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definitely-mothman · 1 year ago

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The Reflection of a Prince Ch 3

I’m really bad at making summaries, but in a nutshell, this is an Overblot! Jade Leech fic, with the Original Characters belonging to Royal Sword Academy, specifically for a fandom based on the Little Mermaid. • A gala approaches, on not one land, but two, and split in half, what other choice does a Prince have to do? But beware in the past, there is an eye that still watches. Who remembers, who plots and hides teeth in the darkness.

AO3 Link

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Ch 3 in Read More

Azul was flipping through finance files, about 7 in the morning according to his watch. It was the best time in the week to put together the documents for each days’ sales and costs, along with calculating the salary for employees for the biweekly basis. It was unusually quiet, although it didn’t bother him at the moment. It was still somewhat early, and the silence made it easier to focus.

It was only logical such silence should be rudely interrupted by annoying text vibrations on the wood desk.

“Hey do you like. Have the attendance sheets for the Board Game Club on hand rn.”

Right side top drawer, folder at the very front. Divider is by year…there it was.

“Yes I have them in the Lounge. Is Crowley asking for them already?”

“Kinda I mean. Yeah. He didn’t do this shit last year, says it’s bc of the festival thingy. BS tbh.”

“Do you want me to run them over in the next few minutes?”

“It doesn’t have to be like right now now, but around 7:30-7:45ish would be coolio, plus I’ll be actually awake at that point lol.”

Set the papers aside, set phone timer for 7:30. He’d likely just ask Jade or one of the third years to carry those over. The logistics of having the main keys for the lounge and having to cross campus not long before opening the back entryways for early shifts just seemed too annoying.

“Ok, someone will come by 7:40 at the latest.”

“Man I thought you’d do it ;-; you always send your Vice to do it and ngl he scares the shit outta me dude”

“That doesn’t sound like my issue, Idia.”

“I mean I’ll gladly accept paperwork from anyone in your dorm who isn’t in the top 3 tiers of the ‘Would Murder Me’ list. Like seriously there’s gotta be someone dude.”

“Any of them would likely lose the papers or be late. It’s not my issue he has an intimidating air carrying out benign errands.”

It was about 7:15.

“Bro tf you mean ‘intimidating air’ that implies it’s like. Accidental, and not him creating the comforting aura of a slasher villain. Idk how you survive interacting with him for most of the day. If I got locked in a room with either Leech for like 30 minutes I’d probably kms to get out faster.”

“I’m sure he’d find that quite humorous to hear. Anyways, it's not my problem, and I have things to do so I’m going to go silent for a while.”

“Alr whatever you’re like 100% serial killer victim number one tho.”

He put down the phone on the desk, mentally rolling his eyes.

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard a qualm like this about Jade, especially not from Idia. It was strange to keep hearing, probably because he just couldn’t see what it was everyone was so…afraid of. In a competitive setting, it was logical for even him to be wary of Jade as a long-game player and as someone very good at concealing his hand. But in terms of just normal school life, it just didn’t make sense. At the worst, Jade liked to poke psychologically in the same way Floyd did physically. Instead of chasing and manhandling, it was done with subtle body language and straight faced teasing. Once you wrapped your mind around how the game worked, it was actually quite fun to play in return, although for a completely anti-social loner like Idia, it didn’t seem like much fun.

He may have come across as strange or snakelike, but Azul had a level of trust in him that provided a sense of ease. At the very least, if Jade had wanted him dead, it would have happened already. He made him tea or coffee every morning, and Azul couldn’t think of the last time he’d even had a second thought at drinking what was placed on his desk.

Speaking of which. He hadn’t drank anything all morning, and the lack of hydration was beginning to make his early morning energy wear off. Usually they were both up around the same time.

He left the VIP lounge, heading back towards the shared communal space, including the small kitchen the dormitory shared. The tea bags he used were typically in one of the top shelves of the cabinet farthest from the shared fridge. He put some water in a pan and turned on the stove, sitting the bag’s string over the side. There was a kettle in the shared area, but it was nowhere to be seen, so he’d have to make do.

The tea that he had made wasn’t perfect, but it was fine enough. Octanivelle students set for the early shifts had started to trickle in, and Floyd stumbled in behind them. A bit earlier than he normally woke up, but well within his range.

“Hey Floyd. It’s odd having you be the first one up.”

Floyd slid over, propping against the island. He still looked a bit tired.

“Huh? Jade left our room like. A few hours ago. At least, I think so. Idk, I was half-asleep.”

“A few hours ago? I haven’t run into him all morning. I was going to ask him to run some papers over to Ignihyde.”

“I could run them over lol-“

“It’s fine, you can handle opening, I’ll just run them myself. Was he running off to do the headcounts he mentioned yesterday?”

“Idk, probably? He sometimes dips out in the middle of the night to do something-or-another, I figure it’s just that.”

“…I wasn’t aware he did that. I doubt anyone at RSA is awake enough for him to get any reasonable survey numbers at this hour.”

“Eh, who knows. I’m not worrying about it personally. Probably went off early to maybe hike over there instead of taking the bus. I could see him doing something like that.”

“Oh, ok. If you're not worried-“

“By the way, when are you supposed to be taking the papers over?”

“Um,” Azul checked his watch again. It was 7:39 already, and the walk across campus would probably take some 7 minutes. Shit.

“I should probably go now; I’m already behind schedule.”

“Alrighty then, have fun. I need the key ring though to open.”

“Right, right.” He took the Lounge key ring off of his belt loop, and took the trenchcoat off his shoulders and dug through the pockets for the VIP lounge key. There. When he took his hand out though, he had two keys.

He couldn’t remember which key this was, and with how often he absentmindedly put them in various pockets, it was any guess when he’d put it there. He handed off the known key to Floyd, and put the second one back.

With that, he returned to the office space, collecting the papers, and then headed towards the mirror for the main campus.

For Azul’s taste, it was an eerily lonely morning.

• • •

“I’m good to meet up whenever you are.”

It was almost 5 in the afternoon, and students were flowing to and from Coralliadom, mostly to leave campus to get dinner or head towards the cafeteria. Rielle hovered over the message, and panned his gaze over to his Housewardens’ staff. He went over and took it up, gripping 3 fingers around the magestone and prying it out. He put the stone in his right interior pocket.

“Aight. I’ll head out that way. Should I turn my GPS on to make it easier or smthn?”

“Sure.”

He flicked it on, and began to make his way out of the dormitory. He left the staff in his room to not raise any sort of suspicion, but held onto his pen. He managed to slip Claude’s visage in this escape attempt, sliding through the mirror and booking it across campus towards the gate. It was actually quite invigorating, sneaking off like this. See, I told you I could take care of myself! The gate was open, and Rielle slipped in with the crowd of leaving students, removing the outer RSA jacket and bundling it under his arm. Just before the bus stop, he broke off, awkwardly trotting down the incline and breaking off into the tree cover surrounding the campus.

He had to walk for a while before eventually running into the Octanivelle kid, about 3 minutes. Curly brunette hair almost covered their eyes completely, and their poise seemed too calm for how they talked over text.

Whatever, people were usually more casual over text anyways, right? Not like he had another option at this point anyways.

“Heyo-! I made it, sorry if I was a bit late.”

“It’s fine, I made sure to set time aside so I’d be good if you were. Do you have the stuff I asked for?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it right here.”

Rielle took a small jewelry box out of his pocket, one that you’d normally keep earrings in. He handed it over to the student, who opened it, eyes glazing over the inside.

“Spit vial thing, hair is in a vial, the clippings are just in the box bc I figured that was fine, and the empty vial is the…song? Idk if you just wanted me to sing into a vial, so that’s what I did, sorry if that wasn’t what you wanted.”

“Oh that’s fine.” He closed the box lid, and put it in the pocket of his dorm uniform, which went almost below his knees.

“Are you guys’ uniforms that long? Based on the photos, I always thought they hit like, mid-thigh at the longest.”

“Oh, this isn’t my uniform.” The kid took out a small glass dish, and sat it over a bundle of tinder he’d piled on the ground. “I spilled some shit on mine earlier this week, so I had to borrow my roommates. He’s like, a good foot taller than me, haha.”

His voice seemed a little…stiff, despite how casual his words were. The student looked up towards Rielle, expression a bit nervous.

“Uh, did you bring a water bottle or something by chance? I would’ve brought one myself for the potion but I didn’t think about it. I mean, I can just use a water spell I guess, but I haven’t eaten a lot today and my magic’s probably a little shaky because of it.”

“Oh, no worries, I’ll do it. Did you skip lunch or something?” Rielle clicked his magestone into his pen, and with a small flick formed about two cups’ worth of water inside the dish.

“Thanks, and no, I didn’t bring much money when I made my way over here so I couldn’t grab anything substantial in Craneport.”

“Oh. Well, you’ll need my ID to get into the dorm anyways, so don’t worry about using it to get meal swipes. Claude will hound you-me if he sees you being the slightest bit winded. Wait-“

Rielle took out his phone, and began texting rapidly. The students’ phone pinged several times back to back.

“Ok I sent you the itinerary for the day of, so that you’ll be ready for that, and also the sheet music for the musical performance on Friday.”

“Musical…performance?”

“Yeah, I am/was doing a pretty singing number for the gala thingy- but you’re taking on my singing voice anyways so you’ll be good. There’s 5 days anyway to get the hang of it, and you won’t be on stage alone!”

“O-oh. Ok.”

The student began to dump the contents into the water, and lit a small fire on the tinder beneath the dish with his pen.

“I could’ve done that, yknow.”

“Oh, sorry. Just didn’t think about it.”

“Lol, you don’t have to say sorry. Just don’t want you to overexert yourself.”

The kid took a small twig nearby to stir the mixture, using his other hand to control the flame, it spinning to a light blue color. He was murmuring something under his breath, but Rielle couldn’t make out whatever incantation he was saying. Maybe saying it really quietly was a part of it?

In a moment, the small whirlpool in the mixture tinted to a bright red, and spread out within the dish. A small smile briefly appeared on the kid’s face, and he put the twig to the side, taking a small necklace out of his pocket.

“Oh, that’s the jewelry item?”

“Yeah. I’m using this one specifically because I’ve been able to get it to work with other magic properties like this already. No worries for me about it not working.”

“It’s so…cute. Is it an actual nautilus shell? It looks a bit more worn and dirty than the ones you see in shops. And it’s so tiny!”

“Yeah, it’s an actual shell, a friend of mine picked it out for me, we were pretty little at the time. So that’s why it’s kinda small.”

“So I’m guessing the string on it is more recent so it fits your neck? Lol.”

“Yeah, I’ve changed the string a million times at this point, hah.”

Again. That slightly strained voice, enough to notice but not noticeable enough for Rielle to want to bring attention to it.

The Octanivelle student took the twig he’d sat down, and stuck it firmly in the ground. Taking the necklace’s string and catching it on the twig, he dipped the shell down into the potion, where it began to glow a pale white within the liquid.

“Ah, yeah. The contract scroll. I almost forgot about it.”

He took a golden paper out of his pocket, along with a slightly decorative pen. It was folded several times into a little square, and once unfolded the top portion was too crinkled to properly read. But most of it was legible, and listed everything they’d spoken about over text, word for word. Rielle panned over the language, checking for any small print. He may have had no other choice, but he’d barter if he needed to.

“The only small text on there is about you being liable if the Unique Magic offered in the contract expires before you return to trade places with me again.”

“And that time would be…”

“Friday, about 11pm. An hour and a half after the gala hosted in your dorm will have ended. I just don’t want to be stuck up there. Do you want the pen? I thought you’d take it already-“

“How did you do this? This is a Unique Magic in and of itself, dude! Did you actually get your Housewarden to write one up for you? Like an IOU or something?”

“…can’t say. Secrets of the trade, lol. I don’t wanna lose my chances of getting deals like this in the future, you know?”

The student smiled, but the emotion didn’t quite reach the shine in his eyes. As if they carried two different people. I suppose that was Octanivelle for you. Rielle took up the pen, and carefully signed his name, drawing a smile heart above the i.

He absentmindedly handed the paper and pen back over, and dropped his RSA jacket onto the ground. The guy would probably need it if he wanted to slip back onto campus.

“There you go. I should probably text my parents about now and head off towards the hall of mirrors. Pretty much no one’s walking around campus right now, although you might wanna wait a few minutes before going into campus.”

“Alright, I have to wait for this to finish up anyways. Hope you have fun at the family gathering.”

“Yeah, I will! Thanks for doing me a solid, man.”

“Don’t even worry about it.”

Rielle finally got up from a squat on the ground, turning and heading back towards the campus.

He couldn’t have left soon enough. The illusory potion put together that morning was only meant to last about an hour. Even now, teal was beginning to push through the brunette hair, which was now falling to the ground at an alarming rate. He hadn’t even bothered to notice the contacts that already matched his eye color, or how squatting down disguised his clothing slowly fitting more snugly. The potion let off a sweet-smelling steam. It was done.

Taking the string off from around the twig, the necklace was pulled from the solution, and now it had a beautiful yellow gleam. He took off the Mostro Lounge jacket, covering a simple white dress shirt like those worn in RSA. The jacket and hat was placed into a pile along with the glass dish, and with a gentle wave of his pen, the pile burst into a large flame.

The necklace’s string fit perfectly to his head, and the nautilus shell was tucked beneath the shirt collar. He imagined how it looked outside of himself. Thin, siren eyes becoming like that of a doe, merging in and out as if both were mirages. A pale glow flowing down the edge of his hair, it growing vibrant red, and growing longer as the glow went down, beyond his hair’s end. The shell felt as though it could replace his own heart with how warm it felt against his chest.

Finally, he opened his mouth, feeling up and down the foreign vocal chords. The sweet, silky sound that left his mouth. That voice which was far too beautiful to belong to him. He stood and straightened his back, and lightly lifted his eyebrows along with the corners of his mouth, trying to make it look natural. Speak with your throat, keep your balance on the left side instead of in the middle. Pretend as though your head is filled with helium.

“Hey guys! Sorry I’m back late, I got kinda sidetracked, went on a stroll and lost track of time. But…you forgive me, right?”

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internalscreaming247 · 3 years ago

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What is it with the mcyt fandom being so obsessed with genderbending?? Like I don't want to see your "this person is a guy but I gave him long hair so he's a girl now" or "this person is a girl but I gave her short hair so she's a guy now" posts. As a genderfluid person who doesn't hide their long hair even when dressing masculine it can be really dysphoric. At least tag it.

Plus whenever someone posts it all the responses are "OMGGGGGGGG 😭😭😭😭😭 STOPPPP 😭😭😭😭 WHY HAHAHAHA" and it's like. Shut the fuck up. Even if they aren't saying that exactly it's always pretty obvious they're posting the pictures because they're "funny".

Plus they never like, draw it or anything too they always use real life pictures of real life people to make edits of.

#mcyt #dsmp #specifically has has this problem #okay to rb #in fact i encourage it #genderbending #<-for bl #i understand sometimes its trans/young ppl experimenting with gender but no one ever tags it #plus in this fandom specifically it ALWAYS seems to be done for humor #''look it's this person who's a boy!!! isn't it so funny that they look like a girl!!! hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!''#youre just reinventing the ''man in a dress'' joke

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i-hate-liking-batman · 2 years ago

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⭐️10 Characters, 10 Fandoms, 10 Tags⭐️

I was tagged by @just-an-enby-lemon which I can't see on the actual post which I blame tumbr but I was curious to see who I prioritize! The order I do these characters in probably isn't listed in the most to least favorite but they will be top 10 characters!

1. Percy Jackson- The Lightning Thief

YES I am the simpleton who likes main characters but in my defense they were made to be liked!!! This is not my fault. I loved his humor and the way he cared for his friends and the series is still my favorite book series!!!

2. Asagiri Gen- Dr. Stone

YOU GUYS! I'm so obsessed with this man I bought a figure!!! I'm a sucker for people who seem suspicious but are good people and Gen is just so cool! I love him literally using psychological tactics so they can save the day! The manga has ended and I'm devastated but the new anime season is coming this January so I'm looking forward to that!!! (I have soooo many Gen pics I've saved that I had to look through)

3. Reigen Arataka- Mob Psycho 100

THIS MAN IS SO GOOD. HE'S BEEN MY FAVORITE EVER SINCE HE DID HIS STUPID "HYPNOSIS PUNCH"!!! WHAT A LEGEND. Honestly he's such a dad and collects espers like currency as he BS's his way through life. I love him so much and I wrote a fic for this fandom and he is definitely in it because I love him. It's almost done too! Had a 5k writing session and now I just have to edit this monster and I'm done!!!

4. Suzuki Iruma- Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun

THIS MANGA IS SO UNDERRATED AND IT IS MY ALL TIME FAVORITE ONE!!! I have a hard time picking my favorite character in this manga so main character it is. He's a good boy and I love him learning how to have dreams. I don't like the anime as much as the manga, but I highly reccomend both!!! Season 3 is coming this October and I'm soooo ready!!!!

5. Sung Hyunjae- The S-Classes that I Raised

GUYS. THIS MAN IS SO GOOD. Not like in a moral sense but I love him. I loved him even before he was handsome through art because the novel gives him so much great content. He's literally so gay for the main character I was genuinely confused if the author was going to have them end up together. He's such a little shit but he's funny and that's all I need from him. Also can confirm that he's pretty, which is also a plus.

6. Howard Link- D.Grayman

This was a huge battle between Allen and LINK but Link has slowly crept into my heart and taken it hostage. He's a complicated character who you can't tell is going to side with at times, but he does his best even if his decisions are wrong and he trusts the wrong people. Also. He's pretty. I'm a sucker for pretty people i'll be truthful here.

7. Hulk- Avengers Earth's Mighest Heroes

A lot of people haven't seen this version of the animated avengers show, and that's devastating! Usually Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel character overall but this show really put my love for the Hulk on max. The entire show was a gem, but I loved the interactions Bruce and Hulk had in this show. They had a deal. Hulk would be out, and Hulk would do good. He wanted freedom but he was used to not getting it and had trouble trusting people. HULK WASN'T JUST MUSCLE. He had his own thoughts and feelings. Anyways watch this show.

8. Billy Batson(Captain Marvel)- DC

I didn't really choose a specific place for where Billy is my favorite character, but he is for sure my favorite! Second place is Dick Grayson because he's Damian's dad BUT ANYWAY. I loved his bright view on the world and the way he kept to his morals. They've changed him a bit from that first impression, but it'll always be my favorite. I also loved the Shazam movie so I guess I'm not too picky lol. He's a good kid and I think he should just not be found out by the Justice League and they can just be confused as Batman tries to figure out why Captain Marvel thinks it's fine to talk like a 10/14 year old.

9. Phoenix Wright- Ace Attorney

I have never actually played this game but I watched a playthrough through the first one and just got the rest of my knowledge from fanfic lol. But he's a fun quirky guy who means well and I like that about him! Also he's totally in love with Miles Edgeworth so they should really just get married.

10. Kozume Kenma- Haikyu

I love this anime to bits and this man had my heart from the start. Suga is number two but Kenma is the ultimate favorite. My best friend painted me a haikyu poster with him as the center and I love it to bits. I love his friendship with Hinata and I just think he's neat!

This was a lot of fun but I started blanking around for favorite characters around number 8 whoops!!! I either went for pretty obscure or well known so there isn't any in between whoops! I can't tag many people bc I have no courage so here is some (you don't have to if you don't want to!) @irumaismybaby @alyss-spazz-penedo @humangerbil @mostlyinconvenient

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thefanficmonster · 3 years ago

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My Kind

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warning: Swearing

Genre: Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Having been chosen by the gang to be a guest streamer on today’s stream of Among Us, it’s safe to say Y/N’s super excited but also a bit nervous. The whole of her anxiety gets lifted off her when she meets someone with the exact same vibe as hers - yeah you guessed it.

Requested by @monizzle96 Hi dear! Thank you so much for your wonderful request! I’m so terribly sorry it’s taken me so long to write and post it but here it finally is! I hope you come across it and read it and if so I hope you enjoy it! Love, Vy ❤

This has to be the fiftieth time I’ve checked my setup in the past twenty four hours. But no, I’m definitely not nervous, what are you talking about. Pshhh. Nah, being nervous isn’t in my brand. Plus, what do I have to make me nervous - a group of famous streamers inviting me onto their stream to play Among Us with them because they enjoyed my own streams? Ok yeah, that’s a pretty good reason. Not gonna lie, I almost chucked my phone out of excitement when I received that DM from Toast, telling me they’d picked me to be their guest streamer for today’s date. My stomach was doing somersaults for a good forty-eight hours following that text and then the anxiety slowly started setting in fueled by the expectations they probably have of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inexperienced in the streaming field, I’ve been a streamer longer than some of the members of Toast’s streamer gang actually. But I never managed to garner that big of a following which I’m honestly quite ok with. I have a modest - ok, maybe larger than modest - following consisting of incredibly loyal fans which I will never stop being grateful for. They are all so respectable of me, my privacy and my boundaries. They know the main rules: no shit-talking in the chat or in any of my comment sections, no bashing other YouTubers in my comments/chat, and most definitely not asking for a face reveal. Fun fact: I didn’t even set up that last rule, they all just collectively know not to ask for it.

I’ve been keeping my brand pretty low-key to avoid garnering some unwanted attention - some of which I’ve already experienced on certain social media platforms following the full body pictures I posted on there - face not visible of course. I tend to also have my webcam on, facing towards my hands working away on the keyboard sometimes when I stream. I don’t know why people obsess over faceless content creators’ hands, but I appreciate the enthusiasm - it also drives me to do a manicure every now and then which ain’t so bad, self-care and all that you know.

Now, back to the subject of my ridiculous nervousness.

You see, it has layers.

I’m nervous of ‘preforming’ underwhelmingly and I’m nervous of what my own fans will think of the person I will become during this stream. They know me as a super chill and laid-back person, which I am by the way, but they might think I’m putting on a show if I exhibit any nervous gestures/vocabulary. I highly doubt they would, but the possibility is not letting my mind rest. And now that it’s about ten minutes till the stream starts, I’m getting doing my best to calm my nerves.

They are all just people. You know they are super chill too. Just be yourself, that’s why they invited you, because you are yourself on all your streams. They liked you for your personality, humor, maybe even your gaming skills. So chill the hell out and be yourself, damn it!

Easier thought than put into action that’s for sure.

I start my stream five minutes early just so I can vibe with my viewers for a little while before I have to meet the gang. My fans always have a way of injecting me with confidence, they remind me of where I was when I started and how far I’ve come. How much I achieved when I thought I’d be nothing and no one, someone the algorithm would simply overlook. But then they entered my life and I entered theirs and it all became much better than I ever thought it would get to be. I rarely tell myself ‘good job’ for the milestones I’ve reached or the hard work I’ve put into my content, but that’s probably cause I orient myself based on that quote from the movie Whiplash: ‘There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job’ - simply put, I’m never satisfied with what I do and I always strive to do better. My fans, however, make sure I don’t go overboard with it - always serving as a reminder that I’ve done plenty for myself and others. And that’s what makes an amazing fandom, one I consider family.

Whoa, when did those five minutes fly by?!

Ah shit, here we go. Deep breaths, Y/N you got this.

“Hello!“ I say as I enter the Discord call, subconsciously biting my lower lip, grateful the camera isn’t capturing it. However, I make a mental note to keep my hands steady cause that’s the one part of me people can actually see and the last thing I want is for them to see how much my fingers are trembling.

“Oh hi, Y/N!“ Toast is the first one to greet me, “Welcome to the stream! Thank you so much for accepting our invitation.“

“Thank you for having me and inviting me, Toast. This is a huge deal for me. You guys are basically YouTube legends, this is unreal to me.“ I reply, cringing immediately afterwards because of my fangirl rambling. Great way to make first impressions, Y/N. Bravo.

To be fair, they already have an impression of you. Quit stressing.

Aright, you’ve got a point, me.

“Oh please, we owe all that to our fans. We’re really nothing special. All streamers are almost completely alike, we all owe where we are to the people who helped us make it there - our fans. We’re no legends.“ Toast says, bringing a small smile to my face as well as a light pink blush to my cheeks, “And from what I’ve seen, you yourself have quite the following. And your fans seem to adore you.“

“And I absolutely adore them.“ I chuckle, “They mean the world to me. They are the reason I’m here today.”

“Then we have to give them a special thank you, don’t you think?“ The teasing, familiar giggle, widens my smile - it’s Rae, “Nice to meet you, Y/N! I’m Rae, and, no cap, I’m quite a fan of your content. No joke, I binged your entire series of Resident Evil 7 as soon as I found your channel when Toast said he’d invite you.“

This rattles me a bit. I can hardly believe it - am I really receiving a compliment from an A-list name in the streaming world? My fans must be hella proud of me right now. A quick glance at my chat confirms that they indeed are. That in and of itself fills me with joy and newfound confidence.

“Oh Gosh, thank you so much Rae! That means the world to me. You’re all so sweet.“ I reply, lifting my ice cold hands to cool down my burning cheeks, my lips spread into a grin, my stomach filled with butterflies.

“Oh please, we have some real savages around here.“ A male voice, seemingly Charlie’s scoffs, “Don’t overlook us please.“

“Wait, we do?“ A deep voice, one I immediately know the owner of speaks up, “Who? How come I don’t know about that?“

I can’t help bust snort, “Nice to meet you, Corpse. Sarcasm central, I see.”

He laughs, “Just returning it to where it’s due. Nice to meet you too, Y/N. Sick Outlast series, by the way.“

Ok, wait, I have two A-list streamers complimenting my content. Ok, I’m bound to crack open a few beers to celebrate later cause OH MY GOD.

“Thanks! I’m a horror junkie so I’d be lying if I said I haven’t binge watched all your story-times. Personal favorites are the deep web ones, they fascinate me.“

“Oh, you’re one of my kind even more than I expected, huh?“ He replies, the tone of his voice changing, raising a bit due to what I can only describe as excitement and enthusiasm. “I’ve had people tell me it’s twisted, but I really like seeing the lengths to which the fucked up human mind can go to. Like, the shit I’ve read is insane! Some stories I didn’t narrate cause I would’ve probably had my video taken down, it was that messed up.“

My eyes widen, sharing the same excitement at the thought of digging deeper into this phenomenon, “Careful, Corpse, you’re walking a dangerous line of tempting me to deep-dive on Reddit in search of those exact stories.”

“No need.“ Corpse says, his tone now taking up a bit of a cocky note, “I still got them all saved, I can send them to you no problem.“

“Please do! I seriously gotta read them now. If I can’t sleep afterwards, I’m blaming you, Corpse. Just FYI.“ I say, giggling slightly, finding myself all but completely comfortable now. I wonder where all that anxiety went?

“Blame fully taken. Given that I’m not much of a sleeper, I’ll keep you company whenever you think there’s a killer hiding in your closet or fear a red room pop-up will appear on your computer screen.“ He replies, chuckling.

“Um, that’s oddly specific.“ Charlie comments, “Been there yourself, buddy?”

“Perhaps.“ Corpse wheezes, getting a laugh out of me too, “I will neither confirm nor deny.“

“You know what, I’ll just private message you my number so if you see it call you at some ungodly hour, you don’t freak the fuck out. Sounds good?“ I ask, already prepping to type it out and send it to him.

“Perfect. Wait...“ he pauses for a second, sounding puzzled for a second, “You don’t have mine.“

“Oh, do I not?“ I reply with a sinister tone - thought to answer the question, I of course don’t have his number.

“Oh, do you?“ He sasses me right back. “If so then you don’t need me to send it to you. Cool.“

Ah, shit

“Wait, no! I-I need to confirm it’s the correct one!“

Damn, never did I think I’d be complimented by some of the most important streamers on this platform, but to get a number of theirs too? That’s a whole another level that will take me time to process. But I’ll do that another time, right now, I have to kick these people’s butts in Among Us and later I have some deep web stories to read.

Turns out, all it takes to get comfortable in a new surrounding is someone of your kind. And Corpse is definitely one of my kind.

@maat-the-prescriptive @simonsbluee @save-the-sky @itsminniekat @hacker-ghost @bi-andready-tocry @imtiredaffff @jazzkaurtheglorious @hereforbeebo @fandomgirl17 @chrysanthykios @maehemscorpyus @loraleiix @letsloveimagines @annshit @i-cant-choose-a-username-help @enigmaticmaze @divine-artemis @waterlilypat @idontknowwhatthisisfam @evi-ka @classyandfabulous00 @redperson58 @lilysdaydreams @solowheein @mythicalamphitrite @axen-gers @luckygirl144 @nj01 @buddyemily @the-albino-lioness @stardream14 @gdhdkfnn @nomadicgypsyy @preciousskye @fluffysuicideunicornsworld @o-kaelin @manacharlotte @awkward-youtube-trash @lolalee24 @bonky-beerns @meme-lord-and-savior-sebastian @strawbrinkofdeath @teenloves @tams0527 @browneyespinkhair @starstruckllamapuppy @daisychains012 @y0ulooked @tinytacosuitcaseflap @supernatural-is-my-only-life @jula-pauline @melodykitty @just-that-bi-girl @crazybutconfidentaf @lowellshade @alphakees @bellero @weallneednamjesus @starryhanji @boiled-onionrings @husherstan @fockingwhore @melaningoddessthings @prettypastelpetals @haleypearce @godwhyamiawkward @y-napotat @daisychainyoonmin @little-miss-rebel3 @free-wheelin-bi-sexual @redmoon261 @darkacademic2 @wiseflamingoqueen @into-the-end @namikhai-i @nastiablr @thelittleplantlover @mirktuan @dont-hyuck @jjk-bunny @vintagegothlover @easygoingtheatre @itsrandombooklover @miiaivi @emmybaybee @befourgolden @jjk-is-my-shit @eternalteaaars @spacebadgerx @princesslunalight @acequinn14 @samm48 @misselsbells06 @simp-lykawa @fo-love @marishimomura-blog @therealglenncoco @cinnamonbun332 @killtherandomness @sanshinexxxsan @fee-btheweeb @press-lay @cathleenpotgieter16 @jazzydoesstuff @moonlxghtbay @forestrain2000 @hyunjinhugs @blood-of-fandoms @lovellylies @ukiyolixx @simpforhpcharacters @chrisdylan17 @parkerjisung @pedernille @theodonyous @wineandionysus @malfoystilinskii05 @morbid-x @coryisagee @jessewa26 @scoobydooluver97 @mindintheskies365 @raeanneinwonderland @indecisive-empanada @gluttonypalace @loriane2503 @btsiguess-kpop @khaoticbunny @lucidlycactus @smiithys @rottenroyalebooks @kpopgirlbtssvt @fangirl-tc27 @fr0z3n-1 @notmesimpingfortechno @shotarosleftpinky @kunoi-chan @idk-whats-wrong-with-me @yikeroonie @goldenstarofthunderclan @poetry-and-tea @ama-do-writing-stuff @wishbonewolf @emeraldxhope @t0xick1tty @kusuinko @speakyourselfloveyourself @sophia902103 @lo-manburg @classsykittykat @dmgama @depressedpuppythatneedscoffee @btsiguess-kpop @akaashi-baby @gun-jong-simp @geschichtenfee @yerapotato-wp @browneyedgirl365 @thysagclub @sparklycloudnight @helloatomicshadow @queentorresstuff @vtte @val-gal @lucy-bunny17 @aaliyahh0 @katluckybear @boyleanti @straybids @franchesca-791 @cosmicstorm19 @averyisbackinthetrashcan @aomi-nabi @xlanawriter @allensimpsforcorpse

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songofclarity · 3 years ago

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what do you think of the idea of Wen Yuan being Wen Xu’s son/ Wen Ruohan’s grandson ? it’s one of my fave headcanons since Wen Ning didn’t say which older cousin is Sizhui’s father.

I absolutely love Wen Yuan being either Wen RuoHan's son or grandson, Anon! It's a canon compliant headcanon or at least a heavily insinuated canon that Wen Yuan comes from his family branch.

Wen Ning says, "Y-You really l-look like a distant relative of mine..." to Lan SiZhui as they are traveling to Lotus Pier (ch. 83, ERS).

And earlier we are told that "[Wen Qing] wasn't a daughter of the Qishan Wen Sect's leader, Wen RuoHan, but instead the daughter of one of Wen RuoHan's cousins. Although they were far cousins, Wen RuoHan had always had a close relationship to this cousin of his." (ch. 60)

Plus a general: "Every day when [Wei WuXian] was free, he played with the toddler Wen Yuan, son of Wen Qing's cousin." (ch. 74)

I highly doubt the specification of distant relative/far cousin was used by accident or just a hand-wave since it's not used for any of the other Wen relatives. We have no idea how Uncle Four or Granny Wen are related to anyone else, for instance. I do headcanon Granny Wen being closer to Wen RuoHan's branch than to Wen Qing's since she is already Wen Yuan's guardian and caretaker when we first meet her. Imagine Granny Wen fleeing Nightless City with Wen Yuan after Wen RuoHan's death only for them to end up falling into the hands of the enemy anyway!? My heart! 💔

I will confess that, depending on what flavor I'm in the mood for, I headcanon Wen Yuan as either Wen Chao, Wen RuoHan, or Wen Xu's son lol

Wen Yuan is a toddler when Wei WuXian first meets him, making him around 2 - 3 years old. The Sunshot Campaign lasted three years, which means Wen Yuan was born either right at the start of the Campaign or a full year later.

Anon may have excluded him on purpose since he's the least popular choice, but I will say that I kind of prioritize Wen Chao as being Wen Yuan's father since we are explicitly told that Wen Chao has a wife. While it's described that him picking a new lover every six months is his routine, that he goes from honeymoon phase to being tired of them during that time is just his norm, I like to consider that him picking his wife's servant this time around wasn't merely out of natural rotation of lovers.

If his wife were pregnant, it's not illogical that a young man under twenty would go for the pretty woman batting her eyelashes at him while she holds back his wife's hair during another bout of morning sickness. Morning sickness traditionally lasts the first trimester, so the specification that Wang LingJiao will be dropped after six months matches well with the projected due-date. Wen Chao sending Wang LingJiao ahead of him to Lotus Pier could easily be because he was taking care of business (and a heavily pregnant wife) at home before he dashed out the door again.

That Wei WuXian then gives up everything to repay his debt to the Wen while at the same time protects and entertains the son of Wen Chao, who turned Wei WuXian's life to hell in the first place, is delightful to me lol

The second person I headcanon as being Wen Yuan's father is actually Wen RuoHan! This is my favorite option and warms my heart ♡ although at the same time it makes me very sad.

MDZS focuses a lot on characters losing siblings and parents and friends, but barely touches upon losing a child. Madam Jin and Jin GuangShan are described as having wasted away before they finally died over the loss of Jin ZiXuan, but we all know Jin GuangYao was done humoring them by then and their deaths were likely caused by poisoning (Jin GuangShan was weakened before his grand finale send-off and Madam Jin's cultivation was strong enough to maintain her in her youth and thus inedia should have preserved her longer even while depressed. These two did not die of grief.)

So Wen RuoHan gives us room to explore the grief of losing a child and having to restart a family, whether it's for the sake of protecting Clan lineage or for his own need to have a family. This also paints a rather intriguing picture of Wen RuoHan's position within his sect that he was comfortable and supported enough to have a child after such a great loss (Wen Chao and Wen Xu's bodies were vandalized and then never returned to him) and in the middle of a war (baby booms happen after wartime).

We're never told if Wen RuoHan's policy to attack the Sunshot Campaign changes after Wen Chao and Wen Xu die. It's both sweet and sad to imagine him playing with and caring for his little son while the Sunshot Campaign knocks on his door.

(Wen RuoHan should not be blamed for centuries of Wen Sect policies. Upholding family tradition is as true for him as it is for Nie MingJue and Jiang Cheng. He is never shown to have conspired to take over anything, much less the world. Let him have a family to love!)

There is also the question of who is Wen Yuan's mother in this case. Same mother as Wen Xu and Wen Chao? Another wife? A lover? The Qishan Wen Sect is not short of people wanting to cozy up to Sect Leader Wen, as we have seen. Wen Chao reveals to us that there is some fear of assassination, but Wen RuoHan seems rather negligent of that threat. Although the other sects might hate them, the inner-workings of the Qishan Wen appears to be a safe and supportive one. Wen Yuan was born from at least an agreeable union, but ideally a happy one~

Although you mention him first, Anon, Wen Xu is the last of the three that come to mind when I think of Wen Yuan's father! Which is amusing because I also know Wen Xu is considered the popular fandom choice whenever I see this topic come up. As I mentioned in another post, there is something poetic in the circular way Wen Xu destroys Cloud Recesses and tells the Lans that the Wen will help them rise from the ashes followed by Wen Yuan raised from ashes of the Wen Sect to find new life in the rebuilt Cloud Recesses.

But whether Wen RuoHan was his father or his grandfather who took the role of father after Wen Chao/Wen Xu died, he would have been the first and only father Wen Yuan truly knew. Wen RuoHan looks like he's in his twenties, so calling him father rather than grandfather wouldn't be unexpected for a child to do, either.

Which brings new insight into this moment when Wei WuXian brings Wen Yuan out to play with him in Yiling. Wen Yuan calls Wei WuXian brother (Brother Xian), so he's definitely not calling out for him in this scene...

When children were scared, they always called out to those they were close to. And so, sobbing, [Wen Yuan] called, "Dad! Dad..." (ch. 74, ERS)

Crying out for Wen RuoHan!? My heart! 💔

#anon #asked from above #wen yuan #wen xu #wen ruohan #wen chao #mdzs thoughts #mdzs quotes #wen fam #i have a lot of feelings about this topic lol #idk if i've already brought up that last scene before #but give me any excuse and i WILL bring it up

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seattlesea · 4 years ago

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✨My (maybe) Unpopular Heroes of Olympus Opinions✨

(maybe part one??? idk)

-I don’t really ship any of the main canon ships in HoO. None of them had any chemistry and most of them are either pedophilic, forced and rushed, or toxic in some way

-Most of the characters that were shoved into relationships (Leo, Nico, and Hazel especially) really did not need a love interest to complete their character arcs and their relationships ended up boring and flat cause Riordan just wanted everyone to have a love interest and it never went deeper than the skin

-Piper took advantage over Jason’s amnesiac state and manipulated him. She really went ‘But what if he has a girlfriend he can’t remember 👉👈 it would be wrong to start a relationship with him while he still has amnesia 👉👈 and cause it was based off lies and fake memories 👉👈 lmao imma just jump all over him and make him fall for me while he’s still amnesiac 🤪’ as if that’s not taking advantage over someone’s mental state

-And then she blamed her relationship being forced on Aphrodite and Hera saying they ‘forced her into a relationship’ and ‘arranged their relationship’ even though Aphrodite never said anything about or did anything to them and Hera gave Piper fake memories of them being a couple but it was Piper’s conscious choice to act out on those memories she knew were fake and her relationship was in no way influenced by anyone (especially Hera and Aphrodite) other than herself

-Shelper and Solangelo were way too rushed and forced (inside and outside of the books) and were only added for publicity, plus it seems like most of the fandom only like them cause they’re LGBTQ+ ships

-I hate Pipeyna and Pipabeth. My girls (especially Reyna) deserve better than some manipulative little girl who went ‘we were friends? no weren’t ❤️’

-The fandom portrays the characters really inaccurately (tweaking them a bit for humor is fine, but changing their entire personality is a different thing)

-The movies actually aren’t that bad when not compared to the books (I mean, you gotta admit- it’s pretty good effects for 2010)

-And speaking of the movies, they did a better job at portraying Thalia and Annabeth’s relationship in one movie than Riordan did in 5+ books

-Speaking of which, Riordan wrote pretty much every platonic friendship that weren’t Thalia/Nico and Reyna horribly and most of them shouldn’t have been friends and wasted all the potential for the good friendships

-Calypso should’ve joined the Hunters, not Reyna

-Annabeth and Piper are horrible friends lmao (separately and together)

-Silena is a hero and deserves redemption, but Luke doesn’t despite most of the fandom agreeing he does (he was a pedophile y’all)

-The fandom over-exaggerated the Tartarus fall, it wasn’t really that bad tbh

-Reyna is stronger and a better leader than Annabeth

-Annabeth’s intelligence is more tell than show (and quite a few characters including Leo, Reyna, and Octavian have shown more intelligence than her)

-Riordan over-glorifies and overpowers Percy way too much. Just cause he’s the main character doesn’t mean he has to be the best of the best after barely 8 months of training (four years at CHB only in the summers is 8 months total)

-Speaking of which, Jason can beat Percy (8 months versus Jason’s twelve years) and so can Annabeth, Reyna, Thalia, Hylla, Luke, Hazel and maybe Frank and Nico. Percy’s skill is overrated and unrealistic

-And I feel like most of the fandom knows that Jason can beat Percy but just doesn’t want to admit it cause they like Percy more

-Same thing with the Greeks and Romans- the majority know the Romans are stronger and can easily beat the Greeks but they don’t want to believe it cause they favor the Greeks more

-Percy and Annabeth shouldn’t have been part of the Seven, they already had their chance to shine. Riordan should’ve brought minor characters into light instead

-And Piper shouldn’t have been part of the Seven either. Riordan really expects me to believe that she’s stronger, more powerful, and a greater/better hero and deserved to be part of the Seven more than Reyna, Nico, Clarisse, Thalia, etc.?

-Riordan’s women line-up of Reyna, Annabeth, Hazel, and Piper was really cheap and boring (Avengers: Endgame women line-up who?)

-Percy (in HoO) and Piper are easily some of the worst, most underdeveloped characters Riordan has ever written

-Annabeth got really bland and weak in HoO and couldn’t do shit for herself without others (especially newbies) having to help and/or save her. She pretty much became exclusively Percy fangirl

-As much as I like them, Frank and Hazel don’t have what it takes to be Praetors and Reyna and Jason should’ve stayed as them

-Jason’s whole ‘am I more Greek or Roman’ arc was dumb af

-Riordan’s bias towards the Romans is also dumb af (the Romans could beat the Greeks in an instant)

-Jeyna is and always will be 1000x better than Jiper

-Hazel is the most powerful demigod (way more than Percy and even Jason)

-My hot take on who should’ve been the Seven: Reyna, Nico, Thalia, Frank, Hazel, Leo, and Clovis (son of the god of sleep puts Gaea back to sleep who?)

-Riordan confirming Piper bi was a cheap move to make her more likable. It didn’t even make any sense. A character is confirmed LGBT only after they become a minor character despite being a main character before and kisses some random unnamed girl only three months after her ex-boyfriend whom she still loved dies??? girl what??? Kinda obvious it was just for publicity. Like- Riordan, honey, the LGBTQ+ community is not a circus you can plop your characters into to make them more entertaining❤️

-The PJ series as a whole isn’t that creative. It’s legit just a copy of exactly what past mythological figures have already done and a bunch of character tropes and clichés shoved into one book

-And in general it’s not even that well-written (like HP, it’s over-exaggerated a lot)

-All of the romantic relationships and platonic friendships are extremely unrealistic. Like they never argue/fight, disagree, etc. (then grow stronger from those fights) at all??? Even if they’re complete opposites???

-Reyna is the best-written character in the whole series and a queen she deserved better and y’all sit on her too much

-Theyna is ✨amazing✨ their dynamic and chemistry was just *mwah Pansexual Muslim blessings to you* and people are allowed to ship them even though they’re Hunters and swore off love

-Rachel doesn’t deserve all the hate she gets. Y’all hate on her cause she crushed on Percy when half of you are doing the same thing and then y’all go and ship Percy with Nico, Jason, Artemis, Athena, etc.

-If y’all want to hate on Jason for ‘not having a personality’ you’d also have to hate on most of the main HoO characters except Reyna, Nico, and Leo (and maybe Hazel) for the same reason cause they have the exact same problem tbh

-Zoë and Bianca’s deaths weren’t actually that sad. We didn’t get to see them enough nor did they have enough development for their deaths to have a real impact. The only sad thing about them was Zoë’s last words and Nico’s reaction

-Thalia needed more time in the books

-Reyna was the only main female character in HoO that wasn’t a boring, bland Mary Sue that all the other characters automatically loved. She was the only one with real flaws and distinct personality traits she’s my queen

-Piper, Annabeth, and Calypso did have flaws but the fact that they weren’t called out by other characters or even noticed are what makes them Mary Sues. It doesn’t matter how many flaws a character has, if they’re not called out by other characters (more specifically, other protagonists who actually like them) they don’t count as real character flaws

-Riordan can’t write female characters for shit

-Clarisse, Drew, and Octavian deserved better than being completely antagonized for no explained reason other than to make the protagonists seem better and to make the readers root for them. Those three had more potential than most of the Seven combined

-The whole ‘Aphrodite kids don’t train’ thing is bs. It’s specifically stated that all the demigods follow a strict schedule and have to follow it or they’ll be on stable duty or smth and the Aphrodite kids shouldn’t (and can’t) be excused from that

-Therefore, Drew should be way more powerful and skilled than Piper, at least enough to not back down automatically from a duel by a newbie who hasn’t even learned how to fight (Drew can control an entire cabin of people at once and Piper can barely control one person at a time, who’s more powerful again??)

-Also I have no idea why Riordan portrays all the Aphrodite kids as weak and girly in the first place. ‘Femininity’ and ‘weakness’ are not synonymous and ‘love’ and ‘beauty’ don’t equal ‘feminine’

-Speaking of which, love is actually really powerful but Piper doesn’t stand for love or ‘inner beauty’ and all her ‘thoughtful/insightful’ quotes in ToA/TBM about love were complete bs

-Riordan using the LGBTQ+ community for the sole purpose of making Piper seem more likable and ‘special’ was disgusting and proves he thinks that straight is the default- “...Or Hera’s ideas of what a perfect couple looked like. Piper finding her own way, not the one people expected of her” my ass. In other words, he’s saying ‘The expectations for love and the idea of a perfect couple are a heterosexual relationship, and anyone who 'finds their own way instead of the ones people expect’ are different’. ‘Different’ and ‘default’ are antonyms, so if you think LGBT people are different, then you think that straight is the default. Aphrodite is the goddess of love not heteronormative bullshit. Like Riordan, honey, you’re the one who thinks that the expectations for love and the idea of a perfect couple are heterosexual couples, not fictional gods from a fictional mythology. Remember kiddos- an author writes their own beliefs

If you don’t agree with some of these that’s fine sis it doesn’t matter if you have different opinions than me❤️

#heroes of olympus #opinion #unpopular opinions #percy jackson #annabeth chase #jason grace #frank zhang #hazel levesque #leo valdez #reyna ramirez arellano #reyna avila ramirez arellano #thalia grace #nico di angelo #zoe nightshade #bianca di angelo #will solace #clarisse la rue #octavian #ships

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alienslikedmyfantasy · 4 years ago

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Okay, so I haven’t seen a show that I related to legit every character like, ever, and The Owl House hit me like a truck.

As I watched (and rewatched) how each character acts and develops, I look at them and feel a connection.

Luz, the ‘weird’ girl, the outsider, the overly positive, interested, distractible, oblivious, and big hearted character. I utterly love Luz Noceda. Like holy crap. We both find oddly specific things interesting be it a specific topic or the immersion into a fandom. We both make weird jokes and get into pun wars with people (I had one go on for about an hour once...it was glorious). For a person who’s pretty negative about myself, when other people are involved, I lift them up as high as possible, even with weak nerd arms. We both get distracted easily, or are at least oblivious. I didn’t know half of the things happening around me during school, and I honestly still don’t. I’ve watched movies 50 times and realized the actual point/blatantly obvious event during the 51st. I’ve had people like me before and I never noticed until someone told me then I struggled to believe it (”What is it she sees, in this cluster clump of me?”). (Honestly the entirety of ‘Ordinary’ called me out super hard). Luz also does crazy things for her friends with the best of intentions (even if it isn’t well thought out). Her heart is so big and she sees the best in everyone, it’s just amazing. Little things she does and has said, I’ve done too (especially the ‘cool’ scene).

Amity is often misread and quiet, struggling to talk to others. She also doesn’t like others to see her emotions very much, she bottles them up and has a need to be seen in a certain way. She has to be ‘perfect’ (a song which also called me out pretty hard). I feel that deep down in my soul my dudes. I always had to have perfect grades and I still have to be perfect at everything I do on the first try (I’m working on not doing that). I was always quiet, and honestly still am. I definitely bottle up my emotions rather than let others see what’s up and I have a hard time forming coherent sentences around crushes...well...around people in general. I always felt the need to be the straight A student and the rock in my loved one’s lives (which they never expected of me so I don’t know where that came from haha) and I still kinda do. Amity also sacrifices herself for her friends (Grom...sports....must I say more?). And though I may not have sacrificed my body, I’ve protected my friends hard core. No one messes with my buds.

Eda. Oh Eda. The wild witch who ran off to live in the woods because she didn’t like school and didn’t want to commit to one coven in life. The witch who is slow to pick up on things, is chaotic, and completely weird in the best possible way. I always liked school until I was about to graduate, then I realized how it can really mess with people (see Eda running around the school pointing out the strangeness of it all). All I feel that I really learned from school was to take a test. Creativity killer sadly. Eda has a strange sense of humor and is slow to get sarcasm or that it was a joke. Same Eda, same. I also cannot commit to one coven, well, career or job for the rest of my life. I like keeping my options open. Plus I would love to build a house out in the woods nearby and be a witch. I’ve always been weird and chaotic too, but I think Eda’s weird is way more fun than my own.

King is a goofy little dude who usually has weird jokes or points of view, but sometimes is super wise. I know that I have a strange sense of humor that it seems like most of my people don’t understand, and I have been known to be wise when I’m not thinking about it...on the other hand, when I try to be wise, I stumble and say something extremely weird. He struggles with public speaking/putting himself out there (Grom) and is nervous a while before getting comfortable with it. (I hate public speaking says the kid who did musicals for 13 years, writes songs, and thinks she wants to be an author, artist, actress, or musician). I also connect with King with the fact that I freakin’ love rubber ducky stuff. I legit have a rubber ducky bathrobe (of which one of my best friends gave me as a birthday gift...it’s a bit small but it’s sososo soft I love it), I made a ducky pillowcase today to practice sewing (it’s so cute I almost cried), I have a bunch of duckies stashed away throughout the house, and my Grandma made me a ducky baby quilt for the future. Ducks! Am I right? (I’m right.)

Willow is the shy, not-so-confident plant girl. I am too a shy, not-so-confident plant girl. I legit have about 14 or 15 plants (each have a name) that I care about a lot. I don’t really remember being bullied (I know I was at least once), but I’ve definitely had my heart hurt (honestly pretty badly) by people I considered friends at that time (I won’t get into that here). I’m also a shy person who’s been working on being more confident with themselves. Plus: plants!

Gus is fascinated by specific topics and is younger than everyone else, which may make him feel a bit childish. I feel this on a personal level. I’m the youngest child on my Mom’s side and the second youngest on my Dad’s. I was the baby and I don’t think I got to do much with the older kids (you’re too young so we don’t wanna play with you kinda thing, etc. [which is totally fine and I get 100%]) Though I may be older than all of my friends, I still feel like a child compared to nearly all of them. They’re all so smart and put together, and I’m not. I’m also fascinated by specific topics that others may not know or care to know much about (for Gus, it’s humans, for me, it’s a lot of things).

Edric and Emira are pretty similar to my sister and I. We aren’t twins, we didn’t always get along, and we rarely had shenanigans or pranked like these two do, but as we got older, we understood each other better and our relationship is basically being there for one another and really bad puns.

Hooty...well...I suppose we share the fact that we both make up songs and are bored a lot...definitely not that we’re both owl tubes.....*nervous laughter*

Owlbert and I share the quiet helpfulness trait...plus we’re both adorable.

(Some of these go deeper than others but the point is there’s still a connection).

Goodness gracious I love this show.

I haven’t laughed at a show this hard since Good Omens last year.

I love when I can connect with characters. It makes me happy.

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homespork-review · 4 years ago

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HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 3

TW: """funny""" sexual and physical assault of a child by another child, extreme bullying, extreme ableism, a very brief discussion of shipping characters outside their canon sexuality.

CHEL: We get some implications of the part of troll culture we ended on last time when a slightly baffled-looking Nepeta, watching through the viewport, updates her SHIPPING WALL. Instead of hearts, some of the hypothetical pairings she’s painted are marked with diamonds. What this means will be explained shortly.

I can’t help but feel it’s slightly creepy to hypothetically matchmake your own friends, but I’m pretty sure the other trolls know at least that the shipping wall exists if not exactly which ships they’re in, and they do live in a society in which it’s stated later that mating is mandatory, so it would indeed be helpful to have at least emergency-doable matchmaking done well in advance and they might appreciate the help.

I’d like to take a moment to note a ship at the bottom row, left of centre; GA/Tavros. Hussie, on his Formspring, later said that GA was “obviously” a lesbian, or anyway was only interested in women, which doesn’t have a specific term for it in troll culture. It’s actually hard to tell going by what’s shown in canon, because she only displays specific interest in girls except for in a complicated case we’ll discuss later, but trolls are supposed to be bi-normative, plus it’s not like the male selection here is particularly inspiring, so, yeah, the evidence we actually see isn't conclusively "obvious". The fandom, knowing this, systematically harass anyone who even muses vaguely about the possibility of shipping her with a boy, even if they don't know about that Word of God. This is why I’m wondering whether the trolls knew about the shipping wall, because if they did, we can presume GA didn’t care. For the record, I’m sex-repulsed ace and have in fact written about.my own imaginary persona fucking (admittedly fucking an opposite sex clone of herself, it was a complicated injoke) and my reaction to someone else writing it would depend on context and reason, so I can imagine her reacting similarly, but not everyone would. A similar thing with a canonically gay male character explicitly on-screen not caring about hypothetical shipping of himself with girls comes up much later; he’s not a troll, but his upbringing was troll-influenced (long story).

BRIGHT: Harassing people over the ships they make content for always baffles me. It’s not like fanart/fanfic for a ship which contradicts canon has any effect on the canon, and playing around with character dynamics (often in a pornographic manner) is a major part of fanfic.

CHEL: On top of all this, gender and sexuality are really shaky concepts to even try to apply to a species which reproduces hermaphroditically. On this side of the fourth wall it’s obviously because Hussie is a not-very-reflective cisgender heterosexual man, and didn’t think about it any further than “girls wear skirts, right?” Plenty of people fanwank up possibilities for how it could happen on the other side. I think we may have to make a “What The Fuck Is Alternian Biology And Sociology” post or two separate from the sporking at the very end.

Discourse discussion over! Next page, we see some of the relevant terminology used in troll culture, though we still don’t get any explanation of what any of the words actually mean, which is a tad annoying for new readers. The context is a discussion between Karkat and Vriska about getting her into the game.

BRIGHT: Specifically, Karkat wants Vriska to get Tavros into the game, leading to this exchange…

CG: WHY DO YOU EVEN HATE HIM, IT'S FUCKING RIDICULOUS. CG: IF ANYTHING YOU SHOULD PITY HIM. CG: ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PARALYZED HIM. AG: I know. I don't really understand it. AG: It's just a really special kind of h8! It never goes away and it doesn't make a lot of sense. CG: THIS IS KIND OF A WEIRD TIME TO BE CONFIDING IN ME ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OF BLACK ROMANCE BUT OK. AG: Oh god, what? CG: I MEAN IF YOU'RE REALLY IMPLYING TAVROS IS YOUR KISMESIS I THINK YOU'RE BRAYING UP THE WRONG FROND NUB. CG: BOTH PARTIES HAVE TO HATE EACH OTHER EQUALLY, I MEAN LIKE TRUE HATE. CG: MAYBE YOUR FEELINGS COME SOMEWHAT CLOSE TO FITTING THE BILL BUT I DON'T THINK HE CAN HATE ANYONE, IT'S WEIRD, HE'S KIND OF BROKEN IN THE HEAD.

Finally, our long-awaited introduction to troll romance!

And the introduction is an effective one. We now know that there’s something called ‘black romance’, that it concerns hate, and that one’s black-romantic partner is a ‘kismesis’. The conversation also flows naturally and fits the characters having it, rather than being an awkward as-you-know infodump, although brace yourselves, there’s one of those coming up. Thirteen is about right for kids starting to have romantic feelings and being confused about it, not wanting to talk about it is pretty normal, and Karkat lecturing people at a good opportunity is absolutely in character.

Karkat goes on to lecture Vriska about the emotions involved in different sorts of romantic relationships, and wow, it really says a lot about troll culture…

CG: OK, MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY. CG: PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE. CG: AND ALL THE NUANCES OF PITY MANIFEST AS VARIOUS OTHER KINDS OF FEELINGS LIKE WHATEVER CHEMICAL REACTIONS TRIGGER MATING FONDNESS OR THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT ARE BEHIND MOIRALLEGIANCE.

CHEL: It’s never really clear if this is just Karkat’s idea of it or if this is how trolls actually work biologically. Trolls do use the word “love” later on, so I always interpreted it as “pity” being a euphemistic term because “love” in such a warlike and oppressive culture could be exploited as a weakness. Fandom has played it with their love actually being based on a weird form of sympathy/seeing the other as needing protection, which is also plausible.

FAILURE ARTIST: I have played with the pity thing before but in retrospect Karkat is the only one who seems to see it that way. Maybe this is all his fake deep teenager view of romance.

BRIGHT: Vriska makes a performance of how bored she is, but Karkat’s on a roll.

CG: A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS. CG: HAVING A GOOD BALANCE KEEPS ALL THE EMOTIONS SHARPER, SEE I THINK THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. AG: Oh???????? AG: I hope you know I already wore out some good note-taking pens today. All the pens. AG: All of them. CG: SEE, MY HATE IS LIKE A FINELY TUNED INSTRUMENT BECAUSE I'M AWARE OF THESE PRINCIPLES. CG: I COULD HATE A HOLE IN PARADOX SPACE ITSELF, STRAIGHT THROUGH TO A NEW REALITY FRESH FOR THE HATING. AG: Hahahahahahahaha, you don't even know how much I'm laughing at this. CG: BUT SEE, YOU'RE TOO HEAVY ON THE HATE SIDE, OR AT LEAST YOU PRETEND TO BE WHICH IS MAYBE WORSE. AG: You aren't reading anything I say are you? You just want to talk and talk and talk. CG: AND YOU THINK YOU'RE HATING UP EVERYONE HARD WHEN YOU'RE REALLY JUST BURNING OUT THAT ENTIRE EMOTIONAL HEMISPHERE. CG: IT'S LIKE LUKEWARM HATE. PRETENDER'S HATE, WITH NO COUNTERPOINT AT ALL. CG: AS SUCH THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE TO YOUR HATE, IT'S LIKE A CARDBOARD MOVIE PROP. CG: WHICH IS WHY YOUR BRAIN IS BROKEN, KIND OF LIKE TAVROS'S BUT ON THE OPPOSITE HEMISPHERE I GUESS. CG: OR MAYBE YOUR BROKEN BRAIN LED TO THE IMBALANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I DON'T KNOW. CG: WHATEVER THE CASE IS, YOU'RE KIND OF EMOTIONALLY SCREWED, SORRY TO SAY. CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION. CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU. CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA! CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU. CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED. CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

Whew.

So now we have ‘kismesis’, ‘moirail’, and ‘matesprit’ as terms for romantic partners, as well as the concepts of black romance, red romance, and ‘moirallegiance’ as the relationship one has with a moirail. Troll romance is not going to get any less confusing for a while.

If Karkat’s grasp of psychology strikes you as amateurish, there’s a reason for that: He gets all his knowledge from romance movies.

AG: Hey asshole, stop watching movies for girls.

I think that’s another strike against the ‘girls are the dangerous ones on Alternia’ argument. Romance movies, per this exchange, are both female-coded and seen as inferior -- Karkat defends his viewing choices by saying they’re INTRIGUING SOCIOLOGICALLY, but Vriska isn’t buying it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 42 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 33

CHEL: I’m not sure an interest in the workings of romance should be a socially gendered thing in a society where, as it turns out, you have to have an acceptable romantic partner by a certain time or die. You’d think most kids would be trying as hard as they could to learn and put into practice everything they could about it, and you’d also think there’d be better information for them than romcoms.

BRIGHT: Has the mate-or-die part come up yet? I’m not sure when Hussie thought of it.

CHEL: I don’t know if he’d thought of it yet, but it does come up very soon.

BRIGHT: Karkat then moves on to the original reason he contacted Vriska -- he needs her and her mind powers in the game, because he’s just run into a double agent called Jack.

Over on the next panel, Karkat is still talking to Vriska, but he’s glancing back over his shoulder at Jack Noir. His hand is covered in blood, which keeps cycling through a range of colours. The blood, it transpires, is because Jack stabbed him. Karkat is amazingly calm about this.

CG: HE'S COOL, IT'S FINE I DON'T REALLY MIND THE STABBING, IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. CG: WELL OK I'M PRETTY SURE HE MEANT TO STAB ME. CG: BUT I KIND OF THINK THAT'S LIKE CG: THE WAY HE GREETS PEOPLE? AG: This game is so stupid. CG: IN ANY CASE I THINK HE'S PROBABLY ALL STABBED OUT.

This would be ridiculously chill even from someone who isn’t extremely cagey about his blood colour -- and it’s not that Karkat suddenly doesn’t care any more, because as soon as Vriska says she’ll ask Terezi or Jack what colour he’s bleeding, he tells her that he’s out of Terezi’s range, Jack is sworn to secrecy, and Sollux (who’s incommunicado) is the only one who knows how to make Trollian’s viewport feature work. (Given we saw how easy it is to use earlier, I’m surprised Vriska doesn’t try to figure it out herself.)

Over on the next panel, the viewer is now Jack, a few minutes prior to this conversation. Contrary to Karkat’s protestations, Jack stabs him because He's got a pretty sharp tongue and can't seem to keep it sheathed. He is curious when Karkat cares less about the wound and more about Jack seeing his blood colour, which is apparently some freakish mutation. Jack looks at his knife…

CHEL: While it’s not a realistic depiction of the colour, recall that this is the shade of red used in-comic to depict human blood. This reveal probably isn’t a surprise to anyone by now, if you’ve encountered fanart, and honestly it wasn’t a huge mindblowing revelation on my first read before I knew, but I do think it’s a clever little “aha, THAT’S why!” moment. Skilfully done.

It seems he's the only one of his kind with this mutant candy-red blood. An outcast. He thinks he was put on this planet covered in an ocean of his own blood to be taunted. Punished for something. Saddest story you ever heard. Got to do something to shut him up.

BRIGHT: Awww. That’s kind of sweet.

This little interchange gave rise to the ‘Stabdads’ fandom phenomenon, where Spades Slick is envisaged as Karkat’s father-figure. In Homestuck canon, it’s dubious how much affection Slick has for Karkat. He seems more irritated by him than anything else, but that’s about on par for how he treats the rest of the Midnight Crew. On the other hand, it clearly makes a massive impact on Karkat. We’ve seen how important blood colour is on Alternia and how insecure he is about his own; his sudden rush of fellow-feeling towards Jack is understandable, even if it does make him way too forgiving about having been stabbed.

CHEL: Karkat and Jack shake hands, and proceed to be in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Doodling on the defaced parking ticket from earlier, they draft OPERATION REGISURP.

Your whole team executes the plan along the course of its journey, employing espionage, mind control tactics, political sabotage, vicious interrogations and cold blooded assassinations. Everyone does their part and you begin to learn the true meaning of teamwork, as well as this troll disease called friendship.

Yeah, it actually happening is skipped over with one paragraph, but that’s probably a good thing with all the complexity already going on, and we do hear more details about it. First, we’re reminded of the existence and functions of the Queens’ Rings, the magic rings the queens of Derse and Prospit have which give them traits and powers from whatever the players put in their sprites. The trolls have put their lusii in their sprites, except for Aradia, whose lusus died long ago, so she got in the sprite herself. The Queen could put up with getting bits and pieces from eleven hideous monsters (well, ten hideous monsters and one adowable little fairybull thing oh my gosh it’s cuuuute) tacked onto her, but what she absolutely won’t stand for is the other thing Aradia put in her sprite…

She could not stand bearing the visage of the most loathsome creature known to existence. So vile is its appearance, so contemptible its purpose, all depictions of the creature let alone members of its population are permanently banned from any jurisdiction in the reach of her agents. Those of its kind go by many names, and so does the reviled patron god they herald - THE GREAT DETESTATION, KING PONDSQUATTER, SPEAKER OF THE VAST JOKE, or most commonly, BILIOUS SLICK.

Recall that AR thought of the hieroglyphs in the Frog Temple as “illegal pictography”. We’ll find out later why the Black Queen has such a revulsion for frogs, it’s important. But the important part right now is that she took the ring off. At the time of planning it’s in the ROYAL VAULT.

We briefly see a moment in the future of the Black Queen wrapped in rags, just like the human sessions’ White Queen, wandering the desert as the BANISHED QUASIROYAL, and the caption notes the plan was a success.

However, Doc Scratch appears in the desert in front of her, and it’s noted she was given a new purpose. This, it seems, is the origin of Snowman.

FAILURE ARTIST: I would like if there was some canon Homestuck material expanding on this REGISURP plot.

BRIGHT: Same! It sounds really interesting. One example of Homestuck’s idiosyncratic pacing, I suppose -- we spend pages and pages on trivial alchimeter nonsense, but skip over something more meaty.

CHEL: The Red Team work on that, while the Blue Team battle their own session… or so they think. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve all already figured it out, but the trolls hadn’t just yet. They note that their prototypes are affecting the opposite team’s underlings, and the readers are shown Alternia’s two Frog Temples, one near Aradia’s home and the other near Kanaya’s, each with six pillars outside (one seems to have five, but the sixth is hidden behind the building). Superimposed on each other, the pillars make a full ring of twelve.

The truth was it had always been the same session all along. That your teams were not competing, but cooperating toward a common goal. In the more drawn out form of this adventure's narrative, figuring this out would have been a huge deal. We would have been completely blown away by this stunning revelation. Wow. Same session all along. Really? Huh.

This is what Aradia’s been so mysterious about. She knew. We’re provided with a handy diagram, in case we haven’t been able to keep up.

After watching the phrases MOBIUS DOUBLE and REACH AROUND toggle for a few minutes while in a sort of stupor, you finally snap out of it.

(I just noticed, the Blue Team are the Derse dreamers and the Red Team are the Prospit dreamers. Neat!)

The reader’s attention is drawn instead to the Aquarius and Pisces symbols in the top left, belonging to characters we haven’t met yet, and the narration promises we’ll learn about them soon. Drawing attention again to GA’s Virgo symbol, the narration muses about her.

It will probably be quite some time before you get to be her. It could very well be pages and pages and pages.

Naturally, we jump right back to her.

GA’s intro is long, so we’ll take it piece by piece.

Your name is KANAYA MARYAM.

The Sanskrit name for Virgo is “Kanya”, and it’s also the name of a town in Japan. “Maryam” is the Arabic version of “Mary”, as in Jesus’ mother. It may also be a reference to Marya Zaleska, the title character of the movie “Dracula’s Daughter”.

You are one of the few of your kind who can withstand the BLISTERING ALTERNIAN SUN, and perhaps the only who enjoys the feel of its rays. As such, you are one of the few of your kind who has taken a shining to LANDSCAPING. You have cultivated a lush oasis around your hive, and in particular, you have honed your craft through the art of TOPIARY, sculpting your trees to match the PUFFY ORACLES from your dreams. You have embraced the tool of this trade, which conveniently is the weapon of choice for those who would hunt the HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD which crawl from the sand at sunrise to feast on the light and the living.

Couple things established here; trolls are not only nocturnal but actively harmed by their planet’s sun, and undead beings other than ghosts exist. Said traditional weapon for hunting them is a chainsaw, which we can see lying against her bookshelf, a reference to the Evil Dead movies.

It would be convenient if you actually hunted them, but it is of course far too dangerous, every bit as suicidal as attempting to poach the terrible MUSCLEBEASTS who roam at night. So you indulge in your bright fascination with the grim through literature. Just before the sun goes down and you join your flora in rest, you immerse yourself in tales of RAINBOW DRINKERS and SHADOW DROPPERS and FORBIDDEN PASSION.

Rainbow drinkers are, as discussed later on, troll vampires. I don’t think shadow droppers are ever expanded on, but they might be zombies or werebeasts. Troll goths, apparently, are the reverse of human goths, dressing in bright colours and staying up in the daytime, which makes sense for a species who can only safely go out at night.

You are one of the few of your kind with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few who could be selected and raised by a VIRGIN MOTHER GRUB, an event so rare as to elude documented precedent. She would defend you from desert threats, and though her life would be short, in time you would assure her of progeny.

Recall that the Mother Grub is required for troll reproduction.

You are a SEAMSTRESS or a RAGRIPPER or a TREETRIMMER or a LUMBERJACK, whichever you care to be, and your unique hive is equipped with a great supply of advanced technology to accommodate your interests. The technology and indeed the hive itself were all recovered from the ruins nearby when you were very young. The seed of your hive was deployed on the volcanic rocks beneath the sand with the assistance of your lusus and her remarkable burrowing skills, and you have lived there happily together since. You know the ruins and the hive and everything here that is not sand and rock originated from the world of your dreams. You also know that one day you will visit this world while you are awake. That day is today.

Like Jade, Kanaya has been awake on Prospit for years, and the technology in question is Skaian in origin, so that’s how she knows what’s going on with the game.

Kanaya is prompted to equip her chainsaw, which promptly turns into a lipstick in a Problem Sleuth reference. Like Jade, she has a Wardrobifier, set to randomise, which suddenly turns her black shirt and red skirt into a red leaf-print dress. She takes out the lipstick.

You can choose between your trademark jade or black. Even though a troll's lips are naturally black. But they can always be blacker, and a lady with a true sense of style knows this.

She goes with green, her dress turns into a blue kimono, and she’s messaged by someone with a fuschia Pisces symbol. This person, named cuttlefishCuller, turns out to be rather excitable, greeting her in all caps and following it up with Glub glub glub glub glub!

BRIGHT: This conversation is pretty sweet, with some friendly joking about CC’s quirk (they stick hyphens in front of their capital Es) and mention of their Collapsing And Expanding Bladder Based Aquatic Vascular System. There’s another mention of moirails, with CC saying they’ll have to join the game late to keep an eye on theirs.

It also turns out both CC and Kanaya are having some premonitions of what’s to come! Kanaya is seeing visions in the clouds of Skaia, the same way Jade does, but CC hears whispers from a mysterious ‘she’ who needs her voice keeping down. It’s implied to be CC’s lusus, as both Kanaya and CC are aware their lusii are going to die soon.

Kanaya hopes to be with her lusus as she dies, but looks out of the window to find the Virgin Mother Grub has already passed away, apparently of natural causes.

CHEL: The Mother Grub was seen briefly before; it’s a moth-like creature with a huge fat body the size of a bus, with wings too small to ever lift it, horns the same shape as Kanaya’s, and a skull-like head with big lips. The skull on Terezi’s Doomsday Scale was, we can tell now, a Mother Grub, except quite a lot bigger - presumably a breeding Grub.

BRIGHT: Kanaya changes back into her original outfit, and goes down to live up to her end of the bargain… which entails slicing a hole in her lusus with her chainsaw and pulling out a round object covered in spikes the colour of trolls’ horns, called a Matriorb. Kanaya stores it in her sylladex; she’s using a CHASTITY MODUS, which locks each card away, and the key will serendipitously be discovered when it’s time for the card to be unlocked. These modii are getting more and more esoteric.

Kanaya proceeds to have a conversation with her own moirail, Vriska, which we already read earlier.

You then proceed to have the rest of this conversation we already read, bugging and fussing and meddling through the special and magical union one can only describe as being in moirallegiance with another. At least, you guess that's how you would describe it. Maybe. Troll romance sure is confusing!

Yes, yes it is. (Spoiler: It’s not that confusing once it’s explained.)

Kanaya doesn’t have long to dwell on the conversation, as she’s contacted by caligulasAquarium, someone with a violet Aquarius symbol who she doesn’t seem to think highly of. It rapidly becomes apparent why.

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin GA: Who CA: your no good connivvin fuckin backstabbin girl crush thats wwho

CHEL: Trolls are supposed to come bi/pan as standard, so why does he need to specify “girl crush”? I wonder if Hussie hadn’t decided that yet when he wrote this part, but I’m not sure.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 34

CA’s gender hasn’t been revealed, but let’s not kid ourselves, we know from how he’s talking that he’s a dude. Nice Girls certainly exist but they don’t tend to get portrayed as so whiny in fiction, plus CC comes off as very girly, and that leaves us with six boy and six girl trolls. Balance and opposites and counterparts are a running theme throughout Homestuck. Not that there can’t be nonbinary characters, as some show up in Hiveswap; just that there would most likely have to be an even number of them, split evenly between the groups of players. Fine by me as a nonbinary person with a thing for balance and even numbers of my own.

Also, note that we’ve seen this guy, or at least his hand and foot, before. This is the litter-hater in the bowling shoes.

GA: Overstating Our Relationship Wont Make Me Feel Very Cooperative GA: Its Paler Red Than That Ok CA: pshhhhhh that is a fuckin laugh and you knoww it evveryone does CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to GA: Why Do I Got To GA: I Dont Got To And Every Time You Take My Help For Granted I Feel Like I Got To A Little Less CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs

BRIGHT: Oh hey, another troll romance term! ‘Auspisticing’ is the last of the lot, don’t worry.

CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her CA: i figure if youre going to auspisticize any twwo brinesuckers wwho sneer at each other a funny wway you might as wwell make it official and be ours right GA: Your Black Solicitation Just Seems Really Indecent

Funny words aside, Hussie does a good job at laying down context for what auspisticism is here; we now know that it involves mediating between two parties who dislike each other and that it’s a form of black romance. Meshing worldbuilding naturally into the dialogue is something Homestuck does really well at times.

Anyway, CA is trying to get in contact with Vriska because he asked her to make something for him and now she’s blowing him off.

GA: What Is It CA: kan stupid wwhat do you think its a fuckin gizmo to bloww up the wworld or somethin CA: ok wwell not that obvviously CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

While CA is obviously a douche, there’s something funny about how over-the-top he is about it and how utterly oblivious he is to the idea that Kanaya might have a problem with a device that would kill all landdwellers, although the humour is inversely proportionate to how likely he is to pull it off.

CHEL: Maybe I’m strange, but I think he’s adorable. I get the impression of a small kid trying to puff himself up to adult size.

BRIGHT: There’s also more romance talk, and this next bit is one I find interesting:

CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

I’m going to take a step back from Homestuck itself for a moment and talk about kismessitude as it’s portrayed in fandom. People tend to envision it in a variety of ways -- some see it as a BDSM relationship, some as a way of pushing a rival to be better, some as just straight-up hate-sex -- but most depictions show it as something that only affects the two people involved.

Here, though? CA’s talking about kismessitude as something that’s potentially really damn dangerous, to other people besides those involved, and cites history as a backup -- implying it can really be that dangerous, and it’s not just a teenager’s flight of fancy. (Although, that said, CA is clearly using this to try and get Kanaya in a relationship with him, so how sincere he is is questionable.)

CHEL: Later on we do see a little bit of one of the historical cases he might have been citing. We’ll discuss it more then. Also, I do like him saying “sunny” instead of “gloomy”. Makes sense!

Kanaya tells CA none of this matters, and he sneers about the “purity of the bloodline”. That’s an… uncomfortable turn of phrase, especially since he’s speaking to someone not covered by the “purity” standard, but since it applies to aliens and it’s in a society where that’s hammered into its inhabitants it’s not a Problematykks issue. Kanaya tells him it still won’t matter because their race will be wiped out entirely, and his reaction is remarkably understated:

CA: huh CA: wwell ok HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 11

CA says he knows Kanaya doesn’t lie except to herself, surprisingly perceptive for one so puffed-up otherwise. CA might be smarter than he’s letting on? He asks if her clouds told her that; that was the reader’s assumption too, but she says no, she has a different source. Uh-oh. We know what the last source of information was, and it cost Vriska an arm and an eye-sevenfold. CA’s own clouds “hide nothin but misfortune and monstrosities”, so we can guess she’s Prospit and he’s Derse. He goes back to nagging her to tell Vriska to talk to him, and when she continues to refuse he poutily steps off.

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that

Kanaya denies this, and CA says everyone knows, including Karkat.

GA: Its Unbelievable GA: Her Patience CA: wwhat CA: wwhoa wwait wwho GA: Never Mind CA: ok wwait did she talk to you today CA: wwhat did she say CA: or glub or wwhatevver

They’re talking about CC, if it wasn’t clear. Kanaya, in a callback to John’s comment to Terezi, facetiously tells him that she talked about Longing To Touch You Indiscretely and That Shes Basically In The Scarlet Throes For You. CA, flustered, picks up that she’s teasing him, and she tells him the truth, that CC’s just concerned as a moirail.

CA: if youre not savvvvy about howw you define yourself to people CA: you can just splash into the moirail zone before you knoww wwhich wways upwward

I’m going to comment on this attitude in a bit more detail when we get a clearer explanation of what moirallegiance actually is. CA leaves her with some arc words.

CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

Kanaya heads back to her room, planning to emphatically not meddle but help her friends, and consults her source; it’s fortunately not a Doc Scratch-related one at all. It is, in fact, Rose’s long-forgotten GameFAQ, saved on a server floating in the Furthest Ring, to which Prospit’s clouds directed her. I have to show you the panel for a moment though…

I’m sure there was a way we could see the screen without having it facing away from Kanaya who’s supposed to be reading it.

You can only assume this took place a long time ago. This race is likely ancient, preceding yours by millions of sweeps. Maybe billions! You like to try to imagine the adventures of these players. Were they successful in repopulating their race? Did they manage to protect their matriorb and hatch a new mother grub? Could they hold it together, or were they torn apart by the complex social dynamics, the matespritships and moirallegiences and auspisticisms and kismesissitudes that will surely plague your group along the way? You have little doubt they succeeded with flying colors.

Oh dear, dramatic irony. Kanaya fantasises about a troll version of Rose, thinking she must have been the leader of this supposedly long-ago group.

And yet they appear to have been the only of their kind to have risen to the challenge in a session stacked heavily against them.

Huh. So is this just because Kanaya can’t find more information, or are the four kids in fact the only humans who successfully got into the game? Picking four specifically white-coded kids to be the last of the human race due to supposedly their own competence is… not a good choice. And why the hell couldn’t other people succeed? This strikes me as more of the whole theme of “nobody matters except the people we’re focusing on”. A good lampshading of video game tropes, but in a literary story, that’s the opposite message to everything I’ve ever read, and it’s a creepy one.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 43 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 12 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 35

BRIGHT: I thiiiiiiiink it’s at least implied later on that there are other sessions going, it’s just that each session is a closed loop of players so we don’t see the others...although if that’s the case, does that mean Earth’s getting hit with meteors from multiple Skaias?

CHEL: That over with for the moment, we cut to Tavros’ house as you take your place as the PAGE OF BREATH in the LAND OF SAND AND ZEPHYR. Vriska, his server player, gets down to the business of building up his house towards the Gate…

… entirely out of staircases.

AT: i THINK THIS, iS, AT: pROBABLY MEANT TO ANTAGONIZE ME,

Okay, this probably makes me a bad person, but I’m crying with laughter at his expression and that line.

It’s more disability slapstick, but here the point of the joke comes off as being more that Vriska is a jerk and Tavros’ reaction is really understated than any reasonable person being supposed to assume Tavros is wrong for not being able to climb stairs. Emphasis on “comes off as”, unfortunately. I’m still gonna give a Problematykks point, and further experience with Hussie’s attitude to disability has soured the joke somewhat, even in just the next couple of pages.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 44

BRIGHT: Vriska tries to get Tavros to crawl up the stairs, first by telling him that he promised not to be boring anymore and then by saying that she’s trying to help him get stronger. She caps off the rant by demanding that he apologise.

AT: oKAY, AT: tHANKS, i GUESS, AT: bUT, AT: sORRY FOR WHAT, AG: For 8eing crippled, you ass! AT: yOU WANT ME TO APOLOGIZE, AT: fOR BEING PARALYZED, AG: Yes. AG: Say you're sorry. AT: i DON'T MEAN TO BE RUDE, oR bORING, AT: bUT THAT'S RIDICULOUS, gIVEN, AT: uH, tHE CIRCUMSTANCES, AG: 8ullshit! AG: It's something called 8asic decency and civility you fudge8looded 8oor. AG: Now get down on your useless wo88ly knees and apologize. AT: nO, i DON'T WANT TO, AG: >::::O

Vriska, what the fuck.

Tavros is really great here. He’s obviously not comfortable fighting with Vriska, and repeatedly tries to redirect her into building him ramps instead of engaging. But, at the same time, he holds his ground and doesn’t let her push him around, and won’t let go of solid hard reality in the face of Vriska trying to emotionally manipulate him.

FAILURE ARTIST: And yet people still call him a wimp.

BRIGHT: Vriska retaliates, because of course she does, by grabbing his wheelchair with her cursor and shaking it about. If Hussie left it at that, everything would be unobjectionable, at least in terms of narrative voice. Instead, well…

Now she's done it. She has awoken the mighty inner fury that is... RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CHEL: It just occurred to me to mention that the name Rufio comes from a character in the movie Hook, the leader of the Lost Boys after Peter Pan left, played by Dante Basco. Tavros’ mental image of him is a reference to that character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dante Basco did read Homestuck, with hilarious results as we will see.

But unfortunately, Rufio is not real. He's imaginary. A fake. Like a made up friend, the way fairies are. You continue to be sad and alone.

BRIGHT: Eurgh.

Let me be clear: Tavros having no further recourse to deal with Vriska’s abuse beyond his visualised self-esteem is a problem for the character, but it’s not necessarily a narrative problem per se. Escapism is a thing. You could get a decent character arc out of Tavros learning better ways to deal with harassment he can’t escape. It is a narrative problem when the narrator mocks it and makes him out to be pathetic for even trying it.

CHEL: I’d consider this to be just Tavros’ own thought process, but, sadly, this kind of narrative sneering at him carries on throughout Tavros’ presence in the comic and the fandom seems to buy into it. Tavros gets a lot of hate for reasons which mostly boil down to him being a male abuse victim; there’s a feeling that he should “try harder” to fight back, despite him being physically disabled and a member of a caste out of sight beneath her on the social ladder and legally permitted to be killed by her on a whim. Might that count as a point for WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM, for Huss and the fandom not taking the social dynamics into account for why Tavros can’t defend himself?

BRIGHT: I don’t know if it’s fair to count against the fandom when we’re reviewing Homestuck proper, but we can definitely count against Hussie!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 36

CHEL: It’s also notable that the common fandom interpretation of Tavros is as Hispanic-coded, at least partly due to his Spanish username, and of Vriska as white-coded. That’s probably not helping.

Since Hussie appears to expect us to agree with Vriska that this is funny, I’m adding another to these as well.

ALL THE LUCK: 2 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 45 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 3

BRIGHT: What’s weird about this whole mess is that Hussie doesn’t — yet — try to say that Tavros should be trying to get stronger; his disability is fully acknowledged. I feel like this kind of mockery is usually accompanied by the attitude that disabled people should just get over their disability, but Hussie’s clear that Tavros can’t. Which means he should do...what, exactly?

CHEL: Not have let Vriska disable him in the first place, presumably. Never mind that, you know, she has mind control powers so he didn’t really have a choice in that either. That is, however, an argument Vriska fans actually make. Apparently some of them actually blame him for not flying when she threw him off the cliff, which… well, unpowered flight is a thing that can happen in the comic but he certainly couldn’t do it then.

BRIGHT: ...Apparently I retain the capacity for surprise at how awful people can be. The fuck?

Back in the comic, Tavros fortunately does have one other means of recourse. Back in her hive, Vriska is suddenly prodded in the back with a flying toilet, courtesy of Kanaya.

GA: Just Presenting A Floating Reminder That Tavros Will Need Plenty Of Inclined Surfaces For His Ascent AG: That's silly. I made so many ramps, you wouldn't even 8elieve it. AG: I specifically decided I wanted to 8uild something ugly and 8oring. It is now the land of ramps and yawns. GA: Hes Reported Otherwise AG: That lousy snitch! May8e I should take his computer away so he can't go crying to fussyfangs anymore. GA: Maybe I Should Upend This Load Gaper Over Your Head AG: No, don't! GA: Im Still Learning The Interface GA: It Could Happen Accidentally At Any Moment AG: I'm only trying to help him. ::::( GA: Think Of Another Way To Help

CHEL: Did I mention Kanaya is my zodiac troll? I can only long to reach her heights of awesome. Of course the ability to levitate toilets would kinda help.

BRIGHT: Vriska heads down to her treasure vault and retrieves a pair of ROCKET SHOES. The captchalogue code for these is ‘PSHOOOES’, which amuses me greatly. Vriska sends the code to Tavros, who combines it with the code for his wheelchair to create a flying wheelchair. Now that is a good use of alchemising!

CHEL: Awww!

Tavros flies up to the Gate, and we cut back to him later on, leading an entourage of communed-with imps and ogres to move obstacles and help him solve puzzles. Using his skills well, I see! In another set of ruins the imps load jigsaw pieces of rock into a frog-shaped alcove,

Things, however, don’t continue to go so well, because Hussie hates this poor kid. I do not mean that facetiously. Statements he’s made elsewhere imply he has a hell of a lot of contempt for several of the characters he created, which I don’t understand at all. We’ll go into this after Act 7, but I get the sensation that the characters are merely tools to show off the complexity and meta references, which are the parts he really cares about.

BRIGHT: It’s not unknown for authors to dislike characters they wrote; the great Terry Pratchett reputedly hated his character Rincewind. The key difference is that in Pratchett’s case, the audience couldn’t tell. Hussie, on the other hand, tends to make his disdain pretty obvious, to the detriment of the story.

CHEL: That’s a point. Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes, too. He didn’t, however, set up situations solely to shit on Holmes in his books.

BRIGHT: I think that’s the key. I’ll forgive a multitude of failings as long as the author seems to be treating the characters fairly. That doesn’t mean that good things have to happen to them — plenty of bad things can happen and I’ll enjoy it — it just means that the author has to...respect how the character feels and would behave, I guess.

Of course, respect is Hussie’s antithesis, so.

Also, nothing so far has shown Vriska to be anything other than a (granted, entertaining) bully. I wasn’t around while Homestuck was updating, so I’m not sure when her fandom took off, but it has to be later than this, surely?

CHEL: I don’t know. I wasn’t around till about mid-Act 6.

What was I on about? Oh yes. Tavros is interrupted by Vriska again, who bitches him out for doing things the boring way and seeking the boring lore.

AG: The minds of your consorts are very soft and impressiona8le. AG: As easily manipul8ed as all those imps you've 8een 8ossing around. AG: I have picked apart their tiny little lizard 8rains and seen through all the smoke and mirrors of their riddles. AG: I have gotten to the truth they are guarding. The great 8ig mystery 8ehind this planet. And you know what it is, Tavros? AT: nO, AG: It's 8ullshit! AG: Meaningless, 8oring, fanciful 8ullshit wrapped in flowery poems to keep you guessing. AG: It all leads to one thing anyway, and that's what we should put our attention on. AG: Real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold. AG: They cheat, Tavros. AG: It is time you learned to start cheating.

Interesting theory. Tavros thinks befriending his monsters instead of killing them is cheating, and Vriska grudgingly agrees but is annoyed he isn’t killing anything. She claims to have designed a better and more challenging quest for him; he asks after her own quest, and she says she has time because Kanaya’s busy.

AG: Which is just as well 8ecause I was starting to get nannied HARD. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 37

Strange word choice for a species raised by animals, but okay. Vriska sends Tavros a map to the next Gate, and he sets off in his little rocket chair. Little does he know.

You proceed through what seems to be your second gate, into the LAND OF MAPS AND TREASURE. The THIEF OF LIGHT lies in wait.

In a callback to our last meeting of Breath and Light players, Tavros crashes through Vriska’s wall and is left hanging upside-down in the rocket chair from the large cobwebs across the room, while Vriska sleeps on a pile of broken eight-balls. Doesn’t look comfortable, but trolls rest in worse places later. Vriska wakes, and Tavros falls head-first onto the floor.

Here is where it gets incredibly uncomfortable, and we have to show it in detail to assign points properly and so that there’s no ambiguity about what’s happening, so if you have any sexual assault, ableism, underage, mind control, or victim-blaming triggers you may want to skip this part. No clothing is removed but it’s very unpleasant to read and the attitude toward it is worse. Seriously, this is Taklamakan Zoo levels of bad.

(This heading below’s not part of the comic, I just put it there so you can skip. The sequence ends with the piece of fanart of Kanaya looking at the sideways screen.)

~*THE ASSAULT STARTS HERE*~

Vriska sits up. She’s wearing a very short strappy white Tinkerbell dress with her sign on it, and what look like over-the-knee socks, a commonly fetishised style of clothing. I remind you these characters are supposed to be thirteen years old. The dress is also the same as the one worn by the fairy in the artwork on Tavros’ desktop background. I don’t know if Vriska had seen that or not.

FAILURE ARTIST:

To be fair she’s just in an actually-more-modest version of what Peter Pan’s sidekick/love interest wears and the socks come off as more dorky than sexy.

Oh my! It appears Pupa Pan himself has flown through your window while you were asleep. How exciting! Surely he is here to take you away on the adventure of a lifetime. He is more dreamy and heroic than you ever imagined. But what's this?? It seems the legendary Boy-Skylark has misplaced his shadow. He is looking EVERYWHERE for it, to no avail. He is having a devil of a time, what with being paralyzed from the waist down and all. He clearly needs your help.

CHEL: Vriska is prompted to Help Pupa find shadow, and approaches Tavros with a nasty-looking grin on her face, while he lies on the floor, gritting his teeth in noticeable pain.

Pupa! You truly are a silly goose. Your shadow has been trapped underneath your useless torso the whole time! Honestly, where else would it be you stupid sack of shit?

Charming. Vriska proceeds to kick him in the head, or at least nudge him with her foot, while he lies unresponsive.

Of course, the secret to reuniting with your shadow is to get up and walk around. And play and dance and frolic! Your shadow will surely join in your gaiety. But it appears Pupa has lost the use of his legs. There will be no frolicking in this young man's future. ::::( Unless...

Everyone knows that just a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST along with a happy thought will allow any boy to get up and walk again. Everyone knows this because it is in the classic tale, PUPA PAN. Young Pupa flies through the window of a fairy girl's respiteblock, falls on the floor, and has trouble getting up like an enormous pansy. The fairy girl then helps him walk again, and in return, he teaches her to fly, even though she probably already knows how to fly. Because she's a fairy. They fly out of her window together, and have magical adventures for many sweeps thereafter. To be honest, you hardly know a damn thing about Pupa Pan. But you do not care.

Pupa remains as pathetic and useless as ever.

FAILURE ARTIST: The story just keeps mocking Tavros for being disabled.

CHEL: Not to mention for being interested in fairies. Because how dare a boy have a gender-nonstandard interest, or a young teenager enjoy whimsical escapism from an increasingly horrible and guaranteed-to-be-short life.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 39

I might be projecting because the fandom has made me loathe her, but it honestly comes off like Vriska dressed up like this in the first place less to seduce Tavros and more to make sure she thoroughly ruined his favourite thing to hurt him further, especially if the narration is supposed to be things she’s actually saying to him.

The stardust did nothing! Probably because it is just glittery powder with no magical properties whatsoever and is basically bullshit. Because in case it wasn't clear, magic isn't real, and neither are miracles. OR It could just be that Pupa has failed to have a happy thought! Your duty is clear. You will have to MAKE him have happy thoughts. Vriska: Make Pupa have happy thoughts.

He certainly doesn’t seem to be having happy thoughts now. Notice his expression, what we can see of it, looks terrified, he’s trembling, and let’s recall that he’s paralysed from the waist down. Even if he wasn’t, she’s of a far, far higher caste than him, legally permitted to do whatever she wants to him, including killing him if he tries to resist. It’s kind of gone back and forth on, but higher bloods are a few times stated to be a lot stronger than lower bloods, and if they work like humans, they’re in puberty right now, a time at which human girls tend to get taller and stronger sooner than boys. Again, it’s gone back and forth on, but a common interpretation is that female trolls are stronger than male trolls in general and/or have the social power advantage. Let’s also remember that, even if none of those factors apply, Vriska has mind control powers. There is no point here at which Tavros has the advantage, nothing he can use as leverage on her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, and she does.

BRIGHT: We’ve also been explicitly shown that Vriska has little to no respect for anyone else’s autonomy if she finds it inconvenient, and that Tavros is her favourite punching bag, and that his ability to stand up for himself when she gets going is extremely limited.

CHEL: Despite the odds stacked against him, Tavros struggles against the kiss forced on him, and when Vriska pushes him back, doesn’t respond with anything but a look of horror, though she appears to expect him to, as a flickering heart-spade with a question mark over it appears between them. I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be the thought process of him or her or both.

Vriska hurls him onto the floor with some force...

… and activates her mind control, causing little hearts to light up in Tavros’ eyes.

BRIGHT: Vriska has used her mind-control powers on Tavros before, and when it happened she walked him off a cliff. There is basically no way that her doing it again isn’t going to be a traumatic experience for him, above and beyond the inherent horror of losing control over one’s body.

I’m inclined to think that forcibly altering his emotions is worse, though. Being paralysed was bad enough, but Tavros knows what happened and he knows how he feels about it. Making him fall in love with her is just…on one level, it’s a horrible assault on his autonomy as a person, and on another level, it’s tailor-made to make him doubt himself and believe the encounter was something he wanted.

FAILURE ARTIST: I hadn’t thought that he might now consider the encounter as consensual, which would explain his later reaction.

CHEL: Tavros paws at her legs, making kissy faces, and she looks vaguely concerned. Note the background still depicts wavy blue rays coming off her, showing her power is still active.

Looking defeated, she drops the control and dumps him on the floor again.

I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be thinking in this last panel. Is she feeling guilty? Is she disappointed that he didn’t like her under his own power? Has she just decided he’s too useless to be worth the effort? Any could be true.

BRIGHT: I read that as disappointment that even when he ‘liked’ her, he didn’t act the way she wanted. (And the way Tavros acted is kind of disturbing. ‘Mindlessly pawing at someone’ is not what I’d expect from him if he was legitimately attracted to someone.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The common interpretation these days was she was realizing she wasn’t into boys which okay that’s good for her but she should feel more bad about molesting him.

CHEL: That also makes no sense, because she shows interest in multiple boys later.

I’m also not entirely sure if Vriska had the intention of actually raping Tavros here (in the standard way, I mean, as one could argue that mind control is a form of rape), or just making out with him. The fact that she dressed up in vaguely fetishy clothing isn’t making it look good, though. Yes, she’s very young, but traumatised kids in particular have been known to lash out sexually like that. It’s a way of reasserting personal power, and I imagine it would be more prevalent in a society with no sapient adult supervision. While there are mitigating circumstances involved in their social situation and Vriska not really having ever had a chance to learn better, that doesn’t make this not a horrible thing to do, or not traumatising for Tavros.

BRIGHT: The clothing could potentially be down to Vriska wanting to look ‘adult’ without fully understanding why it looks adult. That does come up sometimes with teens — they want to experiment with clothing because that’s how adults dress, not because they want to look sexy, or they might dress a certain way for dates because that’s the social model they have for How Dates Work.

And if I read it like that, this basically looks like Vriska having the date equivalent of a dolls’ tea party. Which says volumes about how she views Tavros’s autonomy.

CHEL: Good point. Though honestly it would say volumes about same either way!

BRIGHT: I said earlier that Vriska is better than Equius at recognising when other people’s desires conflict with hers, and she is, but that doesn’t mean she respects those differences. She just recognises that they’re there, and overrides them. This is a prime example of Vriska viewing Tavros as something between a chew-toy and a prop. First she kicks him around and terrifies him, then she expects him to be able to get over those emotions at the drop of a hat and respond to her advances — and, moreover, she wants him to respond in a certain way, which Tavros has zero way of knowing. This is the first time she’s shown that sort of interest in him, unless her earlier behaviour was the Alternian equivalent of pigtail-pulling.

...I think maybe that was in fact Alternian pigtail-pulling. Or at least Vriska’s version of pigtail-pulling.

CHEL: That’ll actually make more sense, once we explain what the spade symbol means.

Okay, how many counts does this cover?

ALL THE LUCK: 12 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 31 CALL CPA PLEASE: 26 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 55 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 13

It also occurred to me during this sequence to think again about how Karkat contemptuously swears at and hangs up the phone on the injured Tavros. This, at first glance, seems to be very much at odds with the “cranky but caring” impression we’re supposed to have of Karkat… but it fits precisely with Hussie’s opinion of Tavros and how pathetic he is for allowing a much more powerful person to permanently disable him. I know at the moment it looks like I’m not separating the character from the author, but it’ll become clear as we go that that is what he thinks.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 14

Why didn’t we start a FUCK YOU, HUSSIE count?

BRIGHT: It would have ended up longer than all the other counts combined.

CHEL: The actual assault is over now, but there’s one more picture of it. The ramifications must continue to be discussed, so tread cautiously. The actual act is over now, though.

Said ramifications come pretty quickly. Kanaya, having dealt with getting herself into the game and prototyped her own lususprite, decides to check on Vriska.

Ideally she has not gotten herself into too much trouble. And ideally the dramatic irony has not gotten so thick you could draw a dotted line on it with a tube of lipstick and cut it in half with a chainsaw.

Of course, she sees the exact moment Vriska kisses Tavros.

(Fanart source has now been deleted, sadly.)

~*THE ASSAULT ENDS HERE*~

Humorous art aside over, let’s watch Kanaya’s reaction in more detail. She angrily looks at a copy of the Tinkerbell dress, which she presumably sent the alchemiter code for rather than the actual item to Vriska, hence why she still has it.

So THAT'S why she had you make this dress for her??? And you just went along with it like a sucker. Argh, you are such an IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like Karkat, Kanaya is presented as the caring one, the protective one. The “mom friend” of the group. And yet, she looks at this, in which Tavros is clearly frightened and struggling, and her reaction is to be mad that Vriska didn’t want to wear the dress for a date with her. I’m not sure whether this says more about Hussie’s opinion of Tavros or the social system of Alternia or both, but it certainly says a lot.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 56 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 13 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 15

BRIGHT: Kanaya has had to corral Vriska on Tavros’s behalf already! Possibly more than once! She has all the information to realise that this is abusive, even leaving aside Tavros’s reaction! Sure, teens can be self-centred, but even so this is egregious.

CHEL: Kanaya’s Grubsprite comforts her and she throws the dress out the window.

Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands.

Yes, I’m sure Tavros thinks so too.

Charles: "I know Sir can be prickly, but you have to understand he had a very terrible childhood."

Klaus: "I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now."

-A Series of Unfortunate Events

#homestuck #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread #let's read homestuck #Homespork

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companionjones · 5 years ago

Text

A Forced Realization

Fandom: His Dark Materials

Summary: After seeing what his future is coming to, you appear in Lord Asriel’s laboratory one day to convince him that he is going about things all wrong. Will he heed your advice?

Warnings: MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR spoilers for season one. I have not read the books.

*******

“Hi.”

Asriel tripped and dropped the glass of water he had been holding. He grabbed the nearest sharp object before facing you. “Who are you and what is your business here?” He inquired, clearly and curtly.

“To put it simply, I’m here to stop you from killing a kid and his daemon.” You glanced through some papers on a table next to you.

He seemed to have put together the horrible conclusion his research would bring him to, so Asriel didn’t question your admission. “I ask again, who are you?”

“I guess you could say I’m a witch of sorts. That’s how I know of your future.” Thinking further, you hummed, “Then again, I do come from one of the other worlds you’re researching, but that’s a long story in of itself.”

Asriel was stunned at the new information. “You’re from another Earth? How did you get here--”

“Ah, ah,” you shushed, “I am not here to discuss that. I’m here to talk about you.”

He was clearly confused. “Me?”

“You’ll kill a kid, Asriel,” you reprimanded, “It was bad enough that you have treated your own daughter the way that you have, but to take child’s life?”

The man avoided your eyes. “I do what is necessary.”

“For what? This war you say you’re fighting? Who are you fighting for if not the children? And don’t give me that ‘needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ bull. If you proceed like this, you will kill a child.”

Asriel shook his head and took a seat on a stool. “I can’t think about that. I have to stay focused on the big picture.”

You sighed. “Asriel, humor me for a minute and think about your daughter. I know that somewhere in you, you care about her. Hopefully, you love her. Just a few weeks ago, Coulter had Lyra in her care.”

He locked eyes with you. “Marisa?”

“You stop with that right now. Coulter is not the woman you think she is. Coulter hurt Lyra. She had her daemon attack Lyra’s daemon. Your daughter’s daemon. All because Lyra was scared and wanted to be free--No! I know what you are thinking. Coulter was not acting in Lyra’s best interests. The only good thing you’ve done for that girl is try to keep her safe. This woman nearly killed her.”

While you talked, Asriel looked at the floor in an attempt to keep his thoughts straight. When he focused on you again, his face was wet with tears. “What part could you possibly want in all this? Why do you even care?”

“I’ve been watching this world for a while now, Asriel. One could say I’ve gotten attached to your family, specifically you and your daughter. Lyra is on her way here now, along with some friends. She will arrive soon...I implore you to be a better man when she does. I now believe it is time for me to go.”

Asriel was taken off guard. “You’re leaving? But what if I needed help? W-with Lyra?”

“I have faith you will find your way. Plus, I should be gone before Thorold finds me here. That would just be more explaining to do.” You paused, and carefully scrutinized Asriel before divulging, “There’s already gates to other worlds on this plane.”

He gazed up at you in awe.

“I can’t tell you where, but they’re out there. But please, be careful. Try to always put your daughter first. I’m trusting you. Goodbye.”

Asriel didn’t move until you were halfway down the stairs. He was trying to process everything you had told him. He called out to you once he realized you had gone, but you had disappeared by the time he got outside.

********

Author’s Note: Thank you so much for reading! Fill up that heart and reblog if you liked it. I also would love a comment if you have the time. If you would like to read more, I have more fics over on my page. You should check it out. Also, REQUESTS ARE OPEN. I take requests for one-shots, drabbles, multi-chapters, headcannons and preferences. No smut, please. I write for a variety of fandoms. If you’re wondering if I write for a specific fandom, please ask me. Have a nice day, night, or whatever time it is for you.<3

#his dark materials #his dark materials hbo #lord asriel #lord asriel x reader #james mcavoy #a forced realization #forced realization #companion jones #love james mcavoy. love lin-manuel miranda. love the show.#his dark materials spoilers

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full-course-identity · 5 years ago

Note

Give me your thoughts on uuuh Jake

wew boy

okay. gonna word dump this, and probably other interpretation asks, so I can get the words out there.

from my POV, there’s 3 types of canon Jake + 1 fanon vers + my personal interpretation. lemme explain what they are;

Book Jake, who I don’t have enough experience with bc I STILL haven’t finished the book… >_>;

2River Jake, who is kinda oblivious and very in-the-moment impulsive (not so bad he’s jumping place to place ADHD like Rich, but like, not considering that maybe dropping everything to seduce Madeline or Christine is a bad idea when he clearly really likes Chloe). these are debatably survival mechanisms bc of his family (and wealth, if you want to go into the “being rich actually traumatizes you and locks you into dissociation” theory–but to be fair, this is partially reliant on thinking Jake is Genuinely Rich. … well, not Rich as in… yeah); ignoring any pain he feels in favor of getting dicked down and forgetting about everything for a while. very “I’m not sad, I’m busy!!!!!”

Bway (possibly the new canon general for all Jakes since it sounds like London’s is modeled after him but just… toned down), who is still oblivious, but towards other people’s emotions instead of himself; he’s manipulative, a little impulsive but a lot more malicious about it, and he knows exactly how hurt he is about his parents. this jake’s awareness of himself makes him act worse because he knows this is the only thing that seems to help and it’s basically the only thing he actually has control of. his wealthiness is undeniably present and Bad here because the reason taking what he wants and not caring that it hurts people is his main coping skill is pretty much only because he’s been allowed that privilege all his life. i tend to think this version of him should be done by a white cishet dude (despite jake’s actor on bway being genuinely FANTASTIC) bc being marginalized in a high school should’ve curved a lot of the “endless power and privilege” he gets for being rich (Not That One).

[i… think this jake has ‘better’/more nuanced writing in BWay… but i don’t think it fits the musical nor is it the overall direction i think it should’ve gone. BMC feels best to me when there’s a heavier element of Dark Humor that briefly nods to a Larger and more Fucked Up world behind the bit we see in the musical. making it largely a twisted comedy, maybe even ramping that up further with more whiplash lines like jake’s “which means the house is empty, so that’s fun”]

Fanon Jake is… like most of the fanon characters in BMC, a bit… “bipolar” (like, radically shifting depending on the situation). the BMC fandom has been born with heavy engagement from minors in the current fascist climate of fandom as a whole. as a result, you have three general uses of jake that as “approved of” by somehow the exact same people despite being conflicting in a lot of ways. THIS IS NOT ME SHITTING ON FANON, i actually think most of this fandom is just a casual romp for most people and that shouldn’t be snatched away from them nor mocked nor treated like you HAVE to be logically consistent when this is just a fun hobby for most… but there are still trends i notice:

1: Jake the sweet bi disaster who loves their significant other and is just a little bit hopeless in their silliness and Down For Whatever-esque personality. this is often used for shippy pictures and memes and cute little oneshots, plus, of course, fluff.

2: Jake the tragic abuse victim who is extremely sad and has to learn to love again and has always been selfless, plus or minus a permanent disability post-fire. this is of course used for hurt/comfort, plus in combination kinda with michael in the bathroom-esque posts and tragic art, often also used as an example of the squip being the worst for jeremy or rich guilt trauma. also: aesthetic and moodboard posts.

3: the one I have the least good will towards: Jake the “why does everybody woobify mlm? You can’t portray him without flaws! queer boys aren’t your fetish!!!” with an attached, clunkily written reasons why he was an asshole that is also simultaneously watered down so you don’t think he’s a Monster bc then you’d be vilifying queer men (well, more like they’d feel bad about their cutesy-er ‘emotional support’ art and writing which is Totally Different from all the other cutesy emotional support art and writing).

basically, Meta Trying To Make Jake Reasonably Flawed But Not Evil in this fandom is RARELY genuine–it’s more often than not moralistic hand-wringing made so that they can wash themselves of the guilt for actually enjoying something with a character they portray as mlm, or otherwise the guilt of enjoying anything romantic or sexual involving men or queer people period when we’re apparently not supposed to do that anymore, as decreed by the radfems infesting our spaces.

and, well, or you’re an mlm writing this post, you’re probably young and still feeling extremely sensitive and scared about your identity. i once saw a very wise post by a trans person who had been trans for a long time, who said that when you first come out as trans (or queer in general, but especially trans people who are beginning social or physical transition and coming to terms with themselves) you are obvs on High Fucking Alert and so you’re insecure and scared of anything, ranging from “obvious transphobia” to “just trans people enjoying themselves and exploring transphobia in fiction or else their own sexuality”. again, this can relate to a lot of identities tbh, and as such young mlm either cis or trans can get very Itchy about people enjoying mlm content.

anyway.

wrapping it back around to me: i edit jake on a case by case basis (sometimes i even make him eviler or meaner based on what’s set up during Bway, he’s just not my usual go-to villain), but i tend to think of him as a tragic Mr. Peanutbutter-y sweetheart who kinda knows he feels like shit yet also knows that if he stops to assess it, it would make his life a lot harder in a time where he can’t afford that. his relationship with chloe is extremely toxic (chloe abuses him horribly, specifically), and so he tries to claw his way out of it only to be continually back in by chloe and her bullshit.

this is why he doesn’t really get... well. he genuinely thought the thing with christine was going to be permanent; he wasn’t jerking her around, he thought he was over chloe and wanted a girl as cool and fun and genuinely nice as her. afterward he Gets It, and so feels Really Bad--at a time where he doesn’t have his house, his legs are broken (i don’t tend to put him in a perma-wheelchair), his parents have abandoned him, and he best friend is in the hospital. guilt crashes in on him from all sides, and he just has to... pretend it isn’t, even as he can no longer stop himself from thinking about it.

if i was to do a jake focused story, it’d probably be a dating sim where you play as him and watch his life change in conjunction with his attempts to find happiness again; you can either choose decisions that help him greatly or ruin his life so ver much... hmm. lets file that under hashtag “story ideas i’ll never use even though they could be great”

to wrap this up: i like jake. i don’t... really enjoy most of the written content (fanfic, meta, sometimes even the storylines on ask blogs) in this fandom about him or... really, most of the characters, which i feel bad about--i’d enjoy it more if it was every in conjunction with my usual Wants in a fic, which is, like. extreme angst.

BUT

i do still like jake, and i can super enjoy his portrayal in memes and visual art

he’s just not my total fave, but like, the reason he tends not to come up a lot in my content is more what i’m focusing on and why. i’d be happy to use him in stories if his presence fit.

as a bonus

here’s the ships i’m happy to use him for, generally: deere, michael/jake, brooke/jake, toxic chloe/jake, and of course, different ocs/jake

his identities/labels: cis, bisexual/romantic... tho sometimes i actually go for bisexual and aromantic! outside bway and eviler jakes, i’m good with him being any race, and even then it’s just a matter of suspending disbelief re: privilege theory. also, PTSD probably, and maybe generalized anxiety as a result. maaaaaybe autistic too? adhd would be a hard sell for me since he seems super put together in a way that’d be extremely difficult for every form of adhd, but i can see him being neurodivergent on the spectrum + like dyslexia maybe. oh, and i sorta-kinda think he may be color blind? but really i’d drop that at a moment’s notice if it’d be easier to write him without it lol.

his interests: one is more or less sports in general, tho i think that, unless he went straight for track or swimming or something Olympics (which he probably can’t do now...), that’s a high school or some college only focus for him. so, besides sports, i think he’d kinda like the satisfaction and steady growth of Collecting Rare Things That You Have To Look For, like cool rocks, bugs, etc.

as for careers... some form of doctor something, maybe a businessman of some sort but he’d likely try to curve his power in that field as much as possible; he inherits his parents' assets and company or whatever, but he probably takes a backseat to that and only really has it out of a sense of ‘it’s my job as my parent’s kid to keep the company going--without engaging in the same awful legal issues they did--for as long as i can’. one of my fave jake-is-there stories, vanceypant’s spicy bis-focused fic 1999, has him owning a restaurant, and that was cool as hell.

also jake loves dogs. especially golden retrievers. yes.

#be more chill #bmc #jake dillinger #kadabralin #bmc meta #meta #character interpretations #wow this... is long #holy shit sorry about that

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chromecutie · 5 years ago

Text

Not A Ghost - part 19

A/N - Multi-part fic. Colossus x OC where OC has come home after being wrongfully imprisoned in the Icebox. Warnings for whole fic - references and flashbacks to harsh prison environment, including various types of abuse. Takes place shortly after events in Deadpool 2. Whole thing will end up on my AO3 eventually.

Taglist: @emma-frxst @ra-ra-rasputiin @holamor @empressme-bitch @marvel-is-perfection @hazilyimagine @marvelhead17 @rovvboat @angstybadboytrash @whitewitchdown @master-sass-blast @mori-fandom @mooleche @dandyqueen . Wanna be added or removed? Holla at me.

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In Rhonda and Piotr’s shared bathroom, Yukio spread her dye supplies across the countertop. She kept a lot of pink on hand for her own coloring needs, but also had small amounts of almost every other bold color imaginable. Rhonda sat on a little stool, tense and seething. That boy Russell had caught her off guard, calling her by her prison moniker as if it was some harmless nickname. It turned her stomach to be called Guestbook in front of her family.

Staying upbeat, Yukio said with a big smile, “I keep asking Ellie when we’ll get more girl time with you, so this is really exciting!” Picking up each of her colors to consider them, she continued, “It’s so sad you’ve been spending so much time by yourself -- I think you’ll feel better spending more time around us.”

“Yeah,” Rhonda said distantly.

Turning to her girlfriend, Yukio asked, “Bunny, will you go get the Bluetooth speaker? Let’s have some music while we do this!”

Ellie hesitated. Yukio only called her Bunny in private. She supposed it was okay to count Rhonda as close enough to “in private,” since it seemed to barely register to her at all. “Yeah, Sugar Bean. Be right back.” As Ellie was walking out, Yukio arranged the dye colors according to her decisions.

“I’ve only known you from pictures,” Yukio said, “and every single one I’ve seen, you have some bright hair color. I think that’s what you’re missing here.” Digging in her pouch of tools, she took out a comb and some scissors. “We gotta do some cleanup first, though.”

Rhonda frowned slightly, “You know how to cut hair?”

Yukio took in a big breath and pursed her lips before answering, “With all due respect, Mrs. Rasputin, veteran X-Men, I can’t do any worse than this,” she fluffed Rhonda’s hair. It was chopped in uneven chunks. The shortest pieces fell about the right length for a bob, if it was possible to do a bob on one third of her head. The longest sections fell to the middle of her back, but the ends were so damaged it seemed like it would be a better mercy to just shave her whole head and start over.

The reality check stung, but Rhonda couldn’t get mad at Yukio for being right. “All right,” she shrugged. “Have at it.”

“You should take off your hoodie so we don’t get hair all over it.”

Rhonda hesitated.

“If you don’t, it will be super itchy until you wash it, like at least twice,” Yukio insisted, with a pointed look.

With a sigh, Rhonda pulled her hoodie over her head and laid it on the counter. She hated having her prison tattoos visible, and tried not to squirm for how uncomfortable she was.

Ellie returned with the speaker and paired Yukio’s phone. After a few taps, some music started playing--

My lover’s got humor--

Yukio’s eyes shot wide and she beamed, “YES!” She tapped Rhonda on the shoulder, “You’re in for the real treat now, listen!” Ellie smirked and leaned against the wall, watching and scrolling on her phone.

As Yukio snipped and combed Rhonda’s hair, she hummed along to Hozier’s “Take Me to Church.” It was light and atmospheric, while also rich and deep like it was made from all the oldest forces on Earth. Rhonda’s troubled expression softened as she listened. When the song was over, she held up her hand, “Hey...can I hear that again?”

Yukio happily wiggled her shoulders, “We can put it on loop until you want something else.”

Ellie was already tapping the loop buttons as her girlfriend said it. “Told you,” she said simply.

Ellie was right -- Hozier was objectively good. As Rhonda listened, she felt her tension ease in places she hadn’t realized she had been carrying it (or how long she’d been carrying it). The sound made her want to stand in an open field between some mountains and cry...or laugh, or shriek, she really wasn’t sure. The vocals and backup chorus were full of raw emotion and she felt her chest opening up, as if she had forgotten how to truly breathe and this music reminded her.

On one loop of the song, Yukio belted at the top of her lungs, as if the song was made from her own soul. Even Ellie smiled and hummed along, no longer able to hide that she liked it too.

Clippings of hair ghosted over Rhonda’s shoulders and arms, tickling and itching. She tried not to glance in the mirror, but finally looked up and saw Yukio was almost done cutting a decent shape that didn’t quite touch her shoulders. There were even some shorter pieces in front that she had to admit looked good with her jaw line.

“Are you good with this one?” Yukio asked after the ninth loop of “Take Me to Church” ended. “There’s others on this album you’ll love too.”

With a sheepish little grin, Rhonda nodded. She gestured loosely at her hair. “This is looking a lot better already, thank you.”

Confident and playful, Yukio replied, “I’m just getting started.”

Rhonda eyed the different colors Yukio had arranged on the counter. “Wait, you’re gonna mix these? How?”

Ellie piped up, “It’s better to just shut up and trust her. I’ve never seen a color job from her that wasn’t amazing.”

Fixing her head straight forward, Rhonda tried not to watch what Yukio was doing in the mirror. She felt Yukio’s fingers as she gently ran them through her hair, testing the texture and the way it fell. Yukio slipped on some gloves, and humming along to Hozier, got to work covering Rhonda’s mousey grey-brown hair with something much more vibrant.

The women laughed and chatted as they waited for the dye to take, and when Rhonda rinsed it all out, Yukio lent her a blow dryer and some hairspray so she could style it how she wanted. When Rhonda was done, she had volume to make an 80s rockstar jealous -- and now with color an 80s rockstar could only dream of. Near the roots, her hair was a muted teal, melting to bright emerald green, and finally ending in electric yellow.

“No way,” Ellie breathed, smiling wider than Yukio had ever seen her. “You look so badass!” Slipping an arm around her girlfriend, she added, “You did great, Sugar Bean.”

Rhonda’s lips quirked -- she supposed that with the bright hair, steri-strips covering the nicks on her face, and visible tattoos (including the tear drops) she did look like a young person’s idea of badass. As amazing as it felt to have color in her hair again, Rhonda’s smile faltered looking at the Xs on her arm in the mirror.

“They bother you bad, huh?” Ellie asked. She had her guesses for what they might mean, but for how angry and hurt Rhonda looked whenever someone brought them up, Ellie was afraid to ask anything specific.

Rhonda reflexively ran her left hand up her arm, like she could hide or wipe off the ink with the gesture. “Oh...I mean--”

“Would you get laser tattoo removal?” Yukio asked, guileless.

“Huh,” Rhonda thought a moment, “Doesn’t the laser just make the shape of the tattoo look like a scar?”

Yukio gave an exaggerated shrug. Ellie brushed it off, “Probably hurts more than it’s worth anyway.” She stood beside Rhonda in the mirror, fixing her with a hard stare. “Besides, I think you shouldn’t hide them. Nobody else here tries to hide their scales, or fur, or blue skin. Why hide this?”

“It’s…” Rhonda debated whether she should explain, and realized even if she should, she couldn’t do it. “This is different. It means something different.”

Stubborn, Ellie pressed, “But you’re the only one who knows what it means, right? So fuck what anyone else thinks.”

Russell knew. Wade knew. If Wade knew, Cable might also know. As well as any other telepath. Plus whoever they felt like telling. Rhonda’s stomach turned. “It’s not just me,” she shook her head.

To keep Ellie from poking further, Yukio cut in, “Well, if you feel like you need to cover them up, it’s the middle of summer. It’s too hot to wear hoodies and cardigans all the time.” She turned to her girlfriend, giving her the most angelic puppy eyes, “Hey Bunny? Can you go get something for me?” Yukio whispered in Ellie’s ear and in another minute, Ellie headed out and down the hall again.

Rhonda fluffed her hair and eyed Yukio in the mirror. “You really got her wrapped around your finger, huh?”

Yukio tried to contain her smile, and blushed a little anyway, “Maybe a little. She likes everyone to think she’s so edgy, but I know better.”

Nodding, Rhonda added, “She acts so tough until you get to know her and realize she’s a sweetheart, yeah.” She had learned that herself with the rough and tumble child Ellie had been.

Yukio chewed her lip like she wanted to say something, then suddenly blurted, “You were my favorite X-Men for a long time. I really wanted to be like you...Voltage.”

She hadn’t been called by her codename in ages, and it stirred up a lot of old feelings. And while she wasn’t Ororo or Scott or Hank (or Piotr), it was funny and strange for someone to tell Rhonda she was their favorite. “Why?”

Yukio flicked an electric spark off her fingers, “You were like me. And you had fun hair. And you always did cool poses in all your photos.” She laughed, “Cool poses were a must when I was nine.”

“You had good taste,” Rhonda smirked.

Ellie was huffing when she came back to Rhonda’s room. “I wasn’t sure which one you were talking about,” she said to Yukio with an edge of annoyance, “I had to hold them all up to the light one by one to check.” She handed off a pair of green tights.

Yukio held them out to Rhonda, “These were more opaque than I wanted, but maybe you can wear one leg as a sleeve? So you can cover your arm without being too hot.”

With a thoughtful frown, Rhonda nodded, “We can try it.” They looked around the room to see where Piotr kept scissors these days, and they found them in a container of other office supplies under the little table by the window. Yukio quickly snipped one leg off the pair of tights and twirled it at Rhonda like a big ribbon.

Surprisingly, the leg fit fine over Rhonda’s arm. It wasn’t too loose, certainly wasn’t restrictive, and her tattoos were invisible under the green nylon-poly blend. Not much could be done for the Xs that peeked out of the leg at her shoulder, but she was satisfied with the rest. With the foot still intact, there was nowhere for her fingers to come out, and she flopped her hand uselessly at Yukio. “Help,” she said with an exaggerated fake pout.

Yukio laughed and obliged her. Two more quick snips and Rhonda stretched her fingers and thumb through the slits. Rhonda checked the mirror again.

What she saw was...tolerable. She could live with a small portion of her ink showing if the rest was covered. Her neck felt bare and vulnerable and she wasn’t sure what to do about it, but her new green sleeve went great with the green in her hair. For the first time in years, she mostly recognized her own reflection. Amazing what a little hair dye can do. Relief eased over her and a smile bloomed over her face. “This looks,” she took a big breath, her smile even bigger, “really good.” She turned and held her arms out. “Thank you!” Yukio quickly swooped in for a tight hug and Ellie eased in as well. The three of them were a tangle of arms and giggling when they heard the bedroom door open.

“Sladkaya, are you in here?” they heard Piotr call. “Wade wanted to visit with Russell, and I finally got him to--” he stopped when Rhonda and the girls came into the bedroom from the bathroom. His mouth fell open, and then pulled into a goofy, lopsided grin, like he was seeing his wife for the first time. Slowly, he crossed the room and just barely touched her freshly dyed hair with his fingertips. “You look…” he brushed a yellow-tipped curl, “you look wonderful, my love.”

As if he had forgotten about his former trainee and her girlfriend, he lifted Rhonda by the waist and kissed her, circling one arm around her and burying the other hand in her hair.

Yukio quietly squealed, barely containing her excitement. Ellie rolled her eyes, but smiled in spite of herself.

Suddenly remembering himself, Piotr broke the kiss and set down his breathless wife. He cleared his throat, “Ah, Yukio strikes again, I see.”

Rhonda glanced at the younger girls, “It’s the best color I’ve ever had, for sure.”

Piotr stared, still smiling, and practically speechless, having forgotten he wanted to ask Rhonda about Russell.

Picking up the Bluetooth speaker, Rhonda asked Yukio, “Is it okay if I borrow this? Maybe for a couple days?” Hozier still swirled through her head and she needed to get some place where she could see how to dance to his music.

“You can keep it!” she chirped, gently elbowing Ellie, “I’ve been wanting an upgrade anyway.”

Ellie gave a halfhearted eyeroll, hint taken. She took her girlfriend’s hand and they left the room. Yukio stole one last glance over her shoulder and waved at Rhonda.

Rhonda returned the wave and picked up her phone with the speaker. “Um...do you mind?” she looked at her husband apologetically. “I wanna...go play with something. I might be a while.”

“Of course,” he replied wistfully.

She grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles, and in another second she was out the door, walking briskly down the hall.

Alone, Piotr chuckled to himself and shook his head. The color in her hair added so much. It was the most his wife had looked like herself since coming home from the Icebox.

#piotr rasputin x oc #colossus x oc #yukio #negasonic teenage warhead #not a ghost #hozier #hair dye heals many things #angst #fluff

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vecna · 5 years ago

Note

For fandom meme-swtor?

Send me a fandom!

This one isn’t as spicy as the Dragon Age one, but I still got Wordy.

Also there’s lots of KOTFE/KOTET/etc spoilers in here, so don’t read if you don’t want to see em. (Looking at you, Chignon.)

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

My own OCs haha.

But more seriously: It was actually Darth Malgus! I was always going to play a Star Wars MMO, let’s be real. But when they started posting promo videos and cinematics for the game, my Sith-loving ass immediately gravitated to that guy haha. And then, it turned out he had the same VA as The Architect from Dragon Age, and that was it for me.

If we’re talking about companions, then it was probably Malavai Quinn. Sith Warrior was the first class I got to 50, and Quinn was the first companion that I really got overly attached to haha.

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Most (not all, but most) of the “new” companions that came in with KOTFE and beyond. I was initially really sour when I realized we were losing all our class storyline companions, and they were being replaced with a new crew of Lana, Theron, Koth, my mother-in-law Senya, etc. Especially when they – at the time – said we’d eventually get our class companions back, but it would be a while. So I started KOTFE sure that I would hate the new crew because I would rather have the old one…. and ended up liking them quite a lot! Mostly, lol.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

Doc is the main one, jesus christ. If you didn’t read my last post, I just really really really do not mesh well with overly sexual and Adult Humor-y characters who scold you with a “You’re no fun.” if your OC isn’t into it. Doc is the worst example of it that I’ve ever encountered. I always play a male JK, and the fact nearly all of his convos amount to, “Boy, you and me are going to be up to our eyeballs in vagina when this war ends, amirite?” “You don’t want that? Come on, the Jedi Code doesn’t say you can’t FUCK, live a little.” “You’re no fun. Well, more for me.” drives me NUTS. This combined with how he interacts with Kira just does me in. Shoves him out an airlock.

Dark Side Jaesa is another big one, albeit mainly for OOC reasons. I just hate the fact that she even exists, really. I get the appeal of a story where a Sith corrupts a Jedi to the Dark Side, but the way she does a total 180 into gross hedonism while Serving You always just makes me cringe. Plus there’s the fact that straight dudebro gamers are really nasty with her, and she’s the main companion I always see men put into the slave bikini outfit, and just yikes.

Also just a lot of one-off NPCs that everyone goes crazy for and ships their OCs with, but I constantly forget who they even are lol. Attros Finn comes to mind. I don’t hate them! Just don’t get the appeal I guess.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Lord Scourge, although I’m not sure he’s really hated as much anymore. I just remember at launch, when all of the overly invested Revan stans absolutely HATED him because of what he did in the Revan novel, and then flooded the tags with vitriol over being “stuck” with him as a Knight, and having to hear about Revan in his companion convos. It was really, really tiresome! Maybe it’s because I never really cared that deeply about Revan as my personal character, but I could not understand the backlash.

Anyway, Lord Scourge is my favorite companion in the game by a long shot. I love the conversations you can have with him about the Jedi vs Sith, and I love the mutually respectful tone those conversations take. (Where other Bioware companions who disagree with you have a tendency to just go, “You’re wrong.” and shut you down.) The fact that he’s so tied in with the plot just makes me love him more, really.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Cytharat, Koth and Theron mostly. Although this takes a bit of explaining, and is a bit Discourse-y – because I really appreciate them as characters, but their role and Bioware’s decisions with them is what made me no longer love them.Here’s the thing: Bioware has a bad habit of introducing male characters that are bisexual, and then having them betray you, leading to situations where they either get murdered or vanish from the narrative entirely. Meanwhile, bisexual women like Lana are untouched and around forever.

I was overjoyed when I first saw Cytharat. Y'all know I’m a ho for purebloods, and the fact that he was Malgus’ apprentice was fascinating to me – and then he turned out to be a bi romance. I got very hyped for him, only to find out he dies like 5 minutes later – or if you save him, he’s never seen again. Huge letdown.

Koth was the first character I fell in love with of the new KOTFE crew – I even initiated a romance with him! – but it quickly became obvious there’s no way to play the expansion without him turning on you judgementally at some point or another. And then, hey big surprise, you can kill him or else he’s never seen again.

Theron I’ve loved since we first got to know him in the Forged Alliances content, but that whole storyline where he seemingly betrays you out of nowhere, only to later reveal he didn’t actually, idk. And then, once again, you either kill him or he disappears from the story. It felt like a weirdly shoehorned in plot for shock value, and robbed us of a second bi MOC character.

You see the trend here? I want to love these characters, but Bioware continually electing to do this shit with bi dudes is tiresome and makes me unwilling to invest any interest in the characters anymore.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

None really come to mind? I just want to be a Jedi, come on.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Hunter all day every day.

The pairing(s) that I love:

Haha, this question is hard, because most of the SWTOR ships I’m invested in are between my OCs and my friends’ OCs.

However.

SCOURGE / KNIGHT IS THE BIG ONE, THE ULTIMATE, THE ALL-TIME FAVORITE. It’s really hard to describe just how much I love this ship, and just how much time and energy I’ve invested into it over the past… 8 years wow……….. To the point of being almost territorial. And it’s also near impossible for me to talk about why I love it, because the version I ship is so personalized with my specific Jedi Knight, especially since it had to live exclusively in headcanon land for so long. Scourge is, more or less, my Knight’s support pillar and the thing that grounds him and keeps him humble, in a world where my Knight is surrounded by people who expect him to be a pure flawless messiah. But, I mean. How can you have a man look at your character and say, “I’ve waited 300 years to see your face.” and not immediately ship it. And then I finally got vindicated after all these years when it was made canon!

I really love Arcann / Knight for a lot of the same reasons as the above, but I just really adore his one (1) romance convo haha. Granted, yes he did a lot of fucked up things, but I was so grateful when he had like… a Zuko-esque redemption. Where he comes to your character and firmly believes he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and especially doesn’t deserve affection, and is instead met with acceptance and a chance to grow and heal. That’s the good shit.

Others:

Lana / Warrior and Lana / Inquisitor are my particular jam. I endlessly enjoy the mutual respect between Lana and those particular PCs.

Malavai Quinn / Sith Warrior is a longtime fave, and although I DO love him with a female Warrior, I really do with he’d been an option for dudes as well. And I feel the same in reverse about Vette / Warrior – I do like her with a male Warrior, and it’s so sweet and wholesome and endearing, but man I wish she’d been an option for female Warriors.

I ship Risha with every woman – especially Vette and Sumalee – and will be salty until my grave that Risha / f!Smuggler isn’t possible, because I love Risha with the Smuggler but she gives me powerful WLW vibes.

Agent / Watcher Two is also a lowkey favorite, but I ALSO wish it could be done with a female Agent instead. Same with Agent / Raina Temple.

Agent / Vector is very sweet, but again, I will be salty until my grave that it couldn’t be done with a male Agent.

Can you guys sense a running theme here?

Finally: NGL I love Valkorion / Senya, even though that ended in pure disaster.

And people around here used to ship Keeper / Lokin, and tbh, I still kinda love it lol.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

In general terms, I fucking hate every single romance that involves the male PC romancing his padawan or underling, especially since most of them seem like very young girls. I don’t know why this is so pervasive in the game, but yikes Bioware. Consular/Nadia is the worst offender, but they’re all just cringe central for me.

But the big one is Agent / Hunter. This would have gotten me run off Tumblr back in the day, but god I hate this pairing. I mentioned in the last post that I just will never enjoy ships where the two characters actively want to murder each other, but. This just gets magnified for me with Agent/Hunter, where all the mind control and blatant abuse comes into play – and people have a tendency to write noncon rape fic of the two and present it as ~sexy rivalmance~, which is awful. Add to this the “no homo” reveal where Hunter turns out to be a woman, after getting everyone hyped about a dude flirting with their male character the whole game, and it’s just a huge No Thanks from me all around.

And for largely personal reasons I just don’t like seeing female Knights with Scourge. Listen, for YEARS I was treated like a pariah for shipping Scourge with my male Knight, while being unable to find Scourge content that didn’t have a female Knight plastered all over him. Even though he wasn’t even a romance option one way or another, the way the fandom treated m!Knight/Scourge with disdain while ardently shipping f!Knight/Scourge was offputting as shit. And then, after years, he was made a romance option for women AND men, and all these awful people acted like they were robbed, the way people reacted when Kaidan and Jaal were made bi in Mass Effect. I’m so tired. I never want to see Scourge with a female Knight again.

#misc: text #misc: meme #series: star wars #vg: the old republic #long post #scorpio-dw

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makeste · 6 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 199: One Whole Bird

Previously on BnHA: Aizawa’s winning class A team reflected on what they could have done better. Tsuyu and Kirishima were unexpected bummers due to their recent internships still weighing heavily on their minds. Shinsou was also frustrated with his performance, despite everyone telling him how good he did. Aizawa and Vlad told All Might and Midnight that today’s exercise is also a test for Shinsou to see if he should be admitted into the hero course. It’s not clear whether or not Shinsou is aware of this, but we’re all rooting for him! The second round of battles got underway, with Team KendouKuroMangaToadette facing off against MomoYamaTokoKure. Class B’s Kuroiro was revealed to have a quirk that allows him to move freely within anything black. This applies even to quirks like Dark Shadow, and once the match began, he basically dove into DS and rode him back to Team A’s location. Now he’s getting ready to throw down with Tokoyami, who has dramatically thrown his cape aside and is preparing to unleash the new technique he developed during his internship with Hawks.

Today on BnHA: Hawks is back! In flashback form. But he’s back, you guys! So apparently Tokoyami first interned with him after the sports festival, only to learn that Hawks mainly selected him to get the good gossip on the whole USJ attack. This frustrated Toko enough that he redoubled his training efforts, and when he went back to intern at Hawks’s agency for real after getting his provisional license, he impressed the #2 hero by being able to keep up with him. So Hawks took him on a cute lil nighttime flight above the city while A Whole New World from Aladdin played, and then they landed on a tower somewhere and Hawks was all, “hey dude you should learn to fly for reals,” and then the flashback ended. Back in the present, Kuroiro sneaks up behind Aoyama and grabs him and hauls ass. Tokoyami then reveals his new technique: Flying For Reals. He retrieves Aoyama, who fires his laser to break up the shadows around them, making it impossible for Kuro to hide. Things are looking good for Team A, but then a mushroom suddenly sprouts from Momo’s nose, reminding everyone that there are still three other Team B members to take care of, and things are only just getting started.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 222, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

ooh, and we’re opening with what I assume is an internship flashback!

well yeah, Mighty Wings is the type of quirk that allows you to do that. when you can individually control hundreds of little godmode wings that are strong enough to even carry people to safety, you don’t really need much in the way of backup

ah, so it’s confirmed this is Tokoyami’s narration

apparently the U.A. sports festival earlier in the year was the first time Hawks had ever taken place in the whole drafting process

hold up, so did Toko intern with him for both the jr. internship and the real internship? like, he did the weeklong thing following the sports festival, and then went back and interned there for real later? or was it only the first and not the latter?

lol Hawks is flying off to go save some other hapless soul. some out of control drunk dude at a bar in Cantina

I assume Cantina is a specifically a reference to the very famous Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars, even though it’s also a common enough word in its own right

lmao his sidekicks are all “yeah so Hawks is just generally better than us in every conceivable way and we just have to live with it”

these guys crack me up

so during his workplace experience Tokoyami just spent the whole time chasing after Hawks with these guys and handling the cleanup with them. so naturally it wasn’t long before he started having doubts about the whole thing

I was literally just about to say “because you’re both birds” and then Hawks was like “yeah, duh”

Tokoyami is asking if he’s joking, because Tokoyami doesn’t have a sense of humor so he probably genuinely needs to know

Hawks says he’s 20% serious. holy shit. that honest to god is what he said lmao

he says he wanted to talk to someone from class 1-A about the League of Villains, and he figured if he had to do so then he should pick someone he thought could keep up with him and who showed promise. and since Tokoyami finished in the top three he went with him

and of course we know from chapter 186 that he had selected Todoroki as well, but Endeavor got him instead

interesting that both he and Bakugou picked the highest ranking agencies on their list and ended up being disappointed. it seems like the people who had the most fulfilling internships were the ones who went with agencies that hadn’t necessarily made huge names for themselves, but were perhaps a little better at this whole teaching thing than some of the big shots

ah, and then Hawks did agree to take him on for a For Reals Internship later on, though

that means Tokoyami actually reached out to him despite his lackluster previous experience. makes me wonder if Bakugou would actually decide to go back to Jeanist’s agency once he gets his provisional and once the kids are allowed to do internships again

(ETA: so I’m honestly not sure if we’re even going to get back to internships again, at least not for a while, but one theory I’ve seen floating around is that Bakugou will intern with Miruko instead of Jeanist, and I gotta say, I really like the idea of that. for so many reasons. but basically it makes a lot of sense; Jeanist is still laid up, Miruko is a top 5 hero, and her personality aligns with Bakugou’s a whole lot more than Jeanist’s did. all this plus Fuck Yeah Girl Power, so hell yeah I’m all for it.)

-- YOOOOOOOOOOO

he can -- you can fly, dude? since when lmao what the fuck

(ETA: what is he doing here, though?? I thought he was flying but then a couple pages later Hawks is like “you should learn how to fly” and then a few pages after that everyone is shocked by his new “bitch I can fly now” special move. so it seems like that’s something he came up with after this scene. is he just jumping with style here or what)

Hawks likey! kid’s got some potential

now it’s later that night and Hawks is telling Tokoyami he did good

OH MY GOD

THIS IS THE CUTEST AND BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED. OH MY GOD. YOU GUYS. I CAN’T IT’S TOO FUCKING PRECIOUS OH SWEET JESUS

(ETA: so as you can see I was enchanted by this scene even before I learned about its significance as a beloved fandom meme. anyways so we all agree that this internship was destiny.)

TOKOYAMI IS SO OVERWHELMED. HIS POETIC SOUL IS SOARING LIKE AN EAGLE

OH MY GOD!!

HOW DOES HE REMEMBER THE CORRECT PERCENTAGE BREAKDOWN FROM A JOKE CONVERSATION THEY HAD LIKE SIX MONTHS AGO

SERIOUS QUESTION WHY IS HAWKS THE BEST CHARACTER IN BNHA. ANSWER ME. SOMEONE

AND LOOK AT TOKO’S FACE OMG

AHHHH

it’s so personal, though. like I honestly feel like he’s baring a bit of his soul to this kid, and for someone with a personality like Hawks’s that is huge

he says he’s not especially interested in nurturing the next generation, “but...”

well that’s fine dude. you’re practically still a kid yourself and you’ve got more than enough on your plate

but the fact that he does have so much on his plate makes me wonder what’s going through his head right now. because the whole workplace experience was before he started his undercover mission, but this scene is taking place afterward. and he always plays it cool, but that shit is dangerous, like one-wrong-move-and-you’re-dead-or-worse types of danger. and that’s not even taking into account the bad-for-your-soul parts that come with having to turn a blind eye to certain things for the sake of maintaining your cover for the greater good

so basically, despite what he says, he may just be feeling a bit more sentimental or brooding or whatever than usual, and maybe that’s what brought this on. he never particularly wanted to be a mentor, but hey, might as well give it a shot. life is short

so Toko’s asking what he meant when he said Tokoyami was wasting his potential

and Hawks says that while Tokoyami is doing a lot to cover his weak points, he shouldn’t neglect improving his strong points

one moment please while we process these Hawks feels ladies and gents

aaaaaaand done

my boy just wants to be free. okay. that’s fine. I’m fine it’s all good

nothing to see here, just some solid mentor advice pulling some double duty as a deeper look into Hawks’s psyche at the same time. just Horikoshi things

and we’re back in the present!

that was a much lengthier flashback than I anticipated, and thoroughly enjoyable! very nice!

so Kuro is blending back into the shadows and for some reason everyone is surprised

what else would he do. I mean. if it ain’t broke

so now he’s mocking them from somewhere in the piping, bragging about how they can’t tell where he is

oh shit!

so he’s planning on targeting one of the others? tbh that probably would have worked just as well even without the red herring, since they can’t see him coming

like, this would have worked no matter what though. but I guess it did get Aoyama to lower his guard

LOL MY POOR GLITTER BOY

FIRE YOUR DAMN LASER KID

ooooh

it’s so gross that he refers to it as an umbilical cord and now I’m never not gonna be able to think of it as that

so anyway, I’m guessing that this special move works by having Dark Shadow fly somewhere and then instead of retracting the shadow back to him, he pulls himself toward Dark Shadow

LOL

what, y’all didn’t see those flashbacks with Hawks just a few pages ago. pay attention to other characters’ life stories

ah, here are the mechanics explained to us in a cute little comic

“Dark Shadow can fly so one day I was like, ‘ohh... pick me up so I can fly too. fucking duh’”

also has the bonus advantage of distracting opponents with how shockingly adorable it is

so now he’s plucking Aoyama out of Kuro’s clutches

I bet Aoyama’s pissed that his cape broke in the process though

LISTEN HERE BITCHES, Y’ALL ARE GONNA NEED PLAN B, C, D, ETC. BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN COME CLOSE TO TAKING OUT MY GIRL MOMO HERE. YOU’RE GONNA RUN OUT OF LETTERS OF THE FUCKING ALPHABET YOU AMATEURS

she said, but also I’m still pretty sure they’re gonna lose fffff

since Aoyama and Tokoyami are now perfectly positioned, Momo’s telling Aoyama to use his navel buffet

ah I see, eliminate Kuro’s potential hiding places by blinding him with Aoyama’s splendor

so Dark Shadow is covering himself in Kuro’s cape and Aoyama is letting ‘er rip

this is such an odd and perfect sound effect and I’m really impressed with Horikoshi for coming up with it in English

aha!

GOTCHA MOTHERFUCKER

now Momo’s calling Hagakure to action, and for a moment I was like ‘why’ but then I remembered her special move

but before we get to that, please enjoy this Yaoyorozu Momo “just as planned” panel

yessssss now get ready for --

...

okay what is plan B

...

and the chapter ends. of course

chapter 200 is gonna be some wild times isn’t it. lol

#bnha #boku no hero academia #tokoyami fumikage #hawks #kuroiro shihai #aoyama yuuga #hagakure tooru #yaoyorozu momo #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #tomorrow's chapter features one of my all-time most hated quirks #as well as one of my all-time favorites #manga's quirk is one of the most original and badass things I've ever seen #but oh my god those mushrooms #I'm already cringing just thinking about it #I don't want to have to look at those panels again #sob here's hoping I survive

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j2madhatters · 6 years ago

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Why Padalecki marriage annoys me - non Tinhat perspective

I can safely say that never before has a marriage annoyed me as much as the Padalecki marriage. Even the Ackles’ behavior is reasonable. They don’t kiss and make out public because Jensen is not an exhibitionist sort. I have never respect PDAs. In my opinion, it is inappropriate. But remember, I am not a tinhat so you can draw your own conclusions about why the Ackles don’t “display” their love in public. There is nothing wrong with theorizing.

Genevieve, and Jared [when he is in husband mode] just irritate me. They oversell it. In the beginning, I thought she was so lucky to have a husband like him. He is so beautiful. He’s so sensitive. He earns well. He is respected in his field. Plus he cried on their wedding day. How beautiful is that? For years afterwards, he would gush over her during his panels. At first, I smirked, then I became poker faced, then I became mildly annoyed and then one day [I even remember the panel] it just got too noticeably exhibitionist. It was the last question. Timothy Omundson was called on stage, pretending to be the last question. And he comically fangirled uncontrollably before perching himself on the designated chair. His question was “who is your favourite guest star, and why is it Timothy Omundsom?’‘ It was a funny question, and Jensen went with it, saying that he was a fan of Omundson’s beard, which caused Robbie to throw a faux hissy fit because he had a beard too, darn it. But Jensen pointed out that his beard was pathetic because it was short and he couldn’t braid it. After the laugh fest, Jared gave his answer: ’'My favorite guest star is Gen, because she’s my wife and the mother of my children”.

For some reason, that is pissed me right off. It was a funny question. It didn’t warrant a serious, gushy husband reply. Some witless creature made a mistake of pointing this out, in the comment section. The entire page converged on her. Even people who had initially agreed with her, backtracked. I felt angry at this fandom's self-censoring. I realized she was over loved, not because of any personal merit, but because she married Jared. They were calling her a queen. Seriously? A queen. For what? So I went on the internet to see if I was the only weird person who couldn’t detect her monarchical merits.

That was last year-ish. How do you think I stumbled onto tinhats. I like most hats because it seems they don't conform to the politically correct norm of ’'treat the wives like gold’’. And they don’t ask tinhat questions during panels. Unlike the leeches who love destiel and Misha Collins. Jared was becoming too extra when it came to Genevieve. And I noticed he inserted an obligatory Gen mention at least once, in every single panel. Even after seven years, he was far too “in love”. And eventually, instead of being happy for their happiness, I started feel like they were rubbing their domestic bliss in everyone’s face. “look at what we’ve got, nyah nyah nyah.’' My polite and genuine [but not over the top] respect for their marriage dissipated.

You know who he reminded me off. He reminded me of Tom Cruise when he was a guest on Oprah and was over pushing the epic love he had for Katie Holmes, jumping on the couch and fist pumping the air. That incident, I found humorous and embarrassing. This was plain irritating. I noticed he’s slowed down now. The unnecessary wife mentions sometimes don’t even make an appearance, for which I am thankful. I wonder why though. Unless he is telling a story that she is a part of, like the Highway story, he doesn’t mention her anymore. My non tinhat guess is that he was aware that fans were getting pissed off, especially since, he had mentioned something about her in a panel recently [I don’t remember which one], and someone in the front row said: We know!

Another thing I don’t like about this relationship is Genevieve intruding on fan space. If people are paying bucket loads to see their favorite actor, unless they specifically ask for a guest appearance by the actor’s wife, don’t intrude. Once, Genevieve appeared on stage, during a J2 panel, to contribute something unnecessary to the story they were recounting. I think it was the highway story. Then she made sure she kissed him before leaving, while the crowd watched. Why? She added nothing fresh to the story, and couldn’t she wait to leave the stage, to kiss her husband. She isn’t paying to see her husband. The fans are. Don’t take that precious time away from them.

And I noticed, she usually sits at the side of the stage, overseeing the whole exchange. As far as I know, Danneel hasn’t done that yet. Why the need to loom over the proceedings? Does she love to hear him talk? That reminds me of the livestream they did, where he was talking and she mouthed ’'blah blah blah’' while making a mocking hand gesture, because apparently he was talking too much. So obviously Jared’s yammering doesn’t entertain her.

Then at Jib, she got to join the panel. I didn’t fault her for attending because apparently the previous year, he had gotten sick and didn’t make the con. I assumed she was there for moral support. I am a non hatter so that is my analysis. You cant of course, explain your perspective. But that doesn’t mean she needs to be on stage. For what? Its not like she did something spectacular whilst there. Rob, Rich and Jared had to take over the discussion because she was so dull. Eventually even Jensen joined in, revved the crowd up even further, and left. One of her fan girls complained that the boys ’'didn’t even let her speak”. Thank goodness they didn’t.

She is inserting herself between Jared and the fan, and now people are forced to be enthusiastic about her. Its so unfair. It almost seems like Genevieve wants shared custody of the fans. That is not how fame works. You earn it. You don’t inherit it. I started to get more and more annoyed with being forced, [by all of fandom, I thought] to go crazy over some woman, I could care less for. She wasn’t impressive as fake Ruby. And I was not the only one who thought so. Cassidy was a bland actor, in my humble opinion. Genevieve was worse.

The only reason she didn’t fade into oblivion, like all the other female actors, is because she married Jared. There was a blog called anti-Genevieve on Tumblr, that received a lawyers letter to cease and desist, because of defamation of character. Its her right to safeguard her reputation, so no problem there, especially if the blog is over malicious without proof or facts. I did visit the site. But I don’t remember seeing anything horrible other than her being called a beard. But it has been a while so maybe I just forgot.

However, there is another blog called Supernatural Snark. Almost the entire blog bashes Jared for everything that comes out of his mouth. One day, an ask about Jensen’s weird behavior at Jibcon, illicited an odd response from the blogger. The asker said that Jensen’s breakdown was Misha, Jared and the destiheller’s fault because Misha queerbaits his fans, Jared teases destiel and the fans abused Jensen on Twitter after Jaxcon. She said Jensen was trying to pacify the fans. The blogger said that it didn’t make sense for Jensen to wait six months to pacify the fans. Then she disabled the comment so the asker couldn’t respond. Of course, even I know he waited six months, because he shares no other panel with Misha. That’s when I realized that Supernatural Snark is a heller blog.

How come Genevieve doesn’t send a cease and desist lawyer’s letter to this witch. I think I know why. She only looked for anti stuff about herself on the net and that’s how she found this page. If she was looking for anti Jared blogs, she would have found Supernatural Snark. The Minute Maid commercial and her words in it were a little incentive. She said she was making so many sacrifices. Well missy, bundle up your babies and buzz off to Vancouver. You husband is not gone off to war. You are sacrificing nothing.

She doesn’t seem to care for him. She doesn’t care about his campaign. She never tags AFK for anything. She tags Random Acts, though. The thing that makes my blood boil, on a personal level, is that she claims that she also suffers from depression. As a bipolar sufferer myself, the one trend I noticed is that when people are impatient with me, and I point out that I have bipolar disorder, they quickly say that they also suffer from depression, so they don’t look bad. Since when does she have depression. Because if she did, she wouldn’t ignore her husband’s campaign that is supposed to help people like her. Is she sharing in her husband’s sympathy the same way she is sharing his fame?

She has diehard fans on Instagram. One of them is Ivana. Ivana gushily asked Genevieve to sign her name so that Ivana could have it tattooed. I was surprised. When did Gen become a rockstar? Then I realized that Ivana has her own SM page where she says she is ITK and best buds with Genevieve. So she knows that Jared abuses his wife and neglects his children. Ivana is a heller. Her best friend Lua James [@Poptivist on Twitter], led a smear campaign against J2 for the Nolacon joke. Her followers are the ones that made this problem reach MSM. And J2 had to apologize, publicly, for nothing. That is ok, because what Lua and gang were initially hoping for was for separates for the boys' panels, so that Jared wouldn’t be near Jensen. Genevieve is making herself the whip with which hellers can beat Jared.

And both Ivana and Lua cornered Danneel at one con to tell her how everyone hated her, except them. That was their snide contribution to tinhat hate. Danneel signed Poptivist’s SPN magazine, with the caption: “He is mine, bitches”… something inappropriate like that. Danneel was wrong for writing that. I noticed she fights with Jensen’s fans a lot. Ungracious. Lua is so toxic that she needs a guard at the cons, supplied by Creation to keep an eye on her. WTF!!! I always wondered why she wasn’t just excluded, but I think it’s because she is friends with a Creation staff member who also happens to be Misha’s relative. And because she is a Misha fan girl, she gets to stay.

That’s why Misha’s face appears on the main posters with J2, despite him not being a lead. Because he is related to staff. The wives have no fans, but I think Genevieve’s ego is in denial. Her intellect isn’t, which is why Jared’s appears in her vlogs. He is the deal sealer for her. One day this pompousness is going to backfire on Gen. I hope she figures that out one day.

APOLOGIES FOR ANOTHER LONG POST. I HOPE YOU DONT MIND.

Thank you for your submission, I’ve always wondered what non-hats make of the OTT parade and the wife stanning.

#submission #go-diane-winchester

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unwiltingblossom · 6 years ago

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I really want to be done with this, since of the people who actually follow me they’re not Marvel centric and who wants to see a bunch of opinion blogs about a movie they probably haven’t even seen, but oh my gosh, I just want to talk about the scene where they try to give Tony a mini heart attack and everyone just wants to complain about petty things instead.

Lemme talk about why You Are Wrong about hating certain things in Endgame, cuz at least that’s a thing I do in Naruto and other fandoms too. Spoilers.

To be clear, I’m sad about the deaths. I’m especially broken-hearted about Steve, because it’s not possible for Falcon to replace him, so there’s no point even trying. Tony is a bummer, but he’s basically just RDJ, so we’ll still see him being Sherlock and typecast as Tony Stark like figures. All Tony Stark adaptations will be made to copy him still, he’s not really gone. Part of why Captain is gone is because Chris Evans doesn’t want to be him anymore, so that death just feels much more real. You can’t replace the quintessential boy scout from the 30s with...anyone, really.

I’m also sad about the pseudo-deaths, but. Despite that, I don’t agree with the movie complaints. Let’s get into those.

First: No, there wasn’t really any other way for Tony to end. RDJ has been done with the character since IM3, he’s been trying to write him out over and over and just can’t. “He’s retired” can’t work when they have no Tony replacement and go up against world-ending threats, and I don’t think he wants to be tied down to cameos and phone-ins. Death was the only answer for his character. As much as I hate losing Captain, that was a similar situation. Unless they replaced those actors - and that’s tough, especially in RDJ’s case - the characters needed to go with their actors, and their roles/personalities were such that anything but death wouldn’t do that.

We’ll get back to why those were the best endings they could give the characters while still being abrupt and sad, and making it feel like there was actual loss and sacrifice required, but let’s meander over to Thor briefly because his is somewhat shorter.

Buzzfeed woman: If you cannot handle TV shows that have fat characters or fat jokes, please seek counseling and get help. It sounds like you have some serious issues with your self image and self confidence, and frankly it’s just not a good thing if your entire day is ruined and you’re dropped into a depression because you hear someone make a joke that’s not even about you. Don’t blame other people and expect them to change for you, because they won’t. Seek to be more secure in yourself.

Everyone else: The reason why Thor seems ‘diminished’ all movie is the same reason why Captain Marvel isn’t there 90% of the movie - no, no, not because they just shoved him into the plot at the last minute to promote his movie, the other reason - he’s just too strong. This is a recurring issue for him in Avengers movies, and they may try to just de-Avenger him going forward to avoid this in the future. Avengers movies are ensembles, everyone is supposed to be necessary, but to set the enemies to a level where people like Black Widow are useful means that Thor could shrug and wipe out most of them except for the boss. And sometimes even the big bad isn’t that scary - CM and Thor could both take down Thanos without infinity stones just too easily, and the plot needed to believably take the heroes from ‘completed gauntlet’ to ‘Thanos has the gauntlet’, which is a lot harder than IW where he was always 2-3 steps and stones ahead.

Fat Thor worked double-purpose to explore the crushing guilt and issues with Thor - he was barely hanging by a thread in IW, losing at the end of it and then having it confirmed at the start of Endgame that there was no hope was too much - and sidelining him most of the movie. It weakened him because he no longer had the focus to just lightning blast Thanos’ army into dust and he was physically out of shape and so not as strong as he was before, making Thanos an equal enemy to him again. Because he was physically unimposing, the Avengers didn’t lean on him and expect him to do everything, which allowed him to go and face his mother again, which allowed him to get the hammer and dual-wield, confirm he was still worthy, and give Steve that moment everyone had so badly wanted to see for years (as Steve’s swan song). The story was never about how Thor was still just as strong even out of shape, because the point is that his own self-loathing and inability cope was destroying him and he needed to heal from that before he could even begin to recover. GotG3 or T4 will be about Thor regaining all that. Endgame was about Thor finally coming to grips with the overwhelming weight of guilt that had been ruining and driving him for several movies now.

And in the end, even once he was able to snap out of his funk and start recovering, he didn’t magically shed all that weight and get back into fighting fit. (That, too, is something for GotG3 and/or T4) Because recovery is still a process that takes time. In my opinion, the way they have Thor deal with his trauma and guilt is as realistic as they had Tony deal with it.

As for the ‘fat jokes’, that’s just taking things out of context. It ignores all the other serious things that Avengers makes jokes about. They always inject levity into things and seek comedy where they can, because the plots are usually so heavy that if they don’t, the movie becomes depressing and draining. In IW/Endgame this is especially so, because so many people die and so much is lost. Fat!Thor and the Fortnite game moments are some of the only opportunities they have to put some humor in. And the Avengers use insulting humor toward each other quite often. War Machine calls Peter - who was at that time dead and had serious issues he was grappling with himself - an idiot because he’s dancing along on a planet to music on headphones. Bucky calls Steve stupid knowing this would be the last time he saw him (at least at that age). Basically, the jokes were necessary to keep the movie from choking on its own darkness and they were in-character (plus, indicators of the fact that they didn’t trust Thor to be the responsible party, forcing other characters to have a role instead, and keeping Thor from any responsibility later for “why didn’t he use the stones to--”)

So. Yes, it’s disappointing that Thor didn’t really get to flex, but at least he was present, and it’s allowed him to begin to heal from the trauma conga line he’s been on ever since Thor 1. It’s really not an issue that people make it out to be, and it seems like people are just being overly specific in their sensibilities. Make fun of Thor’s long hair, his missing eye, his cluelessness about the modern world? That’s fine. Make fun of Rocket when he’s the product of horrific experiments? That’s fine. Make fun of any number of serious issues, or just insult their friends in some humorous way? All okay. Make fat jokes? SUDDENLY it’s just not okay and super mean!

Don’t read too much into things like that. Like the buzzfeed woman claiming his mother ‘nastily’ told him to eat a salad. She was just being a mother, looking at a son who five minutes ago seemed to be in his prime and now had completely collapsed and was desperately looking for direction from her. She must have gathered that at least from his perspective he’d never get to see her again, so it was effectively the last advice she’d give him. “Eat a salad!” is just “Take care of yourself, eat well, please!” in the gentlest, shortest way possible. Don’t be like that woman. Don’t read malice where it isn’t.

MOVING ON.

Tony and Steve.

I know, it’s sad. But these were the most logical conclusions to their stories, both from their own perspective and when you consider how their characters were juxtaposed off of each other. Ignoring for a moment the actor situation, the characters needed to die because if they didn’t we’d just end up with a Battle of Winterfell situation where everything was set up to look hopeless but then things worked out so no one important died. (except Heimdall. Poor Heimdall, he didn’t get snapped or brought back via time shenanigans. I’m guessing he got the fatal Actor’d, since Idris didn’t like being him)

So, knowing that they had to kill one, and therefore because of their connection in the movies it had to be both, let’s look at why they were the most reasonable and perfect deaths to give them under the circumstances while still remaining sad. “And then they lived to death” is hard to do if it’s not Doctor Who, so it’s not really an easy ending to write for a character you need to immediately exit the franchise.

Tony.

Finally we resolve the plot with Pepper. They get married, they have a child, they have five years living together married- this is on top of the eleven years they’ve been in a relationship since Iron Man, and the years before that of flirtatious tension and a relationship that’s non-romantic. Five years was just the time they had living a domestic and quiet life, raising their child, not the complete length of their life. Tony got to live with the love of his life and finally do something right, and in the end Pepper gave him the go-ahead to risk not only himself but their whole family to protect the rest of the universe.

In the end, he ‘fixed’ his failure from IW, defeating Thanos personally. He was the one responsible for the timeline being ‘the one’ where they succeed. He finally found some peace with his father and history, he created something beautiful - for once, he left a legacy that wasn’t death and destruction or weapons, but a sweet little girl who will make the world a better and brighter place.

And Tony made that full circle from the first story, affirming that it was never the suit, but Tony Stark, who made Iron Man. He is Iron Man. Those are his last words, and part of the gruesome death was there to ensure they were. Though there’s also something powerful about him saying nothing and snapping his fingers instead like they’d originally written it to be. But, look. Tony Stark was a man who sent weapons all over the world, caused thousands, if not millions to die because of those weapons and then changed due to the guilt of realizing what he’d done. His character has basically been caught in a loop ever since of trying to fix things by creating more weapons to protect people instead and just causing more death and more harm in the process.

Finally, though, with a snap of his fingers and the cost of his own life...he made an army disappear. He saved not just half the universe this time, but literally all of it, every single being alive can thank Tony for it (ignoring the celestial beings who would have stopped Thanos but shh, MCU hasn’t introduced those). Look at the symbolic nature of Tony Stark being the one to turn an army - and all of their weapons - into dust in a moment. He saved everyone, and he finally erased the ugly stain of his weapons from the world in one fell swoop. Symbolically, this is the most perfect way to end his character, and something the comics will never be able to give Tony.

In a more practical sense, it was also necessary. He’d never be able to truly step away from being an Avenger. His own paranoia and sense of guilt means that no matter how much he’d want to live his own life, he’d always be dragged into things, risk his life again, and Pepper + Morgan would constantly have to worry about whether he’d come back or not. And he’d mess up again. He’s too afraid of the future, needed too much to control things. Ultron would happen again. The Superhero Registration would happen again. Especially when/if Steve would die, there’s no one holding him back anymore. Narratively, his story needed to be finished, especially if he was going to be the one to snap anyway. So yes. Death was the necessary price. And it did need to be that harsh, gruesome thing. Not just because we see over and over how painful it is to use those stones, but because this was a loss. His death was quick, but it wasn’t easy. The price that the universe paid to be saved was Tony Stark’s life, and him just vanishing afterward would have felt cheap and robbed the people around him of their closure.

And again, it worked perfectly as the counterpoint for Steve. His life was short but he died protecting everyone else. He died so that he didn’t have to watch anyone he loved die instead, and he died surrounded by the people he cared about, finally redeemed of his sins.

Then there’s Steve.

Now, I don’t think his death was necessary like Tony’s. But because Tony did die, it does make sense they might kill Steve too. And I don’t think anyone would question that if they chose to kill Steve in the battle against Thanos. But if they did that, someone would have been blamed. Carol, Thor, Scott, Tony, whoever. Someone would get the blame, and I think it would have been extremely demoralizing to see Captain America die during the battle, where morale was so paper thin already.

Plus, like I said, his needed to be a counterpoint to Tony.

Tony got to have his time with the love of his life, but then cut it short for the sake of everyone in the universe, died young, before anyone else, sacrificed etc. It fit his personality, his fast-paced, short tempered quippy self.

Steve is the one with the unnaturally long life, forced to live for over a hundred years and losing everyone and everything around him. Peggy is the love of his life, and unlike Tony he had to watch her transform from a young woman to an old frail thing who had moved on without him, and then eventually die while he was still in the prime of his youth. He has no future to look forward to. Because of his lifespan, all that’s going to happen is him watching his friends all die around him one by one, Nat, Tony, Sam, Bucky, Bruce, etc.

In the end, he’s finally given the opportunity to do the impossible: go back where he belongs. Go back to the world with everyone that he remembers and loves from his past. Go back to the woman whom he loves the most, who he’ll never truly move on from. Live, like Tony always told him to.

And so - with Bucky’s blessing, I’ll note - he does. Everything about Steve has been the displaced, long suffering soldier, and in his ending, he finally gets to come home from the war. He already sacrificed himself and the love he should have had with Peggy way back in the First Avenger. He should have died in that ice, he planned to, just as Tony does. And thus, the only proper ending for Steve isn’t a heroic sacrifice - because he’s already made his - but being able to finally live the life that he gave up for the world. In a way, it’s Tony’s last gift to him, as Tony finally created a time machine to send Steve (who he weirdly thinks of as a friend) back where he belongs.

But even so, Steve is Steve. He got to live his life with Peggy and grow old, but he still watched her die. Again. He lost Peggy twice, and everyone he knew from that timeline as well - not only did he leave it and all them behind, but most of those people would have died (I like to think he saved Howard Stark, though, for the Tony who never knew him and for that Bucky). And he’s still not dead. Which means he’s still living (at least until they say he died off-screen, anyway), and he may yet still watch more of his friends die around him before he can finally find his rest.

Basically, their endings are counterpoints to each other, and also perfect for themselves. Tony flares up bright and burns out in spectacular fashion saving the universe, and Steve is the long-burning candle, the last light that lingers in the darkness after everyone else flickers out, the one who can’t sacrifice himself even when he tries, and so all he can do is live until the end, and pass on his flame to someone else.

They’re both sad in different ways, and they’re both the best kind of ending the writers could have come up for those characters in particular.

and now a few quick rebuttals to the common complaints in particular:

Tony’s survivor’s guilt IS why he goes back to save Peter and the others even at his own personal risk. Anyone else would have refused to help or even actively interfered, because the risk of losing their child would be too much. The risk of failing and still losing their child, when the world was continuing on without any future danger to it, would just be too much.

And that’s another reason he died. The guilt would have eaten him alive if anyone else had snapped and saved the universe for him.

Thor was not ‘fine’ in Infinity War. He was clinging to the thin hope that he could stop Thanos because he was essentially destined to stop Thanos. He had to believe that he had a greater purpose and everything happened the way it did because it had to. He’d been clinging to that for a long time, in fact, and when he failed to kill Thanos, failed to save everyone, that hope was ripped away from him. He didn’t just collapse because he failed Thanos, he became lost and adrift because everything that he built his identity around vanished and he didn’t know who or what he was supposed to be or do anymore. He needed his mother to tell him to be who he is and not who he’s supposed to be to save him from that. And he still remarks at the end that “I’ve never had nothing to do before, I’m not sure what to do with that.”

I wrote a bunch of stuff about why Steve isn’t being selfish and all of those quibbles are silly, but then accidentally lost that, and I don’t feel like rewriting it. Other people have covered that anyway. Steve isn’t being selfish. He creates a world line where everyone gets to be happy, and in the end he gives that up so that he can give his friends closure again, and spend time with them in his twilight. They didn’t lose Steve, he just aged to the point he should have been.

Avengers Endgame timeline isn’t complicated, it’s very simple. I’ll make that a separate post though. In short: they use the world lines theory Steins;Gate uses, so paradoxes are functionally impossible. They literally cannot happen.

#endgame spoilers #tony stark #thor #steve rogers #avengers endgame #ooc #rant #long post #meta #let me tell you a thing about thor #and tony and steve apparently

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