#those other guys need to do a murder suicide like actually though

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

no time for reylo i’m too busy thinking about finnrey somehow doing a middle school situationship when they’re in their early 20s and also how much i want kylo and hux to anthony and cleopatra each other

[accirax]

Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 13 Dissection

Jesus CHRIST, the hits keep on coming (/pos). I don't think anyone could have predicted everything that came to light in this episode. But, hey, at least we're finally cooking on the murder method a bit more...?

SPOILERS for Danganronpa: Despair Time though Chapter 2 Episode 13! Also, CW: discussions of suicide.

Similarly to last time, I tried not to look at too many other people's major reactions/theories as to not influence my opinions as they were when I watched the episode. (Although I think I failed to do that more than last week...) Here's what this episode got me thinking about!

Genocide Jack, Junko, Mukuro, Peko, and Korekiyo:

On that note, though, this is... debatably relevant lore about Hope's Peak as it exists in DRDT? We know from Chapter 2 Episode 2 that Veronika (and likely all of the non-Terukos as well) don't remember Trigger Happy Havoc, and, based on this, it's likely that they don't remember much of the history of the old HPA either. Ace being so adamant that HPA wouldn't scout a murderer implies that the new HPA has fully regained its spotless reputation, potentially even more than the Tokyo school ever had.

I want you all to know that I tried to write out a little theory about whether or not Levi could have killed any plot-relevant characters here, but I came to a dead end at every venture. Levi killed Mai? No, he has no motive, and the murder happened before everyone attended Hope's Peak. Levi killed Elliot? No, Ellie was probably killed by dogs, and the timing is all wrong. Levi killed someone at the North C and Chariton incident? That didn't even happen. I was just getting that confused with my theories about what Xander might have done at that incident in FF's DRDT Milgram AU. Not even what actually happened in the AU. Just my theories on what might happen.

The only option I couldn't fully rule out was the idea that Levi killed some of the ~5 missing members of the altDRDT cast, but, holy shit, can you imagine how funny that would be? Teacher and the gang get to the sixth Class Trial and ask all dramatically, "so, what happened to the rest of our class that didn't make it to the killing game...?" and Monowhatever is just like "actually, Levi Fontana just straight up merced those dudes years ago." Hilarious.

Anyways. That goes to show that I do think these were just random guys, and the only specific relevance they would have is in the realm of Levi's backstory specifically.

RIP to the "Levi used to be an assassin" theory. I actually kinda liked that one myself.

(Also, hijacking this image to point out the background music here. You hear the ticking clock motif? Very suspicious indeed...)

Yup, even more confirmation that HPA highly valued having an incredibly pure and righteous image. Of course this HPA was also corrupt. Is it even possible to make an HPA without some level of corruption?

(Levi. My guy. I need you to use a different sprite; the quadruple image combo is starting to look ridiculous.)

What I find really interesting here is that, even in the realm of forgetting about murders, Levi remembers the three random guys before his father. Like, I know that Levi says that he kinda equally doesn't care about everyone (and I believe him to be telling the truth on that), but you would think that, just by virtue of having spent more time with his dad or the people around him's reactions, Levi would have remembered killing his father before offing three random thugs.

I don't know if this is meant to A) really drive the point home that Levi sees no difference between those he "knows" and those he doesn't; B) imply that Levi might have sustained some greater amount of trauma from killing his father that caused him to block that memory out more; C) suggest that killing the guys was more recent than killing his dad, which might lead him to remember it with more clarity; or D) some combination of the former three. However, I think it's an interesting detail to note.

The foils are foiling........

This was hilarious. And lowkey evidence that Nico was the one who tried to kill Ace.

You know, I actually almost made a theory once that the clauses "you're a murderer" and "you have no remorse" could be read as two separate secret statements! Not to say that Levi didn't have no remorse for the killing part, but that having no remorse was a state of being not solely tied to the murdering.

Alsoooo... just gonna say, Levi on Drawing Pins is looking better and better all the time...

Eden: But you're a good person. Why are you saying these things when it's clearly not true? You're so kind to everyone. You're always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Ace almost died. You kept trying to help him, even if he always pushed you away. Isn't that what "a good person" does?

WE ARE BACK AT IT AGAIN!!! "GOOD PERSON" SPECIFICALLY IN THE LEVI/EDEN CONTEXT AAAAAAAAA

Beyond the further "good person" jumpscare, I found this line interesting due to how Eden describes Ace. Someone who "always pushed [Levi] away." Sounds a lot like Arei, huh? In fact, a lot of it sounds like Eden is applying it to herself.

"But I'm a good person. Why am I thinking these things when it's clearly not true? I'm so kind to everyone. I'm always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Arei yelled at me. I kept trying to help her, even if she always pushed me away. Isn't that what "a good person" does?"

Obviously, I'm reading into this in the "Eden is the blackened" context, but I think that it's still an interesting read of Eden's mental state even if she isn't the blackened. We know that, to some extent, Eden blames herself for both Min and Arei's deaths. Therefore, despite likely feeling like she's fucked up, she wants to cling onto the idea that she's a good person so she doesn't lose faith in herself.

That leads into some super interesting parallels when it comes to this speech versus what Arei said, but I'll talk about that more once we get to the Arei monologue.

This week, acevi shippers take the L. Really, Levi x anyone shippers, but I think acevi shippers got the worst of it.

Except, they also took the W. "Ace lowkey confirms he once had feelings for Levi" was NOT on my bingo card. Or Star's.

(Also I LOVE this new sprite)

I saw some people talking about Ace's friend (Taylor?) but I do not remember and cannot find any information about this character (so I can't even tell if they're just fanmade :( ). If anyone knows what I'm talking about and has a link, please send it to me. Anyways, "insult to his memory" definitely makes it sound like Ace's friend is dead. I wonder if the way in which he died has anything to do with Ace's fear of horses/cowardice in general.

I want to see more Levi and Veronika interactions so bad. It's no surprise that Veronika was the first to pick up what Levi was putting down. Both of them don't have the "normal" way of processing their feelings and interacting with others, but while Levi has decided to try to be what society deems as "good" anyways, Veronika has decided to fully live by her own creed. I wonder if Levi could be at all convinced by Veronika to go back to his old ways.

Veronika: You're always guessing as to what a normal human would do in your situation. You're so awkward in social settings because you can't tell what other people want.

I'm excited to see Levi and Nico interact too, obviously. I suppose Nico is kinda like the midpoint of Veronika and Levi-- doesn't understand people and wants the world to work the way they perceive it, but also has been bullied enough to feel forced to play along with how others want them to be. Characters like these have become some of my favorite archetypes to discuss. I'm so glad that DRDT has so many of them!!!

The foils are foiling AGAIN...

Why the fuck are you so pressed about the secrets now??? I thought you were all about privacy?????

Well, thank you for "confirming" that swap, ladies! This talk of a pact is very interesting, though. I guess Hu must have gone to Veronika pretty early to ensure that her secret wouldn't get out-- makes sense, as without that there's a good chance Hu could believe that Veronika would reveal her secret at the most unflattering time to create drama.

It does slightly recontextualize Veronika's "A little mystery makes this Trial more exciting, don't you think?", though. I wonder if that was just straight up a lie, or if that was the rationale Hu used to appeal to Veronika. I doubt we'll get a flashback of this scene now that this moment's passed, but I'd love to see it. FTEs...? 👀

David you have to stop this right now or you're going to become my new favorite character. Dude's been dying to don the mantle of the comic relief character, apparently.

Is The Motive Scoreboard Accurate?

I'm including this because I've seen some other people say that it is, specifically on Teruko's front. I strongly believe that this motive board is incorrect, and Teruko and Xander's secrets are swapped.

The blaming yourself secret mentions parentS and siblingS. Back in Chapter 1 Episode 4, Teruko says that she never knew her parents (and therefore may even just be assuming that she has two), and she only had one biological brother. Furthermore, she has no idea if they're dead or not. On the parents front, she could assume that being sent to an orphanage is confirmation enough that her parents are dead instead of just not wanting her. Being sent there with her older biological brother is a further implication of that.

However, Teruko specifically says that her brother "left with some other family." She makes no mention of believing he's dead at all. Therefore, for Teruko to have the secret she claims to have, Teruko would have to be constantly mourning parents and an additional sibling that she never knew, and to believe that all of them are dead despite having no reason to believe that her known brother died.

Obviously, all of these things were said aloud to Charles and Whit, so there is a possibility that Teruko lied about or concealed parts of her past to keep her walls up around those two. However, what does this face from David mean if not "I've caught you in my trap?"

(DRDT sprites are SO GOOD--)

To me, this sprite clearly indicates that David knows that Teruko is lying about something, but has chosen not to bring it up to save it for later purposes. I don't know if he has something specific in mind or just wants to hold the potential blackmail over her head, but I strongly suspect that we'll come back to this someday-- either in later daily life or a post-Trial scene in this chapter.

It's also interesting to note that, while David knows that this is Teruko's for sure, Charles and Whit also have the opportunity to recognize the discrepancy. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if Charles kept notes about what he knows about everyone somewhere. We'll have to see if either of them ask her about it down the road as well.

Eden: I know that she's dead!! I know that she's dead and that she's never coming back. I know that I'll never be able to talk to her ever again. But even then... I have to know that when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends. If you really say that you lied about making Arei kill herself, then tell me the truth. Tell me that you didn't make her lose hope. Please! Tell me what happened last night between you and Arei!

Oh boy.

Can Eden Still Be the Culprit?

Look. I understand if you look at this and believe that Eden couldn't possibly be the culprit-- or at least, not without being a completely different character than we know her to be. Because I almost did. Zel's performance did a really good job of selling Eden's heartbreak in a way that makes it feel like she couldn't have possibly been the one to end Arei's life. However, upon further review, I do think that Eden's words could be that of the killer, with minimal levels of intentional manipulation thrown in.

If it would cause you emotional distress to listen to me continue to accuse Eden, I'll write the rest of this section in purple so that you can skip it if you'd like. I don't want to make anyone sad, so I fully understand if you want to avoid these bad vibes. However, for those of you who are still on the fence, and those who have stuck with Eden!culprit all along, here's my justification. I think it'll be easiest to break it down block by block.

Eden: I know that she's dead!!

Okay, well, maybe skipping this section a bit. More points for Arei truly being the one who's dead, I guess?

Eden: I know that she's dead and that she's never coming back. I know that I'll never be able to talk to her ever again.

Alright, so, this can fairly easily be read as the same thing as what Eden was doing back when she was talking to Levi: reassuring herself.

Well, maybe "reassuring" is the wrong word. Basically, she's repeating the same mantra that she told herself when she was trying to justify her decision to kill Arei. When making the decision to kill anyone, the killer (if they care) has to process that they will have to kill every other person in the game if they want to escape for themselves. Therefore, if Eden is the killer, she already had to grapple with the fact that she can't turn back time. ("You can't go back, no matter how hard you try.")

I think that Eden might have it in her head that, even if it wouldn't fully erase her wrongdoings, as long as she doesn't just forgive and forget the whole affair, it makes things slightly better. That's why she was yelling things like "You forgot about all the things you did just because you didn't face any consequences for them? That's incredibly selfish!" at Levi.

Feeling bad about things is her punishment to make sure that Arei is never fully forgotten. She knows that, if she goes through with killing, she'll never be able to talk with any of these people again. However, if there's something more important to her than these 13 lives that she has to escape the killing game to reach, it's a consequence she'll have to accept. She knows it's selfish-- but she at least won't be so selfish as to also forget everyone else's sacrifice.

Eden: But even then... I have to know that when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends.

This is probably the part that feels the most damning. Why would Eden care about whether or not Arei was trying to become a good person if Eden is the one who killed her? Wouldn't it be better for Eden if she wasn't?

Well, that's what Eden is trying to figure out, too. In Venus' Narrative Defense of Eden Culprit Theory, Venus says that Eden didn't believe that Arei actually changed and wanted to be her friend. And, it really makes complete sense if she didn't-- Eden had no idea that David and Teruko continued to talk so seriously with Arei after her departure, and Arei saving Eden from Arturo literally happened the same day that Arei had her breakdown. It had probably been, like, 4 hours since Arei chewed her out for her worldview being stupid, and then Arei's suddenly turning around and declaring that she wants to protect Eden at all costs. Of course Eden might just believe that Arei was setting her up for a fall! (Murder pun not intended.)

Venus also adds that, at this point in the Trial, David knew something that Eden didn't: namely, that Arei actually wanted to change, and saw Eden as her inspiration for doing so. Under the assumption that that revelation has been bothering Eden the whole time, it makes perfect sense that Eden would want to know more about what David knew about Arei. She needs to know exactly how terrible she needs to feel for doing this terrible thing.

I think the quote becomes a lot less defendable if you just swap out the "that" for an "if."

"But even then... I have to know if when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends."

Now, obviously, you could say that this is an unfair point-- Eden didn't say "if," she said, "that"! How can you excuse Eden based off of evidence that isn't actually real?

My point is that, even if DRDTdev didn't have Eden phrase it that way, it would be an incredibly easy swap to make. Thus, the only way in which Eden would have to be lying is to swap out one word. With that one word, "if," we see how she's still doubting whether Arei really was trying to be a good person, and can read into why she's bringing that up at this time. To disguise it, all Eden has to do is trade "if" for "that"-- she doesn't have to be some masterful lying manipulator to pull off a quick exchange that makes her look more innocent.

Eden: If you really say that you lied about making Arei kill herself, then tell me the truth. Tell me that you didn't make her lose hope.

Eden needs the truth so that she can know how despicable she actually is (in her opinion). She needs to know how bad she needs to feel for taking Arei's life, so that she won't wind up as "inhuman" as Levi.

I also think that "tell me that you didn't make Arei lose hope" could be interpreted in a killer-ish way. There is a rhetorical device in English that sorta turns words like that on their head. Like, if I said, "don't tell me you spoiled DRDT for all of your followers!," it's often interpreted as "I know that you did spoil DRDT for all of your followers, but I don't want to hear it." In this case, Eden might not want David to tell her that he made Arei lose hope because she doesn't want to believe that Arei had any hope in the first place. It's better than if Eden was the one to directly crush those hopes, sure, but if Arei approached David talking about wanting to be a better person mere hours before her death, that still means that Eden was killing a hopeful Arei. She doesn't want David to confirm her worst fears.

I don't know if I phrased that section exactly how I imagined it in my mind, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.

Eden: Please! Tell me what happened last night between you and Arei!

In the end, though, Eden knows that she has to face the music to figure out how she wants to proceed with this trial, whether that's sinking the cost of her fallacy or owning up to her crime. And that's how I think you can justify this outburst of Eden's within the context of her being the blackened, without having to fully corrupt her character.

What Arei Meant

This part isn't a theory, exactly; it's more of an analysis of the point I think Arei was trying to convey in this section. I've seen some people be sad about the new note that Arei's character is "going out" on, but I actually think that this is a pretty realistic, thematic ending for where Arei's story and the themes of the chapter are headed. Time to praise DRDTdev's writing for a bit!

Arei: I'm a manipulative, two-faced bitch. I pretend to be cute so that I can treat others like trash. I only care about myself, and I always hurt others for selfish and stupid reasons. Of course I wanted to change myself. [...] Still, for the longest time, I thought it was stupid to even try. I'm rotten to the core, and I might as well be a different species from saints like you and Eden. [...] No matter what, I'll never be a good person. And yet, despite all that... David, you... It turns out that you might be a total piece of shit after all. If even a perfect inspirational speaker like you turns out to be an asshole, then there's no such thing as "a good person." [...] And that makes me relieved, because it means I'm not too far gone. It's okay that I'll never be a good person, because no one else can be either.

I don't think that Arei is saying that the world is a lost cause.

Instead, she's saying that no one is a lost cause. She's applying that Syndrome logic: "if everyone is a bad person, no one will be." Arei thought that, because of her upbringing, there was no possibility that she could ever Be Good, because she'd already done too much wrong. Good People are perfect, unerring gods who do nothing but help others and reach out to wayward souls. However, David's manipulations proved that that wasn't true.

Good People fuck up. Good People do good things for bad reasons, and bad things for good reasons, and, hell, if David is a Good Person, then Good People do bad things for bad reasons sometimes, too! Arei confessed to us that she felt like her life was over because she was given an unfair start. However, now she knows that the bar has been lowered, and that being a good person can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Perfection doesn't exist. Now that she knows that there was never any need to be perfect, the chance she sought for so long has finally been granted.

(Dipping back into purple for a sec to talk about Eden culprit stuff)

After this, I feel like the theme of this chapter has to be about deconstructing the myth of "The Good Person." You think that Nico is just a soft and shy bullying victim? No, they're just as willing to kill as anyone else. You think that Hu is a gracious motherly figure? No, she has an angry streak and talks over other people. You think that Levi is a softhearted giant who just struggles with what to say sometimes? His kill count is higher than everyone who's died to the killing game so far, and he doesn't really care that that's the case. You think that Whit is just a silly guy who cares about others? Fuck, even he's willing to stall out the trial in an attempt to fulfill his own agenda.

The main person who hasn't yet been proven so be not as good as they seem so far is Eden, who in this episode has been clinging to the idea of being a good person harder than ever. I know that some people believe that Eden needs to survive to fulfill the role of the optimist, but I feel like this episode proves that that isn't true. We don't need A Hopeful Person because anyone can step up to the plate and believe in hope if they want to do so. Eden isn't A Good Person, but a real person, who's just as capable of laughing and crying and living and dying as anyone else.

A good person is not gold. That's why everyone who tried to cling to the idea that they were being A Good Person-- Xander, David, Levi-- has always wound up hurting others in the end. Xander believed his actions were morally justified, and thus decided to kill Teruko, causing Min's death and lots of anguish for Teruko. David wanted to follow in his footsteps, and beyond his inspirational speaker persona causing damage to himself, he was also about to kill everyone else to do "what's right." Levi (Arei pending) hasn't killed anyone since trying to become A Good Person, but pretending to follow those guidelines without actually wanting to change anything about himself emotionally hurt Ace, who was set up with false expectations.

If Eden is so convinced that she's a good person, she's only blinding herself to the ways that she's inevitably not.

Back to Arei, while it is sad that her development was cut off just as she made this revelation, I believe that clarifying this additional bit of content is a way to allow her to rest in peace. Even if she didn't get to transform as much as she wanted to, she at least got to die knowing that she wasn't as wretched as she convinced herself that she was all these years, and having done at least one good thing-- saving Eden from Arturo-- before she passed. It's an amazing character arc to squeeze in for your second victim.

Phew, finally, a chance to talk about objective lore instead of heavy and divisive character themes! Except, uh...

WHAT THE FUCK???

Remember when, at the beginning, I said that no one could have predicted everything that came to light in this episode? This was the main point I was talking about. I don't think anyone saw this reveal coming, especially in this moment.

For starters, even though this CG does appear in David's memories, I don't think that he or Arei actually remembers whatever this was taking place. Beyond me attempting to debunk the idea that David had additional memories of Hope's Peak last week, Arei or David specifically referring to this moment means that they had to... be there? When whatever this was happened?

I say "whatever this was" to briefly create suspense before connecting the dots everyone's already talked about: that Eden was probably the one to scratch out Xander's eye. This would make Eden the "she" that Xander (er, I mean, "the guy with the bloody hands") talks about in the intro scene.

It also gives some more context to the clock with the fork stabbed into it depicted in LGI.

I don't know if "non-functional" and "I didn't expect her to" mean that Eden could have been brainwashed or otherwise broken down into not acting like herself when this happened, but it certainly seems out of character for what we know of Eden. Even her facial expression seems to suggest that she might not have wanted or intended to attack anyone with that fork.

Anyways, for Arei or David to know about the contents of that CG, they would've had to both be there when Eden attacked Xander and then also have regained/had their memories of it, which seems unlikely given how both of them treat Eden. Like, even if Arei is sure that Eden "did something to hurt someone in the past," this seems a bit extreme, and David probably wouldn't be so neutral on her if he knew that she attacked his man.

Another really clever point that I saw someone make (AND THEN COULDN'T TRACK DOWN WHO OR IN WHICH POST IT WAS--) was that Eden is wearing her current outfit in this CG. Interestingly, I looked back at A History of Hope's Peak and Visiting Graves to see what Min and Xander were wearing, and while Min was wearing her typical killing game uniform, Xander was wearing something different. Given that Min's scene takes place in HPA and Xander's doesn't, this could imply that Min was wearing the HPA uniform? That's fitting, for her.

We also know that the DRDT cast were all wearing these outfits believing that they were headed for the HPA entrance ceremony. Therefore, we know that Eden would wear this getup to school, but we don't know if she'd wear it elsewhere. Once again, assuming it was Xander who got forked, we can place this CG some time between Visiting Graves and the start of the killing game. I have a hunch that Visiting Graves might have taken place during HPA's spring break-- in A History, Min and Mai (er, I mean, "Unnamed Student") are at school studying for a test with "Spring Break next week" on the chalkboard, while in Visiting Graves, Mai and Xander have traveled elsewhere-- but that's not confirmed, so we can't lock it down.

Maybe we can get more information about this in Eden's bonus episode! Because, well, I at least do think that most of the mysteries of this CG could be solved within a bonus episode and/or other characters talking about her posthumously in later chapters. Again, I understand if you want to use this CG as evidence that Eden is important enough to need to stick around, though.

AREI I MISS YOUUUUUUUUUU

Also, I didn't catch this at all, but credit to everyone who noticed how similar this scene is to the "Diana Chiem" scene in LGI! Fascinating implications that I have no additional thoughts on at the moment. Mostly because we don't know shit about Diana, if that even is her who's portrayed in that CG. I'm sure I'll come back to this someday, just not right now.

Oh, and I don't think you can really argue that Ace made up this conversation anymore. Idk how much of it he stuck around to listen to, though.

See like why is she so pressed about it???

I'd like to say that this is a win for Whit not being the mastermind (because he doesn't seem to know what MonoTV is talking about), but he could probably just be going "why are you saying that at this time?" or something like that. Sigh (/j)

Why Does Whit Know So Much About Hanging?

Alright, so, obviously, this could be a super-suspect hint that Whit knows all of this stuff about hanging and therefore decided to use that knowledge to kill Arei. But, I don't care about that! What I don't understand is how Whit came to know all of this in the first place!

Well, after a quick review, there's one option that stands out more than all the others: Whit's mom was killed by hanging, likely self-inflicted. The only thing we "know" about Whit's mom dying (assuming that secret really is his) is that she is dead, and Whit omits it. It's phrased pretty vaguely. We also know that Whit thinks his mom is awesome, but that doesn't tell us anything about how she saw herself. Sadly, I think this lines up all too well.

Whit's main character flaw, as we've seen throughout the story so far, is ignoring things that stress him out or make him sad. He represses, and chooses not to get involved in others' fights because it's "not his business." It would make sense if the same extended to what he was like before the killing game. If Whit always chooses to ignore things that worry him, there's a possibility he blames himself for his mom's death via not paying enough attention to any warning signs that her mental state might have gotten so dire. Of course, if repression runs in the family, she might have been doing her best to not make it obvious as well.

So, even though he hates himself for not giving his mom enough support in her darkest hour, he still can't (yet) make any changes in his life because ignorance is the only way he knows how to cope. Yet, he still won't let himself pass up on helping another soul in clear need of support, like Charles panicking over the blood, or Eden suffering over seeing Arei's body. He can push himself to help others that are sad, as long as he never focuses on himself.

Or, he's the time loop mastermind who's heard Class Trials discuss hanging a billion times before. You never know with this guy.

CONGRATS TO FF AND BADJOE FOR BEING THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 Man, even seeing Teruko explain this mechanism as the truth, I still don't know if I would've been able to come up with it myself. This fandom is so smart :D

(Also, why was Whit a dog? Goddammit, is this more MonoTV coding?! /lh)

FUCK YES, WE'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO GET ANSWERS ABOUT THE GYM MURDER IN THIS TRIAL? HALLELUJAH! IT'S ABOUT TO BE T A P E T I M E, MOTHERFUCKERS! (/j)

Phew, barely squeaked it within 30 images! I'm impressed and amazed that DRDTdev keeps managing to make such gripping episodes week after week.

Get it? Gripping? Like grippy tape?

I'd apologize, but you're almost certainly going to hear more of that from me next week. Until then!

[ladykailitha]

Serial Killer!Steve and P.I.!Eddie

Thanks to @dreamercec and @bookworm0690 for the inspiration and helping me work out the kinks in this juicy plot bunny!

Steve was a serial killer of serial killers (a la Dexter) who got his start when he accidentally killed Jason Carver rescuing a girl he was about to murder for the sin of being gay (Robin). And even though he didn’t mean to do it, killing a murderer gave him a rush.

But after he killed Jason he skipped town.

Jason had started killing after Chrissy broke up with him for Eddie because he was being controlling and killed her. Then he started killing other girls whom he decided were sinners and/or sluts.

The unfortunate side effect of Steve blowing town was that he wasn’t in town for the fall out. Eddie Munson was accused of not only the murder of Jason Carver, but all the other girls. It’s not until Robin tells the police that the one who saved her didn’t have tattoos and Eddie finally gives up his alibi for the majority of the murders (a gay club in Indy) that the police even look for other suspects.

Steve never even blips on their radar.

Eddie decides that the cops are useless and becomes a PI to find out who the real killer was.

Steve in the mean time due to a hefty sum from his trust fund becoming available, decides to travel the country at first and the world later, hunting down serial killers and taking them out. He never does a murder the same way twice. He never visits the actual town it’s happening in. And he never leaves immediately after.

Then he accidentally got to close to one. He didn’t realize that the reason this guy was getting away with murder was because he had a partner in the local law enforcement and now suddenly a lot more eyes are on this murder than usual. So he has to kill the cop and make it look like a murder/suicide to get away.

As in the cop murdered his partner, started a manhunt to throw the scent off himself and then committed suicide when the guilt got too much to bear.

So he retires to a nice country with very little extradition treaties and settles back to enjoy life with the rest of his money.

Only now he’s bored.

So he started writing about his murders. Changed the names, places, and how he killed them, but the bones of his murders are there in those pages. And at the end the character always goes to confession and admits his crimes to the priest.

Eddie loves the books. They’re really well written and remind him of the times he would write mysteries for his D&D campaigns. He remembers Steve Harrington from the fact they had freshmen in common, but didn’t really know him.

Then the third book comes out. “Murder in the Heartlands” does he start to connect the dots. The books sounds too close to his own case and starts digging into it. Makes Hopper pissed when he steals police files.

And then he figures it out around the fifth book that all of them are murders and not just his. And this author knows way to much about certain things. So he joins forums and things and while there are some fringe people thinking Steve’s a serial killer, a lot of people wisely point out that Law & Order had been pumping tragic news stories for decades and that Steve is likely doing the same.

So he gets the address from Robin and Dustin who both write Steve all the time and starts trying to see if he can trick him into confessing. But the more they write, the more that Eddie realizes he’s hoping for a different confession.

Then murders start happening in Steve’s new town and he’s freaking out. So Eddie decides to come out to the town and help Steve figure out who this person is that’s doing this.

Well, they figure it out, and Steve is all for tossing his weighted body into the ocean forgetting that this thing every happened. Eddie is for NOT doing that. Like turn him into the cops at least, or blackmail the guy. But no more murder. The kids are about to hit college and need his support now more than ever and picking up and moving elsewhere will hurt them. Especially if they don’t know why.

But they are overheard by the killer and he kidnaps Steve to kill him before he blows out of town.

Eddie comes to Steve’s rescue and has to kill the guy to protect them both. Eddie is standing over the corpse of a very bad man and turns to Steve.

“Oh, I think I get why you do this now.”

Steve snorts and confesses his feelings for Eddie. And they kiss about it .

They call the police, Eddie gets heralded as a hero and Steve goes back to writing.

Finally the day comes and Steve has written his last book.

"Well, that's the last of the cases,” Steve says as he mails it off to his publisher, ”I guess it's time to retire from writing, too."

"I really liked that last ending, sweetheart. You did a good job. Let me take care you now. I'll write all about about a PI chasing a serial killer writing about his kills."

Only now Eddie’s book is popular as hell, and he’s getting questions about whether or not there is any truth the story. And each time he dismisses it as fiction. It’s fantasy. Not real. But the true crime podcasts and mystery shows like “Unsolved Mysteries” think that there has to be something to them. Like maybe cases Eddie solved as a PI. But there is no evidence. Nothing to connect Eddie or Steve to the other crimes and while Steve’s last book was semi-autobiographical, there is nothing that suggest the rest were.

Steve and Eddie both refuse to do interviews and only furthers speculation on either side of the debate.

So because Eddie and Steve are also petty assholes, they write a mystery/fantasy/horror series together called “Stranger Things”.

It has five books.

[markantonys]

AITA for joining a "cult" that thinks my sister and mom are Darkfriends?

First, some backstory. I (30m) have always been an outsider in my family. It wasn't anything to do with my parents - dad (dead) always spent all his time with me instead of my younger siblings, and (step)mom (43f) always gave me extra attention compared to her bio kids because she didn't want me to feel neglected - or with my brother (21m), who's always looked up to me. It was all because of my sister (19f). She's hated and bullied me ever since she was a toddler, and I have no idea why. I guess maybe she doesn't think I'm her real brother, or blames me for telling on her whenever she did irresponsible things like climb trees and talk to strangers. All I've ever done is try to keep her safe, but she's never appreciated it.

Anyway, there's this organization (my sister claims it's a cult, though I don't think that's fair) that's dedicated to serving the Light. My mom always hated them and kept them banned from our country because she thinks they have an agenda against women who can channel, and she's one herself, as is my sister. I used to believe her, but after reading one book written by the organization's founder, I realized that my mom has a totally biased view of them and they're actually doing really important work founded on admirable principles. So when my sister went missing at the hands of women who can channel, I decided I'd had enough of those women lying to everyone all the time and I joined this organization.

I did have my view of them shaken when I found out my mom had been kidnapped, abused, and murdered by one of their leaders (turns out she's actually still alive though, don't worry about that), but I challenged that leader to an honorable duel and killed him to avenge my mom, and my friends and I rooted out a handful of other corrupt members of the organization, so now with that small minority gone, the rest of us can continue doing the Light's work and spreading awareness of the evils of the One Power.

To be clear, I OBVIOUSLY don't think my sister and mom are Darkfriends; it's only everyone else who uses the One Power who is. I've explained this to my sister multiple times but it only makes her angrier instead of grateful that I'm making an exception for her and choosing to believe the best of her. It feels like I can never do anything right in her eyes, but maybe I've somehow got the wrong understanding of the situation. So, AITA?

******

u/dainbornhald: NTA. Your sister's problem isn't actually that you joined this organization (which totally does sound 100% Light-serving). She doesn't think you're her real brother and is just looking for any excuse to continue the bullying, manipulation, and gaslighting she's been using on you since she was a toddler. [+5k votes] u/childbyar: Came here to say this. Sister sounds like a textbook abuser, and, honestly, almost definitely a Darkfriend. I'd go no contact with her, OP, and maybe get a restraining order if you have to - she's obviously unhinged. [+1.2k votes]

u/amyrlinseat: You joined a cult that thinks your sister is a Darkfriend based on an innate characteristic about her that she didn't choose and can't change (unlike you, who DID choose to join this cult), and you're whining that she's mad at you for it??? YTA [-749 votes]

u/luckyfox: YTA for the cult thing, but this whole family's got serious mommy AND daddy issues (take it from an expert). Sister resents you for getting all your parents' attention growing up, and you have a victim complex about being a stepchild/half-brother. I can only wonder what might be going on with the middle brother who wasn't mentioned much here. You guys need to go to therapy. [+2 votes] u/galaddamodred [OP]: My brother always seemed very well-adjusted, but a few hours after I made this post he actually died going on a suicide charge in battle because he thought he was unimportant enough to risk and no one would care much if he died in the attempt. Which sucks because now the only sibling I've got left is my sister who hates me. [+273 votes] u/luckyfox: oh my god [+312 votes]

[thevindicativevordan]

Hi, hope you are doing well. I am the anon who asked this question about the Maker (post/730144525324009472/im-conflicted-about-the-maker-as-a-character-on) and I wanted to know what are your thoughts on the Marvel Universe as remade by the Maker? I understand that most of it is a comentary/analogy to real life events, with technocompanies rulling the USA, the USA doing experiments in the Pacific with radiation, basically everything Midas stand for, etc. But, looking from the Maker point of view, how do you think it fits with what he wants? And what do you think he wants, in the end?

Perfect time to ask me this because after I got temp banned from the CBR Forums recently, I decided to read all of Ultimate Fantastic Four. I need to amend my earlier post regarding the Maker - he does actually feel like a believable evolution on the flaws that were always present in 1610 Reed:

Even before he became a homicidal maniac, 1610 Reed Richards was a dick. There was a mean streak and petulancy that I had forgotten about. A willingness to walk riiiiiiiight up to the moral divide that was present from the very beginning. Millar, Bendis, and Ellis all established Maker as having a darker side. Using torture against Doom was on the table, he flat out rejected the possibility that he had made a mistake, he did messed up science experiments for fun. The pieces were all there! Alas the execution sucked. I still stand by what I posted here regarding the Ultimate Doom trilogy:

Bendis' depiction of his "fall" was awful and incoherent. Under Bendis, Reed instantly becomes the type of guy willing to commit cold blooded murder against both his family and other heroes for no real reason. If Reed is pissed about the military controlling everything, why is he trying to kill Peter Parker? Shouldn't he be trying to kill Nick Fury and destroy SHIELD? That at least would make sense, Ultimate Nick Fury is a fucking awful person. Instead he murders his entire family instead of just his asshole dad because... I don't know, he's just evil now. A writer can't write someone smarter than them, and Bendis is just not the guy for tackling the world's smartest heroic mind descending into villainy. Reed's plan is dumb and paper thin.

Coldly murdering his mother and sister Enid - his sister whom he went through all the effort to save from Psycho-Man in one of the final UFF arcs! - reads even more egregiously out of character. Why did he kill those two and not just his asshole dad? No clue, Bendis never bothered to give us an explanation. Trying to kill all of SHIELD after the UFF fall apart makes perfect sense to me after reading Ultimate Power for the first time. 1610 Nick Fury is evil. Fury is a monster whom even Dick Cheney would have to kneel in awe before. Asshole deserves to die and SHIELD should be destroyed. Sending suicide bombers to murder Spider-Man and his other heroic peers on the other hand?

No Bendis, you need to actually explain WTF Maker was thinking there because that makes no sense AND it doesn't line up with his previous characterization! Maker didn't want to kill the zombie F4 despite them 1. Being undead and 2. Planning to infect and eat everyone on his Earth. He wasn't willing to kill Doom even after Ultimatum. Then suddenly off-screen he becomes the kind of guy who murders his sister who only ever looked up to and worshiped him, and his mother who tried to support him and showed him nothing but love? Terrible writing, and it makes me so mad because everything else is brilliant setup unintentional though it was.

Pages like this one floored me. You read this knowing they were not setting up Maker yet somehow it perfectly does just that. The other Baxter Building kids breaking off to form their own perfect society in a secret city tucked away from private eyes? Being sick of how they were forced to serve the military? Commitment to the idea to the point they're willing to kill the F4 and any military personnel sent after them? In-universe this, and other events like Psycho-Man's utopia, likely served as the foundation for where Maker came up with the idea of the City. Everything fits! It's a natural result of Maker having an enormous ego, having seen others make their own attempts at building utopias, tossing morality aside, and going "they failed but I'll succeed. I don't make mistakes like they do."

Begs the question OP asked: why did he make Earth 6160 into the way it is? Fantastic question especially considering that both as a hero, and during his initial fall to villainy, Maker hated the "corruption" of science into a force that only served the elite.

Yet the world of 6160 is exactly what he claimed to hate! America collapsed into a realm ruled by technocrats who abused science to enrich themselves. Freaking Midas is in the White House using cosmic energy as a power source for his war suit and the electric grid. What gives? Is it just Maker being a hypocrite? Maker offers two justifications in Ultimate Invasion. First, that he ran civilization models in the City and humanity cannot accept perfect peace. If you've ever watched the Matrix you know how that argument goes. We aren't built to live in paradise. Our human natures are too fallible, when offered the option we reject it. Given Maker's god complex it does suit him that he invokes the Biblical explanation for why evil exists - human nature demands it.

However, there's a second justification. Maker treats Earth 6160 as his playground, his laboratory. He's the Emperor of the World, and with that comes those who would covet his throne. Keeping the world full of conflicts and evils keeps people divided. They're so busy fighting each other that they can't unite against him. Hitler, Genghis Khan, Bismarck, Stalin, Mao, history is full of dictators who employed similar logic to maintain power. Yes it makes him a hypocrite but Maker is beyond caring about the "small minded" dreams he had back before he jumped off the slippery slope.

Regarding what he wants power for, there are two likely motives to parallel his two justifications. I believe he is trying to create the "Ultimate Earth", an Earth that lives up to what he wanted 1610 to be. Time travelling to the future indicates that he is at the very least invested in this Earth's well-being. He saved it from Galactus, he kept the Council from spiraling out of control as they now threaten to do in his absence. He supported scientific and technological advancements that did improve life for everyone. Howard mentions curing cancer. Maker's Ultimate Earth appears to be a technologically advanced society where the peoples lives are improved at the cost of their freedom. In a single word: Latveria. Fitting for a Reed who has gone the way of Doom.

Unsurprisingly Maker's other motive is much more selfish and narcissistic: he wants to screw with Earth 6160 Reed.

Mentioned this before somewhat in my previous post:

My theory is that it's because Maker is trying to take a Reed who is similar to 616 Reed and transform the guy into a monster like him. It's his middle finger to 616 Reed. Maker wants to prove that 616 Reed isn't better than him, if Mr. Fantastic had lost his family and been put through hell like Maker had, he would break too. That 6160 Reed is, so far, not a monster like Maker pisses Maker off. It's not logical to keep 6160 Reed around, and doing so leads to Maker's fall.

Additionally there's some clear self-hatred going on.

Note the callback to UFF with the "I don't make mistakes" line. People talk about Sue rejecting the marriage offer as being the big divergence point between the 616 and 1610 Reeds. I think it goes back even further. 616 Reed was the one who messed up his friends lives. 1610 Reed however was blameless. 1610 Doom, not Reed, was the one who caused the accident that gave the Four their powers. In Ultimate Power it was Doom's meddling which was revealed to have killed millions of people despite Maker initially being blamed. Maker never had to feel the guilt that Mr. Fantastic has to live with. Always when it seemed like he had screwed up, a reveal came to absolve him of any responsibility. Arguably his two greatest pre-Maker screw-ups were teleporting to the zombie Earth and creating the Cosmic Cube and guess what? Both of those were because of external agents in the forms of zombie Reed and Thanos meddling with his head.

So having done nothing wrong his whole life, never having screwed up with nobody to blame but himself, when Sue dumped him and his whole life fell apart because he put saving the world over his personal desires in Ultimatum? Knowing, thanks to zombie Reed, that there were Reeds out there who got married and had families and kept the Four together despite making mistakes? My headcanon is that's what broke him. Also that's why he made Doom's life hell. 6160 Reed was supposed to live the life 616 Reed got, the kind of life Maker wanted. Instead he lost everything. Why? Because from Maker's point of view, Doom doesn't deserve that kind of happiness. Why should Maker, a Reed who never made mistakes, be the one Reed denied that joy while all the Reeds who are responsible for transforming their friends get to have that?

So Maker took 6160 Reed and gave him the life he thinks Mr. Fantastic should've gotten. 6160 Reed made the mistake of not double checking his notes and lost everything. He ended up with the burnt face and Doom moniker because from Maker's point of view, that is what should have happened to 616 Reed. Maker should be the beloved hero with the fantastic family as befitting a Reed who never made mistakes, not the unworthy Reeds who are fallible. In Maker's mind, 616 Reed should be the one whose Sue rejected him and became a villain. His words in Ultimate Invasion about having thought about what he and 616 Reed would be like if they swapped lives support this.

There's a beautiful symmetry going on here between Maker and Doom. Dooms usually blame Reeds for ruining their lives by sabotaging Doom's experiments. Here is a Doom for whom that belief is valid, and his obsession with Maker completely justified. Except it's himself that he's obsessed with, just as Maker is clearly obsessed with Mr. Fantastic. A grand ouroboros of Reeds chasing after one another. Fitting, for Reeds have always been their own worse enemies.

[judasgot-it]

I’m in love with your writing like omg🩷could i request what kind of lovers are Dazai, tecchou and Nikolai?

(english is not my mother tongue so i dont mean cheat btw…)

IVE BEEN WANTING TO GET TO THIS ASK FOR A WHILE BUT I HAD TO TAKE A BREAK AND AAAAAA

I have SO many headcannons about these fools oh lord. Also hoping I got what you meant cuz I won't lie I am a bit SILLY.

Headcannons: what kind of lovers are they? Dazai, Tecchou, Nikolai

Dazai

He sees his own misery inside of you, which he thinks is romantic. He thinks its beautiful that the two of you can understand each other's suffering in a way no one else can.

I don't think I need to state that while this is romantic in a literary sense, it's a major red flag

Dude would 100% want to do things that he thinks are "romantic" for couples to do together.

For example - murder-suicide, robbing stores together, double-suicide, arson, planning each other's funerals-

Man has a sick sense of romance and death

But he can be romantic!! Sometimes.

Despite being young he knows how to actually take care of his lover - at least in technicality

What he really enjoys, however, he has to suppress

That cold cold sick heart of his wants to isolate them, keep them away from everyone - but he knows that isn't really a human thing to do

So the type of lover he really is the kind of guy who can really only bond over either sex or when you're drunk/sad over the past

dude wouldn't even be able to have sex without crying or would have to do it in the dark, like he just gets too emotional and insecure

100% obsesses over your own trauma and will take any time he can to talk about it - but never his own

sorry dude has red flags ALL over in my mind, I just don't think he would do happy stuff because he would think it's very fake

He can't enjoy any happy occasion, especially dates

definitely thinks weed, deftones, and sex is a good date

Don't date this man if you try to break up with him he will come to your doorstep whimpering and crying telling you that he's gonna kill himself and that you're the only one for him even though he cheated on you

he just strikes me as a messy kind of person

Tecchou

Wants to be your hero. He knows your strong - but he wants to be strong for you. You deserve to be protected from the dangers of the world.

He believes in justice and is a MASSIVE dweeb for "playing the hero"

Man has good intentions that are EXTREME

So yea, he is a bit of an extreme lover

If he can, he'll protect you from anything. It's just his thing

He will try to eradicate all of your fears. Scared of the dark? Your house is brighter than the sun. Scared of bugs? sad, but he will chase them away.

Does this mean he's good at romance? Not really. He'll do anything you tell him too though

Literally anything. Almost. He wouldn't kill someone, but yea that man would 100% try a lot of weird and freaky shit.

would also not care if you weren't into sex. pretty sure that if he likes someone he is just LOYAL lol

although tbh he doesn't strike me as the horny type he just is too dedicated to his job like I'd give it 20/80

idk if he's a freak either like he's probably seen some weird nasty shit so he either is the most vanilla man to walk this earth or is into some weird ass shit.

(I bet it's cake sitting or some food shit. He and Ranpo are too similar, they would both be into weird food shit)

ANYWAY Tecchou is one of those guys who would do cute shit like open the door for his partner everywhere and hold their bags

It's very sweet. Bro 100% lifts.

probably calls while at work which is terrifying and horrible cause you'll hear gunfire but he'll pretend it's normal

Man is also technically property of the state so just know that if you're in a relationship with him you will always have someone stalking you, as you are now a threat to national security

but it's worth it for Tecchou <3

also, he has a huge bank account I bet but would buy either useless gifts or upgrade everything his partner owns cuz he probably only wears his military uniforms and compression shirts.

What's he gonna spend his money on, really?

Nikolai

The world is cruel and predictable, especially with people like him. He hates someone having control over him, so he would only love someone if he chose to - which is fickle at best.

AHHHH omg he's so hard to pin down because Nikolai 100% would be the worst person to have as a lover (jk)

Hot and Cold by Katy Perry esq

Like, 100% if he loves them he LOVES them but if he hates them? he HATES them

but I don't think he really changes his emotions that much, he's sensitive but not so drastically

Definitely is an interesting person to love - would do crazy and weird shit for his lover

doesn't do normal dates. he's a magician, everything is a trick with him

probably gives riddles and doesn't wait for them to be solved - they just lead up to silly dates or gifts. The gifts are probably tame like a drink they like or like, flowers. Maybe some random fingers if he saw that a server was rude.

Does the bottle up his ass trick a lot. or says "do you like magic in bed?" and then never pulls his pants down he just shows every single magic trick he knows.

Listen. that man is WAITING for an audience he will take any chance he can. He'll even pull out some tricks while in the middle of doing it. Let him show you his magic tricks, he practices very hard on some of them.

ranking him as the type to be an exhibitionist and a bit of a freak - how much? idk but he has his coat so who knows what kind of stuff he has on him.

also don't get into a philosophical convo with him this guy will start to talk all sorts of crazy

or political

unless ofc there's common ground then CONGRATS

also I feel like he would be a gentleman. Would probably bring his lover flowers and shit.

once brought oranges though. never explained why.

sorry about the NSFW but I needed the giggles. I did in fact giggle

[hunterwritesstuff]

Could I get Hypno's Lullaby Steven x reader hcs? Yandere or normal works! <3

Bold of you to assume Steven could be normal about things-(/lh, I'll do some yandere some normal fluff <3) I SWEAR I'M WORKING ON MY OTHER REQUESTS BTW GUYS, I'M JUST SLOW, I'M SO SORRY

DISCLAIMER; THIS IS HYPNO'S LULLABY, SO HE'S 18, KEEP THAT IN MIND.

Tws(Because this is a creepypasta character): Death, suicide mention, obsessive behavior, yandere tendencies.

Yandere hcs:

🔥 Steven is pretty much a textbook yandere.

🔥 He'll do anything and everything for you.

🔥 If you try to leave him, he'll blame others for it and not himself. He just gives off those vibes.

🔥 He's already lost Miki, he sure as Hell isn't letting you go.

🔥 If you try to leave, he'll either station Missingo at the door to keep you from leaving or beg you to stay. He's been treating you so well, why are you leaving?!

🔥 In this scenario, alongside Miki dying in the trade, Mike probably also brought Steven's unhealthy mannerisms to your attention, thus landing him on Steven's hit list.

🔥 After the fact, Steven framed Mike's death as a suicide and stayed by your side to comfort you throughout the days after the news comes out.

🔥 He only gets worse from there. The way you just...snuggle as close to him as you can, the way you come to him for comfort, the way you feel safe around him to show your grief, it drives him INSANE.

🔥 He'll treat you like a king, queen, anything in between! You're HIS darling, after all!

🔥 You don't really have a choice!

🔥 You're his.

🔥 You can't escape.

🔥 But why would you want to? He treats you well, he's just...clingy!

🔥 He just wants what's best for you.

Fluff hcs:

🔥 IF BAKING WERE A MURDER CHARGE, CALL THIS MAN A WAR CRIMINAL.

🔥 Seriously, though, this man can bake a mean batch of brownies!

🔥 He sorta stopped for a while after losing Miki(She helped him with heating the oven up), but when you came into his life, he picked it up again and actually started to feel better!

🔥 He's a huge snuggler! He prefers being the big spoon, since he likes the feeling of protecting you!

🔥 He does still worry that he's gonna hurt you sometimes, though. He knows he can lose himself when he's happy, and he knows he doesn't know his strength sometimes, but he's trying his best!

🔥 Just...don't ask him to make mug cakes. He'll have a thousand yard stare for the rest of the day.

🔥 You'll need to be a few years into the relationship before he tells you why he has a disdain for them.

🔥 But aside from that, he's pretty open with you!

🔥 ...granted that's compared to everyone else, but he's a naturally secretive person, but he'll slowly open up to you!

🔥 All in all, he's a sweet guy!

[1moremilgram-enjoyer]

Good luck on the Davi-- wait shit, wrong blog- All jokes aside, now that you've gotten into Milgram I NEED to know your thoughts on either Kotoko or Muu, I don't mind which one honestly can you tell I support women's wrongs

Thanks for the- I mean David who?

I see you have… certainly a taste, in characters. Yeah, I’ll talk about those, though as a warning I still haven’t obsessed over them as much as I have over some of the others, so opinions are subject to change.

CW: Murder, mentions of suicide.

>Muu: Inordinate amounts of silly, I kinda love her and want to see where she goes in Trial 3. I need to know what made her so fucked up. What makes her want to be a “queen bee” so badly, and what That One Girl did to “knock her off her throne.” And I just have to know what she meant in After Pain when she said “I love YOU”, like what’s the deal with that? That’s not even getting into “counterattack as a suicide note”, which seems to imply she knew attacking That One Girl would imply social suicide? At least that’s how I see it. But what made her decide to do it anyways, then? Clearly it wasn’t to regain status if it was “suicide.” Am I just reading the lines wrong?

Like all the other characters, she’s really interesting, especially because she doesn’t even seem to realize how fucked up she really is. It’s wild to see her talk about Haruka, like being idolized to that extent is just normal for her. But it’s also weird, because she lies to Es about not throwing buckets of water on anyone (well, technically she may have just thrown water in bottles or something, but the idea stands), so she clearly knows some of what she’s doing is wrong.

The fact she’s usually paired with Fuuta is also really interesting, but if I start talking about parallels and stuff I am going to end up destroying my brain way more than I can afford to lol.

Anyways, I love her a lot, she’s really intriguing :D

I would have voted her ass guilty every day of trial 2 :D

>Kotoko: One of these days I’m going to have to sit down, really look at Harrow and figure out what the hell is actually going on in her murder(s). How many hoodies can one woman wear? I swear to God, the only character with a more complicated storyline so far is Mikoto “How many people did you guys even kill” Kayano.

Anyways, Kotoko. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but she really is super interesting. Righteous and clearly well-intentioned, but she’s somewhat hypocritical and too prideful to notice. I’m really interested in seeing how she’s going to take getting guiltied this trial, because let’s be honest here, unless her video is the most heartbreaking, sympathetic piece of media ever produced, her ass is not getting forgiven by the fandom after what she pulled post-trial 1. Do you think she can get a worse ratio than Muu did this trial? I could honestly see it if her video doesn’t help her.

I also just really wanna see how her second Voice Drama goes, I want Es to go fucking feral. You know they are fucking pissed at this woman.

I am so excited for Deep Cover, I can tell it’s gonna be real fun.

Anyways, she may not be one of my favorites, but Kotoko is still a really good character and I really wanna see where she goes.

Thanks for the ask, and I hope you’re satisfied with the answer! Take care!

[brandstifter-sys]

Distracting

For @dukexietyweek Day 2: Games           (Ao3)(login required)

Word Count: 1579

Characters: Virgil, Remus, Roman (mentioned)

Rating: T

Warnings: Intrusive thoughts, anxiety, crying, mentions of suicide, referenced suicide attempt, sexual themes, gore mention

Virgil and Remus tend to get serious when they play video games. And when Remus gets anxious because of his thoughts, Virgil knows just how to comfort him.

---

Sometimes having a boyfriend like Remus meant getting dragged into the Imagination for some crazy adventure. Sometimes it meant cuddling him so he wouldn't flail in his sleep when he had nightmares. Sometimes it meant some violent suggestive roleplay. But sometimes it meant playing video games and having a heart to heart. 

Virgil was used to Remus rambling on about his frustrations while plowing through zombies. He was used to venting about his own struggles when it was his turn on the controller. They were better at talking shit when they were both playing. But this time was different. 

"You know what really grinds my gears?" Remus said as he moved Leon through the police station. He was sitting on the couch, leaning on his knees and watching the screen. 

"A lot of things. What is it this time?" Virgil asked from his perch on the couch. 

"Roman. He won't shut up about Nico, and he keeps flooding the Imagination with fluffy romantic scenarios about Thomas getting married and growing old with him," Remus huffed as his fingers worked over the controller.

"What's wrong with that?" Virgil bristled. So maybe he was making that worse. 

"Nothing, but he's setting himself up for heartache. He's trying to make his fantasies reality when Thomas doesn't really know Nico. He's not excited for the journey, just the goals. It'll bite him in the ass if he can't separate reality from fantasy." 

"You're one to talk," Virgil scoffed. 

"I am! When's the last time Thomas actually murdered someone? Or fought a pack of coyotes? Or decided that the blender was a good place to stick his—" 

"Point made." 

"I don't really want to take over the bulk of the creative work while he wallows again. I let my influence slip in too much. I thought you would have caught me back then." 

"You did a good enough job that I thought those slips were just Roman being a mess," Virgil shrugged. 

"Daw," Remus giggled and glanced at him quickly when he was in a safe room, "That's the nicest thing you've said to me all week!" 

"It's Sunday, you dork," Virgil huffed and crossed his arms. He hated how easily Remus could fluster him even though they'd been together since before the series started.

"Yeah and? You'll probably say something even nicer to me before Saturday!" 

"If I didn't have a shit ton of work to do, I'd be insulted." 

"I like it when you're snarky and mean! You come up with the wittiest comebacks and threats, and it makes me feel special that you use that brain power and creativity on me!" Remus said with a shimmy. 

Virgil grumbled and hid his face in his hands. He pulled his knees to his chest and tried to disappear. He really had to get better at taking compliments. At least Remus went back to playing his game. 

"You know, the worst part of this whole Nico thing is that you're involved on Roman's side."

"Are you jealous that I'm spending time with Roman?" 

"Nope! I like that you're friends! I don't know if I like how he's influencing how you think about Nico," Remus replied through gritted teeth. 

"What are you trying to say?" 

"I'm worried about you. You're usually cautious about other people, you need to know more before you get attached. If he's not the guy you guys imagine, I know Pissboy will lose it, but what about you?" Remus asked and wiped his eyes, "What happens to you when he goes back to being a tyrant?"

"Octopup?" Virgil asked and relaxed his posture. 

"What if he starts blaming you and attacking you again when things go wrong?" Remus rambled. He had to pause the game because his hands were shaking, "Wouldn't it hurt more since you were actively trying to help? What if he pushes you to the edge again? I know how mean and hurtful he can get."

Virgil took the controller and set it down before pulling Remus onto his lap. Remus clung to him and trembled. 

"What if I'm not enough to stop you? What if you decide to try again?" 

"Your intrusive thoughts are getting to you," Virgil said softly and rubbed his back. It wasn't an accusation, but an understanding. 

"I can see it so clearly. The falling, the abyss, and then you disappearing. And it could happen! It's not just a bad idea this time!" Remus sobbed, "I keep seeing you die over and over, just like the last time. And I was right back then! If I didn't show up—" he hiccuped and shook with a another wave of tears. 

"Puppy," Virgil said and kissed his forehead, "I'm not going to let that happen. Even if he blames me for everything, I know he doesn't mean it, I know that the others see my worth, and I know that I can't bear the thought of actually hurting you. I can't forget the way you looked at me, the way you pulled me back without touching me. I can't do that again." 

"Virgil," Remus said and looked up at him, "I love you." 

"I love you too," Virgil said and hugged him, "And I won't let any other anxiety eat you alive. You're my snack." 

Remus giggled wetly and nuzzled into his shoulder. It wasn't often he got anxious over his intrusive thoughts, so he was glad to have the most experienced anxious mess with him. 

"Can we play a game?" Remus asked, unsure if Virgil would go with it. With all that needed to be said out of the way, Remus needed a good distraction.

"I guess Resident Evil isn't the best option. So how about this? You name a musician or band and I'll tell you what song of theirs reminds me of you," Virgil suggested. He could think of something else if he had to. 

"If I don't know the song will you sing the lyrics?" 

"It won't be the whole song." 

"Okay. I'll just name bands I don't know well so you'll sing for me," Remus said and lifted his head, "Uh, Escape the Fate." 

"Gorgeous Nightmare." 

"I don't know that one," Remus pouted and dried his eyes. Virgil smirked and kissed his forehead before clearing his throat.

"'You're such a gorgeous nightmare. Old habits never seem to go away. You make me feel brand new, yeah. We resurrect it's like I've come back to life.'"

Remus giggled softly and squeezed his boyfriend. He was an emo nightmare alright. 

"Black Veil Brides." 

"Rebel Love Song," Virgil answered with no hesitation. Remus knew that one and he grinned at the thought. 

"A Day to Remember?" 

"You Had Me at Hello," Virgil responded and gently scratched his scalp. 

"Lyrics?" Remus hummed and melted into the touch like a puppy.

"'What have I gotten into this time around? I know that I had sworn I'd never trust anyone again but I didn't have to. You had me at hello.'"

"Yellow car," Remus suggested, unsure if that was an actual band. Virgil caught him biting his lip and decided he wouldn't make him nervous again.

"Ocean Avenue," Virgil said before singing a few lyrics, "'If I could find you now things would get better. We could leave this town and run forever. I know someway, somehow we'll be together. Let your waves crash down on me and take me away, yeah." 

"Uh, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus?" Remus asked and snuggled closer. 

"Your Guardian Angel. You don't need me to sing that one," Virgil hummed, "I sing it to you at night." 

"Pretty please?" 

"For you, yeah," Virgil said softly and kissed away his tears. 

"'Seasons are changing and waves are crashing and stars are falling all for us. Days grow longer and nights grow shorter. I can show you I'll be the one.'"

Remus laughed softly and kissed his neck. 

"You're so sweet, Scare Bear!" Remus sighed and trailed his lips up Virgil's jaw, "You take such good care of me." 

"That's because you take good care of me. And because no matter how gruesome and gross you are, I love you." 

"Can we play one more round and then cuddle and watch a movie? Naked?" Remus asked and nipped at his ear lobe. 

"You went from anxious to horny fast," Virgil noted and pulled his face away from his gremlin. 

"It's not my usual horny. It's cuddly vanilla horny, and it's all because you gave me a heart boner and it spread. So can we?"

"Yeah, one more and then we can go to your room."

"Papa Roach! And you should still sing!" Remus giggled. He knew them better than Virgil.

"...To be Loved," Virgil said and leaned down right by his ear to deliver on the lyrics with the same cadence as the original recording, "'I want domination, I want your submission, I see you're not resistin', to this temptation.'" 

Remus shivered at the low growl laced in Virgil's voice. He expected that but he was never ready for it. He grabbed Virgil's face and planted a smooch on his boyfriend. 

"You really know how to distract me and make me squishy!" Remus purred, "Keep doing it!" 

Virgil kissed him again and sank them both out. Sometimes having Remus for a boyfriend meant being vulnerable in a casual setting. Sometimes it meant that Remus would need him more than he let on. And most times it meant Virgil had his own piece of heaven. 

[bonesandthebees]

This part is just going to be about theories as to what could happen and details that I think are neat.

1. Reason behind Tommy's attack: So Tommy's been more skittish and on edge since Wilbur almost murdered him, that is a big given though he's been fairly good at hiding it. He's been carrying a knife around with him so that was a Chekhov's gun, very well played Bee. My best guess is that something happened that caught Tommy off guard (he hasn't been out since the ball, people are constantly pointing that out so I'm assuming it's a mix of him being anxious about almost dying and him being out for the first time in a while), he accidentally slashed Jack who saw it as an attack, maybe he said something before that gives him reason to suspect that that's why he was attacked, I don't know but people are not very logical if they have just been stabbed or otherwise endured bodily harm via knife. We don't know what Jack's exact wounds are so that is my best guess under the assumption that it was a slash of some kind on maybe his leg or something since Niki was helping him up but I'm not dying on this hill. Jack is a smart guy and probably won't jump to 'attempted murder' over one jab and if it was on his leg, it probably wasn't very severe since he would need to run back to the temple.

Basically, I don't fucking know but that is my best guess. My theory is about as solid as swiss cheese.

2. Ponk not giving the bottle of pills out of fear that Wilbur would overdose? Yeah that checks out. Even Niki is afraid of that. I do think that while Wilbur is not actively a suicide threat, he is very unstable and all it takes is one night or moment when he's alone and a sharp downward spiral for him to decide to restart the Pythia cycle. It's a smart move by Ponk but very very sad. But now that Tommy has joined the attempted murderer club, currently populated only by the dude who tried to kill him, I wonder if he's actually going to get those pills. I would hope so but I'm not sure who would get them for him other than like Phil and Techno but they'd be very occupied and I'm unsure if Wilbur would ever think about opening a door for anything when Tommy is in emotional distress and not the Deathlings favourite little guy right now.

Even if Wilbur knows that they wouldn't hurt Tommy, I don't doubt that his protective streak will kick into high gear, maybe to a point that he wouldn't trust anyone around him, especially if Tommy doesn't want to see anyone & in general his reaction to possibly seeing other people once he is out of crowd and back in his room with Wil.

But idk, we will see

3. Shrike symbolism!! I love that Wilbur is like "man, the little birdie in my chest could be a shrike but like, I'm not cool enough for that. I'm just a songbird" but Niki is kind of gently nudging him towards "don't underestimate yourself" while also just making a general statement, at least that's how I see it. But also maybe foreshadowing. Wilbur finally snapping and going sicko mode?? I'm waiting for it. I will not be caught off guard again.

4. Niki and Jack's backstory :((

We get another look at how dogshit and corrupt this country is and we get it from the perspective of someone outside the palace. Someone who first hand experienced the brunt of the corruption and just wahhh. She's being so open and vulnerable as to what happened, it's fucking awful with what's to come. I cannot put into words how distraught this makes me, especially when I was so happy with like 'oh Niki and Techno crumbs!!'. How dare u.

I think I'm done for now though. You'll know if I have anything else to say lmao

Great chapter, I am so nervous about the next chapter and what's going to happen in it.

2/2

- 🦈

oooo interesting theory as to what happened, you'll have to wait and see :)

yeahhhh the bottle of pills thing is probably okay for wilbur right now given he's a lot better than he was doing just a week before, but ponk and niki weren't sure of that. also not gonna say anything else regarding tommy getting painkillers. you'll have to wait and see for the next chapter.

the shrike symbolism was so fun to include i've had that written down for AGES now. niki was definitely trying to nudge him into thinking better of himself, so we'll ahve to wait and see how that progresses

(also just a note bc I don't really know where else I could talk about this, but shrikes are known for impaling their prey sometimes with their beaks. chapter 11, which is when wilbur has his panic attack after slipping up about schlatt, is called 'a beak jammed into a bone' referring to the bird in his chest and how it felt like it 'impaled' his ribcage when that happened :))

niki's backstory gave me a lot of opportunity to flesh out how fucked up the society they live in is. just the corruption that sits at the heart of it all. and yes techno and niki crumbs i love their dynamic <3

tysm for this shark anon!! i've missed seeing you in my inbox i hope you're doing well!!

[becaexists]

Gonna vent for just a second because I literally have no one to talk to about this so y'know turning to the internet as one does

All over my social medias like Twitter and tiktok (I know they're bad but sometimes they're designed to trap you) everyone is talking about Brianna Ghey, the 16 year old trans girl that was murdered on Saturday. She was a year younger than me, I have friends that are the same age, and all I have seen all day because I've been travelling thus had nothing better to do than to stare at my phone, is so much of the same thing, the same kind of posts, just talking about how this sweet young girl was murdered, potentially out of hate for our community but they're "not sure", and it is really fucking getting to me.

I know it sounds selfish as hell to because it sounds like "oh there was a trans girl murdered and I have to complain about seeing it everywhere" but it's not that, it's the things people put in and under the posts about it. So many of the people trying to spread awareness are trying to be reassuring by saying shit like "to trans youths, we stand by you, this should not be happening" but that doesn't help, because I'm terrified out my fucking mind that if I start trying to be myself, I might get fucking murdered too. What's worse is all of the horrible things transphobic people are saying, like "she's a boy", and "she deserves it" and "example of what should happen to all those trans freaks" because those are actual things I've read today.

And it's not just her case specifically, it's the constant despair I feel as a trans person where my right to exist are constantly being questioned by the only government I've ever known. I open twitter and see stories of how trans rights are being stripped back all over the western world, how people were abandoned by family after coming out as trans, about how being trans is so incredibly awful with little silver linings of "at least you're yourself". So I open tiktok to distract myself, where I see more people talking about the same things, about how the people in government hate us so fucking much. This whole corecore thing is important to highlight the awful shit but when that's the only thing you're seeing with maybe a few cat videos and stupid family guy or movie scenes while someone plays with slime makes to split them up it really makes you feel nothing but despair.

I just wanna get away from it all. I want people to stop talking about it but that's not exactly what I want? I want it to have never happened. I want to live in a world where these things don't happen. I want to live in a world where I can leave the house without being terrified of being hatecrimed or murdered for being who I am. I didn't come out as a trans guy until this year even though I knew for ages I wanted to be a guy, I didn't come out because if I came out in high school, my "all girls" high school where I was already severely bullied for being autistic and queer, I would be fucking dead right now, either from being murdered like she was or from suicide, which I was so so so fucking close to doing after some girl publicly berated me for asking one of my teachers to not call me my deadname (I was going for a fem NB approach to my transness at the time and thought that Bee was the start of something much more fitting for me) because she was right, no one would ever see me as anything other than some pretty but unpopular girl trying to somehow both escape the torture of womanhood and make myself more intriguing

If I could choose anything else, I would. I would not be trans. I would be a regular teenage girl who likes parties and stupid roadmen and skipping lesson to smoke and vape. But I'm not. And my mum, my own mother, has said "if you would choose not to be this, why don't you? Why don't you just go back to being my girl?" And I want to. But I need to be a boy to live. If I don't transition, I might just die from all the self hatred of what I have to pretend to be. I just can't do it.

Sorry this was long, I just have many many emotions and if I said this anywhere else I might just be on the receiving end of some of the same stupid shit people are saying about Brianna. I hope she finds peace somewhere where there isn't so much hatred.

[alarajrogers]

This is the big problem with social justice movements trying to take on interpersonal systemic violence within groups of equal privilege.

Road rage, for instance. Many, many white, cis, het, probably Christian, American men have been murdered by other white, cis, het, probably Christian, American men, because they got into an argument about their behavior on the road, and someone had a gun. We attempt to address that sort of thing with gun control, and yeah, actually, gun control would be awesome, but the thing is, those people have fists and they have deadly weapons in the form of their cars, and they might be standing in a place where a simple push will throw their opponent into the path of a car, so we really need to be addressing, what causes this kind of violence to happen? Why are men willing to murder other men over something as stupid as "that guy cut me off in traffic?" We are not doing any analysis on this.

When we talk about bullying, we are often trying to relate the bully's victim to an oppressed group. They're disabled, they're autistic, they're queer. The truth is, sometimes a kid has no disabilities, and is probably cishet though we won't know until they grow up, and they're white and speak with the local accent and they still get bullied. If a white cis het abled Christian girl is bullied by a white cis het abled Christian girl, bullying still happened, and the bullying was still bad.

Hell, sometimes someone from an oppressed group bullies someone from an oppressor group, and if it is not direct one-to-one retaliation for that specific person's conduct, that's still inexcusable. If a black cis het abled girl bullies a white cis het autistic boy, that is called lateral violence, and we're only starting to talk about it. But if the boy was fully abled and not autistic it would still be bad. (It would be a lot less likely if he doesn't belong to any marginalized group, but it can happen.)

This is a topic of great interest to me because, for most of my life, no one ever talked about children being abused by other children. You suffer because your parents abuse you. If your parents don't abuse you and you get along with teachers, your life is perfect! And here I am, carrying the mental scars from the bullying I had to deal with. Nowadays we understand that child-on-child violence and psychological abuse is very bad for the victims and can even cause suicide, but for the longest time, no one paid attention, because the paradigm was, abuse of children comes from adults. (There are still people who think this way on this site, who have somehow convinced themselves that all adults who interact with minors are pedophiles, but a person who says they're a minor in their online bio is perfectly safe, right?) It's made me very sensitive to seeing shit that the paradigm doesn't address.

The fact is, if someone does something terrible to a person, it is just as bad if those two have absolutely equal privilege, or if the person who did it has fewer privileges. Privilege doesn't state what direction interpersonal violence is okay to go in, it states what direction is more likely. All directions are not ok. And if violence goes in a less likely direction because the privilege gap wasn't there or went the other way... it was still violence.

if you get more het up about “colonisation” or “oppression” or “inequality” than an actual person getting enslaved or murdered or starved then your priorities are backwards: we care about the big stuff because it’s comprised of many individual things that we care about, not the other way around.

someone getting stabbed is bad, and you don’t have to see it as a microscopic part of some larger trend before it is allowed to count, it’s already bad, and if lots of people are getting stabbed then that makes a larger trend that is worse by simple arithmetic.

but “fixing” the big problem involves fixing all the little problems, you can’t care about the problem in abstract but not the concrete instantiations of it because it’s the actual suffering of actual individuals that make the big problem a problem in the first place.

[sinkingtime]

Remaking the DCU

I know, i know, everybody and their dog has said something about this. It's not even the oldest piece of writting I have rattling through my head!

Anyways, Justice League should have had zero villains and at least two dozen heroes.

More seriously, my single biggest problem with Justice League was the rebirth of Superman. He stays dead. Actions have consequences. I guess the ideal scenario for this hipothetical alternate history is that some executive a few years later is asked when we're going to see him again, and he goes all serious "what do you mean? he's dead".

So we start with Man Of Steel. That one was ok, actually. Yes, Jonathan Kent's suicide was stupid, and Zod's execution was poorly handled, but neither one actually matters to my purpose today. This one can stay unchanged.

Next is Batman v. Superman. Believe it or not, this one is also mostly good. The biggest problems are the character assasinations of Lex and Batman, and the actual death of Superman; but my whole thing today is to make that death stick so obviously that stays. I'm ok with just quietly dropping Lex from the franchise, and new, eviler Batman actually has some potential going forward.

So, the only important thing is to remove Wonder Woman. More specifically, the party scene stays, that was good. The sequel bait emails can stay, but her old photo needs to have her in regular clothes, not the armored bikini. And that exchange should probably be moved to after the credits, though that's not very important. Most importantly, she's NOT in the final battle. We don't get to see "Wonder Woman" before her movie, is the point.

If the choreography/story requires that Batman and Superman cannot take Doomsday on their own, have Alfred show up with a spare power armor. Though I also feel it should not be so hard to have a satisfying final battle with just the 3 of them. Make Doomsday a little slower and sturdier, so Batman can almost participate; their plan is for Superman to distract him so Batman can backstab him with the kryptonite spear, until it becomes clear that won't work and Superman picks it up. Something like that should work, probably.

That's basically enough for this one, but if i can have a couple minor changes: Remove all of Batman's guns. He can still murder all the henchmen you like, he just has to do it in melee; he's specifically anti-firearms for reasons beyond his being a good person. Also, an off-hand remark between Bruce and Alfred, saying they got the armor(s) from "their underground connections". As foreshadowing for next movie.

Next movie is Justice League? I think, i'm not going to look anything up at this time. Anyways, big superhero events need setup, so I want 3 more movies between Batman the fifth Superman and Justice League.

So next is actually Steel. For those who don't know him, he's basically Iron Man if he was a random employee instead of the CEO. So that's already a hard sell; there's actually a famously bad Steel movie, which I haven't seen so won't say anything more about it. And there's also a very good one, named Iron Man.

On the other hand, Steel was a famous part of the actual Death and Return of Superman comic series, so it's important to get him right here, as a sort of double-bluff. And the fact that he doesn't own the company makes his version of the story more about self-sacrifice and determination compared to Tony Stark's unashamed greatness. Not that I'm saying that's necessarily better, just different enough to justify the movie's existence.

The other problem is that the movie cannot be named "Steel" nor "Man of Steel", since both names are taken. And the guy's name is Irons, probably can't use that without Marvel's lawyers smiling. I don't know, call it something, that's not so impoortant.

The actual movie starts with news footage of the Batman/Superman fight. Our hero, John Henry Irons, recognizes the Supermanbuster Armor as being one of the prototypes he's worked on, even despite the black paintjob. So he does a little digging, realizes his company has been secretly selling to foreign governments and crime syndicates, and even the intended U.S. Army contracts are not as legit as they first seemed. Could get Amanda Waller namedropped here, maybe. Plus some general accounting misbehaviours, unsafe disposal of waste, etc etc.

He tries to speak up but is instead discredited, fired and falsely imprisoned for something minor, but with the implication that they could frame him for worse if he doesn't shut up. Cut to a few months later, he's let out of prison and has the regular "returning-to-society" difficulties. Settles for a crappy job as a youth counselor-type in a very poor neighbourhood.

One day he sees, maybe in the news maybe in person, that some street gangsters in the area have super-advanced weapons of the sort he once worked on. That's what motivates him to do something (again). He breaks into an abandoned hospital/church/something, where his earlier research showed they had secretly buried some old, failed prototypes of the power armor (which he originally had thought had been safely destroyed, as per protocol). He picks up two or three of those, and with them builds himself a single, mildly functional one.

His first move is to strike against those low-level criminals, both to remove them from his area and to steal their superweapons. He also intimidates them for info on how and where they got them. With the weapons, and maybe some maintenance tools they had in their hideout, he's able to improve his armor to actually stand up to bigger threats. This is also when he puts the Superman symbol in the chest, in memoriam.

He also has a giant warhammer, very high tech, that he should build at this point. What exact capabilities it has varies, but in this case i envision the head holding omnidirectional thrusters that he can finely control from inside his glove. Not strong enough for him to actually fly, but he would sort of skate along the ground, being pulled by it. Should be able to get some cool fights and chases out of that setup.

The rest of the movie should be fairly simple. Strike at the company's factories and warehouses, steal what tech he thinks he can use, steal and leak to the public any incriminating info, destroy the rest. All interspersed with scenes of him dealing with those kids, trying to steer them to the right path, helping them deal with their thematically appropriate problems. He's not particularly respected, but none of them hate him or anything.

Standard movie logic would dictate the grand finale is the CEO grabbing a suit of experimental power armor to take the fight to Steel, so I'm going to say "not that". Instead, he's been sending assassins at him, probably since shortly after the first attack on company holdings. At first it's just regular gunmen, who are basically nothing to the armor. Then hitmen with the company's high-tech weapons. Eventually a few guys with actual superpowers. Just 3 to 5 relatively minor bad guys, that we'd be confortable introducing with no more backstory than "does violence for money".

Those Steel doesn't actually defeat; he does some damage but mostly narrowly escapes a few times, and ultimately they stop chasing him when it becomes clear the rich guy is no longer rich enough. He's lost everything, Steel wins, though he does have that awareness that there's bigger threats out there that he probably should tackle and probably cannot.

The actual ending is some of those kids showing up to the school/community centre/whatever with Superman symbols (poorly) drawn on their shirts. He says he also misses him, but they tell him that no, it's about this new guy who's been fighting to make things better. They start bickering about theories, it's a woman under the armor, that's clearly a robot, etc etc; he finishes the movie satisfied that he is in fact inspiring the people.

Could also have an after credits scene, news saying Wayne Enterprises is buying out whatever is left of value of this company "just as they did LexCorp last year". Not really necessary though.

Next is Wonder Woman. That one is also good, really. Obviously I agree with everyone else online that the final fight with Ares shouldn't have been, but it doesn't actually matter to my "better Justice League" agenda, so let's let it be.

In the spirit of "one small change", let's just say she shouldn't have her lasso. Ares claims to be the god of Truth, she famously wields the Lasso of Truth, it seems obvious she should get it from him. Either pick it up from his corpse afterwards, or hijack it mid-fight to use against him, like in Shang-Chi. This does require rewriting all the movie so she didn't have it, but I don't think it changes any plot, just the battle choreographies.

The last movie before Justice League has a very important purpose: whatever happens needs to be extremely public and very dramatic. It's what finally convinces Bruce Wayne he needs to stop stalling and found the League already. Could have an after-credits scene to that effect.

One other thing I'd like to use this spot for is having a villain as a hero. Not "reformed" or "anti-"; nothing in the text or subtext to tell us he was ever anything but a Perfect Paragon of Justice, but we recognize the name and powerset as belonging to a villain. The obvious choices are Poison Ivy and/or Mr. Freeze, but that's a little too obvious. Sinestro could work, using the power of the Yellow Lantern for good and also to keep it from those who wouldn't; but the franchise wouldn't be ready for a space-based character like that. One of the more monstrous guys could also be fun, Clayface or King Shark. Maybe Metallo, now that kryptonite exists but won't be useful otherwise.

The other other thing I'd like to introduce at this point is magic. And yeah, Wonder Woman is a little magical, but not really. She's just another implausibly attractive alien. I'm talking spell words, secret knowledge, magic items and places and times, etc. Zatanna or Constantine, someone like that.

So obviously my answer is "all of the above", and my choice is Jinx, from the Teen Titans cartoon. Who I guess does become good in the end, but whatever. In this version she has the innate power of "bad luck", meaning things go wrong for her and those around her, in normal ways but with greater frecuency than normal; and she learned sorcery to contain and suppress that, but also can use it to fuel her magic.

We further go ahead and establish that "nobody can draw power from two sources", as a general rule for magic going forward. It's important to have rules to make magic seem logical, and this is a restriction I haven't really seen used that I think has narrative potential. Important to this movie, since Jinx has the bad luck reservoir innate to herself, she can't ever forsake it and seek another, by whatever means other magicians would normally use.

This, combined with the fact that it's in the nature of her power for things to go wrong, lets us make her the perfect introduction: she can have immense magical knowledge and skill, basically arbitrarily high, but still be limited in what she can actually do. All the exposition we could need in the future, but she doesn't automatically trivialize things. And in an emergency she can always decide to give it a try, draw a lot of power and attempt a huge, powerful spell; which may or may not work, depending mostly on how much movie there is left.

For her civilian life, she's a small business owner, something that helps with that "great store of arcane knowledge" bit. Bookshop, antiques, something like that. She'd have one employee, who isn't in the know but she's friendly with, to be the core of her supporting cast. I'm thinking maybe single parent plus adorably precocious child.

Anyways, for the actual plot: we start with her cleaning some graffitti off her shop, when she notices that part of it is a mystical symbol. She either knows this or rushes to the secret room to consult her notes, but either way confirms it: someone is trying to extend their influence over her land. Actually all the city, now that she knows to look for it she sees the symbol all over the place.

For the record, her city is Green Lantern's city, which was canonically destroyed during Reign of the Supermen. We're not doing Reign, but Superman is dead, should be able to make a few people nervous about that.

She does some more research, maybe has a cop friend, maybe she beats up some small gangsters, something. She learns there's a new group muscling in on local crime. They have some huge and savage war dogs, they are weirdly strict about how their mark needs to be drawn on places, they have had the guys steal some weird stuff, and nobody really knows exactly why the usual crime lords have not moved against them, but as far as anyone can tell they're just gangsters. Maybe a weird cult, at worst.

Obviously she knows it's worse than that, does some more research, being careful since they may be here to look for her specifically. She uncovers traces of summoning, the weird dogs are obviously hellhounds, so it seems the big plan is to summon some powerful demon lord. Maybe Darkseid, maybe Trigon, it doesn't matter since it's a misdirect: the actual plan is to teleport the entire city into a barren hell-dimension, where they figure they'll be able to enslave all the people and live like kings, once it's cut off from the larger world. They're mostly collecting the summoning tools so nobody can use them against them.

She also does have a run-in with some mages of their inner circle, whom she has to use obvious magic to escape, so that's when they learn there's another mage in town and start looking for her. They start the final ritual a little ahead of schedule, so she rushes to stop them, but she hasn't learned the twist so she's been preparing anti-summoning talismans and whatnot. She isn't ready to stop a teleport, the cult's leader is mocking her for that, so as a last resort she unleashes her power on the spell, hoping to mess it up.

The teleport still picks up the city but fails to leave the world, bounces it around and eventually drops it in the other side of the planet. I'd like that to be Spain or Italy, but I guess it would end up being China, for marketing reasons. Could also get a cool sequence out of that teleport bouncing all over the place, like in Doctor Strange but from the perspective of the entire city.

The ending is the cult, enraged, trying to kill her, but they're really no match for her now that she's not holding back. She lets her power spread out, so all the attacks end up hitting random people. That still means she takes some hits, but since it's a crowd against one, the chaos is to her advantage. At the end she destroys their magic source, which for this case I'm going to say they had a statue or staff or something that was the core of their entire group. This lets her definitely render them non-threatening without having to kill anyone, and without having to establish she could depower people at will; it's just these particular fools who were depending on an easily-destroyable power source.

For the final shot, she's at the edge of the city, with some other people including her friend/employee. They meet some people from the newly neighbouring city, who also came to investigate. Camera cuts as many of them are about to say something.

As I said, the after credits is Bruce reading reports or talking to some employee. His Foundation is basically picking up the entire project of building a new city to repatriate the people displaced; his team of lawyers and accountants have been sticking the bills to as many organizations or government divisions as they can, but it's still a huge expense for them. Also, all the world's governments are panicking about who did it and why and what will come next. So he finally decides to get that Justice League started, and calls Diana.

Is that too much? My end credits scenes keep getting longer. Maybe we can consolidate that, he reads most of the exposition in the newspaper, then tells his assistant (offscreen, via intercomm) to get him in touch with "Ms. Prince, at the Smithsonian, urgently". Or she's the one reading the news, then someone tells her Bruce Wayne himself is asking to meet her, he's waiting in meeting room 3, and her answer is "well, it's about time". Something like that could work, I guess.

So, finally, Justice League. The basic point of this entire wall of text is that they shouldn't revive Superman. Shouldn't even consider reviving him, except for maybe a few easter eggs to make us think that's where the movie is going, though it's probably also too late for those. I'm also generally dissatisfied with all of the other things Justice League did, though. It's cliché to say it, but it was trying to be Avengers and had no real way of pulling it off.

So instead I want to skip all the way to Justice League Unlimited, basically. This movie is a workplace drama/comedy, but the workers are superheroes. They still fight some crime and help with natural disasters and whatnot, but almost offscreen. Mostly they talk about it, and we see brief snippets, possibly still frames. The core of the movie is in the interactions between the large cast, setting up lots of friendships and rivalries for future movies; and the wrangling of all the egos involved to make it an actual team. It starts hopeful, then looks like they'll break away, then something brings them together and gives them hope this can actually work, the end.

I also kinda want it to be a musical. A legit one: the music isn't integrated with the narrative in any way, it's a part of the medium, like subtitles. Since there will be way more characters than we can actually develop, this is both a way to help shore that up and the perfect opportunity for the random music episode. But since I cannot and will not write any music, there isn't much to say about it. Please imagine that it is good, thank you. Let's talk about that alleged huge cast.

Wonder Woman is in, obviously. She's the public face of the League and the main recruiter. Batman is not a member. As far as the people are concerned, he's a maniacal murderer who has not been seen for months. They do know that Bruce Wayne is secretly their mysterious sponsor, though all members understand they're not supposed to talk about that.

She's actually sad about that, having become friendly with the man, and at some point I want her to ask the other members "what about this 'bat man' i hear about?", possibly while they're having lunch. The others automatically assume she means "when are we taking him down?" and begin speculating about that instead. Some think he's dead, some think he retired, a few think the Director is waiting for them to prove themselves a little more before deploying them in his hometown, someone suggests he already had the bat assassinated, whatever else we can think of. Diana, and therefore the scene, starts tuning them out.

When she reports that to Bruce, he tells her that it's ok, actually. He understands that the name of "Batman" is forever tainted, and it's well deserved. He could make up a new persona and go punch crime, and maybe he will someday, but for now he thinks he can do more good behind the scenes like this.

We also have both Steel and Jinx, of course. She may help recruit someone from the country her city ended in, if there's any interesting super over there. Which is to say, the target country should really have been chosen with that in mind; I just didn't feel like looking anyone up right now. No Research, Only Memory!

They also get both Flash and Cyborg, but can't find Aquaman. He also doesn't get to have action until his movie. Diana thinks she can contact him, but doesn't mention it; atlanteans and amazons have long kept each other's secrets. She's wrong, this particular atlantean has no contact with that civilization, but we don't actually learn that in this movie.

I also want them to have the Wonder Twins. The restriction in their power is kinda interesting, actually. Not much specific to say about them, sorry.

They also get Chole Sullivan, originally from Smallvile. In this version she's one of Wayne Enterprises' accountants or managers or something, whose psychological profile told Bruce she could probably be trusted with logistics for this secret project. She mostly mans the central communications, so when a member calls she responds with "Watchtower here", meaning the headquarters and whoever may pick up; but since she's the only one doing so the others start treating it as her codename.

She's also Lois Lane's cousin, so I find it funny if she returns in a very minor role, as part of Chloe's supporting cast; neither knows that the other knew Clark Kent (and Chloe doesn't know he was Superman), so it should be funny for us that they never even come close to noticing they have that in common.

Also, she should have the extremely minor healing powers she had in a late season. In that case it was illegal kryptonite research, but it doesn't have to be. I'm operating on the assumption that there's lots of people with random unexplained powers, anyways.

Speaking of minor powers, here's an original character: a girl who can fly, reasonably fast, but is very weak. Normal human strength, and her flight capability is like a third of that. She's been studying to be a paramedic since even if she can't move people, she still can reach them, and so hopes to help in that way. She's very excited to join the team and do good along all these people, but a little intimidated that everyone seems more super than her. I'm thinking of calling her Streak or Stripe, but haven't actually checked if those names are taken. My guess is "probably".

I also want another traditional villain. Let's say King Shark, for real this time. He's scary, maybe a little rude, but definitely a good person.

I also really like Static Shock, but I actually like his origin story enough that he should get a movie, so he's not in this one. Could still be foreshadowed, in a list of people they're thinking of approaching. That does mean his movie is another minor rewind, but that's probably ok.

Definitely get Nightwing. I know he's canonically the Robin whose death turned Batman into Punisher, but I'm pretty sure that was never said in the actual movie. And if you're going to have a dead Robin it should be Jason Todd; it's in the name and everything. So yeah, he's in. He knew Batman before so he and Diana could have an interesting conversation about that.

Add Stargirl, from the HBO show. She has a staff that can fly and shoot energy beams, and is clearly intelligent but doesn't really communicate. She's also a trained gymnast, constantly bouncing about on that thing and nearby walls and stuff. All of that is good, makes for good opportunities for interesting choreographies. I would make the staff explicitly magical, so she could hypothetically learn spells and draw on its light to fuel them. She's also been trying to teach the staff morse code.

The woman that would become Livewire joins, but doesn't have any powers. She's in charge of actual public outreach for the group, Diana may be the face they put in posters but doesn't do speeches. She probably gets that radio/tv/whatever program but League-sponsored. May or may not turn evil later, for the purposes of this movie she's just an easter egg.

Martian Manhunter joins secretly, as part of the regular janitorial staff. Nobody knows he has any powers. He's considering if he should come out and volunteer for action, but for now he's just observing them.

And we need at least a couple refusals. Let's say Captain Cold, who is content with his life of minor crime and not willing to get in the kind of fights these guys seem to be gearing up to; and Raven, who senses Jinx's innate powers and wants nothing to do with any group that would take her in.

Round that up with a bunch more minor supers, some originals, some very obscure, and I think we have a decent movie. Logically this is where I should stop, but I'm going to keep going up to Joker, which is where DC seems to have given up in having a wide interconnected continuity. Which for the record is ABSOLUTELY the right choice, they should have done that long before, but for the purposes of this exercise I need more continuity, not less.

So two more things on Justice League. They will have the Watchtower, as in the space station. Probably not this movie, but we should leave with the impression that it's definitely going to happen. Construction is underway, or at least already approved. Chloe knows about that project, which is why she started using that callsign; she was thinking eventually it will be true that that's where you call when you use the League's comms.

And then we need an after credits scene, of course. This may need to be cut into little snippets fading to black into each other, both because it's long and because it would get reprised in the actual movie.

We open in space, with a wide view of the Earth, heavily damaged. Maybe a single giant crater, like in Adventure Time; maybe it's torn to shreds, like in Agents of Shield. The camera pans over to the moon, covered in dome cities, most of them in ruins, like the future in Chrono Trigger. Inside one of them, in what seems like a futuristic military base, a woman is getting dressed in a dark blue one-piece outfit. Her back is to us, because obviously, but also to hide the Superman logo on the chest. Spoilers, by the way.

She goes to a room where a bunch of scientists and high-ranking millitary are milling about, clearly waiting for her. She should float, not walk, her feet never touch the ground. I don't think we should actually see those feet in this scene, but it should still be clear from her movement that she's just gliding. Maybe some technician walks with her a bit, for contrast.

She assumes position at the center of the room, one knee down, hugging the other, in a small platform surrounded by pokey bits. That position should allow us to look at her face without seeing the logo, so the camera should do that. The highest ranking officer addresses her, thanking her for her part in this momentuous occasion, etc; she responds with something about it being an honour. It's clearly a practiced speech for both, probably long standing tradition.

They're both addressed only by their ranks, no names. I don't know enough about millitary hierarchy to tell you what she should be; she's clearly respected, but doesn't have anyone under her command. Lieutenant? Major? I don't know.

After the pleasantries, they turn on the machine, a bunch of special effects happen and everything dissapears except fo her. She's now kneeling in the moon, which is completely empty as in reality. She stands and looks up and to the side, and smiles. This is when we finally get a full view of her costume. The camera moves a bit low and to the side, to show us Earth, which is not destroyed. She flies off towards it, disappearing in the distance. The end.

This was Matrix Supergirl. Kind of. In the comics she was a bunch of nanobots so could shapeshift into any body she liked; this version will be a human given powers by future super-science, so doesn't have that particular power. I also think she was from an artificial pocket universe, not a bad future, but don't quote me on that. Anyways, she'll be back later, enough Justice League.

I think next was Suicide Squad, right? That's stupid, let's push it far into the future.

Next will actually be Static Shock. He's a high school or college student that got involved with a gang once, and had the misfortune of getting dowsed in chemicals that gave several of them various superpowers. He specifically gets control over electricity, and can float metal objects to surf through the air.

I actually would change that. He's a member of an activist group instead, it was a peaceful protest that got unfairly suppressed by the police. Should probably be protesting something fictional, related to a previous movie, but it could also be something stolen from real-life news. Also, it's not just them that got powers: a few protesters, some bystanders, and at least one cop.

Most of them go variously evil, at least a couple try to ignore it and keep to their normal lives, and of course our hero takes it upon himself to get the others in check. The cop also allegedly becomes a vigilante, but he's clearly doing the overzealous brutality thing. He gives Static the old "we're not so different, you and I" speech, and is ultimately the one he must defeat to complete the story.

At the end of the story, maybe after the credits, I'd like one of the guys who tried to stay neutral to be inspired by Static and decide to take up heroism. I'd further like that to be Poison Ivy, in this case just called Ivy I guess; but I'm not sure it's worth changing her origin like that. She's usually a genius scientist who gave herself her own powers, it's kind of a disservice to remove that. But also DC has too many supergeniuses, so maybe it'd be ok? Not sure actually.

Next is either Wonder Woman 2 or Aquaman, I don't really remember but I also already broke the canonical order, so Aquaman it is. This is another movie that was basically ok, the only strictly necessary change is to remove the scenes at the start where people know him and love him, since this is his first adventure.

Besides that, I really liked the idea that they thought the magic trident would give its wielder control over the creatures of the sea, when it turns out that control is a requirement instead. Except I don't actually know if that was intended or it's me reading too much. So I would like to make it canon: in the final fight against Discount Killmonger, they are surrounded by various sea monsters, clearly formally witnessing the duel. At some point he actually gets the trident from Arthur, poses dramatically with it and orders them to devour him. Their only reaction is to look from him to Arthur, who tells them he's ok, don't worry, as he struggles to stand up; and every creature backs away a little and relaxes visibly. That's when the bad guy understands why and how he will never be worthy, and he flies into a rage, resumes the attack, back to the normal movie.

Next is Wonder Woman 2. Kind of. If it's going to be a prequel again, it could really have gone at any point after the first Wonder Woman. So I have arbitrarily put it here.

Wonder Woman 1984 was a mess. Famously so. For my purposes, there were 3 ideas that went into it: the wishing stone, the cat-themed frenemy, and the undead boyfriend. Any one of them could have been good. Any two of them may have been good. All three, well it didn't work. So, gotta pick.

The wishes thing is the most interesting, from an analyst perspective. The way a "be careful what you wish for" story works is that it teaches the hero a valuable lesson about the "wants vs needs" thing. And the main reason we like them is the joy of outwitting the jackass genie, either watching the hero do it or imagining we would do better. Wonder Woman Big Brother didn't do either because it wasn't really a wish storyline. It started pretending to be, but it was actually about a guy gaining omnipotence, with a weird quirk to it. And the really interesting thing is that you can't fix that without making it more clichéd.

I'm serious, I'm torn about this one. I WANT to say it's a good thing that they tried something original, even if it didn't quite work out. But on the other hand this movie feels like an object lesson for why "subverting expectations" shouldn't be your sole guiding principle. All I can say for certain is that I don't have a good twist for this one, so moving on.

Cheetah is easier to fix. She's still a coworker at the museum, who both admires and resents Diana, gets her hands on magic, starts trying to impress her, ends up trying to kill her. The only difference is instead of a wishing stone, she found the Sword of Omens.

Zombie Trevor is a little harder, in that we need some excuse for why he's back as a ghost, ideally related to one or more previous movies. If that is sorted, though, his actual plot is easier. They are both horrified by it, certainly don't sleep together at that point, instead they go looking for a way to undo the magic. Only she wants to find a way for him to still be back to life afterwards, while he's more willing to go already, and just give this poor dude his body back.

So I want both actually. But the ghost thing is actually better later, as a team movie. For this part of the release schedule, I pick the cat. The movie's name is Wonder Women. Surely that won't be confusing for anyone.

I'm also going to play the "first gay character ever!" card. Barbara is explicitly romantically interested in Diana, also very closeted (this is still in the eighties) and quite unhappy about it. Also, Diana hasn't been celibate all this time; in fact the movie opens with her having just broken up with her boyfriend. The other girls are trying to get her to gossip, but she's too good hearted to badmouth him. All she says is "it wasn't meant to be".

His name MAY be "Maxwell Lord", but probably not. Just some nobody we never hear from. All that matters is that she's now available; Barbara can't help but feel some hope, but she squashes it down, telling herself "it's not meant to be". This is what stresses her, eventually leading her to mess with the artifacts in her care, and accidentally finding the one that gives her cat-themed magic. Nothing big at this point, maybe it sharpens her senses. She freaks out, puts it back, and runs.

On the other side of the cast, Diana also hasn't been a pacifist all this time. She doesn't use the bikini armor, she goes out to fight crime in men's clothes and a mask. Should probably read all of her publication history to find the most masculine-sounding alias she's had, and make that what the people in this era call her.

Anyways, the next day Barbara gets into some problem, either crime or an accident of some sort. Diana-in-disguise saves her, but she recognizes her. They have a talk afterwards, where she promises to keep the secret, and Diana thanks her, telling her she's "a good friend". She smiles of course, but also almost cries. Please imagine Bart Simpson going through this scene frame-by-frame.

Afterwards, some of their friends at the offce (museum, whatever) comment that the two of them seem to be closer lately. Barbara panics and starts trying to deny everything, then Diana says they were both at the <EVENT>, where <CODENAME PENDING> saved them both. They turn to gossip about that, somebody asks if he's handsome and Barbara sighs and says "like a dream come true". Somebody remarks that they'd never seen her like that before, so she starts panicking again; Diana intercedes again, saying she had hoped he would be taller. They all laugh, "I bet you ALWAYS say that!", but finally change the subject, so Barbara can finally relax.

She does spend the rest of the day daydreaming about Wonder Man The Manliest Man Who Ever Manned. At the end of their shift, she finally decides to steal the amulet to see what's up with it. It increases her senses, balance and helps her jump a lot. She also may be stronger than before, but not superhmanly yet. No physical changes yet. She decides to also steal some body-concealing clothes and a mask, and go find Diana.

She finds her fighting some thugs. Nothing she couldn't handle easily, but she's still interested when this mysterious new kid joins in to help. They finish the fight, climb atop some building to talk (Barbara is surprised how easily her hands hold her weight), and she immediately unmasks and explains everything. Diana dissaproves of the theft, but is actually excited about having a partner, so she agrees to fight crime together.

Few months pass, the two are becoming closer friends, their coworkers all agree both seem happier than they'd been "in a good while". They also speculate about the mysterious hero's new mysterious ally. Student? Brother? "Maybe lovers?" "Bill, don't be gross".

Barbara is actually considering coming out to Diana, even if she knows she'd be rejected; but she remembers how she felt when she had to reject her best friend, and decides not to put her in that position.

She also starts having physical side-effects while wearing the amulet, though: her nails and teeth sharpen a little, her eyes start getting a little odd. Diana suggest she should maybe take a break, or they should try and research the amulet, but she refuses.

Eventually her superheroing starts getting a little more cruel than Diana would like. They argue about it, but both agree it's not that bad, she's new to this, she will do her best to control herself. It will be fine.

Until the day she tries to strangle a thief that's clearly trying to surrender. Diana fights her to save him, she's still far stronger at this point, and drags her off to talk.

At this point she notices there's more changes under the mask. She still looks human, but her skin has cheetah-like patterns, and her ears are already changed. She tells her this can't go on, that she has to give back the pendant. Barbara agrees, takes it off and de-transforms, then breaks down crying. They go together to store it in the museum, hidden inside another artifact that they expect shouldn't be moved much.

That night, as Barbara is sleeping at home, there is some sudden noise. Traffic or something. She wakes up and instantly jumps far away, ends up hanging from something. Let's say her roof has exposed beams. Once she calms down and realizes she's still hanging by her hands, she calmly readjusts her weight and lets go, easily landing on her feet.

After a bit of pretending to be normal again, she takes up the mask and goes out to patrol alone. Diana is disappointed and worried, so she confronts her, but she tries to brush her off. She grapples her and tries to take off the amulet, but it's not where she usually kept it. I guess I should establish what exactly that is, no? Let's say a green gem, cut in the shape of a cat's eye, in a golden pin. She usually put it in her sleeve, on the inside. So this frisking is a little intimate, but not too much.

So she asks what she's done with it, Barbara replies that she doesn't need it anymore. They fight some more. Eventually Diana binds her in the lasso to force her to tell her the truth, and she repeats. "It's where we left it. I don't need it anymore". Diana softly asks "why?", thinking about the amulet and wondering for what reason it works like that, but Barbara goes on a rant about how it's all so easy for her, she doesn't know what it's like to be anything but perfect, and then Diana apologizes and withdraws the lasso.

After a moment of awkward silence, she decides to keep going. She never had to hide what she is, to know she doesn't belong among people, that she lives in defiance of nature, and so on and so forth. All her metaphors should be carefully chosen so they could apply to Diana's amazonian/divine heritage, so she's absolutely confused. Until Barbara runs out of euphemisms and screams "you have never been in love with another woman!", and then everything suddenly makes sense.

Next she's clearly trying to say "in love with you", but can't, so she finally shuts up. In the silence, Diana says, very calmly, very matter-of-fact, "no, I have. It's really all the same to me". Because of course Wonder Woman is bi, how dare you ever think otherwise.

Cheetah screams and punches her, transforming mid-punch to be more catlike than ever before, so she's actually strong enough to send her flying and to the ground. Then we cut to the museum, where the thing they put the brooch in starts shaking, then explodes, the brooch flying away. It flies all the way to the fight, hits her in the face and also drops her to the ground, so Diana quickly gets up to investigate.

She sees the amulet has replaced one of her eyes, and whispers that they have to find a way to get it off her. Cheetah wakes up, says "no. Never again" and starts attacking. She's stronger, but Wonder Woman is faster, so she mostly has the advantage. Except she doesn't actually try to get away, just dodges and tries to talk her down, so eventually she catches her and begins strangling her. After struggling a bit, trying to get her off in vain, she summons a huge bolt of lightning to strike her down.

Because she can do that. This character is kind of ridiculous, actually.

Cheetah lets go and falls to her knees, breathing hard, stunned by disbelief and also electricity. Wonder Woman recovers her breath first, and asks her to please give up, let her find a way to help her. Instead she gets up and gets her hands around her neck again, very ineffectually at first, but slowly regaining her strength. Diana doesn't even raise her hands this time, just looks at her sadly. As she starts having trouble breathing again, she whispers "please", to which the answer is "never". Lightning strikes again, and at the same time she reaches and pulls out the brooch with her hand. Barbara falls over, dead, and she picks her up and brings her to the sea or forest or desert (I don't know what's closest to where they live) to bury her. The end.

After the credits, Wonder Woman is leaning against a handrail, staring out a large window. A random superhero, someone we haven't met yet, approaches to ask her what's up. She has the brooch in her hand, and just says she's thinking about an old friend. "Today would have been her birthday". He smiles, then looks confused and asks her "how can you tell, up here?", and the camera pans out, to show us they are in the finished Watchtower Station.

Next is Task Force X. They can still do the "some sorta suicide squad?" joke, but the movie should have the better name.

A lot is wrong with Suicide Squad, but mostly in execution; and I can't just say "edit things competently". I mean, I can and will, certainly the idea is there isn't a remake because the first one was good. But I also have a specific criticism: they need an antagonist that is not a direct consequence of their existence. "Villain of your own making" is good when it gives the protagonist an important lesson to learn, or tragically fail to; but in this case the only one that could receive it is Amanda Waller, and she's not that important. She's an inciting incident with delusions of recurrence, really.

So instead the team is assembled against Atlantis. After their existence was made public during Aquaman, most nations sent diplomats. A few of them have been taken prisoner, it is the team's mission to recover them without letting the public at large learn that anything happened. Secretly, the diplomats actually have gone rogue, requesting and receiving asylum in exchange for various secrets, the actual mission is to prevent that. They still hope to extract them alive, but the secret orders strongly imply that it's a secondary consideration. And extra-secretly, Waller and whatever superiors she actually serves hope they can steal advanced atlantean tech, at least one member has extra-secret orders to do that. That should be enough to get a decent heist/spy movie out of this.

The roster needs to be diferent, of course, mostly on account of a majority of the action being underwater, but also because it wasn't that good. They all have advanced breather masks, by the way; Atlantis already gifted that technology to the world.

Harley Quinn really has no business being chosen for this. And Joker certainly won't appear. I have bigger plans for these two. Kind of.

Deadshot is probably also off the team. Maybe keep him as the one that dies early. Maybe.

Boomerang is in; his throws don't work right under water, so he spends the movie practicing and figuring that out, then at the end actually manages it.

The expendable soldiers have no place here, this is a covert mission. They get ONE army liason/handler, and I guess his name may as well be "Rick Flagg", but he's not a loveable decent guy in over his head. He's a cruel and reckless leader, in trouble for multiple disciplinary actions, and this mission is pretty much his last chance to prove his worth and stay on the army. Definitely knew the secret mission from the start, may be the one with the double secret orders.

Killer Croc would have too easy a time underwater, but maybe that's specifically why they picked him. Keep him if there's good stuff for him to do that doesn't entirely render the rest of the team pointless; if that balance cannot be found, replace him with Solomon Grundy.

Diablo, maybe? I like the idea that he constantly complains he's useless for this mission, but since it would be true, it's kinda stupid that they deployed him. Could go either way.

And I want to use this movie to do the reverse of Jinx: a well known hero, who in this continuity is and always has been a villain. I like Beast Boy for this, but he probably is too useful to the mission, like Croc but more so. So instead let's say Hawkman. Just like Boomerang, he has trouble flying underwater, but eventually figures it out.

For callbacks, add Captain Cold, one of the superpowered assassins from Steel, and the ex-cop from Static Shock. At least one of them should try to abandon the team and seek refuge from Atlantis, then be killed for it. I nominate Cold on the grounds that he's the only one I have any empathy for, though obviously if these were real movies the others would also have been settled and developed by now.

Round things out with 2-3 obscure or original characters, and that's it. They infiltrate Atlantis secretly, skulk about, interacting mostly with each other. Some good action, some inevitable betrayals, about half of the team makes it out alive. Should be fun.

Next comes Supergirl. It's a bit of a misdirect. Certainly, she's here to change the past and avert the terrible future she came from. Which she does easily; between the intel she was given for the mission and the might of the League, they get that sorted out within the first twenty minutes of the movie. I'd like if either the threat or the solution can tie in to some future character's origin story, but it's not really necessary.

What matters is, after they win, she stands around stoically, clearly waiting for something to happen. When one of the others asks her what's up now, she panics and runs to double-check things, but all is well. It will be impossible for the future to turn out how she knew. And she doesn't understand why she still exists.

That's the actual point of the movie. She thought she was signing up for a suicide mission, she had made her peace with that, and now suddenly she has a life ahead of her, in an extremely strange world. So she'll need to adapt and figure out herself, with the help of a handful League members that felt closest to her during that initial mission.

Probably not Wonder Woman. I feel she's being overused.

Probably yes Chloe. Just because I like her.

Definitely Nightwing. He's the nicest person in this universe, would both be inclined to help her and good at it. Also, he'll be important later.

Probably Steel or Cyborg, either could be interested in the future. She wasn't a scientist, but probably still can help them with some stuff that's common knowledge.

Probably King Shark, could be funny if those two end up becoming friends.

Should probably add at least one more woman, so let's say my original flying paramedic. They can fly together.

Since the movie is all personal self-discovery, I don't have much in the way of plot specifics. She starts kinda numb and detached, they drag her all over the world to experience different things, eventually she starts seeming content and like she'll be ok. The end. So, in no particular order:

She does some superheroing, of course. Just a few things, but public enough that the media starts calling her Supergirl. Someone, but not her, complains that it "very clearly" should be Superwoman. She doesn't care either way. For the record I agree, it's kind of a bad name, but it's far too well known to not use it.

Her hair is not super. Some villain manages to cut off a bit of it, laughs, then shatters his sword against her face. After beating him they drag her off to "get that fixed". She assumes they mean they'll artificially accelerate the regrowth, but it's just cutting the rest of it to match. Afterwards she says she could have just done that herself.

She doesn't have a name. Insists in being called by her rank. Eventually Bruce presses her for more info, in his position as the League's Director, and she snaps into attention, rattles off some numbers and letters (in the alpha-bravo-charlie system), and specifies that she's a Sargeant (or whatever her rank actually ends up) of "the Legion". Turns out they don't have names in the future; they have serials, for official functions, but those aren't meant to be human-readable. For everyday life, they use pronouns and whatever titles may have been earned. Should make her serial be a reference. Author names or comics issues, something like that.

(The Legion of Superheroes is a team from the year three thousand and change, who are capable of time travelling trivially and use it to hang out with Superboy or, if he never existed, Superman. A version of Supergirl is sometimes a full member despite also existing mostly exclusively in the present, though I seriously doubt it's this version. Basically none of that is true for this movie, the name is just an easter egg; but since she's explicitly from a Bad Future, we retain the possibility of a more canon-compliant Legion in the Better Future.)

For the same reason, she treats all names as titles, gramatically. When talking to someone it's normal, "what do you think, Chloe?", but when talking about someone it becomes "the Chloe said..."

They visit Atlantis. She's seen bits of it before, but "never imagined it used to be so beautiful. Or so wet".

Somebody suggests she should visit Superman's grave, and she agrees, then everybody is surprised when she leads them to Kansas. That's common knowledge in her time, she didn't know it wasn't for them. If Chloe is here, she specifically should freak out about that. Maybe she wonders about "that time our bus almost fell into the river".

At the graveyard they meet Martha Kent, who recognizes her despite them already having gotten her into civilian clothes by this point. She apologizes for hijacking her son's symbol, her superiors insisted; and they exchange a heartwarming talk about his legacy. She also calls her "Mrs. El". The future doesn't remember everything perfectly.

They go eat lots of different foods. If King Shark is here, one of the dishes is shark-based, so she looks to him nervously. He tells her to go for it, it is delicious, and she just says that "shark culture is weird" before having a bite. They probably explain that to her off-camera.

They keep getting mildly annoyed that she just tells everyone she's from the future, uses names and codenames exchangeably, and in general doesn't seem to care about secrecy. If King Shark is here, who couldn't hide if he wanted, he finds her honesty refreshing. That's probably my best idea for why those two bond.

Nightwing gets a call, apologizes and goes away from them to answer. He returns to explain it was his girlfriend, they had a date, but obviously he had to reschedule for this. Somebody suggests they all go see her, he says she doesn't know anything about his work, and doesn't want any of them outing him. Supergirl says it's ok, she can act normal, and he just looks at her, then down. The camera follows him, to show us her feet, floating a few centimetres in the air. "Have you EVER touched the ground?" "Of course not, it's dirty".

Speaking of her feet, she really does float all the time. She can float in her sleep. It's her favourite part of the augmentation. I don't want to do any actual casting, but I'd like her to be a somewhat shorter actress, so it can be clear she's usually floating up to be eye-level with the others. Not intentionally, but as she speaks with someone she slowly slides into position. If it's someone shorter, she rotates without bending, to still not touch the ground. I imagine if two people of noticeably different heights were having an argument in her presence, she'd end up softly vibrating halfway between their levels.

Turns out they have basketball in the future. They double-check with her that all the rules are the same, then bring her to play, but the first time she bounces the ball down it splatters against the ground and tears to shreds. So, turns out they have super-basketball in the future. She apologizes and says she'll wait for them to invent reinforced balls.

The final scene, which I guess means this was in a slightly particular order, is her having been set up with a department, via the Wayne Foundation, for her to have a civilian life. It's in the city where Supergirl normally lives, not Matrix, but Kara Zor-El. As the moving company is getting furniture and stuff in, her neighbour comes to say hi. He introduces himself, I don't know the name but someone from Kara's normal supporting cast, and she shakes his hand and says "Hi, I'm...", then trails off. The camera focuses on her face, looks like she's trying to think of a fake name, but then she shrugs and says "I'm the Supergirl". The end.

After credits, Dick Grayson is getting ready for that date with his girlfriend. She's a perfectly normal human, named "Star". They head off to what seems like it'll be a lovely evening.

Next is Shazam. This is another fantastic movie, literally the only change it needs is that Superman cannot show up after the credits. What with being dead and all.

So instead, Shazam is waiting alone on a rooftop, clearly barely able to contain his excitement. A bunch of superheroes teleport in from the Station, here to recruit him. As they start the round of introductions, Jinx looks at him, her eyes glowing with magic, and she says "wait, how old are you?". He stutters for a second, then flies away at superspeed.

Next is Jokerz. That's a gang of hooligans that wear clown makeup, do small crimes. Originally from Batman Beyond, they only knew Joker from old history. In this version they formed shortly after Batman killed him, the day after he killed Robin. See, that's why I'm basically ok with his characterization in BvS. It's a terrible introduction for the character, but it makes a pretty good ending.

Also, I don't know exactly when Robin died, or if it was even explicitly established. For my version of the franchise, anything between five and twenty years before Batman v Superman would work; mostly it affects the required age range for various actors. I'm going to go ahead and officially say 12.

Anyways, Harley Quinn has finally been let out of Arkham, where she turned herself in after she succesfully captured Batman, but he convinced her Joker would never have wanted him dead.

She does her best to reintegrate into society. Lands a job at a beauty parlor, she's good with makeup. And costumes.

She gets a very small appartment, where she's friendly with the other tenants. We see her at night, trying to sleep, but she can't. After a while she gets off the bed and to the ground, then falls asleep.

One day, a bunch of Jokerz come into the shop, scare away the other customers and get on the chairs, demanding they "freshen us up". All the other employees are frozen with fear, but the youngest guy approaches them, then Harley, then some of the others. They just clean their faces, then paint them back.

One of them gives what seems to be the owner a big wad of bills. She whispers that it's too much, so he says "oh, ok", throws a chair through the window, then looks back to her. She nods frantically and all the clowns leave, laughing. After they're gone, Harley falls to her knees, crying and hyperventilating. The others move in to try to help her.

Meanwhile, at their hideout, the specific clown she worked on is admiring her makeup very carefully. She digs through a collection of old newspaper clippings they have, for a photo of the original Joker. He looked just like her. They all pass that paper around, as she climbs on a table and starts doing poses. She's the one that would become Punchline, if I had anything for her to do after this movie. Still gonna call her that. Maybe her original face paint looked like that.

So they start following Harley, asking her to join up and "be their Queen". Wherever she goes, there's clowns making a nuisance. Eventually she's fired from the salon, and the next day it's mysteriously burned to the ground. Her friends no longer talk to her, strangers avoid her even when no Jokerz are around.

One day a bunch of them suround her, the biggest and strongest pulls out a reproduction of her old costume. The original one, from Batman: the Animated Series, though clearly very poorly made.

She finally snaps, and goes to beat the crap out of that particular clown. At first he laughs, but after the first couple hits he starts trying to defend himself, and can't. She's a ridiculously good hand-to-hand combatant. All the while, she's ranting about how they're all a disgrace to the Joker's memory. He may have gone too far, at the end, but at least he was trying to do good. He stood for something. These idiots don't seem to do anything except whatever helps them not have to think.

She finishes with the guy broken and bloody, moaning incoherently. She grabs the costume, uses it to wipe his blood off her hands and tosses it over his head. She purposely walks between the two clowns that happened to be standing closest to each other, so she can push them both aside. Once she's gone, all the clowns start laughing again, except the guy on the ground, who can't, and Punchline, who's actually thinking about it.

While Harley is trying and failing to pick her life back up, she tries to whip the Jokerz into shape, find some good for them to do, "as our Queen demanded". They don't care. After a while she also gets disgusted, and goes to vandalize the police station and then the chief's home, so they will finally go and arrest them all.

She goes to find Harley again, to ask her to join together and find the True Way, to honour Joker's memory together. She calls her "doctor" this time. I don't have a specific idea for this sequence, but they try. Go find lost puppies, try to seduce/torture a politician for incriminating info, whatever. They may get romantically involved, I don't know enough about Punchline to say if that would be ok.

She keeps pushing for what Joker's Cause was, which Harley is evasive about. She says she's struggling to remember. We may get brief flashbacks of various ridiculous plans he tried, over the years. Eventually she has to admit there isn't one. She had been lying to herself, the Jokerz had been right all along. Punchline is offended and leaves. "I hoped you, of all people, would understand".

Harley cries a bit and does some soul-searching, finally deciding she's better off this way. "The truth has set me free". She plans to continue looking for small ways to help people, not for anyone's memory, but because it feels good. I want the final montage of her good deeds to be a spoof of the one Superman got in BvS. She's pulling someone's couch on a rope. A bunch of kids are surrounding her, reaching their hands for the food she brought. I don't remember what else he did, but whatever it was, she gets a visually similar but relatively insignificant version.

The movie ends with her trying to sleep, but she can't. After a while she climbs up onto the bed, and finally falls asleep.

After the credits, the police have finally received the report on that burned beauty shop. It was a superhuman of some sort; there's no possible way the Jokerz were involved in that one. So they have to re-open the case, and have no idea where to begin.

Next should be Watchtower, except I don't really have a good idea for this. The basic setup is that Chloe's on vacation, visiting her cousin, and their party/cruise/concert/whatever gets hijacked by terrorists or something. She intentionally left her comms behind, so she has to step up and Die Hard the day.

Is that enough? I feel it needs more.

Next is Lobo. He's one of those characters that was designed to offend as much as possible, so we will sand down his edges a bit, but not much. His world exists, and it exists in the Legion's future. He insists he will always abide by the letter of the law. Maybe he's a good singer or cook or something, I don't know.

We open with various League members sitting at a large table, talking about their respective relationships, plans for the weekend, and so on. Let's say Static, Nightwing, King Shark, Cyborg, my original flying paramedic, one of the Wonder Twins, two or three more. The other Twin is also there, sprawled on the table, growling in frustration.

They start showing off pictures. The spare Twin says "That's a huge security breach. You all know that, right?" Then an alarm goes off. Cyborg gets up, then a moment later the others do, though they look at him, confused. "Someone is approaching the planet. We just installed it last week." "Could it be a test?" "Test was last week."

They start running out of the room, but they hear Supergirl's voice. Not over comms, she's shouting hard enough for the whole Station to hear. "NOBODY WORRY I WILL RESOLVE THIS DO NOT CONTACT ME WILL REPORT LATER BYE".

Outside a bar somewhere, we see a bunch of motorcycles. One of them is some sci-fi looking abomination. Inside, Lobo is holding a though-looking guy by the neck with one hand, fiddling with the other with some device connected to some wires going to both of their heads. He says something in a strange language.

Someone breaks a chair over his neck, but he doesn't care. He messes with the device some more. "How about this? Now can you understand me?" The guy nods frantically, so Lobo snaps off the wires from both of them, pockets the device, and lets him drop. "Well see? That wasn't so bad".

Supergirl walks into the bar, classic Western style. She calls on him to meet her outside. Possibly she calls him by his species' name, if there is a canonical name for them. He looks around the room, smiling. "Well sorry fellas, you're all quite lovely but damn do we have a winner!"

(More generally, he's going to spend the entire movie hitting on her. I'd like it if we could somehow make it clear she's not necessarily uninterested, it's just that she can tell he's not serious.)

She wants him to abide by a set of rules that she's clearly struggling to remember (he corrects her pronounciation). Some sort of Prime Directive, this planet has not made contact with the galaxy. He goes serious, promises he will abide to the relevant protocols, and asks if she will be his local contact for the job. She agrees. He suggests they hide his space-motorcycle somewhere safe, "so as to not spook the natives". They bury it in the Sahara.

He's a galactic bounty hunter, looking for the runaway princess <name> from the <name> empire. I'm sorry I don't remember the names, that's Starfire, Nightwing's girlfriend, though she doesn't know that yet. She does recognize the empire's name, she's a little nervous about that.

He has some counter-surveillance data; there was a network of detection beacons, <Starfire's planet>'s make, around the solar system, that he carefully stayed outside of. A whille ago they went down, and a much weaker version went up, provenance unknown; he waited a while in case that was a trap, but has decided to come find her before the trail gets too cold.

She realizes he means the League's system, Cyborg and Steel designed it, based on vague recollections from her. The target must have turned off hers to avoid being detected. He seems genuinely upset that she's the one breaking non-interference, but she insists she's a local. She's just from the future. "Fine, future, whatever. You're not my princess anyways, let's go".

So they're going to follow his data, basically calculations of where the info from the systems used to go, hopefully directly to her. Along the way he tries to do some tourism, pick some fights, comedically misunderstands various things. She's mostly struggling to keep him in check.

Since they're starting from the Sahara and the end point is the Teen Titans' city (not that they exist, but we should see the name as they go in), I figure they should go northwest, through all of Asia and across the Bering Strait; or they could walk across the South Pole and therefore South Africa and all of America.

The only thing I can say for sure is they should pass through the abandoned displaced city from Jinx. She explains that was before she arrived, but she understands it was a botched mass teleport. "On an entire city? That's why you test on adorable small animals first!" Other than that, whatever route gives us the best buddy cop comedy/road trip.

After a movie's worth of that, they find "Star" and Dick together, enjoying a nice time at the park. Supergirl recognizes him and asks to wait, but Lobo doesn't want to waste the surprise and attacks. Dick tries to help defend her, but she stops him, claiming this is a legal bounty. Also, he would die. They argue about that, making it clear the two know each other well.

"Star" meanwhile had been struggling semi-ineffectually, just enough to not actually be captured while still pretending to be a regular human who doesn't understand what's going on. Lobo notices that, so he picks up a car and crushes her with it. Then he drops an incendiary grenade on them. The other two stop arguing to stare, stunned. He asks Dick "for the record, you guys can't survive that, right?".

She floats out of the wreckage, her clothes partially burnt, her skin cracking and starting to evaporate, to reveal her natural orange skin underneath. He smiles and jumps to attack her again, but she catches him with tendrils of pink light. He pulls out a bigger grenade, fiddling with the buttons and dials one-handed, telling her she has until he's done arming it to surrender, unless she wants to continue their fight "in the smoking ruins of this charming little continent". So she tears off his head. Mostly because he's a bit one-note and there's not that much value in seeing him again, but also because I need to kill off some characters besides Wonder Woman's love interests.

After that, Supergirl is absolutely terrified, so Dick recovers first. He asks why she didn't tell him, she points vaguely at the two of them and asks when HE was planning to tell HER. They look like they're about to start shouting at each other, but instead they both take a deep breath, relax, and start explaining how they each understand the other had good reason for keeping their secrets.

With their relationship succesfully salvaged, Supergirl finally speaks up. She asks the princess if she's a member of the Pink Lantern Corps, also sometimes known as the Star Sapphires. She says yes, that's why she chose that human name. (Incidentally, I love that the name was technically a red herring.) Supergirl starts cursing nervously, probably some future swearwords, and goes to check Lobo's corpse.

His bounty was issued by the Star Sapphire Debt Collectors, not the Imperial Family of <PLANETNAME>. The princess is also surprised to hear this, she always thought her sister was just trying to drag her back to the throne because she was too lazy to rule. But it turns out she has to actually go and deal with whatever is going on. So she goes to say goodbye to Dick.

After the requisite "don't go/i must/etc", he gives her a small box he was carrying, telling her he had hoped to use it tonight, "though I've been telling myself that for almost a year now". It contains a diamond ring. So she takes out her Pink Lantern ring, which she wears in a necklace under her dress; she transfers all its power to the new one, and then gives him the old one. They kiss one last time, and she picks up Lobo's corpse and flies away into space. He waits until she's out of sight to spit out a bit of fake skin.

After the credits, Supergirl is in an office room on the Watchtower, slouching in front of a computer. They're making her write up reports on everything she remembers about "ancient galactic politics". She complains that she barely passed her history classes, then whoever is with her (either Cyborg or someone new) reminds her that's better than literally anyone else in the world, so she gets back to it. We should get a brief look at her screen, it's full of sequel bait.

And now I'm really running low. I have two more big events I want to add, and not sufficient build up. We need 3 more movies here.

First is something about magic. A Jinx sequel, or Zatanna's introduction, possibly both. I kinda want the bad guy to use mass mind control. If Zatanna is here, she's offered League membership at the end, but refuses.

Second, that spin-off from the end of Static Shock. If it's about Ivy, she interacts with Swamp Thing. It wants to end humanity, she convinces it not to. If it wasn't her, then something else, I don't know.

Third, anything that doesn't affect the status quo. Possibly an Aquaman sequel set entirely within Atlantis. Or Gorilla Grodd, though it's getting a bit cramped for secret civillizations that were there all along. Maybe a day in the life of one of the less-powerful supers.

With that we go into Justice League: Rebirth. This is when Steve Trevor returns as a ghost possessing someone. Along with a hell of a lot of other people. Also, the actor doesn't come back; we will trust the audience to remember who is being possessed by whom.

The movie starts in the Watchtower's kitchen. One of the cooks briefly blacks out, then starts panicking at herself and her surroundings. She's screaming in some strange language, and pawing at her head like something was missing. The others get her out of there, since it's full of dangerous things, and ask the heroes to go get help.

They fetch Diana, who is old and well-travelled, and Jinx, keeper of many secrets. By the time they arrive, she's calmed down a bit, grabs someone's face and stares at him like she's expecting something to happen, then panics and starts screaming again. They tell them she keeps doing that. Neither of them have ever heard that language.

Wonder Woman speaks into her comm, asking Watchtower to let her speak to everyone in the League. Chloe, at her control room, clicks at her keyboards a bit and replies that "you have all hands". Back at the cafeteria, she takes off her comm to clearly hold it in her hand as she announces they have an important message, if ANYONE understands it, please report to the Station immediately. Then she holds it to the cook, who is briefly confused but does start speaking into it.

Somewhere during that we should get extremely brief snippets of various superheroes through the world receiving the message. A few of them are already dealing with people acting weirdly, though nothing so extreme. It's also heard in all the speakers in the Watchtower, including a room where the janitors are taking their break. One of them, on hearing it, immediately flies away and through the walls (without harming them). "Huh. Did you know John was a ghost?".

He rises from the ground in the cafeteria, but before anyone can ask him anything he speaks out in the same language, so everybody shuts up, and Diana backs away so the cook can see him. She's clearly relieved, but also confused, and asks him a question. He looks a bit embarrased, but then transforms into his martian form, by which I mean the fully alien body, not the green-skinned human we normally see. She shouts in joy and runs to hug him, but everybody else immediately goes on guard. A few actually point their weapons at him. Diana says "please explain".

He does. He's originally from Mars, was also a janitor, actually, at a lab researching teleportation. When they called for volunteers for testing, he signed up. Animal tests had gone perfectly, seemed like easy money. It went wrong, sent him outside the world, past the twin moons and into the third orbit, where he got stuck at the center of the planet, in a half-teleported state. He doesn't know how long. He tried to reach out with his telepathy, could barely sense there was people around, but nobody seemed able to detect him.

"Wait, you have telepathy?" "You may notice I don't have a mouth right now".

He stayed trapped until Zod attacked. His ridiculous sky beam machines somehow disrupted his suspension, which let him escape towards them. He finally materialized among the rubble in Metropolis, disguised himself as a dead body, and has been hiding ever since. And, somehow, this is his wife.

She takes over the explanation, transmitted telepathically by him. After his accident, the teleport experiment was cancelled. It was theorized it was the telepathy that caused it, actually, that it interacts with the process in a way she doesn't understand. He agrees that sounds right. The experiments were resumed three years later, that's martian years of course, when the environmental crisis suddenly started getting worse. The plan was to teleport all cities to some more habitable planet. Before final testing could begin, she got sick, then got worse, then suddenly she was here.

This is actually fantastic news for him. All this time he'd been worried and puzzled by the fact that humans have pretty good surveillance footage of his planet, and have never found any ruins or anything. But if the plan was to take everything along, maybe it worked. Maybe they're still out there, somewhere.

Though it also makes him wonder exactly how much time has passed. Gallileo would have seen the towers, right?

Chloe interrupts the moment to tell Diana she has a call from the Smithsonian, through the cafeteria speakers. Also, why isn't she answering her comms. She puts it on and tells her this is not the time. Camera switches to Chloe, who says it's a guy claiming to be her first boyfriend, "though they all want to believe that, right?". She listens to a response we don't hear, says ok and clicks at her machine. "Look, it's not that we don't believe you, but, well. We don't really believe you".

Then the camera cuts to the museum's director's office, where a guy is at the phone. He thinks for a moment, then says "ok, tell her, if she speaks a hundred languages, did she really expect me to believe she doesn't know what marriage means?". A woman who is with him raises an eyebrow and starts chuckling.

Elsewhere, Jason Todd is sharing some beers with Dick Grayson. "So, what's with the toy ring?" "A gift from my girlfriend. And it's actually bulletproof." "Girlfriend? Finally! Call her, let's meet up." "She... had to go back to her planet." "Oh, I see. Of couuuurse".

Clark Kent is trying to convince Steel that he is Superman, with little success. He reached him by following the graffitti of his symbol. He's also very out of shape and extremely out of breath. Finally they agree the two had never met anyways, Steel lets him borrow his phone to call someone better. He doesn't know the number.

Joker actually returns in Harely Quinn's body. He doesn't know if he's really a spirit from hell or she's having some psychotic episode, and more importantly, cannot decide which would be funnier. He breaks into Wayne Manor to yell at Bruce for giving up the cowl. He's half panicking, asking what "she" means and how "she" got there anyways. "Same as you, through the waterfall, up the staircase, through the clock." Bruce's face twists with fear. "You know, the day your parents died is a terrible passcode. I always meant to talk to you about that".

Back to the museum, Diana meets with Steve and his friend, who happens to be her mother. Her first question is how they found her, so he pulls his phone and says "these things are amazing!". I recognize that scene realistically has to be product placement, but I'd like it if it could be shot that way but the phone is a WayneTech.

The next question is how are they back, which they don't know. "One moment I'm crashing that plane into the sea, next a pretty lady asks if I want more beer. I thought the vikings were right!"

Hippolyta informs her she has a sister now, Donna. She was 15 when she had her accident, should be queen now. They've told her lots of stories about Diana. "Any of them true?" "That would be an incredible coincidence".

Some more people return, including various who we never knew of but logically should exist. Cyborg's dad, who I think could plausibly have died in the short video we saw back in BvS, I'd have to rewatch but that would be cool. Jinx's old sorcery mentor, Jonah Hex (I don't know anything about him except his name, but that is enough). Would-be Livewire's high school crush, the one that got away, to war. If our Flash isn't meant to be the first Flash, an older one; otherwise Starman, the previous wielder of Stargirl's staff. A prominent member of the activist group Static Shock was a part of, killed during a protest, which is what inspired him to join. Anyone from Task Force X who mentioned family right before dying. Definitely someone for King Shark, though I don't know him enough to say who that would be. Various friends and family of random members of the League. One or two famous actors or singers.

I'd like someone for Shazam, but actually there isn't anyone suitable. Which seems a good excuse to explain. There is a version of the Blackest Night/Brightest Day storyline going on somewhere else. This world doesn't have Lanterns and never has, the closest it's ever gotten was when a single Pink spent a few years hiding here, so the only effect this world is seeing is the return specifically of people who are loved by those close to her, then those close to those people, and so on. Also, it's not a one-time event. More and more people keep popping up as the effect spreads.

Jinx and Jonah do some divinations and figure out part of the above. Not the broader implications, but that "love" seems to be the key, and that the magic has a direction they can track. Maybe if they reach the center they can undo everything.

Some more people return, but only one matters. Supergirl's older brother. Which she complains is stupid, even if her destroying his timeline counts as him "dying", that will not have happened for centuries. He can't be born yet, let alone dead. She's actually venting into the League's comms, so the mages determine she has a point, he's an interesting case. They arrange to meet, somewhere on the planet.

Brother explains. After they sent his sister to the past, everybody was waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. He elaborates that it's not like they thought they would actually see the world change into a better one or anything like that; but they had instruments, which he doesn't even pretend to understand let alone be able to explain, that should have picked up the temporal distortions in the last moments before existence as they knew it stopped.

It took them a couple years to prepare agumentations for someone else, to try again. "Sister, it was the boy you used to dress in your clothes" "We were five!". Anyways, that also didn't work. The higher ups were debating trying a third time when a piece of planetary debris hit the moon, shattering the last remaining artificial atmosphere facility. He was deployed to do emergency repairs, his suit sounded an alarm, and then he was here. He assumes that was probably the End of Humanity.

His sister doesn't take it well. She starts mumbling silently, like she's trying to complain again. Then she starts breathing hard, like she wants to scream, but also can't. She finally flies away.

Elsewhere, Wonder Woman has been gathering people affected, trying to set up some semblance of order. Static Shock and his old idol are there. Martian Manhunter too, but not his wife. Some other heroes, and a bunch of civilians. Static's hero actually has taken the stand. He reminds his fellow returned to be respectful of their borrowed bodies, those people are the real victims here. He encourages them to prepare notes explaining everything, for after someone finally fixes things.

Martian Manhunter interrupts to say they can just tell them. Everybody looks at him. "It's only control they lack. All their perceptions work just fine". Everybody tries to process that. "Did... seriously no one notice?"

The news spreads through the League's communication network, so we get some of their reactions. Lots of horrified faces all over the world, of course.

In the Watchtower's observation deck, some hero pulls up his mask to throw up over the handrail.

At her station, future!Livewire is on air, so she gets it as text. She's trying to read it to her audience but can't get the words out.

Somewhere in the arctic, Supergirl screams "Of course! AND WHY NOT?!"

Joker, tied up in the batmobile, starts laughing like a maniac. Bruce apologizes to Harley, puts on one of those atlantean breathing masks, and pushes a button that fills the car with sleeping gas.

Clark has been trying and failing to excercise at Steel's gym. "i guess.. he won't be... as grateful... as we thought..." "I also have ice cream?" "...okay".

Jonah tells his host to be ready, he's going to try a spell to contact the other spirit within himself. It doesn't work, though. "I suppose the other spirit is me. I wonder if anyone has any spells for this sort of situation". So they resume trying divinations to find the way to unravel everything.

At approximately this point there should be the first returned who was specifically beloved by someone also among the returned, but I don't know how to make that explicit, short of the mages figuring it out.

Jinx finally announces that the lynchpin is someone in the League. That's why the effect spread through their ranks first, before reaching the public at large. They want everyone who has had someone return to report the time; the first one is probably the origin. Then they intend to study those two people, to find a way to extract the returned safely without killing them.

Jonah steals her comm to naysay that. He says they will break the spell immediately. "We all had our time. We cannot ask these people to give us theirs". He looks sternly at her, who looks about to argue, but closes her mouth and nods instead. Then he tells her they better keep up the magic search, since her ill-advised words will probably cause some of them to not volunteer their information. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to turn off the comm. She does it.

At Diana et al's place, she wants to try and find that way to keep everyone. Steve is against that, the guy on the comms was right; but she doesn't recognize his voice, she trusts Jinx's expertise. They start the split over this issue, as I had already advertised. Static's idol stands behind Steve, he had basically already spoken for that side, though he didn't know they would have to. Some of the other civilian returned look towards Diana. A few walk slowly to her side. The minor generic supers also start splitting up.

Martian Manhunter declares they're being ridiculous. None of them knows enough to decide anything. He flies through the roof.

Diana says he's right, they ALL need to learn more, so she leaves. Everyone that had sided with her follows. The last one is Hippolyta, who apologizes for her daugther before going after her.

Supergirl flies back to her brother and the mages, to scream at them about what the HELL they are thinking. They, mostly Jonah, try to calm her down and explain that it would be irresponsible to let this magic run any longer, but she tells them to shut up. That he was dead at the time so he probably didn't hear, but she travelled across time to save "aproximately everyone". Over ten billion people, dead before the end of the century. Any survivors basically a rounding error. So if she gave them all those lives, why can't they give her ONE. She pulls her brother into an one-armed hug.

They're looking at her with a mix of worry and fear, so she takes a deep breath. Still angry but more composed, says she's not even asking for THAT. Not really. Just some time. What would that magical research take? A few months? Couple years, maybe? And then they can make things right, for everyone. Because she's never actually saved a life; nobody has. All those people will still die eventually. But now, they finally have a chance to START saving people. She will help with anything they may need from her. As will all the others, surely, once they understand.

She extends her other hand towards them. Jonah backs away, but Jinx slowly walks forward and takes it. So Supergirl flies away with those two. We hear her voice again, he still has her comm in his hand. "Attention, all who want to help save EVERYONE. I have the Jinx. Join us in the <her city>". Then Wonder Woman's. "No, come to the Smithsonian. I have a secret bunker we can use". "Roger, on our way".

He is about to speak into the comm, but reconsiders. Instead he goes to find a random civilian, asks her to say "Watchtower, private question please". She's a bit confused, but complies. After a bit Chloe says "We are alone, what is it now?". So he explains. Probably we cut to her frantically typing away, so we don't need to hear the repeat exposition. She says that, yeah, about the same happened up there. Everybody already teleported down, she's alone with "the new guy".

Martian Manhunter is sitting at another computer next to her, reading text logs of all League chatter. He's the one to suggest Jonah should rendezvous with "Static Shock and his ancestor", who seemed to be gathering allies for that side. She looks at him curiously, and he says, until he's made up his mind, he should help keep both options viable.

So everybody else in the League starts rallying around their respective leaders. Cyborg is for waiting. He specifically thinks he can probably make robot bodies for the returned, at least temporary ones; he's waiting for Jinx to have the opportunity to discuss that with him. Flash is against, though I don't have anything specific. King Shark is also against; he should try to convince Supergirl, or at least suggest that they send him to talk to her. Stargirl is for; Jinx tells her she will have to perform whatever actual rituals she ends up designing; it'll probably be too dangerous for her, given the nature of her magic. The Wonder Twins are split, it doesn't matter which is which. We see a vast majority of the League converging at both locations. Both sides also have a bunch of civilians hanging with them, though the vast majority of people don't know as much as we do, and a lot of those that know run away from the upcoming conflict.

As the groups are gathered, both mages begin explaining. It starts by cutting between them fast, like one of those distant duets, but as soon as they mention "love magic" Supergirl taps her fist on her palm and says "Ah, the <Starfire's name>!". Everybody turns to look at her. "You know, the Nightwing's girlfriend? He's your patient zero. Come on!"

She picks up Jinx and flies away. Diana signals to 2 or 3 fliers to follow her, then begins instructing the rest in defending the place.

Supergirl flies through Nightwing's city (Blue Haven? Blood Haven? Something like that), scanning with her x-ray vision, looking for him. This should give us the opportunity to see more people reacting to the situation, some confusion, some horror.

They find him and Jason, still drunk, sitting against a wall. As soon as they land, he tries to point his finger at Supergirl, but can't aim properly. "Hey! You met <name>. Tell him she's real!" "What, like she won't lie to cover you? We ALWAYS do that!". Jinx approaches them, does some scanning magic, and announces that yes, this is the origin.

Supergirl starts trying to pick up all three of them, but the drunks keep squirming and spilling away. The other fliers finally arrive, so she says "Ah, good! Bring them!" and flies away with just Jinx again.

Next we need another scene in Static's camp, but I don't have anything specific. In general we keep switching between the two camps, as the two mages figure out what they can, sometimes requesting some resource or action from one of the heroes. When Jonah announces that the other guys have the nexus, they gear up to go on the assault.

They meet above ground, in the museum, formed in two lines facing each other. Jinx and Jonah step forward, to argue about the risks, potential rewards, and likelihood of either, none of which is exactly known to either of them. Supergirl starts the fight, by lasering someone who can absolutely take it, but it still causes both sides to charge.

Static uses his electricity to keep most of the other side in check. A few of his side hang about to protect him, most of the rest split in two to go engage Supergirl, who was already out of his area-of-effect, and Wonder Woman, who is immune to electricity. A few others start getting out and try to disrupt someone, he keeps moving to re-capture everyone. Flash is running all over the place, taking potshots where he can without risking getting caught.

Supergirl just flies slowly through the battlefield, letting her pursuers punch her, staring at them angrily. Occasionally she shoots small lasers out between them at the larger battle. Wonder Woman dances between her assailants, nobody can touch her. She keeps looking in Static's direction, waiting for an opening.

(Various of the minor, so far unnamed characters should get cool moments during this fight, to showcase their unique powers. Ideally, the audience should leave the theatre arguing about which origin story should come next, with the nerdiest in each group going "well, in the comics...")

Diana finally gets Static with her lasso, grounding his power. He shocks her as hard as he can, just in case, but she's unfazed. His bodyguards try to get it off of him, but nobody can even budge it, though it's not even tied up. The crowd he's no longer controlling begins to overwhelm them.

Flash focuses on Diana, kinda like the Omni-man fight. He can't actually hurt her, but it's distracting enough that some of the others almost get her a few times. After a bit of that, she tries to trip him, forgetting that she has Static grappled, so she splatters him against a wall with a squelching sound that makes everyone pause.

She darts out between her crowd, could have done it at any time really, and goes to craddle the corpse. Nobody's fighting anymore. Supergirl breaks the silence. "It's alright". Everybody stares at her, except Diana. "He'll come back. Everything will be alright!". A few of the crowd smile and nod. Others look at her with disgust. Not along party lines; there's people on both sides reconsidering.

She approaches Diana, asks her to give her the corpse so she can store it in a freezing cavern in the moon, "in case that makes things easier. Later". Diana doesn't respond, but doesn't do anything when she takes him from her arms and flies away.

Dick wanders out onto the battlefield, asking what's going on and can they please be quiet, his head is killing him. Everybody is startled by him, both sides look at each other but nobody wants to move first. He stumbles to where Diana is still sitting on the ground, staring at her hands, and hugs her. She starts crying then.

Jinx and Jonah whisper something to each other, then approach them together, both making signs to everyone else to stand down. They ask him to let them study him, together. To make an actually informed choice. He doesn't understand, but asks Diana if she'll be ok. She nods, so he follows them somewhere more open. They sit on either side of him and begin doing some magic. Everyone else approaches to observe, Diana last.

Eventually Jinx cries out and looks away. Everyone around them holds their breath. Jonah says the magic seems to be doing a search. They can't tell how or why, but the resurrections are just a side-effect. They no longer think there'll be a way to make them permanent, after whatever it's looking for is found.

Supergirl just returned from the moon. "We just find it first, and hide it from the spell". Jinx screams that they can't, it's too strong. Jonah agrees; he'd never imagined magic this powerful could exist. "Yeah, I bet. It wants a person. A worthy host". They're both about to question her, but instead scan Dick again. They're not sure, but it seems almost right. "So we find and kill this person. And then no one else has to die. Ever again!"

So now everybody is looking at her with a variable mix of horror, disgust and anger. Except Dick, he's rubbing at his temples and asking them to hold on. Diana is the one to stand up and speak against her. Remember that as Supergirl speaks with someone, she slowly flies into place so their faces are adjacent. I don't actually know how most of their argument should go, here's how it ends: "And what if you are the host this spirit is looking for?" "Then I hope you'll show at least a little gratitude for my sacrifice." "What if it wants your brother?" Then she punches her in the face.

As with the argument, I don't have an exact idea of how the fight should go before it ends. All I can say is that these are arguably the two strongest characters we have, so it had better be good. It ends with Diana grappling her from behind, holding her head to keep her laser vision away from some convenient innocent bystanders. She begs her to stop a few times, but she won't. Then she scrunches up her face, and shifts her arm to block the lasers with her armband.

She grimaces with pain as the metal grows redder with heat. Eventually it snaps and falls off. A bit of molten metal sticks to Supergirl's chin. Most of it falls on her chest and slides right off; her suit is extremely high tech. Wonder Woman keeps her arm in place, now she cannot contain her scream but manages to have it come out as an extremely tortured "Pleeeeease!".

After a while, it does stop. She falls into a sitting position, and Supergirl ends up lying on the ground, head in her lap. She's still looking up at her with immense anger, but also crying. Wonder Woman's forearm has two very small burn marks. Both are breathing hard. They get up, and slowly make their way back to Dick and the two mages. They are terrified, he's confused.

Both start pleading with him. He needs to stop this. He needs to give them time. They already lost too much. They can save everyone. And so on. He's visibly struggling to pay attention. Eventually, Diana phrases it as "forsake this connection" (that's the official term for a mage giving up their power source, most often in order to claim a better one; she knew that already, but probably we should hear it earlier this movie), and that finally pierces his headache. Kind of. He stands up and proudly declares that he'll "never give up on <Starfire's name>!". The ring on his finger lights up.

All over the world, the possessed spasm briefly, then a pink light flows out of them. They start looking at their hands and around them, in immense relief and disbelief. All the lights converge on Dick Grayson.

Supergirl screams and punches him. He flinches, and a barrier of pink light intercepts the attack, producing a shockwave that knocks to the ground everybody not already flying. She pulls back, her knuckles are very slightly bruised. He's fine, more confused, but apparently completely sober. She punches his barrier again, very slowly, almost just for show. Then she screams again and flies away.

As everybody stares at everybody else, waiting for someone to talk, Chloe's voice comes over their comms. "The new guy says it's over. What happened? Somebody report!". The end.

After credits, Dick Grayson is being escorted into an office. He's wearing his Nightwing costume, but all the blue has been replaced with pink. Inside is Harley Quinn. She has clearly been crying. The man that led him in leaves them alone. He pulls a chair a little closer to hers and sits down.

She sobs and apologizes incoherently, he says it wasn't her fault. She starts to retort, but he says "No, shut up. Look, the entire point of that fiasco was to make people meet with their loved ones, right? So if there's one person we can be sure didn't summon someone, it's whoever they ended up in! So you didn't do it. I bet it was that stupid cult of his".

She smiles briefly, then gets serious, but at least she's more calm. He makes a deliberate show of looking around the room, as if there could be eavesdroppers, then leans in towards her. She also leans in. "Or maybe Batman! I always had my suspicions with those two, you know?" She laughs this time, a healthy laughter, none of the clown nonsense. He sits straight and pretends to adjust his costume. "Come on, let's get you out of here".

The camera cuts to outside, to show us this was inside Arkham Asylum. She says "Ok, I'll try".

There's some more stuff i want to explain, though there's no good way of actually getting the info into the movie. Pretend the director said it in an interview afterwards.

The power wasn't searching for a host, Dick was always the only candidate. He was being tested. That's why it revived people who someone loved strongly, rather than people who themselves loved anyone; to tempt him away from his relationship. That's why the mages didn't feel quite right with Supergirl's analysis of the search, even if they couldn't exactly articulate the difference.

That's also why we didn't get any minors, returned nor possessed, and neither his nor Bruce's parents: if you got someone you would not at least consider spending the night with, it's because you're not that close to him. (Originally I had some kids and Martha Wayne for a "why did you say that name?" joke, but then I thought about the implications.)

He could also have exorcised individual people, by telling them "sorry, I have a girlfriend"; if he did that enough times, to enough different people, that would also eventually be enough for him to pass.

I suppose this means he's officially bisexual. At the very least, he wouldn't object hard enough that the Light could justify not giving it a try, just in case.

So, a few more half-formed ideas before the last big movie.

First, if Livewire is going to go evil, the League just killed her first love and lost their electric character. Now is her time.

Next, unless maybe it's instead, The Wonders. Diana takes extended leave of absence from the League to go visit that sister she learned about. Donna is 15, apparently Hippolyta died a few days before the events of Rebirth. At the end of the movie, Diana may choose to stay and/or Donna may choose to travel.

Also I guess she should romance an amazon, who dies. Just for nostalgia's sake.

Next, anything mostly inconsequential. Maybe one of those origins we were hoping people would be clamoring for. Or give a sequel to whoever is currently most popular, other than Supergirl or Nightwing.

Next, Cheetah. Starring that guy who got possessed by Jonah Hex. Turns out that's the best power source Jinx could get him on such short notice. He can access the same transformation Barbara had at the end of Wonder Women, minus the gem in her eye; and he learned how to do a little divination magic, though he's not as good as the others.

Since he remembers where the brooch was and they didn't actually take it after attuning to it, he should at least consider infiltrating them and stealing it. That could be the whole movie, or a quickly dismissed thought. Only issue is I'm not really sure if this guy should be a hero or a villain. If he's bad it's derivative, if he's good it's sexist. Which is better? I'll have a poll on

And so, finally, Red Daughter of Tomorrow. Very loosely based on one of my favourite comics, Red Daughter of Krypton, in which Supergirl becomes a member of the Red Lantern Corps. My Supergirl is not from Krypton, hence the name change.

The point of the movie is she wants to repeat the events of Rebirth, try and permanently resurrect everyone who ever has or ever will die. She gets a Red Lantern ring, goes to space to ask for help with that, but instead learns why they can't and shouldn't if they could. But the real point of the movie is for the narrative to finally get away from Earth, so we can get movies in other worlds. So along the way she should visit various interesting cultures, which would interest people in sequels; which I can't think of right now, except for one.

But before we start, some exposition on the nature of Lanterns in this universe, that I hope would come up more naturally in the actual movie.

They do not have a lantern-shaped object, nor do they need regular recharges. I'm keeping the name "Lantern" mostly for the brand recognition, though there should probably be a vaguely plausible excuse referred to somewhere in the movie.

They don't manifest finely-designed objects. They can surround themselves with a soft glow that gives them a livable atmosphere, and can spread it to others they touch, though it's calibrated for the Lantern and may or may not be good for other species. They can also strengthen that into shields, which gives it a more glassy look.

They can sprout tentacle-like protrusions, that are clumsier than most intelligent species' appendages, but also far stronger. Pinks' are softly curved, as we saw at the end of Lobo, Reds' have more jagged edges; I haven't thought about the others.

They also have or can produce various magical effects that are thematically associated with their corresponding emotion. They are capable of applying it beyond that, by regular sorcerous training, but that is rare; some theorize the power intentionally avoids those that could twist it outside its respective emotional type, though it doesn't abandon those that learn to do it afterwards.

The actual "rings" are not important. A newly-minted Lantern does get a classic-looking ring, made of some mysterious quasimagical material that, as Dick told Jason, is extremely durable; though not enough for it to really matter, as it's usually protected by its own power. As <Starfire> demonstrated, Lanterns can transfer the power to other items if they prefer, and they don't have to be rings, any clothing or jewelry will do. Anything that is considered "worn".

(Technically unrelated, her people don't use rings around their fingers, that's why she turned hers into a necklace. I think her costume has fingerless gloves, right? Let's say there's some traditional nonsense going on there.)

Lanterns are not the "police" of the cosmos. They control a small-ish sector of the galaxy, which is treated as a pseudo-nation, but is generally divided among colours unless a foreign threat presents itself. All space nations follow a general policy roughly along the lines of "leave them be". They also would mostly keep to themselves and probably wouldn't even be known in the wider galaxy, except that their magic keeps spilling out when looking for more hosts.

If they were properly united, there is no doubt they would be the single greatest galactic power. Since they are not, it is arguably the <Starfire's planet> empire.

All these facts are broadly well-known in the Legion's future (though the empire has since fallen), which is why Supergirl was instantly cowed when the princess revealed she was also a Star Sapphire: either the two powers are having an alliance, and she should have been nicer to their joint representative; or they are at war over her, and she should pick up her planet and run away.

So, movie. We start with Supergirl flying into the Watchtower. Various people try to greet her, but she ignores everyone. She's clearly scanning around with her x-ray vision. We may get a look through that, a couple members doing funny stuff.

In a training room, various fliers are practicing, Nightwing among them. Still the pink version. She comes in, rushes to grab him by the shoulders. "I need to go to the Lantern Space. Take me there". "What? I can't-" "You can. I know the way, come on!"

He shakes her off and backs away a little. "Where have you even been? It's been months! You can't just show up and-" "The <Starfire's name> needs you. Ever thought of that?" He looks surprised, then worried.

"Why are you even still in this planet? You should have gone to check up on her immediately." This actually relaxes him. "Ok, so you don't have info. Don't scare me! And I trust her to come if she needs any-" "What if she died?" He freezes again. "Actually, that's probably why your power needed a new host." "N-no, you're just-" "Or would you even care?"

He suddenly raises his hand, like he's about to slap her. She smiles, and sticks her face out, hands behind her back. He takes a deep breath and turns his back on her, to tell her about how he understands some of what she probably feels, it's not healthy for her, she has friends who would like to help, and when he turns around she's gone. "Oh, wow. That takes me back".

Her next stop is at the Sahara. She rummages through the storage compartment of Lobo's bike. First she pulls an interstellar communicator, checks that it has signal and the battery seems good, and sets it aside.

Next she pulls a small leather-bound book. It's full of photos of men and women, of various alien kinds, in underwear or less. The keen-eyed viewer will notice one Martian among them. No humans (yet?). She actually pauses to admire them, maybe does the head tilt thing, then shakes her head and tosses it over her shoulder.

Next, another book. Also sexy pictures, of Lobo himself. This one she burns in her hands.

The third book has what she wanted: his info on bounties, contacts, informants, etc. She searches it for the contact info related to <Starfire>'s bounty, and enters those numbers into the communicator.

First she's formally requesting help. Starts introducing herself by her Legion rank and serial, before realizing that's stupid, but finishes saying it anyways, and adds "codename Supergirl". There is no answer.

She makes various requests, steadily growing more desperate. Then angry. She ends up challenging all the Lanterns to come and face her wrath. "Every Green is a coward and the Reds are worse! Every Pink is a selfish bastard! The Yellows are one big JOKE!" I don't remember the other emotions, sorry, but assume she does and has adequate insults; this is our exposition for what the various colours do.

She ends up crying over the bike. Then she looks up. A red light is descending from the sky. She drops the comm, grabs a comically oversized gun, and flies up to meet it. It's not a person though, just an empty Red Lantern ring. She stares at it incredulously, then her face contorts in rage. "I don't want you! I want them BACK!"

The ring just floats peacefully before her. She starts shaking and snarling, then shoots at it with her laser vision. A long, sustained beam, growing brighter while she screams away. Lobo's gun shatters under her grip. She stops, rubs at her eyes, then looks again. The ring is still there, apparently untouched. She curses and sticks her left index finger right into it.

At the Watchtower's observation deck, one of the superheroes is trying to talk with Nightwing. He's holding a handful of flowers behind his back, which Dick can't see from his position. He stutters for a bit, and is told to stop, take a deep breath, and then tell him what's up. Supergirl flies in right above them, says "Sorry, his girlfriend called!" and grabs him with her Red Lantern tentacles, then drags him away before either can react. He grabs his face with the other hand, starting to cry softly, and tosses the flowers over the handrail.

(I'm getting some good mileage out of that set.)

On the way out of the planet, as he starts complaining, she tells him once again that they need to try and save all the dead people. He mostly believes what he was told, afterwards, that it was never possible; but decides it's worth a road trip, just in case. He also asks how she suddenly got a ring. "I challenged everyone to a fight, and they sent me this instead" "Sounds like 'come and get me, then' to me" "Right? Let's not keep them waiting!".

So, space adventures! Like I said, there's only one I have plotted out: the visit to Palace <Starfire's planet's name> in the city of <same name as before>, Capital of the planet <same name>, Seat of the Just and Benevolent <same name>, Queen of the <same name> Empire. (Would that sentence be more or less funny if I knew the actual name?)

Since that's the alleged reason for her to bring him, they should probably go there first. But there is some important events there, because all I know is those events and one locations so it's impossible for me not to put them there. So it has to be halfway through the movie, maybe two thirds. Let's say she got lost; the stars probably moved a little in a thousand years, right?

They reach the palace, skip to the front of the line for supplicants (he doesn't wanna) and ask for a meeting with the Queen. The guy at the desk is about to tell them off, but she shows him her ring, and he immediately bows and leads them into the castle, leaving the booth unattended.

On the way, Dick apologizes for the abruptness to the guy, who says it is no trouble. Then he asks her why are they here anyways, that's the one place they know she won't be. Supergirl says yes, but, her sister surely keeps track of her. Or at least can tell them where not to bother looking.

The guy leads them to an office, announces "Lantern Corps!". The door opens from inside. He lingers a moment before them, then bows and leaves. Inside it's actually <Starfire>, wearing an elaborate dress, sitting at a table overflowing with paperwork, frustrated. She sees them, then jumps to kiss him.

Afterwards he asks what she is doing here, and she says her sister tricked her into defeating her for the throne, so she could "run away and be a useless piece of <some alien food, probably>". Then she steps back, collects herself and says, more formally. "Thank you, friends, for coming to our aid. I am glad to tell you the crisis was finally resolved..." she pauses and counts with her fingers "...nine human days ago. Eight and a half? I think."

Supergirl sticks her hand in Dick's face and shouts "I TOLD YOU!". He rolls his eyes, pushes her away, and introduces her, telling his girlfriend they met once, before she left Earth. She studies her face for a bit, nods, and then jumps to kiss her, startling them both. Before either can react, she jumps back, shouting "Sorry! I forgot!" at him. That actually jogs Supergirl's memory, so she's the one to explain.

It was customary, among the <empire> nobility, to kiss those of lower social standing, as both greeting and goodbye. <Starfire> points at her and looks at him, nodding vigorously. She continues saying that, the historians theorize this served to force a moment of mutual vulnerability, to show no ill intent and no suspicion of the same from the other. The queen is clearly confused by the peculiar wording, but says "No, it's just polite."

He finally shakes out of his stupor. "So, the day we first met...?" "I'm sorry! I'd only been to your world for half a year".

Afterwards she really does need to finish that paperwork. They are officially welcome as Imperial Guests, so it's basically a montage of a luxury vacation. There's various normal stuff, fancy food, baths, massages, various artistic performances. They split off for her to participate in gladiatorial fights and him to try and learn a music instrument, sort of nunchakus with whistles.

As the fighters leave their weapons at the entrance, she puts her ring in a velvet cushion. It floats up to spin above it instead. She shoves it down with her finger, but it floats up again. She shoves it down again, holds it with someone's sword, and goes to the arena. It floats up again, pushing the sword off the table.

The scene should intercut between them, fighting and playing with similar movements. They meet again afterwards. "It was nice". "They disqualified me for the indestructible clothes".

Eventually he asks why all the servants are always waiting a moment before leaving their presence. She hadn't noticed, but immediately understands and begins laughing. They are waiting for them to kiss them; but not too long, it would be unwise to draw attention to your superior's lack of manners. He's not sure how to answer, settles on "good to know".

She reminds him, since the custom is to kiss your inferiors, he shouldn't try to kiss his girlfriend the Queen; wait for her to initiate. Good to know, again. Also, that as both Imperial Guests and members of the Lantern Corps, they should be effectively high enough to be safe from anyone trying to kiss them, except naturally for the Queen. He repeats that it's good to know, though he's visibly getting uncomfortable. She smiles. For the same reason, then, the two of them are at liberty to kiss any servant or commoner they desire, and could probably get away with anyone else on the planet, except naturally for the Queen. "OKAY YES GOOD TO KNOW THANK YOU".

After that, they finally have dinner with <Starfire>. Supergirl makes sure to look at his face while she's getting her kiss. They make some small talk, then she tells them she hopes their Tests were not too difficult. That they guessed the Whites would try to corrupt them, but didn't really have people available to send to check.

They both freeze. Some food falls from Supergirl's open mouth. She's clearly referring to the events of Rebirth (and assumes they both joined the Lanterns roughly at the same time, but that's unimportant). They're both trying to think of something to say. "...I was drunk for most of it". She laughs, almost spitting out a flourescent drink. "Yes, if they'd warned me we are immune to <some alien drug, probably>, I'd have tried some first!".

He asks what she means by that, but Supergirl shoves his face back. She says they're actually after info on what exactly happened back then. <Starfire> sighs deeply, and tells them to follow her to a nearby planet.

The White Lanterns are transdimensional abominations, trying to "devour the souls of every person in the galaxy, past, present and future, across all possible realities". About a hundred worlds' worth of people were lost, approximately, before they noticed and banded together to put them down. They did also lose almost a thousand Lanterns in the war; mostly Greens and Reds, these should expect more recruiting in the near future. In the end they were succesful in sending them back, they will be unable to try again for, more quick finger couting, seven hundred human millennia, at least. There is a project to find a way to store information in a medium that can survive that long, to leave instructions for next time; though they have suspicions that last time someone may have tried the same, and failed.

Supergirl whispers "try one millenium", and asks why the Lanterns, specifically, faced this threat. They didn't, of course; most governments sent soldiers or other resources. But Lanterns proved protected from their corruption, at least until the power itself is corrupted completely; and by the time anyone realized that they had already assumed command of the war effort. That's why the media called the enemy at large "White Lanterns", after the fully fallen members; though they were not actually the first they were certainly the worst. She asks what happens, specifically, to the people pulled from other times. From the future. An already averted future. They are kept alive until they have been the access point for three or four other temporal displacements, then their soul is devoured. Maybe "unmade" is a better word. Dick pokes at <Starfire>'s face, then points at Supergirl.

Her Lantern tentacles are dancing around her, carving away at the barren ground. She's shaking with rage, her hands opening and closing compulsively. Her mouth keeps moving, but no sound comes; she's not even breathing. <Starfire> looks at her sadly. "Oh. Yes, I feared this. Come on." She pulls Dick's hand. He tries to grab Supergirl, but she specifically pulls him away from her. "It's fine, this planet is empty." "WHAT?" She smiles, grabs him by the waist and drags him into orbit.

Supergirl's tentacles keep slowly growing longer, so she flies slightly higher and higher. Eventually she accelerates and flies high enough they can't reach anything, though they still move as if to try. She's high enough to see the horizon in all directions. She starts using her laser vision, which is Lantern-enhanced. It cuts mountains and digs deep enough in the earth to release magma. Her tentacles finally grow long enough to reach the ground from here, so she sinks one in and lets it plow a giant line as she flies around the world multiple times. Then she sees that, and it reminds her of the destroyed Earth in her past/future. She stops instantly, and all the Lantern energy dissipates. She tries to breathe, but there's no air so she just closes her mouth.

<Starfire> appears before her, very worried, and drags her back to the dinner room. "Better?" She nods weakly, then takes a small breath and says yes. "Then, don't dim your Light outside an atmosphere!" She smacks her in the back of the head, then hugs her. After a moment she looks around the room. "I think Dick got lost. Don't do anything until we're back, ok?" She nods, once. The Queen kisses her, then leaves again, and she sits back at the table, to eat slowly and with a vacant expression.

After a few days, a small montage of relaxing activities, and another trip to the same planet where she doesn't actually destroy anything before returning, <Starfire> announces she will probably be ready to leave "next morning, or the next one". She also reassures Dick that Pink Lanterns are just as powerful, which makes him say that that's not better, before admitting that "it is a little better, sorry".

That night, as he lies awake at the edge of a big bed, <Starfire> enters the room. Before he can react, she's on top of him, tugging at his costume and rubbing her hands on his face and chest. When he pushes her away, she rubs her face against his hand; but then he whispers "wait" and she immediately jumps to the side, sitting on the bed with her hands on her lap. She asks him what's wrong. He just stares at her incredulously.

"He doesn't want me in the room." The camera pans out to show Supergirl floating above the other edge of the bed, which is far too big for two people. Her eyes are closed. She's struggling to contain a smile. <Starfire> turns to look at her calmly, with an inarticulate questioning sound. Dick is startled; she had been pretending to be asleep. "Or him." She points away from them. The camera pans further to reveal a servant, standing at attention beside the bed.

<Starfire> pats her own thigh once. "Ah, yes, I remember this! Sorry, could you leave us?" The servant bows and exits the room. (The camera may resume normal operation now.) Supergirl laughs, and spins around to make sure Dick can see her face. "But I was really looking forward to this!" He stutters and turns his face to the other side. "I'm sorry, but he's more dear to me. We really must insist. Maybe you can ask my sister?" "Wait, WHAT?!"

In a bigger, more luxurious room, a servant is playing the instrument Dick tried to master, much more gracefully. Three more hold trays with food and drinks. A dozen wait at attention, in a line, alternating by gender. Lying on the ground, one foot on the bed, is the Elder Princess of the <name> Empire. She's tossing and catching a plastic ball one-handed, with a bored expression. She misses and it bounces off her stomach, then rolls off and stops near her face. She doesn't lower her hand or look at it. The first servant on the line walks over to pick it up and put it in her hand, then without waiting goes to stand at the back of the line. She waits until then to keep playing.

There is knocking at the door. "Sister? Visitors!" The first servant in line goes to open; the Queen kisses that one, Dick looks uncomfortable, Supergirl smirks at him. The servant goes to the back of the line. Then she goes and kneels on the ground to kiss her sister; Supergirl really wants to look at him, but some instinct draws her eyes to the princess instead. She's squeezing her toy a little harder than is warranted.

The Queen stands up, purposely walks away from the path between her friends and her sister, and introduces them by name, then as members of the Lantern Corps, then as her friends. She only says her name (which I don't know, surprising nobody) and resumes playing with her ball. Now it's the Queen that inexplicably pulls Supergirl's attention; her eye twitches once, but she forces herself to smile and asks, as sweetly as she can, how her day has gone.

I don't have the details of their conversation, it is pointless small talk. All that matters is that Dick and <Starfire> are polite and pleasant, while the princess and Supergirl are both about as rude as they think they can get away with. Eventually the Queen says they should leave; Supergirl says she wants some food.

The princess is directly between her and the food-bearing servants, so she flies right across, her feet almost touching her; she doesn't flinch or stop playing with her ball. After eating one of each different thing, she turns back to fly across the princess again.

As she reaches her, she swiftly rotates upside down to kiss her. The princess squeezes the ball so hard that it bursts, releasing pink smoke and glitter (it belonged to her sister). She rotates back upright and continues floating away, but the princess jumps to her feet, spits out a piece of fruit, and grabs her by the hair. "How DARE you?! I am STILL Queen of the <name> Empire, you insignificant..."

She suddenly covers her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide. "Of course! My apologies!" Her sister swiftly removes her ceremonial robe. Underneath she has her regular costume, except pink instead of purple, and the ring Dick gave her, again on a chain around her neck.

(She has also carved the symbol of the Pink Lanterns on every facet of the diamond, but I don't think we should get a close enough look to see that.)

She gives the dress to the next servant in line, who steps forward to receive it; she kisses that one far more shortly than she has anyone so far. Then she goes to grab Dick's arm, "Come, we must stop bothering her", and drags him away.

The other two watch them go, then turn to look at each other. "I hate you." She lifts her hand between their faces, to show off her ring. "We get that a lot."

And so it was that the three Lanterns came to travel together. They shouldn't meet any others. Maybe another Red, but the other colours are held in reserve for the future.

Now that she's away from her home and travelling with humans, the former Queen will try to not kiss anyone except her boyfriend; though she should forget or almost forget a few times.

And so we must come full circle. Early in Red Daugther of Krypton it is established that Red Lanterns, specifically, cannot ever give it up; it will inevitably kill them to try. Then, at the end, she does it anyways. I have already gone on record as standing against that. Choices should have consequences. I should make that this blog's motto. So instead the sport scene serves to show she can take it off, at least temporarily; and she will not give it up. In fact, neither of them should return to Earth, at least not immediately.

Bonus lore that may or may not be able to make it into the actual movie:

The Test for a Red is to prove their rage is righteous. As in, they honestly believe so; all Lanterns work on emotion, not moral or factual reasoning. Supergirl passed when she tried to refuse the power in exchange for something she held more important. If she'd immediately tried to take the ring, it would have dodged her, though she wouldn't automatically fail: it would keep dodging, to provoke her, to have a chance to judge her.

If she had made her challenge just a couple weeks earlier, she would have triggered another mass resurrection. Since it would be of people who are deeply hated, the consequences for the world would presumably be worse. On the other hand, since she would then have tried to stall in order for her allies to have a chance to hijack the magic and corrupt it to non-wrathful purposes, she would have quickly failed.

The Test for a Pink is to stand by a relationship that is already otherwise threatened. The way it should work is that the candidate would receive visions of alternatives. So in Dick's case, he'd see hot singles in his area looking for a man just like him. The visions are true, those people exist and are not being manipulated in any way; though it is illegal mind reading in most legislations that have rules about that.

Also, the test is not technically about resisting the temptation. He could have gone to fetch <Starfire>, then bring her along to seduce one or more of those people together. Could even do it on his own, without her knowledge, if he genuinely believed that that does not endanger his relationship, and still pass the test.

For <Starfire>, it was when her mother was sick. She was tempted with visions of other worlds. She wouldn't abandon her, but she knew she would lose her soon, so she was undecided. After the queen died, at the eulogy, she said that no matter where her feet took her from that day on, she would always carry her in her heart. That's actually a stock phrase, but she meant every word, and that was enough. Her ring politely waited in her room until all rituals and paperwork were done. Then she picked it up, to follow her latest vision, to Earth.

If she had been tested during the White War, instead it would have returned another of her dead ancestors, and of those around her, and so on. Since basically everyone has at least one ancestor they could love, the rate of spread would have been much higher. That world would almost certainly have been lost.

Few non-Pinks through the galaxy know this, but strictly speaking the Star Sapphires are a sub-group among them, who take charge of quickly and discreetly settling criminal charges resulting from the illegal visions received from new members' Tests. They officially hold themselves not accountable for other colours, but often intercede for them, on a case-by-case basis.

For jurisdictions that would exact prices they deem unacceptable (death, slavery, forfeiture of the ability that enabled the crime, among others) they instead declare war, rallying the entire Pink Lantern Corps, and as many members of other colours as will join. This is the main reason why their name is largely considered synonimous with their colour.

<Starfire>'s visions resulted in four lawsuits for illegal world-wide surveillance. One of them was decided in her favour on a technicality; their world had a long history of tourist slogans inviting "all people everywhere" to "come and watch the most beautiful world". The others resulted in what would have been the single largest fine paid in Star Sapphire history, were it not technically split three ways. They had hope to charge her back for some or all of that, they used bounty hunters because she had hidden in an uncontacted planet, and they didn't want to risk making contact, only to receive a fifth lawsuit.

She used the resources of of the Empire to pay back the fines, plus lawyer's salaries, plus reasonable interest. This is not actually related to how her sister stuck her on the throne, and in fact was not known to her at the time, but still will go down in history as part of her inaugural celebration costs. Given the short duration of her reign, she is the third most expensive, averaged per unit of time; and will have been the fourth by the time the empire falls.

She was also accused by the Star Sapphires of unlawful execution of a duly deputized agent of them, on the grounds that she should have removed his arm instead, and then probably all his other limbs for safety, which would probably have been survivable for him. They were unable to find a neutral jurisdiction to bring the case (they do not keep courts of their own), as Lobo seemed to have been either a national hero or persona non-grata everywhere in the galaxy. The charges were held in abeyance, then officially pardoned following her unprecedented valor during the White War.

There are already rumours in the Empire that she may be secretly Green or Red rather than Pink. Or even in addition; nobody can actually do that, per the "one magic source" rule, but such myths are still common. The most popular numbers are two and seven.

If Supergirl had paid more attention in history class, she would have recognized the princess' name when Lobo first mentioned her, as "the greatest Green Lantern who ever lived". She would then have vetoed his plan, brought him to hide in the Watchtower Station, and recruited the League to discreetly and politely find her and ask her to please not bring that kind of danger to their world. She would have turned herself in peacefully.

He would have spent the search time seducing as many superheroes as would have him, as well as sharing advanced scientific knowledge. "Anybody asks, you heard it from that future babe you got, yeah?". Earth would eventually honour him as a Founding Father, after Unification. He also would have recognized Martian Manhunter and informed him where his people's home world is, though he'd refuse to ferry him. Ok, enough fanfic-of-the-fanfic.

The elder princess of the <name> Empire fills her room with an unnecessary amount of servants, in part, to make other nobles that visit her feel they have to spend the time kissing them all, or else feel guilty for skipping that ritual.

They do in fact use their tongues. Legion historians believe it was to give the other party a chance to bite down.

Their empire eventually fell, at least in part, due to a mass outbreak of an illness that would later come to be informally known as "noble's breath".

Supergirl's vision is enhanced by the Red Lantern magic because it recognizes it as a manifestation of her rage; I hope it comes across that she has consistently used it that way.

Lobo's space-bike still works. It doesn't have any life support; his people can survive in deep space for extended periods, and he enjoyed bragging about that. Plus it makes it less desirable to thieves and joyriders. Supergirl is also capable of some extra-planetary travel; if she had not been recruited to the Red Lanterns, she would have debated with herself for a few months more, then taken it to go to space that way.

The timeline for <Starfire>'s life on Earth is a bit tight, but I think it works out. She arrived roughly seven years after Jason Todd died. If DC has any canon fictional city in Mexico or Canada, she should have lived there first; otherwise Mexico City, on the grounds of being the most densely populated in the hemisphere.

At first she still behaved as a royal, which made her highly unpopular among her neighbours. Also accrued some charges for public indecency, on account of all the kisses. A month in, these convinced her to self-exile, cross the border, and promise herself she would do better. Dick met her while he was in <the Titan's city> to help investigate a serial killer, who turned out to be three freak accidents and one copycat.

Zod detected her planetary surveillance system on approach, but unlike Lobo, didn't bother trying to determine their origin; he simply assumed it would be either Kal El or the locals, and decided to charge ahead either way. She knew had had happened to Krypton, and considered his actions a legitimate salvage effort by a dying species; though it was being conducted in a more aggresive way than she would like, she determined to stand neutral and let the two worlds sort it out, one way or the other. Superman finished things before it could get bad enough to test her resolve.

(If he hadn't and things had gotten worse, she would eventually have gone to Zod, to plead for mercy to her adopted home, and offer her Empire's help in having his people settled in an unhinabited planet instead. He would have refused, as a matter of pride. She then would have left, with as many humans as he allowed her to evacuate (plus her boyfriend, regardless), to help them set up a new world.)

By the time she left Earth, the Whites were starting to be active, though nobody had realized the magnitude of the threat, and the Lanterns had not gotten involved yet.

After coming back from her aborted trial for Lobo's murder, her sister challenged her to a celebratory match of a popular collectible card game, of which she herself is thrice Galactic Sector Champion. Through the match she kept taunting her to escalate their gambling; after the Imperial Gown was on the line, she cheated and was disqualified.

Since the contest was not to the death, the forfeit wouldn't necessarily have been binding, but she publically declined to invoke that clause "out of deep shame and regret for having resorted to such tactics in the heat of the moment". She is also banned-for-life from all organized play, which she does regret.

<Starfire> was Queen when the Lanterns called for help; her Empire sent the single largest armed contingent of any space nation. Her taking charge of such a large part of the army is what gave her so many opportunities to demonstrate her bravery.

The end.

After the credits, King Shark runs into a recreation room at the Watchtower. "I hear she's back! Where is she?". He's holding a chess board in his hand, the folding kind.

And one more thing. Here are my ideas for the posters for all these movies.

Man of Steel - Same as the canonical one.

Batman v Superman - Same as the canonical one, unless it shows Wonder Woman, then photoshop her out. I don think it does, though.

Steel - Closeup of the metallic Superman symbol.

Wonder Woman - Same as canon.

Jinx - Her loitering against a wall, under an open ladder.

Justice League - Multiple sheets of paper, with sketches for various potential League logos.

Static Shock - Protest sign, filled with bullet holes, abandoned in a rainy street.

Aquaman - Same as canon.

Wonder Women - Both of them, in their masked identities, posing dramatically together on top of a rooftop.

Task Force X - Folder labelled "Top Secret". Photos of various members peek out.

Supergirl - Her doing a deliberate rip-off of the one for Terminator. The jacket is over her regular costume, open enough that we can make out the symbol on her chest. Replace the gun with some object that ends up being useful to change the future.

Shazam - Same as canon.

Jokerz - That one Beatles' cover, but with clown faces. Not Joker or Punchline. Probably realistic versions of specific clowns from episode 1 of Batman Beyond, if that can look decent and still recognizable.

Watchtower - Her empty workstation. Cellphone, headset, and some other devices abandoned at the table.

Lobo - Him doing a deliberate rip-off of the one for Terminator 2. With his space-bike, and a sci-fi rifle long enough to go off-panel.

Magic 2: Sufficiently Advanced Boogaloo - If Zatanna appears in an important role, a top hat, some playing cards, etc. If she's only here as a twist or missing, something related to the bad guy.

Unnamed Static Shock Spin-off - If it's Ivy, her lounging sexily among leaves and petals, dressed in more leaves and petals. The greenery is carefully arranged so if you step back, it looks like a monster's face. If it's not her, no idea.

Undetermined - No idea.

Justice League: Rebirth - One of their regular shots of the team in a line, staring stoically at the camera, but it's alternately costumed heroes and regular people.

Livewire - Official-looking document bearing the League's logo, on fire.

The Wonders - Impossing marble statue of the late Queen Hippolyta of Temiscira.

Undetermined 2: Handwave Harder - No idea.

Cheetah - A desk drawer full of jewelry, prominently featuring the cat eye brooch.

Red Daughter of Tomorrow - Her hands doing the Twilight cover, apple replaced with the ring.

And that's it. Thank you for reading. Now go back to your family, they must be worried.

[phoenixyfriend]

When Obi-Wan gets to AotC, there's also about two dozen Anakin clones on-site. They're all girls because... IDK Anakin is trans. They have a hive mind and are developmentally a few years younger than Anakin himself.

It's incredibly unsettling to Obi-Wan.

It's almost definitely a "fuck with Anakin's already fragile mental health" ploy by Palpatine, along with a "what if Jedi Black Widows, for me, a Sith Lord. Wouldn't that be neat? That would be neat."

Anakin is torn between "this freaks me out" and "GANG OF BABY SISTERS LET'S GOOOOOOO."

(I just finished reading Like Real People Do by glimmerglanger, so this is definitely inspired by that and the obligatory 'lay back in bed and daydream variations on plot points of that fic you just really enjoyed,' and also a little by Same Heart, Same Blood by loosingletters.)

They're physically like 14-16 on average, and Anakin's vibrating out of his skin with a million conflicting emotions, but when he tells Padme she's just like "oh, you have a handmaiden gang!"

I told this to @willowcrowned and she suggested:

Once Anakin decides to repress the part of him that’s weirded out and just regard them as baby sisters he gets. A little strange about it The first time one of them dies he may or may not slaughter every person he can [in response to Padme's comment] Anakin starts worrying that he needs to get them cool matching outfits

I also chatted about it with @firebirdeternal and they said:

Gang of Unsettling Smol Siblings is exactly the Karma that Anakin deserves

Do you think the Clones have a kind of Collective Name that they use at first that eventually just kind of morphs into a new last name? Skysisters or something? Like Palpatine was trying to be clever and name them like the Nightsisters.

I initially went with "functionally one person" hive-mind but I'm torn.

I think maybe they're BASICALLY one person on Kamino but drift into Separate Consciousness once they're far enough apart physically that their minds don't blend from proximity anymore.

Then they start Dating (like half of them are dating Fett clones because they grew up with these dudes, it's like childhood friends romance), and Anakin loses his mind about Protecting Them and They're Too Young.

Padme: You're nineteen and we just got married, they can date. Anakin: THEY'RE EIGHT. Padme: And the Fett clones are ten and dying for us in the field. Get them rights before you panic about their love lives.

Firebird:

it could be worse, one of them could imprint on Obi-Wan. "Anakin I promise I won't yell at you for the next five stupid things you do if you can figure out a way to stop this baby from having a crush on me" (I like the idea of Obi-wan bargaining not with "I won't be mad at you ever" because they Both Know That's Not True, and instead haggling with specific allowances. Like he's handing out Stupidity Coupons)

Please imagine Mace and Obi-Wan's personal responses to the idea of suddenly having to deal with not one, not two, but OVER TWENTY SKYWALKERS.

Plo is delighted to take one off their hands.

So is Yoda.

Willow:

Mace is like. okay suicide isn’t the Jedi way but on the other hand. i physically cannot deal with this Yoda: a skywalker, you say? one who is tall enough to reach the top shelf, you say? such a skywalker, bring me

Anakin would be given at least one because fuck you, suffer with us, but he's still a padawan so Ugh, fine, no.

I want to say one stays on Coruscant to hang out with the Guard, and ends up half-adopted by Padme. She keeps dressing up the Aniclone left with her in handmaiden outfits and sending selfies to Anakin.

"Hanging out with the little SiL!"

Anakin has so many issues about WHEN his genetic material was acquired.

And there's some confusion from the Fett clones about how much of a hive mind is normal for Jedi. They are confused that the answer is basically none, and "this is WHY nobody clones a Jedi"

ONE OF THEM STEALS BOBA FROM THE ARENA ON GEONOSIS.

Firebird:

"I have followed in our progenitor's footsteps and acquired a sibling." holds up a struggling Boba "He bites."

Willow:

Ooooo okay so if they have a sort of hive mind then they probably don’t have names other than their designations on Kamino right BUT When they SEPARATE The one that picks Boba up on Geonosis gets a name specifically for that. Okay what if the one Padmé picks up gets some variant on ‘pretty’ because she’s always being dressed up BELLE Maybe Yoda’s Ani has a name that means thief? Because obviously Yoda is using Anakin to steal sweets

So, to make the timeline work...

I don't think anyone would give Anakin one of his sisters until after he's knighted at least.

So obviously when they're doing initial placements none of the sisters go to him or Obi-Wan.

Once he's knighted, of course they're already all placed with someone, and Anakin instead gets Ahsoka. He loves Ahsoka. She is also a little sister. He said so.

At some point afterwards, one of the sisters is left without a place because the Master that was in charge of her died in the field battle.

That sister then gets placed with Obi-Wan, because he's already mostly-successfully raised one Skywalker, so he can do it again.

Anakin gets to hang out with her basically all the time.

Ahsoka is very very jealous of this girl stealing Anakin's attention.

Anakin is oblivious to the rivalry.

He asks Barriss to look after them while he's discussing Adult War Things with Luminara and Obi-Wan, and Barriss gets an eye into This Mess, which is quickly colored by Ahsoka growing a puppy crush on the lovely Miss Offee herself.

Firebird:

Ahsoka: Ah yes, my nemesis. Anisister: Ah yes, my new older sister whom I want to impress so bad.

"I will impress her by being Stoic and Competent" "Oh my god she must think she's so much better than me what a bitch"

Anakin is oblivious to most things to be fair Anakin: Laser focused precision fighting machine who can read the tiniest body movements and predict your moves seconds in advance, who also cannot understand even the most basic social nuance. I was originally writing this as to Dunk on Anakin but then I made myself sad, because none of those things are really his fault.

So you know that post about like, Sasuke and Brooding, specifically in the context of "Brooding" as it's used to refer to Nesting Chickens? Grouchy and protective and sitting on a tennis ball trying to hatch it because they're just. "These are my Babies." Anakin Broods. Baby sisters. Must protecc. "I'm actually fine and extremely deadly in combat." "MUST PROTECT."

Bad Guy: [catches Ahsoka in a Trap] Aniclone: Must rescue sister! Aniclone: [fights, is not winning fight, gets ouched] Ahsoka tearing her way out of Trap: I lived bitch. Also: stay the fuck away from her. [murders so hard]

Ahsoka catches the Protective Older Sib feels by the traditional method: "Hey, only I'm allowed to be mean to them."

Willow:

Oh Anakin has no clue what���s going on. He walks in on Ahsoka glaring at the Ani and is like!!! Little sisters!!! Bonding!!! When Ahsoka was about three seconds away from tossing her out of the airlock. Ahsoka mistakenly assumes that Barriss has a crush on the Ani, and gets even MORE jealous.

Obi-Wan is like oh god. I can’t take care of an Anakin going through puberty again. He’s great with periods and other stuff because he read about a billion books. He is TERRIBLE with everything else, as he was the first time.

Barriss is like???? YOU'RE BOTH CHILDREN, PLEASE CALM DOWN, I HAVE ZERO INTEREST IN DATING ANYONE, LET ALONE SOMEONE YOUR AGE.

IDK how old Obi-Wan's Aniclone is, probably physically the same age as Ahsoka?

Per @atagotiak on discord:

Also something something, similarities btw Anakin and Obi-Wan where like. "Am I a parent? That seems uncomfortable, I'm too young to be a dad to a kid this age, I mean I'm cool with being a mentor/caretaker but..."

Obi-Wan can't even sidestep parenthood this time.

"Is Anakin basically your dad?" "Uhhhhhh" [Muffled discussion] "So Obi-Wan is your dad." "Okay!" "WAIT NO I DIDN'T AGREE TO THIS"

Ahsoka: She's stealing my brother, that BITCH. Obi-Wan's Aniclone: new sister new sister new sister gotta make a good impression

Firebird:

I feel like the Sister Squad would make very effective interstellar espionage agents Even like, kind of by accident. They just get encouraged to branch out in their interests and figure out what they want to do with their lives and end up all over the dang place, and since they're all pretty dang competent they tend to gravitate towards Important Positions wherever they end up. Except for one sister who just retires to raise Space Sheep.

I like that in this AU Palpatine is just like "I will create an army of Loyal Murderers who will obey my every whim and also be a big psychological lever on my Other Pet Murderer," and then they all just Baby Duckling imprint on the first Jedi to be nice to them instead and he has to just be like "Wait no not like that."

AND one of them Steals Boba

I want Obi-Wan's Aniclone to start dating Fives. All the sisters judge her for it, because he's a Goof. A very competent, ARC Trooper goof! But a goof.

Not as goofy as Anakin, though.

Firebird:

Who expects a clone of Anakin Skywalker to not make questionable lifelong romantic choices impulsively?

[violetlunette]

So, I wrote this after I came across posts about Bakagou and Tenya. In these, people would say things like, “Everyone goes on about Bakagou telling Izuku to kill himself, but never bring up that Tenya tried to murder someone,” or “People go on and on about Bakagou, but Tenya’s actions were worse and no one talks about him!” And so on. Due to getting distracted by something shiny, I temporarily forgot this argument. But I remembered it, I’m here, so, let’s get this posted because Tenya deserves better. (Keep in mind that one or two points might be outdated however.)

First of all, why are people comparing the two?? The situations were and are COMPLETELY different. But even if we did compare the actions of the two, I argue that Bakagou’s actions would still be worse than Tenya’s. Yup. I said it, and I’m going to explain why. This is mainly a Tenya defense post, but there are Anti-Bakugou and Bakugou Critical elements below. As I’m talking about Bakagou’s past, I will be kicking a dead horse and bringing up topics I’m sure we’re all sick of hearing by now. Oh, and yes, this is very opinion-based as the whole point is me explaining why I think Tenya has the moral high ground and why his actions didn’t bother me. There may also be some bias as while I don’t hate Bakagou I have an INTENSE dislike for him. Ye have been warned. ACTUAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: I will be discussing bullying, suicide baiting, and attempted murder. If any of these offend you, please move on.

Okay, so here’s the basics of the situation of each and their actions;

During the sports festival Tenya’s brother was attacked by a serial killer named Stain simply because Tensei wasn’t like All Might. He was severely wounded and hospitalized, almost dying. Luckily Tensei survived. Sadly though, he was disabled and injured to the point where he’d have to give up his hero career. Tenya is enraged at the man who did this to a big brother he idolized and worshiped. Blinded by rage and grief, Tenya decided to go after the Hero Killer and take him down. This almost got him killed, and Tenya had to be saved by his friends.

Bakagou was born with a powerful quirk that everyone thought was cool. Even before he got his quirk, Bakagou was shown to be smarter than the other kids, a talent he used to demean Izuku others. Because of these two qualities no one ever scolded him for his actions, so Bakagou did whatever the hell he wanted. Mainly, he bullied a boy his age with BOMB powers even though said boy couldn’t do ANYTHING to protect himself, for their entire childhood. Bakagou always wanted to be the strongest and felt a constant need to prove it.

“Wait a minute! Isn’t the whole point of this post is to explain why Tenya’s actions weren’t worse than Bakagou’s? How can you say that when Tenya tried to KILL someone. Bakagou was just a bully, right? How can you say he was worse?”

Well, let’s get into that, shall we?

First off, Tenya had a VALID reason for feeling the way he did unlike Bakagou (we’ll get to that).

Tenya’s beloved brother, who was also his hero, was almost murdered and severely injured!

Imagine seeing someone you loved at death’s door in a hospital attached to machines, tubes, and the like. Imagine spending hours/days--I don’t remember how long Tensei was in surgery--being able to do nothing except pray that person will live. And by some miracle, that person does live, only to discover that despite all those agonizing hours/days, he’s still going to have lasting injures. That he had officially lost EVERYTHING he spent years dedicating his life to every day. His entire lively hood was stripped away, and why? Because he didn’t meet some guy’s standards of “hero.”

Tensei wasn’t a bad hero. Far from it, he was actually a good hero and a genuine person. We get proof of this in “BNHA: Vigilantes” where we see that he’s a great guy with the best of intentions. However, just because he wasn’t exactly like All Might, Stain decided he wasn’t good enough and decided to end him (as far as I know, Stain meant to kill Tensei).

How would you feel in Tenya’s position? I can’t speak for anyone else, but my fury would go beyond words. So much so that I too would forego justice for vengeance. Would that be right? No, it would not. But here’s the thing; NO ONE EVER SAYS THAT IT IS. 

 No one pushes aside the fact that while Tenya’s feelings are understandable, his acts are NOT okay. He’s called out, scolded, and told WHY it’s wrong, that it’s not heroic of him to hunt someone in cold blood. And oh yeah—there are consequences for his actions. His recklessness and need for revenge almost results in four people getting killed, gets Manuel’s and Gran Torino’s teaching licenses revoked for 6 months along with a pay cut. He also almost loses his arm. The most important thing from all this, though? He learns his lesson and takes active steps to get better, which we SEE in action. Most importantly, Tenya never repeats the actions that got him and others in trouble. Again, he LEARNED his lesson.

Oh, and here’s something that people tend to overlook--

STAIN WAS A FUCKING SERIAL MURDER. He wasn’t some innocent individual. He wasn’t even just a thug! He was someone who actively hunted and murdered people for not meeting his standards of hero-dom.

It was wrong for Tenya to go after Stain because it placed TENYA in danger, and it’s not heroic to go after with the intent to kill. That being said, I’m not going to feel too bad that he wanted to put a crazy serial killer down.

Now let’s look at Bakagou;

As I stated at the start, Bakagou grew up arrogant because he was more intelligent than the other kids, had a great quirk, and was never scolded by anyone. No one even really called him out for being a jerk. (YMMV) Because of this, Bakagou grew a massive ego and wanted to prove that he was the best. As a result, he fought a lot of other kids. (It’s hinted he used to bully others as well, but I’m willing to bet the story changed that to “they challenged Bakagou first” shit.) And who was his main target? A QUIRKLESS child. Bakagou attacked someone over and over again who could NOT defend himself. To top it off, Bakagou got others to help attack Izuku as well. Did he purposely tell others to attack Izuku? None that I can see, but he did lead his friends and took pleasure when he saw others following his lead in class.

Stuff like this went on for TEN years. TEN. YEARS. From 4 to 14.

Time skip to the start of the story to Bakagou’s first interaction with Izuku. At age 14—old enough to have grown a conscience by then—is shown blowing up Izuku's desk, backing him against a wall, and taunting him. (In front of a teacher who doesn’t do a damn thing, btw.) Then when class is over Bakagou destroys Izuku’s notebook, throws it out the window, threatens him with violence once again, and then ends it by telling Izuku to jump off a roof so he can be reincarnated as someone with a quirk.

Why? Because he found out that Izuku wanted to go to UA. 

And the reason for all this? The reason for years of bullying? His hatred of Izuku? Because Bakagou couldn’t understand why Izuku was constantly kind, so he made up a bullshit reason in his head that Izuku was looking down on him. That’s it.

No tragic backstory, no CONFIRMED abuse in the story, nothing. Bakagou was just spoiled by society and felt insecure around a boy who actually acted heroically. Izuku did nothing to earn the abuse Bakagou did to him. Izuku was constantly kind and even risked his life to save Bakagou on multiple occasions. Yet, just because Izuku made Bakagou feel insecure about himself, he would lash out--with bomb powers--while doing everything he could to tear Izuku down.

There are several reasons I’m more sympathetic to Tenya;

First off, the target of Tenya’s rage, again, was a SERIAL KILLER. An adult who could always defend himself. (And did.) Not to mention Stain earned Tenya’s anger through his actions of TRYING to MURDER his brother and DISABLING said brother for petty reasons. That’s a valid reason to hate someone.

Now, I’ll admit that the validity of emotions is subjective, but I don't think that Bakagou feeling insecure about himself justifies years of torment. Especially when Izuku never did anything. All Izuku ever did was be kind and maybe tell him to stop picking on others.

The next reason I sympathize with Tenya and not Bakagou is the state of mind they were in when they performed these actions.

When Tenya went after Stain he was riding high on emotional turmoil. He wasn’t thinking clearly. His mind and judgment were clouded with grief and anger as someone he loved was hurt. It’s hard to think clearly under those conditions.

Meanwhile, every time Bakagou hurt someone his mind was clear. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing and in some cases they were premeditated. With a clear mindset, Bakagou chose actions that caused harm in some way. And why? Because it made him feel better. No one forced him and the only emotion pushing him was envy, it was a clear and conscious choice he made. And these were choices he made FOR YEARS. Hell, he even unleashed a move that he KNEW could have killed Izuku in a “calm” state.

There's also the aftereffect to take into consideration; No one was seriously injured by Tenya’s actions except maybe the murderer who was stopped and locked away. Izuku doesn’t have physical scars, but he does have mental and emotional scars. Before U.A. Izuku was terrified of Bakagou—and with good reason. He flinches instinctively when Bakagou raises his voice. His low self-worth? Result of Bakagou’s bullying. Whether the story is willing to admit it or not, his actions had a lasting effect on Izuku, and they still affected him to the present. (Until the narrative decided to casually push it to the side and hope no one noticed anything.) This brings me to my next—and admittedly pettiest—reason that allows me to forgive Tenya and not Bakagou is how the narrative treats them. As a person who loves stories, I tend to judge how a story reacts to its characters and their actions more than what the characters themselves do.

The story handles Tenya’s actions in a way that satisfying. There is not one moment when the narrative tries to justify, play down, or explain away Tenya’s actions. Every time it’s brought up, it’s mentioned as a failing on his part. Tenya was wrong to put himself in danger. It was wrong for him to go after Stain with the intent to kill. His recklessness not only almost got him killed but almost got him killed. Even Tenya admits he fucked up. And it didn’t take 300 chapters plus 11-10 years to realize this. He learned his lesson and got better. He realized that his actions were dangerous, and he never does it again. Tenya even tries to stop others from making the same mistake in the future. More importantly, he’s never rewarded for his actions.

We don’t get that with Bakagou. After a certain point, the narrative ignores or downplays Bakagou’s deeds, which I made an argument for in a past post.

It’s only recently that we start to address these issues, and even then they’re barely touched on.

Does Bakagou learn his lesson……...debatable, but I’ll be generous and say he has. Yet despite that, he still acts like the same arrogant brat he was in the beginning. He still attacks Izuku and tells him to die. He still charges into danger without thinking things through and has to make it all about him. (YMMV)

Is it all his fault? No. Bakagou was NEVER scolded for his actions. He was never told what he was doing was wrong by anybody. Maybe if SOMEONE had pulled Bakagou aside after he nearly killed a fellow student and told him, “Hey, I know you were playing the villain, however, as heroes we try to avoid killing people, and you went too far here.” MAYBE he would have learned the lesson sooner. Aizawa, All Might, I love you both but was it REALLY that hard to pull the kid aside and scold him? I’m not looking for public shaming here, just SOMEONE to tell him that he was wrong.

And maybe if the rest of the class would stop ignoring his action and treat him the way Class B treats Monoma, Bakagou would get the hint not to be an asshole to everyone he meets. But no one ever did, so it took over 200 fucking chapters for him to finally admit he was wrong.

But here’s the thing that gets me; Bakugou’s actions are usually rewarded, or ignored, no matter how bad they are. Think about it, when does Bakagou ever suffer as a result of his bullying? When does he suffer the consequences of hurting Izuku another?

Told Izuku to kill himself after threatening him with physical harm and destroying his property? Never brought up again. (And no, getting possessed by Sludgy doesn’t count. That wasn’t a result of his actions, it was bad timing.) Tried to kill Izuku while potentially endangering Ochaco and Tenya because he threw a hissy fit? Learns a part of Izuku’s secret and gets the first clue about OFA, then is comforted by the person he tried to kill AND All Might. Seriously, the worse he gets is a “grow up” from Aizawa the next day. (There are other moments as well, but I digress.) The point is that 8/10 his actions are ignored or rewarded by the narrative, which turns any sympathy points I may have had to irritation.

To summarize:

1: Tenya’s reasons for wanting to hurt Stain were valid and earn by something Stain did. Bakugou’s reasons for hurting Izuku FOR YEARS were out of petty jealousy and shit he made up.

2: Tenya went after a killer. Bakagou went after someone who couldn’t defend himself repeatedly for TEN YEARS.

3: Tenya wasn’t in his right mind when he went after Stain. Bakagou was in his right mind every time he hurt Izuku.

4: There were consequences for Tenya’s actions. There are none for Bakagou’s bullying.

5: Tenya learned his lesson right away and apologized to those he troubled. It took Bakagou forever to realize he was acting shitty.

6: The lasting damages of Tenya are minimum. Bakagou’s actions are overreaching the entire story, whether they’re brought up or not.

7: Tenya did it ONCE. And again, it was under emotional distress. Bakagou hurt Izuku time and time again for YEARS out of petty jealousy.

Again, these are two different circumstances and as I said you can’t compare the two. If you’re going to compare Bakagou to anyone, Endeavor’s the better fit.

[chillenby]

Okay. I'll try to explain it as best as I can without spoiling it and while covering everything you might need to now. (If you want me to explain everything else in detail just ask, I'll be more then happy to do so, but I certainly recomend for you to watch or play the game because it's great and has amazing retro graphics and soundtrack)

Since it's a bit longer post I'll just title the segment so that you can skip if you're not interested in something

Intro

It's a psychological horror with darker themes. Rape, murder, suicide and even canibalism. It's a game you can purchise on steam for like 12 bucks or watch a playthrough on youtube (most of them are about 2 hours).

It's about a crew in space. That's all I can say without spoiling it too much. It has a pot of metaphoric meanings and delves into a lot of different deeper topics (which is great if you're into more phylosophic type things and it can cause you to think about it a lot, from their catchy lines to just it over all) and they have a few characters that are very well written and really human.

Daisuke

For characters, Daisuke is the fan favorite, he's the youngest (18-20 years old) and he's the intern. People gravitate to him because of 2 things, 1) they see him as a silly guy (which compared to other characters he is because he jokes the most and is practically a lighthearted character) and 2) they find him relatable because he doesn't know what he wants from his life or his strengths.

Anya

Then Anya is also the fan favorite, she's a polite nurse that in the game doesn't actually have a lot of personality. Which in a nerative way makes a lot of sense. People gravitate to her because some of them have been in similiar situations and she makes them feel seen, while others feel bad for her and from a lot of different ao3 tags say that they think she deserves a hug

Sweansea

Sweansea is that typical old grumpy character you have in a lot of media and he's the engineer of the crew. He's Daisuke's mentor and a lot of people like to think of him as Daisuke's father figure. He's gruff, a bit blunt and in the end has one of the better monologs and opinions of the whole game.

Jimmy and Curly

Jimmy (co-pilot) and Curly (captain) are my favorites and the plot focuses a lot on them because we play as them, switching between their neratives. They're surtainly complex characters and most of the plot is built around them. Jimmy is that assholish character, mean, rude, greedy and selfish, while Curly is that guy people rely on and concider a nice guy. Polar oposites, but they are close friends.

Polle

And then Polle, the lovable mascot of Pony Express (aka the company they work for). She's also used as a metaphore and an amazing one at that. (Can't say anything else so I don't spoil anything and because I fucking hate that pony. Scared me shitless the first game thtough, literally friend had to be on call with me for the last 20 minutes of the game because that stupid Pony was practically haunting my ass).

For the plot, it's not too complex, but I personally find it impactful and as disturbing it is, I hold it close to my heart. It's dark and heavy and simple and complex at the same time. Though, the way the plot is handled through narative gives it that specific charm.

Fandom

For the fandom I'll just say this. Enjoy at your own risk and always check trigger warnings if you're sensitive to something. If you don't like something, just ignore it or go talk with your friend about it. Mouthwashing fandom has a lot of amazing stuff, like from psycho analysis, fanart and certain fanfics, while some miss the point intierly (which is fine, it's not, but if it makes a person happy who cares, I'm not gonna ruin it for them) and some which I personally consider that they go too far. Also, the fandom is perfectly split between people who want to enjoy the dark parts of the game and those who like the silly stuff (memes, jokes, fluff, and they probably do it to 'cope' with the game).

I'm not gonna go too deep into the shipping because everyone has their personal opinions on it, but it's a bit contreversial. At times diving into the proship vs the other side debate.

Music

Last thing, 'Headlock' by Imogen Heap is convidered the mouthwashing song. It's like about how you wanna persue your hobbies and interests, but you're stuck in place unable to actually do it. Which I personally think perfectly fits the game, atleast a very specific scene in the game that actually is one of my favorites and a bit not comforting, but it makes me feel a bit seen. But I think a lot of people actually just like it cuz it's a catchy song with a very nice and specific beat. Also, receantly JT music released the mouthwashing rap which actually covers a lot of the plot, meaning and other parts of mouthwashing. It's also a bop and in the intro they sampled actual sounds from the game which is very cool if you ask me

..

So yea. Sorry for rambling, I covered a few things, I thought would be important without revealing too much if you actually decide to play/watch the game.

WHAT THE FUCK IS "MOUTHWASHING"????

can someone tell me about what Mouthwashing is

my friend is obsessed with it and i wanna learn more about it for her, and i also saw it was a psych thriller and i love those.

lowkey i thought it was the sally face sequel so if anyone could rb and help me out itd be much appreciated

also whos that gay fuck daisueke or whatev