#I don't think much of human Loop designs but if it is on my mind I always think of it as like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thesoulshyperrealaslacreatura · 5 months

Text

Drakenier: Violence as expression and affirmation - Pt.1

It has become a rather well-known piece of trivia (or at least, well-known within the niche internet circles I flow through) that 2010's Nier Replicant / Gestalt had its overall message thoroughly inspired by well, 9/11 - the discourse that produced it, that came of it, and became it. Although it may not be a direct quote, "to kill someone, you don't have to be out of your mind, you just need to believe you are correct" is a sentiment clearly echoed throughout the game; as the many layers of its central and side conflicts drop alongside the curtains to its second, third (and maybe kind of fourth) playthrough, so does what had, for quite a ways into the game, seemed like a story mostly about finding, nurturing and protecting a community - people to call home.

However, the statement above seems to somewhat conceal-so-as-to-merely-hint-at what I'd argue is a much more complex argument the games lay forth, when looked at as one series. I, myself, have found it difficult in the past to distill both Replicant and the wider series as a whole into one coherent message or thematic frame; partly (and beautifully), because there mustn't be one - this singular reading which eclipses the broad range of experiences that people have come to share with the series - such an idea is preposterously reductive. Still, I think that this mish-mash of "the game is about philosophy and tragedy and nihilism and existentialism and society and humanity and life" and whatnot misses a bit of where the different themes intersect, producing further instances of meaning from the text. I hope to discuss the evolution (were I to sound even more pretentious, I might have used the word genealogy, but I would never stoop to that) of a few central concepts surrounding drakenier's "philosophy of violence" and where they seem to have informed or have been informed by other aspects of the works.

Strap in, because just from writing the introduction I can already tell this is gonna have to come in multiple parts. Hopefully my writing can steer away from boring you to tears throughout all of it.

Spoilers for the whole series!

Part 1: Replicant, and the subjective experience gained from that funky 9/11 fun fact

"Blood is sound, sound is words, and words are power"

This quote, almost a chant from Weiss as the player starts to grasp the gameplay loop of attacking enemies to allow for magical attacks, ties in the game's teaching of that system with what I consider to be the most powerful writing from Replicant (I'm going to refer to it as Replicant for the sake of convenience, obviously Gestalt is included in that). And it is deeply tied to what Taro himself has credited as a major source of inspiration for Replicant in relation to his previous game, Drakengard.

In some ways, Nier Replicant isn't introducing a new, foreign idea over the original Drakengard, so much as bringing out new elements from within its predecessors' critiques of the gaming landscape. Though that only really becomes clear by taking future foresights the series would reach into account; this is the point at which it becomes prudent to ask ourselves one question - how might the game's design regulate the player's interaction with the game world? (A question that, if you're at all even familiar with Drakengard, you probably already know the answer to)

From this, we can extrapolate a lot of meaning from how the original Drakengard was conceived: a game about violence, from the perspective of people who were so immersed in their own awfulness and the general precarity of their world that they cannot enact anything but that same violence. And it is that violence which comes to define them.

I'd also like to do the pedantic thing and bring up the fact that violence can be thought of as more than just physical harm, but also in terms of violation. In that sense, when I claim that Drakengard's characters are defined by violence, I mean it in that their reduction of other people to objects serves as an exertion of themselves - the Dynasty Warriors inspired combat of cleansing battlefields as the only win state reflects back at Caim as his only method of building an identity of his own, one based on strength demonstrated from conquering his enemies. You might find that these 'enemies' are violated the moment they're placed into the game as props that sustain its overall narrative.

In fact, this 'loss of personhood as self-affirmation' theme reverberates into another key factor of the game's story: pacts. They explicitly deprive humans of something of themselves - their ability to communicate, to see, to age, to have hair (sure????) -, and reduces both parties into one shared essence, yet it is what permits its characters to have strength through which they find themselves as able to inflict that dehumanization onto others. Dehumanization becomes their characterization, both from the audience's perspective as well as in-world.

Following that, Nier Replicant does not dispute that destruction of the other simultaneously inflicts upon the self both corruption and affirmation. If anything, it only takes measures to strengthen that sentiment, in light of how the added theme of perspective brings forth a need to now more closely study the subjective experience of perpetrating violence. Thus:

"Blood is sound, sound is words, and words are power"

The gameplay system I've anchored this analysis to comes into play; attacking your enemies gives you the literal strength to continue your offense, by design - ridding them of their life force, their blood, perpetuates the narrative, the words being built, the sealed verses of a prophecy you've set for yourself: that of being a hero to your sister/daughter, friends and general community. This even extends to the lyrics of Ashes of Dreams:

"Are we the plaything of fiends or merely the dreams that we're telling ourselves?"

Though we shouldn't forget that Weiss' comment takes the form of X=Y=Z=W, and it seems I've neglected the 'sound' part of the sentence. As I was writing this, my brain immediately made the association between that and Drakengard 3's focus on the power of Song, which, in fairness, definitely was made with the rest of the series in mind - but, in this instance, that sounds like a bit of a lucky coincidence. Still, what the concept of sound brings to the statement doesn't seem too far off from what meaning could be made at a bit more of a general, rudimentary level, that being: our lifeforce (blood) translates into our ability to be heard (sound), thus effectively giving us narratives about the world around us (words), which gives our actions direction, purpose (power).

From that, we can take a closer look into a lot of different aspects of the game. After all, the reason I proclaimed this piece of writing to be so powerful isn't really because I could - and did - stretch its interpretation to its fullest, but also from the way it manifests itself around the struggles of various characters, while being tied to the game's overall systems and world. Emil receding into his identity as a weapon in order to redirect what he sees as his curse onto those who seek to harm his friends - leading to his sacrifice; Weiss, who also goes on to sacrifice himself, does so in the name of putting an end to this now 5-year mission, grown into his own center of existence; Louise, perhaps reacting to the world around her, saw humanity as something to claim from others, and faced erasure upon perceiving herself as incapable of acquiring it. For better or for worse, the moral codes characters create from their own intentions of living become rigid scripts to follow as self-fulfilling prophecies of their own identities.

We can see that, ultimately, characters across both games tend to follow journeys with a general structure of: bleak circumstances > feeling of powerlessness > violence as a misguided means of reclaiming the power to define oneself > entrenchment in violence becomes overbearing, coming to annihilate the very self which sought to instigate it. From the first Drakengard to the first Nier, this hasn't changed a bit. What changed is a distinct awareness in how the self, or what we might call "us" stands in conflict with the generalized other, "them", and where it uses morality as a catalyst for smoothing out the uncomfortable edges of that conflict.

In fact, the annihilation of the self as, paradoxically, an act of self-affirmation is the very core of ending D for Replicant. And this is, partly, where the inciting 9/11 quote comes into play - given our newfound empathetic understanding of where violence comes from, how do we process it? How do we make sense of it? From the way the world is established, the very act of surviving, for both replicants and gestalts, is somewhat tainted as immoral, and predicated on the erasure of an 'other'. It leaves room for later material to find itself more at ease with this question (and those circle back nicely to ending E from the new version, as well). For now, most of what the game feels comfortable in concluding comes from Kainé, who stands in contrast with most characters by fully rejecting the notion of being a moral agent throughout the entire story, yet the game still offers us the chance to save her - it, mirroring the protagonist, relentlessly believes in her. Not even that "she can be better", whatever better might mean, just that "she can be".

And obviously, finally, we can extrapolate plenty of social commentary from this. Playing off of the thematic material introduced in Automata, we could argue that Replicant's plot is, in retrospect, about slowly building up to the depiction of a certain "Death of God" - which, in nietzschean terms, is not merely society straying from religiosity, but represents an irreparable shattering in the very idea of a centralizing narrative that everyone could subscribe to and fit within. So ends humanity, not just as a species, but as a concept; no longer are people able to identify themselves as containing some unified essence of 'humanity', recognizing the other as a complete self in its own right, as they retreat into the violence that was inflicted against them, which they inflict back at the world - to have your totality reduced to a role in a play that the winner gets to write. And in that sense, I'd argue it captures specific facets of a post-9/11 climate pretty well.

Anyway, gonna make a separate post that's just about Drakengard 3, and then one that's just about Automata, but at a later time!

also, this thesis becomes more relevant when the time comes to analyze automata, but it was still helpful in having me think through the previous games, so I'll drop it here as a reference for now, and will mention it more loudly once we come to specific sections later (not about to be the next target for hbomberguy lmao): http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/14525

Cool that there are people writing about it!! Thank you Xinlyu Tan, the goat!!! Would love to go through more material, but I'm writing this for fun on the side... hope anyone reading this has enough fun with it to go looking for more on their own, go extend the discussion further, blah blah blah. Also hope that I make any sort of vaguely coherent point. And, lastly, I hope you enjoy yourself!

#drag on dragoon #drakengard #drakengard 3 #drakenier #nier series #nier #nier automata #nier replicant #nier gestalt #drakenier analysis

31 notes · View notes

mdhwrites · 5 months

Note

The demon realm isn’t diverse despite the show saying all myths from the demon realm influenced Earth even back in the deadwardian era it very European inspired there are also POC witches but their skin color makes no difference and the demons in the show barely have any resemblance to demons from mythology or religion I feel like the Crew could not write different Cultures and sticked to the Fantasy European Model because it easier and because some people will take issue with the show depicting their monsters as demonic What do you think?

Punctuation. Is. Important. This post is... weird without it. BUT it does actually bring up an interesting point, in part because... Well, I'd be in a pretty similar boat unfortunately.

See, western/European fantasy may have a WIDE variety of options but it also has the easiest when it comes to having a good selection of easily available creatures, settings, etc. to take from. Everyone knows dragons, dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc. At least, here in the west. Unless you do deeper digging, a lot of people will have a pretty limited reach for what they can do monster wise and I think that is reflected in the show.

And I suffer from it myself. I've never done real deep dives into all the monsters out there so while I like them, my mind ends up freezing on only a handful of common ones to use in my writing or the like. It's something that I would like to get better about due to just the sorts of things I enjoy writing. But because a lot of fantasy sticks to these close knit groups of easily useful monsters and myths, you kind of get stuck in a loop.

The show did give itself an out though for worry about potentially insulting other cultures and that was that everything is BASED on something from the Isles. They didn't have to make one to one portrayals but could have taken inspiration. Theoretically, that is in fact what the show did since we don't actually get anything named after a regular monster. The closest are the fact that the witches and wizards actually use those terms and I guess giraffes. Otherwise, they're all purely made up. Which, you know, isn't a bad thing so long as they're interesting.

Unfortunately they're not for most of the like... five that show up in the series? Cool designs usually but little in the way of making them unique obstacles or having real personalities besides "Creature."

The other potential excuse is that the style of the Isles was specifically based on a Dutch/Netherlands artist named Hieronymus Bosch. While his art is weird, it still is steeped in his culture as his buildings and the like are still European in inspiration. Of course, then we get into the fact that they don't include any of the actually surrealist elements of his art which is part of why the Isles is so boring. Strip that part away and all you're left with is... Europe but it's a little weird.

However, the reuse of European history, even including people who look like Vikings, is much weirder to me. At that point, you're not basing this on artwork or fantasy... You're just copying history. Like you point out: Their architecture, style of dress, etc. like that actually mimics common, HUMAN clothing trends just as much four hundred years ago, before a human ever ruled them, as it does in the present day. That's a bizarre disconnect that adds to the feeling that this is just kind of a lazy fantasy setting.

And no, I don't expect every fantasy world to look like Hylics and be this unknowable, abstract landscape. I am fine if something just steals medieval fantasy for its style and creatures after all. The thing that makes most fantasy distinct are its cultures and the interplay of them, or how they diverge from our world despite being so close to it at the same time. Skyrim is not a bad or boring fantasy world because it is THE style you go for with generic fantasy. It's world is vibrant to many because it feels more alive and like there are conflicts that are motivated by things like magic, monsters, etc.

It doesn't even have to be something big. My favorite book series of all time is a medieval fantasy series with some magic for two books and then NEVER BRINGS IT BACK. The mythos around the Rangers of Ranger's Apprentice though, them genuinely engaging with the different countries they come across (even if many are just replacements for real world countries) and the exploration of those cultures, how they differ, their beliefs, their tactics, etc. helped make each place feel like a unique challenge and world in and of itself even though it was lifting so much from reality. It drips with what makes these countries interesting and fun to take from for a fantasy world.

TOH though? They wrote in explicitly an excuse to take literally EVERY fun part of every religion, story, myth, video game even, etc. that has EVER been told... And decided to snark at all of it instead and act like it was better than all of that. Which is potentially a reason to go with the generic, European-centric style BECAUSE it is the most generic. Because most people will know about it from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. As such, it is the one that is the easiest to ridicule because they are actively choosing the elements that are the easiest to mock. It's like when people say that Madoka Magica is a deconstruction of the magical girl genre because they have literally only seen Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura.

And yes, there is an argument to be had about Dana potentially not feeling comfortable including other cultures' mythologies due to cultural appropriation and... I'm not going to try to deliberate that. I am the second to last person to get to behind the British. I also won't say it would be exactly a bad reason to avoid it even. Just that it is a thing and... *shrug*

A lot of this in fact kind of doesn't have a conclusion besides a shrug. After all, I like D&D. I like the Forgotten Realms. They are not, by default, that unique a fantasy world, in part by design. But, you know, a good DM makes that generic world into a playground. TOH never feels like it's willing to expand to even add a slide.

======+++++======

Btw, if you want a monthly-ish D&D show to watch, I HIGHLY recommend Dan Jones and Dragons. It has a more casual feel to it than I feel like a lot of D&D stuff I've watched tends to have while not devolving into jokes and gags. Everyone is taking it seriously but they're willing to diverge for thirty seconds about a good joke that happens. All of the characters, their personalities, the drama they go through and the care they have for each other is also just SO GOOD. Cannot recommend enough.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #the owl house #toh

21 notes · View notes

maddrumsticks · 8 months

Text

Since I didn't have an art piece specifically for Undertale's 8th anniversary and I don't wanna burn myself out. So instead, I'm gonna introduce a couple of my Sans AUs! (I have more than two but we're just gonna start with two.)

Introducing: Soul and Broken!

Detailed background and lore dumps under the cut! (Beware, it will be long and probably a lot of reading. I will include a couple TLDRs at the end.)

Soul's Story

TW: murder (that's the only one I can think of, but please lmk if others apply to this)

Soul is the first Sans AU I have ever made. (His design used to be just a Sans recolor, but I have tried to change that a bit.) And so his design is pretty lackluster but his backstory is super long because that's how I was years ago.

Soul was just a normal Sans until the human's reset went wrong. Somehow, it glitched all the way back to when the human with the justice soul fell. Soul felt like something was off, and decided he should kill the justice soul-ed human. Why? Probably felt like this was the only way to break away from something keeping him tied. So he did just that and absorbed the child's soul.

He was able to cross the barrier. He made sure not to enter the large city near Mt. Ebott. Instead, he found a very small village with probably only about a population of 200 or less. Something dark had taken over his mind and he killed every human in sight. (Honestly, I don't remember why, but it was probably because he didn't want to go back to that torturous loop he was stuck in.)

Then he saw someone who was definitely going to reset. In his panic, he grabbed the two souls closest to him, a bravery soul and an integrity soul, and ran. He absorbed the integrity soul, giving him more agility and speed. He was miraculously able to make it back to the underground before everything was reset. Without explanation, he forced Papyrus to absorb the bravery soul. As soon as he did, Soul found they were now back to the normal timeline.

But this time, Soul and his brother, now named Trait, still have the souls they absorbed, but more ingrained into their very beings. There was no way for them to separate from the souls they absorbed now.

Soul and Trait were now able to remember every timeline, Trait didn't show he knew, and Soul could check people's stats, including his own. But any time he tried to check his own stats, he would see them, but he would begin to hear these strange, murderous voices.

These voices started quiet and got louder over time until Soul caved in and killed someone. Then the voices would get quiet again and it would start all over. The only way they would disappear is when a reset would happen.

The only thing Soul forgot about a timeline is his own stats and evil voices. The moment he checked his stats, he would remember all of that.

Eventually, he and Trait snapped. They were done dealing with being stuck in a loop. They had a discussion with each other and came up with a plan to defeat the human.

Said plan kinda backfired. While it did defeat the human, it also destroyed their whole AU, leaving behind Soul, Trait, and an empty white void.

They did mostly fine in this white void, but eventually Soul checked his stats and the voices started. And of course, that doesn't bode well.

Soul's large amount of negativity drew Nightmare, who decided Soul would make an interesting "plaything." (Aka Soul gets tortured and treated horribly by all those guys ig. But he escaped eventually. And don't worry, Trait was taken to the Omega Timeline.)

After Soul escapes from Nightmare, he kinda just explores the multiverse.

Which leads us to Broken's story.

Broken's story

TW: Major domestic violence and abuse

In Broken's world, colors were swapped around somewhat randomly, and they had slightly altered personalities and HP. This Papyrus was angered much more easily than the normal Papyrus. And this Papyrus would build up until he lashes out. (Ps, this is not supposed to excuse anything I describe next as okay in any way, shape, or form.)

His pent up anger had nowhere to go other than to at Broken. It started verbally, then escalated to physical. Some days, Papyrus was so angry that he just wanted to break Broken.

And, unfortunately, he did.

It started with Broken's leg. He watched it dissolve into dust with horror. He was given a cheap, crappy prosthetic so people wouldn't suspect anything. This Papyrus told others that Broken fell off a tree, his leg got ripped off and fell into the river. And they couldn't afford a more expensive leg. This was obviously all bull.

It started with Broken's leg, then his arm, and finally half of his head. From the day his head was destroyed, Broken was rendered blind, and basically magic less.

One day, Broken was hiding in his room, just wishing he could run away when there was a sound at his window.

Soul found his way in, and they talked. Soul and Broken talked for a long, long time. Unfortunately, Broken's horrible brother returned, and Soul had to leave.

The next time Soul visited, he didn't hesitate to offer Broken freedom from this horrible place. And Broken didn't hesitate to accept.

Soul and Broken's life together

Soul took Broken to the empty, white void that used to be his AU. And together, they built a house. Originally, the house was intended for only Broken. But things changed. They fell in love with each other.

And so, Soul and Broken live together, married and extremely happy. They do their best to overcome their traumas together (mainly Broken, he struggles) and live the best life they can. They often explore other worlds together.

Soul is what keeps Broken afloat, and Soul would say the same about Broken.

Broken knows he can do anything with Soul at his side, and everything will be okay. He has Soul at his side.

Until he doesn't =)

TLDRs:

Soul's Story: Soul kills a child to go and kill a bunch of humans, absorbs only one soul of those, gives another to his brother and then things reset. Eventually accidentally destroys his whole AU with the help of his brother. Goes and explores other AUs.

Broken's story (abuse TW): gets abused by his brother really horribly. Soul finds him and takes him to the empty void of his AU.

Soul and Broken's life together: two gay skeletons get married and use each other to overcome traumas.

Feel free to ask me anything about these two if you want :D

#undertale #undertale au #sans undertale #sans #sans au #tw abuse #tw murder #soul sans #broken sans #my aus #my two little gay guys #i procrastinated posting this so now it's like the end of Undertale's anniversary pffff

10 notes · View notes

comicaurora · 2 years

Note

You mentioned that young justice did a lot you didn’t like after s1- how would your ideal season 2 and beyond be?

Oh man, that's a dangerous question to contemplate.

Caveat that this is how I personally would've liked to see it play out, and I haven't rewatched it in a while so I may be fuzzy on the details or timeline of events. And word of warning, this got long.

First move would be to bin the timeskip. We'd be letting the characters age up gradually - maybe one year a season. Since it's perfectly structured for episodic adventures, we can imply downtime between episodes to fill out a year - plus this gives us opportunities for regular birthday or holiday episodes without an obligation to do them every time. We have enough characters without real regular birthdays that I just think it would be cute if Wally was like "congrats Conner and M'gann, I don't know squat about the martian year or how clone time works so I've decided it's your birthday, I made Shazam get us a cake"

Nixing the timeskip gives us the opportunity to put focus on Robin becoming Nightwing as an actual arc of its own, which could be an interesting opportunity to adjust the way it happened in the comic - which couldn't quite be adapted wholesale, because in the comic Robin was running around leading the Teen Titans as Robin for years and years with the Titans before he decided it was time to forge an identity of his own, accepting that he was fully out from under Batman's shadow now that Jason Todd was officially the new Robin. There was some comic angst from Dick about Bruce never officially adopting him which we could loop into that arc, since this Batman is pretty perfectly designed for being a well-meaning but emotionally distant and uncommunicative dad. What I'd personally want to avoid is leaning two hard on the Angsty Robin angle, because (a) that was already covered by Teen Titans (which we'd also want to avoid too much overlap with) and (b) Nightwing is at his best when he's optimistic, cheerful and emotionally well-adjusted. It'd be more fun, I think, to explore a version of Robin that is burying his angst under optimism and cheer in an arc that culminates in his cathartic dad-issues convo with Batman and subsequently his transition to being Nightwing. This gives us opportunities for fun intercharacter dynamics! Robin spent most of season 1 being the reliable party member who had the most experience superheroing and helped keep everyone grounded. Giving him an emotionally destabilizing personal arc and letting the rest of the party take a turn helping him through it could be fun! Plus, we've got one telepath with no boundaries (M'gann), two characters with a lot of experience with Dad Problems (Artemis and Superboy) and two characters who will be 100% supportive even if they don't fully know what's going on (Kid Flash and Aqualad), so he wouldn't be lacking in people realizing what's going on and helping him through it. This is fully a result of my "nightwing is my fave" bias but I think it'd also really work to let the gang have more fun group dynamics with personal emotional stakes, and I think Robin deserves to be helped once in a while, ya know?

Most of the other s2 timeskip stuff I'd either want to nix or foreshadow better. I don't particularly like the Superboy/M'gann "breach of psychic trust" breakup but I think it'd bother me less if it was actually built up rather than skipped over. If we have to do it, let's start with the premise that M'gann doesn't really get that humans are much less comfortable with telepathy than martians are. It's planted in season 1 and mostly centered on Superboy, the only party member with explicit trauma about telepathic intrusion and mind control due to his clone conditioning. He's the one who reacts most harshly and angrily when M'gann does her psychic link thing, but his reaction mellows out as he learns to trust and rely on her to protect him against other telepathic intrusions.

But while this helps improve their relationship, it doesn't fix the underlying miscommunication on M'gann's end - she seems to feel like her peers freaking out about her telepathically popping into their heads is a temporary imbalance, especially since she does the psychic link thing basically every mission instead of having to invest in earbuds or communicators. She's so comfortable with telepathy, especially after season 1 where she reveals her one big secret (being a white martian with a monstrous base form) and no longer has anything to mentally hide from the gang, that I think this could be an interesting miscommunication to explore. Ultimately her teammates will still value their privacy and mental autonomy even after they've spilled their big secrets and learned to trust each other, but M'gann is unlikely to realize this because from her perspective they've just finally stopped being weird about this stuff. M'gann is essentially experiencing slow culture shock at realizing just how private humans and other non-telepathic people are about their thoughts, and how much they at best mistrust and at worst hate and fear the thought of anyone else popping into their heads and rummaging around. So really, I think the psychic breach of trust thing should happen earlier and in a more minor way than it did in the season we got. M'gann using her powers to make Superboy forget a fight they had is a breach of trust and very uncool, but it also seems a little too extreme for the dynamic and understanding we've seen these characters share - even if she'd be willing to do that to anyone else, I think she'd know that doing it to Superboy would be the number one way to break his already fragile trust in her powers.

I'd go with a more slow buildup - start with M'gann commenting unprompted on the casual intrusive thoughts of her peers, totally nonjudmentally (she knows better than anyone that thoughts don't make you a bad person, obviously) but in a way that still makes them uncomfortable or angry. Maybe give her a plot reason to invade someone's mindscape with the best of intentions - could go classic on that one, give us a supervillain with dream-invading powers or something. Encourage her to push the boundaries with her teammates that she doesn't seem to realize are there. Maybe let Martian Manhunter sit her down and give her the "no really, you can't keep your mind this open in casual interactions, it's not about being bad for you, it's about being bad for them" talk. M'gann needs to learn to understand what privacy means, and she needs to become willing to impose polite and moral limitations on how she uses her powers. Since we're negating the timeskip where Beast Boy is introduced into the team, maybe we could work that in here - as he's introduced and develops his powers and he and M'gann's sibling relationship becomes more pronounced, especially if we keep the thing about his mom dying, we have a good character in-road to getting M'gann to better understand how to bridge the gap between herself and humanity.

Personally I'd nix both "aqualad pretends to be a bad guy" and "artemis and kid flash retire from superheroing". I think the show started kind of over-relying on the "you thought I betrayed my friends but actually we planned the whole thing in advance" gambit after it worked so well in the first season, and not telling the team telepath about the secret plan was pretty textbook idiot plot stuff. If we really want Artemis and Aqualad undercover there are still ways to make that work, but I'd say push that way down the line. Give us more time with the team first. If we want Artemis and Wally to retire from superheroing to focus on college and their relationship, that's workable, but that'd be a season 3 or 4 thing at the earliest.

If we want to expand the cast, let's do it gradually - I favor episodic adventures, and "there's some new weirdness in *location* that turns out to be either a supervillain plot, a new kid superhero to give our phone number, or both" is pretty much ideal adventure-of-the-week stuff. If we absolutely must bring in Impulse and Blue Beetle, let's not make the stuff with the Reach the only thing happening that season.

The biggest difficulty with plotting this show is avoiding just making Teen Titans, But Again. That unfortunately means a lot of the best classic comic arcs are off limits without severe modification - Judas Contract, Terror of Trigon, even Brother Blood's whole thing are kind of nixed. This is probably why the show never brought in Raven or Starfire, even though they absolutely could and should. So I understand the appeal of bringing in other threats like supervillain conspiracies and alien invasions and alien invasions but different this time, but this party lineup is demonstrably at its best when it's dealing with less apocalyptic supervillains-of-the-week. That said, in the comics, Raven arranges for the New Teen Titans to form because she goes to the Justice League for help with the Trigon prophecy and they turn her away - an arc that would fit bizarrely well with this version of the Justice League, which are a bit more dickish than their standard portrayal. Letting her go to the already-formed Young Justice crew for help would let us introduce a modified and potentially shortened Trigon arc without having to centralize Raven in the cast like they did in Teen Titans and Titans - could just add her to the expanded roster of Miscellaneous Heroes They're Buds With after they beat up her evil dad. She's also a little older than the rest of the Titans in the comics (and looks MUCH older than them), which could be used in this adaptation and help set this version apart from the other Trigon adaptations that have a tendency to make her increasingly younger - could get a lot of mileage out of making her a slightly awkward and aloof young woman rather than an emotionally troubled child. (Plus, if we want a cheeky nod at the comic-run romantic subplot between her and Kid Flash without actually breaking up the Artemis/Wally OTP we could just have Wally be his usual level of casually flirtatious with this Cool Spooky Goth lady and be gently dismissed because he's "a bit immature" for her.) Also, give me classic '80s hair Starfire or give me death, Nightwing deserves a love interest who can and will bridal carry him

Also, if we absolutely must "kill" Wally, we're bringing him back in one season max. Getting disintegrated into the speedforce is basically just a day at the spa for speedsters.

Overall my angle would be leaning into the massive ensemble cast potential after a proper season or two of just getting to know the main crew and letting them develop and explore the status quo. Trickle in a few more kid heroes during the early episodic adventures. Sprinkle in some more episodes where they deal with one or more members of the Justice League without anyone being mind controlled at the time. Dial back the Grand Conspiracy angle and let our heroes have a few unconditional wins once in a while. More scaled-down character-focused episodes like Homefront and Coldhearted where we fix the camera on one member of the team and get really deep inside their head as they go through something emotionally taxing but are ultimately rewarded in the end. We can still dive to dark and traumatic levels, but we need to counterbalance it with unconditional levity and victories for the heroes so the grimdark stings more when it hits. More character focus, less sweeping conspiracies, no more skipping over major arcs of character development, un-kill Wally West 2k22

#asks #not aurora

151 notes · View notes

outeremissary · 1 year

Note

Top 5 angel or angel-adjacent characters?

OKAY so this was delayed by my computer restarting against my will and destroying the draft. It's okay :') I feel like my list is probably going to be lamer than expected anyway, haha. I suspect this will be a very lame list as well... the shameful fact is for all the time I spend looking at illustrations with angelic motifs, I don't spend much time with angelic characters in stories.

Tristian (Pathfinder: Kingmaker)

This game has some kind of malign influence on my life.

2. Gabriel (Constantine)

I don't think Constantine is a good movie and I did not enjoy rewatching it as an adult. It turns out the reason I remembered it as being a bit befuddling when watched as a child (I think I caught the back half on tv once?) is because it's just not very good. But do you know what was even better than the pristine memory burned into my mind? Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel is so unspeakably perfect on screen. So soft and imposing. So lethal and forceful. Beautiful when in that prim and proper suit, and a vision as a white clad warrior! That twisted philosophy of making humanity "worthy" of love... this had some kind of profound impact on my developing brain, I fear. As a side note, I think there aren't a whole lot of feathery wings that look good in live action stuff, but Gabriel's are actually pretty solid! It probably helps that they're not onscreen much, and not generally static when they are.

3. Angel of Death (Hellboy II: The Golden Army)

I'll be real with you, I remember borderline nothing about Hellboy II, which I last watched when I was 9. But do you know what I remember? The Angel of Death. I remember the Angel of Death so vividly that when my ex had proposed we watch Hellboy I got Really Excited about seeing the Angel of Death and finally getting some context on that vague memory. And do you know what happened? The Angel of Death isn't in the first movie! Betrayed! Bamboozled! And for the rest of the night my ex kept calling me an angelfucker because I was so vocally disappointed.

4. Satan (Devilman)

I'll be real with you, I absolutely saw Crybaby before any other Devilman related thing and this is ummm. Not insignificantly influenced by my feelings about long haired Satan. Anyway. I love a good Satan. Everyone loves a good Satan. I love the deep commitment Satan has to his/their chosen people (the demons) and how desperately he/they works to preserve them. I'm also a huge sucker for a good pyrrhic victory, so what I'm really hooked on is the sincere, pure affection that Satan then develops for one special human who refuses to be taken in and sheltered and protected and saved from the annihilation of humanity. The ultimate symbol of Satan's victory is the destruction of that precious connection, and that's all it takes to make it all feel like it was for nothing. What a pure heart! And then there's all the time loop stuff as well, which is Spicy

Anyway, all Satans are valid but I'm only including one pic, so enjoy long haired Satan.

5. The Wood Sprite (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio)

This is mostly an aesthetic pick... the truth is that as a character I liked Death better. But like. What an aesthetic. Is it cheating to pick two del Toro designs? I resisted the temptation to add Death as well!

Still, it feels a more substantial choice is needed. Thus, I cheat:

5. 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil (Kill Six Billion Demons)

White Chain is a fantastic character with a substantial character arc dripping with ye olde trans allegory (we love a good trans angel in this house). She struggles throughout the series with the conflict between what she understands to be her duty as an angel upholding cosmic law and her compassion for mortals and desire to protect them. Already an outcast among her peers, she fears further alienation. Her form has also been becoming steadily more human-like: messy, complicated proof of connection she's desperate to deny and her superiors wish to stamp out. Her struggle to grow into her own identity is one of my favorite side character arcs in the comic.

4. Satan (Devilman)

Anyway, all Satans are valid but I'm only including one pic, so enjoy long haired Satan.

Honorary mention purely so I can add pictures of her: Eniale

Comedy isn't really my favorite genre, so I didn't expect much of Eniale & Dewiela. But the characters certainly have a lot of charm, and Kamome Shirahama's breathtaking art does a lot to make every moment feel special in a very light hearted series. I have a very strong fondness for Eniale. She's just a little goofball. She's a terrible angel and doesn't work even half as hard as her demonic counterpart (and self-consciously notes that she's far less powerful). She means so well, but she's shallow, airheaded, and selfish, and just tends to cause as many problems as she solves. Despite that, she's incredibly sincere and passionate when it counts. I really love that. She's just a goofy lil scamp! She's a goofy lil scamp and she makes me smile. Also here are some pictures of her.

#eniale & dewiela also has a very lovely gabriel! the other gabriel who didn't make the cut was ultrakill's #I really love how expressive eniale's wings are! ahh... when I look at them I want to work a little harder #anyway sorry this took so long and then isn't a super interesting list haha #there's someone on twitter with a really lovely feathery abomination angel but I don't know the character's name...#ask me emithing #ask game #turbulentpumpkin43

10 notes · View notes

misscammiedawn · 1 year

Text

"I shouldn't be surprised you have this... and yet..." Donna mused, examining a thin white wand in her hand, admiring the intricate curls of its design and the engravings. All the while her grip delicate, as if she would shatter it if she applied too much pressure.

"Mhmm!" Madison chirped, nodding with a toothy grin, radiating joy so strongly that it lit the room, "I saw the Monarch's Orchestra when they were on tour. They had these replicas in the gift shop. I had to."

Madison was a huge fan of the Myth of Monarchs franchise and had been since childhood. The franchise was musical themed and one of the iconic symbols of the series was a conductor's wand. The Hero's Baton. A small lance of ivory with musical engravings looping around. In the game the hero would use it to conduct the music within the whistling of the wind to create magical spells.

Donna grinned to herself as she remembered her favorite one. When the hero would need to command friends and allies to move as needed to solve puzzles. She had seen plenty of fan-art that put an adult slant to that concept.

Donna adjusted her grip and swept her arm to the left in a flowing gesture, snapping her wrist back to center and punctuating with a dramatic flick before a flowing sweep of her arm to the right and another snap and flick. Madison followed the motion and broke into a smirking grin that betrayed familiarity. Though Donna could not tell if it was familiarity with the direction of the conducting or simply Donna's attempt at recreating the animations from one of her beloved video games.

"Oh," she playfully demanded, raising an eyebrow, "Was that supposed to do something?"

"Pausa." Donna firmly commanded.

Madison stopped moving.

Frozen with her arms crossed, her eyebrow raised and a teasing smirk which invited and beckoned for Donna's reciprocation.

"That's it. Frozen in place. You can just let this moment in time drift away, as you always do, knowing that when you're paused like this, my words just slip in unnoticed and you can follow them without thinking about it. After all, these little blips we experience? They're not for your waking mind. Your waking mind can just continue ignoring this and go right back in flow when we're done, but your deep and obedient mind, the self that always pays attention and follows my words and directions? That part of you is focused on my words and will find that when I state the name of the spell you will feel its impact strike you, that you will feel your body surrender to my magical control. That the limb pointed to with the Baton will be targeted and my conducting actions with the spare hand will control your movements and your body will be fully enchanted by my spell and will follow along in the way best suited to follow my actions, knowing you will maintain balance, that you will be a puppet on my strings, that you will be completely enthralled by my spell...

She paused a moment to savor Madison's frozen features, the little twitches to the corner of her lip betrayed the small amount of reality under the keyfabe. She was obeying perfectly and her mind was very good at forgetting and following. But even in the deepest states, eyes needed to blink and subtle unconscious reactions thawed through the ice of the freeze compulsion. Donna would have it no other way. The human was the one she loved. The enchanted plaything she turned into was a toy to be loved and admired and adored and turned into a mindless puddle, yes. But those soft reminders of her partner's enjoyment and enthusiasm just made the magic brighter. At least to her.

Possessed by a flooding of affection she pulled in and kissed her partner's paused lips before settling back and raising the replica baton in the air. "Pausa."

Only a gentle blink punctuated Madison's transformation from immobile object to snarky brat with a raised eyebrow and tempting smirk, her clever and trained mind not even registered that there had been a break in the action.

"I don't know, you tell me." Donna shot back, summoning the tone of voice she saved for when Madison was trying to press some buttons with that bratty manner of hers. "I'm surprised you didn't recognize the directions I waved your baton, my love, surely you would recognize the Song of Submission."

"Oh, is that what you were going for?" Madison chuckled, approaching Donna and lacing her fingers into her partner's, "Because I think it will take a little more than a few waves of a wand to enchant me, Miss."

Delicately Donna raised the clasped hand and raised the back of Madison's hand to press a chaste kiss upon it. "Oh? Would you prefer me to weave a spell of words rather than actions, my love? Would you prefer me to remind you how helpless you become when I will it? How there is simply nothing you can do to prevent yourself from following my instructions and finding your will leashed, tied, bound and owned by my firm commands?" As she spoke she released Madison's hand and began to tenderly stroke her cheek while holding her gaze.

Donna's words hit strong as Madison's lip retreated behind teeth and a gentle whimper escaped, "Please?"

"I could do that..." Donna mused, rubbing her chin and raising the baton with her opposing hand, "But I prefer proving to you that I control you so fully, so completely, so effortlessly; that I need not say a word to prove you are nothing but a puppet on my strings."

With that she aimed the baton at Madison's hand with intent and began to slowly gesture a rising motion. Her hand pulling up to the swell of imaginary music, fingers raised to punctuate. Madison's hand responded instantly, following the tempo of the unheard song and floating upwards.

"Oh would you look at that, my dear, turns out you are a puppet for me to conduct." Donna boasted with an air of triumph.

"...so it seems..." Madison responded, voice filled with bravado, "Did you cheat, my love?"

"Me? Cheat, lass? Take those playful little thoughts in your head and turn them to serve my purpose?"

"Tease."

"Always."

With another sweep of the baton she used her unburdened hand to pull in and make a fist. Madison's body jerked forward and gently fell into Donna's arms. With a kiss to her cheek, lips grazing the edge of her earlobe, she whispered "I do enjoy you like this, lass, completely spellbound..."

She backed out and with another flick of her wrist pulled Madison bolt upright. "That's it. Firm and rigid. Starring ahead... just like that."

A trembling whimper was the only reply Madison provided.

Donna slowly moved in and ran the tip of the baton against Madison's side, her spare hand running through her lover's light hair, pulling in to the scalp and making a fist. With a sharp hiss of bliss, Madison's head snapped back. Donna savored and used her leverage to expose her neck and savor a swift tease of teeth on skin.

Madison whimpered in the grip and trembled on the spot. Yet another of those gentle reminders that the binding spell was a product of their hypnotic shenanigans and not actual magic. Donna could do nothing but enjoy every blissful moment that reminded that Madison offered her submission as a gift, that her joy and blissful murmurs were well earned and not magically compelled.

"In a few seconds I'm going to release..." Donna whispered, slowly maneuvering the pair backwards towards the waiting bed, "And your body will go completely limp for me... falling safely to the bed and discovering you are still unable to move without the baton's magic." a few more steps and another tantalizing kiss yielding a euphoric murmur.

"Three... two... one... Drop." with that final word Donna stepped back and gestured dramatically. The strings were cut and Madison flopped to the mattress, hair splashing across the sheets. Donna positioned herself to find her line of sight and conducted her back to rise and back into the headrest. Every motion becoming intuitive, a dance between the conductor and the doll who understood the intent of each gesture and made the motion a reality.

"Oh my sweet lass..." she finally mused, stroking Madison's cheek and admiring her. "You obey so perfectly..."

---

This post was inspired by a Tumblr post I reblogged earlier and the things I tagged it.

If you enjoyed this story please check my #Cammie Stories and #Madison and Belladonna tags for more hypnokink shenanigans.

#cammie stories #madison and belladonna #hypnosis #hypnokink #yes this is a Wind Waker #and no I do not have access to a replica #YET #but when I do #I promise #I will perform this scene #I pretty much do it with my gestures as it is #The Wind Waker would just add some extra spice #Also I will freely admit the Pausa thing is also a Wind Waker pun #Though I do happen to enjoy the suggestion that is displayed in this story #dawn posting

16 notes · View notes

mushroom-for-art · 11 months

Note

For this

Riven? :3c??

Firstly bullying me XD but let's begin

Favourite thing about Riven, hm I really love his complexity he's capable of so much horror brutality hate and torment and yet there's a lot of love in him too even if that love has been twisted be did love and adore his red lady, he's in a way doing what he is for her. Hes complex, despises humanity and yet also tolerates chatting with them. Got dimensions and that makes him scary. Plus hella fun design too I am not immune to third eyes.

Least favourite thing, uhhhhhh...??? I honestly ain't sure I don't really have a least fav thing? I hate that he's lil fucker but I also love him for that XD he's a good character I don't really have anything I dislike about him

Favorite line, making me do my homework for this lmao um I suppose I find the line where he asked if he could let us in on something quite endearing? The fact the text was small like he was whispering how he seemed hesitant like he was really being vulnerable with us, it adds to his complexity really

BROTP: probably like him and mewtwo before mewtwo changes his mind on their original plan they were probably bros with their genocide plots.

OTP: Riven and Clara naturally

nOTP: he doesn't really have any other romantic options so I guess him and Celeste?? Since ya know that's mewtwos girl stop it

Random headcanon: *vaguely gestures at my intrusion au fic* XD will put you in a torture time loop for shits and giggles. But in seriousness idk I think he's vaguely people starved for interactions it's probably why he keeps going back to torment May he low key kind of wants to interact he just lmao can't like a normal two

Unpopular opinion: sexy also low-key I'm just here like let him maim

Song I associate with them: uuh while I've never really listened to a song and gone Riven when I was pondering this I did think of Just a Man from the troy musical because of the part where like it's debating when does it go from something simple to something horrific and destructive because kinda Riven vibes? He goes from kind of innocent to well where he is now, when does the reason become the blame?

Favourite pic of them: THAT LAUGHING ANIMATION! THAT SLAPS!

#Ask answered #Hello my beloved friend #Talking about ur boi #How dare u do this tho bullying me #Probably would've said more things but don't wanna spoil with my insider knowleg

6 notes · View notes

spellbook-gayboy · 2 years

Note

prompt number 13? 😎

13.

"Figured you might say that!" Kyle smiled. "Don't worry, none of these guys could put a dent in you even if they wanted to. Plus, you gotta learn how to pass as a human sooner rather than later!" he added, pausing to sip from a glass of water, keeping an eye on his dining partner, watching as the woman fidgeted in her seat.

Thula couldn't believe the situation she found herself in. She had taken great risk in abandoning Thragg, morally correct though the decision was, and how had Emperor Nolan repaid her loyalty? By stationing her on some backwater human settlement. Her, a general of the Viltrum Empire, forced to sit in inefficient and stiff garments in some dim setting, strange items served on a plate while she had to hold a conversation with a so-called 'hero'. He was a far cry from the legends of old Viltrum, all smiles and simple platitudes that made her skin crawl. Had this been her homeworld, she wouldn't have hesitated to beat the whelp to within an inch of his life, but such an outburst would jeopardise her mission, and failure was not an option.

"You good there?" the old hero asked. "You've barely touched your chicken!"

The Viltrumite sneered at his comment. "How can you possibly eat when we are so vulnerable?! The enemy could come at us from almost any direction, and you're concerned with... 'chicken'?"

"...Okay, I appear to have touched a nerve there. My apologies, ma'am" Kyle replied, brow creasing. "But if it's any consolation, we're about as 'out of the way' as you can possibly get. Now, I may be wrong, but I really doubt any of Thragg's goons will come knocking. Now come on, your food's getting cold!"

His words didn't allay her fears, but perhaps they had some merit. The 'chicken' didn't look like much of an animal, a strange and shiny brown shape on the plate. Nevertheless, Thula did as he asked, taking up the cutlery to slice off a chunk, using her strength to simply force the knife down rather than cutting through. It had a strange smell, spicy and yet sweet at the same time, which only grew in intensity as she drew closer to eating it. Eventually, she had to take the 'leap of faith' as Kyle had called it, sinking her teeth into the sustenance.

It was... nice, as strange as the concept seemed to her. Most of the food that Viltrumites ate was designed with nutrients in mind, often devoid of taste and texture to maintain maximum efficiency. This 'chicken', on the other hand, was inefficient. It was strange and uneven in its design, with a flavour that had thrown the general for a loop. Never in the thousands of years that she had been alive had Thula been caught so off-guard. Had it been anything other than food, she might've accidentally destroyed the table from shock.

"This is... what is this?" she asked, blinking rapidly as she tried to rationalise the attack on her sense of taste.

"Sweet and sour chicken. It's okay, but I'm personally biased towards the southern-fried variety, y'know?" Kyle explained, before he took notice of the look of her face. "You okay? You still think this was a bad idea?"

"I..." Thula droned, before she quickly regained her composure, her shock morphing into her typical expression of aggressive aloofness. "I still believe that this was idiotic of you, Washington!" she declared, but let her stoic expression falter for a moment, quietly letting slip "But perhaps it wasn't a completely useless experience".

The murmur wasn't lost on Frontline, however. "Huh. That almost sounded like a compliment. We're making progress already!"

#these two #invincible #invincible show #invincible amazon #invincible oc #🦅🛡#Kyle Washington #thula #thula invincible #my asks #sequids #writing prompt friday

12 notes · View notes

crusherthedoctor · 3 years

Note

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

31 notes · View notes

aotopmha · 3 years

Text

Attack on Titan Series Thoughts

I've been mulling over Attack on Titan's ending and how I'd rate the whole story from all kinds of angles and I've reached the conclusion that above all else, the ending is really fucking annoying.

A great or a terrible ending would help me make my mind up much more easily.

If it's great, it's great. If it's terrible it's a good story with a terrible ending.

But instead, it is a mixed bag: there are things about it I like a lot and things about it I don't like.

It is a very common belief that the ending is paramount to a story's quality, but I've found that this is not really true for me. My favourite anime ever pretty much doesn't even have a proper ending. My needs for an ending basically encompass some sort of sense of closure and that's about it.

Especially longer-running series often either make the journey worth it just by being as long as they are (so a pretty generic ending is okay) or fall off in quality long before they are done. But AoT is neither of these for me.

AoT in this sense is complicated for me because I can't decide whether the ending impacted the quality of the story or not depending on which aspect of the ending I focus on.

Some details make it immensely satisfying to me and some details sour it a little bit.

I think right now the good and bad things balance out so in general nothing changes about how I view the story overall.

In basics, I really like the emotional core of Attack on Titan, but I've always found it flawed on the technical level.

I'd give the story a 10 just for how much it emotionally engaged me and made me care. This story is the reason why I started this blog and I became active talking about media in the first place.

For a time I was losing the sense of fun of being a fan: people just became really hostile when discussing stuff.

But this past week or so has been incredible in my inbox, reminding me of the highs of being a fan, with so many wonderful messages.

Other stories have made me more angry, made me cry more or laugh more, but AoT made me feel the biggest spectrum of feelings.

No other story has made me do this, at most I only became a member of various forums as a random member; I didn't create a blog with the aim to talk about one.

From a technical level, I would give it a 6-7 depending on the section of the story.

The foreshadowing for various twists is pretty loose from start to finish, there is a bunch of redundant scenes all over the story and the pacing can be really uneven. It is not nearly as *well-crafted* of a story in my eyes as I see people praise it to be.

The art is a pretty huge mess at points, too.

I think sometimes the fact that this is the author's very first actual long-running story very much shines through. I think only a beginner would dare to employ historical imagery as bluntly as Isayama did, too, for example.

But to me the emotional core is magical.

The average of these two aspects, emotional and technical, would be around 8-8.5.

But at the same time, when I finished that last chapter I felt like I couldn't rate it and this has rarely happened to me.

I've kind of slowly distanced myself from number ratings in general because consuming media is a very emotional and personal thing and exploring it via positives and negatives feels much more apt.

From that perspective, I think the story is incredibly emotionally intelligent and understands humanity really well.

Stemming from that in turn, I think themes are the strongest aspect of the story next to characters. While I think the story faltered in a some instances when it came to characters, I think the themes mostly stood tall all the way through.

I think it ended up giving answers to and looping back to ideas it started with: seeing the good in the cruel world, facing humanity's unending desire for conflict and need to survive, living without regrets, learning to see the world in more complex shades of gray rather than black and whites and learning to do the right thing when needed.

As a mystery box, it does answer pretty much all of the big mysteries of the story and I think I don't really take issue with any of the big answers except maybe one very specific one. The numerous twists throughout the story range from absolutely genius to fairly typical. Again, the foreshadowing gets a lot of praise when it comes to this story, but I think a lot of the story actually isn't planned. Isayama just uses some details in clever ways to make it seem like it was planned.

I think that is a skill in itself that never gets nearly enough credit, but in the end, I think that is the weakest part of the story along with the world itself.

I like the walls themselves and I really like some of the Titan designs, but other than that I never had much interest in the world of AoT on its own. It always has to be connected to characters or themes for me to care. The crystal cave, time sand dunes and certain Titan skeleton are the most interesting settings in the story for me in that sense.

I think it does also fall in the pit of some pretty frustrating dark fantasy tropes, most specifically with a certain blonde female character who had one of the best character arcs in the story that was kind of just thrown under the bus.

It can't quite escape the pitfalls of that genre and it just so happens to be my favourite genre of story, so I constantly see excessive shock value rape, forced pregnancy and gay erasure happen in stories that I think are great otherwise. It's frustrating.

I hoped AoT would be better than that because for so long it was, but it didn't end up being as such.

But at the same time, I think most of its female cast still ended up being pretty great and did some pretty fun archetype-defying stuff. It's a pretty strange dichotomy. It is actually much better than most dark fantasy, but not quite there yet.

This is actually true for the male cast, too, I think. It does some fun playing around with all of the character archetypes.

The story's action scenes are thrilling and some of the action setpieces are really memorable. The final arc really shines in that sense to me. As a horror spectacle it is especially excellent.

Despite sometimes coming across as narmy/unintentionally funny, it still somehow manages to make the Titans a credible threat and this is true throughout the entire story, for different, evolving reasons.

I think the Titans have become iconic for a reason and never lost the luster throughout any of the story.

Along with that, my final point is that it is one of the few stories that sets up a kill 'em all setting that actually kills major characters with substantial focus and commits to it. It also doesn't kill too many characters where no character ever gets to actually develop.

So, considering all of what I listed above, what would my general thoughts be?

I think it still is a story worth checking out.

Personally I obviously love the story as a whole.

But I think any fan of dark fantasy/sci-fi could get a bunch of entertainment out of it: above all I think it is an extremely digestable series.

It's sometimes a very dense read, but I never felt it was a "hard" read. It's a very dark story with a lot of horrible things happening, but I never felt it was difficult to get through even in its darkest of moments.

My favourite characters ended up being Gabi, Reiner, Eren, Pieck, Armin and Annie. Zeke and Hange get a shoutout, too.

My favourite chapters ended up being 71, 82, 100, 122, 131 and 137.

Who are you guys' favourite characters and what are your favourite chapters and why?

Send me an ask explaining why for fun! (Or ask me for my reasonings?)

43 notes · View notes

sapropel · 3 years

Note

The main things that turned me off of conversion for now were

1. I have alot of shit on my plate and am low income as a result so finding a place that will help might be hard because locally there really aren't any synagogues around

2. The synagogue I did find locally was uhhh...... Hhhhh. Their web page had a huge section about Israel in a positive light..

I love the religion, I love certain values it holds however I refuse to align with anyone who justifies colonialism and bloodshed against another group of people while ignoring past bloodshed done onto themselves. It makes 0 sense to me and is highly hypocritical.

Hypocrisy was one of the reasons I hated Christianity so much. Constantly causing bloodshed, huge present and past history of colonialism, huge present day history of wanting people like me who are gay or trans dead and in the ground.

the difference with Christianity is that there isn't even a present day persecution or justified worry of safety despite the fact that I've seen jack chick esque evangelical fuckers unironically act like they're holocaust survivors whenever a pride parade happens within 1 mile of them.

It makes me sad, I don't see the point in colonizing or maiming a group of people who should be your equals.

It's racist at best, dangerous and actively contributing to more death and violence at worst.

The thing is there isn't really a "point." It creates its own point. Real actionable Zionist sentiment was basically non-existent until the rise of European nationalism. It's literally the exact same brand of nationalism that gave birth to fascist Italy and other great failures of modernity. And when "Israel" was a proto-state basically its entire existence was contingent upon its continued usefulness to Britain as a tool of control over India through the Suez. Zionist claims to the land are super shaky at best and straight up revisionist at worst. Post-facto Israel has tried to give itself legitimacy through fearmongering, genocide, and forging alliances with other imperialist powers. It's doing what America did (and is doing) but it's happening in the age of mass media and we are all watching colonial revisionism happen in real time.

If you are letting the prevalence of Zionism keep you from Judaism, I would say you should keep thinking about it. If you treat Judaism as too thoroughly engulfed in Zionism, you do the work of Zionists for them--you legitimize their claim that Judaism is Zionism is Israel. You legitimize the idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitism which is incidentally exactly how my local rabbis have been fucking me over since June. You are of course totally within your rights not to convert to a religion that doesn't work for you, but I hope you rethink the implication that converting to Judaism is akin to aligning with Zionism.

And yeah, Zionist hypocrisy is a systematic issue within American Jewish institutions in a feedback loop with Jewish populations. Any institutional apparatus is going to have systematic issues that reflect the dominant discourse of the greater cultural framework--mainstream Jewish institutions are going to, both by the nature of maintaining relevancy in America and by the natures of fearmongering and cultural amnesia, have a vested interest in participating in capitalism, imperialism, racism... You are not going to find mainstream insitutions that don't perpetuate them. That's why they're dominant. You are no more aligning yourself with Zionism by going to a synagogue than you are aligning yourself with capitalism by shopping at Wal-Mart. Anything you meaningfully do in public is in some way going to be "problematic" on some level because public space is designed to keep itself alive by those values.

It's exhausting to make yourself never come close to anyone or anything bad at all--refusing to associate with anyone with a problematic ideology is a doomed enterprise. I've been there. A lot of Zionist sentiment is implanted in people's minds with lifelong propaganda and destructive mind control techniques, and it's important to recognize that. That doesn't mean Zionist adults don't have a responsibility to unlearn it, but I think it's possible to have compassion for people who do try to do their best with improving themselves. Most people you meet want to be good and don't want to be willfully ignorant. I try to think about how difficult it is to convince the average well-meaning white American of the merits of decolonization/land back. Most well-meaning Zionist Jews are going to feel the same way about Israel--actual systematic justice and decolonization are not in their lexicons. Decolonization is hidden behind thought-stopping techniques that they have been inundated with from day 1. But most people do have a basic sense of goodness and are willing to sacrifice something for it. Most people are willing to give ground for the sake of human decency. The only way I can survive talking to people I know are Zionists is by understanding that we both want the world to be a better place and if I dwell on the specifics of how I perceive them to be evil, the possibility of us having a working relationship and any hope at productive dialogue drops to zero.

You don't have to be patient with Zionists or Zionist institutions. You don't have to forgive them. You don't even have to be compassionate. But you do need to understand, intellectually, that imposed cognitive dissonance is a very powerful tool of mind control (and I'm not talking about woo-woo shit I'm extrapolating from cult research and personal experience) and that the pathos of Zionism isn't supposed to be logical. Fear trumps hypocrisy. Fatigue trumps informed consent. Charisma trumps logic. Any bigoted ideology is going to fall apart under logical scrutiny, and that's why the only battleground for maintaining bigotry is necessarily charismatic and emotional.

We haven't yet, of course, acknowledged that there are also tons of anti-Zionist Jews and that the concept isn't absurd or fringe, no matter what the dominant Zionist discourse says. It's important for us not to let Zionists be the stewards of Judaism--Zionists do not OWN Judaism. Just like the most Orthodox of Jews also don't OWN Judaism. Judaism is only what you make it to be, and if you leave it alone because you are too worried about Zionism, that is all Judaism is ever going to be for you. Of course, you still have to contend with Zionism, and if you actually are interested in being a Jew, you would have to find a way not to let it kill your Judaism. I've come close (ish) to giving up on Judaism a couple of times because of Israel and Zionism, but I'm glad I haven't. I've stuck it out long enough to give myself to tools I need to separate the two and see the situation with more clarity.

#j tag

8 notes · View notes

countdown-to-destruction · 4 years

Text

Inuyasha Sequel: a rant

Put this up this earlier on a post I re-blogged, tried to edit a part or two where I didn’t like the way I had phrased it, and ended up messing up the whole format I wrote this in. Luckily I wrote this as a draft earlier anyways! So I did a some fixing and now I’m just copy-pasting it again and making it a text post instead. This will be very long and a little nit-picky but I wanted to make a post ever since I heard about the upcoming sequel to Inuyasha, Hanyō no Yashahime. I did put a TLDR at the end for those who don’t want to read everything. Not sure how many people in the fandom still follow me and will see this, as it's been a long time since I was actually active in the fandom, but it's hands-down both my favorite manga and anime of all time and I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately so I had to post something. Before reading this be sure to read all of the translated character bios for Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha so that this makes sense.

When I first heard that Inuyasha would be getting a sequel I was excited! But after reading up on it, to be completely honest I'm not feeling this sequel anymore. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but hear me out. Firstly, it seems like Rumiko is mostly involved in the character design aspect and the writing is up to Katsuyuki Sumisawa. The music will be produced by Kaoru Wada which is great! And from what I’ve seen and read online a number of others who worked on the original series will reunite so hopefully the story will go well. However, knowing Rumiko isn't personally writing and not knowing how much input she has or will give makes me unsure about watching. The original Inuyasha anime followed and was based off of the events in the manga, and there was no manga prior to this for it to be based on. Depending on what happens this could be an alright sequel or a total miss. Unfortunately sequels in general are known to be disappointing in some way.

Secondly, if I hear anything about Rin being the mother of Sesshomaru's twin daughters I'm out. This part will be a SUPER long and in depth explanation on why I think this way, feel free to skip if you're not interested. Please don't come for me on this, I'm here to explain my thoughts and feelings on the sequel and the theories around it so far, not start an argument. I'm more than aware that there's plenty of controversy out there on this pairing and personally I do not support it. I never saw their relationship as more than a friendship, or something akin to child and guardian as Sesshomaru and Jaken are basically Rin's caretakers up until she goes to live in the village with Kaede. He definitely cares for her deeply but I can't see it in a romantic way, being that Sesshomaru isn't even a character focused on romance to begin with. He learns compassion through Rin's second death but that doesn't mean he loves her romantically. As a reminder his main goal is to seek power and be powerful, and it's stated that he needed to learn compassion and grief in order to mature. It's what helped him learn to wield the Tenseiga at its full potential. In addition, she was really young when they first met and still was when she went to live with Kaede. The idea of Sesshomaru (an adult) having romantic feelings for a kid under ten years old (around eleven at the end of the series, and still a literal child in all ways) and waiting for her to age with the intention of marrying her sits totally wrong with me. Age wise I realize that Inuyasha is decades older than Kagome and that his father was much older than his mother, Izayoi, as well. The difference here is that Kagome was a teen when she met Inuyasha (who not just physically, but more importantly mentally was also a teen) and clearly Izayoi was old enough to conceive Inuyasha and give birth. As far as the audio dramas (more specifically "Asatte") go they're generally considered as an outtake reel and are essentially parodies, or a form of satire. Some will debate on this but realistically there’s plenty of reasons this is true, and those who take the time to properly check them out understand that. For me I've always had a headcanon that at some point in her teen years Rin would inevitably develop a one-sided crush on Sesshomaru and that he would ultimately set boundaries and reject her, seeing her as more of a close companion than a love interest and wanting her to live with someone she can grow old with. He gave her the choice to follow him and it's most likely that she would, but I think that once she began aging he would want her to have somewhere to settle, given that he enjoys roaming and seeking out other powerful beings to battle. It's strange to me that they decided to give Sesshomaru hanyō/half-demon children in general but based on the artwork we've seen it's fair to guess that they might have made Sesshomaru and Rin a pairing in this sequel.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to clarify that if you ship them together I'm not writing this here because I want to hate on your ship for no reason, or in order to create an argument on if the pairing makes sense, these are my thoughts and opinions on the matter and I’m voicing them because it’s what I believe. I already know that somebody won’t like this and will take it personally. People usually say that once Rin is an adult the pairing is acceptable but I disagree. I find it quite creepy that someone would think it would be alright for an adult to wait around for a kid to grow up with the intention to marry and/or sleep with them. Watching from a distance is the same exact thing, after making an impression on the child... let’s not normalize this. In this situation it would be grooming. We all have our own opinions when it comes to our ships and fandoms and I try to respect that but I can’t get behind this one.

Next we have the apparent lack of parental figures for the heroines. Where are the original Inuyasha characters at? Moroha's character bio says she barely knows her parents (Inuyasha and Kagome, our former main protagonists) and has been alone since she was young! It makes me think either something has happened to them or some kind of bizarre event separated them. And sorry, not related, but why does she transform by PUTTING LIPSTICK ON?? That part threw me for a loop.

When it comes to Setsuna and Towa their parents are absent too. I find it difficult to believe that Sesshomaru wouldn't keep track of his children given how he treats Rin and reacts to her going missing in any capacity. Especially if he happened to be fond of whoever their mother is. One daughter works as a taijiya/demon slayer for Kohaku and the other mysteriously transports to Kagome's era and is raised by Sota (I thought we had finished with the time jumps when the well closed but apparently not. When the Bone Eater's Well closed after Kagome's return it gave a sense of finality and closure to the story, and showed that Kagome had chosen where she was most happy and felt she belonged. I think that bringing the theme of time travel back into the sequel makes it feel repetitive, like something right out of a predictable fanfic. Props to Sota for taking in and raising a child who showed up out of nowhere though).

Another thing that came to mind when I read these character bios was why Inuyasha and Kagome's daughter and Sesshomaru's daughters are the exact same age. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. It only struck me as odd because suddenly everyone is having kids at the same time. And so far there's no mention of other characters like Sango, Miroku, Shippo, Jaken, Kaede, or Miroku or Sango's three children or where they are. One might expect that a story focused on the children of some of the original Inuyasha's main characters would feature appearances from those who had important roles in the previous series and their children. Which brings me around to wondering what made twin daughters a trend? Two sets of twin girls is a unique choice (Sango and Miroku's twin daughters. For such a small group of parental characters, what are the odds of two sets of twin girls? Where is the creativity and again why the repetition?).

Lastly, Sesshomaru's daughters lack some of the common yōkai/demon characteristics we see on Inuyasha and other characters. Their ears are human, and they have no markings or otherwise (that I noticed) with the exception of Setsuna's mokomoko/fur which is similar to Sesshomaru's. So perhaps they take more after their human mother? Given that Inuyasha seemed to inherit strong genes from his father it's interesting that they did not. Their ages also interest me as they appear to age the same way as humans do. Yōkai/demons are known to have a longer lifespan than humans and appear to slow down or almost stop aging at some point. Perhaps this confirms that the slowdown in aging occurs once they reach the equivalent of a human teen?

Overall Inuyasha was a fantastic manga and great anime on its own, and I never got the feeling that it needed a sequel. As a stand-alone it was everything it needed to be. I thoroughly enjoyed both formats of the original, though I do have a tendency to disregard certain parts of the anime. I always preferred the manga more when the anime dragged out certain scenes (Shichinintai/Band of Seven arc for example) or straight-up excluded, changed, and added others. Taking that into consideration the sequel might end up being the same for me in that way, but rather than one scene that plays out for too long or an excluded, altered, or unnecessary added scene, if it’s not any good I’ll simply disregard it altogether. When the anime comes out I certainly plan to try watching it out of loyalty to the fandom, and due to the fact that it's "technically" canon (without Rumiko being the writer I don't necessarily consider it canon, much like how some folks do or do not consider the movies canon) but I get the feeling that I'll wind up giving up on it in disappointment.

TLDR; Overall I'm left questioning if the sequel is worth watching (for me) given what I've read and heard so far, but nonetheless I will give it an optimistic try! I'm currently wondering how much we'll see of the original Inuyasha characters, if we get to find out what happened to them, if the number one pairing I'm not fond of will make an appearance (and cause me to drop the whole thing), and questioning parts of the character backstories and designs (why is there a repetitive and recurring theme of time travel and does it end up hindering or ruining the story, why do the protagonists all lack parents, and why do the hanyō/half-demon characters lack common yōkai/demon traits and does it make them more human than demon?).

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #sesshomaru #please don't be sessrin #kagome #a feudal fairytale #internal screeching #my thoughts #my opinions #unpopular opinion

25 notes · View notes

spartan-ghost-m-k · 4 years

Text

Across Dimensions part two:

Awakening:

Ghost POV:

I groan as my biotic implant feels like it bounced around my head. The air is cool against my face.

My vision returning too me as I see Phoenix sit up as well. "It appears that we are not dead, just... misplaced." I say massaging my temple to try and relive my headache.

I look around seeing a thick jungle around us the air was thick and damp, the place looked beautiful, the sound of birds chirping and leaves rustling, then my ears picked up something else. Gunfire, I checked the HUD of my visor and found I only had my side arm (A/N:the pistol in the drawing I think it's the Carnifex hand cannon. please correct me if wrong.) and stand to my feet and walk over to Phoenix and help her to her feet. "You're right about that we are misplaced." She says surveying the area. "Were are we Ghost?"

"I don't know but we need to move, I hear gunfire." I go run in the direction of the firefight.

"Phe do you have a weapon?" she reaches for her back, nothing then reaches for her side to pull out her Predator pistol. "How many clips? I only have five."

"five, maybe we'll find more of our stuff on the way."

"Either that of more clips." I say as I put a barrier over my armour shield.

As we weave through the jungle into he direction of the noise I spot marines in a strange uniform and rather tall people and, or mechs in heavy armour and a brunette man in what looks like an officers uniform, they were under heavy fire from these strange machines some looked like the old style drones just glowing and sideways floating and some looked like skinny glowing FENRIS mechs and the other ones I had no idea what the hell they are.

"We need to help them." Phe motioned the her pistol and looked at me.

"We don't have enough clips." "We don't but we have an Omni-blade and we have biotics."

"sure... but we don't know them."

"We are members of the Alliance Military, It is OUR duty to help our fellow man, so let's go."

"Yes Lieutenant." She says as I sneak along the edge of the battle getting behind the strange robots.

Saying a silent prayer as I launch myself over a fallen tree firing at one of the dog-like ones, then another as Phoenix was next to the other marines firing at the other machines, creating a biotic sphere around her and the others as they look to her in mild fear, but quickly return to firing at the machines, I biotically charge at one of the larger ones and then used nova pouring the energy from my shields into it, as the larger one dissolved into a orang-yellow glowing dust. I then use stasis on a group of the dog-like ones and then throw.

A larger one appeared behind me about to bring it's blade down on me, as I quickly turned around activating my omni-blade and stabbing it in the side, at that the current battle came to an end with the strange marines finishing of the remaining forces, Phe waked to me looking exhausted from using biotics after what happened earlier on the Normandy, god knows what state our implants are in.

"Hey phe, you good?"

"Yeah, out of clips, a bit tiered and slight headache, but otherwise good." She says, as she looks o my nose. "Umm... Ghost your nose is... uh bleeding."

Surely enough I put my gloved hand to my nose to find the warm crimson liquid on my finger-tips. "Probably due to damage to my implant, either that or doing too many things at once again."

Our discussion was ended by the sound of guns being cocked and aimed at us, me and Phe immediately put a Barrier over ourselves and activated our omni-blades, I feel more blood slowly drip out my nose. A brunette woman stepped forwards *so not mechs, just really tall humans.* I thought.

She had a strange looking pistol at us. "What and who are you?" She demanded, her voice filled with authority.

We looked at the tall female confused. Phe spoke up. "Don't you know what biotics are?"

"No." The brunette says coldly. I start to fidget, those machines could come back anytime or worse, and yet they're questioning us out in the open.

"Ok I may be speaking out of turn, but do you really think this is the right location to play twenty questions? Those machines could come back and we are all unprepared." I say, the brunette goes to argue further but the man in the officer uniform stops her.

"Lieutenant Palmer enough, the lady is right." He says looking around at the other marines.

"We need to find somewhere to treat our wounded and try to re-establish sturdy communication with the Infinity." The brunet woman speaks up again. "We still don't know them and their armour is not standard UNSC or civilian wears and judging by the design definitely not spartan."

"I understand that Lieutenant." He turns to us with a dorky smile on his face.

"I'm commander Lasky and this is Lieutenant Palmer." He says to us as he motioned to the brunet woman.

"Nice to meet you commander, I'm Lieutenant Kaen, an my companion her is Lieutenant Panshura." I say briefly and professionally.

"But with all due respect, sir. This is hardly the place for introductions either." I say as I use my Omni-tool to scan the nearby area detecting a nearby structure.

"I have a location on somewhere That will be able to provide ample cover and a safe place to tend to the wounded, and hopefully you can re-establish communication with you ship." I say as me and Phoenix start to walk to the location I sent to her Omni-tool.

I look over my shoulder at them. "Feel free to stay there, or follow us. I ain't the one in charge of you."

After a few minuets of walking I check behind me to see the marines, Spartans, the Lieutenant and the Commander following behind. I lean to phe. "What do you recon about them?" I whisper to her.

"Lieutenant Palmer seems to have her guard held high with us, while Commander Lasky seems like the type of person who keeps an open mind." She whispered back.

I laugh slightly. "I mean the Commanders a bit of a dork though."

"Kinda reminds me how you are talking to the opposite sex normally." She retorts.

"Heh kinda like you talking in general."

"At least I can talk to people, without keeping it brief."

"At least I can keep it brief."

"Keep it brief huh?" She says smirking, as I flush a bright red.

"That's how I meant!" I yell embarrassed, whispering is out the window.

"See that's were keeping 'it brief' goes wrong, people tend to misinterpret thing."

"You know exactly what I meant!"

"Oh, do I now?" The conversation was interrupted by a short cough. we turn around to see an unimpressed Lasky. "How much did you hear?" I say meekly.

"Everything." He says looking at me. "So I'm a 'Dork' ey?"

"Nothing wrong with being a dork." Phe says with a shrug. Lasky gives her a 'really' look.

"Eh. I tried to save ya." She says patting my shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it as an insult, but I guess that's up to the person's interpretation. I am sorry if I offended you." I say slowly sinking in on myself *I never apologise.* I notice Phe look at me mildly surprised. "wow. You've reached a whole knew level of dysfunctionality." She says sarcastically, laughing slightly.

I just start walking looking at the ground refusing to speak. "What do you mean by that?" I over hear Lasky asking Phe.

"Oh, she never apologises. You must've really made her unconfutable for her to apologize. Without argument." She says laughing slightly.

"Should I consider that an honour?" He says, I can hear the smile in his voice.

"Most people make her unconfutable, especially ones she finds cute." She says laughing slightly.

As I increase my walking speed. And I wasn't paying attention as I feel something tug my ankle as I fall forwards and down a slope, my helmets visor finally smashed cutting the ridge of my nose as I land with a thump. "I think there's a fucking slope!" I yell up minorly in pain, as I pull my helmet off. *No use now.*

"Hey! There's a slope, I think it's pretty steep." Phe says

"No shit Sherlock!" I yell up, as she takes a step and slips down.

She stops just besides me as I feel a sharp pain in my left shoulder. "Hey Phe, my shoulders outta place!" I see the others found a safer route down as they walk over to check on us. "You two ok?" Lasky asks.

"I think I fucked my ankle over, but I'll be able to walk." Phe responds.

Lasky looks to me. "And you?"

"Well, my helmets fucked and My shoulder is dislocated but I can deal with that..." I say looking down at my literally twisted ankle.

"I think I'll be fine... Just... Just need to... Uhhh... Walk it off. Yeah. Just gotta walk it off." I say painfully popping my shoulder into place with a sickening pop, I try to stand up but as I put pressure on my ankle I scream slightly and fall back down.

"I don't think your ankle is meant to face that way." Phe says looking slightly worried.

"I agree, the condition of your leg leaves you in no position to walk." He says taking a step towards me, helping me up and proceeding to attempt to loop my arm over his shoulder, but there was a major height difference also I can't walk without support so he took it upon himself to carry me bridal style. "W... What are you doing, I... I can walk..." I say getting gradually more and more embarrassed. Lasky looks down at me with a serous face.

"No you can't your ankle is facing the wrong way." "But..."

"Actually you would be surprised, she's walked on worse." Phoenix says, attempting to save me from further argument.

"Such as?" Lasky asked.

"Well, something fell on the lower half of her left leg and crushed below the knee, she voluntarily hoped for a full hours walk."

"She is not doing that, her ankle needs to rest and have no stress on it, at all." And he starts to walk.

"Stubborn bastard." I grumble under my breath.

"I heard that."

"I hope so." I say crossing my arms, looking away from him.

"And she's being a child, again."

"She does this often?"

"For someone as hard-ass as her, she's surprisingly immature."

"Heh, reminds me of some people I know."

"I'm going to the back." Phe says as she slows her walking pace and lags at the back.

"You didn't have to carry me." I say meekly.

"Well, you and Miss Panshura assisted us, and even though you did kind of insult me..."

"I said I was sorry."

"... You helped me and my men, so I'll help you." He says looking down at my smaller frame in his arms.

"Thank you... and... and I'm sorry for insulting you." I mumbled.

After halve an hour and a few altercations with the strange machines, and of Lasky carrying me walking we reached a very advanced looking structure buried in the forestry.

"Commander this is the structure I detected on my map, there's a clearing a bit further along you could try to secure as a landing zone." I informed him.

"Thank you for finding the location for us."

"It's standard protocol, if lost in a unknown location and if you have wounded find a safe structure of a defensible position and head there immediately."

"That makes sense. "

"Also Commander?"

"Yes?"

"Can you put me down now, I want to scan the structure, and maybe some of the plants, see if any have medicinal uses?"

"Sure but either me or another marine will accompany you. You still haven't explained what a Biotic is."

"I understand I guess we have plenty of time now for me and Phe to explain a biotic, but I also have the information on my Omni-tool." I say activating it and pulling up the files on Biotics.

After a few minuets of him reading the information he looks at me. "So it's like telekinesis?" He asked curiously.

"Kind of, it is hard to explain but it has a multitude of uses, but just believe this me and Phe are on your side." I say reassuringly.

"Hey, I'm convinced. I think that the Lieutenant will need more convincing that me." he says smiling slightly. I laugh slightly. "So Commander, You said that you would allow me to take scans of the architecture? May I?" I say keeping eye contact with the taller male. He thought for a few seconds. "Sure, but I did say with supervision, and since your leg is still the.. uh... way it is. I will accompany you." He says wrapping an arm around my waist to allow me to walk properly. I huff in mild annoyance. "I'm not a child you know."

He looks down at me from the corner of his eye as we were walking about the large space of the structure. "Well you sure do act like one." He says mildly amused.

I was about to say something in response but we stop by what looks to be a terminal. "Scan away, Little Biotic." He says almost teasingly.

"You do know I can make you have to cling to the ceiling right?" He gulps.

After a few moments going through the alien terminal, and learning about these Forerunners, and me and the Commander poking fun at each other.

We both hear the Lieutenant's voice ring through, Commander picking p movement outside the door." A few seconds of silence. "It's the Master Chief, sir."

"Affirmative Lieutenant." As he wraps his arm around my waist again. Escorting me back to the main area.

#this is cringey #i am sorry #captain lasky x oc #mass effect x halo #Across Dimensions

1 note · View note

karlenasuperluthor · 4 years

Text

Not Very Okay At All

Hey there, this is my first Supergirl one shot, so I hope it’s good. It’s also the first time I wrote a dialogue-heavy thing, I usually don’t have much dialogue in what I write so this was a nice thing to do, not sure it’s my style, but it was fun to try.

Anyway, this is a little 2k words 5x19 fix-it/ what I think happened after the end of the episode.

Anyway, I’m gonna shut up. Enjoy. I would love to know what you think.

Oh! Also! Here’s an AO3 link, in case you prefer to read it there.

~~~~~

When the day ended, after Leviathan was defeated with the help of Brainy and everyone decided to come back tomorrow, fresh and well rested, to figure out how to take down Lex.

Kara offered Lena to come back to her place, order some take out and talk. They started while they were in Lena's lab, but they kept getting interrupted and Kara felt like she needs to talk this through with Lena if they ever want to move on and try to become friends again.

So here they were, in Kara's living room, with three pizza boxes on the table. One plain, mostly for Lena, one with pepperoni and another one with pineapples. They were all half eaten, with Kara take a slice from a different box every time and Lena only eating three slices before she was full.

They were silent all this time, neither knowing what to say to start the conversation in fear of saying the wrong thing while also not really knowing what they want to say. Eventually, though, Kara got tired of the silence and spoke up.

“You know what? Yes, I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but I did. But you never listened to me, you used me, and you intentionally looked for ways to hurt me. And, yes, I probably could have done this differently, but I didn’t hurt you intentionally. I tried to do the right thing, tell you the truth. But you also forgot that I never owed it to you, no matter how much you mean to me, how much I meant to you.

"My truth was mine to share when I was ready. Because it's more than just a secret identity, it's also about my past, my planet, my family. The trauma of seeing my plant literally explode right in front of my eyes, knowing that my entire family and friends are there and there's nothing I can do to keep them alive. It's about being trapped in the Phantom Zone for 24 years, without time passing, the only thing keeping me occupied are the images of losing my plant playing over, and over, and over in my mind, in an endless loop, and being only 13 and not knowing if I'll ever get to earth, or if I'll spend the rest of eternity in this pace where time doesn't pass, where I would be forever stuck as a 13 year old. I was supposed to take care of my baby cousin, at 13 I was given the responsibility of taking care of him. And there I was, stuck in this place, absolute silence and darkness surrounding me, and I didn't know what would happen to me, what would happen to Kal-El, where he was.

"And don't– don't tell me that you're sorry, that you didn't know, because you not knowing that was a result of your actions, of you using me, leading me on for weeks, and then refusing to listen to me, to talk to me, no matter how hard I tried to have this conversation with you. You refused to talk to me, so you not knowing is a result of your actions and your decisions, because I tried, at every single turn, to give you a chance, give you the benefit of the doubt. I fought for you at the DEO, telling my sister and my friends that you were just confused, that you were just processing and that you needed time. But instead, you proved them all right. You went and used me, stole from me, used kryptonite against me, even after I told you why it scares me so much.

"I only made one single mistake, and that is not telling you the truth as soon as I was ready, letting Alex decide for me that it's not a good time, no matter when I wanted to do it. But you let that dictate your actions this entire year, you decided that your anger and hurt is more important to you than our friendship. And I know– I know that you didn't mean to let it get this far, but I gave you so many options to stop, to get out of the path you were on, and then you went and worked with Lex of all people, after everything he did to you. After all the times he betrayed you, tried to get you killed, gained your trust just so that he could manipulate you. You went to him, instead of me, when you knew I would listen to you, and talk to you, if you just gave me the chance."

Kara poured out every single thought she ever had over the last year, since she told Lena the truth, and Lena was stunned into silence.

"I… uh… I'm sorry." Lena said quietly. Kara could see the tears in her eyes, could hear the way she was holding them back. Lena took a deep breath and continued.

"I'm sorry I never listened to you, you were right, I let my anger and hurt lead the way. I thought I knew everything about you, and then you revealed this huge piece of information, and I felt so stupid. I just thought to myself 'wow, if it was this easy for her to hide something as big as this, what else could she be hiding from me?' and instead of coming to you, I just stewed in my anger, let it build and consume me. And then… then then the crisis happened, and suddenly Lex was part of the good guys, supposedly, and he came to me, and told me he'll work with me, used a truth seeker on himself to prove to me he was telling the truth, and I just followed him blindly, because he accepted me, this version of him never lied to me. And it was just so much easier to trust him so blindly than try and repair our relationship.

"But you're right, it was your truth to tell when you were ready. I just never thought about everything else that came with you being Supergirl, being an alien, because it was so much easier to be mad at you when I don't let my mind validate your actions. When I let myself be angry from having to find out from my dying brother. He used his dying breath to tell me this, knowing that this is when he did with it, while you had three years of friendship to come to me with this, it was so easy to justify my actions to myself and everyone around me. To push everyone I love away."

Kara opened her arms to Lena after she saw she was finished, indicating that she wanted a hug.

"You know, you need to stop assuming every time someone hurts you it was intentional and because you're a Luthor. Because as far as I'm concerned, as well as our friends, you're just Lena. You need to understand that once people get to know who you are, under the CEO persona with the killer heels and designer clothes and the looks that could kill, we see our friend Lena who likes to wear t-shirts with bad science puns on them and loves red wine and is crazy good at Monopoly even thought it's supposed to be pure luck, and cries and cried during every single movie we watch. We love you for you, and we keep you around because we like the person you are when you're around us, not because we want to keep an eye on the crazy Luthor that might go over the edge at any second. And know that you can always come to us for help, because we're never going to judge you for needing help"

"I promise I'm gonna try." Lena smiled a soft smile at her best friend.

"That's all I could ever ask for"

Kara tightened her arms around her best friend, happy that she finally got everything she ever wanted to say off her chest.

"Hey Kara?" Lena whispered

"Yeah?"

"Can we try and go back to being friends? I know it'll never be the same as before, or what it could have been, but I want to try, because I never had a friend like you, and I don't want to lose you"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

After a little while, Kara spoke up again.

"You know, another reason I never told you was because being friends with you was always so easy. You never expected me to always be okay, always be strong. My friends, and Alex, no matter how hard they try, they always see Supergirl when they look at me, even if they don't mean to. They always see that beacon of hope and love and compassion, and they always expect me to be strong, and happy, and provide comfort, that they sometimes forget that I need that comfort every now and then. That sometimes I need to be taken care of.

"They forget that sometimes I have bad days, because it isn't always easy to be happy after everything that happened to me. I have days when I need my mom more than anything, to hug her and feel her arms around me, smell her hair that I swear smelled like sunshine, or hear her voice telling me that everything is going to be okay. And I miss the way my dad would sneak me into his lab, and teach me everything he knows, and let me do my own science experiments, blowing stuff up, and accidentally setting equipment on fire, or how he would call me his sunshine, his piece of Rao. And I miss prying with my parents for Rao. I miss the red hue everything had from the light of Rao, and the way His color would change when the sun was setting, and everything would get this deep, dark red color and how beautiful it was. I miss knowing exactly where my life was going, knowing that once I finish my education, I'm going to be in the Science Guild with my father. I was so excited to get to spend every single day with him, he was my best friend. And I know they aren't doing it on purpose, trying to make me feel bad for not being okay, but they still do it, even Alex.

"But I never had that with you, you never expected Kara to be okay all the time, because just Kara was only human. I was only human to you, and you accepted me on my bad days just like you did on my good days, because part of being human was getting hurt, and not being okay. And sometimes I have days where I don't feel okay for no apparent reason, I just do, and it was okay. You never judged me. Never expected me to be this beacon of hope because you didn’t know that was me, and I wasn't ready to risk that, to possibly let that go."

"Hey, here's the thing. There are two things that you need to know. The first thing is that even those people, who seem to have got everything in life all sorted out... they probably haven't. Actually, everyone has days when they feel Not Very Okay At All. Some people are just better at hiding it than others. And the second thing you need to know... is that it's okay to feel Not Very Okay At All. It can be quite normal, in fact. And all you need to do, on those days when you feel Not Very Okay At All, is come and find me, and tell me. Don't ever feel like you have to hide the fact you're feeling Not Very Okay At All. Always come and tell me. Because I will always be there."

"Did you just quote Winnie the Pooh at me?" Kara giggled

"Yes, yes I did" Lena smiled as she said that.

"I never pegged you for a Winnie the Pooh kinda gal"

"Kara Danvers, there is a lot you still don't know about me"

"Well, I can't wait to find out"

~~~~~

For anyone wondering, this is the full Winnie the Pooh quote, it’s one of my favorites.

#supergirl #supercorp #supergirl fanfiction #supergirl fanfic #supercorp fanfiction #supercorp fanfic #lena luthor #kara danvers #my work #personal #text

3 notes · View notes