#and then the character analysis mode hit

[perpetualexistence]

We Drive Each Other Batty

Alenoah Week Day 4: Royalty/Vampire AU

Alejandro Burromuerto is an absolute menace to the kingdom of Wawanakwa. He comes from a legacy of vampires that strive to control as much land as possible. He's only recently set his sights on Wawanakwa, and within a year he's enthralled three towns into being his local blood bank. Life is pretty good for him.

He's so confident in his abilities that he decides to go directly for the castle itself.

Aaaand almost immediately finds himself caught by King Chris's personal bodyguard, Chef, who knocks him unconscious with a pan before he can enthrall Chris.

The smart thing to do would be to kill Alejandro. But Chris is a petty man who prefers humiliating people.

Who better to ask how to do that than his personal court-wizard-in-training who Chris specifically because he's snarky and petty?

Noah gets dragged into this and comes up with an idea. If he likes mind controlling people so much, then let Alejandro be on the other side of things. Tinker with a familiar bonding spell to turn Alejandro into a familiar. He'll be forced to listen to someone else's orders, and can't harm anyone except in defense of his wizard. Plus, if done right, it can have the added benefit of making him 'fun size' thanks to having to categorize Alejandro as a bat to make this work. That way his vampire strength and speed won't be as much of an issue.

There's two problems with this plan.

One, the bond can only be created with a wizard who doesn't have a familiar yet. Most adult wizards do. It's even a requirement to bond with a familiar at some point in a good amount of magic schools.

And two, the bond is usually done with two consenting parties. Since Alejandro would be fighting it the whole time, keeping the familiar bond would be an active effort on the wizard's end. It's possible if you find a wizard with enough power, but good luck trying to convince a wizard to be a spell battery.

"Say, kid. You don't have a familiar yet."

"Mclean. Don't you dare."

"Think of it as a new part of your job description!"

"I'm not going to deal with a psychotic vampire for your sick amusement!"

"Sure you are! Do a good enough job and you might get a better holiday bonus this year!"

Thus Noah has accidentally sealed his fate to being stuck with a 4 inch vampire who is absolutely livid at this humiliation.

They both hate this situation so much. Alejandro can't mind control Noah because that's the first thing Noah ordered him not to do the second Alejandro woke up tiny, confused, and pissed.

Noah can't just leave Alejandro alone in a cage in his room all day because the longer and further he stays away from Alejandro, the weaker the bond and the more likely Alejandro will break free from it.

Alejandro keeps trying to persuade Noah that he's learned his lesson the non-magical way. And Noah shuts him right down because he knows that's a lie.

If Alejandro's really being difficult, Noah has no issues with throwing him into a bird cage and ordering him to shut up for a while. Noah really wishes he could just order him to shut up forever, but Alejandro starts fighting against the bond even worse when he can't speak, which usually ends up giving Noah a headache. Temporary relief is the best he can manage.

That and taking him to Chris to see what humiliation Chris and Chef have decided to put Alejandro through for the day. That usually brighten's Noah's day.

Alejandro still gets his own little revenges in. He looks for every loophole under the sun within Noah's orders. He banters at every given opportunity.

He'd love to give backhanded compliments to Noah in front of people that aren't Chris and Chef. However, no one else is allowed to know that Alejandro is still alive.

Letting a vampire live is a big no-no, even if Chris approved of it. Vampires still need generous amounts of blood to survive. Animal blood works somewhat, but it's more like living off rations. Vampires can only get full nutritional value from a human. Which doesn't really endear humans to vampires. (Part of Noah's job is to let Alejandro feed from his as well. It feels more like four little needles than a serious bite, and thanks to Alejandro's new size he doesn't feel that woozy when Alejandro has had his fill. Noah doesn't mind it nearly as much as he pretends to.)

Plus, Alejandro did get some of his hooks outside of the castle, so there's a decent chance someone could recognize him and decide to take advantage of the fact he's easily killable. So when around others, he takes full bat form and pretends to be a regular familiar. He's lucky he can at least talk with Noah telepathically so he doesn't have to be completely mute.

Still, it's not all bad. Now that Alejandro is, magically speaking, a bat, he can actually experience sunlight. He'd always used the metaphor 'you're as radiant as the sun' when charming others. It's a different thing entirely to actually feel its warmth.

Noah takes notice the first time when Alejandro is completely silent for once. He sees Alejandro staring directly at the sun in awe. He actually looks kind of cute sweet like that.

Except Alejandro is staring directly at the sun, and so Noah has to snap Alejandro out of it. He isn't just going to someone blind themselves, even if it is Alejandro. It's almost a shame to see the mask fall back on his face. (Too bad he didn't notice the flicker of shock at someone showing concern for Alejandro's wellbeing.)

With forced proximity, the two start to learn more about each other.

Alejandro learns about Noah first since he can't help but observe the fact that Noah is reading textbooks, but he hasn't seen Noah attend school once. When Noah isn't reading, he's catering to Chris and Chef's whims.

Noah still seems to be doing just fine, though. He knows Noah is advanced for his age based on what he's reading and how much he gloats about it. Still, if he was advanced than Alejandro would expect a tutor to be guiding Noah along to suit his level. The only adults he's seen consistently during his stay with Noah is Chris and Chef.

Alejandro points this out to Noah, and receives a long rant from Noah in return.

See, Noah's completely self taught. Before Chris, his family couldn't afford to get him a tutor. This isn't inherently a problem. Some wizards will take on apprentices for their service rather than for payment if they see potential in a particular student.

The problem is no one wants to teach a child who wants to learn dark magic. Nobody that Noah would ever want to meet, at least.

Noah could lie about not wanting to learn forbidden magic. But he'd always risk getting caught by whoever's training him. Not to mention the risk of getting himself killed because he was performing something dangerous without anyone to save him.

Plus, he considers it incredibly stupid that dark magic is a taboo subject to learn. The reason why creatures like Alejandro get away undetected for so long is because everyone else is more than happy to stick their heads in the sand. Their solution to combat evil is to simply not talk about it. As if that's just going to make it magically go away.

The only real way to learn how to counter it is to study it. It's like how making an antidote for a poison requires a bit of the poison itself so your body knows what to fight against.

Hell, it could even be used for good! Even something like Alejandro's hypnotism. It can lull a growing angry mob to not be stupid. It can force a different evil bastard to do something good.

But no, people like Alejandro screw it over for everyone else, and now any time he tries to make these arguments he's 'the bad guy' or 'should be barred from magic for everyone's good'.

Noah got lucky. Chef found him when he was insulting yet another wizard who shot down his chance at apprenticeship. He might have forgotten angering someone who can throw fireballs isn't the best way to guarantee your own safety.

Chef dragged him away and attempted to yell some sense into him. When it was clear that Noah was still just as defiant, he dragged him directly to Chris. Who ended up liking his spite and sarcasm, and offered him the job of court-wizard in training. It was hard for Chris to find any wizard willing to stay with him too long. And he's got plenty of dark magic crap that he has stored away. Both of them get what they want!

Noah wouldn't learn how demanding Chris was and how he'd make people put a lot of effort into stupid tasks that drive less patient people mad until later.

He took the deal because it was the best he was going to get. He knows he's being underpaid compared to what a regular court magician would be making. But for as much as Chris is a pain of a boss, he's given Noah exactly what he's wanted. He'd dare to say that Chris and Chef cared about him. Though Noah will refuse to say if he feels the same way about them.

Alejandro can't help but admire Noah for that. Deep down past that apathetic, snarky exterior, there is someone who's capable of ambition. Or at least capable of using spite as a motivator.

Alejandro's mask slips as he ends up sharing how he can relate. He gives off the airs of a vampire who's been around for at least a century or two. Truth be told, he's only a couple of months older than Noah. He's aging as a human would, for now.

He, and his lineage, are born vampires rather than bitten. Hence how he can have multiple thralls at once and transform into mist or a variety of animals. Bitten vampires are lucky to be able to hypnotize one person, and are typically limited to the advanced strength and speed.

So he can certainly one up the average vampire...but not other born vampires. Or vampires who have actually lived for centuries. He's still considered nothing more than an insolent child not to be taken seriously.

He does have the expectation on him to expand the Burromuerto influence. But he's constantly being compared to other relatives and their accomplishments. Particularly that of his brother José who has a couple of decades over Alejandro's head.

Alejandro has been working hard to close the power gap. He's been training to be as strong and fast as possible. His hypnosis works so well because he put in the work to learn how to actually charm people. The magic is to make sure the feeling stays for longer than it would naturally. But getting people to do what he wants? All him.

And it's still not enough for anyone else. So he decided to get a headstart on the family tradition. He was supposed to wait until he came of age, but he was already strong and confident in himself. Going off and succeeding early would prove everyone else wrong.

He'd been doing so well, too. He hadn't even needed to kill anybody. Unlike most of his family, he doesn't particularly care for it. Not because he cares that much about humans. But because he sees it as a waste of a resource. Sure, you can inspire fear into others with a death. But that fear can easily turn into outrage, and rebellion. It will be harder to control a population that is actively working to fight against you. Much easier to charm them and have them not even realize anything is wrong. Everyone is alive, and there is nothing to worry about. They just have to give a bit of blood every once in a while. And for that, Alejandro would make sure nothing else would dare to touch them.

That last part of the story concerns Noah. A lot. But it's...nice? That Alejandro cares? Enough to value a human life. Considering the rest of his family, it's a miracle Alejandro's got anything resembling compassion.

And at least he's finally being honest about something for once. Noah prefers honest but callous to kind but insincere. This part of Alejandro's still concerning...but he likes it more.

It's the start of these two doing more than just argue with each other. Alejandro's still not happy about being small. He complains about it just as constantly. But it's no longer lashing out at Noah. Noah doesn't really throw him into the time out cage anymore. Alejandro is gentler when he bites into Noah's neck to feast. Noah is less tense when it happens. He leans into it more. They bicker still, but they're actually willing to work with each other.

It's how they figure out a loophole. Neither can't really use their own magics to their full potential anymore....but they do now have access to each other's magic. They just have to be willing to train each other in it.

On Noah's side, Alejandro is trying to teach him how to hypnotize others through charming them. It doesn't go well. Noah's terrible at giving compliments. Changing his wardrobe to accentuate Noah's looks doesn't help when he doesn't flaunt them. That shopping trip to get Noah a new outfit definitely didn't awaken anything in Alejandro. Except it does. Noah is indulging him in one of his favorite activities. He looks cute in some outfits, hot in others. Noah mocks, Noah teases, Noah banters. It's just Noah, actually. Noah's cute, and he's also hot. Oh no. Alejandro's got himself a crush. ...MOVING ON FROM THAT-

Eventually, it clicks. This isn't working because Alejandro is teaching Noah how to be a Burromuerto. Which Noah certainly isn't. To charm someone, you have to work with what you naturally have and exaggerate it. Noah has snark. Use that to insult people that his victims would hate, not the victim themselves. Nobody likes being insulted, but everyone has something that they love gossiping about. That's Noah's in to get others to open up.

Then, there's the actual ask. Noah can't directly say what he wants all the time. Sometimes that may work, but sometimes what he wants is directly opposite to what someone else wants. He can find out when it's safe to be direct or not through gossiping. Then, if it's not safe? Make them feel safe. People underestimate Noah because of his age and figure. Use that.

Noah's just a pathetic, cute scrungly little guy who doesn't do much. What's the harm in letting him take a dangerously powerful grimoire off your hands? He's not going to do much with it. He's just curious.

Noah grins with pride the day he's able to hypnotize a guard who constantly abuses their power into humiliating himself.

On Alejandro's side, Noah's willing to teach him shadow magic. He wants to start with teaching Alejandro how to change their shape, and then move on up to making them solid.

There is also teleporting through shadow, but Noah's not teaching him that. That would give Alejandro the ability to leave Noah. Which would be bad for the whole 'keep Alejandro in check thing'. For no other reason. Noah wouldn't miss him. Not one bit. They just have to stay together for practicality. That's all. Let's get back to talking about shadows.

Alejandro assumes this should be a piece of cake. It's just another form of manipulating, just with a thing rather than a person.

He's terrible at it.

He coaxes, he begs, he pleads with the shadow to just move, and it refuses him. He's cursing in Spanish at an inanimate object.

Noah laughs at him for this. This earns Noah some curse words.

Noah tells him to stop treating magic like it's a person to be charmed. It's not. It's a thing. It follows orders so far as you figure out the right language. You tell it what you want, and then it gives it to you. No convincing, no tricking. Just asking.

Alejandro can't ask for one thing when he means another. That just confuses the magic and makes things not work. He needs to be direct for once in his life. Trust in his own ability to make something happen. Not in his ability to trick someone else into making something happen.

It takes Alejandro a while to just ask the magic to do what he wants.

I can't figure out how it'd work on Alejandro's side yet. Probably because I haven't yet defined the kind of magic he can do. 'Standard wizard fair' isn't going to cut it if this is coming from a personal bond/something that's intrinsic to Noah that would simply take a different form with Alejandro. It'd definitely have something to do with tying into how Alejandro doesn't actually NEED to charm people/force them to like him to get what he wants. His problem would definitely be that he's trying to force the magic to go exactly how he wants it to go. But magic's not something that likes being tamed like that. So Alejandros's got to learn to effectively say what he wants and just trust in his own abilities enough to make it happen.

When he does?

Alejandro shows off with a little shadow puppet show. He orchestrates puppets no bigger than him from atop Noah's bookshelf. It's endearing, it's sincere, and Noah is screwed because he is in love with this little vampire.

The more they teach each other, the stronger they grow. Neither realize it, but the bond is no longer draining each other.

They learn about this when someone attempts to mug Noah when he's running one of Chris's errands. The mugger grabs an Alejandro in bat form and slams him against stone to stop Noah from using magic. Alejandro is alive, but in a daze. Noah immediately makes tendrils of shadows to fling the mugger into the nearest wall, then hold them aloft in the air. He's running for Alejandro who's mumbling, asking if Noah is alright.

Noah doesn't know healing magic, but he's putting all of his focus into figuring out something to help Alejandro. It's working somewhat. Alejandro's head is clearer, though his body is still damaged. Noah puts more effort into making sure all of Alejandro is better. So much so that he doesn't notice a second mugger coming to check on their partner, who is now sneaking up on Noah. Noah is grappled before he can react, and is dragged away kicking and shouting.

Alejandro acts before he can think twice about it. The next thing he knows, he's standing at eye level with both of his newest victims. He hisses, his fangs bared, ordering them silent before they can scream about his presence. They are to release Noah and grovel.

The muggers do so without hesitation, their eyes glazed over. Alejandro wraps his arms around Noah in a hug. His grip is tight. He is at his full strength and could crush whoever he desired. He is gentle with his querido and plants a kiss on his forehead.

Alejandro wants so badly to drain them dry, but Noah takes priority. The muggers are to leave, turn themselves in, and forget the type of magic Noah and Alejandro used, and their faces.

The muggers leave, and the two are left to look each other in the eyes for the first time.

They stare for a while. Neither of them quite sure of what the other wants to do right now. Noah's the one who breaks the silence first.

"This late growth spurt's a bit much, wouldn't you say?"

Alejandro snorts at the absurdity.

They agree to keep the familiar bond as it is. It still lets them communicate with each other telepathically, and lets them use the other's magic.

They'll have to hide the fact that Alejandro is at his full strength, of course. Particularly from Chris and Chef. Alejandro tries and finds out that he can shrink at will now. Truth be told, he doesn't mind it anymore. (He's touch-starved, and rather enjoys being held and pampered by Noah.)

Alejandro also promises not to go enthralling everyone.

"Just five thralls will suffice."

"No."

"Two?"

"No!"

"One? I'll even make it Justin. Just imagine the things we could have him do."

"...No."

"You hesitated!"

"Stop tempting me!"

"Is it really tempting if you were already thinking it?"

"I hate you."

"You love me."

"That's not the point!"

The two stop when they realize that bombshell just got dropped.

They finally have proper confessions and decide to start dating. Alejandro immediately offers to turn Noah into a vampire so they can live together. Noah immediately shuts him down. Alejandro's sad until Noah explains.

One, that's a huge commitment when they've literally just started dating. And two, if Noah did that now then he'd have to be a teenager forever. He hates being a teenager NOW. An eternity of that? Hell no. In the future though? They can come back to this, and Noah'll let him know if he changes his mind.

Alejandro is more than happy to wait.

Fun little side note: Alejandro's got a bat form, and I already know exactly which species he is!

Meet the vampyrum spectrum! Also known as the spectral bat, or the great false vampire bat. They're carnivorous little guys who eat birds, rodents, and uniquely, other kinds of bats! Part of their natural habitat covers Peru, and they're also fun in that while most other bat species are polygynous where it's just one male with multiple females, these guys are mostly monogamous! Perfect for Alejandro!

#i swear this was supposed to just be a comedic au #and then the character analysis mode hit #it was all over from there #still I hope you guys enjoy the imagery of a small Alejandro in a cage shaking at the bards and screeching like a banshee #i know i do #total drama #total drama au #alenoah #total drama alenoah #td alenoah #total drama alejandro #td alejandro #total drama noah #td noah #alejandro burromuerto #vampire au #giant/tiny #giant/tiny au #g/t #alenoah week #alenoah week 2024 #alenoahweek2024 #2024 alenoah week #we drive each other batty #perp fanfic #fanfiction #total drama fanfiction #total drama fanfic

[comradekatara]

I saw your toph+katara gender post and honestly... thank you for being one of few ppl i've seen who actually do a deeper analysis of toph? Most people tend to just go "i love toph she's cool <3" and while that's fine, its so nice to actually see someone Get Her. Esp wrt her gender expression and relationship to femininity. She's always been v imporant to me, like when i was like 12 i used to watch youtube clips of the toph+katara spa day scene on repeat and have Feelings abt it (still think its a super interesting scene??). Imo, while a lot of her expression is def rebelling (+overcompensating) and doing the oposite of her feminine upbringing, a lot of it is also a genuine JOY at being covered in dirt/burping/being loud and crass and tough? Idk i just feel like a lot of her contemporary "tomboy" characters were more defined as "ugh i hate Skirts and Dresses", but tophs brand of gnc joy and complex relationship w femininity always hit closer For Me? Like. She's loud and crass and rude and badass and cool, she does find it fun to dress girly but as like an Activity with a buddy, she's overjoyed at being portrayed as a big buff dude ("that's exactly how i would cast it!"), she's actually very spiritual and perceptive when not in Loud Mode, she keeps her fancy hairstyle but adds messy bangs, idk she's just. Character of all time. I'd love to hear if you have more thoughts on toph+gender (or just toph in general), and thank you for actually Understanding Her <33

YES!!!!! i have so many thoughts and feelings on toph. she is one of my absolute favorite characters i truly love her so much, and like you said, i hate when people dismiss her even as they claim to love her. "she's so badass" like okay, and?

toph is also just very important to me as her disability informs so much of her arc. and that disability is also inextricable from her gender and her family and all the factors that shape who she is, her strengths and her insecurities. you cannot separate her parents' abuse from her gender, class, or blindness. it's the combination of being an aristocratic blind girl that informs who she is and how she's perceived, especially by her family. she's an only child in a family that would clearly desire at least one son, and you cannot help but wonder whether they stopped at one for eugenicist purposes, whether they couldn't bear the "pain" of risking having another disabled child. and also because they clearly consider having a blind child such a handful that any other child would draw their attention away from her dire, pressing needs. so they completely smother her, but they also dismiss her, trivialize her desires and ignore her feelings and treat her more like a fragile porcelain doll than a person.

it's why, by the time of "the chase," she gets inordinately defensive over katara's suggestion that she pitch in when setting up camp. i see a lot of people claim that toph in this episode is acting like a spoiled brat who refuses to do manual labor because she's too wealthy to understand, but that's not actually the case. toph is fine with doing manual labor (she literally spent who knows how long working in an underground wrestling ring, she's not unaccustomed to work), but she's averse to helping others. as she says, "i carry my own weight." she's establishing, erroneously but understandably, that her idea of affording others respect is assuming that everyone behaves on an individual basis. she's never had friends before, by her own admission, and so in her mind, the only model she's ever seen for "helping others" is smothering them, denying their agency, and deciding everything for them.

toph thinks that katara is a bitch because katara is suggesting that toph meddle in other people's affairs, instead of respecting their own business. and katara thinks that toph is a bitch because she does just straight up assume that toph is a spoiled brat who doesn't understand the value of community. and while toph isn't a spoiled brat, learning the value of community is indeed integral to her arc. and more than simply communal values of helping and sharing with others, she also learns to rely on them in turn. she learns how to embrace her vulnerability, and let others carry her weight for her. her apotheosis in the finale is literally hanging onto sokka, who is holding her entire weight with one hand, for dear life. putting her complete faith in him to carry her and protect her as he always does.

that ability to embrace her vulnerability among the people she actually trusts to not only love and support her, but also to recognize her as a human being and care about her as a a peer, is so crucial to her identity as someone who has learned from years of ableist stigma to put walls up and present herself as someone uniquely powerful and invulnerable. and it's not that she isn't uniquely powerful, but her strength is also largely a projection. it's why she's so delighted to be portrayed by a big buff man, because that's the kind of person she wishes she could be, so that she wouldn't have to be underestimated and belittled and oppressed by people who dismiss her and coddle her and disrespect her and, quite literally, put her in a box.

so if toph's experience with disability is informed by her class and her upbringing, then let's now turn to her experience with gender, which is equally informed by her background. katara often balks at toph's less feminine presentation, because despite her incredibly righteous crusade against limiting patriarchal standards, she nonetheless has her own hangups when it comes to gender. but then again, so does toph. just as katara disdains toph's masculinity, toph finds katara's femininity offensive because her only real model for femininity in her experience is that of aristocratic wifehood. poppy beifong, to be exact, who is not exactly a girlboss (let alone a revolutionary, like katara is). and when katara tries to shove toph back into a box, toph resists because of course she does, that's who she is. she's not going take what she experiences as violent repression lying down.

toph is wrong in "the runaway" to exclude katara from their fun, and she is wrong to call compare her to a mother, but it's not out of nowhere. there is an obvious precedent to these actions. katara is a genuinely feminine girl who loves to boss people around and dictate how they should live their lives. to toph, this is the most egregious sin imaginable. katara, through her femininity and authoritative attitude, is positioning herself, in toph's eyes, as her mother. and toph calls her out for being overbearing and claims that katara hates fun and wants to boss everyone around for this reason, even though sokka is obviously the primary fun-hating, overbearing member of the group.

however, sokka never dictates how toph should act or dress, sokka never made fun of toph for being blind (which is a thing that really deserves its own post, if we're being honest). sokka makes them spend their vacation time at the library and enforces his color-coded schedules on them and generally brings down the vibe what with his neuroticism and severity, but he also laughs at toph's jokes and banters with her in a way that treats her as a friend and not as a rival. and unlike katara, whose desires and commands seem completely arbitrary to toph, sokka's commands are grounded in a logic that toph can understand. so even if from an outside perspective, toph's claim that a revolutionary teenage girl who loves to cause trouble and seeks adventure and joy around every corner is trying to be the overbearing mom of the group makes no sense, it makes perfect sense to toph, based on her history with femininity, overbearing mothers, and feminine overbearing mothers.

toph presents masculinely as compensation, as a way to make herself seem strong and tough instead of dainty and submissive as she was always made out to be. she associates masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness because that's the paradigm she grew up in. it's why she's always teasing aang about his supposed femininity and calling him "twinkle toes" (which, as sokka points out, isn't manly). in their first interaction, aang beat her in a fight and humiliated her in front of all her adoring fans, and avatar or not, toph's gonna make him pay for that by undermining him in turn, by using his presentation as a monk to mock him. even if aang isn't gay or even gender non-conforming (within the assumptions of his own culture), toph is still employing the logic of sexism/homophobia to undermine aang when she makes jokes about him being "more in touch with [his] feminine side than most guys." and of course, the nickname "twinkle toes" is also deeply affectionate, and aang (bless his heart) never actually takes offense to it. but toph is trying to establish herself as more powerful than him due to the humiliating knowledge that he could beat her in a fight, easily.

toph's masculinity is inextricably tied to her invulnerability. she wants to be taken seriously and treated as a human being, which is respect that has been denied to her due to her status as a blind girl, save for her blind bandit persona, which superficially empowered her and made her feel strong. it's not coincidence that her rival earthbender is a guy who is essentially a parody of masculinity. toph wants to position herself as equivalent, if not directly superior, to the Most Masculine Man, because that's how she'll be afforded respect, in her mind. but she is a girl. and there's a part of her that likes being a girl, and wishes she could explore her femininity more than she's allowed herself to, beyond the confines of the beifong mansion. she keeps her hair long because she still loves her family and holds out hope that maybe one day they can accept her (she comes from a culture modeled off of tang dynasty china, so her long hair is likely a product of her adherence to confucian values). and once she embraces it, she genuinely does get into being made over at the fancy lady day spa.

femininity has been a genuinely harmful and repressive agent in toph's life, and it's understandable that she would internalize some misogynistic notions surrounding girl/womanhood as they were foisted onto her her entire childhood. but femininity isn't ontologically harmful. femininity isn't ontological, period. i think as toph gets older, and her friendship with katara grows deeper as they both come to be more honest with each other, she would grow to embrace her masculinity in a more organic and less compensatory way. less of a "i'm not like other girls" complex (which itself is not something that girls should be mocked and punished for, but rather a product of a patriarchal system that oppresses and alienates women, thus leading many less gender-conforming girls to attempt to assert their agency and individuality in any way they can, even if it means putting down others in the process), and more so genuinely coming to embrace her butchness. (you don't necessarily have to read her as a baby butch, of course, but considering that being a masculine girl is important to her, i think that's a really lovely and beautiful synthesis of her relationship to gender as a character.)

i think toph would learn stop pitting masculinity and femininity against each other, and instead embrace whatever aspects of either (or neither) she desires, while nonetheless respecting everyone else's deal in turn. i think she would also, in a key turning point, realize that even if she loves her parents, she doesn't have any obligation to be the daughter they expect her to be, and cuts her hair. and as she grows more secure in herself (which comes with age, no twelve year old is truly confident in their own skin), she would stop feeling the need to put other people down to feel big, and be comfortable embracing her desires. and, credit to her, she's clearly already on her way. the progress she makes being vulnerable, especially around sokka, even in what is chronologically a matter of months, is huge.

toph isn't just "badass" because she's strong and powerful. but rather, what makes her so powerful, at least to disabled viewers who see their struggles reflected in hers, is her ability to grow with her environment, allowing herself to admit help, and letting herself be loved. if you couldn't already tell, toph is incredibly important to me.

#smultronviol #asks #toph #analysis #katara&toph #sokka&toph #aang&toph #poppy beifong #god she just means so much to me..... #i was trying not to make this too personal but like. baby disabled dyke. god she is so important. #not that i'm butch. but i think she is :) #also some of those links are better than others but i included all of them anyway lol #realizing now that i actually talk about toph a lot... #anyway. thank you for this ask #i really really appreciate it and took a while responding specifically because i wanted to have time to be thorough #not that this is like. The definitive toph essay #but i hope what i wrote here resonated #because like i said. she means a lot to me and i truly do feel like very few ppl understand her fully #she is so important blind bandit numero uno campeon del mundo

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

Last night, I started another rewatch of YOI and I for the first time, I wondered what was going on inside Yuuko's brain while Yuuri was showing her his take on Stammi Vicino.

What do we know about Yuuko?

Yuuko is a big skating otaku. She's not only a fan of her former rinkmate Yuuri, we also see her swoon over Viktor and Yurio (she'd totally be the type who swoons over even more skaters, but we don't know that). When she fangirls, she fangirls hard which can even cause her nosebleed.

Yuuko is one of Yuuri's greatest supporters and someone he can confide in. Together, they copied Viktor's programmes, and she always has his back.

She knows that Yuuri has a crush on Viktor and has been emulating Viktor and striving to become as good as him since they watched the Junior Worlds together as kids.

And then Yuuko, who until that point thought that Yuuri was depressed, witnesses Yuuri skate a perfect copy of his crush's free programme that can be interpreted as a (gay) love song or a yearning for a soulmate (it's a bit more complicated than that, I had started writing a post that analyses the lyrics, but put it on the backburner for multiple reasons) and not only does she recognise the programme by Yuuri's starting pose alone, but goes immediately into full fangirl mode.

That's her face when he stops to perform towards her. In that moment, realisation must hit her that Yuuri is far from giving up skating, that he has not given up on his dream of emulating Viktor and meeting him on the ice as an equal. And he shares all this with her who had been supporting his dream from the very start.

I mean, look at his yearning expression:

Yuuri is fully immersed in his performance. However, being a fan of Viktor herself, Yuuko probably knows what the song is about. And because of that, she is able to empathise with Yuuri and can guess what's going on inside him while skating Stammi Vicino. (Figure skating 101: skaters normally perform towards the judges to increase their presentation mark. But here, Yuuri is alone with his childhood friend and the effect of the move would be wasted if he doesn't perform it towards her.)

Yuuri later explains that he has been practising this programme since the competitions ended for him three months ago. He was hoping to get back his love for skating and to remember how it was like when the two copied Viktor together. Since the disastrous Nationals, Yuuri has been working towards his comeback, even if it's hanging by a thread because he's still missing something that will help him continue and he doesn't know what it is. All he knows is that he wants to return to competition and keep on chasing his dream, and he starts all over where it began (I wrote a long-ass analysis about how Yuuri utilises Stammi Vicino for exactly that purpose here).

As one of Yuuri's closest friends, Yuuko must have guessed some of this already just from watching Yuuri skate. As a fan and a former skater, she immediately understands that he has been practising this programme for some months, and the perfection it exhibits is a telltale of how strong his dream, his obsession with Viktor is still burning inside him. You don't go to such lengths when you're not extremely passionate about something.

And that's oil in the fire of Yuuko's own fannishness. Because Yuuko is a fan of both Yuuri and Viktor, she must be burning like crazy to see them compete against each other again. She's been rooting for Yuuri from the start, she wants him to succeed and be happy and if that includes Yuuri meeting Viktor again, that would be the cherry on top.

If I was her, I would freak out, too.

We're all Yuuko in this scene. But because her character is so underrated, it took me so long to notice.

#yuri on ice #yoi meta #katsuki yuuri #yuuko nishigori #my yoi meta #not really a meta but speculation #yoi #yuri on ice meta #stammi vicino

[dduane]

How do you come up with ideas? Like where do you go for inspiration for things given how annoying writers block can be?

I'd want to separate these out a bit, since they don't seem to me to be the same issue.

First (and simplest): I kinda hate using the term "writers' block", as it tends to mean too many different things to too many people, and it's too easy to be misunderstood. The term gets used for everything from being unable to start writing, to being unable to keep writing, to being unable to finish writing.

When I use it (and of course your mileage may vary), it means "hitting some spot in the writing—usually in the middle, hardly ever in any of the other places—from which you're having trouble moving forward."

After many years' practice, this usually means that I've run into a place in the narrative where the primary character involved in that section has issues going on that haven't been resolved: unanswered questions, uncertainties about what's going to happen next. (And let's be clear, as one writer to another: the uncertainties are yours, not theirs. The character is waiting for you to achieve clarity. You get clear? They get clear.)

When I hit this kind of problem, I set aside time to examine all the main characters' situations and see whether everyone knows where they're headed, or at least what they're headed toward. Normally I find that some one character has questions that haven't been answered, or some necessary conversation (with another character, or fate, or God, or you) that hasn't yet happened. Or hasn't happened to their satisfaction.

I've dealt with this problem in about twenty different ways over four decades, from the cold-blooded-analysis method of taking apart previous chapters or sections of a work, looking at the final end-state chapters or sections, and figuring out what's missing... to the Sherlock-Holmes-in-his-sitting-room method of making your character sit down in the Empty Chair and tell you what their problem is. (Which is also a mode favored by psychiatric professionals the world over, these days. Believe me, I did not give an entire novel that title accidentally.)

So: as far as I can tell, "writer's block" is almost always code for "a missing transaction (or desired transaction) in the narrative that you haven't yet identified and resolved." See above. Or that transaction may be some sort of failed communication between the outer, author-to-real-world world, and the inner, character-in-created-world world. Track it down and resolve it, and everything will be good.

Meanwhile, as for inspiration and finding ideas:

This is... not one of my problems, so I'm probably the wrong person to be asking. ...Going anywhere for inspiration? Why would I do that? It hunts me down in the street. It grabs me from behind when I'm trying to deal with the email. It gets me in a hammerlock when I'm watching somebody else's TV show.

In short: gods help me, I've been a Having An Idea person since before I started to read. I'm the one who, after being read a sleepy-time fairy tale about a prince rescuing a princess, looked at her mom and said, "Why can't it be a prince rescuing a prince?" And you see where that got me: half a million words, and (as we say on AO3) These Two Idiots. (Or: "What if magic came with a user's manual?" ...Oh gods.)

At this end of time, it would be tough for me not to have an idea or three for a novel before I've had my tea.

It goes like this:

(a) Wake up. Reach for iPad.

(b) Read news. Ugh. Naughty, naughty world. (With occasional bright spots.)

(c) ...And then wonder: "How would it be if X [thing that you just read on the news] happened in Y [entirely different universe where conditions (z) pertain]?"

(d) [make up entirely different set of conditions that don't pertain in local or even non-local reality]

...The good thing about this, of course, is that I know that ideas are cheap. Ideas are nothing. They're a dime a dozen. A dime for two or three dozen. In this regard, they observe Sturgeon's Law. (Gods rest his gentle soul.)

And more to the point: ideas are easy. It's execution (especially good, deep-delved, worthwhile execution, over tens or hundreds of thousands of words) that's hard.

Which, ninety-eight times out of a hundred, leads to:

(d) Examine idea, put it in the Scales of How Hot You Are For It, watch how the Scales weigh it and find it wanting: then throw idea out, get the hell up and have some tea.

Or, in those two other cases (twice a year, maybe); when an idea comes along that pulls the Scales down and is heavier than the Feather of Your Current Intent in the other side of the Balance—something that has some weight to it, some bite, one that resists being thrown the hell out:

(d1) Get up, have tea, write a premise filling out the idea to at least a couple of pages' length... and then start working out who the hell to market it to.

...Now this is my personal modus operandi, and I've been enacting it across various media for somewhere between fifty and sixty years and change, and there's no way I'm going to stop now. But I submit to you that it might be possible to train yourself into being this kind of What If? person, by simply spending—oh, a week, even two—asking yourself "What if...?" about everything. Every single thing you see, hear, or come in contact with. Why must this thing/this situation/this world be the way it is? Why can't it be some other way? (And then you start reasoning it out. What other way?...)

Frankly, there's no reason this shouldn't work. In fact, considering the ridiculous malleability of the human mind (and I speak with my psychiatric-nurse hat on, here) it's very likely it would work.

There's only one problem with this concept. I have no idea what to tell you if it works and you then decide you want to turn it off.

Because once you've started training your brain into this mode of questioning everything, looking under all the rocks of so-called Reality for the previously impossible impossibilities... there's no guarantee you'll ever be able to make it stop.

It's heaven for me, no mistake. But for you?

Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.

Anyway: hope this helps! :)

#writing advice #ideas #but also #warnings

[majorproblems77]

Bonus links is back which means so am I! Welcome back to my Comic analysis corner :D

You liked my rambling last time so here I am to once again ramble about this comic I love.

Its a wonderul comic and always so well made. Please go look at it if you haven't, it's well worth it. :D

All comic panels and art belong to @bonus-links and the artist @ezdotjpg. Please go and look at their other stuff too!

Grab some popcorn and a drink, and let's get started, shall we!

First these two, I love this frame right off the bat.

Give me more of these two please I love them okay

Loft looks so worried can you hear the fear i can hear the fear. Poor man give him a break.

Oblatory obsession with SKSW link in various links meet aus.

I love him a healthy amount. I love his design and think about him often.

Oh this frame

This frame is very pretty

I love the golden light in the middle, and how she basically makes up the lower part of the symbol. It reminds me of ribbon. Which is fitting considering we get red string all over this comic. (I still need to go into that at one point)

It makes me wonder if we see the other Zelda's more in this context if they too will get the golden ribbon rather than the red string. As I'm seeing it as a way to show how they are connected like how the links are connected.

Panic mode engaged

I'm living for evil laser eye slate. Straight up looks like hes about to pounce on this man and kill him

Slates thinking face

Fangs?

I love it

I love these two. Interesting how dismissive Wolf is being at this stage. (currently playing through TP so I dont know a lot about the triforce in it but I assume it's still there)

Lots to unpack in this one and i love it

Wake vibing in the rain i can kinda understand.

Wolf just looks kinda done with it tbh and I'm here for it its a vibe.

Slate covering the little fairy pal from the rain is low-key giving me life I love him

And Loft, looking up at the clouds with just pure annoyance in his eyes. Like my man, I know you don't like storms but please the clouds didn't do anything to you. (Yet...)

HES A GRANDMA'S BOY AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

ALSO ALSO

I can hear the music in my head as these actions are being done. Like, they are ingrained into my soul after watching enough wind waker playthroughs.

It's awesome he gets to use it with the melody he's learned. More windwaker melodies please i love seeing them used more

Hold on tight indeed! Cause it's about to get HECKIN WIMDY

Such an excited bean i love him

Help him

Help him so much man has fear

This little picture has me cackling, im sorry loft but omg.

And Slate looks so damn excited for this and honestly he deserves it.

Just his little face

Goddammit linebeck, man is just so done with the shenanigans by now. Impressive he's managing to drink from a cup while they are spinning like that. Man has got some amazing arm control to keep it together.

Tetra and Aryll! Them!!!

Also, can you hear the splash as the ship hits the water? People must be used to hearing the sound of a huge gale, then a massive splash and are just like...

Oh, link must be back again.

Love it

Hope you had fun with me today as I went through this one. More rambling than questions this time around which is nice i love just being excited about characters I enjoy. :D

That's all from me tho, until next time!

#bonus links #bonus link analysis #comic analysis with major #ramble corner with major #bonus loft #bonus wake #bonus wolf #bonus slate #thanks for once again listening to me ramble for ages about the things i enjoy! #Loft my beloved #Wake my beloved #:D #this defo belongs in the ramble corner too #Major yells about the things she enjoys for like 30 minutes? #Tell me what you think too! I love hearing theories #I'm gonna do some investigating on that ribbon I think #Have a great day!

[lollytea]

Huntlow ft Gus au where they roleplay Cosmic frontier and being O'bailey helps Hunter feel more confident to flirt with Willow? Kinda like in Community when Annie, Troy and Abed roleplay Inspector Spacetime and Abed totally changes when getting into character

OKAY OKAY OKAY But after all this Collector shit is over and everything settles down. Hunter and Gus LARPing in their Cosmic Frontier cosplays and Gus casts an illusion curtain so Camila's basement really does feel like the inside of a futuristic spaceship. They even get Camila on board to join them. (Remember how excited she was to LARP in Yesterday's Lie?? She's never done anything like this before but she would be so into it!!)

Anyway. You KNOW how Gus and Hunter are. Obviously Gus is a born performer and very committed to theatrics but also there's Hunter who is intensely hyperfixated on Cosmic Frontier and not only connects to O'Bailey but also sees him as a fictional role model of sorts. He's cool and smart and kind and confident and basically everything Hunter aspires to be. So O'Bailey is basically Hunter's main blorbo. He WOULD be the type to keep a notebook full of O'Bailey characters analysis. He understands this fictional man inside and out. Everything from his big grand life aspirations and inner turmoil to his little character tics and personal details.

So when he and Gus get into the zone? Oh Hunter would take it so deathly seriously. Gus would too so they're perfect LARPing partners.

I think it definitely fits with Hunter's tendency to lose himself in the roles that he plays, like how his personality altered when he was wearing the Golden Guard uniform. Except, in this case, Hunter's face is on full display and rather than O'Bailey being a character Hunter can hide behind like the GG was, it's more like Hunter is just having fun playing pretend, while using O'Bailey as a bit of an outlet for him to experiment with the person he wants to be. Role-playing as this character he really likes helps with his confidence significantly as with the bonus of being unmasked, it's easier for him to tap into it as Hunter.

Eventually. Eventually.

Because when they first start playing pretend, Hunter believes that he's playing an entirely different person than himself. But he has so much fun with it!!!

Anyway Gus and Hunter get very into their roles, acting out extremely tense and emotionally gripping scenes. Camila is also very enthusiastic, though she has a tendency to break character every once in a while by devolving into squeals because this is just SO cool!!! Why did she and Manny never do this??

Anyway Willow almost always shows up to watch. For the plot. She sits there and she watches Hunter go full cool hero protagonist mode for the plot. She's very interested in....whatever the fuck is going on. There's an asteroid about to hit the ship she thinks. She doesn't know what an asteroid is but she assumes this is a bad thing.

It's Camila that kickstarts the chaos. She notices the scene is waning in regards to cool shit to say and decides to spice things up. As O'Bailey and Avery are engaged in a tense dialogue, she shuffles over to where Willow is sitting and takes her by the hands to hoist her up.

"How about you join us, Mija? :)"

"Oh!" Says Willow, blinking out of the stupor that overcame her when Hunter started a dramatic monologue about the safety of everyone in the galaxy. "Okay...?"

She had never done something like this before. But now that Camila is leading her over to the boys, she thinks to herself...hm. yeah...Yeah!! Yeah, this could be fun!!!

"Captain Avery." Camila says sharply, snapping her posture straight. "Botanist Kumiko O'Bailey has been sent to inspect our vegetation crop and report back to the Nebula Federation."

Gus and Hunter turn to look at them and Willow feels the push to engage.

"Uhh. YES!" She announces, adopting a powerful air as she places her fists on her hips and tips her chin up high. "It's me! Kumiko!! And I'm here to...uh. To do what Camila just said."

"Quando."

"What Quando just said."

"Also...." Camila continues. "She mentioned wanting to see her husband."

"My what now?" Willow blurts out under her breath.

Oh. Right. Kumiko. Kumiko O'Bailey. She had heard that name once or twice. She knows at least a chunk of the lore. Hunter talks about it often.

So. So she's currently playing the role of...

"Kumiko!" Hunter exclaims and rushes to her side. And then suddenly there's hands and they're long and narrow and warm and they are cradling her hands. And though Willow has held Hunter's hands plenty of times, it was always initiated by her. It's his sudden bout of forwardness that stuns her speechless.

Where is this coming from?

"Um..." Willow finds herself mumbling idiotically.

"You weren't answering any of my communications." Hunter says, looking deeply invested in the colour of Willow's eyes. "I was worried..."

Hunter has not acknowledged that this is something he would have been far too shy to do with Willow Park under any other circumstances. Because he is currently Chief Engineer O'Bailey and he is extremely committed to portraying this role faithfully. And if there's one thing he knows about O'Bailey, it's that he loves Kumiko with abandon.

"Aw, well, you know how it is," Willow grins, still a little breathless. She tries to tear her eyes away from their interlaced fingers, a slight blush seeping across her cheeks.

"The communication....thingie...was busted. So I just figured I'd hop on a spaceship and come find ya."

Under the assumption that she's nailing this role, Willow decides to get a little rambunctious with it. She tilts her head to the side, tweaking her smile into something overtly flirty. "I missed you <3" She says in a honey sweet tone that she has used on him on numerous occasions. It usually renders Hunter completely unsure of what to do with himself. It's adorable.

But not this time.

Hunter, completely unruffled, responds with a warm endeared smile that sends Willow's pulse coursing. "I missed you too." He says softly.

And then. One of those accursed hands of his. It settles into a gentle caress against her face.

Willow's eyes are just about about bulging out of their sockets.

"But wooow," Hunter croons, stroking the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. (Her skin is hot and he is gonna notice, which is only making it hotter.) That's when the flirtatious touch to his own smile cracks through. "You traveled all those lightyears? For me?"

Willow does not have a fucking clue what a lightyear is. But she likes the sound of the word when he says it like that.

"You betcha, babe!" Willow responds enthusiastically, trying to regain some handle on this scenario. "You know I'd travel a million lightyears just to see you."

She flirts. Her. Willow.

Hunter unexpectedly taking the lead here is throwing her off. She's floundering.

Is this what she does to him all the time?

Hunter's smile spreads and he takes a step closer.

Willow would have taken an instinctive step back but she is currently frozen to the spot.

Hunter's eyes are very brown.

"Well..." He says musingly. "You've seen me. Will that be everything, Mrs O'Bailey?"

Willow is certain her heart forgot its main functions before promptly bursting into a frenzy.

How has his palm not scalded against her cheek.

Willow is about to say something. Potential responses swirl around in her head.

She isn't quite sure what is about to happen. All she's processing is that Hunter is standing very close and she has some ideas of what she would like to happen right now and she's pretty sure if she just--

"Oooooh. Go Hunter!" Somebody suddenly whoops and Willow gets to see the O'Bailey persona shatter like glass before her very eyes.

Luz has descended the stairs with not an ounce of context of what is going on. All she sees is Hunter cupping Willow's cheek and moving closer and closer.

Camila is observing with a broad beam, while Gus leans against a nearby wall, a little bored.

With that, Hunter is yanked back to the reality of the situation. He's not in space, he's in a basement. He's not Chief Engineer O'Bailey, he's Hunter. And she is not his wife Kumiko. She is Willow Park.

He might have been about to kiss Willow Park.

Heat floods his face and he breaks into a splutter of rapid-fire apologies. The words are spit out so frantically, they begin to tangle together.

And as charmed as Willow tends to be with flustered Hunter, she is quite disappointed that whatever that was is over.

Meanwhile Hunter is dangerously close to the realization that flirting with Willow Park is something as impossible as he originally thought.

#huntlow #if you send me fun little huntlow asks you too might receive some stupid shit like this

[crossroadsdimension]

I’m still rolling around in analysis mode with Trigun Stampede, and I remember folks familiar with the serious complaining about how much of Vash’s backstory gets revealed.

Except...while there is a lot that’s blatantly said, it doesn’t outright confirm what old Trigun fans already know.

Here’s what we know so far in the first 3 episodes, if you’re coming in as a newbie:

-He was a kid living on a colony ship when the crash happened

-He has a brother named Nai (going by Knives) who is absolutely off his rocker and wants the Plants to survive more than the humans on this desert world. (I mean, just look at Ep 3 again if you think I’m wrong)

-Vash is something more than human (my dad, who is watching this with fresh eyes, thinks that Vash is a cyborg because of the circuitry). Other than his appearance, how quickly he moves and how well he can avoid bullets even while scrambling around like a clown in Ep 2 makes this clear.

-Vash has excellent eyesight and sharpshooting skills, considering he isn’t using a sniper rifle to shoot at EG Mine’s feet as the man sat on his perch in Ep 3, and a single boulder and a single bullet can destroy an entire cluster bomb. Considering how quickly he probably had to calculate how big of a boulder to throw and where to hit it, that means he’s got a very good brain between his ears. (Whether or not he uses it, though....)

-Vash doesn’t want people to know he’s skilled. He said in the first episode that destroying that cluster bomb was all luck on his part.

-Vash is terrified of his brother. It’s a through line in the first three episodes that culminates with Knives showing up. Anyone inexperienced with the series probably thought the piano was pretty until they saw the look of pure terror on Vash’s face, and his shots went very wide when he was shooting at his brother.

-Vash doesn’t like killing/hurting anyone and wants to keep people safe and alive, and he gets furious when someone threatens the status quo because they live for killing others (like EG Mine. I’ve seen that clip of his voice dropping an octave while he points his gun in the bomber’s face, and I know you all have, too).

At best, we could guess that Vash and Knives are enhanced humans, like the two Nebraskas, but with Lost Technology instead of cobbled-together experimental materials. It would explain the “circuitry,” as well as maybe some feelings of betrayal on Knives’ part, if he doesn’t want anything to do with the humans who “re-made” him.

Again, the above is looking at the information the show has given us and extrapolating on what newbies could be thinking. I don’t know if anyone’s actually thinking this or not, but considering my dad’s current perspective....

Here are the things we don’t know because the show didn’t spell it out (putting under a read more if you don’t want to see these questions, and because the post is getting a little long):

-How long it’s been since the crash (or what they even call the crash, because the manga has a name for it!)

-WHAT Vash and Knives are

-The “gate” that Knives talked about, and what Vash might have that mirrors Knives’ abilities (insofar as they’re brothers, at least...I expect some character foil/mirror nonsense)

-Where Millie is (in all seriousness I expect her to show up at some point)

-How Vash lost his arm and where he got the prosthetic

-How Knives knew where Vash was at the end of Ep 1 (it sounded like he was talking to someone....)

-Knives’ long-term goal for himself and the Plants (beyond getting rid of the human “parasites,” as he calls them in Ep 1)

-How far back before the start of the show Vash gained the “Humanoid Typhoon” status

I’m sure there are some other points, but I hope this makes it clear that no, Trigun Stampede does not give us everything about Vash right off the bat. It gives us some points, but not everything. And I’m looking forward to how they reveal everything else as we go along

#cross' rambling #trigun #trigun stampede #story analysis #I just remember seeing someone complain about how much backstory they give away in Ep 1 #and I just wanted to make a counterpoint because it's not like they tell us Everything

[infernaltenor]

a second niki shiina analysis

i dont have a snappy title for this just know its on rinne and niki

ok so! im actually gonna start with a disclaimer that this post is meant to be taken platonically if only because i interpret their relationship as platonic and will use this lens for the whole analysis. for a quick run down as to why, mostly i think its ooc for both rinne and niki; rinne since his go to with any character younger than him by a few years (hinata, yuta, kohaku, just to name a few off the top of my head lol) seems to be to go into "older brother mode", and niki largely since he doesnt rise to any of rinne's flirty bait/joke with anything other than annoyance.

that out of the way. i think theyre silly.

realistically, i think their relationship chart sets it up perfectly; niki and rinne have known each other for five years and probably lived together for most of it, meaning the most important thing is that niki absolutely knows all/most of rinnes tricks. thinking back to the honeybee story with kohaku, while both himeru and kohaku wrote niki's knowledge of the situation off, he brings it up with rinne right at the end. more than likely, this is the sort of thing niki's sort of.... used to with rinne.

also a major portion of their relationship is rinne's weird flirty/jealous moments. i think what drives a portion of the friendship is that niki is rinne's first actual friend. he's weirdly jealous (fs1 niki scout story, for instance. also funnily enough, niki calls him an overprotective father) because of that importance in the relationship; im not sure how to explain it without knowing someone for a long time and not having that experience of not having many friends before, but let's just say. i get it. i get rinne. i get the overprotectiveness/jealousy. but rinne does by and large flirt jokingly imo! it's not just niki who gets hit with it, as iirc himeru does occasionally too, meaning that its likely meant to be taken as a quirk of his personality. personally, i think niki gets hit with it the most because of their familiarity, at one point or another in a relationship interactions tend to boil down to poking fun at one another, and what is rinne and niki if not that?

niki's a bit harder to nail down, if only because i think his character is meant to be written as someone who intentionally puts himself down and tries to lower peoples expectations of him (for instance, the idiotification, intention to only think about cooking, etc. he has layers. i need to see him have a breakdown); with rinne he's both at his softest and most brash, given that most of rinne and niki's outward relationship is like watching two cats hit each other over the head. in the main story he is uncharacteristically nice (at that point) when rinne's distressed over the situations, offering to go back to rinne's hometown with him, and well. i cant blame him! five year friendship, probably living together, they're genuinely attached at the hip, especially considering that niki was both 14 when they met, and his parents had left him alone following the controversy that hit his father. i can't help but think that niki especially doesn't think rinne would survive on his own, hence the offer that he extended.

i also just think this level of depth in a relationship, especially when taken platonically, irregardless of gender is vastly under represented in media. rinne and niki read to me as incredibly close friends who have been stuck with each other for years and cant imagine the other one without them, which is something that usually gets pushed romantically; but i think in many ways that its a detriment, especially with these two. yes, that's partially because in general it feels occ, but also since the depth in it, imo, lessens with a romantic context, and it erases a large part of both of their personalities.

#enstars #niki shiina #rinne amagi #using my english minor to analyze an idol gacha game like its a piece of literature #PLEASE ask me about niki shiina btw hes gotta pay for the space he takes up in my brain somehow #tenor talks

[heretichromia]

A (mediocre) defense of Shining and Hoshiguma.

Narrow use cases in the advanced metagame don't equate to low power.

I think we sometimes forget the purpose of tier lists, and the kind of people who most need them. Especially in a game like Arknights, where "best in slot" is an extremely loaded question compared to most other games, it's hard to really properly convey unit power.

That isn't to say that tier lists aren't helpful. There is a significant difference between the power levels of characters like Młynar and Ebenholz, and people who don't want to (or don't have the game knowledge required to) read and compare kits and try to navigate the mess that is showcase videos (which are typically not good demonstrations of an operator's utility) get pretty good information from a website generally telling them "build Pozyomka if you want a good sniper" and "don't build Vigil if you want a good vanguard."

...But come the fuck on, man. I promise this isn't just a Gamepress rant. This is a community perception issue. Gamepress's tier list is just an illustrative example of how bad the community at large is at evaluating anything but the absolute top tier of obvious meta threat.

If you're not seeing the problem with the above, then consider this: what unit would actually be best for the kind of person who needs a tier list to build?

The tankiest non-limited operator in the game, perfectly serviceable for almost every map with good performance, who still sees routine usage in many high-difficulty maps and even the occasional Contingency Contract?

One of two units that are mediocre blockers, are significantly squishier, and have extremely few optimal use cases outside of dedicated Contingency Contract strategies that aren't realistically applicable to normal gameplay?

Why on earth is Hoshiguma ranked below Liskarm and Blemishine? Why is Hoshiguma in roughly the same tier as Croissant and Bubble? Why is Shining rated just above two units that are pretty much never used?

I feel like this is the sort of thing that happens when you let Reddit-brained "analysis" get to your head, and you forget how to evaluate units entirely. This isn't even the new player tier list! It's supposedly for endgame, trying to evaluate operators "for all game modes."

I hope they're not trying to include Contingency Contract in there, where Liskarm and especially Blemishine are in fact extremely valuable, because CC is a game mode where Cliffheart is considerably more impactful than Thorns. You just can't take into account CC in a tier list like this without having the list make no sense at all.

None of this means that these units aren't...dated, or that they don't have problems in the modern game. They are, and they do. But this is a pretty poor way of reflecting that. I could see an argument that neither of them belong in any sort of S-tier, even on Gamepress's dumb list where there's four separate grades above A+. But...if that's the case, then we still need to be honest about where the alternatives fall, because the problem with Shining and Hoshiguma isn't that they're bad at their jobs.

———

What are they good at?

If you understand their kits, just skip this section. That said, so many people don't. I see people talking about how Sussurro does Shining's job better than her all the time, which is true if you're only looking at raw healing numbers and not actual damage mitigation.

...Tanking. Specifically, physical tanking, though Hoshiguma's large HP pool means she's pretty decent at absorbing Arts damage too (just not as well as someone like Saria with built-in RES).

—

Hoshiguma has a big slab of DEF, the highest persistent value on any operator. She's good at standing there, taking damage, and reflecting damage back to enemies that hit her. That last bit is why she sees continued high-end usage today. While she can get almost 2,350 DEF with her S1 (the highest possible DEF in the game attainable by a single character, if I'm not mistaken), she's mostly used for her S2's reflect, where she can still get nearly 1,700 DEF (Mod-Y). That, combined with her 25% chance to just...completely ignore damage means she is a hilariously tanky unit compared to her competition.

If what you're looking for is someone who can stare down as much physical damage as possible and live to tell the tale, Hoshiguma is going to be one of your best options, if not your best.

—

Shining, meanwhile, is the best single-target ground unit healer in the game. While her effectiveness spikes when healing high-DEF targets like Saria, Hoshiguma, etc., she's simply good and effective in all scenarios where she's healing ground units taking a sufficient amount of physical damage. I've done...an embarrassing amount of math for this subject, so if any of this is wrong, I'll cry (but also please let me know).

Here's the conclusions:

With her Mod-X, Shining S2 will more or less always outpace the best-in-slot persistent healing (Lumen) in actual total mitigation, even on relatively low-DEF units.

On high-DEF units (Saria, Nian, Hoshiguma), Shining S2 can outpace Sussurro S2 in effective mitigation—on a persistent uptime skill.

Shining S2 loses a lot of value if Shining has to heal anyone but the main tank, because she could waste her shield on someone else. This can be effectively mitigated in most circumstances by proper unit placement, or drawing fire with fast-redeploys, Nightingale cages, etc., but it's something to keep in mind.

Shining S3 is completely incomparable to anything else in the game. Nothing comes remotely close when it comes to mitigating incoming physical damage.

Shining is far and away the best unit in her class at her job. Again, nobody comes remotely close.

———

But, yes, they do have one big issue.

...This is pretty obvious, but physical tanking isn't the premium role it used to be.

It is not useless, and for many players represents a much simpler strategy to dealing with several powerful enemies than the "canonical" strategies you'll find in video guides. It's also an almost universal utility. Surviving physical damage is something you have to do in almost every map, so bringing someone like Hoshiguma who's good at doing that is never bad. At worst, there's a small number of better options, like Saria, who can in many cases reduce Hoshiguma + Medic to a single unit, but...I don't really think we should be implying that a unit is barely better than a vanilla 4* because they're sometimes (and not always!) outshone by one of the most powerful operators in the game that not everyone is guaranteed to have.

...But I do have to emphasize that the role isn't premium anymore.

A sizable handful of modern bosses these days have ways of getting around walls. And they should. It'd be very boring if the best strategy to every encounter was to wall up and watch the enemy bash its head against your units until it dies. But between all the methods of crowd control, debuffs, teleporting, or simply walking through your operators that bosses are doing these days, you'll find that there's frequently better tools for the job than getting a really tanky guy.

Some frequently used options:

Bursting the motherfucker to high heaven before they can ever touch your operators or the blue box.

Straight-up immortality, a la Specter or Specter the Unchained.

Utilizing crowd control, be it through outright stuns, Suzuran slows, Gnosis freezes, various sources of bind (Gladiia, Rosa, etc.), or even shifting from Weedy on low-weight bosses.

We have such expansive toolkits at our disposal nowadays that we don't need to rely on operators who are "just" good. Hoshiguma and Shining are very good operators at their jobs! Their jobs are just sometimes not the best fit for any scenario, and in many cases, the worse options will still suffice, while bringing something more to the table. If you can get by with Saria + Ptilopsis, why wouldn't you opt for the higher SP generation? If Mudrock works and you don't need a healer at all, why substitute one operator for two that do considerably less damage? This won't be true all the time, especially since enemy stats have been on a steady increase—even my level 90, Mod-Y, S1M3 Saria isn't enough sometimes. Still, tankiness is definitely something that, if it's in excess, just...goes to waste.

—

But...

...why are we evaluating operators under the assumption that everyone has every other operator at their disposal? Yes—if you have literally every operator in the game, and can use them proficiently, then you're likely only going to use Hoshiguma when you need her reflect. If you have Saria, then you're likely to use Hoshiguma only sometimes as opposed to almost every map.

I feel like we fall into this trap really often. If a unit isn't the absolute best in every circumstance or doesn't do something hilariously overpowered they're unplayably awful, on the same level as 4*s, and shouldn't be built. Yeah, of course, you shouldn't prioritize getting E2 Hoshiguma if you're sitting on E1 Thorns, Pozyomka, or some first-rate DPS unit, but you cannot look at Hoshiguma's numbers, then look me in the eye and tell me she's a marginal improvement at best over fucking Bubble.

It's a problem that's worse with lower rarity units, especially 5* units, as the current memetic thought is that 5*s are barely better than 4*s, despite that being demonstrably untrue in many circumstances. (Can I blame SUPAH for that?) That said, I wanted to focus on Hoshiguma and Shining here, because they're victims of the same thinking that are actually still optimal in some situations, with no one who does their job better than them.

#arknights #hoshiguma #shining #arknights analysis

[overwatch-does-stuff]

Bad Memories

Summary: The first time Bastion saw the armor, they ran. The second time, they froze. And present at both was a man with more compassion than common sense.

(Author's note: this fic was written before the story announcement trailer showed that Reinhardt was not, in fact, okay with Omnics, so that's the reason he's fairly out of character here.)

---

The first time Bastion saw the armor, they ran.

The day had otherwise been peaceful. Happy, even. Two new friends had arrived, friends of Torbjorn’s, which of course made them both Bastion’s friends by default. There was the tall, enormous man named Reinhardt, with a loud voice and a big smile. Then there was his smaller companion, a woman named Brigitte, with long red hair and a smaller but still muscular build. Torbjorn seemed equally fond of both. 

After the introductions, Brigitte and Winston had brought something in from the outside. Something big and covered in a tarp. Brigitte had smiled and pulled the tarp down. Silver glinted off metallic angles, twinkling, catching Bastion’s attention. They couldn’t look away.

The crested helmet and bulky frame crawled from their optic and into the deep recesses of their memory bank. It reached in and pulled forth shambling strings of a memory that might not have been their own, pulling, pulling, until the fire licked the edges of their vision and warnings spilled throughout their most primal systems.

Crusader.

It was suicide to turn one’s back on a Crusader. Bastion’s systems told them that. Their legs did not want to move and their torso did not want to turn, but a last-ditch override took care of that. Diverting power from threat analysis to hydraulics was also a horrible idea, but they did so anyway.

Active processing began to null as more power transferred, their speed picking up. The door ahead did not open so they tore it down with their momentum.

They were bathed in sunlight and their optic adjusted to the outside. They barreled past further buildings in the complex before thinking to take shelter. Too many open angles, too many lines of sight. They turned, sliding across the ground as they readjusted their trajectory, to an alley between buildings. 

The alleyway ended in a solid wall which housed a decrepit dumpster, which they noticed too late. Bastion crashed into it and it crinkled like a leaf underfoot in the fall. The impact rattled loose the protocol they had been trying their hardest to avoid.

The transformation sent old damage warnings shooting up their frame as they configured into sentry mode. Their barrel swung around to the entrance of the alley.

The Crusader was coming, it had to be coming, but Bastion couldn’t tell whether the thundering they heard came from its footfalls or from their own shaking as they spun their barrel up.

No threats registered. No threats registered. As long as it stayed that way, then they wouldn’t do something that they knew they would regret.

Footsteps from the other end of the alley.

“Bastion, luv. Bastion! Where did you go? No need to be scared. It’s all okay.”

A blink of blue. Target registered. Bastion fired.

The vibration of their firing pins hitting the ends of cartridges, one by one by one, was a well-oiled symphony. It felt familiar. Bastion hated how it almost felt good. It was their purpose, after all- raining metal hell upon whatever was down range.

The chorus stopped. Their clip had run out. 

Nothing followed but silence.

The urge to reload was mounting the longer they stayed configured, but a quick justification- the target is gone, must go find -let them transform back to recon mode.

But they did not investigate. That urge was far more easily quelled. Instead, they turned to face the wall. With no visuals to distract, they focused on turning off their combat protocols. They dug in their memory banks and brought up images of the forest. Sunlight filtering through trees. Butterflies sunning themselves on rocks by a stream.

With a click, their targeting overlay disappeared. The commands keeping their body rigid disappeared, and they sagged forward, letting their gun arm sink towards the ground and putting their hand against the wall to steady themselves. They stayed there until their cooling fans spun on, venting the heat from the strain from their systems. 

A small background notification appeared and they let it through without thinking. Target confirmed eliminated?

Bastion jolted and turned their head down the alley. Immediate visual scans did not turn up a body. 

“B-bastion, luv?” called a meek voice from the other end of the alley.

A head poked around the corner, just revealing a set of eyes, before jerking back again. Then it crept out once more.

Bastion didn’t know what to do.

“Lena, get away from the thing! Now!”

Bastion recognized Torbjorn’s voice. It scared them to hear the man so angry and afraid.

The peeking person disappeared. There was more conversation in quieter tones that Bastion could not pick up on, so they came forwards. They at least tried to muffle their footsteps.

Bastion peered out of the alleyway. Torbjorn and- their processor finally cleared enough to recall -Tracer huddled against the front of the building. Her chronal accelerator glowed only a faint, dusty blue.

The blink of blue. She was. . . unscathed.

Bastion let out a whine of relief. This caused the both of them to turn. Torbjorn flinched and his mouth opened, curses pouring out. Bastion ran back into the alley. They thought up pictures of the forest again, as a precaution. Just in case. Just in case.

There was a pitter patter of footsteps. Torbjorn had followed.

“Damned Omnic! You were supposed to be peaceful! You weren’t supposed to have any battle protocols!” He shook his fist in the air.

Every declaration bit into them worse than a bullet ever could.

“You could have killed her!”

Bastion turned off their audio sensors. They watched as Torbjorn circled around them, his eyes wide with anger, his mouth opening and closing in sharp rhythms that caused him to spit. 

He stopped mid-syllable, before giving a glare. Then he pointed a finger right into Bastion’s chest and yelled. The vibration traveled through their plating and they flinched away at the unexpected sensation. Torbjorn’s fury only grew. Soon he was pounding a fist against their leg.

They knew they deserved this. He had every right to be angry. They had lost control. 

Bastion slowly turned their audio sensors back on to ease into the man���s voice again. At a certain point they realized that they were whining out loud. They silenced themselves. 

“So you’ve finally decided to listen again, hmm?” Torbjorn said.

Bastion made a sad, downturned noise. A noise of regret. There had been no place for regret in a vocabulary made for war, so they had invented the noise in the forest. They had given it to the animals many times. It was the first time they had given it to a human.

“So sorry, aren’t you?” Torbjorn’s tone was mocking.

Bastion nodded.

“Like I’d believe that. You’re one of mine. I should have known you were programmed like the rest.”

Bastion shook their head.

“Come on. No more frolicking around for you. You’re going into my workshop and staying there.”

Bastion knew they deserved it but they didn’t want to go.

“I said, come on, you lump of lugnuts!” 

Torbjorn was behind them now, and kicking at their back legs.

“Did you turn off your audio sensors again? Damn tin can-!”

“My friend, stop.”

Bastion whirled their torso around. A new person had come around the corner. It was the tall man, Reinhardt, only he was not smiling now. 

“Reinhardt! What are you doing here? You need to get out of here. It might kill you if it gets the chance!” Torbjorn shouted.

“Says the one who’s kicking the Bastion.” Reinhardt replied.

This caused Torbjorn to pause. “Touche.”

Whereas Torbjorn was all hard lines and tension, Reinhardt was calm. He was muscled and large, trained for combat, Bastion’s targeting system added unhelpfully, but he didn’t register as a threat. His movements were slow and thoughtful and the only defined lines on his face weren’t from a harsh expression- they were wrinkles, wrinkles from smiles and laughter past, gently juxtaposed with the scar that went down his eye.

Reinhardt walked towards them. Bastion stepped around to meet him.

“Hello, friend.” Reinhardt spoke to them. His tone was as gentle as wind ruffling the grass.

“Wait, are you talking to it?” Torbjorn said.

“I’m sorry to have scared you.” He continued.

Bastion at first thought the apology was meant for Torbjorn, but the man’s steady gaze into their optic told otherwise. Bastion could only cock their head in response.

“The armor holds many bad memories for you, doesn’t it?”

Crusader. Bastion chirped as the word appeared again in their processor. They nodded.

“Reinhardt, it wasn’t scared. Don’t be silly. Given its origins, it’s programmed to engage combat protocols when it sees your armor.” Torbjorn huffed.

“Then why did it run?” Reinhardt asked.

Torbjorn opened his mouth to retort but no words came out. He shut it again and frowned, before kicking the ground.

The hostile motion caused a flutter of activity in Bastion’s threat analysis systems. They began to glance around and realized they were cornered.

“Easy, my Omnic friend! You are not trapped.” Reinhardt took one step aside.

Bastion took a small step. Torbjorn conceded his space as well and went beside the wall. Bastion walked forward, exiting the shade and dark of the alley and entering into the bright sunlight once again.

It was late afternoon, they noticed. The wind whistled across the rooftops, carrying the songs of birds from the sea below. Details they hadn’t noticed before.

“Better?” Reinhardt asked from behind.

The pavement lined with metal had some cracks, from which dandelions grew. The walls of the buildings were soft gray with accents of blue and orange. There was a peculiar pattern in the wall right ahead, many holes upon holes-

The realization was instantaneous. Bastion sunk down with a long, dull whine.

“You are ashamed.”

The statement was not framed as a question. It was a statement of fact, to which Bastion did not know how to respond. They were somewhat certain that regret and shame were similar, but where one ended and the other began was a mystery.

“The war left its impact on us all.” Reinhardt continued. “It took me some time before I could look an Omnic in the optic. Forgiveness comes slow. It can take even longer for the fear to fade.”

The statement, though softly spoken, was unsettling. Bastion looked at Reinhardt’s height again, this time taking an exact measurement. They recalled Torbjorn’s use of a certain possessive in regards to the armor. The armor. Its height. The measurement.

His armor.

“Crusader?” Bastion sputtered in Omnicode, their first comprehensible code in a while.

Reinhardt gave a sad nod. “You used that phrase when you saw my armor. I take it you figured out who I am?”

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense. The man before them was kind and gentle. He couldn’t be, it couldn’t be.

“Does it make you afraid?”

Bastion looked him up and down. They tried to run a threat analysis, but it fizzled out when they saw his face where a steel helmet should be. They started the program again, and again, and again, but there was no conclusion.

Eventually, they shook their head.

“That is good to hear.” Reinhardt placed a hand upon their shoulder pad and grasped it firmly. “It means we have a place to start.”

 Bastion tensed. They did not move.

“That is alright as well. I understand you may not be ready to be too friendly yet.” He dropped his hand.

“Are you done coddling it?” Torbjorn asked.

Bastion turned their head around and realized Torbjorn was behind them. Likely, he had been back there for some time.

“Maybe. Are you done scolding it?” Reinhardt replied.

Torbjorn gave a huff. “Yes.”

“Very well. I shall give it back to you.”

Torbjorn came in front of Bastion. “You’re following me. Back to my workshop. Clear?”

Bastion gave a glance to Reinhardt, before nodding.

Without another word, Torbjorn marched in the direction of a nearby building. Bastion hesitated, before urging their legs to move.

“Wait, my patient Omnic friend!”

Bastion turned their torso around to look.

“Take good care of Torbjorn for me. Make sure he doesn’t stay up all night working on you!” Reinhardt laughed, before growing serious again. “And when you are ready to try and overcome your fear, I am here.”

Bastion paused. Reinhardt wore a close-lipped smile. There was something in his eyes. Something knowing. Bastion nodded.

“Come on, rustbucket!” Torbjorn called.

Bastion turned back around again and jogged to catch up. Torbjorn opened a big steel door and they followed through. The door shut behind them, sealing the sunlight away. There was only the dim light of fluorescent bulbs overhead. Torbjorn began to navigate down the many halls.

“. . . I suppose he thinks he’s getting closure.” He mumbled as they both traveled.

Bastion gave an inquisitive chirp.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

But Bastion did not forget.

---

The second time they saw the armor, they froze. 

It was a few weeks after the first time. Bastion had gained their peaceful reputation back, for the most part. Tracer was quick to forgive (“Poor thing, just startled, that’s all”) and the armor had been hustled away to some deep recess of the Watchpoint, out of sight and out of processor. 

So Bastion did not have any incidents and was allowed to leave Torbjorn’s workshop.

They did notice, however, that people kept an eye on them. There were more people now. Torbjorn didn’t know all of them. New members, he called them. The only thing they all had in common was that they all looked at Bastion whenever they entered a room.

Humans told a lot of emotions through their eyes. Bastion was programmed to read eyes for hostile signs, so they knew a thing or two about what the eyes said. They knew that some eyes were kind and some eyes were angry, but everything else was more difficult to discern.

The constant gaze of the eyes, demanding to be read, was exhausting. They did not spend much time among the others during what was considered their ‘down time’. Instead, they set about exploring the complex they now called home base.

That was when they had found the auxiliary workshop. That was when they had found the suspicious-looking tarp, with its telltale peaks and valleys, laid across a platform.

Bastion turned the lights on. The room was bathed in lights brighter than those out in the halls. Light beams reflected off of the plastic-coated tarp, accentuating the mass that laid beneath. 

They were not stupid. They knew that shape. Their threat analysis systems ticked on in the background, heightening their senses. The buzzing of the light bulbs above was the only sound, and the tarp, like any normal tarp, lay unmoving.

Bastion walked forward. They grabbed the edge of it.

They pulled.

Their systems screamed in perfect harmony as the glint of an orange visor appeared. Threat analysis, targeting overlay, engagement protocols. A thousand different strategic choices bombarded them from every direction- stay, fight, transform, run -and in an instant their processor had selected for them the best course of action. This action, of course, was to fill the room with lead.

They did not want to do that. They remembered the consequences.

Their systems scrambled to find an alternative. Target within melee range. Door is four meters away.

Bastion dismissed those thoughts and every thought that followed with the same reasoning. Consequences.

And they stayed very, very still.

Moments passed like great big clouds rolling across the sky on a sunny afternoon. Their targeting reticule, an angry red symbol brimming in omnicode threats, remained trained on the helmet of the armor. There was no movement. There was no other sound besides the buzzing of the bulbs.

The buzzing became louder. Louder. Their audio sensors maxed their limits. Missing a single sound could mean death. 

But there was nothing more than the vibrations that traveled through the floor as the building shifted on its foundation. Nothing more than the faint whistle of air circulation units. Nothing.

Their targeting reticule faded from red, to orange, to a dull yellow, but it did not disappear. It was still a threat. . . but not an active one. 

Bastion realized their cooling fans had spun on, providing some relief from the tension in their frame. With a deep intake of air, they continued pulling off the tarp.

They disposed of the tarp to the side. The Crusader lay bare before them on the platform. They poked at its side, and their targeting reticule flashed back to red, causing them to flinch backwards, but the armor did not move, so they approached it again. They prodded it again, more firmly. Nothing.

They picked up one of its limbs. It did not resist, and as far as they could tell, it contained no power or life. They let it drop out of their hand and back onto the platform. The sound boomed in their audio sensors before they recalibrated back to normal levels.

They traveled around to the helmet. They tapped the orange visor with their finger. They grabbed the crest that extended from its forehead and pulled. Without much tension, the helmet popped from its mounting. 

Their targeting reticule disappeared. Target eliminated. Bastion could only chirp in confusion.

They looked down to the helmet, then back to the rest of the body. There was no obvious connection port as far as they could tell. They picked the helmet up off the ground and examined it. No results either.

They pressed the empty opening of the helmet back against the empty hole in the armor, but this did not cause the two to join. They pushed harder, then let go, but it fell to the floor again. They tried twisting it, turning it, tilting it, all to no avail. When gravity reunited the helmet with the floor once more, Bastion beeped and kicked the thing with their foot.

It bounced along the concrete floor before rattling to a stop. Bastion beeped at it again for good measure.

“Having fun?”

Bastion flinched and turned to look. In the doorway stood. . . Reinhardt.

They walked over to the helmet and picked it up again, bleating out apologetic noises as they did so. They glanced over to Reinhardt and the power of the man’s gaze pinned them to their spot.

“I. . . understand if that’s how you feel about me.” He said, his voice like a winter wind.

Bastion jerked and shook their head. “Negative, negative,” they told in Omnicode.

They walked back towards the armor. With every step, they looked back to Reinhardt. His expression did not change. 

Bastion pressed the helmet back onto the hole, then let go. The helmet fell down again. Bastion then gestured at it with their hand and made the same beep they had at the helmet before.

Reinhardt’s features unfroze. The corners of his eyes crinkled as his lips formed a smile. He let out a laugh that rang from floor to ceiling, punctuated by thuds as he slapped his hand against his thigh.

Bastion found that they were imitating a giggle as well.

“Ha! That helmet never stayed on right.” Reinhardt pointed as he strode into the room.

He was filled with such vigor and speed and volume that Bastion took a step back. Reinhardt paid no mind, grabbing the helmet out of their hand. He held it out, the crest pointing towards his chest and the open end presented to Bastion.

“See, right here?” He pointed to the rim of the inside. “There’s a little lever you must push.”

If Bastion focused their optic, they could see a tiny mechanism flipping back and forth as Reinhardt pressed on it. They nodded.

Reinhardt tossed the helmet in his grip before aligning it with the rest of the armor. With both hands, he shifted it until the two finally joined. When he let go, the helmet stayed in place.

“A finicky thing, that helmet is!” Reinhardt gestured. 

Bastion nodded. They looked at the complete armor, then to Reinhardt, then back again.

Their targeting overlays sputtered on and off again, never on the man, but on the armor. With the head back on, it was a full suit again, and therefore dangerous, but other observations clearly contradicted that conclusion. With one final notification, the overlay turned off, and stayed off. Bastion could relax again.

When they looked to Reinhardt again, he had taken a step back and his expression no longer bore such joy. Bastion took a step towards him and gave an inquisitive chirp.

“Your optic.”

Their optic. What about it? They reached their hand up and trailed their fingers across the glass of their optic. They couldn’t detect any changes. They repeated their chirp.

“You do not know?”

Bastion brought their hand back to their side, then imitated a shrug.

Reinhardt laughed, but it was a different laugh than before. Something much shorter and more abrupt, but it eased the tension in his shoulders. Then he brought a hand to his chin.

“Bastion, did you know that your optic has a habit of turning red?”

Bastion knew a bit about what they looked like, based on what they saw of their reflection in ponds and streams and what they could see when looking down. They knew that their optic was about the same blue hue as the sky. 

Then again, Reinhardt hadn’t said ‘just red’. He had said it ‘turned’.

Either way, to answer the question, Bastion shook their head.

“It tends to do so whenever you are, shall we say, distressed?” Reinhardt continued.

The targeting overlay. It had to be the targeting overlay. With the way it changed their vision and how sometimes there was a distinct clicking noise when it turned on and off. Bastion nodded, and imitated a noise they had seen Torbjorn do whenever he made a realization.

“Ah, you are aware!” Reinhardt nodded along. 

Bastion searched their vocabulary for a string of codes they could use to tell him exactly what they meant, but all they could pull together was “Danger-warning-moving-sensor.”

Reinhardt’s eyebrows furrowed. Bastion repeated the phrase and tapped their head.

“Apologies, but I only know a few phrases of yours.” He said.

Bastion gave a warm tone with no meaning and nodded. Reassurance, hopefully.

He seemed to get the intent. “Thank you.”

They stood in silence for a few beats, before Reinhardt stooped down to pick up the tarp from the ground. He talked as he did so.

“Brigitte always covered my armor in this tarp when we transported it in the van. I, at first, objected. Who would not want to see such a shining beacon of justice?”

He shook the tarp with one motion, and specks of dust went flying into the air. 

“But as we traveled, she proved to be correct. Some of the places we traveled were not so hospitable. They did not want our help. It hurt, seeing my own countrymen reject me.”

He reached over to lay the tarp back down across the armor, but stopped.

“I realize now that I- my face, the armor, my legacy -only reminded them of the hardships of the past. When they saw me, they only saw the war. I cannot blame them for that.”

With great care, he spread the tarp across the great frame. The silvery metal disappeared from the light. Reinhardt put a hand on where the armor’s shoulder pauldron was.

Bastion brought up their own hand. They closed it into a fist, then opened it again. They then looked to their other arm. The arm that caused people to scream and run whenever it even twitched. 

They remembered the barrel on their back that everyone else could see but they could only notice if they turned their head around. They remembered how others would flinch at the sound of their footfalls.They remembered just how tall they were compared to most humans, and that alone was enough to make them shrink away. 

Yet, they certainly weren’t laying under a tarp in Torbjorn’s workshop.

Bastion grabbed the edge of the tarp and gave a tug. Reinhardt let go, startled.

“Are you sure?”

“Affirmative,” they coded with a nod.

Reinhardt joined in unveiling the armor. This time, there was no target overlay. No threat analysis, no combat protocols. The metal was empty, and there was no fear.

#overwatch bastion #the last bastion #e-54 #bastion overwatch #reinhardt #reinhardt wilhelm #overwatch #overwatch fanfiction

[thatonebylershipper]

soooooo is no one gonna talk about how ME! is so extremely byler coded

okay have fun reading this monstrosity of character analysis if you want to

so uh. mike wheeler. he genuinely thinks he is unlovable and so hard to deal with. he really really thinks that. i disagree with the not thinking part tho. hes a smart kid. when he "jumped" (i do quotations because my little pookie wookie did not jump off that cliff lil guy stepped off) off the cliff, he knew what would happen when he hit the water. (rocks. he didnt even aim for the water he just stepped off right over the rocks and he knew what would happen.)

will is absoluetly a chick magnet and mike knows that. he can see it. hell, he lives it. he knows that will is extremely attractive because he feels the attraction himself. going back to believing he is unlovable, he also doesnt think he is anywhere near good enough for will. he knows that there are probably plenty of girls lined up waiting for a chance to date will and mike thinks that will deserves way better than him.

phonegate phonegate phonegate phonegate

also yeah this bitch (affectionate) has no idea when to stop and just cant stay out of shit. he has to be right in the middle of everything. which btw isnt always a bad thing but it is often detrimental to him.

trouble on my left trouble on my right ive been facing trouble almost all my life-- okay mb i wont make cte references rn i just think its a very mike coded song because genuinely he always has trouble following him around. lil guy cannot escape the Problems and the Horrors

all i have to say about this is gay

OKAY WILL'S TURN

i saw a very interesting character analysis of mike one time talking about how he is always the one to reach out and no one ever reaches out to him. not even will. which you might be like "what are you talking about" but its true. when will tells mike about his problems or whatever is going on, mike always asks questions to try and understand better. hes always the one to reach out first. when he tried to open up however, no one does that for him. no one tries to better understand what hes saying.

ANYWAY during the rink-o-mania fight, will mentioned mike never calling him or writing to him. but did he ever reach out? or did he just expect mike to? [THIS IS NOT ME HATING ON WILL BTW. I LOVE HIM DEARLY BUT HE NEEDS TO GET HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS SOMETIMES. ALSO THIS IS NOT ME BRUSHING OFF MIKES SHITTY BEHAVIOR. HE ALSO NEEDS TO GET HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS SOMETIMES.] all of this connects to "i know i tend to make it about me". i dont think will means to do this, but it ends up happening over and over.

as for "i know you never get just what you see" this particular lyric makes me think of the rink-o-mania scene where angela came up to the table and took el away, but mike didnt do anything. he didnt even seem bothered by it. that is, until will showed concern for the situation. then he jumped into protection mode. when will revealed to mike that el had been lying to him, his reaction was to call bullshit because why would she do that?? he doesnt get what he sees. what he saw was el being taken out to the floor by her friends. but thats not what he got. what he got was el being taken away by her bullies. will knows that mike doesnt always get what he sees.

i feel like this lyric could be purely flirtatious and tbh i can imagine will saying this to mike just to see him blush. "i will never bore you baby." cue mike turning into a tomato. idk this lyric is silly i dont really have anything to pair with it

self explanatory. they had a fight in the rain. and then mike ran after will and called his name. of course will never wants to see mike walk away; hes in love.

idk why that one got big but whatever. again, gay. because theyre not like the others. but the winter/summer thing: there are all sorts of dynamics that all have the same vibe. black cat/golden retreiver boyfriends, moon/sun boyfriends. its all blue and yellow iykwim. winter/summer is just another one of those. mike is winter and will is absoluetly his summer

"and i promise that nobodys gonna love you like me-hee-heee" nope, no one is ever ever gonna love either of them the way they love each other. they were made for each other and not only do they need each other, they want each other which is honestly more important. if they didnt want each other so badly, the ship would be no better than milkvan. because milkvan needed each other, but they did not want each other. thats why the ship is bones. it doesnt work out if they dont want each other.

#byler #get character analyzed bitch #byler x taylor swift songs forever #ME! #taylor swift

[xexiar]

Character Analysis: Bakugou Katsuki. Part 2

As always: Disclaimer: This is for fun. I am not a professional psychiatrist, nor claim to be. These are my thoughts and opinions. If you do not agree, thank you for at least reading, but DO NOT comment!

Bakugo Katsuki from conflict to acceptance.

Note: How I interpreted these two panels is that it’s read as one. Basically these emotions are something they BOTH share.

But let me bring to your attention the bottom two words. Rejection and Inferiority.

During our brief interactions with the Bakugous I have noticed a very strong disconnect between them. Mainly how they speak about Katsuki. Especially when it came to the kidnapping incident. 

Mitsuki flat out vocally blames Katsuki due to his own weakness. And even going as far as to state how he’s at fault for getting caught. This is very problematic. How often does Katsuki get blame for the smallest mistakes? Even if it wasn’t his fault?

This comes back to that childhood belief of being “perfect”. If even in your own home you’re constantly judged by your every action. Not being able to relax in a place that’s supposed to be safe.

The gimmick of the mother’s love language being hitting and badmouth can have a great impact on how a child views themselves. Outside of home people are praising you, but at home you’re constantly being put down for the smallest of mistakes. Then when even the outside world starts pointing out your flaws you can feel trapped. A child would even develop constantly being in fight or flight mode with every interaction they face with.

In Katsuki case, he is constantly in fight mode. Consistently needing to be at the ready. If it’s not one thing it’s another. And the disconnect goes even farther with how Mitsuki brings up how everyone makes a fuss about Katsuki.

From Katsuki being praised for everything and people fussing about how things came easy to him. During this moment Mitsuki does show how she was concerned and grateful for Aizawa’s speech. Proving she does care for Katsuki and probably doesn’t realize that she may have caused him harm with how she speaks to him.

We also witness how uncomfortable Katsuki is with touch. Which usually points to a negative association with such actions. At that, when looking back at other moments where touch is an important interaction, Katsuki show signs of confusion to the notion.

So, along with a bad association with touch, constantly being rejected at the slightest mistake, along with being told he’s perfect, this all can be overwhelming for a child to grow up with. It’s also provides an explanation to why Katsuki is horrible at expressing himself.

If the only emotion that is accepted of you is anger, then that’ll be the only thing you’ll be able to publicly display. Between the fall as a child and starting high school, Katsuki has been emotionally stunted. He’s not able to handle his emotions outside of what he been allowed. He’s basically constantly angry because that’s the only acceptable way he can express.

So, when Katsuki gets to UA, he’s not physically and intellectually challenged. The metaphorical wall he keeps hitting is the overwhelming emotions. He expresses his anger for failing at things he knows he shouldn’t. He let’s his previous knowledge override his judgement of a situation.

Then when Katsuki deals with being wrong he goes into panic mode. Which makes him fail more than if he was to keep a level head. But he doesn’t know how to do so. Especially when nobody has taught him. When everyone only praises you or reject you for the smallest mistake then all you learn is that nobody will help you.

The ideal of perfection and learning that he’ll always be on his own is the driving force of him refusing Izuku’s existence. Because of Izuku existence provides everything Katsuki been told to be true. So to challenge those beliefs feels like he’s failing.

At that, he prides in himself when he’s able to complete a challenge. So when the challenge goes against everything he believes in, he is conflicted and his emotions takes over.

To have someone see that he’s not perfect, isn’t just hurting Katsuki’s ego. For a brief moment he is seen as a person and doesn’t know how to perceive such an action.

——

Part 1 Part 3

#bakugo katsuki #mha #childhood #character analysis #bnha bakugou #fiction #personal observations #psychosis #psychoanalysis #kacchan #bnha bakugo katsuki #psychology #internal conflict

[shoechoe]

Thinking about the "Doppio is a pure little angel who's never done anything wrong <3" fandom treatment again because I think it's kind of interesting. In a way I don't think it's really wholly incorrect, it just picks and chooses aspects of Doppio's character to acknowledge and that grows into the weird distorted, baby-fied perception of Doppio you see so often in the fanbase (and even in actual analysis from people who I think usually hit the mark).

Following the theme of Diavolo and King Crimson being confusing and mysterious, Doppio's main descriptor throughout the story is that he's contradictory. He acts like a genuinely quivering coward until the last moment, where he flips like a switch and turns into a brutal, violent, incredibly confident gangster. He acts like a normal civilian and takes harassment from strangers until they attempt (whether intentionally or not) to discover anything about Diavolo, to which he immediately attempts to mutilate and murder them. He's nice and caring to children and animals and is worried if they get hurt until he's in the heat of battle and stares uncaringly at frogs being brutally mutilated from the inside by razors.

That's... pretty much his thing. He's a perfectly normal civilian until he's not. He's meek and cowardly until he's not. He's sweet and caring and kind until he's not. (To be fair, the story does make this somewhat confusing by often giving him Diavolo's eyes when he's in his "rage mode", but it's clear from his interactions with Diavolo that this rage mode is very much his, not from Diavolo taking over- like how Diavolo tells Doppio to calm down and back off on several occasions.)

And, while I would not exactly call the longtime underboss of a mafia "innocent", it is true that Doppio is being manipulated and kept in the dark by Diavolo. He's lied to about the true nature of his identity and how Diavolo uses him and is essentially kept constantly lonely and isolated with his Boss being the only one that shows him any form of respect and appreciation. While that doesn't lift blame entirely off his shoulders, it's understandable how he came to be so loyal to his Boss- and, in a way, he didn't really have much of a choice to be any different.

I think that's where a lot of the fandom-ized rendition of Doppio comes from; people saw an intentionally contradictory character with a cutesy design being manipulated into his villainous actions, and they decided to take all of the "kind, cowardly, oblivious, and innocent" parts of him and conveniently ignore all of the "...until he's not" parts... which turns out to be a pretty big portion of his character to just throw to the wayside.

#rambles #i hope this makes sense #shoe talks a lot #vento aureo #vento aureo spoilers #i think this would've been helped a lot if we got like... more actual screentime of him #all of his scenes really showing his character just consist of the metallica arc and maybe like 1 or 2 moments afterward #after that he just turns into a vessel to take diavolo to the colosseum and then he dies #that's also a big part of it i think... there's just not enough screentime to let his character really sink in

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/12/2023: RINGU, GOJIRA

I rewatched both of these movies in preparation for an event that my org hosted at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies has a lecture at the fest every year, and this time I got someone really great to accompany their Japanese programming. Actually, you can read the original paper that my speaker Sigmund Shen based his talk on, and I highly recommend it!:

He has something very compelling to say about how RINGU and GOJIRA (among other things) reflect the ongoing struggle to expose suppressed national histories, which inflict shame and trauma on a populace who are unable to fully process events that have been protected by censorship and taboo. Because this is a speed run season of Blogtober, I'll leave the analysis to Professor Shen--you won't be disappointed!

The film festival featured a slate of Japanese fare to coincide with a new documentary called THE J-HORROR VIRUS by Sarah Appleton and Jasper Sharp. When they were asked "Why now?" about this investigation into a mode of production that was extremely hot in the early aughts, and which has seen virtually no new growth in recent years, the answer seemed to be that only this much hindsight has clarified what it all meant--and they're right. The doc is really interesting and surprising, even to someone like me who remembers how hard J-horror hit the American festival circuit back when. The founding filmmakers share insights and inspiration that I never would have guessed at, but I have to say that my favorite part was the interview with Rie Ino'o who played Sadako in RINGU and RING 2. Despite her silent and basically faceless performance, she infused her character with a vivid personality that made Hideo Nakata insist that she return for the second film, and you can really see what made her so irreplaceable. I think I'm in love with her now. Anyway, see THE J-HORROR VIRUS if you can, it's really good.

#blogtober #2023 #horror #j-horror #science fiction #gojira #godzilla #horror documentary #hideo nakata #ishiro honda #the brooklyn horror film festival #the miskatonic institute of horror studies

[rapifessor]

Initial Analysis of Kirara

After seeing some leaked gameplay footage of Kirara I think I’m a little higher on her character design than I was at first. Her in-game model looks quite nice and I do think she’s actually pretty cute. So I started looking at leaked details of her kit.

Kirara is a 4-Star Dendro Sword user who provides a shield and some decent burst damage. Her kit seems to be geared towards Aggravate/Spread teams, and although it isn’t particularly interesting there’s definitely some stuff to talk about.

Elemental Skill

This ability does a little bit of damage based on ATK and creates a shield based on HP. Yes, yes, I can hear you groaning, but we’ll get to that. The shield itself is pretty tanky and is comparable to Layla’s shield. But it can also stack its damage absorption, which means it can become even stronger, and the cooldown of this skill allows you to have 100% shield uptime.

Alternatively, you can hold the skill button to go Solid Snake mode and move around in a box. Running into enemies in this state deals a small amount of damage to them and a larger amount when the state ends, though it’s still nothing crazy. Also keep in mind that the hold variant DOES NOT create a shield without Kirara’s first Ascension passive.

Notably, while moving in the box, Kirara has increased movement and climbing speed and increased jump height. But she also consumes more stamina while climbing this way, which is dumb. From what I’ve seen she doesn’t move all that fast either, but this could still be a pretty useful Talent for exploration. It’s also quite humorous.

Elemental Burst

Kirara’s burst costs 60 Energy and deals a fuckload of damage. I’m not kidding, for some reason this ability has a higher scaling percentage than Zhongli’s meatball. Like seriously, why? I guess it costs more Energy and probably has smaller AoE, but it’s kind of wild to see this on a 4-Star character (inb4 HoYo nerfs it because they don’t want you to have fun).

After the initial explosion, you basically get a bunch of Dendro Jumpty Dumpties that explode on contact with enemies or after sitting around for a while. They deal very little damage, especially in comparison to the initial hit of this attack, so they’re meant more for enabling reactions I suppose.

Passive Talents

Kirara’s first Ascension passive basically just makes it so the hold variant of her skill creates a shield too, but at most 60% the strength of what you get from the press variant. This way you can still get a little bit of protection while using Kirara for on-field Dendro application.

Fourth Ascension passive gives you, wow, HP scaling on Kirara’s abilities! She gets 0.4% more damage to her skill and 0.3% more damage to her burst for every 1,000 HP she has. Unfortunately, her abilities still scale better with ATK so she essentially has the same problem Dehya has. Shocking, I say.

Third Passive Talent is identical to Aloy’s. Makes it easier to get meat.

Constellation

C1: Kirara’s burst makes more Dendro Jumpty Dumpties when she uses her burst, up to four extra if she has 32k HP or more. Should be very easy to do since she gets HP% from Ascension.

C2 is a weird one. Could be a mistranslation, but it seems like it grants shields to party members she hits in Solid Snake mode. In other words, this does nothing outside of co-op, but it’s kind of neat I guess.

C3 levels her skill, C5 her burst.

C4 gives you off-field Dendro application which Kirara pretty much doesn’t have otherwise. When you hit opponents with Normal/Charged/Plunging attacks while protected by her shield, she performs additional attacks.

C6 gives 12% more Elemental DMG to all party members when she uses her burst. Pretty straightforward.

Overall Thoughts

Kirara doesn’t look too bad. At a baseline she’s got a very sturdy shield for a 4-Star character and a nuke for an Elemental Burst, so I think she’ll find some use somewhere, assuming she doesn’t get nerfed into the ground. She really suffers from being unable to apply Dendro from off-field though. Dendro characters tend to live or die by their application, and since Kirara doesn’t deal very much damage outside of her burst she’s especially hamstrung by that. Constellation level 4 makes her a lot more functional.

I do think playing box trot cat will be fun in the overworld though, and I think it’d be interesting to see just how far we can push her Elemental Burst, getting those sweet damage screenshots. My guess is she’ll find her home in Keqing teams most likely, or other Aggravate carry builds.

#genshin impact #genshin spoilers #genshin leaks #genshin kirara #kirara genshin impact #kirara #genshin impact 3.7 #rapifessor rambles #analysis #thoughts #long post

[henrysglock]

dude creels are supposed to represent the byers, lol. how the hell karen is virginia coded? virginia was calling henry broken and such. she is lonnie's direct parallel. viktor is supposed to represent joyce, they are literally given the same lines. and alice is supposed to represent the jonathan, henry's big sibling. and henry is supposed to represent will. it is just gender bent byers family.

Okay, dude, let me direct you to my Link Library. It's pinned at the top of my blog. I have a post talking about Karen and Virginia vs Billy and Henry in there that details how they're the same. Begging you to read that.

The fact is that none of this is mutually exclusive because it's all tied together on a spectrum.

The Creels exist as a direct, clear, black and white foil to the Byers. They show us what Will could have been, and by extension what Henry could have been, if their places were reversed. They exist in static. They're extremes. They don't show us how the spectrum works.

So what about the Wheelers?

They're showing us the progression in real time. It shows us how a family exists in-between the extremes, and how change at any time can affect the outcome.

The Wheelers are so similar to the Creels. They're well off, they're normal, Karen/Virginia is the bad blonde mother, Ted is the ignorant father who does genuinely love his children, Nancy is the golden child older sister, and Mike is the gay scapegoat son who's slipping through the cracks. I'll come back to Holly.

The Wheelers are at a turning point. This is why character growth arcs will be so important in ST5.

Karen needs to actively show that she loves her children, rather than this "he'll come to us when he's ready" and "punishing/blaming Mike for his trauma response to Will's disappearance instead of meeting him with compassion" bullshit. That is how she escapes the Virginia coding she's progressed into across the seasons in ST5.

Ted needs to open his eyes. He needs to wise up and start actively fighting back. No more "ask your mother" "sit lamely in front of the TV" bullshit. He needs to continue his S4 discovery arc and physically fight back in ST5. He needs to escape his Victor-coding.

This directly ties into Mike, our Henry figure.

ST1: Karen is brunette, and she's the supportive Mike that we see her be.

ST2: She's got blonde highlights and the Virginia bangs make an appearance. This is the season where she punishes Mike for his trauma-linked misbehavior instead of reaching out with compassion.

ST3: She's full blonde with Virginia bangs and she's hitting on teenagers. Mike is still in Hawkins, but she has no idea where he is. At all. Meanwhile she's here supporting Nancy and giving her pep-talks. She's lost Mike.

ST4: She's still blonde, but the style is different. She's got the bangs, but she's also got a perm. She's changing. She's getting back to ST1 Karen, but she's not there yet. Mike is physically gone. When he comes back, she meets him with love (love that seemed to surprise him, if you recall).

I wouldn't be surprised if Karen is brunette with no bangs again in ST5, in which she moves back to the Joyce end of the spectrum. I think maybe she'll be supporting Mike more, she'll be actively fighting, she'll be in good mom mode.

Ted hasn't changed much across the seasons, not until ST4. His change may result in his death, which shifts our final picture to an inverse 1959 Creel/current Byers state.

Mother present, father gone. Both siblings alive and cared for. They've fully escaped the Creels.

Now I said I'd come back to Holly, and I'm doing that now.

Holly ties in with my siblings analysis part 2, and I'd suggest you read it for more detail. It's in my pinned post. To summarize:

El is the little sister Henry holds on to in hopes of replacing/atoning for Alice. This is why he keeps her around instead of just killing and absorbing her, and why he's so upset that she keeps going against him. She's the littlest sister in the Creel household by association.

Holly is the exception that proves my point. Holly completes the pattern.

It might be easier for me to diagram it.

Adult Henry wanted El to be his second sister, younger. She said no. El tried to become Mike's sister ("Nancy can be like your sister!" "Will you be like my brother?" "No"). He said no. El became Will's second sibling, and I'll bet she's younger than Will (who is already the oldest in the Party). They said yes.

This all works narratively because of the family structure and narrative patterns. El rejects Adult Henry because he's the opposite of the way he was the last time Alice was alive. El couldn't be Mike's second sister...because he already has one. El becomes Will's second sibling because Will is almost identical to Young Henry. So of course El, the Alice-proxy figure, adores Will and he adores her in return.

I hope that all makes sense.

We can use these two extreme families to figure out how the Wheeler family is going to end up in ST5.

If Karen/Ted begin to act less like Virginia/Victor and act more like Joyce/Jonathan (parentified), then they'll end with the inverse of the Creel ending (and vice versa).

Less like Creels: Karen, Nancy, Mike, and Holly live. Ted dies.

More like Creels: Ted lives. Karen, Nancy, Mike and Holly die.

This is why Nancy sees Karen, Mike, and Holly die but makes no mention of Ted. She's seeing the Creel ending, which is what Henry anticipates.

But Henry is a mirror, so we're going to get the inverse of Nancy's vision.

Hope this helps!

#asks #st5 predictions #creel family analysis #wheeler family analysis #byers family analysis #stranger things analysis #holly wheeler #el hopper #alice creel #stranger things