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ladyluscinia · 1 year ago

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Ok, I think I might be exiting the "are you fucking kidding me?" period and ready to make a real argument, so lets talk about Three Act Structure!

Is OFMD S2 just the "Darkest Hour"?

A very common explanation I've been seeing for some of the... controversial... aspects of S2 is that it's meant to be that way. That the middle act is where the protagonists hit their lowest point. Where we get the big failure point. Where everything looks kind of shit.

S2 is supposedly just that point. It's The Empire Strikes Back. People have been making that comparison since before the first episodes even dropped, telling everyone to expect something that could be disappointing or unsatisfying - it's just a matter of needing to wait for S3 to pull it all together.

It's not a baseless framework to consider the show through - I'm pretty sure David Jenkins has mentioned it in interviews (or at least mentioned he planned for three acts / seasons) so it's certainly worth asking how he's doing at the 2/3rd mark.

So - quick summary of Three Act Structure:

Act 1 introduces our characters and world. It includes the inciting incident of the story and the first plot point, where a) the protagonist loses the ability to return to their normal life, and b) the story raises whatever dramatic question will drive the entire plot. Act 2 is rising action and usually most of the story. The protagonist tries to fix things and fucks them up worse, in the process learning new skills and character developing to overcome their flaws. Act 3 is the protagonist taking one more shot, but this time they are ready. We get the climax of the story, the dramatic question gets an answer, and then the story closes.

If you want examples, the Star Wars Original Trilogy is a very popular template. And, hell, he said it was a pirate story... the main Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy also does a solid job with their three acts.

Let's compare. (Spoiler: I'm not impressed 🤨)

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First thing I need to establish... Wait. Two things. First is that Three Act Structure is flexible, so we can't really analyze success or failure by pulling up a list of necessary plot beats that should have been hit in X order. Second is that if you tell me you are writing a romance with a Three Act Structure - where "the relationship is the story" - the first thing I'm going to do is ask you how you are adapting it. Because while there's not necessarily anything preventing you from applying this to a character driven plot, most people are familiar with it as plot structure for externally driven conflict.

Unless there's a reason the status of the main relationship is intrinsically tied up in the current status of the war against the evil empire, a standard Three Act Structure is going to entail either an antagonistic force that absolutely wants your main couple apart being the main relationship obstacle OR the romance aspect being a subplot to the protagonist's narrative adventure. None of those sound like how the show has been described.

So how is OFMD adapting it?

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Act 1

(Can't figure out how well Act 2 is doing if we don't start at setup.)

Right out the gate, OFMD breaks one of the main "rules" for a story where the Acts are delivered in three parts. Namely the one where the first Act is treated as an acceptable standalone story, with it's own satisfying yet open ended conclusion.

In Star Wars, A New Hope ends with the princess rescued, Luke finding the Force, Han finding his loyalty, and the Death Star destroyed. The Empire isn't defeated, the antagonists still live... the story is not over, but this one movie doesn't feel unfinished.

Similarly, Curse of the Black Pearl gives Jack his ship back, Elizabeth and Will get together, and Norrington has the English Navy let them all off the hook and give Jack and the pirates one day's head start.

OFMD's final beat of S1 being Kraken Arc starting is not that, even if Stede returning to sea is still a pretty hopeful note. Now... I don't necessarily think this was a bad call. At least, not if the story is the relationship. It's easy to close on a happy ending and then fuck it up next movie if the conflict is external and coming for them. Not so much if you're driving the story with your protagonists' flaws, in part because it should be really obvious at the end of setup that your main characters need development and can't run off together right now. I actually like that they were risk-takers and let S1 look at the situation clearly vs doing a fragile happy end, because it takes into account the difference between a character-driven and plot-driven narrative.

I think OFMD's Act 1 actually ends at maybe the Act of Grace? Well, there through the kiss on the beach, counting as our "first plot point" before everything goes wrong, basically.

At that point, they have setup the story and characters. We've been introduced to Edward and Stede's current issues. Signing the Act of Grace does make the intertwined arcs between them real - it's no longer a situation that either one of them could just walk away from like it was in 1x07 - and we narrow in on the (alleged) driving question of the show:

It's not about "Will Stede become a great pirate?" or "Will we develop a better kind of piracy for the crew?" - the show is the relationship and the big question is "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?"

Act 1 ends on their first solution, being together and making each other happy and admitting it's more than just friendship. Act 2 starts, appropriately, by saying both of them are currently too flawed for that to go anywhere but crashing and burning.

Now... looking back, what does Act 1 do well vs poorly?

I think it's really strong on giving us the foundation for BlackBonnet's characters and flaws. We aren't surprised Stede goes home or Edward goes Kraken (or at least... we weren't supposed to be surprised. There are still a lot of holdouts blaming Izzy for interrupting Edward's "healing" despite how at this point in the story it doesn't make sense for Edward to have the skills to heal... but I digress). The relationship question is compelling at the end of S1, the cliffhanger hooks, and the fandom explosion of fics did not come from nowhere - the audience was invested.

I also think Act 1 does a great job of settling us in the universe. We understand the rules it abides by, from how gay pirates are just a fact of life to how there's no important organs on the left side of the body. Stede has a muppety force field. Rowboats have homing devices, and port is always as close as you want it to be. Scurvy is a joke. The overblown violence of pirate life is mostly a joke, but we are going to take the violence of childhood trauma seriously.

Lucius's fake-out death, while technically part of Act 2, works well because Act 1 did a good job of priming everyone to go "obviously this show wouldn't kill a crew member for shock value, and we're 100% supposed to suspend disbelief about how he could have survived getting flung into the sea in the middle of the night." And we do. And we get rewarded for it.

Regarding antagonists - a big focus of any setup - the show is deliberately weak. The one with the most screentime is Izzy, and he's purposefully ineffective at separating our main couple. Every antagonist is keyed to a particular character, and they function mostly to inform us of that character's flaws and development requirements. The Badmintons tell us about Stede's repression and feelings of inadequacy, and Izzy tells us about Edward's directionless discontent and tendency to avoid his problems. Effectively - the show is taking the stance this will be a character driven narrative where Stede and Edward's flaws are the source of problems and development the solution. No person or empire (or social homophobia) is separating them...

...which leads me to something not present - there nothing really about the struggle of piracy against the Empire. Looking at Curse of the Black Pearl... we see piracy is in danger. The Black Pearl itself is described as the last great pirate threat the British Navy needs to conquer. Hangings are omnipresent - Jack is sentenced to die by one almost as soon as he's introduced to the story, when his only act so far had been to wander around and save Elizabeth from drowning. OFMD tries to invoke this kind of struggle in 2x08, but there's no foundation. Our Navy antagonists are Stede's childhood bullies, and so focused on Stede the crew isn't even in danger when they get caught. The Republic of Pirates is getting jokes about being gentrified, not besieged.

Even the capture of Blackbeard by the Navy is treated as a feather in Wellington's cap but not a huge symbolic blow against piracy... because we just do not have that grand struggle woven into Act 1. You only know the "Golden Age of Piracy" is ending if you google it, or have watched a bunch of pirate shows.

Overall, a solid Act 1, well adapted to the kind of story they've said they were looking to tell - a romance in the (silly-fied) age of piracy, instead of a pirate adventure with a romantic subplot.

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Now, Sidebar - Where is the story going?

The thing about the dramatic question - in OFMD's case: "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?" - is that a) there's normally more than one question bundled up in that one + sideplots, and b) while you aren't supposed to have the answer yet, you can usually guess what needs to happen to give you the answer.

Back to our examples... Luke's driving question is "Will the Empire be defeated?" Simple. Straightforward. Also: "Will Luke become a Jedi?" The eventual climax of our story from there is pretty obvious... the story is over when Luke wins the war for the Rebellion in a Jedi way. That's the goal that they are working toward.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit more complicated. We're juggling more characters and have a less defined heroic journey, but there are driving questions like "Is Jack Sparrow a good man?" and "Is Will Turner a pirate / what does that mean?" and even "Will the British Navy defeat piracy?" They get basic answers in Curse of the Black Pearl, and far more defined ones in At World's End. Still, this is another plot-driven narrative. They've laid the foundations for the Pirates vs Empire struggle, and when that final battle turns into the trilogy climax then you know what's happening.

OFMD is not doing a plot-driven narrative. To judge how they are doing at their goals, we have to ask what they think a happy ending entails in a character sense.

Clearly it's not the classic romantic sideplot, where the climax is the first kiss / acknowledgement of feelings. They've teased a wedding in Word of God comments a lot, so that's probably our better endpoint. Specifically, though, a wedding where both of our protagonists aren't ready to flee from the altar (big ask) and where they've both grown enough that their flaws / mutual tendencies to run away from life problems won't tank the relationship.

In Stede's case it's still massive feelings of inadequacy and being too repressed to talk about his problems. Also he ran away from his family to chase a lifelong dream of being a pirate - "Is Stede going to find fulfillment in being a pirate captain, or will the real answer be love?" Edward meanwhile expresses a desire to quit piracy and retire Blackbeard, but we also find out he's struggling with massive self-loathing and guilt from killing his father - "Is retiring what Edward wants to do, or is he just running away?"

If they are going to get to a satisfying wedding beat at the climax of their story, what character beats do we need to hit in advance?

Off the top of my head - both characters need to self-realize their flaws (a pretty necessary demand of anyone who runs away from problems). They are set up to balance each other well, but also to miscommunicate easily. They have to tell each other about or verbally acknowledge that self-realization so it can be resolved. Stede has to decide how much being a pirate means to him. Edward has to decide if he's retiring and what he wants to do. They both need to show something to do with getting past their childhood traumas given all the flashbacks. Through all this, they also need to hit the normal romance beats that convince the audience they are romantically attracted to each other and like... want to get married.

Oh, and this is more of a genre-specific sideplot, but once they demonstrate a behavior that hurts the people who work for them, they need to then demonstrate later how it won't happen again. Proof of growth, which is kind of important in a comedy where a lot of the humor is based in them being massively self-centered assholes. Stede doesn't earn his acceptance in the community until he kicks Calico Jack off the ship, making up for causing the situation with Nigel in the first episode. A workplace comedy can get a lot of material from the boss as the worker's antagonist, but if you want the bosses to stay sympathetic you have got to throw them some opportunities to earn it.

All that sounds like a lot, but like - the relationship is the story, right? If we spend so much time on establishing flaws big enough to drive a story, we also have to spend time on fixing them. Which is where the turning point hits.

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Act 2: How it Starts

This is where the full story reality-checks your protagonist. Glad you saved your boyfriend and embraced new love in Act 1, but his repressed guilt means he's about to completely ghost you, and your own abandonment issues and self-loathing are about to make his dick move into everyone else's problem.

Again, it's a non-conventional choice OFMD has this start at the very end of S1 rather than with a sudden dark turn in the S2 premiere, but it's still pretty clearly that point in the Three Act Structure.

In Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back opens with a timeskip to our Rebellion getting absolutely crushed and hiding on a miserable frozen planet. The Empire finds them as the plot is kicking off and they have to desperately flee. They get separated. Han and Leia try to go to an ally for help and end up in Vader's clutches. It's a sharp turn from the victorious note that A New Hope ended on.

Pirates of the Caribbean's Act 2 starts dark. Dead Man's Chest opens with our happy couple Will and Elizabeth getting arrested on their wedding day for the "happy end" escape of the last movie. Jack has not been having success since reclaiming his ship, and we'll soon find out he's being hunted by dark forces. As for the general state of piracy, we get a horrifying prison where pirates are being eaten alive by crows, and a new Lord Beckett making the dying state of piracy even more textual. "Jack Sparrow is a dying breed... The world is shrinking."

The key here is making a point that our heroes aren't ready. This is the struggles part - things they try? Fail. The odds do not look to be in their favor.

Now, OFMD apparently decided to go all-in on flaw exploration, especially with Edward. The first 3 episodes of S2 are brutally efficient in outlining Edward's backslide. In S1 you could see he had issues with guilt and feeling like a bad person. S2 devolves that into a destructive, suicidal spiral where Edward forces his crew into three months of consecutive raids, repeats his shocking act of cruelty with Izzy's toe offscreen (more than once!), escalates it with his leg, and finally they state directly that Edward hates himself for killing his dad so much that he fears he's fundamentally unlovable and better off dead.

Stede's struggles are subtler, but most definitely still there. He's deliberately turning a blind eye to tales of Edward's rampage, half from simply being too self-centered to care about the harms Edward causes others, and half from being unable to face or fathom that he had the ability to hurt Edward that much. Upon reunion he wants to put the whole thing behind them, not addressing why he left in the first place. Very "love magically fixes everything" of him, except Stede is no golden merman.

Interestingly, here, BlackBonnet's relationship dysfunction has very clearly been having a negative impact on the surrounding characters we care about. Make sense, since it's the driving force of the story, but that also adds a lot more relationships we need to make right. Like... Edward is the villain to his crew. The show focuses on their trauma and poisoned relationships with him. And then draws our attention even more to Stede taking his side to overrule their objections to him.

For a story where the conflict and required resolutions are primarily character based, and the setup had already given the main couple a good amount to work with, dedicating a lot of S2 to adding more ground to cover was... a choice. Potentially very compelling on the character end, certainly challenging on the writing end... but not a complete break with the structure.

Bold, but not damning.

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Act 2: How it Ends

Now it is true that Act 2 tends to end on a loss. Luke is defeated by Vader and loses his hand, and Han has been sent away in carbonite. Jack Sparrow for all his efforts cannot escape his fate, and he and the Pearl are dragged to the locker.

But the loss is not the point. The loss is incidental to the point.

Act 2 is about struggles and failure, but it's also about lessons learned. There's a change that occurs, and our cast - defeated but not broken - enters the final act with the essential skills, motivation, knowledge, etc. that they lacked in the beginning.

Luke Skywalker could not have defeated the Empire in Return of the Jedi until he'd learned the truth about his father and resisted the Dark Side in The Empire Strikes Back. (Ok, confession, I'm using Star Wars as an example because literally everyone is doing so, but frankly it's a better example of formulaic Three Act Structure repeating within each movie because on a trilogy level - relevant to this comparison - it is a super basic hero's journey in a very recognized outfit and as such the Act 2 relevance is also... super basic "the hero tries to fight the antagonist too early" beat where he learns humility. Not really a lot going on. So, for the better example...)

Dead Man's Chest has a downer ending with the closing moment of the survivors regaining hope and a plan against an enemy now on the verge of total victory - a classic Act 2. But in that first loss against Davy Jones we get Will's personal motivation and oath to stab the heart, Jack finally overcoming not knowing what he wanted and returning to save them from the Kraken (being a good man), Elizabeth betraying Jack (being a pirate), Barbossa's return, and Norrington's choice to bargain for his prior life back. The mission to retrieve Jack from the World's End is the final movie's plot, but things are already on track to turn the tables back around as we enter the finale.

Now, relevant sidenote - one major difference between Three Act Structure within a single work vs across three parts is that Act 2 continues into Part 3, and only tips over into Act 3 about midway through. This is because obviously your final movie or season cannot just be the climax. That's why both movie examples start with a rescue mission. They have to still be missing something so they can get the plot of their third part accelerating while they go get whatever that something is.

But if you wait until the 3rd movie / season to get the development going at all - you're fucked.

Jack's decision in the climax of At World's End to make Elizabeth into the Pirate King goes back to the development we saw in the Pearl vs Kraken fight in Dead Man's Chest. So does Elizabeth's leadership arc. Will's whole arc about becoming Captain of the Dutchman gets built upon in the third movie, but it starts in the second. Not just as an idle thought - he's actively pursuing it. Already consciously weighing saving his father vs getting back to Elizabeth as soon as he makes the oath. Everyone is moving forward in Act 2. Their remaining development might stumble for drama, or they might be a bit reluctant, but I know that they know better than to let it stick, because they already faced their true crisis points.

I'm not sure we can say the same about OFMD.

S2 does a good job of adding problems, yeah, but there's not really any movement on fixing them. Our main couple stagnates in some ways, and regresses in others.

Stede opened Act 2 by running away in the middle of the night back to his wife without telling Edward anything. We know he did it because of feeling guilty and his core childhood trauma of his dad calling him a weak and inadequate failure. Now in S1 he actually speedruns a realization of his shitty behavior with Mary, but what about S2? Well...

He continues to not talk to Edward about... pretty much anything. My guy practiced love confessions galore but Edward only finds out about going back to his wife via Anne, and it gets brushed aside with a love confession. He seems to think Edward wants him to be a dashing pirate, or maybe he just thinks he should be a dashing pirate. Idk, it doesn't get examined. Regarding his captaincy, they give him an episode plot about Izzy teaching him to respect the crew's beliefs, but this is sideplot to a larger arc of him completely overruling their traumas and concerns (and shushing their objections) to keep his boyfriend on the ship so. That.

Stede kills a man for reasons related to his issues, shoves that down inside and has sex with Edward instead of acknowledging any bad feelings. At least this time Edward was there and knows it happened? Neither Chauncey's death nor his dad have been mentioned to anyone. He gets a day of piracy fame that goes to his head, gets dumped, and ends on a complete beat down by Zheng where he learns... idk. Being a boor is bad? He's still wildly callous to her in the finale, and spends the whole time seeking validation of his pirate skills. He reunites with Edward, kisses, and quotes Han Solo.

Where S1 ended on a great fuckery, his S2 naval uniform plan after they regroup is ill defined except to call it a suicide mission - and we don't get to see what it would have been because it devolves into a very straightforward fight and flee. And gets Izzy killed. Quick cut funeral (no acknowledgement of his S2 bonding with Izzy), quick cut to wedding (foreshadowing), quick cut to... innkeeper retirement? Unclear when or even if BlackBonnet discussed Stede's whole driving dream to be a pirate and live a life at sea, but I guess that got a big priority downgrade. Despite the fact he was literally looking to Zheng for pirate-based compliments in the post-funeral scene.

I guess he's borderline-delusionally dogged in his pursuit of love now - so unlikely to bolt again - but he's also got at least a decade of experience mentally checking out in a state of repression when he's unhappy. And he's stopped being as supportive and caring toward the crew in that dogged pursuit, while arguably demonstrating a loss in leadership skills, so, um, good thing someone else is in charge?

And if Stede is a mess, Edward's arc is so much worse.

As established, they devote the Kraken to making Edward worse. He literally wants to kill himself and destroy everyone around him in the process because Stede left, and this is fixed by... Stede coming back. That's it. The crew tries to murder him and then exiles him from the ship (and Izzy takes the lead on both, indicating exactly how isolated Edward has become), but it's resolved in half a day by Stede just forcing them to put up with his boyfriend again. Like they think he murdered Buttons and still have to move him back in???

The show consistently depicts Kraken Era as a transgression against the crew, but they also avoid showing Edward acting with genuine contrition. He admits he historically doesn't apologize for anything, and then mostly still doesn't. It's a joke that he's approaching probation as a performance (CEO apology), and then the only person he genuinely talks to is Fang - the one guy cool with him - and the only person who gets a basic "sorry" is Izzy - the guy he really needs to be talking to. Edward's primary trauma is guilt, but apparently he only feels it abstractly after all that? He's only concerned with fixing things with Stede, despite Stede being about the only person around who hurt him instead of the reverse.

Speaking of primary traumas, Edward hating himself doesn't really go anywhere after the beat of self-realization. Apparently Stede still loving him is enough of a bandaid to end the suicide chasing, but he doesn't like. Acknowledge that. Edward is maybe sorta trying to go slow so he doesn't hang all his self-worth on Stede again (you can speculate), but they a) absolutely fail to go slow, and b) he doesn't make any attempt to develop himself or another support structure. Just basically... "let's be friends a bit before hooking back up." And then we get the whiplash that is Blackbeard and/or retirement.

Kraken Era is Blackbeard but way worse, like no one who has known Blackbeard has ever seen him. In the Gravy Basket Edward claims he might like being an innkeeper, before destroying his own fantasy by having the spectre of Hornigold confront him over killing his dad. The BlackBonnet to Anne & Mary parallel says running away to China / retiring makes you want to kill each other - burn it all down and go back to piracy. Stede rightfully points out prior retirement plans were whims. Edward gets sick of the penance sack after a day and puts his leathers back on to go try "poison into positivity". But also claims to be an innkeeper (look - two whole mentions!) when trying not to send children to be pirates after teaching them important knife skills.

Killing Ned Low is a serious, bad thing that prompts ill-advised sex and then going hardcore into retirement mode - leathers overboard, talk about mermaid fantasy, get retirement blessings from Izzy, end up dumping Stede for a fishing job instead of talking about how he's enjoying piracy. The fishing job, however, is also a bad thing and a stupid decision because Edward is a lazy freeloader fantasizing about being a better person. We have an uncomfortable, extended scene of "Pop-Pop" weirdly echoing his abusive dad and then sending Edward to go do what he's good at - disassociate, brutally murder two guys, fish up the leathers, rise as the Kraken from the sea. He continues with comically efficient murder but also he's reading Stede's love letters and seeking to reunite with him so... wait, is this a good thing? Post makeout / mass slaughter he's trading compliments on his kills with Zheng so. Yeah. Looks like it. Murder is fine.

Wait, no, skip ahead and Izzy is dying and Edward suddenly cares a whole lot as Izzy makes his death scene about freeing Edward from Blackbeard. Now being a pirate was "encouraging the darkness" because Izzy - a guy who had little to no influence over Edward's behavior - just couldn't let Blackbeard go. Murder is bad again, and he is freed. Minus the little detail that the murder he explicitly hates himself over was not related to Blackbeard or piracy whatsoever, so presumably haunts "just Ed" still. Anyway he's retiring to run an inn with Stede now, as the "loving family" Izzy comforted him with in his dying moments sails away from the couple that can best be described as the antagonists of their S2 arc. Also Edward implicitly wants to get married. It's been 3 days since making out was "too fast". He's still wearing the leathers.

So most of the way through Act 2 and Edward's barely on speaking terms with anyone but Stede, who he has once again hung his entire life on really fast? Crushing guilt leads to self-hatred leads to mass murder and suicide, but only if he's upset so just avoid that. He's still regularly idealizing Stede as a non-fucked up golden mermaid person (that maybe he personally ruined a bit) because he barely knows the guy. His only progress on his future is "pirate" crossed out / rewritten / crossed out again a few times, "fisherman" crossed out, and "innkeeper ?"

Just.

Where is the forward movement?

It's not just that the inn will undoubtedly fall apart - it's that the inn will fall apart for the near-exact same reasons that China was going to at the beginning of Act 2, and I can't point to anything they've learned in the time since that will help them. I guess Stede realized he loved Edward enough to chase after him, but that was in S1! They should be further than this by now. You can't cram another crisis backslide, all the Act 2 development, and the full Act 3 climax into one season. Certainly not without it feeling like the characters magically fix themselves.

If they just fail and keep blindly stumbling into the same issues because they don't change their behavior, then Act 2 doesn't work. You're just repeating the turning point between Act 1 & Act 2 on a loop.

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Where Did They Fuck Up?

Actually... lets start on what they did right.

The one consistent aspect of S2 that I praised and still think was done well in a vacuum (despite being mostly left out of the finale) was the crew's union-building arc.

With only 8 episodes and more to do in them than S1, side characters were going to get pinched even if the main plot was absolutely flawless. That was unavoidable. With budget cuts / scheduling issues, we regularly have crew members simply vanish offscreen outside of one scene, meaning cohesive arcs for your faves was not likely. Not to say they couldn't have done better - my benefit of the doubt for the TealOranges breakup and Oluwande x Zheng dried up about when I realized he was literally just her Stede stand-in for the parallel - but something like Jim's revenge plot from S1 was realistically not on the table without, like, turning half the crew into seagulls to afford it.

The union building works around this constraint really well. They turn "the crew" into the side arc, and then weave Izzy's beats in so that they aren't just about Izzy. The breakup boat crew working together to comfort each other and protect him turns them into a unit, and Stede's crew taking it upon themselves to address the trauma vibes while the captains aren't in the way solidifies it across all our side characters. The crew goes to war with Stede's cursed coat and wins, they Calypso their boss to throw a party, and they capitalize on a chance to make bank with an efficiency Stede could only dream of.

We don't get specific arcs, but Frenchie, Jim, and Oluwande are defaulted to as leaders in just about every situation, and Roach is constantly shown sharing his inventions with different characters. Individuals can dip in and out without feeling like the sideplots stutter. Any sense of community in S2 is coming from this arc - even if there are cracks at the points where it joins to other storylines (Stede and Edward, Zheng, etc.)

So why does it work? Well, because it's a workplace comedy, and you can tell they are familiar with working on those. They know where the beats are. They know where to find the humor. They know how to build off of S1 because they made sure the bones were already there - an eclectic group of individuals that start as just coworkers, but bond over time in the face of their struggle against an inept boss who they grow to care for and support while maintaining an increasingly friendly antagonism because, you know, inept boss.

OFMD does its best work in S2 when it's being true to its original concept... and its worst work when it seemingly loses confidence in its own premise.

"The show is the relationship," right? It's a romance set in a workplace comedy. The setup of Act 1 was all about creating a character-driven narrative. So given that... where the hell are we getting the dying of piracy and a war against the English Navy?

That's not a character-driven romcom backdrop, it's an action-adventure plot from Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. It's plot-driven, creating an antagonistic force that results in your characters' problems. Once the story is about the fight against the Empire, the dramatic question becomes the same as those adventure stories - "Will the British Navy defeat piracy, and will our protagonists come out the other side of the battle?"

Forget the wedding. The wedding is no longer the climax of the story, its back to the happy ending flash our romantic subplot gets after winning this fight.

Except, of course, trying to pivot your story to a contradictory dramatic question near the end of Act 2 can be nothing short of a disaster, because either you were writing the wrong story until now, or you've completely lost the plot of the real one. I shouldn't even be trying to figure out if they are doing this, because it should be so obvious that they wouldn't.

And yet.

What do the Zheng and Ricky plots add to the story if not this? Neither of these characters have anything emotionally to contribute to Stede and Edward - they truly are plot elements. It's a hard break from the S1 antagonist model, but it also takes up a lot of valuable screentime. This was considered important, but still Zheng's personality and motivation only gets explored so far as it's an Edward-Stede-Izzy parallel with Oluwande and Auntie, and they only need the parallel for Izzy's genre-jumping death scene. Which follows a thematically out-of-left-field speech about how piracy is about belonging to something good (workable) and how Ricky could never destroy their spirits (um...?). And then David Jenkins is pointing to it and saying things about "the symbolic death of piracy" and speculating S3 might be about the crew getting "payback"??? An idea floated by Zheng right before our temporary retirement, btw.

Fuck, the final episode of S2 didn't have time for our main couple to talk to each other because it was so busy dealing with the mass explosion of Zheng's fleet and Ricky's victory gloat. We get lethal violence associated with traumatic flashbacks until they need to cut down enemy mooks like it's nothing, at which point we get jokes with Zheng. The Republic of Pirates is destroyed outright, and it feels like they only did it because they got insecure about their "pirate story" not having the right kind of stakes. Don't even get me started on killing a major character because "Piracy’s a dangerous occupation, and some characters should die," as if suspending disbelief on this aspect makes the story somehow lesser, instead of just being a fairly standard genre convention in comedy. Nobody complains about Kermit the Frog having an improbably good survival record.

Did someone tell them that the heroes have to lose a battle near the end of Act 2, so they scrambled to give them one?

Just... compare the wholly plot-driven struggle in 2x08 to Stede and Edward's character-focused storylines in 1x10 and tell me how 2x08 is providing anything nearly as valuable to the story. Because I can't fucking find it.

At best they wasted a bunch of time on a poorly integrated adventure plot as, like, Zheng's backstory or something, and just fucked it up horribly by trying to "step up" the kind of plot they did for Jim. In which case the whole thing will be awkwardly dropped but damage is done. Otherwise, they actually thought they could just casually add a subplot like this because they've done something wildly stupid like think "pirate" is a genre on the same level as "workplace comedy" and can just trample in-universe coherency while you draw on other media to shore up their unsupported beats.

Bringing us to the most infuriating bit...

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"...end the second season in a kinder spot."

If this was the goal, the entire season was written to work actively against it in way that is baffling and incompetent.

The really ironic thing is that the reason that the Act 2 part typically gets a downer ending is because of the evil empire that OFMD did not have to deal with until they pointlessly added it. A plot-driven story has an antagonistic force - a villain - that the heroes need to defeat. Something external working against them. The story ends when they beat the thing, and it's not much of a climax if they do most of the defeating before you get there. Ergo, they have to be outmatched up to the climax. Ergo, the second part cannot end on them feeling pretty comfortable and confident going into the third.

The same rules do not apply in the same way to a character-driven arc.

We already established Edward and Stede declaring their love is not the end of the story. Nor, necessarily, is both of them confidently entering a relationship. Even once they've developed a bunch they will have to show that development by running into the kinds of problems that would have broken them up before and resolving them better.

David Jenkins keeps talking about this idea that S2 is getting a hopeful open ending and S3 will get into potential problems, and like... I don't see any reason why they couldn't have done that successfully. They didn't, but they could've.

If S2 grew them enough as characters and then had them agree to try again in the last minute of the finale, they absolutely could have had a kind and hopeful ending where you were confident they could do it. And then a potential S3 can show that. It's a bit rockier than they were counting on, but they have learned enough lessons to not break up. And then the overall plot can build to proposal (start of Act 3) and wedding (the romantic climax). It doesn't have to be a blow out fight to be emotionally cathartic.

(Hell, the main rockier bit that they overcome in the S3 Act 2 portions could be marriage baggage. I'm sure they both have some. It would work.)

In the same way focusing on our character's long term flaws and character-driven conflict makes an Act 1 "happy ending" more difficult, I suspect it makes an Act 2 "happy ending" easier.

Instead they wrote an Act 2 that failed to convincingly start development and got confused on its direction, and then presented a rushed finale ending in a copy of the predictable disaster from S1 as though it's a good thing. They yanked the story at least temporarily into an awkward place where a romcom is trying to sell me on a bunch of serious drama / adventure beats that it has not put the work into, and inviting comparisons to better versions of those same beats in other, more suited media that make it look worse. The need to portray everyone as reaching happy closure overrules sitting with a major character death and using it for any narrative significance, while still letting it overshadow those happy endings because a romcom just sloppily killed a major character with a wound they've literally looked into the camera and said was harmless.

If I'm being entirely honest, Dead Man's Chest ends effectively at Jack Sparrow's funeral and then cuts to the British Navy obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, and it still feels kinder and more hopeful just because I leave with more faith the characters are actively capable of and working toward solving their problems.

OFMD S2, in contrast, has half-convinced me our main couple would live in a mutually obsessed, miscommunication-ridden horror story until they die.

---

Additional Reading

Normally I link stuff like this in the post, but that requires more excitement than I'm feeling right now. Here's my alternative:

Where I thought they were going with Edward - really outlines the mountain of character development they still have unaddressed

Where I thought they were going with Izzy - touches on a lot of themes that might be dead in the water & also context that's still probably relevant to why Izzy got a lot of focus in S2

My scattershot 2x08 reactions

An ask where I sketched out the bones of this argument, and another where I was mostly venting about the fandom response

This one, this other one, and this last one (read the link in op's post too) about genre shifts and failure to pull them off

The trauma goes in the box but it never opens back up - the whole point of Act 2 is that they needed to start opening shit like that - and also they focus so much on needed character growth and so little on following through

They can't even carry through on character growth that we got last season???

Why Izzy's death feels like Bury Your Gays ran smack into shitty writing

EDIT: Oh and this post is REALLY good for outlining the lack of change in way less words than I did

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #three act structure #character arcs #blackbonnet #genre #blackbeard ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #my meta #ladyluscinia #ofmd critical

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foxufortunes · 3 months ago

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Some random tips and trivia for anyone wanting to take a slightly more realistic look at exy and sport in their fanfics:

Long jogs are not good for sports like exy. The best you can say is they're good cardio, but most exercise they should be doing anyway is good cardio. To oversimplify: long term energy and fast action energy have different power supplies and training one doesn't really help the other. There's a reason sprinters and marathon runners are not the same people. Exy is a sport of fast bursts and in some cases long jogs can actually be detrimental to your ability to play these sports.

Dear lord, warm up and cool down. I know most of us just assume this is in there and glossed over, but if you're going into details, warm up and cool down and wear warm jackets after. Especially cool down. I know Kevin and Neil have already fucked their bodies but don't make it worse. Also, rest days. You body needs time to recover. Kevin and Jean will be lucky if they recover enough not to have any career after college given how much Tetsuji has fucked the Ravens with his training. Thea is probably in agony the entire time and she doesn't have long left playing.

Goalie's lead the defence line. If you want to throw around a defence captain type plot, it's your goalies, it's always goalies. Because they have the best view of the entire court. You dealer should control the entire team's plays, as the person who should be going from defence to offence and back (assuming they work similarly to other sports with a similar position) but the defence is always run by the goalie, and your goalies are usually really fucking loud about it.

Your division/class is actually nothing to do with your team's skill, but your school's sports program and budget. The Foxes are not a Class I team, Palmetto is a D1 school. To get this status, your school has to have a certain level of sports program, featuring a certain number of sports, sports for women, upcoming/rarer sports and certain required sports. While EAU blatantly ignores all of this as presented in canon (they seem to be D3 status, maybe D2 at best) who got their status through bribery and corruption and their coach, Palmetto, as presented in canon, clearly meets D1 school status. Your school's division also affects what kinds of scholarships they offer. Typically, only D1 schools offer full ride sports scholarships. It's most likely Palmetto was looking to fund an exy team and Wymack went to them because they're a D1 school, or they approached Wymack, unlike the Ravens who clearly don't understand how this works.

On the topic of Wymack: the ERC couldn't have had anything to do with Andrew's miracle in October. We'll get to this but the ERC is just not that powerful, and, see above point, they have nothing to do with Palmetto's status. Now, Nora actually gives us a far more likely and better reason in the EC, that she then overcomplicated in canon trying to make the ERC more powerful for no reason, especially given Kevin wasn't even with the Foxes at the time. In the scene where we see Wymack recruiting the cousins, Andrew brings up the idea that Wymack's initial four year will be on it's last year that year and he needs results or the school will decline renewing his contract and rebuild the exy program from scratch under a new coach. This is far more likely a reason for him to need Andrew's miracle. It's his final year of his contract, the school wants results, and if they drop out now with so few games won, he's done for. And given how many NCAA rules he and Abby help the Foxes break, it won't be long before the rest of the Foxes lose their scholarships too.

Four years might seem like an odd amount of time for an initial contract, and it sorta is, but one thing mentioned in TSC that's never brought up in the original trilogy is redshirting. Basically, for all you have a five year contract, you can only play four seasons. One season, you get to practice, but not play games, this is called red shirting, and in my experience and what I've heard from others, it's typically the freshman, for obvious reason, but this does bring up issues for Wymack's team design, and means Neil will have to take a year off eventually. And don't even think about how this affects the Ravens.

Speaking of Ravens, this is honestly one of the most basic NCAA rules: you cannot play professionally and play NCAA. Kevin and Riko literally cannot be playing for professional teams and be playing for the Ravens, the NCAA would boot them instantly. And, up until very recently, you also cannot be paid for your photoshoots, or using your likeness or sponsorships. To play NCAA, during the period AFTG is set, you cannot make any money as a player. Now, there's an argument that Tetsuji could probably make that Kevin and Riko didn't make money as players, but as celebrities in their own rights, but that's a very grey area. But, no, they weren't getting paid for photoshoots or interviews or sponsorships or anything like that. The only exceptions are tournament winnings, and there is a very strict cap on that, and stipends which there was a lot of debate over whether that counted as payment or not. They cannot be paid for anything related to exy because the second the NCAA makes an exception for exy, every other sport wants it too, and I'm sure some of them are mafia backed too. Mafia bribery doesn't fix everything, and if your trying to write your mafia as not a bunch of idiots, they'll know where to stop.

And then the ERC. They're just not that powerful, y'all. I get that Nora wanted to make them seem powerful, but given how Riko does most of the shit not Tetsuji, even that's pointless. So, for a start, the ERC needs specific scope. It's cool to call it the Exy Rules and Regulations Committee, but for what? Sports tend to have an overall ruling body, but they don't actually control everything. They control things like national tournaments and teams. Then you have the country's body, that controls things like the leagues, and they often have different rules that take time to catch up to each other. Different leagues within the same country can have slightly different rules. And often the NCAA also has its own rules. (To use volleyball, because that does have wildly different rules, in the NCAA liberos can serve in certain conditions, and that's about the only place in the world this rule exists). Basically, they only have control if you're competing in their tournament or affiliated. For the ERC to have such control over the Foxes, they're likely an NCAA committee, this means the ERC only has power over rule and regulations of Class I exy (oh yes, each division has their own committee), meaning they control things like gear regulations, rules on bench size, foul rules ect. Not which class the Foxes are in, not if Andrew's allowed to play with them, nothing like that. It's strictly the rules of the game. And they are the bottom of the power chart. Above them you have things like the division committee, the student athlete's committee and so many others. The ERC actually has very little power because the NCAA is a massive, slow moving, complicated bureaucracy. Even if they could drop the Foxes a division or get rid of Andrew, it would take years.

#all for the game #the foxhole court #aftg

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afreakingdork · 4 months ago

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You Are My Sunshine, My Only Moonshine - Chapter 3

RotTMNT x Reader

I can't stress how much @phoebepheebsphibs brought my vision alive for this week's chapter art~

Rated: Teen and Up Audiences

Relationships: Michelangelo (TMNT)/Reader, Michelangelo (TMNT)/You, Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Donatello (TMNT)/You

Warnings: POV Second Person, Gender Neutral Reader, Anxious Reader, Introverted Reader, Stuttering, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Romance, Love, Love Confessions, Falling In Love, Unrequited Love, Rejection, Aromantic Asexual Michelangelo (TMNT), Bisexual Donatello (TMNT), Pansexual Leonardo (TMNT), Lesbian Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit, Demisexual April O'Neil (TMNT), Implied Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit/April O'Neil/Sunita, Endgame Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Romantic Love, Platonic Love, Panic Attacks, Sexuality Crisis, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, Happy Ending, Fluff

Synopsis: You’ve lost most of your life to anxiety and fear. Now, in your late 20s, you are desperate to reclaim it and during one such outing you encounter the sun personified. With his and his similarly celestially inspired family, will you finally reach your goal or will you lose yourself along the way?

Also available on Ao3

First 💛 Previous

The moon moved the tides.

It was a factoid that struck you after your fateful introduction to Mikey’s family. You had to process what had occurred. You spent the better part of that next month grappling with the things they could do. Mike was already more powerful than any other human by will alone, but that should have been limited to his incredible disposition. If that wasn’t enough, he had his turtley good looks. That meant anything more was an unjust balancing of skills and yet Mikey actually did have the god-like power you had considered unavailable to him.

After surviving the movie night, you hadn’t been able to confront Mikey properly and instead told him you were tired as a means to head home right away. Mikey chirped something about that making sense since you hadn’t flexed your going out muscles in a while and happily saw you off. It was only an hour later, tucked in your bed, that you furiously typed out a mania of messages asking if what you had seen was real. Mikey called you and you had then spent the better part of your night hearing a far too casual explanation of all the things you hadn’t put together.

Casey meant it when she had called Mikey a mystic warrior.

There was an alternate timeline.

There was an entire second city under New York.

There had been many more plots to eradicate the human race than those on the surface knew of.

Mikey was made for one of these plans.

It was all too much.

Relating this and unable to sleep the entire night, you thanked the calendar makers that it was the weekend. You spent most of it in recovery mode, only responding sparsely to Mikey’s texts. He had your address now. Not sure how liberal he’d be with that information, you continued forth, trying to fit the man you knew with the one that your eyes had been open to.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a big deal.

Everything you knew about life itself no longer made sense.

There were entire world’s worth of species with supreme intelligence that had smartly relegated themselves to mythos.

Hiding in plain sight.

Anywhere and everywhere.

Besides work where you were as flighty as a canary, you secretly stared at your coworkers to see if they were any of the broached. You felt like one of those conspiracy theorists with no way to know how far this all actually went. Almost believing that lizard people were indeed in charge, it was around that month mark when you’d awoken from a nightmare knowing your stress levels were absurd ones. Mutants were a known fact and had already dealt with their media hubbub. Yokai were ancient and hadn’t toppled society yet.

Nothing was actually different other than your knowledge of it all.

It also rang eerily close for you.

You’d spent your own life in the shadows for literal decades.

How had these beings not gone stir crazy in millenia?

You then were struck for comparing yourself.

They were forced to.

Fear or not, the circumstances weren’t comparable.

Guilt drove you.

You needed perspective.

You wanted to be better.

You sent Mikey a message.

You: Would it be possible to see the Hamato powers?

In this way you could remove the mysticism from the acts, even though you were sort of sure that’s what they had called magic anyway.

For the first time in what had to be your whole time knowing Mikey, it took him over an hour to get back with you.

Getting more nervous by the minute that you had somehow insulted him. He returned just as you were leaving for work to apologize for the wait. He said he needed to round up his brothers and only asked if you wanted his dad to be a part of the show. You knew Splinter from Mikey’s explanation, but you had yet to officially meet the rat mutant. His fortitude as the legendary Lou Jitsu had seemingly appeared only in his buffed fighting strength. Now grappling with yet another superpowered person, one you had not accounted for and who could, somehow, apparently use every brothers’ power, felt like biting off a little more than you could chew. You would start with the base and work up, you decided then. One step at a time, you asked just the four for now and Mikey quickly rattled off the where and when.

The first of was a location in the middle of nowhere and appeared inaccessible to your searches.

The coordinates were quickly followed up by an explanation that Leo would portal you as the initial demonstration.

The date of which was scheduled later that same week.

Again, you did not have near enough time to prepare.

It seemed like seconds passed until you were in the lair and then out on a field.

Words were happening.

Something was happening.

Raph then grew to the size of a glowing Godzilla.

You stared with your head tipping so far back it felt like you cut off your circulation. Awe not to be diminished, you saw a zip of orange and located Mikey, flying, to land on his brother’s glowing snout. It might have been a cute display were you given any warning for any of this. Instead, you felt your arm tapped and your head lolled to where Leo told you to watch him. His tongue appeared bitten amongst his excited smile before he disappeared out of existence. A sizzle of sparks left in his wake, you sought him out along the ground when a flash of blue light pulled your eye. The blue brother appeared, pinballing in portals all the way up the tower before he gestured at Mikey.

Zips of orange and blue struck like fireworks all over the sky.

Taking a step back, you fell onto your ass in the soft grass.

Even from his massive height, Raph took notice of your fall and shrank down. It left him over a football field away, but he only held out a hand which then kept going. A red projection stretched all the way to your side in an offer. You took it with quaking fingers and felt how it was a solid, but empty light. No warmth other than the shade, you wanted to lean against it, but the thought made you feel all the more pathetic. This was meant to be a grounding experience. You knew Mikey. He wasn’t scary. He was your hero. He was also exploding over and over again in the sky.

Hapless, you turned your attention to the only brother not participating.

Donnie was sat near where you had exited the original portal and was tapping away on his phone as if he couldn’t be bothered.

“Donnie!” Raph seemed to shoot along his projection and appeared holding your hand.

You shrieked in fear and were once again on your behind.

“Sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t mean to scare ya. I can move where they do.” Raph helped you up. “But I get it, you know what helped me?”

You stared at him as nothing could help you.

“Playing Pants Pants Revolution!” Raph did a few hopping steps. “I used to trip a lot when i was a kid, but I wasn’t gonna be the big lug with two left feet forever, that’s for sure!”

You nodded faintly.

“Wait, what was I-?” Raph scanned the ground until he found what he was looking for. “Donnie get up! Let’s go! We can show off our combo move!”

Donnie said nothing and, to your eye, hadn’t moved in the slightest outside of the swipe of his hand.

“Having trouble… ya know? Performing?” Raph knelt down beside him with a snide grin.

With a slow lifting of his head, you saw twisted fury beneath Donnie’s smiling veneer. “While I appreciate your concern…” He held the pause as if drumming up anticipation. “No. Everything is in working order.”

Raph checked around his head space. “Huh. Goading you usually works.”

“Not this time.” Donnie responded with pure ice and dropped his gaze back down to his phone.

You weren’t sure what that meant, but you had a moment to breathe.

It broke your shuddering form to only a shaking one.

The chatter of your body quieted, you heard a blip.

Something akin to a spark, you were involuntarily moving toward the sound when Raph’s body collided with you.

He held you hard to his plastron as you went tumbling.

Air and everything else was sucked from you, leaving you unable to even cry out.

No one would have heard it as the Earth itself sounded as if it were exploding.

The thundering tapered off into the cloudless sky and you were left covered in grassy debris.

Raph unfurled himself and checked you over.

In front of you was an idyllic field.

The disaster must have been behind you.

You’d have to face it.

“Guys!!!” Raph roared and left you.

“Huh. I was sure that’d work.” Leo remarked, no clearly on the ground.

“Is Y/N okay!?” Mikey squeaked before you heard plodding footsteps head towards you.

Readying for another impact, nothing came other than a delicate hand on your shoulder.

“Y/N? Oh no…” Mikey’s head appeared out of the corner of your vision. “You’re in shock!”

“It’s just so unlike you.” Leo sounded like he was upset with something else. “Oh!” You heard a snap. “I know what it is! You’re having performance anxiety!” His voice rose several teasing octaves. “Having a little stage fright there, bud?”

Donnie.

There had been a catastrophe and he was talking about Donnie.

“The fact…” You heard a rustling noise followed by what sounded like pants being dusted off. “… that both of you and Raph tried to provoke me using the same exhausted joke is telling.”

“Ah, Raphie!” Leo cooed affection. “You too!? Mi hermano! We are brothers!”

“Uh, guys?!” Mikey waved a hand in your face.

“Yeah, yeah in a minute, Mike.” Leo prattled off. “What’s the deal then, Donton?”

“Are we finished?” Donnie responded coolly.

“Uh, yeah maybe if you tell me why you aren’t showing off. That’s your thing, isn’t it? Validation? Remember?” Leo’s voice moved and quieted. “Did we hit him by accident?”

There was the distinct sound of a gun cocking and Leo gave the smallest fearful squeak.

“So you are good!” Raph exclaimed without real surprise.

Mikey’s head swiveled where he was examining you. “Huh? Something up with Donnie’s little purple-?”

You didn’t see or hear what hit Mikey, but you watched him go down beside you.

A scream started in your throat, but Leo’s hand wrapped around your mouth. “Shhh, shhh. I know. I’m sorry about this. It’s scary, right? You seem scared.”

You could see his worried face and you nodded around a few tears spilling.

“Look here. He’s fine.” Leo kicked Mikey’s limp leg in demonstration.

“We said no head shots…” Mikey groaned.

“I’m gonna let go now. Are you still going to scream?” Leo’s mask rose with judgment.

You shook your head.

Leo carefully released, but held a hovering hand up just in case.

You sank down, barely catching yourself from outright collapse.

“Okay… Good first step.” Leo ushered softly. “It’s a lot. I get that. I’m just not a fan of bursting my ear drums anymore than they already are from… ya know…” He swiveled his wrist gesturing to what you assumed was his life. “We mighta sorta kinda maybe went a little overboard.”

You wished you had the fortitude for sarcasm.

Leo saw how he’d both understated and not explained a thing. “Okay! Fine! Mike and I were trying to do a cool landing! For you! It was gonna be awesome! We just came in… too hot! Like really hot. Like maybe surface of the Sun hot? It doesn’t feel that fast when you’ve been going hundreds of miles of hours for like fifteen or whatever minutes or hours or like ever? We may have misjudged the distance and blew a crater in this pretty nice field, but hey! It’ll grow back! It has before!”

You felt like your very neurons were leaking out your ears.

“And with that piss poor explanation, we’re done here.” Donnie asked, bitter. “Let’s go.”

Leo glowered over his shoulder.

You still hadn’t turned around.

“What is your problem, man!?” Leo snapped, moving out of your sight.

You had to look.

You needed to see what had happened.

Dispel the mysticism.

“Me?!” Donnie growled. “You of all people should see!”

“See what? I apparently need enlightening because why else would I be asking?!” Leo huffed.

Fisting grass, you got one of your shoulders down which popped at the strain.

“You! All of you! How you show your entire hand! Email me so I can print out and bind your whole playbook!” Donnie yelled.

“What are you even talking about!?” Leo matched his volume.

Glimpsing Raph’s leg, you were almost there.

Silence chased your ears.

The two weren’t fighting anymore.

“You cannot be serious.” Leo gaped.

Not even the wind sounded through the grass.

Passing two more sets of green legs, you found a mound of dirt nearly twice the size of the already tall turtles. Hobbling to your knees just to see it better, you stumbled sideways until you could see how the Earth churned the Earth like ice cream.

Your legs gave out a third time.

This was nothing compared to the climbing wall.

Leo and Mikey had fallen from the sky.

They had done this to the ground.

Both of them were walking without so much as a scratch.

Raph had saved you.

“Y/N?”

You looked up to see both Raph and Mikey had followed you.

Mikey looked particularly unmarred without any evidence of whatever had knocked him over.

The younger reached first and you scrambled backwards unconsciously.

The pair mixed their surprise and concern while the other two picked up their bicker as an odd backdrop.

“I-I’m s-sorry…” You got out meekly, getting to your own feet. “L-Leo was… r-right…”

“Someone say my name?” In a twirling gesture, Leo danced away from Donnie and split the sunset.

Before a solar eclipse closed the gap, you saw Donnie send some ire after Leo before he sent pure rage at you.

What had you done?

A star sparkled to distract you and Leo bent forward so he was at your eye level. “How’s it hanging? Weak in the knees? We have that effect on people.”

Your gaze slammed to the ground.

You were never good with people like him.

One minute he was quieting you and not it was teasing.

Where Mikey manipulated people earnestly, Leo did it with slick speech.

“Hey.” He popped a squat. “Minus one humpty dumpty who got put back together with a stick shoved up his butt, I can tell you this was pretty fun.”

Covering your mouth with a nervous fist, you found it impossible to look him in the eye.

He went on. “It’s not very often we get to show off. We wanted to impress you both for us and Mike’s sake. We just got a little too excited is all.”

You managed what you thought might be a nod.

“We’re heroes.” He did a form of jazz hands in your vision. “Nothing to be scared of. We use our powers for good… mostly.”

Giving a little exhale, you looked over his spread digits.

“So like maybe once in a while I skip airport security and the whole passport situation, but look at this face! I’m too beautiful for those terrible license pics, don’t’cha think?” One of Leo’s hands left your vision.

He appeared to be waiting so you snuck him a glance.

Leo was indeed patient with his chin dropped into a purlicue for a comical glamor shot.

It helped you hold his gaze.

“Fess up! What else we got boys?” Leo spoke at you, but not to you.

“Mayhaps Raph has made dummy duplicates to hold his place in line.” Raph pretended to be sheepish, but his smile said he thought himself clever.

“I’m pretty sure I’m wanted in like two countries.” Mikey grinned far too bright for what he’d just said.

“And he who is being a purple pain in my ass is on the FBI, CIA, MMA, or whatever three letter combination you can come up with watch lists.” Leo waved his hand.

“They all lag light years behind my security.” Donnie’s phone was back at his attention. “Though I somehow doubt the intelligent monitoring systems of mixed martial arts,a sport mind you, consider my status.”

“These are just ninja perks.” Leo offered you a hand.

Your index finger made the trek in a nervous twitch until you just barely skirted Leo’s palm.

“There ya go. Look at you.” Leo ushered as if you were a scared dog.

“Kinda demeaning…” You blurted out quietly.

It caused Leo to blink his eye’s wide.

Mikey burst out laughing and had to hang onto Raph to stay upright.

Great indignity blossomed on Leo’s face before he rose away from you in one upright shot. “Fine! You know what?! We are going home! Woof, woof Mad Dogz! We’re homeward bound!!”

Walking through the portal, you weren’t sure if you’d accomplished what you’d hoped. It wasn’t until later after you showered that you learned you’d earned a seat in the Hamato’s home. Mikey was ecstatic over it, texting you a mile a minute about how Leo casually suggested he should bring you over. At first you didn’t understand why. Mikey taking you under his wing was one thing, but Leo would need an angle. You doubted the blue brother did charity work. When you tried to relay this to Mikey, he only seemed to think the exact opposite of his brother.

You had no choice, but to believe Mikey.

You took those thoughts to bed and decided to try to parse out more information in the morning.

Wary and quick to hold grudges, Leo was described to you as someone who was a good judge of character. Mikey supported his claim with stories of Leo’s leadership and you clutched your phone tightly where you were riding public transit to work. The bus ride rocked you in a soothing manner and you considered what it meant for Leo to see something in you. You weren’t sure if it was like Mikey’s interest, but there’d also been a shift.

In a way, you thought yourself scared shitless.

You weren’t sure if your nerves were currently so shot that you no longer cared or if, in your horror, you’d gotten past the point of fear, but you’d reached an accepting state regarding the Hamato’s powers. If anything, when you thought of them now it came with a state of neutrality. Not sure if it would last, you asked Mikey for time. He said it was no problem at all, he knew his family was a lot, and you wished you could clarify. He was just as tightly packed in with the others and you needed to process. Phone loosening in your hand, you settled into your seat to think.

You’d survived your encounter.

That counted for something.

They were undoubtedly heroes.

You knew the stories everyone else did, even if there were things the public weren’t privy to.

There was still your quest to be more outgoing.

Could you argue you were too far to back out now?

The moon moderated the planet’s wobble.

You spent several days going back and forth on the matter before you found your nerves were still on a steady course. Trusting those more than your mind, you accepted Mikey’s invitation to officially come over to the lair. Done after you’d gotten home from work, your phone rang as soon as the message was confirmed as read. Mikey demanded your immediate attendance as he was baking cookies. Telling him you didn’t actually know the way, he clarified that the oven wasn’t even preheated and he was now going to make cookies because you had said yes.

It helped.

He helped.

You laughed and he asked to come pick you up.

It was the first of many.

Your cookie filled coronation had been a quaint affair.

Leo, Mikey, and you shared the treats while everyone else was busy.

A cheers done with milk solidified the deal.

The lair was now added to your selection of safe havens and Mikey appeared on your stoop as your herald more and more often. Never arriving without your authorization, he seemed to adore his attendant duties and joked about driving you. After Leo’s comment about licenses you weren’t so sure any of them had one and, when prompted, he seemed to confirm they didn’t. Still, there was no need for a car in the city so you both either hung out in the lair or continued your outings.

The latter of which had started up because you began to visit Mikey’s home. Each Hamato with their own idiosyncrasies and you found them to be an equal test of your mental fortitude. No matter how much they depleted your social battery though, they were a fun bunch and you brought them close to your heart. It would have shifted all your life for the better if there wasn’t one exact turtle sized problem you were also dealing with.

Donnie hated you.

You had no idea why.

No matter how many times you ran through the very small amount of time you’d interacted with him, you couldn’t find the point in which you’d garnered the anger.

You did research.

You looked for a custom that might have been broken.

You ran every mental scenario you could possibly imagine.

From stepping on his dropped contact lens to accidentally taking his special stapler, you’d gone through thousands of scenarios.

It got you no closer to solving the problem.

His wrath was impervious.

In the handful of times you’d been to the lair, he appeared as soon as you entered. Like the moon hanging around the day’s sky after its night watch, he only loomed. It was as if he knew the moment you entered and came just to glare daggers at you. If you mistakenly caught his eye, he was unperturbed in knowing you saw him. For you he had no shame, but if anyone else tried to follow your haunted eye line, he would suddenly be looking in any other direction that wasn’t yours. Trapped under his omnipresence, you often escaped to the bathroom just for a reprieve.

Your longest record of surviving his gaze currently sat a measly 32 minutes undisturbed.

Multiple trips were embarrassing in their own right, but it at least gave you room to breathe. You found it a safe haven right up until the moment it wasn’t. You guessed you should have figured that eventually you’d be found out. Several visits deep and your excuses running thin, you emerged to find Donnie standing right outside the door. You were trapped between porcelain and him. Your pause yet another misstep, your knees knocked together as he stormed toward you with flowing fury.

“Why were you excused from jury duty last year?!”

It was so out of left field, you had no answer for him.

“Well!?” He used his height to tower over you.

“I-I… d-don’t…?”

You barely remembered the moment.

You’d been pardoned more than once.

You usually never did anything to garner them.

Somehow narrowing his gaze further, Donnie clicked his tongue and made a comically wide steer to get around you.

Growling to himself the entire way, he disappeared around a corner.

It wouldn’t be the last.

As if that question was an experiment all its own, he now knew he could approach you as soon as you strayed from the group.

He appeared the moment you did with some ill gotten question.

It wasn’t funny, but it painted him a detective at his wit’s end.

“Why’d you fail 10th grade geometry!?”

“You claimed Amanda was your best friend in elementary school, but there were two Amandas in your class. Which one was it?!”

“Did you leave your last food service job because you never paid for those tacos you offered to comp?”

Whether you answered his inquiries or not, he didn’t seem to care. You only assumed he was getting something out of the exchanges because he kept going after you. While his questions were expected, you could never prepare. He had all manner of dirt on you which became more invasive with time. He was already pervasive enough, but the fact that he’d gotten you to admit to stealing a marble from a craft store when you were four was borderline harassment.

Even then, that still wasn’t what he wanted.

You were ashamed to admit you were leaving the lair earlier and earlier.

Something had to be done.

You knew that.

Mikey was starting to notice.

He didn’t see Donnie, but he saw you.

Mikey was clearly bending over backwards to ensure your comfort.

It made the situation worse.

All because you refused to rat Donnie out.

You couldn’t.

Not when Mikey adored Donnie.

Not when this was clearly your fault.

Not when you would only suffer more if you did anything to disrupt this family’s balance.

You were new.

Donnie was mad.

Donnie also cared about his brothers.

He was fiercely protective.

You were aggravating him because you hadn’t figured out what you had done wrong yet.

You could last a little bit longer.

You’d figure it out.

You’d fix it.

You couldn’t ask for more help.

This was happening because of you.

Still, you made about as much progress in your plight as Donnie did his. Early departures from the lair soon turned to you dreading even arrival. While Mikey’s sunny day had once been a safe bubble, Donnie’s distrust was that of a gas. It grew noxious and suffocating until it filled your lungs to the point of bursting.

You had to hold out.

The moon stabilized climate.

An invitation came.

You had heard story of the famous Hamato movie night, but you didn’t dare think you’d be offered a seat. It was a special affair held once a month and unlike any other. It marked the adult family carving time out of their busy schedules to get together. It was for them and not something you felt longing for. Instead, when Mikey mentioned it in passing, you felt a warmth in your heart at how studiously they were there for one another.

Staring at Mikey’s casual call for you to come by during one almost felt like a mockey.

What had you done to earn a seat at the proverbial table?

Were they a democratic bunch?

Donnie must have voted no to your attendance.

Had the majority agreed?

If you thought about it for too long then you could convince yourself that all of them had vetoed you in some way.

Still, you didn’t feel like you could pass up the momentous offer.

This was important to Mikey.

It was important to you.

Attending found a packed lair and a chance for you to put faces to the last outliers in the clan. Hit with a whirlwind of names you weren’t sure you could remember and painfully trying to come up with a pneumonic device to keep from screwing everything up, Mikey abandoned you as soon as he was asked to make his famous rice krispie treats.

Knowing it wasn’t malicious and instead a show of how he trusted you to get along with his family, you tucked yourself into a far bean bag in an attempt to become as small as possible. On the outskirts of the herd, the others were too savvy for their own goods and you were soon pelted with questions. With your safety blanket several rooms away, you tried to answer, but the speed of the questions picked up until voices seemingly came from every direction. Mouths freely floating, it triggered a painfully ingrained fight or flight that you were about to give into when one voice cut through the crowd.

“When are you finally going to admit your villainous intent?”

Donnie’s question had the caliber of a gunshot.

Its reverb silenced the crowd.

It then permeated a cloud layer where all hell broke loose.

Wild like spring, April smacked Donnie up the back of his head. “Do you hear yourself?!”

A perky pulp, Sunita dropped to her knees beside you and mistakenly screamed in your ear. “Omigosh!! Don’t listen to him!!”

Blunt and wrapped in unbreakable binds like the hockey stick she carried, Casey sneered until her upper lip rolled back. “O’Neil’s strikes have dislodged something in your brain! I’d sniff out the indoctrinated in a second if there were one!”

“Are you still going on about this?” Raph groaned.

“It doesn’t make sense!” Donnie sprouted rotors and flew out of Aprils’ reach. “If you would just listen! Use your brains for a moment then you’d see! You were all tested! Each of you earned your spots! Then this one walks in and gets a free pass!? Why!?”

As if inciting war, sides were taken up with arms.

“I call challenge!!!” Casey screeched to an echo. “In the bonds of combat we shall unearth true intention!!”

“That’s not how friendship works!” April climbed onto the couch in an attempt to leap after the purple turtle. “You don’t have to fight to become friends!”

“It helps, does it not O’Neil?!” Casey launched herself at April.

Sunita intercepted. “You know what I find always works?! A group hug!! One time my aunt Chloe and my other aunt Rachel were in a multi-year fight over who stole whose college boyfriend and after they hugged it out and had to spend the next three days separating their jellies, they came out of it closer than ever!”

“Classic movie night!” Leo cheered through a mouth full of popcorn.

“Donnie, look what you did!” Raph pointed down at the floor. “Get down from there right now!”

Maniacal laughter followed from multiple sources and you pulled your legs to your chest.

They were fighting.

You were the cause.

You failed.

You ruined movie night on top of everything else.

Why couldn’t you solve it?

You had only needed to make up with Donnie.

Then all of this would stop.

You just had to make it stop.

Everyone just needed to stop.

Hands going over your head, a single thought popped up.

Donnie would be happy if you only removed yourself from the situation.

Unfurling until a toe touched the floor, you heard a loud whirr and Donnie slammed down to his feet to block you.

“No way! Nuh uh!! You think you’re going to leave?! Sneak away during all this commotion!?” He held his hands out, passing off ownership of the orchestrated chaos. “You’ve created this… this… distraction!” Finding the word, he loomed over you with an expression dripping with sadism. “I think it’s about time you took my lie detector test. One that actually works…” His fingers writhed to grab you and tears burned fresh in your eyes.

Something metallic was struck and its tuning fork hum rang in your ears.

“What are you all doing!?” Mikey stood with flowery oven mitts on and the ruins of his rice krispies spilling out from the tray he’d dropped. “Y/N?!”

Casey roared to life at the same time as Donnie.

“We are preparing to test the grit of your baby soft acquaintance!”

“This has to be done, Mikey! We have to know for sure!”

“Know what?!” Mikey screamed.

A geomagnetic storm, orange electricity flicked off of him like a plasma ball.

Except there wasn’t a casing.

As he closed in, you felt it cause the hairs on your arms to stand on end.

“What they have over you!” Donnie was pleading insanity. “What they’ve done! How they’ve tricked you into letting them hang around!”

“Donnie, that’s enough!!” Leo appeared with a hand to Mikey’s shoulder.

You stared as the orange energy began to obviously sear Leo’s skin, but he didn’t let go.

This was all your fault.

“You’re jealous! We get it!! But you need to stop making it everyone else’s problem!” Leo continued.

The indignity hit Donnie with an inhale that seemed to never stop.

“Mike’s allowed to have his own life outside of you! Outside of us! Can’t you be happy for him? Don, seriously?! Take a second, a breath. Then we can finally talk about this instead of you always running away-!“

Donnie launched himself with a swinging arm toward Leo, but an orange chain appeared to wrap around his arm.

Coming from seemingly nowhere, Donnie was yanked.

“Mikey…” Raph warned, getting up slowly.

“You know how unfair it is!?” Mikey shouted as orange glowing pools of sunshine overflowed and dripped down his face. “How I’m a whole adult and you all still treat me like a baby! How I’m still not trusted to make decision on my own! How I go along with it to make you all happy!” Mikey spun from addressing the room to send his pupil-less gaze at Donnie. “Why can’t you trust my judgment on this!? On anything!?”

“Because!” In a burst of purple energy, the orange chain shredded to bits. “Because you do this! Because you still lose control! Because you never did keep up with the training Draxum started you on! Because all of you! You!!!” Donnie threw a finger into Leo’s face. “Just YESTERDAY I was the reason you didn’t eat shit in the Hidden City because of my obsessive monitors! I caught that Yokai trying to attack you! Me!! And why did that happen!?” Donnie threw his arms out and spun around to April specifically. “HRM!?”

April only frowned. “Cause Leo didn’t trust that axolotl, but Donnie-”

“On a hunch!!” Donnie hissed, turning back to Mikey and Leo. “So, don’t give me that making it someone else’s problem crap. You’re just as paranoid as me! As Raph!” Donnie zeroed in on Mikey. “Not you though. You get free reign from our worries!”

“How could you say that!?” More molten tears exploded from Mikey’s face.

One hit the floor and sizzled.

“I’m the one who watches you!” Mikey cried.

“Then stop! Your duty is self imposed anyway! No one asked you to be the family therapist! You force it on us like everything else!!!” Donnie screamed.

Leo looked away.

Raph rubbed the back of his head.

“You create a Doctor of the hour because it makes you feel useful.” Donnie dropped his volume for pure scathe.

Mikey’s gaze hit the floor where he was burning very real divots into it.

“You take care of that and I’ll take care of this.” Donnie coolly glanced at Leo who was still avoiding eye contact before he zeroed in on you.

You wished you were an ant so you could drown yourself in an acid pool of Mikey’s tears.

“My lie detector is only mentally invasive. I want to run a single test. I will find out what hold you have on my little brother.” Donnie nodded for you to follow him.

Could you go?

You felt like if you took a single step you would pass out.

Were you breathing?

Was this the end?

It felt like Donnie was the mad scientist and any prick from him would cause you to become a husk.

Maybe then you’d finally match your worth.

“Is it…?”

Mikey’s voice was near silent, but the whole room turned toward him.

Bringing his head up, those same orange tears were flowing, but they now lifted free from gravity and drifted away from his face.

There they formed dangerous globules in the air.

“… so hard to believe…?”

He took a step forward and with it the very energy was drained from the room.

Everything took on an orange hue.

“…that I COULD JUST HAVE A CRUSH ON SOMEONE!?!”

Like a solar flare, Mikey released a shock wave from the power he’d pulled.

💛NEXT💛

Much love to my betas @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83

#sunshinemoonshinefic #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt x reader #rottmnt Michelangelo #rise Michelangelo #Michelangelo hamato #rottmnt mikey #rise mikey #rise mikey x reader #rottmnt mikey x reader #me #fanfiction #my fanfiction

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hotd-brainrot · 3 months ago

Text

I think I figured out what personally bothered me sm in this season of HOTD. And it wasn't (only) the fact that it didn't align with F&B.

I feel like the writers forgot, if not completely disregarded almost everything they established in the second part of seasons 1?

I expected Aemond's entire arc of becoming a villian, but not against his own faction? And the thing is, if they truly wanted to go for it, it was doable, but they went way too fast with it and in ways that made no sense? In season 1, yes, we see Aegon bullying Aemond when they were kids, but then during the dinner scene we clearly see they bonded since then and have each others' back. If anyone from the green kids is isolated in that scene, it's Helaena.

In the beginning of s2, they seem to go along with that, have Aegon implicitly trust Aemond, inviting him to his council, not believe Larys when he says it's Aemond plotting with Alicent to rule in his stead. Then there is a brothel scene which is on all accounts awful, but fine. Let's say for a moment Aegon is grieveing and reverts back to his old habits of humiliating Aemond as a way to cope.

Why don't we see more of Aemond's reaction when he is alone? He humiliates him at the council, which makes sense to make them even. Shows he is more in control.

But trying to kill him? And doing so in a way that's clearly pre-planned since he tells Vhagar to wait? It feels like such a jump with no build-up, especially since we have his express regret over killing Lucerys! He shows, Lucerys, who cut out his eye more grace then he does his own brother who we see him support on multiple occasions? What?

And again! If they really wanted to go with this route, why not show Aegon taunting him and embarrassing him on more occasions? Show Aegon distrusts him or undermining him? It would have been so easy.

Also. If they truly wanted to go for "oh, Aemond burned his bully and abuser" then why tf did they have Helaena suddenly defend Aegon? She says he ignores her except for when he is drunk. We get exactly one scene of them together (I am not counting them passing each other on the stairs bc that was...something) where they disagree on if Jaehaerys should go to a small council or not. Despite the fact they lose a child, we don't see them interact at all, and I am supposed to think Helaena is meant to care for him enough to wish death upon Aemond because he burned him? From what they have showed us, I didn't get the feeling Helaena particularly cared for either of her brothers.

Perhaps she does, but we are never shown this??? Like, at all?? Insanity.

But so we don't say I only talk about the Greens, I think the Blacks have a similar issue? Rhaenyra is the only one we see(kind of) care for her family. What about Daemon? Baela? Rhaena?

Listen, I am not saying Daemon, similarly to Aemond is a great person, but I genuinely despise how they made his whole character about Rhaenyra? Did they forget he has two daughters from his marriage to Laena and two sons with Rhaenyra? The only interaction he has with Baela is in episode two and he ignores her!

Rhaenyra sends Rhaena away without a word from Daemon. Rhaena doesn't even bring him up! It's not even "What did my father say to this idea?" Type of situation. Hello??

Even if they wanted to go with "Daemon is a bad father" we see him face pretty much no consequences for it? He hallucinates Laena asking him if he took care of their girls before it's swept up under a rug again. Baela says she sometimes thinks she hates him, but then it turns into another conversation about Jace's parentage.

I also have no idea how we are meant to care for Aegon iii and Viserys later on bc they are A) aged down and B) so irrelevant and unnmentioned I almost forgot they were there at all while making this post.

I could write another essay on Alicent and Rhaenyra but I feel like there have been much better posts on them already but just...what is going on??

Did the writers forget the core of the story was meant to be Targaryen family? Fucked up family, yes, absolutely, but the point was that the war of ravens started because they all wished for power, but the war of fire and blood started because they started killing each other. If they don't care for one another, if they are not family, what IS the point? Why do they keep fighting? For power and revenge? No, no, for feminism and peace!

Give me a break. Genuinely. It's not even about it being inaccurate to the book anymore, it's about the characters losing their central motivations and only letting the plot happen to them, instead of being actuve participants. That's why everyone loved side characters more than main ones! At least they are making active choices!

#hotd critical #aegon ii targaryen #aemond targaryen #daemon targaryen #baela targaryen #rhaena targaryen

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cal-writes · 3 months ago

Note

Can you tell more about the "Law and Zoro in snow" piece?

sure! i was inspired by the idea of law being able to shamble with snowflakes and thought that was such a cool concept. dont really have a plot just that scene. i do have a little more that what i shared before! part 1

A fourth pierces through the borders of his room but similarly loses velocity quickly. The air is close to underwater in terms of pressure, rooting them both in place.

Law squints at the horizon, stifles his breath so the mist of it won't obscure his vision further.

There is nothing. The prison complex sits silent and still further back, no movement from there. He tries to figure out the trajectory of the bullets but their impact into the room as warped them to the point its hard to even tell their shape. It came from behind them but that's all he can tell. And there is nobody behind them.

Zoro stands with a grunt and presses up against Law's back with his own. "Can't see them." He mutters. Law feels something wet and warm where their shoulders are pressed together.

"Me neither." Law says between grit teeth. He can't move the room with them, only expand it which would only cost him energy. Not to mention moving in it will tire them out fast. Dropping it without taking care of their threat will get them killed.

He feels Zoro tense through the line of their backs. "Above." He grunts and before Law can look, Zoro shoves them apart, landing him in the snow. Something cuts through the room. Law tries to stop it but it glides through his powers like sand through his fingers.

Sea stone. Zoro curses, glaring upwards, his eye glinting dangerously in the dark. The white snow around him is speckled red, black feathers clustered in wet clumps and Law has to look away.

There is a ship in the air, flying so silently that it must be a devil fruit ability - Law has never seen such technology before even from geniuses like Franky or the people of Wano. He focuses his observation Haki but the people above them must be trained in it too. He can't get a definitive number. They are too high above, clearly familiar with Law's power and keeping their distance.

"Drop it. Won't do any good." Zoro grunts, taking steps backwards while keeping his eyes up above.

"We're sitting ducks down here." Law says.

"Can't you bring them down?" Zoro asks tersely.

"If I could I would have done it already. It takes time to expand the room to their height." He grits out, sparing the second to glare at Zoro out of the corner of his eyes. Both of them jump out of the way as the next round of projectiles hit, landing in the snow. "Where did they get seastone bullets?" Law growls and returns the air pressure to normal so at least their own movement won't be impeded.

Despite stopping, the vessel keeps its distance. They want to take them out from afar then.

"Do we run?" Zoro asks and the wind picks up, making Law's coat billow behind him like a shadow.

Law's eyes flicker around their surroundings. Curses himself for not taking camouflage with him. Zoro stands out like a dark shadow in the snow. Another projectile pierces through his borders and instead of trying to stop it, Law raises the snow to swallow it. A whole salvo follows right behind it. The seastone is in nail form, the same as it had been in Wano. It gets caught easily by the frozen water but the regular bullets rip right through. Even as he expands the room by the time he's caught up to their attackers they'll be ripped to shreds.

Zoro rips a nail out of his leg, blood spraying. "How high can you toss me?"

"What?" Law's head whips around to face him but Zoro's has a singular focus at the sky. His entire body is tensing for a fight even without any weapons. The air around them seems to shift and Law knows that it's not his doing. "You have a plan?" He asks, swallowing. He hadn't felt this from Zoro since their fight against Kaido. "You won't be able to knock them out, even with Conqueror's Haki. They can already hide from Observation."

"Not all of them." Zoro says quietly. "Not what I'm doing anyway." He adds. Law exhales sharply to telegraph his annoyance, moving a bank of snow in the way of another hail of bullets. One manages to craze his biceps. The cold makes him stiff and slow.

"I need something to switch you with." He says and focuses to increase his reach. He'll have to trust that Zoro's plan works or he'll spend all that energy for nothing.

The prison building suddenly floods with light, becoming a beacon in the waste and a siren wails in the distance. Law curses.

Zoro kneels down, digging through the snow with red fingers until he unearths one of the regular bullets. He holds it up for Law to see, waits for his nod and Law decreases the gravity in the room before he throws.

Law shifts his stance, focuses on the path of the bullet. "Get ready." He says.

Just before the bullet leaves his area of influence, he Shambles. The metal ball drops softly into the snow next to him as Zoro disappears into the air. Law squints into the dark, but in the night sky all he can spot is his white hat on Zoro's head. Zoro spreads his arms, the blue coat surrounding him before he spins. The air itself seems to cling to him, turning into a cyclone around him before he sends it off, straight at the airship. Law gapes.

The force of the twister moves the air even down on ground level and it advances quickly upon the ship in the air, catching it in its path and ripping it apart.

Law shakes himself out of his awe as Zoro drops back down. A comet in blue and black feathers as he falls into Law's room. He shifts the air pressure once more, slowing his fall before he Shambles him back with the bullet so that the momentum won't carry over. Zoro still lands with a thud back in the snow, arms spread.

Law's coat falls open, belt lost somewhere. Zoro's skin is slick with red. He sits back up as in the distance the ship falls. "You can just do that?" Law asks, offering a hand to help him up. He can barely feel Zoro's hand in his own, limbs too numb at this point. Zoro shrugs with one shoulder before he winces, seemingly just remembering that he'd been shot. "Why even use a sword at this point?" He adds incredulously.

Zoro glares at him. His eyes flicker over Law's shoulder and the siren wails again, reminding him of their new problem. Law curses as he looks back, seeing the throng of people spilling out of the prison and towards them.

"How about we run?" Zoro asks, panting.

"Taking the words right out of my mouth." Law says and they take off.

Despite their brief stop, the snow doesn't get any easier to run in. Even as he feels increasingly numb from the cold, the nicks of the bullets burn making everything take even more effort.

Zoro, already not at full percent from his captivity, starts falling behind worryingly quickly, forcing Law to slow down as well.

Their pursuers are mounted on some creature that makes Law think of an unholy mixture of Bepo and Chopper, long reindeer like legs with a big furry body. For how ridiculous they look they are much too fast.

"This isn't going to work!" He shouts at Zoro. They have to weave as another salvo of bullets rushes their way. "Split up!" Law tells him before taking a sharp left. His hand glows as he creates his room, taking a wide turn until he is running right at their attackers. Zoro mirrors his movement on the other side of them. Someone in their troop whistles sharply and they split into two groups.

Law really wished he had his sword right about now but needs musts. He expands his room and from there it's easy to take the riders off their mounts. Three of them get trampled as he switches their positions, two remain seated, resisting his ability. They must have seastone on them then. Law dodges with a roll, getting snow down the back of his shirt as they ride past him, cutlass drawn to swing at him. Across the way he sees Zoro wielding one of those swords, one of the riders scrambling in the snow. He catches his eye across the way, quirks his brow and with Zoro's nod switches their places.

Zoro cuts into the side of the rider that had been advancing on Law and helps himself to another sword as he does it as Law sorts through the seastone carriers with a flick of his wrist.

"This one's Trafalgar!" Someone shouts and Law glances around frantically but in the chaos it's difficult to tell who said it. He's confused for a brief second, before he sees Zoro disarm one opponent, wearing Law's coat and hat. Law doesn't get the chance to curse, having to dodge a sword stroke but feels the urge to. He grits his teeth. Now it makes more sense they were shooting at Zoro as they were running away. They wanted to recapture him and stop Law from taking him away.

Now that their accidental misdirection is cleared up their attackers shift their focus. Law doesn't even need to try using his powers to know that the ones focusing on him will be armed with seastone.

Zoro roars from the distance and Law sees him cut down one of the goons that dared to turn its back on him. "Law!" He orders. Law bristles but if he tells himself he was about to propose the same thing, he doesn't want to refuse to follow it out of principle.

Zoro drops one of the swords in the snow as Law crooks his fingers and swaps their places once again.

Law's hand wraps around the hilt, finally having something to parry with. One guy clashes with his sword before Law lands a kick in his stomach to send him flying. He ducks out of the way of the next swing, catches Zoro's eye and switches them again. A guy with a rifle scrambles to adjust his aim when Law cuts into his hand. Zoro has gotten himself another sword and Law has a brief moment to think about how strange it is to see him with only two.

#wip #moi #ask #anon #reply #lawzo #snowlawzo #is the name of the doc lol

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mdhwrites · 11 months ago

Text

The Isles is Particularly Awful for Sequel/Next Gen Stories

With Belos gone, the Isles loses literally the only thing that makes it unique from any generic fantasy setting out there: The Coven System. Worse yet is how much the show tries to blame every bad thing on the Isles on Belos and his collaborators, portraying pre-Belos as utopian, so now that he's gone, you have to retcon that part of the show to have ANY real threats.

That's really the main thrust of this. I could expand but the basic point is that there's just nothing to do with the Isles that's better than doing it during Belos' reign. You could explore the Isles but now you're just messing with monsters in their ecosystem who were never a real threat in the show. You could try to depict the reconstruction but there's no tension between people of the Isles, just a need to rebuild. Besides, how do you even portray that when the Isles has zero culture so there's nothing to explore in how they are besides how they feel about Belos falling which is seen as a positive by EVERYONE if the group shot at the end, where even old enemies are now on Luz's side, is any indication.

Really, the only thing about the Isles that is still intact in a way that makes for interesting storytelling AT ALL is Hexside and pretty much just because it's a generic fantasy school that you can do whatever you want with. Which... Yeah, that's pretty much all I've seen. Despite the fact that the fandom immediately went for fankids after the finale, no one seems to have anything to do with them besides throwing out concepts and shipping. Or, you know, recycling old plot lines but with the new cast, committing the cardinal sin of next gen stories of just having an excuse to reset and retell. *glares at Boruto*

But what else are you supposed to do? Unless you want to say Eda and Raine failed in reforming the Isles, you have no conflict there. You either have to bring back old villains, bring in an invading force, both... Or change things so drastically that I question why you're not just doing an original story since you're having to put in that much work anyways.

I guess MAYBE you could do the Isles integrating with humans but like... The show made it clear that that's not a hard process either direction. And why should it be? The Isles is so generic as to barely feel like the other world that it is instead of just our world but with elves.

Even Amphibia, which ends similarly happy, still gives people more to do simply by the fact that it explored its setting. There's still so much out there. The three races still have to figure out how to coexist. Andrias wasn't a toxic power structure, he was THE power structure and the entire world has to recover from an incredible ecological disaster instead of just a glitter bomb.

So yeah, good on those who are having fun with their fan kids but I'll just continue to hope they don't try to continue TOH, not when they left themselves nowhere to go.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical

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star-going-supernova · 8 months ago

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a Gregory and Evan sickfic would be so cool!

I also was thinking about your college au, and since you established how much they look alike, what about another au (doesnt have to be an au of your au, just a new universe) where they meet at the same age at the same timeline, but they ARE actually brothers/related? a fun little long lost family moment. would also be interesting depending on how their relationship is! evan would either feel validated for thinking of Gregory as family, or maybe they're basically strangers and they bond alongside that background knowledge. thank you💜=)

I do have a sick fic of sorts in mind for the college AU, so we’ll hopefully see that eventually too! But oh man, how have I not done a classic “twins separated at birth who find each other later in life” story yet? This is an AU of that college AU, just with bio twins Gregory and Evan!

Is This a First Meeting or a Reunion?

When Evan got his room assignment and received the name and email of his future roommate, he curled up on his bed and ignored it. He didn’t want to talk to this stranger, and he hoped they felt similarly and would allow him the luxury of not paying them any mind. He knew it was necessary, knew that roommates actually needed to coordinate at least a little on who would bring what so they didn’t all show up with a mini fridge. Not that Evan would; he didn’t have the money for a mini fridge.

But in the few months since leaving the Afton house for good, his already weak social skills had deteriorated further. He tried to imagine what he’d say to the person he’d be living with for an entire school year, but his mind was blank.

He wallowed in anxiety for all of two minutes, when his secondhand laptop pinged with a new email.

Sitting up from his fetal position, Evan squinted at the screen. It was… it was his future roommate. Of course he wouldn’t be given even a little bit of a reprieve before having to deal with this.

He opened the email.

It began with a keysmash, and it only got more incomprehensible from there.

• • •

Three days later, Evan gingerly slid into a seat at the back of the cafe he’d chosen to meet Gregory in. His mind was still tumbling over itself in a confused sort of distress. He alternated between watching the door and fiddling with his phone on the table.

He had a brother. A twin. He wasn’t actually related to the Aftons. His twin had been looking for him for months, but Evan had done such a good job of disappearing that there’d been no trail to follow. His twin had recognized his name on the roommate assignment email, obviously, and hadn’t been able to believe his crazy luck.

Or so Gregory claimed. Evan didn’t know if he believed it yet, or if he even wanted to. He was wary, nervous of this total stranger who claimed he’d been looking for Evan in the hopes of meeting him. It had creepy stalker written all over it. Or worst of all, it could be some plot for his parents to find him.

It seemed unlikely, but Evan had no way of knowing how they’d reacted to him leaving. Maybe they were furious about losing their control over him and wanted to reassert it.

And he hadn’t worked so hard on getting out to lose his freedom now.

“Evan?” he heard from beside him, startling him from his thoughts. He looked up in a panic, and immediately, surprise and something almost like awe replaced the worst of his nerves.

The teenage boy standing before him was nearly identical to Evan himself. Other than slight differences in their hair, and a scar curving over the other boy’s cheek instead of the one across Evan’s forehead, they would have been indistinguishable.

“Whoa,” he breathed, scanning over the boy’s band t-shirt and frayed shorts. A different sort of messy from Evan’s rumpled button-down and faded jeans. “Um. Hi. Gregory, right?”

“Yep,” his probably actual twin said, beaming with happiness. Evan had never been so happy that he nearly shone with it. Gregory bounced excitedly into the booth seat across from Evan and stuck his hand out over the table. “You have no idea how nice it is to finally meet you, Evan.”

He shook Gregory’s hand in a daze. “Wha—why?”

“I’ve always known I was adopted,” Gregory replied, casual as anything, like Evan’s world wasn’t still flipping end over end with this new knowledge (he’d yet to decide if it was good or bad knowledge). “And my parents knew I had a twin, but we were separated after he got adopted by people who just wanted one kid. The agency only gave us your name and stuff when I—we—turned eighteen.” Gregory grinned, his eyes so alive and sparkling and warm that Evan felt hollow in comparison. “But it was like trying to find a ghost! You absolutely vanished, man, and it was driving me crazy! I mean, I totally can’t blame you—your parents are psychos, if you don’t mind me saying.”

And for some reason, having this human embodiment of the sun confirm that the Aftons sucked and that he agreed with Evan’s decision to leave and cut all contact made Evan burst into relieved, overwhelmed, grateful tears.

He heard Gregory ask him if he was okay, and he failed to answer with anything approaching coherent or reassuring. And then suddenly a body was pressing against his, shoulder to shoulder, knees knocking, and an arm went around the back of his neck and tugged and—

Evan collapsed against Gregory without care that he was a stranger or that he’d dropped a total bombshell on Evan only three days ago. For the first time in Evan’s life, someone didn’t mock him for crying and instead went straight to the most unselfish, genuine form of comfort possible.

Gregory hugged him, rubbing his upper arm, and didn’t tell him to stop being so embarrassing or childish or sensitive. Instead, Evan heard him quietly ask a passing waitress for some tissues and also two cups of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows.

This was his brother, his twin. His future college roommate.

And maybe—perhaps even sooner rather than later, given his first impression of Gregory—he would be Evan’s new family too.

#i answered a thing #puhpandas #fnaf fic #life and times of star

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c-rose2081 · 9 months ago

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The Mal and Audrey swap AU is so interesting, I have so, SO many questions about it. Does Mal know she's actually Maleficent's daughter? If not, how does she handle the revelation? How will everyone else handle it? Will she actually go along with her bio-mom's evil plan? How does Mal and everyone else, including the VKs, feel about and treat Audrey? Do they think Audrey is Maleficent's daughter? If so, does Audrey correct them? Even though Audrey knows she's not Maleficent's daughter, does she know she's Aurora's daughter? If not, how will she find out the truth? How is everyone going to react when they find our Audrey is Aurora's daughter? Will finding her real mom be what pushes Audrey to stop Maleficent's evil plan, or will it be something else? Is Mal gonna change her awful ways? If so, will she have a similar arc to canon Audrey (losing her social status to Audrey, becoming a villain, getting defeated and repenting) or will it be different? Sorry, I know that's a ton of questions, I just gotta know how all this plays out, especially how both Mal and Audrey will develop as characters and how the events of D2 and D3 will be affected, since Ben will still wind up with Mal despite the role swap

Woof, that is a lot of questions XD, but I don’t mind. I’ll go over some of the basics for you:

1.) Audrey knows she’s not Maleficent’s daughter because Maleficent told her so (she has more dignity than raising the child of her greatest enemies as her own). Audrey doesn’t know where she comes from, as far as she knows her birth parents are long gone and Maleficent ‘saved’ her from dying as a baby. She has no clue she’s actually Aurora and Phillip’s daughter. She doesn’t even know her full name, which is why she goes by Auds or A. However, she is very aware that Maleficent’s actual daughter is in Auradon somewhere, just not exactly where she is/who she was raised by.

2.) Mallory doesn’t know either. This is due to a very strong glamor spell Maleficent cast when the swap was made. It’s so strong that no one questions why Mal doesn’t look anything like her parents, and keeps her from wondering about it too much. She’s happy with her life and has no reason to question it. Her magic was explained away as a weird side-effect of Aurora’s time in the enchanted sleep.

3.) Audrey is basically an observer in D1’s main plot, a bit like a background character. On the Isle of the Lost she is a nobody and is treated as such. She’s a servant to Maleficent and bullied by the other VK’s. She takes orders without question, stays out of other people’s way, has no allies or friends of her own, and doesn’t interfere with Maleficent’s plans unless specifically told to do so.

When she gets sent to Auradon, for all intents and purposes she is Maleficent’s daughter (she would never say otherwise). She’s there to deliver Maleficent’s spellbook to Mallory, her one order, while the other VK’s are tasked with turning her evil. The story progresses similarly to canon, VK’s trying to get to the wand, spelling Ben with a cookie to try and fix his and Mal’s relationship, ect. ect. but Audrey is a passive observer to the entire thing, with her own little story on the side where she starts to make some friends (or rather, Jane and Lonnie start trying to be friends with her) and even has a romance with Mr. Chad Charming (I’m a Chaudrey shipper, sue me!)

4.) The glamor begins to wear off once Auds and Mal are in the same place for long enough, which is when people start to figure out something’s up. Queen Leah at Family Day really breaks things open, as her lack of time in the glamor made seeing Mal as an untrue heir easier to accept (she and Mal still don’t get along). Leah recognizes Audrey at family day, which spooks literally everyone and sends everything into confusion.

5.) I’m not spoiling endings or full realizations yet (mostly cause I haven’t decided what I want yet)

🥲 I hope this helps with some of your questions!

#disney descendants #audrey descendants #mal descendants #swapped au #answered asks

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autisticsupervillain · 8 months ago

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Could the Wright Anything Agency catch Agent 47?

Assumptions

I'm analyzing this under the pretext that Agent 47 has killed someone and sticks around under the same cover to scope out another target in the same area. The person 47 was disguised as at the time gets framed for the murder and the WAA take the case, looking into this "Tobias Rieper" guy when it starts to seem like he might be involved.

Neither has any prior information on the other going in.

Pre-Disbarment Phoenix

Given the Timelines of both franchises, this is Phoenix going up against World of Assassination Era 47. That is.... not good.

Basically, 47 is at his prime both in his abilities as an assassin and his resources with the ICA and he's going up against Nick back when he still needed Mia's advice from time to time.

Okay, that is unfair. Phoenix has taken down some very tough cookies. Damon Gant, Manfred Von Karma, Matt Engarde, and so on. All of whom were either very connected, very intelligent, or both. 47 is very much both.

I do genuinely think 47 can talk his way around the Magatama. 47 at this point has a particular habit of speaking when undercover, where he'll tell technical truths as a little private joke to himself. Lies of omission. Much like how Matt Engarde got around it by technicality, I do think 47 could as well.

Example: "Hey, doc, what's in that shot you're giving me?" "Floral extracts. Mostly belladonna." "Uh, isn't that poisonous? Shouldn't I be worried?" "I'm not. Just sit back, it'll all be over soon." Etc.

Not straight up lies, just not giving an entirely upfront answer.

That said, the name "Tobias Rieper" mosy definitely would cause a ding, because 47 himself doesn't consider himself as having one. That'll probably be what prompts Nick into poking around.

47 takes care to avoid getting recorded or photographed, and takes time to destroy such evidence when he has to, so Nick's gonna have to rely on witness testimony to prove 47's disguise didn't match his client. His basic Pressing techniques should be enough on that front, getting them to mention 47's completely hairless physique, tall stature, monotone voice, etc by pressing for more detail.

That said, I don't think Nick can genuinely catch 47 out with anything. He was genetically engineered to not leave a trace behind, so he can't grow hair and might not even have fingerprints. He prides himself on the bodies either not being found until hours after he's gone or spinning his kills as elaborate accidents. Nick can definitely bluff and theorize his way into working out how 47 did it, but without any proof, all he can do is prove it couldn't have been his client.

Also, First Game Nick dies here. Dude almost got himself assassinated by the mafia and 47 won't hesitate with that fiber wire.

That said, 47 does play into Nick's hand a little bit. He's been known to concoct overly elaborate kills that only he could ever possibly pull off just to make things interesting and if there's one talent Nick has its untangling convoluted murder plots through logical leaps no one else is willing to make.

47 also canonically has an "aura of death" that psychics can sense because of how many people he's killed. Don't know if the Magatama or Maya can pick up on that, as that's not really in their wheelhouse, but it's there if you want to argue it.

Similarly, 47 has met ghosts before, so he's liable to put his guard up if Mia tries to interject. Hell, he's met actual Santa too.

Also, if Phoenix does get his man, he'll have incurred the wrath of the entire ICA so... lose-lose really.

Ultimately, I think Nick can get his client off the hook, but he won't be able to corner a man as slippery as 47. 47 covers his tracks too carefully. 5/10, would solve case, would not catch killer.

Post-Disbarment Phoenix

A lot of Nick's advantages from before still carry over, but with a few extra notes.

First off, timeline wise, this is Freelancer Era 47. 47 no longer has an entire international assassination agency backing him up and now relies on his contacts in the black market and Diana Burnwood to get around. He also has a home he can be traced back to while previously he moved around constantly.

This time, Phoenix is the one with higher resources, as he has connections to Interpol through Edgeworth and connections to Khura'in through Apollo. He has the means to organize an international manhunt if he has to.

Nick is also a lot more willing and able to play the long game. Take his seven year plan against Kristoph or his collaboration with Edgeworth to catch The Phantom, for instance. Nick won't stoop to the lows he did against Kristoph again, as that came about from him being at the lowest point in his life, but his plan there proves he's absolutely able to play the long term Chessmaster when silly bluffing lawyer man won't cut it.

Again, Nick won't be able to catch 47 on their first run in. He just runs too tight a ship. Unlike previously, Nick will have the means to conduct follow up investigation and won't have to do so with a massive target on his back because the ICA doesn't exist anymore.

That said, a 47 whose at the top of his game is still a bit more than the Interpol of Ace Attorney can handle. It will take a lot of planning to create a trao that 47 can't just shoot his way out of. Most likely by going after Diana, but it'll take awhile for him to figure out she even exists. Diana's a force to be reckoned with on her own.

In brief, he can, but he'd have to dedicate a significant chunk of his life to it, pulling every string he has through connections and friendships. 9/10

Apollo Justice

Gonna be blunt, perceive is not gonna work. Like, flat out.

47 doesn't have body ticks. He's unnaturally stiff at all times, even while relaxing and having fun. He doesn’t emote or react or change his tone of voice in a situation. There wouldn't be a microexpression to give away the lie because 47 barely has expressions.

That said, he's just as good at the classic approach as Phoenix is, so a lot of what I said there applies here. Press for more testimony and point out the physical discrepancies that come from that.

Of note, if the crime takes place in Khura'in, then the Divination Seance may screw 47 over. He's had entire conversations with targets before killing them, after all, so it could catch him right there if he's not more careful than usual.

That said, Khura'in by itself doesn't have nearly the presence or resources to catch 47 on the follow through unless he stays relatively close by geographically, so even with all of Khura'in's investigative abilities focusing him, 47 should escape afterwards just fine.

Unless you count Apollo bringing in Phoenix to bring in Edgeworth and Interpol, Apollo just doesn't have the right deck to play with 47. 7/10 because Divination Seance and death aura might get 47 in Khura'in though.

Athena Cykes

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Athena basically hard counters 47.

A seemingly emotionless assassin whose a master of disguise. Think I've heard that one before....

That said, 47 isn't just Phantom 2. He does actually have emotions. He just buries them deeeeeeeep in there.

Honestly, 47 is a massive trauma magnet with a lot of damage upstairs. He was genetically designed to be an assassin from the ground up, waa abused all his childhood in an attempt to purge all emotion and empathy from him, had to witness the first family he ever had he shot and killed in front of him to "teach him a lesson", was drugged into believing he killed his best friend and brother for years, and now has to live with the fact that he killed the parents of the one person left in the world that he cares about. Just... that's rough buddy.

Yeah, Athena would hear nothing when 47 talks about the murder and hear a biiiiiiiig blip when someone says the name Diana or Lucas and that's a big give away.

Could Athena talk him into giving up his career? That's a big if. 47's been kicking the can around in his head for awhile and he always comes back to "killing bad people is the one thing I enjoy in life" so... I'm not optimistic.

She also has no way of actually apprehending him, with none of Apollo's or Phoenix's resources (beyond having them in speed dial, at least).

That said, she'd shake him to his core in the way the other two could never. He'd come out respecting Apollo and Nick but shaken by Athena and that's a big win.

All of them:

Combine all those advantages and what do ya get?

That's a conviction several years in the making, my friend.

#ace attorney #hitman #agent 47 #phoenix wright #apollo justice #athena cykes #diana burnwood

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nihilisticlinguistics · 1 year ago

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can't remember where i saw the post reccing Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid, but they were so right.

Juniper and Thorn is set in the fantasy Russia-esque city of Oblya, in the midst of change as it industrializes and draws in immigrant populations. The protagonist, Marlinchen, is the youngest daughter of the last wizard in Oblya, a man cursed to be dissatisfied with everything in his life.

It's very tightly written -- I could tell within the first few pages that this was a book to pay close attention to. Elements introduced in the first few chapters remained relevant throughout, from the beauty of the eldest sister Undine to the spiny-tailed monster under Marlinchen's bed.

Like a good Grimm fairy tale, Juniper and Thorn uses the fantastic to underscore the real. Marlinchen doesn't just live under her abusive father's thumb; she lives under his abusive, magical thumb, with all the power he can wield to control her life. His curse drives the central conflicts of the story, feeding into his consuming hunger, his relentless desire for money, his anger at his daughters, his anger with the changing world that no longer respects his magical gifts.

Juniper and Thorn contains a romance that I would compare, if anything, to the fairy-tale, Cinderella-esque story of escaping family abuse coupled with the realism that shines through the entire novel. Sevastyan, the male romantic lead, is the youngest principal dancer in the local ballet company, but he's also an ethnic minority (if Oblya is "fantasy Russia," the Yehuli people can be read as "fantasy Jewish") in an unfamiliar city and victim to abuses of a different kind. He's drawn to Marlinchen for reasons that similarly thread the line between fantasy and realism, and he's both an archetype to her (emphasized by his heroic role in the ballet) and just a hurt, lonely man who likes her.

Anyone with a close familiarity with stories is likely to be able to guess the twist, if you're paying attention, but it's a credit to Reid that even after I figured out what was coming, enough story elements were left open that I was never quite sure how it was happening until I was almost upon the reveal. When the last piece clicked into place, I actually said aloud, "Oh, there it is!" It was such a delight, like being led blindfolded by the hand and being able to trust my guide to deliver me through the woods.

Reid's world-building also stands out. It lands in perfect synchrony with the plot; the industrialization of Oblya caused Marlinchen's father to lose his standing as a great wizard, keeps their situation on the verge of poverty, and brings the temptations of the outside world that put the daughters in conflict with their wizard father. Juniper and Thorn spends only just enough time on the worldbuilding to paint a vivid portrait of local life and imply the scope of the world beyond Oblya's gridiron streets. Reid neatly avoids the temptation to over-design her world with more details than the story can use; the entire tale occurs in Oblya, so she sticks close to Oblya, to great effect.

If there's any quibble I have with Juniper and Thorn, it's in the overuse of simile in the early chapters. It's clearly meant to establish the gothic atmosphere, with striking metaphor that calls up gory or spooky symbols, but early on it seems that every other line contains such a line. While each simile and metaphor has the intended effect, taken all together they can feel over-saturated and lose their impact. This issue lightens up as the story continues, and eventually these similes become more clearly defined as part of Marlinchen's own grim and violent thoughts.

A few warnings, however; if you're sensitive to depictions of sex, gore, sexual assault, or abuse, this book may not be for you. All four appear throughout this book, and while the depictions vary in explicitness and intensity, Reid doesn't shy away from their effect on Marlinchen's psyche.

All in all, an excellent adult fantasy fairy tale! I would highly recommend this book to fans of dark fiction, especially dark fantasy, and those seeking a fairy tale with more bite.

#juniper and thorn #ava reid #reading #book rec #book review #? is this a book review?

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strangefellows · 2 years ago

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Okay this is gonna be a long post but I figured why the hell not throw my absolute fucking lunatic conspiracy board Limbus Company theory out there, because I’ve had four people tell me it makes sense when I’ve brought it up to them, so! Here we go. Theory: I believe that Dante is Ayin (a main character of the first ProjMoon game, Lobotomy Corp, for those who don’t know). There’s a metric asston of evidence in just the first few chapters alone that keeps making me lie on the floor and scream, so let me document it!

We’re going under a cut for length, let’s get started! Heavy spoilers for Lobotomy Corporation and Ruina under here, be warned.

The Song: First of all, just looking at the lyrics to In Hell We Live, Lament has me absolutely losing my fucking mind. We’re looking at insane lines like “I walked down a path / Leading to the past / Stole from the tree's hands / A regretter's friend / The forbidden fruit” and “If you wanted me to speak / If you wanted me to think / If you wanted me to carry on our dreams / Each loop we live through / The standards inside me / Thе line I drew for me / Lowers to the earth” and “Why'd you make my voice stutter? / Why do truths never matter? / Why'd you curse me with "you're a natural born genius"?” and “Replayed thoughts / Forget me not / I'm inside the empathic light / I bite off your skin / Exposing the angels on your ribs” and just...the repeated mention of loops. The song basically reads literally like Ayin himself singing it to Carmen. (The ending song also feels suspicious lyrically as well, but I can’t pin that down as easily.)

The Prologue: Not as much here, but I find it extremely suspicious that they didn’t show us a damn thing of Dante until after he loses his head and his memories. And honestly, Faust and Vergilius going ‘your name is Dante’ feels very blatantly like a goddamn lie. An amnesiac is gonna accept whatever you tell him is his name, man. Not to mention that he’s explicitly someone very important (Vergilius says so in ch3), and clearly knows something the bad guys desperately want. Which ties to my next point.

The Bad Guys: First of all, they want the Golden Boughs, which as apparently ‘pieces of L Corp’s Singularity’, are a very nice way to say they’re probably literally pieces of Carmen somehow. Branches sure look like the central nervous system, huh. Second, one of the trio in the intro refers to their boss as a ‘her’, says she wants to do something that’s ‘not illegal, but has never been done before’, and IIRC, calls her the Serpent. Now, looking at that serpent reference alongside Carmen’s existing parallels to WhiteNight, as well as Adam and his constant talk of the forbidden fruit...you see what I’m getting at here? Who tempted Adam in the first place?

The Inferno: Now, you see, even if the big bad is somehow Carmen in some way -- similarly to how the Voice led Argalia in Ruina, perhaps? -- that doesn’t necessarily mean Ayin is Dante. HOWEVER! Look back at the Inferno itself, the poem we’re working off extremely heavily. What is the purpose for Dante’s trip to hell? Beatrice. Dante’s dead girlfriend who’s become a divine being. Literally, Beatrice sent Virgil to guide Dante through hell and limbo and shit to bring him to her, roughly speaking. So, uh, looks at the whole dead now divine gf thing. Hm. Yeah. And where is our own trip to hell taking us? Through the ruins of Lobcorp, grabbing what are more or less pieces of Carmen, and I can’t remember if it’s said outright or not but there is a heavy ass chance this trip is ending at the main facility. Which, coming full circle...

The Clock: I will politely resist making a Hokma joke. But you have to admit it’s funny. In all seriousness, though, the fact that Dante’s power is resetting -- something that the entire gameplay of Lobotomy Corp and a major aspect of the plot was built around, resetting and looping and bringing the dead back to life -- is a major sus factor. In fact, I’m just waiting for someone to say ‘death is meaningless’ if I’m not just blanking on dialogue and someone’s said it already. Not to mention, the aspect of Dante feeling the pain of the injuries/deaths he’s rewinding gives me a lot to say about the (fairly canon) interpretation of Ayin martyring himself using the loops to punish himself for what he did. Suffering how the people he’s tied to suffered, so to speak. In fact -- I wouldn’t be surprised if the clock is/was Ayin’s EGO like the Library is Angela’s. How else would it be immediately to hand to slap on his neck, and what else could possibly have been able to legitimately replace his goddamn head on such short notice?

Manager: LOOK, THIS ONE IS TENUOUS BUT WHEN ADDED TO THE PILE-- the simple fact that Dante is deliberately given the title of manager feels important, when looked at through the lens of the rest of the evidence. There’s a line at the beginning of Chapter 1 when the children Sinners start fighting where Dante goes “Should I step in? Is this the part where I exercise my authority as the manager with dignity and grace? A faint memory urges me to do something." and it feels significant.

Random additional note: The Mirror Dungeons Wellcheers event has Dante say it ‘feels familiar’ -- does it? Does it now, Dante?

While I’m still going through the game myself - middle of ch2 - I’ve had the whole story told to me, so I know what’s up, and though there’s probably more small bits I’m missing, the major beats here are definitely enough to support my theory for sure. It feels very right and fitting.

I’m just sitting here with several tinfoil hats and my ConspiracyBoard.gif going GUYS I SWEAR, THIS MAKES SENSE and losing it silently. I hope I’m right. I mean if I’m not right I’m making an AU fic anyway, but I hope I’m right. What do y’all think?

#limbus company #lobotomy corporation #library of ruina #dante limbus company #ayin lobcorp #lobcorp spoilers #ruina spoilers #LISTEN IT MAKES SENSE RIGHT??????????#IT MAKES SENSE

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mamaito · 7 months ago

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What are ur favorite mangas?? Love ur art btw🫶🏻

Sorry for the long reply, here it is. I'm pretty sure I have left out a lot of other manga, I can't remember the others I used to read… I'll update this list once I figure it out.. In the meantime, enjoy this collection:

Aku No Hana/Flower Of Evil/The Flowers Of Evil - Psychological/Drama, about a young man who constantly reads this foreign poetry book called, Les Fleurs du mal by Charle's Baudelaire. From the get go, you're introduced to him having an ego and looks down on others for not being in the same realm of intellect for not understanding the book he is into. The main character wants to stand out, but even he does not understand it himself.

He attaches himself to his classmate, Nanako, the top of her class. Because of her displayed intellect and proficiency in english, Takao assumes she is also different and would understand where he is coming from, placing her in a pedestal, the same way as she places him in the same light also. When his crush left her gym wear in the classroom, he decides to snoop in and wear it. Letting his perverted degeneracy take hold of his thoughts before getting found out by his classmate, Sawa, and all hell breaks lose. He is blackmailed and forced to do her bidding from here on out.

It may not seem like it as first glance but this is a love story that's not meant to be, two people who understand one another but they harm others around them in the process. The three characters that you'll be following are complex that it's hard to label them as this one thing, especially Sawa. You will have no clue what she's thinking, what she wants to do and what she's trying to say, and before you know it, you're just like the main character, wondering about her constantly.

It has an anime, but it's not well received due to it's unusual style which is rotoscoping rather than the usual anime style, but if you can't stomach the long pauses and the drag it brings I would suggest watching the live action instead.

Bradherley No Basha/Bradherley's Carriage/Bradherley's Coach - Historical/Tragedy, taking place around the 1800's, an aristocrat goes around in various orphanages to adopt young girls and train them to join his opera troupe. But upon coming with him, they make the discovery that the man's real intention is not to give them a good life..

It is a oneshot with a plot that must be pieced together to make a coherent storyline, each girl in question has their own story to tell and it is a depressing read, filled with mature subject matter so be warned if you're not good with such things. To me personally, this stuck with me and has taken my interest ever since.

Chi No Wadachi/Trail Of Blood - Or Blood on the tracks.. Psychological/Horror, it's about a mother and her son. One day, during a family gathering to the mountains, an incident happened in regards to the cousin and only Seichi and his mother, Seiko, knew of what actually happened. Throughout this entire manga, the young boy faces psychological torment through his mother and the certain day replays on his mind constantly..

What's great about this is that it let's you figure out what the characters are thinking, especially Seiko, who is the most mysterious character of this manga. There are also times where you're taken out of Seichi's perspective and left to observe his expressions and wonder what's going through his head. You're always left feeling dread because there's no way of knowing what's going to happen.

Collapse of the World as We Know It - Psychological/Horror, a collection of short stories. I'm not going to list it all here so if you wanna know what these stories are, go read it. It has marked it's place in my memory.

Daija Ni Totsudai Musume/The Great Daija's Bride/The Great Serpents Bride - Drama/Supernatural/Romance, written similarly to a folk story, this is about a human girl named Miyo who was given as a sacrifice to the lord of the mountain, Daija. And them learning to live together, they eventually fall in love and start a family. Yes, he is a large talking snake and no he will never become a humanoid. Yes, there are a lot of sex scenes between them lol but that's not the point.

This manga has a lot of plot twists and interesting characters, and deals with heavy subject matter like rape and abuse to gray morals in regards to Daija's relationship with the people who are worshipping him. It is befitting the atmosphere of that era and it feels like someone is writing their own folk story. This is a recent manga I am reading and it clearly stands out to other romance manga out there.

Inuyashiki - Science fiction/Thriller, an old man, down on his luck upon learning he has cancer and coming home to a cold family who could care less, decides to walk his dog to a park one night till he encounters a strange light in the sky and hits him. He was then transformed into this cyborg with powers capable of doing anything, while a young man who happens to be walking the same park was also hit and turned into one. The two of them will choose different paths and use their now owned powers for their own reasons.

Kimi Ni Aisarete Itakatta/I Want To Be Hurt By Love - Psychological/Drama, written by a disturbed loli doujin artist turned mangaka, good for her. It is about this girl named Kanae Kanai who is trying to be part of this group that's composed of the popular girls in the class just so she can say that she's needed and part of something. But she finds it hard to relate and go along with them, constantly needing to be reassured in her position within the group till she meets and catches the attention of the popular guy that they invited from another school named Hiroshi.

The story is dark as you would imagine, there is bullying, revenge, abuse of various degree, sexual content, etc. And I know, a lot of people who read this will say that it is over the top but I digress because the things happening and the actions she is doing is reasonable and will reach to that extent if you were ever in her shoes.. People complained that she's unlikeable and horrible when that's the point. You're not supposed to relate, you're suppose to try and understand why she is thinking in this manner.

When she told Hiroshi to quit his dreams to play, you'd say you're stupid and crazy for suggesting that when in her case, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do because that's all she does in her life. Kanae runs from her problems and when something as a little inconvenience doesn't go her way, she instantly goes to find something to dissociate herself from that problem.

If you've seen the doujins this author makes… Man, she knows how to make a scary scene. She's really using her experiences that she went through. And when I saw those two familiar characters from her doujin make an appearance my heart sank so hard I thought I was gonna have an heart attack. Also, the english title should've been "I want you to love me like it hurts".

Koko wa Ima kara Rinri Desu/From Now On, we Begin Ethics - Drama, an episodic manga featuring a teacher teaching students about ethics. It tackles different subjects and finishes them around a chapter or two, the students are not the normal characters that you should invest for a very long time as he teaches new characters and the years pass by as well, you'd also see them having character development even after their sole chapter ends. But let it be known that it centers towards only the teacher and the mystery surrounding him and why he even wants to teach it in the first place.

The students may or may no change and do not suddenly have a change of heart nor change their opinions about their beliefs, even some of the students I hate are unlikeable and my stance on them will remain that way but the point of the manga is that these are people and people do not change willy nilly. If you like such a concept then experience it for yourself. The english title should've been "Here, we will study ethics."

Made in Abyss - Dark Fantasy/Adventure, takes place in a fantasy world called Orth, a mining town surrounding a large hole that's deep within the earth itself. No one knows how deep it is exactly besides the map that has last been documented is around the 7th layer. Depending on how deep you are, the larger the effect of the abyss' curse has on you.

The two main characters, Reg and Riko decide to embark to find Riko's mother, Lyza from a presumed letter from her, saying that she is will be waiting for her at the very depths of the abyss.

This has the best worldbuilding I have ever laid my eyes upon, there are no main villains except the abyss itself and that's rather rare. Characters using their intellect and knowledge to avoid the curse and the animals inhabiting it, from uncovering the secrets it has. It sends you alongside the main characters in learning what the abyss has in store. If you want good storytelling then look no further, because I can't get enough of it.

Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show/Shoujo Tsubaki - No surprise it's back again, check my previous post in regards to my favorite movies. I've said my case on why I am a fan of this movie and eroguro movement in general.

Nekojiru - Dark comedy, two anthropomorphic cats and their daily life. It's filled with casual child abuse, animal abuse, racism, vulgarity, and violence. All of this was inspired from the creators everyday life because she lives in a poor neighborhood and she wasalso abused so it's to no one's surprise her manga is also filled with it. Write what you know, as the saying goes.

I like collecting and reading these kind of things so this just fits in my forte, it also has a niche fandom. It has a psychological movie also, no dialogue, just straight up acid trip. Go check it out.

Oyasumi Punpun/Goodnight Punpun - Psychological/Drama, of a young boy named Punpun, drawn in this cartoonish anthropomorphic blob of a bird and his everyday life. He through the same as any boy would experience, school life and experiencing a crush for the first time. Till he comes home one day and finds the house a mess and his mother on the floor and his father stuttering to find an excuse.

The manga follows him till his adult life as his mental state deteriorates, trying to find reason to keep on living inspite of the harsh life he has experienced. He then eventually meets up once more with his childhood crush and together they embark to find even meaning in their relationship.

This holds a special place in my heart as this is the manga I've read that actually understands how I feel, watching his dreams shatter and coming home to a broken family, disassociating yourself to the world around you as this goal that you've always centered yourself around no longer bares meaning upon reaching adulthood. You won't find that feeling ever again..

Sentai Daishikkaku/Ranger Reject/Go Go Loser Ranger! - Action/Drama/Sci-Fi/Superhero, taking place 13 years after the defeat of executives, the boss monsters, the dragon keepers decided to leave the few remaining mob monsters called dusters alive and strike a deal with them to do a play every sunday where they are defeated by the keepers so that they can remain in power still and have their place in the world still relevant.

The world of keepers are filled with political and social power that makes them almost untouchable, and while they are seen as villains in the eyes of our MC, fighter D, the line between hero and villain is blurred completely. There are many plot twists and you will find it hard on who to root for.

Sundome - Psychological/Romance, about a young man who finds himself unfulfilled due to not finding someone who can fill his heart with what he actually needs till an exchange student comes around and changes his life. This is a love story between a masochist and a dominatrix, and them learning to trust one another on whether their feelings are genuine or not.

This is an ecchi manga so heads up, they deal with sexual situations that are downright degenerate but it's all in the manner of consent and trust between the two. The two are challenged constantly throughout the chapters, if this is just lust on his part of does he genuinely love her inspite of it.

This to me, I consider the best romance I've read so far but I did not like the ending, I have a lot to say about it too, but most of the time I pretend it didn't exist. But the rest of it is amazing and I don't think I will ever experience something like it again. I will thank the youtuber for introducing me to it but fuck him for mislabeling this manga as psychological horror.

Tonari no Seki no Hen na Senpai - Romance/Comedy, it is adult smut so if you're expecting a deep analysis of the story, I'm afraid this ain't it. This about two co-workers, mayumi knows what she wants, a handsome guy and she just so happens to be in the sales department filled with it, what luck! The guy in question is unfortunately a clingly stalker who's a pervert and he wants to get together with this woman who was nice to him.

Sexual hijinks ensues, and yes, there is dubcon. If you want something to have a laugh or shut your brain with then go read this lol

-- I'll type out my favorite mangaka's here instead as listing one by one their mangas is tiresome, besides, I like all of their work. Be warned, they are eroguro artists.

Suehiro Maru's Mangas - There's too many for me to list it all so just browse his name and you'll find all of his manga collection. He's very popular for his showa esque art style and the macabre surrealism of it all. Yes, he is the one responsible for making Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show.

Shintaro Kago's Mangas - Another surreal eroguro artist, known for his bizarre one shots and grotesque imagery. Unlike Suehiro Maru, Shintaro displays fecal matter just because no one else likes to draw about it and leans more into dark comedy.

#ask

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neighboringheart · 7 months ago

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hi I hope you're having a good day

may I inquire about yours ocs? c:

anon get out here get out here so I can hold your hand and know your face and leave a lil smooch on your cheek (I'm already giving one to @eclipsedmoon87 for replying to my other post asking about them lmao this is for the both of you)

okay so this is gonna get kinda long so just bear with me here

I've got a handful of different OCs but there's only two that I've really fleshed out and I will tell you about them now!

before I start telling you about them tho it's important to establish that they're a part of an AU that's an offshoot of the end of MTMTE/LL in which that the universe they end up in has a cybertron but every Cybertronian is a beastformer

and my OCs are two of these beastformers! they are twin turbofoxes named Turnpike and Trailhead

Trailhead is excitable but just as easily spooked and incredibly fucking smart. He loves experiments of all kinds (even if they're not the safest) and he causes Turn so so much fucking stress all the time from how reckless he can be. He's always carrying some type of blaster, but he's not really that good of a shot. Beware all who may be in the general direction of where he's aiming. He's also religious, but not in a way that was considered palatable back planet-side, as he believes that with the bodies and capabilities Primus gave them, they should use their longevity to find out the full potential of what they can do with their own bodies. Basically, he loves mods and loves his alt-mode dearly, which is frowned upon back home.

Turnpike is the more level headed of the two, they are very stoic, standoffish, and incredible with swords. I'm working on the worldbuilding for this AU still, but I've fully cemented that Turn used to be a fighter in the arena back on Cybertron. They're not religious per se, but like they believe in Primus and similarly to Trail believe that Primus gave them their ability to transform for a reason, and that their robot modes are not their "true form" but that both are equally true and ingrained into them. They have a hard time getting close to people due to how alienated they were before being recruited in the arena. Even after gaining mass popularity there, they still didn't like all that attention and were generally mistrustful of many people.

The two of them are sent out on a mission to gather energon from lifeless or abandoned planets since the naturally occurring energon that was provided by the fruits that grew on Primus' Hand (a giant ass cyber tree that basically spans over the entire planet in one giant system lol it looks like a forest but is actually all one organism) but those trees stopped growing at around the same time that the Blight appeared

The Blight is basically a neurodegenerative disease that causes any who contract it to gradually lose more and more of their memory and have lapses where they will transform into their beast mode for extended periods with little to no responsiveness where they may wander or become aggressive until one day they transform and never return to their robot mode. Their memories and ability to communicate disappear leaving them as seemingly nothing but a standard mechanimal if it weren't for their transformation seams remaining. Despite meticulous research, the cause and cure are still a mystery

luckily the Blight doesn't kill whoever contracts it, but they're not the same after. most who undergo a full regression end up escaping into the wilds never to be seen again beyond occasional glimpses

While on this mission, their ship is critically damaged and despite it being taboo for cybertronians to communicate with outsiders, Trailhead rigs a distress beacon that ends up being answered by the Lost Light

from there the two of them meet the crew and learn things about themselves and I have more plot ideas planned there but I'll leave that a mystery for now because that's more fun

instead I'll keep telling you some little things about my OCs bc that's what you came here for lmao

since they are turbofoxes, the two of them can be very mischievous especially when they team up and the Lost Light crew finds out very quickly just how wild the two of them can get when properly motivated which is quite often since Trailhead is usually the instigator and Turnpike gets bored a lot

other tidbits to note:

Turnpike is a bit of a lurker and loves to sneak around where they can't be seen. They've got some attention deflectors that Trail made specifically for them so they could avoid fans back home and they love to use them to spy on the crew even if Minimus has told them it's against regulation. They'll stop spying once they know they and Trailhead are actually safe aboard their ship. Before long, they learn just how much they love the simple things: music, arts and crafts, and even dancing. That's when they finally start to break out of their shell and really become close with the others

Trailhead has no such hang ups however. Within minutes of meeting and talking to Brainstorm he immediately dove into finding out everything he could from him and Perceptor. By that first night aboard he's already getting drunk at Swerve's with Brainstorm and Nautica and making friends with everyone he can. His biggest vice however is his vanity. With a life of working in a lab day after day and nothing else to do with his spare time, he became incredibly invested in his own appearance, and as such is very protective of it. One scratch in his finish and his mood is dashed for the rest of the day.

and here's some design concepts I've put together for them. The ones in color I originally traced from a panel of dominus bc I was just trying to figure out a direction and I can't draw for shit so like ignore that I'm working on it lol and the second one is a sketch where I'm just trying to figure out some more realism in the way they're put together like in terms of joints (been inspired after assembling a few model kits I guess lol) as well as playing with some shapes.

(the one with the pink is Trailhead as you could likely guess lol he likes his colors bright)

Anyway I'm still figuring that out and I'm way more of a writer than an artist so any work there is especially slow going forgive me but like hopefully you can see what I'm going for there

some other fun notes:

the two of them become obsessed with Minimus. They love to call him big brother to get on his nerves. For them, it was a term of endearment used with the other turbofoxformers in their skulk in the old days, but after everyone else caught the Blight, Minimus is the first other turbofox they've seen in centuries, so in addition to it being entertaining to call him that bc it irritates them, it's also comforting in a way. They also love how small he is since on their Cybertron turbofoxes are quite a bit larger than in the LL Cybertron. they're both a little over a head taller than Minimus when he's irreducible. Once they get comfortable with the crew, they're constantly plotting how they're gonna get Minimus into the nest they share so they can all sleep in a pile in their alts like Primus intended (according to Trailhead anyway Turnpike just likes it bc it's cozy)

but yeah I've got like a million random notes about this AU and these two scattered all over my docs and one day I'll have the motivation to actually write the whole damn thing lmao but for now I hope y'all enjoyed my ramble about them and please tell me what you think of my little guys

oh and I haven't gotten their sexualities set in stone yet since I'm still trying to figure out what kind of endgame would be the best narratively for them both I'm pretty set on Turnpike just not really giving af but being a total romantic who commits to one partner only and that Trailhead is somewhere in the ace and aro spectrums like he doesn't really give af about romance or interface but also isn't opposed to fucking around with his friends if he thinks it might be fun and he enjoys making other people feel good and hasn't figured out what he wants long term just yet

so like I know I wanna pair Turnpike up with someone (and already have someone in mind feel free to guess) and as for Trailhead I'm still not sure what his love life will look like just yet hell I might even leave that one open ended if it would serve the story better I just know that he'd be happy to find the friends he finds on the Lost Light they both are but I feel like he'd find satisfaction in that alone while Turnpike would want more if that makes sense

I also had an idea for him ending up in a sort of queerplatonic polycule situation with some of the other characters that I thought might be fun to explore but it would be a while before I'd get the logistics of that down well enough to be able to implement that so we'll see lol more people = more complexity and I can only handle so much of that before my brain starts to smoke but the image is in my mind and I want to make it real if I can

oh god I accidentally talked about this a lot longer than intended lol I hope anon and anybody else who might be reading this likes these dorks too bc I need the motivation to write this story and also would love people to bump ideas off of for potential side plots and such since I want to write something more long form and there's a lot of blanks still

at last my little guys are unleashed on the world uh T&T be upon ye

#anon #nh text #nh ocs #if I post more about these guys I'll make an actual tag for them but for now this'll do lol #I have been pestering my bestie with these two for so long and now I can pester all of you #please ask me any questions you have about them I wanna answer them

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