#only for that very show to be a creation borne of his intended purpose

[smile-files]

mommy let you use her ipad, you were barely two

and it did all the things we designed it to do

now look at you, look at you!

(objectober 2024 day 10: internet)

[addictedtostorytelling]

hi aj! i'm still on that csi rewatch (just venturing into season 7 now... so good) and i was thinking about how csi was different with naming their characters. i.e. sara instead of traditional sarah, nick and warrick having (nick)names that rhyme, super dave and hodges having the same first name, hank the paramedic + hank the dog. do you think this is all on purpose or it's just stuff that happened? i actually like those details because it's stuff we rarely see on tv and we know it happens in real life. thanks 🤍 have a great week!

hi, rewatch anon!

good to hear from you again!

re: your question:

unfortunately, the only bit of trivia i have ever encountered regarding character naming decisions on csi is that anthony zuiker originally intended to call gil grissom "gil sheinbaum," but billy petersen dissuaded him from doing so. zuiker then selected the replacement surname "grissom" as a tribute to real life nasa astronaut gus grissom, one of billy's heroes.

—which is to say i don't know why csi so often breaks the "one-steve limit" rule most other tv shows tend to as a matter of course adhere to.

the sara instead of sarah thing i can understand, as "sara without an h" was at least a somewhat popular spelling variant for american gen x babies born in the 70s and 80s, but having nick and rick, dave and dave, and hank and hank—to say nothing of gilbert and albert, dr. jane gilbert and dr. gilbert grissom and the gilbert institute for the deaf, lou vartann and lou gedda, sam vega and sam braun and sam the dog, and all of the recycled oddly-specific surnames of perps and victims (e.g., the name "kessler" crops up a lot, and not just for people related to lady heather)—is a somewhat more eyebrow-raising choice, i admit.

while of course in real life, one will often find people who share names or whose names happen to rhyme with each other or otherwise sound alike in most sufficiently large groups—case in point: i currently have three students with the same name in one of my classes, and they all choose to sit next to each other every day; two of them even have last names that begin with the same letter—in fiction, that kind of "doubling up" is usually avoided for the sake of clarity (i.e., so both the characters within the universe of the show and the audience outside of it don't have to constantly keep asking, "okay, but which one do you mean—the asshole boyfriend or the dog?").

whether the csi writing staff actively chose to forgo that particular storytelling convention for the sake of veritas or just stumbled into the name reuse thing more accidentally—as, after all, theirs was a "rotating writing room" which saw dozens of scriptwriters come and go over the years, not all of them equally well-versed in the "show bible"—i can't really say, though i somewhat suspect the latter option.

after all, the nick/rick thing would be easy enough not to notice at the time when those characters were first being named. "nicholas" and "warrick" aren't similar to each other either graphically or phonetically, and even "nick" and "warrick" have different syllable counts despite the end-sounds being the same when spoken aloud, so the "nick" and "rick" thing might just have slid by them, particularly before they were at a point when they really knew the characters or had an idea that "rick" might be a nickname warrick would occasionally go by.

hell, "rick" might not have even been a nickname the writers came up with themselves—it very easily could have been an on-set ad-lib (perhaps a paul guilfoyle innovation, as brass is the first character to refer to warrick that way back in s1).

so that one, i can very much see being unintentional—something that just wasn't really on the writers' radars during the character creation phase.

as for the issue of two daves, i do know that shows will sometimes supply minor characters with the same given names as their actors in order to keep things simple on set (particularly when the minor character in question may or may not ever end up becoming a recurring one), which is very much the case with "david phillips" and "david berman."

why the csi writers would take that tack with super dave but then name a second character david/dave later on—particularly when that actor's name is wallace and he goes by "wally"—i can't say for sure, but i have a sneaking suspicion that timing played a role, as three seasons elapse between the introduction of the first character and the introduction of the second (i.e., super dave first appears in episode 01x05 "friends & lovers;" hodges first appears in episode 03x11 “recipe for murder").

especially since super dave does not appear in episode 03x11 "recipe for murder," methinks the episode's writers, ann donahue and anthony zuiker—who is notorious for not knowing a damn thing about his own show—just forgot that super dave phillips was already in existence when they originated david hodges.

the fact that hodges is most usually referred to by his surname may have also contributed to the doubling, as they may not have been thinking about him as "dave" when they first set the concept of him down on paper.

as a side note: i cannot imagine how confusing it must have been on set filming episodes written by david rambo in which david berman playing david phillips appears alongside robert david hall—whom i believe also often goes by "david"—playing albert robbins and then david hodges played by wallace langham is also there. all i can say is it's a good thing hodges seldom makes trips to the morgue.

i'm disposed to believe something similar may have happened in the case of hank peddigrew and hank the dog, though on an even larger scale.

bad boyfriend hank gets written out of the show mid-s3 and is never seen or heard from again.

goodest boy hank doesn't get his official name on the show until episode 08x06 "who & what" when sara is the first character to say it.

between s3 and s8, the vast majority of the csi writing staff had turned over.

that so, i tend to suspect "that one shithead sara used to date all those years ago" wasn't really on anyone's minds when they were deciding what to name her dog—particularly since richard catalani, the writer who penned the episode, hadn't even begun working on the show until s4.

—though, of course, all of the above is just conjecture on my part, which i have no way to actually substantiate, and i could very well be wrong.

as for why no one consulted the show bible regarding this stuff—i mean, maybe they did and just decided the repetitions weren't that big a deal?

however, again, i tend to suppose that most of the time, they just didn't care to.

some writers are more fastidious about maintaining continuity and internal narrative coherence than others are, and, honestly, the csi writing staff (and especially zuiker) were never, even in their heyday, particularly careful in that regard; they typically cared more about case details than character biographies.

in any case, like you say, regardless of why it happened, the fact that there are so many characters on csi who share names does lend it a touch of realism that not all primetime tv dramas have.

fwiw, per the us social security administration, "david" was the second most popular name for american boys of the 60s (when hodges likely was born) and the fourth most popular name for american boys of the 70s (when super dave likely was born), so the statistical likelihood of there being two davids working in the same lab in the early 2000s would have been very high.

anyway, sorry i can't give you a more definitive answer! thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

and enjoy your rewatch!

[vivalavillain]

( 2, 3, and 17 for father paul uvu )

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC BUT HELPFUL CHARACTER BUILDING QUESTIONS

2. How loosely or strictly do they use the word 'friend?'

{In the Before Times, when Father Paul was still very much Monsignor Pruitt, he would have said he was a friend to all. As a child of God and as all things are God's creation, he would have readily answered that all creatures are simply friends disguised as strangers (within reason, of course; he wouldn't go swimming with piranhas on purpose). John Pruitt genuinely loved all of God's creations and went to great lengths to live the Word as Jesus would have intended. He sough to help the sick, feed and clothe the poor, welcome the stranger into his church. He would serve as a beacon of God's Light wherever he went if he could and thus shared the great Love of God with all.

{Once he met the Angel of the Lord, however, and was returned to his youth, he found himself... lacking things. Certainly the love and the heart of John Pruitt still lived on inside him, he still considered any of his flock to be his friend if they'd so let him say so. However, as we see with the death of Joe Collie and the miscarriage of Erin Greene, John began to notice something wasn't entirely there. His empathy, his guilt, was stunted. So while, yes, he would say he considered many to be his friend, he found the truth of the matter was that he only vaguely cared anymore.}

3. How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just the audience knowing?

{Father Paul tends to wear his heart on his sleeve-- when he can feel it. He goes to no great lengths to lie to his parishioners (other than by hiding who he really is) about what he's feeling or how much he cares about them but there is a part of him, as the days grow wearier and the sunlight harsher, that finds his emotions less and less intense, less and less there when he expects them. Before he fully turns, he's still very much in control of his faculties, but the longer he goes under the Angel's influence, the less he feels and acts human.}

17. What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice when looking at them?

{I would like to think John Pruitt only really started to notice things about himself after Sarah was born. The way she took her nose from him, the way she laughs the same way he did, the dark of her hair. For Father Paul, though, he notices the sharp line of his jaw, the height of his cheekbones. The differences between himself and Sarah now that he's more able-minded to notice those differences.

{As for what others notice about him first, I would have to say his eyes or the figure he strikes as a fairly tall, scrawny individual.}

[amadryas]

Hello! I'll ask as anon because i want to be mysterious :3

I'm so tired of seeing topics about how an ancient deity is evil… I just want to look on Youtube about a a god and what i found? Videos with the name: "Athena is evil", "Apollo is evil", "Zeus is evil" It's so frustrating.

Why those people can't understand that greek gods were complex? Not good or evil!

Also, sure those videos showed only the bad things they did in myths, of course you would think a god is evil if you just know those myths :/ But if you research more on mythology you will found good myths too… Again COMPLEX, NOT EVIL

Sorry if i bothering you with this, but really pisses me off :(

What is your opinion about this? You think that is okay say that an ancient god of Greece is evil?

Hiya! Of course, no worries about being anonymous! And you're definitely not bothering me :)

While overall I agree with you, keep in mind that I'm only giving my personal opinion, which is mostly based on what is, to me, common sense, and my understanding of those figures as someone who's been living in Greece all her life. I haven't studied myth and ancient Greek religion on a deeper, more scholarly level.

Though I very much dislike the idea that myths shouldn't be taken seriously because they are "just stories" and not representative of the gods' personalities (do they even have concrete personalities? Anyway,) we should remember that most often, they were a means for the Greeks to understand the world around them, how this plant or that animal came to be, how region X got its name, etc. Attributing the creation of xyz to a god was probably seen as the easiest way to explain its existence, and that's why we have so many recurring themes in myth—Person A displeases God B, God B punishes them; God C loses their mortal lover, they turn them into a flower. Whether the god is "right" to be angry or not is irrelevant, and whoever wrote those stories down rarely, if ever, shared any opinions on the matter. We see the gods hurting each other (Zeus and Hera, Demeter and her brothers,) but again, the god who committed what we perceive as a wrongdoing is not condemned by the mortal relaying the story.

Exceptions do occur; the entirety of Euripides' Ion more or less deals with the consequences of Apollo's seduction ("Phoebus compelled Erechtheus' daughter Creusa to take him as her lover." Make what you will of that "compell") of Creusa, princess of Athens, and how Ion, the child born of that affair, grew up knowing nothing of his parentage. After he finds out, he questions why Apollo, the god he was raised serving, did nothing to claim him as his child and instead led him to believe he's the son of another man. Creusa makes justifications for Apollo (although she previously fiercely denounced him,) but Ion insists. Eventually, Athena shows up on Apollo's behalf ("who did not think it right to come himself") to put the matter to rest by appointing Ion king of Athens and prophesising a glorious future for his children. Seemingly a happy conclusion and Apollo isn't really outright criticized for his actions (or lack thereof,) but the ending feels very contrary to the rest of the play, though I do wonder if Euripides intended for it to be commentary on the gods themselves, or how humans portray them in their stories.

So, in short, I don't believe the gods were supposed to be seen as "virtuous," not by modern standards. It was not relevant to the purpose they served. And I certainly think the Greeks viewed them as benevolent, rather than the opposite. Demeter taught them how work the earth, Athena created the plough. They survived and flourished because of the favors and the trials imposed to them by the gods. They were also feared and had to be appeased, but I'd say that's not exclusive to Greek religion.

[autumnclove]

It’s highly suggested Henry went through child labour as he worked in a factory too (or..multiple as said, he probably kept getting fired because his “ideas and designs took a toll on them”)!! And I’m pretty sure Steven was stuffed into Freddy after being stabbed 4 times..and then his neck was snapped in the animatronic?? At least that is what I got from the cutscene. And Peter was springlocked in the suit that started with an F (I can't spell it)!!  Henry and Steven are quite similar really, and I’d like to say that Henry doesn't kill people for no reason (that is what I got from the text), though even if he did have a reason it doesn't justify what he has done. He warns Peter and Steven to back off, to which to his disappointment, they did not. Henry didn't exactly want to kill them at first, as they would become black souls, yes? And they are adults, so the souls are harder to catch. And it also causes more problems, as he is “wasting a murder” on someone who just won’t ‘leave’, and it will not advance his research. Henry murders children for the Joy of Creation, to end death not only for himself, but everyone! Henry is a very complex character to me, just as the others can be. Henry, the pink bastard, can’t seem to decide whether he wants to make people happy or to make people scream in pain. The only person I see Henry kill someone based on what seems to be violent urges was Dee...he got to silly.... (I'm sorry) As far as I know, I’ve been informed from an old DSaF member of the server (so sorry if the info is wrong) on Martha’s and David’s death!!: So Henry is abusive (surprise surprise), and David has been born. Martha is unhappy with the marriage so she soughts to kill herself by driving the car into the lake. There are multiple possibilities of how this rolls out. 1. Martha does this with both David and Henry in the car. She most likely attempts to kill Henry but only Henry escapes 2. David is also in the car. They both die. 3. Only Martha is in the car and she dies. David dies either before or after this due to neglect and throws up and chokes on his vomit. 4. Both Henry and Martha are in the car. Only Martha dies. David dies either before or after this due to neglect and throws up and chokes on his vomit. 1 and 2 are the most likely, as David’s soul is also in the old car radio...but I dunno. Even if Henry did neglect David, it does seem for once in his life he regrets something (/j he regrets other things) Henry is I think an antagonist you’d call a “conflict creator”? As in many things, you’ll see the bad guy PURPOSELY get into the protagonists way, intending on stopping their goal (I wouldn't count Henry’s attempted control over Jack’s mind as doing this, as he was just ‘needing a vessel to continue his legacy’ as he couldn’t at the moment, and Jack would be the easiest option as Jack had no soul). A conflict-creator Not necessarily a bad guy in all things (though Henry pretty much is still -- not justifying anything), they are just a character whose goals are in direct conflict with the protagonists. 

Also, fun fact! Machiavellianism comes from genetics and “rough environments” (basically abusive households), and you see the most Machiavellianism in someone when they are put under a lot of stress and fear. Hence why his genetics were properly ‘activated’ during the war time (this also leads to a high chance of Charles being a Machiavellian if it’s passed by genetics, and even David may be one too)! It’s a little bit like a survival tactic, Machiavellianism. They do not trust anyone as they feel as if humanity is horrible, and are all douchebags waiting for the perfect time to show how evil they truly are. Because of this, even when you speak with a Machiavellian, they seem distant. Yet despite that, they are quite charming fellows. If you notice this- during the void..Henry is passive-aggressive, yeah?? But he does not become full on aggressive till he is aware that he is going to be killed. He doesn’t start insulting or anything till that moment. If he was never told he was going to be murdered, he’d probably not even have started a battle I assume. Literally everyone you battle in the flipside is just some..extremely upset soul. AND I KNOW IT SOUNDS REALLYYYY Bad to call Henry that, but I have to say! Henry’s soul IS powered by regret (and mayhaps a mix of other emotions), and because of that it makes him incredibly powerful. I know this is all about Henry, but he’s the character I know most.

Interpreting all the DSAF characters personalities and motivations because I’m bored

I will only be interpreting Flipside squad characters as well as Henry but if this gets enough attention I might come back and do the DSAF side characters.

Spoilers for everything and if you have different interpretations please do share <:

Jack

I had to of course start with my all time favourite character and the main character of the series. Jack is a character so frequently misinterpreted that I jump for joy whenever I see a fanfic who portrays him with any degree of faithfulness to his personality.

As Doggo himself has said Jack is very childish, and we see this ingame. Yes, while often Dave is far more childish and wacky Jack can be just as chaotic and manic from time to time. He’s shown to be immature but capable of realizing the consequences of his actions and growing from them.

Jack is frequently portrayed as a tsundere which is simply not the case. While Jack is as stated by Doggo himself bad at expressing his feelings leading to him bottling them up, as well as being described as a man who doesn’t take shit from anyone, Jack is at no point mean to people he loves to deny that he loves them, he just isn’t good at saying that he does. Jack doesn’t lie about his feelings, he just doesn’t express them.

He’s also not soft as he’s frequently portrayed as, and is very capable of being able to take care of himself, as immature as he is. He doesn’t take shit, he fights his own battles, and he tells people off when needed.

He rarely has his own autonomy ingame as most routes have him following other characters but we still get a feel for his motives in each one although since he varies so fucking wildly from saving all the souls and putting Freddy’s to rest, to having fun and doing drugs, to running a business to just having a thirst for blood I can’t declare definitively what motivates Jack.

Dave

After the Tangerine himself I had to of course talk about the fan favourite secondary protagonist of the third game in the main routes, Dave Miller aka William Afton.

Dave is a pretty clear cut character shockingly. It’s not difficult to understand him. Dave is a manic, chaotic neutral/evil sociopath who acts the way he does due to being raised by Henry who we know from a thing written by Doggo in which he hits a presumably adult Dave with a wrench to be abusive. The abuse, brain damage, and encouragement of negative behaviours led Dave to become what he is in the games.

Dave is highly codependent and once he forms an attachment to a person it’s unbelievably hard if not impossible to sever this attachment, which is notably true because when Jack won’t help him he always defaults to being an enemy in an attempt to maintain the relationship in a weird way. Flipside Dave is codependent as well as Davetrap, but Flipside Dave is far less so and is very capable of severing attachments to people he no longer wants to associate with. The attachments he forms can be platonic or romantic, platonic with Henry, romantic with Jack although they both fill similar roles for him.

Dave is also incredibly stupid and easily manipulated which is why he’s as redeemable as he is as we know for a fact that unlike the FNAF William Afton and even some other characters in DSAF who kill, Dave genuinely didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. He’s a character who is endlessly loyal to those he bonds with even if they treat him badly or make him do things he doesn’t want to. Flipside Dave is again not quite as bad in this regard but he still is pretty bad and maintains for a lot of the plot that Henry isn’t evil. Dave thought the kids he killed would be happier dead and never questioned it due to his endless loyalty to Henry.

He is still however responsible for what he did because it was to a degree willful blindness. Dave didn’t want Henry to be the bad guy so he ignored any indication that he was. Regardless of how much Henry is the problem Dave still actively refused to question his orders. Something we do in fact know he could have done because he did at one point blow up and question Henry after killing Dee because Henry’s reasoning wasn’t quite as on point as for the previous kills. However it still took Dave two children dying to notice killing children to make them happy and make animatronics more lifelike doesn’t really make sense when honestly killing children bad should just be a given. However Dave does redeem himself for what he did and it can be argued his willful blindness wasn’t entirely willful because Henry removed parts of his brain to make him more loyal. While I don’t think brain damage excuses serial child murder Dave’s crimes can be looked past due to his redemption, Henry’s character, and the fact he was taken in at a young age by an incredibly manipulative character.

To briefly touch upon his stalking and obsessiveness it’s a feature of his character that is very much explained. Henry frequently watched him on cameras, and used him as a tool so Dave would see stalking Jack as a normal expression of love, and would also not see the issue with letting Jack take the fall for his actions because Henry would do the same thing and that must be normal. It’s still not ok, but once again, Flipside Dave isn’t quite as bad and the relationship is clearly not one sided. In addition Flipside Dave redeems himself and if given the opportunity, likely would not continue this. He does these things because he thinks they are normal and would likely stop if given enough context to know they aren’t.

As for motivations, Dave has some pretty depressing ones actually. At his core, Dave just wants someone to care about him and is willing to do anything to make that happen. He doesn’t care if this is positive or negative attention as he’s very much willing to fill an enemy role for the same purpose. Everything he does in the story is for someone else, usually Henry. He tries to keep Henry’s dream alive without even actually knowing what it was, only knowing what Henry acted like it was. Dave spent his childhood alone and once he met Henry he was groomed to be incredibly codependent so when left isolated he struggles. The only ways he seems to manage isolation seem to be through chasing serotonin via his many crimes and vegas, acting for someone else, or telling himself that there is someone who cares about him who will come back for him, for instance Davetrap waiting 30 years for Jack to return for him.

Dee

You may or may not know this but Dee is probably my third favourite character after Dave and Jack, and the most clear cut one left so she’s next.

We objectively do not know as much about Dee as we do the other characters, most of what we know coming from other characters and her appearance in the third game unlike with Dave and Jack who are in every game prominently and the phone guys who each have their own game in which they impact every route.

From what we do know of Dee’s personality is that like her brother, she doesn’t take any shit. Dee says what’s on her mind and doesn’t care how it affects others which you have to respect. She’s shown to definitely have a degree of sass to her, but more than that it comes off more as a frustration. While her jokes and attitude are just that, jokes and attitude, they actually do tend to tell a different story when read the right way. Dee is angry about how things turned out for her, probably the second most angry of all the characters. The most angry being Blackjack.

Dee died incredibly young and then directly after her horrible death she was pushed into a position in which she was responsible for helping others who died. She was still, as I’ve said, just a child with no idea how to handle this. Dee was then forced to mature incredibly quickly, and as we know from Jack, the dead don’t mentally mature, so Dee actually does still have the mind of a child, but takes in the personality and responsibilities of an adult, which is an aspect of her character I wish was more explored but I know couldn’t have been ingame because when exactly would it have been?

Dee was also not raised by adults, she was raised by her older brothers who even if Peter was an adult at the time, he was a young one and definitely not in a place to take care of a baby. It’s likely that even before her death Dee had to mature quickly because they all did, but definitely not to the same degree before her death.

Dee and Dave have a strange dynamic, she most definitely hated him for most of the series but was open to being proven wrong about him when she found out about his past and that he was manipulated by Henry. Their relationship is more of a sibling rivalry by the end.

As for her motivations, Dee is motivated by anger and justice. She’s angry about what happened to her and the other children, fuelled by rage for her killers, she set her goals as stopping the killings and freeing the souls. Although as benevolent as this may seem, I do think there is a point to which it’s more about her own suffering and her own justice than it is about the other children’s. Still, she’s a better protector than Fredbear because she does something about the situation rather than waiting until it’s too late.

Peter

Ok I’ll come out and say it, I don’t remember the DSAF 2 Peter routes as well as I remember the rest of the game series, so this particular section may be subject to change, however I do think I have enough of a grasp on his character to write an essay.

Peter is the oldest of the three Kennedy siblings and yet another contender for “who has it the worst in the games” the answer of course being either everyone or Jack depending on how you see the third games good ending. Peter spends most of his time in his debut game brainwashed into thinking he’s Scott.

He spends that game living in a state of confusion as he’s getting dreams with his own past memories, particularly of his beloved wife Caroline. He deep down knows he is Peter but isn’t quite sure and has been told he isn’t. Depending on the ending you can either save or kill him or simply get close to saving him but not actually manage it and have him be killed by the factory.

Peter is far less of a coward than his predecessor Steven, willing to directly attempt to take down the infamous kiddie strangler and in the true ending succeeding. While he never fully recovers all his memory he recovers enough to return home to his wife. In the bad route we see even more of Peter being a fucking badass with his speech to Jack before firing him. Peter tells Jack to cut the shit, calls him out on everything he’s done, correctly guesses his lack of a soul, and goes on to talk about the true situation with the dead kids being that they are really dead kids with families mourning them. Peter is unable to help these families and it eats away at him, he has to carry the burden of the deaths while watching Dave and Jack get away Scott free. He then proceeds to break his own code for the sole purpose of telling Jack to fuck off.

As for his backstory, we don’t know quite as much about alive Peter as we do phone guy Peter. We can however infer from context that Peter was forced to take on a parental role at an age he was not fit for parenthood causing him to not mature properly, once he met Caroline he left Jack to take care of a still quite young Dee all on his own which is understandable since he was starting his own family and surely thought Jack could handle it, but he didn’t take into consideration that Jack actually couldn’t, which led to Dee’s eventual death because Jack was not an equipped caretaker and left her unattended which isn’t anyones fault truly but Henry’s because if he had left her at a place besides Fredbear’s she wouldn’t have been kidnapped and subsequently killed.

Peter’s motivating force is curiosity for who he is as well as a sense of justice like his sister. He spends most of his time trying to rediscover himself after being brainwashed into being a slave for Freddy’s, however unlike Steven he doesn’t just play by the Freddy’s code and actually makes attempts to stop the killings and refuses to send employees to the factory instead insisting on proper burials as he knows it’s not right. He has a strong sense of morality which motivates his actions to end the killings but his primary motivator is still to find out who he is.

Steven

Steven is a tragic character, in most series other than DSAF he would be one of the most tragic, however in DSAF where everyone is pretty equally fucked he’s around the same level.

Steven is a first generation phone guy, which means he has little to no recollection of who he is, all he knows being how he died and his name. Steven died standing up to Henry which is objectively one of the bravest things he’s done in the series, in fact, one of the braver things you can do in the series, however beyond that, Steven is a coward. And that’s not even against him, I love Steven, it’s simply a very central part of his character.

Steven has shown he’s willing to throw anyone and everyone under the bus for his own survival which is understandable knowing he’ll be killed if his business goes under as he has a psychotic purple himbo trying to make his business go under who he unfortunately can’t accuse of this crime because of fear so he has to settle on the new employee. That’s not to say that trying to pin everything on Jack was a moral decision, but given the corner Steven was backed into it was practically the only one he could have made. We do know he could have gotten Dave arrested because you can get him to get Dave arrested by calling in a favour, but he likely was only willing to do this because in this context if he did he has Jack as an ally and thus is less likely to get murdered by Dave.

Steven also doesn’t seem to care very much about the murders, which is a little less excusable than his throwing Jack under the bus because Steven is very willing to just let the murders go unsolved and seems to care absolutely not at all about it. Steven doesn’t care much about death in general actually unless it’s his own. He’s more than willing to kill Jack for the stupidest reasons, he was the guy who sent Peter to the factory so we know he doesn’t care what happens to people who end up there, and honestly I can’t blame him.

As I’ve said before Steven was put in an incredibly bad situation where he knows he’ll die if he steps out of line, accuses Dave, or let’s his emotions control him in any way. Thus he’s willing to kill or frame Jack as long as it keeps his business going, he’ll frame anyone for the murders as long as he doesn’t think they’re a threat to him (thus why he doesn’t accuse Matt, Matt is a threat to everyone), and he doesn’t care about the deaths because he’s caught up trying to prevent his own.

Steven in the Flipside continues this pattern of survival at all costs despite actually being dead. He has others fight for him and runs from his issues until he can’t anymore at which point he tries to fight. After joining the squad he changes his tune slightly deciding he does care about what he did and wants to be saved.

As for motivation, as said, Steven is motivated by an overwhelming urge to survive. He’s put in a position where one wrong move could have him dead and behaves as such, putting himself first and ignoring all others out of not just selfishness, but desperation. Everything Steven does is because if he didn’t he be killed and thus he’s not just a “bad boss” he’s a bad boss who wouldn’t be quite as bad if he weren’t stuck between an Aubergine and a Factory.

Blackjack

There isn’t much to be said about Blackjack, people say he’s underrated and while I agree he has his strong points, Blackjack is easily the weakest member of the main cast, and not in personality or lore as always he’s an intensely interesting character because Doggo is amazing, rather because Blackjack simply doesn’t get enough screen time to be a full character, he doesn’t get an arch because he can’t. Blackjack is introduced at the very end of the third game right before the conclusion of the final battle after which he doesn’t have a single line of dialogue, so he’s underrated yes, he’s a good character, but I think his being underrated is kind of fair. We didn’t get to know him very well. It’s incredibly hard to introduce a character so late into the story and have them be popular, because everyone is already so attached to the other characters and the new one doesn’t have time to be established.

As for his character he’s kind of full of himself which is interesting in its own way but is again a bit of a weak point because he acts like he should have an arch but he doesn’t. He treats the other characters kind of like tools going as far as to basically call them freaks and want to use their trauma and emotional turmoil as punishment for Henry. You can understand why he’s this way of course, he was murdered and is processing it. However everyone was murdered and so he comes off a little whiney given that absolutely none of them made as big of a deal of it.

His backstory is just Jack’s backstory with the addition of turning into a dog and doing more than Fredbear ever could with locking Henry in the void. However due to his rage and selfishness Blackjack decides not to kill Henry, and instead to torture him while letting him grow in power by accident. He’s eventually convinced to kill Henry but he should have done it a long time ago.

As for motives, Blackjack is motivated like Dee by anger and justice, but it’s far more clearly selfish. I wish we got a moment at the end with Blackjack apologizing for everything, particularly his behaviour towards Jack but we didn’t and that’s fine honestly. He’s a flawed character who takes out his rage on Henry believing himself to be worthy of dispensing justice to all who wrong him.

Henry

The man himself Henry, the one who caused every single bad thing to happen in the entire series, he’s actually a very interesting villain who while he isn’t physically present for most of the series his impact is very felt and from what we see of him he immediately became the most hated character.

Henry is as evil as they come, this is without question. At every opportunity in the series he does whatever hurts the most people. He’s someone you love to hate. Henry is far more than simply evil. He’s cruel, psychopathic, manipulative, abusive, delusional, and far more, and it’s goddamn interesting.

Henry is like the other characters in the sense that his backstory explains exactly why he is how he is. Henry is a man abused as a child, who grew up to become a Machiavellian member of the military, and then lost his wife and child somehow. Henry experienced nothing but death and suffering his whole life and sought to end death entirely out of his own fear and potentially to bring back his wife and child. We do know he cared about them because of how mad he was at Dave for taking his son’s name. Despite all his suffering however Henry has done so much worse than what was done to him.

In his pursuit of his goal of beating death Henry murdered countless innocents, mostly children, as well as manipulating Dave into becoming a serial killer by basically grooming him into codependency, telling him he would be doing something good, and messing with his mind as well as very likely putting Dave in a situation where he felt he couldn’t question Henry’s authority, he then springlocked Jack, Steven, and if I recall Peter, allowing them to die in agony without even putting them out of their misery, and capped it all off with showing absolutely no remorse. These actions tell ten story of a man who doesn’t care who he hurts to get what he wants. Henry sees what he’s doing as for a good cause and thus it doesn’t matter if he does something bad because more good comes out of it in the end. He has a utilitarian view of the world seeing others as a means to an end.

As for motives, Henry is motivated by fear, selfishness, and narcissism. He’s afraid to die, afraid of the unknown, and will do anything to escape fate, in a similar way to Steven he just wants to survive, but Steven only did what he had to, Henry hurt people he didn’t need to at all, and dragged on others suffering in ways he absolutely did not have to do. Henry is a horrible narcissist who sees himself as the protagonist of the story with the cards all stacked up against him, when really, he’s the one who stacked the cards in the first place, and is just suffering the consequences.

[artthemasquerade]

Even in Hell of Kanto Happiness could be born Okay, so I haven't been able to read all of Violence Jack, but I have read parts of Shin Violence Jack (took me a bit to realize it was a reboot of Violence Jack XD) but I did read most of the parts to do with Devilman and of course the ending. So some of the ideas in my Violence Jack verse for my ot3 come from both mangas, and also some theories and headcanons of mine. Sooo my theory is when Satan remade the world he reincarnated Akira and Miki, intending to give them a better life, as he had come to love both of them equally, and thus accidentally or on purpose gave them some of his divine power (maybe as a measure in case he got out of hand again and needed to be taken down.) Akira got the element of the bird as the Violence Jack trio and Miki the element of the dog and thus has command over Cerberus, again this is comes from my theory that Ryo's pets in the beginning kind of foreshadow how Akira and Miki die in Devilman, and in Violence Jack and Shin Violence Jack it also shows what elements they get when they are reborn. Also like Satan, Akira and Miki don't become their true selves until they merge with their other forms they had split into. But when Satan removed his own memories of his true identity and sealed away his powers so he could punish himself via the Slum King, Akira and Miki forgot who they were too and split off into other forms as well. But when Satan reformed himself and was getting ready to return the world to nothing, believing that he caused too much damage for it to be saved, Akira and Miki regained their memories reformed themselves to stop Satan. Now in the manga its not exactly clear if Akira kills Satan or merely stops him and helps him forgive himself, either way the world is saved. In the ot3 verse, Akira and Miki manage to stop Satan and find out that he was actually trying to get them to kill him, since he didn't think he deserved to live after everything he had done and had allowed to happen while he was punishing himself. Unsure if killing him would destroy the world they were trying to save, and even after everything they didn't hate him as much they used to and in fact still held some love for him, Akira and Miki try instead to get Satan to forgive and redeem himself by being a more present god the world needed. Eventually, Satan was able to reconnect with his new world better, seeing that despite everything, the humans he had created had endured and were willing to fight and build for a better future, he, Akira and Miki only lend aid to the humans of Kanto when very much needed or to help them better themselves but try to give them the free will to chose their own fates. And in that time, love blossomed between the three of them, and they made it a go to rekindle their relationship again (They previously had one in Devilman before everything went tits up! XD), finding that now there weren't any secrets between them and they were equally as powerful as each other their relationship was a lot better than before. Though there are some old wounds that can't easily be forgiven, you know Miki's whole family and her being killed indirectly cause of Ryo's actions, causing all of humanity to destroy themselves and no matter how hard Ryo tries to make up for them it still stings, but while Akira and Miki might not be able to forgive Ryo for everything, they do appreciate him trying to make things better for his creations now. Also on one last note, you can't see it very well since Ryo and Miki are blocking how Akira looks in this verse, but since he has spent a lot of time in his female Violence Jack form, I headcanon that Akira is now gender fluid and tends to switch between being a man or woman depending on his mood or the situation, but no matter the gender he is always tits out! XD    

[bigskydreaming]

I am looking (disrespectfully) at the trope of Bruce and other family members only seeming to respect Dick’s wishes when doing so aligns with what they already wanted to do.

Let’s go to the examples!

1) Bruce not broaching adoption with Dick because he wants to respect Dick’s first parents and feels like he would be taking their place or overstepping or putting himself in between Dick and his memories of his parents. Sometimes its cited that Dick himself expressed this wish early on after his parents died, sometimes its not and this is still just upheld as Bruce’s reasoning for not adopting Dick before he was already well into adulthood.

THE FATAL FLAW (in mine own personal opinion, natch. Personal mileage may vary, check your speedometer to be safe):

This particular plot point or tangle is in my experience ALWAYS paired with Bruce’s own insecurities about his role in Dick’s life, or not wanting to push that or receive an answer he doesn’t want to or is afraid to hear. Sometimes its about his fears of unworthiness to be Dick’s actual parent, etc, etc. But the bottom line is, there is always the presence of SOME element (and not a small one) in which Bruce’s own self-interest or feelings are protected by him NOT broaching the adoption conversation with Dick and having to confront these fears head on.

This is additionally juxtaposed with the problem that although there’s a lot of variance in regards to stories where Bruce fired Dick versus stories where Dick gave up being Robin and moved on to Nightwing voluntarily....there’s NOT a lot of stories where Dick makes Jason Robin himself or is asked by Bruce first. The part where Bruce takes this initiative on his own, without thinking through its repercussions on Dick emotionally.....this is practically always present.

Now, the problem here is that......Dick became or began becoming Robin well into his time with Bruce. Its frequently cited as the thing that began allowing them to truly connect, their time training and acting as Batman and Robin.

Meaning no matter WHAT interpretation you go with as to why specifically Dick chose the name Robin, whether it was a family nickname or an homage to Robin Hood.....the fact remains, NOTHING of Robin, THEMATICALLY, nothing that spoke to Dick in regards to what he wanted Robin to be - specifically in honor of his parents because avenging his parents and making sure what happened to them didn’t happen to others like, this was literally a key part of what bonded Dick and Bruce, the fact that Bruce was TRYING to help Dick specifically BECAUSE they shared this particular overlap of purpose - like the bottom line is, nothing about Robin CAME from Bruce. Or Dick’s feelings about Bruce. That....didn’t really even exist yet, at the time he created Robin. Everything about Robin, other than the physical costume itself, not even the design just the actual creation of it....all of that came from BEFORE he met Bruce. None of it was thoughts or feelings derived from BRUCE. Its the whole reason Dick was never Batkid or Batlad, or any derivative of Batman.

It all, ALL came from what Dick came to the manor WITH. Remnants of his life with his first family.

So the fatal flaw of Bruce’s reasoning that by not broaching the subject of adoption with Dick before well into adulthood, he was actually just respecting Dick’s relationship with his first parents and not trying to come between them and Dick’s memories and feelings about them....

All of this is inherently undermined by Bruce’s own actions.....when by repurposing Robin to ANY degree, even just to give the mantle to Jason.....this meant that he was inherently viewing Robin as being more about being Batman’s partner, HIS partner....then it was about being Dick’s heritage, his last intangible keepsake of his first family and life BEFORE Bruce.

In effect....Bruce making Jason Robin or firing Dick as Robin, either way....both betray Bruce’s OWN alleged intentions for only wanting to respect Dick’s relationship with his parents, and that being why he didn’t want to overstep by trying to impose or even ask for his own official parent/child relationship with Dick. Because that’s exactly what appropriating the Robin mantle was. It was Bruce ignoring the relationship Dick had with his parents and their memory and the fact that Robin was directly born of that....and making Robin entirely about Bruce’s OWN relationship with Dick, heedless of any other factors.

And the second Bruce did that.....his entire justification for not raising the adoption issue....disappears. It goes away. Because you can’t claim inaction being just a result of not wanting to disrespect something you’ve already voided respect for. No matter whether Bruce INTENDED it or not.....by crossing this boundary, Bruce already acted against Dick’s feelings in this regard and well, disregarded them....which makes claims of Bruce not raising the adoption issue pretty much JUST self-serving at that point. Its an alleged viewpoint of Dick’s that Bruce largely just ASSUMES....and only ultimately respects - in direct contrast to how he didn’t respect the associations Dick had with Robin - because it aligns with something Bruce ALREADY wanted to do, rather than what Dick actually wanted. It provided justification for Bruce to just....not have a conversation he was afraid to have. And that’s about Bruce at that point. Its not about Dick. Its just like...not.

2) Another example of this that is not unique to just Bruce, but recurs frequently in both canon and fanfics in Dick’s dynamics with other characters he’s close with.....is characters not apologizing for things they’ve done to Dick or raising the issue of things they did a long time ago but never apologized for....while claiming to do so because they thought DICK didn’t want to talk about it.

THE FATAL FLAW (in my own personal opinion. Nuances and variations may not be identical at all store locations, please see your local branch for details):

The particular problem I have here is that....Dick never ever ever in the history of ever and also the before ever time.....has EVER expressed a desire to avoid confrontation.

Like. That’s what he DOES. That’s his JAM. That’s literally CITED time and time again as one of the reasons he’s viewed as more of a people person and natural team leader than Bruce and other Batfam members....because he’s not afraid to cut straight (or bi) to the heart of the matter and air out a dispute.

In fact, this very character trait is one of the ones most commonly utilized AGAINST Dick in various depictions of him, as he’s often cited as TOO confrontational, TOO eager for a fight or conflict especially when his temper is engaged, such as when he’s well....personally hurt or offended.

So how does it follow, then, that avoiding tough conversations ONLY when its on the OTHER person to INITIATE, because they were the ones who DID the wrong-doing and Dick the subject of that rather than the instigator....how does it work, exactly, that these are the only times in which we DON’T tend to see a direct conversation about the harms done and the fallout that resulted? With it being claimed that this is solely for Dick’s benefit, out of a desire to avoid pulling him into an allegedly unnecessary (but really just unpleasant) confrontation?

When the concurrent reality is that whether stated or acknowledged or not.....avoiding these specific conversations and ONLY these conversations (as there never seems to be a problem finding canon or fanfic stories in which Dick apologizes for harm HE’S caused to others or is clearly expected to).....this avoidance also carries the side benefit of allowing the character who DID something wrong to Dick to....not ever have to have that super uncomfortable conversation in which they actually verbally acknowledge the thing they did to him and the effects it had on him, and apologize for that.....and then render themselves vulnerable to actually hearing whether or not he accepts their apology or is still upset with them regardless.

While - as long as they DON’T ever have this conversation, for whatever reason - they can look to the clear and consistent precedent of Dick continuing to work with people who have done things like oh, I don’t know....punched him in the face cuz they’re mad at him (and this isn’t a Bruce critical point, this is a whole damn family critical point as the only one who HASN’T actually done this is Duke. Well, Cass technically just threw him out a window, but I mean, tomato toh-mah-to). Writers and characters both can lean on the fact that actually Dick has a pretty clear track record of ultimately giving up a grudge or at least showing a willingness to look past those grudges enough that it doesn’t prevent him from still maintaining or resuming some kind of relationship with the person who hurt him.

And thus, like Example Numero Uno......this ultimately just lets other characters off the hook while claiming to do Dick a favor, but actually Dick receives no real benefit from it and instead now just has another instance of characters saying “see we respect your wishes” when ultimately their inaction is MORE in service to their own wishes and self-interests.

2b) See also the variation of this in which characters such as Bruce, Jason, Tim and assorted others like....are written specifically determining that they’re not going to apologize to Dick or beg his forgiveness because they feel they don’t DESERVE to be forgiven, and once again....its in HIS best interests that they not even give him the opportunity to say he forgives them....because they know Dick Grayson of course, and they know he’s too forgiving for his own good, so its better to like....not make it ever a possibility in this particular instance.

With the problem here being like.....Dick can’t and shouldn’t be expected to KNOW that’s their logic? So....all he’s going to actually SEE is loved ones just....not expressing remorse for hurting him or acknowledgment it even happened? Which....hurts?

So......hurting your loved one MORE after already hurting them....because you don’t feel you deserve to be forgiven for hurting them in the first place and are actually PROTECTING them from being hurt more when mistakenly forgiving you.....by.....hurting and continuing to hurt them with your silence and lack of evident remorse....

Mmmm.....

Its not the best approach, y’know?

Flaws are detected.

3) Dick’s friends and family manipulating situations in order to get the end result THEY desire, while claiming to do so for his benefit only. Dick being willing to manipulate people to achieve his own ends comes up a LOT actually....but there’s relatively little examination of how often people do this to him, claiming his best interests but really just circumventing his clearly stated desires for independence and the right to make his own choices about what HE needs....or when this is brought up, its usually limited to JUST Bruce doing it, but uh....no that ain’t it.

Specific examples of this are like when Wally joins the 1999 version of the Titans specifically to get Dick to join up, because in his estimation Dick needs more of a social life and is drowning himself with his responsibilities....and then quits not long after Dick is finally officially invested in staying with the team. Another example is when Roy gets Dick to join the Outsiders based entirely on his pitch of NOT treating the team like a family, like they did with the Titans, so that Dick could keep emotional distance and not be as worried about losing them like he suffered from losses like Donna....with his claim again being that he worried about Dick in the aftermath of that loss, etc.

And to be clear! Its not that I think Wally and Roy and others who do similar things have NEGATIVE intentions in mind for Dick. That’s the whole point of this post.....like the other examples, I fully believe THEY believe (or writers believe when writing them this way) that they have Dick’s best interests in mind and not their own. I just....disagree.

THE FATAL FLAW (at least as I see it here):

Is that I view this and Batfam members who do similar stuff as like.....falling into the trap of the savior friend complex. Its that thing when you see a friend hurting, and over time get FRUSTRATED by seeing this when a solution seems obvious to you but think they won’t take it because they’re too stubborn or don’t know what’s best for them....with this specifically recurring a LOT with Dick in particular, due to his core characterization of wanting to be the one to make his own choices. The problem here, same as the problem with the savior friend complex....is that it treats the subject of these views as like....incapable of determining what they need. Its a tacit condemnation that they actually don’t know how to cope with things and are doing it wrong - even though the ones making this assessment will never be the ones actually having to LIVE with the outcome of their meddling. Its the conviction that someone like Dick needs to be HANDLED, for his own good....because he can’t be trusted to KNOW what he needs, not as well as them at least.....and so they jump to manipulation rather than just....ASK him what he needs, or HOW they can best support him, or even just WHY he’s making the choices he is.

For instance, the problem with what Wally did was never that Dick wasn’t struggling. He was. He was drowning in his responsibilities, he had very little to no life outside of them.....Wally is not remotely in the wrong for WANTING to do something to change this situation. The problem is Wally basically defaulted to just...HANDLING his friend by restarting the Titans just to give Dick a social life again, which is pretty much a line straight out of the comics...and basically railroaded right over Dick’s initial ‘no’ when he first heard the proposal. And kept pushing things until Dick eventually joined up in order to get Wally to commit to the team too, because Wally spun it as though Dick was helping Wally by getting Wally to commit to the team for the very same reasons Wally wanted Dick to. And then....right after that, Wally quit to go back to just focusing on the Justice League, which was part of what Dick predicted would happen all along.

The thing was.....at no point along the way did Wally actually ask WHY Dick initially said no....he jumped straight to assuming his own view of the problem, that Dick just COULDN’T be made to ever see the reason to take a break occasionally and put his mental and emotional health as a priority. If he’d done this, Wally could have had dozens of other options to achieve his desired end result....he could’ve like....set up regular hangouts with Dick. 

But Wally jumped to assuming he knew the answer, he knew what was best for Dick, and that Dick’s logic was inherently self-destructive and self-flagellating.....and he felt the solution was to bring back the Titans, as he recalled their earlier times as Titans together as a time when Dick was better able to balance his social life and responsibilities.

But by not ever stopping to LISTEN to why Dick felt the way he did and was initially opposed to rejoining the Titans....Wally overlooked one crucial fact: He isn’t Dick.

And more important, his view of the past wasn’t Dick’s view of the past.

Wally was a lot more capable of viewing the Titans as not just a family, but an inherent social life, a hangout, a kind of club....because that’s what it had always been to him.

But he’d never been the leader.

Throughout all their childhoods, the whole time the Titans WERE all of the above, and relatively light-hearted in comparison to their older selves....Dick STILL had the weight of responsibilities that none of the others had by virtue of just...not being the leader. Ultimately, all of their lives were in HIS hands. He was the one calling the shots. The buck stopped with him.

And this is precisely WHY Dick had gotten to the point he had in adulthood. It wasn’t because he’d changed. It wasn’t because he’d stopped figuring out what he needed and how to take care of himself. Its because the position he’d ALWAYS been in as leader....has WEIGHT. That eventually added up more and more and weighed him down. A huge part of the reason Dick had ended up leaving the Titans in the first place, before they disbanded prior to the 1999 revival....is because of the sheer WEIGHT of all the deaths and misfortunes that had befallen the Titans....and how much he and he alone struggled with it in ways the others didn’t....because they didn’t have to. It hadn’t been their plans, their calls, their RESPONSIBILITY to find a way the others could have all made it out alive or at least less traumatized.

So.....of COURSE Dick said no when Wally first proposed restarting the Titans, before Wally defaulted to using his own membership as a lure to get Dick to agree.....because......nothing about the above paragraph had changed, via Wally’s ‘plan.’ It wasn’t because Dick just didn’t KNOW how to be a fully rounded person....it was because nobody was helping him find actual OPTIONS for doing that....that didn’t just double as MORE responsibilities! Because that’s exactly what ended up happening! Dick wound up the leader of the Titans again, just as responsible and just as invested as always.....just like he always knew he would....and also as he knew would happen...Wally ended up quitting not long into it and persuading Jessie Quick to step in as his replacement....aka just one more person for Dick to worry about when it wasn’t like he was going to be worrying any less about Wally, just now he wasn’t going to have Wally there to even POTENTIALLY be able to support him when tragedy inevitably struck because they’re freaking superheroes....and instead he’d just have another person looking to him for the answers but with no reason or chance of being the support Dick could ACTUALLY use at times like that!

Wally’s manipulations circumvented Dick’s opinion that no, actually he knew what was best for him and it wasn’t what Wally was suggesting....without actually accounting for the fact that hey, Dick might actually know that. And in the end, Wally got the result he was after, he got to feel that he’d HELPED his friend....which again, this isn’t WRONG to WANT to....but Dick didn’t...exactly....benefit from this. It wasn’t actually in his best interests ultimately.

I mean...see Donna’s death for details.

And in the aftermath of THAT....Roy essentially did exactly what Wally did....just in REVERSE! Roy got Dick to agree to lead the Outsiders, to shoulder responsibility once again....by promising that Dick WOULDN’T have to view them as family. And did Dick go too far and end up TOO uncaring about their welfare? Yup! No disagreements there! Problem is though....he only ended UP in that situation because yet again a friend thought they KNEW the solution to what Dick needed.....only for Dick to end up essentially punished and further self-blaming....just for doing exactly what Roy had told him TO do, with this particular team. Again - Roy hadn’t EXPECTED Dick to take it this far. But that’s the whole point! Roy had expectations about what Dick would ACTUALLY end up doing, that didn’t match up to the pitch Roy actually gave Dick to GET his agreement.....because Roy all along was of the assumption that by virtue of being Dick Grayson, he wouldn’t be ABLE to avoid connecting with these new teammates and viewing them as family, and thus he’d end up ‘snapping out of it’ with it being the funk he’d been in since Donna’s death.

Roy’s intentions might have been noble, once again.....but his methods stuck to the same pattern of people around Dick believing they knew what he needed or knew who he was or knew what it meant to BE Dick Grayson....better than Dick actually did...particularly when Dick said no, this isn’t what I need or this isn’t a good idea or just...I don’t want to do this.

And in the end....its Dick who ended up paying the price for it, as well as the people who got hurt because of his INTENTIONAL emotional distance.....because the ‘view all surrounding people as new surrogate family’ aspect of the Dick Grayson Experience hadn’t kicked in as Roy thought inevitably would....but the ‘view all this as directly my fault and suffer guilt for it forevermore’ aspect of the Dick Grayson Experience most certainly did! Not at all actually helped along by the fact that like....Roy also expressed frustration with Dick that like.....Dick hadn’t actually responded to Roy’s intended manipulation of his emotions the way Roy had expected him to when he EXPRESSLY TOLD DICK TO BEHAVE THE WAY THAT DICK ULTIMATELY BEHAVED. (Just, he didn’t tell Dick to dial that all the way up to Extra, but given that’s the only setting Dick does ANYTHING at, I feel its a possible outcome Roy should have at least considered. I mean, wasn’t the whole point that you know Dick Grayson better than he knows himself?)

But lo, I am salty.

LMAO, but I mean, you get it right? Obviously, I LIKE Wally and Roy. I LIKE Jason, etc. I’m not saying all of this to be like ugh how dare these characters do all this to Dick....I’m saying it because like.....they all keep falling into the same patterns of making a big fuss and acknowledgment of how much Dick prioritizes being able and free to make his own choices and decide what’s best for him and what HE wants.....

But without ever like....actively asking him AT THE RELEVANT TIME....what he thinks and feels about all this. What he thinks and feels he needs. What he ACTUALLY wants from them, or why he’s ACTUALLY saying no to something and maybe it being for reasons that aren’t just him inherently being stubborn and self-destructive.

And instead just defaulting to falling back on whatever he might have said or expressed in an entirely different context at an entirely different time.....and saying okay, by doing so, we are abiding by his wishes and thus doing what he wants and respecting his right to make his own choices.....

But ONLY when doing all of the above just so happens to align with these other characters then getting to do the thing or take the approach they’re already predisposed towards wanting to take because of their OWN self-interests at the same time.

With this never actually coming into play when respecting Dick’s wishes aligns with them taking actions they DON’T personally want to undertake, because it makes them uncomfy or they think its a bad call, even if it is something that should be his call to make.

Like....the pattern. It very much exists. And abounds. Like I could cite examples allllllllllll the way up to Ric Grayson, where Bruce respected RIC’S wishes to be left alone and not interfere in his life no matter what.....in ways Bruce almost never respects Dick’s actual expressed wish for Bruce to butt out of matters when Bruce is actually quite keen on meddling and would very much like to....

But notice how the other thing about the Ric Grayson storyline is that Ric’s expressed desire to stay the fuck out of vigilantism and superhero work, like.....just so happens to align with Bruce’s longstanding desire for Dick to like...get out of the vigilantism and superhero work? With butting out of Ric’s life and respecting his privacy in ways Dick has to FIGHT him for, like......absolutely the optimal action to take in order to allow this expressed desire of Ric’s to flourish in the ways Bruce always wished would kick in for Dick?

.....just saying. 

The pattern. It abounds.

And the key to breaking any pattern, of course, is to first recognize....and acknowledge....that it exists.

Otherwise you tend to fall into the trap of repeating and perpetuating it over and over without even realizing it, simply because its what’s familiar.

This has been A Post by Me. Thank you and have a nice day. Or don’t. Idk. I’m not the boss of you. Whatever.

[dannyphantom-rewrite]

Timekeeper's assistants AU

Alright y'all! This is gonna be my info dump post for the Timekeepers assistant Au- buckle up cause it's gonna be a long one!

Inspired by @queendibz post here

The entire purpose of the assistant squad is to keep all the time lines running smoothly- this can range from stopping a world ending event to making sure things misplaced by natural ghost portals get put back into the right time and place.

So First up on the crew list,

Dan:

-Dan definitely isn't a homicidal maniac anymore but he's not 100 percent "redeemed" either.

-I mean he's probably still a bit of sadist but he tries not to be?

-The best description I can give is that he's in recovery, basically.

-So, Clockwork knew that Dan would eventually bust out of the thermos just because it wasn't built to hold a ghost of his power level for a prolonged period of time. But beyond that?? He has no idea about anything in regards to Dan. Since Dan's creation was averted, his timeline doesn't exist anymore. He's a paradox that exists outside of time, and unfortunately, that means he's the one entity in the multiverse that exists in Clockwork's blindspot. There's no way for him to know what Dan's going to do next.

-Anyway, Dan eventually breaks out of the thermos fully intending to Fuck Shit Up, And Clockwork makes a point of informing him that if he leaves the clock tower he will cease to exist. (Like Dan, the tower exists outside of time, so he's safe there.)

-Dan is the first member of the assistant squad. Granted, it took a while for him to come around to the idea of helping Clockwork but he got there eventually.

-Dan is an entity that was born out of the rage and grief of two very broken people and he has so much shit he's working through as a result

-One of the first things he had to do was recognize and accept that he's an entity that's completely separate from Vlad and Danny. He might have all their memories and the weight of their mistakes on his shoulders, and on top of that, the atrocities he himself committed because of them. The first step is realizing that he doesn't have to be defined by the people that made him.

-It's a really fucking difficult thing to do tho and he's got a lot of weird emotions in regards to Vlad, Danny and the Fentons as a result. A near constant identity crisis, self loathing, daddy issues, something that could arguably be called an Oedipus complex, (FUCKING THANKS, VLAD)

-Cannot stand the smell of fast food, it makes him nauseous and the sight of Nasty Burger sauce alone is enough to make him vomit Ectoplasm.

-He's just a hot mess all around y'all

-He tries to keep his interactions with the Danny's as minimal as possible at first bc of this. The first time he meets them in person he shape shifts into Danny like he did in TUE and just pretends to be one of them. Some of them have had interactions with their respective Dan's already and would be super wary of him and probably pretty freaked out otherwise.

-Dan is eventually allowed to leave the clocktower for supervised "Field missions" with the aid of a time medallion to keep him from poofing out of existence, but it takes a while for clockwork to build up that level of trust.

-Dan's shapeshifting ability Actually comes into play a bit on a lot of those missions, since he can Mimic Danny it also makes sense that he'd be able to impersonate Vlad in the same way. Granted he's not incredibly comfortable taking on either of their appearances but it does help him hone his shapeshifting ability to the point where he's able to pick and choose features from both Vlad and Danny and sorta make his own human disguise.

-Most of the time he acts as the eye in the sky from the tower, monitoring for timeline anomalies and then notifying the appropriate member of the assistant squad.

-He has a room under the clock tower that he operates from. I kinda like the idea of there being like, catacombs down there? Anyway he's got all kinds of monitors and view screens and he very rarely leaves. It also doubles as his "living space." He doesn't need to sleep but he's got a big mess of a pillow fort that he crashes in regardless bc sometimes you just NEED to be unconscious for a while. The catacombs are also absolutely full of those little blob ghosts that wander around the zone bc They're attracted to the ecto energy the tower gives off. He's really annoyed by them at first but they grow on him after a while and now he just dotes on them.

-There's a specific throw pillow sized one that likes to hang out in Dan's room a lot and he ended up getting a little over attached to the stupid thing. His name is Dorian. Bc he's a gift.

-SIR THATS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT BLOB

-Dan's appearance has changed slightly. He wears his hair loose now and it's kinda just this big fiery mane when it's not contained. His cape is more of a cloak now, it has a hood and he wears it sorta pinned together at the shoulder so the DP logo is covered.

-Dan's relationship with the rest of the Danny's is kinda weird, and a little strained. He has a hard time being around them for very long because, well, he used to sort of be them? Except not really? He does care about them tho, and the last thing he'd want is for one of them to end up like him.

-His relationship with clockwork definitely starts out pretty familial, after he becomes his assistant, anyway. There's room for that to develop into meddling minutes but I'm not entirely sure if I'm gonna go that route yet.

-The Danny's only ever hear his voice for a while before he finally let's them meet him for real, so they end up calling him Charlie for a while as a joke. Cause Ya know. Charlie's angels. Even after Charlie still ends up being his designated name on missions.

Mer! Danny:

-Was recruited bc a lot of the shit that gets sucked through natural portals ends up in a body of water somewhere and when that happens he's on call to retrieve it.

-Is Actually not at all ghostly! Mer Danny's situation is basically the plot of H2O (just add water), or if you haven't seen that, Aquamarine. And by that I mean he's only a merfolk in water.

-He's an electric eel

-His Jack and Maddie are marine biologists, with a particular interest in marine cryptids

-We're taking sea monsters baby!!!

-Not entirely sure how this Danny ended up half mer yet but I'll figure it out, lmao.

-14 years old

-His nickname/ designation is "Moray"

Crown Prince! Danny:

-Nickname/designation is Prince / Princey

-16 years old

-Not allowed to go anywhere in the zone without the Fright knight bc of some ancient ghost law bullshit, so he has a constant babysitter.

-He's next in line bc he sealed away Pariah, but can't take the throne until he is both, A) at least 18 years and B) Completely deceased

-Vlad is his Regent bc he did have a part in the whole sealing the previous king thing, but he's also not completely dead so his power is super limited there.

-As Prince Danny has the crown of fire in his ghost form, although now the name is kinda ironic seeing as it's completely frozen over. It's blue now and it smokes like dry ice.

-As Regent, Vlad has the ring of rage for "safe keeping"

-Vlad and Danny are pretty much constantly at each other's throats, fright knights probably had to shut down more than a few of Vlad's attempts to usurp the crown from Danny through combat.

-Princey deals with the timeline issues that involve the ghost zones' internal / political affairs, and he's gotten very well versed with dealing with the Observants.

Winged! Danny :

-15 years old

-Mallard duck wings

-His Vlad is a swan

-Comes from a family of waterfowl, Jack is a goose, and Maddie is a white swan. Both he and jazz are ducks bc of their grandparents.

-As Fenton his wings are white, like jazz, and as phantom they turn black with a green iridescent sheen.

-He's trans

-Nickname/ designation is inviso Bill. Bc ducks have bills haha get it-

-Ghostly wail?? Nah son he's gotta killer QUACK

-Absolute besties with Mer!Danny/ Moray, sometimes they go swimming together after a mission.

Clone! Danny:

-Physically he's a 12-year-old, but he's only been alive for a few months.

-Alt universe where Vlad manages to stabilize the perfect clone with his own DNA.

-Dani still exists, and the original danny from his time line also rescued the other problematic clones.

-Doesnt like the fact that he's a clone, and very much wants them all DEAD. Bc them running around is a reminder that he's not the real danny.

-Human half looks the same aside from the widows peak and the mallen streak. His ghost half takes after plasmius. Blue skin, and the Hazmat kept it's original white colors.

-Probably has fangs and a forked tounge.

-Not so much a member of the squad as he is someone that they need to be keeping an eye on.

-Does NOT get along with them.

-Dan enjoys making him uncomfortable.

-Designation is Masters / the brat (not to his face tho)

Family Breakfast AU! Danny:

-A BABY

-The boy is a fucking overpowered todler okay. He's an 8 year old.

-The biological son of his Vlad, was born a Halfa. Jack, Vlad and Maddie got their shit together and are in a healthy poly relationship.

-Got separated from Vlad one time in the zone and inadvertently adopted by the assistant squad and clockwork.

-His Vlad is aware of the squad and just. Dad's the crap out of the Danny's as a result. It makes for some..... interesting interactions.

-I can't think of a nickname so I'm just gonna be lazy and say he gets to be the one Tru Danny bc cute little kind privileges lmao.

Full ghost! Danny:

-15 years old, will always look 14.

-Nickname/designation is Toast

-Died in the portal accident and got fucking FRIED.

-He always smells like somethings burning.

-He's really bright and sorta sparks a bit, you can see his bones glowing through the hazmat.

-He still leave the zone to protect his version of amity, but lives with clockwork full time.

Canon Danny (NOT PHANTOM PLANET COMPLIANT) :

-Basically show Danny, except phantom planet never happened fuck you

-Joined the crew after the events of de stabilized

-Also he's trans fuck butch

-Franken! Danny

-Yall remember that Headless Danny Au? This is my take.

-Is Actually 20 years old, but physically stuck at age 14. Bc he's a walking corpse :)

-Came from a timeline that was directly parallel to Full ghost! Danny. He dies in the portal accident, but jack and Maddie are in the lab when it happens and manage to sort of bring him back using a combination of science and freaky ghost junk.

-So he's basically possessing/ stuck inside of his own dead body. Which, is thankfully not rotting or going into rigor mortis bc Ectoplasm is rather similar to formaldehyde, but he's not the most durable thing and bits and pieces fall off from time to time.

-Like his head. For example.

-He's pretty desensitized to it at this point and if he loses a leg after a ghost fight he doesn't see anything wrong with sitting down on the curb of a main street to stich it back on. His being dead isn't exactly a secret.

-Don't ever ask him to "give you a hand" bc he can and will not hesitate to pop one off and Chuck it at you.

-Said hand and any other body part will continue to function just fine even if it isn't attached to anything, btw.

-Nickname/ designation is Adam. Bc. Ya know. that's the name Frankenstein's monster gave itself.

Post Phantom Planet! Danny:

-A very jaded 22 year old who is driven only by spite and enough caffeine to kill a horse

-Very, very tired of the hero thing.

-Being a global celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

-Decided to follow Vlads lead and fuck off to space for a while. Partially to get away from everyone and also partially bc he kinda feels responsible for the fact that the only other person like him and probably floating DEAD in the void somewhere? And yeah Vlad fucked up all on his own but what if he'd tried harder to get through to him things could have been different-

-Joins the crew after a natural portal opens up in space and decides to help out and use clockworks resources to try and track down his Vlad.

-Nickname/ Designation is Polaris, aka the north star.

[kindaeccentric]

When I was writing my university bachelor's degree thesis (that I'm still to defend) about Penny Dreadful as a modern adaptation of Frankenstein I noticed how the original novel's homoeroticism is realized by the series in an interesting way.

In the way he is presented, it seems to me that Victor secretly desires men, but thinks that only through creating a perfect one by himself he's allowed to touch other man's skin. His endeavour to pierce the veil between life and death is an excuse, since Victor from the series grew up lonely after the death of his mother and he searches for companionship, for someone who would love him unconditionally, like his mother used to. He believes he can find such love only in a person he creates himself, brings from the dead, and who would see him as his only friend, calm and obedient. Yet his first instinct is to make a man, not a woman, and a handsome man at that.

I can imagine both Rory Kinnear and Alex Price are not everybody's cup of tea (I do find them attractive, they are quite charismatic), but the way the original Creature and Proteus are shown makes them attractive. Proteus we see through Victor's eyes, when he is tending to his body before its even reanimated, when he sketches him (a sure sign of affection) and when he teaches him how to eat in a way that becomes seductive, because of how the camera lingers on his lips and then, in a closeup, on his fingers running down his long throat, immediately bringing to mind erotic imagery. Some may argue that Victor tries to emulate the relationship between his mother and himself taking the parental role and projecting onto Proteus the role of his childhood self, and as much as it is partially true, their relationship bears these marks of hidden desire on Victor's part from the start. The image at the end of the first episode when Proteus is born shows Victor trembling, teary-eyed, looking at the body, a torn and stitched back together, but human body, of a naked man. He's afraid, but not necessarily of the man, but of finally getting what he wanted, it's a fear resulting from excitement. Then the man is touching his face tenderly and Victor, still trembling, cannot stop himself from a little smile. Their faces are softly illuminated by the orange light of the gas lamp, creating an intimate atmosphere of a warm bedroom. Victor practically gasps hearing his own name smoken by Proteus. I doubt all of it was intentional in the way I read it, but it doesn't change the fact that the final scene can be easily interpreted this way.

Then the original Creature, with the violence surrounding his return, presents him as highly masculine, smart, powerful, a direct opposite to the delicate, clueless Proteus Victor could easily form into whatever he wanted. The Creature throughout the entire series is perceived as ugly by some and easily tolerated by others, making his ugliness purely subjective, since, despite his small deformities he remains strangely alluring with his gothic qualities (black long hair, black lips, white skin, yellow eyes, proportional features) of a dark brooding gentleman. With blood on his face he becomes vampire-like (vampires always a symbol of hidden desires and 'depraved' sexuality, the Creature and Victor becoming a mirror image of Vanessa and vampire Mina, both Creature's and Mina's monstrosity an indirect result of Victor's and Vanessa's desire towards having a same-sex companion). The Creature touches Victor's face, a callback to Proteus doing it, but the Creature is not gentle, he smears blood all over Victor's face (blood in vampire narratives was always a symbol for other bodily fluids, that's why it seems so sexy, it also gained another meaning in the 80s, due to the HIV epidemic, which no filmmaker can shake off if they tried, I could discuss it more with The Lost Boys, but no time for that right now).

The dynamic between Victor and the Creature is a reversal of Victor's budding relationship with Proteus, experience winning over innocence. Victor is under another man's rule, and it terrifies him, because it would force him into a position of having to admit his attraction, whereas as the one in control he could have still easily deny it. The Creature, with all his attributes, symbolizes carnal love, he's all 'body', where Proteus was virginal, pious love (to an extent). In one of the scenes where we see Proteus he looks up into the skylight at Victor's apartment and appears angelic, as if in a halo of white light.

It's revealed Victor never had a woman, and the series wants the viewer to believe it's because of his awkwardness and passion for science that consumed him, but his dedication to creating himself male companions instead of searching for a living female one is exactly what makes him seem more queer coded.

It's clear that the lack of paternal figure results in Victor quickly becoming close with older men he encounters (Sir Malcolm, Van Helsing), but it also puts him into a position where he's constantly surrounded by men, with whom he feels more at ease, and is intimidated by women. The rivalry between him and Ethan is that of siblings, until the moment when Ethan teaches him how to shoot a gun. It might be a stretch (it is a bit of a stretch, I admit), but a gun often, especially in horror, alongside a knife, represents manhood and masculine power. Victor allows Ethan to touch him and encourages him to show off with the gun, which is a scene all too familiar from many other movies where the role of Victor is reserved for a woman and the interaction is flirtatious (can't pull examples out of thin air, but if you saw over 1400 movies like me you know I'm not lying). All this adds to the general image of Victor.

The Creature and Victor, when they are on a walk, have a very revealing conversation in which the Creature points out how quick Victor was to grow attached to his more perfect man, and Victor doesn't deny it, he admits that he did in fact feel affection towards Proteus, although the meaning of it as the scorned past partner expressing jealousy over the love he didn't get while someone else did is largely subtext. When the Creature says that he's lonely, Victor answers 'I cannot love you' (paraphrase, because I can't find the exact quote right now) and the Creature, disillusioned, mocks him, 'I do not want what you cannot give' suggesting that Victor, by making himself a meek obedient man, is selfish, cruel, manipulating, and a coward, therefore could not have loved Proteus truly. Then again, Victor cannot bring himself to love his original Creature, because he's not the ideal man he envisioned and by then the Creature being too aware of his flaws of character. The Creature/Caliban/John Clare knows that Victor is 'monstrous', not just because he's someone who desecrates dead bodies, plays God and abandons his creation, but because of his queer desire. It's important that in the case of Penny Dreadful 'monstrosity' signifies many different things, literal (being a vampire werewolf, witch, and so on), metaphorical (bad deeds, like letting your son die a horrible death, cheating, killing etc.) and wholy subjective, merely condemned by ignorant society (Sembene's blackness, Brona's sex work, Lily's want to be equal or greater than men, Vanessa's want for sexual freedom, the Creature's ugliness, Angelique being transgender and other cases), so it's NOT that much of a stretch this time.

We also have the whole problem with Lily. Victor is so attached to Lily (who takes up both Elizabeth's and creature's bride parts in the novel) because he believes that only by possessing a good woman he'll be redeemed for his 'sinful' desires, but he's foolish to think that. This belief reduces a woman to a semi-maternal, semi-virginal angelic ideal with no sexual urges or agency, like virgin Mary. Lily is a true replacement for Victor's mother, and his imagined redemption. As long as she's similar to Proteus, in that she's not sexual, and pure like an angel. Yet Lily is not a woman in that sense. She is another of Victor's creatures, so she partially also takes over the role of the original Creature from the novel, a male. She's not an ideal of a Victorian obedient wife, she has power, or tries to have it, but power in the context of patriarchal society is masculine by nature. The moment she drops her pretenses of a weak delicate wife-like girl Victor does not want her like this. He doesn't want a woman that is sexually liberated, because he doesn't like women in this way, and yet, by being similar to the first Creature (from Victor's perspective, from hers John Clare is similar to Victor-a man, I could delve into Brona's sexuality, but later, this thing is already way longer than I intended) she's 'the man' he wanted.

There is also Henry. Henry Jekyll takes the role of his namesake in the novel, Henry Clerval, Victor's closest friend, and a character most often cited to have homoerotic tension with Victor. It's true that some of the eroticism might be accidental, stemming from the prevalence of homosocial interactions in 'Frankenstein' which in turn is a result of misogynistic nature of 19th century Genevian society and in-novel universe reflecting it, but like I mentioned before, it still feeds into the queer reading of the text and translates beautifully into Jekyll and Victor being both extremely misogynistic towards Lily and their mutual homoerotic tension. In the scenes where Henry purposes his plan to Victor he practically seductively purrs it into his ear, Lily becomes merely a female buffer that allows for that interaction, a female presence which is an excuse for male closeness (here I have a couple of examples actually: Dead Ringers, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Scream (in a roundabout way, through murder) and a couple others, but that deserves its own article). I won't even mention more references to the novel, because that's a lot already.

Penny Dreadful, although I believe largely unintentionally, expands on what is already there through the changes it introduces in relation to the novel's plot. I have nothing else smart to say, I just think it's worth considering.

*I use the word 'queer', because that's the umbrella term we use in academic writing for years now and even our lgbt+ group at university is called 'queer', so don't come at me with stupid takes

[nikadd]

show the world (the thunder)

(also on ao3)

It is going to be the day of days of jubilation. An air of celebration will rise across thousands of miles, in homes and out in the streets, in some parts quiet and barely felt, in others - emboldened to be bearing witness to the return for the ages. The entire host of angels watches as the turn of history shifts, as humanity makes the first steps towards reassessing its proximity to divinity since the wise king had ordered the building of the First Temple.

An angel they call Castiel gazes down upon a lone shepherd dozing against an olive tree. In awe of the lightness of the man’s slumber and the rise of his chest, Castiel wonders then if he should let a goat shake the man awake so he does not sleep through the culmination of the promised word.

Conflicted with the idea of involvement, Castiel searches for the rest of his garrison. Somewhere not too far away, Balthazar and Ishim speak to each other in quiet tones; not in secret, but in a comfortable kind of confidence. Benjamin is resting, his wings relaxed, his being hazy. Anna, Uriel, Hester, and Bartholomew are nowhere to be seen, as they are out on watch at their intended stations.

Figuring no one is going to miss him with a few hours left before the Sun rises, Castiel flies down and perturbs the goat. The animal jumps in the sense of angelic presence and kicks the sleeping shepherd awake. The man groans in pain, and Castiel watches as he rubs the memory of dreaming from his eyes.

Castiel has never been above looking closer into his Father’s handiwork, and this is no exception. The man’s soul is bright, his face clear and open, only barely slighted by the evidence of age. This man, Castiel allows himself to conjecture, must lead a happy and honest life. He has fifty more years to live, seven children to father, two homes to build (for one will be lost to a fire), and hundreds of Shabbats to celebrate.

There’s something else Castiel sees in this man. Something he can’t quite understand, as if it’s hidden on purpose. Whether it’s the will of his Father or someone else entirely, Castiel does not know, but his curiosity refuses to dwindle the longer he watches.

Uncertain yet unafraid, Castiel approaches the man as close as he possibly can on an earthly plane. Up close, the soul is even more brilliant, a true testament to the intersection of the holy and the mundane. Transfixed, Castiel lets out a song of gratitude towards his Father for bestowing the ability to perceive the glory of his creations.

The man looks up and straight at the angel’s center. In sweet horror, Castiel blinks and floats even closer. The man swallows.

You can see me, the angel speaks, letting his wings out of where he kept them folded unto themselves. The man, who was already sitting on the ground, rises to his knees and lowers his head in reverence, his eyes still on the angel’s form. 

(This simple gesture makes Castiel feel something unrecognizable. Much later he would learn that it is shame, and a giddy one at that, born out of a deep desire coagulating in his very being. It won’t be too long until another man kneels before him, and Castiel learns the true price for waiting for the end of the world.)

What is your name? The angel asks.

The man blinks - a moment of moments - and answers, “Yochanan.”

Castiel smiles and tries the name out in his mouth. Yochanan shakes with the sound, his entire body trembling against the ground.

I am Castiel, the angel continues. Yochanan opens his mouth, but closes before a sound could come out. Castiel frowns. You can say it. Say my name, Yochanan.

Yochanan shuts his eyes and drops lower, his nails digging into the soft soil. He lifts his head, then, and faces Castiel with a resurgence of life and energy.

“Castiel,” Yochanan speaks. Castiel. Castiel. Castiel. Castiel.

Overwhelmed, the angel inverts his form. The holy spark electrifies the ground surrounding the two of them, and a tremor runs down to the depths of the earth’s mantle. Yochanan, still shaking, covered in a layer of sweat and dirt, attempts to stand up, not looking anywhere but the divine entity before him.

A thought strikes Castiel. Here stands a son of Adam, and one with the sight of the holy at that. Such men come one in ten thousand, and Castiel feels a strange sense of pride in finding one. Under that pride, there’s something else. Something personal. Intimate, even. He knows nothing of the future that will befall either of them, and with every second passing in quiet, Castiel’s resolve to take this chance grows stronger.

Are you a devout man, Yochanan?

//

Castiel has walked among the humans before, but never as one of them. The sensations are strange. He’s still very much aware of his angelic form, but the physical dimensions of his vessel offer a new stream of sensory information. The earth under his feet is warm, the air dry, and the slight breeze blowing through Yochanan’s dark curls a welcome feeling.

The first thing he does is make sure the goats stay in place, fulfilling the one promise Yochanan asked him to make. Satisfied with that, Castiel moves towards the city.

He moves through the streets mostly unbothered by the surroundings. He remembers Anna telling the garrison about what to expect if they were to ever find themselves here: the souls, the rips in the veil between worlds, the architecture. Castiel stands upon a rock that just in under two millennia will be a location of Jerusalem's first McDonald's restaurant. He feels its power.

Castiel stops in front of the Temple. From the human perspective, it is a palace, a vision of the wealth of the Kingdom of Judea. He wonders if Father cares what stone a place of worship is made of, or how high the walls reach.

A pair of Roman soldiers with torches appear at the end of the street and start walking towards him. Castiel does not move from his spot, still gazing at the temple. When they get closer, he turns to look at them. The two move faster, for whatever reason.

Before they can reach him, Castiel is pulled by some unimaginable force into a nook just off the street. With wings flapping in the in-between space, Castiel grounds himself in the vessel before looking at the face of his unlikely companion.

“Long time no see, o brother of mine.”

“Gabriel.”

The archangel leans against the wall and fixes the sleeves of his tunic. Castiel does not recognize his vessel as exactly human, but that’s no surprise. His brother has always shared in their Father’s penchant for arts and crafts.

“Congrats on your first mortal ride. How’s it? Fitting you right?”

“His name is Yochanan. He is a devout man.”

“Aren’t all of them always? Michael knows what he’s doing, spreading the old man’s word. Now you can ride any of Yochanan’s descendants, as they will carry a part of your grace within. Nifty little trick, don’t you think?”

Castiel, being in a taller body than Gabriel’s one, stares him down.

“What are you doing here, Gabriel? We haven’t seen you since Lucifer-”

“Pshh, what? I’m not allowed to pass through? I was the one to run away. I’m the one in control of where I wanna go.”

Gabriel’s tone is light, but Castiel denotes a note of offense.

“Gabriel. Are you here to witness the resurrection in person?”

The archangel pulls out a golden comb out the folds in his tunic and runs it through his hair. “Always been a front seat kind of angel. You have an issue with that?”

He puts the comb away and starts walking down the street, away from the Temple. Castiel follows.

“No. Does anyone else know?“

“Michael might have some idea. He’s a nosy son of a bitch.”

“We don’t have a mother, Gabriel.”

“It’s the first century, Castiel. Dads can be bitches too.”

Castiel only rolls his eyes. The physical action is strangely pleasant, and so he does it again.

“If you do that too much, you’re gonna get stuck like that,” Gabriel warns with a gentle spike of mirth.

“That's not true,” Castiel says, but unsure, which makes Gabriel laugh even harder.

Castiel smiles and looks down at his feet. Yochanan’s sandals are worn but sturdy, cared for. There is a scar on his right calf, probably made by a butcher’s knife miscast against a lamb.

“What have you been doing all these years?”

“Nothing anyone would approve of, that’s for sure.”

“We’ve missed you.”

The two stop in front of a house with a low entrance, as if it’s digging itself into the earth below. Gabriel puts his hand on Castiel’s shoulder. The younger angel leans into the touch, exhales in a rush of air he never felt before.

“I know,” Gabriel smiles, a sadness clouding his features. He lets himself take pause before deciding to speak again. “Come. Let me tell you something.”

//

Castiel finds himself on a hill overlooking the city. Gabriel stands just ahead of him, grand and still.

“Spoke to Dad recently?”

“Joshua says -”

Gabriel chuckles. “Right. Joshua. Of course.”

He snaps his fingers and a roll of tobacco appears in his hand, one end already in smoke. Gabriel takes a long drag from the cigar and, after a long second, offers it to Castiel, who shakes his head.

Gabriel shrugs, “Suit yourself.”

He takes another drag and looks down.

“You’ve been here awhile?”

“A few hundred human years. Naomi put me in Anna’s garrison. They needed a tactician.”

Gabriel nods and pulls from the cigar again.

“You know what’s going to happen today?”

“Yes,” Castiel says, but then amends: “As much as they have told me.”

Gabriel blows a smoke ring. “Thought so.”

“Do you know?”

The moment strikes Castiel to think that his brother, once radiant and shimmering in all of his glory, has lived entire lifetimes away from home. No divine face to see in all the years he’d spent hiking through the universe, but still surrounded by everything the holy word had made. The burden of time lies heavy on Gabriel’s wings, but, somehow, it only makes his visage more grandiose; a testament of strength and endurance.

“There’s probably nothing else our siblings like more than fixing someone else’s messes, don’t you think?”

Castiel tips his head slightly to the side in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I’d never claimed to be a perfect angel, Castiel. Far from a perfect son or brother, too.”

Gabriel sits down on the ground and motions Castiel to follow suit. Seated, Gabriel wraps an arm around one of his knees and takes another drag.

“But I could always solve my own problems without having to get everyone else involved. It was the one thing I could still say about myself and know it to be true.”

Gabriel laughs unkindly.

“Whatever you have left, you’re always left to lose. I’ve spent a millennium with the pagans. Orgies, raids - the whole shebang. One thing about them old gods, they love the spectacle. Mind you, Castiel, I appreciate it greatly, but at some point, it can all build upon itself to a halt. At the last bacchanalia, I guess I got so fucked up that I felt homesick for the first time ever since I cut myself out. Going home was never the option, I knew that, but I knew of the place on Earth that was the closest to what I was looking for.

“So I came here and took a young Jewish man’s face to fit. Granted, I flew right out of Pan’s lodging, so I was still not in the state of mind to do anything inoffensive to Father’s name. What’s worse is that the more I sobered, the more resolute I became in my desire to do something to get his attention. It didn’t take me long. A lovely girl found me by a well near her house and offered to sneak me dinner. She was the most gracious being you could ever find. I put my plan in motion before I could stop and consider the consequences. She did nothing wrong bar trusting me.

“I revealed Father’s name unto her, and she spoke it at the edge of happiness. Between the two of us, four commandments had been broken, but neither of us was counting. On that dark Shabbat night, I felt the closest to Heaven I ever could before.

“Unfortunately, I achieved my goal. Michael came down from his post to discipline me in person, but then he saw that she was with child, and, for the lack of a better term, flipped his shit. Scared the girl. I had to put her to sleep just so she doesn’t kill both herself and the baby out of pure shock.”

“Did you kill the nephil child?”

“No,” Gabriel turns to his brother. “No, we called for Dad’s guidance instead.”

“And he gave it to you?” Castiel lets his mouth gape.

“Came down himself to see what was going on. I felt almost jealous, but that was before I remembered that the whole situation was my fault anyways. He acted like he was not surprised by my behavior whatsoever.”

Gabriel puts the cigar out against his shoe, throws it out of existence, and takes a deep breath before continuing.

“So Dad did what he does best: use the situation for his benefit. He chose to keep the child alive, and instructed me to erase the girl’s memory of the night. I was to speak to her upon her waking to tell her that she will carry God’s own child. She was to marry her betrothed and give birth to a savior. Good PR is worth a fortune in gold nowadays. I wanted to protest, of course, but we ended up cutting a deal instead.”

“You bargained with Father?”

“Neither of us have ever been above it.”

“What did you get?”

“Insurance. I do as he says this once, and he commands the angels to not bother me about the Apocalypse.”

Castiel hums his understanding.

“You think it is a fitting condition?” Gabriel asks.

“It’s… charitable.”

“Certainly one way to call it.”

A dawn-time bird lands not too far away from where the angels are sitting. It digs into the ground for a lone worm, its day turning out for the better already. Castiel smiles at the little creature. Gabriel watches his brother in fascination.

“You know what I think is so special about you, Castiel?”

“No, I do not know. Please tell me.”

“Out of all angels, you have probably the singular greatest capacity to love all of Dad’s creations. Whenever an angel gives you shit, that’s why. They can’t measure up, and they all know it.”

Castiel averts his gaze from the kindness bestowed. “You exaggerate.”

“Not at this time. I don’t know what the future holds for any of us, but I know that you are going to be a blessing upon humanity.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

The two angels smile at each other. Castiel lets his wings embrace his brother in a tight hug. He knows that once he returns to his garrison, Gabriel will be long gone, and it won’t be until much later that they will see each other again.

“There is still one thing I do not understand, but I do not think it is my place to ask it.”

“No thing like that. Ask away.”

“Alright. If Father wanted the nephil child to live, why let the humans kill him just to bring him back three days later?”

“Well,” Gabriel chuckles. “You have to remember something about Father, Castiel. He’s an old god too.”

//

Gabriel stays on the hill for a little longer after Castiel has already left. Watching the Sun rise over the horizon, he barely moves when he senses his older brother appear behind him.

“I don’t understand why you chose to tell Castiel about the child being yours.”

“Don’t blame me for being a better storyteller than you are.”

Michael, dressed in an old man’s garb, steps in front of Gabriel.

“You know how he gets. You’re only creating more work for Naomi.”

Gabriel stands up. Michael towers over every angel in the host, but now, on this Earth, his vessel is a smaller man. This makes Gabriel smile.

“Nothing she’s never done before. Castiel is strong; he can take it.”

Both archangels turn to look over the city.

“You know what your problem is, Gabriel?”

“Please, Michael. Tell me what you think it is.”

“You’ve never known what your place is.”

“You may be right on that front, except that that problem is typically never mine.”

“Right, because you’re such a bother to everyone else.”

“Sheesh. You sound just like Lucifer.”

Gabriel does not need to look to feel Michael’s glare.

“Sorry. A rough spot, huh?”

Michael looks up above, somewhere he can sense the others preparing for the great reveal.

“Both he and I agree on the plan. It is inevitable.”

“Right. The Plan. The Grand Showdown. It’s Heaven versus Hell, so get your tickets early! You guys got the date picked out already?”

“Two thousand years or so from now.”

“Oh. You actually have one. I was only joking.”

“There is still a number of uncertainties that have to be worked out, and I don’t trust Lucifer to do everything exactly as we have planned…”

“But it is written, and so it shall be. Have you ever thought that Dad might be trying to roleplay his conflict with Amara through the two of you? I’m not going to be the last person to say this, but he should deal with his trauma in a healthier way than that.”

“I think you’ve spent too much time among the humans.”

“Right, because that’s such a bad thing.”

“That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? Father never said anything about you being here for this part.”

Gabriel does not say anything to that.

“Gabriel.” Michael watches his brother with something not unlike pity, even if in angelic terms. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thought you loved all of Dad’s decisions.”

“I love Father, yes. But I love you, too.”

Michael flies away in a snap, not giving Gabriel even the slightest chance to respond, but it’s not like Gabriel does not know where his brother went. In just a few minutes, Michael will tell the people of Jerusalem that the Son of God has risen. 

The Messenger of God takes one last look at the city and flies somewhere he can mourn in peace.

//

Yehoshua stands tall, both feet on land, his face towards the heavens. Great books will speak of a Holy Spirit inhabiting his blood vessels, shimmering through his skin. It is his second first day alive, and there’s nothing quite like it.

He stands on the edge of a cliff, only mere moments ago having been inside a tomb. Beside him stands Archangel Michael, or so the man has introduced himself as.

“Is there something we are waiting for?” Yehoshua asks.

Michael looks at him, looks through him, and turns away, without saying anything.

I dare say we are, Yehoshua thinks, but is unable to voice any other questions before a bright light appears before him.

The light shifts, swirls, and dances, and Yehoshua knows he’s in the presence of God himself.

The man does not see Michael leave, but after a few moments, he is all alone with his Father.

“I love you,” Yehoshua speaks, as that is the greatest truth he’s ever known.

I know you do, the light reflects, shimmers. I need you to do something for me.

“Anything,” the man says. “Anything at all.”

God smiles on a Sunday morning.

//

Castiel brings Yochanan back to where he found him. He looks around the pasture: the hills in the far edges of what a human eye may see, the rivers, the cities that are not yet set ablaze by the merciless sunlight.

Maybe there is some truth to what Gabriel has said about him. Maybe there is a route Castiel can take to learn to love every single grain of sand and every single newborn mouse that shall ever be. There lies a certain pride in being able to do what your parents have told you to the best out of everyone else.

“Hello, Castiel.”

The angel turns and sees his Father stand next to him as a man - tall, beautiful, and incandescent.

“How are you, dear son?”

“I am… I am good.”

“That’s good. Are you happy?”

Castiel only shrugs. God nods in solemn understanding.

“You can speak to me freely, Castiel. I know you’ve talked to Gabriel.”

“Am I to be punished for it?”

“Do you think you should be?”

“I know I won’t remember my conversation with Gabriel upon my return to Heaven. And I think you’ll make me forget I’ve met you as well.”

“You are correct. You’re not afraid of me?”

“I love you. Must it come from fear?”

God looks upon his son in a recognition of spirit. “I’ve made human souls to be the beacons of my power. You know there is not a single entity in all existence that is purer. When it comes in contact with divinity, such as Gabriel allowed in his caprice, it may become unstable. I am simply containing the power within this body.”

“Would Gabriel not have been able to do so?”

God laughs. “Gabriel likes playing gods and monsters, but he won’t ever be either. This man, this child will be a symbol of my love for all humanity.”

Castiel thinks of the tallest tower, of the golden bull, and of the stone thrown at a giant. “Symbols have caused pain in the past.”

“And so they have.”

“What will be of the man after you leave him behind?”

“I shall welcome him in Heaven.”

“Will you tell him about Gabriel then?”

God shakes his head and smiles.

Castiel understands. At least he thinks he does.

//

God watches as Castiel leaves his human vessel and returns home. He knows what is to be written. He sees Castiel in the flames of hell, reaching for the Righteous Man. For whatever reason, he cannot see much further than that.

He lets Yehoshua take the wheel. Gabriel's spark is not diminished by another holy presence, and the man shines in his pleasure to see the evidence of divine love all around him. There's purity within him that God craves. He knows he will miss this, even if its creation was born out of an imperfect union.

He misses the time when his children stood together. When his sister knew what she wanted. Now, all there is left is a canvas he keeps covering in new layers of paint.

He misses Lucifer the most. The brightest star of them all, even now, even in the darkest of corners, until a sequence of events leads to his freedom. Of course, he'll blame his Father for everything, but God can live with that.

Moreso, he shall learn from this experience and give his favorite son a child, too. The world will have a new hope, Lucifer will have a reflection of his brightness, and himself - a failsafe existence for when the meek inherit the Earth.

Yochanan the shepherd stands up and faces God. What's in a name? the Holy Father thinks, and sends the man home. What a good name.

God pulls out a notepad and a pen and writes it down: Yochanan. Jonathan. Jack.

[vanillawaiver]

i tried to figure out the enneagram types of dream smp characters

have you ever wanted to know the enneagram types, and therefore motivations and fears, of your favorite dream smp characters? that’s a rhetorical question. don’t answer. this post contains a quick explanation of the enneagram and an analysis for every included character. i’m just gonna put it all under the cut.

i’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts!

ENNEAGRAM EXPLANATION

a quick low-down on the enneagram, for those who don’t know:

the enneagram actually refers to a funky circular graph, numbers 1-9 on the outside that depict 9 different personality types. each type is adjacent to two other types around the circle (see image for clarification). the two types on either side are the possible wings for that specific type, a wing being an additional set of personality traits alongside the main personality type. an enneagram type is written as [type]w[wing]. for example, my enneagram type is 4, and i have a type 5 wing, so my enneagram type is 4w5.

(the lines through the inside of the enneagram won’t be mentioned in this post, but you can find more information on them online if you’re curious. i won’t link anything because links can be sketchy)

the nine enneagram types are mostly easily explained by their basic fears and basic desires. the enneagram is intended to explain the “why” behind someone’s actions, which is why it’s so hard to type someone else. you cannot get inside their head to find out their true motivations. however, today i am working with entirely fictional characters and not the content creators themselves, so i give myself a free pass. please don’t go around psychoanalyzing your friends or people you don’t even know and jumping to conclusions without their input lol

also all of these are just what i think ! if you (respectfully) disagree, i would actually love to hear your opinions - you are probably right and i am probably wrong.i don’t watch every stream or even know of every event, and my reasoning is probably weak at best. enough rambling, here we goooo

the grouping will be by type, just because… idk how else to organize this.

again, /rp /rp /rp ! i don’t know these ccs in real life and will not pretend to. i’m talking about minecraft roleplay.

(also, i didn’t proofread this. sorry fnjakdfda)

type 1: the reformer

principled, purposeful, self-controlled, perfectionistic

desire: to be good, to have integrity

tubbo - type 1w2

tubbo is a classic example of a type 1 being put into the worst possible situation for their current mental state. tubbo was the moral and sensical anchor for tommy’s more eccentric and self-centered actions, and they functioned as this duo UNTIL tubbo was made the president of l’manberg. tubbo’s more self-critical tendencies were amplified because his actions had so much weight. tubbo is quick to turn against and polarize those he sees as “evil”, making broad generalizations like “technoblade is wrong” and “tommy is good”, regardless of all the moral gray areas, and even changes his mind drastically between them as he seeks the right answer. (ex: exiles tommy, but then decides it was the wrong idea, and now seems to agree with everything he says again.) i think part of his flip-flopping comes from a sense of people-pleasing and generosity, again amplified by his position as the (now former) president of a nation.

type 2: the helper

generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, possessive

desire: to feel loved/appreciated

quackity - type 2w3

(as far as i know) quackity’s first major action on the smp was to run for president. wilbur and tommy wanted quackity (as part of swag 2020) to share the votes of the two parties in order to ensure a victory over schlatt. however, quackity acted out against them because he felt used instead of appreciated for his ideas. schlatt promised him at least some amount of respect, so quackity switched sides regardless of what was better for the smp at large. i believe quackity kept looking for approval from others, but also some sense of accomplishment, by founding mexican l’manberg (is this even canon…idk but i liked it), starting the butcher army, and trying to bring schlatt back to life. quackity even fought technoblade despite being grossly unqualified and i believe this is due to the martyr mindset that often comes with unhealthy type 2s. 

type 3: the achiever

adaptable, excelling, driven, image-conscious

desire: to feel valuable

nihachu - type 3w2

(at the time of writing this, niki hasn’t had a ton of canon screentime, so this is mostly based off of the doomsday stream.) when in emotional distress, niki applies her type 3 ideas of being the best she can be to others, hyperfocusing on “teaching them a lesson” by destroying l’manberg. unhealthy 3s also tend to become jealous of other people’s happiness and success to the point they attempt to destroy it, perhaps explaining how niki’s character felt that no one wanted to listen to what she had to say about the political state of things. i see niki as a character that values her image in relation to others, hence the 2 wing. when fundy showed her respect, she became even more sure of herself, and this seems to be the kind of thing she is after.

schlatt - type 3w4

much like ghostbur (as mentioned later), schlatt is a very exaggerated character. it’s hard to type him, because the enneagram focuses around people who behave in the way real people do, and schlatt is a larger-than-life villain. i’ve typed schlatt as a 3 because of his narcissistic tendencies. schlatt not only wanted to be but believed he was integral to l’manberg’s continued function. unhealthy 3s tend to be devious and manipulative in order to hide their own wrongdoing, like how schlatt exiled the main opponents of his rule. schlatt doesn’t have the emotional introspection of a 4, only the temperamental self-absorption, but i think this is the best i can do lol

type 4: the individualist

expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, temperamental

desire: to be significant, to find identity

tommy - type 4w5

most of my reasoning for tommy’s typing comes from his time in exile. tommy displayed an impressive connection to his emotions, maybe just out of necessity because he was alone. his constant cry was that no one cares about him, but not in the way a 2 may fear the same thing. tommy feared he had faded from significance. when he felt this way, he was quick to make rash conclusions and decisions. he is self-centered, caring more about his discs than about anything on the server. the 5 wing is there because of tommy’s constant assertion that people pity him when they show basic human kindness. he dreads others viewing him as incapable.

type 5: the investigator

perceptive, innovative, secretive, isolated

desire: to be capable and competent

awesamdude: type 5w6

is sam incredibly important to the plot? not as i write this. but i don’t want to leave type 5 empty. sam does cool redstone and built a cool prison. he’s super swag. i’m too lazy to attempt to do an analysis. this is just what i believe to be the objective truth on his character. give sam your primes.

type 6: the loyalist

engaging, responsible, anxious, suspicious

desire: to have security and support

wilbur (alivebur) - type 6w5

(pls disagree with me on this. this was so hard and i didn’t start watching dream smp until after the original “it wasn’t meant to be” moment sjkdfadkl) it’s right in the l’manberg national anthem. a place men could go to emancipate the brutality of their rulers. wilbur created l’manberg for what i interpret as security reasons. a peaceful land without americans. as an american, i understand completely. wilbur demonstrates the tendency of 6’s to shun outsiders and to turn to hysterical violence in times of distress. wilbur’s final action before his death was to blow up his safe place, because he believed the security had been tainted. i have typed wilbur with a 5 wing almost exclusively because of the intentionally radical beliefs that unhealthy 5s exhibit, becoming obsessed with blowing up the place he once called home.

type 7: the enthusiast

spontaneous, versatile, distractible, scattered

desire: to be satisfied and content, to avoid pain

fundy - type 7w6

fundy grew up in constant distress, what with his dad kinda losing it and the constant political turmoil. fundy has acknowledged that there is nothing that comes from conflict except for personal gain. fundy is selfish (taking netherite meant for everyone, hardly taking other people’s feelings into account) by nature of the society he was born into. like most distressed 7s, he has mood swings and comes off as demanding. i gave fundy a 6 wing because of what i see as the origin of his issues: a lack of support and stability. because of this, fundy often seeks external solutions (material possessions) instead of internal ones (fucking THERAPY OH MY GOD).

badboyhalo - type 7w6

“l’manberg? pogtopia? who cares?” :D

type 8: the challenger

self-confident, decisive, willful, confrontational

desire: to protect themselves, to be in control of their own life

dream - type 8w7

(warning, a lot of this typing is based on my own theories about the smp, because dream doesn’t stream rp to give us his own perspective.) dream claims that his motivation, at least presently, is to cause as much chaos as possible, but this has to come from a more philosophical place. dream is the one who started the server, and, i believe, canonically created the world they all populate. dream’s rule was originally questioned by the creation of l’manberg, which he interpreted as a personal attack. as a type 8 would, he is attempting to destroy all that does not conform to the vision he has for a peaceful, unified server. this may make it seem like dream should have 9 wing, but i don’t believe stability factors into his reasoning. dream seeks fun, for himself and others, and also finds this by causing chaos, as mentioned before.

technoblade - type 8w7

now, just because techno and dream have the same enneagram typing here does not mean they are at all similar. techno also lashes out at things that do not conform to his vision (anarchy) but has a stronger connection to his 7 wing. he wants to protect himself because of the comfort and happiness that would provide, not exclusively to be in control. he cares more about the pain and suffering caused by the government. still, i don’t think techno’s primary motivation is to be happy, as he still causes harm and puts himself in danger in order to achieve his goals. when a type 7 would become depressed and isolated, techno decides to spawn six withers. to each their own.

type 9: the peacemaker

receptive, reassuring, agreeable, complacent

desire: to have inner stability, to avoid loss

ghostbur - type 9w1

more than anyone on the server, ghostbur is a two-dimensional character. (absolutely not meant in a negative way. i adore ghostbur as both comic relief and a consistent character. ghostbur simply doesn’t behave like a normal person, and that is the point.) this makes it difficult to type him, but i tried my best. ultimately, ghostbur cares about others, but not in the way a 2 does. blatant negativity from people he interacts with doesn’t affect him in the slightest. he hands out blue because he is good, hence the 1 wing, and not to be loved. the only time (i can remember) that ghostbur has expressed anger was when friend the sheep was killed in techno and dream’s terrorism upon l’manberg. loss is the only thing he seems to be afraid of, and he applies this to all people within the smp. 

philza - type 9w8

to put it nicely, philza is a mediator. to put it not-so nicely, he doesn’t give a fuck. philza has actually achieved much of the goals a 9 has, making him an anomaly on the smp. (most every one of these characters expresses extremely unhealthy characteristics of their type.) philza is accepting of others, and does more listening than speaking. however, philza still feels the effects of loss from murdering his own son in cold blood (just minecraft things <3) and presumably fears losing something else important to him, thus forming few attachments (ex: didn’t care his house in l’manberg got blown up, didn’t react much to tommy’s betrayal.) i typed him as a wing 8 because of his healthy self-confidence and confrontationalism.

please keep in mind that this is all referring to the dream smp characters these streamers portray. i don’t claim to know anything about their deeper philosophical reasoning for whatever they do irl. not really on that parasocial type beat, ya feel me? i would love to hear your thoughts.

 thanks for reading!

[owlf45]

For the pinned ask game:

7 & 8 for imaginary?

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

How can you live, knowing that someone who can kill you and everyone you love, is watching your every move while in your own home?

How can you sleep?

As Izuku crawls back into bed, Second running his hand in comforting circles on his back, he realizes the answer.

You don’t.

I have a bunch of prose I’m proud of, ones that are much more flowery or meaningful. Things that really pack a punch. But goddamn, these lines bounce around in my head from time to time like ping pong balls. 

It’s simple. But that’s why I like it. There’s no long flowery language. The subject matter doesn’t have to carry the weight for the lines. It doesn’t go on and on and on about his panic and dread in a rambly mess. It’s simple and concise and summarizes all the horror and emotions in a few simple lines. It’s a culmination, a realization, and a discovery and it can do it all in a way that leaves it open to reader interpretation and goddamn if I don’t wish I could replicate that. 

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This is actually a short snippet from an upcoming chapter, but anyway, it’s a portion of Fourth’s memoirs. (it might not technically be considered dialogue since its. really him writing it to himself, but IM STILL SHOWING IT ANYWAY). In one of the memoirs he talks about his feelings on his and Third’s heroics system several decades after they put it into place:

“I am now but an old man, watching as the system that was meant for few, that was meant for little, devolve into a caricature of what it was intended to be... 

For [the public] to know that this invention bloomed in the mind of the Vermillion Riot, younger brother to the now loved and revered Crimson Riot,  that it had been watered and encouraged by the wife of the Commander than the Commander himself, would crush faith. To know that the reason society is on its feet is due to the work of a man drenched in the red of the innocent would cause scandal. The government, my people, know this well. It is why he has been erased from the public, from records, publications, discussions. He is now nothing more than a few rescued pictures in yellowing newspapers and exchanged whispers in the shadows of his home city. Censorship was the only way to hide their darkest secrets. But in the process, in their affairs of expanding the heroics system far beyond its reasonable reach, in their attempt to brighten the spotlight that Vermillion cast upon our country, they have only dimmed its potential. This holy spotlight bleeds red with their failures. 

Every day it strays from its original intentions. I watch as this bare-bones system explodes into the cultural eye, and as the purposes of its creation have been dismantled and thrown away. 

It is no longer what it was intended to be: a system for the reform of the criminal and a platform for the silenced. Those ideals have become enshrouded in politics and corruption. They have been silenced. 

Every day it devolves more and more into what it really was: a system created by a serial killer seeking retribution, and a vestige of misogyny. 

Every day it becomes the system born from a coward and a fraud. 

I am criticized for being this system's greatest critic. But this is not something will stand for. 

I may only be the ghost of my wife's vast intelligence, but I am of certain will. And this is one subject I am unequivocal of. My conviction will be carried to my grave—the heroics system is a failure. And the day those failures are exposed to the world, there will be nothing left to save it from crumbling to the ground, for its foundations have been removed. 

It is a castle built on the whispers of a broken man who tried to leave society better than when he started in it. And the government, my people, stole that very dream from him before his ashes had time to settle.”

— May 15th, Collection of Unpublished Memoirs 

im telling you, man, when Fourth speaks I’m just. holy shit. he has some fucking HOT takes but when i say that his dialogue thrills me,,, he has his convictions and he’s sticking to them through and through. his voice bleeds through every inch of this dialogue especially, and god do i love it. i love building his character and shit. his ideas are so fascinating to explore. especially this specific memoir, holy fuck. i’m really proud of this specific dialogue of his just because everything about him just comes through so nicely and I am fuckin here for it. i don’t know how to explain i’m proud of it i just AM. 

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness Chapter 56

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

Peach led the way towards the bunker. It looked mostly the same as the one built near Mistral. Dented in places from the Grimm, a sign that there was nobody home. Merlot wasn't here at least at first inspection.

The front entrance was just sitting open, though. It wasn't torn into like I would have done. It seemed from an open fuse box that somebody had wired their way inside.

They had to know about electronics much more than I did to do something like that. And it wasn't likely that Merlot would have to wire his way into his own facilities. Unlikely but not impossible. Especially if he hadn't visited in a while.

A harsh wind howled around us. It was quickly whipping up into a blizzard. I pulled my pipe out and smoked it. I struggled to get my lighter to work and I sniffled against the cold.

"This is it. But it wasn't open the last time I was here," Peach said. "Well not here here but near enough to see it."

"Stay here Peach. Be on your guard," I returned. "I'm not sure what we'll find inside. Merlot is rather famous for his experiments on the Grimm."

"On the Grimm? Why?"

"Why indeed. I suspect that he likes it but I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it. Maybe that changes today."

I rather doubted it but it was always possible that he was really here. Somebody had wired that door open.

Neo took a step forward and together we walked into the laboratory. Some Grimm had made their way inside and we collapsed on them easily. I pulled my shorter longsword and Neo used her stiletto. I cut down a creeper and paced my way over a hexagonal tiled floor. The lights were on unlike the last place we'd been to so I didn't need to use my soul to cast light on the place.  

A Beowulf came upon me and I easily sliced it and it disintegrated into ash and the usual Grimm goo. My heavy boot falls rang out against the tile. Even Neo's heels disturbed the sound of the place with little clacks. It was as somber as a crypt inside.

I stomped on a Creeper. I easily crushed the small monster under my heavy boot. They'd gotten inside and had started to tear the place up a little. Some of the glass tubes were broken and frayed wires sparked.

I felt a warning in my soul. My sixth sense called out to me.

"Someone is here. Or was here very recently," I murmured to Neo. There were giant tubes and inside them were Creepers. They were frozen in a strange blue fluid. It wasn't glowing from within like the experiments in Mistral had been, however.

It was incredibly macabre, even these monsters in the tubes rather than the malformed 'human' Grimm of Mistral. The chamber we were currently in was tall and triangular. But it went on past these white and blue suspension pods and deeper inside. Large electrical lights were on above us. They must be dust run, this far from civilization.

The laboratory had to be totally independent of the rest of Atlas and Solitas.

A creeper oozed from the blue liquid from one of the recently broken pods. It was blue instead of white but only in places. The transformation was splotchy and incomplete unlike the green ones we'd run into near Mistral.

It let out a groaning noise and crawled toward me and I put my sword down through it and into the hexagonal tiles. The ground sparked beneath where I sliced it up after the Grimm dissolved into goo and died.

A voice was coming from further in. A low male voice from the baritone of it.

"Come on. Let's see who's up ahead."

As I walked I sliced apart the tubes we came across with Creepers in them. They disgusted me. Perhaps I saw a bit of the experiment that had created me in these. It made my blood boil with hatred. Not just for the Grimm and their ilk but also for Merlot. And for whoever was making noise up ahead.

It also, and I realized that it probably wasn't healthy, made me hate myself.

I didn't like me. That had been true before I learned the kind of monster I really was. I wasn't my biggest fan. I hated what I had to do to get by.

Even before I killed Ren and Nora I hadn't been fond of me. I'd gotten what I deserved more often than I had bad luck. I was disgusted with myself. At Beacon, I hated my weakness. I think that was when it really started.

When Ruby loved me I couldn't believe it. How could she? How dare she, an angel like her, love a monster like me. How could she do that to me? It was, in a self detrimental way, incredibly cruel of her to care about me so. Even before I knew what I was I had been like that. I loathed myself and it fucking showed sometimes.

But then again smoking wasn't healthy and I was doing that. I was also hell bent on this path of revenge. Had been bent on revenge for a long time now, between Cinder and Merlot. I probably just figured something else would kill me long before smoking did. My lifestyle plus the enemies I had made ensured that I was probably going to die young. Salem sort of sealed that deal for me, too, by being an immortal goddess.

My self hatred was there. It was present even in the things that I loved and in the relationships I formed with the people who loved me.

Then I started killing people. I became good at it too. I hated me for that even more than ever. I hated hiding it from Ruby when I killed Eminence and her Seifer.

Now that I knew that I had been right to hate me all along though… now that I knew I really truly was a monster… Now that I was doomed to die fighting with a goddess in my brain after she made me kill my team I just had all the more reason to hate myself.

If before I didn't like me, then of late I despised myself.

I tortured people now. I hurt them because I could and they… they couldn't stop me. I'd chosen blood and violence and when Wutai burned I'd thought about finishing the job just because I could and they couldn't stop me.

I wanted to kill Raven Branwen. She'd never done anything to me personally. Except through Vernal she'd never done me wrong but I wanted her dead all the same. Still, I wanted her dead. She'd only narrowly escaped me and I hungred for her blood as much as I did any of the others just because I could. I knew it was wrong.

I wanted to destroy Cinder Fall. I wanted to eviscerate her for all that she had done. For what she did to me personally when she took Pyrrha from me. Whatever could have been, whatever had been supposed to be, it was no more because of her. She took that from me. I was robbed.

Her minions like Emerald and Mercury would have to go too. That went without saying but they weren't at the top of my list of people to nix. If I ran across them and they got got, so be it. But I wasn't hunting them like I was the others.

Tyrian I had killed for so much as looking at Ruby wrong. The wounds he'd left on my body was meaningless beside what he had wanted to do to her. He tried to take her from me and bring her to Mother. He had to die for that. He did die for that, whether he himself knew that before the end was irrelevant.

Ren and Nora wouldn't want this for me. Pyrrha wouldn't have wanted this for me. She wouldn't have wanted me to seek my revenge against Cinder either but damn it, I wanted that too.

I'd chosen blood over friendship in my heart a long, long time ago. Especially relative to how old I was. One year old and I was committed to revenge.

Ruby's love had been too much for my Grimm blackened heart to bear. In my depths I wanted the boot and the sword. I wanted it.

Mother needed to go too. I wasn't sure how yet. I wasn't sure when but she'd suffer by my hand. As much as she was capable of suffering. However much that was she would experience it. I was going to cut her into pieces.

She had her fingers in my brain. It made me want to slam my head into the wall over and over. There was nothing I could do about it. Her claws were in me. Nothing could keep me safe from her. I was born doomed to go through this.

My cursed father Merlot who even now I hunted would also know my spirit. He would know what it meant to bring a monster into this world. He would know what he had truly wrought. How dare he? How could he?

It was all their fault and I hated them as much as I hated myself. I was a sword. I was meant for this vendetta. My power which allowed me to grow stronger with each beat of my hatred would allow me to strike them down.

We grew closer to the voice. A low aristocratic murmur. It was distant in this place and echoing beside our footfalls. We would be upon the source at any moment.

I suspected it wasn't Merlot but it could be. It could be… and then I'd give him to Neo. Or worse or something, anything worse. I'd split his limbs. I'd tear his eyes from his skull. I'd-I'd… I was working myself up into a tizzy.

I exhaled lowly and slowed my beating heart. It wouldn't do me any good to get jumpy. I breathed in and out, nice and deep as we crept up on our target.

This hall contained suspended Beowulfs now. I continued to spear them. I refused to be cornered by these monsters should the worst come to pass. Whatever purpose my father had intended the blue fluid to have on them was rendered utterly meaningless. Just as I would one day rend his heart.

I moved around a corner, and out a blast door. I came out into a huge open room sword and shield at the ready. I gazed up over a series of computers up at a man in a deep navy blue suit trimmed in yellow. He was speaking into a scroll and abruptly stopped at my presence.

He tapped a few buttons on one of the computers and a shimmering barrier appeared between us. Sealing me and Neo into the cavernous room and himself in the smaller control room.

"And who are you?" His voice boomed into speakers that surrounded me.

"Are you Merlot?" I demanded.

He laughed. "No, I'm not mad Merlot. Now what's your name?"

"I'm Jaune Arc," I announced.

"You… you're Merlot's creation. You're Salem's son!"

I glowered through the barrier at him. "I gave you my name. What's yours?"

"You have… you have the relic of knowledge! I thought your sisters would reclaim it."

"You know my sisters?" I demanded.

"My boy," he drawled. "I created your sisters. In my own laboratory. I suppose if Merlot is your 'father' then I am your 'step-father.'"

I stared at him. "Your name."

"I don't see the point in giving my name to a failure . In fact, I don't see much point in continuing this conversation. I will be taking that relic, however."

"Not from in there, you're not." I glared and turned my semblance on. "Come fight me."

"Oh," he mocked with a lazy yawn. "Shiny." He started tapping away at one of the control panels before him.

"Neo, do you think you can teleport in there and shut this barrier down."

She looked at it and shook her head.

I guess there needed to be a little bit of open space for her to move through and that shimmering barrier allowed her none. Some semblances had rules like that. Like mine had plenty of laws. Mine was even defined by its rules.

A gate began to open up in the floor in a spiraling fashion. I hadn't really taken stock of it but it was earth beneath my boots rather than the hard hexagonal tiles that made up the rest of the facility.

From the pit a giant Deathstalker emerged. It was slightly splotched blue like so many of my wretched father's other wretched specimens in this place.

It was enormous, at least as big as the one in initiation, if not a little bigger. It lowered its brightly colored stinger at me and I raised my shield and sword. It slammed it's stinger forward but I met it with the cold hard strength only my semblance could provide. I didn't budge. Back in initiation I'd been pushed back by that Deathstalker's claws but I was so much unbelievably stronger now than then.

I slashed out from behind my shield at the stinger where it met the rest of the white, blue, and black tail.

It screeched at me as I bit deep into its vulnerable flesh and it pulled back. It came at me with its claws but Neo and I vanished with our speed. She backflipped over it, picking at it's exposed eyes as I slid at it hard and sliced at its mouth.

"Neo cut the tail!" She landed next to me and I saw her nod. The tail was now hanging by a twist of flesh and little else. It was vulnerable there. I doubted we'd hammer the stinger into its own head, probably kill it some other way.

I dashed forward and I met its claws. I held it steady while Neo flipped over it and cut its tail off. It screeched again and the Deathstalker reared back.

I cut at its claws where they met dark flesh and the blueish pincers retreated from me. It then charged me and slammed my body against one of the grey walls. I pushed back against it with a heavy boot.

The tail came around and smashed me in the chest, knocking me to the ground. I picked myself back up and met the pincers again with my shield. I slashed around it, trying for the eyes and mouth but it must have seen that trick before because it held me far away with the pincers.

Like an oversized lobster. I tried again to take off one of the pincers. I bit deep into the black flesh between blue and white flesh and it flailed pressing against me.

Neo flipped into place again and stabbed it in one of its eyes. It roared with rage, the mouth parts frothed with spittle and I felt nothing but disgust for it.  

This thing was just reminding me of better times with my friends. Not that I had anything against Neo, in fact I probably had the least against Neo out of anybody alive on the planet. She just wasn't a good replacement for my teammates and friends. She just didn't do it for me like Pyrrha, Ren, or Nora could. You know? It was nothing personal. I'm sure she felt the same way about me and Roman.

I dived and brought my sword down two handed against the claw and took the tip off through the armor. The tail came whipping around and I jumped and hovered in the middle of the air and Cross-Slashed its face and tail.

It writhed to get away from my combo and it screamed in agony as I took its tail off and left deep gouges in its carapace near its face.

There wasn't that much room for it to escape me from. I was guessing things in here with it were more locked in with it and less having it locked in with them. I was turning its usual situation on its head.

I stabbed down through an eye as I fell and it writhed and tried to shake me off. I twisted Crocea Mors and shattered its shell around where Crocea Mors was buried.

It cried and began to dissolve into dust and goo.

I walked up to the barrier that guy was on the other side of and banged on it four times. Gong. Gong. Gong. Gong. I began to recharge my semblance.

"Little pit, little pig, let me in." He began to back away from his control panel. I stood and charged for a long time. I got my hands on my semblance again and swung at the barrier as hard as I could, burning my semblance with it in a wild attack.

The barrier failed for a moment and lights on his side of the barrier blared.

"I'll huff and I'll puff." I menaced from outside. "What's it going to be Mr. Man."

He ran away, the enormous coward. I couldn't believe it. He was just leaving us locked in here. I charged up my semblance and rattled the barrier until it broke. I banged at it over and over again and then I Cross-Slashed it after putting my sword together with the shield and getting the broadsword. But whoever the man with the mustache was, he escaped.

I swore and I screamed and I slashed up some of the computers in my rage before I had the sense to calm down and remember I might want to look through them.

Then I marched down the passageway after the mustached man. It eventually led out a back entrance to the laboratory. I sighed. He was stone cold gone. Along with any chance I had of learning about my sisters.

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG

[hobbitsetal]

I can’t ever be saved, and what I mean is this: I love my spouse, the kids, a show or game with them, science, experiencing new things, tasting new foods, petting every dog, having a home and other things. Clearly the Bible says if you love the world or things in the world you do not love God and He does not love you. How do I reconcile? How do I hate that which I love and have been blessed with? (I’m aware of the entertainment debate among Christians here as well, and it’s worldly)

Do you imagine your love for God is what saves you? No. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (emphasis mine.)

Let me make myself very clear: what you are saying is a form of an ancient heresy known as Gnosticism, and it was rejected categorically by the church within the first 200 years of Christianity. Indeed, one could argue the apostle John rejects Gnosticism with chapter 4 in declaring, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.“

What is Gnosticism? It’s the belief that anything flesh, anything physical, is sin, and anything spiritual is good. This ignores the theology that God created us to be bodies as well as souls and that God is concerned about our bodies. This ignores that when God created the world, He declared it “good” over and over and over. And it ignores that God doesn’t plan to do away with creation, He intends to remake creation.

I’m quoting John extensively, so let’s take a look at the passage to which you’re referring, 1 John 2:15-17: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.“

Hermeneutics! Big fancy Greek word meaning “how to study the Bible!” Who wrote it, to whom did he write it, when did he write, what was his purpose in writing it, what did he intend his audience to learn from it, and what does it mean to us today?

John (obviously) wrote 1 John, he wrote it to multiple Christian churches (probably in Asia Minor), he most likely wrote it no later than the 90s AD, he wrote to emphasize what Christ has done for us, I’d argue he wanted his audience to learn more about the love of God from it, and it means...heck, it means a lot to us today. It’s one of my favorite books.

So we know John wrote it. What else did John write? The Gospel of John, 2 and 3 John, and the book of Revelation are all historically/traditionally credited to the Apostle John. What’s a common theme for John? The world.

Here’s the thing: when John says “the world,” he refers to unregenerate mankind. He’s not referring to the created world. St. Augustine made the same divide when he referred to “the city of man vs the city of God.”

This is the only true divide in life: those who are redeemed by Christ and those are opposed to God.

Given this, I do not believe that John is condemning us for enjoying our spouses, entertainment, and children. I'd go further: we ought to praise God for these things!

James 1 says, "Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls."

I'm quoting this passage at length for several reasons: first and foremost, to remind you that your spouse and children are good gifts. Psalms and Proverbs repeatedly speak of children as a good thing! Marriage itself, and your spouse by extension, is a picture of Christ's relationship with the church. It is not wrong to take joy in what God gives to us. Indeed, we are commanded to take joy in them!

I'm quoting it also because James goes on from "God gives us good things" to say "because God loves us and redeems us and gives us good things, be like God in these ways and put away these sins."

Galatians 5 is another example of this type of passage, and also brings me to my next argument for why you can and should enjoy science, shows and games, and time with your family.

"For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

Let me highlight verse 18: "if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." Our deeds do not save us. How much love we have for God does not save us. The Spirit of the Lord and the sacrifice of Christ and the love of God the Trinity saves us. 

Does spending time with your family, exploring science, or playing a game lead you into immorality? Does it tempt you to fight or get drunk? Or does it promote love within your family, joy in God's creation, kindness toward your children, patience and self control with your family members?

God is an ever-creative God. He crafted our senses, He gave us the intellect to explore His universe, He made us in His image so that we are capable of love and relationship and joy and play and fun. Don't mistake enjoying His gifts to mean we automatically dismiss the Giver.

As a final thought, I encourage you to look up Brad Bigney's "Gospel Treason," either book or sermon series. He explores the concept of idolatry and right worship clearly and well, and I think that would be helpful to you in considering this.

I have strong opinions on the entertainment debate, too, if you're ever interested in hearing those.

[brokenxfragments]

Thornara, the Beast

Icon Use: FFXIV model

Theme Song(s)

Animal in Me - Solence

Devil Trigger - Devil May Cry 5

Basic Information

Age: N/A (ageless;god)

Gender: Female

Height: 5′9

Weight: 210 Ibs

Species: Deity(?)

Orientation/Sexuality: Biromantic/Bisexual

Relationship: Single (ship verse dependent; prefers being alone)

Occupation: Fighter

Brief Personality: Aggressive — Blunt — Observant

Brief Bio: An excessively brash woman who rarely shows any other emotion except for irritation or intense focus, Thornara is a born hunter & fighter. While she shares a heavy resemblance with that of Rosalia & may call her as her ‘twin’, it’s clear that she & the other are nothing alike, as Thorn is not afraid to get her hands bloodied & often allows her hot-headedness get the better of her. Yet despite that, she’s quite protective of her pacifistic “sister” due to a long work-out relationship that came from when the two were forced to co-exist in one body for countless centuries. At current, her favorite past-time is to find the biggest game or predators that the new world has to offer & bring them down with her own hands. One would rarely ever find her in civilization - not only does she not enjoy the large gatherings of people & finds them too boring or loud to deal with, she doesn’t wish to push her luck with her more bestial side taking over to slaughter everyone & everything.

Full Biography

     Beast. Creature. This one’s beginning was not made to be joyous, nor were there any true purpose to her existence except for one thing - pettiness. The creator of the Beast, for no name was given by the one, was the twin of Lady Salri, Balri - while her sister ruled the realm of Seraphine, she soverigned the realm was called Infernam, a hellish landscape partially of her own design. And there was where one of Salri’s creations had foolishly dared to enter despite the warnings gave to her on the attempt to meet the sister of her creator. Rosalia.

     A forced co-existence of two separate entities within one was Balri’s attempt to send a message to her sister that her creations weren’t safe with her. Regardless that Rosalia’s want to connect was innocent enough, it would make her much more cautious about her decisions from then on & to not take things for granted. And thus, the creature of no name was ‘born’, who’d force a change over the body to grant herself an obvious appearance whenever she were freed. A monster trapped inside a pacifist.

     For a long time, there were no sentient thought that passed her mind - all she knew to do was kill, kill & eat, for the eternal hunger was of design to make her ravenous & angry. She & Rosalia often fought for control over the body when the screaming need to feast occurred, yet while she had stained their hands with blood of whatever living creatures she could find... she was learning. Becoming aware of something beyond instincts - a sense of self. One of the days that the two entities battled for control & Rosalia had remained strong that time, her comment brought an inquiry that surprised the pacifist goddess.

“You are such a thorn in my side...”

     <’....Thorn?’>

“I... yes. That is what you are to me.”

     <’Thorn... I am your Thorn.’>

     With time, she would name herself Thornara as she mentally grew & learned, observing from an rather outside perspective of the happenings around her whenever she didn’t fight for control. Her emotions are limitedly understood - she knew anger & she knew sadistic enjoyment. Sadness was one that she’d struggle to comprehend the use of, as would many other things when she never felt these things. Perhaps that too was an attempt on Balri’s part to make her a creature rather than a person. Yet... Thornara wished to understand better. But more than anything, she wanted to meet her own creator, having seen the kind of relationship her host had with Salri.

     A day would come that she would finally meet her own creator after a unusual occurrence. She asked permission, albeit grudgingly as she never asked for anything before. Yet despite being told that Balri was likely to turn her away, she did so anyway. To her disappointment & perhaps bitterness, Balri met her with a cold shoulder. She never intended for this creature to gain a sense of self-awareness, & even if not she were nothing more than a tool that needed no name. She didn’t want her own creation. This left Thornara bitter... & confused. Perhaps because of this, however, there was something that was felt for the first time by the host towards the other entity that was sympathy. And with sympathy, an uneasy truce would soon follow. As much as Thorn longed to be truly free to be herself, at least she had finally understood something that she might have been craving for so long - she was accepted & considered something of a sister (a very angry sister, perhaps).

     While Thornara herself was becoming more aware & willing to learn, it never quieted the instincts deeply instilled in her, the need to hunt & rip everything apart. Yet she no longer wanted to just fall into them as she had done all this time - with being rejected, she wanted to do everything in her power to be something else instead, not just a beast that her creator didn’t even care for. It no longer was a battle of control between two people - it was more of a battle between them & the instincts. And sometimes, those instincts were too powerful even for the combined effort of their wills. 

     After a very long time, a relief would come for them both in the form of Salri convincing her sister to separate the two entities - a feat that could have been done much sooner if Balri had felt any inclination to help one of her own creations, though that was irrelevant at that point when she made it clear that she cared nothing for what she brought to life & took her sister’s insistence. But Thornara could truly be free with a body of her own, similarly created as Rosalia & the other “fragment” gods had been but with the consciousness that made her the way she was mentally. She still suffered from the hunger, though perhaps with Salri’s help it was lessened. This would grant her at least a bit of loyalty from the baleful woman, thus why she would fight for Salri when Aridem & his Harbingers brought the war to full force.

     Thornara had proved a very capable warrior, more than willing to throw herself into situations that were considered hopeless, but she reveled in these situations. Instead of the hunt for the next meal, she were hunting for her opponents. And just because she hard little love for anything doesn’t mean that she hated the realm that was Eldria - it, too, was her home. She fought tooth & claw to protect it when given the chance. Even when the end had come & she found herself along with Rosalia flung out of the universe at the last minute because of Salri’s final act, she felt... proud. Proud that she fought for something worthwhile, even when it was useless at the end. But now the next challenge was before her, & she wasn’t sure where she was going with it - though she was facing it with her own will.

[traincat]

What’s Peter’s natal chart look like?

An astrology ask! Fun! So the problem with doing a full natal chart for any long running comics character is, as with so many things, the sliding timescale. Even if we had a concrete everyone-agrees-upon canon birthday for Peter (which I don’t believe we do) his birth year would still slide as time went by and that would affect his chart. For Peter to have been a teenager in the early ‘60s like he was during his inception, he would’ve been born in the late ‘40s. However, we know Peter isn’t currently a 70-year-old man; he’s ~30. That would currently put his birth year in the late ‘80s, but it’ll move before long and soon Peter will be a ‘90s baby instead of a baby boomer. The outer planets are slow movers -- some of them can stay in the same sign for entire generations. One thing I think would be interesting to do, although it’s not what I’m gonna do today, would be to run a natal chart for the same comic book character through every decade of their publication history and to look at how the placement of the stars at the beginning of that decade corresponds to the shifts in their characterization or the events of their lives during that decade’s publication. So for example, to contrast the decade of Peter’s inception, the ‘60s, against his most commonly thought of “strongest decade”, the ‘80s, with what I believe is currently his weakest period of characterization to date, right now. 

There’s obviously then multiple ways to do a full natal chart for a character with this situation -- you can pick the birth year that suits your purposes best, whether it’s the year that character would have been born at their inception or the birth year that lines up with what their current age would be. I’m doing neither of those things -- my personal preferred way to do a full natal chart for a comic book character is to treat the date of their first published appearance as their birthday. This is, after all, the day they came out into the world, the first day anyone but their creator could meet them. That’s a birth, baby. So that makes Peter Parker’s “birthday” July 31, 1962. The cover date of Amazing Fantasy #15 is August, so I guess we could also go with August 1st, 1962, or August 10th, which I’ve also seen as the release date for Amazing Fantasy #15. I’m not gonna go down a google well trying to find the exact date and I think Peter feels like a July baby, so that’s what I’m doing. If someone knows better they can run their own. Now unfortunately for a completely accurate natal chart, we also need a birth time and a birth place as well as a birth date. You’re basically never going to get a birth time for a comic book character unless you find some canon detail where they go “and then I was born at exactly 7:37 PM” in some comic, but that’s okay -- a lot of people don’t know their exact time of birth either. We can still run charts for them. The formula I’ve been taught is to use 12 PM if the time is unknown, but the closer you can get for a real person, the better. You want the time of day, if not the hour, and if you can get the minute that’s the best. We’re gonna use 12 PM for Peter because he’s fictional, though. As for birth place, Peter’s lucky -- we’re going to use New York, New York both as the place of his creation, where Stan Lee and Steve Ditko came up with him, and as his most likely in-universe place of birth. So that gives us Peter appearing in the world at 12 PM on July 31st, 1962, in New York, New York. I usually use ASTROLABE to run full charts because they’re free and I like their formatting. Let’s go.

Here’s the breakdown we get from running that information: Peter would be Leo -- that’s his sun sign, which is what people mean when they refer to “their” sign -- with Libra rising and his moon also in Leo. This works for me -- I think Peter is without one single doubt a fire sign, and Leos are big flashy showoffs, which, look at that red and blue costume. Look at how he initially wanted to go into show biz. Look at how he’s remained in the spotlight of pop culture for decades. He’s a scene stealer, an attention grabber, the big ol’ MGM lion. A Libra rising would also make sense -- Peter’s got real charm and charisma, and Libras are famously charming. (And also good looking.) Your rising sign is how you’re perceived by others -- what they think when they look at you. Astrolabe describes this placement as “very attractive and popular, your charm helps you to get your own way and prevents others from getting angry with you” which like, does explain how the fuck Peter has friends. But with both moon and sun in Leo, that’s a very strong influence on him. (I’m a triple Scorpio, sun, moon, and rising, for example, which means when you look at me you think Scorpio and when I look inside myself I feel Scorpio and what am I actually? A fucking Scorpio.) Leo is a fixed sign -- there are three sign categories, and they are fixed, mutable, and cardinal. Fixed signs have a tendency to be stubborn and set in their ways, literally fixed, which -- everything about Peter.

Moving past the Big Three into the other planets, this lands us with a Peter with Mercury in Leo, Venus in Virgo, Mars in Gemini. These are all interesting; to simplify it, Mercury is how you think, Venus is how you love, and Mars is how you fight. So he’s also thinking like a Leo -- he’s got a big ego. He’s very “me me me” in his thought processes. Which, we know this is true for the character. He’s convinced he’s right and that his way is the best way. He’s stubborn and proud, and he doesn’t like being personally challenged on an intellectual level -- look at his interactions with Paul Stacy when he was in grad school. Astrolabe says Mercury in Leo “delights in being asked for your advice and counsel.” Peter is very much the person in his friend group that others go to for help and advice, so I would say this is true. I wouldn’t have necessarily put his Venus in Virgo myself -- Virgo is a hyper-critical sign, good at finding flaws, and Venus is how you love. However, the first line of Astrolabe’s description is I think an extremely good fit for how Peter loves: “You express your love and affection through selfless service to people or causes.” That’s love as devotion, and if you view Spider-Man as a love story not just between Peter and his romances but Peter and his city, that’s what he does. It’s selfless love and that’s what Spider-Man represents at his best. He’s always trying to fix, and he has a sense of service. Mars in Gemini is perfect. Gemini TALKS. It’s a sign commonly characterized by being hyper verbal, and Spider-Man is perhaps best known for his quips during fights. He’s got one vicious tongue. I’m personally very attached to the idea that Peter’s Mars is in Gemini, and it’s where I always tend to place it in my own estimations, even if I run a chart with a different date that places it elsewhere. My Mars is in Gemini and I know my own asshole argumentative tendencies when I see them in the wild. Astrolabe goes on to say, “You love to debate and argue, usually in a spirit of friendly disagreement. But watch out that you do not get too overly aggressive or antagonistic or others will be quick to take offense where none may have really been intended. You need to be in constant physical motion -- sports or daily exercise is a must for you if you are to feel fit and healthy.” I think this is all pretty spot on; we know that for Peter being Spider-Man isn’t only about the crimefighting -- he loves the physicality of it, which is a pretty good reflection of this sentiment.

Jupiter in Pisces: “You are at your best when you give of yourself and what you have -- try to avoid being a martyr about it, though. You're a true idealist, but you must learn not to be upset when life does not cooperate with the way you think things should be.” Again, that’s pretty accurate. Now though as we move through the outer planets we’re going to hit things that are generational instead of strictly personal. I think they still make for interesting character dissection, but everyone who was born around this time is going to have these things in their chart because the outer planets have much slower rotations. Saturn in Aquarius, Uranus in Leo, Neptune in Scorpio, Pluto in Virgo. One thing that’s interesting here is he’s pretty balanced in terms of the elements -- lot of fire, but also some earth, water, and air. The air influence is BIG, too, with his Rising, Mars, and Saturn, which makes sense -- Peter’s a literal aerialist.

Now if we wanted to go really in depth -- and I’m not going to because this is already long -- we would look at his chart on the whole, the placements of the planets within houses, conjunctions within planets, whether anything was retrograde, and then factor that into how we view his chart as a whole. But even just looking over the basics, I think this is a pretty good reflection and summation of who Peter Parker is as a person in his own universe and as a popular figure in the pop culture landscape.