#there are discrepancies from the canon fight but whatever

[olsmad-illo]

“Just like a child, all your best moves first… You aren’t completed, are you?”

[virgo-79]

I have a new (I think) take on the coffee theory.

Now first off, I don't think the coffee theory is needed to make Aziraphale's actions make sense in terms of his motivation, his hopes for Heaven, or his desire to be with Crowley safely. I think the Aziraphale we know could absolutely get there on his own, for all the reasons that have already been examined very eloquently in other posts.

No, I think there's something to a coffee theory of some sort just because SUCH a big deal was made out of something that would otherwise be minor. They didn't have to show the Metatron getting it at all; we know there's a coffee shop right there across the street. The only reason I can think of that they needed to show it was to highlight the fact that what the Metatron ordered and what he told Aziraphale was in the drink were different: a dash of almond versus a jigger of it. That is a HUGE distinction. Adding a dash means you take your flavoring, your bitters, whatever liquid you're working with, and do a quick, tiny splash. A WHOLE JIGGER OF ALMOND IS SO MUCH ALMOND. That's anywhere from an ounce to 2 ounces of liquid depending on the jigger you're using. A drink containing a whole jigger of almond is going to taste STRONGLY of almond.

They drew our attention to that fact. Not only was it a point of discussion twice, there was a significant difference in the ingredients mentioned. If they just wanted to paint the Metatron as using all of Aziraphale's sweet spots to manipulate him, all they had to do was have him bringing coffee -- or whatever -- as that gesture.

I don't think for a second Metatron mind-wiped Aziraphale, but I absolutely think he put something in that coffee. The level of attention brought to it and the discrepancy don't make any sense if we're weren't supposed to notice it.

But to what end?

I1¹ understand the jump to cyanide -- strange almond taste you say? And we have a canon example of poison affecting celestial beings very differently than humans, what with Crowley shotgunning a whole bottle of laudanum and getting high as a kite.

But. There's also the "almonds for purity" symbolism. And that's the one I'm particularly interested in. Not for the possibility of Aziraphale's mind being made "pure" and supernaturally suggest able. But as some kind of deterrent against *impurity.* Against demons.

Against Crowley.

Because while I think Aziraphale is absolutely in a place where he would have been vulnerable to the idea of ruling Heaven with Crowley, the part of their scene together that does seem like it could have gone differently in Aziraphale's reaction to the kiss.

Watch that scene again and tell me it couldn't read as Aziraphale being in pain. Watch him touch his lips afterwards. Shock at the kiss? Sure. But doesn't it also kind of look like he's been hurt? Or burned?

This is Aziraphale getting kissed by Crowley. When they were just dancing hours before, and he was gushing about how much Crowley loves rescuing him. Fight or not, conflicting beliefs or not, I still feel like Aziraphale would react to being kissed by his Crowley with pure joy.

And the "I forgive you" then reads TOTALLY differently.

I think the Metatron poisoned Aziraphale against Crowley specifically.

[watermelonsloth]

How would your infinite tsukuyomi dream end? when did it started and how to end it? let's not consider boruto as canon but go with the end of gaiden and do you have links for other analysis which talks about this possibility

I’ll be honest, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize what you were asking. I’m hoping I can still read and you’re asking how I’d ideally write the infinite tsukuyomi working off of Gaiden and ignoring the Boruto anime/manga.

Assuming that’s what you’re asking, I have a couple of ideas:

First the Rules

Everyone was put under the genjutsu by Madara at the same time. (It doesn’t make any sense that the susanoo would block it out.)

The reason we saw team 7 fight Madara and Kaguya afterword, is because the genjutsu is designed to basically gaslight you into thinking that it’s reality. It tells you everything was just a bad dream or quickly brings whatever was bothering you to a conclusion.

The infinite tsukuyomi works on two principles: It can only reflect back whatever is in the victim’s mind, so it can’t create someone/something the victim can’t conceive of (ex. can’t create “true peace” in the mind of someone used to conflict, can’t create a world with dead people alive in the mind of someone who can no longer imagine the world with them in it). The dream continues on a linear path unless distress or suspicion is detected, in which case it will only change to relieve those feelings.

The dreams aren’t perfect. They’re based on what the person wanted at the time of it being cast and will make as few changes as possible (think of it like a computer made to find the most efficient way to keep everyone happy. it’s the ai art of dreams, except with less art theft). On top of that, it can’t recognize complicated emotions. So bittersweetness, reluctant contentment, dissatisfaction, anxiety, disappointment, etc. aren’t considered “distress” and won’t cause the dream to change.

Dreams aren’t identical with each other and dreams aren’t mixed like in Road to Ninja, but some people are able to affect the dreams to some degree.

Different people have different levels of awareness when it comes to whether or not they know they’re dreaming. Generally, the better someone is at genjutsu/spotting discrepancies in their chakra, the more likely they are to notice.

Now, What I’d Do With This

The status of everyone at the beginning:

At least a year has passed since everyone went under the genjutsu, but the Rookie 9 aren’t in their thirties like they are in Gaiden. I’m thinking they’re in their early-mind twenties.

Kurama didn’t break Naruto out because Kurama is under a dream of his own (they do have separate consciousnesses after all). Naruto is in blissful ignorance in a dream about being Hokage, Sasuke being in the village, the world having rebuilt itself and being a peace, him having kept his promises, etc. It would probably look very similar to the Boruto world. Kurama would probably be trapped in a dream about Naruto being happy and him and the other tailed beasts being free.

Sasuke took a while but he figured out he was under the genjutsu, probably because he isn’t used to things coming so easily to him. His dream, given when the genjutsu was cast, would have him acting as Hokage fighting for world peace and security. Despite this, he’s neglecting his “duties” to instead search the world for a way out.

Sakura was aware pretty much from the start and is in denial (Denial is a river in Egypt, Sakura! This is a dream!). Regardless of what her dream is, everything would be tinged with guilt. With the nagging question of whether she’s doing the right thing. She’s meant to be a realistic character and I think it’s very realistic to prefer fantasy over reality. Just think of all the people who use escapism (via books, movies, tv shows, video games, sleeping, etc) as a coping mechanism.

The rest of team 7 is blissfully ignorant all throughout because it either wouldn’t make sense for them to be aware or their role would be redundant. Same goes for every other character except its because their character is passable as they are or the ship has sailed and them suddenly becoming relevant at the end would be more confusing than satisfying.

One the outside, the four Hokage are still trying to break everyone out of the genjutsu while Madara is bored, watching them try and fail repeatedly. At first I can imagine them fighting each other (verbally and physically), but at this point they’ve all realized there’s no point. The Hokage are the only thing keeping Madara even marginally entertained/sane and fighting Madara only wasted the Hokage’s time. At most, they throw jabs at each other.

The Plot:

This would be very Naruto-Sasuke-Sakura centric with cut aways to the few people on the outside.

Naruto and Kurama would find out about the dream because their chakra networks are still linked so whenever they try to tap into the other’s chakra, they see glimpses of the other one’s dream.

Black Zetsu would either be an obstacle within the dreams or be reabsorbed into Madara because he isn’t really needed.

Naruto would have an arc choosing reality and choosing real people. Since he had spent much longer than Sasuke or Sakura fully believing that the dream was real, he got much more connected to the fakes inside of it (both real people that he didn’t get to interact with much in the real world and fake people his imagination/dream conjured). I think he would know very early into becoming aware that he wanted reality, so most of his arc would be him teaching/forcing himself to say goodbye. (Demon Slayer spoilers: picture the scene of Tanjiro leaving his family from the Mugen Train arc)

Sasuke would have an arc about what you want not necessarily being what you need. I think instead of him continuing with his revolution/world peace goals, he would return to his roots and instead focus on finding peace. Maybe some spreading awareness stuff, but most of his arc would have him choosing to instead focus on what he still has, maintaining what he has, and restoring whatever he can of his clan (its honor, its culture, its place in the village, etc).

Sakura would have an arc about self-acceptance. I interpret her as carrying around a lot of shame and self-blame, so I imagine her keeping herself in the genjutsu because she’s ashamed of who she is in the real world. This would have her moving forward with the newfound awareness that there’s no shame in being who you are and it’s never too late to do better.

Because I’m biased and I think it’s fitting for a story about understanding others to end with the day being saved because of understanding, I’m giving Madara a redemption arc. So, Madara would be going through team 7’s character arcs all at once. He learns to choose the real world with all its flaws over a fake utopia, he learns that finally grieving and coming to peace with all that he’s lost is what he really needs over the world peace he was chasing, and he learns to stop blaming himself for the deaths of his brother/s. His story would be full of the Hokage and him talking about why they wanted peace, their dreams to become Hokage or bring change, their experiences in war, what they’ve lost, etc. and him slowly deciding to help them free everyone.

The End:

Team 7 gets into contact with the outside somehow. Maybe one half of Kurama communicates with the other half. Maybe Madara can tweak the genjutsu but can’t break it (because that would be too easy). Maybe Tobirama makes a jutsu. Maybe Hashirama, Minato, or Naruto use sage mode to interact with the tree holding everyone. Maybe Sakura finally uses that talent for genjutsu that’s been being hyped up for the entire manga. Whichever you think makes the most sense.

So team 7 and the Hokage + Madara come up with a plan to draw a huge amplification seal around the god tree’s trunk and using that seal plus a bunch of chakra to pretty much perform the biggest genjutsu release ever. It’s not enough to break everyone out at once but it is enough to get Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura out and send a shockwave through the rest of the tree. Everyone notices that shockwave and gets suspicious. So the infinite tsukuyomi starts stretching its chakra thin trying to cover it all up. Because it’s stretched so thin (it is covering everyone on the planet), the genjutsu is weak enough to break. Some ninja, especially those good at genjutsu, start breaking themselves out. For everyone else, team 7 + Hokage + Madara is doing a race against the clock to release everyone they possible can before the infinite tsukuyomi stabilizes itself.

From here, the Hokage + Madara would either leave after everyone’s been released or after the world has gotten back on its feet after the war. I’m leaning towards the latter for two reasons: 1. Along with the symbolism of the old generations passing the torch, there would be the symbolism of generations working together for a better future. 2. Madara could pass what he knows of the Uchiha clan onto Sasuke since Sasuke would’ve been too young to remember most of his culture.

I don’t think Madara should stick around any longer than the Hokage (y’know, leaving the world in the next gen’s hands), so he’d have to die somehow even if it would be a pretty dark end. I’m thinking seppuku style.

Did I just answer an ask by basically plotting a fanfiction? Yes. This wasn’t supposed to happen, but I apparently had a lot more than “a couple of ideas”.

[flambo19]

hey! im back! 2.3 story thoughts!

but before that I got e1s1 firefly :3 might go for e2 depending on how i feel

Found Family Stellaron Hunters My Beloved

Jade, Topaz, and Oti: Discussing shares and money or whatever the fuck. Me: *eating popcorn and understanding maybe half of it*

Getting an outside perspective on the Trailblazer's shenanigans was a treat. TB is no longer silent and is a menace

Loved the Firefly sections (what a surprise) and it was nice to see more of her thought process and attitude. She desperately wants to fight against her predetermined end and live the life she wants. She deserves everything including all my jades

Also! The Stellaron Hunters (or most likely Elio with the rest by association) follow the Finality! Pretty sure everyone expected this but. Wild!

The group chat was fantastic. I will never get over Ratio going "k" and then leaving immediately (and of course still helping later)

I got spoiled on the buttons being fireworks so the tension for Firefly's "sacrifice" was not really there but the cutscene? Beautiful. Can't believe SAM princess carrying the Trailblazer is now canon

The new song is really nice as well. Idk how to explain it but the start with the piano reminds me of Beyond the Sky from Xenoblade 1 lol

SILVER WOLF HIRED SPARKLE TO KEEP FIREFLY OUT OF DANGER SHES A FUCKING SAP I LOVE FOUND FAMILY STELLARON HUNTERS

The final goodbyes and toasts got me emotional. All the Astral Express having things to say, March's little speech, and Pom-pom's crying. I love the Nameless so much

Also the final page of the Penacony guidebook reveals that the writer was Razalina. I'm glad she got something since she was the Nameless with the least going on in the story

I apparently missed an interesting scene with Acheron because I pressed the wrong dialogue option... It sounds like it was a HI3 reference so maybe it wouldn't have meant much to me anyway

So Jade broke out Sunday because of a deal with Robin. They drill it into you that Jade has some pretty harsh deals so what did Robin give up then? I've seen the theory that Robin gave up the memories of/connection with her brother and 🥺 terrified of being hit with even more sibling tragedy

One hole in this is that Robin on the Express mentions Sunday. I know that these aren't super canon or anything but it feels like a discrepancy worth noting (note: i am coping)

And Stellaron Hunter Sunday is a pretty popular theory at this point. Wonder how that's all gonna go down and if it will even happen like that in the end. The possibility that he will decide to continue with his ideals and not change despite being beaten in with the power of friendship (and a train)? I'm honestly interested in the idea, it feels like the opposite of what people would expect

Trailblazer: I can fix him. Elio (or Jade?): Well I can make him worse watch this

Overall it really felt like a fitting send off to Penacony that also set up a bunch of stuff that can show up in future quests (which is exactly what I thought would be the case)

[chimeracorpse]

i might have missed it if it's in your carrd somewhere, if so, i am sorry but when did your version of theo become a dad? i originally thought after the show but i don't know if i got that right?

hi nonnie! i apologize for the confusion & vagueness on that end. i have all the information rattling around in my brain, but i’ve yet to actually write his bio. work has been crazy these past few months so i’ve had very little time to actually sit down & write his bio of his carrd, honestly. but here’s a little breakdown:

my theo was born in 2002, not 1995. i basically Upped the timeline from the start date of the series being 2011 circa the pilot episode to six~ years in the future. this was done so everyone’s ages could fit more with @cosmichunted / @taughtdefense [ ethan wilson(-keene)’s ] ages + my other characters, & @taughtpain’s robby / mads’ characters’ ages. robby was born in 2002, hawk was born in 2002, chase was born in 2002, etc. etc. i “slid” the timeline of the teen wolf universe up further to reflect that.

tldr: i was getting confused trying to figure out the timeline discrepancies between the two shows, so i decided to go “screw it, i’m slightly more modernizing teen wolf”. ie: the 2011 year of s1 doesn’t exist. instead, my version of s1 starts in, roughly, 2017. ( cobra kai’s timeline )

as such: my theo’s DOB isn’t 1995 like it is in canon. instead, his DOB is roughly 2001. as with my scott’s, my stiles’s, my lydia’s, my malia’s, etc. etc.

my version of theo became a dad pre his s5 debut. his children are informally adopted, but they take on the raeken surname regardless, because theo doesn’t know who their bio parents are. they’re not around at that time. my theo felt bad about them being basically kidnapped by the Doctors; the Geneticist specifically brought the cubs to the operating theatre to live there, like theo, but acting on the orders of the Surgeon. it wasn’t just theo growing up with the dread doctors, but multiple of my other original characters, & talia.

so, after he helps fight off belasko with scott & the pack, he is Already a dad. his children, shane & haley, are very young. (they are born werewolves with two sets of DNA that would make them chimeras is still TBD. the kids basically wound up imprinting on him because he was nice to them, & instinctually wanted to protect them from the dread doctors, & theo + his chimera Accepted the imprinting wholeheartedly.

(theo was roughly 14 at the time when he met/became shane & haley’s adopted father. the cubs really didn’t know any better… because they’re terrified, & were desperate to feel safe.)

shane & haley are not seen throughout s5 or s6— he asks talia / @vipersunion to take his children OUT of beacon hills, away from the Dread Doctors, & another villan oc of mine (his name is Oscar Dunbar). he would routinely harm the Dread Doctor Group (theo + ocs), doing whatever he wanted, & the Doctors just let him because he had been assisting them with their goal of achieving complete immortality/reviving the Beast.

theo didn’t want shane & haley to be poked & prodded any further by the Doctors, or tormented by Oscar. he also didn’t want them to become “candidates” for the Beast. that’s why he asked talia to take them out of beacon hills—so they’d be safe from harm.

theo not only wanted the beast's power to become a "real werewolf", but he also wanted to be strong enough to protect shane & haley from any & all threats... & based on the shit that goes down in beacon hills, it's not exactly a stretch as to Why he wants to protect them.

he works with the dread doctors to gain the power of the beast for himself. (he was most likely going to kill them anyway, had he successfully obtained the power.)

his driving goal behind everything he's ever done is to protect his children. trying to use liam to kill scott, so he could then kill liam for that power? he did that to ensure his spot at the top of the mccall pack, so he could be a co-alpha with the super pack ( stolen power ). he wants shane & haley to be back home with him where he can protect them directly from Every Conceivable Threat in beacon hills, or those who would travel to BH. he doesn't care who he has to hurt, kill or threaten in order to achieve that.

throughout s5, my theo is desperate to stay alive & gain the powers of an alpha for himself, & more importantly: his children. his cubs mean the entire WORLD to him.

i hope this answers your question, nonnie! let me know if you’d like any clarification on anything :) ❤️

[igneouswyvern]

After replaying ys origin I've finally gotten brainrot for it which is probably overdue tbh

I'm so ill abt yunica she's such a lame character but she could be so much more

Please consider: yunica is half demon

No there is absolutely no basis for this headcanon in game. However there's also no counter evidence so you can never prove me wrong

She's too strong to be a regular ass human. She's stronger than like all the knights and all the magicians at like 17 or whatever she's supposed to be when the game takes place and there's literally no lore explanation for it. She's just crazy strong for no reason

But if she was part demon....that could account for the discrepancy

Also we know her father is human but her mother is never mentioned ever. I've concluded she never knew her mother and there's absolutely nothing that says her mother can't have been a demon

And I know this isn't canon but I keep coming back to that door you have to open with the evil ring. Like ik in game you just have to put on a protective necklace and then wear the ring to trick the door into opening for you but. What if yunica didn't need to wear the blue necklace. What if she could just put the ring on and be fine. What if putting on the ring even gave her demonic properties. What if those properties were innate to her all along. What if the evil ring is just a method of activation. What if she just needed to be exposed to demonic energy to reveal her innate demonic characteristics.

And what if there's nothing inherently wrong with being demonic. Maybe it's what you do with it rather than the fact of being demonic. But what if most humans are scared of demons by default anyways and assume they're all evil. What if the reason yunica spent so much time with the goddesses is because she didn't feel naturally comfortable around humans the same way. What if the goddesses were the only ones to accept her for being half demon because they've just seen so much there's no point in being frightened by it. They probably met yunica's mother too, anyways. And maybe yunica kept her demonic characteristics secret from everyone, from all her friends, because she was scared of how they would react to her. And maybe because the goddesses were the only ones to accept her for who she was that's why she's so devoted to them. Because they were her one true friends, the only ones who truly loved her unconditionally.

And maybe she has to reveal her demonic nature to her friends to get through that door, and maybe after the initial shock they begin to accept her as well. And maybe she slowly begins to be comfortable with her demonic side as well. Comfortable enough to be able to put the evil ring on again to tap into her extra demonic powers during tough battles. And maybe that's what she uses to fight Dalles in the end. Maybe it's not just sheer force of will that grants her victory, but her finally coming to terms with both of her halves.

Oh hm this got ramblier than I expected I apologize. Good night

[snowberry33]

Stamina & Grace

Ekko/Jinx -- 4712 words

Warnings/tags: explicit smut, minor allusions to abuse, drug use, and toxic relationships, hurt/comfort

Something I wrote for a Tattoo AU made by Grim (@girlshapedmnstr) on Twitter!! After ending a rocky and volatile relationship with Kayn, Jinx runs to her best friend who she's been having entirely unsuspicious tension and on-and-off fights with about her being with another guy. They make up and make out...and more. (Because of course they do.)

Canon discrepancies that aren't explicitly clear in this fic: -- Ekko & Kayn are tattoo artists and sorta rivals (Jinx got her tattoos from Kayn) -- Jinx used to live in Piltover -- Jinx uses shimmer along with Kayn (Ekko does not like this. Obviously)

AO3 Link

Jinx shows up on Ekko's doorstep far into one rainy night; he can't remember the time, he just knows that most of the lights are off and he's already locked up the place, but he's not hesitant to undo his work when he hears frantic rapping on the worn, trembling door. Though he can only see her silhouette through the stained glass, he recognizes the tap of her hands; lightweight, but strong, purposeful.

When he opens the door, the silhouette fills out to a shaking, sobbing Jinx, shining purple-pink tears drawing tracks of eyeliner and mascara down her pale face. The awning above the shop's door shields her from the downpour to no avail, as she's already soaked from whatever journey she's taken to get here. But Ekko doesn't care; he pulls her in the moment she looks up at him, wraps her safe in his arms and lets her sob it all out—the shimmer, the cold of the night, and all the things she came to pour out into him.

Jinx doesn't tell him anything that night—not with her words, at least, but rather the way her fingers claw at him, desperate for something to hold her onto solid ground, and how she nuzzles into the crook of his neck for some trace of warmth, of familiarity.

When she finds the will to walk again, Ekko takes her down to the Firelights' base, gets her some proper TLC. Which, of course, includes snuggling up in his bed, pressed together under his covers—too close for comfort for anyone but them, and certainly for Jinx's tatted up, jacked, and mildly murderous boyfriend who happens to rival Ekko's business.

That is, her boyfriend until the night she showed up at her childhood best friend's door and spent the night in his bedroom. 

He'll take that well, sure.

In the morning, after she's taken advantage of Ekko's warm water to wash off the dirt and grime and whatever else of the previous night, she sits on his bed to watch him work; silent with her voice, but the weight of her stare distracting him like the persistent hum of an engine. It's then that he gets the chance to look at her—to really look at her, when she's fresh out of the shower and couldn't be bothered to put clothes on before hovering over Ekko’s shoulder, in that very distinct 'Jinx' way she does. A thick bath towel protects her decency, but leaves a window open to the dents and scratches littering the protective coating that is her skin. The stains of the shimmer and the memories that she can’t wash off in full view without the clutter of gaudy clothing or paint splotches or gunpowder to distract.

Ekko takes it in thoughtfully, the display; shrapnel scars and dark purple veins peeking through their pale, thin shield. But it’s the red trails down her sides and the barely faded bruises that catch his attention, and sparks the question; “Did he… hurt you?”

Jinx looks up, shifts a bit—processing. 

“No. No, he doesn’t hurt me, he’s just… You know…” she pauses, waves her hands around incomprehensively. “Kayn.”

Her shoulders fall as it seems she’s lost her vocabulary, and she shrugs the question and all its implications off as she looks curiously and nonchalantly around his room, like the extensive injury on her body is nothing more than another petty inconvenience. He’s not amused when she meets his eyes again. “What?”

“I’m worried about you, Pow, I—”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“I know,” Ekko says, immediate regret falling upon him with a heavy sigh. “I know. I’m sorry, I just…”

He hesitates for a moment, long enough for a thick tension to settle in the air between them—the lingering tension from the weeks prior that’d stuck to them and tracked its way in like mud from the rain outside.

“I can handle myself, you know. I don’t need you to come to my rescue.” Jinx breaks the silence for him, an undeniable venom in her voice. 

Ekko reacts to that, but catches himself before he can shoot back that she was the one who showed up banging on his door in the middle of the night after running from her ex. “I know, I know, but fuck, I care about you, Powder, is that a crime—?

“I said stop it.” she growls—and really growls this time; the last warning a feral dog gives before it bites. 

That seems to do the trick, as another long pause drags out between them. Slowly, carefully, Ekko moves from his desk and sits beside her on the bed. Jinx watches him the entire time, as if any sudden movement he makes poses a threat, but she does nothing—just stares.

“I don’t wanna be like this,” he starts. Jinx looks him up and down, releases some of the tension in her shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry, really—about everything, I just… it’s been a long time. Things change. Still going through the growing pains, y’know?”  

Jinx is quiet. Ekko worries that maybe he’s said something wrong, that she’ll huff at him and tug her clothes back on and walk out the door. But it seems to be an irrational fear as she gives a forced smile. 

“We’ve both changed. I get it.” she says, all too vulnerable for a few seconds before her smile turns playful, the Powder—Jinx—that he’s had to grow used to since she’s been back. Her hand creeps onto his knee and pulls her forward. Ekko’s heart skips a beat for a second, and she clicks her tongue. “You’re taller than me now,”

They both laugh at that, melding into the familiar playfulness that comes so easily to them. Ekko notices how she bites her lip when she giggles, and just as he thinks his gaze has been lingering there too long, his eyes have fluttered shut and Jinx's mouth is on his. On instinct, he reaches out to grab her face, and she moans, the smooth skin of her arms looping around his neck as she deepens the kiss. She tastes like sugar and smells clean from the shower, and Ekko can feel the warmth of her breath from the soft pants on his lips. 

It's been so long, so many nights daydreaming about what she tastes like, what it feels like to have his hands grace her skin—and seething that someone else took that away from him—that he's too caught up wondering if all of this is even real to notice when they shift positions and Jinx is on his lap, bare thighs settled on either side of his, smooth against the fabric of his pants. Until he realizes that he's getting hard, and fuck , she's grinding on him, slow and purposeful circles against his growing erection as she pushes her body into his and her tongue into his mouth. 

The friction makes Ekko groan, which she seems to take as approval as she continues her motions and whines softly into his mouth. He places his hands on her hips—to stop her or encourage her, he hasn't decided. They shouldn't do this. They can not do this. He knows that—she's just broken up with her boyfriend; she's vulnerable, and he's probably pissed—and yet the sugar on her lips is the sweetest poison he's ever tasted, her skin like polished marble under his fingertips practically magnetic to his touch. And the way she whimpers as she grinds down on him, the heat of her cunt seeping through his pants, no doubt leaving a wet spot on the fabric now—fuck, fuck, fuck. This is wrong.

"Jinx... Jinx, what—" he starts once he gets a breath of fresh air, cut off by another low moan when Jinx leans down to suck on his neck instead. "What—what are we doing?"

Bewildered, she slows the motion of her hips to a stop and removes her lips from his neck. Her brow furrows, eyes darting down to Ekko's lap where her naked pelvis sits comfortably atop of his bulge. "...What's it look like?"

"Well, it looks like you're trying to fuck me," Ekko huffs out a breath of laughter and immediately feels the dread sink in when Jinx shifts in his lap. The towel has long since fallen down her shoulders and left her chest partially exposed, but she tugs at it idly at the prospect of rejection.

"You don't want this?"

Her voice is firm enough—she's being practical, polite—but it wavers with confusion and thinly veiled dejection, and Ekko knows what she's really thinking; you don't want me.

"I—" Yes, I do. I want this. I want you. So badly it hurts. "Don't think it's a good idea."

Her skeptical gaze narrows into his, searching him for a bit. Then it clicks. "Kayn,"

"Kayn." Ekko repeats with a heavy sigh.

A sick smile spreads across Jinx's face, a familiar one of amusement that he recognizes from their childhood. He dreads what's about to come out of her mouth but finds relief in seeing her smile, if only for a second, before she buries herself in the crook of his neck.

"You're jealous!" she purrs, warm breath and gentle giggles against his skin. Before he can even protest her accusation, she's in his face again, staring him down with those big blue eyes and lips donned in mischief, dripping mockery. "What's the matter? You worried you won't measure up?"

She puts a notable strain on the phrase as she rolls her hips, drawing a harsh wince from Ekko that melts into defeated laughter. 

"I dunno, seems pretty promising," Jinx chuckles, low and husky against his lips before she captures them in hers again. 

Ekko puts a hand on her face and pulls her away before they can get caught up again. As much as he wants to let himself lose himself in her, in her taste, in her scent, in between her legs—focus—there's still a problem. "I'm worried,"

She smiles with a soft, amused hum, and cradles his face in her hands. Ekko finds himself leaning into her palm when she runs a thumb over his cheekbone, draws it down to his lips. "Aww... you're chicken." 

"Worried for you ." Ekko pulls her hand down, but keeps it in his grip, weaves his fingers with hers. "He'll be pissed; he probably already is. If he takes it out on you—"

"I'm a big girl, Ekko," Jinx cuts him off, sharp and forceful, like a guillotine. In that way she does when she's clearly tiring of his shit. But the hostility melts when she leans down and presses a ghost of a kiss to his lips, replaced by something he can't quite place but raises hairs on his neck when she whispers; "Stop talking about Kayn. I don't want him—I want you."

Ekko's breath hitches as she pulls his lip between her teeth—not hard enough to draw blood, but he doesn't doubt her willingness to. "You're sure? ...You want this, like, really?"

Her answer comes as a deep breath, soft giggles, and a teasingly slow buck against the bulge still painfully prevalent in his cargo pants—he takes that as a yes. Hands clamping down on her hips to guide her motions, Ekko lets instinct take over and indulges; breathing in the scent of her shampoo, letting his hands roam Jinx's back once she's got a steady rhythm of rocking in his lap, and most importantly, absorbing the sound of her moans and pants. The pretty song of her pleasure that only increases in volume as she grows needier and needier, pressing herself into him and whining into his neck. A wordless plea.

"Here, let me—" Ekko says through the haze, right before scooping her up by her thighs and letting her fall back on the bed as he kneels between her spread legs. The towel splays out behind her, now completely useless as she lays exposed to him like she's on display.

And gods, what a display. 

With pretty perky tits that he can fit in his palm, blue swirls of ink along her curves and over her hipbone, where under lies a patch of curls surrounding what he's only got a sparse glimpse of when it pressed against his erection.

\With all the scars, the scratches, shimmered veins, bruises, and every little mark and signature that makes her… her—what makes her Jinx. And Jinx is... 

Gods, she's perfect.

And Ekko wants to make sure she knows that.

Once he thinks she's getting bored with his ogling he descends on her, pinning her with his body as he subjects her to a relentless string of kisses from her lips, along her neck, her collarbone, and down to her chest where he takes one of her pierced nipples in his mouth, curling his tongue around the tiny barbell. She gasps into a shaky, sighing moan as her hand makes it into Ekko's hair and curls around his locs. One hand goes to tease her other nipple while the other trails down her side, slowly, dragging it out til he reaches her thighs and slides between them. With a pleading whine and a roll of her hips against his hand as affirmation, he slowly runs his fingers along her folds, only lightly brushing her clit but earning a nice sharp inhale every time he does.

He detaches from her nipple just to see the look on her face—her half-lidded eyes glazed with a look of need that he's never seen from her before, but makes it a priority to see more of; her lips pointed down into a pout that asks why he's stopped, pleading for more, for him to touch her, fuck her, please her—and to see the noticeable twist in pleasure when he rubs her clit more pointedly, in quick but precise circles to make her writhe under him.

"You're stunning, you know," Ekko says in a low growl, lips brushing her neck where he plants a few gentle kisses and then trails up to her ear. He doesn't quite know where the words come from, but sweet talking seems to come naturally, and definitely gets her worked up—something that awakens a competitive streak in him. "Did he ever tell you that? How gorgeous you are?"

Jinx doesn't answer him with words, but with laughter that melds into a long whine as she throws her head back into the mattress. All attempts at a response lost to the pants and moans spilling from her throat, she only musters up the word 'please', and when that proves ineffective, she clamps her hand around Ekko's wrist and moves it down to where his fingers grace her entrance. He pauses at the interruption, but the message gets across. With the lustful look in her eyes his confirmation, he slides a finger inside her, then two, and works up to a steady pace of finger fucking her that makes her back arch as she cries out to the heavens and rolls her hips into his hand to meet his movements.

It's fucking mesmerizing, watching her in the throes of ecstasy, sanctifying his sheets with the sweat rolling off her bare skin. Makes him wonder who could ever take such a sight for granted, should she choose to give them that privilege. He realizes in that moment that no, he's not worried about "measuring up" to Kayn; he wants to outdo him; fuck her better and with the passion of 7 years of unspoken love that he can never take advantage of her giving herself to him again and he can seethe about how he never loved her right to really earn her.

He's so focused on squeezing every bit of pleasure out of her that when she clenches around his fingers, he only pushes in harder and uses his other hand to hold her steady as she thrashes about, pale knuckles curled tightly around the sheets. 

Voice strained and desperate, Jinx murmurs under her breath; "Ekko—Ekko, please—please, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cum—"

"Good, good..." he coos, dipping into her neck to get the most from her pretty sounds and litter her skin with his kisses, hoping to replace the bruises from the night before and give her some that she can be proud of. "Come on, baby. Cum for me, beautiful."

All it takes is a bit more force—one more push against the sweet little spot inside of her—for her to fall apart with a resounding cry and collapse shaking on the mattress. Ekko slows his movements, letting her ride out the high until it seems like she's spent, and then pulls his fingers out of her, now covered in the creamy white fluid of her arousal. There's still the towel, but when she reaches out to caress his face, dazed and blissful, he decides to clean it off with his tongue instead—make a show of it for her. 

That makes her erupt in joyous giggles as she pulls his face down to meet hers. He can't gauge her reaction to the taste of herself on his tongue, but he hopes it isn't too unpleasant as he follows her lead into more messy, needy kisses. 

"Figured you'd be good with your hands, but I didn't know you were that good," Jinx quips as soon as she breaks away from him.

Ekko huffs in amusement, burying his head in the crook of her neck while her hands tread his hair. "C'mon, don't placate me."

"I'm serious!" she laughs—not just mischievous or mocking chuckles, but pure, untainted laughter—as she gives him a little slap on the arm. It's not visible, but the lilt of her voice gives away the smirk on her face so clearly Ekko can picture it in his head. "You know, making me cum like that is deserving of a reward."

"Oh, yeah?" 

Her smugness is, apparently, contagious, as he smiles against her neck and then lifts his head up to see just the smirk he was expecting—like déjà vu—with her bottom lip curled under her teeth as she looks him up and down.

"Mm, yeah," is all she says before she goes in for the kill. As soon as she's got his lips trapped in hers, she's all hands; reaching under his shirt, feeling every inch of warmth his skin offers, and sliding over his crotch to bring to attention the fact that he's still painfully hard—watching the girl of your dreams cum all over your fingers will do that to you.

Luckily for him, she makes quick work of his belt and uses the advantage of him being distracted to switch their positions so that she's hovering over him, hand down his pants and lips still interlocked. Until he finds the room to groan at the touch that he's been holding out on himself—slim fingers gently running up and down his cock—and gives her a chance to make fun of him.

And she does, of course. Not too brutally, but with something like a pitying chuckle as she watches him struggle to keep his composure. "Jeez. Excited, much?"

He doesn't have the strength to quip back before she's pulling his shorts down, taking his boxers with them, and leaning between his legs, lips dangerously close to his tip.

Instead of what he shamefully admits he wants her to do, she wraps a hand around his cock experimentally, glances up and down like she's looking for something, and then lets a sly grin spread across her face when it seems she's satisfied with the results of her inspection.

Slowly, hand still wrapped around him, she meets his eye level, and something in her stare is absolutely terrifying in the most intriguing way that only she can achieve. The voice that comes out of her mouth is low, a level of sultry he didn't know she was capable of, and makes him feel things in all the right places. 

"How long have you been waiting for this?"

It's a simple question. One that shouldn't make him as dizzy as it does, but pinned under Jinx's stare, it feels damning, and he can't come up with an answer to save his life.

She rephrases—"How long have you wanted to fuck me?"

This time, the question comes with a slow drag down to the base of his cock that makes him shudder. Slumped against the headboard of his bed, helpless against her interrogation, he meets her eyes.

"How long have you been back in town?" 

That seems to be the correct answer, as she gives a coy giggle and pushes his legs apart. She settles comfortably atop his thigh, nuzzling into his side as she strokes him, starting with gentle rubbing with her fingertips—testing the waters, tease him a bit, drink in the soft, needy growls in the back of his throat—and eventually taking the whole thing in her hand. Her pumps are slow and gentle, yet firm, and speed up just a bit as pre-cum leaks from his tip to lubricate her movements.

"You must've hated it." Jinx starts in a whisper, raising hairs on Ekko's neck. He's too hazed to ask what she's talking about, but she clarifies for him; "Seeing me with someone else, wanting me all that time."

Right. That. The bitter, angry part of himself that he always pushed down, but always came bubbling back to the surface. The part that hated how much they'd grown apart over the years, how different they'd both become, and channeled the hurt into spite. The one that he'd let slip only moments ago when he'd taken a hit at her ex, and maybe, unintentionally, at her for dating him. It's only fair she'd turn that stunt back around on him.

Yeah, it sucked to see her tangled up in this guy who she barely knew when Ekko was standing right there and she couldn't see how much it hurt to be snubbed while he watched her get worse, collecting scars and scratches and drowning the natural blue in her eyes with that vile substance. 

But neither of them wants to think about that now. When she describes it—with her lips against his ear, warm skin against skin, and her hand carefully drawing him closer to climax, but not too close—she leaves out all the anger, the fights, the nasty words thrown back and forth, and shines a light on the parts neither of them spoke about. The blind spots, the shameful moments alone in the dark. And her voice in that godforsaken tone makes them sound absolutely filthy.

"You wished it was you, huh? Every time you saw us? I know you did—I saw you too. Part of me made sure you did, to piss you off." she continues speaking over Ekko's husky moans and sighs, not even waiting for an answer. He knows she doesn't want one. It's all rhetorical, all part of her little game to get him riled up and he'll be damned if it isn't working. "You get off to that, imagining yourself in his place? Touched yourself thinking about it? About taking me from him?"

If her voice in his ear wasn't enough, reverberating through his body and raising pinpricks on his skin, Jinx rolls her hips, still so wet and warm as Ekko can now feel with her pressed against his bare thigh. There's a pause in her sinful rambling where she takes a sharp turn in her demeanor, only for a second, as she grabs his chin to face her, and he takes a moment to realize she wants an answer this time. It comes as a simple nod and a stuttered, barely audible 'yeah' which, upon hearing, she drops the tough act. She runs her hand over his cheek and into his hair.

"It's okay, me too," she goes on, now with her forehead pressed to his and slowly grinding against his thigh, gracing his lips every once in a while but never sealing the deal. "It feels dirty, right? Like you're doing something wrong? I tried not to—not to think about you but I just couldn't help it. Even when he was fucking me sometimes, I'd imagine it was you instead."

That hits a nerve somewhere inside of him, something twisted and spiteful that he knows he shouldn't indulge in, but fuck, it feels so good. She feels so good with her hand working him just right, getting herself off on him, and reciting sickly sweet nothings like some kind of erotic poet. He swears to every god he can think of that it's the hottest thing he's ever witnessed. 

"Holy shit, Jinx," he strains, now having to put a bit more effort into holding himself up on his elbows as she picks up the pace on his cock.

"Yeah?" she presses her lips against his neck, panting hot on his skin. "Are you gonna cum?"

"I—fuck, yes—I'm so close—"

"Do it inside me." 

She says it with no hesitation and so fast that Ekko almost doesn't hear her, and he runs through the thought process of actually registering what she's just said and how it's incredibly sexy and they definitely can't do that, but they're already here and she's already slowed down, and he's about to cum and wants to fuck her so badly and—

Without thinking about it, he pulls her into his lap again, positioning her right over his dick, but pauses. They lock eyes for a second, both panting and sweating and desperate for each other, and it's like something's clicked. Something that's been dormant for so long that neither of them can really place it, but it's overwhelming, drawing their lips together as Ekko helps Jinx take every inch of him inside her. And it lingers as they thrust and grind together and as Jinx clings to his hair and stifles her sounds in his neck, and as her warmth clenches around Ekko's cock and overcomes him and he releases inside of her and they finally collapse, damp and breathless, together as one for a few blissful moments.

It takes a while to recover, and in the meantime, it's quiet. Just the two of them in the aftermath, basking in the inimitable glory of it all. Jinx's loose hair falls over her shoulders and splays out over her chest, sparsely covering her nipples—not that she's keen to. She almost falls asleep on Ekko's lap before he nudges her a bit, drawing out a soft "hm?"

"I... You know I love you, right?" he says, pushing some of her hair out of her face to get a glimpse of those blue eyes that make him so weak for her. "I mean it. I don't know why it took so long to say it, but I do."

Jinx cracks a smile, wraps her arms around him like a koala bear and simply giggles, lighthearted and airy. "You're so stupid,"

A pause—she’s quiet again. Then she pipes up.

“I love you too,”

It’s small, murmured in the crook of his neck, but that’s how he knows she means it; she doesn’t say these things lightly. Ekko breathes in deep with the affirmation he didn’t know he’d been seeking for so long. He clutches her close like she’ll slip out of his hands and fall away if he lets go, runs his hand over her arm, feeling the curve of her muscles.

“Do you wanna stay here for a bit?” he asks. She nods wordlessly, and Ekko gets the impression he doesn’t have a choice anyway as he notices her soft snores.

With the rain outside settled down from last night’s storm but still notably present, and Jinx nestled in his arms with her smooth skin against his, he feels an almost unsettlingly unfamiliar sense of peace wash over him. But it doesn’t raise suspicion. He doesn’t feel the need to check the locks on his doors or windows, and only one prevalent thought occurs to him;

Yeah, he could get used to this. 

[cruelfeline]

In light of all that we’ve learned with this most wonderful final season, some people have asked me to reassess Hordak’s backstory monologue. To see how Hordak’s narrative fits with what we now know about his home. To try to discern exactly what its discrepancies are, and why.

I’m going to do that! But before I do, I would remind everyone: this is a little difficult to fully untangle because, given that Hordak is not a main character and thus does not have the focus that we’d like, we really don’t know a whole lot about the Horde in terms of function, social roles, and general history. So this is going to be very much limited by what I can glean from exactly what the show gives us.

That said, it’ll hopefully still be interesting. So!

During season three, after recovering from his syncopal episode, Hordak describes to Entrapta what he is, what he was, and how he came to be on Etheria. He describes himself as a defective clone who, once upon a time, was the top general in the galactic Horde. When his defect became too much of a burden, he was apparently demoted, sent to the front lines to fight until death, and arrived on Etheria by way of unexplained portal.

This is what Hordak tells us, and, as far as we know, he’s not lying. Hordak, as portrayed in the show, is a very honest person, both in his own actions and in the actions he expects of others. He greatly dislikes deception and does not appear skillfully capable of it himself (save for that one time). Knowing this, we generally have to assume that, in his own mind, what Hordak is saying is true.

So. What gives, right?

After all, once we see the galactic Horde in action, we learn that it is a played-straight, honest-to-the-gods cult. There’s nothing distinctly military about it. It’s not a bigger, grander version of Hordak’s Etherian Horde.

It is a cult with a god-brother-creator at the helm, commanding countless identical acolytes who live their lives in slavish devotion to their master. There do not appear to be any ranks. We hear nothing about any generals, let alone a “top general.” There doesn’t even appear to be a need for anything like that, because Prime doesn’t seem to really delegate to his brothers in a way that singles them out or relies on real autonomy from them.

He can, after all, read their minds at will and slip into their bodies whenever he fancies. If he needs to make a decision about a battle on a planet at the other edge of the galaxy, he can just take over a body on that planet and make said decision himself. Or, at the very least, enter the relevant clone’s mind and influence the decision as needed. He doesn’t need, and certainly doesn’t appear to tolerate, clones taking their own initiative.

So, again: what gives? What does Hordak mean by “top general”? Why does he think he has this elevated role when we can see that Prime considers all of his clones the equivalent of faceless bodies to be used a he likes?

Well, while we will likely never know the full truth, given the lack of Horde background detail, we can safely assume some things from what canon shows us.

Namely that, while all clones appear indistinguishable and do not seem to have named rank, there are definitely clone positions that work more closely with Prime than others. His attendants are one example. Those who are in his throne room feeding him information while he is working are another. (Hordak actually appears to be one of these, at least while Prime is trying to hack the Heart of Etheria, when Entrapta is captured.) And then, of course, there are the chosen vessels that will one day house Prime’s consciousness.

All of these positions can likely be occupied by any clone, with bodies switched out as needed (likely what happened when Hordak got sick). I doubt that individual clones have any sort of real rank. Prime knows this. Hordak and his brothers, I suspect, may not fully understand it. 

Rather, I would not be surprised if Hordak, deceived and indoctrinated into believing things about himself and about Prime that are not true, misinterprets the nature of his purpose and the truth of his relationship with his Brother. He believes that, fulfilling whatever role he was fulfilling for Prime, he was a general, an individual of note, an individual that Prime specially valued. Perhaps he fulfilled the role long enough that, in all but name, it became “his.” Perhaps he even fulfilled it well enough that Prime praised him frequently, cementing this unfortunate delusion. Perhaps Prime gave him legitimate favor -  a false thing, of course; simply a controlling tool, but Hordak did not realize that. 

Without canon confirmation, we can really only speculate, but these ideas seem reasonable.

Details aside, the point of the matter is that Hordak sees himself as “top general” because he sadly doesn’t understand that he is an interchangeable piece of a utilitarian machine. He truly thinks that he has this coveted position, that he is particularly useful, special, of great value. It’s a tragic misunderstanding that simply fuels his misguided devotion to Prime and prevents him from seeking freedom when he is given the opportunity. 

It’s something, I think, that people in very controlling religious organizations often end up thinking: that they are especially valued, worthy in some way that others are not. It’s part of how the organization controls them. 

By the by, there is also the theory that Hordak has suffered memory erasure before and is thus doubly confused, filling in blanks with fantasy, but given that we have no direct evidence of that, I’m not really going to go into it; it’s a popular bit of speculation, though.

Now, however, let us examine a different aspect of this. Labels aside, delusions aside, we are left with another conundrum: however Hordak interprets his position, it is very clear to us that said position does not actually offer the power or respect that a legitimate high military rank would offer. It does not appear to provide Hordak with any special treatment. 

Once upon a time, back when we first learned of Hordak’s backstory, it was somewhat assumed that the position would do something like this. Numerous fans speculated about how it might be a position that gave a clone dominion over others, or over their own personal ships or planets; some fans suggested that it might give a clone the right to a name. Now, of course, we know that none of these speculations are true: all of Prime’s clones are essentially interchangeable; all are part of a hive mind that eliminates the need for certain clones directing others; no clone is allowed a name, no matter what their current job might be.

So. What, exactly, is Hordak practically gaining here? Despite this position appearing to hold zero effective esteem, despite it necessitating Hordak giving up his self and his autonomy, it is abundantly clear that he desperately wants it back. Why? 

What about this position, whatever it may or may not be called, would provide Hordak with this sense of value, of specialness, of personal worth? After all, Hordak may be deluded, but he’s not stupid; even indoctrinated, he can tell that he doesn’t hold dominion over other clones, or have a right to his own name. He can tell that he doesn’t receive any functional privileges, that his own sense of value doesn’t translate into anything that you or I would think is “worth the price of admission,” so to speak. 

In light of that incredibly steep price, what does this position offer, in a world where military rank appears irrelevant? What does it offer, in exchange for Hordak’s name and his bodily autonomy and his freedom? In short, what does it offer that makes Hordak think it worth sacrificing so much for? 

Well. 

It offers closeness to Prime, doesn’t it? It offers the chance to work near him, to bask in his presence, to be spoken to and looked upon and touched by him. It offers the chance to receive his praise, personally. It offers the chance to perhaps -  hopefully, wishfully - receive his love.

Because that’s what Hordak really wants. Not dominion over others, or a fancy military title. He wants that emotional connection. He wants that approval and validation. He wants love. And for so much of the series, for so much of his life, he believes that love comes only from Prime. That working closely with him, being of use to him, will provide him with that sense of belonging and acceptance and affectionate care that he hungers for. That it will make him worthy and loved.

(There’s a line in the deleted Entrapdak scene, where Prime calls Hordak the “most unloved and unworthy” among his brothers that really cements the idea that worthiness is synonymous with love within the galactic Horde)

This is what marks the position as “special” in Hordak’s eyes: it is special because it stands the greatest chance of providing him with Prime’s love.

All of it is a lie, of course. Because Prime only “loves” his brothers as extensions of himself, and even then, only if they are physically useful to him. Once Hordak starts to lag behind due to his illness, he is quickly removed from Prime’s presence and sent to the front lines, destined to fight until defect or battle kills him. And yet it is a lie so powerful, and the clones’ need for Prime’s love so great, that he is able to use it to control them even when they are separated from him. To the point that a sickly clone trapped in a shadow dimension will forgo freedom in his desperate bid to feel wanted and treasured by his cruel god.

Eventually, thankfully, Hordak finds a true version of the connection he craves, someone who looks at him and acknowledges him, values him and loves him as he is, without him needing to prove himself useful. He finds Entrapta, and she provides that love that he sought from Prime.

This is why, even though Hordak actually ends up working in Prime’s throne room again, ends up close to him once more, he breaks free from control and kills his Brother. Throughout season five, Hordak remembers Entrapta. He remembers how she makes him feel. He remembers her love... and he realizes that it is not the same as Prime's. It is sincere. It is unconditional. It accepts him as his own flawed person, rather than the perfect drone Prime wants him to be. It is deeper and more true and more real than the hollow sham Prime offers.

And so Hordak rejects this once-coveted position, rejects Prime, and frees himself. He makes the choice between a false, controlling “love” and the real, heartfelt thing. He makes the choice, and he chooses Entrapta.

In the end, the greatest disconnect between what Hordak tells us in season three and what is true isn’t the word “general,” or even the cruel difference between how Prime views the clones, and how they view him. It is the impression of why Hordak wants such a position at all, of what it means to him. What initially comes off as a disgraced military man seeking to regain former glory is actually a lost, unloved soul desperately searching for the emotional connection he needs.

And, after many mistakes, after much hardship, he finally finds it.

[wormstar]

i was going thru ur blog and u have good posts about ableist aus and i was wondering - what if in the aus the requirements for warriors were different? Like instead of having to fight jay only hunts? Would the muddling of roles still be ableist? In a Tree-like situation?If its not presented in a "work super hard to get what you want" and more in a "yeah they can decide what he wants to do". This is mostly for jay (and cinder) specifically because they had desires to be warriors yet were forced to be medicine cats because of ableism (ig this can apply to briar but i just truly cant remember oots that well and i havent read her death). I am asking because i am still trying to unlearn the ableist mindset that i grew up with. Feel free to ignore this ask and thnx!

hey yeah thank you for asking! took the opportunity to write up more general thoughts on rewrites as a whole and i went over why exactly theyre ableist hopefully that provides a better perspective

i think the major thing to keep in mind is that the structure of the clans is very abled centric and overly ignorant of inner community work (for example dens are only solidified or altered when either the area takes damage/the clans grows wrt population) theres a fixation on marking territory and starting fights and whatever with other clans which is whats expected of most warriors to partake in. to fix those implications in any fanwork youve really gotta knead into them and understand the nature of their ableism....its not just a problem with cats being barred from being warriors its the whole occupation and the standard its held to, so to speak (+ that fits into general clan society being flawed but eh thats another thing and also its easy to branch out into thought about)

going to stress other disabled people might have other solutions to how disabled cats are received this is just how i like to think of things

first i think its kind of interesting to examine discrepancies between disabled cats in canon as somewhat of an indicator of clan attitudes and leaders and whatnot. like i think you could get something interesting by regarding lets say deadfoot in windclan and cinderpelt in thunderclan who both have bad legs yet had different experiences with them in clan life. if you wanna go a step further comparing generations like lilywhisker and deadfoot or cinderpelt and jayfeather (+ the consideration of how congenital disabilities are regarded) can also make things interesting and just give you an idea of what to do. having the clan systems stray from a clear-cut common attitude both gives you more freedom for different approaches + adds to worldbuilding anyway. imo boiling down clan society to perfect utopia just gets boring but you can have imperfections in the system that depict the disabled experience just fine. just be careful with them and the way they come across yeah?

(real quick as an in between. god just dont refer to cats/their injuries as crippled. it still happens somehow)

im a little ambivalent on the idea of creating a ‘special role’ for disabled cats to be thrown into. cause then thats a repeat of canon medicine den really. its like ‘oh youre disabled youre instantly discarded into the x role pit’ i think just adding substantial in-universe changes to the warrior rank itself (vagueness is fun actually) or expanding on ‘warrior types’ rectifies the othering angle. ‘othering’ as a whole is just as bad as the ‘exception’ archetype people run for most warrior aus i want to state that clearly. effectively if youre gonna introduce roles that dont depend on fighting or hunting or both make sure theres abled cats who have them too. like say you want a camp-based role where a cats job is to fix dens or one where they help in the nursery, its far easier for a cat who cant run to manage those but also have some cats who are physically capable of doing other ‘tasks’ do the same thing for personal reasons

the tree comparison is interesting honestly cause i guess you could just give a cat a particular thing to do as a nonfixed position. and roles accordingly being made for a cat to fill until they cant and the positions done away with afterward. but youve gotta do it carefully so you dont fall into othering as ive said. id avoid something like that personally i just dont like the quality of ‘well theyre not a warrior (the most noble/useful concept in cat society) theyre actually some other thing’

in general giving disabled cats agency and choice is the best thing you can do. whether this means them deciding on tasks they can do themselves or picking a certain kind of warrior to be or asking for an assistant to help them out when they do stuff. the way you wanna pull it off again depends on my first question of “how does the relevant part of your warrior cat world treat disabled cats already”

very important point, the majority of the ableism also comes in the form of character narratives and not just the structure of the world itself. like think for a bit why the writers decided jayfeather shouldve been forced to be a medic or why briarlight got killed off early etc etc. characters ‘wanting’ to be like the abled ideal and still being bitter about not fulfilling that years down the line are just part of the ableist storylines. if youre abled id literally say just do away with those sadstuck ‘i wanted to be a warrior!’ moments. if you really want to id say pull a cinderpelt or a shadowsight where a cats time in the medicine den started their fascination with medicine and they switched to that path due to personal intrigue. id say a more interesting and realistic angle to it is having a disabled cat who found fulfilment in doing something else besides being a warrior becoming bitter about their entire clan ‘mourning’ how theyll never fight again or giving them the pretence of being a warrior being the best thing you can do.... it depends on the character really

this is just a very basic disability thing but stray from the whole ‘useless/dead weight’ way of regarding disabled characters. like dont place their worth on how well they service a clan or not theyre still deserving of shelter and whatnot. you dont need to justify a cats existence or usefulness by going ‘well they may be blind but their sense of smell is excellent so we keep them around’ or whatever its just no good

last thing i can think of is like. dont disregard how a cats disability affects them. like its fine that briarlight cant fight (or even hunt major types of prey) she doesnt need some convoluted method that lets her do that. there are like a dozen other warriors hunting and fighting and theres present value and enjoyment in the stuff she does around camp. she doesnt have to be brightheart 2 its ok

[butwhatifidothis]

So. Took a look into that fic @nilsh13 is going through the comments of. Dunno if I’ll actually go through the entire thing - 300k words is certainly a lot of words to read through, especially with it still updating, but I’ve read through/am reading through longer ones - but I jumped to the latest chapter to get a feel for where the fic’s at now.

I’m not halfway through the chapter and I have Words To Say lmao, under the cut

This is going to be as serious a critique about the sections I’ve selected as possible - I want to be clear why I think what is being written is not of high quality, pointing out specifically what I have wrong with it. 

Here are some snippets of the fic (boldened), and following those snippets are my thoughts on them:

“My actions have caused immense turmoil, pitting friend against friend, mother against daughter, and brother against sister*,” muttered Edelgard, desperately trying to drive any hint of self-pity (emphasis mine) from her voice. “My best friend has been disowned by her family, Hubert and Ferdinand’s fathers are dead or imprisoned, and the woman I love is now deemed a heretic by the Church that once offered her shelter. The weight of my decisions seems to pull down all who are caught in the shadow of the Imperial crown.” The Flame Emperor gave Professor Hanneman a wan smile. “Whatever imagined slights you believe you have committed against me, they pale in comparison to the carnage my own words and deeds have unleashed.” 

""I made my choice, the only choice I could make, and dragged this continent down to hell with me. It makes me a poor ruler, and an even baser person, but that was the path I knew I must take."" 

“"It is funny you use the word ‘choice’, Miss Edelgard. When I resigned my title to study at Garreg Mach, I lost marriage prospects, became penniless outside of a small stipend…I even renounced the opportunity to have a family.” Hanneman smiled, his whole body suffused with melancholy. “Really, how could I dare to dream of bringing a daughter into a world this senseless and cruel, knowing that someday, she too, could be hurt in such a way? I…I would not survive it.” The man’s body shook. “I sacrificed those things, things I desperately wanted, because the chance to allow my sister to rest in peace was more important. And I would make that choice again, despite all that it has cost me. You are much the same.”"

"“But your sacrifices were your own,” protested the Emperor of Adrestia. “Thousands bleed for the choices that I have made, and sacrifice themselves for the cause that I have placed before them. There is a profound difference-“"

"“We are both wise enough to know a painful truth,” said the scholar with a melancholy smile. “No matter how grave the sins, no matter how many innocents suffer…there will be countless individuals who will defend the law not because it is just, or righteous, but because it is the law. They will permit a hundred Abysses, and a thousand women to be raped, and a million dead children, as long as such actions do not disturb their order.” He placed a hand on Edelgard’s shoulder. “To stand against such moral rot, knowing that the world will despise and vilify you for it, is the truest sign of not only a just ruler, but a good woman.”"

"The academic’s words blazed with the passion of both a scholar and a man who had watched his world crumble to ash. A man who had been forced to live in the remnants of a life forever altered by the cruelty of both society and of humanity. And yet he had fought, the only way he could, to make the world better. It gave the Flame Emperor new resolve."

"“I…” He turned and looked away. “I believe in you, Miss Edelgard. When I see you, and your determination, your spirit, your bravery in choosing not what is easy, but what is right…it reminds me of her.” Fingers clenched around his locket. “I will fight for you, in the way I should have fought for my sister, long ago. My strength is meagre, and my courage more meagre still. However, all of it is yours.”" 

The author writes Edelgard as one trying to give pity onto herself for her actions, despite how negatively they affect her, due to the immense ramifications those actions have had on those both around her and those under her care. This is the appropriate response to someone who has done as morally dubious an action as starting and spearheading a war that has led to the deaths and suffering of countless innocent people, some of whom were undoubtedly already going through immense suffering without war compounding itself onto their already existing pain. She - rightfully - points as, as a negative towards herself, that she has forced thousands of people to sacrifice their lives, livelihoods, friends, family, homes, etc. in order to continue with her war. Edelgard's canonical self-justification - that she had no other choice to do this - is properly utilized, and further characterization is given to her when she herself recognizes that performing such horrendous actions on the people under her care makes her a poor ruler and terrible person. This is, in truth, a decent set-up for her to go onto a possible path of redemption or self-realization.

However, that progress is forcibly stopped and reverted by Hanneman justifying her actions and recontextualizing them in a morally good light. In fact, the entire story does this, as characters act wildly out of character in order for Edelgard to be seen as good in comparison to them. Focusing on the quoted lines, however, Hanneman relating him giving up nobility and going into momentary poverty - whether true to canon or not - to Edelgard's war actively paints her actions as something that she had a right to be making, which she does not, as they force others to make sacrifices for her cause. When she herself rightfully points this discrepancy out, Hanneman excuses her actions by pointing to another - supposed - source of turmoil and essentially saying "You are more right than x, therefore your y actions are not only better, but objectively good, and make you a good person." He says nothing of the inherent injustice of taking away the choice of the people to live as they want and fight for who they want as well as deliberately taking away any semblance of safety from them, and makes objective statements about Edelgard's moral righteousness despite her taking actions that would, by definition, make her moral righteousness a subjective matter at minimum.

Hanneman is projecting the image of his sister and his own personal sense of justice onto Edelgard, and thus sees her as just as much a victim of the war and society as everyone else. Edelgard is a young woman who has gone through trauma due to Crests, as was his sister, and he himself (in this story, though not within the quoted lines) wanted to beat the man who abused his sister to death, and so he sees Edelgard using violence as a means to achieve justice as not only not questionable, but morally good and brave, as he felt he was not brave enough to enact "justice" onto the man that caused his sister's death. Instead of this being settled, focused on, or even mentioned, despite its obvious nature due to deliberate connections Hanneman himself makes, it is used as a means to showcase that Hanneman is a, for lack of a better term, "expert" on what he is saying when speaking to Edelgard. He knows what it's like to want to force change, he has by-proxy experienced the apparent injustice of the Church - not human society, not his family's decision to allow his sister to be married off, not the man who caused her death's decision to discard her, but strictly the Church and only the Church - and so he can "rightfully" justify and excuse Edelgard's morally questionable actions and paint them in a solely positive light, with no nuance or gray whatsoever.

Edelgard, in the first quote, attempts to say her actions without a tone of self-pity, and yet the narrative itself pities Edelgard. She should be allowed to feel bad about her actions - not because they are causing unfathomable suffering on people who were underserving, but because they’re just hard decisions that she was good and brave to make and maybe she can feel a little bad for herself for making them. She shouldn't feel responsible for choosing to start the war - in fact, did she really have a choice, or did everyone else in society force her to? She shouldn't question whether she's a good person or not, because she simply is - no debate, no question. She is - “justly” - standing up against "moral rot"; that she does so with even more moral rot is irrelevant, because, according to the story, it is not as rotten as that she's up against, therefore it is no longer rotten in the first place. War has been completely justified, as it is now not the last resort of desperation that could only ever be morally grey at its absolute best, but an objectively morally white decision of an objectively morally white person who is facing an objectively morally black opponent.

The actions of other characters attempt to paint Edelgard as someone closer to the former, but I will - maybe - eventually go over how those characters are extremely mischaracterized in order to prop Edelgard as their moral superior. 

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter 355 Thoughts

Herein: Endeavor, Jirou's big moment, and me lamenting the long-lost AFO With Nuance.

On Endeavor

 •   The discrepancy in Enji’s recollections of his sons is, in fact, completely great.  Shouto with the glare but the small sweatdrop of awkwardness, and Touya with the big happy deranged grin.  One of your sons is so happy to see you, Enji!  It’s also notable—as others have talked about at more length than I will—that Endeavor’s thinking directly about Touya for the first time since the reveal.  He’s previously shied away from it somewhat, using kanji/furigana mismatches to conflate "my son" with “a villain,” and being extremely vague every time Shouto tried to pin him down on the matter of going and doing something about Touya, but here his thoughts are aimed directly at both of them, "facing" them even if only in his mind.  A positive sign, I feel.

 •   I think it’s interesting that he lists “this fight” among the things he brought on himself.  The wound, sure; he slipped up and let AFO get that attack in.  But the fight itself?  Hawks and All Might planned those match-ups; the most Endeavor did was go along with it against his own misgivings and guilty conscience.  Should we take this to mean he’s now thinking he should have put his foot down and gone to face Touya instead?

 •   People (both in the fandom and in the chapter itself) seem very confident that Endeavor will be right back up, and they’re probably right?  But I wonder.  Endeavor tries to get back up, but he falls, and then there’s that close-up of all the blood in the grass, spreading ever farther.  It feels ominous. I don’t think Endeavor’s going to die, and frankly after all the hurt he’s taken in previous fights, it would feel a bit odd for one wound in his side to take him down.  The manga has ever been inconsistent when it comes to how much lasting effect any given injury is going to have, but since that inconsistency typically resolves in favor of “whatever’s going to make things more convenient for heroes,” Enji staying down because of this would be a swerve, and a welcome one.  I guess we’ll see.    

On AFO and “Extras”

I kind of hate this.  I’ve complained about it periodically before, and maybe it’s just sour grapes from having read him wrong, but late series AFO really is such a disappointment  This is a man who built an empire out of little people, one power exchange, one favor at a time.  At Kamino, he said he hated All Might for taking out his support network, for standing atop a pile of bodies of AFO’s allies.  He always recognized Tomura’s choices in allies.  His nemesis is One For All, a power built up through the lives of “small” people.  Hell, if you take Vigilantes as canon, it’s only been a few years since Koichi’s big finale, in which AFO explicitly recognizes the power of ordinary people to rise to the occasion in extraordinary circumstances and calls that a specific danger to him in modern times.  So why on earth is he so dismissive of “extras” now?

From a Watsonian perspective, I favor the explanation that he went kind of crazy in Tartarus; it’s also about the only explanation I don’t find exceptionally tiresome, but sadly one that is almost certainly not the intended read.  It’s just so easy, so unchallenging, so plodding.  And frankly, it makes AFO act stupid.  If he can’t imagine that little people could pose a threat to him, it leaves him completely flat-footed when they do, and that’s just the deadliest fuckin’ thing for his believability as a “mastermind”-type villain who can’t shut up about all the different paths and plans he has available to reach his ultimate goals.

He and his vestige have been trending this way for some time now—certainly since Jakku!—but it’s reaching new heights since the beginning of this arc.  It’s like I’m watching Horikoshi flanderize this man in real-time.     

Jirou and Friends (and AFO and Bakugou)

Man, I wish BNHA actually had the ensemble chops to land this moment.  But like, if we were really supposed to buy Jirou getting angry about her friends crying, maybe we could have had a) any more significant relationship between Jirou and Midoriya than him helping her organize her notes that one time and b) any relationship between Jirou and Aoyama at all.  

The most generous read I’ve got is that Midoriya and Aoyama were on Jirou’s mind because she’d been thinking mere seconds prior about how those two have been living with the terror of AFO’s looming threat,(1) but it would have hit so much harder if Jirou had had any significant presence in Deku or Aoyama’s arcs before, or had been shown as the type of character who’s overtly friendly with everyone.  Hell, what would be so wrong with letting her get up in arms for her own sake, wanting to prove she’s no extra, or that AFO is wrong to spit on the efforts of people like her just because he doesn’t think her quirk is duly impressive?

When you put it together with the A Band reunion back in Chapter 327 and the total lack of pay-off on that thread, it’s enough to make a blogger wonder if there was something else originally planned for Jirou and this is a hurried sub-in moment after that idea was scrapped.

You know who feels like he ought to be having this plot?  Mr. “Extras Should Just Get Out of the Way” himself, Bakugou Katsuki.  Honestly, with as over-the-top as AFO is getting with the extras talk, I very much wonder if Bakugou will end up having to fight him after all—maybe if Kurogiri gets sprung and shuffles the fights again?  AFO having nothing but derision for weak quirks and thinking that extras serve no purpose but to make him look cooler in their defeat feels so precisely calibrated to mirror early Bakugou that’s it’s hard to imagine it’s a coincidence.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy AFO getting ganged up on by relative randos! And that, too, is thematic in its way. Jirou (and maybe Tokoyami next chapter?) getting something like this is very cool. But I wish it could come in a context where I was more convinced by BNHA as an ensemble piece. With any luck, this will be a first step of the series finally properly turning away from the mentality the heroes still have, of using big "important" people to fight important fights.     

AFO and Vestiges (What’s New, Pussycat?)

Once again, AFO gets all the good vestige drama.  I ask you, gentle readers, why didn’t we ever get to see Deku have to struggle with vestige interference?  Why can’t Shigaraki get some assists from vestiges who hate AFO more than they have any opinion about this new kid?  When will we get to see Vestige!Ujiko?

This is another case, though, where it’s difficult to credit that this should be such a surprise to AFO.  Has he really never had a (non-New Order) vestige try to fight him before?  Would they not have contributed their efforts when All Might drove him into a corner in their backstory fight?  I largely like the idea of them banding together only when it seems that their efforts could make a crucial difference, but it would carry more weight if we had ever gotten to see their perspective before.

And there’s even an easy prospect for that!  AFO has Search, Ragdoll’s quirk, so why haven’t we ever once seen her in any of these vestige scenes?  Hell, she could even have gotten a line or two explaining why this is only happening now, maybe a flashback to what it's actually like to be a psuedo-sentient quirk ghost trapped inside AFO. She could be the one leading (or maybe coordinating, given the nature of Search) the charge, because that's one of the things heroes do: inspire others to take up the mantle themselves.     

Jirou’s Injury: Is It Sexist?

Here’s my opinion: The talk getting around about Horikoshi being a big gross sexist, possibly one with a fetish for brutalizing women, because of Jirou getting one ear jack blown off is not entirely without merit, but it is pretty oversimplified.(2)  Only two women have been irreversably maimed beyond simple scarring thus far: Mirko losing two limbs, and Jirou losing half her quirk.  Compare Aizawa losing an eye and the lower part of one leg, Mr. Compress an arm, Re-Destro both his legs, and Overhaul both his arms and his access to his quirk, and you’ve actually got twice as many men as women taking those lifelong, irrecoverable injuries!

Also too, that’s only talking about people who were significantly and, thus far, permanently impacted by their wounds.  If you expand the scope somewhat to people who were maimed with less severe impact on their combat effectiveness, you get people like Jeanist and his lost lung, and Hawks and all his lost feathers.  You also have to talk about people like Mirio or Shigaraki, whose maimings were severe but temporary, or Gran Torino, who didn’t lose an obvious limb, but who still doesn’t seem to be back in fighting shape, given that we still haven’t seen him out of a hospital bed.  

Virtually all the characters in these latter categories are men; the only female character I can think of that fits any of those particular bills is Lady Nagant, who at present seems to be in the Gran Torino tier.  Two women compared to four men, or three women compared to nine men: it’s not exactly the clear-cut damnation a lot of people talk like it is!  And Mirko bounced back like a damn jai alai ball, while Jirou still has enough oomph for supermoves, whereas Aizawa’s big contribution at the moment is holding hands with Monoma, and Overhaul can’t access his quirk at all!

That said, the numbers absolutely do get much worse when you start folding in deaths.  I would say that twice as many prominent/significant women have died in this series than similarly placed men—Nighteye and Twice compared to Magne, Curious, Star & Stripe, and Midnight.(3)  It looks even worse when you consider the percentages of women overall in the groups that lose them: three women versus eleven men in the UA staff; one woman and four men in the MLA; two women and six men in the League circa meeting Overhaul.  And so on; in all cases, men drastically outnumber women, but women die at exorbitantly outsized rates.

That ties into a further disparity, which is the gender balance on which characters are allowed to keep contributing to the plot after their injuries, versus which ones die or get booted off-camera.  

For the men, you once again have Twice and Nighteye, and I would add Overhaul as well—his brief return doesn’t see him doing anything remotely significant save giving Deku a quick moral trial.  You could possibly count Gran Torino as well, though he at least got to give Deku some words of advice for the road, and it remains to be seen whether he might make an appearance at e.g. the hospital Spinner’s currently attacking.  That’s four men significantly removed from prominence out of a list that I would probably say constitutes eleven men overall—add on Aizawa, Mr. Compress, Re-Destro, Best Jeanist, Hawks, Mirio and Shigaraki.

For the women, conversely, Jirou and Mirko are the only two who have bounced back, from a list that would in full include Lady Nagant, Curious, Star & Stripe, Magne and Midnight.  Fewer women on the overall list than men, but the men have much better rates of recovery.  There’s no getting around the fact that Aizawa wakes up in a hospital after chopping off his own leg like a badass while Midnight dies on her hands and knees.

Which also brings up the topic of how sexualized women’s injuries are compared to men’s.  Off the cuff, and without going back over all the relevant scenes in detail, I feel like there’s at least some measure of reflexive sexualization of women’s bodies going on there, stuff that is being read in a worse light than Horikoshi intended it.  I would call it a factor with Midnight and Mirko for sure, though, and I might think more with some research.  The only male counter-examples I’d even consider broaching would be Mr. Compress (shirtless, posing, dramatic reveal of his hair and unmasked face; it’s all very intentional and agency-having compared to the women) and Shigaraki, who we really do have to watch get brutalized, shirtless, at profoundly uncomfortable lengths and extremes; he does far more agonized floorbound writhing, for example, than Mirko, though their respective outfits mean you see a lot less of his thighs when he's doing it.

So, yeah.  The trouble isn’t the simple number of women taking bad injuries, nor even the extent of those injuries.  The trouble is how impactful those injuries are on the whole, and what percentage of women are taking them compared to the men.

That said, Jirou’s not out of the fight yet—again, she still had the oomph for that big supermove—and as a 1-A student, I don’t expect her to be bowed out of what remains of the plot entirely, at least not more gallingly than any number of the second string 1-A kids.  Her injury was not sexualized at all, and while it was somewhat graphic—that panel of her severed jack!—I wouldn’t say it was more graphic than, say, Shigaraki getting his fingers pinched off by RD, or pretty much anything going on with the remnants of Dabi’s face.  We’re also very early in this fight still; there’s lots of time for more students to take more injuries, so the full scope of how 1-A’s girls fare in this fight compared to the boys will not be apparent for some time yet.  

That all said, while I would call Jirou’s injury part of a larger pattern, I’m not prepared to jump to “Horikoshi was just sitting at his desk slavering at the chance to brutalize this teenage girl.”  Frankly, I’d far rather see girls out there taking an active role in fights against major threats like AFO and Near High Ends and taking their licks for it, like Mirko and Jirou, than girls sequestered in support roles on the sidelines and never getting anything interesting to do, like poor Momo.  And I will feel even happier about it if some boys—any boys—take some comparable licks too.

Stray Thoughts

 •   “I could tell from the sound of his breathing, which my feathers picked up on.”  Lawd, this is stilted.  Why would Hawks need to tell himself the bit about his feathers?  Surely he himself knows the method by which he detects Endeavor’s breathing?  Some of his lines here I could chalk up to him being a very methodical thinker in combat—as is the case with, “We go forward with that assumption!”—but some of it just feels like a combination of Horikoshi holding the audience’s hand(4) and C.Cook’s translation being awkwardly phrased.

 •   Dark Shadow asking after Jirou: what a cutie.  I like it when he interacts with other people—Tokoyami, of course, but the rest of the class as well.

 •   I’ve really enjoyed the dynamism of this fight.  I’m deeply tired of the BNHA fight scenes all boiling down to Deku punching and/or kicking something really hard, or people like Bakugou, Shouto and Endeavor all having these huge elemental-based attacks that might be distinguishable in color, but just aren’t very interesting in black and white.  Also, like, none of those people can truly fly; they can only propel themselves violently in a certain direction.  So the high maneuverability of a true aerial combat between AFO, Hawks, and Tokoyami-carrying-Jirou, with Hawks in particular zipping around with a pair of swords, and Jirou and AFO’s attacks tending towards more serpentine visuals, has been a welcome corrective.

-----

1:  Which is a fair cop for Aoyama, but is on thinner ice where Deku is concerned, seeing as he and AFO never had a direct encounter at Kamino, the Jakku encounter was AFO’s vestige rather than the man himself, and the post-Nagant material was spurred on entirely by a prerecorded video.  Deku had never met AFO face to face until literally the beginning of this combat.

2:  And, tumblr being tumblr, wildly over-accusatory.

3:  Counting all named deaths evens the raw numbers somewhat, but I categorically refuse to grant side characters and one-offs like Native, Majestic and Snatch the same prominence as arc-starring characters like Star & Stripe and prominent arc villains like Curious.  Crust comes the closest to making my cut, but he’s just such a one-joke character, completely lacking the slightest hint of interiority, that even though he’s in twice as many chapters as, say, Curious, he doesn’t have half of Curious’s motivation, personality and clear sense of history with her compatriots.

4: 1:  I wonder, sometimes, if Horikoshi was a little traumatized by that whole thing where he had everyone writing in to ask him about Deku using OFA One Million Percent against Muscular and having to explain that that was just Deku thinking 1,000,000% to get himself hyped up, not a literal representation of his power output.  The BNHA fandom is full of pedants, East and West alike, it seems.  (I say this as an unbelievable pedant myself, of course.)

[droplet-dread-cat]

Okay, so... idk why that came to my mind but I’ll roll with it.

Also there are surely some discrepancies in timelines and such but it’s an AU and I don’t really look for accuracy here

WifeSwap!AU 

- The chief of the Southern Water Tribe is like “Oh shit, we have only like seven benders left. We can’t afford another attack of the Fire Nation” and he meets up with Fire Lord Azulon to propose a peace treaty. Only Azulon’s an asshat and he’s like “Peace and no further attacks on you? Well, you can have that, no problem, but for that we’ll need tokens. You can still have your benders but we will trade nonbending people between our two cultures... sort of a slave trade deal. You can do whatever you want with the people we send you and we can do whatever we want with those you send us. Oh! And of course, the Southern Water Tribe will raise our flag additionally to yours and, before I forget it, you’re obligated to send us Water Tribe specialities as our nobility finds them quite... interesting.”

And the chief is overwhelmed and can’t quite understand why the slave trade thing has to happen (it’s because Azulon’s eager to see if he can manipulate the genetics into his favours so that they’ll end up building a waterbending force additionally to a firebending one (which they can use as healers if they have that gift), firebenders born into the Southern Water Tribe also are sort of lifetime test subjects who show whether they can remain in such conditions or not (also if they can be trained to withstand the cold and become better benders that way) and most of his war council consists of those creepy old men who are weirdly obsessed with “exotic” features) but he has no other choice but to agree because he knows another (last) attack is on the horizon. It’s better to essentially become a Fire Nation colony than to lose all of their benders for good, he thinks.

- Fast forward a couple of years. Azulon has managed to gain forty waterbenders by mostly trading men from the Water Tribe for women from the Fire Nation. As you know men can um... make a lot more children in a short period of time than women. The Southerners aren’t really treated as people and more as concubines while the Fire Nation people in the south are treated as equals (and become enamoured with the culture - because they’ve always known only the strictness of the Fire Nation.) and they bring equality for men and women because now there are more women than men => leads to a fighting force consisting of men and women.

- One day Ozai really pisses off his father. It’s a minor thing, really, but it leads to his fiancé getting shipped off to the Southern Water Tribe and he gets the most fierce nonbending warrior woman of the Water Tribe as his wife instead - Kya. She is straight up able to make him eat dirt and refuses to be treated as a slave. Hakoda gets Ursa - this meek, shy girl who refuses to raise her voice or look him in the eyes. There’s a whole subplot for Hakoda and Ursa slowly getting together while Kya dominates the shit out of Ozai because she wants kids and has no hope of ever returning to Hakoda (her true love). She sort of takes over the Fire Nation after Azulon’s... unfortunate death.

=> Kya and Ozai’s children are Zuko and Katara while Ursa and Hakoda’s are Sokka and Azula (who Ursa names after the man who essentially set her free)

- just. think. of. the. implications. 

- Zuko is allowed to be a soft boi and because Kya all but overtakes the government, there’s never an Agni Kai between Ozai and Zuko. Also Ozai’s forced to love his children. Kya won’t take a no.

- Kya loves her two children equally. She doesn’t mind that Zuko’s a firebender. It’s just the way things are.

- When Ozai foolishly asks his father if he can have the throne after Prince Lu Ten’s death and Azulon asks for Zuko to die Kya fucking explodes and stealthily poisons the Fire Lord but with such a slow acting poison that nobody can trace it. => Ozai’s like “DAmn wife, poisoning my dad?? Kinda hot ngl...” 

- So, like, Ozai’s more and more showing his human side because Kya just yeets the throne out of his hand (”No, someone unstable like you is not going to reign a freaking country, what the hell? Gimme those documents, husband.”) and after being manhandled into caring for his kids he has those little moments in which he shows that he can, in fact, love but it’s burrowed under layers upon layers of jealousy, hatred, anger and manipulative demeanour. Kya’s not one to turn down a challenge, though.

=> so. many. trips. to. ember island.

- Katara’s a fierce thing. She loves her brother, feels conflicted on her country and gives like a speech a day to the personnel who cowered under Azulon. Her waterbending is treated as something desirable by Ozai who, in turn, makes sure she gets teachers but he’ll also imitate Iroh (only this once, of course, and he’d never say he saw a merit in an idea his brother of all people had) by also teaching her firebending forms. Katara’s so dangerous but she’s still herself. In this AU, her healing abilities come when Zuko falls from a roof and breaks his leg.

- Ursa and Hakoda take things slowly. Initially, there’s a major heartbreak on Hakoda’s side, of course, because he really loved Kya wholeheartedly but slowly (and I’m talking real slow - like slow burn times 3) he starts warming up to Ursa who doesn’t know how to act in this new society she’s been thrown into. Hakoda shows her how to fight... ugh, that’s so cute I CAN’T and then she someday is gifted a bethrotal necklace but it’s dark red and omg utreghuigheguhenffberfievbhue

- Sokka and Azula are siblings. This is interesting on different levels because for one, Sokka’s a nonbender. Meaning that he only can impress with his boomerang and intelligence while his little sister’s a goddamn firebending prodigy who can?? Shoot lightning??? Wtf???

- Hakoda is Best Dad and instantly sees Azula’s unhealthy desire of perfectionism early on and sends her to the tribe’s psychiatrist. She still has anger outbursts but she is a lot more stable than in canon. Also, she’s obsessed with Sokka learning new fighting styles. She won’t stop arguing about the merits of him learning the sword or him learning the bow or him learning the art of chi blocking or him learning... basically, it’s Azula’s form of care but it annoys Sokka to no end (even though he loves his little sister too, obviously).

- There is not an ounce of sexism in Sokka because... um... have you seen his sister?!

- So, one day, there’s a letter from the Fire Nation. To Hakoda. Saying “Hey, what’s up, my old fiancé? I took over the Fire Nation - how about we meet up some time for a renewed peace treaty and to show off our kids?” And Hakoda’s like “Omg, Kya. What the hell?” but he grins the whole time and is so glad that his almost-wife is thriving. He wouldn’t have thought she’d give in easily but to hear the good news lifts a rock off his heart. Ursa’s a little bit hesitant but Hakoda tells her that she’s his wife now and a meeting between the two couples won’t change that.

- They all meet up when Sokka & Zuko are 14 and Katara & Azula 12-ish; surprisingly, it goes super well? Oh, well... apart from the fact that Katara and Azula begin arguing like crazy when they’re on Southern Water Tribe territory and accidentally free the Avatar.

- So now they have the Avatar.

- But Aang’s kinda not needed all that much because Ozai sure as hell won’t do anything to capture him - not when Kya’s been stopping a war that he slowly begins to see was totally f-ed up

- Aang grows up with Katara, Sokka, Zuko and Azula at his side. They then later on stumble upon a lemur, a Kyoshi warrior and Toph during one of their trips (which they can do only when they’re at least 14 because Kya isn’t going to let her kids roam around when they barely hit puberty yet.)

- Sozin’s Comet comes and goes. Ozai guesses he could have technically taken out the Earth Kingdom but who the hell does that kinda stuff? He’s not a villain in some theatrical play or something.

- The war ends for sure when Ozai finally gives in and signs the peace treaty between the different remaining nations (and Aang as the last airbender). It’s not like everything’s alright now that they’re not attacking but it’s a lot better than before. 

[gold-kobold]

hello!!! i’m goldie! :D here is my main info about the stuff i post/reblog!

my post-season 3 trollhunters fanfic, “how to fight a shadow”, can be found here

posts with the tag "ask game" are also generally about HTFAS

i tag characters as whatever they’re most commonly addressed by! (eg. “nana”, “vex”, “angor rot”, “strickler”, etc..)

i generally tag ships by their most commonly used ship names (eg. stricklake, jlaire) but i do have a lot of rarepair stuff floating around, so if there’s any more obscure ships you’re trying to avoid, feel free to ask me how i tag it so you can block it!

i will sometimes reblog posts i’ve reblogged before under the “.re-reblogging.” tag and will not tag the content within them again! so if you’re, again, trying to avoid certain ships or anything, block my “re-reblogging” tag. i will also put longer fandom discussions i have with people through posts under the "discussion" tag, so block that tag if you're not interested in seeing conversation posts! (those aren't too common on my blog tho)

since tumblr is big stupid, my queued posts will be changed from the "queued" tag to "next in line" instead

also, i do not consider rise of the titans or any of the trollhunters side novels (eg. angor reborn, welcome to the darklands, ect.) or the side comics to be canon, due to their many discrepancies to the main series! so keep that in mind if you come across any of my book or movie ramblings 

if i follow back, it's usually from @lurking-goldie rather than this account

i will add more to this list if i think of anything else relevant that needs clarifying lol

[undertalethingems]

What is your opinion on Sans' HP? His HP is unknown. And the stat being one is only seen in code and cannot be trusted as canon. You never see his HP after the final attack. It was probably set as one cause you only fight him in the Genocide Route and he dies after one hit. It is confusing and can differ from person to person.

To be fair, I don’t think you see the exact number of any other monster’s HP in-game either, do you? So technically, we don’t know the HP of any other monster either by that logic... and the stats given in their ‘Check’ actions hardly match the stats in their code either, sometimes by a huge discrepancy--and some monsters like Mad Dummy don’t even state a number in their Check XD

My approach is that the stats listed in the game’s code are a ‘base’ stat, and whatever numbers are listed in a monster’s check act as a modifier that reflects their emotions, thereby making use of both sets of numbers. idk that it makes sense, but then, it already didn’t =u=;

[aethylas]

For anonymous: a series of answers/clarifications/amendments on The Goldenrod Revisions! (I've answered these all in one post just to make it easier). Thank you so much for the asks, this helped me a) clarify my thoughts b) solve some canon continuity issues so I really appreciate them!

THANK U for agreeing to answer my questions! I'll have to ask them separately so they're not in 1 super-long impossible-to-read ask. I have 3 about 15x19, 1 about 15x20, 2 about 15x21, 2 about 15x22, and 2 about 15x23. quick disclaimer: i don't mean any offense at all by my question count! I didn't even notice these oddities the first time I read this; once I read it and accepted it as the true canon, I took a closer look and then noticed. but plz don't think these made your fic any less great!!

No worries anon! It is literally my pleasure to answer them and I am VERY very happy to find discrepancies with canon in the fic - then I can hopefully fix them and make the fic better :) Also I really appreciate the very systematic way you laid all these out, it really helped me reply, and also subsequently make a couple of edits to the fic!

For 15x19:

1. Why did Chuck trust Michael with the task of killing Jack? As God he should know Michael betrayed him in 15.08; did he expect Michael to disobey him again?

I think in this case we're/Chuck is relying on knowledge from the canon 15.19, i.e. Chuck would assume the outcome predicted by the show - that Michael WOULD betray the Winchesters/the world in order to please his father. So God assumed Michael would act the way he did in Inherit The Earth. But additionally, Chuck isn't actually very keyed-in to his own characters' motivations (esp. when love is involved) or very attached to certain results - he basically sends Michael and Lucifer to kill Jack because he figures it will entertain him no matter what happens - whether Michael and Lucifer kill each other, whether they kill the Winchesters/Jack, etc. - either Jack dies this way or Chuck will think of another way to do it.

2. How was Sam able to kill Lucifer? It was said only an archangel could kill another archangel with the archangel blade; was this a total lie or could Sam do it since he's Lucifer's true vessel? (plz don't change it to have Michael kill him; Sam being the one to do it was perfect, I just wanna understand how he could do it).

So glad you raised this because I honestly totally forgot! But now that you have, I have corrected that lore continuity with a line about biblical metaphors.

3. How is Rowena alive? She said she was dead in 15.08, so I initially assumed as a witch and the Queen of Hell she found a way to travel between Hell and Earth despite being dead. But then Sam says "Michael could've killed you" and then Chuck kills her twice in 15.21, both of which indicate she's alive here - does this mean Michael resurrected her when she summoned him?

God okay this is like - please call me out if this is incorrect or still confusing - but it's kind of like, based on the very inconsistent and confusing lore of the SPN afterlife that I assume Rowena is 'dead' but also 'alive' in the sense that Crowley was 'alive' and is now 'dead'. Does that make sense? She's not 'alive' as a human but rather as a demon (or something like it). So as Queen of Hell and a presumably demonic-adjacent entity, when she's 'killed' she gets sent to the Empty now vs. being 'killed' as a human and going to Heaven/Hell. (Based on when we see her in Hell, I assume she possesses her own body? Unclear. Just go with it. They've never been great with what it means to show vessels in Heaven/Hell etc.)

4. I thought asked all I wanted to know about Goldenrod but I just thought of 1 more thing: I don’t get why some dialogue implies Michael was dead? He mentions how he “found himself back on Earth” and tells the Empty it couldn’t stop Chuck from resurrecting him & Lucifer, but prior to 15.19 we last saw Michael leaving the bunker with Adam alive and well in 15.08, and it seemed like he was gonna stay on Earth for Adam’s sake. So what happened to him?

Oh that's a great point! I think that is actually just a confusing choice on my part that Chuck killed absolutely everyone including Michael/Adam in 15.18 Despair and THEN chose to resurrect Michael (but not Adam) alongside Lucifer when he was bored/wanting to kill Jack. I made some slight adjustments in-text to hopefully make it less confusing because I know that's different to the lore of canon 15.19 Inherit the Earth.

For 15x20:

1. How did the angels and demons in the Empty wake up? Did Michael use the last of his grace to wake everyone up? Were they already awake thanks to Jack blowing up in 15x18 or did they somehow sleep through that? (Not expanding on the Empty's claim that "you made it loud" is one of countless things I'll never forgive the actual show for, so THANK YOU for taking the show back to the Empty in the first place; I was just curious about this one element.)

So the Empty was already 'loud' according to canon, but since canon is vague on what exactly that means (thank you writers!...) I got the impression it meant the Empty wasn't 'peaceful' anymore but still powerful enough to suppress the beings inside, like the beings in there were awake and suffering but unable to rebel. Sort of what we see with Cas in this version of 15.20. Maybe like, additional suffering in sleep paralysis? Regardless, Michael does expend his grace to weaken the Empty enough that other beings wake up and/or are able to fight back and exist outside their own personal nightmare chamber. So whatever your impression of 'loud' is with regards to the other beings in there, assume Michael was able to free them from the Empty's control.

For 15x21:

1. Having Jack & Amara take out Hell & Purgatory was a BRILLIANT idea; I love that they ended all the places of suffering and changed the system. I just wonder - what happened to the souls and the demons still in Hell at that point, and the Leviathans and other monsters still in Purgatory? Were they just wiped out completely and sent to the Empty? Or did Jack turn them human and add them to the cycle? (I don't think the show clarified whether or not Leviathans have souls, so...)

No matter whether they were monster or demon or even angel, they would eventually be given human life. I broke it down to 'human enough souls' vs. 'not human enough souls'. Human-enough were immediately brought to life with memories and versions of their original bodies, and not-human-enough were sent to the Soul Queue to be born as infants. I assume Leviathan and most demons fall into 'not human enough', therefore, whatever tiny microbe of personality/soul they had was added to the cycle of rebirth and would be translated to a new human soul. Of course this might have a WILDLY different impact on the world depending on how many people go to hell in this system, how many people were 'human enough', etc.... But we're basically fudging those numbers a bit one way or another just to give certain characters the revival they deserve haha.

2. Did Cas drown and die after Chuck threw him in the lake and Jack left their limbo-dream world? If so, did he go through the same question-&-answer situation with Death that Sam & Dean did? Or was he with Jack & Amara when they rebuilt the world?

Cas was already dead/dying even when he was talking to Jack, he was sort of in a different version of the 'Veil' per se. VERY wishy-washy, but basically he and Jack were on a different dream-plane that they were jolted to in the chaos of the disorganised no-Death world.

I think Cas, Rowena, Lucifer, Michael, etc. as beings who were killed after the snap is a bit ambiguous. Rowena and Lucifer, I think, as entities who were demonic-dead or Empty-level-dead pre-Snap probably went through the reincarnation Yes/No Death questionnaire. Cas and Michael might not have since they were technically 'alive' and human before the Snap. Regardless, I think they probably wouldn't remember the interaction even if they had it.

The reason the question happened to the Winchesters AND that they remember it is Main Character Syndrome... they were the only people left alive when Jack and Amara did a hard reset, and that honestly Death took time to chill/exposition at them because he likes them. Really. Despite all appearances. Or respects them enough to let them know what's gone down, anyway.

Metatextually, it was really just to reaffirm to the audience that Dean (and Sam) want to live, in contrast to 15.20 Carry On 😅

3. Did all the snapped people (Eileen, Adam, the Waywards, etc.) also go through the Death question-&-answer process but not remember it, or did Jack & Amara just send them back?

Snapped people were reset automatically! Normally the new-humans also wouldn't remember their interactions with Death/reapers, just like in canon lore when someone like Dean has a near-death experience.

I realise this whole section and various other lore reformation parts of the fic aren't SUPER clear on specific logistics but on some occasions I'm like, I've done enough info-dumping, I don't want to overwrite exposition. But if you think it's worth clarifying certain points let me know and I can try to do so!

For 15x22:

1. The twenty something blonde guy in sunglasses getting hot tea, is that Belphegor? sure sounds like it but I wanted to confirm.

Yep!

2. Since Death mentioned that Jack only resurrected the angels, demons, and monsters from the Empty who had enough of a soul, and since all the human souls from the Veil went to Heaven as confirmed by Kevin's presence, how exactly are Anna's human parents and Bela alive now?

Great question - 1) I SOMEHOW FORGOT ANNA'S PARENTS DIED? Complete screw up on my part, I don't know how that happened. I fixed this so it's her grandparents now. 2) Bela was sent to Hell as part of her deal, so I was assuming she was a demon by this point in canon (since it would be... MANY Hell-years since she died.) Therefore she had a 'human' enough demon soul to be put back as a human.

3. Oh, and the tall woman with the flyer in 15.22; who is this supposed to be? Hannah I’m guessing?

To be honest I didn't have anyone in particular in mind for that scene; it was kind of a catch-all for missing characters like, it COULD be Hannah. It could be Raphael. Hell, it could be Abbadon. I didn't want to do a full shot of every single person missing from the cast who had died (esp since like - we wouldn't know who they were anyway! Their bodies would be different). So this one is literally just fill-in-the-blank. But if I had to assign a character there I'd say it would probably be one of the more arrogant angels like Raphael or Uriel.

For 15x23:

1. How is Bobby in the Roadhouse with the gang? 10x17 seemed to imply the angels were about to throw him in the dungeons to punish him for helping Cas; did Ash hack him out of prison, or was he never imprisoned at all? Also, is Jack not surprised to see another Bobby in Heaven because the boys already told him there was another Bobby besides the one he knows from Apocalypseverse? (I was half-expecting him to comment about that and confuse Bobby).

Oh that's a great point! I think that's another sort of fill in the blank since it's been five years since 10.17... even if he was in prison of some kind, I think it's likely either Ash helped him get out in the same way he helped everyone else, and since the angels were extremely short-staffed I doubt getting Bobby suitably imprisoned/punished was their top priority. But honestly I'm not super clear on how the angels intended to punish Bobby, I don't think canon is clear either... like, We Just Don't Know.

Finally I'd like to know, has Sam proposed to Eileen yet by the end of the final episode? The script doesn't mention a ring on her finger, and as Sam's fiancee, I'd assume she'd also have carved her name on the table. Sam mentions the innuendos Dean has said "in the past year," so it's been a while since Jack's prayer scene, yet Cas says Dean & Claire's argument was the last time they spoke, and it doesn't seem likely to me that Dean wouldn't call Claire in a year given how close they are...

Nope! I think Sam is saying 'I'm going to marry her' as a declaration of certainty of his feelings and faith in the future, not neccessarily as something that immediately happens. With regards to 'in the past year', that referred to the period when Eileen was alive during s15 as well! I assume Dean did teasing off-screen (and I mean, he did plenty on-screen too.)

I honestly think that Sam and Dean are just very very busy in the aftermath of the events of the 15.20 reset, like they have to deal with the new world AND try to wrangle all these hunters into this new system of collaboration. I didn't put Eileen on the table because she isn't there in the finale and because I do think the Sam/Dean/Cas/Jack family unit was a bit more central and important to the show, but maybe they add her (and any possible kids, if they have any) later on. God, imagine generations of hunters and/or Winchesters carving on that table. Sacred Artefact...

(1) Ok that's all the questions I have. Again, so sorry to blow up your inbox - I really appreciate your willingness to clarify these things! If there are some things you'd rather not explain and leave ambiguous, I totally get that. And in spite of these aforementioned confusing parts, I still ADORE your fic and will continue to read it whenever I feel like re-"watching" how Supernatural really ended! Thank you so much!! .... (2) I’m SO sorry to overload u! I know I asked a lot and I didn’t mean to sound like a hater saying “none of ur story makes sense”; that’s not what I meant at all! If this was a regular good ol fix it fic I wouldn’t have said anything but since u said u wanted it to wrap up the show as replacement canon, I thought maybe I should point out places that didn’t line up. But take as MUCH time as you need! Good for you working to meet your deadlines; I hope you succeeded!! And again I really appreciate you taking the time to answer whenever you have time—absolutely no rush!! Have a GREAT Memorial Day Weekend!!!

Anon thank you SO SO much for all these questions, as you can see it really helped me identify problems or straight up errors in my work wrt continuity and I'm so happy that means I can improve it. If any of the answers weren't clear or you think I should modify the fic to make certain things clearer than they are right now (other than the things I said I'd fix in-text for sure) let me know! It's really been a pleasure answering them too, I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it, I actually went back and proofed/edited the whole fic as part of adding some of these corrections in (and that took like... three weeks...) and as you said, it's very important to me to get it as true to canon as possible so - yeah, just, once again, thank you!! You're wonderful! ♥♥♥

[galacticnova3]

sorry but what do you mean by good faith headcanoning? /gen (i agree w/ you and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, i’m just curious)

Oh I’m fine answering stuff like this! Helps me get my points across easier if people actually know what I’m talking about after all. Apologies in advance this got very long because I’m tired and can’t write short explanations when tired.

In a nutshell, it means not making some incredibly complicated headcanon that “explains” how x thing that clearly applies doesn’t actually apply. I just call it good faith headcanoning because it’s headcanon that doesn’t stem from much, if any canon basis, but that also isn’t used to excuse or push harmful or super unrealistic interpretations. An example of a good faith headcanon would be that Meta Knight is blind and his mask is what lets him see. There’s nothing that suggests or supports this in canon, and considering he still flies off even without his mask, it can be assumed it’s not actually required for vision. But saying that you headcanon he’s blind ultimately doesn’t do any harm, and just as importantly, doesn’t deny important established information.

As an example of a bad faith headcanon… Ok, this is gonna be silly, but I’m kinda brain’t right now. Say someone decided they don’t like the fact that Kirby loves strawberry shortcake for whatever reason, and said that they headcanon that Kirby LOATHES strawberry shortcake. In response to people pointing out that Kirby’s love of strawberry shortcake played a major roll in Squeak Squad, and has been depicted in other situations as well, they decide to say they headcanon that Kirby actually DOESN’T like it, but had to eat it for a challenge. Or they headcanon he was being “influenced” by something to make him want to eat the shortcake, as well as in every other instances of it being eaten.

The problem is that while this sort of thing technically DOES work as an explanation, it’s not a “fair” or reasonable one. No matter how much people point out that it contradicts something that’s been established, the person can always just point to their complicated workaround and say that “you can’t police my headcanons that’s mean!” In essence it’s basically the same issue teachers/professors have with you doing an opinion or argument-centric paper on something that can’t be disagreed with or argued against; at that point you’re not addressing the information, you’re just dodging the issue.

Yes, it’s true that people are allowed to headcanon what they want and that policing it(when it isn’t harmful/disgusting) is a shitty thing to do. I agree with that entirely. I’m also not against a bit of tip-toeing around in the vague parts of canon, and in fact that’s probably how the majority of my headcanons came about. However, in my opinion, there’s a point where it becomes a bit too much, where it’s really clear it’s all just an excuse to ignore important and well-established information about a character. Ignoring canon is fine until ignoring it fundamentally changes aspects of everything connected to it, in a way that no longer resembles the actual media.

The simple solution is to just call it an AU and then go from there, instead of making excuses for why X is like Z, when in the series X is shown to be like Y. In that case, so long as the impacts of changing that aspect are shown, and again, it’s not just an excuse to make abhorrent content, there’s no problem.

In reference to how this came about, the “bad faith” headcanons I was talking about would be the ones that basically say “Marx wasn’t actually a bad guy”, “Marx wasn’t being selfish”, “What Marx did wasn’t manipulative”, etc. as a means to justify Marx not experiencing consequences. Doing that essentially removes the basic core aspects of Marx’s character. Milky Way Wishes’ entire plot revolves around the simple fact that Marx is manipulative and a liar. He basically admits it himself when he says he got the sun and the moon to fight, got Kirby to summon Nova, and then brags about that whole thing going according to plan.

While it’s not out of the question to give him a motivation besides wanting to rule, like I did with Magolor in my headcanon, that motivation shouldn’t/can’t be used to undermine or otherwise excuse his actions. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to take over in order to improve Popstar or whatever(which he didn’t, because he gets excited about being able to cause all the mischief he wants, by the way). At the end of the day, he still probably caused major problems when the sun and moon started fighting, lied to and later attempted to kill Kirby(indirectly through exposure, then directly by fighting him), and ultimately got Nova destroyed. If the headcanon solely exists to say “but it’s ok and doesn’t matter anymore”, whether to woobify him into just a naughty widdle clown boy or (eugh) ship him with Someone, I can’t see a plausible way that it is in good faith and not just a tailored excuse to deny his wrongdoings in canon.

Now, this might seem like there’s an unfair line, because obviously not every unrealistic headcanon is in bad faith, but imo it can be figured out pretty simply. Generally, it can safely be assumed to be bad faith if multiple of the following things apply, within reason:

-It’s ignoring core information that, when changed, changes something completely in ways beyond just what’s being changed (ex. If you say Marx was actually possessed and that’s why he did MWW rather than being power hungry, there’s going to be more affected than just everyone going “oh it’s not his fault, ok” and then doing nothing)

-It’s changing so much information to make sense that, in justifying the one headcanon, many other things no longer line up or make sense, but go unaddressed (ex. Saying Meta Knight wasn’t bad in Revenge of Meta Knight because he wanted to take over Dreamland because there was actually some kind of great evil that he needed control to destroy, and that saying it’s because he wanted to end the lazy lifestyle was just a coverup to not cause mass panic)

-The headcanon attempts to justify an act that can’t be honestly justified or made ok in the canon circumstances (ex. Saying Sectonia actually wanted to rule Floralia and take over Popstar for good reasons that Kirby couldn’t see, like trying to unite them into a safer whole, or trying to justify Hyness’ mistreatment of Zan Partizanne by saying she’s actually the bad one)

-It is used in a manner that basically attempts to “victimize” the creator or “villainize” people who disagree if discrepancies in their headcanon are pointed out (ex. The creator “headcanons” Dedede is actually totally evil in order to write characters hating him, and acts like they’re being bullied when people correctly point out the positive relationships Dedede has with the main cast, as well as his role in aiding the side of good in games like Return to Dreamland, Triple Deluxe, and Star Allies.

-It is otherwise an unsupported, implausible headcanon being used to excuse gross and/or malicious content (ex. Headcanon excuses for shipping gross pairings, like MetaSusie or p*do/*nc*st ships)

While these criteria technically mean my shortcake example doesn’t count, I think there’s also always going to be a bit of case by case judgement with this sort of thing. Another important note, a bad faith headcanon isn’t necessarily bad conceptually; in most cases the issues can be solved by just making it an au with the appropriate changes, as that removes the issue of “how much canon can a headcanon ignore before it’s basically just an au?” As an example, “Au where Marx wasn’t a bad guy” is very different from “Marx wasn’t a bad guy”, while still allowing the same concept to be explored.