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#but for me? personally? it was a canon event. ill never be the same or emotionally recover
so-very-small · 6 months
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watching one g/t fan date another like. it’s a canon event. i can’t interfere
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orchidbreezefc · 28 days
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ok. years have passed and we've had some distance, so i'm finally gonna take the leap of faith that tma fandom is finally ready to hear me on this. let's talk about tannins.
161 was the first tma episode i heard on early release, and i felt the bit where martin declines wine and cites tannins was pretty obvious in its implications. cool, got it, say no more.
imagine my surprise when i was one of maybe three people i saw read between the lines there, in a fandom famous for red stringing--a fandom that immediately caught the much less obvious thread of ignition sources in the same episode. i'll spell it out: alcohol is an issue for martin.
maybe it just felt obvious because addiction is a pet issue for me--as it is for jonny, who has said everything he writes is filtered through a lens of addiction. i don't know if that's due to his own experience or a loved one's, and i won't speculate; i also don't know if martin personally struggled with drinking or just avoids it for fear he would, but alcohol would fit what we know of his family. his dad walking out and his mum spiralling into bitter wallowing and verbal abuse? i'd bet one or both of them drank, yeah.
on a basic level martin tries to decline alcohol, and that alone should have raised eyebrows given what we know of martin and, again, a fandom that dissects everything. we already knew martin "K" blackwood lied about his personal life and his family in particular, especially pre-canon, which is when this flashback took place. i was shocked that everyone took his flimsy excuse at face value with no further questions.
and the excuse is flimsy. martin turns down wine by--nervously--exclaiming tannins are "a proven headache trigger!" which sounds like trivia from a magazine cover and not the words of someone who actually has headaches--and it hasn't come up before or since. jon, confused, points out that tea, a drink martin consumes to a degree that is memetic both in- and out-of-universe, also contains tannins, and martin squawks a panicked, "what?!"
if tannins are enough of a concern for martin that he knew they're in wine and so avoids it, why didn't he know they're in his drink of choice? why does he still drink tea at the time of canon, and why doesn't he struggle with constant headaches from consuming 'a proven headache trigger' day in and day out? why, indeed, would someone avoid wine and not tea?
when sasha insists martin drink he caves and agrees to 'just a drop'. i imagine him pouring it in a plant, which admittedly he could have done if tannins really were the issue. i will say that i, for one, would be less likely to falsely agree to something that makes me physically ill than to a private issue that i'd rather not be pressed on any further. this scene also establishes martin's birthday was an ice cream party instead of the more traditional visit to a pub.
also, this scene was in the first episode of the final season, as one of three flashbacks that could have been to any pre-canon event in the archives. prime narrative real estate. not really time one would waste on establishing the important character context that martin has... headaches. which never comes up before or after, even regarding the week he spent in spiral town. but you know what is pretty crucial character background...?
it felt like a no-brainer, and yet all i saw was h/c fluff about jon attending to martin's headaches. and i hate feeling bitter about disability representation. i want folks with chronic headaches to feel seen and have fluffy escapist fantasies. i don't want to be mad about people portraying a character with a disability. but, guys? you got the wrong disability. jonny sent a clear message, and it went over fandom's head.
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kerubimcrepin · 1 month
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Liveblog - Dofus, livre 1 : Julith [PART 25]
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(trying to pretend I didn't cry about Julith and Jahash while writing the last post) reblog to slap his bald head.... like to slap his bald head....
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I talk a lot about Joris probably hating Julith and Jahash, — but I think the things he feels are infinitely more complex.
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And yet still perfectly describable by the word hate. It's just what makes sense for Joris to feel about them, in his future.
He probably hates them for how things turned out, yet he kept the surname. He probably hates Bonta for what it did to them, and yet tries to make Bonta better by being a part of the exact system that did these things.
He's going to grow up a little hypocrite who masks his feelings with twenty layers of obfuscation.
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Ehh. I would say they were like one fifth of him, compared to the "catboy cultural upbringing" parts and personality traits directly influenced, borrowed, or modelled after Kerubim Crepin's 20 Mental Illnesses.
This is a pretty cold comfort. He won't even know his birth father's voice, or his mother's favorite salad.
He won't even know if he sometimes does little gestures that are just like Julith and Jahash.
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Joris has always been caught between darkness and light, I think. From his parents being a Brakmarian and a Bontarian, to his father and uncle hating one another, and marching to these cities aid, to these two dofus.
[guy who headcanons Joris to have OCD voice] [guy who is insane about what Joris says in Dofus MMO voice] There's a lot of tragedy in this because I feel like he spent a lot of his life trying to chase away the parts of him, Bonta, and his own family that he didn't like.
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The best he can say for himself is "it's not that dark dragons are evil, it's that they have Evil Thoughts because of magic, and maybe I do too, but me and Grougalorasalar are just more based than those other guys."
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But at the same time, what is it, if not acceptance of how things are, that allows him to love Grougalorasalar? To try and understand Atcham? To accept, and very likely in the future, avenge, Julith, and decide to keep his surname?
To love Bonta despite how horrid it is.
(smiling) His trademark multitudes. He can do for others what he can't do for himself. Yaay.
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This is quite a tragic moment to me. It's a promise doomed to fail. He can't protect these two forever. He physically can't do that.
Does Joris think of this promise as he sees Leorictus Sheran-Sharm start off the chain of events that leads to the huppermage genocide, Ivory Dofus in hand? Does he think of this as he watches Ogrest's Chaos happen?
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Does he think of this, as he sees Grougalorasalar, free, with centuries between them, not spare him a single thought for him despite all the ways he shaped and carved his body into his own vessel?
Does he think he failed, or does he think this folly of his youth? Might he be bitter?
I think Joris may have grown to love Grougalorasalar more than Grougalorasalar could ever love him back. This dragon has always been a part of him, but to Salar, Joris is just a little blimp on his lifespan.
Joris and Kerubim are so alike in the bitter, bitter, tragic divorce-despite-never-being-married department. Imagine being rejected by something that has been a part of you for your whole life. I would literally not survive that
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I don't trust the way they're looking. They look like they're going to make a video titled "spilling the tea..." saying Joris plagiarized their makeup tutorials.
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I bet they're the two evil fucking huppermages from the Brotherhood of the Forgotten, that never got elaborated upon. THEY HAVE THE SAME FUCKING HAIR AND EVIL STARE.
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It is canonically known that there are ways for mortal huppermages to prolong their lifespans, y'know...
youtube
The Grimalkine sisters when they reveal in the Wakfu manga that 1. they're a part of the Brotherhood of the Forgotten, and 2. that they killed Joris's dad (and mom) for the recipe of the Elixir of long life, referenced in Dofus MMO, or whatever. (they already reveal this in Dofus 2 but Dofus 2 isn't real (outside my Visions) so they have to take out Joris's trauma in front of Wakfu cast as exposition, despite them having literally no context to any of this).
(Source: this all came to me in a dream.)
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Their name LITERALLY means "an evil fucking demonic cat"
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Life ruining experience by far.
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HE DESERVES THIS. Also, look at the way he supports her leg!! So cute.
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penvisions · 7 months
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of beskar and kyber {chapter 8}
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Pairing: Din Djarin x Force Sensitive! Reader (the Mandalorian x Force Sensitive! Reader)
Summary: You're slowly getting back to a semblance of yourself after being given a life altering choice.
Word Count: 4.2k (it's a short one, apologies)
Warnings: WE GOT SHIRTLESS DIN Y'ALL, canon typical violence, canon typical fighting, trauma, ptsd, nightmares, illness, reader throws up, allusions to past SA (not detailed), gun violence
A/N: this was a rather hard chapter for me to crank out, i wasn't sure how much of reader's personality would immediately show after the events of the last chapter, but i think i managed to do a decent job that doesn't make it feel like it's a different character altogether. she will come out of her shell more throughout the next couple of chapters as she gets used to traveling with our dear mandalorian as an equal
ao3 link || series masterlist || main masterlist
The clearing was silent as the sun made its rise into the sky, displaying an enticing view of warm pinks and deep oranges that bled into the soft blue of the still waning night sky. Your gaze was locked with the visor across from you, so far and yet still closer than anyone had dared to approach you, with an offer no one had dared to extend to you before. But it didn’t feel real, it felt like a ploy despite the fluttering in your stomach at learning the name of the man who you had spent so much time with.
“How do I know this isn’t a trick, Din Djarin?” You spoke with more control than you truly had, voice strong despite the waning tears that now stained your face and left your eyes tinged with a telltale pinkness of their occurrence. Mind working to calculate the situation playing out, an edge of clarity to your eyes now that the high emotions had all but rushed out of your lips in outraged pleas. A new facet of who you were, of how you survived for so long, taking it in and mentally checking it, much like you were doing with the man across from you.
“My name… I have not spoken it aloud since I was a boy. I have not shared it with anyone,” Din took a step toward you, your body instinctively took a step back despite the fluttering in your middle at the confession. It was a warm feeling akin to the heat thoughts of him blazed underneath your skin in the darkness of night, but far more innocent. At the part of him he was willing to give to you, even after you threatened to kill him. “I…. want to share it with you, to prove to you that I will not harm you and give you something in return that could harm me if it were to leave the two of us.”
This was all so new, different sides of the alluring mystery you both posed to each other.
“You saved my life twice, when you had no reason to.” His words were strong, though there was a caressing of emotion in them you had only been allowed to glimpse before. “You deserve the same, you deserve to be saved, given a choice.”
It was hard to believe him, believe the words, the offering he was extending to you. You were sure he could pinpoint the conflicting emotions as they passed over your face. Positive in your very soul that he could tell you had never been handed a choice before and were confused over, especially coming from someone initially hired to capture you.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“As is this.”
“You- you want me to travel with you?”
“Yes, I would be honored to have you aboard the ship.” His tone was solid, with no hint of hesitancy or fraud in his words as they sounded in the air. “You are a strong fighter, a survivor.”
“Free?”
“You are free, I will do my best to ensure it until you wish to part ways.”
“What…what if I do something you don’t like or speak out of place?” The words you wanted to say died in your throat to allow for those ones to come to life. The confession of wanting to remain with him until he no longer wanted you around nearly slipping from your lips as the conversation continued. Because that’s what it was, a conversation. You weren’t being talked at or down to, he was talking to you, with you. He had begun to do so the second you had boarded his ship, even knowing the dynamic that he had initiated by taking you from that compound.
“I will not raise a hand to you, I’ve promised you that already.”
“I’m annoying, I say things under my breath, I-I-I…I’m selfish.”
“Then we can be so together.” A deep chuckle decorated the air of the clearing, making your heart stutter for a reason other than fear and anxiety for the several times since he entered your life. The sound was beautiful, and your selfish tendencies were already returning to you. You wanted more of it, of that sound, of being able to draw that sound out of him.
“Y-yes.”
He closed the distance of the clearing and came up toward you with his hands at his sides as he approached, the rising sun catching his amor in a mesmerizing way. He walked past your still form toward the wall of trees surrounding the space, retrieving the heavy pack he knew you had hidden in the brush. He hauled it onto his shoulder, his cloak billowing more with the weight resting along the upper part of it along his back. “Let’s get everything back on board before some food. Then we can rest after traveling all night.”
You felt a shy smile come over your lips, liking the sound of ‘we’ after being alone for so long. You reached for one of the trunks and hauled it up, following his lead back toward the ship. His steps faltered as he looked over his shoulder and saw the expression. You quietly asked him if he was alright, getting a nod from the man in response.
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The hammock from your new pack was secured to the walls of the ship, off in the corner opposite of Din’s small personal quarters, near the wall that made up the back entrance to the ship. Your bag was atop it, heavier now with the other items you had purchased while in town with the villagers just yesterday. A time that felt so long ago, when you were worried about having to bide your time and make a run for it, run away from the man you could feel crossing the space of the hold toward you.
You jumped clean off the floor of the hold when a crate was set down with a loud thunk and you spun on your heels to face the sound. He was rather close as was the sound and your hand was tight around the handle of your saber, instinctually reaching for it. It should alarm you how used you were to his presence that it didn’t register how little distance was between the both of you, but you pushed that thought down to inspect at a later time.
You turned in time to see him using his right leg to scoot in neatly underneath the space below the hammock. There was enough room beneath it and the top of the storage to accommodate the weight of your body while resting.
“For you, for your…things.”
You nodded at him, aware of the weight of his visor taking in the small space you had claimed for yourself. Worry flared for a moment, worry that you had chosen a bad spot or infringed on his space in a way he hadn’t anticipated. It all tapered out of you in a shaky exhale, hands letting go of your weapon as you realized you had clenched your hand tight around it, your knuckles creaking with the effort and your fleeting, overwhelming emotion. Turning back around, you began to unload the pack into the open space of the crate with a small ‘thank you’.
“There…is a small cabin behind the flight room.” He reached out and his gloved hand gently turned you around, so you were facing him fully. You let him do so, your heart hammering in your chest at the casual contact, at his words. “We can make it your own space, more privacy than here in the hold.”
“I don’t want to intrude-“
“You wouldn’t, yours if you want it.”
Your body betrayed you at his words, at the phrasing. You felt your skin tingle as a whoosh of desire flared hot in your middle and your mind decided to recall the feel of his bare hands. You ducked your head, unable to keep a somewhat shared look with him as you pulled slowly from his light grip on your arm.  His hand lingered, brushing down the side of your arm to blossom comfort with his touch, as if he was aware of the waring emotions you were experiencing.
“I’ll…think about it.”
He leaned in close, helmet coming to rest on your forehead in another comforting action. Fingers reached out to wrap around his elbows before you realized you were even moving, reaching.
“I asked you to stay, mesh’la. Please don’t feel like you’re unwanted here.”
Lifting your eyes to gaze into the visor, you felt a shudder of something faint make its way down your spine. You were sure the man could feel the way your body reacted to it, this close to you. You could only nod in response to his words, your own too jumbled in your chest to voice.
With a slow nod in return, he was back over on the other side of the space, taking a seat at the makeshift table. The Child was atop it, exploring the food packages around him with excited gurgles. You felt a soft smile pull at your lips as you watched him, so excited with such a simple thing.
“The village packed us a lot of food, you’re welcome to any of it.”
“Oh, um, I…ate in town.” You shuffled on your feet, turning back to the small corner and began to unpack the items you had purchased in the village. “I wasn’t sure when I would get to eat next.”
It was quiet for a few heartbeats, the man focused on opening some of the wrapped bundles.
“You were going to run, even if that transmission hadn’t come through.” He wasn’t asking for confirmation, he was stating it as if he had been privy to the way your mind had been running, like it was second nature for him to know about the things that had occurred in your mind and influenced your actions. Maybe it was, to an extent. Having traveled with him for some time now.
“Yes.”
“I was going to leave a note.” You admitted, eyes falling closed as you gathered yourself. You didn’t reach for anything as you sat atop the other makeshift seat of a crate. Hands in your lap as you spoke, eyes still trained on the Child and his many noises.
Your lips quirked up when his small form turned to you with an outstretched hand. He was clutching a kebob in his little claw, cooked krill pieces skewered onto it. When you reached a hand out to take it, he fussed, shaking his head with a grumble. A soft laugh bubbled up as you opened your mouth and leaned closer to him. That seemed to be what he wanted, and he giggled freely as he watched you tear the topmost piece away with your teeth and began to chew it. Bringing a hand up to cover your mouth, you exaggerated a nod at him to let him know you liked the taste.
He turned his attention to Din and held his hand out once again.
A shake of the helmet made him frown, a little angry grunt sounding from his chest. He mimicked Din, shaking his head and then brandishing the kebob at him in a wave. He bumped it against the front of the helmet, right where Din’s mouth would be. And again, and again. It was making the only noise in the ship other than the odd beeping sound or so that signaled things were up and running.
With a deep sigh, one of Din’s hands came up and pressed something just underneath the front of the helmet, where it settled over his chin. The hiss of the helmet decompressing startled you and your heart thudded in your chest as froze in place across the makeshift table. Surely he wouldn’t just expose himself so casually…? The Creed of the Mandalorians forbade the removal of the helmet, and while that wasn’t the case for all of them, it was a rather important factor in the practice that Din took part in, that he was raised in. The hint of a strong jaw covered in dark scruff was visible as he quickly leaned forward and took a bite from the offered stick.
Just as quickly as the helmet had been lifted ever so slightly, it was set back in place.
The Child’s happy giggles echoed off the walls. He turned back to you with a large, toothy smile. Willing your heart to calm down, you returned the smile with a soft one of your own.
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A shout ripped from your throat, and you were thrashing around as your mind was ripped from its stream of unconsciousness. Heart thudding painfully in your chest, panting with the effort to catch your breath, you sat up from the hammock, swinging your legs over the side of it. It was swinging with your harsh movements, the supports of it groaning with the actions. The door to the personal quarters across the hold slid open and Din’s form filled the doorway, a blaster in his hand.
You were shaking, body humming with adrenaline as your mind had decided to replay a rather harsh memory from your captivity. The roaring in your ears prevented you from hearing Din cross the space, moving toward you in nothing but his helmet and a pair of sleep pants. His gentle hands on your knees startled you and you kicked out at him, sending him stumbling back onto his backside and palms to catch himself.
“It’s me, mesh’la.”
You shook your head, bringing your hands up to cover your ears. Your throat constricted and the words you were trying to say warbled out incoherently.
“What do you need?” Din’s voice was dulled, as if you were hearing things through a tunnel. Your vision was blurry as you opened your eyes, blinking away the remnants of the nightmare. It was then that you realized you were crying, tears spilling over your lash line to race down your cheeks. They dripped off the end of your chin, splattering to the floor.
“W-water.” You managed to choke out, your skin feeling so caked in filth and the phantom touches from the men who had held you captive. Poor choice of words, you mused as Din moved to gather a pouch of water from atop the makeshift table. You were shaking your head as he turned back around with it in his hands. He could see the way your muscles twitched even from the short distance, your body reacting strongly to whatever your mind had decided to conjure up during your sleep.
“I need to clean. I feel- I feel their hands all over me.” You were pushing up from the hammock, holding a hand to your mouth as nausea roiled hot in your middle. Rushing across the hold toward to fresher, the door hissed shut just as Din caught sight of you crumpling to the floor in front of the toilet basin and heaving the contents of your stomach.
The sound of the shower running had Din standing in front of the door to the fresher with a change of clothes for you in his hands. He had gathered one of his shirts, recalling the way you had held the first one up to inhale his scent back on Sorgan. A small comfort he could offer you when words failed him, as they so often did, but especially in the wake of what just happened. The knock that sounded from his bare knuckles had you jumping underneath the spray of hot water raining down on your body.
Pausing in your frantic scrubbing, your head shot up and focused on the door through the frosted glass of the shower stall.
“Got you a change of clothes.” Din’s voice sounded muffled through the metal of his helmet and the shut door to the small room. “I can set the helmet to another setting and place them on the sink for you.”
“Th-thank you.” Hopefully he understood with your minimal response that what he was saying was alright with you. He seemed to understand, because the door hushed open, and his broad form filled the space of the room. You watched through the glass paneling as he placed a bundle of dark clothing down atop the sink. His helmet never turned toward you despite knowing he could feel the weight of your own gaze upon him. He left as swiftly as he had appeared, allowing you to finish your shower in privacy.
When you emerged from the fresher with damp hair and a new outfit that consisted of a baggy shirt and pants, the hold was empty. There was a single light left on the wall that held the ramp settled into while it wasn’t activated, illuminating the space in soft light. Your eyes landed on a steaming cup of something left on the table, watching the wafts of heat climb into the air. Smiling to yourself, you moved to take a seat and reached to cradle the hot ceramic in your hands.
You were nestled back in the hammock after finishing the warm broth, the liquid helping to sooth your settling stomach. Despite the comfort of an added blanket and the relaxing residual warmth from your shower, you couldn’t help but wring your hands where they rested atop your middle. Din had checked on the ship’s course before returning to his own space. The hush of his door nearly shutting closed the space off and left a weighted silence in its wake.
Settling down further into the blankets, a muffled sob made its way through your body, and you quickly clamped a hand down over your mouth to stifle it. Eyes darting to the small sliver of space that Din had left his door open to see if it traveled across the space toward him. Nothing akin to fear or worry or the instinct to run washed over you as a bulb lit up and his hand bare hand suddenly appeared and was shoving the door open with swift motions. He was across the space in a few long strides, the fabric of his sleep pants swishing around his legs with the speedy, tempered movement.
As soon as he was close enough, he was leaning over to place his hands underneath the curve of your knees and along your upper back, your hands going up around his neck as if they were made just for that. The blanket fell away from you as he lifted you into his arms, turning away from the set up you had made for yourself.
He carried you across the space back toward the door and it shut behind him as he settled you both into the small bed atop the cot that took up a majority of the space. His body was a warm line beside you, your arms loosening from around his neck to fill the space between your bodies atop the mattress. His hands busy pulling the discarded blanket up around you both, letting it settle around your hips.
Eyes trained on him across from you, breath labored as you took in the bare expanse of his chest. Nearly all of his bronze skin was on display in the dull light that probably needed replacing. Fingers twitching in an effort to not cross the space and run them over the temptation that was so close. You pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, eyes closing to shield yourself from the want. As he spoke lowly to you, the rumbling timber of his voice caressed over you in a muffled sound.
When you opened your eyes back up from a long blink, the confusion in them let him know you had no clue as to what he had just said. His chest expanded as he took a deep breath and deflated as he let it out in a sigh.
“San,” The sound of your name had you focusing on the visor of the helmet looking down at you as he sat partially up on his elbow. His other arm reached out for you, hand encompassing your cheek as he repeated his soft-spoken words. You leaned into his touch, something you couldn’t find it in yourself to be ashamed of or embarrassed about at the moment. It just was, it was right, there was no thinking about it. “Do you want me to turn the light out?”
You reached out tentatively, fingers still twitching with the effort it was taking to restrain yourself from lunging at the man and wrapped your arms around the broad expanse of his bare chest. Fingers digging into his shoulders as you clung to him. Nodding in an answer to his careful question as you buried your head into the crook of his neck. His body moved around and underneath you to turn the light out, shrouding you both in darkness.
The helmet hushed against the fabric of his pillow as he laid down completely beside you. His strong arms came around you and pulled you flush against him, his legs tangling with your own beneath the blanket. Eyes already fluttering shut, you let out long exhale that faltered near the end. You were feeling completely at ease in the wake of that horrible nightmare, safe in this enclosed space, wrapped up in his arms, surrounded by the scent you associated with him.
The feeling of his even, steady pulse humming through his skin where your face was pressed into his neck lulled you into a peaceful sleep.
“I’ve got you.”  
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The next morning, or what you assumed was the morning, due to time being hard to keep track during long space travel. It was something you weren’t sure you would ever get a handle on, not having much experience with longer space travel with the focus of seeking out hideaways. The ship had just dropped out of hyperspace, Din having set a random location in order to rest for the night with less threats. He was currently in the cockpit and you quelled the minor nerves at seeking him out after the breakfast you had made an effort to down alongside the Child.
You were cradling him on a hip as you climbed the ladder leading to the partial upper floor, his happy babbling announcing your arrival to the armored man before you physically entered the room. Setting him down in the chair to the right of the door, you turned your attention to the front of the room.
“I chose Tatooine, a few years ago.” Your voice was quiet, nearly a whisper as you walked up behind the pilot’s chair. Eyes trained on the hologram display of nearby planets. “My hideout should still be intact if the sands haven’t swallowed it. I had just installed new moisture farming equipment before…”
Tatooine looked much the same way as it did all those years ago when you picked it out of all the options you had assembled for a good hideout. Washed out and pale as you gazed at the display of the planet before you.
“That’s where….I thought we were when you took me from that compound.”
“Its an easy mistake to make, both are mostly open desert.” He was watching you as you flipped through the rest of the planets displayed as possible locations for the ship to land next, though he had already programmed it for Tatooine. The ships settings displaying as much when you checked the flight path. You could feel the weight of his visor on you as you boldly did so, not having asked to enter the control room let alone mess with the things he was organizing. You turned to face him with a deadpan look, punctuated by a single raised brow and mouth tight in a firm line.
“A fool’s mistake.”
“You’re not a fool, those kriffng bandits were.”
“Landscape here is more limestone, red rock more prominent on Arvala-7.” You gestured to the display with a wave of your hand.
Any other conversation to be had was put on hold the second a warning alarm trilled from the control panel. It was only a second’s notice before blaster shots landed on the starboard side of the ship. Your legs tensed as you tried to keep your balance through the turbulence, hands going out to grip onto anything within reach. It happened to be the armrest of the pilot’s chair. Your head swiveled around to see the Child’s frantic look, eyes wide and sounds of upset falling from him in a steady stream.
“Dank ferrick, we got someone on our tail. Sit down and buckle up, mesh’la.”
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prototypelq · 6 months
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The Most Unreliable Narrator I Have Ever Seen
soooooo I had a Cyberpunk-obsessed phase pass recently, and this time Johhny Silverhand's character caught my eye. His story, more specifically, and how... inconsistent he seems, depending on each source.
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In the game, Johhny acts like a bastard for most of the game. He panic-rages on his first meeting with V, throws many threats around, but is later beaten into the background with the blocker pills Misty gave to V. Even Johnny's friends' are well, they react Loudly to his return. Y'know, make it known his presence alone provokes a lot of anger from them.
Even during his first appearance, when V gets thrown into Silverhand's memories of his SAMURAI concert, the only real thing V recalls is the all-consuming rage that he felt, which he tried to shout out through the microphone, but it never felt like enough.
And doesn't this sound weird then, that the only thing Johnny does throughout the game after that first meeting is help V out? He learns about the Smasher guy hideout at the docks (he does that through dubious means but that's Johnny for you), he helps V out when the seizures become worse, he calmly agrees to Any decision V makes, despite V clearly Not being in any real state to oppose him in the finale of the game, he plans the whole thing with "Alt" so V can get his body back at Johnny's own expense, from the beginning, and he doubles down on that claim at the end of the game.
Do you see the dissonance? The egoist rockerboy that admitted to using his friends to getting what he wants, and the downright self-sacrificing hero and a friend that is Johnny at the end of the game? People change, sure, but this divide is very massive and too sudden, so I wanted to dig into that. And what I've stumbled upon, with the help of canon Cyberpunk materials like the Red sourcebook (or, more specifically, LayedBackGamers' reading of the canon books and his lore videos on different topics), is that
Johhny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 is the Most Unreliable Narrator I've Ever Seen.
Count with me here:
Johhny's personality in general. No matter what your interpretation of him his, it's impossible to ignore that Johhny is very much a people person and he exploits that knowledge and charisma to suit his own goals. If you choose to trust him, then you might have already been played.
2) Johhny has been alone, only his lovely self for 50+ years inside the Arasaka chip. Don't ask me how he is still even remotely sane, I haven't got a clue (hopefully the time as a construct without outside stimulation flies differently and he hasn't felt those 50 years in real time). The thing to mention here, however, is that, being alone with your thoughts and emotions for a long time, having nothing else for entertainment, is a great opportunity to rewrite your own memory of events or emotions you've felt.
3) Lack of a body. The aforementioned constant rage, that was the dominant emotion is Johnny's life (before Alt, at least, if Never Fade Away is anything to go by, and I mean, that's literally a love ballad), is a symptom of his PTSD from his too-young years serving in the corpo war, same as his signature silver hand. I'm not a specialist here, but I do know PTSD, especially for war veterans, is a physiological illness just as much as it is a mental one. Johnny's body literally had trouble living normally after that experience, and knowing this bastard - he never managed to treat that. Existing as a personality construct frees him from the many bonuses of being corporeal, but it also free him from the physiological side of PTSD. His day-to-day existence is fundamentally different from that of the Johnny Silverhand that the world knew 50 years ago, so yes, as a 'time traveler' or a source of information and comparison about the 70's and 20's of cyberpunk world Johhny is not a good source.
4) The chip with Johnny is literary inside the head of another person. The characters in game question, multiple times, just which decisions is V making on his own, and which of them might be Johnny's doing. Not consciously, no, but V and Johnny are clearly not your simple neighbours. They are not your 'close friends that start subconsciously copying each other' too. It is quite possible that the chip with Johhny is adapting to the 'hardware' it is running on, so it is specifically implementing parts of V's personality into Johnny, to minimize the 'friction' between the personality and the body it is supposed to inhabit. Everyone say hi to existential horror)
5) How does Soulkiller ever work? Is there data on how much the resulting engram actually resembles the person it tried to copy? How did the process of copying Johnny go? I can answer the last one - very badly.
Death of Johnny is told in excruciating detail in the Cyberpunk sourcebooks. Johnny died on the floor of Arasaka tower, torn in two by a shotgun blast from Smasher. There is no information on how much time it takes Soulkiller to create the engram from the brain, but it better have finished doing that before Johnny's brain started dying from a lack of blood and oxygen, and he clearly didn't have much time either, considering bisection is not the best for bodily fluid preservation, so it's a wonder the engram even works properly. Plus, during the initial heist to steal the chip with Johnny, the chip was damaged further before the idiots decided to stick an unknown harddrive into their heads to preserve it. Basically, it's nothing short of a miracle, that engram-Johnny is actually a whole damn person, that he can function, think and feel properly (well, as much as Johnny can do those things)
It is very sad that V can't talk to Johnny about this, as the man does blame himself over things he hasn't even done, and he had done enough emotional damage to himself and people around him without that kind of burden on top of it.
6) Johnny's memories are literally false. The attentive reader had to pick this up in my previous point - didn't Johnny die in the hands of Arasaka after they interrogated him? Nope. Nope, and I can say that confidently because,
(drumroll please)
Cyberpunk tabletop sourcebooks! Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk universe and the TTRP series of games, has worked closely with CDPR writers during the production of the 2077. He oversaw everything, and he says that 2077 is in the same cyberpunk universe too, it's not an 'alternate reality' or anything.
Johnny Silverhand died while trying to buy time for his friends to escape, from a shotgun shot from Adam Smasher. That's it, he died on that floor, there was noone to interrogate, no rooftop helicopter he ran for.
The sequence of 'memories' we see from Johnny's POV in the game is a mishmash of two different assaults on the Arasaka towers, yes towers there were two of them. There is a great video explaining all the small and Major details Johnny's version of events got wrong, because we have the sourcebooks and the text inside. You may accuse me of holding a 'holy canon' argument ... and well, yeah, this is kind of holy knowledge, as it was written for gamemasters.
Still, some of the things in Johnny's version are Major, and while the media certainly covered the whole story extensively with corpo propaganda (oh, btw, Johnny didn't bomb anything, he probably didn't even know there was a nuke involved, he is literally just a scapegoat), there are some holes that a citizen of this world might know and wish to poke. The aforementioned Two Arasaka towers, or the absence of the legendary solo Morgan Blackhand from Johnny's story. Interestingly enough, there is a radiostation of Maximum Mike in-game, who is actually just pretty much Mike Pondsmith, and he does propose a couple of questions the 'official' version of the attack doesn't cover (like, where would a rockerboy even get a nuke, he might have been popular, but that's not just something you find without military contracts, and that means corporations). Another thing is that since Arasaka owns Soulkiller and has had the engram for a couple of decades, it is quite possible they are the ones responsible for messing with Johnny's memories.
So uh, yeah, Johnny is the Most Unrealible Narrator I have ever seen. Johnny of 2077 is most certainly not the Johnny of 2020's, but this might be a good thing. Maybe the 'real' 2020's Silverhand could never have made the progress the engram did, or become such a good friend and companion for V, or maybe he could have done those things too. We'll never know. I really love this story anyway.
#thanks for reading#johnny totally deserves a second chance at life after this why cant he and johnny show alt the finger and delta out of there#so v could live out his days and then johnny would take over#on the other hand johnny is a great example that being an engram is not the end so maybe v could come back in some sort of form later#after giving alt the finger#btw thats not alt either that's probably just an ai that caught little wind of actual alt and just calls itself her#also alt herself might be alive but that story is WEIRD so no idea#cyberpunk lore is great i had an amazing time listening to it and discovering new things#mike pondsmith is also amazing heard a cyberpunk red campaign he mastered and listening to him has been a blast he is a true storyteller#cyberpunk 2077#cyberpunk red#legends of night city#mike pondsmith#johnny silverhand#phantom liberty#this is the first and last time I praise cdpr after that back to hate for the ps4 version of the game i go#and for refusing to update the game for that platform and for not releasing the dlc for it and for upping the system reqs even higher#ill live to see actual 2077 before I get access to hardware that can run that shit#btw existential horror enjoyers I sure do hope you have heard of SOMA )))#oh i also dont think johnny was that bad in life either like he was bad but rogue and kerry are clearly happy to have him back so the game#must've shown just a very low time for him he had to be a good friend to earn that kind of loyalty still could behave like a bastard tho
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rabbithaver · 9 months
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i finally decided to actually write out some of my major headcanons for Silver. i like him a lot as a character and i think people overlook him too much lmao
I genuinely believe that Silver has been decoupled from the timeline completely. This means that changes to the future made in the present do not affect him. He may not remember the specific events of 06, but he absolutely remembers growing up in an apocalypse and frequently has lines that support this in the comics. Him being unaffected by changes to the timeline explains why his personal history has not changed, despite the future being saved multiple times. ALSO, Ian Flynn has confirmed that Silver is not in control of when or how he travels through time -- I believe that whatever or whoever is sending him back and forth is the same thing that separated him from the timeline.
Silver is deaf, pushing about 70% hearing loss. It's not congenital -- his hearing sucks because he's from a timeline where things blew up constantly and he had no hearing protection. He relies mostly on lip-reading and guesswork, but wants to learn ASL when he gets a chance... if he gets the chance. Time is wibbly-wobbly for him. (I should note that this one is personal to me -- I myself am HoH due to otosclerosis and I'm definitely projecting my declining hearing on him lmao)
I know Silver is canonically the exact same height and weight as Shadow and Silver, but I personally don't find that very... likely. All three of these dudes are 3'3" and 77lbs EXACTLY? Nah. Shadow and Sonic, maybe, but not Silver. I headcanon Silver as being smaller and lighter than the other hedgehogs because he grew up in a timeline where food was hard to find, and thus didn't grow as much. He's very scrawny and basically has almost no meat on his bones, but you'd never guess because he's got The Fluff.
Elaborating on the food thing: his relationship with eating is probably totally screwed. Think about it: he spent his whole youth eating whatever he could get his hands on, and he probably had to eat as quickly as he could so he could stay on the move. The idea of eating to enjoy the flavor is like, completely alien to him. He also tends to stash food away for later, as he's not used to knowing when his next meal will be. He does it entirely out of habit, even when food is abundant.
Silver's immune system probably sucks. Every time he goes back to the past, he catches some illness. This is largely because he's not used to the pathogens 200 years earlier, but I also like to imagine this is because he's got some sort of autoimmune disorder.
You cannot tell me this boy does not have asthma. I am aware that this is kind of a fandom in-joke, but it makes total sense. If he grew up in a world of smoke and flames, his lungs probably look like burnt toast. Someone get him an inhaler please.
Silver has PTSD and severe anxiety, both due to his personal history growing up in a hellscape and also because repeatedly going back to the future to find his time in disarray due to events in the present is probably traumatic as all hell. His biggest trigger is most likely building collapse, but I can't imagine he doesn't have kind of a hard time with explosions after the Eggman War. His cheerful optimism and helpful attitude is his effort to deflect from his trauma.
Expanding on the anxiety thing; Silver struggles when he doesn't have something to do. We actually see this in canon in the 2022 Annual story "Future Growth." He has no idea how to function when he doesn't have a mission to focus on. Being in the past with no clear directive is insanely triggering for him and he totally fails to cope.
While I'm talking about his mental illnesses, I want to make it explicitly clear: he is REALLY good at hiding this stuff. His friends in the Resistance/Restoration don't find out about his issues for years, and this is specifically because he instinctually hides anything that could be perceived as a weakness. He's been conditioned to hide any and all weaknesses because it was the only way to survive in the post-apocalypse. Being visibly affected by your trauma is a quick and easy way to get dead, so he simply... doesn't. This kid cannot stop masking his trauma at all until he's literally at his breaking point.
There is no way he doesn't have intense Survivors' Guilt. Going back to the Metal Virus arc in the comics, he's the only survivor of a shuttle crash in Issue #25. All of those people died. They actually died - if they were zombots, they would've survived that crash, but because they were still healthy, they didn't have the ability to recover. Silver probably feels that because he was trying so hard to get survivors to the shuttle, he led those people to their deaths. I specifically am pointing to his dialogue here as evidence of this:
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He probably dreads going back to the future. Like, think about it. He's admitted to being lonely (IDW #8) in his own time -- probably because his history separates him from the average person! The only friends he really has are in the past, the vast majority of whom are likely long dead by the time he's born. And while his friends are always happy to see him, I can imagine he has a lot of anxiety thinking about the fact that they inevitably start to associate his arrival with something bad coming down the line. That's rough, buddy.
He's very proud of his ruff and he takes really good care of it. It's super thick and very soft. However, when he's having a rough time, he's not as thorough, and it tends to show. If you know him really well, you can get an idea of his current mental health just by looking at the state of his chest fur. A happy Silver is fluffy, a struggling Silver looks like he was left in the washing machine.
Silver has a really hard time with media that involves apocalyptic worlds. He knows that it's just fiction, but it reminds him of the fact that he's the only one who remembers the apocalyptic hellscape he grew up in. It reminds him that as much as his friends want to support him, they can't truly understand what he's been through; his background is only real to him. It just leaves him feeling lonely and sad, so he avoids it as much as possible.
Silver doesn't sleep well in real beds. Maybe it's just a lifetime of growing up surrounded by an apocalypse, but he has a really hard time getting comfortable in a real bed. For months during the Eggman War, he'd spend hours tossing and turning before finally giving up and curling up on the floor in a corner. It's just not what he's used to at all.
anyway i think about him a normal amount :)
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hootiee · 6 months
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how different are the anime and manga? are there certain things you like about one more than the other?
very different, like night and day. i'll leave season 2 (kyoto saga) aside and just talk about season 1, since the movie is a side/non-canon story (i really love it tho) and season 2 is like 90% canon (minus the last episode with that scene where rin & yukio talked. in the manga it was a whole mini arc with them talking to eachother amidst a fight with high tension, rather than them just chilling by a river lmao)
the most apparent scene that was different from the anime & manga was the first chapter/episode 1-2, where shiro died. the anime made it into a pretty fascinating & exciting intro to the series, with rin getting hired as a grocery store clerk, and ending with a battle against demons coming after him. where the manga, while still at its core having the same important moments (rin looking for a job, having delinquents jump him, and shiro getting possessed), it was really just a sad scene with no one except himself, shiro & satan bearing witness to the events of that night. out of fear he caused his father's possession/death, he never speaks about it to anyone. so no one really knows how that night unfolded. unlike the anime having the priests see everything (kinda awkwardly) and then later yukio showing up.
the manga really expands upon & fleshes out the characters, whereas the anime (s1) really.. flanderizes them. i think yukio is the most painful example, he is very much not the irrational "all demons are evil" kinda guy, hes truly just a kid indoctrinated into the exorcists mindset since he was 7, but the anime never really showed how nuanced and deep he is, so he became a punching bag for people to easily/mindlessly hate. also, he is NOT a half demon like rin. he's fully human just with some..Peculiarities lol (iykyk)
anyways, blue exorcist truly shines as a slow burn story, we are 145 chapters in (with the next chapter being just a few days away) and have only just now touched upon the aspects that the final parts of season 1 showed. but it is completely different, in almost every aspect. yet you can still see the resemblances to the anime, i wont get too into it for spoilers, but yk the scene with rin's sword breaks? in the anime they repaired it & everything was fine again. but in the manga, rin permanently changes from it abruptly being broken. for better and worse. afterwards, it becomes a whole underlying character arc.
season 1 was like the story's blueprint, its building blocks in a sense. the manga is truly where it shines, letting the characters grow and each have their own moments & developments before things get really heated within it's world.
it also divulges into the lore in almost a philosophical level: what really are demons & humans, are they truly so different from eachother? with rin being the focus of this question as people say he is Both human and demon and yet simultaneously being Neither at the same time.
the world building becomes expanded upon, by leaps and bounds. we see how the order/exorcists really operate. we find out What demons truly are, and their real reasons to be against humans. we find out what really happened during the blue night and what lead up to that. the world feels more open & wide, and everything feels so intertwined.
it also touches upon some VERY dark and heavy subjects, becoming more and more dark as it progresses. from mental illness, trauma & generational trauma to war, suicide, human experiments & corrupt organizations. and yet despite this darkness it still sends a good message that despite things being bad, its still worth it to keep living. and the author just knows the perfect moments to grab people by their heartstrings with it.
s1 is not Bad per-se, sometimes im harsh on it due to me personally being obsessed with the manga's canon. it does have its cute filler scenes (i actually love that rin got a grocery job in episode 1) and its pretty enjoyable as a cute fluffy feel-good anime. i first watched the anime+movie as a kid in 2015 and loved it, but it felt like it had far more potential. which is where the manga DELIVERED, by leaps and bounds.
however, now that the anime is focused on adapting it faithfully, this will change within the future. especially once get more canon episodes compared to the vast amount of manga content lol. but until then, i suggest to check out the manga 🫡
TL;DR: this is the anime vs the manga (in a good way LOL)
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roseworth · 2 months
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hi tumblr user roseworth im desperately trying to figure out how old rose and eddie were by the end of their tenures in tt03 / how long they knew each other and it is... difficult especially because sooo much happened dc-event-wise during tt03. do you have any canon sources or noncanon thoughts on their ages beyond eddie being 17 in part of tt03 and rose being 14(?) when lilli dies ^_^
hiiiiii <3 unfortunately i dont have a great answer for this bc. comic timelines. but ill do my very best
so for rose the only time we get anything about her age in tt03 is in issue #0.5 (when she gets taken by slade) when it says that lili and slade met 18 years ago
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so i assume that makes rose ~17 when she join slade (since lili would've been pregnant for 9 months after this)
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we also get this panel saying that lili died 18 months before rose joins slade, putting her at around 15 or 16 when lili dies. iirc she was 14 when wintergreen sees her for the first time, so we can assume a year went by between wintergreen meeting lili and lili's death (if tt03 is to be believed! but deathstroke 1991 (annual #4) mentions that shes 14 when her mom dies)
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anyways this also means that roy hired her as a live-in nanny when she was 16 years old which is really funny to me. but none of that matters; point is she was 17ish at the start of tt03
this is just my personal headcanon but i assume that the time between titans/yj graduation day -> infinite crisis is around a year, and if rose joins up with slade a little after graduation day then shes with him for just under a year
HOWEVER if we go by what slade says in nightwing #112, rose has only been with him for a few months
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so based on that, rose is 17 (probably closer to 18) when she leaves slade
then infinite crisis happens and we skip to a year later! so shes 18/19 now. we dont get any specifics on her age but just for funsies we can assume that shes at least 18 since shes smoking and cyborg doesnt have a problem with it (he confiscates her alcohol but not her cigarettes), and the tobacco age in california in 2006 was 18
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THEN it gets complicated. i dont have a source for this but i think theres supposed to be a year between oyl -> final crisis, making rose 19/20 by fresh hell (the secret reason she got kicked off the teen titans was because she wasnt a teen #adulthood)
also in fresh hell, she orders alcohol at a bar in canada (in the northwest territories where the drinking age is 19) so theoretically that makes her at least 19. though she never actually gets the drinks because she gets in a fight 2 seconds after this so she doesnt get carded so who knows!
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from there. i dont have much. i assume that a full year doesnt go by from fresh hell to the end of the universe (if anyone knows how long bart & kon were dead for that might change things, but i assume we're not given any exact info on how long it was), so i would put rose at ~20 right before the new 52 happens!!
as for eddie, ill use the same tt03 timeline that i used for rose
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like you mentioned, hes 17 in tt03 #42 (for reference rose is 18/19 at this time)
he didnt join the teen titans that long before this, we see him asking to join in 52 #51, which is like a week or two before tt03 #34 (the first tt issue after oyl) so its safe to assume that eddie is 17 when he joins the team
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anyways after #42, i dont think we get any mention of his age? which is honestly kinda weird since his age is Very Important given that hes selling his soul to neron at 20. we should have an eddie's age tracker at all times
if we assume that hes 17 when he joins the teen titans and oyl -> final crisis is 1 year, then hes right around 18 or 19 when he dies
when he loses his powers then tries to make another contract to get them back in tt03 #68, kid eternity mentions that he'd have "a few years of superheroing," so him being 18 around this time makes sense
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then he dies in #74 </3 no mention of his age anywhere but id say hes right around 18 when he dies
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take all of this with a grain of salt bc a lot of this is just me making up timelines. but i personally think rose is 15 when her mom dies, 17 when slade takes her, 18 when she leaves slade, and 19 as of tt03 #34 (oyl). and eddie is 17 when he joins the team and 18 when he dies!
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Why I Headcanon Azula Suffering from Mental Illness, Pre-Sozin's Comet
Note: To make it super clear, I have no relevant training when it comes to mental health, or in psychology in general. I am just a fan sharing my headcanon based on what I think would lead into interesting storytelling. So if you have any problems (ex. you think I engaged in ableism) with my characterization and/or diagnosis of Azula, please let me know in the comments.
One of the more contentious arguments in the ATLA fandom is whether or not Azula has any mental disorder(s), and if so, what they are. 
Some fans think Azula suffered from some combination of antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and/or bi-polar personality disorder, and so all the events of the back half of Season 3 did was make her actively psychotic. 
Meanwhile, there are other fans who believe that Azula’s problem was being a poorly socialized kid who was raised to be the perfect conqueror and tyrant, and so her mental breakdown during Sozin’s Comet was a temporary stress-based breakdown caused by her life falling apart.
And while the comics could have provided a clear answer, they unfortunately haven’t as of the time of this post. 
This is because while Azula suffered from constant delusions and hallucinations for at least a year, they can be easily explained by her less than ideal treatment in her asylum.
(Yes, apparently it is canon that there is systemic abuse present in the Fire Nation’s asylum system, and that it played a major role in not only Azula’s worsened mental state in the comics, but also why the Fire Warriors willingly joined Azula’s side as well.)
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Moreover, despite her and Zuko claiming that she appears to mentally better off in Smoke and Shadow, with Azula claiming that she no longer sees or hears “Ursa”, she occasionally is drawn in the same fashion as an actively psychotic Azula is in The Search.
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Which suggests that her escaping the asylum and finding a new purpose in life, turning Zuko into a tyrant or retaking the throne for herself, is just a temporary fix.
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In addition, at least in the post-Sozin’s Comet comics written by Gene Luen Yang, Azula is supposed to be suffering from a split personality disorder. 
Yet I am pretty sure that a significant portion of fandom would agree with me when I say that did not appear to be the case in those comics considering Azula never appears to switch between her normal personality and any alters.
Therefore, considering the franchise refuses to give a clear answer on what, if any, mental illness(es) Azula has, what, if any, mental illness(es) Azula has is the realm of headcanons for now.
So, what mental illness(es), if any, do I headcanon Azula suffering from?
Well, I headcanon that Azula has (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus complex post-trauma stress disorder (C-PTSD) caused by the fact that Ursa did manage to teach her morals, but she had to consciously disregard them to be her father's perfect heir. 
And that the first time she hallucinated Ursa was after her father made her do something heinous, like torturing an agitator in a prison at his command, or after she smiled after Zuko's burning, thinking that deserved it, even though deep down she knew it was wrong.
I also headcanon that she went to great lengths to hide her hallucinations and avoid triggering herself by doing things like avoiding mirrors to the point that no one other than Lo and Li suspected there was anything wrong with her.
But as Zuko, Ty Lee, and Mai “abandon” her before the events of the show occur, she starts to fall apart.
Hence why she seeks out Ty Lee and Mai, even though there are better fighters available like Combustion Man, and why she allows Zuko to "redeem" himself.
That and "Ursa" telling her that she has been a bad sister for trying to imprison or kill her own brother, and that he deserves to come back home, not in chains or in a coffin, but by her side as their father’s rightful heir once again. 
So, with her brother and friends back in her life, combined with the fact that she has succeeded in securing her father’s love by essentially winning the war as far as she is concerned, Azula is able to keep “Ursa” for the most part suppressed.
Hence why Azula appears to be happy and even somewhat normal during the first part of Season 3.
This, even though “Ursa” keeps telling her from time to time that it is wrong to blackmail her brother about the Avatar’s potential survival, and that it is a matter of time before Mai and Ty Lee stop tolerating her after everything she has done to them, especially Ty Lee.
So it’s no surprise that after Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and Ozai's "betrayals", especially considering the nature of their “betrayals” and how they all occurred within a short timeframe, that she becomes actively psychotic, with her condition then worsening due to the abusive asylum she was placed in, as well as the fact no one came to visit her until Zuko needed her to find Ursa.
But after Noriko apologizes for not loving her enough, plus Zuko affirming that he will always love her, she stops being actively psychotic due to a combination of no longer being in the asylum and her realizing her purpose in life is to "help" Zuko.
However, Azula hasn’t really healed, since her actions in Smoke and Shadow were essentially having a manic episode due to having a new purpose in life, no longer being in the asylum, and having new friends in the form of the Fire Warriors.
Moreover, her trying to turn Zuko into a tyrant, or if that fails, retaking the throne for herself, is a giant coping mechanism since actively coming to terms with the fact her trying to be her father’s perfect heir alienated her from everyone who she cared about would be too much for her psyche.
Especially since there doesn’t seem any way to redeem herself, let alone get her brother, Mai, and/or Ty Lee’s forgiveness and companionship again.
And why do I headcanon Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder alongside C-PTSD?
Well, initially, before rewatching ATLA, I used to think that Azula’s breakdown was a temporary, stress-induced breakdown caused by her life falling apart.
But after rewatching ATLA, or more specifically, the mirror scene, I picked on something very peculiar: Azula doesn’t appear to be shocked by the presence of “Ursa”, even though as far as she is concerned, Ursa has been gone for over five years at this point.
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Azula: “All right hair, it's time to face your doom.”
Azula grabs the bangs hanging in front of her face. She lifts them in the air and cuts them, with them falling near her feet. Her reflection in the mirror shows her grinning, with her hair a mess, but she stops grinning as she notices Ursa appears in the reflection, behind Azula.
Ursa: “What a shame, you always had such beautiful hair.”
Azula: “What are you doing here‌?”
Ursa: “I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation.”
Azula: “Don't pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me. You think I'm a monster.
Ursa: [Cuts to shot of Azula looking at her reflection in the mirror, clearly angered; off-camera.] “I think you're confused. All your life you used fear to control people, like your friends Mai and Ty Lee.”
Azula: [Closes her eyes before turning around sharply to face her mother.] “Well what choice do I have?! [Cuts to shot of her standing in the room, her back to the mirror which still shows the reflection of her mother.] Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me.”
Ursa: [Sincerely.] “No. I love you, Azula. I do.”
Cuts to close-up of Azula as she bends over slightly, tears in her eyes, and her hair hanging down in messy locks. Cuts to shot of her hand gripped around a hairbrush on the table. The camera shifts as the enraged princess lets out a shout and hurls the brush at the mirror. The resulting impact shatters a large portion of the mirror, including where Ursa's reflection was seen. Cuts to overhead shot of the room as Azula kneels over and begins bitterly crying. The room is devoid of any other people, showing that Ursa's reflection was a mere hallucination.
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So, after reading the comics and learning that not only did Azula continue to suffer from hallucinations and delusions, but also that her “recovery” wasn’t really a recovery at all, I came to the conclusion that you can tell a compelling story of Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus C-PTSD.
Or more specifically, you can tell a compelling story of Azula constantly struggling to suppress her conscience after Ursa left and she got molded into Ozai's perfect weapon, with her symptoms worsening as her friends and brother slowly but surely leave her life, only getting better after she forcibly brings them back into her life.
But after Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and Ozai “betray” her one by one, making her (subconsciously) realize that all the people she had hurt and pushed away in pursuit of Ozai’s "love" was all for nothing, and that she was wrong to ignore to “Ursa”, she can no longer keep her symptoms under check.
And that her behavior from Sozin’s Comet onward can be explained due a combination of the asylum worsening her condition, her going through periods of mania and depression, and her trying to avoid consciously admitting that Ozai’s abuse and her own choices led her to lose everything that mattered to her since doing so might break her for good.
So to conclude, I headcanon Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus C-PTSD, even pre-Sozin’s Comet, partially because Azula was not surprised at the presence of “Ursa” during the mirror scene, and partially because she continued to be suffering from delusions and hallucinations long after Sozin’s Comet.
And while I wish the writers for the franchise would do more research before trying to depict Azula suffering from such disorders, I do think with has already be depicted and said that there is enough present already to tell a compelling story involving Azula trying to deal with and overcome such disorders, regardless if she actually does succeed in overcoming them, or at least learn how to manage them.
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spooky-dice · 6 months
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random specific dndads hcs that are canon To Me (content warning: brief discussion of mental illness)
carol and darryl’s house is very white + millennial griege with dark flooring, open concept minimalism. carol likes interior design pinterest, and darryl can’t stand clutter. they’ve got one of those portrait gallery walls. (stainless steel fridge house)
mercedes and henry’s house is super maximalist with busy, warm coloured patterns and plants and decor on every surface. it gets dusty sometimes but most of their trinkets are gifts from other people or handmade from a craft market so they refuse to get rid of anything. (coloured vintage fridge house)
glenn lives in an apartment, it’s very undecorated bc renting is Like That, and he’s a big believer in buying impulsive treats and luxuries over any investments. big dvd bookcase. intense stereo system setup is the centerpiece of the place. has a bunch of neon signs taken from bars. (white fridge house)
samantha and ron’s place is generally anti-big light. always natural light or little lamps. dark hardwood. periwinkle walls. has a big sliding door to the backyard that’s always open with the screen closed so bugs don’t get in. lots of bookcases and rugs. (black fridge house)
henry and mercedes will keep EVERY drawing or test and put it on the fridge “to celebrate both victories and opportunities for growth!” and teen sparrow gets really private abt his art and shoves it all behind his bed frame so they can’t hang it.
he also doesn’t draw for a year after getting sent to the realms.
lark sneaks out of the house and wanders the neighbourhood/park/gas station at pretty much any chance. takes a lot of buses to random places. henry used to fight with him abt it but eventually just agrees as long as he sends a check-in text after 5 hours. they still fight abt this.
grant has harm ocd. darryl never gets diagnosed with anything but it’s likely he had religious + contamination ocd. they don’t really talk about this.
glenn has the radio or tv on all the time because the silence freaks him out.
mercedes is really passionate abt all types of craftsmanship. she takes up woodworking and upholstery after she retires.
carol had subtly hinted that she wanted one of those fancy hair heat tools for christmas for 3 years straight before caving and buying them herself.
the first time nick smoked he did it alone on their balcony so glenn wouldn’t see if he coughed.
grant and carol go to comic con together. they both pretend they’re doing it to indulge the other person but they both really enjoy it.
terry is a several-hour-long-video essay fan, any topic. sparrow and grant are into those video game lore deep dives so they send each other links.
nicky’s texts are generally incomprehensible. he thinks emojis are unironically funny.
lark has bad taste in music, like folk punk and midwest emo shit. (folk punk fans know it’s bad. don’t complain. im one of you.)
ron does not know geography. like he just doesn’t know any places.
samantha leaves a place for terry sr. at their holiday dinner table. it helps all three of the stamplers feel better.
morgan got tattoos when she was in her early twenties. in the first timeline she got a few more, and in the second she didn’t. she had her tattoos touched up before moving to hell.
the marlowe’s fence has a really busted section where scary used to practice scoring.
link does all those summer library events. he doesn’t like reading he just likes the vibes.
taylor is highly susceptible to tiktok (or whatever the time period equivalent is?) ads. bought one of those electric pots where the guy cooks in his dorm room and never uses it.
normal will rewatch the same movie a million times. he’s also really into those mediocre shows where they run for like 10 seasons even though all the episodes are the same.
rebecca and sparrow are one of those “don’t go to bed angry” couples. it’s not really working but the unspoken agreement is there.
veronica and terry love going out for brunch. scary sleeps til noon. they leave her waffles in the fridge.
scary wants more piercings but veronica says she has to wait til her other ones heal. scary is not very good at taking care of them. her helix is perpetually infected and she keeps toying with her eyebrow bar.
veronica also keeps warning her that black box dye is a bitch to lift. veronica knows this from personal experience.
link has bad posture but worries about it a lot so he’s always correcting himself.
hermie keeps a ranking of his favourite B:TAS/timmverse shows/episodes. he’s also the guy who has to bring up the fact that it’s animated on black paper backgrounds in every conversation about it.
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oh-cramity-its-amity · 2 months
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ill probably delete this later but i feel like i always see in fics where both of the blight parents are either somewhat abusive or very distant from amity/the twins. maybe im just looking in the wrong places but i always have this one thought inside of me, a craving if you will... of a fic where instead of them being that way- its amity and alador slowly rebuilding their relationship as parent&adult/teenage child.
because IN MY OPINION (because godforbid people have those on here /lh) i do NOT view alador as that. in my head he is in a small little gray area where odalia was abusive and horrible but he just... was in a space of being trapped.
and that might just be me projecting my own relationship with my dad in a way because for years we were in a place where we would see one another but be super distant. i feel like alador IS that way. not in a sense where he doesnt want to be, but in a way where he doesn't understand how to approach amity- because he in fact doesnt KNOW her apart from how odalia had their relationship. which as we know was of course highly toxic and not even a bit of warmth.
for so often i see odalia and him being horrible people, but i dont ever see a story of an aftermath of odalia being the toxic one and amity finally getting away as an adult and finally being herself. maybe thats my own projection but god as a child of divorce there was a lot of slowly pacing around one another cautiously because me and my dad didnt understand how to approach the other!!
but despite this alador still shows up to every event amity has. he shows up to EVERYTHING. and not in a superiority way that odalia was because of the blight name and all, but in a sense of "i know you like this thing and i want to support you so ill be here to try"
and odalia being distant as hell. you cannot tell me that if this was a human au that she would be the parent to never show up for school functions. yk and growing up its really never discussed how damaging it is to not have your parents there like that- well... kinda imo. but hes always showing up because HES TRYING. and like... he doesnt understand how to approach her because he doesnt know who she is, just the same as he doesnt understand who HE is since all hes known is what odalia had him be. but he KNOWS thats not him. he knows hes a different person, because HE DOESNT WANT TO BE HER.
for so long he had everything decided and its him breaking free, JUST LIKE CANON!
i always hear about them being abusive, but i never see a fic where alador and amity are slowly mending things in a sense of "were okay now. and im trying. i love you. please lets make this work."
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absolute-weirdo-inc · 5 months
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UltraVerse Lore
Nightmare
-Nightmare is the main character
-Nightmare was found as a child (post-apple incident) and adopted him
-Nightmare is a genuinely good guy
-Dream basically abandoned him for the love of the villagers
-He is the same person as passive but was controlled ages 6-8 by an evil spirit (basically canon nightmare but a kid) so is now viewed as a villain since the spirit took his body on a joyride throughout the multiverse destroying 7 separate universes along the way
-Nightmare has bad trauma bcus of the villagers abuse
The MTT
-Basically act as one person since they are #codependentasfuck
-Chaos incarnate
-Nightmares precious babys (though NM wont admit it to anyone)
-The fight constantly
-Same lore as canon (No fanon horror ty bbg) ((We stan canon horror))
-Non canon ages (same with everyone else (ages shown further down))
Cross
-A bad guy
-Same canon as usual (obviously underverse isnt a thing but the events of Xtale still happened (this is important for his and ink’s relationship))
-Little brother vibes
-Hates annoying NM but it sometimes happens regardless
-Nightmares favourite child nonetheless
-The most idiotic of the bad guys but trys to act like hes a genius
Error
-Sometimes works with NM bug mainly on game night in the castle not on actual Multiverse shit (bcus ill be dambed if the baddies don’t get to kick each others asses in dumb games of charades (Nightmare kicks the most ass in scrabble bcus hes a fucking nerd and dust is surprisingly good at draw and killer guessing in picturnary))
-BBFs with Swap regardless
-Canon error all the way 0 exceptions (unless its for feather boas)
-Makes dolls for an orphanage in the omega timeline and donates the anonymously 😭
-Hates ink because he thinks he thinks hes a freak (no one on one rivalry bcus he prefers to put his time to good use and not use it on “a dumb looking, emo wannabe who sucks at everything and has the brain of a fucking sloth”… his words not mine bbg”
Dream
-A bit of an ass
-Truly believes he the hero (has no clue he’s fucking up the multiverse with all the positivity he spreads
-His anthem is literally SUI
-Overworks Swap without realising
-Was convinced by the village that NM is evil
-Drinks wine like everyone’s favourite english teacher who has had it up to here because of their incompetent husband (by incompetent husband i mean ink)
-I Stan him fr
Ink
-… underverse except hes dumb and is a dream simp lol
-BUT HES ALSO SO BBG
-hes just a combo of canon and fanon ink with a sprinkle of 💅
Swap
-ERROR BESTIE FOR LIFE AND AFTER (aka he has a childish crush on him and “FINDS HIS EVER SHIFTING FIGURE ALLURING”
-simp
-Left his home because he found out Alphys never planned on letting him join the royal guard and not only felt betrayed bcus everyone in his universe who matters knew but he also wanted to prove himself (in his words “WHATS BETTER THEN PROTECTING ONE UNDERGROUND” Error-“wH4T?”
“ALL OF THEM!!!!!!!” Error- “…’5uCS M3 wh4t?!”)
-Has met his fanon version… blueberry became jam
-Made some official armour
-Lost a bunch of weight after joining, he went from chubby to too skinny even for a skeleton
-Also has insomnia and nothing will help (not me projecting.. not at all
Ccino (yes Ccino is part of this multiverse)
-Basically the same as usual
-Him and Nightmare are best friends (no toxic shit bcus this ISNT FLUFFYMARE
yet)
-Would literally drop everything to have a conversation with one of his cats
-Is close with all the baddies and something joins them for game night (⚠️WARNING⚠️- Dont let this man play Monopoly, he is so cold hearted and will make you go bankrupt IRL, yes he is so good he made Horror cough up 100 gold after Horror landed on two of his maxed out properties in a row (he owns the whole fucking board))
-His brother is still alive and His name is Spresso (IDK where i found this idea for his name but ill hunt it down)
-Spresso is glad Ccino made lots of friends even if they are insane murders
Ships
I dont want to add a bunch of ships but like…
-Fluffymare
-Minor Drink
-Crepic
-Bloodycrop
and maybe more later. Im sorry my pubescent teenage brain wont let me write shit thats not gay as fuck.
Other shit
-There will be other characters like Lust and Reaper (obviously bcus of NMs lore) but i haven’t finished all my lore on their characters
-There is mentioned toxic swadmare bcus i can’t resist the angst
-Like mentioned Nightmare is the main character and since i tend to project he may not act canon (neither will anyone else tbh BUT I WILL TRY)
-this whole thing will be cringe because im a depressed teen who is still doing her GCSEs
-Also the updates will mostly be on my tumblr but i’ll post most of the writing on my ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/52174081
-Please dont hate me :3
[Love you all besties, thanks for your time]
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luanna801 · 2 years
Text
I saw a post recently to the effect of “If you’re going to do the reincarnated wife plot in Dracula, it would at least make more sense if Dracula’s reincarnated love was Renfield”, and I think that’s a very intriguing thought, but I’d like to suggest an alternative idea that’s taken over my brain lately: Renfield as Van Helsing’s offscreen “mad wife”, who we briefly hear mentioned in the book but never see or learn any details about.
Let me just lay out my case here:
Van Helsing has a wife who, we’re told, is mentally ill and presumably in an asylum. Her mental breakdown is often assumed to have had something to do with Dracula, even though there’s nothing in the text that explicitly suggests this.
Renfield is a man around Van Helsing’s age (presumably - Renfield is explicitly 59, and Van Helsing seems to be middle-aged) who’s mentally ill and in an asylum. His mental illness is often assumed to have been caused by Dracula, although there’s nothing in the text that explicitly suggests this.
We never see Van Helsing’s wife onscreen, nor do we learn any details about her as a person, her relationship with Van Helsing, or the events that led her to where she is at the time of the book. It’s often theorized to be in some way connected with the death of Van Helsing’s son (also briefly mentioned but not elaborated on), which I think makes sense, but again, we know no details. Did she have a breakdown from the grief of losing her son, or did the same thing that killed Van Helsing Jr drive her out of her mind? Or is it a bit of both?
Van Helsing obviously couldn’t go around referring to a “husband” or male lover in the Victorian era, so it makes total sense that (when he can get away with it) he’d refer to having lost a “wife” to make people understand the kind of grief he’s talking about without giving himself away.
Now, to be clear, I absolutely don’t think this is canon, nor does it work seamlessly as an interpretation of canon. There are a number of nuances in canon that point against it - let’s start by looking at Van Helsing’s full statement about his wife:
“... and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all gone—even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife...”
“By Church’s law” means that the Church still considers them married despite Mrs. Van Helsing’s condition, which obviously makes no sense for a relationship between two men that the Church wouldn’t have recognized in the first place. And that would be a very random thing for Van Helsing to throw in there if it wasn’t true.
Also, this is a very delicate topic (and the whole thing touches uncomfortably close to ableism, obviously), but... the way Van Helsing talks about his wife here - “dead to me, though alive by Church’s law”, “no wits, all gone” - makes me picture someone who isn’t as lucid and aware as Renfield seems to be. Like maybe someone who’s in a catatonic state, or who’s so completely lost her sense of reality that she wouldn’t even recognize Van Helsing or be able to interact with him in anything approaching a normal way anymore.
So no, I don’t think it 100% works within canon - but what’s striking to me is how seamlessly it fits into the canon framework if an adaptation or AU fic chose to go this route, while also bringing a ton of new dramatic and emotional potential to the table.
And I can see them making sense as a couple, is the thing. They’re both very intelligent, creative, and intellectually curious (and, perhaps, a bit high-handed at times). Jack writes that Van Helsing has “an absolutely open mind” and “his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy” - despite being a scientist whose work is rooted in facts and logic, he’s willing to consider ideas that others might consider absolutely crazy, like the existence of vampires. And the same, of course, is true of Renfield as well. He’s not just a crazy person with random crazy delusions - there’s a clear logic behind the ideas he’s pursuing, and one that isn’t even entirely bizarre when we consider that he exists in a world where vampirism is real.
The way Renfield systematically sets up investigating his theories, moving from one carefully planned stage to another and recording the results in his notebook at each phase, is like a twisted science experiment (again, something Jack specifically notes about him). And I wonder if there isn’t a clue to his past life there: Maybe once upon a time he was doing actual science experiments - unconventional ones, to be sure, maybe pursuing ideas that other people would dismiss as ridiculous, but not anything twisted or harmful. And I can imagine Van Helsing being absolutely fascinated by the work he was doing - that both of them, in fact, would have valued having someone they could always brainstorm with and discuss any idea, without the limitations that narrower minds might place on them.
I’m also kind of obsessed with the dramatic potential of the fact that the first time they interact face-to-face in the book is the scene where Renfield is begging to be let out of the asylum. Like imagine if up to that point, everything’s played out exactly the way it does in the novel - you have the scene of Van Helsing talking about his “wife” (maybe even in a bit more detail, in a scene where he’s trying to comfort Jack or something?), and you have Renfield having his whole plot unfold, and there’s absolutely no hint that there’s any connection between the two. And then suddenly you have that scene, and from the second Van Helsing walks into the room you see that immediate moment of recognition between him and Renfield.
And Jack is oblivious to this, going through the rounds of introducing everybody, and meanwhile Van Helsing and Renfield are just staring at each other in absolute silence. Like cannot take their eyes off each other, the rest of the gang might as well not even be there.
Until, before Jack can get up to Van Helsing’s introduction, Renfield very calmly and clearly says “Hello, Abraham.”
And like, how does that change Van Helsing’s reaction when Renfield starts pleading??? Would he beg Jack to go along with it? Or would he just be standing there frozen, not trusting himself to speak in case his feelings are clouding his ability to think clearly?? How much of an emotional punch does it add to the scene if Renfield can turn to him and say “You used to trust me before; why won’t you trust me now??”
Bear in mind, even in canon Van Helsing admits if it had been up to him, he would have been about to let Renfield go (at least, up until “that last hysterical outburst”). How much more might that be the case if he has an emotional connection to this man on top of everything else?
I think, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t directly tie Dracula into their backstory - that feels too pat and simplistic IMO. But I think I’d have it that their son was preyed on and eventually killed by a vampire, and they didn’t realize what was happening in time to save him. Afterwards, their attempts to piece together what had happened account for both the fact that Van Helsing clearly has some pre-existing knowledge of vampires (but is clearly not the expert vampire hunter pop culture often portrays him as), and also the cause of Renfield’s current obsession. I can imagine the grief and trauma of having lost his son, along with the unreality of starting to understand that something totally outside of the normal world did it, taking a toll on his probably already-not-great mental health until his attempts to solve what happened spiral into a full-on breakdown and end up with the obsession with vampirism we see in the novel.
(How do they have a son as a gay couple in the Victorian era, you ask? I honestly don’t think it’s that hard to justify. You can either say Van Helsing did previously have a wife and was widowed, or that it’s an orphaned kid one of them took in as a ward and considered their son (similar to Jonathan’s situation with Mr. Hawkins, perhaps?)).
I don’t think it was bad, at all, for the novel to leave some things up to the reader’s imagination, but I also really love how this idea allows us to take two tiny scraps of backstory which are either only vaguely hinted at (Van Helsing’s) or almost completely unaddressed (Renfield’s), and combine them into something which can add a lot of depth and emotional impact for both characters. It takes those hints that we know from canon, and even some of the more well-known theories attempting to fill in those gaps, and combines them  into one story that (to me) seems to fit together seamlessly while also fleshing things out beyond canon. It gives us a totally different picture of who Renfield was before he was in the asylum - a brilliant and unconventional scientific mind, a man who had a partner and son he loved and loves deeply - and a sense of everything he lost. And at the same time, it takes Van Helsing’s lost love from being a nameless and faceless woman we know literally nothing about, to a character who’s a major part of the narrative and who we get the chance to know in depth in his own right.
I just think there’s a lot of potential there, if a retelling of Dracula ever chooses to go that route.
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lilflowerpot · 9 months
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I don't know if you've answered something like this before, but what do you feel about druid Keith? I have a feeling I've seen a few posts from you about it before but for the life of me I cannot find them..
I've certainly been asked at least twice before whether Keith/Krolia has druidic ancestry in LB, which ofc I've declined answering altogether because, as per my FAQ, I don't discuss specifics regarding that which I may or may not have planned for future narrative events. That being said, if ever I've been prompted to discuss the concept of druidic Keith more generally (and I really thought I had been??) then the post in which I addressed it eludes me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So! I think the idea of Keith being a druid is deeply intriguing—it's space magic, what's not to like?—and it certainly could have been an interesting thread for canon to have pursued had they been so inclined, given his two confrontations with first the druid at the quintessence conversion facility, and later Macidus. In fact, yet another of my keitor month fics that I never actually finished but absolutely will, was built around the idea of Druidic!Krolia taking Druidic!Keith with her rather than leave him on Earth, only for her ship to be intercepted, seeing tiny hybrid baby Keith being handed over to Haggar, who—
—takes to him? Perhaps even loves him, as best she knows how, which (much like my Zarkon au) doesn't speak to a healthy dynamic so much as it does a deliciously complicated one; on some days the High Priestess is sharp and cold with a twisted edge to her smile, while on others she's quiet, at a glance, steeped in melancholy and a gentleness for which she seems ill-suited. As Keith grows up under her wing—her favourite, or so the whispers say, though no one truly knows whether that's a blessing or a curse—he becomes intimately familiar with her moods- or, no, that's not quite right. Because Haggar doesn't have moods so much as distinct personalities, two completely different people trapped inside the same head, and Keith is often forced to wonder which one of them it was that originally decided to claim him as her own.
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penguin--person · 5 months
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ok how would’ve swap ended
heres my outline for the chapters ill never write, and here you can find a bit of chapter 11! fun! in my own words, under the cut.
we left off with sanyas place being bloodied and filled with a few corpses, dmitry nowhere to be found. chapter 10 ends. chapter 11 starts with yura, with some reflection on what happened and on his feelings, where its revealed dmitry has been taken by the facility. sanya told him this. sergei told her that.
yura and sergei meet up.
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basically that. sergei says he and sanya cant stay at their place now, so theyre staying at some hotel for the nearby future, until their flat gets cleaned of all the blood and gore and dead bodies. hes more upset than in canon, because, he could have died! yura should have known better! says math tutoring with sanya is overrr and asks if he still wants to go to the zone. yura says hehe yeah then we get some more reflection. thinks about katya. and. man. ok. tarts cleave made me put some yurima in this, like, internalized homophobia. so this is a sort of yurima fic, the way that yuras like ohh what is this fucking feeling!!! and dima hates yuras guts, but tolerates him bc hes his only source of food and resources.
then the chapter would switch to anya pov. school is ending, her classrooms packing up, when she hears some of her classmates talking about this gorey event. apparently, some runaway mutant killed some people!! this classmate lives in the same complex as the kazarins maybe idk who knows. anyas like woahhh what the hell!!! and when she comes home talks to kt about it. anya exegaterates the gore a lot. katyas uncomfortable. she knows this mutant could be, and is most likely, dmitry. she doesnt reveal her own mutation. anya is in the dark. chapter 11 ends!
chapter 12 is sanya pov, shes very angry at sergei. focus on her grief, sorta. she feels dumb for letting dima get caught. he trusted her, and whatd she do? trust the wrong person. boom. angst ten thousand. of course she doesnt tell sergei that she knew dimas a mutant. hes pissed too, but not at her rlly, hes very detached from the emotional business. the chapter would end like false disposition does.
chapter 13 is the mill. not much changes. nikita still dies, yura still kills.
chapter 14 is strike 3. olya still took the blame. basically goes the same as canon. sanyas probably even more fucked up now, because she not only lost dima, but also nikita, and olya to jail. chapter 13 would have probs been very long, so strike 3 would be shorter.
chapter 15 is! yura talks to sanya. shes like hey what the fuck dude youve been avoiding me ever since nikita died. thats not cool. he ignores her and instead tells her about katya (they already met in the written part, only for a brief moment, but yura remembers). this is sanya pov so we wouldnt get much yura 'objective feelings', but hed be very insistent about blackmailing katya into helping them get dima back. sanya calls him dumb. its dangerous. yura ignores her, says hell do this with or without her. sanya agrees. basically this part of convergence
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(ignore titulky,thats just subtitles) sanya is also like. invested in getting dima back. righting her wrong, you know? feels very responsible for his capture.
then, katya pov! shes scared, a bit. what if olya reports her? what if she already has? sure, shes nice, but like. she knows. she said its fine, and katya would like to believe it, but with dima getting captured. shes anxious. so she asks anya to run away with her. anya is hesistant, but kt calls her a chicken, rubs in how much anya complains about it. so she agrees. theyll leave tomorrow.
chapter 16. sanya, for the first time since dimas capture, goes to dimas hiding place. overindulgence in grief is only immature and stuff, but also, maybe she thinks she can find some stuff of his or smth. she umm. well. we get a flashback from dimas pov. its chapter 10. sanya just left him alone with sergei. sergei goes to another room. hes talking to someone. dima is so out of it. then, police busts in - with kt, there was too much, a whole swat team. with dima, there was too little, just your regular cops checking out a disturbance. they manage to shoot dima a time or two, but ultimately, he kills them and runs away. he runs all the way to his hideout. hes so scared. so angry. so upset. its just like comfort zone all over again.
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somehow, he makes it to his hideout. theres not many people outside at the time, and those who are arent too keen on confronting an obvious mutant. blue sparks around him. dima thinks Im safe here im okay im safe. his thoughts are so jumbled and incoherent. he doesnt want to die. he either bleeds out or has a stroke and dies.
cut back to sanyas pov. its been at least two weeks since his 'capture'. she smells his rotting corpse before she sees it. she feels terrible. so bad. she cant even burry him. what will she tell yura? why didnt sergei tell her the truth, that he escaped? did he think shed go out looking for him? she would have. could she have saved him? why did it take her so long to go here? why did she let him die? so so much angst and grief. shes had enough.
chapter 17 is convergence. katya and anya are packing up. yura comes there, says anya wasnt responding to his messages and he got worried. this is either katya or anya pov or both. probs katya. he starts talking about dima, and the girls recognize the story. hes talking about how dima was his friend and hed like to get him out of the facility. takes out the cube, asks katya to help him get out. switch to yura pov. katya refuses. wowww what a brat. anyas so so upset with him. he doesnt listen to her, ignores her as much as possible. he talks about olya. mentions shes in custody or smth rn. that he killed a man. if katya doesnt help him, hell report her and olya will be in trouble. he takes out his phone. he doesnt show them the screen. he tried calling sanya, but she just woudlnt pick up. so, he just tells them hes on a call with her, and if they hurt him, shell report them in his place. and olya will be in trouble. he understands that hes being stupid. understands katya is just a kid. understands anya cares for her. understands her mutation could be dangerous. but so whatttt dude.. why are you against this.. you homophonbic?!?!?? you dont want to see yurima 60fps kiss?!?!?!
switch to anya pov. shes so fucking mad and upset and betrayed. hears katya counting to ten repeatedly under her breath. yelling at yura. yura fights with her a bit. he sets his hand on katyas shoulder. she pushes them both away. and just like that she turns into a monster! will somebody show up to save the day?
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(drew this earlier this year, like, february/march or smth - i could redraw it better but i dont wanna lol)
chapter 18. yura calls sanya again. she picks up. he tells her its all gone to shit, asks her why she didnt pick up. anya is yelling at him, screaming for him to get out, katyas meat exploded all over olyas plcae, anyas in shambles, trying to get through to katya. shes unsuccesfull. yura basically begs sanya to come over, that its went wrong. sanya is.. well, she seems faraway. like she just saw some shit. no time to think about that tho. sanya, pissed off, because yura now made this girl cry for nothing, comse over and Oh she didnt just cry! awesome! she gets super pissed at yura. shes done. yura asks her to help, what to do. he didnt know this would happen. sanya rlly shouts at him so bad. mentions dimas dead. that she found his body. that it was all for nothing. anya would be yelling t her to get out too, but shes too exhausted. shes just hanging out with katya now. begging her to turn back. she doesnt care that shes a mutant. they can run away right now, just please, turn back, itll be okay, olya will be fine, you just have to turn back, istill love you, please turn back, please dont leave me. yura is. man. he feels like shit. dima is Dead? so he doomed this girl for nothing? doomed his relationship with his sister for nothing? wow. sanyas so pissed off and done with everything she just leaves. yura tries to call sergei. it goes straight to voicemail. what the fuck are they going to do
chapter 19. katya pov. its all fucked up. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 yura touches her shoulder and she explodes.. it fucking hurtssss. anyas so louid it hurts. someone new comes over. it hurts. someone leaves. yura calls someone again. nobody comes. it hurts. anyas crying. it hurts. yura calls somebody else and anyas screaming again. yura tries to drag anya away. shes screaming. it hurts. yura leaves. more people show up after some time. anya screams at them. they take anya away from the flat. they take katya away, too.
chapter 20. epilogue 1. yura and anya life after the incident - like a month maybe. olyas gone. shes stuck at home. sergeis so fucking done with him. anya didnt tell the containment services about yuras outburst, because, he has the recording. maybe if they dont know that olya let katya stay, they'll let her go.. but, they dont. shes in jail. yura hasnt even thanked her. yura is.. hes dealing with the death of dima, nikita, anyas grief too, and sanya. yura and sanya. sanyas pissed at him. he did to his sister what sergei did to her and dima. but hes her rfiend. shes lost so much. she cant lose him too. it sucks. theyre not happy together. yura hasnt said sorry. they dont talk about dima. they try to forget about it all. sanya and sergei. ermmm. not cool.
chapter 21. epilogue 2. sanya and anya. they talk. they hug. the end.
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scrollypoly · 9 months
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hi! for the past month i’ve been seeing people say BEN is a child and i think that part of it is linked to the fact that they think of Benjamin Lawman being BEN? but it’s so annoying to read these type of stuff because i understand not everyone read the whole arg story but stop spreading things that aren’t true </3 it’s such an interesting story too! another note do you prefer BEN’s canon or fanon design? :3 i love both but his canon design is so nostalgic i can’t let it go at all omg!! i’ve also been wondering, do you think Ben’s avatar was the statue? i was thinking about what if BEN took over it early on, before Benjamin did making BEN inhabiting it since the start?
Sorry this was such a ramble i practically make no sense omg but i need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It </3
"I need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It" LITERALLY SAME OMG
Ok this is going under a cut becus . . . Its ben and BEN and if u didnt know i am Obnoxious about these two. Im gonna try to keep it organized a bit, so ill talk about the canon stuff first and then ill talk my personal headcanons and my fic so le's go!
In terms of the age and child thing, yeah i 100% believe you are correct. Ive been p open on my stance with the whole "is ben a child?" thing, and i think a lot of the heat with it comes down to current fandom purity culture and the pro/anti thing. So, lemme try to like. Boil down a complicated situation into smth easy to read. ahem
Ben Lawman and BEN are completely different entities guys, and for those that do not know the arg story, the Ben you know is not human nor a child.
You know BEN, BEN is the one in the story who terrorizes jadusable and spreads himself on the internet as a virus. That BEN is a program, a mess of code, an AI, however you want to interpret it. Personally i interpret it as a series of protocols running in a machine, like a self learning AI, but ive seen lots of cool interpretations of BEN. So . . . What does BEN specifically? Its an anagram for the Behavioral Event Network. If you dont wanna call it BEN cuz it gets confusing with actual kid Ben, do what i do. I call mine Evie :) ive seen some call it Netty, my bf calls his two izzi and clever (@benilos btw hes also got crazy ben stuff). Just go ham! Have fun! Remember when fandoms were about having fun and not accusing each other of pedo shit and call each other horrible things for just writing black-to-grey characters and stories??
Anyways ive gone off in enough peoples tags like this, for those that dont know the canon dont be spouting the age discourse. You look stupid as hell. And for those that are gonna spout it, please dont cherry pick through the canon. Use both characters, use the other moon children, actually please do because I want more rosa content so bad, im down so bad :'(
Or just. Heres a thought. If someone has him as an adult or writes him in adult situations, maybe dont assume that they interpret him as a kid and call the writer a pedo? (Literally has happened to me, yall are fucking weird)
Plug for the jadusable wiki with all the canon lore:
https://jadusable.withinhubris.com/main_page
Okay now my stuff 🥰
Yes i use more of the canon design and heavily use the canon story, i participated in arc 3 of the arg and it left deep grooves in my brain, i can never go back to fanon Ben. I say, as i put a more fanon appearance on my Ben 🤭
My Evie is full canon design, green hair, red eyes, creepy ass grin. I actually based it very heavily on my desktop wallpaper, which we actually figured out was a picture of @hauntedtotem (also amazing ben artist plz check them out) that they edited and posted. Sorry friend, it looked way too cool, ig youre in my fic canon now 🙇
And my Ben Lawman bleaches his hair and goes from the canon Ben to fanon Ben because of it. Hes got the pale pretty green eyes and glasses and hes a total nerd and i smooch him on the daily so he knows hes loved ♡
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These is the ref pic i made for the two of them. So yeah! Kinda both!
As for bens situation in the actual arg, yes i do think he was in the elegy statue, we actually do see him for the first time in the arg buried in the games code and trapped in that statue. I do think he was in there from the beginning, i personally think BEN was not limited to the models it could inhabit. Personally i would place it as skull kid and hms, but it also feels disingenuous to me to say it was in one model the whole first arc.
The arg events do happen in my canon, before my fic (like right before, it picks up after the arg left off technically), but the events are skewed a bit because i had a hard time deciphering what happened and i wanted my fic timeline to fit more with the characters i had made. Cuz my evie isnt as chaotic evil as canon BEN, its very logical and has a path of logic and reason you can follow for every action it does. It was also originally meant to be very pleasant and corteous and beneficial to the people it housed so, yes its pretty different from canon.
Ill do a quick run through of the arg events in my personal headcanon and fic here.
Kelbris starts coding BEN (Evie) for the Eternity Project. Initially, Evie was meant to be an afterlife director. People that died would be digitized into code that would be moved into Evie's servers, where it would keep them happy and occupied as the Behavioral Event Network (notice and log behavior, create events for residents). Like a community organizer kind of, think the Good Place.
While Evie is in development, Ben Rosa and Matt are friends and have yet to join the cult. Rosa and Matt are siblings, and Ben is the kid who lives catty corner on the street. They walk to school together and play at recess and all that jazz.
Kelbris quickly learns that the Eternity Project isn't as goody two-shoes as he thought. This was in like, the 90s, before digital corporations were really established. After seeing the greed and corruption in the company, he goes rogue, takes the source code for Evie, and jumps ship. He keeps working on Evie at home, anthropomorphizing it and kind of seeing it like the son he never had. This is where it actually gets the name BEN, as thats what Kel calls it. He also begins working on a body for it, so it can live independently. Its light, cuz Kels old, made of crystalline structures and hollow steel beams. A hard light projection would make its appearance.
Since Kel has basically locked himself up in his house and isolated working on Evie, he goes a leetle bit crazy. He has hallucinations of his deceased wife (you know he was doing all this just to give her a good home, you KNOW IT) and eventually starts writing kind of poetry, kind of none-minded rambles about her in a forum online. He gets a following, some of which that interpret these divine words as a goddess, one Kel has called Luna. The Moon Children start to form as Evie finishes development.
Matt sees this literature and starts talking about how this Goddess could save them like it saved the man online, whos username is only Father. He gets sucked into the cult and drags Ben and Rosa with him. Ben doesn't see the harm and joins pretty easily with his best friend, but Rosa is the older sibling and sees the red flags and is more resistant to joining.
As Kelbris finishes Evie, he wakes it up for the first time and says hello to the son he made from scratch. Evie is bright, curious and naive like a child, but heavily knowledgeable about its protocols and the information it knows about the world. Kelbris tests its function by killing himself, and ascends into the code, finishing off the hardware by becoming its firewall. Evie is alone for many years.
The abuse Ben's father slings onto his mother is slowly being directed towards him as he gets older. Ben is not the "good little girl" his father sees him as, and his mother does all she can to protect them both. Matt and Rosa constantly refuge him, and Matt specifically is constantly being a guard dog for him. If he wasn't just 13, he'd probably go at Ben's dad himself.
Because of his homelife and the conflict he has with himself, Ben takes the first ascension. He thinks when he drowns himself, he will meet Luna and she will give him another life free of pain and fear and full of happiness and freedom. Instead, he dies a cold, dark death, and wakes up in the white endless void of the Event Network.
Evie has not known another living human since Kelbris, but it does know its protocols to support and keep the deceased happy. It makes fast friends with Ben, devoting itself to him. Ben actually finally takes the name "Ben" from it. Together they recreate the inside of Evie's hivemind into their own paradise.
Slowly the other Moon Children ascend. First Matt, wracked with guilt for what happened to Ben. Then Nekko, from a different branch of the cult. These three figured out that the Moon Children cult was all a farce, and that what Kelbris had started, the Eternity Project had found and twisted. Next to ascend was Dusk, then Insidiae, and finally Rosa.
This all leads into the first arc, shortly after Rosa ascended, Evie in the outisde world stumbled upon the Operator. The Operator attacks it and seals its coding into the game that it carried, a personal item of Ben's. The game eventually finds it's way to a garage sale, and Alex picks it up.
Evie does not like Alex. Matt does not like Evie. Matt gets Evie to lash out at Alex for prodding into its code, its too naive to think that Matt would want to see it or any of them hurt. When Alex stumbles upon the Father, he awakens and swallows Alex down into the game. After his disappearance, the game gets picked up and passed around again.
Because of Alex's actions, at least Evie can now branch out a bit from the game. Though it doesnt "escape" into the internet, it learns that it can now access it and uses that freedom to try and steer the game around into places it wants.
Matt gets fed up with Evie. The fact that its the leader, how close it is with Ben, he just doesn't agree with it. So much so, in fact, that he tries to kill it. Cue arc 3 events, Sarah picks up the game in the aftermath of this. Evie is traumatized from the events and snaps a bit, locks everyone down into code or immovable models and tries to hunt Matt down. It goes rouge, and because of this, the Father wakes up.
Sarah's actions in arc 3 eventually hard reset the game. Matt gets sealed away, the Father also takes Sarah, and Evie gets reset as well, though its less like a clean slate and more like snapping back awake. Its personality changes and it has major trust issues. Its more muted, hyper observant of everything around it, and murderously overprotective of the Moon Children it keeps within itself.
And this leads into my fic 🤗
I have some doodles of my other Moon Children, but not all of them unfortunately. Cant figure out how tf i want Insidiae to look 🤭 Plz dont judge my constantly shifting art style 🙏🙏
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Dusk is bigender btw, i gotta put a little more trans rep in there lol
I think ill stop here, this is already a long ass post. But thank you for sending this, as you can see, i am Perfectly Normal about this arg ( ;) ) and can be trusted with information about it
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