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tabithatwo · 1 year

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fics and posts of note!

if yellowjackets enthusiast is my second job (it is) then, within that, fic writing is my day job and tumblr rambling is my moonlighting, so here's easy access to my fics and to my more involved posts!

current status: I’ve had a long, rough hiatus from writing but I think I’m back! With bee charmer complete (yay!) I plan on finishing abmb then focusing on other things! I have to read abmb so it might be a bit of a wait still, but it’s in progress now and I’m excited to be back in it <3 —2/5

likely order of updates: abmb, resurrection —2/5

multichapter fics

(ongoing)

always be my baby (32/?)

explicit / post-s1 canon-divergence / jackie lives (but shauna doesn't find out until 2021)

jackieshauna centric, taivan background, lottienat background, mistynat implied / ensemble piece; the primary focus is jackieshauna, but the other characters play in heavily and their relationships (both romantic and platonic) are very much explored

novel length (and then some) / wip / primarily 2021 timeline with flashbacks / primarily shauna and jackie pov / includes povs from: taissa, van, natalie, lottie, misty, callie, jeff

All the living yellowjackets are forced together when someone decides to unearth their past. Tensions rise, past relationships are revealed, and new ones are forged in a reunion that no one asked for (except maybe Misty).

Shauna’s world is rocked when Jackie Taylor walks back into it.

read on ao3

we practice resurrection every night (4/?)

explicit / jackie lives au / slice of life

jackieshauna centric, lottienat, ensemble piece

novel length / wip / set in and around 1996 canon / shauna and jackie primary povs, lottie and nat secondary povs, with assorted ensemble povs

A series of moments based pre, during, and post 1996 canon, centered around Jackie and Shauna, accounting for the huge, rippling impact of one small change: the Holmdel bust goes differently. Shauna ends up walking home with Jackie instead of Jeff.

read on ao3

(complete)

you're just a bee charmer (~53k)

explicit / no crash au / shifted ten years (they graduate high school in 2006, rather than 1996)

jackieshauna centric, taivan background, lottienat background

novella length / wip / set in 2006-2007, they are 19 / shauna and jackie pov

They've been at college for an entire semester, and Shauna is really fucking sick of the Jackie-Jeff rollercoaster. So, when Jeff dumps Jackie right before winter break, Shauna decides she's willing to do pretty much anything to keep them broken up. Jackie just wants to feel wanted, so what harm can a few messages from a new account really do?

read on ao3

just unzip me (4/4)

explicit / no crash au

jackieshauna centric, taivan background, lottienat background

novella length / complete / set between 2004-2006 / shauna and jackie pov

Shauna is the maid of honor in the Taylor-Sadecki wedding, but on the big day both the bride and the groom have a confession to make.

(and big moments in Jackie and Shauna’s lives after the not-a-wedding)

read on ao3

and it's spinoff oneshot, the perfect fucking wife (teen and up, three short snippets from three jewish holidays in the shipman household. total fucking fluff.)

read on ao3

oneshots

trying to keep you alive

explicit / canon-compliant / ghost!jackie or hallucination!jackie depending on how you read it

jackieshauna / shauna's relationships with taissa, jeff, and callie

~5k words / set eleven years post return / shauna pov

A night of Shauna feeling especially self-destructive (cruising for women, talking to Jackie's ghost, and burning bridges with the only two people in her corner).

read on ao3

no take backs

mature / canon-compliant / ghost!jackie

jackieshauna centric, lottielee background / jackie and laura lee

~3k words / set during 2x02 / jackie pov

Jackie didn't leave the woods when she died. Laura Lee is a few steps ahead of her in this whole navigating being a ghost thing, but Shauna is falling apart quicker than Jackie can pick up the pieces.

read on ao3

series (jackie lives post-return fluff)

definitely think twice

teen and up / jackieshauna, taivan / ~2.5k words / van pov

Van and Tai head to Jackie and Shauna's to babysit during their much needed vacation, but getting Jackie out the door is proving harder for Shauna than expected.

read on ao3

this she was sure about

teen and up / jackieshauna / ~2k words / jackie pov

Jackie and Shauna bring the kids to Shauna's first book signing after some encouragement from her agent.

read on ao3

no being sad about ice cream

teen and up / jackieshauna / ~3k words / shauna pov

Three slice-of-life moments from Jackie's pregnancy.

read on ao3

and if i can't fix it, i'm gonna make you fix it

teen and up / jackieshauna / ~2k words / jackie pov

Bee has a shitty day and Jackie gives Shauna a pep talk.

read on ao3

posts of note

x jackie taylor is a lesbian frame by frame pt. 1

x jackie taylor is a lesbian frame by frame pt. 2

x tai and shauna / call your mom

x shauna and psychosis

x the "dreams" (travis' dialogue on near death experiences in 2x02)

x the "dreams" (eating and drinking in other realms motif)

x jackieshauna / lottielee

x mirrors and reflections in yj (the pilot)

x pit girl scenes and their cuts away from natalie

x lesbian breakup so bad (yj edition)

x sight and power and leadership (lottie, tai, nat, jackie ruminations)

x jackieshauna / our wives under the sea

x yj and jennifer's body

x nat/jackie ruminations

x why it matters if they keep jackieshauna vague

#here's all my shit all in one place so very organized of me!#yellowjackets fic #yellowjackets theories #yellowjackets meta #jackie taylor #shauna shipman #jackie x shauna #yellowjackets

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ruthlesslistener · 1 year

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A History of Regions in Hallownest (with marked maps)

*Note: this is HEAVY speculation/veering into headcanon territory, because we honestly just don't know most of the details to the history of Hallownest other than architectural cues, brief one-liners, and fossils. I'm mostly just doing this to provide a visual explanation for what my rough guess is, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyways, did anyone else notice the fact that in Hollow Knight, you can tell which tribe lives in which area of the game based off of architectural differences? How about the fact that you can tell which gods rule in certain areas based off of environmental cues? Different areas on the official map are colour-coded, which is helpful and can give us some idea of which tribe lives where, but the gods are more fickle, especially since their territories have canonically changed over time as new gods were introduced, old ones began to fade, and bloody wars were waged over the indoctrination of new followers. I wanted to mark off the ancestral regions of the tribes of Hallownest, but those have a measure of overlap with the historical territories of their deities, so to begin with, I took the map of Hallownest as it appears post-fall (aka during the game), and picked out colours to indicate the main ones that we know of so that we can keep track of how their territories might have looked over the years. I left out minor/debatable gods simply because these five (The Radiance, the Pale King, the White Lady, the Lord of Shades/Void, and Unn) are technically the only ones that we can confirm where their territory holds were via environment.

[ID: the map of Hallownest as it appears in-game, with an additional note reading 'Map of Hallownest with Major Gods Colour Coded (post-fall)' on top. On the left, Unn is marked in pale green, White Lady in hunter's green, and grey text is used to indicate undisputed/neutral areas. On the right, the Radiance is indicated in pale pink, and the Pale King is depicted in pale purple. The Lord of Shades is marked below in darker grey.]

Next, I want to indicate where I believe the major god's territories were in three different ages in Hallownest: the time of the Void Civilization (pre-Radiance), the time of the Radiance (pre-Pale King), and the time of the Pale Gods. Because the goal of a god is to true-kill another and capture/secure the loyalty of their followers by erasing any evidence of their predecessor's influence, we are going to assume that there have been two stages of records-wiping and potential civilization-breaking, done by first the Radiance and then the Pale King. Therefore, the amount of speculation decreases the further down we go along the timeline.

Hallownest as it was during the time of the Void Civilization:

[ID: the same map of Hallownest as before, but now with transparent, colour-coded blobs over certain areas to indicate the potential territories of the gods during the era before the Radiance. The vast majority of the map is overtaken by a blob of grey, with a couple smaller blobs to the left and right, and a green blob over Greenpath. The green blob correlates to the colour indicative of Unn, while the grey blob indicates the potential range of the void civilization, including monuments and void gates (which is written on it in white). A note underneath states 'likely vast overestimate due to lack of knowledge of this era'. Blue text at the upper right states 'outlier unaccounted for: Lifeblood God]

Like I said, this era is pretty much mostly left up to speculation, as we have little to no information on the void civilization other than the fact that they existed, and the vitrolic hatred that the Radiance had for their god (the Void itself). We also don't know if Unn was actually here during this time period, but I included her because her civilization feels extremely old, and because I interpreted the fact that she pulled the Mosskin and much of Greenpath from her dreams to mean that the Radiance likely either didn't exist yet, or if she did, had not yet ascended to the God of the Dream Realm.

As for the Void Civilization itself, I made a rough indicator of where it probably was based off of the location of the void, the number of strange statues and voidgates/free floating void present in the air, the composition of the walls, and the areas where large, ancient-looking beetles are found, similar to the one in the Abyss itself. The cutoff point and 'extras' written on the higher blobs indicate areas where certain members of the tribes might have spread, based on the presence of voidgates, the Black Egg Temple, and soul totems that are carved in the abyssal style, but that's mostly just tentative speculation. The tribes likely involved in this worship were the Snail Shamans (who are tied to death/can teach void spells upon death/are now very scattered/rare), and the predecessors to the Beetle Tribe.

Next is the Radiance.

Hallownest as it was during the dominion of the Radiance (pre- Pale King):

[ID: the map of Hallownest, now with different transparent territorial indicators. The vast majority of the top right area is taken up by pink, which is tied to the Radiance. A stronger pink outline shows a more canonical guess as to where her actual seat of power was located. To the left, Unn's territory has expanded, and underneath both, an area of the map has been circled in purple and cut in with slashes to indicate the fall of the Void Civilization. Pink text says 'potential extermination via Radiance(?)' with an arrow pointing to it, and pink slashes bridge the gap between this circled area and the Radiance's territory. To the right, a small circle of darker green is visible on the fringe of the map in Kingdom's Edge, with the text 'maybe WL germination spot' and an arrow pointed at it.]

How the godly territories looked during the time of the Radiance is still mostly speculation, but it's less rough than the era of the Void Civilization, as we have environmental indicators to point where the seat of the Radiance's power was, and where Unn's influence spread to the max before the Pale King and the White Lady became threats. I am personally of the belief that the Radiance destroyed the Void Civilization and whatever god they worshiped when establishing her power, which was a necessary act for her own survival, but was brutal nonetheless (remember that gods depend on worship to survive and are countered by gods of specific other elements- these turf wars are very similar to lions and hyenas fighting, in a way). In solid pale pink, I've indicated the areas that might have technically fallen under her territory after she destroyed the Void Civilization, and outlined the ares where we know that the Moth Tribe (her favored followers) dwelled. Pink dashes indicate potential areas with her tampering, while the purple circle with the dashes through it is where I believe the stronghold of the Void Civilization was, and where she might have fully destroyed them. Because Unn was also a God of Dream, no danger was posed by her and thus the two likely survived next to each other in relative harmony, with Unn benefitting from the Radiance's ravages.*

Oh, and since the White Lady's roots are strongly present in the area where the White Palace was eventually built, it's likely that she germinated in Kingdom's Edge during the end of the Radiance's reign, and ascended to full godhood with the assistance of the Pale Wyrm (and visa versa) when they were taking territory of their own.

*Note that I do not fully blame the Radiance for her actions. They were brutal, yes, and likely unfathomably cruel, but the Void is one of the few deities/elements that could kill her, and securing a territory with followers is essential to the survival of a Higher Being. I cannot judge her for this any more than I can judge a new male lion from killing off all the cubs in his fresh pride to ensure his paternity. It's just how nature works.

Now we have everyone's favorites (sarcasm), the Pale Gods.

Hallownest as it was during the dominion of the Pale King and White Lady (pre-fall):

[ID: the map of Hallownest, this time with different territorial indicators. The map is dominated by a massive blob of pale blue at the top, a sizable blob of pale purple directly below with a section of it circled and crossed out with darker green, and a large chunk of olive green now takes up half of what used to be Unn's lands. The pale blue indicates territory shared between the Pale King and the White Lady, the purple indicates where the influence of the Pale King reigned stronger, and the olive green is where the White Lady's prescence was more apparent. The section where the White Palace is technically falls under the Pale King's territory, but has heavy influence from the White Lady. Purple crosshatching up by the King's Pass also indicates where PK's claim of the land comes to an end.]

Aaand out of all the godly territories, this one was the easiest to map out, as it was the most recent and thus easiest to define. This one, however, is somewhat unique, as much of it is shared between two gods instead of dominated by just one- likely why the Pale King and White Lady managed to claim such a large swathe for themselves in the first place. Marking exactly what was the Pale King's was far more difficult than marking what was the White Lady's, as her boundaries and claim are felt far stronger than his influence (mostly regulated to the City of Tears and Ancient Basin), however his insistence on commerce and trade routes meant that his architectural touch extended all the way up into Dirtmouth, King's Pass, and the Crystal Peaks, even though his actual hold over those lands was probably held only by the expansion of the tribes loyal to him (the Beetles for sure, the Moths at least for a little bit), and the backing of the White Lady, whose pale flora are seen in those areas. As you can see, large chunks of Unn's lands have been annexed into the Pale God's power, potentially due to Unn weakening enough for them to quietly move their territorial boundaries further outwards, while the land that lead to the squabble between them and the Radiance came about from the Moth Tribe changing loyalties, allowing the Pale King the rights to the Radiance's territory. While it seems like this switch was done voluntarily and with full consent of the moths, it should be regarded with the same amount of suspicion that one should hold for the annexing of Unn's lands into their domain.

*Please also note that the Pale King and the White Lady's conquering of their lands was similar to the Radiance's in terms of necessity, in that both needed to conquer a territory of their own and obtain followers in order to sustain themselves. WL seems to have managed to do this with relatively little fuss and was on her way to slowly replace Unn as the god of greenery, however the Pale King persuading the moths to defect was probably primarily what caused the conflict between him and the Radiance. The worship of one tribe (in this case, the moths) is an important resource to a god, so the conflict arose when he tried to steal her source of sustenance, and the Infection arose when she attempted to regain her territory. Both of their actions are technically valid from a survival standpoint, however the brutality of the fight and its effect on both the mortal tribes and the vessels was inexcusable.

And last but not least, we have the potential ancestral lands of the tribes of Hallownest! In this case, I've saved the best for last, as this is the most interesting from a cultural perspective if you're not out here oggling at the gods like a biologist watching wild beasts in the field (ie me), yet is still extremely interesting if you're a specbio/behavior and sociology nerd (also me).

The likely ancestral layout of the tribes of Hallownest:

[ID: the map of Hallownest, now with regions marked over with light green, pale pink, pale blue, aqua blue, pale yellow, golden yellow, dark grey, and blue-grey. The pale blue indicates the range of the Mosskin and their relatives, the pink is the Moths, the pale blue are the Beetles, aqua is the Flukes, pale yellow is the Shrooms and Mantises, golden yellow is the Hive, dark grey is the remnants of the Void Civilization (potentially the snails/ancient beetles), and blue-Grey is the Beasts, aka spiders and centipedes. The writing at the top reads 'Likely Ancestral Layout of Mortal Tribes (based on architecture)'. Dashed lines indicate overlap of regions and/or areas where stragglers may wander despite not necessarily being based there.]

Personally, this was the easiest to indicate, as the bugs and architecture of each tribe are visually distinct. I chose to indicate ancestral regions, as the shifts in deity reign did not always lead to elimination of the tribes themselves, merely their expansion and contraction. Areas where there is no set culture or type of bug (like King's Pass and Kingdom's Edge) were left blank, as they seemed to either be transient places or areas where past dwellings were uncommon- though I did mark part of Kingdom's Edge as under the Hive's rule to account for workers leaving to collect nectar. Dirtmouth was similarly labeled as ancient moth territory because of Thistlewind's commentary on 'the caverns of Hallownest being dangerous', indicating that the moths stayed on or near the surface, and I marked off the Void because there's enough snail shells in there to potentially argue it was where the snail tribe originated, and PK produced so many vessels that they're practically a species of their own at this point, albeit one that is very much dead. They weren't a civilization, they were a family, but they were hatched and killed on the bones of a place where many likely died under the Radiance's ascension, and so that accumulated net loss was enough for me to mark it on the map.

What I find interesting to note here is that in terms of expected ranges, it actually...makes sense? The Mosskin had a large historic range because they are a historic, varied people, and though they experienced some changes after the White Lady took chunks of Greenpath, it wasn't enough to make them fully distinct from their ancestors. They're also possibly herbivorous, and thus can sustain their larger numbers relatively easily. The same can be said for the beetle tribe, as most beetle species are omnivorous and there is significant variation in the members that we see, indicating that there may be two or more species present in that tribe. The Flukes feed on detrius, and are most likely a much more recent civilization to have arose due to the plumbing installed in the City of Tears accumulating enough nutrients for them to gather in one place. Bees, as we know, generally tend to all be one family staying in one place, so they're less of a tribe and more just,,,well, a hive, and while the Mantises and Shrumal Warriors have the smallest territory, we know from the game that the Fungal Wastes are currently in the process of expanding, and the Mantis tribe is a singular-species group of carnivores with an insular community, meaning that smaller numbers are to be expected from them. When compared to the range of Deepnest, another society built primarily of carnivores, they seem very small, but one has to remember that Deepnest has at least two different species of spiders and centipedes living in tandem, and that much of their territory is tunnels and hunting-grounds instead of open space. The Hidden Village is only slightly larger than the Mantis Village, which fits with the carnivorous lifestyle (as there must always be more prey than predator). I didn't include the Oomas because they are very much not from Hallownest. When you step back and look at it, its interesting to note where the overlaps are between the territories of the gods were, and the ranges of the mortals they were so dependent on.

So there you have it! One super long post containing a detailed breakdown of the territorial boundaries in Hallownest, dealing with the generalized guess of where the ancestral lands of the tribes were and a three-part breakdown of different major god territories over different ages. Again, the only two that I'm even somewhat close to being certain about being canon are the maps of godly territories pre-fall and the ancestral lands, but its fun to think about regardless. Hope y'all have just as much fun reading this as I did with making it :>

#hollow knight #hollow knight lore #hollow knight meta #hollow knight headcanons #the radiance #the pale king #the lord of shades #unn #the white lady #i would include the other gods/potential higher beings in here as well but #we got no idea whats up with them!#if they got outcompeted or what #so this is just including the major players + unn #who we know was there for a while before she got utterly steamrolled by wl and radi at the end

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 8 months

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oh my god I binge read sea glass garden last night and the third and fourth chapter DESTROYED ME.

I’m omw to reread the entire fic because it was too good and I KNOW that it’s going to be one of the must-reads of this fandom. I’m literally in love with all your characters (your Tsumiki is so freaking interesting she was READY to get at it with Maki✊🏻) especially your description of Megumi’s situation is killing me, my heart is in pieces. No matter how many stories there are depicting the years before his high school time, there will always be too few idc.

I’m pretty sure it’s canonically stated that Megumi went on missions before being enrolled as a student and that he witnessed the death of at least one comrade, all because he had been bought to be a jujutsu sorcerer. Imagine never having the delusion of a future because you signed your life away to ensure your sister would live happily. Your take on the fact that, maybe, at some point of his life, Megumi didn’t wish to be a jujutsu sorcerer anymore destroys me. I never really thought of it, and he probably never imagined a life for himself where he wouldn’t die as a jujutsu sorcerer either. He was downright begging to be left to die in peace because he couldn’t bear it any longer when he shouldn’t have even gone on missions yet at all😭 And even though his current injuries weren’t caused by a mission, I don’t think he’d be so stupid to try to tame the snake unsupervised a few days after Geto’s death. Like c’mon. It’s all the higher ups fault, because it always is. Damn them. I hope they choke on their rotting teeth😤

ANYWAY I GOT LOST ON THE WAY TO ASK YOU A QUESTION JANSJAJANJAHA I ramble way too much

I noticed the updates have been pretty frequent, so do you have an update schedule with pre-written chapters? No because if you don’t I applaude you for being able to write masterpieces in a few days😩

P.S. I was curious about the meaning of the title and I read your other post about it and it’s so beautiful😭 obviously it’s sad but it also speaks of the determination of humans’ will to survive yk? You are genius😫

No update schedule, unfortunately! I don’t have the self control to not post chapters when I have them. I go on hyperfixation-fueled writing binges and writers block crashes of unending despair. It’s a Whole Thing. Updates tend to come in waves with me. It’ll probably be pretty erratic updates until the story ends. Thank you for reading and for your kind words!

You are speaking my ENTIRE LANGUAGE with Megumi. He is, hands down, the most interesting character in the show to me. His backstory and how it intertwines with his philosophy and approach to morality make him just so unendingly interesting to me.

Like, the Fushiguro siblings and specifically Megumi really were doomed by the narrative from the start. Megumi never really lived in a world where he had a future. Like, the past arc takes place during spring of 2006, and his dad had ditched long enough at that point that he straight up forgot megumi's name. Tsumiki's mom had been gone long enough that Megumi thought she and his dad ran off together, so she probably wasn't around after Toji stopped coming. Megumi was born late December of 2002, so he would have been three then. Tsumiki was, at most, five. And because Gojo didn't go to meet them until after Geto's massacre in late summer of 2007, it was just the two of them for at least a year.

Like, the sheer horror of being two very small children taking care of each other, knowing that the money's running out and that your parents probably aren't coming back. They were living in abject poverty, and Megumi was most likely seeing curses during at least part of this (considering he was right at the age for it and he wasn't all that surprised with Gojo rolling up to tell him his dad was from a magic clan) with no idea what they were, because even if Toji explained anything (which i doubt) the chances of Megumi remembering the explanation aren't great. He's seeing horrifying things every day and doesn't have any support past his sister, who can't see the same.

Tsumiki and Megumi faced parentification at a ludicrously young age. We know that Tsumiki most likely took a pretty strong caretaking/maternal role for megumi from an early age, but the fact that baby Megumi's only question when Gojo found him and made his offer was about Tsumiki's happiness suggests that the caretaking wasn't one sided. Making decisions about your future based on the needs of your family is a very adult concern, and it was Megumi's only concern. While Tsumiki was canonically far more open with her affection and care (grumpy baby Megumi refusing to hold hands, you have my whole heart), Megumi definitely loved her deeply already and was modeling his actions with her interests in mind. They must have both been shouldering the load of raising and protecting the other for as long as they can remember. Tsumiki and Megumi were likely barely surviving day to day. They were already shouldering the stresses of grown ups and likely didn't have any of those childish, starry-eyed dreams about what it would be like when they grew up.

Even when Gojo enters the scene, the parentification didn't end. While he does take on a paternal/caretaking role, his intro into their lives very much heralded a time where Megumi became the family's compulsory breadwinner. I won't break down my thoughts on how Gojo probably wasn't the one who came up with the deal of Megumi being collateral for their survival since I already did it in another post, but however it came about, it doesn't change the fact that Megumi knows that he's the one his family's survival hinges on from a stupidly young age.

We know that Megumi was training/working as a jujutsu sorcerer pre-canon. Gojo straight up tells him at age 4 that he's going to need him to work hard, he references the fact that he's been training megumi for a while in season 1, Megumi admits to nobara that he's lost a comrade on a mission before Yuuji (though Yuuji was the first that was his age), and Megumi knows a lot of the people in this world. By the time canon starts, he's been training with Kamo since before Kamo entered school, so for 3-4 years minimum, and Mai knows him as well. Kamo straight up says that Megumi's got more talent than the head of the Zenin clan by his first year, and his Grade 2 status at entrance means he's considered a prodigy. There's also a lot of little scenes that suggest that Megumi's been doing this a while. When Gojo's talking to Yuuji about the detention center fight, he makes a few comments about how Megumi likely understood the reality of the fight and just how bad their odds were better than the other two, suggesting 1) megumi has the experience already to do that and 2) Gojo has witnessed him in the field enough to get a sense of how he evaluates situations. He's been doing this a while.

But the thing is that he's also passively suicidal the entirety of season 1. And that's probably because he spent his entire life believing he was going to die young.

He probably doesn't think of it as being passively suicidal, but he absolutely is. The sacrifice bunt vs Yuuji's homerun in season 1 is SUCH A GOOD MICROCOSM OF HIS CHARACTER.

Yuuji has the blind confidence of a very young god who was never informed that there were other gods that were older and more powerful and will kick his fucking ass. Like, he will be in Sukuna's throne room after the man ripped his heart out and Literally Killed Him and still be like "I will beat your entire ass." No doubt. No hesitation. I simply love him.

Megumi, meanwhile, walks into fights knowing he will find one that he can't win. Yuuji thinks he can beat anyone, but Megumi defaults to the assumption that he can't win in a way that is really suggestive of a very, very deep underlying mental issue.

I don't know if you're anime-only or if you know what the "trump card" gojo refers to during his training scene with Megumi, so I'll confine it to what's already appeared in the anime. Throughout the anime, there's multiple times where it's alluded to the fact that Megumi has some kind of "trump card" where he can take his enemy down with him. Gojo specifically refers to it as "dying to win." Sukuna even recognized to some degree that he was pulling it during their fight and called it "burning through your own life." Whatever it is, it's a sacrifice play. It's taking someone down with him.

And we see throughout the anime multiple times where he almost pulls it. Sukuna is the biggest example, but he likely almost pulled it twice in the fight against Hanami during the Goodwill Event arc. When Hanami first confronts them, Megumi immediately says "Get Inumaki out of here" to Kamo.

And that's fucking weird. Inumaki's a semi-grade one sorcerer, higher than him. He's his very experienced senpai. He's no slouch in a fight. Kamo is older than all of them, has been training his entire life, and is a first grade sorcerer. Out of all of them, Megumi was the baby kohai who should have been leaning on the older students. Instead, he's trying to get them out of the line of fire. He probably saw an immeasurably powerful special grade and decided to pull the same trump card he almost pulled in the fight against Sukuna as soon as Inumaki and Kamo were safe.

Later, when Hanami has Maki by the throat, after he was already hit by her root attack that would kill him if he used cursed energy, he makes the same hand signals he did during the Sukuna fight while thinking about how he's the one who has to make the sacrifice play. He was absolutely killing himself to win.

And that mentality makes so much sense when you consider that Megumi already made the sacrifice play with him and his sister all those years ago.

He's spent his entire life locked into being a sorcerer. It's the collateral keeping himself and his sister alive. He doesn't have a way out. His future employment is collateral for an already-accrued debt; he just doesn't have the option to quit and do something else the way everyone else does. And the thing about being a sorcerer is that the mortality rate is not awe-inspiring, to the point where the Kyoto students canonically tried not to get close to each other because they knew that a decent number of them would be dying young and it would hurt less.

Megumi's not stupid, and he's been doing this for a long time. He's probably been reconciling with his own likely violent death for a long time by the time canon starts, and it really fucking shows with how he approaches fights until the bridge fight. There's something so tragic and sad about that to me. Like, what age was he when he realized this life would probably kill him? When he realized that he would never have a way out?

When you bring in his own morality structure and philosophical approach to life, that entire mindset becomes so fucking interesting. Because Megumi's plainly fucking furious that people did this to him.

Megumi's middle school bullying days is both hilarious and endlessly fascinating in the context of his history. His entire thing is that he hates bad people and believes that we’re born into a fundamentally unjust world. Specifically, he hates people that look at the vulnerable and lack empathy for them, to the point where he ended up going out of his way to beat up every single bully in his middle school an unilaterally enforce peace. He had an entire dramatic speech about how he was doing this because they had hurt others—the worlds based on social construct, "please don't kill me and I won't kill you." They had broken that to make themselves feel strong, and if they did it again in front of him, he'd kill them. All that jazz. And it's really interesting that he never once looks down on the people getting bullied. There's a huge emphasis on strength as tied to value in JJK--Sukuna and Gojo being some of the biggest examples--but Megumi only looks down on a lack of empathy and compassion, not people who are physically weak.

Once that's contextualized with the fact that the person who was supposed to protect him abandoned him and sold him to some very bad people, it becomes a lot more tragic. He's doomed by the narrative and he's self aware of the fact that he's doomed. He spends his entire middle school years kicking the shit out of people who take advantage of people because they can, and I personally think that's because that's exactly what happened to him when he was a kid. There's always a bigger fish, and some pretty fucking big fish have him in a corner. But he's the biggest fish in the pond of his middle school, and he does not put up with people who hurt others just because they can.

He spends his last years before becoming a full time sorcerer acting as the sort of person that never was there for him as a child, and there's something so tragic about that to me. Megumi just reads as someone who's already accepted he's doomed and is so angry he wasn't saved.

Even his name has tinges of tragedy to me. Like, it's the difference between "blessing" and "blessed."

On his face, Megumi seems like he's blessed. He won the genetic lottery. He was born with one of the most powerful techniques in the franchise, the one that the Zenin clan desperately wants. It's rare enough that no one else alive has inherited it. It's suggested that it's the Zenin equivalent to the Six Eyes, and Gojo's the one who's always saying how he alone is blessed by heaven. Even Kamo, who isn't even Zenin, commented during their fight on how much people wanted someone like Maki or Mai to get it instead. I won't comment on manga events, but as it proceeds, it becomes even more obvious just how valuable his technique is considered to be.

But Megumi doesn't seem to particularly care about his technique.

He said at one point that, in middle school, he didn't really want to be a jujutsu sorcerer because he couldn't imagine who he'd want to save (the fact that his first act in the series is to save Yuuji is another discussion entirely that I am so mentally ill about). Megumi spends the series surrounded by people who are extremely impressed by and focused on his technique, but for Megumi? His technique and its value seems to be the thing that trapped him. No one was ever going to let him live in peace, and he was young enough that he had no real way to protect his own interests.

He never got to be a kid who got to dream about what he'd be when he grew up. Other kids got to say they'd be an astronaut, or an actor, or a veterinarian or whatever, and he has known that he would be lucky to not die in wizard school his entire childhood. He is a blessing for other people, for the Zenin who want his technique, for the higher ups who effectively own him until he repays his debt, but he's not blessed. He's just valuable sea glass with collectors circling. He hates his name, and I think he hates what he is as well. He's an extraordinarily strong willed person who hates people who take advantage, but he's spent his entire life with a boot on his neck. that must piss him off.

I think his relationship with jujutsu sorcerer would have potentially been a lot better if it had been a choice for him, but he's someone who intensely values control over himself who has been controlled by the circumstances of his birth his entire life. There are all these tiny ways in the show that he tries to exert control over his own circumstances because he just doesn't have a lot of control over his life and it's just amazing character design.

He's just so tragic to me. I am so mentally unwell over him.

Tsumiki and the fact that she was fully about to fight Maki for a hot minute was a lot harder to settle on, mostly because we just don't get a lot about her. But I actually kind of like those kinds of characters? I get to play more in those sandboxes and have more freedom with the character because I'm just using what's little known about them as a bouncing off point and making shit up for the rest.

And with Tsumiki we just do not have a huge amount because she's in a magic coma when canon starts. What little we have is coming through Megumi, who is a naturally unreliable narrator when it comes to her. Like, in his mind, her primarily defines her as "a good person," and that makes a lot of sense when you consider that this is his big sister who was, effectively, the only source of stability and care he had growing up and is almost completely lost to him by the start of canon. he's the last person i would expect to be an reliable narrator about her.

Fanon (at least what I've seen) seems to have translated what we've seen to her into "kind natured good girl" which I don't entirely agree with? I just don't think those kind of people exist. Like, the one's who are all sunshine and rainbows and kind thoughts all the time. Everyone has negative emotions; it's just a matter of how they deal with them.

Also what little concrete we have on her doesn't necessarily suggest she fits that kind of eternally-caring good girl motif anyway.

There's the big example, where she says she would much rather think about the ones she loves rather than curse anyone. This very notably isn't an idealistic "everyone has good in them" rationalization, but it's more "I have better things to do with my time." Forgiving bad people is a trait that Megumi attributes to her, but he's an unreliable narrator about her, so it may be accurate or it may not be. There's a difference between forgiving someone and taking a policy of non-interference.

It's also suggested that she doesn't actually look down on the absence of forgiveness--she actually comments pretty favorably on it. She says that Megumi's refusal to forgive people is a part of his kindness. This suggests that, even though she goes after him for fighting, it's not some kind of perfectly kind "forgiveness is the right thing to do" rationalization. She recognizes the nuance in Megumi's actions and his anger. The thing she really gets on him for is the fighting itself, not the anger, and fighting 1) has wider impacts on Megumi (physically, mentally, emotionally, on his record, etc) and 2) it's suggested that she gets on him because of these wider impacts. We never actually see her discuss it at all in terms of the people he beats up, and Megumi thinks, in retrospect, that she was picking him to care about the same way that he picks who he saves. Again, he's unreliable, so this may be true and it may not be, but I find her character so interesting if it is true, especially in light of her quote about not cursing people because she'd rather think of her loved ones.

That takes Tsumiki from the kind of "prototypical good girl" character type into the realm of someone who has picked to only care about certain people and approach the rest of the world with polite indifference. She doesn't share Megumi's anger at the world, but she doesn't exactly approach it with starry-eyed idealism either.

A much better example of starry-eyed idealism within JJK is actually Yuuji (pre-Junpei) or Geto (pre-genocidal breakdown) than Tsumiki--and the narrative immediately deconstructs both cases of starry-eyed idealism, suggesting that it doesn't genuinely tie being a "good person" to those approaches to morality.

Both Yuuji and Geto kind of spout like, baby's first philosophy class styles of idealism. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way towards either of them--they're both highly empathetic teenagers who care a lot about the world and people in it who are trapped in a system that is fundamentally hostile. Yuuji has a stance of "even considering killing would affect my soul" and Geto has a stance of "I exist for the sake of protecting those weaker than me," both of which aren't wholly without merit, but both are overly simplistic and lack nuance. Which makes sense, because they're both a teenager's approach to morality. In a safer environment, they could have grown in nuance and had their world views challenged safely. but the system they're both existing in isn't safe and never has been--so Yuuji ends up having to confront his stance on killing when he has to put literal children trapped in inexplicable torment out of their misery, and Geto goes off his rocker entirely.

In contrast, Tsumiki really isn't as idealistic as either of them, from what little we see of her. She never once gets close to their levels of "I want to save everyone" syndrome--it's straight up that she's picked her people to care about and has better things to do with her time than waste it on hate and anger. Contextualizing it within her background, that reads more like a survival strategy than being a sparkly kind perfect good girl.

She was a very young girl who had to shoulder a huge amount of responsibility at a young age. She was stuck in terrible circumstances, living well below the poverty line, with her only support being a brother that was even younger than her. We don't know anything about her mom or bio dad, or how much she knows about/remembers Toji, but it's interesting that Toji's approach to life is the antithesis of Tsumiki's.

Toji was so caught up in his own bitterness towards how he was treated that a big part of why he took Riko's assassination was so he could prove he was stronger than *checks notes* a sixteen year old miracle baby and his repressed boyfriend. In the end, the fact that he was caught up in his bitterness was his downfall, and he said it himself: he normally would have fucked off the second Gojo showed up after the assassination was done. He directly ignored his instincts to prove a monkey like him could take on the pinnacle of jujutsu sorcery, and that's what killed him.

There's not enough in canon to tell us either way if tsumiki had any impressions of the adults in her life, but I honestly really like the idea of her looking at the a life where the adults are neglecting her because they've been consumed by their own anger and hate and purposefully deciding to not let it consume her as well. To discard that kind of stuff, not because she thinks there's good in everyone or that it's horribly wrong to have negative emotions, but because she has the people she loves and she's building a life with them by sheer force of will. She's fleeing the teeth of a beast, not approaching the world through rose-colored glass.

For another thing, we have legitimately two actions that she's canonically taken in the series. One was nail Megumi in the back of the head with a milk carton during a fight, the other was fling her fucking body off a bridge with a homemade bungee chord. Girl's probably not a nun.

I ended up deciding that the core of Tsumiki's character needed to be that had a, for lack of a better word, selfish way of loving people. Not to say that she acts selfishly (if anything, canon shows she's intensely selfless when it comes to the people she loves), but just that she's decided to conserve her efforts and care to center around the people she loves and not care about the whole world and everything in it. In her mind, Megumi's kindness is in part because he's angry on the behalf of other people, which is a trait she doesn't share. She cares about her brother and just straight up doesn't have the time or resources for everyone else. Megumi is her landmine.

There's not enough in canon to contradict this reading of her, which makes her fun to write. So she's a relatively nice and polite girl until her brother's in danger, in which case she's immediately stealing cars and about to throw hands with a girl holding a polearm. She's so fun.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk spoilers #fushiguro tsumiki #fushiguro megumi #sea glass gardens #those that have been following me for a while know that the ask box comes at the risk of 73 different tangents in the answer #that's right folks it's yet another info dump

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weightedblankettt · 9 months

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nicovid works well platonically but i really like it romantically. taking someone who’s desperate to survive (nico) and pairing them with someone who views his own life as worthless (david) is already an interesting dynamic, but when its paired up with their actual personalities it just adds a layer of bittersweetness to it. nico, someone who’s been tormented their entire life, and david, who’s basked in the attention of everyone around him for years. nico, who was bullied for being themselves, and david, who was praised for being someone else. nico, who’s shy, david, who’s outgoing at first but slowly devolves into someone cynical. i do like their dynamic pre-freakout, its very cute and could lead to nico breaking out of their shell, i find their post-freakout dynamic much more interesting. nico and david both have a common denominator: they did something bad and will most likely be ostracized because of it. seeing as they both know how it feels to be set aside as the odd one out (nico through their bullying, david through never feeling as if his true feelings are enough for others) and they both have similar character relationships. (disdain towards ace, fallen-through friendship with hu). i feel like given david’s clear self-esteem issues, nico’s blunt manner of speech won’t be seen as insulting by david, and that lets them learn how to speak their mind. i see their dynamic as someone who wraps himself in a lie, and one of the only people that can see through him. even during the trial, nico’s one of the three people out of the cast of 13 students attending the second trial that notices david’s bullshitting about killing arei, alongside the protag and the support. idk if this is plot armoring my favs or whatever but i do think that nico can read people well, similarly to the animals they work with (considering their occupation: pet *therapy*) and david’s tendency to lie might not really fool them. they can both depend on each other when they need to, but they also do have their own problems and stuff. their development in canon chapter 3 could be interesting if they do end up talking to each other, especially if nico does end up becoming a chapter three victim. another thing that really intrigues me about them is how they’ve both committed an irredeemable action. david’s trying to get them all killed by pretending to have killed arei after all, and nico tried to kill ace. they’re both one of the “bad people” of the second chapter, and i can heavily emphasize (empathy =/= sympathy by the way.) despite their contrasting personalities and themes. it emphasizes how anyone is capable of doing bad, even someone seemingly kind and timid or someone seemingly well-intentioned. nico really has no room to speak on david’s shortcomings and vice versa, and i doubt that either of them want to. they provide each other with a safe space that neither of them really deserve, but it’s still comfortable to have and they enjoy it. david, although his nihilistic tendencies are on display, probably still can’t help but accommodate for nico if they ever started dating or going out. maybe not immediately after— he’d probably still be cruel, but nico wouldn’t really mind. they both let each other say what they’re thinking freely, without caring much for their words, but one thing leads to another and they cant help but fall in love. they both accommodate for each other. nico tries to help david with his honesty and his feelings, because they can’t control their own feelings OR how honest they are (even if its insulting,) and david takes care of nico when they can’t take care of themselves. gaah i lovw them.

this sounds insane? thats because it is. i dint know what the fuck im takjing about but they make me happy and sad. their entire dynamic can be described as one thing: bittersweet

#danganronpa despair time #nico hakobyan #david chiem

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classpect-crew · 10 months

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If you could choose any player to add to the canon beta kids’ session that would have helped them out massively, what would their classpect be and why? What about the alpha kids’ session?

This is a really interesting question! It's difficult for me to really say, with regards to the Beta kids' session, since their session did run about as smoothly as one could imagine, aside from the outside forces that made things go so utterly awry. Dave kept things fairly tight with the timelines, especially as he began to quickly correct his own missteps, though his biggest weakness was his constant fight to establish a true, authentic identity. John's ascent to true Hero status was complimented by his love for his friends, and he greatly impacted the trajectory of their lives even as he was "doing his own thing." His biggest challenges, from what I recall, came whenever his freedom was severely restricted, though the best example of this was his time spent on the three-year universe-spanning trip. Rose had some very unique struggles with her Classpect, but ultimately came out of it with an incredible breadth of knowledge and experience—not to mention a true appreciation for Void, Light's opposite. Jade also faced her own demons—including her prototyped dreamself, which forced her to come face-to-face with the things she hated most about herself.

In truth, a Hero of Heart would've likely helped things go a little smoother in the "identity and self-reflection" department, but this would not be without its own risks. This session was made up of three Passive players (Heir, Seer, and Knight) and one Active (Witch), though Rose attempted to shift that balance during much of her time pre-Scratch as she inverted to the Witch of Void. Given the time it took for Jade to grow into her power, it makes sense that the balance felt even more misaligned for some time. That said, they may have benefited from a Heart player with an Active Class—one whose journey toward self-actualization would at least inspire others, even if they don't go out of their way to play therapist.

Speaking of Classes, a Prince of Heart is out of the question. Their destruction of Heart would not bode well for a session that desperately needs more, and Dave suffered enough at the hands of Bro, who carries all the qualities of his post-Scratch Classpect, plus the influence of Caliborn/Lord English through Lil Cal. (More on that another time.) A Thief of Heart would also be inadvisable, for fairly obvious reasons. If the team needed another powerhouse, a Witch of Heart wouldn't be a terrible idea, but Witches are known for having powerful familiars (such as Becquerel and Gl'bgolyb) that often overpower the will of their Witch in the early game. The Page, Maid, and Mage could all fit the role well, particularly if they're likeable enough. This wouldn't be a problem for a Page of Heart, who would have an uncanny magnetism that might just pull the team through a little quicker toward self-actualization.

As for the Alpha kids, if we're taking into consideration the fated expansion of the Beta and Alpha sessions into one big eight-player session, then Space and Time players aren't necessary, so we don't have to worry about those. (I do, however, have some fun ideas about what might've happened if Roxy had attempted to create a Genesis Frog using the same principle she did for the Matriorb, by "stealing" its nonexistence, and how she'd be the best candidate to do so, due to her Class and her Aspect's placement in the Wheel. I'd like to keep this from becoming a thesis paper, though.) The Alpha session had the opposite problem of the Beta session: three Active players (Maid, Prince, and Page) and one Passive player (Rogue). Since Maids start out with a more Passive lean, this is where we see the initial illusion of "balance" coming from. By the end, though, it's obvious that we've got too many motherfucking cooks in this motherfucking kitchen, and every single one of them is putting up a front of some kind, as if you could win a prize for being the most emotionally opaque player in a session. What they really, truly need is someone who will inspire them to sit down and be real with each other—someone who can help them cut through the noise, and also make sure Roxy isn't the one saddled with holding the friend group together. Someone like...the Sylph of Blood.

We've seen what the power of a Blood player can look like, even without ascending to God Tier. Karkat was a tour de force as the Knight of Blood, uniquely capable of keeping the members of his session in line long enough to almost win the damn thing. This is even more impressive when you consider that he and his friends were members of a violent species whose society was developed with limitless cruelty baked into every system and institution. Even worse—they were teenagers. While there's certainly no reason why a Knight of Blood couldn't have helped the Alpha kids, Knights are known to put up fronts of their own in order to protect themselves. That's the last thing the Alpha kids need. A Sylph, meanwhile, would be just as skilled at encouraging the kind of raw emotional honesty their session desperately needs, while also being more likely to show their own vulnerable side. Whether they do this by sitting everyone down for mandatory group therapy sessions, or spend much of their session browbeating their teammates to just fucking talk to each other, is up to the individual Sylph. Pick your poison.

#classpect #classpect analysis #homestuck #beta kids #alpha kids #heart #heart aspect #blood #blood aspect #lord almighty it's been like...almost three hours since i started writing this?#i ended up looking at some of the wiki pages for null sessions and glitches. shit like that #i'd love to come back to these posts later and add some helpful links

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teecupangel · 10 months

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What if scenario: Desmond dies and is reborn in AC2 and ends up somehow being betrothed to Claudia instead of Duccio. (Duccio still gets beaten up though lol) Desmond has his memories like in yew branches.

I’m sure there’s going to be at least three people (one of them being Claudia herself) who would joke that he only wants to marry Claudia to finally be Ezio’s brother. XD

Okay, in all seriousness, let’s talk about how this would work.

Betrothals during this era is quite… early. Claudia herself is betrothed to Duccio by the time she is 15 so it won’t be surprising if their betrothal happened when she was 13 or 14.

Now, you mention Yew Branches and I think that we would have an easiest way to make this happen by just kicking Desmond into a canon character that would make sense to be betrothed to Claudia.

Of course, the first target that comes to mind would be one of the Medicis, mainly because that would fortify the alliance between House Medici and House Auditore and Claudia would be marrying ‘up’ but the oldest son of Lorenzo would be Piero and he has an 11 year difference with Claudia and would be 4 when Claudia is 15.

Claudia would definitely complain and say no. Honestly, pre-tragedy Claudia feels like a girl who would be into older men because she’d think they’re sooooo mature and ‘dashing’ and ‘mysterious’. A bit of a hopeless romantic keeping her Auditore audacity at bay.

So…

May I suggest… kicking Desmond into being reborn as Lorenzo’s unfortunate will-die-in-the-Pazzi-conspiracy younger brother, Giuliano?

He would be 8 years older than Claudia but that’s fine. There are larger age gaps in Renaissance Italy (Lucrezia’s 14 year gap with Giovanni Sforza for example) and it would be funny if Claudia is actually attracted to him because he’s cool, strong and sooooo mysterious.

Desmond… Desmond just wants to save everyone, goddammit.

Also… this gives us an excuse for Desmond to have complicated feelings over having Lorenzo as his brother.

If you’re still iffy with the age gap, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici is only 2 years older than Claudia and marrying Claudia to a branch family member of the Medici would be a better move because Lorenzo is trying to lock in the Auditores’ loyalty (and the Assassins’ support) but marrying from the main family seems a bit… ‘wasteful’.

Either way, pre-tragedy Claudia? She’d definitely be attracted to Desmond.

Post-tragedy Claudia? Yeah, she’d cling to Desmond more because she’s so lost but, once she gets her feet to the ground and starts understanding the ‘freedom’ she has in Monteriggioni, she’d probably be the one to break off the engagement (especially if this is Brotherhood!Claudia).

Desmond accepts it but, shit… He can’t believe he’s saying this but…

He…

He might have accidentally fallen in love with Claudia already???

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butchsophiewalten · 6 months

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I'm wondering why Jenny didn't tell Sophie Jack's name during their /sophiwalten page convo? Like, I'm 100% sure she knew it. Jack was a famous person, all of Brighton was talking about his disappearance for three years, according to Derek Collins, Felix talked about him when he was interviewed. Why didn't she do it? She literally told Sophie that she would help her remember her family in every possible way. Then what is her help? Just film Sophie's testimony? How will this help her regain her memory? It makes absolutely no sense.

This is a confusing question to me, because I think it's really obvious that in the canon of The Walten Files, Jenny is not supposed to know about/have made the connection between Bon's Burgers, Bunny Smiles, the missing Walten family, and her girlfriend. Whether you think it makes sense and is believable that she would have no/very little knowledge about what was seemingly big news in the small town where she grew up is one thing, but to pretend like she absolutely does have information that she clearly really doesn't, just because you don't think it makes sense otherwise, is something else entirely.

To better articulate what I'm saying: This is a weird way to blame a character for a problem which you should actually be taking up with the writing. It's okay to have complaints about the way The Walten Files is written.

That ^ Is the most significant and important thing I have to say about this but I'm writing a lot more under the cut:

I'm interested by what makes you "100% sure" that Jenny knew Jack Walten's name and would have related that to the situation with Sophie. I agree that it doesn't make absolute sense that she would have no memory whatsoever of the Walten's disappearance, which was apparently big news in her small town when she was 18 (not exactly too young to remember it), but that circumstantial evidence doesn't contradict the textual evidence that when she's talking about BSI with Sophie, all she has to say about it is the rumors she's heard about Ashley and about Brian's recent disappearance.

I do think there are legitimate explanations for her lack of information here that make sense and are reasonable. Maybe she heard rumors around the time of the disappearance, but wasn't really keeping up with it? Maybe she had seen the name "Jack Walten" in the newspaper before his disappearance but didn't really look into it because she was already an older teenager and didn't really care about a new kid's restaurant. It's not like when a Big Event happens in a small town, it's instantly beamed into the collective consciousness of everyone who lives there. Especially in the pre-internet age, your knowledge of ongoing events was tied directly to how much you read the news, and how much gossip you listened to and believed.

I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine that a 26-year old Jenny Letterson wouldn't really remember the details of random newspaper gossip from 8 years ago, even if it was a big news story involving prominent local public figures. And I don't know what makes you think she would have known about and tuned in for the single radio interview in which that disappearance was addressed years later.

The thing about her filming Sophie's testimony also makes sense by itself, just evidenced by the fact that at the start of the conversation, when Jenny asks her to remember the oldest thing she can, Sophie recalls something that happened *later* than everything she eventually mentions later in the conversation. She's remembering more and more as she's talking and encouraging her mind to go back further, things which she may not remember so clearly when the conversation is over. Recording it gives her the ability to revisit those memories later.

#ask #i'm going to add more commentary to this in a reblog actually. give me a second

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troutfur · 6 months

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Cloudtail/Swiftpaw/Brightpaw, and the tension caused when Cloudtail becomes a warrior and the others don't.

Bright/Cloud/Swift(/Thorn?) is one I've been trying to figure out for a while in terms of what their pfurr dynamic would be like. Because I've already committed to Lionheart/Frostfur/Tigerclaw/Goldenflower. Which means that rather than first cousins Bright and Swift would be raised as myempfurr, father siblings. Although from a legal perspective, so to speak, they'd stop being so when Frostfur declares her two litters were sired by Lionheart, therefore stripping Tigerclaw AND Goldenflower from the pipfurr, father, role.

(Is she telling the truth? Maybe. Maybe not. I won't tell you either way, but if you wanna feel free to speculate.)

I've also been mulling over the specifics of the chronology of births of the three litters born from that particular pfurr before it falls apart. I have the order down, I believe, Brackenfur + Cinderheart -> Swiftpaw + Lynxkit -> Brightheart + Thornclaw. But I still struggle to really conceptualize what would be the ideal age difference between them and the timeframe during which they are born for it to be a) believable, and b) keeping mostly to canon.

Maybe I shouldn't sweat that detail too much but when writing young characters, as WC tends to focus on, I find it particularly important to have a clear idea of development stage and relative maturity. Hence why the brainstorming/pre-planning section of my docs very often has a timeline plotting births and relevant life milestones of key characters relative to plot beats.

Anyway not too much of this is going to be super relevant to the one-shot because these are meant to be very quick-and-dirty, mostly a means to train discipline and get the writing muscles working, but I still wanted to get my thoughts out. (Not to mention writing all this prologue is excellent for procrastrinating!)

(Wanna see me ramble a whole bunch before getting to your damn prompt? Check out my guidelines and submit one. I'm taking submissions all November long. I have enough to last me the month but I always appreciate having more than needed so I can have my pick. Plus we are rather lacking in the female-character centric prompts I wanted to do more of, so ya know. If you want a higher chance of getting chosen.)

“Swift,” Brightpaw said, reaching a paw out to his shoulder from her place in their shared nest. “I’m sure it’s nothing like what you are imagining. Cloudtail is a warrior now. It’s only appropriate of him to not interact with us the way he used to.”

“When has he cared one bit about what’s proper?” he retorted. “When have we for that matter?”

Brightpaw’s ears burned. It was true that she wasn’t supposed to sleep on a nest with anyone other than Thornpaw’s. It could be tolerated if it was a close myem, a sibling, who was close in age but it’d been a long time since the two had stopped being myempfurr in the eyes of Clan customs. And from there to have done so not only with him but with another tom that were they all warriors would be considered a suitable sire for her kits.

“This is more serious,” Brightpaw continued to insist. “Can you imagine the kind of scandal it’d be? Especially with the kind of history Cloudtail has? You’d want him to risk all of that just for us?”

“It’s no excuse to leave us forgotten like crowfood,” Swiftpaw snarled. “Besides, not only is he Bluestar’s newest darling, you’re forgetting we’re older than him, that everyone knows just how much of an unfair promotion that was, that we are just as skilled and just as strong, if not more! Anyone who took issue would be better off picking the thorns out of their nest.”

“Swift!” Brightheart scolded. “You know the Clan is not going to be like that. Not towards him, especially. Just let it go. When we’re warriors he can just court us and it’ll all be like nothing happened.”

“And when exactly is that going to be, Brightpaw?” Swiftpaw challenged. “A moon? A season? A year? Do you really expect us to just sit here idly by until the situation with Bluestar blows over? Do you think that while he has us forgotten and thrown to the wayside he is not going to be getting to know his fellow warriors? That he may not have fully forgotten us?”

“Oh, now you’re just assuming the worst possible outcome without any real proof,” Brightpaw complained.

“You said it yourself, possible outcome,” Swiftpaw retorted. “With what’s been happening do you really think that the worst one won’t be the one happening? How many times does it have to happen before you realize? How many times before you take it to heart?”

Brightpaw went silent.

“If Cloudtail will leave us forgotten, so be it, we will too,” Swiftpaw declared. “And if both of us want to stay as empf we need to do something. Something that will prove beyong anyone’s doubts that we are ready, that Bluestar’s judgement was warped, that we can do something to turn this Clan around.”

“What do you even want us to do?” Brightpaw asked.

The whiplash in what he was saying was just palpable. Wouldn’t he more than anyone be aware that even with a hundred assessments passed it ultimately rested in Bluestar whether or not to promote them? Wouldn’t he understand deeply that a cat set in his ways like her be would be unlikely to listen to his concerns? Wasn’t he the one wanting to sever from her ‘newest darling’ as he put it?

“We need to fight those dogs,” Swiftpaw declared.

Brightpaw’s eyes opened and she rose to her feet to stand in front of her empf. “No.” She stomped a foot down for emphasis. “No, no, and no. I’m not going to be agreeing to this. You’ve just got to forget this idea. Even with an expertly organized patrol this would be a risky mission but as an apprentice to put on this--”

“Brightpaw do we have another choice?” Swiftpaw challenged. “We’re practically warriors and we need to act like it. Moreso with such a paralyzed leadership over us. If a brat like Cloudtail can just strut around with respect by putting the shallowest act, imagine what we could obtain by actually doing an act of service to the warrior code.”

Brightpaw once again went silent and Swiftpaw rubbed across her neck in reassurance. “You’re more capable than you give yourself credit for, Brightpaw. Let’s prove that to everyone.”

It was a conversation that was forever burned into Brightheart’s memory.

#warrior cats #wc #warrior cats au #swiftpaw #brightheart #cloudtail #this one goes with a special dedicatory to @wanderwren #love ya wren #even if it wasn't you who requested I hope you end up enjoying regardless

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omori-aus-archive · 6 months

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OMORI OC: Eriko/Erika

FINALLY got around to making an OC. Ref is by @shrimperini.

PERSONAL

Her name is Eriko, nicknamed Erika. Eri is made from the kanji for blessing and reason. Ko is from the kanji for child. Erika, depending on the kanji, means "Blessed village/country of flowers".

She’s the older sister of Mari and Sunny. She’s approximately a year to three years older than Mari (so at most 22 years old) and has a variant of albinism (hence the eyes and hair).

She’s much taller than Hero and Artist (approximately 8 feet, because queens deserve to be tall), athletic, tattooed, and her defining trait is her rebellious nature.

She’s also a huge fan of Nightwish and Within Temptation and the most likely to commit an actual crime.

She is FASCINATED by zombies, witchcraft, and horror films, especially cosmic ones. She’d pay a lot of money to be learn witchcraft….

In regards to her size, it’s abnormally large for someone her age and heritage.

REGARDING THE SIBLINGS AND MARI'S DEATH

-Pre-canon-

Erika gives Sunny and Mari each a wash-off tattoo of their choice every single birthday. For Sunny, she also buys comics and plays games with him. For Mari, she will cook with her and bring her to concerts.

-During Canon-

She’s well aware that Mari died of an accident and that Sunny was somehow involved. She doesn’t blame Sunny. Instead, she blames her parents for their treatment of the two and herself for not being able to help her siblings enough.

She would take it upon herself to take care of Sunny, even though she was unemployed and currently going through some college.

Technically, she DOES have a Headspace counterpart. But she’s a fusion with Mari, based on the beta character Inko, and solely in Black Space as a representation of their shared remorse and sorrow.

With the mask, Inko looks more or less identical to Mari (just in a white kimono). Without the mask, she's more or less identical to Erika, though outlines of Mari and Erika appear along side her in pain (Left, purple, and emotional for Mari. Right, red, and physical for Erika).

-Post-game-

Her sibling relationship with Sunny is honestly tighter, because she’s desperate to make sure the past doesn’t repeat itself.

Her relationship with Mari though is…complicated. She still loves her and misses her, but…after finding out about the truth of the accident, she’s…disappointed that Mari and Sunny never told her what was going on.

She’s frustrated that Mari let her perfectionism blind her and didn’t let her help combat said perfectionism.

In remembrance of the pain and trauma Sunny and the group went through…and to remind her to never let Sunny bear the pain by his lonesome, Erika has Sunny and Basil’s SOMETHINGS tattooed on her.

-The Bad Ends-

Erika feels like she’s failed Sunny and Mari, having lost Mari to a preventable accident and Sunny to a preventable suicide. She did her best and yet it did nothing to stop these tragedies.

Erika unleashes her anger and sorrow at the group, truly believing that all of them and herself share a portion of the blame. And her parents? She makes sure that they regret treating their own children poorly.

-Mari and Sunny Live-

If both siblings survive, Erika tries her best to help Sunny calm down, before eventually talking to Mari. She’s honest with her emotions and explains that she’s disappointed and sad more than anything.

Erika explains that Mari shouldn’t be going after perfection, as it doesn’t exist, instead saying that her life is already “perfect” thanks to Sunny and her friends. Needless to say, this is a huge wake-up call for Mari. Unintentionally, this makes the guilt hurt a bit more.

Erika does her best to pull Mari and Sunny away from depressing thoughts and runs away with them, finally fed up with their parents’ treatment of them.

I’m not gonna go over #omari AUs as I think that Erika would be exactly the same with Mari as she is with Sunny.

RELATIONSHIPS

Love Interest: Artist (yes, Artist's an adult, as she's Angel's legal guardian).

Friends: Mincy, the Bread Twins, Polly, and other few individuals.

Acquaintances: Kel, Aubrey, and the Hooligans. She is, at best, okay with them. She’s also chill with Vix (@donuqx-art's OC).

Dislikes: Hero and Basil. She stopped Basil from falsifying Mari’s death.

Hates: Her parents, Kel’s parents, Aubrey’s parents, and Basil’s parents. From what she can tell, Faraway is cursed with AWFUL parenting. Which is why she has been trying to raise Mari and Sunny herself.

#omori #mari omori #omori mari #omori sunny #sunny omori #omori oc #Erika Omori

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dragonbma · 7 months

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Some character exploration and headcanons as I write the Vos Possession AU:

Adventure trio my beloveds… [similarly to my last infodump, these are headcanons for the game, but are all canon in my AU]

// Jack: team leader //

weapon: sword 🗡️ (alternatively fists)

very headstrong and sometimes gets too caught up in the moment to realize something is happening

has a perfect sense of direction, survival instincts, and tracking capabilities

—Extras:

-Sea Temple leaves him with tinnitus, PTSD, and a partially blinded left eye

-used to wear more red apparel (where he got the nickname Velvet Tornado) but has since switched to colors that reflect his fallen friends (Vos- blue, Sammy- beige)

// Vos: enchanter / healer //

weapon: potions 🧪

inventory management (often overpacks for adventures just in case)

can enchant items without an enchantment table, only needs the lapis (knows all enchants by heart and can read/write the font)

—Extras:

-has cold hands, is very cold in general (always wears warm outfits no matter the temperature)

-fascination with sea lanterns

-developed photophobia while in the temple and was much more talkative pre-Sea Temple adventure

// Sammy: navigation / explorer //

weapon: bow 🏹

often built makeshift abodes for the three to stay in temporarily during adventures

very knowledgeable about biomes, mobs, and cartography from years of being an explorer with Nurm

speaks fluent Villic (they translate when the group enters a village)

—Extras:

-has a journal used to catalog flora/fauna from her expeditions

-collects plants

Interactions:

Jack and Vos have been adventuring together since they were young and are essentially inseparable, rarely going on adventures without the other (have matched experience and have saved the other’s life)

meeting Jack was the reason Sammy decided to take up adventuring in favor of exploring (inspired her to get out of comfort zone)

Vos was teaching Sammy to make tipped arrows (the potion in her inventory was from him)

Sammy introduced Vos to the concept of wrapping his hands (+ his leather boots were a gift from them)

Sammy usually has to keep the other two in check, but on occasion would need assistance from Vos to convince Jack not to do something reckless

Extras:

—The trio liked taking turns picking places to go adventuring:

Jack usually planned adventures around treasure hunting or thrill-seeking. (Dude treasure-hoards like a dragon.) He liked to test his limits and improve his abilities at any opportunity. If the other two were having trouble, he’d always be there to help them. These adventures were always challenging, but in a fun way (until the Sea Temple.) Favorite biome: desert / mesa.

Vos adored visiting ancient ruins and kept a stash of artifacts of unknown value. He also liked finding treasures, but would usually give them to Jack. On occasion, these locations would turn out to be more perilous and dilapidated than anticipated. Favorite biome: ocean.

Sammy usually picked places that were less dangerous to keep Jack and Vos from burning themselves out, but never strayed from thrill-seeking if she knew the other two were fine to handle it. Neither liked to admit when they needed a break: (Jack out of pride, Vos out of embarrassment.) Sammy would take every opportunity to teach the two about the world around them on expeditions, especially reminding Jack to slow down and appreciate the places he visited. (Rather than seeing everything as a challenge to be beat as fast as possible.) Favorite biome: jungle.

—All three have vastly different expressions of speech:

Jack is no stranger to cursing, loves making puns, and often uses Minecraft metaphors/similes

Vos’ exclamations of excitement are almost always references to poetry (“Callou, callay!” or “Frabjous day!”) and he prefers using nonsense words in substitute of cursing

Sammy often uses botany terms for expressions and they don’t curse either

—Structure Block preferences: (if they had made it to the final room in the temple)

Jack and Sammy would have voted to take the Tower of the Warrior.

Had the events of the temple not gone awry, Vos would have voted to take the Wall of the Builder. However, after being trapped in the obsidian cages for so long, when he finally sees the structure blocks, he likely would have avoided the Wall of the Builder at all costs.

—I associate the three with land (Jack), sea (Vos), and sky (Sammy). No idea why.

—Similarly to the Order of the Stone, if I had to assign them ores… Jack- gold, Vos- lapis lazuli, Sammy- iron or diamond, and Nurm- emerald.

—Nurm didn’t accompany the trio during the initial adventure to the temple. He only found out later upon reuniting with Jack.

If any of y’all want to snatch these for any reason, feel free! Credit is optional- enjoy ^^

#trying to keep these as close to canon as i can #but a lot is speculation #mcsm #minecraft story mode #mcsm jack #mcsm vos #mcsm sammy #mcsm au #vos possession au #bermuda brainrot hours #bermuda ramblings #vostober #a lot of these extras are totally not me projecting #how many headcanon drafts can i turn into one big post? let’s find out

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raayllum · 1 year

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yeah my bad, honestly forgot that he was half asian (I have not interacted w the show or fandom in a while, so thats on me tbh), but I definitely agree with your input. I know that Callum is the main character, so he’s going to get more love and attention, same as Rayla, especially since Rayllum is the main couple (not dissing on them or the ship ofc) but it really upsets me when I look for art/fics of Ezran he’s either A) with Callum or B) in the background of something Rayllum related and in fics i rarely ever see solo fics of just him, he’s either in the background of rayllum or being their therapist or something like that

TDP has done a good job when it comes to portraying their characters of color, and its nice to see POC in positions of power for once (Harrow, Ez, Janai, Anaya, Kasef, etc), I just wish that the fandom as a whole would do the same thing yknow?

I’ll get out of your askbox for now, but this was definitely something that was weighing on me for a while lol

Omg you're all good! That's actually why I've run two Ezran Appreciation Weeks (although I still need to finish my fics for the second one, but life got unexpectedly super busy) and why I use the tag Ezran centric for fics that well, focus primarily on him and his relationships, rather than him being in a supportive or background role. I still wanna write a fic about him and Janai (maybe I can work it into a speculative S5 piece, since it seems like maybe we'll get to see them on screen together, and they had a Lot of parallels in S4).

But yeah there are definitely people in the fandom who aren't open to critique in how they treat Ezran. I once pointed out that hey, most of the time when his character is incorrectly tagged in a post, it's almost always in relation to his brother. Did not go over well, but I don't really care. It was still worth saying (and hopefully people will think a bit more thoughtfully about it too).

We could definitely all do more; I do my best to put dents in it when I can, but with varying degrees of success I'm sure

List of Ezran focused fics for anyone who wants em! (to the dashboard, i know i've missed some, so please feel free to add 'em)

Ezran appreciation week day 1: animals

3 shot collection on AO3

Ezran dealing with possessed Callum (post s4)

Opeli & Ezran drabble 1

Ezran & Rayla oneshot

Opeli & Ezran oneshot + future oneshots

Chessmaster Ezran oneshot

i hope i wake up young again: Soren is the “best crownguard,” ten years in the making. Ezran&Soren, 3.7k

if i am the king: then you have to let me go.“ Ezran and Corvus make their way back to Katolis, times three. 3.2k

ezran contemplates viren’s death

ezran and ethari’s first meeting (pre s4)

will not be denied: Per the monarchs of old, King Ezran is visited by Lady Justice in a dream. 1.5k, Ezran centric

can my eyes rest: otherwise known as how many autistic Ezran headcanons can I fit into one ficlet

Other relevant tags perhaps: autistic!Ezran, let Ezran be messy, chessmaster ezran, ezran's council, ezris (for ezran/ellis) and ezran x aanya, ezranedit

Upcoming Ezran projects:

Canon divergent Ezran & Kasef focused oneshot

why is it a monster: Ezran finds Aaravos' mirror first.

Ezran oneshots/drabbles about missing Rayla during the timeskip; feelings about his mother's death; bonding with Ibis in 3x09; etc.

Aforementioned Janai&Ezran parallels piece

great responsibility: Modern AU. Ezran gets bit by a radioactive spider. feat. Rayla as his boxing trainer and Callum as an overprotective big brother while he becomes the superhero he's destined to be

#ezran #tdp ezran #thanks for asking #anonymous #in regards to #like the two main characters introduced in S4 were both men of colour #terry (we support trans wrongs) and karim #and it's like. they deserve way more than what they get #i should write more terry & haven't written canon karim yet either i need to get on that

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bohemian-nights · 1 year

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Sorry for the ranting it’s just nice to meet follow Nettles fans who appreciate her character and don’t try to constantly erase her from the narrative.It’s definitely doubles down with the show but that’s been happening even before that. Why are there so few stories about Netty? She’s such an interesting character who seems to have had a horrible life(can you imagine what it does to a person a young girl on top of that to live all ok her own homeless for many years?)yet the fandom doesn’t bother with her at all. And you can’t blame the show because like I said Nettles erasure has been happening from the begging. Rhaena as much as I love her isn’t the last dragon rider she’s the last Targ one(if N isn’t a Targ/Valyrian)which is an important distinction the fandom doesn’t usually make. Which brings me to D and N’s relationship that always gets erased and I don’t even mean just on a romantic level but on s platonic one as well that’s how you now no matter how the show portrays their relationship fans will hate her no matter what. But talking pre show why are there more stories about Daemon/Laena or Daemon/Rhaenyra even Daemon/Mysaria then there is about him and Nettles. There’s nothing to indicate either of these relationships especially the first two were romantic but for a long time Laena was used as the self insert for D’s true love before they switched to R lol. And I mean self insert because we barely had any idea what their relationship was beyond them probably having affection for each other considering D’s reaction to her dying. No matter how you choose to interpret him and N there’s more info about them together and his feelings for her then there is for the other three women put together yet whenever D’s relationships are discussed N is always cut.🙄

No don’t apologize for “ranting” lol I enjoy these ask’s/discussions. Nettles 👩🏾🐑🐉 is criminally underrated period and she’s one of if not the most interesting characters in F&B.

She comes from less than a humble background and she’s potentially the only non Valyrian dragon riders that we know of in the ASOIF universe. And was you pointed out she is the last dragon rider as well. She straight up rocks!

I hate saying it, but one of the main reasons why she is less talked about/loved is because she’s the only in canon(not partially race swapped) “Black/Blackish” character in the actual books. Nettles is cut from the list because it’s hard for them to picture

In book canon Laena, Rhaenyra, and Mysaria are all “white” so there being more stories on them prior to HOTD makes sense. They could self into them(now they only have Rhaenyra) so of course they would show them more love.

There does seem to be more information on how Daemon felt about Nettles (as well as their day to day lives with one another), but their relationship in general(romantic and platonic) is just glossed over in favor of his other relationships by certain parts of this fandom.

For Christs sake’s some of them are literally calling for Nettles to be cut from the show entirely cause they straight up do not want her anywhere near Daemon in any capacity 🙃 We can see what you are doing when you say this.

There is no way to separate Nettles from Daemon so the next best thing replace her with or girl Rhaena and make sure that Daemon can only be with Rhaenyra.

Mysaria really isn’t that much of a threat in their eyes cause they know he never really was “in love with her”(especially not during the war). They were just f*ck buddies and she was his master of whispers, but whatever romantic feelings he held for her were long dead.

Nettles on the other hand, well they wouldn’t be putting up all this fuss if they really thought that he only saw her as his daughter and not someone he deeply cared about in a less fatherly capacity.

Side note: Them switching up saying Laena is the love of Daemon’s life then switching up to Rhaenyra being the love of his life cause Laena is Blackish in the show will never not be funny 🫠

I do think Laena was the wife Daemon loved the most in the books and I do believe that he at some point “loved” all of his love interests(well not Rhea obviously lol), but whether he was “in love” with all of them 🤷🏽‍♀️

I will stand by the fact that he was probably in love with Nettles though. There was no reason why he was doing all that he did for her when he stood little to gain from it. Nettles would have fought for Rhaenyra whether or not Daemon showered her with attention and affection.

Nettles was honorable/loyal as well so she would have never betrayed Rhaenyra. Which I have seen some of these stans claim who try to justify their queen making the idiotic/insane decision to order a 17 year olds murder without even questioning her🫠

#hotd ask #answered #nettles asoif #hotd spoilers #daemon targaryen #nettles #mysaria #laena velaryon #anti rhaenyra targaryen #nettles supremacy #daemon x nettles #nettles x daemon #bring in nettles hbo #daemon targaryen x nettles #bnasks #bnask #bnhotdask #bnhotdasks

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pinkandgreenarepurpleandyellow · 2 years

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Writing out my personal thoughts on what Lab Rats could have been. (Disclaimer: I don't own the show, I do like the show but also have my own opinions and thoughts, don't like don't read, etc etc).

So, Season 1 and early Season 2 stay mostly the same because they set up some neat dynamics. The main change is that I would even out Adam and Chase's dynamic a little more so it seems more like they both constantly fight instead of just Adam picking on Chase non-stop (Seriously. As the annoying sibling who would constantly throw their siblings if I had the super-strength for it, I think the bullying gags got too repetitive and seem more malicious than intended). Separate note that I would change a little bit of Katelyn's personality so it's less of her hating Bree and more of her being completely feral (sorta like she was in her first appearance, but more violent and willing to ignore the law).

Now, we have some established character roles. Adam as the dumb strong one, Bree as somewhat inconsistent teenage girl, and Chase as the egotistical nerd.

Beginning around the time that we start seeing more plot-connected episodes in late Season 2 and early Season 3 (as opposed to stand-alones), we start long-term character arcs. Specifically, their individual arc and their adjustment to the world arc.

For Adam, it's the slow (like 2-3 seasons' worth of slow) shifting from constantly teasing Chase and being more rude and annoying to being the protective brother and affectionally bullying Bree and Chase. Unlike the others, he seems to have an easier time with being an outcast at Mission Creek High, so part of his arc would be the steadfast refusal to bully his weirdo siblings at school to humiliate them, and consistently being the rock of the trio.

For Bree, shown canonically to have a very inconsistent personality until the writers nailed down what they wanted, the arc would have her figuring out who she is and slowly embracing that she's allowed to not fit perfectly into any box. She's a fan of girly things, she's tomboyish, she can study, she likes to slack off, her moral compass is not always consistent, and she doesn't have to fit into any of these weird boxes other people shove her into. This would be especially relevant during the "Three Minus Bree" bit of the season, but instead of the show shafting blame onto her, she understands that her feelings were valid, even if she overreacted. I, personally, would also add in the idea that she can quit the team once they're stable and can prepare. The first part of her arc would end with her wanting to stay for now, but also exploring the idea of leaving in the future.

Chase's arc would revolve around his ego being tied to his intelligence. Unlike Adam and Bree, Chase has no hobbies or skills that do not tie into his super-intelligence. Adam doesn't need super strength or heat vision to bake and like dogs. Bree manages to win over friends and collect creepy dolls without relying on her super speed. Chase doesn't have this option or, at least, it doesn't seem like it. The majority of his arc would be around mid-late Season 3 and most of Season 4 as he struggles to balance the power dynamic shifting and reconciling with himself that it's alright if he can't handle everything on his own, which he mostly does to compensate for the fact that everyone else could function easily without bionics, and he cannot.

Leo's arc is both an ego check and a confidence boost. While the initial Mission Specialist position was given to him mostly as a joke, I'd set up more mission episodes and have Leo progress over the seasons from an overexcited rookie to their chill level-headed backup, pulling information over and relaying updates to them in real-time. His work in Season 4 would be growing and stepping up (and instead of a rivalry with Spin, I imagine he and Sebastian would butt heads pre Bionic Rebellion), to the point where he becomes unofficial leader in training exercises because years of missions with the original trio have given him a lot of practice.

Now, for a more detailed breakdown of Season 4 and my personal re-writes:

More Tasha. Tasha's big work in this season is setting up a better program for end of season world (more about this below), in collaboration with her husband and brother-in-law. She's also the one sometimes helping the younger kids handle conflicts.

Sebastian's motive is less just 'you took away my father' and more of anger at being lied to, tricked into their weird little program, or being manipulated by Giselle and Marcus. Seb's betrayal would be a huge blow to Chase's trust and reinforces idea that the cannot rely on other people.

Chase's anger at being taken off the elevator project is less about just ego and moreso the fact that clearly he's been doing okay for years, and right after he trusts someone and messes up, it's taken away and all of his research is given over to some shmuck, so clearly these things are related and it's his reliance on someone else that screwed him over. The next episode features Chase trying (yet again, this would be built up over 3-4 episodes from BR on) to fix something on his own until it nearly kills him/Adam/Bree/Leo, and he tells all of them exactly why he's afraid to trust that they can help him.

Obviously, they all get their sappy little group hug, but it does show that the dynamics shifts a little because over the rest of the season, Chase slowly grows and takes advice and works with people, while Adam Bree and Leo don't rag on him quite as harshly for mistakes/temporary failures.

Giselle shows up a bit earlier. Initially, her plans seem to be roughly the same as in canon, but Douglas had let the Marcus thing slip while they were dating, and this becomes more obvious in the season finale. For the her first fight w/the main team (approx mid-season), we again see Sebastian, working with her.

The final episode features the basic og concepts but Leo takes up Daniel's role. Chase and Sebastian have a big fight, Sebastian says some stuff about Chase needing to take everything on his own or calling him a failure, and Adam and Bree jump in, moving Chase over to fight with a different threat. In the battle, we see all three of them coming into their element. Adam shields them from the blows if they can't dodge. Bree goes where she is needed and does whatever works for the moment. Chase gives orders but also moves back to let Adam take over some parts of the fighting while he focuses on defeating something else.

Now that all of the students have been upgraded, they have no more need for mentors. They do, however, still need some training before they can all safely do missions on their own.

Douglas and Donald offer for Adam, Bree, and Chase to get their chips taken out now that they are no longer the only heroes on Earth. It's their chance to live a normal life.

The trio accepts, but keeps the chips safe and intact so if there's ever an emergency, the Lab Rats can help fight it.

Leo is now officially the Bionic Academy's Mission Specialist. He's promoted to 'mentor' level and is to help the entire class work with missions with the kids from his team as assistants. Tasha, Douglas, and Donald are working on an integration program so the kids can juggle normal lives with being superheroes.

Big family hug with all three parents and four siblings.

We see the trio in college.

Adam is baking and a guy near him asks for help in lifting a table. They work together to lift it and while Adam is still clearly pretty damn strong, it's just what his muscles have built up over the years. He trains with 40 pound dumbbells instead of 400 pound ones now and when he slaps one of his bros on the back, the dude only stumbles forward a little bit instead of flying 20 feet into the air.

Bree is running a track meet and in the final stretch, she speeds up just a little and gets second place. She's not bionic anymore, it's all training and the years and years of habitual motion, but no real super speed anymore. He friends run up to her and hug her, all of them from completely different group (cheer, athletics, geeks, several different guys, etc, etc). We see that she's done shoving herself into one box, and all of these different people are smiling with her and hugging her.

Chase is arguing with three other nerds over a giant whiteboard cover in equations. He writes out a new equation and triple-checks it. His writing is slower than before, he can't rely on super intelligence. But their arguing is more for fun than out of genuine hostility, and they all compare notes and grin at each other and Chase might not be the smartest guy in the room anymore, but he's definitely far happier.

In between these scenes, we see Leo at his desk, assigning missions, getting status reports, and answering student questions. A mission goes wrong and he stands up to go rescue them. He doesn't brag or show off, just gives an ETA and sets out. He's now the oldest, the one they all look up to, and it's clear that he's stepped into the role of unofficial leader fairy damn well.

Taylor slides into his spot, but in parallel talking to Douglas about the integration program. The camera pans to show Tasha and Donald arguing over how much work-life balance the students need. It's clear that they all care about each other and want the best for the kids, they just need to hash out the details.

Ik it's not a perfect fix for everything, but I do wish that Lab Rats had either ended on the third season or built up more to actual plot progression for season 4, and this is what I thought would work.

#lab rats #adam davenport #bree davenport #chase davenport #leo dooley #donald davenport #douglas davenport #tasha davenport #tasha dooley #what if

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addictedtostorytelling · 2 months

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Hello! I really enjoy your CSI metas, they’re always very insightful and just delightful to read. I have a two-part question, if you’re interested in answering (it’s very long, sorry, and I apologise if you’ve answered something similiar!):

1. We get mostly clear dates on when Grissom, Sara, and Catherine (despite them changing it later) joined the lab and became CSIs, but I’m less clear on Nick, Warrick, and Greg. We do some info early on - S1E17 Warrick mentions he’s worked at the lab for six years - which makes sense to me, as he would’ve been not far out of college by then; in S2E11 he says he was a rookie three years prior. In S1E22, Nick says he was a CSI ‘before Warrick’. And Greg - apocryphal info on the CSI wiki says he worked at the SFPD lab prior to Vegas, but I don’t really take it as canon. So what’s your understanding of how each came to be a CSI/and or work at the lab, prior to 2000?

2. What’s your opinion on the relationship between Nick and Warrick prior to the show? Real ‘friends’ or just coworkers with a friendly rivalry? They start the show off comfortable enough to joke around with each other, and they’re obviously competing for the CSI III role, but they don’t strike me as ‘friends’ early on, the way they became later. Same goes for Nick and Greg, (and Warrick and Greg). Sometimes they seem to be genuinely friendly with Greg, sometimes just seem to tolerate him.

Anyway - perhaps I’ve missed something because it’s been a while since I’ve watched the entire show, but I’ve just always been very curious about how the early members of the team worked together pre-show, and was wondering what your interpretation of those relationships might be.

hi, anon!

unfortunately, trying to figure out character biographies on csi is a crapshoot.

not only do we get conflicting information between episodes/seasons—as you mention, in episode 01x18 "$35k obo," we are told warrick has been on the job for six years, suggesting he began working at the lab in 1995; however, in episode 02x11 "organ grinder," his rookie year is stated to have been 1998—but the old cbs character biographies don't offer much clarification, as they oftentimes conflict with in-show information and/or with each other in multiple versions (e.g., catherine's old biography says she was born in montana, whereas show canon frequently suggests she was born and raised in vegas).

with that acknowledgment in mind, the best i can do for you is conjecture.

to do so, i'll make reference to the old cbs character biographies, which are no longer available in their original form but can be found in bits and pieces all over the internet.

i've got some takes for you after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

let's start with warrick.

with his 1971 birth year, he is approximately 28 or 29 years-old (the same as nick and sara) in s1, which takes place in 2000.

we know he attended college at (the fictional) wlvu for four years and, per his many references to the jobs he had during this time, worked to put himself through school. he most likely graduated with his bachelor's degree circa 1992 or 1993.

there is then some "unaccounted for time" in almost all of his character biographies and the information we're given about him in the show. no reference is ever made to him attending graduate school, though it's possible he may have earned a master's degree at some point between 1992 and 1995 (perhaps at unlv). he also may simply have spent this time working.

given that several of warrick's old cbs biographies stated he started out at the lab as a tech (most likely a/v), we can perhaps use this idea to "bridge the gap" between his seemingly conflicting csi start dates given in s1 and s2.

to me, the idea that warrick may have started at the lvpd crime lab as an a/v tech prior to becoming a field csi seems eminently plausible, given he does have an affinity for technology and especially seems to know a lot about audio, so i'm willing to accept that notion, even though it's never confirmed in canon.

let's say he started at the lab as an a/v tech in 1995. later, he transitioned to the field circa 1997 and fully certified as a csi level i by 1998. he then spent 1998-1999 earning his csi level ii certification and became a csi level iii in late 2000.

meanwhile, nick was also a 1971 baby and would have been 29 years-old during csi s1 (given his august birthday).

he graduated from high school in 1989 and for the next four years attended texas a&m university in college station, texas, where he pledged an unspecified fraternity. he most likely graduated from college in 1992/1993.

his old biographies are pretty much unanimous in saying he began his career as a cop with the dallas pd straight out of college. after graduating from the police academy probably circa 1992/1993/1994, he was on the force until 1997, when he transferred to csi while still in dallas.

while this detail is (to the best of my knowledge) never corroborated in show canon, to me, it fits well with nick's character and even perhaps explains why he, of all the csis, is the quickest to pursue fleeing suspects, draw his sidearm, place unruly suspects in submission holds, generally take "police action," etc.

after earning his csi level i certification, nick then relocated to vegas in 1998, where he began work at the crime lab under grissom. he earned his csi level ii certification sometime between 1998 and 1999 and certified as a csi level iii on october 16th, 2000 (slightly before warrick did, by brass's design, in episode 01x01 "pilot").

so.

as for the question of who became a csi first out of warrick and nick:

both warrick and nick began training as field csis circa 1997 and earned their respective csi level i certifications in 1998, albeit warrick in vegas and nick (starting out) in dallas.

since we don't know the exact months in which they each respectively began their training and/or earned their level i certifications, it's possible nick may indeed have become a csi before warrick either by commencing field training before him and/or earning his level i certification before him, certainly.

however, my understanding of nick's "i've been a csi level iii for nine months now. i was a csi before warrick. warrick works dbs solo. why can't i?" line from episode 01x22 "evaluation day" isn't that he's referring to when they each respectively started their csi careers but rather (as per the larger context of that conversation between him and grissom) that he is making specific reference to the fact that he certified as a csi level iii before warrick did—if only by a couple of days/weeks (and with a little help from brass).

i therefore don't think we can say with surety that nick has been a csi longer than warrick has overall; warrick may actually have "seniority" but have simply certified as a csi level iii after nick did.

as for greg, since that apocryphal "he used to work at the sfpd" story has never really made sense to me—if he had, wouldn't he and sara already have known each other prior to s1? i mean, just given their ages and where they are in their respective careers by the time the events of s1 are taking place, they would have had to have overlapped in san francisco from around 1997-1998, had they both worked there—i spent some time trying to determine its provenance and was able to figure out that way, way back in the csi forum days, someone erroneously identified greg's alma mater as uc berkeley rather than stanford and then wrongly assumed (based off of this mistake) that he must have begun his crime lab career in san francisco.

of course, in reality, uc berkeley is sara's alma mater, not greg's, so if we're going with the theory that greg originally worked at whatever crime lab was closest to where he studied, then it's more likely he began his career in santa clara county, affiliated with the palo alto pd.

—that is, if he began working in law enforcement in the same place he went to school at at all.

again, given that that forum post essentially seems to confuse greg's backstory with sara's, it's possible he didn't take a job in law enforcement immediately upon graduation at all; it was sara who did so (enrolling, per her old cbs character biographies, in a work-study program with the sfpd's coroner's office during her graduate studies at berkeley and then being hired as a csi by the sfpd immediately upon graduation with her master's degree).

now.

here's where things with greg get even murkier.

greg is far and away "the baby" of team graveyard, born in 1975, which makes him just 25 years old in s1.

over the years, i've seen many biographies for him which state that he, like both grissom and sara, was an early high school graduate who attended college young, which might make sense, given his tender years at the start of the show.

and, hell, i've thought along those lines for him myself, up until this point.

however.

given that one person's mistake on those old message boards seemingly resulted in the transposition of many of sara's biography points onto greg's (and the repetition of that mistake across numerous other csi sites thereafter), i can't help but wonder if maybe the idea that greg graduated high school early is similarly spurious.

—and particularly given that his biographical timeline works out just fine even without him have been an early admit to stanford.

it's not that i don't think greg is smart enough to have graduated high school early!

certainly, he has a genius intellect and is capable of thriving in academic environments.

it's just—

since the "graduated high school early" thing isn't show canon, and there is some evidence to suggest that story element never really belonged to him to begin with, i think there's reason to at least question that particular biographical note for him.

to that end:

let's say he began attending stanford at age eighteen in 1993, graduated with his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1997, earned his master's degree by 1999, and then started working in las vegas immediately thereafter, during that same year.

that would mean he'd been on the job at the lvpd crime lab for about a year by the time s1 takes place, which fits.

in episode 05x09 "mea culpa," it is mentioned that greg was working dna at the lab back in 1999.

him being an early high school graduate would maybe have allowed him to gain some additional working experience (and perhaps have begun his career in palo alto); however, that addition is not necessary to make his character timeline scan.

in the late 90s, graduating as a top prospect (phi beta kappa from a stanford master's degree program) would have afforded him good enough credentials to be hired by the las vegas crime lab straight out of school, no additional experience required.

to me, that option makes good sense.

the only pieces of greg's known biography which don't fit this particular timeline: 1) that dumbass story greg tells in episode 01x06 "who are you?" about how he and his friends used to go to the french place to watch strippers on friday nights. not only could he never possibly have seen catherine dance there (considering she retired from the pole when he was all of ten years-old) but he almost certainly would have already known he couldn't have seen her dance there without having to ask her about it, as, no matter which biographical option we go with for him (early graduation vs. no), he has only been living in vegas for one to two years by the time s1 is taking place, and catherine has worked at the crime lab the whole time he has been there; 2) that weird story he tells grissom in episode 02x01 "burked" about having lived in new york. like. when did that supposedly happen? when he was a kid?

now.

as for the question of nick and warrick's friendship in s1, i personally do believe they are friends (and that any potentially "off vibes" between them at this time are just part and parcel of literally everyone being written slightly ooc to start out with).

yes, they jockey for position over the csi level iii promotion, but notice that when nick wins out, he actually tries to apologize to warrick because he knows brass manipulated things to give him the edge over him (see episode 01x01 "pilot")—indicating he does actually care about warrick's feelings.

while they do tease and heckle each other, that's just part of "jock" socialization.

your best buddie is your best buddie and you would do anything for him, but you are also going to try to beat his ass at basketball and break his mile-run record and trash talk him when you do so, because that's just fun, okay?

if you read between the lines of all the razzing, warrick and nick genuinely enjoy each other's company and choose to hang out with each other of their own volitions (like when they play video games together in the break room in episode 01x08 "anonymous"). they have a very familiar rapport, complete with inside jokes and set patterns of behavior (like betting on case outcomes).

though of course later on in the show—after they've been through more character development, known each other for longer, weathered several "i could have lost you! please don't ever leave me!" near-death experiences together, etc.—they grow even closer than they were to start out with, i do think the foundations of their friendship are already very much in place in s1.

those two guys love each other.

—they're just also ultra-competitive with each other and have a tendency to talk smack.

as for the greg of it all, though, he is very much "on the outside" with nick and warrick in the early seasons of the show, not only because he is stuck in the lab while they're out in the field but also because he doesn't know how to operate on that same "jock" frequency that they do.

there's a kind of aggressiveness and swagger baked into their brand of masculinity that he just doesn't have and can't even successfully imitate. he isn't part of that whole "snapping towels in the locker room" culture that they grew up in and he isn't exactly sure how it works.

while for the most part, their teasing of him is all "in good fun," you can tell there are times when they genuinely frazzle him (like in episode 03x10 "high and low"). you can also tell how desperate he sometimes is in seeking their approval, trying to win them over but not really knowing how to "run with the big dogs."

it's the quintessential "big brothers vs. little brother" dynamic.

to my mind, only when greg first ventures into the field in episode 02x18 "chasing the bus" does his relationship with warrick and nick really start to shift. once he shows that initiative, they start to take him a bit more seriously and, to their credits, when he officially makes the decision to transfer out of dna, they both take him under their wings and provide him with valuable mentorship (such as, for example, in episode 04x15 "early rollout").

by s5, it's clear they count him as an actual friend (making time to see him even after they are transferred to the swing shift while he remains on grave, as seen in episode 05x22 "weeping willows").

and while teasing him is still a part of their dynamic with him, it's now much more give-and-take, with him having found the confidence (and learned the "game") enough to keep up with them.

anyway.

your mileage may (and probably does!) vary, but those are my thoughts.

thanks for the questions! please feel welcome to send more any time.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #**#my meta: csi #meta: production #meta: nick #meta: warrick #meta: greg #csiverse #season one #let's talk shop

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