#like i love a good tragedy i love a good horror i love a good doomed romance

[dcxdpdabbles]

More Menace!Danny please he's so funny

"What are you doing in my house?" A young voice whispers as softly as the spring rain pouring outside.

Clark screams, jumping a foot into the air. He wirls around only to come to a standstill as a young teenager, no older than fifteen, stares back at him.

His clothes hung off his body, but it looked more like that was a personal choice for baggy, checkered pajamas. His skin was pale, too pale, like he hadn't seen the sun in months. There were dark circles under the boy's eyes, as if someone had taken purple paint and rubbed it against his face until no amount of washing would get it off.

Bandages were wrapped around his arms and neck. Clark could see a few of them disappearing inside his shirt, indicating there were more treated wounds hidden away. His hair was in disarray, pointing in every direction like the top of a pineapple, but cut short enough that it almost looked like someone with scissors had gone at the strands with a personal vendetta.

In the teenager's closed fist is a chunk of hair.

Clark notices, with a growing sense of panic, that there is a breeze on the back of his head that wasn't there before. Accompanied by stinging is more proof that a good amount of his hair had been ripped out, and if he wasn't Kryptonian, then that would have been a whole lot worse.

If it wasn't for the yank on his hair, he would think he was staring at a ghost.

He gawks unattractively, feeling his heart run faster than the wild rabbits he used to chase out of the gardens with Pa. Clark hadn't heard the boy's approach at all, couldn't even pick up his breathing or his heartbeat.

Wasn't that just alarming? He had come to do an interview on Mr. Wayne's latest charity, one that would assist more than half the city get a college associate, so long as they graduated from a high school within Gotham. It was a generous offer, one the readers would adore hearing in his new Positive column.

Clark was finally catching his big break at the Daily Planet. He has been put in charge of a newspaper column of his choice, and he chose to report on all the good things that were happening. He felt that people chased tragedies too much when new worthy stories were everywhere.

Yes, his column was towards the end of the paper, near the comics, but it was his. It seemed to be doing well, too. Perry had increased his writing space as positive reviews started pouring in. Soon, Clark may even be assigned the big stories, the ones that would be put on the front page.

Mr. Wayne had made a comment about checking in on his son, who had vanished upstairs while Clark was busy setting up a recording device - with Mr. Wayne's permission, of course - when the boy had likely snuck in.

"Who are you? What are you doing in my house?" The boy repeats in a soft voice, but with the new amount of steel entering each syllable. Clark felt vulnerable as he scrambled back a few steps on instinct.

"I ugh, I'm here for Mr. Wayne-"

"If you think you can convince Bruce into your bed, you've got another thing coming," The boy hisses, lurching forward with his feet bent in two separate directions, appearing almost spider-like. Clark yelps, pressing himself against the wall, staring down in horror at what he's half convinced isn't human. "How many broken bones can a body survive before someone dies? You should know, shouldn't you, News Man."

The words are more growled out than spoken, and Clark is half convinced that he could go through with his threat even if he doesn't know Clark is Superman.

"I ugh-"

"Danny, there you are!" Mr. Wayne's cheerful voice breaks the spell as the boy straightens up, twisting his feet back in the direction they have to be and stepping away from the reporter with a nasty scowl.

Mr. Wayne walked over, throwing an arm around the boy and bringing him into an easy side hug that spoke of fatherly love, while beaming at Clark. "Mr. Kent, I've seen you've met my son Danny Fenton-Wayne. Adopted him only a month ago."

Clark stares between the two, drinking in the easy, warm disposition of Mr.Wayne by the darkness that surrounded Fenton-Wayne. If it wasn't for the slightly more effeminate features of Fenton-Wayne, which made him more tragically pretty than Mr. Wayne's classically handsome, they would have looked biologically related.

That and the fact that Mr. Wayne looked like he would cry to hurt a fly, while Fenton-Wayne would set a building on fire just to feel something.

Clark shivered but forced a strained smile on his face. "He's lovely. You must be so proud."

Fenton-Wayne's eyes narrowed in barely concealed violence while Mr. Wayne beamed brighter, "I am!"

Clark prayed he didn't have to see Fenton-Wayne often in the future. He could barely handle Batman breathing down his neck for coming to his city. The other hero didn't seem to like the idea that he was just doing his job, but thankfully, Phantom, the young sidekick of Batman, was holding him off.

Now that kid was the sweetest child he's ever had the pleasure of encountering.

[powermove102]

back at it again, really upping the drama now, as always I am itching to hear where people (dis)agree so lmk, hope you enjoy:

B TIER - debilitating sad times

Ulrich Nielsen

Lost his brother pretty young (seems like they had a relatively good relationship) - his parents (or at least his mother) were never the same again (likely contributing to a less-than-best home life), his dad is also a cheat (a ridiculously horny one at that), so that’s an extra contributor

Cheatercheater in every reality (like father like son) - he absolutely does not understand the concept of love and devotion (that’s just who he is)

Will do absolutely anything to save his son - had a moment of restraint before smashing Helge’s face in (was faced with the baby Hitler situation), but remembered he was doing it for his son and he absolutely went for it (can we also mention how powerful this scene was? He paused and started putting the rock down and I was like aw he can’t do it that so emotional- OH WAIT NO HE’S REALLY GOING FOR IT)

At the very least he cut off his affair when he was looking for his son - he just views relationships like a passtime in the Sims, so he can actually focus on the important things when he needs to, good for him

YES he was using Hannah to get out of jail in 1953 (because he doesn’t actually love her (aforementioned lack of ability to do so)), but I am convinced if he got out he would straight away go and try to save his son again (maybe would have started his relationship with Hannah again just to keep her happy but Mikkel is so much more important)

YES he basically aired his wife and remaining kids to look for Mikkel but honestly he was having a hard time coping and he was kind of in the right to do that - focus your efforts where they’re needed hon

Got terribly terribly done for by Egon in every time period - mans cannot catch a break- got wrongly imprisoned by him TWICE and then got sent to a mental hospital for 33 years (which I’m pretty sure MADE him at least a lil bit psycho)

Egon has the absolute NERVE to show up again to question him

AND THEN HE FINDS HIS SON and all is well because he breaks out and goes to him and he even recognises him!!!! (despite the drugs) and they run away together!!!! And they’re so close to the cave!!!! And then EGON shows up AGAIN to take him away, and then some RANDOM WOMAN takes his SON away from him

Then he has to go back to the mental health and they up security so he can’t escape back to his son again

AND THEN HIS WIFE SHOWS UP and she’s basically forgiven him for all the cheating if only they get their son back and go homesies so he waits for her… and he waits for her… and once again a woman he thought loved him leaves him hanging and left for dead locked up, he really thinks she just left him, she may have even gone to get Mikkel herself and just left him to die alone

And he DID have to die all alone in the psych ward, what a tragedy

He had so many glimmers of hope shine through but all of them just made his life even worse, just consistently was not great, so he gets a sad/sad from me

Katharina Nielsen

She has to deal with Hanna’s bitching when they’re in school (always trying to steal her mans) but more importantly her mother low-key high-key hates her

She’s put in the middle of the Big Bad when it happens, since her little boy goes missing, her family falls into depression, she finds out her husband is cheating with the BITCH that's always been trying to steal him, said husband is missing, overall what a mess

No progress is being made in finding anything out, so she rolls up her sleeves and does it her damn self, eventually finding out about time travel (not before accusing Hannah of sleeping with her son, lmao), which, as for most people mentioned here, is an absolute gut punch, especially when her lost kid is involved

Kind of perfect that her travelling saves her from the apocalypse, also because it means she has no idea the horror that happens to her remaining kids (you know, dying and being recruited to the fuck-ass time travel gang in 1888, my favourite time to see them in)

In this crazy attempt to get her son back, she finds out he’s not even there. What the heck. Disappointing is too mild a term for this. 

However

She DOES find her cheating husband. Thankfully bonding over ‘we are now back in the 80s and our son is missing’ allows them to move past the cheating and into ‘i’m gonna free you and we’re gonna find our son together’

However

We all know how that goes. This is really the main reason she gets to go all the way up in B tier, because just as she has a plan and a way to get her husband and son back home and get away from time-travel fuckery, the last obstacle is the mother that hates her but doesn’t recognise her. A small one-on-one moment leads to something that, for her mother, is a terrifying instance of someone trying to kill her and therefore she defends herself, but for Katharina is her whole relationship of her mother hating her terminating in her trying to kill her but instead getting killed and tossed in the lake, never able to save her loved ones, and probably in those last moments thinking Mikkel will be done for, which he kinda will be.

You tried / you almost won

Peter Doppler

He has to deal with the death of his mother while a teenager, but thankfully it seems he gets quite accepted in Winden when he arrives, having Charlotte there for him, happy marriage, kids, yay

My bad, did I say happy marriage? He cheated. (WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE) At least they keep it chill for the sake of the kids

By absolute chance he gets roped into time-travel when Mads just, oh you know, pops into existence in front of him, then he has to dispose of the body in the woods when a creepy old lady tells him *vaguely* wtf is going on. And now he has a notebook with all the shit that's gonna happen and he and his wife have to piece together wtf is really going on with all this time travel. What a chore

Thankfully he and Elizabeth survive the apocalypse (yay notebook), but he loses his wife and other daughter, which… just imagine that dread. Go ahead. I’ll wait

Now he has to search for them all while trying to survive the post-apocalyptic landscape they’re in with his young daughter… hell

I’m not saying much because there’s not that many plot points beating him down but we all know they’re pretty heavy

Then of course his daughter, the one remaining family he has close to him (because as far as he knows the could be convinced Charlotte and Franziska are dead and he’s looking despite his convictions and for Eli to have a little bit of hope) gets attacked behind his back, he’s probably feeling like a failure of a dad for not being there to protect her, but he does everything he can, and saves her, only to get killed for it in the end

Good dad / poor husband

Regina Tiedemann

Raised by a single mother. No siblings. Bullied. It's not looking up for bestie

But wait…! What's this…! *airhorns* IT'S ALEKSANDER!!!!!

Just two besties being besties together, everything is great, (her grandad dies and her mother disappears which isn’t great), everything is great (she opens a hotel), everything is great (they have lots of money), everything is great (they have a son together)

Cancer

She has to give up her hotel due to aforementioned cancer, thankfully she has the full support of her awesome family, unfortunately not much can be done about aforementioned cancer, but then her MOTHER (missing for 33 years but seemingly unaged? weird) RETURNS which sounds good but let’s remember that she was a little bit (quite a bit) neglected by her and then completely abandoned so this is NOT good

Then she gets shoved into a bunker by her crazy young mother so that she survives the apocalypse? What is going on? Now she has to ENDURE THE APOCALYPSE with the mother she is reconnecting with, the cancer that's eating her alive, and WITHOUT her beautiful family. Her husband? Dead. Her son, who is but an innocent child? Essentially dead as far as she is concerned. Now all that’s left is for her to get KILLED by her mother’s boyfriend. She has no idea what’s happening. Why has she been roped into all this without knowing. This is terrible

Her rating is Zero to A Hundred because that's exactly what she got with this nonsense

Jonas Kahnwald

Jonas jonas jonas… the main man… where to fucking start…

Also no he is not going in the top tier, or even in second-top, and I’m about to explain why

That’s not me saying his life was not a shattered mess, BUT, hear me out

Everyone can agree he started with a pretty good baseline, having lots of friends and such, I’m putting my foot down on Michael likely being a saint of a dad despite everything

The suicide was then a big thing, which likely came completely unexpected and he didn’t know why his dad would just die like that for seemingly no reason, so now he has that to deal with

Oh yeah, then he comes back and his new gf (they literally got together a few hours before he had to take mental health leave) is now with his BFF. That’s not cool.

LITERALLY DAYS later, said gf’s brother (who he’s also friends with) goes missing after they heard creepy shit and he lost the little guy while running away in the woods. Absolutely wild occurrences, and Jonas is up there on the list of people most affected by this, directly behind Mikkel’s family

Hello time travel. Suddenly he’s thrown all the shit: Mikkel = his dad, cave stuff, actually traveling, FINDING Mikkel, the Stranger???? telling him to leave it alone and all that destiny and determinism stuff. At this point he’s kind of in the thick of it, where it’s a healthy amount of mindfuck to warrant B tier agony. 

At the moment where he comes back from mental health leave he can get back together with Martha but then ofc he finds out she’s his aunt and (actually lmao) now he’s the one to drop her for no reason. God these two are actually ridiculous together

More travel to the past, he finds out his older self is weird and time traveling??, then he travels to the future, and the future is actually pretty crazy

He not only has to adjust to life in the post-apocalypse, but then when he finds a way out via new portal, he gets captured and HANGED

Well not really because Eli changes her mind at the last second but that’s quite a lot of mind-fuckery for one teenager

1921. Finds out he will be Adam. This is a particularly crazy occurrence and we can recognise it as such, especially because it allows us to separate the ‘Jonas’ from the ‘Adam’, which will allow me to make my main point later

He reaches a higher tier with the fact that he has to go back to tell his dad not to suicide, which then causes him to suicide. I am admitting that this is very big and should be enough to put him in S tier because… no-one should have to have that

And then he has to take Mikkel to the past too. Overall his relationship with his dad is very interesting, because obviously they love each other very much, and Micheal was a great great dad, and then when he was gone it really left Jonas incredibly hurt and empty, now left with just his mother who does take care of him but is far more distant and is also affected by the death, though it seems not to the same extent. That already is quite heavy, but then comes the fact that Jonas NEEDS his dad to die. And Michael is happy to do so for him, because of how much he loves him. Then, he NEEDS to ruin his dad’s childhood by taking him away from his family, working against every instinct he has to do bad things and perpetuate suffering because it just needs to happen. This I believe as the start of Adam-ification, though he’d be damned if he admitted it. It’s where he’s starting to do things for the ‘greater good’, without having his own choice in it, and even though right now he’s mad about having to do it, he does understand the importance of it that Adam has sold to him.

It’s officially the end of his real life now, completely sending him head first into doing time-travel shit, following Claudia when she’s old and teaching her when she’s young

Apocalypse time and it’s a mess. He goes to get Marta, only for her to get killed right in front of him by, well, HIM (I never fully got their relationship, like it was just never that deep for me, but let’s accept that they liked each other, and even if they  didn’t date/ were aunt and nephew, they were childhood friends and he was literally in the middle of trying to save her from the apocalypse when Evil Him shows up to kill her anyway - that’s fucked)

Then we have the three realities: the one where he gets saved by Martha, transported to an alternate universe where he never existed, in a weird way makes this new Martha fall in love with him, tries to stop the apocalypse there, finds out its all for nothing, and gets killed by, why yes, Martha… this one is quite weird but does work as a final sucker punch to a good life that has been absolutely wrecked by existential time travel when he really wanted nothing to do with it, but found himself in a position where he couldn’t refuse and found a path always leading him to determinism when at every turn he secretly hoped and actively tried to do anything he could to break the loop of suffering. In fact, at this last point, where he has had it confirmed that nothing he does can change anything, he must be thinking about his older selves, and how he will soon become them, and resents it, but in a way he’s wrong. While his death is part of the loop in Eva’s world, his older selves were never in the position he is now, because when he is he will always die. As an ending to his arc, it's a pretty tragic one

Something similar can be said in the reality where they go to the origin world and break time travel in general. This is the ending where they wipe the slate clean, they’ve finally found a way that they can ACTUALLY stop all the time travel bs from happening, and it means they have to make everything stop existing, but if nothing exists then does anything even matter. It's a very ‘sweet and sour’ ending and they finally have what they’ve been working for this whole time, but will never get to appreciate it, and it involved Jonas having to sacrifice everything ELSE he ever wanted for the worlds to wipe and time travel to stop, but then again if he just wiped two parallel universes I don’t know if we can really call that HIS sacrifice to have made (or even his and Marta’s) - it’s just them doing the one truly necessary thing and then wiping everything along with its meaning because they never existed - in terms of suffering this is a net zero event

Then there’s the third eventuality, and this is the one that brings the Jonas suffering score plummeting

So he has to survive the apocalypse and then work on the new portal with the smart besties of the future. At this point, he is arguably in the THICKEST of the thick of it, especially because he wants to kms. Nothing is working, everything he cares about is gone, and he has to keep trying against everything to make time travel work and whatever - he’s basically given up all of his own happiness to be here (or rather it was taken from him) and he’s had enough, so he might as well die. The one thing looking up is that he has a new BFF (Noah) and probably knows his friends are safe in the past, even through he probably knows they will never truly be friends again because of how their paths have diverged and how his life is basically slave to the time travel loop - i will reiterate, HE IS MAD SUFFERING RN

Unfortunately he no longer has a bff because he is accused of stealing his child. Sad. But now the portal works. Happy! Only to now be a crazy, kinda mindless drone that has to trudge on and repeat events that happened to him, essentially doing all the work but simultaneously none of it

His bitch-ass mother steals his time machine

Honestly though, their reunion is quite a lot for him, and he finally gets to see her after so long a time, and someone cares about him for him, and he doesn’t have an obligation to time travel stuff right now, he just gets to be with his mother

He tries to stop Martha from dying in the apocalypse… soz babes, you literally SHOULD have known this wouldn’t work

And then ALL the lads take a trip to 1888, where they proceed to do fuck all for many many years!!! For reals tho, he saved them from the blast but really only because Noah told him to, then after bringing them there he refuses to elaborate and keeps them in the dark about a lot, and that’s a big deal when a big thing you’re hiding is the fact that he is Adam, the bitch that made all that happen

And thus, he slowly DOES become Adam, hell-bent on just destroying everything (which kind of makes the Jonas that prevented the car crash in the Origin world an Adam, since he just destroyed everything, discuss amongst yourselves), but in order to destroy everything, a certain series of events must happen, and so… he becomes an unredeemable bastard

He kills his mother. That thing about a heartfelt reunion with her that happened earlier? Wipe it. I take it back. This is the first time he has seen her in *calculates* twenty-three fucking years???? and you kill her that same night because what? she’s not necessary and you can’t have her intervene while you give her child away to the future? I'm not known to sympathise with Hannah much and I kind of brushed past it when doing her analysis because I was mad but this was fucking brutal from Jonas’ point of view

Now he’s manipulating people and lying to them and generally fucking shit up so he can no longer say anything about what he was made to do as a teen. Like. In essence, when you really look at it, really find the cause, you did it all to yourself

All the things he endured at the hands of his older selves? Wiped from his Suffering Score for the fact that he is now his own master yet consciously chose to do that to his younger self

The thing with him and Noah is that yes, Noah went berserk on him when he thought it was him that took the baby. IN HIS DEFENCE, he was told that Jonas would betray him (yes, a lie, but how was he to know?) so it makes a lot of sense to make that accusation from his end. And Jonas fr should have been more understanding of man's frustration. He has a hellish life too, has two things in his existence that actually matter dearly to him (a wife and baby), and one of those two things is brutally stolen and possibly endangered. He’s gonna go berserk. What else do you expect? But that’s not good enough for Adam, because now he has to make Noah go and find that Adam never really cared about him in the whole time that he was telling him what to do, never wanted to help him, never cared about him and his family, just makes him do his dirty work, and then has his own sister shoot him when he UNDERSTANDABLY wants to stand up for himself and do something by his own choice for once (kill the bastard that ruined his whole existence)

Then he kills Martha. Literally whatever at this point.

Then he kills Martha again. A different one. A pregnant one. Oh my bloody damn who cares. This bald bastard just annoys me now.

Then he manages to facilitate a situation in which an alternate reality ‘him’ can make it so none of this happens and everything is destroyed. Are you happy now? Are you? Is this what you wanted? What was the goddamn point. Everything bad that ever happened was because you were a bitch who couldn’t get over himself and his own importance. Goddamn I hate Adam.

Either way, B is way too high a ranking for Adam, but if we factor in the fact that the young Jonas had it rough, the Stranger’s whole schtick was him not even being himself and just being a vesicle for things to happen to his environment, and the two alternate Jonas’ having a really really tough time, B is a good compromise I think. 1/10, the only real ranking because he pissed me off to no end

Special Mention!!!!!

Claudia’s assistant (Jasmin Trewen). She did not deserve what happened to her, that stress of the job and then she gets killed for said job for no reason whilst pregnant. Truly a tragedy.

Dark Schmerz-o-meter analysis

AKA the comprehensive tier list of pain and suffering (fun!)

Characters are all ranked on a scale of S-E and are all relative to one another (yes, you can be sad and still go in E tier). To reiterate, they are NOT ranked based on how much I like them, how good their character is written, or suchlike (although there may be some correlation), this list ONLY takes into account how hard their life was, how much suffering they have had to endure, etc. Points are indeed taken away if you are the one actively causing the sadness (how much depends on e.g. whose idea it was/ how much enthusiasm you did it with).

(also I'm only referring to Adam's-World versions of the characters, unless otherwise specified, because we just have way more information about them)

Feel free to disagree/ counter-argue, this is just my list and my analysis (all for fun).

(OK I'll stop stalling) So why don't we get started with the best of the worst:

E Tier - You don't know what pain is

Hannah Kahnwald

She starts having the affair whilst she is STILL MARRIED (she was unawares that Michael was literally penning his suicide note whilst she was having a smooch with Ulrich) - she also has the inability to love imo, she just has the ability to love attention

She’s not even that good a mother either, she kinda leaves Jonas alone and is only really sad because she no longer has a mans to give her all that attention (PLUS her fling left her too, and then she has the AUDACITY to ask (not ask - FORCE) Alexander to DESTROY HIM for choosing to focus on his MISSING SON instead of HER!!!!!!

And then when Jonas leaves she’s just more attention-deprived so she thought about offing herself but then thought well if I’m dead no-one can pay attention to meeeeeee so decided against it 

Then Jonas returns (33 years older but it is still her SON who displays AFFECTION towards her) and as soon as she finds out about time travel she’s like you know what this means? An opportunity to find more MEN, and she commits THEFT even though Jonas reeeeally needed that machine (she only cares about herself), and proceeds to go to Ulrich ONLY TO TELL HIM SHE HATES HIM BECAUSE HE TRIED TO SAVE HIS SON I MEAN WHO DOES THAT

yes I am well aware that he was unable to say he loves her when she did but I will get more in depth with that later and I mean, come on, man has other priorities, could you really not get him out of prison???? so he can save his son???????

And then obviously she promptly moves on to the first man she sees (married, but she doesn’t care of course) (it’s the guy she reported Ulrich to way back when in the future/past, but she doesn’t care of course) AND HAS THE AUDACITY TO SAY SHE LOST EVERYTHING like MADAM you did not care about your husband, your boyfriend only mattered because he gave you attention, and your SON has RETURNED with all the LOVE he has LEFT from this CAR CRASH of a reality and you RUN AWAY FROM HIM WHILST HE IS ASLEEP AND YOU SAY YOU LOST EVERYTHING MA’AM YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING I ACTUALLY CAN’T WITH THIS WOMAN-

I’m convinced she has a soft spot for kids because i can’t imagine what other reason she really has for having Silja (she obviously never loved Egon) so she has her and then she gets taken to Jonas and PRETENDS like NOTHING ever happened, like she didn't abandon him when he returned to her to go have a kid with someone else and she didn't steal his most important possession

And then YES she is tragically killed by her own son (which is usually a trait of someone very high up on the list (RIP in pepperonis Bartosz you are loved) but I don't care, she deserved it, otherwise the family tree would be 100 times more kaput if she was allowed to populate it even more, especially if she still has access to the machine) and that’s it, she gets a shut up/die

Ines Kahnwald

So people seem to be opinionated both ways with this one but here we go

I guess she WAS doing everything for Michael’s own good - he rocks up with no family or anything to speak of, he’s real scared and sad and she does in fact take him in when otherwise he would have been homeless jobless lifeless so yay Ines

And yeah I guess you could say it’s hard on her when he’s distant from her and everything but like? What did you expect? That’s not your real son bro???

And then she has to deal with his suicide (but again, he was kinda distant anyway it seems) and you get alienated by Hannah (honestly a good thing) but all in all it is nothing in comparison so you get a meh/maybe I don't actually care all that much, Hannah has taken all my energy

Doris Tiedemann

You did cheat on your husband. Idc who, why, with who, whatever, if you cheat then you a bitch for that and i have nothing more to say on the matter

Yeah then Agnes goes missing, then they potentially reunite, it’s all tame in comparison let’s be honest, idk/idc

Anyone else who I do not mention in any tier is either not a particularly significant character or they do not compare :) stay tuned for D Tier if you want

[sparklingdemon]

i know sorrow's quote was in referral to blue but i feel like it could also be applied to leaf/green herself and abandon lonliness: i am's new ending from a meta standpoint if you think abt it hard enough……….

i mean. did we not see OP try to rewrite history in order to prevent the tragedy of lonliness and leaf rotting in hell? do we dare to forget - to erase what she did to lonliness? can she be forgiven now that it never happened in the first place...?

[isdalinarhot]

did i like wind and truth? girl i dont know. ive been surrounded by people who both hate it completely and who think its the best book in the series. and the people who hate it hate it for stupid reasons like "kadolin dont interact much" and "they used early 19th century technology in this book series thats roughly at late 18th century technology" but i cannot deny that when i finished wind and truth i felt miserable. i dont like a book ending on an everything-is-horrible ending when theres gonna be a 7 year hiatus before the next one comes out. thats my big complaint.

[doomdoomofdoom]

god fucking damn you mike flanagan and your profound horror series making me feel things about life and love

[acerikus]

Okay!!!! It's!!!! A day off being a month since I finished tma and I. Gave it a couple of days to feel crushingly sad and read a bunch of fanfics, then listened to the entire thing again (a lil less all at once though bc I started using it for evening walks and it's been really nice!!!! On one of my walks rn and will be continuing through protocol I think :])

Putting this under a readmore bc I was just gonna slap together some ending thoughts, but I accidentally let the words spill out and I've been typing this out for an hour now. Oops.

Anyway. G o d this was good. I've never listened to podcasts before really and this feels like it was a good place to get into it! Only picked it up in the first place bc I've seen mutuals talking about it for years and I wanted something to do when cooking other than half watch YouTube videos in the background. Somehow I still managed to go into it totally blind except for knowing it was horror, that it was mainly voiced by jonny sims and that the spinoff has lesbians???? EXTREMELY glad I wasn't spoiled on anything, bc watching it all come together was magical and a huge part of why I had to relisten.

I love how tied together every story is and how the earlier seasons in a first listen just kinda???? Feel like disconnected scary stories???? I usually don't do horror - never been able to watch horror movies and I only get through horror games by watching manlybadasshero play them and sound so chill about it the whole time, and I knew from slay the princess that jonny had a nice voice for it too.

Anyway a bunch of the early ones still freaked me out but were like... Kinda assuring bc the people mostly made it out? Like that kinda assurance of 'oh it's not TOO scary bc they have to survive to make a statement!' ...Until they started revealing a bunch died afterwards and then the scariness was right back.

Then it's... Kinda cool how as you learn more info about the fears and avatars, it takes a lot more shape???? The tone feels totally different once you learn to start identifying which fear each statement is, where avatars are involved and start recognising reoccurring names (is2g I recognised sarah baldwin's name when it got to Melanie's statement, then dismissed it as some other Sarah like all the Michaels and the way jonny kept pronouncing gerard as jared and making it seem like there were several jareds w wildly different motivations 😭)

And after a while it becomes a lot more about the characters - including avatars from earlier on who just seemed like background spookiness, and you have to sit and listen as jon gets more and more dragged into it himself. Especially liked that part in season 3 where Gerry mentions that Gertrude doesn't like compelling people and then Jon admits he does when asked. Like. Oh. Oh this isn't gonna end well, huh.

Like!!!! The way the entire thing builds up more and more to Jon being far too wrapped up in beholding to ever give it up is really cool, and solidifies that it couldn't have ended any other way, I think. He would've always made that choice, he couldn't help it. He was always going to end up that way.

And there's the added tragedy of him mentioning that he doesn't wanna end up a mystery back in his conversation w martin at the end of season 1 too!!!! Bc the way the end is so ambiguous and open with what actually happened to them (I think I actually do like the idea that they both died best tbh, but I love that it's not confirmed either way) and like. At the core of it, his fate DID end up a mystery. One of the things he was scared of most. And that's just... Really neat????

Should wrap this up soon bc I've been typing this out for like half an hour but another thing I like is that NOBODY in tma is like. Treated as wholly a good person. Everyone's an asshole and most of the time nobody even likes each other and that's???? Really fun and interesting? Like even when jon and martin get together they still argue constantly and aren't super great for each other, and a good chunk of that is probably due to going through an apocalypse but even then, they'd probably both need to work through a lot more of their own issues independently before they could actually have a healthy relationship, I think. Even at the safehouse before the eyepocalypse happened I think they were probs sweeping a loooooot of their issues under the rug, both with themselves and with each other. And I genuinely LOVE that, they're doomed and kinda toxic and not exactly good for each other, but they still somehow love each other more than pretty much anything in such a powerful and destructive way and that's awesome.

Characters like Gertrude too!!!! Gertrude fascinates me so so much because everything about her feels like somebody who would be far more fitting as a protag to this kind of story, while jon would be some kinda distant tragic failure of the past, but that's not it at all. She's the archivist who never really became The Archivist, who learned enough about the situation and the fears and who Magnus really was to decide she was never going to let any of that in, to hold onto her humanity at every chance she got and devoted herself to stopping the dread powers in every way she could. She p much felt like some kind of badass action antihero in all of her tapes - even as it was proved time and time again that she was pretty messed up too and treated all her assistants as disposable, a means to an end.

It contrasts so much with jon, as someone who's so desperate to Know that he falls further into the grasp of the eye, who takes thrill from compelling people and seeking out information, even as it becomes clearer and clearer how dangerous it is, and how it won't end well for him. And jon cares so much for the others around him too, even as they turn their backs on him and call him a monster. He just also does that while relishing in the power he's been given by an eldrich dread entity, and being aware of that fact. Idk, I just think the way they contrast each other is neat :]

Anyway uhhhhhh tma didn't actually make me cry but it made me scared, got me hooked, made me laugh a bunch, caught me EXTREMELY off guard bc for some reason I thought jon was aro even up till most of season 4 due to mishearing something earlier on (he's demiro TO ME) and its ending hit me so hard that I just kinda sat numb the entire night after I finished it and didn't sleep Like At All for like three days bc I was too buzzed (which has only happened to me before after uhh. Undertale, deltarune chapter 2 and uty soooooooo-)

Yeah. It was good. And now that I've finally had a good relisten, had a chance to notice all the connections and plot threads and setup from the get-go and take them all in at a slower pace, I think I'm ready to listen to protocol!

...even if I did just get to the end of my walk. Oops. Maybe I'll do one tonight?

OH. OH ELIAS HAS BEEN JONAH THIS WHOLE TIME HASN'T HE

[wackywatchdotcom]

honestly i dont really talk about caine all too much, i talk about pomni a lot and then ill talk abt ragatha a lot and then i also talk about gangle and kinger and it generally cycles between them (i draw jax a lot but it has to do w him just being fun to draw- i need to talk about zooble MORE bc they were one of the first parts of the show that got me invested)- i love the entire main cast but some of them i talk abt more and i feel like caine is not a common one i discuss. but i really really like his character even if i dont talk about him so much

[arysthaeniru]

Things I find are handled so interestingly well in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist compared to Brotherhood: 

Ishval! The true horror and terror of Ishval is handled so much better: it is the centre of the show’s thesis about the violence done against other people in the name of scientific progress and the empire’s violence

Speaking of: racism is handled better in this show too! The way that Ed and Al are so callous and dismissive about Ishval through most of the show, despite Marcoh’s warnings, and it really doesn’t hit them until they go there in person and realize that Rick and Rio have suffered just like them: in fact, Rick and Rio have suffered even more than them. Ed and Al can always go back to Resembool. Rick and Rio can’t. The casual racism of our main characters is really good! It’s very realistic that Ed and Al believe the racist lies about Ishval for SO LONG, despite rationally understanding the military is bad

Liore! Because Liore gets to have this back-and-forth with Ishval, you get this really strong empathy and solidarity between Rose and Scar, as this representation of Ishval and Liore: religious brown people versus the Empire coming to genocide them out of existence...the solidarity and love between Scar and Rose and the peoples of Ishval and Liore is really good!

Ed and Al really get to be kids and get to be wrong a lot? They get to be such unreliable narrators in a way that is so interesting! When they say something about alchemy or make comments on other characters, they’re often wrong and misguided! Ed’s petulance and anger and stubborn defiance and Al’s naivete and inability to question other people’s lies gets them in trouble way more often than it does in Brotherhood and it really emphasizes just how much he and Al are children out of their depth in a horrible system, in a way that Brotherhood often doesn’t. 

The metaphor of alchemy: Alchemy IS science. For all its goods, it is all the evils and fallouts of unethical science: science that is done at the expense of people, science that is done in the name of greed, science that is done only in the name of violence, and with this strong metaphor, the Philosopher’s Stone as this pinnacle of progress that is built on the blood of common people is just a less complicated metaphor. Because Alchemy is science and FMA 2003 is a commentary on imperialistic, colonial science that is so directly commenting on the Gulf War, it gets to say things much more angrily than I think Brotherhood ever gets to?? You feel the anger about the lies of the Gulf War in FMA 2003 and how it parallels to WW2 better. The animators seem more angry and I enjoy that more!

(More about pacing, characterization and the overall tone of the show under the cut!) 

Although the show ultimately whiffs it, the homunculi being the leftover remnants of human transmutation allows for so many climatic, interesting conflicts between both the homunculi and humans, but also between different humans! Ed and Izumi and their relationship in this show is defined by their fundamental disagreements regarding the role of alchemy and what to do with the homunculi: and it is SO good!

I love that the homunculi are resentful of humans for living and want the philosopher’s stone to be human again! I could do without them all being controlled by a mysterious entity who is so much more boring than all of the other homunculi, but hey. That happened in Brotherhood too, Father’s very boring. 

Speaking of the homunculi: they are so much scarier and intimidating!! When they show up to a fight, pretty much everybody loses! It’s great! It’s not until the last 10-15 episodes of the show that Ed is able to actually put up a fight against them, so you really feel the stakes everytime they show up on screen. They kill Hughes masterfully, they beat the shit out of Scar, they beat the shit out of Ed and Al, they beat the shit out of Izumi--they’re genuinely scary and I love it! In Brotherhood, they are able to evenly fight them SO MUCH MORE QUICKLY and I think it makes them less of a threat than in 2003. 

The main women in Ed and Al’s lives get so much more to do! Maria, Sheska, Izumi and Winry all have a HUGE amount of screentime compared to Brotherhood, where Winry is mostly just running around and has very little initiative to investigate the main plot! Here, she and Sheska investigate homunculi, participate in fights and really are emotionally impacted by events. Izumi barely shows up in Brotherhood ever, and she is a fundamental player in the game in 2003! And Lieutenant Maria Ross gets to really actually play the role of ‘first adult to be like CHILDREN SHOULDN’T BE IN THE ARMY’ which gives her genuine depth and emotionality. 

Oh, Martel’s a real character too! She and Al are fun, I enjoy their banter and I enjoy that she gets to really emphasize to Ed and Al that Ishval was entirely a false-flag operation 

Rose too! I love that Rose comes back as a real character and not cameo! I love that Rose’s rape too, is not just this moment where Ed truly and really realizes that the military does interpersonal violence, but also is something that motviates Rose herself! I love that moment where she screams at Ed to keep walking, just as he shouted at her at the beginning of the show. I love that her continuing on as a character means that Ed’s shitty speech at the beginning of the show gets to be recontextualized as a thing of strength again. I love her resilience, and I love her.

On the villain-side, at the expense of Greed being a character, Lust gets to be a very sympathetic character! I love her contemplations on why she wants to be human, I love her slow realization that she’s tired of the fight, I love her immediate betrayal of Dante once she realizes that Dante is just using her, I adore her and Envy’s petty bickering. She gets so much depth by being formerly human and being linked to Ishval. 

Speaking of Winry: Roy killing Winry’s parents is just. So much better. I love how it immediately breaks Winry’s faith in the government entirely, I love how much it really and truly shows how the Amestrian military is evil. I love how it really creates this moment of weakness and vulnerability in Roy, which he doesn’t get nearly as much in the other show! Roy’s too cool in Brotherhood! I love how young, sad and pathetic he is when he kills the Rockbells, it really sells the horrors of war much better. 

I really like getting to see Ed and El’s counterparts across all of the side characters: the characters that only show up for one or two episodes: everybody is brothers. Everybody is consumed by this burning posessive love. But nobody goes as far as Ed and Al are willing to. I love how they are confronted with their mistakes and failures everywhere they go! It really sets the tone of horror. It really sells Ed and Al as the protagonists of a dramatic tragedy. They made the mistake, and they will make it again, in the name of love! 

A small thing: but I love that Izumi and Ed disagree with what the Gate is? I love that Ed thinks of the Gate as Truth. And Izumi doesn’t! Izumi simply thinks it is a horror. Izumi thinks that what insight the gate gave her was not truth but something else, and I agree with her. I love the idea that Ed’s conception of reality is based on him being Mr. Edgy Angsty Atheist! I love that the gate is silent in 2003, I like that there are very little answers. And I agree with Izumi! The answer to the question: what lies behind the ultimate taboo of science is NOT truth!! It doesn’t quite make sense! 

Relatedly, I love that Ed learns all of his horrible communication skills and bottling everything up coping mechanisms from Izumi. They make all the same mistakes all the time! Izumi always takes everything on her shoulders even though she has help, as does Ed. Izumi never communicates her love and appreciation for the people around her, letting her actions do the speaking, as does Ed. They are terrible mirrors of each other, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

I like that Armstrong is not comic relief? He puts on ‘Mr Muscle Man’ as a facade about three times in 2003, and every single time, it’s a distraction, it’s supposed to make people look elsewhere. Most of the time in 2003, he’s incredibly solemn and serious, as he tries to endure doing the wrong thing in the name of duty. I love that he’s still suffering the consequences of being too kind in Ishval. 

I like that Mustang, Hawkeye and all our favourite main characters put Ishvalans in trains and take them off to concentration camps. It’s not very subtle with its metaphor, but it shouldn’t be. If anything, Brotherhood deeply de-emphasizes the horrendous nature of the genocidal play of the army and the constant violence they partake in. Roy and his people are so heroic in Brotherhood, and I really like how much they are complicit. How much they are ultimately soldiers who are ‘just following orders’ in a genocidal regime. 

I like that they don’t turn to act for the side of good until the very end of the show. I think it highlights the stakes a bit more. I like that the show makes us doubt Roy for a lot longer before finally giving Ed hope! It’s far more cathartic!

I like that Paninya ISN’T ACTUALLY A THIEF???? I like that Paninya is just a gal who wants to make her adoptive dad proud and she steals Ed’s pocketwatch not for Winry to teach her a lesson about how ‘stealing is bad’ but that Ed gets the lesson that he’s not the only one that makes automail work for him! I love that Ed loses actually in 2003!

I really enjoy Fletcher and Russell. Fletcher especially is my good boy. He and Al should hang out more :) 

I really like that Kimblee starts out as a fugitive in 2003! There is something so slimey in Brotherhood where the army just immediately takes him out of jail to track the Elric brothers: it definitely shows just how evil the Amestrian army is, but I think I prefer him being a traitor to Greed’s gang! I love how much more personal Martel makes her fury with him! I like how it takes a while for the military to take him back in here, mostly because it allows for Archer to be a character instead. 

I think Archer being a character makes Kimblee more effective: Kimblee is not Ed’s enemy. He’s Scar’s enemy. And I LOVE that in 2003. 

Archer’s initial attempt to do the right thing instantly being overtaken by craven greed is also a really fun arc! I just enjoy more military characters getting to be pieces of shit. 

Scar gets to interact with more Ishvalan characters because he’s not tied down by far too large an entourage cast, and as a result, he is just. SO much better. I love that he and his mentor fight and talk and he ties himself to the refugees of Ishval in a way he doesn’t quite get to in Brotherhood. I LOVE his determination to make a Philosopher’s Stone out of the military’s lives. I love that he has no hesitation about it either. This is praxis!

I love that Ishvalan people’s legacy is alchemy too! I like that alchemy is the lost art, the old art, and not something that missed Ishvalans by entirely! Although I do like that Scar’s brother in Brotherhood is trying to combine alchemy and alkahestry, I LOVE that 2003 is simply him going back to Ishval’s ancient history. It makes the science metaphor more interesting, especially when you see that apparently the ancient Ishavalsn found out how to make a Philosopher’s Stone and then rejected it and alchemy entirely as a result. I think it’s really interesting worldbuilding! 

I love that whole sequence where Ed kind of makes Wrath’s hatred of him worse? I love how mean and obsessive Ed can be in the show sometimes, I love how flawed and interesting he is. He really feels like a teenager lashing out against the cruel world, and it emphasizes the tragedy of it all.

I love that Hohenheim’s immortality is NOT an accident. I like that he actively did evil things to gain immortality and I like that now his is a story of regret! I think it makes Hohenheim so much more compelling when he is a man seeking repetence for an actual sin instead of being tricked? I think it’s more compelling that he has the same sins as his sons. I like that he was the first to do human transmutation and the first to make a Philosopher’s stone, and that these are Ed and Al’s legacy?? It’s so interesting and fun!

The slow pacing really allows for the tragedy to actually build! I love how slow yet purposeful all the episodes are! The only truly filler episodes are the weird episode about the sexy female thief that keeps tricking Al because Al is too horny/naive, and the Mustang Team’s side adventures. Every other filler episode is doing important work for building the themes of the show! And even the two filler episodes are doing importent things re: characterization! 

Shou Tucker is such a CREEPY minor villain that is used to perfection in 2003. I love how he keeps showing up, I love how awful he is, and I love how much more significant he and Nina are to 2003, because Ed and Al spend four episodes with them instead of their story being wham-blam-ka-blam like it is in Brotherhood, where everything with them happens in 1 episode. 

Laboratory Five is SO MUCH MORE DEVASTATING as a dramatic tension point for Ed! I love how much more evil it is! I love how much more hopeless the situation is. I LOVE the dramatic irony of Ed almost killing hundreds of people because he believed Shou Tucker, despite everything. It’s so good. It makes Brotherhood’s Lab Five Arc pale in comparison. 

Hot Take: I kind of love that Ed goes to Nazi Germany by going through the Gate xD They don’t spend nearly enough time on it, but I kind of adore it anyway. FMA 2003 said subtlety is for cowards, and they were CORRECT!

Things I think weren’t as good but still interesting

Brotherhood really went off with making the homunculus the root of the nation-state of Amestris. I love that in Brotherhood, the state was founded for the explicit purpose of genocidal violence, and the homunuculus as simply the underside of the genocidal turn, the secret police that make the state violence seem legitimate. The hazy relationship between the military/state and the homunuculus muddies the otherwise clear message that 2003 is going for re: state violence and the role of science in perpetrating/continuing violence. 

Dante’s bad. Not that Father is GOOD, not in any way, but Dante’s plan is very stupid and is very underexplained. Why do Trisha and Bradley still follow Dante when she clearly reveals she’s just using them  to prolong her own life and has no intention of making them human? Why do they not immediately just turn traitor like Lust does--the show never builds any real loyalty between Dante and the other homunculi, which makes for a rushed climax, alas. (I do LOVE her and Hohenheim’s bodies physically rotting, that’s some really fun body horror! And I can’t help it, I love exes who were evil scientists and one continued to be evil, and one repented. It’s a fun trope and it was DEEPLY underutilized, alas)

I’m sad Scar died! 2003 obviously has an incredibly high body count and I  defend all of them, but Scar dying is just kinda sad! I like that he has to live with himself in Brotherhood and make Ishval again. 

Greed doesn’t get to do much at all, and his weird acceptance of his own death is VERY strange compared to his own acceptance of being a man so greedy that he wants everything. Although I ended up liking his role as Ed’s first murder, I think Greedling is SUCH a highlight of Brotherhood, that its absence felt jarring. 

May Chang and Ling are such good characters, and I miss Xing! I think I really end up liking 2003′s laser focus on Ishval more, in the end, I think it does a better job of focusing on genocide and racial violence as the catalyst for the state’s and science’s expansion. But May and Ling are such lovely characters and I missed them. 

Al’s angst about maybe not being a real person goes on for SO LONG. I forgot it’s like a full four episodes! It’s the one emotional stake that doesn’t quite feel as impactful as the rest of the show. 

Sloth-Trisha had so much potential that was squandered, I loved when she finally became a fighting antagonist, but I wish they’d spent more time on Ed and Al arguing about her and what to do with her/what she means. I mean, it tracks with them both: that Al instantly goes ‘oh, homunculi are remnants of human transormati--OMIGOD MOM’S OUT THERE’ and Ed’s like ‘i refuse to think about this until the last possible minute’ it’s very in character, but it means they never get to really fight about killing Sloth-Trisha, which is a shame! 

[vulpinesaint]

hey man. you know what. school finally did it. made me watch a movie that i liked. enjoyed even. would 100% watch again. all it took was a two and a half hour surrealist adaptation of titus andronicus

[redrobin-detective]

I have the absolute angiest idea for a fic that I will not write because I’m already half in tears just thinking about it. Only click the readmore if you want to see me dribbling into an emotional puddle.

Zuko’s lightning injury from Azula during Sozin’s Comet was just a bit worse. Katara finishes the Agni Kai with furious tears in her eyes because she knows that the blow was lethal. There is nothing mortal hands can do to save him. But Agni is at his highest power in a hundred years and he knows Zuko’s destiny is to lead the Fire Nation out of war. He cannot die here. A sunbeam concentrates on him while the women fight and suddenly Zuko sits up, perfectly healed with a streak of gold in his hair, bright as a sunbeam. Distracted by her brother’s miraculous recovery, Katara subdues the Fire Princess.

The war is over, everyone lived and there is much celebration.

Until Zuko is hurt during an attempted assassination just a few months after his coronation, not enough to be fatal but enough to add more gold to his hair. That’s when the others realize that the spirits gifts to do not come without cost. Zuko lived to be crowned and as the literal embodiment of Agni’s will on Earth, it is his duty to help pull the Fire Nation back from the brink. But age and injury will slowly sap away his humanity until he will return the life he was given to the sun.

Everyone is devastated. Sokka especially does not take this well. He was just starting to move past Yue, starting to imagine a life in the Fire Nation alongside Zuko. And now he’s going to lose a second love to the spirits. Zuko is hurt but understanding of the distance his friends, his love, give him. He is well used to losing the things he loves. Ever since he died and was reborn, he’s felt different. The gold streaked hair is the most obvious but his eyes take on an extra golden hue. His firebending is now effortlessly powerful and suddenly he has to work on tamping down the raw power he feels under his skin.

Every day that passes, every new golden hair that appears, he feels a little less human, a little more ethereal and he tries to be strong and grateful for the time he has. Mostly, though, he’s scared. Every evening at sunset, he prays to Agni for one more day, just one. He has to settle this trade agreement, he has to help celebrate Toph’s birthday, he needs to hear the swipe of his swords cutting through the air just one more time. Zuko is living on borrowed time and is determined to make the most of it.

One day, Sokka returns, storms into the Fire Palace with steady, tear-filled eyes. He didn’t get time with Yue, he had no warning when she was suddenly taken from him leaving with regrets of what could have been. But Zuko is still here and Sokka will not waste any more of those precious, dwindling days. He pulls his love close, tucking golden fringe out of his eyes. Sokka cannot promise or expect forever, all he wants is here and now.

Assassinations and injuries still happen, sometimes severe enough that Zuko is unconscious. He wakes up during those times in the Spirit World, more gold appearing in his hair as he waits and wonders if this is the last time. Sometimes he sees his familly in the Spirit World. Sometimes he meets them in the wrong order. I want a scared, suspicious Sokka trapped by Hai Bai in the Spirit World eyeing the Fire Prince who’s older, calmer, has streaks of gold in his hair and looking at Sokka with such soft, loving eyes. A younger, grieving Iroh meets a burned, golden haired spirit on his spiritual journey who offers tea and advice. He feels a new wave of grief for this nameless man he will not place for many years. I want Aang to yell after Azula’s lightning, to rage at an older Zuko for letting it happen, for letting Ba Sing Se fall. All Zuko can do is apologize and hold his friend close and pray they both wake up. While Aang sleeps in the iceberg, sometimes he hears whispers of a friend, warm as a candlelight. If he were able to open his eyes, he’d see love and attentiveness and hair so gold he barely looks human. Zuko, at the end of his life, tells Aang just at the beginning of his that they’ll see each other soon.

Years, decades pass and Zuko’s black hair is almost entirely replaced by gold. He’s having a hard time staying aware and present in the physical world. He’s done so much good, helped save the soul of his people, raised a fine, generous Fire Lord to carry on his legacy. The work Agni saved his life for is done. His last day on Earth is a joyful filled with love, friends, family and contentment. He does not pray for one more day because he knows he will not get it. The sun sets that day and so too does Zuko, disappearing into the fading sunbeams.

There is grief butt also gratefulness that they had so long, time they did not expect to have. The sun gleams in the sky, lighting the way for future generations. He laughs with Yue over silly things, mostly Sokka and welcomes each of his friends to the Spirit World. And when a new, bright eyed Avatar enters the Spirit World and finds an old man with kind eyes, an old burn scar and long flowing golden hair, they know that they are in the company of a friend.

[lifesver]

every time i listen to the credits music of the game i go into an emotional state like dude no the love was there it might not have saved anyone but it mattered that the love was there--

[squuote]

recently finished my adventure time rewatch before I watch the new series and like, I rlly rlly love betty and her overall character, I just wish there was more content to her in the show. I would have love to have seen her interactions with OOO and how she dealt with everything since arriving, just a few episodes dedicated to her specifically and her underlying experiences of the horrors when she gains magic. We get such a small glimpse and it’s agonizingly teasing, just show me Betty and her tragedies PLEASE I am begging at this point

[blujayonthewing]

myrkul: hi I'm an unambiguously evil death god of cruelty and suffering who has never had anything to do with you until right this moment, would you like to align yourself with me in exchange for the power to win this midtier combat you're already in the middle of winning and no other clear benefits whatsoever

eachthighern: um hey hi it's me your current patron, you know, the good god of protection and light who has only ever given you unwavering strength and hope and support through all your darkest hours and also extraordinarily powerful magic powers and the ability to heal? I am still here and have never stopped being here and I love you very specifically and personally? remember?

the warlock: hmm..... hmmmmmmm

[cinnabeat]

i love how kh games are just sometimes psychological horrors

[paradoxlemonade]

Ughhhh I need more media with absolutely fucked up relationships in canon but I'm having a hard time finding stuff that people agree is good and fanfic isn't cutting it anymore

Maybe I'm going about this wrong and instead of looking for stuff people say is good I should instead pick something wildly controversial to find quality.

[eldritchqueerture]

🫥🫥🫥