#while using none of the story's actual canon traits for that character

[starcurtain]

respectfully the reason people mischaracterize aventurine in the specific way you mentioned in the tags of "canonically not caring about wealth or power" at least is a lot more simple than you'd think; because the devs said otherwise. in the livestream where acheron and aventurine were revealed (so right before we actually got that tb quest where we learned everything) the ceo and the writer outright state that he seems to have an obsession with amassing wealth.

now obviously we can now look back on this with hindsight, they said a lot of things in there that make more sense with context (example; mentioning that his original kit being focused around dodging left him the only party member alive was scrapped even though they joked about it being fitting might have made him look like a jackass, but now recontextualized as being about his luck only saving him) but i would argue that when the writer of the story and the ceo of the company look into the camera while revealing behind the scenes details and say he has an obsession with wealth (even if there are now multiple interpretations of that, from thinking he intentionally plays into that facade to thinking that's how he coped after losing his reason for going on) and that is the first impression a lot of people had of his real character if they didn't follow leaks, it's kind of no wonder that it's so common of an interpretation.

Yeah, I think I take this with a strong does of skepticism though, because:

A) Everyone knows the devs lie in previews in order to keep secrets about characters, and, as you note, what they say about characters tends to be wildly out of context. We all remember those comments about Gallagher not being plot relevant at all lol. Should we still believe that just because it was said by the devs once?

B) At this point, why would you be engaging in the fandom for a character if you skipped or put off doing any of his content in the actual game? Playing through 2.0 alone, let alone 2.1, would reveal to anyone paying attention that Aventurine is a very duplicitous character who puts on a specific persona as a mask to hide the fact that he thinks of himself very differently on the inside.

I feel like we can use the "the devs said this" as an excuse for a little while, but once the character's content has been out for months and provides a completely different picture of the character, if you're not willing to update your "first impression" of the character to an more accurate portrayal of them based on what's actually in the game... then like... why be in that character's fandom at all?

That's just my opinion anyway. This might not be the nicest thing for me to say, but I do feel like if people refuse to move on from an impression they formed of the character before the character was even released... then what they've created is an OC, not a portrayal of the actual canon character anymore.

[thankskenpenders]

Amy's fortune cards

The Sonic fandom has long been the kind of fandom that takes minor details very seriously, for better or worse. On the one hand, this means fans will really dig for the diamonds in the rough, latching onto fun character interactions, animations, bits of background worldbuilding, and more in pieces of Sonic media that many would write off as "the bad ones." But it also feels like every week another needlessly hostile debate over Sonic minutia erupts on Twitter, whether it's over individual lines of dialogue, fanart that makes Tails' shoes blue, or the ideal length and volume for Sonic's quills.

So it was probably inevitable that a fandom-wide debate would erupt upon seeing Amy's new gameplay style in the DLC for Sonic Frontiers, which takes the once-obscure fact that she enjoys reading tarot and shines a spotlight on it like never before.

I mean:

The thing is, while I basically always try to tune out Sonic fandom bickering... for once, I kind of sympathize with the detractors? Don't get me wrong, I like Amy's tarot stuff, and people on all sides of the discussion are being overly nasty about their opinions, as usual. (Sonic Twitter remains my personal hell.) But when I set aside the hyperbole and zoom out, I do think I understand why some fans are put off by the sudden shift in focus for the character, even if I think it's cool.

It's complicated. Let me attempt to present the cases for and against Amy's fortune cards

For years, I was always one of those fans who thought it could be fun if they played with Amy's tarot reading, or even leaned into some kind of magic with her. Part of that is my own biases showing, but there's just something that makes sense there, especially when you look at Sonic, Tails, and Amy as a trio. (I would argue that's the real "Team Sonic" these days, especially in the comics where Knuckles is more likely to be stuck on Angel Island or otherwise doing his own thing.)

You could argue that Tails is all about logic, relying on science and technology and deductive reasoning to solve problems. But Amy is all about emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is extremely empathetic, and is very prone to magical thinking - both figuratively and sometimes literally. Her origin story has always been that her tarot cards told her it was her destiny to meet Sonic on Little Planet. She's claimed to be able to "sense" peoples' presences - particularly Sonic's. She's the type to believe that The Power of Love is a literal magical force. So, on some level, it makes sense to mirror Tails's science by having Sonic's other best friend believe in magic. And then Sonic is somewhere in the middle, primarily following his own gut instincts but taking advice from both of them as needed. This isn't totally accurate to how their dynamics actually function in canon stories, but I think it's a mode that could work for them.

Going off of that, it's fun to lean all the way into Amy being a magical girl, or even a witch, using her fortune telling as a foundation. Take, for example, this version of Amy from Diana Skelly's old Sonic cast redesigns from before she freelanced for Archie and IDW. This is one of MANY such redesigns for Amy.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and Amy's tarot cards are, in fact, finally getting brought up again in canon. Which is fun! I like seeing that. I like all of the individual stories involving Amy's fortune cards. This is a fun character trait for Amy, a fun nod to old lore, AND a fun storytelling device, all in one. It's really cool that the Sonic universe has its own thematically appropriate arcana, and that the cards are getting made as physical merch. And sure enough, the official card backs and borders were designed by none other than Diana Skelly, in yet another cool example of an ascendant fan leaving their mark on the series.

BUT... when you step back and look at the big picture, I get why some fans find this shift in focus jarring. At the moment, it's starting to feel like every new story about Amy involves her fortune cards to some degree.

The most recent mainline comic arc to feature Amy as the lead character, 2021's Trial by Fire arc, prominently features a sequence where she reads fortunes while camping with the girls. The Origins version of Sonic CD now bookends the game with scenes of Amy and her tarot cards. Sonic randomly mentioned it in a scene in Frontiers. And now, just this week, we got the (very cute, gorgeously illustrated) Amy's 30th Anniversary comic with a story revolving around Amy's tarot cards, followed the very next day by the Frontiers DLC in which she gets a brand new tarot-based moveset. Even her base melee attack now has her throwing tarot cards instead of swinging her hammer. Again, I like all of these individual things, but after years of it almost never coming up at all, it's VERY noticeable that Amy's tarot cards are suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a superfan who's actively following ALL Sonic media. Casual fans - especially kids - aren't necessarily going to be reading the comics every month, buying the thousandth rerelease of the Genesis games, or playing the ultra-hard new alternate ending DLC for a game that came out last year. Each of these stories is going to be someone's introduction to the idea that Amy can read tarot, and that's probably part of the idea behind this unified push.

But to play devil's advocate, for my fellow superfans, I understand why it feels like a very minor footnote of Amy's character is suddenly becoming the entire focus of her personality. While Amy has always been said to enjoy fortune telling, that wasn't really a character trait in and of itself, but rather an example of her being a typical girl who hopes she'll be able to find true love one day. It's less that Amy can literally predict the future and more like her using a cootie catcher or going "he loves me, he loves me not" while picking the petals off of a flower. So I get not vibing with this stuff, or feeling like it's being pushed very hard out of nowhere.

What I don't agree with are comparisons like "it's like if they made Knuckles' moveset revolve around him liking grapes." Like, I get it. Ian Flynn loves shoehorning in his little winking references for us nerds, and mentions of Amy's tarot cards were previously on the same level as other random bullet points from old Japanese manuals. But a multifaceted hobby like fortune telling that opens up so many narrative and aesthetic possibilities is obviously very different from having a favorite food. It's ALWAYS been a part of her story, not just a random fact, and there's no reason why the fortune telling can't be elevated to something more.

And, hell, even if it wasn't an established character trait, there's nothing inherently wrong with injecting new ideas into a character. One of the best Amy stories in recent years, the Free Comic Book Day special "Amy's New Hobby" written by Gale Galligan, came up with the idea that Amy's secretly been drawing little comics about her and her friends. Is this based on Lore? No. But it's cute, and helps tell the story of a younger Amy who's still coming out of her shell as both a hero and a friend.

Certain fans are also looking at Amy's Frontiers moveset and using it as evidence that once again the Vile American Contributors like Ian are CORRUPTING Sonic Team's perfect vision of Sonic with their misinterpretations. And like. Come on. Ian does not control the gameplay. He's a freelance writer. The tarot stuff is clearly something that Sonic Team likes if they made it the basis of Amy's new moveset - and, you know, if they keep approving comics and animations about Amy's fortune telling. None of this gets made without their blessing, and lord knows how much they can micromanage shit and shoot down ideas over the most minor of details.

Like, yeah, Amy's fortune telling was probably conceived less as a sign that she Knows Magic and more as a pretty mundane hobby for a lovesick young Japanese girl to have. But you're gonna sit there and tell me that using Amy's tarot cards for more than that could only be the result of a cultural misunderstanding? That nobody in Japan uses tarot card theming and aesthetics (or the general idea of magical cards) for the cool factor? Stardust Crusaders? Persona? The Astrologian class in FFXIV? Cardcaptor Sakura?? Hello??? Do you think Capcom put Gambit in Marvel vs. Capcom ironically because they thought using magic to throw cards at people was stupid? There's tons of precedent for this! It's nothing like Knuckles throwing grapes at people, be for real.

Giving Amy a very magical girl-esque moveset also just makes a lot of sense. For decades her hammer attacks have literally made sparkly heart shapes appear around her. Leaning into both that and her tarot cards in her new moveset makes a lot of sense to me.

But, admittedly... I do think it's very odd that her hammer is treated as a secondary element here, rather than having her primarily use her hammer and adding the cards for extra flair. If hitting the attack button made her swing her hammer instead of throwing cards, I'm not sure we'd even be having this discussion right now.

But the tarot-cycle and Amy riding her hammer like a witch's broom are fucking SICK and I will not concede on this point

The thing is, this whole fortune card discourse is but a small piece of a bigger problem. Amy's been a character who needed some work for ages, but there's basically nothing you can do with her without pissing SOMEONE off.

Years of stories where Amy's crush was her primary motivator and Sonic went "Ew, cooties!" have lead many casual fans to believe that being Sonic's obsessive fangirl is Amy's entire personality. At best people might call her Sonic's Minnie Mouse. This isn't just a matter of Amy having haters within the fandom - venture outside of that bubble and you'll realize that this is how MOST video game playing people seem to see her to this day. I don't feel like this is a fair assessment of the character, but this idea didn't come from nowhere. No matter how much good deeply entrenched Sonic fans may see in their old dynamic where Amy perpetually chases Sonic, this is a very real problem that Sonic Team has to contend with for their leading girl. Of course all those games where the way-past-cool protagonist thought Amy was annoyingly clingy and tried to get away from her made people think less of her.

If new stories were to go back to emphasizing Amy's crush on Sonic a little more, they'd probably be taken as confirmation that Amy's just the girl with a crush on Sonic and that this is her entire personality. Conversely, when the crush is played down, you piss off the hardcore SonAmy fans who don't seem to understand that they're Charlie Brown and Sega is Lucy holding the football. You can't win.

And so here we are. In the absence of what was once her defining trait, now reduced to an occasional blush or wink in Sonic's direction, new stories are trying to mine Amy's past for additional material to work with. Having been a thing fans wanted to see for years, right now we're getting a lot of tarot, but we're also getting reminders of her compassionate nature and her desire to go out of her way to help the little guy. This is an ongoing process. I continue to hope that her bubbly, exuberant demeanor can shine more in future stories. Now, I also hope that the tarot stuff gets balanced out a little better with other traits of hers. But I don't want it to go away. I think it's fun.

This course correcting is far from exclusive to Amy. Knuckles is getting stories that remind us that he's a competent fighter, an experienced treasure hunter, and even a self-taught archaeologist after years of him being perceived as either the dumb one or just the guy who stands in front of the Master Emerald all day. And Tails has been getting some stories reminding folks that he's a capable hero in his own right and not just Sonic's timid kid sidekick.

But no supporting character will ever compete with the sheer number of new ideas Sega has tried with Sonic himself. Like Amy, his Frontiers moveset has also given him half a dozen new superpowers that he never had before, from the Cyloop to air-slicing projectile attacks to his own take on Shadow Clone Jutsu and beyond. He's also been a hoverboarder, a swordsman, a time traveler, an Olympic athlete, a racecar driver, cursed with a Flame of Judgment, imbued with alien power, a fucking Werehog with stretchy powers, and on and on and on.

If Sonic can do all that, Amy can try out using a tarot-cycle.

Anyway TL;DR the REAL problem with Amy's current characterization... is where the FUCK is Amy's bestie, Honey the Cat???????

[starrysharks]

DESIGN DEEPDIVE:

OCTAVIA KRANKENSTEIN

due to popular demand, here is my first DESIGN DEEPDIVE, where i explain all my little character designs! character design is really important to me, so i hope you guys appreciate this TwT

this deepdive goes over octavia krankenstein, the main character of my series reassassination. firstly, we'll go over shapes and color pallete, the first things you notice when looking at most character designs.

when it comes to octavia's shapes, we can see that she's primarily made of squares and triangles. this establishes two things about her right off the bat:

- she's sharp, and personality wise, probably dangerous and active.

- she's strong, and possibly stubborn.

however, a detail that i want to point out is octavia's singular circle, in the form of a button on her dress under perfect pendant. i've added this button to indicate that behind the sharp, tough exterior, octavia has some empathetic traits. the location of the button is also important, being at the heart. (this exerpt is from my own personal factfile for octavia):

"...Octavia is a particularly self-contradictory character - while she's apathetic to the idea of killing, she can't stand the idea of harming innocents - meaning she often feels the need to justify her homicidal tendencies."

the color pallete of octavia is also important. as you can see above, she's made up of two colors and a tone - black, scarlet, and seafoam green. i want to focus on black and scarlet here.

when it comes to black, i think it's an interesting color both technically and in terms of character. black was used to give octavia's design the vibe of an executioner or medieval assassin. it blends into the night, and hides bloodstains, so it makes sense for octavia to wear it as an assassin. however, this is juxtaposed by flashy red details, which indicate several things about octaiva -

- she cares a lot about fashion and the way she looks, even if it isn't functional. the style of clothing that octavia wears is heavily inspired by 2000s "mallgoth" and the general nu-metal scene, which was often red and black clothing. (cybergoth was also a small inspiration!)

- octavia is a character with a lot of freedom. this might seem like a stretch, but in color language, red indicates action, confidence, danger, passion, and power, along many other things. in canon, octavia's dress was given to her by another character (dr. krankenstein) completely black, and then octavia edited the dress herself to include red details. this on its own might seem like nothing, but the thing about octavia is that her design is complimentary to another character's; vivica de la crux.

vivica is a character who wants freedom, but has next to none, to say the least. therefore, her "red" qualities (passion, freedom, etc), are stifled, so she has very little red in her design compared to octavia. side by side, you can see that their designs have a strong contrast in this regard.

- and lastly, octavia is vulnerable in that she wears so much of her personality literally on her sleeve. while octavia may seem stoic and mysterious in terms of character, and possesses strong physical strength, she lacks social awareness and struggles in that regard, being a social outcast within the story.

alright, now it's time to go over body type, hair and outfit! these are all pretty important in my opinion.

firstly, body type. octavia's heavily exaggerated thinness which is actually inspired by that "scene kid" artstyle that you've probably seen before, and 90s/2000s cartoons and comics in general (SPECIFICALLY the art of jhonen vasquez, who made invader zim and JTHM)!

of course, octavia's hair gives her design more depth and volume, and a strong silhouette - one resembling a ghost or spiky monster. as you can see in her ref sheet, there are 3 spiked ends on either side of the hair. in fact, there are a lot of matching pairs of threes in octavia's design, aren't there?

- three bottom eyelashes on either eye - 6 in total

- three bows on either boot - 6 in total

- and of course, three hair spikes on either side - 6 in total.

that's right! octavia's design hides a secret 666, which relates to her alternative name - experiment-666 - and the fact that she's literally seen as a demon to the clear crucifix org, the antagonists of the story.

but let's look at octavia's outfit entirely. or maybe not? the thing about octavia's design is that i wanted it to be one where you could deform and modify it in various ways, and no matter how many details you remove, it's still clearly octavia. kind of like hatsune miku!

in the end, octavia is supposed to feel like a character from the 2000s, rather than just one based off of 2000s alternative culture. i don't know if i really succeeded with that, but i'm still proud of her design regardless. if you read all of this ramble to the end, thank you so much! i might do more design deepdives for other characters if people are interested. you can even request specific characters of mine if you'd like!

[adarkrainbow]

Names in fairytales: Prince Charming

Prince Charming has become the iconic, “canon” name of the stock character of the brave, handsome prince who delivers the princess and marries her at the end of every tale.

But... where does this name comes from? You can’t find it in any of Perrault’s tales, nor in any of the Grimms’, nor in Andersen - in none of the big, famous fairytales of today. Sure, princes are often described as “charming”, as an adjective in those tales, but is it enough to suddenly create a stock name on its own?

No, of course it is not. The name “Prince Charming” has a history, and it comes, as many things in fairy tales, from the French literary fairytales. But not from Perrault, no, Perrault kept his princes unnamed: it comes from madame d’Aulnoy.

You see, madame d’Aulnoy, due to literaly helping create the fairytale genre in French literature, created a trend that would be followed by all after her: unlike Perrault who kept a lot of his characters unnamed, madame d’Aulnoy named almost each and every of her characters. But she didn’t just randomly name them: she named them after significant words. Either they were given actual words and adjectives as name, such as “Duchess Grumpy”, “Princess Shining”, “Princess Graceful”, “Prince Angry”, “King Cute”, “Prince Small-Sun”, etc etc... Either they were given names with a hidden meaning in them (such as “Carabosse”, the name of a wicked fairy which is actually a pun on Greek words, or “Galifron”, the name of a giant which also contains puns of old French verbs). So she started this all habit of having fairytale characters named after specific qualities, flaws or traits - and among her characters you find, in the fairytale “L’oiseau bleu”, “The blue bird”, “King Charming” (Roi Charmant). Not prince, here king, though he still acts as a typical prince charming would act - and “Charming” is indeed his name. 

And this character of “King Charming” actually went on to create the name we know today as “Prince Charming”. It should be noted that, while a lot of d’Aulnoy’s fairytales ended up forgotten by popular culture, some of her stories stayed MASSIVELY famous throughout the centuries and reached almost ever-lasting fame in countries other than France: The doe in the woods, The white cat, Cunning Cinders... and the Blue Bird, which stays probably the most famous fairytale of madame d’Aulnoy ever. It even was included in Andrew Lang’s Green Fairy Book.

And speaking of Andrew Lang, he is actually the next step in the history of “Prince Charming”. He translated another fairytale of madame d’Aulnoy prior to Blue Bird. In Lang’s “Blue Fairy Book”, you will find a tale called “The story of pretty Goldilocks”. This is a VERY bad title-translation of madame d’Aulnoy “La Belle aux Cheveux d’Or”, “The Beauty with Golden Hair”. And in it the main hero - who isn’t a prince, merely the faithful servant to a king - is named “Avenant”, which is a now old-fashioned word meaning “a pleasing, gracious, lovely person - someone who charms with their good looks and their grace”. When Andrew Lang translated the name in English, he decided to use “Charming”. At the end of the tale, the hero ends up marrying the Beauty with Golden Hair, who is a queen, so he also becomes “King Charming” - but the fact Avenant is a courtly hero who does several great deeds and monster-slaying for the Beauty with Golden Hair, a single beautiful queen, all for wedding reasons, ended up having him be assimilated with a “prince” in people’s mind.

And all in all, this “doubling” of a fairytale tale hero named “Charming” in Andrew Lang’s fairytales led to the colloquial term “Prince Charming” slowly appearing...

Though what is quite funny is the difference between the English language and the French one. Because in the English language, “Prince Charming” is bound to be a proper, first name - due to the position of the words. It isn’t “a charming prince”, but “prince Charming” - and again, it is an heritage of madame d’Aulnoy’s habit of naming her characters after adjectives. But in French, “Prince Charming” and “a charming prince” are basically one and the same, since adjectives are placed after the names, and not the reverse. So sometimes we write “Prince Charmant” as a name, but other times we just write “prince charmant”, as “charming prince” - and this allows for a wordplay on the double meaning of the stock name. 

[thechurchoftheradiodemon]

I've been mulling over something. I read one of Vivzie's interviews lately and I've come to some conclusions about Alastor's character (these are just my own theories, though, so we'll see how everything actually develops in s2).

Unfortunately, I believe, canonically, Alastor is NOT aromantic. Maybe on the aro-spectrum, and deffinitely asexual, but not aro per se. In this interview, Vivzie confirms Alastor's asexuality, and plays with his aro identity saying something like "I don't want to ruin people's fun with him". This could be queerbaiting in a sense (I don't actually think so, when Vivzie is high on queer representation, but aro people are very left behind in the community, sadly).

But she continues to add on that there are plans for Alastor in the future of the series, saying something like "I can't confirm that he is aromantic". To me, this reads like we will see romance in Alastor's life in season 2, wether it's a past lover/romantic interest or a new one I could not say. She would've had no problem in confirming Alastor as aromantic otherwise, and I interpret this as Vivzie not wanting to spoil part of the plot.

I used to think that Alastor's deal would most surely be with Lilith, but, while it could be the case, I'm not so sure anymore (although it could be a fun dinamic). But, nontheless, I think Lilith's and Alastor's 7 year absence and his deal are intertwinded somehow.

My bet, for the future romance plot, is that it could be one of these three: either Lilith, whom the fandom is already considering in a sense; the mysterious Eve, or... Lucifer. HEAR ME OUT. I don't say this as a Radioapple enjoyer. The reasons I think it could be Lucifer are the same that I think it could be Eve (although we know absolutely nothing about her).

Mainly, I draw these conclusions from the early comic Zoophobia, from where we know Alastor's character was taken. In this comic, his character is supposed to have a crush on the character of KayCee, a powerful being with whom he could have made an alliance to reign chaos.

KayCee's descriptions could match either of the three romantic interests I mentioned, but what strikes me more are her defining traits: white and gold colour palette, and the apple. We know not all of Vivzie's characters stem from Zoophobia, and the ones that do have (understandably so) went through important changes through the years, mediums and aesthetics.

BUT these could be some clues into what we might discover in s2 of Hazbin. And, so long, the character we've seen fit this palette and apple motif is none other than Lucifer himself. Eve, on the other hand, is also shown during the intro sporting some sort of apple motif, which could be indicative of her future appearance in the series. But we know so little about her, and, knowing Hazbin Hotel will only have 2 seasons confirmed, I'm not sure we will see more of her.

I personally don't like the idea of losing Alastor as an aromantic character. I'd much rather not see him in a romantic relationship whatsoever in the canon series. But that is not my call to make, and he will always be our ace-king no matter what. Also, that wouldn't mean his story or character will be less interesting or developed. So we'll have to wait and see...

(This is visual representation of me reaching these conclusions, btw)

I would love to hear what other fans think about this, so if you want to leave and opinion in the comments we can discuss!

[foolsocracy]

Hi, hello, I’m new to your blog. I’ve made myself at home. Lovely carpet.

Can I please know more about your spider Robbie pie? Can’t seem to find the silverware.

but of course, kind anon

Spider Robbie is an au in which Robbie Robertson takes up the spider mantle after the death of the one before him. He is the third, following Ben Urich and, most notably, Peter Parker.

This au is very much canon divergence from Eyes Without a Face, where Peter makes it in time to save Robbie from his original fate but dies in the process. Peter is shot while rushing Robbie and the others out. In his panic and elation at finding Robbie physically unharmed, Peter outs himself as the Spider Man to his best friend. Robbie stays with him as he bleeds out and resolves to continue to hide Peter's identity.

Peter is buried and remains that way for... an undetermined amount of time.

Robbie is left with a mask, a jacket, and the question of just who was this other half of his friend. As he learns more of who this... Spider Man was, he gets more and more involved in the spider's cases and conflicts. Robbie gets more sure of his own abilities and makes a bit of a name for the Spider Man within his own community, though the people of Harlem are largely unaware that the appearances of a masked vigilante match the interests of one Robbie Robertson.

It is to be noted that none of these aforementioned abilities are spider-god-induced powers like Peter's. Robbie, especially at the beginning of his spidering career, leans more into Urich's role than Parker's. To me, Robbie has been passionate about the press and journalism in a way that Peter never was. For Pete, his job as a photographer and reporter was a job he took until he could get into college and study science. Robbie has a way with words and communication that Peter frankly lacks. Of course, that isn't to say that Robbie won't be kicking ass, because he will. It will just take him a bit of time to get some of those skills as he's, well, a normal guy. Not everyone can get their biology scrambled like Pete.

And just because Robbie hasn't been scrambled doesn't mean he's completely separate from all things supernatural either!

I think the marvel noir universe is at its best when there's a magical, supernatural undercurrent. This concept isn't super prevalent in the actual comics, but HoplesslyLost on ao3 has done some really cool world building with it.

I think in Robbie's case, where he would be the narrator, "magical realism" would be an interesting avenue to take it. I use this term in particular because I most closely relate it to Toni Morrison in my head, when I first learned about it through her work in high school. For Morrison, the concept was inseparable to blackness and I think for Robbie, where his blackness is so central to his character and his motivations, drawing on that could be more of a service to his character. It feels better to do that than ignore how incredibly racialized his society and story is. It will make his relationship with the spider god, Peter (who I will get to very very shortly), his community, and his own mythos as The Spider Man really interesting and complex.

So it's been established that Robbie doesn't have spider powers. And we all know that Peter did-- or should I say does. One of the spider god's abilities is to bring Peter back to life. She does this in the comics, but not in any of the runs from 2008-2010 (the runs that make up this au). When Peter dies on Ellis Island, he does not think he is coming back from that. Waking up again is a surprise.

Here's where I think the au really takes a left turn. Do I think the Spider God is purely evil and spiteful and has it out for Pete? No, not really. Will I be ramping said traits up to 11 for the au? Yeah, I guess I might. This is because I love a little bit of horror and the came back wrong trope. I will hopefully be fleshing the spider god out in the near future, but I really haven't given her the many hours of thought I have the other characters. For that I'm sorry spider god </3

Peter digs himself out of his grave, more spider than he ever has been. For much of his new, waking life he is more animalistic than not. There is clearly something wrong with him; his joints are too flexible and loose, he's got some eye-shine going on, his skin is pale and his veins are starkly dark beneath it. He's possessed. Someone is puppeteering him, someone who knows a lot-- almost everything about him, but it's clear that the someone isn't him.

And Peter--- the body, it can't be Peter. At least, that's what Robbie thinks when the figure catches his eye the first time. Because Peter is dead and buried, and he has been dead and buried for weeks.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Man i just.Why do DC fans prioritize trans Jason over the actual representation in his story.Yes yes yes he has tons of transmasc swag so there's this he/they weird goth tboy so true but in CANON,almost all his important people are poc or women and every one of his love interests is BOTH and they're......completely erased in trans Jason headcanons,as if they can't perfectly co-exist

I've seen literally ZERO posts of Duke included in 'All Batboys are trans' in all my years as a Batman fan when he's Jason's favorite brother.No Talia helping out with adjusting to his Lazarus Pit testosterone and surgeries combo when HER FAMILY OWNS IT and when SHE WAS THERE WHEN HE GOT THROWN IN.T4T Jaytemis/Jayrose?Nonexistent and nobody even aknowledges they're a part of his lore while also complaining about lack of female characters because they refuse to seek them out so they can focus on their female coded binary white boy.Him and Stephanie being transmasc/transfem solidarity as found trans siblings?I may as well be dreaming if i ever see get to see it.I can't even enjoy the ones of him with Dick and Damian unless it's just them because it's genuinely so upsetting to see Tim too but no Duke.And i'm not gonna touch on the all loads of smut that claim to be representation but are actually fetishizing with ZERO respect or care for his transmasculinity other than i hope y'all get over that internalized trans*phobia soon and that fuckass transmisogyny with your minus zero inclusion of transfems,be it canon girls or egg headcanons

It literally dosen't matter if you make Jason trans if you erase everything THAT'S ALREADY THERE.As a black trans femme,i don't want your whitewashed bullshit.Jason is already rep-He's poor and mentally ill with ptsd and implied cluster b disorder(s)and with the add on of the afrolatino side of the DC fandom claiming him i'm good with those but y'all erase THAT too by making him rich by Bruce given nepotism baby status and a million other things you've made up because you just can't stomach the thought of some peasent being your fave,you woobify him by downplaying his symptoms so he can be your lil bad boy bf you can fix with your coquettish wiles or whatever the fuck and you don't see him as afrolatino because of a connection and relatability like we do but because you think it adds 'spice' to him or are a snowbunny or both.He's still him if he's cis but he's not himself if dosen't have those traits i said because they're actually fucking canon and believe it or not,canon IS better sometimes and you'd know that if you bothered to read and watch it

Jason's story is NOT a trans metaphor.Jason's story is about grief and poverty and trauma and the poc and women and woc he loves and cherishes and this is why so many of us irl love him.It's not Jason's story if there's no Talia or Dick or Damian or Rose or Artemis or Stephanie or DUKE,who IS a Batboy,who IS a Robin,who IS Jason's FAVORITE,NONE of who are options for him but the people he actively CHOOSES to have as parts of his life.Jason's story is NOT about YOU.Not everything is

[solisaureus]

Let’s talk about a trend in queer Jason Grace headcanons

I have been seeing headcanons about Jason Grace actually being queer since House of Hades came out (Jason was not popular before that. trust me). While there's nothing inherently wrong with queer headcanons, it is frustrating that the most common ones I see are already included in canon in the less-acknowledged character arcs of Reyna and Piper. It feels wrong that Jason fans are so willing to read deeply into the story for evidence that that this white boy could be affected by compulsory heterosexuality and is actually queer, while Reyna and Piper are not appreciated nearly as much despite comp-het being a part of their canon stories.

I even recently saw someone say that Jason's character arc of learning who he really is outside of the norms of Roman society is suggestive of a queer coming out journey. If only there was a character in this series who canonically struggled with heteronormative expectations of Roman praetorship, who then embraced their canon marginalized sexual identity after stepping away from Roman society....does this ring a bell to anyone else...?

In addition to Reyna's canon arc getting projected onto Jason by fans, Piper's queer journey also gets applied to Jason while Piper herself is largely brushed aside by fans. Like Jason, Piper's memories of her hetero relationship with Jason were implanted in her head by the goddess of marriage, and she later realized that her feelings of love for Jason weren't genuine. She then goes on to break up with him and explore her queerness, later dating a girl. This is a very compelling allegory for the real compulsory heterosexuality that wlw experience, and as a lesbian I found myself relating to it a lot. It makes me sad that Piper's queer journey so underappreciated by fans, while every other day I see posts imagining Jason with a very similar journey.

Why Jason? Why do I see so many people put so much thought into how Jason could be read as queer, while largely not touching the female characters with canon stories of queer self discovery? It's hard not to wonder if this is linked to the bias of prioritizing white men over women and especially women of color. This isn’t anyone’s individual fault: if it were just one Jason fan doing this, I would chalk it up to just a preference for his character over Reyna or Piper’s. However, the presence of a trend, the fact that this happens repeatedly, suggests a bias in favor of centering white male characters to the detriment of brown female characters. If you feel targeted by this post, sit with that discomfort. Examine and question your preferences. None of us are free from bias, and leaving it unexamined doesn’t make it go away.

I’m not against queer readings of Jason’s character, I just wanted to point out that people’s headcanons tend to recreate the canon queer arcs of Piper and/or Reyna to project onto him. I’m pointing this out because I don't think people even know they're doing it. Part of me wonders why Reyna and Piper don't get the same kind of attention and celebration for the traits that people want to apply to Jason. Except I think I already know the answer.

[bambiraptorx]

I think the reason people, myself included at first I'll admit, are/got so hype for missing sis' design is because it's a 'canon' (I can't remember how canon the comics are) appearance of a character reveal that was planned to happen in Rise but we never got. Now that my hype has gone down I'm disappointed too :(. I'm semi-willing to forgive the snatched waist she has because Leo has it too. I do think the face marking are cool though

Yeah I do appreciate the facial markings, they're a different enough shape from Leo's (and the fanon ones the others often get) that they stand out nicely. The idea of a flame-like pattern that doesn't seem to be fully symetrical is very cool. But honestly? It's one of the few things I like about her face reveal/comic design, the rest I'm neutral on or mildly annoyed by.

this next part got ranty, so I'm just gonna put it under a read more. Absolutely nobody has to read this lol. TLDR I get heated about the design for Big Mama's Assistant in the comic.

I do want to clarify upfront, most of my issues are with the design of Big Mama's Assistant (Venus/Frida) as shown in the comic specifically. Given that it does not (and isn't meant to) fit into the show's artstyle, it's possible that her show design would have looked different. But the fact remains that this might be the closest we ever get to having an actual canon design of her.

And... it's not all that great a design in my opinion.

(That said, I do still like the markings that she's given in that design. Those are cool. Thumbs up.)

My main issue is with how there's so many little details intended to scream "I am a Girl Character that's G-I-R-L and don't you forget it". Like, I genuinely hope that's not the design she was supposed to have in the show, because it feels like it's being almost shoved in your face that This Is A Girl.

The traits I've noticed so far:

She has lips. Or possibly lipstick, but in either case the appearance of lips. None of the other (male) turtles have lips, but all the important female characters in Rise do.

She has heavy eyeliner/mascara, as in the upper line of her eye is noticeably thicker. Yes the boys look like they have winged eyeliner at some points, but hers is much heavier.

This is more subtle, but she seems to have larger pupils than the other (male) characters in the comic, giving her something of a doe-eyed look.

Her plastron shape has been rounded out/simplified, giving her the appearance of boobs and an hourglass figure. (Interesting note here: in the show, the male turtles have comparable or perhaps larger sized bumps in their plastrons. Yes there's a slight difference in shape, but it defintely doesn't look like she has boobs in the show.)

They made her have an obviously lighter skin tone than the other turtles. Yes it may well be a result of dramatic lighting, but enough people have taken it as her canon skin tone that it still counts.

Long story short, all these items are things often used in visual media (especially in cartoons) to code male and female animal characters as, well, male and female. And it's important to note, most of the time this coding is *completely divorced* from the sexual dimorphism actually seen in those species. We can speculate all we want on if she's wearing makeup or not, but the fact remains that turtles don't have lips or cinched waists. She doesn't *need* all that to emphasize that she's a girl. Even just two or three of these traits would be fine!

(And while I also have issues with the whole "you have a brother and sister" thing when it was previously discussed as being two sisters, maybe it would have been fun to see a design that gave us a little more room to debate if this was a brother or a sister. Yeah we'd heard from the creators that Big Mama's assistant was a girl, but that's also where we heard that the turtles had two sisters.)

It also kind of bothers me a bit to see the fandom response, in that there's a lot of people who are taking the design as is I guess? And sure, there's plenty of people who *aren't* drawing her as is and remove some of the intense girl coding, but there's also people who do draw her as close to the comic design as possible. And while there's nothing automatically wrong with that, I do hope those people are at the very least aware of the tropes that her design falls into.

Now to perhaps the more controversial part of this post outside of just the visual tropes she falls into. For me personally, there's nothing (outside her markings) that makes the face reveal all that interesting design-wise? And there's basically nothing that indicates anything about her personality.

She wears makeup. So what? Not only is that the societal standard for women and girls in real life, it's basically the standard for how female characters in Rise are designed. It's also a hugely common design element of female animal characters. It tells us nothing about her, except, again, she's a girl.

Her outfit is the same as canon, so there's no new information there.

Her expression is carefully neutral, and doesn't really tell us anything. Heck, everyone else in the scene is having more of a reaction than she is. The other turtles have shocked expressions and Big Mama is angry. Venus... has her eyes open I guess? There's a lack of expression on her part in an otherwise very expressive comic.

And (again in my opinion) her design honestly isn't particularly unique. She has a face shape relatively similar to Mikey's (the main different being his chin is rounded and hers is pointed) and she has facial markings like Leo. And while it's not a bad thing that her design resembles the other turtles given that she's supposed to be related to them, many of the design traits that make her stand out are the Girl Design Traits.

It's also worth pointing out that there's a very specific way Rise draws important female characters, with them all having similar body types and facial details, and this design plays right into that. It's a further example of a Rise girl/woman who's thin with a small waist and lips and a small nose and no obvious musculature. There's been other posts that break this down more than I'm going to here, but the design for Big Mama's Assistant just... continues all that.

And I don't have a problem with characters looking feminine, but when they're all feminine in similar ways, it gets a little... boring? Even a little body type diversity would have been nice (like giving Casey muscles instead of the same slender arms as everyone else, for example.) The assistant doesn't have to follow the same pattern (she's an entirely different species, for one), but she does.

And in some ways it's like, yeah, we got to have confirmation that she's a character. She exists. Hooray. She said nothing and she did nothing besides take off her mask. We all knew there was gonna be a face under there anyway! And seeing her finally appear in canon, only to be drawn using so many visual cues to show her as The Girl Turtle is... a little underwhelming, I think.

But the fact that I've already got a design for Venus/Frida is probably also a factor here. I'm more attached to my design and I like it better lol. Rant over.

[docgold13]

On the Scale of 1 to a Villain's Circus themed torture chamber, the amount of unnecessary, painful and contradictory loops taken by the retcon for Nightcrawler's origins goes beyond that limit. Because Azazel cannot do a single takeover without Nightcrawler existing as both his biological child and a mutant with his exact teleportation abilities. You remove any of those things and Azazel's plans can't come to fruition whatsoever (he really needed him for both a possible one on earth and the one in Heaven). So literally making sure Nightcrawler or someone like him doesn't exist would have made none of Azazel's takeovers happen (which is easy because none of Azazel's other bio kids have his powers or even look that much like him and Kurt was literally the only one that did)... It also doesn't help that every time Nightcrawler did stop Azazel, he needed his blood ties to him to pull it off (no really, every magic seal required his blood to work). To even be part of the first takeover and "stop it", Nightcrawler had to be related to Azazel too because Azazel had to bring all of his children in one place which was easy because he has mindcontrol powers that only work on them. To pull the Heaven one, Azazel used Nightcrawler's soul (which he is tied to as his father) to pull himself up there and he found him right away because he has a passive ability that helps him know where his children are (and who is his bio child too, it keeps him from accidentally thinking someone is his child when they're not and has always worked). The icing on the stupid cake is, Azazel is just a mutant, who was even on Krakoa since before the laws were made there and they only allowed mutants back then. The last time Nightcrawler stoped him, he put a power nullifier on him... And it was all over. He would have went to Rikers island and be sentenced if he didn't break out of his transport vehicle and Mystique didn't give him a job

And then you have Mystique and Destiny's first canon X-Men story which is Days of Future Past where, after they assassinated Senator Kelly, they created a dystopian future for mutants that has them near extinct... And Nightcrawler is one of the first to die in it, right after Kelly's assassination actually. He also already died in 616 protecting Hope Summers and stayed as such for years while they were ready to sacrifice baby Hope to save Rogue right after M-Day, which would have doomed Mutants. Then you have Age of Apocalypse where Mystique raised Nightcrawler since birth and did it all as a single mom after picking his father for his fuzz, where he never met Destiny until he was in his 30s and where Azazel never did a single takeover because a lot of other components were missing to pull it off (and you know, APOCALYPSE took over and killed almost everyone). Then you have Cardinal, a Chimera made from Nightcrawler's DNA (+ three other mutants) which makes Kurt Wagner his bio grandfather, who just looks like Azazel with red hair and red eyes so all of Azazel's traits were passed down in Kurt's family line. Then you have the fact any of Azazel's takeovers happen years after Destiny dies in 616 (they would have taken much longer if Nightcrawler didn't exist, if not never happened at all) yet she appears in the vision of his takeover. Then you have characters like Doctor Doom, Jean Grey and the Scarlet Witch as part of the people Azazel managed to defeat (Scarlet Witch depowered 99% of mutants with a few words and can scramble powers on a whim in an average day, enough said). Then you have the fact the only reason Azazel is even on Earth is thanks to Margali Szardos getting him there so literally convincing her not to do that would have meant Azazel would not be at the point he was in 616 (the retcon has it that Destiny made a deal with Margali to KIDNAP Nightcrawler from the spot Mystique left him at under a tree in a SNOWY forest, since she never threw him to his death to save her own skin in this take even tho Azazel remember that happening), ...

Unnecessary loopholes doesn't cover it : We're on an essay's length in tomfoolery

TL;DR - The X-Men's Nightcrawler has a very complicated backstory. Efforts to retcon and streamline his origins have been clumsy.

No offense to readers out there who are fans of Azazel, but the best option moving forward might be for the X-men comics to never mention him again and just move forward.

[blackstarchanx3new]

Red's characterization is frustratingly inconsistent (based on the viz translation)

So I tried to do a "Red centric" FS reading the other day and honestly:

Red as a character lowkey pisses me off the more I think about him.

Trying to write him doing ANYTHING in FSR just, breaks my brain because: What character does he actually HAVE?

To explain further: WHAT CHARACTERIZATION DOES HE HAVE THAT IS CONSISTANT?

Because I can list a fuck ton of his traits, but none that remain consistent and reliable character traits that I can make into a rule set for me to follow to write him properly and which rules I could BREAK depending on the scenario.

I'mma admit this rn: This might be extremally bad faith reading and I'll admit that with my whole chest but it just bugs me the further I try to think about characterizing him.

Buuuut on the other hand. Venting my frustrations might help me get a grasp on what he's MEANT to be like and that'd be useful.

TLDR: I genuinely think Akira has no fucking clue what they were doing with him and I think he's the worst written Link of the set of four/Shadow Link. (This admittedly could also fall hugely on the fault of the translation team too with botched dialogue.)

And I even hypothesis they cut a whole chapter about him for time. (We'll get to that)

Full rant:

Okay. So you'd think this idiot would be pretty simple to figure out.

There's a lil page dedicated to each Link describing their traits, which are all pretty accurate. (This to my knowledge i only in the legendary???)

EXCEPT IN MY OPINION, RED'S. (Green's too but maybe I'll get into Green at a later time...)

His is just. Wrong. Upfront wrong depending on how you read his character...Which...is imo inconsistent based on the canon events of the story.

Let's go down the list of traits from this page

Easygoing - this is accurate since he takes the mission the least bit seriously between the four and gives everyone silly nicknames.

Bright- ...I'm going to assume this is in reference to his personality being "Optimistic" not his intelligence, as we'll get into soon.

Innocent - ...I have some counter arguments to this one but go off I guess. He's SUPOSIVELY more innocent than the other 3.

Simpleminded - again there is a shit ton to suggest the opposite, but well, get into that shit.

So, depending on how you read the word "bright," there are already inconsistencies with "simple-minded" (I'm trying real damn hard not to be obtuse as fuck here but I'm a stickler for wording...)

So for the "innocent" thing...okay this one particularly rubs me the wrong damn way. Because of a few diffent things.

Let's go over smth first:

Identifying the links, you can always tell its red in a panel due to his even screen tone tunic and white sleeves.

Blue has a gradient that goes almost black with screen toned sleeves. Green also has an even screen tone but black sleeves, and Vio has a noise screentone with white sleeves.

Now, Red's "Innocence" or imo lack there of.

Now thought bubbles are hard to pin to anyone specific without like, tails to lead to characters. The fs manga is guilty of not having proper word bubbles often or pointing at the wrong damn character. But here were lead to think the one who assumed the knights were dead were Red and Green. Green starting the thought and red finishing it here.

Red is the first one willing to stab who they assume to be very close people to them. Green as we know is the one NOT willing to fight and rather just defend himself.

So much for "innocent"

Tangent time: I'm not unconvinced the screen tone artist didnt fuck up here, and this was meant to be Blue, but...uh that's not what it ended up being

It's hard to tell because the eyebrows could be either red or blues from my guess.

Until coloring the first volume of manga I ALWAYS ASSUMED this was Blue.

It's for sure not vio or green since their eyebrows are nearly always blonde/not filled in while Reds are thin but occasionally have a bit more thickness, especially when giving heavier expressions. And if this was meant to be Blue. It would be a bit on the thinner side but would match way more personality wise.

Further on the whole "innocence thing"

Wtf was all this shit

Like...I get it. It's for comedy haha. But it just feels so out of character for him this scene just ends up annoying me.

Like it makes him feel so fake. It makes ALL HIS PREVIOUS AND SCENES HERE ON OUT FEEL FAKE.

His tears feel so crocodile considering he doesn't cry when stabbing someone he assumes to be his friends and does THIS SHIT immediately after assuming blue is MAYBE DEAD???

Seriously I kind of hate this scene it feels so two-faced, out of character, and mean-spirited for no fucking reason.

I get it. It was a joke haha. But why the fuck is he joking around and being a goof when his response to green possibly being dead TWICE was to panic and cry and be terrified for real. Why am I meant to take one seriously and not the other from a character standpoint.

From a character stand point: it just feels like he gives less of a shit Blue is in danger/dying vs Green and considering later character interactions I don't think that's meant to be cannon/intentional. (He also calls out to green exclusively on occasions so like...Again was this on purpose or on accident...)

I'm just not a fan of writing characters shittily and out of character for the sake of comedy that doesn't even land.

From a character context: it just looks like he doesn't give a shit about blue here. Which, fine write him mad blue has been a dick but this feels like such the wrong way to go about it to me. Idk.

Onto his intelligence:

Imma be real it feels like he just is only smart when the writing needs him to be for plot reasons and not for characterization reasons.

His intelligence fluctuates so damn much it drives me insane. He's either dumb as a brick or literally smarter than vio, and there's no in-between or reason behind why. It's not like he's good at certain things and dumb as fuck at other things it's literally just because Akira pulls it out of their asses and said so and that kind of writing especially character based pisses me off. 😭

Examples of red being smart:

I don't have a problem with Red having intelligence of his own, but they had to give vio 1 functional brain cells for this scene to work the way it did. Like red can be smart, it'd be great if he was in some instances! It'd even make sense they're all dumb at some shit or excel at others. That'd make them a good well rounded team!

Vio randomly being shit at directions would be a hilarious character trait.

IS this why he gets lost in the tower of winds? Idk if that's a genuine intentional writing reason, but I'm going to assume/head cannon. Imma say that's why, for my own sanity and making this scene make any sense. But i shouldn't have to justify vio being an idiot here with head cannons.

I'd have loved for a scene where Vio over thinks to shit about smth and red is just like "lol the answer is just this silly" but red and vio literally never speak sooooo...thats off the table.

That almost feels like that's what this was trying to be but just...failed at.

He randomly grows a brain again in the temple of darkness. But it just feels so out of nowhere, considering how he's such an idiot most of the book. Like his competent moments, feel SO out of character in comparison.

Like I can see what I THINK they were trying to do with him but it just doesn't land. It just feels like he randomly grows a brain every so often instead of always having one but he he just lags behind the other three in terms of other contexts.

What i think they were going for is "red IS smart. He IS capable. He just needs to be in the right scenario for it to shine. He has such a unique mindset compared to the other three and hes a valuable team mate"

What it comes OFF as... is bad writing.

Onto his like "crybaby" persona the manga and the Fandom itself likes to fall back on

I've touched on it but it feels so fake.

Like I genuinely cannot tell if this is meant to be a character trait I second guess but it's thrown out the window all the damn time.

-him stabbing that one knight with no fucks given really

-him quickly getting over blue being frozen in lue of a stupid joke

Okay let's see when he DOES CRY...

Virtually all the damn time but here's smth I noticed:

He doesn't cry when shadow dies lmfao.

But he does when they kill random rock babies.

Yeah sorry but that rubs me the wrong way too.

Like Reds whole reaction and facial expressions to shadow dying just gives "I wonder if we're having Wendy's of McDonald's later"

Like I think most people are too distracted by vidow to notice that shit but it's so off-putting from a guy who will take the change to bust out the water works at any given change doesn't shed a damn tear when a version of himself kicks the damn bucket.

Not even a reaction to vio being upset about it. Like wtf.

This is what I mean about him being inconsistent. Literally the entire manga is just "He does x sometimes but not other times when you think he would" I genuinely cannot find rhyme or reason to half his character traits and it drives me up a wall. There's no consistency to ANY OF IT and it just leaves this sense of fakeness and it rubs me such the wrong way.

One last thing:

I'm pretty sure he had a cut chapter centered around Red.

I don't have concrete evidence but here's smth i noticed:

This is the last time we see him before his next apearance

And then...suddenly. THIS IS HIS NEXT APEARANCE:

I'm sorry WHAT.

DID WE MISS SOMETHING???

Randomly:

He has a fairy. They've apparently been looking for the other three. TELEPORTATION IS JUST A THING WITHOUT EXPLANATION???

Like, Wtf????

What my opinion?

And SUDDENLY later Red's all like "I'm so independent!😇 "

WHEN. WHEN DID WE SEE THAT RED BECASE IMEDIATELY AFTER YOUR TOWN SCUFFLE YOU'RE WITH A FAIRY AND GET BLUE SO STFU.

If you want what I THINK happened in this hypothetical cut:

Red got away from the towns people and ran into the fairy, and Shadow shape shifted out of being that kid that stole his shit.

Because like...I never knew that kid was meant to be shadow Link until someone pointed that out as a possibility because...Literally I thought Red having his sword and shield gone after he left the waterfall was an art error and not because of the kid.

Like the fact that is even up for debate whether or not that kid was shadow or it could be misinterpreted is a flaw in the writing imo but whatever.

Like it was never solidly conformed. There's evidence but it wasn't stated/shown directly and having the idea Shadow can shapeshift to THAT DEGREE is very interesting/cool lore. (We know he can look like green/Link but still. Would have been nice concrete powers around him he can be random ass people too and he's not bound to being just Link.)

If you think about it:

Green got the Pyramid segment

Vio gets the whole shadow link subplot

and Blue gets the temple of darkness.

Wtf does red get. He gets tacked on in the temple of darkness KIND OF but that felt like it was ONLY because he didn't get his own chapter and they had to mash Blue and Red's arcs together making both of their arcs WEAKER. And it just, annoys me idk.

Aaaaanywaaaay. That's my rambling nonsense.

I think with the idea of what they were TRYING TO DO with Red's character I can get a better grasp of where to take him in FSR.

It's so hard to describe why Red gives me "uncanny valley" vibe in his characterization but I hope I did a decent job explaining my thoughts.

You probably noticed: When smth about red doesn't make any fucking sense. I try to rationalize it. But I don't think there was any thought behind a lot of what he does. Which is why it makes me annoyed. 😭

[antianakin]

Do you think it’s a common thing in the fandom (especially when writing fan-works featuring the Skywalker Father-Son Duo(TM)) to give Anakin a lot of Luke’s more noble and good attributes and act like he’s been like that the whole time, and give Luke some of Anakin’s worse attributes to make Anakin seem more centrist compared canon Luke and the “old Jedi” (quotes used ironically)?

Cause as a kid I loved Anakin for many of the reasons I now realize don’t apply to him at all, and moreso apply to Luke, and it’s really getting irritating to look up cool Luke fic and realize that this has been done to ma boi. What do you think?

I gotta be honest, I don't think I read enough fics with that dynamic in it to be able to say with any degree of certainty whether that's true or not.

What I will say is that I think fic writers who like Anakin tend to smooth him out a LOT and, yes, give him traits that are more applicable to other characters in order to make him likable. And in fairness, that's exactly what TCW did as well by effectively just giving him Obi-Wan's personality and erasing some of his less likable characteristics from the films.

Because Anakin is... a difficult character in many ways. The core of him is fear, so there's a tendency to want to sympathize with him, but what gets ignored is that Anakin is 1000% a fascist by AOTC, someone who can and will let himself be filled with enough anger to commit a massacre of an entire village down to the last child, and someone who is perfectly fine with pressuring a woman into a relationship with him. None of that is necessarily fun to write and it's hard to write Anakin as a sympathetic character if those things are kept in mind. So they just get... smoothed away. He's not REALLY a fascist, he's just confused or brainwashed and one good conversation with someone can completely fix that little problem. Anakin isn't pressuring Padme, he just could tell that she was into him and he TOTALLY would back off if Padme said no. The Tuskens deserved it anyway! So on and so forth.

Luke, by contrast, is a very easy character. There's a reason he gets labeled "sunshine boy" by the fandom and his struggles with anger get sort-of... forgotten and overlooked in favor of just seeing him as this easy, likable, charming farmboy. He's sweet and honorable and passionate. He IS a lot like Anakin in many ways, and that's deliberate. Fandom has taken a turn recently towards wanting Leia to be like Anakin and Luke to be like Padme, and there's reasons to make that comparison, but Luke's similarities to Anakin are very deliberately there in the narrative for a reason. Luke has to struggle with anger and fear and be filled with righteous passion because that's exactly what Anakin struggled with and Luke's ability to overcome that in a way Anakin never could is what makes the entire story interesting and meaningful.

Luke also is one of those characters who tends to get handed the "grey Jedi" label which tends to lead to Luke choosing to look down on the Prequels Jedi and decreeing that attachments are totally fine actually and HIS Jedi aren't going to be repressed anymore blah blah blah. And this does come from fans who have fallen into the fandom osmosis hole of "the Prequels are about the Jedi's failure" and have twisted the entire Skywalker Saga around that theory, including Luke's journey. And part of that theory tends to be a lot more sympathetic towards Anakin, as well. If only the Jedi had been more understanding and less oppressive, Anakin wouldn't have fallen. So it's not shocking that fans who are writing from that perspective are going to make Anakin seem softer and more sympathetic.

So yeah, sure, it's entirely possible that some fic writers are choosing to give Anakin more of Luke's nobler characteristics in order to help smooth him out and make him easier to like, while giving Luke some of Anakin's more arrogant or dismissive traits in order to make those traits seem more "centrist." I don't think it's something that ONLY happens with Luke and Anakin, though. Like I said, TCW gave Anakin most of Obi-Wan's traits and then tossed a few of Anakin's onto Obi-Wan, as well. I think you could make an argument that we're seeing some of that happen with Ahsoka, too.

I wish I could offer you some Luke fic recs, so instead I will simply say I hope you find some good ones that feel like they're more in character!

[sage-nebula]

Tails ~

What I like about them

Tails fits the definition of a classical antihero. While nowadays we think of antiheroes as brooding types who are willing to do less-than-heroic things to get the job done, in classical literature an antihero was a character who, while heroic, displayed personality traits that weren't often associated with heroes. For instance, a classical antihero might be wrangle with self-doubt where a classical hero is confident. A classical antihero may be physically weak where a classical hero is physically strong, so on and so forth. Frodo Baggins is an example of a classical antihero, and so, too, is Tails. And I like this because it gives us interesting avenues to explore his character from. Sonic is great, but as a traditional hero he doesn't wrangle with things like self-doubt or anxiety. What you see is what you get with him: just a guy who loves adventure. But perhaps in part due to being a literal genius, Tails is a lot more cerebral and there's a lot more introspection with him, particularly given his shortcomings and weaknesses. Exploring the ways he grows and learns to work with his anxieties and traumas, rather than against them, makes his character really interesting.

Also, he is so fucking cute oh my god.

What I dislike about them

His character writing has been, to put it politely, inconsistent over the years. He went through all that growth in the Adventure games just to have it completely ripped the fuck away from him in later ones (particularly Forces). It's not great and most days I pretend I do not see it.

Favourite moment

In the games: Either the moment he threw hands with Eggman when he thought Eggman had killed Sonic in Adventure 2, or the acknowledgement of his issues and his whole arc in Frontiers rolled up into one.

In animation: Either saying that Sonic was his "mom, dad, and picket fence" in AoStH, or the episode in AoStH where Sonic was turned to stone and so Tails spent the whole episode trolling Scratch and Grounder Home Alone style. Again, he is so fucking cute oh my god.

In the IDW comics: Either catching Sonic with the Tornado in the middle of the Angel Island arc, or crashing the airship into Neo Metal at the end of that arc, or when he said goodbye to the Cyclone because he had to sacrifice her during the Metal Virus arc, or when he figured out how to take down Surge in their fight against her in the city, or defending Sonic from Kit, or immediately building guns to go save Sonic in the Scrapnik Island mini series, or . . .

Least favourite moment

Forces 🙃All of Forces. I hate it so fucking much.

Also not a fan of how they made him fight Sonic in the Archie comics. Really, any situation which pits those two against each other is an automatic Nope.gif in my books. I will smack that back button so fast, don't test me.

A situation with this character that I want to see explored more

How he's developing his technology to utilize clean energy! We see that he's using hydro power to fuel the Mystic Ruins workshop in the IDW comics; I want more exploration on how Tails' development of technology is not only not detrimental to the planet, but actually works to reverse the damage that Eggman does. Technology doesn't have to destroy the planet; it can be a clean force for good, too!

An interesting AU for this character

Can I promote my own fic Beyond Oblivion? Because that's an interesting AU to me!

A crossover

I'm still very much in love with my Night in the Woods crossover, where Tails spends an autumn in Possum Springs during his solo journeys. All anthro stories take place in the same universe and this one happens in my head and in my heart even if Sega thinks it could never work in canon. Sega doesn't pay me, they can't dictate what I do.

OTP (or OT3+ etc…. just… favourite ship)

None. In fact, adaptations that have tried to give Tails romances (Archie, Sonic X, Boom) are off-putting to me because they try to give Tails romances. He doesn't need a romance for his story to be interesting! In fact, I think a romance arc for him is far more boring than the alternatives like exploring how he overcomes his inner demons or focusing on the clean energy alternatives he creates to improve the world. And even if you want to explore him with other characters, platonic relationships and platonic love stories are a thing! Tails' brotherly relationship with Sonic, his friendships with Amy and Knuckles—these are interesting stories and romance isn't a part of them. Destroy the heterosexual notion that every character must be paired off for a story to be good.

Other ships?

Nope.

BROTP

His big bro Sonic, of course! Like I said above, platonic love stories are a thing, and the platonic love story in Sonic and Tails finding a family in each other when they were both orphaned has been one of my favorites since I was four years old. I don't think that's going to change any time soon.

NOTP

I wish people who ship Sonic with Tails romantically a very do not ever interact with me, ever, in any capacity. Thank you.

An assortment of headcanons!

I have a lot! You can read some here, and here, and here :)

[crownedinmarigolds]

12, 19, and 17 for Noa and Xandy if not already answered?

*Gasp!* Thank you for asking ahhH! 12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)?

17. Is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story?

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

Noa: 12. I would say the most difficult part about creating art for Noa is having to really restrain myself! Noa is incredibly repressed and has SUPER staunch beliefs and a code she really sticks to, so I feel weird if I just do certain things with her with wild abandon even if I really really want to. Like if I want to fun crack!ship her with anyone, then I overthink like "well she wouldn't do that," or etc... making her probably the most socially "inept" out of all of my OCs! Like, Nono is not a meme'r. 17. I'm usually very flexible with character stuff, I don't keep things I feel are actively detrimental to the stories I want to tell with them! If they have something going on with them, I put it there purposefully and with good reason. I will say I regretted certain things at her initial conception when I was playing her on a live VTM server. I had made her a Instagram starlet with a cute big butt. I had just added the butt thing as a dumb little "hee hee I got a bubble butt" but a LOT of people really ran with it? It made me actively uncomfortable how people took the "has a big butt" thing and made her to be a very very sexual character. It was this attitude towards Noa that actually had me hard reverse her into being sexually repulsed and also being small and flat as a board. Of course... people still sexualized her even with these traits as well in our next server we played her on. It could just be the way I type making people feel nice, but it's still very annoying to try and play a serious game or write out a serious conversation and people just won't stop writing about how their drooling over her body. So I regret making Noa curvaceous in the beginning of her play, but I'm VERY happy with Noa as she is now. I use the sexualization from these people to fuel a very important part of her motivations! 19. I love lots of stuff about Nono, but I think I love her having a good father despite being a Giovanni? Now her father wasn't good to her brother of course, but so many people go nuts with the more unsavory parts of the Giovanni lore in VTM, so I just feel satisfied with Noa having a good relationship with her Dad while he's alive.

Xandy: 12. Xandy is a bit difficult to write for because I have very specific situations in mind that involve her that are hard to make interesting in a written format? If that makes sense. She's very action oriented, swift, silent. If I could animate I think she'd be a blast to draw - I imagine her operating like Faith from Mirror's Edge - lots of parkour and smooth disarming motions. However writing action isn't my biggest strong suit. One of her coping mechanisms is to try and see herself as a tool for her Master to use, and while writing her breakdowns is very thrilling, I also can't have her upset ALL the time. She fills a great role in the canon but otherwise a little difficult to make the main character. ALSO - a lot of her stuff is history based, and that's a TON of research to fall down the rabbit hole for! 17. Xandy was one of my first REAL OCs... I had a few before her but she's probably the one I've had and kept the longest. [I had a ATLA one for a little bit and a Naruto OC that lasted a while but none stuck like Xandy!] I have changed her a lot over the fifteen years I've had her! There's not much I regret really, she was my Call of Duty Modern Warfare OC, so she was a military woman - which COULD be regretful but nah. It suited what I liked at the time and she's changed for the better I think! I suppose one regret is that she's silent and distant, which makes writing fun interactions hard, but it's still an important part of her character! 19. My favorite fact about her is.... commitment issues? I think I love it because I'm such a hardcore Ride or Die, and so are practically all of my characters. So it's kind of fun to have someone who is like "BAIL" the second someone really shows genuine adoration and interest in her beyond a one night stand or a passing curiosity! She's not against-against commitment... she just knows the life she lives and how "it just can't work."

THANK YOU GORGEOUS FOR ASKING!!!!!

[zosonils]

Wait, no, actually, tell me about the Scribblenauts timeline. I must be real... I like it too. I love unifying timelines where things seemingly just happen, tell us!

scribblenauts fans rise up >:] to be clear this isn't an attempt to sort out the canon timeline [although if you asked i'd guess unlimited > scribblenauts > super > unmasked based on the few splinters of plot we get] but rather taking inspiration from the scraps of story available to build something new and coherent, although at this stage 'coherent' isn't super accurate lmao it's just islands of solid ideas amidst a sea of autism nonsense

basically i'm deciding that the doppelganger's presence in 10-5 of super counts as a plot and slapping that on top of the more consistently defined world and lore of unlimited and onwards [so kind of what unmasked and the subsequent comic did but batman isn't there], with an added sprinkle of the 'scribblenauts being an actual organisation that maxwell is involved in' thing that never made it past background details in the first game. while unlimited arguably has the most iconic and/or existent plot and for sure i want lily to be a deutragonist i'm not sure how much of it i'll retain because 1. turning your daughter into stone is bad parenting 2. let her tag along and be an actual character instead of a literal rock you cowards and 3. the more super-inspired storyline i have in mind with the doppelganger is probably enough to carry the emotional intensity of a mostly lighthearted story by itself and i don't want to bog things down with too many subplots lol

i'm absolutely reading too deep into this kiddie game but i think the doppelganger as an antagonist of maxwell's own creation reflecting all his worst traits would be super interesting in an environment that puts more consistent and deliberate thought into character writing, so that's the idea i'm basing this autism-powered rehash on. i don't think it's ever actually specified but when i was a little sporelet playing scribblenauts unlimited for the first time i somehow got the impression that starites grant wishes? which is cute so i'm using that as maxwell's motivation to join the scribblenauts and seek them out, that he wants to collect enough to wish for something cool and superficial that a 12ish [?????] year old kid would want. but then after lots of adventures and character development when he's in the dramatic final confrontation with his doppelganger and has matured enough to see him as a distressed kid in uniquely terrifying circumstances rather than just an annoying knockoff he instead uses his wish on giving doppelganger the chance to be a normal kid with a normal life because he wants to make kind decisions now. then i guess they all go home and nobody dies in a scripted ufo explosion

this post is getting toooooo long so i'm gonna try and wrap it up now but god i already have so many ideas rattling around my head for an autism reawakening that could be over in a week lmao. now i'm even sadder that my computer is busted because i want to replay unlimited and refresh my lore so badly..... there's a fandom page [breezewiki sweep though] for the series which has helped refresh my memory but none of the sources are cited it's a nightmare. what do you mean maxwell and lily are twins for the love of god give me a single screenshot or manual scan that mentions this

also i didn't have a good place to insert this but even though edgar and julie having 42 kids is obviously a Silly Joke and excuse to give unlimited some unique characters i am choosing to interpret it as them being experienced foster carers. i don't care to sort through every single character and decide which if any are biologically related to each other lmao but adopted/foster families are swag as hell and there should be more of them in media! it also adds a nice layer to the doppelganger plot - maxwell is more willing to reach out to him because he's seen 'angry bitter kid who will only get better with kindness' in a lot of his brothers and maybe himself, and it gives doppelganger an easy place to go for his happy ending because maxwell's parents are experts at taking in kids like him. didn't want to end this post without mentioning this because i'm already suuuper attached to the concept

[aquaburst3]

I'm starting my own take on Pomefiore. That means Neige is coming into play a lot more. While I seen posts saying why they enjoy him and think he's a fleshed out character, I still think he's the complete opposite.

He has almost no personality. His good personality traits are similar to the Golden Aged princesses and princes. Charming, kind, gullible and easily forgiving. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. I enjoy Cinderella. I don't mind Snow White for what she is, especially given the fact it was one of the first animated movies ever and was created at a time when male writers didn't know how to write female characters yet. The problem is that none of Neige's similar traits are examined or developed. He is as static and bland as they come. Hell, Snow White from the 30s movie is a better developed character than him! That REALLY says something...

He has done some pretty shitty things in the arc. He picked his buddies to be on his team, slamming the door on anyone else at RSA with actual talent. Instead of working on his routine, he came up with a half assed on. He relied on the dwarves' cutesiness and childlike appearance to win over the crowd, going against everything the competition stands for. Do I think Neige is a bad person for this? Absolutely not. However, like Kalim, I think he's an inconsiderate, thoughtless and selfish person, who is like a Disney prince who just skipped straight to his happy ending without earning it. Unlike Kalim who learns that how he's acting is hurting others, especially Jamil, and tries to improve himself, Neige is treated as being in the right and never learns anything, despite hurting many other people. That is anger inducing.

He's also rather dumb and gullible. He takes the drink from Vil without even questioning it.

His connection with Vil is all "tell" and no "show." We only get Vil's perspective on the situation. While I love Vil and he's one of my favourites in the game, even I admit he's extremely biased. We never get a chance to learn anything about Neige from his own words. Vil and Neige never directly interact till the climax, despite Neige being the antagonist of that arc.

The same goes for his acting ability. We're told that he's an amazing actor, but are never shown any examples other than two commercials. Let's face it. Acting in a commercial is different than in a movie or tv show.

Honestly, the canon doesn't show us anything that proves that Neige is more talented than Vil in regards to acting and singing. If anything, it seems like the exact opposite. It comes across like Neige is coasting by on only his looks.

I'm 95% sure that Yana pulled that info about Neige right outta her ass after Rook's VA received death threats from the Japanese fandom. For one, all of that info came out AFTER this incident instead of being woven in organically into the previous book. None of it was even remotely hinted at in advanced nor makes any sense when you think about it more than a few seconds. It's so tacked on that I don't even consider it canon. (Seriously, why the hell wasn't Neige taken away by Child Protective Services if he was a minor living with seven other kids, who don't seem all there? What the hell happened to his parents?)

Any opportunity to give them a deeper connection is completely dodged by the narrative. Again, why aren't they stepbrothers? It would make them resemble the original story more and have Neige's backstory make far more sense.

At the end of the day, Neige is just a cardboard cutout for Vil to sneer at and that's it. Ironically, Neige's such an underdeveloped and boring character that Vil is better Snow White analog than him, despite technically being based on the Evil Queen. Both Vil and Snow White are adaptable, capable, stern, value hard work, and want to help out other become their best selves.

Honestly, it's a damn shame. Neige could've been an interesting and fun character, but that was all dodged in favour of lazy and shitty writing. Hopefully my take on his character with his new backstory will improve him a lot, including making Neige Vil's stepbrother.