way he mistreats everyone around him is unpleasant.

Like, I've had that banter about Aveline's husband be the first thing that triggers between them before - it's a comment that is gross and cruel for the sake of being gross and cruel, else he'd be asking about how many innocent mages died at the hands of Aveline's "good man" for taking that little bit too long in their Harrowing, rather than asking if he liked to play the naughty mage and the hapless recruit in the bedroom. It's not even about her asking about containing escaped mages, something that, in her role as a member of the City Guard, she has justifiable reason to want to know, given that we regularly see there's collateral damage - her duty is to protect the city, in a 'needs of the many' scenario, the one mage is secondary to the many people who'd be harmed by them, or by Templar reactions to them being protected by non-mages.

I mean, I romanced him in my first playthrough, my very first one, on release. And I was... ALWAYS deeply uncomfortable with how it played out. Like, even though I put forward that Hawke as continuing the romance at the endgame, I was thinking 'this doesn't feel right' to myself at the time, and that just metastasized over time, to where, years later, when I did it a second time and tried to approach it as a romance that burned out over the course of the game, I didn't feel like that was a perspective being given, that if you were in a romance with someone at the start of Act 3, the game expected that to be Hawke's final romance, to the point that I basically had Hawke tell Anders 'get the fuck out of here' when he showed up at the Gallows at the endgame, since that Hawke couldn't bring himself to kill his lover, but he DEFINITELY had broken it off with him... Only for that worldstate to get carried over to Inquisition as having Hawke talk like they were still trying to make it work, when... Again, NO.

This is to say nothing of the way that his dynamic with Hawke basically comes across as so freaking POSSESSIVE, particularly when he is NOT romanced. HE decided that Hawke is his "reward" for being the hero of the story. And he gets so pissy if Hawke doesn't respect his narrative for them, especially if they instead get together with Fenris. On top of the massive lies he tells to Hawke, romanced or not - he is USING Hawke to set up his Chantry bomb, after all, lying about the ingredients he's having them gather up. He says it's to protect them, but it's clearly about how he doesn't want Hawke to know so that they can't talk him out of it OR warn anyone about it.

Anders is an interesting character, sure. But I don't mistake that for a likeable one. He's the guy on your side who makes your argument look stupid, because he is only using his own myopic point of view, refusing to accept the idea that he is wrong - again, look at the lie he tells Hawke about separating from Justice, he USES that as a weapon to get them to help him, when he has no intention of separating, because he knows it would make Hawke sympathetic to assisting him.

Since the first time I played DA2, abusers and manipulators have been something I've gotten a lot more awareness of. And I'm comfortable putting Anders into the same category of those people.

CONFESSION:

I really don’t understand why Anders is as popular a character as he is. He spends most of the game needling the other squad members, randomly throwing out harsh words some downright cruel such as mocking Aveline’s deceased husband.

He can be a downright hypocrite towards them as well saying how Merrill’s naive for using blood magic when he literally fused with a spirit willingly without thinking on the long term effects it might have on him Or the fact that he’s all about mage freedom but is the only party member that gives approval if you sell Fenris into slavery back to his former master.

He’s also the only romance able character that’s quite so clingy to Hawke, second guessing them when they choose someone other than him and gaining rivalry for turning him down at one point whereas the others don’t have an approval change and are more encouraging to Hawke when another romance is selected other than them.