K but the fact that Kristen is just a regular human being. Just a standard, average person in a land filled with mystical beings and magic spilling from every crack, nook and cranny.
And here's Kristen Applebees, the first born child of typical suburban parents, born into a religious neighborhood where everyone goes to church every Sunday and prays every night and everyone has a white picket fence with a perfect manicured lawn and not-so-subtly shuns those who are in anyway different from them.
Was Kristen not chosen by her God, by Helio himself, because of her perfect average parents with their perfect average house in their perfect average neighborhood?
Kristen wasn't rich, she didn't have a powerful bloodline, her parents weren't important, there was no prophecy foretelling her birth. No, Kristen was an attainable goal. Kristen was a good example for the youth, an example of what could be achieved if you just played along and played your part.
Kristen was destined to be the perfect picture of a devoted follower of Helio. She was the poster child, born smack dab in the center of Helio's flock, surrounded on all sides by followers and moulded into the perfect unquestioning chosen one since birth.
But by choosing Kristen, by marking her as property of a God, Helio gave Kristen power. Power over him, power over good and evil, the divine and infernal. Because Kristen is promised to Helio, because she was chosen by him and prophesied to be his, Kristen wields the power to start the end of days and crumble nations with a snap of her fingers. Should she want to, Kristen could destroy the world by simply not doing that, by not ending up in Helio's afterlife to live for eternity by his side, by proving a God wrong.
And it's with this power, this leverage that Kristen holds over Helio's neck like the sword of Damocles, that Kristen is able to free herself from his grasp. It's slow, at first. Joining a 'risky' school, meeting people outside of the religion, questioning elders, researching history and religions. And she doesn't understand how much power she has, not at first, because the power she possesses isn't magic, but a divine promise and unspoken rules that govern a world that she was never supposed to know.
But despite not having magic, despite being chosen for her averageness, despite being trained to be naive and blinded to the realities of the world, Kristen is overpowered as, if you'll excuse the pun, hell.
Helio creates divine religious scholars to protect her when she doubts and strays from him. Helio creates an entire new deity and religion for Kristen, allowing her to think that YES! (and, later, YES?) is it's own separate power from his and he does all of this, not out of generosity or love, but because he needs to keep Kristen alive. Kristen cannot die before she rejoins Helio's flock or the divine promise will break and Helio would be fucked.
So Helio gave her power under the pretense of it being from elsewhere, solely so that he could keep Kristen alive until he changed her mind.
And then! And then Kristen dies! And is revived. And she's Saint Kristen Applebees now (but the Saint of who?) and Helio has fully given up on her and turned his back on her (but his prophecy cannot be unspoken and he cannot be proven wrong so does he really? Can he really?) and Kristen finds a new God, a broken God and Kristen chooses her.
Kristen names her, creates her, Cassandra the Goddess of Doubt and Night, and Kristen finally has her religion, a source of power that doesn't stem from Helio, she's finally escaped his grasp.
And yet.
And yet, Helio still spoke his prophecy, still chose Kristen and she will always have that power over him.
And yet, in his own foolish shortsighted attempt to keep Kristen within his grasp, Helio still created a deity for her, a separate divine entity that chose her as well.
And yet, Kristen is still the undying, the follower of Night and Doubt, Saint Applebees, Creator of Cassandra.
With no real magic to speak of, with nothing special in her bloodline, with no real talents or money to her name, the perfect picture of normalcy in every way, Kristen has managed to twist the divine sphere around her little pinky finger. She has so much power and she has so little awareness of it.
And also she's going to be President, bitch.
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Nya's design for my Scorched Au. Also this is my first time drawing Nya with her short hair so that's neat!
Nya's pretty important in this au. With Kai off doing his own thing, Nya ends up training to be a ninja/master of water WAY before she does so in canon since Wu thinks her abilities will be very useful. Which makes sense since you know, Kai is the master of fire. Having a master of water to deal with him would be pretty useful.
Although most of the time when fighting, Nya is trying her best to reason with Kai since she thinks if anyone can talk him down it's her. And while it's true that Nya's really the only one left that Kai cares about, he also sees the fact that Wu started training Nya as a way of replacing him which does not help his mindset at all.
Overall, it's complicated between these two. Obviously Nya doesn't like seeing all these places getting burnt down in Kai's path, but she also doesn't want to lose her brother. Meanwhile Kai doesn't want to hurt his sister, but he also wants to prove that he's good enough to be the Green Ninja so badly that he will burn down anything and anyone standing in his way.
Also bonus drawing of Kai seeing Nya as the water ninja for the first time:
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Dick + not getting phone calls
1. Bruce makes Jason Robin (Batman 416)
Dick: "It was quite a kick for me to learn about the new Robin in the newspapers."
2. Jason dies (New Titans 55)
Dick: "Bruce never called to tell me what happened to Jason. He didn’t know I was half-way across the universe, but he didn’t even leave a message on my machine. If Danny hadn’t found out... Blast him. Why didn’t he call me?"
3. Bruce picks Jean-Paul Valley as the next Batman (Robin 13)
Dick: "You left Tim alone with a lunatic. The kid could have been killed."
Bruce: "There wasn't time."
Dick: "No time to pick up a phone? No time to call me? ... I thought there was one guy who'd have faith in me. But when it comes down to the test, you picked someone else to succeed you."
4. Alfred quits after Bruce's back gets broken in Knightfall (Nightwing: Alfred's Return)
Dick: "Bruce didn't send me. I came because I'd like to know why the guy who's been like a father to me suddenly upped and split without a word! Because my best friend has been gone for months - the Bahamas, Antarctica, England - and I didn't even get a call! Not even a postcard!"
5. Donna's son dies (Teen Titans Vol. 2 12)
Wally: "Man, Dick, I'm sorry! I thought for sure she would have called you!"
Dick: "Robbie was her world. Why didn't she call? I could have helped. I would have... I'd do anything for her..."
6. Wally's wife miscarries and...it's complicated, but for the purposes of this list you just need to know that he didn't tell Dick or ask him for help (Flash 210)
Dick: "What I said earlier, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. You're my best friend. You have been since we were kids. And after everything you went through, I just wish I was the one you came to for help - instead of Hal."
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@erika-de-claire
There was so much Randall wanted to say and do in response to all of this. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to rage at Constance, this interloper who had barged into his home and pushed his bride out in order to make room for herself, he wanted to give in to all the feelings now swelling in his chest...
…but now just wasn't the time for that. Now, he needed to focus on Erika, his pride and joy, his daughter. His and Emily's daughter. In the absence of her mother, she needed him-now more than ever.
And so Randall set aside all of the uglier feelings he felt as he embraced Erika close, squeezing her tight as he gently stroked her hair (briefly reminded of her childhood, and how he used to do the same whenever she had a nightmare), saying soothingly, "It's alright, my girl, it's alright, it's alright, I'm here, I'm here..."
In an effort to calm them both down, he sat the two of them down on a nearby lounger, still hugging her close, letting one another's presence ground them, bring them just a little bit of much-needed peace.
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