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firekitten830 · 11 months

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Some thoughts about Miguel, the comics, and what it could mean for Beyond the Spiderverse

This post has spoilers in it! It also contains mentions of suicide. And it's also VERY long. Consider yourself warned.

Comic vs Movie Comparison

Going to be starting this off with comparing movie Miguel and comic Miguel. And to clarify before we get into it, I don’t think deviation from the comics is a bad thing, and I love both versions. Also worth mentioning that at the time of writing this I've only read the original series from 1992, Dark Genesis, and a couple of the temporal crossover stories (which I'm considering non-canon for the sake of this discussion). I might make another post like this once I've finished all of them.

Starting off with story deviation there's... not a lot for me to really say here, since we don’t know much about movie Miguel’s backstory aside from the part where he accidentally caused a universe to collapse, so there’s not a lot to point out in terms of story deviation yet. However his personality and behavior is a little bit different. He’s more serious in the movie. Now Miguel has always been more serious than most other versions of Spiderman, but in the comics he’s still humorous. His humor just tends to be more sarcastic and cynical (think a bit like Deadpool) rather than the quips and wisecracks you usually get with Spiderman. He’s pessimistic and actually pretty mean, especially when not in his Spiderman alter ego. I'll admit I do miss his sarcasm in retrospect, but at the same time it wouldn't really suit the role the movie has set him up to play. Plus his characterization in the movie is still super good, and I like it a lot.

Miguel in the comics does tend to be a lot less bouncy and acrobatic than most other spidermen, and that definitely shows in the movie too. But the movie did something I personally love, and pushed that aspect further, and made him almost animalistic rather than just a Spiderman that fights a bit more close quarters. He’s intimidating, he’s brutal, every move has weight and power that you can feel through the animation. They kept the inertia of his movements in mind, something they do for all of the characters but is especially noticeable and fun with characters like Miguel who have a lot of force behind their movements (This is also why I love how The Prowler is animated so much). One of my highest praises for these movies is that every character has their own unique style, and Miguel’s fits him very well and stays true to the comics.

And the last point I'm going to talk about before jumping in to speculation is the powers. There's not a lot for me to say here either in regards to comparison, since we've not really gotten a chance to see how movie Miguel's powers work, but I still do want to address it because if it's the same as in the comics, then he's actually pretty unique! Makes sense, considering he didn't get them from the standard radioactive spider-bite (more on that later). I am sorry to say but he is (probably) not a vampire (I say probably because it's entirely possible he is in the movie. But assuming it's the same as the comics, he isn't actually a vampire, just looks like one, since judging by the fact that Blade is... around... vampires are real in his world). Do keep drawing him as a vampire tho its hot.

Anyway. He does have those fangs in the comics! He also has venom! As in the paralytic toxin spiders use to catch prey, not the character. Another thing that sets him apart is that he... doesn't seem to have a spider-sense? At all? He has super enhanced normal senses, but not that sort of extra sense that pretty much every other spiderman seems to have. I don't know if this is true in the movie but it would be sort of neat. He also isn't sticky! Instead he has those talons to hook onto surfaces, those are a part of him, not the suit. Unless they changed it in the movie which is the one and only change i think would be super lame. But since they gave him the fangs I doubt it. There is one noteworthy difference between his powers in the comic and the movie, and it's that in the movie his webs seem to be technology based, maybe some form of energy or hard light technology, while in the comics he has spinnerets in his arms. It could also be a mix of both, or that could just be how his natural webs look. Either way I'm curious why that change was made, even if it was as simple as just to fit the futuristic aesthetic.

Miguel's Backstory

Onto the next section! I'm going to do my best to give a brief recap of Miguel's backstory, for anyone who doesn't know it. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to assume that his backstory in the movie is more or less the same as in the original comics, up to the part where he goes to another universe.

In the year 2099, most major cities are controlled by the interests of oppressive mega-corporations. Nueva York, controlled by Alchemax and their corporate police, is literally divided between the Uptown and the Downtown, the uptown being the shining, sparkling futuristic city where all of the rich and important people live, while the downtown is the crumbling remains of New York that have been built over, where all of those deemed worthless by Alchemax are confined to.

Miguel O'Hara is the head of the genetics project in Alchemax's R&D branch, leading their efforts regarding gene splicing and genetic manipulation. Miguel is a snarky, standoffish man, who’s just generally a jerk to pretty much everyone. He has a soft spot for Dana, his fiance, Lyla, his apartment's AI companion, and Gabriel, his younger brother, and... that's about it. Despite his rather high position in the company, Miguel has a strong distaste for Alchemax and its unethical scientific practices, and is determined to delay human genetics testing until he's sure it's 100% safe. After his reservations are ignored by the higher ups, and hasty human testing leads to the death of a man under Miguel's unwilling hand, he decides to quit working for the company. However, he's a valuable asset. Tyler Stone, the head of Alchemax, laces a drink for Miguel with Rapture, a hallucinogenic drug that alters genetic structure to cause almost guaranteed addiction and withdrawal so severe it can be deadly. Coincidentally, Rapture is only legally produced and distributed by Alchemax.

Rather than let himself be manipulated, Miguel decided to use his own genetic modification equipment to attempt to reverse the alterations made by Rapture. During the procedure, Miguel's supervisor, resentful of Miguel's fast rise through the ranks and his constant disrespect for his superiors, sabotaged the process in an attempt to kill him. Instead he ended up activating the gene splicing program, and spliced Miguel and a spider together. Why was a spider present at all, you may ask? The final result of this genetic manipulation project was super-soldiers, and Miguel had decided to take inspiration from a certain hero back in the Heroic Age. Spider based enhancements seemed to work pretty well back then, why not give it another go?

After emerging from the process very much not dead, but no longer human, Miguel has to navigate new powers, and the new dangers that come with the mantle he's accidentally taken. It's around this point when Miguel starts to have thoughts of taking his own life, and pretty consistently continues to throughout the story.

I'm not giving a full recap, this story is already long and I don't remember specifics for most things. Miguel faces a myriad of villains, future versions of classic spiderman villains and new foes as well. He also takes over Alchemax after usurping Tyler Stone, which I'll touch on again later. But throughout all of it a consistent theme for him is loss. Over the course of the original comics, he loses almost everyone he has any kind of connection with, in one way or another.

He has a falling out with his fiance, Dana, and before he can try to reconnect, she gets caught in the crossfire during a fight with Venom and dies in his arms. He finally starts to repair his broken relationship with his mother, only for her to be shot during a raid on Alchemax after she started working as a secretary. Gabriel eventually becomes so overcome with resentment for Miguel that he takes up the mantle of Green Goblin, and attempts to ruin his life and also kill him. Xina, an old flame he was rekindling his relationship with, left him again without so much as a goodbye. The only one he has left to turn to for any sort of familiarity or comfort is Lyla, and even she tried to kill him once. He cuts himself off from everyone who tries to make a connection with him again, because he's convinced that being close to him leads to people hating him, dying, or both. Assuming Miguel's backstory is the same up to this point, he's already at the lowest he's ever been. And probably stays there until he and Lyla develop the technology to travel between universes. Here's where the speculation kicks in.

Miguel finds another universe like his own. Another universe with another Miguel O'hara, except this one never became Spider-man. And this one never lost all of the same people that the other did. He and Dana got married, they have a daughter. They're happy. Not only does he have proof that it isn't just being close to him that gets people hurt, he has an opportunity. Because this other Miguel is dead, and this other Miguel isn't Spider-man. He could take his place and be free of his own unhappiness, his own burdens, and save the inhabitants of this parallel world the pain of losing him. And for a brief time he's happy, he doesn't have to be Spider-man, he has a family and a life that isn't full of danger and loss. And then he loses it all again, and is left once again with nothing but the feeling that it is his fault.

Further speculation, I think that's probably why he's so caught up with "canon"; it means that the losses he faced were inevitable. It makes him feel just a little bit better, a little less guilty. Yes, he's trying to protect other universes from possibly meeting the same fate as the one he caused to collapse, but he's also trying to make himself feel better in the process, even if he doesn't realize it.

Theories

This bit is going to be mostly unstructured, since I don't have any huge theories, just certain smaller points or plot elements I think are going to happen.

Miguel’s ties to Alchemax are going to come up, and they’re going to be important.

Alchemax is a company that originated in the 2099 comics. There has to be a reason they chose it for the company in Into the Spiderverse, because there’s dozens of other evil companies they could’ve chosen. But they chose Alchemax, the company Miguel has ties to, and then they set him up as an antagonist. It's going to be brought up, and it's going to be important.

Miguel and Miles will relate to each other

I say this because they're both very much outliers. They aren't their world's original Spider-man, they both have different powers and backstories than the other Spider-men. I feel like this is going to be called out, both as a way to call out Miguel's hypocrisy, and as a way for Miles to relate to him and find common ground.

Miguel was injecting himself with a gene stabilizer, or with something Rapture related

I know I'm not the first person to suggest the first part of this point. It makes sense--we know that the mutations from the spider DNA didn't all happen immediately. I also can't imagine that having your genome that dramatically altered is very good for you. I haven't seen anyone suggest the second part, but I think that's probably because it's not seeming very likely at this point. I don't want to rule out the possibility, though.

Peter B is going to be important to resolving the storyline with Miguel/Have a heart to heart with him

During the movie I got the sense that Peter B is trying to befriend Miguel, or at least to get him to open up a bit more. I think this is because he sees himself in Miguel. Yes, they're very different, but they're similar in ways that matter. Peter B looks at Miguel and he sees someone who's given up; on his principles, on his role, on his own life. Peter B has never been openly suicidal like Miguel, but before he met Miles he was still very much in the same spot. He had still given up on his ideals, on being Spider-man, and he made the choice to stay and destroy the collider not for a noble reason, but because he didn't care if he died. I think that Peter has recognized that same mentality in Miguel, and is trying to reach out to pull him back from that edge, like Miles did for him. I think the two of them have a lot of potential for some heartfelt interaction, and I hope I'm picking up on something that's actually there and intentional.

So that's pretty much it! This post is a lot more ramble-y and unstructured than I wanted it to be, but it was really just a way for me to get my thoughts out.

#combat talks #across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse spoilers #spiderman across the spiderverse #atsv #miguel o'hara #spiderman 2099 #peter b parker #suicide mention #spiderman

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ectonurites · 2 years

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…ok the next DC:YJ issue (#5) isn’t out yet (aside from the preview and a leaked page) but I wanna briefly talk about this criticism/sentiment i’ve seen in at least three or four separate posts across here and twitter:

Several people confused/frustrated by Meghan seeming to characterize Young Justice fans (via Mickey) as conservative homophobic sexist racist etc dudebros- when the Young Justice fandom they are familiar with is largely made up of a completely different diverse group of people. Plus the 1998 book itself being unfairly misrepresented as less progressive than it actually was in order to justify this.

To which there’s two points I’d like to bring up:

1. Meghan Fitzmartin is the one writing this book. Meghan Fitzmartin who wrote the story in which Tim became canonically bisexual. Meghan Firzmartin who has been constantly berated and criticized and sent hate by the vocal toxic homophobic Tim fans that think she ruined the character! A lot of those people aren’t fans of just Tim- they’re fans of Tim’s generation (in many instances because stuff like Young Justice 1998 was current back when they were getting into comics). And plenty are opposed to any change, not just characters coming out as LGBT, but more diversity in comics in general- more lead characters of color, more lead women, etc. The tumblr- and like stan dctwt- sections of the DC fandom might be what you see the most as a user of those communities, but they are not the only part of the fandom, not the majority, and not even necessarily the most vocal.

2. @gwynerso said the other thing I wanna communicate well when discussing misrepresentation of Young Justice 1998:

I think the whole point was that it was progressive, given the whole point is that Mikey had to heavily twist the guys memories and remove Cassie to make his “point”. Whilst we can talk about writing quality and whether it hits its mark or not, it’s definitely a critique of (x)

the sort of fan who will ignore the progressive elements of what they like to paint it in the gross light they want it to have. If it wasn’t progressive, Bart, Tim and Kon wouldn’t have noticed the dissonance. Mikey’s powers are reality bending on both ends like his dad’s. (x)

Because, as stated earlier, those types of fans of YJ do definitely exist and they are in Meghan’s twitter notifications on a pretty regular basis (plus I wouldn’t be surprised by some irl encounters at conventions she’s attended since UL #6 dropped). Maybe they’re not the ones reading the book (and even if they are, they’re obviously not the only ones) but it’s still a toxic mindset that’s within the comics community and she is actively painting that mindset as being the villain here (which goes along with the general theme in both this book and Dark Crisis as an event that things can’t/shouldn’t just go back to ‘how they were’ because things have changed, modern comics can’t just be ruled by nostalgia)

I think there is definitely fair discussion to be had about whether this was the book/story that was needed for these characters right now (I personally at this point don’t really think it was, in large part because a lot of problems/unfair treatment the YJ generation has faced were more editorial’s fault than the fanbase’s, and that’s something hard to actually approach through an in-universe story), I think there are certainly elements/execution/characterization worth criticizing (I’m just… waiting to formulate my final thoughts on any of that until we have the whole story, because the context of the ending could absolutely change/explain things), but it feels like so many people are just looking for reasons to be angry without taking a step back to think about the larger picture/larger comics community. Without trying to think about what is actually being communicated here and instead just getting defensive.

#please don’t take this as me vaguing any specific person though i’m just #saying all this because of how frequently i’ve been seeing people say stuff like this over the last day or so #and slight side tangent but #I also feel like a lot of people (in the tumblr and dctwt subsection of the fandom)#liked Sum of Our Parts a lot #and thus came into this book with really high expectations and strong ideas about what they wanted #and this book turning out to be different than what was wanted/expected has made people #look for more reasons to be angry about it whether consciously or not #idk man 🤷‍♂️#grandpa max is god? i go to church now

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dastardly-dyke · 6 months

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I mean, if you want a genuine conversation on why "some people" think that sort of content should be allowed (I wouldn't say "embraced" personally), then I'm okay with having it.

Depends on what you’re going to say. I understand why CSA survivors would want to create stories or art or just generally talk about characters going through the things they did and recovering from them, but a lot of “pro-shippers” are just looking for an excuse to make child porn. There’s a difference between creating content that discusses dark issues and creating content that glorifies and normalizes those issues. I’ve seen both types and I’ve also seen myself and many others be very negatively affected by the sexualization of child characters in fandom spaces while we were kids. I don’t think it’s okay for people to actively make that sort of content unless you’re going to address it properly and not just put child smut out onto the internet for the masses to see. Media DOES affect real life and “it’s not real so it doesn’t matter” is frankly gross and untrue. Everyone has different coping mechanisms but some of them should be kept private and also, seeing a therapist is definitely better than making comic cp ☺️

#I’m open to listening but I have a very stiff view on this so fair warning #I’m never going to support proshippers but maybe I’ll understand the coping part of it a little better

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razorblade180 · 2 years

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My main issue with BB is that as it is, it’s a very frail relationship that won’t last long because neither girl seems to be mentally prepared to be in one, specially with each other. As it is presented in the show, seems like Yang is gonna need constant reassurance and Blake is gonna have to be there all the time, which is already bad enough, but then you remember… it’s Blake. She has a bad story of people like that. They are each other’s triggers, and the show nor fans talk about it!

I see your points, and I’ve actually mentioned similar subjects in the past. I feel the need to put this on the record on what I’m about to say is no way a rant. I’m simply speaking my thoughts calmly. So please, do the same if you’re gonna type a reply

I like BB. They are cute, and can work, but I do agree their current state isn’t that great. It’s why one of my random predictions I made for V9 a long time ago was some kind of moment where things are bad for everyone and Weiss calls out Blake and Yang for not properly contributing because they’re too focused on one another.

It’s why I really wanted in V8 for Ruby to be a bit upset that the two, specifically Yang, for deciding to tell Robyn about the plan without discussing it first; then shut down the counter argument of Blake being on board with it because Blake is the most likely person to try and agree with Yang instead of pushing back. I think it would’ve been a good character moment for Ruby to acknowledge and be happy that the two clearly love one another, but puts her foot as a leader who should definitely be aware of big choices. After all, one of them literally said they’d “follow her lead” but didn’t.

I would like to see an arc for Blake that is the realization that in her quest to feel like a good partner this time around, she’s actually letting the team down as a whole. It would also bring into light that while Yang isn’t trying to gaslight Blake or anything of the sort, she’s unknowingly using the rockier parts of their relationship to get Blake on the same page as her.

I really do think it’s unfortunate that RT gave Renora the “figuring who we are alone” message and not BB. While anyone can see Ren and Nora were pretty joined at the hip sense the beginning, I personally never got the idea that Nora didn’t know who she was as individual until they made that focus for the volume. Meanwhile, the person who encourages her to find individuality has had all their actions driven by others since the start of the show.

Be it Adam, Sun, or Yang, Blake doesn’t make a big move or really any move that wasn’t based on or pushed by those three. Left alone, Blake has little to no initiative. She has the most to benefit from being single right now and trying to rediscover who she is in my opinion. Much like a real relationship, if you don’t self reflect in between getting out of one and getting into another, then you’re likely to make the same mistakes. The thing is both in the show and especially in the comic they made set around the V4 time period, they talk about how Blake used to be this outgoing individual and cheery. We even see it a little. I would love if her arc was her taking time for herself and trying to gain some up that back; especially with her seeing some of her former self in Ruby. She knows she won’t be able to be exactly the same because that’s what trauma does to people, robs innocence, but that doesn’t stop her from regaining a sunnier disposition and learning to be the active go getter again. I think that would be really nice. Especially if we got scenes of a younger her being happy then Kali and Ghira in the present start seeing that little girl come back in little ways.

Yang is a different can of worms. You can say deep down Yang has never been truly happy and the façade fully broke when Blake left, making it impossible for Yang to act like like she did in V1-V2. Or you can say now that Yang is constantly forced into situations where she can’t be care free and has to deal with more personal feelings that she has to learn life really does just happen and you can’t hold on to every negative or serious thing tightly. Certain conflicts that have been resolved just have to be let go despite the outcome. It’s easier said than done but if she’s really comfortable with things like her arm and is happy to have Blake in her life, then she shouldn’t dwell much on all the things it took it get to that point. Oz lied, but so did she; people are scared and confused. Not everything is meant to be internalized forever. Some things are simple truths you acknowledge and then move forward with.

This was way longer then I intended but yeah. They need work. I hope they get sufficient work because honestly I don’t know about you all but simply being a same sex couple doesn’t really cut it for me or feel as grand as it used to be. Disney somehow beat Rooster Teeth in showing two girls getting into a developing relationship and kissing on screen. How did they let that happen?

#rwby #bmblb #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #ask me stuff #rwby talk

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anneapocalypse · 2 years

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Dragon Age: The First Three Graphic Novels

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, slavery, sexual violence, discussion of the handling of a transgender character.

The Dragon Age series of graphic novels published by Dark Horse Comics begins with The Silent Grove, released serially in 2012 after the first two games were out. The storyline continues with Those Who Speak, also released in 2012, and Until We Sleep in 2013. These three graphic novels were written by then-lead writer David Gaider and Alexander Freed and illustrated by Chad Hardin, with cover art for the third book by Anthony Palumbo. Since these three books comprise one story arc, I'm going to talk about them together.

I should probably say up front that I'm not really a comics reader generally; it's just not a format I've ever been especially drawn to. I'm so not a comics reader that when I noticed panels seeming sort of weirdly out of order on my first read, it didn't occur to me until like the third book that this was because those pages were formatted as two-page spreads, and I was reading them on my tablet with only a single page displayed by default. This is also to say that I probably don't have the appreciation for the tropes and aesthetics common to comics. That doesn't mean the comic-booky stuff is by default bad, just that it tends to stick out to me and doesn't necessarily appeal to me personally.

I'm not a visual artist and I don't have a whole lot to say about the art, but there are a few things that stood out to me. Both Varric and Alistair have had their hair coloring tweaked a bit from how they appear in the games. Varric, who is pretty clearly blond in the games even in poor lighting, has had his hair colored sort of a light brown. Alistair is sort of a dark blond in Origins (the texturing of his vanilla hairstyle makes it look a touch darker and depending on the lighting it might appear to lean toward a strawberry blond, but you can see in the screenshots of this tutorial where nothing but the hair mesh has been changed that it's definitely a blond tint and not brown or red), but the comics (and later Inquisition) lean more into the strawberry side of the blonde, giving him a distinctly orangey hair color. I think this is done in part to make him and Varric look more distinct from one another, and I'm not really bothered about it. You can still clearly tell who both of them are, and that's good enough. Thankfully, they didn't "tweak" Isabela's appearance.

The comics maintain the slight distinctions in elven facial structure that DAII introduced (namely the prominent nose bridge) but throw out the blue-green undertones to their skin, probably for the best. Notably, the comics maintain the gray skintones for most of the Qunari we see, but not all—the Tamassran who questions Isabela has a lighter and warmer skintone, while the Arishok formerly known as Sten is given a skin tone pretty close to how he appears in Origins, maybe a little darker and a little warmer (and having gone back north, it makes sense that he would be more tanned than he was while traveling in the south). His hair is longer and he has a beard now but he's still hornless and still quite recognizable as the Sten we knew.

There is one artistic choice that I found increasingly irritating as I read these books and that's the way certain female characters are drawn in weirdly exposed or sexualized ways in specific situations. I'm not talking about, like, Isabela showing cleavage in her usual outfits because that's how she dresses. I find the panels where she's specifically posed to show her underwear during an action sequence weird, and I guess this is sort of a Comics Thing, but even that isn't what got under my skin the most. I'm thinking of, for example, Isabela in the flashback where she's being taken away from her childhood home by the man her mother sold her to for "marriage." Clearly much younger and probably still a teenager, Isabela is drawn in a low-cut top that shows a lot of her chest, while her mother watching her being taken is wearing the same style of top but cut noticeably higher. It's not so much a matter of whether a younger Isabela would have chosen to dress that way, as she certainly could have, but something about it in a shot where she's being sold into sexual slavery, with tears running down her face, just feels really skeevy to look at. Which, maybe that's the intent, but I don't personally feel like it adds much to that plot point.

But probably the worst example is in the flashback dealing with the time Isabela transported captive people for an Antivan slaver. I am not questioning why enslaved people would be wearing ragged clothes that cover them poorly (though there's definitely still a deliberateness to drawing their clothing ragged in a "sexy" way for the women). But when, pursued by the Orlesian Navy, Isabela and her patron throw the enslaved elves overboard to lighten the ship, there's literally a shot of a woman with her skirt blown up so that we can see her underwear as she falls into the sea screaming, and I just genuinely don't get that decision. If you must have an upskirt shot, what makes you decide that the part where enslaved people are being murdered is a great place for it? It's weird, and it's uncomfortable and not in a way that I think adds to the story. It's not making any kind of a point, it's just taking a moment that's horrifying, is supposed to be horrifying, and otherwise works as such, and sexing it up for no reason.

There is one more example that might fall in with this, but it's a bit unique and intersects with the writing in a different way, so I'm going to save it for later.

Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot to say about the art, other than I liked the style just fine. The text is what I tend to focus on, and most of what I want to talk about is the story and the characters.

Because this is a universe based heavily around player choices and their consequences, the supplementary books and comics all follow what's known as "Bioware's canon," a series of arbitrary choices that constitute not the only canon, but one possible continuity for the universe. The novels do make a point of dodging certain major points of divergence; Asunder and The Masked Empire both take place largely in Orlais and avoid ever mentioning who is currently ruling Ferelden. At the same time, Asunder also features Wynne as a major character and Shale as a side character; Wynne can die in Origins, and Shale may not be recruited at all in which case she and Wynne would never have met. These first three graphics novels lean in even further to embracing that arbitrary world state, and don't shy away from centering characters from the games who have many possible outcomes. This is a story about Alistair and specifically about an Alistair who's King of Ferelden, ruling alone.

I'm covering the first three together because they basically comprise a complete story, wrapped up at the end of Until We Sleep. These first three volumes star Alistair, Isabela, and Varric, all familiar companion characters from the first two games, whereas later volumes introduce more new characters in lead roles and focus less on established characters. The story begins in 9:38 Dragon, about a year after the Kirkwall rebellion. Alistair has been King for about seven years.

So, let's talk about our main trio for a moment, because I think the setup for it is rather funny.

Alistair, now King and sole ruler of Ferelden in this timeline, is on a personal quest to find out what happened to his father King Maric, who disappeared at sea in 9:25 Dragon and was subsequently presumed dead, causing the throne to pass to his only legitimate son, Cailan. The implication here is definitely that Alistair is hoping that Maric is not only alive, but willing and able to to reclaim his throne and lift the burdens of ruling from the shoulders of his bastard son. And for assistance he's hired on... Isabela, pirate captain, and Varric Tethras, dwarven businessman and storyteller.

How does the King of Ferelden end up in Antiva working with two of Hawke's old pals? Was Zevran busy? Alistair has met Isabela, once, at the Pearl while traveling with the Hero of Ferelden (who in this continuity died killing the Archdemon). He met Varric through Isabela. I get that Alistair doesn't want to involve the Fereldan navy because this quest is a big secret, but his next best option for help was a pirate he met once in a brothel? Well. Zevran did offer him some information to get him started, so perhaps it was also Zevran who pointed him toward Isabela, as we know they were previously acquainted.

Hilariously, though, some of the dialogue between Alistair and Isabela has the potential to imply something that I'm pretty sure isn't meant to have happened in this canon! Alistair calls her "an old... acquaintance, of sorts," with those ambiguous ellipses, and at one point Isabela exclaims to him, "Didn't you used to be fun?" I cannot imagine what about Alistair Isabela would have thought was "fun" in the brief time they met... unless something else went on between them. Later on, when Alistair asks if she'll take him to the Tellari Swamps to find the Witch of the Wilds, Isabela replies, with a knowing smile over her shoulder, "For you? Anything... but just the once."

With no canon romance with the Warden in this timeline, there's no canon threesome (or foursome) at the Pearl either, but... well, I can imagine and I found myself enjoying the idea that Alistair and Isabela got to know each other a bit better during their brief acquaintance.

So, we're two chapters in and I have a new ship, that's cool!

Anyway, these three are sort of an odd combination, but the story explores themes of identity and purpose for all three, though Varric gets the least of it, possibly because as a storyteller, he prefers not to focus on himself.

At the center of this theme is Alistair, Ferelden's reluctant King, and he takes center stage in the first graphic novel, with his voice providing the narration. There are several reasons he wants to find Maric, but perhaps the greatest is the one he tells Isabela at sea. Hearing the message Maric left his old cellmate for his son, that he was sorry, that he "had to do it," only reminds Alistair that Cailan was the son who mattered—that he was never meant to be King. "I need to know..." Alistair says.

"If he abandoned you?" Isabela fills in.

"If he abandoned his Kingdom," says Alistair.

Despite Alistair's longing for a family, I think he accepted long ago that his father never wanted anything to do with him, that he could never be anything to Maric but a threat to Cailan's rule, and so he found his family elsewhere—in Arl Eamon, in Duncan, in the Grey Wardens. But becoming King changed everything for Alistair. And if Maric is still alive, if he could have come home but didn't, then he is responsible—for abandoning his people, for leaving them with an inexperienced ruler when the Blight came. For Cailan's death. For the civil war. For Alistair being forced onto the throne.

Meanwhile, here is Alistair, sailing off on his own voyage, leaving Ferelden in the care of some regent, presumably (I don't think it's ever mentioned who that might be). Placing himself in the path of danger and potential death, for his own personal reasons. I doubt that irony is lost on him.

In the Tellari Swamps, Alistair and his companions meet Yavana, a Witch of the Wilds of Antivan legend and allegedly the one who broke Maric out of the Antivan prison where he had been held. Yavana confirms that she is another daughter of Flemeth, and if the legends are to be believed she is a much older one. We know that Morrigan never met any other daughters. Whether Yavana is the same Witch in the stories dating back hundreds of years, however, I'm not sure. Unless Flemeth passed on to Yavana the knowledge of how to extend her life, and Yavana has herself been taking daughters to possess over the ages, I'm not sure how she would have survived, and I'm also not sure whether that skill is unique to Flemeth due to her carrying the spirit of Mythal. At any rate, Yavana calls Morrigan a "poor, confused child" for having refused the "gift" of Flemeth's possession, which lines up pretty well with what Flemeth tells Morrigan in Inquisition: that "a soul is not forced upon the unwilling," and that she would never have possessed Morrigan's body without her consent. Interestingly, it seems that Flemeth never chose to possess Yavana, despite her apparently willingness. Instead, Yavana has lived here in the Silent Grove, protecting these great dragons.

A quick note on dragons: while reading, I never got the impression that Yavana referring to the dragons as "these great ones" or "great dragons" was meant to denote an actually distinct type of dragon; I just took it as a descriptor, not a classification. The wiki certainly seems to believe they are distinct, however, based apparently on an annotation by David Gaider found only in the Library Edition of the graphic novels, which is only now available in very expensive used copies and which I don't own, and thus I can't verify what that annotation actually says. Based purely on the text on the comics I would be inclined to think that "great dragons" were simply older and more powerful high dragons—and it's worth noting here that high dragons are not themselves a distinct species, but simply mature female dragons that appear in many different varieties. So "great dragons" are a thing, and it seems that their blood in particular confers some sort of power, but we'll get to that. Beyond that vague distinction, nothing is really clarified here.

Alistair and Isabela respond with confusion to the idea that dragons need protection, and this is where Yavana drops what I think is going to turn out to be a very important piece of worldbuilding:

How many "heroes" hunted dragons over the centuries, until almost none were left? It was nearly a tragedy for us all. ... In destroying what it does not understand, mankind would destroy itself. The blood of dragons is the blood of the world.

What does this mean? We still don't know, but I think it comes back in Inquisition when Solas is so upset at the Grey Wardens for their plan to pre-emptively seek out and kill all the Old Gods. He is likely right that their plan is backwards, of course—that the Archdemon is not the source of the Blight and in fact not even corrupted until the darkspawn find it. But I also get the sense that Solas knows more than he's saying—that he knows killing all the Old Gods would cause something very bad to happen. In fact, I don't think it's a far-fetched theory to say that killing all the Old Gods might bring on the end of the world. I think this would go pretty far to explain Solas's general contempt for the Grey Wardens, to the point that he is reluctant to admit they have done any good at all: "They are fools," he says, "a fact only amplified by Corypheus's meddling." I think this assessment is pretty obviously unfair given that no one else shares whatever knowledge Solas is hiding, but that's Solas. He argues that they have merely bought time, making no real progress—by which I think he means they've never figured out the source of the Blight or how to actually end it, only how to kill an Archdemon and send the darkspawn back underground.

We also learn in Inquisition that dragons have an unusual resistance to the Blight, though clearly this resistance is not absolute. But I would guess that this is why the Grey Warden Joining requires the blood of an Archdemon: this confers some of the old dragon's natural resistance to the Grey Warden and is what might allow them to survive the taint.

I think that not only does Solas know the death of the last Old God could be disastrous, he also knows the true source of the Blight, which the Grey Wardens are nowhere near understanding. I think Flemeth must have known this too, especially given that she has a daughter in the business of preserving dragons. Notably, this run of comics began after Dragon Age II, at which point it had definitely been established that Flemeth was going to turn out to be Mythal, because there are way too many hints about that in DAII.

But back to Alistair, and his family history. In The Stolen Throne, we saw Flemeth save Maric and Loghain during the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden, allowing Maric to lead the rebels to victory and restore the line of Calenhad to the throne. What we never saw is what Flemeth asked of him in return, and now we learn: she made Maric promise that he would seek out Yavana when his heir was grown. She needed his aid in awakening the sleeping dragons that lay hidden and protected in a cavern beneath the grove. She needed Maric for this because of his bloodline, but we'll learn the specifics of that in the next book. Before he could complete the task, though, he was taken by Aurelian Titus, a Tevinter magister seeking power from Maric's blood. Blood, blood, blood. It's all anyone ever wanted from Maric! Says Yavana:

Your heart beats with the old blood as well. Where do you think it comes from? It sings of a time when dragons ruled the skies. A time before the Veil, before the mysteries were forgotten. Can you hear it?

Another fascinating little bit of worldbuilding here! Of particular interest to me is that it was established this far back that the Veil didn't always exist. And dragons existed before it.

So, Yavana asks Alistair to help her in exchange for aid in finding Maric, and instead he stabs her.

This is... an interesting moment for Alistair. Personally, I think his choice to kill Yavana is impulsive and childish. She isn't responsible for what happened to Maric (the promise was made to Flemeth, not to her daughter), and killing her neither avenges him nor brings Alistair any closer to finding him—on the contrary, Yavana could have helped him and was offering to do so. Alistair cites his distrust of Morrigan and Flemeth, and he claims he's seeking justice, but I think that in reality, he simply needs someone to blame for his own and Ferelden's misfortune.

At the same time, it's after this that Alistair finds new purpose and direction. He tells his companions that he's tired of being a pawn—that he's going to kill Aurelian Titus, find Maric, and then go home to be King.

"It's about time you said that," says Varric.

I think at this point Alistair does believe Maric is dead, and means to avenge him, but has about given up on the idea of a rescue. This is the beginning of him accepting his future as Ferelden's King.

But there are few more twists coming his way yet.

Those Who Speak shifts to put the focus more on Isabela, giving her the narrative voice and also giving her some backstory.

We have a few interesting firsts in this volume. We get our first female Qunari character, the Tamassran who interrogates Isabela. We also get what I believe is our first canonically transgender character, Maevaris Tilani, who will play a prominent role in the rest of the story.

This is also, I think, the first direct look we get at the Qunari in the north; previously we'd on seen them in smaller groups in the south where they are not presently at war (except for very briefly in Kirkwall). In the north, the Qunari are actively at war with Tevinter and have been for a long time, and our heroes get themselves briefly tangled up with the Qunari.

As mentioned above, we see Sten again! He's no longer Sten, however, having been promoted to Arishok after the previous Arishok was killed in Kirkwall, because he's a character we've seen before and therefore he must go on being important for all of the franchise for the rest of time. :P I don't honestly mind this; I liked Sten in Origins and it's not implausible that he would have risen in the ranks after his successful return from the South and helping to defeat the Blight, plus he now has unique cultural and tactical knowledge of the south. (As a sidenote, he is also presumably still the Arishok during the attempted Qunari invasion in Trespasser, though of course officially Qunari leadership denounces Operation: Dragon's Breath after it fails.) Alistair's past acquaintance with the Arishok ends up being plot-relevant, or perhaps we should say plot-convenient. It works well enough. But it's still one of those Things this series does a lot. Incidentally, Alistair keeps calling him "Sten," and the Arishok keeps correcting him, which is understandable but also sort of reveals how little Alistair pays attention to what other people are saying sometimes.

The Arishok formerly known as Sten agrees to let Alistair and Varric go because they are basalit-an, the Qunari term for an outsider worthy of respect. Considering that Alistair never got to know Sten well enough to understand that "Sten" was a title, I have to wonder what he did to earn that. He isn't even the one who killed the Archdemon, in this timeline. Is it just that he fought with the Hero of Ferelden? In that case, I guess the whole crew would be basalit-an. Maybe it's that the Grey Wardens earned Sten's respect. In any case, here it is for narrative utility.

Isabela's backstory is the emotional core of this book, revealed to us in her memories as a Tamassran questions her about her life and past. Her one experience trafficking in slaves is the reason she refuses to ever do so again, and the reason she freed Castillon's captives when she discovered them, thus leading directly to the desperate need for coin that led her to steal the Tome of Koslun, thus setting in motion the events that led to the Qunari invasion of Kirkwall. The Tamassran prods her for her history, and in particular her birth name, holding up the possibility of redemption.

The interesting thing about the way this volume plays out is that the Tamassran sort of wins. Isabela escapes, but before leaving she does reveal her birth name to her captor, though she says it is no longer her name. Isabela regains her ship, Alistair gains aid from the Arishok, and the trio set forth again—but in the pages to come, we will see that the Tamassran's questioning has set Isabela off-balance. As the second book closes, she tells Alistair "I'm not sure I'm Isabela any longer," and her internal monologue notes that after this mission, "There are going to be some changes," but leaves her meaning ambiguous. In the beginning of the next book, Varric notes that Isabela still seems troubled, and at the moment seems to prefer being called "Captain" to "Isabela," indicating that her emotional arc is still ongoing.

Until We Sleep places us in Varric's point of view, opening with an entertaining little narration Varric has made up about the nameless henchman he is about to kill: "Do you want to feel sad for a luckless, nameless thug who joined the wrong cult?" he teases the reader, "or do you want to accept that Arthur the Wicked had to die, and move along?"

Alistair and his companions are now in a temporary alliance with the Qunari, which is sort of notable because Qunari making alliances is presented to us as a very big deal in Inquisition. But the Arishok respects Alistair and any Tevinter magister is a common enemy, so they have that much going. It is actually the Arishok formerly known as Sten who gives us the final piece of the puzzle of Alistair's weird bloodline: Calenhad the Great gained his strength by drinking the blood of a great dragon, on instruction from a witch with whom he struck a bargain. (It's always a witch, isn't it? It very well could have been Flemeth herself, for all we know.) Why does drinking dragon's blood have this effect? We don't know. How does blood that is drunk and digested become a part of one's own blood in a way that can be passed on to one's children? Far be it from me to impose science on a fantasy world with magic. But I do find this all hilariously silly and I think the writers kind of knew they were writing something dumb because they even have Varric there to lampshade what a "special snowflake" Alistair is turning out to be. Royal-blooded, elf-blooded (unbeknownst to him), and now dragon-blooded. And none of those things have brought him anything but unhappiness! Oh, Alistair.

I do think that as with all information that comes to us from biased in-universe sources, we need to take the Arishok formerly known as Sten's version of this story with a grain of salt, and Isabela even points this out. Dragon's blood in Alistair's veins is verifiable by other sources, but it would make sense for the Qunari to interpret this as Calenhad and his descendants having lacked any true heroic qualities, the source of their power and influence being artificial. But power alone doesn't make a leader. Nevertheless, I think Alistair reflects some of my own feeling when he says, "Couldn't he just have been a hero?" To which Isabela responds, "Maybe he was."

Very special bloodlines aside, I am very curious how this whole blood of dragons thing is going to play out in the future of Thedas, especially given my earlier theories about the importance of dragons. Alistair himself can't really be essential to any future story, since he has multiple opportunities to die in Origins and yet another in Inquisition—unless some future plot point of a game diverges based on those previous decisions. Still, it's a hell of a setup for, I hope, something, even if doesn't directly involve Alistair or his family. In fact, maybe especially if it doesn't. After all, if Calenhad did this, others could have as well.

Blood, in this universe, is basically magical in one form or another. Lyrium is the blood of titans, with properties that may either fuel or cancel magic. Darkspawn blood carries the Blight, and properly prepared with lyrium and the blood of an Archdemon (a corrupted dragon) confers a temporary resistance to the Blight. A blood mage can use the blood of any living person to fuel magic; blood magic makes one more susceptible to demons, but makes it harder for one's spirit to enter the Fade... but now we're getting into the weeds. Untangling the mysteries of blood and magic in Thedas shall have to be another entry for another day. For now, suffice it to say we have discovered yet another effect of blood in this universe: drinking the blood of a dragon (at least, a great dragon, whatever that means) will make you really, really strong, and also infuse your own blood with that of the dragon. Given that Calenhad learned this from a "witch" (let's be real, it was almost certainly Flemeth or one of her daughers), this is also likely a form of blood magic.

Incidentally, Aurelian Titus seems to believe that the Magisters Sidereal would have succeeded if they'd had dragon's blood. I wonder how true that is. He also remarks on the Qunari: "Dragonfire. It might have been their birthright. Instead it kills." This seems to tie into the rumor that Qunari themselves have some dragon in their blood, whether or not it is true.

While Alistair, Isabela, and their Qunari allies confront Titus outside, Varric is sneaking into Ath Velanis, and finds Maevaris chained up in the dungeon, and... okay, so this is where we need to talk about how Mae is "revealed" to the audience to be transgender. I need to put a lot of scare quotes around "revealed" because honestly, I didn't initially get that this was supposed to be a reveal, probably because I already knew Mae was trans from reading The World of Thedas Volume 2 first. What I did notice was that Maevaris is drawn very differently here from how she was drawn in the previous volume. She's chained with both arms above her head, with a black eye and a bloody nose, her clothing torn and ragged leaving most of her chest bare, which... well, I already talked about female characters being physically exposed in situations where they're being violently victimized and this does qualify in its own way. The difference is that instead of over-emphasized breasts, Mae is drawn here with a flatter chest and the kind of detailed musculature that is common for these types of comics to use for men, but not for women (to my dismay, generally)—not for Maevaris herself, in other parts of the story where she's fully dressed but her arms are bare. My initial thought was not "Oh, this is how we know Mae is trans," but rather "That's a weird choice to make only for your one transgender woman and not for any other female characters whose vocations would certainly make them strong and muscular." It wasn't until I read on the wiki that Maevaris is "revealed" to be trans in this book that it clicked that... oh, that's what this was supposed to be. It's never explicitly stated in dialogue that Mae is trans in this story; there's dialogue that supports it but wouldn't be definitive by itself.

So, this falls into the trope of showing the audience that a trans character is trans by putting them in a situation where they are exposed and humiliated against their will. Varric clearly already knows Mae is trans, but she still says "I don't want you to see me like this" as he's giving her a blanket to cover with. Even though Varric is a friend, this experience is still awful and humiliating for her—and she has also had her body exposed against her will to the people who did this to her, though thankfully we don't see that on the page. Let me emphasize here that I am very glad to have an unambiguously transgender character, always, and I hope we get even more. Nor do I want to say that there is only one right way to portray a trans character, or that nothing bad should happen to a trans character (Mae being captured by Titus, in and of itself, is fine and makes sense with the story after she helped our heroes earlier).

But as a way of telling the audience a character is trans, I just don't think this is great. Invasive as some of the questions the Inquisitor can ask Krem may be (can ask, as in, you have the option not to ask him those questions), this is invasive on a whole different level. Writing in such a reveal in a setting that doesn't use the same words we do is always going to be a challenge, yeah. But I just feel like there are better ways than this, and the way Krem's dialogue is handled does tell me that at least the writers are trying to do it better, and I hope that effort continues. Let's hope for better with Mae herself, since I think there's a good chance we'll see more of her in the next game! I hope so, personally, as I do love Maevaris, and enjoyed her presence in this story a whole lot.

In this third book we get something so essentially Dragon Age it's almost a cliché at this point: an escape-from-the-Fade sequence! We start in Varric's dream, and this is really the most character development we get for Varric in this story arc. It's also confirmation that Bianca the Crossbow is named after a real person, which I hadn't realized was confirmed prior to Inquisition. So that's neat, although notably the Bianca in Varric's Fade dream looks distinctly un-dwarfy. In fact, Varric himself looks pretty un-dwarfy in his dream, even as he and dream!Bianca discuss the Merchant's Guild being after them and Varric having been born outside of Orzammar. I wonder if that's meant to represent Varric's complicated feelings about dwarven identity. It's certainly a more interesting and more charitable explanation than "someone thought dwarf!Bianca wouldn't be hot enough."

Isabela's arc culminates in her Fade dream, or perhaps more accurately her nightmare, in which she is a loyal adherent of the Qun, in full Qunari garb right down to the dark red vitaar across her chest and face. I mention the latter part specifically because I don't think viddathari can actually wear vitaar; it's supposed to be poison to anyone without qunari physiology. I think the fact of Isabela wearing it here in her nightmare symbolizes the totality of her conversion. Or somebody just forgot the lore. But isn't the other interpretation more interesting? ;) As Varric begins to break through to her, we see the vitaar vanish first, before the rest of Isabela's appearance transforms back into her pirate tunic and she is once again herself.

Varric, in a rather touching kindness to his friend, declines to narrate what is actually happening in Isabela's nightmare, instead asserting that "She was never tempted by the Fade for a moment. Not even a little." We, the audience outside of Varric's universe, are allowed to see the truth. Asked if she really wants this life under the Qun, Isabela admits, "It would be easier. Simpler." Maevaris knowingly responds, "It always is—letting someone else define you. I don't know you, but I know that much."

By the end, I think every character here can relate to that sentiment.

Henceforth Varric, Maevaris, and Isabela set forth to find Alistair, who in true form has been taken in by the illusion of living family, his father King Maric alive. (He also flirts with Isabela here, and once again, I ship it.) But before long, Varric figures out that this Maric is no demon in disguise, but the real Maric—his spirit trapped in the Fade.

After they defeat Titus in the Fade, they are able to return to the real world, though Maric is reluctant to return, saying that Alistair is likely a better King than he ever was. "The people I love are all here—Cailan, your mother, Loghain. None of them are in the real world any longer, are they?" I appreciate the fact that Maric is so committed to the lie of Alistair's dead human mother than he even remembers to lie about it while they're both dreaming together. I'm also amused that the list of people Maric loves includes Loghain, but not Queen Rowan. Yeah, this Maric is completely in-character. Also, I will ship Maric/Loghain until I die.

In the end, though Maric agrees with reluctance that he will try to return, once Alistair sees the state of Maric's suffering body in the real world, he chooses to let him go, destroying Titus's magical device that was keeping him alive and allowing Maric to die. I like this. Maric's time was over, and bringing him back to Ferelden would have been a narrative mess as well as a political one; plus, he really didn't want to come back. As Varric says, "It's a terrible thing, to live as part of someone else's story. You need to finish this, or the story will never end."

Each of the three main characters gets their little epilogue panel, and in Alistair's, Varric remarks that he did all that he set out to do—kill Titus, find Maric, return home to be a proper King. The Alistair on the throne, accompanying this image, looks distinctly unhappy. He has completed his hero's journey—accomplished what he swore to do, and even gained a stronger sense of self by the end: "I thought I needed Marric... he needed me." Alistair is a hero. He has a complete story arc, with the hero's end. Yet like his father Maric, holding the throne does not bring happiness. Alistair's arc is the most complete here but I would not say that it has a happy ending. I also don't think a happy ending needs to be the point of a story. To me, Alistair's greatest weakness as a character has always been his passivity, and indeed unlike Isabela and Varric, the tragedies of his past and the discontent of his present revolve pretty much entirely around choices made by others, not himself. This story is about Alistair making a choice, on his own initiative, and following through with it to the end. It may not be a happy ending, but it is a strong one, and I think it also represents Alistair becoming willing and able to be King.

Varric has the least of an actual arc of the three main characters, but that sort of makes sense for who he is. Varric's whole deal is that he prefers telling other people's stories to his own; "the one story I'll never tell" (as he says once in DAII) is his own personal tragedy, losing Bianca to her arranged marriage and the insurmountable threat of the Merchant Guild's wrath. Until We Sleep touches on this part of his past, but mostly to affirm that that part of his life is over and done and he knows it. Varric does not change here, but this isn't his story.

It's Isabela's arc that feels a little incomplete to me, and I wonder if that's partly the nature of this story being written serially, because the ending of Those Who Speak really seemed to imply some sort of major change on the horizon for Isabela, whereas the resolution in Until We Sleep was much more Isabela getting back to who she was when we began. We learn her backstory, yes, and we see her briefly shaken by her encounter with the Tamassran and what that experience unearths from her past. I doubt we're ever meant to think Isabela was seriously thinking of converting to the Qun, only that she couldn't help wondering what her life would have been like had she followed her mother's path. The end of Those Who Speak and the beginning of Until We Sleep do sort of tease the idea that she's going to change her name again, though of course that doesn't happen either. Isabela's resolution is ultimately about returning her to status quo rather than changing her; she loses and regains her sense of self, and she does so by revisiting her past, but I hesitate to say that experience has actually changed her in the present. What "changes" she meant at the end of Those Who Speak are never specified, and ultimately left hanging. And even the ending, I think, is meant to leave us with a hint of doubt. Varric's narration over her final panel reads, "Isabela asked me later if I thought he [Alistair] did the right thing. I told her there's no way to know." This seems to reflect the what-ifs of Isabela's own life and choices, doubts that may still linger, but with no clear sense of how this changes her life going forward.

Even Varric himself ends on a somber note, his final panel showing him alone and unsmiling, at a table covered with papers, a quill, and a pint and pitcher, with the second chair empty. His narration concludes: "We all go through our entire lives not knowing. Wondering. Trying. Until we sleep."

Thus, all three characters end on a note of either unhappiness or uncertainty. But taken all together, there's a unity to the ending tone and I think that's meant to be the point.

I enjoyed the comics even more on my second read, I think in part because I had become more comfortable with the medium and better able to appreciate what it adds to the storytelling. Despite its flaws, this storyline was a fun read, and it adds some interesting things to the worldbuilding pot for further consideration.

Crosspost. Originally posted on dreamwidth on 7/9/21.

#the silent grove #those who speak #until we sleep #dragon age graphic novels #dragon age #alistair theirin #varric tethras #isabela #maevaris tilani #blunders of thedas

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messedupfan · 2 years

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Infinity & Beyond (Wanda Maximoff x Reader) Chapter 8

Summary: Wanda and Y/n are expecting!

A/N: its short.

Masterlist | All Chapters

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“Wanda, have you been seeing someone else?”

“How could you ask me that? Of course not!” The audience laughs but you are trying to be serious.

“Then how do you explain this?!” You point to the ever growing belly. You stopped blinking because everytime you did, you swore that it got bigger. More unsolicited laughter. “Last I checked, we can’t do this between ourselves.”

“Well, y’know, you made that thing…” She trails so that you get the point without her actually saying what you did. This time a round of oo’s happens.

“I made a toy, Wanda! Not a functioning body part!” Again, they laugh and it takes a lot out of you to control your temper.

She shrugs, “Maybe you did without realizing. We don’t know the extent of our powers, love. Who knows what we’re capable of given the circumstance.”

"Look, I know that we've been talking about babies. A lot. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done something like this without discussing it with you first. How are we supposed to explain this to the neighbors? What are people going to think?"

“It doesn’t matter what they think as long as we are happy, dear. Maybe we should start telling people about us. I doubt anyone will be unsupportive.” She looks at you with those big green eyes and your heart melts at the thought of a baby that the two of you somehow created might have her eyes or her nose and they will carry some of your features as well.

“I’m going to call a doctor to get you checked out, we can worry about the rest of the world later.” You peck her lips and move to the home phone. In no time at all the doctor is there and you are sitting next to Wanda, holding her hand as the doctor uses his stethoscope on her baby bump. He makes a sexist remark about using fruit as an estimated measurement of the baby to make it simple for ladies like you and Wanda. He asks to speak to the father so that there would be someone that understood him. You and Wanda comically exchange a look before you feed him a lie.“Uh he’s at work, can’t be bothered. Anywho, I’ll walk you out.”

You wave at your neighbor as he trims his bushes. Herb greets you back and then seems to freeze, effectively slicing into the brick wall in front of him. You decide to ignore it and head back inside to check on your wife. A grin spreads across your face as you realize that Wanda was your wife and the two of you were expecting a child that you somehow created together. All of which seemed impossible years ago. Even now, it all still seems a little impossible and yet… As you walk in, you plan to discuss the odd encounter with Wanda but the second she turns around all you can focus on is the size of her belly. Something was definitely wrong. “Wanda! How in the world are you more pregnant?”

She frowns, confused, and you point until she looks. Her eyes widened in surprise, “Oh my! We better get started on that nursery.” The two of you walk into the spare bedroom, you with a book about what to expect and her with a bowl of fruit. Wanda has fun as she uses her abilities to decorate the room meanwhile you stress over the text in the book. At some point, she says that she feels a fluttery sensation and you hurry over to her side.

“How can the baby be kicking already?” You panic. “At this rate they could be here…hmm.” You scowl at the ground as you try to come up with a nearly accurate estimate.

Wanda rolls her eyes, “He’s going to get here before you figure it out, love.”

“I don’t know, it could be the end of the week or the end of the day. I have no idea anymore. Everything has been so random since we moved to this town! It’s almost like none of this is real!” You start coughing aggressively after your outburst. You look down at your hand to find it covered in some sort of black liquid. “Wanda? What’s happening?” A blinding pain shoots through your entire body that causes you to scream out and collapse to the floor. Wanda squeezes her eyes shut and holds her hands out as her magic flies out rapidly, reversing everything back to the moment before you fell over.

Wanda rolls her eyes, “He’s going to get here before you figure it out.”

You smirk, “You think we’re having a boy?” You place your hand lovingly on her belly and Wanda nods with a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I don’t know when he’ll arrive, all I know is that we’ll be ready no matter what.” You kiss her with as much love as you have to offer but when you try to pull away she isn’t ready to let go. “Everything okay?” You ask with a frown when she finally releases you.

Wanda nods with a twitchy smile, “Yeah. Just nervous about being a mother.”

“Don’t be, you’re going to be amazing.”

Before either of you could have predicted, Wanda’s water had broken and you were dashing over to the doctor's house hoping to catch him before he was off to his vacation. You try to return home as fast as possible but unfortunately you miss the birth of your child. Luckily, Wanda wasn’t alone, she had the help of Geraldine. The doctor is a little light headed when he walks into the house and Geraldine assists him to the kitchen to give the small family some privacy. “I guess there is something to that mothers intuition. Do you want to say hi to your son?” Wanda holds the baby up to you from her lying position on the floor.

You carefully hold the baby in your arms, “Hi Tommy, I’m your other mommy.” Wanda is pleased to hear that you chose to agree with the name she had picked out and you wink at her. Suddenly, she lets out another blood curdling scream and you look at her with concern. You lift up her dress and find another head crowning. “Oh gosh, there’s another one!”

“Billy!” She shouts as she pushes. You call out for help as you catch the baby that was coming out of your wife.

“Ten fingers and ten toes! Two healthy baby boys!” The doctor declares.

“Here, let me walk you out doc.” You offer after you settle the baby you were holding into the single bassinet. He makes sure that it’s just walking and you share a laugh with the audience as you leave Wanda and Geraldine alone. The doctor makes a strange comment about not being able to escape small towns and then Agnes and Herb act strange as well. None of it mattered to you. Inside the home were two baby boys that you and Wanda somehow created together. All you were concerned about was being able to hold them in your arms again.

You walk back into the house to find Wanda alone with the babies. You ask her what happened to Geraldine. "Oh she left honey, had to rush home." Wanda turns around and gasps, turning away at the sight of you. Out of confusion and curiosity, you touch your face to feel if something was on it. Black fluid covers your fingers when you pull them away. This time you let out a gasp but in a blink everything returns to normal. You and Wanda hold the babies and settle in on the sofa to spend the rest of the evening in front of the TV.

Chapter 9

Taglist: @idiotegirl @evenbeingcrazy1998 @liver-casserole @franfineashell @yeetus-thyself @olsensnpm @brokeandconfuse @when-wolves-howl @cristin-rjd @i1ovewanda @obsessed-with-wandamaximoff @itscryptic @drpepperobsessed @alwaysgoodnight @diaryoflife

#wanda mcu #y/n stark #fanfiction #wanda maximoff au #the scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff x reader

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demonslayedher · 3 years

Text

How Does Eating Humans Work?

Hello, Gotou here. We’re shamelessly borrowing from the format of a KnY Fanbook #2 comic to launch an investigation into demon metabolism and development by crossing the Sanzu River again to interview demons in the underworld. While we’ll be using canon materials as a base, the analysis and conjecture herein is personal, so we ask for your understanding. Also, please note that consuming any food in the underworld will make you unable to return, and we cannot promise your safety even though the interview subjects are dead, so please come along at your own risk.

Some of the questions we’d like to answer are, why do demons need to eat humans? How much do they need to eat to survive? Are there factors that influence how eating humans makes them stronger? If they don’t want to kill humans, what are their other options? We’ve rounded up some special guests below the cut (hidden for length and grossness), everyone from the lowly Temple Demon to the lovely Tamayo, to see what their actions in canon might tell us.

First, a review of what canon tells us, mostly as summarized in Fanbook #2: 1. With one exception named Yushirou, all demons were created by Kibutsuji Muzan, for his own purposes. They all have some amount of his blood, and can be divided into four classes depending on how powerful they are. From top to bottom, the Upper Moons, the Lower Moons, demons with special abilities, and other demons without any special characteristics. 2. Demons may be stronger depending on how much of Kibutsuji Muzan’s blood they have. Most beings’ cannot handle a large amount of his blood, and it will rupture the cells and that being will die, but there are demons who adapt well to it. 3. Typically, sunlight is the only way to kill a demon, by either bathing them in sunlight or cutting of their head with a Nichirin blade. However, there are powerful demons for whom chopping off their head does not work, and if it’s strong enough, demons can also be killed by wisteria poison.

4. Demons eat human blood and flesh. The more they eat, the stronger they become, and the faster their regenerative abilities become. Some humans have “Marechi,” a rare blood type, which is especially nutritious to demons, and eating one Marechi is the equivalent of eating several humans.

That’s an interesting thing we’d like to come back to, especially since we’re looking for quantitative information about how demons gain nutrition (though I have my doubts we'll get enough for statistical analysis). As an interesting note, Fanbook #2 also tells us that if demons try to consume the same edibles humans do, they’ll vomit it back up.

I’m told that Miss Tamayo drinks tea, though. That’ll be an interesting question for later. In my notes, it seems she’s also explained to Tanjirou back in Chapter 15 that demons will normally go berserk if they go a long time without consuming any blood or flesh. Berserk is one thing, but I wonder if they can starve to death? We’ll see if these canon clues will lead us to anything. We’ll begin now in an interview format. Hopefully this will go smoothly, but I’ve got a feeling it won’t. First up, we’ve the Temple Demon.

Temple: Who were you calling ‘lowly’ just now? Up there, above the cut?

Gotou: That was in a literal sense, not having Blood Techniques means you’re in the bottom common tier of demons.

Temple: Argh. Fine. What do you want to know?

Gotou: In Chapter 2, you were spotted with three human victims. However, it seems you left their bodies mostly intact and only ate small parts instead of consuming one full human at a time. Could you comment on this?

Temple: I’d have gotten to more later if that whelp with the strong legs didn’t interrupt me! Who’s got time to eat entire humans anyway? I went for the easy stuff first.

Gotou: I see. It appears you might had focused on key organs, like the heart and the liver. Would you say these are especially nutritionally dense?

Temple: I guess. If I’m going to eat humans, I’m going to start with what’s worth bothering to digest. Blood’s easier on the stomach, so that’s what I was busy with on the lady there.

Gotou: Then it takes effort to digest? Hmm. Let’s come back to this later. How many humans would you say you consumed, including these three?

Temple: Not a lot… I tried to get a variety so I could get stronger faster, but…

Gotou: I’ll put down a guess as ten or less. Let’s move on to someone who has a sharper memory for numbers. One of our longer-lived guests at Mt. Fujikasane for 47 years, the Hand Demon. While most of the demons on the mountain had only eaten two or three humans, you’ve eaten a whole 50 of the children who headed into the Final Selection, didn’t you?

Hand: Yes, that’s right. It was hard at first since I wasn’t very strong, and the demons usually all went crazy there eating each other, just like that one brat who got away in Chapter 7 said. If you could manage to kill any of the kids, you had the other demons to fight off to even get a piece to yourself. That was enough to get me by, and stronger, little by little. Your body learns to make your meals last, and make the most of what you can get. I usually only had a bite of one child a year, can you imagine how horrible that was? Most demons who survive usually figure out some way to develop and survive better, and once my cells found something that worked for me, I kept doing it. I got really good at snatching away prey from other demons, and soon enough I was a bigger threat than any of them. None of them could, you might say, lay a hand on me.

Gotou: That’s an interesting point about self-development. A demon named Nezuko was spent two years doing that in her sleep.

Hand: She must have had a big meal before that!

Gotou: Well, anyway. It seems that in near starving conditions, your metabolism made the most of what you had, leading to the most efficient use of whatever food was available to you.

Hand: That’s right, I got really good at it. Wasn’t always pretty, but I made it work. I got to a point where I could go two years without eating and still keep my wits about me while the other demons were going mad. But I chose to eat. I liked to keep my appetite for specific children.

Gotou: That smile is not reassuring. Some humans taste better than others, I guess?

Hand: That’s for sure. This one kid tasted awful, like rust and man sweat! I still don’t have that disgusting taste out of my mouth! But he was one of my more satisfying meals, so I ate more of him.

Gotou: Then why would you… nevermind, I don’t like that smile, no further questions. While I had hoped to keep these interviews focused on quantities of humans consumed, it does seem personal taste is worth asking about. I had tried to invite a Swamp Demon from Chapter 11, but it kept arguing with itself and it felt like I’d be wasting my time. The one definite thing I learned was that this demon is picky, with a distinct preference for 16-year-old girls. Based on the number of trinkets he kept, it seems he had consumed at least seventeen of them, including several in one town. Sheesh, that’s sort of a rough mission to send a first-timer on. I’ve got a more cooperative guest here to discuss her tastes, a Snake Demon who, according to Chapter 188, has a special taste for baby flesh.

Snake: Thank you for having me here. It’s good to be appreciated again.

Gotou: Did you only eat babies?

Snake: Goodness, no. Babies are delicious, but they aren’t very nutritious. And their skulls certainly aren’t that big, the ones I lounged around with were from the people whom I killed and stole from. But you know the nice thing about baby skulls? They’re still soft. They take a long time to digest, but I can swallow them whole.

Gotou: Like… like a snake, then. Sorry, I’m a little ill hearing that. Let’s back up, were all those skulls the remains of adults you ate, then?

Snake: Meh, I ate some of them of better-looking ones, but most of them I only killed. I could usually kill a lot more at a time than I could bother eating, my killing record was fifty women all at once.

Gotou: And you didn’t find that wasteful?

Snake: Wasteful? Not at all. I wasn’t exactly in dire straits, I lived a more luxurious life than most demons do. That meant I could afford to wait for a truly delicious meal, like how you humans might leave something in a slow-cooker to enjoy the perfect combination of doneness and tenderness, plated in the most appetizing of ways.

Gotou: I guess demons and humans are similar in that regard.

Snake: I’m so glad you can relate! Then you understand the frustration of a meal you’ve be preparing for years opening up the slow-cooker and running away right when they were just about done.

Gotou: I have never had that experience.

Snake: I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little snake, too.

Gotou: I think we might have gotten a little off-topic here. It does seem digesting humans comes with some difficulty. I’d like to invite the Drum Demon in next. Your name is Kyougai, I hear?

Kyougai: !!

Gotou: Kyogai, right?

Kyougai: You’ve heard of me! You know my name!

Gotou: I happened to, yes.

Kyougai: What have you heard???

Gotou: That you were kicked out of the Lower Moons for being unable to consume enough humans.

Kyougai: Oh. ……..yeah, that’s me.

Gotou: I thought demons go berserk if they go a long time without consuming humans. Wouldn’t that make an inability to consume them problematic?

Kyougai: It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat them! Like I said in Chapter 24, I had to in order to sustain myself, just like any other demon. But, at some point, I couldn’t eat as much as I used to. That happens to humans too, doesn’t it? When you just can’t stomach anymore?

Gotou: You mean like when you’ve overeaten? In a human’s case that feeling may go away within a few hours.

Kyougai: Sort of like that, but you know, humans reach a time when nothing is appetizing or the thought of eating makes them feel sick, right? Isn’t that the human condition?

Gotou: …uh… maybe if they have a medical condition? Or anxiety? Do demons get anxiety? Or eating disorders?

Kyougai: I… I don’t know. I just wasn’t good enough.

Gotou: I think it’s plenty good if you stopped eating humans. Though to have developed Blood Techniques and been a Lower Moon in the first place, you must had eaten a great number of them.

Kyougai: You think I’m great?

Gotou: What?

Kyougai: No, sorry, I was getting ahead of myself. It’s true, I used to be able to eat as many as the other Lower Moons always consumed. Our stomachs were stronger, you might say. Demons got strong by eating humans, and then the more you did that the better you usually got at it, so the strong ones would eat more and more and keep getting stronger and stronger. At least, that’s how it usually worked. I’ve seen other demons below me reached that point too, where they feel the drive to eat, but then they have trouble digesting it for a long time, so they don’t wind up eating that many people.

Gotou: Then it would make sense to eat the most nutritionally dense parts first.

Kyougai: Or a Marechi.

Gotou: Yes, or a Marechi.

Kyougai: It was a great idea, wasn’t it?

Gotou: I cannot condone any consumption of humans as a good idea.

Kyougai: I knew it. I’m nothing. Go ahead, stomp all over everything I ever tried to accomplish.

Gotou: I think I’m going to move on to my next interviewee now. It looks like we’ve got… oh, would you look at this? Lower Moon One. Enmu, I believe.

Enmu: You can believe whatever you want. I’m happy to help.

Gotou: I don’t need any help, thanks. I’m curious, since you were one of the stronger demons out there, it seems you had a stronger capacity for consuming humans.

Enmu: I did, I was always careful and paced myself so the Demon Slayers wouldn’t notice me. I took my time. I liked to enjoy e-e-e-a-c-h one.

Gotou: Then you had tastes too? Like babies, or 16-year-old girls?

Enmu: I could season any human to my liking. They’re all very easy to prepare.

Gotou: I’m still trying to get quantitative data. Can you tell me at least a rough estimate of how many humans you consumed?

Enmu: I told this more precisely to that boy with the earrings back in Chapter 59, and I can tell you this too. At my best, I could had eaten over two-hundred people at once if I took my time.

Gotou: OH MY GAW----sorry, I dropped my pen. Two hundred, at once?

Enmu: Yes. If I had just. Had. A little. More. Time.

Gotou: Clearly there is a huge difference between what common demons are capable of and what the Twelve Moons are capable of.

Daki: Psh, those were all any random common people. That’s nothing to brag about.

Gotou: Excuse me, and you are?

Daki: Daki, Upper Moon Six. You want something really impressive, you talk to the Upper Moons.

Gotou: I’m sorry, I don’t see you on my list.

Daki: What! Your list is stupid. Look me in the eyes, I’m Upper Moon Six!

Gotou: Very well, then. What can you tell me about your diet, Miss Upper Moon Six?

Daki: That’s more like it. It’s true that digestion takes a while, and takes some effort. Even though we Upper Moons may have eaten hundreds of people in our lifetimes, it’s not as if we gorge ourselves. The clever ones among us save prey for later to eat when we feel ready for it.

Gotou: Food storage? How do you keep them fresh?

Daki: You leave them still alive, numbskull. Nobody wants to eat something cold, that’s gross.

Gotou: I see, so that’s why demons prefer to go after new kills instead of saving what they’ve already managed to kill. That also might explain why the demons on Mt. Fujikasane wouldn’t had eaten many humans, if they found long dead ones in edible.

Daki: You want to know the real secret to eating humans? You can eat what you find tastes good, sure. But to get stronger, you eat strong people. Like your Corp members, the ones besides chumps like you? Using all that Breath makes their muscles really lean and potent, it’s like they come offering themselves as protein bars for us.

Gotou: You make them sound like a fad diet…

Daki: The real secret is eating Pillars. Besides Marechi, they’re the strongest meals out there. Guess how many I’ve eaten?

Gotou: I don’t have the data to make an educated guess.

Daki: Then get educated! Look back at Chapter 88! I’ve eaten seven Pillars, and my brother has eaten fifteen!

Gotou: Your brother? Who is he, then, Upper Moon Five?

Daki: What? Ew. Gross. Gross! No way, ew!

Gotou: Hmm… eating Pillars, huh? Well, I can think of one Pillar who was…

Douma: Me too!

Gotou: Speak of the devil.

Douma: Actually, we Upper Moons can! And he's not Satan, that's not how this works. But I guess Muzan-sama’s curse doesn’t effect us now. Ask me anything you want!

Gotou: That Chapter 143 reference was such a rude entrance. I understand that Pillars are particularly nutritious—

Douma: Oh, please don’t misunderstand! I don’t even eat all the Pillars I’ve encountered. There was the one Flower Pillar who got away from me, but some of the boy pillars I just leave around. What’s really the key to consistent nutritional intake is women! It’s really unhealthy for a demon not to get enough women in their diet, that’s why even if you’re only looking for Marechi or Pillars, your metabolism is going to get thrown out of whack with sudden big meals. You grow a stronger metabolism with consistency, I believe!

Gotou: If I could stop you there, I had an image from Chapter 142 I preferred to focus on for this case study. I see you keep a wide collection of skulls, from victims whom I assume you ate.

Douma: Yes, they all stayed together inside me for eternity, but the room looked lonely without décor.

Gotou: It seems other demons usually go for nutritionally dense organs like hearts or livers, or easy to digest parts of the body, perhaps just blood sometimes. Eating the entire victim, bones and all, doesn’t seem to be the norm.

Douma: Bones are organs too, you know! That’s where blood is made, at its freshest. They do take more practice in learning to digest, and I had to find a way around not having to chew them, but the bone marrow is very, very good for you, so I make sure to consume it frequently. It may take more time and it causes some of my followers to panic more while they wait, though, that’s a bit of a downside. Oh, and I guess bones can make good storage for some sneaky poison. Even fingernails and hair follicles, who’d have thought?

Gotou: I don’t think hair would have much nutritional value in the first place. In all my years, I can never recall seeing a victim with their hair eaten.

Douma: Tsk, tsk! Clearly you haven’t done much metabolism research in advance. I was really impressed by how well Shinobu-chan understood how my digestion would work. Eating hair can do amazing things! Isn’t that right, Genya-kun?

Genya: ?????????

Gotou: Genya-kun!?

Genya: What am I doing here?

Gotou: I don’t think you’re supposed to be here. Isn’t there, you know, another side? The other direction?

Genya: What are you doing here? Did you die?

Gotou: I’m here doing research on demon metabolism and how they get stronger by consuming flesh.

Douma: What can you tell us about what up with having your friend feed you hair you found on the floor in Chapters 170-171, Genya-kun?

Genya: I’m not a demon!! Why the hell are you asking me?

Douma: ‘Hell’! Haha, good one!

Gotou: How do you even know about that? You were dead almost a full volume before that. And Genya’s different, he’s not a case study in how demons consuming humans works!

Douma: Are you certain?

Gotou: I hear the term get thrown around a lot that he’s ‘half-demon’, but—

Genya: I’m not a demon!!!

Gotou: --how would that even work? That would imply that one of his parents had to be a demon, and that—

Genya: What did you say about my mother!?!

Gotou: What? Nothing—

Genya: You say that to my face! You just trying saying something about my mother to my face! My mother never actually ate any flesh, you got that? She doesn’t deserve any of this!

Gotou: Genya, calm down, what—

Douma: I see we’re learning nothing about hair at all. Maybe Kokushibou-dono would provide better commentary on that?

Genya: Mom? Mo-o-o-o-m? Are you down here somewhere?

Gotou: And there he goes… wait, did you say Kokushibou? Upper Moon One? Oh no—he—he didn’t want me bothering him, he did not agree to another interview—

Douma: He-e-e-e-e-y, Kokushibou-dono! How did that work with Genya-kun eating your hair? Hair can be nutritious, right?

Kokushibou: You would gain… nothing… from consuming human hair… it’s not… flesh… you wasted your energy digesting it…

Douma: Aww, cutting it off them would had been sad, though.

Kokushibou: Demon hair… like demon weapons… is made… from our unique cells. It’s not dead… like human locks. Because that boy ate my live cells… it affected him…

Gotou: Yes, because he had a very, very unique metabolism, analyzed separately in this post. To be perfectly clear, Genya is completely human with cells that could temporarily transform, and he never consumed human flesh.

Kokushibou: He… vexes me…

Gotou: Um… while I’ve got you here, you’re one of the longest lived demons, clocking in at over three, maybe four centuries. Do you have any estimate of how many humans you’ve consumed?

Kokushibou: ……I see in… Chapter 100… that you are 23 years old?

Gotou: That is correct.

Kokushibou: Do you bother… remembering how many meals… you’ve had in a mere 23 years?

Gotou: I’m very sorry to have bothered you.

Douma: Kokushibou-dono’s ancient compared to the rest of us! But if I tried, I could probably recall. Let’s see. One, two, three, four…

Gotou: Is that? Your finger in your brain? Oh—ohhh—that is disgusting---I really don’t need to know numbers that badly, please stop. Is there maybe just some average you can give me for the Upper Moons instead? Like how many you’d eat in a month?

Douma: I wish I could, but a certain someone was an annoying outlier and didn’t like to eat so many humans. He made me worry all the time about his health.

Gotou: Really? Who might that be?

Douma: Hello-o-o-o-o-? Akaza-dono? Yoohoo! He spends all his time with his wife now and never answers when I call, it makes me so sad. Akaza-dono did eat humans, plenty of strong ones, but any time he wasn’t under orders from Muzan he liked to spend his time training instead of eating. Fanbook #1 says he did that way more than eating!

Gotou: Training? What sort of training?

Douma: Similar things to what your Corp members did, I imagine. Doing squats, throwing punches, things like that.

Gotou: Then demon muscles had similar function to human muscles, and could be strengthened through hard work? That’s surprising.

Douma: I know, right? I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t think it was the physically repetition that did anything. I think it was his willpower getting honed and shaping his muscles.

Douma: I had to focus when I acquired new skills too, like breaking down poisons. A lot of sad, lowly demons, like that Hand Demon fellow? They focus as hard as they can in their desperation, or focus on some strong emotion or attachment or whatever, and they grow and develop because of it. Sometimes all their weak bodies can manage is an ugly mutation, but that’s proof enough of how much focus they had.

Gotou: That sheds a lot of light on Nezuko, actually.

Douma: Shed “light” on Nezuko-chan, hahaha! Sunlight! You humans are all so witty!

Gotou: Speaking of willpower, I’ve got one more interview I need to get to down here. Of all the demons I have records of, only Nezuko went her whole time as a demon without consuming any human flesh, although she did go through moments of berserk cravings for it. It’s possible that other demons were killed before they could consume anything, but typically they will consume flesh as soon as possible, which is why its common for their family and close relations to be among the first ones killed. Tomioka-san even mentioned in Chapter 1 that these close relations are especially nutritious.

Gotou: A demon about as old as Kokushibou, if not older, is a special case of her own. She was one of the only demons we know of to have escaped Kibutsuji’s curse and acted in dependently of him, including having created a demon of her own after two hundred years of trying. Most notably to our purposes, she trained herself to subsist on small amounts of blood, after having survived on corpses and wild animals for a time, according to the extensive Taisho Secrets at the end of Volume 21.

Tamayo: I explained this in more detail to Tanjirou-san in Chapter 15, but I went on to purchase blood from poor people, and extracted it in ways that wouldn’t be harmful to them. The one demon I created, Yushirou, could subsist on even less. I gained enough self-control that I could treat injured humans without feeling tempted into a berserk state.

Gotou: I was just talking to Douma about willpower making demons capable of accomplishing new physical developments. Was that how you were able to gain this state? I heard you even enjoy a cup of tea now and then.

Tamayo: Yes, I’ve taken a liking to it. I’d offer you some if not for this, you know, being hell. It’s nothing like the hell I went through when first resisting consuming humans, though. My demon body refused to take anything but fresh human flesh at first, but in the hardest moments, I always remembered a kind demon hunter who said he believed in me and my desire to defeat Kibutsuji Muzan. I believe Nezuko may have summoned her strength to resist the call of her demon cells in a similar way; she knew she had her brother there to rely on. Once she mastered something as remarkable as resisting the need for human flesh, it gave her the freedom to prioritize other developments.

Gotou: You spent centuries researching demon cells, especially how demons may break down and metabolize poisons.

Tamayo: I had not studied the metabolism of poisons until working with Shinobu-san. The medicine we concocted for Kibutsuji was only possible thanks to her work, and I couldn’t had worked with many of those wisteria-based substances on my own. I feel I was only there to fill in the gaps of her brilliant understanding.

Gotou: You’re very humble. I would pass along my thanks and compliments to Shinobu-sama too, but I’m pretty sure she’s not down here. On that note, did Genya-kun go back home?

Tamayo: He did after a nice reunion with his mother just now, it was very sweet. Shizu-san and I get along well, after all, we both carry similar guilt.

Gotou: Wait, was his mother a demon? That means Wind-sama’s mother was too? Wait?? What??

Tamayo: The worst hell I went through, or that any demon has gone through, is to realize what you’ve eaten after the hunger-driven madness clears. Being similar to your own cells, they’re easy on a volatile new anatomy to break down and digest. That’s why many demons may have driven themselves to forget everything all over again, or to twist their personalities to justify the horror, saying that because they ate the hearts of their loved ones and because demon flesh can live forever, then they never truly killed them. The truth always remained untwisted for me, and to this day, it torments me more than anything in this underworld can try.

Gotou: …

Tamayo: You should wake up now, Gotou. You’ve been through a lot; the nightmares must be taxing on your health. Please remember to eat well.

#kny fandom theories and meta #too many characters to tag #I wrote this draft early last week and only this morning had time to edit it but it took foreeeevvvverrr on my slow computer #now off to work #eat well everybody #I'm off to work #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?

I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s).

I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.

Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.

He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth?

That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-

Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.

The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).

Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -

Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:

Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914).

Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.”

He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.”

Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.

The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins

And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,

Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion

One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day.

I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”

They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth.

You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.

Whoops!

Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.

The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm.

He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.

The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel

I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.

Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC.

So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?

Just until he gets his full powers back of course.

I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.

#replies tag #marvel comics #marvel #dc comics #dc #pulp heroes #pulp villains #martian manhunter #plastic man #kraven the hunter #two-face #shuma-gorath #marvel vs capcom

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takerfoxx · 3 years

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So I was thinking about Wonder Egg Priority the other day while delivering pizzas when I had something of an epiphany.

WEP is, in many way, sort of the anti-Madoka Magica.

Now, by that I don’t mean it’s intended as an answer, attack, response, or counter to PMMM. It’s obviously a show doing its own thing, and being compared to PMMM probably wasn’t on the creator’s mind. Also, I don’t mean it’s a reconstruction intended to rebuild the genre that PMMM broke apart, much like Gurren Laagan did to the Giant Mecha genre after Evangelion happened. Rather, it feels like, whether intentional or not, to be Madoka Magica in reverse.

Let me explain.

I’ve already gone into detail how PMMM became the hand grenade to the Magical Girl Warrior genre that it was, how carefully it was crafted to utterly deconstruct the genre and did it so well that it was completely changed. Just look at all those dark magical girl shows, comics, and whatnot that sprung up in its wake, all trying to recapture that same magic, and practically all failing. And while it wasn’t the death of cute and optimistic magical girl shows, the genre as a whole was definitely altered by PMMM, taking themes and ideas originally brought up by Utena and Bokurano and building upon them to create a surgical knife that dissected the whole genre and changed it forever.

And one of the methods it used was to show that each and every one of the main character was left in a much worse state than she was in thanks to the contracts.

Think about it. Each of the five girls was basically ruined by becoming a magical girl. Sayaka fell into despair and was destroyed. Madoka straight up died in the original timeline and ended up erasing herself. Mami spiraled into loneliness and depression until she was killed. Kyoko lost her whole family because of her contract, became a heartless nihilist, and when she tried to redeem herself, she realized the futility of it and decided to go down in a blaze of glory. Homura was cursed to relive the same trauma over and over again and eventually lost the person she was fighting for. Even the ones already in a bad place ended up worse off because of it. Hell, Mami only managed to delay her own death by a couple years, and in the end, her end was even more gruesome.

And that was the point. The wish/contract system is intended to chew these girls up as fodder and just move onto the next one. Just by making a wish you’ve doomed yourself, and there is no escaping your fate. At best you can delay it, and so few can. The best Madoka could do with her universe altering wish was make the girls’ ends a little less cruel. And the movie broke them down even more.

But WEP seems to take the opposite route. Here, when each of our mains are introduced, they’re already at their worse, all four of them traumatized by losing someone close to them while dealing with a multitude of other issues. Ai was bullied heavily due to her appearance, found one friend that could understand, let that friend down, and was deeply wounded when that friend killed herself, leading to Ai becoming a hikikomori. Rika grew up with an absent father and a neglectful mother, got pushed into the toxic idol world way too young, drove off the one person that cared about her and eventually caused her death, leading to her to develop her weirdly cheerful/abrasive personality and self harm as a means of coping with the guilt. Momoe was devastated when her rejection of her friend’s advances led to her friend’s suicide (as far as she knows, anyway), leading to her having a major complex about her appearance and gender identity as a result. And Neiru...well, her situation is really weird and kinda sci-fi, but being a genius test tube baby who was nearly murdered by her sister and left with horrific scars can’t be fun.

Point is, each of these girls is already broken inside when they’re introduced, and the whole wonder egg thing means they spend their nights fighting violent battles against horrific monsters and suffering a lot of pain and even more trauma, and unlike PMMM, this isn’t shown as being fun or cool at all. There is no false sense of security. You’re shown what a brutal affair it is up front, and the show seems to go out of its way to throw a whole bunch of serious and uncomfortable topics right into the spotlight, from bullying to suicide to sexual abuse to self harm to eating disorders to parental neglect, and the list goes on. It’s a very hard show to watch sometimes because of it.

And yet, unlike the PMMM girls, who only grew worse the longer they were in the system, the WEP girls only seem to be getting more emotionally and mentally healthy from the battles they fight. Protecting the Wonder Eggs, as violent as it might get, seems to be acting as a form of therapy for them, a way for them to confront their pent-up emotions and let them out. And the friendship they’ve built together, while sometimes messy and contentious, is shown to be incredibly healthy for them. They’re basically each other’s support group, and their get-togethers often become group therapy sessions as they confide their true feelings about their lives with each other and discuss their issues out in the open. And as a result, we see the bond that they’ve formed help them heal. Ai becomes more confident, more outgoing, and more brave, to the point that she’s not afraid to go to school anymore. Rika comes to terms with her own guilt and feelings of neglect and realizes that she doesn’t have to risk her life if she doesn’t want to, and even starts to forgive her mother. Momoe starts to come to terms with her feelings of discomfort around her femininity. Even Neiru has started to learn to open up to others and act like a kid for once. All four of them are better off for having met the others, and for fighting to restore their lost ones.

Now granted, the show’s not over yet, and I’m sure there’s a twist on the way, especially with what we’re learning about the Accas and Neiru’s secretary. But even so, the inverse mirror images the two shows seem to make of each other was very interesting to me.

#wonder egg priority #puella magi madoka magica #ai ohto #rika kawai #momoe sawaki #neiru aonuma

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stxleslyds · 3 years

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I have read your thought about the Batfamily, now I really want to know your thought about the one who started it, the Batman himself. We can't ignore the fact that Bruce is abusing his children, but there's also some moments where he's being a good father to them. But some of his act doesn't make sense.

He's beating his children, then calling them his son after. He act like a mad man after Damian's death (yeah, they did Jason dirty in here), feeling sorrow and desperately wanting to ressurect him, but then neglecting him continously in the future. I didn't know much about Cass, Bruce seems to always be a good father to her. But her fans once pointed that Bruce (or DC) is too hard on her to not killing/too soft on the others, because the other batkids has killed some villains while under Batman and still got to continue putting on their costumes.

What is exactly Bruce character? How is his relationship with every one of his children?

I feel like Batman can't be in a good relationship with one of his children without destroying his relationship with the other. I always love parents and children relationship in comics, but with batfamily sometimes it just so 'fanon-y' and some are hurtful.

I stopped reading Batman book for a long time. And come back reading that wedding and city of bane arc, because I want to know how they killed Alfred. And honestly those run are terrible. The issue basically just a batcat fanservice, with the worst Batman and Catwoman characterization ever. The batkids didn't even got many appearance and treated awfully as if they are just extras, even if they all are capable and have connection with Alfred.

Hey there Anon!

My thoughts on Batman and Bruce have changed over the last few years, he wasn’t the character that introduced me to DC comics but what I got to read from him at the time seemed good. As time went by, I started to feel like the whole concept of Batman was overrated and he kinda tired me in entertainment such as movies and all that. He never truly was a character that I actually liked so by the time that I read Under the Red Hood I knew that I liked Dick and Jason better than Bruce.

Batman was interesting but I was completely indifferent about Bruce. That whole thing changed around the time that the New 52 was sort of ending, there I started to heavily dislike Bruce and then that turned into pure hate. Now, I am just tired of the guy and every time that he appears in Dick or Jason content my day is ruined.

I hate that DC has been writing Bruce as an abusive and manipulative person and father to his “kids”, he has done a lot of wrong to them in comic history but all went to shit (in current comics) when Bruce tried to manipulate Jason into reliving the day that he died and his resurrection in Batman and Robin vol2. #20 and when he beat Dick and manipulated him into becoming a spy after telling him that he had told everyone that he was dead in Nightwing vol.3 #30.

Bruce was a horrible human being in the pre-New 52 timeline too sometimes, mostly towards Dick but in a way, it felt like Dick was able time and time again to get away from him a little bit. Now none of his kids are given the opportunity to turn their backs on Bruce, they are kept in his surroundings no matter how abusive he becomes towards them.

My biggest problem with Bruce’s abusiveness is the fact that the writers never treat it like he acts in an abusive way, they never make him apologize or have an internal discussion where he realises that he was in the wrong. “Bruce is a horrible person to his sons but it doesn’t matter because he is right and he is Batman so that’s that”, that’s the message that I feel DC is selling us. Bruce never receives punishment or is called out for his behaviour, Dick was never able to tell Bruce that what he did to him was unforgivable, he never got the chance to explain to anyone that he didn’t play dead, and when he came back from Spyral he took all the shit from his “family” himself.

Sometimes DC does something even worse, they try to hide Bruce’s neglect with things that never happened like they did with the Ric thing in Dick’s case. Dick was passed around from villain to villain when he was most vulnerable and at the end of it all DC had the guts to say that Batman had been watching over Dick all the time. Like, why lie in such a blatant way? Does Bruce enjoy watching his son suffer from a far or was he too much of a coward to tell Dick that he was a shit father, got stuck in a hole and then decided to play “Cat and Bat” with Selina instead of caring for any of his children?

The situation with Damian’s death and resurrection was a whole thing that was meant to prove that Bruce loved Damian and considered him his son. But in their effort to make Bruce look like a good father to Damian they completely destroyed his relationship with his other kids and that was also the start of Bruce referring to Damian as his ONLY son. And like you said after Damian was resurrected Bruce ended up neglecting him afterwards which ultimately led Damian to run away.

His relationship with Cass and Duke is something that I cannot explore because I am not into those characters and they are involved in books that I am not interested in. So I cannot say anything about that.

With Tim it’s complicated because I feel like his relationship with him was never actually father/son it was more like mentor/mentee and that seemed to work better for them, ever since they started the whole family thing Bruce started to act a little bit too rough towards Tim and that ended with Bruce punching Tim during the “City of Bane” arc. Bruce never apologised or was shown realising his mistake, but DC made sure to explain that Bruce was going through a rough time so that’s why he did it. It was pure rubbish and I dislike it a lot.

I answered an ask a while ago about how I thought Dick and Jason could become family the way that DC treats the “Batfamily” within comics and I came up with the idea of the “Dickfamily” because I felt like DC made a big mistake the moment they revolved the Bat family around Bruce and not Dick. Bruce is a character that is known for being lonely and for being surrounded by darkness that he only manages to escape through the light of Robin (Dick Grayson because he was the first), he was always depicted as someone who is hard to work with and considers his teammates only co-workers and not friends. He is a difficult person to connect with, so why on earth did DC come up with a family surrounding that man? (I actually know the answer to that question and it is: money, DC did it to sell more comics under the Batman name but we are going to forget about that here, let me be petty).

Why would DC make it all about a man that doesn’t connect or goes out of his way to say that he “works alone” when Dick Grayson is standing right there? DC hates that they created a character like Dick because he is just better than Bruce at everything, he just is, he is better family to Alfred, Jason, Tim and Damian, he was even written as a better father to Damian than Bruce ever was!

Bruce is just not a people person or a person that forms strong bonds with people. And that makes the whole “Batfamily” concept suffer and come off as something forced that doesn’t actually work.

Tom King was one of the writers that tried to kill the concept of the “Batfamily” with Bruce and Selina becoming a couple and by continuously saying that Selina was who was the most important person in Bruce’s life and the one that made him a better person. All Tom King did with that is make fans and non-fans of the “Batfamily” feel rage. Like, I might not like the “Batfamily” but there is no way that Selina comes first to Alfred, Dick or Damian, there is just no way and if that were actually true then that’s boring.

All the writers that have pushed the “Batfamily” concept (try) do it in a way that makes it look grand and of actual essence but without putting any work on it, if you ask me the “Batfamily” (if there has to be one) should only include Bruce, Alfred (he do be dead though), Dick, Tim, Cass and Damian (I suppose Duke too, I don’t know much about him). The “Batfamily” has to be small because that way you can actually build relationships and make them matter. Having Kate, Steph, Jason and so many others involved in a concept that was made to fit around Bruce looks stupid! Bruce has had almost zero connection to Kate and Steph in the last ten years and Bruce’s “relationship” with Jason is a complete joke!

Bruce is just not the character that is meant to be surrounded by too much people, and he is not a good person towards his family so the whole ass concept should be thrown to the trash and finally let it die. But money is important and if there is something that DC will never stop doing, is milking Batman for content that can be (sometimes) pretty basic.

All in all, I think Bruce sucks and that his “kids” shouldn’t be dragged back to him ever again or at least for a long while. All of them would actually benefit from not being involved with anything relating to Batman. Dick could benefit from Bruce and other Bat-related characters staying away from him and letting him live his life in Bludhaven. And Jason? My sweet Chonky? He would be in such a better place if Bruce disappeared from his life, imagine the actually good books we would have if Jason was free to act the way he was meant to do as the Red Hood…

(We saw a little bit of that in the back up story of Detective Comics by Rosenberg, Batman is still involved but he and Jason are definitely not on the same side of the story! So excited for Task Force Z!)

I don’t know If al that I just said answers your question but I hope you have a fantastic week Anon!

#batfamily #batfam #jason tood #dick grayson #bruce wayne #damian wayne #dc comics #asksss

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thanksjro · 3 years

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More Than Meets the Eye #33: In Which I Write the Word ‘Quantum‘ 19 Times

Dang, I forgot what happened at the end of the last issue. It was pretty important, too, but I don’t have time to reread. Maybe the establishing shot can help me out?

Oh, that’s right, Rewind happened!

Everyone’s pretty jazzed that Rewind is here, non-exploded, and supposedly alive. Megatron carries this ridiculously small man over to a table, while Skids is busy admonishing Nightbeat for trying to put the pieces of this mystery together.

That’s one of the two first canonically, openly gay Transformers, Megatron. You bet your ass he’s important.

Nightbeat’s dragged Nautica over to look at that poster for Crosscut’s play they saw last issue. Together, they discover something interesting, and it’s not that Nightbeat’s chin has elongated to the point of absurdity. On this future ship, the play was completed and produced a mere few weeks after the initial launch of the Lost Light.

While this is going on, Rewind wakes up and asks Skids what the hell is going on. Skids, likely not wanting to poke at farm-fresh trauma, glosses over the fact that everyone on this ship was violently murdered, and that they found Rewind blacked out inside the hollowed torso of his brother-in-law.

…This is a dark story line.

You see, the joke here is that “Dark Cybertron” sucked major chrome.

Megatron reminds everyone that they’re still in grave danger every moment they stay aboard this ship, but Skids is more concerned with Rewind’s mental health. Which is sweet, but maybe not the thing to prioritize in such a precarious situation.

Rewind takes the fact that Megatron is an Autobot now pretty friggin’ well, as well as the introduction of gender into his species. That is, until Nightbeat, the king of social graces, saunters up to the scene to ask Rewind what the hell happened to the ship. He does get his answers, despite Rewind being horrified to the point of speechlessness.

Over at the hole in the wall, Nautica and Riptide are taking a gander at the quantum drums, which house the quantum foam for the quantum engines so quantum jumps can happen.

As Nautica explains the process by which quantum travel works, she realizes that the answer to what happened to everyone who disappeared was right in front of them this whole time.

Quantum, quantum, quantum- doesn’t even sound like a word anymore, does it?

The data slug Rewind made corroborates this theory, showing a series of events that definitely didn’t happen to the Lost Light we’ve been following throughout this story so far. The data slug contains this Rewind’s version of dead Rewind’s “Little Victories”, the travelogue that was never completed, where the question “are you happy?” revealed just how emotionally unhealthy most of the crew is. I’d like to imagine this Rewind’s film is called “Small Achievements”, or perhaps “Dear Fucking Lord, We’ve Been on this Trip for Three Hours and the Captain Has Been Killed by a Goddamned Soul-Vampire”, or maybe even “Where the FUCK is Our Therapist”.

The DJD came into the equation by way of someone having led them to the Lost Light. We get a flashback panel of the gorefest, in which Tarn appears to have learned how to fly, given the angle he’s coming from.

Because Rewind’s big thing in this series is being the guy who records stuff, the DJD take the opportunity to make some movies of their visit to the space yacht.

James, why do you keep getting Rewind involved with snuff films? I’m starting to get concerned.

Now, the thing about Rewind is that he’s almost always accompanied by his other half. Where is Chromedome, anyway?

He’s dead, that’s where.

Turns out, when you tell the DJD that you won’t do the thing they want you to do, they have a habit of doing nasty things in retaliation. Chromedome got stabbed in the friggin’ visor with his own finger needles, because Vos enjoys ironic deaths, I suppose. There’s some other stuff that’s implied to have happened, but we’ll get to that once we learn a little more about the DJD themselves.

While Rewind recounts the grisly tale of his husband’s demise, Riptide notes that the quantum foam has begun to spread at a remarkable rate. This is a bad thing, because that shit can and will explode, given half the chance, and this wreck is floating right above a potentially-inhabited planet.

Though I could have sworn we established that this planet was a Smartplanet, and therefore very much populated by students and staff. I don’t know. Maybe we conveniently forgot that, so we could make this a learning moment for Megatron.

Jiminy Christmas, Megs, do you even listen to yourself?

Skids, who has had a very long day of finding corpses and learning about quantum theory, snaps at Megatron, telling him that in order to actually be an Autobot, you have to have a little frickin’ compassion for those outside of your peer group.

Which is sort of contradictory to the Aequitas trials, the Killswitch debacle, the POW situation back on Cybertron, and whatever the fuck Prowl’s whole deal is, but maybe Skids is speaking about his own, personal relationship with being an Autobot. Hopefully so, otherwise he needs a class on critical thinking, STAT.

Never mind all of that though, because the problem just got a lot worse- the quantum foam has expanded to a point where any holes in the stuff are too small for the Rod Pod to get through. We’re going to have to get creative if we want to save the day.

Luckily, we’ve got a quantum duplicate of just about the tiniest little dude in the franchise here to do the job. Now we just need another, equally tiny little man, so the quantum drums can be shut off at the same time. Nautica commits more microaggressions, and this gives Getaway inspiration for a witty quip, which in turn gives Skids a brilliant idea.

The gang heads down to Brainstorm’s lab, to look for the mass displacement gun that was used for treating Ultra Magnus’s nanocon infestation back in the 2012 Annual. While they search, Nautica explains just why the hell the Lost Light disappeared in the first place. You see, quantum duplication acts on the Cain Instinct— it’s fine, as long as the duplicates don’t perceive each other. However, the moment contact is made, it says “oh man, guess I’m gonna have to end you” to one of the duplicates. The contact in this case happened when the Coffin Rodimus was brought aboard the ship.

Anything that wasn’t aboard the Lost Light at the point of the takeoff/explosion was never duplicated, and thus wasn’t erased from reality once shit started going to hell. This is why the Rod Pod is still around, and why the remaining cast are— well, the remaining cast.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica and Nightbeat uncover yet another dead body; it’s Brainstorm, and he’s a little underdressed.

…Someone run a paternity test, I think Cyclonus might be the father.

Also, Brainstorm’s a double agent.

Fucked up.

Getaway is furious that a Decepticon has been living on the same ship as him for the last six months, right under his proverbial nose. Even Megatron’s surprised, stating that Brainstorm isn’t usually who the recruiters aim for.

So, no mass displacement gun, and now they’re aware of the fact that there’s a traitor on the ship who’s had access to a LOT of weapon tech. It’s at this point that Megatron decides to stop lying by omission and tells everyone that he can mass-displace, since he used to turn into a handgun.

Smashcut to Megatron and Rewind floating out in space, the former now not much taller than the latter, as they traverse the web of quantum foam to get to the drums. Nautica instructs them from the Rod Pod. If this works, anything produced or connected to the quantum engine will be neutralized, and maybe we’ll even get the other Lost Light back! YAAAAAY!!!

Y’all really let this man go out there to fuckin’ kill himself for the greater good, didn’t you?

Rewind is honestly pretty chill with ceasing to be, seeing as he watched 200/+ people die today, including his long-time spouse.

Jesus. I’d say get him a therapist, but in order to do that, we’re going to have to wipe him off the map anyway.

Rewind asks Megatron if the Chromedome that isn’t his and his duplicate are still together. And I mean…

Luckily, Megatron has the good sense to lie.

With that, they flip the switches, and deactivate the drums.

And that’s a series wrap on Rewind! Congrats to Mr. James Roberts for the esteemed honor of burying the same gay twice!

Later on, everyone is back inside the Rod Pod, as their disappeared shipmates return from being nonexistent. Chromedome pops back in, and Skids is on him like a shark, telling him to go on the roof. Skids doesn’t even try to explain why. Which, fair. How the hell do you explain to someone that their dead husband’s quantum duplicate survived both a terrorist splinter cell attack, and the laws of quantum sci-fi bullshit crashing down on his tiny, tiny body, and that he’s right there on the roof waiting for them?

Welp, there goes the Chromedome/Dominus endgame. Shame, that.

Looks like Chromedome finally hit the threshold for having earned Roberts’ pity, and won’t be directly targeted by the plot for a little while. This isn’t something you see very often, so let’s really soak this in.

…Someone had to have told Rewind what happened to the other Rewind, right? I wonder what that conversation was like.

Back inside the ship, Blaster gets word that the Lost Light has reappeared. As they navigate towards it, Megatron requests that an encrypted call be made to Rodimus, to discuss the Brainstorm problem.

In the interim, Ravage is offered the opportunity to be a part of the crew, so he doesn’t have to keep skulking around in the shadows. We don’t get an answer from him, as our focus shifts over to Nightbeat and Nautica.

Nightbeaaaaaaaaaat, stop stating the themes of the comic verbatim! People are going to start thinking you’re a shonen anime protagonist!

Nightbeat’s somehow managed to keep ahold of the briefcase that they found on the other Lost Light. Unless Brainstorm’s boyfriend is in there, I don’t think this one was the work of Huey Lewis and the News’ hit single from the Back to the Future soundtrack.

Over on the Lost Light, specifically in Swerve’s, Brainstorm’s making his way through the crowd, briefcase held gentle like hamburger as he goes. He makes it to the bar, where Atomizer tells him he can’t have his briefcase in here. Brainstorm has what most would accept to be a healthy response to being told “no.”

It’s what I would do.

#transformers #jro #MTMTE #slaughterhouse #issue 33 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

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who-is-page · 3 years

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We sort of started this discussion at Chimeras' Othercon panel, but I wanted to keep it going so I figured I would send an ask. What do you think it would mean for our community to drop the focus on voluntary and involuntary identities? I agree that we fundamentally should, but a bunch of things immediately jump to mind.

Our community has spent years leaning heavily into the lines between voluntary and involuntary identities and taken special care to make massive distinctions between them, leaving little to no room for grey area. It's no bit surprise that alterhuman spaces have had actual, legitimate, longstanding issues of grilling and gatekeeping. Nonhumans with nuanced and complicated identities are forced to shove themselves into a box to fit into the community, and the ideas we have about certain identities needing to be involuntary are absolutely baked into many aspects of our community and its history.

At the same time, we have used this unjustified gatekeeping in part to protect the community from genuine threats and appropriation of our terminology. The way we have limited our concepts of who is allowed to identify in what ways is generally wrong and has no doubt harmed a subset of kin, but at the same time is understandable in the sense that it has a cause. Yes, this was an issue even before KFF, but KFF certainly don't make it easy to create space for genuine voluntary kin and other voluntary alterhumans.

How do we create the space for nuance and fluidity and complexity in these terms and identities after we have spent so long defensively creating rigid boundaries and restrictions regarding the ways people are allowed to identify? How do we address community gatekeeping while also protecting our community from the people who use our identities and terminology in bad faith?

I have a lot of ideas, but this is obviously a very complex topic that we can't just solve in a day. I was just curious to hear your thoughts, if you had any. Hopefully once our personal website is up one of our first essays will be about this issue. (Also, how is Page? /hj)

So I know we’ve been sitting on this ask for... -checks watch- ...almost two weeks now, but it’s genuinely because I just wasn’t sure how to answer it for a good long while, and I didn’t just want to throw out some haphazard, half-hearted answer to such important questions. So here’s our thoughts on the debacle.

Voluntary and involuntary is a focus I doubt we’ll ever see any of the alterhuman communities permanently drop, for several reasons.

The first and foremost being that, by the definition of the term “alterhuman,” defined here as “a subjective identity which is beyond the scope of what is traditionally considered ‘being human’,” both experiences at their most extremes technically fall underneath the label, rendering the distinction (to some) vitally important to helping understand and define their identity/identity labels. The difference between KFF as an alterhuman identity and forms of otherkinity as an alterhuman identity, for instance, as you mention.

And then there’s the societal factors to consider. People like nice, neat little boxes: people like to be able to compartmentalize their communities, with no overlap, with no spillage, with no complications or grey areas or nuance. It’s a fact of life that people often instinctively want to water down labels and identities into more easily digestible formations, though there are arguments around why people precisely do it. And, as you point out, that often means alterhumans and nonhumans with more complex or nuanced identities typically get shoved into one box or another that they may not perfectly fit into.

When we zero in on specifically the otherkin community, this becomes even more complicated given the community’s rife history: abusive p-shifter groups, the appropriation of language by roleplayers and fiction writers, zoophiles attempting to forcibly associate otherkinity with pro-bestiality movements, and the blatant general misinformation spread by laymen and academics alike, just to name a few relevant problems the community has faced and continues to face. The community is stubborn to a fault, largely because it’s had to be in order to survive. It holds to its preconceived notions and rigid boundaries like a dog with toy aggression to their favorite plush stegosaurus. Fittingly so, really.

So how do we take that stubbornness and change it to be more inclusive to our own? How could we, while still surviving all that onslaught and more? That’s the big question.

In regards to the larger alterhuman community, we’re blessed in the fact that it’s still such a young concept: it hasn’t quite yet had to face the “pathological anger” Religious Studies professor Joseph Laycock has described otherkin as bearing the brunt of. It’s still a community figuring itself out, with much of the anger you find related to it aimed at specific subsets of community within it, rather than at alterhumanity as a whole. And I think the fact that the alterhuman community is still metaphorically air-drying on a table means we have the opportunity to prevent anti-nuance and anti-complexity attitudes from taking hold in it. How we do that is another battle in itself-- I feel like the encouragement of inclusive dialogue, of open discussion intermingled with considerate or civil attitudes, within alterhuman-marketed spaces is a good starting point. I also think that the encouragement and legitimization of “alterhuman” as its own standalone term would be a positive force, where it functions as a broad, diverse identity label in addition to being an overarching, joining umbrella label. A label where someone doesn’t have to give details away of their identity if they don’t feel comfortable doing so, or shove themself into a box they may or may not actually feel they fit into. Something functionally similar to how many people use “queer,” if you will.

But that still leaves aside the issue of identity and terminological misuse, I am aware. And that is...an abstract thing to ward against, at absolute best. I think that the defining of our own spaces not only through our words but also through our actions would perhaps be the best thing we could do, realistically. The cultivation of websites, of group projects--books, zines, comics, pictures, forums, anything!--, of community-led conventions and meet-ups and howls and gatherings. Things which foster and build a community identity of sorts is the best defense against those who would try and distort that which makes us, us.

Zooming back in on the otherkin community, these answers change slightly, because--going back to the clay metaphor--the otherkin community has already metaphorically been glazed and baked (in the fires of hell). That history is cemented, the ways people have wronged it and continue to try and wrong it is cemented, the assumptions and attitudes are cemented.

With the otherkin community, I think that the burden of changing minds and pervasive attitudes falls a bit more onto the shoulders of “community leadership,” because of how the community functions and values both community experience and articulation. There’s a reason we don’t have a term comparable to “greymuzzle” in any of the other alterhuman communities, after all-- it’s a well-known and often aggravating quirk of the otherkin community, to hold certain individuals in such high esteem and put them on a pedestal because of their longevity and the things they’ve done and said. I hate to say that they have to set an example, but in the otherkin community that really is one of the best ways to advocate for change, or to push against those gatekeeping and grilling attitudes--by those who are largely well-respected putting forward ideas that have previously been mocked or disavowed, pushing debates on their legitimacy into community consciousness until it eventually trickles into community normalcy and foundation.

(This is, as you can imagine, a double-edged sword depending on how it’s used. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

That’s not to say that the ideas of creation and creativity with the goal of cultivating an inclusive community identity, like I suggested for the alterhuman community, is inapplicable to the otherkin community: but the otherkin community already has a long-term community identity, so it’d moreso be creation and creativity for the sake of formative inclusion. “History is always written by the winners” is a very, very literal phrase in its application to the otherkin community. Our community memory, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks from individual-to-individual. The future of the otherkin community, its eventual-history, is determined by its historians and creators of today: day-to-day arguments and discussions, unless deemed historically relevant by one archivist or another, disappear to the sands of time, and much more long-term recordings such as essays, websites, comics, etc., often go far beyond just its creators hands and get passed around and down for years, potentially. If you want a more nuanced and inclusive community, you have to dig up the clay for it, shovel by shovel, and bake it yourself, brick by brick, and eventually, with luck, or enough backing prestige, or just because those bricks are so astoundingly solid people can’t resist taking some to build their own foundations to nonhumanity, things will change. It will take time above all else, but once it’s there it will be impossible to remove, because people will just assume those bricks have always been there given enough years.

But those are just some of my thoughts and opinions on it. It’s an issue with so many layers of complexity to it, that there’s really no perfect answer out there that I can offer, and I know even what I’ve shared here has its flaws and drawbacks. I’m sure plenty of my followers also have additional thoughts on the subject, and I’d love to hear from other people what they think in the replies and reblogs.

(Also, Page is a very tired boi.)

#long post #otherkin #alterhuman

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bookishlyizzy · 3 years

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discussing the final season of carmen sandiego

*spoilers* umm....so yeah, i finished watching carmen sandiego, and i’m left in a state of perpetual sadness and despair. i feel like the ending of the show wrapped up wayyy too fast, and kind of left off on a bit of an unsatisfactory note for some of the characters. although i love the large and diverse cast of carmen sandiego, one of the drawbacks of having all those characters and arcs and storylines makes it harder to cram in a satisfying conclusion for everyone in a twenty-minute episode. so here’s what i would do if there was more time.

let’s start off with the threads that i think were tied off pretty well:

julia & chase devineaux: i wasn’t really a shipper of julia and devineaux but i actually really enjoyed their relationship throughout season 4. we see a lot of character growth from devineaux in the way that he interacts with julia and the world. julia pushes devineaux to become a better person, to see things with a broader perspective and from other people’s points of view. and he does really change a lot into an understanding person instead of the overconfident, arrogant detective we first saw him as in season 1. in addition, he also grows to respect julia as a person and partner, and it’s completely adorable how he looks at her while zari tells julia that they’ll follow her lead. also i love how he keeps wearing his lucky cat jacket from san francisco in season 4.

el topo & le chevre: okay, i was pretty much shipping these two the minute they showed up on the screen together. you can tell how much they care about each other throughout the series. whenever one of them gets hurt, you can really see how they prioritize each other over whatever thing vile is planning. when things are good, they’re so sweet and they have so much fun together. and they take dumb cute selfies. they’re so, so adorable, and this season definitely brings the shipping fodder. and they end the season moving on from vile and running a food truck together. the only thing i’m mad about is that we definitely needed more screen time from them.

shadowsan: i didn’t like shadowsan in season 1 but over the course of the series he really went through a lot of major character development and i love how he’s now basically a grumpy dad figure to carmen. the season ends with him finally reuniting for good with his brother in japan, and it’s a satisfying conclusion for his arc. i also love how he was the one to help carmen in the finale when she’s struggling with the brainwashing thing. which is way better than the brainwashing being resolved by some bs like true love’s kiss. (also carmen and gray are way too hurt and they’re super not ready for a relationship.) carmen sandiego is a show that emphasizes the importance of family with this father-daughter duo, and i think that’s something really valuable. also i’m interpreting that shadowsan isn’t permanently moving to japan, but rather just visiting his brother. he’s still definitely going to be there for carmen going forward when she needs him.

player & carmen’s friendship: i love this show for having a male/female friendship with absolutely no romantic feelings going on. it’s a solid friendship, and depicts a wholesome, supportive relationship. absolutely no qualms here.

and here’s all the stuff that needs expanding/fixing:

tigress: i actually really love tigress as a character, and i personally think that there should have been more of her in the series. i would have liked to see more depth and motivation to her, since she has a lot of character potential. i don’t really know how i would rewrite tigress’s arc, because it’s virtually nonexistent and there’s not too much to go off of. i don’t think she needs a redemption arc, but i would give her more of a spotlight. (also low key fictional-crushing on her.) i would like to include sort of a tigress-centric episode, which can also generally be more expansion on the inner workings of vile.

cleo & saira: villain couple. villain couple. they need to be a villain couple, enough said. i would rewrite season 4 to have include an emotional downbeat moment in which saira struggles with being able to fit in with society and humans and being completely awkward at it while cleo, in all her regal and ettiquite-esque manners, tries to help. this wouldn’t really help with the main plot, but it would be humanizing and provide character depth. i feel like this could be the b-plot in the tigress episode somehow.

coach brunt: you don’t betray family. at this point, coach brunt has lost the daughter she raised, who, in her mind, has basically backstabbed her entirely. coach brunt was also betrayed by shadowsan and left for the police to find, and in season 4, malestrom basically abandons her to drown. and it’s highly likely that somewhere in her backstory she’s been betrayed many times, likely by her own blood family, which would provide context for why she’s such a loyal person to vile, who she thinks of as her found family. in rewriting season four, i’m adding one extra episode that’s solely on the backstory of coach brunt. in this episode, we would explore brunt’s upbringing and the first time she is betrayed by someone she considers family. in my opinion, coach brunt was likely pushed to fall by another influence, but she also makes the conscious choice to choose revenge over moving on. potentially, we could also explore brunt’s budding friendship with the mechanic, who we never see again after that one episode, as well as a reflection upon this from her adult self.

gray & the freaking mind control thing & his moral struggles: *sighs* i can see what the show is going for, but i really just don’t see it in the execution. the way that gray struggles with morality is like it’s an on and off switch. he’s either graham, basic civilian, or crackle, basically evil. in that one episode, he flip flops between being overly heroic, even taking out time from his day to specifically track down a random kid to return his wallet instead of just dropping it off at the police station or leaving it where he found it. and then the flip side is like he’s just robotically relapsing into stealing mode, where he just suddenly has to impluse to steal literally anything. i feel like this flip flop wasn’t really a good portrayal of his struggle and didn’t really demonstrate many active choices made by him. and the way that he’s just like “i’m actually just evil” when he confronts carmen at the lab is just super one-dimensional. i just don’t buy it that he flips to vile so quickly in the span of a few episodes. i feel like there should have been more active reflecting and the decision should have been dragged out longer.

also it’s revealed in the finale that gray also changed his crackle rod to not go beyond a stun, and i think this was a nice touch, because it demonstrates his aversion to murder, which calls back to the first caper, in which he’s confronted with killing the archeologist at the excavation site. but he doesn’t end up having to make that choice, because carmen stops him. but this time, it’s his own choice to take that step away from vile ideals. i don’t think gray is ever going to be a “hero” of the traditional sense or have a complete redemption arc, because it just doesn’t fit him. to be honest, i don’t know what the future will hold for gray, but i definitely think of he will fall somewhere along the lines of red x (teen titans) or catwoman’s (in certain comic runs) gray morality. (and i think the way gray returns to vile kind of screws this up.) he’s still going to steal stuff sometimes probably, but he’s not going to straight up murder people. he would probably be the type to work for himself alone mostly, but be okay teaming up with the good guys sometimes. definitely no joining evil organizations tho.

gray & carmen & the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight:” i definitely ship these two, but i think they’ve got a long way to go before they’re really ready to admit their feelings for each other. i’m happy that the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” didn’t culminate in a kiss scene being the thing that snapped carmen out of the trance. because that is just so cliche and not the message of the show. instead, it’s shadowsan who does. and that makes sense going along with the themes of family. i think the issue with this i dislike how there is no more elaboration after carmen supposedly kills gray. this is her best friend. i would imagine that the reaction would be greater, since he was also her friend and teammate during the months they were both working under vile. and then when carmen’s brainwashing wears off, she agonizes that she killed her best friend. but that’s it. the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” is the last screen appearance of both of them together. then it’s directly cutting to taking down vile. there should have been a hospital scene where carmen rides with him in the ambulance and talks to him as he’s unconscious, and leaves behind a note for him to read when he’s awake.

i just really think there should be a “heart to heart” scene somewhere in this finale where they confront their feelings (not romantic stuff, but more about like shared trauma at the hands of vile and their broken apart friendship). this could happen at that sydney cafe. both times carmen and gray go on a “date” she leaves him sitting there alone, bewlildered. i think the finale should include a scene of them leaving the cafe together and then walking away and waving to each other. this shows development in their relationship, and that they are now closer, but it also visually shows that they still have differences as they walk away with a sort of two toned kind of environment angle that shows the different paths they have chosen. (and carmen calls him gray. and he doesn’t correct her.) it’s more of a see you later, than a goodbye though. we’re also getting rid of that part of when gray says he doesn’t want to complicate carmen’s life in the hospital scene. instead, he’s going to ask for a sheet of paper on which he will write an indiscernible letter to carmen. (the same letter will be seen in at the carmen brand outerwear hq a few scenes later for continuity, but unopened at the time, as if carmen’s not yet ready to read it. i feel like both of them need to heal a bit on their own before they’re ready to reconnect. gray knows he has hurt carmen in the past but he also knows it will hurt her if he disappears without a trace, so he’s leaving her with the choice if she wants to see him again instead of making the choice for her.)

ivy & zach & found family: carmen leaves a note behind for ivy and zach and leaves to find her mother. i feel like this did not handle team red’s found family very well. basically, the whole show is setting up this importance of family, especially found family not blood family kind of narrative. vile blood runs in carmen’s veins but she chooses to do good and find her own family. ivy and zach both choose carmen, their found family, over their racing career. i think that they should have stuck together, and when carmen goes to find her mom, they would have been totally onboard dropping her off at the airport and saying a “see you soon” or actually driving her to carlotta valdez’s house in lydia (the car). i just don’t think that splitting them up via a note is really a satisfying conclusion to the whole found family aspect. and in that time skip carmen really should have stopped by to say hi to the zach and ivy and the acme squad instead of maintaining the air of mystery. that would have definitely pushed the family feel, instead of the mysterious loner archetype.

that time skip thing: yeah, no. this part was completely not needed and unhelpful. instead, we’re going to have carmen hug her mother at the airport, and go to visit all of her friends and found family, especially shadowsan in japan and ivy and zach in presumably boston. and the time skip will be a few onths not two effing years. i think it’s natural for them to grow apart a bit and pursue their own personal goals in life after vile’s gone, but they’ll definitely be staying in touch and reconnecting and seeing each other pretty often. and lastly of all, carmen will meet gray at the cafe in sydney.

basically, this is how i would redo the episodes for season 4.

episode 1: the beijing bullion caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part, i would like more expansion on lady doksu and shadowsan's past since it seems like their pasts are more tied together than is revealed)

episode 2: the big bad ivy caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part.)

episode 3: the robo caper. (the scenes in which carmen first meets the robot and ivy runs it over with a truck can stay the same. where we start to deviate is with gray’s story with a revised, more complex, and in depth view of his moral struggles. instead of being unaware largely as gray flops between graham/crackle, he’s going to be a lot more aware. he’s still going to rob the house, but instead it’s because he feels hopeless that since he was previously a criminal, that’s all he’s ever going to be. gray doesn’t want to be a civilian, and feels like the only thing that he can do instead is be a part of vile. however, when he sees carmen again, he’s going to realize that if she got out of vile, then that means he has a chance to get out of it too. gray comes to a crossroads of deciding between carmen and vile, good and evil.

episode 4: this will be the episode that concentrates on tigress, with a cleo/saira b-plot. most of this episode will take place within vile, and give more insights on the workings of the organization.

episode 5: the himalayan rescue caper. (this episode is going to get a real makeover. with the insertion of episode 4, this creates more actual space between the last time we see gray grappling with his big choices, which makes it feel like more time has passed. so it actually feels like he had more time to think. carmen’s still going to try to rescue gray, and the part with player can stay the same. as gray is manipulated by malestrom, i think this episode should further emphasize how vile manipulates their recruits and amp up the shittiness of how malestrom is acting. i think malestrom should say something along the lines indicating that vile is gray’s only family left, this is what he was born to do, he belongs with them, and make up a bunch of bullshit lies about carmen. malestrom will portray this stuff as the “truth” and then say something like “we told you to the full truth, while carmen was hiding your past from you. didn’t you say you wanted to piece together more of your past?” (which gray did express interest in a previous episode.) since more time has passed, malestrom will play the “if carmen wanted to rescue you, she would have done so already. she abandoned you.” card. of course, it’s not easy to get into a super advanced vile facility, so instead carmen’s going to be having more struggles with getting in, which is the real reason she’s taking a while.) i want to keep the scene where he says that his name is crackle, not gray and not graham. i think this scene is particularly painful because graham/crackle is kind representative of the two sides of good and evil that gray thinks he has to choose between. gray will accuse carmen of abandoning him, both in the present but demonstrating that he’s still hurt by the time when she first left vile, and all those times when she kept secrets from him and disappearing in sydney. carmen asks him to leave with her, but instead of him being like “i’m bad, and i was always a villain,” he’s just going to be hurt and feel manipulated and be so conflicted. i feel like gray would choose vile, but not because it’s where he belongs but because he’s afraid of being brainwashed again if he doesn’t agree and because he just wants to know the truth, which vile happened to tell him first (and carmen had been hiding it from him for a while). why would it make sense for gray to willingly side with vile because he’s “throughly bad?” actions speak louder than words, and it’s clear that he’s definitely not evil enough for vile.

episode 6: the vile history caper. (we’re just going to keep this episode as is for the most part. but like more el topo and le chevre moments.)

episode 7: this will be the coach brunt backstory episode, piggybacking off of her hurt feelings about maelstrom’s intended betrayal.

episode 8: the egyptian decryption caper. (this one is just going to be as is for the most part. the cleaners kidnap carmen, but we’re going insert one more painstaking scene of gray learning of vile’s plan to kidnap carmen. he’s not going to know they are planning to brainwash her. he’s going to feel conflicted and try to protest, but then realizes that now that he’s stuck with vile, if he goes against them he’s probably going to get brainwashed himself. and the brainwashing was really traumatizing, so it’s understandable he’s really afraid of it happening to him again.)

episode 9: the viennese waltz caper. (mostly just keeping this episode as is, but more worrying gray scenes. i feel like he should have had a bigger reaction to seeing carmen so unlike her personality. carmen’s lack of empathy should have pushed himself to question if vile is really a healthy place for anyone if they’re so willing to brainwash his best friend in a greater capacity. i think gray should recognize how bad the situation is but he still won’t act upon it since he’s trapped in the nostalgia of their old squad and since he’s been abandoned by carmen before, he’s too afraid that reversing the brainwashing will result in a repeat of her leaving him again. and he’s still afraid of the brainwashing.)

episode 10 + 11 + 12. the dark red caper. (yeah, this episode is kind of just way too quickly wrapped up. i’m going to expand this into a three parter so we have more time to focus on everyone. basically, we’re going to expand this for the angst. and because this is the last season and i need more content. i feel like we can follow the general plot trajectory but with more nuance and include the improvements i wrote above about the finale. absolutely pushing the found family trope to its limits, and less vagueness since there’s not going to be another season. oh yeah, and the scene when carmen fights shadowsan, i feel like they could have amped up the emotional stuff and make it as much as about him being her dad figure as the doll because #foundfamily. and also the extra time gives more space for all of that other stuff like endings for all the characters, and more team red found family, and a bit about the non-jailed vile operatives, and the acme team, and also maybe a little infrastructure rebuilding montage, and also that carmen and gray moment.)

basically i just want a satisfying ending for gray, and i love him, and he can’t just stare out of the hospital bedroom and agree to stay out of her life while melancholy music plays.

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fabdante · 3 years

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Ok, last one. The Kat and Artemisia post. Incase you missed them, this is part of a trio of posts on Baroque art and the DmC reboot trio and a separate post on the DmC reboot and the Baroque as an art movement.

The other posts if you want to check them out: Dante and Caravaggio, Vergil and Benini, DmC and the Baroque

Today for the final installment in this little mini series, we’ll be discussing the artist who won the Baroque, Artemisia Gentileschi, and her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, featured below.

Analysis of this painting, why it’s such a bop, Kat, and the devil may cry reboot below the cut!

Content Warning: discussion of abuse as it relates to Kat.

I guess we start with the beginning and the beginning is who Judith is.

Judith is a biblical character. Upon impending invasion, she is unsatisfied with the response of her people and decides to infiltrate the enemy camp with her maid, intent to stop the enemy army. After gaining the trust of the people there, she eventually seduces general Holofernes and is invited to his tent. Then she beheads him with what I am left to assume is his sword. I suppose given the painting that part’s a little spoiled.

A lot of paintings focus on the beheading or Judith posing with the decapitated head in victory. But a lot of them don’t have the impact of Artemisias, as seen above.

Judith, as painted by Artemisia, is full of rage. She is not serene or delicate. She is not posing or unsure. She is angry, certain, and out for blood. Everything in her expression and her movements is full of force and intent. It’s the little details like his hair between her knuckles from where she’s gripping it and the forceful twist of her wrist on his sword that she’s taken. To her rolled sleeves in her incredibly fancy dress. And it’s not afraid to be gory to. Perhaps this is tame by modern standards of blood and gore but for the time it’s very bloody and violent. Supposedly the violence was too much for the first owner who kept it hidden for some time (allegedly). I think it’s important that while the focus is Judith doing the act, her maid is not passive in the violence. She’s holding him down with just as much force as Judith. And unwavering to, despite how we can see how Holofernes was trying to throw her off before he died, his hands still limply in the air. The maids full of as much determination as Judith is. Judith’s dressed up for this to, in a fine gown with her hair done up. This is likely part of the ruse Judith set up before she got Holofernes alone, but I like the detail none the less. That she’s dressed up for this murder.

The key to why this painting fits Kat so much to me is how it is not only full of anger and femininity and violence but how in Artemisias hands, the image feels like a bloody catharsis. There’s something personal in Judith's glare, in her rage. Something kind of interesting to in how she’s forced Holofernes to look away from her, like he hasn’t earned the right to see her victory even if by this point he is surely dead (I mean, the sword is nearly through his neck). Or like she doesn’t want to look at him at all, like he’s not worth looking at.

Likewise, for Kat, hunting demons is personal. The Order is personal. Why she’s here doing this is personal.

It’s personal because Kat killed her abusive foster father. I don’t think how impressive this is truly gets conveyed. It’s almost a throw away statement. It’s just that one line, ‘I killed the bastard’, and that’s that. Like it was easy or something. In the reboot universe, though, she’s not even in the same dimension as her foster father. We don’t get a lot of information about how much a demons human form impacts their demon form. We are told Mundus is fused to his human form, but we’re also told this is because he’s been in it so long and also there’s the matter of his relationship to the hell gate. We’re not even told how long he’s been in this form. Has it been years, decades, centuries? How long is so long that it led to this fusion? So, I don’t think we can base the average demon to this. As far as we know in canon, it’s Kat against a being in another dimension. A dimension she cannot engage with physically and to which he can escape to at any time.

And yet she kills him anyway.

She is the only human we know of in canon who’s done this, to. To be fair, she is the only human mentioned at all in the reboot canon but by how Dante positions himself as human savior and by how certain Vergil seems to be that humans cannot take care of themselves, this must be rare.

I cannot express enough how important it is that Kat is the one who kills him to. It’s not Vergil. She doesn’t say it was Vergil. It’s also not her and Vergil, she doesn’t say that either, she doesn’t say ‘we killed the bastard’. Kat says explicitly that she killed him, ‘I killed the bastard’. It’s Kats kill. No matter how much Vergil helped her, she did it. She killed her abuser despite the odds against her.

I can’t imagine the sort of catharsis Kat must have felt in that moment. We don’t know how she killed him, she never says. The greatest crime of the comics, in my opinion, are how they take this kill away from Kat and give it to Vergil instead. Which means no further elaboration there on what went down. But I can imagine her in that moment after, unsure how to feel with the rush of adrenaline and power and newfound safety. She’s done it. She’s done something she must have thought was impossible. And she tells us in game how this made her feel emboldened to handle the rest of demon kind. She doesn’t tell us in that many words, I suppose, but she says that she wants to deal with them all because she killed her foster father.

To Kat, this is personal. To Kat, mankind is something worth saving that she is willing to do everything to save. We don’t see her violence in game, but we know she’s willing to kill for this freedom. We know she’s willing to die for it to, given the aftermath of the Orders fall. It’s personal. And Kat sees it as something far bigger then her.

Often Kat I think is written off as someone who is naïve and weak and in need of saving. I’ve complained at length how I feel about her being called naïve. In game we see a very interesting, complex person in Kat I think. I’ve said before that it’s kind of fun to just watch her in scenes. Like really watch her. She has very deliberate body language that often betrays this calm she’s fighting to display, particularly around Dante for the first half of the game or so. It’s little things like how she physically contains herself after the ‘I like it rough’ comment, shutting her eyes and taking in a deep breath, but things that are there. She’s someone who, despite everything, is fighting to be a softer, kinder person even if she’s still got a lot of anger (Vergil does compare her and Dante, after all).

And being soft and kind does not make someone weak. Existing in a world where you are at a disadvantage to the things that aim to hurt you is not weak. Entering into your enemies tent armed with nothing but an elaborate gown and your anger, waiting until you spot a sword and an opportunity is not weak either.

I think something about Kat that is so often forgotten in the drama of the twins and everything else (because lets face it, no matter the media, female characters tend to get side lined for...everything else really), is without her the twins would have failed. It’s Kat who gets Dante and safely brings him to the Order. It’s Kat’s spells that bridge the human world to Limbo. It’s Kat who saves Vergil in the server room by way of bringing Dante to him. It’s Kat who ultimately gives the twins the final plan to get to Mundus. It was her. Dante says so at the end, to. The game recognizes that without Kat, the boys have nothing. And it's still Kat at the end who saves Vergil, and saves Dante from the guilt of killing him.

With Kat taking so much into her own hands despite her disadvantage, despite just being human, despite her softness, despite this rage boiling under her skin (or perhaps because of it), she is so much of why the world is free from demons.

I mean Artemisia herself got that treatment, largely left out of artistic canon until very recently despite her success during her time. I also debated for a very, very long time across the many, many iteration of this essay on how much I talk about Artemisia’s personal life. I suppose if you made it this far you’ve seen that I’ve chosen not to, despite how it could be relevant to this discussion. But I think her work stands on it’s own without me having to justify the anger Artemisia may have personally felt and conveyed here without bringing up her personal life in depth. Though, if you want to know, I assure you that pretty much any information you look up on Artemisia will go into detail on her personal traumas and how that might impact her work. And it could definitely be relevant angle in discussing Kat and Artemisia, I just felt it overall did not add to this essay.

I often wonder, if she was in a different game or a different medium or a different story, if Kat might get more love. So often she’s called weak for the crime of not having a big weapon and a trail of dead demons behind her. So often she’s reduced to a love interest or a damsel despite how she is really the thing that saved the day, despite the fact her relationship with both twins is much more then ‘potential love interest’. And how many times have you guys seen a post on your dash about wishing a character picked to enact revenge on an abuser? How they fought to be soft despite their trauma and pain? But I suppose, as is often the case with women in any story, she might have gotten this treatment anyway.

So, here’s to Kat. The brain cell, the Nephilim baby sitter, the girl who wanted to throw Vergil off a cliff, the hero Limbo city got who will never get enough credit, and forever the girl who deserved more.

Those of us who love you will love you enough for the whole fandom, it’s alright.

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