#not blaming anyone who works on the wiki

[blaithnne]

The Hilda wiki is pretty disorganised do you guys think I could get away with just adding Lauren onto there like it’s nbd

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers "mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs" and laugh at "the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review":

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.

They wanted to asset-strip the company, in other words ("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

Starboard didn't have enough money to force the sale, but they had recently engineered the CEO's ouster. The giant slide-deck making fun of Olive Garden's food was just a PR campaign to help it sell the bust-out by creating a narrative that they were being activists* to save this badly managed disaster of a restaurant chain.

*assholes

Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/

They had forced Darden to sell off another of its holdings, Red Lobster, to a hedge-fund called Golden Gate Capital. Golden Gate flogged all of Red Lobster's real estate holdings for $2.1 billion the same day, then pissed it all away on dividends to its shareholders, including Starboard. The new landlords, a Real Estate Investment Trust, proceeded to charge so much for rent on those buildings Red Lobster just flogged that the company's net earnings immediately dropped by half.

Dayen ends his piece with these prophetic words:

Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?

Flash forward a decade. Today, Dayen is editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, one of the best sources of news about private equity looting in the world. Writing for the Prospect, Luke Goldstein picks up Dayen's story, ten years on:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten years hasn't changed much; the same kind of snark that was deployed at the news of Olive Garden's imminent demise is now being hurled at Red Lobster.

Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.

Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer? Are they just good-hearted slobs? Can't they do math?

Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?

Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.

Red Lobster rose to success – 700 restaurants nationwide at its peak – by combining no-frills dining with powerful buying power, which it used to force discounts from seafood suppliers. In response, the seafood industry consolidated through a wave of mergers, turning into a cozy cartel that could resist the buyer power of Red Lobster and other major customers.

This was facilitated by conservation efforts that limited the total volume of biomass that fishers were allowed to extract, and allocated quotas to existing companies and individual fishermen. The costs of complying with this "catch management" system were high, punishingly so for small independents, bearably so for large conglomerates.

Competition from overseas fisheries drove consolidation further, as countries in the global south were blocked from implementing their own conservation efforts. US fisheries merged further, seeking economies of scale that would let them compete, largely by shafting fishermen and other suppliers. Today's Alaskan crab fishery is dominated by a four-company cartel; in the Pacific Northwest, most fish goes through a single intermediary, Pacific Seafood.

These dominant actors entered into illegal collusive arrangements with one another to rig their markets and further immiserate their suppliers, who filed antitrust suits accusing the companies of operating a monopsony (a market with a powerful buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with a powerful seller):

https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster in the midst of these fish wars, promising to right its ship. As Goldstein points out, that's the same promise they made when they bought Payless shoes, just before they destroyed the company and flogged it off to Alden Capital, the hedge fund that bought and destroyed dozens of America's most beloved newspapers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Under Golden Gate's management, Red Lobster saw its staffing levels slashed, so diners endured longer wait times to be seated and served. Then, in 2020, they sold the company to Thai Union, the company's largest supplier (a transaction Goldstein likens to a Walmart buyout of Procter and Gamble).

Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group. That brings us to today, with Thai Union having moved a gigantic amount of its own product through a failing, debt-loaded subsidiary, even as it lobbies for deregulation of American fisheries, which would let it and its lobbying partners drain American waters of the last of its depleted fish stocks.

Dayen's 2020 must-read book Monopolized describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

After deregulation allowed the pharma sector to consolidate, it acquired pricing power of hospitals, who found themselves gouged to the edge of bankruptcy on drug prices. Hospitals then merged into regional monopolies, which allowed them to resist pharma pricing power – and gouge health insurance companies, who saw the price of routine care explode. So the insurance companies gobbled each other up, too, leaving most of us with two or fewer choices for health insurance – even as insurance prices skyrocketed, and our benefits shrank.

Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions. That's because, lacking a regulator to consolidate patients' interests, and strong unions to consolidate workers' interests, patients and workers are easy pickings for those consolidated links in the health supply-chain.

That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain. Everything that hasn't consolidated is defenseless: diners, restaurant workers, fishermen, and the environment. We're all fucked.

Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices. These places are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society – and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places' failures as a kind of comeuppance that's all that's due to tacky joints that serve the working class.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

[honesty-my-policy]

i'm so infuriated

I'm not Jewish and I'm so infuriated at the world.

I can't imagine how it must feel to be Jewish. Especially as this entire ordeal has made me dive more into educating myself about Jewish history and how the world truly has always blamed everything on the Jews.

How is everything their fault?

Even the crucifixion of Christ has been blamed on the Jews when it was a Roman tradition?

Martin Luther who is known as one of the original reformers in Christianity's history wrote a book called "On the Jews and Their Lies". In which he advocated for burning down synagogues, Jewish homes and if that didn't work, Jewish people!

Apparently, somehow, Jews caused the Black Death despite the fact that the most predominant modern theory is that due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried out grasslands to more populated areas which ended up spreading the infected fleas they carried, thus spreading the disease. The fleas infected not just rats but ground rodents in general, so once the rats migrated the fleas could jump to any ground rodent and the infection spread.

Some of the craziest modern stuff though has come mostly from the Middle East (i wonder why)...

Apparently, Israel has remote control sharks that can attack Egyptian civilians and tourists, at least that's what a Governor of Egypt things. source

According to a fundamentalist group of Muslims called the Wahhabis, the Jews have a secret ally they've been conspiring with... the Gharqad tree. A tree, they call it the Jew tree. source Which is identified as either nitre bushes or Lycium which is part of the nightshade family, it's such a thing that the TREE WIKI PAGE TALKS MORE ABOUT THAT THAN THE TREE ITSELF source

Palestine once said that Israel was breeding super rats that could grow twice the size of a normal rat - just to chase Arabs out of Jerusalem, note this was in like 2008, where are these super rats NOW? source

The Nation of Islam (an organization) accused Jews of tricking people into thinking slavery exists??????? Sorry, "still" exists. This was originally in 1996, the gall this motherfucker had in 1996 to say "Where is the proof?" - oh, his name is Louis Farrakhan btw and there is an entire section dedicated to him on the anti-slavery website iabolish.org - his page

Also, Pokémon is a Zionist conspiracy plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein, at least, in 2001 that was what some Iraqi security personal reported. source

listen... I won't lie. I love a good conspiracy theory because to be honest, the amount I trust my government or anyone in authority is so small that just about anything could come out as true and I'd be so un-phased.

but blaming the Jews for everything when they make up an estimated 0.2% of the population versus say the 23% that is Muslim? Which there are approximately 50 Muslim-Majority countries in the world, though depending on sources the exact number differs.

If anything Christianity (32%) and the unaffiliated (16.3%) should be eyed at. Also, how come no one ever gives the folk religion people a hard time? Not that anyone deserves to be given a hard time as long as they aren't hurting anyone, it just boggles my mind to be honest.

sources for numbers cited came from this website: https://worldpopulationreview.com/

anyway, woke up this morning and just wanted to say this cause I'm mad and I want to show my support but also call out stupid people. I'm here to fight for Israel and the Jews, fuck off pro-palestine simps.

[erinwantstowrite]

Erin I have a question ⁉️

How did you start writing LoF? Like,.not writing it in general, I mean like how did you get—or learned—or studied—all the information regarding the Batfam and their backgrounds, and also about Peter and the Avengers, etc.

Currently, I'm honestly planning on writing a small fiction about Peter ending up in Gotham (You must know your words hold a very dangerous power to inspire) but unfortunately, I don't have the right information to actually START writing it TT_TT. Do you have any tips on how I can start?

(P.S Apologies if this sounds a little confusing, I am not entirely the best at explaining 😞🤞)

There's one person to blame for getting me into DC, and it's @alighterwood

I've always been a fan of Spider-Man. He was my first hero, I wanted to be him soooo bad. I had gotten around to sort of writing my own fic for it with my own version of Peter around last year? (Very much inspired by ITSV, LoF Peter came about because he's his own universe and is based on Spider-Man lore from multiple media versions). I had never thought about writing a Spider-Man fic until ATSV, but at the time I was pretty much dead set on rewriting VLD. I got inspired after rewatching ITSV and then watching ATSV.

But it wasn't until alighterwood got me reading their favorite Batfam fics (specifically Tim) that I started to enjoy Batfam or DC in general.

(My favorite Batfam fic is "The Lone Ranger Never Had to Deal with Bruce Wayne" )

From there I started branching out into learning more about Batfam, what is and isn't fanon, and forming my own opinions. It was a natural progression into "I want my favorite characters to meet each other" and alighterwood's evil genius plan ended up working.

I've read a few comics (mostly the Red Robin series, because Tim was my intro to Batfam so I figured I'd start there) but most of my information?

Wikis, reddits, forums from years (a few of them from decades) ago, my father (who was a Batman fan as a kid) and his friends (my uncles, who were all DC and Marvel nerds), my own friends- basically anything I can get my hands on. If I had a question, it was (probably) answered somewhere, or there was someone else with the same question that made me feel better for not getting it. The internet has a BOATLOAD of information about both Marvel and DC.

It's a LOT of research and note taking, to be honest. I have a physical notebook where I take notes on lore so I don't forget it. I comb through fanon AND canon and I decide from there what I want and what I don't want/what doesn't work and what does work for what I'm writing.

But here's something to keep in mind: at the end of the day, you're not writing FOR anyone else. You're not out to please people who are 100% canon, all the time, nor are you trying to accommodate people who only read fanon material. You're writing for YOU. This part is fun for me, but could be very tedious for other people. I'm a little weird like that (I started writing essays for fun since I learned about them in school).

I like doing research. Like a lot of writers, I go down multiple rabbit holes a day. I start by googling a simple question that should take five minutes and then I see something and go "oh! What's this!?" and pick it up, and the cycle continues when I see something else and eventually remember that I was writing.

I enjoy the research and figuring out the balance. Because DC and Marvel do the same shit with their own works! Shit gets retconned, or they bring characters back from the dead, blah blah blah. The fun part for me IS going insane trying to figure out the Flash Family and their STUPID family tree, or learning about characters that were basically forgotten by everyone- even the writers. The best part is that since it's my fic I'm writing, I can go: "What's the most entertaining way I can use this?" And no one can stop me.

But if YOU don't enjoy that part, and you try to do it, you might lose your spark!! Your inspiration!! You might not have fun, and that's what writing is all about!! My thing is, is that basically every fan interpretation, whether they try to stick to the original source as closely as they can or not, IS FANON. And fanon is fun!!

Basically it all stems down to: it's your sandbox and you can play in there however you want to. And sometimes, people see what you're doing and they're like "Can I play too?" and you're like "Yes that'd be awesome!!"

If you find that you do enjoy the research, I think it's well worth it. It's very satisfying to put together all that work and then get a comment from someone where they say "OMG!! I know that reference!" or "I love this interpretation of this very obscure thing!!"

My advice for writing a Peter in Gotham fic is to know where YOU are starting at, before you start writing your fic. If you're a Spider-Man fan and you don't know much about the Batfam, try reading a comic about them, or find some favorite fics and base your information on that. It works vice-versa, if you know more about Batfam and not a lot about Peter.

Imagine there are two people sitting in front of you. One is a Marvel fan, the other is a DC fan, and they know NOTHING about the other comics. But they both want to hear your story where you have combined them. It's important that you don't lean too much into either side: you keep both of their interest by appreciating the details from both DC and Marvel.

The Marvel fan will be happy to see Peter reacting to a new world and situations, even if they don't know everything you're referencing. But the DC fan will be excited because you care about the place that Peter is interacting with enough to make a joke that maybe only they would get.

So: have fun, explore everywhere you want to, and get a little crazy. Don't worry too much about not knowing everything there is to know. I don't know everything about DC or Marvel either!

[eerna]

Oh that ask you answered about how you would rewrite Callum and rayla's relationship in the show without changing major major details was really interesting and you liked of hooked me with the idea of trying to keep your rewrite within canon realm.

So I wanna ask what would your rewrite be for tdp in general outside of canon realm and do you ever plan on making a fic on it?

Ayy I'm glad, thanks~ I am totally up for some outside-of-canon idea throwing, sounds fun! However, keep in mind I am not saying my vision is what the show should have been like. I am not a professional writer. I can only give some ideas for how to fix the stuff I didn’t like and what would make the story engaging for me personally. And no, I would never write a fanfic based on this. I already have an unpublished 40k+ word TDP fanfic I can't complete because I lost my passion for the series, so going on an epic fantasy writing bender is definitely not in the cards for me. If any of my ideas sparkle anyone's fix-it wires, I give them my blessing to go forth and write it instead of me :) 

You asked for outside canon, but we gotta establish some rules first, because if I turned TDP into a story I PERSONALLY wanna tell, it wouldn’t resemble it at all, so we gotta keep it at least a little canon-consistent. In addition to that, this series’ refusal to disclose important worldbuilding info within the main storyline means my knowledge of its lore has enormous gaps shaped like tabletop guides and video game dialogue screens. I will rely on the wiki for this to the best of my abilities and if most of the lore is totally dropped, don’t blame me. In this rewrite I will establish THEMES, WORLDBUILDING, and CHARACTERS, and then even a bit of the PLOT. I will do my best to adhere to the existing themes and the worldbuilding. I’ll only use the characters already created for the show (while giving them a few new characteristics) and the plot will be only hinted at because dear lord I can’t map out 7 seasons of a TV show in a tumblr post. I am also gonna stay in the Y7 rating range because eff you people who think kids can’t handle interesting stories. There’s gonna be lots of ATLA comparisons because this show insists on trying to be ATLA and I can’t ignore that. Continuing under read more because this got LONG (I had to stop myself almost 8k words in. Someone save me). 

THEMES

TDP is trying to do way too much when it comes to themes - it wants to be complex and nuanced, but it doesn’t walk the walk. ATLA did it best, they kept it simple, but added a hint of complexity. We will do the opposite: we are concentrating on ONE big, nuanced concept that we will be writing around, and peppering in the other stuff as character garnish. The one big theme we will be concentrating on is THERE IS NO TRULY GOOD GUYS IN A WAR. We will be sacrificing the “How do we forgive and forget after the war?” theme because it would require starting the show after the war is officially done, as it is far too large of a concept to be used as a second-act theme (also, I was born first generation after a war, and my answer to that question is not the correct tone for an epic fantasy quest). Instead, we will make it a smaller scale character garnish of “how does this character put aside their hurt and work with the people who have hurt them?”. 

Secondary themes will be: You have to keep your mind open and learn from everyone you meet. Our planet deserves to be treated with respect. Everyone has a place in this world. Love can make people do vile things. Nature VS nurture. Divine right VS meritocracy. Plus other Truths that will be discussed in the following sections.

WORLDBUILDING

Again, ATLA made a very simple system of four (or three) different countries and then went ham with it. We can’t do that because I am not redoing the entire universe, but let’s try making it less overcomplicated while keeping the map sort of the same. The two nations at war are Xadia (as seen in the show) and the Neolandian Empire (includes all the human kingdoms). The areas are generally the same as they are in the currently available lore of the series, unless stated otherwise.

Magic

First, we gotta establish the magic system. The whole arcanum setup can stay the same. The world is made up of six primal sources: the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth, the Sky, and the Ocean. A deep connection to one of the primal sources is called the arcanum, and an arcanum means you understand what this primal source brings to the world, and the Ultimate Truth behind it. Once you understand this Truth, you can use the spells (in draconic language) connected to it to manipulate the world around you acting in accordance to this Truth, and this makes you a mage of primal magic. So it isn’t just controlling the elements, the Truths are applicable to a wide range of situations (for example, if you break a plate, you can put it back together by connecting to the Earth arcanum which understands that all things that are now broken used to be of one body and spell it back together). Creatures born to one of the primal sources understand this truth perfectly from the get-go, but they still have to learn the draconic incantations to effectively use spells, which is why not every primal source creature is also a mage. The more difficult the spell, the deeper your understanding must be - the most powerful mages live solely according to their arcanum’s Truth. But since the Truths can be contradictory or uncomfortable to tie to each other, the deeper you are connected to your Truth, the less chances you have of understanding other Truths. Creatures born to one of the primal sources don’t have the ability to fully commit to any other primal source - they can get it in theory, but can’t tap into its magic naturally. They all live in harmony with one another, balancing the world and its inhabitants. But there is one creature in the world born without a connection to any one primal source, but with the cognitive abilities to learn to understand them. That’s right, ALL humans have the potential to understand multiple arcanums, and are only limited by their philosophical abilities. This means our magic system is based on philosophical thought. Magical creatures are naturally predisposed to it, but it limits them, and are the equivalent to people who limit their worldview only to their personal lived experiences. Humans have the potential to gain limitless knowledge, but the difficulty of that path and the disadvantage with which they start out often discourages them from even trying. Magical creatures tend to view humans as inferior because they perceive them as incapable of living the same blessed balance as they do. They see their potential to learn multiple types of magic as a transgression against the ways of the world, and have outlawed any magic done by humans. This means humans were completely dependent on magical creatures for things such as shelter, physical defense, food, et cetera. And if you repeat to someone enough times that they are a parasite on the world and have no right to live in harmony with it, they are going to try and live as separate as possible in their own way.

And here we reach the dark magic. Dark magic can perform the same spells as primal magic - and yes, every single dark magic spell has its primal equivalent. They are simply different means of getting to the same end. However, dark magic skips the “needs a connection to the arcanum” part, and instead consumes the amount of primal magic energy proportional to whatever you need to do. To fix a broken plate with dark magic you need to say the spell, and provide the appropriate amount of primal Earth magic, through a plant or a creature connected to the Earth arcanum. Primal magic is lots of spellbooks, conversations and philosophy. Dark magic is necromancy, recipes, potions, way more scienc-y, as it requires a lot of experimentation and trial and error to determine how much magic needs to get used in spells to achieve the desired effect. Primal magic is borrowing, manipulating, and returning the magic around you to reach the desired effect. Dark magic is taking the magic and consuming it to reach the desired effect. Once you spend all the magic in one area, it takes centuries for it to get replenished again. The only effect it has on the user’s physical appearance is the black eyes for the duration of the spell, but none of that “gray white corpse” look (it looks cool but is way too on the nose). Dark magic use is strictly regulated and its secret closely guarded to ensure it is used only “in service of the Empire”. The humans use magical items in their everyday lives, which the show should showcase - we need to understand how much these people rely on the magic. I am trying to format it as the equivalent of plastic in our world, if you can’t tell - something helpful that’s not bad in small doses, but once you base your system on it, it totally ruins everything. 

History and geography

Xadia was once one land where humans and magical creatures lived together. The archdragons were never rulers - they were revered as gods by Xadians, seen as the embodiment of the primal sources on earth, but they stayed in their heavenly abodes, perfectly in-tune with their arcanums, above all squabbles of mortals. There were no countries, the nations organized in settlements according to their arcanum, but that doesn’t mean there were no conflicts. The primal tribes understood they had to live in harmony to keep the world balanced, but their opposing beliefs kept them at each other’s throats if they got too close to each other, so they all preferred to stay separated into societies that functioned according to the Truth of their primal source. Humans had no tool to deal with the dangers of survival in the dangerous magical wilds, so they too lived in these societies, protected by the primal magicians, but also seen as lesser beings in a magic-oriented world. Deviation from the laws and beliefs of society, including humans doing magic, was seen as a danger to the balance of the world, and some humans preferred to leave and start their own settlements. The settlements were small and fell quickly, but the largest of these was Eboreus, all the way to the inhospitable desert in the northwest of the continent, where dark magic was discovered. Empowered by this new power source, it grew into a kingdom named Neolandia, a safe haven where the humans despised by the magical creatures could find refuge. The dark magic ensured humans held resources for their own survival for the first time, and as their numbers grew, they needed more and more access to magical resources once they spent the ones already in their possession. At first expansion was easy, since the area was all wilderness, and Neolandia grew in strength. By the time they spread to the first Xadian settlement, they were powerful enough to take it on in battle once negotiations fell through, and thus the big war started. The territory ruled by humans split into kingdoms to make it easier to govern. The expansion was stalled over the past 500 years because their numbers stopped increasing, and also because the forces reached the Breach, the mountain range separating the continent in half, which is almost completely devoid of magical properties (aside from the Xadians guarding it). Conquering it would take a long time and a lot of resources that couldn’t be replenished until it is completely passed, so the Empire has to change its war tactics. Katolis, the youngest of the kingdoms, partially resides in the Breach and marks the frontier of the war. Katolians are soldiers, their culture devoted to defending and expanding the Empire. A year ago the king of Katolis and his High Mage did the unthinkable - they snuck into Xadia and slayed Avizandum, the sky archdragon who resided in the Breach. This sent the continent into an uproar, Neolandians empowered as god killers, Xadians angered at the defilement of their most sacred beliefs. Both await what magnificent magic will be unleashed upon the world now that Katolis has such a powerful resource in its hands.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Callum. The fourteen-year-old adopted son of Harrow, the king of Katolis, he doesn’t fit his country’s warrior ideals and feels rejected by both the society and his family. His mother, a Katolian general who famously perished in service of the Empire, married the king when Callum was very young. He is no good at fighting and is scared of war, so he prefers to spend his days hidden alone in some nook, reading poetry and drawing. He has an interest in magic from a lore standpoint, he doesn’t want to try it himself because it’s not something you just dabble in: if you decide to become a dark mage, you stay a dark mage until death. He is kind-hearted and emotionally mature, his mind open to any and all ideas, but this also makes him anxious and insecure - if anything is possible, the world feels unstable. Callum is going to be our protagonist, who we accompany as he learns lessons about the world and himself.

Ezran. We are rewriting the heck outta this little dude. He was supposed to begin his education as the crown prince of Katolis this spring, as he has just turned 10, but for some reason his father delayed it. Ez is very glad for this, as he quite enjoys being a carefree little kid with no responsibilities. He is everything Callum isn’t - social, silly, optimistic, and energetic. He loves the entire world and tells stories of the most basic things with the wonder of a fairy tale. This means that when he tells people he can talk to animals, they smile at him indulgently and marvel at the prince’s creativity. Ezran as a character is supposed to embody a child’s lack of awareness when it comes to differences between people - he sees everyone as his friend, and believes everyone is the same. The Earth arcanum follows the same principle, and here is where his ability to speak to animals stems from, even if he is totally unaware that he is doing magic. He is the kid in the zombie apocalypse - you don’t want him to be corrupted because he symbolizes the potential of future generations. However, at no point are we making him a monologuing mouthpiece or the best king who ever lived, since his story is in his potential to grow, and not his perfection as he is. I am writing Bait out because I honestly hate his role as an useless damsel in distress, and the role of the animal companion is already filled by the title character, and it’s not like I can write HIM out.

Harrow. The king of Katolis is meant to be Ezran 30 years into the future, an optimist who forgot how to believe in a better world because he was pressured to grow into the role expected of him. His wife, general Sarai, and his High Mage, Viren, supported (read: pressured lovingly) him and made him into the brave, fierce king he is today. A year ago he led a bold invasion into Xadia which was meant to turn the tides of the war - the plan was to kill Avizandum and harvest his body for magic for years to come, even subduing the Breach along the way. However, once the archdragon was slain, his body dissolved before it could be transported back to Katolis. Viren predicted the reason - archdragons were manifestation of primal sources on earth, so when all that magical energy was released from its physical form, it must have reformed somewhere. The answer awaited them in Avizandum’s nest, the Stormspire (now located within the Breach) - an egg of a newly reincarnated sky archdragon. Harrow and Viren took the egg and hid it from the world, buying time until Viren figures out what to do next. However, this close encounter with a god left Harrow’s faith in his life’s path shaken. Who is he to meddle in affairs he can’t even comprehend, such as the laws of the universe? Could it be that the survival of his people doesn’t have to be achieved by destroying the existing world? Did he choose wrong all those years ago? Looking at his small son, he can’t force himself to force the same choice upon him, not yet, so now Harrow is stuck in a limbo of his own feelings and re-examining his entire life with no one to confide in. 

Viren. I am totally stealing from The Kyoshi duology for his villain type, and I am not sorry. Viren is the High Mage of Katolis, the king’s closest advisor. He and Harrow have been the closest of friends since their youth, despite their wildly different origins. He was the son of an Evenere farmer family, and he got sent to a Katolian military academy, where he met young Harrow who had just begun his own education. The boys became fast friends, but soon Viren was recognized for his intelligence, work ethic, and high potential for dark magic. Dark magic is usually taught generationally within selected families which makes the study very elitist, but his drive and ambition led him to excel, so that by the time they finished education, Harrow took him back to his castle where he could become the High Mage’s apprentice. From the very beginning the drive behind Viren’s ambition was the knowledge that he is all that’s standing between those he loves and utter ruin - first it was the financial difficulties his family faced that were mitigated by his high paying position, and now it is the responsibilities of one of the most important men in the country. As mentioned before, Harrow faced many difficulties adjusting to the role expected from him as a king, and Viren saw himself as his compass, the one making the hard decisions that save the world until the king becomes strong enough to make them himself. And for a while, it seemed it worked and Harrow became the ruler that could defend humanity from Xadia, but ever since their return home Harrow has been growing more and more distant from Viren. For the past year Viren has been trying to figure out how best to harvest the archdragon egg. He knows he only has one chance to use its energy, because if he kills it, it will just respawn back at the Stormspire, and since Xadian forces have now been alerted and concentrated in that area, he won’t be able to get it back again. Dark magic relies on experiments, and he doesn’t have the right to experimentation. The dragon was supposed to power the Empire with magic for years, but now it turns out they get one single spell out of him. He knows that if word gets out, all of Xadia will descend upon Katolis, so he doesn’t even dare share his discovery with other High Mages. He’s been slowly breaking under the pressure, and the only other person who knows about the situation, Harrow, is of no help. Lately, he has even started saying their way of life is wrong, and they should have never stolen the egg. His strength is faltering. Viren is used to doing whatever is needed to save those he loves, but what happens when those loved ones are the ones preventing him from saving them? Harrow is a possible Ezran future, and Viren is a possible Callum future, a man who had to carve a place in the world for himself, who felt powerless until he discovered something that made him more powerful than anyone else, whose sense of right and wrong is so strong it might even overpower his love for his brother. 

Claudia and Soren. Soren is the himbo disappointment son, he inherited none of Viren’s intelligence, or magical talent. He is ambitious and a fantastic swordsman, a true Katolian, so he recently managed to score the position of the captain of the king’s guard at only 18 years old (his dad’s only comment was “Excellent, now you can report all of the king’s everyday life to me”). Claudia, on the other hand, is a magical prodigy - at only 16 years old she has almost reached the same level of skill as her father, which is something Viren is immensely proud of. However, Claudia is very chaotic and doesn’t take this entire “We’re the only thing standing between the Empire and total ruin” thing seriously, and likes to spend her days doing normal teen girl things such as inventing new potions and befriending the princes. Soren desperately wants his dad’s approval and is doing his best to get it at any price, making him a parallel to Harrow. Claudia doesn’t worry about what her dad or anyone else thinks, but she fully believes in “no price is too high to save someone you love”, making her a parallel to Viren. The siblings grew up with the princes, but Soren stays away from them (out of envy) while Claudia is friends with them. She taught little Ez the spell for speaking to animals when they were both kids, but she doesn’t know he still uses it on a daily basis in a totally non-dark way. She is the reason Callum knows as much as he does about magic, since she sees him as a cute little friend she can infodump to (as long as she doesn’t lay out the details of the ingredients needed for the spells, it doesn’t count as revealing big secrets of the dark arts. After all, what could a human boy do with draconic words??). He is of course massively crushing on her and remembering every word she’d ever uttered. 

Rayla. Our sole elven main character. The murder of Avizandum prompted Xadians to band together in a more organized manner than has ever been seen in history and retaliate against Neolandia with united forces. After a year of preparation, the first wave of attack is ready. The Moonshadow Assassins will send a pair of lethal killers to each of the five kingdoms, one to kill the ruler, the other to kill the heir, causing civil unrest and sowing fear. Rayla, the youngest of the band at 15, was sent to Katolis with the leader of the group and her adopted father, Runaan. She is everything that is expected of a Moonshadow Elf: a ruthless, fearless fighter bound by honor to serve her tribe. There is nothing more sacred to her than fulfilling the mission given to her by her elders. Any doubt or weakness is to be stamped out quickly and without a single thought. This mission marks the end of her initiation into her tribe - once she kills crown prince Ezran she will be considered a fully fledged member of the Moonshadow Assassins. Her character role is to serve as an opposite weight to every other child character, where she has already chosen her path and created a much more mature space for herself as a kid should have. She needs to learn that vulnerability is needed to live a fulfilling life, and showcase the effects of the golden child syndrome. In this, she is the foil to Callum.

Aaravos

He is gonna be the ultimate Big Bad, the god our characters deal with in the final decisive battle after all the smaller villains are done. The star arcanum doesn’t have much in canon lore as it’s meant to be a mystery, so I am about to invent a whole lot of crap. In this story it deals with the Truth of eternity, the existence of the universe as something so vast and limitless no mortal mind could ever comprehend it, and thus a “startouched mage” is an oxymoron. It also differs from other arcanums in that it’s not one single whole, but many separated ones that make up one bigger whole. Each star is a world upon itself. As mentioned, it is incomprehensible to everyone in Xadia - it is a rare thing to see a creature who comprehends even the basics of the star arcanum (which would be “I know I am less worthy than a speck of dust when compared to the infinity of the universe” - I don’t think many useful spells exist in that vein), and no elves exist of this race that are born to the knowledge. In that vein, instead of having only one archdragon, the star arcanum has as many as there are stars in the universe, and Aaravos is one of them. As opposed to the other archdragons, his interpretation of his arcanum makes him interested in mortal affairs. Sadly, this twisted interpretation also means he has interest in world domination, as he sees himself as the only creature capable of comprehending the ways of the universe, and thus that makes him the most logical choice for the emperor of the planet. As a character his role is to represent overstepping boundaries, the sin of pride, what happens when one has no limits - so the same flaw present in a lot of rulers, explorers, and desperate people, and it just so happens our main cast is filled with those. He is limited by not having a physical manifestation that can walk the earth, though, so he has to build one for himself. He infects mortal minds through star arcanum. There are no mages who are dedicated solely to star magic - the world is already filled with more secrets than one could fit in a lifetime, so why waste time searching the stars to an even more futile effect? Still, those who manage to figure out at least a little bit of the arcanum leave their minds open and vulnerable to Aaravos’ influence. He is NOT some puppetmaster who is to blame for every single bad thing that ever happened in history, though. In most cases his hosts are driven insane because they can’t comprehend the spells he is trying to teach them, so he has been searching for a suitable host for a long, long time. As there are no elves tied to this arcanum, this leaves humans as the only ones who can interact with it, be it through primal magic… or dark magic. Let me remind you, in this rewrite every primal spell has a dark equivalent, but where primal spells are fueled by mind’s ability to comprehend philosophical concepts, dark magic needs only a source of magic connected to the primal source tied to the spell. This is Aaravos’ connection to dark magic - he sees it as a possibility he’d never had before, a medium through which his hosts will no longer be driven insane before managing to build him a body. 

THE PLOT

I think the seven season, three-act structure first presented by the writers (before it went off the rails) was good, so I will stick to it! Each season will be dedicated to one of the types of magic (so 6 primal sources + dark) that teach the characters relevant lessons, be it positive or negative. However, I am switching it from a fully overarching single story to the ATLA-like episodic that builds up to a big story, simply because that is a much better format for TV in my opinion. I am gonna lay out only the basics here. You know the drill, they travel around the world and do side quests and help lots of nice people who help them in return. The fact that they are carrying around a god makes Xadians more willing to trust them, and the fact that they are missing Katolian princes makes humans feel the same. Also I am not calling the seasons “books” because this isn’t ATLA.

ARC 1 - lasts ~3 months

Season 1: Dark

Starting off with dark magic because this would be the kind most of our characters have lived their life knowing. The thesis of dark magic is “by any means necessary”. 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The king of Katolis is assassinated by the Moonshadow Assassins in retaliation for the killing of Avizandum, the sky archdragon. The two Katolian princes and one of the assassins discover that the archdragon had been reborn as an egg, which the High Mage aims to kill once and for all. Knowing that the assassination is only the opening act of a horrifying war that could end both their countries, they steal the egg and escape the kingdom, planning on returning it to Xadians as proof that the damage Katolis has done isn’t irreversible. They reach the Stormspire, but the guardians there are unwilling to credit humans for the return of the egg, so the trio decides to keep going and find someone who shares their views.

CALLUM: He starts the season out unsure of his position within his family and his country, feeling like a reject from both. His father tells him “I used to think I would do anything to protect my kingdom, but I am not so sure that would be the right thing anymore”, which prompts Callum to think about his own position on the subject. He discovers he possesses the ability to perform dark magic. By the end of the season he concludes his little brother is what is most precious to him, and realizes that his country and empire were wrong in their approach to the Xadian issue. He swears not to do dark magic again.

RAYLA: She starts out as cold, focused and effective as possible, but the discovery of the egg and Ezran turning out to be a smart, optimistic little boy who feels no hatred towards her and could grow into a decent king makes her change her mind on the topic of bringing absolute war to the world. This enrages Runaan, who attempts to kill her for betraying her tribe. She manages to escape badly shaken by the experience, but she rationalizes it as “I am doing this for them, they will understand one day and be thankful for what I’ve done”. Her left hand is bound by a magic ribbon as a symbol of her oath, and every day that Ezran lives, the ribbon gets tighter until her hand will be severed. This too is, to her, proof of the sacrifice she is making for her people.

EZRAN: He is the only one capable of communicating with the infant dragon inside the egg, thanks to his ability to speak with any and all creatures in the world. This makes him feel responsible for something for the first time, as Callum and Rayla would have no other way to figure out if the dragon is doing ok. Other than that, his role is to be cute and optimistic while the teens are being emo.

VIREN: Viren could have saved Harrow’s life when Runaan got to him, but chose not to as the past year made him fear Harrow could no longer be a good ruler. He is well respected throughout the Neolandian Empire and has many resources, but he can’t trust them because the egg might be discovered and he might be declared a traitor. And so he sends Soren and Claudia after the princes, but gives them different jobs: he confides about the egg’s existence to Claudia, knowing he can trust her curiosity regarding magic and informs her to bring it back at any cost, while he tells Soren to kill the princes, banking on Soren’s obedience and the ability to do what is needed. In the meantime, he himself starts organizing defense against Xadia and buying time for the siblings to return. That’s his plot for the entirety of arc 1, he travels around the human kingdoms hanging out with people who respect him and grows more and more paranoid.

Season 2: Moon

The theme of the season is “Reality isn’t the only truth; you can only truly know the appearance itself, and you can never touch the so-called reality that lies beyond the reach of your own perception”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The first stop for the trio is the only crossing into Xadia, currently occupied by General Amaya, the boys’ aunt. The boys try to recruit her to help them, but she is unwilling to let her nephews risk their lives so they have to escape her too. The finale happens in Rayla’s home village, the assassin’s hideout Silvergrove, where she discovers she has been excommunicated and won’t get any help. They tell her it doesn’t matter that the dragon has been reincarnated, this battle has been a long time coming and there’s nothing that can stop it now.

CALLUM: After the disappointment of giving up on dark magic and being unable to trust even his own family, the discovery of his connection to the arcanum gives him a new sense of purpose. I feel like this arcanum is the best intro into mastering the rest because it involves keeping your mind open to possibilities and the knowledge that you do not yet know all there is to know, so that is his arc to learn this season. Rayla helps him understand it through her own arc, and he manages his first Moon arcanum spell in the season finale. 

RAYLA: She bonds with Callum because he is open and keeps trying to get her to open up. She still has her binding on when she meets Ethari, and he sees it as a mark of shame instead of what she has been convincing herself it is. She learns that Silverglove will never accept her back or understand why she has betrayed her mission, but that she has to stay true to her convictions. 

EZRAN: Having seen his aunt turn against him and the way Xadians fear Katolis, little boy needs to deal with the knowledge that his dad was a good dad, but a bad king. Just because he knew him as a gentle, happy man, it doesn’t mean that was the full truth of it. He resolves to be a good king one day in his stead.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Let them meet Terry here. Terry is an Earthbood elf who has done the unthinkable - he severed himself from his own arcanum, and has left his tribe behind. He offers to help the siblings after they save his life. 

Season 3: Sun

Theme of the season: “A thing can be warm and nurturing, but given the right situations, also destructive and cruel”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: Next major stop for the trio is a community in the Sun territory where humans and elves secretly live together, and the humans practice primal magic. This is the season Soren and Claudia catch up to the trio, and this is where they find them. The season finale is Soren and Claudia’s troops VS the trio and the human/elf community. The trio wins and the siblings retreat. The egg is damaged in the process and has to be hatched. Welcome to the world baby Zym!

CALLUM: The only thing better than discovering he can do primal Moon magic is discovering he could also potentially do other types of magic as well. In his thriving era, slightly interrupted when Rayla confesses to him that she likes him and makes things awkward for an episode or so. They deal with it with care and love. Then Claudia and Soren show up and he has to defeat his friend to protect his mission, and this is what leads him to understand the Sun arcanum. All the good things he’d admired about Claudia are also destructive because she doesn’t know when to stop.

RAYLA: She has to learn how to deal with being untethered and unlimited by the rigid expectations of her society for the first time in her life. The rules of her upbringing, which once made her feel accomplished and safe, also left her scared to make her own decisions in fear of making the wrong choice. She needs to forgive her destructive, cruel side and find the warm, nurturing one, and no longer base her self worth on her family’s expectations.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Claudia refuses to learn the theme of the season and instead goes the other direction: “nothing done out of love can be wrong”. From her POV, the human mages of Xadia are delusional and sitting ducks, and would be better off joining Neolandia. She is heartbroken when Callum chooses them over her and his home, and declares him a traitor. She leads a small-scale attack against the village hiding the trio in one last attempt to get the princes and the egg.  I love the canon s2 plotline with her and Soren, so I wanna fit it in her, Soren gets very hurt in this battle, Claudia has to retreat to heal him, and the siblings switch places. Now Soren is the one no longer willing to follow orders, while Claudia finally develops the drive needed of a High Mage. 

VIREN: The guilt and fear of discovery (over letting Harrow die, but also the egg scheme they kept from the rest of Neolandia) drive his actions to become more and more erratic. The confident guy we’ve known since s1 is now running on fumes. At some point he IS discovered, but manages to defeat the person who knows it before word gets out. In his prideful desperation, he manages to establish connection with Aaravos for the first time.

ARC 2 - lasts ~3 months

Season 4: Sky

The theme of the season is “You are one with the world, air is all around you, but also inside you”. 

Timeskip so Claudia and Soren can make their way back to Katolis, the community ravaged in s3 can get rebuilt, and the trio can recuperate. Maybe 2-ish months? It’s been almost half a year since phase 1 of the Xadian counter-offensive has been released, and it’s time for phase 2.  

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The trio decide their best bet to prevent phase 2 of the Xadian counter-offensive, the full-scale attack on Duren (where the Empire gets most of its food reserves) would be to go tour the north showing off baby Zym and his connection to Ez, the next king of Katolis. The queen of Duren, Aanya, is a young girl only a couple of years older than Ez with a reputation for sympathizing with Xadians, and might be more willing to listen to them than the Katolians. Now that little baby god Zym is out of the egg and they can prove he likes and trusts them, Xadians should be more willing to listen, too. The point of the season is developing the trio’s will to fix the world. Meanwhile, Claudia and Soren (plus Terry) rejoin their dad and have their arc of “Soren wants out, Claudia is digging her feet deeper and deeper into the ground”. Terry knows about the second wave of attack for some reason and they all decide to go to Duren. 

Season 5: Earth

The theme of the season is free real estate because the wiki says there is no arcanum data for Earth yet. I am giving them the “already dead” thing. See, the mountains and the earth are stalwart and unchanging, the same as they ever were. Why worry about paths well established, your life is the same as another’s, it begins and ends the same way. This can also be interpreted as stubbornness, but mainly it is the arcanum used for mending and healing, as it deals with returning to true form. “To know yourself is to be unshakeable, we are all made of one.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The “hits the fan” season. Rayllum gets together. Aaravos is invested in helping the Empire succeed because he needs his dark magic worker bees. Soren betrays his family’s secrets and helps the heroes before he dies, sending Viren and Claudia into hiding. At some point Callum used dark magic again out of desperation, and it was a star adjacent spell. However, Duren still falls, and it’s both side’s fault. Turns out that the kids really can’t do anything unless they have some kind of a power, and they are now willing to take it. With Aanya’s support Rayla and Callum decide to return to Katolis, which has taken the opportunity to sever itself from the Empire now that there are no easy ways to access it by land, and try to bring some order to the country and prepare it for Ez’ rule. Ez and Zym escape into hiding in Xadia with Terry’s help (he realizes that maybe seeing the world burn would NOT help him feel better), as it is obviously far too dangerous to keep them in the public eye right now, since that was the reason Duren fell in the end. Aaravos’ existence is now known to everyone. Sad sad sad. 

ARC 3

Season 6: Ocean

2 year timeskip. The theme of the season is “One is not in control, there are parts of yourself that you cannot understand, there are things that cannot be controlled, you cannot control everything, no matter how hard you try.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The war has stalled for the moment, as the spectacular failure at Duren rearranged the map and introduced Aaravos’ existence into the world, so the game has changed now that both sides share an opponent and it is a god. Ez and Zym feat. Terry are on a quest to figure out wtf is an Aaravos from the Xadian side of the border, as they are probably the only incorruptible team in the game. Callum, now the High Mage of Katolis, is still guilt-ridden over how Duren slipped from him, and how easy it was to return back to dark magic. Rayla is dealing with trying to help a country that obviously doesn’t look too kindly to her existence. Viren finally reaches Harrow’s s1 arc and realizes this whole thing has gone too far, but Claudia keeps marching on, and he is determined not to lose his second child as well, so he stays by her side. The season is dedicated to Callum and Claudia both dealing with similar vulnerability to Aaravos and the story could really go either way, but ultimately, Callum learns to deal with it by letting go of control, while Viren kicks the bucket and sends Claudia straight into Aaravos’ waiting arms. He has a physical body and is ready to party.

Season 7: Stars

The theme of the season is once again free real estate, this time because the characters don’t have the ability to comprehend the arcanum of the season and have to make up their own, and it’s “You are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and that is okay. Better to focus on doing your best regarding your own life and be happy than to perish in delusions of grandeur”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The Final Season. It’s Neolandia and Xadia being forced to unite against the same foe. No one side will ever get to claim to have won the war that was going on for thousands of years, and that’s great. The ban against human mages has to be lifted, the ban on dark magic has to be established. Those who couldn’t put their pride aside perished in Big Pride’s AKA Aaaravos’ party zone. I am intentionally avoiding writing character arc endings because I am trying not to reach 8k words on this thing, but you know enough by now to be able to tell what happens next. The divine right of kings is bullshit, we are all just regular people, and the divine is too smart to worry about our little lives.

And they all lived happily ever after~

[batfammeetsspidergang]

Spider-Gang Headcanons

I was bored, so I decided to create headcanon character sheets for the Spider-Folks! Basically, this is how I personally envision the characters when doing incorrect quotes. Like I've said before, these origins are mish-mashes of the comics, TV shows, movies, games, and so on, plus some minor, original ideas. (And yes, I was lazy so I copy-pasted much of the info and stats from the Marvel Wiki. Shout-out to the editors and their amazing work!)

If your favorite Spider-People aren't here, that DOES NOT MEAN I don't like them! Lmao I adore Pavitr, Cindy, Jess, etc. These are just my personal favorites. Also, I'm still tryna figure out Ham's cartoon powers, and movie-verse Miguel can go sit on a barbed wire brush XD

P.S. No ai art was used. These are all borrowed from official Marvel media.

🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️

Spider-Man

Peter Benjamin Parker

New York City, New York; present-day

16-18 years old

5′10″ (1.78 m)

160 lbs (72.57 kg)

Eyes: brown

Hair: brown

Gender: Cis male

Orientation: Bisexual

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and gained a suite of powers reminiscent of a spider, including agility, wall-crawling, and the ability to sense danger. When Peter learned that his beloved Uncle Ben had been murdered by a thief that Peter himself had selfishly allowed to escape, he realized that with his new powers also came a responsibility to use them for good. Since that day, Spider-Man has fought criminals while enduring a constant barrage of negative press, a stream of personal losses, and the occasional crisis of confidence. Somehow he manages to maintain a positive attitude and rarely lacks for a humorous quip when battling bad guys.

PERSONALITY:

-Peter is a geeky, shy, socially awkward, high-spirited, caring, and friendly teenage boy who is loyal to his family and friends. While his heroics as Spider-Man have given him a reputation for being a flake, Peter will always be there for anyone that needs help. 

-Since the death of his beloved Uncle Ben, Peter's vow of responsibility has led him on a path of heroism and humanitarianism. He regularly sacrifices (or sabotages) his personal well-being for the greater good. It has also meant that Peter often takes on more burdens than he can bear and blames himself unnecessarily when the city is hurt.

-He possesses an innate scientific curiosity and loves to figure out how things work. He has been known to immerse himself in personal projects for hours on end, forgetting to eat and sleep as a result.

-Though it can be difficult for him to open up with new people, he becomes enthusiastic and talkative when asked about his favorite subjects (i.e. science, photography, TTRPGs, the New York Mets).

-Peter has a tendency to use humor and sarcasm as a defense mechanism, a trait that is amplified when he fights criminals as Spider-Man. He is proud of his humor, deploying it to break tensions and lift the mood, something that has at times irritated his friends and allies.

-Peter also has a bit of a vengeful side—he once secretly used his powers to humiliate his bullies and was single-minded in his pursuit of revenge for his uncle’s death. If Peter's trust is betrayed, it can be difficult to get back in his good graces.

-His humility often teeters on the edge of self-loathing, to the point of considering himself lamer than his counterparts. These feelings also extend to his romantic relationships—Peter is often blind to his crush’s reciprocated feelings simply because he doesn’t believe they could ever be reciprocated. According to Peter, he always falls for people who are "way out of his league."

-Behind his naturally upbeat demeanor, Peter possesses a tragic and depressed side. This is brought on by the immense guilt he feels about the deaths of people he held close: Ben Parker and Gwen Stacy, his first girlfriend.

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Spider Physiology: Peter Parker possesses the proportionate powers of a spider, granted to him by the bite of an irradiated spider.

Superhuman Strength: Peter can lift up to 10 tons. His physical strength also extends into his legs, enabling him to jump to a height of several stories in a single bound.

Superhuman Speed: Peter possesses the proportionate speed of a spider; therefore, he can run and move at speeds that are beyond the physical limits of the finest human athlete.

Superhuman Stamina: Spider-Man's advanced musculature produces fewer fatigue toxins during physical activity than an ordinary human. This allows him to exert himself physically for much longer periods of time before fatigue begins to impair him.

Superhuman Durability: Peter’s body is physically tougher and more resistant to some types of injury than the body of a normal human. He has shown little to no discomfort when sustaining great impact forces.

Superhuman Agility: Spider-Man's superhuman agility, balance, and bodily coordination are all enhanced to levels that are far beyond the natural physical limits of the finest human athlete. Spider-Man is extraordinarily limber, and his tendons and connective tissues are twice as elastic as the average human being's. He has the combined agility and acrobatic prowess of the most accomplished circus aerialists and acrobats. He can also perform any complicated sequence of gymnastic stunts, such as flips, rolls, and springs.

Superhuman Equilibrium: Peter possesses the ability to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium in any position imaginable. He seems able to adjust his position by instinct, which enables him to balance himself on virtually any object, no matter how small or narrow.

Superhuman Reflexes: Spider-Man's reflexes are similarly enhanced and are currently about 20 times greater than those of an ordinary human. In combination with his spider-sense, the speed of his reflexes allows him to dodge almost any attack.

Wallcrawling: Peter can cling to any surface using just his fingertips and feet.

Spider-Sense: Spider-Man possesses a precognitive danger sense that warns him of potential or immediate danger through the manifestation of a tingling sensation in the back of his skull, and links with his superhuman kinesthetics, enabling him to evade most attacks unless he cognitively overrides his automatic reflexes.

Regeneration: Spider-Man is able to rapidly heal and regenerate from harm faster and more extensively than normal humans are capable of.

Web-Shooters: Spider-Man's trademark equipment. With his brilliance in physical science, Peter created these devices to fire thin strands of a special web fluid at high pressure and speeds. These enable him to web-swing between buildings and entrap enemies.

Web fluid: Created by Peter Parker. A shear-thinning liquid (virtually solid until a shearing force is applied to it, rendering it fluid) whose exact formula is unknown but is related to nylon. On contact with air, the long-chain polymer knits and forms an extremely tough, flexible fiber with extraordinary adhesive properties.

Specialized Web Cartridges

-Acid Webbing: Webbing laced with hydrochloric acid. -Taser Webbing  -Impact Webbing: Web-pellets that, upon impact, release tendrils that ensnare the target.

Spider-Tracers: Small, electronic tracers that allow Spider-Man to track objects or individuals. Typically, he plants or throws one on a departing enemy, but he can also use a launching device in his web-shooters for better range and accuracy. Spider-Man can follow the signal within a 100-yard radius by using his spider-sense.

Genius-Level Intellect: Peter Parker possesses a natural talent for science, standing out as a top student in his high school. His favorite subjects are biology, physics, and chemistry. A prodigy biochemist, Peter could understand his father's, Dr. Richard Parker’s, research notes at age 15.

Expert Inventor/Engineer: As a teenager, he developed his signature web formula, Web-Shooters, and the Spider-Tracers.

Budding Photographer: Peter is a talented photographer and has worked part-time for the Daily Bugle.

Skilled Acrobat: Due to his superhuman physical abilities, Peter easily surpasses normal acrobats and is able to perform somersaults, flips, spins, cartwheels, etc.

Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Spider-Man's fighting style incorporates and takes full advantage of his proper use of physical forces, momentum, and leverage, with the hero staying low and mobile while utilizing the momentum of frequent spins to come crashing down on his opponents. Peter has stated that he is self-taught, having learned many of his fighting techniques from movies and lucha libre.

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Spider-Man (Miles Morales)

Miles Gonzalo Morales

New York City, New York; present-day

16-18 years old

5′8″ (1.73 m)

160 lbs (72.57 kg)

Eyes: brown

Hair: black

Gender: Cis male

Orientation: Heterosexual

Miles Morales, a fellow student of Peter Parker, was bitten by a genetically altered spider that his uncle had stolen from Osborn Industries. The next day at school, he found that he had grown taller overnight and gained incredible, arachnid-like powers. Donning a similar costume, Miles became a budding superhero with the original Spider-Man as his mentor. Miles was the first person Spider-Man revealed his identity to, and they have become the closest of friends. Miles considers Peter a great hero, but can he live up to the legacy set before him?

PERSONALITY:

-Miles is a passionate, bright, confident, selfless, and extremely eager young man. 

-Miles' dedication to helping others stems from his deep respect for his father, Officer Jefferson Morales, and his admiration of Peter Parker as Spider-Man. He draws his passion for science from his mother, Rio, who is highly regarded for her boundless dedication to being a nurse. Moreover, being a long-time fan of Spider-Man, Miles aspires to uphold his mentor and friend’s legacy while also forging his own path.

-Like average Spider-Men, he has an irreverent attitude towards villains, although when enemies indicate psychological instability, Miles addresses them respectfully to prevent further danger.

-He has a strong love for science, having started inventing at an early age, as well as a passion for music, mixing hip-hop beats with his uncle during his early years.

-He is much more sociable than Peter Parker, and often initiates conversations with strangers in his neighborhood.

-Miles instantly fell for Gwen Stacy upon their first meeting. They’ve since become the best of friends, though a part of Miles still pines for her romantically. 

-His relationship with his Uncle Aaron is complex; while Miles acknowledges Aaron's inherent goodness, he also grapples with his uncle's shadowy past as the Prowler and their differing views on heroism.

-Miles' eagerness to be a hero is both a strength and weakness; it propels his desire to grow and assist others, but it also makes him prone to danger and reluctant to accept help. Additionally, he has been known to act impulsively on occasion. Miles also dislikes being a victim or receiving pity. 

-He initially displayed panic and insecurity due to struggling to handle even basic spider powers, and he felt unworthy of the Spider-Man mantle. When it is up to him to save the city on his own, Miles occasionally has doubts about his capabilities, often comparing himself to Peter. 

-Miles' intellect and love for others can cloud his judgment. At times, he can be too arrogant to listen to those who might know better

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Spider Physiology: Miles Morales gained the proportionate abilities of a spider after being bitten by a genetically-modified spider.

Superhuman Strength: Miles can lift roughly 10 tons.

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Agility: Miles' agility, balance, flexibility, and bodily coordination are all enhanced to levels that are far beyond the natural physical limits of an Olympic-level gymnast.

Superhuman Equilibrium

Superhuman Reflexes

Wallcrawling

Spider-Sense: When danger is present, Miles feels a buzzing sensation in his head as a sort of early warning system, allowing him to react accordingly. His spider-sense offers him near-complete awareness of his surroundings and, in conjunction with his reflexes, allows him to instinctively dodge or counter nearly all attacks. 

Bio-Electrokinesis: Miles is able to generate and manipulate a form of bio-electricity that his body produces and can utilize the energy for multiple purposes. Miles has learned to discharge the energy from his hands in controlled bursts of what he calls "Venom Blasts".

-Mega Venom Blast: Arguably Miles' deadliest ability. Miles is able to emit a larger scale burst of bio-electricity from his entire body. It is powerful enough to repel a large group of opponents and destroy sturdy restraints. This ability leaves Miles exhausted after using it, and can be triggered with focus or by extreme stress. -Venom Beam: Miles has shown that he can channel his bio-electricity outward as a direct burst of electrostatic energy to knock away enemies in a stunning/concussive manner. -Venom Punch: Miles can enhance the power of his punches by infusing his fists with bio-electricity. -Lateral Repulsion: By projecting a controlled Venom Blast, Miles is able to launch himself in the air with greater force than when jumping or web-swinging.

Camouflage: Miles, including his clothing, can blend into his surroundings, allowing him to sneak up on his enemies or, in some cases, flee from them. The resulting effect closely resembles that of invisibility.

Regeneration

Web-Shooters

Bilingualism: Miles speaks English and Spanish.

Gifted Intellect: A fast learner from a young age, Miles is a highly gifted individual with an aptitude for science. He attends the Robotics Club at school and has experience in programming applications. Upon discovering his bio-electric powers, he demonstrated an impressive understanding of biophysics, throwing out possible explanations for this new power, such as electrolytes. At the start of his superhero career, he was able to mimic the original Spider-Man's fighting style by watching online videos to improve his own abilities.

Photographic memory

Skilled Acrobat

Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Despite his lack of formal training prior to his spider-bite, Miles' enhanced agility, reflexes, and coordination made him an extraordinary melee fighter. He has developed his own unique combat style which incorporates a rudimentary form of boxing, Capoiera, and breakdancing.

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Spider-Woman

Gwendolyn "Gwen" Maxine Stacy

Alternate New York City, New York; present-day

16-18 years old

5′5″ (1.65 m)

125 lbs (56.7 kg)

Eyes: blue

Hair: blond

Gender: Trans female

Orientation: Heterosexual

Leaping from an alternate reality in which she was bitten by a radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy learned the painful lesson that with great power must come great responsibility. At first, Gwen used her new powers for selfish reasons, reveling in the attention it brought her. Meanwhile, her friend, the bullied Peter Parker, turned himself into a lizard monster because he was desperate to be special like her. Gwen inadvertently killed Peter during the ensuing fight, and the police blamed her for his death. Seeking redemption, she now fights crime as the amazing Spider-Woman.

PERSONALITY:

-Gwen Stacy is a spunky, sarcastic, awkward, and emotionally vulnerable teenage girl. She has a history of rejecting friendship since she can't bear to go through the pain of losing another loved one. After getting to know Miles Morales and Hobie Brown, however, she tentatively decided to give companionship a chance.

-Gwen initially put on a tough, antisocial front when she met the other Spider-People, but she has come to view the Spider-Gang as family and is fiercely protective of them.

-It can be difficult for her to look at the other Peters when they are unmasked, hence why it was initially easier for her to interact with Miles and Hobie. 

-Currently, Gwen's interest in Miles is platonic, bordering on sibling affection.

-Gwen has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, especially where her friends are concerned. On impulse, she will intervene on their behalf. With this in mind, Gwen and Peter (Spider-Man) have sworn to always watch each other's backs.

-There used to be unresolved tension between Gwen and her police officer father, George Stacy, regarding the morality of Spider-Woman’s vigilantism. Upon realizing that the vigilante he had been pursuing for years was his very own daughter, George reached out to Gwen about her problems and insecurities. Father and daughter have reconciled, and George Stacy has become Spider-Woman’s staunchest supporter.

-She is absolutely fearless in battle, but not to the point of recklessness.

-Gwen’s relationship with her bandmates has become somewhat strained since her superhero lifestyle often interferes with their gigs. That said, Gwen’s band members have made attempts at getting her to open up about her feelings and trauma.

-Gwen tends to bottle up her emotions and release them when she's playing drums, leading to her being particularly angry and distant. When dealing with people she is unsure of, she puts up fronts and walls to appear more confident and put together than she actually is.

-She hates when Noir calls her "doll."

-Her favorite band is The Smashing Pumpkins.

-Outside of music, her hobbies include skateboarding, gymnastics, and ballet.

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Spider Physiology: Gwen gained the proportionate abilities of a spider after being bitten by a radioactive spider—genetically engineered based upon the genetic template of alien spider parasites.

Superhuman Strength: Gwen can lift roughly 10 tons.

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Agility

Superhuman Equilibrium

Superhuman Reflexes

Spider-Sense

Wallcrawling

Regeneration

Web-Shooters: Twin devices, which she wears on her wrists, that trap moisture from the air to create a "web-fluid" that allows her to eject web ropes, nets, and globs. The Web-Shooters also enable her to web-swing between buildings. Given to Gwen by her universe’s Janet Van Dyne. 

Amateur Detective: Gwen has a proclivity for analytical thinking and detective work. She is also the daughter of a police captain, thus she knows some police protocols and methods.

Skilled Fighter: Gwen is a skilled freestyle fighter. That said, she is untrained and learned most of her moves from Kung Fu movies.

Trained ballerina: Gwen trained in ballet since she was young. Her ballet training has allowed her to be incredibly precise when moving, often walking on the tips of her toes. Evidently, her ballet experience is incorporated into her fighting style.

Trained gymnast: Gwen was a member of the gymnastics team at her school; even before her radioactive spider bite, Gwen was able to hold her own body weight and possessed an athletic build similar to that of an acrobat. She incorporated her gymnastics training into her fighting style.

Trained musician: Gwen plays the drums with her band, The Mary Janes.

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Spider-Man Noir

Peter Benjamin Parker

Alternate New York City, New York; 1933 AD

Approximately 19 years old

6′1″ (1.85 m)

150 lbs (68.04 kg)

Eyes: brown

Hair: brown

Gender: Cis male

Orientation: Bisexual or Demisexual (still figuring it out)

In another New York, in the year 1933, Norman Osborn murdered Ben Parker for encouraging a strike on the local sweatshops. Seeking justice for his uncle, Peter Parker became an investigative journalist in an attempt to expose the corruption in New York. One evening, Peter was investigating a warehouse where Osborn's henchmen were housing stolen artifacts. An ancient spider statue broke open and released a swarm of spiders, one of which bit Peter. He passed out and dreamed of a spider god who told him it would bestow the curse of power on him. When Peter came to, he discovered that he had been gifted with arachnid-like superpowers. Thus, Peter became the Spider-Man: a dark avenger fighting for the rights of the downtrodden and waging a one-man war on crime.

PERSONALITY:

-Noir Peter Parker is an unwavering, righteous, sympathetic, brooding, solitary young man of few words.

-Peter grew up witnessing injustice in the harsh environment of the Great Depression. This, combined with his Uncle Ben’s horror stories about the First World War, made Peter distrustful of would-be leaders and political figures. He’s leery of police officers; in his world and time period, especially, police corruption is rampant.

-Unlike most Spider-Men, Noir Peter was never taught the motto "With great power, there must also come great responsibility." Instead, his Uncle Ben told him, "If those in power can’t be trusted, it’s the responsibility of the people to remove them."

-Peter’s jaded demeanor and bleak realism belie his indomitable will and inherent idealism. He will never stop fighting for truth and progress, no matter the personal cost.

-Peter is a devout socialist and liberal activist, often participating in protests for workers’ rights, racial equality, and standing against the rising tide of Nazism.

-Peter is an empiricist—he believes his eyes, no matter how implausible something may be. Ever since his encounter with the Spider-God, he has gradually come to accept that some things are never going to have an explanation.

-Unlike the other Spider-People, Peter is willing to kill his enemies if absolutely necessary.

-Peter struggles with trauma and depression, perhaps more than his counterparts. To cope and better do his job, he closes off his emotions and ignores his bodily needs.

-Peter smokes cigarettes, even though he has been warned that they cause cancer. The nicotine helps calm his nerves, and he doubts that he’s capable of contracting cancer due to his powers.

-Peter puts on a convincing, deeper voice to make himself seem older. The rest of the Spider-Gang was dumbstruck when they learned he wasn’t much older than them.

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Superhuman Abilities: Peter possesses enhanced physical abilities granted to him by the Spider-God.

Superhuman Strength: Slightly inferior to that of his mainstream counterpart.

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Durability: Although he is incredibly durable, his body does have its limits—unlike his modern counterparts, he cannot sustain multiple injuries and continue to function.

Superhuman Agility

Superhuman Equilibrium

Spider-Sense

Wall-Crawling: He can stick to walls using just his fingertips and feet; however, Peter prefers a type of parkour over clinging to the walls themselves.

Organic Webbing: Spider-Man is able to shoot organic black webbing out of his wrists. However, he cannot generate webbing in a constant stream (like his more modern counterparts) and is therefore unable to travel via swinging on webs.

Night Vision

Regeneration: Slightly superior to that of his mainstream counterpart.

Pain Resistance: Ever since he was bitten, Peter no longer feels physical pain as potently as an average human.

Gifted Intellect: Peter is of above-average intelligence and possesses a natural talent for science.

Experienced Reporter: Peter is a gifted investigative reporter and very skilled photographer.

Investigator: Honing his talents as an investigative reporter, Peter has become experienced in detective work and research.

Hand-to-Hand Combatant: He is formidable in hand-to-hand combat, having received boxing training from the Daredevil of his universe.

Skilled Marksman: Peter is adept in the use of and has impeccable aim with firearms; more often than not, he is able to hit his targets accurately.

Weapons: Peter has been known to carry revolvers and incendiary grenades.

Glasses: Unlike other Spider-People, after receiving his powers, Peter still requires corrective lenses to see properly. 

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Spider-Punk

Hobart "Hobie" Brown

Alternate London, United Kingdom; c. 1977-early 80s

Approximately 19 years old

5′11″ (1.8 m)

150 lbs (68.04 kg)

Eyes: brown

Hair: black

Gender: Cis male

Orientation: Pansexual

In an alternate London, foul-mouthed teenager Hobart Brown was living as a squatter in a United Kingdom ruled by the fascist regime of Prime Minister "Ozzy" Osborn. He was bitten by a spider irradiated by illegal waste dumping, which gave him spider superpowers. With his newfound powers, Hobie became a punk-rock-inspired Spider-Man and led the oppressed people of London in a revolt against Osborn and his storm troopers. Spider-Punk is defined by his rebellious attitude towards absolutely everything, and will take any opportunity to turn on an establishment, regardless of the consequences.

PERSONALITY:

-Hobie is a zealous, headstrong, brazen, uncompromising, and altruistic young man.

-Although he pretends to be an apathetic badass, Hobie clearly has a deep connection to his team and a surprising amount of respect for Spider-Man Noir.

-He is surprisingly good with children.

-Hobie is an extremely devout anarchist who chafes at all forms of authority. Whenever he is given orders, Hobie makes it clear that he’s only going along with them because he wants to. Put simply, Hobie fights evil on his own terms.

-Hobie lives by two rules: No Gods. No Masters. He hates the rich, authorities, and politicians.

-Hobie takes the Spider-Man staple of flippancy to a whole new level—oftentimes, he doesn’t even attempt to be clever with his quips, instead throwing out the harshest insults he can come up with. 

-As a musician and activist, he integrates anti-authority messages into his performances. He frequently encourages (and joins) mosh pits among the audience. Such acts are deemed illegal in his home universe… not that he cares. 

-Hobie is a terrible singer, but he argues that’s what punk rock is all about.

-With the plethora of questionable decisions he’s made just to survive, Hobie does not consider himself a role model, let alone a hero. Despite this, he still has high praise for himself and tries to project an aura of "cool."

-Hobie's boots are ladder laced. In punk culture, ladder lacing with colored laces is a way to discreetly express your beliefs. Hobie's laces are blue, which means the wearer has killed a police officer. Though Hobie remains unwilling to divulge many aspects of his life, he has mentioned that he was once betrayed by a police officer…

-Hobie enjoys playing with people’s gender expectations and dresses as androgynously as possible. He believes that it is impossible to separate punk history from queer history.

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Spider Physiology: After being bitten by a spider irradiated by illegal waste dumping, Hobart obtained the proportionate powers of a spider.

Superhuman Strength: Hobie can lift at least one ton.

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Agility

Superhuman Equilibrium

Superhuman Reflexes

Spider-Sense

Wallcrawling

Regeneration

Web-Shooters

Modified guitar: An instrument that can emit a large shockwave attack similar to Miles Morales’ "venom power". In addition, the guitar can play frequencies strong enough to cause electronic equipment to malfunction.

Cricket bat: A simple yet effective wooden bat inscribed with "Beat on the Brat," a Ramones lyric.

Engineer: Hobart is a tech genius, able to create his Web-Shooters and a functional dimension-hopping watch after studying the properties of Peni Parker’s teleportation device. He was also able to engineer his guitar into a weapon.

Skilled Acrobat: Spider-Punk is able to perform acrobatic and gymnastic moves, such as high jumps, somersaults, flips, etc. at a level far beyond the ability of normal humans.

Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Hobie has years of street fighting experience. He utilizes techniques that enable him to make full use of his speed, agility, and strength. However, he lacks any formal training.

Musician: Hobie is a talented musician and plays both guitar and drums.

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SP//dr

Peni Parker

Futuristic New York City, New York; 3145 AD

9-13 years old

4′11″ (1.5 m), 9′ (2.74 m) (in armor)

105 lbs (47.63 kg), 900 lbs (408.23 kg) (in armor)

Eyes: brown

Hair: black

Gender: Cis female

Orientation: Asexual

In an alternate Japan, in the year 3145, Peni Parker was born the only daughter of Dr. Richard Parker. When she was 9 years old, her father passed away piloting the SP//dr suit. She would be adopted by her Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York, and they informed her that she was the last person able to bond with the radioactive spider that controlled Richard’s bionic armor. Peni accepted this responsibility, allowed the radioactive spider to bite her, and repaired the mech suit. Now known as SP//dr, Peni protects her futuristic neighborhood with her new best spider-friend and a powerful robotic suit!

PERSONALITY:

-Peni is a peppy, energetic, optimistic, intelligent, tough, and somewhat smug girl. 

-Peni’s bubbly nature is infectious, and she loves making new friends. She quite literally views the Spider-Gang as her family, even addressing them as onii-chan (big brother) and onee-chan (big sister) respectively. Likewise, she cherishes her bond with the SP//dr spider more than anything—in many ways, it’s her last connection to her father.

-A generally happy-go-lucky person, it is rare to see her sad or discouraged. That said, if grief or anxiety do strike, her productivity takes a sharp decline. She is a very emotional person, and her friends’ struggles affect her profoundly.

-Peni is a responsible and dedicated individual; she has devoted countless hours to her studies and working on her father's suit. That said, she can be a tad arrogant where her work is concerned, and bristles at outside input or assistance. It can be difficult to get Peni to accept technological help or admit when she’s made a mistake.

-Peni is proud of her intellect to an almost vain degree. She unconsciously comes off as condescending when explaining her technology to others, especially Spider-Man Noir (even though he can easily pick up how modern tech works).

-In battle, she is ruthless, aggressive, and devastatingly analytical.

-She has a habit of striking magical girl or idol singer poses.

-Peni is a vegetarian but isn’t preachy about it.

-Peni has an ultra-secret candy stash hidden… somewhere.

-Her hobbies include J-pop and manga (she’s recently gotten into Boys’ and Girls’ Love).

POWERS & ABILITIES:

Genius-Level Intellect: Peni Parker is extremely intelligent, mostly regarding her exceptional scientific, engineering, and hacking skills. 

Scientist: A wunderkind prodigy, she is remarkably skilled and knowledgeable in a wide range of scientific fields.

Engineer: Peni takes great pride in her engineering intelligence, which has enabled her to create upgrades for her SP//dr armor and even invent an inter-dimensional teleportation device.

Expert Hacker

SP//dr Suit Mk III: A psychically-powered mech suit created by Peni’s father. The SP//dr suit is genetically linked to her, so only Peni may use it. The suit uses magnetically manipulated appendages for versatility, wall-crawling, and enhanced strength, and it can shoot lasers from its fingers and weld various metals. Additionally, wrist-mounted web shooters built into the SP//dr suit allow it to web-swing between buildings and entrap enemies. The suit is shielded against radiation, biological, chemical, corrosive, and electrical attacks. In the cockpit, there is an on-board computer operating system that aids Peni in accessing the internet, providing background information, and connecting with (or hacking into) other devices. The inside also has a snack compartment.

Bilingualism: Peni speaks Japanese and English.

Expert pilot: Peni’s piloting abilities have advanced to the point where the SP//dr suit feels like an extension of her body.

Psychic link: Peni allowed herself to be bitten by the SP//dr spider—a radioactive, sentient spider (whom she refers to as her best friend) acting as one half of the CPU that makes the SP//dr suit work. Beyond piloting the suit, the spider shares thoughts and emotions with Peni.

Spider-Sense: Through her psychic connection, Peni possesses a precognitive "spider" sense that warns her of potential immediate danger.

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[mirroredmemoriez]

Amanda Young style and fem whatnot thoughts

Once again here to speak my thoughts that nobody asked for because I love documenting my brain which I have to boot up like a chainsaw. I've spoken about Amanda's appearance before! Going over her outfits throughout the franchise and such and how I believe it kinda symbolises the stages she's at- I am in the firm belief her cutting her hair was almost like a rebirth for example.

However, right now I'm looking at the ''gender representation'' and stylisation side I guess? Which, I want to state- These are my opinions and thoughts and are by no way to say I'm like the only CORRECT view and anyone else's interpretation of Amanda that's different to mine is wrong, because I like seeing everyone's various takes on her character. With that said! I see Amanda as somebody who tries to be feminine, but can't express it truly how she wants? Down to factors such as she can't afford certain things like makeup accessories, and that she needs to have more of a practical wardrobe whilst being an apprentice. Oh! Also having to hide her identity at times. (I also want to slide in the fact that I don't think she's hyper feminine or masculine, honestly? She's just Amanda really, I wouldn't personally put a label on it when it comes to that.)

The first look we get of Amanda, she's in a way more revealing outfit than her future ones whilst working under John. This could just be her style, which to a certain degree I agree on... However there also could be an aspect of performative femininity, seeing as she's not ''reformed'' at this point and it's suggested in the Saw wiki that she has prostituted herself to be able to fund her drug addiction before. Basically, catering to the male gaze to get what she wants. She's wearing a cut off shirt which exposes her shoulders and collar area a lot, something we don't see again until Saw 3- And even then it's still not as cut off as the purple one. Amanda also has fishnets, a skirt and boots on. If I had to say how I view Amanda' style myself, I'd go with Hot Topic thief and or something alternative like ''grungy.'' We've also got the fact she has black nail polish on, eyeliner and more curled out hair- Even when she grows it back, it's not as wavy as it's seen here, so it's possible she's either just heavily dishevelled or she purposely has maybe curled it out a little. Once again, this could possibly be her trying to look more appealing to others by ''grooming'' herself better. However, I also think she wants to just for herself really.

Now, we've got her Saw X look, which to me is the most heavily influenced by John. Amanda has cut off her hair to I guess kinda a pixie-bob cut? A big leap from her previous haircut which had it falling at least over her shoulders if not longer. She's also very bare faced, with no heavily noticeable touches of makeup anywhere to be seen. Her clothes are drastically more practical than her previous outfit. A form fitting shirt, cargo pants and combat boots. The only influence I feel she has on this outfit is the choker and little earring. You can't really blame her for the change though- Amanda just wouldn't be putting time into something like beauty cosmetics or making any fashion statement when she's got shit to do... Y'know like make death traps and kidnap people, activities where the way you look doesn't matter and you wouldn't want your clothes to get caught on something especially.

Before I fully move on to her Saw 2 look, two honourable mentions! These both showcase the fact that nowadays, when Amanda is out and about, she's trying to hide her identity. She can't really draw any attention to herself and that is reflected in what she wears. The Scott Tibbs Documentary look has to be one of my favourites, I love the skull trousers so much and they are definitely something she wears because she likes the LOOK, not just because of ''simplicity.''

(Amanda has them on again in the deleted nightmare scene as well, so it's a recurring piece of her wardrobe.)

(I also think this is her dressing for herself- Compared to her outfits when it comes to the games and abductions)

The pig outfit, though I believe can be slightly stupid at times, due to the fact that it's probably less convenient than whipping on something like a balaclava with a hoodie and a bit more out there visually too- It still does it's main intended job, which is to conceal the identity of the Jigsaw apprentices. With the one I've selected above, this is when Amanda is going to abduct Adam, so obviously this is still pretty early in the timeline? We can see a re-appearance of smudged eye makeup like in her introduction.

TRYING TO GET BACK ON TRACK! Here we have her ''blue'' outfits as I dub them. I'm aware there is a time jump between them, however generally what I have to say for them is the exact same? We can see that Amanda is growing her hair out more and I would say these are very relaxed fits. Saw 2 Amanda has to be one of her most basic outfits I'd say, a plain blue shirt and blue sweatpants to go along with it.... The wiki feet people are going insane too.

WOOOOO! ON TO ANOTHER OF MY FAVOURITE OUTFITS. YOU JUST KNOW SHE STOLE THAT BELT FROM HOT TOPIC I AM SO SORRY! Saw 3 Amanda to me is a mix between something like her look in Saw X and then her look in Saw (2004)- I also love the contrast between it and the Saw 2 look, a blue vs red type feel almost? You're definitely more inclined to see Amanda as intimidating here than in blue. Comparisons aside, let's look at the actual fit this woman has on! Once again, she sports cargo pants with a belt to accompany and combat boots too. The shirt isn't as cut off as the purple one as I stated before, but it leaves a lot of her collar and back area exposed. It's her influence alongside John's- And her almost I wouldn't say rebelling? But defining herself outside of him. If I once again want to go full English teacher analysis... We could make the reach and say that her physically exposing herself is paired with how she emotionally is exposed as well. Her lowest points if you will. BUT! We'll move on from that so I can ramble about some other accessories. Amanda is wearing a gold ring and a watch, nothing too out there but I wanted to point them out seeing as I am covering the WHOLE outfit. Her hair is now at it's original length, once again reinforcing the fact she is almost reverting back to her old style but at the same time redefining it? Hair growth to show personal growth. (Some more honourable mentions.)

Here we have her dress, leather jacket and DBD concept art! First we'll look at the dress. It's honestly really cute to me- The ribbon around her neck just really makes it AMANDA, otherwise there isn't too much to say on the design outside of that and it's colour. Then moving on to the leather jacket, it's something I can definitely see her wearing a lot on top of her other outfits. OK! This is getting super fucking long now, I'll try and finish off soon- I have to say I love the DBD concept art and the in game designs too, I can 100% see where they've taken inspiration from with the outfits. I'm in firm belief Amanda deserves to have her arm sleeves so where they've combined that and the Saw 3 look is URHG YES. I also enjoy their take on her leather look, fleshed out the design more in my opinion. Anyway... If you've somehow gotten all the way down here? Jesus Christ, thanks I guess? I am someone who loves over analysing things and discussing characters/movies like this, so I just couldn't help myself anymore. Oh, and feel free to add on to any of this, whether you agree or disagree! MAL OUT

[yanderes-galore]

If I'm not too late to the party, can I request a yandere concept for Daan (fear and hunger)?

I'd love to write more for Funger, yeah! Moonscorched timer not mentioned.

Yandere! Daan/Daniël Concept

Pairing: Platonic -> Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Trauma, Overprotective behavior, Depression, Murder, Violence, Jealousy, Fear of loss, Slight possessive behavior, Mentioned drinking, Blood, Religious themes/Cults, Forced/Dubious relationship.

As I have not played the game myself, I had to scour Youtube for Daan's interactions and I also found a wiki for his personality.

Honestly? He is one of the sadder characters.

He essentially grew up alone since the age of 13 due to his parents being part of the Sylvian cult.

He was originally once in love and learning to be a doctor after being taken in later on in his life.

Then he was drafted to war and came back to his family dead.

The reason he came to Prehevil was to try and find a reason for why his wife and mentor were killed.

He's a man cloaked in depression and mostly is seen alone while trying to investigate the town.

When he can he is kind to those who need it, yet he is a man followed by demons.

He has knowledge in the occult and medicine and is shown to be protective of younger characters like Levi and Marina most likely due to his own trauma.

There's a good chance as a contestant you meet him by chance.

Daan is most likely diagnosing bodies of Moonscorched villagers when you find him.

He takes note of your hesitancy yet can tell you don't really want to be alone in a place like this.

He can't blame you... so conversation between you starts.

Daan works as both a platonic and romantic yandere.

He most likely starts as platonic as he is still grieving the loss of his wife.

Daan would be protective like he is with younger contestants.

Even if you were 21 or even a little younger than him instead of 18 he shows the trait.

Daan is a yandere who doesn't want his darling to suffer or go through pain.

He knows what it's like and would try to prevent it due to him being compassionate.

Daan doesn't mind the fact you came to speak with him while he was investigating.

He likes that you offered to help, even if it's just because you didn't want to be alone.

His obsession is slow acting as he is wary of being close with anyone here but he does prove to be a helpful companion.

Your discussions are often of theories of what could've happened in Prehevil.

You even learn facts about the occult from Daan along with basic medical knowledge.

Your companionship starts pretty basic, partners for survival and investigation.

Sometimes you two share info about your past in private.

Daan appears hesitant to share at first but eventually he reveals to you about why he lost his eye and his past/reasons for being here.

You show sympathy, something he doesn't feel he needs but appreciates.

During him being bartender, if you confirm you're of age, Daan doesn't mind offering to make your favorite drink to ease the nerves.

Or if you just don't prefer alcohol he can find something else.

Daan, despite his past, would be very caring towards you.

If you're ever injured or infected with something from Prehevil he'll look into treating you.

Just because he has no official license does not mean he's clueless in what he's doing.

He'll patch you up and keep an eye on you.

Daan can be rude and callous at times, usually aimed at Karin for her theories, yet he'll be nicer around you.

Many contestants can tell you and Daan are a close pair.

Some even make rumors you're closer than many think.

Daan ignores such rumors for the most part as he's still sore about the murder of his loved ones and just...

You probably don't deserve all the baggage he carries.

Despite this, the thought does linger in his mind the longer you're around.

When he looks at you and how eager you are to help him, he feels his heart melt a little.

It's a familiar feeling.

You don't mind him venting and you keep him company.

Maybe it's just the lingering depression that's making him desperate but he does yearn for what he had before.

His normal behavior takes a shift when he begins to consider what he could have with you.

He begins to be a bit more physical with you to try and test the waters.

Pats on the back, arm around the shoulders, full on hugs...

If you're receptive to this he'll go further and further.

When you start showing resistance he backs off to not scare you.

Daan may show possessive behavior due to his potential Moonscorched form.

For the most part Daan is overly protective and caring towards you.

He no doubt has PTSD and fears the idea of losing you.

He fears he'll hurt you if he becomes a monster and he fears you'll die in front of him.

He watches your health like a hawk and never lets you out of his sight.

Even though Daan is skilled in mixology I doubt he'd use alcohol to manipulate you.

He cares for you too much for that and, like I said before, hates the idea of hurting you.

If anything Daan wants to prevent you from going through the same trauma he went through, similar to Levi.

Daan has experience in romantic relationships and would be sweet with you once he gets there.

He's slow to make romantic due to his past but once he's there?

He has you in an iron grip, like claws digging into your back.

He's jealous of other contestants at times and appears possessive due to his fear of losing you like his wife.

It could just be Rher's influence, maybe even Pocketcat...

But Daan finds himself wanting to make the other contestants bleed for you.

If he doesn't do something, they will.

If he doesn't kill them, you'll die.

He just hates the look you give him when you see him covered in blood.

He promised he'd never hurt you... look at him now.

The normally compassionate yet sometimes callous doctor surrounded by death as he looks at you with strange eyes.

Are they slits? Why does the moonlight make it seem like they're glowing?

Daan understands you're scared of him.

Who wouldn't be?

But he couldn't lose the love of his life yet again.

So maybe he'll embrace being a monster if it means the pain goes away... and he gets what he wants.

[baeddel]

obviously, i'm trying to get my head around things as someone who doesn't ultimately know that much about about Palestine. i went to look at Al-Manar (Hezbollah's news outlet) and they have this article (click) saying that while in the past 'the resistance groups' of Palestine (they don't name Hamas or anyone else) have been forced to be on defense, they have been moving towards a new strategy, an offensive strategy. Al-Jazeera had an analyst on saying something similar, that this was a 'new resistance approach' (click, scroll down a bit), seeing it as a way of sending a message to other Arab states that have settled into normalized relationships with Israel that they can't have it both ways.

obviously Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar both have a specific point of view on Palestine, but i wondered how much it was true that Hamas were building towards a new kind of strategy that the rocket attack (by the way, what Iron Dome?) was an expression of, and what reasons would underlie that change. one condition is obviously the availability of rockets, something Hamas didn't always have (if this wiki article is correct, click, the last suicide bombing on Israel was 7 years ago and there were only two in the 2010s; i feel that this is a big change, not just strategically; doesn't it allow for a big change in the kind of relationship you can have between an organization and the people it wants to represent when it no longer needs to convince young people to kill themselves to carry out operations? access to rockets must come with access to new civic modes as well).

i remembered an article by Haaretz (a left/liberal Israeli newspaper; unfortunately i can't find the specific article again—i posted it on this blog but tumblr's search is awful) from years ago about the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, where they said that the IDF were blindsided by Hezbollah because the IDF had transformed itself into a counter-insurgency force to deal with Palestine and were unable to cope with Hezbollah's conventional military, taking the view that it may be impossible to have an army that can effectively cope with both insurgent 'small wars' and conventional militaries. since then we've seen the US transition from being COIN-oriented to 'Great Power Conflict' oriented, at least according to a lot of media (see WSJ, click). i was reminded of it because of the theme of the shifting approaches to war in the region.

i went to look Haaretz today to see what their view was; they seem to mostly focus on the Israeli dead and the threat Hamas pose to Israel. i am not sure what their real position is; on the one hand they're ultimately an Israeli paper so that bias isn't unsurprising, but i appreciate that they also probably can't publish treason during a war, so you can suspect timidity. one article has the headline "Israel Must Smash Hamas" (click). but the very next word is "But..."—as if to say, 'of course we support the war, we only wish it was a just one.' their rhetorical strategy is to start off talking about the cost to Israeli lives, especially civilians, but then to redirect the discussion towards Israel's internal politics, to say that this wouldn't have happened if the Israeli government hadn't mismanaged its handling of Palestine, that the government is full of corruption and that they can't effectively respond to the threat that Palestine poses. i realized that the article on the Israel-Hezbollah war was actually saying the same thing; it blames the situation on the transformation of the IDF and so forth. in this article they first blame it on the government's creation of the division between Gaza and the West Bank, their unwillingness to recognize any Palestinian authority, and their unwillingless to work towards a peace process that might have "required territorial compromise in the West Bank."

but then they blame it on Netanyahu's corruption, saying that he appointed incapable people to the positions of Minister of National Security and Minister of National Defence because they were his personal allies, and that their reforms have "severely weakened the IDF." in contrast to the Arab outlets Haaretz' analysis effaces Palestinian agency, which is actually a familiar motif to me as a radical in the West who supports the Palestinian resistance. everyone talks about Israeli settlerism, Israeli rockets, Israel's sanctions and so forth, and are happy to attribute full causal powers to these things. this is because it's necessary to convince people (and renew their conviction that) Israel is the enemy, but i think there's also a certain timidity about acknowledging Palestinian agency for various reasons (you don't agree with Hamas about anything except that Palestine should be free, you don't want to support the killing of civilians, and you don't know what relationship ordinary Palestinians have with Hamas). but Haaretz take a view that i have never seen before and which is probably very uncommon outside of Israel, which is that the IDF are actually weak and mismanaged and that's the problem, and that the situation could be better if they had a left-wing government with competent leadership committed to peaceful negotiations, and that political changes in Israel are the step forward.

[theprotagonistisdead]

The Spuffy Hotlist (according to Me)

Most of these are Spuffy episodes, some (especially the ones from Season 4) are episodes with a b-plot that is centered on Spike, and aren’t necessarily Spuffy-centered. The descriptions are partly taken from the Buffy Wiki and then changed a bit.

also tagging @me-and-snails

S2E3 School Hard – Spike and Drusilla visit Sunnydale for the Night of Saint Vigeous, the holy night of attack.

S2E10 What’s My Line? Part 2 – Buffy drops an organ on Spike.

S2E22 Becoming, Part 2 – Spike offers a temporary alliance to Buffy.

S3E8 Lovers Walk – After Drusilla has broken up with him, a broken Spike returns to Sunnydale to punish everyone to blame, especially Angel.

S4E8 Pangs – Spike tries to get help from the Scoobies after The Initiative has put a chip into his head and is taken in by Giles.

S4E9 Something Blue – Willow’s spell goes badly, making Buffy and Spike fall in love and get engaged.

S4E11 Doomed – Spike has lost his will to live without his ability to kill due to the chip in his head, but grows heartened by the approaching end of the world as the Hellmouth has reopened.

S4E14 Goodbye Iowa – Spike has become an outcast among demons since he has taken up with the Scoobies.

S4E20 The Yoko Factor – Spike joins forces with Adam and devises a plan to tear Buffy from her friends, leaving her wide open for an attack.

S4E4 Out Of My Mind – When Riley stubbornly refuses help for his physical aftereffects of Initiative drugs and goes into hiding, Buffy turns to Spike for help, but he takes her situation for his own plot to rid himself of her once and for all.

S5E7 Fool for Love – In an effort to learn about Slayers’ final battles after having gotten hurt, Buffy forces Spike to tell her how he killed two Slayers.

S5E10 Into the Woods – Spike exposes Riley’s letting vampires suck his blood to Buffy.

S5E14 Crush – Buffy’s rejection of his love sends Spike back into Drusilla’s arms, who is set on returning him to his killer ways.

S5E15 I Was Made to Love You – Spike is thrown through a window by a heartbroken young woman/robot.

S5E17 Forever – Spike decides to help Dawn, who is trying to resurrect her mother, Joyce.

S5E18 Intervention – Believing he is The Key, Glory kidnaps and tortures Spike, but he decides not to tell her about Dawn. As a thank you, Buffy kisses him.

S5E20 Spiral – Spike helps the Scoobies protect Dawn and flee from Glory.

S5E22 The Gift – Spike protects Dawn from Glory’s ritual because he’s “made a promise to a lady.”

S6E1 Bargaining, Part 1 – Spike still takes care of Dawn, even after Buffy’s death.

S6E3 After Life – Buffy opens up to Spike about what happened to her while she was dead, something she feels she is unable to tell her friends.

S6E4 Flooded – In a quiet moment, Buffy and Spike sit on the porch and talk about life and money.

S6E7 Once More, With Feeling – A demon makes the citizens of Sunnydale break into song and Spike sings about their complicated relationship and that she should stay away if she can’t decide what they should be.

S6E9 Smashed – Spike realizes he can fight Buffy. The two fight; but as tensions rise, the two kiss and sleep with each other.

S6E10 Wrecked – Buffy is disgusted with herself after having slept with Spike.

S611 Gone – A social services worker believes that Spike is Buffy’s boyfriend. Later, Buffy is hit by an invisibility gun, which gives her a sense of freedom and she goes to sleep with Spike while invisible.

S6E12 Doublemeat Palace – Buffy starts working at a fast-food restaurant and after Spike annoys her at work, she sleeps with him during her break.

S6E13 Dead Things – Buffy is framed for murder by Warren, Andrew and Jonathan, making her believe she has actually killed an innocent person. Spike tries to convince her she didn’t kill anyone by making the body disappear, even though he had attacked her earlier.

S615 As You Were – Riley comes back to Sunnydale to recruit her to fight a demon. Accidentally, he stumbles onto Buffy and Spike sleeping with each other. However, Buffy decides to break things off with Spike at the end of the episode.

S6E19 Seeing Red – Spike tries to assault Buffy, but she fights him off.

S6E21 Two to Go – Spike starts fighting to get his soul back.

S6E22 Grave – Spike manages to get his soul back.

S7E1 Lessons – Spike appears in the basement of the rebuilt Sunnydale High School but appears to have gone mad.

S7E2 Beneath You – Spike, even though still mad, reveals to Buffy he’s gotten his soul back.

S7E8 Sleeper – Buffy fears that Spike has been killing people again and finds out that he can’t remember what happened, but switches from good to evil, again and again.

S7E9 Never Leave Me – Spike is tied up in the Summers’ house, but is later taken by the First’s lackeys.

S7E10 Bring On The Night – Spike is being kept prisoner by the First, who tortures him by appearing to him as Drusilla and Buffy.

S7E11 Showtime – Buffy rescues Spike from the First.

S7E12 Potential – Buffy and Spike train the Potentials.

S7E13 The Killer in Me – Spike’s chip malfunctions, and he ad Bufy have to find a way to help him.

S7E15 Get It Done – Spike kills a demon to get Buffy back to the present.

S7E16 Storyteller – Andrew documents what is happening for future generations and Buffy and Spike get a big romantic introduction in his story.

S7E17 Lies My Parents Told Me – A solution to Spike’s trigger is found, but Giles and Principal Wood decide to try to kill him.

S7E20 Touched – Buffy is demoted from leadership by the Potentials and throw out of the house. Spike is the only one who stands up for her and comforts her in an abandoned house.

S7E22 Chosen – Spike sacrifices himself to close the Hellmouth, but not before Buffy tells him she loves him.

[recentadultburnout]

Info for writer in Thai series fandom : Chapter 19 Mythical creatures

As the title says, this chapter will be about mythical creatures, specifically Himmaphan's creatures. There are a lot of himmaphan's creatures, some more popular than others. In this chapter, I won't list all of them here, just some, and I will just do a quick introduction and some random points I can think of, not their full myth.

The link below is to the Wikipedia page for Himmaphan. In there, there are also links to some of the himmaphan's creatures too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himavanta

This mythology is pretty famous and known across many regions, so there are a lot of resources in English already. So I think, just after a short introduction, anyone who is interested will be able to get more information quite easily.

There may be some differences between each region's version of it, but from what I saw, the differences are not that great. Especially if we look at only the character characteristics and not the entire epic.😆👍

นาค  naga

Naga is, in short, a big fantasy snake. There are quite a few types or ranks of them. They have four ways that they can be born. Opapātika, born and grows up immediately. Sansetcha, born from ashes and accumulated matter. Chalapucha, born from the womb. And āṇṭhāca, born from an egg. Water is their element.

Personally, I suspect that some of Nega's tales are of different origins from Himmaphan's tale but got mixed up when cultures merged. And that is the reason why there are so many more tales about them than about other mythical beings. But right now, I'm too lazy to actually drive in and try to verify that theory.

ordain บวชนาค When a man wants to ordain, there will be a short period during the ordain ceremony when the will gets called naga. The story involved is that back then, when Gotama Buddha was still alive, there was a naga that wanted to be a monk, but, in the end, as one of its requirements was to be human, he couldn't. So we incorporated this into the ceremony to honor him. There is a step in the ceremony where the person who is ordain has to confirm that he is, in fact, a human, too.

Water amount There is a belief that rain and water come from nagas, and the amount of water we get each year is determined by how many nagas are in charge of giving it. The more naga, the less water, because when there are more nagas, they start to be unwilling to do the work and want to push the burden on others. The maximum number of naga is seven per year.

Nakee is a pretty iconic drama about Naga. I never fully watched it, but if you are interested in Naga, this drama might be a good choice.

ครุฑ  Garuda

Garuda's appearance is part bird, part human, with a human's torso and arms and a bird's head, wings, and legs.

Garuda is a sibling of a different mother of Naga and an enemy. Their mothers are also siblings and enemies. In fact, the reason why Garuda and Naga are enemies is because their mothers made it that way. There is a lot of family conflict in this story. Garuda also eats Naga.

Garuda is one of the king's symbols. Culturally, the king is an avatar of Narayana, and Garuda is Narayana's vehicle.

(I tried to translate the word for this concept, สมมุติเทพ, but it seems like there isn't any word in English that fits.)

Queen Kakati กากี

Garuda Is one of the important characters in a famous tale about Queen Kakati. The story is that Garuda disguises himself as a man and goes to play a game with a king, and when he sees the king's wife, Queen Kakati, he wants her. So then he kidnaps her and brings her to his Chimplee Palace.

He slept with her there, and then one other guy also slept with her there. So the name Chimplee occasionally got used to hint at sexual things.

The name of the heroine also gets used for slut-shaming.

Just a warning if you want to read the whole thing. The story is heavily victim-blaming. All the guys in this story are trash, at least in the Thai version.

กินนร kinnon

Kinnon is described as a half-bird, half-human creature, or a creature with a human-like body but with detachable wings and tail.

Kinnari and kinnara are words that are also used to refer to the same mythical creatures.

We have a lot of variant words for each Himmaphan's creatures, actually. I think it's for poetry.

Suthon and Manora

Suthon and Manora is one of the stories that features Kinnon. Manora, the female protagonist, is a kinnari. She got captured one day when she removed her wings and tail during her bath with her sisters. After that, she met and fell in love with Prince Suthon. But later, Prince Suthon's family wronged her, making her flee back home. This tale is linked to the other tale. It says that Suthon and Manora's past lives are Phra Rod and Meree.

ปลาอานนท์  Anon fish

A giant fish that can cause an earthquake when it turns over.

นารีผล  Nariphon

Naripon is composed of two words: Nari (woman) and Phon (fruit). It is a fruit that resembles a beautiful girl. They have 7 days before they rot away.

คนธรรพ์  Gandharvas

Heavenly musicians and singers. Servant of a greater deity. They are pretty flirtatious beings and like to take a ripe nariphon for themselves.

I feel like they are always the asshole in every tale they feature.

นกหัสดีลิงค์  Hatsadiling

It looks mostly like a bird, but its beak looks like an elephant's trunk. The Hatsadiling is often used for decoration in cremation ceremonies because it is believed that it can carry the soul of the deceased to heaven.

There is evidence of the use of the Hatsadiling-shaped crematorium in the Lanna and Lan Chang cultures. But in Ubon Ratchathani, there is a specific tradition where they will have a person act as Sita performs the traditional Hatsadiling bird-killing ceremony.

There are a few versions of the tale that influence this tradition, but the highlight is that the woman named Sita kills a hatsadiling that has been causing trouble via arrow.

มอม  mom

The Mom creature looks similar to a mixture of many animals, including dogs, cats, geckos, lizards, monkeys, tigers, etc. It has long arms and a long, stretched body similar to that of a reptile. The color of the body will vary depending on the artist. This creature is prominent in Lanna art.

มกร  Makorn or Makara

It's statue is usually in a state of spitting something out of its mouth. It's look pretty similar to Hera. Often got mixed up with Hera. Some sources say that it IS the same creature as Hera, just an alternative name. 

เหรา   Hera

A mix of naga and (Chinese?) dragon, or a crocodile-like creature. It has four feet, and its face has both fins and a crest. It is sometimes described as a different mix, like with Garuda or a horse.

It's tale is that it tries to eat a naga but fails....

There is a statue of Mom and Hera that went viral awhile ago. It's an amateur DIY cement stair railing by a monk. It came out looking very adorable. they even got fan art and goods.

^Mom

^Hera

^The good in question.

สิงห์  lion

There are four types of lion-like creatures in the Himmaphan universe. (Not included the lion mix with other creatures.)

Kraisorn Rajasribody is white like conch shell. Mouth, belly, and feet are red like it is painted with cinnabar mixed with mercury and sulfur dissolved in lac water. Live in a gold or glass cave. It is faster than sound and has a voice as loud as thunder.

Kala Sriha is black and despises being a lion-like creature. It is an herbivore. Not that it is harmless, though.

Tinna Sriha has a red body like the legs of a pigeon and is as big as a bull. Also an herbivore. Tinna means grass.

Bantu Rajasribody is like the color of a yellow leaf. This one is carnivorous.

We use them in government logos, and some of the universities (4) have them as Faculty of Political Science logos. Each university uses a different one.

I found this website when I searched for the English spelling of Kraisorn Rajasri, and it is amazing. So this chapter ends here, lol.

And this website is for art that was created for the King Rama 9 funeral.

https://phramerumas.finearts.go.th/group-items.php?grpID=15

^ from the Fine Arts Department

^ from the Thailand Foundation

Index

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

In the past, I've talked about Kodaka's current (to be extra clear, at the time) body of work and its lack of representation of characters outside the gender binary, or characters who fucked with it.

Kodaka's relationship with writing gnc characters has been a hot topic for a while due to the inclusion of Chihiro Fujisaki in Danganronpa 1, a character who, according to any straightforward analysis, was simply written without consideration for the sheer existence of gender non-conformity. Not only is this lack of acknowledgement of queer experiences disappointing coming from an adult - yes, even in 2010, though yes, it being 2010 plays a role in the narrative - but many players felt a connection to elements of Chihiro's experience and felt that their own queer identity/experience had been actively disrespected. Beyond that, there's the Ultimate Imposter in Danganronpa 2 (and later 3), a character whose identity "and gender" are unknown, but it's made pretty clear with every part of his representation and writing that he's really just a guy, who only ever presents himself as a guy, and the inclusion of gender in this description was just to hammer down the fact that he was a complete mystery. (Unlike Genocider Shou from Danganronpa 1, for example, for whom the police had fairly accurate theories concerning her potential profile.)

Later on, after Kodaka left Spike Chunsoft to found Too Kyo Games and started working on multiple new projects, due to having Wiki brain and being a fan from the release of Episode 1, I was in the midst of a small controversy concerning Cutthroat's gender in Akudama Drive. As Funimation's subtitles had a character who had never seen Cutthroat's real face use the neutral pronoun "them" to refer to him, some viewers assumed Cutthroat may have been non-binary. Something else that played a role was the lack of an official translation for the characters' Japanese profiles, and the fact that a few viewers decided to use Google Translate, which mistakenly prompted up the word "gender". This was a mistake due to the machine translator not understanding a line break, and this word was in fact not mentioned in his profile at all. The final nail in the coffin: none of the characters' profiles mentioned their genders. I absolutely do not blame anyone for believing in this theory (and as a headcanon, I definitely respect it,) seeing as there were enough vague elements to make one consider it. Unfortunately, as it turned out, this was another case of not even taking the possibility of gender non-conformity into consideration. This time, the year was 2020. It's very likely that the characters' genders weren't mentioned because you were supposed to look at the characters and think "well obviously, that's a man" "well obviously, that's a woman". (Because Doctor's whole shtick is more of a mess, I won't delve into it for the purpose of this post, but as of very recently the manga artist indulged in a little bit of transphobia in how he referred to her and allegedly thought up her backstory himself - in a way that's honestly just confusing.) As for that aforementioned subtitle, just like the Ultimate Imposter's gender was unknown, this had to do with Cutthroat's anonymity.

It was only on February 25, 2023, that an official profile featuring Cutthroat's gender was released in the manga. No surprise here: he is listed as being male.

So from October 8, 2020, when Episode 1 released, to February 25, 2023, I was left to die on the hill that… no… he's not non-binary, guys… I'm sorry, it's a misunderstanding. Because not only did I receive some insults and was subject to rude reactions, but also because believe it or not, I would actually also have been overjoyed had he been non-binary, as time went, I explained why I believed he wasn't meant to be. This included the explanations above, that factually the idea that he was non-binary stemmed from a misunderstanding, but I also mentioned Kodaka's current known body of work - at the time.

Kodaka had never created a character who was actually gnc. His creations included characters who had clearly been written without gender non-conformity in mind. It's not like his only other work since he founded Too Kyo Games at the time (Death Come True) had non-binary characters either. It just wasn't a thing in his works. Best we had was… Kiibo, the robot from Danganronpa V3…? He has a throwaway line in which he mentions not being for a fact gendered. Because he is a robot. Nothing happens with that, and he is not human, but it did feel a little bit like real life was sort of in the room with us for once.

As such, and because none of us know Kodaka personally, there was no reason to infer that this Japanese man in his forties who had never even tried to imply he cared about trans and gnc identities… cared about trans and gnc identities. I was told it was a bit harsh to claim he didn't care, but I thought it important to present to young queer people who were at risk of being lied to the possibility that this stranger in his forties isn't in fact their friend. I thought it a concept important to take into consideration, when you know, queerbaiting exists. When parasocial relationships exist. And when there are also angrier consumers who assume the worst - that he is in fact actively transphobic - I wanted to clarify my stance that we just. Don't know. And that the information we had pointed towards him probably being an ignorant man who doesn't care about it.

Then comes RAIN CODE. At some point, maybe a few months before the game's release, official character profiles were written in English for the main cast. Although every other character's profile included their pronouns, Halara's, specifically, didn't, and instead very clearly repeated their name where there would have been a gendered pronoun. Despite my general stance, which I made clear in this post, I did have the belief that this meant Halara would use neutral pronouns.

There was no certainty, and I was extremely ready to be disappointed. That being said, there were multiple elements which made it a reasonable assumption; not only did this profile clearly stand out in this way, but I had other reasons to believe it a possibility - notably, Spike Chunsoft's involvement, and the promotional content that made it clear RAIN CODE was being made by the team behind Danganronpa. At this point in time (being 2023), with knowledge of Danganronpa's fanbase and a specific intent to cater to it, it was extremely reasonable to believe that Spike Chunsoft was going to want - or possibly accept, if the idea was Kodaka's in the first place, which I don't know - a token non-binary character. It's yet again a pretty crude way to put it, but by being so deeply involved in the Danganronpa fandom and by having dealt with Spike Chunsoft directly for a while, the time felt right. On top of that, Kodaka's work partner and fellow game creator, Uchikoshi, has demonstrated himself as a proper trans ally. With Uchikoshi having defended gnc identities, and his close relationship to Kodaka, there is a fair assumption to be made that Kodaka may have been influenced somewhat.

And not too long later, Halara's official profile was published on the official site, where one line was added - and this line used the neutral pronoun "they". At this point, it was clear that regardless of what their identity would turn out to be, Halara was going to be presented as a gnc character.

This post is already very long and I'm only now getting to what I wanted to say: I'm glad. I'm not sure I've said it before, but I'm glad.

I haven't played RAIN CODE, so I can't speak to how Halara's identity was presented, if it was good or not, but it's been confirmed to me that they are in fact neither a man or a woman. When I was in Wiki brain mode and taking note of the promotional content for the game, it was genuinely exciting, as someone who has had to look at a lot of Komatsuzaki's designs, to look at Halara as his first non-binary design. To consider the thought that was put into designing and presenting them the way they are. Finally!

This doesn't change the way Kodaka's previous works were written, but it is extremely reassuring to see that things are moving in the right direction. That gnc identities are being taken into account by someone who famously didn't before. That there is good will being extended to people with those identities, who want to see themselves on-screen. Now, here's to hoping that Halara won't be an outlier. That in Kodaka's future works, more gnc/non-binary/trans representation will be found, be it in main or surrounding casts, as a normal option for how a character can be.

That's all I wanted to say.

[pridewishes]

i wanna try to get into enstars bc i like pjsk (even tho i am so bad at it) and also am gay but i find it overwhelming and confusing can u give me some tips or something

Absolutely, I will do my best to help! It's very, very overwhelming and a lot so I don't blame you at all! I'll put everything under a cut because I'm autistic and very excited and have a Lot of links and things!

First, absolutely watch the Enstars anime. This will go over the main points / ideas of the Main Story of the first game (aka ! era). Strongly recommend watching in sub because the dub isn't very good.

Then, watch Element. This goes over the Element Arc of ! Era Main Story. They cover this in the main anime but not as good.

There's also a movie, which I have but I don't have a link for it. If you'd like the download + subtitle file for it, just shoot me an ask or dm me at @shinobukawajiri and I can help out! But it's not super lore important or anything so don't worry.

Alright! So you've seen the anime! Now you can get into the music. You could also listen to songs before the anime, really whatever you want! For this, I'd suggest going to the wiki and picking a Unit! Check out their discography, which you can view from their wiki page and give the songs a listen. You can find all of them on YT! I'd definitely listen to a couple songs from all units to get a feel because they all have very different sounds! If there's a music genre you like let me know, and I can recommend some songs / units! There's also some Temporary Units + Shuffle Units, which have music as well that you can listen to! If you'd like some recommendations, lmk!

Now, after viewing the anime, and listening to songs, pick a Unit or some characters you like and focus on stories for them! Since there's a lot of stories it's better to just pick some favorites and go from there. Crazy:B and Alkaloid were introduced in !! era / the second game, so you won't see them in the anime, if they're of interest to you. Here is a guide for important stories from the first game for the characters in that.

To access stories for the first game / ! Era, you'll have to use the wayback machine, or you can just look up (story name) tl / translation on Google, and you should usually be able to find what you need, since they were forced to take down any tls on the wiki.

Now, there's two games as I've established. The first game is completely in Japanese, and I'd rely on Story translations from the wayback machine wiki. As for the new game, you can play in English! It's accessible from the appstore, but remember, this takes place AFTER the other game! You absolutely do not have to know all the lore / read all the stories or anything to play! I'm just mega autistic so lmao. But the English version of Enstars Music doesn't have the best translations, but it is more accessible. Though, if you become super invested like me and my partner, you can absolutely download the Japanese version of the game!

There's lots of people on Twitter who translate and things for the stories + general game things and id be happy to direct to them if you find yourself super enjoying the Series!

Basically it is VERY difficult bc there's also drama cds, stageplays, manga, but finding things translated or just finding them can take work but ofc all that isn't required. In general just have fun!!! Don't be deterred and like I said I'm more than happy to help find things or whatever anyone needs! Since my partner has been more invested for longer than me, we both can do our best to help!!

Also a note from said partner ;

to my wife’s autism anon: i am also autistic . enstars has been my favorite thing in the entire world since the ripe and beautiful year of 2019. this source is beautiful , fun , indulgent , deep as all hell , and So So So much to unpack . there is no such thing as a background character in enstars . there are 50 characters who are all so deeply fleshed out and have so much content and backstory to them so i am absolutely certain you will find somebody that appeals to you . enstars can have some pretty heavy topics at times it’s not your run of the mill happy idol franchise, but if you like project sekai (which i also LOVE) you will Love enstars . the game is so much fun , the characters are so deep and interesting and real , the stories are engaging and silly and wonderful, you will love it. you Have to. for me . stan knights

[sideprince]

What’s your view on Lupin and his dynamic with the rest of the marauders?

Oooh this is a fun ask! Thank you! My response got away from me a bit, so I'm popping it under a cut.

It's hard to just talk about Lupin in relation to the rest of the Marauders because those four had such interconnected dynamics. My take on the Marauders is that they were friends because they were the only four boys in the Gryffindor dorm. If there had been a fifth or even sixth student there, or if Lupin and Pettigrew had been less dependent on friendships, then I think James and Sirius would have been best friends with each other and just buddies with their other roommates, and Lupin would have either been the kind of loner who has friends just not close ones, or maybe he might have formed a stronger bond with a fifth or sixth student. As it is, I think he was still that kind of loner to some degree, but since these four boys formed a friendship group, it was less apparent. I'm not sure how many intimate conversations he had with any of the others, though. His relationship with James didn't seem to be very different from his one with Sirius and my reading is that those two were closer to each other than the other two, and Lupin and Pettigrew had no one they were closer to than anyone else.

James and Sirius were best friends, and their status and dynamic affected Lupin and his relationship with both them and Pettigrew. They were also confident, privileged boys. Sirius' family was likely emotionally abusive, while James' was almost overly caring to the point of spoiling him. My view on Lupin, though, is that he grew up in an average middle-class muggle/wizarding home with loving parents until he was bitten by Greyback. From the Harry Potter Wiki:

Remus was born on 10 March 1960 to Lyall and Hope Lupin. His father worked at the Ministry of Magic and encountered the werewolf Fenrir Greyback, who was on trial for killing two children. Lyall was the only one at court to realise that Greyback was a werewolf, as Greyback pretended to be a Muggletramp. Outraged when Greyback was released, he voiced the opinion that Greyback deserved nothing but death.  This opinion cost the Lupin family dearly, as Greyback decided to revenge himself upon Lyall by targeting his son. As the nearly five-year-old Remus slept peacefully in his bed, Greyback forced his way in through the window. Though Lyall was able to get there in time to drive Greyback off with powerful spells, he was unable to prevent him from completing his evil goal. Remus became infected with lycanthropy and he became a werewolf himself.

He must have had to grapple with conflicted feelings at a very young age about being a danger to those around him and having this painful, traumatic experience every month that others didn't have to go through, and that was forced on him by someone acting out revenge on his dad. He would have few memories, if any, from the time before he was bitten. His sense of safety would have been forever compromised by the experience, and that feeling that most (most, not all, mind you) children have, that their parents will protect them and that their home is safe, would have been robbed from him. As he grew older he may have had conflicted feelings about blaming his father. He very likely would have taken on the lesson that speaking up and fighting for justice gets you or the innocent people around you hurt. Whether this meant that you're better off keeping your mouth shut, or that justice inevitably come at a price, or both, I think his processing of his experiences would have affected him and is apparent in the way he later handles his friends' bullying behavior. He may have also developed ideas around bullies or abusers and the like that define them in relation to their targets, ie. because Greyback, a werewolf capable of ripping adults to shreds when transformed, preyed on children who are even smaller and weaker in comparison, Lupin may have framed predatory behavior in his own mind as relational in this way.

I assume that Lupin's condition would have made it difficult for him to make friends. So when he gets to Hogwarts and ends up in a dorm with three other boys, two of whom are confident and bear the signs of/have the natural entitlement of being raised in privileged homes, it would have been important to him to be part of the group and to be taken under the wing of these kids. When they found out he was a werewolf and reacted with support, Lupin must have felt grateful and lucky to have such friends.

My own interpretation of why they did it is that James and Sirius saw it as an opportunity and an excuse to do something that felt ambitious and grand, like becoming animagi, that they could justify because it was in the service of a friend. Really, though, I think they did it for themselves. Lupin was an excuse to break rules and do dangerous things. If they had merely wanted to ensure Lupin felt supported, they could have made a myriad of other choices that were less focused on personal gain and breaking rules and more about serving his needs. I think that while there's an argument to be made for keeping Lupin company as animals while he's a werewolf being an act of serving his needs, leaving the Shrieking Shack and endangering the local population is more about reckless behavior and using him as an excuse for it. It fits in with how James and Sirius are described and their interest in breaking rules and taking risks that would have a greater cost for others than themselves if something goes wrong. By using Lupin as an excuse, they could leave the school illegally and run around the countryside undetected.

We also see that Sirius didn't respect Lupin or give his needs and wants much consideration in the way he used him for the "prank" against Snape: he doesn't seem to have gotten Lupin's consent for it, and he treated Lupin like a weapon to be wielded, with no regard for what it might do to his conscience if he hurt, infected, or killed another student.

Lupin described the incident in PoA like this:

Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me. ... Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf

His phrasing isn't just passive, it focuses the action on Sirius. "Sirius played a trick" "Sirius thought." He never mentions that he had reservations, or asked Sirius not to, etc. Which makes sense if you see Lupin as someone who's just grateful to have friends, let alone ones he can trust with knowledge of his condition, which would cost him his place at school and future career options if it got out. It also shows that Sirius, at least, wasn't all that concerned about meeting his friend's needs and doing things to ease his condition when it interfered with what he was interested in doing. Whether James intervened to protect Sirius from the consequences of his actions or to protect Lupin from them, he and Sirius were close enough friends by that point that I can imagine any breach of trust between Lupin and Sirius bleeding out into his relationship with James too.

I think all of this informs Lupin's dynamic with the other Marauders. James and Sirius are both dominant boys and the only way that works is that they're best friends who dominate together (otherwise they would be at odds with each other). If Lupin and Pettigrew were more similar they would have been closer, but I think Pettigrew was too much of a people-pleaser. Lupin was intelligent and I think if it hadn't been for James and Sirius he may have blossomed more into his own person at school despite his condition. He would have had limited patience for someone like Pettigrew who was sycophantic. I can't really see the two of them having long conversations let alone interesting ones, because Peter would have been worried about saying the right thing and Lupin would have gotten bored with that quickly. I can also imagine moments where Peter would have said what he thinks Lupin wants to hear when they're alone, and said something different to agree with James and Sirius when they were around, in which case Lupin would have come to learn quickly that Pettigrew can't be relied on as an ally. So when it came to feeling the need to stand up to James and Sirius, he would have known he had no support. As for James or Sirius pushing back against the other on Lupin's behalf, I don't think they would have.

So, in that sense, I think even with friends Lupin would have felt lonely sometimes and then would have chastised himself for it, because look at his friends! Willing to become animagi for him! Giving him all those great, fun adventures that were his best memories! Giving him the first feelings of freedom in his young life! Those are powerful experiences and I think they would have clouded Lupin's perception of what James and Sirius were really like. I don't think Lupin saw them as bullies or abusive, because if we look back at the dynamic his experience with Greyback established, he likely saw predatory/bullying/abusive behavior as a dynamic between strong and weak. If James and Sirius hexed people in the halls, it didn't fall into this dynamic because it was against their peers and, after all (Lupin might say to justify their behavior to himself) if the other students were smarter they would be able to defend themselves.

He wouldn't have seen Snape as vulnerable in the ways I think he objectively was. I think Lupin would have felt that if he, who came from a middle-class home with a muggle mother, was accepted by James and Sirius, then they can't be snobbish or prejudiced. I'm not sure he would have understood the difference between various kinds of class prejudice, but he would have felt targeted by the Death Eater kids in Slytherin who were pushing pure-blood rhetoric and seen James and Sirius as righteous and possibly standing up for him by their targeting of Snape. We don't have any reason to assume they did the same with kids like Mulciber and Avery who were more in their own economic and social class, and more vocal about their prejudices, though. We can probably also assume that, Sirius having come from an old pureblood family who was on board with Voldemort's pure-blood rhetoric, he may have known Mulciber and Avery growing up, as kids who inevitably end up hanging out at social events their parents drag them to. (I also think this is one reason that Sirius is so on board with targeting Snape - he's easy prey to him for many reasons, one being that he doesn't have to deal with the consequences. He won't be getting admonishments from his mother for duelling with/bullying someone who's her friend's child and whose family she needs to maintain a good relationship with. Targeting Snape has no bearing on Sirius life outside of school, whereas he can't say the same about most of the other Slytherins.)

But Snape wouldn't have necessarily fallen into Lupin's personal definition of what a target of bullying or even a victim is, and in order to realize why he was he would have had to question the friends who had supported him and, in his mind, made sacrifices for him. He would have started wondering if James and Sirius did the things they did for him or for themselves, using him as an excuse.

As for Pettigrew, he was just tagging along, relieved he was included and that someone else was doing the thinking for him and teaching him skills he wouldn't have learned otherwise, making him feel special and protected. It's interesting what Sirius says to him in PoA:

When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter - I’ll never understand why I didn’t see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who’d look after you, didn’t you? It used to be us … me and Remus … and James … . . . You’d want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn’t you?

Sirius, who only a few pages earlier says that Snape deserved to die for being nosy (and says this in the context of how he himself deliberately set Snape up to die), still lacks the self-awareness to draw a connection between Pettigrew liking big friends like him and James and Lupin, and going from that dynamic straight to Voldemort who he literally refers to as "the biggest bully in the playground."

I think this defines a lot of Lupin's dynamic with the Marauders, though. For James and Sirius, there's a lack of self-awareness and a justification for their actions and perspectives because questioning these things would be uncomfortable and they're boys who aren't used to stepping outside of their comfort zone. Even when he leaves his family's house, Sirius goes to James' and is welcomed by his parents. Which isn't to say Sirius didn't have his own struggles, but for 10 months out of the year he was at school and not with his family and free of their pressures and judgments. When he's older, he doesn't have to deal with it for those two months anymore either. While that break and sense of rejection must have been painful, it would also have been a relief. Lupin didn't get to escape his werewolf condition in the same way. More importantly, Sirius didn't have to step outside his comfort zone while at Hogwarts, and his own ethical measuring stick was based on his own family, so the idea of stepping out of his comfort zone to question his own actions just wasn't something he ever wanted to, or had to do. Even if Lupin had questioned any of this, he would have done so to himself. It's canon that he didn't do so to James or Sirius' face.

Lupin, unlike Sirius, has nowhere to go, so to speak. As far as we know he gets on with his parents, but if he had a rift with the Marauders he would have no other friends to go to. Somewhere he must know that he has no way out of this friendship if he should ever want one, because they know his devastating secret. And who would he be friends with? If James and Sirius are racking up detentions for hexing people in the halls and someone like Lily Evans, who we only hear spoken of as a kind, wonderful person beloved by everyone, spends most of her years at school hating James and his friends and openly telling them to stop being self-absorbed gits, then it's not likely Lupin even has a chance to strike up a friendship with someone from another house because who would want to? Who's going to be friends with the guy who stood by these snooty bully kids and who they see as part of their gang?

So he puts James and Sirius on a pedestal too, kind of like Pettigrew does, except Lupin, at least, has opinions of his own. I think he's just afraid to say them too loudly or assertively. I don't think he argues or even debates with James and Sirius too much because he's afraid of losing the first true, potentially lasting friendships he's formed. Somewhere, I think, he can't believe these guys want to be friends with him. I also think that, after the "prank" with Snape, Lupin gets a bit of a reality check in his perception of Sirius and, more than anything, it makes him question for the first time whether he wants to be friends with them. And realizes that if he doesn't, there isn't much he can do. He's stuck.

As for how James and Sirius view him, I think he's someone who's on their sidelines. He's there, in the dorm with them, he's a nice guy, he's smart, he's fun to chat to, and he enables their behavior. If you asked them what they think of him they'd say sure, he's great, but if you didn't ask them I'm not sure they'd think about him. In some ways, he could have been anyone, but over their years together they get to know each other and it creates a bond. These are guys who believe strongly in the idea of loyalty, to the point that Sirius even says he would have died for Pettigrew purely because he was a friend. Lupin's werewolf condition allows James and Sirius to feel noble and righteous and I think they hide behind these feelings to justify their risky and careless "adventures." Once that truth comes out, James and Sirius see Lupin as an asset and I can't imagine that, as people with clear bullying tendencies, they wouldn't have an awareness (and enjoyment) of the power dynamic it establishes between them.

I don't have much to say about Pettigrew because we know so little about him. I can't imagine he would have contributed much to the general dynamic, being so sycophantic and worried he'll say or do the wrong thing. I know he has very little dignity and self-esteem because of how he reacts when James keeps catching and releasing the snitch in SWM:

Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention.

This tells us as much about James as it does about Pettigrew. In any case, I can imagine moments between him and Lupin where they found themselves alone together while James and Sirius were off doing something and just not having much to say. Long, awkward silences. Most of their conversations were probably about classes or something they all did as a group/James and Sirius did. I think the two of them had an unspoken understanding that they were both friends because of their relationships with James and Sirius (and their dorm assignment) and coexisted. That's about it.

To wrap up this response that I wasn't expecting to be so long (sorry not sorry) I think Lupin's relationship with the rest of the Marauders was fulfilling and enriching in some ways, and toxic in others. I have reservations about Lupin as a character in general, but I also think he was written clumsily, or rather, the way he was written was handicapped by Rowling's insistence on using him to make a statement (ie. the parallel between werewolves and AIDS patients which was very poorly thought out, relies more on the homophobic prejudices of the time than anything else, and warrants its own post). I think Lupin was a vulnerable kid who was grateful for the friendship of more secure people, and who weren't the best influence. The more complex that relationship got, the more Lupin was trapped in those relationships by circumstances, and I think he felt it better not to question that. There's a moment in DH when Harry challenges Lupin's choices in the kitchen at Grimmauld place and Lupin immediately lashes out and assaults Harry. In a way I think this can be read as a revelation about either the influence the other Marauders had on him, or about a shared affinity for being controlling and violent. In another way, though, it felt uncharacteristic and I can't help but wonder how much of that moment is more about Rowling's occasional clumsiness as a writer coming out when she needs to justify creating tension or extracting a character from Harry's support system.

[naquey]

Analysis of Drake Parker

Because he is inherently my favorite little guy, and I relate to him a lot. I also watched Drake and Josh, but I'm not quite finished. I just have way too many thoughts about him.

Also, I just want to say his bowl cut sucks, and I like his season one haircut. Anyway, let's go!

First, the show makes it very obvious from the get-go what his character is supposed to be. He's the cool, popular guy; girls like him, and he is friends with almost everyone. His character is the opposite of his step-brother Josh, who is more nerdy and quiet.

One problem with this is that Drake canonically has one friend. How is he supposed to be popular if he has one friend? And it's Trevor. No one mentions that Scottie, Drake's old drummer, and Trevor are brothers, but I know. It's on the fandom wiki. However, the fact that he has one friend leads me to think that Drake is only popular or well-liked because he's attractive. My guy has the pretty privilege and has been using that to make friends. Without it, he probably won't talk to anyone other than Josh or Megan.

But throughout the show, Josh and Megan are the only people he interacts with on a personal level. Can I just say the show has established that he's cool, suave, and popular? It seems more like he's a loser on tier with his brother and Mindy Crenshaw. The only thing that makes him "cool" is the amount of girlfriends he's had.

He's had 72 girlfriends, and I don't think that's normal for a teenager, but I could be wrong. 72 girlfriends in the span of four years. Granted, he would date them for three weeks and then break up, but that's like a good chunk of a month. How did bro have the time??

This brings me to the point about schoolwork. You may remember your high school years, but at some point, we all had that classmate who didn't want to do the job and would fight with the teacher about it. Drake is the slacker you wouldn't want on your group project. He wouldn't do any of it, and then you would be forced to do it all yourself. That must be how Josh feels when he tries to get his brother to do homework. Now, aside from saying he has any sort of neurodivergence because that is up to you to figure out, and I'm not going to speak over anyone on that topic. He will easily get distracted if you dangle something shiny in front of him.

But, also, the adults didn't really push him to do anything. They left him to do his thing and focused more on the people who had either already done the work and got an A+ or they (Mrs. Hayfer) insulted him. Like, I'm sorry, I can't believe that Drake is 100% a slacker; he may be disillusioned with school because of how piss poor his teachers were, but with the proper guidance, he could have gotten good grades. He had potential, but no one saw it, so eventually, his only skill became music that no one really validated. (And let me just say, it's fucking torture having one skill you're good at that wasn't really validated. Granted, my skill was writing, and I can hardly imagine how a beginner musician would feel.)

He's just giving me a gifted kid that burned out too quickly. For starters, we don't know what happened between his dad and mom. I can only assume divorce (mainly because I don't want Dave Parker to be dead) since he's in the military. Divorce is hard on a kid. I may never know, but I can understand what it's like suddenly losing a parent. And Drake? Well, he went unchecked. I don't blame Audrey. She was a single mother trying to raise wild-child Drake and Megan. (Maybe this is why I relate to him???) Drake was essentially denied when he never even got to prove he could do something, so he resigned to lounging around instead of doing it out of fear of failure.

Can I circle back to his 72 girlfriends? Because I had ten relationships in four years, I don't know how he could have 72. And yeah, it's a funny joke that he's a womanizer and is just "sleeping around" for fun without actually doing the do. Look, I may be 20, but like... I feel awkward saying it in a semi-professional sense. At least, I view this analysis as professional. But, honestly, I think his dating around so much is also tied to that fear of failure and rejection. For example, if he's too afraid to work on an assignment sheet, you better believe he'd be too scared to put himself out there and get to know someone. Which could be why he never directly asks any of the girls out. He lets them come to him.

I could even say that Drake has an avoidant attachment style and that he can feel stifled if his partner overtly expresses interest in him beyond making out in the lobby of The Premiere. But there is a point I forgot to mention. There are a few girls for whom he is absolutely head over heels. One is Carly, and the other is a girl who beats up football players for him.

He saw something with Carly because she liked the same music as he did and was pretty. With the girl who is stronger than him, I can only assume it was because she beat up four football players who were harassing him and Josh at The Premiere. I don't think I could see either of those relationships going anywhere; all things considered, Josh did help him grow and change as the series progresses, but he is still shallow and vain.

This analysis has gone on too long, and I have touched upon everything I've wanted to say, but if you want to hear more, let me know!

Sidenote: Once I rewatch BTR, I am totally going to analyze James Diamond because in a way I think James and Drake are very similar and I could even compare them after I do a James analysis!

Side, Sidenote: I'm in the process of setting up a ko-fi I just have to figure out a couple of things!

[onisiondrama]

He called kids ‘degenerate scumbags’ the ones who would upload to the rating website. Jeezusssss. They are still kids bro wtf gross

Yeah I caught that part. He is continuing the lie that his forums for his rating video submissions always had an 18+ only rule. They did not until around spring 2017. He defended his right to rate anyone of any age for months before caving and making that rule.

He is blaming his fans for lying about their ages when in reality he allowed and invited them to submit photos.

He also says his fans were the one “demanding” he make those videos, but he was the one that started the photo submission trend in his fan base with his Onision.co forum in August 2016. After that he moved to tumblr and would tell fans what to submit at the end of each video. It wasn’t really until Onision.xyz that the fans were the ones solely coming up with the topics.

I am planning on getting back into loo wiki editing and making an article about the rating fans series to get all the information out there because he just boldly lies about that stuff when there is mountains of evidence proving otherwise.

I wasn’t able to listen to the whole live, but I did record it. I’ll upload it tonight. The only new information I heard was that he revealed his daughter is “fully” autistic. He says that’s why she climbed onto the window and messed with the screen.

That would give some context as to why Lucas worked with autistic children at one point.

A couple more side notes: Tumblr hasn’t been allowing me to post through their app for over a month now. I can only reply to asks. I was waiting for an update to fix this, but so far none have helped. It’s really frustrating because I’m used to mostly using mobile to post screen shots and updates. I’ll catch up on my old pc some time this week. Hopefully the app will work properly for me again soon.

Lastly, I lost access to the Discord I used to talk to other Onision archivists. The hard drive I have most of my Onision video archives has been not working so I am going to take it to a professional service to try to restore the videos onto a cloud. Sorry for anyone I lost contact with! If that is fixed I’ll make a new Discord account.

Sorry I had to use this ask to get all the info out.