#the culmination of the prank war arc

[operas-phantom]

She arrived in his lair with a big suitcase. She seemed very serious as she came up to him. “Erik Destler.” She said calmly.

@daydreamingofafairytale

”Nour Mebarki,” he said in an equally calm tone, looking up from where he was composing. Already some stubble seemed to be present on his head again, and he didn’t have a beard anymore. “What’s with the suitcase?”

[magnetoeisenhardt]

It’s actually interesting because Cass and Dick can only recently be argued to have a sibling relationship. I think Cass not having a sibling relationship with Dick (or any other Batfam character) is tied to the consistent mistreatment of Cass. DC has no interest in promoting her, so she doesn’t appear in other bat books as anything other than a cameo. Cass’ father daughter-relationship with Bruce was kept separate from her interactions with his other kids.

Pre New-52, Cass’ interactions with Dick were pretty solidly characterized through her mother-daughter relationship with Babs, with Dick being “Mom’s boyfriend”. When Cass infamously kicks Dick through a window, it’s because he “hurt” her mom. While she appears in crossover events, like Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive (the best batfam event since No Man’s Land), she doesn’t have many one on one interactions with Dick. Even in her (very few) appearances in Nightwing, they don’t really do any emotional bonding. She shows up, she kicks the crap out of Deathstroke, she leaves.

During this era, both Cass and Dick have very close relationships with Tim. I bring this up to contextualize Cass’ role in the batfam at the time. Dick is definitely Tim’s older brother, despite Tim, like Cass, then not being adopted by Bruce. Tim admires Dick in the same way someone might admire a mostly absent older brother. Tim wasn’t around to witness the fall out between Dick and Bruce, and maintains a really high opinion of both of them. His optimism actually helps Bruce and Dick to reconcile, even as Tim grows more jaded with Bruce himself. On the lighter side, Tim and Dick tease each other and play pranks, culminating in the infamous glue trap panel, where Dick is so tired of Time making fun of him for how easy it is to break into Dick’s apartment, that Dick installs a giant glue trap Tim gets caught in.

While Cass and Tim grow very close after they’re both banished to Bludhaven after War Games (one of the worst Batfam events of all time), there are moments that render a sibling reading nonsensical. Cass has a nightmare hallucination where Tim calls her sexy. Characters joke about how the two of them are dating. During the worst Cass arc of all time, a mind controlled Cass sexually assaults him. Cass being Tim’s love interest is deliberately left on the table, and giving her a clearly sibling role with him would remove that.

I think a lot of this was because, as Batgirl, she was supposed to echo Babs, a character who tends to get written off as “Robin’s girlfriend”. Babs has been romantically involved with Bruce (Bruce Timm’s “The Killing Joke” movie), Dick, Jason (the “Three Jokers” comic), Tim (The “Arkham” video games), and Luke Fox (the New 52 Batgirl and DC Bombshells comics). Robin/Batgirl are an iconic couple (despite Babs and Dick not getting together until after he was Robin), and DC didn’t want to take that off the table with Cass. For example, in a move that somehow manages to be worse than Babs/Tim, the Harley Quinn show has Cass as the love interest for Damian (despite this show coming out post 2008, with Cass and Damian actually being siblings).

In the post Rebirth era (since Cass didn’t exist during the New 52) Cass is still kept separate from the larger Batfam. Her introduction back into comics features Dick, Jason, and Tim, but she is written with so much ableism she isn’t a character and they don’t have relationships. Later, in Tynion’s Detective Comics run, she gets to interact with Tim, Jean-Paul, Luke, Clayface, and Kate. In the horrible Batgirls run, Cass gets to have a queerbaited romantic relationship with Steph, and a sibling relationship with Barbara. Wayne Family Adventures gives Cass a sibling relationship with every batboy, and restores her mother-daughter relationship with Barbara, but WFA has very little relationship to actual canon.

All this to say, I would love for Cass and Dick to have a sibling rivalry, but the fact that such a thing would be totally out of place in comics right now highlights just how terribly Cass has been treated as a character. She doesn’t get to have the complex relationships the batboys get to have with each other, because DC doesn’t care about her and has no interest in developing her relationships. It’s probably for the best that Spirit World is giving her an identity and relationships outside the batfam.

Cass and Dick deserve a sibling rivalry AT LEAST as petty as Tim and Damian but none of you are ready for that conversation.

[emmys-grimoire]

Character Study: Satan’s Birth

Character Studies will be essays that focus on specific (and important) aspects of a character that may be easy for readers to overlook. They’re not comprehensive works: those will be appropriately dubbed Deeper Dives.

The first one I’m taking a crack at is one of most confusing parts of Satan: how he came to be, and what that means.

One of Satan’s biggest draws, and what separates him from the rest of his siblings, is that he was never an angel and he was born from Lucifer’s wrath.

In his devilgram The Search for Self, Satan relays the gritty details to us.

He is the culmination and release of Lucifer’s fury after he failed to overthrow his Father and protect his sister. The exact timeline of his birth is unclear and the details we know so far are confusing, but they’re ultimately unimportant.

A Fragment

Satan was once a fragment of Lucifer’s emotions given form, but since they’ve split, so have their paths. This has led to Satan developing his own ‘self’, but he himself isn’t entirely convinced that he’s now something more.

Satan’s insecurities stemming from his origins have plagued him throughout seasons 1 and 3. What he hates and fears the most is being considered a mere fragment of Lucifer, because Lucifer is the origin of his existence. Without Lucifer, there would be no Satan.

In season 1, his resentment towards Lucifer is what kicks off his first character arc. The only reason why he’s interested in pursuing a pact with Lucifer is because he knows it’ll piss him off. It’s even implied that his pursuit of knowledge is part of his quest to differentiate himself from Lucifer, and to prove his worthiness to his peers.

At the conclusion of that arc, he eases a bit on the active resentment: it no longer consumes him or instructs what he does outside of the pranks he pulls alongside Belphegor as a member of the Anti-Lucifer League.

It follows him into season 3, and plays a large role in his character arc in that season, too.  

How he feels towards Lucifer isn’t entirely reconciled: his problem in season 2 and season 3 is he has a crystallized version of Lucifer in his head, that doesn’t take into account Lucifer’s growth since they’ve parted ways.

It gets “resolved” when his perception of how Lucifer was is challenged. Note: Satan was a part of Lucifer at this time. You would think if they were the same being at this time, there would be no one who knew Lucifer better... and yet, that isn’t true. He doesn’t know. Not only are his memories fragmented, but so is his perception of his ‘host’.

There are parts of Lucifer that are inaccessible to him as Lucifer’s hidden rage tumor. More than likely, the Satan is only intimately familiar with Lucifer’s negative emotions, because that’s literally what he was composed of at the time. He is not familiar with Lucifer’s more positive feelings and memories. 

To be fair, though, Lucifer doesn’t seem to have many of those from his Celestial Realm days. I’m not surprised all that constant build-up resulted in him the minute Lucifer was expelled from the Celestial Realm (if that’s indeed when it happened).

This is corrected in his season 3 arc by simply having him interact with Angel!Lucifer and his brothers. It gives him a more complete picture of how things were.

Lesson 59 reveals that he still fears being considered a mere fragment of Lucifer, and Lucifer/MC have to talk him out of it. Convincing him he needn’t suffer this identity crisis any longer might continue being a work in progress.

Satan’s Age

This is confusing, but I’m going to try to clarify: Satan was born last but he is older than half of them because his growth did not start after his birth. The story does a terrible job explaining this, so supplemental out-of-story material explains it for us. Namely, dev DMs and RAD newsletters.

Source: This reddit thread

Satan was growing inside Lucifer before Beelzebub and Belphie.

He’s older than Luke.

Luke was born after the Celestial War: there’s a conversation in Season 1 that suggests he was around to admire Lucifer and his gorgeous wings, but there are multiple incidents later in the story that contradict this misconception, and I go into further detail here.

Season 2 hard mode clarifies it further, and puts him ahead of Asmo.

Ergo, he’s the fourth oldest, according to himself.

In short, when Satan comes into metaphysical existence and when Satan is physically born are two different points in time. The time between can be considered a “gestation” period. I wouldn’t say Lucifer was “pregnant” with Satan because pregnancy does not involve the transfer of experience and memory (however fragmented it may be). It’s not entirely like mitosis, either: Satan was technically an active growth who was conscious of his own existence (though apparently Lucifer wasn’t). It’s some sort of weird hybrid.

For whatever reason, his physical age seems to match his metaphysical age, otherwise he would physically look younger than Beelzebub/Belphegor and closer to Luke. He probably never was an adorable toddler. Sad.

Something changed in Lucifer between Levi’s arrival and Asmodeus’s arrival that sparked Satan. Learning how the Celestial Realm operates, and how Father treats his children, will likely give us insight on just what changed in Lucifer’s perception. Lucifer’s hate for his Father must stem from something. Satan himself, so far, hasn’t given us any clues.

All Will Be Revealed... Eventually

Good news for us: the devs have expressed their intent to explore Satan and his origins later in the story. There is more Satan content in the future.

Hopefully they’ll start moving away from “lets-teach-Satan-that-Lucifer-isn’t-that-bad-actually” arcs and into this, because it’s good stuff.

[flameysaur]

So. This is going to be a rant about the most topical of subjects: the ending of Avatar: The Last Airbender!

This is something I discussed with @harunohoe but I remember when Avatar finally ending there was a lot of bitterness. Now I’m in the zutara side of that shipping war. (The right side.) But there was a lot of bitterness among people I talked to that had little to do with the ship. It felt like it did, because Katara centered the discussion, but it wasn’t. Later, when Harry Potter ended, I noticed an interesting echo, and I think it comes from the same place.

The finale for Avatar: The Last Airbender felt wrong with the rest of Season 3. It had the same feel, scope and depth as season 1. Season 1 was epic. It’s easy to forget because seasons 2 and 3 so blew it out of the water, but Season 1 was large. It was deep. It had pathos and engagement and fun. If the finale had come at the end of Season 1, I don’t think a lot of people would have the feeling that something was off the way they did when it came at the end of season 3. I think this because I think the finale was written before episode one ever hit the air.

(This is a good thing, btw. When writing serial fiction with a solid end point, you need to know what the end is if you want to keep working towards it. That’s how you avoid ended up in the reeds with no way back except how you got there in the first place.)

But things changed. The Avatar crew was very vocal in they changed things in response to fan criticism. (The amount of female characters in season 2, for example.) And that change included adding depth and character struggles that were so much more than season one Avatar. Especially in season 3 which dealt with adult themes of redemption and darkness with a maturity that I’ve never seen in an adult show. The biggest examples being: Katara’s flirtation with murder and Zuko’s redemption.

Katara is a dark female lead. It’s easy to forget, because she’s the Mom Friend(tm) and she’s so loving and she’s the healer but Katara is also a person that about a month after promising to never use bloodbending again, USED IT. She premeditated an attack to use it and she used emotional blackmail to carry out that attack. Katara has, from season 1, put her friends first, but her feelings before that. She wants to do what’s right, mentally. But emotionally? Katara wants what Katara wants. It’s a complex side of female characters we do not get in fiction. That someone can be both the light and the dark. She is the moon, always shifting between the brightest and darkest points during this very long night.

Then you get Zuko, the masterfully written redemption of a character. I don’t think anyone can argue that Zuko’s change from one dimensional whiny villain to desperately trying to redeem himself boy wasn’t amazing. You could argue it’s the best thing written for television, never mind a kid’s show. And his redemption. His confrontation of his abuse. Him receiving everything he ever asked for and realizing it wasn’t what he needed, then taking the steps to fix his mistakes. All that was beautiful and complex and hard and understated within the show. Which is perfect. The show trusted us with knowing more than they told us, and that’s hard to do.

Both Katara’s darkness and Zuko’s redemption were confronted the most during season 3. They told us this show understood moral complexities without losing its optimism. Katara didn’t kill because she couldn’t. Zuko did the right thing because he wanted to. For all the greyness of them and their actions, they chose the light. Which, again, isn’t something you’re likely to get on an adult show.

Then we have Aang.

One of my, and many people’s, biggest complaint with Aang in the finale was the spiritbending/stripping of bending power. I remember watching a lot of people discuss the morality of that choice. How it wasn’t “better” then killing. How it was more evil and Aang was wrong to do it. And I don’t agree. It was a fight to the death and Aang found an option that wasn’t death because he chose his morality over the easy answer. That should be a good choice. It should be powerful. It should be the culmination of everything Aang has grown to be.

But it wasn’t. Because Aang lost nothing in making the choice.

Season 3 showed us again and again that it was morally complex. This theme continued with Aang realizing everyone expected him to kill Ozai.

(Tangent! This was also something I saw people complain about. I don’t think anyone, really, had an issue with Aang being anti-killing Ozai, but it does not make sense that the death didn’t come up before it did in season 3. Death rules this world. Reminder: Katara was a small child, eight, when she watched her mother get murdered in her own home. That means, from young childhood, Katara knows death can come to anyone and from anywhere. Sokka likewise, was ten, maybe eleven, when his father left to fight in the war. Sokka declared himself a man and asked to go with him. He was a CHILD. And he wanted to go KILL people. That’s brutal. He only agreed to stay because his father framed it as needing him to protect the villiage. Sokka has, since young childhood, decided that his job is to kill to protect his family. Death is a part of these kids in a way most first world people will not understand. You think Sokka or Katara would use “stop” and “destroy” every time they discussed the finale battle? No. They’d use kill. And Aang would have had to have the debate sooner than the last quarter of season 3. End tangent.)

Aang’s character arc, from episode one, is a painfully simple conflict between Want and Need. In writing, the easiest way to create tension in a story is to have your characters Want a Thing, and they do whatever it takes to get that thing, but they Need something different. And if that Need conflicts with their Want, then bam! You get instant story tension.

Aang wants to be Aang from day one. He wants to be the fun loving monk boy who doesn’t hurt anyone, gets along with everyone and always had a hand outstretched. He wants the world to support this boy. He wants to be a child who helps people and travels and makes friends everywhere and has no care greater then taking care of Appa or what his next prank is.

Aang needs to be the Avatar, savior of the world, master of all four elements. In a world that’s desperately unbalanced, he needs to find and maintain balance. Not just in himself, but in everyone around him. He needs to know not only how to solve surface issues, but the deeper issues that arouse from a 100 years of war and conflict.

And in all three seasons, Aang turns down being the Avatar for being Aang. We get told this rather blatantly in the season 2 finale. His love for Katara is holding him back from becoming a fully realized Avatar. And one thing this show fails at in all this telling, is it fails to show it’s not about Katara the person, but Katara the representation of the love he’s found in this time. Aang failed at being an Avatar before the show began because of this same love. They were going to take his beloved master away from him, and so he ran away. Now, a hundred years later, and everything a hundred years worse, he’s making the same choice. His love, his heart, over his duty. Aang doesn’t want to kill the boy in service to the Avatar.

(And if the show focused on this rather than if Aang could totes bang his first crush, we’d not be left feeling that Katara is a rather literal prize that Aang is fighting for, but instead Aang choosing between his humanity and his destiny.)

Now we return to Season 3. Aang has lost contact to his Avatar spirit. But he’s growing closer and stronger with these people he surrounds himself with. By being himself, Aang has formed a family that is as diverse as he has always wanted. He has Zuko, Sokka, Katara, Toph, Suki, and more allies always reaching out to him. Aang has gotten his want, and he thinks he has married it with his need. He is both a boy who is Aang and the Avatar who is going to save the world. He did it. And in the finale we got...yeah. That’s it. Three quarters into Season 3, Aang stops growing as a character and he never starts again.

But here is where things should have changed. Aang has achieved balance, he thinks. He’s not a fully realized Avatar, but he shouldn’t have to be. Being the Avatar in this world is more about being the spiritual guide to the world, the one person who is not attached to any one country and so can help lead them all to balance. Aang can do that as he is. He already has! He has brought balance to his friends and united a group of people from around the world to join him and believe in him. And it can all stay that way.

But he has to kill Ozai.

We remember, I’m sure, the scene where Aang talks to his past lives and they all say, “Yeah, no, smoke the asshole. Kill him dead.” And that was a weird scene. It was supposed to be a dark moment, before Aang figured out a third answer, but...he...didn’t. He talked to a lionturtle, we don’t see what really happens, and then end of show, BAM! Magic answer from no where.

What should have happened, what would have been stronger, is if he’s told in all his lives, there is faint memories of a non-lethal option. He can find and learn that option, but only if he becomes a fully realized Avatar. Aang knows he can’t. He doesn’t want to pay the price, his heart, his self, for that. So his past lives agree. That’s fine. You can do that. You can do everything you’re supposed to do and never reach that finale pinnacle. Many Avatars, great Avatars, never get there. You are best as you are, Aang.

But you will have to kill Ozai.

That’s the cost here. Kill the boy, or kill the man.

And I want to focus on something: neither of these options are evil. Aang would have to make a choice that echoes the very first one he ever made in the series. He can chose the world or himself, but before, when he chose himself, he doomed thousands (at least) to die. This time, no matter what he does, he will save the world. He is not choosing between dooming humanity or dooming his own heart. He is choosing between his heart and his morality.

(Something that, btw, would echo Katara’s journey. She had that choice when she faced her mother’s killer. She chose her morality over her heart. Something Zuko knew she would do because she’d done it once before, with him. In the season 2 finale, Zuko and Katara had their moment and Katara offered the water from the spirit well to him to heal not a debilitating injury or to save his life, but to heal his scar. He is someone who chased her across the world and has tried time and again to kill her best friend but when he showed her weakness, her response was kindness. That’s why Zuko took her to face her mother’s killer. He knew she’d chose empathy in the end because that’s who she is. If Aang was going on this journey, Katara could be brought in to echo what Zuko did for her.)

I also want to say it is very clear what Aang would chose as well: himself. Aang has, from the beginning, been selfish. He’s caring, empathetic and giving, but he is always selfish. From day one, he put the world on hold so he could do what he wanted. The more he started to understand what the world was going through, the more he clung to what he wanted. That’s why Katara became this giant sticking point in the series. He wanted something to make all this worth it. And she, his crush, became that something. That thing he could want and have and hold. And though he and Katara are friends. Though they are best friends, he still turned her into an object in his head. Something for him to clutch to. “You can have this world, but I want this in return.”

And I think, if we confronted this head on, it would give Aang what he needed. Clarity.

Here’s the scene in this story: Aang has learned the price of his Want and his Need. To get what he wants, he only has to kill someone that everyone agrees should be killed. To get what he needs, he has to kill the part of himself that is so desperate to live. And Katara talks with him about it. She relates it to her mother’s death and what Zuko did for her. She tells him that she knows he’ll do the right thing. That he’s a good person, and a good Avatar, and that he will--

And Aang kisses her. Not on the dock before a battle. But here, in this private, intimate moment. A moment where it’s just them as they are, at their best. Friends who love each other. He kisses her and he thinks, yes, I choose this. I chose her. I will always choose her. I love her.

And Katara pulls back. Because she doesn’t love him. Because. She. Doesn’t. I don’t care if she’s kissing Zuko or not. (Though she is.) But she doesn’t love Aang. She, at best, doesn’t like it when the boy who likes her show interest in other people. And as a former fourteen-year-old girl? MOOD. Even not wanting someone, you can get pissy when their attention is given elsewhere. You feel like shit about it, but damnit, it’s yours even if you don’t want it.

Now Aang is kissing her. He crossed that line she put up a long time ago. And made his feelings clear. And her response is, at best, “Not now.” And she leaves. And Aang is alone. And Aang has to come to some realizations about himself.

He expected Katara to fall into his lap. All his stress and angst and fighting for her, he never realized that...he never asked her how she felt about it. In his head, he was fighting for his future with Katara, but it was never about Katara the person. It was always about Katara, the symbol of all his new love he found in this dark future. 

And Aang would look over his friends. He’d watch them go through the nightly routines. He’d see the joy they had (Sokka and Suki flirting casually together.) and he’d see the growth (Toph, loud as she ever is, bullying Zuko, able to take it and smile) and he’s see the darkness (Katara, alone because of him and his feelings and his choices and him not doing the blindingly obvious) and Aang will realize something.

The problem has always been him. Aang, the boy, has been the issue this entire time. The good he’s done, the good he will do, isn’t what this world needs. This world doesn’t need empathy. It needs balance. And Aang gets up. And he leaves.

He goes to the lionturtle. He learns what he needs to know. The finale battle happens. And he is still Aang, the boy. He’s hoping he can make a third choice. He’s hoping, Aang, the boy, is enough. But he isn’t Ozai isn’t willing to be anything less then ruler of the world. Aang fights. Fire, rocks, wind, water. All of it flying at him. At a pivotal point, a dagger of rock is snapped free from the ground around him. Aang throws it, and it’s aiming for Oazi’s neck. And it would kill him, but at the last moment Aang stops it.

Because he made his choice.

He will kill the boy.

And in that moment, he becomes the Avatar.

He takes Ozai’s bending. No longer a cop out “yay no death in our kids show” ending, but the price of peace. Something must die. In this case, it was Aang.

He doesn’t smile as bright after this battle, (though he does still smile.) And he doesn’t laugh as hard (though there is so much laughter to come.) His pranks are smaller (but they do still happen.) Aang still lives, but as a man, and a man who carries the lives of everyone he killed because he was a boy for too long. (And not near long enough. Spirits help him, not nearly long enough.) And he still has his love. His friends gather around him. 

The ending isn’t Aang and Katara kissing. It is Aang, held and loved by the family he formed on his journeys. The reward for Aang isn’t a girl he earned by virtue of saving the world. It is the family he made because Aang, the boy, chose mercy at every turn. Now Aang, the man, still has them. All of them. They all lived. All grew. All loved.

Aang won.

[kozzax]

Rendog Variants: Standard Rens

Standard Rens are... just Ren. They're just normal Ren, no caveats or special names. Just Ren.

Season 4

Season 4 was Ren's first season on Hermitcraft, as many people know! He spent the vast majority of the season in his old standard skin.

This season featured the Logfellas plot, a business war which Ren was a major player in that included such activities as stealing, kidnapping, and vandalism. The Logfellas plot eventually culminated in a wonderfully entertaining trial (which is highly worth a watch), which Ren attended in appropriate formalwear.

Season 5

Season 5 was less directly story focused than Ren's other seasons have been, and instead focused moreso on working on his base. Once again, he spent the vast majority in the standard skin pictured above. This season, though, for the first time, he had a recurring lore-based skin! This is his main skin for La Revolution, a team consisting of Ren and Iskall (and, later, Stress) that was formed to fight against the nHo, featured in several short segments throughout the season. Even post-nHo, the revolutionary skin showed up in segments as La Revolution refocused onto taking down the ConVex.

Season 6

Season 6 saw Ren's characters and lore-based skins multiply exponentially. Throughout the season he used quite a number of different skins, though several of these were trial runs while he revamped his skin. I'm only going to note two of these trial run skins here. For the majority of early season 6, he used his old standard skin.

During the Hermitcraft Civil War, called by Doc after the server's prank war went too far, Ren switched over to his war skin [on the left]. While he did go on vacation for much of the war, he kept the skin on until it was over.

Just over halfway through Season 6, Ren started trying out new skins. For about ten episodes he'd have a new skin on each episode, with most of them being minor tweaks from previous skins. This is the first take on the skin that would, eventually, become his main skin. Canonically, Grian gave him this outfit.

This is the skin that Ren ended on as his main skin by the end of season 6. It would go on to be his primary skin for the majority of season 7, and one of, if not the most notable of his skins. Later, during season 7, he would gain dog ears after a questionable haircut by Bdubs.

Season 7

During season seven Ren had, by far, the most skins to date. From the very beginning this season, he started with a brand new skin and a story to go with it. The start of Ren's season seven saw him washing up on Loser Island, sunburnt and with his clothes torn to bits, and this is the skin he wore for the majority of the season.

His more notable Bigger Logz Inc. skin is his CEO outfit. This skin was primarily used for skits in video intros, inside the PR cabin of Bigger Logz Inc. Whenever Ren was reporting on finances or Bigger Logz developments, this skin or a variant of it was used.

Throughout much of the later half of season 7, Ren wore his Stargazer skin. This skin was tied heavily into the core story Ren wove throughout the season, although it didn't appear in the condensed movie that capped the season off. I won't go into detail concerning the Stargazer arc here, and instead am going to direct you to the movie in question (here), as it is a story best experienced in its original form.

Season 8

Cyberdog Ren is the final Standard Ren skin on this list, and by far the most story-intensive. At the end of Ren's Stargazer film, he was left broken and battered in the valley of Tatooren, and had to be put back together piece by piece by Renbob. After three long months in cyberspace with Renbob and Doc, he emerged as a cyborg-dog, and that's how he remains today.

Rendog Variants: The Masterpost

Back in August, I set out on a journey to watch the entirety of Ren’s Hermitcraft backlog. In preparation for the animatic I was starting to think about, I took a mental note of every character I came across. Having recently picked the animatic back up, I’ve started sorting through this list again, and I thought it would be fun to compile the entire list for anyone who was curious.

I’ve broken this list down into five categories: Standard, Roleplay, Possessions, Friends, and Enemies.

Due to the amount of Ren Variants there are, I have had to split the list up into several reblogs. The full thread can be found here.

Disclaimer: This list includes only Rens from Hermitcraft and Third Life/Last Life. Variants from other series will not be included on this list, mostly because I haven’t yet had the time to go through and learn about them. In addition, there are a few of Ren’s standard skins that, due to Tumblr’s image limit, I could not include in the posts. This includes Ren’s Get Gorgeous and lumberjack skins from season 7. Apologies for the missing Rens!

[magical-girl-hell]

Okay, for real though, here’s the context behind this!

Big spoilers for this comic, Infinity Wars, and War of the Realms under the cut.

This comic (Wolverine: Infinity Watch) is a sequel/epilogue to Infinity Wars, which I have talked about a lot, because I love it. The entirety of Infinity Wars is the culmination of a running plot Loki had involving the infinity stones that started when Thor became unworthy. That’s how long these plans have spanned. The entirety of the Mighty Thor arc all the way to the beginning of War of the Realms. (Which comes directly after this comic.) It’s a lot of planning. A lot.

And these plans have inexplicably been screwed up, repeatedly, by people just... happening to be in the right place at the right time.

Except they didn’t just happen to be there -- a time-traveling version of Logan from the end of time did it. (Comics be like.)

Loki has just found this out, and he doesn’t like Logan to begin with. Among other things, when he failed to get the space stone because Logan “accidentally” stumbled upon the heist and picked it up, Loki went to him to ask him nicely for it. And Logan stabbed him. In the face. Ow.

So... pranks were in order.

...That said... Loki’s just been through some real shit and he knows it’s about to get way worse. Loki’s romp in Infinity Wars ended with him taking a peek at his future and noping right the fuck out of the comic. He’s on this particular adventure specifically to stall the beginning of the War of the Realms, during which he now knows he’s going to get brutally murdered by the villainous frost giant father that he has been valiantly but hopelessly trying to redeem for the past several years.

So I wasn’t kidding. He really needed that hug.

how… how far was that joke gonna go?

Wolverine: Infinity Watch #1 (2019) written by Gerry Duggan art by Andy MacDonald & Jordie Bellaire