#superpower: foresight

[littlemissredheadauthoress]

hwang insu has been best friends with min gansukh for as long as he can remember—they went to school together, played in the backyard, were trained by her legendary crime boss father to fight and use their abilities after min’s mother was killed… anyway. the point is, insu stuck by her side while she supported her older sister in becoming the new head of the crime family when their father decided to retire, and when min decided to leave the world of organized crime and go to university, insu followed her there too. except min’s sense of justice has always been more powerful than his own, as well as her ability to pick up strange strangers and turn them into powerful friends and allies. and so, when min decides to “cleanse the streets” the way her father and mother had once done, insu does what he always has: he follows and supports her in whatever way she needs. and if he happens to develop a massive crush on one of min’s new friends who’s sense of justice is right up there with hers, well, thats no one’s business but insu’s own.

[chaotic-would-you-rathers]

Would you rather...

A: Have the Ability to instinctivley see up to 1 minute into the future when something you would consider bad or important will happen (and then be able to changet hat future) B: Be able to instantly teleport to any unnocupied space within one metre on a 45 second cooldown (you can change the direction you are facing) C: Be able to quantum tunnel at will for up to 1 minute of your choosing every 24 hours D: Be able to levitate at a speed of 1mph up or down, but only vertically and not horizontally for up to 1 hour of every 24

[cloama]

You can tell the plan is to fill prisons with dissenters which is even easier than picking people up on drug charges bc you don't have to plant anything.

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Hot take maybe but I think Bertie would be FAR more likely to survive the first two months of Dracula than Jeeves would be. Bertie has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Jeeves consistently underestimates how dangerous a situation might get (Steeple Bumpleigh, the club book) because he’s overconfident about his level of control over any given situation. He'd handle Dracula masterfully if they faced off in England, but on Dracula's home turf? Much more doubtful.

I realize this might be a tough sell, so I will explain further (or it's not a tough sell, and I'm going to explain further because I want to). (criteria taken from @canyourfavesurvivecastledracula) Without further ado.

Would Jeeves and Wooster survive Castle Dracula?

Jeeves

Jeeves' survival will depend on how long Dracula finds him more entertaining than irritating. On that basis, I don't think he's long for this world. On the one hand, he has a huge wealth of knowledge about English society and culture that he can recite perfectly from memory. That should buy him at least a little time with noted teaboo Dracula.

On the other hand, he would be absolutely no fun as a vampire plaything. Jeeves cannot be got. Sneaking up on him while he's shaving will yield zero reaction (though that's at least good for his short-term survival--given that, although he DID take the crucifix from the old woman out of politeness, he certainly isn't going to wear it. The rules of fashion don't go out the window just because you're in a spooky castle). Then, although managing the whims of rich jerks is not an insignificant part of a valet's job, Jeeves usually does this by bending his employers to his will. Dracula is not the sort of employer this will work on. It'll just add insult to injury when on top of being impossible to scare, NOW Jeeves is telling Dracula that his favorite cloak is several centuries out of fashion and he's not allowed to wear it anymore.

Jeeves will 100% go exploring in the areas he was told not to go-- though to be fair, he MIGHT actually get away with this, what with his superpower of appearing in rooms without being seen or heard. Said superpower might save him from the brides as well (though this is by no means guaranteed). Since I find it doubtful that Dracula would come to rescue his annoying ass, not being noticed is his best defense.

There are a couple other things working in Jeeves's favor; the question is just whether they'll be enough to save him.

He DOES know shorthand, and could try to send coded letters. He might even have the foresight to squirrel away some extra stationary where Dracula can't find it. But could he get them posted? Would it even do him any good?

He certainly has enough cultural literacy to figure out what his new boss is pretty quickly. If he didn't chuck the crucifix out the carriage window, he might start carrying it around in his pocket.

Psychology of the individual, sure, but the individual in question is a 400-year-old vampire who lives in an isolated castle in a foreign country and is regarded as a terrifying mythological figure in the surrounding villages. Jeeves has never come up against anything this alien before, he's cut off from his normal resources, and opportunities to play people against each other are limited.

He probably has enough upper body strength from all that shrimping and fishing to climb the wall, so he COULD escape if he wanted to, if he survived long enough. It's just, again, that overconfidence, and also Dracula has a vast library full of rare old books that are entirely at his disposal. He's keeping his eyes and ears alert for potential escape strategies, of course, but I don't see him being as desperate to get out as Jonathan was.

There are just a lot of "depends on"s here, and I'm not convinced that luck would shake out in Jeeves's favor, all things considered.

Bertie

Bertie is so perfect for the job of Castle Dracula Prisoner it's like it was made for him. Think about it. Being held against his will in big manor houses comes more naturally to him than breathing. He's afraid of things that are scary. A lifetime of dealing with Aunt Agatha has made him the world's preeminent expert in "curl[ing] up in a ball in the hope that a meek subservience [will] enable [him] to get off lightly." He will NEVER go exploring in places he's been warned away from if nobody is forcing him to (Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's office notwithstanding. There were biscuits in there). He's both fun to talk to and easy to toy with (and extremely English). A+ prisoner. Dracula adores him.

In my opinion, Bertie is at Castle Dracula either because Aunt Agatha got some wires seriously crossed and thinks he’s going to meet an eligible potential bride (I mean, there are certainly brides there), or because Dracula has something Aunt Dahlia wants him to steal (far less likely, given that one of Dracula’s THINGS is famously not owning anything silver). Either way, he's shown himself entirely willing and able to escape down drainpipes if a sitch gets too scaly.

He DOES take the crucifix, and DOES wear it (which is what will save him during the shaving scene, because you KNOW he's going to jump a foot and cut himself like the dickens). He's read enough supernatural goosefleshers to be genre savvy about terrified old women cryptically pushing crucifixes into one's hands. I also think his sunny disposish endeared him to the villagers, and they were particularly vehement about urging him not to go. He doesn't speak German or Romanian, but he's empathetic enough to recognize Pure Terror. So by the time he actually gets to the castle, his imagination is already running wild and he's plenty aware that he is in imminent danger.

I think the biggest risk to Bertie will be the brides; whether or not he's susceptible to trances, if he thinks they're trying to marry him, it's against the code of the Woosters to turn them down. But that only becomes an issue if he comes face to face with them, which, luckily, I think is unlikely on account of the aforementioned "won't go exploring" (and if he did, Dracula would definitely rescue him).

I'm inclined to say due to his drainpipe-escape habits that he WOULD be able to climb the wall and MAY attempt to sneak into Dracula's room to look for the keys if his desperation grows to outweigh his fear. Whether he does or not, though, he does NOT have the stomach to attempt shovel murder, and therefore won't get magic brain fever, and may very well simply walk out the front doors when the people come to take the boxes away. OR he climbs his way out like Jonathan did. Either way.

When Bertie tells this story at the Drones later, Tuppy will say that no doubt it's been greatly exaggerated and all that probably happened was that he spent a couple months in an oldish house entertaining a weird loner.

[ifourloveisdead]

It was actually Adam that said that, and I know this because I just literally read just the TAYF liner notes tonight.

It was me

[practically-an-x-man]

Fifty Superhero-Inspired Whump Prompts

Couldn't find a lot of whump prompts I liked, so I decided to compile a few of my own! Here's a jumbo list of prompts for superheroes and enhanced characters:

Powers Stripped Away (permanent)

Powers Blocked/Forgotten (temporary)

Powers Enhanced/Too Much Power

Powers Out of Whack

New and Unwanted Powers

No Longer Human

Healing Incorrectly/Healing Around Embedded Object

Allowed to Heal... Just Enough to Survive

Loss of Healing Factor (first time healing at a normal pace)

Anesthesia/Painkillers Burned Off Too Quickly

Awake Through Surgery

Forced to Watch Loved Ones/Sidekicks Injured

Confronted with their Weakness/Kryptonite

Betraying their No-Kill Rule

Put Under Hypnosis/Mind Control

Coming Out of Hypnosis/Consequences of Hypnotized Actions

Telepathic Torture (it's all in their head)

Forced to Relive Trauma/Memories/Nightmares

Forced to Defeat/Kill a Former Ally

Downfall into a Supervillain

Chronic Pain from a Lifetime of Hero Work

Deemed a Villain/Public Scrutiny

Wrong Choice, Right Reason

Trolley Problem (risk a loved one to save civilians)

Dangerous Powers/Forced to Isolate

Alter-Ego Friend is Super-Ego Villain

Superpowered Sleep Deprivation

Starved Until Their Powers Shut Down

Made Into A Lab Rat

Identity Stripped Away/Living Weapon

Loss Of Limb/Eye/Something That Won't Regenerate

Enduring Extreme Temperatures

Physically Unable to Die

Supersuit Melts into their Skin

Child Mistakes Them for a Monster

High-Tech Imprisonment

Alien Disease/Parasite

Unwanted Tech/Cybernetic Enhancement

Adapt or Die/Powers Emerge

Grieving their Normal Life

Outliving Friends/Loved Ones

Accidentally Hurting a Teammate/Innocent

Died and Revived

Working for the Enemy/Undercover/Forced to Defy Moral Code

Foresight/Too Predictable/Can't Get Ahead

Trying to Escape Superhero Life/Tracked Down

Emotions Manipulated

Injected with Paralytic

Dazed, Drugged, or Concussed

Fighting Until They Tear Themselves Apart

[melorambles]

I know its an issue of having written a scene before a character's backstory is fully established, and then years later establishing a backstory that now doesn't match with that scene. But getting a flashback to baby Yagi Toshinori meeting his future hero mentor makes his reaction to Izuku make less sense. Toshinori was really out there trying to fight people off with a stick and his not-superpower of being built like a brick wall, in an a villain-overrun and almost-post-apocalyptic Japan.

He's also been a hero for literal decades in a world where not only are heroes also PR trained pseudo celebrities. That interaction with Izuku absolutely cannot have been the first time he was asked if a quirkless person can become a hero. And we never see Toshinori meet Aizawa the first time, but the only tension between them is related to Toshinori not knowing how to teach, they each have respect for the other as a hero. He also had at least two sidekicks with quirks that didn't have immediate combat utilities (David Shields - bendy fingers, Nighteye - limited foresight). Heroes who fight essentially quirkless are not new to him. The more we learn about Toshinori, the less it makes sense that he would essentially say, "you'd be better off as a police officer"

Unless he was specifically tailoring his response to what he could tell of Midoriya. Because, for Toshinori, the lead up to that conversation is like this:

"thankfully the villain was defeated before this skinny child could be further traumatized, thankfully he's only unconscious. kid dropped his notebook, oh, he's a hero fan? ... that's a whole lot of hero analysis... he'll appreciate an autograph. Oh good, he's waking up and he's got his faculties, now I can go secure this villain."

And then this skinny middle schooler who only in theory knows what a gym is and has just had the traumatic experience of being choked out by a villain, makes the impulsive choice to latch onto someone trying to fly away (requiring an emergency landing as All For One hits its limit) and then asks if Toshinori thinks its possible to be a hero without a quirk.

Given this kid's lack of reflexes, lack of training, dangerously impulsive decision-making, and recent traumatic experience; it'd probably be irresponsible to tell him to go be a hero. But Toshinori has seen his notebook, kid has some brains, he'd probably make a good police officer. Tsukauchi would be a good mentor.

It's only after Midoriya fights off the villain with only his analytics and his backpack that All Might sees he has combat potential.

TLDR:

Midoriya, about to blow away if the wind gets too strong: can I be a hero without a quirk?

Toshinori, who came into the world with the shoulders of a linebacker and a willingness to fight dirty: no, you're tiny. You're smart though, take that notebook and your stalker tendencies to the police force.

Midoriya: *sees his... friend? about to be harmed and immediately goes for the eyeballs*

Toshinori: Never mind! He's got exactly the right instincts *nostalgic for the good old days, before he became a symbol*

(this was supposed to be a post about how Izuku is a reactive protagonist and never actually seeks out improvement on his own, but that's a different ramble for a different essay)

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

What would happen to the richest countries in the world these days because they export oil when my story takes place in 2400 and and the oil is all gone and these countries are where my story actually takes place. Where all the money is now is pretty much the countries that produce cutting edge technology.

Licorice: 2400 CE is 376 years in the future. 

Which countries were the richest 376 years ago?  That would take us back to 1648. The richest country in the world was China, with India not far behind. The Ottoman Empire was another superpower, and most of today’s Middle Eastern oil states were its posessions. The USA didn’t even exist. The British had barely begun building their empire; the Netherlands and France were both far richer and more powerful than GB, but the European powerhouse was Spain with its Latin American colonial empire pumping out seemingly inexhaustible supplies of silver and gold bullion, inspiring a golden age of piracy in the Caribbean. 

China, India, France: their wealth was based mostly on strong diverse domestic economies. 

Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands: they were too small and poor to build a China-type self-sufficient diverse economy. They grew rich on trade.

Ottoman Empire: a multicultural melting pot covering roughly the same geographic area as the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottomans had it all. But they fell behind in the 19th century, and the empire was torn apart by the waves of nationalism that swept across the globe after the French Revolution. The Ottoman Empire no longer exists.

Spain grew rich in the same way the oil economies grew rich, by mining a single commodity and using it to pay for everything

A country like the USA is going to be as fine as anywhere can be after the oil is gone. Like China, India and the EU they will diversify into renewable resources and keep right on truckin’ because their economies are sufficiently wealthy and diverse, their population sufficiently  educated, and their governments sufficiently forward thinking to do this. 

Back in the 18th century, the measly little island of Britain took the wealth it earned from trade to invest in R&D, invented the industrial revolution, and used its tech advantage to conquer an empire the likes of which had never hitherto been seen. 

Spain, on the other hand, didn’t invest in itself. The gold and silver from the Spanish Main trickled through its fingers the way easy money always does with lottery winners. Much of the bullion ended up in China via British, Dutch, and Portuguese ships. Spain’s empire disintegrated in the 19th century.

In short, if you’re a country with a booming economy dependent on a single non-renewable commodity, and you are smart, you will use that wealth to build your competitive advantage in diverse areas of human economic activity. You will educate your population to be creative and entrepreneurial. This is more likely to happen if your government is some flavour of democracy.

If you’re not smart or if your government is controlled by a small clique of aristocrats or a dictator and his court with no accountability to the future, your elite will simply take most of the wealth for themselves, stick it into Swiss bank accounts, and leave the country impoverished and under-developed when they flee the inevitable coup. 

Since the history of the years 2024-2400 hasn’t yet been written, it’s up to you to decide what the countries in your story are going to do. All of them are well aware that the oil bonanza will not last forever. You might find this useful: “How the Gulf Region is Planning for Life After Oil”. 

So, which of your countries will be smart and which will be foolish? Which ones will have the foresight to build a viable post-oil future for themselves, and which ones will slide backwards into poverty, ignorance, and oppression? You decide. 

[marvelshifter111]

HI!!! I'd love a superpower pack that includes: Mind reading Teleportation Foresight (seeing the future) Shape shifting (also, Hi! I'm a fellow MCU shifter. If you want to rant about Drs with me feel free to visit my ask box or dm me!!)

Thank you for sending an ask ❤️

Because you mentioned foresight, I went more in the direction of time manipulation, because I think this connects well with everything you were looking for. If this is not what you wanted, tell me and I will redo it

Time manipulation - superpower pack

The users can control, and manipulate time, the indefinite continued progress of existence, and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future.

Temporal teleportation - The user can teleport through both space and time, allowing them to reach any location and/or era in the same move.

Chrono vision - The user can see any point in time, from only a few seconds, minutes, even hours into the past/present and future, up to events all throughout time, whether that be along their own timelines or along the timelines of others.

Shape shifting - Users can change their shape, size, color, density, texture, cellular composition, and/or atomic composition to mimic qualities, impersonate entities, amplify abilities, and/or traverse environments.

Mind reading - The user can sense the thoughts of other people, usually hearing them like ordinary speech but possibly by other senses such as sight.

Time travel - Users can travel and send others to the future/past.

Time stopping - User can stop time while being unaffected themselves and also allow whatever they including objects and beings to be unaffected as well, just like a pause button for the reality.

Temporal healing - User can heal by rewinding time to erase the damages from existence. They can regenerate fully destroyed limbs or body parts.

Decelerated aging - The user ages slower than normal for their species. Slower aging can mean one maintains their youthful appearance and health longer but aren't necessarily immortal and could still eventually die.

Temporal trapping - The user can send and trap anyone in another time. For example, they can send victims to another 300 years into the past and they cannot return to the present. This can also work if sending the target into the future. (Basically the weeping angels from Doctor Who)

Telepathic prediction - The user can know an opponent's moves and attacks by reading their minds/thoughts/brain waves.

Telepathy - The psionic ability to read and control the minds and thoughts of humans, animals, and other sentient beings, and to transfer information from one mind to another without the aid of physical communication (noise or movement).

[princess-of-the-corner]

So I've been having thoughts on developing a proper Rogues Gallery for miraculous. This is going to be long and a little convoluted, I apologize in advance.

The first thing I was thinking about was how there is something of a civilian rogues gallery that already exists. As in, threats Marinette and Adrien regularly has to deal with, but not Ladybug and Chat Noir. These people include Bob Roth, Roger, Andre/Audrey, pre-redemption Chloe, Lila, Felix depending on the day, and occasionally less maligned but incompetent adults like the principal or Bustier. Due to the nature of ML, these are also some of the more frequent targets of akumatization. Gabe and Nathalie can actually also fall on this list, since they manage to be plenty problematic even when it's not part of an evil scheme.

So the issue lies in creating a separate superpowered Rogues Gallery that threatens LB and CN as heroes but not so much as civilians. Like, there's going to be overlap, but a lot of what, Bob Roth for example, does pre-akumatization had little to no bearing on the superhero shenanigans. So there needs to be some villains that do the reverse.

To use a Spider-Man analogy, they have their Flash Thompsons and their JJJs and even their Eddie Brocks/Venoms in the form of Lila, but they don't have, like, a Doc Ock or a Vulture or the rest of the Sinister 6, who don't really give a shit about Peter Parker.

So my next thought was, "what's the path of least resistance to creating a group of consistently present superpowered villains that don't really care about Marinette or Adrien?" And my answer to that was just take some existing akumas and revamp the butterfly powers a bit to make them stick around.

There's already Mr. Pigeon as a non-serious silly threat. I think keeping Stormy Weather, who's a pretty badass akuma and who's akumatization has literally nothing to do with Team Miraculous is a good one, but I'm unsure why Auroré would keep working with HM. Rogercop could be good. He tends to get akumatized because of Team Miraculous, but Roger is also kinda just an asshole, so I feel like there could be other reasons for it. I like the idea of keeping Simon Says too, as a villain that Gabe doesn't have a whole lot of control over, although why Gabe would repeatedly give him powers is a big question, and he's also a bit too sweet to just be villainous on his own. Darkblade could work for another silly one that's somewhat more threatening than Mr. Pigeon, and is also enough of an asshole/weirdo to regularly justify repeated akumatization. I also kinda want Copycat or a variant thereof, as someone who specifically has issues with LB or CN and isn't named Lila. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on who you'd add to the list. Like, I know they smoothed things over with him in canon and in HC, but I'm having trouble thinking of anyone else who has LB or CN related beef.

The main thing I haven't really worked out is how to revamp the butterly powers to make this feasible. My tenuous idea is that instead of like, directly empowering and lowkey mind controlling the akumatized villain in a weird kind of contract situation, the butterfly user just gives them a store of power they can draw on periodically with the power of their emotions. So like, if canon gives you a power that you can use infinitely, but only while being directly controlled by the Butterfly user, this version would give you, like 10 shots before you ran out of power and the Butterfly would have to empower you again. But the stronger your emotions, the more shots you get, or something like that. But that would require an emotionally charged villain to have the foresight to save their shots up for a later date, so IDK if this would actually work.

Thoughts?

Yeah I think my main thought is on the how/why they stay Villains and hm.

I think my thought on it would be the idea of something going 'wrong' in a way?

Maybe this could replace the thing of what happens when Ladybug doesn't Purify the Butterfly. Instead of Hawkmoth being able to make copies, the person just stays in their Akumatized state but is no longer controlled by Hawkmoth.

[autumnmobile12]

Felt like sharing some speculation today:

All right, so we know My Hero Academia has the something of the same premise as X-Men in the sense that select a group of humans were suddenly born with powers, the whole 'evolution leaps forward’ deal.

We see in My Hero how the First Generation of people with Quirks, especially the ones who appeared non-human or semi non-human, were originally ostracized like the mutants of X-Men are, but then more people were born with powers and then more people had powers until it became a widespread phenomenon and ‘normal’ people became the minority and society had to restructure itself to accommodate the new normal.

But have you read The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black?

The plot is a 19th century doctor who theorizes that mythical creatures like the minotaur, harpies, sirens, and the like all existed millions of years ago but slowly interbred with humanity and eventually died out altogether.  So he believed that when someone was born with extra fingers, limbs, a tail or otherwise didn’t have the typical human shape, it wasn’t so much a mistake in genetic coding as it was the extremely recessive genetics of those ancient creatures trying to reoccur in the modern day.

...

Definitely an interesting premise, so now I’m wondering if the My Hero world has a cult, conspiracy theorists, or even some scientists/historians that have similar views regarding mythology.

If this whole Quirk thing happened back in the Stone Age where no one had the benefit of science or awareness of DNA, anyone born with an otherworldly power would have been worshipped as a deity. Or the ones born with a non-human appearance would have been reviled as monsters.

So following the idea of The Resurrectionist, maybe the sudden appearance of superpowers did lead people to take a closer look at the old myths and consider the stories of the gods/goddesses of old were originally stories of people with 'Quirks' who rose to power.  Humans with meta-powers ruled the world for a few centuries, then those powers inexplicably died off. For a variety of reasons or maybe unknown reasons, humanity lost that history but remembered the old stories and chalked them up to just myth until the powers that made it possible began to reappear full force several millennia later.

Some myths began as historical events but in being handed down hundreds of generations, the multiple tellings and retellings exaggerated them into the realm of impossibility.

Lightning/electricity powers:  Zeus, Thor, Hinon

Fire powers:  Hephaistos, Surtr, Hestia, the phoenix

Foresight:  Any seer, prophet, or oracle that appears in any myth ever

Ice powers:  Yuki-onna, Skadi, Morana

Water powers:  Poseidon, Chalchiuhtlicue, Anuket, Tlaloc

Plant-related Quirks:  Demeter

Gigantification Quirks: Giants, titans, nephilim

Ryukyu:  Is a dragon.  ‘nuff said.

All Might:  Herakles

Tokoyami having a bird head but otherwise appearing human is pretty reminiscent of the old Egyptian gods.

Hawks:  Any winged creature; take your pick.  Personally, the one that comes to mind for me is Hermes.  He only had wings on his sandals, sure, but the trickster archetype resonates.

Tsuyu: Naiads, nymphs, rusalki, any kind of water fae

Momo: Sedna (created sea life from her finger bones), Ukemochi no Kami (produces food from her own body)

Best Jeanist: This one's a bit of a reach, but the fabric thread thing coupled with the long, spider-like limbs kinda brings to mind the story of Arachne the weaver.

We do get a nod to Ancient Greek mythology with the prison Tartarus.  What better place to lock away beings with god-like powers than the prison of the Titans itself?

Obviously an incomplete list, but you see my point.

Personally, I'm leaning toward cultist ideology with this one as I find it hard to believe every civilization would have forgotten about a previous appearance of Quirks. But civilizations die off, civilizations are overrun by others and their histories are suppressed, maybe this hypothetical 'previous Quirk phenomenon' wasn't as widespread as the current one and so fewer people were affected and therefore fewer people were alive to verify the truth of facts, maybe this hypothetical time was from an age of oral history and nothing was documented properly, so not impossible just really, really improbable.

Still, I love mythology and I find it an interesting headcanon to think about.

[maxbfunk]

If you reread/watch Jujutsu Kaisen from the very beginning it becomes immediately clear that Gojo was doomed by the narrative from the very beginning.

This man is so powerful he’s the literal Jujutsu society equivalent of a nuke. Power levels are measured in Gojos. Even he tells the elders they aren’t being responsible with the power tiers because there is stuff that goes beyond Special Grade.

The world we are introduced to in JJK is one of entropy. A society that is so relaxed because of the one superpowered man on their side that they ignore the storms on the horizon.

Everything happens because Gojo is too strong, and the powers that be refuse to risk the sanctity of their bloodlines and techniques long enough to create safeguards in case the worst happens.

If it were not for Gojo’s foresight with his students then we wouldn’t have even gotten the bittersweet ending we did. He knew that, as powerful as he was, he was not invincible. He dreamed of the future rather than living in the past.

But the future would never come while he was still alive

[silverserpent]

Silly Game Time: Who are some of your favorite fighter characters? And what do you like about them?

They can weild any weapon (swords, spears, axes, clubs, knives, bare hands, etc.); they can be of any class or variety of combatant (ones who rely on strength like brawlers or berserkers, ones who use finesse like martial artists or technique masters, ones who balance defensive and offensive equipment like knghts or samurai, etc.); they can be of any race or species (from fantasy or sci-fi); they can even have access to special powers to improve their combat skills (magical, psychic, technological, superpowers, etc.).

What matters is that one of their primary skills, roles in the story, and traits as a character is physical fighting.

I KNOW this is an odd choice, but hear me out: Alan Becker's stickmen.

First off, their choreography is something AMAZING. Very fast paced, and always doing AMAZING cool stuff. Here's a poorly cropped clip of one of their calmer fights.

And here is what they can REALLY do.

And also... they are children.

Look at them. they are playing with action figures. Look. Red just crashed the party by involving the piggie.

And they made the ULTIMATE TREE CHOPPING CONTRAPTION with no foresight whatsoever.

THEY ARE PLAYING TETRIS AND CHEERING EACH OTHER ON. While Green just dances because there is music.

And they all have very established personalities and fighting styles, even though there are no words uttered! Orange is mostly the guy who comes up with very smart tactics; Green jumps around a lot and is very flashy; Red gets up-close and personal, hotheadedly rushes into the stupidest losing battles, and will love every animal they find; Blue is an incredibly powerful support guy when he has access to potion, fights ranged, likes to cook and deal with plants; Yellow is a big big engineer who has little foresight on whether or not the thing they make is a good idea, and the most likely to hang back, and provide support. Yellow is my big favorite, because of course. Their first move when they find a cool item is to take it apart.

And they are good natured and kind and friendly! They goof off and cheer each other on and prank, and they will help without hesitation, and there is also a big dramatic story and they are SO FUN.

One of my WIPs I need to return to was inspired by them, because I wanted to captivate the feeling they gave me.

this got away from me a tad, but hey :"D

[yuriosakawa]

Batfamily Secret Powers AU

This is an alternative universe where the Batfamily DOES have superpowers, they just never use them because unlike most other heroes, they don’t want to be overreliant on them 

So, they decide to only use their powers when the situation really requires it or when there’s really no other option 

(You can imagine the surprise and slight betrayal the Justice League and the other teams felt when learning about this) 

You told me you didn’t have powers! 

No! I said I never use superpowers! 

A list of the Batfamily’s hidden powers are: 

Batman: Umbrakinesis, the best power for a Dark Knight, Bruce can completely bend the shadows around him to his will

Nightwing: Combustion. With a simple snap from his fingers, Dick can incinerate objects 

Oracle: Foresight, she can see brief glimpses into the future. However, they can appear at random times and they’re not always very clear, so she often has to interpret them herself. They manifested some point after she was crippled 

Red Hood: "Bounce Back", he can absorb any type of energy (say, laser beams and the like) and redirect it back at his enemies with double the force! 

Black Bat/Orphan: Phasing/Invisibility. In reality, Cass’s powers are a variant of umbrakinesis. By manipulating the shadows around her, she can phase through solid matter like a ghost and turn herself completely invisible 

Spoiler: Energy Crystals/Crystallokinesis, Steph can generate purple-colored crystals that are empowered with energy and use them as projectiles to dagger her enemies with them 

Red Robin: Telepathy/Telekinesis, Tim can lift objects with his mind and also access the minds of other people. He may not be as powerful as a Martian, but he’s way more subtle in his work 

Robin: Afterimage Creation, Damian can create a series of illusions of himself but they only last briefly, and are mainly used to confuse his enemies 

*Note: When he first joined the Batfamily, Duke also believe they were powerless until Dick accidentally revealed his powers to him during an emergency. At first he felt a little hurt and betrayed by being kept on the loop about this, but then he understood the importance of keeping this secret

So, he keeps the charade of being the only superpowered Batfamily member. At least until the other heroes one by one learn about their secret in one way or the other 

[teriwrites]

Down Memory Lane

A WIP Retrospective

Do you get a kick out of reading someone's silly, ridiculous childhood writing?

Do you occasionally enjoy taking psychic damage from reading words that have no right being strung together?

Could you use a bit of encouragement and a solid reminder that, no, your writing is Not the worst to be found on the internet?

Well, then, I invite you to join me as I take a foray into my history with creative writing. More specifically, in order to track projects with similar levels of (questionable) quality over the years, a look into the various WIPs I've written during the month of November.

Since I first started in 2011, at the tender age of 13, I've participated in and completed fourteen Novembers' worth of writing 50,000 words over 30 days. Those drafts have been stored on a variety of family computers, flashdrives, laptops, and the like over the years, and only this past December did I actually manage to track down all of them and collect them into one place.

And now, partially out of curiosity, partially out of masochism, and partially out of a genuine interest in analyzing my own writing progress across half of my life, I've decided that I'm going to sit down and read every single one of them.

Arguably, most of these I haven't read through since they were originally written. Many of them are barely more than a vague plot summary and vibes in my mind. Obviously, some of the later projects will become more familiar and their quality will increase slightly (but, remember, these are very hastily-written projects. So don't worry, there will be plenty of trashy writing to be found even up to 2024). But I - and anyone who decides to follow along on this insane project - will have to earn those nice words by living through the earlier ones lol

Some highlights of what to expect:

A bunch of superpowered teens inexplicably running across the Alabama countryside

Lucifer is Tired of all the customer complaints he receives in his day job running Hell

Area Man loses his only ally in saving his friends because he simply cannot shut up for even one second

'Bridge to Terabithia' meets 'Anne of Green Gables' meets Depression

Woman hates her famous mom up until the moment she realizes famous mom might be onto something, actually

Guy doesn't respect girl's boundaries, has sense quite literally Knocked into him (she very publicly decks him in the face)

Golden fae who swears he's just using this human girl as a tool in his quest for vengeance accidentally discovers the meaning of devotion and friendship

Student so stressed about final exams that she accidentally stops time about it

A bunch of college girls working together to craft the perfect comeback to one of their asshole exes' awful texts

Fate bullying her favorite guy by giving him exclusive access to the Worst possible foresight

And so much more!

[cyb-by-lang]

okay so i've been thinking about A Ninja's Guide to Gotham and i think i know what Ra's al Ghul's plan is, at least what he (and Zetsu) want to do

the plan to set Kei loose on Konoha didn't go well for Zetsu and Madara, she had her team to help (and the power of foresight) but the gist of the idea could still work, if Zetsu sets up the stage right

Kei has a pretty good grasp on her emotions, but Hayate (specifically, Hayate in danger/hurt Hayate) being her trigger is known to Zetsu. so it makes sense to isolate the two from the rest of their village. drop them into a batshit (ha) crazy city, keep them separated, really pile the stress on Kei and wear her down.

all the while, they've got a Zetsu army cooking for maximum trauma later.

Ra's al Ghul wants to destroy Gotham, and this Zetsu has essentially handed him the trigger for a massive walking bomb, but can only be activated under very specific circumstances. and Kei, as stressed as she is and even with almost losing it a couple of times, has done an excellent job reigning her fury in (thanks Isobu)

AND there's the fear toxin. i imagine they've been adjusting it this whole time to actually work on a Jinchuriki.

i don't think they really want Kei to join them, necessarily (though it might save them a few steps) i think all the attacks serve mostly to increase Kei's stress until she starts breaking.

and then Zetsu was trying to take Hayate. because what would be the one thing to almost certainly break Kei?

idk if this is how it will play out exactly, but i'm guessing this is the gist of Ra's and Zetsu's plan:

Zetsu army attack, with giant Zetsu monster included to spread out the Bats and allies. try and separate Kei from team. keep her focused on the attacks without provoking her yet, but wear her down.

take Hayate, or at least manipulate the field to put him within sight of Kei. kill him where she can clearly see.

use that moment of shock to shoot as many fear toxin darts at her as possible. if she's distracted enough, she might get a few doses. and it doesn't matter much how quickly Isobu burns through the poison, because all they need is that initial ignition of super enhanced terror and trauma for her to explode into a raging Jinchuriki. throw the Zetsu monster back at her, and they take out half of Gotham ripping each other to pieces.

(the Bats and Kei's team hear her agonized beastial screech, even the ones on the other side of the city, and know this is Worst Case Scenario)

this is an excellent narrative strategy for maximum pain and plot drama for Kei and friends, and i can see it coming so close to fruition (if i'm even in the ballpark here, this is all an educated guess)

unfortunately for Ra's and Zetsu, Batman exists. he knows how Ra's operates. once the fear toxin came into play, and Batman listened to Kei talk about her past, i'm pretty sure he could connect those dots.

"Superpowered ninja host of a demon able to level a city, if pressed, and her main trauma trigger is her brother being threatened or harmed in any way. Right. Best keep the brother out of harm's way. If only they could all stay put."

also unfortunate for Ra's and Zetsu, Jason exists. i doubt they were expecting Hayate to adopt Gotham's newest menace, nor for Jason to take to it like a mother goose. Kei might be correct in thinking Hayate is safer with Jason than with her, bc as volatile and explosive as he can be, he's not quite "city-leveling" tier.

as DC stories tend to go, the villains plot usually gets to play out at least most of the way. so maybe Hayate does get hurt at some point, maybe Kei does lose it, but this could be where Jason finally works with the Bats + Team Minato to save the day (and his new little brother....)

anyway, idk how much of this is right, but the pieces have been fitting themselves together in the back of my brain for a while. and if i'm on the money on any of this and you'd rather not post bc spoilers, no worries!! i just wanted to share how much i've been thinking about it, it's on a short list of things i play in my mental movie theater ಠ⁠◡⁠ಠ

[image description: a GIF of Kronk from Emperor's New Groove saying "Oh yeah. It's all coming together." end description.]

I love it when readers send me their analysis. It really helps me figure out what's working when I write and what is sticking with people.

And I hope you feel like a detective for having figured out most of today's evil plan (credit to Ra's al Ghul) before a fair number of the characters in Gotham have. I'm glad you picked up on it!