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arvoze · 10 months ago

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[1/3] HHNFLARTAS - the master trials

hell hath no fury like a rescue team association scorned not a fic or anything, i just ramble a lot about my pmd ocs in a digestible format that's more or less that kind of content. random yearly event for rescue teams. covers no more than like, one week of VV content

[ X / 2 / 3 ]

the master trials

an annual event where the rescue team association (RTA) judge teams of a certain rank and higher. this judgement is made after teams are put through a series of challenges to make sure that the rescue teams are up to par and can perform their duties.

whilst many pass, it is also entirely possible for a team to fail the trials, subsequently getting demoted. in this case, teams may earn enough points to reach the entry rank again, though in order to be recognised as that rank, they must pass that year's trial. this is not a requirement unless you are re-entering the rank.

many high-ranking teams will be famous within good reason. one way to earn notoriety is to place well in the master trials -- but if a team comes in the top spot, chances are they'll already be known anyways, and be some of the highest possible ranks. there are outliers, though, but they're few and far between.

hundreds, if not thousands of teams will take part regionally. each continent has its own top 100 chart. it's fine to place below the top 100; this doesn't mean you're getting demoted, it's just a way to deter giving everybody a placement. many of those who make it into the bottom bracket of the ranks aren't cared for much, either, even if it's still an achievement.

the rescue team association

the RTA is like a board of directors within the rescue team profession. it is worth noting that this covers all forms of rescue team; if it operates under guild rules, it counts. rescues, exploration, discovery, all-rounders -- it's all under the "rescue team" umbrella. many on the RTA board are former high-rankers, but some less-than-savoury upperclassmons have had their says in their matters too.

regardless, many of the pokemon here are strongly revered in their fields. they oversee many of the trials in action, after a certain point within the master trials begin (they can't track the progress of every team).

in the final few stages of the master trials, they observe teams using rotom devices linked to familiar technology -- nothing entirely new. just rotom drones projected to a large connection orb, probably. developed technology still isn't that great.

the RTA are responsible for sending messages out across all guilds, whenever needed.

verdant village

verdant village is situated within the water continent, meaning that it's part of the master trials (water division). guildmaster rime doesn't actually have that many great teams registered under the guild itself; it's mostly just a place for other teams to hang out and get missions from, sometimes. and a lot of the actual teams are pretty low-ranking, because not a lot of heavy missions show up. that's really just because verdant village is a "new" location in comparison to most other guild origins, having only been founded within the past 50 years. it's still finding its roots, but they're growing.

there's a good few number of teams that can apply for the master trials, however. but the only ones that are really important right now are keith's team (keith/cacturne, mike/breloom, luwel/nuzleaf) and team pb&j (roadblock/garganacl, minecart/palossand). they're rival teams, but in a one-sided sense. PB&J is more of an inconvenience to keith's team.

keith's team, having been doing this job for at least 20 years under verdant's guild, have taken part in the master trials several times. team PB&J are fresher on the scene, but have participated in at least one previous trial. keith's team has barely cut into the top 100 within the water division a few times, though always in the lower bracket. they're the highest scorers in verdant village, though, which isn't really a surprise to anybody.

keith's team

keith's team - real team name, nonexistent, they've never had one - have been registered under verdant village since [the team's] creation. the team has existed since the trio were children, and continues to exist as each member is in their thirties (varying ages). despite their general additiude and demeanour, keith's team take their job as a rescue team very seriously -- which is precisely why keith is set to become the future guildmaster. in rime's words, despite what he shows, nobody cares about others quite like him.

the master trials go about as average as you'd expect. keith's team never fail the master's, but they're nothing to entirely write home about either. they're somewhere above average, but they're also not the most famous team in the continent. far from it. (they're recognised within the village, though, as each member is social in their own way). their teamwork and planning-ahead tends to be standout, but still nothing to make other guilds remember the name.

luwel usually prepares far in advance for the master trials, because he's fucked up and likes to make sure everything is right. this always works tremendously in the team's favour, because his tendency to overthink and over-worry allows for the team to solve problems they'd otherwise have no way of figuring out.

hell hath no fury like a rescue team association scorned (#1)

the master trials have begun. they're pretty far in, in fact. the top placements are already well under consideration -- they're going to really be put to the test. the whole point is to make sure that these teams are earning the right to be trusted, right?

higher-ranking teams (and lower-ranking ones of interest) will face further challenges. many teams have already passed the trials and can rest easy; they've nothing else to prove. they're just keeping their status, not needing to prove themselves or aim higher.

keith's team press on for the fun of it, and because they do truly believe that they have something to show. and they're not entirely wrong -- their teamwork and synergy is great, and they get along with eachother & understand eachother far greater than even some of the best.

but they're three grass types. and to some of the stuck-up oldies of the past at the RTA, that's a concern. they've got an incredibly glaring weakness that can make them a liability under certain circumstances. monotype teams can exist, yes, and there's no inherent problem with this, but you also can't just… allow a team like this to think that they can take on anything without acknowledging their faults.

they're going to a volcanic dungeon. it's a rescue, of course -- get deep enough into the caverns to find and save a pokemon, but prove yourself further by "completing" the dungeon. it's a deliberate set-up, of course; no team this far into the master's is going to be given the easy way out. the point is to prove yourself.

and it's… a journey. keith's team have survived volcanic endeavours before, but not often -- other teams are better suited for that. the master trials have thrown this at them before. it's always been enough for them to maintain their ranks. luwel's prepared enough, he thinks. keith's belief of if we don't save them, who will echoes in their minds. mike's just here, really. he's always been cautious about these dungeons. he's always worried about what could happen.

[pt 2.]

#pokemon #pokemon mystery dungeon #UHHH UHHHH IGNORE THIS SHOWING IN TAGS ITS FOR LOGGING PURPOSES!!!!!!!!#my art #keith #mike #luwel #roadblock #no point tagging my palossand im only tagging garganacl for the image #ill try posting the 2nd part tomorowwwwww its super late and that part is really long #honestly i think this stuff is probably really boring to other people but i wrote this up in october and never had it able to be read anywh #anywhere so. i figured i would finally post it #(part of it at least)#this was all me spitballing at the time btw not everything is set in stone i didnt mean for the RTA to be boring corpos

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talentdelunecomic · 1 year ago

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Arc 2.5

(Part 1) (foreword)

Contrary to his expectations, Fae is settling into life at Talent de Dal. Like, really settling in. To the point where Jupiter, Aidyn, and Eight are starting to give him responsibilities and work to do.

Today marks the two-month anniversary of his arrival at Talent de Dal. Him and the other eleven ex-gladiators, that is. Everyone celebrated their one-month anniversary as well, and it was so awkward for Fae that he had to stand in the corner while Aidyn tried to coax him out with cake. Now, as October begins, Fae has gotten comfortable enough for Eight to request his help in setting up the celebration. It’s going to be bittersweet this time, because some of the gladiators are leaving for Spia.

Hermes—no, Aulani—told Fae about it last week. She’s talkative, even with him, the antisocial one who’d been scheduled to punch someone’s lights out every other week. Most of the other gladiators are skittish around him, and for good reason, he was the most intimidating fighter among them and he’d been the one to haze them upon their initiation to the Colosseum. Aulani has always been friendly, though. They’d been matched up against each other often enough that maybe she’d just gotten used to him.

She caught Fae in the greenhouse—a place he’d grown fond of—to tell him the news.

Rocky, Thunder, and Lightbender respectively, as Fae had known them before. Fae had hazed all of them but Matt, who’d been a gladiator the longest. Matt had always seemed old…if you could call 26 old. But to Fae—who’d been 17 when he was conscripted, and the rest of them—who hovered around 20 with a few young outliers Fae didn’t know all that well, Matt was their wise senior.

Aulani elaborated. “We’re gonna hitch a ride on Rivergirl’s soul-stream next Saturday.”

“She can transport physical bodies?”

“Only on Saturdays,” Aulani said cheekily, and she winked. Fae didn’t know much about Rivergirl, who talked kind of like a hippy and hung out with Eight—an activity that consisted mostly of them sitting in her room listening to records that played ‘Awesomesauce Ocean Sounds’. But Rivergirl had a Talent that worked like teleportation when it wasn’t just astral projection, and that was helpful when TDD members needed to travel without the risk of crossing state lines unauthorized.

“We’re going to Spia,” Aulani said, “so we’ll say hi to Talent de Lune real quick. Max worked things out so we’ll have a place to stay and a job if we can’t find either of those things on our own.”

Fae had only known Max for about a day or so, but Jupiter, Aidyn, and Eight talked so much that he could now tell you Max’s favorite movie, favorite song, and favorite food—mole chichilo he had in Oaxaca when he was 5. The recipe was a secret and he’s never managed to recreate it or find a restaurant that makes it the exact same way. Just send him lofthouse cookies instead, he’s not so picky about that and they’re his guilty pleasure.

“I’m surprised to hear Zacharie is going,” Fae admitted. “I thought he hated traveling.”

Aulani laughed. “He does. But Matt wanted to look for his old friend and I wanted to see more of the world, so he said he’d come. He’s gonna be a grump about it, probably. Did you ever meet Matt’s friend? She was retired before I got kidnapped, so I never did, but you were there before me.”

Fae shook his head. He was pretty sure they’d never crossed paths—Matt had always seemed lonely, even when Fae first met him. But there had been so many gladiators sent away and exchanged when the crowds got bored of them or they were badly hurt in a fight; it was all a blur. Fae wasn’t sure.

He refocused. “Zacharie is leaving because you’re leaving?”

Aulani’s cheeks darkened. “Yeah,” she said, smiling fondly. “He and I… Well, recently, we’ve gotten…close, you know?”

Fae flustered and looked away. Oh. He hadn’t known that.

“I know it’s too early and we should focus on our own personal recoveries and journeys and all that,” Aulani rambled, even though Fae hadn’t said anything. “I know. But, like…” She blushed further, throwing up her hands. “He gets me.”

“I don’t think it’s too early,” Fae said.

Aulani stared at him, eyes wide. Then she smiled, bright and mischievous. “I see,” she giggled.

“What?”

“You and Aidyn, I think you make a cute couple—”

“We are not a couple,” Fae snapped, ears burning. “We don’t— We’re not a couple.”

“So, you and Eight…?”

“No.”

“Jupiter?”

“No.” He grimaced, locking eyes with the ground. He was on fire. “No, I’m not… I’m not.”

Aulani gasped. “All three?”

“No!”

She laughed. “I’m just teasing you. But, you know…I think it could happen. Jupiter and Eight and Aidyn, they seem like…hmm. What’s the word? Poly…something? Anyway, I think you’d fit in with them. I think they like you differently than they like everyone else.”

Fae rubbed at his face, still warm. “No, I… No, it’s not different. That isn’t true. They wouldn’t…like me.”

Aulani’s smile turned a little sad. “Give it a try, at least. Ask them about it.”

He didn’t respond.

Aulani offered him a hug, and Fae froze up before incrementally relaxing into it. “You’re likable,” she asserted. “Have some confidence.”

How?

Aulani squeezed him and then let go, patting his shoulders with finality. “Okay!” she said. “Give it a try.”

Fae didn’t know what else to do, so he nodded.

---

Eight greets him in the dining hall with open arms and a huge smile.

“Hi, Eight.” Unable to escape the usual bear hug—and largely unwilling, Fae pats them on the back and waits. Eight’s hugs are always warm, like they’ve been waiting to see him forever and they’re so glad he’s finally here. It’s a little embarrassing how nice that is.

“What’s the temperature today?” Eight asks, a twinkle in their 20-sided die-eyes. This close to them, Fae can read ‘outlook good’, though his vision is mediocre on the left and worse on the right.

“I suppose it…feels like a ‘boy’ day, potentially,” Fae fumbles out. Eight offered him pronoun pins in his first week at TDD because he gets weird about bracelets and necklaces these days, weird about things someone could use to hold onto him, but Fae usually forgets to wear them. Eight took no offense, and in fact told him conspiratorially, “My eyesight’s bad anyway. I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell which pin you were wearing unless I got close like this.” Then they leaned in to jokingly stare at Fae’s chest, and Fae spooked and accidentally elbowed them in the chin.

These days, he doesn’t startle so much when people get close to him, but the only ones who don’t need to ask permission first are Aidyn, Eight, and Jupiter. Fae refuses to examine this.

“Wonderful!” Eight cheers, because they’re the sort of person who says ‘wonderful’ unironically. “I’m feeling kind of femme right now. We’re like a pair!” It wouldn’t be a very charming thing to hear from anyone else, but it’s charming when coming from Eight. Fae blushes and can’t hold back a smile.

They’re the first person Fae’s ever been able to talk gender with. It’s nice.

The two of them get to work. “What do you think, darling?” Eight asks, a few minutes in. “Red streamers, purple streamers, or blue streamers. Maybe all three?”

Fae chuckles, still blushing for no discernible reason. “Don’t get greedy,” he quips.

“No!” Eight cries dramatically, like the streamers mean something. “It’s not greedy to accept what you deserve if someone’s offering it.”

“Tri-colored streamers?”

“Yes,” Eight says, smiling nervously. Fae swears their cheeks are darkening. “And balloons! And cake! Everyone deserves streamers and cake.”

It feels like Fae’s missed something obvious. He tries to push past the atmosphere. “Magic Eight.” He beckons them closer. They obey without thinking.

Eight is a couple inches taller than Fae, but it feels like they’re looking up at him. A little awkward, Fae looks into their eyes. “Should we hang up all three streamers?”

Eight is definitely blushing. ‘Ask again later,’ their eyes say.

---

Spider asked for help with her hair, the other day. Though the two of them are somewhat awkward with each other, Fae volunteered to assist.

All of them have already spent two months at Talent de Dal, but Spider still hasn’t told anyone her name. When Jupiter asked her in the beginning, Spider smiled obliquely and explained that she was not all that fond of the one I had before being plucked up by the Colosseum. ‘Spider’ isn’t very classy, but for now it does the job. I’ll let you know if that changes.

Fae knew a thing or two about not being fond of your name. The one he’d used before his captivity had also been ill fitting. ‘Fae’ had been an alternative he’d contemplated, one he’d never said aloud in more than a whisper to himself before Aidyn came around. Now it was just his name, and he liked that.

They met on the second floor balcony, overlooking the pool and neatly blanketed by the shadow of the clay roof tiles. It was starting to get colder, so there weren’t many people in the water. Fae found himself squinting and considering the possibility that the colorful blur floating on an inner tube-shaped blur was Rivergirl.

Sipping a soda on the lounge chair, Spider had an actual hammock attached to her hair.

She’d taken up hobbies of knitting, weaving, and the like to deal with its speedy and unmanageable growth. Like bamboo, Eight had suggested once, and Spider had laughed brightly, as she so rarely did.

Fae greeted her and helped her tie off the loose ends before cutting it near her collarbone. Spider sighed with relief and shook her head. “It’s so light when it’s this short. But tomorrow, it’ll be halfway down my back.”

Feeling equal parts sympathetic and out of line, Fae asked, “Is there anything you can do to keep it from growing?”

“Do you remember that boy from Talent de Lune, the one with the nullification Talent? The girl with all the arms had this bracelet of his braided hair, and it could suppress her Talent when she needed to be inconspicuous. I didn’t know about it until after they left. C'est la vie!”

Fae nodded and bundled up the hammock for something to do.

Spider sighed and rested her chin on her hand. “Before all this, I had really nice hair.”

Fae blinked up at her.

“Well, it was hard to manage,” she clarifies. “Some strands were coiled very tightly, and others were much less so. But I was very good at working with it, and I had an excellent sense of style.” Spider sighed again, wistfully. “Now I’ve got straight, boring silk.” She gestured at her hair.

Fae assumed most people would consider pink silk anything but boring, but picturing how Spider might’ve looked in the past had him shockingly sad at the thought that he’d never see her like that in reality.

“And anyway, those Talent suppressor cuffs they made use of back at the Colosseum never returned my hair to normal, so I don’t have high hopes for that Talent de Lune boy either.” Spider shrugged. “There are things you lose that you can never get back. But it’s pointless to get hung up on the pointless.” With an enigmatic smile, she took the hammock from Fae’s limp hands and left the balcony.

---

Once Fae is done helping Eight, they send him off to Jupiter. Apparently, she needs him as a taste-tester.

She’s waiting for him in the communal kitchen, eying the door and standing in front of the food-covered counter like she can keep all the dishes a surprise if she stretches out her arms far enough. Jupiter is 5’4” and stocky; even if such a thing was possible, she could never manage it. Instead of coming off as silly or immature, Fae’s first thought is cute. Argh.

She relaxes when she realizes that the kitchen intruder is only him. “Good, you’re here. I need you to try this.”

Jupiter’s curt as ever. For a while, that intimidated Fae. Stoicism tends to remind them of their father, a man they are loath to think about. In darker moments, Fae can only see it as an inherited trait, and they gravitate toward brighter, more expressive people as a result. Obviously, Jupiter is an exception to that rule. Underneath the flat affect, she’s generous and awkward and passionate. She lives in the moment and never holds grudges. It’s so contrary to Fae’s instinct that they find themself captivated.

Jupiter picks up a bowl of what looks to be frosting. Beside her is an unfrosted cake. She takes a spoonful and passes it to Fae. “Tell me what you think.”

Fae pops the spoon into their mouth and savors the flavor. The very sweet flavor. …Maybe too sweet. They suppress the urge to wrinkle their nose as best they can. It’s not their place to criticize.

Jupiter is watching them closely. “How is it?” she insists.

“Good,” Fae lies.

She frowns nervously. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Me and Eight and Aidyn made this together. None of us are very good cooks, and we’re worse bakers. We just followed a recipe online. You have to tell me if it’s bad, I can’t figure it out on my own.” Buzzing with anxiety despite her calm expression, Jupiter clenches her fingers on the frosting bowl till her knuckles go white. “This isn’t a question where you read between the lines. I want you to answer me honestly, I won’t take offense if it’s bad. I’m really, seriously asking for your advice, Fae.”

Another thing Fae likes about Jupiter—she always says exactly what she means. After years of tip-toeing around their own home and months of combing through Heele’s vague jokes and slang for underlying instructions, it’s a breath of fresh air. Sometimes, Fae falls back into old habits. But Jupiter always reminds them to trust her.

“…Excessively sweet,” Fae admits. “The frosting, that is. I’d say it’s suitable, but only if Talent de Dal is made up entirely of people with kindergartener-level taste buds.”

Jupiter doesn’t smile, but she looks relieved. “Oh, thank goodness,” she breathes out. “You’re so reliable, Fae. Thank you for telling me. I knew something was off. Maybe we need to add more citrus…”

The rest of her words fade out as Fae’s mind replays the important ones again and again. You’re so reliable, Fae. Thank you for telling me. You’re so reliable.

They hide their burning cheeks by offering to search for a lemon.

Once the two of them have adjusted the flavor to a reasonable balance, they frost the cake together. It’s nice, calming. Maybe Fae should take up baking. After they’re done, Jupiter takes a picture and dutifully sends it to the group chat between her, Eight, Aidyn, and Fae themself, then to Max. They get varied responses—a barrage of heart emojis from Eight with one bizarro accidental gorilla emoji, the critique of a well-seasoned baker from Max, luckily culminating in approval, and Aidyn doesn’t even see the message yet.

“Is there anything else you need help with?” Fae asks.

Jupiter takes a moment to think. Realization dawns subtly on her face, a widening of the eyes. “I forgot,” she says. “There’s something important I have to ask you.”

Fae’s heartbeat goes from resting to a million miles per hour in the span of two seconds.

Trying not to explode with how hot their face is getting, they clear their throat. “Go ahead.” There’s a yearning in their heart, a reflection of Aulani’s words—I think you’d fit in with them. I think they like you differently than they like everyone else—and Eight’s eyes—It’s not greedy to accept what you deserve if someone’s offering it. Ask again later—and even further back, what Aidyn said to them the night they first met and everything changed.

…Your smile is pretty cute.

I like seeing your eyes.

We can figure…everything out later.

Jupiter takes a deep breath. Fae holds theirs.

“Remember when you told me about your younger sister?” Jupiter asks. “Yesterday, we found her. We have her email. Do you want to talk to her?”

All the warmth drains out of them. Fae turns to ice and their Talent breaks three stacks of ceramic plates in half.

…They should’ve known. They got their hopes up impractically, and reality hit hard and completely unexpected. Fae has always known to prepare for the worst instead of the best, but these past two months have blunted their cynicism and lured them back into all those old, childish expectations they thought they’d grown out of.

They should’ve known. After all…

There are things you lose that you can never get back.

It’s pointless to get hung up on the pointless.

What a fool they are.

“Fae?” Jupiter is staring at them with one of her unreadable expressions. They shake themself out of their stupor and answer her.

“No. I doubt she’d be happy to hear from me.”

Jupiter falls silent and Fae walks away, leaving spiderweb-crack footprints with every step.

#talent de lune #TDL #Arc 2.5

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reignsan · 3 years ago

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Honestly, almost everything i know of the clock tower ia fandom and they were stupidly evil eat babies group of paranoic mages with some outliers. For what i read of your post of El meloi buzzfeed quiz, this is not true. So what is the cloc tower and magus culture?

That wasn't actually my post it was just a reblog. I'm still happy to answer though. Mages for the most part are cold and willing to do a lot of nasty stuff. Mage culture is very much, "the most important thing is passing on my Magic Crest to my descendants so that some day my family can reach the Root", but they're for the most part still not evil. Outside of freaks like Kirei who enjoy seeing others suffer, most mages just care more about their goals than about any innocents who get caught up in the collateral damage. A good example of a typical goals-focused at all other costs mage is probably the villain in episode 3 of the El-Melloi anime. His magecraft familiars - electric bunny things - were draining electrical power from London and killing any of the people who went into the sewers to investigate. The reason the Clock Tower arrested him wasn't because he was a murderer, but because his methods were too obvious and risked normal people finding out about magic.

The Association didn't care about the deaths, but they weren't going around saying "Yeah fuck muggles, I love killing people" either.

Of course there are mages with more humane responses who reject the typical mage mindset of "research above all." This is mostly in the younger generation, like Waver's students and Waver himself. Here's another example from the El-Melloi anime: when Waver took in a stray cat, a typical asshole mage named Bram (who is Kayneth's fiancé's brother) wondered why Waver hadn't killed it already to use for magecraft. He was genuinely surprised when he learned Waver wasn't going to use the cat as a sacrifice, but just wanted to heal its injured leg. That was a thought that never even crossed Bram's mind, because to the stereotypical mage everything should just help further their magecraft.

One of the Clock Tower's Lords, Inorai, is a politically-scheming mage from an old and powerful family, but also a friendly old lady who listens to rock music on her iPod and loves modern art. But she still has that mage coldness to her when the situation gets serious, too. Mages are complex people is what I'm trying to get at. They’re not just baby-eaters.

This has sort of been me rambling but I hope I got my point across. Mages aren't sociopathic monsters besides a few notable exceptions. It's just that most mages care about their magecraft more than anything, and if people get hurt during their research, then as long as it helps their magecraft that's fine.

#fate series

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work-of-waking-up · 4 years ago

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In Defense of the Psychopath

Alright, wanna venture into my crazy ass brain? I’m going to start by saying one thing that will set the tone for everything else that follows: Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand them. Why am I even bothering to write about a fictional character, you ask? Because representation is important. Media portrayal of various mental and behavioral health topics (including ones that people might not think need to be discussed) is important and this show has a big audience. I also just want to contribute to the conversations that are taking place because I am seeing A LOT of them and the reason for that I believe boils down to the fact that Jodie makes Villanelle so relatable and people want to know what that means and looks like for them. Even those who felt they could relate to Sandra’s Eve, or the relationship between the two, maybe questioned what that meant the further they went down the path with them. “It’s probably a bad thing I relate to a psychopath, right? But she can’t be a psychopath because she cries and she feels things! Psychopaths don’t cry, which means she isn’t realistic so therefore it’s okay that I relate to her! Right? Or are my assumptions about psychopaths and people with antisocial personality disorder wrong? I relate to Eve but look what she is underneath it all...so does that mean I relate to that part of her too?” Not only is villanelles character relatable, but people see the freedom inherent within her, the freedom that Eve sees, and they realize that, at least on some level, they want it too. The show has (unintentionally I think) created a massive dialogue which is super cool and you can tell everyone involved on the show is aware of that now, I mean they have a consulting psychiatrist so I think that speaks for itself. This is less of a commentary on the character herself and whether or not she is a genuine psychopath, and more so a commentary on the conversations she has inspired and why... For the record, this is literally just my opinion sprinkled with a few facts, nothing else.

So, the term psychopath gets thrown around in the show, more so in the beginning, MI6 explicitly labels Villanelle this way, even going so far as to use her in a presentation about psychopaths, although I think that was more so to gauge Eve’s response than anything else. The reality of Villanelle, which we come to learn, is that nobody has been able to get close enough to really know the truth. Anna and Konstantin both got close but we never hear either of them use that word (Konstantin says it once but he clearly doesn’t mean it, it was more of an attempted manipulation tactic). They make it clear that she has, and can, and WILL cause damage, but that’s as far as they go. Eve is getting close and she tells Villanelle when they first meet that she knows Villanelle is a psychopath but it’s obvious from Eve's behavior and things she says later on that she truly doesn’t believe Villanelle is what everyone says she is. It’s easier to label her as a psychopath because that alienates and isolates her and her behavior completely. She is an outlier with behavioral anomalies and therefore it isn’t necessary to look any closer. For MI6 and others (not talking about the shows creators) to label Villanelle as a psychopath is easy, it’s lazy, it’s reductive, it serves a single purpose... a means to an end. They (anyone other than Eve basically) simply do not care about Villanelle’s truth. But as an audience we are lucky enough to see more of her with each episode. The psychopath label begins to fade and Oksana is what’s left. We know based on what she has said that she is aware that people think she is a psychopath, a monster, a person built to kill. It’s not always easy to decide that who you are is different from who you’ve always been told you are, especially given her history. Villanelle hasn’t told us yet if she thinks (or knows) that she is a psychopath, but it’s clear towards the end of last season that she no longer wants to be the person that they (meaning the twelve, Dasha, Konstantin, etc.) created. We see moments where she clearly has no remorse and clearly enjoys what she does, but then we have little moments sprinkled in between where she very obviously struggles, even if its short lived. And those moments are important. We have the moment where she struggles with the choice to shoot Konstantin, saying he is a good person, she thinks. This comes shortly after a conversation she had where Irina tells Villanelle she thinks she is a good person because she is sad, so we know she is thinking about it, we know the awareness is there, and it becomes more and more there as times goes on. I like to think of it in terms of having moments that are pure Villanelle (ie the way she killed Inga in the Russian prison), and then we have moments that are Oksana, vulnerable and emotional. Villanelle is a creation and a mask whereas oksana is the truth. Those moments are starting to really mean something. I'm not even going to start with her trip to find her family, that’s its own thing, but it's a Really Big Thing.

So. Villanelle is not a psychopath in the way that we currently understand and perceive them. Yes, she displays psychopathic traits, and yes, she absolutely has antisocial personality disorder. I read an article where the psychiatric consultant for the show (makes it pretty obvious how hard they worked to make Villanelle as realistic as possible) said that the Villanelle in Luke Jenning’s books scored a 32 on Hare’s psychiatric checklist, but I like to think (and I think a lot of people would agree) that number is a bit high, at least for Jodie’s Villanelle, maybe not even hitting 30 at all (close though, let’s be real lol). The max score is 40 which would be a fully blown primary psychopath. For reference, Ted Bundy scored 39. This checklist is flawed though, mostly created and based off the prison population. Which is why it isn’t used as a proper diagnostic tool. 32 is apparently extraordinarily high for a female (think Aileen Wuornos), which brings me to my next point which is that because it’s hard to measure a lot of the classic traits objectively, there is not a ton of solid data surrounding psychopathy, and even less of it is on female psychopaths. Like most things in life, psychopathy exists on a spectrum, there are levels and layers. It’s not black and white, there’s no definitive test (psychopathy isn’t even in the DSM-5 because as I said earlier it’s extremely hard to measure objectively) and it's important to distinguish between someone who exhibits psychopathic traits and someone who is actually an identifiable psychopath. Chances are high that someone you know displays at least one characteristic shared with psychopaths and this doesn’t make them one.

I think what’s important about this is that mental disorders (mental illness/personality disorders/etc.) of any kind are much more nuanced than a lot of people tend to think they are. That they exist less in black and white and more in shades of grey. Jodie Comer is absolutely remarkable for showcasing that through portraying the different layers of Villanelle. Her performance is a literal gift. We cannot keep thinking and acting like we know everything about how a person thinks, feels, and behaves based strictly and entirely on one label. The thing that has stuck out to me the most, the reason I decided to even write this bullshit babble, is that one of the most searched topics about the show is whether or not it’s realistic that Villanelle cries, and honestly how sad is that? That makes me sad for V. Is it more realistic for her to develop connections and cognitive empathy if she was made into a psychopath vs if she was born that way? Is there a legitimate difference between the two? And how do we even decide which one is applicable for someone? It’s important to add that antisocial personality disorder is not the same thing as psychopathy or sociopathy. You can have aspd and not be a psychopath. Research has shown that about only a third of those diagnosed with aspd would meet criteria to be considered a psychopath. Society is not doing a great job at getting people to understand this. But to be fair, understanding personality disorders specifically has been somewhat problematic, a lot of diagnostic confusion and overlap between disorders. A LOT of work needs to be done. But as far as portrayals go, society has strictly chosen to go the route of giving us psychopathic characters and having them be inherently violent, incapable of remorse, feelings, or change. Poverty of all emotions. Subhuman. They are made out to be so abnormal and unrelatable to the point where the character of Villanelle has sparked so much debate and fascination simply because she exists in a way that actually IS relatable...and layered and beautiful and thrilling. We thought she would be the bad guy and yet we root for her at every turn, we cry for her, we want good things for her! We see her darkness and without question or hesitation we forgive it. She makes us question what we’ve previously been shown. Questioning whether or not it’s realistic that she acts the way she does is less important than questioning our own personal assumptions and beliefs and where those come from. I think that’s awesome. Villanelle is truly a gift. She is hands down one of the most well written fictional characters, which is saying a lot considering when you put something, or someone, in a box it doesn’t leave tons of room for expansion. and I honestly don’t even really need to say this, but.. Jodie Comer.

#killing eve #villanelle #jodie comer #eve polastri #sandra oh #villaneve #feel free to rb #if you want #oksana astankova

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fromtheplanethexagon · 4 years ago

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the robot problem: a critical look at tobecky, 5 years late

hello wordgirl fandom i am back :) and i have a lot of thoughts that i never got around to expressing before i moved on from the show. so be aware that everything i'm saying is based on my experiences during the 2012-2016 era of the fandom & state of tumblr in general, and i am not familiar with more recent fan content.

it's been over five years since the show ended, and @ifbrd reminded me (along with some great analysis) that while tobecky was super popular since before the show technically started (thanks to the play date shorts), it's pretty unhealthy in a lot of ways that tend to be excused or flat out ignored in fanworks. i'd like to reflect on that a bit (a lot); specifically, how both the show and the fandom approached this enemies-to-lovers ship, and how easily this ship can slip into uncomfortable territory if we're careless about how we interpret the ship and create fan content of it.

i will admit, i'm mostly writing this as a response to past me and my old creations - though i moved on from the show as a whole years ago, i do like taking the time to reflect on old interests once in a while, and reevaluating my thoughts on them. and this ship is probably the biggest one that still lurks in the corners of my mind once in a while, so let's go.

cherish is the word: a short positive note before a much longer negative one

i wanted to start this essay off with some positivity, because i am going to be very negative after this. tobecky was, in some ways, cute. it's obvious from the very beginning that these two characters are on pretty equal ground, even if one of them isn't aware of it. and that's part of the fun - the irony of how unaware tobey is that his nemesis/crush/person that pretty much always wins against him is someone that he completely dismisses as incompetent. i want to point this out because honestly, in general i don't like enemies-to-lovers because a lot of them use a power imbalance within the dynamic, and i hate power imbalances, especially when it comes to actual life-or-death scenarios (at least, as much as cartoons can do that). in most episodes, becky is never actually forced to go along with his wishes. she's not held in a 'date' against her will, nor is she ever really outwitted by him. i bring this up because there is one huge, uncomfortable exception, which i will get to later.

another big plus to the ship is the fact that they just... get along? even when fighting? of course we get brief moments where they just hang out and talk about paintings or whatever, but i'm talking about how much they get each other, even if they don't realize it. like the word banter, for example. been there since day one. becky loves words, and while most other people in her life don't really care (ranging from 'eh, that's cool i guess' to her brother calling it annoying), tobey gives her a chance to show off and thus treats her as a worthy adversary as herself, not because of her more generic superpowers - something that we've seen in canon that she feels self-conscious about (see: her motivation in patch game). one of the less noticed examples, to me, is "it's your party and i'll cry if I want to", because it's just - okay. they both are excluded from a social event, and while it's obvious that tobey deals with it by destroying the city, it's also pretty obvious that becky also deals with her frustration by fighting in that battle. like, yes, realistically it's just objectively bad that he's destroying buildings. but they're also providing each other with a way to work through their frustrations, first by fighting and then by talking things out, and finally by hanging out together instead of dwelling on being excluded from the party.

so it makes a lot of sense to me that many tobecky fans gravitated towards writing far-in-the-future fic, usually by implying that some growth had taken place before starting to write the ship. (there are, as far as i'm aware, 2... maybe 3 exceptions, that take the time to attempt a real redemption for him, at least when i left the fandom.) because if you take away his worst moments, either by reasoning out that he was 10 years old and a mess, or that he was a cartoon character in a cartoon world where everyone's actions are over-the-top, or by just flat-out pretending that certain episodes never happened, there's some pretty solid ground to start a ship on.

go gadget go: we all do not see it, we simply close our eyes (review of canon)

when the show began, i was the same age as the characters. a lot of other people were, too - at least in my cohort of the fandom. i think it's pretty safe to say that many of us have fond memories of the show's earlier seasons, and held on to that interest as we got older, for whatever reasons. so like, not to be all 'as an OG fan...', but i remember seeing the shorts air for the first time in 2006. i have a diary entry in july of 2009 about how i, a 12yo with no concept of the idea of 'shipping', was disappointed in the new tobey episode because i wanted more tobecky interactions. (that was robo-camping, btw, lol.) and so i remember how exciting their rivalry felt, watching them as someone literally their exact same age, and then watching that again as a nostalgic 17yo, and then uh... growing up, to put it frankly, and realizing just how unhealthy most of their interactions were.

okay what i meant to say was, this section is an overview of the relationship's canon portrayal throughout the years.

first, we have early tobecky: this includes the shorts and the first few seasons. this is their classic relationship: he likes her and takes robots on rampages to get her attention, she majorly disapproves and has fun taking him down. we've all seen the show, you know what i'm talking about. his backhanded ways of trying to find out her identity often feature prominently in the episodes, which - sigh, i've mentioned this whole issue before, but it's kind of a grey area in the whole uncomfortable-factor thing, because while trying to find out her identity is VERY invasive, it's something that like... everyone in the show tries to do, even her canon crush (scoops). on the one hand, it's really not a great look, but on the other hand, this is a cartoon meant to parody a genre in which this trope is extremely common. so i just wanna say that i have Issues and Thoughts on this aspect of their relationship, but there are other things i find more important to discuss here.

second, we have late tobecky: this is seasons 7-8. this is... a very strange and huge shift from the previous dynamic, though it's not necessarily obvious. what i mean by that is that for some reason, the show writers made it so that half of tobey’s rampages have nothing to do with his crush on wordgirl, even though that used to be the sole reason for his villainy. seriously. we have the birthday episode, where he's upset because he feels left out; wg vs tobey vs the dentist, where he's mad that he has a cavity; and trustworthy tobey, where his robot goes on a rampage... after becky accidentally makes it malfunction. the two outliers are ‘guess who’s coming to thanksgiving dinner’ and ‘patch game’, but they still differ from previous seasons because 1) his destruction is isolated to a forest far away from the city, and 2) his motive is still to impress wordgirl, but his methods are relatively tame. also he completely gives up on the secret identity thing??? i may have missed some things but i think he straight up tells her 'yeah there's no way you're wordgirl, lol' and the subject is just dropped for the rest of the show.

i also want to include 'the robot problem' here, because it's one of two season 6 tobey episodes, and follows the 'doesn't destroy buildings to get her attention' pattern: in fact, he teams up with her to try and stop someone else from going on a rampage (even if his reasons are selfish, lol).

and finally. the other season 6 episode. we have go gadget go, the bane of my time spent in the fandom. because GGG is the single episode where tobey truly manages to take away her autonomy, and proceeds to abuse that power for an extended period of time, for his own amusement. it's bad. it's Very Bad. put in the context that it's a white boy doing this to an (ambiguously) brown girl, it's REALLY REALLY BAD. and the more i look back on it, tbh, the more weirded out i am that the show not only made it seem like she wasn't affected at all within the episode, it just... forgot about it (which is not unusual for shows and especially children’s shows, but WG does make some efforts to either retain continuity or create canon reasons for why things are forgotten about). it's the kind of thing that you can't excuse and honestly you can't redeem (like at this point, you gotta ask yourself why you're spending so much effort trying to redeem this guy when becky has several other possible ships that are nowhere near this unhealthy - violet, scoops, honestly even victoria if you want another hero/villain ship, my absolute fave rarepair rose, etc).

so if you want to still ship it you have to just pretend that it never happened. (i remember trying for weeks to write something exploring the aftermath of this episode, to try and make myself feel better about it, but the more i wrote the more i realized just how traumatic this event should've been, so i eventually just dropped it.) and i brought up my own timeline of experiences earlier to point out that this episode aired eight whole years after the show started. which means that when i saw it, even though i was a huge stickler for canon at the time, i'd built up my own idea of the show and characters strongly enough to go 'yeah, no, this episode sucks and i am going to pretend that it doesn't exist'. and i think a lot of other people did too, because i really saw like... no one mention it, ever, except for some rogue fanfics over on ff dot net that already liked dynamics like that.

because here's the thing, and i don't know if people nowadays are aware of it? but i'm 80% sure (cannot find a source, so the other 20% is that it was just a rumor) that the show was originally supposed to end after season 6. and even if it's a rumor, it makes a ton of sense, because we get 1) an 'ending' to tobecky, which is a bad one, 2) a permanent wordgirl identity reveal that significantly changes one of the major dynamics in the show, 3) an episode where TJ gets to work with wordgirl and get a nice potential ending for their sibling dynamic, 4) an episode where we see Two-Brains explore life without his henchmen... the list goes on, and idk how many of these are just major stretches. but the point is. if the show had ended there, that would've been a pretty solid ending for many things, including their relationship: aka, it would prove that it was only ever heading somewhere bad, and when tobey finally has his moment of triumph, he is truly evil about it. and this provides us fans who HATE go gadget go with an easy reason to dismiss it - we can say that it was an attempt to conclude things in a way that wouldn't have happened if the writers had known they'd get more time. but despite that... it is still a canon episode.

it is odd to me how dramatically the dynamic shifts after that, though, because we seriously go from 'worst case ever, tobecky is toxic, your ship is dead' to 'no actually they get along and hang out and get ice cream together and tobey isn't even pressuring her into it, she's happy to go along with it :)' like, immediately. i never knew much about the show writers, so i don't know if the writers changed in between these seasons, but i would absolutely not be surprised if they did.

the earlier episodes are definitely problematic as well (though they pale in comparison to GGG) but i think everyone who ships it is aware considering that tobey is, yknow, a villain. from memory, he destroys buildings to get her attention, lies to her about the level of danger that people are in to trick her into spending more time with him, blackmails her into reading his poetry, and he creates a robot based on her that’s supposed to be devoted to him (but of course, all of these things backfire). not great stuff of course, but like... he’s a villain, that’s the point of his character. and considering that he’s a child these are things that can be redeemed, if done thoughtfully.

anyway, to sum up this section, the show starts off with a pretty standard 'enemies with an unrequited crush' setup, takes a really dark turn for a single episode, and then for the rest of the show takes their dynamic in a direction that makes it much, much easier to ship. as long as you ignore a lot of previous content.

wordbot: where's becky's autonomy in all of this? (misogyny)

we've finally gotten to the fandom. i recognize that a lot of this is going to come across as hypocritical considering how active i used to be re: this ship, but like... i'm a very different person now. anyway. disclaimer i guess - i don't write this to accuse all tobecky shippers of being like this - i know a lot of us aren't/weren't! but boy do i have things to point out, so without further ado:

it is very hard to ship this without allowing some bit of misogyny to slip into it. very, very hard. the entire premise of the ship involves a girl falling in love with a boy that repeatedly pressures her to date him via threats to the safety of herself and people she cares about, which... it's 2020, i shouldn't have to explain why that's terrible & a terrible example to set for children (which is why i am glad they never made it canon, tbh). best-case fan content has tobey stop pressuring her and start working to redeem himself out of an actual change of heart, which leads to becky seeing him in a new light. worst-case fan content treats his incessant pressuring and sometimes outright threats as something romantic - and even worse, romantic to the point where he deserves her attention and love as a reward for not giving up or whatever. i did see this pretty frequently for a while, especially in the earlier 2010s (didn't read much, Not My Thing At All), but i don't feel like going into detail here because of how obviously problematic it is. one medium (but still bad) case is where the fan content makes him start his redemption, but treats her liking him back as a reward for not knocking buildings over anymore. another not great case is where she tries to fix him with her love, which is a very common and very dangerous romantic trope. both are just... so incredibly unfair to her.

in content where she tries to 'fix him'... yeah i feel like it's really obvious how misogynistic that is. girls and women should not feel responsible for the evil actions of men, plain and simple. idk what else to say here i just really hate that trope and hated it back then and it just sucks! so can we not do that anymore, thanks.

in content that treats her like a reward for good behavior, there really isn't much of an explanation for what she sees in him. if she just goes 'oh wow, you're good now, i am going to fall in love with you for it' the whole thing falls flat because it makes NO sense whatsoever. we get to hear so much about tobey and his feelings and why he likes her and how he feels about it, but where is that energy for becky? why does she choose to trust him, to spend time around him, what does she enjoy about his presence? where is her getting over scoops in the process of falling for tobey? where is her telling her friends about this, confiding in them, asking them for advice? where is her choice in the matter?

win a day with wordgirl: do you guys even like becky or do you just like the idea of her (misogyny... 2!)

it was pretty standard for all fandoms the early-mid 2010s, but that's still not a good excuse for why so many tobecky fanfictions centered specifically around tobey's feelings while refusing to give becky the same level of empathy and nuance. it is true that to ship them comfortably you have to redeem him to some degree, which means spending time figuring him out and trying to find ways to pull him to the light without feeling super OOC. but ships take two people??? and there was so much potential for fanfics to explore becky's complex feelings on the matter - because she is! complex! she's heroic and kind but she's petty and has a competitive streak, she easily befriends villains but also doesn't trust them and doesn't believe they can ever really change, she's the savior of an entire planet but has feelings of inadequacy as her civilian identity and struggles with feeling like she can be successful without superpowers, she's great at the straightforward meanings and uses of words and loves reading but struggles to write passages that aren't dry as hell, it can be easily headcannoned that she's neurodivergent (special interests, issues with fitting in with her peers, taking things very literally, etc)... seriously there is SO MUCH to explore about her character, and a lot of it comes into play when you add tobey into the mix (literally ALL of the things i mentioned are explored at some point using tobey as a parallel or foil), but i rarely saw fanfiction that explored her thoughts on things further than 'he's evil but... maybe good?' or 'he's evil but... i kind of like him anyway?'.

if you want her to fall for him while being a villain, explore it!! why does she go against her morals? does she lie to herself about it to feel better? does she feel like she has to 'fix him' as part of her superhero duties to the city, and if so, how does that affect her as she tries and fails to help him? does she fall for him when she believes that he's turning good, only to feel betrayed when he starts acting worse because he feels like he can get away with it? it's such a shame that fanworks spend so little time even considering these questions, and it is absolutely a product of how deeply misogyny is/was baked into how we approach media (especially back then).

tobey goes good: but wait, i thought this show was progressive (a conclusion, i guess)

ifbrd wrote a great meta recently about how the show is a bit misogynist, despite being progressive in several ways. honestly i don't have much to add, but i'd really recommend reading through this; it makes a lot of great observations about the ways that male and female characters are presented differently through the show

i have little to add, so i'd just like to conclude with a reflection on the ship from my current viewpoint. i do think part of the reason so many of us latched onto the ship, despite how obviously problematic it was, is that the show treats a lot of things that would be serious in real life as normal or even comedic - which is fine lol, i'm not going to pretend that it's not a show for little kids, so they have to keep the tone light.

but if we, as teens/adults, decide to engage with this content in a more realistic manner, we have to be prepared to confront how messed up so many of the things going on really are. and if you still want to ship it, there's nothing inherently wrong with that! there's a lot of interesting things to explore in this ship, no matter what stage of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers you write them at, and it can be really helpful to have a space where you can explore a dynamic such as this in fiction. (speaking from experience here tbh, writing some fic for them helped me deal with complicated feelings about some ex-longtime friends.)

so to write this ship at all means that there are canon issues that you need to deal with if you want to have them end up in a healthy relationship in any manner that makes sense (unless you create an AU where none of that is applicable, which, power to you then). and i’m not saying ‘write them with a healthy endgame or you’re Bad’, not at all lol. but at least please, please take a step back once in a while to examine the dynamic that you’re writing, and please be careful about whether you mean to be romanticizing whatever behaviors you end up portraying as good.

#wordgirl #becky botsford #tobey mccallister #tobecky #tobecky critical #has anyone ever used that tag before LMAO #anyway: i may come back and reword the ending because i am not totally happy with it #but wow this is so many words. so many. send help

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y0d00p · 1 year ago

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this is really unfortunate. i honestly thought my experience with them was an outlier. i'm not reblogging this as a warning, kirbypurrs is not a dangerous person, my addition is just too long for a reply. i haven't read anything purrs has written/posted because i do not care to keep up with them and skirt around the block, this is purely about my personal experience with them in the past.

i made a kirby server early 2020 2022 and they were one of the first people i invited, i also offered them a mod position early on because i considered them a friendly acquaintance and thought they could help vet people to invite because me and the other mods weren't familiar with the tumblr community, but they were (i have a friend that has dealt with a lot of harrassment/stalking + the server was strictly 18+ so vetting was important to me).

through the entire server's run we thankfully never had any problems with them, it wasn't until they got tired of me (us?). at some point i unfollowed their (and others') main for ~mental health~ reasons, quickly after they soft blocked me from their other accounts. i wanted to make sure things were ok so i asked and they said they wanted to keep those for close friends (which is fair!) but also they did have a lot to say to me and would get back to me.

you can see in this post what they wrote to me and my response to it at the time

the gist of it is they had huge issues with various facets of me (and to a lesser extent, my friends) including a few wildly off base assumptions about me. ftr, the comments about my aggressive nature were totally valid, it's something i've been working on for a long time and this did its part to help. the rest of it was mostly them (wrongly) assuming my thoughts/feelings/intentions and judging me based on those.

no point before this did they ever show indication they had such huge problems with me (that i noticed at least), this literally came out of nowhere for me. it seems they had no intention whatsoever to discuss or try to remedy this, they never responded to me and never even gave any indication they read my response despite my requesting it, and not long after this they blocked me and my partner on everything.

neither of us have had any contact since. then, this last year, they made a document (included in a collection of other documents about someone else, this is not about them) accusing myself and my partner of high hostility toward them/their friend and about others in my server. my partner covered this in the post linked above.

purrs' document about us was eventually deleted at some point after my partner's post, but there was never any acknowledgment of wrongdoing whatsoever, not in public, no private apology to either of us, nothing. just quietly deleted because they supposedly "didn't want to be involved" anymore.

i'm very lucky to not have been as greatly affected by this as others, but i was still hurt. as much as i took their criticisms to heart, it hurt a lot to have never been given a chance to do better before it was too late, and it hurt to be accused of such unkindness and thoughtlessness.

About Kirbypurrs:

Recently, they made a post talking about a targeted smear campaign against them. As someone who used to be a close friend of theirs, I wanted to share my experiences.

On the surface they're certainly charismatic and easy to talk to, but they've never been able to hold down any relationship deeper than that due to their own faults. In all the time I've known them personally, they've shown to be nothing but an incredibly self-absorbed, toxic, and manipulative person who is unable to accept fault or responsibility for a situation they caused or got wrapped into of their own volition. Time and time again I've given them chances and chances and tried to reach out to them and be understanding and thought the best of them only to be let down by them as a friend and told, actually, I'm the problem, no matter what that situation is. If you try to come up to them about a concern, or tell them you they shouldn't do whatever thing, they will apologize to your face, but in reality, they'll always claim it was a You problem. For example, one time Purrs broke a preestablished rule of our friend group chat. We had that rule written down and put in pins, even. When I told them to stop, they made it out to be me "not letting them speak when something bad happened to them again" and that I was being mean to them by telling them to stop in the first place. This is the kind of person Purrs is. They never apologized about their actions and still think that I wronged them to this day.

Purrs claims that no one has ever come up to them telling them what the issue is. This is BLATANTLY untrue. It is a long, long pattern spanning many years with them that they will avoid confrontation at any costs, even if that confrontation is as simple as a "hey, could you not do this?". They have ghosted people for coming up to them about concerns, and will often dodge around the concern in the first place. Purrs if you're reading this, I have personally tried to reach out to you about concerns only for you to say "I would tell you if I had a problem with you" and then go to the extent of leaving voice chats when I join, softblocking me from your priv, and actively avoiding me wherever I am, without warning or explanation, all for having the audacity to ask you if there was an issue in the first place. And I am not the first person you have done this to, by far. I have personally witnessed you do this to another person not including me, just in the slightly more than a year we were friends. I have spoken to people who were friends with you years before I was friends with you who had the same experience. You have told us stories of how "overbearing" and "clingy" others have been in the past for daring to constantly ask if you had an issue with them due to your poor treatment of them. And despite your claimed "I would tell you if I had a problem with you" attitude, I personally have seen you actively avoid Another two people when they tried to be friendly with you, only for you to shittalk them to absolute hell in our friend group chat about things they could never have known were rubbing you the wrong way, or about things that were, quite frankly, stupid of you to make their fault anyways. Remember that time you got mad at someone because their headcanons were getting more attention than yours? Remember that time you hated someone's guts and ranted about them on multiple occasions in our group chat because you were upset they didn't use tone tags, and then when I said "You should tell them you need tone tags" you got pissed at me instead for not letting you vent? Good times /s

Purrs does not care about fixing problems any problems they cause. They are one of the most hypocritical people I have ever known. If you ever try to act like everything is anything but rainbows and sunshine, they will distance yourself from you and shittalk you behind your back before you even realize. They are the one that will make all these false and exaggerated claims about others. I have witnessed it again and again over situations I was there for, even. Again Purrs, if you are reading this, despite what you think and what you keep telling people, I'm not the reason this supposed smear campaign of yours has come up again. Everyone who speaks ill of you does so because of their own experiences with you. Everyone who I have spoken to about you did not have their opinion changed because of me; those were always their experiences from the start. I just made them realize that this has always been a pattern with you. I'm not going to say that I have never been in the wrong ever, and there are times I genuinely believe you've been unfairly treated and gotten the short end of the stick, but overall in this situation, I know that I am in the right due to the sheer amount of people you've fucked over the exact same way you have me. You are a shitty friend and a shitty person. I cannot express the countless amount of people you have fucked up badly by betraying our trust. It would do everyone well to stay away from you.

To anyone else who has had bad experiences with Purrs, I encourage you to state them on my post. Their behavior has always been a trend, but for the most part, everyone affected has been courteous enough to keep it in the private space. I am done with them playing the victim and I am done with others being hurt by them.

#negative

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maijily · 4 years ago

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INTRAAAASSSSSS RELEASE NOTES

Heya Tumblr. How have you been? ;)

It’s time for the Intracodes to be announced~~ But this post is super long so don’t continue unless you want 289347329 years of text

You’ve been warned

GUESS WHAT THE HIATUS IS OVER!!! ...Kinda. There’s still a few things left to do before DC, Omission, and Tumblr can come back to life, but trust that things are moving and it’s only a matter of time before they all start posting again.

BUT FOR NOW, we have intras. I hope you haven’t forgotten about them-- Intra submissions started a few months ago, where anyone could submit an OC who would end up being canon in the world of DC, either in the current lore or a future comic! ARA’s an example of a submission who ended up in DC’s hiatus chapters as a healer outcode, and if you submitted, they’ll show up in one way or another too, some having to do more with the plot than others.

So there were a TON of submissions and only FOUR of them could become intracodes (since intras are ridiculously rare and powerful and all). The REST are either basecodes, outcodes, or outliers, and they’ll all show up in one way or another as interactable characters later on.

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Due to lore secrets, I can’t tell you what your characters will be and what they’ll do. Instead, you’ll know the code type, code role, status, alignment, and power level of each. (Keeping the creators secret for privacy reasons~)

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IF YOU SUBMITTED A CHARACTER, PLEASE please PLEASE keep the following in mind:

((Your submission probably contains secrets to the character, either in backstory, traits, secret intentions, etc. The character belongs to both you and DC, and there may be some traits about your character that the audience doesn’t know. (say your character pretends to be a good guy but is secretly evil). When they show up, it’d be great for no spoilers on your end as well as mine. We’re both sharing a piece of canon here!))

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OK, so now some info before the submissions are released:

Your character is either a basecode, outcode, outlier, or intracode. (this is also in order from least to most powerful).

✦Basecode: Like SK or Cloud. Stuck in a void, their story has been discarded, and they are alone.

✦Outcode: They’ve escaped their void/been rescued, and are living in the wild land of the Interface. They are either living in an outcode community, leading an outcode community, or wandering the interface independently.

✦Outlier: Rare, powerful, and usually feared. Contain powers that outcodes can’t replicate and are often not accepted by the rest of the Interface.

✦Intracode: Gods of the Interface. Live in pain and extreme power. Nearly impossible to kill, and highly destructive and deadly if their power is not kept under control. There are 6 in existence including Digi.

Alright. Reveal time, are you ready?

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THE INTRACODES:

(Gods of the interface. Highly destructive and deadly.)

Name: Cancor Spiderwick Code type: Intracode Status: Hidden Alignment: True Neutral

Power level: 11/10

Name: Rollo Code type: Intracode Code Role: Outsider/Wanderer Status: Free Alignment: ???

Power level: 11/10

Name: Delta Code type: Intracode Code Role: N/A Status: Void-bound Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Power level: 11/10

Name: Millie Code type: Intracode Code Role: Outsider Status: Free Alignment: Chaotic good

Power level: 11/10

Clap it up for the intracodes 👏 👏 👏 We have two chaotic evils (including Digi) so it’ll be a fun ride ;w;

And for the other submissions~~

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BASECODES

(Trapped in their void. They are alone.)

Name: Angel Code type: Basecode Code Role: Isolated Status: Void-Bound Alignment: True Neutral

Power level: 5/10

Name: Ceryk Ardor Code type: Basecode Code Role: Isolated Status: Void-Bound Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Power level: 5/10

Name: Rox Code type: Basecode Code Role: Isolated Status: Void-Bound Alignment: True Neutral

Power level: 5/10

Name: Sophie Code type: Basecode Code Role: Isolated Status: Void-Bound Alignment: Neutral Good

Power level: 5/10

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OUTCODES

(Escaped their void, is living in the wild lands of the Interface.)

Name: Ara Code type: Outcode Code Role: Damage Control Status: Free/Famous Alignment: Chaotic good

Power level: 7/10

Name: Badru Code type: Outcode Code Role: Sector 1, Second in Command Status: Free/Famous Alignment: Chaotic good

Power level: 8/10

Name: Edgeblade Rainbow Code type: Outcode Code Role: Outsider Status: Hidden Alignment: (Is Chaotic Chaotic an alignment)

Power level: 6/10

Name: Emilia Code type: Outcode Code Role: Undercover Status: Hidden Alignment: Chaotic good

Power level: 6/10

Name: Ivan Code type: Outcode Code Role: Leader of Sector 3 Status: Free/Famous Alignment: Lawful Good

Power level: 7/10

Name: Jack Servini Code type: Outcode Code Role: Outsider Status: Hidden Alignment: True neutral

Power level: 6/10

Name: Kirai Code type: Outcode Code Role: Outsider/Wanderer Status: Hidden Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Power level: ???

Name: Liva Code type: Outcode Code Role: Sector 2, Second in Command Status: Free/Famous Alignment: Neutral Good

Power level: 8/10

Name: Luna Code type: Outcode Code Role: Exiled/Outsider Status: Hidden Alignment: Neutral Evil

Power level: ???

Name: Tank Code type: Outcode Code Role: Undercover Status: Free Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Power level: 6/10

Name: The Storyteller Code type: Outcode Code Role: N/A Status: Hidden Alignment: True Neutral

Power level: 10/10

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OUTLIERS

(Rare, powerful, feared. Usually not accepted by others.)

Name: Neri, Leandro Code type: Outliers Code Role: Assassins (Sector 2) Status: Free Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Power level: 9/10

Name: Storm Lycan Code type: Outlier Code Role: Leader of Sector 1 Status: Free Alignment: (Evil Evil should be an alignment)

Power level: 9/10

Name: Liam Code type: Outlier Code Role: Undercover Status: ??? Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Power level: (Varies from 5/10-10/10)

Name: Tacir Code type: Outlier Code Role: Outsider/Famous Status: Hidden Alignment: Neutral Good

Power level: 10/10

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OTHER

(Too lore heavy to reveal)

Name: Lyssa Code type: ??? Code Role: ??? Status: Free/??? Alignment: ???

Power level: ???

Name: Tao Lycaon Code type: ??? Code Role: Exiled/??? Status: Free/??? Alignment: Neutral evil

Power level: ???

Name: “The Sailor” Code type: ??? Code Role: Famous/??? Status: ??? Alignment: (Varies from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Evil)

Power level: ???

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WAIT DID YOU THINK WE’RE DONE!??!?! Nope time for questions for those who submitted.

Q/A:

✦What does the status mean for the character?:

Free = They can roam the interface as they please.

Hidden = They are running/hiding from someone/something.

Void-Bound = Accounts mostly for basecodes. They’re trapped in a void.

✦What does the code role mean for the character?:

Undercover = Likely spies/assassins. They are pretending to be something that they aren’t.

Exiled = They were banished from a community they were previously in.

Outsider = They are outside of the main communities of the Interface and live independently.

Wanderer = They don’t have a set home and travel/explore the Interface.

Isolated = Accounts mostly for basecodes. They are secluded from all and can’t escape.

Leader/Second command of [insert Sector] = Has a leadership position in Sector 1-3, all outcode communities.

Famous = They are of high power/influence, known by all.

N/A = None of the above/probably a secret honestly

✦How much is planned about my character?: It’s a little different for each, as some are more developed for the plot than others. But for the most part, all of them currently have a set DC backstory, morals, and role to play in the overall storyline. They’re all included and have relationships with the new main character and each other.

✦This is great and all, but when can I see my character?: I... I really don’t know yet!! There will be many comics following DC, all interactive and character-based. Your submission will be included in one way or another, either as a main character, antagonist, or side character. Those stories just aren’t planned out yet, but I promise your character is there.

✦Yeah, but how long will it take for me to see them in-comic?: That... Depends entirely on how long it takes to make the new comics and actually implement your character. It won’t be a matter of years, but there might have to be some patience involved with how long it takes to make these things.

✦Can my character die or kill other characters?: Yep! None of them are dead yet, but none of you have plot immunity. None. And some of you are all chaotic evil assassins, so just... Keep that in mind.

✦Can I still change my character/request changes?: Yes. If you’re truly unhappy with how your character looks right now or later on, please tell me and I’ll try to change things. They belong to both of us and you will always have a say in what happens to them.

✦Am I being credited?: Absolutely. Either in the credits at the end, description, and/or conversation with the next audience, you’ll be credited for your character all the way.

✦This looks cool, can I submit a character now?: Depends. Tell me your plans and I’ll see if I can fit them in. If not, you’ll have to accept no for an answer. I want to accept characters all the time because of how flexible DC is but there’s a lot of complications involved.

✦This is really long can I stop reading now?: YES. YOU READ THROUGH IT ALL. CONGRATS.

✦I made a submission but it isn’t on here...: WAIT WHAT???? If you made and sent a submission in which I gave you a response and it’s NOT on here, PLEASE tell me immediately through Tumblr/Discord DMs and I will drop everything to get them and apologize for 55 spam messages

I can’t stress to you enough how amazing this was or how brilliant you all are at character creation. Some of you have absolutely incredible ideas and made some golden characters, all of which seriously helped out DC and the cast for future comics. You’re all endlessly talented and it was an honor getting to work with you and add your ideas to this project!! Thank you for making this successful and giving it a chance. I’ll see you soon.

#make an intra #thank you.

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keets-writing-corner · 4 years ago

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Analysis on a scene from RWBY

Been a while since I’ve done any meta, and even longer since I’ve done meta just for me and not for a class. I’ve been on a RWBY kick recently, and I’m once again obsessed with Qrow Branwan and thought I’d do a little analysis from Volume 6. Of course there will be spoilers for volume 6 but also a little for volume 7, so I’m gonna put a cut

So I’d like to talk about the scene where Qrow’s trust in Ozpin is completely shattered. It’s quite famously memed. You know the one. (Quick Disclaimer, this is not meant to be a dunk on Ozpin, who’s one of my favorite characters, this is just an analysis on Qrow’s POV)

Jinn pops out being all naked

And Qrow’s all AVERT EYES

You know the moment. The whole “oh haha the local gay-leaning Bi-man got enough tiddie for a lifetime now” Or maybe it’s just respecting Jinn’s privacy. Whatever, but in actuality this little moment is less about Jinn herself, and more about Qrow’s entire image and pedestal of Ozpin is being shattered into pieces.

Let’s look at how much Ozpin really means to Qrow. We all heard Qrow’s little speech at the end of V6E3. How Ozpin was the only one who actually wanted Qrow’s help, trusted him with things, help and things that people likely spent Qrow’s entire life pushing him away from, in addition to making likely more than one scathing comment. Sure, in Volume 4, Jaune might’ve been a bit over emotional at the time, but the first thing he says when Qrow explains his semblence is to passive-aggressively MOCK him, and Qrow just bows down his head and takes it. This is likely something Qrow has heard his entire life and believes about himself. Aka the whole, the only thing he’s good for is for making everything worse. So of course it would make sense that when Ozpin comes knocking at the door, aka the prodigious cute headmaster of beacon academy, and then tells Qrow he can be MORE than just his semblence, MORE than just bad luck for others, that he can actually HELP with Oz’s cause, that Ozpin trusts him, more than other people around him, it’s small wonder Qrow hyper fixates his loyalty on Ozpin, and raises him on a pedestal. Qrow is aware that Ozpin keeps secrets, Qrow even helps him keep those secrets hidden and justifies Ozpin’s decisions, but he never once thought that Ozpin would hide something from him. No not him. Ozpin hides things from others sure, but not Qrow, right? Ozpin trusts Qrow. Ozpin is the only person who completely and whole heartedly trusts Qrow in a way no one ever has before.

Qrow’s loyalty to Ozpin is so great, that our first introduction to Qrow can arguably be considered an outlier in his usual behavior. Most of the time, Qrow has repeatedly proven himself to be chill, intelligent, patient, and someone who at all times tries to de-escalate the situation, knowing that agitation will attract more grimm. When we meet Qrow? What’s the first thing he does? Get angry-drunk waiting for Winter’s ship to show up, provokes her into starting a fight with him to make her, Atlas and Ironwood look bad, and then proceeds to sass, snark, and call out the ever living hell out of Ironwood. All of this because he was thoroughly pissed off at Ironwood disrespecting Ozpin’s trust. Something Qrow knows Ozpin does not give easily, and something Qrow considers sacred. Qrow only ever shows his brash, impulsive and aggressive side to him when someone is directly challenging Ozpin. Another great example being back in Volume 5, when Qrow is upset at Lionheart for not following Ozpin’s orders and not being even remotely helpful to Ozpin’s cause.

Aka, this man who will take jabs at his insecurities lying down, and tries to de-escalate situations, will straight up pick fights and throw hands with anyone who dares challenge Ozpin. The conversation between Qrow and Raven back in Volume 4 also implies that this loyalty to Ozpin could have been the very thing that caused him to completely abandon his family in the bandit tribe (along of course, with a shiny new and better set of morals). Qrow has demonstrated remarkable loyalty towards his new family in Tai, Yang and Ruby, and despite his disagreements with Raven, and disapproval at her life choices, he still hangs onto loyalty to her to a degree. Qrow is easily one of the most loyal people on RWBY, and Ozpin trusting him managed to get him to change his tune about his origins with the bandit tribe and become disloyal to them. That is how much Ozpin means to Qrow. That is how large the pedestal Qrow built for Ozpin is. I’m not going to get into shipping here, and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if it’s platonic, romantic or just idolization, Qrow seriously loves Ozpin, just as much as he loves his nieces and his family.

Which leads me back to Qrow getting his loyalty to Ozpin shattered in Volume 6.

Qrow’s doubts about Ozpin started far earlier than that single moment with Jinn. It starts back on the train when Oz reveals that the grimm are attracted to the lamp. Qrow’s reaction is for the most part innocent, and he might be used to Ozpin revealing information on a strict need to know basis only. Still the surprise on his face that Ozpin withheld information from him is undeniable.

His initial reaction is to check in and confirm with Ozpin. While he is gentle, there is a bit of reproach to his tone when he says “Are you serious?” He is clearly unhappy in this moment. It’s important to note that Qrow also crosses his arms here, and remains with his arms crossed for the rest of the scene. Crossed arms can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. Oftentimes it’s a sign of a person become defensive, either by physically closing themself off to others, or because they’re suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

Of course, he doesn’t get much time to dwell on this at the time because Ruby rightfully points out “HEY, WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING RIGHT NOW, WORRY ABOUT THIS LATER”. This is mostly aimed at the others, who were more vocally upset about Ozpin withholding information, but Qrow remains cross armed in the background.

Qrow is just as unhappy at this as the others.

Of course, later is when things start getting real for our poor bird man. After everyone’s crashed, we’re shown flashbacks of Ozpin explaining the relic of knowledge to the group and by extension Qrow, showing us exactly what Ozpin told them, including but not limited to what the lamp does (not how it works), and that it has no more questions left to answer currently (which we later learn to be a big fat lie on Ozpin’s behalf, like an actual straight up lie). First thing Yang does is complain about their situation, to which Qrow’s immediate response is to tell her to knock it off because they don’t want to attract more grimm, aka trying to deescalate the situation so that they can focus on the least amount of problems as possible.

Of course, Blake points out that that might not even be relevant since apparently they’ve been attracting grimm that entire time due to the relic’s presence. At this point everyone agrees. We don’t see Qrow’s reaction to this, but he doesn’t vocally disagree with it either.

This might be a good place to remember that Raven encouraged Yang to not take anything Ozpin said at face value and to question him constantly. Which she absolutely does. It should be important to note that nothing Ozpin told her when she was questioning him for the first time back in volume 5, surprised Qrow. Qrow already knew everything, or at the very least, he thought he already knew everything, which further reinforced to him that Qrow was the person Ozpin told everything, and never lied to. He never had any reason to doubt Ozpin before Yang started bringing these things up on the train and he realized that Ozpin maybe was not being entirely honest with Qrow too.

While the others are confronting Ozpin after the crash, Qrow is pretty silent, but he can be seen reacting in the background.

He’s staring at the ground, listening to what the others are saying, probably thinking about it too, and then he looks at Oscar, wanting Ozpin to explain himself. Once again, Qrow is not jumping to Ozpin’s defense. Hands on hips also has a myriad of meanings in the world of body language, but it’s especially notable for when a person is getting ready to be assertive, aka preparing for some action. I don’t know for sure what Qrow was subconsciously preparing himself for, maybe he didn’t know himself, but he could feel a confrontation coming in which he’d have to pick a side.

While the team are questioning Ozpin at this time, Ozpin is openly and freely admitting to a few of his lies, and explaining his reasonings behind him, both to the ones the team knew about, and the ones that they had only just discovered. Qrow is still only listening quietly, not really taking any sides yet, but judging by his reactions to the conversation, he’s not liking what’s happening.

He seems almost in disbelief, and as if he’s currently unsure of who it is he’s supposed to listen to, or who he’s supposed to be defending right now. He’s not defending the girls, but he’s most definitely not defending Ozpin either (something we’ve seen he’ll easily go up in arms to do). By this point, his loyalty to Ozpin isn’t completely shattered, but it’s in jeopardy. He doesn’t know what he should do. These girls aren’t Ozpin, they haven’t trusted him the way Ozpin has, they haven’t told him he can be more than just his semblence the way Ozpin has, they haven’t told him that he can do good in the world despite of the entirety of his life and what other people have told him. But Ozpin is admitting to lying, coldly justifying his own reasons, and while Qrow was aware of many of these lies and in on them, he’s starting to see some flaws in that reasoning.

Then of course Ozpin gets distracted at the absence of the relic which is when poop REALLY hits the fan. He had just openly admitted to additionally having even more secrets, and now didn’t want anyone to hold the lamp, which as the others point out, is awfully suspicious if it’s supposedly useless at this time, and how it technically doesn’t matter who carries it since they’re all trustworthy, right?

Then cute boy Oscar starts taking control of Ozpin from the inside, realizing Ozpin is trying to keep even more secrets from the others. This is the first time Qrow says anything in all of this and it’s just a single questioning, “Oz?”

He still doesn’t seem particularly happy at how this conversation is going down, and he also hasn’t picked a side yet. He saw a man he was intensely loyal to suddenly act strangely and be under stress. He’s never seen an Ozpin host fight Ozpin before. Despite voicing his concern for Ozpin, he’s clearly still trying to process everything that’s happening, given that his eyes don’t stay solely focused on Ozpin and drift a little before he refocuses back to the moment.

Then Oscar reveals that to get the lamp to work you have to say Jinn’s name. Qrow did not know this, he seems as puzzled as everyone else when Oscar tells Ruby to say Jinn’s name.

And again, he’s waiting and watching quietly. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what side he should be on. For now, he’s just waiting and listening, and getting increasingly more and more uncomfortable with all these revelations. Then Ruby calls Jinn’s name, and everything freezes.

Qrow is the first to react beyond just looking up like everyone else. “What?”

Qrow didn’t know this would happen. Ozpin never told him this would happen. Ozpin never told him that time would stop when you used the lamp. Ozpin told him instead that the lamp was currently on a questions cooldown. His “what” was more about the shock of time stopping which he had no idea what happen, but it was also about realizing that Ozpin had straight up lied right to Qrow’s face and hid something from him.

And then Jinn comes out.

Then comes the shot I put way at the beginning of this meta

Qrow had exactly 0 clue this is what was going to happen if you used the lamp. He had no idea. In this exact moment, he’s not thinking about the large, mystical, blue, naked woman floating in the air right in front of him. He’s thinking “Ozpin didn’t tell me this...” Or maybe “Oz lied to me?”

Jinn then introduces herself, and while she does so, we can see Qrow still being in complete shock in the background

Jinn is about to tell them how many questions she can STILL answer this century, when Ozpin interrupts her trying to get her to stop talking, aka very clearly with no room for doubt he is intentionally trying to hide things from everyone there, including Qrow.

Qrow is one of the first people to turn around and stare at Ozpin when Ozpin tries to hide more things from them. What’s notable about Qrow’s position here, is that Qrow usually slouches. Maybe it’s a depression thing, maybe it’s a self-loathing thing, maybe it’s a tired thing, maybe it’s all of the above. Qrow is not slouching. He’s standing straight, and even looks like he’s leaning back a little, as if he’s so appalled by Ozpin that he’s trying to create more space between them without stepping away.

Jinn then reveals that she can still answer two questions this era. Earlier in this episode we were given a flashback of Ozpin telling everyone that all the questions had been used up. In this moment, it becomes crystal clear just how blatant Ozpin has been in his lies, and even worse for Qrow...

He realizes that Ozpin lied to HIM to his face with a smile.

Ozpin, the one person who had believed in Qrow, told him that he wasn’t just bad luck, that he could do some good, granted him the ability to turn into a bird, trusted him with secrets, supposedly was the person Ozpin trusted so much that Qrow was tasked with carrying Oz’s staff until he reincarnated... Ozpin had lied to him. This is truly the nail in the coffin for Qrow. He’s now chosen his side and is not going to support Ozpin.

He’s feeling betrayed by Ozpin, and in all likelihood, is also feeling used. He turns to say something to Ruby. What it is he was planning on saying we’ll never know because the others immediately jump on him the second he opened his mouth.

We can hardly blame them since, as I’ve previously established, Qrow is known for picking fights and throwing hands on Ozpin’s behalf despite usually being calm and level-headed. It’s usually the only thing that can get him to act out. Still, I highly doubt by this point that he was actually going to support Ozpin. I think he wanted actual answers just as much as everyone else, and was actually going to suggest to Ruby to ask Jinn exactly what she did in the episode. However, when the others threaten him, Qrow instead aims for de-escalating the situation, calmly putting his hands up, not even questioning the others’ threats, and voicing his support for Ruby.

As I previously stated, Qrow will, on average, aim to deescalate a situation above all else. The only exceptions have been when it was unavoidable (such as fighting Tyrian) or when Ozpin was being disrespected. This is something that has been very consistent with his characterization throughout the series. The fact that at this moment, Ozpin has basically been dragged through the mud and berated by others right in front of Qrow, and not only did Qrow not do ANYTHING to help Ozpin, instead just listen quietly, trying to determine what his own actions should be, he also did not lash out aggressively at anyone, instead aiming for his usual, deescalate the situation. This says absolute volumes for him to do a complete 180 on what’s been established to be his usual behavior in regards to his loyalty to Ozpin.

Of course, as we all know, Qrow is trying to be the bigger person, in this situation, but when Jinn starts telling everyone exactly what Ozpin was hiding from them, it pushes Qrow past his patience.

He had absolutely no clue about any of this. He was just as confused and lost as everyone else

Which, again, I know this is a highly memed moment because Qrow is essentially checking Ozma out, but consider for a second that he’s genuinely trying to understand what is happening, trying to come to terms that this man here is the real Ozpin, the real man he came to know, love and trust. And here he was not knowing anything about him, unable to even recognize him.

Most of V6E3 is focused on Ozma and Salem, while occasionally showing everyone else’s reactions. While I’m not going to sit here and analyze why each character was chosen specifically for each scene, but I will point out that probably the reactions we saw were deliberate and personal for each character. Qrow only shows up in this moment right here, when he’s introduced to the OG Oz, probably because out of all the characters there, he was the one who was closest to Ozpin, and narratively was seeing him with new eyes, which then was represented visually by the real original version of Ozpin, aka a new person he didn’t know. Qrow isn’t even present for the reveal that Oz can’t destroy Salem, because to him the information and revelations themselves matter less than the fact that he spent all these years believing that Ozpin trusted him like no one else ever had, and believed in him like no one else ever had, only to discover that not only had that trust, and vulnerability been increadibly one sided, but that Ozpin had straight up lied to Qrow. The person Qrow looked up to and trusted the MOST, LIED TO HIM, and not just about one little thing, about almost literally everything.

Qrow can’t even bring himself to look at Ozpin after the reveal of everything, he has his back turned.

The others are just further interrogating Ozpin at this point, upset at how much he had hid from them. Qrow is the only one not speaking. As a matter of fact, Qrow’s first immediate reaction is to give Ozpin a solid punch to the face before lamenting how Ozpin hurt him personally. He didn’t yell at Ozpin, except for the punch, he was pretty non-aggressive, aka the quiet type of upset, disappointed, and angry. In a way, Qrow’s softness almost hurts more than it would’ve had he been yelling at Ozpin. It shows just how far his trust and loyalty to Ozpin has been broken.

Now, I don’t think Qrow was particularly in the right to just dock Ozpin because that also means he’s landing a solid blow to Oscar, who’s barely figured out how to use his semblence as a shield, and was trying to HELP them this whole time. However, given everything I just explored, it does make complete narrative sense. Qrow was feeling very hurt and very betrayed by likely the person he trusted the most. He was acting pretty passively up until this point, and I think that his breaking point when he could no longer contain himself was seeing for himself everything that Ozpin was hiding, but especially that Ozpin didn’t have any real plan to defeat Salem. Ozpin was constantly telling Qrow that he could do good in this world, despite his semblence. That he could save people, make lives better, and then he finds out that Ozpin can’t defeat Salem, which could make that previous sentiment feel pretty manipulative and deceitful in order to gain Qrow’s alliance and loyalty. In short, Qrow feels used, betrayed, and that he’s been wasting his time doing absolutely nothing worthwhile that could help. That was his one thing that helped him keep chugging through everything. “At least I can do some good” but it turns out, even that’s a lie.

All of this is so devastating for Qrow, that he reacts the only way he knows how and falls even deeper into his depression and alcoholism, and spends the entire rest of the volume being The Load on the team. This “betrayal” has messed him up, shaken him to his very core. While it was uncool of him to further shut himself out from people who were trying to help him like Ruby, and to isolate himself and sulk, it is understandable. If it’s true that Ozpin was the person Qrow valued and trusted the most, and was likely the person closest to Ozpin besides Glynda, then it would make sense that Qrow had also been emotionally vulnerable with Ozpin. It can take a while for a person to bounce back after an apparent “betrayal” of someone they used to be so close to, and being emotionaly vulnerable with others, might lead them to reminisce on a person they don’t want to think about. Which would explain, that despite how much Qrow loves Ruby and Yang, that he couldn’t bring himself to open up to them. Instead going for the trying to not deal with reality by being black out drunk “coping mechanism” (someone please get this man some therapy and a new liver)

This post was pretty bash-y on Ozpin, so in Ozpin’s defense, I don’t necessarily blame him for his secrecy. As Ozpin pointed out, he’d been betrayed multiple times throughout his lives, he’s experienced many things, he’s likely tried multiple different approaches, which has led him to his current conclusion that he must play things close to the chest and keep information on a need to know basis only. However, when Ozpin was first explaining his cycle of reincarnation, one of the first things he says, “I am changed”. Given how badly keeping secrets has backfired on him in Volume 6, and how Oscar keeps being resident good boy, I do think Ozpin will grow and change in future volumes.

In addition, as many people have pointed out, Ozpin only retreats back into Oscar, AFTER Qrow calls Oz out and tells him how much Ozpin hurt him. Ozpin did genuinely care about Qrow, and was devastated when Qrow finally turned on him. Ozpin trusted Qrow to be the one to carry his staff until he reincarnated, that says a lot. Ozpin spent a lot of late nights chatting with Qrow during Volume 5, and just spending time together. Qrow’s insane loyalty to him probably didn’t go by unnoticed either. Ozpin genuinely trusted Qrow a lot, and valued him as a person. While Qrow certainly doesn’t view it this way, Ozpin did 100% believe that Qrow was doing good in the world by helping him, and even gave him some magic as a gift. He also gave that to Raven, who ultimately left, and this is one of the driving points of conflict between Qrow and Raven, BUT STILL. Ozpin trusted Qrow enough to give him magic. Ozpin probably spent a lot of time is Oscar’s head reevaluating what his secrecy has done TO Qrow, and also to his relationship with Qrow. The series makes it very clear that Ozpin gives people choices and doesn’t judge them on their decisions, Qrow had the choice to leave at any point in time, to leave Ozpin, just like Raven, but he didn’t. Even though Qrow feels manipulated and used by Ozpin, that doesn’t mean that that’s what Ozpin was doing. Everything about their relationship Qrow probably chose. It’s unfortunate that Ozpin was going around with half-truths and secrets that led to this moment. I wonder how this Oz-Qrow relationship will further develop in Volumes 8+, especially considering Qrow’s currention emotional and mental state and Ozpin’s return.

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botanyshitposts · 5 years ago

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pls explain the news in laymans terms 😭

okay lads buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. the paper is “A phylogenomic analysis of Nepenthes (Nepenthaceae)” from Murphy et al. i’m gonna link it here, and i encourage anyone interested to read it for themselves and draw their own conclusions, but otherwise i’m gonna give an overview as i understand it.

if you do not want to see 394023 words of in-depth carnivorous plant genetics content you should start scrolling now.

so. Nepenthes is a carnivorous plant family colloquially known as ‘asian pitcher plants’ or ‘monkey cups’. it’s one of the largest carnivorous plant families in the world, and without a doubt one of the most diverse, but we’ll get to that in a minute. these plants have pitchers that fill with fluid and digest bugs alive (important note in terms of nep anatomy 101: unlike venus fly traps or sundews, Nepenthes are passive traps and don’t move or curl up or anything, just sit and watch it all unfold). their range has china and korea on the northern edge, the tip of australia on the southern edge, and most of indonesia, the philippines, and most associated landmasses encompassed between. there are a couple outliers, but for the most part these are jungle plants with a vining growth form that weaves through trees and just….eats.

now, putting aside the fact that they’re carnivorous, one of the biggest points of Nepenthes is their diversity as a family. if anyone out there remembers the term ‘adaptive radiation’ from an intro bio class, Nepenthes is THE family of adaptive radiation. in addition to common species that grow everywhere in their range, these lads can be so specialized that there are species you can only find on single specific ridges on single specific mountains on single specific islands; as you can imagine, this makes them especially vulnerable to climate change, habitat destruction, and poachers.

the most obvious point of diversity here is the pitcher traps themselves: there are hundreds of different pitcher morphologies, ranging from special peristome adaptations to bizzare patterns and colorations to the addition of fang-like structures and symbiosis with bats, ants, and rodents. the list goes on. these lads are so specialized it’s unbelievable. one might think that, in terms of figuring out how these different species are related to each other, that it would be pretty obvious, since everything is so distinctive.

but there is a problem.

they fuck.

Nepenthes as a family is established to be one of the oldest carnivorous plant families, but the 200+ species identified over the years are suspected to be the result of very recent (in evolutionary time) modern radiation. one of the most common definitions of what a ‘species’ is that i see circulated is the idea that something is a species when it can no longer breed with another species, but it’s important to realize that this is one definition of what a ‘species’ is. in the case of Nepenthes, the knowledge that a bunch of scientists have decided they are different does not stop them.

it was hoped, with the advent of DNA testing, that maybe we would be able to assemble a semi-full map of how all these species relate to one another and how they came to be (a phylogenetic tree), but as it turns out the lads fuck so much between themselves and other Nepenthes species that figuring out how they became the species they became, even with DNA, is extremely difficult. ‘breeding complexes’ not too different than what i wrote about in the fern sex triangle post a while back are a very nepenthes-esque thing to have happen.

a quote from the paper:

“These uncertainties are not unique to Nepenthes but various factors make them important in this group: the frequency of natural hybrids and apparent lack of intrinsic reproductive barriers between taxa, the extent of intraspecific morphological variation and the reliance by taxonomists on the pitchers.”

in short, these plants have no control. they are not practicing safe sex. they are living lavishly in their own tropical jungle paradise with as much hedonism as a plant can muster as botanists try to connect how one pitcher might be the evolutionary origin of another while somehow all the pitchers are either functionally the same or radically different.

which brings us to this study. when people compare DNA, they’re rarely comparing the entire genome (although that can be done), but rather they identify a set of consistently mutable genes that are present across an entire subsection of life, and look at just those genes at just their locations on various chromosomes. instead of trying to find a couple genes fit to compare plants across the Nepenthes genus, as past studies did, this study took and applied a set of DNA probes developed previously to compare 353 genes present across the entire subkingdom of flowering plants.

as you can imagine, this provides a significantly larger set of data to work with. sure, it’s not perfect and this take will need more research to confirm (basing the entire Nepenthes phylogenetic tree off of a single study is a dangerous game, especially when things are so saucy in the forest), but it’s significantly better than the results past Nepenthes phylogenetic analyses generated, where researchers were able to see some general outlines and attempted to sort the genus into a few groups, but were ultimately unable to see where species themselves split and what their relations to each other were (you know, because of all the sex).

so. this paper:

-obtained samples from 151 different Nepenthes species from different collectors, herbariums, and conservatories. for those familiar with Nepenthes as a hobby, Andreas Wistuba might ring a bell; he contributed some samples from his plants to this study. otherwise, the KEW botanical gardens is more ubiquitously recognized donor.

-for more common species, more samples were taken from different places to account for different populations.

-another quote from the paper that i think is interesting on multiple levels: “We also include two unpublished species, N. sp. Anipahan and N. sp. taminii. The former, from Palawan, is discussed by McPherson (2011) and may be a synonym of N. leonardoi. The latter is an undescribed species from Sumatra that has been circulating amongst Nepenthes growers and resembles N. rhombicaulis but is perhaps distinguished by its leaves. Also sampled here are N. echinostoma Hook. f., a commonly collected plant usually considered a variant of N. mirabilis, and a sample we liken to N. angustifolia Mast., a species usually considered synonymous with N. gracilis.”

i mentioned earlier that previous molecular analyses done by other people were able to see a general outline but weren’t able to see anything more distinct; the results of this paper for the most part confirm these general outlines, which means that if nothing else we have strong support for the relationship the entire Nepenthes family has to other, more closely related plant families, which the paper resolves in this tree:

note that the above tree describes the family’s relation to various other families, followed by ‘Nepenthes clade 1′ and ‘Nepenthes clade 2′. these two clades contain most of the Nepenthes genus sampled; the six species shown in red, according to the results, are considered sister species to the entire rest of the genus, separate from those two clades.

now, what personally gets me the most excited here is the plant they confirmed as being the sister species to that subsection of sister species, effectively making it the outgroup to like, literally everything else: Nepenthes pervillei, from the republic of seychelles.

yeah. you know back at the beginning of this response when i said there were some exceptions to the Nepenthes habitat range? this would be one of those exceptions. the republic of seychelles is off the coast of africa, closer to madagascar than indonesia. to be fair, there are also Nepenthes along the eastern coast of madagascar, but because Nepenthes is so strongly geographically coordinated (this paper goes on to describe clades literally just named after the countries they’re in) this is pretty goddamn cool. this species got cut off in the middle of the ocean and now looks…….like a Nepenthes, but just off enough to be kind of weird (the biggest thing i realized just…staring at pictures of it is that it doesn’t seem to have wings down the front, which to be fair isn’t required of neps but makes it look super naked as a result). forbidden uncanny valley Nepenthes cast from the fuck zone. i love it.

the other main outgroup species (the sister species to all the ‘typical’ asian species, specifically, aka clades 1 and 2) they identified was Nepenthes danseri, which is native to waigeo island in indonesia (that’s in the fuck zone, for those keeping score at home) and, i would argue, has the same kind of thin-peristomed, simple-ribbed kind of look to it that pervillei has, but it definitely looks more traditionally Nepenthes-like.

now, with that, we really get into the meat of their results here. this is the full phylogenetic tree with all tested species laid out according to their results:

i….have no idea if tumblr will let you zoom in on this pic so im just gonna write down some notes.

the color-coded names on the tree to the right match their respective habitats down in the map on the bottom left, which is neat, but it’s also interesting to see how some of these species have apparently been fucking between islands. i know this is gonna be low-res but look at this swath at the top, some of what they’ve identified as being ‘clade 1′ (mostly common, widespread lowland species):

- man………. i mean, first of all i wanna point out the lone bicalcarata branches at the top #representing, having somehow maintained their chastity despite being the sexiest of the Nepenthes.

- hookeriana being the outgroup for ampullaria seems to fit well by adorable chubbiness factor alone.

- one thing that seems weird but not totally out of character is that halfway down in yellow we see mirabilis in multiple populations in yellow, then down from there a little ways we see different mirabilis populations in green and purple and red, all but N. echinostoma and N. orbiculate, which are both outgroups. i knew it was a common species, but for some reason i wasn’t expecting it to be like………that (there’s an entire second section of them in red just below where this screenshot cuts off). like, good for them.

going down the main tree, we get into clade 2, the more specialized highland species, which are always very exciting.

there’s my personal favorite, N. villosa:

not surprised at N. edwardsiana’s relation, because how else would you be able to achieve such absolutely enormous teeth, but N. macrophylla surprises me. it’s got good teeth, but both edwardsiana and villosa are like, TEETH, you know? i guess it makes sense that it split from villosa, though.

moving from that, VERY glad that the littlest known lad, N. argentii, made it on here. i know i’ve talked about argentii on this blog before, as the Nepenthes species that was so tiny the paper describing it’s discovery warned that population counts could be skewed by the plants ‘hiding under bushes’. their tinyness, which kills me every time i look at an image of them, is somehow weird in terms of being related to N. graciliflora, which is…..pretty normal sized. same with N. armin. makes me wonder how the hell they got so tiny.

of course we can’t leave out the group with the largest currently known species, N. attenboroughii. the hilarity of the smallest and largest Nepenthes species being a single clade apart, if not very distantly diversified down their respective evolutionary lines, is not lost on me.

N. palawanensis is a chonker, but i gotta say i wasn’t expecting it to be the sister species to the one and only megachonker, the plant literally famous for its sheer chonk. imagine being that overshadowed by your sibling.

on a more general note– the paper noted this, too –it’s interesting to see how the lowland species seem to be happier about jumping islands and being promiscuous than the highland species, which seem to clump together by location. i guess it’s not surprising, knowing how specialized some of these highland species can be; villosa, for example, is native to a single side of a single mountain, and is positioned so that the populations are hit by cool wind coming up from the sea. still, lowland species need hot and humid environments, and can be just as picky. it’s gotta be a matter of isolation.

anyway, there’s probably more i could talk about here but…man there’s a lot of data. the paper goes in-depth with how they constructed the more problematic branches, and trouble they had with some over others, confirming that we shouldn’t take this phylogenetic tree as 100% correct; things will almost certainly change or become clearer as more research is done, and phylogenetic trees in particular are known for being constructed and reconstructed time and time again.

still though, it’s like…to see these relationships at this resolution for the first time is just really fucking cool, man. this isn’t even all the species. i remember i went to a carnivorous plant conference two years ago now, and there was a lecture by researchers attempting to untangle the phylogeny of Nepenthes and coming up short aside from a low-resolution tree of some of the more major species and the relation of Nepenthes to other families, their science blocked by the sheer feral chadness on display in the tropical jungles encompassing the land between china and australia. like, i really just want to take a moment, as an end note, to appreciate that these plants fucked so much in the past couple million years that it took multiple major advancements in technology and the examination of hundreds of genes just to get an approximate look at the phylogeny. like, that’s an Isoetes level power move and im not over it

#Anonymous #long post #me reading a new nepenthes paper: *sight narrows into a tunnel* *writes for two hours*#nepenthes #carnivorous plants #asks #plont asks

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peace-coast-island · 3 years ago

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Diary of a Junebug

Down by the fishing hole

The guys from Airy are back for a fishing tourney and more musical fun times! Joining them are Franny and little Ellie May, both who are enjoying the camp very much. It's been forever since I've seen the two so it's been great catching up with them.

Ellie May's full of spirit, she's a lot like her dad and aunt. I'm surprised that she kinda remembered me a little from when I last visited Airy, which was maybe four or five years ago - not too long before I came to the camp so around that time period. She was probably around two as she was walking and talking by then.

Sam says that Ellie May couldn't wait to come to the camp so she's been marking down the days until the tourney on the calendar. It's no surprise that she's into the great outdoors like her parents. At home she would tag along with Sam, Buddy, and Storm on their fishing trips at Sawyer Lake right outside town. And like the guys, Ellie May has a knack for fishing.

Franny's a bit of an outlier as she's not an avid fisher, but she does like hanging out with the guys. Though it's more so she can keep an eye on them. Buddy and Storm have a way of attracting trouble while Ellie May has Sam wrapped around her finger so it's up to Franny to be a couple steps ahead when their antics drive them up a wall.

What I love about Franny is that on the outside she looks like the kind of person who's got her shit together - the sole braincell of the gang. Independent, intelligent, creative, badass - there's a reason why she's a force to be reckoned with. Though on the inside she's just as crazy and eccentric as the others - and that's why everyone looks up to her.

While fishing, we got to talking about what's been going on in Airy. Ellie May's on the soccer team at school and taking piano lessons with a neighbor. Sam and Franny's dad is semi-retiring from the Airy Gazette, which is slowly phasing out newspapers to go completely online by next year. The community choir album is progressing while In Hopes and Dreams is a hit, prompting Storm to work on recording more music. Buddy's running the gas station/auto shop as usual. Franny is filling prescriptions and keeping up with current events. Sam's balancing town council and home life as well as dabbling as a songwriter.

Airy's one of those small towns that has adapted and changed over years while still retaining its heart. People like Franny, Sam, Ellie May, and Buddy are rooted firmly to their town, their families having been there for generations. Franny and Sam's grandpa, Andy Beryl, was a well known townfolk. He was the good samaritan, the kind of guy who takes the time to help others and actively worked to make the town a better place. There's a plaque in the courthouse dedicated to him in the office where he worked - it was brand new when I last visited.

We also got to talking about Andy Beryl a bit as it's been almost ten years since his passing. Imagine if he had lived a few more years he would've gotten to know Ellie May. Sam and Franny speak highly of him, talking about fond memories of him telling stories of the shenanigans he and his friends got up to in town. Among his friends included Buddy and Storm's grandpa, who was also known for getting into sticky situations that involved Andy stepping in to save the day.

Being part of the town council, Sam and Franny feel a sense of responsibility for the town. Since taking on the role of head council, Sam has kinda followed in his grandpa's footsteps - even mirroring his life in a way. Along with being the go-to person in town, Sam, like Andy, is also a single parent who's trying their best. The Beryls hold pride in their family name but at the same time avoid putting it up on a pedestal. After all, they're regular folks just like everyone else - something that seems to get muddled over the years but the message's clear enough. They have a legacy that they're proud of and want to keep it up, to make things even better for the next generation.

Speaking of generations, what's interesting about Airy is how different things were thirty years ago. During Andy's time, the town was mostly white - English, Irish, Scottish, German - most who have been living there for generations. Now most of the people in Airy are mixed, mainly white and Asian like the present company. Sam and Franny's father, Andy's son, married his college sweetheart, a Cambodian immigrant. As a result, Sam and Franny grew up with a mix of both cultures and know how to speak Khmer. It's fun seeing them bickering in their second language, because even if you don't understand what they're saying, at least you get what's going on.

(Also I'm lowkey jealous of how well they speak Khmer. I can barely hold a basic conversation, plus my pronunciation totally butchers the language. They say theirs isn't that great either but compared to mine, it's nothing. Sorry Mom, I'm trying but Khmer is hard.)

And as for Ellie May, her mom, Ellie, was born from Mexican immigrants. Ellie's parents visit often so Ellie May's picked up Spanish from them, making her trilingual. It seems early, but her grandparents want Ellie May to have a quinceañera, though before we know it, that day will come soon! It's good to see Ellie May proud of her heritages as well as showing off her impressive language skills!

Again, I find it interesting how much the demographic? culture? of Airy has shifted so much over the past 30-40 years, which is basically Sam, Franny, Buddy, and Storm's generation. Pretty much everyone around their age is born from a longtime Airy townfolk and an immigrant. I wonder how much more Airy will change with Ellie May's generation.

In between fishing sessions, we did a bunch of fun activities. Buddy was in his element at OK Motors tinkering with engines. He's a bit unconventional when it comes to fixing cars but he's got his ways. Storm messed around with engines too while looking for songwriting inspiration. He and Sam have written a couple songs over the past few weeks so they'll be dropping by the island in the near future to record. I'm happy that Storm's getting back into writing music, especially now that things are finally working out in his favor in terms of creative control.

Franny and Ellie May enjoy hiking and foraging, they've gathered a lot of berries so we're gonna be making something with them. We're debating on whether to make a pie or a bunch of little tarts - either one sounds good. Sam brought his guitar, prompting spontaneous jam sessions throughout the camp. Like Storm, he's been getting into music too, especially since discovering his talent as a lyricist. We've heard live performances of the new songs - Out of Reach, Dandelions, and Where the Ferns Grow - all which sounded fantastic. Hopefully there's more where that came from.

Since working on In Hopes and Dreams, Sam has also been seeing a counselor. With the song being about grief and loss and now that Ellie May's become more curious about her mom, Sam finally realized that he needed help. Talking about Ellie has been difficult but he knew that he can't keep avoiding it forever, especially for Ellie May's sake. I haven't known Ellie for long but her absence is felt, which I think says a lot about her.

While the others fished, Franny collected seashells and took a bunch of pics. Sam managed to catch a lot of doubles as well as a shark during the off hours. Despite almost getting yeeted in the middle of the ocean, he managed to drag the shark to shore - with our help, of course. Ellie May drew a cute sticker for him that says "I fought a shark and won!" with a funny doodle to go with it, which he stuck on his jacket for all to see. The two have such a sweet bond, it's fun seeing Sam carry Ellie May up on his shoulders as they laugh and run around the camp.

Earlier today we took a short hike along the thornberry trail behind the camp. That probably wasn't the best idea as the path's kinda narrow and we had to watch out for thorns. Sam had to go after Ellie May, who was running around, and both ended up stuck in a bramble bush. Thankfully their injuries are nothing serious, but they looked painful. As soon as they took off, Franny knew that something like that was gonna happen as both have a tendency to be too curious while easily distracted. It doesn't matter how grown up you are, the older sibling never stops being the caretaker for the younger one.

Just for the record, Ellie May was a lot braver than Sam - and she has more scrapes and bumps than him. Though for him, it's less the pain and more that the sight of blood puts him off. There's a reason why Franny followed their mom's footsteps to study medicine and he didn't.

Aside from that little mishap, everything else has been going well. Franny, Daisy Jane and Norma made fish pies that turned out great. They're basically like seafood chowders with a puff pastry layer on top. Stu and Buddy helped Reese and Cyrus build a gazebo that's ready to paint so that's what we're gonna do tomorrow. Storm, Candi, and Tipper hung out at Sunbust Island and harvested coconuts to make smoothies. Sam and Ellie May helped me run errands while sightseeing and stocking up on supplies. Just another fun and busy day at the camp!

In between those activities, we met up at the beach for another round of fishing. The tourney fish seem to gravitate towards the area near the cliff so we called that spot the fishing hole. It's a nice area to be situated in, kind of like our own little nook in the ocean.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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cordonia · 5 years ago

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Ethan + MC: “PUSHING DAISIES” AU: P2

[Read Part 1]

Summary: Ethan Ramsey made the rash decision to bring his best friend back to life after she was attacked. But one person who doesn’t know of his gift watched Mariana die, and her future has been completely derailed by his choice to revive her.

Warnings: This is less lighthearted than the show. Death, mention of physical attack and injuries. Also Pushing Daisies (2007-2009) is one of the best shows ever so this is your warning to watch it.

Word Count: 2700

The laws of reviving the dead had seemed quite simple to Ethan Ramsey, once upon a time.

A life for a life, always equal in consequence.

One touch after bringing them back, and they are dead for good.

The patient revived is not alive nor dead, but simply exists in between.

Never tell anyone they were dead to begin with.

The revived can die again, steer clear of danger.

There had been two instances in his entire life when those rules had become glaringly apparent to him, like a trial run to his own gift. The first pet he ever owned was a boxer that he called Jenner who met an untimely fate at two years old. Before life had introduced Ethan Ramsey to coping with death, he met his own ability to reverse it.

Jenner was twenty seven years old and didn’t look a day over two, the most loyal companion he would ever have. Animals were far brighter than humans, and Jenner had never come physically close to Ethan in all of those years. It was a level of intelligence he believed most humans lacked.

He knew objectively that one day he would feel Jenner’s fur against his fingertips again, but it never felt like the right time. His furry friend was still happy and quite strange after all of that time, who was Ethan to take that all away from him?

The second instance where he was faced with those rules was the night his mother left. She had packed her bags and booked a flight to the city where her parents still lived. Ethan followed her outside, hoping to beg her to come home again, and instead watched a Honda Civic barrel into her as she crossed the street.

He knew he could bring her back, and he did, but just like Jenner had run off after being revived, his mother followed suit. Jenner came home to him one day and had never left again; his mother did not. He knew that she was out there somewhere without having aged a day since she left, and probably not a single clue why. It terrified him, but she had never reached out and he wasn’t sure she ever would.

In present time, Ethan didn’t feel as though the rules were quite simple anymore. Mariana was supposed to be dead, Bryce Lahela had watched her die. But he couldn’t submit her breathing body to the morgue for an autopsy, and he couldn’t quite send her home. Other than his mother, he’d never kept another human being alive like that.

“I’m going to look like a sleep deprived resident for the rest of my life.”

The statement came after a lot of silence and a few questions that Ethan answered almost robotically. For something he never talked about with other people, nor fully understood, he still felt like a walking pamphlet.

Mariana sat cross legged in a chair in Ethan’s office, bandaging her own head as Ethan stood behind her to make sure she was successful. She was wearing clean scrubs and had tried to brush out some of the blood matted to her hair. Ethan had to get her out of the hospital with as few people noticing as possible, but not before he convinced June to stitch her head.

She would heal, he just didn’t know how fast or what she would feel the longer that she was back. She seemed to be numb for the time being, but if Jenner could yelp when rounding a corner too quickly, a hole in Mariana’s head would eventually catch up to her.

“Technically speaking, you don’t have a life. You have as long as you can keep yourself out of harms way, and yes, you will appear to be twenty-eight.” If he were not himself, perhaps someone even funny, he would have remarked that most people would kill to look her age forever.

“I would ask if I’m going to be alive for eternity, but I couldn’t even keep myself breathing long enough to turn twenty-nine.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” he blurted out, not a promise but the base for one. He would do everything in his power to take care of her, he just didn’t know what that meant, yet. Technically speaking, she could be killed again, by more than just his touch.

“I know I can’t go back to Boston, I need to stay and find who wanted to hurt me. But if I don’t age... I ever really can’t go back, can I?”

“If you went back, you would stay for maybe five years before your appearance would be noticeable to those close to you. Another five years after that and I’d assume people would start asking serious questions you’d have to run away from.”

“And if I stay here?”

Ethan didn’t know what to say, he only knew what he wanted to say. She couldn’t stay anywhere for too long, and he didn’t know how easily he could jump around the map with her. If she even wanted him to follow her; he couldn’t stop thinking about the lonely life he had set up for her. He was responsible for the situation she was in, she hadn’t asked for it. Though, as any would expect, she hadn’t asked him to take it back either.

“You could finish your residency at Delarosa, experience being a fellow even. But eventually... You’ll have to lay low, change your appearance some and maybe you could find another hospital to work at before--”

“Before I’ll never get to be a doctor again.”

“I don’t know what’s possible until we cross that bridge.”

When June finally snuck into his office, she didn’t bother to look at him, avoiding speaking to him completely. She didn’t ask for an apology because there was nothing Ethan could say that would make up for risking her life. She was used to him stressing her out, but she hadn’t seen him take risks. Not like that.

“You can’t feel anything?” June questioned, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. Mariana nodded with a small shrug. She began examining Mariana’s head, grimacing at the damage. “This is so not my job,” she whispered to herself.

Ethan sat back on his desk and watched his friend’s face, searching for any hint of pain even knowing that she was okay. Whatever okay meant.

“I’m sorry you have to be a part of this.” Mariana looked genuinely sorry, and Ethan only felt guilty knowing the blame was his to bear.

“There’s not much else to do here,” June replied. “So, I heard you’ve been working for Edenbrook? I worked there up until four years ago, I remember you starting your internship here in Delarosa. I envied you, I shouldn’t have left.”

It was no secret that June wasn’t challenged enough in Delarosa, but she did like her life there and Ethan knew it. He had the same complaints, the same desires to leave and never come back. But the partnership they’d created together was something to be proud of. They had left six anonymous tips in the last year that had led to arrests.

It was a mostly crime-free town, a community with few people who sought to wreak havoc. Every community had outliers though, and Mariana was proof of what they were capable of.

“I like it there, but my best friend is switching to Mass Kenmore and I don’t have anyone else there anymore. My only other friend tried to sabotage me and if I wasn’t so lonely, I wouldn’t have caught him before it was too late. I was just trying to finish my residency before I came back here.”

Ethan didn’t know things like that, they had spoken so rarely since she left. Of course she had come home a few times and they’d gotten coffee or tried to fit in time for a movie. It became difficult after they kissed, the more they talked, the more he felt the distance between them. At the time, he couldn’t have left and or asked her to reverse the life decisions she had made for herself.

For a long time Ethan would have done almost anything to have her come back home. There had been a few times where he even dreamt of it and it only left him under a spell of depression for days. All of those times he wished something would bring her back, he never considered it would happen this way.

If it were possible to go back and wash himself of every wish and dream, he would. What if he had hoped so fiercely that the universe traded her beating heart for it? Irrational, yet anyone who knew of his power would say rationality was subjective.

“I got offered a whole department to leave Edenbrook, and two years later they took it from me. I guess I have a different department now, but I miss the city.” June had told everyone that story to remind people that she could have been anywhere, and yet she chose to go to their hospital.

“The city is exciting, but there’s something nice about the pace here. My neighbourhood is my family, there was always someone to have my back.” She looked up at Ethan and smiled halfheartedly, a glossy look to her dark eyes. He knew she was trying not to cry, and he wanted so badly to reach out for her hand.

“Did you and Ethan meet through the hospital then?”

“No,” Ethan said gruffly, but June didn’t look up to acknowledge him.

“I was applying for med school at the library, just sitting in one of the comfortable chairs. He kept glaring at me from a table, so I finally asked him what his problem was.”

“You took my chair, Mariana,” Ethan interrupted.

“That’s exactly what he said to me, too. We only lived a few streets apart so I’d seen him around but he lives in the whitest part of Delarosa so I didn’t actually know him. It turns out that before I was born, our mothers had been best friends.”

“How in the world did he wind up as a friend and not someone who makes you want to cross the street when you see them?”

Mariana laughed, and Ethan was more grateful for June than she would ever know.

“I asked him to help me pick what schools to apply to. I never would have gone to Westley, I thought it was too close to home. But the stories he had... he made me want it badly enough that I went. He helped me with every single exam, and we watched every medical documentary known to man.”

“Don’t forget about the sharks,” Ethan reminded her.

She smiled and he knew she was thinking of the same memories. How could anyone forget three hours of a shark live feed? He could still feel the pillow hit his head, thrown with no warning when he had asked why all hammerhead sharks are “actually baby”. Her response was just as unhelpful as he had expected and the pillow was thrown twice.

“He must be a different person outside of work, because here, he makes a habit of ruining my day.”

“At least I’m consistent,” Ethan retorted quickly. Not that he had a right to argue.

“He’s not different, it’s just all circumstance. If you saw him at an awkward dinner party, you’d see him brought down a notch.”

“Do you have proof?” June looked suddenly amused.

“The stories speak for themselves. My parents have gatherings with their friends and I finally had dragged Ethan to one. He tried to keep up and my cousin Isaac wouldn’t stop correcting his Spanish.”

“Who raised a seven year old to be so judgemental?” It took everything in his power not to roll his eyes. Ethan Ramsey did not roll his eyes, but Mariana’s cousin reminded him of how persistent he had been at that age. Worthy of the annoyance.

“Have you not noticed that the population of Delarosa is prominently Puerto Rican? You’ve lived around here your entire life and a seven year old was embarrassed for you.” June didn’t hesitate to interject.

“He’s better than I’m giving him credit for,” Mariana said with a grin. “I don’t know entirely how to speak it either, just far better than he can.”

“Does my father look like the kind of person who teaches his son Spanish? I had to teach myself through full time university.”

“I’ve tasted your father’s cooking; I’ll wait to hear it from his own mouth that he didn’t offer you lessons.”

She could genuinely die and still frustrate him all within five hours.

June finished cleaning and stitching the wound before Ethan could defend himself again.

“I don’t know how this works, but your head will hold together for now. I should probably look at it again soon. I brought discharge papers, saying you insisted on leaving despite the severity of your injuries.”

“Have the cops arrived yet?”

“I told them she was unconscious, they’re going to come tomorrow and find her gone. The first place they’re going to go is her family’s house.” June gathered all of her supplies and handed Ethan the papers. “So come up with a story of how she miraculously survived or take her somewhere until you do.”

“I’m not sure what to do about Lahela, I don’t think he’ll believe some story. He’s a better doctor than that and he already works around us enough as it is.”

“Bryce? Why was he anywhere near Trauma? He was a surgical intern when we started here.” Mariana’s interest peaked at the name of an old friend, it was clear as day on her face.

“Dr. Lahela is where the excitement is, this hospital is more flexible than Edenbrook,” June explained, followed by a long sigh that didn’t even begin to convey the extent of her exhaustion. “I’ll talk to him, but you should get out of here soon. If anyone sees her walking around, they’re going to think we’re either incompetent doctors or that she wasn’t attacked at all.”

After she left, Ethan and Mariana attempted to plan their escape with little idea of where they were even headed. Every solution was unbearably temporary, and Ethan was putting her at risk no matter what option they chose.

“I think it’s best you stay in my spare room and tell your parents I’m taking care of you while you heal. I know they’ll want to see you, but not until you’ve taken a reasonable time to repair. If anyone thinks you’re okay the day after being attacked like that, the police won’t investigate at all.”

They hadn’t spoken about her being attacked yet, all he knew was that she never saw who hit her. How many times? With what kind of weapon? How much did she feel? Some part of him that believed in good things happening to good people would disintegrate if she answered those questions.

“Will you have to come right back here?”

He was convinced he could hear her heartbeat quicken, she looked petrified at the idea of being left alone. It wouldn’t look ethical if he broke a seriously injured person out of the hospital and then took a few days off. ‘Ethical’ was often a grey area for him when he had the ability to revive dead bodies. Fuck it.

“I’ll be there with you, I promise. I’ll grab you a cap and a mask, and then we need to leave before my replacement questions why I’m still here.”

“I wish I could hug you right now.”

Ethan gripped the doorknob tightly, the cool metal almost numbing his skin. The second he opened it, he was officially facing the most reckless scenario he had ever put himself into. It seemed tragically fitting it was all for her. How did they go from sharks to a flood of devastation?

He looked back at her and reminded himself that the fact that she was even standing was against many, many odds. However, he would let every seven year old in the world bully him for a chance to hug her.

“Welcome home, Mariana.”

Note: I know it’s probably boring for me to develop a whole story here but the next chapter will be from our MC’s point of view and should be sweeter and a fresh perspective for the story...

Tagging: @ethandaddyramsey @binny1985 @openheart12 @bellcat2010 @edith-eggs1 @missmiimiie @queenofspades6 @schnitzelbutterfingers @longneckramsey @queencarb @kaavyaethanramsey @ethxnrxmsey @jooous @blazerina @choices-lurker @itsgoingnuts @lilyvalentine @aworldoffandoms @choices-love-affair @nooruleman @junehiratas @mrsdrakewalkerblog @perriwinklenerdie @edgiestwinter @togetherwearerapture @dl-thewriterperson @interobanginyourmom

#open heart #open heart fanfiction #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #choices: stories you play #open heart fanfic #open heart edit #my fanfic #my edit #ethan ramsey fanfiction

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things2mustdo · 4 years ago

Link

A while back, I came across a thought-provoking article about r/K selection theory. The basic idea is that r-selected species are adapted for environments with unlimited resources, while K-selected species are adapted for competition. The typical examples of these are rabbits and wolves. As the article explains:

Rabbits (r-Strategy)

They’re herbivores with near unlimited resources (never a shortage for grass).. The virtually unlimited resources are a primary reason why rabbits are not territorial. This is also part of the reason why they opt for breeding often; unlimited resources means they’re not going to starve.

They have no defense against predators other than running. They do not have any loyalty towards their group. It makes no sense for a rabbit to rush to the aid of another rabbit being attacked. Then you’d just have two dead rabbits. Because they can be killed so easy, it makes sense to reach maturity as quickly as possible so they can begin birthing children.

Hierarchies are pointless in rabbit society. Rabbits lives are rather simple; eat grass and run away from danger. There’s no need to invest heavily in their offspring. As such, there’s no need to prove who’s the superior (alpha) and the best candidate for passing on their genes.

Wolves (K-Strategy)

They’re carnivores that must hunt to survive. Hunting requires more intelligence and training than grazing on grass. Due to the increased difficulty of hunting compared to grazing, more time is invested in training the offspring to survive.

Because prey is limited, wolves must viciously protect their territory from intruders. While it might seem heartless, if another pack is allowed into their territory the supply of prey will be exhausted and both packs will starve to death.

Wolves are monogamous/pair-bond. Because raising the offspring is so important for the continuation of the species, the wolves will pair for life in order to raise their young. As such, they will choose the best mate they can find to further improve their chances of birthing strong, healthy cubs. This process of choosing leads to hierarchies with an alpha male leading the pack. Wolves also wait longer before reproducing and generally have less offspring. If they reproduced early and often, there would be too many wolves for the ecosystem resulting in the consumption all the prey and starvation.

Wolves are more complex. This is true for carnivores in general. Because carnivores typically live in groups, they must have more sophisticated ways to communicate. The same is true for their domesticated brethren. Look at a dog and you can easily identify if he is scared, happy, angry, or bored by his body language and barks. Can you tell the same moods on a rabbit?

This isn’t a completely binary distinction. For example, some herbivores (such as bovines) will flock in packs and defend themselves. Lions are more K-selected than domestic cats.

The social angle

Humans are mainly K-selected; that’s what is natural for us. There are individual differences and statistical outliers, of course. As an extreme example, imagine two brothers; one picks up Atlas Shrugged and is inspired to become a successful businessman, and the other reads the Communist Manifesto and then continues to live in Mom’s basement where he smokes weed and posts social justice memes on 4chan all day. Compare also the factory worker who is a pillar of his community and is proud to bring home the bacon to his wife and kids, versus the starving artist who has yet to produce much of value.

Differing societies have their own average balance between r and K selection. Those mostly r-selected tend to be more collectivist; those more K-selected are generally individualist. In isolation, societies find their own level and work out what’s best for them according to their own unique cultures. When one group enters another group’s turf, problems can happen. I’ve already described how this was a factor in my witty take on the demise of the Neanderthals, who might have been too progressive to survive, rather than too backward as is often assumed. That, of course, was an analogy for what’s going on in today’s society.

This even has implications for mating strategies. What we’d now sometimes derisively call “provider game” used to be the only game in town, and was natural for our society at the time, as it had been since antiquity. After the Sexual Revolution, all the rules changed seemingly overnight, and what used to work became ineffective. The flowers, gifts, and poetry stuff once showed you were dependable and good-natured, which (believe it or not) used to be desired qualities. That will get you Friend Zoned now.

The weird thing is that today’s game strategies are an adaptation in response to our society’s unnatural shift from K-selection (where being hard-working and stable is valued) to r-selection (where being “exciting” and flashy is valued). This is why in today’s dating arena, those continuing to use traditional courtship strategies are like fish out of water. These days, being at least somewhat game-aware is pretty necessary even to get a steady girlfriend. These differing strategies lead to much confusion about what best exemplifies an alpha—a socially savvy and successful man, or a meth head ex-convict with missing teeth and a high “notch count”?

The political angle

Ideologies tend to support either K-selection or r-selection as a model for society. Now consider the part quoted about rabbits given above. Which ideology favors handing out unlimited free goodies, is anti-military, puts down traditional morality, believes in gun control, despises their own society, will run from a fight, seeks to eliminate the consequences of promiscuity, considers any hierarchy to be “privilege” or “oppression“, and doesn’t believe in self-improvement?

That certainly hits the highlights of the culture war. This presents a new perspective on why Social Justice Warriors want to re-invent society their way. All along we thought it was only cultural Marxism, but maybe there’s something even deeper going on psychologically with the SJWs.

This is reflected in policy arguments too; compare Bush the Elder’s “family values” with Hillary’s “it takes a village to raise a child”. As we can see, quite a bit of leftist ideology is basically about turning human society from the K-selected model into one friendly to the r-selected model. Two competing ideologies (or two societies living in the same space) with differing ideas about these things will come into conflict. The more K-selected ones will get themselves dragged down by the others if they let it happen, or even destroyed. Also, take a look at any bad neighborhood; consider it a low-investment parenting theme park.

In the wilderness, these things wouldn’t happen. Apex predators don’t tolerate rivals coexisting in their own turf. The smart lion drives away a pack of hyenas, and the smart bear chases away the foxes. In human societies, this has worked out quite differently, especially when clever manipulators weaponize our own societal values of tolerance, fairness, and all the rest of it against us.

The greatest problem is that we don’t actually have unlimited resources available to meet our wants and needs, like rabbits in a grassy field. All the free goodies a government hands out must come from taxpayers, with bureaucrats getting their piece of the action. (So who are the predators in that situation?) As Margaret Thatcher put it:

I think [The Labour Party] made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.

In the Communist world, those faced with the task of implementing the silly theories of Karl Marx had to ration resources, which resulted in inefficiency and corruption. Things didn’t go according to theory, obviously. Ideologies out of touch with reality become dysfunctional pretty quickly.

The endgame

Now here’s something even more disturbing. In advanced species, adulthood means being able to fend for oneself. In the beginning, people relied on families and tribes (extended families writ large) for resources, protection, and support. Some degree of interdependence in a community is natural to us, since organized hunting and agriculture increased the odds of survival, and thus we’re social creatures. The head of the household called the shots in the family, and the chief led the tribe.

At the dawning of civilization, related tribes bound together into nations. The model of families living under kings was the norm up until the Age of Enlightenment, with the main drawbacks that the nobility (and those close to them) got rich at the expense of others, lorded it over their subjects, and sometimes got into short-sighted wars. Afterwards, the transition into democracies moderated some of these problems, though graft and corruption and badly-conceived wars still happened.

Now we’re moving into the “New World Order” model, where a few thousand plutocratic elites around the world use their wealth and influence to implement managed democracy, get into spit-in-your-eye wars, and other forms of skullduggery to influence things their way. They’re pushing to open the borders, erase national sovereignty, turn the diverse peoples of the world into a mass monoculture, and they’ve conspired to make the public unaware and compliant.

Overall, the elites are causing increased dependency on the nanny-state governments, which meanwhile neglect the public’s safety and well-being. They’ve shown great hubris, trying to live as kings and make us their serfs. Meanwhile, young adulthood has become increasingly an extened adolescence, and these days many are seeming more childlike than ever. The more all this goes on, the less citizens resemble independent adults.

The extreme model of this in the animal kingdom is with some insect species, such as ants and bees. Joseph Sobran used The Hive as a metaphor, and so have I. If you don’t feel like being one of their worker bees, or a neutered drone, then it’s time we get the globalists off our backs.

Read More: Cultural Collapse Theory: The 7 Steps That Lead To A Complete Culture Decline

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

Text

Changeling: The League (1/3)

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

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

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

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

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

THE PROLOGUE

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

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

One of them needed to ask.

THE LEAGUE

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

Shigaraki Tomura

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contracts:

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

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

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

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

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

Toga Himiko

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darkness I-II. Makes her targets more suggestible.

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

Bubaigawara Jin

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

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

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

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

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

Contracts:

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

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

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

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

Spinner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dabi

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

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

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

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

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

Contracts:

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

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

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

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

Mr. Compress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Magne

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

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

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

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

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

Contracts:

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

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

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

BONUS TIDBITS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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