#speculative history???

[happyia]

Why not add cannibalistic programs to my fantasy sci-fi worldbuilding project?🖳

I had this idea for a while, but decided to work on it yesterday when I was sick, so the text bit sounds more dramatic. <3 I'm not sure if this will be 100% canon in AA, but I have always been a big fan of evil sentient computers in media, soo..

Generative AI also doesn't exist in this worldbuilding, but that's due to conflict with one specific (very petty) sapient dragon, but I will explain another time.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

One of the more frustrating things about the particular kind of anti-intellectualism directed at the humanities here and on places like tiktok is that pointing it out makes you seem like a killjoy.

No, I actually didn't find your "historians will say they were just friends" joke funny. No I don't think speculating that old photos are in black and white to make them seem older is harmless. But I seem uptight and "not fun" when I say these things.

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Raphael skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality

Turtle shells are really funky, and in real life turtles, their shoulders and hips are actually fused to the shell and form immobile shoulder and pelvic girdles. Their scapula (shoulder blades) therefore are pushed almost fully downwards to give turtle arms that elbow up look. Most of their muscles are attached via ligaments to their plastron and limbs, with their large neck muscles reaching back along their spine with very minimal muscles on their sides or back.

Because of how funky their bones are, I tried to find a good middle ground between the brothers’ humanoid shape and mobility vs. their original species limitations. Their shoulders are very human, with their collarbone instead connecting to the top of their plastron rather than a sternum (flat bone in the middle of the ribs) with the addition of their shoulder blades resting much lower than a humans and protecting the open space in the armpit of their shell (rather than being set on their back under their carapace). Their necks can stretch slightly longer than a humans and have some extra mobility, on account of how they usually sit curved and tucked into their shoulders. Their pelvises and lumbar vertebrae (hips and lower back) are not fused to their shell to enable them to twist their torsos some.

As for how flexible the show depicts their shells to be… suspension of disbelief! I like to keep the idea of their shells being turtle like, so even though they’re all bone, I’ll allow cartoon physics to bend them some.

Additional info on Raph: The spikes on his shell are mostly bone. Also (something I didn’t draw because it was only after I finished this that I was able to find a picture of an alligator snapper shell bone without its scutes) there are small gaps between his pleural bone plates (middle of shell) and his peripheral bone plates (edges of shell). The scar on his shell is probably from a bone deep injury, as broken scutes shed away, but because scars don’t grow with a person, the injury is small enough that it probably happened so long ago that Raph can’t even remember it.

This is all just my speculation, so feel free to disagree or expand upon these ideas!

[General][Donnie][Leo][Mikey][Splinter]

[pokemonblack3white3]

Do you guys think Archie and Maxie and Cyrus and N and Guzma and Volo were anything like Penny when they were her age. Do you think they were anything like Kieran. Do you think they were anything like Bede. Do you think they were anything like Lillie. Do you think they were anything like Gladion. Do you think they were anything like Hugh. Do you think they were anything like Silver. Do y

[magnetothemagnificent]

Just had a shower idea about an alternative history where the Second Beit HaMikdash is still around in modern times....

-The field of dermatology is dominated by Cohanim because they're the only ones who can diagnose tzara'at and they want to be as educated as possible

-Airlines that fly to Israel are built to have livestock storage for people bringing korbanot

-Pigeons never became feral en masse, at least in Israel and in areas with a high population density of Jews, because dove-keeping stayed extremely prevalent due to their use in korbanot

-Price caps were enacted on transportation to and from Israel during the pilgrimage seasons

-The astronomical observatories in Israel are considered sacred sites because of their usage in determining the months.

-The old method of fires on high points to announce the new month is still used in Israel and some nearby regions because of tradition, but once Jews became established further and further across the globe, a communication center was established in the Temple compound. At first, it used messenger pigeons, horseback runners, and ships. It was upgraded once the telegram was invented, then again when audio radios were invented, again when telephones were invented, again when television was invented, and again when the Internet was invented.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Forgot to post these yesterday here! Our first two constructed ecosystems are coming together for the #LemuriaChallenge. We started yesterday with the coral reefs...

And continued today with the rudist reefs...

Afterwards we laid the foundation for the carbonate platform reef which will be finished today. Also on the menu later tonight: coasts!

We have over 950 entries with several thousand species to choose from, so this will be a lot of work

We continue with these around 9 PM CET

[chronurgy]

Gortash designs and builds mechanisms so I imagine he has to be able to sketch fairly decently in order to sketch his projects and designs. And I'm imagining a pile of charcoal sketches of Durge, done over their entire acquaintance, starting out with sketches of them in battle and then slowly becoming more detailed and intimate and as they do, the titles changing from things like "The Bhaalspawn" and "Bhaal's Chosen at Their Bloody Work" to "The Chosen in Contemplation" and finally just Durge's name

[spineless-lobster]

Since we technically have no idea who homer actually was I’m gonna be the first to speculate that he was actually a teenage girl who wrote fanfiction, none of you can disprove this btw

[variousqueerthings]

reading a book rn called "the other olympians" and lemme tell you, i knew that women's sport was segregated because of misogyny and i knew there was always a fear of women being "too masculine" by participating in sports and that this was wrapped up in intersexism and racism but. the extent. to which this was embedded from the olympics earliest days (that is, utterly and completely).

trust that the issue has never been and never will be a trans woman who's good at swimming, or shotput, or running, or anything else, she's a handy dandy scapegoat. it's always been about diminishing women's capabilities and access by denying women who are too good at sport the right to be a woman in the first place. because a woman who is too good at anything has lost the right to be a woman. and by that i mean she's lost the right to be a human being.

[wisteria-lodge]

I've seen a theory floating around that the Fantastic Beasts film was repurposed from a scrapped Doctor Who movie script and I was curious for your take.

In the early 2010s, there were plans for a Doctor Who film to expand the franchise, offering a fresh entry point new fans with focuse on courting an American audience. David Yates was in talks to direct or produce, and the Eleventh Doctor’s planned encounter with the Master was saved for the movie. However, the project fell apart due to Matt Smith’s early departure, Steven Moffat’s workload (Doctor Who, Sherlock, & Tintin), and declining interest from the BBC. Instead, Doctor Who marked its 50th anniversary with a feature-length special.

Enter Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Despite being credited as the sole writer, J.K. Rowling had no screenwriting experience. At the time, she was focused on her detective novels, while Yates played a major role in Fantastic Beasts’ unusually fast development. The film’s protagonist—a quirky, pacifist British traveler with a bigger-on-the-inside case, a love for strange creatures, and two companions—closely resembles Doctor Who. The villain even has a transformed face.

It seems likely that Yates repurposed the abandoned Doctor Who script, handing it to Rowling to rework as a Harry Potter spinoff. While the first Fantastic Beasts had some structure, the sequels—written solely by Rowling—were poorly received, probably due to her lack of screenwriting experience.

Obviously there is no way to know for sure, but this theory honestly holds up for me. The dates line up. The studio politics line up. David Yates is there both times. According to Karen Gillian, Johnny Depp was attached to the Doctor Who movie - and if he *stayed* attached as it was retooled into Fantastic Beasts, that would help explain what is easily the most baffling casting decision in the whole franchise. Even people who liked Fantastic Beasts thought Johnny Depp was a bizarre Grindelwald. It is so obviously a role that wants a Colin Farrell or a Mads Mikkelsen.

Jacob is also SUCH a Doctor Who companion - normal guy, dead end job, swept away into magical adventures. He's really not a very JKR-ish character because... well... she doesn't write sympathetic muggles. Her muggle characters are villains, ridiculous (or both.) Or else exist totally off-page. Her most sympathetic muggle character is probably Frank Bryce - who is bad tempered, crotchety, and not very interesting. This is honestly kind of a structural problem: if your villain's main point is "wizards are better than muggles," I think you'd want to prove him wrong by writing muggle characters who don't suck.

But Doctor Who loves a normie protagonist who teaches the Doctor an important lesson about community, or responsibility, or love. That is 100% Jacob. There are also elements of Fantastic Beasts 1 that feel... pretty tonally off for a Harry Potter movie? I'm thinking specifically of the Death Cell execution room. That whole scene - the way it's designed and shot - it's all extremely horror movie. That's fine for Doctor Who, which has always had horror DNA. But Harry Potter doesn't. It also doesn't really make sense as a sanctioned government execution room, it makes sense as the sort of creepy, uncanny trap the Master would put the Doctor in. If Universal developed cool/expensive assets for Doctor Who, I think it's totally possible that they would be motivated to recycle them into Fantastic Beasts.

It also explains why Fantastic Beasts 2 (which would have been JKR's original work) immediately un-does a lot of the plot elements from Fantastic Beasts 1. The bittersweet moment of Jacob losing the memories of his adventure, but keeping his unlocked creativity and hope, that's such a Doctor Who ending. So is that moral-quandary moment of 'is there a way to stop this monster, who is both an danger to others and an innocent, without destroying it.' But in Fantastic Beasts 2, within the first ten minutes Jacob has his memory back and we hear that Credence is fine. Also... Jacob gets a wand in Fantastic Beasts 3. And it's not a "real wand" or whatever... but like, if the series continued, it was going to do something. (Because JKR doesn't like writing muggle protagonists.)

I will also say that in Fantastic Beasts 1 - information is delivered visually, film language is better understood, it has a good sense of its own scope. It's a filmmaker's movie, while Fantastic Beasts 2 is a writer's movie. It's got a million characters, tons of scenes of characters in a room or hallway just *talking* to each other (which is less interesting to watch than it is to read.) Important plot beats are delivered through monologs or extended flashback sequences. The pacing is much, much worse. The action sequences are much more confusing.

Okay. Fantastic Beats 1 could have been made out of assets originally developed for Doctor Who, and by some of the same creative team. Yeah. I see it.

[happyia]

Worldbuilding? Wrong, Worlddestruction.

Exploring concept of needless destruction that happened before current time of Axolotl Afterparty setting. It's still a work in progress, but history is a theme I want to explore. The three nations are currently at peace with each other.

Some clarification rambling: Post Dragon Planet explosion, Catfolk, Birdfolk and Anguine lost part of access to their magic abilities (part of self?), they can still cast spells and such, just not specific ones that were important parts to their identities. Example: Catfolk lost ability to shapeshift

This specific medallion pictured has a bird on top to symbolize Phoenix King's prowess in war.

[iamthekaijuking]

A lot of people came together for this episode and it turned out great!

I talked with UHC about the two a few times during the development of this video and even proofread the script, mostly because cephalopods are one of my three favorite animal groups so I was pretty excited for this video.

Nu Udra has become one of my favorite monsters and as soon as a figure for it hits the shelves I’m buying it. It’s such a pleasant giant octopus and I find it and the babies cute and I want them as pets.

Xu Wu is definitely an interesting one, and I brought up the possible brittlestar behavior comparison. Overall it’s such a fascinating creature with a lot of personality, and I love toothy nightmare mouths. I also think its weapons being named after famous assassins is super cool, although I for one think it was a bit cowardly of Capcom to not name a Xu Large Bow Gun after JFK’s assassin (and a bit disappointing we don’t live in a timeline where assassination of an orange happened and we got a weapon named after that).

I’ve talked about how Xu Wu might not actually be a cephalopod, and now that we have access to some of the model we now know for certain it doesn’t have a beak or a siphon, so definitely lends more credence to that idea.

I suggested the thumbnail title just be SQUID GAMES in bold letters

[starleska]

so many televisions...but who is Tenna, and who is Mike?! here's what we know (with some speculation) 📺

from left-to-right, we have all of the television sets which seem relevant to Deltarune Chapter 3. these are: 📺 the leaked border image graphic of a snail-like TV-headed character likely from Deltarune Chapter 3 📺 Toriel's television set crossed out by Spamton in a hidden gif on deltarune.com, with the url d_a_m_n_y_o_u_t_e_n_n_a 📺 Toriel's television set in the daytime during Deltarune Chapter 2 📺 Toriel's television set during the night-time after everyone has fallen asleep at the end of Deltarune Chapter 2 📺 Toriel's television set after Kris creates a Dark Fountain and is swallowed by it at the end of Deltarune Chapter 2 there are two (presumed) upcoming characters in Deltarune who could be any of these televisions: Mike and Tenna.

Mike is a character referenced by Spamton NEO, and from his dialogue lines, it seems that Mike may have been Spamton's friend or recorded for him in the past. creation-wise, Mike is probably a reference to this Big Shot soda commercial from 1997 starring Mike Ditka, presumed by many to have partly inspired Spamton and his 'BIG SHOT' catchphrase/theme. we can also see a hidden reference to Mike on the d_a_m_n_y_o_u_t_e_n_n_a page: if you press ctrl+f and type 'Mike', or simply highlight all the text on the screen, you should see it at the bottom of Spamton's rant. Tenna is another character referenced by Spamton, but with a great deal more wrath. it's clear from the above page that Spamton despises Tenna, calling him a '[Boob tube]' and saying that everything is his fault. as we know that the next chapter is going to have a television-themed antagonist, we assume that 'Tenna' is a play on a 'television antenna', and 'Mike' is a play on 'microphone'. in Deltarune Chapter 2, Spamton gives you several interesting bits of dialogue while in his shop, starting with:

the 'easel' in question is most likely Swatch, who describes Spamton as having been a regular at the Colour Cafe and highly valued. adding to the intrigue, 'CRTs' stands for 'Cathode-Ray Tubes': an older type of television/computer monitor display that was prominent before LCD and plasma screens. now if Spamton has negative feelings towards CRTs, he has negative feelings towards televisions...and the most likely candidate for being a television is (ann)Tenna, not Mike 👀

we have a few little extra bits corroborating Tenna as the television-headed character's identity. after you defeat Spamton NEO and return to the Trash Zone, you can talk to the Addisons who give us more background on Spamton's past as a 'big shot'. they mention how he was always bragging about TV deals, and when he was evicted, Spamton left a phone hanging off the receiver...but all that could be heard was 'garbage noise'. many fans have attributed 'garbage noise' to Gaster...but i believe it could actually refer to the sound of television static, which we see playing in Spamton's eyes when he remembers Mike. based on this reaction, it's a fair guess that Tenna hurt Mike in some way. okay, so if Tenna is the big bad and not Mike...and the big bad is the TV-head...what's up with the differing appearances between the snail-eyed figure and the larger TV-head? take a look at the snail guy...and then look at Spamton and the Addisons. they share a few features, don't they? especially the long nose and pointed mouth! it's implied that Spamton and the Addisons are the same 'species', with Spamton being a variation who perhaps deteriorated over time. i believe that the snail guy is Tenna, but a different version of him. we haven't seen a full view of what the larger, purple TV-head looks like, but as a television, who's to say he isn't capable of 'possessing' multiple forms? if he is still partially stuck in Spamton's head in the form of 'garbage noise', wouldn't it be interesting if Tenna moved from one, more Addison-like form, to another, larger, more powerful one? many real-world objects have larger-than-life applications in the Dark World, and i think Tenna will have more than one form, and can likely move between screens, or even people. that's why Spamton specifically has Toriel's television crossed out. and of course, the final, silly bit of evidence that we have: both snails and televisions have (an)Tenna(e), don't they? 😉

[o-craven-canto]

Filters in the way of technologically advanced life in the universe and how likely I think they are

1. Abiogenesis (4.4-3-8 billion years ago): Total mystery. The fact that it happened so quickly on Earth (possibly as soon as there was abundant liquid water) is a tiny bit of evidence for it being easy. Amino acids and polycyclic hydrocarbons are very common in space, but nucleotides aren't, and all hypothetic models I've seen require very specific conditions and a precise sequence of steps. (It would be funny if the dozen different mechanisms proposed for abiogenesis were all happening independently somewhere.)

2. Oxygenic photosynthesis (3.5 billion years ago) (to fuel abundant biomass, and provide oxygen or some other oxidizer for fast metabolism): Not so sure. Photosynthesis is just good business sense -- sunlight is right there -- and appeared several times among bacteria. But the specific type of ultra-energetic photosynthesis that cracks water and releases oxygen appeared only once, in Cyanobacteria. That required merging two different photosynthetic apparati in a rather complex way; and all later adoptions of oxygenic photosynthesis involved incorporating Cyanobacteria by endosymbiosis. For all that it's so useful, I don't know if I'd expect to see it on every living planet.

3. Eukaryotic cell (2.4 billion years ago?): Probably the narrowest bottleneck on the list. Segregated mitochondria with their own genes and a nucleus protecting the main genome are extremely useful both for energy production (decentralized control to maximize production without overloading) and for genetic storage (less DNA damage due to reactive metabolic waste). But there's a chicken-and-egg problem in which incorporating mitochondria to make energy requires an adjustable cytoskeleton, but that consumes so much energy it would require mitochondria already in place. Current models have found solutions that involve a very specific series of events. Or maybe not? Metabolic symbiosis, per se, is common, and there may have been other ways to gene-energy segregation. Besides, after the origin of eukaryotes, endosymbiosis occurred at least nine more times, and even some bacteria can incorporate smaller cells.

4. Sexual reproduction (by 1.2 billion years ago): Without meiotic sex (combining mutations from different lineages, decoupling useful traits from harmful ones, translating a gene in multiple way), the evolution of complex beings is going to be painfully slow. Bacteria already swap genes to an extent, and sexual recombination is bundled in with the origin of eukaryotes so I probably shouldn't count it separately (meiosis is just as energy-intensive as any other use of the cytoskeleton). Once you have recombination, life cycles with spores or gametes and sex differentiation probably follow almost inevitably.

5. Multicellularity (800 million years ago?): Quite common, actually. Happens all the time among eukaryotes, and once in a very limited form even among bacteria. Now we'd want complex organized bodies with geometry-defining genes, but even that happened thrice: in plants, fungi, and animals. As far as I know, various groups of yeasts are the only regressions to unicellularity.

6. Brains and sense organs (600 million years ago): Nerve cells arose either once or twice, depending on whether Ctenophora (comb-jellies) and Eumetazoa (all other animals except sponges) form a single clade or not. Some form of cellular sensing and communication is universal in life, though, so a tissue specialized for signal transmission is probably near inevitable once you have multicellular organisms whose lifestyle depends on moving and interacting with the environment. Sense organs that work at a distance are also needed, but image-forming eyes evolved in six phyla, so no danger there (and there's so many other potential forms of communication!). Just to be safe, you'll also want muscles and maybe mineralized skeletons on the list, but I don't think either is particularly problematic. An articulated skeleton is probably better than a rigid shell, but we still have multiple examples of that (polyplacophorans, brittle stars, arthropods, vertebrates).

7. Life on land (400 million years ago): (Adding this because air has a lot more oxygen to fuel brains than water (the most intelligent aquatic beings are air-breathers), and technology in water has the issue of fire.) You're going to need a waterproof integument, some kind of rigid support system, and kidneys to regulate water balance. Plenty of animal lineages moved on land: vertebrates, insects, millipedes, spiders, scorpions, multiple types of crabs, snails, earthworms, etc. Note that most of those are arthropods: this step seems to favor exoskeletons, which help a great deal in retaining water. Of course this depends on plants getting on land first, which on Earth happened only once, and required the invention of spores and cuticles. (Actually there are polar environments where all photosynthesis occurs in water, but they are recently settled and hardly the most productive.)

8. Human-like intelligence (a few million years ago?): There seems to a be a general trend in which the max intelligence attainable by animals on Earth has increased over time. There's quite a lot of animals today that approach or rival apes in intelligence: elephants, toothed cetaceans, various carnivorans, corvids, parrots, octopodes, and there's even intriguing data about jumping spiders. Birds seem to have developed neocortex-like brain structures independently. Of course humans got much farther, but the fact that even other human species are gone suggests that a planet is not big enough for more than one sophont, so the uniqueness of humans might not necessarily imply low probability. (We seem to exist about halfway through the habitability span of Earth land, FWIW.) The evolution of sociality should probably be lumped here: we'll want a species that can teach skills to its offspring and cooperate on tasks. But sociality is also a common and useful adaptation: many species on our list (octopodes are a glaring exception) are intensely social and care for their offspring. I mentioned above that the land-step favors exoskeletal beings, which in turns favors small size; but the size ranges of large land arthropods and very intelligent birds overlap, so that's not disqualifying.

9. Agriculture and urban civilization (11,000 years ago): Agriculture arrived quite late in the history of our species, but when it arrived -- i.e. at the end of the Wurm glaciation -- it arrived independently in four to eight different places around the world, in different biogeographic realms and climates, so I must assume that at least some climate regimes are great for it (glacial cycles are a minority of Earth's history; but did agriculture need to come after glaciations? Maybe a shock of seasonality did the trick). And once you have agriculture, complex urbanized societies follow most of the time, just a few millennia later. Even writing arose at least three times (Near East, China, and Mexico), and then spread quickly.

10. Scientific method and industrialization (300 years ago): We're getting too far from my expertise here, but whatever. The Eurasian Axial Age suggests that all civilizations with a certain degree of wealth, literacy, and interconnection will spawn a variety of philosophies. Philosophical schools that focus on material causes and effects like the Ionians or Charvaka have appeared sometimes, but often didn't win over more supernaturalist schools. Perhaps in pre-industrial times pure materialism isn't as useful! You may need to thread a needle between interconnected enough to exchange and combine ideas, and also decentralized enough that the intellectual elite can't quash heterodoxy. As for industrialization, that too happened only once, though that's another case in which the first achiever would snuff out any other. I hear Song China is a popular contender for alternative Industrial Revolutions (with coal-powered steelworks!); Imperial Rome and the Abbasid Caliphate are less convincing ones. For whatever reason, it didn't take until 18th century Britain.

11. Not dying randomly along the way: Mass extinctions killing off a majority of species happened over and over -- the Permian Great Dying, the Chicxulub impact, the early Oxygen Crisis -- but life has always rebounded fairly quickly and effectively. It's hard enough to sterilize an agar plate, let alone a planet. Disasters on this scale are also unlikely to happen in the lifespan of planet-bound civilizations, unless of course the civilizations are causing them. A civilization might still face catastrophic climate change, mega-pandemics, and nuclear war, not to mention lesser setbacks like culture-wide stagnation or collapse, and I couldn't begin to estimate how common, or ruinous, they would actually be.

****

I have no idea how common the origin of life is, but the vast majority of planets with life will only have bacterial mats and stromatolites. Of the tiny sliver that evolved complex cells, a good chunk will have their equivalents of plants and animals, most of which may have intelligent life at least on primate- or cetacean-level at some later point. At any given time, a tiny fraction of those will have agricultural civilizations, at an even tinier fraction of that will have post-industrial science and technology. Let's say maybe 1 planet with industrial technology out of 100 with agriculture, 100,000 with hominid-level intelligence, 10 million with animal-like organisms, 100 millions with complex cells, and 10 billions with life at all?

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

It’s hilarious how Vaggie made herself a ‘sinner’.

How that linked her up with Charlie is such a weird, round about truthful way, even when she was lying by omission about it.

And how amazingly dumb it all makes Adam and Lute look.

Thousands of helpless souls killed by her, but she didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ until she wondered if what she was doing was right. The divine powers in her life only took her wings and condemned her to hell after she doubted their orders, their idea of justice, and quietly chose not to completely follow them.

“You fucked up” they tell her “your mistake” she “left the band” “tried for a solo career". It’s so pathetic. They're so butthurt over the idea of one of their own having a mind of her own.

It’s also so funny, because they spin her simple act of whispering “Go, run. Now!” to demon kid she’d been holding at spear point like it was big defiant move- which makes it into one- even though she never challenged them openly, or threatened them.

Hell, Lute’s “You always were weak” plus exorcist Vaggie always frowning while her murder sisters all grin with glee as they kill sinners- it paints a picture of Vaggie never having been as into exterminations as she ‘should’ have been. Too weak to be a proper exorcist no matter how good at killing she was, not just “the traitor” but also “the failure”.

And she was scared of that. She didn’t want anyone seeing her spare that child, whispered her words to them in a back alley, out of sight.

She was scared of what would happen and didn’t even fight it when Lute took her eye and wings- she was scared and no threat in any tangible way, but apparently refusing to do one single murder is enough to freak Adam and Lute the fuck out.

One woman. Doesn’t do exactly what she’s told. After who knows how many decades of being one of the “top girls” at murder, a “bad bitch” named after “the best thing ever”, and they still get spooked by that tiny moment when she wasn’t under their total control. Like it's such a betrayal to them, her daring to so much as think this level of violence isn’t justified actually, and for a split second act on that thought.

It’s an instant ticket to ousting her from the exorcists AND from heaven, while they fly the fuck off again.

“If angels can do whatever, and remain in the sky-”

and they do. After doing that to one of their own. They did that, to someone who was supposedly meant to be in heaven. They didn’t wait for divine justice- took it, and her eye, and her wings, and her halo, into their own hands and tore them away from her. Then happily, they spend the next three years up in heaven, slurping smoothies and doing more murder sprees.

until Vaggie comes strolling back with the princess of hell, there supporting her girlfriend and the idea that all the shit she did for so long really was and IS wrong.

oh and Adam and Lute are pisssssssed about it. They take her being there PERSONALLY, wanna solve it with VIOLENCE

She hurts them without even trying. Without even noticing they're there.

They're told to fix the princess of hell situation and they have no concept of forgiveness, of caring about sinners, so they guess (rightly) that Vaggie hasn't told Charlie about her past and bet (wrongly) that Charlie would never forgive her if she knew, and also assumed (rightly) that Vaggie would be terrified of that

But they don't get that she's scared of hurting Charlie. Of Charlie being hurt by her. It's a selfless thing. That's her whole PROBLEM.

Her running to hold Charlie after the reveal- her NOT breaking down when Charlie takes alone time in the aftermath, respecting that right up until she thinks Charlie's actively in danger- afraid FOR Charlie when the deal with Alastor is made, no crumbling that Charlie went to someone else for help, when being helpful to Charlie is basically her raison d'étre- agreeing to go alone to an overlord, after learning she can DIE and THIS OVERLORD knows how to do it- all this for the sake of Charlie's dream, their shared goal, their hotel. Their friends, resigned to despair in the hotel lobby, losing hope and maybe hours away from losing their lives

No shit she was never going to bow down to the blackmail?? It'd be like turning herself inside out. Charlie isn't just some "little hottie" or whatever, they're partners. They're in this together. Even when Charlie out loud doubts if that's true, it still is.

Lute and Adam don't GET what it means, that Charlie assumed Vaggie was a sinner already. That the thing she'd be hurt about was the lying, not the murder. She was scared of not really being loved by Vaggie- of everything else wonderful between them being a lie too, all that support and faith empty empty- she wasn't afraid of loving Vaggie, whoever Vaggie had been, she was afraid of who Vaggie might be now and that she'd never really believed in Charlie at all.

Charlie was angry at the thought that Vaggie didn't think she would've accepted her. The idea of not really being understood or trusted by Vaggie, that's what hurt.

And it goes against everything Lute and Adam are, Charlie actually caring about sinners while knowing what they've done- about an exorcist after finding out who they'd been- really trusting that people can change. Lute and Adam hear her say it and see her stand up for it and they just want her to shut up and die

again though, no shit she was going to stick with Vaggie after the truth came out, in the end. Once she had a moment to take a breath and step out of her head long enough for a reality check

Vaggie didn’t say to Charlie what she'd done or who she'd been. But she’s been and keeps doing what she can to follow that idea, unvoiced, from that day when she couldn’t kill a sinner- something Charlie didn't know about but now knows must have happened- A final death means no second chance and no worth as a person, but Vaggie didn’t think that, even before meeting Charlie she didn't think that.

She's always been on Charlie's side. They were on the same side before they ever set eyes on each other. All this time, for three whole years, and now she's off to go find a way to protect everything they've built together.

"-words are cheap, but actions, they speak the truth"

Charlie never really stopped trusting her. Maybe she wondered if she should, but even then, she had Vaggie go to Carmilla to find the key that might save them all.

"She killed an exorcist in the last extermination. She knows how they can be harmed."

"But… I- I didn't even know that was possible."

"If you did, would you have told me?"

So Charlie asked. A pretty painful thing to say- and she said it even as she sent an angel to go find out a way to hurt other angels.

She DID trust that Vaggie WOULD tell her.

The irony of all this happening thanks to Adam and Lute trying to keep it from happening, and all of it leading up to Vaggie getting back part of what they took from her, because now she doesn't need them or heaven to be an angel anymore.

Charlie has faith in her. Enough to send her off on an important mission even after Vaggie hurt her- and send her right to the person who end up helping Vaggie get back her wings.

“The rules are shades of gray when you don’t do as you say”

Vaggie’s new fucking wings are gray when Lute sees them. When Vaggie’s standing over her, sparing her life, her wings and that one, fucking unexplained stripe separating her from the other exorcists, all of it is GRAY.

That visual gut punch of, you’re. Fucking. Wrong. You’re wrong about sinners, you’re wrong about supposedly protecting heaven, you’re wrong thinking you can just DO this shit. That imagery of an angel who DIDN’T stay in the sky because she DIDN’T think being angel meant everything she did had to be right- who’s here in hell, trying to protect sinners from heaven’s slaughter-

And Lute wanted Vaggie to “correct” HER “mistake”? Vaggie’s???

That’s Lute, admitting that people in hell can get second chances and make up for what they did. Admitting that “Sinful filth” like Vaggie can be redeemed in some way, by following Lute’s version of what’s right.

But wasn’t her and Adam’s whole thing the idea of blowing your shot? Getting no other chance after it?  

Oh yeah. Vaggie doesn’t believe that though. Not for sinners like her, not for angels like her.

She let’s Lute live. She does it to make Lute suffer, but there are a lot of ways to make someone suffer- an eye for an eye for example- and Vaggie chooses the one that doesn’t hurt Lute more than it has to, that leaves her alive, and leaves Lute’s suffering to be something completely of Lute’s own making (a HELL of Lute's own making, if you will) (Lute choosing to tear her OWN arm off to continue the fight-).

She's totally dismissive of the woman who was just going after her remaining eye like a dog after a bone.

Why is it that nothing Adam and Lute to do her matters?

Why don’t THEY matter to her at all?

Walking right past them, being so done with them up in heaven, not caving to the blackmail, only being worried about Charlie afterwards, not letting that crack in their relationship stop her from doing what she can for their hotel, Lute threatening to take her other eye and BLIND her just making her snark- even the vague threat to Charlie only gives Vaggie the oomf she needed to defend herself.

“Pathetic” she calls Lute. She’s right- they’re so pathetic, both them, Adam and Lute. They’re so scared of being wrong. So pissy over the idea of being less than great and perfect.

It breaks them. Adam’s last words are him having a meltdown in the face of not actually being hot shit. Where’s his respect, he wails, they should all be worshiping him! But they’re not. One of his random decedents stabs him to death because he would’ve done the same to her, and one of the last things he hears is Vaggie- the fuck up, the traitor, his former grumpy top girl Vagina- whooping with glee as he dies.

And Lute lives knowing that could’ve been her, too.

If it wasn't for Vaggie.

Being not all that didn’t break Vaggie. Finding out she was wrong got her to stop and think and change, not run straight on blindly into a fight that ends up with her (with HIM) dead.

Why does she go from terrified of Lute and Adam, to dismissive and annoyed and just all around not caring about them at all?

They gave up all her respect for them when they demanded the death of a child.

The father of humanity wanted a child killed. A helpless, whimpering kid, sacrificed to his ego and bruised pride, and for shits and giggles. His first lieutenant saw failing to do so as a sin worthy of hell. All this over a child. How could she ever take them seriously after that.  

She came down from high and chased the child and held a blade over them on divine command.

Then, somehow, she saw the HORNS in her own shadow above them- even though she wasn’t WEARING her MASK, and she stopped.

She was her own messenger angel.

She chose to give the child mercy, and became the sacrifice herself.

Vaggie stuck it to the man. Didn’t steal that life. And, terrified of what would happen to her next, acted selflessly. The same thing that got her left behind in hell should have earned her place in heaven, according to Adam-

heaven was shit to her though. Made her into a soldier. Sent her to kill and kill and kill. Taught her trust on the battlefield- in heaven, of all fucking places-

Timeline wise we see her very first smile when she meets Charlie. When a stranger does- again- the bare minimum for someone else.

When she’s back up in heaven later she isn’t wistful, just angry, uncomfortable, annoyed. She isn’t happy there. It’s not home to her, like her and Charlie’s room back at the hotel is. Why should it be? What good did she ever find in herself up there?

Down here though, she's happy. Hell is where her heaven started. So I guess in the end, she did find what she’d earned after all. Or it, Charlie, found her.

When “The rules are shades of gray…”

Sometimes they’re wrong, and you have to break them.  

People like Lute and Adam would rather crack under the pressure and die instead, but not Vaggie. They're out for blood. She's out for love.

Sucks to be them~

[heartless-aro]

Forever thinking about how Haven for the Human Amoeba (HHA) user maxnova100, who was the first known person to use the word “aromantic” as we use it today, described themself as “not quite asexual” and “not so much asexual” in the very same post where they coined the word aromantic. Forever thinking about how non-ace aros are and always have been cornerstones of our community