#means she’s adapting + conforming) and in turn took away basically all of the focus from her pokémon.

[wild-battlebond]

i feel like out of all three (? I think it’s just three because there’s dress-up, baking is repeated, and then quiz) different types of first-round activities for showcases, the quiz show one has to be the absolute least interesting

[currentfandomkick]

Marinette did not sign up for this part 4

hey, so OG chapter 4 will now be chapter 5 as the gremlins hijacked this chapter.

part one here   previous part here   ao3 here

--

            Damian stared in quiet horror as he looked over Ladybug’s exploits after hacking into Paris’ servers. His sister—the one he took down with little effort—had been defending the city for a month before he appeared. From the video of “Stoneheart” he could tell she was given no training. And her partner was flirting with her! When he should be focusing on the mission!

             What gathered from further research was the following: his sister and her ‘partner’ were untrained. Their teammates were also untrained. A team of ten untrained teenagers—perhaps younger—were tasked with keeping a villainous coward from stealing their magic artifacts, and with stealing his in turn. A team lead by his sister. A very alone, scared girl from his one interaction with her. Smart (he saw now she knew how to save her own skin. Redirecting his attention was a good move at the time). She is smart and creative because if she isn’t, then her city and her will lose. Be under the control of some madman.

             He had to get there, and he doubted he could convince Jon to help him at the moment—why are kyptonians always fighting one another when you need the assistance of one?

             Father would stop him.

             The League was keeping Father in Gotham and he didn’t have individual access yet…

             He was stuck for the moment, and did not like it. Perhaps Grayson could prove useful? He’d ask once the man was done resting from patrol.

---------

             Cass was enjoying Paris. She spotted the possible sister at the bakery with her adoptive mother. They were happy. Cass likes that.

             Cass moved quickly through the crowd, managing to make it to the bakery.

             Marinette ran into her.

             “Ah! Sorry!” the girl managed to catch her things before they hit the ground.

             Cass waved her hands, indicating there was no harm or foul. The girl was no clumsy—Shifu Cheng was ill-informed. Those reflexes and her expression before indicated nothing but an intense focus on something else. On what, Cass wasn’t sure.

             Yet.

             For now, Cass took a seat in the bakery, smiling at the kind woman working the front. Sabine Cheng, the woman who raised the maybe-Bat.

             Cass began doing her own research, messaging Babs that she saw Soup Girl for a moment, and would be assessing her parents. She knew of cases in Gotham where things weren’t always right, and she wanted to be certain that this girl was safe, regardless of if she’s a Bat or not.

--------

             Tim decided to ignore Babs offer in the end. The possibility of owing Jason was low given both him and Cass are on the Case. Jason is good, don’t get him wrong, but the chances of Jason actually talking to the girl in a real conversation before the rest of them? As Red Hood?

             This is a calculated risk and the odd are in Tim’s favor. (Well, not in Jason's.)

--------

             Steph hummed as she went over the designer pool she was looking over. Shockingly low given its Paris—granted 200 girls is a lot to investigate… she didn’t give the others all the information she had though.

             According to Damian, she “posts a disgusting amount” which means she’s posting or tagged often. When she used some of Babs old filtering program with social media involved, it brought the candidates down to 30. She could go through thirty teenage designers social media and comb over who at least has some genes that are dominant from the Wayne side. Her natural hair had to be medium brunette at the lightest, so the natural blondes took out seven candidates right off the bat. While blue or green eyes would give them more priority on the list, eye color genes are weird. Weirdly, five of her candidates had attached earlobes, so she only had 18 left after that filter was put on… Bruce’s hair isn’t curly, so two girls with intensely curly natural hair were taken off the list. Bruce’s thin lips only knocked out two more candidates.

             That left Stephanie Brown with 14 designers in Paris to find and investigate in the right age range, because she doesn’t think Bruce started having sex at 15, unlike Tim who is allowing college kids into his ‘could be Bruce’s daughter’ mix.

             Stephanie is also going to need a plane ticket to meet these girls, and that means getting help from one of Wayne kids… Or stowing away on the private jet that she knows Tim can and will be using sometime today to do ground work himself.

             She’s cool stowing away—Babs is covering for her on principle since Tim wouldn’t take the deal. Steph was smart enough to relinquish one piece of blackmail in total in exchange for use of Babs filtering tech—she has more than that thanks to one Supergirl spilling a number of things Babs has done over the years. Has Stephanie mentioned she’s the only one of the Bats to listen to Oracle, Queen of Technology, in this bet? She is, and she is better for it.

-----------

             Marinette managed to make it to the Agrests Mansion with little issue this time. Today she was going to one of the production lines with Gabriel to learn how to reset the machines and program them to follow any simple stitch pattern she wanted. It was good.

             She also noticed that during none of her times with Gabriel, was there a single akuma sighting. Not an attack—those never happened anywhere near their time together. It was an… interesting pattern. She was beginning to suspect that if Hawkmoth wasn’t Gabriel (he was akumatized, it can’t be him. Get that theory out of your head Marinette), then it had to be someone who worked for him, and high on the food chain.

             She made sure to memorize each of his ‘supervising managers’ and partners’ names. One of them had to be Hawkmoth. And Gabriel had to be someone that this Hawkmoth either really respected or really didn’t want handle re-scheduling with. Which would be all of them…

             She really wished she had more time to dig into their lives herself. For now, she had to trust Max and Markov to do the research… which reminded her, her name had been pinged on multiple searches in Gotham last night. From numerous devices. If the Bats were planning anything…

             Marinette gripped her purse a bit tighter. Her team has her back. She just doesn’t want them caught up in this mess too. She wishes that Aquaman never showed up. If he hadn’t, then the Bats wouldn’t be looking into her civilian life, the one they already knew about but only now deemed worthy of their attention.

             She wished they would just stop—she won’t look into the Great Detectives. She knows she’s not one of them. That she wouldn’t hack it in Gotham. But Damnit, in Paris? Her Territory—she does more than hack it. Sure, she may have blown herself up that one time, and yes, there is the timeline where as Princess Justice she may have sort of broke the world by forcing it to conform to that akumatized version of hers’ idea of Absolute Justice (apparently she was ruthless, made no exceptions and took out a third of the Justice League using Multimouse at the time on top of it all). Yes, she is not a perfect leader. Or hero. But Damnit, her (admittedly two) supervillians have been almost caught twice. Her re-akumatazation rate is much lower than any of the Justice League’s heroes’ normal villain or general crime recidivism rate by more than a little. By a lot. She’s not some Detective but she’s a damn good strategist, a champion at improvising and she and her team do work with the public and victims and reworked so much of Paris’ social culture to lower akuma-creating circumstances and keep the public emotionally healthy.

             She’s no detective.

             She’s a Guardian. That means caring about the details that shift the bigger pieces. That means adaption with what is there and creating what she needs. That means knowing her limits and getting help—to set an example and prove that not even her or Chat are an island. That even superheroes need help, need others and need to work together.

            She’s no detective. Detectives work alone.

            Her? She’s forged a team that (she hopes) could become the new Order of Gaurdians with her… some day. For now, they’re heroes with the same mission and different roles to play.

            Marinette just wishes that she could shut up this hunch since its been disproven. Her instincts on guilt and possible baddies aren’t the best—Adrien’s job is to sense what’s wrong and take them out. Hers is to make whatever is needed to help fix things, to push someone forward and help them grow. Her job to craft a better tomorrow today… and to do that, she lost the parts of her that picked up Danger. She can still find Caution signs (and her anxiety will always invent danger) but real Danger detection went to Adrien when she agreed to become Ladybug in the first place… And until both her and Adrien renounce their roles as the pair wielding the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculouses, she’ll always be missing it.

            The same way Adrien is missing his ability to think outside the box—seeing things as what they could become to help them went to her. He can only see potential threat and act on them. She can only see potential aide and act on that.

---------

            Jason grinned when he managed to make it into Paris. The second there was some damn akuma attack, he was grabbing the baby Bat and hunting Hawkmoth his way—she need the jewelry? Fine. She can have it. The guy brainwashing kids? The one that slaughtered the city? He’s Jason’s. ---------

            Bruce didn’t like being benched. He doesn’t like not knowing he had another child. He especially doesn’t like that this one is constantly preventing an apocalypse and his allies can’t be bothered to even send him anything about it. Not even a basic ‘she’s not living on the streets’ like Jason did. Or ‘she’s got parents here, calm down’ so he could get this stupid instinct to storm Paris and take on the bastard threatening his family that he didn’t know he had.

            Apparently Barbra has a hunch, but isn’t sharing until she has “conclusive evidence” of his daughter’s identity. Damian just isn’t speaking of it. As if being someone’s father biologically gives him a built-in alarm system for when he’s had a child and the ability to track them down at birth. Damian being raised in the League of Assassins should be enough proof to the contrary there.

            The others were… he wasn’t absolutely certain, but fairly certain his self-proclaimed ‘middle kid club’ were tracking his missing daughter down themselves. Possibly to claim her as part of their group, specifically.

            God, she was so young, It was before he even heard of the League that she was born. In that lifetime before becoming Batman. Would she like him? He was absent her whole life—did she want to meet him, meet the family? They’re a mess, he knows it. But they’re his—he chose them and they chose him. Would she chose him too?

            He watched another video of Ladybug in her early days, before she and her partner (dear god he’s cat-themed. Is it genetic? Should he test her and himself for some ‘drawn to dresses-as-a-cat’ gene?) were given any kind of training.

            She blew herself up to stop her city from being taken over by ‘Animan’ and his creatures.

            His daughter.

            Exploded.

            (She died. She died and he didn’t know. God he’s a horrible parent, and he hasn’t even parented her yet.)

            She died.

            To keep her city safe.

            She somehow reconstituted. But her face, in that video, she was shocked.

            His daughter should be dead but she’s not.

            Magic, he’s so glad his daughter uses magic.

            He. He’s going to need to consult someone. Raven? Raven should work. He can’t talk to the Justice League—nothing wrong with talking to the half-demon all of his Robins that lead the Titans has worked with.

            Loopholes.

            The Justice League is horrible at closing them.

---------

            Dick wanted to be mad when Damian came clean to him about the needles. He wanted to freak out over almost losing a sister he hasn’t met.

            He did.

            But.

            But this is Damian.

            Damian who still has trouble connecting. Who still flinches at certain tones of voice and phrasing. Damian who desperately wants to do Good but… struggles.

             Damian who has all of Bruce’s communication problems and then some.

             So no, Dick did not scream when he found out Damian only sparred “the blood daughter” because she looked too frail and weak for her to be considered anything resembling a threat to him. He did not sigh when he found out that Bruce didn’t know when Damian assumed he did. He did not hit himself when Damian discussed the various weapons he’d gifted her as a apology with the bouquets over the years and their meanings.

             He did take a deep breath, and begin explaining from this baby bat’s stance what had happened.

             “Imagine for a moment that it was me before I became Robin, and I was almost killed by someone who only let me live if I never contacted a shared parent or that parent’s known family. How do you think Pre-Robin me would have responded?”

             “You would have feared for your life and done whatever you could to prevent contact.”

             “Now, imagine I wasn’t told who to be avoiding, only aliases.”

             “You would avoid everyone with an alias that you did not help them create, and keep them from unknown aliases.”

             Dick snapped his fingers. “Exactly. That’s what this sister, what are we calling her?”

             “Her alias is Ladybug.”

             “Yes, that is what Ladybug was going through before Aquaman made contact.”

             Damian was quiet for a moment. “She must be on edge.”

             Dick nodded at that. “She probably is.”

             Damian furrowed his brow. “Do you think the League would allow me to contact her and end our agreement?”

             Dick rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure, but we can try.”

             “… And if they refuse?”

             “Then we find another way. We’re Bats,” Dick reassured Damian. He just hoped the missing members weren’t doing anything too rash…    

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

             Marinette made a (painful) decision. Adrien and her would swap miraculouses—at least until there were less pings on her sites from Gotham. For added protection, she kept the Mouse miraculous on. Chatte Noire was less known, and she doubted Wonder Woman or Aquaman informed Batman about the miraculous of Creation and Destruction’s particular… refusal to let anyone but a pair chosen together to wield them at any point.

             Chatte Noire would only be on call for a day or so… what’s the worst that can happen?

--------

the characters are jinxing themselves, and procrastinating the (vague) plot of Shenanigans. i swear. 

if anyone can message me on how to add in a read more, that’d be great since i know these can get long to scroll past for mobile users.

@heldtogetherbysafetypins @laurcad123 @raisuke06 @chaosace @jeminiikrystal @toodaloo-kangaroo @kris-pines04 @laurcad123

[aion-rsa]

11 Diverse Vampire Stories To Read Instead of Midnight Sun

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

There’s a very good chance we’re going to read Midnight Sun, the companion novel to pop culture juggernaut Twilight that retells the first story in the Stephanie Meyer YA vampire series from Edward Cullen’s perspective. But we can enjoy something while also being critical of it, and the truth is: our culture deserves more, better vampire stories than what the Twilight saga has to offer. With that in mind, we’ve pooled our collective knowledge to recommend the following vampire stories that have more diverse and imaginative takes on the popular genre. From short stories to book series, hopefully there’s something here for you…

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

A good general rule of life to follow is that if Octavia Butler has written something in a particular genre, you should read it. And that’s as true in the world of vampire fiction as anywhere else. Fledging was the final book Butler published before her untimely death in 2006 and, though it’s technically a vampire story, it’s also a whole lot more than that.

Much in the same way that Butler’s Kindred is a time travel story that tackles physical and psychological horrors of slavery, Fledging is a vampire tale that explores issues of racism and sexuality. In it, a 10-year-old girl with amnesia discovers that she’s not actually a girl at all, but a fifty-something hybrid member of the Ina. Ina are basically what we understand as vampires in this universe – they’re a nocturnal, long-lived species who survive by drinking human blood. They’ve formed something of a symbiotic relationship with the humans they live alongside, using them as a food source in exchange for boosting their immune systems and helping them live (much) longer.

As Shori regains her memories of her former life, Fledging uses her unique situation as an avenue to explore timely issues of bigotry and identity. As a human-Ina hybrid, Shuri has been genetically modified to have dark skin, allowing her to go outside for brief periods during the day, but drawing the ire and distrust of others. As the novel further explores complex issues of family and connection – both the Ina and their human symbionts tend to mate in packs – Butler pokes at Shori’s uniquely uncomfortable position of being the master over one particular group, even as she herself is considered part of something like an underclass within Ina culture. And the end result is something that’s much more than a vampire tale, even as it embraces—and outright parodies—some of its most obvious tropes. 

– Lacy Baugher

Buy Fledgling by Octavia Butler on Amazon

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Twilight’s sin was not in trying to make vampires sexy all over again (it’s OK to make bloodsuckers cool), but rather in amplifying the teenage girl protagonist’s desire while blunting her agency. In doing so, Meyer maintained the dynamic of traditional vampire narratives instead of modernizing it. Five years after Breaking Dawn was released, Holly Black redeemed the YA vampire novel with her standalone tale, set in a world where it’s not just one hormonal teenager who’s dying to be a vampire, but all of society craving that sweet sweet immortality.

In Black’s world, everyone wants to be Cold: infected by a vampire bite but neither killed nor made into a fully-fledged vampire. Not until they drink human blood, at least. But in an effort to control the rising population of vampires and Cold people, the governments created Coldtowns, trapping both in a never-ending party town. The titular Coldest girl is Tana, who wakes up after a (very human, very teenage) rager to find almost everyone slaughtered and herself bitten. Fearing that she has become Cold, she voluntarily turns herself in to the nearest Coldtown along with her also-bitten ex-boyfriend Aidan and Gavriel, a vampire who seeks to take down the uber-vampire who rules the Coldtown.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a sly riff on the vampire obsession that took over pop culture in the early 2000s, yet still its own cautionary tale about chasing after a glamorous, self-destructive afterlife. The cast of characters are fully fleshed-out, from a twin with a fangirl blog to Gavriel as an actually suitable vampire love interest to Tana Bach herself, who gets to be proactive where Bella Swan was always reactive. Best of all, it knows that it doesn’t need to lure readers back to a franchise, like vampires returning again and again to feed, instead telling its entire story in one bloody, chilly gulp.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy The Coldest Girl in Coldtown on Amazon

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, edited by Carmen Maria Machado

A quarter-century before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a different vampire seduced young women away from the suffocating constraints of their lives by awakening within their blood a thrilling, oft-considered perverse, desire. That it is a female vampire—the eponymous Carmilla, known also by her aliases Mircalla and Millarca—likely explains why LeFanu’s text is either incredibly well-known among niche circles, or entirely absent from pop cultural canons. Yet the moment you read it, its depiction of the heady attraction between innocent Laura and possessive Carmilla is anything but subtext.

Like Dracula, this Gothic horror novella is presented as a found text, with a frame narrative of occult detective Dr. Hesselius presenting Laura’s bizarre case… but also to some extent controlling her voice. In her new introduction, Machado posits a startling new contextualization: that Hesselius and Laura’s correspondence is not a fictional device, but a fictionalization of real-life letters between a Doctor Peter Fontenot and Veronika Hausle, about the latter’s charged relationship with the alluring Marcia Marén. That their relationship provided the basis for Laura and Carmilla, but that only the tragic parts were transmuted through the vampire metaphor, excising the queer joy of their partnership, further illustrates how these stories fail their subjects. Yet neither is Marén wholly innocent; as with In the Dream House, Machado does not flinch away from imperfect or even violent queer relationships, such as they resemble any other dynamic between two people.

It’s best to read Machado’s Russian nesting doll narrative without knowing much about her motivations. Though it might be useful to consider how she ends the introduction with something of a confession: “The act of interacting with text—that is to say, of reading—is that of inserting one’s self into what is static and unchanging so that it might pump with fresh blood.” Or try running some of these names through anagram filters.

And if that whets your appetite for other adaptations, the 2014 Carmilla web series both wrestles the frame story back into Laura’s hands, in the form of a video-diary journalism project, and makes the Laura/Carmilla romance very much text.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Carmilla on Amazon

A Phoenix Must First Burn, edited by Patrice Caldwell

A Phoenix Must First Burn is a collection of sixteen short stories about magic, fantasy, and sci-fi that focus on Black women and gender non-conforming individuals. The book features stories about fantasy creatures of all kinds, witches, shape shifters, and vampires alike. What they have in common is that they are stories about and by Black people, and they offer unique takes on familiar lore.

Bella Swan is a great protagonist in the Twilight series because she is whatever the reader needs her to be. Just distinct enough that you can conjure her in your mind, but mostly a blank slate for the reader to step into the story with her, using her as their avatar. That’s a generality specific to White characters. In A Phoenix Must First Burn, the protagonists are Black. This gives them a very particular point of view, and one that isn’t as common in fantasy, and in the vampire tales of yore.

In Stephenie Meyer’s world vampires look like they’re lathered in Fenty body shimmer when they’re in direct sunlight. In “Letting the Right One In,” Patrice Caldwell gives us a vampire who is a Black girl, with dark brown skin, and coiled hair. Sparkling vampires are certainly a unique spin, but the Cullens are still White and don’t challenge any ideas of what it means to be an immortal blood-drinking creature of the night. A Phoenix Must First Burn shifts the lens to focus on the experience of Black folks, and allows them to be magical, enigmatic, and romantic.

– Nicole Hill

Buy A Phoenix First Must Burn on Amazon

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In the Twilight series, we’re introduced to vampires from other cultures, but they are all very much the same, save for their individual power sets which appear to be unrelated to their ethnicity or nationality. In Certain Dark Things, vampires are a species with several different subspecies and where they come from influences how they look and what kind of powers they have.

Atl is from Mexico and is bird-winged descendent of Blood-drinking Aztecs. The Necros, European vampires, have an entirely different look and set of abilities. Certain Dark Things doesn’t just include vampires from all around the world, it incorporates vampire mythology from all of those places, filling its world with a rich array of distinct vampires with their specific quirks and gifts.

In his four-star review of the book on Goodreads, author Rick Riordan had this to say. “Throwing vampire myths from so many cultures together was right down my alley. If you like vampire books but would appreciate some . . . er, fresh blood . . . this is a fast-paced read that breathes fresh life into the genre.” Riordan, who opened up his literary world to new storytellers and has championed authors of color is certainly a person whose opinion holds weight. Vampires haven’t gone out of style, but the Draculas and Edward Cullens are.

– Nicole Hill

Buy Certain Dark Things on Amazon

Vampires Never Get Old, edited by Zoriada Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

This anthology featuring vampires who lurk on social media just as much as they lurk in the night will hit the bookstore shelves on September 22, just in time to start prepping for Halloween. Edited by Zoriada Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, the collection features eleven new stories and a really fantastic author list, populated with a diverse group of authors from a ton of backgrounds and sexualities. The contributors include V. E. Schwab, known for her “Darker Shade of Magic” series; Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winner, Rebecca Roanhorse; Internment author Samira Ahmed; Dhionelle Clayton, author of The Belles and Tiny Pretty Things; “The Blood Journals” author Tessa Gratton (who also contributed to the super spooky looking Edgar Allan Poe-inspired His Hideous Heart); Heidi Heilig, author of the “Shadow Players” trilogy; Julie Murphy, whose book Dumplin’ was adapted for the Netflix film of the same name; Lammy Award winner Mark Oshiro, whose forthcoming YA fantasy Each of Us a Desert will hit stands just before this anthology; Thirteen Doorways author Laura Ruby; and essayist and short story writer Kayla Whaley.

There are a lot of YA authors on this list, many of whom crossover to adult, so there’s a good chance readers will find some of their favorite kinds of angsty vampires on these pages, as well as body-conscious vampires, and vamps coming out as well as going out into the night, seeking for their perfect victim—or just looking for love.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Buy Vampires Never Get Old on Amazon

Choice of the Vampire by Jason Stevan Hill

Back in 2010, when I was first getting to know interactive fiction, Jason Stevan Hill wrote Choice of the Vampire for the still-relatively new company, Choice of Games. A sequel came out in 2013, and this year, the third interactive novel, in which you, the reader make the choices, releases. Best played from a mobile device (although you can play in your browser as well), the interactive novels from Choice of Games are always fun (disclosure: I have written a few), and they’re dedicated to featuring inclusive options to let players express their personalities, gender identities, and sexualities within the confines of the game. Choice of the Vampire starts players as young vampires in 1815 New Orleans. In The Fall of Memphis, the story moves to 1873, and rather than facing the concerns of learning to survive their unlife adventures, players get embroiled in the politics of Memphis, where vampires are electing a new Senator, and the Klan is on the rise. 

With the release of St. Louis, Unreal City, the intention is that the two earlier games will be combined into one larger omnibus, so that players can have an uninterrupted play experience of the full story. St. Louis, Unreal City moves the story forward into 1879, in a St. Louis where the first wave of Chinese immigrants and the dismantling of Reconstruction force the city to face its systemic racism. As workers demand greater rights—and rich financiers attempt to keep control of the nation’s wealth—vampires have to continue to hide, lest they be destroyed. But when one of their own lets loose the beast, causing terror in the streets of America, players have to decide how their character will triumph in a changing world. Stevan Hill pours a ton of historical detail into the scenes he creates, making these vampire stories as much historical fiction as they are fantasy or horror. In advance of the release of the newest installment, the first two games have been updated with new material, so if you’ve played them before, they’re worth a replay before you launch into Night Road!

– Alana Joli Abbott

Moonshine by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Like the first two Choice of the Vampire stories, Moonshine, which came out in 2010, embroils its protagonist in the social struggles of its era: the 1920s of New York City. Zephyr Hollis is an activist, devoted to creating equality for both humans and Others, including vampires, despite her upbringing as the daughter of a demon-hunter. She’s immune to vampire bites, which is helpful when she discovers a newly-turned child vampire; if she turns him in, the authorities will kill him, so soft-hearted Zephyr takes the child in and feeds him her own blood. When she’s approached by a jinn, Amir, to use her cover as a charity worker to undermine a vampire mob boss in exchange for his help with the child, he doesn’t explain what he’s after—but Zephyr’s intrigued enough by the idea (and Amir) that she gets involved. If you already finished Johnson’s newest novel, The Trouble with Saints (also set in historical New York, this one during World War II), returning to this earlier novel and its sequel, Wicked City, will be a fast-paced treat.

Buy Moonshine on Amazon

“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone

There are not a ton of stories out there about vampire parenting—and fewer that are more about what it means to be a parent, what it means to give up the person you were before (even it that person was a monster). Max Gladstone’s 2014 short story, published at Tor.com, is absolutely a vampire story in the classic sense: a hunt, a victim, a struggle. But it’s also the tale of a vampire, Vlad, who settles down with a vampire hunter, and the changes that settling down create for both of them. How can a parent be honest with his child when he’s hiding something so core to his identity? Even playing baseball in the park requires Vlad to hide his own strength. And how can he work with the teacher to help his son with struggling grades when that teacher is the ideal prey? The idea of being a vampire blends with the idea of hiding an affair, of planning to do something that shouldn’t be done, and then determining whether or not to do it. The way the story is written, it’s hard to tell where it’s going to go, or how two parents hiding so much about themselves can ever be honest with their child—but when it comes to the end, Gladstone knocks it out of the park.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley

The visual of Cleopatra dying with a poisonous asp clutched to her breast is an iconic, Shakespearean-tinged bit of history that we all learned in our ancient Egypt history units. However, Headley’s debut novel gives the queen a bit more credit, by reimagining that instead of going all Romeo and Juliet after the supposed death of her lover Marc Antony, she strikes a bargain with Sekhmet, goddess of death and destruction who has nonetheless begun fading away due to a dearth of worship. In Shakespearean fashion, things go awry when Sekhmet seizes control of Cleopatra, transforming her into an immortal being and transmuting her revenge into a literal bloodlust.

Unable to die, with her lover still slain and her children in danger, Cleopatra must battle the dark force within her urging her to drain others of their lifeforce and let loose Sekhmet’s seven children (plague, famine, drought, flood, earthquake, violence, and madness) upon the ancient world. What’s more, she also has to contend with the mortal threat of recently-appointed emperor Caesar Augustus and the three sorcerers he has rallied to fight the queen-turned-demigod. Drawing from Egyptian mythology to contextualize various familiar vampire tropes (the aforementioned bloodsucking, aversion to sunlight, and weakness for silver), Queen of Kings reinvigorates the vampire mythos through a historical figure who deserved to exist long beyond her mortal lifetime.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Queen of Kings on Amazon

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry never met a trope he didn’t take the opportunity to parody, but his Discworld take on the vampire mythos is more love bite than going for the jugular. His Magpyrs embody the classic vampires, with all their subgenre trappings, but also are an example of how a supernatural race seeks to evolve beyond its bloody history and try something new. To be clear, these Magpyrs are still in it to drain humans dry, and they’ve developed cunning methods of doing so: a propensity for bright colors over drab blacks, the ability to stay up til noon and survive in direct sunlight, a taste for garlic and wine along with their plasma.

But the clash between the youngest immortals, who seek to overtake the mountain realm of Lancre as their new home, and dutiful servant Igor, who misses “the old wayth” (he’s a traditionalist down to the lisp), reveals a tension familiar to any long-ruling dynasty or established subculture: Change with the times, or adapt but lose what makes you unique? In struggling with this intergenerational dilemma, the Magpyrs find the perfect opponents in Lancre’s coven: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat, and Agnes—four witches who find themselves taking on different roles within the mother/maiden/crone dynamic as life changes force shifts in their identities. Between these relatable personal conflicts and a hall of vampire portraits that pays homage to Ann Rice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carpe Jugulum gently ribs the vampire subgenre rather than put a stake through its heart.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Carpe Jugulum on Amazon

Do you have any vampire story recommendations that challenge the traditional tropes of the genre in interesting and diverse ways? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 11 Diverse Vampire Stories To Read Instead of Midnight Sun appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[weapon13whitefang]

Challenge Ask: One of the theories out there is that Beth is part of the Whisperers. If so, what do you think Beth would have to do to get Daryl to join aswell? #BringBackBeth2019

I’m gonna start off by saying that, with one hundred percent belief on my end, Beth would not try to get Daryl to join the Whisperers unless she had absolutely no idea who he or Carol or Michonne – the only people she’d recognize at this point since Maggie and Rick are MIA – were at all.

The Whisperers in the comic would only kill people that wouldn’t conform to their belief. They shun civilization and humanity and view humans as animals. Basically, the apocalypse was a reset for them to “go back to their roots”, so to speak. Which is funny because on the show, that’s what The Wolves believed. Hell, a Wolf basically says that to Morgan and Gabriel before Carol kills him:

“We’re freeing you. You’re trapped. You need to know, people don’t belong here anymore.”

Which is why a lot of people who’ve read the comics probably thought The Wolves were going to be The Whisperers. They’re very similar after all… But it turns out it was more like a hint / foreshadowing of the Whisperers. At least in terms of dealing with people with views that are “way out there”.

Think about it this way. So far, besides Terminus and The Wolves, the other groups that TF has faced had very understandable reasons behind their actions that one could associate with human survival and mentality. The Governor was a bit mad but his choices stemmed from basic human emotions that were twisted. He lost his family and therefore it twisted him up and he wanted a cure to get his daughter back and he wanted control to run things as he saw they should be. His actions were disgusting and horrible, but he was still marginally human. A monster in his actions. But a human.

Dawn and Grady were an example of The Stanford Prison Experiment. The psychological perceived image of power and control over one’s prisoners. Dawn believed she had control and therefore she underestimated people and what they can and will do for power or to survive. If you’ve never read about the experiment or seen the tapes, fair warning that they’re hard to stomach but also really fascinating. But I can say that some of what we saw at Grady is very similar to the experiment. Especially when you focus on how each person fell into their roll and how quickly things fell apart since the experiment only lasted six days but many people left mid experiment…

Anyway, Grady still had the psychological connection to human actions. What we saw with Dawn and the other officers and the prisoners/Beth was examples of human actions when given no boundaries within boundaries. Meaning the actions of the officers were still “controlled” in the hospital because too much push could have consequences to them even if Dawn was slack on punishment for the sake of a power balance, she still had the illusion of control over things and psychologically that put people in place. Even the ones plotting against her. She was still being a cop just with very twisted views and survival choices… It’s kind of like when you deal with a teacher that thinks they can do whatever they want because they have ten year but, in the end, they still have to keep to certain school rules or risk a full-on student attack. Least in high school anyway.

Then there’s The Saviors. Negan was using charisma and intimation to rally people the way he wanted them. He was basically being an Adolf (I’m not gonna put the N with the Z word in here incase it gets flagged or something since Tumblr is on some cray with their tagging or mention issue) and he used charisma and the illusion of power to make things his way. We get a hint from Gordon (the Savior who tried to get away that Dwight killed) that things before Negan were different. That when Negan came in, everyone and everything changed:

“Thug swoops in with a baseball bat and smiles and we’re so scared we gave up everything – but there’s only one of him and all of us so why are we living like this?”

If you think about it, Negan’s reign was a very basic example of Adolf’s reign over Germany. Adolf came in, worked himself up to power in politics with cunningness, violence, and his overall charm. People liked him (crazy enough) and he was excellent at speaking and surrounded himself with people like himself that weren’t afraid of violence to fulfill their political gain… Who does that sound like? Negan. And Negan used a lot of psychological torture on people (example of letting Dwight fuck with Daryl by taking away his clothes, keeping him awake with cheery music, and feeding him dog food), something Adolf himself had done with his camps… Basically the Saviors could be an example of Germany and their fall to Adolf’s political party… And this is even more true when you think of how Germany had a hard time adapting after Adolf’s fall (I know there’s more history to it than that but I’m not going into politics and history here, just pointing out similarities).

So now look at the Terminus crew and The Wolves. Out of the two, Terminus is more human than the Wolves were. They were once a peaceful group who put up signs to bring people together to survive and have a future… But the wrong kind of people got in and stayed and used the Terminus crew and raped and just enslaved them. This broke Gareth and his brother Alex and their mother Mary. He started seeing his deeds – eating people and hurting them – as things he had to do. Not things he wanted to do. Things he had to do to survive. They needed to eat. Food was scarce, so they took a page from the Walkers. People became the food. You’re either the butcher or the cattle mentality taken to a whole new level… Those that didn’t fall in line – those that questioned the choice to eat others – became the cattle.

Really, Gareth even says it to Bob after Bob wakes up (I cut down some of the speech because it’s not really needed):

“I want to explain myself a little. You see, we didn’t want to hurt you… before. We didn’t want to pull you away from your group or scare you. These aren’t things we want to do. They’re things we gotta do. You and your people took away our home. That’s fair play. Now we’re out here like everybody else trying to survive. And in order to do that, we have to hunt. Didn’t start that way, eating people. It evolved into that. We evolved. We had to. And now we’ve devolved, into hunters… I just hope you understand that nothing happening to you now is personal…. A man’s gotta eat….”

It’s human to evolve… But it’s also an animal thing. Humans and Animals have evolved over the years to adapt to the changing environment and changing world. Gareth had a point when he said they had to evolve… But he was right in that when they evolved, they devolved as well. They went back to cave men. Because in TWD world you can’t be like you were. Like Beth said, you gotta put the past behind you or it kills you. The Terminus people became the Walkers… Humans as Walkers. So, they were the first simple example of The Whisperers in that they turned their back on civilized norm. They ate other humans to live. They weren’t too different from the walkers… Just maintained their human mind of being able to have cognitive thoughts. In the end, that got them killed cause they tried to eat the wrong people.

Then there’s The Wolves. Primitive and cult like, The Wolves used the walkers just like Terminus adapted with the walkers. Now we didn’t see a wolf eat a person (least I don’t recall seeing them try to eat a person) but they did use the walkers and took to overthrowing and raiding other survivor groups to survive. They were scavengers (taking the arc of The Scavengers in the comic, who are the ones who actually attack ASZ after Rick kills Pete). They were like wolves. They scavenged their food, mark their territory, and would grow in numbers with gathering more people to follow their way or gather more walkers to use as a trap, marking them with their W’s as well. Marking them like a farmer marks their cattle. A butcher marking their kills… Which is what a pack of wolves does. They mark their territory and take from it as they see fit.

So again, it’s easy to see why they were viewed as being The Whisperers. But I believe – like a lot of people – that they were just a “beta” version of the Whisperers for the group to face. The Wolves devolved from civilization to taking on animal qualities of a cult-pack mindset and were using the walkers to gain an upper hand against other “packs”, AKA the people they attacked. The Whisperers devolved to become those that use the walkers but walk among them… The Wolves and the Terminus crew were a buildup to the Whisperers – a buildup to Beta and Alpha. Alpha is basically like Gareth and Beta is like Owen, the former leader of the Wolves.

So, what about Beth in terms of my entire rambling? Well as I said, I do not believe that unless Beth didn’t know who Daryl was, she wouldn’t try to lure him to the Whisperers. That role seems to be going to Lydia – the girl we see telling Daryl in the trailer that “you don’t belong with these people” or so it’s being made out as… We’ll see.

Now I started writing this out before the mid-season premiere so I’ve gone and changed some thoughts, but most of the following stuff is still what I think. I think Lydia is going to try and persuade Henry and Daryl. More so I see Henry, as it seems they’re trying to play Carl’s role with Lydia on Henry, though I don’t see it going over like it did in the comics (We saw an image of Lydia violently lashing out in the future episode previews so I’m still with the belief that she can’t be trusted for now./// May change.)

Anyway, with Lydia persuading Henry, his easily impressionable and good hearted nature is gonna have him go after Lydia (SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON YOU’VE BEEN WARNED there’s going to be an exchange for Luke and Alden from Alpha to get her daughter back). Daryl is going to have to get into the Whisperers group because I’m sure others are gonna be captured (this part I do not know but I do know Daryl is supposed to put on a Walker suit and mask). That’s how he ends up fighting Beta like we see in the preview (which, ooc for this post I’m so fucking excited for just FYI ‘cause I love love love Ryan Hurst and I’m so happy to see SOA peeps on TWD… Can we get others? Please?! Lol) and that’s going to probably get Daryl captured by the Whisperers as well.

Now here is my speculation… I have a few ideas about – if she is with the Whispers – that can maybe be possible. One, I am wondering if Beth is going to be shown coming across the spiked Walker heads. Why do I think that? This:

This is Andrea after she finds the spiked heads of her friends with Michonne, Rick, Dante, Carl, and Lydia. Michonne in the comic was in a sort of relationship with Ezekiel (who is one of the heads that the group finds) and she breaks down, unable to put down Ezekiel’s reanimated head. Andrea takes a knife from Michonne and does it for her. Now… Look at how Andrea looks. She’s wearing a poncho, a hat similar to what Gabriel has been wearing (I believe it’s called a Gaucho hat or more commonly just called a Mexican cowboy hat), jeans, her hair pulled back, and the scar on her face.

The poncho automatically makes me think of Daryl. Daryl’s poncho was left back at the prison when it fell along with Merle’s bike. So unless Beth ended up back at the fallen walker over-run prison (which, hey, if she was still in Georgia when she woke up, wouldn’t be that far off though I highly doubt it) then her picking up a poncho not only would be a reference to something Daryl did but it would also connect to Maggie as Daryl let Maggie wear the poncho in S3. The hat would be a nod to Rick, as the Gaucho “Mexican Cowboy Hat” would associate to the cowboy hat that Rick wears and honestly with Beth’s jeans, would look dope as hell… Just saying. She’d look like a female Clint Eastwood, which is why Norman wanted the poncho – Clint Eastwood look.

This image of Andrea is one of the many that really paints that Beth and Comic!Andrea looked very similar. There are tons of images in the comic of Andrea that make Beth look like her twin. Especially with the new cut across her cheek she had received in Grady.

With this image in mind and being at this part in the comic on the show, I can’t help but just gravitate to it and think of Beth in general… Which is mostly just fan reaching with no solid evidence, but that’s one way I can see Beth having a connection to the Whisperers’ coming across their “handy work”.

Number two, if Beth survived the gunshot, her memory could be all kinds of fucked up. She might not have a single clue as to who Daryl or Carol or Michonne are. She might not recall that she has a sister or who Rick was or even know who Judith was/is. I always keep in mind that we were told the reunion could be bittersweet for Beth and the others… Bittersweet could mean that she doesn’t remember anyone OR that she’s partially blind and can’t recognize people OR that she doesn’t remember anyone and is a completely different person than she was… That would be the only way I’d be able to see Beth within the Whisperers world. The Beth we know wouldn’t stand for what they do. Would she maybe stick around to survive them if they captured her? Absolutely. But the moment she could, Beth would escape… Unless she didn’t know who she was at all anymore. As in who she is and who she was are not part of her and make her completely different. What’s more bittersweet than finding something you lost but it’s not the way you remember it? Ever find an old book or an old photo or something you lost, only to see it’s missing pages or is cracked in places or just not completely like you left it… That could be Beth. That gunshot has to have some kind of leftover affect on the girl… Trauma to the head isn’t gonna leave you in one single piece. Not from what I’ve studied and heard…

So of course the third thing is that she’s pretending and with the Whisperers as a means to survive because they said join us or we kill you / fuck you up. So she joins them… But if Beth saw Daryl or Michonne and her memory was still around, then she’d do her damn best to get to him and Michonne to get back to her family like she’s been trying to do FOR EIGHT YEARS. This is why I have a hard time with this whole “Boots is Beth” thing, by the way. I can see the appeal of it. And there are some strange things around it… But if Beth had any clue of where Rick or Maggie or Michonne or Daryl were, she’d have gone to them asap. Granted, she could’ve gotten held up / something bad happened to her on the way between the junkyard and Alexander. But even still, eight years is a long time to get held back…

Overall, eight years is a long ass time between Grady and now. Oh sure, it had been two years or so since they’d seen Morales and suddenly he shows up and his loose end was closed… But at least Morales wasn’t some weird ass fucking Dutch angle bullshit. He left for a new location with his family, he never made it, and he found the Saviors. That’s the basic of it… But it’s a story and it folds up nice enough to make sense… Beth’s story is an eight year fucking gap in the TWD world. For us it’s been just over five years of nothing… Would now be the best time to drop her in? Well it wouldn’t hurt the ratings right now that’s for bloody sure. I mean – I know everyone is pointing it out but why don’t I as well – the ratings for Season 1 were just slightly lower than they are now… Slightly. Not too far. But close… Season 4 and Season 5 were the best and highest in ratings out of all nine… They need to step some shit up. Not by taking away and adding in a bunch of who the fuck people… But by doing something no average viewer is going to expect. I took film classes. I studied this shit. They need to do something or the show can end up on the chopping block and goodbye big screen and FEAR and all the other ideas that were supposed to be played out.

Now… Back in 2015 – give or take – I did have a thought. This will be my final thoughts on Beth and the Whisperers, I cannot believe I’ve written something this long good god I am sorry for the long read…. But anyway, back in about 2015 or so, I wrote a post called “Liz Makes A Contribution to TD” (click to read if you want) . In that post I talked about the season five cast photos that were out at the time.

If you don’t recall which one those were, here’s a link from Skybound of them . So these photos come out and – like Skybound pointed out – there was no Tyreese or Beth or Carl. Which had people speaking up on Tumblr and I saw a few people on Twitter also comment to Skybound about how bizarre it was that we didn’t have these three… Well then we got a picture of Beth and Tyreese.

Of course Tyreese’s photo looked like everyone elses. Like they were all inside a barn (which they would end up in later… But not Tyreese) and Beth’s… Well, if you looked at everyone elseS THEN LOOKED AT Beth’s… Hers was completely different.

If you look at Beth compared to the others, hers just… Sticks out. Everyone else is inside something. There’s light coming through cracks and hitting everyone… But not Beth. She’s being completely covered in light. As in it’s shining down on her while it’s peaking at everyone else.

Now of course, if you read my post, you know that when we got Season 6 Promo pics, a lot of people flipped out and were pointing out how Beth’s picture looked like she was on the other side of the wall that Rick is leaning against and listening to the Walker on the other side.

Take a look

Even someone like me - on team fence - could still look at these images and go “Hey, Wait a minute…” and gasp at the realization that it literally looks like Beth is just on the other side of the wall Rick is against

Immediately I was thinking of Beth’s lines that she screamed at in Daryl to make a point to his drunk, angry ass. The same damn lines that many of us today have still been quoting and that many people have been pealing back layer by layer and feeling like this is important and it’s trying to tell us something.

“I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl. I’m not Michonne, I’m not Carol, I’m not Maggie. I’ve survived and you don’t get it ‘cause I’m not like you or them. But I made it and you don’t get to treat me like crap just because you’re afraid!”

How many times has TD gone over and over this line? How many times have you all found yourself just repeating that line and thinking “why did they have her say that if they just were gonna kill her” when we were told Scott had this whole damn thing planned out… Why give her that line to spit out? Or the line she says to Daryl as they’re sitting and talking on the porch?

“I’ll be gone someday.”

“Stop.”

“I will. You’re gonna be the last man standing. You are… You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone, Daryl Dixon.”

Of course I highlighted the important elements... I have thought really had about this line many a times and I know you all have as well… So when I thought of those lines and thought of those promo photos and what they were saying to me, I went into “Holy Shit I Get It” mode.

Beth IS A dead girl… She’s among the dead…

At the time I didn’t understand what I was getting at. I just knew Beth would return with the Walkers. I felt that deep in my gut when I looked at the images. And even now, looking back at them, my body is like “dude, wake up and look dammit!” and I’m looking… But until now, I think I get what I didn’t realize back then.

The Walkers Beth will be with… Are the Whisperers.

A living girl among the dead… Who does that? The Whisperers do that. Alpha and the Whisper do just that. They LIVE among the DEAD. The WALK among the DEAD. They ARE the WALKING DEAD. They are what Rick said that Team Family was and what Daryl said they are not.

But what exactly does that mean… Is Beth a Whisperer… Or will she come from the Whisperers.

Let me explain… You asked if I believed Beth would try to convince Daryl to Join the Whisperers… If Beth is among the Whisperers AS a Whisperer, no I do not believe she will try to bring Daryl over… But rather try to get from the Dead to Daryl and Carol (who will be the only damn people left she will know with Michonne leaving) and reveal herself among the dead…. Or this whole Whisperers arc will lead to something that will clue Beth on where to find everyone… As in the Living Dead – the Whisperers – will be with the walkers that lead Beth to Hilltop or Alexandria or the Kingdom… Something done among the dead will lead the living back.

Make sense? God I hope so.

Those images are the only reason I could see Beth have anything to connect herself to the Whisperers… She’s among the dead. I do believe that… But how she’ll be with the living again is the mystery…

I’m so sorry this took so long and is so long oh my gawd lol!

Also imma tag @twdmusicboxmystery and @bethgreenewarriorprincess and @bethgreeneishopeunseen and @wdway cause they’re more TD than me and know more shit lol

[linkspooky]

What do you thought between kaneki n touka and furuta n rize? I dont why for me there so similiar but at the same time so contrast each other. Ah im not question it for ship, just character interest or i dont know what i should call it

Kaneki, Touka, Furuta and Rize form a nice square of foils that arranges itself neatly like this. I was even able to draw a chart for you. 

This is stuff I want to work on for a later post so I’m going to be more concise with this one.

Kaneki vs Furuta

Kaneki and Furuta’s current selves are both defined by a contrast to an extreme selflessness earlier in their lives. Furuta had one good thing about his early life as a Washuu child, somehow he was able to love one person despite being born completely unloved. 

Yet, he gave that up. Despite the actions of his adult self, his childhood self’s action is still one of pure selflessness and love. 

Perhaps too pure, so much so it was almost destined to be corrupted by his later self. Furuta’s selfishness in his current life is almost a direct response to this action. Even so far as overcompensation. His current self turns completely on his childhood self, as if he’s trying to prove his childhood self wrong for acting that way. 

Rather than a person capable of such acts, capable of letting go, the Furuta we are now presented with is one of ultimate control, who uses literal iron bars to subjuggate the person he once let free. Rather than a child born at the mercy of the Washuu who understood the cruelty of his father and wanted to spare others from it, Furuta steps into the exact same position his father once occupied and deals that hurt out to others.

Furuta’s clownish and wildly selfish antics are just that, an act. One to save himself from vulnerability. In his attempt to spare himself from his own emotions though, he reduces all others around him into nothing more than tools. They have no meaning and therefore he has no meaning, and Furuta spares himself from the hardness of his own life.

Furuta is all the negative traits of Kaneki, his extreme selfishness in his world spanning goals, his need for importance to justify the tragedy that happened to him, his habit of using others as objects. In Kaneki these habits still appear but much more lukewarm as they are expressed in the midst of a full persona rather than a concentrated antagonist. I always find it funny that Kaneki looks so bored when he’s told Furuta is running a revolution against the Washuu family for basically what is his own twisted  childhood romance, considering Kaneki not even fifteen chapters later says this.

Kaneki says in the same conversation that he’s willing to fight for all of ghouls kind, and that he also does not care at all for people unless they’re directly in front of him. His entire motivation for running a ghoul revolution then, is about ten or so people that he knew for about six months at most. 

The reasons look small and petty when you zoom out from Furuta and Kaneki’s perspective, but at the same time inside their own heads you can see why these people, these few brief moments of happiness in their otherwise miserable lives are reasons they see for fighting the entire world over.

Kaneki too is, afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of being weaker than the situations around him but most of all afraid of being abandoned again and therefore seeks to control the people around him in passive ways. 

Kaneki is always the first to abandon, with no warning or no explanation for himself. He always says it’s for the safety of the other one, but in reality it’s to spare his own feelings of having his agency ripped away, of losing them suddenly just like he lost his mother.

Kaneki himself once devoted himself to trying to live as selflessly as possible, but one day he snapped and became far more selfish to overcompensate. Whether this happened specifically with Yamori, or even before that is ambiguous but Kaneki’s current self is devoted almost entirely to his own ego and support. In a way then, Kaneki sees the people around him as symbols for himself and conjures them up inside his own head, Rize is his strength, Hide is his hope, Yamori is his evils. 

He assumes himself the point at which the universe turns just like Furuta, and just like Furuta is willing to take on revolutions with thousands of lives at stake for as petty a reason as finding his own reason to live. Which is why despite having massive amounts of empathy Kaneki is rarely ever able to make proper use of it. Because everything to him is always filtered through the lens of Kaneki. His passive action is to treat others as if they were support characters in his own tragic novel, to focus on those who validate his own existence over all else.

Rize vs Touka

Rize and Touka however are more interesting on how opposite they are. This is going to be shorter because Rize isn’t really allowed to be a character so much as a collection of traits that other people project onto, but I’ll try nonentheless. One important thing I want to observe is that originally there was no Rize in the oneshot version of Tokyo Ghoul. Instead Touka took up the role of what was basically the binge eater that Kaneki came in contact with. 

That trait was obviously shed from Touka, and split off into a character entirely of her own in the form of Rize. Being Kaneki’s two main love interests Rize and Touka are obviously set up to foil each other but I see little on comparing them. Perhaps because they’re not similiar enough to be considered classic foils. They do have some similarities.

In the manga Touka’s introduction to her real self rather than her cafe persona is in tearing apart a molester in a Rize like fashion, mostly due to losing her own temper. 

If there is a similarity between the two of them, they both tend to get violently angry and lash out physically at convenient targets. Touka was angry at the whole of the CCG, but only lashed out by picking a few select agents. Rize was angry at the existence of the Washuu and the birdcage she was born into, but rather than directly fighting against them she merely picked off male targets that most likely represented to her the Washuu as a hobby to cure her so called ‘boredom’. 

Of course there is a world of difference in how these two women express their primary anger they feel as a core part of their being. Touka does everything she can to suppress it and appear human, even to go so far as to eat food she could have easily thrown away when no other human being is looking at her. 

Rize would never do something like that in a million years, she actively resented the restrictions ghouls had to play to in order to pass as humans. While Touka wants to conform, Rize hates all rules, even the ones that make sense as to not attract Doves.

They both are women fueled by a fundamental anger but deal with it in a drastically opposite approach. Another minute detail is that after losing their homes, both Touka and Rize were adopted by secondary father figures. Rize had Shachi and Touka had Yoshimura, who also were both established as old friends. 

This is something that for the most part didn’t happen to both Kaneki and Furuta. Kaneki’s aunt who took him in only worsened his abuse, and Furuta was left in the garden alone after Rize fled. Perhaps that’s why the girls in this foil square are able to handle loneliness substantially better, while both boys are near suicidal from lack substantial love given in their lives. 

The Two Pairs of Foils

If you line up the two of them as a pair then, you have one pair defined by extreme selifshness and extreme selflessness.

Rize only used the freedom that Furuta gave her to indulge in herself, while thinking nothing of him. She turned her back on him fully and instead of making something for her life, she only indulged, and indulged building atop the corpses of others. Rather than try to fight for the freedom she seemed to care about so much for ghouls, she became nothing more than a serial killer basically who caused troubles for other ghouls. 

Furuta also, lost the childhood care he had for Rize and slowly only came to care about her through the lens of how she made him feel. Rize made him feel anxiety, Rize made him feel worry for her sake, or perhaps Rize just made him feel in general. As Rize turned away from him, Furuta too, turned away from her and eventually only sought to control her.

Then you have Touka and Kaneki, the couple that stands on opposite ends of the bridge. The great obstacle in their relationship, despite too coming from similiar places of origin just like Rize and Furuta. As both Kaneki and Touka are orphans, with abandonment complexes who therefore have their primary fear as losing epople. 

They both adapt to this fear in their own way. Kaneki pushes people away while attempting to fight for them, so he can feel validation from them in some indirect way. While this is selfishly motivated, Kaneki running himself into the ground, to near insanity merely trying to protect others is selflesss, an action he tries to do for others.

Touka herself who waited for three years, who chose the route of pasivity like Yoshimura to an extent. Refusing to act directly yet at the same time waiting all that time hoping that he will come back to the cafe.

Both of them were being selfless and trying to think of others, but neither of them were able to get closer that way. It’s only when Kaneki and Touka both acted on their selfish desires, when Kaneki spoke of his fear of losing others when Touka admitted she wanted to be by his side more than to wait at home for him to return did they actually get closer.