Reasons why G1 Hot Rod and Ocarina of Time Link would be besties

They're both chosen ones

They both have a lost childhood

They shoulder the responsebility of their world on their shoulders

A magical macguffin tells them that they are the chosen one, and ultimately dooms them to the worst fucking time of their live

Look at me and tell me that neither of them have broken down and had a panic attack at one point

They're both fire resistant

They both can shoot things

Both of them can't die. No matter HOW MANY TIMES their big bad evil guy tries to kill them

If given the chance, Link would, as well, kill Unicron

They BOTH have a pink, ass kicking, woman as a friend

They also know a green guy

They have an old ass mentor (Deku Tree would defintely get along with Kup)

Both of them travel a lot

AAAAAAAAnd to top it all off, they would die for their friends

Thanks for coming to my Ted-Talk

Permission to headbutt: Granted (Patreon)

double trouble

There's something about like. A certain genre of posts / Online Opinions about insecurity/depression/misery/complaints that are so unhelpful that they wrap right around to being straight up hilarious. and it's the ones that are more or less written to the tone of "Feeling bad? That's gross!" Like, just so you know, don't voice your insecurities/ have low self esteem, because that's offputting! You're gross and weird. Don't be insecure about that, though. That would be stupid if you felt insecure about people disliking you for being insecure. Not attractive. You should be thinking about being as attractive as possible. You shouldn't make comments about suicide, even if you're suicidal! Keep those thoughts entirely to yourself. Make sure nobody around you knows you're thinking about this. It would Make Them Uncomfortable. It's better to keep these thoughts in your head where they can fester. Don't post OR talk to friends with complaints about you feeling miserable or depressed. Tbh people who are sad/upset a lot? Kinda a red flag! You are probably miserable because you're a bad person and you've brought this on yourself. If you don't have friends, it's because you're awful to be around. Easy! Solved the problem for you. And no, there is no nuance to this, got it? So, make sure to feel bad about feeling bad, but don't feel bad about it, because, well, that's just gross. And annoying! You might've wanted your brain rotted thoughts to be Peer Reviewed, you might have just needed to vent- you might've been hoping for some comfort, to get things off your chest. Well, don't! Don't talk about thoughts or feelings that are negative with your friends, you'd be burdening them and that's only meant for THERAPY. #SponsoredbyBetterHelp #MentalHealth like, DAMN. that's so helpful. you're so good at helping. I um really liked the part where these are all hard and fast rules that encourage keeping feelings bottled up and keeping your friends at arm's length. That's really funny of you.

Batman Annual #25

Before Talia took him in, before he was dunked in the pit to have his memories restored, even when operating purely on survival instinct, he always split a meal with the other homeless people. It may not have been essential to his survival, but caring about and helping other people when he couldn’t even help himself was just always such an intrinsic part of Jason’s core.

What Kind Of Woman Does Oli Like? (cut me down to pieces oli please!!!!)

Sorry, sorry, but if you ask what kind of woman or man he could like, well. Something pretty much unrealistic. Someone pure, kind-hearted, who lacks flaws in a sense. Who could never harm a fly, but not naive..and I guess, also insane enough to love the real him. If S/O is tidy and shares the same values as him when it comes to animals and environment, that would arouse his interest. Overall, someone who doesn't fit his philosophy. Not a plus if S/O's a chatterbox. He enjoys the silence much more.

There is also a slim chance he would feel like having a partner to enhance his innocent facade, although it would be tiresome for him to juggle between his night hobby and time with S/O. Oh yeah, the S/O shouldn't mind lack of affection. He doesn't have the urge to seek physical contact, at times he would forget that his S/O needs that. He would just do gestures of affection randomly, when he remembers about that lmao.

felt like this one fits here.

Hey remember when Baghera adopted Dapper like 8 months ago or did I make that up ? ────────────────────────────────────────── Support all the admins that spoke out (& do your daily click) ──────────────────────────────────────────

Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).

And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.

IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.

So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.

Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....

There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).

It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.

I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.

At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care

TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence

nothing will make you sympathise with conspiracy theorist ideology more than having a seemingly rare reaction to a vaccine lmao.

Po and Tigress's relationship is so funny because they're written like a queerbait couple but like. its a male character and a female character. like theres some stuff that is obviously written in a way that can be interpreted as romantic but like the movie never actually backs it up with any further development of a romance between the two. there's always that plausible deniability so they dont actually have to follow up on it.

honestly if I were ever to throw the Suitehearts into any of my Killjoys stuff the dynamic would literally be the stupidest thing in the world. you do not want to have the Four and those guys together in any setting. it's a recipe for disaster. Jet and Benzedrine bitch and bicker like old ladies. telepathic warfare is waged via a complex language of glares and eyebrow movements between everyone in the room. Sandman makes a wholeheartedly joking comment to Ghoul like "I want to study you in a lab" and Kobra Kid gives him a black eye on the spot. Crab and Donnie end up playing hide n seek with the Girl until someone else who isn't aware of the game accidentally dumps a whole dude out of their hiding spot on accident and then gets elbowed for it. everyone hates each other but they're also kind of pals in the way that people who occasionally help each other out but don't see each other outside of that can be. that kind of thing

A Prequel? Haarlep, is that you?...

Hello darlings~ I have landed where all writers who love Haarlep end up eventually, imagining their first meeting with Raphael, how they came to be in the cambion's service, what they were like before taking his form. Both are probably around 120 years old, so they are well established in their own rights, but by their races' standards they are young and inexperienced. I'm only half working on this between my request list for now, because the idea won't let me go, but have a few little previews below the cut, including a version of their appearance that a very talented Tav-maker has made with their lovely mods~ Other renditions of them based on my imagined description are more than welcome, I do very much enjoy seeing different interpretations. Preview below the cut! If you'd rather wait for the first chapter to drop, give me a few more days while I work on a few deadline pieces ahead of event exchanges and I'll publish it on AO3 <3

The first appearance of the un-named incubus.

A young fiend stood before a glimmering doorway, uncertain of when precisely they were meant to cross the threshold. They were dressed in a black silk outfit that gave them an appearance of masculine androgyny. Dark tan skin and bright green eyes might have looked human, if it weren’t for the 4 short horns protruding from their brow, slightly parting black hair that cascaded down their back and over their shoulders almost blending with the silks they wore. The other tells of their demonic nature were more obvious, however. Huge wings with blackened edges, claws at the tip, coloured in sunset hues of red and gold stretched out behind them, quivering with nervous anticipation. A long tail with an arrow-tip end pawed at the ground behind them, kicking up a little infernal ash. All they carried was the clothing they wore and the instructions they had been given. A simple enough task, and they were hardly inexperienced, but their first meetings were usually within a dream. Subtly watching their target, learning their desires and their fears, finding every intimate secret they hid in their subconscious before they would ever appear before them physically. They sighed. They didn’t even have a name to bring with them. Whatever it was had been taken, a simple exchange for a promised reward. “Let him name you,” the instructions had been clear, “let him do as he wishes. Get close, learn all you can, and deliver it back to me. You are no fool, incubus, and neither is he. But play the game well, and you will have the life of your dreams in the end. A home all of your own, whatever meals you desire delivered to your door, complete power over the domain I shall grant you.” It was tempting. It would be tempting to any incubus or succubus. They also couldn’t deny a small amount of pride at having been chosen. It sounded like the advances of succubi had already been rejected, so they relished the thought of a challenge. Besides, the son of Mephistopheles was hardly without any power of his own. They took a deep breath, steeling their nerves before they stepped through the portal.  ------------

The sass starts early with this one...

The cambion put his feet on the floor and straightened up the papers, putting them in a neat stack on the table. He stood, walking towards the invited invader in his home, stalking around them to observe and assess them. “I’m not a piece of meat, Raphael.” They stood still nonetheless, allowing him to pace and take in all of their form. They flexed their wings and tail to put on more of a show. “Do you like what you see?~” “Passable.” The cambion grunted, the highest praise he had given any attempt yet. “And good you finally recognise your master’s name. So, why are you here?” “You know that much. Your dear father sent me. You are well aware that many of your kind take ours as advisors, partners in pleasure, or allies for whatever purposes you might have for our abilities.” The incubus grinned, the hint of slightly sharpened teeth glinting in the light as they looked down on the smaller human form of their supposed master. “You’re a spy.” Raphael said simply. “Obviously.” They replied, pleased that they were not being expected to work for a complete fool. “Do you wish to refuse me? Send me back?” “Honesty is a commodity that few of your kind trade in. You may stay. However, ground rules must be set.” He turned to walk away, beckoning for them to follow. “Come.” “Already?” The incubus laughed at their own humour. “It takes more than that, Raphael.” 

-----

The First Rendering of The Presently Un-Named Incubus

Lore Time

The description, appearance, and other details I'm using here are all from established lore for an incubus in 5e. The main source is an article titled for the succubus, but they are very similar beings. Click here for Incubus/Succubus Lore In the article there's a lot of binary gender talk and heteronormativity which irritates me, so I'll also be taking the literal latin descriptions here: Incubus - To lie on top of Succubus - To lie below Concubus - To lie beside (The literal Top/bottom/vers, where a Top gives, bottom receives, and vers is either. As an aside, this is not the same as Dom/sub/switch, as you can have a sub Top and a Dom bottom) From this line: "Legend held that incubi and succubi were wholly separate sexes,[1] and the males were significantly rarer than the female of their kind.[5][6] In fact, with their shapechanging powers, incubi and succubi could both change their sex with ease, though most had a preference for one or the other." I headcanon that Haarlep feels more comfortable in a masculine or androgynous form, but has no issue taking a feminine form or body. However their attitude to gender in general remains "stop boring me with the details and tell me what you desire, all that matters is pleasure. Gender is a boring mortal construct. My nature is an incubus, my form is immaterial." So the article also shows that incubi and succubi also have a more human range of skin tones, much smaller horns than cambions, and the distinct pointed triangle at the end of their tails - something which isn't present in Haarlep's scenes when he's in Raphael's form. I'll definitely go into more detail on these things later too, particularly the changing of forms for the first time.

This is an incubus from the lore page images, so you can see a difference between this and a cambion's fully reddened look. They are much closer to a human in all but the wings, tail, and horns. So that's where I'm leaning with dear Haarls, before they take the form of Raphael.

What about Raphael? What is he like now?

Well...he's younger. Not long taken ownership of the mansion that will later be known as the House of Hope. --- Quote --- Fine leather boots paced across stone floors, the click of heels echoing around the halls of the largely empty mansion that floated through Avernus. It was a start. A place of his own, somewhere to work with his own contracts and plans. The owner of the boots was a cambion, son of Mephistopheles, and already a powerful fiend in his own right. Raphael, if you were to ask a mortal, looked like a human in his mid 20s. Chestnut hair was swept back neatly from his brow, the ends curling a little just below his shoulders. His brown eyes were deep set but sparkled with ideas, face clean shaven and expression darkening by the moment. --- End Quote --- So as you see, Raphael is still finding his feet, working out the beginnings of far grander plans. He has already rejected several "gifts" sent his way, so that's why our dear incubus is nervous. They have to work to get his attention and approval, but they're not sacrificing everything of who they are to do so. As soon as I wrote the two of them in a room together again, it was flowing. I love their dynamic as they exist in my head, the push and pull, the absolute sass and shifting of power between them. I'm going to lean heavily on how this builds up, how they find the balance that leads to where they are in my game-era works with them.

Is this all an excuse for more Raphael and Haarlep? A self indulgent dive through their history just to keep writing their stories?

...Yes. I'm not sorry. I earned this. I love them both too much. I hope you'll join me in my endless adoration for the very best of fiends~ I can't wait to share the first chapter and begin proper work on the series in 2024!

Was doing some thinking today and realized that one of the reasons I'm really drawn to Kieran is because he's a rare example of a character that's shy (and usually good-hearted) but still has some rougher edges to him.

I feel like all too often shy characters are shoved into being portrayed as either "smol bean who would never hurt anyone and just wants friends uwu" or "brooding loner who snaps at people to cover up the fact they don't actually know how to socialize" with not a lot of wiggle room in between. While I can and do enjoy characters that (arguably) fall into those respective categories, they're a bit reductive in the sense that things are very rarely that black and white in reality. Even the kindest people have a limit to what they can tolerate. They have bad days or respond poorly to events around them that cause them stress. And the same can be said in reverse as well—point being, people are multifaceted and don't always behave as predictably as we'd like to think.

And I think Kieran reflects that dichotomy perfectly. When we first meet him, he's meek, timid, and relies heavily on his more brash and forceful older sister to help him navigate social situations where he would otherwise lose out on something valuable because he's too afraid to come forward and ask for what he wants (like how she has to ask the player to battle him on his behalf). He's often quick to cower whenever she starts to get heated, but he's also not afraid to point out when he thinks she's wrong and sometimes even gets sassy with her himself. He's undeniably sweet and gentle and shows eagerness to make friends with the player, but he becomes much more curt when he notices we're lying to him about Ogerpon. The rest of the Teal Mask storyline shows him fluctuating even further—yelling at Carmine and the player for keeping secrets from him, punching things in fits of anger...then backpedaling and apologizing for the trouble he caused a few scenes later. Spreading the truth about Ogerpon to everyone in the village to help make her happy...then selfishly demanding a battle to see who's worthy of being her Trainer when she has already clearly chosen the player.

After being lied to and suffering repeated losses at our hands (including the Pokemon he's idolized all his life choosing us over him), he leans even more heavily into his bitter side during the Indigo Disk—being cold and ruthless to pretty much everyone around him, but at the end of the day it's primarily overcompensation for what he perceives as his own personal weakness (because he's still just a kid trying to be taken seriously). He's shown to drop the act on multiple occasions—most notably when he's caught off guard by our appearance at Blueberry Academy and at a few points during the Area Zero expedition. He antagonizes the player up until the moment of his defeat and tries to catch and use Terapagos in a last-ditch moment of desperation that ends up going horribly wrong, but after everything resolves he's quick to admit his mistakes and asks the player for forgiveness and if they can still be friends. After the epilogue he's mostly back to his old self, but still seems to get worked up when provoked (e.g. when he yells at Drayton for refusing to stop calling him "ex-Champ" in one of their League Club Room interactions).

And I think this varied and sometimes contradictory behavior is precisely why Kieran is such a cohesive and believable character—because it shows how even kind, well-meaning people may have a hidden darker side that can show itself under the right circumstances. How they might let their insecurities get the better of them. How a shy, timid kid might not have the experience to know how to deal with sudden feelings of frustration and/or jealousy that are far too strong to keep to himself, so he lashes out as a result. How despite all this he remains kind, sensitive and loving at his core and shows willingness to learn from his mistakes. And that is what makes him so compelling to me.

they've come a long way

In talking about Chaucer (p. 74), I said that, in general, puns and verbal connections of sound were unimportant and not to be sought out; and now, you will say, I have been using them to explain cruces in Shakespeare. Alas, you have touched on a sore point; this is one of the less reputable aspects of our national poet. A quibble is to Shakespeare [Johnson could not but confess] what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind.... A quibble was for him the fatal Cleopatra for whom he lost the world, and was content to lose it. Nor can I hold out against the Doctor, beyond saying that life ran very high in those days, and that he does not seem to have lost the world so completely after all. It shows lack of decision and will-power, a feminine pleasure in yielding to the mesmerism of language, in getting one's way, if at all, by deceit and flattery, for a poet to be so fearfully susceptible to puns. Many of us could wish the Bard had been more manly in his literary habits, and I am afraid the Sitwells are just as bad.

William Empson, 7 Types of Ambiguity, ch 2 pp 100-101

i'm sorry this is so fucking funny. that pathetic loser shakespeare who loved puns so much it cost him everything, except of course his status as the most famous, most read, most immortal english-language author of all time. but everything else, he lost and it's all because of how weak he was to resist a pun :/ pouring one out for my sad little girly man who could have had it all if only he was better at writing, the thing he is the most famous guy in the world for.

even empson, who disagrees with johnson that shakespeare "lost the world", is like, too bad our favorite poet is susceptible to the thing that made him famous :/ really tragic that the guy whose wordplay we've been talking about for 300 years likes wordplay :///

also i can't get over writing a book about the types of ambiguity and NOT INCLUDING PUNS?? sorry but puns are ambiguous! that's where their juice comes from! imagine liking ambiguity so much you write a book about it but never mention puns except to dunk on them. imagine being a POET and POETRY CRITIC who looks down on sound-based ambiguity! could not be me!!