#like the story is BETTER and more interesting with her as a character

[demaparbat-hp]

For your Dandadan AU. Are we in a "Modern Setting" (e.i. No bending)? Or you are having their "supernatural powers" be homages to their bending powers?

Something tells me that Aang is going to get the Jiji role. Only Aang to be that goofy, and do the thing that will happen in Season 2.

Are you also having Kanna as the stand-in for Seiko?

Hi, and thanks for asking!

I'll be leaving this over here and the rest of the lore under the cut.

The Dandadan AU takes place in a modern setting, much like the anime/manga does. There are legends about people who could control the elements in ancient times, but those are just tales—humans can't bend.

Spirits and Yokai, however, are a different story.

Each character's supernatural abilities reflect their original bending prowess! Zuko is a bit of an exception, since I'm leaning towards the shadow and stealth aspect of the Blue Spirit. Fire is still there, just in a different form.

Katara has natural bloodbending powers which the Painted Lady enhances. Whenever Katara taps into the yokai's curse on her, she becomes able to control water as well. Azula (in Aira's role!) will get lightning, illusion, and deception powers from a Kemurikage yokai.

Seiko's role gets passed on to Hama and Iroh. They're both part of the White Lotus, a society of mediums and yokai hunters from all nations.

Hama is Katara's Gran Gran, a stern and rather intense old woman who has made several deals with the Gods of the Land. She delivers corrupted souls to them in exchange for strength, protection, and an emergency tap into the bloodbending powers that she wouldn't be able to harness otherwise.

Meanwhile, Iroh becomes spiritually enlightened after his son's death. He's a beacon for corrupted spirits and bloodthirsty yokai—mostly because of his unnatural ability to rehabilitate said beings. The Painted Lady is one such yokai, and isn't it ironic that Iroh's own nephew is now one of his patients?

Hama sends most of the yokai she hunts down to Iroh due to his ability for dealing with them. If Iroh can't help a yokai move on peacefully, she finishes the job. Not because he can't do it, but Hama is the one who does what she considers to be "the fucking bulk of the iceberg" and Iroh can't take all the credit for it, damn it.

As for Aang...

The Avatar State is terrifying, which makes it the perfect stand in for the thing. Aang has such an outstanding amount of spiritual energy that he's a beacon for all spirits and yokai out there. Which...isn't good. Especially when one of the most ancient and powerful spirits out there wants to possess him.

Which leads us to the Avatar State.

I made the choice to remove his power over the four elements to focus instead on something much more interesting and fitting for this AU: energybending.

The Avatar is able to manipulate all vital and spiritual energy around him, as well as give or take everyone else's powers at will. This makes him pretty much the most dangerous being to ever exist, since he can make everyone powerless by simply willing it so.

As for the Avatar's motivation? He's a protective yet ruthless spirit that has laid dormant for thousands of years, but a certain event woke him up to a world in disarray. His purpose has always been to keep balance in the world, but the concept itself of balance can be easily corrupted.

The Avatar comes from a world that doesn't exist anymore—a far better place that he wishes to recreate and bring to life once more. Even if he must destroy this version of earth to birth it anew.

[elf-trash]

Solavellan Recommended Reading

I made a post like this for SilverV a million years ago and wanted to make one for Solavellan as well!

A few of these fics overlap with the ones I have linked in my current pinned post, but there are soooo many fantastic Solavellan fics out there that I decided to make a longer rec post so I could include more of them!!!

Without further ado, here are some of my favorites, in no particular order. Some of them are one-shots or shorter multi chapter fics, and some of them are massive long fics and everything in between. Some of them are new and still in progress, some of them are completed, and a handful of them are older fics. All of them are absolutely worth your time!

walk you to the shore - Scaryanne A beautifully written post-Veilguard one-shot about Solas and Lavellan having it all out in the Fade. Highly recommend!

the sun to burn - Pip (Moirail) An Inquisition re-write that goes off canon and does a phenomenal job at exploring a ton of aspects of the lore and story. Features fantastic character writing and takes really thought-provoking directions with the lore!

love is not a victory march - Brunchatthebookstore A Veilguard retelling where Lavellan is present at the ritual at the beginning that goes off book from there. It's beautifully, heartbreakingly written and off to a REALLY strong start with some truly devastating moments, so this one is absolutely one to watch.

miles below the surface of the dawn - thefirstaidkit This fic is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read, period. On its face it's just 6 chapters of "there was only one bed" Inquisition-era Solavellan smut, but I stg the writer was channeling the spirit of Solas Dragon Age himself because it is the most perfect Solavellan smut I can imagine. Read this one, just trust me.

Martyr - existential_naptime If you like Solavellan angst, this one delivers in spades!!! It's set during Veilguard and explores what would happen if the Evanuris kidnapped the Inquisitor (and more specifically, how Solas would react). It is DELICIOUS and also extremely painful but well worth it!

Requited - cursedhag A beautifully written, pitch perfect Inquisition rewrite that fully checks all the boxes! Features a lot of excellent Solas POV that incorporates all the new lore reveals we learned in Veilguard. Do yourself a favor and read this!!!!

rook wins in the end - wiltedartist A great exploration of Rook's relationship with Solas in Veilguard. Solavellan, but focuses on the one-sided unrequited feelings that Rook develops for Solas. Really interesting angle that I haven't seen done better.

And Yet - say_lene Beautiful Inquisition-era Solavellan one-shot. All of this writer's fics are so beautiful and well-written, so I kind of picked this one randomly but ALL of their Dragon Age fics are worth reading. We stan a good smut character study!!!!!

In the Colours of Your Regrets - scribeofmorpheus Another excellent smut character study! Solas sadly jorkin' it in the Lighthouse to his own sad murals of his wife. 11/10 no notes.

Roses Where Thorns Grow - Bdafic This one explores what would have happened if, after Crestwood, Lavellan learned the truth about Solas and they rekindled their relationship. It's a beautiful story that stays true to character and explores some of their messier and more complicated relationship dynamics.

Servitude - niceasspavus Another really, really solid Inquisition rewrite that explores Solas and Lavellan's romance. Well-written with excellent details and characterization. Highly recommend all of this writer's other fics, as well.

These Hands, If Not Gods - Gefionne An AU where a pre-Inquisition Lavellan accidentally discovers an eluvian that lets Arlathan-era Solas time travel to her. Beautifully written smut and character development. AUs aren't often my thing, but this one is absolutely worth your time.

Looking Glass - Feynite This one is theee classic Solavellan fic and probably needs no introduction. It's a time travel Arlathan AU, and it still holds up even after all these years, even unfinished. If you haven't read this one yet, stop whatever you're doing right now and fix that.

Wildest Dreams - elf_trash Finally, this one is mine!!! It's a retelling of Veilguard with Lavellan as the protagonist (aka Lavellan IS Rook) that focuses on her complicated relationship with Solas. Starts near the end of Inquisition and will continue through Veilguard and slightly beyond. I plan on reincorporating a lot of scrapped ideas from Joplin.

This list is in no way comprehensive, as a) there are sooo many good ones and b) I haven't read everything (yet lolol), so please feel free to reblog this and add your favorites!!!

But in the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out all of these fics! Top tier stuff all around.

[tuliptiger]

I've been pondering why people are so adamantly hating on Caitlyn. I can't really understand it completely unless, from an audience's perspective, you plug your ears and ignore her when she's on screen completely.

It's so hard to talk about Arcane without talking about the characters like they're people because they're really well written. They're believable with their actions. That's what a normal ass person would do in that situation I'm sure, they'd probably act more maliciously in real life tbh.

Caitlyn does so much. She's not even my favorite and she doesn't need to be for me to acknowledge and appreciate how she was written, her character arc as a whole and her place in the story and the changes she helped usher in. And I don't understand why other people can't do the same.

I'm a 100% Silco hater in a "I think he was well written, compelling and interesting character. He loved with his whole heart. I still think he made awful and bad decisions and let his pain control him and refused to do better." kind of way. People LOVE Silco where they hate Caitlyn and I don't get it.

She did better, she improved the system from the inside out, she lived and got hurt and didn't let that drive the rest of her life. She had a weak moment, Vi also had a weak moment. Vi haters point out her punching Powder all of the time as if one moment of weakness ruins a character.

And this is all over the place but I'm pointing out all of these other characters because the common thread is that they aren't perfect. Caitlyn didn't handle everything perfectly as a person who didn't choose to be born into an incredibly powerful and influential family. She didn't disown her family and fight with the rebels, she didn't personally slit all of the councilors' throats herself. Short of self flagellation or self sacrifice I don't think these people would ever like her and even if she did do all of that it still wouldn't be enough. At least from what I've seen in the past.

I hate rich people as much as the next person because I don't think they are people anymore. I think they're less than human for the path they had to take to get where they are. That isn't Caitlyn though, she's not a real person but if more people acted like her who are in her position we sure as fuck wouldn't be in the world we are in today. She was born and raised into it, with all the ignorance it covered her in, all the misinformation and bias it tried to instill into her.

If she was a Zaunite none of these complaints would exist and I'd bet money on it and isn't that a double standard. She was ignorant, had weak moments, grew, ACTIVELY sought out information and a different mind set after being traumatized and did better. And that's not enough for these people.

I think Caitlyn is a well written character and I sympathize with what she went through. How she still came out on the side of the people, how she still learns, puts her pride on the shelf to do better. She's a strong woman who is written like a person and not a narrative vehicle for class hate. To me.

"I hate Caitlyn because of the system she represents. I'm so tired of people acting like we can'thate her for that."

Let's have a long, hard talk.

This argument IS made in direct comparison to the oppressive systems we see in real life, so let's first talk about how Caitlyn compares to real world oppressive systems, her faults and the ways she fails the people she serves, and then let's talk about how you're just fucking wrong about her and how you hate the wrong character.

Caitlyn is an enforcer. Stating the obvious. She is a member of a larger system she chose to be a part of, because she wanted to serve the people. She was ignorant of the system's corruption as we see throughout season 1. Her initial intentions with becoming an enforcer are because she wants to fight injustice, defy the stuff politics of Piltover that she was raised under, and have her own identity.

At the end of season 1, several things happen to Caitlyn. She is abducted naked from her home, held hostage for at minimum 24 hours, during which time an array of things could have happened to her but of which we know for certain left her TERRIFIED of the young girl with blue hair she was abducted by. She watches that same girl fire an explosive that kills her mother. Preceding this, she has been witness to the ways Silco has harmed the people of the undercity and how he had the enforcers in his pocket in order to do it. Ekko explicitly tells her this. He tells her how Silco has ruined lives and how the enforcers were the manpower that let it happen.

Caitlyn walks away from season 1 changed in many ways. She is brokenhearted and traumatized, but still holds a strong desire to protect the innocent people of both cities. Because of who she has been up to this point, her belief is that she can rectify the wrongs by using the power of her position to do good instead of aid corruption. Her asking Vi to become an enforcer to do as much is in bad taste, yes. Which she later apologizes for and takes ownership for. That doesn't remove the good intention behind it. And it doesn't negate that Vi can later see the logic behind it. Being able to take control of a bad situation and use that power to do good instead of abusing that power to do bad, is an incredibly shaky but important position to be in. And the whole point of Caitlyn's character is how she navigates that--can she use her position to do good? As per GOOD WRITING, she's not going to get it perfect until she learns and grows.

We can acknowledge the moral ambiguity of using the grey, how it does harm, while also acknowledging the WAY it was used and for what purpose was both smart, economical, and GOOD. Doing bad things for good reasons. That's what the use of the grey was.

I'm not going to get into the memorial much, but all I will say for that, is it's an excellent example of people twisting Caitlyn's words and underselling the pain she's going through. If you can't acknowledge the right Caitlyn has to be upset at the people who just violently disrupted a memorial for mourning the loss of loved ones, I don't think you care to have a conversation about the humane treatment of others. And using Caitlyn's anger and grief as a "see?? She hates Zaunites!!" is so fucking stupid I'm not going to entertain an argument for that.

Caitlyn's setback is her trauma, her ignorance, and her heartbreak. She still isn't a fully realized character throughout most of season 2. She's learning and growing and unfortunately that is at the expense of the people she lords over while enforcing martial law. But if we acknowledge that, we also have to acknowledge the ways she changed the system so that needless suffering and punishment didn't happen. Confronting Ambessa when violence is used unlawfully. Improving the prison food and banning the use of the most inhumane cells in Stillwater. Bare minimum? Yes. But still ways she showed that she saw the Zaunites as humans and not as flesh covered problems the way Salo does. Not as problems to get rid of the way Ambessa does.

If the reason for your ire is because Caitlyn is a figure in a corrupt system, then your hatred is misdirected. The point of Caitlyn is to show the ways the system needs to change, and how the people within it who want to do good can often be misguided, but that doesn't mean they aren't good people or that they can't do good within their position.

If you fundamentally disagree with that, there isn't much of an argument to be had, but I will say that your ire is still misdirected.

I never see you guys discuss Salo or Ambessa.

Salo represents true bigotry in the system. It's a position he maintains all the way up to when his mind is commandeered by Viktor and the hexcore. Salo is the type of person who functions on confirmation bias--he already has a prejudiced view of Zaunites, and will use any opportunity to say "see? Told you so! We should put them down." Compared directly to how Caitlyn talks about them, asks Vi to help fix the system, fights against the system going too far, actively makes adjustments to change the way the system treats Zaunites, the claims that Caitlyn is a bigot don't hold up.

Ambessa IS the system. She IS the oppressive force that indiscriminately will take and take and take and sees violence as a tool and not a consequence to be avoided at all costs the way Caitlyn does. And for some fucking reason, no one who criticizes Caitlyn gives any weight to Ambessa's actions, ever. They don't discuss the way she manufactures the attack on the memorial to manipulate public opinion on Zaunites, as well as manipulate Caitlyn. They don't discuss how she sets Caitlyn up to be pressured to take the position of Commander and uses her grief, promises her justice, in order to warm Caitlyn to her and keep her as an ally, a pawn she can use. They don't discuss how she sent Maddie to be a spy, to be in Caitlyn's bed and to be as intimately close to her as possible, to make sure Caitlyn still was behaving the way she needed in order to see her plan through.

When discussing the manipulative, exploitative, and violent nature of oppressive systems, Caitlyn has become the scapegoat, when it is people like Salo and Ambessa who deserve your blame and your ire.

You wonder why people don't take your complaints about Caitlyn seriously? That's why. Because the show gave you very bold examples of oppressive individuals in control of the systems you hate, and you ignore both of them for the sake of hating on a beloved lesbian character, who is beloved because she is flawed and good natured and whose journey we enjoy because it's all about learning what to do when you're within a system that pulls you at every direction to do evil, and you still find a way to do good.

Do some more think pieces on Salo and Ambessa. Then maybe we can have nuanced discussions on Caitlyn.

[astray-clangen]

Oh I had so much fun drawing everyone's kitties and trying out this style on so many varied and beautiful designs 🥰 I drew them all smiling because I want all these characters to flourish and be happy🥺

Fogpool is the founder of @cycloneclangen - I adore his gorgeous flowing fur and design, hes so stylish even when its so dang wimdy, the design always stuck out the first time I saw it. I'm looking forward to seeing how he survives on his own after the storm!!

Piperdapple is the fluffiest warrior of @sporeclan whomst design is one of my FAVOURITEs with the poofy fur and striped tail, but I also love her childish whimsy!! Looking forward to seeing her litter soon 😍 Sporeclan is so unpredictable with its mean rng qwq Fogfreckle is the wonderful deputy and brother of @nimbusclan 's leader, and I've always loved his design!! Clangen's heart pattern pelt becoming clouds is so creative, his eyes are so bright and augh- I'm so worried for this lil cat after the last update. He better be oKAY!

Velociraptor is a newer member of @clangenthriftclan that I just spent today reading and wowow I love the story of this comic. The style is wonderfully varied with the shape and expressions and it compliments the story so well - its a really long running clangen which is so inspiring to me. Definitely following for more ouo

Coniferheart is the deputy of Gravelclan, the starring story of @passing-moments !! I just read through this story too and I'm so interested to see more of the character's backstories and about that strange white kitty who gifted those 9 lives 👀

And last but not least! Shadestar the leader of @tidalclan I love the style of Tidalclan so much, there's so much personality in all the characters, and the journey from being 2 apprentices and a kit to a full clan is always so fun and interesting 🥺The latest lore drop was ough

Thank you everyone who requested a kitty and thank you again everyone who liked, reblogged and followed my comic so far!!! It's felt so nice having a real drawing muse again after months of nothing, I can't wait to get drawing more pages (also because then I get to play more and see what happens to my lil guys)

[legendarywonderlandnightmare]

Due to recently made question, I'm headcanoning (?) every Bachelor/Bachelorette Stardew Valley Surnames.

So, I gonna explain the logic behind these:

1-I headcanon that their surnames fit into hobbies or personalities, more than into proffesions (I will leave this to all non datable characters).

2-I will go assuming that the majority of them took their father's last name (with some exceptions).

3-I read all names meaning, so it helps me to decide their last names and add more layers to their character. I ignore if Maru comes from María Eugenia or from Japanese word Circle, so is the only case I ignored her name.

4-Personal aesthetic. I will chose those what sounds good to me.

............

ALEX George, Evelyn and Alex Mullner are canon so I can't explore more. Their surname means miller. I think that Alex used to have his father's surname, but for obvious reasons he changed it. I would like to think that he used being Alex Barrett, because Barrett means troublesome.

ABIGAIL Pierre and Caroline are French origin names. I considered Marchand surname (literally means Merchant), but as I said, I don't want surnames based on professions. Also, I feel that even if Abigail is not Pierre's bio daughter and there are many discussions and differences between them, its obviously that they love each other. I think that it would be cool that, at least, she can inherited a surname from his father that fits her personality. Pierre, Caroline and Abigail Piper, because it means "flute player". Yes, I know that Abigail has a more adventurous side, but I also assume that those flute classes weren't free and this is something that her parents made for her that she actually enjoys.

SHANE, as I explain in a previous post (https://www.tumblr.com/legendarywonderlandnightmare/775814088240545792/you-i-need-your-help-what-do-you-think-shanes?source=share), I named him as Shane Gwalnet (Welsh-celtic last name meaning hawk of may) .

LEAH. Our cottage girl who loves art and likes foraging in her free time. She broke up with an abusive partner and gave up her life in Zuzu city to pursue her art career. Basically, cutting to grow into something stronger, healthier. Let's not forget that trimming, cutting and reaping are techniques used in gardening to encourage blossoming. Due to this, I would say that her complete name is Leah Cropper as an occupational surname that used to reap crops and trim trees.

ELLIOT. In the beginning I was thinking giving him a last name related to the sea. But I think there are other aspects of him that are more important. Like his creativity, his poetry, his tenacity to fight for his dream even if many think he won't be able to do it. I found that Elliott Garnett would fit him better. Garnett means seller of hinges, but also means "seller of pomegranates" that he loves. Why I'm centering on pomegranates? Because they are a symbol of resurrection, fertility and creativity. Something that fits into Elliott's character!

MARU and SEBASTIAN. I like to assume Demetrius took Robin's surname, because I don't see her as a person who takes their husband's surname. And Sebastian...uggg, even if I feel bad for him, I think he has Robin's ex husband last name. But, that's not kinda his story arc? That he feels ostracized from his family? So, I think that Robin will keep her maiden name and Demetrius and Maru would take it. All of them have different hobbies, professions and interest. But it's a fact that all of them depend somehow of living by the forest to express themselves (Robin works with wood, Demetrius is an environmental scientist, Maru needs clear skies to observe through her telescope, and Sebastian loves solitude). So let's name them Robin, Demetrius and Maru Atwood (English last name, meaning dweller at the wood) and Sebastian Blackley (English last name, meaning dark wood) because even if it's not obvious, he still belongs to his family.

SAM. I know I've said that "no last names related to professions" but I make rules to break them, specially, because I think I must do it in this case. Kent is traumatized by war and this has a huge impact on his family. We know by dialogue that he used being much more happy, playful and carefree. Probably, he was like Sam before war (cries). Also, Samson was the name of a soldier and Vincent is good at shooting (dialogue said during Valley Fair festival). So, yep, I find no reason to not give them a military last name. So, from now, I'm gonna name them as Kent, Jodi, Vincent and Sam Krieger (German last name, meaning soldier).

EMILY and HALEY. These both sisters are so different, but I think that the have something in common and it's their pursuit of beautiness in the world. It could be in the form of creativity and self expression or from observing surroundings and vanity, but it's basically the same pursuit. So I will name the sisters as Emily and Haley Belcher (Norman last name meaning Fair face, cheerful, pleasant temperament).

PENNY. This was difficult. Because I can't imagine naming Penny with a last name related to alcohol or naming Pam after books. They are opposite in personalities and values and pursuit different goals. But then I realized that both were hurt by the same man who abandoned them. This unknown character left nothing behind, except his last name that its stills haunting this family. Also, I totally headcanon that Penny changes her last name for her partner's as a symbol of breaking from her past and going after the bright future she always dream about. So let's name them Pam and Penny Wanless (Scottish, meaning hopeless or luckness).

HARVEY is our kind doctor. He is timid, scareful, but sweet and a good guy in general. He loves everything related to flying, but due to his own fears, he never tried to pursuit that career. He learns to overcome his fears thanks to the farmer. I think that a last name related to birds will fit him. Also, mostly birds spent their lives with the same partner and this sounds like Harvey to me. So let's name Harvey Finch.

KROBUS because, why not? I headcanon that all magical creatures have Zoroastrian last names (because the word magician comes from there). Krobus told us that his name means bridge-crosser in his language. Curiously, there's a bridge related to Zoroastrian beliefs called Chinvat bridge (bridge of judgement, very interesting,but too long to post it, so look on it on Wikipedia), so last name him Krobus Chinvat.

[your-unfriendlyghost]

I dunno when you're gonna see this but take your time. I just wanted to know your opinion on the musical and if you had to pick a favorite NEW character, who would it be?

Ohhh lord. I’m preemptively sorry for all this. 

  So I haven’t seen the musical, and honestly I don’t plan to. I’m not much of a musical person in general. There’s definitely a place for them, but yk, I’m just not that into theatrical, over the top, song-filled ways of tellin stories…I may be in the school play now, but I’m a movie guy not a theater kid 🥲

  Aside from that (probably small-minded) preference, according to what I’ve picked up from y’all, the musical apparently has done a lotta things with the plot/characters that I’m just not into. I guess I just am not a big fan of the musical’s changes. I understand that it's a different medium, and lets be real I know nothing about musicals, so I’m sure the changes make sense in context, but I dunno…it just feels so different to me, enough so that I’m just not interested in it. Plus I’ve tried listening to the music n I just don’t vibe w/ most of it. 

  >>BUT I did hear the Little Brother song (Daryl Tofa cover I think) tho and that one went pretty damn hard ngl. I do not like the Johnny/Dally lil brother thing, but BOY that song was AMAZING. Really dug it. Very emotional, in a way where I could really feel it. That doesn’t happen to me very often lol.

  Idk tho aside from that I tend to refrain from commenting on the musical because I don’t have a lotta good to say about it, and I just don’t feel like it’s necessary for me to talk about something a bunch of folks like if I’m just gonna be bitchy lol. (Which is why I’m gonna tag this post very minimally lol 😭) Gah idk. Steve Randle and Randy Adderson deserved better. 

More bitchin under the cut, because I have some very silly nitpicks that I know aren’t a big deal, but I keep seeing these things around and they irritate me personally. For stupid personal reasons. It’s totally ok to dig these things/characters I’m just a hater at heart lol. So yk don’t hit the read more if ya don’t wanna see me bein a whiny, petty jerk abt things ya probably like 😭😭

  BEFORE that tho, some things I do like about the musical:

-Marcia looks perfect, no notes. Musical Marcia rocks

-Musical Cherry is also cool, n I dig her fit

-Daryl Tofa seems awesome. I like his Two-Bit, I like his Dally, I like him. I know next to nothing about him, but he was a fantastic casting choice imo. Two-Bit is still Emilio Estevez to me, but Daryl Tofa’s Two-Bit is pretty much perfect too

-Johnny’s fit is cool

-I like that the cast seems to like Marbit :)) 

-The way the cast posts things/interacts w/ the fandom is very endearing :)) I may not give a damn abt any of them really, but it’s fun seein’ y’all freak out abt it. Feels like watching a party from the sidelines in a good way- like I may not understand, but it’s charming and fun to see y’all happy ‘bout it 

-Soda’s actor quoted the “People who stay and people who leave” thing, so I don’t even care much that he’s not how I picture Soda- like he clearly gets Soda n that’s pretty cool

Ok time for the whining

-“Chet” is the name my folks used to say they were naming me before I was born, because they thought it was an awful name and they thought it was funny seeing folks’ reactions. So I’m pretty primed to dislike him by name alone.

-Chet/Soda annoys me, Soda has Steve he doesn’t need some Soc jerk. Y’all have Parry for ur homoerotic Soc x greaser stuff, don’t kill Stevepop man

-Cherrycola is just Marbit but blander 😭

-I also am not fond of cutting Randy?? Like why tf did they cut Randy Adderson?? I liked him a lot in the book/movie, and he really added a lot to the plot in my opinion…But idk, whatever…

-“Trip”- shut up, just LET HIM BE RANDY, HOLY HELL! he could be played COMPLETELY THE SAME just CALL HIM RANDY and I’ll stop being mad about it :,)

-the Dally/Johnny little brother thing…it’s a take, but it’s the most boring take for their characters ever, and I just despise that view of Johnny. Idk if I were him I’d be so pissed, having a friend who’s just a year older than me callin’ me “little brother”. But that’s just me! I definitely see why folks dig it, it’s just not my thing.

-I am probably also personally resentful towards the musical because I couldn’t afford to see it this summer, which just felt very ironic considering the themes about class divide and all. Like great, y’all have fun spending a crap ton of money on a musical about greasers. I’ll spend mine on gas for my car. And food. Whatever. I was in NY this summer too, so Broadway Outsiders straight up haunted me. There were brochures for it in the hotel. We walked past the Jacobs Theater a bunch on the way to restaurants and stuff. The ad for it is in the background of all my selfies in Times Square… Aughhhh I’m bein such a bitch about it ik ik it’s so unfair and so stupidly petty for me to be so irritated about it. I know. I can’t help it. Sue me, I’m not a logical man.

-I do NOT care about Paul. But there’s more like…tension w/ Paul in the musical, so obviously everyone’s latched onto him + Darry. Fine. I just really really don’t care about him, and seeing something I don’t care about constantly is turning neutrality into disdain…which is again such a me problem n I needa just get over it lol. I won’t though. I wish I could.

-Not into the way Dally dies in the musical. It is cool, don’t get me wrong, I love me a good train, but something about the way he died in the book/movie felt more like Dally to me. Idk. There was more plausible deniability or something, like Dally could convince himself he was going down fighting instead of “giving up”. (Kinda crass ik but…so is Dally, man)

-The Socs annoy me. That is so hypocritical since one of my favorite characters is Steve Randle. I know it. I swear I do. But ughhhh I just don’t like hearing about them…I’m so sorry

-Soda shouldn’t be that buff man he really shouldn’t. Also feel like he should be prettier. Jason’s good looking, but not in a very “sensitive” way…TO ME! And that is ridiculously unfair of me lol. Idk Rob Lowe’s Soda is irreplaceable to me I think (I can’t help it he’s my gay awakening) (/J/J/J ISTG)

-I miss Steve’s vest man, it was so tuff. The way it’s cropped in the movie to meet the waistband of his jeans?? The way the collar’s popped?? The fit w/ the tank top underneath?? Genuinely the height of coolness to me. I had a denim vest before watching Outsiders, but after watching it I bought one in the same brand as Steve’s because the fit was so fire man (n it does fit better than my old one lol. IDK what it is abt Lee’s denim, but their jacket makes my shoulders + waist look so much better than my old jacket it’s great) tl;dr I miss Steve’s vest it was my fav Outsiders character

-I don’t r e a l l y care much about Ace…I mean she’s ok, and she does look very cool, but I just wish we were clearer on her…role in the gang, I guess? I dunno (maybe if she was Two’s lil sister it wouldn’t bug me? Like cos he canonically has a little sister?? Or if she was like…Sylvia or smth… but nah she occupies an entirely different role so idk how to feel abt that)

-I don’t like that Steve “travelled here w/ Dally”. Steve is SODA’S BEST FRIEND! THAT’S HIS WHOLE ROLE!

-They shoulda casted me. Look I may not like musicals but I can sing GREAT and it’s frankly appalling that there’s a modern Outsiders adaptation and I don’t get to be part of it. Smh. I’d be a great Steve. I coulda been Steve. Plus I’m Asian so yk. Diversity. (I’m a minor they could not and would not cast me lol this one’s a joke)

-I don’t love the Pony n Johnny as best friends take. I think they became close because of Windrixville, which is just another thing that adds to the tragedy of Johnny dying. That’s a nitpick tho again. It’s not that big a deal :,)

Augh so ik I needa just cope with all of this but y’know…you asked… :,)

Sorry again for all this lol 😭

[iamnmbr3]

I'm not a drarry shipper by any means, so this isn't coming from that place, but: Draco should have been the main character. A child brought up in a racist household who grows and changes by the end. It would have been FAR more interesting, and given a chance for some true ethical exploration still suited for children. But JKR's ethics are a joke, so I guess something like that was never possible.

I get that. I mean. I think there's no one right way to write a book. I think Harry is good as a main character for the story the author wants to tell. But I also think characters like Draco or Tom have REALLY interesting and compelling stories that makes the book richer. I mean, Tom coming up from nothing, getting thrown into the House of bigoted purebloods while apparently being a muggleborn, having no one on his side and having Dumbledore against him from day one is another really interesting story with a fascinating (and fascinatingly flawed) protagonist you could tell.

I think the biggest issue with Draco is that JKR tells this really interesting story of a character learning to overcome his bigoted upbringing and struggling towards becoming a better person and then...pretends she didn't. Like she literally mocks fans for finding him an interesting and compelling character and acts like he's just a mustache twirling villain and anyone who likes him is just a girl who has a crush on Tom Felton and can't think straight. I think it all comes down to her homophobia (bc she hates Draco partly due to hating drarry I think) and internalized sexism. Thankfully we have fanfiction.

[bishamontdn]

Ave Mujica Thoughts (not spoiler free)

Seeing Ave Mujica while knowing what is inevitably going to happen with Uika is such a wild experience, and I almost wish I’d gone into it not knowing what her voice actress has said about her (i.e. that she is truly scary, and that Sasaki Rico was genuinely surprised by some of her lines.) Seeing Uika and waiting for her reappearance these past few episodes, knowing this, has been like a ticking time bomb. But if you disregard what we know about Uika from sources other than the anime, her portrayal gets really interesting.

Without any sort of religious symbolism tied to her character directly, Uika is practically pronounced as a holy figure. She wears all white, and is a mysterious, far-away and untouchable singer, part of a popular idol band that is completely free of scandal, unlike Ave-Mujica. She has done nothing so far that could possibly be controversial to anyone, while the moral-greyness of every single other character is being explored. She continues to be a figure of kindness towards Sakiko, mainly. Even when Mutsumi accuses her of “lying” in episode four, it doesn’t really land, because Uika didn’t really lie so much as try to deflect to fix the disbanding situation. Even before Ave Mujica, Uika is atop a pedestal, shown when she gives Tomori advice… in the PLANETARIUM. Our perception of her since then has not changed much. 

Her character remaining sort of holy and free of sin up until this point is notable mostly because of her clear obsession with Sakiko. In my opinion it goes past just appreciation or yearning, and is a true obsession. Typically, when a girl’s obsession is unrequited (especially romantic, though I don’t know how far Bushiroad will go with that… Uika’s obsession does seem to be characterized differently than the rest) the character who yearns after the other is portrayed as gross, unbecoming, or weird. But Uika, through the eyes of the story, is never portrayed in this way. Additionally, the series doesn’t ever make it seem like Sakiko is in the wrong for not reciprocating Uika’s obsession. It can seem at first, like an unbiased account of the two girls’ interactions. Until you remember who narrates this story.

Since Anon narrates MyGo!!!!!, she must learn about Crychic from the outside. At first, characters that Anon (and therefore, the viewer) have a bad opinion of, like Taki and Sakiko, are somewhat redeemed as we find out their backstories. Since Uika is the one who narrates Ave Mujica, I wouldn’t call it unbiased at all. Sakiko is understood from the get-go. Uika extends compassion to her through the narrative- making sure that the viewer will forgive her by positioning her exposition in the very first episode. By this logic, Uika also controls her own self image. The entire narrative falls away to center around Uika and Sakiko. Uika is the clear uncommon pick for Ave Mujica, and it causes her scandal to participate in both Sumimi and Ave Mujica. There are reasons that joining Ave Mujica HURTS her. She is the only person in the band who is there solely for Sakiko. Mutsumi is here because Sakiko has dragged her here. Nyamu is here because Sakiko guaranteed her fame (Nyamu DOES care about her band members, but cares about the audience more. I don’t think this makes her shallow, and I could better explain in another post.) Umiri is here because of her obsession with the band atmosphere. Uika is the only one here ONLY for Sakiko. She has crafted a narrative where she is the only person whose desire for Sakiko is pure, and all-forgiving. Uika is ultimately the one who pulls the strings, and the only one for Sakiko. Who truly wants and deserves her (other than maybe Tomori, who coincidentally… appears when Uika’s narration is absent). 

The last few episodes have been, in a sense, so scary because Uika’s narrative voice disappears. She has been markedly absent. She hasn’t had a huge personal impact on the story’s events so far, but she is certainly about to. This portrayal of Uika and her desire as divine and deity-adjacent has also done another thing; portray Uika as immensely powerful within the narrative. Her focus in the opening and practically any promotional work has also cemented this. I believe Uika’s desire is about to be usurped in some way, and I believe her reaction to this is going to be basically turning into a supernova. Her desire for Sakiko from now on may be seen as a corrupting force to her character, but she still nonetheless has the power if not the purity of a God. She is going to destroy the narrative in ways that I can’t even predict. 

[bonecarversbestie]

✨ Thank you for being in the fandom! ✨

Being here, you have contributed so much and have made so many people happy and excited. Now, just so we can get to know you better:

What made you first read the books, and which SJM series did you begin with first?

What character across all of her books do you relate to the most and why?

What inspired you to begin contributing to the fandom (i.e., fanfics, artwork, commissions, analysis, all of the above, or something else?)

Are there any accounts that you’d like to shoutout that have either inspired you, or made you feel the most welcomed and loved here?

💕 Thank you again for all that you do 💕

What made you first read the books, and which SJM series did you begin with first?

So I actually swore for the longest time that the acotar fandom was a cult and I would never read the books. But I wanted to understand the memes so I started watching Cari Can Read’s plot summaries on YouTube and was interested enough that I gave in. I am dragging my feet through throne of glass and might get to crescent city when I’m retired.

What character across all of her books do you relate to the most and why?

Absolutely Nesta. I relate so much to her internal struggles with guilt, self-criticism and deep loneliness. I found her story of healing and friendship so powerful and she gives me hope that I might one day be freed from the prison that is utter self-loathing.

What inspired you to begin contributing to the fandom (i.e., fanfics, artwork, commissions, analysis, all of the above, or something else?)

I have been telling myself stories about my favorite characters from books and movies and tv for years and years but never actually sat down to write any of them. But something about Elain and Lucien really got me in a choke hold and I decided it was about time.

As for the blobs, they are based on my childhood art style (when my preschool teacher explained to me how to draw stick figures, I completely missed the part where they were supposed to have bodies and not just be giant heads with arms and legs coming off) and I drew the first acotar blob drawing for Eris week because I wanted to contribute something but didn’t have time to make a proper drawing and the blobs ended up taking over my life from there 😂

Are there any accounts that you’d like to shoutout that have either inspired you, or made you feel the most welcomed and loved here?

Yessss all my friends 😋

@zenkindoflove and @crazy-ache for being the kindest, most talented people and best writing cheerleaders and beta readers for my first fic—I honestly wouldn’t have finished it without you guys and your writing is a huge inspiration for me

@jadedbugart who I might share a brain with? One day we will collab pinky swear

@olenvasynyt @fierling and @works-of-heart whose paintings inspire me to work on my art beyond the blobs

Also @yennas-stuff, @sapphiresandgold, @ethereal-lionheart, @themadmorrigan, @the-darkestminds @starsreminisce, @clarafae and probably many more who are so talented, kind, funny and supportive. I never thought acotar of all things would bring me to you lovely people but I’m glad it did 💛😘

[stillness-in-green]

in an ideal world, how would you have written mha's endgame?

That’s not a question with a short answer, I’m afraid.  There’s a lot I’d do differently, in ways it’s hard to even sum up all of because a lot of what I’ve thought about revolves around things I’d want to do differently with the Heroes (and dating back much farther than the second war, at that) with the changes to the Villain side of things being, I don’t doubt, equally drastic but currently much more vague.  I’ll cover my biggest contention in a general way above the cut, but if you want some of my more specific ideas for how I’d approach changing things, look below the cut!

The most pressing problem is that the story built so many of its themes on a framework of Saving People and then let the endgame dissolve that central idea into an incoherent, mushy slurry of saved and unsaved, alive and dead, smiling and unsmiling, free and imprisoned.  For the story to work under its own established parameters, the kids have to truly save the Villains—not just their souls, but also their lives, and not just the ones the kids personally care about, but all of them.  Nothing less will fulfill the twofold promise the story made to its readers with great specificity: that The Greatest Heroes are those who save everyone and that this is the story of Deku/Class 1-A becoming The Greatest Heroes.

That’s not possible in the Hero System as it currently exists, which is my other big target for the thing that needed to change with the endgame: addressing the problems with the status quo.  Class 1-A has to confront the reality of their failing system and realize it needs drastic change, if it can be salvaged at all.  The kids cannot be hailed in the narration as the group who became, collectively, The Greatest Heroes if they inherit and uphold that selfsame failing system.  Regardless of how positively the story tries to spin things in its epilogue, if society doesn’t treat or conceptualize Villains any differently than it ever did,[1] then none of that society’s long-term problems have been solved.

1: And it doesn’t; the vast majority of the epilogue’s focus is on how the kids’ actions have reduced/are reducing the number of people who become Villains, with little to no focus on how their new-and-improved society deals with Villains themselves—either the already existing ones left over from the war or the future ones who still arise despite society’s best efforts.  An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but the pound of cure is still important to have—BNHA’s epilogue very pointedly lacks it.

Saving the Villains who are right in front of you, and making sure the people you can’t be there to help still get saved anyway are ideas that are inherently, inseparably connected.  You can’t do one without the other because each of them requires the other to stick. If individual Heroes don’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then Hero Society will follow their lead, and if Hero Society doesn’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then no help individual Heroes offer will be guaranteed once the Heroes have gone.

Toga is the clearest, sharpest example of the problem, in that no help Ochaco offers her means a thing if the larger system to which Toga is remanded doesn't support Ochaco in giving it. Horikoshi's inability to solve this conundrum is presumably why Toga had to die.  The short answer, then, to the question of how I would write the endgame is that whatever I’d come up with has to be a story in which Toga could be saved in the sense that Shimura Nana meant the word—a resolution that would see her both smiling and alive.

As to specifics?  Well, again, I don’t have the details ironed out because a lot of my ideas are unconnected “I didn’t like how canon utilized its set-up and characters; here’s an idea I like better” spitballing, but if you’re interested in what those ideas might be and how I’ve started lassoing them together, hit the jump.

So, I may have, on occasion, made reference to “the fix-it fic(s)” around here.  This is a pair of scenarios I call “Forward Different” and “Backward Different,” with the idea being that both would be canon divergent from the moment Heroes launch their attack in the first war, but the divergences would immediately go in very different directions based on changes to the underlying material.

Forward Different keeps everything established by canon up to that point as-is, but only what’s been explicitly established, so there could be some surprises with things like character motivations or secrets that had not yet been examined.  Backward Different, meanwhile, would have huge differences incorporated into the backstory, stuff that goes at least as far back as the training camp attack, that would not be made immediately apparent to the reader.[2]

2: The hypothetical reader, I should say, since I have no plans to ever write these out in full, my track record with longfic being as woeful as it is.  But I do want to hammer out the plotlines just to have them, share them, and maybe write some excerpts from them when the mood strikes.

I’m not going to share everything I’ve got in mind right now, but there are a few major points I can talk about, and some fun ideas here and there that I’m willing to share.

The single biggest difference between the two timelines is how they treat Deku, Shigaraki, and (to a lesser extent) AFO’s respective relationships to the One For All and All For One quirks.  Basically, I think it’s tremendously unfair that we see two almost totally incompatible versions of Vestige Fuckery in the story and it just so happens that the main character gets the version that makes everything easier for him while the Villain get stuck with the shitty version that make everything harder.[3]  The fix-it fic AU(s) are in large part about equalizing that balance.

3: And god knows I don’t buy that Deku gets the good version because he’s the good guy and he deserves it because Good Karma or whatever, while Shigaraki gets the bad version because he’s the bad guy and has Bad Karma.  You don’t give bad guys or good guys the fruit of the seeds they’ve sown two-thirds of the way into the story.  That stuff’s for the climax, goddamn.

The Backward Different timeline (the one that’s somewhat better developed at this point) is also called Splintered Wills.  In it, Deku and Shigaraki are both dealing with multiple vestiges that have minds and desires of their own who can choose to be helpful or to cause problems.  In effect, it’s giving Shigaraki access to the same potential benefits Canon!Deku enjoys while making Deku deal with the same potential downsides that Canon!AFO (who’s basically working with Deku’s version of the vestige mechanics; his vestiges just all hate his ass) has to deal with.

In Shigaraki’s case, that’s a huge step up from his canon situation, where he gets devoured by one (1) uber-powerful vestige and spends the vast majority of the last two arcs totally out of action.  Instead, he finds that his head is now full of quirk ghosts and, while many of them want no more to do with him than they did AFO (especially the vestiges of civilians and Heroes), plenty of others have no great love for Heroes or their status quo and thus are much more open to helping him.  Maybe they’re willing to hold back more hostile vestiges like AFO's; maybe they have memories or experiences that could be useful.

Shigaraki also pulls away a chunk of OFA the first time he and Deku fight post-surgery.  Specifically, he picks off All Might’s “vestige,” and All Might’s vestige, unspeaking though it is, and technically powerless, has lots of opinions on who he’s more inclined to help when given the choice between his career-long archenemy and his master’s grandchild.

Meanwhile, on Deku’s side of things, Deku’s newfound desire to save Shigaraki Tomura combined with Shigaraki Tomura stealing one of the eight spirits in One For All sends his headspace into a tailspin.  He spends much of the post-war arc with his powers on the fritz, as the OFA vestiges clash and argue and have mixed feelings (or very strong negative ones) about what he and they should do going forward.  He no longer benefits, as his canon self did, from OFA behaving as basically a unified collective; Yoichi can’t win Kudou and Bruce over for him with a sweet line or two.  Indeed, Yoichi doesn’t even want to because Yoichi is inclined to agree with them, though he’s not without sympathy—he never did stop wanting his brother to change, after all.

The other big factor influencing Backward Different/Splintered Wills is that the class size steadily shrank over the course of the backstory.  Aoyama was revealed as the traitor all the way back at the training camp.  Momo’s parents pulled her out of UA after the attack and enrolled her at Shiketsu instead.  At least one student will turn out to have Liberation Army ties that pull them away from the group.[4]

4: Probably Iida, but I’m not firmly decided yet.  MLA!Iida is very near and dear to my heart, though, so he’s definitely going to be in one of these timelines.

Several students aren’t allowed to do active Hero work because, without Aoyama to rally around during the license exam, they failed the first round, not even making the cut for the remedial course.  One transferred out of the Hero course for less dangerous work.  Maybe one gets critically injured during the first war.  Maybe some aren’t willing to buck the system enough to follow where Deku is going.  And so on.

The smaller class size serves two purposes, one character-based and one meta. First, starting big and winnowing down allows the story to actually write the students as distinct people rather than having them melt into an undifferentiated blob of Unified Niceness.  We shouldn’t have had a story with twenty kids who all, ultimately, react the same way to the crises they face!  If modern heroics has a problem with people who are just in it for the fame and money, or people who expected it to be relatively easy work due to the peace All Might established, then we should have seen that reflected in the class, too!

(That’s not to say no one who leaves or fails can ever show up again!  I have specific scenes in mind already for how Aoyama and Momo return to the story as allies, for example, and Shishikura plainly shows in the canon that failing the license exam in the first round doesn’t mean you can’t still find yourself doing Hero work anyway.  But the students’ paths should be ongoing threads that diverge and reconverge throughout the story, not a solid monochrome stripe that runs across the entire story-cloth like someone fell asleep at the sewing machine.)

Secondly, the smaller class size facilitates one of the major changes I have in mind for this timeline, which is that when the class confronts Deku post-first-war, they do it not with the intention of dragging him back to U.A., but of joining him in staying outside.  I have a ton of stuff I want them to see and interact with and be forced to acknowledge and reflect on, and that doesn’t happen if they just go back to school and wait for their next assignment.  Navigating all of that as a group trying to feel their way to a better future against the efforts of both jaded authority figures and Villains who’ve been burned one too many times to trust so easily is just simpler with a smaller, more focused, more strongly characterized group.

So, the Splintered Wills timeline, in summary, goes all-in on OFA being a repository of different people who are allowed to have different opinions and reactions to things, paralleling the dissolving of Team Hero’s united front; Deku & Friends have to struggle and clash, learn when to compromise and when to stand their ground, in order to build their way back up to unity, while Shigaraki is allowed the chance to continue coalition-building and consolidating resources under his own banner mentally in the same way he spent the entire series doing physically.  As Team Hero’s collective grasp on society collapses, Shigaraki’s grows stronger, reversing their positions such that Deku and company have to come back from the actual underdog position they fall into compared to BNHA, where they never 100% fall from the seat of power the way readers are encouraged to believe.

The Forward Different timeline is also called, for now, Creepy OFA.  It goes in the opposite direction by making Deku deal with the same kinds of problems Canon!Shigaraki has to deal with vis a vis being possessed of/by a quirk with a single domineering will of its own.  While Splintered Wills portrays OFA and AFO alike as being full of people, each with their own unique motivations and desires, this story underlines and reunderlines that quirk vestiges are ultimately biological impulses, not people.

OFA is an originally simple force that’s been compounded in complexity and appearance of rationality every time it’s been passed down, but is still ultimately just a quirk, mindless, unreasoning, imprinting its bearer with its own dictates and not caring a bit if the bearer likes or agrees with those dictates.  “OFA must be passed on,” “AFO must be destroyed,” “The bearer must be the Symbol of Peace,” and so on.

Making Deku and Shigaraki have to struggle against this loss of autonomy due to an out-of-control quirk vestige puts them on a similar level of challenge, the better to give them some common ground for understanding.  Whether they have to fight or help each other in the end, they’ll do it as free agents, people who have both had to figure out a way to throw off the weight of the lineages trying to mold them into  a desired shape. The help of their respective friends and allies—and maybe even some of their enemies?—will, of course, be immeasurable with this.

Some ideas I want to incorporate (or have already so started) into one or the other of these timelines include:

I want the PLF to do better no matter what timeline we’re in.  Currently my idea is that in one timeline, they had a well-placed mole somewhere whom Hawks and the HPSC didn’t sniff out, so the PLF knows the raids are coming and have laid traps for the attacking Heroes.  This could still go haywire, of course, ‘cause Heroes are very good at what they do, but it definitely won’t be a total blowout as it was in canon.  Then in the other timeline, the PLF don’t see the attack coming, but are given more license to act like the organized, effective threat they were initially portrayed as—they have sentries and security cameras posted, so while they only get a minute or two’s warning, it’s still better than absolutely nothing, and the outcome is way more chaotic and fraught for both sides, such that the country ends up dotted with PLF holdouts in situations that are part-siege and part-extended hostage negotiation. That gives an opportunity to show at least a partial version of what a PLF takeover might look like in practice, though it remains compromised by the ongoing conflict.    

As part of treating the PLF better, both timelines will have characters revealed to have MLA ties.  As mentioned, MLA!Iida is for sure in one of them; my strongest concept for a second choice is Ochaco having to grapple with the government’s heavy-handedness getting her parents arrested when they barely know anything about what they got themselves into,[5] but really, it could be practically anyone, including parents or mentors.  All I require is that the kids have a reason, any reason, to care about the fates of the tens of thousands of people the government sent them out to mindlessly arrest. 5: This would be a scenario in which I just went with the makes-more-sense-as-canon-anyway idea that being a Hero is the only way to get a quirk-use license so Ochaco is pursuing Heroism because she can’t get permission to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.  She doesn’t wind up MLA herself, but her parents—trying to be supportive but not thrilled that their daughter decided to pursue such a dangerous career for that reason—get handed some dodgy pamphlets, after Uraraka moves out to attend U.A., about a group trying to get the laws changed to be more in-step with the universality of quirks and the principles of bodily autonomy and economic self-determination.    

I think the time between the first war and the last confrontation should be longer, introducing more new characters and developing many characters BNHA showed only in passing.  I have ideas like new heroic types (students or pros) who are brought in from other parts of the country because they have useful quirks for the raids, a heteromorph ex-Hero student who bails on his school when he realizes that the people handling its shelter operations are turning away heteromorphs, someone who catches Nagant’s backstory confession on video and has to decide what to do with the bombshell about black ops extralegal Hero assassins, a support/protest group consisting of people who’ve become jaded about Heroes after things they see on the day of the initial attacks (people like Can’t-Ya-See-kun, the medical staff who tried to defend their beloved Doctor Garaki, people who lost family to the mass arrests and so on), people from branches of the government that aren't specifically associated with law enforcement, etc. Seriously, I want a story that acknowledges that there are people who could possibly be relevant and important to events that we haven’t already met circa the first war because something like The Total Collapse of Society will naturally stir up activity all across the country!  Maybe people who the 1-A kids have never met before could bring valuable input to the table!!  Gosh!!!    

Changes to the traitor plotline.  I mentioned Aoyama being outed circa the training camp for one; I’d like to run with Traitor!Hagakure in the other.  I’m thinking she goes missing during the first war and the students are worried sick about her because no one’s sure what even happened.  Did she run away?  Was she hurt?  Was she killed?  Would anyone even know, if she stayed invisible even as—as a—as a dead body, Bakugou is the only one willing to actually say out loud.  She is, of course, not dead, but the class won’t find that out for a while.    

Changes to how Hawks and Endeavor’s partnership plays out.  I want Endeavor to die during the first war in one story, allowing the rest of the family space to navigate that plot without him even as it pushes Hawks off the deep end, leading to him going rogue such that he gets what was in canon the Lady Nagant fight.[6]  In the other story, Endeavor survives but tries to make better decisions about how to handle Touya, leading his and Hawks’ stellar partnership into rough waters when it comes out that Hawks very much just wants Touya dead. 6: And freeing Lady N to show up elsewhere in some totally different capacity.  There may be ample evidence that her fight was originally intended to be for Hawks, and in that version of the story she probably never existed at all, but I love her potential far too much to erase her completely, even in a timeline that reverts her plot back to Hawks.    

Gran Torino living and having a change of heart about saving Shigaraki in Splintered Wills, but dying and becoming a loss Deku has to weigh against his desire to save Shigaraki in Creepy OFA.  More named and important losses in general, actually, and more time for the characters to react to those losses, be it with grief or with mounting rage.  Students who lose teachers and mentors, Heroes who lose peers and sidekicks, Shishikura losing his father, the League losing Twice, civilians who are allowed to be justly angry about their losses without being drawn like unreasonable screeching harpies for it, and so on.    

The Lady Nagant fight cuing up the way it did in canon only to abruptly end when Deku just straight-up agrees to go with her willingly because finding AFO and Shigaraki is what he wants, so why would he turn his nose up at the opportunity?  This leads to him getting a lot of exposure to Alternate Perspectives via Lady N’s history, Overhaul’s shattered state, and whatever’s going on with the League in this scenario before he eventually escapes or gets rescued with neither him nor AFO/Shigaraki able to make concrete progress on saving Shigaraki/stealing OFA.    

Playing more with All Might’s mental connection to OFA.  In Splintered Wills, Shigaraki gets his vestige, which means he loses the connection to Deku/OFA completely and instead starts having horrible nightmares of rage and death and Decay.  I’m still making up my mind about how things go in Creepy OFA, but I like the idea of All Might having his own mind back after 30+ years of being under OFA’s influence, and having a front row seat for what that influence is starting to do to the teenager he so unthinkingly gave that power to (or, more accurately, gave to that power?).    

Ditching the stupid mech suit in one timeline and letting Toshinori Yagi find ways to be relevant and meaningful without it; alternately, letting him keep the mech suit only to run it square into the rogue AI teeth of the lone free-willed survivor of the U.A. robot uprising, the R2D2-looking PLF advisor in Toga’s chain of command.    

Consequences for Deku’s fucking arms. He developed a kick-based fighting style; he can damn well use it. Also handle his problem with losing his temper by making him fuck up something that can’t get unfucked by having an ally nearby to save him from the consequences of flying off the handle.    

More, and different, interactions between Stain and All Might.  More extended ones, for a start; I want Stain to rescue a heavily injured All Might from the car attack and for them to then spend days together while Toshinori recuperates enough to be moved.    

Better material for Kurogiri and Gigantomachia.  And plenty of other Villains too, really, not just the PLF.  I’d like the Tartarus escapees to be human beings suffering a variety of ills from their extended solitary confinement; I’d like the Shie Hassaikai to make another appearance; I’d like Mustard to be relevant again. Et cetera.    

Let stuff like the quirk erase bullets and quirk singularity have more significant airtime.    

Spinarakiya.  AHEM. My willingness to be self-indulgent about ships I know good and well would never be canon has yet to be determined.

And that's some ideas! I have lots of others, but I don't want to completely turn this ask reply into a dumping ground for the many (many) ideas I have for that dyad of stories. If you read all of these, know that I appreciate you deeply. And thanks for the ask, @friedeggpajamas!

[jesterkoops]

Sharing vessels et al.

Fresh musings dump about the latest...

I don't know that I completely trust Rehgabi. Not in the sense that she's deliberately plotting anything, but in the sense that I get the feeling she's strongly driven by ideology and the conviction that what she's doing is right. But like in many stories where people who rebel against a tyrannical system can become blinded by their own beliefs, I feel like she's promising things she can't really promise just to convince Mark to go along with it. "Your Gemma is still in there". How do you know?. "It will be you and her, together again". Way to spoil to the audience that it's never going to happen. While I think good things can come from the reintegration, I think a lot of shit is going to come too.

Mark and Helly are relationship goals. The way they dealt with this whole sex/autonomy/consent thing? BRAVO! What I love about their story is that, first and foremost, the writers aren't interested in messing with the audience and dragging drama out for cheap romance points. I was legit scared that they might go down the route of the pregnancy plot being the way Helly finds out Mark had sex with Helena, which would have been horrendous on so many levels (not just for the characters in-story but for the whole "women bodies in fiction" argument too). So I was so pleasantly surprised and relieved when they had him confess what happened relatively quickly.

Second of all, things are going to get so fucked up now that Mark is (more? completely?) reintegrated, so the the fact that they chose to write them have sex while it is still mostly i!Mark, so that it can be a "pure" experience that is theirs and theirs alone makes me feel like these writers really care about the characters and the story and aren't just using them as tools to manipulate the audience and make us to bond and care about them just so they can do horrible things to them, and destroy them, just to make us suffer (looking at you, GoT).

I can already foresee so much pain in their future though, now that i!Mark is going to be completely hijacked by o!Mark, with potentially life threatening consequences. Who knows how their story will end, considering Helly is also sort of on "life support", as her existence is dependent on the technology that can keep her and Helena severed. But I think/hope, if I'm right in what I said above, that the pain that's coming will be "good pain", the kind that makes good writing and not torture porn. It will be pain that makes sense for the story, and no matter how it ends for them, these moments won't be cheapened or tainted.

Helly being obsessed with the fact that this is HER body, asking Mark if it was different having with her, and the way she insists on dissociating herself from Helena, to find nefarious intentions into everything Helena does, is so understandably desperate. But, eventually, I feel like she will have this view challenged somehow, even just for the fact that it makes for better writing than just confirming all her beliefs.

I thought the makeshift tent scene had a lot of similarities with the actual tent scene. Yes, it was more giddy and awkward and teenage-like, but the framing, the kissing on their knees, the looking in the eyes, and, not to sound like a pervert, the way the... act was filmed... very similar. Similar enough yet different. I don't get people who see these as drastically different scenes portraying drastically different dynamics. When Helly asks Mark if it was different with her, he doesn't answer. Brings me back to Britt's analogy about the studio vs live version of a song. This is exactly what those two scenes are like to me.

And finally... HELENA MY DARLING. They are doing such a wonderful job with Helena because she's just as much of a mystery to me as what the fuck is up with Gemma. They are holding their cards sooooo close to their chest I literally am throwing my hands up and admit that after this episode I have no idea what she's playing at. I think she was fishing to find out if and what o!Mark knows about "Gemma," and that's why she was asking about his OTC experience and bringing her up (and what would she do about it, if she knew what he knows?). But maybe she's also noticing the glitching (from when they were together and then on camera?), and she suspects something is up with his chip?

There's also the human element of having experienced love and a connection with his innie, as well, for sure. Again, there were parallels between innies and outies in this scene too. Their flirty banter over him meeting her father was so similar to the flirty banter over the car wash coupons. And OMG that "you'd be the first" line. That's one of those statements like "I didn't like who I was on the outside", where I think some truth slips inside the lie. Yes, it was banter, but I also think that, while I don't subscribe to the "Helena was a virgin before Mark" theory (I mean, I can't rule it out but I mostly highly doubt it), her never having a chance at a relationship in her entire life? That I can buy 100%.

I expect a ton of drama and angst next episode with what's happening to Mark's brain. First of all, how is he even going to go into work? Is he even going to wake up by next episode or slip into some kind of coma? And how much will Helly freak out if he doesn't come into work the day after they have become officially an item? Then again, there's that scene with them holding hands and Mark having what looks like a bloody sleeve, so maybe he will be fine and come into work but the glitching and bleeding will get worse?

I also have more thoughts about the Gemma stuff more broadly, but that's for another post.

[elainsgirl]

I’ve seen some people say they don’t mind elriel not being mates because their story will be beautiful regardless, and that it might be better if they aren’t mates because that makes their love more special. While I’m not against that sentiment, I just feel like SJM has written too many hints that they are in fact mates. Some nessians get angry if you say elucien is a corrupt mated bond due to the corrupted couldron. To them you’re implying nessian is also a corrupt bond. But that is not true. Because that would mean the couldron actively gave Nesta a mate. Why would it? It hates her. And if it did, Cassian likely would’ve immediately realized Nesta is his mate like Lucien did with Elain. But he realized later, like Rhys did with Feyre. It’s the timing that gives it away in my opinion. Thus, nessian is a bond from the mother, just like feysand, and elucien from the couldron. Now we have Azriel who is showing clear signs of being Elain’s mate (sensing she is a seer like Madja said a mate would, whereas Lucien couldn’t figure out what was going on with her, and so many other things but I don’t want to type all that lol). SJM loves writing parallels with her main acotar couples because she’s using the Koschei story as her inspiration. Feysand and nessian’s stories have many, but elriel has as well. I believe Elain and Azriel definitely have a mating bond given by the mother. This way, SJM can still write the rejected bond story with elucien like she has been wanting to, while still having elriel ending up being mates, perfectly completing the pattern she started and the prophecy with the sisters and the bat boys. How do eluciens and gwynriels not see this? The answer as you know is that they are in complete denial.

One thing I never understood is when antis complain that if one bond is corrupted that means all bonds are wrong, not just eluciens. And the reason that doesn’t make sense - its stated by Sjm herself that not all bonds are right or perfect, its a mismatch system. You can get a good bond or an illsuited bond. Feysand and Nessians’ bonds are clearly matched and perfect meanwhile the ONLY bond to be questioned is Eluciens. That is a choice done on purpose by Mass.

Look, the minute Mass wrote “why not make them mates?” Between elriel, everyonr should havs clocked on and questioned this. Bcs there was no reason to write that line if elucien is endgame. Absolutely none. From acowar Mass has the readers question why elucien? Why not elriel when it’s clear they’re more suited for each other? Then in the bonus as a set up for elriels upcoming journey she once AGAIN makes you question why elriel aren’t mates. The literal fact she wrote the “how does it make sense that two of my brothers are mated to two sisters yet the third given to another” line - eluciens should’ve packed it up bcs Sjm atp is blatantly telling you where the story is going.

Rhys knew Feyre was his mate long before, she had her transformation and the bond snapped BUT Feysand fell in love first THEN accepted the bond. Their love was established before they became “official” mates- Nessian follows the same path. It shows us readers that these characters aren’t accepting each other bcs of the bond but they fell in love and chose each other long before. The bond is a cherry on top, take it away and Nessian/Feysand would still be in love.

Elucien breaks away from this pattern. Lucien blurts out they’re in mates and what I find extremely interesting- in his monologue during acowar, he does not once state feeling drawn to Elain or how he looked at her and knew she was his mate who he had to save at all costs. Sjm never reinforces that idea within acowar - the same book where she introduces the idea of elriel being mates. Interesting right? Anyways, elucien break from this pattern that Mass has used so far. Their story would be forced proximity and then Elain coming to accept Lucien as her mate and realise the cauldron was right for her…which doesn’t sound romantic does it? Also what author questions if the cauldron was wrong between a couple…only for it to be right in the end? I definitely agree there is 2 bonds at play. A fated/mother bond and a cauldron bond, Azriel is elains second mate hence why he is affected & can smell the elucien bond. Also worth noting, Elriel have mother imagery whilst Elucien have cauldron imagery.

Elain and Az fall in love, choose each other, establish their love and then BOOM! Mass creates their “we’ve been mates all along!” Storyline that she is so fond of and used for Nessian/Feysand. It allows her to maintain the pattern whilst exploring the concept of bonds.

[deadtoes666]

As much as I love Van... I don't think she should have been a big part of the adult timeline (if she were to even be in it AT ALL) for these reasons. I'm a Taivan lover, but disregarding Tai's family and so much of her story was not the right way to go. And don't get me wrong, I love the fact Tai is messy and a cheater! I think it could've been really interesting if only it was handled a bit better. I like to see women do bad things (just like men!) and I enjoy exploring how other characters respond to such things!!! The writers dropped so much of Tai's story in season 2 for no reason. Sammy and Simone should continue to be a part of Tai's life while she sneaks around and cheats and lies!!! And drops her government standing after ALL the suffering it caused. It would be more realistic and interesting

real talk but i just don't get why the show introduced simone and sammy and have adult tai's storylines revolve around them if their only purpose is to be there for only for the first season and in the next one have simone being fridged and Sammy also disappearing from the narrative. I find it so disrespectful because what they did to Simone is not only fridging but also it's weird how when white woman Van comes around suddenly the black woman that Tai had a relationship with needs to completely disappear from the narrative. Why introduce important characters for Taissa only to disregard them completely when she meets up again with Van? What was the purpose of making Taissa having a family only for her to forget both of them in the start of s2??? For tha sake of Taivan? Literally what.

[seph-ic]

Georgie baker means so much to me like she literally just decided to have no fear and be completely immune to like the entire tmaverse.

“Fear gods rule us and feed on our greatest fears.”

“Good for them can I just film my fucking podcast and be bisexual in peace?”

A legend among men she is truly a hero to us all.

[arnaerr]

Rellana, Twin Moon Knight & Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon

prints ✦ full process on patreon

[ohrackham]

what was the point of lila thinking home was a feeling she didn't deserve and could never earn until she found diego. what was the point of them finding deep, meaningful love in each other. what was the point of lila opening her heart and confessing that all she really wanted was a family with him.

what was the point of developing diego and lila over two seasons, creating such a beautiful, chaotic bond, just to destroy it for no reason.