#the only exceptions i can find are outside of the comics

[whitestopper]

Why does Elle wear so many crop tops, Yasmine Finney must've been FREEZING 😭

[maxwell-grant]

So is Worm good from what you have read

"Yes" doesn't begin to cover it but yes. Worm is a brain-rewiring mobius strip disguised as a bible disguised as a superhero web serial that either cured your cancer or shot your dog or both depending on who you ask, and it has many extremely dedicated, brilliant scholar priest surgeons publicly dissecting it on this platform on the regular to the point I don't think I have much to add to the conversations surrounding it, even if I do have some The Thoughts about it. I had never even really seriously thought about superhero prose before and Worm isn't a thing I go back and reread frequently but it did a complete and total 180 on the way I think about superheroes and even fiction, and I've never stopped thinking about it since I've read it.

It is a monumentally impressive story with completely absolutely incredible characters that I cannot stop thinking about. No matter where it was going, even past stretches that were less interesting or more of a slog to read or worse, I could not put the story of Taylor Hebert down for one minute. Tattletale fascinated me every step of the way, I had to keep up with her. Rachel Lindt was a character I feel like I'd been waiting my whole life for. What was I gonna do, not see them through? I feel like Worm easily loses you if you don't particularly connect with the characters enough to justify to yourself the amount of time you'll spend with them, but man, I could not unglue my eyeballs from these people enough (I love all the core Undersiders, to be clear, I'd say it's Rachel > Taylor > Tattletale > Aisha and Alec and Brian, there are very small gaps between these, I just don't go berserk for the last three like I do for the first three, I'm taking Bitch and Skitter to the grave I'm dead serious)

Worm irreparably destroys your ability to engage with superhero fiction the same way ever again, as evidenced by the fact that it destroyed the author's own ability to engage with his own superhero fiction ever again. And everybody who read it has one or several gripes with it with some major dealbreakers in the mix. Tumblr's kinda the only place online where you can really talk about them at length without the spectre of John Wildbow hanging over the discussion, which enables discussion to the point where yes, maybe it does look like to outsiders that nobody can agree on whether Worm is good or what is it even about or whether it even has worms in it (it has at least one, although it's a very big one).

And it is good, it has the Undersiders in it and the Undersiders are one of the greatest groups of characters ever put together, but everyone has at least one major point of contention with Worm whether it's the timeskip or the length or the racism or the gross fatphobia or aspects surrounding the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus and etc. I'd say it has maybe the most racist vision of Latin America I've ever seen in a superhero text a hair short of pro-colonial tracts in Golden Age comics and that is a tall fucking order by any metric (part of why I started WEON4 as a project was motivated by spite, to try and make my own stories about non-American superheroes even if just as practice). It is Complicated, and that winds up making it so fascinating to talk about.

Worm has self-sustaining ecological systems of posts up here, far away from the Spacebattles and Reddit battlegrounds where it has different ones and that's not getting into Weaverdice or the sequel or Wildbow's larger body of work, which I haven't gotten to and probably will not any time soon because Worm was enough of a commitment as is. Do I recommend Worm to everyone? It is certainly not to everyone's tastes and I personally find it difficult to describe it simply enough to make it sound appealing or not like a pyramid scheme. But yes I do think it's good, in fact great, in fact, amazing, except when it isn't, and except it Plainly Sucks, but then something like Taylor vs Mannequin or Kevin Norton's interlude or "You needed worthy opponents" happens and it fucks harder than anything has ever fucked before and you don't walk away from it the same, so yes I guess "good" will have to do now.

It's certainly a lot but I definitely found it worth my time to read and then read the texts written about it here. You'll have to take my endorsement of Worm as proof of it's quality and proof of how deranged it makes it's readerbase, they're not mutually exclusive. If you can make it, Worm and the wormosphere has layers and layers to wade through and talk about and enjoy, despite how we're all so very small in the end *gunshot*.

[icejjfishesz]

𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐔𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ━━ ❛ 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐀 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 ❜

chapter no. 001!          

𝗈𝗈𝗈.               ⠀CONTENT : paige “with” another girl (for the plot). reader is so terribly down bad. also, i don’t proofread so if you see typos or grammar mistakes i’m sorry. and this chapter is kinda boring but it's necessary soo.

𝗈𝗈𝗈. ⠀      WORD COUNT : 1.5k

𝗈𝗈𝗈.   ⠀AUTHORS NOTE : yall seemed to like the prologue so i hope yall like this too!!

THEY’RE KISSING. and she’s enjoying it, by the looks of it. you can tell because she’s doing that thing where she pulls the other person closer like they could never be close enough. the thing she used to do to you. 

it’s almost comical that the first time you see paige again, she’s kissing some other girl with eyes like yours outside the diner where you and the girls were. she thinks she’s being sneaky (she’s not). she always thought she was sneaky, you remember that much. in fact, you somehow remember everything about the blonde except what her lips tasted like. so of course you’re a little jealous, feeling a bit out of the loop. that’s normal. right? and maybe definitely it’s stupid to mourn so deeply over a relationship that you ended but, whatever, you can’t help that you miss her.

there was nothing human about the feeling, it was more like a typhoon or a volcanic eruption, something so completely out of your control. it was purely sickening…but whenever you see the peroxide-blonde with someone new, you  find yourself apprehensively scanning their hair, their skin, the words that they would say –– always finding a hint of yourself within them. the delusional part of you wanted that to mean she still wanted you, but logic said that maybe she just started having a type. but then you’d think back to before…the paige before you never had a specific type. but since you? there’s an unmistakable one. but that’s not enough proof that she still feels for you. in fact, it’s nothing. it’s hard not to see yourself when you’re actively looking for it. you’d keep up with the torture by staring at paige kissing that girl through the window but then you feel a sharp kick to your shin from underneath the table. 

“stop staring, perv.” nika mutters, rolling her eyes lightly. although nika was one of the few people who knew about the dead relationship, she didn’t know that your feelings for paige still lingered. she only knew what paige told her, that the two of you were friends.

“i wasn’t ––”

“you were.”

okay –– maybe you were. you sigh silently to yourself, taking a sip of your milkshake. this is the first time you’re actually hanging out with your friends together rather than just one on one (which you only did because you didn’t want to see paige). the two of you agreed to be friends but that was clearly not going to happen. however, you felt bad for denying your friends every time they asked to spend time with you. so, you sucked up your pride. you could spend an hour in paige’s presence, it wouldn’t kill you. at least not literally.

angel, a redhead who shares a dorm with nika and a major with you, is sitting in between azzi and you. she’s eyeing you carefully, after all, the two of you are very close and she knows why you and paige broke up. she also knows that you still care about her. her gaze is simultaneously suffocating and protective.

“...are you okay?” she whispers only loud enough for you to hear. you simply nod, munching on your fries trying not to look out of the window again. in truth, your head was spinning. you haven’t seen paige face to face since the breakup. you were hoping you’d never have to again…

then she finally enters, walking up to the booth. every step she takes is just as confident as they always are. her hair is down, running across the length of her back. her eyes meet yours, they’re more familiar than your own name. her beauty is still unquestionable –– but you wouldn’t admit it. it would make looking away from her even more difficult. so instead you pretend not to look as she sits down at the booth right next to nika…right in front of you. she pokes nika’s side just to piss her off  before snatching a fry from angel’s plate and dipping it in her own milkshake. angel rolls her eyes but says nothing.

“that’s disgusting.” nika turns up her nose as paige bites it. 

“don’t knock it till you try it.” paige dramatically licks her fingers. nika makes a fist, gently hitting the table a few times with her knuckles. you chuckle at nika’s attitude.

“what are you giggling about? you used to like it too.” paige mutters, smiling lightly but her words send a pang to your chest. nobody else seems to catch the bitterness in her tone….but you do. her eyes look almost guilty when she sees the sharp intake of breath you take. but before she could say anything else, you look away. you avoid her eye contact like it’s deadly.

nika clears her throat, eventually sensing the tension, and turns her attention to azzi whose eyes are close and head is rested against the booth. “you okay?”

“mhm…just really tired.” she mutters, opening her eyes to sip her lemonade. 

you chuckle. “i bet you are, we stayed up all last night studying.”

“finals?” angel questions.

“yeah…” azzi mumbles.

“can we please not talk about that right now?” paige groans.

“says you, scholar athlete.” azzi mutters, rolling her eyes at the blonde.

“she’s too busy with that girl to focus on studying these days.” nika chuckles. angel looks over at you for a quick moment but you keep your gaze steady on your plate.

you nearly jump out of your skin trying to relax your tensing shoulders before someone notices. you ended things with her…she couldn’t even call you her girlfriend. so why did it hurt so much to even hear of someone else in your place? this wasn’t exactly the plan, you were meant to move on by now. but seeing her…again…all you can wonder is what she’s thinking about right now.

“who? cleo?” paige snorts. “we’re not talking about that either.”

cleo. cleo. the girl who just had her tongue down paige’s throat no less than ten minutes ago. you feel sick to your stomach at the mention but you hide it well, then you feel sicker when you think about how pathetic it is that you even felt this way to begin with. it’s just another indignity among many.

“why not?” nika mutters. “it’s more interesting than talking about studying.”

“true.” azzi adds.

paige looks over at you, her way of saying that she’s not going to talk about another girl in front of you. “where’s aubrey?” 

you appreciate the conversation shift even if you know it’s in vain. they want to know about this mystery girl and honestly, so do you.

“late.” nika mutters.

“i ordered her food for her.” angel smiles softly. 

“and she’s gonna wanna talk about the girl too.” azzi chuckles. angel’s leg shakes underneath the table, she’s clearly empathetic for you. she knows the girls don’t mean to hurt you but she also knows that it is hurting you. you wanted to relax her, make her feel less guilty for not saying anything even if she wasn’t participating in the conversation.

so you chuckle lightly, pretending to be completely fine and say, “can you please be still?”

“can you please be still?” you sigh softly, braiding her hair in its signature style. paige is sitting in front of you on the bed with her legs crossed. she has a game later, and she asked you to braid her hair for her. 

“you’re pretty.” paige mumbles as you finish up her first braid, still squirming at your touch. 

for a second you almost forget yourself, paige being damn near sickeningly sweet. she seems to notice how her words have temporarily struck you, pride swelling within her since she loves making you happy. 

you shrug it off and remember that her back is facing you, so you chuckle at her commenting on your appearance. “you can’t even see me.”

“i don’t have to. i’m thinking about how your face looks right now.” she turns back to look at you over her shoulder. “pretty.”

you bite back a smile, turning her head back so you can braid the other side. “you’re corny, you know that?”

“i’m enamored.”

“oh, someone learned a new word.” you snort, continuing braiding her hair, being as gentle as you can with her. (though it gets increasingly difficult when she won’t stop moving).

“shut up.” she mutters. “i’m super smart.”

you finish braiding her hair, tapping her side to let her know that you’re done and she can go look. she stands up from the bed, long legs taking her to the dresser which has a mirror over it, she eyes her braids carefully. “they’re a little crooked, babe.”

you roll your eyes. “cause you wouldn’t stop mo––”

she turns back your way, walking back to you. paige towers over you while you sit on the bed, she puts a hand under your chin and kisses you. “i’m joking. they’re perfect. thank you, baby.”

“anything for you…” you whisper back and your words make her smile. it’s wide and toothy –– the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

[ozzgin]

Sweetypie🍓🥧.... If You don't mind...

may i make a request again about Baki characters with prehistoric reader who's have a normal size body, she's so innocent in the modern world... And that's remind you with a Lil kids...I think it will be cute when the prehistoric girl looks around with those big doll-like eyes, she's like a porcelain doll with long hair .... thanks again sweet heart 🍓❤️....

You so lovely 💋🧁🍭🎂��

I can’t help but think that someone of normal size but in Pickle’s times would be the result of some form of dwarfism. Like, reader was probably bullied relentlessly for their restricted growth and lack of hunting efficiency and next time they wake up everyone is a “little person”. The shock!

Baki Characters x Prehistoric! Small Reader Headcanons

[Baki Masterlist] [Part II]

Unless someone had invented a Time Machine and ended up stuck in late Jurassic, the researchers just assumed you must’ve had your growth impeded in some way. Funny to imagine that someone sharing their features and size was an exception to the rule. Your presence frozen next to Pickle was a comical sight.

On the other hand, you’re absolutely overjoyed to see you’re no longer an outsider. While you don’t fully understand what happened, you can very easily deduce that these new humans are not only surviving, but leading self sufficient and comfortable lives without large bodies. It offers you a sense of belonging.

Pickle has always been aware of your disadvantage in battle, so his protectiveness towards you is almost instinctual. Even when fighting his challengers he has one eye turned to you, making sure you’re safe and secure. And you can’t blame him, really. If only you noticed the greedy stares you receive from the men. Being surrounded by dinosaurs might’ve been safer.

Yuujirou is rather unimpressed and somewhat disappointed when he considers the idea of potential offspring. There’s no advantage you’d bring with your incomplete genes and he doesn’t care about having pretty children. Pickle would be absolutely mortified if he knew the blasphemous, insulting thoughts this man dares to think about his partner.

The rest of the fighters thankfully don’t share the same utilitarian perspective. Baki finds your innocence adorable and is almost envious to witness your glistening, worried eyes that follow Pickle during his matches, with your small hands tightly pressed together in anticipation. He wouldn’t say no to having the same kind of support coming from the audience.

Katsumi and Retsu can’t even muster up a properly maintained eye contact with you. They’re not used to a feminine presence closely observing their fights from just a few meters away, especially if it’s someone like you. They’re also ashamed to admit they’ve wondered about your relationship with Pickle back in the day and how plausible that’d be given the…difference.

Jack can relate to Pickle more than he’d like to confess. You often approach him - since he’s closest to what you find familiar - in order to gesticulate questions about the unknown surroundings. He was initially frustrated with your apparent neediness, but your helpless stare now startles him into assistance without much complaint. He’s uncovering a growing need for shielding you and he doesn’t like the distraction one bit.

Pickle is heavily considering sending you back to the lab enclosure. He’d rather have the men in white coats scribbling from a distance than these sly vultures. He wishes you wouldn’t be so nice and naïve, but then again none of it is your fault. He’ll just have to keep the persistent suitors away himself. It’s his duty.

[jesncin]

The potential of Ma'alefa'ak; a comics retrospective

Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz, Martian Manhunter's evil twin brother, is considered the most iconic villain of the martian's rogues gallery. Aside from the white martians (which are arguably more often used as Justice League rogues), Ma'alefa'ak is the most frequently revived and adapted rogue to go against J'onn. Readers tend to remember Ma'al as "the Darkseid cultist who genocide-d the entire martian race", and while that's true for his first iteration, I don't believe that's the reason he's persisted as long as he has.

As with much of Martian lore, Ma'al's character and origin has been reinvented many times in both comics and adapted media. I would like to take a retrospective look into how Ma'al has evolved and shifted from his initial origin story, what I find compelling, what works, what doesn't, and where I'd like to see this character moving forward. This post will cover the comics and a separate post will cover his film and tv adaptations.

As we go through these iterations, I want to dig into what the through line of Ma'alefa'ak's character is. What do writers decide to keep and reinvent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?

disclaimer: Ma'al is frequently coded and sometimes even explicitly written as a disabled martian. While it's not a one-to-one comparable marginalization to any human disability (it's more of a fantasy disability or thematic rather than true representation), I figured it's still important to disclose that I am not a disabled reader. These are observations from an outsider perspective with no personal authority. Additional content warning for discussions of sexual assault (not directly, more like an act likened to rape- with the exception of a brief analysis on Brightest Day), genocide, and ableism.

Let's start with Martian Manhunter's 1998 solo run, issue #0 Pilgrimage. In this storyline, Ma'al is introduced as "the only martian born without telepathy!", and is therefore the only martian immune to fire (famously the weakness to the martian race). He admits to creating the telepathic virus that caused the martians to combust into flames, thereby killing them. Notably Ma'al is described as a "priest / scientist", and he explains that his goal is to wipe out all telepathic martians so that he can no longer be "the freak". The twins fight, presumed they killed one another, and went on their separate paths: J'onn is teleported to Earth, while Ma'al just kind of. Takes the world's longest nap in martian rubble. J'onn takes a pilgrimage to Mars one day, which alerts Ma'al that his quest to eliminate all telepathic martians is not complete.

Ma'al continues to appear as an overarching villain on issues #3-9, infiltrating J'onn's human life as John Jones and eventually impersonating the Martian Manhunter to get the Justice League to turn against his twin. In the process, Ma'al also impersonates several League members, sporting a signature Joker-esque smile to let the reader know it's him. This act of impersonation and trickery becomes a popular staple in future incarnations of Ma'al, as is often the case for shapeshifting villains. Ma'al adopts the "human" name Malefic.

In issue #7 we're given a flashback to a once living Mars, where Ma'al is being tried for the crime of "mind rape". It isn't specified who the victim of his crime is, unlike other iterations would later elaborate on. The reveal here is that Ma'al wasn't born disabled: he was punished to be by the martian council. His memory was wiped to make him believe he was disabled by birth.

[I know I could share other more informative panels of this flashback but I have to share what I consider, as a twin, the funniest panel ever]

In issue #8, it is revealed that while Ma'al's memory was wiped, his hatred was so strong that even though he doesn't remember why he hates he knows that he just does. So he secretly orchestrates the genocide of telepathic martians. J'onn notably defends his brother from the martian council initially, telling them that Ma'al deserves a chance as a new person, only to be proven wrong. By issue #9, the twins have a final battle with each other in the present. J'onn reinstalls Ma'al's telepathic abilities and memories, reactivating Ma'al's weakness to fire and letting him burn in the sun.

And that's Ma'alefa'ak's first debut! A standard trickster evil-twin villain who dies in his very first story. He does show up later in this solo run, but it's with a rebooted origin. So they're kind of like two different Ma'al takes in the same run.

Let's talk about this first version! We're dealing with a very typical evil twin character; he's described as the evil parts of what was supposed to be a whole person, while J'onn is all the good parts. There's a semblance of themes surrounding disability and destined good/evil, but it's only touched upon in this first take. One of the core flaws to Martian Manhunter's longevity as a solo character is his underdeveloped moral code and themes. It's the reason why J'onn doesn't have a stable rogues gallery, because he just kills them. He will SAY he has the basic moral high ground of "killing is bad, life is sacred" but he has no problem tossing his villains into the sun before acting upset about it later. J'onn lets his brother burn, but the narrative feigns him to have concern afterwards over how he couldn't save his poor brother. It's an odd read.

J'onn's "killing is bad" moral code also doesn't bounce off against his evil brother in a meaningful way. Ma'al wants to kill all martians so he won't be the freak martian anymore, but then what? He could go to a planet like Earth with no telepathy where he'd be normal, but instead he just,,, buries himself under some rocks to sleep until he realizes J'onn is still alive- which gives him purpose again. It's funny in a petty way, but meaningless considering he is now 50% of the martian population. While I consider this iteration of Ma'al's motivations to be shallow ("focused hatred" as a core motivation is short lived and unideal for the longevity of a recurring rogue), I do find Ma'al's shenanigans impersonating both J'onn and League members very fun to read.

He's a true equal to J'onn and while his immunity to fire wasn't explored as much as it should have been, it's no wonder this first impression gave Ma'al his iconic status as Martian Manhunter's arch nemesis, there's a personal connection between them as brothers. It's a familial short-hand for a deep relationship between hero and villain, but it's something to work with. Because even after death, Ma'al is still a revisited character.

Honorable mention time! The "DCU Villains Secret Files and Origins" (1999), featured an exclusive short comic on Ma'al's section that foreshadows the shapeshifting shenanigans he's about to pull on the League. His character page describes him as being born without telepathy even though that's proven to be untrue. We'll discuss the ableist narrative of having a disabled martian seeking to destroy all able-bodied martians in detail after looking through more of his backstory. Also, in the Secret Files information, Ma'al's marital status is left ambiguous for some reason. In case any of you were wondering if he was single.

Up next, Ma'alefa'ak returns in the 3-part flashback arc, In My Life (issues #33-35)! This story contains the most extensive characterization of Ma'al in the comics. In this storyline, we get to see J'onn and Ma'al's twinly birth. Sha'sheen and M'yrnn (J'onn and Ma'al's mother and father respectively) give J'onn a blessed name, while Ma'al is given a cursed name that prophesized darkness within him. Great favoritism on the parents, there. As the two grow up, J'onn is treated better than Ma'al-who is ostracized as someone vaguely "difficult". Despite this, J'onn cares about his twin dearly, constantly defending and giving his brother the benefit of the doubt. J'onn confronts his precognitive mother, and asks why she gave his brother a name that alienates him from martian society. Sha'sheen avoids answering directly and instead explains that before J'onn was even born, she had visions of a terrible future where a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" will be needed. "Ma'al's name serves as a warning", Sha'sheen says.

J'onn grows up to be a manhunter like his mom, while Ma'al becomes a theologian and quantum physicist. At a big council meeting, Ma'al opens a portal that allows the people of Apokolips to visit Mars. The Apokolips people are friendly at first- asking around for an anti-life equation- but then quickly attack with an army and kidnap a bunch of Martians! They've taken Ma'al and M'yrnn too! J'onn goes on a quest to rescue his friends and family from Apokolips.

In the next issue, J'onn traverses Apokolips to free the kidnapped Martians and meets his love interest: M'yri'ah. He finds a traumatized Ma'al, whose mind has been experimented on by the people of Apokolips. J'onn also finds M'yrnn, who has been so horrifically tampered with to the point he is beyond saving. J'onn manages to save a group of Martians and head back home to Mars.

In the last issue of this arc, it's revealed that Ma'al is feigning being messed up by Apokolips. He's actually working for Darkseid and is snooping around for the anti-life equation! Meanwhile J'onn gets happily married to M'yri'ah, but before they can get-funky-Martian-Style, M'yri'ah feels her mind is being intruded on and is traumatized. An emergency council meeting is called, where we learn several Martians have been telepathically violated. Sha'sheen asserts -because the narrative didn't set up any other suspects- that the perpetrator is Ma'al. J'onn continues to be defensive of his brother and tells his mom they need more evidence before they can accuse him. Meanwhile he orders the manhunters to do a mental patrol while everyone sleeps.

In a sequence that is cosmically funny, J'onn goes to his home where he has it Martian-funky-style with his wife only to hear a cry for help from his mother who turns out to be dead. As a funeral is had in her honor, Sha'sheen's ghost materializes to J'onn. She reveals that she intruded into Ma'al's mind and confirmed her suspicions; Ma'al is Darkseid's servant. Angry, J'onn confronts Ma'al on Venus where the two fight.

J'onn proposes to take some of Ma'al's darkness and offer some of his lightness to heal Ma'al (some sort of Martian fusion I guess?). Ma'al is disgusted at the prospect of being more like J'onn so the two battle it out. I respect an identical twin that wants individuality. Anyway Ma'al loses and is brought back to Mars where his telepathy and memory are wiped away as punishment. J'onn goes home to have it Martian-funky-style with his wife which results in his baby girl K'hym. The ending is very abrupt.

There is a lot to dissect with In My Life. This is personally my favorite Ma'alefa'ak comic because while it's silly, predictable, and really slows down in issue #34 on Apokolips, it has some compelling characterization moments for Ma'al.

"But what am I, dear brother, other than what our mother made me? And what she didn't do to me, Darkseid and Desaad surely did. Am I the villain or the victim in all this?"

Let's discuss! Ma'al is set up to be the dynamic opposite to J'onn. While J'onn is "the best aspects of the Martian race" and is a duty bound to the point he is a law enforcer, Ma'al is an authority-questioning, faith-doubting, anti-establishment, outsider. There's a scene where M'yrnn is teaching young martians the ethics of telepathy: while Martians can read each other's minds, they are still entitled to privacy. To this, Ma'al calls out a double standard: how come manhunters are allowed to break these rules? M'yrnn essentially responds "it's tradition, don't question it." Even J'onn challenged this notion later when the Martian council accuse Ma'al of being the perpetrator of Mind Rape: "in investigating a mind rapist, you propose we rape Ma'alefa'ak's mind as well?". Yet that's exactly what Sha'sheen does to confirm her suspicions. She's allowed to after all, she's a manhunter.

Ma'al's entire reason for opening a portal for people of Apokolips to visit is because he's lost faith in Martian gods- something considered blasphemous by the Martian council. J'onn tries desperately to get Ma'al to assimilate into a society Ma'al doesn't identify with, going out of his way to propose how he could infuse his brother with parts of himself so that Ma'al could be more like him.

"I will not be you! I will not give up who I am! If I am flawed, then I will be flawed! I am Ma'alefa'ak! I will not be you!"

We all yass'd in quick succession. After their fight, J'onn's rebuttal is "You are as you are. Perhaps the only way to change that is to take it all away from you." Absolutely wild that J'onn and the Martian society are the good guys here. There's a story in here about someone who has been Assigned Ostracized At Birth and then dares challenge society's double standards. It's a far from perfect story, Ma'al absolutely victimizes himself as having no agency in following Darkseid's orders- but he came to this point as a result of a society and religion that shunned him. His punishment is to have his rebellious tendencies and memory stripped of him, and in the words of the comic:

"he would be mamed. He would be crippled. He would be given a new identity so that he would become a useful member of our society again. But he would never be fully trusted and he would never know why."

Dystopian!! He's been Martian Unperson-ed like it's 1984 by George Orwell. Of course this doesn't work and continues the cycle of Ma'al feeling shunned by society, this time because he's disabled, causing the destruction of Mars through H'ronmeer's Curse. Maybe Sha'sheen should've just named him something nice.

Immediately I know what the criticism to this is- Ma'al is a Darkseid cultist and telapthic rapist (and eventual perpetrator of genocide), why is it a question whether he is a victim? To this I say, we need to look at the bigger picture: how often are we treated to narratives that frame a rebellious and marginalized character who Has A Point About How Unfair Society Is, but "their methods are just too extreme"? It's the classic MCU villain and respectable-hero dynamic. Villain challenges the status quo, Hero upholds it.

Within the context of In My Life and Ma'al's lore, none of Ma'al's worst actions make any sense. In his first appearance, Ma'al is tried for the crime of "mind rape". However we, as the reader, are not privy to why he did these things. M'yria'h wasn't even written as his victim yet at this point. As she's consoling J'onn over Ma'al's trial, she says "I know how hard this was for you" "he cannot hurt others again". In My Life is meant to show us why Ma'al did those crimes. Ma'al was looking for the anti-life equation for Darksied, which My'rnn explains earlier to the Apokolips guests that "neither me nor my people have any desire for them {the anti-life equation}". Yet Ma'al violates M'yri'ah's and several martians' minds to fruitlessly find the anti-life equation when Ma'al should know that no one on Mars is interested in it. M'yri'ah is re-written to be his victim in this story, because it sure would be messed up for Ma'al to hurt his own twin's wife! Ma'al is oddly unmotivated in his origin stories, was he collaborating with Darkseid all along before opening the portal? Or was he indoctrinated by Darkseid after he was on Apokolips? What about Darkseid's ideas does he find appealing as an outsider?

Then there's Ma'al creating H'ronmeer's curse to wipe out the Martian race so he wouldn't be a "freak" anymore. This is also unmotivated. He had his memory erased, and all that remained was that he may not know why he hates Martians, he just does. So the next logical step was genocide? His motivation is watered down to "vague hatred".

Let's look at the optics of a story about a disabled character seeking to destroy the able-bodied population. Although I don't think Ma'alefa'ak's origin story is as intentional in its implication as some MCU propaganda perpetuates in its "respectable hero" narratives, the story of Ma'al is still the result of something so ingrained and unquestioned. It's reflective of the privileged fear that fights for equality will only result in the oppressed group oppressing the privileged-by doing unto them the same kind of oppression the privileged are used to doing to the oppressed. The privileged cannot comprehend what making space for others looks like, all they know is what it looks like to have that taken away.

No disabled person would go to the lengths a fictional Martian does in their frustration against an ableist society. Historically, it is able-bodied people and ableist society that's sought to wipe out disabled people and their culture. Everything from enforcing laws that ban the use of sign language in schools, discouraging disabled people from marrying each other, and the forced sterilization of marginalized people among many things, all exist with the goal of erasing disabled people. You've heard of fantasy reverse-racism, now get ready for fantasy reverse-ableism.

So why did the writer choose to make Ma'al do these nonsensical things? It's simple; J'onn is the best parts of the Martian race, and Ma'al is the worst parts. In a blogpost, Martian Manhunter writer John Ostrander discuses what went into Martian worldbuilding:

"Tom and I decided we would investigate and explore Martian culture in our version. He [J'onn] was telepathic; his race was telepathic. What did that mean? What were the societal rules? Rape, for example, would not only be physical; it could be emotional and mental. On the flip side of the coin, sex would involve a melding of minds as well as a melding of bodies. With his race dead, J’onn would be forever denied that. He could never again experience physical love on so deep a level."

Yeah their first thought about Martian worldbuilding really was "dang what's sex like for Martians, I guess it's super personal for them". Ma'al telepathic violation of M'yri'ah is not meant to be a deep look at rape culture or how something so vile can happen, it's just a demonstration of what the worst thing someone in a telepathic society could do. It's not even a sexual violation, Ma'al did the equivalent of looking for a secret pie recipe in someone's head, but it's framed as sexual assault by the narrative. That's why it's so unmotivated. Genocide is the next worst thing a person can do, and so that's all Ma'al is known for to most people. These narratively unmotivated actions, detached from a story about marginalization and challenging an unfair society.

And despite all that, telepathic violation and genocide are not what end up being the things future writers keep about his character. So let's continue.

Honorable mention time! In the 2006 comic run: Martian Manhunter The Others Among Us, it is revealed that the Cay'an (a surviving green martian and villain of the story) hates J'onn for letting his brother live! She wishes he was harder on Ma'al so that Ma'al wouldn't have destroyed their home. Ma'al doesn't appear in this story at all, but his influence on Martian Manhunter lore is so strong he still gets a mention and inadvertently spawns another rogue for J'onn.

It sure is weird how the narrative keeps punishing J'onn for caring about his brother. I would understand if In My Life was a story about giving an abusive family member too many chances or how some people are a lost cause, but that doesn't work when Ma'al is marked as an alienated outcast since birth. J'onn caring about Ma'al isn't a flaw to me, it's the one thing no one else in Martian society would do for Ma'al.

Moving along we have 2007's JLA: Classified: The Ghosts of Mars (issues #42-46). So if Ma'al's debut story was about impersonating J'onn and Justice League members to get everyone to mistrust and eventually kill the Martian Manhunter, The Ghosts of Mars is about Ma'al doing all that again but this time he's a dream ghost. Ma'al just possesses J'onn now. The writer, Justin Gray, really did his homework on both Martian lore and Ma'alefa'ak's origin story as there are some very specific callbacks that I enjoyed reading in this run. Rick Leonardi and Sean Philips's art is so appealing too! I love that they committed to Ma'al's edgy design.

So the reason J'onn is seeing Ma'al's Force Ghost (essentially) is that back when J'onn and Ma'al were kids, they partook in the G'amal'Khul ritual- which bonded a portion of each other's souls within themselves. Ma'al has a bit of J'onn's soul within him, and vice versa. What's notable about this incarnation of Ma'al is that despite the fact it heavily calls back to Ma'al's history in the In My Life storyline, it makes one key difference: Ma'al is explicitly labeled as disabled.

Textually it's more like a late-bloomer situation, where Ma'al can't hear The Great Voice in the way J'onn naturally could, but I think it's telling that the writers were willing to label that as a disability. Whereas In My Life and Pilgrimage never even used the word "disability"- Ma'al was only coded that way. You'll notice a still continuing theme of Ma'al needing to "overcome" his "flaws" in order to become a "useful member of society" or "a complete family". This ableist mindset and language is never called out or explored as something flawed in Martian society. It's just a given, acceptable thing.

Ma'al does eventually develop Martian Telepathy enough to hear The Great Voice, and then In My Life events remain the same in their briefly summarized retelling. Except!! For when J'onn is having a ghost-argument with his brother and calls out Ma'al by listing his crimes, J'onn does not mention Ma'al's violation of M'yri'ah or any other Martians. Later on, the ghosts of K'hym and M'yri'ah don't bring it up either. Possibly implying a small but noticeable retcon. Contrast this with his original incarnation, where that was Ma'al's defining crime that led to him being mind-wiped.

[these are from 2 separate pages that I fused together to save up space but please appreciate Ma'al peeping over J'onn's shoulders twice]

However there are some choices in characterization for Ma'al in this arc that are at odds with Ma'al's core themes and origin as a marginalized martian. His goal in this mental-ghost-argument with J'onn is to convince his brother that the Justice League will never accept J'onn as one of them because of anti-alien xenophobia. And in doing so, Ma'al weirdly props up Martian Superiority talking points.

Ma'al talks about how humans can never be faithful to their partners because humans can't shapeshift to keep the relationship spicy and interesting (I'm not joking). Unlike Martians who can change it up every now and then. Ma'al even says that because they're not telepathically open to each other like in Martian cultures, their sense of family "pales in comparison to Martian sensibilities". Having Ma'al flex abilities Martians can do as superior because humans don't have those abilities, in the same arc that explicitly labels Ma'al as disabled, is a bizarre characterization choice. While this version of Ma'al appears to have kinder parents raising him, the larger story beats of In My Life play out just the same. And those story beats rely on Ma'al being ostracized from his family since birth. The entire premise in this arc is J'onn being ostracized from human beings, who judge his more alien-appearance compared to Superman. J'onn even calls this out as racism. Yet no introspection is given over how Martian society oppressed Ma'al as a disabled Martian. So there's a bit of a dissonance in themes here.

Overall while I did enjoy this iteration of Ma'al (his ghost-aura pettiness continues to amuse me), I felt that a better version of this story was told through Martian Manhunter's Brightest Day arc. J'onn is tricked into trapping himself in his mind where he fantasizes about the Justice League sequentially dying off and is given cryptic clues in order to wake himself up. This arc deserves a shoutout because it also continues this Martian ableism tradition, but it's vilified this time!

The villain of this storyline is D'kay D'razz, and she's some kind of Martian scientist who seeks to cure Martians whose minds can't be read but are able to still telepathically read the minds of others, or "cerebrally isolated Martians" as D'kay puts it. She even proposed purging disabled Martians, which the Manhunters didn't like so they imprisoned her for hundreds of years in isolation. We don't get any named disabled Martians, they're mostly props to D'kay's belief and desire to breed the perfect Martian race with J'onn. It's odd that this time ableism is something Martian society and the manhunters disapprove of, since it was something they enforced in Ma'al's origin.

The Brightest Day Martian Manhunter storyline is also another prominent recurrence of Martian telepathic assault. Only for D'kay, unlike Ma'al's telepathic violation that was framed as rape, her goal with J'onn is explicitly sexual. "Rape" by term isn't mentioned at all in D'kay's plot, yet it's absolutely what she did to J'onn: deviously tricking him into hopefully giving her a Martian child. Yet J'onn as a victim isn't something fully recognized by the narrative to the extent that M'yri'ah was for In My Life. There's a larger conversation over the treatment of male victims in DC (and mainstream at large), but I think it's particularly clear in the case of J'onn versus M'yri'ah's treatment.

So our next two versions of Ma'al are more Elseworld takes on his character and they're much shorter to dissect. While I believe Ma'al is at his thematically strongest in these previous comics, I think these are still worth looking into because they continue some interesting staples to his character that we'll see in future adaptations of him. Also this is a Ma'alefa'ak retrospective, we're being thorough.

Get a load of this guy! Ma'alefa'ak appears in 2010's Batman The Brave and the Bold: Invasion from Mars! (issue #18) In this story, Ma'al is reimagined as a white martian. That's right, contrary to popular belief, Young Justice was not the first to make Ma'al unrelated to J'onn and turn him into a White Martian. Oh no, no no. Batman Brave and the Bold paved the way, my friend.

In this version, General Ma'al is trying to bring Martians back by destroying humans on Earth. Even though it can be argued this character only shares a name with Ma'al and little much else, there's some semblance to his character here. Ma'al possesses Batman in the later half of the story, even sporting his Joker-esque smile as he tries to take over Batman's mind. That's just about it, though!

Ma'al being reimagined as an Alien Invader seeking to wipe out humans and replace them with an alien race is a really generic villain motivation (for Kryptonians but especially Martians) so it doesn't stick. This does already show writers trying to freshen up Ma'al as a rogue by changing his Martian race. This Ma'al is the cutest design in the world.

Our last prominent Ma'alefa'ak comic appearance takes us to the infamous New 52, which features a red Martian variant of Ma'al who is once again, not J'onn's twin brother. The New 52 is a reboot where the DC universe gets an overall edgy makeover. For Martian Manhunter, this meant the 12-issue solo Epiphany. While it's easy to write this take off as a dark Elseworld interpretation with no connection to the characters' history, the Epiphany run actually has a ton of call backs to Martian Manhunter history. I like to describe this series as taking all those references and throwing them in an evil, twisted blender. So let's discuss. Since this series relies on a lot of time skips and twists, I'll be describing the relevant plot points as they happen chronologically in the universe.

Long ago, Krypton-uh I mean-Mars, was a technologically advanced society whose people became so arrogant of their progress that they didn't realize their planet was hurting. So the cosmic Spirit of Mars itself decided to psychically send the Martians a vision; a cry for help. Instead, most Martians interpreted this vision as a threat. Many just saw the vision of a large cosmic monster coming for them. Martians like Ma'alefa'ak, weaponized the growing fear and paranoia for his own gain. He convinces the Martian council that they should make a Martian Manhunter; a fusion of all the best Martians to be their weaponized champion against the coming threat. J'onn volunteers to be the soul vessel of the weapon. At the last minute, Ma'al betrays the Martians by slaughtering some of them to perform "Ancient Long-Banned Black Martian Blood Magic" to turn J'onn into a monstrous hybrid.

J'onn is betrayed, but decides to make the most of it by challenging the cosmic monster to a fight. The Spirit of Mars takes the form of J'onn's son and shames Martiankind for responding to its cry for help with violence. It punishes Mars by sucking the planet dry and spitting J'onn off-planet. Ma'alefa'ak seemingly escapes with his troops.

As millions of years pass by, J'onn goes insane and out of loneliness, splits himself up into a bunch of Martians with consciousness of their own and spread them throughout the planet (and the universe I guess). Out of shame, J'onn hides from his past and convinces himself he's a hero with false memories. Eventually in the present day, all of the split parts of J'onn decide they want to return to him as "our god", and they do that through...a fake alien invasion.

The invasion consists of a fake Ma'alefa'ak (constructed by J'onn) and his team of fake White Martians (also constructed by J'onn) who seek to put J'onn into a giant magical beam that would supposedly bring Mars back. J'onn splits himself into 4 new identities to make himself harder to find, but he's found and brought to the beam regardless.

The magic spell goes wrong and instead sends him to a universe where Earth and a resurrected Mars are about to collide into each other. J'onn tries to save both the resurrected Martians and the people of Earth by taking the Martians through a portal back to before the spell happened. Which he does. But as he makes it back to normal Earth, he is treated to the plot twist that none of the Martians (neither the ones that attacked him nor the ones he was saving) were real. J'onn realized he orchestrated the whole thing. And before the reader can think too hard about all the innocent people J'onn killed in his weird roleplay game, the comic ends with a little girl basically telling him "well, at least you tried to do good." J'onn quickly flies away because- yeah I don't think he was convinced by what she said either.

And that's a very brief summary of the New 52 Martian Manhunter arc. I'll go into more detail in the analysis since the story is so overloaded and convoluted that it would take forever to explain every plot point as its presented to us in the comic. So let's talk about themes and how Ma'alefa'ak fits into this story.

One of the other foundational flaws of Martian Manhunter as a superhero character is that he is in many ways, a creatively redundant variation of Superman. Whenever writers try to flesh out the world of Mars, they often end up accidentally re-creating Krypton. In J'onn's limited Rebirth solo run Identity, he's basically a more corrupt Jor-El figure. When both Superman and Martian Manhunter are the last of their kind and powerful, an exciting villain means bringing out another Martian or Kryptonian that seeks to take over Earth to bring their lost planet back. What Epiphany tries to do to differentiate J'onn from Superman is to dip into the cosmic horror idea that J'onn is not who he always thought he was. He's not a hero, he's a weapon designed to attack the Spirit of Mars. The new identities J'onn split himself into are convinced they have fully lived lives and are horrified to learn they're a part of something else. The full horror comes around when J'onn realizes he's constructed all this alien-invasion destruction himself. It's a very unnecessarily edgy end to a story with potential. But how does Ma'alefa'ak fit into it?

Outside of the origin story, the Ma'al we see in this arc is mostly a fabrication of J'onn's mind. Sure he has his own consciousness and we can only assume he's an accurate re-enactment of what the real (probably dead) Ma'al was like, but he's still an extension of J'onn at the end. Ma'al is characterized as a paranoid, violent egomaniac. He casually uses forbidden Martian magic to fuse Martians against their will, and his ultimate goal is to recreate Mars in his image. I highly doubt the writer of this run was referencing Ma'al's more generic re-imagined motivations from the Batman Brave and the Bold comic, but it's interesting that making Ma'al into discount General Zod is a thing that happened twice. So how does this fit into older takes on Ma'al outside of being overly edgy? It's all in the details.

The first time J'onn (as one of his new human identities) meets Ma'alefa'ak in the story, Ma'al and the many White Martians have disguised themselves as humans on Earth. Ma'al takes the form of Leo Chandler, a disabled, wheelchair-using boy paralyzed through motor neuron disease. Out of all the throwbacks to Ma'alefa'ak's disability, this one is the wildest. Leo is introduced as having been kidnapped by his own mother before murdering her himself.

But eventually J'onn learns that Leo is not who he seems. He is Ma'alefa'ak in disguise, and Leo's human "mother" was another Martian in disguise. Ma'alefa'ak's "mother" grew to like humans and decided she didn't want to go through with the invasion. She paralyzed Ma'alefa'ak with her powerful telekinesis into a form he finds disgusting and inferior. Once J'onn's many identities get close to the magic beam, Ma'alefa'ak regains his true form again. This is a surprising mix of many things from Martian Manhunter lore. Ma'alefa'ak being disabled by another Martian, finding humans inferior to Martians, even the part where he kills his own mother, are all callbacks to his original iterations. The missing thematic piece is that Ma'al is not marginalized by the Martians or humans in any way, so we're left with only the cartoonishly evil and generic "bring Mars back in my image" through genocide ritual sacrifice.

This is further contrasted against how J'onn is reimagined in this run. Remember how when J'onn's mother tells him she foresaw how he would become a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" way back in In My Life? Well in Epiphany, J'onn is now the ultimate able-bodied best Martian. He is a magic-made mix of the greatest warriors and intellects Mars has to offer. Part of the themes of this run is the way J'onn's unique existence dehumanizes him. After witnessing Ma'alefa'ak slaughter Martians with forbidden magic to complete J'onn's transformation, J'onn tells Ma'alefa'ak "You murdered me!". His new identities have personal crises upon finding out their lives are fabricated. So even though J'onn is Mars' ideal champion, the transformation is a burden on him.

In terms of J'onn and Ma'al's dynamic, we're not given a lot to work with. They're basically council associates until J'onn is betrayed by Ma'al turning him into a hybrid fusion monster. The fabricated-by-J'onn's-mind-version of Ma'al hates J'onn for resisting his destiny as a weapon to bring Mars back. There's something about how Ma'al's hatred of J'onn is characterized in this series that feels strangely familiar. Sure, Ma'al is defined by paranoia and ego, but the hatred almost feels like classic Ma'al's vague and petty hatred. It leads to amazing instances of dialogue like "COME DOWN, MANHUNTER! AND MA'ALEFA'AK WILL RIP OUT YOUR TRAITOR'S HEART AND EAT IT AS HATE FUEL FOR BLACK BLOOD MAGIC!" along with the classic "I HAVE HATED YOU SO MUCH I THINK I LOVE YOU, J'ONN." A real tsundere moment for Ma'al.

There's many other nods to Martian Manhunter lore- but to keep it Ma'alefa'ak centric, I have to point out that the series does end with J'onn talking to Ma'alefa'ak's force ghost. And I find that so amusing as an arguably intentional reference to their JLA: Classified, the Ghosts of Mars arc.

So that's New 52 Ma'alefa'ak. My main criticism for Epiphany as a Martian Manhunter take is that it feels less like a story with a unique voice and more like an amalgamation of annotations, references and citations to other Martian Manhunter stories. There's a great premise at the center of Epiphany; the cosmic horror of realizing you're not who you thought you were, that your existence is fabricated and fake, but it's bogged down with an edgy convoluted story that loses what it wants to say. This is reflected in their take of Ma'al. If you remove all the strange quirky references, he's just discount general Zod of Krypton.

Epiphany is a symptom to a larger core flaw to Martian Manhunter's as a superhero character. If Superman is an allegorical immigrant that symbolizes hope and Batman is vengeance initially motivated by grief that eventually evolves into hope, then what grounds J'onn J'onzz as a character? He may be an alien, but stories exist to describe human experiences. DC recognizes J'onn is a survivor from planet-wide destruction, but its writers don't know what to do with him after the fact. What is heroism motivated by? Why does he choose to protect his new home?

Because they're unable to answer this, we get story after story of J'onn grieving Mars like he's your best friend who can't get over their ex. It's why they constantly revisit his origin story, because they don't have anything else to say about J'onn outside of his grief. This affects his villains too, most of them reverting to just tempting him to bring back Mars. Testing nothing else about his character. This isn't a bad plot to have, but it's J'onn's ONLY plot most of the time. So unless Martian Manhunter gets a major revitalization of his entire character, he can't grow into a self sustaining property. Speaking of revisiting his origin-

It's time for our last honorable mention! With the Rebirth reboot across the DC Universe, we get yet another Martian Manhunter origin retelling. This time, in the form of a limited 12 issue solo series Martian Manhunter; Identity (2019) written by Steve Orlando with art by Riley Rossmo.

Ma'al gets but a single mention in this series, but it's crucial to point out for many reasons. For one, Ma'al is revealed to be a slut. And while I'd love to stick to that one point alone, it's the broader implications of this reimagining that are important to consider in terms of how Ma'alefa'ak has evolved as a character. As of writing, Identity is the most thorough characterization of J'onn's wife and daughter in all of comics canon. It is the first time M'yri'ah and K'hym are fleshed out to have personalities, motivations, occupations and lives. Before this, they were props for J'onn to love and feel sad about. Yes, these two are what Jor El and Lara are to Superman and what Thomas and Martha Wayne are to Batman, but they only got fleshed out all the way in 2019.

In Identity, M'yri'ah works as a nurse who has suspicions about the growing fire virus infecting Martians. After learning J'onn is a corrupt cop who tried to sneak her and their daughter K'hym off-planet before the fire consumed them all, she dies by opening her mind to K'hym's and getting infected. So how does this come back to Ma'alefa'ak? The true origins of the fire virus remain a mystery in this interpretation, so we don't know if Ma'al is still responsible for burning all the Martians through Hr'onmeer's curse. But what we do know is that he's no longer involved with M'yri'ah in any way. Sure she knows who he is, but there's certainly no hint of a violation that occurred between the two. Much like with the JLA Classified: Ghosts of Mars comic, we're seeing the more controversial parts of Ma'al be removed in newer iterations of the character. Because it was never integral to either his character or J'onn's origin story.

I'd love to do a thorough analysis of Identity, since it is both an earnest attempt at revitalizing Martian Manhunter into a solo character while also being a showcase of common pitfalls writers run into when developing his character and world. BUT since this is a Ma'alefa'ak essay, that would be a huge tangent. So that concludes all of Ma'al's current comic appearances, time of writing. Just know that all the stuff we mentioned before about J'onn's lore accidentally recreating Krypton, Superman and Jor El are in this limited run as well.

Earlier in this essay I posed a question about Ma'al as a character; "what is the through-line of Ma'alefa'ak? What do writers decide to keep and re-invent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?" With the way Martian Manhunter struggles to get a footing in DC comics, it may look like we have an unsatisfying or incomplete answer to that question. When you look at the timeline of Ma'al's comic appearances, it's basically his initial origins, one revisit in a JLA comic, some mentions in other comics, and 2 Elseworld takes. That's not a lot of substantial iterations to see the character properly evolve past a reference. So what now?

This is where we must head into adapted media, because Ma'alefa'ak's story doesn't end with the comics. I think it's crucial to examine the way Ma'al has been adapted because we get to see writers look at the source material and decide which parts of him resonate with the stories they want to tell. It's where we can truly see what aspects of Ma'al endure with time. So join me as we look into the 3 cross-media adaptations of Ma'alefa'ak to finally figure out what is it about J'onn J'onzz's evil twin character that keeps him coming back. In another post!

[kiaxet]

So it turns out the latest update in @somerandomdudelmao‘s apocalypse comic has been living in my head, and when that happens I need to get it out, so ~900 words of sad it is!

~~~~~~~~

Donnie is good at birthdays. He has been once he was old enough to understand the concept. It's a point of pride.

Specifically, he's good at presents. According to his data, most people who fail at presents do so because of the guesswork they seem to think needs to be involved. He's never understood the point of that. Data and hypotheses, certainly, but why guess when a definitive answer is available after a simple direct inquiry?

"What do you want for your birthday?"

Early on, the presents are easy. Art supplies. Comics. Stuffed animals. Things he could hand to Papa in an easily followed list format, or obtain for himself once they all got old enough to start safely leaving the lair and venturing into the city above. It's simple and straightforward and so, so easy to get right.

(Of course, he always has an annotated list of his own desired gifts to provide to his brothers; if he's solved the guesswork issue, he may as well make things easy for them too. Plus, that method ensures he gets what he wants.)

Things start getting a little more complicated as he and his brothers get older. Art supplies and comics and stuffed animals are still very much appreciated, and he's documented his brothers' tastes well enough to know exactly what they like, but the answers to his simple direct inquiry are different.

"Dee, can you help me plan this mural out? I think I have enough space, but I could use a hand with the measurements."

"Donton, my half of the day is gonna be a Jupiter Jim marathon, and I need you there. Without your laptop." A beat. "But you can pick one of the movies if you want."

"Hey Donnie, you think you can help me out fixing up the gym? Things just stay put longer if you weld 'em."

After a few years of documentation, Donnie spots the pattern. His brothers appreciate physical gifts from him, certainly, but that's not what they want anymore. What Donnie's family wants from him is time - time outside the lab where he spends a good amount of his days, time spent in conversation or shared activity or simply in the same room. It's not as easy as finding the right physical gift, but if that's what they want, then he's more than happy to provide. Now that he's discerned the pattern, it's just as easy to give his brothers what they want, and Donnie can continue to maintain that he is Good At Birthdays as a point of pride.

~~~~~~~~

The Hamatos don't do birthdays anymore. There's no time in the apocalypse, no supplies, and Donnie is one of the few who actually keeps track of the calendar date. The apocalypse certainly has its share of anniversaries, a list that only grows the more people they lose, but birthdays are no longer celebrated.

With one exception.

Casey Jones Junior, their collective adopted kid, is young enough that birthdays still matter - should still matter. They do their best to keep him safe and keep those days calm and happy for him, despite everything happening around them, and while they don't always succeed, they at least try.

And damn it all, Donatello is still good at birthdays.

"Casey Junior!" He greets the kid with a grin, leaning on his bo like it's not both an inconvenience and a humiliation to need to rely on it in order to stay upright.

"Uncle Tello?"

"Since I'm not very good at guessing, I'll ask straight out." This is not entirely true - he has a list of potential gifts for Casey drafted, with 98% certainty that whatever Casey asks for will align with one of them - but he requires that confirmation to move forward. A certainty in a world where certainty is in short supply. "What do you want for your birthday?"

"My...ah." Casey's expression falls and he looks away, gaze fixed on the paperwork in his hands. Donatello says nothing, pointedly ignoring the elephant in the room in order to give Casey space. "You...can do anything," Casey starts.

"Pretty much, yes." Material issues aside - spirits know he'd have a cure for whatever the Krang had infected him with if those weren't a concern.

"I want you to stay alive," Casey says, and Donnie's smile freezes in place as Casey looks back up at him. "Can you do that?"

Damn that two percent uncertainty.

"Ah. Of course." He shrugs, as though he doesn't know exactly what Casey is asking for, and pulls up a holographic display of a calendar. "According to my calculations, I will be alive next month, which means I'll be here for your birthday." Not talking about it won't solve the problem, but it may salvage this conversation. "So! What's an actual gift you want?"

"I want you to be here." Casey's gaze finds a point on the floor, and Donnie falls silent. "Not just for a month."

No. No, he needs something concrete - something he can act on - he knows how long his list of responsibilities is, but he still feels stymied, rushing up on the end, and he needs something he can do- "But it's not a gift," he replies, a last-ditch effort he's fairly certain is bound for failure-

"No. No, it is."

As always, all Donnie's family wants from him is time.

And now, at the end of his rapidly-shortening life, it's the one thing he can no longer give them.

[lubrumalis]

I know you've already glossed over how simon would be with a partner and what kind of person he would need. but would you be able to go more in depth about what type of person you think he'd be interested in? what kind of person do you think would suit him best?

ghosts ideal type

who would this man be interested in?

first of all, i think ghost isn’t blinded by physical attraction. of course everyone has their preferences when it comes to height, weight, etcetc but i really dont think ghost cares. at least for 2009 ghost, hes a gentleman who doesn’t judge others. tall? short? fat? skinny? ugly? pretty? he doesn’t give a fuck. i think 2009 ghost is very attracted to kindness and compassion for others, leading him to have a soft spot. in the end i think he’d be very interested in someone who constantly is on the lookout for others and is very independent. in the comic hes always the one saving others and taking that responsibility, so he finds it nice when theres someone out there thats similar. hes the typa guy to fall for the girl next door whos constantly smiling, but knows how to playfully banter with him.

i highly doubt ghost would ever be attracted to someone in tf141 or working with him in the military… since to him work is work. there are also no females in the SAS (its true!) with only 2 passing pre selection in 2021, meaning ghost would have little exposure to working with female teammates. even if there is, it would be a huge slow burn romance imo.

also on the enemies to lovers thing—i dont see that happening. reboot ghost gives the vibes of a man who’d lowkey do that at first, but itd never happen. ghost is a simple man when it comes to relationships: i like you + you like me = mutual feelings. he wouldn’t get the whole ‘i kind of hate you because im pissed at you but also find you attractive’ trope. in fact he’d find it really annoying. he was already betrayed by his soldier teammates once, hes not gonna take it well if someone on his team suddenly gets aggressive towards him in the name of 'attraction'.

ghost isn’t shallow. but he would want his partner to be clean of drugs, have basic hygiene, and dress cutely from time to time. stuff like big ass and big boobs with an hourglass isn’t of his concern at all. in the comic he was in this bar full of prostitutes with his team, every soldier was enjoying their time with a girl—except ghost. he even told a prostitute to go fuck off when she got too touchy. so this can prove hes really not that hypersexual.

traits s/o needs

someone independent. they can cook, clean, live on their own for long periods of time. ghost is a soldier, meaning his schedule is different from most men. hes deployed for sometimes 6 months at a time, so his s/o needs to be content with living alone for long periods of time. the fact ghost is also deployed in active war zones and literal deserts while surviving on 5 hours of sleep, means he cant text or call daily either. this person can’t think that ghost is being distant or not loving them enough, its simply the life of a top tier SAS soldier. ghost doesn’t want this to happen either, but the person must be able to feel secure and independent without him… this also means knowing the possibility ghost could die at any point during his deployment.

someone who values acts of service. first of all, ghost has had a lot of people disappoint him in his life. general shepherd, his american teammates during the mission to destroy roba, and his dad. id argue his brother tommy too (used to be an addict), though its not disappointment its moreso “im not happy you’re on drugs”. ghost needs someone who does things for him that proves trustworthiness and loyalty. small things, like taking care of him when hes sick and preparing a warm meal when he comes back from the freezing outside. id imagine ghost does the same for his partner.

someone with good and strict morales. ghost is a good guy, and we know it. he prevented a girl from getting sexually assaulted, spent years guiding his drug addict brother into rehab, and will just punch about anyone who he thinks is pure evil. even after months of brainwashing and torture done by roba, when every american special forces soldier gave in, ghost didnt. he needs someone similar—morales they will never break … ever. even when tortured.

[sadesluvr]

Platonic! Lemon + Tangerine Headcanons (GN!)

aka the babygirlification of two assassins (i literally birthed them it’s true)

You come across the twins as a civilian - in this case you work at a coffee shop. When they walk up to the counter you’re a little shocked, not because of anything they’ve done but the fact that one of them is bleeding. 

“Woah, are you alright?” You say, gesturing to the dark-skinned man’s shirt.

“What? Oh, I’m fine. I don’t bleed.”

It’s in your better judgment not to question it. The man next to him - classically dressed and spouting a moustache - sighs before smiling at you and ordering: one black coffee, and a hot chocolate with a chocolate chip cookie to be precise.

From behind the counter you can hear the moustached man mention something about his friend ‘eating all that sugar’, whilst he brushes it off, going on about ‘rewards’ before somehow talking about Thomas the Tank Engine?

The man isn’t even halfway done with his drink when you can see his eyes brighten, snapping his fingers with every sip.

“Ah, mate…You’ve gotta try this, init? That barista makes it proper - good layer of milk and cream, the right temperature for sipping…None of that hot water shit they used to give us in school!”

You smile to yourself, and once he’s done he comes up and thanks you personally, leaving a generous tip :)

The rest is history:

Lemon is the type of guy to come back to something when he enjoys it. When the Twins are in town, he’s definitely coming to your store, and you’re the only one who can make his hot chocolate. No exceptions.

From there you actually learn their names - Lemon and Tangerine. Tan is cordial enough, but you definitely click with Lemon the most

They ask you about your day, if you’ve been busy, all of that. It’s nice to have a familiar face in their line of work

Sometimes they stay until closing time, and if you’re shutting up they ALWAYS walk you home

Thomas the Tank Engine initiation rituals…The engine Lemon decides to give you is forever stuck onto your uniform as a badge of honour

Making fun of Tangerine for being grumpy and only liking black coffee… He orders a muffin just to shut you all up

“Would you two grow up, would ya? Can’t beat a classic Victoria sponge anyway.”

The one time you offer them to have a meal at your house it’s the sweetest thing ever: takeout or home cooked, they lap it up whilst they tell you crazy stories about their travels

They would LOVE home baked/cooked goods in particular though, it makes them feel 'normal' and like a family

They'll always bring you gifts from the different places they’ve been!! Ex. A Momomon from Japan or a snowglobe from Switzerland

I feel like Tan gets comically angry if he opens your fridge and sees that you only have oat/almond milk…He can’t get over the fact that it’s a ‘fucking NUT, it’s not proper milk’

Lemon using you as a parent, telling on Tangerine for everything- "I'm telling them that you stole from that vendor. You said you were trying to kick that habit, mate."

You figuring out that ‘outside contractors’ means something shady, but you don’t care bc they’re your friends

Tangerine is better with pets than Lemon, who isn’t really fond of them. Your animal will either love Tan or hate him, and there’s no in between

Being worried when they disappear for long periods of time :(

They're not the best at comfort (Tangerine in particular) but they try. Lemon suggests a relevant Thomas episode to help you get through it

Your watchlist is filled with animated/children's films

If there’s a stray/abused animal they find on a mission, they’re bringing it back to you. Surprise, you have a pet!

Them having your back. Tangerine is definitely beating up someone for you, and they’ll give you a bit of cash if you’re ever running behind on rent.

Them having a tiny photo of you in their jacket/wallet to look at and remember the good times missions <3

[taleeater]

Fragile Part 2

Generation: Bayverse TMNT

Tmnt x Reader Fanfic

Pronouns: Gender Neutral (except ‘dudette’ and ‘princess’)

Warnings: guns, blood, injury, panic attack, not proof read

Part 1

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

The next time you open your eyes, you see a white paneled ceiling. For a horrifying moment, you believe you are back in the lab, and bolt up in bed. An icepack that was resting on your bruised shoulder comically gets flung across the room.

Frantically looking around, you see the inside of a hospital room. But your panic only subsides marginally. You know you are not safe here. You throw off your bed sheets and swing your legs over the side of the bed. But you almost fall off the edge when you suddenly feel the suffocating weight of exhaustion on your limbs. You had been running for your life all night.

You look down and see that you’ve been changed into a hospital gown with a pair of thin papery shorts, and a bracelet on your wrist that reads a name. “Jane Doe”. You rip it off and discard it. A large bandage was stuck to your knee where you had scraped it, and thick gauze were wrapped around your feet. You noted that your arm where the purple mutant had pinched you was heavily sore. You shivered with the familiarity of it. Like the soreness after receiving an injection.

You wondered marginally how much time had passed, and glancing out the open window you saw the sun was getting close to peaking over the horizon. By your guess, you’d barely been out more than 2 hours. You needed to leave. Now. You reach for the IV in your arm, but before you can rip it out, a large thump at the window startles you.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

There in the window sat the large form of one of the turtle mutants. The one with the blue bandana, Leo- your hazy memory recalls. So they were the ones who had brought you here.

“I can’t stay here, I need to go.” You rip out the IV anyways, making the mutant flinch sympathetically. A small trickle of blood traveled down your arm. He gets down from his perch on the windowsill and comes to stand in front of you. He moves to put his hands on your shoulders but hesitates when you flinch away from the touch.

“It’s okay now, they can’t find you. Donnie took out the tracking chip. There are police guards stationed outside-“

“That’s worse!” You didn’t mean to shout, but your anxiety was peaking again.

Leo looked at you with concern.

“They’re going to know to look for me here. The hospital is not safe. The police are not safe. I have to get out of here right now.” You tried to stand up but your legs felt like jelly and you stumbled. A large strong arm caught you around your waist and held you up.

“Now hold on just a minute, what do you mean?” He asked you seriously, lifting you up and setting you back on the bed.

“It’s the Foot. They’re in the police force. They’re tapped into the hospital security cameras. It’s only a matter of time before they find me! Dr Stockman always told me there was no place in this city I could hide from him. He-!” Suddenly a beeping in the room cut you off. You looked around for the source, and Leo quickly pulled a small cracked iPhone from his pocket.

He apologized to you, asking for a moment, and immediately answered the phone. He held the device up to his head as he looked at you sympathetically. But his expression turned serious.

“What?” He responded to the fast report coming in from the speaker. You could barely make out any words. That is, until you heard the last sentence.

“The Foot are inside the building!!!”

Leo’s and your eyes met in shocked panic. You suddenly hear a shout and a grunt from out in the hallway, the sound of the police on duty being subdued.

“We need to go.” Leo said to you, and without wasting anymore time he tucked away his phone and scooped you up just as the door slammed open.

You looped your arms around his neck and held on as he ran for the windowsill. You just barely caught a glance at the figures in black invading the room, pulling out guns and shooting at Leo’s retreating figure as he leapt out the open window. Bullets bounced off his shell.

The chilly air rushed you all at once and stung your bare skin. Then a loud clang and you were jostled as Leo grabbed onto the metal fire escape of the adjacent building.

“Come on fearless, we gotta go!” Shouted Raph from above.

Leo held you with one arm around your waist. “I’m going to need you to hold onto me really tight. Do you think you can do that for me?” He asked you firmly.

You nodded at him, and adjusted your hold tighter around his neck.

“Good. Let’s get you out of here.” He slowly released his hold around your waist, careful you wouldn’t fall, and quickly began scaling the fire escape up the side of the building. Once he got to the roof, he set you down among the other 3 mutants.

The Foot had retreated outside the hospital and some were piling into cars while others began entering the building, taking the stairs up to your location.

“They just won’t quit!” Shouted Donnie from where he was watching over the edge of the building.

“Whatarewegonnadowhatarewegonnado- ouch!” Raph smacked Mikey from where he was guarding the roof door.

“That’s enough Mikey!”

Leo stepped up. “We’re bringing them back to the lair.”

“What?!” The other three shouted in unison.

“We need to get a better grasp of what’s going on. There’s a lot we don’t know. And until we can figure out why Stockman is so desperate to get them back, and find them safe passage out of the city, we keep them safe. At home.” Leo said pointing his finger with finality.

Mikey whooped with excitement. “We’re having a human over!!!”

Donnie smiled.

“I don’t like this fearless.” Gruffed Raph.

“It’ll only be for a little while. They can stay in my room.” Leo assured Raph.

“Aw no fair! I want them to stay in my room!” Mikey complained.

Suddenly loud banging could be heard from the roof access door making him shriek comically. He braced the door and shouted. “They’re here!!”

“Time to move out.” Raph wasted no time and scooped you up like you weighed nothing, making you yelp in surprise. He ran for the edge of the building, you grabbed around his neck and braced yourself, and he leapt off the edge of the building. You buried your face against his chest so you didn’t look down.

Raph snorted. “You holding on tight enough, princess?”

“Me next! Me next!” Begged Mikey as he landed beside you on the next rooftop.

The four of them leaped from rooftop to rooftop, keeping away from the main roads where the Foot in cars tried to follow. The sun was almost up. Eventually you came upon a back alleyway that the mutant turtles quickly descended into, Leo using his katana to loosen and knock away the sewer cover. You were deeply confused until suddenly Raph jumped into the hole and you were assaulted by the sour rotting smell of the New York City sewers. Raph held you while he slid down a sewer pipe, followed by whoops and cheers of the other three. A tell tale clatter of the metal lid being closed behind them.

For what seemed to be a few miles of sliding through pipes and jumping over large water basins and train tracks, they arrived at a wall. You thought they were stopping for a break, until Donnie stepped forward and pulled on a pipe that triggered the wall to open up into a large open room. You looked around in awe as Raph carried you in. There were street signs and neon lights and spray painted art all over the walls. You walked by a small kitchen and a living room with a couch that Mikey promptly flopped into. You saw Donnie trail his way muttering into a dark den full of blue computer screens. But Leo was leading the way towards a shadowed area in the back and you got nervous.

Raph squeezed where he was holding your thigh in reassurance, his expression stoic.

You arrived at a doorway covered by a piece of fabric with Japanese kanji scrawled across it in black ink.

“This is my room. It’s the most clean, so you can stay in here for now.” Leo said walking in and pulling back covers of the pristinely made bed.

Raph followed in and gently sat you down on the edge of the bed, and stepped back to stand against the wall with arms folded.

As soon as you sat on the bed, you truly felt the exhaustion weigh heavily on your body. You felt pain radiate down your legs into your bandaged feet. Tensed shoulders from the stress and bruises. And your eyes felt strained and sore from being on high alert for so long. So much had happened and the gravity of the day came crashing down on you.

The pain and tiredness must’ve been clear on your face, because Leo gave you an empathetic look.

“I’ll grab Donnie to patch up your arm before you go to sleep.” He stood up to leave but you stopped him.

“Where are you going to sleep?” You asked quietly.

Leo smiled kindly. “The couch. That is, if Mikey hasn’t already fallen asleep on it. I’ll be right back.”

Then it was just you and Raph.

It was silent as you looked at each other. Then the thought that had nagged at you earlier that night came back to you.

“How did you all escape?”

“Who?” Raph looked at you with a raised eyebrow.

“Dr Stockman. How did you get away?”

Now Raph just looked confused.

“Stockman was the one who ran away, not us.”

Suddenly Donnie entered the room with a med kit and Leo followed with a glass of water and an ice pack.

“Hey brainiac, check their head. They’re asking weird questions.”

That seemed to peak Leo’s attention.

“What kind of questions?”

“They asked ‘how we escaped Stockman’.”

Donnie flicked on the bedside table lamp and kneeled in front of you. He pulled out a little light from his pocket and checked your eyes.

“Well I don’t see any signs of a concussion. What did you mean by that exactly?” Donnie asked you, opening the med kit and taking out a packaged alcohol wipe and began to clean the blood off of your arm where the IV had been. You’d forgotten about that. You looked confused as well.

“Dr Stockman mutated the others in the lab, like Bebop and Rocksteady. I didn’t know there were other mutants outside. When did you escape?”

Donnie, Leo, and Raph all stopped and exchanged a look that you couldn’t read. This conversation was drawing on what little energy you had left.

“We weren’t mutated by Stockman. We’ve been like this for about 25 years now.” Donnie answered you.

Your eyes lit up.

“Then… how did you….?”

“That’s a conversation for another time.” Leo interjected.

Raph left the room, and you heard the sound of a smack outside the door followed by Mikey’s whispered “Ow!”

Donnie finished up dressing your arm while Leo supervised. You were starting to sway in place, eyelids heavy as you blinked to stay awake.

“I’ll change your bandages later. Sleep well.” Donnie said with a kind smile before taking the med kit and leaving the room.

“If you need anything, just call for me. I’ll be just outside, okay?” Leo said.

He came up to you as you laid down heavily in his bed, falling asleep almost as soon as your head hit the pillow. But you were still awake enough to feel the cold press of the ice pack being placed on your bruised shoulder and the blanket being pulled up to your chin.

And then you slept.

A small meeting was called in the living room.

“What are we gonna tell dad?!?!” Mikey squawked and Raph and Donnie shushed him.

“I’m sure he’ll understand! They have no place else to go!”

Leo walked up behind them and joined.

“Donnie’s right. And we’ll text April later. Maybe she can bring them some clothes to wear.”

“Why don’t they just go stay with her?” Raph argued.

“We can’t put April in danger like that, she gets enough heat as it is. We can’t be sure the Foot won’t be tailing her now to find out where we’re keeping them!” Leo persuaded. Things were starting to get a little heated.

Raph confronted him. “And what about us? You heard them! We don’t know what Stockman did to them. They could be dangerous.” Raph and Leo got up in each other’s space. Mikey and Donnie jumped in to try and defuse the situation before a fight broke out.

“Woah woah hey! I think we’re all just a little tired, alright? Let’s all get some sleep.”

“Yeah! I’ll make pancakes! With extra syrup! Then we can talk things out with dudette in the morning. Sounds good?” Mikey bounced enthusiastically.

It was clear on everyone’s face they were all tired from being out until sunrise. So without further arguments, they all left for their own rooms for some much needed rest. Leo grabbing a blanket and promptly passing out on the couch.

Part 3

@itsberrydreemurstuff

@honeysuckleboy

@thecreat0r64

@eli-chris

[goldenshrikecomic]

FAQ

Please read these before sending asks! It's also good to check the tags listed on the pinned post to see if it's already answered. Where can I read GS? On Comicfury or DeviantArt. Two pages ahead on both Patreon and Ko-fi.

Who works on this comic? Only me, ratt/doeprince. You can call me either, I usually refer to myself as doeprince when it's more official, otherwise ratt or some secret third thing. I'm an amateur artist and I draw these comics for fun without much ambition to gain greatness. I want to make enough money to be able to keep working on more comics, and buy trinkets.

How can I support what you do? Why thank you for asking! All my income comes from making comics, so the support on either Patreon or Ko-fi is literally making my comic endeavours possible.

Do you have other projects? I work on some secondary comics. Jet and Harley and Honey are currently updating, Corpse is finished. You can find my other art on doe-prince.

How long will Golden Shrike be? I don't know how many pages. I hope it's less than 1000.

What programs do you use? SAI for lineart, CSP for coloring and bubbles, PS for text and backgrounds. Hoooow do you draw the antlers from different perspectives? I've made 3D models for each recurring antlered character.

Is GS going to have physical merch? Will it be printed? Consider this a no, but I won't say never.

Does GS have a map, official wiki or dub or something like that? No. There's a fan wiki out there full of inaccurate information so take everything in there with tons of grains of salt. There's no map. The dub on YT is separate from me, I've had no hand in it.

Can I make a fan character? Can they interact with yours? You can absolutely make a fan character! I just ask you not to make them interact with mine, at least not in any kind of heavy way. It's a slippery slope and I've seen people treat my characters very rudely to make them suit their needs.

Can I make fanart/writing? Yes! All sfw and well-meaning works are welcome. Just tag me so I can see them! Why are the borders black and sometimes white? White borders means it's a flashback.

Deer don't do that!!!!! Or birds!! Or plants! The moon shouldn't be that shape right now. Everything in GS is fictional for this very reason. I shall not be shackled by the chains of realism when there's entire new worlds in my fingertips. I aim to make things believeable in its context, not realistic. Are other animals sentient, can they talk? Sure they are and can, but not outside their own species. A frog can't hold a conversation with a deer, but a deer and antelope could possibly make it work. There's exceptions though.

How old are main characters? They're fawns right? No they are not, they'd all be in their early 20s if they were humans.

What does sire mean? It keeps popping up in different contexts. You can liken this term to 'father', as in your dad but also something like a priest. The priest isn't your dad but "father forgive me for I've sinned". So sire is a) respected stag, b) very formal way to address your father. Dame is the female counterpart. Why are the does so small compared to stags.... are you a freak... do you just hate women..... Listen when I started GS I had been dwelling in a place where monster deer characters had insane size differences and it became some kind of norm to me and of course it found its way into my comic. Now I just have to keep drawing those tiny women to keep up the consistency. I've created bigger ladies nowadays because I too think it's a little silly now.

Please please will this character ever get a mate? Will this pairing be canon? Will you please make this pairing canon? I won't spoil any pairings, I think it'd be the most boring thing to do to my own work! I'll only confirm the ones already established in the comic.

Is this a speck of ember? Is it snow? What is that floating thing, is it relevant to the plot? IT'S JUST MY DUST BRUSH LEAVE ME ALONE.

[rorichuu]

OMG HELLO!!! i see that u do tf2 and i’d love to request smth hehehehheheALSO ur account is so pretty what ?!?!

but i hope you’re well dude! can i request some relationship headcanons with some (or all!!) of the mercs pls? or any basic headcanons !!

take your time btw:)

the tf2 mercs in a relationship + headcanons

pairing: mercs x reader (gender not specified)

authors note: MY FIRST REQUEST WAAAHH also oml thank you, you’re so sweet :( some headcanons coming your way! ... also i apologize if they're ooc, this is my first time writing for them:'(

disclaimer: minor spoilers for the comic in heavy's!

Scout:

i’ll be honest, when scout found out Miss Pauling was a lesbian he was pretty beat up for a while

that was until he realized other people exist!

he literally follows u around like a puppy dog when he realizes he has a crush on you

ALWAYS TRYNA RIZZ YOU UP LIKE SCOUT PLEASE WE'RE ABOUT TO GET BLOWN UP BY THE ENEMY SOLDIER

his love language is definitely physical touch and words of affirmation

and is ungodly touch starved

i can see him trying to find ways to touch you, and not in a sexual way... just either grazing your arm when he talks to you, or he stays shoulder-to-shoulder with you when you sit next to each other

he finds it very very comforting

and if you tell this man he looks very handsome or just occasional i love you's, he'll fold ong

his heart melts and he just wants to hold you till he can't anymore

but i think Miss Pauling and Scout would be pretty good buds after the whole "Scout constantly flirting with Miss Pauling" thing died down

and his confession was pretty cringey ngl

his crush on you was very evident so when he tries to ask you out, you say yes

(skipping down the halls with joy)

bisexual icon

Soldier:

oh man

this dude's flirting is... so hard to detect😭

but a lot of his attention is on you!

and makes a lot of exceptions for you

for someone who doesn't like loud noises and is very sensitive to outside stimuli, if you're like me and he notices it, he'll definitely find a way to be more quiet

like if you and the rest of the mercs are lined up and notices you're cowering or anxious asf, he's goes soft and let's you go

if you thank him or say you appreciate him for his efforts, his face is SO RED.

but he salutes you and said he was happy to do for a fellow compatriot

(his hearts beating so fast help him pls)

BUT if you're just as loud and upbeat as him/share his energy, he's in heaven

he loves that you like to blow shit up with him?!?! like omg this is my lover and i will marry them on this battlefield right now.

love languages is totally acts of service

like if you save this man from the enemy he's blushing so fucking hard like omg i love you

with his confession, it was straight forward and to the point (but he was beet red ... basically my hc on him is that he blushes very easily fhjrebjh)

also gender doesn't matter to him, he loves who he loves

Pyro:

HUBBA BUBBA

i love pyro sm :3

anyway

best lover!!!

gifts and quality time!!!

alwwaaaaaaays giving you gifts like omg all the time

your reaction is her FAVORITE

like they'll find a flower burnt to a crisp or a homemade corpse bracelet and he'll have the brightest aura

LOVES MAKING CRAFTS WITH YOU OMG!

jumping up and down if you give her something

like she's the happiest person in the world

bonus if you share a love for fire

campfires/bonfire dates!!

and you're probably the only one who understands him (alongside Engi, of course) so your conversations are endless!

and is suchhh a sweet tooth

such a soft and loving partner!

when pyro confesses (and you accept) he's leaping with joy quite literally

BIG HUG :)))

asexual royalty!!!

Demoman:

holy moly

VERY DRAMATIC WHEN HES DRUNK AND VERY CLINGY

which is a lot of the time cause yknow, very much alcoholic

but when he's sober he's pretty level headed NFJHBJ (comics for reference)

idk man he gives off best friend kinda lover

like he's always so hype and the best to be around

so when he found out he had a crush on you, he was pretty much head over heels

when he's drunk he's always holding you

hugs, kisses, hand holding, slumping on you

NAPS!

omg the best to nap with ong

BRO IS A FUCKING HEATER he's always so gd HOT

so if you're taking a nap with him don't get a blanket he's legit sprawled all over you

but it's kind of a different story when he's sober (he gives you your space but def rolls around in his sleep)

oh boy his confession was definitely when he was on his 100th drink

his confession was SO SLURRED

if you said yes he's over the moon

Heavy:

honestly, this man is a huge softy

and VERY protective.

have you seen him in the comics? he was 100% ready to kill a man over Medic's death (and just his natural protectiveness, like his family for example)

but dude his love language is for sure acts of service and physical touch

when he realized he had a crush on you, he always kinda stuck by you on the battlefield

even with the high of combat, his eye always finds youuu😭

i love heavy sm

and its quite obvious this man doesn't speak much, unless in his native tongue (which isn't often)

so even if he doesn't say anything, he'll for sure stand by you or take your hand

if you have anxiety, this man is SUCH a comfort

also you'd def be the one to confess

if you asked him out or asked to if you could be his partner, he is kinda shocked but is very very happy :)

lets you hold Sasha

no label, love is love

Engineer:

AUGRRHHRR SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY

i'm so deeply in love with this man omg someone sedate me

but anyway

is SO polite and is SO PATIENT

he absolutely adores it when you visit him when he's working

it gets lonely sometimes because he focuses best when the others aren't around (aside from pyro) ... but when he realized how much he loved your presence, he expected almost every day for you to visit him at least once

(gets bummed when you don't)

but if you have a genuine curiosity for what he does and what it means, he tells you ALL about it!!!

he understands it can be very confusing if you haven't studied engineering/computer science, etc... so he is more than happy to explain it to you :)

BARBEQUES!!

loves cooking for you and would sooo wear a "kiss the cook" or something cheesy like that (he finds it funny and hopes to get a smoochy)

quality time quality time quality time

and pet names

omg pet names

"love", "darlin'", "sweetheart", "buttercup"

HIS CONFESSION OMG

i can kinda see engi being a bit cheesy honestly

his confession would be pretty casual! he wasn't too stressed about asking you... and would probably slip the question in mid-convo !

rfhbrtgbj much love for this man

pansexual!

Medic:

I'll be honest here

his love is lowkey highkey possessive

but i think it'd either take a while for him to realize his feelings for you or would become attached VERY QUICKLY

there's zero in between

with his deep love and possession, he finds such deep fascination with your anatomy/body

not even sexually bro

he just thinks you're so incredible and puts u under a microscope

PHYSICAL TOUCH

this man hasn't felt the touch a person in years (aside from the mercs' checkups obviously)

and übercharge, if it was a love language

worships u ONG

loves to see you with such confidence when he activates the übercharge omfg

he thinks you're the most attractive thing he ever laid eyes on

confession? nah yall kinda just started dating; yall kinda just started happening

let me explain😭if someone was tryna ask you out, medic would be pretty quick to step in

uses his height to his advantage to let the person know what's up 😨

bisexual with a def male lean

Sniper:

at first you would definitely think sniper hates you

he wouldn't purposely avoid you, but he like spends zero personal time with you at first

he's always in his van and istg u wanna drag him out and force him to tolerate you

(and he'd probably find that very attractive if you did)

but if he found out he has feelings for you? oh boy oh boy

acts of service 🔛🔝

if you were in close combat with someone and you tripped, the enemy having the upper hand... you'd hear a sudden gunshot in the enemy's skull and a loud thud.

but before you could look up, he was nowhere to be found (you knew it was him and you were very appreciative)

if you brought it up to him OH MY GOD his face would be soooo red soso red

"Don't worry about it, mate..." HIDES UNDER HAT HIDES UNDER HAT HIDES UNDER HAT

the most bisexual man i have ever seen

Spy:

too suave for his own good dude

his love is very old-fashioned!

when spy finds his massive crush on you, is when he realizes the comfort of your presence

if you can have comfortable silence with spy is when he is totally connected/in love with you

smoking out the window/evening night conversations!

also when i tell you this man gets so flustered if you one-up him...

he'll wave it off and play it mad casual but on the inside he's malfunctioning

would definitely take you to the best, high-class restaurants and walks you home omg

HAND KISSES FOREHEAD KISSES

loves to spoil you holy shit

always buying you stuff (jewelry, clothes, shoes, personal things you like... he bought it already)

which btw love language is definitely gifting and quality time

def bisexual like cmon

.

.

.

rorichuu!

[baconcolacan]

ColaLosers vs TomTord: Different Fonts - Same Font Family [short essay]

ColaLosers is rivals-to-lovers and TomTord is enemies-to-lovers. That’s the main talking point of this post. I could end this here, but I really REALLY want to gab about them so indulge me.

It’s probably obvious by now but I’m such an avid fan of the rivals-to-lovers and enemies-to-lovers trope, and yes, I do differentiate the two, but I also think they share an umbrella under the ‘antagonistic’ branch of the relationship types. They’re in the same family, but not exactly the same thing. To me, they are very closely tied to each other but only in a way that they can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, except one side is a bit shinier than the other.

Moving that pretentious preamble aside, this whole yapping session is just me explaining how I personally see ColaLosers and TomTord’s relationships, so buckle down a bit and listen to me over analyze two fictional fanon gay relationships.

Like I said above, there is a lot of overlap in how their relationships are portrayed by the fandom, but I really do think there’s a fundamental difference between the two with regards to the people who are involved in them. Now I’ll be very very subjective about this, because I know that my opinion isn’t shared by the fandom collective, we aren’t a monolith, so take whatever I say next as a personal take and doesn’t reflect everybody’s interpretations, even if I might sound like I’m preaching gospel truth with how I word things.

My opinion is formed by most of what I consumed from eddsworld [of course. i.e. eddisodes and comics] plus whatever crumbs we have of Tord [of course] so it might not even be accurate but like I said; this is the musings of a queer man over analyzing fictional fanon gay relationships.

So, ColaLosers, to me in the fandom they’re very peak rivals-to-lovers. Eduardo does have some unaddressed grievances with Edd, which drives a lot of his actions against him, but all in all, this really just comes out to a competitive drive that he cultivates between the two of them. While yes, he doesn’t like Edd for upstaging him in their past, and quite possibly giving him a minor trauma and inferiority complex, his reaction to him would at most be resentment and at the least irritation.

It doesn’t mean his negative feelings towards Edd is light of course, but his way to go about it is to create competition when he finds opportunity, albeit a little unfair as he doesn’t inform Edd about them, but sometimes he does, like when they both agree to art competitions or when he gives Edd the chance to one up him if he can. See hammer and fail, though he’s very mocking about it and makes a spectacle out of the situation, but we can argue that he’s trying to recreate his minor trauma to make Edd feel what he felt in that moment.

Eduardo, while petty and catty, really just wants to facilitate competition with Edd, partially to prove that he can be at the same level as him or more [mostly more], and he has shown that he’s able to show care about Edd [see PowerEdd] and would rather have them settle their score one-to-one without much outside interference.

In a ColaLosers lens, you can see this as him wanting to have Edd’s full attention focused solely on him, he isn’t looking for approval from people around them, though he may have once wanted that, he’s looking to have Edd’s acknowledgement, someone who everybody seemed to love on principle. Every time he does something, or accomplishes something, who does he tell first? Edd. If he could have his approval, it was more than enough, worth more than enough.

On Edd’s side, the relationship feels like something that drives him to be better. Usually, Edd doesn’t seem to mind the world around him, or what other people think or are doing, while he does have a penchant for competition, it’s mostly on the average level where he strives to prove that he can win it, like most people might when finding themselves in a competitive environment.

When it comes to Eduardo though, he seems to take it a lot more seriously. It might have started out as mild irritation, but Eduardo’s insistence to take his first place, and not a first place, has made him more inclined to defend his position with gusto rather than to prove something, because usually he has nothing to prove, why should he? It usually goes his way, woopie! And if it doesn’t? Who cares? It was dumb anyway.

But with Eduardo, ooh, a point lost to Eduardo would incense him.

Eduardo seems to be the only person who can push his buttons and fuel his drive, usually Edd’s the one who does the gloating, but Eduardo targets him specifically and that just drives him up the wall.

I like characterizing Edd as someone who has a subtle MC syndrome [lmao], and Eduardo is the only person to rip him from his fantasy that the world revolves around him [double lmao. EDDSworld], and that his spotlight could very easily be taken if he isn’t doing his best to defend it.

So yes, ColaLosers, they have an antagonistic relationship, but they aren’t praying for each others’ downfalls, not genuinely at least, and they foster the relationship through competitions and verbal jabbing.

I feel like Edd and Eduardo already know the kind of people they are, while there is room for growth, they’re sure of their positions in life, which makes their relationship already grounded on sure footing, the only thing left for them to do is to learn how to stop stepping on each others’ toes when they dance to their respective songs. They aren’t opposites, in fact, I would say that they’re very similar to each other [lol]. It would be easy for them to compromise, even if their egos don’t outwardly let them or show it. Plus, they might even enjoy their little back and forths.

Now, TomTord, ough good god, this ship is the death of me. I have been obsessed with this dynamic for such a long time, especially since I’m a fan of opposites attracting. Unlike ColaLosers however, they are the enemies-to-lovers ship, and I do mean enemies.

Tom and Tord have never seen eye to eye, they might have started as rivals, but they are unable to fully reign themselves in before they take it too far, unlike how I view what Edd and Eduardo do. Sure the latter can cause some damage to each other, but it doesn’t seem to become as lasting and bitter than when the former do it.

To be honest, I think Tord was the one to try and start a ‘friendly’ rivalry with Tom, but he wasn’t good at reading the kind of person that Tom was as they grew together. Seeing as Edd was his best friend, he might have mistakenly tried to carry over his friendship with Edd, into whatever relationship he was trying to foster with Tom. Edd is much more cavalier about things than Tom is, as despite acting like he doesn’t care, Tom is a very emotional person who’s just good at hiding away his feelings when he’s hurt. Tord could have mistakenly thought that Tom could handle what he dishes out, but Tom instead got hurt and started to harbor a growing resentment for him that was seeded by very negative feelings.

Tom is also known to lash out angrily, so it would be no surprise if Tord and he got into a very bad altercation, it might not even be physical, just really bad, where you know that hurtful, personal, and threatening things may have been said.

I genuinely think that, despite growing up together, Tom and Tord didn’t give each other time to understand the kind of persons they were, not caring enough to get to know each other on a deeper level and instead making assumptions about each other, and with Tom being very quick to anger and retaliate, and Tord perhaps taking things too personally and refusing to back down, their irritation with each other could very well become openly hostile as the years go by.

They do not know how to compromise.

Tom doesn’t care [at least when it comes to Tord], and Tord doesn’t want to learn.

They’re both convinced that the other is a straight-a douchebag. Tom thinks Tord is self-centered and grossly, maliciously, petty, and any positive thing about him, be it his devil-may-care attitude or extroverted tendencies, is extremely overshadowed by his flaws.  Meanwhile Tord thinks Tom is an angry asshole who gets ticked off at every minor thing, although Tord acknowledges that Tom is smart and can truly get in his way if he really put an effort into it, which to be honest, is somewhat of a backhanded compliment considering he thinks he puts his emotions first before logic.

They both have very strong personalities, but their selfishness and self-centered mentalities gets in the way of good personal growth, they both have a lot of issues as far as I can tell. Relationship-wise, they have already shown each other the worst of themselves, and would keep to their hostile relationship if they aren’t willing to disregard their preconceived notions.

I think, really, that any relationship they could start at this stage would purely stem from rage, and would most likely only be physical at the start [emotions are high, and loathing feels very similar to love on a physiological level], it won’t be a very good relationship as neither party is willing to compromise. It’s a doomed relationship, even from the very beginning.

To be honest, they need time apart, so Tord leaving could be a blessing in disguise, their [lets face it] obsession with each other is distracting them from their own personal growth, and becoming a healthier person requires a lot of vulnerability and ‘softness’ that they would refuse to show each other or would find shame in. Without a distracting outlet in their lives [i.e. them antagonizing each other], they would be forced to face the negativities about themselves without fully taking it out on someone else like they are wont to do with each other.

I think they both have the potential to compliment each other [be it good or bad depending on who you ask] but they need time and space to figure out who they are first before trying any sort of relationship with each other, they need to address their own issues before a good and healthy relationship can form. And with their old perspectives on each other, they would be very pleasantly surprised to discover the person behind all that negative light, and find that, well, he could be someone who could understand them, as they had already seen them at their worst.

I find it endearing for love to bloom when the other person had already seen your ugly parts, and slowly get to know the good in you, it’s very easy to fall in love with someone you already feel so strongly about, only to find that they aren’t as bad as you think, especially when it all stems from a misunderstanding, like I believe TomTord to be.

Also, its funny when they get together and be the cattiest fucking gay couple you know, they’ll be gossiping about everybody and be totally vile about it, but what does that matter to them? They’re both assholes, and they love each other, the outside world doesn’t exist to them, they live in their bubble and can be horrible together if they so wished. What’s a more devoted action than pressing the nuke button on everyone together? Date night would be a blast.

Anyway, that’s it I think, thanks for listening, this was awful, goodnight.

[lychgate]

Echo brain comic?? My beloved?

this one's pretty new and id like to in the least get some segments drawn up if i can

i went balls deep in depth about my personal ideas of Echo's structure and how it works, it has much more writing rn then art lemme get some snippets:

tech and echo begin digging around in his wiring as echo's health has lately began to decline rapidly. Blood transfusions are becoming daily, exhaustion occurs much quicker, and newest to the issues are these seemingly random seizures. They've attempted many outside options at remedying the problem but it was becoming urgently clear that the only way to get answers would be to open up his system and understand exactly how his body operates from the inside out. Echo is mostly on edge because he fears finding the answer that is he's just doomed to die soon, and that his body was in no way sustainable outside of that fridge. He fears the idea of dying so much that he has manic considerations of being put back in some sort of stasis chamber. Death, which he never feared prior to the citadel, but now he's come to be you know uhhh quite traumatized from it. But he also hates the idea of that fridge!! caught between two terrible options, wowie here ill add some more breakdown of that in a read more if anyone is interested in paragraphs of bullshit:

as for a brief descriptor on the shit on his head and body, from this paragraph:

Tech: these rivets across your skull are not simple ports one can just plug into. They're a very unique structure, containing an extremely delicate, but long system of thin metallic fibers wiring throughout your brain. These 'rivets' then act as anchors to those metal fibers, which then respond to very specific electric signals that we can access at the nodes on the surface here. If the signals sent are not exact. Well. Echo: yeah I get it I get it.

and some write up on how Tech begins to diagnose the problem:

Eventually Tech will find his way into deeper functions of the brain, finding shortcuts that were already developed by the Techno Union scientists for the sake of their own equipment likely. Categorized sections for monitoring all sorts of chemicals and levels within Echo's body, most of which were left on an automatic function to regulate.

Tech begins to understand that the key issue is that this program, and these automatic functions, were fitted for exactly the stasis chamber Echo had been put in, and if they want to begin fixing Echos phsyical body, he would have to start going in and coding line for line, functions that pertain to the body on a sustainability outside that fridge. Some functions were completely turned off, being that Echo was getting fed certain synthesized chemicals thru the machine, his brain had to be telling itself NOT to produce said things naturally.

But it's all very finicky work that requires continuous maintenance and updates, not much unlike a patch update to any other computer program, except this is Echo's life. It's an impossible amount of code to do in any short time frame, and so Tech will begin splicing lines of code from similar organic droids with systems of similar complexity.

They handle these sessions once per week, giving time for Echo's body to catch up and adjust. At first he begins feeling some nausea, his heart rate starts rising, but he insists something feels good about it and urges Tech to keep going. Echo begins to feel warmth back in his body, his mood increases, after about a month hair begins to grow again, muscle mass fills in what once was skeletal limbs, nail beds regain a lively shine. Besides a few errors in updates like over producing a chemical or small bouts of insomnia, everything seems On Course.

and then:

So now we get into the meat of the drama, which is a lot of Echo mania and identity issues:

By this point Tech has outfitted much easier screw on parts so they can go in and out of this program faster (the set up previously was hours of work) so pulling that up he theorizes that he will have to do more then just reverse programs that the Techno Union set up. Tech now believes he'll have to create NEW systems, as the old program appears to be getting corrupted from all of Tech's editing. The seizures are, at this point to their best guess, coming from this. That parts of his brain are literally crashing, and soon he's going to start having more serious issues like bro is gonna just have a massive stroke at some point. Tech points that out all regular voice and Echo is just 'great im back in the mental swamp' Now that Echo's learned that he has corrupted files eating away at his brain, and that the chance of having a massive stroke is like inevitable, he's back to feeling like anxious shit. It doesn't help that this will take Tech a lot of time to figure out. Truthfully he's putting as much effort as he can into it, but this is when Echo begins to get Really mentally unwell. He's both worrying and also trying NOT to worry out of fear that it's going to complicate the program even more. Echo begins to have identity issues, coming to rely more on the mechanics then the organics that make him. He doesn't feel like a human with robot parts anymore, he feels like a robot with human parts.

and it keeps going like there's parts where echo is begging Tech to up programs on dopamine generation and Tech has to turn him down cause that would just be creating an addiction problem, situations where Echo starts trying to mess with his own brain, situations where he tries to kill Tech, its a lot of rambling but im not a writer, like i can't write for shit and I'd like to try and draw it instead

[cuubism]

I keep thinking abt the Threshold vs the Dreaming, since we don’t see much of the Threshold besides the gallery (did u notice Desire’s sigil in their gallery is a mirror?) but there’s no way the entire Threshold is glossy latex hallways, right? There’s gotta be … furniture? Rooms? At least a bed somewhere? A sitting room? What’s it like in there!!!!! Why doesn’t Desire have their own castle like Dream does???

I have some answers to this actually! Since I just read the relevant comics issue.

In Doll's House the Threshold is described thus:

There is only one thing to see in the twilight realm of Desire. It is called The Threshold. The fortress of Desire. Desire has always lived on the edge. The Threshold is larger than you can easily imagine. It is a statue of Desire, him- her- or it-self. (Desire has never been satisfied with just one sex. Or just one of anything--excepting only perhaps the Threshold itself.) The Threshold is a portrait of Desire, complete in all details, built from the fancy of Desire out of blood, and flesh, and bone, and skin. And, like every true citadel since time began, the Threshold is inhabited.

There is only one occupant, at this time. Desire of the Endless. The Threshold is far too large for just one person. It contains two eardrums larger than a dozen marble ballrooms. And empty, echoing veins, like tunnels. You will walk them until you grow old and die without once retracing your steps. Given Desire's temperament, however, there was only one place in the cathedral of its body to make its home. Desire lives in the heart.

So basically, the idea is that Desire lives within the body, and the rooms we see in the show are the inner chambers of a heart. While dreams are made of fantasy and hopes and stories, Desire is physical to the point of literally being represented by a body -- meanwhile we often interpret Dream as not even really having a body in the first place. And there's a self-consumed, self-referential sense to the Threshold, such that Desire literally lives within itself, and is consumed with and preoccupied by itself, solitary, hidden, shielded. The end of the edition contains the following lines -- Desire walks the chambers of its heart. It walks the Threshold, its citadel and its protection--

The solitude and hard edges of the structure are a shield so Desire does not have to admit outside influence, does not have to admit lack of control -- "Human beings are the creatures of Desire. They twist and bend as I require it -- if I thought otherwise, I would crack, like Delirium; or I would abandon my realm, like our lost brother" -- "Desire walks the endless pathways of its body, certain that it is in sole and only control of its destiny" -- the thought of being subject to outside forces or not being in control is frightening to Desire. Which is ironic, considering how out of our control the feeling of desire is, how it happens regardless of choice, and how hard it is to wrangle back. But the Threshold is also representative of desire as a concept, how one will wander through wanting for one's whole life, always finding new things to look for as each one is satisfied; how frightening it can be to reveal a deeply-held want or relinquish it to another person's control (by revealing feelings for example); how closely we hold our desires to ourselves and how they guide our actions; how desire is usually a very personal and solitary and internal experience.

(I don't know if the Threshold even has furniture, actually. I think it's possible Desire spends a lot of time wandering the many isolated empty halls. Interesting too, how the veins are described as empty and echoing, the heart, presumably, not actually beating at all.)

This comics edition also has that line love is in the realm of Desire and desire is always cruel -- which I'm not sure I agree with conceptually, I think that may be more of Dream's perspective, and that really love might be shared between Dream and Desire's domains, and that the Endless's domains overlap more than they might think -- but that's just my feeling. In the end, I think Dream and Desire's respective realms just reflect their sense of their own domain. They're both holding themselves apart from humanity in different ways - Desire thinks humanity should be subject to them, theirs to play with and manipulate. Dream just thinks that he himself isn't really a person, so he's overseeing and shepherding things, but locked away in his tower, not really connecting or admitting himself any humanity. The fact that their interaction with humanity is so different - Desire localized in the body, in the real, Dream in the mind and the abstract, isn't helping with their strained relationship either.

At least, that's how I like to read it :)

[mayzi33]

Random thought of something I find quite unfair. Everyone knows Sonic and Tails are best pals right? Right. But here's the thing. Sonic, and pretty much almost everyone else in the franchise has many different relationships. For starters, Sonic is literally the main character, so he has a relantioship with pretty much everyone. Knuckles, for example, is really close to Sonic, Tails and Amy, but he has other relantioships outside that, like with the Chaotix and Rouge. Amy is another one that befriends everyone easily, like Cream, Silver, Blaze, Shadow and heck even Surge now in IDW.

But what about Tails?

I've seen many people complain already that despite Tails being ridiculously close to Knuckles and Amy, we don't get to see him interact much with either of them without Sonic being around (except for Frontiers, which I'm very greatful for). We don't see having any strong bonds with everyone besides Sonic, and yes, I know that they're called "Unbreakle Bond" for a reason, but come on, everyone else gets to have a million of close friends, why does Tails have to exclusive to Sonic?

The only really close relationships we've seen Tails form besides him and maybe Knuckles and Amy are with Cosmo and Chunck on Sonic X. But it isn't even canon in some time-lines. Some might say Charmy or Cream, because they're the "kid trio", and as much as I like that idea come on, is there any comic or canon Sonic content really featuring this trio alone? And then there's IDW, where he finally gets a nemesis for HIM, Kitsunami, yet we got like- 5 interactions of them or something. He's also kinda close to Tangle and Belle, and you can even take like, Barry from TMOSTH, but the fandom doesn't even give much attetion to that. It's SO HARD to find comics, fanarts, fanfics and just overall content of Tails with someone else who isn't Sonic, (at least from what I've seen on Tumblr) while for everyone else it can be easy.

Anyways my point is... GIVE. US. MORE. TAILS. INTERACTIONS. WITH. OTHER. CHARACTERS. Thank you so much.

[emeraldspiral]

Zim episode where Membrane takes the kids on their annual vacation to Disneyworld. Except this is Invader Zim so it'd probably be like "Meatworld" or something and literally all the face characters, locations, rides, and exhibits would be meat-themed. But I digress.

The plot would be the Membrane family goes on vacation to this meat-themed amusement park and Zim shows up just like he did in the ski trip comic. While Dib and Gaz are in the bathroom puking after chugging some nasty meat milkshakes from some terrible on-site restaurant, Membrane waits outside and spots his son's "little foreign friend", about to be kicked out of the park for being an unaccompanied minor. Zim claims that his parents are at the hotel, sick in bed, and they gave him permission to go into the park alone, but park security says he MUST be accompanied by an adult guardian. Membrane steps in, believing that Zim is from a poor/working class family who would've had to save up a lot to afford a vacation to Meatworld and it would be a terrible shame if his vacation was ruined. So he claims that actually his and Zim's families are traveling together and Zim's parents have left him in his care for the day, and uses his clout as a world famous scientist to pressure security into accepting the story.

Dib is livid when he gets out of the bathroom, but Gaz intimidates both Dib AND Zim into behaving so her vacation isn't ruined by their antics. Zim attempts to ditch them a few times, but Membrane is watching too closely and security is ready to kick him out anyway if he does manage to sneak off, so eventually he just resigns himself to blowing a whole day intended for some evil schemes just visiting the park as a regular tourist. After touring several rides and exhibits together with gritted teeth Zim and Dib start to loosen up and actually enjoy the day. They see some VR motion simulation ride documentary on the history of meat packing that they actually both find fascinating and informative, watch a dinner theater show where meat-mascots wrestle and actually get invested in rooting for one of them, and although Zim trash talks every ride as "pathetic" and primative" he's clearly actually getting genuine thrills.

Throughout the day, the group tries to get onto a particularly popular river raft adventure ride, but every time they get a notification from the park app that the queue time has been reduced, a huge crowd always beats them and increases the wait time to several hours. In their last hour at the park, they think they're finally about to get on, only for the ride to malfunction and get shut down. Zim really wants to experience this ride, so he fixes it just so they can go on. The ride seats everyone on little two-person boats so Zim and Dib have one to themselves while Gaz and Membrane ride in another one behind them. The ride takes them through a simulated battle being fought by a brave group of ranchers, butchers, and frycooks defending their meat against a savage group of vegan hippie zombies who've been mutated with soy and tofu DNA.

Zim and Dib both enjoy the ride a lot and at the end a photo is snapped of them going down the meat river waterfall at the exciting finish. The operator at the end of the ride asks if they want to keep their photos, which they're both quite embarrassed of. Membrane is incensed that they've added an exorbitant fee when photos used to be free, but the more Zim and Dib insist it's okay, they really don't want them, the more Membrane is convinced that they really do, so he caves and pays the outrageous fee.

Membrane lets Zim ride with the family back to the park hotel and after a long, exhausting day, Dib, Zim, and Gaz all doze off in the back seat together.

Zim and Dib both say they're going to destroy their photos, but when they get back home, they both end up tucking them away somewhere instead of tearing them up.