#source: occasionally they will say things that are canon in animated stuff as if its canon in campaign

[gorgynei]

ohhhh. does everyone remember how marisha randomly said that beau hated yasha at first a few episodes back despite that straight up being untrue. what if thats something theyre adding in m9 animated?

[basilpaste]

Do you have any miscellaneous bizzyboy headcanons... share with tha class

a small handful i think :} ill start with post canon Nouns because theyre easy.

p - she/her. maybe an occasional he is thrown back in there for spice. she plays around with some nounself stuff at some point for funzies, but all in all she/her suits her needs best. vib - he/she. purely your influence but i believe it in my heart. boy in a dyke way girl in a fag way. you understand. capochin - he/him. but in that way that if he thought about it twenty years ago hed probably be using they/them exclusively today. and maybe someone used they/them for him on accident once and he still thinks about it sometimes. but no. he/him. al - he/him. but in the most stoner ass transmasculine way you can imagine. you ask him what pronouns he uses and he gives you a thumbs up. ban - he/???. he says he. he just also says hes got secret pronouns no one gets to know about. the truth is that the ??? means any. gr - he/it. has a weird relationship with personhood and identity in general. he because hes perceived as a man. it because it doesnt perceive itself as much of anything.

nouns aside: i dont think a single bizzyboy can cook. but they all have one thing they can cook decently enough. these six foods make up a good Most of what they eat in a week. its rough out here.

gr can kinda bake though.

i think vib is really good at drawing bodies and clothing on bodies. but she cant draw faces to save her life. or animals really, hes bad at animals.

bans kinda bookish? not really, but they do pick up a lot of useless information from various sources that he tends to use for conversation starters. xir affinity for fun facts also means knowing a lot of stuff about flowers? which it imparts to p.

gr objectum. thumps up.

i also like to think about which gods theyd all gravitate towards after inspekta.

p - miss mitternaucht (comforting, close to home) capo - cobigail (earnest. something he needs) vib - thespius (creative, affectionate) ban - click clack (creative, a critical eye) al - huzzle mug (energetic, the no-nonsense in nonsense) gr - king (courageous, a voice her own)

... and hes not one of the boys, but i think hector would benefit from speaking with bauhauzzo.

i think p is the most physically affectionate of them but vib is not far behind. hes a big fan of casual touch.

okay thats all for now wau.

[doom-nerdo-666]

Something people heard is "all wads are canon" and i wonder if this line from the 2016 Slayer's testaments is why:

(Source is this video by howaboutbecause686, i just wanted some quick reference)

It's something that is either rarely sourced or just carried over from someone's interpretation of a lore bit that could mean something else.

Because the idea of Doom wads being canon reminded me of some points:

The new lore/direction is more likely to be made with new fans in mind

2016 technically being a reboot with its own direction/stuff seems clear, specially since the original games still have a long lasting modding scene.

Even if the Doomslayer as a concept does have some interesting fanservice-y origin and there's some easter eggs, these games also attracted a lot of new fans.

One can also say that a "more faithfull/closer to classic" Doom universe already exists in some mods, which leads me to the second point:

How people view Doom mods/wads to begin with

To some, Doom modding is like a main pillar of the community, from not just the quality stuff but also with how important and beneficial it is to the series.

But then there's always some sort of "line" that divides those "deeper into the rabbit hole/iceberg/whatever" and those that approach things in a more basic way.

As in, Brutal Doom, HDoom, MyHouse and typical meme/pop culture based wads.

It's why some people think "all wads are canon" think of goofy stuff like Homer Simpsons and anime girls, since goofy wads are more likely to be thought out than the "genuine" stuff like well made maps, creative gameplay mods or assets that could "expand the original setting".

Or even stuff like original characters and fanservice based mods.

One can see this as "you just want me to worship/idolize some random guy, don't you" or as an attempt to make the community revolve around a specific group.

And i can see why, as someone who thinks the Cacowards aren't enough to showcase the best works in the community.

Because you want the community to look diverse and huge, which is part of why people didn't like BD being too popular: It casted a shadow on the other stuff that shows how far Doom modding went and still goes.

Another thing is id themselves, since we do have stuff like the Unity addons and some other collaborations.

How wads can (If ever) affect the series

Remember when people thought Brutal Doom inspired D2016?

I still occasionally wonder if the Baron's design in Eternal was inspired by the fire Baron idea that is present in some mods/wads.

(Even made a post about concepts for demons that exist in both mods and the series)

Because one can probably wonder if "all wads are canon" can lead to "id can do what they want with fan projects".

Because one thing is referencing memes or inside jokes or even how the Doomslayer can be traced to the "rip and tear" comic and maybe Death Battle or some copypastas.

But another is a concept from a fanmade playable work made for the original Doom games being used somewhat in an official Doom title.

It'd be like "canonizing someone's interactive fanfiction" but also have some negative side effects/meanings in regards to creativity, ethics, how it can affect a fanbase etc.

It's also worth noting that "canon" in media is usually more relevant if it's from something that is published and owned by the company.

It's an issue with "lore" that only exists in interviews or streams but also means that Final Doom is "more canon" than Romero's Sigil because id technically owns one but not the other.

At the same time, one can see Doom having a lot of "HIRE THIS MAN" projects, so if id were to collaborate with some people to make something cool (And be fair with fans over it), it could be cool.

After all, D64's official new port can be traced to its fan port history and there's the contribution of a dev who worked on D64 EX.

[hungeringheart]

what's your favorite aspect and the reasons for it being your favorite? :o

Oh, this is a nice one! Thanks for asking it!

I actually am not sure I have a favourite! Most recently I've got Life on the official quiz, and I do see why it would give me that. But I've also had Void, Doom, Breath and Blood, and those make sense too. I suppose I enjoy the system altogether, and I like the metaphorical uses of all of them...

But what the hell, what the hell! Let's say it's Void, hypothetically speaking. I do like Void a lot -- not just because I like the sense of mystery, but also because of the mechanical role and the implications. Void is deletion and obfuscation, right, but it's also just ... well in some sense it's the code of the game, which is opaque to the players. On the level of its connection to Doom (which people seem not to know about!) and to the Horrorterrors, it grips me.

I've always had very ecological outlooks about things (I grew up pretty rural and I was raised to think of animals, trees and mountains as persons), and so I've felt some type of way about the fandom reading of Void as the most mechanistic aspect without considering that it's also about the unknown, about confronting fear, about something like the sense of fear and hopelessness integral to growing up.

What if it's all for nothing? What if the mysteries of adulthood don't go anywhere? What if I'm going to grow up, get old and die, and through it all there's nothing there but more of the unknown, more fear, more uncertainty, more shapes in the dark?

I would love to see more people exploring the Horrorterrors as detritivores with an ecology, rather than just unknowable daemons that wipe the hard drive (ooh fatalism ooh determinism the game the game the GAME!). As animals, as Animals (in the way that a coyote is an animal and Coyote is an Animal), as angels.

I would like to see Void and the Terrors utilized more in fanworks as negative space, the way Japanese filmmaking uses filler interludes of the characters just doing stuff to hold space betwern scenes. As a way to say that it is scary and painful to grow up, but once you do you can start to see the world for what it is, a place full of other thinking creatures like yourself, to which you have responsibilities you're now old enough to carry.

My Homestuck fic (the source material for the Matsya and Yudhei you might have seen me occasionally bring up), which I'm probably going to nurse on for a few more years before I do anything so bold as put it online, has this sort of thing as a theme, actually -- outlooks and the meanings people assign to things, what it means to have a home, what it means to share a home with things you don't understand, why it matters whether you can accept that those things are also persons with perceptual worlds or not. What it does to the way you think when you demonize what you don't understand. What it means that in canon, in text, directly, the terrifying whispers of the eldritch gods of the celestial abyss were cries for help the whole time.

I'm pretty active on the Homestuck rp scene under other names, and on here I can say that I think that's really what irks me a bit about other readings of Void -- of course, as always, mileage varies, but I'm just so very tired of Lovecraft. I think it's cowardly and lazy to just lump the unknown into unknowability and invent reasons why it definitely wants to kill you; that's how we end up with leaders who are cowards, telling us what else to be scared of. Fear is no way to live in a world where we're just one among many kinds of being -- the way that type of thing goes, eventually we'll be almost alone on a dry brown planet. If there's anything I wish people replaced the Lovecraft with in their terrors it's Arrival.

Oh, they're higher-dimensional beings? Who cares if we can only perceive them in the way a point would perceive a line (as another point, with something else we know is there that we can't apprehend)? Who gives a damn if they're physically dangerous, elude description and mess with our established notions of how things work? We perceive what we can, and surely they have to know that; we have no problem knowing it ourselves about, say, spiders, who we can also easily hurt by accident. We find a way to live in a world that contains them, because there's no such thing as a fundamentally wrong and abominable existence.

And that's why I really like Void! It's a fundamentally challenging aspect because it has nothing to do with the actualization the game is apparently about; it's a sort of programming artefact in a game set up to lie to children about heroism and growing up. It's not the only aspect you can grow into something other than what SBURB wants to make you under, but it's the one that most obviously challenges the rest of the metaphor -- the reminder that your incipisphere isn't the only one, the context you have to grapple with.

Canonically it only appears in void sessions, but I would like to believe that that's not because it's just the evidence everyone is going to die forever. I would like to think that it's like the key to an escape room -- that through understanding why Skaia thinks you deserve to fail and be eaten, you can rise above whatever restrictions the space cancer programming of the game wants to impose. Maybe you can even use that understanding to prevent a certain category of calamity that is always already here.

Think of it as mystery - but mystery as in the secret rites of passage in religion. Mystery as in the things that change you, and that make you more a person, but cannot be handily explained except in symbol and allegory.

[comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny]

I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

[phantastus]

Separate person here, but I’d love to see the tag meanings for the other characters!

I tried to answer this once and then mysteriously lost the post, but I’m doing it again! Thanks for the interest, guys-- I’m really glad that my weird bird tags have been a source of intrigue and curiosity!

(And to address specific bits in these replies/tags: 1. Yes the coincidence with Heather’s bird name is the coolest thing ever and I can’t even take credit for it, it just worked out completely organically. 2. Yes you can totally reblog it, sorry for the Readmore! 3. Yes the title is from the lyrics to Hometown! Good eye!)

NOW FOR THE DEETS, follow the Readmore!

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TRAVIS GRADY | CATHARTES AURA (Turkey Vulture)

If you’ve driven on just about any highway in the U.S., you have definitely seen one of these guys. They’re not just desert birds; they can be found just about anywhere in the Americas. Given Travis’s traverse-oriented line of work, a bird so associated with man-made roads just seemed appropriate.

Turkey vultures feed almost exclusively on carrion, and Travis unsurprisingly has a lot of roadkill themes and imagery in his Otherworld (he even has a monster CALLED “Carrion”!). Being an animal lover, Travis feels a lot of guilt about roadkill, whether it’s animals he hit himself or just ones he sees dead on the roadways. Although vultures are considered creepy for eating dead prey off of the ground (and Travis himself seems to be considered disconcerting by people around him), they’re smart and often friendly birds that perform the important role of cleaning up decomposing stuff that would otherwise just rot and go to waste. Plus,eating already-dead things instead of killing stuff themselves makes them objectively less scary than... most birds tbh.

Sort of like the other protags and their “corvids=pests” deal, vultures are not just seen as an annoyance but often actively considered disgusting and filthy. Travis doesn’t have an easy time making friends and a lot of people seem to consider him scary/bad for reasons that honestly don’t match up with his actions. SH0 has a weird dumb plot that doesn’t make a lot of sense (or even try to tbh) but edgy bad ending aside, Travis has always struck me as a bit of a gentle giant who’d rather avoid violence if he can. Also my firm headcanon is that he’s gay and experiences no small amount of alienation/perceived scariness because of it, so there you go.

Interesting fact! Turkey vultures lack a syrinx, the vocal organ that most birds have. As a result, their vocal communication is more or less limited to the occasional hiss or grunt. Travis isn’t much of a talker either.

EDDIE DOMBROWSKI | LARUS MARINUS (Great Black-Backed Gull)

Gulls are big, extremely opportunistic predator-scavengers. They’ll eat fish and crustaceans. They’ll eat eggs. They’ll eat garbage. They’ll eat anything. They’ll walk right into a convenience store and take a bag of chips without paying. I’m not about fat-shaming here, but Eddie is kind of unavoidably characterized by gluttony. And for eating mystery food he just found unattended in the middle of an abandoned building.

Gulls are also, well, kind of mean. While they’re not considered particularly dangerous, they rank right up there with geese on ‘do not fear God or man, WILL fight you if you look at them wrong’. Especially these guys, who are mostly found in New England and are freaking huge. they have very few natural predators (assuming they can make it to adulthood). The only things that regularly take down fully-grown GBB gulls are literal eagles. Other than that, they’re big and strong enough push around most other birds, and frequently do. Eddie is a victim of bullying, but also very quickly becomes one the second he realizes how easily he can turn the tables.

IDK, maybe it’s the blue-and-white striped shirt, but for some reason Eddie has always had, like, a maritime vibe to me. I just see him being from a coastal town. Maybe with a dad who spends lots of time working away from home on the big fishing boats.

Nobody likes gulls except me. And nobody likes Eddie except me*. :’(

One time a seagull snatched an entire (very large) slice of pizza from my room-mate and flew away with it without even faltering.

ANGELA OROSCO | MACROURA TURTURILLA (Mourning Dove)

Unlike most of the other birds on this list, mourning doves are NOT predators-- they are not only prey for wild animals, but are also hunted by humans for game. Mourning doves and Angela both have a lot to fear from the world around them.  

While I PERSONALLY think they are very soft and beautiful, coloration-wise they are very unremarkable-- the plain browns and grays are perfect camouflage for the forest floor. Angela also spends a lot of time trying to avoid drawing attention to herself, for obvious reasons.

They’re very skittish, and despite staying under the radar most of the time, when they take flight in a panic it’s VERY noticeable. Their feathers make a distinctive whistling noise when flying. Angela’s tendency to be calm right up until the point where something is Too Scary (tm) and she just takes off kind of reminds me of a startled dove.

Mourning doves were totally among the birds featured in That Scene, The One With The Birds (tm) in Chapter 10 of Gravity. I am speaking from experience when I say that a previously-unnoticed mourning dove very suddenly taking off in front of you is extremely alarming.

The mourning dove gets its name from its call, which just sounds very forlorn and sad. Angela is also forlorn and sad. :(

Technically the ‘turturilla’ is a subspecies not found in North America, oops. I should change that but I’m lazy.

STANLEY COLEMAN | LINARIA CANNABINA (Common Linnet)

Linnets are a finch-like bird that were once a popular pet, leading to a lot of references to them in classic poetry, particularly to their sad status as an often-caged bird. While that’s sort of fitting since he was institutionalized, this is not why Stanley’s bird is the linnet. 

BIG TW FOR STALKING / DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT

Stanley is the linnet because of this stanza of the SH3 Crematorium Puzzle: “Song of the Linnet: "He seeks out her soul by his own black ambition, Frightening her out of her wits. Whispering love songs into her ear, What cruel Linnet wants, he gets."

Stanley is literally the scariest thing in SH3 imo and the poem not only canonically refers to him (the poem is a clue leading to his body as part of the puzzle solution), but describes his actions towards Heather with very little exaggeration. He follows her around the hospital, always just out of sight, and leaves messages for her that get progressively more disturbing and graphic/sexually-charged as time goes on, repeatedly referring to her as his lover and describing what he’d like to do to her. She in turn is completely repulsed by Stanley and actively afraid of him.

Literally how could I pick anything else, I mean, there it is.

I THINK I will save the last three for another post, but hopefully these are interesting addons to the first four!

*i know i’m not the only one who likes eddie lol, but a consistent pattern over the years of being an SH fan has been me playing the Eddie Dombrowski Defense Squad to other SH friends until they appreciate him as a character more.

[belacedia-a]

H A R U & N E O ((ooc: heh I did a thing))

. * ♛ •     PROMPTED ‚      alphabet munday. @queenharumiura

H :  What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

I like watching anime   &   reading western novels. I also read manga, but it’s harder to find translated series online. 

A :  Ships that you currently like a lot. Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

answered here. But to add on, since it’s you asking, I’m totally down to write BelHaru with you.

R :  Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

answered here.

U :  Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Well, I’m going to assume I’m not allowed to include Belphegor since you already hear enough of why I like him from me. The first is Bankotsu from Inuyasha. I really like him as a villain who could’ve had an interesting anti-hero arc, given its executed properly of course. I feel like Bankotsu is a very grey character, he’s portrayed as a villain, but at the same time, he’s loyal to his comrades, cares about his friends,   &   has his own reasons for doing what he did. 

Next is Prince Ellidyr from The Black Cauldron (Book 2 in the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander). Oh boy... I have a lot to say about this dude. I think he was what started my lifelong hyperfixation on well written villains. To put it simply, he’s very easy to hate. He bullied the main character (a pig boy) of the series, basically acting like an elitist rich boy, on top of just being a complete asshole. 

Then, to solidify his status as the meanest character in the book, he attacked the main character (despite being allies) to steal all the credit for completing the quest. ...Then he goes   &   redeems himself by sacrificing his life in the climax, showing the complexity of his character, he just wanted glory/validation... i could ramble about this all day, but I loved that book because it showed the contrast between a Good King who became a villain,   &   an Evil Prince who became a hero. 

Last one is Chuuya Nakahara from Bungou Stray Dogs. Recently, I feel like Akutagawa Ryunosuke has grown on me   &   is competing for my favorite BSD character, but overall there’s a specific reason why I like Chuuya which is related to how one of my friends portrayed him once in roleplay, so it’s not even really about canon Chuuya lmao, so I’ll keep my secrets.

N :  Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

Belphegor fanart. Belphegor centric fanfiction. People petitioning for a KHR reboot. (I know there’s already lots of all three of these things, but there needs to be more). 

E :  Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Well, I have a shitposting personal sideblog where I occasionally post KHR memes and the like. I like to think I’m doing everyone a favor with my top tier sense of humor. 

O :  Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

Heathens by Twenty One Pilots. It reminds me of Fran in relation to the Varia. 

[daringherring]

Actually, Decepticons are the bad guys

@warworldcmdr​ wrote a very thoughtful response to my "hot take" post the other day and brought up a lot of points that I want to address--some of them good, some of them bad.

I'll start with what I agree with: Yes, it's probably true that a lot of the people writing "very nice and helpful, even to my enemies" Decepticons are young. And even if they're adults, yes, it's valid for people to write what they want, however they like it, whether I enjoy it or not. So yes, although my point was "I'd really prefer not to interact with people who write Decepticons in this way, as it makes me uncomfortable", Dai is probably right to call me out for making the blanket statement that it's "not cool" to write """nice""" Decepticons.

It is also true that Autobots have done some shit, whether individually or as a system. Yeah, Transformers Animated is morally grey as shit, and there are some players in IDW who really make you take a step back and whisper to yourself "what the fuck". It was never my intention to claim that Autobots are entirely pure and innocent actors in any of the Transformers series; arguably in G1 they're the best they get, since they were explicitly written to be the good guys to the Decepticons' bad guys, but in other series boy does shit get muddy. More on that later, but honestly my post was not about Autobots. "Sometimes Autobots are also not great" does not negate the fact that in every (yes, every, once again except for Shattered Glass) continuity the Decepticons have the explicit goal of universal domination.

For the sake of relative brevity, I'm only going to focus on the three continuities Dai brought up: the G1 cartoon, Transformers Animated, and the IDW 1 run (2005-2018).

So, what are G1 Decepticons about? Dai claims that they have "no motive beyond saving their homeworld from an energy crisis", but canonically that's just not the case. The original motive the Decepticons had for starting the war on Cybertron was to rule Cybertron. Then they lost that war, and after a while they started another one... once again, with their entire motive being to rule Cybertron. Prior to the war, there was no energy crisis. That happened because after 5 million years of fighting, they eventually used up all of the planetary resources.

After the Autobots leave Cybertron in search of new energy sources and the Decepticons follow them, Megatron's motivation turns from simply ruling Cybertron, to ruling the entire universe. Seriously. He says it in almost every episode. He wants to conquer the universe, and while yes, part of his strategy is to send fuel back to Cybertron... that's so that the Decepticons can conquer Cybertron once and for all, giving them a secure home base from which to conquer the universe.

Now, most of the G1 cartoon is centered around the fighting between Autobots and Decepticons on Earth, with occasional side trips to Cybertron, so we don't see a lot of what's happening elsewhere. What we do see of other planets is that Megatron and the rest of the Decepticons have no qualms whatsoever about killing or enslaving the sentient alien inhabitants of those worlds. That's just part of their strategy: find a planet with resources, enslave the local population, plunder it for all it's worth. We see this happen repeatedly on Earth, as well as on Saturn's moon Titan and the planet Tlalak.

There's also a whole mess of stuff happening on Monacus, the gambling asteroid, which definitely involves slavery and other forms of exploitation, and it's more than just implied that Megatron is running that entire operation. I’m not even going to get into season 3 because I’m tired and this post is getting too long as it is. Then there's TFA. I'll be the first to admit that the Autobots of Transformers Animated are heavily morally grey; not so much the main cast, Optimus' team on Earth, but the Autobots as a whole... yeah. You could easily make a comparison between Autobot-run Cybertron and post-9/11 America in terms of rampant xenophobia and government surveillance. It's uncomfortable. It's meant to be; that's good writing! But once again, the Decepticons are still the bad guys. I'm just gonna quote straight from tfwiki here: "The Decepticons came to prominence as a sub-faction of the Destrons around 70 million years ago. They advocated the use of the AllSpark to bring Cybertron itself to life, that it might serve as a cosmic juggernaut that would allow the Transformers to return to the era of expansion and colonization of other worlds they had enjoyed nearly 700 million years beforehand. When the Decepticon leader Megazarak was ousted by charismatic rhetorician named Megatron, tensions finally exploded, and the Autobots and Decepticons went to war for possession of the AllSpark." We all know what happened with the AllSpark: the Autobots eventually launched it through a space bridge, and Megatron spent the next 4 million years, plus the entirety of the Animated cartoon, searching for it and plotting to use its power to return to Cybertron and conquer his home planet. So that he can. You know. Turn it into a giant spaceship that he can use to conquer the universe. Once again, there's nothing to do with an energy crisis. In fact, there's nothing in Animated to suggest that there is, or ever has been, an energon crisis. The Decepticons just explicitly want control so that they can go on a galaxies-wide killing and pillaging spree. IDW 2005 is a whole different beast. Like Animated, it's incredibly nuanced in its character portrayals, and there are a lot of shades of grey on both sides. And there's 13 years' worth of regularly produced content available, so it's probably the largest body of Transformers works within a single continuity. There's a LOT to go through. I'm quailing just at the thought of it. G-d, do I not want to go through all of IDW 2005 and point out all the explicit Nazi imagery, calculated genocide, fascist talking points, and etc. I'm not even going to do it in this post. Fuck it, I'll write another essay on the matter at some point if people really want to know why the Decepticons are the bad guys in IDW. Right now, I'll settle for saying that Megatron could not more obviously be an allegory for Hitler, and being an artist before he started publishing inflammatory writings designed to push his world into a bloody conflict does not make him more sympathetic. Being oppressed by an unfair world order does not justify or excuse the invasion and occupation of foreign territory and the massacre of millions of innocent civilians. Seriously. Am I talking about Megatron right now, or Hitler? The Decepticons, or Nazi Germany? One is literally a fictional carbon copy of the other.

And finally, here we have a continuity where the energy crisis contributes to the escalation of the war. You know what it's an exact historical replica of? The Great Depression! Yes, Decepticons and Germans were both starving prior to their armed revolt. And you probably know what I'm about to say: that doesn't make any of what came after okay, or reasonable, or just some understandably angry lashing out! Genocide is genocide, and genocide is always bad. Look. I get that there are "nice" Decepticons in canon. I get that there are also terrible Autobots. That's reflective of real life, too: the Allies were responsible for their share of heinous war crimes during WWII, and there's plenty of documentation out there that actual, literal Nazis were real people too. Anyone can fall for ubiquitous propaganda when it's being served to them day and night by sources they trust. There were a lot of soldiers who were just following orders, a lot of civilians who believed they were doing the right thing by turning in their neighbours and friends for seditious talk, a lot of people who fell into line because they were afraid. There were also a lot of people who genuinely believed in what the Nazis stood for and celebrated their victories every step of the way. Functionally, there is no difference whatsoever in the end results of the true believer's actions, the fearful capitulator's actions, and the loyal soldier's actions. At the end of the day, they're all still Nazis. So, yeah. People can write what they want. But respectfully, if people want to write Decepticons who are really just nice and helpful and wish the war were over and everyone would just get along, UWU, without ever distancing themselves from the Decepticons as a whole and the many atrocities they've perpetuated? I'd rather they wrote that somewhere far away from me.

If you want sources for any of my canon just @ me I guess, I’m too tired right now.

[mahou-furbies]

2019 is almost over, and it's time for

The Dazzling Pink Precure were supposed to be handling the ceremony, but then unexpectedly had to go back to the drawing board for some design tweaks, so...

This is the magical girl media that has been consumed here on Mahou-furbies this year!

Anime

(Fresh Precure, Star Twinkle Precure, Invaders of the Rokujouma, Machikado Mazoku, Madoka)

Manga

(the original CCS & Clear Card, Magical Girl Site, Sailor Moon, Madoka Wraith arc, Homura revenge, Oriko Magica, Sakura Hime Kaden, Is this a Zombie?, Flying Witch)

(revisits to old familiar stuff don't qualify for an award unless I had forgotten everything about it)

Other notable stuff that happened over the year:

Before going to the awards, let’s say a few words about the artistic activity here at Mahou-furbies.

The "practise figure drawing while Precure is playing" project still continues! The experience is surreal, with Precure on one half of the screen, and a nude model with a 60 second timer on the other!

Honestly I don't see any progress myself but having watched roughly 3 seasons this way and 20 drawings per episode that's 1000 sketches, that has to count for something? I hope?

The Chibi project started and continues! According to my statistics that is 170 characters and 504 drawings (different outfits) total! Out of the 63 Main Cures (incl. Healin’ Good) 40 are finished. 

The Magical Girl Fusion drawing happened this year! It is the second most popular tumblr post I’ve ever made, and it still continues making its rounds, occasionally showing up as the most popular post of the day in my activity! It’s one of the few posts of mine I really like, I think it has both a good concept and execution, so I’m happy that it has received attention.

After the Fusion post, another chibi series has launched and these even smaller chibis have invaded all three of my other active blogs, and there is more to come to this blog as well... They’re cuter than the main chibi series, but the details aren’t as visible so they’re not going to completely displace it.

And then there’s of course the Dazzling Pink Precure, which has received outstanding support right from the beginning!

It is kind of amazing that whenever I post about them I often get some kind of feedback, when I think it’s more common that artists struggle to get recognition for their OCs while art of canon stuff gets more responses. So I’m very flattered by the interest they’ve received! And they have even been nominated for this year’s fancure awards (thanks to whoever nominated them) which is just incredible. The changes they are going through right now hopefully won’t have a meaningful impact on that since I only plan to alter some of the pink shades or make one skirt hem a little different or stuff like that, and the main concept should stay the same.

I also find it entertaining that Cure Fluffy who was created to be a parody of the spotlight-hogging pink protagonists got upstaged by an all-pink team.

But that’s it for the art life of Mahou-furbies, now let's start with the awards! 

Best henshin design goes tooooo

Tetty Goodgripp from MagiPro Black! I haven’t read it yet (I’m still at Jokers or Aces, whichever was the middle of the trilogy) but I do love this design.

Then, best team henshin design is

Fresh Precure! Though to be fair not a lot of teams this year... But a win is a win and I did rank them #1 in my Precure Team design ranking a few years ago.

Next, best powerup look is

Also Fresh! bonus points for implementing the powerup in a more interesting way than "new once-per-episode stock footage sequence in the latter part of the season" or "thing we see in the final episode for two and a half minutes"

The award for Best civilian design goes to

Cure Cosmo! Surprising for this monochrome a design, but the simple and stylish look is just so good.

Best school uniform is

Magical Girl Site! ...I know the common opinion of this series and kind of agree with it, but I just like the basic black sailor uniform ok?

Then best hair. That is

Cure Star’s ridiculous twintails! I love them!

Best magical item goes to

The Clear Cards! Sakura’s cards are already a fun item, and I like the transparent visuals.

Best Henshin scene is

Cure Passion’s transformation! I love the part where she sinks into water and the one where her earrings and tiara appear.

Best fan creation witnessed in 2019 goes to

Banban! Hero Precure by @aceaeite​! Great designs that work well both individually and as a team, and the designs are recognisable as both Precure and superheroes! Also I love the detail of the little sister not fighting with the rest of the girls and instead having her own adventures.

(link to source)

Then, Best relationship goes to

Love & Setsuna from Fresh! I don’t ship them, but I like them as sisters and Setsuna finding a loving family after all she had gone through was one of the best elements of the season.

The Best mascot of the year was

Chito from Flying Witch! I don’t really consider this kind of witch series to be a part of the magical girl genre, but it’s more fun to have more works on this list so... Anyway I don’t usually care much for mascots but Chito was cute and not annoying.

Best supporting character (i.e. not one of the magical girls) is

Kaoru-chan from Fresh! At times his existence felt a bit superfluous, but he was funny and it was nice that the girls had a supportive adult around to give advice.

Best visuals goes to

The colour palette in Cosmo’s intro! The use of colour really stood out to me. Not a lot of outstanding animation this year it seems... 

Next, Best audio!

The ending for Invaders of the Rokujouma! The song puts me in a happy place (and I also love the little logos for all the girls).

Then, Best scene is

Seconds 0:05 - 0:10 of Cure Cosmo’s attack! It just has such good lighting and music! (don’t care for the rest of the attack...)

Then, the Innovation award for a work that did something cool and new for the genre!

Honestly I don’t think I can give this to anything this year... Sakura Hime kaden had an interesting historical setting and Machikado Mazoku’s concept of having the friendly villain be the main character was amazing, but neither did anything worthwhile with these ideas so I don’t want to award them... Better luck next year!

Then a special award! While it would be all kinds of entertaining to also pick the worst hair, worst henshin etc I thought I’d focus on the positive. However we can’t get through this post without a little bit of bitching, so next is one Golden Mana Award for one thing that didn’t go quite the way I wanted in some way. And that isssss

The henshin designs in TMM Au Lait! I love the original TMM designs but these new boys apparently have no intention of even remotely following the old design ideas. Pah! 

Then the final awards. Best character of the year is

Cure Milky! Love her more serious and down-to-earth personality, she has a cute design in both civilian and henshin form, her voice is lovely and with a unique origin she brings some fresh air to Precure!

And finally, Best series of 2019 goes to

The first half that I’ve seen of Star Twinkle Precure! I haven’t seen all of it yet, but what I have has been a surprisingly positive experience, with a lot of great characters, exploring the space theme and changing the usual formula even a little. Hopefully the quality will remain strong!

Annnd with that we're all set for 2020! Plans and expectations are

Let’s see if I can make even one of these happen!

--

Art-wise I hope to be able to complete all main Cures for the Chibi series (though that also depends on if everyone’s 5-star-card dress will be revealed). But once they are finished there will be compilation posts, and I’m hoping to have some kind of bracket polling thing where we can all vote for the best 5-star-card dress. 

Then there’s the Dazzling Pink Precure, for who I’m currently trying to think of a story and will hopefully be able to put something out.

--

Alright, that was Mahou-furbies 2019. What were your highlights (or worst points) of 2019, and how does 2020 look in terms of magical girls?

[tumblunni]

okay to talk about EXACTLY HOW i would handle giving charon a big good boss fight and also sympathetic backstory and redemption and all that jazz

there are approximately ten million words beneath the cut, and also ten million raspberries in my shampoo, and these charon thoughts are just as sweet as that

alright so ALREADY i kinda did feel like he was sort of a friendly enemy when i first played the game?? like his Thing of being the constantly never fightable dude actually was kind of sympathetic in a way. it always just felt like he was Chilling Out and not giving much of a shit about being evil and also had nothing personal against you the player. he doesnt follow any of cyrus’s big philosophy and he’s clearly only here for the money and really phoning it in, and that kinda makes him not your enemy at all, even though he’s on the team youre fighting. Like I always found it a good establishing moment that in the Valley Windworks when they first introduce “hey this time there’s two galactic teammates here” and all, CHARON IS STANDING DIRECTLY IN EYELINE OF YOU RUINING EVERYONE’S PLANS. he’s just standing there! and of course he’ll never do anything to warn mars about you, the game just isnt programmed that way. but it fits really well with his character if you think of it as an intentional thing? just imagine this random gramps sitting there drinking tea while all his teammates actually Care About Things and Use Effort. He’s always criticizing team galactic’s plan too and like WHY IS HE DOING THAT TO YOU if not because Nintendo Wants Him To Be My Best Friend ok. Like he doesn’t fuckin trust anyone on his team so why would he spill the beans about his big secret plans he has to make money off of this villain plan and then bail before they actually do all the dumb shit with legendaries and such. Yes ok its PROBABLY just because its a videogame and they need to exposit stuff to the player that the character is probably just thinking and not saying out loud. But wouldnt it be so much better this way!!!! Also even when you finally face off against him personally in the postgame for his actual dumb money plan he’s still like ‘lol fourth wall breaking time im gonna not have a boss battle cos if you beat cyrus’s ass i aint got no chance’. Dammit nintend i still wanted to fight him but thats endearing so i cant stay mad at u! And he has several lines during it with stuff like “i like seeing children trying so hard BUT YOURE TOO LATE” and “youth like you can live in idealism but for me its all about the money”. Like man u remember that time i had a big angry rant about how his manga version was super OOC cos they didnt just choose to make him eviler but made him murder a child? like the only time anything involving children is mentioned in canon its him being mildly more polite to children!!! MILDLY FRIENDLY! LET ME HAVE THIS...

okay so YEAH the first big change would be just giving him more screentime and more fleshed out character in these early scenes. Make him a full on friendly character who is technically on the opposite side but has no beef with you and no loyalty to the greater plan of his team. So he’s just comically like “oh hi again! yeah lol today’s plan sucks huh?” and makes idle conversation while the main character villain admin of the day is actually doing important plot stuff. like have him along for everyone’s scenes not just mars at the start, dissappear for hours until the very end. And yes definately keep the thing of the game constantly lampshading that he’s a new character for the third version of the game, and everyone in the team thinks he’s useless and forgets he’s even there. it was annoying in the original game cos he actually didnt get any love from the writers themselves, but yknow you could give him an expanded role and rewrite that stuff to be more like “oh poor guy he’s the underdog”, yknow? am i the only one who felt inherantly sorry for him?? i mean he’s a tiny grandpa!!! and he looks so sad on his official art!! Oh oh and also add the additional running jokes and expanded characterization he had in his very brief anime appearance, which was honestly the only well written part of the entire team galactic arc. It fleshed out a bit of his relationship with jupiter who never really appeared alongside him in the game except to say “im not teaming up with you” at the end. Having the context that she finds him annoying cos she’s very serious and also very dedicated to cyrus so she hates this opportunistic bastard pretending to be dedicated when its an obvious lie. And also she thinks his laugh is obnoxious XD Oh also I liked how they expanded upon that one scene of Saturn being sarcastic at gramps and made it into an actual thing that him and charon most often work together and have a mutually sassy dynamic. I found it humanizing that anime saturn is very serious but can comically overreact to very minor teasing from this grandpa! I thought that was better than the games where he’s just serious or the manga where he was 100% changed to be 100% silly and kinda stole charon’s personality for reasons i will never understand.

ANYWAY! IN SUMMARY! show scenes of charon being endearing by being not really interested in the big evilness, being underdog-y by always failing at his smaller evilnesses and getting disrespected, and also maybe drop in some more interpersonal relationships between the admins to hint that charon does indeed have some friendship going on even if he’s a tsundere bitch who’d never admit it. Also maybe the other thing from the anime where they made him a cool computer guy? cos srsly it was lazy that the games just said “he’s the science” and never clarified wtf he actually does at his job. cos cyrus is already a science boss??? he kinda already did most of the big sciencey plans?? why does he need this man if its not for mechanical or legendary pokemon stuff OK HEY MAYBE COMPUTERS! also its funny to imagine him being a memey blogger but sun and moon actually made faba canonically that so i dont think you could improve on him. TAKE NOTES FROM BEAN MAN, NINTENDO

Also maybe you could hint at the rotom backstory before it actually happens? like could just show some mild implications that he is sad, cos the ‘friendly enemy’ thing would already be decent foreshadowing for him potentially having a soft spot. “Wah i am an emotionless evil money man” says local villain, while gossipping with Dawn about his coworkers and sharing lemon squares. But like I mean i don’t really want him to be LITERALLY that, i still like him being grumpy and guarded about his secret good heart. I’m just saying “friendly” as in.. sort of a disconnect between what he says his personality is and how he actually acts. The stuff he actually says is very grumpy but like.. hey he’s saying stuff to you when he doesnt need to, and nobody else on this team is casually talking to you as if youre not an enemy. Like he’s SUBCONCIOUSLY friendly and doesnt realise it? He’d never SAY “i am lonely hello please talk to me” but he’d sure as hell walk over to you and talk to you anyway. About grumpy things! Grumpily! And maybe express occasional compliments in a sort of “haha im surrounded by idiots you’re way more down to earth than all these adults who act more like children”. Cos in that fourth wall breaking moment he has, he respects that you’re a badass and decides thats why he’s not gonna have a boss fight. “You’d just kick my ass, so lol fight these grunts instead while i run away and do my evil plan” That is the kind of sympathetic charon i want!! He’s doing a douchey thing by breaking the script of how boss battles work and making everyone else fight you instead even though he knows that they’ll lose. But he’s also likeable because breaking the script of boss battles is unexpected and comedic! And he’s also accidentally being complimentary to you so its like SIMULTANEOUS JERK AND NICE AT THE SAME TIME. Thats the good stuff!! That quality grumplegramp content!!! if he got redeemed and just 100% changed his personality to lose all the sass and sneakyness then that’d be boring yo...

OKAY WHERE WAS I? Okay hey once you’ve established that, maybe now you have a basis for the sad foreshadowing!! Like you could have one scene where he’s suddenly NOT friendly, he’s not just grumpy in the funny sort of way but actually seems cold and stoic and actually does something useful to the team’s mission or whatever. Sort of a ‘whoa what’s wrong with him today’ thing and it could be subtle cos on the first playthrough you’d just think he was being a jerk cos he’s a jerk and all. but maybe it happens on a scene of team galactic doing some evil plan in eterna forest/other place that’d potentially relate to the rotom sidequest. like he’s just really fuckin depressed to be reminded of his one big failure in life. OH maybe it could actually be at the unnamed junkyard thats mentioned in his backstory but doesnt actually feature as an area in the original game? It could make sense that it’d be part of their plan cos team galactic attacks various energy sources and other technology related places to find the stuff they need to make the big world erasure machine. could just be simply them robbing some old generator parts after their attempt to take the whole power plant failed.

Oh and also maybe add a lil something to his last scene at the galactic lab? Cos like.. what we already have in the game has potential to be a moment where he did a good thing but no its not. Like when you look at it, hey he kinda helped you out here by being all “hey lol saturn the kid is here, bye im not stopping u, feel free to take the lake trio”. Even if saturn is the one who actually SAID feel free to take the lake trio and actually had a good hint at redemptiveness moment and all. Please never take that away, that was good, you just coulda had both of them do it, yknow? And we dont wanna make charon go full good guy all of a sudden when he hasnt even finished his characetr arc, so instead make it more of a moment where its like “im a bad guy but this is going too far”. Like maybe ACTUALLY HAVE A PAYOFF for the foreshadowing that he has no loyalty to cyrus and is blatantly plotting to betray him at some point. He never actually did!! He only tries to capitalize on cyrus already being defeated in an entirely optional sidequest that fails at delivering a proper payoff.

So hey! My idea! Add some complexity here by making it clear that charon is evil in a more petty and mundane way and not in a.. like.. actually dangerous way. Once things start getting actually dangerous he starts chickening out! Like he’s a jerk who does mean things to get money but he’s just MEAN and not friggin murderous or worldending. Give him a moment of “oh shit cyrus was actually serious oh god how do i get off of this train”. Like it seemed that he never really believed that team galactic would ever truly create a new world, and he certainly didnt give a shit about it, he just thought he found an easy opportunity for a paycheck in some dumbass’s deluded plan that’d never really work. But OOPS i guess it actually is happening, oh fuck! Give him a bit of a crisis where he realizes what he actually helped this man do, but not like a full on “everything ive ever done is bad and i dont wanna be evil anymore”. Not YET! Just friggin.. “oh fuck i cant spend money if the universe doesnt exist and also i am dead”. “PLEASE HELP ME CHILD, CYRUS IS GONNA TAKE AWAY THE MONEY!!” xD It’d be fitting for his character and a good light moment of comic relief after the emotional and dark stuff happening around this section of the game. Like he already kinda does that by having that scene of saturn snarking at him, but it could be even more funny! Move the first him and saturn bickering scene to earlier on and have this be like a satisfying scene of saturn actually winning? cos in the anime it was always charon being smug and making fun of him while saturn gets all grumpy about it, now it could be the reverse with smug charon having a breakdown and realising his whole money plan is in shambles and its his own fault.

Also maybe it could have additional payoff with Charon actually helping you take down cyrus? Again, not actually because he’s switched sides but because he's still evil but evil for different reasons than cyrus. That good ‘reluctant teamup with minor goofy villain to take down big actually scary villain’ thing. With the added bonus that the minor goofy villain is objectively a worse person than the scary villain and the scary villain is still redeemable, as opposed to in the manga where they used this same trope in the form of “cyrus is good now and we’re making charon the big scary villain to prove how good cyrus is cos charon is worse”. That was dumb. It was especially dumb cos WHY ON EARTH would you pick charon for this??? like they still had moments of him being comedic and wimpy yet at the same time wanted us to believe he was legitimately threatening? ANYWAY my idea for this is that charon’s computer skills could pay off and it could be something like “oh i always put a failsafe kill switch in my computer just in case i need to grab the money and run”. Like him being a paranoid untrusting selfish asshole was actually the reason he was able to save the day! Also it would explain why cyrus’s machine only fails and summons giratina in platinum version. the manga actually did say that charon sabotaged the machine so thats one actually good thing that came from it! Congrats u filled one plothole while making twenty more XD

OH and perhaps this same section could also foreshadow the rotom thing? like I was thinking about how he could actually choose to give up and let you take the lake trio and have it still be 100% in character. It could be an extension of his “shit, i didnt think things would get this serious, please save me from the consequences of my own actions!” moment. Cos I think that any normal dumb greedy money man would still be horrified at the idea of mutilating a thousand year old majestic unicorn of mythology and then flushing it down the toilet when it outlives its uselessness. Like he doesnt do it because he wants to help you save the day or anything, just cos the idea of killing the lake trio is just too evil for even him. It could be kind of a meaningful moment about how cyrus is doing all this for good reasons yet they caused him to do these actions that are even more evil than the actual dude with evil motives. And maybe you could establish this through a scene of him and cyrus inetracting, which could also help amp up how intimidating cyrus is, in preparation for the big climax? Have charon trying to wimp out of “disposing of the useless specimens”, but cyrus is having none of it. Like it could start off funny with him making up loads of other excuses cos there’s no way he’d admit he’s having Feelings and all. “Wait but let me have them! if theyre useless to you then i can just sell them right?? ha ha thats the only reason im saying this, lol you know me i’d never be swayed by any sentiment” But cyrus sees through it instantly and gets right up in his face like fuckin Raw Cold Fury, no you are NOT going to disobey me. He is PISSED OFF because the only reason he kept this useless senile old bat around is because he’s the only one in this group who isn’t a simpering moron at the mercy of their pitiful heart. If you can’t even do that, then what’s the use of you? So everything charon tries fails and all he accomplishes is getting fired on the spot for even TALKING ABOUT defying his boss. And cyrus just orders saturn to dispose of the lake trio instead. Saturn of course is smarter and says nothing in defiance, but then the both of them work together to let you take the pokemon and just act like they failed to stop you rather than doing it on purpose. And its kind of an uncharacteristically quiet and intense moment between these dudes that are usually at each other’s throats with funny banter. They’re united for a moment but for very different reasons. Charon knew that cyrus wasnt a good guy from the very beginning and he just underestimated him, and is now feeling in over his head and worried this could be the end. And saturn always thought cyrus was good but is starting to struggle with doubts. And maybe charon actually tries to warn saturn about it? Like “hey i knew this all along but i never told you but HEY CYRUS MIGHT ACTUALLY KILL US ALL” and saturn starts on his usual speech about cyrus being the greatest but he starts to question it and AAAAA! but ultimately this moment isnt the moment where he makes the right choice, and he does end up going back to cyrus and continuing the plan. and also charon is on the edge of actually doing something good and trying to stop cyrus’s big ol doom time (albiet for selfish reasons of No Money In The New World) but he also wimps out from this chance and instead decides to grab as much cash as he can and run the fuck away, as if its even possible to outrun the destruction of a whole dimension. but at least him and saturn agreed on the lake trio rescue operation, thus their moment of almost-redemption helped the player even if they didnt actually turn good. AND then you’d have the surprise moment of charon actually stepping up at the last minute and doing his thing to sabotage the machine and all. which again doesnt really solve the whole thing and doesnt really make him turn good but at least it downgrades the threat from ‘cyrus actually succeeds in destroying the world’ to ‘okay we just need to deal with a slight case of poke-hell and one collossal centipede’. Srsly man sinnoh’s plot has the highest stakes cos in platinum you straight up actually fail and cyrus actually would have destroyed the world if not for giratina! Oh and also a random note is that i think it’d be funny if charon helped you out while still running away? like you just learn about the machine sabotage being his responsibility cos it flashes his goofy hacker logo from the anime or something. Maybe instead he hacks your Poketch and is like HEY HELLO IM GONNA SPLODE THE THING BUT NOT COS IM A GOOD GUY, BTW I AM A SAFE DISTANCE AWAY PLEASE DONT LET CYRUS KNOW I DID THIS

SO YEAH! whatever! whether or not we get that added bit of teamup with charon in the climax, we’ve still given him a bit more screentime so the player actually remembers him and actually cares about doing his optional sidequest in the postgame. so him not having a boss fight would be less of a letdown and all. But having the teamup plot would be a good opportunity to turn the wifi event into not a wifi event! maybe during his panic charon drops the key to his secret lab and thats how you get it? cos really it makes no sense at all that the magic wifi gods can just hand you something you’d have no idea existed and never have an opportunity to get. none of the other wifi items are literally a thing owned by a significant character that needs to be teleported out of his pocket by plot magic! Also it sucks that a chunk of important backstory would be hidden in a wifi event so if they still wanted rotom’s alt forms to be a wifi event then JUST make it the ability to get the forms and not the charony diary bit. Cos it makes no sense that the ENTIRE REASON CHARON EXISTS is to introduce the rotom form event yet you’d have no clue he was connected to rotom until after youve already finished the event. It gave no damn indication you had to take the key to this particular dude’s lab in team galactic!! ANd click on an otherwise unmarked wall!! Put the diary somewhere else and hey there’s a Charon Clue(tm) and now you can actually find the damn event, there you go, fixed. Also annoying cos nothing in the event tells you you have to go somewhere entirely different to catch the one rotom in the game, and click another unmarked piece of scenery that only has a staticky screen to indicate rotom if you happen to be playing at night. Seriously this is why serebii.net was such a lifesaver!!

Okay so WOOP there we go, here we are at a point where the player has seen more of charon and had oppotunities to grow to like him as a character and be suspicious that maybe he could have some sympatheticness. And if he drops an Importante Key Itemme right before the end of the game then thats a hint that postgame stuff exists involving him, and at least one clue where to find it! All the rotom diary stuff would play out exactly the same except that its less of a hell to find, lol.

BUT THEN the big difference in Stark Mountain is that now you have the full context of charon’s backstory and the game actually reacts to you having that knowledge. Like maybe if you dont do that step first then either charon never appears at stark mountain until you do, or you get an abbrieviated version of the quest without the redemption plot? I was thinking actually maybe make it one of those daily repeatable quests, to avoid the player doing the quests out of order and permenantly losing the chance to redeem gramps. Like if you dont see the rotom diary then instead of a big actual quest you just get some five minute “oh we’ve seen team galactic sneaking around stark mountain, defeat them for Some Money Or Something hey thats weird that they were only stealing money hey yknow who’s all about the money? charon! maybe go follow up on his Importante Key Itemme to continue the plot.”

SO THEN once you return Emboldened By The Knowledge Of Good Gramps, you get the proper thing. And... it would actually play out totally the same as in vanilla platinum. Charon doesn’t have a boss fight, all his minions leave him and say he sucks, he gets anticlimactically taken out by someone else in a cutscene, and his last moment is someone making a crack about him being so frail and useless that the hot volcano breeze could knock him over.

BUT THAT ISNT THE END

Its just a fake out that its gonna have the same funny ending as every other charon appearance, and the same lack of him being remotely threatening.

cos NOW WE FINALLY GIVE THE MAN A GODDAMN BOSS FIGHT

and yknow how i said i hate the manga where he’s all super evil and owns three legendaries and kills a guy? okay take away all that stuff but KEEP THE MOMENT OF GRANDPA GETTING TO DO SOMETHING BADASS FOR THE ONLY TIME EVER

Maybe he surprises everybody by actually not being down for the count! And by now he’s just SO pissed off from a whole game’s worth of failing and being disrespected that he does something desperate and stupid at the last minute. If he was meant to be the dude who invented the red chain, maybe he could use it to control heatran even if looker took away the magma stone? like i feel it’d be in character for charon to secretly steal a prototype red chain for himself during the whole “oh fuck my boss is legit destroying the world i need to get out of here” thing. Grab some stuff to sell now your last paycheck is dissappearing into an ominous void, lol. He didnt expect to actually be using it, and if the actually completed red chain puts enough stress on its weilder to make them cry blood then this thing must be even more risky to use! so its a really huge holy shit moment of tiny gramps actually doing something intimidating! and his boss fight could actually be using heatran and actually having heatran get to goddamn appear in this sidequest. it was soooo underwhelming to have to return thru the dungeon a second time to actually see heatran, this time without any story stuff to break up the long walk...

also this entire thing could be a great climax to his character arc and sort of a moment of “okay THIS was actually his motivation all along!” Cos I always felt like Charon’s real motive was low self confidence? Like he’s always on about money but he seems to focus more on SUCCESS instead. Fame and success. “Ha ha i am the greatest scientist and i want people actually aknowledge me” is a thing he repeatedly brings up and also that other characters directly demonstrate in how they act towards him. It just feels like he thinks he can buy that with money if he’s failed his whole life in earning it. And the old “acts egotistical because he actually hates himself” character archetype would work really well as a sympathetic interpretation of his character. It would be like how he’s ‘subconciously friendly’. The thing he actually does (being boastful) is because of a different reason (not believing his own lies and being super insecure about his self worth), but he keeps it so well hidden that not even he realises that its really what he feels. Similar to how he acts grumpy because of a different reason, because he actually DOES want friends and he’s just guarding his emotions under a million walls cos he’s scared of being hurt again. And scared of how he knows he’s a weak willed person who might betray his friends again for his desperation for money. Which is really a desperation to feel valid as a human being, which is really just ‘i want friends’ again under another coat of paint. So depressingly he caused his own problems because of the same character trait that was once a positive in his life! I think he works well when interpreted from that angle, he’s like a dark subversion of a pokemon professor or of your classic ash ketchum figure. Like “the power of friendship” is what turned him evil, and also turned him into a guy who acted awful to his friends. And it could add to this thematic thing if “loving pokemon” was also referenced throughout his plot in a negative sense?

That’s actually one other good thing about the manga, they removed his greedy grumpyness (bad) but replaced it with the same motive as the villain of the 2nd movie (weird flex but okay). Aka “a guy who collects legendary pokemon just as trophies and has forgotten how to treat them like genuine friends”. Even if that wouldnt be his main character concept in this hypothetical rewritten game, it could still be a secondary trait that’s used to suppliment the main emotional arc. Like instead of just saying “money money money” you could flesh out more scenes of him actually talking about HOW he’s gonna get the money and what he’s gonna use it for. Via collecting all the rare pokemon, and to collect more rare pokemon. Which will somehow (in his twisted cynical perception of how the world works) make him a person of value and get people to respect him. It could also tie together pretty much every scene he already has! Cos his backstory is finding this pokemon friend... who was a rare unknown species. And maybe as a kid he decided to become a scientist initially just out of excitement to learn more about his new friend and show them to the world! But then the realities of the difficulties in being respected as a scientist gradually wore him down and he became more cynical, more obsessed with recognition, more believing that the only way to get it was by being an asshole and he’d just get taken advantage of if he kept being soft. And he started to forget why he really wanted that fame in the first place, and instead it just became an obsession, a vain hope that he’d hate himself less if he accomplished his life’s dream. When really from the player’s perspective its obvious that even if he succeeded he’d still be depressed when he realized how he’d lost everything in the process. And it’d be a more realistic sort of way he could have turned from a good kid to an asshole gramps. There wasnt any single day he suddenly made the decision to change, it was just a gradual wearing down of his morals over the years. he became more obsessed and more cynical that normal moral ways of doing things would never get him what he wanted. he started making small sacrifices to his personal sense of morality, and eventually reached the point where he’d completely abandoned it all without even noticing the gradual change. And somewhere along the way he forgot that he started this because of his pokemon friend, and discarded it as “not good enough” in favor of this vain quest to acquire a million other rarer pokemon and just friggin put them on a shelf to boast about them and feel less empty inside. And then also his redemption was a gradual change too? After he reached that point of completely betraying his own sense of goodness, he gradually got sadder and more tired with living this way. By the time you see him ingame he’s not remotely happy with being evil and he’s just a poor dude who’s deluded that being evil is the only way to escape the sadness rather than the cause of it. And thats why his whole ‘oops im accidentally subconciously befriending my coworkers and also the enemy’ thing kinda set him on the road to eventual redemption, cos its the first bit of small upliftingness he’s had in ages. sorta recharges his Ability To Care and he starts realizing what he’s doing and feeling regret. But yeah throughout the main game he never actually acts on his doubts and just repeatedly misses the chance to get redeemed and makes you Kinda Frustrated, similar to zuko or peridot’s redemptive arc? And ultimately reuniting him with his old best friend and showing him that its not too late to fix what he broke = the actual catalyst for his changes to fully stick and he completely switches to the good side.

BUT ANYWAY thats why he needs a boss fight first!

Something like 50-70 years worth of self hate and frustration from devoting himself to a super incorrect way of defeating that self hate, and sacrificing EVERYTHING for the sake of it, and being disrespected the entire time, and being terrified that you’re getting old and running out of time, and almost dying to some guy’s weird void plan, and losing the only thing you had left aka the team galactic job and a few maybe sorta kinda friends you had, and now being disrespected AGAIN by those same people you thought were friends (but never actually admitted it to them) and then also bitchslapped by a frog?? Also this place is real fuckin sweaty?? Yeah stark mountain is a great climactic point for his entire frustrations to boil over and be a bigger eruption than the actual volcano!

Thus we have Grand Dad Gets Serious And Has An Actually Interesting Boss Fight!

but also grand dad is being emotionally open and whoops accidentally might be tearing down those walls he built up around his big ol soft as fuck heart

like the battle would possibly be more ‘you talk him down into giving up, realizing he was wrong, quitting being evil, and going home to his friend that he misses so much. and finally realizing that thats actually the only way he could ever really defeat the self hate that drove him this far in the first place. also he’s not worthless and his friends always believed he was the awesome dude he always wanted to be’. Yknow, rather than actually defeating him and all. I mean you still do that but i think it’d be a case like with the giratina fight where even if you lose or run away you get the same result, just slightly altered text? Just as long as you come here with rotom in your party your victory was already a foregone conclusion. you just get a really cool boss fight as your reward, yknow? cos seriously I WAS WAITING THE WHOLE GAME FOR THAT DAMN BOSS FIGHT!!!

obligatory link again to the cool song i think is a great summary of all of my headcanons for this man’s character arc and would also be badass backing music for a hypothetical boss fight:

context: it makes more sense if you imagine it as his own internal thoughts of all the stuff he’s been running away from accepting in his own feelings. and/or what he THINKS that the player and rotom would be saying to him, so he’s shocked into speechlessness by the fact that they actually do think he deserves a second chance and has the potential to be good.

actually that could be a really good ending to the fight!!!

like when you get through to him and convince him to stand down, he cowers in fear thinking he’s gonna get the karmic payback for everything he’s ever done. and he tries to run away from reuniting with rotom. half of him is scared that his friend hates him and the other half is.. well..

i think it would be thematically appropriate to end it with a hug

just an image of this lil toy robot pokemon hugging this scared old man, and he’s just so empty and doesnt know what to say. its the last thing he ever expected. and then his shock turns into pain and sadness, as he was really the most scared that his friend actually would forgive him. that everything he ever did really was all for nothing, and he should have done this years ago and saved all that lost time. he’s so scared because he thinks he doesnt deserve forgiveness and he doesnt know what to do now its happening. so he just lets out all those tears he’s never cried over all these years, and the scene ends with him desperately hugging his best friend and never wanting to let go ever again

And then that’d be the big moment that was really the turning point for him, though of course that wouldnt be the end of his redemption and if there was any further postgame content you could show various scenes of him atoning throughout that. or just some images in the second credits scene after you beat the postgame stuff. i’d kinda like if there was some moment of him apologising to the rest of team galactic and joining them in their attempts to rebuild the team into something good. and maybe an extra postgame segment where this redeemified team goes on some bigger quest to try and rescue cyrus from the distortion world and heal his pain too. i think you could get a lot of good scenes out of a redeemed charon being along for the ride! like you’d obviously have cyrus being skeptical that this dude really has changed so much, and probably an extension of that earlier scene where he’s pissed off that the one guy he thought agreed with him about emotions being foolish is actually being the most emotional of everyone. but i think because of that they could also have scenes of relating together and actually starting to form a friendship in the end? like i can see charon feeling guilty for never trying to reach out to cyrus before, and also believing really strongly that cyrus can be redeemed cos like ‘yo i’m way worse than you and i was able to change, please believe that its a possibility for you too!’ Also cyrus likes machines so i think he’d be happy to meet rotom and become friends. And he has that whole grandpa related backstory so it might help a lot towards healing those scars and reuniting the two of them if he starts forming a friendship with a different gramps? THERES A LOT OF GOOD THEMATIC LINKS BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT TEAM GALACTIC MEMBERS THAT ARE NEVER EXPLORED IN THE ORIGINAL GAME

also in the original version of this plotline it was a fanfic/fangame idea of an alternate universe swap where dawn/lucas/other customizeable protagonist is a galactic grunt instead of the hero. so a lot of the details were different but in that version the protag was literally adopted by whichever galactic admin they picked as their main friendship route. entirely because of self indulgent ‘i wish these guys were my dad/sister/grandpa/whatever’ feels cos sinnoh helped me thru a tough time as a kid. soooo i cant really do that charon grandpa idea where he also renovates the Old Chateau into a ghost pokemon sanctuary and becomes like an actual good pokemon professor. (also rekindles his friendship with prof rowan and agatha from the kanto elite four cos thats just a random headcanon i have) BUT i could still do all that except the part where he adopts u cos canon dawn/lucas already has a mom lol. And i think it’d be more fitting of canonverse protag to adopt Cyrus? Like obv in the canonverse itd probably be the main boss of the team who gets the bigger redemption plot and is canonically the best friend EVEN THO for tumblr user tumblunni in particular it is All Grandpas All The Time. And i like the idea of Cyboy being a survivor of child abuse who tries to become a good dad just like his parents werent. But i also like the idea of dawn’s mom adopting him as her new big brother and him getting to experience a genuine loving family for the first time! I think itd work that way cos cyrus is meant to be 27 even tho he looks older, and i dont think dawn’s mom is that young and also i just see no chemistry between them as any sort of ship. (and headcanon cyrus as asexual anyway) But also the family does still keep in touch with all the other galactic friends!!!

hhhh i wrote So Many Word just about grandpa redemption holy shit i’ll probably die if i try and cover all the other teammates now

ok i will leave it here but just know i also have Deep Headcanons about all of them, even if charon gets the most. somedaayayyyay i will share with you more!!

[written-in-sunshine]

Predating Predators 001 - Clint Barton/Pietro Maximoff - SFW

Title: Predating Predators Author: Donnie Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe Setting: Various; Somewhere between Kosno, Poland and Novi Grad, Sokovia Pairing: Clint Barton/Pietro Maximoff Characters: Clint Barton, Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, OC: Christabella, OC: Shasta, OC: Muni, OC: Papillon Genre: Fantasy/Romance Rating: M Chapters: 1/? Word Count: 1956 Type of Work: Chapter Fic Status: Incomplete Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, AU - Canon Divergent, AU - Myths and Fantasy, Clint is a Harpy, Pietro and Wanda are still mutants, Teratophilia, Kidnapping, Sacrifice, Witchcraft, Implied animal abuse, Implied Predation, Pietro and Wanda are 17 so I guess underage?, Underage, More To Come Disclaimer: I do not own anything, except for Christabella, Shasta, Muni and Papillon. I am also not native to Eastern Europe and do not have a very good grasp of the geography or culture beyond what I have in the source material. I have placed Sokovia roughly at the convergence of Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, as I couldn’t find much more about where it should be placed. If anyone wants to try and help me determine a better spot for it (if this is just way off base), please let me know! Summary: When Wanda’s life is put at risk, Pietro must do the literal impossible in order to save her. He didn’t realize that seducing the apparent last male Harpy in existence was going to be a very real part of the plan. AN: Welp, I dedicate this entirely to my BFF, Ed. ; u; I love her so much, and we were discussing this last night a little bit. I got a little out of control with it, so it’ll be at least a few chapters long. My brain keeps saying THREE but something tells me that is not exactly true. At any rate, this is a pretty big shift in AU. I’m sure Avengers stuff is happening but it’s not near Sokovia, at this point. Anyway, have fun with this, kids, I know I will!

MCU Fic Masterlist Chapter One: What They Say Is True ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Life in Sokovia had never been what Pietro Maximoff would call easy. Between himself and his twin sister, things had gotten harder with the world around them. They held a bond so tight nothing could break them but each other; and it showed. 

Pietro had been described as ‘wickedly fast’. He could rob an entire city blind in a blink of an eye and nobody would know it was him. Of course, he’d never bothered to do something quite that extravagant, stealing what they needed to survive and little more. After all, the twins had been on their own for a long time, now. He could think back and remember a small hand on his arm, the only thing keeping him from rocketing off, the night it had happened. They had been inseparable ever since. Wanda was what people considered a witch. Maybe she really, truly was, but Pietro had never seen anything that would make him think of those old, bawdry tales. He had yet to see her eat a baby, like many people asserted she must, or pull the tail from a rat for a potion. In fact, she never seemed to imbibe anything aside from the occasional juices and milk he was able to steal for them, and water. No potions in sight, no cats, no bats, rats or other such creatures. The only thing people shrieked about when they saw her was her ability to graze their minds. Okay, she could do a bit more than that, but most people didn’t give her the chance, if they knew about it at all. The thing that seemed to have brought their existence crashing to a pitiful end was not so much Wanda being a witch, however, so much as her affinity for likeminded women. Pietro wouldn’t say anything about her friends, but should she catch him thinking something untoward, he usually got a pointed glare. He had never quite lifted his mental guards after the last time, because he could feel her presence in his brain. If she wanted this friendship with these psychopaths so badly, then he would let her have it. But that didn’t mean that he wanted them to have her.  When Wanda didn’t come home when she was supposed to, when his days’ worth of hard work paid off and she wasn’t there to celebrate with him, to break bread with him… He began to worry.  She had insisted that they needed some time without a boy present, and that had caused him to balk for a moment, point to himself and mouth ‘me?’ at her. Her light laughter and nodding only made him pout, there was no other word for it, but he nodded and let her go. Responsibility was not exactly his forte, but he could handle things while she spent time with her friends. Now, he was starting to wish he’d followed them.  At least he knew where they usually congregated, not that that made much of a difference in the time it took to find them. Even moving faster than the eye could comprehend, it was an awful lot of forest to cover, and the four girls Wanda had fallen in with were good at nothing more than hiding their tracks. For a coven of witches in a place like this, it was an important part of their everyday life.  If he was going to have to go on a damn witch hunt, though, he wished he had made the decision not to do so on an empty stomach.  Speeding to a stop outside of the fifth camp he’d come across, he didn’t even have the decency to act tired as he pressed up against a tree and listened, straining his ears and trying to keep himself absolutely still. With what they were saying, cackling to each other, it was nearly impossible. “We should hurry, before her meddling brother shows up.” One of them was saying, slurping down something that looked less like soup and more like a thick, gloppy run-off of some kind. “No, no, we want him, too.” The eldest girl, just a few years older than him and Wanda, spoke with a little chortle, pointing her spoon at the other girl. Pietro could feel bile rising in his throat but he didn’t know if it had to do with what they were saying or what they appeared to be eating. “He could be a good…” She paused, sniffing the air, and he had to wonder if he’d falling on the wrong side of the wind. “Speak of the devil.” She spoke, finally, rising from her seat and greeting him with wide open arms. Even Pietro had no idea when he’d walked from the tree he’d been clutching and practically vibrating against to the clearing they had chosen, and he narrowed his icy eyes at them. “I want my sister.” “Well, good evening to you, too.” The eldest responded, rolling her eyes, “You never were exactly good with your manners, were you? It does show that you raised yourselves in a barn.” The venom in the cut of his eyes caused her to chuckle, waving him off as she turned around. “At any rate, she is ours, now. You cannot--” “I will take her, and she will not be yours.” The growl in his voice only caused her to turn slightly, glancing at him over her shoulder. He didn’t like how she looked down her nose at him, and he barely managed to still himself from searching the camp for his sister. “You will not have her!” The youngest, a girl just short of Wanda and Pietro’s seventeen, shouted as she rose to her feet, only to be silenced by the eldest. “Christabella--” “Calm now, Shasta.” Christabella responded, her lips pulling into a sneer, “Pietro can have her, if he does us a few… Favors.” She clucked her tongue, shaking her head as she turned, brushing back crimson locks and turning golden eyes on the speedster. He looked pensive, but stepped up to the plate, shoulders back and head held high. Backing down was not an option, not when Wanda’s life was at stake. “You must do three simple tasks for us.”  Simple, he could handle. Difficult, that would take him five minutes. Impossible would take twenty if he really put his mind to it. “And what are these tasks?” His skepticism was rewarded with a cold chuckle and a mirthless smile that didn’t quite meet Christabella’s golden eyes.  “You will bring us the first drops of dew, before they have fallen. It is very important that they are retrieved before falling, and they will not be accepted should we find you cheated.” The blond to her left, Shasta, practically cackled. It was an impossible thing to ask of someone, nobody could move quickly enough to do such a thing. It had never been done. Pietro grit his teeth. They must not have heard much about him, or paid him much mind. Either way, he waited in a silence swarming with the friction of the air on his skin as he forced himself to remain still. Now would be no time to show off his grand speed, or they just might scrap his one easy task entirely. “The second is to collect the feather of a male Harpy.” The fourth woman, stocky and dark haired with skin the color of unprocessed cotton, smirked. A Harpy on her own was a beast to be reckoned with, but a male of the species had never so much as been spotted.They were fierce, however, enough that if he so much as tried, he would die, leaving them to their work. A Harpy could turn its own feathers to stone, should it want or need to, which only made the idea of his failure that much greater.  When Christabella went quiet and her gaggle of gossiping geese followed suit, Pietro crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes until he nearly couldn’t see despite the roaring fire. “And the third task…?” He finally tried, obviously perturbed by the quiver in his voice. “Should you survive the first two, the third will be waiting for you here.” Christabella told him matter-of-factly, turning on her heel and settling back in front of the fire. Suddenly, it was as if their conversation had not happened at all, and he found himself shut out completely no matter how many times he tried to speak to them.  While he hated being ignored, he hated knowing that Wanda could be hurt or worse with every second that he put this off. First dew, and a Harpy. Male Harpy. This was going to be great, just great. The first one sounded easy enough for someone with his abilities, but the Harpy thing was… Honestly driving him to tap his hand against his hip so quickly he was sure he’d knock himself over.  “I need a drink.” He murmured, knowing he wasn’t quite old enough to have one, before he went stock still. A drink. That was it! If there was a place in every village and town from here to Russia and back, it was a bar. And where there were bars, there were superstitious old men ready to spill their ideas about every mythical being and creature under the sun.  Between Novi Grad, Sokovia and Kosno, Poland, he managed to find a rumor that lead him to a specific bar, in a specific, small but scenic village just short of being a clump of houses in the middle of nowhere. There were whispers of a Harpy that lived high on the mountain, perched in a way that nobody could actually travel beyond the treeline on any side. They said he (and definitely ‘he’ every time) was strong and impossibly voracious, but that wasn’t exactly turning him away.  With a new outfit under his belt, a thick coat with layers and lined in wool, thick pants and boots he could still run in, and a thickly woolen balaclava to keep himself from freezing to death, Pietro Maximoff was ready to scale a mountain and take care of this once and for all.  While the trees and animals alike could have taken his breath away with their beauty, the sunsets and rises being something he could have actually stood and waited for, something else was cutting off his oxygen the higher up he went. Height, he remembered, had never been his friend, and he’d just about sped off past the treeline before he started to feel light headed, out of breath, and sluggish. Maybe ‘sluggish’ for PIetro Maximoff was more of a regular pace, but when he finally staggered from the treeline and gazed up at the cold, unforgiving grey sky above him, he had to harden his resolve. This was for Wanda. She would die if he didn’t succeed. A small thought pressed at the back of his mind, flavored in her voice.  But if you die, we will both perish. Shaking the thought out of his head, snowflakes persistent in their agenda to cling to his hood, he scanned the mountainside as far as he could see. Where was this nest he was looking for? It would have been more helpful to come up here with someone who knew the area, or at least a hand-drawn map on a napkin, anything would be better than coming up blind. A whistle behind him sounded less like wind and more like an animal, and when he turned, muscles tense, he barely had a second before something heavy, hard and sharp collided with his head and he went down like a sack of bricks.  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ AN: Welp, there we are, the first chapter. I’m excited to get into the next one, even if this isn’t going to go very long. I really have no plan, just kind of… Flying by the seat of my pants. At any rate, I got this out in record time. I hadn’t quite expected it to go as well as it did. I hope you guys enjoyed! If you want more, keep in mind that nothing motivates me to finish something like feedback!

[shirlleycoyle]

Did Zack Snyder Draw A Picture of Batman Going Down on Catwoman? An Investigation

Over the weekend, director Zack Snyder—a man who Mr. Magoo'd his way into having control over the cinematic presentation of DC Comics for many years and is an avowed fan of Batman—posted an image of the Dark Knight performing cunnilingus on Catwoman. Since that time, I have not known peace. I must know who drew it.

Like the two women at the counter of the coffee shop where I bought the iced coffee that was necessary to begin this investigation, I am so desensitized to pornography involving cartoon characters that at first this image barely registered. The necessary context is that, apparently  in response to the ongoing conversation about DC's decree that Batman canonically doesn't eat pussy, Snyder, who once directed a movie called Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and was for a long time as in control as anyone else was of DC lore, posted a drawing of Batman going down on Catwoman. He captioned it "canon." I guess!

As time went on, theories began to emerge about who drew the image. Snyder fans—and to be clear, he is a divisive figure in the multiple fandoms oriented toward and revolving around various DC brands—propose that he, personally, drew it. A major aspect of this theory is that Snyder didn't provide any information about the image when he posted it, at all. The image doesn't even have a signature. Running it through a reverse image search yields nothing from before Snyder posted it. The drawing seems to have appeared from the ether.

Representatives for Snyder didn't respond to requests for comment, leaving Motherboard unable to put the question of whether he drew this image of Batman satisfying his longtime love interest and occasional fiancé with his own hand. A Motherboard review of footage from the DVD extras of Watchmen—a movie directed by Snyder that I definitely saw in theaters and remember absolutely none of—suggests that Snyder is a talented draughtsman, and may well be capable of having drawn this image. We cannot definitively establish, though, whether or not he did so by putting the question directly to him, and so had to turn elsewhere in search of answers. 

Logically, there are only so many options here. It's possible that, as some fans are beginning to think, Snyder drew it himself; it's also possible, though, that it's a panel from an existing comic book or a piece of fan art, whether preexisting or commissioned personally by Snyder.  Roy T. Cook, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota who specializes in the aesthetics of popular art, told Motherboard that it seems unlikely that it comes from something DC published.

"If this were from a comic, it would certainly be well known given its content, and hence would have been identified by fans or scholars by now," Cook said. "So it’s almost certainly a custom piece of art."

In theory this would narrow things down some, but the sheer ubiquity of Batman-related pornography means that there are still too many images to anyone to sift through. On the pornographic website Rule 34—named for the humorous "rule," which functions with the force and power of a basic law of physics, that anything that exists will also have porn of it on the internet—there are more than 400 images with both the tags "Catwoman" and "Batman." The image Snyder posted can be found there, but was only added after he tweeted it, and notes Snyder's tweet as the original source. It is not hard at all to find an image of Batman eating out Catwoman. Finding one that no one has ever seen before is much harder.

It's possible to inferentially establish that this image is unique to Snyder, whether as something he commissioned or as something he had unique access to and chose to put on the internet. The question consuming many fans, though, is the one of whether he personally drew it. Experts in comic book art doubt that he did. Both of the comic-art brokers that responded to Motherboard's requests for comment said that they definitely don't think Snyder drew it. Details noted about the art style offer food for thought.

"I would say that [Frank] Miller is most certainly an influence/inspiration for the style of the image Snyder tweeted. Dark Knight Returns and all. Gritty stuff," Douglas Gillock, vice-president of the comic art brokerage ComicLink, said. (He was referring to the writer/artist whose mid-80s Batman comics set the tone for all the many, many grim and bleak interpretations of the billionaire who does kung-fu at muggers that have dominated pop culture for decades. Miller's Batman comics have been critiqued as fascistic but could also be read as brilliant parodies of fascistic excess; complicating the question is Miller's later-career turn toward things like a comic where Batman murdered Muslims to avenge 9/11, which was rejected by DC and subsequently repackaged as Holy Terror, a comic where a thinly-veiled Batman stand-in murdered Muslims.)  "I would also say that I also see some David Mazzucchelli here. He was an artist that was also influenced by Miller. He did the art on the Batman: Year One run, which Miller wrote. Pretty sure that is where that particular iteration of Catwoman's costume came from in the modern era too. A similar version was used for the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm Batman animated series."

Gillock's interpretations seem correct. Notably, the outfit that Catwoman is wearing in the image that Snyder tweeted is purple—the color used in most Miller versions of the character—while many popular depictions of the character have her wearing black. It also features cat ears, which not all of her costumes have; this design was favored by Miller and used not only in Year One, but in a special wedding issue of Batman written by Tom King—a renowned comic book writer who spent much of his run on Batman making it canonical that Batman and Catwoman fall in love and get married with the insistent energy of a Livejournal poster embroiled in a shipwar—and featuring a Miller drawing of Catwoman wearing this exact costume. 

Snyder's Miller fandom cannot be overstated. He directed 300, based on the Miller graphic novel. He recreated scenes from The Dark Knight Returns in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in exactingly specific detail, even where it made no sense to do so. Like Miller, Snyder has used his work to promote and exult in vaguely fascist iconography. (Unlike Miller, for Snyder the appeal seems to be mostly aesthetic.) Snyder's fandom for Miller is so intense and specific  that the details in the shading, the coloring, and the costumes depicted in the image of Batman face down in Catwoman's super soaker pussy stand out as ones a fan steeped in Miller's work would not only appreciate, but commission or create, if they were able to. Especially on Selina's legs and head, the specific way that the image is shaded looks a lot like the way that Miller draws Catwoman. In both Snyder's tweet and the image from King's Batman, the shading on Catwoman's suit consists of black swirls and circles. (Miller's image is a lot more stylized than what Snyder posted, though, with Catwoman's spine curving exaggeratedly, like an actual cat's would.)

It should be noted that one thing we know about Snyder is that he's a passable artist, at least from the storyboards he's released for a few of his films. According to a profile in Bloomberg, he studied painting for a year before transferring to film school. It's difficult to tell, but when I look at this blurry screenshot of one of Snyder's sketchbooks where he shows off a drawing he did of Watchmen's Silk Spectre kicking a Nazi in the back of the head, it kinda looks like the same general body proportions as Catwoman as she's getting eaten out by Batman. In particular, both Silk Spectre and Catwoman have pretty sturdy thighs, though comparing a fully colored and inked image to a sketch is not going to yield conclusive results.

Image Source: League of Mayhem

DC, several art history professors, noted Snyder enthusiast Armond White, and Tom King did not respond to requests for comment. In absence of their authoritative input, as well as Snyder's, it seems Motherboard will never know for sure whether Zack Snyder spent the weekend drawing Batman eating box. But my friend and film critic Nadine Smith pointed out something important to me as I discussed this mystery with her: With any other director, this wouldn't even be a question. Snyder's fandom for comics, which somehow is for the exact opposite things about the genre that I admire, is nevertheless deep and powerful to the extent that he forced a major studio to release a four-hour uncut version of the Justice League fanfiction he filmed at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. He's always expected to do the most, and could not surprise anyone by doing anything that demonstrated the depth of his passion.

"If anyone else posted it, we would probably assume they just found some fanart," Smith told me. "But like, Snyder would."

Did Zack Snyder Draw A Picture of Batman Going Down on Catwoman? An Investigation syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[trulycertain]

Well, I asked for this. (Actually, I paid £10.)

So, after getting a (new! New!) copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution that kept crashing on me right after the first level (literally, I didn’t even get to the hub part of the game, right after the “rescue the plant from terrorists” level it just went WOMP and... never loaded, no matter how many times I tried to sort it out), and then having the secondhand copy I got nicked by a mate before I could really play it, I invested in the Director’s Cut. Five years later. Look, I was traumatised, all right? 

However, this game has one of my favourite soundtracks in living memory, which I must have listened to a good three or four times and still write to, despite barely playing the source canon, and it had got me curious. That and some folk I know getting into the series very enthusiastically and talking about the transhumanism, neo-noir and body horror elements, and promising that Jensen gets some development beyond “generic gravelly cop protag” kind of sold me.

 Also, I decided that “beardy dudes who are full of tech and get worried about it occasionally” and “unnecessary black and gold” were becoming themes on my blog, and I might as well take that to its logical conclusion.

I set it to “Tell me a story” difficulty - stop laughing - and booted it up, and... do you know what, I’m actually having a much better time with it than I remember. I think it helps that in the interim, I actually learned to play stealth games (I managed to get through Dishonored!). 

What also helps is that, knowing the first level or two by heart because of the amount of times I tried to get this damn game to load on the other copy, I turned on the dev commentary that comes with this edition. And so far, it’s been really fun and interesting - and funny, in places. The project lead, head writer, lead designer and lead sound designer are all on board for the commentary, and as a game nerd, a narrative design nerd, and especially, a soundtrack nerd, this was gold to me. As well as enjoying the Quebecois accents, some stuff I learned:

The lead writer had originally made a big focus of Megan’s necklace because Jensen was meant to find it, and fear the worst for her. Unfortunately, this all got cleared too late into the dev process and there wasn’t time to do much with it. It was also the last bit of her wardrobe to be finalised.

What everyone assumed was a beauty mark on Malik was actually a piercing, it just wasn’t rendered that well.

The reasons for all the yellow and orange paint cans scattered around? It became a running joke amongst the devs that the denizens of this world had actually painted it to be this ridiculously gold. So they kept those in as a nod.

The sound designer went, “A hostage would never be completely silent,” and it was his idea to include the hostage’s whimpers of terror while Jensen’s trying to talk the terrorist down. 

The finding-people’s-passwords neopryzene-stealing plot was originally meant to go somewhere; one of their level designers wanted an incentive to make the effort to go round discovering stuff and breaking into people’s offices, etc. However, by the time they’d realised this and put it all together, it was too late, so it never really leads anywhere.

Apparently they were tormented by the vent doors. How to open them without alerting AI, etc. One of their designers, who’d actually studied engineering, eventually came up with the idea of the levering-up mechanism.

After the plant level, I turned the commentary off for immersion’s sake, because I was reaching actual new game that I’d never seen before, but I suspect I’ll end up toggling it on and off for minor sidequests and such, because it’s fascinating.

This game is a lot less, well... fugly than I remember. My issue wasn’t the general aesthetics - I enjoyed the strong lines and black and gold - but some of the unnaturally exaggerated character models and awkward animations. While I still have some issues - let’s not talk about general mouth width, or Adam’s odd little full-body bop when he very exaggeratedly crosses his arms, good lord - it’s far less immersion-breaking than I recall. Or maybe I’m just giving it more of a chance this time. 

What also helps is that the DC has “rebooted graphics”. What that actually seems to mean is that they took the gold filter and heavier shadows off everything. While I understand those were to disguise the limitations of the graphics etc. (they admit they knew they weren’t working in the best engine and tried to compensate for that, and apparently they basically tried to do a 1:1 rendition of the concept art, with the same aesthetics - “I’d see a piece of concept art on someone’s desktop wallpaper, and then it’d start moving, and ‘oh shit! That’s not the concept art, that’s the game”), it’s nice to be able to see what I’m doing. Even if it’s slightly less noir. There’s a ton of gold anyway, it hasn’t lost too much.

The VA is also much, much better than I remember, I’ll say that. And I love the immersive sound design and the background conversations. (And the immersiveness of the world in general. I got yelled at by Sarif because I kept wandering off to look at things, read books and poke the employees. It’s so consistent, well-built and cool.)

I finally got past the first level, and met Megan’s mother, which was an excellent scene. And I think you all know which dialogue option I had to pick. “I never asked for this.”

[delkios]

Something of Your Own (DC TV)

This was something I fought with for two weeks. Couple things of note: I haven't watched the last few episodes so if this contradicts canon then oh well. Second, this was inspired when I remembered the line from season 1 about Mick having to strangle rats to survive and this fic will be partially taking place during that time so mind the warnings. Third, I had intended to pretend the rest of the team was treating Mick better than they had been but that quickly fell to the wayside so there's gonna be some salt in here. Title: Something of Your Own Fandom: Legends of Tomorrow Rating: PG-13 Warnings: animal death/referenced cruelty, trauma induced by isolation and starvation, implied child abuse Word Count: 5411 Characters: Mick, Mick's rat, cameos by other Legends Summary: Mick always had a soft spot for rats though they never ended well before. This time, though, he'll make sure is different. Mick didn't have a pet growing up. Not technically anyway. Their farm had no animals but it wasn't uncommon to see stray cats wandering around, chasing off rodents. They were all feral and would run off if a person tried to get close. They were never given food or water, were never taken to a vet or worried after and as such they were unreliable so traps were set around the farm and house. Mick found a rat in one once, it's tail caught and broken, squealing in pain and fear. He took it and kept it in a box while he made a rough cage out of scrap chicken wire. He named it Miss Bianca after a movie he'd seen once where mice saved a little girl. He kept it under his bed.

He had it for almost two months before his father found out. He cracked Miss Bianca's head with a shovel and boxed Mick's ears, threatening to do worse if the house got infested because of him. Mick snuck out of the house after midnight, combing the field his father had tossed Miss Bianca's body into in hopes he'd be able to give it a burial. He never found it. He chased away every rodent he found in the house after that, unsure if he was trying to protect them from his father or from Mick's occasional impulse to keep them. In the end it was the same thing, really. If his father found them, he'd kill them and Mick's feelings on the matter didn't factor. The impulse to have something of his own, something to look after and take care of came and went but never really stopped. He hadn't expected it to transfer to scrawny, smart-mouthed punks. ~*~*~*~ The crew treats it like an adorable joke. Like just because Mick has a pet rat now, he's no longer scary. Mick sets its cage atop the case to the- still broken -cold gun. A place of honor where Mick can watch and talk to it while laid out in his recliner. Talking to the rat isn't as calming as staring at fire but it's better than arguing with his imaginary partner. There's a knock on the frame of Mick's open door. He rolls his head around, still absently scratching the base of the rat's skull and not caring about the crumbs on his jacket as it stuffs its little face while perched on his shoulder. Nate takes in the scene with a big grin. "Hey, Mick!" He says cheerily. "Just checking in on the little guy." The rat snuffles at Mick's head before continuing to gnaw on its carrot. "Well enough." "You got a name picked out yet?" "No." "Really?" Naming an animal, Mick figures, is like giving them a nickname and to him nicknames are important. They're identifiers, maybe ones that start out isolating a specific feature or trait but has to have enough elasticity in Mick's brain to evolve with his opinion on the person. Nicknames need to fit the person. Or rat, in this case. "One'll come to me." "Have you checked if it's a boy or a girl?" "Does it matter?" Nate gives him that odd look-smile combination. The one that says he's amused that Mick doesn't know something so obvious. "Might help you come up with a name." Mick just raises an eyebrow. "Don't think its parts really matters to anyone but the rat." Nate opens his mouth, then closes it. After a couple repetitions he says, "Yeah, I guess that's true." ~*~*~*~ There were few things Mick liked remembering about growing up on the farm. The hunting trips were a mixed bag though having been stranded in bumfuck nowhere, the occasionally painful survival lessons had paid off. Especially given that Snart had left him here with nothing but the clothes on his back, the knife in his boot and the lighter in his pocket. When he came to in that forest, sun filtering weakly through clouds and leaves, Mick took a moment to sort through his priorities- find a water source, figure out cardinal directions, make note of potential shelters -before looking for signs of civilization or, failing that, food. After all, either he'd been abandoned or Snart could go fuck himself if he expected Mick to stay in one place. He found a thin stream, barely more than a creek, but the water was cold and clear. Snowmelt, he'd wager. He followed its flow. Hopefully it would run into other streams or a river. If anyone lived here, that's where they would be. Along the way he found some berries and nuts he recognized, not a large supply but enough to keep him alive for some time if he portioned them right. Mick filled his pockets and kept trekking. As the sun started to fall, Mick found a clearing a little ways from the creek to settle down for the night. He found some promising looking animals tracks and set up snares using his bootlaces. He went off in the other direction to find sticks and kindling for a fire and pocketed what other bits of food he came across. Eventually, just as hunger was starting to get distracting, there was a squeal. Mick went to check the snares and found a wiry rabbit caught in one. He killed the rodent, skinned it to the best of his memory and hung it over the creek to let it bleed while he started a fire, keeping an eye out for any predators attracted by the smell. He took out the offal he couldn't eat and tossed them a good distance away on the other side of the creek as the rest of it cooked on a make-shift spit. It was gamey and tasteless and Mick longed for even a bit of salt but at least he had some wild berries to help. He didn't have any way to carry leftovers so Mick ate as much of the rabbit as he could, tossed the remains far from his sleeping spot, cleaned his knife, hands and face in the creek, then settled in and watched the fire die down. He fell asleep long after the stars came out, a distant part of him noticing the lack of animals noises around him. When he woke up there was something moving in his jacket pocket, laid over him as a makeshift blanket. Mick shifted, trying to blearily peer at it and the something froze before turning around and peering back at him. It was a rat. Or a mouse, maybe. It was pretty small. It had one of the nuts Mick had picked up the other day in its mouth. "What," Mick rumbled at it. In defiance of being caught, it's little hands wrapped around another nut. "You hungry?" The rat stuffed the second nut in its mouth and scampered off. ~*~*~*~ The Waverider's makeshift lab isn't a place one usually finds Mick. Not that Jax is surprised to see him working on something- he's seen the man wander into the lab to grab some tools on things he tinkers on in his room -it's just he thinks Mick's idea of not working in the lab is smart. Whenever Jax is down there, he seems to have even chances either working in peace or having to deal with Stein- who tends to devolve into a lecture like he's back in a university -or Ray- who's honest 'let me show you a trick' tends to result in his taking over entirely. Jax waits for a pause in Mick's work, the man calling to Gideon for some kind of adjustment, before speaking up. "Hey, Rory. What're you up to?" Whatever it is is tiny. Like a child's bracelet. "A collar." "For your rat? Why so high-tech? Putting a tracking device in it?" Wasn't that stuff a micro-chip inserted under a skin in their time? "It'll create a miniature temporal stasis field so the rat won't die when we time-jump." Jax has to pause to digest that statement. "Wait- what?" "Time travel sucks," Mick says like he's saying any old thing. "Our bodies can barely handle the strain. Something that small, its organs'll rupture." He holds up the collar, peering at it critically. "Why do you think Hunter never worried about bugs getting on board? They can't survive the trip into the timestream." Jax had not, in fact, wondered at the lack of bugs before and now with that knowledge in his head, he tells Mick, "Imma go to my room and be disturbed for a bit." Mick just waves him off absently, instructing Gideon to scan the collar. "Have fun." ~*~*~*~ It wasn't a daily occurrence but it was pretty even odds that Mick would find the rat scrounging for food. Enough times that he designated the easiest accessible pocket its food. And it wasn't alone. It had a small family or herd or whatever a group of rats were called. A rat pack. It took a while for Mick to confirm it was the same group of rats following him on his fruitless journey to find anything. Maybe it was because he only managed to catch one other animals after that rabbit. Or maybe he was lonely and the memory of Miss Bianca was floating around in the back of his head but Mick started dropping nuts behind them, encouraging them to follow. And whenever he thought they might've fallen too far behind, he stopped to let them catch up. There were five all together and Mick started naming them in his mind. The biggest one he named Scarface because its left ear was mangled. Another fairly large one that walked like it had an old injury he called Splinter. The one that had initially snuck inside his pocket, the smallest and the one that tended to get shoved aside in the scramble for food, was Cinderella. The two that bullied Cinderella the most Mick dubbed Scudder and Dillon and, even though one of them had socks and the other didn't, Mick never really assigned them specific names. They were assholes and they hung out together more than not, it was fitting enough to him. At some point the creek he'd been following had joined up with a slightly larger one. Still didn't look like fish lived in it, though, or if they did they were too small and not worth it. Mick had seen a couple frogs which made him wrinkle his nose. His family had to go frog gigging sometimes when money was tight and he'd never really like eating frog. Too much effort for the amount of meat it got and these frog in particular weren't very big. Once, when Mick had been sick during an especially bad month, his mother had brought him a frog stew. He'd gotten violently ill off it- turned out there'd been mildly toxic toad in there as well. The fact that no one else in the family had gotten sick and his mother's relationship to Mick had always been ambiguous made him question if that might have been purposeful. Mick had hated toads- and to a lesser extent frogs due to similarities -since. But, he supposed, he had a last resort if no other food source was found. And if they ended up being toxic then, well, then Mick hoped Snart was coming back so he could find his body dead from bad frog legs. Fuck you, Snart. By the time Mick had coaxed the rats into hanging out next to him whenever he rested, the forest had thinned out and within a week of his abandonment he stepped out of the treeline entirely. The sight was not promising. There was a vast plain that stretched out farther than Mick could see, very little in the way of plantlife outside of the grass that was sparsely populated with hard, craggy rock. There were no towns, no paths, no smoke in the distance and no animals. "If that fucker dropped me off in some pre-history time," he grumbled darkly, "I'm going to kick his ass." Mick went back into the forest to restock on berries and nuts and managed to catch another boney and undersized rabbit while he was at it. He ate some, then stripped the remaining meat into chunks, skewered them on sticks and cooked them through, planning on eating them when he stopped for the night. The offal he wrapped up in the rabbit skin and tied that to another, longer stick. Hopefully a crow or vulture or other scavenger would come to investigate and Mick could catch them. The stream continued off in the distance so Mick didn't worry about water. Preparations complete, Mick went on his way. He made it all of twenty feet before stopping and turning. Clustered together under a wimpy fern, the five rats stared at him as if debating if they were willing to risk the open to follow the guy that had been feeding them the last few days. Mick crouched and pulled a couple of berries from his pocket, holding them on outstretched fingers. "You coming or what?" After some hesitating, they scuttled forward and just like that Mick had himself a rat pack. ~*~*~*~ When Stein finds them in the kitchen he immediately bristles though his rebuke gets way-sided by an incredulous, "What are you doing?" "Training," Mick says shortly before giving a sharp whistle. His rat runs from Mick's shoulder and over his outstretched arm. Mick turns his hand over and opens it, letting the rat get at the treat hidden in his palm. He gives two more whistles and it runs back over his arm and to his shoulder where it climbs into one of the pockets at his chest. It sticks its little head out and makes grabby hands at another treat Mick gives it. Stein boggles momentarily. "I was not aware you knew how to train animals." "Did a stint in Opal. They got a program for inmates to train dogs and it wasn't like I was doing anything else." Another whistle and the rat clambers back on Mick's shoulder, over his arm and, when he inclines it downward, onto the counter. It turns back expectantly and gets another treat. It reminds Stein of his initial outrage. "And why are you doing this in the kitchen? Where we prepare our meals?" Slowly Mick raises his eyes at the older man, hand absently petting the creature. "Rat's clean. Gideon checked." "It's hardly hygienic to have a creature shedding fur on our counter tops." Mick just stares, arms folded. He very slowly, very deliberately sits on the counter. Stein just looks at him in a mixture of confusion and irritation. Eventually Mick asks, "No comments?" "About what?" "Sitting on the counter." He waves a hand out. "Not like you know where my ass has been. Coulda been working on something mechanical and gotten grease or oil on me. Coulda been wading through the septic tank, I could be wearing week old underwear with skid marks for all you know." Stein wrinkles his nose and looks like he's about to attack his own brain with a cleaning spray but Mick goes on. "So why don't you say anything? Maybe you got used to it 'cause you know just about everyone else sits on the counter sometimes- including your partner. Maybe 'cause you know the ship has automatic micro-scrubbing bubbles that activates when germs are around." "All surfaces are coated with a microbial film of smart antibacterial nanites," Stein recites automatically. "Ship kills all those nasty germs which is why no one's gotten sick on this boat or had to dust. So tell me, Professor. You complaining 'cause it's a rat or 'cause it's something I'm doing?" Stein hesitates, not entirely certain what he's being accused of. "All I ask is that you please not let the rat on the counter." Mick sneers and whistles, somehow even sharper than before. "Doubt it." Rat safely perched on his shoulder, Mick storms out. ~*~*~*~ In all honesty Mick never really cared much for animals. They just kind of existed and so long as they didn't cause him problems he didn't really care. He had a soft spot for rats though, even before he was consciously aware of it. But only rats, mice and gerbils and whatnot did nothing for him. Maybe he just related to rats, the way people hated how big and ugly they were, their reputation for being mean and vicious, the way people sneered as they called rats vermin and treated them like dirt. While all a rat wanted- all most things wanted, really -was just to be left alone to do its thing. At least they're easy to carry, especially after a few days when Mick could consolidated his food enough to free up a couple pockets. He managed to catch a bird scoping out the rabbit meat a couple days in, not long before Mick was going to toss it. A hawk of some sort, if Mick had to hazard a guess. He fed bits of the meat to the rats just for the irony of it. No other bird came by before he ended up dumping its remains on his trek. At least wherever he was had some similarities to where he grew up in terms of edible plants. Mick harvested plantain plants, chicory and spatterdock wherever the stream broke off into small pools. They did little to alleviate his hunger. Mick chewed on a spatterdock root, grimacing at the bitterness of it. Cinderella, tucked in between the collar of his jacket and his jaw, pressed her nose up against his ear momentarily. "I'll stop soon," he told it, absently reaching up to give her a scratch, "and then I'll feed you. Promise." It squeaked lightly, then settled in. ~*~*~*~ "Wow!" Mick rolls his eyes but otherwise doesn't turn away from where he's installing an exercise wheel and hammock into the rat cage. Ray steps further into his room, agog at the length of tubes running maze-like all over the walls, zig-zagging around the pin-ups and guitar and whatnot that was already up. There's a couple smaller cages set up with water bottles, food dishes and beds like way stations. The rat is in one sitting on a shelf, digging out snacks stuffed in a small wiffle ball. "You really went all out!" "Not gonna keep it cramped and bored in a tiny cage," Mick grunts. "Can't just let it wander the ship, either." "Yeah but... you gotta admit," Ray grins teasingly, "you're spoiling it." "Not like I got anyone else wanting my attention." That, of course, makes Ray's face fall. "You know the team's here for you, right?" Could've fooled him. Instead, Mick says, "You want my attention, feel free to shrink down and get in a cage." "Or we could do something where one of us isn't treated like a pet." "Nope. In a pet-spoiling mood. Take it or leave it, Haircut." He chuckles. "Later, then. When you won't try to make me drink from a water feeder." Ray pauses, half out the door, before turning around and saying, "I'm really glad you're taking care of the rat." Mick says nothing and eventually Ray leaves. He's extra attentive as he ties off the hammock. Spoiling the rat is the absolute least Mick can do. ~*~*~*~ His lighter ran out of fuel. Mick had been careful about it, keeping from pulling it out and flicking it on no matter how much his hands shook, trying to make it last as long as possible. He reserved staring at flames for when he settled for the night and had a proper fire going. The lack of fuel was hardly anything to be alarmed by. He still had his knife- a Swedish FireKnife that his bastard former partner had gotten Mick on his last birthday -and a striking tool in one of his pockets. Worst came to worst, he also knew how to start fires with various rocks and steel as well as with sticks. Though there really wasn't too much to work with for the latter option. Everything was still empty. Still no sign of civilization and very few creatures that Mick could only find at a distance. He was constantly hungry now and had to take breaks more often because he'd get dizzy. The sun wasn't all that strong but it was enough he could feel the heat through his jacket and could feel his skin beginning to peel along the tops of his ears and head. Mick knew he should stop feeding the rats. They could probably survive on their own and without sacrificing for them, it would probably give him an extra day or two. Not that it would do him much good if he never found actual food. He'd been walking through an unchanging landscape for so long Mick almost didn't realize he was coming up on a steep slope, practically marching in his sleep. It wasn't a cliff by any means but Mick would have to pick and climb his way down, leaning one hand against the ground and let gravity slide him from one outcropping to another. Mick sat on a rock at the top of it for some time, part to catch his breath and part to scan the sprawl below him, hoping to find signs of anything useful. He must have zoned out because the next thing he knew, Scarface bit him hard enough to make Mick gasp. The sky had gone dark and he could no longer make out anything below him. Mick cursed, "Guess we're camping here for the night," and went down to his hands and knees, having to feel out for materials to make a fire. ~*~*~*~ For the hell of it, Mick's teaching the rat how to high five. It takes some time for him to realize he has to do it with a finger because if he angles his hand too much, it thinks he wants it sit in his palm. Which is good because that's a trick Mick had already taught it but not what he's going for now. "I'm surprised how much it likes you." He doesn't look up. He heard Amaya enter the dining area- not the kitchen, since Stein continues to be touchy about that -but didn't say anything as she seemed content to just watch. "I feed it," he says, running the rat through a couple more tricks before doing another high five. It succeeds and gets a treat. "No surprise there." "It's not just about food." She walks in, standing on the far side of the table. The rat's ears twitch, head shifting slightly just enough to keep Amaya in its periphery but otherwise unafraid with Mick nearby. "Also around all the time," he adds with a shrug. "Not that, either." Mick rolls his eyes. He doesn't know why half the crew likes being so damn cryptic. The action makes Amaya smile. "I just mean that it likes you. It's comfortable around you and trusts you. For a prey animal, that is a big thing." Mick eyes her, not exactly mistrusting but not sure if he believes this. "What, you talk to animals?" "No," she admits, slowly reaching out a finger and pausing as the rat hops back slightly, turning its body so it has better sight of her, "but as I'm granted to ability to use various animals' skills, it was in my best interest to study and understand them. Despite what people think, rats aren't dumb. If it thought it had reason to fear you, it wouldn't let you handle it." As if validating her words, the rat crawls under Mick's hand, pressing its back against his fingers in a quiet demand to be tickled. Mick obliges. "I'm not one for pets," he says, as if it's some kind of defense. "You certainly took to it readily enough. And it seems to make you happy." She gives him another smile before sweeping out of the room. "I'm glad you found each other." Happy, he scoffs quietly. Happier maybe but it's not like he could get much lower than he'd been. It was possible- Mick's certainly had enough lows to know it -but just because Mick's been a little better off recently doesn't bring him out of the dark by any means. But it helps. The rat helps and that's more than he can say about anyone else. When Mick looks down, the rat is half asleep under his palm, quietly bruxing its teeth in contentment. ~*~*~*~ He's stuck. About seventy some feet from the foot of the slope, Mick was stuck. He'd hit a patch of loose rock and pitched forward, rolling until he hit a large outcropping. When he came to the rats were scrambling around him, squeaking and nipping at his ears. He checked them over, checked what survived the fall- not a lot though he hadn't had much to begin with -and nearly howled with pain when he tried to get up. A knee was busted, a shoulder dislocated and his back felt like a twisted mess. He lay, panting, and when the pain ebbed, Mick tried again. Slowly and carefully he pushed his way to his feet. He crawled to the rock and found the flattest surface to slam his shoulder down on it, sliding it back into place. He looked around. There was no way he was trusting himself to slide down as he'd been but there was a rough approximation of a path leading vaguely downward. The trail took him away from the stream. His route slow going because of his injuries and slowed even more as hunger and dehydration grew. Days in, still not much closer to the ground, Mick ate his gloves in desperation. He dug into his pockets and pulled out every scrape of food he had left, likely eating more lint and dirt than anything else. He pulled up scraggly bits of grass and ate that, gnawed on the hem of him jacket, anything and everything he could think of. Then, when there was nothing else, not even an ant crawling around at his feet, Mick turned to the rats. They stuck with him, even though he couldn't feed him anymore, and he didn't know why. His breath rattled around his ears and he reached up to his shoulder where Splinter was. It felt like Mick was watching from outside of his body as he grabbed the rat and stuffed its head into his mouth and bit down. His other hand shoved into his pocket to trap the rat inside there- Scarface -and the other three scattered. After Splinter, Mick ate Scarface in the same way, its tiny claws drawing lines across his mouth, struggling so much Mick had to bash it against a rock to kill it first. Minutes after he finished the second, Mick vomited them both up. He curled up on the ground, covered in blood and bile and bits of fur, jaw and teeth aching from crunching down on bone, now completely and utterly alone and he began to cry. ~*~*~*~ The others develop an annoying habit of waltzing into Mick's room whenever they feel like seeing the rat. To be fair, Mick supposes he should start keeping his door closed so they can't get in but still. They don't even pause for an acknowledgment, just come in like it's any other communal room on the ship. It's Sara this time around. Mick's reclined in his chair, watching the rat on its wheel like it's more interesting than television- which, depending on the time period, is accurate -and Sara sits herself down on the edge of Mick's bed. "So how are things in Redwall?" "Well enough." "Gotta admit, I'm impressed. I wasn't actually sure how long you'd keep this up." Mick keeps his focus on the rat. Otherwise he'll have to look at Sara and then he'll start getting mad. The only reason anyone comes to see him is to make sure the rat's okay. Unbothered by the silence, she says warmly, "I'm glad you're looking after it." That gets a noncommittal grunt and Sara watches him watching the rat and comes to the wrong conclusion, voice softening, "If anything happens to you, we'll take care of it. I promise." His jaw clenches tight, biting back the sudden flare of anger. They'll take care of it, huh? Watch out for it and soothe it if Mick can't? Does that mean Mick rates lower than a rat to them? Because they sure as hell haven't been doing that for him, haven't even tried to talk him out of getting himself killed. And what does that make Len if they're willing to take care of a rat in Mick's memory but will let Mick wallow in depression in his partner's? Mick's long gotten used to the knowledge that few people will ever care for him, that he's next to nothing to anyone. That he's just a tool people only bother with if he screws up. It still hurts, though, from people that's supposed to be his crew. To make it worse, Mick wouldn't have actually minded warming up to this particular group. But Ray, Sara, Amaya- all of them -are so quick to turn their backs on him after a brief showing of kindness. No, he thinks privately, he can't trust them to look after his rat if he dies. Not the way they should. Paying just enough attention to ensure it stays alive isn't nearly good enough and it deserves so much better than what any of them can give it. He closes his eyes and settles in like he's about to take a nap. "Let's not find out if you'll make good on that promise." ~*~*~*~ Mick had stopped moving. He was hungry, hurt, exhausted and dehydrated. He had no shade from the sun, his pockets had run empty, his throat dry and didn't have the strength to make fire to help ease the slowly creeping panic and despair that was clawing at his mind. Fuck, he didn't want to die. At least not like this. He laid there, limbs trembling and weak, and wished so damn hard for Len to come back to him. He sniffled, pitiful in his misery, dry eyed only because he didn't have any water to spare. He wanted Len. Wanted to see him so fucking bad. Beg him for forgiveness just so he wouldn't die like this. There was a squeak and when Mick's eyes focused he saw a tiny rat- just barely larger than a mouse -peeking out from under his hand. Cinderella, he thought. He didn't know for sure, might've been making it up except he could feel its fur and heat when he grabbed it. Felt it struggle in his hand, squeaking louder. He didn't want to but he couldn't stop himself. "I'm sorry," he told it in a broken whisper, bringing the frantic creature to his face, "I'm sorry." ~*~*~*~ Mick stretches out on his bed, the rat a curled ball in the center of his chest, contently dozing as Mick strokes a finger down its back. He'd gone through a litany of names- Ratigan, who was among Mick's favorite Disney villains, Remy because Lisa would have laughed, Templeton, just to see if someone would comment, and dozens of others just to keep from even considering some sort of reference to Len. He eventually settled on Newt. Amaya hadn't gotten the reference- she's forty years early for that -but the others either looked at him like he was a simpleton naming the creature after a completely different animal or like he'd gotten bored of thinking of a name and picked whatever word first came to mind. Len would've gotten the reference and the reasoning behind it. Newt, the little girl from Aliens- one of the few movies both Mick and Len love -who managed to break through Ripley's caustic shell. Newt stretches out so it can lay flat, soaking in Mick's heat and Mick watches as Newt blinks, long and slow a couple times, nose giving a final twitch before finally falling asleep. Mick thinks of Miss Bianca, of Cinderella, Scarface, Splinter, even Dillon and Scudder. "No one's gonna hurt you," he swears quietly and Newt just gives a tiny sigh. "Not me. Not anyone. I promise."

[hell-and-pepsi]

what is a tagged can you eat it

I guess I was tagged by @ilwinsgarden ? That was a surprise, people don’t tag me in stuff too often, thank you very much!

Rules: Answer all the questions, then add one of your own, and tag as many people as there are questions

1) Coke or Pepsi? I never drank coke in my life. I tried Pepsi once so I guess Pepsi.

2) Disney or Dreamworks? I’d say Dreamworks, especially since my brother is a huge fan of How to Train your Dragon

3) Coffee or Tea? Tea, in all forms and quantities - from a cheap-arse tea bag put in a bucket of hot water to exquisite brands prepared by the rules of the Chinese traditional tea ceremonies

4) Books or movies? First read the book, then watch the movie based on it. Never vice versa (except if the book is really crappy compared to the movie)

5) Windows or mac? Windows! Also doors. Illuminators. Ceiling lights. Ventilation vents. If you can punch a hole through a wall, that’s nice too.

6) D.C. or Marvel? Not a fan of either.

7) Xbox or PlayStation? Never had neither of them.

8) Dragon age or mass effect? I never played neither of them and I don’t even have friends that played any of these :(

9) Night owl or early riser? Early riser. If you can manage to, which doesn’t happen to often to me unfortunately.

10) Cards or chess? I can barely play any card games, I don’t even know the names of the card suits in Russian (but I know them perfectly in English because Homestuck.) So chess, even though I haven’t played chess either in a very long time.

11) Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate any time.

12) Vans or converse? I don’t care much for fashion so either is fine

13) Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar? Low Sorbian? Volapük? Or are those not weird language names?

14) Fluff or angst? Both. Both is good. 

15) Beach or forest? Um. Have you looked at my username. Well, I guess you should just look at it again

16) Dogs or cats? Cats! Especially my cat, Sebastian. Though dogs are cool as well.

17) Clear skies or rain? Clear sky! I am basically a reverse vampire, I can’t live without a blue sky and a bright sun up above. Also, stars at night *_*

18) Cooking or eating out? I’m broke, so cooking.

19) Spicy or mild food? I like spicy. But honestly, it all depends on the ability of the cook. Mild food can be very tasty too if done right.

20) Halloween/Samhain or solstice/yule/Christmas? @ilwinsgarden while answering this question said that they don’t celebrate Hallowe’en in Czech Republic and I relate - we don’t celebrate it in Russia as well save for the occasional shop sell. 

But here we go even more extreme - we don’t celebrate Christmas either! In the Soviet times the main winter celebration shifted to New Year’s Eve, and that’s what we celebrate mainly up to this day. Christmas is a religious holiday solely, and moreover, because Russia is mainly an Orthodox Christian country and not a Prothestantic/Catholic/Anglican one, we celebrate Christmas two weeks later than Catholics (January the 7th).

Actually, even putting cultural differences aside, I don’t like the themes of both holidays. The modern media has generalized and cheapened them so that Hallowe’en is merely pumpkin spice and costumes instead of being a spiritual day, and Christmas is merely presents and trees instead of an important Christian milestone. I guess I enjoy Christmas a little bit more.

21) Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot? Uhhh, that’s a tough one! But I am actually often a little too cold (including today), so if I choose a little too hot perhaps it can cancel it out? :D

22) If you could have a superpower what would it be? There are so many choices! Super intellengence would be helpful. Teleportation would allow me to travel anywhere in the world for free. If I could create plant life or accelerate its speed of growth, I could end famine.

23) Animation or live action? Both have their perks. Currently I’m more invested in animation, but I would really like to explore live action movies and even create ones myself.

24) Paragon or renegade? Okay, so I learnt a new English word today! Paragon, huh. And as much as I love the sound of that word I choose renegade. I’m a rebel by nature.

25) Bath or shower? Showers are cooler and more eco-friendly, but when you’re tired all you want is a nice hot bath. So both once again, depending on your state.

26) Team Cap or team Ironman? Like I said above, I’m not a fan of Marvel.

27) Fantasy or sci-fi? Don’t make me choose like this! But when I was younger I definitely enjoyed sci-fi more, and I know there’s still a lot of classic authors for me to explore.

28) Do you have 3 or 4 favorite quotes if so what are they? Oh boy, you came for a treat. “Fears are caused by a lack of understanding. And in the world we live in, you have unlimited information out there. There’s no reason you should be afraid of anything”  - Ethoslab, my most favourite Youtuber and Minecrafter ever. I don’t remember the exact episode, but I believe it was in his Let’s Play series around 390-410 ish, when he was building Sandy City.

“I mean, I know you want it to stay pleasant around here, but — there are so many things … that are so much better. Like silly, or sexy, or dangerous … or brave. And every one of those things is in you all the time, if you just have the guts to look for them.”  - Bud Parker, from the movie Pleasantville. Go watch it. It’s a true piece of art. I watched it in my English class in detail and it was absolutely delightful and amazing and so, so true.

“I never let school interfere with my education.”  - (incorrect, I think) Mark Twain. Sums my feeling about school perfectly.

“Every moment is the moment, and everything you lose, you lose forever.”  - my teacher. He told us once to remember this saying very carefully, even if we don’t understand it fully, because there may come a time where it will be very, very true for us. It is one of those quotes that you do not memorize, but which memorizes you instead.

29) YouTube or Netflix? I don’t have a Netflix account and I don’t even know whether the site is available in my country. But I spend endless hours on Youtube.

30) Harry Potter or Percy Jackson? Look at my nickname and my avatar yet again... plus I never quite got into Percy Jackson. I think I only read one book. Its fans make cool fanart though, with many different ships.

31) When do you feel accomplished? When I do something that’s supposed to be “in my field” and I do excellent on it. Also, contrariwise, when I have to go through something I’m scared or unexperienced to do and perform well.

32) Star Wars or Star Trek? Okay, please don’t kill me for this, but I never watched a Star Wars movie in my life. I also didn’t watch Star Trek, but I relate to it a little bit more because I’m a fan of Doctor Who which is a show from the same time. Plus Star Trek is responsible for a lot of modern sci-fi tropes, its fans started the modern fanfiction culture (including the concept of shipping), and it’s a historical and innovative piece in general.

33) Paperback books or hardcover books? I don’t have a strong opinion of this, and I read books online mostly nowadays. In my experience, different kinds of books are more prone to being in a hardcover or in paperback. Both of those types can be very enjoyable.

34) Fantastic beasts or Cursed child? Seen/read neither. (I feel so ignorant while answering those... haven’t seen that, haven’t read that...) But from what I saw and heard, especially from my little brother, Cursed Child is a hectic fanfiction piece somehow gone canon (and Rowling had barely to do with it anyway) and Fantastic Beasts is, well, a fantastic piece of work. Also Americans got their own Potter movie. (like A Very Potter musical wasn’t enough)

35) Rock or pop music? My music taste is dictated by artist, not style. That being said, nowadays I have more favourites in pop than rock.

36) What is the most important thing in your life? Keeping close to my principles/morals. Expressing those principles and morals in one way or another, because I find it something important to show to other people. Trying to help the people I call my friends. Trying to make sense in this big mess of things we call the world.

37) Mountains or sea/ocean? Tough question again! But I guess I’ve been to the sea like, thrice in my life, and never been to the mountains, so sea/ocean.

38) How do you express yourself? Mostly in words and sometimes in action. But my ultimate goal is to create content through which I could successfully express my view of the world.

39) What’s the first book/film that really counted to you? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When I was little I never cried at books at movies. But there was something in chapter 34 (where Harry has learn the truth about himself and goes to the Forbidden Forest to be killed by Voldemort) that made me shed my very first tear. The name of the chapter was The Forest Again, so, well, you can see how big of an impact it was for me.

40) What’s your element (air, water, etc.)? I want to be the Avatar! :D But seriously, I can’t really choose. By my star sign, Leo, it’s fire.

41) If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? Is “everywhere” an option?

42) If you had any job in the world, what would it be? A teacher in a school that is actually a good school. Not that those exist. Or a cartoon/anime/movie director/screenwriter.

43) If you were granted three wishes, what would they be? I guess all unlimited wishes hacks are banned, so:

1) World piece 2) Unlimited food to end world famine 3) Unlimited eco-friendly power source to end (most of) the world’s ecological problems.

44) If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Pizza! Because you can put anything on a pizza.

45) What’s currently the most pressing issue on your mind, and what’s stopping you from fixing it? Is “everything” an option” [2]? But seriously, it’s probably my unpreparement for the uncoming exams and the search for my future career. The first one is caused by just lazyness and the boringness/objective unimportance of the exams, and the second time always takes time, naturally. So they are pressing, but at the same time I don’t worry too much at “failing” them.

46) What is your dream companion animal? A cat! Or a cool bird, like a jay or an oreole.

47) Raptors or songbirds? Raptor songbirds. Just imagine.

48) Do you think there is life on other planets in universe? “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. “ Arthur C. Clarke sums my opinion on this pretty welI

Woah, that’s a lot of questions! It also took me a lot of time to answer them, it’s super late for me now. Here’s my question:

49: If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, what would be some of the things that you do?

And I can’t possibly tag 49 people, so here’s just some: @polyglotplatypus, @kuufox, @artisticprotector, @cultureklub, @crap-iccioso,  @glannniglaepur, @stefan-stefansson, @moonpaw17, @klavierr, @antialiasis, @johannesviii and basically anyone else who wants to do this. And if you don’t want to do it, of course you’re not obliged in any way. @ilwinsgarden thank you so much for tagging me once again!

[drink-n-watch]

Fire Force is back and until I watched the first episode, I didn’t hadn’t realized that it was just what I needed right now. Let’s get a few announcements out of the way first though.

This first review is going on up Saturday because I didn’t have anything else for today but starting next week I will most likely be moving it to either Sunday or Monday. If I have another season of not being able to do anything on Friday night cause I got a review to pump out, I’m gonna end up single again!

Second, a reader pointed out that my best episode reviews were my gallery reviews as they were at least a bit more unusual and sounded more personal. And I have to agree. My gallery posts were not always easy to write but they were often se of my favourites. Not that I didn’t have a great tim discussing my litterature tastes trough BSD or Woodpecker or going deeply introspective with Steins;Gate 0, mind you. So I’m going to attempt a hybrid. I’m assuming my readers have seen the episode and do not need me to recap the plot so I will stick to my views on the visuals and production as well as any big elements that stood out for me. It’s probably going t take me a couple f weeks to find my footing so I hope you’ll bear with me!

Season 1 of Fire Force was somewhat of a mixed bag. There were a t of elements I absolutely loved. The religious and political background plot, the quick paced action, the doofy characters (if there’s one thing I love more than a troll, it’s a dork!) and the occasionally earnestly emotional episodes that somehow managed to avoid melodrama all together. I think it’s fair to say that for me, when Fire Force was good, t was great! But then there was the outdated humor, the occasional uncomfortable fanservice an the complete objectification on certain characters that made it not only less enjoyable for me, but at times even bring.

As far as I was concerned, the good outweighed the bad and there was no doubt in my mind that I would be watching this second season. I was a bit anxious to see what episode 1 would bring.

I shouldn’t have been.

First let me say, Fire Force is a show that I have always found beautiful and it still is. those vibrant colors filling my screen was a shot of endorphins for me. Second… did the producers tweek something in response to viewer comments or is it a coincidence?

Th episode opens with Shinra and the three girls, Tamaki, Sister and Maki all shopping together. This is a prime set up for fanservice. Trying clothes on, laughing, tripping… In the firs episodes last season, no ladies could be on screen without a cleavage or derriere sho. And amaki was never allowed to stay clothed at all. Ys all hr girls were absolutely adorable and just lovely together without a hint of that type of fanservice. It was almost a little weird. But great.

The scene was fun and joyful. It was coloured in ultra saturated pastels to keep those happy grooves ging and it had me smiling from ear to ear. I like seeing Shinra get all flustered around sister.

And the the action picked up. An infernal appearance quickly reminded us what this show was all about and the episode used the opportunity to reestablish the cast and their relationships. And it did great.

My girl Maki got to be a big boss quickly taking hold of the emergency and dispatching everyone as needed. Each member of the 8th got a chance to be reintroduced and a chance to show their own skills. For once no one needed to be saved r ended up purely decorative. The episode was careful t make every single character useful an feel like the were an important part of the team. And YAY, Arthur!

It’s just the first episode so I don’t know if this is going t be true all season, but let me try to explain why I loved the shift in fanservice in this first half. Here is Tamaki’s reintroduction to the audience:

Tamaki was a pretty divisive character last season and I would say the mos common source of fanservice although all ladies were fair game. Sure, her uniform is still a bikini top under an open jacket but the framing and context is completely different. The Plot didn’t rip off her clothes for no reason, it’s her own choice to wear this and it could easily be argued that her ignition ability make cosing the jacket uncomfortable. I’l buy that. Heck I don’t even need to buy that. Girl can wear whatever she wants to, it’s just a convenient excuse for why her uniform is different. But for me, even better is how the camera frames her. Wait, here’s another shot:

The emphasis is mostly on hr face and eyes. Her expressions are set and determined. She’s in full action. She looks great and personally I really like this way more than this

I was happy to see that they kept the trend of making the sky a darker royal blue whenever the action kicks up, and clearing the clouds out. Fire Force has some of the most beautiful skies!

Another screencap I want to bring attention to is this one:

I have always loved the shot composition in Fire Force. It was one of its greatest strength in my opinion. And Look how wonderful the image is. The rough crescent shape with Victor as a lone central anchor. Those fantastic reflective strips on the uniforms creating a continuous line. Arthur’s golden hair tying together with the golden accents on the hats and sleeves, while Vulcan’s red hair and Sister’s white collar and sitting positon crae visual stops on either end. This is a great shot that highlights the spiritual undertones of the series! Am I getting carried away?

The fight with the inferno was really fun to watch and showed off some new tricks. The ation was more frantic than we we are use and the character models were prone to some deformation à la Trigger. This happens to be a technique I tend to appreciate so I was psyched. In general the designs and models seem pretty much unchanged from season 1 but the animation has had an upgrade. Very cool!

And as soon as the inferno is defeated, the white fluffy clouds come back to break up that sky and we get a beautiful baby blue horizon.

It’s really great that out of the entire hopping trip, th most inappropriate outfit ended up being worn by Hinawa. Is it a sign that I’ve been watching too much anime when I immediately assumed that his hat “Nudist B*tch” was a reference to Kill la Kill instead of cheeky wordplay? Doesn’t matter, I’m sticking with my head canon.

Although it might be a definite sign that I’m watching too much anime when I think that outfit sort of suits him. Maybe not for the office, although…

Ok…so maybe they didn’t so much tone down the fanservice, as move it to the guys. Still, in the context of a Firemen calendar it still leaves the control with the characters which makes me enjoy it more. Still, I wouldn’t have minded a mixed gender calendar.

Aside for the brief inferno interruption, which was really just an excuse to assure the audience that this is still the action shonen they all love and remember, the episode was mostly fluffy filler stuff. And you know what, I suddenly think that fluffy filler was really missing from season 1. I’m n saying it should have been a slice of life,  but one or two episodes just like this one would have improved the pacing in my opinion.

When all is said and done, I had a great time with this first episode. I think it really highlighted the potential of the series and showed it in a great light. Did y watch the first episode? And did you enjoy it? Are you sticking with season 2?

Fire Force 2 Episode 1 – A Great Start Fire Force is back and until I watched the first episode, I didn't hadn't realized that it was just what I needed right now.