#because it's more than that when there's an established canon you should be sticking to

[chevelleneech]

Both Buck/Tommy and Buddie shippers are being so dramatic about everything.

On one hand, you have people acting like Buck and Tommy is written in the stars and anyone who dislikes them are being unjust and hateful. On the other, you have people acting as if Buck can’t possibly be in a relationship with a man who isn’t Eddie, and claiming he can is somehow based in racism and hatred of Eddie.

Neither is true! The problem is that prior to 7x04, Evan Buckley was not a canon queer character. He was viewed that way by fans and Oliver Stark was all for it, but that does not change the actual canon history of the character. Therefore, the writers can only fix what they feel fits the current story. They can retcon a few things and so on, but both sides are acting like they’re right, and it makes no sense.

Yes, Buddie shippers have Oliver and Ryan on their side for the most part. Yes, Oliver believes Buck has been queer all along and he thinks a lot of the headcanons about his character’s reaction to things make sense, but he is NOT saying it’s all true. He agrees Buck was likely experiencing some jealousy when Eddie first showed up, but that does not mean Tim Minear is going to make that theory canon. It’s fans and Oliver who think it, but that does not equal canon.

As well, with things being slightly retconned or adjusted to fit the story… Tommy is obviously no longer an asshole by proximity. He was rude to Hen and Chim, but we’ve seen he him interact with the two of them since in civil ways. We know Chim thinks he’s cool. Continuing to demand he apologize on screen is a waste of time. It was five seasons ago, and the story had to change to fit Tim bringing his character back. It happens.

As for Buck/Tommy shippers, y’all have got to get off the high horse of Possibility. At the moment, there are so many ways their relationship can go, and the only reason you all are so high and mighty about it, is because you’re technically never going to be wrong until you’re wrong. Which is annoying.

Yes, Tim could choose to have Tommy stick around for another season. Yeah, Buck and Tommy could be endgame. Yeah, Buck and Tommy could… any and everything is possible, but acting as if Tommy is the love of Buck’s life and deserves fan devotion is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the character. He seems nice if a little cocky, but I like that. I like that he’s written as a grown man who, even though he’s changed, still has a little bit of asshole in him.

Because yes, what he did to Buck on their first date was rude. He didn’t explain anything and left him standing outside the restaurant as if he hadn’t just told him he’s never dated a man before, and as if they hadn’t just run into his best friend. It was a dick move. However, it’s also kinda realistic. So I dug it, but that’s also all we really know about him.

Tommy is an army vet, flies helicopters, was a firefighter, and is gay. Which he struggled to come to terms with, and can be a dick. The way y’all treating him like a savior is insane. Y’all are trying to rub it in people’s face that his relationship with Buck is canon while Buddie isn’t, and I don’t understand that. Buck wasn’t even bisexual three episodes ago, so where is this higher than thou attitude even coming from?

The only thing people should be focused on is the fact that Buck is now canonically bisexual. Tim liked the idea and Oliver loved it, so they finally made it happen. Now, his story has even more potential. I’d even go so far as to say season 7 is going to be a cleaning and re-establishing of all the characters, because so many of them feel a little different.

We’ve got bi!Buck, meaning we’ll get to see him in one or more relationships that he isn’t used to being in. We’ve got a new actor playing Harry, and he’s older, meaning they’re going to have to write to his strengths and build a storyline there that is more mature. Bobby and Athena almost died together for real for real, thus hopefully we’ll get to see their relationship evolve and what if it changes them in any way. Chim and Maddie are finally getting married, so we get to see them kickstart a new chapter together. Hen and Karen have a new child, which will hopefully bring them more storylines and hijinks as a family. And Eddie is dealing with forcing himself to accept a relationship he may not even want to be in. And he’s aware this time, which could result in him ignoring his fears or bowing out, then having to face what bowing out means.

Point is, there is no reason for all this drama.

Buddie is not guaranteed just because it is a popular want for fans, and an accepted theory by the actors and showrunner. They’ve all said it has to fit the overall story without forcibly gearing the writing in that direction. Which means it could happen two episodes from now or two seasons from now. We just have to wait and see.

At the same time, Buck and Tommy are not an established couple yet. They’re going on their second date, and it’s been said Tommy isn’t in the last few episodes of the season. So it’s possible he and Buck are still together, but Lou isn’t a series regular nor regular recurring, so he’s just not contracted to be on set. Which is fine, but acting like a quick breakup is also bad storytelling is ridiculous.

Fans have hated Buck’s relationships with women from the jump, and him breaking up fast isn’t exactly new. So if it happens with the first man he dates… okay. Tommy can become more than a stepping stone, but the writers aren’t obligated to make his first experience with a man something deep and profound. It can be fun and eye-opening and still have mattered, even if it ends fast.

Y’all have got to let the stories play out, and not scream bloody murder if your headcanon doesn’t become canon. Because truth be told, Buck being canon bi is the biggest flex of fan service I’ve ever seen, even if I think it adds to the depth of him. So I can’t imagine how difficult it is to be sure not to continue giving that same group of fans everything they want outright, when there’s so much more story to unfold.

Which means they can’t just make Tommy the love of Buck’s life because Buck/Tommy fans have ditched Buddie or were never Buddie shippers, and want to be right. But they also can’t have Eddie come out and he and Buck start dating, because Buddie shippers have waited five seasons. Just wait to see what happens, and in the meantime, enjoy watching Buck discover more of himself. With Tommy as his current love interest, and Eddie as his best friend.

#911 abc #evan buckley #eddie diaz #tommy kinard #buddie #bucktommy

[michaeljoncarter]

this makes negative sense, but to me, "oc" takes on a completely different meaning in the context of comics than what it means out in the wild. like there's new characters and then there's writer's ocs. being a writer's original character in the literal sense doesn't automatically make them that writer's oc, and actually, they don't even have to have been created by that writer to be their oc. it's all very diachronic

#something about the collaborative nature of comics makes it so like... #it's not that originality is a bad thing obviously #but when your ch or take on a ch is so new & unrelated to everything before that it requires scrapping all of history to make it work #why are you even putting them in this story at this point #it's like... not 'original character' in the literal meaning but 'original character' as in 'literally nothing about them meshes #with this story/world and they're feel like an original character that's been pulled out of a completely different original universe' #does that make sense????? #like you could say that's juts like a fave/bias/whatever when it's about an existing character #but also NO because it's so specific to comics #because it's more than that when there's an established canon you should be sticking to #but you instead just decide to make up a bunch of whole new shit out of nowhere #both in terms of the universe around them and their place in it #and/or how that character specifically has been written for their entire history #and that a lot of the time directly conflicts w & erases huge portions of the story instead of adding to it #they will just make up a whole new character and slap an existing character's name & face on it #as if the aesthetics of the character are what people have been reading for all these years lol #sir that is your oc committing identity theft

[millllenniawrites]

Daddy Knows Best (Joel Miller x f!Reader)

summary: stranded mid-mission, you and Joel find something to distract you while you wait. 

words: 2.1k

warnings: this is smut so 18+ only allowed beyond this point; daddy kink; afab fem Reader; Reader is described as being smaller than Joel; dark-ish Joel cause we know how dark canon Joel can get; pre-Ellie!Joel; there is very little plot happening here; established relationship; pre-established consent; gaslighting but in a sexy way; orgasm delay/denial; overstimulation; choking; elements of little!Reader; pet names (princess, baby, good girl, whore, honey, sweets); anal play; sex in front of a window (some reflections are used); rough sex; painful sex; bratty!Reader; I almost wanna tag this as cnc just because of some of the dialogue; this is what it says on the tin. Dead Dove, Do Not Eat 

no y/n 

a/n: here y’all go in honour of the final episode! i wasn't anticipating this to be my return after my hiatus but here we are

Looking out at the dark field, the lights from the helicopters sweeping an empty valley, you should be worried. Everyone is looking for you. Joel had needed your gun that morning to make a run on a supply truck — medicine . Penicillin, Zofran and, more importantly, Codeine — and his haste got you stranded on the top floor of an old office building waiting out the night watch. You should be losing your mind: locked in a room full of broken furniture, praying for a storm in the morning to cover your trail, a case of drugs beside you, one blanket to share. 

Instead of worrying, you’re naked in your business partner’s lap, your back to his chest. Joel’s near fully clothed, his pants pulled down just enough to release his cock, reclined back against a desk and laying on the few cushions you could pull from a couch. He rests against you, not inside, hard and heavy, every inch of him making your mouth water. 

“Daddy… Daddy, I want more…” you groan, trying to wiggle. To get more friction. Anything to ease the incessant warmth between your legs. 

“No y’don’t, baby.” He rocks his hips, his cock rubbing against you just enough to tease. 

You whine, head thrown back on his shoulder. “I do…” 

“Who’s cunt is this?” 

The low rumble of his voice has you clenching around nothing. “Yours, daddy.” 

He chuckles and you stop breathing. “Good girl. And what does that mean?” 

“You know best,” you gasp. 

“Exactly. So when I tell you that your leaky little cunt doesn’t need anymore, you’ve gotta believe me.” He rubs the inside of your thighs, his rough hands dragging deliciously against your skin. 

“But it’s— it hurts, daddy.” You stick your bottom lip out in a pout, not that he can see your face. You hadn’t been allowed to look at him for what felt like hours.

He chuckles, rutting his hips again so the head of his cock bumps against your clit and pulls another whine from you. “I know, baby. But having more won’t make you feel better. It’ll actually make you feel worse.” 

 “No it won’t!” 

His hand immediately moves to your throat. “What was that?” His low voice, coupled with his tightening grip on your neck, steals your breath. 

“I’m sorry, daddy,” you gasp. 

“That’s right. Needy little thing… Don’t make me ask again.” 

You half-expected him to slap you but instead, he lowers his hands to your thighs and spreads you out wider for him, shifting you closer to the windows. You can only just see the reflection of you both in the windows, his dark eyes, your body yielding to his every demand. 

He could snap you in half and you’d let him. 

Joel manhandles you onto your knees, resting on either side of his thighs to keep you open. Your back is still to him but you aren’t leaned fully against him, instead arching away to keep his cock resting against your cunt. 

He presses his hand into your lower back, forcing you further. “There’s my girl. So pretty for me.” His hand drags down the curve of your ass and you can feel the heat of his eyes on you. 

“Please, daddy? Just a little more?” you ask softly, holding perfectly still. “Just the tip? Please?” 

“I already said no.” Something in his voice begs you to challenge him. 

“I know, daddy. But it hurts.” You don’t wiggle despite how badly you wanted to. “Haven’t I been a good girl for you?” 

He ignores you.

“Joel, please.” 

He clicks his tongue. “Good girls don’t beg, honey. So what does that make you?” 

His words draw an ashamed whine from you. 

The way you’ve whittled away his patience comes through in his sigh. “If you can stay still for a whole minute, not moving at all, you can have a little. Hm? How does that sound?” 

“Thankyoudaddy.” Your words come out in a rush. 

Every muscle in your body clenches as you struggle to stay still. Joel lets you have your moment, but just a moment, before his hands start on you: running up your sides, pinching at your nipples, tugging gently at your hair. You let him move your head around but nothing else, your gaze trained outside to keep your focus. 

He’s too close. It feels too good. 

You can last a whole minute. You’re sure of it. 

His hands slide down your back to kneed at your ass. “So pretty, baby.”

No matter what he does to goad you, somehow, miraculously, you stay still. 

After the longest minute of your life, he coos, “Good girl.” 

Immediately sinking down, you do your best to only take the tip of him. You really really try. Clenching down, legs shaking, whimpering with the effort as he thrusts just enough that you can feel him, just enough to give you a taste of the friction you’ve been begging for. 

But he’s right. You’re needy. Too needy to resist when everything you want is so close. 

You began to rock your hips in time with his little thrusts, inching yourself lower and lower onto him. As wet as you are from the hours of incessant teasing, the stretch of him knocks the air from your chest. 

He freezes, fingers digging into your hips. At your moan, he pushes further, forcing you up and off of him enough that he’s just barely inside you. 

“Think I’m not gonna notice?” He bites out, grabbing your ankles, forcing your legs wider and flipping you onto your face. He pulls your hips up, keeping a tight grip on you as he positions you exactly where he wants you. “You wanna be a little whore? Fine.” 

He sinks into you, none of the typical warm up on his fingers or his tongue to get you ready to take him, and you scream, hands scrambling for purchase. It burns, equal parts pleasure and pain. 

“I was treating you so nice, princess. But you just had to be greedy, didn’t you?” 

“I’m sorry, daddy,” you gasp. 

“Y’aren’t yet.” 

He wrenches your head back by your hair. With his knees between yours, he forces your legs wider, setting a punishing pace. His thumb rubs harshly across your clit, drawing his name from your lips with every stroke. 

He knows what he’s doing and you hate him for it. 

You cry as he finally bottoms out and his pace becomes almost brutal, his tight grip on you keeping you from squirming away. 

“Now you’re done? Had enough?” He curls over you, snapping his hips into yours. “Gonna run from me, baby?” 

“N-no, daddy,” is all you manage to get out before Joel shoves two fingers into your mouth, hooking them into your cheek and tugging your head to the side. 

“Get ‘em wet or this is gonna hurt.”

Obediently, you run your tongue around his fingers, sucking lightly on them. He hums his approval. So close to the windows, you can see yourself in the glass, tear tracks of frustration running down your face, wild-eyed, lips tight around his fingers like you were taught. Like Joel taught you. Trained you. Hours on your knees had taught you one thing: something in your mouth meant you’d better be working for it. 

Shame runs hot down your spine.

You know what Joel wants. 

And he knows exactly how to get it. 

Something in the angle of his hips changes and his cock is dragging inside you, right where you need him. 

“Right there? That what you need?” 

“Please…” you moan around his fingers. 

“Not yet, baby.”  

As good as you’ve tried to be, as much as you’ve tried to listen, you can’t hold out. And Joel knows it. 

“Okay, baby,” he says and your eyes squeeze shut as he makes you cum for the first time that night. Relief burns hot from the denial of the previous hours, washing over you and turning your body to putty. Your back arcs further and you collapse to the cushions under you, limp. 

Joel knows an invitation when he sees one. 

His hips slow, but don’t stop. He pulls his fingers from your mouth and sinks one into your ass. No time to recover, but you can’t help but push back, wordlessly whining, begging for more despite how overstimulated you already are. 

“Greedy girl. D’you want me here next?” 

You sob and he leans over you, breath hot and heavy at your ear. 

“See, sweets? Told y’this would be too much.” 

All you can do is moan in response. You’re full, taking more than he’s ever made you as he adds a second finger. The stretch is entirely overwhelming. You know he’s talking, can feel the rumble of his voice moving through you, but you can’t make out the words, your mind fuzzy and echoing a chant of ‘please please please’.

You only realize the words are coming out of your mouth too when he flips you onto your back and his lips find yours, just for a moment, insistent and controlling even as you share breath. 

He props your hips up before starting in on you again, curling his fingers inside you and rubbing circles over your clit with his thumb. “Eyes up here, honey. Lemme watch.” 

You try to reach for his cock and he bats your hand away. With a click of his tongue and a, “So demanding,” he eases his fingers out of you and lubes himself up with them before sliding in again, still working over your clit as he finds a new pace. The angle, with him driving into you, keeping you from moving at all, lets you feel every inch of him. 

“Fuckin’ love this cunt, baby,” he groans, his lips between his teeth as he watches where your bodies meet with dark eyes.  

Every part of you aches, but you don’t want him to stop. Not when he’s looking at you like that,  like you’re the only thing he can see, his brow furrowed as he concentrates every ounce of himself on driving you right to the edge. 

Your hands fist the twisted blanket under you, desperate for something to hold on to as Joel makes your body do exactly what he wants. 

“C’mon, honey. We just started. Gotta give me more. At least one.” 

Your brain whites out. 

~

He’s stroking your hair as you come to, wrapped in his arms and the warm blanket. 

“Y’okay, sweet girl? You back with me?” 

You hum an affirmative and cuddle in closer. 

Chopper blades whir overhead and you have the sense to open your eyes. The sun has begun to suggest its rising behind the far hills, but that slight warm light is really all you can make out. “’m supposed to take watch.” 

Joel chuckles, “You’ll just fall asleep.” 

“Prolly.” Your head lulls to the side so you can see his face. His gaze is focused out the window, but you’ve worked with him enough to notices when he’s watching without looking. 

And you know he’s watching you. 

“Was that okay?” you whisper. 

He rubs up your back. “You’re always perfect, honey. You’re feeling okay?” 

You nod into his shoulder so that he can feel the motion. “That was exactly what I needed.” 

He hums, “Good,” and readjusts the blanket so that it’s covering you. “I’ll wake you when I need to sleep.” 

“D’you think we’ll get out of here tomorrow?” 

His shrug is almost imperceptible. “Might need to stay one more day.” 

You wiggle up enough to kiss his cheek before burying yourself in his chest and the blankets, letting sleep carry you off. 

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller imagine #joel miller x you #the last of us #tlou #the last of us hbo #joel miller fic #joel fic #pedro pascal

[buckttommy]

JACK! I am deeply curious to know where YOU stand/fall on the poll you posted?

Objectively speaking? Yes, they have endgame potential.

But a lot—and I mean A LOT—of work would have to go into moving that potential from a theoretical possibility to a genuine reality. Some of that work has already been done, what with Tim being intentional about developing a love interest for Buck that's not segmented away from the rest of the firefam, but that's the easy part tbh. They'd still have to 1) establish Tommy's character as a character unto himself, 2) define Buck and Tommy's relationship outside of the shadow of Buck and Eddie's relationship, 3) introduce a character that would be Eddie's endgame (because that's something you'd have to consider now that you're intentionally severing this will-they-won't-they bond between Buck and Eddie), and 4) convince the audience that these are the two endgame ships they should be rooting for without making them feel like they're being convinced, because that would blow the whole thing up in their faces instantly... all in a limited amount of time (9-1-1 isn't going to last forever).

So. Yeah. A lot of work.

All that to say, it's not impossible. I have a tentative idea for how it could work (a thought exercise, if-not-this-then-that)—what kind of character would need to be introduced for Eddie, what kind of archetypes would need to be in place for Tommy + Female Character, what kind of plots and tropes would need to unfold on-screen in order to not just neutralize the die-hard fans, but sway their opinions toward these two ships, etc. all by taking into account 9-1-1's existing and brand new audiences. But the writers/Tim would really need to sit with the decision and decide whether or not it's worth the effort to establish TWO endgame ships for their most popular characters when said characters are already six seasons deep into an accidental marriage with each other.

This is why I say that Buddie is only thing that makes sense. It's the only ending that does the characters and their journeys justice, sure, but it's so much more than that. There are layers—complicated and tangled layers—that would cost (literally!) more money to untangle than it would to just say "thank you" to the writing gods for hand-delivering an endgame ship on a silver platter and just going with the flow. You know? Yes, Buddie makes the most sense narratively. Of course, it does. But technically? It truly does not get much better than this.

You don't have to like it. You know? You don't have to like Buddie at all. But you have to recognize that this is the dynamic that most shows dream of—accidental or not. How they started—what was intended for their relationship—doesn't even matter now. What matters is where they are, and where they are is at a crossroads where they can either go with the flow, or do a complete overhaul that would run the risk of shattering everything. And, I have to give credit where credit is due—if anyone could pull this off, the 9-1-1 writers could. They are incredibly strong and skilled at what they do. But Tim et. al. need to make a choice, and they need to make it now, because if they wait too much longer, the story is going to start to drag. It's going to start to feel lazy. People aren't going to be satisfied with the "Buck and Eddie are getting their shit together so they can be ready for each other" excuse forever.

Now. Me personally? I'm in it for the long-haul. I love Buck and Eddie, I love Buddie, so whatever happens, I'm here for it. I've already said a thousand times over that their relationship could go canon at any point, even in the final episode (though I want there to be at least two seasons of them together before the show ends), and I would be completely satisfied with that. But we're rapidly approaching the point of no return, wherein Tim etc. need to make a firm decision and stick with it. If they've decided Buddie? Great. Good. Can't wait to see it. But if they've decided on something else, they're the ones that need to get their shit together and kick it into high gear quickly.

TBH.

But anyways.

#hmm #i'm going to stop talking now. lol #as you can see #i've thought about this. in great detail. lol. but anyways. #tv: 911 #jack answers mail

[beanghostprincess]

Bughawk is soooo underrated and it makes me so sad. Please tell me you see how grand this vision is

I am personally more of a Shuggy/Crocobug shipper but that's mainly because Mihawk isn't doing it for me much?? I love him and his gold autistic eyes staring into my soul and his classy attitude and vampiric looking aesthetic, but I wish he had more screentime to figure out his personality better and enjoy him more. But I do like him! I swear! And tbh one of my favorite ships is Cross Guild, like, the three of them together, even if I have a bit of a preference inside of the trio. I do love them and tbh I think Mihawk and Buggy's relationship would be really funny to explore. Especially within the fanon portrayals of the characters because god forbid Oda gives the cool edgy swordsman more than three minutes of screentime and more than five words per episode.

Okay, so doing a mix between fanon and canon and "whatever the fuck I want to see these characters as because I am the princess of this blog and I can do whatever I want": I think their relationship is fucking hilarious.

Unlike with Crocodile, Buggy doesn't really know what to do with Mihawk. Crocodile at least is easy to read and he's usually the one to make the first move, but what the fuck is Buggy supposed to do with the swordsman sitting in front of him, legs crossed and staring into his soul like he's about to bite his neck and suck him dry. Scary. And also very hot. But mostly scary. But turns out Mihawk is like, way more peaceful than what he thought. He likes reading. And classical music. And swords in a very weird obsessive way that the clown should not speak about. And not much, honestly. Cooking, too, apparently. Buggy keeps learning new things about him every day and the guy opens up little by little, because even if he's quiet, the very few words he says speak a lot for himself. He's also a fucking sadist and loves teasing Buggy all the time to the point of making him cry of frustration, but, well, when he's good he's really nice to be around <3

They both have history with Shanks. You know the movie "The other woman"? The one about this girl who discovers her boyfriend is married and then becomes besties with the wife and start hating him together? That's the energy I'm getting from this triangle. Stop making Mihawk cry over Shanks not loving him and a past love!! Make him go "Oh. Yes. Red Hair and I had something. Pretty sure he still felt something for you, clown, so I am not happy about that" / "What?! Why would you be angry at me for Shanks' shitty feelings that have absolutely nothing to do with me, by the way, our thing ended years ago when his stupid-" / "No, no. I am referring to him. Moron. I like you" / "You do???'' / "Sometimes. Sort of. Maybe. Your existence confuses me". And then they start dating because nobody can tell me Cross Guild isn't just a poly relationship doing business together.

I think Mihawk likes Buggy because it gives excitement to his boring life and also he's fun to bully. Besides, he's more than what he looks like and he actually has a dream and pirate spirit, so maybe he's not as useless as he used to think. He's still annoying, yes, but oddly comforting. Mihawk can't quite figure out what he wants with this clown, so he just sticks around with him. Buggy is like a chihuahua. A very loud chihuahua. Mihawk is definitely a black cat. They don't match. At all. Not in the slightest. And yet, Mihawk likes his company. And Buggy actually loves seeing all the soft and interesting sides of Mihawk and realize that he's not as scary as he looks like. I mean, he could slice him in half if he wanted to and he's still scary and hot but, y'know, he has a very domestic side that Buggy likes.

Thinking about them being established is pretty sweet because I think Mihawk would like reading out loud to him and Buggy would make the funniest comments about the story. And they would cuddle. And it would be so uncharacteristically soft of them and it's something they only do in private. Crocodile stares at them from the corner of the room and,,, He likes having them there. He's not alone and it's kind of sweet.

Also overprotective Mihawk with Buggy my beloved. In the sense of: He cooks for him because his eating habits suck. He makes him go on walks and do a bit of exercise. He makes him read, too. Listen to music that it's not only commercial pop or circus music or musical/Broadway tunes. He takes care of the clown when he's not bullying him. I think Mihawk treats Buggy like Sharpay Evans treats her dog.

And following the Shanks thing to end this post: Bughawk is really cool because I think it would break Shanks' heart and I love angst.

#yayyy cross guild asks make my day #i love them i love them i love them #sorry for saying mihawk wasn't doing it for me i realized while writing that i absolutely love him too #i just wish he had more content #one piece #dracule mihawk #buggy the clown #bughawk #cross guild

[sunysideeggwithsideofegg]

What Would a Third Edna & Harvey Game Look Like?

According to me. There's unfortunately no chance at an official third game, but I have an imagination and there is a story to be told still. Strap in for a long post featuring my silly art.

Spoilers for Edna & Harvey: The Breakout and Harvey's New Eyes !!

Establishing Canon Real Quick

Like how the “Listen to Harvey” ending in The Breakout became the canon for Harvey’s New Eyes, the “Contradict” ending is the canon to set up EH3. Not only is it the most popular ending, it’s also the ending that would give a third game the most room to flourish.

On another note, the end of HNE claims that Edna and Garret are just hallucinations or projections of Lilli’s mind, but this creates a lot of plotholes. It wouldn’t make sense for Lilli to have received all this specific information from ‘nowhere.’ Things like the firecrackers, the diary, Edna’s hideout, the owl whistle, the truth serum, the advice for defeating the hypnosis, and more, all of which are proven to be true and backed by reality, are too concrete in the story to be convincingly fake. It honestly makes more sense for Dr. Marcel to have gotten into Lilli’s head and manipulated her than for Edna and Garret to be imaginary. He’s an ‘expert of psychology’ after all, and it’s clear that Lilli’s in a very fragile state of mind after everything that happened considering she was willing to stab Dr. Marcel when she wasn’t that aggressive before.

Therefore, rather than stabbing or listening to Dr. Marcel, Lilli snaps and runs away from the asylum, leaving the doctor alive and Edna and Garret, who are real people, behind.

THE STORY

So Lilli runs off screaming and ends up back in the town, the knife and wool from earlier still in her inventory, and she’s not exactly in a good position: she can’t exactly go back to the convent, after all. Though before she has time to consider what to do, a dinky little car stops at the sight of her. The driver steps out and– guess who! It’s Stiesel. 

The reason Stiesel and Hulgor (split up/not together) weren’t in HNE was because they’d been suspended from their asylum duties and assigned a different task by the doctor, that being to track down the rest of the escapees and bring them back to the asylum. Hoti and Moti were located, but they seemed to be doing fine and were left alone. Aluman, Edna, and Keymaster were not located considering Aluman ascended to a being of pure energy (and those can be kind of hard to track), Edna joined the monastery, and the Keymaster disappeared after falling from the church balcony.

That being said, Stiesel was driving back to the asylum after receiving the call that Edna was found, stopping out of pure concern for the unsupervised little girl with a knife wandering the dark town at like 3am. The dialogue system would be the same as in HNE, but Lilli would be able to say more than a syllable or two. The main irony is that all of her screaming from the “Contradict” ending left her voice so hoarse that she still can’t say too much, limited to maybe a sentence or two. She tells Stiesel what happened with the hypnosis dolls and he’s… a little shocked at the news. Since he’s been on search duty all this time, he hasn’t been in the asylum to catch up on current events, so Stisel wasn’t exactly in the loop for all of this. He leaves his car running and puts his coat in the back seat, telling Lilli to sleep for a bit while he ‘takes care of business quickly’ and marches towards a horrifying-looking abandoned house: Edna’s old house. Except Stiesel is a bit of a coward and doesn’t want to go alone, so he pulls a 180 and says something along the lines of “it’d be irresponsible to leave a little girl by herself at night– you should stick with me, okay?”

Exploring the house, Lilli enters the basement and finds– oh, guess who it is now! Crouched by the furnace is The Keymaster with a homemade splint on his poorly healed leg. They’re both not sure what to really make of each other. Lilli recognizes the asylum uniform from her encounter with Petra and The Keymaster recognizes the convent uniform from his upbringing in the monastery. They naturally have some questions for each other, but Stiesel conveniently comes down the stairs to interrupt the Q&A. He’s both excited and freaked out. Bringing back the escapee is his ticket for no longer being suspended from asylum duty, but that involves putting The Keymaster in his dinky little car and making it back to the asylum in the first place.

take a look at this trio

The first puzzle of the game would be Lilli finding a way to get The Keymaster some crutches. Stiesel isn’t going to let Keymaster lean on him for support, and he unfortunately understands that he (and Lilli technically) are a bit short to carry an unconscious man up a flight of stairs and into a car. So while Stiesel and Keymaster idly chat/bicker back and forth, Lilli uses the old furniture to craft a pair of crutches in classic Edna and Harvey puzzle fashion. In her search for materials, she ends up finding a relatively controversial photograph posted to the inside of Mattis’s old bunk and takes it down to the two new unstable adult figures in her life for clarification. They confirm that Edna is very much real through stories of her antics and this combined with the picture are enough to make Lilli doubt Edna’s non-existence.

Once the crutches are made, the three of them mull over the few options they have available to them. They could go back to the asylum as Dr. Marcel would intend (Stiesel as a guard and Keymaster/Lilli as patients), dawn new identities to run away from Marcel forever, or attempt to take down the asylum once and for all. And because it’s an adventure game, the choice is very obvious.

There is more than one story to tell now, more than one perspective to play through. Gameplay can be split between Lilli’s POV outside to Garret’s POV inside, and the completion of puzzles on either side affects the state of the other, some completely dependent on the opposite POV, until the plots collide and the two perspectives meet again near the end. How cool is that?!

The reason Garret is the playable character instead of Edna is because Dr. Marcel has locked the latter back in her tower cell (with a reinforced vent) and she’s got a limited range of influence now. Garret, on the other hand, can move relatively unrestricted. 

Through his grip on law enforcement, Dr. Marcel was able to twist the story of the dedicated undercover agent into one of a delusional junior detective digging for controversy that doesn’t exist, and Garret was admitted into the asylum to keep him out of the way. Both him and Edna are being subjected to some aggressive ‘character correction’ treatments as Marcel attempts to rework the hypnosis therapy. Most of the Harvey dolls are burned up in the furnaces, but the more ‘put together’ ones are kept for the future of the project, including the real Harvey thankfully. So Garret has a lot to do without a lot of time to do it! Find Harvey, stop the doctor, free Edna, regain his (and Edna’s) fading memories, get in contact with Lilli, keep a low profile, and a handful of other nonsense tasks.

Sooo...

A classic Edna & Harvey adventure of absurdity, twisted humor, and extreme trauma. Can you tell I put way too much thought into this.

here’s everyone lined up together all cutie.

I might post more about EH3 later on because I couldn't seamlessly fit information/roles of the other characters in this already lengthy post 😳

#edna and harvey #edna bricht aus #edna & harvey #harvey's new eyes #harveys neue augen #daedalic entertainment #schlüsselmeister #keymaster #stiesel/babbitt #i wonder if people would read a fanfic about this

[traincat]

got the sudden urge to re-read 'work song' this weekend after years of not really being into spideytorch anymore. the fic is still incredible, it's reminding me why i used to love them, but it got me wondering -- was there ever any canon fallout from sue, reed, and the kids being gone like that? i had already stopped reading the comics at that point.

It's funny, I've been thinking of Work Song recently too. I obviously like to get into the guts of canon in a lot of my fic, but Work Song was really an exercise in getting into the emotional fallout that comics tend not to deal with -- for both good and bad reasons. (I think the modern lack of dealing with pretty much any emotional fallout is bad, but also if you have a serial story you have to keep a certain amount of action going. Idk, complicated thoughts about pacing and sacrifices made for genre standards and the shifting of those standards from decade to decade, etc., etc.)

And the answer to whether the fallout is ever addressed in 616 canon is... kind of no? I think there were attempts made -- both Zdarsky in his Two-in-One series and Bendis, somewhat, in Infamous Iron Man were sort of digging into things, albeit notably before Reed and Sue were actually back. (Both of those series deal HEAVILY with their absence, though.) But both of those series were also cut short, and they have finales I'm not quite satisfied with, which in this case is the fault of neither author. I think Zdarsky tried with his final two issues of Two-in-One especially, especially the one that focuses on Johnny and Sue, but just didn't have the space to address the issue of Reed and Sue essentially leaving Johnny and Ben with the gravitas and nuance that it deserved. And given that Johnny is, you know, flat out suicidal over this issue in the first ten issues of Two-in-One, that's a problem. (IIM also has a disappointing final two issues, but it focuses much more on Ben and Doom than on Johnny. Hell of a setup, wish it didn't feature the biggest copout resolution of all time.) And again I don't think this is either writer's fault -- they were both clearly trying to do something interesting and emotional, and 2n1 had a really good set up and character work. It just wasn't given the space to stick any kind of landing before everything had to be wrapped up in a tidy little bow so Slott could write some mystifyingly bad stories. (I don't believe Slott ever seriously addresses the fallout, but I could be wrong. I skimmed the back half of that run hard.)

And also I think this was something of a foundational problem that sprung from Reed and Sue and the kids going missing not as an actual story point but as a hissy fit over film rights. There was never any solid plan in action for where they were or what they were doing or what Ben and Johnny fought over that caused Ben to leave for space and Johnny to spiral out of control -- it was all just "this is happening now because we canceled the Fantastic Four comic because we want the film rights." It's very hard to build a story on shaky ground like that when you've got multiple writers, all who seemed to have slightly different takes, and apparently no one on an editorial level actually managing all of that to make sure there was a cohesive story in place. Even if the reader doesn't have that information, there should be some kind of established story for the writers to follow, and it kind of seemed like there just wasn't. (I say "kind of seemed" because obviously I wasn't there and I don't know for sure, but also like, we know for sure that there wasn't. By reading the comics it was very clear that there wasn't.) It's frustrating to think about it now because it could have been some really great storytelling, and instead it was addressed just barely and then kind of rushed along. And I feel similarly about Superior Spider-Man's fallout, except they keep resurrecting that concept every two years and kicking it around like it has anything interesting left in it.

#*replies #traincat talks comics

[spoofymcgee]

Rating Various Companion Exits in Terms of How Objectively Sad They Are

because if we do my personal opinions it'll just be donna donna donna bill rose jack everyone else

Least: Martha

i don't think it's an unpopular opinion that martha's exit was the least sad. like, she retires to take care of her mental health and for her family's sake, gets her doctorate, continues being an absolute badass who is also in touch with her emotions and super nice. she finds a partner who sees her for how incredible she really is and appreciates her.

personally i do believe that she and the doctor clear the air at some point–though i don't think martha holds anything against him still–and she'll just call up the TARDIS when she's having a bad day and one of various doctors will come do a girls night with her and paint their nails and talk about the wild shit they've each been up to lately.

(i don't think martha ever stops being in love with the doctor a little bit. but it's not a tragic kind of love–it's a comfortable one, the kind of love you can have once you understand that love will never be perfectly symmetrical and it can be nice without being reciprocated. in the same way that the doctor loves their companions in a way that they can never fully return for how vast and unending and universe-ending it is, martha can love the doctor in a small and quiet and steady way that never fully goes away even when she does hate them.)

(and if you keep to canon with mickey as her husband you get some fun angst about that! okay, martha digression over.)

Second-Least: Rose

look. i know this is an unpopular opinion. i know the doctor is haunted by rose leaving and the narrative is haunted by rose leaving and everyone and their grandma is haunted by rose leaving.

but. girl got sucked into a parallel universe. she got to say goodbye to the doctor, even if he had a stick high enough up his ass that it kept him from saying he loved her. she moves to a different world to retire in a mansion with her mom and her dream guy and has a baby and spends the rest of her life being awesome and cool and saving the world.

yes it is sad that she left. but her method of leaving itself is not sad. she gets a happy ending and the doctor knows about it and no one dies! so i think maybe that's my hot take. first of a few.

Third-Least: Clara

idk how unpopular this is but i'm not entirely certain it's correct because.

look. clara does technically die. the doctor watches her die and spends four billion years smashing diamonds with his fists to save her. as pissed i am that those two episodes basically made her retroactively superfluous before getting rid of her, i can admit that that's a pretty epically tragic way to go out.

but the thing is, she spends the rest of time running around the galaxy with me in a TARDIS, and the doctor only forgets her for, like, seventy years and then he's fine with it again.

so her exit is sad but it's undercut by the fact that she gets at least a bittersweet ending and also that she should have left a season before she did and also the episode after she dies establishes that the doctor hasn't needed her for a while.

so worse than martha and rose who have a happy end and don't die, but better than everyone else.

Third-Most: Amy and Rory

this is why i wasn't sure where to put clara, and i'm sure this is not a popular opinion but. i don't think amy and rory's exit was so sad.

like, i can acknowledge that the course their story was going to take was amy having to choose rory over the doctor. i get that now. i understand that.

and their exit is sad! it is! it is mathematically engineered to be sad. but. and i don't want to go cinema sins about this. is there a really the doctor couldn't have picked them up and brought them home a year later? like, the year is the problem, yes?

and maybe if i didn't have spoilers and also had no media literally or ability to understand foreshadowing i might have been more affected by the real death right after the fake-out death, and the doctor running across the bridge to the book is a nice scene and the bit with river is excellent but.

i just think it's missing something. i think it feels like it's designed to put them in an impenetrable plot prison in a way that was totally unnecessary because they want to leave anyway. it feels like it wants me to be sad–and then move on right away.

Second-Most: Bill

first off! bill dies! because if you really think about it. nearly none of the nuwho companions do? and bill technically becomes space oil yes but

a) the entire downslope of world enough and time and the doctor falls is so fucking sad. she dies and she wakes back up and she has to live in a body that is clunky and awkward and painful and doesn't fully feel like hers and is slowly failing her and that everyone treats as not having a chance despite the fact that its doing its best. and eventually even that gets taken away from her and she is being slowly deconstructed, everything that makes her who she is sawed off piece by piece until she can't even get angry because it's too dangerous, and everyone is scared of her, and she is clinging to the edge of herself because the only thing worse than being a walking rotting weapon is hurting her friends.

b) the doctor only like, 50% knows that she survives as space oil. the glass people don't fully know, so he might not trust them and from his perspective she's dead and he got her killed.

c) no other companion's death affects the doctor's next regeneration so deeply. thirteen throws herself between people and guns, she drops the monologues and the arrogance because her overconfidence is the reason why bill died. what the fuck is that. insane.

anyway bill is so high up and it's been weeks since i watched world enough and time and i'm not over it. bill potts my beloved you made me so happy and then crushed my heart to bits.

Most: Donna

i mean this is just canon. what can i say here that has not already been said.

the doctor has to take donna in his arms, donna who is finally seeing how brilliant she is, who saved his life and her life and the universe, who is brilliant and ruthless and burning.

her takes her in his arms and he kills her while she's begging him not to, begging him to let her go because she'd rather die as herself than die knowing that (from her perspective) the shallows cruel, self-hating voice in her head will replace her and talk like her and look like her only she'll be dead and that will be all that's left.

donna knows who and what she is without the doctor, without her memories, and it is her worst nightmare. and the doctor sends her back to that because he can't bear to lose her, because she is donna even if she doesn't show it, because he thinks that she will figure out how to do so again–and it's so easy for him to make excuses for the fact that he cannot stand by and let her die in his arms when he can do something about it.

god.

#that's a wrap folx #doctor who #rose tyler #martha jones #amy pond #rory williams #clara oswald #bill potts #donna noble #honorable mention to jack harkness because i did cry when he died bit i haven't watched most of martha's season #so i think i can't really talk about him yet

[emblemxeno]

I know Azura and Corrin get a lot of flack for not having shown the orb to the Nohrian Royal but ... weren't they supposed to conquer Hoshido either way ?

Pretty much.

Hypothetically, showing the orb to the other siblings and successfully getting them to fight against Garon relies a lot on unrealistic occurrences going their way:

1) The siblings believing Corrin and Azura are telling the truth. Elise would probably believe them, but wouldn't have the power to stop things by herself. Camilla could go either way in terms of believing, but ultimately she cares more about not dying. Xander and Leo though? Good fucking luck lol.

2) The siblings believing the orb isn't a trap or a falsehood. Leo only entertains this aspect in BR because he was beaten before Azura gave it to him. The other three literally can't use it, so even if Leo does, if he isn't convinced that the orb isn't a Hoshidan trap, why would the others go along with it?

3) The siblings getting over their fear of Garon to fight back. Even when the truth is on the throne in front of them, the siblings aren't gung-ho to kill their dad. Even after all the things he put them through, it's not easy cuz he was their fucking dad and to expect them to flip the switch is to expect poor writing. It's only when Xander inspires them that they're able to do so, and Xander is the hardest one to convince.

4) Having the power to effectively do anything. Azura comments that half of the Nohrian royal army is loyal to Corrin, Xander and Leo, and the other half is loyal to Garon, Iago and Hans. She says this in chapter 23, 8 chapters after the orb is relevant. Safe to say, there wouldn't be enough manpower to rebel against Garon at that point.

5) Doing something that's effectively believable to the player. When the orb comes up, the war has been underway for a while. The Cheve rebellion has been put down, with Scarlet, Orochi, and Reina dead. The Cyrkensia townsfolk are in danger. Corrin has crossed blades with the Hoshidan army more than once. Realistically, what could Corrin's group do to Garon, that also takes into account the war going on? Joining Hoshido isn't an option (and shouldn't be one cuz that defeats the purpose of joining Nohr in the first fucking place), especially when Ryoma is the way he is and Takumi is already possessed. And you'd have to be an idiot to think that Hoshido will just sit on its hands while Corrin rebels against Garon, as if they wouldn't take advantage of the opportunity to take all of Nohr out in one fell swoop. There's precedent for this already, with Hinoka, Ryoma, and Takumi willing to use Nohr's negative reputation to their benefit.

Do you guys know the Rhetorical Triangle of persuasive writng? It's ethos (showcase of author authority through citing of sources or taking care to establish a base argument), logos (building up a logical audience), and pathos (appeals to audience emotions). Most storytelling is persuasive. For your story not to be utter dogshit, you need the central theme/argument to be believable, the logic of a story's circumstances and context in order to believe it, and the emotional weight to get the reader to care and invest in it.

The above "solutions" to the orb issue, would sacrifice the ethos (Corrin sticking to their path, the Nohr siblings being consistently written) and logos (not having the power to start a rebellion, Hoshido canonically taking advantage of Nohr's internal troubles) established in Conquest before chapter 15, in order to maybe satisfy the pathos of some of the audience. I say maybe and some because only a fraction of the fandom has this double-think thing going on where they hate that Corrin gets worshipped and followed for "no reason" but also that Corrin should be totally believed and, in fact, followed earlier to topple the king while there's a war going on. Another subsection also hates Corrin for being a "spineless, whiny coward" so those people might also like this alternative better.

But again, that's a fraction of the total. What about the rest? How would they feel about this change in this story? How can you guarantee that they'd care when you've sacrificed two other major persuasive tools to possibly achieve one for a small and annoyingly persistent group of wannabe story writers? It'd look amateurish and erroneous, not to mention the script's prose in the English versions is already scuffed thanks to Treehouse.

The only thing left for them to argue would be "well, they shouldn't have added the orb in the first place, because it just results in these questions being asked" which... okay! Yeah! In the grand scheme, it doesn't serve anything more than getting Corrin, a character known for his trust, to trust Azura's word. But that kind of critique is useless, cuz it boils down to "well this story should've been better", which can apply to every damn story in the world, and has been said about FE stories in the past. Robin's fake Gules plan was the magic orb of Awakening, same with the blood pact in Tellius, same with effectively every villain dialogue in previous FE games (like Ursula in FE7) that betrays what their ultimate goals are, same with the Turnwheel, Divine Pulse, and the Time Crystal in the future FE games, and countless other examples. At some point, you gotta roll with the punches and accept what the game is trying to tell you, rather than deride it constantly, cuz eventually you'll just hate everything in every story.

Hell, why do you think people say FE stories have never been good? Not cuz they're actually bad, it's cuz people refuse to set aside their biases and faulty evaluations/expectations in order to appreciate what the writing is doing in the grand scheme. It's a lame excuse more than it is a meme, IMO.

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem discourse #long post #sorry i didn't expect this to be a big response #but i just kept writing lol

[see-arcane]

Lucy, Mina, and Jonathan: The Childhood Friend Trio We Don’t Get to See

Because I saw your tag @marghen (and because I need little to no prompting on this)—yes, everyone should absolutely keep in mind that Lucy, Mina, and Jonathan have been friends since childhood. I can’t be bothered to harvest all the scraps of text, but it’s mentioned more than once that Lucy and Mina have been close since they were little girls, and Mr. Hawkins will later mention the fact that he’s known Jonathan and Mina since they were small. They were all wee little kids together, all each others’ closest social circle up through adolescence and young adulthood. And, if the manner of their writing is any indication, they’re still each others’ closest friends.

Things to picture for maximum sweetness (and hindsight pain):

- Mina was the bridging friend between Jonathan and Lucy. As canon has established, both Jonathan and Lucy have the sweetheart gene, and likely took to each other like two golden retrievers meeting for the first time.

- Mina, while still being the mini mom friend, is also the scary friend. She’s the one who goes out of her way to read/stay up late to overhear the ghost stories too menacing for little children’s ears. She absolutely recites them to Jonathan and Lucy. They are both too smitten with her to mention they will have nightmares afterwards.

- Sometime around age 6, Lucy announces that she has already made plans for their home someday. Also their wedding—they will need an especially wide chapel to fit everybody across the aisle, she’s decided. She draws out the situation on a big piece of butcher paper, illustrating little crayon Lucy holding Mina’s hand who is holding Jon’s hand. Lucy is also holding the hand of a stick figure with a question mark for a head. There are several such figures squashed in with the three of them, as placeholders for future people.

Lucy: “In case we need to get more married,” she explains. “We’ll need a very big house.”

- Jonathan causes more than one heart attack when he reveals himself as being part spider monkey. He once climbed a tree that was three floors tall to retrieve Mina’s hat that had blown up into the branches. Another time he climbed the outside of a house to get a stuck cat off the roof. He was 8.

- All three have individually fought for the others’ honor on separate occasions as they grew up. Insults and rumors varied, but generally had themes of implying unmanly weakness on Jonathan’s part, salacious man-stealing on Lucy’s part, and blindness to how foolish it is to let her man be friends with other women on Mina’s part. Rebuttals were always swift, venomous, and often required the insulted party frantically holding back their companions, lest the defensive duo commit something newsworthy against the mudslingers.

- Mina, hiding her left hand: “Lucy. You know that trip to Bournemouth Jonathan and I went on last week?”

Lucy, has been conspiring with Jonathan for the perfect setup for weeks, has been slowly dying with the effort Not to Blab: “Mmhmm?”

Mina: “He proposed to me there. In a graveyard.”

Lucy: “Oh, my!” :o

Mina, glowing: “It was at Mary Shelley’s grave.”

Lucy, turning mental cartwheels: “You don’t say!” :O

Mina, revealing a wedding band with gemstones set like a skull: “And just look at the ring!”

Lucy, straining with every fiber of her being not to break decorum by jumping on the café table and cheering at the sky: “It’s gorgeous, congratulations!” :D

Later, out of Mina’s earshot, everyone in a post celebration-wine buzz:

Jonathan, beaming: …

Lucy, shit-eating grin: …

Jonathan, for the 100th time: …She said y-

Lucy, also for the 100th time: Fuck yeah, she said yes!

(They have been doing this for half an hour. At the full hour mark Lucy is giving a thorough monologue about why she should be both Maid of Honor and Best (Wo)man, it’s only fair, really, she’s known them both longest/best than any of his law school fellows…)

((Jonathan is still nodding at her when he falls asleep and off the chair.))

(((Mina herds them both to bed, silently promising herself never to mention she’d caught on to their plans from day one)))

I don’t know, I just really think it’s vital to recall that these characters are all just barely grazing young adulthood as of the novel’s time, and their entire lives have been spent growing up with each other. Even if the romantic context weren’t there, this is a certified found family trio—we just don’t get the chance to see and appreciate it within the novel due to certain vampiric prick circumstances. 

Which is yet another strike against the bloodsucking bastard man. If it weren’t for Dracula, Jonathan would have gotten home on time and we’d have gotten a whole beach episode in Whitby with the three of them. Sigh.

#yes I do love hurting myself with headcanons why do you ask? #really though if a good adaptation ever happens #I'd love it if they examined the closeness of these characters before Dracula smashes everything with a big gothic hammer #it adds an extra layer of Something Precious Lost to the whole ordeal #not just personal danger #but the threat to this specific group of people who have known and loved each other since they were children #anyway #lucy westenra #mina murray #mina harker #jonathan harker #dracula #dracula daily

[neoyi]

Just came from theaters. Thoughts (spoiler heavy) under the "Keep Reading."

I pretty much expected the narrative to be the safest, straightest Point A-to-Point B plot. Being a ninety minute film (which my bladder thanks, because I can't watch movies past the two hour mark in theaters without rushing to the restroom nowadays), it never stays in one place or dilemma for long; this film is snappy. Everybody takes things at face value amazingly quick and advance the plot with little struggle. It's kind of odd, because normally this would bother me WAY more since the emotional impact of the protagonist's personal arc should have that gravitate (this film needed maybe like, an extra ten minutes), but I think having a paper thin plot that runs entirely in speedrun mode probably saved it more than killed. It is right to the point, says what it needs to, establishes and answers, and then moves on. I think having a laser focus goal (Mario and Luigi ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom, Peach needs to save it from Bowser, they go kick his ass) means all the little scenes that we do are crucial to the overall movie instead of pointless meandering. The action-y part of the film get to linger the most, which are spectacular to see, though I would have sacrificed a few minutes of it for some introspection. I guess I shouldn't have expected much from an Illumination film, let alone Nintendo's default flagship. When you have a brand as big as Mario (he's pretty much gaming's Mickey Mouse, after all), it makes sense this movie is just... the most Okay Thing Ever. At the very least, it does mean the movie didn't get gross out humors or Mario spouting dated catchphrases, though the pop songs playing in the background DO stick out by contrast, even if it's another thing I'd expect from a mainstream western animated movie.

Probably the biggest jaw drop is not the isekai route (I'm 36, I grew up with American Nintendo lore where Mario and Luigi were originally from Brooklyn and I'm still grateful the movie paid tribute to it because damn it, I find that aspect of Mario Lore interesting, non-canonical my ass!) , but that they have... parents. Nay, a FAMILY. Mario and Luigi have always BEEN Mario and Luigi. We see their parents from the knee down and cloaked in shadows in Yoshi's Island, but that was literally a couple of screens post-credit; we never see their faces or catch their names or anything. Even the 1993 Mario movie only had Mario and Luigi - their parents were non-essentials. Imagine my shock to see they have A Mom and Dad. What the fuck? And not just parents, they have a whole extended family living under one roof (like any true Italians, of course.) I wanna know who these other folks are. Uncles? Cousins? There's a baby there. Mario and Luigi's cousin? Is the old guy their grandpa??? Help, I don't know what to do with this information. How do I take in Mario and Luigi having an actual family?

Pauline has a brief speaking role and it looks like she's in an important position. I'm guessing she's NYC's mayor. Does she know Mario in this continuity?

I see you there, Charles Martinet, voicing a character who looks like Mario, but it isn't Mario. ;D

Speaking of family, holy SHIT, this movie also clarified whether Donkey Kong was Cranky's son or grandson. It's the first! Granted, this might be true for THIS film only, but it's nice to hear someone lay out their relationship out loud!

It is absolutely to no one's surprise that the stand-out role is Jack Black's Bowser. Every scene he's in, he nails. He delivers with so much gusto and enthusiasm - this man clearly loved playing this guy. Dude gets a piano solo in the middle of the film (a love song to his beloved Peach, of course) because Christ, man, if you're gonna use Jack Black, then you gotta use every part of that buffalo!

I've already accepted that Peach is just the oddball humanoid out in the Marioverse long before canon established Mario and Luigi as Mushroom Kingdom originators, too. But the movie does something interesting and goes out of their way to explain why she's the only human in a sea of Toads. I imagine this could be potential material for the sequel. Like Mario, it's also hinted she, too is from Earth, before accidentally wandering into the Mushroom Kingdom as a baby. I have so many questions how this kid walked into a pipe located in a very obscure part of the NYC sewers (maybe her parents were very neglectful plumbers) and even more questions on her upbringing So, the Toads decided to just one take her in, raise her, train her, and then... crown her as their princess? This brings up the question on whether the Mushroom Kingdom started as a monarchy because of her or if they were filling in a vacant seat that they felt only she was worthy. It's such a weird, eccentric thing for the Toads to just DO, especially without a feasible explanation, but also, I feel like this is something these mushroom idiots would kind of do. I mean, have you seen them? They're hopeless.

I would have been fine if Mario learned all his acrobatic parkour skills in the training montage alone, but I actually love that he's always been acrobatic just from dodging Brooklyn's many, many, maaaaany obstacles. Is it silly? Yeah, it is, but ya know what, people do parkour in real life every day, so why not?

Mario and Luigi taking off their gloves to reveal their... hands, is weirdly off-putting to me. Like these are just CGi cartoon hands, but they have like nails and creases and stuff. And it sticks out so badly that all I wanted was for them to put the gloves back ON. Which is funny to me because official Mario renders do this all the time. Like look at a recent 3D model of Mario and see the visible strewn of hairs sticking out from his hat. I don't know why the hands don't work for me. Maybe I'm just so used to them wearing gloves 24/7. Kind of like Mario's nipples.

I suspected Luigi wasn't going to do much from the trailers I've seen, and that proved correct in the final film. He does get to use the super star with Mario to beat Bowser, but I feel it went a bit unearned. Look, if there's a choice between Peach getting kidnapped or Luigi, than I'd rather it be the latter. Peach here is leagues better than what she's originally stuck with, and it really was for the better. I just kind of wished Luigi had maybe a moment prior to the final fight where he, I don't know, gain some courage, and try to free himself and all the other prisoners. I mean, the film already squeezed in Donkey Kong's daddy issues for all the five minutes it had, I don't see why they couldn't do the same for Luigi. I feel then his team-up with Mario (which isn't thoroughly unjustified - they are the Mario Bros) would have felt like a gradual step forward with his character. Ahh well, maybe in the sequel. Which probably will happen. It'll be good news for Yoshi fans if it does, if the post-credit tease is anything to go by.

tl;dr: This is a very safe movie, though I expected it as much. It's like, there are all-age films designed for their target audience, but thoroughly enjoyable for older folks, too. And then there are kid's movie which are... just for kids. This movie is the latter. It's either that or designed for longtime/dedicated Mario fans, which I am also the latter.

I'm not entirely sure if I would consider it a fun movie, but it's not bad. Shallow, but not bad. I have no genuine grievance or high praises for it. But I enjoyed my time regardless and didn't feel like it was a waste. And hey, that's fine with me.

I will absolutely be getting this on bluray, are you kidding me? (Funny little ancedote: A kid sitting next to me in theaters was thoroughly disappointed with the movie. Like straight up groaning, because Bowser did not win. It put a smile on my face. You're gonna conquer the world, kid!)

#super mario #mario movie #mario movie spoilers #nintendo #neoyi talks

[a-student-out-of-time]

Teach me your massive writing nerd ways, senpai!! 😫

(For real though, hope you get better soon ^^)

//Thank you ^^

//I'm not really an expert in this department, but here's Sixteen Steps on how I oversee the Fangan writing process:

Decide on your story's theme first and foremost. What's the major conflict? What ideas are being put forward and challenged? How will your Killing Game's story, character and environment reflect these? Are you sticking with the classics (Hope vs. Despair, Truth vs. Lies), something similar but new (Trust vs. Doubt, Growth vs. Stagnation, Redemption vs. Corruption) or are you going with something completely different? All of these can and should play a role on the nature of the Killing Game itself.

When you've decided on what kind of story you want to tell, work on the characters. Your characters shouldn't just be there to die and crack jokes, they should be an active part of the story and their arcs should ideally reflect the conflicts and themes. You also are not bound by the archetypes used in canon and can vary it up however you want.

Character arcs: Have them. Even with characters whose fates are sealed and they aren't going to die, there's no reason not to allow them some degree of growth and change in the time that they do have. Their arcs can even naturally conclude with their deaths in trials or the like, which can vary from them choosing to save someone else to one final act of spite against the rest of the group.

You are not bound by the almighty outline. You're also going to need at least a general idea of where you want your story to go, but it's okay to provide yourself with a degree of flexibility. Who's going to survive? Who isn't? Why? What are the motives? Are they doing anything besides just faffing around waiting for the next murder? Maybe your ideas will change, just make sure you can smoothly integrate those new ideas without upsetting the flow and clues you've established.

Small moments are more important than big ones. Moments of characterization in the plot, like vulnerability, small confrontations, even casually-provided pieces of dialogue can do more for your characters than just having them die horribly/dramatically or them revealing something major in or after the trial. FTEs should be supplemental, not the place you dump all their best/worst character qualities.

Characters should communicate. You shouldn't define characters purely by their relationship to the protagonist or to one other character. See how many dynamics and interactions you can come up with, and how you might be able to include those into the story. Diversifying interactions opens up a lot of potential new dynamics and story opportunities.

It's okay to be a LITTLE self-indulgent. I say this because I got flak for saying writers shouldn't let their self-indulgence overwhelming their fangans. I will clarify that it's okay if you want to include something just because you want to include it, as I have in my own writing, but if you want a murder method/execution/confrontation/what have you in the story, please at least integrate it in a way that makes sense. If you don't, it's going to feel jarring at best and actively harmful and disruptive to the story at worst.

Your setting should feel like a part of the story. The place where your cast is trapped shouldn't feel like a featureless prison with setups for murders, it should have an active role in the situation and clue us into the story. Is it run-down and grungy? Unnaturally clean for an inhabited space? Is it dark? Is it colorful and lively? What's keeping them from leaving? What do they find as they explore?

Avoid stereotypes about mental health. If you're going to use DID, Schizophrenia, Autism, OCD, depression, PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, any personality disorder, etc., PLEASE do your research before you even think about writing a character with any of these. Mental health being equated with violence is grossly exaggerated; people with these conditions are more likely to be victims of violence, not the perpetrators. Please don't make a character built out of negative stereotypes just for the sake of drama or making the story "interesting." A good character is vastly more interesting than another Genocider Syo knockoff.

Idiot Plots are Unacceptable. There's a fine line between a character making a bad decision because of pride, fear, miscalculation, or any sort of understandable flaw, and them making one because the story needs them to in order for a murder to happen. Your characters can make all the right decisions that they reasonably could, and still ultimately fail. That often makes the antagonists seem much smarter and more threatening.

Do not overly focus on the rival. If you've ever heard someone say that villains are more interesting than heroes, that person is probably just bad at writing heroes. Your protagonist does not have to be boring and your rival doesn't have to, and preferably shouldn't, be the most important and well-written character in the story. A good rival challenges the protagonist and serves as their foil in some way, but that also means the protagonist can challenge them in other ways; e.g. Byakuya has no chance of solving Trial 4 because he couldn't even conceive of a situation where someone would sacrifice themselves for another.

Suffering does not equate to sympathy. Yes, a killing game would be a miserable experience, but just making the characters miserable and putting them through the wringer constantly, with no chance for them to breathe or get any kind of victory often feels more exhausting than sympathetic or interesting. This extends beyond fangans and into writing in general; if you've established that a character is never going to succeed at anything they do, people are going to emotionally check out of the story because there's no reason to get invested that something might go wrong.

The mastermind should reflect one side of the conflict. For the driving theme, whichever side the protagonist is on, the mastermind should represent the opposite. For extra thematic flair, maybe have their backgrounds parallel each other in some manner and see how their lives too very different paths as a result. If they don't, they're going to feel very disconnected from the story and like they had no reason to do this at all.

Ask yourself what kind of mastermind works best for your story. Do you want someone loud and bombastic? Quiet and scheming? Angry and bitter? A deluded paragon who thinks they're doing good with their killing game? Someone not even human? When you have it in mind, work backwards and ask how this person would then decide to become the mastermind of this killing game in the first place.

If you're stuck, try reverse-engineering. A lot of us have the outcome of a story in mind first but aren't sure how we get there, especially with murders in these games. I find the best way is to work backwards, starting with the outcome (basically the Closing Argument) and scattering all the pieces of the murder scene around to where it becomes a mystery. Motivations, of course, should be the first thing on your mind and why they targeted a particular character.

EXECUTIONS ARE NOT A STORY. This is probably the biggest hurtle I see with a lot of aspiring fangan writers, where they focus very much on the deaths and executions over everything else. Your fangan can't just be a paper-thin plot designed to get us from one execution to the other, it needs an actual story and characters to keep us engaged. Furthermore, your executions shouldn't just be spectacle, they should have a purpose in the narrative and provide character insights in and of themselves, whether it's ironic punishments or some final revelation about the character.

//And there you go, some tips for writing a fangan. Hope these help! ^^

#mod talks #a student out of time #writing advice #fanganronpa #fanganronpa writing advice #fangan writing advice

[beesmygod]

JJBA PART 5, VENTO AUREO IS THE UNDERBAKED MESS I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT FIXING...PART 2

FIX 1: MORE KOICHI FOR THE MASSES

koichi! we love koichi, don't we folks? i know i do.

who's koichi? oh shit, that might be hard to explain.

pictured: koichi, in his dormant, yet most powerful, form.

if you DON'T recognize this little gremlin above, his appeal might be totally lost on you, and his appeal is necessary to understand if i'm going to convince you of what a fucking missed opportunity his narrative purpose could have been.

that's koichi hirose, the short king of morioh. i didnt think i would like him at all after realizing he was being set up as the deuteragonist and companion to the titular jojo of part 4, josuke. like, who the fuck was this little dork? get outta here! im here to see the joestars kidnap children and have homoerotic adventures. i am not here to be subjected to the trials and tribulations of a friendless, spineless, standless dipshit. i assumed he was going to be the designated joestar hypeman for the chapter, a role usually carved out for precocious children.

wrong! koichi gets hit with the stand arrow (the arrow the gives you stands, remember this) early on and gets dragged into a frightening battle of good versus evil right in his own backyard. the arrow and the responsibility that comes with it acts as the main catalyst for his transformation from nottie to hottie. in contrast to the bastardly joestars and their ilk, koichi is a genuinely kind, empathetic, and honest person; he's intended as a foil to the mischievous josuke. he brings to the table the platonic ideal of an every-man who rises gallantly to the challenges thrown at him because its the right thing to do. the series folds koichi as a main cast member to the point where he is one of the very few people on planet earth to draw a smile and praise out of jotaro kujo.

who's jotaro kujo? uhhh.

hmm. i'm getting to my point. but it might require a chart:

POINT: jotaro kujo, the man who probably has with the strongest stand in universe, who appears in 4 chapters out of a total of 9, and who is probably one of the most recognizable and beloved characters in manga history, trusts literally one person on the entire planet: koichi hirose.

SO:

when koichi shows up in part 5 right from the jump to act as the part 4 connective tissue, there is absolutely no reason why he can't stick around for longer than he does canonically so that he can satisfyingly fulfill his role as official vibe checker. let him be important!

---

oh my god, i can hear jojo fans groaning as they scroll through all that shit. so what?! did you make me read all that just to say "there should have been more koichi?!"

look, i need to make sure "we're" all on the same page and understand the perspective i'm coming from. "we", in this case, being the audience of both jojo fans this is primarily aimed at and fandom rubberneckers (greetings friends) who shouldn't have to comb a wiki exhaustively to decode my unhinged ramblings. it's essential background info that koichi is a fan favorite both in canon and in fandom. we gotta understand the role he wound up playing in the overarching struggle of good versus evil in his hometown to understand his narrative role in part 5.

YES. there SHOULD have been more koichi! but not just because we like to see him! he provides an established, trusted moral backbone for the audience. his reputation as a reliable guy is such that jotaro sends him on his own to investigate a young man who may be related to the dreaded bisexual nemesis of the joestar bloodline, dio brando. this is a big fucking deal. if dio has a kid that's really bad. how many backup plans did this guy have (answer: dude you have no idea).

---

ugh! part 5 koichi! if you really want to scream look up how he looks in the rohan spin off series.

in ep 1 of the "golden wind", koichi arrives in italy looking for our new jojo, giorno giovanna (who sucks, but that's a whole kettle of fish we can only barely touch on now). koichi, who has the street sense of one of those dogs that gets carried around in a luxury purse, instantly gets robbed by petty street criminal giorno in a rare burst of personality never seen again after this initial story-line.

okay whatever. after skipping a few eps, giorno and koichi team up to defeat the first stand together after drawing its ire during giorno's weird mafia test. the stand, black sabbath, stabs its victims with a stand arrow (the arrow that gives stands), causing them to either die or gain powers. this might be controversial, but its my personal opinion that its probably not good for a mafia to have a factory that creates jerks with super powers and its right to try to shut that down. after the fight, giorno reveals his dream to koichi of joining the mafia with the explicit purpose of reforming it from within. koichi promises not to report to jotaro about the fact that there's ANOTHER STAND ARROW until after giorno is initiated into the gang. god. jesus christ.

first of all, this GANG-STAR thing is the silliest shit anyone has ever heard. this is literally his for real goal throughout the entire story-line. which could have been great! but people within the fiction should react to this like hes telling them he's going to invent the first bicycle for fish instead of looking at him with the kind of wonder and glory you reserve for jesus christ himself. this train of thought leads to too many thoughts about giorno's lack of personality, so let's set it aside for now. i think giorno should maintain this insane goal, but he should actively have to convince people that he is capable of doing something that fucking nuts.

second, no way would koichi agrees to this absolutely braindead truce lol. koichi doesn't know giorno from adam; the sense we're supposed to get is that koichi innately senses that he's a good guy from his little speech and we, the audience, are supposed to take his word for it. but there is nothing convincing or authentic in how the situation plays out. there's a level of naivety/stupidity applied to the characters involved for this situation to work at all: i dont know why telling jotaro in florida that there's a stand arrow in italy would impact giorno's mafia standing at all. especially considering the arrow breaks and no longer functions shortly after giorno's initiation. koichi should find giorno's dreams and desires spurious and continue his investigation for jotaro, both to impress him and because its the right thing to do. he should also be like "heh, i took care of a stand arrow for you mister kujo". let him have another win. fuck it. why not.

third, koichi doesn't know that the stand arrow is destroyed and i have a hard time believing that he, a victim of said arrow, would do anything other than raise serious alarms over the proliferation of objectively evil stand users in italy where dio's son coincidentally happens to live. the following arc in which giorno and his new team mates go on a hunt for a hidden treasure should have been a series of demonstrations to koichi that italy was being cleaned up by a joestar (as opposed to the danger of being exploited by a brando) and was ultimately in good hands. this would require giorno to get some wins in during this time so he would actually have to do something for a change.

keeping koichi around long past where he does in canon could and should have given giorno a chance to demonstrate a different form of heroism to contrast the pure-hearted pursuit of justice championed by koichi. in eventually winning over a familiar and trustworthy character, giorno would have proved himself to be more than just "dio's son", a fact which should have hung over this part like a dark cloud.

but that's. that's next time.

#jjba #part 5 #vento aureo #golden wind #long post // #essay #s. sorry.

[itsclydebitches]

With all the talk about Blake's bisexuality lately, I wanted to revisit the stream where this is "confirmed." I think it's really important not only that Blake's sexuality hasn't been confirmed in canon yet -- a fact which RWDE fans have explained ad nauseum and I won't rehash here -- but that our external "confirmation" is so tentative that it still leaves room for doubt. And that right there is the problem.

That video includes:

Arryn initially ignoring Blake's sexuality as a similarity between them because she "wasn't sure she was allowed to say that." If this were a 100% confirmed, established, 'We planned it from the beginning' bit of characterization, there wouldn't be any hesitation about what they're "allowed" to discuss in a stream. I'd understand the hesitation a little better if Blake/Yang were getting confirmed in the upcoming Volume and the crew was avoiding spoilers... but that wasn't the case.

"I think it's pretty obvious." You're either confirming a fact or you're not. Why the emphasis on what the audience should "obviously" be taking away? And as established, after the Golden Age of Queerbaiting there is no "obvious" reading when homophobic writers and executives can dodge a confirmation at any time.

"I confirm nor deny canonically, but in my headcanon? Oh, that's a whole other story!" This is LITERALLY dodging a confirmation. We are told outright that the crew cannot confirm that Blake is canonically bisexual, but they do support it in their own, RWBY imaginings. That's great! That's also, as explicitly stated, not canon.

The video link I could most easily find is attached to a RWBY Reddit thread titled "Arryn has basically confirmed once and for all that Blake is bisexual." There should be no "basically" in that sentence.

This is why so many fans are wary: because these kinds of "obvious" implications without an explicit confirmation is the definition of queerbaiting. That's what you do if you want your audience to stick around without actually producing a queer relationship. You put a blush here, a forehead touch there, a nudge-nudge-wink-wink from a VA, a comment about bisexual bobs, a ship-inspired song, a "Wait and see ;)" and, and, and ... and then you end the show with nothing ever coming of it. Or, it's a last moment addition so the writers never have to actually write the relationship. This is why Supernatural was (and in many ways still is) the most overt example of queerbaiting. It's not because fans saw the potential for a relationship between Cas and Dean, but the writers never capitalized on it; it's because the writers LOADED the story with "obvious" references and innuendos, spent YEARS having Misha, Jensen, and other cast members talk about the "obvious" love between them... and then just continued on their merry way for fourteen years, doing nothing with it, before throwing out a one-sided confession + death in the final hour. Fans were taught precisely how "obvious" a queer character can be without actually existing.

As a bisexual woman watching RWBY, I want confirmation of this relationship and, furthermore, I have more hope for one than I would have a decade ago. I'd be more willing to put my money on these "obvious" references amounting to something in 2023 than I would have back in 2005. But those of us who are old enough to have been active in fandom during that time know that just because many shows have gotten better about their queer rep doesn't mean that every show is going to follow in their footsteps. I do wonder how many fans who take a "basically" as undeniable confirmation are on the younger side, with "younger" meaning... under 25? Because I can't imagine anyone who was immersed in popular media back then coming in with such confident takes built on so very little, or having such faith in a company with RT's reputation. We've been blessed with the likes of She-Ra, Owl House, Steven Universe, The Last of Us, and a wealth of other stories that have fought for and/or introduced queer rep, and I wonder if those raised on that bounty literally can't picture a show that would tease a popular ship so extensively and not bring it to fruition. The unexpected downside of getting more canonical rep is that there's a generation of viewers who are ignorant -- or at least appear ignorant -- of the history that gave us shows like Supernatural, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Buffy. And if you're older still, you're familiar with the age of television when a canonically queer character wasn't even a possibility, but that didn't stop writers from both building the show around fans' desire for representation. Sometimes that was done kindly with coding that, legitimately, was the most they could hope to air and showcased the writers' own desire to diversify television... and sometimes it was cruel.

I've said a hundred times that I hope Blake/Yang shippers aren't hurt in the way so many older fans have been, either due to deliberate queerbaiting, or RWBY getting cancelled before a relationship can truly develop. We all deserve to have such prominent confidence in writers treating their queer characters well. But we can't allow hope or personal certainty to blind us to reality, not when that's resulting in a completely unnecessary antagonism within the fandom. And the reality is that no, Blake hasn't been confirmed in the show and her "confirmation" outside of it does not meet many fans' standards -- for very understandable reasons. I can say categorically that I have never seen anyone erase Blake's bi identity because that identity doesn't truly exist yet. The ambiguity of her attraction to Yang is precisely why queerbaiting is a problem and why RWDE folks call so loudly for a 100% canonical relationship: it's too easy to shrug off such moments as a "sisterly" thing, to use the unfortunate words of Arrowfell. And if you scoff and go, "What? Sister don't act like that!" then you don't understand queerbaiting. You don't understand the history of shows writing THE most "obvious" coding you've ever laid your queer little eyes on and then going nowhere with it. That's the point. That's the point! The entire point is to make the relationship as "obvious" as possible so that fans will stick around, praise the show, celebrate rep early, push everyone else to watch it...

...and then fall apart when the relationship never happens.

I hope to god that's not RWBY's future, but after three years of just a single hint each (hand-holding, blush, Blake's fury over Yang's "death") and the lack of hints in the Volume 9 trailer, please don't go after fans who don't have unwavering confidence in the girls' queerness being canonical. Posts that acknowledge Blake's attraction to men, ambiguous attraction to Yang, or point out the comparative wealth of straight confirmation compared to the queer coding aren't attacking queer fans. Those posts are written by queer fans who know precisely how quickly the "obvious" ship can get tossed aside. Or worse, the queer character never really confirmed as queer in the end.

RWBY can ditch Blake/Yang. They can shrug and say that a bi Blake was just Arryn's headcanon -- weren't you listening when we said it wasn't canon? They can make sweet apologies and explain that they never intended the animators to make that so romance coded. You know, just like they never meant for Clover to wink at Qrow. Real talk: I personally can't imagine having this much faith in the show after that fiasco. We got the EXACT same kind of coding (wink + bashful look + "obvious" romance tropes like their opposite semblances) and the ending was Clover dying a bloody death, Qrow hating him, and the writers backpedaling from the idea of an attraction like nobody's business. That set off SIREN alarms in every RWBY fan I know who understands queerbaiting history, but so many others appear ignorant to the warning signs. I'm not saying examples like this means we won't get queer rep in the title team, I'm saying it explains others' hesitation. RT has made no promises, is not beholden to their fanbase, and does not have a good history with its queer rep or its queer employees. If you're a queer fan who has confidence in bi Blake in the face of all that, fantastic, more power to you, but those who are wary aren't your enemy. They're also queer fans, just those who have been burned enough in the past and have learned not to put their whole heart into what they might not get. What we're likely to get? Probably, but you know what they say about counting chickens...

I just wish fandom was better about learning from these past experiences -- listening to older fans and acknowledging that history with an open mind -- rather than learning through another awful, first-hand experience. Though I'm crossing all my fingers and toes that this never happens, I wonder how many RWBY fans might be fruitlessly warning others someday if their queer rep crashes and burns.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

[qdbs-writes]

Babysitting Renesmee Cullen

Warnings: Canon typical violence and sarcasm

Bella and Edward are relatively new parents and new parents tend to welcome any breaks they can get from their small children, so they're happy for you to babysit their little half vampire/full demon baby

There are two major obstacles to babysitting Resentment, one of them is Rosalie. You would normally have to fight Rosalie just to be able to hold the baby, she's quick to assume nobody else is capable of looking after a child. However, Revolution will be quickly handed over when her diaper needs changing

The second obstacle is naturally Jacob. When the imprinting situation is first explained to you, your initial reaction was which chair you should use to beat him with. As it's established that Jacob is not an imminent threat to the baby, you let him stick around. This is a mistake because now Jacob will breathe down your neck about every little thing you do with Representative. Take your eyes off of Recommendation for even a second during 'tummy time', then expect to get an earful from Jacob about how careless you're being with his imprintee

Apart from dealing with those two, babysitting Responsibility is almost like babysitting a normal child. Sure she'll grow half a foot if you don't see her for a week, you're constantly taking her to get new shoes and clothes, and she guzzles animal blood like the world's most fuel inefficient engine. But you're certain regular children can be like that as well.

You probably want to wear washing-up gloves when first handling her, especially when she can't quite control her touch-based memory powers. You do take off your gloves when Refridgerator asks you to nicely, then she proudly shows you when she first saw you: it's about 30 minutes after Alice rang you and told you to come over, you haven't slept and were horrified after seeing Bella's torn up corpse in the basement. You'd never quite recovered from that night but Retroreflector looked so proud of herself to make you relive it. Thank you, Redistribution, please never do that again.

As a human who is comfortable with vampires and werewolves, Reduction is probably more interested in you than anyone else (to Rosalie and Jacob's utter dismay). Any time you spend at the Cullen house while not babysitting her still sees you being followed around with Refractometer's beady little eyes peering at you and everything you do.

It can be hard to keep up with Reforestation's constantly maturing and changing interests. First, she liked ducks and the colour yellow, but two weeks later all she wants to talk about is Brittney Spear's new song 'Piece of Me' or whatever is going on between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Refurbishment is probably quite a good child, she does have a small army of super-powered vampires to look after her when you aren't around to babysit

#twilight #twilight imagine #twilight headcanon #twilight x reader #twilight reader insert #Bella Swan #Edward Cullen #Renesmee Cullen #Alice Cullen #qdbs writing #twilight renessaince

[small-screen-superman]

Superman Ideas That “Stuck” (and Should They Be Unstuck?), Part 1: Powerless on Krypton

This post is also on my independent blog, Small Screen Superman - go there for an even better experience!

A lot of things about Superman and his world change over the years and across media, but some things rarely if ever change, even if they weren’t that way from the beginning. That’s to be expected, especially with things from very early on, such as Superman’s powers.

While it’s nice to have a certain amount of consistency, I actually consider it a positive of the Superman franchise that it has such a wide variety of different interpretations. So sometimes it feels like a bit of a shame if certain ideas end up being used everywhere, especially if I think there’s potential to the way things were before that idea was created.

In this series, I’m going to discuss aspects of Superman canon that have been implemented widely since their introduction and potential advantages of not sticking to them all the time. First up:

Kryptonians have no powers in their native environment

This is a very old idea, likely the oldest idea I will discuss in this series – you have to go back to the Golden Age to escape it. It has a clear purpose: make it easy to make sure almost all Kryptonians died when Krypton exploded. Superman wasn’t nearly as strong or invincible when he was first created, so it used to be easy to believe that all his people would’ve been wiped out by their whole planet exploding, but as his powers grew more and more through the years, this idea became “necessary”.

Of course, I put “necessary” in quotes because it’s not like this idea is absolutely necessary. I certainly don’t blame them for going with this all those decades ago – it’s a simple and easy solution. It also has the advantage of making Krypton simpler and easier to write and conceptualize for in general. A world full of extremely superpowered people sounds pretty crazy. Could random citizens destroy the planet or conquer other planets if they wanted to?

So it makes sense this idea has survived so long and been implemented into almost every Superman continuity. In and of itself, though, I’d say there’s nothing really logical or interesting about it. It’s pretty unbelievable that a species would evolve to be able to do such amazing, incredible things that they’d never be able to do in their native environment. OK, a lot of things in Superman are unbelievable, but usually in a way that makes stories more interesting. This idea, if anything, does the opposite. A world of supermen sounds like it could be very interesting to me.

I don’t think you’d have to worry too much about random Kryptonian citizens causing destruction as long as you established that the technology of Kryptonian society could prevent this. For example, you could have important objects and structures be invincible themselves, and make there be a forcefield around the planet that can only be passed under special circumstances.

Of course, you do need to solve the central problem of why almost all Kryptonians were killed by their planet exploding, but there are other possible solutions. For example, you could make Kryptonians have powers in a red sun, but be less powerful than they are in a yellow sun. The powers of Kryptonians under a red sun could be at the level of early Golden Age Superman, or even early Post-Crisis Superman. This solution would also be rather logical: the idea that Kryptonians would evolve to be able to absorb yellow sunlight (which they would never normally be exposed to) and get powers from it is strange, but the idea that they evolved to be able to absorb red sunlight and get powers from it, and they could get even more powers from a young and vibrant yellow sun, makes more sense.

Another thing you could do with this idea is make it so Kryptonians have superpowers in a red sun, but Superman doesn’t. Superman’s body could be so adjusted to the overabundance of energy from Earth’s yellow sun that red sun just can’t empower him the same way. Something a bit like this was actually established in an alternate universe miniseries called Superman: Space Age. It didn’t have Kryptonians be powered on Krypton, but it does establish that Superman has a weakness to the red sun that other Kryptonians don’t have due to being away from it for so long.

Another idea I’ve had is that maybe instead of pieces of Krypton becoming radioactive after its destruction to become Kryptonite, this could happen before and be a part of the destruction process, poisoning all the inhabitants of Krypton.

Should it unstick?

Overall, it’s not surprising this idea has stuck around, but it’s an idea that I think mostly exists for convenience or simplicity as opposed to because it adds interesting storytelling possibilities. And I personally see a great appeal to Kryptonians being inherently super, and the simplicity and logic of this idea. But ironically, reintroducing this idea might be confusing to people since it hasn’t been seen for a very long time. And I admit that it simply can’t be as simple as it could be back in the early Golden Age since you still need some explanation for why there are so few survivors of Krypton’s destruction.

However, for me personally, it would be so cool to see a version of Kryptonian society where everyone has Superman’s powers. Very little time and attention was spent on Krypton in the early Golden Age, so we never got the chance to explore a planet of supermen in detail.

Other than potentially being confusing due to it not being the case for such a long time, the only other major disadvantage I can think of is Superman losing his weakness to red sunlight, and I already explained how this could be kept. Admittedly, this adds another thing that needs to be explained and thus more potential for confusion. Personally, I wouldn’t consider it a deal breaker if they eliminated Clark’s weakness to red sunlight altogether, but it would be at least a little limiting to storytelling.

All this being said, I admit that I’m pretty unique for even caring about this at all, and even I will concede it’s not exactly a big deal. But I feel like a Krypton with powered inhabitants at least deserves a try in some form of media.

Will it unstick?

All things considered, Kryptonians will probably always be unpowered on Krypton in mainstream comic canon, and the same can probably be said for live action films and other high profile media. But spinoff media is more flexible, so I can see the idea of powered Kryptonians on Krypton being explored there. In the My Adventures with Superman show (which has already made some big changes from Superman tradition), there is a scene where Clark is shown a hologram of Krypton and it features a yellow sun turning red (seemingly because of something artificial). If this means what I think it means, Krypton used to have a yellow sun until it was artificially and recently turned red, and therefore Kryptonians had powers on their native world until recently. But we probably won’t know any details until Season 2 comes out.

Another possibility is that it might be used by non-DC entities when Superman enters the public domain, particularly because when this happens, people will be drawing on the earliest Superman media. I’m unsure if simple concepts such as Kryptonians not having powers on Krypton are able to be copyrighted, but if they are, non-DC entities won’t legally be able to use it, and thus will have no choice but to bring back how things originally were.

Conclusion

I’ll admit that Kryptonians having or not having powers on their home planet is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, even by Superman lore standards. After all, the planet gets destroyed when our hero is a baby. But I’m the kind of person who enjoys when aliens are significantly different from humans biologically, and with Kryptonians being so human-like in most ways, it seems a shame they don’t even get their superpowers (their only major difference from us) while on their home planet. We’ll just have to see if My Adventures of Superman, or any other Superman spinoff, decides to play with this idea.

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