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homo-sex-shoe-whale · 3 years ago

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Online shipping, the fetishisation of gay men, and the romanticisation of queer trauma

An essay by me!

Word count: 2.8k

A link to the Google Doc version of this essay.

A big thank you to my friends Nathan @themeerkatnate, Mav @not-mavv , and Duke @dukedark-ness for reading this essay and giving me their thoughts as mlms on the topic. Make sure to check out their blogs and give them a follow!

So I was on a lovely website by the name of Twitter.com yesterday, just scrolling through while having my afternoon cup of coffee, when I saw that viral post of a girl reading a Larry fanfic through a classroom projector. I'm sure most of you have seen it. It's gone viral on Instagram, TikTok, and likely Tumblr too, and if you haven't come across it I'm positive you will soon.

Now, after getting through my initial reaction to that post which was, holy fuck, that's so embarrassing, I had a second reaction of... wait, this ship is still around?

And after I had some thoughts on the incredible permanence of some online ships and the weird obsolescence of others, I did get to thinking of how lots of these popular ships seem to stem from the same types of perceived relationship dynamics and homophobic stereotypes.

These online fandoms often seem to have an obsession with objects of queer trauma, such as having to hide a relationship, lying about sexuality for self-preservation, and even social rejection. So, after some opinions from my followers and the great archive that is the internet, I've decided to discuss some of the most popular examples of online shipping and the particular nuances they came with.

NOTE: Out of respect for all these people, I won't be sharing viral images or videos of them in perceived romantic proximity (or even kissing, as is applicable for some examples), but I will be describing certain moments I deem to be relevant. So even if you're unfamiliar with them, you won't be confused as to what I'm talking about.

NOTE 2: Although not all people within these fandoms were/are toxic, this essay is focused on the overall toxicity of the fandoms, and how they are toxic more so as a "hive" than as a group of individuals. When I refer to a fandom I don't mean every person involved in the fandom, but rather the collective impact of the group.

1. Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson

This is arguably the most popular example of online shipping. The absolute permanence of this ship, and how its fandom never seems to fully die off even beyond the lifespan of One Direction as it once stood, is downright impressive.

I'm going to be the first to admit I was never in the loop with this fandom. My childhood best friend was actually a massive Larry shipper and asked me to beta read one of her fics, but that was before I even knew who tf Harry and Louis were! Not because I avoided the fandom or even because I rejected the online shipping, but just by coincidence, I delved into the world of pop punk music right when One Direction began gaining its popularity. I bought my first ever album, Riot by Paramore, in 2011- only a year after One Direction made their X-Factor debut. So, this fandom just bypassed me by a sort of weird coincidence.

But I don't need to be in the loop with this fandom to know the astronomical obsession with these two men, no, these two BOYS, was extremely toxic. In 2010, when One Direction made their debut, Harry Styles was only 16 years old. And Louis Tomlinson wasn't much older at 19! This made the two of them incredibly young when this unprecedented wave of shipping hit the internet, and although that must be traumatising for anyone, I cannot even fathom how overwhelming it must've been for two boys that young.

I'm 18, almost 19 now, and I cannot begin to imagine how scary it was for the two of them to have their every interaction nitpicked within an inch of its life by thousands upon thousands of people online. I do not know this myself, but from numerous recounts by some of my followers, this massively impacted Harry's and Louis' nondescript relationship in real life, seemingly driving the two previously close friends apart.

Now, before we move on, there's something we need to talk about. And that is the obsession with the dominance/submission dynamic within the world of gay shipping.

With almost every popular mlm (an acronym meaning man-loving-man) ship based on real people, it seems that fandoms have a particular fascination with power imbalances in these relationships. You don't even need to look at the insane amount of fanfictions based on BDSM to figure this out. In almost all of the examples I'll be citing today, there is an age gap within the perceived relationship and a person the fandom has seemingly decided to be the top/dominant figure.

Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are 3 years apart in age. Although it isn't all that relevant now, an age gap of 3 years when you're in your late teens is a lot more significant. In 2012, for example, when this shipping really started gaining traction, Harry Styles was 18 and Louis Tomlinson was 21. That power imbalance, albeit not that significant, is enough for a fandom to latch on to. We'll see this a lot more in the coming example with Dan and Phil.

2. Dan Howell and Phil Lester

It's impossible to have a discussion about internet shipping without talking about Dan and Phil.

Dan Howell and Phil Lester, although being popular YouTubers individually, are arguably one of the internet's most iconic duos. The two creators published their first videos together in 2009, and while their relationship was already a motive of speculation back then, the peak of the "Phan" shipping definitely came in the 2013-2016 era of Tumblr.

Now, I'm going to admit… I was actually on Tumblr when that happened.

The 2013-2016 period perfectly aligns with my middle school days (I started middle school in 2013 and high school in 2016), and I was not only on Tumblr back then, but I was on Wattpad too! Again, this wasn't a fandom I had much contact with as I had a huge anime phase in middle school and I was on Tumblr posting mainly photography and Soul Eater content more than anything.

But I did watch some of Dan and Phil's videos! And the occasional "Phan" content did not completely evade me as one of my closest friends in middle school had a fanchat for them. I wasn't involved in the fandom myself but they were actually one of the few English-speaking YouTubers I watched once in a blue moon (back then I watched mainly Brazilian YouTubers). One thing I did in fact notice over the years, around 2014ish perhaps, was that the two of them seemed to grow increasingly "awkward" around each other, in a way that many folks on the internet thought was reminiscent to Markiplier/Jacksepticeye, two YouTubers who also dealt with extraordinary amounts of shipping.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. The change in Dan and Phil's relationship, at least to the outside world, was clear to almost anyone who watched their videos for a while. I cannot blame them at all. The shipping was nuts. Between the countless fan videos, speculative comments, and insurmountable number of fanfics, there's no way the two of them didn't feel the weight of the shipping. The term "demon phannie" made its way into internet vernacular and there it stayed for years. Even Shane Dawson, who was one of the largest creators on the platform at the time, made several videos speculating on the nature of Dan and Phil's relationship and their sexual orientations.

There was even porn made in which actors with similar appearances to the creators were made to have sex on camera.

Now, this is actually a rare example where the two people involved in the ship actually came out as gay once the shipping seemed to die down. I'm incredibly happy Dan and Phil both reached a point where they were comfortable being publicly out, but I hate to say I'm shocked this day ever came. If I'd gone through what the two of them did, I don't know if I'd ever trust the internet.

And again, this ship's fandom definitely had an obsession with the power dynamics they thought existed between the people within the ship. Dan Howell is 4 years younger than Phil Lester, and was only 18 in 2009, when they started making videos together. From my personal understanding, the shipping was often quite focused on this dominant/submissive dynamic especially in discussions from their early relationship. And this is in no way exclusive to Dan and Phil.

This general fascination with the older man/younger man dynamic, in my opinion, plays into the homophobic stereotype that gay men are predators. The idea that gay men usually seek younger men, and somehow "convince" them to engage in homosexual relationships, is popular homophobic rhetoric. The popularisation, exaggeration, and fetishisation of these power imbalances, in age and/or in relationship dynamics, is directly harmful to the mlm community.

Not only that, but the romanticisation of a "hidden/forbidden relationship" is also detrimental not only to gay men and the mlm community, but to queer people as a whole. Queer people face huge trauma having to hide their relationships; queer attraction is already a societal taboo. And acting like this is good, or even desirable, is harmful to queer people as a whole, regardless of whether or not it's actually applicable to the people being shipped. It normalises this trauma not only to cisgender, heterosexual people, but to impressionable queer youth who grow to believe this type of trauma is to be expected.

3. Frank Iero and Gerard Way

This is another example where the perceived power imbalances between the two subjects of the shipping were directly exploited online. Now, this ship did precede the others mentioned above. If we're looking at this topic chronologically, this particular ship did come first in the shipping timeline. It's closer to the origin of the shipping extended universe, if you will.

In case you aren't familiar with them, Frank Iero and Gerard Way are both members of the American emo band My Chemical Romance. This ship is the first one here of which I don't recall the full popularity. It really peaked in popularity around the late 2000s, circa 2008. And I don't remember this moment online as in 2008, I was only 6 years old and believe it or not, I wasn't really all that concerned with rumoured homoeroticism as a first grader.

However, the popularity of this ship did carry over into the 2013-2015 Tumblr shipping boom. The emo fandom (or "bandom" as it was called) involving not only My Chemical Romance but other similar bands such as Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and Pierce the Veil, found its hub on Tumblr.

During this time, I did in fact listen to this style of music, but was focused a lot more on the anime side of Tumblr as mentioned earlier. Of course, I wasn't 13 years old like, "hey, this type of content might be harmful and can inadvertently perpetuate homophobic stereotypes," I just happened to care more about my silly little anime and ended up not getting involved.

This ship does involve a discussion that the others don't, however. With Frank Iero and Gerard Way, there is quite often a certain sentiment of, "Oh, they brought this upon themselves!" as the two band members very famously kissed during a show in 2007. In my opinion, though, this doesn't really justify all the obsessive shipping. If you look at Green Day, a band often grouped in with MCR as another famous pop punk group, the members don't follow too different of a trajectory. Billie Joe Armstrong has, on numerous occasions, kissed both of his fellow band members onstage- particularly Tré Cool, the drummer. And Billie Joe Armstrong is openly bisexual, which none of the members of MCR seem to be but some, or even all of Billie's bandmates, are too.

You'd think Green Day would face a lot more shipping as the more persistent onstage homoeroticism and Billie Joe's openness about his sexuality would warrant more "substantiated" speculation. However, Green Day faces nowhere near as much shipping as My Chemical Romance. Why is this? I actually don't know. It might've been because Green Day has been around for over a decade longer and generally has an older fandom, but I really am not that sure.

It could also be because of the lower lack of potential for forced relationship dynamics. The members of Green Day are all less than a year apart in age and are even similar in height. However, Frank Iero is 4 years younger than Gerard Way, who is not only the frontman of My Chemical Romance, but also considered to be the group's intellectual and creative "leader". Even beyond that, Gerard Way is quite visibly taller, and the perceived power difference between the two of them definitely did not elude their fans.

This difference could even be partly due to the lack of a "mystery" with Green Day. There's not as much to speculate as, well… the members of Green Day are already open about their sexual orientations. It might be that shipping in the Green Day fandom has less of a forbidden appeal for most people.

Of course, I won't just keep repeating myself, but my previous points about forced relationship dynamics still stand.

4. Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch

Better known for their roles in BBC Sherlock as Sherlock and Watson, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch unfortunately had their roles follow them well into real life. This is the example I know least about, so have these thoughts from a follower by the name of @indubitably-a-goblin, who had the following to say:

"the main issues i had with it were:

a) they were both married at the time, freeman to amanda abbington and cumberbatch to sophie hunter (in which both had children)

b) the main reasoning for it was their chemistry in the many projects they've done together. which is, shockingly, their Whole Job. They're actors! That's what they're supposed to do! if they weren't good at interacting then they wouldn't be good actors! i don't know how people can't understand this.

c) they're real people. we don't know them. we aren't friends with them. we aren't their family members. we have zero right to be pushing this onto them and ruining their friendship by doing so. (this one relates to most of the ships you've mentioned though)

d) healthy friendships between two men are ignored so plainly in most medias and in fandom. its obvious that these two men have a relationship, but that doesn't mean it's a romantic one.

e) its fine to ship their characters, but actors shouldn't be treated as less-than-human or some sort of prop. they're doing a job, and once they are off-screen, they aren't here for your entertainment."

I believe she did a great job of summing it up on her own, and for the sake of avoiding redundancy, I'll leave it at that!

5. Corpse Husband and Sykkuno- an emerging yet subtle example

I am absolutely positive you remember how popular the game Among Us was a couple of months ago. And with the popularity of this game, some of its most prominent content creators became the targets of online shipping- as is the case with YouTubers and streamers Corpse Husband and Sykkuno.

Although the shipping involving these two creators is nowhere near as strong as it was/is with the examples above, I do think there is once again a reemergence of a common theme here. Whilst Sykkuno is known for his happy-go-lucky, almost "innocent" persona, Corpse Husband is the antithesis of this, known for his much darker and moodier personality.

Do I even have to mention what the common theme seems to be?

Again, although the popularity of shipping - at least with real people - seems to have died down a bit since the Tumblr shipping boom of the early to mid 2010s, I do believe this example is worth mentioning. Even though the creators are still close, they have in fact expressed discomfort regarding the shipping, and I can only hope the internet as a whole lets their friendship blossom and exist naturally without obsessive speculation.

My final thoughts

As explored in the essay:

The romanticisation of objects of queer trauma as a part of online shipping normalises queer trauma to both cishet and queer youth.

Online shipping, especially at a high intensity, can end up negatively impacting the very relationships they pine over.

The relationship dynamics often forced on mlm ships perpetuate homophobic stereotypes about non-heterosexual men.

If anyone else has thoughts on this matter, do share! This essay is moreso an opinionated observational piece and isn't meant to be taken as fact but rather just as my thoughts on the matter. I hope it was useful as a reflective piece regardless!

Date of posting: June 16th 2021

#lgbt #lgbtq #gay #mlm #I cannot believe I said the phrase 'shipping extended universe'

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cacoetheswriting · 4 years ago

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library hours [reimagined] - spencer reid

warnings: age gap, professor / student, maybe a swear word or two, a lil tension, but mainly a fluffy first interaction word count: 1.7k summary: a late night at the university library leads to reader meeting a certain handsome professor.

a/n: this is a reimagined / rewritten version of this fic. for those interested, the original centres around baby!spencer. both fics start off pretty much the same, what differs is the interaction between spencer and reader.

There was something you always enjoyed about the going to the library.

Perhaps it was the way every single person that walked through the threshold had a purpose. A mission to complete. Perhaps it was the quiet. The solace you felt sitting alone in a corner researching various topics, for class and for recreational purposes.

The university library had quickly become your second home. A location you frequented more than your own dorm room. It wasn’t always to study, no. You people watched. Doodled. Even napped there from time to time. The place brought you peace, and by the time you senior year rolled around, you saw the librarians more than your college friends.

The university library was also the place where you first met a certain handsome professor, doctor - which in time became the main reason why you liked it so much.

Lights were slowly being turned off section by section. A vacuum came to life in one of the aisles. People started to scramble from their seats - shoving their things into their backpacks, throwing out empty coffee cups into the overflowing bins, checking out books they might still use that evening.

All signs indicating it was time to go.

Dolly, one of the librarians, ushered towards you. Her jacket draped over her shoulders, her bag in hand. She gave you the usual spiel of how you can stay until the janitor is finished cleaning, to which you politely nodded along. She wished you a pleasant night, and with a “see you tomorrow” she hurried out the door.

Once she was out of sight, you groaned under your breath and ran your fingers through your hair. You had an assignment due tomorrow, one you started hours ago and only managed to formulate three total sentences. Your gut was telling you there was no way you were going to finish now, especially since you had about thirty minutes until you would have to leave.

Leaning back in your chair, you fluttered your eyes closed in an attempt to collect your thoughts. The tranquil feeling didn’t last long however, as you were abruptly brought back to reality by someone loudly clearing their throat. You immediately sat back up and quickly scanned the space for the source of the interruption.

A tall brunette man stood a few tables away, his hands slowly sliding into the pockets of his pants. He was definitely older, by how much you couldn't quite tell. But, you definitely took notice of how handsome he was.

“The library is closed for the night.” He stated, the tone of his voice calm yet stern.

“I have permission to be here.” You retorted with as much confidence as you could muster, but the mysterious man didn't seem impressed with your answer. With an arched brow, he took a firm step in your direction.

“From who?” He challenged, as if he was waiting to catch you in a lie.

You folded your arms across your chest, unwilling to give in to whatever game he was playing. “Dolly, the librarian. I could call her if you don't believe me?”

The brunette didn’t respond. Instead, his lips twirled slightly upwards into a sly smirk and with the way he was now looking at you, you could feel the blood rush to your cheeks. You only hoped he didn't see the faint pink blush now present on your facial features.

“May I?” The man asked after a brief moment of silence, pointing to to the chair beside yours. You found yourself nodding, before quickly turning your attention away from him, and back to the book in front of you.

While he made himself comfortable, his leg brushed against yours. The sudden close contact sent a jolt down your spine and you shivered. A small act he definitely noticed.

“You’re not some sort of killer, are you? You’re not here to murder me?” You asked, tilting your head to once again look at the man. Shaking his head, he let out a wholehearted chuckle.

“No, I’m definitely not a murder.” He reassured.

“Definitely? That's over selling it, don't you think? It’s exactly the kind of thing a murder would say.” You teased in response, gaining a little bit of your courage back. He didn't reply. The smirk on his face widened just a little and he eyed you silently, as if you were a treasure map he was desperate to solve.

The two of you stared at one another for what felt like eternity. There was something amicable about the seconds that passed as you looked into his hazel eyes. Something harmonious. Friendly. Strong.

When you finally broke contact and proceeded to return to working on your assignment, you could still feel his gaze burning into the side of your head. In any other situation, with any other stranger, the feeling would have made you uncomfortable. Scared even. But there was something quite thrilling about the mysterious brunette sitting beside you.

“I’m a profiler.” He said after another moment of comfortable silence. “I work for the FBI as part of their Behavioral Analysis Unit.” He added as you glanced up at him from your notes, intrigue gracing your facial features. The statement was to make you feel safer in his presence - not that it was needed since you already felt strangely guarded around him.

You smiled, dropping your pen and shifting in your chair to face him completely. “So, agent, what are you doing at a university library on a Thursday night? Did the bad guys take a break?”

“Doctor.” He calmly corrected.

“What?”

“It’s doctor, not agent.” He said, the corners of his lips twitching upwards. “I have PhDs in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering.”

The smug look on his face earned him a playful eye roll. “You don’t happen to have a PhD in History under your belt, do you, doctor? Because that would be very helpful right about now.”

“No, but I do have an eidetic memory and can read twenty-thousand words per minute.” He declared and you gaped at him in disbelief, mouth parting ever so slightly in shock.

Great, you thought, as if he wasn't intimidating enough.

“You could have just said you were a superhero.” You joked before leaning in towards him ever so slightly. The faint whiff of his cologne caught you off a little off guard, and you took a mental note to never again settle for someone that only used body spray. “Don’t worry, I’m really good with secrets. I won’t tell anyone.” You whispered and gently pressed your index finger to your lips.

The comment caused the handsome doctor to throw his head back in a whole-hearted laugh. He placed a hand on his stomach as you slowly shifted back to your previous position, chewing down on the inside of your cheek down to stop yourself from commenting on how good he looked.

“Am I going to get an answer to my previous question?” You asked once the laughter died down, your assignment long forgotten.

“I teach here.”

The statement earned him another eye roll. “Seriously? Is there anything you don't or can't do?”

It was his turn to lean in. He rested his elbows on his knees and intertwined his fingers together, his hazel eyes never leaving yours. The air hitched in your lungs at his proximity. You felt as if every single cell in your body was shaking.

“Well, us superheroes, we like to stay busy.” He whispered, his cool minty breath hitting you in the process, sending a shiver down your spine.

You cleared your throat, a timid smile appearing on your face. “There uhm, there’s this diner not far from here. It’s twenty-four hours meaning they won’t kick us out. Would you like to come with me? We can have coffee?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he moved back in his seat and ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. You bit down on your bottom lip, wondering what was going through his mind. Wondering if perhaps you had overstepped some sort of boundary since he was a professor and you were a student.

But, it was just coffee. Nothing more. That wasn't so bad... Right?

“Coffee sounds nice.” He responded with a smile, after what felt like forever.

Outside, there wasn’t a cloud in the night sky making the million stars shine all that brighter. They looked like perfect sugar granules spilled on a dark surface, accompanied by the glowing moonlight.

The breathtaking sight was accompanied by street lamps. They illuminated the path while you walked side by side, almost in sync. Shoulders faintly brushing against one another.

“How long have you been a profiler?” You asked, looking ahead. The wind blew lightly through your hair causing your brunette companion to turn his head and observe you quietly. A smile crept up on his lips.

“I joined when I was twenty-two.” He answered. You glanced up at him for a brief moment - that wasn't much younger than you now. The look in his eyes suggested he knew that’s what you were thinking.

“Do you like it? Or do you prefer teaching?”

He licked his lips, thinking. As he furrowed his brows together, you noticed the unobtrusive age lines defining his handsome features. Each individual crease telling a different story, and you found yourself hoping you would one day be lucky enough to hear them.

“Every job has its pros and cons.” The brunette man stated eventually, lightly shrugging his shoulders.

You couldn't help but let out a soft giggle at his answer. “Okay professor, now you just sound conventional.”

He chuckled, his hands sliding into the front pockets of his pants. “I’ve been called many things in my life, miss. Conventional was never one of them.”

“It’s Y/N. My name, uhm, my name is Y/N.”

You both stopped once you introduced yourself, simultaneously turning in your spots, so that you were facing each other completely.

“Y/N...” He tested your name on his tongue, and a smile embellished your features because for some reason it sounded incredibly striking coming out of his lips.

“It suits you.” He retorted and the blood rushed to your face. Now, he definitely noticed the blush, you thought. He didn’t comment on it however. Instead, he proceeded to introduce himself, “My name is Spencer. Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Y/N.”

masterlist

spencer reid taglist: @no-honey-no, @calm-and-doctor, @idroppedmygourd, @averyhotchner, @wowitsel, @elldell1204, @hey-there-angels, @reidabookforonce, @willowrose99

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fic #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #professor spencer reid #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfiction #professor reid #prof reid

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mysterious-cuchulainn-x · 2 years ago

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A Three-Edged Lightsaber

“Understanding is a three-edged sword.”

Idk where this came from other than my general syncretic brainmash, but I really want to work this into my SWTOR fic now, ideally in the mouth of a Jedi since they’re about as close to the Vorlons as Star Wars has (albeit more genuinely benevolent and generally less aggressively paternalistic).

In particular, I want to use it to explore (via yet another alternate sci-fi franchise’s cosmology and philosophy) the conflict between Light and Dark in Star Wars. After all:

“Your side, their side, and the truth”

Sounds a lot like light, dark, something in between, with that “in between” having the privileged “truth” status. But that’s not how it works.

Although the Force is ultimately unitary, light and dark don’t have an equal claim on its true nature. As we’re shown in the movies, the Force as a whole, as the unifying energy of the galaxy and especially of all living things, has much more to do with the “light side,” most manifestly expressed through compassion, than with the dark side, which corrupts what exists already and warps what, and who, it touches to the point of self-destruction.

And it’s in the nature of the light that the conclusion of Bablyon 5 (”Get the hell out of our galaxy!”) swings away from the themes of Star Wars. The Vorlons aren’t creatures of compassion above all, they are creatures of Order; the Shadows are likewise creatures of Strife rather than selfishness, but the dark side is pretty firmly associated with conflict along with a dozen other destructive characteristics.

(Ironically, B5 here directly contrasts my favorite Light/Dark SF system: Destiny’s Light is “the growth and preservation of complexity,” while the Darkness disparages it as a creator of eldritch perversions and urges, “the universe is chaotic, bring order to it.” More on that another time, maybe.)

Order and Chaos stand in the sort of symmetrical relationship that a lot of people want the light and dark side of the Force to share, but the exact point is that the Vorlons, for all that they call themselves allies of life, don’t have a shred of compassion for others. The gods of Babylon 5 are ultimately narrow-minded tyrants; the Force, on the other hand, is a genuine metaphysical power that can, in response to one’s own intentions, enhance and enlighten or darken, distort, and destroy. Against the former, a third option makes sense; in dealing with the latter, one eventually chooses a side.

So where does all of this random nonsense leave Jedi Master Kosh?

Obviously, the Vorlon saying can be a useful dictum generally; a Jedi consular or sentinel might consider it in the course of fractious negotiations or a complex investigation. But it has a general applicability in Star Wars, as well as in its source:

Never think yourself beyond rational doubt.

Not all arguments are created equal.

Both of these principles are important to the Jedi. The Jedi fall apart, individually or collectively, when they allow themselves to be lured into the Vorlon position of equating a broadly superior moral position with general infallibility (think of Nomen Karr vs. the LS Warrior, or complacent elements of the Council before the rise of the Empire). At the same time, the Jedi recognize that, for all its promises of power, the dark side isn’t an equal mirror to the light side, differing merely in abstract moral philosophy, and those who forget this (coughAnakincough) fail in far more devastating ways.

The Jedi have their philosophy of compassion and inquiry and service.

The Sith have their philosophy of conquest and acquisition and fear.

And then there is the Force, surrounding and penetrating and binding everything in the galaxy into an indivisible whole, and guess where the balance falls in the end.

#star wars #swtor references #babylon five #kosh #babylon five spoilers #like the whole thing #fictional comparative metaphysics #11pm word salad special

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roguishredaxion · 4 years ago

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My BnHA AU List

Sorry for the length. Fics that are currently available to read have links. To those of you mentioned in this post, I wanted to make sure people knew where the ideas originally came from. (And you’re all awesome anyway!)

Can't See The Forest For The Trees - Genderbent Midoriya Izuku who became a vigilante known as the Forest in Musutafu. Has been operating for five years dealing mostly with information gathering and dispersal and some smaller situations that crop up on the streets. Todoroki Shouto is on patrol in the area and takes an interest in the unknown vigilante after she helps out with a situation where he got in over his head. AO3

A Piece of Patchwork (Improperly Placed) - AU where Izuku and Aizawa swap places in canon. Izuku fights the hero system to become the first quirkless hero, graduating alongside Present Mic. He gets called in to help in a situation where the villain has the ability to steal quirks, five years before the start of canon, providing part of the back-up team for All Might. Part 1 is the battle against All for One, part 2 is an alternate ending to the fight. Part 3 is Izuku learning to use One for All, which was forcefully given to him by All Might at the end of the battle. Part 4 is the other half of the role swap, where Aizawa grows up alongside Bakugou and is trying to get into UA. AO3

The Fallacy of Greatness (AKA Tenth, in my files) - AU where the whole first year class of UA in canon is born 4 years later than in canon. All Might encounters a 10 year old Izuku who asks if he can be a hero. Even after rescuing Bakugou and proving his heroic spirit, All Might elects not to give One for All to a child as young as Izuku. Izuku, desperate for someone to believe in his dreams, realizes that he has to be his first believer and decides to take matters into his own hands and prepare for a future in heroism on his own. AO3

The Capture Scarf Caper - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus Izuku finds Aizawa's capture scarf discarded in an alley and takes it home. He figures out how to use it and becomes so proficient that it accidentally gets mistaken for a quirk. Deciding to capitalize on the strange bias he's come up against, he uses the capture scarf to get into Class 1-A. Unfortunately, this means his teacher is the original owner of his scarf. Suddenly his deception is a lot more desperate and precarious. Meanwhile, Aizawa is trying to figure out why his instincts are telling him to pay such close attention to this anxious kid. AO3

The Better Part of Valor - Suspected Traitor Izuku AU a la @gentrychild. After Aizawa discovers one of Izuku's hero analysis notebooks, he drags Izuku to an interrogation room trying to get him to confess to being the traitor in UA. Izuku comes to realize that several of his classmates were also made aware of this theory and have been feeding information on his movements to their teacher for a while. Betrayed, he starts to pull away from class, falling back into some of the same habits from middle school to go unnoticed and fall off of people's awareness. At some point, his classmates realize that he's no longer staying in the dorms, they only ever see him in class, and All Might is the only person he will voluntarily interact with.

Civil Disobedience - All Might doesn't track Izuku down after the slime incident, but Bakugou's parting words cut far deeper after the day he's had. Realizing that everyone talks about how great of a hero Bakugou will be, Izuku comes to the conclusion that he wants to be the exact opposite of what Bakugou is. He elects to become a villain who goes after and exposes corrupt heroes. Adopting the username Wasureta for his villain work, he collects information on heroes who aren't performing their job as they should and releases it to the court of public opinion, taking away the support that has kept them from being exposed before this. As he digs deeper into the cesspool of rotten heroes, he manages to collect enough information to rake Endeavor over the coals and ends up with an interesting new follower. Dabi, meanwhile, is shocked by the ruthless but polite teenager he found when he tried to find Wasureta and he's not sure if he's impressed by what the kid has accomplished on his own, or horrified by the scope of what he controls.

Hunting Prometheus - There is another quirkless student attending Aldera Middle School, but she wasn't born that way unlike Izuku. When she was seven, her quirk was stolen from her by a man with a smooth voice and a forgettable face and she's been existing in a state of carefully cultivated rage since that day. Before, she never even considered becoming a hero. Now her only goal is to become a hero so she can find that man and punch him in the face. (OC fic, obviously)

Lost Stars in an Indifferent Universe - Leverage AU, five parts, origin for each member of the team. Izuku is told to be realistic and he tries to be following his disastrous encounter with All Might. But realistic means that he has already exceeded the life expectancy of quirkless individuals, acknowledging the fact that no amount of studying or work will let him join a remotely helpful career, and he is stuck living with his mother while he wastes away as a janitor at a nearby middle school following the completion of his high school education. When he returns to a tall building he hadn't managed to convince himself to jump off of yet, he finds that the abandoned space has been taken over by a black market of sorts and gets folded into a world of grey morals and an underground economy based on merit instead of quirk. When he becomes aware of an illegal quirk experimentation operation and tries to blow the whistle, several attempts are made on his life in order to shut him up. Instead of disappearing, he gets angry and decides to collect a team to strike back and prove the shady shit the lab is up to. (Izuku=Mastermind, Shinsou=Grifter, Hatsume=Hacker, Shoji=Hitter, Eri=Thief)

Love and Other Things Not Bound By the Laws of Time - Mr. Peabody and Sherman AU. Nezu adopts a young Midoriya Izuku whose mother died shortly after he was diagnosed as quirkless. Determined to show his new son that one's quirk or lack thereof means nothing in the grand scheme of things, UA's principal develops the WABAC machine to travel through time and prove just how capable people were before quirks manifested. He indulges Izuku's passion and curiosity, encouraging him to look into as much or as little as he wants on any subject. It becomes clear that, while not supernaturally intelligent, Izuku is a genius whose ability to make connections and strategize is by far his greatest asset, especially as he still holds onto the goal of becoming a hero.

The Quiet Revolution (collab w/ my sister) - The Todoroki siblings need therapy. Instead of getting that therapy, they decide to meet up for dinner every Saturday night, begin a tradition where they burn their father in effigy each week, accidentally start a highly successful Minecraft YouTube channel, and generally cause the downfall of the existing hero system through the power of networking.

You Can Tell What I Am By The Lines In My Skin - BnHA/Naruto AU. Naruto dies in his own universe and is reborn into the My Hero Academia Universe as Midoriya Izuku. He remembers who he was, but his chakra, which followed him into this life, is always out of reach. He trains as best he can to keep up his regular ninja skills but can't break through the barrier separating him from his chakra. He still meets and trains under All Might. When he receives One for All, however, the sensation that fills him is entirely familiar. It breaks through the barrier as though it isn't even there, and settles inside like it's always been there. Honestly, he had been missing the angry furball anyway, so he was glad Kurama managed to follow him to this world. With access to his chakra again, the world is about to discover just how effective one shinobi can be in a world of heroes.

War Games - (Inspired by RogueDruid's Hero Class Civil Warfare and others similarly inspired by it.) A year-wide hero class exercise is announced. Bakugou is announced as the Hero leader while the villain leader's identity is kept secret. Izuku knows it's him before the letter appears in his room. The students are allowed to pick whichever side they want, but most choose the hero side, which has won the exercise every time it has been run. This year is no different. Todoroki realizes that Izuku is the villain leader and signs up with him. Izuku goes and recruits Momo and Monoma to his side. Then, after consulting the rules, he folds in Shinsou and Hatsume as well. Monoma plays decoy villain leader and attempts to collect a few more people, but they've already signed up for the hero side. Izuku, without explicitly saying that he's signed up with the hero team, gets folded into the hero strategy sessions since no one expected him to make a different choice. He proceeds to get "taken out" in the first villain assault, and most people don't realize what's happening until it's far too late.

Life's A Game (And I'm Player One) - AU in which Izuku realizes that he does have a quirk but can't tell anyone about it because a) he can't prove it and b) it could be dangerous if he talks about what he can see. His quirk, which he privately calls Stat Check, freezes time just for him in order to open up what looks like a video game character bio that explains a person's quirk, as well as containing vital statistics. It only works in person or on unaltered photographs with a person's face or a distinctive enough feature to identify them. As he gets older, more tabs are added to the bio, and he starts to notice signs above certain people's heads telling him what level he needs to be to fight them (he stops seeing these after receiving OfA, until he sees AfO in Kamino Ward). In pictures, only the first tab is available unless he took the picture while time was frozen, in which case all the tabs are accessible. Because of this, he has accordion folders filled with photographs of people instead of analysis notebooks.

Of Unpainted Fences and Raw Ingredients - Smart Izuku AU. He has been writing essays about hero society, morality, and several other issues since before UA, but he doesn't realize how much people are paying attention to them until the essays start becoming required reading for certain classes. Meanwhile, the teachers are desperate to get in contact with him, not expecting that the essayist they have been gushing over is sitting near the back of the class, trying not to blush.

In A Mirror Darkly - Aizawa is out on patrol with Shinsou and Midoriya when they are attacked and the boys are apparently obliterated by an enemy quirk. The rest of the class attempts to help Aizawa, but he blames himself for their deaths. It doesn't help that he keeps seeing flashes of them in the mirror out of the corner of his eye and could swear he heard one or both of their voices in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Shinsou and Midoriya are stuck out of sync with the rest of the universe and can't communicate with anyone except Aizawa, and only through mirrors. Izuku figured out that they have maybe two weeks before they waste away since they can't interact with anything being stuck in this in-between space. The only way they can get out is for Aizawa, who was there when they de-synced, to touch them and bring them back in sync with the rest of the world.

Guerilla Tactics - Vigilante Class 1-A AU. After the slime villain debacle, Izuku runs away from Bakugou and the heroes. He literally runs into Todoroki Shouto and they commiserate about how the heroes have failed them. Realizing a bit late exactly who Shouto's father is and why he's trying to run away, Izuku offers to come up with a plan to help him get away cleanly. (This is sort of the worst timeline, where most of the good teachers aren't employed at UA, Nezu is not the principal, and the HPSC is in charge of almost everything.) The plan they come up with involves Shouto failing the recommended exam, then disappearing the day results arrive home. Izuku, meanwhile, attends the regular exam and sees how the whole points system benefits those with flashier quirks and easily aimed egos. He gets to talking with a lot of hero hopefuls and sort of steals them out from under UA when their applications are rejected. They move into an abandoned sector of outer Tokyo and start working as vigilantes. Dadzawa makes an appearance, as if summoned by the horde of teenagers with no form of parental guidance to speak of.

No Rest for the Wicked (Or The Damned) - Person Of Interest AU. Instead of apologizing to Izuku when he asked if he could still be a hero without a quirk, Inko points out the other ways he can be a hero, by building the things they would need to fight crime. Figuring that one of the main problems with villains is that no one knows when they're going to attack, Izuku creates an intelligent program that can assess a high volume of data and extrapolate when and where a villain attack will take place, and who the villain will be. When his mom is killed and he's badly injured in an attack his AI predicted, Izuku realizes that no one is taking his information seriously because he's quirkless. He decides to take matters into his own hands and reaches out to an unlikely helper. Dabi doesn't know why this kid decided he was the best option to stop a lot of the more violent crime he somehow knows is going to happen, but he promised and then delivered Endeavor's fall from grace, so he's willing to see where this goes.

Binary Stars - Slight Megamind AU. Before their respective planets were destroyed, Izuku and Bakugou were placed in small space pods and sent towards Earth. Bakugou's people were warriors who looked enough like humans that they intermarried (unbeknownst to humans), thus bringing about the first quirks. Izuku's people, however, are survivors. Their planet was populated by predators so their greatest asset was their ability to camouflage themselves. As Bakugou's people often hunted Izuku's people, they gained a sort of sixth sense for them, which is why Izuku's very presence pisses Bakugou off. (All for One is from Bakugou's planet. He was exiled for stealing power. The last power he stole was what he gave his brother, and the brother always resented him for getting them both sent away.) Izuku still receives OfA, and is the first of his species to have a quirk/power like that.

The Wings of Icarus - Spy AU. Todoroki Shouto works for Yuuei, an espionage agency run by his father. He's been training practically since birth, no thanks to his father, and is second in the spy business only to a person known as Icarus. When something goes wrong on a mission, he is rescued by a short man with freckles and deep green eyes shortly before he passes out. He is found at one of the entrances to Yuuei with a note from Icarus to the tune of "I think you lost this", making Shouto the only person to have actually seen Icarus. Meanwhile, Nezu is running a small but successful info brokerage out of a bakery with three kids he picked up off the streets years before: Izuku, Shinsou, and Hatsume. Codenames: Icarus, Psyche, and Daedalus, respectively. Nezu is known as Zeus.

Dark is the Night (Momo is Batman: version 1) - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus . Momo loses her parents in a villain attack when she's eight. She throws herself into her studies in earnest, determined to be a hero. In the meantime, however, she has a hard time ignoring all of the hardship she sees on the streets, all of the crimes that go unanswered. However, to duck the vigilantism laws and disguise her identity, she wears a suit that covers every part of her body (think Cassandra Cain as Batgirl) because no one would assume that someone with a creation quirk that needed exposed skin to function was under it. She produces everything she needs at home. Aizawa notices that there's someone off about Yaomomo, something fake. It isn't until he runs into her on patrol that he figures something out.

Used to the Darkness (Momo is Batman: version 2) - Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus . Bruce Wayne was reincarnated as Yaoyorozu Momo. She remembers everything about her previous life, but she has adapt all of the fighting training she knows to her new female body. The intelligence and detective skills are useful in this new world, especially since a good portion of logic and deduction has fallen by the wayside for the majority of those in law enforcement. The quirk is something else to get used to, but it's highly effective at producing materials of various things needed for vigilantism. She's interested to see how far she can take the limits of the superpower this universe had given her. At the very least, she's more than capable of recreating the gear she had. Even though her parents haven't died in this universe, she still ends up going out at night and trying to help in whatever way she can. Upon meeting and befriending Todoroki Shouto, she realizes the good she can be in this universe. She attacked the corruption in Gotham wherever she could. Why shouldn't she be able to do the same here? The night is still dark and the people who hide in it are the same cowards they've always been. It's about time someone reminded them that the dark hides more than just their actions.

A Rose By Any Other Name (AKA the Haruhi AU) - Based on a prompt found on @rayshippouuchiha‘s blog. Midoriya Izumi is having trouble staying in uniform after starting middle school because her bullies have decided to step up the abuse a little bit and keep burning them. She had three sets of uniforms, and all three are burned by the third day of classes. What's more, the nurse doesn't have any spare girls uniforms and her teacher insists that she needs to be in uniform and not in her gym outfit. Since the nurse does have a boys uniform that would fit her, Izumi elects to follow her teacher's instructions and shows up in a boys uniform as she doesn't care as much about the clothes she's wearing as she does about following what her teacher said. Cue a gender identity crisis. AO3

Nothing But The Truth - Izuku is hit by a truth quirk while out on patrol and Aizawa is made to babysit him until it wears off. Although he tries to avoid more sensitive lines of questioning, Aizawa asks about his analysis notebooks and ends up accidentally learning about One For All, Izuku's life prior to receiving it, and what his Problem Child's true goals regarding heroism are. (Might become a series with this as a oneshot, or a multi-chapter story as originally planned.)

Panacea - Izuku has a hidden quirk his whole life, one that people didn't even consider could be a quirk. He has a super-powered immune system, and it can and will treat damaging quirks as an infection to fight. His burns from Bakugou's quirk heal faster and faster, emitter quirks used on him start to be less effective after the first couple of times until they don't work at all. He has the ultimate cure in his blood and no way to share it. And then he receives One For All, a powerful stockpiling quirk with a secondary aspect that makes it capable of passing from person to person regardless of heritage. Izuku doesn't realize it, but his invisible quirk got a free pass to start changing the world, one touch at a time. (Possible Dad For One) (Just had the stupid thought that Izuku's quirk is basically Cure For All)

Prototype - While getting scolded after the Slime Villain incident, an underground hero known as Prototype shows up and forces the other pros on the scene to back off. They then walk Izuku home (accidentally forcing him to miss All Might's offer). During the walk, Izuku confesses that he is giving up on his dream of being a hero since everyone says it's impossible. Prototype points out that Izuku was the only one on the scene who was thinking about a solution from more than one angle, which is a useful skill for an underground hero to have. They offer to take him on as their apprentice in the underground, promising that if he still wants to be a hero, an apprenticeship would be more flexible and faster than trying to become a hero through one of the heroics schools. They advise Izuku to think about it and discuss it with his mom, since he would probably be spending a lot of time training out of the house and not every parent is willing to let their child basically move in with someone they barely know. Izuku, after talking things over with his mom, decides to go for it, embarking on a totally different journey to being a hero than he ever expected.

Yesterday's Sunshine (A Storm On The Rise) - Based on @hey-hamlet's End of An Era AU in which the mind of a 19 year old Izuku fighting a losing battle against Paranormal Liberation Front and the League of Villains is sent back to his 14 year old body, a mere month after he started training with All Might. He is traumatized and trying to hide the fact that he is shocked to see the people he knows died walking around again, untouched and whole. He's determined to make everything better this time, to keep his loved ones from dying or betraying him in the worst ways. He also needs to try and stay ahead of the people around him, who are trying to figure out why this child who shouldn't have encountered many villains in his life, is so terrifyingly good at putting them down hard. (I'm considering adding an aspect of DFO.)

Searching for Tododeku - Or Five Times Shouto Tricks Midoriya Into A Date and One Time Midoriya Asks Him Instead. Featuring semi oblivious Izuku, Shouto stealth-competing for the title of supreme memelord with Kaminari, and a cameo of Endeavor's crippling addiction to tabloid magazines.

Planar Shift - An All For One-Izuku body swap just weeks prior to a fight that would have left AFO and All Might both greviously injured. Izuku is quick to realize that the person he ended up in doesn't seem to be a nice person (and he tries not to think about what it would mean if the person is in his body around Kacchan) and has a lot more quirks than a person should have. His childhood doctor is there, as is a strange boy with delicate skin, a disintegration quirk, and a love of video games but little else. Then there's the purple mist person who reads as both alive and dead to one of Izuku's new quirks. When he figures out that All Might is trying to track this villain down (and will probably think it's a trick if Izuku tries to explain his situation), he decides that he should get himself, the kid, and the not-dead-but-not-alive person out of there. He doesn't know how long he's going to be in this body, but he wants to be the hero those two need, even if he's technically a villain.

Environmental Damage - Hitman Izuku AU. When Izuku's mother is killed when he's young, he manages to track down the killer but the police won't take him seriously because he's quirkless. Neither will any of the heroes he approached with it. So instead he goes back to the criminal underground where he found most of his information and talks to an assassin who had a soft spot for him. Izuku agreed to become the man's apprentice so he can take out the person who killed his mother himself. After that, he starts selling his services to people who can't get out of bad situations, offering a much reduced rate compared to other contract killers. Then a kid his age with red and white hair approaches him about killing the Number Two hero.

Summertime and Seaglass - Aizawa keeps running into this mute homeless kid on his patrols. He's not sure what to make of him, except that he needs someone to care for him, especially as the nights are getting colder. Treating the kid a bit like an abused and feral cat, he starts taking food with him to offer the kid when they meet up. It's more or less an accident when he learns the kid's name is Midoriya Izuku, a child thought to be dead and burned three years before when he and his mother were caught in a villain attack that was ended violently by Endeavor. Aizawa wants to give Midoriya and all of the other victims of Endeavor's carelessness the justice they deserve, and maybe by the time he's done the kid will let him bring him in from the cold.

The Importance of Being Batman - (Based on an idea from @terrible-my-hero-academia-aus .) Izuku spends a lot of time on forums for quirkless people, getting support and advice from other people like him who don't have a quirk. He gets the attention of an old Admin, Toshinori, and they talk about heroics, pre-quirk comic books, and the importance of representation and symbols in modern media and culture. After failing to get into heroics in the entrance exam, Izuku shifts his focus slightly. Batman didn't have any special powers in the comics, but he was one of the best heroes in his universe. Izuku decides that if he can build the skills, knowledge and (most importantly) money to become his own version of Batman, that would be almost like being a hero. It's time that society learns that 'useless' is a matter of choice, not birth, and even someone who doesn't have a quirk can do incredible things.

#MHA AUs #BnHA AUs #My AUs #BnHA AU list #MHA AU list #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #fanfiction #my fanfic ideas

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bigskydreaming · 3 years ago

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what are your opinions on we are robin?

Massively complicated by the fact that DC's writers don't have an ACAB bone in their collective bodies.

Dunno how new to my blog you are and thus how familiar or not you are with my ACAB stance for Dick and my personal tendency to never acknowledge or interact with the specific idea of Dick as a cop...like there's more than enough material for me to work with without ever having to delve into that and I fundamentally believe being a cop is counter to everything I see as Dick's core premise and makes no sense given the specific origins and continuities I view as most 'him' -

But I WOULD have a lot of thoughts about how Dick would feel about this massive city-wide movement that he had no hand in creating and how he would inevitably feel personally responsible for every life to put on a facscimile of his family's costume AND the things they did in those costumes (such as the kid who was manipulated into killing someone while in that guise, per the Court of Owls' agenda).....

AND I would have a ton of thoughts about the fact that it was Alfred who secretly engineered this movement and how he of all people should know how Dick might feel about that, and thus how Dick WOULD feel about that information, but complicated and coupled with the fact that Alfred most certainly was motivated in part by his grief for Dick and seeing this as a kind of legacy, a way to honor his grandson, and able to justify to himself any transgressions towards Dick's feelings here with the idea that Dick wasn't alive TO be hurt by his actions here....

BUT the reason I avoid engaging with We Are Robin content beyond acknowledging it as Duke's origin story in the background of Duke content I write....

Is I absolutely can not - or more to the point - WILL NOT - attempt to justify Dick's decision to get all the kids arrested and locked up for their own safety while he went after the Court alone.

To be clear - I absolutely am of the opinion that Dick was and always will be right and justified in not wanting to see anyone get hurt in the colors and image of his family's legacy. That this has absolutely NOTHING to do with his impression of any such individual's competency, nor is it about trying to restrict their agency. That its wholly a PERSONAL thing for him, its a private instinct that is entirely reasonable and allowable, for him to have a kneejerk need to keep more people from dying or suffering in that specific mantle that he never intended to BE a legacy beyond just himself.

I headcanon that after Jason himself, nobody hated the memorial in the cave more than Dick, because the last image he had of his family was them lying dead on the ground of the circus ring, just broken bodies colored from high above in the classic Grayson colors and covered in blood. That THAT specifically is the image Dick so often saw in his nightmares in his early years in the Manor, that is the SPECIFIC visual Bruce so often comforted him about upon waking....and that it was a massive slap in the face and an indication of Bruce's most unfortunate tunnel-vision tendencies in his own grief, that it never even OCCURRED to Bruce that in memorializing Jason in the specific way he did, he was also subjecting Dick to a constant, ever present visual reminder of one of Dick's personal most traumatic images....the sight and idea of his family, now not just his parents but also his brother....reduced to just broken, bloody costumes he'd never get to see as anything but that again.

Not to mention then captioning this memorial with "a good soldier" and thus in the process of disrespecting Jason's true bond with Bruce, simply because Bruce couldn't handle that at the time and was trying to literally DISTANCE himself from that view of his loss, the loss of a son, of family....Bruce simultaneously disrespected Dick's legacy of his family and everything he'd created Robin to be, and envisioned Jason-as-Robin to be from the moment Dick gave Jason his own old costume and embraced him as the new Robin and by extension, HIS family as much as Bruce's.....like, no matter what Bruce intended for HIMSELF and his feelings about Jason's death with that caption, he literally reduced Dick's tribute to his parents and expression of brotherhood to his brother to.....nothing more than the uniform of a child soldier, a subordinate of the Batman in HIS personal crusade. Something that Jason never actually was, and Dick CERTAINLY had never created - or gave Jason his blessing as - Robin to be.

So on that front, I have no problem with Dick WANTING to keep all the Robins, every child who called themselves one, safe - and to take on the Court of Owls alone, by himself, because like it or not, that will ALWAYS be personal for him. That is about HIS family in a way that it will never be about the family, the heritage, of anyone else, even his adopted siblings. The Court were after HIM, specifically, and always were and always would be. I don't see anything hypocritical about Dick's desire to keep kids out of that fight when he himself would have never been okay with Bruce benching him as Robin in some random fight....because this fight is deeply personal for Dick in a way that's not transferable, and to be honest, I see his desire to keep anyone else from dying as a Robin, in a fight against the Court ESPECIALLY....I see it as an inherently selfish want of Dick's.

A selfishness that I think he's entirely justified in having. Its not about anyone but him. Its about HIM not having to deal with the burden of any more deaths in his family's colors, his family's name, when he in all likelihood originally created Robin in that particular guise because he figured he'd likely die as Robin at some point, and thus he'd never have to see anyone die in the image of his family's costume and colors ever again because the only person left TO die in them, at the time, was he himself.....thus kinda ensuring for Dick that when he did die, he'd go out just as his parents did, which in his youth at least was likely a weirdly kinda comforting idea for him.

So on the one hand, Dick's desire to keep the kids out of harm's way was ultimately a selfish - but justifiably so - desire to not see anyone else dead or injured in a literal WAR of CHILDREN being fought in his personal family colors and image....especially when 99% of them had literally no idea what the colors they were fighting in signified and meant for the mantle's original creator.

BUT.

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT.

Where this all falls apart for me, and why I don't just go with this take and instead just kinda sidestep around the whole story itself and don't engage with it....

Is there's absolutely no way to 'fix' the story as is.....without coming up with an entirely different middle climax, in which Dick finds some way to sideline the kids without getting them all arrested.

Cuz see, what I'm NOT gonna ever do, is try and argue from an in story perspective, that Dick would ever be stupid enough, or try to justify, getting kids - many of them marginalized, and people of color specifically - arrested in the name of keeping them SAFE.

That's just stupid to the nth degree, and unilaterally the fault of DC's writers being oblivious to the real-world realities of police brutality and the interactions and dynamic people of color have with the actual police.

It was DC's fuck-up there, but I - especially as a white writer and fan - am not going to try and fix or transform that fuck up short of entirely rewriting the whole second half of We Are Robin's plot, which to be honest, I don't see as likely to ever be a priority for me as there's so much other content in Dick's narratives I'd rather get to first. Its just way too far down the list, the premise itself doesn't interest or engage me enough to make me WANT to invest in that particular story heavily enough to create a whole other direction for it, that navigates around the issue I have with it here.

So again, I mostly just....don't engage with it. Because I can't see Dick's stance on the issue of his family's legacy ever being other than what I always see it as, and thus see it as here, but I'm definitely never going to find it appropriate to write Dick trying to justify his decision to ENGINEER the police arresting all these kids for their PROTECTION....to a black character like Duke in specific.

Because its not. But again, this wasn't Dick's decision at the end of the day, because he's a fictional character who can only make the decisions he's written making. And thus it was the decision of writers who wrote these characters in situations that contained analogues to real world issues without keeping centered an awareness of how those issues intersect with people of different identities, particularly people of color and black people in specific.

So its not a decision that made me like, dislike Dick, because its one that I don't think he should have ever been written making, but its not a decision I care to justify in universe.

And that's about all I think I ever intend to - or even could - expand on that subject, I'm pretty sure. *Shrugs*

Oh wait, no, I lied!

Quick thought for white fans in particular....because I HAVE seen this subject tackled at least once or twice in fiction, from an ACAB standpoint that had Duke reaming out Dick for his decision here, for the same reasons I'm outlining above.....

This isn't an attempt to gatekeep or police anybody as like, I'm not actually ever trying to do that, I'd have to know every fic writer's personal identity and marginalizations TO do that, and I'm not pretending to know that or asking to, like, its just not on the menu for me so please don't get me wrong, this is purely aimed at a plea for white writers in particular to exercise personal accountability and good, sincere judgment in this regard:

No matter your personal feelings about Dick Grayson, the subject of Robin, or any of this in general, PLEASE keep in mind before utilizing Duke as a mouthpiece for giving Dick shit for this in the name of smearing the latter's character or making him look bad, like.....

Dick is of Romani descent. In the New 52 continuity as well as pre-Flashpoint. That's been made explicitly clear, and as such......there is no substitute in our current real world zeitgeist for the interactions the police have with black people, but please keep in mind that Romani people have a very, VERY long history of being subject to police brutality and persecution in a wide range of countries. Its a big part of why so many people are so uncomfortable with cop!Dick in the first place, and as such, it makes treating him as this naive, privileged white guy when having the realities of police brutality explained to him by another character, like.....not look exactly like you might intend there, because the reality is he's not SUPPOSED to be that character, but too few people at DC, and ESPECIALLY the people writing the We Are Robin stories, like, completely fail to ever extend the idea of Dick being Romani to any kind of examination of what kinds of lived experiences, perspective or perceptions this results in him having specifically.

And that's a failure on DC's part, but you don't need to go making it your failure as well, so for those of us who are white like, this really is something that should be kept centered before we decide to engage with story elements like the above one from We Are Robin, and like, if we do, then HOW we go about that specifically.

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doitwritenow · 5 years ago

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IronStrange Starter Kit - Master Fic Rec List for all Y’all Because You’ve been Asking and I’ve been Avoiding

Hi! All you anons and askers, I made a list!!! Hopefully some of these are what you’ve been after. :D

(Please reblog this, lol, I spent too much time on it...)

General rules: These are complete unless indicated otherwise, and end happily unless indicated otherwise. There’s a variety of ratings, as I have no qualms against smut, but I don’t usually read it outside of a larger plot. So I don’t think there’ll be many explicit stories on here. Word counts vary; I indicate general length but don’t go into specifics. What else, uh... Bold stuff is the headers and general subjects. I link the titles. Block quotes are author summaries. Enjoy!!

Okay so first off, there are a couple of Fandom Staples who just have leagues worth of good short stories, and if you haven’t read them, then definitely treat yourself to the array:

A Thousand Futures of Me and You - VisionaryGalaxy (Vishanti, what a legend, ily so much). This is a series of unconnected one-shots, each their own and covering a variety of tropes and moments and themes and AUs. They’re so fun (and/or painful and/or thought-provoking and/or tense and/or sexy)! In-character and amazing, consistantly.

Prompt Collection - amethyst-noir (Arbonne). (Also a legendary human). This is exactly what it sounds like: a series of prompt fills in all sorts of tones. You’ll almost certainly find something here that feels like it was just made for you!

Alright, onto the individual stories and series!

Long fics/series:

The of overqualified hands and pi figures series - lantia4ever. (This was my first Ironstrange story, and it is no less magical now.)

A series of one-shots, all set in the same alternate verse in which Tony and Stephen first meet following the events of the first Avengers and then continue to meet after that throughout the canon up until Infinity War and eventually beyond it. Becoming friends - and more along the way.

Time After Time - fancylances. (I love love LOVE this one. Highly recommended.)

Tony Stark is unstuck in time. Stephen Strange might just be the only person in the universe qualified enough to help.

Citizen Erased - Imagined. (This author. Just... such a wonderful, talented, stunning person who makes wonderful, talented, stunning works. This story is masterful.)

What do you do when no one in the world ever manages to remember you?

Anyone who sees Tony Stark promptly forgets he ever existed after mere seconds. When everyone he has ever cared about has lost their memories of him, he goes to Stephen Strange, possibly the only one who can help him lift the curse. But a terrifying danger is coming, and saving the world isn’t an easy job to do when no one can remember who you are.

if only the gods had mercy on us and it’s sequel a soul too deep - orphan_account. (Vishanti, this series... It’s so beautiful and emotional and heart-breaking and heart-warming. And it has so few views for so many words! One of my absolute favorites, VERY highly recommended.)

Tony Stark loved Stephen Strange. He loved him more than anyone could ever imagine. But then a terrorist group attacked the convoy. Then there was a car accident. In the middle of it all, there is tired, battered love. (And, maybe, a little bit of genius)

From the Top - lucifersfavoritechild. (Everyone reads this fic. Written by the blogger Monarch Of The Ironstrange Ship, it’s an MCU rewrite around the relationship. Very fun.)

“Stephen, if you’re . . . there somewhere . . . when I drift off, I’ll be with you again. I can’t wait.”

|| Personally, I think the MCU would be much better as a love story between Stephen Strange and Tony Stark. Don't you?

Starting from Iron Man, and going all the way to Endgame, with all the appropriate stops in between. Let's take it from the top.

UNFINISHED: Skin Deep - Mystical_Magician. (Super cool premise, and super interesting to read! The dynamic here is very fun.)

A battle that should have finally killed Stephen instead launches him into a parallel universe. Exhausted from centuries as Sorcerer Supreme, he chooses instead to explore this new world in any animal form except human. Having hoped for peace at last, he can't stand to be looked up to, to be responsible for others, to have the world on his shoulders.

If he'd hoped to avoid excitement, however, he really should have stayed away when he noticed an enormous explosion and a falling metal suit of armor as he passed through Afghanistan.

UNFINISHED: The End of Infinity - FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls. (Self rec. Very long, very slow-burn. Canon-compliant Endgame fix-it. I’m trying so hard, lol.)

In 2023, the battle for the universe has been won. At a cost no one can forget, the fight is over—for all but one. Stephen Strange has an idea. An impossible idea spanning dimensions and timelines, life and death, and the lines of good and evil. But he's played impossible odds before—perhaps he never stopped.

All that Loki wanted was to fight, one last time, for the fate of his universe. So when he finds himself fighting for another, crashing into the past, he has a few intended words for the wizard that forced him there. But not before he finds a boy. Or, more accurately, before the boy finds him.

Peter Parker had been waiting for the next mission. He just doesn't expect it to come from the future, armed with a ridiculous story demanding a ridiculous quest. And he doesn't expect not to be able to tell Mr. Stark.

Tony Stark is trying to rebuild from the Civil War, knowing that someday, something will come that he needs to be ready for. And he doesn't know it yet, but two universes are trying to rebuild around him, and that something is already here.

Seven Stones. Five dead. Two universes. And one impossible quest to tie it all back together.

UNFINISHED: Sunrise in Exile - Ragdoll (Keshka). (Another fandom favorite! And for good reason. This is really really good!)

Tony does the math and realizes their best chance to save the universe is by... not confronting Thanos on his own turf.

So he steals a wizard and a spider and a space ship. And he runs.

(Three humans and an A.I in space, the alien friendships they make along the way, and discovering how science and magic might coexist in a universe where they can be one and the same.)

Shorter plotty ones:

Out of Suffering - Mystical_Magician. (So this author??? THIS AUTHOR??? Very very good, much yes, very good.)

Stephen Strange does not like people, but 14,000,605 lifetimes of fighting and dying alongside this small group have worn down his walls. He likes them, gods help him. He might even consider them friends. It’s really for the best that they all go their separate ways once Thanos has been defeated. In their eyes, he’s barely even an acquaintance.

Now if only Tony and Peter would stop surprising him.

moros - spookykingdomstarlight. (Almost got a spot in the angst section. Very good).

There were fourteen million universes Stephen had birthed into existence and let die and, in far more than he cared to count, the visitor standing before him had become something… dear.

Shaking is Caring - mariadperiad20. (This is just STUNNING. Highly loved.)

5 times Stephen's hands would shake, +1 time they didn't.

It's Kinda Chalky - DestielsDestiny. (This one’s pretty short, but definitely worth it.)

You can live an entire lifetime by looking into someone’s eyes. His sister used to say that all the time. Stephen never gave it much thought back then. These days, he can think of little else.

Something Magic - Imagined. (Beautiful!)

There is only ever one rule that matters:

do not fall in love with the enemy.

An Idiotic Theory - FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls. (Self rec! I tried to be funny.)

His wizard has been cursed, again, and Tony's already used up his luck for the day.

(Stephen says it's not a curse. He says Tony's whole daily-allotted karma-based luck theory has minimal merit, citing the fact that Tony had come up with it while he was drunk.)

Tony really should have saved his miracle.

Love Through Time - babywarg (morphaileffect). (I love this one. It sticks with you.)

Tony discovers an old drawing of, and finally remembers, his invisible friend Stephen from when he was a child.

Alternates - doobler. (Super cool!)

After being punked by a lowbrow magician, Stephen finds himself falling through doors to otherwordly dimensions. How will he ever get home?

132 - 28ghosts. (Soulmate AU! Very fun, incorporates Stephen’s time-loop with Dormammu.)

Ninety-nine point eight percent of humans have a soulmate mark that tells them the age their soulmate will be when they meet them. Tony Stark has a mark. It's just that his is...different than most people's.

(Or: six people who aren't Tony Stark's soulmate, and one who is.)

and when the world falls (I will fall with it) - HeavenChild. (Another multichap soulmate AU. Absolutely lovely.)

Tony will give anything to those he loves.

People will take everything he gives before leaving him in shambles.

Rhodhey, Pepper and Vision have had enough.

Or the five times Tony had his heart broken and the one time he didn't.

i saw the end of the world - JumpToConclusions. (Why has no one read this fic??? It’s so good!!! Stephen knows the future since he saw it on Titan, and things grow more complex from there.)

Tony and Strange are trying to make this work, this being remaking The Avengers. ...And maybe they'll stumble into something else along the way.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying - Mystical_Magician. (R e a d t h i s p l e a s e. The mythology is so cool and the symbolism is so beautiful and the prose is so satisfying. One of my absolute faves.)

As a fledgling crane, Stephen was too curious for his own good, and it was this curiosity that led to Eugene Strange finding and stealing away his feather robe. Trapped in human form, cruelly forged into the perfect son, not even his father's death freed him when his robe was so well hidden. He only managed to break his father's mold after breaking completely in the aftermath of his accident, and slowly gluing those broken pieces back together at Kamar-Taj, but not even magic could find what had been hidden. Enter Tony, after the defeat of Thanos.

Fluffy ones:

From The Outside - Live. (Hilarious.)

Being a sentient life-form surrounded by humanity can be hard. Especially when said humans just can't admit their feelings for each other.

Sleeping Iron Man - Golden_Asp. (Another fun one. Perfect balance of ridiculousness with a touch of angst to make it interesting.)

Stephen Strange stared at the Avengers on his doorstep, Tony Stark flung over Steve Rogers' shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "He touched something, didn't he?" "Yuup." or The one where Tony touches Sleeping Beauty's spindle, is put into an enchanted sleep, and everyone, even Rocket Raccoon, take their turn kissing him. But Tony only has one prince charming.

Doctor Ob(li)vious - lantia4ever. (One of my very favorites. So cute.)

Stephen starts getting some weird looks from the Avengers, spanning across disturbed, confused and even scared all the way to curious. He dismisses it at first until weird turns into knowing.

And knowing turns into realizing...even if the scheming teenagers had to all but paint it on the walls for him to do so. Oh wait...

Applied Combinatorics in Two-Player Games - 28ghosts. (Short and fun and full of snark.)

After a battle, Tony Stark and Stephen Strange argue about games.

“Chess is not a solved problem.”

“Has been since ‘97, Kasparov versus Deep Blue. Kasparov, 1; Deep Blue, 2; three draws.”

“Chess is a game, not a problem.”

The Courtship of Peter Parker's Father (Figures) - flyingonfeatherlesswings. (Peter plays matchmaker! Adorable.)

Peter couldn't stand to sit by while Tony and Stephen danced around each other any longer. Something had to be done.

Speaking Eyes - Vrishchika. (Not Steve Friendly. Tony is amazing in this. And Stephen is so fantastically dramatic.)

Tony has always had expressive eyes.

The Signs of Sleep Deprivation - FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls. (Another self-rec. <3)

"Tony said to put the potato in the dishwasher, so that's what I did."

Sometimes, Avengers just show up to say hi. Sometimes, they all show up at once, and Tony makes an party out of it. Sometimes, he invites the snarky, oblivious, somewhat insecure wizard because, and Peter quotes: "everyone else is coming".

Sometimes, something needs to be done.

Show Me Your Scars (And I'll Show You Mine) - Imagined. (Adorable. Lovely. Imagined does it again.)

The worst part is that Stephen keeps tucking his hands away, just as Tony wants to hold them. He keeps hiding them, surreptitiously, no matter what they’re doing. It’s only when Tony kisses Stephen, or hugs him, that he feels the hands settle on his back, uncertain, ready to pull back within seconds.

It only makes him want to cuddle up to Stephen even more, but he backs away, not sure if it’d be welcome.

Promise? Promise. - sharonscarters. (AU, kidfic, absolutely adorable.)

A four year old Tony Stark runs away from home and finds his Guardian Angel.

What The Doctor Ordered - wakandan_wardog. (Post CW. Kind of not Rogues friendly? So fun, makes me smile. I re-read this one a lot.)

The Rogue Avengers are called back to New York because the heavy hitters are going to be needed against Thanos. Of course, there are some truths that Steve Rogers will need to accept sooner rather than later. Tony Stark has moved on and Stephen Strange will not suffer fools lightly.

Hurt/Comforty ones:

Among The Chaos of The Stars (You're My Safe Harbour) - ShootMeDead. (Oh my vishanti. OH MY VISHANTI. So so so so SO good.)

Stephen has always been able to hear the stars. Tony is the only one who can silence them.

each night like a white noise frequency - Phierie. (I ADORE THIS FIC. OKAY. I LOVE IT. READ IT.)

Stephen is no stranger to making hard choices. He doesn’t regret his actions on Titan, but months later they weigh on his mind heavier than ever; the cracks begin to show.

Just An Accident - CucumbersInGold. (I really like fics with Stephen’s hands and the difficulties thereabout. Idk, just one of my favorite things. This is beautiful).

Stephen's hands act up.

Learning, Unlearning - Caaaaaaas. (More character study than anything else. Really good.)

Whatever Stephen wanted with life, life just didn’t seem to know what to do with him.

In which Stephen learns and unlearns some very important lessons.

your eyes have their silence - doctortwelfth. (Oh look it’s another scars fic. I told you I liked them.)

Tony is gentle with Stephen’s hands even when Stephen forgets to be.

Burning Lines Into The Snow - petroltogo. (Not very Steve friendly. Short and sweet.)

Post CW: It's not just the team that's so broken they are barely able to comprehend how many parts they're missing now, how many have been ripped and twisted and torn. It's Tony as well, right down to the core, the damage so far-reaching even he doesn't know how to fix it.

And then there's Strange, who has his own way of covering the cracks.

Old Bones - CJtheWeeb. (Owch. Dumb geniuses trying to be invulnerable.)

Sometimes Stephen Strange has great days, where he was nearly pain free and his hands still enough to where he could pick up a cup of water and barely spill a drop.

Today was not one of those days.

something taken, something new - meowrails. (So in-character. The premise was a little off to me, but I’m so glad I decided to read this one. I really really like this fic.)

The ChronicConnection implement and app allows a person that lives with chronic or illness-induced pain to transfer their burden temporarily to a willing loved one.

Tony and Stephen sign up as beta testers.

Angsty ones (happy ending unless otherwise mentioned):

day one - days4daisy. (THIS IS SO GOOD OKAY IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE ON THIS LIST READ THIS).

Three days in Stark Tower. Stephen must be in bad shape if he just agreed to this.

His Merlin - babywarg (morphaileffect). (This author keeps showing up on this list because they are A LEGEND. A LEGEND I TELL YOU.)

As a child, Tony imagined himself a Knight of the Round Table. Little did he know he would grow up to be a king. And that he would have a wizard by his side to lead him to either glory or destruction.

there is no heart for me like yours - turtle_abyss. (Soulmate AU! Wonderful. <3)

Being able to feel your soulmate - a phantom touch, a bone-deep awareness - is a divine torture. To know, but not see. To seek, but not find. To feel someone holding your hand and not be able to hold theirs.

Grace - StrangeMischief. (*cries in beautiful fic* Happy ending!)

“Pain’s an old friend.”

Us...Me - StrangeMischief. (This will hurt you. So melancholy. Pepper and Tony live their life, and Tony remembers. Not a happy ending.)

“I don’t believe in happily ever after.”

One-Thousand Cranes - FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls. (Self rec, sorry. Hopeful ending.)

After it all, a man with shaking hands makes a wish.

courtesy - deathofglitter. (Dealing with the fourteen-million futures. So good.)

Stark looked at him like he looked at the amulet that rested on his chest like a steady promise - dutiful, a bit burdened, and trying to hold a profound lack of personal emotion whatsoever, still personal enough to protect as anyone would a precious object.

La Douleur Exquise - BananasofThorns, StrangeMischief. (More pain. Pepper and Tony, and Stephen watching and trying not to wish. Very good, no happy ending.)

The before was easy. There were fewer boxes in their minds and no chains around their hearts. There was no hurt. No tears. No dreams.

But those days were long gone.

Stigmata - babywarg (morphaileffect). (AU! Soulmates again. Very interesting, beautifully done.)

Since Stephen was little, mysterious wounds have appeared and disappeared on his body, leaving mysterious scars. His mother says it's because he's one of a Pair, and he's absorbing pain meant for someone else.

*wipes brow* PHEW! That gotta a little more in-depth than I first intended... Have fun, my MysticIron friends. Happy quarantine.

907 notes · View notes

mc-lukanette · 4 years ago

Note

Hey, about the whole Ao3 thing: if you don't wanna do a collection, why not a "series" instead? You can post individual works for all your oneshotty stuff, but for related fics (ie. no context nov collection) you can link them together in a series (you can even reorder them so it's not chronological based on when you actually posted it), and for stuff in their own universe (like locker buddies) you can put those in another series too since fics can be in multiple series at the same time.

YOU’RE A GENIUS.

Okay, I think I got it. One-shots will go by themselves and I will compromise and have a collection featuring the rest of the fics (having thirty+ new fics when some of them are just parts of AUs doesn’t sit well with me), and all of them will go into a “No Context November” series. Maybe if I do that and I feel good about it, I might actually consider having all my snippets (AU or otherwise) on AO3. Warm me up to it, y’know? Like Tikki-brand Boyfriend, 2in2, Luka Charm, etcetera, probably all in one collection, and if one of them ever gets worked on to completion, I’ll figure out what to do from there?

#other: ask and answer #((My stubbornness shouldn't take priority of people wanting all of my fics to be easily accessible.))#((I think I've gotten a few comments that my Docs file is organized but it's also not AO3.))

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ravenclaw-questions-gone-writing · 4 years ago

Text

Outline # -1 Abandoned Lore (Trinity)

@fanfics-and-fangirling

I have learned my lesson, I will be writing these on Google docs and then copy-pasting onto Tumblr. While I am on GD, I figured I might as well open the docs I used to write the actual fic. Man, I went through a ton of hoops to get where I am. I will be using the most coherent ones for reference.

I can literally track my thought process as I went through writing all the different versions and I still have no idea how tf I went from this to dropping a flaming papermache whale on Ra’s Al Ghul. And I will die mad about it. Which means more meticulous notes in the future I guess.

Also, I’d like to apologize for how long it took to get this out, I have no sense of time whatsoever and as always, there’s a lot more than expected. This was 7 pages long

Original Ramble Post

Like most of my stories, the MC is an OCI - reincarnator brought into a fictional world they once watched. (Because I am obsessed with that trope.)

I now find the original name I had for her cringy and out-of-place given these are norse gods. So, from now on her name is Lokka, which is the female version of Loki

There’s a whole ass backstory about the transition of godly names and power I won’t go into. Just think Thor and female Thor kind of thing I guess. She’s basically seen as a spare Loki but it’s also a respected position.

Was tempted to name her Sigyn since Marvel doesn’t care about actual norse myth relations. No, Idc that there’s a canon Sigyn.

If you’re curious, the original name was Aradia. Yes, like the queen of witches.

MC is an asgardian, the daughter of the librarian in the royal palace and a blacksmith

She managed to get an apprenticeship under Loki and is occasionally taught by Frigga. She also learns under Eir when both her royal teachers are busy.

Lokka found her way into the central plane, probably having found it’s location from Loki’s notes and is unaware that it’s unstable.

So, Lokka is in the central plane, having the time of her life exploring new lands when she stumbles across a crying Marinette who is very lost

Unlike Lokka, Marinette does not know where she is or what is going on. She literally just tripped into a portal and has no way home.

Lokka takes Marinette under her wing and promises to help her find a way home

Problem is, she doesn’t know which of the three universes Marinette is from.

Even if/when she finds out that the girl is from MLB-verse, she still wouldn’t know which one that is because she has no reference to which world is which. Only that Marinette is probably not from Asgard.

At this point, she is unaware she lived in Marvel, she just knows Asgard is Norse Mythology.

So they continue to wander the central plane, Marinette ends up picking up a card guardian for a pet, accidentally becoming a cardcaptor.

Marinette has trouble pronouncing Lokka and Lokka gives Mari permission to call her Cosette (pre-reincarnation name)

Meanwhile, Ra’s sends Damian and Talia into the Central plane for combat experience and resource gathering.

Ra’s might be 700 years old, he might have access to the Central plane but he sure doesn’t know about magic or how it came to be or the current state of it. He might know something’s off because all the inhabitants have been increasingly on edge and the weather’s been stranger than usual but he didn’t deemed it important

Notably, he has never seen anyone other than those who he’d sent in himself in the central planes (CP, from now on bc I am getting tired of typing the entire thing out) so as far as he knows, the CP’s only entrance point is under his control.

Talia and Damian, who’s still going by Hafid, go hunting for resources and training

They separate for a bit for individual hunting/training time

Marinette and Cosette (Lokka) stumble across Damian’s camp

Misunderstandings occur, Damian fights them, more accurately he fights Cosette

Cosette tries to protect Marinette while also making sure not to harm her opponent

It was harder than she expected considering her opponent was a child

Asgardian training pulls through and she is able to do both

Damian’s tied up, Marinette is confused, and Cosette does not want to deal with this

Negotiation time

Marinette can’t speak Arabic, Damian doesn’t know french, and Cosette has all-speak

This means Cosette’s sitting there, having to repeat everything the kids say to each other for translation’s sake

also misunderstandings before the kids realize allspeak is a thing

Cosette is stuck with two kids who don’t like each other, one of which barely puts up with her so she does what most adults do when kids are too troublesome

Distract them: she does magic tricks with actual magic

Damian+Marinette are fascinated, Cosette accidentally gains two magic students

even though she’s still learning herself and all she has for guidance right now are Loki’s and Frigga’s notes

So, the trio end up travelling together

Damian demands Marinette should at least be able to fight so they train her too

They also figure out that Marinette and Damian’s worlds are not the same.

Cosette drills some value of life, basic morals, and feminism into Damian’s head

Marinette and Damian (Hafid) have trouble pronouncing each other’s names

They chose nicknames for each other from Cosette’s bedtime stories

Marinette is obviously angel or Tenko

Damian is gets Kabane, the name of a half demon

Kabane later changes to Kasane, protective blade

Yes, Cosette was/is a weeb and yes, they still mispronounce names which defeats the whole purpose but at least they kids don’t notice now even if Cosette is cringing every time they

They run into another card guardian and this one goes to Damian.

Cosette does not pout about this, it would be very immature

One training montages, several fights, a couple language lessons, and an abandoned (and Cosette-raided) house later, Cosette gets to the part of Loki’s notes where she figures out that the CP is collapsing in on itself and uh-oh

She tells the kids the gist of it but they’re too smart, ask all the right questions, and end up figuring out the important parts of situation that she’s trying to keep from them

Cosette is both impressed and a little put out, mostly impressed because not only did they figure out extremely complex magic, they also mostly remained level headed.

Marinette wants to rescue the card guardians and for once Damian is backing her up so Coestte gives up the notion of returning home and they go collect the guardians.

Remember, DC and MLB universes are closing in on each other

MCU is drifting away

If they don’t collect the guardians, Cosette would have the time to just drop them off at their world collection points and head back to hers

After collecting a couple guardians, they end up finding Talia and explain the situation to her.

Talia joins the gang, she may or may not be plotting a marriage

They raid a couple more houses, collect the 54 card guardians, and complete the power transfer ritual (replacing the Yue’s trial because the cards are the guardians)

The cards end up latching onto the three kids.

Marinette gets the Mistress title, Damian gets Sun Guardian, and Cosette gets Moon guardian.

Originally Cosette was going to be the mistress and Marinette the Moon guardian but because of the way I’ve decided magic works in this world - explaining that will need a whole other post - if Marinette is the moon guardian and gets the Ladybug miraculous, she will - for lack of better word - get sick and possibly die... or not.

Y’know what, it made sense at the time. But now that I think about it, we’re going back to the original idea.

Cosette’s the Card Mistress, Marinette’s the Moon guardian and Damian’s the Sun guardian.

Spoiler alert: that is a plot point for tropes-verse.

The completion of the ritual breaks puts CP deteriorations in high acceleration

Damian and Talia get into their circle, Cosette and Marinette in the other

Damian doesn’t have any cards bc he doesn’t want his grandfather trying to get to them. He and Talia agreed Ra’s would only know about the CP’s destruction. He does, however, have a CP beast that they picked up.

CP beast: magical creature that was born of CP’s magical residue or smth

Damian’s looks like a Teddiursa (Teddy bear pokemon) it is not

They have a notebook from a raided house detailing CP’s deterioration for proof

Cosette goes with Marinette because she can’t make it back to her universe and in the event that Marinette’s also from Cosette’s universe, she won’t be alone

They separate with the promise of meeting again.

At this point, I have had several differing ideas

They all go into DC world because they aren’t sure of Marinette’s world

Child trio goes into MLB world and Talia tells Ra’s Damian died

Everyone goes into MLB and Ra’s finds out about the collapse when he tries going in himself and finds out he can’t and just assumes they died

Y’all, I’m starting to see why I can’t do one-shots…

One of the things I forgot to mention in the rambling post is that while Marvel-verse was pulling away, it also messed with the time regulation thing, a day in the Maribat-verse will

Time in CP was very messed up

Kind of assumed readers could piece it together but I figured might as well make it obvious and straight up say it

MLBU: Cosette and Marinette arrive safely

Marinette is delivered home and Cosette has to figure something out

They find out Marinette has only been gone for a week

Marinette has some separation anxiety for about three days

Cosette slowly realizing this is an MLB universe and having a crisis

Cosette gets adopted by the Dupain-Chengs and starts working at the bakery

I have not figured out ages for Cosette

MLB goes like most Maribat fics pre-gotham because I’m lazy

Will likely be adjusted if I ever actually write this fic

Except Cosette steps in when things got too far and Paris has 3 heroes

Cosette is the known as the Sorciere or Lokka

Her uniform is just her asgardian armor

Good but misguided Adrien, Cosette probably adopts him too

Love square goes platonic and Cosette is glad this rom-com is over

Magic tutoring continues

Cosette is neutral with Fu and fascinated by the miraculous

You remember those ghost interactions? Those are filtering in

One of the first things to merge is the internet, because it doesn’t have a physical body and it’s just waves of information

News and discoveries between the world are being swapped

Given what I remember from DC and dimension travel, it wouldn’t be surprising if they figured out universes were merging.

The news about JL and Paris’s situation are causing all kinds of confusion

Cosette beings looking for information on Damian

As the physical world begins merging, there’s pockets of space where you can slip from one world into another; not quite portals but close

Eventually the trip to NY became a trip to Gotham because their plane slipped between planes (sorry, I saw the chance and I had to take it.) but yeah, that happened.

There’s quite a few details I’m forgetting

DCU: Damian and Talia arrive ok and report bare basics to Ra’s

It has also only been a week

Ra’s is displeased to find them back until they report the state of the CP

There’s the whole coup not long after and Damian is sent to Bruce

Damian is much more innocent looking when he’s bringing what appears to be a teddy bear with him

It’s name is Abd and it has grown wings by now. Actual name pending.

He gets teased about it, but under Cosette’s teachings, he has learned the virtue of patience, underestimation, and getting revenge with a side of entertainment

He does not try to kill Tim either

He also has to make the choice of bringing Abd with him as Damian or as Robin

He choses to make a side company for WE making toys based off creatures from the CP so Abd wouldn’t look too out of place

It takes two weeks for the bats to realize there’s something off about the Abd

They are convinced it’s haunted and Damian is very entertained

Abd only moves in daytime when no one - Damian excluded - can see it

Movement can expel magic that interferes with recording tech

Alfred is the first to figure it out and surprise, surprise, he has some magic books for Damian to learn from

It’s from the Wayne family library and they just assumed the language was lost to time. At least three are from Alfred’s own family.

Bat brothers spend the next 6 months trying to convince Damian his magical pet bear is a haunted doll.

Damian sort of getting along with Poison Ivy because his Sun magic is very compatible with plants and they love him

On an unrelated note, the plants seem to refuse to attack the new Robin

Damian randomly, unconsciously humming to songs Cosette and Marinette sang

Damian just vibing with the magic users of JL and Teen Titans

No one took him seriously at first but he pointed something out during a conference

“Robin, stand down and let the magic users handle this” - Green Lantern, probably

Constantine who actually knows what he’s talking about “No, no, let the boy talk.”

The plan was twice as efficient after Damian was through with it

Now Constantine’s trying to adopt Damian as an apprentice, he’s failing bc the bats are protective and possessive of what is theirs

Reminder that Damian brings Abd with him everywhere and he’s still getting teased about it from anyone who is not a bat (still convinced the thing is haunted)

The only thing the magic users have picked up about Abd is that he’s a magical construct which could mean a number of things but they brush it off as just a doll.

No one is prepared for the thing to come to life, multiply in size, and start spitting ice, sleep sand, and illusions. (Hiccups bubbles and can also turn into a cloud.)

They are also not prepared for the thing to quadruple in size and for Damian to ride it like a horse into battle. Reminder that Abd has wings and can fly.

Confusing talk about what’s going on in Paris and some other parts of the world

JL slowly figure out the universal merger that Damian already knows about

Damian is not impressed, it took him and Angel about 2 hours as 9 year olds

Somehow, Damian still has the ice prince image, less demon spawn though, that goes to Abd

Time moves on and one day, a plane from the other world arrives in Gotham

There’s a bit of confusion but it’s not exactly the first time something like this has happened at this point

WE steps up and offers jobs and a tour and all the usual Maribat plans (not just for the kids but all the other people on the plane)

Given the merger of the internet, MLB class and crew have some idea who the Waynes are and they accept.

Estimated about 6 months for full merger so people from MLB world are kinda just stuck there until then

Lila literally cannot lie about knowing the Waynes personally but she sure can lie about other things.

Dick and Damian are sent in to monitor the group

The reunion is awkward given they can’t freely interact and are not supposed to know each other.

While Dick is talking, there are just wide eyed staring between Marinette, Damian, and Cosette. With something a little extra between Marinette and Damian.

Cosette is torn between laughing and groaning at another rom-com trope coming in fast.

She ends up filming it bc blackmail is always good to have

Adrien is confused and quite frankly, he’s really just there to cover for them

The tour begins and about five minutes in, the trio breaks off and exchanges stories and names.

Cosette hears about Batman and has a dawning realization of what this world is, mentally nopes out, later digests that they are going into Maribat verse

Starts checking off Maribat tropes they’re coming across bc she might as well have fun with it

They continue to meet up

Batfam thinking Damian somehow managed to get two girlfriends

Damian choking on his breakfast when it is brought up

The girls are invited to dinner and Damian is just dying inside

Cosette blatantly hitting on all Damian’s brothers in the first 5 minutes

Damian screaming internally while Cosette cackles

Dick is awkward until he realizes it’s a joke, Jason plays along, Tim has an awkward bean crisis

Tim x Cosette? Maybe.

Cosette does that sit and repeat thing at least three times out of habit

Batfam gets full explanation about how they met and everything

I have played with the idea of Cosette getting fear gassed a couple times and Idk how it would go tbh.

That’s as far as I got with this version, so shenanigans ensue

Pretty sure they used the cards and magic throughout even if I didn’t mention it

Absolutely would be useful for being in two places at once

I later changed so the merger happens and then Paris’s heroes meet the Justice League

Damian immediately recognizing Cosette but not Marinette bc magic

still effective but weaker because of Damian’s magic type

He later recognizes Marinette later when she pulls off a move he taught her way back in CP

Nickname confusion for everyone else

Cosette vs Constantine on who gets to teach Damian magic

Damian goes to Paris. They beat Hawkmoth and then go to Gotham.

Also had a general idea of a plot with LoS that never got fleshed out past existing

If we’re going for the rebound version: Cosette reunites with Thor and Loki during the Avengers movie

Also, poor Heimdallr. He probably had a lot of headaches with the universe crash

Accelerated merger because of the convergence in the dark world.

I wanna go with 2012 Avengers towers shenanigans. + Loki and his sort-of but not really daughter

Cosette vs Antman, shrinking/growing, science vs magic.

And then there’s the whole Ironman vs Batman vs Arrow rich boy fight

Hammer x Luthor or Hammer vs Luthor?

Also, Cosette just staring at her home universe in betrayal and being insulted she didn’t think of it earlier because classic Nordic myths had Loki as Odin’s brother and not his son among other things but still

Fight against Thanos is a bit anti-climatic when you give a gremlin murder child magic and a sword that can through anything, including magical artifacts.

this baby boy can and will fight God and Cosette’s not really the kind to hold him back

If I actually wrote this, a lot of things would probably change because I’d actually have to put more thought into logistics and how things work

#Maribat #Daminette #multi-crossover #Ven's ideas #Ven's rambling #Abandoned Lore #Ven's idea outline #feel free to ask questions #maribat x CCS #mlb x dc x marvel x ccs #I gave up editing #I only have vague recollection of what is actually written here

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weibenwolken · 4 years ago

Text

Day 5: Outfit

They cosplay!

Individual pics under read! Also a headcanon I have!

So, I have this headcanon that Akechi, besides Featherman, also like this one complicated franchise.

When he is still in the foster system, Akechi like to listen to one of the songs in that franchise. A song about a white haired girl who always alone that she wishes to the tree so she can have a friend.

He always listen to it while holding a hope that sometime, in the future, he can have what she have.

And then, he decided to delve with the other songs on the same series as that song. And then the bigger series that series a part of. And then the whole franchise. And then, when he escape the foster system, he bought the novels.

That's when he realize that this franchise is more complex than he know. He love it.

It become one of his escapes.

He like Meta. She's his favorite.

He make a cork board full of theories of the universe in that franchise

Sometime after a few meetings with Akira, Akechi decides to try dragging someone into one of his interests.

He introduces Akira with the Story of Evil series first, as it's the most popular. Telling him to listen to the songs first before read the novels.

The next time they meet, Akira interested with the rest of the franchise. Akechi is happy (even though he didn't admit it) because finally! Someone to discuss it face to face!

Not that there's anything wrong with the internet community of it that he join two years ago, but... He want to talk about it with someone irl too...

Akira seems interested with it, he want to borrow the other series.

Akechi thinks he success at dragging someone into it.

(Of course he is, his persuasion skill is perfect)

Akira want to cosplay as the main pair on the Last Revolver song.

He didn't particularly want to (he rather cosplay as someone else) but Akira already got the costumes from whoknewhere.

Akechi cosplays as the woman, Akira as the man.

Akira seems happy even though Akechi's face shows only annoyance because this woman is not on his favorite characters. In fact, she's one of his least ones.

But Akira said that the main woman on the Wrath arc is his favorite. He also love all of the Wrath songs.

Akechi didn't like the Wrath arc.

That arc is his least favorite.

(Because it's too close for his comfort)

Greed arc is on thin fucking ice.

November passed and he loathed the Wrath arc.

Akira look at the books and CDs collection inside one of the box. The full colored anime characters plastered on the covers.

Purple, red, yellow, green, pink, blue.

No, the books and the CDs are not from Futaba.

It's Akechi's.

He never return any of them after he done reading and listening to them, and Akechi never bringing it up in any of their outing.

He grab his bag and fish out a book he just bought before.

A novel with a cover of a green haired woman holding a gun.

The creator just realesed it two days ago.

He already read half of the book on the way back, after saying goodbye to everyone.

Right now, he is on the part where the main character shoots her lover.

Akira once tell Akechi that this woman is his favorite character. When Akechi ask why (with distaste), Akira just smirks.

He never tell him why he like her.

He never tell him that she remind him of someone.

He put the book back to his bag and put a cork board full of theories (that he stole from Akechi's apartment that one time he manage to find it) into the box.

Akira remember a song. One of his favorite song. The song about a woman who have to shoot her lover because she ordered to.

Because they are on opposite sides.

Ah... He think, how it aged well.

It's time to go home.

After saying goodbye to his friend in front of station and stumble upon Sumire on the way to the train, he finally inside the train. Morgana already dozed inside the bag he carry.

While he pick up the novel from the book, careful so to not wake up Morgana, his phone ring.

He move his head to reach his phone and at the same time, something flashes outside the train.

And he saw him.

And the train move.

He relaxed his body on the seat, open the book to where he left out.

After he get home, he have to set the cork board up and fill it with the newest theories.

So they can discuss it together when they meet again.

Wait

Nemesis is what?!

A/N:

...

This is not a headcanon...

This is a full-fledged fic

#shuakeweek2020 #persona 5 royal #goro akechi #akira kurusu #ren amamiya #evillious chronicles #nemesis sudou #nyoze octo #shuake #akeshu #weiben's art #let's see how long I can write someone description without telling their name #oh fffffff #weiben's story

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writingblock101 · 5 years ago

Text

Till Kingdom Come (Jason Todd x Reader)

Part 1

Thank you so much to everyone who left a nice comment for me! They made my day and I’m so happy you guys like this fic as much as I do! Without further ado, here is part 2 to For the Kingdom!

Warnings: Various spoilers for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Outsiders

Word Count: 5,000

Tags: @idkmanicantenglish @jaybirdxarsenal @palefiregiver @because-icanhide @nakedszn

Jason didn’t talk to you like he told Dick he would. He was scared to face you after causing so much pain during something that is supposed to bring pleasure. Why would you want to see him? Besides, Jason would end up saying something stupid and making you cry.

As he walks by the library, Jason pauses, backtracking and staring into the huge room. When he first tried giving gifts, he tried guessing what you were interested in and failed. So, instead of trying to guess what you might like, what if Jason shows you things about him and hopefully gives you a reason to not be scared of him?

. . .

The next morning, you receive another gift from Jason. You open the box, expecting to find clothing or jewelry, but instead, you find a book with a note: I’m sorry about last night. I don’t want our marriage to be built on fear. I’m willing to try and make this work if you are.

You smile sadly at the note then look down at the book: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

. . .

It takes two days to finish the book. It was absolutely fantastic and bizarre, and now you want to talk about the book, but you’re not sure who to speak to. Jason doesn’t strike you as the reading type… Maybe Alfred suggested it.

You wander the castle in search of Alfred until you find him in the kitchen.

“Mrs. Y/N,” He greets, finishing cooking lunch. “I see you received Master Jason’s gift, did you enjoy it?”

“Yes,” You smile, sitting down at the island in the kitchen. “Giving a book was a great idea.”

Alfred smiles.

“Yes, Master Jason is quite fond of his books. He’ll be thrilled to hear you enjoyed it.”

You blink.

“So… Jason likes reading?”

Alfred chuckles.

“Very much. Why else would he give you a book?”

“I don’t know,” You say quietly. “I thought he was trying to find something to relate with I guess… I never took him for the reading type.”

“You have a lot to learn about your husband, Mrs. Y/N,” Alfred turns, placing two sandwiches and a bowl of fruit on a tray then holds the tray out to you. “Master Jason is in his office and I’m sure looking for a distraction. Would you care to bring him lunch?”

You stare at the tray, doubt racing through your mind.

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“I assure you, Mrs. Y/N, Master Jason has been desperately trying to come up with ways to talk to you. He will be delighted to have lunch with you.”

He’s been desperately trying to come up with a way to talk to you? Really? The look on Alfred’s face shows that he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer so you hesitantly take the tray from him and walk to Jason’s office.

The door is shut and the sandwiches are getting warm the longer you stare at it. Just knock, that’s all. This is your husband. You’ve seen him naked. You can knock on the door.

Master Jason has been desperately trying to come up with ways to talk to you. He will be delighted to have lunch with you.

Alfred wouldn’t lie to you. Just knock on the door. You reach out a hand and knock hesitantly.

“What?” Jason calls from the other side of the door.

Your heart rate speeds up. He sounds irritated. This is a bad idea.

“I um… I have lunch from Alfred, but if you’re not hungry, that’s okay. I can just leave,” You ramble then the door opens, revealing a surprised Jason.

“Y/N,” He greets then blinks. “Um… hi.”

“Hi,” You respond, then neither of you speak for a moment.

“Uh… You said you had lunch?” Jason asks.

“Yes! Right, the whole reason I came here!” You hold up the tray, giggling nervously.

“Would… You care to join me for lunch?” Jason asks hesitantly.

You smile.

“That would be nice.”

He takes the tray from you and brings you into his office, you sitting on one side while he opts to sit behind his desk then you both begin silently eating. You’re about halfway through your sandwich when Jason speaks.

“How’s your day been?”

“It’s been good,” You nod. “How’s your day been?”

Jason shrugs.

“It’s been a lot of meetings.”

“Oh?” You ask.

Jason recalls you mentioning the lack of independence given to you by your mother.

“Yeah,” He nods. “We’ve been tracking Dent for months now. We hired Frank Castle to keep him from entering Murdock’s territory, but now Dent is forming an alliance with Bane’s kingdom and it’s a nightmare,” Jason sighs.

“Sounds like it,” You sympathize.

Honestly, you had no idea who Jason was talking about since you were never allowed information about your parents’ kingdom affairs, but you appreciate him telling you.

“I finished Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” You tell him randomly.

“Yeah?” Jason asks. “What did you think?”

“It was...good,” You admit, looking a little puzzled.

“You don’t seem confident in that answer.”

Your eyes widen and you rush to rephrase your answer, worried that Jason will think you’re ungrateful for the gift.

“No! No, I liked it! I really did! I just...”

“It’s bizarre?” Jason offers.

“Yeah...” You agree. “Bizare is a good word for it.”

He grins.

“Yeah, it’s a weird book. But I want to hear what you really thought.”

You pause, studying Jason’s earnest expression. You should be able to share freely with your husband. He hasn’t given you any reason to feel as though you were in danger. He’s encouraging you to speak your mind. You take a breath.

“It was good and I liked it, but I think a lot of it may have gone over my head.”

Jason chuckles.

“Yeah, I think it was supposed to. Honestly, when I finished it, my first thought was “what the fuck?”.”

You laugh.

“That’s how I felt! Then, of course, I started thinking about if mice actually ran the world and if we were really their lab rats.”

“That part messed with my head so much,” Jason admits. “As humans, we think we’re the dominant species or whatever and we’ve seen other humans manipulate us, but we really don’t know what capacity other animals have to manipulate us. Especially if they are smart enough to hide their intelligence from us.”

“That whole idea kind of reminds me of Toy Story where the toys secretly came to life without any human ever knowing. I always wonder what goes on that we don’t know about… Is there some secret universe within our world that we just don’t get to know about?”

“You know, given how many haunted doll movies exist, I’d prefer if that secret universe doesn’t consist of inanimate objects coming to life.”

You laugh, feeling yourself relax.

“Not a fan of Chucky?”

“Not really. I don’t mess with demons or ghosts or whatever possesses them,” Jason admits.

“Fair,” You nod then your mind follows a new train of thought. “I like that it started with something that was definitely a problem-- I mean, the guy’s house was about to be demolished-- but that problem becomes so small in comparison to all the crazy stuff that was about to happen.”

“Right?” Jason nods along. “It makes you wonder about the big picture and how much of it we can’t see.”

“There are so many possibilities in the universe,” You elaborate. “There are so many things out there that exist and we don’t even know about them. It makes you feel... small.”

“Yeah… It really makes you think about what you see as a problem,” Jason looks over at the map of various wars. “I know I’m going after people that are evil and hurting others, but sometimes I wonder about the bigger picture, you know? Am I actually making a difference or am I just part of the problem?”

You stare at the map for a long time, your eyes tracing where Dent retreated into Bane’s kingdom, mulling over Jason’s words. No one ever truly knows their impact. They hope they can understand it, but at the end of the day, individual lives are complex. Who knows if they are making a difference?

For the first time, you see Jason’s true intentions with running the kingdom. He wants the best for others and his kingdom. He doesn’t go to war for the thrill of violence, he goes to war to protect his kingdom and to help others. Despite the stories, they aren’t showing a true version of Jason. He is ruthless because he wants to protect his people and he’s afraid he isn’t protecting his people. Jason is... caring.

“I guess that’s what life is…” You say slowly. “We try to make a difference and hope we aren’t contributing to the problem. I don’t think we will ever know, but we’re trying our best…”

Jason nods along, still staring solemnly at the map. This is something that seems to haunt Jason, but it shouldn’t. He isn’t adding to the problem and you feel confident in that, but clearly, he is doubtful. Before his brain can further torture him, you smile and break the silence:

“Oh, and of course, 42.”

Jason laughs, tossing his head back at your joke. You feel your face heating up with a blush and a small flicker of pride for making him laugh.

“How could I forget?” He grins then glances down at the empty tray. “Thanks for eating lunch with me. I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me.”

You shrug, avoid his gaze. Embarrassment burns on your face from that night.

“It wasn’t your fault,” You say, even though your nervousness did originate with Jason’s presence. He still did everything he could to help you relax. “You did your best, and you’re trying, so I think it’s time I gave the same effort. I want to make this work too,” You smile then stand and collect the tray. “I’ll see you later.”

Once outside of Jason’s office, you smile softly to yourself. Maybe Jason isn’t so bad...

. . .

The next book he gives you is To Kill a Mockingbird.

You shyly hang around the kitchen, wanting to talk to Jason about the book. While you know he would probably be more than willing to talk to you--he did give you the book-- something is holding you back. Finally, Alfred hands you a tray with a knowing smile.

“I believe you have someone waiting for you.”

You smile back and take the tray to Jason’s office.

Like last time, Jason updates you on the war against Dent then the conversation turns to the book.

“That was just…” You shake your head. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Jason nods. “It’s intense.”

“I can’t believe they actually convicted Tom Robinson,” You admit. “I was kind of hoping it was going to have a happy ending where they beat the odds but…”

“But instead it’s a smack from reality,” Jason finishes.

“It’s mind-boggling that people used to be like that,” You pause. “Okay, maybe not, it makes sense because racism still exists but to that extent? I mean, I’m sure it still unfortunately happens, but…”

“It really makes you wonder about people.”

“Yeah, it does. I actually really like reading about trials. Government is kind of… Stupid, but the judicial system is interesting.”

“I agree that government is stupid. Too many damn politics.”

“Good thing you’re running a kingdom,” You laugh.

Jason sighs, shaking his head.

“It’s so unnecessarily complicated. Yes, people are complicated in general and someone is always going to be unhappy and whatever, but I hate how much of this is based on who you know and how you know them and have you pissed them off recently.”

“It’s a people-pleasing game.”

“Yeah, and I hate it. Who cares if I pissed off some advisor for the Stark kingdom? It’s not my kingdom, it shouldn’t be my concern.”

“Stark kingdom?” You ask.

“Yeah, you know, the big flashy one out west?” Jason prompts.

You hesitate, tempted to say that you knew exactly who Jason was talking about, but changed your mind and opted to be truthful.

“No, I honestly have never heard of that kingdom… Or really, any of the other kingdoms you’ve mentioned.”

“Really?” Jason asks. “But you were royalty, how did you not know about other kingdoms?”

You shrug, shyly picking at a loose thread.

“My mother had a very specific idea about how I should be raised. She basically raised me to be a wife,” You roll your eyes. “So I never got to know about politics in the kingdom, places outside the kingdom, how to fight, hell, it’s a miracle I can even read--”

“Wait,” Jason interrupts. “Fighting? You don’t even know how to defend yourself?”

“No, she just wanted me to be some helpless little princess and marry some strong rich prince,” You remark bitterly.

Jason looks down at his desk for a moment, looking a little ashamed. Fuck, why did I run my mouth?

“I don’t mean you! I know it sounded like I did, but I promise I don’t--”

He shrugs, waving you off.

“I get it, that basically is what happened,” Jason admits. “But that’s bullshit. Some of the best fighters I have are women. I’m going to--” He paused, remembering how much of your life you lived against your will and rephrased himself. “Would you like to learn how to fight?”

Your face lit up and Jason kicked himself for not offering earlier. Seeing you excited made his heart skip a beat.

“Really?”

“Of course,” Jason grins. “I want my wife to kick ass like the badass that she is.”

. . .

“Okay, so we’ll start with the basics,” Jason says, the two of you in the castle's extensive training room. “Do you know how to form a proper fist?”

“Thumb not tucked it,” You say as you form a proper fist, one of the few pieces of information you managed to sneak from your kingdom’s general.

“Exactly,” Jason agrees. “You’ll break your thumb if you try to tuck it. For standing, you want your dominant foot behind you, slight bend in your knees,” He demonstrates. “Your hands are up by your face, protecting you.”

You copy his stance, protecting your face.

“Good,” Jason praises. “This is your fighter’s guard. You always stay in this. When I say reset, you go back to your fighter’s guard. Whenever you are punching or kicking, there is always at least one hand protecting your face.”

You nod along, still holding your fighter’s guard and listening intently.

“We’ll start with a simple jab. This punch doesn’t have a lot of power, but it’s fast and can catch your enemy off guard. Something important to know is that the power in your punches doesn’t come from your arm, it comes from your hips,” He does the punch slowly, emphasizing how his shoulders and hips move into the punch. “Why don’t you try it?”

You punch the air, moving your shoulders and hips the same way Jason did.

“Good, when you’re punching, don’t aim any higher than your shoulder height or you’re going to hurt yourself. Okay, so the next punch is one for power, it’s your cross,” He stands in his fighter’s guard then with his back arm, punches forward, twisting his body and pivoting his back foot. “See how I pivoted?” Jason asks, twisting his foot. “That’s where the power comes from because by pivoting, you’re twisting your hips and using your body weight as opposed to brute force. Try it.”

You frown, trying to move your body like Jason’s, but you focus too much on the pivot that your shoulders don’t move.

“Close, but remember to let your shoulders naturally move with your body so your torso is facing me.”

You try again, but instead of focusing on your hips, you focus on your shoulders, causing your hips to remain stationary.

“You’re thinking about them as two separate movements, but it’s all just one movement,” Jason steps behind you and puts his hands on your hips but feels you tense at the contact. “Is this… okay?” He asks, realizing he may have overstepped despite the fact that you two have had sex.

“No, it’s okay,” You say back, feeling tingles where he’s holding you.

“Okay, throw your cross,” As you turn your shoulders, Jason turns your hips, forcing your foot to pivot.

“You feel that?” He mutters to you, shivers shooting down your spine at the feeling of his breath on the back of your neck.

“Yeah,” You answer breathlessly.

“Do it again.”

You throw the punch again, his hands moving your hips again then Jason moves out from behind you. You feel a little cold now that his presence behind you is gone.

“Now do it when I’m not moving your hips.”

You throw the cross again, your shoulders and hips moving perfectly.

“Atta girl,” He grins.

You can’t help but grin back.

Jason knows you’re still not completely comfortable around him, but you’re trying. With each day, Jason can see your walls wearing down. He hopes one day you’ll fall in love with him because he thinks he may be falling for you.

. . .

Jason walks into his office and notices a box sitting on his desk, which is odd since Alfred didn��t mention any deliveries. The packaging is plain, with no indicators of where it came from or who sent it. Jason frowns but opens the box. Inside are two books and a note: Beowulf and Grendel.

I figured it was my turn to give you a book. Read Beowulf first then Grendel. It’s my favorite.

Jason grins to himself, flipping open the first page of Beowulf.

. . .

You and Jason fall into a routine. Every other day, he teaches you to fight and about twice a week, you join him for lunch and discuss the latest book you sent each other. Now, you don’t hesitate to waltz into his office and have lunch with him.

“You’re terrible!” You insist, bursting into Jason’s office with lunch.

He looks up from the documents on his desk with a smirk.

“So, you finished the book?”

“‘So, you finished the book’,” You mock. “Yeah, I finished the book and it made me cry. It’s paper! It’s not allowed to do that!”

Jason laughs, sitting back in his chair.

“Which part?”

“Oh, I don’t know: When Ponyboy is reunited with Darry and Sodapop, when Johnny died, when Dally died, when Ponyboy almost died.”

Jason nods along.

“Yeah, it’s pretty brutal.”

“But it was so good,” You grin, setting the tray down on Jason’s desk, but frown at his tied face. “You okay?” You ask.

Jason waves you off.

“I’ll be fine, I’m just tired.”

You frown, rounding the desk.

“You didn’t come to bed last night.”

“Yeah,” Jason admits, scrubbing his face. “It was a long night. I didn’t want to wake you.”

You feel your heart swell with affection and reach forward, running your fingers through Jason’s hair. He closes his eyes, leaning into the touch. Ever since Jason broke the invisible wall around you when it came to physical contact, you’ve started showing Jason more physical affection.

“What’s going on?” You ask.

Jason sighs, forcing his eyes open.

“Dent’s gone underground. We can’t find him or Bane. Rumors are flying around that they are trying to make a super-soldier army. Bane has dabbled in that in the past so the likelihood they can pull it off is alarmingly high.”

“You’ll find him,” You reassure. “There’s only so many places he can hide.”

“Yeah,” Jason nods in agreement. “It’s just frustrating. I hate not being able to do anything.”

“You are doing something,” You insist, knowing how much he hates the politics surrounding his kingdom. “You’ll find Dent,” Your hand moves to rest on his cheek.

He lifts his hand to cover yours, leaning into your touch.

“Thank you,” He says softly, then the door opens, unannounced.

A young man you haven’t seen before waltzed in followed closely by one of Jason’s advisors.

“I apologize, sir,” The advisor begins. “I was unaware you had company.”

“As I usually do during lunch,” Jason growls, standing up.

You walk over to stand next to Jason.

“And what lovely company you do have,” The man grins, shaking your hand then pressing a kiss to the top of it. “Billy Russo,” He introduces with a charming smile.

“Y/N,” You smile, shyly taking your hand back from Billy.

He winks at you.

“Russo,” Jason greets tightly. “I see you’ve met my wife,” Jason wraps a protective arm around your waist, leveling Billy out with a deadly glare.

��Wife?” Billy asks in surprise. “My apologies. I was unaware you were married.”

You notice Jason’s jaw is still clenched, so you lean against him, wrapping your own arm around his back and squeezing him lightly. He glares at Billy for a moment, pressing a kiss to your temple.

Billy watches with interest, quirking an eyebrow then tucks his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels.

"I was informed you have a proposition for me?”

Jason sighs, turning to you.

“Sorry to cut lunch short--”

“Nope, go run your kingdom,” You insist then lean up and kiss him on the cheek.

Jason looks shocked for a moment, but grins and easily kisses your head fondly.

“Rain check?”

“Damn right,” You grin, then walk out of the room, leaving your husband to run his kingdom, your cheeks burning with excitement. Seeing him get a little jealous and protective when Billy came in? You liked that.

. . .

You stretch your arm across your chest, waiting for Jason to join you on the mats. This week, you’ve been working on kicks, your favorites being the roundhouses. They’re powerful, fast, and they make you feel badass.

Living with Jason has been...nice. At first, you were angry, reluctant, and scared, but things have been getting better. Jason admitted that he’s never really dated before and now he’s married so it’s been one hell of a learning curve.

Between your unofficial book club and fighting lessons, you’re learning a lot about your husband, mainly that he is a gigantic dork. More importantly, you’re learning that Jason is more than the stories you’ve heard about him-- he’s caring, patient, charming, and fiercely protective. He’s incredibly smart, stubborn, and snarky. Jason sees you as an individual, as his equal and treats you as such. You’re extremely grateful for him and the independence he has effortlessly given you.

It feels weird to have a crush on your husband, but you can feel yourself falling hard. A smile stretches across your face as you think about the lovely flowers Jason left on the dresser for you this morning. While the kingdom has kept him busy and usually gone before you’re awake, Jason still finds ways to leave things for you. You do the same for him, usually through the form of a note on his desk, or bringing him lunch on days when he’s busy with meetings.

Your marriage is odd and developing, but you’re both making it work.

As you’re thinking about Jason, the door opens and your husband walks in, looking exhausted. You frown at his tired face.

“Hey,” He greets through a yawn, stretching tall.

“Hey,” You frown. “You okay?”

Jason pauses, rubbing his eyes for a moment.

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m just tired.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do our fighting lesson today,” You suggest.

“No,” Jason shakes his head. “I’m okay, really.”

“Jason, you look dead on your feet.”

“I’m fine,” Jason snaps, causing you to recoil, but he sighs, collecting himself. “Sorry, I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”

You frown, taking a step closer, running your fingers through his hair. He leans into you, closing his eyes for a moment.

“What’s going on?” You ask.

Jason sighs again, his shoulders slumping.

“Dent’s armies wiped out two villages last night. There weren’t any survivors.”

You feel your heartache for those families. While Jason was a fairly ruthless general, he always prioritized keeping innocent casualties to an absolute minimum. He’s protective of his people and innocent bystanders.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper to him, knowing the frustration building up inside him.

“Yeah, me too,” He admits.

“You’re doing everything you can,” You insist.

“But it’s not enough,” Jason’s jaw clenches. “So many people died because I’m not moving fast enough. We keep trying to play this defensive strategy game instead of just hitting him where it hurts.”

“This isn’t all on you, Jason,” You cradle his face. “Unfortunately, it’s not just your choice and you’re doing what you can.”

“But it should be!” Jason explodes, pulling away from you to angrily pace. “People’s lives are on the line. Who the hell cares about politics?!”

You say nothing, letting him rant.

“This shouldn’t be a people-pleasing game! We found Dent! So now, we need to take him down! We shouldn’t be waiting!”

“So, why are you?” You ask.

Jason’s jaw clenches.

“We’re working with the Russo kingdom now and they’re afraid Dent actually made super soldiers so their gathering intel before making a move.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing…” You point out hesitantly.

“It is when people who had absolutely nothing to do with this are getting slaughtered!” Jason snaps. “Nobody in either of those villages were associated with this kingdom or Russo’s. They didn’t leave any survivors, not even kids,” His voice went quiet. “Between those two villages, fifty-three kids died.”

You step toward him, grabbing Jason’s hands.

“Those deaths are not on you,” You tell him. “You’re doing what you can. I know it’s frustrating to watch people die when you have the power to do something, but Russo is right. If Dent and Bane are working together to make super soldiers, you have to know what you and your men are walking into so you don’t have more casualties.”

Jason sighs, looking down and playing with your fingers. He’s frustrated and feels helpless. People are dying and Jason has the resources and ability to stop it, but instead, he is restricted by politics. You know nothing you say to him will truly help, but you offer support anyways.

“I know…” He finally admits. “I know Russo is right… It’s just… Frustrating.”

“I know it is,” You frown, pulling Jason into a hug.

He slumps into you, pulling you close, his head on your shoulder.

“You need to sleep, Jase.”

“I did sleep.”

“You didn’t get an actual good night’s sleep,” You pull away from him, forcing him to look at you. “It’s the third time this week you didn’t come to bed.”

“There’s just...” He sighs. “A lot going on.”

“I understand that, but you need to take care of yourself,” You cup his face with one hand, pushing a few loose strands of hair off his face.

Jason smiles softly at you, placing his hand on top of yours.

“How did I get lucky enough to have you as my wife?”

You grin and shrug.

“Looks like the odds were in your favor.”

Jason rolls his eyes but smiles and pulls you into another hug, kissing the top of your head.

"Come on,” You say, pulling him away from the hug and toward the door. “We’re going to go take a nap.”

“We?” Jason asks, looking a little hopeful.

“How else am I supposed to make sure you actually sleep?” You tease, excitement building in your stomach.

Jason grins then you two head to your bedroom and change into something comfortable. You climb into bed, then face Jason and hesitantly open your arms to him, hoping you’re not overstepping. Jason smiles then climbs into bed with you, laying against your chest. You run your fingers through his hair and down his back, feeling him relax under your touch.

“Thank you,” Jason mutters, tightening his arms around you.

“Of course,” You murmur back, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

. . .

Jason lunges forward but you catch his arm, bend your knees and force him to roll over your shoulder, letting gravity do the work. He hits the ground with a hard ‘oof’ and you jump on him instantly, trapping his arms under your feet.

“That was good,” He praises.

You shrug with a sheepish grin.

“I have a pretty good teacher.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jason raises his eyebrows. “Well, he can’t be that good.”

You furrow your eyebrows.

“What?”

Then before you can react, Jason is hooking his arms under your legs and quickly flipping you to the ground, pinning you to the floor.

“Because he clearly hasn’t taught you the importance of keeping your guard up,” He mutters, his chest pressed against yours.

“Well, I guess I was a little distracted,” You respond, breathlessly, looking at Jason with a coy grin.

When you first saw Jason, you registered him as attractive, but fear kept you from appreciating how handsome he is. Now, as you stare up at your husband, dark hair, blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and muscular shoulders, you know he’s hot.

“Distracted you say?” Jason hums. “We can’t have that, now can we?” He asks, his eyes flickering to your lips.

You stare at him for a moment, your chests heaving as you both catch your breath. His eyes flicker down again and he slowly begins leaning down, giving you time to pull away from him.

Instead, you surge up, tangling one hand in his hair, pulling him down to you and connect your lips. You haven’t kissed him since you had sex with him. You were nervous and apprehensive, but now? You trust Jason completely, even with his body weight pinning you to the ground. He would never intentionally hurt you and cares deeply for you.

You weren’t ready the first time, but now, you have never felt more confident in your life.

Jason melts into the kiss, bracing his arms on either side of your head. Your free hand grips his shirt, pulling him even closer to you, but Jason pulls away and sits up, dragging you into his lap.

You kiss him again, cradling his face in your hands while his hands trace up your sides. You open your mouth into the kiss, allowing Jason to slip his tongue inside, his hands running under your shirt. Breaking away, you toss your shirt over your head with a giggle while he does the same then pulls you in for another kiss.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” He breathes, his thumbs stroking your sides.

You blush at the compliment, running your hands down his strong arms. Jason leans in again, kissing you slowly and dragging your hips against his. You grin into the kiss, pushing your hips down equally as hard.

Jason breaks away again.

“You sure about this?” He asks breathlessly.

A few months ago, you would’ve been fearful of Jason hurting you, but you know the man in front of you would never lay a hand on you and will protect you at all costs. He’s stubborn and a bit of an ass sometimes, but he’s also loving and passionate. You feel your heart swell with affection for the man in front of you-- your husband.

“I love you,” You say simply.

Jason’s face goes blank with shock.

“What did you say?” He whispers.

“I love you,” You repeat without an ounce of hesitation.

Jason stares at you for a long moment, then surges forward, kissing you deeply. One of his hands tangles in your hair, pulling you closer to him while the other wraps around your waist, your body flush against his.

“I never thought I would hear you say that,” He admits, pressing his forehead to yours. “I never thought I would hear anyone say that to me.”

You grin, cradling his face with your hands.

“I’m in love with you, Jason,” You repeat.

Jason pushes your back to the ground, kissing you again. Your legs wrap around his waist as he conveys as much passion into the kiss as possible before finally breaking away and resting his forehead against yours.

“I’m in love with you too, Y/N,” He grins.

You pull him down for a soft kiss then Jason starts trailing kisses down your neck. You tilt your head back and impatiently pull on his shorts.

“Are we really about to do this here?” He chuckles into your neck.

“Hell yeah,” You grin.

Jason grins back and kisses you again, helping you pull your sports bra over your head.

. . .

One round of sex eventually turned to two then three then you finally made your way upstairs only to have sex again in bed. You trace your fingers across Jason’s chest as he cards his fingers through your hair.

The first time you had sex, it was painful and scary. You felt pressured by the kingdom and were still scared of Jason, but the second time? Well, you don’t ride horses, but damn you love to ride your husband.

Jason wraps his arm around you and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“So, what next Mrs. Todd?” He asks.

“Hm… I’m kind of hungry,” You admit.

“Yeah?” Jason asks. “Me too. Sandwiches?” He offers.

“Yeah,” You nod. “But not the cucumber ones Alfred makes. I want a ham sandwich.”

“I’m sure we can arrange that,” Jason agrees.

You toss back the covers and pull on a pair of shorts then steal one of Jason’s shirts. He grins at the sight of you in his shirt and pulls on a pair of sweatpants before walking over to you.

“I like when you wear my clothes,” He whispers, pulling you in for another long kiss and slipping his hands under the shirt.

You grin into the kiss then Jason tosses you over his shoulder.

“Jason!” You exclaim.

“Yeah, doll?” He asks, opening the door.

“What are you doing?!”

“You said you wanted a sandwich!” He starts walking down the hall. “So we’re going to the kitchen.”

“Put me down!” You demand through laughs.

“No can do, sweetheart.”

You two were going to be just fine.

Thank you for reading and for everyone who left a reply! If you have any requests, let me know and I’ll see what I can do! Until then, catch me writing random inspiration that comes to mind!

Part 3

#jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #jason todd #red hood #jason todd au #red hood au #royalty!au #royalty!jason #dick grayson #nightwing #billy russo #where are my punisher fans?#futuristic kingdom au #don't ask me questions about the time period #cause idk #red hood headcanons #jason todd headcanon #reques #imagines

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ironwoman359 · 4 years ago

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Your point of view is not universal. You're welcome to interpret them as not manipulative in any way, but that's your interpretation, it isn't everyone's. That anon was being a dick but you're still being super condescending and acting like how you interpret the show is the one true way of viewing canon and everyone who disagrees is wrong and dumb

I’m fully aware that my point of view is not universal. I literally said multiple times that you can think however you want to about a series and about the sides. And I know that some people view some sides besides Janus as manipulative, and I don’t even think there’s no evidence whatsoever for that interpretation! It’s not like they’re perfect, innocent characters either. I never even said you couldn’t see the others as manipulative, I literally just said that if Side A’s behavior is your threshold for viewing a character as manipulative, than it tracks to view them all that way, because they all do it. And maybe that is how you view them all, but there are a lot of people who pick out one or two sides in particular to call out the behavior of, while ignoring the same behavior in the other five to six.

And let me say this now, as clearly as I can: A) I DO NOT think someone who disagrees with me is dumb or wrong B) I DO NOT think people should stop interpreting characters the way they want to, or that my interpretation is perfect or unbiased. C) I am fully aware that everyone’s point of view of ANY piece of media is going to be colored by their own experiences, and that some people’s experiences lead them to distrust Patton or Virgil (or anyone, though I see those two the most) as characters while not distrusting others. Those are not the colors that I view the show through, so of course we’re going to see it differently. In fact, that’s one of the beautiful things about interpreting art, everyone’s life is different so everyone sees art differently.

It’s not even the interpretation that Patton or any of the others have been manipulative that makes me go ???? It’s holding that interpretation while at the same time being all:

See Patton as more manipulative? Neato. See Janus as not manipulative? It’s a stretch, but sure, especially if you’re of the opinion his motives justify his actions (which is a valid interpretation!). It’s just such a HUGE contradiction to hold the opinions that Patton is a toxic, manipulative character and that Janus is nothing more than a misunderstood snake boy who can do no wrong simultaneously.....there’s a massive amount of cognitive dissonance there. And I’m not saying Janus can’t be your comfort character and that Patton can’t be your least favorite, or even most hated side. Like I’ve said a thousand times, you can view characters however you want to. But to say that canonically a protagonist who makes mistakes sometimes is at the same level or worse than an antagonist who is right sometimes is a pretty big logical leap to make. And if you wanna make that leap for your interpretation THAT IS FINE. But you know how fanon does not equal canon? Interpretation does not equal canon either. Not mine, not yours, not anyone’s. Just look at supernatural. Canon is a dumpster fire that does not match with what canon textually says, but the fans don’t care, and that’s the great thing about it.

Authorial intent isn’t the end-all-be-all of art, but when critically examining a work, it must be considered, as must the literal text of the work. And in the literal text of the work, the sides are not real people or even proper individuals, so right off the bat the notion that they could manipulate Thomas (even Janus, I’ll admit that) is thrown into question, since they are Thomas. And we know, from multiple livestreams, tweets, and tumblr posts from multiple authors that the authorial intent is not to have Patton be a manipulative character, rather a representation of what happens when a person (particularly a person raised catholic) tries to reconcile the black and white morals they were raised with the world that’s actually shades of grey. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIKE HIM. You don’t even have to take canon’s perspective (again, supernatural). But that doesn’t change what canon is. To quote my husband (who was actually talking to me as I wrote this about Kingdom Hearts reimaginings but shhhhhhh it’s still relevant, I swear), “Before you reimagine the way you want something to be, you have to acknowledge, even if you don't appreciate it, what the thing is on it's own terms.”

And I’m sorry if I’m coming off as condescending, it’s certainly not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings, and YOU DO NOT HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME but at the end of the day this is the kinda stuff I get frustrated with. Not even that different fanders have different interpretations of the work, but that we ALL are trying to see our version of it as The Right one. And that’s just not how any of this works. Maybe I have blinders on that I can’t see, but even if I do and my interpretation doesn’t match canon either, that STILL doesn’t change what canon actually is. And this fandom would be a whole lot more bearable if we could collectively learn to recognize the difference between canon and interpretation.

Call me crazy, but I think that opinions, both my opinions AND other people’s opinions, should be allowed to be posted about. I think that someone who disagrees with me should be able to post “This is what I think about the Thing” and post that, on their own blog, without someone telling them “you’re stepping on the toes of people who disagree with you.” You can have discussions about conflicting opinions, too! But discussions start with “I disagree actually, because xyz,” or “the way that I view it, it’s more like abc,” not “You’re wrong actually, and you should feel bad.” And that, more than anything, is the attitude that bothers me, and that is both what I want to see less of and what I hope to avoid myself. So if I’ve strayed into that territory, I’d like to apologize, because I FULLY BELIEVE you should be able to disagree with me. Let’s debate in the coments of my opinion posts! But I’m tired of people going on to other people’s blogs unprompted to start Telling Them They're Wrong, or leave comments on fic or art about how “That’s not How It Is and Therefore Your Art is Wrong.” THAT. At the end of the day. Is what really has to stop.

#sanders sides discourse #fander discourse #asks and answers

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antialiasis · 3 years ago

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Worldbuilding June (Pokémon edition), Days 8-12

Whoops forgot to post these for a couple of days, too busy with a load of Things as always.

8. Who rules in your world?

TQftL never brings up government, but each region has its own human government, generally just standard representative democracies similar to what we have in the modern world. Ouen has an elected parliament and president. It's a fairly utopian world with little scarcity and politics play kind of a background role - they keep things running, they have some different parties, but there's low polarization and usually they work pretty smoothly together and have little conflict. The situation in other regions is similar - movement is very free and conflict between them is rare and minor in the grand scheme of things.

QftLverse Pokémon, once again, have their own societies and are not subject to human rule except in a limited way while they're with a trainer, as per the Agreement, an all-encompassing contract dictating how the relationship between humans and Pokémon should work. Different Pokémon species govern themselves differently, but their societies are generally based on smaller self-governing groups. The Scyther society has a single leader, who is meant to be the simply strongest in the swarm, and anyone can challenge them to a duel to the death to take their place at any time.

The Morphicverse is once again close to Earth, with different countries having different modes of government. The Poké-USA's politicical climate resembles the actual USA's political climate in ~2007, but if I ever wrote references to the current president I wouldn't make him an outright Bush expy or anything, beyond being from the conservative one of the two highly polarized parties.

9. What religions and myths/legends exist in your world?

The QftLverse's human society is basically post-religious. Legendary Pokémon are revered, but not worshipped - people don't pray to them, ascribe natural phenomena to them, expect them to watch over them personally, perform symbolic rituals associated with them, etc. That said, humans do have myths concerning them - not always accurate ones. The story describes the human myth behind one set of legendaries early on before the reality much later turns out to have been fairly different, for instance.

QftLverse Pokémon have their own myths, legends, religions and beliefs. The Scyther society explored in the spin-offs has a bit of a vague mythology going on explaining the sun, moon, stars and clouds, but it's not very important to them, more of a just-so story. Meanwhile, they live by a system of ethics known as the Code that they consider sacred and all-important, though it doesn't have a godly figure behind it as the source of it, only a philosophy. Other Pokémon might variously have straight-up religion (whether worshipping legendary Pokémon or something else), be entirely areligious, or something in between; most will have myths and legends in some form, though.

The Morphicverse has a form of Christianity, which is functionally a lot like ours; this also means they had a version of Judaism. Other specific religions don't come up, but they'd at the very least be as varied as real-world religions. Like in real life, there are many sects and variants, and as many individual interpretations of faiths as there are people. The villain cult in particular has fringe views that in no way resemble the mainstream. And like in real life, many people nominally believe but don't really practice their religion, and many are agnostic or atheist.

Legendary Pokémon in the Morphicverse are cryptids - there are myths and legends about them, and people think they're neat, write fiction and make movies about them all the time, but in the modern day, actually-for-real believing that they exist out there ranges from mildly eccentric to entirely unthinkable. Worship of legendary Pokémon exists, but in the way that modern neo-Paganism does. It's not remotely mainstream, generally seen as a weird hippie thing, and the notion of Arceus appearing in the flesh one day and declaring he created the universe is about as fantastical to most people as the notion of the Norse pantheon doing the same in our world.

10. What traditions are observed in your world?

QftLverse human traditions are mostly just secular holidays - commemorations of important days in the region's history, etc. It's tradition for most children to go out on a Pokémon journey the spring after they turn ten years old, and participate in a First-Timers' League in the autumn if they manage to stick it out for the whole journey and collect all the badges - there are kids who don't, but it's rare for them to not want to, and other kids may see them as no fun.

Every year in Green Town, there is a Pokémon Festival originally built around the legendary Pokémon Chaletwo's yearly brief visit to the outskirts of the city (which may or may not be ditched in the next revision); it hosts a number of Pokémon-themed events over several days. One of them is a starter Pokémon giveaway, where most kids go to get official starter Pokémon, who have specifically volunteered and been trained to work with beginning trainers - though many kids have had Pokémon as pets/partners since they were young and journey with them instead, or their parents otherwise get them a Pokémon who's up for a beginning trainer. (Many Pokémon kind of like the idea of journeying with a beginning trainer, in the way that many people like the idea of getting a kitten rather than an adult cat - just something special about having been with them from the start. Though getting a starter who's actually been trained to deal with kids is recommended over just finding any random enthusiastic Pokémon.)

Pokémon have all kinds of different traditions. The Scyther society as explored in the spin-offs has a number of traditions and rituals, including a sort of blood baptism of new hatchlings, the leader of the swarm teaching all the adolescent Scyther about the Code, and First Prey, where each of the adolescents is sent out to hunt prey on their own for the first time, with a male and female witness following, so they can prove their ability to kill and to feed themselves. Afterwards, they're expected to publicly offer a symbolic piece of the meat of their first prey to some members of the swarm, and doing so signals respect; you don't technically have to, but in practice everyone always offers it to the leader and not doing so would be taken as outright disrespect.

The Morphicverse is once again culturally similar to the real world and has mostly similar sorts of traditions. Pokémon training is less culturally ingrained there, but still a very common hobby for kids.

11. What are some ways people communicate with pokémon in your world, or pokémon with each other?

In the QftLverse, humans learn to understand Pokémon speech as a mandatory subject at school. Pokémon inherently understand human speech, but they speak anime-style, usually in syllables of their species' name (which is what the species are named after). They share one language, which is not based on exactly what the syllables are but the tone and the way they're combined, hence why it works regardless of the species.

In the current version of the fic, this is pure handwave worldbuilding: it's established that it happens at school at the beginning, and then we just move on to the story, where every human simply understands what Pokémon are saying at all times. In the next revision I'd give a bit more proper worldbuilding attention to it - let the language barrier be a little more present, humans vary in exactly how good they are at it (luckily it's already the main character's best subject at school), and otherwise treat it less like it's just an excuse to act like Pokémon speak English.

In the Morphicverse, Pokémon do communicate but they don't do complex communication - instead, it's closer to the sort of communication most animals do in the real world. They can express how they're feeling, draw attention to something interesting, sound the alarm about something scary, ask another Pokémon to follow, and can do this in a somewhat more efficient and intelligent way than most animals generally do. But one way or another, they don't communicate complicated abstract ideas, neither to humans nor to one another. Pokémon don't automatically understand human speech here, though they're very quick learners when it comes to commands, and they can pick up a fair amount just by being around humans, allowing them to get the gist of basic statements and requests without being explicitly taught them, though anything abstract would still be entirely lost on them. You could tell a Pokémon you've lived with for years "I lost my hat, can you help me find it" and they'll go look for your hat, but they'd be lost if you tried to ask them for anything much more complicated than that.

12. What is the gym circuit or adventuring organization like in your world?

In the QftLverse, gyms are meant to be taken on in a specific order and gym leaders are accordingly expected to keep their Pokémon below a certain level. To be officially sanctioned by the League, a gym needs to have a theme - usually a type, although Rick got away with a legendary theme because he gets away with everything because he is hypnotizing League officials with his Mewtwo super-clone I was twelve years old. Every year there's a First-Timers' League in the autumn in each region, where new trainers who have collected all eight badges of their region face off (except for the bit where I somehow made a guy who'd been training for years be part of it without thinking about it properly). There's also a global Old-Timers' League for more experienced trainers, which crowns a world champion; this doesn't involve badges and is just a tournament. Trainers are advised to stick to official routes, while Pokémon who want a trainer seek out the routes and others avoid them; going off-route has the potential to lead to run-ins with Pokémon who are more hostile to humans. It's not forbidden but it's drilled into kids' heads that you're not supposed to.

The Morphicverse's gym circuit is not too dissimilar to that, but gym leaders are expected to carry a variety of Pokémon teams to take on challengers of different skill levels, who can take on the gyms of their circuit in any order. Kid trainers are strictly meant to travel only along official routes, which are thoroughly monitored to be safe, and often take public trainer transportation; when they're eighteen they can get an adult trainer license with which they can take their Pokémon anywhere they like, at their own risk. Mostly kids do it as a hobby, and many young children dream of being professional trainers, but only a fraction are actually good enough to make money off it, so most either quit it after a few summers on realizing it's not for them (they might release their Pokémon or keep them as pets, depending on how high-maintenance they are), or continue to do it as a side hobby. There exist college-level training schools for those who really want to dedicate their lives to it, but by that point in time most people will have dropped their pro trainer dreams.

#tqftl #morphic #worldbuilding june #pokemon

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kuriboo · 4 years ago

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Bit Shot

Rating: General Audiences Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Words: 2,484 Relationship: Fujiki Yuusaku/Homura Takeru Characters: Fujiki Yuusaku, Homura Takeru, Kusanagi Shouichi Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - High School, Tag force, characters in vrains going to duel academy, Crushes, abandoned dorm before abandoned, Denial of Feelings, Idiots in Love, ...or at least one idiot in love, jury’s out on the second idiot

“The Tag Force tournament’s coming up in a couple of months,” Yusaku told Takeru. “Duelists will be teaming up for tag duels. Teams will be betting medals to try to collect the most. Some students are teaming up on Sundays to practice tag dueling before then. They’re in the duel arena in the main building right now, I think.”

“I thought you didn’t have time to make friends.” Kusanagi snorted. “Guess that changed when the new transfer student turned out to be cute.”

(This is a continuation of a prompt I wrote for a Vrains Rarepairs week a couple of years ago. I’ll include the link to the prompt, as well as the link to this fic on ao3, in the notes.)

⁂

Yusaku honestly hadn't been sure how he'd been planning to spend his Sunday, but he definitely hadn't planned to spend it practicing Tag Duels partnered with the new transfer student. He didn't care about Tag Duels at all. He could think of probably three hundred other things he'd rather be doing. But for some reason, he'd been unable to say no when Takeru asked him to be his partner.

Kusanagi could claim it was because Yusaku thought Takeru was ‘cute’ all he wanted. That was not the case.

(It was maybe a little bit the case. Yusaku refused to admit it to himself.)

When they reached the stadium where the practice duels were being held, Takeru faced the room with a smile. “Who should we duel first?"

Yusaku trailed behind him, trying (and failing) to hide how worn out he was. Why did the transfer student want to run the whole way here? "We should take a break first.”

Takeru laughed. "You're really funny,” he told Yusaku, even though Yusaku definitely hadn't been joking. “Hmm... if we're both Osiris students, maybe we should try to look for another pair of reds as well. See how we measure up against our own dorm.

"That makes sense,” Yusaku agreed. Takeru didn’t seem to want to say it but Osiris were also the worst dorm. As a new team, it made sense to seek out a weaker team for their first duel.

It didn't take that long to find an opposing team meeting their standards. "So, you’re looking for some Osiris on Osiris action!" one of their opponents asked.

“Please don't say it like that,” Yusaku mumbled under his breath.

Yusaku and Takeru’s team won the duel. But Yusaku didn't feel like he won.

"You destroyed my monsters to activate your spell, but I had a different combo planned for them,” Yusaku pointed out to Takeru.

Takeru didn’t seem to feel like he won, either. “That’s funny, coming from you. I only started doing that because you started using all my cards without my permission. You didn’t even ask!”

Yusaku rose an eyebrow. “Isn’t the point of a Tag Duel to try to play your cards well with your teammate’s?”

“Teamwork is more than just using your partner’s cards!” Takeru ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “You didn’t want me to destroy your cards? I didn’t want you using all my cards. If you asked, I would have said yes to some of them, but not all of them. I had really good combos planned, too. But halfway through the duel I figured if you were dishing it out, you could take it. I guess not, then.”

“What does it say about us that we lost to a team like them?” one of the opponents asked.

The other opponent shook their head. “They have good cards and skills individually, that’s all. They can’t beat every team like that. It was a close duel, anyway, thanks to our teamwork.”

Great. Even their opponents felt more victorious than they did. “Whatever. This seems like it’s not working out,” Yusaku said. “I don’t want to be here, anyway.”

“If you don’t want to be here, why did you agree to come with me?” Takeru sighed. “This could be salvageable. We could work on it, but if you don’t want to be here, there’s no point. We might as well leave.”

The two of them did leave. Takeru was clearly headed back for the Osiris dorms. Yusaku would prefer to go back to his room and complain to his roommate, but he didn’t want to walk the whole way there with the guy he was mad at. So he left in the opposite direction and let his feet and mind wander.

Yusaku honestly didn’t have an answer for the question, even now. Why did he want to practice Tag Duels with Takeru? He just hadn’t felt like he could say no, but there had to be a reason he’d felt that way. He had no problem telling people ‘no’, and did it all the time. So where did this feeling come from? The closest he had was still Kusanagi’s joke about a crush, and that idea just frustrated him further. He had no time to entertain any sort of crush that he may or may not have. (He was definitely leaning towards the not side, but better to leave it open until he knew for sure what it actually was). It would just be a waste of time, and Yusaku had wasted enough time already.

He stopped walking. His feet brought him to the other Blue Dorm. The last place an Osiris student belonged. Yusaku didn’t care about the whole ranking system, but that didn’t make it stop existing. Better to go back to his room before someone saw him.

⁂

“So, what’s the reading?” Kusanagi asked him when Yusaku returned to their room.

Yusaku pushed an extra button on his duel disk. He and Kusanagi had both modified their duel disks to register and record duel energy readouts from duels they participated in. He read out the result for his most recent duel, which was still the Tag Duel with Takeru.

Kusanagi blinked. “That’s the most energy we’ve seen from any duel,” he commented.

“There were 4 people participating in the duel.”

“We’ve both taken part in duels with 4 participants before.” Kusanagi leaned forward in his chair. “What happened in that duel? What made it different?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Yusaku groaned. Of course the duel generated more duel energy. Of course it did so that he’d have to talk about it, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do.

Kusanagi was not sympathetic to his plight. “Well, I guess I can’t make you. But it’s the only way we can make any progress right now, so I’d much rather you did.”

There wasn’t a good way out of this, was there? “I don’t know how it generated so much, it was nothing special. Dueled against a couple of other people in this dorm. We won, but he started using my cards like they were his, without caring what I wanted to use them for. When I pointed it out, he said I’d already been doing the same thing. Clearly we weren’t going to work out, so we left.”

Kusanagi stared at Yusaku. “Did you even ask him if it was okay to use his cards when you used them?”

“The point of a Tag Duel is to use your cards with your partner’s cards to duel as well as possible.” When Kusanagi continued to stare at Yusaku, giving no response, Yusaku answered his question. “No.”

“That’s not the point of a Tag Duel. You’re supposed to work together with your teammate, not just use their cards however you want. Teamwork requires communication, like asking if it’s okay to use their cards. I’m surprised you missed your own hypocrisy , by the way; it’s okay for you to use his cards, but not for him to use yours? Did you even try to work together and make the team work out, Yusaku? I know it’s hard for you to trust someone else to duel as well as you can, or to open up to anyone, but you can’t declare the team a failure if you didn’t even try.”

Yusaku hadn't wanted to try, really. “I don’t even know why I went.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Kusanagi told him. “It’s clear, though, that it wasn’t your strong teamwork that generated more duel energy. And we’ve both dueled against pairs that work well together before.”

Yusaku could feel something in his stomach drop. If it wasn’t him, teamwork, or their opponents, that only left one option. “It’s something about Takeru, isn’t it? Something about him, or his deck…”

“It’s a solid theory. We’ll need to test it, though. I hope you’re ready to apologize.”

⁂

Classes were boring at best, and awful at worst. Duel Academy did your average general education classes, with languages, history, math, and sciences if you wanted to call alchemy a general education (??) class. There was a cooking class, which was practical it nothing else. It was the dueling classes that were the worst, though. Multiple classes devoted to different mechanics and aspects of the game. Even dueling history. This was all well and good for most students of Duel Academy, but Yusaku was not most students. He wasn't here to duel, and he wasn't here for an education. He barely tuned into the classes he could handle, and slept through anything that involved dueling. As far as he was concerned, classes were just a waste of his time. He only came for appearances.

The last class of the day got out. Kusanagi, sitting nest to Yusaku, waved his hand in front of Yusaku’s face to make sure he was awake. Yusaku blinked; he was just about half-awake. Something resembling notes were scribbled down on the notebook in front of him, and Yusaku had no memory of doing so, but it was his handwriting. Before either one of them had gotten up, they both saw Takeru walk by their row to leave the room. Kusanagi gave Yusaku a meaningful look once Takeru was gone; right, yeah, Yusaku still needed to talk to him. He'd do it soon.

Kusanagi had already packed away everything from class. Yusaku hadn't started. Kusangi got up and left the classroom as well. The two of them had different plans for the day.

Yusaku had just wished packing away his things when someone sat down in the seat next to him.

“So, what brought you to our dorm yesterday?"

Yusaku tensed and looked over. One of the students from that Blue dorm was looking at him, a smile on his face.

"Yusaku, right? I heard you get called on in class earlier. I'm Fubuki." Fubuki offered a handshake. Yusaku didn't move, but Fubuki didn't seem to mind.

"I'm not, like, mad or anything. I'm not one of these Obelisks that are like, “Osiris Red students should stay where they belong’ or anything, you know? But I never see you guys ground our dorm, and I saw you yesterday, and I recognized you today, and I'm just kind of curious.

Well as long as this guy didn't care. "Was practicing Tag Duels. My teammate sad I had some issues so after we argued and left, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.”

"Arguing with your partner sucks." Fubuki winced sympathetically. "I partnered with my buddy Ryo one week. We had some, uh, creative difference, and now whenever I go practice on Sundays, I go with Fujiwara. The whole thing was a lot less fun before I switched partners.”

“I wasn’t there for fun.”

“Most duelists are there for fun. Why were you, then?”

This guy asked a lot of questions. Yusaku fished in his head for an answer.

"Duel energy,” he settled on. “I'm interested in duel energy. " That was one way of putting it. "I thought an event like that might generale a lot it, a lot of duelists dueling in one place.”

"Did it?”

“I wouldn't know. I wasn't there long enough to find out.” That wasn’t enough, since Yusaku only got to measure the results of a single duel.

“Duel energy, So you're one of those types. My dorm has been researching Shadow Duels a lot lately. I wonder if there could be a connection between the two."

Yusaku was still annoyed at the line of questioning from Atticus, but now it was his turn to ask a question. “Shadow Duels?”

“If you lose it's more than just your pride on your line. They say you lose your soul, " Atticus answered. “There's a lot we're still not sure on, like how they were started. Maybe it has something to do with duel energy. Maybe you should come help us out some time. "

"Maybe I should."

Yusaku didn't know much about these Shadow Duels, but it seemed as plausible a theory as any. It was a good opportunity to learn more about duel energy, and that's why Yusaku came to Duel Academy in the first place. Not to duel, he'd never wanted to duel again, and only put up with it now to achieve his goals. No, he was here to learn more about duel energy.

Duel energy ruined his life, after all.

It ruined the life of Kusanagi’s brother, Jin, as well. Maybe if they could learn more about duel energy, maybe if they could figure out why, they could finally move on.

⁂

It's an easy process.

Knock on the door, apologize, make plans for Sunday. But Yusaku was stuck on step 1, because he didn't want to do step 2.

His reluctance didn't mean he was nervous, or afraid of rejection. If he faced rejection, it would be a set back, but he would find a way around it. He was even less concerned about the reasons for the possible rejection. He didn't care about Taken's feelings. Yusaku was an emissary of revenge, not politeness. He wasn’t there to make friends. (He did care about Takeu's feelings. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, even to himself.)

He didn’t want to be here and do this. But he needed to, so better to get it over with. Yusaku knocked on the door.

Takeru opened the door. He looked less than thrilled at recognizing Yusaku. "Oh. Hello."

“I wanted to apologize for the other day, I shouldn't have dueled the way I did, it was disrespectful to use your cards without communicating at all with you, and I should have trusted your own cards and strategies more. It was hypocritical of me to be upset about you dueling the same way I'd already been dueling. I was inconsiderate. I'm sorry." Yusaku had hit at least most of the points Kusanagi had said he should aim for while apologizing. He'd count that as a success. (He hoped he didn't come off as insincere, he really was trying.)

“I still shouldn’t have retaliated the way I did. I'm sorry, too,” Takeru said. “I appreciate your apology."

That threw Yusaku off. He didn't expect to receive an apology as well. "It’s... It's fine I, um deserved it. It wasn't really fair that I stopped you from trying out Tag Duels. I understand if you don't want me to be your teammate again, but if you do want to try again on Sunday, I will do my best to communicate better and try to work with you instead of, uh, what I did before."

Takeru folded his arms together “...I'll think about it. Come back on Sunday and I'll give you my answer."

It wasn't an outright rejection. Yusaku felt queasy for some reason. It wasn't an outright acceptance of the proposal, either. "Okay. "

#yugioh vrains #tater writes #firestormshipping

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