#even if i am going to emulate it for (partially to see if it lives up to the hype partially to make fun of it. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nopefun · 3 years

Text

Interview #494: Ryan Frigillana

Ryan Frigillana is a Philippine-born lens-based artist living and working in New York. His work focuses on the fluidity of memory, intimacy, family identity, and visual culture, largely filtered through the lens of race and immigration. Embracing its plasticity, Frigillana explores photography’s relationship to context as a catalyst for thematic dialogue.

His first monograph, Visions of Eden, was published as two editions in 2020, and is held in the library collections of the MoMA, Getty Research Institute, and Smithsonian among others.

We spoke to find out more about Visions of Eden, his love for photobooks, and photography as a medium for introspection.

Lee Chang Ming Ryan Frigillana

Thanks for agreeing to do this! As we’ve just arrived into the new year, I want to start by asking: how did you arrive at photography and how has your practice evolved so far? Your earlier work was anything from still life to street photography, but your recent work seems to deal with more personal themes.

It’s my pleasure; thank you for having this conversation with me! Wow, looking back at how I’ve arrived at this point makes me feel so grateful for this medium, and excited to think of where it will lead me from here. I came to photography somewhat late. I was initially studying to become a nurse and was set to start a career in that field, but I found myself unhappy with where I was going. My mother was a nurse and I know what goes into being one; it’s not an easy job, and I respect those who do it, but my heart wasn’t in it. I found photography as a creative outlet during that stage of my life, and I’ve clung onto it ever since.

My first exposure to photography (no pun intended) came in the form of street and photojournalism. I would borrow books from the library a lot, consuming works by Magnum and other photographers working in that tradition. At the time, it was all I knew so that’s what I tried to emulate. Even early on in my undergrad career, these modes of creation were reinforced by curriculum and by what I saw from my own peers. My still-life work branches off of that same sentiment: the only names that were ever thrown around by professors were Penn and Mapplethorpe, so that’s who I studied. Thankfully over the years, I’ve been able to broaden that perspective through my own research. Though I don’t necessarily pursue street or constructed still-lifes anymore for my personal work, I’d like to think my technical skills (in regard to timing, composition, light) owe a debt to those past experiences.

I suppose now I’m starting to explore how photography can be used as language, to communicate ideas and internal conflicts. I’m thinking more about the power of imagery, its authorship, its implications, and how photographs have shaped, and continue to shape, our reality. That’s where my work is headed at the moment.

I liked how you mentioned photography as a language, which calls into question who we are speaking to when we make images and what kind of narrative we construct by putting photographs together.

In your work “Visions of Eden”, you trace your family’s journey as first-generation Filipino immigrants in America. I was quite struck by how you managed to link together original photography, archived materials and video stills. To me, with the original photography there was a sense of calm and clarity, perhaps in the composition. But with the archived material it was like peering through tinted glass, and the video stills felt like an unsteady memory. What was the editing process like for you and how did you decide what to include or exclude?

For me, editing is the hardest part about photography. Shooting is the enjoyable part of course because it can feel so cathartic. Sometimes when I shoot it feels almost like muscle memory in the sense that you see the world and you just react to it in a trained way. But with editing, it’s more of a cerebral exercise. More thought is involved when you have to deal with visual relationships, sequence, rhythm, and spacing, etc. The real creation of my work takes place in the editing process. That’s where the ingredients come together to form an identity.

When creating this identity, I not only have to think about what I want to say, but also how I want to say it. It’s like speaking; there are numerous ways you can communicate a single sentence. How are images placed in relation to one another? How large are they printed, or how much white space surrounds it? Are the images repeated? What’s on the following page? The preceding page? Is there text? How are they positioned on the spread? All of these little choices impact the tone of your work. And that’s not even mentioning tactile factors like paper stock or cover material. I think that’s why I have such a deep love for photobooks because 1) they’re physical objects and 2) someone has obsessed over every aspect of that object.

I’m aware that my photographs lately have a quiet, detached, somewhat stripped-down quality to them. I think that’s just a subconscious rejection of my earlier days shooting a lot of street where I was constantly seeking crowded frames and complexity in my compositions. As I’ve grown older, I realize less is more and if I can do more by saying less, that’s even better. Now, the complexity I seek lies in the work as a whole and how all these little parts can form something fluid and layered, and not easily definable.

For Visions of Eden, I wanted the work to feel somewhat syncopated and wandering in thought. That meant finding a balance between my quiet static photographs and the movement and energy of the video stills, or balancing the coldness of the illustrations with the warmth of the family snapshots. The work needed to be cohesive but have enough ambiguity for it to take life in someone else’s imagination. Peoples’ lived experiences in regard to immigration and religion are so complex that they can’t be narrated in any one definitive way. Visions of Eden, hopefully, is a rejection of that singularity.

Yes, there’s definitely something special and intimate about flipping through a photobook! For your monograph, you recently released a second edition which is different from your first (redesigned, added images, etc.). Why did you decide to make it different? Was the editing mainly a solitary process?

The first edition was a partially hand-made object. Illustrations were printed on translucent vellum paper and then tipped into the gutter of the book. When you flip through the pages, those vellum sheets would overlap over certain images, creating a collage-like effect. That was my original concept for this book. Doing this, however, was so laborious and time consuming, and not to mention expensive! Regretfully, I wound up making only twenty copies of that first edition. I wanted the work shared with a wider audience so that’s why I decided to publish a second run.

The latest edition is more of a straight-forward production without the vellum paper. With this change in design, I had to reconfigure the layout. I took liberties in swapping out some images or adding new ones altogether. Also, a beautiful afterword was contributed by my friend, artist, writer, and curator Efrem Zelony-Mindell. I still feel so fortunate and grateful to have had my work seen and elevated by their words in my book.

For the most part, yes editing is quite a solitary process for me. But there does come a point when I feel it’s ready, where I share the work with a few trusted people. It’s always nice to have that outer support system. Much of Visions of Eden was created during my time in undergrad school so I had all sorts of feedback from peers and professors which I’m grateful for. But in the end, as the author, you ultimately have the final say in your work.

Given that Eden is a starting point and metaphor in the work, I was thinking about ideas of gardens, (forbidden) fruit, and movement of people.

How do you view yourself in relation to your place of birth? In your series, I see the most direct links in the letters, old photos where tropical foliage is present in the background, and the photo of the jackfruit (perhaps the only tropical fruit in this series).

I came to America when I was very young, about five years old. For my family and for many other families still living in the Philippines, America is seen as a sort of ideological Eden: a land of milk and honey, of wealth and excess. We all know that’s far from the truth. Every Eden has a caveat, a forbidden tree. Which leads me to ask: as an immigrant living in this country, what fruits were never intended for me?

I honestly don’t remember much about my childhood in the Philippines aside from fleeting memories of my relatives, the sounds of animals, the smell of rain and earth, the taste of my grandmother’s cooking. The identity that I carry with me now as a Filipino is not so much tied to the physical geography of a place but rather it is derived from a way of life, from shared stories, in the values we hold dear, passed on from generation to generation. This is a warm flame that lives on in me to this day as I write these words thousands of miles away from where I came.

Photographs have a way of shaping our memory and our relationship to the past, which in turn affects how we engage with the present. The family photographs and letters used in my book act as anchors in a meandering journey. They serve as landmarks that I can return to whenever I feel lost or need assurance so far away from “home”. They give me the comfort and affirmation that I need to navigate a space where I never really felt I belonged. The spread in my book that you mentioned—the jackfruit on one side, and the Saran-wrapped apple on the preceding page—was a reference to my duality as both Filipino and American. It’s a reminder and an acknowledgment that I am a sum of many things, of many people who have shaped me. If I flourish in life, it’s because my roots were nourished by love.

I like how you mentioned photos as anchors or landmarks. Isn’t that why we create and photograph? To mark certain points in our lives and to envision possible futures, like a cartographer mapping an inner journey. Do you feel like you and your relationships with those you photographed changed through the process of making your works?

When my parents took pictures of our family, it wasn’t done solely in the name of remembrance; it also served as an affirmation of ourselves and our journey—a celebration. Every birthday, vacation, school ceremony, or even the seemingly insignificant events of daily life were all photographed or video-taped as a way of saying to ourselves, “Here we are. Look how far we’ve come. Look at the life we’ve made. And here’s the proof”.

Now, holding a camera and photographing my family through my own lens still carries all of that celebratory joy, but with so much more possibility. Before I really took photography seriously, I never realized its potential as a medium for introspection, but that’s ultimately what it has become for me. In taking pictures of my family, I not only clarify my own feelings about them, but the act of photography itself informs and builds on my relationship with each person. The camera is not a mere recording device, but a tool for understanding, processing, and even expressing love...or resentment. Though I may not be visible in my pictures, my presence is there: in my proximity, my gaze, my focus.

Does all of this impact my relationships? Absolutely. Photographing another person willingly always demands some degree of trust and vulnerability from both sides. There’s a silent dialogue that occurs which feels like an exchange of secrets. I think that’s why I often don’t feel comfortable photographing other people unless we’re very close. Usually my family is open enough to reveal themselves to me, other times what they give can feel quite guarded. That’s a constant negotiation. After the photograph is made though, nobody ever emerges the same person because each of us has relinquished something, no matter how small.

Being self-reflexive in photography is so important. I agree it should be a constant negotiation, but it’s something that bothers me these days – the power dynamic between the photographer and photograph, particularly for personal and documentary projects. More significantly, after the photograph has been made, who is really benefiting. But I guess if we are sensitive to that then perhaps we can navigate that tricky path and find a balance.

Right, finding that balance is key and sometimes there are no clear-cut answers. That power dynamic is something I always have to be mindful of. As the photographer, you are exercising a certain role and position. At the end of the day, you’re the one essentially “taking” what you need and walking away. There’s an inherent violence or aggression in the act of taking someone’s picture, no matter how well-intended it may be. This aggression carries even greater weight when working, as you say, in a genre like documentary where representation is everything.

I remember an undergrad professor of mine, Nadia Sablin, introducing me to the work of Shelby Lee Adams—particularly his Appalachian Legacy series. Adams spent twenty-five years documenting the disadvantaged Appalachian communities in his home state of Kentucky, visiting the same families over a long period of time. Though the photographs are beautifully crafted, they pose many questions in regard to exploitation, representation, and the aestheticization of suffering. He is or was, after all, an artist thriving and profiting off of these photographs. Salgado is another that comes to mind. This was the first time I really stopped to think about the ethics of image-making. Who is benefitting from it all?

I think the search for this balance is something each photographer has to reckon with personally. Though each situation may vary with different factors that have to be weighed, and context that must be applied, you can always ask yourself these same ever-pertinent questions: am I representing people in a dignified way, and what are my intentions with these images? Communication (listening), building relationships, acknowledging your power, and respecting the people you photograph are all foundational things to consider when exercising your privilege with the camera.

Well said! The process of making photographs can be tricky to navigate yet rewarding. Any upcoming projects or ideas? What’s keeping you busy these days?

Oh, let’s just say I’m constantly juggling 3-4 ideas in my head at any given time, but ninety percent of the time they don’t ever lead to anything finished haha. This past year has been tough on everyone I’m sure. I’ve been dealing a lot with personal loss and grief and the compounded isolation brought on by the pandemic, so for months I’ve been making photographs organically as a subconscious response to these internal struggles. It’s more of an exploration of grief itself as a natural phenomenon and force—like time or gravity. Grief is something everyone will experience in life and each of us deals with it differently, but in the end we have to let it run its course. I see these photographs as a potential body of work that could materialize as a zine or book one day, so we’ll see where that goes.

Other than that, I’ve been working on an upcoming collaboration project with Cumulus Photo. Speaking of which, I saw your photograph featured in their latest zine, running to the edge of the world. Congrats on that! It’s beautiful. But yeah, just trying my best to keep busy and sane, and improving myself any way I can.

Thanks! Looking forward to your upcoming projects! Last question: any music to recommend?

I feel like my answer to this question can vary by the week. I go through phases where I exhaust whole albums on repeat until I get tired of them. So I’ll leave you with the two currently on my rotation: Angles by The Strokes, and Screamadelica by Primal Scream.

Thank you for your time!

Thank you for a lovely discourse. I had a lot of fun!

his website and Instagram.

Get more updates on our Facebook page and Instagram.

#Ryan Frigillana #nope fun #new york #photographer interview #artist interview #Contemporary Photography #Visions of Eden #PhotoBook

330 notes · View notes

ourladylennon · 3 years

Text

this is a stress rant and also I absolutely have to get these thoughts out of my head and onto something so that I can understand how I'm feeling. so pardon me.

I have some very mixed feelings about my latest tattoo experience and it has been incredibly, astoundingly stressful. For anyone who was interested in how it went.

and after typing out this whole rant and reading it back my advice is: ALWAYS make sure it is exactly what you want. ALWAYS speak up if you don’t.

I have a specific style, as everyone, but the style of tattoo I have is a bit of a niche that can be hard to find: geometric design with dotwork/pointillism/stippling techniques to create shading rather then standard fill in shading. This shading style is incredibly time consuming and taxing for the artist and I've had a lot of trouble finding people who specialize in this (and within my area).

I started with an artist about 3 years ago, whom was new to me but known to be good. Got my appt set up, he drew me an entire sleeve- it was absolutely gorgeous. Went through two sessions and his work is genuinely amazing. Clean. Precise. Detailed. Unique. I didn't vibe with him too great but it was something I kind of put aside. But without explaining the whole fucking mess that became, just know that our artist-client relationship fell through. This left me with only the beginning of my tattoo. The whole ordeal was really stressful and upsetting so I put down the goal of getting it finished to try and recoup. And I just continually hit roadblocks trying to find artists who are good at dotwork and willing to do it. Often times they live in other cities/states/etc. Obviously this involves meeting a new artist, trying to figure out if it's a good fit, driving out for consultations/redoing all that process- s t r e s s. Now with covid, it's even more difficult because almost every artist I've come across that I've considered has closed books. All of them being out of town which is fine because it would be worth it. It's expected.

But after three years of this go around of trying to find someone, I was getting really put out by the process and just wanting to get this thing going. (Mistake #1- or #2 technically cause fucking up w the first artist is where it all started and I do regret it to this day).

A new shop opened IN my town- a miracle!!! I started following an artist whose work I found to be particularly amazing. Clean lines, clean shading, artistic seeming. Didn't see any pointillism, but I just like kept seeing her work and thinking damn that's good. So I decided to reach out and told her this is what I'm looking for, a dotwork sleeve and here are some examples of the style I like. I specifically mentioned this and asked if they'd be interested in working on it because I know that dotwork is not everyone's thing. The artist replied and said they've been wanting to get into and would like to do that (we'll call this mistake #3. Do not assume the artist, even if very good at other things will be good at all things. Do not go to an artist wanting a specific style without having seen their work for THAT style).

At this point I sent over pictures of my current tattoo that we'd be adding onto for reference. In my mind this is what I thought would mean: "I am looking at what you have to see how to incorporate it into a new sleeve design and see how I can create a collaborative piece and mesh the two together." (Mistake #4: that was not the case. Do not assume. Anything. Ever.)

The appt date was relatively quick despite the fact that I figured she'd be booked out for quite some time (red flag #1: not because she wasn't busy. But because this was not a whole lot of time to come up with a design but I figured "Well she knows her capabilities better than I do and she wouldn't suggest it that soon if she weren't sure). In my previous experiences, the artist will send you a proof or have a separate appt to review the design. I never received an email with said design (red flag #2, in my personal opinion. But I thought I was just being...extra? Also just thought, okay I'll see it at the appt and it will be OK, right? <- mistake #5).

I show up, there is no sleeve design. (RED FLAG #3) There are two single mandala tattoos. Outlines only. No shading. I'd also like to say my style is much more geometric fractals than it is mandala. A lot of people find these interchangeable but...they're really much different. (RED. FLAG. #4). I genuinely did not see that coming. Maybe I'm wrong to say, but this was negligent in my opinion and experience. A sleeve design ensures that your finished piece flows, that it works together, you can see the whole picture, modify, etc. Especially with it being an addition to my existing work. Cannot stress how much of a red flag.

I'm wigging out at this point. I don't love them but I want this tattoo. I'm going back and forth thinking, "maybe it's just because the shading isn't filled in I can't picture it." (MISTAKE #6: trust your gut!!!). I tell her OK well I like this about this one and that about that one. She only nods and listens, where I was expecting feedback; perhaps an "OK well we can draw it on" or "I can rework it" etc. She didn't and I am too paralyzed to speak up. (Red flag #4)

Mistake #7: I accept it at this point. I pick between the two. She has to go resize it. I'm having a literal internal freak out and battle. I am someone who DOES NOT know how to speak up for themselves. In any way. EVER. For any reason. At any time. I am a fear based individual, in fact, I am nearly certain I have APD (avoidant personality disorder) and it effects me severely and deeply. To the point that simply speaking to someone can be hard for me.

But my brain was screaming you cannot do this! You aren't sure! This is for life! It's your body!! You HAVE to say something! (RED fucking alert)

She came back with the one design resized and my heart is thumping, my chest is constricting, the throat feels like it's closing. I make myself say it. I tell her I don't think this is what I'm looking for. I literally almost busted into tears trying to say it because I was so fucking terrified and overwhelmed. I've never been in a position where I genuinely wasn't sure whether I liked what I was looking at. She says you don't need to be sorry you should speak up this is your body. So immediately, I lost a lot of tension because of her kindness. I thought she would be angry or rude or upset, just because I'm fearful. She proceeded to kind of go in and shade in with a pencil on the stencil to give me a better idea and apologized that she should have had that prepared. I continue asking questions to assuage my concerns and feel....better....ish. she offers to redraw and reschedule but I went against my gut, gave into my desperacy to continue my sleeve, dismissed my feelings as being just my typical overexertion of fear and did something I NEVER do: turn my back on my instincts. (Mistake. Mistake #8)

She was pleasant and I genuinely enjoyed her, felt comfortable with her which is not something I can say about previous artists and that's a good chunk of why I decided to continue. I liked her, I liked her other work I've seen, I just thought that once the stippling was in that I'd see it was really nice. However, I am laying there and I'm like I do not feel poking, which is literally how dotwork is done. Dot by dot. I'd feel her do the tiniest bit of dot-dot-dot and I'm like OK OK I'm just not paying full attention and missing it. But then I'd hear and feel her shading- standard shading. I'm like why is she using a shading tip? I'm just confused honestly. I'm like I have no idea what the could be for, just assume it's necessary for something I didn't realize. But I can see because I'm laying and my arms at a weird angle.

I finally get a peek while she's pausing and its....not dotwork. It's not dotwork at all, in fact. It's too late at this point in my eyes. It was only partially done but what am I gonna do? Stop her in the middle and have an unfinished tattoo? And then what? (Try to) go to someone else to have them do dotwork and have a half unmatching tattoo? There was nothing I could do. So I resigned and accepted this as the consequences of my actions and ill choices. And that's honestly been the hardest part to deal with: I let this happen to myself because I could not speak up. The only person who could have stopped this was ME. And I could not do it. That's how deeply my issues of fear run. And that is terrifying, pathetic, sad.

I'm not saying I got the world's ugliest tattoo. It's okay. Just okay. In the words of RuPaul, meh. I don't want meh. I want astounding. And I didn't do what I needed to to make that happen or not happen.

I just have been in awe over the fact that I asked for dotwork and the artist expressed no concern over this, literally had my existing tattoo right above where they were working and continued to not emulate that style of shading at all. Most of this is my fault, 90% of it. But there was negligence on the artists side and I genuinely don't think they meant it to be. I just don't think they had enough experience, but they too should have spoke up if they didn't feel they could carry it out. They gave me no inclination that they could not or would not be doing dotwork. At any point. And I do feel upset that I don't think they put in the effort or care to work off my existing tattoo in their design, and in looking back, their design also does not look nearly anything like the designs I gave for example. It was my job to walk away and request a redesign or to cancel and I didn't. So in the end this is on me. And it has been very taxing on my mental state.

To end this shit show: the tattoo I just got costed half of what my first one did, while only having taking the fraction of time as my first and being less then half the size of my first. It is not nearly as clean, it certainly reflects their level of experience. The shop environment was not fantastic: it felt a bit like as if I had walked into a chain restaurant...but a tattoo shop. There were no private rooms, there were no tattoo chairs. They were literal stools and that's not...not professional or normal. And I chose to continue.

I'm faced with some really tough decisions moving forward. I am at least thankful it is relatively small ish and wraps towards my inner arm which makes it less visible. But I'm at a crossroads of whether I go through the whole mess of trying to find a FOURTH artist to try and finish my sleeve the way it was meant to be finished (dotwork, whole sleeve design etc) and make the best of it at the risk of having a fucking patchwork arm. Or I continue to work with this artist and see the design through myself (literally design it myself which I didn't want to do but it doesn't appear that I should leave this to them), so that at least the remainder of my arm is consistent shading and work.

And because I've made it sound like the tattoo is atrocious, be assured it's not trash by any means. It's just not what I wanted. Big sis learned a big lesson.

(the immediate center is bothering me the most. But I think it can be altered. Nonetheless. The skill/experience level shows, unfortunately. And you can certainly see the difference between the stipple shading on my first tattoo and the regular shading on the new one.)

I am trying to be positive and that's all I can do. I accept the results and I think it can be fixed to a certain extent, and I can only hope as I move forward that I make the right decision and that the end product is something I enjoy.

#aye aye aye children #it was a big lesson is all i can say #genuinely helped to get all this out #i was able to identify my biggest stressor of this whole experience which is a disappointment in myself first and foremost #but i have hope #and it will be okay #as my dear anon reminded me tis but a bump in the road #sorry for the huge ass rant but i have been having the worst anxiety over it and i do feel a lot better #and i am glad to get this off my chest and move on #it's like a resolution to move forward now #deep breath! :-)

6 notes · View notes

k7l4d4 · 3 years

Text

Kamen Rider Info and Ideas (Feel free to ignore)

As a huge fan of Kamen Rider, I always wondered about ways it could be expanded, and maybe not improved so much as become More. So, right now, I am gonna make a list of Kamen Rider Series, starting with Black and RX, and continuing all the way to the Reiwa Era! Everybody clap your hands!! *Cricket noises* Okay, here we go!

Kamen Rider Black, and its sequel, Black RX, details the journey of Kohtaro Minami, or Minami Kohtaro for those who prefer the traditional Japanese naming conventions, on his mission to defeat Gorgom, an ancient tribe/organization that has evolved into a cultic terrorist organization bent on world domination. While still holding to the Showa era’s tradition of having Cyborg Riders, Black and RX were the first in which, aside from Kamen Rider Amazon, the supernatural played a prominent part in the powers of the riders, as Kohtaro and his stepbrother Nobuhiko were the designated heirs to the leader of Gorgom, the Century King, and infused with the relics that contained his power, the Kingstones. Both Kohtaro and Nobuhiko were infused with the Kingstones, in the attempt to convert them into the Villains Black Sun and Shadow Moon, with only Kohtaro managing to escape.

One of the things that I felt could’ve been at least a little better in regards to the series was if Shadow Moon could regain his original self and rejoin the path of justice. It would’ve also been pretty cool if Shadow Moon gained his own upgraded form, which did actually happen in tie-in novels and manga, and if either or both of them gained the ability to unleash a final form that drew upon the power they wielded as the New Century Kings. Ah well, that’s what fanfiction is for!

Kamen Rider Kuuga details the battles of Yusuke Godai, the successor to the ancient warrior of justice, Riku, as the Kuuga. Kuuga’s powers are derived from Growth, allowing him to access a variety of forms and powers based on what he needs to grow into, and can be bolstered by mystical energy sources to ascend even further! Yusuke’s enemies are the Gurongi tribe, ancient monsters who abandoned their humanity to satisfy their love of death and conflict, and wished to have all of humanity become as dark and twisted as them, with the “honor” of being the Gurongi to start the process going to whichever of them managed to win their tournament, in which the Gurongi Tribal-members all battled to the death as a whole.

One of the things that bugged me a little, was that Kuuga never fully evolved all his forms, and that his true final form was even used in his series! I mean, seriously, what!? Once again, budget concerns limit the awesomeness of a series before it can bloom, sigh.

Kamen Rider Agito is the story of Shoichi Tsugami, a young amnesiac who belongs to an offshoot of the human race known as the Agito. Agitos possess incredible psychic powers and exist in a perpetual state of evolution, adapting to the changes in themselves and the world around them at an incredible rate.

My only real beef with this series was the limited number of forms Agito had as compared to Kuuga, and that one of the Extra Riders had the lazy name of Another Agito. You heard me right. All in all, not to bad, but a little frustrating.

Next up, Kamen Rider Ryuki, which also served as part of the inspiration for the list. Honestly, with how much I plan on covering JUST for Ryuki, I’ll probably leave this off after this and pick up more tomorrow. Ryuki is one of the first series in the franchise to fully exploit the nature of multiple riders, and basically invented the concept of Dark Riders, which I will also explain.

Ryuki involves the Rider War, a conflict taking place in the real world, and a parallel realm known as the Mirror World, populated by unfeeling monsters known as, you guessed it, Mirror Monsters, which must constantly kill when in our world in order to remain stable, or at least they are allegedly supposed to. The Rider War was a conflict set up by a man known as Shiro to revive his dead sister, under the guise of a tournament to the death for a reality-warping wish, which Shiro wanted for himself. The war brought together 13, yes you read that right, 13 Riders, all with variances in their styles and abilities. This selfish conflict is partially, if not entirely why I said that introduced Dark Riders properly to the franchise; Dark Riders are individuals who bear the same transformative powers of Kamen Riders, but instead of using them to fight against the wicked and monstrous, are instead put towards their own selfish ends, and none of them are the type of individual you wanna run into in a dark alley.

The Riders of Ryuki derived their power from two things, their Contract Monster, a Mirror Monster that they formed a bond with in order to exist without needing to bring about death, and an Advent Deck, a Deck of Cards that harnessed the power of the Mirror Monster it bonded to and allowed the Riders to survive in the Mirror Realm, which is inherently fatal for humans to be in. One of the key aspects of Advent Cards is how they work, each one draws and harnesses an aspect of the Contract Monster it is connected to, or wields a power specifically to fight other Advent Riders. Now, before I get to my thoughts and ideas, I am going to list each Rider from Ryuki, as well as the nature of their Advent Decks and fighting styles.

Shinji Kido: Kamen Rider Ryuki himself, and contracted to the fierce Dragon-Type Mirror Monster, Dragonredder. With a Dragon on his side, you’d expect him to be the powerhouse of the group, right? HAHAHAHAHA no. Shinji stumbled upon the Rider War by near-complete accident, and, being the nice guy he is, decided if he was going to be a part, he would protect the bystanders from the conflict and ensure as many of the Riders made it out alive as he could. Easier said than done. Out of all the Riders, Ryuki has the least straight-forward fighting style, not helped by his incredible clumsiness, with his deck emphasizing the ability to have as many options as possible; jack of all trades master of none, but better master of none than master of one.

Ren Akiyama: Kamen Rider Knight, and the contract holder of the Bat-Type Mirror Monster, Darkwing. He comes across as aloof, cold even, whose only in it for himself, but in truth he decided to enter the war to save the life of his ill fiance. Knight’s fighting style blends straight-up direct combat, and subterfuge based war tactics, with his deck emphasizing this by providing him with both weapons and special abilities that optimize getting the drop on his foes. Hmm... themed after a bat, a knight, and mixing close combat with dark and spooky tactics. Now where have I seen THAT before?

Masashi Shido: Kamen Rider Scissors, a Dark Rider, and the contractor of the Crab-Type Mirror Monster, Volcancer. A corrupt cop and detective, Scissors took bribes and cuts in illegal dealings, and used his Mirror Monster to liberally dispose of witnesses as he pleased. He ultimately died when his contract was destroyed and Volcancer turned on him. Despite his practices necessitating subterfuge, Scissors’ fighting style is rather extravagant, emulating that of a gladiator, with his deck providing cards that mix heavy combat with putting his enemy into an unfavorable situation to seal the deal, fitting for a backstabber.

Shuichi Kitaoka: Kamen Rider Zolga, one of the neutral and later heroic elements in the war, and the bearer of the contract for the Minotaur-Type Mirror Monster, Magnugigas, a colossal bio-mechanical behemoth. A shady lawyer with a lot of wealth, Zolga was diagnosed with fatal cancer, and desired to become immortal to continue living his lifestyle forever. While initially uncaring and selfish, he ultimately came to see the value in others, and lamented all the criminals that walked free due to his actions, hoping Ryuki would win. Cunning, intellegent, and crafty, Zolga’s fighting style favors both heavy defense and massive firepower, burying an enemy in a storm of blasts while he hunkers down, with his deck further emphasizing this with a bevy of long-distance combat cards and barriers.

Miyuki Tezuka: Kamen Rider Raia, a fortune-teller beyond compare, he enters the war to save lives and honor his deceased friend, and bears the contract of the Stingray-Type Mirror Monster, Evildiver. Raia’s fighting style places heavy importance on movement, offering cards that can offer him superior movement, and uses a whip as his principle weapon.

Jun Shibaura: Kamen Rider Gai, an utterly selfish and monstrous beast of a man, he wields the contract of the Rhino-Type Mirror Monster, Metalgelas. A prodigy of computers and gaming, Gai sees the death match that is the Rider War as nothing more than a game, and the fighters as players he can wipe out at his leisure. Gai’s fighting style is a straight up rush of overwhelming force, with his cards emphasizing interfering with his opponent’s options to force them to fight him directly and his brutal power of himself and his Contract Monster gives him an edge.

Takeshi Asakura: Kamen Rider Ouja, and the main Dark Rider of the series, holder of the contract for the Snake-Type Mirror Monster, Venosnaker. A sadistic monster to his core, Takeshi killed his own family as a child, and left a bloody trail in his wake for years, remorselessly cutting down anyone who falls in his path in his bloodlust. Despite his seemingly simple minded nature, Ouja is immensely cunning, favoring a sadistic fighting style that emphasizes causing as much pain to his enemy as he can before they die at his hands, and he is far from afraid to get his hands dirty. Ironically, Ouja has one of the weaker decks in the war, bearing limited options to fight with, Ouja thrives due to his sheer brutality, fighting ability, and utter ruthlessness. “Fun” fact, unlike the other Riders, Takeshi never realized that a wish was up for grabs, he was just having a good time! When he finally learned that the winner got a wish, he decided his wish would be to have ANOTHER Rider War, so he could kill another pack of warriors! Ouja’s deck does have two solid advantages over the other riders; Ouja possesses extra Contract Cards, meaning he can add other Mirror Monsters and their powers to his deck, ultimately deciding to save them to take the Mirror Monsters of the Riders he kills, with his other big trick his Unite Card, which allowed him to COMBINE his Mirror Monsters into the horrifying Chimera-Type Mirror Monster, Genocider (ain’t that a name).

Odin: Kamen Rider Odin, a Rider not designated Dark only due to the fact he doesn’t have enough of a mind to be one, and wielder of the Phoenix-Type Mirror Monster as his Contract, Goldphoenix. Odin is unusual, in that he is essentially a puppet, a brainwashed shell that acts as Shiro’s representative in the war that occupies whatever body Shiro gives the Contract to. Out of all the Riders, Odin has the greatest immediate strength, allowing him to overwhelm just about anything in ideal situations, and if things go wrong, Odin (along with Shiro) can REWIND TIME to reset the war until Shiro gets the outcome he wants, only giving up when he accepts that he won’t be able to bring his sister back.

Satoru Tojo: Kamen Rider Tiger, a man who wants to be a hero, and wields the power of the Tiger-Type Mirror Monster, Destwilder. Tiger is a broken individual, lacking a LOT of basic understanding in regards to people, he wavers between good and evil in his desire to be a hero due to his incomprehension of what it means to be heroic, ultimately becoming a hero when he selflessly sacrificed his life to save a father and son about to be hit by an oncoming truck, finally realizing what it truly meant to be a human in his last moments. A highly inexperienced fighter, Tiger often lost, which didn’t help his instability, forcing himself to rely on ambushes to win, his deck favored close-range melee and offered him support in the form of ice attacks.

Mitsuru Sano: Kamen Rider Imperer, a self-styled mercenary rider, and wielder of the multi-type contract allowing him to command the power of the Gazelle-Type Mirror Monsters, with Gigazelle serving as the leader of his horde. Imperer was raised to believe that wealth was what was most important in life, completely missing the fact that his idea to be a mercenary in the Rider War was impossible as all but one of the contestants must die for it to complete and you cannot quit either. After falling in love, Mitsuru seemed to be realizing that there is more to life than money, he tragically died before he could act on his new views, trapped in the Mirror World, reaching out to the image of his love, screaming in fear. Imperer’s fighting style makes use of boxing, and bum-rushing his enemies with his massive swarm of Contract Monsters.

And, because I am starting to grow tired and this is REALLY LONG, I am gonna finish this later today before I burn out.

#kamen rider #kamen rider franchise #kamen rider series #kamen rider ryuki #observations #feel free to ignore this

6 notes · View notes

simptasia · 3 years

Text

here are my thoughts, headcanons, about the human owners in the Cats universe. i have cats 2019 in mind with all of this, but a lot of this could easily apply to the stage musical ‘verses, if you’re so inclined. i haven’t thought about them in Great Detail but i have pictured a lot of these cats at home, so i’ve pictured their humans a little. oh side note: when i imagine humans in this universe, i operate on lady and the tramp logic where you cannae properly see them. like, from the neck down at the highest. maintaining the cats themselves as the focal characters. so yeah here are the few hcs i have about people who in my mind literally have no faces or names

munkustrap: i’ve considered the idea that his family is rich but it turns out he lives in a flat thats directly next to a junkyard. i think they’re middle class, maybe even upper middle class, because it’s not cheap to live so close to trafalgar square (that and a lot of these cats live close to each other and we see other cat’s homes that are well off). anyways, they’re a generic late 1930s family. in an idyllic way, really. i’ve based them off the human family in lady and the tramp. munkustrap being our lady. so there’s a husband, a wife and a baby. and there’s also an aunt who takes care of munku when the family is away on holiday. i gave them a baby to add even more to munku’s Paternal Instincts. they’re pleasant people and they treat munkustrap well. the lady of the household brushes him. munku has a bed in the lounge/kitchen area but sometimes they let him sleep on the foot of the bed. munku wants caviar like it’s crack so i have to assume he’s tasted it at least once. this would imply very indulgent owners. or they might have dropped some at a party, who knows. they’re not strict with munku (he can go where he wants to, get given Human Food, sleep on Human Beds) but this never led to him being spoilt because he respects his family a lot and doesn’t take advantage of their kindness (eg. many cats are known to push things off tables. munkustrap would never) oh also the baby has pulled on munku’s tail once but he doesn’t hold it against her

mr. mistoffelees: we can actually glean some things about his family from his song and the behind the scenes. first of all, laurie davidson says misto is owned by a magician, who uses misto as a helper during magic tricks. that is to say, he pulls misto out of his hat. this is delightful and i hold to this concept too. from his song we know at least two things: one lyric says “the family” and thats plural so there’s more than just a magician, who i imagine is a guy, by the way. so he gets a wife. i don’t see them having kids. the other thing we know from his song is that misto sleeps by the fire..... though sometimes he is on the roof, making a ruckus, apparently. misto’s owners are sometimes annoyed but overall fond of their kitties antics. since misto emulates his owner’s magic-ness, it stands to reason that this guy is a guy worthy of being emulated. therefore: decent and nice. concept: misto sees his owner doing magic tricks and being lovey dovey with his wife and is basically like “god i wish that was me”. i also imagine they give misto a decent amount of toys, like a jingly mouse, a ball of yarn, etc. this was partially an attempt to get misto to stop playing with forks and the man of the house’s magician doodads... it didn’t wooork~ yes, im still thinking of 2019 misto, just because he’s anxious, doesn’t mean he can’t be a silly little scamp too. he’s gotta practice his magic!

rum tum tugger: his owner is a sweet lady who adores her kitty so very much and loads him with praise. basically she’s largely responsible for tugger’s,,, High Self Esteem. she talks to him in baby talk a lot. she’s a cat enthusiast and has even entered tugger in some pet shows. she’s good natured enough but her house smells funny. she spoils tugger and will allow him to behave however way he pleases. according to tugger’s song, she sews. he jumps on her lap, throwing her off her task, and she sighs fondly and says “oh, what am i going to do with you?”. nothing. because she wuvs her pwecious widdle kitty. basically, tugger owns her

victoria: she was given to a little girl as a christmas present and what we see at the start of the movie is her being chucked away because the girl and the parents got bored of her once she reached maturity. so basically they’re fickle bastards who weren’t ready for cat ownership

mungojerrie & rumpleteazer: ohhhh boy, so i said tugger was spoilt but these two. these two! their owners are rich. the details of this family are unclear in my head but at the very least theres a middle aged couple who hate the way these cats behave but choose to tolerate it, and a younger stupid woman who ignores their shenanigans and says “they don’t know what they’re doing” (said whilst they grin mischievously). mungo and rumple’s behaviour is put up with because they’re show cats who are worth a lot of money. once in a while they’ll do a show and then the rest of the time these two are Chaos. as i said, their family is the one i’m least clear about, like how many people live here, how everybody is related, but im picturing a somewhat large rich family (like 3 generations in one house and theres a few bratty kids about) and they’re not very nice people. they’re snobby and unkind. any goodness the chaos twins have was given to them by the other jellicle cats, not their owners. oh this household also employs several maids, who have to put up with so much shit, lord

skimbleshanks: skimble has no one Owner in a traditional sense, he is beloved by the people who work at the local railway station. the drivers, the guards, the station master, the station master’s daughters who are 6 and 8. skimble does and doesn’t belong to all of these people. the train people adore skimble and literally will not start the train without him, which is canon. i picture the driver as being really burly, to juxtapose how cooey he gets over this orange kitty. they let him roam the train as he pleases, and honk the train horn, drink scotch and they always give him Human Food. and in return skimble is infallibly loyal and has amazing work ethic. i mean, considering he’s a cat... anyways everybody loves skimbleshanks

and for the sake of the story working, these owners are either ignorant that their cats are getting out or letting them free roam. twas a different time

#cats 2019 #a lot of this turns into hcs about the cats themselves and thats fine #my hc for bustopher and maitre d's owner is so brief it didn't deserve a bullet point:#a stupid rich tory who doesn't know where his cats are 90% of the time #i ended with skimbleshanks because i wanted a nice one on the bottom #we see that jennyanydots is a house cat but i have no thoughts about her owners #oh except that they should clean their fucking house. that is way too many cockroaches #munkustrap is the cat i've Most pictured at home #like i honestly think i could recreate his flat's kitchen/living area in sims if i wanted to

8 notes · View notes

thelanternlight · 3 years

Text

Source

Witchy Asks!

Hello fellow witches! Here’s 50 Witchy Asks written by the-lunar-vixen. Please follow if you enjoy them. Blessed be!

1 What type of witch are you?

A gay one.

2 What deities do you like to work with, if any?

Angels, faery, guides, Mother God, Father God, Christ, saints, and ancestors. I'll also work with deities from various religions as they pertain to a spell or ritual (e.g. I may work with Hathor for a love spell).

3 Have you ever created your own spell?

Absolutely, most of the spellwork I do is original at least to some extent.

4 What’s your favorite time of year?

All the year is beautiful and wonderful for a myriad of reasons but Springtime is sacred to me.

5 Do you have a witch you look up to?

I think I have teachers that come and go in my life. They can be famous or not famous, witches or not, etc. Currently I'm loving Ember Honeyraven.

6 What makes you feel powerful?

Balance and freedom. Knowing that I'm on the side of what's good and right.

7 Do you have a favorite myth?

I'm an author and storyteller so I have many, many favorite myths. Off the top of my head I love the stories of Medusa, Apollo, the Christian Creation myth, Germanic and Scandinavian folklore, Anansi and his stories, Arthurian legends... the list goes on, but yes I LOVE stories. I think have so much meaning and wisdom to share.

8 Which famous/fantasy witch do you relate to the most?

I've grown up watching witches in movies, television, reading about them, etc so I've related to witches one way or another since day one. The Charmed Ones (all four) were role models for me when there were no role models for little, effeminate weirdos like myself as a child. The Sanderson Sisters were person heroes to me and I tried to emulate them from the very first time I saw the film; in fact those three are perhaps the original witches with whom I related the most. Since then there have been SO many wonderful characters in entertainment and in real life that inspired me so incredibly much that they've become a part of me.

9 Are you a wiccan?

I am not.

10 What’s the most unique item you’ve ever used in a spell?

I guess a dildo? I think 'unique' is a relative term.

11 Do you own any witchy books?

Apart from my personal book of spells I've owned many books on witchcraft but have parted ways with the majority of them. I'm currently trying to downsize the amount I have currently as it happens. Anybody want some free books?

12 Which misconception about witches annoys you the most?

That magic isn't real and this is all nonsense. I think it's especially irritating when people of other faiths criticize my own as if a prayer is anything different from an incantation. In fact I would argue that spells direct energy in a more concentrated way to affect change than simply petitioning a deity.

13 Have you ever created your own sigil?

You bet. Sometimes you just need something original and unique for the rite/spell.

14 What element are you most drawn to?

Water.

15 Do you have a familiar?

Some people use the word "familiar" interchangeably with "pet". I do have a pet but she's not my familiar. Other people define "familiar" as "spirit animal" which I'm not entirely sure is correct either. I'm in a bit of a gray area on this subject, but I see question 17 below touches on it as well.

16 Are you a part of a coven?

No. I've tried working with others to do magic but I think the synergy/chemistry has to REALLY be on point to do effective magic. Very often there's a clash of philosophies or practice that sort of spoils things all too easily whereas working alone allows me to concentrate so much better.

17 What’s your spirit animal?

Again this is a vague term that means different things to different people. I consider my spirit animal to be more or less my "familiar". When I was younger I was walking in the woods one evening praying really hard about something that was weighing very heavily on me. Then suddenly I looked up and there was this gorgeous and perfectly white stag looking back at me. He stood there for quite a while before slowly walking off again and the whole situation had such a profound sense of meaning to it. I saw the stag a few more times until finally, late one night while I was walking through the woods by a lake under the glow of a bright full moon I saw the stag one last time on the far side of the water. Ever since then the white stag has been sacred to me. So that's what I consider my spirit animal/familiar. It's a guide of sorts, a good omen, a sign, a representation of Spirit/Soul/God-energy and Self. I identify with it. So that's my spirit animal.

18 Do you do tarot readings?

I do indeed!

19 What’s your favorite witch movie?

I have several, but Hocus Pocus has been my favorite since I was a wee tot.

20 How many crystal do you have?

I actually don't really know. I don't go out and buy crystals but sometimes they come into my life and then go when they've served their purpose. For example, I had a beautiful large quartz that my grandmother had bought me from the nature store when I was a kid. I loved it so much. But one Halloween night I was doing a ritual with a friend of mine in the woods and ended up losing it. Interestingly, that friend was pursuing me romantically unbeknownst to me while also hooking up with the guy I was hooking up with and also really liked (ugh, gay culture). And during that ritual I was speaking with my grandfather (husband to the grandmother who bought me the quartz that I lost that night). So what does all that mean? I have no idea. But I figured all things considered maybe it was just time to let that thing go, along with other things that night.

21 What’s the most unique item on your altar?

I don't really have the privacy to set up an altar but generally I like my "work area" to be neat. Everything has a purpose and a meaning and a function. If I need to burn something I have the item/items, the cauldron, the lighter, oils, and anything else needed for what I'm doing. So nothing in particular stands out as "unique"... unless... Well I do have a small copper cauldron with a handful of dirt from my grandmother's house that I've kept for almost twenty years now. I guess that's unique?

22 Have you ever enchanted anything?

Oh god, yes, lots of things. I've enchanted things so as to protect them, or so that the item will protect someone else or some place... I've enchanted things for love, or to keep something or someone away. I've enchanted things to help in a greater ritual or spell. And so on.

23 What’s your religion?

I was raised Christian Baptist but following one horrible experience after another I've absolutely left that faith well behind long ago. I don't have a particular religion in the sense of organized religion. I'm spiritual and I cast spells. I also believe in science. I don't call myself a witch but I do everything a witch does.

24 Do you have a favorite crystal?

"I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens".

25 What are some of your favorite spells?

Oooo I'd have to say I'm rather partial to love magic. I'm particularly good at it too.

26 What do you like to do to cleanse your space?

After physically cleaning a space I like to use the Violet Fire to cleanse an area as well as cleansing using a broom and a wand and/or athame.

27 When do you feel the most powerful?

When nature and I have our little moments. When the wind is warm and strong. When I'm out in a storm. When I can "feel" things growing during the Spring. The silence of a frozen winter night in the woods... Also when I'm cooking. I fucking LOVE charging a pot of boiling ingredients with good juju.

28 Do other people know you’re a witch?

A few people close to me know I practice witchcraft. Others think I'm just a little bit daffy.

29 Has one of your spells ever gone wrong?

Definitely. Mostly when I was still learning and practicing. Like this one time in sixth grade I cast a spell so that a popular girl in school would like me and we could start dating. Obviously since I was gay I didn't really want to be with her, I only did it because I wanted to be cool (although I did like her and we ended up being fairly good friends until we went to different high schools). That spell backfired and I ended up 1. not getting the result I intended because I was doing it for the wrong reason and simultaneously trying to force another to do something against her will, and 2. I ended up having one shitty fucking love life for the longest time.

30 What outfit makes you feel the most witchy?

Oh I love me a good cape. Even just walking around with a long blanket around me.

31 Have you ever tried astral projection?

Yes, successfully, several times. I like to use it for meditation. Often I go to the artic sea where there's just ocean, ice, and darkness.

32 Do you have any enchanted jewelry?

Probably.

33 What does your altar look like?

A space on the floor where I cast a circle and set up my stuff.

34 Have you ever seen a spirit?

YES! I've seen fairies, spirits, ghosts, shadows, sparks, heard voices, etc.

35 What’s your favorite spell sachet?

I can't say that I have one.

36 Do you have a favorite sigil?

I'm especially fond of the Sigil of Venus.

37 What’s your astrological sign?

Sun sign Virgo, Rising Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

38 Have you ever interacted with a deity?

Well, yes, of course... per the previous questions.

39 What color are you most drawn to?

Purple.

40 Do you believe in past lives?

Without a doubt.

41 Where do you like to practice your craft?

Wherever I have privacy and calm.

42 What’s your favorite season?

Springtime, as mentioned previously.

43 Have you ever cursed someone?

That's not what my magic is for. Yes I'm familiar with the how-to, but no I don't partake in that kind of thing. The "worst" I've ever done is cast binding spells to keep someone from harming me and/or even coming into my presence.

44 How long have you been a practicing witch?

I'm telling on myself now but I'd say about 24 years practicing in earnest.

45 What drew you to witchcraft?

A natural inclination.

46 In what moon phase do you feel the most powerful?

The Moon itself does not change with the phases of its shadow. The phases are representational, of course, and its symbology can be evocative and meaningful, but otherwise the Moon is what it is. Therefore I'd have to say I personally feel most connected or at least most aware of the Moon when it's full. Else, I would say when it's waxing as that's when most of my spells are done simply because of the type of spell I usually work.

47 What’s your favorite holiday?

Wisterlimas, and then Halloween. Although I love all the holidays.

48 Do you know anything about your past lives? (if you believe in them!)

Yes, wow, I've done extensive work on discovering my past lives. I've lived in San Francisco at the turn of the century, in Scotland, England, France, Japan, China, as a woman, as a man... It's all very fascinating but you can't delve too deep because it's simply not necessary. You're not really *supposed* to know about your past lives. That defeats the purpose of the great forgetting once you're reincarnated. Yes, you can revisit the major themes and lessons learned, but one shouldn't really fret too much about what happened in the past.

49 Have you ever done an energy reading?

Certainly. I think most people do energy readings even when they don't know they're doing it. There's "reading the room" or "getting a bad vibe". There's also reiki and the like. And healing work. And of course magic is all about directing energy so to achieve a specific goal.

50 What time of day do you like to practice your craft?

Usually at night but it has more to do with the individual spell. Astronomical positioning is also important as well as weather, season, personal mood, day of the week, et al.

3 notes · View notes

undertalethingies · 3 years

Text

Self Indulgent Self Insert Fic, Part 2

Part one here

“Why’d you shoot fire at him?” I ask, partially to fuck with her and partially out of genuine curiosity. He hadn’t been attacking me, after all, so it was odd that she’d intervene. What did he do to get her to set him on fire just for being near a human?

Toriel purses her lips, and I note that her hands are clenched tightly. Must’ve been bad, then.

“He hides a wicked nature behind a congenial facade. Please, my child, keep your trust out of his reach,”

Oh, she’s just as formal in person! That’s honestly kinda cool. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one I know who’s ever used ‘congenial’ in a sentence, but for her it just seems natural.

“I definitely have more questions about that, but first, can you not call me your child, please? We literally just met,” Seriously, it’s weird. I know she’s grieving, but spontaneously adopting every child that falls without their approval or consent is kinda messed up.

If I manage to free the monsters, the first thing I’m doing on the surface is sticking them all in therapy. Seriously, these guys are worse than me, and I really don’t say that lightly.

Toriel’s face falls slightly, though she makes a valiant effort to hide it. (Seriously, what were you expecting me to say?)

“A-Ah, I suppose that is reasonable. May I ask your name, then?” Ok, people who are definitely reading this because I am 100% egotistical enough to assume y’all want to hear about my life. Listen up, because I’m going to say this as many times as the author wants me to. I know this is normally the part where I’d say ‘y/n’ but I want to make it clear that y/n is for reader inserts.

I am a self insert, which I know because no reader insert would ever have this much personality, those boring fucks. As a self insert, I am free to call myself Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and dye my hair black with purple streaks if I so desire.

(I don’t, I really don’t, My Immortal is a fun read if you want something to laugh at but no way in hell am I emulating that MC in any respect other than our shared enjoyment of MCR.)

ANYWAY, back to my conversation with goat mom! I’m not saying my real name because I’ve resolved that if I ever end up getting isekai’d I’ll go by my middle name, due to its general awesomeness. (My first name is also awesome, but it has a different vibe and aesthetics are everything in fantasy worlds)

“My name is Solena,” I say, responding after a reasonable pause in actual time and a weirdly long one in mental time. Now, my name looks like it would be pronounced ‘sol-een-a’ but it’s actually ‘sol-ain-uh’ which I’m stating because again, I’m fully confident that these thoughts are being written down somewhere by some enterprising author who is also very likely me from another timeline because no one else in existence is fully capable of conveying the Wonder that is Me.

“Thank you for telling me, Solena. My name is Toriel, and I will be your caretaker while you are in these ruins,” Toriel says, conveniently leaving out the fact that she’d prefer to keep me in these ruins forever, probably because I’ve already demonstrated some leeriness towards her.

Now, I could bring up Flowey again, seeing as her explanation for fireballing him was more than a little lackluster and I’m still pretending not to know this world inside and out, but I already know stuff about Flowey and there are things I’m significantly more curious about.

“Cool! Toriel, got it. Hey, if you live in a cave underground, how did you get such a nice dress? Do you have farms down here? Livestock? Do you harvest fibers from animal monsters?”

Haha, you thought I’d ask more about the magic? Hell no! I’m way more curious about how society functions down here!

Toriel does a double take, her expression implying that she’s revising all of her expectations towards me. (Again)

“There are small plant farms in some areas of the underground. We have no livestock down here, as we were delivered to this cave system in a bit of a rush, but we do harvest some fibers from willing monsters, yes. How did you guess it?”

Let me tell you, the high I’m getting right now from those theories being correct? Very similar to what happened recently in the BNHA comic with Dabi’s true identity. I am living for this, just absolutely vibing with this new knowledge.

“Well, I don’t see how else you’d do it. How do you get the dyes?” Because I don’t see them having access to chemical dye, and it’s not like humans trash a lot of the stuff unless this is one of those illegal dumping spots, so what gives?

“Excellent question, Solena! There are professional tailors who transfer dye from clothes that fall from the surface! Many also simply wear clothes acquired from the trash, though mine are hand-crafted as befits-” She cuts herself off before she can let slip her (former?) royal status. I let it slide because I really don’t see a need to step on trauma landmines here.

“As befits someone who’s! Affluent! Anyway, we’ve entered the Ruins proper! There are many dangerous puzzles here, an old monster tradition, so I’ll need to focus more on guiding you!” Damn it, we’re at the first puzzle already? I completely missed the staircase room, which sucks because not only did I miss out on seeing one of my favorite rooms, I didn’t notice whether there was a save point!

Fuck!

I walk to the sign by the door. “Brave ones, foolish ones, both walk not the middle road. What’s that mean? I obviously get it in the proverbial sense, but it’s near this puzzle, so is it supposed to be a clue?”

It straight up took me until my second playthrough to understand that sign, man.

Toriel’s face just lights up. She looks absolutely delighted, and I remember that she’s always wanted to be a teacher.

“It is a misdirection! The sign tricks the reader into thinking about it metaphorically, when the answer is actually quite literal!” She demonstrates by stepping on all the buttons but the center two, before turning to smile at me.

“Oh, that’s genius! Because you’re supposed to ignore the tiles in the middle! It works as a puzzle while also having an easily remembered solution if you’re in a hurry!” It’s honestly my favorite puzzle in the game for that, even if you’re never given the opportunity to solve it yourself.

“That is exactly what I was thinking when I created it! It is wonderful to hear that the message came across to someone, even if my- my, ah, my friends had consistent difficulty with it!”

We continue chatting about puzzles as we walk into the next room.

Toriel explains the spike puzzle here and how you’re supposed to memorize the layout of the first room to safely traverse the spikes. She also explains that she locked the ‘incorrect’ spikes permanently in the ‘up’ position so that no one would get hurt, stating that puzzles should be fun, not dangerous.

Honestly, she’s giving way more exposition than she ever did in the game, probably because I’m a slut for knowledge. I only really half hear her explanation, though, because what comes next is going to be very important to knowing the kind of experience I’m going to have down here.

See, we haven’t gone down the hallway to the spike room yet, and I know full well there’s a Froggit waiting there to ambush me.

I have a few questions that this pseudo fight will hopefully answer.

One, are there options like there are in the game? Because if the battle system is the same, it could severely limit my choices when it comes to conflict resolution, especially if I have the same options as Frisk.

Two, do I have a narrator and is that narrator Chara? TwoA, do they have control over me in fights, as in some fics, or am I fully autonomous? TwoB, if they are here, are they evil or are they a person, because that’s also something the fandom intensely and frequently disagrees about. TwoC, can they hear my thoughts? I’m going with ‘probably not’ because I’ve made zero effort to exclude spoilers, but there's still a possibility and I need it confirmed. TwoD, can they hear thoughts deliberately directed at them? I hope so, it would be a huge pain to only be able to talk to them when no one’s around.

Three, are Froggits secretly cats because there’s a meme comic about that and I need it in my life.

With these thoughts in mind, Toriel and I turn down the hall, and the world goes black and white.

#undertale #undertale fanfic #undertale fanfiction #toriel #self indulgent self insert fic #trying to keep the chapters around 1800 words long #toriel is so fun to write dialogue for

2 notes · View notes

artkaninchenbau · 4 years

Text

My cat of little over 13 years will be put down tomorrow. A vet and a nurse will come to our home to put him to sleep peacefully, as we didn’t want to stress him out any more by taking him to the nearest clinic.

I just want to talk about my sweet little sunshine, so that’s what I’ll do. That’s all this post will be.

This whole shitshot began almost immiditiately in January. My cat (who I’m not going to name because he has a very generic cat name that easily reveals where I live, so I’ll just call him Sunshine here) started limping for what felt like no reason. I wanted to take him to a vet right away but my mother didn’t want to, first because she thought there’s nothing a vet could do to help aside from putting him down, then later because she thought Sunshine’s limp was getting better (honestly I couldn’t see it). 7 days after he began limping my mom was finally convinced he needed to see a vet and we booked an appointment to the nearest clinic (just 10 minutes away) where we went to have him checked on the next Monday

Somehow our indoors-only cat had broken a bone on his middle toe on his front left paw, the toe was swollen (we hadn’t noticed) and possibly infected. We started giving him some antibiotics (had a terrible time when I learned in the worst possible way that cats sometimes start foaming and drooling excessively when given liquid antibiotics, so that was changed to a pill) and painkillers while our vet had some samples taken from my cat’s toe to be analyzed

She was worried he might have feline lung-digit syndrome (where lung cancer starts metasizing in toes) so she wanted to see if they could find any cancerous cells in his toe. After a little over a week or so the results were back and they couldn’t find anything like that, but the antibiotics didn’t seem to be helping either, so our vet believed the toe would have to be amputated. That said she was still worried about that syndrome and wanted to have his lungs x-rayed just in case, so soon we took him to the clinic to get those x-rays. Two vets looked at the images and they couldn’t find anything, so we booked the amputation for a week later

Our vet was still worried though, so she sent the x-ray images to be analyzed by a third party over seas. We were all worried sick for four or so days until on Monday the 27th, just before the clinic would close around 8 pm, the vet called us to tell us the results.

There was a soft mass in one of my Sunshine’s lungs. A few centimeters wide. The vet said he’d have anywhere from a few weeks to a few months left. The amputation was canceled as she thought my baby wouldn’t survive it due to the tumor.

We continued giving him his antibiotics until we ran out, and he seemed to get better. He hardly limped anymore, a scab that had formed around the nail of his broken toe was getting smaller, he seemed to be okay.

But a little bit over a week after the antibiotics ran out he started getting worse again. Eating worse and worse, limping again, moving around so very little. So in mid-late February we took him to the clinic again to see if there was anything left we could do. The vet gave us some gabapentin for him, a painkiller that affects the nervous system (sometimes used to treat epilepsy/seizures).

The side-effects of that painkiller is ataxia (like, a loss of control when moving limbs) and sleepyness. For the first week it seemed like the painkiller was kind of helping, my cat was sleeping a lot but he also ate a little better. But then he didn’t eat as much anymore, and the ataxia started getting worse and worse. The worst part was that it was so hard to tell how much of it was caused by the painkiller and how much of it was just his condition getting worse and worse.

It’s so hard for him to move now that he doesn’t get up on his own to go poop or pee, for the past 5-6 days we’ve had to carry him to his litter box. He went from being a lil glutton, to picky eater, to only eating food straight from my hand, to only eating one cream-like cat treat. For the past week or two I’ve been feeding him liquids (water, cat milk, but mainly cat soup) with a tiny syringe (one we gave him his liquid antibiotic with) because I was worried he wasn’t eating enough and it was the only way I could pretty much force him to eat, but even then I can only feed him so much

His paw has swollen up so badly, it’s almost twice the size it should be. The infected toe had been bleeding out pus, the scab around the nail having grown massive, and now another toe on that paw has started bleeding a little too. And a toe on his left hindleg seems swollen as well

I hate myself for letting him get to a state this bad. There’s 16 and a half hours left before the vet comes to put him out of his misery- although the painkiller is pretty damn strong, he shouldn’t be in pain... But still

I always wanted a cat when I was little, I was always asking for one but my parents always said no, until December 2006, when they finally caved in. A little bit after Christmas my mom found a kitten, mere weeks old, somewhat abandoned by its mother, looking for a home. When we went to check out the kitten at a farm nearby, we weren’t sure yet if we’d actually take the little thing with us. But seeing how the farmer didn’t really want it, how its mother seemed uninterested in it and how the farm with the many cows wasn’t a safe place for a helpless kitten... Well, we fell in love with him, at first sight. And we brought him home that same day.

We weren’t prepared at all, so my parents just dropped me and my brother off at home with the baby while they rushed into the city to buy supplies. We don’t know how old he was exactly when we got him, less than a month old for sure, but more than a few weeks. Small enough we had to bottle feed him, but eyes very much open and walking. He was our little baby. And he still is

He’s the most beautiful and soft cat in the whole world, and he means everything to me

When he was still a baby he pooped and/or peed under the Christmas tree. My dad had originally been against letting the little Sunshine sleep in their bed, but he warmed up immidiately and the cat has slept almost every single night in their bed ever since, the first time he specifically brought him to their bed and scared my mom who thought the kitten had escaped from the secluded area we were keeping him at the time. We thought him to raise his paw for treats

He rushed in and jumped straight into the toilet bowl once after I left the toilet (I had to chase him around desperately, trying to dry him- it had scared the shit out of me but my mom always loved telling this stoy about how one day when she came back from work she found me crying, trying to chase the cat around with a towl in hand because the cat had jumped into the toilet)

He loved, absolutely adored going outside in the summers, even when taking him out on a leash was a pain in the ass. He was so happy running around our yard, rolling in the grass. As he got older we stopped taking him outside (partially because it was my job but he’d always get really angry at me while we were outside, mainly because my dad was afraid he’d bring in ticks), but some 2-3 years ago we rebuilt our patio and turned it into a catio. He loved being there, he even learned the word “terrace”, so that everytime someone would say that word he would rush downstairs to the door, waiting to be let outside

His favorite toys were always hairties, a stick with a furry noodle thing sticking out at the other end, and a very long, very thick and slightly stretchy pink string

I was awful to him as an idiot kid, so he learned to hate me and distrust me, and I deserved that. And despite all that, he was the most patient cat in the world, letting me pet him as much as I liked while he was napping, letting me kiss his tiny forehead and rest my entire face against him. He wouldn’t purr to me, but he tolerated me so much, and I’m so grateful for that

After years of being given smooches, my cat started doing this thing were if someone gave him two kisses on the forehead/neck, he’d smack his lips twice in return. I think that was him trying to emulate the smooch sound, and it was so cute

I’ve heard people say that cats that’re separated from their mothers too early become weirdly like, licky? Like they’ll lick people’s hands etc a lot, and this was so true for him too. If you offered your hand to my Sunshine he’d give it a good ol’ bath, and it was the sweetest thing

I like keeping the doors to my room closed, so if my cat wanted to come in (which he didn’t want often), he’d either scratch at my door until I’d come open it, or like last summer, scratch at the door right behind me, and stare at me through the semi-jammed but slightly open door, until I’d open the other door for him. He’d often try to come to my room around 3-4 am, and he’d come almost daily to my room in the winter because I would open the window for him so he could get some fresh air even in a -25 C weather

My Sunshine didn’t like sleeping in my bed with me, he did it a few times when he was just a few years old until he stopped. Usually if he’d settle in my bed while I was still doing other things, he’d straight flee my room when I’d climb into my bed myself. In this January he started sleeping in my bed, sometimes climbing in while I was still there, or just not feeling when I’d come to bed myself. He didn’t do that every night, but he slept with me in that month more than he did in the past few years combined.

One “morning” (after his lung cancer diagnosis I think) he came into my room to sleep a little bit before noon, trying to escape the sounds of my dad vaccuuming downstairs. I had been struggling to fall asleep, but I managed after he settled in. I proceeded to see a few weird dreams, but the last one of them stood out;

In the last dream my cat had escaped outside, so me and my parents all rushed in to capture him and bring him back inside. It was summer, the weather was wonderful. We were running around in the yard, franticly searching for him, until I spotted him hiding amongst some wheat in the field next to us. He immidiately bolted out, running from that side of the yard to the other, towards the road, until he laid down under the birch trees next to the road. We were so worried he’d get run over by a car. We managed to get to him and grab him (not that he was fighting us), and we immidiately turned around to go back inside. I could hear a car approach us as I watched my mom hand my cat to me. He was so young and skinny, but looked somewhat upset as we were carrying him back inside.

And then I woke up, my cat sleeping quietly at the foot of my bed, against my legs. Call me nuts, but it felt like it was a message from my cat. How he had wanted to go already but we didn’t let him, and while he’s going to spend a little more time with us, sooner or later he will go, and we’ll never see him again.

Late last year my dad had appearently seen a dream where he was forced to eat cat paws. He feels like it may have been a prophetic dream.

A little over a month ago, I was so worried one night about my cat not eating properly I kind of started crying in my room while with my cat, asking him why he wasn’t eating. He came to inspect me almost immidiately, before leaving my room. I go check where he went and he was sitting at the stairs, staring at me. I went to dry my tears real quick and when I returned, he had gone downstairs. I found him waiting in front of his bowl, and when I gave him new wet food, he ate it. At that point, usually he wouldn’t eat anything if I didn’t offer it from my hand specifically.

I’m so grateful to my cat. For being such a sweetheart, for being so patient and kind and making us all so happy. I love him so much. And I’m so sorry I can’t do anything for him anymore except have him be put out of his misery

And while I know most indoors cats live to around 13-15 years old, meaning my 13 year old baby has reached the average age, I still feel like he’s too young to go and that its not fair. I’m going to miss him so much

Please don’t take my sunshine away

#Is this what they call 'blogging'?#CW Animal death #CW Euthanasia #CW Cat death

4 notes · View notes

tren-fraszka · 4 years

Text

Past Imperfect 2019 Letter

Dear creator,

Thank you for taking your time to check my requests. I know my requests can sound a bit tricky, but please don’t be discouraged. I wish you will have good time writing first and foremost!

My AO3 is Tren, if you wish to check it out.

Likes: comedy, casefics, canon compliants, AUs, time loops, bodyswaps, roleswaps, “being hoisted by your own petard” plotlines, snark, pettiness, rivals, enemies to friends to lovers, violence, friendships and character bonding,

DNW: explicit sex, A/B/O, mpreg, rape depicted as positive (so no “it’s okay, because the other person enjoyed it/it was what they truly wanted”), trans headcanons, soulmate AUs, stories ending with surrender to fate/destiny, fourth wall breaking in canons where that doesn’t occur, character has cancer or other real life terminal disease AU, word “queerplatonic”.

Also, I included what ships I’m okay with in each fandom. Please do not include any ships that aren’t canon and I have not allowed in those sections (if you feel really strongly about a ship I haven’t mentioned, you can always ask through mods just in case).

Additionally, while I almost never request fanart as possible medium, because I prefer my main gift to be fic, I would be very okay with receiving fanart treats. On another note, feel free to use my old letters if you get your hands on them. I never stop being interested in fandoms, and if I requested something once I will still want it in the future.

REQUESTS

A general note on time travel: feel free to get bloody if you want. Aside from Revue Starlight which isn’t a violent show by nature, I don’t mind characters dying and getting hurt during the attempts to change the timeline. I also don’t mind characters not succeeding in their attempted goals, as long as the fic doesn’t have a complete downer ending. I’d rather the heroes won at the end of the day, but I don’t mind if you make it a bitter victory. Good endings are, of course, fine too. I also love the trope where the attempt to change the events through time travel results in the canon timeline.

TALES OF SYMPHONIA

Lloyd Irving, Lloyd Irving & Kratos Aurion

This party gets so many things wrong on their journey to save the world that almost half of it is in ruins when they are done saving it. Needlessly to say I think there is a whole lot that our party may want to fix using time travel.

I'm partial to the idea of time traveller Lloyd because he would be so terrible at it. He's just so earnest he would accidentally reveal he has a whole lot of knowledge he shouldn't possess. Give me future Lloyd who returns to the body of his younger self who has only just started on his journey of regeneration and who keeps struggling not to call Kratos dad. Or future Lloyd returning to the past with his own body, who is desperately trying to stay incognito and fix the timeline rather than accidentally breaking it even more (bonus points if future Genis and Yuan have some sort of magical connection with him and are constantly screaming at him about what he should and shouldn't do). I would also love future Lloyd pretending before the party that he is just a mysterious swordsman by emulating Kratos.

I'm also fine with other characters travelling in time, I just don't have concrete prompts for them. But you are free to have fun with them. I'd rather the Kharlan Heroes weren't the ones time travelling since their charm is in the fact that they are absolute dumbasses who keep failing to account for the consequences of their actions (aside from Kratos who spends way too much time being apathetic, only to regret absolutely everything when he does manage to pull himself out of his depression), but if you have some good ideas for how they can fail even more by time travelling I won't mind (maybe they can accidentally get into way of some other time travelling characters). I just want them to keep being ancient disasters. If they suddenly became competent enough to fix the timeline it would feel weird. Unless it's Martel who somehow time traveled into the future and proceeds to fix everything by slapping all other Kharlan Heroes and telling them they are idiots.

As for how much the timeline is fixed, I would prefer for Yggdrassil to get defeated and the worlds to be merged at the end, but if the characters' efforts don't amount much to actually making things better than the original timeline, I won't mind. You are even free to make them fail even more. Honestly, stopping Kratos from gallivanting into space is the only fix-it that actually matters to me and I would love if it gets included into the story.

Also, you are free to go for some darker moments with Lloyd time travelling back to when his mom died and trying to save her, but failing to do so.

As for the ships, I'm fine with: Lloyd/Genis, Genis/Presea, Lloyd/Genis/Presea, Zelos/Colette, Colette/Sheena, Zelos/Colette/Sheena, Anna/Kratos, Yuan/Martel, Kratos/Yuan (as "useless widowers who only have each other left" ship). Please don't include any ships not listed here, even if they are 2/3 of a threesome.

Time Loop/Groundhog Day

Time Travel Fix-It

Mental Time Travel to Past - Replacing Past Self

Mental Time Travel to Past - Sharing Body With Past Self

Time Travel Fix-It - Time Traveler Fixes Things By Accident

Uncontrollable Spontaneous Time Travel

Time Travel to Fix Problems Caused By Previous Time Travel

Multiple Travelers - Get In Each Other’s Way While Trying To Achieve Different Goals

SHOUJO KAGEKI REVUE STARLIGHT (ANIME)

Yes, I really am okay with any characters from this show. I love all girls in this theater school, so I'd rather you focused on the ones you enjoy the most, dear author. I admit I just want more shenanigans around Banana's time loop. Give me all more or less successful attempts to break out of it. Maybe Maya becomes aware of the time loop and starts to view Nana as a rival much to Claudine's frustration. Or Kaoruko's increasing frustration with the fact that she's the only one who remembers time loops other than Nana finally spurs her to put effort into bettering herself. Or maybe Giraffee's POV as it gets increasingly frustrated with the repeating performances and tries different indirect approaches in hopes of stopping Nana. Feel free to use any other idea you have, I'm just interested to see your ideas!

I'm playing Re-live game so you are free to borrow characters and ideas from it. Maybe rather than Hikari it's some other stage girl that comes to Seisho and gets caught in the time loop? Or one of the characters travels into the future and they end up having three days to learn for their role, because they don't share memories with their future self.

You are free to ship any girls from the anime as you like. My only request would be that if you decide to borrow Michiru from Re-Live that she will not be shipped with anyone.

Breaking a canonical time loop

Canonical Time Loops

Time Loop/Groundhog Day

Multiple Travelers - Accidentally Get In Each Other’s Way While Trying To Achieve The Same Goal

Multiple Travelers - Get In Each Other’s Way While Trying To Achieve Different Goals

Time Loop - Unexpectedly Living With The Consequences Of Actions During Final Loop

Time Travel For Pranks And Petty Mischief

Trying to not break a canonical time loop

5 Minute Long Time Loop

Outsider POV Of Strange Events Caused By Time Travel

LORD EL-MELLOI CASE FILES

I’ve watched anime and read the first volume of the novel. I also know way too many other Fate properties if you want to use them or the characters from them.

Waver Velvet, Gray

This canon is perfect for all sorts of magic induced time travel shenanigans be it time loops or time travels. I would love for Waver and others to stumble into some sort of time distortion and have to figure out how to escape out of it.

I requested Waver and Gray, because I feel like they would be the most interesting characters to be involved in time travel shenanigans, but if you want, I also wouldn't be opposed to Flat, Reines or Callum in that role. You may make the situation as serious or as mundane as you wish. This fandom is great for all kinds of stories. Whether it be Gray caught up in a time loop that always ends up with Waver ending miserable and trying to change that, or Waver having to watch death of people important to him.

The loop could be caused by magical accident or be a ploy aimed to Reines faction. Or maybe Flat created a time loop because he couldn't finish his homework on time. Or someone from Waver's class brought a cursed artifact to the class and now they need to figure out who it was. The possibilities are endless. I also think that a character from the future using magecraft to communicate with those in the past could work really well here.

If you know Zero, then I would also be very much up for Gray travelling back in time to see the fourth Holy Grail war. Whether she changes anything, or if she remains a bystander by accident or choice isn't really important to me. I'm fine with both. Though I think it would be really sweet if she got to comfort Waver after Iskander's death.

I love this fandom for all the gen relationships, so I would love if you went in that direction. When it comes to pairings I would be okay with Waver/Melvin or Reines/Gray, but don't feel forced to write them in.

Time Loop/Groundhog Day

Time Loop - Unexpectedly Living With The Consequences Of Actions During Final Loop

Time Loop - Only looping character is aware of the loop

Time Travel For Pranks And Petty Mischief

Unusual Ways To Communicate Through Time

Accidentally Built A Time Machine

Uncontrollable Spontaneous Time Travel

5 Minute Long Time Loop

Meeting your hero in the past

Multiple Travelers - Accidentally Get In Each Other’s Way While Trying To Achieve The Same Goal

Parallel Universes

Outsider POV Of Strange Events Caused By Time Travel

MY HERO ACADEMIA

I'm reading the chapters as they come out, you are free to incorporate any new developments.

Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Uraraka Ochako, Tokoyami Fumikage

Unlike other canons I requested, for this one I have a very strong preference for one of the characters I requested to be the time traveller. I love most of the cast, but this is one time I'm gonna play favourites.

This canon is great for characters going back in time to fix stuff with everybody having heroic motivations. How well their attempts go is up to you. Feel free to put the characters through some hell if you want.

Since I would enjoy similar scenarios for all characters I feel like it would be more helpful if I focused on the reason why I chose this specific characters:

- Uraraka - one of her biggest strengths is her ability to read and influence others. It would be interesting to see her change the events using her talents. She's not very powerful and charismatic compared to some of her classmates, but she has plenty of tricks of her own to use instead. Also, she has determination to spare.

- Tokoyami - I love him and Dark Shadow. It would be very interesting to see how the loyal and hard working Fumikage deals with suddenly being thrown into the past. He would surely want to help his friends, but at the same time he seems to believe in fate to some extent. How would he be able to reconcile those two drives?

- Aizawa - on the one hand as a teacher he can do much more, but on the other one now he has to save his thirty students from all the dangers lurking before them. Needlessly to say, it's no easy task to keep all the problem children of class 1A safe. He's an experienced hero, so it would be interesting to see how he uses his knowledge and skills to overcome the obstacles in his way.

For the pairings I enjoy Bakugou/Uraraka, Todoroki/Deku and Aizawa/Hizashi. I don't have strong shipping preference for Tokoyami, but I would be okay with shipping him with Deku. Feel free to ask through mods if you feel strongly about shipping him with someone. As far as Uraraka's feelings for Deku are concerned I'm okay with her crush being mentioned, but I'd rather it wasn't the focus and definitely not an endgame. I like the idea of the two of them dating for some time, but realizing it isn't working for them and staying friends instead or a scenario where Uraraka never conveys her feelings and they sizzle out through years.

Character Receives Letters from Their Future Self

Character's Health Worsens the More They Time Travel

Time Loop/Groundhog Day

Character Meets Their Own Earlier/Later Incarnation

Time Loop - Looping character trying to save another character's life

Uncontrollable Spontaneous Time Travel

5 Minute Long Time Loop

Alternate Universe - Canon Character Is Secretly A Time Traveler From The Future

Multiple Travelers - Accidentally Get In Each Other’s Way While Trying To Achieve The Same Goal

Mental Time Travel to Past - Sharing Body With Past Self

Mental Time Travel to Past - Replacing Past Self

Mental Time Travel to Past - Merging With Past Self

#exchange letters

1 note · View note

rahirah · 5 years

Text

gallifrey-via-pylea replied to your post: Out of curiosity

I have a feeling you’re not fond of Xander, but idk if he’s your least favorite. I’ve never seen you say anything nice about Andrew and I don’t see him being a fave or even a neutral character

And thenewbuzwuzz said: Your least favorite BtVS character: hard question, I'm not sure you have one. I'd guess Andrew, because I foggily recall a tumblr post where you said something about how he's a mushroom (in reference to what Buffy said in "Potential") and, also, he doesn't have a character tag in any of the Barbverse stories. :D ******************* DING DING DING DING!

Insofar as I have a most hated character, Andrew is it. And again, a lot of my dislike is more fandom-related than character-related – or at least, it was until season 9 of the Dark Horse comics. I can remember, back when S7 was airing, Andrew was far from the fan favorite he is today. People found him irritating, felt he'd been redeemed far too easily, and resented him for "stealing" screen time from Xander. (It wasn't common knowledge yet that this was at least partially because of Nicholas Brendan's off-screen substance abuse problems.) At that point, being the contrarian I am, I thought people were just exhibiting knee-jerk resistance to a new character, even though I felt some of the criticism (the too-easy redemption) had some substance. I found Andrew mildly amusing.

What changed my mind was AtS season 5. There was a big trend in Spuffy fandom at the time for portraying Andrew as Spike's Only True Friend (TM) which I found a little hard to swallow. It seemed to me that in S6, Andrew had just substituted Spike for Warren as the Cool Male Figure he emulated badly. At this point, you couldn't spit without hitting a Spuffy fic which prominently featured Andrew. The fact that a character whom I still found only mildly amusing kept turning up everywhere made me less and less inclined to like him. When Andrew showed up in Damage all Watchered up, and coolly betrayed Angel and Spike, it seemed obvious to me that he'd replaced Spike with Giles. Fandom only focused on Andrew hugging Spike. Meh.

Then "The Girl In Question" aired. Now, for the most part, I really enjoy that episode, for all it fits very weirdly into the season at that point (I tend to forget the angsty Wesley/Illyria parts even exist.) It's the scene at the end which consolidated my Andrew... well, hate's probably too strong; my Andrew God-he's-so-annoying! The scene was originally supposed to feature Dawn, and adapted rather badly, which accounts for many of the things about it which I found infuriating. But in the Watsonian sense, still, there it is. My reaction to that scene was who the hell is Andrew to be living in Buffy's apartment and making sanctimonious pronouncements on Buffy's love life to EITHER Angel and Spike? Not even getting into the Doylist aspect of it being a lecture from the writers to shippers, which is doubly infuriating. If there was any scene in the Jossverse which ought to have united Spuffy and Bangel shippers against their real foes, the writers, that scene should have been it. :D

(Now, if it had been Buffy, or even Dawn as Buffy's designated representative, telling Angel and Spike that she wasn't interested in either of them at the moment, and they needed to get out of her hair, that would have been a completely different thing.)

When the S8 comics came out and we found out that Andrew hadn't even been speaking on Buffy's behalf in that scene, that Buffy didn't even know that Angel and Spike had ever come to see her, and Andrew apparently thought it was a great big joke that he'd pulled the wool over Buffy's eyes, THAT solidified God-he's-so-annoying! into UGH ANDREW. And then S9 of the comics, and the infamous Robot Abortion storyline, where Andrew takes advantage of Buffy being blackout drunk to transfer her mind into a robot body (which for some creepy reason he's apparently designed to fake-pee, fake-eat, fake-poop, and fake-menstruate, else I cannot imagine why Robot Buffy didn't realize much, MUCH earlier that she wasn't human any longer) without her knowledge or consent, while installing her human body (which starts developing a new amnesiac personality of its own) in a Barbie Dream House and spying on her. And then just blithely lets this situation go on for weeks, maybe months, without telling either version of Buffy what's going on. If Robot Buffy hadn't found out the truth by having her arm torn off, who knows how long he'd have let things go on?

This is arguably the most loathsome and pervasive violation of a character's consent and autonomy in an entire series' worth of horrendous consent issues. (Two characters, if one counts Amnesiac Human Buffy as a separate person.) And when it all comes out, Buffy is... mildly peeved, and no one else seems to care that much. Which is, tbh, par for the course for the series, and the extent to which one finds it annoying is dependent upon whether or not it happens to be one's favorite character screwing up and being forgiven too quickly, or a character one already doesn't like.

But. I would have expected fandom, which leaps on other characters' screw-ups and shreds them like raw meat, to get at least a little cranky about this. But nooooo. Andrew is feckless and (at that point) ambiguously gay, so Andrew can do no wrong in fandom's mind. He meant well!

Anyway, my dislike has cooled off some since then, because the writers in season 10 actually did give Andrew some character development to get him away from doing things like that. (Even though I have a different set of issues with the "the mechanical recording of Jonathan isn't a real person, but the biological recording of Fred is, never mind why, it's because we say so!" stuff.) But he still ticks me off.

#gallifrey-via-pylea #btvs #andrew wells #experiment

19 notes · View notes

kechiarts · 6 years

Photo

Warning!! Long post ahead (LOL)

I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a while now. Quite a few friends and followers have asked me ‘what big influences can you think of that have inspired you as an artist/creator?’

A lot of movies, games, books, tv series, artists, and writers have influenced my drawing style and storytelling - some of them more so than others. (As represented by the larger squares in the image)

So here we go!! The numbers for each inspiration were chosen at random, the order doesn’t have any significance lol

1. Cardcaptor Sakura - (and the works of CLAMP in general I suppose because I read them all) Cardcaptor Sakura wasn’t my first manga but it holds a really special place in my heart because it’s lore and depictions of love has influenced my storytelling a LOT. I was obsessed with CLAMP and their art style when I was young to the point I would trace their drawings to learn and emulate their style. To this day I feel like it left a big impact on my art style especially.

2. Cyborg 009 - When I was a kid my parents told me and my brother that we couldn’t afford cable TV and reduced our service to the news channels and public broadcasting. We didn’t have cable TV for several years and when we finally got it back when I was 12, one of the FIRST TV programs I saw was Cyborg 009. I was just beginning to understand what anime was, since the only anime I’d seen was before our cable got cut, and I was so young I didn’t know it WAS anime. I immediately fell in love with Cyborg 009. I loved the characters, the story, everything - and I still do! It was the beginning of my exploration of the anime genre as a whole haha

3. ‘The Twelve Kingdoms’ book series - Around the same time I started watching Cyborg 009, I began getting into manga. While browsing the section in the bookstore one day I came across the first novel in The Twelve Kingdoms series. I was surprised to find a novel in the manga section and decided to browse through it. I couldn’t put it down! The rich world building and storytelling pulled me in and left me wanting more. I devoured the entire book series and the way the world was brought to life really stuck with me and influenced my own world building.

4. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - my very first Final Fantasy game, and it was a spinoff title to boot! I was drawn in by the dark, melancholic world and cute graphics. I played this game a lot with my friends and even though multiplayer was a nightmare to set up, we had so much fun. I wasn’t able to beat it until I was 16, and the story left me in tears. The Crystal Chronicles games as whole have left a HUGE impact on me, but the first one especially so.

5. Sonic the Hedgehog - My first game ever! My brother and I first played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when we were around 3 or 4 years old. We were hooked on our parent’s Sega Genesis system and Sonic was our favorite! When we’d get home from school we’d fight over who got to play first in single player, eventually we settled on a system, My brother would play sonic, and since Tails couldn’t die even if he ran out of rings, I would fight all the boss battles as Tails while my brother tried to keep Sonic out of the way. Using this system we made it all the way up to Metal Sonic but could never beat him. We’d have 99 lives too because we knew ALL the secrets of the game LOL. I’ve played most of the Sonic titles since then, including my favorite, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.

6. Sailor Moon - my ‘first’ anime. I was very young when I first saw this anime. I didn’t even know what anime was! But the portrayal of girl power and how strong all the female characters were really stuck out to me, raised as I was in a women-are-inferior-and-should-serve-their-husbands religious household. Sailor Jupiter was my favorite because she was a tomboy and wore ponytails just like me haha

7. Fullmetal Alchemist - I think I’ve touched on this before, but I have had really weak bones since I was a little kid. In middle school I was constantly on and off of crutches or in and out of wheelchairs with broken bones and such. (I blame being a huge clutz) It got to the point my classmates started calling me ‘calamity Jane’ and making fun of me. To that dorky middle school girl with crutches and leg braces, Edward Elric was my HERO. Disability representation matters folks! It certainly helped me through a rough time in my life.

8. The works of Studio Ghibli - My first Ghibli movie was My Neighbor Totoro, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I actually managed to get my mom into them too, so now we can have mother/daughter quality bonding time over new Ghibli movies when they come out. It gives us a lot of fond memories together and I enjoy those times I get to spend with her. Mom and I may not see eye to eye all the time, but I truly treasure the memories I have of watching Ghibli films with her.

9. Odin Sphere - This one is more recent, and one I blame @heebiejeebiejade for. I love everything about it. The story, the art, the characters! It tore my heart out and the writing is just superb I love it so much. and the ART my god it’s so beautiful.

10. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles the Crystal Bearers - I decided I needed to make this one separate from the earlier Crystal Chronicles section. Mostly because this game HEAVILY influenced and changed my life. Not only is it my favorite game ever, it brought me to many of my current friendships! If not for this game I never would have met @heebiejeebiejade @killerkitty4 @indestructiblemoog @shadyfolk @ninjamonkeystudios and SOOOOO many others. These friendships mean a great deal to me. They’ve changed and shaped who I am today and I’m truly grateful for them, and they never would have been possible without Crystal Bearers.

11. Dragonball - Another one of those I never knew it was Anime cartoons I watched as a young child. I loved Dragonball and later Dragonball Z. The characters, the storytelling, the fight scenes, I loved it all because it was so different from what I was used to seeing in American cartoons. My brother and I would have Super Saiyan battles in our backyard throwing Kamehamehas at each other and laughing and generally annoying our neighbors XD

12. Over the Garden Wall - Another more recent influence. Over the Garden Wall was one of the first new cartoons that grabbed my attention due to it’s great pacing and creepy Americana storytelling. Mysteries, ghosts, the afterlife, purgatory, this show dealt with a lot of creepy things while simultaneously making it funny and endearing. I rewatch it often and it’s one of my favorites.

13. Legend of Mana and the Seiken Densetsu Series - Again, I blame @heebiejeebiejade entirely for this. She sent me a huge box with every game in the Seiken Densetsu series in it along with the guidebooks saying “you HAVE to play these.” I knew she liked them so I gave them a try and YEP as per usual with anything Jade introduces me to, they COMPLETELY DESTROYED ME. Love, sacrifice, life, death, and rebirth, are a huge part of these title’s storytelling and they drew me in completely. Legend of Mana and Dawn of Mana especially. Their world building and plot devices may or may not have heavily influence my own XD

14. The ‘Stravaganza’ book series - The first time I picked up a Stravaganza book title was when I was twelve and found this really shiny book in a used bookstore for $3. It featured a picture of Venice, and a pair of violet eyes staring at you from behind a shiny silver mask on the cover. I’m not sure why It spoke to me, it just did. I bought it and finished it within a day. That book was titled City of Masks and I loved it a lot! And then I found out there were more! An entire series! The books featured time travel and dimensional travel, espionage and intrigue! I read and devoured them all and to this day I hold out hope for a final volume to finish the series.

15. Avatar: the Last Airbender - At age 12 I dismissed Avatar as a kid show originally. I scoffed at it and laughed at my little brother for being so into it. Then I saw the first episode. And it was then that I knew what a mistake I had made. I know a LOT of people love Avatar, and for good reason! I don’t have to go super in-depth here because I’m sure most of you already know how great it is. It’s definitely influenced both my art style and my storytelling.

16. Hikaru no Go - This one’s special. When I was in high school I was bullied a LOT. Like, people writing DIE YOU WHORE in my textbooks and putting thumb tacks in my gym shoes kind of bullying. They’d touch me and then pretended that they’d die of the plague. That if anyone had a crush on me they were worse than trash. The kind of bullying that made me a bit suicidal in my teen years. Lucky for me my mother had bought me a copy of Monthly Shonen Jump in early 2005, She knew that I liked manga and thought it would be the perfect magazine gift for me for valentine’s day. Boy was she right and one of the manga featured in it was Hikaru no Go. I loved the art style, and the storytelling. I was instantly captivated by the characters and I wanted to know what happened next. I soon subscribed to SJ monthly and eagerly awaited the next installment each month. What this meant was that whenever I was feeling like I wanted to end it all, I’d remember that I didn't’ know what happened next and would wait. I honestly believe that Hikaru no Go is at least partially responsible for me making it out of high school alive, and I treasure it to this day. (Also I’m on anti-depressants now so don’t worry about me y’all okay? XD) There was another manga like this, but I'mnot sure how to feel about that one anymore :(

17. Magic Knight Rayearth - I know I’ve already listed CLAMP as a heavy influence on me, but I felt Magic Knight Rayearth deserved it’s own place because it was my first manga ever! I’d seen the commercial for the anime on one of my old DVDs way back when, and I was already intereseted in it when I happened to find the manga in a bookstore! I bought it and reread the first volume a dozen times before I even found the second ahaha. I must have read the complete set a hundred times now and let me tell you the twist ending of the first part kills me every time! The first of my manga obsession ahaha

18. Tales of the Abyss and The ‘Tales of’ game series - Tales of the Abyss was my first (and still my favorite) Tales game, and since then I’ve played almost all of them! They definitely influenced my character designs, most of my friends comment on how Tales-like my costumes are ahaha

19. The 'Riyria’ book series - The most recent novel series I’ve read. It’s got everything I’d ever want to see in a novel, it’s so great and the story is so deep and intriguing! I recommend everyone to read it, it’s a MUST READ for sure!

20. Journey - The first time I played this game I cried for three hours. I felt like I’d just had a religious and spiritual experience far beyond what I’d ever experienced in a video game before. It was just something so… beyond me. I recommend everyone to play this game at least once in their lifetime. I can’t really form the words to express what it means to me. It’s just something you’d have to experience for yourself.

21. Ico: Castle in the Mist and Shadow of the Colossus - Another famous one lol a LOT of people love these games but In particular I want to bring attention to the Ico novelization, Ico: Castle in the Mist. I really enjoyed the novel and it’s worldbuilding. The games will always be special to me, but that novel man. That novel.

22. Yu Yu Hakusho - One of my guilty favorites! I first saw Yu Yu Hakusho when I was 16 and I’ve loved it ever since! I’ve always been fascinated with spirits and the occult, but I definitely had to hide this one from my religious parents.

23. Black Cat - Honestly this one surprises me. I love those secret identity and hidden horrible past animes and this one definitely fits that bill. I think this one established my favorite tropes in my life more than anything else.

24. A Bride’s Story - Two words. THE ART. MY GOD THE ART. This manga, in addtion to being a really great read, has some of the most detailed artwork I’ve ever seen. It’s influenced me greatly and I encourage everyone to read it.

25. Bravely Default - Bravely Default definitely influenced my story building and characters, it was one of the first 3DS games that really captivated me and drew me into its world!

26. Yu-Gi-Oh!! - Another series I had to hide from my parents ahah This anime was something I really loved in my childhood. Again, I really love ghosts and spirits and things like that so this anime was probably what started it all!

27. Fire Emblem Awakening and the Fire Emblem Series - Awakening was my first Fire Emblem game (Cue whining from the FE purists LOL) but since then I’ve played them all! (Including the JP only ones don’t start with me haters ahahahaha) The storytelling and bonds between the characters really resonated with me and it’s become one of my favorite game series!

28. The ‘Legend of Zelda’ game series - The repeating themes of good vs evil throughout the Legend of Zelda games really struck a chord with me, especially when I was young. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker especially influenced me. “A Sword has no strength unless the hand that wields it has courage.” Is something that has suck with me for a long time, and something that encourages me and helps me get through my everyday life.

29. The Final Fantasy Series - Final Fantasy has had a HUGE impact on my life. I already gave Crystal Chronicles it’s due, now it’s the numbered titles turn! Final Fantasy has influenced my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago even! I’ve played them all (Except 11, curse having no internet as a teenager!) and they’ve definitely shaped my lore and world building skills!

30. Naruto - Okay I’ll admit it! I was Naruto weeboo trash in highschool!!! Oh woe is me!! Just kidding! I honestly still love Naruto, and it’s something that really stuck with me for a long time, since it’s one of the first anime I saw (after learning what anime was ahaha)

31. Gravity Falls - How can I put this… Hmmmm. Gravity Falls has heavily influenced my character building. I love it’s characters. Don’t get me wrong I love the story too! But the characters are honestly what kept me coming back for more! Not to mention that epic foreshadowing in season one. Yep.

32. Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning - Another one of my favorite manga in Highschool that oddly helped me through my depression. The main character’s struggles sort of resonated with me and helped my healing process in my late teens and early twenties.

33. Final Fantasy XII - Okay WORLDBUILDING. Let’s talk about worldbuilding because MY GOD has Final Fantasy XII have it. I love the Ivalice games in general, but the amount of effort put into 12 having a world that feels like it’s alive is astounding to be honest. The world truly feels like it’s alive, and it drew me in for over 400 hours of gameplay on Playstation 2. To this day it’s the game I have logged the most hours into.

34. Radiant Historia - What drew me in here was TIME TRAVEL and STORY AND WORLDBUILDING. This game is a hidden gem in the Nintendo DS’s extensive library. It doesn’t have the best graphics or even the best gameplay mechanics, but it didn’t matter to me because the story kept me coming back for more! By far one of my favorite games ever. (Pssst go play it, it got a remake for 3DS)

35. Final Fanasy XIV - This one is a favorite, not just because of it’s story and world building - both of which are excellent btw - but because of the connections I’ve made through it. I have made so many friends online through this game, friends that make me feel better about myself as a person, and who’ve stuck with me through the hard times along with the good.

36. Mushishi - We’ve established that I love ghosts and spirits and things, but this series made me love connecting it with nature, something that has heavily influenced my writing and my own webcomic!

37. Voltron - Mostly the first two seasons. Beast King Golion was one of my first super sentai anime as a child, and I loved seeing it remade! It was like getting to revisit my childhood

38. Gundam SEED and the Gundam Series - Okay Gundam has influenced me throughout my life, starting with Gundam Wing when I was six years old, and continuing on to this day. The one I’ve watched the most times though, is Gundam SEED, and it’s influenced my characters and storytelling a lot!

Wow, congrats to whoever manged to read this far. You’re really determined I’ll give you that! Thanks for reading!

137 notes · View notes

raendown · 6 years

Link

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 1931 Soulmate au: The one where any scars on your soulmate show up on you as well once they're healed

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Chapter 128: MadaraTobirama

Madara woke up with a new scar on his arm. It was there when he opened his eyes, a thin brown streak where there had been only pale unbroken skin when he went to sleep the night before. As he rolled over in bed and stared at the ceiling, yawning so wide his jaw very nearly dislocated, Madara scoured through his memories out of habit. Had he seen anyone he knew with injuries on their arm recently? Not that he could recall.

It wasn’t exactly a massive source of irritation that he couldn’t think of anyone. Like everyone else, Madara had been living with the random appearance of new scars on his body since he was very young and if he hadn’t figured it out in the last twenty-seven years then his odds of doing so now were really only slightly better. Making peace and building a village had certainly given him the opportunity to meet more people but it had done nothing to change his preference for quiet and solitude. Even if he randomly decided to emulate Hashirama’s habit of making friends with every child, rock, and squirrel he was still aware that his soulmate might not even live in this part of the world. His morning was no more disturbed by this scar than any of the others he already carried.

When he made his way in to the tower that day Madara’s thoughts were centered more on the claims for budget abuse he was supposed to be investigating than the fact that his arm had acquired a new blemish. He briefly noted the presence of Tobirama in their shared office and nodded once in lieu of welcoming him back from his mission to the Iwa border. Tobirama nodded back and went back to his scrolls without a word.

Though he would rather chew off his own fingers than say so, his usual morning exchange with Tobirama was one of the daily rituals he enjoyed the most. Not because he and Tobirama were particularly close but because it was just the sort of communication he wished the rest of the world could practice: wordless, silent, and free of the unnecessary aggression which had marked every conversation between the two of them for the first half a year after their clans came together. They might not be friends exactly but Madara often felt a certain kinship with Tobirama now which made it much easier to work in the same room with him.

It was a kinship partially based on a shared exasperation with Hashirama but the source hardly mattered.

Madara had only just settled in to his desk and sighed at the pile of work waiting for him when the door swung open again to admit his best friend. Hashirama also shared their office, though he flitted in and out so often they had been contemplating evicting him to his own space to save themselves the constant distraction. Rather than head towards his own desk Hashirama went straight for his little brother, smile on his face and arms open wide, cooing like one would at a small child.

“So you did come home last night! I thought I heard someone in the kitchen this morning!”

“And you didn’t get up to investigate? Brother, honestly. Just because we’re not at war anymore does not mean you should allow your awareness as a shinobi to grow dull. Losing your instincts could get you killed.”

“Wow. I missed you too.” Hashirama stuck out his tongue then used his massive arms to drag his sibling in to a hug and pin him there.

Madara snickered openly at the dismay on Tobirama’s face and then promptly buried his own I some papers when the noise drew a sharp glare over in his direction. He did continue to snicker though, peering over the top of the folder he’d grabbed and watching gleefully as Hashirama began the same ritual he insisted upon every time his younger brother went on a mission out of the village, hands reaching everywhere they could reach in search of anomalies.

“Are you hurt? Did you get injured? Any broken things or blood or eviscerations? No death?”

“Clearly I died,” Tobirama drawled. “This is my ghost you’re fondling.”

“Don’t be like that! I just want to know if you’ve been hurt anywhere so I can heal it.”

“I’m fine, it’s already healed.”

He quite obviously regretted those words a moment later when Hashirama gasped and pawed at his shirt as though he’d said he was bleeding out right there in his chair.

“You were injured! Where?!”

“It was just my arm so calm down.”

Amused as he was by the scene in front of him, Madara didn’t even make any connection between the other man’s words and the new scar he had woken up with until Hashirama pushed an exasperated Tobirama’s sleeve up to reveal the thin brown line sitting low on his right bicep. Madara froze as soon as his eyes landed on that mark. His hand rose to touch his own arm while he watched the siblings bickering across from him, staring long after Tobirama’s sleeve had fallen back in to place and bickering had turned in to a spiteful shoving match.

“Get away! I’m working!”

“You’re so cute Tobi, did you know that?”

“I am nothing of the sort. Now shoo or I’ll ask Madara for a rundown of all the paper work you didn’t get done while I was gone and make you do it now!”

“Hey!”

Pouting indignantly, Hashirama scuttled off to his own desk and flopped down in his chair, pulling the contents of his overflowing inbox closer until it at least appeared that he intended to be productive. It wasn’t that Hashirama had no work ethic or that he was a poor Hokage – quite the opposite, really – it was just that he spent perhaps too much time on public relations and not enough time on the more boring details like sanitation by-laws. His strengths lay in leading but not in administration.

Finally free of unwanted coddling, Tobirama looked up at Madara with a smirk hanging about his lips, clearly expecting to share the joke with him as they always did when one of them managed to put Hashirama back to work. His expression became confused when he saw the way Madara was staring at him so openly.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Madara wheezed incoherently. “O…kay. If that’s all you needed.” Tobirama shook his head and returned his eyes to the papers on the desk in front of him. Madara wheezed again.

“I don’t think he’s okay,” Hashirama said, standing up to crane around his piles of paperwork.

“Hm? What? No, I’m f-fine.” Madara shook his head in an effort to draw himself back to reality. It was only partially successful in that it managed to break his vapid stare but it was not enough to chase away the memory of that thin line on Tobirama’s arm, leaving him in a state he knew would not be conducive to paperwork. “If you gentlemen would excuse me, perhaps I will find somewhere else to work today.”

Rather than wait to fend off the inevitable objections, he snatched up a thick stack of whatever projects happened to be closest and darted out the door even as both of the Senju brother opened their mouths to say something.

Madara darted in to the first empty room he could find and walked over to the gaze blankly out the window. Thinking himself in the clear, he allowed his body to slump against the glass pane, staring down at the people below while he waited for his heart to quit leaping around in his chest like a drunken monkey. What had started off as a calm morning much like any other had suddenly become a day he knew he would come back to in his memories over and over and all he wanted was a few moments to process that.

He expected to be left alone for as long as he needed so it was a bit of a surprise when the door opened and he felt Tobirama’s calm-still-water-flowing chakra wash over him like a soothing balm.

“You looked as though you were about to faint,” the other murmured. “I won’t be as intrusive about it if you require medical attention.”

“I don’t. As I said, I’m fine.”

“Really?” Once side of Tobirama’s mouth quirked up as he stepped closer, arms folded in a manner which said he didn’t believe a word of Madara’s weak protests.

Before he could stop himself, Madara dropped his eyes to the other man’s arm and blurted, “Can I see your scar again?” He only just managed not to cringe at how awkward and desperate he sounded to his own ears.

“My scar?” Tobirama’s hand was moving upwards automatically even while his face twisted with confusion.

“Please,” Madara said. “I just need to confirm something.”

After giving him a look for being so cryptic Tobirama took hold of his short sleeve and pushed the material up to expose the top of his arm. From up close it was even more obvious how identical the mark was to the one Madara had seen upon first waking this morning. The shape of it curved almost lovingly around his muscle like a frame, drawing the eye to just the right point for prime muscle admiration. Were Madara so inclined he could use the scar as a guide for where to stare and drool over the other man’s perfectly shaped arms.

Right then he was more inclined to raise his eyes to Tobirama’s and lick his lips nervously.

“I have that scar too,” he murmured.

“Oh?”

From the polite yet distant tone of that single word it was clear that Tobirama did not see his meaning. Madara huffed as he reached for his own sleeve, dragging the heavy material upwards until that same spot was visible. He studiously ignored the fleeting hope that the other wouldn’t notice how his arms weren’t quite as defined anymore after delegating most of his missions to others now that they had the manpower to do so. He should really train more often.

“I didn’t have this yesterday but it was there when I woke up this morning.”

“Oh.” Tobirama’s tone was appropriately stunned this time, to Madara’s satisfaction.

“Yes. So. Hm.”

The only problem was that he had no idea where to go from here. Was he supposed to beat around the bush until he figured out what kind of bond the other man was interested in? Shouldn’t he figure out first what kind of bond he himself was interested in? They got along surprisingly well these days so he couldn’t say he was disappointed, at least.

“Dinner?”

“Hm?” Madara drew his brows together in confusion.

“Will you have dinner with me this evening? We can, ah, discuss this in a more private setting.” Tobirama peered at his from underneath snowy lashes and Madara wondered dazedly if he’d ever noticed before how long they were, how prettily they brushed against pale cheeks.

“Yes that sounds…yes. Thank you.”

Tobirama smiled, lingering for a few moments before turning and going back to their office. No doubt Hashirama was waiting for him with a hundred questions and more about what was going on and Madara did not envy him having to deal with that. With a deep breath he turned back to the window to look out at the sprawling village below, unaware of the smile he too was wearing unconsciously.

What a beautiful day it was.

#rae writes #soulmate collection #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

33 notes · View notes

kittyrossa · 6 years

Photo

KEITORWEEK2017 — FREE DAY: parallels & potential

if you follow me on twitter, you know that i love nothing more than geeking out about the parallels & potential between keith & lotor — but it’s time for me to bring that circus to tumblr town! it delights me that fandom is enjoying all of the ways that they mirror each other (even the voice actors!), so i hope you enjoy my breakdown of that mirroring throughout S3 + S4!

LEFT TO LEAD

keith vs. lotor is immediately apparent through both being new leaders: keith of team voltron, and lotor of the galra empire. but their circumstances could not be more different.

keith: i know you wanted this for me, shiro. but i’m not you. i can’t lead them like you.

lotor: i am the leader! but i am not my father.

how does keith become leader? shiro chooses him. as soon as shiro considers the prospect that he may not make it in this war, he turns to keith as someone he trusts to be his successor. keith denies that anything could happen to shiro and is devastated when it does, returning to the battle debris to search for him. shiro is the one person who has never given up on him; through giving keith advice and support, he has made keith’s life different for the better. keith has already lost his biological family, and now he’s lost shiro (his found family) for the second time. he says “please, no” when the black lion echoes shiro’s choice: being the leader means that shiro is gone, and keith refuses to see him as replaceable. team voltron attempts to comfort him in his grief, agreeing that shiro is indeed irreplaceable — but keith has to step up to save the universe.

how does lotor become leader? haggar chooses him; zarkon does not. when haggar says “summon prince lotor”, it is the first time we’re made aware that lotor even exists. zarkon never mentions him beforehand, let alone out of trust or support. he speaks with more approval of soldiers like sendak, who zarkon personally trained and thus does not doubt sendak’s loyalty. it speaks volumes that haggar only calls upon lotor when zarkon is incapable of rejecting that choice. lotor is chosen because he is heir to the throne — not because of qualities seen in him by his predecessor. this lack of personal relationship does not go unnoticed by commander throk, who questions why lotor isn’t at his father’s bedside, and complains that lotor has been chosen over followers more loyal to zarkon.

lotor: my father built our empire on the bones of his enemies. but the time has come to change the old ways, and inspire not fear from those we rule, but loyalty. we must not waste our energy fighting to keep our subjects down, but rather multiply it by allowing those worthy to rise and join our ranks. the universe can no longer doubt our strength! each ally gained only makes us stronger, while those who continue to stand against us will be crushed.

keith: we have to keep trying. we may have come here fragmented and disorganized, but the only way we’re getting out of here is if we work together. this is our team. shiro believed in us! we have to believe in ourselves. who’s with me?

lotor’s first leader speech is a political one. as he privately reveals to his generals, it is a tool to manipulate the masses — and, as he privately reveals to haggar, nothing angers lotor like being compared to his father. his first leader speech is objectively about inspiring loyalty rather than fear in allies; but, upon closer look, he is shining a light on how zarkon treats his own people. Zarkon’s Way demands unity through power and intimidation. by showing mercy to throk, lotor is displaying His Way: that unlike his father, he won’t threaten them or send them to their deaths if they don’t gain a victory. he is displaying the power of unity through equality; he is displaying “i am not my father.”

keith’s first leader speech is an emotional one. he has tried leading His Way, but His Way ends up putting team voltron in danger. he fixes it by emulating shiro: his first leader speech is not only thematically similar to shiro’s first leader speech (don’t give up, believe in yourselves, let’s work together), but repeats some of shiro’s own words. keith knows that Shiro’s Way works — that team voltron feels comforted and encouraged by it. that he feels comforted and encouraged by it. he knows he can’t be shiro, but even when keith does things His Way, he never undermines shiro’s leadership. he relies on shiro’s leadership to make everyone feel safe and united under a common goal.

EXILE & EXPULSION

these differences in keith + shiro and lotor + zarkon may have been formative for two pre-series events. the details are unclear (as of S3 + S4), but we know this: at some point, keith was expelled from the garrison; at some point, lotor was exiled from the empire.

given the way that keith reacts to shiro’s second disappearance, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that shiro’s first disappearance destabilized him. commander iverson claims that keith flunked out due to “discipline issues” — perhaps explosive behavior unfit for what is partially a military academy; or, perhaps keith’s supposed lack of discipline involved doubting that the kerberos mission failed due to pilot error — perhaps, much like pidge, keith challenged the garrison’s authority.

given the way that zarkon reacts to his authority being challenged, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that lotor was exiled for what zarkon would deem “discipline issues” — that lotor may have proposed alternate methods or priorities, or poked at the truth of zarkon’s past, perhaps wanting more information about his mother or the war’s events.

whatever instigated their removal, keith and lotor shared something in common: they did not wallow. they discovered a new purpose.

keith discovered the blue lion’s energy, and gathered research to track it down and examine its surroundings. lotor discovered another transreality comet, and gathered his team of generals to help him develop his plans — like retrieving scaultrite from the belly of a weblum.

the main difference is that until shiro returned to earth and team voltron formed, keith acted alone; lotor had like-minded people and acted as their leader.

MISSING (& MYSTERIOUS) MOTHER

as far as lotor knows, his altean genes come from his mother; and as far as lotor knows, his mother is honerva, a long-dead altean alchemist. he does not appear to know that honerva and haggar are the same person. he is scornful of haggar, but respectful of honerva, speaking of her with pride: “no one comprehended that the experiments of my mother honerva could not be undone.”

as far as keith knows, his galra genes come from his mother; and as far as keith knows, his mother left behind a marmora blade to be passed on to keith from his father. keith is given the chance to hear more, but decides against it. saving the universe is more important than the secrets of his history and identity.

lotor, by contrast, seems highly knowledgeable of altean history, even if there are still secrets about his identity. he has done his research on altean distress signals, teludav technology, voltron, king alfor, and of course, the rift and transreality comets. he indulges in this side of himself that he sees as coming from honerva — which makes sense when you remember how much he doesn’t want to be like zarkon, who is all about physical over mental strength.

lotor knows that the empire has prejudice towards people who aren’t pure galra, though his altean genes appear to be unknown to the empire. nevertheless, the empire knows that lotor’s generals are half-galra. lotor may not be able to find other half-alteans, but he and his generals remain bonded by being half-galra in an empire that views galra as the superior race. rather than feel inferior due to his altean genes, lotor seems to view them as strengths that set him apart from his father; he is not only scientific like honerva, but diplomatic like king alfor and princess allura.

keith’s relationship with being part-galra is difficult in a different way. as a paladin of voltron, he is on the side of the war that rightfully fears the galra. they have enslaved and colonized a countless number of planets, and committed the genocide of altea. allura’s reaction to keith being part-galra — and to the idea of allyship with the blade of marmora — is not because she views altean as the superior race, but because her fellow alteans were destroyed by the galra.

even after that tension is resolved and the marmora members become trusted allies, keith remains the only part-galra member of team voltron. he has no one to relate to, and while he eventually continues his marmora training, he has yet to explore the mystery of his mother. on top of that, keith often feels alienated since his fighting style + speed are sometimes seen as weaknesses to the group; but many galra would consider them strengths.

VICTORY OR DEATH VS. KNOWLEDGE OR DEATH

as seen in his marmora trials, keith tends to be a fighter that “won’t quit” — a determination that embodies the Galra Way (Zarkon’s Way) of victory or death. zarkon even tells him that he fights like a galra soldier!

but several galra, particularly those in rebellion against zarkon, propose a different path: to not be so focused on your goal that you would needlessly die for it — to know when to pull back. we even see it from those loyal to zarkon, ranging from soldiers unwilling to lose their crew to soldiers definitely willing to lose their crew, but unwilling to lose their own lives. the galra are not a hivemind, but Zarkon’s Way certainly asks for them to be.

keith hasn’t grown up under zarkon’s reign; his unwillingness to quit is, simply, His Way. when he’s in, he’s all in. shiro — who knows him best — understands this.

kolivan: sometimes, the greatest challenge is knowing when to stop.

shiro: he’ll never quit.

kolivan: one way or another, this will end. knowledge — or death.

as seen in his swordfight with throk, lotor strives to avoid the Galra Way (Zarkon’s Way); he comes closer to embodying knowledge or death, preferring to observe his opponent’s patterns and evade them. this is yet another way that he subtly rebels against his father.

lotor: you must realize at some point that your repetitive attacks are getting you nowhere. your tactics are stale — and in the end, your own aggression is your undoing.

keith is suited to the red lion’s style of “faster and more agile than the others — but also more unstable.” he can keep up with its aggressive speed as though their minds and bodies are connected, but when the time comes for him to fly the black lion, the connection doesn’t come as naturally to him.

guess who notices?

lotor: zethrid, use the ion cannon to shoot the black lion.

zethrid: why the black one?

lotor: there’s something different about that lion. its pilot isn’t in control.

this first encounter is mostly a set-up for lotor to find out why the black lion has been missing in action. when it ends, both he and keith come to similar conclusions:

keith: now we know that zarkon has a son. we need to find out more.

lotor: we just learned all five lions are operational. there’s still much we don’t know.

at first, the aim is the same: both sides are facing a new enemy, and knowledge needs to be gained about strengths and weaknesses.

but keith quickly veers towards victory — this, he says, is how he leads. back when he faced zarkon, he’d declared it his chance to end the galra empire; he had to take it. facing zarkon’s son reignites that all-encompassing intensity, though with higher stakes because keith is now bringing the rest of team voltron along with him. as the new leader, it creates a chaotic domino effect if he sets a pace that not everyone can follow or wants to follow.

hunk: more than half of the team are in new lions — maybe now’s not a great time to bite off more than we can chew.

lance: you can blame our hotheaded leader for that one.

keith: first, you want me to lead, and then you complain about how i do it. prince lotor is the heir to the galra throne. we could end his reign right now.

pidge: keith, what should we do?

keith: how about this? everyone stay out of my way!

lance: we’re a team, we stick together. isn’t that right, keith?

keith: it’s not about the team! we have a mission that’s more important than any one of us. we need to find lotor and stop him, and i plan on doing that right now.

if keith fights like a lion at the moment of pouncing and going for the kill, then lotor fights like a lion during the hunt. his strategy revolves around keeping a distance; he watches his prey’s movements, circling them and zoning in on weak points. he is patient, both in carrying out his actions and communicating his motives when his team doesn’t follow his wavelength.

lotor: ready my fighter. i’m going to attack the lions myself.

zethrid: you’ll never take them all out alone!

lotor: i’m not trying to.

lotor: acxa, set course for these coordinates. i’m going to lure the lions there.

acxa: thayserix? why?

lotor: these are not the paladins who defeated my father.

ezor: what? how do you know?

lotor: they do not fight as a unit and are unable to form voltron. perhaps my father did as much damage to their team as they did to him. whatever the case, they’re vulnerable and we need to take advantage. keep the cruiser in orbit around thayserix. i’ll flush the lions out one by one for you to capture.

though keith gets better at controlling black, it isn’t enough to singlehandedly stop lotor. keith may be intent on cutting off the head, but lotor goes for every limb: he keeps spotting chinks in the team’s armor and turning them against each other, particularly allura as the newest paladin; lotor dodges her fire so that it instead hits keith, frustrating him. even when keith directs them to circle up on thayserix, to stay calm and fire on lotor as soon as they see him, it literally backfires due to thayserix’s atmosphere — the team is split up and lotor sees the opportunity to chase what he perceives to be the weakest link (the blue lion/allura).

but this is where keith deviates from Zarkon’s Way: he is not only willing to admit his mistakes and weaknesses, but willing to move forward and rectify them.

keith: this is all my fault. i followed him right into this trap. everyone warned me, but i didn’t listen. i put the entire team in jeopardy.

lance: yeah, you kinda did. but now we gotta fix it.

keith: you’re right. let’s go.

even more unlike zarkon, keith isn’t arrogant or prideful. he listens to his right-hand man, and he has no bitterness that allura is the one to outsmart lotor’s plan, using blue’s sonar map and shooting blue’s ice (rather than the fire that thayserix explodes back at them). he gives her the credit, and the team’s relief and gratitude creates a more hopeful energy. keith delivers his first leader speech, calling back to shiro’s themes of unity, and they are finally able to form voltron.

keith comes away from this with new knowledge, knowing that victory is not currently in the cards; and lotor is right there with him:

pidge: lotor’s getting away. should we go after him?

keith: no. pushing the team too hard is what got us in this mess in the first place. we’ll face him again when we’re ready.

zethrid: where are we going? voltron is back there! this is our time to fight!

lotor: a leader must know when to leave the field of battle. we’ll face them on a day of our choosing.

what’s interesting is that keith’s wording admits that team voltron has to work on its pacing if they want to beat lotor; but lotor’s wording is confident that his team is already in control, foreshadowing that lotor has his own complicated relationship with victory and not attaining it. he was willing to admit that allura’s strategy was well-played, but what happens when he loses something more permanent than a temporarily frozen ship piece?

INTUITION VS. INTELLECT

before lotor finds out what it is to lose to team voltron, however, he gains another win over them. his intellect is so strong that it only takes him mere moments to form a new plan from the knowledge gained on thayserix.

acxa: they can form voltron after all. will that be a problem?

lotor: no. an opportunity.

to get his hands on the new transreality comet, he has sent in several pilots without results — but now that he knows that the new paladins can form voltron, he can use them as another test subject. lotor has theorized that voltron will be successful because it’s also composed of a transreality comet, and it’s a gamble he’s calmly willing to take no matter how things end.

lotor: if voltron disappears from our world, then we win. if they make it out with the comet, we’ll take it from them. it’s a win either way.

lotor suspects that team voltron’s attention will be snared by an altean distress signal, and sure enough, allura and coran are instantly moved by it; keith, having fallen for lotor’s thayserix trap, is instantly suspicious of it.

keith: wait — what if someone’s cloning the signal to try and lure us in? princess, i still think there’s a chance that this whole thing is a trap.

allura does not want to miss the chance to find out if there are surviving alteans, and she vows that she will go herself if she has to. keith, again having learned from the thayserix trap, does not allow the team to be split up; they go in as voltron, and as acxa says, lotor’s theory — lotor’s intellect — was right: team voltron is able to come out with the comet, and lotor steals it from under their noses, sarcastically thanking them for answering his distress signal. which means keith’s intuition was right.

allura is heartbroken, mirroring keith’s feelings on thayserix: she feels that it was all her fault that they were lead into a trap, but keith assures her that she couldn’t have known.

allura: that is the problem — we never know. lotor is always one step ahead of us. he has a plan for that ore, and if he succeeds, the galra will finally have a weapon as powerful as voltron.

from team voltron’s perspective, lotor is an enigma. his priority isn’t zarkon’s (capturing voltron); if anything, lotor is a bigger threat because he’s willing to do whatever it takes to build his own equivalent, including breaking into a galra base to steal a remnant of voltron’s teludav. his generals are there to load it onto a cargo ship, and (to team voltron’s horror) they arrive there on a new ship built from the comet.

team voltron doesn’t know that lotor is half-altean, or working separately from zarkon and haggar; that it would be lotor that would operate the teludav technology (not haggar, as allura assumes). it’s an already mystifying situation without the added confusion of shiro’s return, and the clash between him and keith over what the team’s priority should be.

keith: lotor must be nearby. we need to find him and take him out for good.

shiro: team, you cannot let lotor get that ship. you need to get back to your lions. you need voltron!

keith: why take out one ship when we can stop all of this by taking out lotor himself? we can’t let him keep outsmarting us!

shiro: that’s exactly why we can’t risk letting lotor have that ship! this is too important!

allura: keith, i want to stop lotor just as badly as you, but shiro has a point.

keith: okay, you guys go back to the lions. i’m gonna search the ship for lotor.

shiro: keith, you need to stick together.

the rest of the team gently agrees with shiro, and keith grudgingly agrees to move on. it is then that they meet lotor’s generals, and seeing that one of them is acxa only makes the need to stop lotor all the more dire to keith.

keith: i’ve met one of them before. in the weblum. she stole some of the scaultrite.

hunk: allura, you said they had an altean? they must be trying to build a teludav so they can make wormholes.

allura: if lotor has turned the comet into a ship, we have much bigger concerns.

pidge: i thought lotor took over for zarkon. why is he attacking a galra base?

keith: i don’t know. that’s why we have to stop him here and now.

keith is action-oriented: he understands people by their actions, and lotor’s actions aren’t clear-cut. meeting acxa was like a preview: she was voiceless and faceless, and all keith could do was interpret her by what she did. she shot at the weblum’s defenses to save him, earning his trust and teamwork, only to later turn the gun on him and steal some scaultrite. this has given keith firsthand experience with team lotor’s methods. acting against the Galra Way doesn’t necessarily mean that team lotor will be on your side until the very end; but they’ll pretend to be as long as you share a common goal.

so, understandably, keith isn’t giving lotor the benefit of the doubt. he can acknowledge that a lot of the information they’re getting doesn’t add up, but why should they settle for theorizing? why not go straight for the root of the problem? his intuition is telling him that cutting down lotor will cut down all of lotor’s branches — the stolen teludav, the comet ship. and then they can figure out lotor’s plans.

keith knows that lotor is twisty, that he is cunning and that he likes to set traps. keith isn’t about to let team voltron fall into yet another one, even if he has to prevent it entirely on his own. even if he has to defy shiro!

lotor: keep voltron engaged until the cargo ship is out of range. do not be drawn in; the sword strike is his most deadly blow.

shiro: guys, the cargo ship is escaping with the teludav inside of it!

keith: i thought taking down the ship made from the comet was the most important thing?

shiro: we still can’t let lotor get away with the teludav!

allura: shiro’s right. we need to destroy it.

keith: but the comet is right here! we need to take it down!

shiro: keith, the cargo ship is getting away!

lotor: we have them right where we want them. they can either defend, or go after the teludav and leave themselves vulnerable.

shiro: you’re going to have to lower your shield, shoot the cargo ship, and deal with the consequences.

keith: we can beat this ship first and then get the cargo ship!

shiro: there’s not enough time! you need to make a decision!

lotor: they’re going to attack the cargo ship! prepare to fire as soon as the shield goes down.

you can see the parallels between lotor and shiro: both of them feel most comfortable when they have control; when they are able to predict their opponent’s plans, and then form their own decisive plans to prevent them. but during this battle, neither of them are on the field — lotor is directing acxa from a distance, and shiro is directing keith from a distance.

lotor is trying to trap team voltron again: to force them to choose between attacking the comet ship or the cargo ship. he and shiro are aware that choosing the cargo ship will leave team voltron vulnerable, but lotor sounds unusually panicked and impatient — it’s clear that this is not a situation where team lotor will win either way. he wants to come out of there with both the comet ship and the cargo ship, and acxa trusts him to make the calls that will ensure that outcome. lotor’s intellect about voltron has yet to be wrong.

but intellect can only get you so far. no matter what lotor has researched on voltron (like the sword strike being the deadliest), and no matter what lotor has observed himself (that voltron will make itself vulnerable if they want to take a risk), lotor and shiro are unable to predict the extent of keith’s risk-taking.

true, keith does as lotor assumes and as shiro commands: he guides voltron to lower the shield and shoot the cargo ship, leaving voltron exposed for acxa to take them out. but what happens next happens so fast that we need to get it in slow-motion to fully understand it: keith breathes in, waits, and at just the right moment, he dodges the comet ship’s fire so that it instead hits the cargo ship — a faster version of exactly what lotor did to him during their last battle. he has finally outsmarted lotor; has finally escaped one of his traps. he had no direct proof that lotor was attempting to trap them, but keith’s intuition told him to take the chance anyway; he acted slow enough that lotor wouldn’t catch on to him catching on, but fast enough to make the trap backfire as soon as team lotor pounced.

if lotor is dangerous because he knows how to think several steps ahead, then keith is dangerous because he knows how to change steps in a heartbeat. this is why it’s a mistake to assume that keith being action-oriented means that he’s hotheaded — that he’s all about the physical, when instead he’s all about acting based on intuition. sure, lotor realized that the new pilot of the black lion wasn’t “in control”, but he couldn’t predict that keith has learned to balance aggression with “patience yields focus” — that keith is capable of control, of slowing down and coming up with new actions in the heat of the moment. he did it in the marmora trials, and he did it again here.

but keith still doesn’t see it as an all-out victory: he still wants to go after the comet ship, but shiro says they have to come back to the castle and figure out lotor’s actions. and while shiro tells keith that he needs to learn to pick his battles, he also praises keith for what he just pulled off.

keith: i’m no good at this.

shiro: yes, you are. it was your quick thinking that prevented lotor from getting away with the teludav. you’re gonna get there. the black lion has chosen you. i’m proud of you, keith.

shiro doesn’t let his own pride stop him from being supportive, even though losing the black lion is painful for him. but lotor doesn’t manage to keep a cool head about what he’s just lost; he takes the opposite approach to keith, who acknowledges his own mistakes and doesn’t let his teammates blame themselves for his or theirs.

lotor: your failure is most disappointing.

although he was the one to make the call that lead to losing the teludav, lotor places the blame on acxa. it’s the first hint we’ve seen that lotor is capable of pridefully lashing out at his people like zarkon does — that this is what can happen when he loses a chance at victory, and therefore loses his grip on control. and this is acxa, who has been displayed as the most devoted to lotor, not unlike keith’s devotion to shiro; her distress at failing lotor could rival keith’s distress that shiro is no longer the leader, and keith’s firm belief that he’ll never be able to lead like him.

LOSING LEADERSHIP

coran shares the history of honerva, the original paladins, and the transreality rift, from which team voltron concludes that lotor must want to get quintessence from other realities. keith once more underlines that they need to stop him, whatever it is that lotor’s planning.

but several months pass, and lotor has disappeared — not just from voltron’s sight, but from the empire’s. keith starts going on missions with the blade of marmora, and they find a lead in a new form of quintessence that could be linked to lotor.

except team voltron has new priorities: building the coalition. keith finds this embarrassing — “we’re basically the grand marshal of a parade” — and thus does not hesitate to join kolivan’s infiltration mission instead.

keith: count me in.

lance: hey, what about our performance?! we can’t razzle-dazzle the crowd with just four lions!

keith: this mission is more important than a show of arms!

funnily enough, keith is accusing team voltron of what lotor has accused them of:

lotor: your savior, voltron? and where is your precious protector now? gone, leaving you with nothing but a hollow promise of freedom. mercy has never been the way of the galra — until now. how would you like to become a valuable part of the new empire? join us, and you’ll never need voltron again.

lotor said this to the leader of puig, and after what keith said to the leader of puig, it could almost ring true.

leader of puig: our people have heard of the legend of voltron, how he defeated zarkon. that is what gave them hope! what are we supposed to tell them now?

keith: tell them to stand up and fight for themselves! voltron is gone!

this was born from keith’s grief after shiro’s disappearance, not from keith actually thinking that voltron shouldn’t help people. he does want to help people, as voltron or otherwise, but his frustration with voltron as a “symbol” still stands — performed acts of saving the universe aren’t literally saving the universe.

keith: allura, i know you’re mad at me, but i’m not in the mood for a lecture.

allura: i know how important the work you’ve been doing with the blades is. they are incredible allies and have been instrumental in our victories over the galra. and while the news of a new quintessence supply line is deeply troubling, i cannot help but feel —

keith: i said i didn’t want a lecture.

allura: keith, since our battle with zarkon, we’ve been able to bolster our forces by uniting those previously ruled by the galra under a common symbol: voltron. it’s so much more than a weapon.

keith misses the parade, but he misses it because he feels that marmora’s mission is more effective than being what allura calls “a symbol of freedom and hope for the oppressed to rally around.” keith is not interested in parading voltron as a symbol of freedom — he wants to actively confront the galra and fight for that freedom, and the parades distract team voltron from the time that could be spent doing that. for keith, the coalition is important for the rebels that it unites (rebels that he now fights alongside), but not for the fanfare.

throk’s partner: i’ve heard rumors [lotor] fights alongside his enlisted men like a lowly private. some say he allows the planets he conquers to continue to rule themselves. can you imagine?

lotor seems to want a middleground: even if people are united under a “symbol” — an empire based on loyalty rather than fear — it’s important for them to be self-sufficient; they shouldn’t need voltron or galra soldiers guiding (or dictating) their every move. for lotor, there’s an overestimation of voltron from both sides: the people who see it as their only savior, and the people who see it as their biggest threat. why not create a bigger threat?

and so, on lotor’s end, he is also being lectured about not prioritizing voltron, nor rallying troops against voltron’s efforts. haggar doesn’t know it, but lotor doesn’t see the point when his time is being spent on a weapon that could overpower voltron. haggar’s priorities seem weak in comparison.

haggar: lotor, while you distance yourself from central command, rebel forces have taken entire star systems from our hands.

lotor: you think clutching on to worthless outposts strengthens our empire?

haggar: your father knew those outposts would one day become strongholds.

lotor: my father is on his deathbed — and i’m in control.

haggar: you say you rule, yet you stay hidden. an emperor must be seen. his absence diminishes his power.

lotor: i don’t have to explain myself to you. now, do not bother me again.

keith was harsh with allura, but lotor is even harsher with haggar — which is expected, because while keith feels he can defend his mission to track down lotor’s supply line, lotor wants to keep his mission untrackable. his comet ships are being made in secret, and the supply line is far from the typical supply routes; there are even decoy ships to throw people off its trail, which means that lotor is still trying to trap and evade anyone who wishes to stop him. keith is acting apart from team voltron, but they at least know what he’s doing when he’s gone. the fact that lotor needs to shroud his plans in secrecy is a product of his upbringing: he doesn’t feel as though zarkon and haggar can be trusted to support him.

keith wants to trust team voltron to support him, but they’ve proven that their support is elsewhere. their priority is the coalition, and keith’s priority is lotor; he knows that he can’t lead them when they believe in different paths, which is part of why he’s so adamant about shiro taking up the black lion again.

in their original paladin formation, shiro and allura were the co-leaders, and they still act that way despite shiro not being a paladin. they are the ones who try to convince keith of the importance of being present on team voltron — that he’s needed there.

allura: the marmora can go on without you. they have for thousands of years. voltron cannot. we cannot.

shiro: we need to find out all we can about that quintessence, but more importantly, voltron needs a strong leader.

keith: i know they do, and it should be you!

shiro: keith, we’ve discussed this before. besides, we both know that the black lion has chosen you.

keith: you only tried once! you had a connection with the black lion and i know it’s still there! if you just give it another shot —

shiro: keith, we all have a part to play. this is mine now. i’ve come to terms with that — now, you need to. i support your decision to continue with your marmora training, but not at the expense of the team. they need you, keith. they need you to be their leader.

allura and shiro mean well: it’s not that they don’t care about keith as a person, because they do. shiro is keith’s found family, and allura extended the same “new family” invitation when she apologized for doubting keith due to losing her family. this is more than we have ever seen from zarkon and haggar to lotor — if there were ever any feelings of familial love amongst them, they seem to be long gone.

but even the most loving families have misunderstandings — even the people closest to you can misjudge you. we see this fear reflected in keith’s marmora trials, where the hologram of shiro implies that keith is selfish for wanting to know the truth of his past.

hologram!shiro: you know exactly who you are: a paladin of voltron. we’re all the family you need. just give up the knife, keith! you’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!

the hologram of keith’s father does the reverse: he tries to convince keith to ignore the galra attacking earth, because if keith leaves, he will never find out who he is. when keith leaves the virtual mindscape and finally awakens his marmora blade, it’s because he firmly says:

keith: it doesn’t matter where i come from. i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.

keith’s fear is being seen as selfish — as someone who would put his own needs above the needs of the universe. flashforward to S3 + S4, and keith hasn’t wavered on this, not permanently. the one time he did waver, it was because it felt as though everyone only cared about losing voltron as a symbol of hope, while he was the only one heartbroken over losing shiro: a real, breathing person who gave keith hope — not as a legend as the other paladins phrased it, but as a friend so supportive that keith let down his walls and let him in like family.

but once he agreed that shiro would never want them to lose sight of the mission, keith didn’t abandon that mission. if you swap out zarkon’s name for his son’s, what keith said in his marmora trials is still what he believes in: “we all need to work together to defeat lotor.” this has been his goal ever since becoming leader, and marmora is willing to work together on that goal; but team voltron’s brand of “working together” has become more about the coalition than going after lotor directly. keith has tried, time and time again, to get them to follow his lead, but they aren’t on his wavelength. lotor is out of sight, out of mind, and so they don’t see pursuing lotor as the main mission.

so, when allura says that marmora can go on without keith, and shiro says that leading voltron is more important than lotor’s quintessence — that keith’s marmora training shouldn’t come at the expense of the team? both of them are implying that keith needs to choose, and that the only right choice is team voltron. it’s said more gently than the hologram of shiro, but that doesn’t mean it’s not said.

keith is essentially being asked to be a figurehead that can fill the seat of the black lion, but without any sway in leadership. just as haggar tells lotor that an emperor should be seen, that he shouldn’t stay hidden, keith feels that he’s being asked to be seen but not heard — to show up in the parades as black, to show up as black to guide refugees to olkarion, to show up as black to give supplies to refugees. but don’t lead as black, because we’re not interested in your plans; we don’t agree with your mission.

pidge: well, look who decided to show up.

lance: yeah, are you even taking this seriously?

keith: sorry i’m late.

haggar: i’m afraid that lotor has not taken his duties as heir to your empire seriously, my lord. vast stretches of territory have fallen to voltron and a growing group of insurgents.

zarkon: your decision to place him on the throne was ill-advised. but no matter. i am returned. it is time to relieve my wayward son of his duties.

keith and lotor take their missions incredibly seriously. keith is serious about weakening the empire, and lotor is serious about strengthening the empire. when they are absent, neither of them are wasting time: they are acting out their plans, not twiddling their thumbs. but they’re still treated as irresponsible because they’re doing it Their Way, ways that are equal in strength to the ones proposed (if not stronger).

if that isn’t hard enough, keith and lotor are each working with a team of outcasts. the marmora is technically part of the coalition, and team lotor is technically part of the empire. but there are coalition members who feel unsettled by marmora’s presence — they look exactly like their oppressors — and there are pure galra who see half-galra as less strong and less worthy of power. keith can pass as non-galra, and lotor can pass as pure galra; but not everyone can pass, and thus it makes sense that both teams prefer to work “in the shadows” — that both teams are built on secrecy and trust. they have to do things Their Way because there is no guarantee that prejudice won’t impact people believing in Their Way. some will absolutely follow them, but some absolutely will not. the marmora now has team voltron’s allyship, but lotor cannot count on allyship from central command. and even with the marmora/voltron alliance, there can still be a clash of missions.

just as shiro fears, the day comes when the team is in jeopardy due to keith’s absence, and shiro is forced to try piloting black again. keith is apologetic, but genuine in seeing a silver lining.

keith: this is not the way i wanted this to happen, but if there’s a bright side to any of this, it’s that my absence allowed shiro to reestablish his bond with the black lion. he can finally be the leader i was unable to be. i’m not meant to pilot the black lion. shiro, you are the rightful leader of this team — and you proved it today by reconnecting with the black lion. it was always meant to be yours.

keith sincerely believes in shiro; this is what he’s been insisting from the start, both during and after shiro’s disappearance. these aren’t simply words spoken out of keith’s doubts about his own leadership, but out of keith’s love and support for shiro as a person and leader. there is no resentment towards shiro, even though shiro sometimes approached keith’s leadership as though keith didn’t remember “patience yields focus” — as though keith needed to be guided like a subordinate instead of an equal. in S1 + S2, keith took no issue with following shiro’s orders, and there was a lightness and familiarity to answering shiro with a “yes, sir!”; but in S3 + S4, some framework was as if they were soldiers at the garrison — as if keith felt he had to be a cadet to shiro’s senior officer, instead of a trusted friend.

shiro: i’m sorry i had to step in back there.

keith: i thought i had it under control.

keith: this is lotor i’m talking about. he hasn’t been seen in months. this might be our chance to track him down!

shiro: i said we’ll discuss it later. right now, i need you to focus on the mission at hand.

keith: but —

shiro: this isn’t a request, keith. get to the fimm system. that’s an order.

“that’s an order” was once said by shiro to the black lion: he felt he had no control over where black was taking him, and panicked. once they met zarkon in the astral plane and zarkon told shiro that only the powerful could “command” black, shiro corrected his own error and zarkon’s: “no one commands the black lion!” + the relationship between a lion and its paladin “isn’t about power! it’s about earning each other’s trust!”

it’s possible that “that’s an order” was said to keith for similar reasons. shiro felt that he had no control over black’s sudden lack of trust in him + rejection, and panicked because keith wasn’t being reliable in his duty as black’s new paladin. his trust in keith wasn’t as secure as it had been in the past, and shiro had to be firm in letting keith know that he needed to maintain that trust.

whether this stemmed from operation kuron is up for debate! perhaps stage three of operation kuron was “get back to the voltron lions and get back into the black lion”, and part of that manifested in subtly chipping away at keith’s confidence in his leadership. and that’s just one theory! whatever is actually happening here, both keith and shiro think that S3 + S4!shiro is the “real” shiro — not a clone, not a brainwashed sleeper agent. shiro isn’t being intentionally dismissive — or even intentionally zarkon-esque by pulling rank — and keith doesn’t see shiro as intentionally dismissive or zarkon-esque.

keith simply sees what he has always seen: that he can never be shiro; that shiro is always going to be the person who should lead team voltron. keith has never wanted to take shiro’s place. their clash of leadership brought about everything that came from shiro’s hologram: the misreading of keith as selfish; as someone who would rather be alone than work together; as someone who does not care about saving the universe. shiro returning to black is a major relief for keith, albeit a bittersweet one: a potential rift in his relationship with shiro was prevented, but he still has to move on alone — shiro and team voltron will not follow his lead.

when zarkon takes up leadership again, the contrast could not be starker. lotor goes into performance mode, every word of support to zarkon an act. as he tells his generals, his father “is simply ready to return to the throne. he can have it. our plans have not changed.” he has no reason to fear that losing leadership will mean losing his team — he won’t be leaving behind anyone that he cares about losing.

lotor: father, it gives me such pleasure that you’ve made a full recovery. you look stronger than i’ve ever —

zarkon: silence. i did not bring you here to waste time with your flattery. you are relieved of your position, effective immediately.

lotor: lord, i beg you, do not discard me. let me stay by your side.

zarkon: your short reign will be regarded as a black spot on the galra empire for years to come.

lotor: of course, my efforts at ruling the universe seem feeble beside your inestimable accomplishments. but, perhaps, if you were to train me, i could learn.

zarkon: you are no longer needed.

lotor: as you wish.

unlike shiro, zarkon has no need for his successor, nor words of encouragement for him. and unlike keith, lotor doesn’t sincerely believe that his predecessor is the rightful and superior leader; it’s that not being the leader gives lotor more freedom to further his own mission. he is playing the part of the devoted son who wants nothing more than to be supported and to stay by his father’s side. he even pretends to think low of his own skills, when we know that he’s using his skills to secretly surpass what zarkon hasn’t even considered (since he’s so obsessed with voltron). lotor has no genuine intentions or inclinations to stay at central command — he knows that he doesn’t belong there, nor does he want to. not while zarkon and haggar are in control.

upon walking out of the throne room, lotor’s fake frown transforms into a sincere smile — more like a smirk, even. zarkon’s treatment of him (both now and pre-exile) has left lotor with no desire to follow zarkon’s path. lotor is instead determined to carve his own path, and has been doing so for quite some time.

but upon walking out of the castle, keith’s smile transforms into a frown. he does want to belong with team voltron, even if he believes in furthering his own mission; even if he knows that he has to carve his own path to do so. like lotor, keith doesn’t mind losing leadership in favor of going down that path — but unlike lotor, keith does feel he’s leaving behind people he cares about, especially the person who has taken back leadership from him.

thankfully, there is no parting resentment between keith and team voltron like there is between lotor and zarkon. team voltron misjudges keith, but they are open to hearing his defenses. if lotor uses words as weapons, shielding his true intentions, then keith — who prefers actions — uses words as though lowering a shield; the team does not understand his actions, and so he has to use his words. and those words reveal his true intentions (about not being the rightful leader, and about using his skills elsewhere).

keith: a mission is being planned to infiltrate the supply line. it could take weeks, maybe months to pull off, but if there is a chance, we have — i have to take it. i need to be on that mission.

the “we” that he then corrects to “i” is not a performance — it’s an honest slip that reveals his desire to work as a team, followed by the acceptance that that team will not be voltron. shiro hugs him, and then the entire team hugs him; they tell him that they’ll miss him, and that they know he’ll make them proud.

shiro: keith — if this is what you feel is right, then we won’t try to stop you. but just know that we’re here for you whenever you need us.

keith: i know you are — and i can’t tell you how much that means to me.

in a way, keith is being dismissed as a leader; shiro doesn’t say anything about calling when keith is needed, which one could compare to zarkon saying that lotor is no longer needed. but shiro is still doing the opposite of hologram!shiro: he doesn’t want keith to feel alone or abandoned, and he is no longer pressuring keith to choose team voltron — shiro instead assures keith that he’ll be there for him either way. keith believes it, even if his belief that he can’t lead voltron has been confirmed. though this means going down separate paths, their paths will converge: shiro will call when he needs keith, and be there for keith in return.

so: what about lotor? when zarkon and haggar discover his true intentions, it is done in a way that confirms everything that made lotor believe they couldn’t be trusted. their discovery isn’t through honest communication — through asking lotor what his words + actions have been hiding — but through haggar sending out a spy as she’s done before, and as she already knows will prompt lotor’s disdain and unease.

and how does zarkon respond? not by inviting lotor to unite forces — not by letting lotor know that he’ll be there for him if he needs help — not by expressing pride in lotor’s skills + innovation — but by ordering the empire to hunt lotor down and kill him.

zarkon: from this day forward, my son lotor is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the empire. all citizens are authorized to use deadly force to stop him or any of his soldiers. i repeat, prince lotor is an enemy of the state. engage with extreme prejudice. kill on sight.

SAFETY & SACRIFICE

team lotor is now desperate to find safety, but the generals feel unsafe even beyond zarkon’s threat. they just witnessed lotor taking out narti, one of their own. he did it silently and without explanation, and now he is leading them somewhere without explanation.

lotor: ezor, acxa, set a course for the coordinates i’m sending you.

ezor: where are we going?

lotor: just do as i say!

it’s an eerie mirror of keith after he was first made leader: impatient, snappish, and single-minded in his focus. clearly, when trapped and backed into a corner, lotor and keith are not so different. lotor does eventually communicate his plans as he normally would, but those plans don’t promise the usual security of calm and control.

zethrid: sir, we’re approaching the coordinates, but my scanners don’t detect anything.

lotor: they’re not supposed to.

ezor: lotor, what is this?

lotor: the ruins of planet daibazaal. i had a secret team construct this interreality gate on the rift, where [honerva’s] work began. just as voltron was able to, i will pilot us through the rift, and we will harvest the unlimited quintessence that exists in the layer between realities.

acxa: i never doubted you, lotor.

ezor: so, we can just fly right through this thing to another reality?

lotor: i’ve not yet had a chance to test the gate. my plans have been accelerated by our recent turn of events. but if my calculations are correct, by infusing our ships with concentrated quintessence, we should be able to pierce the barrier between realities.

zethrid: sir, this is all the concentrated quintessence we have left.

lotor: and i will use it to reap an untold amount more.

just like keith on thayserix, lotor is leading his team into the unknown. they’re terrified of his plans failing, and not just because of the harm that could befall them, but because of the harm that could befall them even if they do survive.

acxa: we must trust lotor.

ezor: what about narti? she trusted him. you saw where that got her.

acxa: enough. lotor will protect us.

it’s possible that acxa is clinging to something from her past — perhaps, as shiro did with keith, lotor made acxa feel like she belonged and that she was valuable, despite others giving up on her. whatever brought them all together, the generals have been treated by lotor as united teammates — until one of them threatened the safety of his plans, and was then immediately eliminated. from their perspective, this is not that different from the intimidation of zarkon’s rule; the threat of being disposed when they are no longer needed is a sword dangling over their heads.

when team voltron was concerned that keith was pulling away from them, they never feared that he actually wished them harm — just that he wasn’t being attentive to the universe’s safety. when keith explained that he believed his plans would double their efforts to ensure the universe’s safety, they were soothed by it.

team lotor no longer has the guarantee that lotor wants to ensure their safety. unlike team voltron, the generals can relate to keith’s alienation of being part-galra; they felt safe when lotor protected them under that shared umbrella, but that safety is gone, and so comes the decision to avenge narti and turn lotor in.

zethrid: i’m sorry, sir. nothing personal. this is our only way out.

lotor: you plan to give me up. i understand, zethrid. you do what you must — and i’ll do what i must.

lotor splits the team apart, flying away with one half of the comet ship and leaving behind his generals with the other. after this, lotor is abnormally silent. he has no one to communicate his plans to, nor anyone to help him put them into action. when he gets tracked by zarkon, he desperately flies close to a sun to evade him. his grunts and screams of anguish are not unlike keith’s when he battled zarkon, but keith had been reckless out of a desire to end the empire and save the universe. lotor is being reckless because he wants to save himself.

this is generally true of lotor’s plans. his collection of quintessence doesn’t appear to be about ending the empire, only strengthening it to fit His Way of ruling it. keith’s determination to follow lotor’s supply line is about finding the source and severing it, therefore weakening the empire. lotor wasn’t flying through the rift to find out about his origins, just as keith didn’t leave for marmora to find out about his — they both did it for their missions, but those missions happen to be in direct opposition to each other.

because team lotor has parallels with marmora, it’s fair to wonder if marmora’s mission also risks the safety of its members. after the following lecture, one might interpret kolivan as treating those he leads as disposable:

keith: will he be all right?

kolivan: you broke protocol.

keith: i had to!

kolivan: you didn’t consider that something could’ve happened to you — that would make two men down instead of one! every member of the blade of marmora understands that the mission is more important than the individual. this isn’t voltron.

keith: i understand that. in voltron, we would’ve gone back in to save regris. i went back to save the mission. regris had the intel. getting him and it back on the ship was worth the risk.

kolivan doesn’t want to lose any more men — he doesn’t see them as disposable. but he’s critical of needless sacrifice: he saw ulaz’s sacrifice as preventable, and born out of “a penchant for ignoring orders and following his impulses. that’s what got him killed.” it’s clear that kolivan fears the same thing happening to keith — that keith’s impulses will get him killed, no matter how worth the risk they are. the mission is more important than the individual, but an individual putting their life on the line should only happen when they have no other options (like thace); it should never be the first risk that they take.

when they get trapped on the decoy ship, keith proves that saving regris wasn’t just mission-motivated for him. he once again runs to save regris, even though there isn’t any intel to save this time — keith just wants to save regris as an individual, but kolivan knows he won’t make it; he lifts keith up and pulls him away before he loses two men, even as keith struggles against his hold.

back when thace was captured and keith volunteered to finish his job, kolivan was instantly against it, saying that he “would never command someone so inexperienced to go on a mission so dangerous.” he was willing to abort their mission and wait rather than jeopardize everything, claiming that this is how marmora had survived for so long, but allura snapped that their caution was holding them back — that caution was the reason zarkon was still in power. since then, kolivan has gradually taken more risks, and bringing keith along on missions is one of them; marmora is slightly less “in the shadows”, working more openly as themselves, with voltron, and with whoever is open to allyship with them.

he may be worried about keith’s risk-taking and how far keith is willing to go to save people, but kolivan still listens to keith’s perspective. sometimes, kolivan is right to be cautious and keith is wrong to be risky (like when kolivan said they should leave the decoy ship, but keith said they should stay to plant the tracker, leading to regris losing his life — to keith’s immense distraught). but sometimes, like during the battle of naxzela, keith’s intuition is right when kolivan’s intellect is wrong.

coran: that galra fleet heading towards naxzela stopped.

keith: stopped?

coran: yes. quite a distance away, too.

kolivan: perhaps the galra decided it’s too well-fortified to attack.

keith: “victory or death” is the galra way — they never stop attacking. voltron. shiro, can you hear me? shiro! something’s wrong. i’m gonna check it out.

keith steals a ship and flies towards haggar — a move that could become a mirror of when keith fought zarkon by himself after sensing that something was wrong with shiro.

but his time with marmora has repaired keith’s sense of purpose. now, keith feels confident enough to contact matt and the rebels for back-up — to ask them to trust his intuition and follow his lead. “i can’t explain why,” he tells them, “but we need to attack that fleet.” when shiro contacts him, their communication is easier than it had been as dual leaders — after some distance, they’re on the same wavelength again, even if keith is progressing faster.

shiro: keith, can you hear me?

keith: shiro! where are you? is everything okay?

shiro: not for long if we don’t stop zarkon’s witch. she must be aboard that battle cruiser.

keith: i’m way ahead of you — and i brought some back-up!

while keith has a team to communicate with, lotor still has no one. he only finds out about the battle through picking up radio transmissions, and as soon as he hears that a bomb is expected to go off, he wordlessly starts flying, invigorated with a new purpose after drifting through space half-awake. lotor seems to have an idea of where to go, and of what he’ll need to do when he gets there.

guess who he’ll run into?

keith sees that the shield around haggar’s ship cannot be penetrated by normal weapons. he makes the decision to break the barrier with his own small fighter, even if he’ll die in the process. if he succeeds, he’ll save the universe.

and then lotor arrives. and lotor sees that the shield around haggar’s ship cannot be penetrated by normal weapons, and he makes the decision to destroy the barrier with his cannon.

keith pulls back just in time, in complete and utter shock. this is prince lotor; this is the person he’s been trying to track down for months, only for lotor to find him first and save both keith and the universe in the process. the question is if he did it to save the universe — or did he do it to save his own skin?

naturally, S4 ends before we and keith can find out!

WHAT A WILD RIDE.

lotor: i know we’ve had our differences in the past, but — i think it is time we had a discussion.

for me, this quote perfectly encapsulates keith & lotor’s potential. they have enough differences to clash and misunderstand each other, but enough similarities that if they were to discuss them, there is potential to come together and understand each other like no one else could.

that they’re both part-galra only scratches the surface! they are both quick-fire when it comes to swordfighting and piloting, and can get so consumed by Their Way of doing things that not everyone can keep up. they’ve both had to develop survival skills out of family abandonment (for keith, loss and separation; for lotor, belittlement and banishment). both need to solve the mysteries of their mothers, and both have gone separate ways from the found families that they could have had with their teammates. keith could teach lotor not to sacrifice others, and lotor could teach keith not to sacrifice himself. keith could help lotor go with his gut in the heat of the moment, and lotor could help keith strategize in advance. they are both so stubborn about seeing their missions through, even if they often fight with opposing — yet complementary — speeds and styles.

and they are both so unpredictable, which means that a) they will continue to be unpredictable to each other, and b) whatever happens is probably too complex to predict! but we can have fun speculating!

will keith trust lotor? keith is a lot like the red lion: you have to earn his respect. remember that keith understands people by their actions, and he just saw lotor act in a way that went against everything keith had assumed of him. lotor saved the universe! this is on a much grander scale than what happened with acxa in the weblum: lotor acted in open defiance of haggar, and therefore in open defiance of the entire empire. it would be understandable if keith were now willing to hear him out, even if his trust may be a slow burn.

A SIDEBAR ABOUT THE RED LION

when the red lion was captured by the galra, it was on sendak’s ship. does this mean that zarkon considered sendak a worthy candidate of the red lion and of being his right-hand man? did zarkon even consider lotor for the position, or did lotor say or do something that made zarkon consider him unworthy? if any of this is true, it’s another thing that could make keith & lotor’s dynamic complicated, since as far as we know, keith was the first to prove himself to red after alfor’s death.

will keith team up with lotor (+ his generals, should they return)? team lotor is like a middleground between marmora and voltron: a team of galra, but a team of potential peers that are closer in age to keith. keith is even suited to the lightning-quick agility and versatility of the comet ships — and if those ships are intended to have five pilots like voltron (after the third component is built)? it looks like there’s an empty seat for someone to fill, and co-piloting with lotor would certainly be one way for keith to keep an eye on what lotor might be planning. keith may find that he relates not only to lotor, but to everyone’s feelings of being a part-galra outcast (as well as acxa’s relationship with lotor and how it may mirror keith’s with shiro). fighting-wise, he and acxa share the same seriousness about their missions + efficiency in carrying them out, a devotion that makes them reliable right-hands to their leaders; but keith also shares zethrid’s tendency to not want to lose chances to take out their enemy, as well as ezor’s flexible speed in going after that enemy.

will lotor team up with voltron? going after the teludav means that lotor can likely create wormholes, and his cyan quintessence is similar to the energy created by sacred alteans like alfor and allura. lotor may find that he relates not only to keith, but to team voltron’s other leaders: shiro, because they both know how to inspire people as fighters, even impressing the gladiator arena by evading and calculating to survive; they’ve also both been hunted by zarkon and haggar, treated as weapons for the empire’s agenda (instead of as people with their own autonomy). and of course, lotor may relate to allura because she’s the royal heir to the other side of the war, and to the culture that lotor connects to; as an altean diplomat, she knows how to inspire people with words, and she understands the pressures of living up to a father’s legacy (only to find that you don’t have to be your father to be a strong leader; lotor knows this, but keith still needs to learn a variant with shiro). as for additional skills, lotor shares coran + hunk and the holts’ knack for exploring science and technology, as well as coran + lance’s knack for flourish and performance.

will lotor team up with marmora? lotor can relate to being a galra outcast within the galra empire, and will find that some non-galra rebels are hesitant to ally with visible galra (never mind the galra prince). if lotor needs to hide his visibility from those hunting him, the marmora uniform is the perfect option. lotor already knows how to wield a blade, and he already understands kolivan’s perspective of exercising caution/stealth over impulsive action/preventable sacrifice. but would lotor pass the trials, or would they reveal his motives to be self-serving? what (or who) would he see in his virtual mindscape?

will lotor uncover operation kuron? in S3 + S4, lotor seems unaware of the operation (otherwise he would’ve known why black was absent + why team voltron was struggling). but the operation answers to command headquarters, which means haggar is likely in charge, but chose to exclude lotor from her plans (as he did to her). stage three did not seem to use shiro as a spy (otherwise haggar would’ve known about the comet ships as soon as shiro did); but if a future stage uses shiro as a spy, lotor may be attuned to it as he was with narti. further tension with keith would follow, because keith — who has promised to save shiro “as many times as it takes” — would be horrified at the thought of attacking shiro at all, let alone for something shiro can’t control.

will they get the classic trope of “started out fake, ended up real”? because lotor is cunning, he may use their similarities to manipulate keith and alienate him from team voltron, making keith feel like he belongs more with team lotor. will it stay manipulation, or will lotor grow to truly empathize with keith and want to befriend him?

WILL KEITH & LOTOR FINALLY HAVE THE EPIC SWORDFIGHT THAT THE LORD INTENDED? there’s nothing to elaborate on here, except that i doubt it’ll end like 80s!lotor hitting 80s!keith over the head with a rock. or will it?

this could go on for centuries, so please feel free to keep the conversation going with your own speculation!!! i love these two and i love all of the content that fans have put out for them; thank you for reading my geeky contribution!

#keitor #keitorweek2017 #vld keith #keith kogane #vld lotor #prince lotor #vld meta #long post #this may be the latest ship week entry in the history of ship week entries! I AM SO SORRY #but i love their potential dynamic so much and did not want to give up on this even as i went past the deadline #i cover all of my canon bases in the post but i'll just add: i would die for a keitor AU of kimi no na wa (your name)#ALSO MY FAVE SHIP NAME FOR THEM IS LOKEI #except my love for them is highkey #keith and lotor #add-on:#keith and shiro

803 notes · View notes