#must be the bad guy or otherwise perceived as the bad guys

[jimothy-g-brooks]

Kitchen Sink Urbana: Global Superhero Teams

The Peacekeeper Society

The Global Council is this Earth's rough equivalent of the United Nations, founded a century ago after the near cataclysmic conflagration of the Greater War. Supersoldiers of every stripe and shape and nation played a huge role in that conflict, a not inconsiderable number of them being WMD's in their own right. Since the stated aim of the Council was to prevent such a global catastrophe yet again, it organized the constituent nations' supers into the Peacekeeper Society.

A century removed from its founding, Council and Society have evolved and changed beyond their original purpose. The Peacekeeper Society now represent the world governments' voluntary superhuman task force and emergency response unit. They respond to wide scale disasters and aid mundane authorities in international crime with no clear jurisdiction.

Obedient of the laws of the lands and the world as a whole to a fault; they are not here to use their superhuman might to supersede the authority of the people. They are here to work with the authorities and render all the aid that they can to uphold the law and work as examples to others to strive to. Symbols of hope and peace.

The "core" team, the ones listed in the official public documents with their names and pictures on the websites, are a little bit of a PR stunt. A member from each major nation and then one from each continent from a non-major nation, specially chosen to display the wide diversity of peoples there are on Earth. Photogenic appeal and a lack of scandals is also necessary to make the cut.

Even with that handicap for choice, the Society has a whole planet to pick and choose the best and the brightest. And when a desirable asset doesn't fit the diversity quota or has a few too many black mark on their record, then they can still go on the unofficial reserve team and be equally compensated. They're picked for their ability and competency, and skill in heroics, diplomacy and legal minutiae, screened for their capacity to obey the edicts of the Council and whatever nations they're sent to operate in.

Each constituent nation with a charter with the Peacekeepers often has their own branch team, usually referred as the national Peacekeeper Society. IE, like the American Peacekeeper Society, as it might be on our Earth. They're almost always local mirrors of the Global Peacekeeper Society, with members chosen out of a combination of ability and good press and a semi-secret reserve team filled out with members purely for their competence.

The Enforcers

Founded 50 years ago by certain members of the Peacekeepers that had become dissatisfied. Not by the pageantry, they understood the necessity, to give people symbols and role models. Not by the restrictions, because they agreed that men and women of such power should not be allowed to operate unabated. But by the failures that the need to adhere to both had caused.

The Enforcers were neither the first nor the last to try to form a more law-breaking vigilante group on a global scale, an organization that does things that aren't pretty or right but gets the job done. They are the only ones to still survive up until this point, where all other groups were disbanded and arrested by world authorities and the Peacekeeper Society.

No small part has this been because of the tacit approval by the Society and that because the Enforcers' founders understood why the Peacekeepers operated as they did. They knew that powerful people needed to be seen and cheered for playing by the rules and that if they were going to break those rules, they needed to be jeered. This is why they call themselves the Enforcers, to put the public on edge about their existence and their actions.

They're hard men making hard decisions, but there is in fact some amount of public relations going on or anti-pr more accurately. They go out of their way to be disliked by the mainstream and have themselves presented as shady loose canons by the press. They seed rumors that they're the governments' shady black op deniable assets to discourage the admiration of fringe groups as well.

They have far fewer numbers than the Peacekeeper Society and all its branches around the world and the reason for that is two and a half fold. First and a half, slower recruitment, in part because almost nobody wants to join a pack of barely paid vigilantes that nobody else likes and the other part is that said vigilantes want almost nobody to join them, screening for the contradictory values of willingness to break the rules and distaste for the same. The second part is because, recently, a schism in the Enforcers broke off and formed a third group, a smaller but a significant chunk, some 20 years ago.

The Guardians Of The Earth

Thought to be future supervillains in the making by their former comrades, certainly not helped by the fact that their ultimate goal is, not to put too fine a point on it, world domination. They don't broadcast this fact and they haven't made any overt moves in that direction just yet either. Their former comrades in the Enforcers only have pretty good guess work on their motivations, piecing together the rhetoric of this faction's founders as they radicalized the others.

The founders of the Guardians believe that superheroes, due to a combination of their superpowers and more specifically the unaccountability those superpowers grant, and their track record for benevolence and public service, would be superior and incorruptible world leaders. The unaccountability is important, the ability to act and aid the public as problems arose without having to worry about laws, special interests or the willingness of your subordinates, politics. If superheroes ruled the world, they could do what was right, when it was right to do so and not have to worry about any opposition or red tape. Or such was and has been the the growing rhetoric of the founders, fed to their followers and those who would listen and radicalizing them over years.

A major obstacle to the founders' plan is that they are very obsessed with doing it right. They don't want to turn into supervillains at the last minute, in part because that will just get them squashed. Their plans for world domination need to be done heroically and correctly. That means they spend their time seemingly a whole lotta nothing, besides actual superhero vigilantism, ala the Enforcers. What this means is that some of their followers, the ones they've radicalized, grow frustrated with this inaction and are liable to go rogue. None have yet, but a few of the Guardians have disappeared.

In fact, the founders' plans are constantly on slow, steady progress, as far as they're concerned anyway. Doing superhero vigilantism like the Enforcers is the point. Unlike the Enforcers, they also do PR, or they do the opposite kind of PR. They're trying to get the public to cheer for them whenever they break the rules to do what's right. Slowly eroding the public's reticence towards their shenanigans, their suspicions and reservations, until the Guardians are allowed to do whatever the want and are effectively the rulers, the Lawgivers, of the Earth.

In a way, the Enforcers already did that, paving the way for them. Fifty years ago, a group like the Guardians would have been disbanded by the Peacekeepers at the urging of the public and the authorities. After years of the Enforcers doing their thing with the tacit approval of those would have otherwise stopped them, people have gotten accustomed to unaccountable superheroics and it's only the PR angle that's different.

[tawked]

I feel like engaging with real world homophobia would make Batman / Superman slash much more interesting.

It's more inaccessible, though. You have to finesse with knowledge not only of one "Gay Community" but the multitudes of communities and Kinds Of Guy you meet in those communities, you have to engage with Bruce as a public figure vs. Clark as a relative unknown, you have to understand how homophobia and therefore homosexuality are defined in American mainstream culture, blah blah blah - but it's worth it, right?

So, Bruce Wayne is a rich beloved playboy billionaire in his 30s with liberal beliefs that funds and advocates for, while maintaining a veil of being a real fucking dumbass. Everybody would hate his ass. He'd probably not be known publicly as queer until "exposed" ala Peter Thiel, either intentionally or simply because he doesn't perceive his identity as queer as important for the media and public to know (because it shouldn't be, but we do not live in that world lol). Because he's rich and therefore no one can conceive of him experiencing homophobia, people would defend his public outing as their exceptional case to a social policy they otherwise never discuss, that is outing people for fun and profit, a staple of American culture since the 90s.

From there, most leftists and working class progressives would probably hate him, especially The Straights, who would attempt to characterize him as some kind of class traitor. You know, [queer business] failed, why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne bail them out? [Homophobic politician] did [bad thing], why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne use his money to save the day? And then, in the same breath, using Bruce Wayne's success to say that American culture isn't homophobic any more whenever a major discrimination case breaks the news, similar to how Republicans use characters like Ellen. This is an especially common strategy racially marginalized people have to deal with, the use of a single successful person as a model minority to discredit the idea of systemic racism - they do the same thing to The Gays. But overall, drawing from how liberals discuss Peter Thiel here, they'd be making bitchy comments about how because he's a billionaire, cis and conventionally masc - and especially because he doesn't show any social signifiers of being of the culture - Bruce Wayne is basically a straight man, regardless of whatever he must deal with, exactly like how they characterize Dave Ruben.

Meanwhile, conservatives would NOT be okay with a known queer man raising a handful of adoptive sons, especially not one of their billionaires, who they prop up as proof capitalism works, the American Dream is alive, blah blah blah. He'd be accused of depriving them of a mother, he'd be relentlessly pedojacketed, QAnon flavoured freaks and the Christian Right would be constantly on his ass calling in fake allegations to CPS. Especially after Jason Todd's disappearance from public life. Alfred would, inevitably, become part of all of this, as people knowing Alfred basically raised Bruce after Martha and Thomas died would be like "oh well Wayne was definitely abused by his butler and when men are abused they just become abusers, that's how homosexuals reproduce," 'cause Boys Beware style beliefs never actually went away, it's just less common for people with a college education to share them. Bruce would have to navigate a social impact upon his whole family.

And the thing is, in actual lived gay social life, you have to realize, Rich Gays are not perceived as being at all like us. The ones with social profiles are perceived as aliens who tap-dance for straight people. Ryan Murphy, Steven Moffat's bottom, Stephen Fry, all them wealthy hyper-visible Hollywood homos seem behave as if homophobia is something you can outwit with a sarcastic comment (like that West Wing Bible lecture scene), and that no one but isolated freaks who can't hurt anybody or achieve anything is really homophobic with their whole chest. Because they're so insulated by their wealth that they've never been denied housing by a landlord who'd "prefer to rent to families," or harassed with "girlfriend conversations" at work, nothing like that. It's understood that they can buy their way around the barriers created by discrimination, experiencing only meaningless slurring from people who do not know them.

They belong in the PinkNews world, where homophobia is someone saying something mean on twitter. You cannot imagine they had the same experiences coming out to their parents (especially not Bruce, who seems really distant from his parents, like they're just never around for some reason idk), going through high school (Bruce was home-schooled), or perhaps most importantly, trying to start adult relationships with a lack of education about what all anything is. A formative experience many gay men of Bruce's usual age have is navigating those adult power dynamics while vulnerable. There are other touchstone experiences among working class gays, like fear of potentially being kicked out of home or dealing with the social isolation of being denied family in a family-driven culture.

Finally, it's not like he can just show up at the club with his nips painted rainbow and be inducted into the community. My point in saying all of this is, there are layers upon layers of social barriers between Bruce Wayne and conventional queer life. So - if he's connected to a queer community at all, it'd be the insipid one of rich white people, where being queer means redecorating your fucking McMansion for the 10th time in one year, with a kitchen perpetually under renovation. Annoying Miniature Poodle Gays. And I just do not see Bruce Wayne hanging with Charles & Rudy, he's too much of a Debbie Downer and is simply not someone who can fake an interest in Christos Tsolkas novels.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent is nobody. Sure, sometimes he has his name on bylines and depending on when in continuity we place him he's been a TV anchor, but let's be real, if Clark Kent were outed there wouldn't be a similar amount of drama, not even close. If Superman were outed - well, Superman is already the subject of fearmongering and conspiracies among the stupid, the status quo would not shift for him. He might wear a rainbow cape during Pride Month or whatever and make a bunch of public appearances where he's like, "trans women are women, and an individual's right to their own body must be protected!" I kinda picture him as the sort of dude who'd volunteer a weekend at the AIDS Council without knowing who ACT UP were.

Because, hear me out, he's from a small country town in Kansas and absolutely would have grown up with the concept of City Queer vs. Rural Queer. So, for some context here, where I live straddles the line between suburban and rural. I have cow paddocks and a major mall both five minutes from my house (Australia is a place man). So when I'm looking for dick my Grindr is full of cowpoke lookin to yeehaw and people who just moved into the area from the inner city. These are distinct flavours of Gay, believe me.

The social consequences of being outed when your nearest neighbours are an hour away, when you're dealing with the severe social isolation of rural living - it's different. Ostracism in circumstances like that will make you insane. These are communities where the church exists as the center of social life. Baby Clark has access to Smallville, which is more of a population center, obviously, but the likelihood of him having exposure to and a concept of queer life while growing up in this place is low. Men who went through this often claim they were The Only Gay Person In Town, which is not actually what's going on, it's more that men are so extremely closeted and the consequences for interacting with a 15 year old, even if it's just to say "hey dude, you're not alone, it gets better, move out of this hellhole ASAP" are so extreme that no one is taking that risk.

Meanwhile, homophobic narratives are pervasive, and many rural queer people actually do internalize and believe a lot of these homophobic myths, like that city-dwelling homos never experience oppression, that they're all poppin party drugs and living at the club 24/7, that they are incapable of commitment and only want shallow sex, blah blah blah. Clark would have to unlearn a lot of that after his move to Metropolis and if his primary connection to queerness is Bruce, well... he wouldn't. Y'know? Shit, Lois is more likely to know actual working class, real life gay culture than Bruce Wayne. The distinction being, Clark can actually access and learn these things, but Bruce Wayne is always Bruce Wayne, sans some kind of weird disguise he can't access the same spaces and cultural institutions as Clark.

For what it's worth, I feel like Clark would come out shortly after the move to Metropolis and he'd seek out actual queer life, but you've met boys like that, who come from bumfuck nowhere into the modern world and have to unlearn all of the stigma that surrounded them throughout their formative youth. They tend to have the realest, most honest understanding of how discrimination actually functions, and I feel like that'd be in the back of Clark's mind especially as a champion of truth, justice and sloppy makeouts with the lads.

My point in saying all of this: Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne would be very specific Types Of Guy if they were indeed queer and together. Their relationship would be heavily influenced by that. They are in some ways opposites - Bruce likely believes queer rural people are redneck hicks with a lot of homophobic beliefs, the kind of men who sign up for conversion therapy, and Clark likely believes that Bruce is so insulated from real homophobia that he's simply never been called a slur, capable of understanding homophobia only in the pure abstract.

This is, in real life, the kind of fiber that in many ways can define a queer relationship. We do, in real life, have concepts of how out one is and where one is out, we navigate complicated relationships with each others' families, and it is not uncommon to meet someone in the community who simply has no ties to their parents. The concept of "having kids" is, for most gay men, this incredibly complicated ordeal, regardless of those photos of smiling men in their 30s wearing Mr. Rogers cardigans you see in lifestyle magazines (the Charles & Rudy Gays I was discussing earlier), and Bruce has like ten of the fucking things running around. That would be a big deal to Clark, who's from a background with no queer parents in a ten mile radius, where queer marriage may be legal (for now) but the church sure ain't likely to cater to they/them folks, not in these here parts.

As a final thought, when gay men criticize fanfiction as not representing us, it's because none of this stuff is ever really considered in how those queer relationships are written. There's this lack of awareness or interest in how a relationship between queer men is fundamentally different to a hypothetical relationship between two ostensibly straight men, as men who are not victims of discrimination and have not had their identities formed under oppression. It can feel alienating and invalidating to see media someone who is not like you has created to represent a fetishised, simplistic idea of you, the literary equivalent of that "lesbian" porn made for straight men that has no interest in any kind of emotional or social connection between the performers under the male gaze.

And in the case of Batman and Superman specifically, it's like... to be honest, you're missing so much of the potential romantic tension and meat by simply not engaging with this stuff. You have a rich socially isolated queer man who's never been able to enter the community due to his wealth, who would reject the rich gay community because I mean who wouldn't, hooking up with a country boy liberal journalist who moved from Gay Hell to a major city at 18-20 or so. There's so so so so much there. Flattening this into "it's just them 1:1 exactly as in the comics but they fuck" feels alien and unreal, like they had no sexual thoughts or self-concept before encountering each other and therefore have never lived as queer men.

This is not a "you should do it like this or you're homophobic" post, this is a "you could access these concepts to add humanity and drama to your writing" post.

btw I think this applies to basically all slash fic but am using Batman / Superman specifically due to familiarity with the characters.

[toskarin]

some mostly flippant rambles on including elves in the Saltreave (that fantasy setting I write when I'm not working on my more serious projects) along with some setting notes in the margins

well. the setting notes are like 90% of the body of the text.

but we do get to elves. and we stay at elves for a while.

-

THERE IS NO ZERO IN THE ROMAN NUMERAL SYSTEM: Prologue to the Preramble

so I've written about my thoughts on elves as sort of "narrative level lifeforms" before, and that's still very much where my thoughts lie on them, but there are also just kind of elves around as fairly normal people in the Saltreave

this is a bit of a blurry line, because they're obviously not the nature-loving type of elf you see post-Tolkien -- which I'll go ahead and say feels like a deliberately obtuse misread of what Tolkien was implying by them living in harmony with a world that is literally described as the manifestation of a song -- but the bottom line is that Saltreave's elves aren't Tolkien elves, and they're not attempting to be subversions of them, but they are written by someone who quite likes those guys

all of that raises another question: what the hell are elves in the Saltreave?

-

I: Preramble

I put a bit of an information abyss at the beginning of the setting by design, outright saying that the "pre-apocalypse" might as well not exist at all.

to some extent you can say that it must have existed, and there is a bit of scattered writing that implies things about the state of affairs the world was in (mostly in terms of the politics between mortal civilisations and how that manifests in the modern politics of the remaining citystates), but the Advent is where the story starts

the most common explanations of what things were like before the current era are, at the end of the day, just attempts to explain what the people living in it are presently perceiving

the Advent, used as shorthand for a million things that each mean something different to everyone, is either the end of the world or the end of the old order of things. it is both the death of the symbolic plane and its violent merging with the material plane, severing every connection to the symbolic along the way

a bit further down that line of thought, even the present magic system gestures towards being derived from an older practice that was forced to adapt to sudden shift of the central symbolic source to a source diffused unevenly in the material plane, although from what exactly this magic system was forced to adapt remains a bit of a mystery

-

II: Into the Ramble

the Saltwind (the thing that gives the setting its name and effectively wiped out the previous world) is actually harmless

or more accurately, it's a visible symptom of an invisible problem, and that invisible problem is extremely harmful in a way nothing else could possibly hope to be

the "salt" in the wind is actually just salt. it's a lot of salt, but it's still just recognisably some sort of organic salt if you were to hold it in your hands

the salt is both the result of the Advent and a vessel for carrying "warped grain," an invisible ripple of magical static that functions more or less like (non-mutagenic, because I'm actually not a fan of using that as an apocalypse fiction concept) magical radiation

warped grain takes on a bunch of roles, so let's go over a few of those in relative brief

the one most commonly acknowledged fact is that warped grain is a soul-destroying pollution. it's bad stuff. it's poison that seeps into everything. it's in the water, it's in the air, it gets into the food as it grows, and you need to affiliate yourself with a citystate that has access to unpolluted (or otherwise purified) supplies to survive in the world as it exists

a bit less commonly (mostly when scholars and other big-hats talk about it) it's acknowledged as a sort of ambient magical noise that makes spells more unpredictable and dangerous. it can also periodically "complete" a spell if you take too long casting it, making it do something unintended (often killing the caster)

in a pinch, warped grain can be absorbed into the body as some kind of environmental magic energy, allowing someone to replenish their depleted magical energy and forgo resting to generate their own*

*: absorbing environmental energy in a world where it's literally poisoned will also eventually fuck up your soul beyond repair, so it's a really stupid idea and not something any serious magic-user would recommend

but most importantly for why elves are around, warped grain can be seen as the frayed threads of a decapitated cosmological order, death-rattling itself apart

-

III: Rambling About Elves, Mostly

because of their intimate connection to the disrupted symbolic plane of the world, the elves who were alive at the time of the Advent were grievously injured, experiencing the soul equivalent of radiation-induced chromosome aberration, and died a few years later. the generations following this one represent the entirety of the remaining elven population

this means that all modern elves can theoretically be divided into two categories

Selvedge Elves - while ostensibly referring to one of "pureblooded" elven stock, meaning someone whose parentage has never included a mortal. the elephant in the room is that Selvedge Elves aren't real and haven't been for quite some time. an actual Selvedge Elf had a lifespan of about 20-25 years and was not capable of having children, on account of being a wholly symbolic being born into a world where the symbolic plane exploded like an asbestos ceiling. "Selvedge" exists as a highly ideologically-charged concept, and not exactly one that lends itself to any non-reactionary interpretations

Scion Elves - everyone else. all elves currently alive are demimortal, which means that they have at least a bit of mortal parentage. even beyond elves, there are no immortals left in the Saltreave, but their descendants are absolutely still around. the term "Scion" refers to those descendants, but given that there isn't really a group to draw them in contrast to, most people prefer not to use it at all.

now it's worth mentioning, while they're all partially mortal, not all currently existing elves are specifically partially human. the stereotypical elf is human or similar, but there's nothing stopping an elf from being, say, a sylvan (the broad category of mortals who have animal ears and such)

Luuga, a character I've posted a few times, would be considered an elf if her status as a sylvan didn't make people identify that first. that's why she has longer, narrower ears than other feline-type sylvans (contrast the only other example I've drawn, Imiellith, and how her ears are much stouter)

more on sylvans and other types of mortal at some later time, but with everything out of the way, let's get down to some elf facts

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IV: Indulgently Rambling About Elf Facts at Great Length

elves theoretically have different lifespans from mortal beings, which is something they have in common with other demimortals. elves specifically live about ten years longer on average than mortals, provided they don't die of unnatural causes, which they usually do.

additionally, they have a few notable traits that are more specific to elves

(an egregious number of) examples of these include...

elves only breathe as a learned social behaviour and theoretically don't actually need to do it. the same goes for yawning, coughing, sweating, sneezing, and similar functions. somewhat unfortunately for them, because most living things know they need to breathe, elves are still perfectly capable of knowing they need to breathe, which means they're capable of suffocating. in theory, an elf raised by people deliberately trying not to teach them about breathing wouldn't have to breathe, but that's not really a good way to raise a child

elves tire more based on time rather than effort. this is a subtle distinction, but means that an elf can exert more effort in a burst than a mortal companion, yet drops from exhaustion as soon as they've reached the limit of how long they can work. most people never notice this, since "the limits of exerted effort" and "the limits of time spent exerting effort" overlap heavily

elves are about five times more likely to die of old age on their birthday than any other day, but only if they're aware of their birthday. this is something most people are aware of, and different cultures grapple with this in different ways

in cultures with different calendars, the previous point also holds true. in cultures without the concept of something equivalent to a "year," elves just die of old age in more or less the same way mortals do

an elf's hair has a length it wants to be, with the specific length varying between individuals. if cut, it will grow faster back to this length. it cannot be grown longer than this by any means

elves tend to be quick to grasp spoken language, but a bit slower when it comes to grasping written language. this isn't always true, and when it is, doesn't tend to manifest past initial language acquisition

in exception to the previous point, elves are prone to grasping pasigraphies at the same (often accelerated) rate with which they grasp spoken languages. if the conditions were ever to arise for a wholly elven-developed language, it would likely have no direct written component, with all writing consisting of a highly contextual pasigraphy

elves stereotypically have exceptional memories when it comes to things that catch their interest. it's not uncommon for elven big-hats to keep a small stash of special expensive candies entirely for the purpose of forcing themselves to have eidetic memory for something they're disinterested in by associating it with extremely positive stimulus

because of the previous point, there is a notable market for making luxury treats aimed specifically at elven academics in cities they frequent

because of the two previous points, elven academics often develop pleasure-deprivation complexes, feeling guilty whenever they experience positive emotions that don't lend themselves to furthering their work

the previous three points are only true if they are generally understood to be true in the location where the individual is raised

if tested, most elves would appear to be colourblind. a deeper examination would reveal that elves only struggle with telling green and blue, and that this difficulty persists into the very concept of green and blue, which they struggle with disentangling in abstract. this is also true of elves with most other colexifications because I got annoyed with constantly reading people on tumblr doing pseudolinguistics and thought it'd be a little funny to have the Symbolic People run on the faulty assumptions I kept seeing

elves can get so sad they just physically die

elves can theoretically recover from any acquired disease provided that they receive adequate and comprehensive treatment for the symptoms

nothing can reduce an elf's pain to the point where they don't notice it. sedatives work, but analgesics simply do not

elves can theoretically die of any disease (no matter how minor it is) if it lasts long enough

in the same vein as the previous point every chronic illness is effectively a terminal one to an elf. the exception to this rule is that an elf will not die of a chronic illness they are born with, even if the same chronic illness would eventually prove to be terminal in a mortal

elves cannot leave permanent footprints, regardless of what they're wearing and where they try to leave them. if an elf were to step in cement, the bootprint would eventually disappear in the same way that it would if they'd stepped in sand

contrary to the previous point, if an elf writes in ink, the ink cannot be smudged or otherwise distorted on accident. the writing can still be lost by destroying the object it's on or deliberately attempting to smudge it, but this requires intention

while elves are exceptionally capable of performing magic without any formal education, this is actually the result of them being able to open the immortal component of their souls to grain, including warped grain, and therefore should never be done. this is true of most demimortals, with the mortal component of their soul being the safeguard that prevents their souls from being torn apart in the same way their ancestors' were

elves grow to be about as tall as is normal for them to be where they are raised. this is a bit counter-intuitive at first blush, but more or less means that an elf (regardless of specific heritage and origin) will grow to the height that is generally understood to be "normal for an elf" in the location where they are growing

in a similar vein to the previous point, an elf raised by mortals with no knowledge of elves (especially without knowledge that the child is an elf) will not show any physical traits of being an elf. this is an unlikely event that requires like three sets of perfect circumstances to happen, but it's not off the table

in a similar vein to the two previous points, dominant cultural understandings have a causal influence on certain other things considered "elven features," but the only evidenced ones besides height are ear length, ear angle, degree of facial hair, number of ribs, and the exact position in the chest where the heart resides

as a final note, elves always have both palmaris longus tendons, unless they are explicitly understood to lack one or both, as with previous points

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V: Drawing Some Kind of Conclusion From Rambling About Elves. But Not Really.

this is all a very long way of saying that elves (and other demimortals) represent "those who have lost their plot armour" in a setting where the symbolic plane was seemingly once something running parallel to the material world and now exists most prominently as a severed limb bleeding all over it

because no written history of the immortals was preserved in the Advent, knowledge of the old world is heavily slanted towards a mortal perspective, containing only outside views into the symbolic plane's nature

there is nobody left alive who remembers the world before, several generations having passed since then, but to those who were told that they fell from a world of elevated importance and meaning, it can be especially tempting to view the old world as a halcyon paradise that was ruined

what remains is largely conflicting and disputed. most have long since moved on from litigating these things, faced with a world where it would make no difference

[dr-spectre]

As someone who's been in multiple fandom circles and calls themselves a Splatoon fan, I've seen a lot of focus and discussion on "THE LORE!!" and "CANON!!!" and to be honest with you... it's getting really tiring and I think people are just WAY TOO obsessed with what a wiki or an intern at Nintendo says rather than forming their own perspective on events and coming to their own unique conclusions.

Now, I wanna say, if talking about lore and discussing which elements are canon or not makes you happy and you love talking about that, then that's perfectly okay. It's fine. It's not for ME personally because my focus on Splatoon is the gameplay, music and the storytelling chops of each Hero Mode.

Story >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Canon for me any day of the week i do not care.

Because, to get away from Splatoon for a second, for my Sonic fans out there, you remember when Sega and the people behind the show Sonic Prime said that it was canon to the mainline Sonic timeline? And if you said otherwise you were technically wrong because "oh Sega said this, so it MUST be true!"

........But then everyone said that Sonic Prime cannot be canon to the mainline Sonic timeline because it has a fuck ton of inconsistencies? Yeah.... funny. Basically, don't put a lot of focus into "what actually happened" and "oh this is what the multi billion dollar corporation said!" because there's always gonna be one guy out there that goes "um this information kinda fucking damages the story in a severe way." (And sometimes that one guy is me.... hehehehe....)

I could obviously talk about.... you know.... Hypno Callie again for the 50th trillion time.... (and i will)..... This bitch.... I wanna love you girlie i really fucking do but Nintendo and millions of people make it hard to....

Nintendo set up Callie's villain arc decently in Splatoon 1 with the Splatfest dialogue, the Squid Sister stories and the Sunken Scrolls, yet they ultimately damaged the progression of the arc by saying "nah fuck u she got kidnapped and brainwashed, removing all of her memories and free will because fuck telling a good story with satisfying set up and pay off that allows for character growth. Fundamentals of storytelling? What are those?" And it also destroyed Callie as a character by reducing her to an object that the player "must save from da evil Octavioooo" and "oh look at her! She put the stupid brainwashing shades onnn againnn!! such a dumb fucking moron dumbass piece of shit right guys?!? lmaoooooooooo!! explore the dangers of addiction and how you need to seriously change your life and be surrounded by those you love in order to change bad habits?? Themes?? PFFTTT! NAWWW! THAT'S LAMEEEE!! It's Callie! No one cares about Callie!! She's stupiddd!!!"

(I talked about Callie in a tumblr comment section one time and I got made fun of for by a guy way older than me. I love humanity.)

It also ruined DJ Octavio's character too because, if what Nintendo said is true about what he did then he cannot be redeemed in Splatoon 3. He cannot go back on the shit he's done. But they try to redeem him out of nowhere and now he's all chill with the New Squidbeak Splatoon and appeared in the Grand Fest.... Yet what he did to Callie which Nintendo loves to push is truly TRULY unredeemable and if that's the case then welp.... I call that bad writing, straight up. It's bad writing.

I really hate it when something happens in a story and you perceive it in a certain way where you feel like it elevates the events, but then the company behind the story chooses to pick the worst outcomes possible just because? And everyone rolls with it just cause? Ugh...

Lesson of today is, don't fucking listen obsessively to what a company says and suck it up. Consume media and come to your own conclusions on what happened. As long as you have tangible evidence to back up your claims you can make any interpretation you want to, whatever makes you feel happy bestie!

[bestworstcase]

Anything from Volumes 1-3 that is setup that you don't think is given enough attention or respect for good setup?

Sidenote to this:

Open seat with no person in it + Salem having someone looking for the Choice Relic was hinting at Summer Rose. Did we have anything hinting at her pre Beacon's Fall or just things that she fits given additional context?

regarding summer specifically, while i wouldn’t call them hints per se, there are a handful of beats in v1-3 that smell like foreshadowing to me:

the first is “she was right about you; such arrogance.” – cinder might well be referring to salem here, of course. however. what strikes me about this remark is that arrogance is not a characteristic that salem seems to perceive in ozma; rather she describes him, in her soliloquies and songs, as a self-destructive, deceitful, manipulative fool blinded and trapped by his faith in the old gods. cowardly. fallen from grace. think of what she says to oz in 8.9—look how you’ve diminished, how you’ve lessened yourself—she sees him groveling at the feet of tyrannical monsters and sees debasement.

does it follow for salem to characterize ozpin to cinder as, primarily, arrogant? i’m not convinced it does. but summer rose? well… hm. consider, also, that the full line is “this whole time, right beneath our feet… she was right about you; such arrogance…” <- i think it is more likely than not that “she” is someone inside the brackets of “our,” and in context “our” is either [cinder + ozpin] or [cinder + her associates physically present at beacon].

in the event that “she” is not part of “our” the more naturalistic phrasing is “beneath our feet… salem was right about you” – because “she” otherwise has no antecedent. of course, some allowance here for this to be a narrative choice not to name salem yet, but we’re one (1) episode off from revealing her face and by this point we’ve known for a while that cinder works for someone else, so the choice to drop the name here or in the volume credits is of fairly trivial importance. unless of course cinder isn’t talking about salem.

second: “Oh! We've also stopped some bad guys, too! I guess it's like they say: "like mother, like daughter"! I still wonder why Ozpin let me into the school early…” [laugh track] – obv this part of ruby’s address to summer’s memorial headstone foreshadows ozpin’s conspiracy and team strq’s involvement therein. but it also foreshadows this exchange:

RUBY: We don’t have to kill you to stop you, and we will stop you. SALEM: Your mother said those words to me… she was wrong, too.

and i think it bears pointing out that ruby is wrong here, and later in the volume qrow specifically calls attention to this and lays out why she’s wrong. team rwby didn’t stop the bad guys; they cut off one avenue of attack and cinder circled around from a new direction that took advantage of torchwick’s imprisonment, and this also resulted in the public break between ozpin and ironwood which eroded the cohesion of the inner circle. ergo, ruby thinks she stopped the bad guys but in the long run the consequences of the breach all benefited salem.

looks into the camera like im on the office.

like mother, like daughter!!!

further, that sequence of events ultimately leads to the final confrontation between her and torchwick – wherein he declares “if you can’t beat them, join ’em,” and shortly gets eaten by a grimm right after making it clear that he intends to kill her. torchwick’s death is thematically motivated – a narrative rejection of his cynical every-man-for-himself, dog-eats-dog outlook – but consider that:

summer rose, if she is indeed salem’s willing agent, is certainly at beacon tonight – because she’d be the one who stayed behind to hold the fort.

summer is thus the one salem instructs to “reinforce our numbers at beacon,” meaning the grimm; that instruction only makes sense if the person receiving it can communicate with or command grimm. ergo, summer must have some degree of control over grimm.

ruby is disarmed and on the ground getting beaten by a man who fully intends to kill her, and a grimm swoops down out of nowhere to eliminate him faster than he can blinks. and then… the grimm rears up, roaring at her, and comes down with a sweep of its wings that creates a blast of air that pushes her away. that isn’t aggression!! that’s a defensive threat display!! (the feilong in v4 does the exact same thing – trying to push the boat away). it’s ruby who charges the gryphon, and while it lunges forward in reaction to her charge, all that happens is she gets her feet on its head and pushes off to leap over it, and the grimm goes fucking flying so hard it crashes into the ship’s interior and never emerges. the point being,

math.

it’s plausible that the grimm was drawn to torchwick’s murderous rage. but the way it behaves immediately after it swallows him – that very clear “get away from me please” body language, and ruby -apparently- kicking a grimm the size of a goddamned clydesdale dozens of feet and then through the hull of a literal warship? ruby is strong, but she’s not… that strong. but if the grimm didn’t want to engage her and propelled itself under and past her at the same time as she vaulted off its head? that would explain what happens perfectly – ruby’s kick altered its launch trajectory just enough that it crashed.

minutes later, someone loyal to salem scraped a very badly injured cinder off the top of beacon tower and left ruby alive where qrow would find her. salem’s vested interest in keeping ruby alive is VISIBLE throughout the battle for beacon, and notably include a perfect opportunity to capture her while she’s in a coma atop beacon tower that isn’t taken – suggesting that salem makes her singular attempt to capture ruby solely to reassure cinder that Something is being Done.

and if summer rose has command over grimm and was at beacon that night… the gryphon’s behavior is exactly what i’d expect if all the grimm had marching orders to insure this one girl in particular – the spitting image of their commander – doesn’t come to serious harm. there’s a nonzero chance that gryphon did in fact save ruby On Purpose!

…and that happens in the context of a fight between ruby and the bad guy she thought she stopped (but she was wrong), who joined salem because “if you can’t beat em, join em.” (salem voice) she was wrong, too…

also

<- like mother like daughter. summer had a nevermore’s eye view of the battle for beacon, in this essay i will –

third: this one is something i didn’t really Think About until v9 and specifically the v9 ost dropping, but some of the things cinder says in v2-3 strike me as like – she got that from summer im sure of it. for example, in midnight, cinder’s view of huntsmen is that they’re free, they have power, they can go anywhere and do whatever they want, and rhodes never contradicts this. where did she get “huntsmen and huntresses should conduct themselves with honor and mercy”? who taught her the aspirational moral ideal?

summer rose, maybe.

but in the deeper sense,

where did cinder get the ‘destiny’ conceit? her underlying beliefs about how the world is are a product of her childhood, but the overt framing of fate/destiny isn’t present in midnight; nor has salem ever spoken of destiny and her philosophical views are in many ways a rejection of destiny – salem does not believe in fate, she is the woman who dedicated her life to toppling the gods.

and on close examination this looks like yet another suspiciously summer rose shaped hole!! “you’re special, ruby […] special the way your mom was special […] it was said that those born with silver eyes were destined to lead the life of a warrior.” – in after the fall, ozpin gives coco an entire pep talk whose central conceit is embracing and submitting to the turns of fate – sacrifice “show them gods and deities/blind and keep the people on their knees” & guide my way “you were born to hypnotize them all/they all said their prayers/can you hear me up there?”

cinder, of pyrrha: “people assume she’s fated for victory, when she's really taking fate into her own hands. interesting. add her to the list.” & “it’s not about overpowering the enemy; it’s about taking away what power they have.”

<- that second statement is salem’s strategic doctrine, through and through. but the ‘power’ cinder is talking about here is derived through manipulating the perception of destiny; the self-fulfilling prophecy. the invincible girl cannot be touched because she makes subtle adjustments to insure that no one is able to try. it is pyrrha’s belief in destiny that destroys her, as it destroys ozma. ozpin invokes fate to justify and explain his choices. those born with silver eyes are destined to lead the lives of warriors.

summer rose was destined to live and die fighting the grimm – so the world promised her. maybe she believed, maybe she felt like she had no choice but to accept her prescribed fate. until she met salem, and took fate into her own hands. made a choice. broke the chains. it’s about taking away what power they have, like salem did when she tore the scales from summer’s eyes, like summer did when she refused her destiny and joined hands with the grimm instead.

what does summer rose look like through cinder’s eyes? she was a huntress. she was literally destined to be one of the greatest huntresses in history, a hero, the shining pillar upholding the world order that chose the enslavement of children as a fair price for peace. fate dictated that she be the icon, the idol, the embodiment of the system that brutalized and subjugated cinder – she had every privilege cinder could ever dream of, freedom and security and a home, a loving family – and she chose to walk away.

and if they talked about that like, ever, and specifically if summer talked about that warrior’s destiny as a cage, a curse she had to escape – is it any wonder that cinder would adopt that framing to make sense of what happened to her? if summer rose was fated to stand at the pinnacle, then does it not follow that cinder fall was fated to be ground into the foundations? and likewise, if summer rose can shatter her pedestal and fall from grace, then cinder fall can shatter her chains and rise. summer proves that the idea of destiny is powerful but not inviolate. and it is hollow, it is a lie, a fiction, and that means it can be taken away. revealed as a deception. destroyed.

anyway

to the broader question

i think people really, really do not give the jaundice arc enough credit for the long-term set up it’s doing.

(or the very overt textual statement from THE HISTORY PROFESSOR! placing the blame for the violent radicalization of the white fang squarely on human bigotry and persecution of faunus in general; the white fang arc is clunky and hamstrung by the inadequacy of its vocabulary, but the fandom talking point that the narrative perspective on this subject has “evolved” or “improved” is just. not true. v1 is very emphatically clear that 1. terroristic violence is not activism, 2. ascribing the terroristic violence of a few to an entire minority group to rationalize bigotry is bigoted in and of itself and completely unacceptable, and 3. violent radicalization is created through relentless discrimination and hate, which creates a self-reinforcing circle wherein the justifiable outrage of the persecuted outgroup and the extreme violent reactions provoked by the persecution are distorted into a justification for further persecution by those of the in-group who materially benefit from perpetuating this cycle!!! all of this is explained in an almost afterschool special manner by the main character faunus rights activist and the history professor!!! in volume one!!! what changed is that the writers developed the skill and vocabulary necessary to weave these ideas into their storytelling in a more effective and more cogent way!!! literally begging the rwby fandom to start listening to the actual words the characters say)

ahem. the jaundice arc lays so much of the groundwork for jaune’s and ruby’s character arcs reaching all the way to v9 and undoubtedly beyond; it sets up the first pieces of the ozlem fractal; it foreshadows the white fang arc and sets up blake’s character arc of self-reclamation and figuring out how she wants to use her voice as an activist; it draws attention to the misogynistic cultural norms that define and are defined by the history between ozma and salem; it lays the foundation for the scene in v2 where ozpin questions blake, which hits the way it does because we have the context of anti-faunus harassment occurring openly at ozpin’s school and nobody doing anything about it, and by extension is the first stroke of the salem-faunus connection that is almost certainly the keystone holding the entire narrative together because it is her relation to the faunus that provides the key to decipher the lost fable.

the jaundice arc is a crucial load-bearing pillar that supports the entire narrative and people revile it because nobody in this fandom can be fucking normal about jaune. lmao

[zoeykallus]

Hi buddy. I have an idea. You can ignore it if you want to. Can you write the bad batch + rex as the reader's dad? Like how they treat their children, how many offspring they want. That's it. Thank you for your attention. See ya

Aloha!

Well, this is new 😁 Let me see what I can do for you 😊

The Dad Batch x Offspring!Reader HCs

Warnings: None that I could think of. (Let Me know if I missed something)

___________________

Hunter

As soon as he realizes (after Order 66, presumably on Pabuu) that he now has the opportunity to lead a new life, and he finds the right partner, he really likes the idea of having children. In fact, he wants many children, at least four, preferably five or six. So you have a few siblings. Hunter is a very active Dad and likes to take his kids outdoors, camping, fishing, survival training and open fire barbecues. Boys and girls have to go, he makes no exception. For him, this is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with the kids and teach you something in the process. He is fair, he treats all his children equally, although he is always a little more worried about his daughters, which comes automatically and he probably doesn't even realize it. Hunter values his children being able to make their own decisions, within reason, of course. There are rules that you must not break, otherwise you will be punished. He is gentle but also strict when necessary. However, he would never hit his children, not under any circumstances. In his opinion, a parent who has to hit their children to get their point across has failed entirely at being a parent.

Hunter will always openly involve his partner in parenting issues, no one is the good guy or the bad guy here. You all spend a lot of time outdoors, in the woods or by the sea, Hunter hopes that he can pass on his love of nature to you

Echo

He hesitates for quite a while before he really thinks about starting a family. It is only on Pabuu that the thought occurs to him for the first time. Echo is not planning a large family, one child, maybe two. He wants to stay within his means. Children have to be looked after, everything costs credits, and he wants to be able to offer his offspring everything, not just what children like to have, but also what they urgently need. Medical care, education and so on. All of which costs credits and, given the circumstances, it is unlikely that Echo and his brothers will become particularly rich. Echo therefore remains rather sensible in his family planning. He's the Dad who's very good at telling stories, when you first ask him to do it he's unsure at first, but he quickly catches fire for it, disguising his voice to mimic the characters in the story. His evening readings before bedtime are a real highlight, and somehow bedtime isn't so stupid when Daddy Echo is there to read stories.

So you probably only have one sibling, and you are both very loved and well cared for. Echo is overprotective, though, especially when you are young. He keeps a very close eye on what you do, where you go, who you hang out with, what you consume and so on. He makes sure you eat a balanced nutrition and usually cooks for the whole family himself whenever he can. Children often tend to perceive such behavior as sabotage or restrictive, but Echo does it out of pure love and concern for his kids.

Wrecker

Children love him, and he loves children. He is the first of his brothers to think about family and children, even before Hunter. If he finds a partner who will go along with the whole thing, he will have up to twelve children. Some of them adopted. He would love to look after all the children in the world. The giant has a heart that is as big as it is soft. Wrecker is playful and approachable, he will always go out of his way to make time for all his children, play games and visit amusement parks. But he also makes time for serious things and always has an open ear. So you probably have a lot of siblings and things are probably often pretty chaotic, but in Wrecker's house there is not only chaos, but also love and team spirit. It's important to him that you all learn to look out for each other, stand up for each other, be decent and never let anyone treat you badly.

Among your siblings are many adopted children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Wrecker wants to show all his children how good life can be, what there is to discover and learn and what is really important, that you are all loved, without exception.

Tech

You are most likely an only child. He is not only your father, but also your teacher. You're home-schooled, partly because of the Empire and the danger of being discovered. Besides, Tech is sure there is no better teacher than him.

Sometimes Tech has to be slowed down a little by his partner, every now, and then he tends to challenge you too much, but this balances out and Tech is very considerate and adaptable when you point this out to him.

Tech loves to tell stories, but also loves to listen. He is fascinated by seeing the world through your eyes, so he loves to listen to you talk and ask questions, describing things as you see them.

From a very early age, you have your own astromech on which Tech teaches you various things and which accompanies you everywhere. The astromech is practically like a pet and develops its own personality over time, evolving with you and your work on it over the years, so to speak.

Tech is a calm, level-headed representative, but also a protector. He will always look after you, no matter how old you are, you will always be his child and he will always be there when you need him.

Crosshair

You're an only child. Crosshair never really thought about having children, but at some point it happened. Don't worry, it may not have been planned, but Crosshair is getting to know a whole new side of himself through your existence. For him, being a father is like an instinct, his protective instinct, the caring, comes from deep within him. No matter how scared he was when you were born, he is a very proud father. Crosshair teaches you everything he knows, he cares, he protects you. He is very skeptical when you bring new friends home, he scrutinizes everyone and makes most of your friends a little nervous. But he's basically harmless as long as you're treated well. Crosshair likes to take you with him, teach you about things, listen to your stories. You'll hear him grumble now and again, but you'll also see him smirk. Every minute you spend with him is precious to him.

It is important to him that you never let yourself get down and that you don't bow your head to others and make yourself smaller than you are. You are something special, he tells you that again and again. Crosshair is sometimes stoic and can also be quite strict, but never to an exaggerated degree. Your safety is important to him, he doesn't compromise on that.

Rex

You probably have two or three siblings. Rex is as loving as he is strict. It's important to him that his children are decent, so he sets some rules, and he ensures that you follow them. Respect is important, but so is knowing that you have the same right to be treated with respect. Discipline and decency are just as important in his house as love and affection. Rex is an upright soldier, and this is also evident in his role as a father. Rex is not overly strict, but he insists on the rules he has laid down. This includes tidiness, so your rooms will rarely look like a bomb has gone off. Rex makes sure that you put your things away yourself and teaches you to treat your property and that of others with care. He likes to tell stories, makes the typical dad jokes and tries to make you laugh, no matter how often you tell him that his jokes are embarrassing. Rex just grins and already has the next joke on the tip of his tongue. Rex is a provider and a carer, it's in his nature. His children will never want for anything, he will see to that, no matter how difficult that may be at times.

@rintheemolion

@andyoufollowyourheart @clone-whore-99

@brynhildrmimi @kaliel2310

@misogirl828 @tech-deck

@meshla-madalene

@chxpsi

@thebahdbitch

@nahoney22 @ladykatakuri

@darkangel4121

@ttzamara

@arctrooper69

@padawancat97

@agenteliix

@allsystemsblue

@palliateclaw

@either-madness-or-brilliance

@ortizshinkaroff

@andy-solo1

@hunterssecretrecipe

@heyitsaloy

@greaser-wolf

@extrahotpixels

@hated-by-me

@hunterxcrosshair

@malicemercy

@bebopsworld

@echos-girlfriend

@cpnt616

@dangraccoon

@jediknightjana

@pb-jellybeans

@antishadow2021

@sleepycreativewriter

@projectdreamwalker

@1vlouds

[just-castlevania-imagines]

Hi, it's so good to see you guys again. I really missed your fantastic dearly, and I was wondering if you could do a Hector X reader one and how he would react to a very protective reader. Especially after what Carmela and Lenore did to him You can skip if you want anyways have an awesome day.

Oh I adore this. Hector is baby and we must give him lots of love.

Hector x Protective!Reader

When he first meets them he gives them the same general distrust he's always given people. There's a reason why he lived secluded before he met Dracula.

It takes a while for them to earn his trust. He is slowly won over probably by long conversations.

If they like animals it is a bonus. He has a weak spot and that's definitely it.

He doesn't notice that they're protective at first.

When he does, he dislikes it at first. He's been weak for so long. He doesn't need that. He's not naive anymore, he can take care of himself.

It's definitely a recurring argument.

It takes a while for him to realize and accept that the protectiveness doesn't come from them perceiving him as weak.

But out of care for him.

He's not used to it.

He wasn't loved by his parents, his general experiences with others; human or otherwise, have not been good.

So it shocks him.

But overtime he begins to enjoy being protected.

It means someone cares about him enough to.

It's a strange but welcome feeling.

Just don't overdo it. Otherwise he'll get upset again. It's nice being taken care of, but he wants to be independent enough to do it himself.

He feels like he needs to prove to himself he learned from his mistakes.

Being trusted to do it himself, after failing so many times.

So give him space.

But not too much. He learned that being around people isn't so bad.

Well, being around his special person.

-Mod Medusa.

[h-doodles]

BREAKING MY SILENCE!!!

sorry im late but i was spamming one bestie with some more analysis thoughts on the borb while half scrolling through my fyp bc i do curate my experience ya know. BUT YOU GUYS. EVERYONE TAKE SEVERAL STEPS BACK AND A DEEP BREATH.

@oneginn I get your point and your post and I respect that, and I personally apologize for the boundaries that were set off with regards to some of my reblogs! I do recognize romanticizing toxic behaviors is BAD and a point of extreme concern, especially in real life! HOWEVER, at the same time, like you said! exploring and liking the darker themes are a thing, and fundamentally, people expressing their thoughts about it is part of the process, especially when writing about it in fiction. I believe that as long we do recognize the proper warnings AND DO give warnings, it's perfectly sane for people to post whatever in our personal blogs. Not to mention that while fiction has the ability to influence reality, some times fiction IS just fiction, and saying this from a place of love: IT'S NOT ALWAYS THAT DEEP. Sometimes the girlies just want some unhinged absolute gratitious smut, some girlies want the most heart wrenching traumatizing angst, some people want the most rancid and unhealthy parts to see how worse they can go, and some girlies want the soft slice of life absolute peaceful fluff AND that's why fiction is great, it can contain ANYTHING! Of course, it is still important to keep a critical lens on everything we read, but it's also important to keep in mind that it's a space where people can explore their boundaries SAFELY.

@shortstrawberry GIRL. when you said that i couldn't help but agree for a hot moment, bc EVERYONE needs a chill pill. But at the same time the arguement that it's just fiction isn't gonna cut it, bc there are too many flavors of fiction for people NOT to react. Thus, my earlier statements: that Fiction is a safe place to explore one's thoughts, no matter how dark it gets, but at the same time we have the responsibility in learning to recognize that there are still certain critical thinking we MUST do in order to properly handle such things. Not everyone is comfortable in what we create, and thus warnings need be applied. But otherwise, it's free real estate!!!

ALSO ough what anyone writes OR creates doesn't reflect their mental health or mental state!!!!!!!!! please you guys. sometimes exploring the possibilities is just that. EXPLORING. it doesn't mean the creator is a monster or a freak for making it. all content is a piece of artistic rendition, and just because the message is unpalatable to your senses doesnt mean it's garbage, nor of need to be censored. If you don't like it, simply click block and go!!!!!

As for the rest of the reblogs in the respective posts. Y'ALL. you dont WANT to start the kinkshaming discourse. But i'm on the side of NO kink shaming. As long as it's safe, sane, and consensual, who are YOU to judge the people involved? ... Don't forget the roots of the queer community. Our lifestyle was just kink to the majority then, and still is perceived by many conservatives as such. LEARN.

[compacflt]

Hi, big fan of your fics. I've just found your Tumblr and binged everything Icemav-related. When reading about Icemav's political beliefs, I've gotten curious. Does Bradley share the same political beliefs as Ice (and Mav)? Does being raised by them or them pulling his papers influence how he votes? Or there are other factors in the play (e.g. generations, social media)? How about Jake and the other Daggers? How does this young generation of the Navy perceive politics (elections, gender, etc.)? My apologies for bombarding you with questions. But as a non-American, American politics have always been something we must pay attention to. I've seen many interesting interpretations on Tumblr but it feels more or less wistful than realistic, but I might be wrong (again not an American) so I would love to see your perspective on this. Thank you.

a good politics roundup post before i leave this blog

icemav & their conservatism: here, here, here

ice’s NECESSARY conservatism as commander of the pacific fleet (i.e. officers who are most likely to get promoted to the highest ranks do NOT break the service line when it comes to domestic politics, so by necessity ice would’ve had to keep his mouth shut, he Cannot be both a four-star and a revolutionary, like he just can’t; and being a revolutionary is otherwise antithetical to his character anyway): here, here.

and the original “ice & mav politics post” which is being updated here: here

I’ve gone back and forth on everyones politics over the last year of me being involved with these characters, but let me just tell you where I’ve ended up headcanoning them politically, if ur interested

ice: reagan democrat. “educated moderate” who was more right-leaning pre-9/11. now just a regular ol liberal (did you SEE those gay little round glasses in tgm? no way this guy isn’t a straight-up lib) with absolutely no strong feelings about most domestic politics besides “fascism bad”. Has some foreign policy opinions that areeeee questionable at best, like all members of the military elite (hangman voice: DO NOT ASK ICEMAN ABOUT CHINA. WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE). foreign policy neoliberal favoring the dovish side of the spectrum. A force conservator (“let’s save our military assets [read: my boyfriend maverick 🥺] for when we really need them, not for any old conflict. the deterring specter of the American war machine should outweigh the risk of underperforming”). He’s in favor of marriage equality of course, but treats it like a privilege and not a right. would be sad/upset if it got repealed but wouldn’t necessarily fight for it. “well at least my marriage will always be legal in california so i just won’t leave, problem solved.” Normie median Biden voter.

mav: political wildcard tbh. original 1986 mav is DEFINITELY right-leaning (i think i’ve written elsewhere, “he fully believes bill clinton is an affront to god”). i get young republican vibes from him. Full on patriotic (but dispassionate) 1980s reaganite anti-commie neoconservative. but after the 2010s i am very confused tbh. Tom cruise’s political aura is an insanely confusing one. idk. No matter what, Mav has some Hot Takes that a.) can immediately be shot down by ice using Facts and Logic at any time and b.) are not strictly partisan. He’s registered democrat just to support marriage equality (his marriage is his top priority but he doesn’t care about Other gays’ marriages, only his own), doesn’t care about any of the party’s other lines. Votes however ice tells him to. I get real “kind clueless libertarian” vibes from 2022 maverick tbh. Especially with the “isolating himself in a hangar in the middle of the mojave desert.” that has a political connotation to it for sure. bro just does whatever he wants out there

also, ice & mav live in San Diego, which… while in blue/democrat leaning California…is famously a bastion of right-wingers & has a hitler particle level off the charts… (sorry its not my favorite place in the world). That’s why they’re both continually so disgusted by San Francisco (a metonym for effete liberal homosexuality). Theyre from San Diego, hatred of SF & liberal SF politics is kinda par for the course down there.

Bradley: as u will see in the extras i definitely hc Bradley as an activist, but because he’s… in the navy and also like in his 30s… It’s not college campus activism, it’s just “things all of us in the left wing can agree upon” activism. so, like, BLM or pride, etc. He’s an “in this house we believe” yard sign liberal. He is 38 years old. hes a solid millennial so not politically hip with the kids (me)

Bradley & ice/mav disagree on the VISIBILITY of politics. Ice & mav, who did live through the vietnam era draft/near-dissolution of American society in the 60s and 70s, are not in favor of possibly losing their job/honor they have fought and killed for, for the sake of a political statement. And they believe their relationship IS a political statement, whereas Bradley would rather encourage them to treat their relationship like, I don’t know, a relationship that has a right to exist independent of politics!

Jake and the other daggers: idk. i don’t really give a shit about the daggers sorry. They r blank slates 2 me. jake especially is canonically frat-boy sexist in a way that gives me the heebs, much like original 1986 maverick and ice. But the navy tends to be the most left-wing (or thought of as left wing in common thought) service of the military, if that helps. But it is also the most traditional service of the military, and by traditional I mean BRITISH!!!! 🇬🇧💂there’s so much pomp and circumstance and hoity-toitiness that comes from the navy’s origins in the Royal Navy. A lot of sticking to outdated tradition in the very fabric of the navy itself, while the navy’s enlisted demographics shift younger and more left-wing/“revolutionary…” some interesting conflicts there. Like that one sailor who got blasted by multiple congressmen on social media for (with permission!) reading a poem about their queer identity on the USS Gerald ford’s intercom a few months back, if I remember correctly. Hoo boy the Takes that day were wild. Younger Americans tend to be more liberal but YMMV with officers, who are by nature trying to uphold outdated traditions of the navy for the sake of keeping the navy a unified service

i am of course writing carole as a christian republican who has gay friends and a gay kid not by choice but by the Grace of God

[zeracanule]

I am not THAT pale...

There's gotta be some neurological brain thing pertaining to teeth whiteness and the whites of the eyes.

Also realizing. I think part of my issue is that neurologic recognition, from an early age, even if I transitioned I wouldn't be pale-ass petite.

So it's like... I could never pull off a certain brand of femme fatales.

So then what even is the point of transitioning.

Where as like. My mom, being my mom, was able to pull off the tomboy personality for years.

And that's why... you must eat your father.

"Bless me, with the, leaf off of a tree, on it, I see, the freedome reign"

... they had a house meeting today. Rather bitchy because I got woken up at 10:30. And so like. You know how your dreams after affected by how you get woken. Or like... it's like the dream actually happens in the split second of awakening and I'd just your unconscious suddenly processing all the information so as to perceive reality.

Well. I had a half-nightmare about failing at college. And having to go to a class I failed. And all that. And a bit of flying around campus/gliding.

But like. Shit dawg. If I could have just slept another few hours. Or something. I dunno.

Realized that the guy I was living around in Vegas was named Sean. And Sean is a diminutive of the French name Jean. And my mom's middle name is Jean.

And like. Another one of those "reality isn't real" blah blah blah situations.

Was nice not being asked how my day was by the liquor store guy. I think after I come int he third day in a row he realizes I'm not on some depressive binder. I'm just on autopilot.

If I could I'd be autopiloting myself to minecraft. But apparently the other part of my brain doesn't perceive the whole uh... like. Calories... of beer.

"Oh, he's depressed, maybe he'll want to go out, buy some beers, and be social."

And I'm like

No, no, I'm just doing this because otherwise you'd nag at me for a few hours.

And then there's the other voice which is like "hey, why don't you go unalive your former housemate."

And I'm like fuuuuccckkk offff, but then like at nighttime that voice turns into the faux-adult voice saying it's trying to teach me how to hold in my need to use the restroom so that I can get a job and all that.

And I'm like. Shit.

Brain grumpiness. Cheddar chicken rollers from Del Taco. Extra yummy. Creamy ranch. Mmm good.

Mild grumpiness because I am currently low on youtube videos to watch. Started up a new series again but the 1st season only has 10 episodes. And I think the 2nd season has some 20-ish episodes. But when I watched the other podcast they did which was 59 episodes I had a LOOOONNNGGG hiatus at around 40-ish episodes and didn't watch it for a year.

And like. I think my brain is trying to pace myself with episodes again.

Apparently my eldest niece is into D&D. Super cool. Sort of funny that my sister is getting that going. She used to be really good at story telling.

I'm just a world building idea farm.

>_> and then a decade goes by and I realize "oh, this was a reflection of blank" or such and such. But hey, almost a decade of having an idea be unabashedly mine. Or something. Need to drink more water.

Had a period of adding drink flavor stuff. But then it felt kinda funky drinking it.

And then started up vege drinks. And back on mid-range caffeinated drinks.

But needing to check an article I saw on artificial sweeteners being bad for the brain. Saw another before which mentioned differing levels of depression depending on type of sugar/sweetener intake.

Just all seems relevant because after I went to inpatient I met a dude who mentioned being "bored of water."

-contemplative cat reading newspaper- "I should buy a Juul."

[aiamthegreatest]

⠀⠀⠀⠀𓉸 ᷒ ᷭ Counting Crows: Feathers of Sorrow.

Fairy tales are the backbone of romance, the root of the gentlemanly-prince idealism, the dream in our wishful thinking. And in every story comes a man who's attractive enough to overlook all the cracks of morality, like foible is how they treat it. So when Aurora got kissed in her sleep— four years apart, such a minority, I'd say— Irony! Snow, as white as her name and as fragile, too, both in body and mind. Double her age on show so people won't find it too grotesque. Their promise of forever is like a grotto, an artificial whimsical dopamine-injected serotonin with the hidden description of lust-induced none of the packages indicated. Thus, creating a notion of love to a girl whose innocence should be enjoyed and youth to prosper— Do not say otherwise.

Pillars of salt in a world woven by tales and founded by fiction where the bad guy is very simple to spot, with their plans and deeds that seems easy to guess; waves of the unspoken truth and untold histories crashes the stanchions revealing that the villains were just victims of the very same prince they are hailing as heroes but everyone closes the book before it can even start the narrative of eye-witnesses. The castle he spoke of in arrogance turns out to be just another house of cards with exaggerated promises of a forever that only he will be the center of written in each tarot, a deck with multiple visible erasures on the receiver's name. How gullible they perceive princesses to be, to use the same stack of papers multiple times for different women with an assurance that no one will refuse such offerings even a God of man-kind— a man they are alike would kick in the teeth.

Now that the days have sharpened the years, the tales these fairies groomed turn out to be the beauty and the buyer to those who have experienced another romance by the same script— a literature we study, worship, and set as the ideal made women as art they can fuck, a gift they couldn't wait to unwrapped, a candy everyone must have a taste of, a dish must serve with the milk of the moon, a receiver who cannot choose but only gets and received.

So let's clarify the situation. A wife, whore, mistress, and mother wouldn't make much of a difference in the streets for they are all women who are asking for it for the two-legged no-alien non-aligned morale men despite the resistance. There's no lamb, there's no wolf, there's no bear when there's men who prefer screaming women. A flower for the men they all could've been if only they didn't choose to become a monster. And cheers to every monster worth more than a man now because they just replaced the visage of one.

© Caoikå.

[lightcreators]

@vernorexiiia continue from here

proserpina giggles , her head still leaned against hades' back . “ they've always been this way . ”

especially teenagers , & the children of gods no less . it was no easy task being stuck in the in-betweens , whether the ages of development or in the thralls of whatever the gods had going on . what a pain ...

“ does something ail the boy ? ” she aks , brushing her forehead against the other like a cat . “ should i talk with him ... ? ”

Each  time  he  was  complaining  about  one  of  kids  that he  represented  the  parental  figure,  it  involved  Deimos,  it  involved  the  Witch  of  Illusions  ---  regardless  if  he  willingly  didn't  precised  that  single  detail.  Around  Lelouch  vi  Britannia,  dealing  with  anything  that  kid  could  have  imagined  as  new  manner  to  mess  up  with  them,  had  becoming  one  of  their  common  usual  conversation  between  them.  After  all,  that  Emperor  couldn't  fantom  to  having  an  mere  clue  he  was  dealing  with  one  of  Ares  children  unknowingly,  in  which  meaning  of  his  actions  generated  consequences  beyond  anything  he  could  have  imagined,  in  which,  as  much  he  would  hope  somewhere  Deimos  would  behave  normally  for  one  second,  he  would  need  to  buried  deep  inside  his  mind  all  the  dreamy  things  he  would  want  for  him.  Otherwise,  this  kid  wouldn't  have  a  reputation  for  being  so  agitated  !  Connotation  upon  an  kid  consideration  would  always  been  the  clue  he  was  speaking  about  that  particular  adoptive  children.  Concerning  his  future  emotional  son  that  will  giving  him  another  around  of  worries  ?  He  was  attempting  an  nice  foreshadowing  and  anticipation  of the situation !

There  was  an  moment  in  which  he  hesitated  to  agreed  upon  that  sentence.  Zagreus  has  made  his  personal  share  of  trouble,  nevertheless,  looking  back,  has  been  enough  understanding  concerning  his  father,  and  only  wished  tasting  his  own  freedom.  Melione  was  close  to  him,  and  Macaria  appreciated  everything  she  learned  with  his  closeness  with  Thanatos  for  presenting  herself  as  another  coin  of  the  miroir.  These  children  wandering  around  the  big  universe,  nevertheless,  never  has  been  perceived  or  been  informed  of  something  in  which  he  looked  at  them  with  disbelief.  It  was  the  future  concerning  Nico,  hence  as  much  he  would  be  difficult  at  times  ---  he  would  have  given  enough  in  this  area  with  Deimos,  theoretically  he  should  be  prepared  to  endure  everything  emotionally  !  He  hadn't  yet  touched  those  hundred  years  of  additional  experience  to  which  he  would  be  born,  where  he  expected  to  do  well  beyond  that.  ❝   I  feel  less  like  my  kids  were  reacting  like  the  kid.  ❞  He  bounced  back  indeed,  in  which  the  manner  he  exposed  that  term  as  first  approach  was  indication  concerning  his  divine  children.  Physical  comfort  remained  appreciated.  Decomposed  look  of  his  features  must  be  something  amusing  for  her.  ❝   There's  always  something  wrong  with  the  kid,  otherwise  he  wouldn't  be  the  kid.  ❞  He  admitted.  ❝   Oh,  you  can  try  talking  to  him.  He  listens  to  me  whenever  he  wants.  ❞  It  was  more  complicated  than  that,  but  he  avoided  constant  reminder  of  being  biggest  bad  guy  inside a  story,  of  being  a  horrible  villain  who  had  planned  circumstances  of  this  chessboard.  Lelouch  half-heartedly  despised  his  little  game  of  manipulation  although  he  understood  his  own  reasons,  and  he  had  a  magnificent  grudge  from  the  concerned  kid  that  Alice  must  be  in  angels  to  reflect  such  a  desire  for  revenge  without  having  to  make  slightest  effort,  that  distant  memory  that  he  was  final  boss  somewhere  bored him terribly.

He was just a lovely dad who did his best to spoil his kids.

[palant1r]

There are so many fascinating interpretations of light's cannonball into immorality but i have no friends to talk about it with 😭 so why do u think light went so evil so quick? one of my fave interpretations is that, even tho light spoke a bit on how he thought the world was rotten, his ideology was a retroactive justification for killing ppl using the notebook and that his first two kills were actually just him being "bored" and everything grew from there

Man, okay. I have a confession to make: one of the reasons I find Light so fascinating is that I really see myself in him — we just went down uh. VERY different paths. So maybe I'm projecting a bit, but I find his cannonball both understandable and deeply sad, while simultaneously inexcusable and thoughtless. Here goes:

I think that Light has always been someone who is extremely concerned with being Good. His greatest fear is being Bad. Not to personality type him, but he is the quintessential enneagram type one. He holds a deep amount of anger at perceived injustice, and because he needs to be Good, that anger becomes righteous. The thing is, when people are terrified of being anything but Good, that doesn't actually make them do good things. It makes them justify anything they do as good, and makes them completely unwilling to question their own worldviews because the idea of accidentally discovering they've been Bad is too painful to bear. (Like how, when Ryuk says Light would be the only bad person left, Light pulls out some non sequitur and refuses to even engage with that possibility). Another thing is, Light Yagami finds the Death Note when he's in high school. Maybe if he'd found the Death Note later, he wouldn't have gone full Kira mode. But he found the Death Note at a time in his life when he was starting to come up with his own rigid and righteous moral code without the experience to incorporate nuance. Another thing: his dad is a cop, and as I've discussed, he clearly gets his moral code from his dad but with even MORE anxiety about Doing a Bad.

So he finds the Death Note. And he kills the dude who took those hostages. I think he was just being a stupid teenager here, acting impulsively but convincing himself he was being Big Brained. Remember, cop dad: he believes that Crime is a thing that must be Punished, and that Punishment is a Moral Good. It has to be, otherwise his dad and him by extension are Bad, and that is simply unacceptable. After that, I don't think Light was thinking beyond immediate practicalities — the weight of what he'd done hadn't set in yet. He had to confirm the Death Note's power, because Light is ALSO someone who really needs certainty and control. So he kills that one attempted rapist.

And THEN what he's done sets in. We see Light have a mental breakdown, stare the slippery slope in the face, and then immediately decide to grab a sled.

Here's what I think happened. When he realized what he'd done, Light was left with two possibilities. The first was to admit to himself that he was a murderer — that he had done a Bad Thing, and for Light, doing a Bad Thing is totally indistinguishable from being intrinsically, ontologically Bad. This was obviously too painful. So he went with option two: in order to preserve his own self-image as a Good Person, he retroactively justified his actions as Good. This was made easier by the cop morality poison, since under that framework, punishing evil makes people good. After all, there was no doubt a riot team ready to move in on that daycare who might have killed that guy anyway.

Of course, once he'd done that, he couldn't stop there. Light is also a responsible, dutiful person. Because he'd mentally framed his killings as a heroic and necessary act for the sake of self-preservation, continuing his "cleansing" became not just morally neutral but a moral duty. One that he had to continue in order to preserve his self-image of a Good Person. It's a self deluding feedback loop where his actions are good because he is good, and he is good because his actions are good. Light has absolutely no moral self-awareness because that would force him to confront the most painful truth he could possibly acknowledge. His view of ethics is mind-numbingly, braindead-ly simple (baby's first deterrence theory) (someone get Hobbes on the line, this bitch is trying to be the Leviathan) because it's never meant to be a coherent philosophy in the first place — it's a self-justifying defense mechanism.

It's like...so sad to me. Because I see in Light Yagami the potential for an actual well-adjusted person — he wasn't doomed to turn out like this. As much as we clown, without the Death Note I don't think he'd become the Unabomber. He clearly wants to be a good person! But the Death Note didn't "control" or "corrupt" him, either. It just gave him absolute power to carry out an extreme ideology driven by his police upbringing and moral anxiety at a time when he did not have the experience to pump the brakes.

[flightfoot]

Lingering Trauma

(A/N) So I came up with the premise for this fic back when Hack-san first aired, but didn't want to write it because well, salters were screaming that Adrien was an attempted murderer who should be arrested and thrown in prison. Which uh... no. I waited until that had calmed down before starting on this. I just really wanted to put Alya through some trauma so that I had an excuse to focus on her thoughts and emotions, and her almost being Cataclysmed seemed like a good catalyst for that. Though I also ended up exploring Adrien's feelings quite a bit as well.

Adrien, Alya, and Marinette are all good kids who care about each other a lot and hate to hurt people, but sometimes it happens unintentionally, like with what this fic is sorting out. Luckily, they can also talk things out and get to a good place again! With hugs. Hugs are mandatory.

Oh yeah, I always intended to release this fic after whatever the newest episode after "Multiplication" ended up being. The fact that "Destruction" touches on some similar themes to this fic is fortuitous, but purely coincidental. I finished writing this fic months ago.

AO3

-----

“There’s only one Ladybug, which means you can only be… a sentimonster or an akuma!” Chat Noir took out his staff, spinning it around and aiming it at Scarabella.

Her mind raced, trying to come up with some way out of this situation. Dammit, she’d assumed that Marinette had given Chat some form of heads-up about her, but it must have slipped her mind. She had seemed to be in a hurry at the train station, she probably didn’t have time to consider her partner’s reaction to someone else showing up wearing the Ladybug Miraculous.

She held up her hands placatingly, hoping to assuage the angry catboy. “Woah, wait, I’m not a bad guy, I promise!”

“Liar! What have you done to M’lady?!” he geared up, hitting her across the midsection, sending her flying into a nearby chimney stack.

Right. She’d always loved watching clips of Ladybug and Chat Noir being super protective of each other, but being the one perceived as a threat to their partner’s safety? Not so much. “It’s not what you think! She trusted me with it!” Crap, what could she do to convince him she was telling the truth?! It’s not like she had a sworn affidavit from Ladybug proclaiming Scarabella to be her appointed substitute!

“She’d never do that without telling me! CATACLYSM!”

FUCK.

“LUCKY CHAR–”

She didn’t get the words out in time. 

Stumbling back, she stared at her hands as her suit slowly lost its luster, turning ash-black. Her fingers lost feeling, crumbling into dust before her eyes. As the corruption slowly spread down her arms, she fought to scream. Even that grew beyond her, the destruction reaching her chest, silencing her voice.

All she could do was watch as her body fell to pieces, until the last piece of her was gone.

------

Alya woke up gasping. Fumbling blindly for the light switch, she felt along the wall of her room until she finally found it, flicking the switch.

As light flooded the room, she looked down at her hands.

They were intact.

She let out a deep breath. Of course they were. She wouldn’t have been able to turn on the light otherwise. 

Everything was fine. She’d gotten the Lucky Charm up in time, fended off Chat, and persuaded him she was one of the good guys. Heck, they’d even had fun together near the end, posing and joking together during the museum fight! Things worked out in the end.

So why were her hands still shaking?

Right. She just needed to get her mind off this for a bit. Once her brain had time to calm down, she’d try to sleep again. 

Setting her silk nightcap to the side, she pulled out her desk chair, waking her computer up.

Let’s see… maybe working on one of her articles for the Ladyblog would make her feel better. Even if it didn’t, at least she’d have something to show for her lack of sleep. 

Not something with Scarabella yet – she’d need to wait for her readers to submit videos of the fight, or petition the city to give her surveillance footage of her debut. It’d take a long time to comb through the videos, cut them together in an appealing way, and add her own commentary to it. Definitely something she needed to do, but not a task she wanted to undertake at 4 am on a school day.

What about the article she’d been working on before Marinette called her up? What was it again?

Frowning, she looked at her most recent docs. “Top Ten Most Inventive Uses Of Catacly-”

Abruptly she pushed away from her computer. Right. That was enough of that for today. 

Sighing, she eyed her bookshelf. What would be helpful for making her feel better…

Her vision caught on a thin, tall book with a red, yellow, and blue spine. 

Smiling, she put on her glasses. Majestia comics always helped her feel better. Her daring rescues, her interventionist philosophy, her steadfast belief that anyone could make a difference in the world - it always electrified her imagination, even back when she was a young child. Sometimes you couldn’t fix everything right away, but so long as you kept persisting, things would get better. 

Opening the book, she let herself get sucked into the adventures of her second favorite superheroine.

-----

“...Alya?” she heard Marinette ask.

Alya groaned, her head married to her desk

“Alya!”

“Is there an akuma attack?” she asked Marinette blearily.

“No, but-”

“Then NAP.”

“You’re gonna hurt your neck if you sleep like this!” her friend fussed.

“At least then I’ll sleep,” Alya muttered.

“Alya, what’s wrong?” Alya still couldn’t see Marinette’s face since her head was face down on her desk, but she could hear the concern in her friend’s voice. “Usually I’m the one coming in here half-asleep, because– well, you know why. You’re the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed one. Did something happen?”

“I–” she hesitated. “It’s nothing, really. Just some nightmares. Everything went fine.”

Marinette gently laid a hand on Alya’s arm. “If it’s keeping you up, then it’s not nothing,” she said quietly.

Would talking about it with Marinette even help anything? There wasn’t anything to change or fix, nothing bad had actually happened. She just needed to calm herself down, get her brain to realize that.

Turning her head to the side, she caught a glimpse of Marinette’s worried expression, her eyebrows drawn together as she gave Alya a small frown.

That sealed it. She still wasn’t sure whether talking to Marinette would help lessen her anxiety, but it’d help with her friend’s worries at least. It was worth a try. “Alright. But we need to talk about it at your place, not here.”

Marinette’s frown deepened, but she nodded. “First, though–” she rummaged around in her backpack, pulling out a U-shaped pillow. “Here. If you’re gonna sleep in class, at least lean back and use this. It’ll be more comfortable and less likely to cause problems.”

Alya took the pillow, settling it over her shoulders. “Should I ask why you have this stuffed in your backpack?” 

Marinette blushed. “Well, you know how little sleep I sometimes get. I figured it was better to prepare for a class nap than to just pretend I’d never need one.”

Alya chuckled. “Fair enough.” 

She laid her head against the soft pillow, absently noting the fine craftsmanship as she drifted off. “Oh, and Marinette? Thanks.”

“It’s the least I could do…” was the last thing Alya heard, before she drifted off to sleep.

-----

Alya settled down in Marinette’s room during lunch break, feeling a little less like a member of the walking dead than she had that morning. Thankfully Ms. Bustier let her sleep. She didn’t normally like her students sleeping in class, but she recognized that if they were tired enough that they were conking out on wooden furniture, they weren’t gonna learn anything anyway. 

She smiled, watching the little kwamis flitting around, Daizzi happily drawing on a piece of paper in one corner, Sass arranging a game of red light, green light in another. At least they were having a good time.

“So what’s going on?” Marinette asked, her chin on her hands. “I heard you muttering while you were napping, you didn’t seem to be getting good sleep, even during class.”

Alya looked away. Her dreams weren’t as vivid as earlier, but they still weren’t entirely peaceful. “How much do you know about what happened during Robostus’s attack? About my team-up with Chat?”

Marinette blinked, frowning. “Not much, just what you told me. I mostly rely on the Ladyblog for superhero-related news, and you haven’t posted much about it. I was actually gonna ask you about that, I’d expected you to have an article up about the ‘new hero’” she made air-quotes with her fingers, “and I wasn’t sure why there was such a delay. It’s not like you.”

Alya let out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, the team-up… it went well near the end, Chat was fun to banter with and was good at following my lead, even when we weren’t able to discuss a plan ahead of time, but… it didn’t start out like that.”

Marinette cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean? I know you said that he was put-out that I’d told someone else my identity without informing him, that he felt like I’d been pushing him out of the loop, but we talked it through, and I think we’re okay now.”

“‘Put out’ is one term for it,” she replied. “Marinette, if, out of nowhere, a new Black Cat wielder appeared with no word of warning from Chat Noir, what would be your first assumption as to how this new Black Cat acquired the ring?”

“Well… hm. Chat wouldn’t tell his identity to anyone but me,” Marinette muttered, looking down in concentration, “so if someone else had his ring, then either he lost the ring and Plagg found someone else to use his Miraculous– wait, no, something like that’s happened before, Plagg just went and hung out at Fu’s. So he’d probably just take the ring to me. Which means that, if someone else had the Black Cat Miraculous, they probably stole it from Chat!”

Her face fell. “Wait… did Chat make that assumption too?”

Alya nodded. “I told him that you entrusted your Miraculous to me, but he couldn’t believe that you’d give your earrings to someone else without telling him, so…”

“So he assumed you must’ve gotten them through nefarious means,” Marinette concluded. “And if I hadn’t tried to contact him in some way about the theft, like by wearing my motorcycle outfit and waving him down, then–”

She froze. “Alya,” she said slowly, “did Chat Noir think that you’d hurt me so badly that I couldn’t get in touch with him?”

Alya nodded.

Marinette groaned, burying her face in one of her pillows. “He attacked you, didn’t he.” her muffled voice said. It wasn’t a question.

Alya nodded, before remembering that Marinette still had her head down. “I did persuade him I was one of the good guys, but it took me kicking his ass and pointing out that I could steal his ring, and choosing not to do so. Which he accepted, thankfully. But before that…” she trailed off, thinking back to the inky blackness that’d spread over her Lucky Charm as Chat destroyed it.

Marinette turned her face to the side to look at Alya. “Is that why you’ve been having trouble sleeping? Because of that fight?”

Biting her lip, Alya nodded. “I know why he thought I was a villain. Heck, if I’d been in his shoes, I’d probably have thought the same thing, been just as angry and scared about what’d happened to you. He found out I hadn’t hurt you and everything was fine. But when I see him using Cataclysm, think about what could’ve happened if just one small thing had gone differently–” she shuddered. The only living beings she’d ever seen Cataclysm used on were Sentimonsters. But they weren’t exactly regular creatures. If people were affected the same way that inanimate objects were…

She shook her head. No need to continue that line of thought, her nightmares had done that plenty.

Marinette looked away. “I– I know the feeling. I’ve had to face Chat a few times before. It’s never been pleasant fighting him. Especially–” a shadow crossed her face. “Never mind. Let’s just concentrate on you right now.”

Sounded like Marinette was leaving something out. “You can talk about it, you know. I don’t need to be the only one spilling my guts.”

Marinette shook her head resolutely. “It will never happen, I made sure of it. I don’t want to think about it.”

Alya frowned, but didn’t pursue the subject, filing it away for later instead. “If you’re sure. Anyway, that’s why I wasn’t sure about talking about it. I don’t see what can be done to help, except just… try to get over it.”

Humming to herself, Marinette looked around her room, her eyebrows drawing together. She climbed down her ladder, approaching the Miracle Box.

Alya hurried after her. “Marinette? What’re you doing?”

“Something I should’ve been doing more of since I became Guardian: sitting down and talking with my partner,” she lifted the box out, looking at each Miraculous symbol. “Hey Pollen, you up for a quick jaunt with Alya?” she called out. 

“Of course, my Guardian,” Pollen said, flitting over to Alya.

“Oh no you don’t!” Trixx protested, flying in front of her Holder. “Alya’s my Holder, mine! Bad enough I had to share with Tikki for a day, I’m not sharing with you too, I’ve got dibs! Besides, you already have a wielder, you just don’t get to be with her all the time like I do.”

Marinette let out an exasperated sigh. “Trixx, Rena has to remain hidden at all times, Alya can’t use you publicly.” 

Trixx opened his mouth, but Marinette barreled onwards. “And I know that you could cloak her in an illusion, but it’d only last five minutes and could be dispelled way too easily. It’s safer for this if she just uses a different kwami for this occasion. I promise that it’s temporary, and you’ll still be the one staying with Alya permanently.”

“What’re you talking about?” Alya asked. Sometimes Marinette forgot that not everyone was privileged with knowing how her thought process worked, and you had to get her to slow down and actually explain what she was doing and why. She’d become adept at it over the past school year. “I thought you said you were the one talking with him?”

“You and me,” Marinette clarified. “This whole issue arose through miscommunication, so maybe some better communication can help fix it.”

That… wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Though she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter much what she thought of it either way. Once Marinette had seized on a solution to a problem, she pursued it with a single-minded determination that both impressed and scared her. “Just make sure to let Chat know I’m coming this time.”

Marinette nodded, handing over the Bee Miraculous to her. “The transformation phrase is ‘Buzz on’.”

Taking the comb, Alya let out a slow breath. She didn’t know whether this would help, but– “Pollen, Buzz On!”

-----

Alya leapt across buildings, savoring the acceleration as she jumped, the exhilaration as gravity took hold of her and she fell back to earth, and the joy as she leapt once again. She giggled, unable to contain herself. As Rena she’d had to keep a low profile recently, and as Scarabella she’d had a villain to get to, but now? As Apidae? She could savor the abilities the Miraculous gave her.

A giggle escaped from Ladybug as she bounded, leaped, and swung alongside her. “Having fun?”

“You know it!” Alya said, indulging in a completely unnecessary (though oh-so-fun) double front flip, smoothly transitioning back into a run when she landed.

Ladybug’s expression softened. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I was hoping a run would help, before-”

“Before we talk to Chat Noir,” Alya said, voice dropping a little. Normally she’d look forward to seeing the catboy, and part of her still did, but… with how she’d been reacting to any reminder of Cataclysm, she was afraid of what would happen when she met up with him again. 

Still. Marinette was right. She needed to talk to him, to attempt some sort of closure. She didn’t want to be afraid of watching the heroes’ fights, for fear of getting flashbacks. Maybe this would help, maybe it wouldn’t. But it was worth a shot. 

Rounding a corner, a flash of black caught her attention. Chat Noir’s ears perked up as he turned to face her.

Not for the first time, she wondered whether his senses improved as Chat Noir. She hadn’t noticed anything like that while she’d been transformed as Rena Rouge (or Rena Furtive nowadays), but then again, Chat Noir had always embodied the animal he represented more than most other Miraculous wielders did. No one else had a tail or ears that responded to their mood, after all. Seriously, that was a crime. She wanted to be able to wag her tail, dammit! And if Carapace had a tail of his own…

Nope. Not the time. She could think about how cute it would be to make her boyfriend blush in the suit, his tail betraying his feelings, later. This meeting was dedicated to something far less fun.

“Milady! And…?” he trailed off, looking at Alya.

“Apidae,” she supplied. “Though you know me as Scarabella.”

He nodded. “She did say that you would be using a different Miraculous.” Chat gave a mischievous smile. “You look bee-autiful, by the way.” 

She laughed. “Thanks, but I already have a boyfriend.” 

He shrugged, unbothered. “I only have one Lady in my life, anyway.” He tilted his head to the side. “So, what did you need to talk to me about? It’s great seeing you again, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t sound like this was just a social call.”

That sobered her. She hated the idea of wiping the smile off of his face, but she was sure he’d be even more upset if he found out what she’d been going through, and that she hadn’t told him about it. He’d been kept out of the loop enough already. “I- I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I keep having nightmares. Getting flashbacks.”

He frowned. “Nightmares? Flashbacks? Why…” His eyes widened. “Is- is it because of something I did?” he asked hesitantly.

She drew in a breath, closed her eyes, and nodded.

“What is it? How- how did I hurt you?” His voice took on a strained tone.

“Do you remember when you first encountered me? How you thought I was a villain?” she asked softly.

He blinked. “Yeah, I thought you’d hurt Ladybug and stolen her earrings, so I-” His breath hitched. “So I… I tried to… to Cataclysm you… Oh. That’s- that’s why, isn’t it?”

She looked away to avoid seeing his face. If she kept looking at his devastated, kicked-kitty expression, she wouldn’t be able to finish describing her feelings. She needed to put this out there. “I had a nightmare last night where I didn’t get my Lucky Charm up in time. I slowly watched the corruption eat away at my body, until I crumbled into nothingness. I couldn’t get to sleep again for the rest of the night. Any mention of Cataclysm started to bring back those memories, the idea of ‘what-if?’” She took in a deep breath, centering herself. “Ladybug suggested I talk with you, see whether that would help me… I dunno, come to terms with it? 

“I- I didn’t know- I’m sorry, I-” his voice cracked. “I never wanted to hurt another person with my Cataclysm. Not again.”

“Again?” She’d never heard of Chat Cataclysming a person before. Sentimonsters a few times by accident, sure, and there was that one time Volpina faked him Cataclysming himself, but that was it. He only ever intentionally Cataclysmed non-living objects. 

He winced. “You know Uncanny Valley?”

“Of course I do!” she was one of Majestia’s biggest fans, she could hardly call herself that if she didn’t know about her daughter. “What does that have to do with… oh no. No, what happened?”

Ladybug put her hand on Chat’s shoulder. “Do you want to tell the story, or would you prefer I tell it, kitty?” she asked softly. 

He hesitated for a moment. “You tell it,” he finally said. “I don’t feel up to it right now.”

She nodded, turning to Alya. “During the fight with Techlonizer, the villain managed to grab Chat while he was distracted and whip him around so fast he wasn’t able to stop his momentum. He let Chat go when he was aimed right at me, with Cataclysm active in his hand. I wasn’t able to dodge in time. But Uncanny Valley saw what was happening, and took the blow instead.”

“I gave up the ring back then,” Chat said, fiddling with it. “I didn’t want to risk harming anyone like that ever again.” He let out a sigh. “But it happened again. I hurt you.”

Nope, she wasn’t letting him continue down this train of thought. It’d hurt both Marinette and Chat, compromise the fight against Shadow Moth, and would only make Alya feel worse than she did right now.

“Like I said back then, I don’t know that I can be Ladybug without you,” Ladybug said sharply, a tinge of panic in her otherwise firm voice. “I don’t want to have to find out, either.”

“Running away isn’t the answer,” Alya said. “The mistakes you made, the accidents that occurred… they could happen to any Black Cat. Hell, even Ladybug ended up making a sentimonster run amok-” she winced at the unintentional pun, but barrelled onwards “-when she was Lady Noire. We need to figure out a way to deal with stuff like this when it happens, not give up. That doesn’t fix anything.”

Chat looked down. “Do you have any suggestions? I- I’m just afraid I’ll mess something up again, if I try to come up with an idea.”

That would be tricky. It’s not like he was hitting the wrong targets on purpose. During the heat of battle, tempers ran high, and accidents happened. 

Still. There were some things they could try.

“What if you only called Cataclysm when you had a good idea what you’d use it for?” she suggested. “And tried not to use it unless you actually needed it, either. I’ve looked through a lot of the Ladyblog’s footage of your fights in the past-” very recently in fact, since she had been working on her Top Ten list for best Cataclysm uses, “-and over half the time, you just use it to break an akumatized object that would’ve been destroyed just as easily by snapping it with your hands, or stomping it on the ground. It’d also reduce the time pressure on you, since you wouldn’t be at risk of transforming back.”

“..Huh,” Ladybug said, a thoughtful expression on her face. “You know, that could work. There’d be some risk in it - it takes a second to prepare a Cataclysm, so if you only called it right before you were gonna use it, you’d risk getting interrupted - but it might be worth it.” She looked at her partner. “What do you think? It’s your call. If you think it won’t work or you just don’t want to do it, we’ll drop it. You’re the one who uses the power all the time. You’d have the best grasp of how feasible this is.”

Chat looked down, his eyebrows bunching up in concentration as he closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and smiled. “You know? I think that might work. And if it might reduce the danger of Cataclysming something- someone- I didn’t mean to…” he looked down at his right hand. “I just don’t want to hurt people.”

“I think anyone who’s been around you knows that, kitty cat,” Ladybug said softly. “There’s a reason Fu chose you.”

Alya frowned. “This policy wouldn’t have stopped you from Cataclysming me, though, since that wasn’t an accident.” 

Chat Noir winced, looking away.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea,” she said, putting up her hands. “I was the one to suggest it. But we might need something else as well. Something based more on why you decided to jump to Cataclysming, when you don’t usually do that for supervillains.”

“I was angry and- and scared,” Chat said. “I thought you’d knocked Ladybug out, or maybe even-” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I lost my mom recently. I was afraid that Ladybug was gone now too, like she was.” His eyes widened, processing what he’d just said. He whipped around to face Ladybug. “Sorry, I know we’re not supposed to say anything about our identit-ooph!”

Ladybug’s sudden bear hug knocked the air out of his lungs. “Kitty, you’re allowed to talk about stuff that hurts you,” her muffled voice said, “even if it’s with your civilian identity. I never wanted you to feel like you had to hide something that affected you that much. Just try not to say anything that’d make your identity obvious, that’s all.”

“Thank you, Milady,” Chat said, his voice quavering. He wrapped his free arm (the one that Ladybug hadn’t inadvertently trapped at his side with her hug) around her, returning the hug just as fiercely.

Alya smiled, wishing she could record this for the Ladyblog. Granted, Marinette wouldn’t like that, since she’d ordered Alya to get rid of her Ladynoir file, but she could still appreciate seeing the two of them being so close with each other. Romantic or platonic, they were quite the pair.

“Maybe you two should set up some contingencies for what to do if either of you suspect the other is… indisposed somehow?” She suggested. “I mean, I don’t think it’d stop Chat from freaking out if you were hurt - heck, I don’t think it’d stop ME from freaking out if you were hurt - but bad situations are less scary when you have a plan to deal with them. Just don’t expect that plan to survive contact with reality.”

Ladybug’s face lit up, as Alya knew it would. If there was one thing Marinette was good at, it was making plans for any possible future. “I think I can help with that, kitty,” Ladybug said. “Do you think it would help you, though?”

He gave her a soft smile. “I don’t know, but I want to try.”

Alya gave a small laugh. “Mind if I join the hug, or is this Dynamic Duo only territory?”

He blinked. Ladybug chuckled. “I think we can make room for one more.”

As she wrapped one arm around Chat Noir and the other around Ladybug, Alya felt safe and at peace, in a way she hadn’t since she’d transformed into Scarabella.

----

That evening, Alya pulled up the list she was making of Cataclysm uses, reading them over before exiting the file.

She wasn’t ready to finish it yet.

But she would be.

[jhoudiey]

I swear this is the last one (for now heh). Can't have rotisserie chicken ships without DUMB AND DUMBER. Questions from here

Even though I've been neglecting them lately they still own my entire life so like... ANYWAYS. Ship questions of my favourite fish and bird.

Pre-relationship

How did they first meet? He stumbles on her experimenting in the Alchemy lab after ditching the entrance ceremony.

What was their first impression of each other? Yoru: who the fuck is this guy and why won't he leave? Floyd: Heh neat bird this is fun.

Did any of their friends or family want them to get together? Not particularly, though Crowley is glad she's making friends.

Who felt romantic feelings first? Floyd cause Yoru is bad at feelings and just thinks any feelings are regular friendship ones, then 'i think i must be getting sick' ones.

Did either of them try to resist their feelings? Both! Floyd at first cause he doesn't want to get stabbed, and Yoru when she realizes cause she doesn't wanna get rejected.

If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think? That whoever told them must be ready to die.

General

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go? Floyd! He just kisses her out of the blue one day and they go from there. Works out pretty well (last words said before disaster eh?) But don't specifically say HEY WE ARE DATING.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like? Nope.

What was their first kiss like? In the hospital wing when Yoru's complaining that her face is all scarred up.

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)? First everything.

What’s their height difference? Age difference? Floyd is 6 inches and 3 months older- I figure adult him is about 8 inches taller.

What’s their relationship with each other’s families? Yoru's relationship with mama leech is pretty rocky, but Crowley adores Floyd.

Who takes the lead in social situations? Floyd, because Yoru's too busy trying to not be perceived.

Who gets jealous easier? Floyd, jealous fish is jealous.

Love

Who said “I love you” first? Floyd, tho Yoru didn't believe it. (again, surely this won't cause any problems in the future right?)

What are their primary love languages? Acts of service

How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA? Basically glued together.

What are their favorite things to do together? Cause problems on purpose with people minding their business.

Who’s better at comforting the other? They are both REAL bad at it.

Who’s more protective? Neither, cause they know the other can take care of themselves just fine.

Do they prefer verbal or physical affection? Physical!

What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise? *lists every emo song I know cause they're a mess* Most notably 'this time imperfect' by AFI

What kind of nicknames do they call each other? when they meet, Floyd calls her "Fugu-chan" and she just calls him Floyd. When they get together he drops her fishname and just calls her Yoru.

Domestic Life

If they get married, who proposes? Floyd does the Christmas after they have mido.

What’s the wedding like? Who attends? Chaos. Just super loud super insane with tons of weird shit. jade, azul, idia, ortho, kalim, ace, ruggie, malleus, lilia, sebek, silver, crowley and vargas attend.

How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like? They accidentally have Mido and she is a fucking terrorist (affectionate)

Do they have any pets? They get Mido a slug that she names Timothy.

Who’s the stricter parent? Neither. 'No' Isn't really in either one of their vocabularies.

Who kills the bugs in the house? both.

How do they celebrate holidays? loudly, chaotically.

Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning? Floyd cause he's a whiner.

Who’s the better cook? Floyd, when he actually feels like cooking.

[skaruresonic]

I'm not Infinite's biggest fan by any means. I still find "I'm not weak" to be laughable. While I dislike him for reasons ST probably intended, such as his sadism, I also consider him overrated and cliche. He's not that deep, he's just a bully on a power trip.

That being said, all this has got me to thinking about narrative payoff.

I guess I just don't vibe with the idea of pathetic characters in general because it's a difficult concept to pull off without veering too far into "he was beaten when he was a baby boy, blah blah" territory.

Bad writing tends to teeter-totter with the way we're supposed to perceive such characters.

It happened with Scourge. The book spent all this time hyping him up as a badass capable of going toe-to-toe with Sonic and Shadow... only to have him consistently flee any fight he was not guaranteed to win, thus depriving us of the opportunity to see whether his bluster held true. To see him get his comeuppance via a simple tongue-lashing by Sonic's dad doesn't feel cathartic, it feels frustrating. And the worst part is the author makes you feel like a fool for being invested in the first place by saying "What did you expect? He's a nobody, a joke. His story was never going to matter in the long run." Because YOU told me he was IMPORTANT. That's why I made the mistake of caring. This isn't to say anticlimaxes are inherently bad, but it goes without saying that if you spend a large amount of time hammering in a certain point, the audience is going to assume your character must have a purpose in the narrative---otherwise, why are you wasting our time?

Surge waxed poetic for ages about how she was going to destroy Sonic and Eggman and burn down the whole rotten system. Fine. She can be deluded in her beliefs. She can be wrong about them and learn that lesson the painful way, even. But can you, you know, at least show that dissonance in a coherent character arc instead of flipflopping between badass and woobie whenever it's convenient and pretending that counts as a character arc?

She spends ages nattering on about how she's going to destroy Sonic and Eggman... and ultimately winds up pulls the exact same shit as Scourge. At one point, her enemies are conveniently gathered in one place, and what does she do? Lash out at them, teeth bared, gives them a fight to the death? Nah. She flees. Has a panic attack. So very dramatique. Oh the tension. I'm on the edge of my seat.

Same concept applies to Starline, to a lesser extent. Flynn says in 2018 that they "don't need some other major villain," winds up writing Bad Guys where the entire point is that Starline will only be dragged down by trying to emulate Eggman, then kills the guy after having him get curbstomped just to prove some spurious Captain Obvious point that Eggman is the series' antagonist. And it's not even established onscreen that Eggman heard anything about the Hypnoglove, much less enough to be able to take preventative measures against it. The flashback in Imposters 3 just shows us a random nonsequitur about Eggman's love of theme parks. It's not thematically (heh) relevant, it doesn't show Eggman and Starline having a single conversation about the Hypnoglove. (Also, in hindsight: why would Eggman listen to Starline about his inventions anyway?) In retrospect, his entire "arc," if you can call it, is pointless. It makes you believe it's leading up to something, but ultimately leads to nothing.

I mean Infinite is also a joke and wasted potential, don't get me wrong, much cooler then Surge, he has such a sick design, nice background story and cool voice. And Forces wasted it and he's just dead like that. That made me more pissed of as I wanted to see more of Infinite.

Infinite was entertaining to watch though. The game makes it pretty clear that he’s a ginormous loser overcompensating for his inferiority complex by hiding his own face, seeking power and overall being nothing but an artificially-enhanced bully in order to not feel weak. His final defeat was anticlimactic, not only to reflect that he (Presumably) died a complete loser but to make it abundantly clear who wears the pants as far as domination and main villainy goes - The one and only Dr Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik.

Surge is just a shitty character, a blatant rip off of another shitty character. A creators pet who only gets one over on game characters by ignoring canon facts about them I.e Metal Sonic being both water and shock-proof or to make her look cool I.e Making Dr Eggman scared. Who canonically has huge cojones and wouldn’t be the least bit cowed by this fucking puke-coloured upstart.

Ironically, despite the evident regard Stanley and Flynn hold her in, she repeatedly is subject to indignities you’d see in Home Alone. She is only ever even remotely a threat by being artificially enhanced and/or stealing Dr Eggman’s tech. None of her “achievements” are accomplished by her alone or believably.

Flynn and Stanley and Fonsesca by extension seem to think they’ve portrayed the hottest shit ever as far as Sonic villains go, Fonsesca portraying her as beating seven shades out of the franchise’s main protagonist in CA and Stanley being egoistic enough to honestly believe that if Forces was “graced” with the presence of this shitty canon foreigner, it’d be vastly better.

Fucking awful character that has her horn tooted in the most obnoxious and transparent ways by a pair of hacks.