#this post is about at least 3 different characters ive seen subjected to this recently but the one im naming is wilnas granblue | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ramblings-of-a-mad-cat · 4 years ago

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If you truly are the master of unpopular opinions, then I challenge you to name ten of them. Across any fandom you like.

Oh snap. Well, I certainly wouldn’t say I’m the master. A lot of my ships are pretty popular ones, for example. I think it’s mostly that a number the fandoms I follow feel like their stories have gotten bad recently, but I mostly disagree. I’ll try to tag each discussed fandom and character!

1: Star Wars: The Last Jedi is amazing. It’s the best movie in the new trilogy. I love Luke’s character arc, even the flashback moment that everyone hates. I really liked Rey being nobody (R.I.P.) and Rose was a great addition to the story. People unironically say she’s worse than Jar Jar Binks and I just don’t get it. How are they in any way comparable? Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Star Wars - I’m a Reylo shipper who also loves Finn and Stormpilot. Yes, we do exist. I’ve also made my peace with Rise of Skywalker. It’s a terrible movie...when you watch it as a sequel to existing Star Wars. But watch it as a standalone film? It’s pretty damn good.

2: Pokemon: Looker is one of the worst characters in the entire franchise. I feel such visceral, most likely irrational hatred for him. First of all, I don’t like it when the police are utilized in pokemon whatsoever, because they don’t really fit in this world, but Looker...when he’s not being creepy as hell, he’s just absurdly annoying, and forces himself into your life. I just want him to go away. Black and White are two of my favorite titles, but I still remember yelling “Get out of my house!” when he turned up in the post-game. As much as Sword and Shield have problems, I was overjoyed when I finished the game and realized that he hadn’t appeared.

3: Avatar: There is a certain moment in Legend of Korra, Season 2. I’m not going to spoil it, but it was a moment that broke everyone’s hearts and changed the game forever. Yeah...if you know, you know. People hated this twist. They felt like it ruined the series. Suffice it to say, I disagree entirely. Sure, that moment completely broke me as well, but I don’t think it was bad writing. I think it was incredibly bold and powerful. I appreciate that moment and how the characters had to move forward with that having happened. I felt like it was drama done very well.

4: Harry Potter: J.K. Rowling is...not the worst person to ever exist? Not even close? I’m not nearly the staunch defender of her that I used to be, as it has recently come to light that she’s kind of transphobic. Which breaks my heart, and I hope she learns better. However, literally...all the other complaints against her don’t make any sense? I feel like I’m going to get messages about this one, but I’m happy to respectfully counter-argue the reasons people have for hating her. As much as she can be problematic...she still gave us this universe. And as much as I love the Potter fandom...we can also be a bit entitled. EDIT: She has gotten far worse since this was posted and any desire to give her a second chance has since shriveled away.

5: Timeless. Garcia Flynn has always been my favorite character, and the fan-made Seasons 3 and 4 have made something of a Lucy x Flynn shipper out of me. However, I also don’t hate Wyatt. I actually love and enjoy his character....yes, we do exist. I’m gonna say it over and over again: Wyatt deserved better. Sure, he didn’t treat Lucy very well in Season 2. Considering how his worlds were colliding in ways no one could have predicted, I think we can acknowledge that he was wrong, and move on from it. If nothing else, he shouldn’t still be on the hook for it by Season 4. But...no. I guess he is. (Sigh)

6: Undertale: Asgore is not a terrible person. This is one of the weirdest takes I’ve seen, but people hate Asgore. More than just acknowledging that he’s flawed, they despise him. To the point where they write in head-canons that he groomed Undyne into being a child soldier, or that Toriel was forced into an arranged marriage and didn’t love him....the canon clearly defies both of these ideas. And I get it, he’s killed children before. His cowardice meant he couldn’t fully commit to saving his people. Fair enough. But he’s not evil. No one in Undertale is, that’s kinda the point. Also, you might think I’m an Asgoriel shipper, but no. Definitely not. I’m an Asgore fan, and I prefer Soriel. Yes, we do exist.

7: She-Ra: I’ve talked about this before, but even though I agree that Catra and Glimmer are interesting foils of each other....I don’t understand the idea that Catra opening the Portal and Glimmer activating the Heart of Etheria are somehow supposed to be comparable, or draw parallels between the two of them. Glimmer genuinely thought she was doing the right thing, that she would defeat the Horde and save everyone. She was misguided, but her motivations were selfless. Catra...was furious at Adora and just wanted to stick it to her. When Entrapta tries to warn Catra of the danger, she sends Entrapta to her presumable death. Catra’s motivation wasn’t noble. It was spite. Then, at the end of it all...she blamed Adora. Glimmer took responsibility for her mistake. To be clear, I’m not Anti-Catra at all. I’m just a very dedicated Glimmer stan.

8: Game of Thrones. I thought Season 8 was okay. The very ending, with the Grand Council? Absolute garbage. Do not talk to me about King “Bran” or the pointless exile of Jon. But everything before that? Even the destruction of King’s Landing? I was fine with it. Mostly because I kinda saw the warnings signs long before Dany got to Westeros. Was Season 8 amazing? No, Season 7 was better, but I still liked 8. Side note, because I just have to keep this recurring line alive - I’m a Sansa stan who will defend everything she ever does, including her betrayal of Jon, but I’m also a Jonerys shipper. Yeah...we do exist.

9: Doctor Who: I love the twist introduced in “The Timeless Children.” It blew my mind and it changes everything. I don’t think it ruins the canon at all, I think it reinvents it into something mysterious and intriguing. The rest of the episode? Eh...I love the Master, but other than that...Most people tend to think that this episode was at least better than “Hell Bent” barring the twist. I...feel the opposite. At least in Hell Bent, the timelords acknowledged that the Doctor was behaving out of character. At least that was the point. In this episode, using the death particle on Gallifrey with no moral debate about it...Doctor, you had a seven season character arc about why doing that was wrong. (Side note, Day of the Doctor is my favorite episode, so I am not happy the Gallifrey is gone again.) Even so, it has to be said - The Jodie era has been amazing. I will never understand why people don’t like it.

10: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse: Oh boy, it’s an unpopular opinion to even like this game, and I love it. Most people agree that the story is weak and cliche compared to the original. I disagree. It’s more like a different style. Yes, this game is very “anime” whereas the original felt more like a bible story. But this game has that rag-tag team of misfits who form a found family, and I just live for that trope. Speaking of the characters, my favorite is Asahi. I know people hate her, but I found her to be incredibly endearing, and she had an amazing character arc. Right up there with Hallelujah and Gaston. Nozomi, on the other hand....(deep inhale) let me know if you want to hear my rant about her...

#Harry Potter #Star Wars #J.K. Rowling #Timeless #Garcia Flynn #Wyatt Logan #Doctor Who #She-Ra #SPOP Catra #SPOP Glimmer #Asgore #Undertale #Game of Thrones #The Last Jedi #Legend of Korra #Shin Megami Tensei IV #Pokemon

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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Changeling: The League (1/3)

Being some errant nerdery combining two things I love very much into one thing that is exponentially more nerdy than either thing on its own: My Hero Academia villains as Changeling: the Lost characters!

This will(/should) be a series of three posts containing some mid-length write-ups on the League of Villains, the Metahuman Liberation Army, and some odds-and-ends on other characters/alternate takes.

Some prelude: The most prominent question that kept coming up as I was brainstorming the write-ups below was, “Is this retelling the story of My Hero Academia using Changeling: The Lost’s mechanics and world, or is this exploring Changeling: The Lost’s themes using the My Hero Academia cast?” Would these versions of the characters be NPC villains in Izuku’s story, opponents (or possibly eventual allies) in some grand, epic clash between Heroes and Villains as begun with All Might and All for One? Would it be the story of a corrupt system, pulled down by the PC group that was Shigaraki and his motley? I had ideas for both, but in the end, I decided that, rather than oblige myself to the MHA canon, I was ultimately more interested in just letting the implied “story” focus on the League and their histories of loss, trauma and recovery, so that’s the spirit in which these are written. (Though things do get a bit plottier when their story intersects with the MLA’s.)

Lastly, these are, of course, completely AU, but if you don’t know who the Liberation Army is, you’re probably still going to trip over manga spoilers, so be mindful.

First, let me lay down some backstory! Specifically, the story of All for One, One for All, and the lives they drew into their story...

THE PROLOGUE

There is a realm in Faerie inhabited by a pair of binary-matched Fae, All for One and One for All, styling themselves as warring brothers. They’ve been fighting for many long generations, each in their own fashion. All for One has tended to keep his power mostly within himself, employing many underlings, but sharing his power with very few of them. One for All, conversely, has shared most of himself with a succession of users, and in each generation, the pair clashes, with OFA not very "present" for the battles (and thus at less risk), while AFO is able to bring more of himself to the fights. Before each battle, each user of OFA would be "freed" for a period to find and designate a successor (who would inevitably go missing a few weeks later), before returning for the battle. They often did this with deeply tormented feelings, but saw little escape from the pattern. Each one hoped that they might be the one strong enough to break the cycle, as OFA told them each time was a possibility--patterns grow stronger for being repeated, after all--but none of them was able to do so until recently. Toshinori Yagi refused to designate a successor, and finally, for his stubbornness, was recalled to do battle without one--without having passed even a fragment of OFA's power on, he was finally able to defeat AFO.

In his defeat, AFO was cast out from Faerie. He had little memory of who and what he was, but retained a sense for fae matters and a limited grasp on his powers. He spent the next several years setting up shop in the local freehold, dabbling with Spring and Autumn Court matters as his fancy took him, and racking up a fair amount of renown with the latter in particular when the former found him too ruthless, and not only with humans. One day, though, he stumbled across what would eventually become his way home--a little boy who felt startlingly familiar, black-haired with a mole on his chin. AFO struck up a friendship, and when he eventually met the boy's father, things began to click into place--he knew this family because he once fought their matriarch, and that connection was the key to his return. As he was once defeated by this bloodline bearing his brother's power, for his rise, he had to defeat someone of the bloodline--but he couldn’t just do it straight out. With his brother, there were pacts in play, old bargains and arrangements. He couldn’t just waltz in and kill Shimura Kotaro.

One of them needed to ask.

THE LEAGUE

Here are the League roughly as we might find them when they’ve been out long enough to build a motley, solidify their bonds somewhat, and start taking on bigger, toothier problems. All have 7 dots of Contracts except Shigaraki, who has a modest leader bump. Just assume he’s been out doing some level-grinding the others haven’t.

Shigaraki Tomura

Quote: “There’s always a win condition.”

Type: Gameplayer Wizened. A trophy/souvenir of AFO’s time on Earth, Tomura survived a durance filled with little but tests in the guise of games. Survival, combat, endurance, manual dexterity, reaction time, strategy, academics, even odd trivia--he learned them all under his Keeper’s tutelage, in preparation for the next battle with his brother's champion (AFO having seen that his brother's way of doing things has its merits). Tomura grew up believing himself responsible for his family's deaths (though he's blocked most of the specifics, he knows in his gut that he's responsible somehow) and watching the realm celebrate the champion who'd defeated Tomura’s Keeper, but who hadn't done a thorough enough job to prevent the cycle from resetting after all.

Toshinori, for his part, initially had no idea that AFO had returned with a child, a new champion. But he did know that AFO had returned (the realms are connected enough that you can't really miss it), and so waited for the next battle with some impatience. He thought that he, perhaps, just hadn't done well enough, that he'd be more careful, more thorough next time. After all, patterns become stronger when they repeat. He doesn't truly understand that All for One can't be killed--not in Faerie, at least--and so there will be no end to the cycle as it stands. Eventually, he got tired of waiting and sought out AFO on his own--and was shocked to find a kid, just a kid, where he expected to find AFO. AFO did not think Shigaraki was ready for this yet, and was not prepared to watch several years' worth of effort and his cute keepsake get slaughtered (and he probably would have been; Shigaraki could have all the lives he wanted in training, but an official battle against the sanctioned bearer of OFA would have been different), so he ejected Shigaraki from Faerie and fought the battle himself. As to what happened afterwards, Shigaraki has no way to know, but the gradual return of various other servants of AFO may eventually begin to shed some light on the subject…

Shigaraki is, when his story truly begins, still figuring out his current game--outside of Arcadia, second chances are harder to come by--but he’s a sore loser and a quick learner, so he never stays down for long, and he’s already made a friend in Toga, who he met in his escape from the Hedge. He still has very ambivalent feelings about his Keeper, which makes him something of an outlier amongst changelings, who typically feel only terror and loathing for the Others that upended their lives and scarred them in ways that will never--can never--fully heal. No one, including Shigaraki, has quite realized his connection to the Emperor of Darkness who caused so much havoc in the freehold when he escaped back to Faerie five years ago. Likewise, Tomura’s fetch, only ten years old, is still in a mental care unit in juvie for the murders of the Shimura family, but dealing with that mess will have to wait until Shigaraki can stomach the idea of even looking at that version of himself.

Tomura looks much as he does in canon, thin and covered with scratching and scarring. Behind his tousled white hair, though, his red eyes gleam and flicker as if they’re forever reflecting the dancing lights of a screen. His masked form has black hair rather than white, and eyes the color of dark, old rust.

Court/Mantle: Autumn, the season of fear. Shigaraki’s entire durance threatened him always with the fear of failure (and the fear of the consequences of failure), and he himself would rather intimidate than charm, but he also shares the Leaden Mirror’s inquisitiveness and discerning eye. As such, even when he first emerged from the Hedge, it was with a strong Autumn mantle, and it’s only grown stronger over time. He’s often trailed by dead, desiccated brown leaves, and Hedge foliage that’s in his presence for any length of time visibly begins to wither--but his mantle flares up even more when he’s being actively combative. Chilly, dry bursts of air can wring involuntary chills from those on the receiving end of his wide grins and dire promises. When he’s feeling more playful, one can sometimes see small flickers of light in the shape of unknown words or hear odd little strains of music from unrecognizable (albeit somewhat tinny) instruments.

Contracts:

Fleeting Autumn I. He’s not so concerned with becoming some kind of symbol of fear that he’s pursued this Contract very much, but it never hurts to get an idea of what your opponent’s afraid of.

Eternal Autumn I-III. It takes time, glamour expenditure, and good dice rolls, but he can kill people this way, withering them down to nothing. Conversely, he can also make plants bear fruit. It’s occasionally useful.

Hours I. He’s figured out how to consciously botch the activation of this clause so as to decay the targeted object instead of restoring it. It usually works, but sometimes randomly backlashes onto him instead, causing him injury--the bigger the object, the worse the damage. The Wyrd doesn’t like being toyed with.

Lucidity I-IV. Clarity is a fluid, malleable thing for Shigaraki, which can make him extremely frightening--he can thank his Keeper’s lessons in control. With this series of Contracts, Shigaraki can and does laugh off the kinds of deeds that would make other changelings quail back in fear of what their own minds would do to them in the aftermath. He can also be shockingly perceptive for someone who by rights should have terrible trouble distinguishing the boundaries between Real and Unreal, Self and Other. However, his use of these powers does make him somewhat mercurial and difficult to predict, even to his motley, as derangements come and go with the artificial inflation or drain of his Clarity. It’s a downward slope, but one he’s taking more slowly than would otherwise be the case.

(Hypothetical Powered-Up Shigaraki: Adds two 5-dot Goblin Contracts, Blood-Binding and The Fatal Transformation. Be it the power of glamour or the breath of life itself, if Shigaraki wants an enemy drained and is willing to pay his pound of flesh, Goblin magic will provide. It’s a good thing he’s got friends to back him up, as both of these powers leave him in a pretty vulnerable state.)

Toga Himiko

Quote: “I met someone cute today. Don’t wait up!”

Type: Mirrorskin/Leechfinger dual kith Darkling. Toga served her durance in the chrome-tinted underbelly of a glass-and-brass dystopia full of mirrors, learning to steal life as easily as she stole food, and to slip from one form to another to keep ahead of everyone who’d chase her down for doing it. More free than she’d been in her old life, to be sure, but still not free to truly do as she pleased, she dreamed of being able to hunt people down the way she’d been hunted down, with no one to answer to for it. In time, she managed her escape and, on her path back through the Hedge, crossed paths with Tomura--distraught, lost, but still with plenty of fight left in him. Each decided that the other was dangerous but sympathetic enough to be a better ally than an enemy, and they teamed up to find their way back to the real world.

Back in that real world, Toga is learning to put herself back together. Getting back home only to find something waiting there wearing her face was a shock to her system, but after some agonizing (and a bloodbath in her parents’ kitchen), she’s decided it’s for the best. If going back to being that girl means giving up the amazing psychic buffet the world now presents her, it’s not even a debate.

Toga in her masked form is dark of hair and eye, a school girl with a wide smile and swift, excitable hands. In her true form, everything bleeds paler--she’s china white, even her hair turning paler than flaxen fiber, most of her features seeming somehow insubstantial except for the long points of her teeth and the gas lamp yellow of her eyes.

Court/Mantle: Spring, the season of desire. Toga, more than anyone in the motley, has embraced the fact that she wants things now that she never would have before, that she has desires that no human would ever understand. And why not? She doesn’t kill people, after all; she just likes to taste. The air around her is always infused with heady floral scents, and when she walks, phantom flowers trail up behind her. Hemlock and cypress vine, spider lilies and nightshade--all lovely, to be sure, but the language of flowers does give her away.

Contracts: Everything about Toga’s Contracts heightens her skills as a predator, and she’s unquestionably the best in the group at it.

Mirror I-II. Allows her to shape her form with more specificity and finesse.

Darkness I-II. Makes her targets more suggestible.

Fleeting Spring I-III. Lets her pinpoint what her targets want so that she can shape those wants or her reflection of them as needed.

Bubaigawara Jin

Quote: “Nothing’s too much for my friends!”

Type: Truefriend Beast. Jin’s human life didn’t differ much from his canonical backstory, minus the super power, but went drastically off course when he was hunted down--even on a motorcycle, hunted down!--by a monster on horseback and the various other monsters tumbling before it. His changeling life consisted of one cage, one chase after another, and while most of the people around him were shaping themselves into being better vessels for coursing, baying, sharp-toothed menace, what Jin most wanted was the pack solidarity. His Keeper thought this was funny but not a very useful trait in a hunting hound, so they started taking him to dog fights instead, hoping to scour the excess sweetness off of him. Lacking a pack to stay for, he escaped, but the wanting for one never left him.

Toga basically tripped over him his first night out, and her kindness then meant he was more than happy to follow her home. He later made the acquaintance of Mr. Compress and Magne on a bar crawl and, wanting all of his friends to be friends together, introduced them to Shigaraki and Toga. He’s also trying to make friends with his fetch, who is finding the whole experience of having a clone pop up at him at unexpected times to be unbelievably disorienting and nerve-wracking. Which one of them is the real one, anyway…?

His mask looks much as Jin does in canon, though his scars are in different places. In mien, he always looks a bit rumpled, with short, sandy brown fur and bright, emotive eyes. He’s dog-eared (literally), one alert, the other floppy, and his hands have stubby, darkened nails. Unbelievably expressive and more overtly doggish body language--he didn’t keep a tail in his flight back through the Hedge, but people tend to remember him as having one anyway.

Court/Mantle: Courtless. Jin’s too mixed up in his own emotions to pick just one to focus on. He likes the idea of Spring, but he’s also skeptical that just wanting is enough to keep people safe, and that fear is rooted deep. He’s also not without his old sorrows. Of the High Court emotions, wrath is his rarest visitor.

Contracts:

Fang & Talon (Dogs) I-III. Jin’s got an undeniable rapport with dogs. He loves them and they love him. There’s practically no mutt he can’t get some words out of if he asks nice. He’s also still got a hunting hound’s nose, when he needs it.

Hearth I-II. Deeply dedicated to his friends, the Contracts of Hearth make advancing the goals of the motley (or hurting the chances of their enemies) even easier.

Eternal Spring I. Easier to be a people-pleaser when you know what pleases people! Toga taught him this one.

Moon I. It’s good to know what people want, but it’s also good to know what kind of crazy people (fetches especially) might be sitting on. This one also helps the group nail down where Shigaraki’s head is at on any given day.

Spinner

Quote: “What a mess. Where are we even going with this?”

Type: Steepscrambler Beast. Spinner spent, by his best reckoning, four years in a Faerie jungle. It was always sweltering, sickbed heat with air so wet you could choke on it, and after a few close calls with the serpentine river dragons and over-large birds of prey that prowled the place, he’d all but given up trying to search for a way out--the sea of trees just went on forever anyway. A long-tongued madman named Stain convinced him otherwise, with talk of hidden trods and clues found in the bellies of gutted fish. When Stain went missing, Spinner resolved to try again, and though he can no longer remember the method of it, whatever he did seems to have worked. He got back to his shitty hometown, but found it just as bad as ever, if not worse, with a fetch still cooped up in his old bedroom, spiralling ever further into depression. And so, fed up with the state of his life and the apathy his fetch reflected back at him, he did something that very few changelings are capable of doing--he left home.

Finding his way to the nearest big city with a proper freehold, Spinner gravitated to the Summer Court and got set up with an apartment in a small complex the freehold maintains for newbies to stay in while they get their feet under them. Not too long after, Shigaraki and Toga wandered into a Summer recruitment drive, with Shigaraki immediately managing to get on Spinner’s nerves--which made it all the more exasperating when Spinner went home and found the both of them moving into the apartment next door to his! Spinner’s still trying to figure out what he thinks of the mercurial and difficult Shigaraki, but they have been bonding over video games of late.

Spinner’s mask is a sun-darkened young man with a prominent nose and a thin, terse mouth. He’s straight-backed but with a certain nerviness in his eyes, a stance that suggests he’s ready to throw the first punch. He has a street punk look--pointy fingernails and pink hair--that people without the sight to know better assume is achieved with a nail file and hair dye. His mask looks exactly like canon!Spinner with one exception--changeling!Spinner has ears. They’re pointy, green and finely-scaled, but otherwise normal humanoid ears and they make his face look just a little wider and more humanoid than canon!Spinner’s lizard profile.

Court/Mantle: Summer, the season of wrath. Spinner’s angry about a lot of things--the state of the world, the injustices served to his motley and the wrongs of his life in particular--but he’s also wrestling with a lot of self-loathing. It’s easy for him to slip into fatalistic thoughts and get mired down in apathy, and every time he thinks he’s gotten past it, someone or something comes along that throws him off, and then before he knows it he’s back on the ground wondering how he’s ever going to get past this. Leaning into Summer’s hot anger helps keep him focused. His mantle is relatively weak, tending to manifest as a warm, dry wind only when he’s particularly fired up or activating Court contracts.

Contracts: Spinner’s well-rounded, but that’s because he has a hard time settling on anything. His ridiculous spread of Contracts illustrates this.

Den I-II. Not interested in leaning into his animal instincts and learning to talk to lizards, Spinner has instead leaned into possessive territorialism. Unfortunately, he still feels like a small fish, so it’s hard to muster up the swagger that would allow him to progress this Contract further.

Fleeting Summer I. Need to pick a fight and score some quick glamour? This is the clause for you! Just make sure Dabi’s not around; that guy’s angrier than the whole rest of the motley put together and it skews the readings.

Eternal Summer I. Makes Spinner a walking thermostat. Yes, sometimes Toga and Mr. Compress take advantage.

Oath & Punishment I. There’s a certain capital-R romance to this Contract that Spinner likes, but he’d need to find something (or someone) to whole-heartedly devote himself to first. At least he can do sick parkour jumps in the meantime.

Artifice I. Temporary repair magic. Handy around the house and when you fight with cheap knives.

Dream I. Useful facts about the local Hedge and he’s generally content to leave it at that--he doesn’t have a lot of use for dream-spinning, not when Magne’s so good at it.

Dabi

Quote: “You’re mad, huh? So what are you gonna do about it?”

Type: Gravewight Darkling. Once upon a time, there was a barren couple who wished desperately for children. For many years, it was only a wish, until Todoroki Enji finally found someone who offered him a solution. Nine months later, Todoroki Touya was born, to be followed by a string of children, each haler and heartier than the last. Seven years later, the firstborn child was taken away in the night. No fetch was left behind--after all, the Other was only claiming the price they’d been promised. Fifteen years after that, a changeling calling himself Dabi dragged himself out of the Hedge, having spent most of his life lighting funeral pyres and digging graves in Faerie until he dug his way out.

Dabi fell in with the rest of the League motley after being found by Magne after a fight went sideways. She patched him up and offered him a group to run around with for a while rather than doing the solo act. He accepted, but his pledges with the rest of the group are a bit different--more paranoid, less supportive. Dabi is distant from the motley, and only time will tell if he eventually lets them in or not.

In mask, Dabi’s a beanpole, wild black hair and bright blue eyes with a caustic grin, skulking about in a succession of black coats and heavy, workmanlike boots. In mien, he’s even taller, a too-thin gaunt with great swatches of skin burned away by restless soul-fires, which still cling and flicker blue around his hands. His skin fits him a bit too loose, and he wears staples to keep it all in place.

Court/Mantle: Summer, the season of wrath. Could it ever be anything else? Rather stronger than Spinner’s mantle, Dabi’s manifests as heat distortions in the air around him and, when he’s particularly riled up, blasts of hot air like you’d get opening up a hot oven. He has some trouble advancing in the Court proper, though, as he prefers to only fight battles he knows he can win. He feels, all the time, sick with rage, but until he proves willing to make stands even when the odds are against him, the Iron Spear’s time for him will be limited.

Contracts:

Shade & Spirit I. If he’s going to see ghosts around all the time anyway, he might as well be able to talk to them. They’re only sporadically helpful, but as a skeleton in the closet himself, he has some fellow feeling for them.

Elements (Fire) I-III. He brought fire with him out of Faerie, but it’s a difficult thing for him to master, foreign to his seeming despite sometimes feeling as if it’s nestled in his very bones.

Fleeting Summer I-II. Dabi’s much at home with wrath, and very willing to shape it to his own ends. Whether or not he sticks around for them, he likes starting fights.

Punishing Summer I. An odd branch of Summer magic, but one that he feels has some promise for him. Compared to the more straightforwardly righteous Contract of Eternal Summer, this feels harsher, longer-burning, and that sings to him in ways he finds very appealing.

Mr. Compress

Quote: “If we’re going to break the law, why shouldn’t we do it in style?”

Type: Larcenist Fairest. A simple stage magician of modest fame once upon a time, right up until he was offered a promising and lucrative gig by a stranger who thought he deserved a better stage for his talents. The stage in this case turned out to be--well, you can guess. His client (Keeper) wanted things stolen--they seemed to enjoy the taste of things ill-gotten--and there was always some new diamond or painting or antique. Sako’s time in Faerie (which he came to share with Magne) was like a string of heist films: glamorous and bubbly and thrilling, but the underside was rife with lurid, impossible violence waiting on the slightest error, the stakes always seemed to be climbing, and of course you could never say no… But one thing you can say for heist films is that they always allot a proper amount of time for planning, and so over time Sako and the others planned their last heist--the one to steal themselves into freedom. If asked, Sako will tell a dozen different stories about how it went, but the truth is his memories are fuzzy, and the only thing he knows for sure is that he and Magne emerged from the Hedge alone.

Sako’s a bit disjunctioned in time--many more years have passed in the real world than he spent in Faerie, and he spent a good many years in Faerie. His fetch washed up in a nursing home in the meantime, riddled with palsy and Alzheimer’s, and though Sako is not by habit or preference a violent man, the sight of it filled him with a primal loathing. And it’s so easy, in an overcrowded environment, to make a mistake with a dosage… Sako still has a piece of the detritus left over, just to remind himself of how his story could have ended, and how determined he is to not let such a future come to pass.

In his mask, Mr. Compress (well, he needed a new stage name) is a handsome, auburn-haired man in his forties who gestures constantly, frequently toying with a short white cane, and speaks in refined if somewhat dated language in a rich, theatrical voice. He always dresses a bit more nicely than he needs to, preferring clothes with hidden pockets and long sleeves, and is rarely without a hat to flourish. His mien mostly serves to heighten all of that--he becomes impossibly graceful and compelling, his voice catching the ear like a song, and his clothes are revealed to be Hedgespun, the feather in his hat belonging to no bird an ornithologist could name, the buttons on his coat and the stone accentuating his bolo tie shifting slowly in pattern and shade the longer you watch, and the cane almost certainly a low-level token of some kind. The most eye-catching thing, though, is the mask--he wears a white mask that always seems to have a different pattern on it, though it never moves while you’re looking directly at it. He doesn’t seem able to actually remove it all the way, though he can slide it around enough to eat or theatrically squint or blink his eyes (dark and bewitchingly expressive). If it’s forcefully pulled off, it’s only to reveal another one beneath it--though he’ll complain that it stings and ask you to refrain.

Court/Mantle: Autumn, the season of fear magic! Mr. Compress didn’t come out of the Hedge with a particular Court affinity, but he was drawn towards Autumn like a compass needle finding true north. He’s only a limited interest in fear (though his response to his fetch shows that he has his share of it), but he’s endlessly fascinated by the ins-and-outs of faerie magic. Trinkets, tokens, pledge-craft--if it’s a clever trick, he’s interested. His mantle shows as pops and starbursts of light, and frequently as a cool, trailing mist about his feet.

Contracts: The only person in the group more focused than Toga.

Separation I-IV. Escape magic fit for Houdini himself. If it looks like Compress is locked up or restrained, it’s almost only certainly because he’s allowing himself to be.

Forge I-III. Sleight of hand is even more impressive when you’re using magic! Extremely convenient for those times when he needs a passable ID or a house key he does not in fact own.

Magne

Quote: “Take it easy, honey. I’ll handle it.”

Type: Metalflesh Elemental. Magne was a criminal before she was a changeling, and it was in that capacity that she--like Mr. Compress--fell prey to an offer that should have been too good to be true. The heist team needed a bit more muscle, is the thing; they were getting caught too often without a good combatant. And so came Magne, given a sturdier body (that could, incidentally, meld through safe walls when necessary) through processes she only remembers in her nightmares. An odd thing happened with her, though--what Magne felt the pull of in Faerie was less the element she became and more the stuff of Arcadia itself. Where her Keeper expected her to become hard as steel, instead she embraced dream conjury; where she was instructed to protect the rest of her band, that protection took the form of healing as often as it did squaring up for a fight. It’s hard to argue with the results, though--Magne is a fierce and stubborn defender of any group that wins her loyalty.

Currently in a live-and-let live relationship with her fetch--she feels a bit sorry for the poor creature, and would rather see her find a way to break free of the image she was forged in and make her own path than kill her. It’s painful to be around her, though, so while Magne’s willing to extend some help from a distance, she would rather the fetch keep her distance. Time will tell if her fetch--who has her own desires and very much shares Magne’s willingness to bust some heads over them--is prepared to abide by this.

Magne in mask looks much as she does in canon, though she can afford nicer clothes. Her preference for butch presentation is unchanged, but the jeans are designer and the shirts elaborate silk prints. She has a collection of fetching sunglasses for any occasion. Her mien is a gleaming ochre bronze, flesh hard and smooth, her hair (a bit darker in color than the rest of her) always a bit stiff but, on the other hand, difficult to muss. Her body is in all ways a more chiselled, more perfected version of the body she went into Arcadia with, which Magne has mixed but overall relieved feelings about. The flesh-to-metal transition her Keeper forced on her was bad enough; whyever would she trust the Others with gender affirmation?

Court/Mantle: Spring, season of desire growth. Magne’s desire is to never be held down by any sort of repression or expectation forced on her by others (the Others in particular), and this pride drew her strongly to the Antler Crown. While she doesn’t exhibit the flowing, graceful beauty so prized in women of the Emerald Court, her passion for self-expression and her unstinting support of those fumbling their way towards the same has certainly won her her share of admirers. Magne’s mantle takes the form of fresh-scented air and pleasant breezes. She doesn’t leave flowers where she walks, but you can sometimes find ivy where her hands have been.

Contracts:

Dream I-III. By leaps and bounds the most talented dream-weaver in the motley, Magne’s oneiromancy is light-hearted and nonjudgmental while her oneiromachy is formidable. Everyone in the motley can soothe one another’s nightmares, but Magne is the best at it. She usually has at least one or two dream-task pledges active with mortals, too, so she rarely struggles to keep her glamour reserves--or her wallet--full.

Elements (Metal) I. Magne’s retained only the minimum level of connection with the metal she was forged from; in truth, her body is less important to her than what she does with it.

Eternal Spring I-III. Easing fatigue, curing wounds, and even bringing in a gentle rain--Magne’s deeply in touch with the rejuvenative aspects of her Court.

BONUS TIDBITS:

Shigaraki experienced more deaths in Faerie than any other member of his motley. After all, you might know the cheat code for unlimited lives, but that doesn’t mean you never die. And it did feel like death, every time. Of course, sometimes failure just meant Sensei shaking his head and Being Disappointed. That still felt a bit like dying too, though.

Over the course of her durance, Toga had more than one knife fight with a cyber hero adventurer hunting through the city’s underbelly looking for a power core. Also, changeling!Toga is much less murderous than canon!Toga because if she were as murderous as canon!Toga, Clarity loss would rapidly render her unplayable.

Spinner was pulled into the motley over a planned playdate heist to see how well Shigaraki and Toga could work as a unit with Mr. Compress and Magne. Being very familiar with heist stories by that time, Sako and Magne decided the group needed one more guy to provide muscle, and as it happened, Shigaraki and Toga lived next door to just such a one.

I have not decided on whether the Todoroki family are a mundane equivalent of the way we see them in canon, all deeply damaged by Endeavor’s ceaseless drive to fulfill his goals by way of his children, or whether they’re actually pretty normal and well-adjusted with the exception of Enji’s one dark secret. Either way, Natsuo is the only one who has any inkling that there was anything “off” about Touya’s death/disappearance. He has no inkling of the truth, obviously, but he always felt that Enji didn't react quite the right way to Touya's death, or thought Enji was behaving suspiciously on the night Touya vanished.

The League’s basic motley pact includes the dreaming pledge, so they frequently take mental voyages into one another’s dreamscapes to clear out the nightmares and indulge in silly, impossible-in-reality lucid dreaming adventures. The exception is Dabi, who would rather have nightmares than people in his head.

Mr. Compress doesn’t jokingly call himself an old man anymore because he’s too traumatized by finding out what he’d actually be like in old age.

Shigaraki, while beginning the story in a fairly ambivalent, uncertain place, eventually finds his way towards a goal of helping to free loyalists--from their hopeless circumstances, from their learned helplessness, from their starstruck adoration. He finds this goal over the course of his late-game encounters with Kurogiri, Gigantomachia, and Re-Destro, and it is through helping them that he’s finally able to begin to process his own feelings of attachment and affection towards his Keeper. It may well be that the fetch of Shimura Tenko is Shigaraki’s final boss.

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #toga himiko #bubaigawara jin #iguchi shuuichi #dabi #sako atsuhiro #bnha magne #bnha spinner #mr. compress #league of villains #changeling: the league #changeling: the lost #my writing

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