I see a lot of posts about Danny seeing Jason and immediately thinking he’s a baby ghost and wanting to adopt him but what if it’s the other way around?
What if Jason sees Danny and is hit with oh my god that’s a baby, who left a baby unattended out on the street?? He needs help, gotta protect him, mine, yeah he’s mine now, I got u lil guy don’t worry
Meanwhile 15 yr old Danny is like um hi?? And promptly gets kidnapped. But he just lets it happen because he’s actually feeling the safest he’s ever felt in his life with this guy, and Danny’s core immediately recognizes Jason as parental figure and just relaxes Danny 100%
Jasons feeling like Danny is a helpless baby while Danny feels safe, protect, calm, safe, relax, and he just lets Jason take him home. Neither are really sure why or what is going on with them but they’re not gonna stop it.
I think it’s because Danny’s own parents kinda suck and any other ghost that he’s interacted with he’s had to fight in some capacity or has been spooked by them. Jason’s the only one who 1) wanted to parent him and 2) has good vibes. Danny’s usually waiting for fights to happen and he’s very stressed. Jason calms him down so much he probably falls asleep before they even get to Jason’s apartment, full trust that Jason will take care of him.
Meanwhile Jason never really connects with his pit side, but really wants to find some way to have a truce. Cue Danny, and both Jason and the Pit turn to protectiveness and so the rage becomes more protection and Jason yk, might be kinda lonely and wanting something to take care of. He was probably thinking about getting a cat and not a kid but he’s not complaining
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So. Fatebreaker, right? Ryne's biggest fears made manifest, daddy issues personified, yes?
He's an amalgamation of Thancred and Ran'jit, his face, his voice and his weapon is Thancred's, but his body, his fighting style and his words are Ran'jit's.
Throughout the fight Fatebreaker constantly makes comments about how only he can protect Ryne, only he can provide for her, only he has even the right to so much as stand beside her, to be in her general presence. He's possessive and obsessive, repeatedly asserting that she is HIS and his only. Which is exactly what Ran'jit says basically every time we encounter him.
But this time it's in Thancred's voice. This time it's with the voice and face of a man she actually cares about.
Ryne isn't scared of Thancred, she never has been. Even when she first met him she was barely even nervous (as clearly shown in Thancred's short story). There's a lot of different feelings happening between those two, but fear has never been one of them.
But now, after things have gotten so much better, she is scared of Thancred becoming like Ran'jit. Because if Thancred was just a little further gone, if he was just a little less compassionate, he would've. It wouldn't be hard for him to go down the same path as Ran'jit did, to be incapable of letting go of the ghost of that girl he loved so so much to the point he'd stubbornly grip anything close to her he could. He didn't, but the fact he could've is terrifying.
It makes his final words, words that are Thancred's, so very important. This is her deepest fears made manifest, but he still says he wants her to be happy. Her happiness not only matters, but is important to him.
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This week on "CJ needs to gush about DAO": Morrigan's dark ritual.
I adore Origins because depending on how serious you take roleplay, every decision you make is a thread that leads back to your origin, and in this case of the ritual, who you choose to romance can have a major impact on how you handle this choice.
For context, my canon run is with a female Tabris who romances Alistair and keeps him as a Grey Warden, and is close friends with Morrigan. It's more in character for my Tabris to reject Morrigan's ritual and not even bring it up to Alistair, which would result in her leaving him behind while she makes the ultimate sacrifice in killing the archdemon... however, agreeing to convince Alistair to do the ritual with Morrigan is the only choice in the entire game where I break roleplay because I'm selfish and weak and I want Tabris to live.
I have a lot of strong feelings about the ritual, like it hurts me. It makes me want to chew on furniture. I can talk about it until I can talk no more. I so badly want to be strong enough to remain in character and reject the ritual.
Let me explain: Tabris survives an origin that deals with sexual assault. She gets kidnapped on her wedding day, she watches the other kidnapped women and her husband get murdered, and then is too late to save Shianni from being assaulted... and Tabris carries that trauma with her throughout the entire game.
If the way to save her life is to ask the two most important people she cares about; one being her lover and the other being her best friend; who she knows hate each other, to have dubiously consensual sex in order to make a baby to absorb the old god soul... she's saying no. The last thing Tabris would ever do is put someone into a sexual situation where consent is at all dubious after what she saw happen to Shianni and nearly happened to herself. She'd rather die than force that upon Alistair and Morrigan.
That's what I mean when I say origin affects everything; I know some will side eye that with "Really? Your warden would rather die than let Alistair sleep with another woman? It's one time, and Alistair agrees to it, so no one needs to die?"
Let me be clear in saying this isn't a "Morrigan slept with my man" issue. Sure, that part's awkward and it sucks, but that's not even breaking water tension, let alone diving into the deep waters to the core of the issue.
For my Tabris, this is about betrayal, consent, and accepting fate.
The person offering Tabris this deal is someone she thought of as a trusted friend who has actually been lying to her the entire time. It doesn't matter what Morrigan's intentions are now or if she genuinely wants to save the wardens. She knew from the beginning why Flemeth sent her with them, she admits as much. She knew a warden would need to make the ultimate sacrifice and then leveraged that to get what she wants. Morrigan waited until the night before, when Alistair and the warden learn one of them has to die to defeat the archdemon, and took advantage of the high running emotions and possibly the fear of dying to make the warden agree to her ritual.
At least, that's how my Tabris interprets this confrontation. She feels betrayed by someone she came to love like a sister and went out of her way to help Morrigan with her mother upon learning what's in Flemeth's grimoire. And then that someone tells her no one needs to die, she just needs to convince Alistair to sleep with her... which is a huge fucking problem.
The Alistair and Tabris romance is slow; it took a long time for either of them to be comfortable with being emotionally vulnerable and trusting each other with basic intimacy, let alone sex. Tabris is mortified at the idea of putting Alistair in this situation. Not only would it feel like a betrayal on her part to ask that of him, but she knows the last thing Alistair ever wants to do is father a bastard who then goes on to grow up without him. How could she possibly ask him to do that?
Then you consider that ritual or no, there isn't a guarantee that they'll survive anyway. Say they do the ritual and Tabris dies anyway; she made Alistair sleep with Morrigan in order to save her and then she died anyway. Or if Alistair dies then Tabris gets to live with the fact that the last person Alistair was with was a woman he hates because she asked that of him… and either way, Morrigan gets to walk away with what she wanted.
Tabris led the group, and she's accepted that if Riordan dies [which he does] then she'll be the one to make the sacrifice, even if it means breaking both hers and Alistair's heart.... except she doesn't because I'm a coward who doesn't want to lose her because my worldstate isn't good without her in it but I also refuse to lose Alistair so I just pretend it plays out differently in my head it's fine-
But... that's how I play Tabris and view the situation. My friend @pi-creates and I have discussed the dark ritual at length. While I play a Tabris who romances Alistair, Pi plays a Mahariel who romances Morrigan, so we have vastly different interpretations of the ritual itself and Morrigan's intentions.
Which yeah, it makes total sense that someone who romanced Morrigan with a different origin, and has the option to do the ritual with her rather than asking someone else to do it, wouldn't see this the way I do.
To quote Pi: "Playing as a male warden in the Morrigan romance makes the whole situation feel different, and maybe it’s because she’s presenting it differently due to the emotional connection, but it feels more like she’s opening up about her initial instructions (that she had been given by Flemeth) and offering a solution to avoid the possibility of death. And for my Mahariel, the constant threat of sudden death has haunted him from the start – he caught the blight and was ripped away from his clan (something he did not want to do in the slightest), got forced into a Grey Warden ritual that could kill him, was forced into a battle that could kill him, going on this whole quest that he never wanted but has now become responsible for regardless of his thoughts on the matter… the dark ritual may be one of the few moments where he is presented with an option to decide if he wants to walk into certain death, or take actions of his own volition to stop it.
"The idea of the ritual still feels like a dodgy thing to do since the ultimate outcome is unknown at that point, he’s taking Morrigan at her word that it will save the warden and that this child would be unharmed, just with an old god soul that she isn’t exactly clear on why she wants that and is determined to runaway immediately after the battle to secure it properly. It could be interpreted that it’s purely a preservation thing, but I’m biased to wanting Morrigan's intentions to not be power based.
"But also, taking part in the ritual isn’t as outlandish for my warden since he and Morrigan have already been involved in an intimate relationship. It’s the future of the ritual that is scarier – the idea of this old-god baby, and the idea of Morrigan insisting that she’s leaving afterwards when Mahariel and her have a loving relationship. He’s hurting, but he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Alistair to die, he doesn’t want Morrigan to leave, he definitely doesn’t want pregnant Morrigan to leave on her own… it’s complicated, but for completely different reasons."
And I find that fascinating. I want to know how other players approach this part of DAO, what origins they play, and who they romanced. Seriously, this is an invitation to anyone reading to share their thoughts.
What about a warden who doesn't even have Alistair in their party because they made Loghain a warden? Is there anyone out there who has Loghain do the ritual with Morrigan and why? What about male wardens who don't romance her? Do you choose to do it with her anyway, or do you ask Alistair or Loghain to do it? Do you tell Morrigan to fuck off with the ritual? Why? Who makes the ultimate sacrifice in that case? And what about Morrigan herself? How do you interpret her intentions/motivations? I want to know.
I'm telling you, this is a discussion that gets me excited, as most discussions about DAO do.
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can we just talk about how kenji has one of the Most tragic abilities in bungou stray dogs??? like. the more i think about it, the more heartbreaking it is.
he's fourteen years old and has an ability people would die/kill for. in s3, chuuya called kenji the ada's "trump card", so it's safe to assume the rest of the port mafia thinks the same way. he is immune to literal bullets, to being whacked in the head by hard metal or pretty much anything, he can easily lift cars above his head as if they were nothing,,,
but only if he's hungry.
if you ignore that last bit, kenji has one of the best powers in the show. and like he still does, but my God. he's fourteen years old. he doesn't think his ability is all that impressive. he doesn't see the issues.
since he has a job, he probably doesn't Really eat lunch, and if he does, it's snacks. but also his job is a part of the armed detective agency. therefore, things happen all the time. who knows how long cases will run, who knows when someone will try to destroy yokohama or the agency or whatever. there's been many times when it's been clear that they've had to work into the night. then we have to ask: does kenji eat dinner? no. probably not. and if he does, he probably just eats a piece of fruit or something small. that way, he doesn't lose his ability. he is the agency's trump card, after all. and he knows how important his power is. i mean, that's one of the reasons he joined ranpo and the others when they went against fukuzawa's orders in s3. it's not explicitly stated, but i'd argue that it's implied. anyways. does kenji eat breakfast? well, i don't think so. why? he sleeps when he eats. why sleep so soon after he just woke up? he has to go to work, anyways. so he can't fall asleep.
so, we've basically established that kenji probably has an extremely unhealthy eating schedule due to his ability. but also,,, what about his sleeping schedule? what kind of relationship does he have with sleep? so, let's say he eats a full meal three times a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. let's say how long he sleeps depends on how much he ate... so let's say that a small snack is no sleep since it's barely anything, just maybe makes him a little physically weaker. and a normal meal is at least an hour. that's at least three hours of sporadic sleep during the day - one of them shortly after he wakes up. but you know what makes that even sadder? what if kenji doesn't sleep at night because of his ability. or, sleep consistently or well? we can assume the agency actually really wants kenji to eat, even if he falls asleep, so on days when he can't get away with not really eating, he sleeps during the day for an unspecified amount of time. his sleep schedule would get so thrown off. also, he was raised on a farm, so we can assume he wakes up really early anyways. maybe early enough to say that there isn't any reason to sleep because he would wake up soon normally anyways.
and... what if kenji can't sleep without eating? what if kenji has to eat to sleep? maybe it wasn't that way when he was younger, but the older he got, the more his body grew to rely on his ability's exception. like... that's just... really sad. this kid is fourteen.
and think about it. the agency is best friends because they are. they'd probably like to go out to lunch or dinner together. i bet half the time at least, kenji wouldn't eat. why? because he'd fall asleep. wouldn't want to ruin the fun. because then they'd have to watch their volume around him or try to wake him up (and i hc that it's really hard to wake him up for like... the first ten minutes after a meal at least - it gets easier the longer he's been asleep or the less he eats). and what if they can't wake him up? then someone would have to carry him back and that's so kind of them but, well, they didn't have to and now kenji feels like a liability or a burden. like he ruined all the fun.
and he works with the armed detective agency. they've got a lot of enemies. he is the trump card. the physically strongest on the team. also the most naive and, objectively, the kindest. oh and one of the two youngest. can you imagine how vulnerable he is when he sleeps? i would imagine the agency wouldn't want him to eat by himself in public for, you know, safety reasons. and that even includes the cafe downstairs. who knows what could happen if kenji fell asleep on his own? and that's probably why he went to eat with atsushi in s1 ep11: he was with atsushi so he could eat out. one of those rare chances. and if an enemy did get to him while he was asleep, he'd be pretty easy to keep out of it: just keep forcing him to eat. shove food in his mouth, force him to swallow. and there you are: you have the armed detective agency's trump card. and kenji knows this.
and the sad thing is? kenji probably doesn't even realize he's having problems. he probably thinks this is normal. something he just has to deal with - and i don't say that in a negative or self-loathing kind of way. a genuine "it's always been like this; i know nothing else" kind of way. he wants to help people: that's why he came to the agency. he couldn't handle not being able to help everyone back home. he needs to be useful, to help. he grew up on a farm: he values hard work a lot - that much is obvious. he feels like he can't help if he eats consistently. he's probably (albeit subconsciously, unknowingly) scared of what would happen if he did eat and sleep consistently. that means he's not useful, right? that means someone will get hurt because of him. he'd rather starve than someone else get hurt. he was given this ability, he has to use it to help people.
tldr: kenji's ability is so interesting and underutilized in the the manga/anime and in the fandom and is so overlooked in angst potential. his ability most likely has ruined his eating and sleeping schedule to the point where he doesn't know anything different and genuinely thinks it's healthy because it's what he's always done, it's what he was blessed with, right? kenji deserves more love in canon and by the fandom <3
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