There was another timeline.
One that, at the moment, only Clockwork and a single other person knew about. Both of whom has separately vowed to never let the timeline exist ever again.
That time was dark. It was bloody. The skies were painted red and the oceans boiled. The dead walked the Earth with a freedom not even the living could achieve. It was like the pits of hell had opened up and spit out the things even the Devil couldn’t bear to look at. It made the Dark Ages look like a middle school girl’s slumber party on Halloween.
It was the timeline where Danielle successfully replaced Danny. Both as Phantom, and as a Fenton.
She replaced Danny, under the orders of Vlad. And then she did more. She grew up, committing more and more crimes at Vlad’s command, gaining infamy and hate, eventually surpassing Vlad’s own reputation as a violent ghost.
Vlad knew she’d grown too powerful by the time she was biologically fourteen, the same age Danny had been when Danielle had shattered his core and eaten it. Vlad knew this, and thought the same trick would work again.
He tried to replace Danielle with another clone.
It didn’t work.
In that timeline, Danielle killed Vlad, absorbing his ghost half, just like Dan did. She became Eleanor, the Queen of Death, and ravaged the Earth for many years. Due to the power boost of consuming two other halfas, Eleanor was more powerful than any other variant of herself, Danny, or Dan that Clockwork could find. The only reason she did not expand to other dimensions, was because Danny was not around long enough to pass on the knowledge of time travel, and how to reach Clockwork’s tower.
It was a dark time. But Clockwork’s fears have been laid to rest, as the Dani of the current time had NOT replaced Danny. In fact, she’d been adopted into the Fenton family with open arms, and the Vlad of this world was less psychotic since he didn’t have a mental break. No Fentons died and caused Dan, and Amity has accepted the various Phantoms and other ghosts with open arms. It was the best possible course of events.
Nothing could go wrong, right? Eleanor was a secret Clockwork would take to his grave, if he ever got one. Not even the Observants knew about it.
Booster Gold, however, did not swear to keep the timeline a secret. He swore to prevent the timeline.
No matter what.
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Love Is Stored in the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie
On Lizzie & Ripred
The newest take I’m seeing right now, both in the TUC tags and on my “controversial TUC takes” post, is that Lizzie’s relationship with Ripred is unfounded and that the inclusion of it “robbed” us of a softer moment between Gregor and Ripred. I disagree with this take so much that I decided to write an entire essay about my thoughts on the subject. The most common argument I see against Lizzie is that she received Ripred’s affection, as well as his tragic backstory, after being present for a very short period of time, while Gregor has known Ripred for months. At a surface level, this may seem counterintuitive, but when we dig deeper into the characters and their behaviors, motivations, and allegiances, the thematic significance of Lizzie’s role in the story becomes apparent.
First and foremost, let’s take a look at Gregor. I love this kid so much, but I do believe that the core of this argument hinges on his more subtle flaws as a character. Consider this: the entirety of The Underland Chronicles is narrated from Gregor’s point-of-view. What does this mean for our perception of the story? We receive only the context that Gregor has, and we only receive the details that Gregor notices and finds important. Across the series, his understanding of the Underland and its denizens expands, grows, and solidifies. He is twelve by Code of Claw and very much still learning and growing, but some of beliefs have settled by this point.
This is where Ripred comes in. Gregor has more or less made up his mind about Ripred by the end of Curse of the Warmbloods. He wants to lead the Gnawers and will achieve that goal by any means necessary. He’s an ally, but probably not a friend, grumpy and abrasive and untouchable. Definitely not worthy of sympathy, because he can take care of himself. In short, Gregor doesn’t see Ripred as a multidimensional person, as someone with emotions outside of anger and self-importance.
In direct opposition, we have Lizzie. Upon first glance, she might seem inconsequential until Code of Claw, because her character arc is quiet and mostly happens off-screen. She’s anxious about almost everything, and the Underland puts her through a lot of trauma in the earlier books without having ever set foot down there. It took her dad from her when she was only four years old, and when he returned years later, he was ill and severely traumatized. His absence and then his inability to work meant that she grew up in poverty, spending a large portion of her childhood food insecure and without a stable home life. Similarly, the Underland suddenly took Gregor, who by that point had undertaken a parental role in the household, and Boots away on more than one occasion. These traumas were then compounded on in Curse of the Warmbloods, first when her family’s apartment was swarmed by rats and then when Grace, the stable parent and breadwinner, contracted the plague and was unable to return home.
Lizzie’s role in both Marks of Secret and Code of Claw directly opposes the effect that Gregor—and by direct extension, we as readers—expects this trauma to have on her. Lizzie is afraid of almost everything, and the Underland has harmed her directly in the past. She should approach it with fear, maybe even hostility, like Gregor does in portions of the book. Lizzie is not Gregor, though, and her key trait as a character is that she is able to see the world as a whole through different eyes. So she chooses kindness, instead.
This is where the excerpt above comes in. Lizzie has never met Ripred personally at this point, and she really only knows anything about him from Gregor’s stories—which almost certainly don’t paint Ripred in the kindest light. Lizzie sees beyond the surface of these stories, though, and considers Ripred as an entire person, with depth and emotions. What she sees between the lines is up for individual interpretation. Maybe she latches onto Ripred’s insistence that Gregor learn echolocation, a skill that might save her brother’s life. She does pester Gregor about practicing. Maybe she sees pieces of Gregor reflected in those stories about Ripred. A rager who doesn’t quite fit in where he’s from or where he’s fighting for, who can be stubborn and short-tempered and quick to hide his vulnerabilities from the people he considers himself responsible for. Maybe she sees pieces of herself reflected in those stories. Maybe, as someone who has lost pieces of her family, who has only one friend, who has likely eaten less than her share so that others could be full, she finds it easy to spot the humanity, for lack of a better word, in Ripred, like light through the crack under a locked door.
Whatever her reasons—and maybe there are no reasons beyond “he’s a person, too”—Lizzie goes out of her way to treat Ripred with kindness before she ever meets him. She sends some of her own food with Gregor so that Ripred doesn’t have to go completely hungry. She makes sure Gregor knows to share that plate of oatmeal raisin cookies with Ripred. Where Gregor rarely shows any gratefulness for his help and, in fact, rarely views him through a lens unclouded by a deeply ingrained bias against Gnawers, Lizzie is kind. Ripred notices.
This is not a matter of Ripred suddenly opening up to Lizzie for little reason after bonding with Gregor across the entire series. Ripred treats Lizzie differently because she acted differently. Their relationship is not built only on Lizzie’s similarities to Silksharp, but on a history of compassion and respect. It isn’t shoehorned in, it’s a necessary relationship that supports the central themes of The Underland Chronicles—violence, war, and colonialism are cyclical, but the refusal to continue living life based on the biases of the past can break that cycle and bring about a brighter future for everyone.
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Started playing Fear and Hunger recently and this guy is pretty silly. I like that he likes bugs, that’s a green flag in my book, bugs are great.
Nothing in this post in particular is mature, but the game itself is, it’s a pretty dark horror game, so I’ll be putting some content warnings in the tags so any talk about the game on my account can be filtered out easier!
Some thoughts about the game under a cut :3
I haven’t played as Enki tho, I picked Cahara because he’s easier and it’s my first playthrough, and he’s pretty cool too. I really love the character and monster designs in this game. The art is super cool :3. I’ve had the worst luck this run tho oh my god; I started the game took like two steps and immediately got blindsighted by three dogs. All the enemies in the first left entrance area spawned in the first room. Two elite guards spawned in the room past the prisons instead of the usual one. Moonless would not spawn for like a solid few reloads and then ended up on the bottom of the map instead of the top where they usually are. I talked to Nosramus (love them, they’re great, they were off screen the whole conversation tho whoops) and immediately afterwards got the crow mauler text and had to leave the room. Got D’arce and promptly ran into a yellow mage and lost my arm! It’s been wild and I’m even just playing on easy mode 💀💀💀!!! My computer also kinda sucks and lags sometimes, but yeah! The game is fun!!!!! I have no idea how far I am in it, but I’m almost to where Le’garde is captured. My whole strategy has been fuck around and find out and it’s working XD!!! I kinda expected it to be scarier, but that might be because I’m a little used to horror as a genre in general, but it’s a nice balance of spooky atmosphere and usual RPG action stuff in a way that comes off sincere and not like edgy for the sake of being edgy if that makes sense. It’s cool :3
Anyway there’s a lot of games I’ve started recently and haven’t finished so I guess I’ll be playing those for a while. I still need to beat CV64, I’m just currently stuck on the uh gear platforming section with the bomb. If you know, you know 💀💀💀. It’s hard. I also have to beat Curse of Darkness, but I’m really close to the end in that one I’m just getting all the random side rooms and stuff. Raising more innocent devils besides my main team just to be able to open a door is a little tedious tbh, but eh it’s an excuse to play the game for longer so I’ll take it. But yeah, hopefully life actually lets me beat all these games so I can talk about them more (TwT ;).
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