#obviously people In Real Life do not die and get resurrected by magic

[silverwhittlingknife]

comics are super-contradictory on what the pit does, but YEAH, i'm 100% with you, OP. it should have bad consequences!!

if you want some of the lazarus pit stories that skew more toward the ominous side, i think some good comics to check out are

batman 243 (first comic to introduce the lazarus pit)

lost days (backstory for jason's resurrection)

resurrection of ra's al-ghul (dick & tim fight over whether tim should experiment to see if he can use the lazarus pit to bring back his loved ones)

I do not care about what canon says, pit "madness" exists to me. Not because I need an excuse for Jason's violence and the murder attempts on his family, but because, from a storytelling point of view, you need your immortality bath water to have some consequences for your heroes to not use it every tuesday. You want death and injuries to still matter, it is silly for your characters to be worried about each others' health when they can just take a dip in the magic green goop and be back in one piece without side effects. Which is literally what is going on now in the comics, with the batkids dying and immediately being resurrected with a sip of the forbidden green smoothie. Like, what's the point than? You're going to tell me the tale of a man who created a symbol from his grief, only to give him some magic goop that can make him and his loved ones immortals without drawbacks, and I'm supposed to believe he would refuse that power? That he would not have dip Jason himself the moment the kid died if there was no consequences? Nuh uh. Like, I can understand a "immortality is against nature" as the simple reason why your heroes would be against using it, BUT when we are talking about a child that was murdered, it's not really immortality to bring him back to life, so it doesn't work.

Immortality must have some aftereffects so your heroes can understand the attraction to its use, but the cons are too much for them to actually do.

[barnabybugspeopleonline]

as per my wonderful mutual [@gaypplreal]'s request: i will be speaking about THE YAPE AU

[or scissors pmtok: reanimator, the official unofficial title]

CONTENT WARNING: LITERALLY EVERYTHING

[blood, gore, death, surgery, clearly unhealthy relationships that are only fun to watch in fiction...]

also this is long

and a comedy-horror because it is silly, but very bloody

so, for starters, this is a gijinka/humanised au. so that way the gore makes sense.

the way i interpret scissors is sort of like a reserved mad scientist. she's still the dual-blade duelist first and foremost, this is more of a side thing.

this "science thing" is the human-world counterpart to what she does ingame. cutting people up and sewing them back together would be pretty grisly if this world wasn't all-paper.

[handaconda being our main canon example. it's alive! and scissors is the one who gave life to it, somehow. alongside the paper cutout soldiers. in my head this translates to something like a lab experiment.]

so scissors is pretty quick to take life, but she also likes to play with it, since she can somehow give it.

she likes to play with life. killing people and resurrecting them just to kill them again. like windup toys.

in a realistic context, this would obviously be bloody. she'd do surgery just for fun, as an act of intimacy. it's as simple and it's as caring as a kiss to her.

[sidenote: i also see scissors as being skilled at embroidery (and sutures) since fabric scissors are a thing]

so, we're getting closer to the crux of my point. but not quite! this au is scisstape centric, kind of. [sorry.]

i would go into my dynamic for them but then this post would be even longer so to cut a long story short [ha-ha]

i don't really ship them, i just think they're dating and it's horrible. they do love eachother but in different and [sometimes] disgusting ways.

you know how i mentioned surgical intimacy earlier? scissors would take tape's heart out just to hold it closer. [don't ask how he doesn't die: it's magic]

i used a literal analogy for my version of their relationship once: you can't use tape without scissors but once you have that pairing one is just going to chip away at the other. forever.

[so their relationship sucks and i would not condone performing vivisections on your partner irl but fortunately they are not real]

[also i think non toxic versions of scisstape are really cute this is just my version since i'm insane]

with everything established, i think, finally, we can get to my point.

yape.

in this au, yape is a busted zombie-ish copy of tape, created by scissors herself. for a plethora of reasons, and from a plethora of parts.

[she couldn't have both if she took all of tape's parts. just, snippets, if you will. alongside various grafts she had laying around.]

but why did she make him? yape is a love letter to tape, in a terrible way. i'm saying terrible a lot.

"i love you so much that i made another you." "don't you like him?"

tape, unsurprisingly, does not like yape. he's usually tolerant-ish of scissors, but this is just too far.

yape, conversely, loves tape. i described it as christian man following the god whose image they were made in.

yape functions. well enough. he bleeds a lot from places he should and shouldn't. sometimes the stitches peel away and sometimes his guts are out on the ground.

but through scissors' miracle of life, yape can't die. can he feel pain? sure. can he understand it?

yape was a mistake. and yape is a mistake.

because he's still within the present tense.

IF YOU READ THIS FAR I OWE YOU MY LIFE

FEEL FREE TO ASK SPECIFIC QUESTIONS, ALTHOUGH I HAVENT FLESHED MUCH OUT YET [THIS IS A NEW IDEA]

also scissors and tape are both lesbians tape is just really butch. masc-ing tape. ha-ha.

[my-gf-is-kazuichi-soda]

(Warning for game spoilers, talk of religion/doomsday cult/Jehovah's Witnesses.)

My general idea is to have her refer to God/The Lord, and that's what I'll default to if I decide this idea is too much, buuut Jehovah's Witness Angie has been rotating in my brain. I have a special interest in Christianity-based cults, especially JWs. It could work somewhat with the narrative, she even forms her own Watchtower with the curfew crew.

I'd have to rewrite her introduction line about asking Kaede for her blood, since JWs believe blood transfusions are a sin (it's actually pretty bad, since they will deny their kids treatment for deadly diseases). Another thing is Angie being a girl, is not supposed to take on a leader role (sexist gender roles). I can see a workaround though; Angie is pretty stubborn and could bend the rules by pushing a boy like Kibo or Gonta (those two cant catch a break can they?) into being a sort of puppet ruler/mouthpiece while she (um, I mean Jehovah) is obviously the one calling the shots.

JWs views of magic are pretty fickle. They believe magic is from Satan which makes it bad, but anything from Jehovah and Jesus is not magic, even if it's something most non-JW people would consider magic. I can picture a conversation of Himiko asking if that means Jehovah is against her magic, with Angie reframing her mage stuff as "miracles" and Himiko as "serving the will of Jehovah", and Shuichi and Kaede asking how that makes it not-magic.

The wax figure plot and Angie's idea of staying in the school forever almost sounds like JW idea of Paradise Earth, that instead of Heaven JWs dont really die and instead get resurrected and live in a version of Earth where everyone is vegetarian, animals are all friendly to people and dont eat each other anymore, and all your (JW) relatives are there too. Everyone else dies either before or during Armageddon, which is why JWs tell people about Jehovah right now, to give them the ability to choose Jehovah over death. It is a doomsday cult, fantasies about the end of the world and bad people suffering/obedient servants thriving is their thing, which matches Angie's perverse excitement about the killing game and taking over the narrative of that situation. Yes, it is absolutely a coping mechanism to dealing with the horrors. This killing game is Jehovah's test to reveal who His true followers are, so even if you are killed His followers will come back, so you shouldn't worry or try to leave. I think Angie would try to use the book Monokuma gave them (a crack in her faith?), though she would claim to everyone else that she's keeping the evil book away from others and bringing Rantaro back through other means, with the will of Jehovah...somehow. She never elaborates. This too, is like real life JWs/Watchtower, contradictory behavior and the rules "applying to thee, but not to me."

[itsclydebitches]

You know, bringing Penny back already had the risk of cheapening her death, but NO ONE having an emotional reaction whatsoever and Pietro being like “Yeah, I guess she did die lol :D” just DESTROYED the weight of her death. Just another reason I felt nothing when she died again.

The lack of reaction to Penny's resurrection will, forever and always, be a black mark on the series for me. I'm not at all surprised that she was brought back given her android status and popularity among the fandom, I can't even fault RT for restoring our original Penny perfectly given the latter (as opposed to getting a "Penny" without her personality and/or memories), but the sheer indifference to her cheating death? Not just that, but treating her return like a joke? Oh haha, silly Penny with her overenthusiastic hugs. I sure missed that bubbly girl back when our enemies manipulated our now murdered friend into killing her and that trauma kick-started the destruction of our school :)

And this trend in the fandom of going, "Just wait"? Penny suffered from it too. Massively. Like we were told to just wait to return to Oscar's mystery shopping trip, or for the reconciliation with Ozpin to start, or, now, for Emerald to undergo an actual redemption arc, the lack of reaction to Penny's return was explained away as shock (and haven't we heard that one before). Ruby will need to grapple with these emotions, it's just that she was so stunned by this turn of events! But, quite obviously, that never happened. Ruby and Penny's relationship fundamentally returned to where it had started, with Penny making comments about how she isn't allowed certain freedoms and Ruby reminding her that she's a real girl despite it all. A death and the trauma of losing a friend? Not a part of their Volume 7-8 dynamic, to the extent that the story throws them a party in the arena where Penny died — and where Yang was framed, and where the Battle of Beacon began — and not a single character has anything to say about that. The meaning that Penny's death carried in Volumes 3-5 was, in short, erased... and then Penny's entire journey of learning that she's always been real is erased too in an effort to kill her off for good. Her human body wasn't included because it was something she strove for (it wasn't), or something the group needed (it wasn't), or because it was a thematic culmination of her journey (quite the opposite), or even because it follows her inspiration (Ironwood's Tin Man would have something to say about that). It exists solely so that Penny could be murdered again, this time for good. The mad scramble to theorize that she's not really dead (again) is telling. Even the most complimentary fans, those who were quite happy with Penny becoming a human and took no issue with her story throughout 7 and 8, recognized that her death was a horrific, meaningless scene that served only to drum up shock value and give Jaune something to angst over.

I'd even go so far as to say her time as the Maiden was meaningless too. Not just in terms of her not actually doing anything with the powers and Winter ending up with them as originally planned — those two points have both been covered extensively — but in regards to the fact that the group didn't react to that either. Our formerly dead friend came back and a short time later is one of the Maidens? Neat! And that's the extent of their emotional investment in Penny's change. Neat, we've got a stronger fighter now. I just answered that ask that referenced Yang and Ren's fight and that's literally Yang's entire thought on the matter: "We have the Maiden." The Maiden is positioned as a useful tool in this war; a checkmark in the "Victories" column when your friend thinks you haven't achieved enough. But doesn't anyone care that the Maiden is Penny? It's particularly strange to me given the six years of fandom discussion surrounding Pyrrha's almost-time as a Maiden too. As someone (quite obviously lol) interested in Ozpin's character, his desire to make Pyrrha the next Fall Maiden is often viewed as one of his worst acts, supposedly taking this poor, defenseless student and manipulating her into accepting a power that will ruin her life. So much of this is conjecture and even more is an erasure of Pyrrha's agency, and the hypocrisy here is on full display when we look to the reaction to Penny's acceptance of the powers instead. No one is worried about how this power is supposedly going to ruin her life. Or drive all her friends away. Or make her a target to be murdered (again) which is precisely what happens. Or turn her into a tool for the evil men around her to abuse — even though Penny is the one who actually has storylines revolving around her agency, from Pietro building her to be Atlas' obedient weapon to Ironwood ordering her back to his side. Yet the characters don't react to this change with any of the horror we might have expected, because these views don't derive solely from fan headcanoning — we've got moments in the text too. Like Jaune convincing himself that Qrow and the others forced Pyrrha into this. Or the knee-jerk reaction to "real" magic and the horrible things it must do to you. Yet Penny walks out of that lab brimming with a foreign magic, something that Ironwood had always planned to pass onto one of this allies, a power that they know has gotten numerous people killed, and our group is just like, "Cool. Penny upgrade." Everything about Penny's Volume 7-8 journey demonstrates a lack of forethought; the authors' inability to connect what they're currently writing to what came before and what will come later. The lack of reaction to her death, the framing plotline going nowhere, a total acceptance of her as the Maiden despite complicated feelings in the past (and we can toss Yang's assumed secret about Raven in here too), the ableist and contradictory message of giving her a human body, dying again just an episode later, doing so in a way that throws Jaune back into the same situation we've seen before... none of it is emotionally fulfilling when set against the rest of RWBY.

And Emerald, as you say, is a crucial part of all that. Emerald is the one who originally orchestrated Penny's murder. We see her love for Cinder pushing her to attack Penny again just hours before she joins the group. Emerald pretends to be Penny in order to get close to Ironwood... and the only thing we get from all this is a quip about how "weird" it feels to do good. Their stories are woven together and the fact that RT doesn't seem to realize that does a huge disservice to them both. The question of, "How does Penny grow after being resurrected post-murder?" and the question of, "What will it take to redeem Emerald?" are irrevocably linked to one another... and yet neither character was given the chance to answer those questions in a fulfilling manner.

[hopeymchope]

Wonder Egg Priority finale thoughts

My Tumblr has a lot of anti-bully content, so it was probably no surprise when I began to watch and enjoy Wonder Egg Project this past spring. The series famously hit production delays that forced them to put out a mid-series recap episode, and that decision in turn forced them to push the final episode until late June. But now that the series (or at least season 1) is out there and complete, I thought I’d talk about how it all shook out in the end as well as the questions it left me sitting with.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the context: Wonder Egg Project deals with four middle-school teen girls who’ve undergone hardships either at home or at school or both. They all lose someone they care about to tragic suicides, and then they discover the titular wonder eggs. They get these eggs from a vending machine and then, when they fall asleep, they enter a dreamworld where these eggs hatch to reveal a young person who recently committed suicide. For that night, it is the duty of the girl who got that egg to fight and defend that suicide victim from monstrous enemies that represent their abusers and oppressors. The girls are told that if they protect enough of these victims over many nights, they will be able to resurrect the specific person they lost to suicide. But of course, if you get injured or killed in the dreamworld, it affects your body in reality as well. 

The squad: Ai, Neiru, Rika, and Momoe.

Obviously, bullying is among the topics most frequently explored here, but we also deal with so many other terrible things that people might experience during childhood and adolescence. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse are all on the table. Coming to terms with one’s gender identity is raised. It’s a show that manages to tackle a lot of heavy subjects through the lens of what’s essentially magical girl combat. I mean, there are no outfit transformations or any of that stuff, but still.

With THAT out of the way, let me talk about how the series wrapped up.

It’s clear to the viewers that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense during the show — it’s intentionally very trippy and ethereal at times — and there’s also a lot that raises obvious questions even if you grasp it. Where do the eggs and their connection to the recently deceased come from? How do the psychological traumas of the various egg-children manifest as monsters that can literally kill you? What’s the deal with Acca and Ura-Acca and their freaky dummy bodies? What are they getting out of this whole deal with the eggs and the girls? What do the repeated references to the “temptation of death” mean? How does access to the Egg Garden even work? Is it really possible to resurrect their dead friends? Is Mr. Sawaki a predator or a chill guy or what? Why did Neiru’s sister stab her? And so on. 

The writers could’ve opted to keep things mysterious and hazy and metaphysical for the entire run or they could’ve provided lots of explanations and tried to ground this weird story in some sort of strange logic, but I’m actually pleased that they opted to go down the middle. There are answers for many things, but not for all. And when those answers come, they typically just raise more questions as well as doubts to their validity. 

SPOILERS for the finale/”special episode” below the cut.

So, obviously the answers for Acca and Ura-Acca are centered around Frill. Frill is this interesting fusion between the artificial and the organic; her body can be injured like any regular physical body, but she’s actually an A.I. on the inside. Acca and Ura-Acca are the exact reverse of this — they’re human minds inside of completely artificial bodies. Exactly how Frill started invading girls’ minds to lure them towards suicide is kept incredibly vague, but she serves as the embodiment of the “temptation of death” that was so-often referenced in the show. Frill doesn’t really appreciate life or care about the finality of death, making her a pretty natural foe for the heroes who have spent the entire series learning to appreciate their lives and bemoaning painful losses.

Can you even believe this bitch?

Acca and Ura-Acca also have documents talking about how warriors of Eros need to battle against Thanatos, the embodiment of death, but what’s that all about? We don’t really get into it. Is Frill somehow Thanatos herself? I mean... I guess maybe you could go that route, but I sincerely don’t think that’s meant to be the case. I assume she’s just another player in the game, and she happens to have taken Thanatos’ side in things. Her artificial existence and resentment of her fathers leads her to treat death flippantly. She was programmed to be selfish sometimes, and that selfishness has ultimately manifested itself in the worst possible ways. Intriguingly, we see Acca and Ura-Acca act similarly selfish in how they drive our four heroes to risk their lives just to battle Frill. Acca in particular shows that he’ll risk anyone’s life to get to Frill, who killed both his wife and daughter. But Acca never has to risk his own life. He’s just risking other people. Both sides of the equation are treating human lives like disposable pawns in some kind of war game. 

Y’all are SUPER-SKETCH.

It’s never really clear how these eggs work. We’re told that the Accas created the eggs, and honestly, I could’ve figured as much on my own. But they don’t try to explain how the eggs can contain the souls of suicide victims or how they manifest those people into dreams, and frankly, it’s probably better not to try.

I was really shocked that the girls actually manage to resurrect their dead friends. I was 100% certain that was going to be a scam and the point was going to be about learning to move on and live for the moment and appreciate those bonds while you had them, etc. And there is some of that. Alas, the price of resurrecting those people they care about is that the people in question no longer know them or remember them. That was pretty brutal... having our heroes nearly die over and over in service of people who ultimately will no longer care about them at all. Although they did the impossible and brought someone back to life, they had to lose those people all over again. I suppose this, like much fo the finale, emphasizes that we should appreciate our relationships while they last, because you can lose them for so many reasons. Regardless, I’m not surprised that Momoe just wanted to quit and avoid getting hurt after that. It’s understandable.

There’s a lot of discussion around parallels in the last two episodes. Parallel worlds with alternate versions of the self are raised multiple times, Ai gets an awesome encounter with a parallel version of herself that really brought her emotional journey to a head, and we even have to deal with a doppleganger of Neiru at the end. This leads to the revelation that Neiru looks exactly like her formerly deceased sister... a fact that presumably was part of what drove the sister to attack Neiru in the first place. Given that we’ve already been told that they were both genetically engineered, their identical appearances don’ seem that strange. But then the finale tells us that Neiru’s one dream is “to be human,” and suddenly the characters assume Neiru was an A.I. just like Frill. That... seems like a leap to me. I mean, she was genetically engineered to lead her company and never had a family of her own; no wonder she feels inhuman! So I’m not sure if I should take this at face value.

Neiru real or fake challenge

Another thing that I don’t think we can take at face value is Mr. Sawaki’s explanation of Koito’s death. In episode 12, we meet a parallel version of Ai who actually killed herself. The big boss monster for Ai to fight while protecting Alt-Ai? It’s a dark, abusive version of Sawaki. And our Ai inexplicably assumes this monster was made from her own fears. A very bizarre conclusion to jump to when you remember that every single boss monster has been the abuser of the victim that the girls were defending in that episode. By all available evidence, the Sawaki monster should be a parallel-world Sawaki who is very much exactly the scumbag he appears to be! Notice how Alt-Ai never says a damn word about the Sawaki Monster - never asks who he is or why he’s like this, etc? She’s not even surprised. That just lends further credence to my belief. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.

So in the finale, when our version of Mr. Sawaki claims (via a VERY awkwardly inserted voiceover) that Koito’s death was an accident after she tried to ruin his reputation because she fell in love with him, why should I believe any of it?! The previous episode introduced me to Abusive Sawaki! Sure, we don’t have any reason to assume our Sawaki is That Dick, but we JUST learned that he’s certainly capable. Furthermore, how could Koito suddenly be the ONLY accidental death among all of the available suicide victims in the dreamworld? She shouldn’t have even appeared there if it was just an accident! Although I’d like to believe that Sawaki was someone who Ai and the girls were jumping to conclusions about based on nothing... but it sure doesn’t look that way from here. And given how the show ends things, I fear we may have a hard time learning anything else about Sawaki. Ai changes schools and runs away, there is zero comment on what happened to Sawaki’s relationship with her mom... he’s just gone now.

As the final episode winds down, we see Rika and Ai fall back into bad habits, as they all treat Neiru just like they treated the girls they tried so hard to save. Rika acts disgusted by a friend and abandons her, treating Neiru the same way she treated Cheimi. When Neiru finally reaches out to Ai and calls her, Ai ignores the call and throws her phone away, thereby ignoring her friend’s needs in the same way she ignored Koito’s when she failed to record the bullying Koito was experiencing. You might even be able to connect Momoe’s choice to walk away for the sake of self-preservation to her decision to reject Haruka and walk away, honestly. And to compound the bad news that the show gives us near the end, we skip forward months to learn that Ai, Rika and Momoe have all drifted apart. Ai is in a new school, but we don’t see her with any new friends. She’s back where she started the show.

The difference, however, is that she doesn’t seem hopeless and lonely. She seems wistful, sure, but she never seems beaten down. She still treasures the friendships she built even if they wind up fading away. So there’s still a message in here about moving on, because even if you lose a person or a connection, it will forever matter.

*insert engine rev-up noises*

In the final moments, we see Ai preparing to run in the exact same pose she used back in episode 1 when she first stood up to the abusers within the dreamworld. This time, she runs to grab her chance to reunite with a dear friend. She takes charge of her own future and her own self-worth, somehow gets back into the Egg Garden (even though Rika wasn’t even allowed to enter after she rescued her specified victim, so uh... how did Ai get back in exactly... ?), and insists she’s going to use the eggs to see Neiru... even though the eggs only let you see the dead up to this point, so uh, that doesn’t really make any sense either. Consistency, motherfucker — DO YOU USE IT?

Amidst all the uncertainty that the finale left us with, at least we can see Ai find herself in a more confident place. She spends much of the series learning to stop running from her problems in the real world. Even after she gains confidence in the battles of her dreams, she struggles to face reality. It’s a huge step when she returns to school. Yet even in the very last episode, she opts to run away to a new school rather than cope with seeing Koito each day. But at last, she decides to take charge of her reality and try to reunite with her new best friend, Neiru. She’s wavered on her path, but ultimately, she’s grown. Although you could simultaneously argue that she’s failing to learn the lesson that rescuing Koito should’ve taught her...

“Ai Ohto is BACK!”

I don’t think any of us expected this finale to be a cliffhanger coming into it.  And unfortunately, we don’t know if there will ever be another season or a movie or anything. Given how people reacted to this finale with such overt hate, I really don’t expect anything more. And I think that would be a goddamn shame. Even with a finale that doesn’t quite stick the landing, I still found it fascinating and engaging. The series is more than worth the trip for the characters, for the themes and topics it explores, and even for the fluid action scenes and music. And this is a series that was made by first-time writers and a first-time director! Yet I’d easily call it one of the best animes from the past couple of years. For total newcomers, that’s a goddamn TRIUMPH.

So I hope we reunite with these girls again. I hope Ai manages to get the band back together, find out exactly what’s going on with Neiru, and face down Frill. Even if they never wind up in some ultimate battle with Thanatos, I don’t know that that’s the point. All of us are in a battle with Thanatos every single day, after all. They just need to show how they’ve all gotten stronger together and truly overcome the “Temptation of Death” by beating back Frill (and her ridiculously powerful dreamworld bug-people) as a unit. 

But maybe that’s too obvious and simplistic of a message for a show like this one. Maybe this complex ending centered on the main protagonist’s self-actualization and the value of fleeing relationships is more in keeping with the melancholy nature of the series. 

... I still really want to see the more obvious happy ending, though. I think they deserve it.

[lex-malla-non-est-lex]

Tatiana, Belial, and their plans relating Jesse in the past

I’ve dabbled on this topic a few times but your comment really got me thinking. @delilahssbard

This turned out long so I’ll put it beneath the line.

Like, ever since CoI I’ve been highkey thinking Tatiana intended for Jesse to be possessed, but the specific phrasing you used reminded me of a part of ChoG and suddenly everything fits even more now.

- Chain of Gold

Back then, I honestly assumed Belial was talking about preference here, especially since he’s made it clear the reason he could possess James without destroying his body is they share blood, but that’s clearly different in Jesse’s case.

Considering how it’s repeatedly clarified that the anchor was placed on Jesse while he was a baby, that fact is probably significant. If anything, I’d dare say the anchor seems to be a workaround Belial’s destruction not just because he was literally anchored to Jesse’s soul, but by way of tolerance, especially since James also seems to have drawn a similar conclusion.

- Chain of Iron

There it is. Belial would have the anchor and a body to possess, as Jesse grew older. The anchor was in him since almost day one, and Tatiana clearly knew about the anchor, but what’s to say she wasn’t involved? We know the only one who was reluctant to place the anchor on Jesse’s soul was Gast. At no point is Tatiana mentioned in this until Belial outright says that he owed her a favor.

Jesse is just Nephilim, unlike James and Lucie, so by all accounts, a normal possession by Belial would have destroyed him, but the anchor intervened in such a way that there didn’t seem to be any visible consequences at all to him being possessed repeatedly (unless we subscribe to the theory that Jesse’s ghost started fading faster near the end because of the possession, but as of right now we honestly have no way to be sure about that specific fact).

We know Jesse’s childhood sickness involved fevers, and perhaps weakness, the latter coming from the statements in which he’s specifically referred to as weak. We also now know that the real reason Jesse died was because the rune he was given reacted badly against Belial’s essence inside him. Jesse’s description of his own death is that he collapsed into bed after getting the rune, then woke up feverish and in agony. Honestly, that just sounds like a worse version of his alleged childhood symptoms.

Considering his death was basically the result of a rune’s angelic magic clashing with the demonic essence inside him, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to assume his sickness was just his nature as Nephilim having a bad reaction to Belial’s essence, even if he only died because of the rune. I find it frankly impossible to believe that the anchor wasn’t hurting him, because we know under normal circumstances Belial would destroy a body within hours.

And let’s be real, Tatiana knew this. The only question in relation to her is whether she intentionally let him die.

The following are all quotes from A Lightwood Christmas Carol.

“He is very delicate,” said Tatiana. “Nephilim like yourself wish to put Marks on him, because they are intent on killing my boy as they have killed everyone else I love. You sit on the Council, do you not? Then you are his enemy. You may not see him.”

“I would not force Marks on the boy,” protested Gideon. “He’s my nephew. Tatiana, if he is that ill, perhaps he should see the Silent Brothers? One of them is a close friend, and could come to Jesse at our house. And Jesse could know his cousins.”

Before CoI, lines like these could be shrugged off to Tatiana being paranoid about her son being hurt by marks because he’s sickly, but no, we know now that Tatiana is entirely correct.

And it makes perfect sense that she refused to even let the Silent Brothers examine Jesse. No doubt they’d have been able to notice what was wrong with him wasn’t a sickness. Tatiana made a show out of it to exacerbate her own hatred of Nephilim, but she isn’t unaware of things, she just likes to spin them in a way that can be used to blame her enemies for things.

“Father planned alliances for us, when we were children.” Tatiana shrugged. “How ashamed he would be of you. How is your grubby servant?”

Then there’s her attitude, of course. The implication that she thinks it’s perfectly normal to involve children in alliances and plans. We know she didn’t hesitate to have a dark power forced onto Grace, if anything, it’s implied she requested it. We know Tatiana only sees Jesse as something that is hers, not as his own person, so it’s completely within the realm of possibility that she involved him in her own plans for revenge, even if he was just a newborn with no choice in the matter (or perhaps because he had no choice in the matter, considering how badly she reacts to the fact that Jesse *gasp* has a different worldview than her).

“I don’t care!” Tatiana shouted. “My son is of the blood of two of the oldest of the Shadowhunter families. He is not weak like your son. Go back to your weakness, Gideon. Get out of my sight, get out of my house, and do not darken my door again. I have not missed your company, nor your brother’s, and I am relieved that my child will not grow up under the corrupting influence of either of you.” 

Now, this one isn’t so relevant as much as it’s interesting, because while it looks like Tatiana is just flexing and being mean to Gideon, that whole implication that Jesse isn’t weak does compare to how Belial views Nephilim in general.

- Chain of Gold

Belial had the anchor placed on Jesse alongside his protections as a newborn. Humans never get such protections against possession, and Belial still chose one of the Nephilim as his alternate vessel. He was that plan of his as completely viable.

And much like Tatiana, Belial clearly sees Jesse as a tool, as a method to push his agenda.

- Chain of Iron

And assuming Tatiana knew of the anchor from the start, that checks out. Belial wanted Jesse as a vessel to get closer to his goal. If he’s never seen him as an end-goal, then he’s always planned for Jesse to be a temporary vessel. Tatiana wants the Nephilim destroyed. Letting Belial possess Jesse probably sounds like a completely reasonable thing to her. It solidifies her alliance with Belial, makes things easier for Belial, and as Belial himself implied, Belial owed Tatiana a favor.

- Chain of Iron

Seriously, I can say with reasonable confidence that Tatiana knew Belial would use Jesse, perhaps even agreed beforehand to the anchor itself being placed, because to the both of them, Jesse was basically a puppet. (I mean, even the clothes she had him dressed in within his coffin literally scream Belial)

Then of course, what I believe to be the nail in the coffin for Tatiana’s involvement is just what she tells Grace near the end.

- Chain of Iron

She literally has the audacity to claim Jesse was to blame for his own death and basically defended Belial. You know, Belial, who was possessing and controlling her son. Belial, who placed an anchor in the soul of her newborn son and has basically robbed him of anything resembling a normal life or even afterlife. Tatiana is taking Belial’s side on that without any hesitation.

If anything, Tatiana might have let Jesse get runed just to be able to tell him off, like “ha, told you you were too weak to be Nephilim” or something like that, despite knowing damn well the reason runes would kill him was Belial. Tatiana had literal demons to do her bidding, I don’t doubt she could have physically prevented Jesse from following up on his threat to run to Alicante if she didn’t let him get runes, had she wanted to.

Belial probably can control the dead like Lucie can, most likely having far more experience at it. Tatiana surely knew that. Belial said Tatiana called him after Jesse died, and that he owed her a favor, hence the preservation of Jesse. Obviously, Belial benefited from this, but clearly Tatiana saw Jesse’s death as an opportunity to bend him to her will, because he never shared her beliefs during his life.

Now, this is actually where I believe Tatiana and Belial’s views of the situation diverge. Belial outright says raising Jesse as Tatiana wanted wouldn’t suit him. He had Jesse kept in that so-called twilight state that certainly proved useful to Belial, but I don’t think whether Jesse was alive or not mattered pre-Cortana. Not only does Belial clearly not care about consent, he also probably wouldn’t need it, because his anchor was already deep within Jesse’s soul. Jesse being dead or alive was likely irrelevant to the possession, since the one part of Tatiana’s statement that’s correct is that Belial probably wouldn’t have guessed Jesse would die as he did.

Tatiana wanted Jesse resurrected for herself, for her own desire to have her son follow her beliefs and intentions. Belial just cares for Jesse as his vessel. While they’re allies, I don’t think those two usages were as compatible as Tatiana thinks they were, which is probably why Belial outright says reviving Jesse wouldn’t have suited him, and honestly both of them seem pretty angry about losing control over Jesse.

(Belial’s clearly salty that Lucie exorcised him and Tatiana’s mad he’s “in the clutches of a Herondale”, but clearly both of them lost something they valued as an instrument, none of them are actually mad about their loss of access to Jesse as a person, because they’re honestly both terrible people, to say the least).

I know I called that other one the nail in the coffin, but in relation to Tatiana letting Jesse be runed even though that was practically bound to kill him, Belial outright says Tatiana killed him, even despite recognizing the rune was technically the cause.

- Chain of Iron

TL;DR: Tatiana definitely knew about the anchor, Tatiana definitely knew Jesse would be possessed and used by Belial, and Tatiana also definitely let her son die just because it suited her.

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Rambling about Fundy Reincarnation again because THE IMPLICATIONS

Ok so with the recent update on what Wilbur counted up as the tally of canon lives everyone has (and since Dream and Sapnap and everyone have mentioned it on stream as well, I think it’s safe to say that they all agree with it?), I wanna quickly talk about the Fundy Reincarnation lore because oh man it’s such an interesting piece of lore and I’ve seen pretty much nobody talking about it!

This is just a bunch of mindless ramble and speculation and random thoughts I’ve plastered together because I like taking this one random, very strange idea and thinking about what it could possibly imply.

I do think it’s worth thinking about!

Because yeah, it could just be a one-off jokey ramble or something, but you know what else was a joke at first?

Sally the mother-fucking (father-fucking?) salmon.

And I’ve made a whole post already just about the fact that Fundy has an elephant’s memory when it comes to his own lore and he doesn’t forget those one-off “Sally’s an accountant” type lines

Plus, Fundy brought it up in response to a dono literally asking him to clarify pieces of the lore, and he was very VERY insistent on the fact that he’s canonically older than Tommy due to the reincarnation. Maybe the details about being born from fire and fireworks are exaggerated, but the reincarnation thing certainly doesn’t seem to be.

So with that in mind, here are some things I’ve been thinking about:

Philza. Phil is, in the lore, Fundy’s grandfather. And despite only being on the server for two weeks and having seemingly no canonical deaths (and very few plain Minecraft deaths as well), he only has one life. He’s known for Hardcore, so if that’s the reason why he only has one, this would be an interesting way to bring the Hardcore World into the Dream SMP logic.

The implications that Fundy, while he has two remaining canon lives for his current Wilbur-Salmon-born incarnation, can never TRULY die, means that Fundy is a contrasting force to Phil.

Phil’s playing on Hardcore, Fundy’s playing on Easy.

Fundy can “canonically respawn” beyond both his grandfather AND his father’s capabilities.

How did Fundy lose three lives originally?

Yes, it’s kind of an impossible task to truly impose a very recent rule onto old plotlines so obviously we’ll never get a true answer, but in this case I just find it more funny than frustrating to speculate, ‘cause he basically “died” for the last time somewhere in between the flaming hot dog being placed on top of the Camarvan and Eret’s walls being built. Usually the debate about which deaths were canon just doesn’t sound fun to me, but I am coming to terms with the plot device more and more and this is just such an amusing idea.

What killed him? Was it the pure karma for him pranking Wilbur with fish? Did he get crushed by the hot dog? Run over by the van? Did Eret lay his foundations over Fundy by accident and drop a wagon of bricks on top of him? Did he drown in the L’manburg river?

I love every single possibility.

What is Fundy, exactly?

Ok, so obviously Fundy looks like a fox. Wilbur has said that he’s not literally a fox, just a furry, but Fundy’s also previously refused to kill foxes at all costs and it’s pretty commonly accepted that, yeah, he isn’t human.

So he was born to a salmon and a human, right? That makes his species a salmon-human hybrid?

Nope, but there’s no real explanation given for why not.

BUT, maybe this reincarnation lore, which sounds batshit crazy at first, actually helps clear up the confusion a bit.

Fundy’s magical somehow. Some sort of magic since he gets reincarnated, yeah? And he was a fox long before he even met Wilbur.

Yes, Wilbur made love to a salmon, but Fundy’s appearance remains the same before and after rebirth regardless of what new people/animals he was born to. That’s basically it. His species doesn’t depend on who his new parents are. His species is just a constant thing.

Yeah, he’s 1/4 Samsung fridge right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fox, ‘cause he’s just always been a fox and he always will be a fox.

The different possibilities for what parentage he could have next

This part haunts me, and I’ve made posts about how much it haunts me, but I also think this has some interesting potential as well.

Eret wants to adopt Fundy right now. And Wilbur basically adopted SMP Fundy in a meta way when he first claimed Fundy as his son. So theoretically, when Fundy loses his lives, another person could claim Fundy as their son and then he would be their new child biologically. He’d have new parents and the implications for his lineage and family trees would be catastrophic and pure chaos.

Is anyone else in the SMP like Fundy? Is Dream like Fundy?

Maybe even, some people in the SMP can be reincarnated and they don’t realize it because they’ve never died three times before.

Dream’s “???” life count is puzzling everyone right now, but his situation could be similar to Fundy’s. Fundy definitely isn’t a god, but he’s still got a mysterious life count quirk as well.

PLUS

Dream has done his “levitate into the sky and /kill” act a couple times now for comedy’s sake, for the Dreamon plot and for the founding of Church Prime.

And notably, during his Church Prime bit he literally shouted “I AM RESURRECTED” as he ran back to everyone.

How cool would it be for that first Church Prime stream to have actual implications for the lore? And the Dreamon plot with Fundy??

Also...You guys love angst. This is angst potential right here. Every time you’ve got a character who’s canonically immortal you can RUN with that idea, dammit!

Fundy was so affected by Wilbur’s death. How many parents has he lost in past incarnations? How many more people around him will die, and he just gets stuck being reborn? Is that why he sought out Dream’s company? Dream, the only one with some mysterious “higher power” association? Dream, whose life count is a complete mystery?

Join me in the chaotic ramblings!

Yes I am absolutely reading way too much into this. This whole post is 100% reading wayyyyy too much into this.

Why?

Because it’s fun

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH8

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

-----

Chapter 8: Resurrection Overture (VIII)

When Qi Leren arrived at Chen Baiqi's store, it was 20 minutes earlier than the appointed time. Chen Baiqi was chatting with a woman with her back to him. They both looked at Qi Leren in the doorway, and Qi Leren also looked at the woman.　

That person was a very gorgeous and charming beauty, wearing a gorgeous and complicated low-cut witch's dress and a European top hat. Although her whole person was dressed in dark colours, it made her skin more white, and her bright red lipstick and smokey eye makeup were particularly attractive. When he noticed this, Qi Leren first reviewed why he noticed his sister's makeup at first sight... Was it really a matter of sexual orientation?

"Since you have a guest, I'll take a walk first. I'm tired from the task I just finished. Let's talk about it another day." The beautiful woman smiled at Qi Leren, picked up the women's walking stick at the table, and walked out of Chen Baiqi's shop gracefully.

"Who was that?" Qi Leren asked.

"The Illusionist," Chen Baiqi said.

Qi Leren suddenly remembered that the Court’s Miao Li had mentioned during his dream lessons that the Illusionist had helped cover up his tombstones on the Undead Island in order to hide them from the Slaughter Secret Society. Was it that beautiful woman just now?

"Have you had breakfast?" Chen Baiqi asked him.

Qi Leren nodded: "I’m full."

Chen Baiqi smiled meaningfully: "Don't eat too much next time, lest you throw up."

"..." Qi Leren felt that his future was grim.

"Although we’ve known each other for some time, I’ve never introduced myself properly. Since you will train with me from today, I will introduce myself again. Come with me. " Chen Baiqi led Qi Leren inside. Qi Leren had never been to the back part of the store. When he found that there was a basement with several floors, he couldn't help crying deeply for his future self.

"I used to be the executive officer of the Trial’s Heresy Court. I was mainly responsible for executing the Devil worshippers. Later, because of an injury, I could no longer continue such a high-intensity and dangerous job, so I retired early. Now I’m half an insider who does intelligence." The elevator stopped on the third basement floor and Chen Baiqi led Qi Leren out. The third basement floor was as big as a basketball court. The ground was made of concrete, without any obstacles, and it was scary.

Qi Leren wasn’t very surprised. He had always felt that Chen Baiqi was familiar with the Trials Court. It was to be expected that all of the information she had was somehow related to them.

"In the Nightmare World, so many players have explored 'playing methods' about this 'game' for more than 20 years. Today, I will briefly talk about the 'professions'," Chen Baiqi said.

Qi Leren pricked up his ears and listened attentively.

"Players will receive a skill card when they are in the Novice Village. This skill card is not given randomly, and most players will eventually build their own fighting style around this skill card. That is to say, the original skill card has actually selected the appropriate profession for the player. Take your Novice Village as an example: Dr. Lu, who is with you, is obviously a healer, while Xue Yingying is obviously a berserker. As for you, because your basic skill card is very delicate, it's the first time I’ve heard of such a skill card, so it's hard to judge your basic profession. But it doesn't matter. Most of the skill cards that players get in tasks will follow a certain rule. For example, a healer rarely draws a berserker-type skill card when drawing their card. That is to say, the skill cards obtained in the future are actually based on what you receive as your first skill card. They build around this 'profession'."

Qi Leren suddenly realized: so the skill cards he got later, such as "Rain-Day Laundry", "Primary Fighting Skills", and "Devil Etiquette", including the latest one, "Secretly Observing", all emphasized his profession.

—Assassin.

"I only know some of your skill cards, but I can make a rough judgment about you. You’re an assassin." Chen Baiqi folded her arms and looked at him laughingly. "So congratulations, I’m in the same profession. However, even amongst assassins, they will be subdivided into different categories because of their different personality traits and abilities. After all, everyone's skill cards are different. If you trust me, you can tell me your existing skill cards, and I will not disclose it to others."

Qi Leren vaguely felt that Chen Baiqi would sincerely teach him, and that his answer was the key. Of course, he couldn’t say it. Chen Baiqi would still train him, but she would not give everything to him. Chen Baiqi was... Qi Leren's brain flashed. She was looking for a successor!

Yes, Chen Baiqi entered the game very early and she said it had been eight years, which meant that she was an old player with high strength and rich experience, but it also meant that her time wouldn't be much longer.

Chen Baiqi was optimistic about him and willing to teach him, which was only too important for a newcomer who was still groping for his footing shortly after entering the game, and Qi Leren was very grateful. He didn't think Chen Baiqi had any malice towards him. After all, the gap in strength between the two people was right in front of him. If Chen Baiqi wanted to, she could kill him.

After figuring this out, Qi Leren relayed his skill cards and even told her of his items.

Chen Baiqi said, "You are an assassin. You already have basic premonition skills, detection and latent skills, and even half a camouflage skill. Right now, you still lack a skill to escape and strengthen combat effectiveness—Primary Fighting Skills is too low, it takes too long to upgrade past the basic stage. You can sell it after you’ve been trained."

Qi Leren nodded, "I’ve felt an obvious lack in combat effectiveness. I have no effective means of attack, and often I can only take the same route."

This also led to his excessive dependence on S/L Data as his solution.

"Although skill cards are very good and greatly improve newcomers’ survival rate in this world, I don’t advocate relying too much on them. The Nightmare World is a surreal world. There are many things that we can't do in the real world that can be done here. It also has its own power system. If you want to integrate into this power system, relying too much on skill cards will only hinder you. To put it simply, if you want to become a field-level master, you must quit your skill cards," Chen Baiqi said seriously.

"When you say the power system, you mean the Devils and the Holy See?" Qi Leren asked.

"Yes. With our status as players, if you want to reach the field level, you’re bound to become close to one of them. Because you’ve been parasitized by Slaughter before, I originally thought that your attributes were more inclined to the Devils, but now it seems that maybe you’re more inclined to the side of divine power," Chen Baiqi said.

"How do you see it?" Qi Leren was puzzled.

Chen Baiqi's mouth crooked and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were already a pair of red eyes: "The holiness of your body has exceeded the standard. Maria gave you an important gift before she sent you back."

Qi Leren recalled the warm and comfortable feeling when the dotted light of endless faith had poured into his body, and nodded silently.

"In fact, in addition to these two power systems, there are many magical powers in the Nightmare World. For example, I seldom use investigation skill cards because I once learned the language of birds from an elder. Although I’m not very proficient, I have no problem with basic dialogue. You can imagine how desperate it is to meet me in a wild jungle. This is better than the ability of any reconnaissance skill card. After all, there is no cooldown."

Qi Leren imagined that if he had met such an opponent in the forest during the Witchcraft Sacrifice mission... The birds in the whole forest were her eyes. She could observe every enemy 24/7 without cooldown, avoid any danger she wanted to bypass, and set traps to deal with anyone she wanted to deal with. This was simply terrible.

"Well, with this said, I’ll now begin to test your abilities, including your physical quality, judgment, intuition, and so on. I’ll test your intuition first. If you want to be a good assassin, you can't do without phenomenal intuition. You stand there blindfolded, this won’t take more than a minute," Chen Baiqi commanded.

Qi Leren obediently went to the place she indicated and took the red cloth she handed him, tying it over his eyes. Suddenly, there was only a suppressed scarlet: "How do we test it?"

Chen Baiqi's voice floated from in front of him: "It's very simple. I'll throw some knives at you. You can dodge them with your intuition. I won't tell you when I throw them."

???

! ! !

This wasn’t a test, it was a threat on his life!

"Put away Rain-Day Laundry and only use S/L Data, or else you’ll really die," Chen Baiqi said with ease and pleasure.

"The Prophet told me to use it less," Qi Leren protested weakly.

"Oh, then you don't have to. I’ll try not to aim at anything vital," Chen Baiqi said.

"...Forget it, I'll use it." Qi Leren surrendered and thought he would use it just this once.

S/L Data was activated and the current position was set as the save point. Qi Leren looked at the red before his eyes and his heart beat fast with nervousness. He counted the seconds for S/L Data in his mind.

30, 29, 28...

Chen Baiqi didn't throw, she was walking—Qi Leren couldn't see her or hear her footsteps, but he had a strong feeling that Chen Baiqi was walking around him... She was on his left... Behind him...

Danger, danger, danger!

Clearly there was no warning, no noise, but Qi Leren's mind had already sounded the alarm. He quickly squatted without thinking and a slight wind flew over his head, cutting off two floating hairs.

"Eh? The response was good." Chen Baiqi's voice came from behind him. It was behind him!

Qi Leren stood up and continued to count the seconds: seventeen, sixteen, fifteen...

Under your feet!

Qi Leren suddenly jumped up, and the throwing knife shot obliquely downward and struck the ground with a tang.

Even though he wasn’t hit, Qi Leren still felt a dull pain in his feet, probably from jumping too fast and cramping.

"You’re really good." This time the voice came from above his head!

Qi Leren flung himself forward and rolled on the ground for three or four meters. There was a continuous sound of breathing behind him. Obviously, several throwing knives stabbed one after another—into the concrete ground, and he stopped breathing from nerves. In such a dark place, he directly evaded the ubiquitous fatal danger that made him feel on the verge of a breakdown.

When he stood up again, Qi Leren had forgotten to count the seconds and Chen Baiqi's voice came from ahead of himt: "Well, let's stop here for now."

Qi Leren breathed a sigh of relief and his whole person relaxed from his panicked state, stretching out his hand to untie the cloth over his eyes. When the cloth strip was torn off, there was no figure of Chen Baiqi in front of him—only a parrot standing on the ground and talking with Chen Baiqi's voice, which laughed at him: "Fool."

Qi Leren stood stiffly and a cold wind struck into his torso from behind, the knife piercing his heart. After 30 seconds, S/L Data successfully read the file.

The real Chen Baiqi came from behind Qi Leren with a cheerful demeanor: "This is the first lesson for you: never let off your guard down too early in the face of danger."

-----

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

[impyssadobsessions]

Something I thought about for a while though my idea was completely different LOL WIP but I don’t know if I can finish it ;w;. I’m not so good with rendering things. I had several thoughts of storylines that inspired this…  ROUGH IDEA OF THIS IMAGE: After a bad run in with some deatheaters(or wannabe deatheaters… always had the idea after the books they be some trying to resurrect or create a better dark lord.), they send a large horde of dementors to finish them off. Draco Malfoy having gotten close to Potter and his life either to mend his way or an opportunity to help chase down the remaining deatheaters. Ends up being the only one able to fight. He puts every bit of magic into his Patronus, having trouble casting it at first cause of the memories and the fear. His determination to save them outweighs all his doubt, his mind focused on Harry. Everything they done, everything he meant to him.  And because of how Patronus is such pure magic I can see it conflicting with the dark mark on Draco’s arm. It festering, and reacting to the magic that is trying to purge everything dark. As the magic Draco is summoning is from every essence he has, never stopping even as the Dark Mark is bursting and shredding apart his arm. Ending with Draco’s arm having blown off of him due to the magic clashing. Most of the Dementors having been obliterated instead of driven away. Draco having collapsed just seconds after the light fades. His wand bleached by the magic.  Harry in shock, having watched all this go down. I Had several different ideas.. i still like the first idea i had but I couldnt draw it.. i might attempt it later but I thought it be a cool Fanfic idea… likeiwritefanfic =w=; I’m bad at explaining too. It basically was like a few years after the war, there was an attack on Pansy (with spells) that left her in St. Mungos. Aurors Ron and Harry are told to go and talk to the last person seen with Pansy that day. They arrive to Malfoy Manor, to find Draco ill and way too tired to argue much. Turns out to Harry and Ron’s surprise, that Draco is a werewolf, and obviously couldn’t have harmed his bestfriend that night as he went home just before sundown. Harry annoyed they werent told of this before hand and even the paperwork barely mentions it despite Draco being  on the registry. Draco however, having good knowledge on how politics work and people who would harm his friend, gave some very helpful suggestions. Harry taking these suggestions into account started unraveling a bigger mysterious. But as it unfolds, he is forced to take leave when Andromeda Tonks ends up being one of the victims, leaving Harry to take care of teddy. Harry unable to keep his nose out of the case, winds up at Draco’s again for more information, especially with pansy being well and better. And while conversing Draco again offers some good suggestions and leads. Ends with them confirming that someone with a darkmark is attacking them, due to Teddy’s panic once getting a glimpse of Draco’s arm. Harry brings the leads and news to Robards and Kingsley with Ron’s help, and they devise a plan. Kingsley trusting Harry, decides to visit Draco to judge whether or not Draco is trustworthy and to hear his advice with his own ears. Draco is then given a chance to redeem himself, but a permanent job at the ministry if he aids them in their investigation as a temporary auror. (His Leads not only having been correct but provided an insight they did not have) The catch is he has to do it, while pretending to be Harry. Since becoming Harry be the perfect way to draw them out and keep them panicking. Draco agrees, and has to live in Harry’s shoes for a good few hours a day, drinking Polyjuice to keep the appearance while investigating. Draco works with Harry and Ron on the case back at his manor. Filling Harry in on things that happen (more or less) so they can keep up the appearance.  Eventually a raid get set up, The real Harry is under his cloak with Kingsly and other aurors on standby watching the town. While Draco pretending to be Harry is with Ron and Robards and a couple of other aurors confront the deatheaters. The raid ends up a bust as they manage to ambush them. Draco’s polyjuice wearing off mid fight, once the deatheaters realize who been golden boy all this time they loose interest and send the dementors while popping off to find the real Harry. Robards is unconscious and Ron is on the ground having been mostly petrified or injured and unable to move. (Draco being werewolf having aided him in the fighting) Draco has to make a choice, if he runs to get aid robards and ron will most likely be kissed. If he fights, he’ll more in likely be kissed. Ron telling him to get out of there, but Draco makes a stand while he attempts to cast a patronus. He starts to panic as they close in, seeing bad memories all the ones he regrets flash through his mind. Then he shakes himself free seeing the glimpse of the glasses he discarded mid fight.  His thoughts turn to harry, and the time with teddy being over. Them laughing, working. He points his wand at the horde and manage to cast a patronus. Bright and pure, that got larger and stronger the more magic and determination he put into his spell. Planning to put his all into it. The magic starts to envelope him as he only poured his thoughts about Harry. Knowing if he let Ron die, then Harry would never be the same. Harry deserved every ounce of happiness he has left and by damn would he let it go. As his thoughts stayed focus the magic starts purging and combining with his blood. Pain searing through but he doesnt stop, even as it conflicts with the dark magic on his arm..  Basically ends the same with his magic having purified and combined with what was left on his arming, blowing it off accidentally in the process. He managed to fight off the horde in a spectacular display that harry and the others can see from afar as they run towards the group, having just realized what happen. Harry stumbles in on Draco barely standing as the light fades from his wand head hung, blood pouring from his left arm. Then Draco collapses, Harry rushing into stop the bleeding out. Ron letting out a “Bloody Hell…” Surprising Harry as he did not expect Ron to be conscious, staring back at Ron. Ron giving a short explanation, joke, and telling harry to hurry and take the git to st mungos in quick couple sentences. Cover been blown but everyone manages to make it out alive, even the victims. Draco no longer having to be in Harry’s shoes, but still ends up helping solve and wrap up the criminals who crimes get bigger each time. Can see the last fighting scene involving a magical mutation to Draco’s lycanthapy that allow him to fight side by side with harry. Everyone seeing Draco being a hero too. =v=b I Thought of this one for long time reason it better.. the sketch was based off my drawing abilities… =v=‘ kek. BUT TELL ME UR IDEAS… and hopefully i get this drawing done.. ;w; Also I was debating on fox or ferret for patronus lol. =v=‘ could be wolf too, in the second story.

[phoebehalliwell]

Yo Death as a lover of a Halloween SLAPS!!!!!

ty!!!!!!! bc like. like for real there’s no reason for him to be so invested you know like yes the halliwell line is plagued by death but like. so many people die every day that i can’t imagine that he’d be on a first name basis with prue and piper without a lil skin in the game. and we’ve already established that there are multiple angels of death kind of on accident with the courtship of wyatt’s father so to have Only this death interact with the line,,,,, let’s talk!!

i feel like it’s gotta be some type of enemies to lovers thing in which the warren witch is trying to like. fistfight death or barter with him. we could say she’s lost a sister or potentially a child and is trying to barter with death a trade her soul for them resurrected to which death is like no. but then they keep summoning them and attempting necromancy dark magic etc which death is aware of because of kinda like the fallout the problems the fatalities that practice will end in so he’s like hey. stop that. and she’s like no fuck you in a very emotional breakdown type thing because it’s all this guilt and sorrow and rage and she has nowhere to direct it except at this one thing, at bringing her child back, at death for taking her away and she’s really just like furious bc she thinks death doesn’t get it bc he’s always so kinda stoic but he does get it blah blah blah something something something we’ll say he helps her overcome this particular grief hurdle she moves on maybe finds a new love and then he bites it!! and then she like idk threatens to kill death attempts to orpheus it and cross over and drag them back out something something something she’s really volatile but once again death kinda helps her through this intense period and stops her from like. uprooting nature and life and death as we know it blah blah blah then we can say like idk she realizes how much she like talking to him how much his presences actually comforts her and death doesn’t engage w people much. like at all, actually. but this witch has kinda become such a like. like first off the only reason they’ve every spoken is because she has tried every known trick in the book bartering stealing hell she even tried to kill him (didn’t work lmao) and he like. obviously gives a little monologue whenever people hit their time and he’s seen them beg to stay or cry bc they wish they’d done differently but like. her relationship with death as a concept is wild she’s terrified of it but would gladly die if it meant her daughter could live but she doesn’t want to die she loves living itself the act of living even though she constantly lives on the edge of death and maybe that makes every day more valuable but that’s not even it she just has a giant heart impossible amounts of love and that’s what guides everything she does and death is just like. 😯. because most people who are not moving on briefly in a three second interaction with him are like. angels of destiny who are kinda like rigid sobs who do everything my the book definitely not overly emotional and something something something something idk if i were actually writing this i’d write it better but what starts as fascination grows into affection grows into love

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #474

Top Ten Characters Who Came Back from the Dead

I am stunned – stunned! – that I’ve not done this one before. I mean, come on! It’s right there.

So there’s obviously a thematic resonance going on here. This weekend – the weekend you’re meant to be reading this – is famous where I come from because of a story where someone came back from the dead. Unlike other holidays – Christmas, Halloween, the release of a Star War – I’ve actually been a little slow off the mark in making lists that celebrate Easter. I’ve done eggs and bunnies, but incredibly I’ve never done resurrections, which really is the day’s whole deal. I mean, if you get down to brass tacks, it’s kinda the big selling point of the entire religion really. I hesitate to say “USP” because, well, it’s been done elsewhere, but it’s still supposed to be one of the big Christian takeaways (there’s definitely a chain of Christian takeaways in the States, isn’t there?).

Anyway, resurrection. It’s actually more common than you might think. Certainly in terms of comics there are probably more characters who’ve “died and come back” than have never “died” at all. But! And this is where I get pernickety. Most characters who “die” don’t actually die. Take Batman for instance: he’s shot in the face by Darkseid, and then Superman ups and finds his charred corpse, but – shocker! – he’s not actually dead, he was just sent back in time, where he Quantum Leaps his way back to the present day, accumulating enough Omega Energy with each leap that by the time he reaches the present day he’s blow a hole in reality. Or something, I’ve not read that story for quite a few years. Anyway: he wasn’t dead. Neither was Sherlock Holmes, or for that matter Dirty Den. Generally speaking, if someone dies in a story and then reappears, they’re not dead. Not really.

So this list here is supposed to be people who actually died. Now, even here, it’s debatable; I mean, is E.T. dead, or does his body just go into some kind of hibernation? If Optimus Prime’s brainwaves survive, does he ever really die? Is a clone someone coming back to life or not? It’s all a bit wishy-washy really, which kind of makes sense when you’re talking about resurrection. And let’s not get onto the chief resurrector, the Doctor; do they die every time they regenerate? Or is the regeneration itself a way of staving off death? When David Tennant turned into Matt Smith, did the Tennant-Doctor die? “I don’t want to go,” and all that; there’s always a subtle (or not-so-subtle) change in personality. Does that count? Well, for the purposes of this list, I’ve kinda decided it doesn’t. But it’s an interesting discussion to have, if you’re a big old nerd like me.

So yeah: people who have died – properly, I suppose – and then come back to life. That’s the list. No fakery, to mistaken identity, no alternate universe shenanigans; they were dead but they got better (no Chev Chelios either; sorry, Stath stans). No zombies either! Or vampires! They’re not undead; they were dead, and now they’re alive again. That’s the rule. Also I’ve seriously tried to limit comic book characters. And I’m sure there are some big omissions (like, I know there’s one from Game of Thrones that’s not on here, but that’s because I’ve not seen that far into the show yet; I know, I know). But I reckon these are the best at being back.

Optimus Prime (Transformers franchise, from about 1987): OP is the OG when it comes to coming back to life. Dying and then stopping being dead is pretty much his thing. Technically the first time he came back from the dead was in the original animation; famously being offed by Megatron in The Transformers: The Movie (1986), he came back to life a year later. Subsequent media have frequently killed him and brought him back, even in the live-action movies, but I want to talk about the comics. Because the original Marvel run killed off Optimus at a similar time as the cartoon; he’s blown up in slightly contrived circumstances, but his brain is saved on a floppy disk. Two years later he has his body rebuilt and his brain restored and he’s off to the races once more. Then in 1991, when facing down planet-eating mega-bastard Unicron, he sacrifices himself again, but this time his personality has begun to merge with that of his ostensibly-human companion Hi-Q. Hi-Q/Prime is converted/rebuilt into a new body, and he wins the war. So there you go: even in this one sliver of continued continuity – not including off-shoots or spin-offs, let alone other iterations of the overall franchise – Optimus Prime died and came back to life twice. Beat that, Easter.

E.T. (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982): not much to say here that we don’t already know from the Book of Spielberg. E.T., doddery little alien magic-man, grows sicker and sicker as he’s stuck on Earth, until in a thrillingly-edited set-piece he seems to expire, human doctors unable to help him. “I know you’re gone,” says best bud Elliot, “because I don’t know what to feel.” But then! His heart glows! His colour returns! And he positively yells, “E.T. phone hooooooome!” – and Elliot’s euphoric laugh is just devastating. The whole sequence – what is it, ten minutes? Fifteen? – is masterful in every way, from the technical to the performative to the emotional. Bloody magic is what it is.

Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 1954): Gandalf the Grey famously leads the Fellowship of the Ring across the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, where he faces off against a Balrog. After a bit of “you shall not pass” and all that, they both fall from the bridge, battling each other on the way down, before both perishing at the bottom. Gandalf, though, is not really Gandalf, but Olórin, one of the Maiar – basically a kind of angel, I guess. He is returned to Earth by the powers-that-be to complete his mission, and is promoted to Gandalf the White, supplanting the corrupt wizard Saruman. This new iteration of Gandalf is a bit more serious and steadfast, although he does retain his fascination with hobbits. Regardless, he gets a terrific death scene and a triumphant resurrection, and how it ties into Tolkien’s wider mythology is interesting.

Superman (DC Comics, 1993): comic book characters die and come back all the time; it’s pretty much a staple of the medium. I guess Jean Grey/Phoenix is probably the most famous, but they’ve all done at some point (even if, like in my Batman example earlier, sometimes they don’t actually die). Anyway, Superman died, very famously, after getting into a tremendous barney with genetically-engineered super-git Doomsday (as famously, and atrociously, depicted in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). The whole “Death of Superman” arc is interesting and entertaining as an example of mid-nineties big-panel EXTREME storytelling: as the issues tick down to the fateful scrap in Metropolis, the number of panels-per-page is reduced until the final issue is basically just full of splash pages. It’s a terrific, exhilarating rumble, really selling the heft of the confrontation. Interestingly, the comic spends a lot of time afterwards dealing with life without Superman, as a raft of imitators/wannabe successors emerge from the woodwork; these include the best-ever Superboy, Conner Kent, and Steel, who’s basically Superman meets Iron Man. Eventually, of course, Superman comes back, his body essentially having been sent to a Kryptonian day spa to recuperate; he emerges clad in black and with a mullet, so death obviously has some lasting repercussions. Overall, it’s a whopping arc with long-term consequences, and whilst it’s easy to make Christ parallels when discussing Superman, this story doesn’t really hew that way (unlike the Snyder-verse which really goes all-in on that plot point, much to the films’ detriment). One of the better aspects is how, even in death, Superman is an inspiration, which in itself has a long trail; leading, eventually, to Batman’s famous withering diss, “the last time you inspired someone was when you where dead.” Anyway, I’ve gone on about this far too long.

Spock (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984): let’s start by acknowledging just how great Spock’s death is in Wrath of Khan. As a plot point within the film, as a piece of staging and performance, and as a landmark moment in this franchise, it was seminal; a death for the ages (as an aside, it’s crazy to think Star Trek as a whole was only sixteen years old when Spock died; the MCU was eleven when Tony Stark clicked the bucket). Anyway, they built an entire film around how to bring him back, and Spock as we know him is absent for much of it; a presence looming over everything as he rapidly ages, going through his Vulcan super-puberty and everything. It’s actually a rather sombre film as Kirk’s son is killed and the Enterprise blows up; bringing back Spock comes with a very real cost. Trek III is not one of the top-tier films – in the loose trilogy that comprises Khan, Spock, and The Voyage Home it’s certainly the weakest – but it’s still pretty good, often underrated. And, of course, it brings back Spock, which is nice.

Agent Coulson (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 2013): Coulson’s death in Avengers comes as a huge shock, one of the fan-favourite characters being brutally offed in surprising fashion. In a film chock full of super-people, it’s the ordinary guy who buys it tragically. However, did any of us really think he was dead-dead? And so barely a year later he pops back up in the TV series Agents of SHIELD. However, his reincarnation became a recurring plot point; his references to spending time in Tahiti (“It’s a magical place”) becoming increasingly sinister as we come to understand even he doesn’t know how he’s back up and running. The eventual truth – Nick Fury using painful and transformative alien tech to basically bring Coulson back to life – may be a bit underwhelming, but it gave Clark Gregg a lot of meat to chew on dramatically speaking, and it underscored a lot of his character development going forward (especially when he, yes, died again, and then sort-of came back, twice).

Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001): full disclosure: I never watched Buffy religiously. I think I just missed it at the start and it was only when all my friends were talking about how great it was that I started tuning in more regularly. Weirdly, I think the most I watched it was around the time Buffy died and came back. It’s fascinating, really, and full credit to the show for the way they explored it; in a series full of magic, the afterlife, and the undead, bringing a character back to life isn’t too shocking. Willow, Buffy’s witchy mate, resurrects her with magic; but in an excellent twist, it turns out that she was in Heaven, and is super pissed off to be pulled out of paradise and stuck back on Earth, leading to her feeling depressed and alienated all season. That’s a great hook for bringing a character back, and leads to some meaty stuff for Sarah Michelle Geller to do.

Agent Smith (The Matrix Reloaded, 2003): do you ever feel that The Matrix has slipped from popular culture a little bit? Twenty years ago it was ascendent, rivalling Lord of the Rings for the title of “the new Star Wars”. Everyone was copying it. but now hardly anyone talks about it. probably because it hasn’t had a multimedia shelf-life comprising dozens of games and spin-off shows. Maybe the new film will change that. But I digress; Hugo Weaving is tremendous as Agent Smith in the first film, and is exploded at the end (spoilers) by Keanu Reeves’ Neo. Unsurprisingly – especially as he’s, well, just bits of code – he’s back in the sequel. However, he’s now been corrupted; he becomes, basically, a virus, self-replicating and threatening not just our heroes but the Matrix itself. This builds across two films, as Neo has to fight dozens of Smiths in the famous “Burly Brawl”, before the final conflict in The Matrix Revolutions when it seems everyone in the program has been Smithed. It offers Weaving a lot of scenery to chew on and makes for some great set-piece battles, even if the films themselves are a little disappointing.

Olaf (Frozen II, 2019): let’s not beat around the bush here – Olaf carks it in Frozen II. Okay, maybe Elsa dies; maybe Anna dies in the first film. They’re frozen, right, but I feel like it’s “magic ice” and there’s something going on there. Do they come back to life or were they ever really dead? Anyway, Elsa is effectively “gone” but we get a protracted death scene for the comic relief talking snowman. He literally fades away, slowly dying in Anna’s arms, and melts into a flurry of snow that blows away. People talk about Bambi’s mum all the time, but mark my words; “Olaf’s death” is going to be cited as a major traumatic incident for twenty-year-olds in 2030. His resurrection, truth be told, is slightly less great, Elsa just straight-up bringing him back to life, reminding us that “water has memory” to let us know that it’s the same Olaf and he remembers everything (including, presumably, dying? That’s creepy). And that, to be honest, is where I draw the line; sentient wind and rock monsters I can handle, but we all know homeopathy is bollocks.

Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 2019): look, I hate this. But let’s deal with it anyway, because I have a funny feeling it’s going to lead to some quite interesting stories being told in spin-off Star Wars fiction. I personally feel quite strongly that Palpatine should have stayed dead. And maybe he did? We are led to believe that the Palpatine we see in Rise is a clone; there are jars of stilted Snokes floating in the background. He’s all knackered and broken, eyes blackened and fingers dropping off; clearly he’s not well. So is he really the same character at all? Is his Sith essence somehow fed into this new body, the way Prime’s mind is downloaded from a floppy disk (“run prime.exe”)? Let’s say it counts, let’s say he’s the same slimy Palps we know and love. He is, at least, a sinister presence, and like I say, the whys and wherefores of how he came to be back is quite interesting. There’s a fascinating story to be told about the rise of Snoke and the seduction of Ben Solo – a more interesting story than anything told in The Rise of Skywalker, for starters. Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian seems to be researching cloning and seeks to extract midichlorians from a Force-sensitive being; are we to conclude that this in service of making a new body for the Emperor? All this – stuff hinted at but not explored in the film itself – is, like I say, interesting if not outright fascinating. And I agree, there is a certain degree of circularity in bringing back the series’ Big Bad for the final instalment. But I still feel, hand on heart, that it undoes a lot of the victory of Return of the Jedi (as did The Force Awakens, if I’m honest), as well as throwing away all the development of Rey and Kylo in The Last Jedi. So: Palpatine is cool, his presence and backstory in Rise of Skywalker is suitably creepy and interesting, but on the whole it’s crap and they shouldn’t have brought him back. The end.

Ten people who definitely died and definitely un-died! What could be more Easter-y? Honourable mention goes to the episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer changes history and ends up not being a hologram, only to accidentally blow himself up in the final seconds.

[kekeslider]

I’ve been holding on to this one for a while because of sheer laziness, because I knew it would be long as fuck, but I continue to see people saying that Shadow Weaver was redeemed at the end, via one act of good before dying, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I believe at the end she may have escaped.

Here’s my biggest take on SW, obvious as it is: she is primarily concerned with power and control at all times. It’s consistent through every bit of her story. She recognizes power in young people, Adora and Micah specifically, and seeks to control them. She’s nice to them, affectionate, at first. In her own super messed up way she cares about them. But never more than herself, her own desires and interests.

The common belief after the finale is that Shadow Weaver’s last act before the end was an attempt by the writing to give her a miniature redemption through death. And other people have said it but one of the purposes this actually serves is to show that despite all her efforts, SW never really controlled Adora and Catra, she never turned them into the things she wanted them to be, because they anchored each other. Adora and Catra crying over SW’s death isn’t to show that she was actually not so bad, it’s to show that in spite of everything, Adora and Catra still care about the life of others intrinsically.

Shadow Weaver knew this before her sacrifice. The fact that Adora could not continue on to the Heart without Catra was proof enough that she had lost control, if you could even argue that she ever truly had it. You might view SW’s decision to stop the beast and let them go as an acceptance of this fact, or that she simply did what had to be done to save the whole universe, or that she had a genuine desire to do one good thing in her life. But I’m going to argue for two different alternatives.

1. Shadow Weaver sacrificed her life here because she realized that she had no way out after this. She no longer had sway over Adora or Catra, and throughout the season, and some specific scenes in prior ones, both characters repeatedly call attention to SW’s abuse of them. They’ve reached a point in their journey where they’re both completely aware of her manipulation, her abuse, her two-sidedness. They never believe during this season that SW is a good person now, or that she repents for what she’s done. There’s a recognition that Shadow Weaver is helping the rebellion because she’s chosen to be on the side of the winners because that’s how she’ll guarantee her survival and maintain her control over the situation. She tried in the previous season to control Glimmer like she had the others, but Glimmer was too wise to actually trust SW, potentially because she knew what real love and loyalty was and recognized that that wasn’t what Shadow Weaver offered. In a genius turn, Glimmer uses Shadow Weaver rather than the other way around.

All attempts to guarantee her position after the war have failed. She has no control over Micah, Adora, Catra, or Glimmer. She can’t get Adora to the Heart without going back for Catra, so even if they somehow pull through without it she can’t claim herself a hero for her role in it. She is at the end of the road, she’s run out of tricks, and she makes a decision. She decides that dying in one last act of manipulation over the two girls she almost destroyed is her final way to secure her place in the narrative as a Hero. It’s about the legacy, it’s why she says “You’re welcome,” so they will be forced to believe she did it for them, and that would solidify her life as meaningful. It’s her last attempt to retain some of the power she craved, fought for, and stole throughout her life.

But I don’t think the writers actually intend for her to get what she wants here. Shadow Weaver is an interesting character, she has a lot of pull over events in the story, but there’s no sense that she’s beloved. Not by characters and not by writers. I’m eternally sorry to fall back on one of the most tired comparisons in the universe, but bear with me for a moment. In thinking about all of it, I noticed certain similarities between SW’s death and that of Severus Snape. One final moment before death that they want the child(ren) they abused to see that will justify everything. But that is where the similarity ends, and why I think it’s so different on the writing side of things. Snape’s death was intended by both author and narrative to excuse and forgive him for countless misdeeds. And over the years we’ve become far more critical of that. I don’t get the sense that the writers of She-Ra want us to forgive Shadow Weaver because she was oh so complex. I don’t think there’s a future catradora kid named “Shadow Hope Prime.” I think they wanted us to see this act of desperation for what it was: a last ditch attempt to retain control by a person that can’t care about anything but herself.

2. This is where we go straight into theorizing and headcanons so I’ll try to keep it shorter. My suggestion is this: Shadow Weaver did not die in her final scene, she made a grand escape.

At this point she has no friends, no allies, no one who believes she’s anything but dangerous. She has 4 people in positions of power she has personally and extravagantly harmed. She abused Catra and Adora throughout their lives, she manipulated Micah as a child and eventually sent him to Beast Island for at least 10 years, making him miss his daughter growing up, and never to see his wife again, and while SW never had the sway over Glimmer she did the others, she still was directly responsible for taking away her father, turning her mother into a, to be harsh, cowardly and ineffective leader for years, and indirectly responsible for the strife between Adora and Catra that took the war to new extremes.

Shadow Weaver has no one, and no options, and at that point in time the most likely outcome after it’s all over is prison, and she may not be lucky enough to be treated to Brightmoon’s cushy prison again.

You may ask at this point, Catra, Hordak, all the clones all get a redemption without threat of imprisonment, why not Shadow Weaver? And the answer is simple: Shadow Weaver has not redeemed herself in the eyes of the writers, viewers, or other characters. Catra saves Glimmer in an act of selflessness and love for Adora, and then becomes an instrumental help in saving Etheria. Not to mention Adora’s personal relationship with her and the recognition that they come from the same place and lived much of the same hardships. Hordak and the clones get a second chance because it is now known that they were all effectually mind-controlled and enslaved by Horde Prime, and their lives, as individuals with free choice and no strings holding them down, is only just starting. Not to mention Hordak and Wrong Hordak both have Entrapta on their side, and she’s a princess with her own kingdom and could just grant them asylum and bet the other princesses wouldn’t do anything about it lest they risk a civil war, but that doesn’t seem like a realistic issue for this new post-Horde planet anyway. The point is, the other antagonists from the show have made meaningful connections with other characters for the sake of them, not to be self-serving. Shadow Weaver continues to be manipulative up until the very end, no one will give her another chance at this point.

And she knows this. She’s a smart lady, and there’s a great big universe out there full of people that don’t know her. If Adora saves the day and the universe is saved all she has to do is get off planet, and if Adora fails they all die anyway, so why not have a go at it? My theory is that she uses her great big show of magic as a distraction and a disguise to make her escape. The world will believe she died, they may even celebrate her for her role in saving the universe, and she’ll be free.

You think there’s a hitch in this theory right? Because we see the room after she’s gone and all that’s left of her is her mask. Obviously she was completely destroyed, right?

But this specific scene reminded me of something else

If you’ve watched Teen Titans you know that the mask-wearing Slade was one of the major antagonists throughout the series, was also quite inclined to use and abuse powerful youths, and at the end was at the mercy of one (arguably two) of the children he had hurt. She kills him, he falls into lava, and the last thing we see of Slade is his mask. The next season picks up with Robin obsessed with the search for Slade, believing that he couldn’t really be gone that easily, and driven by this single remnant of him. Only to find out later that while Slade did die, he was resurrected and was once again back to be a massive asshole.

I think Shadow Weaver’s last scene does what it is meant to at first glance. Audience and characters believe she’s dead, which makes for a tidy ending, the death is non-explicit so kids don’t get too traumatized, but the ambiguity of it also means that if they wanted to, Shadow Weaver could return for a future installment in the series, be it comics, a movie, or another season. Whether those things are likely to be produced isn’t my interest in arguing here, it’s the possibility.

There’s still a lot of potential for Shadow Weaver to be used as the primary villain, and facing her again could be used any number of ways to shake up a domestic bliss the characters end up in, to have them, older, more mature, having spent time healing from how she hurt them, no longer be affected by her in the same ways. Or the complete opposite, they may still be affected by her, seeing her again could tear open old wounds, but in the end show that while hurt remains, they still carry on.

[ibroughtyoumybullets]

I love stories. And all life-changing music aside, that’s why I’m here, really. I’m weak for a good story - especially one that leaves room for me to fill in the gaps, make leaps that aren’t necessarily founded in anything, but arrive somewhere more satisfying than whatever the text of the thing allows. It’s the nature of my shitty little plagiarist heart. I’ll take what you made and make it better, change it as I see fit. That’s why I’m here.

And this is divorced from the context of any reality. This is me indulging in the story that has been given to me, completely aware it has no affect on whatever the truth of the situation was. I’m here for the story itself, not the actors - willing or unwilling, aware or unaware of their places - inside the story.

But oh my god, it’s a beautiful story.

It’s not perfect, it’s not, and I would begrudge it, if it was. I have no use for perfection in real life or in stories. It’s not perfect, but I could argue it’s perfect to me. For me.

Humbled beginnings tinged with desperate suburban longing. Anywhere but here, by any means necessary. The quiet, persistent, possibly insane belief that you are meant for more than whatever you are - that you could be somebody different, somebody better. Soulless bureaucracy and the shitty reality of a thing you held in such high esteem breaking your heart daily. The heavy weight of your early to mid-twenties ruthlessly teaching you that your life isn’t going to be what you thought it would be.

And then, God or Fate or the Universe Herself, sweeping down in flames and fury. Enough is enough, they say. You are meant for more than this, so go on, be more than this. This is our command. So you take up arms. You’ve found your cause to die for, and you charge forward, ready to die. You find your comrades, your brothers, your rag-tag band of thieves - the people who can see it too, feel it too. And together, you work. Together, it all makes sense. Together, you spark, and you’re ready and willing to set the world on fire.

And those early days, they’re not pretty. They’re sweat and blood and piss, long nights, long drives, longer days. But you’re all possessed by this thing you have created, by it’s power. You’ll all gladly sacrifice whatever sanity you were still clinging to, to keep it going. And before you know it, this thing you’ve created is too big for the world you know. And corporations lurk, have been lurking, on the sidelines. promising a bigger pond, the time, money, and ability to set the whole wide world on fire, not just the world you’ve lived your life in. And it’s a gamble, it’s a compromise, but it’s a choice you make. So you charge forward again, past portents on your side. Let this be a declaration and threat. You are ready for the world to hear you scream.

And scream you do. Maybe the world was waiting for you, maybe they weren't - maybe it was through sheer blood, sweat, and tears that you made them pay attention. But they're paying attention now. Revolution is the wrong word - it implies that there is a goal, an after you want to reach. It isn't revolution, it's revenge. Revenge against that world you left, against all the people who said you would never make it out, against all the people who didn't have to grow up like that, and against all the people who did and thrived anyhow. And maybe, something dark and quiet in your heart says: it's revenge against yourself. For being alive, for wasting time, for being so much of what you hate and cannot name, for the grief you cannot escape. And you're on fire, all of you are, but this is not how stories go. You must meet the Goddess. You cannot languish in the unknown, all challenge and temptation and no retribution. So you meet the Goddess.

And through luck, through righteous indignation, through divine will, you come out the other side. You are still on fire, but you burn different. It's no longer coal-muddied and stinking, it's a holy flame. Purifying and certain. Whatever you saw in the dark set you free, but bound you all the same. There is still more you have to say. You are not the death at the end of this story. Things have changed, and they have stayed the same - or maybe you can just see everything better now. The blur has worn off. You know who you are, where you are going. Delilah, fetch the shears. You are to be reborn.

There is no difference between the beginning and the end. And the masses - frothing and out for blood, looking for an ending, calling for a death to decorate their cheaply made t-shirts - will be taught this, through gentle instruction or brute force - it doesn't matter to you. And the will of God is rarely easy to live through - you found your way out of where you were, but there was no promise it would get easier. Haunted mansions and heightened tension and the feeling that something, somewhere, is about to break. The path stretches out in front of you, and you must learn to walk it alone. And walk it you do.

Here, you say, is the life promised after death. You know what you've done, but a parade waits for you all the same. We are all of us sullied and imperfect, and we all deserve to live - even if we must die. You couldn't have known, holed up in that forsaken corner of Hollywood, what exactly you were about to unleash. Sure, you burned before - but never like this. To surpass the sun in it's glory, to be the hero you never intended to be, but crowned yourself, anyhow. You shoulder it like you were born to bear that weight. Atlas has nothing on you. They called for your death before, and still they do, but now, it is so they can deify you. Immortality through loss of life. Perfect and completely dead.

But the story does not end here. Would you destroy something perfect, in order to make it beautiful?

Revolution does not interest you, it never has. But righteous violence - the acts of the lost, desperate, and determined - lurks always in the back of your head. You have all changed. You picked the locks that kept you trapped, escaped your own heads and made it out into the world, and found it wonderful and lacking. Saw the end lurking a decade out on the horizon. You've shown them the welcome that waits after we all die, but what about the party at the end of the world? Venom bright and unrelenting - you looked at rock and roll and said: the best way to love some things, is to kill them. You are no longer a savior, but an anti-hero, a figure cloaked in light and legend. Blood on your hands, and in your hair, you joyfully mutilate the thing that made you. The aftermath has always been secondary.

And then: a voice. The flames from a decade past are no longer needed. This message comes from inside of you. Again: Would you destroy something perfect, in order to make it beautiful? You know the answer already. The kill-switch has been primed since the beginning. It was always going to end. But god, you were spectacular while you lasted.

There are birds, and glass, and time passed. Things change and stay the same, as they always have. But there is life after death, you have made that clear, time and time again. And in that resurrection space, in the magic circle you have drawn, there is a question that must be asked: after death, after blood and flame, after making it through all that was set out for you, could you ever be the same? 

The answer is no, obviously. That’s a bit of authorial conjecture, but of course I’m in this story, too - I’m writing it. The hero never makes it home the same. So why go home? 

You’re raising the dead, messing in magic I can’t quite understand. I don’t know what’s coming. The story isn’t over, so I cannot write you an ending. 

But it’s a beautiful story. 

[valkyrieelysia18]

RWBY Rewrite: Penny Polendina

Salutations Tumblr users! Today, we tackle beloved fan favorite robot girl Penny Polendina.

Now as I stated before, I dropped RWBY after Volume 6 and didn’t really watch Volume 7. I have however heard about certain developments and one plot point made me grateful I got out earlier or I would have rage quit this Volume anyway.

They brought back Penny, with all her memories completely intact.

This destroys one of the best pieces of writing in the show. Penny’s death was meant to symbolize the death of innocence in the show and it led in to the Fall of Beacon as well as Pyrrha’s death. Up until now, the show had been treating it as if a real girl had died. Vexed Viewer on YouTube has done a video on the topic that explains this better than I could. Even if they were going to bring Penny back in some way, she shouldn’t have been exactly the same as if nothing happened. Such as her memory of Vale (and everyone she met) being completely gone or her personality being significantly changed she isn’t even the same person anymore.

So, in this post I am going to be going over her history, role in the plot, and ‘successor’ for the Atlas Arc. 

Creation and History

Okay, slight can of worms, but if Doctor Polendina is black, why is his daughter one of the most obviously white characters of the cast?

Alright, there actually is a legitimate reason for that in this rewrite. Penny’s physical features are actually based on Pietro’s late wife Clara Polendina (reference to the Nutcracker ballet) who worked with her husband. The two were very much happy and in love, but Clara died in a Grimm attack before they could have children. Thus, Penny is basically the daughter Pietro never got to have with her. Clara won’t come up that much in the Rewrite, but she was close to both of her husband’s prized students Arthur Watts and Willow Schnee. Arthur would note the resemblance and bring it up during his final confrontation with the doctor (This is what you ruined my life for as well as countless others?! Clara would be ashamed.) Willow would also bring it up and notice the similarities in both Penny and her successor.

However, the Atlas military and Ironwood’s desires to build something like Penny is less heartwarming. There was the original desire of making stronger robots for mass production to protect humans that evolved into infiltration and espionage purposes. But James Ironwood would see Polendina’s plans and see an immense opportunity. A young woman who would never age or die. An individual that they would never have to worry about running away or disobeying orders. Such a person becoming a Maiden would mean that they would never have to worry about the transfer process ever again. That would explain why Penny said that it would be her job to save the world one day, but they don’t think she’s ready for it yet. She is Ironwood’s hope for the future of the Maidens. And just in case she isn’t perfected in time for the next transfer, Winter is being trained and kept in reserve. Ironwood would provide all of the materials Pietro could need, including a crystalized substance that no one knows much about other than it being a classified by the military. It’s source  will be noted in a spoiler’s section in this post, but it’s the very thing finally got things to work.

But while Pietro is aware something is up and suspicious of Ironwood’s intentions, he loves his little robot daughter regardless. There will be some flashbacks involving her first days awake (showing her curiosity and determination) as well as her bidding her father good bye when she leaves for the Vytal Festival. 

Vale

The only thing I’d really change about Penny in the Vale Arc is giving her more time to interact with the cast, especially Ruby. What we got was okay, but I think it would be much more impactful if Ruby got to spend more time with Penny before her death. I’d definitely like it if Penny would bring up her father during their conversations, saying she was sure that two of them would get along given how much Ruby likes weapons.

It might be also nice for Pyrrha to feel a little off by her sensing all the metal when they first meet, but not realize why or how important that is. Just bit of foreshadowing.

Pelia

So, as you might have guessed by now, Penny will stay dead in this Rewrite. With the kind of story and tone I’m working with, it’s important that there is legitimate consequences to events and actions of the characters. As such, characters who died will stay dead. They may be referenced, appear in flashbacks, haunt our characters’ dreams, perhaps having a spirit linger with unfinished business to help the main characters on their path, but there is no chance of resurrection.

Not that Pietro wasn’t thinking along the same lines as others had considering Penny is a robot. They did manage to retrieve her body and core, but when he managed to build a new body, reboot, and restart, it wasn’t Penny greeting him. Rather, it was a completely personality. And they did not recognize anything or anyone. Pietro was devastated.

Thus I introduce Pelia Polendina, or Pelly. This is reference to the Coppelia ballet that actually includes a toy inventor trying bring a doll to life that he calls a daughter, much like Pinocchio. Only instead of magic bringing a puppet to life, the inventor tries to bring Coppelia to life by stealing a human soul and putting it in the doll. Quite the dark contrast and is actually going to be a bit of foreshadowing. I will say her appearance is actually pretty similar to Penny’s redesign with longer hair, though I would picture her more similar to dishwasher 1910′s design in https://www.deviantart.com/dishwasher1910/art/penny3-0-SD-758463321 . Check them out on DeviantArt, their work is amazing.

Pelia is considerably different than Penny. Whereas Penny was bright, enthusiastic, and rather trusting; Pelly is subdued, talks very mechanically, and is significantly less naïve. While Penny longed to be a part of something greater and be with humans despite her lack of social skills, Pelly avoids most people and is afraid of what Atlas(and by extension Ironwood) wants with a robot like her. This is partly due to her finding about Penny and how the world reacted with the Fall of Beacon.

In regards to Penny, she feels rather guilty about being alive in her place though she doesn’t quite realize that’s what she is feeling. This would lead to her trying to find out everything she could on Penny to understand her emotions, learning about Ruby and the others in the process. Pietro is devastated by the loss and incredibly frustrated with her, not really considering her alive in the same way Penny was which given her personality isn’t that unreasonable to think. Pelia does care about her creator and tries to assist him in what ways she can, but his attitude towards her is not positive and as such she mostly stays out of his way.

Atlas

Pelia’s first proper appearance would be in the Atlas Arc when the group visits Doctor Polendina for weapons repairs after their meeting with Ironwood doesn’t go well and the good doctor isn’t the on the best terms with the General at present. The man is not pleased or in the mood to humor them, though he does defrost a little when Ruby shows her geeky know how on weapons. (He may have also said some rather terrible things about Pyrrha which made the group somewhat grateful JNR wasn’t there.) As the group leaves the building and goes on their way, Ruby looks up to the upstairs window as she feels she’s being watched. She doesn’t see anything, but as she turns and walks away Pelia comes into view from the window. Having recognized who the people who just visited were, Pelly sneaks out and follows the group in the secret for a while.

She finally gets revealed while the group is watching Weiss dance ballet at a Mantle Community Theater. The Atlas Arc is primarily Weiss centric and part of her Arc in proving herself as worthy of the Schnee name will have her prove herself to people of Mantle. One such instance will have her helping out at the community theatre in learning and teaching dance. It’s in which she is showing off her skills Pelia accidentally reveals herself to the group having been incredibly entranced in ballet (little show to her inspiration). Ruby at first mistakes her for Penny so she gets very emotional, only to temper down when she realizes Pelia’s not her. The situation is cleared up and the group gets more insight into the situation of Atlas as well as the strain between the General and Pietro.

Pelia has three distinct dynamics of interactions with the group: Ruby on Penny, Weiss and Winter on siblings, and Oscar on succession. With Ruby, Pelia gets to know more about Penny as a person and Ruby gets a chance to fully process her loss. Pelia’s not Penny, but she comes to appreciate her all the same. Ruby also comes up with Yang in regards to sibling interactions, but Pelia’s focus in this case is more on the Schnee siblings. She’s basically wondering what sisters act like and whether Penny would have seen her as a sister. This lets her get some ballet lessons from Weiss as well as close to Winter. Then there’s her relationship with Oscar with the two of them having to deal with their predecessors and the problems they’ve let them to deal with. The both of them come to realize through talking with each other is that they shouldn’t compare themselves to those who came before. They have their own views and ways of doing things different from their predecessors and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The only thing they can do is do things the best THEY can.

The big turning point in the Atlas Arc for Pelia is when Pietro finds out abut the Winter Maiden and what Ironwood’s original plans were.  While I am majorly rewriting the Atlas Arc, I do actually like the idea of an old Winter Maiden who is on her last legs. Pietro doesn’t get all the details of course, but it gives him the idea that the magic could bring Penny back to life. Aside from the whole ‘Dead means dead’ world I’m working with, it’s also a way to show that magic that cannot bring back the dead. I know that’s very much true in the show though not directly stated, but here I want to lay the ground rules down on what magic is and is not capable of.

After being called back by Pietro and assisting him in breaking into the facility where the transfer is soon to take place, the two enter the room that was originally prepped for Winter (who is distracted with everyone else on things going wrong due to Pietro’s interference) with the old woman in the pod. Pietro has explained things and orders Pelia to get in the other pod. Pelia doesn’t move, having been conflicted during this entre plan which shows all over her face. The doctor orders again, much firmer this time.  A few moments pass as she thinks it over; fear, doubt, determination all playout in her expressions. Finally, she speaks. “No.”

While Pelia may have been built to be a weapon, she still has free will. Unlike Penny who accepted her role without many doubts, Pelia rejects that her only purpose is to be someone’s tool of war. She wants to help others, but she doesn’t want to fight. I think that if you bring choice into a story as a main theme, you also have to give the characters the choice not to fight, to walk away even if they don’t actually do it. Above all, Pelia doesn’t think that sacrificing others for herself is what Penny would have wanted after having met Ruby and gotten to know what she was like. 

She would tell this to Pietro, who would get furious and argue with her. this would continue until they were interrupted by Watts. Watts, with revenge on the brain, would focus on Doctor Polendina and tell Pelia to run along. I know this seems a little hypocritical for Watts to do this considering his advice to Cinder in Volume 5, but this a different situation. Spoilers for the future Atlas Arc Rewrite and future James Ironwood post, go to the next paragraph if you don’t want spoilers. You see, the villains don’t need the Winter Maiden to open the Vault for them because Ironwood already took the Relic of Creation out of the Vault years ago (and is NOT holding up Atlas). In fact, a bit of the power from the staff was used to create Penny  which was the the crystalized substance. Watts knows this due to his hacking Ironwood’s system and has already retrieved the Relic and sent it on the way to Salem. This will make the results in Atlas a lot more bittersweet: our heroes will win on the people’s side of things, but lose the Relic. Back to Watts, the man is all about efficiency. While the Winter Maiden’s powers would be nice, they don’t have a vessel for it at the moment and it’s not necessary for their primary goal. Once the business side of things is taken care of, then he’ll indulge in revenge.

Pelia, while conflicted, would run and get to the group to tell them everything. She would then spend the rest of the conflicting helping to escort and treat the wounded, giving her a presence to the people of Atlas. Pietro will be arrested and will be convicted for his crimes, Watts dead but having gotten the last laugh in the end with his technological abilities exposing his teacher and those who left him out to dry.

Once everything is settled, Pelly will stay behind in Atlas as the new right hand of new Headmistress Winter Schnee. Basically, she becomes the Glynda to Winter’s Ozpin (though Winter is a much more hands on no nonsense person). She bids the group goodbye, hoping to Ruby that they will meet again.

After Atlas

I don’t have much in mind for Pelia after the Atlas Arc except for two things. Firstly, that she and Pietro do eventually reconcile and develop something of a relationship when she visits him in prison on her off days. (Jacques is not so lucky in regards to his children.)

The second is when she and Winter will meet everyone at the lowest point of the story. Ruby will have learned some pretty dark truths, including some choices her mother made that’s really made her think. Pelia will actually have a similar conversation with Ruby that she had with Oscar. In how she’s no more Penny than Ruby is Summer. She’ll remark that perhaps Ruby put her mother on a bit too much of a pedestal thanks to the way her family viewed her. When in reality Summer was just a person and people make mistakes. Right now, what choices Summer made in the past aren’t what matters. What matters is what Ruby wants to do now.

Okay, I think I started before the coronavirus stuff went crazy. I am so sorry. Not sure when I’ll get beck to this.

However, I know the next subject is going to quite the doozy...

[recurring-polynya]

Idk if you have already answered this, but when/how do you think Renji & Rukia *officially* said the big “L” words??

This is a very interesting question to me. First of all, have I already answered this? Well. I have written this scene into three different fanfics, all which take place at very different points in time (once at the beginning of the 2-year timeskip, once in the Royal Realm, and once post-TYBWA), with an additional time Renji slipped it casually and didn’t notice (Rukia did), and once where Rukia shouted that she loved him and all their filthy urchin friends at him. I surely have at least one more in the works, and who am I kidding? I am never going to stop writing variations of this. But this is not a question of when I would have liked them to, it’s when I think they did.

I did write an extensive meta once on when they hooked up, and this is a related, but not-entirely-the-same question.

So, a) of all, I am obviously a fan of slow-burn, and b) between Rukia’s emotional constipation, Renji’s ridiculous patience, and a looming Nii-sama, there’s a real good chance that it took a looooooong time, and if that’s the case, I think the confession was simultaneous with the hooking up. I realize now that when I wrote that, I did not consider at what point in the timeskip they hooked up, but I think it does make a difference. I had never really considered the case where they hook up right away (as in any time between right after the SS arc through the first half of the timeskip), but I think that if they did, it would take forrrrrreeeeeeeevvvverrrrr for them to say it, like, probably TYBWA or maybe after. I have never written this scenario and now I desperately want to, THANKS ANON THIS IS DEFINITELY WHAT I NEEDED IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. What if Rukia screamed it at Renji’s back while he was dragging Ichigo off to go fight Yhwach? What if they said it all super-casual when Rukia leaves Renji to fight the Luchador guy whose name I refuse to type? MY DING DANG HEART.

Oh, also, even though I kind of hate this trope, I have been kicking around this idea that it’s the end of the timeskip, Byakuya gives Renji some super lame, quarter-ass compliment, and Renji makes the Big Decision: Kuchiki-taichou has Accepted Him, It Is Time. He gets his New Years haori drycleaned, buys an assload of camellias, makes a completely unnecessary reservation at Rukia’s favorite shitty ramen stand, and Rukia’s like, “Hey, babe, do you mind if we postpone a week? I gotta go stick this magic sword in Ichigo” and that is why Renji is so phenomenally weird during the Fullbring arc.

Also, I never got around to addressing the case of: did they hook up in Inuzuri/the Academy? which I will now.

The answer is no.

A headcanon I firmly adhere to is that no one in Inuzuri expresses affection out loud. It’s bad luck. You never, never say it. People die constantly in Inuzuri, and it’s treated as a natural and good thing by people in higher districts-- life is shit there, get back in the resurrection cycle, cowards. To admit that there’s something to hold onto there is a radically optimistic point of view, and I find that very romantic and heartbreaking and is part of why I OTP them.

Now, in my fanfic, these two blessed morons tempted fate by embarking on some horny teen make-outs and stopped abruptly when one of their friends died, but I only did this for fanfic reasons, I do not actually headcanon this. I think that Renji had been in love with Rukia since late Inuzuri days and was aware of it, and his big plan was to CRUSH IT!! at the Academy, land a sweet gig, and then be like, “Rukia, behold, I am the GOAT! I have passed a gazillion tests and beaten up Kira so many times and I have been offered an actual paying job. It’s at the squad with the nerdy glasses captain, but money’s money. Also, I love you, like, so, so much, will you marry me? Please, my crops are dying. I have a character recommendation from my zanjutsu instructor.”

I think at the same time, Rukia loved Renji in a “this guy is literally half of my heart I need him” but not necessarily in a romantic way, the same way she will later come to love the Karakura kids. She went through some really traumatic self-worth times at the academy and definitely could not read whatever insane signals he was giving off. Rukia has a lot of tight control over her emotions, at least as far as denying them, and wouldn’t let herself be in love with him. If he had made it to that insane proposal he had planned, she would have been like “wat” and then punched him in the face.

Did I have a point? I do not remember. Right, when did they drop the L bomb? Probably New Year’s, timeskip year 2.  But really, any time you want.

[mittensmorgul]

Thoughts on Rowen's actual fate? Sucking up all those souls and plummeting to hell sets her up to take the reigns down there, ya know? Is there hope? Or is she truly dead? (in episode THREE?? Really??)

Hi there! I’m gonna start by throwing out quotes. First, from 14.18:

Rowena: Where's the body, Jack? -Jack: We can do this. That's -- You will make it work!Rowena: It won't. Can't.Jack: Then I'll do it myself.Rowena: You're in no condition. Jack, a cardinal rule of magic -- disposition affects execution and you are spinning! Whatever you bring back, it won't be her.Jack:Then help me!Rowena: I won't.

She wasn’t able to bring back Mary, but she believes in the rules of magic, how it works, how everything from “disposition” to execution of the spell will affect the outcome. This... is important. Because it set up the entire reason for why she believed her spell would work in 15.03. Because that entire spell was founded not on her killing herself FOR something, but just knowing that her belief in the prophecy WOULD work, would carry out the magic that she otherwise believed would have no power against all the spirits of Hell. She’d walked into the graveyard so powerfully convinced that her “gossamer to concrete” spell would work, but it hit her back just as hard. In carrying out that spell, she was attacked directly in a way by those ghosts. Her belief and disposition didn’t give her the power to do it alone.

Her second spell was founded on the belief that Belphegor’s horn thingy would drag all the ghosts back into Hell, and then she’d be able to heal the wound with Sam’s help, with Dean at the edge of the rift ready to toss the symbol of her magic into the pit. It failed because Cas saw through the scam Belphegor was trying to pull and stopped him. So the thing her belief was founded on faltered.

So the entirety of her third spell was founded in the one thing she’d already staked not only HER life on several times, but the lives of the people she claims she doesn’t care enough about to power the spell. Her belief in the prophecy that only Sam Winchester could kill her had given her more power than all the magic in the world could’ve. She’d faced her fear of Lucifer that had paralyzed her with terror for two years, looked Michael in the face and told him to make a better offer because she wasn’t scared that he could kill her. And she KNEW after 13.19 that Sam wouldn’t kill her without her having earned death, so she didn’t have any real fear of SAM. But she did stake an awful lot of her own personal peace of mind on the fact that the prophecy was real and true and unbreakable.

Which... is fascinating in light of the fact that WE KNOW THOSE BOOKS CAN CHANGE. We know this because it was a major plot point of 14.10, and Billie telling Dean that all of his books but one had changed to say that Michael would use him as a vessel to destroy the world. ALL OF THEM said that (effectively, since the one that didn’t... even the prophecy IT foretold never came to pass...) So... NONE of Dean’s prophesied deaths had been correct.

And Rowena knew this, and STILL believed with all her being in this prophecy being true. Because she HAD to, because it was what gave her the power to live without fear.

Which brings us to 15.03:

Rowena: I don't care about anything enough to take my own life. Not you, your brother -- not even the world. But I believe in prophecy. I believe in magic. And I'm here and you're here and everything we need to end this right is in our hands. I know this in my bones -- it has to be this way. Do it! Kill me, Samuel! I know we've gotten quite fond of each other, haven't we? But will you let the world die, let your brother die, just so I can live?

It’s not that she didn’t want to save the world, or that she didn’t want to save Sam and Dean, or that she doesn’t care about Sam... it’s that for the spell to work, she has to base it on an unshakable belief. And in that moment, it was the prophecy she’d built her life on since 13.19.

Sam would be the one to kill her, for her real, final, permanent death.

Which... is wild, since everything since 14.20 has somehow been about free will, and the essence of prophesy in general being... “Writers Lie.”

So... how will this potentially alter what has happened? Obviously her spell worked, because the rift closed. But I believe this is only a temporary fix for their larger problems. Their larger problems being “Chuck is still writing their story. Only now he’s about to get really nasty about it.”

If this is actually the end of Rowena’s story... it doesn’t really fit with the larger narrative, and isn’t a true redemption, you know? Yes she chose it, but her reasons for choosing it were suspect at best, and likely to be proven entirely faulty at worst. Where’s Billie when we need answers to these sorts of existential questions?

And the reason she even had to do the spell in the first place still came down to “We had no other choice.” Which is Chuck’s kind of storytelling. There’s so much I’m suspicious of in canon right now, wondering how much of this current fiasco is directly due to Chuck’s manipulation, you know? Why did the initial spell she used fail-- and fail in such a way that broke her belief in their chances at success here at all-- when she’d been 100% confident in its success before? It’s... Chuck-tropey, and like I was suspicious of Belphegor from the jump, I’m suspicious of Rowena’s death now.

I would honestly not be thrilled at Rowena becoming Queen of Hell. I think that still is pushing her into a role she may have coveted at one point a long time ago, but that I think she’d grown bored with long before Crowley died, and that after her experiences of the last few years, isn’t even something she’s seeking out for herself anymore, you know? She hasn’t looked for a coven, she hasn’t been attempting to amass power or seek shelter in wealthy men, or whatever else. She’d been living her life.

Do I think she’s dead-dead? I have serious doubts about that.

I mean, everyone’s basically said about Ketch that he’s gone goodbye not coming back, but... he had one of Rowena’s charms, and we know how effective they can be. Having one’s heart ripped out doesn’t seem to be enough to stop the thing from resurrecting someone.

So I’m also at a point where I’m not writing off anyone’s death as what it looked like yet.

But Rowena? If she was still holding on to that prophecy as the basis for her entire life up to that point? I think she’s going to learn that prophecies can be misleading...