#to spite someone. but also for self destructive reasons. <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[luvmailing]

mean when i'm nervous.

「 tws + notes: no tws, unedited as BAWLS, dc writer newbie but im very enthusiastic abt the comics and shows and movies, dog metaphor but insane and unsubtle, explicitly vigilante!reader in dick grayson’s part, dramatic asf but not really angst 」

「 gn!reader, can be platonic or romantic <3 」

↳ ft. bruce wayne, clark kent, richard "dick" grayson, and john constantine

author's note: so. we all know what my favourite thing right now is (⌒_⌒;) i still adore everything i used to write for,,, but i’ve been on my comic motives recently (*ﾟｰﾟ*) ! reading dc mostly but spider-noir and deadpool have been picked up along the way!!! um. anyways. if i get comfy enough, i might do more dc stuff but i get that this isn't my exact audience on this blog— sorry my loves (´＿｀。) </3 might write a part two cuz i love jason. and booster gold. and like every single one of them (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ) halfway through writing this i realized everything feels very literal, so i feel the need to mention that this is not dog hybrid reader stuff but if u fw that u can imagine it that way

perhaps the habit of burning bridges you’re actively crossing isn’t a good idea. and you’re not an idiot, not in the slightest— but even if you were, everyone knows that needless self destruction when developing relationships is counterproductive.

you strike the match anyways, like it’s just a force of habit. another instinct.

if you spent life knowing that the hand only beats. why would you expect it to do anything else when it’s lowered towards you?

you learn to keep your hopes down, ears alert, and teeth sharp. you learn to get used to the taste of blood. to make things messy and complicated, and to end things when they need to be ended, because god knows it’s only self preservation when you do it.

you learn that the only way to survive is to bite— to hurt before something hurts you.

and one day, an unfamiliar hand that extends towards you decides to feed instead.

why do you still bare your teeth?

▸ BRUCE is unsure why he sticks around. he’s understanding, but also reasonably frustrated with your antics. it doesn’t evade him that they stem from something deeply rooted in your past— but he doesn’t know what to do about it. if there is anything to do.

at his core, he's a detective. he's got an eye for digging into strange pasts and a knack for knowing things he isn't supposed to. but in spite of his paranoia and hunger to know, bruce doesn't pry too much. he can do research on his own, without you ever having to realize.

you’re self-sufficient, he’ll give you that. you’re unsure sometimes of whether he’s proud that you can take care of yourself or irritated that you consistently insist on doing so. he’s unsure too. not like he lets you know.

it’s a mutual understanding the two of you share— he stays, you bite. yet bruce, unsurprisingly, doesn’t mind being bitten. he’d hope that the reason he’s sticking around is for the selfless reason of making sure you’re alright. though, the reality is, you’ve grown on him, whether you realize or not.

bruce has always been fond of strays.

▸ CLARK is nothing but patient. and that scares you beyond reason.

he sees the way you bare your teeth whenever someone gets too close for comfort to you. he knows when to back away, when to speak, when not to— he’s always attempting to never make you feel backed into a corner.

somehow, it makes you more anxious seeing just how much he understands about you. he knows just how to coax you out of the corner of your cage, how to bring you in closer, and it almost, almost convinces you to let your guard down.

the thought of that is terrifying.

you try barking, you try biting— and none of it works. clark doesn’t coddle you when you’re wrong— but he’s absolutely nothing but gentle. patient and understanding, sometimes you wonder how a man of steel can be so soft for someone like you.

▸ DICK isn’t dumb. it’s fairly easy for him to put two and two together. quickly, he figures out what he’s dealing with when he encounters you.

his conversations with you are never without a note of levity— a deliberate action on his end, you’re certain. he knows, you know, and because of it, everything feels oddly tense around him, even with the attempts to banter.

it’s too late to run. his observant gaze has caught a glimpse of you through your one way glass, and he’s chosen to meet your eyes with a smile. there's a sense of foreboding that gnaws at your gut, anxiously anticipating what might be lurking under that grin of his.

on his end, there are no malicious intentions. he doesn’t really have ulterior motives when it comes to you.

most times, he chooses to defend you and be the one standing at your side when no one else does. you don't understand why he insists on offering you friendship when all you do is pull away.

after a long night of patrolling the streets of gotham, you find the two of you leaning on the railing of a rooftop side by side. your eyes are on this cityscape of gotham. his are on you.

“you keep on insisting i’m not as bad as i seem,” you mutter under your breath.

late nights make for loose lips. he’s pleasantly surprised to hear you continue the thought instead of attempting to take it back.

“do you just hate being right?” you snort, allowing your gaze to flit over to him just for a second.

"no." dick smiles, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “i think you just hate the fact that i could be.”

▸ you tried not to bother with CONSTANTINE. the day the two of you met, you didn’t even introduce yourself.

john constantine’s presence alone reeks of trouble, as acrid and suffocating as the cigarette smoke that clings to his tan trenchcoat. you are attuned to things like that. he notices.

one thing you actually enjoy about him? he doesn’t chase. he’s a nosy one, for certain, sticking his nose into places no one in their right mind would— but for the most part, he steers clear of yours. initially, you think it’s because your urge to be left alone by him is so prevalent that he’s just chosen to heed the warning and not approach when unwanted.

but he’s not a man known for abiding by rules. he’s much more curious with you than you notice or prefer. in a way, your distance has made you more myth than man, more tale than tangible— you are a rumor passed through whispers between lips, a silent shadow lurking in the corner of the room… and he loves a good mystery.

“c’mon. you're actin’ like ‘m gonna bite your head off, luv,” he chuckles, lighting up the cigarette between his fingers.

i'd probably be the one doing that if i got any closer. you keep that thought in your head, standing with a gap between the two of you as always.

he doesn't miss how you avoid looking into his eyes like his gaze could murder, instead, focusing your gaze on the cherry of the cig, burning bright red.

“not much for a wee natter, hm?”

the quick shake of your head only makes his smirk grow. you could just walk away… so why exactly were you sticking around?

“fine by me. quiet company’s welcome.” that’s a sentence he’d probably never say to anyone else. in a strange way, he feels like he knows you well enough to be comfortable with the words that hang in the air.

it’s weird. you’re completely unknown, and yet, an irrational part of his mind keeps nagging at him to look just a little closer at you. sometimes, when he listens to it, he catches a glimpse of something silent in your eyes— an all too familiar pain of a person who can’t help but hurt the things that they cling onto.

so that’s why you’re keen on keeping everyone at arms length. it almost makes him laugh to think how similar the two of you are, plain as day, and yet unnoticed by you— a person who won’t even meet his eyes.

— reblogs always appreciated!

[brain-rot-central]

I just want to say I really loved how you wrote Tav and Astarion. Tav despite in a fragile position she is still determine to do stressful things for the sake of the safety of the people. For Astarion, I really liked that he is very morally conflicted which makes his past journey doesn’t feel wasted. And his obsessiveness is very intense.

Thank you!! Despite her being Durge, I do see Tavaria as being diplomatic. Perhaps she helped organize Ketheric's army during, or gave planning advice to Gortash. Who knows! But I do see her as being able to find common ground in most situations and essentially being the one to "do what's right," even if it's controversial or the more difficult decision. The fact that it's right is what matters.

Astarion, on the other hand...

Now that it's been almost 11 months post release, I have a few bones to pick with Astarion's endings. I will preface this by saying that I respect both endings and love and accept them (long time followers know how I push for tolerance of both and this is a welcome space for all), but I have to be honest.

I don't think the spawn ending would actually happen if you apply real world logic to someone like Astarion. He would pick ascension. I'm like 90% sure he would, especially if the game only spans 2-3 months.

Characters, and people, honestly, have an arc. Very rarely does the "rags to riches" trope ever pan out the way it does for the spawn ending. More often than not, people are down on their luck and often slip down further until they hit nothing.

Astarion ascending is him choosing himself and his fear of his independence being stripped away. When you're in a situation like that, that's all that matters to you. I speak from personal experience -- you literally do not give a shit if the world burns down around you. You may love and care for people, but you matter more.

Your ability to be safe and free from abuse in all forms matters most to you. Your ability to stop yourself from being taken advantage of in all situations matters most to you. Your ability to have control over almost every aspect of your life matters more to you than literally anything else. The alternative to any of that is akin to death itself.

It takes so much time to break out of that mindset. Once the hopelessness of a situation wears off, anger usually sets in. Resentment, spite, unrest -- sometimes at yourself for allowing a situation to go on for as long as you did. You're angry you didn't speak up and chose to let someone control you for so long, because it was the safer solution. You're angry you were forced into surviving a situation.

You feel ashamed of the person you were reduced to. Rather than meet them with kindness and grace, you spit on them, vowing to never allow yourself to sink to that level ever again. You will never let anyone put you there again.

But, that mindset is self-destructive in many ways. It chips into your personal relationships, because you're now fishing for any hint of someone trying to take advantage of you. You become paranoid, unreasonable. Prone to outbursts if things aren't going your way.

Inevitably, everyone leaves. And all you're left with is yourself, and your thoughts. You have no choice but to confront them, and apply logic and reasoning to them.

That's my logic when it comes to the ascension for Astarion. The ascension is his true "dark" arc, where he's fighting to save himself. It's not pretty, it doesn't make sense to everyone, but it works for him.

And Tav is there to help him, because she gets it. She's been through it herself, remembering all she's done and was likely forced to do. She understands how to put words to the raging inferno within him. But she also feels responsible for allowing him to slip down this path. She's a little further along on her own healing journey, and will try helping him anyway she can.

Love is the ultimate form of vulnerability, and they both struggle with expressing that. To love someone is to be vulnerable -- you accept the possibility that this person may rip your heart out and ground it into the pavement. You accept the possibility that this person will leave a permanent imprint on your heart, and hope to whatever higher being there is that it doesn't become a scar. Doesn't become something else you'll have to survive. To love someone is accepting that this person may forever change your life. And that's scary fucking shit.

Sorry for the impromptu character study on your ask, anon. I just really love their dynamic so much lmao

[toomanyfandomsthings]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks...

OOOO thank you so much for asking, I've never been asked that before! ✨️😃✨️ It's not a top 10 in any particular order (except for number 1, that one is number 1 😂), but mostly the characters who have impacted me a lot or have a special place in my heart right now. Also I'm terribly ineloquent, so please bear with my while I try to make sense -

1.) Aki Hayakawa (Chainsaw Man)

Oooooh my God, where do I start? XD This one was easy because Aki is like my favorite of favorite characters in anything 😁 Such a sweet, caring, protective figure who doesn't see himself as any of those things. He's such a heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of how someone can be self-destructive and I love seeing his dynamics with the cast start to change the way he views and values himself. I love how his instinct to be a big brother shows itself in small ways that don't get directly pointed out - to avoid manga spoilers, I'll point to the scene with Denji in the hospital where Aki makes him the apple bunnies - and just the little ways that he shows he cares for people. I think stuff with him later on in the story is some of the most well written and heartbreaking stuff I've ever read, and I genuinely think he's a wonderfully different take on the revenge plot line. I also have like...way too many figures of him...and plushies...and acrylic stands...and key chains.....and a snow globe I got from Hot Topic- I just love him a lot! 😂💕

2.) Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul)

I have a little less to say on this one because I haven't read Tokyo Ghoul in a long time so I'm a bit fuzzy on plot details. 😅 But I read Tokyo Ghoul in college at a time where I really needed it and saw a lot of myself in Kaneki. He's such a sweetheart and such a deeply lonely character, and the ways he changes over the course of the story, for better and for worse, are absolutely brilliant and tragic 🥲💕 And I love how, throughout all of these shifts in personality and role in the story, he still feels so distinctly Kaneki. Like, in spite of how cruel and difficult things get, the sweet, book-loving college student is still recognizably there. Kaneki Ken did nothing wrong 😂 Also I wrote a far more eloquent 35 page paper on Kaneki as my final thesis paper for college, soooo that speaks to my affection for him 😂

3.) Felix Hugo Fraldarius (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

There's gonna be a lot of Fire Emblem characters here, I'm so sorry XD But I love Felix so so much! He's a tough personality and admittedly can be incredibly harsh when it's not called for, but he's given so much reasoning as to why he has this attitude and it makes him such an engaging character to watch. He cares so much for everyone around him and just for the life of him cannot communicate that, nor does he want to admit it to himself for fear of losing them like he did his brother. He works so hard to be stronger than his brother so he can protect everyone, to the point where, definitely post-timeskip, he's long since reached that goal but still refuses to believe it. He's a caring soul who's taken on a lot at a young age and has suffered a lot more than he cares to acknowledge. He's also insanely smart (which he is never given credit for in-game which is a crime) and an absolute monster of a unit and is good at basically anything you try to teach him, so he's also just objectively cool 😂

4.) Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Same as Felix, I love Dimitri so so so much 🥲 I think his character arc is so beautifully written (if you couldn't tell, I favor the Blue Lions quite a bit XD) and he's just such an absolute sweetie who's been through entirely too much. I love how protective he is of his loved ones and how the weight of all that he's been through wears on him in big and small ways (I think of little things like his lack of a sense of taste, which you only find out in his support with Flayn, which then recontextualizes little moments like Felix commenting on Dimitri acting like he dislikes the food at meal times and ahhh the character writing in 3H is so good). Also, I am partial to sweet characters becoming absolutely unhinged (see #2 😂) so I knew I'd like Dimitri almost immediately XD Didn't know he'd break my heart as much as he did though 😂

5.) Kaoru Sakurayashiki/Cherry Blossom (SK8 the Infinity)

Cherry is so great, what a truly insufferable person (affectionate) 😂 He's such a brat and I love his dynamic with Joe so much. They argue in the kind of way you only could with someone you've known your whole life, and they clearly love each other and always look out for one another. Also, the interviews with Utsumi which say that he's also anxious and a generally lonely person break my heart, and also inform why he's *always* at Joe's restaurant. He also clearly cares for the little skateboarder family they've made and i love that he takes on a sort of mentor/parental role for the kids. Also what an absolutely chaotic idea for a character - a formerly emo/punk, professional calligrapher who also designs robots and helped establish an illegal skating competition to which he attends in a ninja costume with his AI skateboard - I love him 😂💕 He's also got an amazing character design, like, I want to be him 😂

6.) Zelkov (Fire Emblem Engage)

ZELKOVV I love him so much, he is the character currently occupying my brain the most. 💕 Much of what I've said before, such a sweetheart. I love the way the portray his mental health struggles through his need to constantly have a pursuit or task or hobby to keep his mind occupied, and how it eventually resolves with him opening an orphanage (which is such a perfect resolution for his character 🥲) He's such a caretaker at heart, and I think it's so interesting how that is juxtaposed with his past as an assassin. Plus I think coming into a revenge plotline 10 years after the revenge has been had is just such an interesting take on it. I dunno I just love him so much I could go on for ages but I'll stop here...kinda

7.) Kagetsu (Fire Emblem Engage)

And I say kinda because Zelkov and Kagetsu are inseparable in my mind 😂 I love Kagestu, what an absolute cinnamon roll! 💕 Such a sweet, silly little friend! He's so eager to make friends, almost to a fault. I'd hazard a guess that after leaving his family, not knowing if he could ever go back or if they'd even want him to come back, the eagerness to make friends is sort of a coping thing - trying to reaffirm that he's not alone and that there are people who like him. I love his dynamic with Zelkov and Ivy - he draws the two of them out of their shells and gives them the direct and clear love and affection they need, and in turn they reassure him that he is cared for and give him a place where he is truly content and happy 🥲 He's just a genuine ray of sunshine with more depth than you'd think at first glance.

8.) Yuki Soma (Fruits Basket)

Yet another character that I feel directly called out by 😂 I love him so much, I love that he's such a kind person but doesn't view himself as such because he way overthinks about the nature of what "being kind" is. I love his arc about learning how to better yourself little by little and taking small steps to change; I really find it so inspiring 💕 His backstory episode ruined me for the rest of the day, I literally couldn't sleep that night after I watched it.

9.) Lukas (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia)

This is my weird pick, but I still think about Lukas and the game came out when I was just starting college XD So kind and so caring, but still very pragmatic and reliable. I think his self reflection on how he feels he may be emotionally broken is so fascinating and relatable, and I love how his support with Python and his ending resolve it in a very satisfying way (I teared up when I saw his ending when I beat the game, though I also may have been going through something at the time XD) His big brother energy to Alm and the kids is also very endearing (especially him and Alm in the Drama CD oh my God) I'm not explaining it well, but I need to give this sweet depressed fellow a hug! 💕

10.) Megumi Fushiguro (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Ahhhh my son, my sweet boy who can't catch a break 🥲 So kind, so caring, so unable to see his own self worth 🥲 Like Aki, I like how the show points out his character flaw maybe once or twice, but it's showed off in dozens of more subtle ways if you pay close attention. I love how kind he is, how much he cares even though he struggles to display it, how he's got a self-admitted flawed sense of what justice is and how, like Kaneki and Dimitri, he's also sliiiightly unhinged XD

Hugs, hugs for all of these characters 😂❤️ Also sorry, I kind of went off, iiiiii got excited 😂 I also left out a bunch of characters because I didn't want it all to be Fire Emblem characters 😂 Thank you so much for asking!!

[sebastianravkin]

October book recommendations

As All Hallow's Read approaches, here are some spooky book recommendations that I have enjoyed from around the web:

1. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

Daphne du Maurier's ghost-less ghost story about a haunted marriage is on everyone's best scary books list for a reason: Rebecca is utterly chilling. In every scene the unnamed narrator is in the dark, surrounded by fog, or being startled by someone sneaking up on her (in the foggy dark). The literal and psychological miasma grows thicker and thicker as the second Mrs. de Winter explains how she was nearly driven insane at Manderley, her husband's estate where his first wife died under mysterious circumstances.

2. Silver: My Own Tale as Written by Me With a Goodly Amount of Murder, by Edward Chupack (2008)

Edward Chupack started with Long John Silver, the dastardly pirate of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and spun this rollicking story of terror on the high seas. Silver is deliciously creepy, full of adventure, loads of murder, and an elaborate, well-crafted mystery. Silver the pirate makes no apologies for the lives he ruins on his quest for treasure, and by the end, you'll fear and respect him as much as his crew does. Well, some of his crew.

3. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Dave McKean (2008)

Nobody Owens is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Nobody in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more. But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Nobody's family.

4. Grotesque, by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Rebecca Copeland (2007)

Sometimes the worst part of a story isn't its graphic violence but its characters' reactions to it. In Grotesque, prolific Japanese crime writer Natsuo Kirino gets the murders and the mystery out of the way, instead ceding the story to the unnamed female narrator who has connections to the two sex worker victims. The narrator talks about the two dead women from her own, twisted perspective — she hated them; she hated all their classmates at their elite private school; she hated her parents. The power of the narrator's spite, her utter disdain for everyone and everything, is so compelling you might find yourself agreeing with her, and then immediately recoiling in horror at how seductive hatred can be.

5. Zone One, by Colson Whitehead (2011)

With the many iterations of The Walking Dead, Zombieland, Resident Evil, Shawn of the Dead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — what more is there to say about humanity's apparently imminent self-destruction? In Colson Whitehead's skilled hands, however, the end of the world is just the beginning. Zone One is as scary and horrible and creepy as you'd expect from a story about a man calling himself Mark Spitz who's just trying to stay alive. It's also quite moving. Whitehead is particularly good at world-building; here, people cling to their last shreds of humanity as they try to reestablish civilization among the ruins of New York City.

[yurious-george]

what's going to happen in ultrakill act III?

i'm on the final fight in act 2 and musing on where the plot might go, despite not having finished the fight, Just Because

gabriel is going to die. he already has less than 24 hours to live and v1 killed v2 with no hesitation. as fun as it is there's no sign v1 would feel terribly strongly about gabriel other than 'damn. i'm sad he died now that i've killed him.' even if v1 spared him he is sooo doomed. we have to be realistic here

between mirage's whole... (gestures vaguely) and common sense logic, hell will run out of blood and v1 knows it, effectively putting them on a self-imposed suicide mission in its quest for survival. (is that why levels are called missions? dang.)

if act 1's title was about v1 (infinite hyperdeath) and act 2 was about gabriel (imperfect hatred) it seems most fitting act 3's title (godfist suicide) would be about both of them

i'm going to assume satan is down there and has a good chance of being the final boss. this will be important later

so, godfist suicide, huh. a suicide not only means killing one's self; it can also mean knowingly getting into a fight or mission where someone will almost certainly die. this will also be an important distinction for speculation reasons

'go down fighting, even if it won't change the outcome' is a major theme of this game, so i doubt gabriel will just die to v1 or skewer himself out of spite. like he would not do that

i expect an over the top all out bloodbath for the final challenge, that's what this game is all about and i can't imagine it ending any other way

so, assuming satan is down there, there are three options for the boss order:

a. Gabriel -> Satan b. Satan -> Gabriel c. secret 3rd option??

these also really decide the tone of the game. if it's gabriel first and then satan, v1 will just have to sit there and watch itself slowly die, knowing it's possibly the only thing alive in the universe (aside from some of heaven I suppose?) If it's satan first and then gabriel, it will probably be a mutually assured destruction, dying at each other's hands and all. secret third option gabriel will go "fuck it, let's team up and kill satan and/or all of heaven too" which makes the order matter less.

I don't know if any of these will seem more likely than the other once I finish the gabe heresy fight, but gabe get worse arc would be really something. I want to see him stoop to v1's level <3

[randomfandomskillme]

DSMP Steven Universe AU made by me and my friend at 2 am

Based half on character gems and half on their canonical reasons for creation

WARNING: MADE AT 3 AM WHILE ZOOTED OUT OUR MINDS Eret: Blue Diamond

- royalty, calm, empathetic but self-preservative

Dream: White Diamond

- tyrranical, emotionless, all about power, manupulative

Technoblade: Yellow Diamond

- powerful, vengeful, warrior for war, logical

Foolish: Pink Diamond

- destroyer turned healer, powerful, caring towards others but can be scary when mad

Sapnap: Ruby

- chaotic, fiesty, fire, soldier

Quackity: Zircon

- lawyer moment, a thinker, political, a fighter through words

Karl: Sapphire

- time powers, comforter, trying to help people

Karlnapity: Sardonyx

- lol

George: Padparadscha

- never in the present, hindsight is 2020, sort of just there, made for support and fails. just a friendly dude

Captain Puffy: Blue Jasper

- strong willed, a fighter, mom energy, leader

Niki: Pearl

- soft but can learn how to fight, used to follow but takes her own path, helpful

Jack Manifold: Ruby

- tempermental, feisty, momentary villain arc, spiteful, was a also a soldier

Awesamdude: Bismuth

- epic builder, very strong, intimidating, stubborn

Ranboo: (Fusion defect) White Pearl - Black Nephrite (main state)

- defect makes two personalities, black nephrite is usually in control (people oriented, neutral but fights for their home) and white pearl is ranboo’s “enderwalk” (follows White diamond [dre], tactful, information gatherer)

Fundy: Peridot

- looking for companionship/attention/approval, can work with tech, a follower, knows how to fight but is nervous about confrontation

Tommy: Spinel

- annoying, chaotic, wants somewhere to belong, was alone/abandoned, goofy

Tubbo: Amethyst (defective)

- soldier turned hardened veteran, never had much power by himself, was given high expectations but couldnt meet them, loud

Jschlatt: Hessonite

- mean, angry, controlling, wants power 

Callahan: Earth Beetle

- silent, been in the background, support character

Ponk: Rose Quartz

- healer type, wholesome but manipulated, betrayed

Antfrost: Red Pearl

- a support character, follows orders, loyal

Skeppy: Lapis Lazuli

- mischievous, blue, chaotic, we know hes technically diamond already but shut up, follows his own agenda

Punz: Topaz 

- fighter, mercenary, works for other people

Wilbur: (half-corrupted) Sapphire

- logical, corruption led to distorted future sight of disaster that he felt compelled to make happen, wanted to create a better future for others

Purpled: Amethyst

- soldier, PURPLE, what else is there to say

Philza: emerald

- important presence, not much of a fighter but still intimidating

Connor: Zirconnor

- he’s just vibin man and its a pun idk what you want from us (also blue), chaotic messy version of a put together zircon, he was supposed to be put together but now hes just doing his best

Badboyhalo: Rose Quartz

- kind and sweet presence that gets corrupted

Hannah: Rose Quartz

-she has rose in the name was there any other option

HBomb: Spinel

- an entertainer/clown, funny, just messes around, a good guy :}

Michaelmcchill: Lapis Lazuli

- causes a lot of destruction, impulsive

Slimecicle: Green (altered??) spinel

- melts instead of stretches, also an entertainer/supporter/hype man, oblivious, naive, funny

*made by me and a friend

*anyone who is a guest on the smp or otherwise not listed are humans, if we missed someone important idc

*feel free to discuss in the comments but we will probably not change anything lol

[erosia-rhodes]

Speculation: The Big Bad of the Loki series is…

…someone I will reveal after the jump, because I’m not a total jerk, even if I'm only speculating and have no more knowledge than anyone else with a Disney Plus account, an intermediate understanding of storytelling techniques, and a God of mischief or two living inside my head rent free. So, here we go.

*cough, cough*

 The master villain of the Loki series is…

…Loki.

It’s an obvious choice, which could have been an argument against it at the start of the series, but after episode 5 he’s the only person who makes sense. The structure of this show is character driven above all else. The overarching question of the series has been, "What makes Loki a Loki?" We've been taking a deep dive into who Loki is, why he does the things he does, and why he's so unhappy. Thus, the big bad has to be a Loki variant because…

1) Loki's worst enemy is himself. Loki's the one holding himself back. Loki's the reason he's so unhappy. Loki's the one preventing himself from becoming a better person. And it will turn out he's been doing this literally, not just figuratively!

But our Loki is going to change because he's been forced to confront who he is in various ways, leading to growth: The memory theater showed him the consequences of his choices in the sacred timeline, the worst of which was getting his mother killed; Mobius analyzed him like a therapist and forced Loki to self-reflect until he eventually confessed his faults; Loki became friends with Mobius who believes Loki could be a better person and that “it’s never too late to change”; Loki's relationship with Sylvie led him to truly trust someone for the first time; it's also symbolic of letting go of his self-loathing; and most recently, Loki felt exasperated watching all the Lokis fight in the Void world, an indicator that he doesn't want to be like that anymore.

The final way Loki will be forced to confront himself will be literal. That's why he must be the secret head of the TVA, the Boss Loki. In order to truly change and grow as a character, he has to defeat the version of himself that is holding him back, the version that is pruning any variant that tries to end their self-sabotaging, destructive ways.

After that, he'll also have to reject the temptation of taking over the TVA himself. That will show he's truly changed as a person. After all, another reason Loki has to be the villain is because…

2) Loki already wanted to take over the TVA. When Loki saw that the TVA made the infinity stones nothing more than paperweights, he decided to overthrow the Timekeepers and take over, but he didn't know that another Loki variant had already beaten him to it. There probably was a trio of lizard people in charge of the TVA at one point, but a Loki variant killed them, took over, and became Boss Loki.

3) That's the reason the TVA has pruned more Loki's than any other person The biggest threat to Boss Loki is another variant of himself coming for the throne. The Boss Loki is getting rid of the other variants so none of them have a chance to overthrow him.

4) That's also why Loki and Sylvie created a nexus event If Loki and Sylvie let go of their self-loathing and become real friends who trust each other and work together, they'd be a huge threat to Boss Loki, which they proved by making it past the guard dog Alioth together. Has anyone else gotten that far before? That's why their connection on Lamentis created a nexus event. The Sacred Timeline is a timeline where Boss Loki stays in power, so any threats to that need to be pruned, even if they're happening during an apocalypse.

5) If the most-speculated villain, Kang, is the big bad, it would have no emotional payoff. I mean, episode five ended with an old man clad in a yellow diaper saving the day in a way that was truly cathartic and moving. If the writers are capable of creating an emotional moment like that, imagine how it will feel if we get to the final episode and the villain is…some dude most people have never heard of. This has no emotional resonance at all. That's why it's not Kang.

Most of my Marvel knowledge comes from the MCU and some animated shows from the 90′s, so I’d never heard of Kang until people online started talking about him in regards to the show. And even though he might have a larger part to play in the MCU, I don't think it's as the head of the TVA. If Kang is involved at all, he's just working with Boss Loki in some function and his presence won't be revealed until an end credits tease.

Bonus speculation) Sylvie's nexus event would have made her a Valkyrie Since I'm speculating, I also think Sylvie's nexus event was that fact that she chose to become a girl, which would have allowed her to become a badass Valkyrie sorceress. When we see her at the beginning of episode 4, she's playing with a Valkyrie toy, which means she admires them. It was also revealed in Thor: Ragnorak that Thor wanted to be a Valkyrie until he learned only girls were allowed to do that. It's easy to imagine Loki taunting his brother, telling Thor he would never be a Valkyrie because he's not a girl, but Loki could be one because he could become a girl. Then Loki might have become a Valkyrie just to spite his brother.

Also, Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner plays at the end of episode 5, but this seems to ramp up when Classic Loki is doing his thing, not when Sylvie is using her magic, so I don't know if that's a clue or not.

I guess we'll see if I'm right about any of this a week from now!

[crystalkleure]

I have a Concept.

BeyBurst beyblades are supposed to burst. As in, it’s actually a necessity. In spite of the Exploding Beyblade mechanic potentially causing sharp little bits of spintop to go flying everywhere and hit people, what if it’s actually a safety feature?

If I recall correctly, all the way back in s1 territory [specifically in the manga though, can’t remember if we saw it in the anime or not], Valt and Shu just straight-up got their original beys from a store. And there are also all of those Unimportant Characters running around with different-coloured versions of preexisting beys. This indicates that beyblades are, in fact, mass-produced and sold in stores, and those are all built to be able to burst. In fact, I still haven’t seen the newest two seasons of the Burst anime yet, but I’m pretty sure super special fancy custom beys, that some important character explicitly made themself, that have some really creative [and strong] anti-burst features built into them, don’t ever show up as NPC recolour beys? In spite of the trend of “random background characters in new season use recoloured versions of Prominent Character beys from LAST season” to me seeming to indicate that those new recolour beys are either bootleg copycats, or those actual official shelf models have just suddenly started selling really well, due to someone having just recently done something cool with one in a tournament/on TV lol. [Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong on which beys get NPC recolours, I don’t exactly actually, uh, pay attention to all the random background scrubs. That point’s not particularly important anyway because I’m sure unofficial bootlegs are a thing that exists, mmmm delicious plagiarism. The point is the stores seem to sell beys with the normal level of burstability. And so I’m only caring about the everyday random NPCs with no names or anything, if another important character specifically goes and painstakingly recreates a bey similar or identical to another important character’s bey just because they idolize that other character, that doesn’t count. That’s not important here, implication-wise.] So...

What if it’s actually a really bad thing that people keep making their own custom beys now that are increasingly more and more ludicrously difficult -- or even near-impossible -- to burst?

What if the self-destruct mechanic is intended to be an emergency shutdown switch, and actually really needs to not be subverted? We’ve seen what an adept beyblader can do while running at full-throttle -- they’re dangerous, to themselves and their surroundings. Beys have the power to be obscenely destructive...while they’re spinning and battling, primarily. They are by far the most potent while actively in use. But if they hit things too hard like 3-4 times or so...they burst. Their locks disengage, they fall apart, and thus they are forced to abruptly stop. That makes them theoretically incapable of just rampaging indefinitely.

Picture this: One day, in the probably-decently-distant history of the BeyBurst world, a kid has a spintop. Probably made that spintop themself. This kid, it turns out, happens to be one of the Super Special Powerful Kids, who’s not only REALLY GOOD at using that spintop, they also possess that funny little supernatural ability to accidentally create an incredibly powerful incorporeal monster ghost creature thing with their brain. And because they love playing with their little spintop so much, that spintop becomes the vessel for this Terrifying Monster-Shaped Culmination Of Spiritual Elemental Energy or whatever that they’ve manifested. That’s...good, probably, because at least that means the Scary Monster Thing isn’t 1. just stuck in the kid’s brain with nowhere else to go, which would lead to possession that would decidedly be incredibly difficult to deal with without harming the kid, or 2. funneled into something more dangerous to control, like a car or a nuclear warhead or some shit. But then it turns out that the kid is ABSOLUTELY still able to wreak impressive havoc and cause Large Amounts Of Destruction, even accidentally...until the spintop stops spinning. The Power Level drops dramatically as soon as the demon top is still, and it takes a little while for it to build back up once it’s launched again. But what if a feature is implemented into the spintop that allows it to keep spinning for much, much longer? Or just The Supernatural Monster Power itself becomes capable of sustaining it, through wind manipulation or something?

Now, imagine you’re idk, the government or something, someone with Power and Influence over the masses, and you see THAT happen. Shit, that was just a random kid that did that! Looked like any other kid, acted like any other kid! There is no feasible way to tell a kid with Brain Monster potential apart from other kids who are NOT That Powerful, until a brain monster happens. So, if you can’t predict it, and thus can’t do anything to mitigate the potential destruction on a case-by-case basis...well, how about you convince ALL the little kiddies that spintops are just the greatest thing ever, everyone should play with spintops, AND you ensure those spintops are mass-manufactured specifically to not be able to Hold A Charge for too long because...they burst! You’ve designed them so that violence itself causes them to fall apart and stop to cool down! It’s perfect! That way, anytime an odd mutant child with Brain Monster powers comes along, the chance of them funneling their Brain Monster into their spintop is now Very High, meaning that all the Brain Monsters will hopefully end up inhabiting these little plastic toys that actively inhibit them instead of possessing children or nukes. It’s brilliant!

This does raise some questions, though:

1. What happens when someone’s spintop breaks, and they DON’T get it repaired, after they’ve already manifested a Brain Monster to live in it? Where would the Brain Monster go in that case? Uh oh, demon on the loose? Exactly what we were trying to avoid? Shu’s change between Legend Spriggan and Spriggan Requiem in God does seem to indicate that the Brain Monster probably 1. by default, does just camp out in its blader’s brain until a new Spintop Vessel is created for it, and 2. the Brain Monster itself is probably not actually completely strictly sealed into any bey, because it doesn’t disappear as soon as the bey is destroyed, and it doesn’t stay with an old/broken bey that’s been discarded when a new bey has been made for it. Legend Spriggan was discarded and left on the riverbed, and Spriggan Requiem was then made from scratch, seemingly using no recycled physical parts from Legend Spriggan, but Spriggan Requiem’s bitbeast looks only very slightly different from Legend Spriggan’s. All of Shu’s Spriggans are honestly probably still the same creature, just progressively evolved. I don’t think we’ve ever seen somebody make an entirely NEW Brain Monster that does not resemble their original one, it seems the original simply gets developed more and more. One person apparently only possesses the ability to make a single individual Brain Monster. You Get One (1), but you can upgrade it. But what about Hearts? His Dead Hades, which very much had a Brain Ghost in it, was not only destroyed, but assimilated into Phi’s Revive Phoenix, to make Dead Phoenix. What happened to that situation, over time? We haven’t gotten to see. Is Hearts’ Hades truly actually fused with Phi’s Phoenix, ceasing to be its own entity anymore, or does Phoenix simply very slightly resemble Hades now due to its bey being upgraded with physical bits of Hades’ bey? What if it’s not even POSSIBLE to truly fuse Brain Ghosts, especially without consent? In which case...is Hades itself just lingering around back in Hearts’ brain, waiting for a new bey to inhabit, and Hearts isn’t making one because he doesn’t realize Hades isn’t just Part Of Phoenix now? That sounds potentially dangerous, there’s no more outlet for your Brain Ghost, buddy. I want to see Phi and Hearts again, to know what eventually happened there.

2. Why do the tournaments not actually enforce a rule that says “Your bey HAS to be able to be reasonably burstable”? Chouzetsu Wings and the Mugen Lock System did not equal disqualifications. Has it maybe, over time, been forgotten exactly WHY we Need Beys To Burst? Well, that’s a ticking time bomb, then. How difficult a bey is to burst does seem to directly cause its Potential Destructiveness Levels to scale accordingly. [With somewhat of an exception of Pot and his Pegasus, but it should be noted that Pot was not exactly terribly serious about beyblade initially and yet was STILL considered one of the strongest ‘bladers in the world, GT3 iirc, AND he’s very into the whole “Love and light, chillax, be in-tune with yourself and all the energy in and around you, etc.” peaceful thing.] This HAS To Be A Problem. Why is nobody concerned.

3. ...What is causing the general public not to panic about this? Why are people okay with Brain Ghost and Mass Spintop Destruction happening, instead of terrified? This shit is broadcast on TV. The stands during tournaments are packed with spectators. It may be that perhaps not everybody can SEE the Brain Ghosts themselves [and I’m skeptical about that, because there have absolutely been MANY indications that other people know what someone’s bitbeast looks like], but the Big Bada Booms they cause are DAMN sure Highly Visible. Aiga’s father seems to be the only one truly properly concerned about the incredible mass-destructive potential of the spintops. Realistically, The Salem With Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo should be happening due to the Scary Spintop Kids being Fucking Scary, and sometimes quite clearly even out-of-control of themselves.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this is not a direction canon will ever go in, or I think it would have already done it. I don’t think they’re going to explore this route. It’s a shame I don’t have the chops for writing long-haul fanfiction, because if I did I would absolutely be hardcore capitalizing on this idea. This has incredible Worldbuilding Lore Potential.

[technospotatoes]

FUNDY LORE ANALYSIS

Howdy, howdy friends! After about 6 hours of pure thinking, I have more Dream SMP brain rot-theory-analysis stuff for you! This week I’m on spring break, so unfortunately I’m not prolonging any assignments haha! Today my focus is FUNDY LORE >:) and I’ve sprinkled in a little IRL factoids for ya to enjoy! 

Please lemme know your thoughts, opinions and theories-- and as always, it’s gonna be a long one! 

Enjoy <3

TW/CW for brief mentions of derealization-- nothing in detail, just thought I’d let y’all know. Please be safe ily.

Fundy’s lore stream took place today, 3/30/2021. It's roughly 45 minutes, so if you have some time to kill, go watch it! It’s really well done, and his acting is incredible. I will give you a warning; it contains derealization. If you choose not to watch it, here’s a summary from Twitter! link

First, let’s talk about what we know of Fundy’s character so far. 

Fundy’s story throughout the events of the SMP are quite tragic. A few key staples are...

1: the death and betrayals of both Wilbur and Schlatt, as well as the absence of Eret-- all of whom he viewed as father figures (Wilbur being his biological father, and Eret his adopted father who failed to show up at his adoption ceremony. Schlatt was a source of validation and approval for Fundy). 

2: Jealousy of Tommy and Tubbo-- These two replaced Fundy’s position as Wilbur’s son during the L’Manburg eras, and Fundy became rightfully jealous towards them. He no longer felt valued by his father, and was only more negatively impacted when Wilbur made an attempt to mend that rift. 

3: witnessing the rise and ultimate fall of L’Manburg-- and even assisting in its destruction with Niki. 

Along with some other rocky encounters with his family members in the timeline, Fundy can be simply boiled down as a character with no stable relationships to his family, or those whom he considers family. However, he does deeply value his friends and the fun that he has with them-- which we can assume is one of his attachments (this will be important later). He takes pride in making mischief and carries a friendly persona… which makes him easily approachable. 

He does carry valid reasons to instigate villainous acts-- but he instead chooses to remain neutral due to his fear of losing something else close to him. 

I have a number of thoughts regarding Fundy’s character and his current lore, so enough stalling from me, and let's get into it!

Analysis of Stream:

The desert

When Fundy leaves his tower for the first time during the dream sequence, the world is no longer the SMP, but is replaced with a barren desert. From the title of the stream, we can infer that this desert represents Fundy’s Mind and contains the majority of what he thinks about. Deserts often symbolize loneliness or emptiness, and can also be synonymized with brutal honesty or survival. Fundy’s character is indeed alone (in terms of family), and has fought for his survival by being sly and mischievous through Schlatt’s reign of Manburg. Sand itself symbolizes the passage of time, or in other words, the inevitability of the future or truth. As we see in each of the 3 dream sequences, the mysterious bunker containing “truth” appears closer and closer to Fundy’s tower and also becomes more withered and worn on the inside, implying that Fundy cannot escape the coming of truth and future as time passes. 

The desert itself contains a replica of the Camarvan from the old L’Manburg days-- likely a representation of Fundy’s childhood that he holds onto dearly, in spite of his past trauma. During the first dream sequence, the van even contains Wilbur-- perhaps to mock Fundy’s pain, or remind him of it. During the second sequence, Wilbur is gone, likely referencing Wilbur’s absence in Fundy’s life, or his death. During the 3rd dream sequence, the Camarvan is replaced with what looks to be a crater, or the aftermath of an explosion. This could possibly reference the ultimate destruction of L’Manburg (and the destruction of the van), or it could be foreshadowing of the destruction in the future… 

Side theory, here! Tubbo just lost a nuke, and multiple people have vendettas against Dream / want him dead. The pit seemed like it was made out of black stone and obsidian, the same materials as the prison, so it is likely that this is an allusion to Dream’s possible escape.

Who is “He”?

On his 3rd visit to the odd bunker in his dream world, Fundy reads the 3rd book in the chest. Towards the end, this book warns him of a vague male character that Fundy should not join, or avoid at all costs. To quote the book…

“Do not join him. Whatever he asks of you. Do NOT join him. His plans aren’t as nice as they sound. His intentions aren’t what you think they are. He will use you. He will destroy you. Everything you ever loved, everyone you ever cared about. Do not join him.” 

I bet a few characters instantly came to your mind as to who this person that Future Fundy is warning us about, and I’m going to list who I first thought it could be below: 

Technoblade and the Syndicate. Now, I disagree with this option, even though Techno has the outright power to destroy anything and everything like he’s done before. However, because of the creation of the Anarchist Syndicate and their accommodating ideals, it would be out of his character or set of ideals to suddenly destroy Fundy’s attachments to purely demonstrate his power. Also, Fundy no longer represents any forms of government, so he does not pose a threat to the Syndicate. 

I did theorize here that Fundy could be Harpocrates, but that would imply that he goes against the warnings of his future self. (Also not to mention the placement of this stream in the timeline would have to be much later in the past.) But the more that I think about it, the more likely it could be. It wouldn’t necessarily be out of character for Fundy to join the Syndicate and side with Techno against the warnings of his inner voice, but he has been a spy before… 

BBH / the Eggpire. This is also not a likely option for our “he” character, because it is more likely that this dangerous person is not associated with a group such as the Syndicate or Eggpire-- in other words, he operates alone. The Eggpire has plenty of members and those who oppose it, even BBH tried to recruit Fundy and failed. Our “he” has not had an interaction with Fundy yet, and I don’t think that the Eggpire would make an effort to reach out to him again. 

My theory is that Quackity is our “he” figure. As I’ve stated before (see my C!Sam post here), Quackity has proven himself to be an effective manipulator, and could easily persuade Fundy to join his side. Quackity has power over Dream at this time in the plot, and is using it to gain knowledge about revival. He could use his acquired learning from Dream to make a deal with Fundy through using Wilbur’s revival to appease his interest (and provide a chance at healing, given his tough past). Not to mention his cameo at the end of Fundy’s lore stream-- There’s plenty more involvement in the lore that we are going to see from Q. 

The Mysterious Figure

During the final dream sequence of Fundy’s lore stream, he opens the door to his tower, only to see a dark figure, staring into the world… or rather, the absence thereof. This Figure has no other significant character details besides the black hood/cloak and no ign, so we have no evidence as to who it is. I’ve seen plenty of people theorize that this person could be BBH (because of the similarities in cloak design) or they could be the “he” Fundy’s logs are warning him about. But I disagree-- I strongly believe that this mysterious figure is neither of those options, rather, The Mysterious Figure is someone completely separate in this story. Here are a few people I think it could be: 

Wilbur/Schlatt-- both of whom are dead, and could manifest inside Fundy’s mind as spirits or ghosts. 

Dream-- he causes paranoia in many of the younger characters of the SMP, so I wouldn’t put it past him to haunt Fundy like he did Ranboo (the voice in his head). 

Fundy-- a form of himself from the future, or a representation of his conscience (wants, desires, etc). 

Or a guide/protector to Fundy’s mind-- we could see more of this figure if episodes like this stream occur in the future. A character similar to that of the Inbetween or Other Side.

It is important to note that at the end of the sequence, the Mysterious Figure chased Fundy up the tower in fear, causing him to sleep and escape the dream world. I think Fundy would only react this way if he felt directly threatened, so this figure is likely someone unknown and intimidating, or familiar and repulsive enough to cause behaviour akin to a sort of PTSD. It is possible that this figure doesn’t have malicious intent, because there was a bed placed on top of Fundy’s tower. The figure was likely supposed to guide Fundy to this bed to escape the dream world, but this encounter probably did not go according to plan, due to Fundy’s reaction. 

His Internal Monologue

Through the presence of fear and doubt we can learn about the deeper parts and truths of a character. This is the case with Fundy: while he is distressed and afraid in his dream world, through the provided angst we learn about what Fundy truly wants. Fundy states that he wants this dream to end, and he wants to go back to his friends and his old life. He longs for the times where he can just have fun again and prank people, when his friends were there for him. Except, sometimes they weren’t. He states he would join parties and join groups only to watch them disappear as he started to get attached to them. Now, whenever the word “attachment” is uttered anywhere I immediately think back to Dream’s speech, perhaps Fundy is becoming more aware of what he could be endangered by.

Deja Reve

There’s no theory attached to this, just some super cool stuff I found. :)

The reveal of Fundy’s powers instantly set off a flag in my mind the second I heard it. His “powerset” or ability is one of foreshadowing, whatever he dreams about, could happen or is linked to the future. Now, the reason I bring this up is partly because I think it is cool, and it is actually a REAL thing. And I’ve experienced it. Let me introduce you to Deja Reve. 

Deja Reve isn’t really a condition or illness, rather it is a “creepier” form of its more popular counterpart, Deja Vu. When translated directly from French, Deja Reve means “already dreamed.” This word is a descriptor for a specific sequence of events: you dream something, and it happens later, in real life. No, I’m not making this up, and yes, it is real. I’ve had this happen to me multiple times. 

Deja Reve isn’t so simple as “i dreamt this so it will happen tomorrow”. In my case, I would have a particular dream, for example, I went to a Subway with my mom and she discussed with the manager about having my sister work at that location. The morning after I would forget the dream like any other, but many weeks later the exact event I dreamt would happen. I can remember it now, right down to the sandwich I ordered and the way my mom moved across the establishment to talk to the manager-- it was word for word, vision for vision. Each time Deja Reve occurs, I freeze, and I think I’m experiencing a second copy of life, or rewatching a movie. It's super weird, but cool. If something like this has ever happened to you, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your experiences!

Now I bring this up because many people mistake these sorts of things as having foresight or being able to prophesize-- but it's not the same thing. Deja Reve occurs more often in the younger population, and becomes less and less active as one gets older. Because Fundy is still relatively young in the SMP timeline, I think that not only is this a cool ability set for him to have, but it makes sense for him psychologically as well. There is no clear cause or reason behind why individuals experience Deja Reve, but personally, I believe it has to do with the condition of your brain and it’s experiences to past trauma. Kids who experience trauma find elaborate ways to cope, and usually defer to their imagination. Due to the fact that most of Fundy’s trauma occurred while he was very young in the SMP lore, it is definitely plausible that his amplified, or “more woke” application of Deja Reve, is a product of his past. 

Number Symbolism

I’ll keep this section short, because this post is already miles long, but similar to the previous section, this is something SUPER COOL that I noticed :]

Each book that Fundy reads has a specific number of pages… haha big whoop, Biz, that’s not weird. But did you know that some numbers have symbolism? Did you notice that the 3 books in each dream sequence each had 87 pages, which symbolize family, organization, and idealism? That number symbolizes what Fundy WANTS, but also what he’ll never get if he’s not careful. The first two times he read that book he didn’t finish it… He didn’t achieve his goal? 

Did you also notice that the signed book had 22 pages? That number symbolizes redemption, intuition, emotions, duty and diplomacy-- qualities that oddly correlate to warnings. This number represents what Fundy will NEED to be, in order to survive his future. Also, a Catch 22… take that as you will ;) 

Sidenote… 

Ok this is the last mini section before the end, but another thing that immediately popped into my head during Fundy’s lore was the factor of derealization. Nothing major, but the other times we’ve seen this storytelling or manipulation technique used was during...

Ranboo’s Panic Room / Prison Visit-- believes derealization

Karl and escaping the In Between-- fights against derealization

Fundy’s notebooks-- questions derealization

I have a feeling that whenever derealization is being used, it’s intended to distract the character from the true evil, to prevent them from tracking their own course or fulfilling their own story… So I’ll be excited to see where Fundy takes his. 

GAAAAAAAAAH IT’S DONE, FINALLY. And Congratulations! You made it to the end!! If you have any thoughts or theories, comment below, shoot me an ask or DM, I’d love to discuss with you! Follow me for more in-depth analysis content, I will be doing as many of these as I feel inspired to do in the future. :] 

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING <3

[scarletarosa]

What to Know Before Training in Witchcraft (part 3)

You need to learn to question everything. Learn as much as possible, yet question it all until satisfied with sufficient proof. This goes for magick spells you read in books, religions/mythology, and even your current beliefs. Your current self must be destroyed before you can be reborn, and only then will you be ready to carry the burden that this path will bring you. Do not be fooled into thinking that witchcraft is only for having fun, it is a spiritual science that will get you noticed by deities who will test you to see if you are worthy of the power you are seeking. Advancement on this path can only be gained through suffering, so if you want a simple life, this will not work out for you. As mentioned in the first post, witchcraft begins with the Spirit Death, and the death lasts for years until you finally are awoken. But when this happens, you will not be the same at all.

Crystals are talismans and amulets. There are many books on the properties of crystals and rocks, but make sure to question them and experiment for yourself. In order to use them, you either carry them with you, wear them as jewelry, or place them at a certain part of your body (if using them to heal). For example, black tourmaline placed on one’s stomach can be slowly turned in circles in order to release built up toxic energy, and carrying star sapphire allows the energy to act as a protector against malicious attacks (from people’s negative energy, such as envy or spite). If you wish to keep yourself grounded and not lose energy, carry a snowflake obsidian in your pocket, and touch it while asking for it to protect your energy. If a crystal is on a piece of jewelry, this jewelry must be ritually blessed in order for it to allow the crystal to function. 

There are no ingredients that can replace all other ingredients. Just because some people some time ago started the rumour that “white candles replace all candles” or “rosemary can replace all other herbs” does not mean that these are true. One of the greatest things to learn before training to be a witch is to think critically and not follow herds. Experiment for yourself so you can truly learn and become wise. As for these ingredients, the reason why it does not work this way is because everything has its own energy (like DNA) and it cannot be manipulated or be so complex that it represents all things (not even gods are like that). 

Invocations are powered by passion, not by the words themselves. When using invocations, it does not matter whether they rhyme or not (as popularized by media), but what matters is the passion and will you put into them. You need to actually understand how invocations work in order to use them properly; otherwise, you are simply speaking and nothing more. So in order to use this ability better, you can study ancient cultures’ magick such as Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Aztec. Additionally, do not recite any invocation you do not understand, this can sometimes lead to trouble. 

Be cautious about the incense you offer to gods. Every scent has a different frequency, and each deity has a specific frequency that they match with. For instance, do not offer rose incense to Ares or myrrh to Set. If this is done, the deity will become offended due to your lack of effort and consideration put into this offering. Each offering is meant to be a form of sacrifice, so put thought into it and even just ask the god if what you have in mind would be acceptable. Incense may seem like a simple thing to people nowadays, but in ancient times, it was taken very seriously as an offering and that is how the gods expect it. 

Learn how to ward yourself. In order to avoid malicious entities coming up to you or receiving intakes of toxic energy from other people, you need to know how to make wards in the astral. To do this, visualize and deeply focus on a cocoon of protective energy or fire forming around you. It will take practice to perfect this, but it is well worth it. Just remember that the ward will fade over some short time, so it needs to be remade. 

Higher Selves and the Shadow. Both of these are present in every person: the higher self is the soul (or Ba, our eternal self who we become after death). In most of the population, peoples’ higher selves are human, but some others may have different entities within them (such as angelic, demonic, elven, draconic, etc). As for the Shadow, this is the accumulation of one’s trauma, negative emotions, and insecurities. It forms into its own entity in your mind and attempts to sabotage you and manipulate you into submitting into self-destruction. In order to fight against your Shadow, you must work on your will-power and the ability to analyze and understand who you are and your traumas. Just make sure that you do not interact with your Shadow, since developing a connection with them puts you in danger.

Sigils need to be created on planetary squares. Sigils are a very old practice in magick that requires the witch to use a tablet of spiritual power to numerically infuse that into a design. There are instructions on how to do this online, though make certain that you use the proper square in regards to what you are needing (ex: sigil for help strengthening psychic powers- use the square of Luna). Once the sigil is made, you need to meditate upon it without any distractions for at least 20 minutes. Then continue doing this for about a week (with more complex desires, such as developing astral abilities, the meditations should need to last a month at least). Overall, one should study planetary magick and learn to recognize the energies of each celestial sphere so you can sense which of them effect certain plants and rocks. This skill will allow you to better understand the properties of each object before utilizing it (each object is connected to more than one planet- ex: avocados are linked to both Earth and Venus).

Magick is far more complex than you think. The abilities one can have through magick after decades of training can be vast and even terrifying, which is why witches were feared in the first place. An advanced witch is capable of healing illness, exorcising spirits, spirit communication, astral travel, calling upon storms, and even cursing someone to die with barely any effort. All of these and more are possible, but it takes years upon years of diligent effort, patience, humility, will-power, and study. It is a craft like any other, though perhaps one of the most difficult things to achieve. Due to this, it is highly recommended that any witch seek out an experienced and trustworthy mentor who can guide them. And if possible, it is best to also become initiated into a certain path such as Hermeticism, which will put the witch through trials of struggle in order to grant their Rebirth. 

Part 1 | Part 2

[testudoaubrei-blog]

TL/DR - Catra is a uniquely complex and compelling character who has -so much going on- compared with most characters in any medium. Her character arc is psychologically astute, morally powerful and dramatically compelling, and it pushes the boundaries of the audiences sympathies in ways that are really groundbreaking for a kids show, and her arcs conclusion celebrates love, growth, and the power to change in a way that is all too rare in TV for grown ups.

Content note for mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm.

Well, now that the summary is out of the way, here’s a massive fucking dissertation on why Catra is such a great character.

This is the first of a series of posts outlining things that make She Ra a truly great show, one that stands out even 15 years into a golden age of TV animation for kids. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive account for why the show is great - the real answer is that this show has so many arcs and so many fully realized characters and they are all growing and changing in ways that interact with each other and complement each other so well. But I’m going to highlight some particular standouts, things that this show does better than anything else, things that made me step back and say ‘holy shit they did this in a show pitched at 10 year olds?!’

And so the first of these posts is about Catra. I’ve never seen a character in a kids TV show like Catra before. Depending on the season, she’s an anti-villain, an outright villain and an anti-hero and then, in the end, a hero. Being glib, I describe her in villain mode as a Saturday morning cartoon Supervillain as written by like, Dostoevsky. She’s got the trappings of classic villain camp - long speeches, sneering, over-complicated plans, she’s oddly ineffectual at times etc/ Yet all of this is underlaid and justified by something much deeper - her feelings of rejection, her desire to lash out at everyone around her, at her self-hatred and hatred of everyone and everything else (at least by Season 4. Good God.) And her actions are as dark as her motivations - she nearly destroys reality out of spite, betrays literally everyone who cares about her (often multiple times) and isolates herself so completely that in the season 4 finale she is a solitary, suicidal wreck of a person. Hell, in her last fight with Hordak, I was definitely rooting for Hordak (to say nothing of Glimmer, who is a pretty impressive antiheroine, like if Sparkles had just blasted her into glittery oblivion would we have held it against her?).

Let's start by discussing trauma. It comes up a lot with Catra for obvious and good reasons. But I almost feel like that word is insufficient for what's going on with Catra, or at least, we shouldn't stop with it (I know there are terms like complex trauma, but rather than simply using those I want to explain the difference between Catra’s consistent abuse and a single traumatic event). To use another example from a different show, Korra was also traumatized in season 4. But she was traumatized by a series of an events when she was a young adult. She had something horrible happen to her, and it fucked her up, and then she had exposure therapy with Zaheer and at least starts to get better. Catra...Catra is much more consistently abused. It's not just that shadow weaver traumatized her with the various acts of torture, but that Shadow Weaver taught Catra both an explicit worldview and a series of coping mechanisms that she struggles with through young adulthood. First, Shadow Weaver trained Catra to seek her approval. This is something she is particularly vulnerable to with Shadow Weaver, but also what she does with Hordak and to a extent Double Trouble. Catra's instinct when people mistreat her or show that they aren't trustworthy is to invest further in the relationship, until the breaking point. By contrast, when people treat her well Catra lashes out or takes them for granted. This is uh…a dymamic I am acquainted with among people who have been abused as kids, people whom I love. It is pretty rough.

She also developed a desire to prove herself. This starts off being tied to her drive for approval, but combined with her competitive streak (which is expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways with Adora) it turns into a desire to beat Shadow Weaver and then Hordak at their own game.

At the same time, Catra learned by always being blamed for everything to evade and deny responsibility, no matter what. I think this form of self reassurance is tied to her self doubt (I think at some level she does think she is worthless) and her self hatred. It is also enabled by Adora’s martyr complex and willingness even act as Catra’s punching bag (as we see in the flashback in Corridors). This is a dynamic that actually repeats in an even worse fashion with Scorpia. Far from being arrogant, her constant evasions, put downs against others and preening speeches sound like the words of a woman who is trying to convince herself most of all. This tendency borders on narcissistic self delusion by season 3-4, which she begins recounting her version of events and possibly believing it even when it is obviously false, and everyone knows it.

When it comes to worldviews, Shadow Weaver taught Catra that love is about control and manipulation. We see this in seasons 1-3 where she congratulates herself for manipulating Adora when all she has done is take advantage of Adora's lingering love for her. Meanwhile, she’s learned that power is her only protection, and that the only way to stay on top is to abuse those beneath her.

The final kind of static tendency in Catra is her identity in the horde and her view of herself as one of the bad guys. This is something she rarely articulates but underlies much of her her decision to stay and not join Adora (at least at first). I think one thing to consider is that even if Catra never believed horde propaganda, it may have made her cynical and unwilling to imagine something better for herself or the world. Another factor is having struggled to belong in the horde for so long, she isn't going to give up now. At first this ties into her desire to win the approval of shadow weaver and Hordak, then it comes from her desire to prove herself better than them. Another factor is her self hatred. She sees herself as someone who hurts people, perhaps as a monster. She sees herself as a bad guy and so team evil is her side.

So yeah, our girl is kinda fucked up.

And yet Catra is never reduced to the sum of her traumas and bad habits. At every step of the way she is shown as a moral agent. She is shaped by shadow Weaver's abuse but she remains aware of and responsible for her actions. This is a double edged sword. She is fully responsible for her actions, but also she is never shown as broken by abuse or mental illness. She’s fully responsible, but by the same token is also redeemable, because she still has a choice.

So with that our of the way, let's go to Catra's arc.

I’m not going to recite everything terrible Catra does because I’m still on my first complete rewatch and I honestly find it hard to list it all. It’s a lot. So let’s talk about her shifting motivations. Early on, we see her desire for approval and recognition motivating her in ways that are so easy to sympathize with - she’s been told she’s worthless for years, and she wants to be worth something. We see how much she’s been scarred by Shadow Weavers abuse and by the ruthlessness and callousness of the Horde, and can sympathize with her desire to survive and advance since her own position is so untenable. We also see how, at first, she wants to be reunited with Adora. Her first huge turn into much darker territory is Promises, when she tries to kill Adora in order to permanently sever her connection with her own life and eliminate a possible rival for advancement (should Adora ever return). She’s told herself that she doesn’t want Adora back, and at least partly means it. Yet we still show her care for Scorpia and Entrapta and even Shadow Weaver in Season 2. It’s when Catra realizes that Shadow Weaver has chosen Adora over her once again that she takes her darkest turn. It’s not just that she destroys reality out of spite, it’s that she rejects her chance for a better and happier life, betrays every friend she has and focuses single-mindedly on hurting Adora (and arguably herself) and then on surviving when her attempt fails. Then Catra spends an entire season both fully inhabiting her role as a villain (and not a sympathetic one - really only our history with her leaves us sympathetic) and being utterly self-destructive and miserable. At the end, as mentioned, she’s a broken, suicidal wreck who has destroyed everything she’s strived for. If this was an HBO drama, we’d roll credits here and she’d go down as another self-destructive antihero. It would perhaps be too much to call her ‘Walter White as a catgirl’, but still. Of course, her story doesn’t end there.

Something that is incredibly dark that is happening in step with this is Catra’s hardening of herself, indeed, her dehumanization of herself. We see her struggle with her natural compassion, her kindness, her need for connection, her desire for happiness, and we see her ignore it all, stamp it down and nearly snuff it out. This is a huge factor in her descent into becoming a real villain (no ‘anti’ qualifiers needed). Every step of her descent is a struggle for Catra - not going with Adora in the second part of ‘The Sword’, trying to kill Adora in ‘Promise’, going back to the Horde, betraying Entrapta, lying about Entrapta, threatening Scorpia, destroying the world - but she always chooses evil. And with every step she becomes more isolated, more callous, and more cruel. Her default reaction becomes not just bravado and mockery and insolence, but threats, bullying and intimidation, until her management style is identical to Hordak’s, and indeed, is quite a bit worse. Catra starts off fighting for Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s approval and struggling to survive, and ends up cackling maniacally at her brutal and murderous conquests. She has very deliberately turned herself into a cruel conqueror, and a tyrant. This self-dehumanization is a huge part of evil in the world, I think, and it’s really powerful to see it so clearly in a kids show.

Meanwhile her insistence on evading all responsibility finally results in a self-serving, self-protective narrative that insulates her from responsibility or self-examination but also cuts her off from reality and other people. It’s always a bit unclear to what extent her various untruths (about Adora leaving her, about Shadow Weaver’s escape and her concealment of it not being her fault, about Entrapta betraying Hordak) are things she believes, lies she is telling to have power over others (mostly Scorpia) or things that she doesn’t quite believe but is trying to convince herself of. It’s probably all of these at various times, and in different degrees for each lie. The end result is that Catra is even more alone, because only she inhabits the safe cocoon of lies she’s built around herself. It also is the key to her and the Horde’s downfall - Catra is so isolated and in such denial that she can’t see how thin her forces are spread, and this crack shows up even in episode 1 of Season 4, with her insistence that the Princess Alliance is in shambles (when, in fact, it’s already rebounding, and proves more resilient than she allows herself to believe, and is led by a woman as ruthless and determined as herself). This part of Catra’s arc brilliantly shows how deception (of yourself and others) can feel protective by keeping shame at bay, but ultimately is destructive and strips someone of so much of the intellectual and moral qualities that we call ‘human.’ It’s also chilling to see since we’ve seen the end game of this mentality play out in US national politics, at the highest level.

I said at the opening that we’ve never seen a sympathetic character like Catra in a kids show. What about Zuko? I would argue that Zuko is never a cruel, or as callous, or as self-destructive as Catra is at her worst. Zuko is motivated by a desire for recognition from his abusive father (much like Catra is initially motivated by desire for recognition from Hordak and Shadow Weaver, and indeed Adora), and perhaps a desire to belong in the Fire Nation. All of this gets wrapped together in his ‘Honor’. He’s a young man with a very weak sense of what he truly believes, instead relying on external guides to what he should do. He’s also incredibly self-involved, and initially indifferent to anyone’s pain but his own and anyone’s needs but his own need to restore his honor. Uncle Iroh is there throughout to push Zuko both to see the needs of others and to become his own person. Zuko’s redemption arc, then, is a twofold quest to recognize other people and to find his own moral center and act from it. This is a pretty powerful coming of age story in that it is about him becoming his own person and throwing off the shackles of his upbringing. Politically, it’s a powerful story of a young man taking responsibility for his own actions in an authoritarian regime and refusing to participate in its imperialism any more and to embrace a new way forward both for himself and his nation. At the same time, in some ways it is easy to sympathize with Zuko because his greatest crimes are those of weakness - he’s not strong enough to stand up to his nation and his family until midway through the last season. Catra though...Catra does what she does, eventually, because she wants to hurt people. She’s cruel, and spiteful, and destructive in ways that are truly scary and which prevent any excuse or mitigation.

Which brings up the other comparison - Azula. But while Azula is (somewhat inconsistently) shown either as a monstrous child sociopath or a traumatized and broken child who can’t help it (and thus, perversely, as not a moral agent but something like a monster), Catra is consistently shown as a moral agent. Catra chooses her own path, every step of the way. She has so many chances to do something else - Adora’s offers to leave together in the two-part series opener, Promises, Scorpia’s suggestion that they dessert the Horde and become desert gang leaders, etc - and until season 5, she turns them all down. While Azula seems destined for evil and madness, with Catra we see a young woman very deliberately walk down the path into unmitigated evil with both eyes open. And then we see it destroy her.

And after she is basically destroyed, we see her build herself back. This process actually starts in Season 4 with the creeping realization that even when she is winning she is miserable and alone. She doesn’t even notice Scorpia is gone for several episodes, then she completely loses it. She spends the entire time when she is at her most triumphant isolated and raging and borderline incoherent, as ineffectual as she accuses Hordak of being. She’s won, and she’s alone, and she’s the most unhappy she has ever been, and I think for the first time she realizes that. And that’s the worst blow to her, even before all the external things come crashing down. She’s already miserable before Double Trouble and Glimmer deal her a triple coup de grace of destroying all her armies*, turning her and Hordak against each other and then Double Trouble’s epic evisceration. By the time Glimmer shows up, Catra is, as mentioned, literally suicidal. But she’s also already begun the process of changing in that she knows that she has a problem (her, and her self/other-destructive tendencies). Moreover, she knows, at some level, that what she really wants isn’t conquest, or to prove herself as the baddest leader of the Horde, but love - and she’s seen how she’s squandered that at every opportunity.

Let’s just pause for a moment to observe how much better Glimmer is at villainous machinations than Catra. In a couple episodes she makes a faustian bargain for unlimited power, kills all her enemies armies, sets her two chief foes at each other’s throats and literally cripples one while rendering the other helpless. And given her ironic non-answer about hurting Catra (‘we’re the good guys, remember?’ and the fact that she’d tried to kill Catra twice before**, she walked into Hordak’s sanctum fully intending to end Catra’s life, one way or another. She does all this through ruthlessness, recklessness and treachery, and she could give like, a TED talk on villainy. Of course it also blows up in her face and is actually way worse than the portal did in Catra’s, endangering the whole universe (I always assumed that the portal only threatened Despondos), dooming Etheria to invasion and all that. Of course, Catra pulled that switch and then fought Adora knowing that the world was ending, while Glimmer was just ignoring warnings from...just about everyone, including Shadow Weaver. So yeah, Glimmer, best kids show antihero since Princess Bubblegum***(unless we’re counting Catra as an antihero, which works for the first half of season 5).

Anyway, at the beginning of Season 5 Catra is adrift. Though some interpretations, like TV tropes, see her as immediately falling back into old habits and casting her lot in with Prime, I see her actions from the end of Season 4 onwards as more ambivalent. She seems to be kind of...going through the motions. She doesn’t have any of the drive or passion in her plotting that she once did, she seems to be maneuvering into Prime’s good graces out of habit. At best she’s back in the survival mode of early season 1, but without the ambition and desire to prove herself that motivated her. Some interpretations put a lot of stock in Prime being someone that can’t be bargained with or appeased, but...I don’t buy it. I take him, to an extent, at his word when he says that he was ‘exalt’ Catra (I am sure it is something awful). Catra actually gets what she wants halfway through “Corridors.” Only it’s not what she wants. She’s done jockeying for advantage, especially in a world where she truly would be alone because all she has is this psychopathic narcissist and his clones for company. She wants connection. She wants to do what is right. She’s suppressed all her humanity (felinitity? Anyway) for years and it’s made her miserable, and now she’s ready to embrace it. At the same time she confronts her own culpability, seeing just how much harm she’s done and admitting it for the first time. Her first lifeline is Glimmer, the only person she can actually talk to, the only other Etherian, the woman whose mother she doomed and who has nearly killed her three times. But Glimmer is also going through her own dark night of the soul - Glimmer and Catra’s character arcs were converging at the same time that Catra’s and Adoras and Glimmer’s and Adora’s were diverging. And they come together on either side of that forcefield, just talking and being people in an environment that is designed to be as dehumanizing as possible. Even this barest lifeline is enough for Catra to hold on to for dear life, and enough to inspire her to not just feel bad about the bad things she’s done, but do something good.

But the first way she does this is a cop out. Her plan, like Shadow Weaver’s in the finale, is to sacrifice/kill herself doing ‘one good thing.’ That way she doesn’t have to figure out how to live with the consequences of her actions, face the possible rejection of the people she loves whom she’s wronged, and do the hard work of building herself back up as a better person. She gets to die a hero rather than live as a villain. That said, unlike Shadow Weaver she does at least get off one apology, and it makes all the difference.

Then Adora fucks Catra’s sacrifice up, in glorious, space operatic, gay AF pulp fiction fashion, by saving the cat. Catra is mind controlled or unconscious for most of this episode, but what she does do is so crucial. When Adora comes for her, she reaches out to her, as soon as she is able. She doesn’t push her away, she takes Adora’s help, and her love, and Adora does the rest in badass fashion. The next few episodes plus the so perfect its canon Don’t Go are my favorite part of Catra’s entire arc.

She nearly falls back into her old habits, at least partly. Now that she has to live with what she’s done rather than just dying for it she just wants to run away again. But when she has to choose between losing Adora all over again and confronting herself and her past, she chooses Adora, and asks her to stay.

Catra then spends the rest of Season 5 slowly easing herself into the very human world of the Princess Alliance - the comaradery, the dedication to others and a cause, the goofiness. I’m going to talk a lot more about her relationship with Adora in my Catradora post, but I do want to highlight three moments.

The first is Catra running away again. This is actually a big change from what she’s done before - she’s not leaving because she’s angry, or bitter, or spiteful, she’s leaving because she doesn’t want to see the woman she loves sacrifice herself yet again (maybe this time for good) after being manipulated by the woman who had abused them both. But then she comes back. And then she confronts her abuser in a way that she has never done before - for the first time in the series, she not only calls Shadow Weaver out but calls her to do the right thing, and doesn’t give up until she does (this is after Adora also calls SW out and cuts her off forever, meaning that her two charges have finally called her on her bullshit and chosen each other over her, more in my Shadow Weaver Rant...and I guess my Catradora rant).

Then, at the end, Catra both stays with Adora through her potentially fatal harnessing of the Heart of Etheria and then her comes in and rescues her by challenging her to do something for Catra and for herself. Not to be with Catra, or to kiss her, or love her, but just stay for her. Needless to say, Adora responds far more enthusiastically than Catra had dared hope. (more on this in my Catradora rant).

Catra starts the show convinced she doesn’t need anyone except Adora, and she’s willing to even push Adora away if she can’t have Adora on her own terms. She goes down that path - ambition, manipulation, treachery, cruelty and isolation - until she has nothing left. She then slowly, painfully, turns around and reaches out and begins to heal the pain in Etheria and the universe rather than causing more. This is a psychological journey in many ways, but even more than that it is a profoundly moral one. It is a story of her accepting responsibility for her actions, facing reality, reaching out to others and making amends. It is in every sense a redemption. And while it works perfectly with Adora’s own development into her own, fuller, happier, healthier person, it works not because of Adora or the power of love, but because of Catra herself. Adora’s companionship, Adora’s rescuing of her and holding her to account, all of these are necessary for Catra to change for the better. But in the end it is Catra herself who chooses the right path, maybe for the first time in her life. And that’s what makes the romance work in turn - Catra is motivated to change not simply by a desire to impress her girlfriend or by Adora’s shining goodness (to the contrary, Adora’s a healthier and less self-sacrificing person at least in the finale...she comes around later than Catra) but by her desire to be true to herself and seek out what she really needs and wants - which is love, and connection, and to do good rather than evil. It’s a gorgeous story that takes an antihero all the way down to hell and then back again, and this makes it a truly unique redemption arc in all of kids TV - not just because of how far Catra falls, but how far she travels overall.

*(I know a lot of fanficcers talk about there being a lot of Horde Soldiers left but like...in the show...they’re nearly all dead, guys. Glimmer and company...okay mostly Mermista... just about killed them all in an afternoon. The cadet Triad survives because they deserted and weren’t there to get drowned/frozen/suffocated by plants when the grand invasion of Brightmoon went sideways)

**Okay, once she was only an accessory to Shadow Weaver’s attempted murder of Catra, the other time she leaves Catra for dead in ‘Pulse’

***I stan PB so hard guys. So hard. Machiavellian genius, mad scientist, god figure, possible Nietzschean Ubermensch? She’s so great. So great.

[sanjuno]

Meta Fic rides again

I'm a little stuck on how to word something in my Nano 2020 project so I decided to take a break by trying to read “Scum Villain’s Self Saving System” again and failed horribly because I got to the part when Binghe comes back and my interest died a quick and messy death for yet a third time. Someone write me a giant pile of gen-fic and LiuShen AUs to heal my heart.

Here, I’ll start us off:

Spite and Fury (or; PEDW is a hive of Scum and Villainy)

So bitter-old-man!Madara dies of old age after he passes his Epic Revenge Plot over into Obito’s keeping, and the Sage’s knockoff-brand cycle-of-transmigration peels Indra’s chakra out of Madara’s soul - which results in dying!Madara having a screaming ragefit that sends his spirit-and-chakra careening through the void between worlds

At which point shattered-and-fragmenting-more!Madara gets into an altercation with the System and since the System is a little bitch it tosses Madara into the worst possible Fate it can think of (see: PEDW)

Transmigration bullshit and Sharingan fuckery smash into each other in a gigantic clusterfuck of asspulls

Madara is missing bits because Indra’s imprint got ripped out

The Shen Jiu base soul is missing bits because torture and previous abuse of his character by the System

The resulting villain amalgamation is Not Pleased

Instead of landing in the divergence point chosen by the System - aka the Qi deviation fever shortly after Binghe arrives at Cang Qiong Sect – we instead have the jigsaw puzzle mashup of Mads-and-Jiu land in baby-slave Jiu’s body

The good news is Madara and Jiu stop fragmenting because they end up woven together - they’re stuck together as an almost-single person only with two different sets of memories

Character exploration is going to be an EVENT

Also the Madara part of them is really happy with the silky smooth hair

Also Yue “lets-Binghe-kill-him-because-he-thinks-Shen-Jiu-is-dead” Qi is cast is a much better light when compared to Senju “stabs-his-sworn-brother-in-the-back” Hashirama

So Mads-Jiu plays it close to canon for the first few years - the only real difference is that he tags his Jiejie with a tracking seal for after he escapes from slavery - he’s not leaving his ability to find her again up to chance or developing a reputation as a whoremonger if he can help it

When he gets bought by the Qiu is when Mads-Jiu starts being a manipulative little shit like we all know he is

Xanatos-pileup-or-bust!Mads-Jiu basically lets Yue Qi escape alone because he NEEDS Yue Qi to become Cang Qiong Sect Leader for his long-term plans to work properly

So Mads-Jiu warns Yue Qi that if he has to be CAREFUL because cultivating is dangerous and if Yue Qi comes back missing any pieces then Jiu will cut the EXACT SAME BITS OFF HIMSELF

And so Yue Qi is EXTREMELY safety conscious and the life eating sword drama is avoided entirely

Of course he’s also taking longer to reach his initial strength levels than in canon because he isn’t rushing

So there’s nothing like Yue Qi showing up early to trigger a plot divergence alert in the System

</mwahahaha>

Mads-Jiu is more pragmatic regarding Qiu Haitang’s so-called innocence this time around - and so he arranges for her to catch the Creeper Qiu bro abusing and assaulting Shen Jiu

Haitang is HORRIFIED AND DISGUSTED to see what her brother is doing to her fiancé and also TERRIFIED by the fact that he talks the entire time about how sweet it’s going to be when it’s HAITANG under him

The Qiu burn on schedule but Haitang kills her fair share - double Qi deviations FTW!

The system does not notice such a minor change in the background events - Jiu kills the Qiu, burns down their house, and Haitang survives the fire with vengeance raging in her heart

Mads-Jiu kills the demonic creeper that was hanging around because ew no and also keep your hands of Haitang

Again, it’s too close to canon for the System to notice - Jiu killed him in defense of a “childhood friend” so hahaha again

Instead of being used as a stalking horse by an evil master Mads-Jiu runs off with Haitang to track down and rescue his Jiejie

Shenanigans ensue

Afterwards Mads-Jiu “has an idea to help find Qi-ge” by asking around for him at the Immortal Alliance Conference

Of course there are more shenanigans and Yue Qi saves all three by claiming that they’re Cang Qiong disciples - so of course he drags all 3 of them back with him and wibbles at the current Sect Leader until he lets them all join

Still (mostly) following canon! Ha! So no “punishment” events get triggered in the System (which is mostly dormant because the Protagonist isn’t born yet XP)

Qiu Haitang was supposed to join a Sect! Jiejie got sold on schedule! Shen Jiu killed the Qiu and his “first master”! Yue pesters his Shizun into letting his sibling(s) join the Sect in an unorthodox fashion!

But the devil is in the details

And the devil’s name is Uchiha Madara

Jiejie ends up as Peak Lord for Talisman Peak because magic and seals saved her before

Haitang ends up Peak Lord for Hidden Peak because she refuses to be caught unawares by a dangerous secret ever again... also because she’s a mean sneaky bitch and owns it

Having more than one sibling for the Sect Leader to blatantly favour means less wholesale resentment directed at Mads-Jiu as well

However the Jiu part of them has memories from PIDW and also SVSSS - so he knows that shit is going to get horrible once Su Xiyan gets knocked up

Obviously the answer is to seduce all of his fellow peak lords into a glorious polyamorous clusterfuck so as to promote skinship and pack bonding and harmony among the sect leadership

(It worked for PIDW Binghe with his wives and SVSSS Shen Yuan with getting Bing-mei to chill his tits after all and nobody can trip you into bed quite like a shinobi)

And so Cang Qiong’s family aesthetics get rocked so hard that instead of panting after his Shizun baby disciple Binghe decides to seduce his peers...

... and his rivals

... and other sect’s disciples

... and the occasional demon

Mads-Jiu is really proud of his baby demon lord but makes sure not to single Binghe out - instead every Qing Jing disciple gets rewarded and punished at the same time

It promotes bonding! And teamwork!

And prevents the utter destruction of Mads-Jiu’s chrysanthemum via oversized demonic pillar!

There is totally going to be an extra where Mads-Jiu realizes that the average size of a male cultivators pillar is DANGEROUSLY EXCESSIVE

NOBODY NEEDS THAT MUCH PILLAR

Even HIS pillar hasn’t escaped the curse

BIGGER IS NOT BETTER!

How the fuck is he supposed to fight if he can’t even wear pants comfortably!?!?

(No wait come back Mu-shidi this shixiong is sorry it wasn’t mockery it was a perfectly reasonable tantrum that was a long time coming now stop sulking your dick is very pretty let shixiong make it up to you~)

And at some point there will be a wild Bing-ge who appears to cause trouble with a mirror that’s intended to temporarily transform people into the form of their last life - he aims it at the native Bingbing to get him out of the way so he can steal the “nice” Shizun

It would have been Pom time for Bingbing but Mads-Jiu pushes him out of the way

And cue giant explosion of dark Qi as a bonus expansion pack of Madara’s 10-tail Jinchuriki time with powers-and-memories gets downloaded into Mads-Jiu

Mads-Jiu the “Heavenly Demon Demi God” drops several mountains worth of flaming meteor rock on the invaders and then goes on a giant flaming skeleton rampage against Bing-ge

... Bing-ge has changed his mind he doesn’t want this Shizun take him back and oh gods the shrieking

How does he shriek so loud? Doesn’t he need to breathe?

... ok so Shizun breathes fire that’s good to know

Whelps time to bravely run away

And then the amassed sects need to figure out how to calm down the rampaging hell beast

The youngest Qing Jing disciple is brought out and told to cry for Shizun

Actually-a-broody-hen!Mads-Jiu whips around and starts fussing over his baby student

Because baby why are you crying stop it tell Shizun who hurt you and he will BURN THEM TO ASH

The last bit I have an idea for involves Mads-Jiu getting yanked though dimensions because Edo Tensei where he instantly twigs to what is going on and pushes the “righteous cultivator” skin to maximum strength

He shoves all the baby ninja behind him and keeps barrier spamming the zombie army - because ew no stay away from the children resentful corpses

Zetsu is included in the zombie army shall not pass smack down

Zombie!Tobirama is appalled because wut? Wasn’t this supposed to be Madara’s zombie? What is happening?

And I dunno something where he “notices” the resentful energy surrounding Danzo because stealing the eyes of the people you murdered is bad karma

So Mads-Jiu does a spirit thing and the ghosts of the Uchiha rips Danzo apart while screaming about his guilt in full view of the entire Village

And then Mads-Jiu goes home because filial little Bingbing came to get him and he’s not enjoying upending the shinobi social order nope not at all whom exactly do you take him for?

... Yes he’s done and ready to go back to his spouses now he’s sure the ninja have all learned better than to raise living corpses now anyway

The end

=/=

[a-magical-artist]

Top Ten Favorite Doppels

Turned in less than five minutes before Halloween ends, but whatever:

10. Abigail

Hagumu is really just a scared kid despite being a Neo Magius stooge, and Abigail is a very good representation of that; Hagumu closes her eyes whenever she comes out, to which, same as Abigail is a very intimidating doppel filled with teeth and spikes. Her form’s listed as a “reversible shape” and she gives the impression of a torn up, straw-filled doll with a toothy mouth and spines/shards all throughout her inner lining. It’s also a good twist that since Hagumu’s magic makes her unusually strong against witches, Abigail is the opposite, being effective against magical girls. 

I really love the exterior on this one, it looks very pretty and ornate, and it does a nice job contrasting with the messy, shard-filled fiber underneath.

9. Gothel

I’m very close to unlocking Gothel (all I need are materials for Magia leveling), but I already love her design. She takes Yozuru’s wish and magnifies/projects it as many witches (or doppels) do, in her case, trying to find someone or something that can make Yozuru feel the emotions she wished away. She takes the form of a tower (name being a great Rapunzel reference) with exposed ribs she uses to drag in and crush whatever she sees, which is...fairly impressive as a doppel design without being too gory (a reason why Beatrice and Therisia aren’t here or in this slot). 

8. Clothette

I...really, really don’t like Suzune Magica, and I don’t like Suzune. I do however, have a grudging respect for her Doppel design. Clothette’s based around a gadfly, comes out of Suzune’s eye, has bells for eyes, and is constantly on fire. It’s a great design, but points off for coming from a character I can’t stand.

7. Gibdaughter

So, fun fact about hummingbirds for anyone who doesn’t know; they’re beautiful little birds...that have the worst tempers. I love them for that, and I’m happy to see one used as a base for a doppel design. Gibdaughter, as per usual, externalizes Kanae’s wish to be left in peace by using her very love of music. Her main attacks all revolve around the vibrations she gives off, adjusting them to resonate with her targets until they shatter. Given both the animal and the character of Kanae, this was an all too appropriate fit. The doppel’s mechanical appearance is pretty and both a nice reference to hummer feathers (they give off a metallic sheen when light hits them), and to Kanae’s aloof exterior.

6. Sylvie

Given how sweet and caring Ikumi is, this one was a surprise. Sylvie’s a very invasive doppel-moreso than Hevelius even-in that she’s not only formed from Ikumi’s lower half, but also seems to thread her way through her entire body given Ikumi’s eyes turn into glowing, barbed anchors. Definitely lines up with her nature, but...jesus. She gives the impression she’s based around one of those cymbal monkey toys, which is already creepy enough, but Sylvie’s “head” is just Ikumi, and also the gigantic screw jutting out of her upper back. The accordion midsection does not help in any of this and makes Sylvie’s movements look off, even for a doppel. Good but horrifying design, though the glowing eye anchors are a little over the top for me. 

5. Hund Balou

Hund Balou is one of the rare genuinely disturbing doppels; Hanna was already very close to being her by externalizing her curse on the world and those around her, so there’s not much for Hund to do except just. be destructive. Her form is creepy, her description’s creepy, everything about Hund is really screwed up. And Hanna, being spiteful, vindictive Hanna, loves her and thankfully, never got the opportunity to use her for some pretty obvious reasons. Hanna’s relationship with Hund is similar to Alina’s with Old Dorothy-both are in sync with their doppels and have the same goal, which is...horrifying given both characters. Hund is really cluttered and witch-like in appearance, being covered in leashes, chains, and buttons with a splattered green/purple/blue dress topping it all off. Her mixed media feel is pronounced, which is a good indication of how close Hanna is to her, and how messed up her implications really are.

4. Ein Roter Drache

This is the stupidest, and yet most awesome doppel I have ever seen; it’s a dragon that makes its entrance by riding on its hoard of treasure and smacks its targets with its tail. The tiny crown is a really funny touch for it and I will forever be sad that I can’t get Elisa outside of a support as of NA’s shutdown

Also love how it’s just Elisa’s bottom half to give the illusion she’s riding the doppel-that’s awesome and I love the creativity going into it

3. Oaji

*Insert the “What are you doing in my swamp” mere here*

Oaji takes the appearance of an entire swamp that lures people in, hinting at both the barrier of the witch and the witch herself possibly being similar to Zola, which is a cool concept. I love how simple she looks, and her coming out from behind Chiharu lines up with her misguided efforts to help her. She kind of gives off a similar vibe to Elsa Maria from the original series-even the branches bring the Sebastian familiars to mind. Also really love the lantern and the gray pool forming underneath Chiharu-the gold streaks just really top everything off here.

2. Marita

I love assassin bugs and so I love Marita. Instant number two for me

For real though, I didn’t expect these to be used as a doppel base, so I was very surprised when Sunao came out and her doppel had this as one. It looks appropriately creepy and very elegant, and I like the little necklaces hanging just below the head of the doppel. Marita also shares the needle/sewing aesthetic with Latria, and although there’s no blood, the giant one serving as a mouth is scary enough in implication. The crystal ball (that turns red during attacks) being the doppel’s abdomen’s also a nice touch. 

Honorable Mentions:

Old Dorothy: Old Dorothy in-game is described as witch-like, and that’s because unless the viewer knows where her core body is, she just looks like an unrecognizable mass of puffballs and paper flowers dipped in orange paint. With witches, you can never really tell what it is you’re looking at, so Old Dorothy gives off that same impression. She didn’t officially make it because of her weird little core body, but I do love her gimmick. 

Theresia: I do like Theresia, but I felt her design wouldn’t fit since I’m trying to avoid the more gory doppels. I do like how she’s literally just Sana’s ears, and how there’s two versions of her that have an equal chance of coming out (though this does present some complications when going competitive with Sana).

Poker Alice: Too much of what looks to be exposed muscle for me to feel comfortable putting her in, but I adore the skulls exploding outward behind the chair and the hands covering Yukika’s eyes. Speaking of, the eyes on this thing are both cool and nicely scary in contrast to the simplicity of the rocking chair. 

Gosirsa: Colorful and very beautiful, the wheels at the front make for a surreal touch, something that many doppels tend to lack due to being scaled down versions of the full witch. Didn’t make it because there’s too few slots and too many doppels to choose from, but definitely in my personal faves.

1. Campanella

Campanella’s just the right amount of dumb, elegant, and unsettling, hence her being here at the number one spot. Yachiyo’s training event also helped me warm up to her; while Yu Hong and Cyan were self-defeating and frustrated respectively, Camp was really, really mellow by contrast. She seemed willing to work with Yachiyo as long as she accepted and stopped rejecting her, which was, at the time, a very nice change from the usual (not that Camp doesn’t try to take over however-once Yachiyo implies she’s going to keep running from her, she goes on the attack). She takes the form of a ticket puncher holding a lantern, comes out of Yachiyo’s leg, and gives the overall impression of a scorpion, ridiculously oversized shoes and all. Her anime appearances are a nice representation of Yachiyo’s fears and it’s just really satisfying to find out  that they have enough of a relationship to where she can use her in fights. Doppels when it comes down to it are a sort of agreement/truce between the magical girl and their witch self; not only does it allow them to come back, it allows them to make peace with their insecurities and fears without the danger of turning into a witch. Campanella, both in-game and the anime, represents that relationship to its fullest, so she’s at the #1 spot. 

[zuzu-hotman]

Ready To Love Pt.4 [[Zuko]]

Pairing: Zuko x Female!Reader

Warnings: The usual (;

A/N: Ahh, part four! So so close..also more word vomit. I know, I know, it’s taking long but listen, I do enjoy slow burning and world building <3 I promise, much more to come next part!

Pt.1,, Pt.3

“ Aɴᴅ ᴀʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ..”

Your hand felt so warm clasping his- he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the feeling. The last time he’d gotten to was in Ba Sing Se, sometime before he’d made the bad choices he made. Honestly he felt like it was going to be the last time. He was aware he’d hurt you, but he never realized to what degree. He hadn’t known how you had suffered in his absence. Adding his betrayal to it was another- and how he looked at you when you began to bend? He never meant to look hurt. It wasn’t because you didn’t firebend. It was because you didn’t tell him- because he had made it so you were unable to do so.

As kids you had always told each other everything. Though back then, there wasn’t much to tell. Only dinner plans or events at school. He complained about Azula to you and you tried to make things look brighter than they were. You made him once believe Azula would change. He still sometimes wished she had. Still, he’d always did his best to make himself available to talk. You’d opened up to him before and it killed him to think that at one point you decided it was best to close up.

The brutality his Father showed him effected him greatly- he only wished it wasn’t a big enough blow to reach you. He hoped his brutality wasn’t something you had to deal with in his absence as well.

Your father.. the thought still weighed on his mind. It sat heavily upon his heart- what happened to you? What led you to Ba Sing Se?

His gaze drifted from your hand clasped on his to the back of your head. He stared at your hair, watching how the strands moved as you dragged him into no where. Same as the first time you’d met.. he smiled softly to himself as he recalled..

“Azula! Let me back in!”, he’d hissed, gripping at the bars of the palace gates.

“You should’ve played with us Zuzu! Gosh, Mother will be so disappointed knowing you snuck out just to spite your dear sister.”

“She won’t believe you! Not this time!”

“Aw won’t she?”, Azula batted her eyelashes innocently, “Mooom!”

Zuko panicked, looking around for somewhere to hide while he thought of how he can sneak back in. It was horrible enough Azula forced him out- throwing a gift he’d received from Uncle Iroh over the gates, in an area that was kind of like a blind spot. Not many guards passing through, on account of it being near a poorer part of things. No one on that end had to means to try anything- these people could barely feed themselves sometimes, and so they also couldn’t afford weapons. The thought made Zuko.. uncomfortable. His own people were starving.. yet he had to remain hushed about it.

Even more so now. Mother always warned both him and Azula about getting too close to this area. The people had no means of getting in, but if they got out.. well, she said some people weren’t too kind. Greed corrupted them in horrible ways. Zuko wasn’t sure how it was greed rather than need.

“You’re lost.”, a voice says, and he jumps almost a foot in the air- all his training lost on him in a moment of panic.

Before him stands a girl his age- a little frail. Looking back now, Zuko knows this was from lack of proper food. Her hairs a little messy and her clothes have some patch work here and there. She holds something in her hand- Zuko fears he might be in trouble for a moment.

“Is this yours? I saw someone throw it over- it hit me in the head.”, she speaks softly, holding it out for him to take.

“...Why are you being nice to me?”, he asks, hesitantly taking it from her hands.

She shrugs, “Dunno. You didn’t give me a reason to be mean?” Her eyes look him over, taking him in. It’s clear now she realizes he’s of royal blood, or at the least, not poor. Her gaze moves towards the palace gate, “You’re not lost, you’re stuck.”

Zuko relaxes just a little, “Yeah. My dumb sister threw this over here and made me get it. Now she’s going to lie to my Mom and get me in trouble.”

The girl makes a face, “That’s mean.”

“Yeah it is.”

“Maybe that’s just how she likes to play?”

Zuko huffs, “She did it because I wouldn’t play.”

The girl makes a face again, crossing her arms. She’s silent for a moment or two, thinking something over carefully before speaking, “Well.. I can help you get in, but only if you promise you won’t tell. You’d be getting someone I know in trouble.”

Zuko stares at her. He wonders if he can even trust her- his Mothers lecture becomes nothing more than a faded echo as he stares at her. It’s either this, or let Azula win.

“Okay.”, he says, “I promise.” There’s another beat of silence before she suddenly grabs his hand and drags him off. He lets out a small startled sound but allows himself to be dragged away. You wove him in and out of some alleyways and bushes. He wonders if you’re helping him or kidnapping him- do kids kidnap other kids?

The longer this takes the more he panics- and then suddenly you stop. He bumps into your back, letting out a small ugh as he stumbles away from you.

“Shh..”, you hiss, “We’ve got one shot at this, okay?”

“Wh-what do you mean by that?”

She deadpans at him, “Not in a danger kind of way. I mean we have only one chance at you not getting caught. Got it?”

“Oh- okay. Uhm.. how do you know a way in?”

“Maybe I know a maid.”, she says, and Zuko raises a brow. She knows a maid? Is she the daughter of one?

“Do you want to play a guessing game or do you want to go home? Prince Zuko?”

He stares at  her, absolutely dumbfounded, “How did you-”

“M’kay, so you gotta make a mad run for it when I say go. One more thing.”, she looks at him with a very serious expression, “If you ever find yourself out here again, come find me. You’re very good at follow the leader.”

Zuko groans quietly to himself, “Oh whatever.. well.. is this my only shot? Like my only chance all day?” He asks cause he has to know. In the moment he didn’t think of it as a game. Though now that he’s sure he’s in no danger.. well, it was kind of fun. Everything was a blur but he saw things he never got to see up close. He met someone on his own and not because it was needed since he was the prince.

This girl found him and he found her- she wasn’t so proper and up tight. Even knowing who he was from the start.

“Mhmm.. no? There’s another one but it’s not until night time.. and how would you explain being gone all day?”, she says, interrupting his thoughts.

Zuko shrugs now, his mind suddenly made up, “I’ll find one. Maybe Azula will panic for once. That would be nice. Mom might worry too though..”, maybe he wasn’t too sure now.

She smiles at him gently, “We can play another day. I’m sure we have time.”

“Are you sure?”, he asks.

“I’m sure. I’d like to see you again P-”

“Zuko.”, he insists, “Just call me Zuko.”

A small laugh escapes her, and to this day he holds it dear, “Okay, Zuko.”

He nods at her, a silent promise to see her again, but before he runs off, “What’s your name?”

“Come back tomorrow and find out.”, she replies, a cheeky grin on her face.

“I think this is a good spot.”, you say, breaking the long silence at last. You sit down and pat the spot next to you. “Before I start, I want to apologize only for being so irrational with my anger. That, and what in the world were you thinking?! A high security prison?! With Sokka! Katara would have killed you if anything happened to him! I would have lost my mind! Jeez Zuko!”

Zuko could only stare at you, it had been so long since you’d worried over him in any way. So very very long since you had truly seemed like yourself. It was the little things he’d missed the most. He had to let you know.

“I missed you so much, ___.”, he says, so softly your heart about bursts.

“Zuko I am literally about to lecture you-”

“Do it. Lecture me all night I don’t care- just talk to me. Talk to me. Yell and scream- I don’t care. I missed you so much. I missed you when I had to leave and I missed you when I made that mistake. So much.”

You could only smile sadly. He was as hurt as you were by his actions and that much was clear. You could see it now. Zuko never aimed to hurt any one, he’d only self destructed, and the blow effected those he cared for.

“Okay, but I’m only going to talk. It might be a long night.”

“That’s fine with me.”

So you began, not knowing where it might take you both. All you knew was that it was needed. You couldn’t hide any longer, the feelings were bubbling over despite a horrible war nearing.

Love didn’t much care for proper timing..

“ᴀʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs..”

Pt.5

[linkspooky]

Ten Favorite Female Characters

I was tagged by @midnight-in-town​, so now I have to show them how much I love my favorite women. 

Name your favorite female characters from 10 different Fandoms and tag 10/or the amount you wish people

Tagging: @hamliet​ @amonmahboi​ @inumaqi​ @thyandrawrites​ @kaibutsushidousha​  @harostar​.. yeah, I don’t know ten people. 

Enoshima Junko 

“Hope is harmony. A just heart, moving toward the light. That is all. Despair is hope's polar opposite. It is messy and confusing. It swallows up love, hatred, and everything else.”

Junko wishes she was a psychopath. She’s spent her entire life pretending to be a crazy psychopath, because living that life is just so much more interesting than the one she’s stuck in. Enoshima Junko is just too smart for the world, and everything is too easy for her, and rather than try to dumb herself down a little bit she’s decided to knock everything else down. She’s a girl kicking down sandcastles because building them out of sand all alone is no longer doing it for her. 

Junko’s interesting because of the weird logic and loops she runs her brain into. There’s a complex character behind the whole “I exist only to spread despair” thing. She’s perfectly capable of forming emotional attachments to people, and genuinely caring. But the people she likes are generally far worse off than the ones she doesn’t care about. 

Junko wants so badly to, just not be human. She does the most inhuman things possible to prove that she’s not human. What really made me love her is the lengths she’s willing to go, to the point in Dangan Ronpa Zero where she basically took a screw to her own brain and started acting like a normal girl only when all of her memories were removed. 

Junkos relationship with Matsuda shows two conflicting sides of her character. How much she's humanized by her love of him,  and also how much she wants to completely destroy that part of herself. It's like she physically can't be a normal girl. Or rather she doesn’t want to be to such extremes she’ll break everything and then herself. 

And if she can’t be normal than Junko decided that self destruction is her next best bet. There’s just nothing that will satisfy Junko, and it’s interesting to watch someone that empty decide the world is going to end, or she’s going to end herself and she doesn’t really care which. 

Ajimu Najimi

“Call to me with affection, Anshin’in-san. Well, I don’t really care what manga characters call me.” 

Hey, I put Junko on this list twice. Both Ajimu and Junko live in a world that is too easy for them, and therefore they have no reason to get emotionally invested in others or try to attach themselves to anything. Which is why it’s fun to see Ajimu attempt the same thing as Junko to kill herself in style and eventually get saved from herself.

Medaka Box is such a meaningful manga to me because they take the weirdest characters and no matter how deranged they are they find the parts of them that are relatable and go, well guess what you’re human too. Ajimu literally calls herself a non-human and she’s just as human as all the rest in the end. 

The best part is it’s not her good points that make her human, it’s all her flaws. It’s easy to feel like the world isn’t real, that nothing in the world is worth living for, to feel no emotional attachment. Those are all human emotions. Not because they’re good and shining, but because they’re petty and terrible. Ajimu is this brilliant character, but she’s also kind of just a petty little girl using a ‘fiction is reality’ lens to cope. She’s not that special actually, she’s just suicidal, and kind of awful in general. It’s nice to see that human side behind the mastermind character. 

Azula

“My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right of course but it still hurts.” 

Azula is someone thoroughly dehumanized by everyone even the “good” members of her family (Uncle Iroh, Zuko, her Mother). I like how Azula in some part seems to be aware that both her brother, and mother seem to kind of consider her the “bad sibling” and she just decides to embrace it. Like it’s... not emotionally healthy in any way and it’s terribly tragic but there’s something about characters who actively make the decision to be a monster that gets me. 

There’s something about Azula’s writing that makes me uncomfortable, and it makes me sad that Zuko like... continually associates her with his father’s abuse, and demonizes her like she wasn’t also a kid going through the exact same situation, but Azula getting increasingly unstable is at least an appropriate response to that. 

Even if her brother, her mother, or her father won’t see her as her own person and they all see her as an extension of her father’s abuse on her, Azula is just so determined to be her own person even if it means burning the world, or herself A common theme I guess, but a lot of these characters have narratives about not being allowed to be their own person or shown any kind of humanity or normalcy. 

Morrigan

“Well, well, well what do we have here?”

Morrigan is mean, and nasty, and grumpy and bitchy and witchy. She’s allowed to be unlikable, because Morrigan never bends to anyone. Her survival, and freedom will become first before anything else. 

It feels like Morrigan is the main character in her own story, and you just happen to be a part of it for a short while. You may even be an important character to her, she may be attached, but ultimately you’ll never be more than support to her. 

Morrigan is such an ambitious an singular entity that her character development is letting you be a part of her life and not the other way around. She'll always survive on her own.  Morrigan is irrevocably shaped by her environemnt, and yet she craves freedom in that too because she doesn’t want to be bound by her past or shaped by her mother. So much of herself is dedicated to being better than the environment that she was raised in that she defeats her mother not by killing her, or freeing herself, but rather by being a better mother than her. 

Raven / Rachel Roth

“Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos...” 

Raven is fun, because a bunch of monks thought the best way to teach her to handle her emotions was to never allow her to feel any emotion ever. So, Raven is eternally running on a zero. She’s terrified even a small amount of happiness will end the world. She’s not allowed to be her own person, neither her bastard father, nor the monks treat her like one.

Raven is so gentle, and selfless, and emotionally perceptive and sensitive to others needs but she can’t ever display almost any of these good traits because she’s internalized the idea that she’s such a bad person. She always believes all the time that she exists to hurt others and that makes it so difficult for her to connect to others. 

Which is why her true friends bond with the Teen Titans is so meaningful, because Rachel found a family in spite of all of that. She has friends who think she’s a good person unconditionally despite the fact that Raven continually tells herself she isn’t. There are people in the world willing to navigate the maze of walls that Raven has built around herself, and that her environment forced her to build and closed up, and she’s so happy to have them. 

Midna

“Some call our realm a world of shadows, but that makes it sound so unpleasant... The twilight there holds a serene beauty... You have seen it yourself as the sun sets on this world. Bathed in that light, all the people were pure and gentle...” 

Midna just steals the show. Her story now. The game’s not called Legend of Zelda anymore now it’s Legend of Midna. Not only is she the most important character in the game she appears in, but she’s also in character someone so selfish she’ll always prioritize herself over everyone else. However, only because she feels that she can’t exist as anything other than the princess of the twilight and has to prioritize her survival for the sake of her people. Midna even says so at the start of the game, she can’t be kind because she wasn’t spoiled like princess Zelda in the bountiful kingdom of the light. 

Midna is so selfish and yet doesn’t really have her own wants and needs as a person outside of the role she has to play for her people, which is why she’s so terribly lost without it and just because this terrible selfish little gremlin. Link and Zelda affect Midna so much because they humanize her. They both sacrifice themselves to save Midna the person and she doesn’t get why. She doesn’t get why two people would help someone who has been so unkind to them and who has failed them this much so far. 

That act of selflessness moves her, and also freaks her out. She even says she didn’t want to be saved by either of them. Which is what makes her redemption in the second half of the game so interesting, because Midna really improves herself so she can become someone worth their kindness. She doesn’t want the selflessness of people like Zelda and Link to go to waste, and because of that begins to care about things outside of her kingdom and her role as princess 

Vriska Serket

“After all of this is over. Do you want to go on a d8?”

Unfortunately one of my top 3 favorite characters of all time comes from a really terrible source material. Vriska is everything I like in a character.  She's a mess. She's really hard to swallow. She's a character that's not meant to be liked.

Nobody really likes Vriska and it's all her fault for being such a horrible person, nobody wants her damage. Which is so interesting because usually main characters get forgiven over and over again. Everyone leaves and if they don't Vriska will burn those bridges herself. No character better embodies what it's like to be stuck in a self harming cycle

Authors are always so obsessed with making characters look good or showing what a good person they are few characters are allowed to be just plain unlikely in ugly ways. It’s what lets Vriskas genuine desire to be better actually seem like a struggle. 

Kocho Shinobu

“Are you angry? Yes, I’m angry Tanjiro. I’ve always been angry.” 

Shinobu is just all pleasantries on the surface, but so full of negative emotions in ways women aren't allowed to be. I love the medicine / poison dynamic to her character and how it rots her to the core. Too much medicine is a poison, while poison can be a medicine when applied to the right situation.

Shinobu is, two faced. She’s beautiful and kind, and full of ugly emotions and empty. She nurses people back from the dead, she sees no point in living herself and purposefully throws herself into a suicide in her plan against Doma. There’s just such a destructive dance between extremes for her because Shinobu is such a unique individual, trying to deal with all of these emotions she just can’t deal with. She can’t be noble, or better than her trauma, she just pretends to be a good person while she slowly rots away inside.  

Shinobu can put on smiles all day -

But she can't be like her sister.  She can't love people like her sister can. Maybe she could once but all that's left now is anger. Bitter, unpleasant, and completely in denial of it and still masquerading as a good person. The most beautiful kind of poison of all.

She’s not her sister, but she’s also not really her own person. She doesn’t know who Shinobu is, doesn’t know who Kocho Shinobu lives for. She just doesn’t imagine herself living past her revenge, and even though she’s surrounded by love she’s just so cracked it all pours out of her and absolutely nothing could be worth prolonging her life after everything she’s lost. 

Toga Himiko

“What exactly is a normal life? I also live a normal life, you know.” 

Himiko Toga is a girl who lives entirely on her own terms. Which is just so rare for a female character, you know? It’s so genuinely subversive to know that Himiko was once a nice girl, who always smiled, always put other people’s feelings first, and that sort of ‘good girl’ behavior drove her completely insane.

Toga deciding to be true to herself is an act of rebellion against the world. 

For Himiko everything is flipped. What others regard as psycho behavior is her normal. She doesn’t let other people define her story as a tragedy, and even murders the one person who tries to control her story. In a story where female characters constantly downplay their own importance to support the male characters Himiko is the only character important enough to be the center of her own story. Himiko’s story is so subversive as well, both of how society treats her, and how the story treats characters like her. 

Himiko is such an excellent yandere, all yanderes wish they were himiko. She comes off as this batshit stabby girl,  but then you find out that shes actually emotionally perceptive. She first comes off selfish, bratty, and self-centered but she turns into one of the most sensitive characters in the manga. She eschews the ideals of being a good girl that was forced down her throat, but that doesn’t mean she’s not empathic, or that she’s not capable of goodness. She’s good to twice. She’s good to the people who accept her. 

Himiko no matter what will always be a deviant. Always be an outsider. Instead of trying to make room for her her parents forced her to lie and wear a mask until her identity became completely shattered. I like Toga because under the knife wielding psycho she's a normal girl. Then under that normal girl there’s also a knife wielding psycho ready to fight back, and both of them are the real her. 

Ihei Hairu

“I saw the reaper, he was very beautiful.” 

Every character from the garden is just fundamentally broken.  Hairu and Rize are interesting foils, because if you think of about it a loveless childhood turned them both into ruthless killers. It’s just they decided to live for different things, Rize lived rejecting love and Hairu lived chasing after love. However, fundamentally they are the same. They are children starved for any kind of love or nurturing.  Hairu is so desperate she devotes her entire life to the first person who acknowledged her. However, the same sort of desperation to live, that tragic need to make the most out of the few short years they have exists in all garden children.

Hairu wants so badly to be a person, but she’s not a person. She’s half ghoul. 

There's just something about a girl who was never meant to be born and never meant to live, still trying.  There's a dark side to her character, she's violent and inhuman exactly like the environment she was raised in but she was also still a child at heart seeking love.

Which is why though her narrative is a thoroughly unhappy one, it does make me happy that there was someone who loved her in the form of Koori Ui. There is someone who wanted her to live longer. Her life was short, but she did live, and it’s that struggle to connect to others that made her truly alive. 

[acephysicskarkat]

Redemption, Forgiveness and She-Ra S5

So just to spite the anon who told me to stop posting my opinions, I’m gonna post another opinion!

This will contain spoilers for SPOP, Avatar: the Last Airbender, The Good Place, and Steven Universe.

So the most common take that I’ve heard about S5 from Catra stans is that it’s a story about redemption and forgiveness and that if I’m in any way critical of it then I’m saying abusers can never redeem themselves.

To which I say: the second part is a strawman argument, and the first part doesn’t help because it’s a bad story about redemption and forgiveness.

Part 1: Redemption

The problem with S5′s stories about redemption is that they are, universally, undercooked.  For things that the fanbase had been wanting for months, they’re surprisingly lacking in meaningful impact.

Catra’s is the least bad, because Catra is at least on-screen long enough to tell us that it seems to be sticking, but it’s still not good.  It’s rushed, it’s weightless, and it feels like they didn’t even check what she’d done in the past three seasons that she would need to find redemption for.

At no point does she meaningfully confront her actions (which, in case you’ve forgotten, ranged from bringing about the death of Queen Angella (S3E6), to repeated attempts to murder or permanently harm Adora (S1E11, S1E13, S2E5, S3E4-6, S4E3), to bullying Scorpia (present throughout but most obvious in S4E6), to taking part in a war crime (S4E8)), nor does she really confront the jealousy and spite that drove them.  Indeed, the episodes that could have been spent showing us her character development are spent showing us that she still has a very unhealthy attitude towards Adora (S5E6) and telling us that she underwent her character development offscreen, while we were distracted by Double Trouble (S5E8).

Hordak’s is even worse, because Catra at least admits she wronged people, even if the focus is put almost entirely on Catra feeling bad about it.  Hordak realises, accurately, that being made into a cog in a machine of conquest is bad (S5E13)...but he never makes the leap onscreen to it still being bad when he did it to other people, as he did to Adora and the other Horde kids (S2E7).  It treats Hordak’s decision to break free of Horde Prime as if it in and of itself makes him good, overlooking that the life he’s trying to go back to was the one where he ruled over an empire of stolen children.

I don’t even want to get into Shadow Weaver.

AtLA gave a compelling redemption arc to Zuko by having him confront the consequences of his actions.  SU gave a compelling redemption arc to Peridot by showing us, in great detail, her evolution from antagonist to ally.  SPOP just kinda tells us that characters are good now and expects that to work out okay.

And the really depressing thing is that both these characters actually could have sustained really compelling redemption arcs!  I would have loved to see Hordak meaningfully realise onscreen that the universe does not consist of him, Horde Prime, Imp, Entrapta, and a bunch of largely interchangeable pawns for him to treat as he sees fit.  I would have loved to see Catra wrestle with and overcome her resentment of Adora, maybe come to understand that being Shadow Weaver’s favourite fucking sucked actually.  The show just didn’t bother, and so what we got was on par with a bad fanfic or the backstory for a D&D character.

Part 2: Forgiveness

For my money, one of the best stories about forgiveness in modern media is in a third season episode of The Good Place called “A Fractured Inheritance”.

Explaining it with as few spoilers as possible, protagonist Eleanor Shellstrop discovers that her cartoonishly neglectful mother Donna faked her death and seems to have built a new life where she’s a good stepmother to a child.  Eleanor spends most of the episode convinced that her mother is running a scam, but eventually concludes that this does appear to be sticking and gives up her plan to reveal Donna’s secret, cautioning her not to go back to how she used to be.  At the end, she opens up to a friend about the trauma she sustained as a result of her upbringing.

SPOP could never.

"A Fractured Inheritance” tells a more compelling story about forgiveness in 15 minutes of screentime than she-Ra S5 managed in four and a half hours because The Good Place cares about Eleanor’s trauma.  It’s portrayed as pretty understandable that she has a grudge against her mother, and working through that takes time and sustained proof that Donna has changed.  More than that, forgiveness isn’t portrayed as a magical button that instantly solves Eleanor’s issues; just because she’s letting go of her anger towards Donna doesn’t mean that the harm she suffered as a result of Donna’s neglect goes away.  Her fear of opening up or being vulnerable, stemming from a childhood of constantly being shat on when she did, is still there, even after reconciling with her mother.

Contrast this to She-Ra S5.  The second Catra says she’s sorry, Adora is willing to forgive her and go across the universe to help her (S5E3), even though in their last interaction, back in S4E3, Adora actively tried to kill her for pretty darn compelling reasons (you may remember those reasons from S3E4-6).  Adora gets, like, a brief rant in S5E4 where she seems to be confused about this, but there’s never a point where she meaningfully seems to process the trauma she’s suffered as a result of Catra’s treatment of her, which we know has been toxic, controlling and unhealthy since they were kids (S5E3).

More than that, there’s never really a point where any of the people Catra victimised in the first four seasons gets to deal with that.  Glimmer seemingly never realises that Catra is why her mother is dead (S3E6), which is especially jarring given that the effects of Angella’s death on Glimmer drove the entire previous season; Entrapta barely remembers that Catra betrayed her and sent her to her presumed death (S5E6); Bow thinks someone who’s done nothing but attempt to hurt his friends for as long as he’s known her is adorable (S5E8); Scorpia forgives her before she even finishes saying sorry (S5E13); and both Frosta decking her in S5E9 and Perfuma’s understandable irritation with the woman who bullied her GF in S5E10 are portrayed almost as jokes, the latter never escalating beyond mild rudeness.

This also extends to Hordak, who, after his tissue-thin face turn in S5E13, gets a baffling montage that tries to portray his picking up an abandoned child and indifferently turning her over to an abusive sorceress (S2E7) as somehow heartwarming and a big bonding moment, and then the notion that Mermista might have some grudges against the guy who burned down her home and displaced her people (S5E7-8) is framed as comic.

I’m not even saying that neither of these characters should never be forgiven by anyone!  Just that the forgiveness they get in the show is lacking in dramatic weight, because the actions that are being forgiven don’t feel like they mean anything.  Catra has hurt Adora, Glimmer, Entrapta, Scorpia, Mermista and countless unnamed innocents, and it’s all treated like it has the same impact as borrowing Adora’s Xena DVDs and forgetting to give them back.  Hordak should be considered Etheria’s greatest monster given the number of people who’ve died as a result of his actions and maybe one person is slightly irritated at the prospect of having to send him a Christmas card this year.

(This is without getting into the fact that Glimmer and Entrapta are expected to deal with the consequences of their actions to some degree, with each getting an episode focused around that (S2E2, S2E4).  It’s kind of wild that Glimmer nearly destroying the world because she took a reckless risk in a desperate gamble to try and save the people she cares about from the Horde blitzkrieg, a gambit that she immediately tried to fix when she realised she’d fucked up (S4E10-13) is treated as something that causes a notable rift in her friendships, but Catra nearly destroying the world because she was just that jealous of Adora (S3E3-6) is breezed past with an “I’m sorry.”  Entrapta building the robots causes the Alliance to hold grudges; Hordak waging 25 years of warfare is [shrug] Just Horde Clone Things.)

3. Salvaging These Plot Points

Now, as I implied above, the notion that I think these characters are irredeemable is a bullshit strawman, a thought-terminating cliche that Catra stans use to dismiss criticism without processing with it.  So how would I go about it?

Catra

I would start by having Catra and Glimmer be in the same escape.  Having her attempt to sacrifice herself in S5E3 had some weird thematic issues given her previously established self-destructive streak (S2E5, most of S3).  If we have to keep the bad plot point where Adora recovers the friend who loves and cares for her and immediately goes “well, we gotta leave our friends back home to deal with a colonial invasion while we charge across the universe to save my abusive stalker ex who’s never respected my personhood or autonomy”, I’d probably look at the two biggest missed opportunities in the season: S5E6 and S5E8.

S5E6 is terrible, and should just be expunged mercilessly with fire for its baffling endorsement of the sentiment “yes i abused u but now u hate me so i’m the victim really”.  Its replacement should probably be focused around Adora genuinely processing the harm she’s sustained as a result of Catra’s treatment of her, probably deciding at the end that she’ll accept Catra’s help but is still understandably suspicious of her given the established mistrust (S1E8) and hostility (S4E3).

S5E8 is easy to fix, though; instead of it mostly being the characters bumbling around a haunted house, I’d make the setting actually do stuff for the characters’ arcs.  We already know that First One ruins can bring up memories, so I’d turn it into a reversal of S1E11 where Adora and Catra’s friendship can actually be rebuilt, probably culminating in Catra saving Adora from falling off a cliff as a symbolic rejection of the resentment she would have been struggling with throughout the episode.  This is probably where Adora starts to actually believe that Catra has become a better person.

Basically, the goal here is to show the audience that Catra is working to overcome her issues and become a better person, instead of telling us that it happened offscreen.

Hordak

The problem with Hordak’s face turn is that at no point in the show, including after we’re supposed to treat him as Good Now, does he seem to give a shit about anyone not on a list that contains maybe 4-5 names.  I’d probably put in some scenes earlier where his experiences seem to be actually changing him for the better: maybe his response to Entrapta asking him to spare Catra isn’t to commute her sentence to a suicide mission, or he feels a sudden sympathy with a captive Etherian after the fall of Salineas, as the shared feelings of loss line up, and orders their release.  Basically, the idea is to put in some groundwork so that it actually feels like he might be safe to have around, instead of him betraying his tyrannical overlord because he misses his life where he was, himself, a tyrannical overlord.

I also would not play the idea that people might be a little bit suspicious of a man with a 25-year history of ruthless oppression, colonial violence and unprovoked warmongering as a joke.  Just one of those personal quirks.

4. Summary

In conclusion:

S5 is a bad story about redemption because it doesn’t give the characters being redeemed engaging or compelling redemption arcs, favouring a blind rush to the ending, and it’s a bad story about forgiveness because it treats the actions that are being forgiven as though they don’t mean anything, even when episodes or entire seasons have been built on the effects of those actions.  It’s not that these ideas are bad in general, that these characters axiomatically couldn’t be redeemed or that forgiveness is problematic; it’s just that the execution is bad.

Anyway, thanks, jackass anon, for inspiring me to set down my thoughts in detail like this!