#i will definitely cover these in the future perhaps in the form of comics

[n4rval]

hi I just wanted to say your tags on the gaster poll posts are so correct yessss (always enjoy your takes just in general). thank you for being one of the seemingly very few people out there who also believes there's no way the timeline works for gaster and alphys to have been colleagues. however, him haunting her benevolently is something I'm 1000% here for <3 (also I hope your finals went well and you get to have a nice relaxing break!)

HII HELLO HI im glad you like them!!! knowing you read these motivates me to keep being Absolutely Very Normal About Him on the internet

personally it's less of a believing thing and more of a come on it's written right there thing, but since we're here.

behold! dingus timeline. (and the hottest of takes with freshly baked personal headcanons otherwise what am i doing)

Not a skeleton?

Isn't 201X too early?

Indeed, not a skeleton, but rather, some guy. Something about how monster's bodies are manifestations of their SOUL, and him oddly resembling a strange looking man does well to represent his insatiable curiosity and love for creating. (things humans are known for in a better light)

On the other hand, you will be pleased with how fascinated he is by "FLESHLINGS AND THEIR CALCIUM DEPOSITS".

And then they fucking died.

201X is the year the first human fell into the underground, and shortly after, the royal family has moved to New Home. This means some decent exploration of the cavern has already been made. Scientists could very well already have been working on optimizing life underground, with special attention to the large and ever growing new capital.

My idea? As this idiot has been aiding exploration with his antics, Gerson was the one to appoint him to Asgore. Something about his talent with turning garbage into non-garbage. With a little patience and getting familiar with his odd manerisms, it was not too long until he got to be the prince's weird godfather.

Cracking already?

And everyone was devastated, mainly the close family. Not only that, but amidst your mourning, the one couple responsible for your unrealistically high standards for romance just divorced. Is love even real anymore. You eat ants with your cereal and your work consists mainly of convenience improvements and absolutely nothing groundbreaking. What's the point of breaking that pesky barrier again? Child murder? Come on.

That's the Wingdings PATIENCE and BRAVERY encountered in their adventure. Dear god, you're lame. Aren't you some kind of genius? Get yourself together! And together he got his self, now, he has children to look after. Surely there must be some other way. He must stop coming up with new flavours for chips and find some other way.

... Dear god, the King is going to kill them.

BONES and DT

Listen. He's old. You got your wrinkles, he's got his cracking. What? You meant to point out some major event of injury must have been responsible for his current state of deformity? Well, he's old AND heartbroken. That's a direct blow to the SOUL, okay.

Jokes aside (kind of), doing any lasting damage to a monster is quite difficult given their magic forms can easily be healed through, well, magic. They can, however, eventually "fall" (wink wink) and dust away with age - which cannot, however, be fixed with magic.

With a little determination however ...

Something about the anomaly.

He found it, the other way. It was the bones all along, the so needed sustainance for channelling such a high concentration of that power. Well, not necessarily, but a boney structure will endure much more and last much longer than a meaty one. Also, it looks so cool.

You know this guy, he gets first dibs on any and all dubious substances that might or might not deal the last hit to the nail on his coffin dust urn(?). And when it all works out (dubious), he might as well play a little. What kind of things can he make? With the material properties of these calcified remains infused with his own magic, animated with determination.

Some new, powerful magic tricks?

A new kind of monster, maybe?

DARK, DARKER, YET DARKER.

There is a lot of interesting things one can do with isolated DT, aside from making bones rattle with life - for example, peeking onto the complex layers and ramifications of what composes reality. This is when the already kooky scientist grows a little mad; manic, if you will. This is the Wingdings sans was familiar with.

Time travel this, resets that, blah blah blah alpha timeline, the anomaly, the angel, the anomaly again, all things that only make sense to him and his illegible mess on the black board. The lack of detail is killing him, he needs to know what it is - what it does, why it does, how it does. Not to stop it, no, there is no stopping it.

Rather, an overwhelming need to understand it.

He falls somewhere in recent history, details of it left ambiguous. The shattering, combined with the amount of DT running in his magical... mathematical physiology, rendered all of his self but an espectator of his reality; confined to the code and unable to do anything but watch, powerless before the nature of his very being, like a corrupted program.

It is all rather frustrating, besides the burden that is coming to terms with simply not existing anymore, watching was pretty much all this research was and now ever will be. That is, until something interacts with him. It is different from the tragic prince, whom no matter how much DT he's accumulated, he is just as confined to this world's rules as other elements. Not this one, not the force from beyond. Not "YOU".

He makes it a mission to reach out, despite the limits of the code, to give away bits and pieces of him and see if you bite. But not too much, he's seen how you tend to exhaust a world for knowledge, something he can oddly sympathize with. I mean, what will you do once you find everything? One cannot fully know a person.

Maybe in another world, prophetized by a cute, little white dog. A much better world for everyone, without so much as war or disease, his greatest creation yet. And he could invite you to it, to experience bewilderment, to be reminded of wonder. If it could even help you, wherever you are, to deem your own world worth of partaking ... then the experiment was a success.

#artwork #inbox #freakbullet #gaster #wd gaster #undertale #deltarune #character design is my passion #not so much graphic design i suck at this #WIPES SWEAT #happy new year!! i've been writing this since christmas!!!!! #sorry if you have to squint at my handwriting its a big canvas #just zoom in #also sorry if my writing lacks extensive details if you were looking for any #im one for visual narrative #so i tried my best to convey everything in the simplest structure i could #and cut short a lot of specifics that are not relevant for a timeline dissection #things like complex feelings and worldbuilding related shenanigans #i will definitely cover these in the future perhaps in the form of comics #this just isnt the place #this is all you need to get a grasp on the character :pray: #there is a lot of proportion inconsistencies on post tragedy old man dont point them out #its just that i've redrawn him like thrice and i was like. you know what? it doesnt have to be perfect #he'll make a cameo when i post fallen humans art

[thegreatwicked]

Shadows of Deception Chapter One

The Great Wicked

Summary: In Gotham City, a world of secrets and danger, Belladonna finds herself embroiled in a web of crime when she becomes a witness to illicit activities at Roman Sions' exclusive club, Masquerade Noir. Instead of eliminating her, Roman sees an opportunity and spares her life, forming an unconventional alliance. They pose as a couple, using each other as alibis to deceive the police. But as they delve deeper into their charade, their connection intensifies, blurring the lines between reality and deception. As desire and danger collide, they discover unexpected love in the midst of a thrilling and forbidden affair.

Rating: Explicit; graphic depictions of sex and violence

Pairing: Roman Sionis/OFC; Belladonna Black, slight Zsasz/OFC if enough interest.

Notes: Yes, I do know Roman Sionis is a bad guy. No, I do not care. Yes, I am absolutely simping over Evan McGreggors portrayal. Setting is not quite the Birds of Prey universe but Roman is definitely a criminal but not quite a sadistic crime lord like he is in the comics. Doni favor one shots? Yes I do, but this would be perhaps the longest one shot in history so it will be a chaptered story. Let me know if you would like to be tagged in future chapters.

Final Note: This story is not meant for minors, you alone are responsible for what you consume on the internet. Minors DNI. I do not consent to having my work translated or posted elsewhere but please feel free to reblog.

Shackles by Steven Rodriguez

The night was supposed to start with a slinky dress that hadn’t seen a night out in months, some overpriced drinks that could be made for cheaper at home and end what she had hoped to be a memorable, hot and very irresponsible one night stand with the first gorgeous stranger she clicked with. She wasn’t looking for Mr. Right, just Mr. Tonight. The worst she expected was a bad DJ, a disappointing romp in the sack and a hangover. Instead it ended with gunshots, the smell of sulfur, threats of torture and several dead bodies at her feet.

It wasn’t like she’d snuck beyond the door for ‘employees only’ because she was looking for some fun. Hardly, she was just trying to disappear from a creep who thought he was hotter than he was. He’d followed her from one end of the bar to the other insisting on buying her drinks. She turned him down each time and she wasn’t subtle or polite about it. No vague “I’m waiting on friends” or “I’m not really thirsty” she told him to his face multiple times that she’d rather die of thirst than to take any drink he offered, but it didn’t deter him at all. He was the type of guy who was a few years older than he let on, wore cologne to hide the fact that he was too lazy to shower before going out and probably couldn’t find the clitoris with both hands and a map. There wasn’t a suit nice enough to cover the cringe nor was there enough liquor in the universe.

Wherever she went, he had followed. If she were on the dance floor somehow he found her, hiding in the bathroom? He was right outside. She had been dying for a smoke but there was no way in hell she was going outside where he could corner her. And he’d made it only too clear on what he’d been interested in when she decided to ditch him for good. Sure, she shouldn’t have been there but she just wanted to lose the guy. The back of the house seemed as good an option as any.

The door didn’t have a lock, it was a simple handle and it only took her a split second to slip past it. A quick but maybe not the best decision but she didn’t have a ton of options. Rejecting a man was dangerous at the best of times and she was alone in a club in a wealthy part of town where a cosmo cost nearly twenty dollars. But a man where it hurts; his dick or his wallet and no telling what these types would do.

The door had no windows so she couldn’t tell if he was right behind her but she instead decided on rounding a corner just in case he stuck his head in. Maybe it would have been better if she’d just kneed him in the crotch and run like hell. The closest corner to duck behind was at the end of a fairly long hall leading to a storage area. Her high heels clutched firmly in her hand as she ran barefoot down the corridor to avoid making any noise. It worked a little too well, unfortunately and not in any way that benefited her in the long run.

Several seconds of silence passed as she glanced back down the hall sticking out as little as possible with only the sound of her slightly hurried breathing. No sign of the guy, several seconds turned into a few minutes of dead silence but something about it was wrong, the hair on the back of her neck stood up and as soon as she turned around, the reason became clear. That horrible cold sensation ran down her back and settled in the pit of her stomach.

Shit.

Whatever she walked in on, she wasn't meant to see, and the three men there were just as surprised to see her. Two guys looked like laborers and their expressions went from shock to anger very quickly. One pulled out a box cutter, the other reached for a length of pipe. The last one to turn and face her set off every internal alarm she had, everything about him was bad.

From his ill fitted suit to his greasy slicked back hair to the hand gun in his waistband.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

He shook his head as he stepped towards her, he couldn’t pull off a sympathetic look if his life depended on it. Shame, because hers did.

“Bad timing lady…”

“You’re telling me.” Her voice was hardly a whisper and the words hadn’t left her lips when she dropped her shoes and turned to bolt back the way she came. Shouts followed her, and the sound of heavy boots and shoes on the ground echoed loudly.

She had no idea where she was and in her panic, the simple hall back to the club's main floor had been erased from her memory. She took several turns hoping to run into anyone but also dreading running into anyone, she had no idea if those men were the only ones who would be after her.

The sound of shoes faded and she chanced a look back but saw no one, her furious heartbeat hammered in her chest. She was alone.

Maybe they’d gotten scared and run off, afraid of being discovered while pursuing her.

Time to go home.

It would have been a great idea if she hadn’t turned another corner and walked into a solid mass of man. Rough hands grabbed at her arms and pulled her back down the hall. She shrieked and flailed, kicking her legs out, not knowing or seeing all that well what she was aiming for. Panic flooded her chest as her fight or flight kicked into overdrive.

A hand quickly clamped over her mouth as she was dragged back down the corridor kicking and trying to break the iron grip on her arms. Not that she thought anyone could honestly hear her, the music was muffled from the main dance floor which gave her little chance of being heard.

The guy in the suit was waiting for her, and he looked pissed. He leaned against a table with plastic bags of powder spread on it and a briefcase of cash in plain view. She was no narcotics cop but she knew drugs when she saw them.

She flew like a rag doll against a wall with such force that knocked the wind right out of her. Her lungs clawed for air trying to catch up with what had just happened. As quickly as she scrambled back into a sitting position and managed to get a breath in, he was standing there.

One thumb tucked into his pocket looking down at her like a disappointed parent. He was the type of guy who liked looking down on people but was probably too low on the totem pole to get to do it too often. He wore gold jewelry and not in a tasteful way, gold rings, gold watch, gold chain necklace. From a distance he could have just been a guy in a bad suit, up close he looked like an extra from the movie the Goodfellas or a Mr. T reject.

His smile was very off putting because it wasn’t a real smile. “Should have stuck to the dance floor.” There was only one door that she could reach and it was an emergency exit. The way she had come in was blocked by the two men. He watched her eyes flicker to the emergency exit and shook his head and actually gave an audible tsk, tsk, tsk. When the exit wasn’t an option she frantically searched the room for something, anything. “You know, if a sign says employees only, maybe you should stay on the other side of the door it’s on.”

He probably thought he had the upper hand, thought she was too scared to do anything or try anything, she was scared shitless but not enough to do nothing. The two men behind him chuckled and he turned to nod to them. She had seen the gun on his waistband, and before she realized exactly what she was doing, her arm shot out and miraculously found purchase with the cold steel of the grip. She jerked her hand back, the gun went off and an odd sense of disassociation came over her.

The room smelled like sulfur and the barrel was smoking and in an instant she had somehow managed to fire off three shots. The suit monkey in front of her was on his back clutching his side, blood flowing from where she had just shot him, looking up at her in disbelief.

His accomplices couldn’t be of much help, one bullet struck one man in the leg just below the knee, the other in the hip.

Oh shit. Oh fuck.

Fight had turned to flight and as quickly as she could, she made a dash for the way she’d come in and again, ran into another hard body.

This guy was different. He wasn’t like the other men, a grip of steel shot out and grabbed the gun that had still been clutched in her hand, aiming towards the ceiling away from any potential targets. Another shot went off before it was wrenched from her hand, she yelped. Another arm wrapped itself over her chest, keeping her from getting away.

“What in the fuck is this?” The voice was angry and dangerous and when he called out to someone else she realized he wasn’t alone. “Take this.” His other arm now free of the gun kept her caged against his body and she had even less room to maneuver. “For fucks sake, stop struggling already!” He tossed her to the ground into a corner, her head smacking against the cinderblock wall.

“Looks like quite the party back here.” Another voice, and something mechanical sounding, the gun. “Well, she won’t be winning any marksman competitions anytime soon but three out of four isn’t bad.” It must have been the little birdies and stars dancing around her head but there was an air of lightheartedness to his voice and she couldn’t tell if it was comforting or concerning. Things either weren’t as bad as they seemed or they were far worse.

“Jesus Christ, look at this mess…” The first man sounded less angry now and more likely he was inconvenienced, like he was running late to a meeting. “What’s going on here, Jimmy?”

Jimmy, the guy she shot? Yeah, he looked like a Jimmy, he was bleeding out but despite that, he didn’t look even remotely concerned until the guy in the suit spoke to him and only then he looked up at him with a look of fear in his eyes. Like his greatest nightmare had stepped out of his subconscious. He tried to choke out words but nothing short of a garbled response was audible.

“Uh, boss?”

“What is it, Zsasz?” Zsasz? What the hell kind of name was that? Sounded like a cult leader.

“We’ve got a bit of a situation here.”

“What could possibly be worse than-“ he stopped dead and his body stilled in a concerning way. The man he’d called Zsasz, who she could finally see properly now was standing next to the table holding up a white bag. “Fuck!”

“Looks like Cobblepots branding. Picking up some side work, Jimmy?” Zsasz looked at Jimmy with pure disgust and tossed a bag to his boss, he caught it easily and examined the packet. His brow furrowed in anger and the corner of his lips turned into a snarl.

“Cobblepot?” He growled, his voice now sounding positively feral. She had no idea who these men were or what exactly was going on but she knew the name Cobblepot. Everyone knew that name. Oswald Cobblepot, drug dealer, arms supplier, owner of the Iceberg Lounge, overall a well known name in Gotham, not a man to cross. Suddenly her presence wasn’t the biggest issue in the room but the situation had gotten even more dangerous.

He stalked over to her and held the bag's contents in his gloved hand and looked down at her. Several tense moments passed, his face gave little away in terms of what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to decide if it was more trouble to kill her, pay her to be quiet or count on fear to keep her silent. Maybe he was trying to decide where to dump her body.

“Know what this is?”

Yeah, it was probably drugs but she couldn't be more specific and she didn't want to give the impression that she knew more than she did, so she shook her head.

“No.” Something about how he spoke and looked at her gave her the impression that he preferred words to gestures. She shouldn’t have been concerned with it but now that she could see him better it was hard to ignore. He was gorgeous. Eccentric but gorgeous. Black pinstripe suit with silver accents that were giving her hard core Liberace vibes. Dark hair styled perfectly, not slicked back like the suit monkey and he was wearing rose tinted glasses. The look worked for him but the irritated look on his face was kind of spoiling the whole thing for her.

He looked to Zsasz and then back to her. She was probably much prettier when she wasn’t terrified. She reminded him of a cornered mouse. “What’s your name?” His tone was flat and uninterested.

“Belladonna Black.” She tried to keep her voice from shaking but it was difficult.

“Why are you in the back of my club?” A terrible weight dropped in her stomach and the cold feeling raced up her back.The kind you get when your body is trying to tell you that you’re in deep shit. His club? This was Roman Sionis. He was usually in the tabloids, known for having a volatile temper and little patience and extravagant tastes, now the suit and glasses made sense.

It took a minute for her lips to form words, suddenly dealing with a creepy guy wasn’t so bad compared to this. “I was trying to lose a guy in the club, I just ducked back here long enough to ditch him.”

He didn’t seem very impressed with her reasoning but he also didn’t seem like he didn’t believe her. “And it looks like you walked in on something that you weren’t supposed to see. Well, that’s unfortunate… Maybe you should have found a bouncer instead.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“Boss?” Zsasz held out a smartphone to Roman, he looked at the phone and watched carefully, the audio was loud enough for her to recognize her own voice and the sounds of running and struggle.

Zsasz watched her with an expression that said he definitely had a plan to kill her and dispose of the body or knew the right drug to give her to make her forget this while night had happened, he was just waiting on word and that he didn’t particularly care which one happened. Zsasz was one of the most intimidating men she’d ever seen, if his stone cold sociopathic expression didn’t do it, the dozens of scars across his arms and chest as well as neck did. He had scars like most men had tattoos. His gaze was icy, suggesting that the workings of his mind were very pragmatic and matter of fact. Meanwhile Roman seemed to be having a debate in his head. He handed the phone back to Zsasz and shoved his hands in his pockets and with a tilt of his head he studied her.

“Well, look at that Angel? Looks like you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing could be more innocent.” His emphasis on the word innocent suggested he believed in the concept about as much as unicorns.

“Kill the feed.” Zsasz nodded and tapped away at the phone. “Don’t move.” He warned in a low growl then turned and walked back to Jimmy and his two men. He didn’t walk, no he stalked towards them placing a leather Italian shoe on Jimmy’s bleeding side. Jimmy half groaned, half yelped loudly, she suddenly felt kind of bad for him. “Dealing for Cobblepot in my own club…” He ran a hand through his hair before holding his hand out to Zsasz, and Zsasz gave him the gun back. “I warned you, Jimmy.” She watched as he racked a round into the chamber and fired three shots in rapid succession. Jimmy stopped moving. “I’m afraid it’s not going to work out, Jimmy.” He then fired two shots into each of the men at the door and once more he handed the gun back to Zsasz. “Make the call.”

“What about her?” She was pale, eyes transfixed on the scene before her, somehow unable to move, too in shock to speak.

“Oh,” Now he sounded like someone had told him he couldn’t leave the table until his dinner was done. Like an annoyed teenager. She didn’t scream which was probably the only reason she too didn’t have a bullet in her head, or because he used them all on Jimmy and his friends. He looked around and shrugged before stepping forward taking off his rose tinted glasses. He looked her up and down now. His gaze leisurely and predatory at the same time, it gave her chills.

It seemed like he was making a mental list of pros and cons, he paced back and forth for a minute. Zsasz kept looking at her like a guard dog waiting to be let off his leash. She didn’t need to be told that the only thing holding him back from turning her into confetti was the word from Roman. “Fuck!” He groaned, “These decisions are always easier when they’re ugly…” He complained to Zsasz. Was that a compliment?

His hand again, found its way combing through his hair making a mess of the styled locks before straightening his suit collar then he finally turned to look at her.

“Clean up crew is on the way, three or four?”

“Three’s plenty. Four's a crowd.” She let out a breath in relief. It seemed like he didn’t plan on killing her. Not yet anyway. “It’s your lucky night, Angel.”

His entire demeanor changed as flashed a smile that under normal circumstances would make her swoon. It was shocking, this sudden 180 he pulled. Jesus, if not for the dead bodies and the fact that she’d just seen him shoot three people she just might be falling under his spell.

Zsasz leaned in as Roman muttered something to him. Then Zsasz nodded and walked away quickly, leaving the two of them alone. Roman offered a leather clad hand to help her up, she hesitated at first but eventually took his hand and got to her feet.

“Zsasz is going to take you home and you’re going to behave for him. You’re going to keep that pretty mouth shut about what you saw here tonight, you’re not going to say a word to anyone. Not even your cat, understand, Angel?”

“You’re letting me go?”

“For now.” He paused, “Don't misread the situation here, you’ve been a naughty girl, sneaking around here. And I should put a bullet in your head and dump you into Gotham Bay,” he uttered the last sentence with considerable venom. She shrunk back slightly but couldn’t go far as Roman was still holding onto her hand. “But I’m feeling generous tonight, as without you here I might not have found out about this disloyal employee.” He leaned in closer now, barely a breath away. “ If you speak a word of this to anyone I’ll have Zsasz string you up and slice that pretty face of yours off like a discount Halloween mask. Understand?” She nodded shakily, “Say the words, Angel.”

“I understand.”

“Are you going to be a good girl for me?”

“Yes.” She wished her voice hadn’t come off so weak sounding but it felt like she was walking on a glass bridge that could shatter at any minute with the wrong step.

“Good girl.”

People should have warning signs around their necks, warning the public of their idiotic behavior. Belladonna’s would read ‘Do not allow to ingest tequila.’ Vodka left her feeling light and floaty, gin reminded her of seltzer water; annoyingly bland. And rum of course brought out her inner stripper, like it did for most women, everyone has a drink that does that to them. Tequila was the one that left her feeling like she’d gone five rounds in a boxing ring. Laying in her bed, with sunlight streaming through her window, she groaned and pulled the pillow over her head and immediately regretted it. The back of her head was throbbing, odd, Tequila usually left her with an all over headache, not one specific spot. Her hand threaded through her hair to ease the ache and froze when it found a considerable lump on the back of her head, she shot up in bed, sunlight be damned and felt that cold feeling again. She didn’t drink last night.

Then last night drifted into her memory, the smell of sulfur and blood, the sound of gunshots, and the feeling of being trapped. Black leather gloves. Roman Sionis. She felt like throwing up.

Then she did. Barely made it to the trashcan in time.

Her apartment was blissfully empty and nothing seemed out of place. The cold water she guzzled did little to get rid of the taste of bile in her mouth, so the first order was brushing her teeth and then maybe some more panic.

She hadn’t had anything to drink last night but she still felt hungover, could a traumatic experience do that? A quick google search suggested it wasn’t impossible and that if she felt sick then to treat it as such, but a quick inventory of her medicine cabinet found that she was seriously lacking in aspirin. If she wasn’t drunk last night, she had every intention of drinking herself stupid tonight.

But she didn’t want to leave her apartment, not after what happened. She found herself pacing her living room for the better part of the morning, uncertain of what to do. She remembered Roman's warning.

“If you speak a word of this to anyone I’ll have Zsasz string you up and slice that pretty face of yours off like a discount Halloween mask.”

On the bright side, she didn’t have a cat. She wondered why she didn’t just do what most women her age did; stay in, drink wine and watch violent slashers. Her stomach churned, maybe not a slasher, but she didn’t like romcoms, right, so documentaries it was. The urge to throw up wasn’t far behind, but there was nothing to throw up.

A quick check of her phone saw the time creeping up close to eleven, she remembered Zsasz dropping her off at her apartment around three but she wasn’t sure how long the whole thing behind the club had taken. Had she only been asleep eight hours? Could that be right? Her phone had no text messages or missed calls and the date told her it was only Saturday, so it wasn't like she’d slept all day. Christ.

Her head was pounding. There was a bodega a block away from her place, she could run in, grab some aspirin, bagels and something to drink and be good until Monday when she had work. The guy who ran the bodega was a nice old guy who she was fairly certain only spoke Korean, either way, all her past interactions suggested that he wasn’t likely to start chatting with her over hangover remedies. She nodded slowly to herself. Yeah, that was it, she’d grab some things and be done with it and get home. No harm, no foul.

Yeah, she could do this.

She grabbed her purse and slipped on some ripped jeans, a Gotham City Rogues t-shirt and some old sneakers. Throwing her hair into a messy bun and grabbing her cropped leather jacket, she didn't mean to look like she was going to start a girl rock revolution but figured she’d blend in and be just another face in the Saturday crowd. She locked her door behind her and tried to stay focused on getting to the bodega and back again without incident.

It was all fine and well until she hit the street, then the sounds of the city hit her like finding out she left the volume turned up on her headphones. She jumped as a taxi rushed past her like some kind of tourist, cringe. Then she remembered her headphones were actually in her jacket pocket, she wasn’t planning on listening to any music, but just to use them to drown out the ambient noise that she usually loved.

It was a quick brisk walk over to the shop oddly called Ernies, even though the guy who owned it was Korean, or Vietnamese, she wasn’t sure. But today was not the day to find out. Belladonna had been, at one point comfortable enough in this city to walk barefoot in it but now, every movement startled her, every car backfiring sounded like a gunshot and every person casually looking her way put her on edge. Several times she could have sworn she saw Roman Sionis or Zsasz watching her but they always turned out to be just some wall street guy in a suit or some random buff guy in a wifebeater. They smiled and winked at her which she never returned on a good day, but it was oddly comforting this time, as she didn’t think Zsasz and Roman to be the smiling and winking type.

The familiar bell over the door was comforting and as soon as she stepped into the bodega it felt like she stepped into a hug. There was a hot bar that always had hot dogs and asian finger foods that she never tried before and the smell of the foods made her briefly forget why she had come in, in the first place. It was only when she reached up to scratch her head that she remembered the aspirin.

Fifteen minutes later she had a basket with a few drinks, aspirin, fresh bagels, and a bag of m&ms. She decided to pass on the bottle of wine.

She jumped when someone spoke over her shoulder, and she tried not to panic when she saw two police officers.

“Man, I love these things!”

“What the hell are they?”

“They’re called bao, like a steamed bun with beef and onions inside. I could eat a hundred of them!”

They weren’t talking to her, just talking around her, but the information and her current situation gave her the push to try something new. She asked for two of them while the cops behind her continued on with their conversation about what awas superior foreign food or good old fashioned american hot dogs.

The guy who ran the shop gave her his usual wordless smile and she left with her two reusable bags. No conversation, no questions, no comments, and she was a ten minute walk from the safety of her apartment.

The sounds of the traffic had died down enough or she had calmed herself to the degree that they didn’t startle her anymore. She was herself again within the span of that short walk. She’d even reached into one of her bags for the fresh hot bao she’d just purchased, its smell calling to her empty stomach. It didn’t last two minutes, she hadn’t eaten since dinner last night before she went out and she was suddenly wishing she’d bout a dozen of them.

It was savory and hot and hit a spot she didn’t know she’d had, and by the time she got to her building she was even smiling.

Her door was still locked as she had left it but her sense of relief vaporized in an instant when on her coffee table she saw something that made her stomach turn. Something that hadn’t been there.

A pair of black high heels. The ones she’d been wearing last night and the headless stem of a rose.

Everyday her assistant had asked her if she ‘had a case of the Mondays’ all week, usually a harsh look was enough for Daisy, her assistant to move onto other things. But sure enough the young woman had asked her in some fashion or other everyday if she was having a bad day and it was an unfair question. She hadn’t been having a bad day, she had been having a bad week.

Spring fashion week was coming up and this was the calm before the storm. In a matter of two weeks her studio would be a madhouse of activity with agents, models, designers, and other photographers all jockeying for the best work. Personally, she hated fashion week.

She didn’t pick up a camera with the intent of taking pretty photos of rail thin models wearing expensive dresses that didn’t conform to her sense of fashion in the slightest. She’d picked up a camera because she preferred shooting objects instead of people.

And her preferred type of photography was going out of style, not too many people shot actual wet film, everything was digital. Her favorite pastime was going the way of the dinosaurs, which made her a bit old school. Or so everyone who’d ever set foot in her apartment ever told her, not too many people had their own personal darkroom.

Maybe a few hours in her darkroom this weekend would settle her down, calm her mind. It sounded like a nice and easy weekend in, and she needed nice and easy after the week she’d had.

The studio was a mess, the vanity had product all over it, the mirror covered with smudges, clothes and props strewn about. The last of the crew had left and it was just Belladonna and Daisy.

It was nice to finally have some quiet after the storm that had swept through. She busied herself with turning off lights and moving furniture back to where she preferred it while Daisy tidied up the vanities and bathroom. Some models were thoughtful and didn’t leave the place a mess, others, well, not so much.

It became apparent that Daisy had been talking to her when a hand waved over her face and she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and looked at a startled Daisy, usually their evenings were filled with idle chatter but tonight she knew she wasn’t an active participant.

“Sorry, what?”

Daisy blinked, “What's got you wound up so tight?”

“Just a long day.”

“More like a long week.” Daisy muttered, “What’s going on with you? You’ve been out of it all week, it’s weird really. I’ve never seen you so… robotic.” Belladonna shook her head and shrugged. “Does this have anything to do with what happened last Friday?”

Her blood ran cold. She hadn’t said anything to Daisy about what happened, hell she didn’t even tell her she’d been out. “What do you mean?”

“The voicemail you got from Jackson?”

Jackson! Relief flooded her, and she made a mental note to cut Daisy some slack the next time she asked her if she was having a case of the Mondays. She slumped down onto the couch and groaned internally, truth be told she’s forgotten about her ex’s phone call. The thing that had prompted her to go out in the first place.

“I’m busting my ass working fifty hours a week on a good week, getting further and further away from any thought of him and then I hear he’s engaged and I’m jealous.” She released a deep held breath, “Why am I jealous?”

Her and Jacks had been steady for two years and then an on again and off again thing for over a year and their chemistry was amazing but in their last year together something always came up. In the end he would never choose her and they’d break up for a bit and then get back together. The final straw was another canceled date. She just wanted a straight answer from him about what was going to happen between them. Daisy gave her a comforting look.

“How about we go out and have some fun at a club? Grab some drinks and maybe flirt with some cute guys?”

The thought made her feel sick. She shook her head as nonchalantly as she could manage. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You sure? It’s Friday night in Gotham, anything can happen.”

Don’t I know it?

“No, I think I’m going to go home and binge watch Lucifer.” Daisy didn’t seem convinced, “Seriously, I am perfectly happy spending time alone.”

“Do you want me to stay and help you finish?”

“No, go enjoy your weekend while you can. We’ve got about two weeks until hell week. Go have fun.”

“Well, if you’re sure. I’ll have a lemon drop in your honor.” She chuckled and nodded, the gesture was sweet. Daisy was a nice girl but she was a younger girl than Belladonna, almost ten years younger. Still in that clubbing, lemon drop drinking phase. She remembered those days. “See you Monday.”

Daisy gave her one final wave and went about finishing up in the studio. With Daisy gone she breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She had forgotten about Jackson.

She wasn’t even sure if she missed him so much as she missed having someone in her life that she was comfortable with.

She grabbed her jacket and purse before locking up the studio and setting the panel alarm.

It was a bit late for the subway and she didn’t see any taxis so maybe walking a few blocks would help clear her head. She hadn’t gone far before she realized someone was following her.

When a hand reached out behind her she shrieked and spun in her heels.

“Belladonna Black?” Her eyes were wide in fear and as they met the disinterested faces of two men in off the rack suits and two badges made a quick appearance. “Detectives Ramirez and Craven with the GCPD, we’ve got a few questions for you.”

Chapter Two

#roman sionis smut #romansionisfanfiction #smut #fake relationship #fanfiction is life #original character #close proximity #slightly toxic #I’m the bad guy #slight power imbalance #medium burn romance #Roman Sionis original female character #18+ content #18+ only #shadows of deception #Roman Sionis toxic love fangirl club

[mr-poire]

This is fascinating, thank you! Speaking of the Doctor’s old enemies, like the Daleks, what are the statuses of the Time Lady’s oldest nemeses, such as Davros, The Cybermen, and The Master in this Penultimate era? Given how far in the Doctor’s future this takes place, I can’t help but wonder if they could have changed significantly along with her. On that note, what kind of new villains and/or obstacles does this TARDIS crew end up facing?

Thank YOU for all your questions and your interest toward my silly idea, I'm not used to this kind of interest, aha !

I don't have a definite plan for every classic Monsters yet. They're a bit intimidating as they've been done countless times by far more interesting writers than I am. I had a few general ideas though.

Daleks : after the definite death of Davros, I would imagine them mutating despite their best efforts to remain "pure", their organic part slowly outgrowing their tank and partially encompassing it to make them a mix of fleshy and metallic parts. Gross, self-hating, savage and destructive things, driven even more insane by their own selves. Perhaps hiding from the world in the Time Vortex out of shame as lone drifters but still as dangerous as ever, especially if they were to be expelled by accident at any place and time or, worse, if two were to meet on accident, immediately tearing each other apart and leaving their battlefield barren.

Cybermen : I was partial to the idea of going for a more morally grey version of them here, which I would've renamed "Cyberkind". A bit more androgynous and chirurgical looking. They would have managed to overcome their desire to convert everyone once, according to some fairytale-sounding story, at the height of their dominion over the universe, then covered in metal, a single blade of grass would have still grown on one of their worlds, somehow quick starting a chain reaction in their programmed world view to finally accept that organic life does, in fact, prevails in spite of them. Of course the reality behind their change of heart might have more to do with a certain Doctor... Going to one of their worlds would be in theory harmless enough now, as long as you wouldn't plan on getting hurt/sick on accident, with the risk of getting Cyber-converted as a gesture of "good will".

The Master : I wanted to go for a new version of Missy but as a Time Tot this time (love his Time War Incarnation from the comic books), looking like a cute and innocent blonde girl in pigtails, which would be perfect to trap her victims into a false sense of security and could create an interesting dynamic with the youngest of the Doctor's companion. But she might lack her character development from the show and I would like to make a more nuanced version of Missy so I'm not sure.

As for new menaces, I had a few in mind such as a form of sentient fongi that would possess robotic life-forms (like theses spores that take control of ants) instead of organic ones, an egg from an alien that fills the space it is put in when it's born that a companion could bring back as a souvenir inside the TARDIS by mistake, making it grow infinitely inside its corridors, or an alien species built around the concept of multiple personalities depending on the social situation...

But I think the main "villains" from these stories would be two Watchers (as in the being that manifested before Four regenerated into Five), but more fleshed out, each offering a possible future for the Doctor : one where she continues her adventures as always, becoming more and more renown and powerful, Time Lord Victorious-style, and one where she accepts her own mortality to become the Curator. Her main antagonist in the end would be, as it's always been (to me at least) her own time and life running out of her control. Her companions would only perceive these figures as mysterious enemies, seemingly pursuing them everywhere they go until the Doctor sees them and runs away, but I figured she would probably know what they are from the beginning.

Hope I didn't ramble too much and hope it wasn't too vague of an answer ! I barely know what I'm doing with this "story".

[lightsonparkave]

HAPPY TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO LIGHTS ON PARK AVE! 🎂🎉 In celebration of LoPA’s birthday (August 22, to be exact), all of the prompts from the previous year are up for grabs.

Round 24 will end on August 31, 11:59 PM ET (what time is that for me?).

As always, you’re free to jump in whenever you’d like during the round, a wide variety of work types is accepted, and there are no minimum work requirements. Unfinished works and works for other fandom events are allowed. You can find more information about Lights on Park Ave and the participation guidelines here.

Here are all 149 prompts. Go crazy and have fun! 🎈

ROUND 13: TIME

A quote about being infinite in the present moment from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Vellichor,” the the strange wistfulness of used bookstores

“How long is forever?” dialogue from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“Time” - Hans Zimmer (Inception OST)

A quote and gifset from Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) about the nonlinear structure of time

Agnès Varda’s portraits when she was 20, 36, and 80 years old

A John Irving quote about what time does to the people who matter to us

Ten traveling back to see Rose on New Year’s Day in 2005 before he dies and reincarnates in Doctor Who

Future inventions in 2015 as seen in Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Part II (1989)

A quote about what time does for wounds

ROUND 14: LIMINALITY

A photoset of various liminal spaces

Illustration of a black cat in front of a red-lit house with the caption, “They say no one is living here—but the lights come on, once every year”

A photoset of Victorian-era spirit photography, an art form that attempted to capture the ghost of a deceased loved one

Information on the famous Mojave phone booth, a lone telephone booth in the middle of the desert that received calls from all over the world

Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits Third Edition’s definition of “witching hour”

Illustration of a ghost train on an abandoned trestle bridge in the Pacific Northwest

A quote by Isabel Allende about spirits coming out at night in the library

Gifset of the spirit world in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001)

Illustration of a neon roadside sign of a motel that only appears at night by a long-forgotten highway

“Pacific Coast Highway” - Kavinsky

A gifset quote from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Scenery from Twin Peaks season 1 (1990)

A quote about something shifting into a strange, new place inside of a person from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

ROUND 15: LOSS

A quote about being lost and found by someone special by Sue Zhao

A photo of the Mildred, wrecked off Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall in 1912

A quote about ephemerality and the beauty of it from Troy (2004)

Two paintings of people visiting ruins by Caspar David Friedrich

A quote about desire and loss by Lara Mimosa Montes

A photo of an overgrown, abandoned conservatory

A passage about what disappears and what remains in ruins from Suicide by Édouard Levé

Dialogue about gratitude for people who aren’t meant to stay in your life but shape who you are from BoJack Horseman

A scene from Fleabag where the Priest chooses God over Fleabag and gently tells Fleabag that her love for him will pass before they part ways

A prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, people, and souls

Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, covered in lipstick kisses from admirers

Photos of a cemetery statue in Austria, wrapped in branches and dead leaves, holding a single flower

ROUND 16: DEVOTION/SERVICE

A gifset of Kevin on the phone, telling Chiron he’ll cook food for him from Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight (2016)

Buttercup’s monologue to Westley about how she would do anything for him from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Gifs of Merlin saying that he was born to serve Arthur from BBC’s Merlin

An excerpt about giving all of oneself to someone despite what it costs from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A gifset of various times Jaime and Brienne demonstrate their loyalty to and love for each other in Game of Thrones

A gifset of all the different ways Cliff is there for Rick in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

A gifset of Nadia deciding to be by Alan’s side no matter what in Russian Doll

“Devotion” - Ocean Vuong

A gifset of Bond comforting a traumatized Vesper in the shower in Casino Royale (2006)

A gifset of Sookhee refusing to leave Hideko, saying her job is to look after her in Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

ROUND 17: DREAMS

A dreamscape gifset and quote about repressed thoughts in dreams and the Internet from Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006)

A gifset of Mitsuha and Taki finally meeting in their own bodies in a dream from Shinkai Makoto’s Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016)

A quote by Tinker Bell telling Peter Pan where he can find her and where she’ll always love him in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991)

The scene where Keating tells his students that poetry, beauty, romance, and love give life meaning in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An animated illustration of a storefront called “Hauntings” with a flickering “99¢ dreams” neon sign

Various dreamscape scenes and a quote about ideas being the most resilient parasite from Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

A quote about how all living beings must dream to survive reality from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A comic about people we love taking turns to visit us in dreams every night

Lovers and Sleeping Couple, two drawings by Egon Schiele

A quote about belief in a better world by Robert Frobisher to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A quote about the feeling of falling in love lingering when you wake up from a dream in Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (2009)

A photo of subway graffiti by an unknown author insisting that they’ll never give up making the world a better place to live in

ROUND 18: PHYSICAL TOUCH

A scene about how to return a stolen kiss from Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks (2014)

A line about kissing someone the way a flower opens from “I Know Someone” by Mary Oliver

A gifset focusing on showing affection and care through hands from Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

A passage about two people leaving invisible marks on each other through the accumulation of touches over the years from A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Two conversations about never being touched before and only being touched by one person from Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016)

Going from yearning to touch someone but stopping oneself to being allowed to touch them from Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy

Moving art of two bodies made of stars and the cosmos embracing

A quote about maintaining sanity by touching someone but being separated despite proximity from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A line about proving that one still exists and is real through touch from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Different touches between Villanelle and Eve expressing violence, threat, sexual tension, comfort, and companionship in Killing Eve

A juxtaposition of two scenes from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) of Su Li-zhen rejecting and accepting Chow Mo-wan’s hand

A compilation of marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Syd (Chris Evans) trailing kisses down London’s back in London (2005)

ROUND 19: IMMORTALITY

James Baldwin talking about how art helps you discover that people before you have experienced the same thing as you and you are not alone

Dr. Brand saying that love transcends time and space in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014)

Nadia and Alan meeting for the first time as they’re about to die and relive the same day again in Russian Doll

The loneliness of losing everyone by having a long life as expressed by Ten in Doctor Who

The doomed eternal time loop romance of Simon and Alisha from Misfits

A quote by Edvard Munch about becoming eternal through the flowers that grow from his body after death

Nagai Kei recalling the traffic accident that killed him and triggered his immortality, making him one of the rare persecuted humans to possess the power, in Ajin

A collection of moments from Jay Russell’s Tuck Everlasting (2002)

A quote by Mary Wollstonecraft hoping for something that lasts inside the heart

Various scenes with Jack Harkness from Doctor Who

Aya telling Asou-kun to live on and live forever as she nears the end of her life in 1 Litre of Tears

An excerpt about the immortalization of the self through love from “Love of the Wolf” in Hélène Cixous’s Stigmata

A collection of scenes from the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”

Naoko telling Toru to always remember her and remember that she existed in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Dom explaining to Ariadne that he uses the PASIV to dream as it’s the only way that he can be with his wife and children in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

ROUND 20: POETRY

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” - Danez Smith

A line about wanting to forget how much you loved someone and then actually forgetting from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” - Joy Harjo

“In Time” - W. S. Merwin

“By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.” - Jack Gilbert

“Magdalene: The Addict” - Marie Howe

“Wild Geese” - Mary Oliver

“Morphology 2″ - CJ Scruton

“20″ from Moscow in the Plague Year by Marina Tsvetaeva

“To Hold” - Li-Young Lee

ROUND 21: LONGING

“I Loved You Before I Was Born” - Li-Young Lee

A poem about longing for someone through worlds by Izumi Shikibu

A gifset of Marianne and Héloïse falling in love from Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

“Make Me Feel” - Janelle Monáe

A quote about living in longing being better than realizing that longing from 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

“I Want You” - Mitski

Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades - Friedrich Heinrich Füger

Long definition of the word “saudade”

Definition of the word “hiraeth”

“Something About Us” - Daft Punk

Two lines about burning quietly from the poem “The Pillowcase” by Annelyse Gelman

A conversation about wanting each other after decades of separation from Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019)

A Hanahaki disease mood board

“Shrike” - Hozier

Two lines about wanting someone to return from Herakles by Euripides

“Love of My Life” - Queen

“Eyes, Nose, Lips” - Taeyang

A screenshot of Kathy and Tommy holding onto each other desperately from Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) and a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel

ROUND 22: YOUTH

“Perfect Places” - Lorde

A piece about realizing you’ll never be this young again, but it’s the first time you’re this old by Kalyn Roseanne Livernois

A conversation between Neil and Mr. Keating about Neil feeling trapped and unable to live the life he wants because of his father from Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An excerpt about being too young to know how to love properly from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” - Arctic Monkeys

Elio’s father telling Elio not to try to rid himself of his sorrow and pain—and with that joy—which he feels so strongly because he’s so young from Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

A quote about how everything feels final to young people because they’re experiencing it for the first time from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Lara Jean telling Peter that she had to make it seem like she liked him to deal with her love letter fiasco in Susan Johnson’s To All the Boys I Loved Before (2018)

Rue and Jules dancing together and partying it up in Euphoria

“Le Plongeoir” by Laurent Roch

A quote about being pushed into adulthood and not being ready from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

A photo of a roller rink illuminated by pink and purple lights

Pastel photo series of Coney Island by Mijoo Kim and Minjin Kang

“Hips Don’t Lie” - Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean

“Young Dumb & Broke” - Khalid

Different moments accompanied by the letter to Mr. Vernon at the end of detention from John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985)

Various scenes and a quote about growing up and realizing life isn’t like a fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Stills of the young lesbian couple in love from the music video of “You Know” - Jaurim

Lines by Effy about her emotional and mental struggles from Skins

Nathan chiding the group for not taking advantage of their superpowers as young offenders from Misfits

ROUND 23: HEDONISM

A passage about giving into passion and losing control from The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Thot Shit” - Megan Thee Stallion

An aesthetic photoset of the Greek god Dionysus

A quote about living for ecstasy rather than balance from From a Journal of Love by Anaïs Nin

A photo of an anonymous person in nothing but a silk robe and lingerie

A photo of Donatella Versace lounging in a chair, surrounded by shirtless, muscular men sunbathing around her in Capri, Italy in 1994

An aesthetic photoset based on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The music video for “Heartless” by The Weeknd

A plea for summer to never end from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

“Plastic Love” - Mariya Takeuchi

A gifset from the music video of “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, a continuation of the “Heartless” music video

“XS” - Rina Sawayama

A gifset from the music video of “Body” by Mino

Photos of people dancing at the legendary Studio 54

Photos and a description of the party scene at Studio 54

Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood hooking up in a car in the “Gucci Guilty Black” commercial

#stevetony #steve/tony #superhusbands #stony #stevetony prompts #stony prompts #lightsonparkave #round 24

[stars-below]

finished with time to spare this time! I actually had this mostly done yesterday, but real-life stuff came up and I couldn't clean things up until today

AUgust Day 3: Timestuck

(prev) || (next)

"I can't do this." Ford grumbles, his attention fixed on keeping his breathing regular. In the mirror, he can see how awful he looks, how the scant hour or so of sleep and the shower he'd been wrangled into taking have done little to fix his flagrant exhaustion and disheveled appearance. Perhaps it's simply an inevitability, at this point. "There's no way this is actually going to work."

From her perch on the tyrannosaurus specimen (he has, at this point, given up on asking her to stop treating it like some manner of novelty furniture), half-engrossed in her knitting, Mabel shoots back a cheery, "of course it will! You have the Power of Mabel on your side!"

The girl, the one who'd shown up on his doorstep barely a week ago with more knowledge about himself and his work than any ignorant person would have and insisted she was 'his beloved great-niece from the future here to help him prevent his greatest mistake'. The notion had been ludicrous, of course, but then she'd proven herself (relatively) unaffiliated with a certain someone, and flashed him her comically small hand-held telephone (the one she has since refused to let him properly examine, claiming 'the 'time police' won't appreciate her altering the flow of time too much' or something similarly ridiculous), and shown him a digital photograph of two old men standing on some sort of boat and flashing the camera matching grins.

She'd claimed was his future self and the estranged brother he's done his best to not give much thought over the past decade, and though he doubts the validity of that quite a bit Stanford had been forced to concede that maybe the girl was telling some form of the truth. She may be family, temporally displaced or not, but that doesn't mean she can be trusted. There's still the distinct possibility that this is some elaborate trick from his former muse, a ruse to get him back under the demon's control.

Given that she's taken to removing all of the effigies of said muse around the house that he hasn't had the energy to dispose of, has been seemingly unconcerned about the whereabouts of his journals after he'd assured her they were safe, and almost nonchalant about (or at least not upset with him over) the reality-ending doomsday machine under their feet, that detail may also be more plausible than he'd initially thought.

"Well," the girl corrects, setting one needle aside as she gets the next skein of yarn out from beside her, "I'm not an 'actual' love-god or anything, but the last couple I set up turned out perfect for each other, after we got passed the whole everyone-freaking-out thing!"

This is less than reassuring, and Stanford feels his anxiety start to spike again.

His jacket, the only one remotely clean until they can get the washer functional, is littered with stains and has a jagged tear in the arm where he'd caught it somewhere that hasn't yet been repaired. His hair refuses to lie flat, and the bags under his eyes. He's also wearing an ill-fitting navy sweater vest from his college days she'd dragged from some remote closet. And the scarf she's currently knitting him- silver, cobalt, and maroon- doesn't quite feel appropriate for the thawed (if still a bit chilly) spring weather. Altogether he looks downright frightening.

"Look at me, Grunkle Ford," she commands, the project set on the skull as she gets to her feet. Grunkle because he is, apparently, her estranged Great-Uncle, and should be responsible for taking care of her, even if their relationship largely feels reversed. Whether she's Sherman's grandchild or Stanl otherwise remains to be seen. "What's the absolute worst thing that could happen?"

"He'll hate me." The answer comes automatically. "He has every reason to be furious, after everything I've done. I wouldn't be surprised if the mere sight of me was enough to set him off. This evening may- no, it's quite likely to turn sour, if not violent, unless I'm wrong."

Mabel makes some sympathetic sound, starting to offer some counterpoint, but Stanford keeps going, unable to help himself.

"O-Or, if your estimate is correct, he may have already erased me from his memories entirely. What if he doesn't remember me, what if-"

"Then you'll just have to remind him who you are again," Mabel is suddenly next to him, her little hands warm on his arm. "I know it's scary, Grunkle Ford, but it's gonna be okay. He agreed to do this, he wants to see you. You just have to stop overthinking things and trust me a teeny little bit."

Stanford opens his mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. His nerve falters, and when she tugs on his sleeve, he bends down to let her wrap her arms around his chest.

After a long moment, he pulls away, turning back to the mirror and going back to trying to get his greasy hair to cooperate. "In any case, I don't think you're right about Fiddleford's intentions. I was his roommate throughout both of our college careers, and if he was, ah, interested, in that way, I feel like it would have come up at some point." He doesn't say a word regarding his own feelings, hoping against all likelihood that Mabel won't needle him further on the subject.

"Oh my god, you were roommates..." She snorts under her breath, trotting back to her seat on the tyrannosaurus skull and resuming her work on the scarf. He's not sure how long she's intending to make it, but the thing is long enough now that it'll have to loop around his shoulders multiple times, and if it grows any further Stanford may have to worry about it getting in his way. After a moment of giggling to herself, Mabel seems to realize she didn't address his actual concern, and shoots him a measuring look. "Well, he did seem pretty excited about the whole 'going out' with you thing, so there's that. And if he doesn't feel that way, you know this doesn't have to be a date-date, right?"

A blink at that, and Stanford says nothing, cheeks growing pink.

The silence that settles over the room is thick, but oddly comfortable.

"Okay, I think this is done!" Mabel eventually chimes, tucking her last stitch in, and holding the finished scarf up for him to see. It looks very well-made- Ford would even be inclined to believe it was professionally crafted if he hadn't been here to watch her knit it. "I was gonna put little tassels on the end for you to fidget with, but I don't think I have enough extra material, and I definitely don't have any time."

"I see," Ford hums, taking the gift with great care. "It's, ah, it's certainly quite lengthy..."

She preens at that, shooting him a bright grin. "I know! I wanted to make sure you had enough room to go to Scarf Town, if you needed." She rocks on her toes, not really giving him the space to ask before showing what she means, pulling the neck of her sweater up and covering her face so she can hide in the thick fabric. "It's not as nice as Sweater Town, but that vest looks really good on you, and adult-sized sweaters take forever."

When Mabel comes back out of 'Sweater Town', Stanford has the scarf around his neck, the fabric wide enough to easily obscure his mouth, if he so wished. The thick material sits comfortingly heavy on his shoulders, and the scent of something that isn't drenched in days-old anxiety-sweat is more reassuring than he'd anticipated. "Thank you, Mabel, this is wonderful. In fact, I think I," he manages, taking a breath and collecting himself, "I think I might be ready now, actually."

"Good!" Mabel huffs, and for a second she's the picture of someone else, rolling her sleeves up seeming to square her jaw. "Now quit stalling. If you need me, I'll be having an argument with a unicorn."

#gravity falls #timestuck #august #stanford pines #mabel pines #what's the fiddleford/ford pairing again? #ford^2

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1-3

May, 1984

THE WAR BEGINS

Oof, here we go.

Just gotta replicate the pace that let me do the Hawkeye miniseries in one go, three times in a row.

This is probably too much effort considering its Secret Wars (or more accurately Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars) and maybe there’s not going to be a lot of big changes from this in the Avengers book to really justify it.

But we’re getting Jim Shooter writing the Avengers and his non-consecutive runs were a lot better than I had remembered. And it continues the theme he had from the Avengers book.

It just makes sense in a nonsense way to cover this story.

Last relevant time in Avengers! Acting Completely Normal Vision warned the Avengers about some weird, possibly hostile energy surges right in time for an energy surge to surge energetically in Central Park.

When the Avengers went to investigate, they found a weird structure that looked like a techy coliseum maybe. When some of the Avengers wandered into it (apparently the most bankable Avengers? Sucks to be Vision and Wanda, shrug) they vanished.

In the next issue, after several days, these heroes returned, speaking of a secret war they fought. Weird stuff like She-Hulk taking the Thing’s place on the Fantastic Four happened. In other books, Spidey got a cool new suit.

Would you know more?

After being raptured in their various books, the missing superheroes all end up on one of those distinctive structures like the one that appeared in Central Park, except IN SPACE.

Its cool that the Avengers will have some company.

We’ve got a terrific 3/4ths of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men (including Lockheed but not including Kitty Pryde for some reason), the Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the totally Articulate Hulk, and hilariously Magneto is also here.

Maybe Secret Wars is just setting up the most awkward moment in the universe, as a prank show.

I think I’d enjoy a big event that turned out to be a prank show at the last minute. The fan discontent. Imagine.

Everyone introduces themselves to each other but mostly the audience and Ben Grimm claims his new codename as the Easter Bunny.

Checking, marvel wiki doesn’t have Easter Bunny listed as one of Ben’s known aliases. Cowards.

Looking up into space, Captain America spots another one of the totally cool constructs and Professor X scans that it contains EEEEEEEVIL.

Specifically Amora the Enchantress, Ultron, the Wrecking Crew, the Absorbing Man, the Lizard, VICTOR VON DOOOOOM, Kang the Conqueror, Doctor Octopus, and Molecule Man. Also, hilariously, Galactus is there.

I’m more convinced than ever that this is a prank show.

You know what would be more hilarious? If Punisher ended up on this construct.

The distribution of villains is kind of odd though. Galactus and Doctor Doom map to the FF. Doctor Octopus and the Lizard to Spider-Man. Ultron, Molecule Man, and Kang are Avengers foes. The Absorbing Man and the Wrecking Crew can go a couple ways but started off as Thor villains. And Amora is usually a Thor villain but supposedly has chilled out around this time or at least is less of a pain than her horny sister.

No X-Men villains. Because Magneto is chilling with them in the generally heroic pod.

Also, all the heroes were raptured from Earth while the villains were grabbed from Earth, from space, from Asgard, resurrected just to be here, or from the FUTURE.

I know marketing is wagging the dog but be consistent, secret organizer who we don’t know yet.

The Thing points out that Magnet is off-sides, re: being in the hero construct, and Magneto is like ‘hey, chill out dudes’ and denies specifically doing murders.

Magneto: “I know not what power transported me here from my secret lair, nor why I was placed among you -- but I find it more appropriate to ask why such as you were judged fit to be placed in my presence!”

Oof.

Burn.

Then the conversation is put on halt on account of the wildest shit any of them have ever seen.

An entire galaxy vanishes but probably not due to a wave of anti-matter.

Thor: “It’s gone! Gone -- ! Swept away like dust before some unseen, giant hand!”

And then around that last star left unswept, various chunks merge together to form some sort of world, perhaps for battle.

A nice touch for later is that you can definitely see that one of the chunks is a stray chunk of city.

Some of the villains start squabbling because close quarters, ego, etc.

But Ultron goes hey we’re allowed to fight? I’m the best at that.

Ultron: “I am Ultron! I do not understand the events transpiring! I do not understand how I came to be resurrected... nor how I came to be here! Nothing computes... Insignificant! I am Ultron! My purpose is to slay that which lives. You are all living things, ergo -- Ultron must destroy you!”

With the benefit of having read all the Avengers up to now, I feel that Ultron got up on the wrong side of the resurrection a little.

He’s not not like this but he’s not usually this turned on?

(Then again, maybe he just came back cranky)

DOOM grabs and shakes Molecule Man to do something about this because given enough time even the mighty DOOM might fall before Ultron.

Ultron is famously annoying to defeat, what with that adamantium.

But Molecule Man is in therapy after the Avengers kicked his shit and Tigra yelled at him for being a punk. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

So Doom with all his brilliant genius tells MM a cool way to help out that won’t hurt anyone. Directly.

Using his Molecule Man power over molecules to lightly toss Ultron into Galactus.

So that Galactus goes ‘who the fuck scuffed my boots’ and rips out all the energy in Ultron’s Ultron.

He can do that.

Why wouldn’t he? If he can do that to a planet, he can do it to a pissbaby robot. Even one apparently containing more power than an atom bomb.

Then, because this is one of those plots where things are always thenning, a rift opens in the nothingness of space and a heavenly esque light shines out. A warbly voice commands the action figures beat each other up.

I mean. Its more like

The Beyonder: “I am from beyond! Slay your enemies and all you desire shall be yours! Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!”

But you have to admire that this toy commercial of a comic book is being honest and upfront about being a story where action figures bonk off of each other.

Galactus just hears ‘i can finally shake off these persistent forever munchies’ and flies off to demand prepayment for action figure bonking, with DOOM following behind him.

The Beyonder speaks up warning Galactus that hey, personal space. And that a guy that can effortlessly wipe out a galaxy is gonna have a sweet barrier but Galactus wants the hunger pangs gone and does not listen.

DOOM recognizes a bad idea when he sees one once in a while and hangs back but still gets blown out of space by the force of Galactus bonking off the Beyonder’s barriers.

Captain America: “They were swatted back like flies!”

Professor X: “To the Beyonder, even Galactus is less than a fly, Captain!”

Interruption dealt with, the Beyonder gets the show on the road and sends the two constructs to different parts of the patchwork planet.

The Marvel Super Heroes And Magneto land on some hill and quickly make sure that there are no villains excepting Magneto around.

With Magneto around, the non-X-Men raise an objection to Magneto being around.

He sank a Russian submarine with all hands back in X-Men #150 but he insists that it was self-defense and also they started it.

The X-Men’s position is ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk plus we could use his help? The bad guys get GALACTUS, how is that fair?’

Well, they don’t say it but they’re probably thinking it.

And Hawkeye decides to be a little racist today.

Hawkeye: “You mutants stick together, huh? Well, sticking to a blood-soaked maniac like him doesn’t speak well of you, pal!”

Dude, Clint. Your dear old friend is Wanda.

Wait, why ISN’T Wanda here? Did the toy people really not want her? Fools. Her husband is toyetic as all get out.

Also, point of order, Wolverine? If anyone qualifies as ‘hey he’s a jerk but he’s our jerk!’ here its you.

Johnny “good life choices” Storm decides he’ll just kick Magneto’s ass and end the debate but yeah. Yeah, no. Magneto makes a fool of him.

And then Magneto decides eff this noise and flies off.

With Magneto alienated (good job, guys), Professor X decides this group needs some dang leadership and throws a nomination to Reed Richards. Reed defers since he’s thinking of Sue, left at home and not able to participate in the event.

Wasp, the cool leader of the Avengers, nominates instead Captain America.

Wasp: “We’re off in a strange land, up to our ears in a little secret war that may decide the fate of the universe! Some people don’t know me well! They might have doubts... and there’s no room for that!”

I’m baffled that there’s people here who don’t know Wasp who has been heroing since the 60s but sure. Cap(tain America) probably gets more crossovers and whatever.

I mean, heck, we’re talking a group of heroes consisting of the Avengers (who she already leads), the Fantastic Three (who she’s well acquainted with), and the X-Men (who I’m sure she’s met, although awkwardly its going to later be revealed that Wasp is in the Hellfire Club, but only the sex parts).

And I guess Wolverine’s extensive backstory with Cap doesn’t exist yet because Wolverine isn’t keen on him being the leader, describing him as the least of the assembled heroes. When Hawkeye is right there!

I kid because I love.

Meanwhile, DOOM wakes up adjacent to Galactus ankle and heads to a nearby fortress which he correctly assumes is where the villains have ended up.

Wait, the heroes get beamed down to a random hill while the villains get sent to an advanced fortress with weaponry and we later learn vehicles sold separately?

Kinda stacking the deck, the Beyonder.

You gave the villains GALACTUS and A FORTRESS PLAYSET right out of the gate.

The other villains tell Doom that they’ve (mostly) decided that he should be their leader. But Doom has bigger fish to fry than the prizes that the Beyonder is offering.

In typical Doomesque fashion, he wants the whole kettle. But the other villains what with their petty concerns think he’s too afraid to fight.

So he ditches.

He goes to steal-borrow a spaceship and even though he hates the thought, takes off to go talk to Richards. And then Kang shoots him out of the sky with a GIANT GUN THAT THE VILLAIN FORTRESS ALSO HAS? to stop him from allying with the heroes.

Said (marvel super) heroes see the distant explosion and fly as a group in the most hilarious way possible to check it out.

God, I have always loved this image. Its squished down into the bottom third of the page but its a delight.

They find Doom sprawled in the crash site, rambling that he’ll only speak to RICHARRRRRDS and about the Beyonder’s power. But Cap offends Doom mightily but offering him a hand up and because Doom sees pity in Cap and RICHARRRRRRDS eyes.

So he blasts the heroes and fucks off.

How very Bakugou of him.

And right as the heroes recover from that, a bunch of villains arrive to get this secret war started.

I have a fondness for this particular issue. For a long while, issue 1 was the only issue of Secret Wars I could find. So I just had the start of this story with all these non-Spider-Man non-X-Men heroes I barely knew cliffhangering into an attack by villains I really didn’t recognize except for Doc Ock and the Lizard.

It was a window into another side of the Marvel Universe. And for child me, this first issue worked perfectly to intrigue me. All these characters, the very straightforward conflict, all the complications that immediately pop up like Magneto, Galactus, and Doom. Alas, small child resources.

June, 1984

PRISONERS of War!

The heroes react slowly to the sudden villain attack but thankfully, the villains aren’t working together well. Unthankfully, half of the heroes were already knocked out by the first attack.

Meanwhile, over at Doctor Doom’s side of the plot, he flies back over to where Galactus just in time to see him finally rouse from being slapped down by the Beyonder.

Galactus floats to his feet and wanders off.

Doom: “He ignored me! As though I were a gnat buzzing at his feet! And so I am... Just as all of us, even Galactus himself, are but insects to the all-powerful Beyonder! Thus, the others have chosen to play the Beyonder’s simple game -- thereby, in effect, paying homage to him. Should I, too, pay homage? Should I worship at the feet of this god-like being -- or chose another path... one only Doom would dare!”

I think anyone that knows Doom knows which option he’s gonna choose.

He heads back to the villain fortress and finds Ultron’s deactivated body and decides Doom can use this.

Meanwhile, back at the first secret battle of the secret war, the heroes rally and start fighting back under Cap(tain America)’s leadership.

She-Hulk even gets a designated girl fight with the only female villain on the villain team.

I’d complain, I would. But at least She-Hulk isn’t the only heroine on the hero side.

She-Hulk: “Hiya! I’m the She-Hulk! You must be the Enchantress! Gee, I’ve heard so much about you -- ! You’re a not-nice lady!”

Enchantress: “A green woman? Is there no end to the varieties of mortals?”

The Enchantress magic slaps She-Hulk away and comments that she could crush She-Hulk physically but its beneath her.

Yeah, all Asgardians have some level of super strength, that’s right. Even the squishy wizards.

But all She-Hulk heard was, ‘someone I can really punch!’

She-Hulk: “I don’t often duke it out with someone solid enough to really unload on -- and slow enough to let me! Oh, wow! That was, like tubular, you know -- to the max!”

Uh. Jen, are you okay? Did you have a stroke? You don’t usually talk so much in Mario World secret world levels.

I think maybe Jim Shooter didn’t have a good grasp on her. I don’t think he’s ever written for her. And the other heroes mostly don’t vary too much from generic hero speaking patterns. Add some smart for smart characters, add some rude to Wolverine, and so on.

The battle wraps up with Kang, the Enchantress, and the Wrecking Crew captured and the rest of the villains fleeing when the battle didn’t go their way.

Cap sends Storm off to scout for a cool playset that they can use as shelter and she does so, noting that the winds on Battleworld are super easy to control. Like Battleworld was created to create ideal fighting conditions for everyone. Pretty neat, the Beyonder.

Storm finds a particularly rad fortress (”Bigger than fifty-four and a half Pentagons, I’d estimate!” Wow!) and the heroes move in.

I unironically enjoy how toyetic this story is with the fortresses and the vehicles and the weapons. Because I’m almost positive that Mattel barely capitalized on it.

There were only two playsets. Pitiful.

Over in their new headquarters, Reed stashes the captured villains in some form of psychostasis which “works by controlling aggression through brainwave modulation!”

He also sticks Enchantress in a healing pod to address that nasty case of being She-Hulked right in the face. Nothing will salve her ego though.

Captain America: “It’s no wonder that the name Mister Fantastic is renowned for compassion as well as courage! You give added meaning to the word hero, Richards!”

Whenever someone loudly announces that Reed is super compassionate, it makes me feel like they’re overcompensating.

Nobody ever makes note of, say, Captain America’s compassion.

With the prisoners (of war? Is that the whole reason for the title?) accommodated, Cap calls everyone for a meeting in a cool meeting dome he found which has a small waterfall for aesthetic and so everyone has to yell to be heard.

Wolverine yells that they should mop up the rest of the villains and get this over with.

Not mentioning that in order to “win it” they’d have to kill the villains, which none of the heroes have shown any interest in doing so far.

Cap(tain America) replies that A) planet big and they have no idea where the villains got to. And B) the remaining villains slash antagonists are Galactus, Doctor Doom, Molecule Man, Doctor Octopus, the Wrecker, the Absorbing Man, and Magneto. Not really people you mop up.

In a fun logistics bit, Cap sends out a patrol to make sure the area is secure but he also sends out two additional groups to find  if there are any places in this fortress they can sleep and whether there's any... food.

Makes me imagine a Secret Survival War where the sides have to wrestle over limited resources.

Hours later, the villains that escaped the fracas arrive back at their fortress.

I’m sort of confused here.

Maybe it took so long because they had to make sure they weren’t followed. Or maybe because they didn’t have the sweet tripod vehicle anymore. But think about the flow of events of: everyone beamed down to Battleworld > Doom ditches the villains and gets shot down > heroes investigate and Doom ditches > villains show up for cliffhanger fight.

The villain fortress should be pretty close to where that fight took place. And then the heroes find a nearby fortress of their own so their fortress should be pretty close to the villain fortress. Maybe not in the same neighborhood but surely the same zip code.

Anyway, they find that while they were gone, Doom swanned in and renamed the place the Doombase.

If they have problems with it, they can talk to his Ultron.

Which I’m surprised he didn’t rename Doomtron.

Doom also tells them that he’s in charge now.

Absorbing Man: “Aw! Who gives a hoot! I need a meal an’ sleep! You wanna be in charge, Doom? Okay by me!”

If you think about it, this is just some steps added what the villains wanted all along.

They wanted Doom to be their leader but he told them he had bigger fish to fry and fucked off. Now he’s fucked back on and told them all that he’s their leader. They initially object before reconsidering due to Doomtron but, yeah, its all gone full circle.

Doom is a lot more cordial to Molecule Man though.

Doom: “Molecule Man... uh, Mr. Reece, I believe it is? I trust you were not inconvenienced.”

Molecule Man: “Well, being absolute master of molecules I can just assimilate molecules when I want, so I never have to be hungry, and I can just shoo away dirt molecules, so I’m always nice and clean -- but I am tired!”

Doom: “I have prepared a special chamber for you! I hope you like it!”

Molecule Man: “If not, I can always reconstruct the molecules -- !”

Heh.

Nice to see Jim Shooter able to follow up on the trajectory he sent Molecule Man on.

The rest of the villains head off but Doctor Octopus, the only other brain cell in this group, hangs back to talk to DOOM.

He wants to know what he plans to do about Galactus and then shows Doom on the biggest screen TV that Galactus is standing on a mountain glowing with an awesome power.

Doom just retorts that his plans are for his forces to triumph.

Doctor Octopus: Something tells me he’s got ambitions that dwarf merely triumphing in the Beyonder’s little contest! The question is whether he will destroy us in trying to achieve them -- or immediately after fulfilling them?!

Like I said, the only other brain cell in this group.

Meanwhile, while Magneto secretly sneaks into the hero fortress for Reasons, the heroes have a quiet moment that lets this Secret Wars biz really sink in.

Wasp: “I’d be having tea in my studio now, Jenny... And lunch on my patio tomorrow... This... um... situation we’re in... is kind of... much, you know? I feel there’s just a little thin wall inside me holding back a flood of despair!”

Its a nice touch, if intentional, that Wasp only admits this kind of thing now that she’s passed off the leadership responsibilities to Captain America. Its been a recurring character beat that she’s been keeping these sorts of worries to herself as chairwoman.

Over in another part of the fortress, Cyclops complains that he was right in the middle of his dang honeymoon when he was yanked into this event.

Cyclops: “I don’t know about you, Richards, but more than angry or afraid, I feel cheated! I -- I was on the verge of real happiness...”

Oof. This really sets the tone for his marriage with Madelyne Pryor.

Spider-Man and the Human Torch even have a little conversation.

Spider-Man: “You mean it doesn’t shake you, Torch, being here? What if we don’t get home?”

Human Torch: “The Fantastic Four have been off on space missions a couple of times, Spider-Man! We’ll get back! Believe me!”

I like when they’re friends.

So, I’m not sure what Magneto’s plan actually was. He was going to sabotage the fortress’ fusion generator as a distraction but Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense Spider-Alerts him to shenanigans afoot and he runs off to the power plant while Johnny Storm goes to get the other heroes.

Magneto decides to abandon whatever his plan was and captures Wasp as a consolation prize.

Gasp, another prisoner of war!

The Thing tries to give chase but inexplicably turns back to normal, smooth skinned Ben Grimm.

Also, Magneto escapes with the Wasp.

It’s like the aardvark says, you can get what you want and still not be happy.

Captain Marvel is holding the randomly anti-mutant ball for Hawkeye here and comments that none of the X-Men showed up to help stop Magneto.

Cap(tain America) tells her to belay that.

Captain America: “Let’s keep our minds on solving problems, not creating more!”

And they can’t even go after Magneto or rescue the Wasp right now because they have bigger problems: Galactus glowing with an awesome power and a massive storm that’s forming on Battleworld.

July, 1984

TEMPEST WITHOUT, CRISIS WITHIN!

The Beyonder has thrown in a nice stage hazard to keep things fresh in the form of a massive storm raging on Battleworld, with lighting that shatters mountains and winds that could tear someone’s limbs clean off.

Or perhaps its the unintentional result of just slapping a planet together out of random stuff you have lying around. The climate must be shot to shit.

I like it either way. Secret Wars has a lot of very toyetic collisions between groups of characters so its nice when Battleworld itself manages to be an obstacle.

Over in his giant U-shaped fortress, Magneto finally unwraps Wasp from the ball of random metal crap he has her in.

He lets her wander around until she finds him so that he can be all casual and eating a space scone.

Magneto: “Do not bother trying to attack me, my dear! My person is magnetically shielded!”

Wasp: “Well, la-de-da!”

Wasp: -blows up his space scone- “You think I have to strike at you directly to hurt you, monster?”

Hilarious spite, thy name is Janet van Dyne.

She also makes the point that magnetic shielding or no, she could bring this whole room down. Her being able to knock over a small house with her pew pew hasn’t stopped being true.

Magneto hastens to ask her not to do that because neither of them want to be out in the storm outside.

Besides, he just wants to talk! And flirt!

Magneto: “You are obviously a woman of intelligence and understanding as well as great beauty -- and I am not the monster you believe I am -- which is precisely what I wish to discuss!”

Wasp: “Oh? My intelligence, understanding and beauty or your non-monsterhood?”

Magneto: “Why... both!”

Back at the hero base (which is apparently ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF CHICAGO?? I want that playset), the storm has almost completely flooded the area, leaving just the top dome and such poking above the water.

The storm keeps dropping chunks of mountain at the base but Thor is standing on top, protecting it while grinning like a loon.

Captain Marvel even speculates that Thor could calm the storm but is whipping it up into a greater frenzy instead. Those storm gods, amirite?

Hawkeye is also standing by, with his explosive arrow, thinking to himself that if Thor fails, Hawkeye will totally save the day.

I don’t know whether that’s sad or endearing.

Mostly though he’s trying to distract himself from thinking about the new wife he left behind.

Cap, Reed, and Hulk are watching the villain base because apparently they do know where it is. The storm is keeping the villains in too but Cap figures they’ll pull one desperate attack as soon as the storm breaks.

They’ve already lost four of their dudes. Plus, Galactus isn’t a team player.

Spider-Man is just swinging around, enjoying how good for swinging the random technological pipes and tubes and whatsits are when he stumbles upon the X-Men having a secret meeting.

Professor X has decided, possibly on the basis of two (2) rude comments from Hawkeye and Captain Marvel, that the X-Men just don’t belong here and that they’d be better off going and teaming up with Magneto.

This... sure is a take.

Rogue comments that the Avengers don’t trust her because of that time she kicked their asses collectively. Which, hey, very possibly. They haven’t really had a thing to say about you though. They’ve mostly been grouchy about Magneto.

Which is kinda born out by the way he tried to blow up their base and definitely kidnapped the Wasp?? And is even now aggressively eating scones at her?

That’s the Magneto you guys want to go join because he’s more your people than the Fantastic Avengers and friends are?

You know, there’s a pattern I sometimes see with the X-Men where they loudly insist that the other superheroes don’t help them and don’t care about mutant stuff while at the same time doing shit like this.

“Should we get Reed Richards, smartest dick in the world to help with the legacy virus or the techno-organic virus Stryfe shot into Xavier? NAHHHH Beast can handle it.”

“Should we stick with the other superheroes or go hang with Magneto instead in a cool mutants only U-shaped fortress? Well, U is the coolest letter that isn’t X...”

If you squint, you can definitely see Krakoa all the way in the future.

Anyway, Spider-Man overheard all of this and goes ‘I’M TELLING!’

Wolverine tries to tell him that snitches get stitches but the thing is?

Spider-Man is ridiculous. He’s a ridiculously good combination of skills and powers which lets him make chumps out of entire groups at a time.

He’s embarrassed the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and now he’s about to embarrass the X-Men.

After making them all feel foolish, Spider-Man gets away and goes to tell Reed what that doody-head Xavier said when Xavier uses his psychic powers to just wipe the entire encounter out of Spider-Man’s memory.

Yeah, it’s to cover their imminent blowing off but also? I don’t think he wants anyone else to find out how badly his X-Men just got stomped.

Psychics are too OP, I tell you what.

In fairness IN FAIRNESS, the X-Men kind of have the right to fuck right off if they wish. I don’t even know what it had to be in secret. In fact, doing it in secret is a massive dick move of its own for reasons.

What would the Fantastic Avengers have done if the X-Men had just said ‘hey we’re heading out’? Would they have put them in stasis tube jail? I doubt it.

Professor X made the decision to handle this the stupidest way for whatever reason. That scamp.

Speaking of Magneto, he’s over at the U-Lair turning down a partnership offer from DOOM. So, hey, he has standards.

Wasp has become less ‘i’ll blow up this room and your breakfast’ about him over the course of whatever the hell they discussed in their offscreen chat.

Magneto even starts to make out with her and Wasp is like ehhhhhhhhhh what the fuck why not.

Why is this happening?

I guess he has a...................... magnetic personality?

Eh? Eh??

No, but seriously, I do have a theory that I heard someplace but it’ll have to wait.

What’s weird is that there’s a Marvel What If about some spinoff babies that come about if the heroes and villains got stuck on Battleworld and never managed to leave.

Wasp has a son with Human Torch. Which is pretty weird and comes from nowhere. I guess a lot can happen during a massive time skip. My point being though, its weird that they didn’t have a Wasp/Magneto baby instead given the weird chemistry they have here.

Meanwhile, over at DOOMBASE, DOOM has some women in giant tubes.

That’s So Doom.

Doctor Doom: “All is ready -- ! This alien technology, so rich, so subtle... so easily harnessed to serve my purpose... Energy, tapped from the raging tempest... And two mortal subjects who dare to gamble for power -- knowing that to lose is death, for truly, here I shall test the limits of power a human body can contain! With the throwing of a switch... so -- the die is cast! Hear me -- ! Power must be seized -- ! Crave it! Welcome it! Drink it in, despite the pain... or it will destroy you.”

And thus are Volcana and Titania created!

Talk about lasting effects of Secret Wars! Titania is going to be around forever! Mostly annoying She-Hulk!

Where did Doom find two random women to give superpowers?

Denver, Colorado.

No, seriously.

That city chunk we saw as Battleworld formed? That’s Denver, Colorado, USA, EARTH.

Why isn’t there a miniseries or one-shot about a normal ass civilian from Denver having to deal with OH MY GOD WHERE DID EARTH GO?

I actually read an interesting thing re: this scene. It exists because Mattel asked Marvel to introduce some new female characters so Shooter wrote in these two and a third who I’ll get to when I do.

Mattel then promptly used none of these characters for the associated toyline.

The toyline, in fact, used none female characters at all. It made toys of characters who weren’t in the story but did not have a single female character.

So its very weird that they asked Marvel to introduce some but I’m not going to knock the results.

Doom introduces these two new characters to the other villains.

Hilariously, Absorbing Man guesses that Doctor Doom just made women from scratch. Because doesn’t it sound like something he could do?

Volcana and Molecule Man immediately hit it off, her being attracted to his sensitivity and him being attracted to... positive attention at all, I guess?

He muses that he could easily stop the storm outside, because molecules, but his therapist told him to let nature take its course. “Unless Doom asks me to!”

And Titania and Absorbing Man. They don’t hit it off. She either wants to hit him or hit that and its not clear and it might be both.

(Spoilers: Its both)

Titania: “You! Absorbing Man! You look like the toughest man here! Get up!”

Absorbing Man: “Whatcha got in mind?”

Titania: “I’m going to do anything I want to you! Everything I always wanted to do to everybody who used to be bigger and stronger than me! Maybe I’ll just play with you... or maybe I’ll make you eat dirt... or maybe...”

Absorbing Man: “Woman, if you got somethin’ to prove, prove it tomorrow against the guys we’re fightin’!”

Titania: “You’re backing down?”

Absorbing Man: “Nope! I just ain’t getting up! I got nothin’ to prove... to a dame!”

Would you believe that they become one of the healthiest and most stable romantic relationships in Marvel?

Speaking of weird relationships, back over at hero base, Thor goes and pops the lid on Enchanteress’ healing tube because he’s bored and wants to talk to a peer. A god peer.

Enchantress is at first more characteristically worried about what her face looks like after being She-Hulked.

But she then creates a portal so she and Thor can go have a chat.

Later, it’s morning and Hulk has been too busy stressing over losing his Banner smarts to actually keep watch or wake up Cap for watch like he was supposed to.

So when the villains ram an airship into the hero base, the heroes are not at all prepared.

Titania hurls a giant slab of wall through the room the Terrific Three are sharing, breaking Johnny Torch’s arm and ribs and knocking out the other two. He manages to get himself and co out of danger by melting through the floor.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is carrying a big heavy as she’s been doing since the previous night and is caught unaware by Volcana who blasts her off her feet and then collapses the room on top of her.

Doctor Octopus knocks out Captain Marvel who is in the hot springs dome but gets chased away by Hawkeye, claiming that long-range firepower is his weakness.

I’m stunned at the implication that Doc Ock is one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous foes but could be scared off by Hawkeye while Spider-Man could pretty easily drop Clint’s ass. There’s some rock-paper-scissors nonsense at play here.

Spider-Man and Iron Man are also taken unawares by Ultron but manage to hide under some rubble.

Hulk leaps into the fray at Molecule Man and Doom but Cap convinces him to fall back to a defensible position.

The villains reconvene with all the captured villains freed except Enchantress (since she fucked off to have a chat with Thor) and the heroes scattered and buried under various rubbles. How the fortunes of Secret War turn.

Sure would have been nice if the X-Men had been around to help or if they mentioned they wouldn’t be. Sure would have been.

Doom: “We have accomplished much here today! And to finish it, we shall level this place so that no stone remains on stone!”

No wonder Mattel didn’t make a playset of this base! Dammit Doom, you’re ruining the merchandising!

Follow @essential-avengers​ for more of Secret Wars! At this same pace! Its sustainable! This is fine! Like and reblog too!

#Avengers #Secret Wars #Essential Avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #Captain America #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Hawkeye #Iron Man #james rhodes #She Hulk #Thor #the Wasp #X Men #Colossus #Cyclops #Nightcrawler #Professor X #Rogue #Storm #Wolverine #Fantastic Four #Mr Fantastic #Human Torch #the Thing #Hulk #Spider Man #Magneto #VICTOR VON DOOM #some villains

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (9/15/2021)?

I Am Batman #1: This has the same "wow, you're sure putting a lot of 'if only there were more GOOD cops everything would be fine' in this" problems as all the buildup, but Coipel gives it the invaluable cool factor needed to put over the idea that this is the for-real new Batman, and Ridley scales back and adjusts to accommodate.

Batman: Urban Legends #7: This might be my favorite multi-writer anthology single issue of all time - no big 'story of the year!' entries, but damn would any story in here still be the standout of nearly any other comic of its kind.

The Joker #7: Now *that's* an opening.

Batman '89 #2: Liked this a lot more than the opening.

Superman and The Authority #3: You know how it goes, notes to come. No idea how it'll reach any kind of resolution with one issue remaining but every faith it'll pull it off.

Justice League: Last Ride #5: I just don't get how this is Zdarsky's big attempt at an evergreen.

Justice League #67: This clicked with me a bit more than recent issues but again I'm just waiting it out to see if the team shakeup reawakens a few of Bendis's muscles or if he'll stay on autopilot.

Wonder Woman #779: Some good stuff but definitely didn't end on its strongest chapter; I think next issue is gonna decide whether I stay onboard.

Rorschach #12: Liked it. I have received several asks now inquiring for my thoughts on the series now that it's done beyond that. Perhaps I will respond at some point.

Perhaps.

Second Coming: Only Begotten Son #5: One of the better issues in a bit - even if I don't imagine I'm going to be getting much of Russell's other future work I'm probably onboard here for as long as it goes.

Jupiter's Legacy: Requiem #4: The comedy of this coming out the same day as Authority each month (the final issue of the latter notwithstanding) cannot be understated.

Iron Man #12: Ehhhhh it's fading on me again even with a nice middle.

The Last Annihilation: Wakanda #1: I decided what the heck, I was getting every other Last Annihilation book. Hadn't read the previous Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda stuff but this did a great job educating me on the basics and it was a solid issue to boot.

The Mighty Valkyries #5: Finally completely lost track of what's going on in time for the ending.

Fantastic Four: Life Story #4: Definitely the best issue even as it's entirely abandoned any notion of playing by the very clear rules established by its predecessor.

Fantastic Four #35/LGY #680: Got this for dad; the lead was as good as any modern Slott story could be with Romita Jr. in solid form, Jason Loo's two-pager was fun, the Waid/Renauo conclusion was nice enough but if Waid was going to explicitly go back to that particular territory it demanded more of a punch.

Eternals: Thanos Rises #1: This issue makes me wish this blog was well-known enough to have its reviews be quoted as ad copy, because I'd love for this special to be reprinted with "A wry, eye-popping tale of hope, and a family where nothing ever goes quite according to plan! -- David Mann" on the cover.

#Week's Comics #Opinion

[blessedsage99]

Why Lapis and Pearl Could Work As A Great Pairing

It is without a doubt that most people agree that Lapis and Pearl would do absolutely anything for Steven. Maybe not anything as Lapis jumped off to the nearest solar system to get away from conflict, but he is in fact the one person she would indefinitely pull out extra stops for (ie; willing to indulge befriending Peridot, live on and try earth, go into the ocean once more, etc) . But I do not think that would be the one of the driving forces between their relation but it might be one of the factors to goad them into trying and befriending each other. And perhaps…. More.

Similarities On a surface level you can perhaps glean several similarities, perhaps similar shadow and body type, sasuke pointing hair… And then another layer and find their personalities are vastly different. Pearl is very educated, prefers order, dramatic, emotional, enjoys engaging in combat, very forgiving (ex; is quick to forgive Peridot once she actually makes the amends to not call her an object), and does her best to make up for mistakes (ex; several episodes of making it up to Garnet).

Lapis is very lazy and blase, the barn she and Peridot have formed together has no sense of order and moreso chaos, she instantly flies at the first sight of conflict, is the least forgiving gem out there (ex; holds it against the crystal gems for pretty much the entirety of the series, and Peridot goes lengths and miles to try and get Lapis forgive her and still is unable to and it takes Steven to intervene and scold her to make an attempt), and honestly? Lapis hardly ever apologizes for her mistakes versus Pearl. She shows signs of guilt but she never really apologizes to Peridot for anything she’s done to her nor Steven nor… Well, really anyone else, except in Future.

But that aside, it’s when you think about their more lighthearted sides and trauma is where most of their similarities lie.

Hobbies

As off as it sounds, it’s fairly essential in pretty much any relationship to cross over a few hobbies, even if you don’t share everything, it often all starts with something along those lines. And Pearl and Lapis share a huge chunk of their hobbies, believe it or not.

Both Lapis and Pearl definitely enjoy reading, Pearl being the educational beast she is and Lapis probably enjoys the relaxed activity. In fact their genres might be even similar as Lapis and Pearl enjoy reading odd textbooks (ex; The hairstyles book for Lapis, and the engineering book for Pearl) and both enjoy dramas (albeit, perhaps this might be different) like Camp Pining Hearts and Pearl was willing to write a play and overseer one in Jamie’s case. This perhaps is b-level canon however, in the comic issue Camp Pining Play, Lapis is willingly engaging in participating and acting out in a play, she even enjoys it.

If given incentive of enjoying the subject already, Lapis is willing to perhaps enjoy the drama of things along with Pearl.

Both enjoy singing, if we’re going off Lapis was previously like other Lapis, that would mean singing and dancing is looked down upon on her caste. So the fact she even makes the attempt to do so in Distant Shore means she’s practicing in it, and if we want to add another layer of it, in the game Unleash the Light, one of Lapis’s key items is the Crying Breakfast Friends Sing-Along. And who else enjoys karaoke? Pearl (ie; the commercial karaoke). Also Lapis does it in Future so like if you want canon material it’s right there in Why So Blue.

This is a bit of a stretch but it’s clear that Lapis enjoys the arts which her participation in the class and what the heck else she does with Peridot in the barn, and Pearl has at the very least has experience in it. (ex; the drawing she makes, despite her humble opinion, makes it clear she’s done it before, in fact I’m willing to bet she even painted that fucking painting of Rose Quartz) It perhaps could lead to some more experience and artworks together if you know what I mean…

Casting that aside, it’s clear the two have a main stream of things to enjoy together should they choose to versus some other couples. (And different ones should they choose to introduce the other, Pearl with baking and sword fighting and Lapis with farming and flying, etc)

Traumas

Now this is the important part, I’m willing to argue they both can share extremely similar and relate to each other’s problems. They just have vastly different ways of coping with it, or well… They both have some similarities there as well, but we’ll address that in the next paragraph-ish.

But the biggest one? Both miss their homeworld. Dearly.

In fact it’s the driving force for Lapis’s introductory episodes and one of Pearl’s where she tries to get Steven into a rocketship back to her home. Both are ancient and dusty as fuck, or well, at least heavily implied to be ancient with the fact of Pearl commenting she learned the sword when she was only ten thousand years old (Sworn to the Sword iirc), the war was six thousand which implies Pearl learned before it. And Lapis, it’s merely conjecture however the fact that Lapis isn’t a vegetable after and still has a strong sense of identity after being in the mirror for 4 thousand years says something (ie; My name is LAPIS LAZULI!), the likely conclusion is the fact it’s because that’s not even close to how old she is. It’s only a fraction of her lifetime, which means both are… Well, old as hell. And even more likely? They come from the same ‘homeworld’ unlike Peridot or Amethyst who were made after and Garnet who has herself.

The second one is the one both of them likely have their divisive opinions on, especially as they were from opposing sides of it, is that they were both part of the War.

Both obviously have their trauma’s from it, as shown as Pearl in ‘A Single Pale Rose’ she’s still traumatized over the thousands of shattered gems (which is essentially corpses to her) she was forced to witness right after the war, and Lapis being forced to watch inside the mirror as everyone condemns her to being a crystal gem. I’m willing to bet she saw everyone die while inside the thing as well. As well as considering Lapis never really got over anything as she was gonna literally yeet herself away at the mere IDEA of the war… Well, who else could help her but another person who knows the horrors as well? And Pearl has experience as she had a support system unlike Lapis who got worse and worse purely just by being herself.

Moving on as I don’t have a cool and smooth transition...  This might be a bit of a stretch, but the last thing they both share very heavily over is the fact both were objectified.

Pearl was born to be an object, whereas Lapis was forced to become one, the mirror. And both consistently fight over the fact throughout most of the series. In the movie, the thing that makes Pearl remember herself is the freedom to be herself, and when she returns to her homeworld she’s forced to be reminded of her place when she talks to Holly Blue and returns to Steven in the final season. Lapis is obviously shook over it and holds it against the fact she always feels like she’s being used, (‘[...] AND YOU CAN’T KEEP ME TRAPPED ANYMORE!’) she longs for a safe place and to be free just as well just as Pearl does and the freedom to express herself (ie; her art). And who else but Pearl----- *coughcouhgcough*

Differences

I covered this in the first part where it's obvious the two have very vast differences when it comes to their personalities. But I find it important to have differences as both have something to bring to the table with their differences, no? Another essential part of a working couple.

And to quickly cover what I had before, their personalities. Pearl is literal and Lapis is sarcastic, Pearl is outwardly emotional and sobs and Lapis moodily and angrily exists, so on and so forth. How does this work? It’s also one of the hardest parts of their relationship, should they ever try it out because one of their biggest differences, is one of their flaws in a relationship as proven over and over.

Pearl is all give and no take, and Lapis is all take and no give. Which is a mix for a toxic relationship, as Pearl would constantly be giving to Lapis as Pearl’s entire worth as shown in her previous relation was all about what she would give to Rose, or else she was nothing. Even by the end of the main series she still needs to be reminded she’s still something without her. And Lapis’s emotional baggage? Let’s face it, Lapis is selfish and it’s all about her. She’s angry? She’s gonna fuck you up (ie; Jasper and the two Lapis), Lapis doesn’t want to deal with war? She doesn’t even think twice about what Peridot wants, and jumps away despite Steven calling out towards her.

But, but, but, but… It’s also a mix for something amazing as after their development, they’re kind of the perfect people to call each other out. In theory of course should they communicate.

Lapis would teach Pearl to be a little more selfish and care about her own needs, whereas Lapis needs constant reminders to actually take notice about what others want and feel (ex; the way she immediately rushes in and notices Steven’s expression at the last moment). It’s clear that Pearl isn’t willing to be treated that way should Lapis do so (ex; the way she snapped back at Peridot and towards Holly Blue) and Lapis upon caring enough? Is in fact willing to try to do better (ex; Why so blue, and Alone at Sea). It’s just that Lapis is farther behind on maturity (considering she ran away and panics instantly twice in a row). They can strike a perfect balance should they put the effort to do so, which would lead to the possible second problem they might have and would need to work through.

And the second difference the two of them have?

Fusion.

It’s the one trauma Lapis has that Pearl wouldn’t understand, and, it’s something Pearl clearly finds something addicting or to use above others. In fact she needed a crash course on it with the string of episodes of what she did to Garnet. Because Pearl is the kind of person who would desperately try so hard to not repeat the same mistake, she’s probably she’s willing to wait a millennia about it or even be fine with never fusing with Lapis. Because consent is important, but I think because of her actual experience with good and loving fusions? She might not be actually be a bad candidate for helping Lapis should she ever want to try again.

The Biggest Conflict

Now, for the biggest problem of the relationship. Uh, let’s be real here…. Despite all these arguments and nice claims and all.

Lapis doesn’t like Pearl, at all. Perhaps she even holds the biggest grudge against Pearl because Pearl was the one who literally carried her around in the mirror for a good chunk of time, doesn’t even bother to learn who she was, and even was willing to bubble her and trap her further. And Lapis probably has incentive to keep it against her for purely that fact as she was holding it against Peridot for the same fact, except for the fact Pearl has made zero amends to apologize for it. So why would Lapis ever want to talk to her?

You might consider the possibility of Steven but it’s not his job to make them friends. The only thing the two of them would do for him is to pretend to be friends, as shown in ‘Hit the Diamond’ and ‘Gem Harvest’ but otherwise, there’s clear distaste from Lapis’s side (ie; The New Crystal Gems) and her consistent ‘fuck the crystal gems’ attitude from the beginning. Maybe for him they might try something however I doubt it’s enough.

Regardless, I do believe an apology is due on both sides whenever they are ready. And that would be the start of perhaps their romantic relationship shenanigans which I consistently desire. Also I’m a slut for tense relationships to friendship to lovers if people would just---

Anyway I think there’s a lot more material for them to work with and they might actually be a pretty awesome couple

#steven universe #su meta #pearlapis #lapearl #steven universe analysis #pearl #su analysis #lapis lazuli #pearl (Su) #sage text #meta #i like geniunely thought about this a lot i lay awake at night thinking about them i just FEEL LIKE THERES MORE THAN WHAT PEOPLE BELIEVE Ok

[deliciousscaloppine]

Hot Takes Galore: A brief overview of fandom backlashes that influenced fanfiction writing traditions as I have personally experienced them:

In today’s segment I am going to talk about copyright infringement.

First let me preface this by saying I have only ever been in 3 fandoms, starting from 2008 and I have never been terribly active - like this blog has been the most active I’ve ever been in any fandom ever. I am not going to talk about particular fandom dramas because I am pretty clueless about that. What I am going to talk about is that friction between “reality” and online spaces that brought about changes that are still in effect today in the way fanfiction is written and perceived.

In 2008 as I was entering, nearly every piece of fanfiction had a disclaimer about the author not owning the characters, which were the property of Corporate Entity X, or Author Y, and also not profiting from the work in any shape or form. At the time getting money from writing fanfiction was a gigantic taboo, and almost no one did it, or advertised that they did. 

But as I understand through convention culture printed writing did circulate in exchange for money (zines), and at least in Japan one could sell doujinshis (self-published stories and comics, often within the framework of another work) in certain events. Although this was largely considered “illegal” under copyright laws, and artists could be persecuted or blacklisted from entering the industry if discovered. That’s also why fanartists often to this day may screen where and when their work is viewed, and move to take down reposts, or call others to protest if artworks are circulated without permission outside of the artist’s page.

Older fandom people also hated authors that moved against fanfiction, a big case being Anne Rice, the vampire lady everyone - including me - copies when writing about vampires. And now I am going to talk a little about that.

Usually, writers, just sit somewhere cosy and write, and often they have no idea, absolutely no idea, on how to manage their writing properties - usually a lawyer does that, and lawyers want A Lot Of Money (A brief brush with justice and lawyers over a civil dispute I won, cost me 1000 euros out of nowhere, in a single day, and no I couldn’t avoid it because I was the accused one, so I had to appear with some representation). 

So sometimes, quite often, it’s a lawyer that activates a writer or other artist to move against “smaller” copyright infringements, in order to make bank. And if one suffers such a case, they should make it as apparent as possible to the other party that they have no money, and the pressure will go away immediately. But even MORE OFTEN a small copyright infringement, may lead to a sequence of bigger ones, and ultimately the de facto loss of rights from one’s writing properties, and of course revenue. 

And for a lot of published authors, they just don’t know for how long they can publish things - publishing houses that have them signed can close, book sales can drop, tastes change, personal problems, and anything else may mean that they could find themselves without a source of income at any point in the future, while they are aging and becoming more and more irrelevant. 

A very famous case currently, is that of Alan Dean Foster, the writer who has done some novelizations for movies like Star Wars and Alien, and is no longer receiving revenue from that - while his wife is hospitalized and their family needs the income - because Disney absorbed the company that had signed the contract with him, and chose to not honor the previous contract. To make them pay he will have to go into a huge legal battle with a corporate giant, which he cannot afford. But they still absorb income from these novelizations.

But how does fanfiction tie into that, and Anne Rice’s case (which if memory serves right, also went through a series of personal problems, including her husband’s death during that time). 

So for a lot of writers, fanfiction may be that tiny breach that may threaten their rights in the future from tresspases of distribution networks. Meaning, people write vampire fanfiction based on Anne Rice’s work? What if another publishing house used the template of her works (historical settings, bleeding orifices, religious themes, homosexuality and sexual trauma etc) and produced a royalty free series of such works with a team of professional writers that do not own the work - who often have less rights, like not owning the characters, or the storylines, participating in a very small scale, so their payment goes down etc)

And in this way EVERYONE SUFFERS. Big Name Published Author fades into obscurity and goes into poverty and payroll writers are horrifically abused.  

A lot of hobbyists, and hobbyist writers whose sole dream is to be published in some shape or form, do not really care, and do not concern themselves with the legal aspect of creation, or the technical skill that it takes to produce writing on a consistent basis, which can only happen if you’ve got your basic needs covered. So they might see this type of backlash as inherently privileged. 

But it’s not really a privilege, there has been a global recession in basic working rights for everyone, and lovers of fiction don’t have to condone, of course, attacks against them, but they need to put that kind of backlash in perspective. Someone did write the content you enjoy, THEY ARE NOT DEAD YET, and may have opinions on how it should be managed, especially when it pertains to their livelihood. 

It’s a delicate balance that we all must keep in order to keep corporate regulations out of it.

For instance with the recent danmei explosion The Untamed brought forth, Ao3 was banned in China. Now a lot of you might know that this was caused by some real person fic involving the actor Xiao Zhan, which led to a whole other level of drama. But make no mistake this was a political act to protect the interests of the domestic publishing industry as it prepares to do an international opening that will bring in several billions from foreign markets.

Because Ao3 has been expanding as a platform globally it brings about changes, and in many cases steals readers away from traditional publishing, so it becomes unacceptable economically for a bunch of hobbyists to influence tastes, market mores, and create sensationalism around certain properties out of literally the blue. This is not a good thing for a lot of corporate thinking, they set the product and we are supposed to buy it. We are not supposed to go, it would look greater with a bunch of anal, and then put forth a million words altering the character of the intellectual property.

Why you ask? Again, because another publishing industry might choose to imitate the style of danmei fanfics and produce works that hijack readership, or lead to breach of contracts, making an unsafe environment for workers in this industry (Xiao Zhan’s case.)

Nowadays I see more and more fanfic authors coming out of their shell to ask money for writing in the form of donations, patronage and commissions, as fandom involvement is also becoming vastly monetized. The market of conventions coming into social media platforms. A strange more exists still in which while “legally wrong”, as long as money is not asked on the publishing platform (Ao3), it may not count as copyright infringement. But fanfic authors, may still be treated with hostility for this, for not “deserving” to profit from someone else’s properties, or even worse for “stealing” readership. 

For instance a recent argument I have seen from lgbtq authors, is that they remain unsupported by fandom spaces, who often proclaim themselves as lgbtq or lgbtq friendly (something that is not true), but at the same time they are not looking for published lgbtq stories, or authors, or even treat these with open hostility, or a lot of bias.

Fandom is not comprised from “readers” in the traditional sense, definitely not friends of literature, and it’s free, no one really has to pay anything to read a published fanfic.  So it’s a pretty loose demographic with no set characteristics, and no interest in investing time and money in something for long. It’s an online social activity and not a readers’ movement, highly influenced by peer pressure and branding. It’s basically a gigantic group of people who don’t really do anything for no one, and may develop a parasitic connection to intellectual properties (I am sorry peers, it’s the truth). 

And it’s perhaps the biggest counterculture scene at the moment in the developed world. To this day it treats even its own authors with tremendous suspicion, disregard and dismissal, meaning that even if someone can get some money and recognition locally through writing fanfic they are on thin fucking ice at all times for all the reasons but mostly attracting unnecessary attention to themselves and subsequently the scene.  A pattern that we will see is endemic to all forms of fandom backlashes.

So to this day in contrast with fanart, fan writers may not be compensated for their troubles, but may also be ousted from their domestic professional spaces for writing fanfic that may infringe on their intellectual property. 

The thing is, for me, that fandom culture can become incredibly supportive of corporate practices that harm actual people (writers, they are people too) but when they realize that the same corporate practices may be used against them, it’s too late to realize that it’s not a lottery of who wins by crying more, and by the time that happens, a corporation or industry who has used them to do its dark bidding, can stop catering to them  because ultimately they have become again irrelevant once a well defined demographic of  readers and viewers has been secured.

So if you are going to do counterculture, at least do it right. Be respectful of the writers/authors of the content you consume and mindful of their troubles, do not generate public strife that brings in political regulation in favor of corporate interests. Become interested in writing culture, support your fanfic authors with lasting engagement in their work, even if it escapes the narrow confines of a certain fandom. It’s simple. Eat, live, pray, fuck, or something.

#fandom history?

[gaknar]

Review: The Claremont Crossovers

Geez, I haven’t written a review for this blog since my Secret Wars review from like 17 years ago. How can that be? Well, I guess I used to work on this blog a lot more often and now I’ve gotten way more into Super Nintendo games and BDSM. Like a lot of people. But now that I finally finished reading Inferno, it is time once again to bookend my experience with an overly wordy wall of text filled with the worst kind of oblivious meninist butt humor jokes and pretentious sounding run-on sentences that are trying to sound smart but are always improperly ended with prepositions of. And lots of ridiculous comic book panels.

These are only the silliest panels from this reading that I could find after looking for about 25 seconds.

Bookeeping. This review covers everything that I have read since X-Factor #1. This includes Uncanny X-Men #204-243, X-Factor #1-39, New Mutants #38-73, along with a smattering of annuals, Daredevil, Power Pack, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Excalibur, and X-Terminators comics that were all part of the Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno crossovers. There were a lot of developments over the course of the 4 years these comics were published. Jean Grey was resurrected and the original members of the X-Men reformed under the moniker X-Factor.

Mr. Sinister formed his band of evil mutants, the Marauders, who would become the X-Men’s main antagonists, and their most devious act would include committing mutant genocide against the Morlocks in the New York City sewers while dealing critical wounds to main X-Men team members Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Colossus during the fight.

Later, the X-Men were seemingly killed in a struggle with the mystical being known as the Adversary, but in reality they went into hiding in their new Australian outback base.

Illyana Rasputin lost control of the hell dimension Limbo which led to a demon invasion of Manhattan.

And finally, perhaps most prominently, Cyclops left his wife Madelyne Pryor and their son to get back together with Jean Grey, an act that led Madelyne to become corrupted with Pheoenix Force power and to turn into the Goblin Queen.

This era of X-Men comics contains the first major crossovers between the main X-Men comic book and its spinoffs. These events would become common as Marvel found ways to use its more strongly published works to carry the weaker ones, and the ploy still works apparently since here I am 30 years later reading 500 page omnibus collections just because there are 4 or 5 absolutely killer X-Men comic books in them. I love the X-Men so much that I’m willing to wade through the unending buildup to get the most out of the climaxes.

Seriously this artwork.

However, I find that this style of editing leads to a peculiar trend in pacing that can be tough to recover from in-between the major storylines. As Mutant Massacre leads into Fall of the Mutants, which then leads into Inferno, the characters are faced with consistently increasing stakes. With each passing story line, casualties grow and become more grave, and the consequences are more lasting. Mutant Massacre starts with the genocide of a mutant community, and several main characters are critically wounded as the X-Men face the worst defeat they’ve ever experienced. Then a year later in Fall of the Mutants, just as the team is starting to recover, the entire team of X-Men is killed during their battle against the Adversary. They would immediately be resurrected as a reward for sacrificing themselves to save the world, but it is still a defeat that claims the lives of every member of the team, if only for a moment. By the time we get to Inferno, the world is literally ending. Demons are raining from the sky and regular people are straight up getting slaughtered in the streets and elevators as the X-Men are more or less helpless to stop the destruction.

Inferno is an amazing storyline, if only for all the scenes of inanimate objects coming to life and straight up eviscerating common folk who are just minding their own business. Look at this shit!!! How did the comics code of conduct ever approve this. A mob of people just packed themselves into a demon FOOD PROCESSOR and every inch of them was liquefied except their bones. Chilling. (And let’s just forget about how the writers retconned all this blood orgy stuff in the Inferno Epilogue).

This all works in a capitalistic sense. Constantly raise the stakes and don’t let up for a second because if you do, the reader will take their eyes off the page and you will lose money. But the problem is, you can’t do this forever. And if you try, eventually you are going to write yourself into a corner where you’ve raised the stakes so many times, and you’ve re-manufactured the drama so often, people will stop caring. I call this the Dragon Ball effect.

How many times have these characters become gods at this point? Like three movies ago, the most recent movie was literally called “Battle of Gods.” I’m not even watching Super. Once your characters get so far away from humanistic stories people can relate to, you are no longer creating art. You’re manufacturing sensationalism. And it gets boring. These guys are starting to look like different flavors of freezie pops.

Maybe this is why the X-Men comics that come after this, the comics that make up the last leg of writer Chris Claremont’s 17 year run on the series, become so weird. Because perhaps there was no way to continue to raise the stakes any higher. After this point, we don’t get any more big crossovers until X-Tinction Agenda, but even that story is small and quaint when compared to what is presented here. Wolverine completely disappears from the series, all our other favorite characters disappear into the Seige Perilous to be transformed into completely different versions of themselves, and we get a lot of surreal stories that don’t have any sort of climax in the way that we’ve been conditioned to expect. The series becomes murky and ambiguous, without a solid narrative arc, and I think that’s why people regard the end of Chris Claremont’s writing on the series to be the weakest part of his run.

I can’t wait to read the X-Men comics that are coming up next. Because I didn’t know what in the FUCK was going on in these comics when I was a kid and I’m hoping they make more sense now.

Anyway, I’ll be the judge of all that, once I get there. (I may even indulge in the Infinity Gauntlet omnibus because, you know, there’s a couple X-Men involved in that). But regardless of what comes after this, I think it’s also true that the crossovers presented in this reading are generally regarded with less respect than Chris Claremont’s earlier work on the series, such as the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. This I don’t agree with. While the stories in this reading do range in quality, with Fall of the Mutants definitely being the weakest of the three big crossovers, and even though the Uncanny X-Men portion of Inferno isn’t even the central story of that crossover (the critical story elements take place in the far inferior issues of New Mutants and <ugh> X-Terminators written by Louise Simonson), Claremont’s writing is still much stronger, more layered, and more elegant than anything else that is presented in these collections. These crossovers may not be as timeless or original as the most famous X-Men stories, but the writing here is still really darn good and engaging (at least in Uncanny X-Men), and in my opinion, does not represent a decline in aptitude on the part of the writer. It’s clear that Claremont’s writing has continued to mature and become more nuanced, so much so that when you compare it to the first issues he wrote for the series, it seems like he’s a completely different writer.

KALIDASCOPICALLY. Again, these were just the silliest panels I could find after looking for about 25 seconds.

Personally, I love this period of X-Men comics. Under Claremont’s executive control, no plot thread gets dropped. No minor detail goes disregarded. Characters continue to grow and develop at such a natural pace, sometimes it feels like my own life is developing right alongside theirs. This adds depth to these readings and I can’t describe how it feels to be a part of them, and I think it’s this element that is missing from so many other comic books written by so many other comic book writers, including nearly every X-Men story written after Chris Claremont left the series.

Case in point, there are so many minor recurring characters that appear in these stories, like Franklin Richards. (I seriously tear up every time I see these panels). This little guy bounces around the Power Pack, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four like a ping pong ball. He’s a key character in the story line where Kitty Pryde finally recovers from the wounds she suffered during Mutant Massacre. And even though Kitty and Franklin have only met each other a few times, those meetings have meaning and they are remembered and called upon in the telling of the current story. All of the efforts made by the writers and editors to keep the narrative linked make these characters seem like real life people with weight and substance, rather than a thin layer of ink on a piece of paper. And it totally works.

Ugh, this review turned into another circle jerk about the writers of these comics, and especially about Chris Claremont. But what can I say. It’s because of the writers that we are here. Love or hate these comics, and I know Claremont’s wordy scripts are not everyone’s cup of tea, but these are the stories that make the X-Men what they are. It’s tough to be aware of these things when you’re in the middle of reading them, but I’m having the absolute best time writing this blog right now, and it is primarily because these are the comics that resonate with me the most. And when I’m finished with Claremont’s material and I’m slogging through some crap written by Chuck Austen, I bet I’m going to look back on these days with envy.

#x-men #review #madelyne pryor #jean grey #inferno #Mutant Massacre #fall of the mutants

[comicbooknews]

An Amateur's Overview To Manga Genres Or Kinds Of Manga

Allow's start with a definition of manga in Canada. Manga are actually just comics coming from Japan. That's what manga indicates; it's Japanese for "comic." Today prior to experienced manga supporters start quibbling, I understand that is actually a streamlined meaning. There are actually producers who may not be Japanese if you seem at the manga online industry in Japan. Korean comics, or manhwa, have actually been actually serialized in Japanese comic compilations. Among this season's cartoons is based on a manga by a French designer.

A Beginner's Guide To read free manga

When our team typically think of categories, our experts think about categories that possess common metaphors, storytelling settings, as well as goals. The scary category tries to scare you. The dream category will probably feature some sort of magic. A love story story should be about two people falling in affection.

Our team discover those styles in manga online free, too. There's scary manga, dream manga, and also romance manga in United States. -- and this is a key aim-- the manga market doesn't talk regarding categories along those lines. Those are actually even more like sub-genres. As an alternative, sorts of manga categories are actually often identified through major target demographic.

Various forms of manga.

SHONEN.

An amateur's quick guide to read manga online should start through this category. Much of the collection on call in English fall under this category. Shonen manga are targeted towards adolescent children. It is actually one of the equal categories to YA. While there are exceptions, shonen manga normally feature great deals of action and also male protagonists that wish to receive more powerful somehow. This is also the category where you'll locate great deals of located family members as well as squads of buddies. Shonen manga really loves concentrating on the connects forged through a group of individuals going on a journey with each other or even the camaraderie that arises between the teammates of a straining sporting activities staff that wishes to succeed the competition.

SHOJO.

If shonen manga aim ats teen kids, shojo manga targets teenage girls. There is actually a mistaken belief that shojo manga amounts love, and also is actually most definitely not true. Shonen manga has some noteworthy love stories. Remember: manga categories normally involve intended demographic, and also those intended demographics have actually varied flavors given that readers have wide varieties. Say goodbye to, no less. When examining shojo manga all at once, I will say a typical attribute is actually the expedition of connections, which are actually sometimes romantic yet not constantly, as well as the emotions linked with those connections.

SEINEN.

Seinen manga are targeted towards men in their 20s and much older. It is actually the substitute of grown-up myth. The stories as well as particular dealing with often tend to be elder than what you discover in shonen manga in Canada. I such as to think about the difference by doing this. A little bit even more resentment as well as materialism permeate seinen if the chance and also promise of the future go through the shonen genre.

JOSEI.

Josei is the female market substitute to seinen. Unlike the previous three forms of manga, there's a wide range of subject and styles so it's a little bit more difficult to determine usual characteristics beyond the target audience. Like seinen, josei attributes older storytelling as well as franker depictions of scenarios as well as connections.

YOUNG BOYS LOVE.

While I mentioned this newbies resource to manga would certainly cover the major category types, I wanted to feature 2 various other types of manga that you may manage into while diving right into the channel.

Often described as yaoi, young boys adore refers to manga including homoerotic partnerships between men. It is primarily produced by females for an audience of girls, and certainly, it could be as problematic as it sounds. Yet taking that right into account, there are still some appealing accounts to be found listed below. Just realize that you may run into some downfalls in the process.

YURI.

As you can perhaps presume, yuri describes manga featuring homoromantic and also homoerotic connections between ladies. Unlike young boys adore manga, its own target market features both males and females.

And that regarding covers the major forms of manga.

#Manga

[kytea]

The True Nature of Deltarune

Deltarune Chapter 1 has been out for over a year now, and being the big UT/DR fan that I am, I’ve been slowly mulling over both games, reading many fan theories and putting together my own interpretation of what I believe the nature and goal of Deltarune will be. This will be a long one so grab some popcorn, put on your matpat hats and click to keep reading!

So what is Deltarune? Is it a sequel to Undertale? Is it a prequel? Is it an alternate universe? Is it the coming of age story of a bunch of teens? Is it a complex meta-narrative on the nature of video games?

The answer is yes to all of the above. And to begin delving into this we must first understand the creator of this game: Toby Fox.

I won’t toot Toby’s Fox’s horn too much, we all know how talented and hardworking he is, but he’s also very emotionally perceptive and empathic. His general disposition is reminiscent of avant-garde artists that push the boundaries of artistic creation in a medium.

Toby loves mysteries, and in the early version of Undertale there was an included file that disparaged hackers and went on to say that it’s difficult to add mysteries in games these days due to data miners and such.

Thankfully, this did not stop Toby from lovingly adding quite a few big mysteries to Undertale that have yet to be resolved. Knowing Toby and his strong desire to share his story, a story that according to him, kept him awake at night:

“For the past 3 years I've been waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep because I've been thinking about the scenes that happen in the game. Even though so many details are still hazy, I really want to show you the things I've been thinking about.That's really my only reason for making this game. If I don't show you what I'm thinking, I'll lose my mind.“

I don’t believe Toby will let these mysteries go unanswered, and it is here that we can begin to understand what Deltarune is about.

The Mystery of W.D. Gaster

Truly, the biggest mystery of Undertale is that of W.D. Gaster: former royal scientist, creator of the CORE and the Determination Extraction machine.

A player can go through the entirety of Undertale multiple times and never even hear word of Gaster’s existence. This is because all the events that pertain to him are hidden behind a value in the game’s files known as the “FUN value”. Outside of actually manipulating this file manually yourself, it is, to the average player, random. The FUN value can trigger multiple different events throughout the game, some of which include running into “Followers of Gaster” or even Gaster himself.

While the latter has nothing to say before he “boings” out of existence, the former Followers all tell an eerie tale of a scientist who fell into his own creation and was scattered across time and space.

But hold on. Time and space? Why does that sound familiar?

Ah yes, during the Sans battle he speaks about an “massive anomaly in the timespace continuum”.

And during this battle Sans says a lot of other cryptic things without context, for example, he laments not being able to “go back” somewhere. But where or when is he referring to?

He mentions how he and others were monitoring time-lines and their readings showed them stopping and starting, jumping left and right, and eventually ending. Who was he monitoring these readings with? This all seems incredibly scientific and sci-fi, I thought Sans was just a silly skeleton, is he some kind of time cop? (he does have a “badge” in his workshop) He also uses skeletal weapons known as “Gaster Blasters”.

What…? Gaster Blaster?

Okay, now we KNOW Sans DEFINITELY has some connection to this mysterious scientist W.D. Gaster, but what? Well, for starters W.D. Gaster is short for Wing Dings Gaster, a type of font that he also speaks in.

Who else is named after and speaks in specific font types? Sans and Papyrus of course!

Furthermore, in the concept sketches for Papyrus, Toby wrote and redacted parts of a message that says: “has a brother named comic sans and a [BLANK] named [BLANK]”.

Who is this mysterious redacted person and what is their relationship to Sans and Papyrus? The easy money is on a family member, and for sake of argument lets use the prediction most of the fandom has already concluded and accepted: that Sans and Papyrus have a father named Gaster.

So Sans and Papyrus have a long lost father that was a scientist. This explanation would begin to explain why Sans has a weapon named after him, and why he wanted to “go back” to some place or time, perhaps in an effort to save him from his fate.

There’s a hidden event in Undertale where if you reset after listening to Sans speak about LOVE and EXP in a pacifist route, and initiate the conversion a couple of times in a row, he’ll catch on by the expression your face that you’ve heard it before and will surmise that you’re a time traveller and give you secret code words to tell his past self.

This will lead to him giving you the key to his room which ends up just being a prank at first.

But then you find a key to the secret workshop/basement hidden behind his house.

Once you enter the workshop, you’ll find some blueprints written in symbols you can’t read (wing dings?) and a curtain covering a machine that doesn’t seem to be working, among other things.

Toby Fox tweeted a message regarding this machine a few days after Undertale’s release around the time people were figuring out FUN values and the secrets surrounding Sans and Gaster.

“You’ve all seen the happiest outcome. Neither of them could fix the machine, no matter how hard they tried. No one can.”

This tweet seems to imply that if the machine could be fixed that Undertale could have a happier outcome.

And this my friends, is the gateway to the nature of Deltarune.

Deltarune, according to Toby Fox, is a game for players that have completed Undertale. But what does it mean to complete Undertale, and I mean, TRULY complete it? Toby often expressed that he wasn’t happy with how people told others how to play the game, that it is best played completely blind. Having played Undertale blind myself, and having watched others do the same, the natural way the game is meant to progress is that first players will experience the Neutral Ending, followed by the Pacifist Ending, and Finally the Genocide ending. This is because the game cruelly plays against your expectations of how an RPG should work and this almost guarantees that you will kill at least one monster your first play through. As if the fact that the fight button is always the default position in battle isn’t enough, in the early parts of the game you are told that you may need to weaken a monster before you can spare them. This naturally brings to mind the systems of Pokémon, where you have the best chance to catch a Pokémon if it’s at low health. Well, if you try this during the Toriel fight, as most do, you’ll find that as soon as you get close to critical health, you’ll instantly kill her.

Poor goat mama..

Difficulty-wise, the neutral route is the most easy, because you can level up a little and gain more HP. The Pacifist route is a bit harder because your HP is lower, but with the experience you gain from the previous route, it should prove no problem. Finally the Genocide route is the most difficult because it takes a concerted effort that implies knowledge of the previous routes to kill every single monster.

So an ideal Deltarune player has knowledge of all three main routes of Undertale, and may have experienced or heard of Gaster.

Is this player you? If so, ask yourself, what would a “happier outcome” look like to you? And be honest. Many fans in the Undertale community have already answered this question in the form of fanworks. Some of the most common elements among them are as follows:



1) Frisk and all the monsters are free from the Underground and living on the surface with humans.

2) Asriel is revived.

3) Gaster is revived.

4 )Chara is revived.

The revival of Asriel, Chara, and Gaster are the undisputed holy grails in terms of happiest endings that the UT community dreams of and creates endless fan works to explore the possibilities. Toby knows this well.

Using a speech pattern attributed to Gaster, Toby teased the release of Deltarune Chapter 1

“I LOOK FORWARD TO CREATING A NEW FUTURE WITH YOU.” stands out quite a bit to me as the prospect of a “happier outcome” is already tied to Gaster and Sans, now a “new future” is connected.

And when Deltarune released, and fans had a chance to play it, they found:

1) All the monsters are free and living on the surface.

2) Asriel is alive and well and living his best life.

3) A voice with the same speech pattern as Gaster (based on Japanese text) brought you to this world and attempted to give your own vessel before…

4)…a voice with the same speech pattern as Chara (also based on Japanese text) discarded it.

Right off the bat Toby seems to have given fans what they wanted, a perfect future ending. But as you continue to play, you begin to realize that this may not be the world you dreamed of.

First, while all the monsters are living on the surface, they aren’t the same people from Undertale, for example: Undyne has never met Alphys, and the amalgamates that went to live with their families at the end of Undertale are deceased in this world. And while Asriel is alive, it’s not THE Asriel we were so determined to save in Undertale.

Gaster’s presence permeates Deltarune so thoroughly it would take awhile to point out every example, but it seems clear that he’s present in some form.

And Chara? You only need to see the ending cutscene of chapter 1 to know that they are around in a similar fashion as when they possess Frisk in the True Pacifist after a Genocide ending.

But their presence is also present in subtle ways. For example, if you attempt to play the piano in the hospital in Hometown and then speak to the receptionist, she comments that Kris’ playing isn’t the same as usual (Likely due to our control), but it seems that Chara may be good at piano. Interestingly, on the cover artwork for the official Undertale Piano Collection 2 book, Frisk can be seen holding a knife playing a key on a piano in the judgement hall filled with bones.

So for better or worse, what appears to be the original Chara and Gaster from Undertale are present in Deltarune, in some meta form or another. And maybe that’s the key: “Meta-characters”. After all, you yourself as a player are a “Meta-character”. You can ask the inhabitants of this new world questions that only someone with knowledge of a True Pacifist route would have, such as being able to ask Undyne about Alphys. Asking her this only makes sense if you yourself completed a True Pacifist route before playing Deltarune.

Ralsei, the lonely prince.

Toby being the trickster dog he is, he didn’t just give us 1 Asriel and call it a day, no he gave us 2.

Ralsei is quite clearly meant to be a version of Asriel because not only do they have similar or identical dialogues, but he was also was meant to look more like him before Toby decided to give him his Black Mage look.

There are even strong parallels obviously meant to create an emotional response and connect Ralsei to the feelings people had for Asriel in Undertale by giving the players the option to hug him.

Ralsei is quite the mystery on his own. And while he’s most certainly sweet and lovable, there’s undeniably some disconcerting things about him such as:

-Why does he know Kris and Susie’s names?

-Who did he learn the prophecy from? “Foretold by time and space” isn’t a good answer (or is it?).

-What did he say to Kris when the player SOUL wasn’t present in the prison?

-When he’s KO’d in battle, what does he become? Apparently he can still eat to regain HP when in this shrunken form.

Ralsei seemed to be under the impression that violence wasn’t needed in this world, but upon nearly being defeated by the King after mistakenly healing him, Ralsei says “This isn’t a world where kindness always wins, is it?”

The way he says this seems to imply he knows of other worlds and that they have different rules. Perhaps he comes from a world where someone being kind to everyone they met had great results?

There are definitely things that Ralsei is not telling us, whether this means he’s up to no good will remain to be seen, however, I would like to take this opportunity to make a prediction based on the previous understanding that the original Chara and Gaster are present in this new world in meta forms, and assert that Undertale Asriel, the final piece of the perfect ending puzzle is present in Deltarune in his own meta-character form of Ralsei. Perhaps the form he shrinks into when KO’d is one we know well...

There is that unused Flowey face...

Add glasses and a hat and...

but that’s just a game theory!

And I can't help but wonder about the dark heart on Ralsei's chest and this merchandise in the Deltarune section of fangamer that specifically features a quote from Undertale about the prophecy of Delta Rune (that turns out to be about Asriel in the TP ending, and Chara in the Genocide ending) "There is a prophecy. The Angel... The One Who Has Seen The Surface... They will return. And the underground will go empty."

It's also the Deltarune game logo

Because the merchandise is called Darkheart, it made me immediately think of the dark heart on Ralsei's chest, and having an Undertale quote about Asriel/Chara makes it all the more mysterious...

Regardless, in just the first chapter of Deltarune, the elements of the “happier outcome” connected to Sans’ machine are present. But how do they all connect? Well, let’s look at the other characters in Deltarune, starting with:

Lancer

Oh Baby Santa Claus, how we love you so. It’s hard to overlook how similar Lancer is to Sans. They’re both hilarious in their own way, both ride bikes, have similar color-schemes, both have a love for tomato-based products, and both have some scientific/engineering affinity (Sans and his workshop, Lancer and his “Lancer Industries”).

But that’s not all, the door to Sans’ room is identical to the warp doors found in the Dark World that Lancer hails from, and Sans’ warp ability also makes the same sound effect as these doors as well.

Lancer is a member of the FUN gang (remember the FUN value?), that, as far as we know currently, has 3 other members besides himself: Kris, Ralsei, and Susie (with the possibility of Noelle and others in the future).

Speaking of Susie, her name (or a version of it) popped up in Undertale prior to Deltarune’s release when the game was released on the Switch. By speaking to the Gaster Follower “Clamgirl”, you can learn of a girl named “Suzy”, that you will meet her soon, and that “in life’s grand scheme, she might be why you came here in the first place...”

Upon receiving this dialogue, checking the drawers in Sans workshop will reveal a card with a drawing of 3 people smiling and the words “don’t forget”.

“Don’t Forget” is the vocal theme of Deltarune sung by Laura Shigihara, and the melody from the ending verse,“Don’t forget, I’m with you in the dark.”, is leitmotifed throughout the entire Deltarune chapter 1 OST. The connections between Sans, the FUN gang, Gaster, and by extension Undertale and Deltarune are quite apparent. Perhaps the actions of the FUN gang in the Deltarune world will have an affect on the FUN value in Undertale.

Based on all the evidence we have now, I am going to make a bold prediction:

Lancer is literally a younger Sans.

That’s right, Toby Fox made Baby Sans before Disney and Sega made Baby Yoda and Baby Sonic.

Deltarune’s Dark World is the past from the perspective of Sans and Gaster (or a recreation of it). How Lancer becomes Sans will likely be a very large part of Deltarune’s narrative, and once he becomes Sans, he will exist as a separate meta entity that can traverse different worlds, even if versions of himself already exist in some form there (similar to Ralsei and Asriel).

We’ve seen that if characters are exposed to elements that make it clear they live in a video game world, whether this be Determination for humans and Flowey, a time-space accident for Gaster, or a strange man whispering to Jevil, these characters become something wholly different, more powerful, and begin to become more similar to players with the ability to SAVE, RESET, or use abilities that seem beyond the scope of the game (e.g. Photoshop Flowey, Jevil’s ability to speak, etc). Undertale and Deltarune are video games about video games.

So if it is to be believed that Gaster is Sans’ father, and that Lancer is a younger Sans, then it stands to logical reason that whoever Lancer’s father is, that they must be Gaster.

No, not the King, there is another. A “Lesser-dad”.

Yes, Rouxls Kaard.

“GOD DAMNIT”

Rouxls Kaard, or “Rules Card”, or if you rearrange his name “A Dark Soul Rx”, wait, Rx as in prescription? As in a doctor? Dark Soul as in Mr. Darkness Gaster himself? Too much of a stretch? Maybe. Although you can’t deny they have similar appearances.

If Rouxls Kaard is Gaster, and therefore the father of Sans and Papyrus, then he’s undeniably similar to one of his sons. Rouxls Kaard seems to be quite passionate about puzzles, (despite not having a natural predilection to them). I could see Papyrus gaining an affinity for puzzles by being raised by such an individual, they both have quite flamboyant personalities. And let’s not forget that there are also hints that Rouxls Kaard may be inclined to creating scientific devices such as the “Control Crowne” he uses to control K.Round.

Hmm, controlling other people… sounds familiar to what we the player are doing to Kris… and who was it that was initially going to give us control of a vessel before we lost said control to Chara’s intervention? Control seems to play a big part in Deltarune doesn’t it?

Also, isn’t his manner of speech is reminiscent of a silly ye olde knight. Wait, wasn’t there a Knight causing trouble in the Dark World? Hm.

So something is going to turn Lancer and Rouxls Kaard into Sans and Gaster, respectively.

Now remember the CORE that Gaster built? This one?

It turns geothermal energy into magical electricity via an unknown means with one of the byproducts being ozone, which is corrosive and could potentially make someone very melty. This is what it looks like on the inside.

Lots of blues of varying hues with white accents. Kinda reminds me of Rouxls Kaard and the other “card” people’s color schemes.

What a coincidence! Oh and apparently the layout of the CORE can be re-arranged or something:

"I work at the CORE. The inside is a maze made of swappable parts... That means we can shuffle the layout at will." - Hotland NPC

Almost sounds like a sliding puzzle…

Finally, Gaster is referred to as “The man who speaks in hands”, likely due to his Wing Dings font that contains a lot of hand symbols, however, it isn’t a stretch to also apply that epithet to Rouxls Kaard, after all, the Rules Card speaks in hands as well. Hands of cards.

Susie

Can’t forget Susie. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can say about how her role in all this will play yet. If we are to believe that the “Suzy” that Clamgirl references is Susie, then it’s clear that she’ll be key, perhaps as a catalyst for all the big changes some characters will need to undergo...

I will say that I think it’s interesting that toby specifically has a character in Hometown comment that humans are made of blood (and implying the monsters are not),

and Susie says:

“Everybody bleeds, right?”

From our understanding of monsters in Undertale, monsters don’t bleed, they turn to dust. But, maybe Darkners can bleed. If we believe Sans is a Darkner, it may explain this:

It could be ketchup. It could be a Darkner thing. Lancer does mention blood casually. But if only humans and Darkners bleed, then why would a monster like Susie say “everybody bleeds”?

So what is Deltarune you ask? I think it’s:

1) A story about Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster’s past and future. We get to experience their past in the Dark World, and speak with their future selves in the Light World. But these future versions of Sans and Papyrus may not be as far into the future as the Sans and Papyrus we meet in Undertale. Remember, Sans had an Ice-E’s crossword in Undertale? Ice-E’s-P’E’zza is a restaurant in Hometown. Papyrus may also be younger than he was in Undertale because Sans, an adult who runs a grocery store, thinks a teen like Kris should hang with his little brother, and it would be “weird” if he were there with them.

2) A story about post-Undertale Asriel, Chara, and Gaster. Asriel/Flowey maintains his new form as Ralsei thanks to the power of the Dark Fountain. He now lives in what is/was Sans’ childhood home. Whether he knows this or remembers the events of Undertale is unknown, but it is my belief that he holds a deep connection to the Asriel we all wished to save. Chara resides within Kris in a similar manner as they did at the ending of a UT True Pacifist Ending after surrendering the red SOUL to them in a Genocide ending. Does this mean that Kris’s body or “vessel” is Frisk? This seems to be heavily implied by Kris’ outfit taking on the same color scheme as Frisk’s UT shirt while in the Dark World.

3) A coming of age story for a bunch of teens. Kris, Susie, Ralsei, Noelle, Lancer, and all the friends that may join on their adventures are still people regardless of what grand meta narrative is at play involving the nature of their reality. They still need to go to school, fall in love, and worry about growing up and going to university. Noelle will undoubtedly play a large role with Toby’s tease of her as “Lost Girl”, and considering how attached most of the community has already gotten to these characters, it hurts my heart to think about what may befall them as they try their best to live their lives. Does this mean Deltarune’s world is doomed? I hope not... but those save file screens sure are creepypasta...

“IT WAS AS IF IT WAS NEVER THERE AT ALL.”

4) A story about video games and the control (or lack thereof) we have over them. It’s quite clear that we, the player controlling the red soul, is able to influence this new world based on knowledge from Undertale that should have no barring. For example, we can name “Onionsan” who has forgot their own name. One of the options is “Onion”, but why? Is it because we know their name is Onionsan in Undertale? How do we even know if that is actually what this version of them is really named?

Deltarune is so close to the perfect Undertale ending we wanted, but it’s just a little bit wrong. Would it hurt to force Undyne and Alphys to meet and fall in love? To get Toriel and Asgore back together? To make Bratty and Catty friends? If you were given the option in game to do it, would you do it? What if it made their lives worse…? I believe that the fact we are able to influence inhabitants of Deltarune with our Undertale knowledge may have some unforeseen consequences, and perhaps, be what begins this whole situation in the first place. (Paradoxes are the best time travel stories!)

Toby Fox said that Deltarune was the game he originally wanted to make, but whether it was too ambitious or time consuming, his idea evolved into Undertale. Now that he’s creating the game he always wanted to, I believe that he will connect everything we know about them together and resolve the mysteries, after all, Gaster has been waiting for this chance.

And maybe, with a little luck and determination, we can create a new future with a happier outcome. If I’ve learned anything from Undertale, it’s that you must hold on to your hopes and dreams, because dreams are the goal of “Determination.”

#undertale #deltarune #spoilers #sans #papyrus #gaster #asriel #chara #frisk #kris #toriel #sans undertale #theory #the true nature of deltarune #noelle #fun gang #susie #toby fox

[mobius-prime]

202. Sonic the Hedgehog #134

Uh oh, that cover page doesn't bode well…

Home: Epilogue (Say What You Will)

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Jon Gray Colors: Jason Jensen

Everyone please welcome our newest penciller, Jon Gray! I wouldn't normally go out of my way to announce a new artist, but Jon Gray has perhaps one of the most heavily stylized and recognizable art styles of any other artist for this comic. You'll see what I mean almost immediately once I start showing panels. Anyway, a lot of this issue is devoted to Sonic simply catching up with family and friends, now that the immediate danger to Knothole is over and he can fully relax. When he and the others get back to the village, he's sent to Dr. Quack for treatment of his shoulder, and while there Quack scans him and notices the implant the aliens gave him to understand all forms of speech. Apparently it's bonded permanently to his nervous system, and Sonic panics a bit when he hears this, accidentally agitating his injury… which causes him to actually swear.

It wouldn't even be a big deal as the panel is fairly humorous and cartoony, but this actually makes Sonic one of only five characters in the entire comic who ever swear, at least that we ever see. Monk is one, Espio is another a few issues from now, and the fourth and fifth we have yet to properly meet. Anyway, yes, Dr. Quack lost an eye during the war while Sonic was away, and he's back to being a regular doctor, despite us never actually having seen him as a frontline medic. Sonic exits the hospital and meets with his family and Sally plus the queen, who inform him that there's going to be a huge celebration tonight to welcome him back to the land of the living. They exit the hospital and part ways with Sally and her mother, and are immediately blinded by a multitude of camera flashes from a press mob, all clamoring to ask Sonic a million questions about his year away. Somehow they manage to extricate themselves and head home, where Sonic is happy to see his old room exactly as he left it, his parents sadly explaining that after they thought he was dead they couldn't bear to change anything. He flops into bed for a nap while his mother fixes dinner, and wakes up to see his favorite pup, greeting him at the foot of his bed.

Sonic rushes out to confront his parents on why they didn't tell him such an important detail as Muttski learning to speak while he was away, but then realizes that his alien implant must be what allows him to understand his dog. Wait, so does this mean that Sonic can now understand any ordinary animal's speech? This is an amazing superpower! I would kill to have my own version of that. Sonic explains something else that he learned during his journey that he just remembered. Apparently, as he broke Ceneca-9009 out of prison, he had asked her why she deroboticized every Robian except for Jules, and she explained that due to the nature of Jules' injuries before his roboticization, reversing the process would bring back the same state of his body at that moment in time and ultimately kill him. This would explain why it took so much longer for him to be returned than the others - clearly Ceneca-9009 tried for a while to find a way to deroboticize him without killing him, but was ultimately unsuccessful. After dinner, Sonic heads to Knothole's airstrip knowing he will find Tails there, and they take a moment to catch up one on one before the party. It's not purely a social visit, though - Sonic has some important news for Tails as well.

This kid has never known his own parents, remember. His father disappeared the same day he was born, and his mother followed shortly afterward. Even when everyone else was getting their roboticized family back, he never looked for his parents, never seemed to expect to see anybody. Now he knows that he has two living and loving parents on the other side of the galaxy, waiting for him - and one day they'll be able to reunite once more. Something to look forward to, eh?

That night, the entire village celebrates, with Mina and her backup band performing for the crowd amidst flashing, colorful lights. Sonic takes the chance to hang out with all his friends, especially Sally, with whom he's resumed his budding relationship as though he never left. The king interrupts the festivities for a brief moment after Mina's set concludes, with an important announcement for the populace.

Mina happily runs to Sonic to hug him (with Sally looking slightly jealous behind them), informing him that in the course of the war she'd completely lost her stage fright and become a veritable pop star, singing and performing to keep morale up. As she introduces him to her stage manager (and boyfriend, as he gruffly informs Sonic) Ash the Mongoose, Sally's parents look at her from the edges of the party, with her mother expressing some concern about leaving Sally in charge while they're gone due to her seemingly fragile emotional state, evidenced by how she reacted when she saw Sonic take a hit during the battle. However, King Max says that he trusts her, as Elias never wanted to be king while Sally was born and bred to be a ruler from birth. Sally, for her part, seems to be eager to speak with Sonic about something, but they keep finding themselves interrupted by the arrival of more friends, this time including Knuckles and the Chaotix. Knuckles explains more fully why he's here, that while Sonic was gone Eggman invaded and captured Angel Island and he and his crew have been forced to stay here for a while as a result, helping the king in the war effort.

Rotor arrives with a rocket, and while he sets it up he explains to Sonic that he's since retired from active duty on the front lines to focus on inventing and science back home. Honestly, I always got the impression that Rotor was at least several years older than the others - like in his mid-20s or so - but apparently no, he's like eighteen, so "retired" seems like a bit of a strange word to use in this instance. But eh, whatever - he shoots off the rocket and it lights the sky with a barrage of colorful fireworks, including a special one that changes shape, taking the form of Sonic and Sally kissing and holding each other. Seems a little gaudy if you ask me, but Sonic is pleased, as is the crowd. Sonic then congratulates Geoffrey and Hershey on their impromptu wedding, and they say they're leaving Knothole for a while, to go on a secret mission for the king which will also double as their honeymoon. Fair enough for two people who live for the life of a spy, I guess! Sonic then gets to chatting with Bunnie, and asks her why she and Antoine broke up and where he got the facial scar from.

Ouch. That's not the Antoine we know and love. I'm sure we'll get more answers later on, though. After one last interruption, from a reporter looking for a photo of the royal couple, Sally is finally able to pull Sonic aside onto the now-empty stage for a talk. She informs Sonic that since she'll be acting ruler while her parents are away, she wants Sonic to stay away from the fighting and rule at her side while they're gone, ultimately retiring himself from the life of a front-line fighter. Sonic is surprised at the request and begins to try to argue, but Sally suddenly snaps at him, saying that she doesn't want him risking his life anymore if they're going to be together. Her outburst gets the attention of everyone at the party, who are now staring at them up on stage. Sonic seems sad as Sally reminds him of how she already lost him once, but firmly sticks to his guns, telling her he simply can't stop fighting while they're in the middle of a war. And thus, we have our lead-in to perhaps one of the most infamous panels of the preboot.

And with that, Sally runs away sobbing, yelling that Eggman can have Sonic all to himself.

Now, I definitely have some things to say about The Slap and everything that surrounds it. The reaction of basically every fan I've ever seen is that this is totally out of character for Sally, and one hundred percent a result of bad and biased writing on the part of Karl Bollers. I both agree and disagree, to an extent. Let me defend my position. I do agree that this is out of character for Sally, and not at all like what the Sally we've always known from before Sonic's space adventure would act like. However, I don't think that this is necessarily a case of bad writing as a whole. See, grief will make people do strange things, things they would normally never do. Please keep in mind that Sally, at this point in time, is all of sixteen years old, and, on top of what you would expect from teen mood swings, is dealing with the immense pressure of being a princess, and being ruled over by her parents after eleven prior years of being mostly free to be herself. And then, to add to all of that, she lost her closest childhood friend just as they finally admitted their long-standing feelings for one another that they'd repressed their entire lives, and proceeded to watch him die in front of her eyes. After almost an entire year, he's made a miraculous comeback, only to appear to die once more, again in full view of Sally who was in no position to be able to help. She's had the voice of her parents in her ear for this past year telling her that she mustn't put herself into danger anymore as the kingdom's future ruler, and likely been estranged to some degree from the other Freedom Fighters as a result. Yes, this is not how Sally Acorn would act - but I think that's the point. A running theme in this arc is that given time, people change, and not always for the better - and that's ultimately exactly what we're seeing here.

Furthermore, all that aside, I also think that this works from a plot standpoint in general. Think what you will about "will they won't they" type plotlines, but they're popular for a reason - they create drama between characters. Normally I myself am not a fan of that type of dynamic, but I do think it works in Sonic and Sally's case just because they're such different people from each other, so opposite in personality in so many ways that I can definitely see them struggling to find a balance as they work through their teenage years and try to figure out where they'll ultimately stand with each other. I mean, think about it - it would be a bit bizarre if they just stayed together from here on out, never disagreeing or having difficulties resulting from Sonic's stay in space, and there were no more avenues to explore regarding romance and relationships. We can't just have a happy ending where Sonic returns from space, reintegrates right back into his social circle without any problems, and continues his engagement to Sally without a hitch. The story and the world simply wouldn't work properly that way - it would feel too sugar-coated, too easy. One of the things I've always loved about the story that's told in the Archie Sonic preboot is that nothing is ever truly okay - at its core, the story of the comic differs so greatly from the stories in the games and anime because it's the story of a war, and how the youth of this world react to living in one. Even when things look like they're going well, there's always something else, something that once again shatters the fragile stability that everyone has worked so hard to build. Having everything be hunky-dory once Sonic gets back just wouldn't fit the type of story that's being told.

So ultimately, as much as I know a large portion of the fandom disagrees with me, I don't have a problem with The Slap. I feel that taking everything that has happened in the story up till now into context, it makes sense for Sally to start breaking under pressure like this, and leaves the story open to further character interaction and conflict that we otherwise wouldn't get to see if they stayed together. (Keep in mind as well that I am a big fan of Sonic and Sally as a ship, so this isn't coming from a selfish place of not wanting to see them together or something - it's more a case of me thinking it wouldn't make sense yet.) Ultimate I think there much better (or worse…?) examples of instances in the comic where characters behave out of character due to bad writing. Such as…

Mobius 25 Years Later: In Transit

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jason Jensen

…this abomination of a story arc! Seriously, this is one instance where I totally agree with the rest of the fandom on how bad it is. Granted, today's story isn't as egregious as some of the ones in the past or other ones to come, but even so. We open right where we left off, with Knuckles and Rotor discussing serious matters of world annihilation and such while two horny teenagers listen in. They accidentally cause a twig to snap, and Knuckles whirls around to find the source of the noise.

Now, see, this is actually an interesting plot point! Science has advanced enough in this world where if one loses an eye, they could easily have it replaced through cloning, and yet Knuckles has willingly chosen to forego such an option in favor of keeping his cybernetic eye instead. And surprisingly, I actually find this totally in character for him. I think Knuckles, in any canon, if he lost an eye, would likely choose to keep a cybernetic replacement in favor of cloning himself another organic eye - if not for the enhanced vision it could give him, then as a point of pride, perhaps feeling that he should live with the cybernetics as a reminder of past mistakes and failures that can spur him to keep moving forward. But we don't get to focus on the eye! Instead, Knuckles takes his leave of Rotor for now and heads to Haven Two, which is (obviously) the replacement for Haven after it was destroyed in the past. He greets his fellow Guardians and asks them a favor - to fire up the ol' hidden camera system across the island so he can follow the two teens who were spying on him and Rotor in the park. Apparently, he promised Julie-Su in the past that he would never spy on family, so he's never made much use of Haven's surveillance system, and this is something that Spectre feels he's being foolish about given who Julie-Su's half sister is. And, as it turns out, that's exactly who we're going to be spying on today! Knuckles tunes in in time to see Rutan and Salma being confronted by Lien-Da about their late-night excursions, and Knuckles explains Rotor's suspicions about the weather to the others while Lien-Da gets ready to scold her son after they take Salma back home.

Well well now! So Rotor and Cobar have intercepted the feed from Haven, huh? That's quite a feat - and quite suspicious of them, at that. Rotor then makes a comment about all this likely not surprising King Sonic… as apparently, Sonic doesn't like echidnas, and especially not Knuckles!

…what?!

So this is a really stellar example of what I was talking about earlier, about having better examples of out of character behavior! Apparently, in this timeline, Sonic and Knuckles actively dislike each other, going so far as to refuse to speak to one another and resenting having to interact for even short periods of time. This is so far off the mark that I'm kind of stunned at just how wrong Penders has managed to get these two's relationship. I mean, just, what? Sonic and Knuckles regularly butted heads when they were younger, sure, but in every canon they both exist in, the two always end up as good, if volatile, friends, who would trust each other with their lives! I seriously can't imagine a future where the two would end up hating each other. We're going to be seeing the exact specifics of why they hate each other in future issues, too, so strap in guys, cause this is gonna suck.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 134 #writer: karl bollers #writer: ken penders #pencils: jon gray #pencils: steven butler #colors: jason jensen

[dailycharacteroption]

Pop Culture Builds 7: Space Dread (Val and Isaac)

We’re back with another pop culture build special, and this week we’re starting off with a character that may not be as well-known as others we tend to cover in these specials: @tredlocity ‘s Space Dread from their Val and Isaac universe of webcomics!

The universe of Val and Isaac is a place of science fantasy and far-future magic, full of zany encounters with extradimensional horrors that are deadly allergic to trending memes, robe and hat wizards working alongside badass space warriors, and even a massive multi-avatar virtual robot school used to help robots socialize and learn during their offline hours.

However, it also has it’s serious, heartfelt moments and struggles, making it a real complete package of a comic. I definitely recommend it.

Anyway, the character Space Dread is a four-armed red-skinned trans woman who occasionally appears to hang out with the main characters, either for leisure or work, but also has her own social circle as an independent bounty hunter. She’s also a major gaming and anime nerd. Her codename “Space Dread” actually comes from an MMO that she used to play, while her normal bounty hunting outfit is a repurposed cosplay outfit that she decided to incorporate into her regular gear after chasing a bounty during a convention. Furthermore, despite her outward demeanor as a cold-hearted figure, she is actually quite emotionally complex, even harboring anxieties about whether her friends actually care about her.

Space Dread is so freaking fun that of course it needs to be given the pop culture build treatment, so that’s what we’re going to do!

 As befits the universe she comes from, we’ll be building her as a Starfinder character, giving her a good mix of technology and magic.

Preferably, you should build a custom alien race to represent Space Dread, but given that we don’t have much information on the abilities or culture of her species, in a pinch you can probably reskin the kasatha race for simplicity’s sake.

As far as class goes, I figure that she would have a multiclass build combining her mastery of dark magics, shapeshifting, and bounty hunter skill. As such, I would build her primarily as a mystic of the geneturge connection, giving her unparalleled mastery over her own form, with at least 5 levels in operative with the spy specialization, which grants her the master of disguise exploit.

From there, I would recommend spells that first and foremost improve her own shapeshifting abilities, by which I mean the polymorph series of under-castable spells, so as you level up you learn and replace the others with the next-highest version, gaining a whole slew of potential forms to turn into. Beyond that, her focus on “dark” magics screams of having a lot of damage-dealing and debuff spells to keep foes manageable. This build is meant to mix spellcasting with mixed range and melee options. Additionally, she is a natural fit for the bounty hunter theme.

With that in mind, her feat selection should combine combat and spellcasting feats like agile casting, combat casting, multi-weapon fighting, and the like

Space Dread describes herself as 50% cybernetics and 40% dark magic, so as you can imagine, she probably has a lot of augs. However for the most part the author has left them vague and unspecific, and she regularly changes form, making this even more difficult for me to pin down. The geneturge connection works best with biotech augs, so she probably has a lot of those, but if she does have true cybernetics, they’ll probably be of the subtle type that cannot outwardly be seen, unlike another Val and Isaac character, Minnow. Definitely favor those that give her an edge in her profession as a bounty hunter.

Weapons and armor wise, she’ll likely favor light armors for agility, and she tends to favor multiple sidearms, using her shapeshifting powers in many cases when melee is required. However, Space Dread has no special attachment to such equipment, and will use whatever is needed for a particular target, even deliberately using nonmagical blades when hunting a foe that consumes magic.

 If you want to explore alternate builds with Space Dread, feel free to. Perhaps you could pick a different mystic connection and just rely on the polymorph spell, or you could go full operative and use magical disguises for most of the shapeshifting. Going back to Pathfinder, a more medieval Space Dread might be a shifter or a transmutation-focused magus, wizard, or arcanist.

 This feels like a fun build, so you don’t necessarily have to use it for Space Dread. The great thing about the starfinder system is how easy it is for classes to step outside their traditional roles, including combat, so feel free to experiment here.

#starfinder #pop culture #pop culture builds #pop culture characters #webcomic #val and isaac #Space dread #tredlocity

[thickwamuu]

i was wondering if i could request some yandere pillarmen including santana going after the reader

I hope you know the phrase “including Santana” may have translated into “mainly Santana” I’m so sorry, my love for Santana knows no bounds 

ALSO IM SORRY if this AU is something that nobody asked for and if not I have no qualms taking more requests for these hunks... wink wink nudge nudge. Also wasn’t sure what you were wanting so I went with one shot. It definitely could have had more yan I’m sorry, will make it up with plenty of yandere in the future!

So basically,,, this AU is a super self indulgent ‘lab experiments’!pillarmen AU with super duper light mentions of animal testing in passing. Expect the pillar men to essentially act like overgrown house cats

Pairing - lab experiment!pillarmen x reader

Words - 1280

“You promise to be good and not touch anything?” Your stepfather asked causing you to roll your eyes just a bit. “Yes, I promise...” it’s not like you weren’t an adult that could regulate yourself, dragged into your fathers lab as he grasped at the last fragments of your missed childhood for ‘bonding time’.

He seemed satisfied with your answer and slipped your guest pass over your head. “Okay, come back to meet me in the lobby for lunch. And try to stay in the indoor environmental biomes, the animals are fun to look at! Super cute!” He said the latter in a mock teenage girl voice before throwing up a peace sign making you cringe. “Yeah, Yeah, I get it dad!”

The added ‘dad’ in place of the usual ‘Tim’ seemed to butter him up enough to finally get out of your hair. You turned to walk towards the environmental areas, determined to see something noteworthy.

-

Much to your disappointment the glass wall was preventing much of anything from happening. So you couldn’t help yourself when your wandering fingers made it into some sorry saps pocket to nab their official ID. Slipping passed the doors that emblazoned with a massive “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” You saw an open supply closet full of lab gear. It was almost comical how easy this was.

Nobody paid you mind as you walked passed the several empty glass rooms, and It was only as you got deeper that you felt sick to your stomach as you saw countless animals that visiting tours gawked at lined up on tables, helpless. You pushed forward, snapping photos discretely. If Tim was still part of you’re family after all this-as long as you didn’t get caught and thrown in some sick government jail, you decided it would be him or you.

A certain window made you stop dead in your tracks. 4 absolutely massive men were strapped to the wall with all sorts of wires and liquids being pushed into their system. “What the fu-“

“And here you’ll see the latest progress in our age regeneration products-“

You decided you wouldn’t stick around to see who the voice belonged to, ducking into the closest room... which happened to be the man room. You ducked just out of view of the window and held your breath as the voice got more distant, breathing a sigh of relief. This was all too much to believe. Yesterday you were playing on your switch deciding what to order on ubereats, now you felt like you were somewhere in between a full on meltdown causing you to retreat into the wilderness and live like a survival guru, or turn this evidence to the media and become the martyr of animal rights before being under government watch for life. Your daydream was brought to a skidding halt as you heard a soft groan causing you to become painfully aware of the nearly naked doped up men.

“Shit, I...” You pondered what you should do, at this point the side of you that figured the likes of you walking out of here a free man were slim to none was winning out and you walked up to one of the god-like men.

You started with the random IVs, pulling them out of the most approachable looking one. A few moments later his eyes sleepily opened before shooting wide as his arm snapped out of its restraint forcefully brought his hand to your neck, lifting you well off the ground.

Your saliva bubbled out of your mouth trying to form words as you scraped at his rock-like hand. “Let..ggo.. set..ting you... free”

This seem to grab his attention as he dropped you to the ground before easily ripping off the rest of his restraints. His feet bounded towards you in minimal steps and as you cowered, he crouched before you forcing you to feel the huffs of his breathing as he...

Wait.. was he smelling you?

“Nnnn...nnot like oth-thers”

You looked up as he tilted his head curiously, his long red hair flowing with his movements. You scooted away, grasping at straws. “Nope! Not like others. I’m just an average joe.”

“Joe?” His deep voice rumbled as he pointed at you.

“Joe... wha.. no I’m Y/n”

“Y/n” he mimicked, his voice coming out more like a purr than anything else.

“I sure do hope your friends are as nice as you, let’s get you fellas outta here, big guy.”

He looked conflicted for a second, his gaze following yours to the sleeping men before meeting your eyes once more.

“Wait.” He said, making you look at him.

He got closer to you and you held your breath, jumping as you felt him rub his forehead up against your cheek. “Uhh..” you nervously laughed. “What are ya doin big guy?”

“Smell like me.” He said curtly.

It hit you. He was trying his best so that the others didn’t attack you like he did. You found it rather endearing and couldn’t help the knee jerk reaction of your hand reaching up to stroke at his hair like he was a domesticated animal of some sort. Much to your surprise, he leaned into your touch as more audible vibrations leaked from his vocal chords.

“You’re not scary at all, huh?” You said scratching lightly causing him to push more weight into you. “Let’s go get your friends, yeah?” You chuckled before getting up and walked over to the long, purple haired man. “No.” The voice behind you cut in. “I get him... last” You side stepped allow it him to stand in between you and the sleeping man. Turning your attention to the other two, your new friend bit at his lip before pointing to the one with ice coloured cloud-like hair “Him... I’ll get the others.”

You nodded and got to work removing the tubes. The man quirked his eyebrow before opening his eyes to look at you. “Human.” He chuckled. “ I see the child doesn’t like to share his things.”

An animalistic growl came from the long haired redhead.

“Oh come on Santana. Grow up.” He chided, condescendingly.

“Esidisi...” the man- Santana, you suppose- bit back.

The straps retaining him melted away before your eyes as he grabbed your chin, inspecting you. “Not bad.” You clenched your teeth awkwardly as you tried to get out of his grip but he pulled you closer, letting out a hearty laugh that you could feel from in between his pecs.

The other 2 men slowly became present and got out of their restraints. There was calm for a moment before red lights and sirens filled the room. Santana immediately covered you as personnel flooded in, guns ready. “Open fire!” Came the command as a wave of bullets was unleashed.

The bullets had little effect as the purple haired one hardly lifted a finger, slicing through the wall of men with a shiny blade protruding from his wrist. A last man, left over attempted to sneak up on him making you grab one of the strewn about guns before opening fire. None of the bullets managed to hit him, but you happened to alert the towering man to the attacker.

A hole through a chest later, the purple haired one turned to you, walking closer.

“Careful Kars, Santana likes this one.” Esidisi warned mockingly.

“Breaking us out of this dormant hell and betraying your own kind in favour of us?” He pondered for a moment before bringing his nose to your cheek, grazing it against you as he purred. “Perhaps you’ll make a nice pet.” As if having a pack mentality the other 3 closed in on you.

#jjba part 2 #pillar men #oneshot #x reader

[davidmann95]

Superman & Lois Pilot Script Review

I’ve been reliably informed that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and indeed as my laptop and everything on it have been unusable for a couple months after a mishap, I went from ‘maybe I’ll write something on the pilot script for Superman & Lois’ to ‘as soon as I can get my hands back on that thing I’m writing something up’. I’m actually surprised none of you folks asked about it when I’ve mentioned several times that I read it; I was initially hesitant, but I’ve seen folks discussing plot details on Twitter and their reactions on here, so I guess WB isn’t making much of a thing out of it. Entire pilots have leaked before and they just rolled with it, so I suppose that isn’t surprising. Anyway, the show’s been pushed back to next year, and also the world is literally sick and metaphorically (and also a little literally) on fire, so I thought this might be fun if anyone needs a break from abject horror. 

(Speaking of the world being on fire: while trying to offer a diversion amidst said blaze, still gonna pause for the moment to add to the chorus that if opening your wallet is a thing you can do, now most especially is a time to do it. I chipped in myself to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and even a casual look around here or Twitter will show people listing plenty of other organizations that need support.)

What I saw floating around was, if not a first draft, certainly not the final one given Elizabeth Tulloch later shared a photo of the cover for the final script crediting Lee Toland Krieger as the director rather than a TBD, but the shape of things is clearly in place. I’m going for a relative minimum of spoilers, though I’ll discuss a bit of the basic status quo the show sets up and vaguely touch on a few plot points, but if you want a simple response without risk of any story details: it’s very, very good. Clunky in the way the CW DC shows typically are, and some aspects I’m not going to be able to judge until the story plays out further, but it’s engaging, satisfying, and moreover feels like it Gets It more broadly than any other mass-media Superman adaptation to date.

The Good

* The big one, the pillar on which all else rests: this understands Lois and it really understands Clark. Lois isn’t at the center of the pilot’s arc, but she’s everything you want to see that character be - incisive, caring, and refusing to operate at less than 110% intensity with whatever she’s dealing with at any given time, the objections of others be damned. Clark meanwhile is a good-natured, good-humored dude who you can see in both the cape and the glasses even as those identities remain distinct, who’s still wrestling with his feelings of alienation and duty and how those now reflect his relationships with his children. The title characters both feel fully-formed and true to what historically tends to work best with them from day one here in ways I can’t especially say for any other movie or show they’ve starred in.

* While the suit takes a back seat for this particular episode, when Superman does show up in the opening and climax it absolutely knows how to get us to cheer for him; there’s more than one ‘hell yeah, it’s SUPERMAN, that guy’s the best!’ moment, and they pop.

* While the superheroics aren’t the biggest focus here, when they do arrive, the plan seems to be that they’ll be operating on an entirely different scale than the rest of the Arrowverse lineup. Maybe they scripted the ideal and’ll be pared-down come time for actual filming and effects work, or maybe they’re going all-out for the pilot, but the initial vision involves a massive super-rescue and a widescreen brawl that goes way, way bigger in scope than any I’m aware of on the likes of Supergirl. I heard in passing on Twitter from someone claiming to be in the know that the plan for Superman & Lois is that it’ll be fewer episodes with a higher budget, more in line with the DC Universe stuff if not exactly HBO Max ‘prestige TV’, and whether it’s true or not (I think it’s plausible, the potential ratings here are exponentially higher than anything else on the network so they’d want to put their best foot forward) they seem to be writing it as if that’s the idea.

* This balances its tones and ambitions excellently: it’s a Kent-Lane family drama, it’s Lois digging in with some investigative reporting to set up a major subplot, it’s Superman saving Metropolis and battling a powerful high-concept villain, and none of it feels like it’s banging up at awkward angles with the rest. There are a pair of throwaway lines in here so grim I can’t believe they were put in a script for a Superman TV show even if they don’t make it to air, and they in no way undermine the exhilaration once he puts on the cape or the warmth that pervades much of it. This feels as if it’s laying the groundwork for a Superman show that can tackle just about any sort of story with the character rather than planing its feet in one corner and declaring a niche, and so far it looks like it has the juice to pull it off.

* While the pilot doesn’t focus on him in the same way as the new kid, Jonathan Kent fits well enough for my tastes with the broad strokes of his personality from the comics, albeit if he had made it to 14 rather than 10 without learning about his dad being Superman. A pleasant, kinda dopey, well-meaning Superman Jr. - the biggest deviation, one I approve of, is that he can also kinda be a gleeful little shit when dealing with his brother in ways that remind you that this is very much also Lois Lane’s boy.

* We don’t know much about the season villain as of yet, but it’s an incredibly cool idea that I’m shocked that they’re going for right away, and I absolutely want to see how they play out as a character and how they’ll bounce off all the other major players.

* The way this seems to be framing itself in relation to the Superman movies and shows before it feels inspired to me: there are homages and shout-outs to and bits of conceptual scaffolding from Lois & Clark, Smallville, Donner, and more, but they’re all shown in ways that make it clear that those stories are part of his past rather than indicators of the baseline he’s currently operating off of. We get a retrospective of his and Lois’s history right off the bat with most of what you’d expect, and combined with those references the message is clear: this is a Superman who’s been through all the vague memories that you, prospective casual viewer, have of the other stuff you saw him in once upon a time, but this series begins the next phase of his life after what that general cultural impression of him to date covers. It strikes me as a good way of carrying over the goodwill of that nostalgia and iconography, while building in that this is a show with room to grow him beyond that into something more nuanced (and for that matter true to the character as the comics at their best have depicted him) than they tended towards. Where Superman Returns attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle of an earlier vision of him in full, and Man of Steel tried to turn its back on anything that smelled of Old and Busted and Uncool entirely, perhaps this splitting of the difference - engaging with his pop culture history and visibly taking what appealed from some of those well-known takes, while also drawing a clear line in the sand between those as the past and this as the future - is what will finally engage audiences.

The Bad

* This is the sort of thing you have to roll with for a CW superhero show, and that lives and dies by the performances, but: the dialogue varies heavily. There are some really poignant moments, but elsewhere this is where it shows its early-draftiness; a decent amount is typical Whedon-poisoned quippiness or achingly blunt, and some of the ‘hey, we’re down with the kids!’ material for Jon, Jor, and Lana’s kid Sarah is outright agonizing. I suspect a lot of it will be fixed in minor edits, actor delivery, and hopefully the younger performers taking a brutal red pen to some of their material - this was written last January and the show’s now not debuting until next January, they’ve got plenty of time for cleanup - but if this sort of the thing has been a barrier to entry for you in the past with the likes of The Flash, this probably won’t be what changes your mind.

* There are a few charming shout-outs to other shows, but much moreso, Superman & Lois actually builds in a big way out of Crisis. Which is a-okay with me, except that what exactly that was is rather poorly conveyed given that lots of people will be giving this a spin with no familiarity with that. Fixable with a line or two, but important enough to be worth noting.

Have to wait and see how it plays out

* The series’ new kid, Jordan Kent, is so far promising with potential to veer badly off-course. He’s explicitly dealing with mental illness, and not on great terms with Clark at the beginning in spite of the latter’s best efforts, the notion of which I’m sure will immediately put some off. Ultimately the commonalities between father and son become clear, and he’s not written as a caricature in this opening but as a kid with some problems who’s still visibly his parents’ boy, but obviously the ball could be fumbled here in the long term.

* Lois’s dad is portrayed almost completely differently here than in the past in spite of technically still being her military dad who has some disagreements with her husband. There are some nice moments and interesting new angles but it seems possible that the groudwork is being laid for him to be Clark’s guy in the chair, and not only does he not need that he most DEFINITELY doesn’t need that to be a member of the U.S. Military, especially when one of the first and best decisions Supergirl made when introducing him was to make clear he had stopped working with the government any more than necessary years ago. Maybe it can be stretched if his dad-in-law occasionally calls him up to let him know about a new threat he’s learned about, and maybe they’ll even do something really interesting with that push-and-pull, but if Superman’s going to be even tacitly functioning as an extension of the military that’s going to be a foundational sin.

* As I was nervous about, Superman & Lois has some political flavor, but much to my delighted surprise, there’s no grossly out of touch hedge-betting in the way I understand Supergirl has gone for at times. As of the pilot, this is an explicitly leftie show, with the overarching threat of the season as established for Lois and Clark as reporters being how corporate America has stripmined towns like Smallville and manipulated blue collar workers into selling out their own best interests. Could that go wrong? Totally, there’s already an effort to establish a particular prominent right-wing asshole as capable of decency - without as of yet downplaying that he’s a genuinely shitty dude - and vague hints that some of the towns’ woes might be rooted more in Superman-type problems than Lois and Clark problems. But that they’re going for it this directly in the first place leaves me hopeful that the show won’t completely chicken out even if there’ll probably be a monster in the mix pulling a string or two; Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics may justify Superman punching a cop by having him turn out to be a shadow monster so as to get past editorial, but it’s still a story about how sometimes Superman’s gotta punch a cop, and hopefully this can carry on in that spirit of using what wiggle room it has to the best of its ability.

So, so far so good. Could it end up a show with severe problems carried on the backs of Hoechlin and Tulloch’s performances? Absolutely. But thus far, the ingredients are there for all its potential problems to be either fixed, subverted, or dodged alright, and even when it surely fumbles the ball at junctures, I earnestly believe this is setting itself up to be the most fleshed-out, nuanced, engaging live-action take on these characters to date. And god willing, if so, the first real stepping stone in decades to proper rehab on Superman’s image and place in pop culture.

#Superman & Lois #Superman #Lois Lane #DCTV #Opinion