#like he obviously never killed anyone in his life directly or himself

[return-of-the-queen-au]

TW: Mentions of blood

as a man in armor fell down, limp and lifeless.

Blood slowly poured from his mouth, as the wound on his chest was draining his life from him through pain and suffering.

two shadowy claws were there, dirty of the red that gave life to men, letting some of the liquid drip. And drip.

two yellowy eyes stared, empty and unblinkingly.

the dead man was a knight, sent from a Kingdom not too far away from subcon, an ally, or was it his kingdom? Where his home was?

Oh, to be able to remember.

oh, to be able to care about it.

a grin appeared, slowly creeping and turning into a full smile.

a chuckle, maybe two. A giggle, and another.

shaky hands touching the ghost's face, completely smearing blood on each cheek.

a wheeze, a snort. Until a full laugh came out.

A loud, long laugh.

a laugh to mock the knight, a laugh to enjoy the pleasure in seeing so much blood, so much death in front of the ghost.

A laugh that could only belong to a crazy man.

a laugh that he always had, but hid. Because he didn't know how to show it.

He didn't had the right thing to show it. To let it out.

He never had the experience of killing someone, directly and so brutally it looked like an animal attack.

He never knew it would be so fun, so pleasurable. He never knew he liked it so much.

He never knew how much he enjoyed hurting others.

This was never for self defense, this was never a warning for other knights, this was never an accident.

This was his rebirth. this was who he always used to be, who he was supposed to be.

his mind slipping, his mind fully embracing the insanity that is inside of him and the cold, dead forest around him.

"Ahh....you fools." to no one in particular.

[keefechambers]

I wanna be blunt about this ongoing James somerton suicide threat issue but I don't want to connect it to my IRL Twitter to comment on the dogshit takes I'm seeing there or the good and well meaning but maybe too kind takes I'm seeing here.

Obviously, I hope that this is a false alarm cry for help fake threat. Yes, it would reinforce that Somerton is a self-centered egomaniac who can't handle consequences but that's preferable to dead.

But I work in local news and let me tell you something. I've covered half a dozen family annihilating murder suicides and heard hundreds of men making suicide threats over police scanners and a huge swath of these don't happen because they're depressed or because people are mean to them on the Internet. They're punishment. A person with an enormous amount of entitlement towards people around them gets backed into a corner and they punish the people closest to them by killing themselves or threatening to kill themselves.

No one wants to talk about this feature of suicide because...you want to help people who are struggling and guide them away from this path and being blunt about the fact that sometimes people die of suicide as a consequence of their own shittiness towards the world does not really help actively suicidal people. But suicide rates are higher in men not just because they have higher rates of untreated mental illness (a societal issue we must address for the sake of all) but because some people, often men, use suicide (but more often the threat of suicide) as a tool of abuse and control.

I'm not saying somerton is like, an icky abuser bad guy, he's just a run of the mill grifter scumbag, but his actions in the past show a clear pattern of escalating behavior that aligns with this.

Somerton gets called out -> somerton alleges physical threats of violence against himself and his fans rally around him supportively -> Harry calls somerton out in a bigger way -> Somerton says he's hospitalized but there are inconsistencies with the story but no one wants to talk about that because you wanna be nice-ish about a guy who just tried to kill himself and now he's trying to be framed as tragic but it doesn't really stick -> somerton apologizes again but his apology is rightly called out for lies and manipulative framing as well as his continuing attempts to profit off the community he betrayed -> James posts a suicide note publicly putting the onus of his own suicide on the loss of his friend Nick who he repeatedly threw under the bus and now everyone is rallying to say nice-ish shit and wring their hands in concern over poor james -> indefinitely repeat this vicious cycle forever until he actually does die or finally gives up and gets real, intensive therapy and a day job.

Thats not to say anyone's concern is misplaced, it's 100% better for him to be a living scumbag than a dead one. He deserves the chance to grow and learn and have a life outside of youtube.

But you don't have to portray this as the action of a sad depressed man who got bullied off the Internet. It's manipulation, whether he intended to go through with it or not and whether someone intervened or not. Not denying that internet bullying is a thing, I'm sure there were some people who were shitty directly to James but he made the choice to not unplug from this and to try and keep being a public figure rather than taking care of himself. He could have deleted Twitter, blocked anyone who was an asshole, gone to therapy and tried to move on with his life but if he'd deleted his channel he'd have lost monetization... Can't have that, right? So he posts some apology videos so his channel stays active and then complains about how ruinous this is while never trying to take real accountability.

But the reality is that people would have forgotten about him so quickly and maybe his job prospects would've been impacted but...that's on him, and that's for him to figure out but it's not actually life ruining. He chose to continue to engage knowing he'd get backlash and hate and he'd feel worse and worse and things would never get better without the time and space for people to forget.

He made the choice to make a public spectacle of his own alleged suicide. That is the action of someone who wants to put the weight of their suicide on someone else's shoulders and is morally wrong. He can be held to account for that, alive or dead.

[sanguinesmi1e]

A Round Door Like a Porthole, Lazarus Green Pt. 1 Pt. 2 (you're here) Pt. 3 Pt. 4

Art of LBM

Danny was still lying under the Specter Speeder, mind reeling as the words “they opened this portal with a child sacrifice, and bound his death and all the lost life potential to their bloody machine to create a perpetual gateway to the Infinite Realms” ran in a loop through his head. Could that really be true? Is his death attached to the portal, forever lodged in the doorway, preventing it from closing?

The guy clearly knew what he was talking about. The bit about why his ghost friends and frenemies caused so much chaos as they unleashed their obsessions on Amity Park made so much sense. It would certainly explain a lot of his interactions with ghosts after he died. 

 Danny silently cursed himself for not destroying everything in the lab before they got here. He and Jazz hadn't worried about the portal schematics, because they honestly didn't have any way to open a portal, only cycle energy in a recursive loop that shouldn’t have done anything. No one, not he and Jazz, not their parents, not Tucker or Technus, had been able to figure out why it had worked when Danny was inside. But if the machine was able to sustain a portal that was already opened. . . He wondered idly if he could light a fire that looked accidental and would both destroy the lab and leave the two men enough time to escape. It’d probably be too risky. And who knew what destroying the portal would do to him. Fully kill him? Destroy him completely and shatter his core? It might be worth it to prevent anyone from gaining this knowledge. 

No wonder Lex Luthor was interested in this business. A child was murdered in this basement, and for all Tim knew, the child’s soul could still be trapped here fueling a Lazarus Pit that connected the world of the living to the afterlife. What Luthor could do with an interdimensional portal or even a single sample of Lazarus water. . . Tim shuddered to think.

On the one hand, he was grateful that Wayne Enterprises secured the business before Luthor had the chance. On the other hand, he felt rather ill to think his family had directly enriched mad scientists who performed child sacrifices. At least he had full faith that between him and Oracle, they’d hunt the Fentons down and make sure justice was served.

“What is to be done for the child?” Tim asked Constantine. “Is his soul tied to that machine?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it’s just his death.” 

“You’re gonna have to explain the difference to me, ‘cause I’m not sure I see the distinction.” Tim said wryly. 

“I guess. . . Hm. You could think of it as the moment of transition drawn out endlessly like a plucked string whose note never stops vibrating. Like life is the anchor point of one end of the string, and the afterlife is at the other end, and the child’s death is the note created when his soul crosses from one side to the other. The soul is the bow causing reverberations, but the reverberations are the actual death itself. The effect of the soul’s passage. And in this case, the portal is amplifying the death so it doesn’t end like a normal death ‘note’ would.” Constantine leaned in to examine some of the runes that were part of the array. “Not a perfect metaphor, obviously, since you bow perpendicular rather than parallel to the string, and death and souls are nothing like music, but you get the idea, right?”

Tim was still caught on John Constantine saying the words “death note” together unironically in a sentence. He was going to have to share that with Steph later. Maybe with the whole family group chat, even. “Yeah, the metaphor makes sense, as much as any of this occult stuff does to me.”

“Whatever. As for whether there’s anything we can do for the child, I think we’ll have to try and summon him if we can.” The Brit started pulling items out of his trenchcoat’s inner pockets. “We need to ask what the spirit wants done, before we go messing with things we don’t understand.”

“Alright, need anything from me?”

“Yeah, move this stuff out of the way so I can draw a circle.” Constantine directed Tim to shove aside a few stacks of boxes, something called a Fenton Ghost Weasel, and together they shifted a coffin-shaped iron maiden that for some reason was labeled Fenton Stockades. Then he set to work chalking a circle and runes on the ground.

Finally he sat back and dusted chalk off his hands. “That should do it.”

“Will this be bright too?” Tim asked warily.

“Eh, might be? Shouldn’t be too bad.”

Tim grabbed an auto-darkening welding helmet with a green “Fenton” sticker on it off the workbench and slipped it on.

“Alright, here goes.” Constantine began the summoning ritual.

While Danny debated arson, the other two had finished clearing a space and chalked some kind of circle onto the floor. He tuned back into the conversation when he heard the trenchcoat guy begin a traditional incantation for a summoning. Were they trying to summon him? Danny really hoped it wouldn’t work. 

When people tried to summon the Ghost King he could almost always ignore the pull. This pull, however, was very strong and immediate. It seemed proximity made a difference, or this guy was just better at summonings than the average cultist. Before Danny could accept the inevitable, he was pulled bodily — literally! — out from under the vehicle and across the floor, still flat on his back on the Fenton Under Car Creeper, with the Specter Speeder’s ecto-engine hugged tightly to his chest. The wheels of the Fenton Creeper (not to be mistaken with the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick) sped him straight to the summoning circle. Still very much in human form. 

This was his first real look at the guy called Constantine, and he couldn’t help a horrified yelp. “Eugh!! What the fuck is wrong with you, dude!?!!” 

His lapse in attention made him lose the battle with the summoning spell, and it gripped him, pulling him through the convolutions of the spellwork even though he was already lying half across the circle, and forcing him to change into Phantom in the process. It was such a disgusting sensation, like he was one of those squishy water filled tube snake toys that look like a fleshlight, and someone squeezed really hard and abruptly so he turned inside out and went flying to go splat against a wall (or in this case, against the ground inside the circle of chalk). He tried and failed not to retch.

The younger man in the crisp suit whom he’d already identified as Mr. CEO-Timothy-Drake-Wayne looked at him in startled bafflement, while the older blond, still smoking his cigarette, (gross, and was that thing never ending?) was probably looking at him. Maybe. It was really difficult to tell, because he was a frankly vile sight. Danny winced and swallowed down nausea. “What have you done to your soul?”

“I — what?”

“Trypophobia central, man! Ugh that’s gotta be the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. Can’t you cover it up?”

“Who are you?” Timothy Drake-Wayne interjected.

“I’m the dead guy? You literally just summoned me.”

“Constantine said you were a child”

“I mean, I was?” Danny looked down at his obviously twenty-something year-old self and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s been a while since I was fourteen though. These things happen.”

“Not typically, no. The dead tend to be pretty unaging.” Constantine said. 

“Dude I’m not having a conversation with you while your soul looks like Escher’s swiss cheese nightmare. Anyways, some of us do. Heck, I know a guy who constantly shifts from infant to old man and every stage in between. It’s pretty distracting when you’re trying to get him to let you fix the timeline again.” Danny continued to look anywhere but at the blond man. “But if it’s so important to you, I can —” He got an abstracted look, and slowly de-aged himself until the two men stood over a fourteen year old boy with snow white hair and glowing green eyes.

“That does not help. No.” The guy whose soul looked somewhat like a bleeding tooth fungus said. He turned away and started doing something magical. Danny hoped it would mask his soul in some way, but so far all it did was make Danny feel like he needed to pop his ears.

He also felt particularly uncharitable, so he didn’t revert to his natural age, and instead tried to see how young and cute he could make himself appear.

“So are you just haunting this basement? Seems hazardous, given the former proprietors.” Timothy tried to redirect the conversation. He didn’t seem nearly as distressed to see the ghost of a child, but his eyes darted surreptitiously to the Lichtenberg figure Danny used to always hide under gloves.

“Nah, haven’t been back here in years. I mostly live in my Infinite Realms haunt these days.”

“You . . . live? Is that just a figure of speech?”

“It’s rude to ask about a ghost’s nonliving status, you know. Highly taboo to ask how a ghost died or poke into the circumstances of our deaths without permission.” Danny admonished. Making himself younger than fourteen took more effort than he expected.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” Timothy raised his hands placatingly to the boy who now looked younger than Damian. “What brings you back to Amity Park?”

“Uh, you summoned me? Are we still not clear on that?”

Tim looked pointedly at the Fenton Creeper and the engine Danny still held. He’d shrunk down to the size of a four year old, and the engine really should be crushing him given it was bigger than his torso now. He quickly set it aside, and turned his biggest puppy dog eyes on Tim.

“You were in here already, and you looked pretty alive for a moment there.”

“I can look lots of ways!” Danny focused really hard on looking as cute, small, and nonthreatening as possible. He thought it was working when all of a sudden there was a pop! and he was smaller than he’d ever managed before. 

Timothy Drake-Wayne looked like a giant. The other guy, who had thankfully managed to put away his soul somehow, wore scuffed oxfords bigger than Danny. Hell, he could probably fit his entire self into one of Constantine’s shoes if that wasn’t a bizarre thing to do, and they weren’t already full of stinky feet. Holy shit what happened to him!?

Tim blinked down at the cat? Snake? Ghost. . . thing at his feet. What the fuck. A moment ago he was talking to an adult man whom he’s pretty sure was dead and he’s very sure was trolling them. Now his interlocutor had turned into an adorable creature with soft white paws, a long twisting tail, big pointed ears that swiveled like a cats, and a humanoid face that should’ve been creepy but was actually eliciting cute-aggression in him. Tim blinked again. The little baby ghost creature blinked enormous green eyes back at him. Then it yawned, revealing three rows of needle sharp teeth that looked like a cross between what you’d find in the mouth of a shark and a cat. Yikes.

“Does that mean the interview is over?” Tim asked him.

The creature just blinked up at him again, then zeroed in on his shoelaces, pupils expanding until only a narrow band of green ringed them.

Yup. The interview was over. Those paws hid some wicked claws which could apparently slice through leather with ease. Oh, Tim really hoped ghost scratch fever wasn’t a thing. At least the ghost looked sufficiently contrite after he yelped, and it waited while he removed a shoelace to sacrifice as a toy.

If Damian ever met him, there would be a new member of the family. Maybe he should name the creature preemptively so they didn’t have a cat-snake named Bat-Ghost in Wayne manor. 

“Do you have a name, little baby cat-snake ghost? Little baby ghost man?” He cooed as the miniature monster dashed back and forth, intent on shredding his shoelace.

The ghost paused long enough to chirp, “Li’l baby man!” before launching himself at the string. Even shocked, Tim’s reflexes had him whisking the toy out of the way, and the ghost went careening under a cabinet.

He wedged himself in the gap, landing face first in a dust bunny, and quickly wriggled backwards with an indignant squall. His wordless protestations cut off as he fell into a violent sneezing fit that thankfully dislodged him from beneath the cabinet.

Tim suppressed his laugh, and asked, “Little Baby Man? Is that what you want to be called?”

The ghost pawed most of the dust away from his nose, but spider webs covered his face and a big dust bunny perched atop his head like a fascinator with a cobweb lace veil. He looked Tim right in the eyes and nodded, dislodging the dust in his hair and setting off more sneezes.

“Li’l Baby Man” he confirmed. He placed a paw on Tim’s shoe and chirped, “Tim!” Then he pointed his tail at Constantine and said, “Gross!” with narrowed eyes.

[sublimeinal-messages]

How great would it have been to have Lila and Diego’s marital problems actually be that they’re both tired of normal marital life, when both of them are secretly getting back into the superhero / assassin gig behind eachother’s backs?

Like, ok Diego can still has his infidelity suspicion plot, thinking lila is cheating on him with five (which is fake. Didn’t happen at all. We all agree right?) but it turns out that Lila and Five are actually meeting up to plot, talking about old commission stuff on the downlow. Diego sneaks out to find them having dinner and he’s heartbroken, but it’s actually them eating takeout over assassination plans with files all over the table detailing how to kill someone without a trace, with pictures of alleyway vantage points and sniper rifles.

I didn’t expect this to end up being A Whole Thing but I had to write it out. Full thing under the cut:

Meanwhile, Diego’s been lying to Lila about losing his job. He hasn’t shown up for work in weeks, and recently got fired. Levaing the family financially unstable. Diego’s still showing up to be a dad during his usual scheduled times, but he hasn’t been paid in a while and both parents seem to be pulled away in different directions. And now the kids have begun to notice. This comes to a peak when one of their kids spot someone in their house at night dressed in black, and they tell Lila later that they saw Batman. Obviously Lila sees right through this and confronts Diego, who confronts her right back over her infidelity. Lila laughs in his face, because he’d have to be insane to think she’s ever do that, and with Five?? The barely-legal teenager who killed her parents? Are you stupid?? (Stares directly at the camera). But Diego’s hurt. He can’t get a clear answer on what they’re doing because she doesn’t want to admit she’s tired of being a housewife and wants to kick ass again. All they can agree on is that this isn’t working anymore, neither of them are happy, and they just hurt each others feelings.

So this fight ends in Diego storming out. They’re on a break. Lila is heartbroken, the kids don’t know what’s going on, and Diego throws himself wholeheartedly into being a vigilante again. It’s shown he’s fighting some shady organization that seems to have far reaching ties—related to Reginald, Abigail, and their new reset empire. Lila doesn’t know what to do, she gets some in-laws to stay over and look after the kids as she goes out to look for him (to no avail) and it ends up being the day she and five planned on their big assassination happening. Lila caves and says to five he’s gotta do this himself because her family is falling apart. Five is annoyed and makes a quip about how this is why he never lets romantic attachments get in in the way of him doing a job (stares directly into camera).

So five takes his sniper rifle and goes to the location early, where he’s positioned to take out their mark. Lila is out looking for Diego, and Diego is kitted up, on his way to take out these shady people he’s been making a case on, and intends to stop what they’re doing before they do it.

Anyone pick up where this is going yet?

Diego shows up at the location—a shady laboratory owned in secret by Reginald Hargreeves. The place is familiar. Diego slips into an alleyway. but what’s this? We’ve seen It’s the exact same alleyway but from a different point of view! Five is perched on the roof with a sniper, looking down at him. He gets his quarry in his sights and takes one final, steadying breath. This mission is going exactly as planned. The idiot showed up right as predicted. He didn’t even come with backup this time. It’s a textbook fish in a barrel. It’s almost disappointing how this couldn’t be an easier kill. But maybe Five’s glory days are just behind him. He puts his finger on the trigger.

Cut to diego and Lila’s house. It’s dark inside. Gracie and the twins have been put to bed and the in-laws are tired and in the living room. A phone rings, and it’s Lila, calling to say she hasn’t found Diego and is hoping he came back, but it’s not the case. Lila says she’ll be back soon and the in-laws begin packing up to go home. Gracie stands in the hallway, overhearing. To her, her whole world is falling apart, and she runs back to the twin’s bedroom in tears. She can’t believe this is happening. The lights are turned off in the hallway and the house grows quiet. The front door opens and closes and it’s implied that the in-laws have just gone home. Mum will be back soon, but the twins won’t stop crying, so Gracie gets up to get them some milk and cookies to make them happy again. She steps out into the dark hallway

To see a man dressed like Batman, in full fight gear. And she looks up at him with hope in her eyes, saying “daddy?”

Only surprise! It’s not, and they grab her as she lets out a scream. We cut to Diego as he reaches to open the door at the end of the alley only to find it locked, and realize he’s been set up. He spins around only for a gunshot to sound, and it cuts to black.

Lila comes back to the house. Finds it trashed. Finds her Inlaws murdered in horrific fashion in the driveway. Gracie and the twins are gone. And the little domestic life she and Diego made destroyed as we cut back to Diego, bleeding out in the street from what looks like a fatal gunshot.

Then five comes down from his perch to confirm his kill, only to realize what he’s just done.

So there. Here’s a dramatic, non-cheating subplot that has a similar amount of stakes that we could’ve had with season 4. Maybe Lila and Five end up going on a crusade for everyone to get their powers back so they can bring Diego back from the dead. Maybe this is what leads them to the subway, to mess with the timeline again, because as commission agents they can’t let go of the idea that time can be fixed and it isn’t theirs to mess with anymore. Maybe this sends Lila over the edge, and when trapped in the subway with five—she tries to murder him instead!! After all, he’s not only killed her parents, he’s now killed her husband! Why not have five scramble to figure out a way back for all those years while running for his life? (While a scooby-doo like soundtrack plays and they get all turned around and confused). Maybe Diego isn’t actually dead in the end, and it’s all a bait and switch to fool Reginald, who was watching and lines the whole thing up to fuck with them. Taking the kids as a deterrent so they won’t dig any deeper. But maybe in the last second before five pulls the trigger five hesitates. Maybe he doesn’t have what it takes to murder anymore. He swore it off earlier—what glory is he really chasing anyway? Maybe he recognizes the gait of the person in the alley and makes a non-killing shot to just take them out. Maybe he saw ahead that this was a setup by Reginald and made an agreement with Diego and filled his vest full of blood packets. And he fully knows Lila and Diego are both doing secret little vigilante gigs behind each others backs but tells neither because he really doesn’t want to get in the way of some stuffy marital dispute. Nooooo thanks. He had enough of that when he and Delores were together and bickering constantly. Five just wants his family alive and happy in whatever timeline they end up. (Chokes the spirit of Steve Blackman just a little bit harder)

Anyway, everyone else thinks Diego is dead; and all get together again. Weddings and funerals uniting them once more, and each of them reveal how life didn’t turn out how they wanted on their own, and they get to bond and unite to track down Gracie and the twins. “One last time” they agree, to be heroes and finally do something right. To save some little kids. Members of their family! Innocent ones, who don’t deserve to be caught up in their mess. And it culminates in confronting Reginald once and for all and destroying the ill-gotten gains he warped the universe in his favor for. And Reginald’s gone the rest of them can finally have peace of mind. Maybe the timeline genuinely gets better now that one monocoled megalomaniacal maniac isn’t in the centre of the universe anymore. The very thing that doomed the timeline before. And now the umbrellas are able to disband and go on in their lives as normal people in a timeline that exists with no favouritism at all. It’s all just what they make of it

(and hey! Maybe Diego comes back out of hiding and saves the day! And he and Lila both confess they want to take more active roles outside of being parents. And their kids are wowed by the fact that their parents are both superheroes. And it’s cool and awesome and I don’t sob at a very tragic defeatist ending of all I hold dear).

I don’t know guys. There’s so many different ways the final season could’ve gone, but not in a million years would I have chosen to make it go the way it did. That’s a whole other post—but in the end, I just know I’ll be entertaining my own little ideas for what happens to these characters I’ve grown and loved, and keep them alive in my own heart and AU story ideas. Thats the true canon for me, and the rest is just… fuss and marigold dust

[jennaimmortal]

Musings on OFMD Season 2

I’m feeling a bit sad today for the OFMD writers. After rewatching S1 & 2 a couple times, it’s become blatantly clear to me that Izzy’s arc this season was a very obvious love letter to both Izzy fans & the great Con O’Neil. Izzy was very clearly written to be an obstacle to Ed’s healing & personal growth, a snare that Ed needed to be freed from, albeit with plenty of nuance hiding under the surface. It would have been much easier for them to kill Izzy off while he was still the toxic, abusive, sadomasochistic terror of S1E10.

Instead of taking the easy route, though, the writers flipped the trope on its head! They utilized every bit of the potential buried beneath Izzy’s super fucked up shell. This season Izzy got

• a fully fleshed out redemption complete with terrible consequences of his 1x10 actions

• a realization of the possibility of another way of thinking & existing that he’d spent all of S1 running from & trying to destroy,

• genuine love & support from his crew mates which he was actually able to accept,

• exploration of the long abandoned softer side of his nature,

• an apology from Ed w/o first offering one of his own,

• a powerful, devastatingly poignant speech that mentally demolished a new nemesis, and finally

• a beautiful, meaningful death in the arms of the man he’d dedicated so much of his life to, known that he was truly loved by him & completely accepting of the fact that Ed’s love was not in the form he’d always hoped for.

It was so much more than we could have hoped for, and was very obviously done in service to the MANY fans that had fallen in love with Izzy even after S1, as well as to give Con a storyline worthy of his immense talent. Considering the face that Izzy was never going to end up becoming the show’s third protagonist, it was more than we could have hoped for!

OFMD has two protagonists, Stede & Ed. All the secondary character narratives that haven’t directly involved Ed and/or Stede have been icing on the cake, but the cake has always been the Gentlebeard love story. I feel like some people forget this, expecting them to treat the secondary characters as if it were an ensemble show instead of a show with leads.

Izzy’s arc really was an amazing gift! The writers gave us this incredible journey for Izzy this season, and what did a disgraceful number of people do? They attacked David directly, insulted the entire show, the writers, & other characters, even wishing actual harm & misery to other characters or even to David himself!

While I know that comparatively speaking, the percentage of show fans who reacted this way was relatively small, it was still an astounding amount of hatred & vitriol thrown at the people who had obviously worked very hard to give Izzy fans something beautiful to hold on to after his inevitable death. Much of the discourse honestly shocked me, considering the fact that OFMD isn’t even an adaptation of another work.

When fans get angry at shows written as adaptations of books, it’s a bit more understandable for them to have extreme reactions. They’ve had certain ideas and headcanons about characters they’ve felt very strongly about for a long time. It can be really jarring & painful when expectations like that aren’t met, the characters or plots are taken in totally different directions, or even excluded entirely.

OFMD, however, is an original creation. This is David Jenkins’s story. These are David Jenkins’s characters. He knows his story, his plotlines, his characters far better than anyone else does because they came from HIS brain! So while we as fans can have our own interpretations & head canons, they are always going to be at risk of being proven totally wrong by the ACTUAL canon.

One of the worst aspects of fandoms, in my opinion, is the way people become so proprietary over the story & characters, insisting that their own interpretations & theories are the only correct ones, which is exactly what happened with Izzy. Fans’ individual & collective interpretations, theories, hopes, & other head canons became concrete & true in their minds. So much so that when the actual story didn’t meet those expectations, so many of them lashed out in some truly unpleasant, sometimes hateful ways.

My only hope is that the rest of the fandom’s love, appreciation, constructive criticism, heartbreak, pain, joy, & excitement has been enough to drown out the deluge of vitriolic comments directed at David & the other writers.

If you stuck with me through this unintentionally long diatribe, thank you! Maybe take a moment to give the writers some comments or replies on social media, showing your love! I know I will!

[o0opumpkino0o]

Here’s a Demon twins AU that I will never write. I feel like the best crossover fics are written by people who enjoy and have a good grasp on the shows/comics/whatever they are combining and my DC knowledge is severely lacking. So this will mostly be focused on Danny. Feel free to take inspiration and make whatever changes you want, if you feel like taking a swing at it. Originally, this was supposed to be a comedic prompt that took advantage of Danny having ghost powers. But that quickly changed. 

-I’m not the biggest fan of Ghost King!Danny so I’m not writing this with that in mind but if you like it then feel free to add it in. 

-I feel like this AU would work better with Danny and Damian as rivals or having a love/hate relationship but you do whatever you like best.  

-In this AU they are not identical twins. 

-While on a mission, Danyal and Damian were separated at age 5. Damian stayed with the league while Danyal was found by the Fenton’s. 

-Danyal was seriously injured during the mission and the Fenton’s thought it would be irresponsible to leave him on his own after patching him up. And any parents that allowed their child to get so grievously injured obviously shouldn’t be incharge of raising a kid. So they decide to adopt him. 

-The league assumes that Danyal was killed on the mission. Even though a body was never found, there weren’t reports of a child matching Danyal’s description in the surrounding cities or even states and a five year old can only go so far on his own, even one with League training. 

-Did Danyal want to leave the league? Did he want to stay and protect Damian/prove himself worthy of the title or heir? You decide! Either way he ends up living with the Fenton’s, has his accident at 14, and the Danny Phantom series continues as normal.

-Over the years of living with the Fenton’s Danny starts to lose touch with his league training. Some of the knowledge sticks with him, like what specific poisons can do, etc. But most of the physical training fades away. He was five when he was taken from the League, by the time he became half-ghost, he’d spent most of his life out of it. 

-He also starts to feel invincible after avoiding the League’s radar for so long. As long as he doesn’t bring too much attention to himself, there’s no way they could find him. They probably think he’s dead anyway. And even if someone from the League showed up in Amity Park, for whatever reason, what are the chances they’d even recognize him?? As long as he lays relatively low his past will never catch up with him. 

-At age 10/12/whatever age Damian was sent to live with Bruce, the “scandal” was broadcasted across national television. While Danny knew he and Damian were the sons of the Bat, he had no idea who Batman was. It did not take long for Danny to put 2 and 2 together. 

-Unfortunately for Danny, the broadcast was airing while he was with Sam and Tucker. Any training he had to hide his emotions eroded in the 5 to 7 years he was living in Amity. His friends, understandably, wanted to know why he suddenly started freaking out and weren’t going to take nothing for an answer. 

-While he could have lied, he wanted to trust his friends and told them everything. For the most part. He did leave out what the cult of assassins he was born into was called along with most of the names of the people in the League. And the parts where he was responsible, whether directly or indirectly, for the deaths of dozens of people. But, pretty much anything else was told.  

-Miraculously, they believed him and still wanted to be friends. Danny was sure Sam would have had an issue with him being raised to kill people for the first few years of his life. But she actually thought it was pretty cool! Mostly because he didn’t actually kill anyone himself, as far as she knew. Was he responsible for slipping some poison into a target's drink? Yes, but that couldn’t be proven. Did he and his brother lower the guard of targets with their ‘lost-children-trying-to-find-their-mommy’ routine so that another member could come in for the kill? Also yes, but he wasn’t directly responsible so it didn’t count. 

-Yes, Danny did mention that his father was Batman and that the newest addition to Bruce Wayne’s family was his twin brother. So that does mean that Sam and Tucker also know the identities of a good portion of the Bat’s and Bird’s. But Danny was young at the time, thought nothing could hurt him, and didn’t quite understand the severity of having a secret identity. Once he had his accident and became personally aware of the risks and consequences of that, the trio had a meeting and got rid of anything that might have had that secret in it. Old diaries, computer journals, text messages. Everything was burned or wiped. They agreed they would never mention that secret directly, especially once Vlad entered the picture. 

-Everything was as good as it could be until about two years after the accident. Casper High won a competition for the Juniors to tour Wayne Enterprises. The Fenton’s refused to let Danny skip on the opportunity. When else would they get the chance to measure Gotham’s ambient ectoplasm or pitch their inventions to Bruce Wayne himself? Danny tried to explain that Bruce probably wouldn’t even be present for the tour and that the TSA would confiscate any Fenton Tech his parents would try to make him bring. But they didn’t listen. 

-As nervous as he was, Danny insisted that everything would be fine. Bruce/Batman was a busy man, he probably had a case he was working on that was way more important than some stupid tour. Tim was CEO and was too important to be a part of a tour. It wouldn't make sense for anyone else in the flock to be there. Gotham itself was so big that the likelihood of him running into anyone was slim and, even if he did, he and Damian weren’t identical twins, any resemblance could be passed off as coincidence. And if he noticed any stares or double takes, well, it wasn’t like it was hard for him to get lost in a crowd.  

-Sam and Tucker weren’t confident in his defense and made sure he had enough makeup on to subtly hide his face shape and any notable facial features at a glance. 

-Danny was right about the TSA forbidding most of the Fenton’s tech on the plane, the only things they allowed were the fenton phones, the emf reader to monitor Gotham’s ambient ectoplasm levels, and some gas masks his parents made in case their trip was interrupted by one of Batman's rogue. Danny was able to sneak some things on board by phasing them past TSA beforehand, but the only things the trio brought with them was the thermos and a few disguised blasters, just in case. 

-The trip actually went pretty well, the hotel wasn’t in the wealthy part of the city, nor was it in Crime Alley. It was in a safe enough area where the students probably wouldn’t be at risk of being shot if they were to wander off. But far enough away that the elites wouldn’t get annoyed at some midwest tourists. 

-Danny was also right about Bruce and the others being too busy to run into him. It turns out most of the bats probably weren’t even in Gotham. According to the guide, Mr. Wayne and co were on a “family vacation” and weren’t expected to be back for another week, days after the student’s would return to Amity. 

-Of course it would be after Danny lowered his guard that things took a turn for the worse. They were just about to board their flight back. Everyone was lined up to go! Only for the terminal to start filling with fear gas as Scarecrow and, if you were to ask Danny, an excessive amount of goons entered the building. Danny had an idea what the Bat’s were focused on during their “vacation”

-Thankfully, the trio was prepared. So, while their classmates were unfortunately swept up in the chaos; Danny, Sam and Tucker were able to slip on their gas masks and find a place to come up with a plan. Even though Danny didn’t need to breathe, even in his human form. He still slipped on his mask to keep up appearances.

-It didn’t take long for the Bats to show up. Specifically Batman, Robin and Nightwing. Batman went after Crane while Nightwing and Robin took care of the henchmen. 

-Batman seemed to be pretty evenly matched with Crane but the goons managed to separate Robin and Nightwing. Both were starting to get overwhelmed with the number of goons they were fighting. 

-Danny couldn't continue to sit back and do nothing. He was a hero, he could do something to even things out. 

-Sam tried to convince him to leave it alone, that there were other heroes who could help but she knew it was hopeless. Tucker put a hand on Danny’s shoulder and told him to be careful before the two went off to find a better place to hide. They made sure they kept their Fenton Phones on in case Danny needed their help. 

-Danny found a place to transform, went invisible, and joined the fight.

-Danny tried to stay in between Nightwing and Robin, picking off goons in their blind spots. If the other two noticed anything off with the number of goons decreasing faster than they were fighting, it didn't show in their body language.

-Just as Danny thought he would be able to get out of this fight undetected, one of the henchmen was able to rip off Damian's gasmask. Nightwing hadn't noticed yet, in the middle of his own huddle of goons. Batman was still focused on Crane. Danny was the only one who could help.

-Time slowed. It was subtle but he could see his brother's shoulders rise and fall as his breathing was starting to speed up. The fear toxin was setting in. Danny did not spend the first 5 years of his life training to protect Damian just to fail now. 

-In an instant, he flew over to his brother. Knocking out the goons surrounding him, Danny loses his touch on his invisibility as he slipped the gas mask on to Damian’s face. He mentally pleads to every Ancient he knows that his brother won't recognize him. 

-Danny realizes that the domino masks the Bats and Birds wear doesn't give away much emotion wise. But he doesn't think Damian's eyes widen or anything along those lines. Maybe one thing will go Danny's way. After all, he’s in ghost form right now. What are the odds, after all this time, his brother would recognize him?

-”Akhi?” It came out more like a breath than a whisper. If Danny’s hearing wasn't so sensitive he wouldn't have heard it. 

-Well, fuck. Maybe if he bails out now everyone will chalk it up to a fear toxin hallucination. 

-He allowed himself to fade from view but stayed close in case any goons tried to take advantage of his brother's disoriented state. 

-Nightwing was finally able to break out of the goon huddle and come to Robin’s defense just in time for Batman to take down Crane.

-Danny took that as his cue to leave and found Sam and Tucker before anything worse could happen. 

-Once they were able to regroup, Danny quickly filled them in on what happened before Mr. Lancer ushered them away to be checked over by some medics while their plane was rescheduled. 

-It isn't until the trio are back at the hotel that Danny realizes he left his gas mask with Damian. 

-Bad news, Danny’s ghost form was caught on the airport’s security cameras before Tucker had the chance to try and delete it. Good news, the cameras being out of date added with Phantom’s ectoplasm means that the footage was too distorted to make out any discernible features. Bad news, the students of Casper High know full well it was Phantom, the ghost boy. And have no problem saying it to every reporter who comes across them. Good news, most people dismiss the ghost explanation as nonsense and assume its a meta trying to encroach on Batman’s territory. 

-Casper High ends up needing to stay in Gotham for a week longer than intended. Bruce Wayne returns from his ‘vacation’ a few days after the attack and offers to pay for the extra nights and any medical bills that students might have gotten as a result of the attack. 

-During that week, Danny can’t bring himself to sleep. He keeps on expecting his brother or one of the others to burst through the hotel window and whisk him away to an interrogation. Thoughts he’s managed to keep pushed down for years are suddenly rising back to the surface. This whole time Danny assumed that, since Damian’s been living with Father for years, Damian was out of the League. Everyone knows about Batman’s no killing rule, there is no way that Batman would let Damian continue his training. But what if that was all a ruse? What if Batman was working for the League but wanted to keep his own hands clean? What if they were going to send Danny back? What if they thought Danny was a spy or wanted revenge? What if they find out he’s half ghost and believe his parents research that all ghosts are evil?

-Sam and Tucker try to calm him down. It was just his ghost form that Damian saw, whose first thought when seeing your brother’s ghost was to assume he’s still alive and living a double life? Plus, for all Danny knew, his brother could have been reacting to the fear toxin instead of Danny himself. Danny appreciated their efforts but he was still on edge. 

-Instead, nothing happens. He can’t find anyone or anything out of the ordinary during his invisible perimeter checks. There’s no attempt to communicate with him. According to Tucker, no one has tried to gain access to Casper High’s student files. Danny’s parents haven’t mentioned that Bruce Wayne has shown any interest in their inventions during any of their phone calls. Nothing.

-He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or disappointed. Batman was supposed to be the world's greatest detective. How could he not look into all of the loose ends Danny left behind, no matter how unintentional it was? Sure, most people brushed off the ghost thing. But an entire class, from the most haunted city in America, saying their hometown hero came in to save the day is something to look into. Even if it’s just to find proof to write them off. He left behind a Fenton branded gas mask for Ancients sake! A new thought started to crop up. What if they didn’t care? What if Damian already explained everything? Maybe the bats knew about Damian’s long lost/dead brother and thought his sudden reappearance, alive or dead, wasn’t worth looking into? What if they- what if Damian- wanted nothing to do with him? Can Danny even be upset? It‘s not like he ever tried to get in contact. Maybe Damian thinks Danny wants nothing to do with him. Does Danny want his brother back in his life? Every time he thought about it, it was either too good to be true or his fantasies ended with Damian stabbing him through the chest. 

-Either way, they were able to board the plane with no issue. The plane landed and his parents picked him up with nothing of interest happening. His parents dropped him off at the house, they wanted to do a quick patrol since the ghost attacks have been rising the last few weeks. There were no surprise attacks in the living room or the kitchen. No signs of anyone in the Lab. (Or any signs of a ghost getting caught while he was gone, that was a relief.) Jazz’s room looked like it did the day she left for college. The house was completely clean. 

-Now there are a few different ways I think this could go. One, Damian is waiting for Danny in his bedroom, sees Danny phase into the room and immediately has a sword to his throat. Maybe Damian was able to get away from the Manor without having to give away too much information and takes it upon himself to look into his brother’s reappearance. Maybe Damian was forced to tell his family about his late brother. Does Damian miss Danyal? Does he feel betrayed that Danyal left? Maybe Damian told his family once they earned his trust when he first moved into the manor? It’s hard to say how this goes from here or how the DC characters react since I don’t know enough about them but if you want to add on to this, please do!

[operationslipperypuppet]

something about… mee maw’s burden. and it being of survival. of responsibility. of a sacrifice you made, of your own volition, and told no one about.

the first time we hear it, of course, the titular time, is when mee maw comes clean to moonshine about having crick rot. a burden she has carried for an indeterminable amount of time. one that she’s willing to shoulder, until it kills her, because she has to keep helping the cricks who are sicker. she knows it’s eating her alive, and she couldn’t tell anyone. until moonshine.

i’m skipping a lot here because of a point i’ll get to in a moment but one of the more prolific scenes it’s used under is “how long do half elves live?”. now, obviously, there’s an obsession with that moment for hardshine reasons, but moonshine’s point is about something much deeper. she took on an ability, quietly, that would extend her lifespan beyond the realm of comprehension. she’s doomed to survive that long if something doesn’t kill her first. and she’s willing to do work that takes time, things that will slowly rebuild the world, work that will make it all worth it. but she never wanted this. she was planning to learn a new type of magic to avoid it, the burden of living beyond all your friends, of knowing that there’s one day, sooner than you’d like, where everyone who ever meant anything in your early life is long gone. and she tells mee maw. who gets it, who has to get it, because she’s dealing with the same thing.

when we jump ahead to the far too many (for the part of me that doesn’t like weeping before 8am on a friday) uses for gowan kilde in campaign 3, it’s a little subtler. for the most part, it’s used as he’s talking to calder about his responsibilities as ranger general. the things he owes to the village. the things he owes to his mom. in retrospect, he’s talking himself into justifying his decision to make the deal with alexandrite. his burden lies with the protection of the village. his duty as leader (much like mee maw’s) to stand up and do what needs to be done for their at large survival. and maybe if he can explain some of it to calder, it’s off his plate.

most of the crick songs, and by this i mean the ones about crick people and not as much those from the elemental chaos, have an element of hope to them. some sort of positive you can spin from it. gunslinger’s girl is about reminiscence, the bittersweet aspect of it, and how there were good times once. greener shades has an aspect of looking to the future, one that particularly comes from its use with balnor’s letter, where things are unknown but will be better. hell, even prodigal sister, a deeply devastating death dirge, has that component where you can feel that this person is returning home to the crick. for mee maw’s burden, it tends to be an element of relief.

because a burden shared is one that’s less heavy. that’s the final element of the song, it’s not simply about the devastation of a burden of surviving, of leading, of making a choice no one else could. it’s about the relief you feel when you share it. moonshine and calder are the ones who directly stop the bad thing that their family member is going through. jolene is able to commiserate with moonshine, to reassure her, because she’s doomed to the same sort of life.

to put it through an evil twist, it’s what plays when calder asks ultrus for the deal. because he’s looking out at an impossible fight, where callie is practically alone and sol is seconds from death, a thing his friends are certain to lose. and he can’t lose them, even if they lose. so he asks ultrus for help. and ultrus provides that relief. he takes a lot, too, but the relief is there.

with mee maw’s burden, you’re going to survive. you are perhaps doomed to. that deal you made will crush you under an enormous weight. but maybe, just maybe, the person you talk to about it can supply just enough leverage that you can get free.

[oddberryshortcake]

Twst theory time (and this is a very big what-if) but Lilia is the one who cursed Silver

Not saying this is anywhere close to what the actual story has in mind (or if I even end up close I will be legitimately blown away) 

(Warning- current chapter 7 spoilers, can change as more info comes out obviously)

But now that we’re getting a more accurate timeline of the history of the Human-Fae conflict in Briar Valley, I’m starting to wonder if maybe the ‘Knight of Dawn’ and Princess of the humans mentioned in (very loosely translated) chapter 7 part 4 are more directly related to Silver rather than distant- as in they are his parents, not his great-great-grandparents.

If Malleus’s mother was indeed murdered by the human forces of Briar Valley, which that seems to be at least where the reality of the situation is going, then I don’t see how someone as powerful as Maleficia would ever let anyone directly involved live.

That would include an innocent baby, should one exist.

The humans have killed the Princess of the Faes, they have seemingly torn down the Draconia lineage, but their child has done no wrong.

General Vanrouge has killed many in his time, but a baby?

Maleficia wants everyone dead, and so Lilia can make it seem like he did the dark deed…By sending the baby into an ageless sleep, where he will remain in stasis and in hiding until Lilia sees the time is right for him to awaken.

300 years pass. After 300 years, the late Princess’s egg finally hatches and the Draconia family line thankfully continues. Lilia dedicates himself to caring for the little prince as it is what his departed friends would’ve wanted.

Perhaps, there could be less bloodshed in their future. Current Lilia talks at length about how he wants humans and Fae to get along despite all that happened, he no longer wants war.

Maybe this human baby, a descendant of those humans who have so terribly wronged the Faes, could possibly act as a bridge between human and Fae relationships. Imagine, if Malleus and the human child were to become friends. It would change everything.

But Malleus is unstable and immature. He has his mother’s incredible temper, and he would be a danger to a human child as he is now. So Lilia waits, and Silver still sleeps.

Over 100 more years pass and Malleus is already itching to sneak out of the palace. There hasn’t been much conflict in years. It’s the perfect time to wake up the child.

So Lilia does, and the baby who has been sleeping for hundreds of years awakes as if nothing had happened.

He’s a baby, so he still sleeps a lot. That’s to be expected.

Except the sleepiness doesn’t stop, not even as the child grows up.

Lilia thinks he knows what’s wrong, but he doesn’t want to face it just yet. He takes Silver to multiple doctors, no one knows what’s wrong. They can’t detect anything, there’s no illness, nothing.

There’s seemingly no explanation as to why Silver is like this, so Lilia plays along with it.

But he knows.

Maybe he keeps it to himself, maybe he reveals everything to his old friend Baul who scolds him for hiding away the missing human prince the way he did, saying that there was no point in saving his life or bringing him back.

Silver was never going to live a normal life.

He has already lived longer than any normal human would, given the spell cast on him. That magic sleep he was in seeped into his being. The curse had been lifted, but a part of it still lingered there. He spent too long in magic sleep, and it will now forever try to drag him back into it, endlessly.

This is Lilia’s fault. He hadn’t meant to harm his son in this way, he had no idea what his powerful Fae magic would do to a feeble human baby’s body, and now his child is paying the price for his naïveté.

He trains Silver to be strong, resilient, and open-minded. His kindness is beyond Lilia’s teachings, and he is so proud to call Silver his son.

But he doesn’t have the heart to tell Silver what he did. He can’t tell Silver that he’ll never be cured, that this is something he will have to fight against with all of the strength he has in him. The darkness that tries to drag him into a deeper sleep is something he’s always been fighting against in his dreams during every sleep attack, it won't stop.

He can’t tell Silver that he was spared out of pity and a belief that he would be useful for proving Lilia’s ideology on possible Human-Fae friendship. He can’t tell him that he has drastically altered Silver’s life in a way that doesn’t deserve the praise Silver gives him. He gave Silver that ring knowing well that Silver’s parents were long gone and possibly killed at his hand in revenge.

He adores being Silver’s father, and it would break him to see Silver look at him with a terrified expression, knowing what he did.

[daisyychainssj]

Something about foolish and bad being two immortal beings who’ve had skewed morals since the beginning of their time on the island. One being able to hide it pretty well and the other always open about the fact that he sees actions and consequences differently. Everyone knows foolish is open to playing multiple sides and doesn’t really grasp the repercussions of certain things like mortals do (he didn’t really understand why people reacted the way they did to him arresting Pac e Mike) he’s always been pretty open about the fact that the only people he cares about being hurt, either directly or indirectly, by what he does is Leo and Vegetta. Then you have bad who is pretty much universally trusted on the island, it’s bbh like yeah sure he pulls silly pranks and stuff but he’d never really hurt them, right? BBH and Foolish are so similar in so many ways. At the end of the day the only people that bad has trusted without a shadow of a doubt is dapper and Pomme, he would die for his kids in a heartbeat. He also does not care if others have to die for them either and I don’t think anyone but Foolish really knows or understands that about him. Pomme and Dapper were in a certain sense, bad’s moral compass. He wouldn’t allow himself or others to do certain things because it could hurt them. Mines? Absolutely not, are you crazy that could kill an egg? The eggs are gone? Bad is blowing everyone and everything up. Leaving boxes with invisible and strong magmas that can pretty much two shot you, what if one of the eggs was to open them? No way, he could never? No eggs around? Everyone gets a killer magma cube whilst he laughs at seeing people downed by them repeatedly. Here’s the thing, bad and foolish obviously love and care for people on the island but I just don’t think they truly grasp it the way everyone else does, the only time they’ve come close is when they’ve loved something that was fragile. They’re kids. It gave them a taste of mortality and so they had to change. Now that they’ve had that love and lost it? I truly don’t think they give a fuck about the consequences of their actions anymore. Foolish literally asked bad last night “Does your family trump all other families?” And after bad told foolish that he was in his family (because they can understand eachother in a way no one else can and I think that brings a lot of comfort) he replied “to answer your question by the way, yeah I think it does” like bad is just openly admitting he will do ANYTHING to get dapper and Pomme back and it doesn’t matter to him what it costs and who gets in the way. I really think that if this does lead to BBH capturing Fred for info no matter how devastated tubbo is BBH Will. Not. Care. Fred is just another obstacle he has to get through to get his family back. And foolish understands that and is encouraging him to do so. Foolish understand because that’s the exact way he operates too. Tina said she would’ve died for Leo and Foolish immediate reaction was to be like “just to be clear I would take you up on that offer and trade your life for hers” and just the other day when Bad was being his usual self and saying he wanted to live at Foolish’s place and the moment he started messing with Leo’s room foolish lost his mind, wanted to arrest bad for even daring to touch such a sacred place and when asked about what the order would think he said if they didn’t understand how serious it was that bad tried to mess with Leo’s room that he Did. Not. Give. A. Fuck. I just think they’re both very willing to be ruthless no matter the consequence and the only person who really understands that is each other.

Q!LANDUO YOU’RE SO FASCINATING TO ME I WANT TO PUT YOU BOTH IN LITTLE TEST TUBES AND STUDY YOU

[bibibbon]

Mei mei is well written

⚠️this post will discuss things like manipulation and exploitation ⚠️

A good character ≠ A morally good person or a good guy

Mei mei is a character that acts as a foil to many characters like choso, nanami, Gojo and even toji. However, even with all of that mei mei still ends up feeling like her own character and is unique enough to not just be regarded as a foil to other characters.

Nanami and mei mei

Nanami and mei mei are very obviously character foils in my opinion. The share a lot of differences and are basically anthesis.

Mei mei doesn't have a problem with exploiting children (her brother ui ui) she she can use them to gain money or survive whereas nanami is known to be the protector of children and his famous line " being a child isn't a sin" says it all. As soon as mei mei escaped kenjakus grasps she was out of shibuya not even taking a second to worry about her examinee itadori yuji and basically leaving him to fend for himself wherever he was at the time whereas nanami even after being heavily injured by jogo's attack had megumi's wellbeing (his examinee) on the forefront of his mind. Mei mei wasn't going to risk her life for anyone not even her own brother as seen in the most recent chapter if it weren't for Miguel, UI UI would of died for certain whereas nanami died protecting the children. Due to mei Mei's selfishness and her own ambitions she easily achieved her dreams and was able to go to Malaysia during the downfall of everyone in shibuya whereas nanami could only dream of going to shibuya and ended up also dying for his own desires to make sure everyone is ok. Nanami could of easily walked to shoko and seek medical attention yet he chose not to. There's also one for their biggest contrasts chapter 236 the famous south and north conversation where mei mei says, "if you want to change go north but if you want to stick to your roots then travel south" nanami states that he didn't hesitate and picked south which is seen in his character as nanami could never really abandon the past whereas mei mei has been implied to go north and that can be seen through her own character and how she continuously moves and sticks with the flow of a situation.

However, you would think that we would get at least one scene where we see Gojo and nanami (the supposed protectors of children) criticise mei mei on how she treats and exploits UI UI but we don't

Mei Mei and choso

They are mainly contrasted when it comes to the idea of family.

A huge aspect of choso's character is his love for family. Choso deeply values all of his siblings and his mother but completely despises kenjaku (as he should!) This is contrasted to mei mei who has been stated to exploit and only use her family for money. Choso only hates one member of his family noritoshi Kamo aka kenjaku whereas mei mei only values one family member and that's UI UI. Choso will do anything for his siblings whether that is to kill for them or to he heavily protect them in the battlefield whereas mei mei wouldn't even protect her brother from sukuna and if it weren't for Miguel coming in UI UI would be dead. Choso wouldn't force anything upon yuji and tired to assist him the best he could whereas mei mei literally made UI UI take a binding vow that states that he can't use his CT without her permission. Mei mei and choso are directly foiled to eachother in chapter 133 where choso is seen to be continually freaking out over the discovery that itadori yuji is his sibling and that he almost killed him whereas mei mei was manipulating and basically grooming UI UI so he would stay a loyal pawn to her.

Mei and choso are basically the saying :

A curse that acts more human than a human that acts like a curse

Mei mei and toji

Their whole contrast mainly centers around their standing in Jujutsu society and the modern capitalist society.

The biggest difference between mei mei and toji is that toji failed in gambling and hoarding money whereas mei mei succeeded.

Both mei mei and toji used their family members as a way to gain money. Toji was going to sell megumi to the zenins clan (even if it was somehow for megumi's own good he was still gonna do it) but changed his mind right before dying whereas mei mei still exploits her brother and only views him as important when he can benefit her. They both gamble and hussle a lot of money however, toji fails at gambling and ends up running himself to the ground by trying to gain money over and over again whereas mei mei succeeds and is able to naturally exploit any situation to where she comes out on the winning side of gaining money. Both mei mei and toji seem to only care for one of their family members (megumi and UI UI). Mei mei manages to exploit the Jujutsu system and easily gain money from it whereas the system despises toji and made his life unbearable. Toji literally died because of his hatred to both the pinnacle of Jujutsu society (Gojo) and to his desire of money whereas mei mei didn't.

I also find mei Mei's character to be fascinating her cursed technique is basically black crow manipulation. In Japan black crows are seen as a symbol of good luck, fortune and gratitude which is similar to mei mei. There's also the hair design for MEI MEI. It looks like a curtain of some sort almost her hiding her identity and making her seem two faced but that honestly contradicts with the way she acts considering that she is very open about her lobe for money and how she uses her brother to get it.

In conclusion, I personally like mei mei but I just hate how gege doesn't outright use her character to critique anything and just has her there.

[the-nightshade-crypt]

My personal favorite headcanon for Nerdy Prudes Must Die (spoilers, obviously) (I start off with a shit ton of just the actual story before the theory, I'm bisexual and autistic, I'm hyperfixated as fuck and these two are so cute, leave me alone /lh)

Max is obviously in love with Grace. Even if he frames it as just wanting to take her chastity, it's clear that he loves her. I mean, firstly, he defends her from bullying despite her being the nerdiest prude. Max himself says to Pete that nobody is a loser until he says they are, so if Max says Grace isn't one, then she wouldn't be. When she comes over to him in their first scene he asks so fucking sweetly to carry her books, like, batting his eyelashes and such a sweet voice. And when she declines he resorts to his mean bully self.

Grace very clearly does not love Max back. Despite her sexual fantasies, and even the lyric "I think im loving you more than I should" in Dirty Girl, she doesn't love him. Cause that's all they are, fantasies. In Dirty Girl she makes it very clear, with her saying multiple times "I don't/won't care about you". And its clear she doesnt want him to like her either, since her fantasy Max specifically asks her to "love me like you dont care." Showing that she really just wants him so she can give in to her temptations. She only sees him with lust, a symbol of her "sinful" desires. A symbol she wants to get rid of by any means to stay pure.

When Max decides to kill Steph first, he screams "you fucking Judas", which causes Grace to show up and shout "So you do know the Bible!" She then follows that up with "I used to have a crush on another guy who rose from the grave. But Jesus never threw a football like you max!" Despite her saying "crush" I fully believe she didn't mean it that way. She just needed to get him on board with her plan, and she knows how he feels about her.

She finally gets him to leave Steph and Pete alone and they have sex. When she comes back, she's smoking a cigarette and states "I needed that." Max comes out from behind the the wall and gets on his stomach, kicking his fucking feet like a tween girl writing self insert fanfiction, and says "Hey, uh, Grace? Where you going? Don't you wanna cuddle a little bit?" This line alone proves to me that he's in love with her. Compared to someone like Ted Spankoffski, who would never do something as romantic as cuddling after sex (at least not with anyone besides the girl he loves), it's obvious that Max has real feelings...

Only for Grace to say "Oh Max. I just gave you a gift. A very special gift. In fact, I just gave you what I cherish most. My chastity." Not only did she successfully fulfill what the Lord's in Black demanded, though we all know they didn't like that Pete or Steph didn't die, she also got what she wanted... to give into her sinful sexual urges.

With Max screaming that it was worth it, and him gone into the black and white, Grace becomes almost addicted to the power of the Black Book. The end of the musical is her taking over Max's role to kill the people she deems deserve it, in her case, perverts.

Now, my actual theory is that since Grace is directly connected with the Lord's In Black, she can freely go to the black and white, similar to how Miss Holloway seems to be able to. With Max in the Black and white... I like to think he's still actively pining for her. Whenever she visits to talk with the Lord's he's just kinda watching and trying to flirt with her and she's just completely over it. It gets to the point where even the Lord's are irritated. But slowly Grace starts to find his flirting charming. Realizing that since she is working for the Lord's in Black, effectively denouncing her Christianity, there's nothing stopping her from finding someone attractive, or wanting to be with someone. Their relationship at this point might stay as mostly sexual, but she is falling in love.

Maybe she makes a deal with the Lord's to bring him back to life, or maybe she's into fucking ghosts and just asks for that idk but the point is... I like thinking that with her doing the Lord's in Black's bidding, she can see max and actually get to know and fall in love with him.

I just really love the idea of Max being a lovesick himbo babygirl, only for Grace to reject him and be an asshole. But Max is a hopeless romantic who finds it hot that Grace is mean to him and he doesnt take it to heart. He's desperate for a positive relationship, seeing that he says his dad calls him a cuck and is very clearly emotionally/verbally abusive at best, and it kinda seems like Grace wants to be adored by someone, the same way Linda Monroe does.

They are in love your honor

[saiyanmazen]

Your fiery nature

Another Vegebul ficlet written for the Vegebulocracy's D&D event. I would've finished it yesterday, but I've been struck down by a virus.

The prompt I used for this is obviously rage. This piece is rated somewhere between T and M. Nothing explicit or sexual, but very direct about the topic of sex.

Can also be read here on AO3.

------------------------------------

Vegeta didn't think he would ever have anything in common with the Earthlings. He knew there were similarities between him and Kakarot given their shared race, but he'd been more than disappointed by how corrupted the third class Saiyan had been by the humans. There was very little of his heritage in his blood, beside the physical attributes he reaped the benefits of.

No, there wasn't anyone on this forsaken planet that could measure up to the Prince of All Saiyans.

Or so he'd thought.

The first time he felt the strange sense of kinship was when Baldy was visiting the compound. The small so-called warrior (although Vegeta begrudgingly admitted that he was the only one he carried a tiny amount of respect for - he had at least been ready to kill Vegeta until Kakarot stopped him) hadn't turned his back to Vegeta the entire time he was there; a good instinct to be honest. The midget's fear of him was justified. The Prince was the most dangerous being in the entire universe.

He hadn't paid attention to the conversation, only watched as the Earthlings interacted with each other. Maybe it could prove useful in the future. But it appeared that Baldy said something to the woman that made her angry. Her voice rose to mind-boggling shrillness as her eyes threw daggers at the midget and her mouth spewed the most heinous things at him.

The tiny man was quick to respond, backing away in fear of her wrath, and actually turned his back to Vegeta, leaving him open to attack. In fact, the bald man backed directly into Vegeta where he was leaning against the wall. Baldy didn't even flinch when he felt himself collide with the genocidal alien, still keeping his attention on the furious woman.

Vegeta was frankly offended. Why was a warrior afraid of a person as weak as her? She practically had no ki at all.

He pushed the midget to the side, possibly through the wall, and approached the hysterical female. Her rage was no match to his and, though he'd given his word that he would do no harm to her and her family, he wasn’t going to let her behave this way in front of him. Her screeching was awful to his ears and her language some of the foulest he'd heard in his life, but he would stop her. He shouted with all his might that she better shut up right this instant.

She quieted a moment, her blue eyes zeroing on him with blinding white rage, and then she directed everything at him. Her ferocity shocked him and, even as he returned her fire, she didn't back down, not once.

He'd never experienced anything like it. No one, even Frieza, had ever spoken to him like that. But he suddenly found something in another that he could relate to: an intense and burning rage.

She was magnificent. A wildfire hidden right beneath the surface of her deceptively weak appearance. In spite of the insults he flung at her, he was enchanted by her fiery nature.

After their fight somehow came to an end (which might have ended with him walking away in anger after she'd threatened to dismantle the gravity room), he felt invigorated in a whole new way. He knew that he would never look at her the same way again.

It quickly became clear to him that it wasn't just Baldy who feared the force of her wrath. Her little boytoy lost all his (unearned) bravado whenever her temper spiked, Kakarot would immediately do his best to placate her and even the Namekian was quick to disappear at signs of her nasty behavior.

Vegeta could never act so cowardly. He stood his ground and gave back, making her rage flare to almost explosive levels. It caused a strange sensation in him, an attraction to her that he eventually acknowledged had something to do with his Saiyan genes. The women of his race had been fierce and unafraid of even the greatest warrior, no matter how inferior their strength was. And Bulma’s steely gaze and cutting words made him feel more at home than he ever had before.

He began seeking her out, goading her into fight after another, relishing the sparks flickering between them as they exchanged blows.

It inevitably became physical, albeit in a way he was unfamiliar with. Not that it stopped any of them from pursuing this new passionate dance. They wrestled for dominance every time and it blew his mind every time. It drew him even more to her, much to his chagrin.

Over the time spent together, they learned not to come to blows at every turn. It took the birth of their infant child and the death of their future son for them to find a peaceful co-existence. They still argued, often to the point that the other inhabitants would clear out for a while until the dust had settled. It was usually after they'd aggressively worked things in a physical manner.

At times they'd be forced to put their quarrels to the side. Those were his favorites. She would pounce at him at an unexpected moment, push him into the mattress, a wall or wherever she attacked, wrath burning in her eyes, and put her whole body into releasing that anger at him. She would move like a wild beast, scratch and bite at him, pull his hair and even yell at him while they both reached the peak.

She was glorious, a true Queen worth of any throne, passionate and strong in all ways that mattered. He was lucky to have found a woman whose temper could match his own if not outdo him. After all, her rage could even make a god cower in fear. And Vegeta wouldn't have it any other way.

[fallloverfic]

Solo Leveling Episode 7 Thoughts

Excellent ep!!! Spoilery thoughts for the anime, novel, and manhwa below, CW: blood:

Jinwoo and Jinah are so cute together T-T I love them being close sibs. I mean obviously he helped essentially raise her since he was 14, when their dad disappeared and their mom was too ill to do everything, and then fully did so after he graduated because their mother was comatose, and I just... think about that a lot. This kid who has to raise another kid and never got to finish being a kid himself and had to immediately go into the workforce and give up going to university and he just wants her to have the opportunities he didn't and I just T-T

I feel like I accidentally am vibing with this because I got fried chicken on the way home from errands today, completely unaware this was going to be in the episode.

I love Jinah asking about him and how he's doing. Makes up for calling him a cheapskate >.< I mean to be fair to her, I grew up in a household that struggled for money and I was completely clueless about why we often didn't get stuff, though my parents really tried to spoil us to the extent they could. I do get it. It's realistic in my experience to react this way, especially when the younger person is kept clueless about finances. It's just T-T sometimes. But I do love that she cares about his mental health.

Jinwoo just processing his first murder(s) essentially alone cause he certainly didn't confide in Jinho and he is the older brother with a sister in high school who is just living a normal life and wants her to be happy and so cannot confide in Jinah and it kills me he kind of doesn't do this with anyone, ever T-T Sort of when the Hunters manager warns him, but not on an emotional level. I mean to be fair he's also kind of just, "I resented them for thinking they had a chance against me," which is pretty dark lol But he's obviously really conflicted about that cause these were humans.

Jinwoo has one goal and that is protecting the people he loves. He's pragmatic. I think it's interesting he doesn't focus as much on "they tried to kill me multiple times, it was self-defense and defense of another person". Just... "My family is what's important and I'd do it again if I have to." Which, yes, that's a consideration you can have.

I mean he "could" have incapacitated the Lizards, maybe, rather than killing them, but he's not trained to do that, lacked equipment for it, and in the moment it's hard to process that. It just bothers me he doesn't really do any actual emergency training or whatever other than just building up muscle, EXP, and fighting/movement skills. Even his healing solution is just... shove a potion in people's mouths and it's unclear if he has literally any training in first aid of any kind outside that time he helps Song Chiyul wrap his arm.

Also Jinwoo is still really cute :3 He's animated well.

Hehe learning about the detox, poor guy lol I honestly do love the detail that the system detects alcohol as a harmful substance. It's fun when stories add it in.

Jinah worried about him drinking too much T-T They love each other T-T I love themmm

(just skip down three paragraphs if you don't care about my rant about cellphones lol)

One criticism I have because I always focus on the appearance or absence of mobile phones in modern stories where they should be there: the novel focuses a decent amount on how Jinwoo's cellphone broke in the double dungeon, and he has to get a replacement specifically from the Korean Hunter's Association, and that is completely absent from both the manhwa and the anime, and the anime is compensating weirdly. The novel explains, "Hunter-issue smartphones used specialized technology, so Jinwoo had to put in a request directly with the association." (Vol 1, Chapter 4). So the phone does more than just allowing the Hunter's Association easy access to hunters (I think at one point it's shown it works inside the dungeons, when most technology does not, so I imagine it's powered somehow by mana/essence stones). Jinwoo doesn't have the money to speed up the process, so he has to wait for multiple weeks for them to provide him with a new one, and he forgets to take care of it until I think after he's out of the hospital, so that puts off the process even longer. This means: the association cannot contact him except via landline, and anyone with his cell number cannot do so either, unless, presumably, they have his landline number. In the novel, Jinwoo demands an explanation from Jinho for how Jinho has the number on the presumed landline (it's just called "phone" in the Yen press English translation, I don't know why he wouldn't have his cellphone if he has one in the anime outside his bedroom where Jinah is, and I can't imagine Jinho getting Jinah's cell number, or why the Association would have it other than maybe as an emergency contact, which, again, why would he get that number and I feel like Jinwoo would kill him if he did lol), and Jinho explains that he knows someone at the Association.

Most of this revolves initially around various people trying to contact Jinwoo during this non-cellphone time and not getting to him because he literally does not have a phone and, presumably, they don't have his landline number. The nurse whose number he got tries to contact him via his mobile and nearly gives up by the time he gets his phone back to see her messages. Like many related subplots, this is also part of showing that Jinwoo is just... bad at keeping in touch with people lol I mean he explains, sadly, in the novel, "No one ever calls me anyway." (Vol 1, Chapter 4). But he gave this woman his number and ultimately decides to ignore her/not respond when he sees all the messages she sent him rather than saying literally anything like, "Sorry I was out of touch" or whatever, or just politely turning her down. He does this for most people: most of his interaction with his cellphone is to decide not to use it lol I can see why the manhwa dropped this plot nearly entirely (except for a later modification, which I really like) because it feels clunky. But it creates this weird scenario where... it's South Korea, Jinwoo doesn't have a ton of money but he's doing fine-ish enough to have a giant TV and a computer, and he needs his phone for work. Phones and mobile phones in particular exist in the anime (e.g., we see Woo Jinchul use one, Dongsoo crushes one). So one would ask: why does he not have a cellphone (and when/how did Jinho get his number)? And unrelated: why doesn't his email almost ever get used? The webnovel released in 2016, both would have been commonplace things then; I mean the guy goes onto a forum to ask if other people have leveled up in the novel; it would have been a lot simpler to have Jinho send him an email, though I guess I appreciate the added Jinwoo & Jinah bonding created by keeping this to some extent.

It doesn't ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things. It was really one of the weaker elements of the story and it's really incredibly minor. I can, again, see why the manhwa dropped it and why the anime is side-stepping it when considering what to adapt. But anyway, that was my aside of "how cellphone usage/lack of it when it should be there changes stories". (Also for the record, I think it's good he didn't respond to the nurse, in the end, because that entire plotline is really creepy and probably violates some ethics, but it's also so completely unnecessary).

Jinho pointing out the fight with the Lizards was self-defense :3 Good!

The "this cafe sells coffee" glamour shots are making me laugh, I don't know why lol

One thing that's always intrigued me with this series, and I don't know if this is common to the genre or something, maybe it is, is how much buildings are used as collateral. Like it is a simple truth that buildings are a very core part of value for wealthy people and organizations. Real estate is where big money is made. A lot of people in power literally control large chunks of your local real estate. But a similar story would probably just say like... "I can wire x money to you as needed". Instead this just upfront goes, "I'm rich, but here's this really big money item you could have: a building." It's just neat.

O.o Jinwoo doesn't take Jinho's offer. That's interesting. He does take the offer in both the novel and the manhwa, so I'm unsure about why the change? Maybe it combines into his realization that he needs to level up to face enemies past Cerberus and Jinho is a convenient way to do that.

Dongsoo's Japanese voice actor (Junichi Suwabe) has too pretty a voice for Dongsoo alkdjaldja Like he sounds unfairly beautiful aldkjalalkj (Unsurprising for the guy who voiced Viktor in Yuri on Ice) I don't precisely know what I expected him to sound like, and I'd love to see who they picked for the Korean dub, but alkdjal dang. To be fair... he did also voice Jaeha in Yona of the Dawn, and Grimmjow in Bleach, so I'm not that surprised the actor sounds good... I just. Wow. Salud. I don't know that this works for Dongsoo (at least for me) but he does at least sometimes play annoying dudes lol (I love you Jaeha and Grimmjow, and Viktor and Oda, but still aldkjalj).

Stop fatshaming your sister Jinwoo. You deserved that kick even if you did not at all feel it.

Bonding time ruined T-T

The way the buttons on the system get clicked is such a satisfying look/sound.

O.O oh, Jinwoo's learning about the Elixir of Life way early. That's intriguing! In the novel and manhwa he doesn't learn until way later. The anime is really focusing overall on making his goal centrally about caring for his family rather than more about improvement for the sake of improvement (I mean in the novel it feels kind of like 60/40 trade-off with the former being improvement). I get why the change: it makes him more sympathetic. And it also makes him look less strange for trying this difficult dungeon early, and for why he focuses so hard on getting back to it, even before he knew about the elixir. Also gives him a solid goal for season 2.

The gentle piano is lovely, and really sets the mood well. Jinwoo has a lot on the line: his mother's health, caring for his sister, beyond his own survival. The juxtaposition is really good.

As someone who loves Greek myths, I have seen a lot of designs for Cerberus (I have two plushie three-headed dogs, including the Cerberus from Hades the video game). Can't say I'm a fan of this design lol It's fine. It's functional. It's a very good remake of the manhwa design. I guess it just... didn't look as eh. It moves well and works, and the team did a good job. I think just... seeing more of it highlights how I really don't care for the design lol Dubu/the team were really good at designing some monsters, but not others.

The fight is really amazing and well-paced, though. Though it's an interesting change that the system is the one reminding Jinwoo about the gland during this fight, rather than him doing it on his own (he figures it out after discovering the detox in both the novel and manhwa). I like him making the connection on his own. Jinwoo can be a little thick a lot, but he is pretty intelligent, and that was one of his smarter moments. Ah well.

Will never get tired of his eyes glowing in shots. His wounds steaming as they heal is also a neat effect.

He's getting the Elixir of Life recipe early too :3 That makes sense. Would be weird if they bring that up early and don't reference it again for... goodness I don't even know that they'll come back to it before the season ends. I don't think we will, because I wouldn't be surprised if the season ends with the Igris fight. But it gives something to look forward to for maybe season 2.

Also he gets the dog collar :3 BUT... like the manhwa we don't see him put it on lol In the novel he's really nervous about people seeing him wear it, but canonically speaking, particularly since he never seems to take his armor off other than to exchange it for improved gear, he puts this on and wears an invisible dog collar through a good chunk of the story (until he gets a better neckpiece) lol Love it. Ah well. Would have been funny to see animated but they are generally sticking to the manhwa, so. It would be funny if I was proven wrong <.< Have him put on the collar, anime!!

All in all, a really good episode, with some great animation, some more lovely music, and some lovely moments between Jinwoo and Jinah. This continues the trend of modifying stuff in interesting ways. Looking forward to episode 8!

More episode thoughts:

S01E05

S01E06

S01E07 (you are here)

S01E08

S01E09

S01E10

S01E11

S01E12

[persephoneprice]

Okay, re: Persephone's life post-Academy, as you know, I'm a hurt/no comfort, angst enjoyer, so I do speculate that at some point Coriolanus gets a little murder-y with his former classmates, especially the ones who decide to enter politics. At some point, I do think that even if this doesn't affect her directly, this will probably weigh on her. Actually, with the burden of hindsight, I do imagine that everyone of his former classmates have a moment of "could I have changed this outcome?" as Snow's political opponents start dropping like flies. It's doubly hard on Lysistrata and (probably) Clemensia and anyone else who starts having second thoughts about the brutality of the Games. (Oh, to know you played a part in what they became, and that the time to undo that damage has past, but also what could they have done at 18?)

I do think that while she might not be fully aware of it, she may subconsciously know that she isn't Snow's favorite person, so she might not really hang around with him as they head off to University/try to avoid him as he rises to power, but I'm actually not sure how possible that is in a world where she does end up with Festus! I mean Festus seems to be the closest male friend that Coriolanus has by the end of the book, and Snow has even gaslit himself into believing their best friends! (I can imagine Festus believing they are but Snow has to be playing himself, because his best friend is obviously Clemensia. People can have more than one best friend, but I just don't buy it. Okay, tangent over.)

Anyway, I just think that with Persephone and Festus as a couple, I don't see her being able to keep off of Coriolanus' radar which could mean trouble for her. But dare I say it for Persephone... "it's the things we love most that destroy us." Thematically resonate with loving Festus being the reason that she has to stay in Snow's circle...

Even if Coriolanus doesn't decide to kill her, Snow trying to get her and Festus to split or iceing them both out of social circles without any explanation would be a start down the no good terrible world-shattering bad luck.

This got long... Probably the longest i've gone without mentioning— Ahem, anyway, I suppose I like crafting tragedies for every character! Haha, okay, if you read this all, thanks for letting me ramble in your asks!

—@felixravinstills (and the inability to send asks from sideblogs)

friend you cannot possibly imagine my sheer excited when i woke up to this ask!! i’ve been waiting all morning for a chance to sit down and respond.

this is probably going to be long so i’ll put my response under the cut:

i also think coriolanus starts picking off his former classmates and i can absolutely see persephone being a victim to that somehow. maybe not even her directly, but festus when he has outlived his use for coriolanus? (actually, i have a hc that festus and coriolanus’s relationship crumbles after felix passes of ~mysterious circumstances~ but that’s a whole other thing).

you bring up a really interesting point that i haven’t given much thought to- do any of snow’s former friends feel any type of guilt for not seeing the red flags or intervening sooner? i agree that lysistrata definitely is the most likely candidate. put i could also see some of the others having that same moment, in my own capitol world here would be what i imagine for some of them:

- festus definitely has a moment of questioning everything with felix dies

- persephone has a moment as the games continue to grow and more children die. i always imagine that she was pretty affected by mizzen and his death (it’s wishful thinking i know. i’m the one that was affected my mizzen and his death. but a little projection never hurt anyone, right?)

- i’ve been following this fanfiction about livia cardew and her life through and following the games. it covers her marriage to coriolanus throughout his presidency and how it affects livia and the guilt she carries for the things coriolanus does. so maybe this is unpopular, but i can also see livia as his wife feeling that guilt and wondering if/when she could have stopped things.

i also think she doesn’t outright know that coriolanus is repulsed by her- i don’t think coriolanus would ever say something and risk his own image. but i definitely think she has been able to pick up on it and feels uncomfortable around him at times.

which would make the dynamic with her marrying festus and festus and coriolanus being best friends more interesting. i said it in another ask, but i wonder if coriolanus ever did try to tell festus about the cannibalism thing?

anyway, i mentioned yesterday that i had been thinking about persephone being pushed out of elite capitol circles. it sort of started because of a quote from a poetry book i was reading:

“I wasn’t allowed

to live on the Mountain.

I wasn’t even allowed

to call myself an Olympian.”

the poem was inspired by Persephone from greek mythology but (and maybe just because it’s her namesake) i started thinking about Persephone Price. i had this idea of a moment where persephone is much older and has been iced out of her former social circles and finally feels the bitterness and anger from all the bad things that have happened over the years.

anyway, yeah sorry i’m just rambling and info-dumping my thoughts now so i will stop!! hopefully at least some of it makes sense.

i cannot thank you enough for dropping the ask!!

[crosaidi]

DARP Advent 2024: Day Three

Past/Birth, Present/Life, Future/Death.

Past/Birth:

- Does your muse know their name day? vaguely. he knows it, he just doesn't keep track. he barely keeps track of how old he is. - What's their sign? (Which month were they born in?) Kingsway. ( September / Virgo ) - What is your muse's background? He joined his village's militia at an early age, which during the earliest parts of the Fifth Blight combined with a few other nearby settlements. there was a lot of infighting because of old tensions, and that combined with the blight's influence led to some rash decisions being commanded. he went against his commanding officer and was detained and thrown in a cell for it; very soon after, a recruiter for the Wardens came through and pulled him and three others. he survived the Joining, obviously, and helped fight the Fifth. he was not involved directly with the Hero of Ferelden's business and Ostagar fell sometime around the time he was conscripted, but he was at the final battle at Denerim. he spent some time after around Ferelden and traveled home to the Free Marches to find it decimated, and he never found his mother or anyone he knew. he helped clear remaining Darkspawn, helped recovery, and then eventually went to go find the other Wardens, which led him out towards Orlais and the Western Expanse —— where he found most the Wardens gone and ran into the Inquisiton, where he was pulled alongside them as an agent and contact. after Corypheus, he left to go to the Anderfels and Weisshaupt. really, he should just stop going places, he always ends up in the middle o shit - Where are they from? a small village in the free marches. it was overrun by darkspawn during the fifth blight. - Do they know their parents? What kind of relationship do they have with them? He knows his mother, but not his father. He was the bastard-born son of a human mother and elven mage father; his father doesn't know he exists. His mother and father formed a brief relationship while she was traveling, but she didn't know she was with child until she was far away. He was raised by his mother alone. He knows his heritage but it's rarely referenced. he's not ashamed of it. - Do they have close family? Yes, his mother was lovely and they were always close. - Is your muse born with any distinguishing characteristics (heterochromia etc) or disabilities? None notable. He's half-elven, but looks human. - Do they discover anything strange about themselves in childhood? (ex. Emmrich's affinity for spirits) Nothing in particular.

Present/Life:

- How long has your muse been alive? Do they know? he's in his lower 40s as of Veilguard. - What is your muse doing? Presently? waiting for the Calling to come haunt him and in the meantime killing as many evil bastards as he can. - Does your muse have a "day job"? Something to go back to when their "cause" is over? he's had a sword in his hand for way too long. he wouldn't know what to do with himself. for Wardens, their cause only ends when they're dead, so he doesn't make many plans. - Who are your muse's closest friends? verse-dependent. he's usually a bit of a lone wolf until yanked into something. that said, he's fond of other irreverant bastards and also mages. he likes mages. don't ask him why. - What are your muse's favorite hobbies? little puzzles, games, sometimes carving things. very very occaisionally reading, but rarely ( and only dashing adventure stories ). horseback riding. hikes. exploring. food. drink. he's not a complicated man. - Does your muse have a place that they live? Multiple places? he's nearly always been just where his Group is. Warden camps, Skyhold, Weisshaupt, etc. in between, just camping on the road. he doesn't really have a dedicated home.

Future/Death:

- How long after their "home game" or media will your muse live? as long as he can without dying terribly. given the change in the Calling, he's no longer completely doomed to that, but lbr he lives a lifestyle that isn't conducive to long lifespans - What are your muse's goals for the future? live til tonight. wake up. live til tomorrow night. that's about as far as it goes. - Does your muse have plans for building a family if they don't already have one? as of veilguard beginnings: hell no. he wouldn't have children because he feels like that would be cruel to everybody because his fate's already set in stone. - What does your muse want done with their body when they die? he doesn't have any particular thoughts because he assumes he'll die in the deep roads. - What kind of funeral rites does your muse believe in? the calling rituals are about the closest thing. - How does your muse want people to remember them? he just wants people to remember him. whether that's for good or ill or with a roll of the eyes, at least it's in memory. - Does your muse suffer any long-term illnesses, disabilities, or injuries from the events of their story? How do they cope with those changes in their life? he's got bad knees, a creaky back, ptsd, and various scars and aches and pains. he's been a soldier for a couple decades, and he feels it.

[ase-trollplays]

break, desire, fear, secret for florah

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

Florah is unfortunately very easy to upset. The thing that breaks him down the worst/easiest is losing people, and I don't just mean death. Obviously losing loved ones to death will break him, but people he loves and cares about leaving him is absolutely devastating. He struggles heavily with loneliness and feeling like an outsider; someone he loves deciding they're better off without him is an emotion killer.

Normally when he breaks down, he's a spectacle: Uncontrollable bawling and wailing, glowing so bright he's blinding, wishing he wasn't alive, the works. However, when he is beyond broken, he goes completely numb, borderline catatonic even. He'll pick a spot and just. Stay there. He won't eat or move or do anything but isolate himself, sleep, and self-harm.

Quite a few people saw him at his lowest after Karima was murdered: Maeron, Tuuya, Proxus, and Cacoph.

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

He wants to be alive again, as in no longer a rainbow drinker. He's resigned himself to what he is and how that affects the rest of his unlife, but if you told him there was a way for him to become mortal again, he would do almost anything.

He's very open about not wanting to be a rainbow drinker. He doesn't moan and complain about it anymore, but he will casually wish he was alive again. As for what he would do to get it? The only thing he won't do is kill. He'll do just about anything else.

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

Allmah, plain and simple. She's been a constant force of suffering in his life, and he knows he can't really do anything to stop her. Her magic way outclasses his own, her literal inner demon is just as deadly as her, killing her only postpones her atrocities, and worst of all she'll target his loved ones instead of directly going after him. As much as he hates her, he's even more afraid of her.

He's incredibly open about it. He doesn't generally go into great detail about everything she's done to him and others, but he is not shy about the fact he's afraid of her.

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

Hmmmm..... That's kinda tough. Most of the stuff I can think of, he's told at least one person already. I guess I'll go with: When he was still being possessed, he took part in the ritual torture and murder of other trolls completely willingly and even took pride in how well he did because it made Allmah happy. He was happy to torture people to death and do as instructed under Allmah's guidance. He actively enjoyed the fact she was proud of him.

Only Tuuya knows about that. He refuses to forgive himself for the part he played in other people's suffering and death, and he's convinced no one else would forgive him either if they knew. Not even torture would get him to admit that to another person. The only other person who knew was Karima.