#kill every avatar on the planet and the fears will just make more

[bracketsoffear]

Medea (Greek Mythology) "Medea has a classic "afraid of Thing, ends up in service to Thing" avatar arc. When she falls in love with Jason, she's terrified of losing everything because of him, but she eventually chooses him over her family in epic fashion, killing her own brother just to distract her father from pursuing them. She repeatedly tricks people into murdering their own family members, which seems like the kind of cruelty Desolation would enjoy. And of course, when Jason betrays her for Princess Glauce (thus realizing her fear of giving up everything for nothing), Medea first kills both Glauce and her father with a horrifically painful poison, then kills her own children even though losing them will hurt her even more than it will Jason. It's just THAT important to her that Jason has to lose absolutely everything for what he's done.

Also, as a granddaughter of the Sun, she has fire associations. I think the rest of it is more important though."

Dhwan!Master (Doctor Who) "Every incarnation of the Master is an angry, sadistic bastard to varying degrees, but Dhawan’s portrayal in particular makes clear that he is destroying things and killing people to hurt the Doctor first, and to further his ends second - save for when destruction is an end in and of itself. The previous incarnations of the Master all have ambitions of conquest, which requires something actually surviving to rule over in the end. Dhawan's Master, however, is deeply affected by a) the events leading up to his previous self's death, and b) numerous horrifying revelations about the nature of the Time Lords and of the Doctor. When the audience first meets him, he is already DEEP in a self-destructive spiral and only gets more unstable with each subsequent appearance, turning his rage outward all the while. He razes his home planet, draws out the reveals of his schemes to twist the knife for the Doctor, and eventually even tries to steal her very identity and being in order to tarnish her name and destroy every good thing she ever did. He hates himself and both loves and hates the Doctor on a deep, fundamental level, for things he wouldn't be able to change even if he were capable of letting go in the first place, so he leans ever harder upon his hatred for everything else in order to keep going."

#desolation poll #the magnus archives #the desolation #greek mythology #doctor who #poll

[autisticsupervillain]

Complete Monster Throwdown!

The show where we take two Pure Evil Monsters and make them kill each other!

Today's Monsters....

Fire Lord Ozai vs Emperor Belos!

Conditions:

Sozin's Comet Ozai vs Season 1-2 Belos

Scenario:

While experimenting with glyphs one day, Belos discovers a way to access other worlds. Discovering the world of Avatar, Belos decides that Benders are yet more witches in need of purging and launches a full scale invasion of the Fire Nation.

Analysis: Ozai

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. For a time, these four elements lived in harmony. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. This sparked a hundred year war that plagued the entire continent, as the ruthless militaristic empire the Fire Nation had become waged brutal war against all who opposed them. The Air Nomads were wiped out. The impenetrable city of Ba Sing Se was sieged. And the Fire Lord was soon feared by all.

Yet, for all the Fire Nation's atrocities, no Fire Lord was ever more feared or more brutal than Fire Lord Ozai.

Born fifty five years after the Air Nomad genocide, Ozai was the youngest and less appreciated son of Fire Lord Azulon. Cast in the shadow of his brilliant older brother, the legendary General Iroh who sieged Ba Sing Se, Ozai knew he would never defeat his brother on equal footing. Not in the race to become Fire Lord, at any rate. So, Ozai had his wife murder Azulon and then banished her as a traitor, leaving him with no obstacles between him and the throne.

It is this same ruthless ambition that made him dreaded all across the world, even to his own family. Ozai burned and permanently scarred the face of his son Zuko before banishing him forever for objecting to the cruel actions of his generals and manipulated his daughter Azula into becoming a perfect conquering machine and soldier by the age of 14. His older brother abandoned him in digust for his actions, leaving with Zuko to accompany him in his banishment.

With such little compassion to spare for those he supposedly loves, it's hardly any wonder that Ozai would go to equally monsterous lengths on the grand scale. He fully intends to incinerate the entire Earth Kingdom, as well as every other nation that dares to oppose his rule. And as the most powerful fire bender on the planet, there was no doubt that he could achieve exactly that. Even Iroh himself didn't believe that he could defeat Ozai, especially not during Sozin's Comet.

Sozin's Comet is an event in which a large comet briefly enters the Earth's atmosphere, allowing Fire Benders to harness it's energy. The drastically boosts the power of Fire Benders during this time, to the point where Iroh was able to blow straight through the walls surrounding Ba Sing Se, which would require a force roughly equivalent to 138 tons of TNT.

Source:

And Iroh did that with ease. Even far weaker Fire Benders outside of Sozin's Comet can achieve similar feats, such as when "Combustion Man" vaporized a massive cone of water, requiring an energy of roughly 2.2 kilotons to vaporize. As the strongest Fire Bender in the world, Ozai should be far superior, especially during Sozin's Comet.

Source:

Of course, Ozai isn't all brute force. He has a wide variety of fire bending techniques at his disposal. He can manipulate and create fire in all sorts of ways, from shooting it from his fists to using it to fly through the sky at hypersonic speeds and creatings massive flamming rings around his entire body. Hell, he can even breathe fire if he wants to. They don't call his brother "The Dragon of the West" for nothing!

And, of course, he has full access to the deadliest move in a Fire Bender's arsenal. Lightning. A guaranteed instant kill on anyone and anything it hits. Though the issue with that incredible power is... it can potentially be reflected back. Provided you can move at Mach 2458! As that's how fast Aang had to be moving just to catch one of Ozai's blasts.

Source:

Ozai may very well have been the most powerful bender of his era period, as he was fully capable of taking on even the Avatar Aang himself, master of all four elements, and outright dominating him in open combat. Until, well, the Avatar State was activated. For as mighty as Ozai is, he is but a flickering candle against the full might of the Avatar State.

Ruthless. Abusive. Imperialistic. Ozai represented the absolute worst of what the Fire Nation had become. Beneath all of that strength and guile exists only a callous, ambitious bully. The true antithesis to everything the Aang is and stands for.

Analysis: Belos

The Boiling Isles are not a kind or welcoming place. The seas and rain boil hot enough to melt a man's skin. Rainbows can turn you inside out. Monsterous beasts roam the land and the closest civilization floats on the corpse of a long dead Titan. Yet, the most dangerous threat any human can face is the mysterious masked witch who calls himself Belos... and the monsterous man he is underneath.

Philip Wittebane was your average 1600s American colomist when he and his older brother Caleb moved into the small town of Gravesfield. They both found themselves quickly adjusting to the town's local culture and practices, developing a taste for witch hunting at an early age as a result. This passion, however, was derailed in adulthood when the brother's happened upon an actual witch. The beautiful sorceress Evelyn who hailed from the mystical Demon Realm captivated Caleb with her beauty and magic, convincing the older Wittebane to follow her to home realm.

Believing his brother to be under a dastardly spell, Philip followed suite to save his brother, only to find the two happily married and expecting a baby. Caleb and Evelyn had genuinely fallen in love. Unable to reconcile his puritanical beliefs with the reality before him, Philip murdered his brother Caleb in a fit of rage and swore to annihilate all witches everywhere. No matter how many years it would take and how many brothers he would have to bury.

As a human, Philip could not use magic naturally by himself. Witches have bile sacks next to their heart that stores magic within them, but humans have no such thing, so Philip had to find alternatives. As such, he taught himself how to use glyphs, using the language of the Titan in written form to harness the magic emitted by his corpse. Other humans use glyphs written on pages or the environment to cast spells, but Philip took a bit of a shortcut. By carving glyphs directly into his own body, Philip could cast magic with nothing but a thought. Similarly, Philip found an exploit in the laws of magic that would allow him to cheat death itself. By feasting on the souls of a witches Palismen, or staff, Philip could live for hundreds of years, feeding off the magic of the thousands of souls trapped within his body.

However, these practices had disastrous side effects on his body, causing him to literally melt alive if he didn't regularly consume more and more Palismen, to the point of eating them to extinction. As such, Philip had a time limit on his goal, so he'd need a little help. Upon discovering the god-like being known as The Collector, Philip used their guidance to master all forms of magic and launch his master plan.

Philip took on the name Belos and set his thousand year plan into motion. Firstly, he would revive his brother as a "Grimwalker", seeking to mold this new version into a perfectly loyal witch hunter to fit Belos' own personal ideals. The corpses of thousands of failed attempts litter his layer, showing how little cares for a brother who doesn't obey his every whim. Then, Belos would create the coven system, convincing every witch in the realm to let him brand them with a coven sigil that seals away their ability to use any magic outside of their covens. Then, finally, he would enact the Day of Unity ritual, using the sigils to suck the life out of every witch on the Isles, killing all of witch kind.

To this end, Belos ironically became the most powerful witch of all time. He is known to have access to fire, ice, and light glyphs, allowing him to blast you with massive flames, create huge mounds of ice, and create floating orbs of light. He can create shields to protect himself from harm, manipulate plant life to his will, and telekinetically ragdoll you with just a thought. His telepathy can reach across his entire palace and his teleportation lets him cross the battlefield in seconds.

Luz Noceda, another human who uses magic, was able to make a massive wall of ice almost the size of a boat. Given the energy needed to freeze the boiling hot waters of the Boiling Isles, creating this ice would've required an energy roughly equivalent to 7 kilotons of tnt, and Belos is literally decades ahead of her, to the point of tanking her attacks without a scratch and nearly petrifying her in stone.

Source:

Similarly, numerous witches have shown to be fast enough to dodge lightning, such as Eda Clawthorne avoiding lightning directly from the sky, and Belos is easily superior to her to a similar degree, allowing him to move at Mach 678.

Source:

However, all of this power has come at a grievous cost. If Belos were to go too long without eating a Palismen and runs out of magic to sustain himselfwith, he'll melt into a rotting green slime monster. While this constant rot has given him the ability to stretch his limbs and shapeshift to a degree, the fact that he has such abilities at all shows how bad his condition has gotten. If reduced to his full on slime monster state, Belos will be forced to possess other beings to sustain himself, rotting away and consuming his hosts into lifeless skeletons for months until he's forced to find a new one. But, even then, he's remarkably difficult to put down, as he could still pull himself back together even after being smashed into a puddle by the Collector. Yet, in this state, his death is essentially garranteed. He'll run out of life to consume eventually and he'll eventually melt away into nothing. A perfect metaphor for the soulless parasite Philip Wittebane is under his benevolent fascade.

Throwdown Theme:

Throwdown Breakdown:

Oh, boy. Imperialism vs Puritanicals. Alright, first off, Stats.

They are pretty equal in terms of AP. Ozai is far above Combustion Man at 2.2 kilotons, and then stronger again by virtue of Sozin's Comet. Belos meanwhile is effortlessly stronger than 7 kilotons, down to tanking hits from someone that strong without a single scratch. Fairly comparable, with a slight edge to Belos.

Ozai has a much greater advantage in speed, however, with Mach 2458 against Mach 678. About a 3.6x speed gap. That's a pretty significant advantage for Ozai and it stacks atop his other ones.

Flight and range are pretty decisively both in Ozai's corner, which, when combined with his significant speed advantage, means both hitting him and avoiding getting hit by him are going to be a right pain for Philip. In fact, you can very well argue for Ozai ending this quickly with a quick lightning bolt before Belos can pull his other trump cards. However, I'm not gonna be making this argument.

I'm not entirely convinced that a lightning bolt would be enough to kill Belos in one go like it would be for anyone in Avatar. Sure, it'll do horrific damage to his brain and heart... but Belos could survive being smashed into a puddle by the Collector and that was while severely weakened. Hell, he survived up to the point of being just a skull and that was without any of his magic or Palismen left to sustain himself. Lightning alone isn't gonna cut it. Ozai will have to keep blasting until he's vapor.

Which, to be fair, is well within Ozai's character. He has some good counters to chunks of Belos arsenal. Flight can pretty handly keep him away from Belos's plants, Ozai can throw his fire right back in his face, and ice glyphs don't offer anything new that Ozai wouldn't expect. But, by that same token, Belos has tons of powers Ozai would have no context for, as they simply don't exist within the magic system of his world.

Teleportation can help bridge the speed gap somewhat while shields further increase the (slight) stat gap. Telekinesis can help hamper flight and speed (even if I don't think Ozai would be ragdolled. He's comparable enough to resist it somewhat.) and shapeshifting is just good for catching Ozai off guard amd getting a lucky punch in. A major advantage here for Belos is that he'd likely just assume that Ozai is a really good fire magic witch, while Ozai would have no idea what to make of most of Belos's kit. Especially teleportation and shapeshifting.

Of course, the problem with the shapeshifting is that it would likely invite Ozai to go hand to hand if Belos drags him in. Belos may have been alive longer, but nothing indicates he's ever gotten into any hand to hand fights with people during that time. Ozai very much has. It's a core part of Fire Nation culture even. Though, even then, Belos can just teleport away. Oh and I doubt Belos is gonna try and brand him with a coven sigil mid fight. Even if he did, it wouldn't do anything because that's not how Bending works. Ozai doesn't have a bile sack to drain.

Can Ozai wear Belos down until he's reduced to shambling slime? No. It took months of not eating Palismen for Belos's condition to get that bad and even then, he had to have all his magic drained by the Day of Unity first. Sozin's Comet will finish passing before that happens, so the long game screws Ozai over more so than Belos. Assuming the fight would even last that long or that either could even keep fighting that long.

What ultimately makes this admittedly close fight Philip's game is intelligence. Ozai, while skilled, deadly, and manipulative in his own right, has only been Fire Lord for six years and it's an empire he inherited after one assassination. Belos has been ruling for fifty years and he built his empire from scratch over the course of hundreds. He's been alive since the 1600s up until modern day. Manipulating people like Ozai is second nature to him and he's silver tongued enough to at least get Ozai listening long enough to strike. He's an expert at buttering people up with compliments and Ozai has an ego the size of Transylvania. I can see Philip feigning defeat and going into a whole spiel about how "it was the Titan's will for the mightiest to defeat me. You shall inherit the Boiling Isles." and then drop the fascade to reveal that Ozai's legs have turned to stone.

That's the other clincher here. There is fuck all Ozai can do about being turned to stone and Belos can activate said power by thinking. Hell, Belos also has an advantage in how much skill and knowledge it took for him to learn his techniques. Ozai's fire breathing and lightning bending are some of the most complicated and advanced forms of bending out there, but Ozai didn't invent them. He's never demonstrated the aptitude and intelligence needed to invent whole new forms of magic like Belos has. Philip is the first person we know of to create and use Glyphs who isn't a Titan and even before he met the Collector, Philip could create highly advanced glyphs that could teleport him kilometers away. Hell, Belos created the Day of Unity spell himself and spent countless years testing and perfecting it. That shows that Belos has a much deeper understanding of magic than Ozai has of bending. It's like if Ozai himself invented the technique needed to harnass the power of Sozin's Comet or something. It's magic on a continental scale. The fact that the Titan tried to actively hide the secret of Glyphs from him and Philip figured them out anyways shows the level of intelligence that Belos is bringing to the table here.

Belos is versatile enough to not be overwhelmed by Ozai's offensive immediately. His telekinesis can hamper Ozai's movements just enough to hamper flight and speed (which are Ozai's biggest advantages), his regeneration would let him survive the lightning and the beating he's sure to get, his shields can help bolster his slight stat advantage (and mitigate the issue of dodging giant walls of fire that are faster than him), and petrification is an auto win. Combine that with a vast experience and intelligence advantage and Belos just takes it.

Is Philip gonna get the absolute shit beat out of him before gets there? Oh yeah. You saw his fight with Aang, you know what Ozai does. Imagine that but Ozai is three times faster. But, still, Belos just clinches it.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Emperor Belos!

#fictional throwdown fridays #emperor belos #philip wittebane #the owl house #avatar the last airbender #fire lord ozai #complete monster #complete monster throwdown #Youtube

[themattress]

From this video.

I get this argument about SatAM!Robotnik, but I also have three points against it.

1. There is a right way to do this kind of stationary villain and there is a wrong way: it all depends on how justified their stationary position is and how much of a threat they are whenever they leave their stationary position and do something active. Many great villains have gotten this balancing act down: Professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes, Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar: The Last Airbender, King Andrias from Amphibia, Emperor Belos from The Owl House, the Kingpin from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, White Diamond from Steven Universe, Queen Beryl from Sailor Moon, Maximillian Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Giovanni from Pokemon (Original Series) and Pokemon: Best Wishes, Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II, Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2, Ganon from The Legend of Zelda and many more.

But SatAM!Robotnik’s stationary position isn’t justified - he “isn’t afraid of the Freedom Fighters and consider them beneath his personal attention”, and yet has an absolutely psychotic hate-boner for Sonic, the lead Freedom Fighter, who has proven time and again that his mechanized minions are no match for him? These are two completely conflicting ideas, and you can only take so much of Robotnik sitting on his ass and screaming at Swatbots or Snively to “GET HIM! GET THAT HEDGEHOG!” before you ask yourself “why don’t you just get him yourself, you idiot?” And while Season 1 definitely managed to make Robotnik a threat on the occasions he did something active, Season 2....not so much.

2. The execution of Robotnik’s reign is fatally flawed; not to a Sonic Forces degree but still bad. The only distinct follower with personality that SatAM!Robotnik has is Snively, who is almost always at his side, doing things for him and getting yelled at for his troubles. So that begs the question just who the Hell he’s got stationed in charge of every other part of the world he controls, outside of Robotropolis? SWAT-Bots are cannon fodder on the level of Imperial Stormtroopers, so them alone running things doesn’t seem likely since the Freedom Fighters would have had a much easier time taking the planet back if that were the case. How can be Robotnik be that secure in keeping his grip on the world? Without proper context to back that up, it just comes off as short-sighted arrogance and tactical stupidity on his part.

3. The biggest issue is what the start of the video points out - the Dr. Robotnik of the games was an active player in his plans and desire to kill Sonic. Don’t get me wrong; you can do a more stationary version of the character who doesn’t just keep popping up at every stage to fight, which doesn’t work as well outside of video games. But you still need some level of recurring activity from him or he’ll come off as an “in name only” adaptation of the character.

And I know this can be done right because the Archie comics DID do it right!  That version was constantly active in trying to kill Sonic and his friends in addition to sitting on his butt and letting his robotic minions do the fighting which meant we got more variety with him, even in the early comedic days of the series it was made clear he had robots with personality and sentience mass produced on a global scale so you knew who was running all the areas beyond Robotropolis, and his willingness to keep on getting into the fray himself, losing and being humiliated honestly reflected MORE of a lack of fear from the character - he knows he can afford to keep doing this because he knows he’ll get out of every scrape alive and well and ready to fight another day (his cybernetic implants make him highly durable), and that he’s got all his bases across the planet covered so there’s no chance they’ll all fall even if he were to be temporarily incapacitated. He had a goofier personality more like in the games, but he genuinely came off as more secure in his tyranny and tougher to beat once and for all. (It took 25 episodes to dethrone SatAM!Robotnik, whereas it took 50 issues plus a dozen side specials to dethrone Archie!Robotnik; that kind of tells you everything you need to know.)

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Dr. Robotnik #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison #Obejction #Correction

[artbyblastweave]

I gotta say, as someone who really, deeply gets the appeal of revenge-horror fantasies, and of the siren song of vigilantism in general, there was something deeply, deeply satisfying about how thoroughly The Magnus Archives went “No, fuck you” in regards to that “ethical murder” post going around about how vampires should target billionaires or whatever, Santa Clarita style.

I’m deeply leery of flippant attempts to brush off the moral consequences of a vampiric lifestyle with “Oh, I’ll just target bad people! UwU.” That wouldn’t be sustainable! People go to school to try and figure out who’s deserving of punishment and death on a moral, legal and philosophical level, and we all know how that fucking goes!  What, are you gonna start working your way down the twitter callout list? Kill customers who’re rude to you in the hopes that that was the extent of their whole fucking personality? What happens when eight vampires show up at the house of the same convicted sex offender? How many corrupt politicians can you kill before people notice a pattern? For that matter, do you, personally, actually pay enough attention to politicians to tell the genuinely corrupt and abhorrent from the faintly slimy, or the decent ones targeted by the media?

Broadly speaking I’m deeply leery of most media that tries to pawn off vampires and werewolves and the like as misunderstood outcasts while also having them have to eat people to sustain themselves- if X-Men aren’t an ideal metaphor for marginalized groups because they have an inherent potential to be a threat, monsters suck when the narrative shows us that they really are just going to keep killing people, again and again and again, and the best we can hope for is that all the people that they’re shown killing are set up in advance as unpleasant or evil, so it’s all fine. 

It’s a copout. If there’s anything resembling a society of these bastards- or even a small community of them, a la The Magnus Archives- then all those charming supporting characters have almost certainly done something to earn themselves the death penalty a hundred times over.

And that’s what I love about TMA- there’s no ethical way to do it, and most of the avatars don’t bother pretending that there is, or pretending that they care enough to go out of their way to find one. The handful that do either wind up repudiating their power with mixed success (Melanie, Daisy, Martin) or spending all their time working damage control (Jon) and mostly failing anyway. The vigilante monsters (Daisy, Trevor) are arguably the worst, in that they explicitly get the wrong people quite often and then just brush it off as the cost of doing business. Adelard Dekker is the only vigilante in the setting who manages to walk that line without falling off, in that he only ever targets avatars who are actively, patently engaged in killing sprees or mass murder (Throne of melted corpses, anyone?) and he, himself doesn’t have any powers.

(Compare to settings like Worm, where the superpower system is inherently rooted in a person’s trauma and damage, and the “Avatars” thus tend to circle back to it in a way that’s unhealthy, but there are still paths to be productive and ethical within the confines of the system- they’re just really hard to find, and frequently beaten down by conventional human bureaucracy. Compare to The Boys, whose major saving grace was its near complete unwillingness to play ball with the “MCU Superheroes as a marginalized group“ dynamic.)

#Obviously I have complicated feelings on the hunt #because at the micro scale you can usually justify killing any specific avatar on a number of grounds #But at the same time it's extremely reasonable to be leery of someone who'd make it their day job to just hunt and kill avatars all day #But at the same time it runs the risk of valorizing inaction- if you KNOW vampires are murdering people and you think you can stop it #it doesn't make you a bad person to try #And of course you can't deal with the root cause by killing avatars #kill every avatar on the planet and the fears will just make more #but there's an inverse starfish logic #killing any given avatar will matter a hell of a lot to anyone said avatar is actively victimizing #I think they shouldn't have waited until season 5 to give Daisy her Alard dupont moment #I think they should have made it clear much earlier that she frequently got the wrong person #the magnus archives #TMA #parahumans #worm #wildbow #rusty quill #tma meta #vigilantism #thoughts #magnuspod #jon sims #daisy tonner #adelard dekker #melanie king #martin blackwood #magnus archives #discourse #meta #analysis

[azucanela]

OMG I AM OBSESSED WITH YOUR WRITING YOU ARE DEFINITELY ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS ON TUMBLR NO CAP!!! i love ur zuko fics, and i wanted to request some sokka x reader!!! i want u to have complete creative freedom but i love how you write slowburn omg so some enemies to friends to lovers sokka content would be insaneeee! maybe reader is fire nation (zuko’s cousin/iroh’s daughter??) but joins the gaang after crossroads or something?

AFTER | SOKKA X READER

SUMMARY: Sokka didn’t expect the girl who held a knife to his neck to be the same girl he’d fall for. Y/N didn’t really expect to fall either. 

WORD COUNT: 10k

WARNINGS: injuries, implications of death, kisses, bloodbending, threats of bodily harm, death threats

A/N: time to give sokka the attention and hype he is OWED, also im SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONGGG but this is quite possibly my favorite Y/N. writing for sokka is hard tho. im not sure how much i like this tbh but its really long omg. also thank you!!!! i feel honored to be considered the best :D you are too kind

When she was younger, Y/N joined Azula’s little troupe of girls. Though she wasn’t some loyal little soldier for her to order around, no, Y/N never feared Azula. Nor did she follow her blindly. No, it had always been a struggle for power between the two. Even when her father was booted from the throne as the rightful heir. 

Losing her brother made her wonder if giving up like her father had in Ba Sing Se was the easy way out. Perhaps thats why she promised herself she would never give up. Maybe thats why she challenged Azula to... an unofficial duel when she’d heard her comment. Challenged her and won. 

The new Fire Lord’s pride and joy had lost against his niece, a shame. 

Y/N hadn’t thought much of it, but it probably would’ve explained why Fire Lord Ozai was rather pleased when Y/N had came to him and explained her intents to go alongside her father and cousin in banishment. She was, no matter how unlikely, another potential heir to the throne. And unlike Zuko, an actual threat. Sending her on a journey to find someone who’d been missing for a century was the best way to get rid of her. 

If Y/N was honest, she viewed the banishment as more of a vacation. All her life, she had to deal with banquets, politics, war tactics, all at such a young age. It was tiring, and dull, spending day and night in the palace doing such things. Now, she had the opportunity to travel the world, though her grumpy cousin was rushing them throughout each spot, it was still nice. Zuko certainly didn’t think so, given that they hadn’t found the Avatar yet, not that Y/N believed they ever would but, it is what it is.

A sigh escaped her as she sat, on leg propped up against the other on the deck of the ship, they had arrived in the Southern Water Tribe after seeing an odd light in the distance. Maybe it was cruel, but Y/N sincerely hoped they didn’t find the Avatar. She didn’t want her vacation to end, she didn’t want to return to the politics, and she didn’t want to deal with one of the most powerful people on the planet. Aside from her own desires, Y/N couldn’t help but disapprove of Zuko’s need to please his father, the man who’d hurt him beyond forgiveness.

She sincerely doubted her father approved either. Though their relationship had been strained for some time now. Y/N didn’t hate her father, she doubted that was possible, he was a kind man and a good father. Things between them simply felt... off. She liked to think she’d gotten over it, the initial jealously she felt when she discovered her father intended to join Zuko on his hunt for the Avatar.

When she’d found out from Fire Lord Ozai. 

Sometimes she wondered if her father even intended to say goodbye. But she wasn’t a fool, Y/N knew he had recently lost a son, they were both hurting and Zuko needed someone who wasn’t going to hurt him if he did something wrong. Though, Y/N saw him try to save the lives of the soldiers of the so-called great Fire Nation, not do something wrong. Regardless, Zuko needed a father figure, yes. But Y/N needed a father as she grappled with the death of her brother. 

Maybe she was just a little bitter about it. 

“Are you coming?” Zuko asked, his words coming out harshly.

Raising a brow, Y/N shook her head, “no. Don’t get too violent, though.” She warned, looking at him pointedly, “they’re a small tribe that’s going extinct.” 

Zuko rolled his eyes as he exclaimed, “that’s not my fault!”

Sitting up to face him, Y/N smacked him upside the head as she walked past him, “considering the royal family, which you are a part of need I remind you, ordered the genocide of every single Waterbender they had...” She paused, cracking her knuckles before turning to look back at Zuko, “I would say you that everyone here probably blames you for it by assosiation.” Y/N reasoned. She had never liked the history that her ancestors had, much less approved.

Taken aback, Zuko exclaimed, “you’re a part of the royal family too!”  Y/N was well aware of the circumstances surrounding his banishment, he’d tried to save lives, but war was the only thing that mattered to the Fire Nation it appeared. 

His attempt at defense simply earned him a shrug, “perhaps.” Y/N didn’t consider herself a member of the royal family, and she doubted her father did either. And no matter what Zuko thought, though he was royal by blood, his banishment severed his ties to the throne permanently.

Unless they happened to find the Avatar, though that wasn’t very likely, Y/N decided she would rethinking her life choices should the Avatar be here of all places, as she rested her forearms on the side of the ship and watched Zuko march down his soldiers.

She wasn’t going to tell him that the Southern Water Tribe didn’t have a military, much less benders. As previously mentioned, the genocide destroyed the benders, and the most of the soldiers in the village had headed off to fight in the war against the Fire Nation. Though her brow did raise as she watched him yank an old lady from the small crowd of people, Y/N straightened her back, preparing to get involved. 

Of course, a young warrior ended up running at her cousin, war paint and all as he attempted to attack. Key word being attempted. Watching him fall face first into the snow, Y/N realized he wasn’t a warrior, but a boy. The Avatar also happened to be a boy. A very, very young boy. Not a century year old Airbender. 

Y/N supposed it was time to start rethinking her life. 

Sokka didn’t know what he was supposed to do as he helped Princess Yue onto the Sky Bison. They needed to find Aang’s physical body, quickly, otherwise he wouldn’t be returning to the real world, and they happened to be fresh out of Avatars up until recently so that wasn’t really an option. Not when they needed the balance of the world to be restored immediately. 

Sighing, Sokka moved to get onto the Sky Bison, only to be yanked backwards, stumbling before having a knife pressed to his neck. “What the hell!” He exclaimed in shock, garnering the attention of the others that were already on Appa. Katara’s mouth gaping open at the sight of him as Princess Yue cried out in shock.

The knife against his neck is certainly uncomfortable, and he realizes that he probably should’ve stuck around Kyoshi Island long enough to learn how to get out a situation like this. “I’m coming with you. Someone has to make sure Zuko doesn’t do anything else dumb.” Comes a voice from behind him, and Sokka’s brows furrowed in confusion, who was this? And why were they trying to kill him? More importantly, how did they know Prince Zuko, the guy who had been chasing them since Aang had come out of that iceberg. Questions ran rampant through his mind, and he nearly forgot that his life was being threatened.

That was a luxury he couldn’t afford at the moment. 

Though he couldn’t see the person behind him, he could see Katara grimace at her demand, anyone associated with Prince Zuko likely had a similar end goal, to capture the Avatar. This wasn’t something they could allow, and Sokka recognized this as Katara asked, “why should we trust you?” Katara’s eyes soon met Sokka’s and he knew that no matter what he said, she would give into the girl’s demands for his safety. Sokka mentally scolded himself for failing to prevent this situation. 

The girl behind him scoffed, “unlike my dear cousin,” Sokka couldn’t help the shock that flooded him, cousin? As in Zuko is this girl’s cousin? Or did she mean someone else? He was kidding himself, there was no one else it could be. “I like banishment, it’s like a fun little vacation. I could care less about the Avatar.” The knife draws in closer to Sokka’s neck, nearly drawing blood, likely expressing the fact that she could care less if Katara believed her. Though Sokka doubted she didn’t care about the Avatar, he was one of the most important people in the world. 

But Sokka would likely die if she didn’t agree, or at least end up fatally injured. No matter how far Katara had come with her Waterbending, she hadn’t perfected it yet, and healing was only so effective. Sokka sincerely doubted she could beat the speed of this girl and her weapon considering the fact that she’d gotten the jump on them the first time around. Death wasn’t something he wanted, but anyone who knew Zuko couldn’t be trusted, much less someone who shared his blood. If he turned out... like that, Sokka didn’t want to imagine how this stranger ended up.

“Don’t try anything.” Katara warned, eyeing the girl wearily. Though it was an empty threat for the most part, in the air, there was little Katara could do against a foe. Though three, well two if you exclude the princess, against one seemed like favorable odds, this girl seemed talented in combat, even without bending.

She released Sokka, and he turned to see her beaming up at Katara, “happy to be doing business with ya.��� Turning to Sokka, she looked him up and down, sizing him up before speaking, “be a gentleman and help me up?” Yeah, she was crazy. The pretty ones are always crazy. That, and she was Zuko’s cousin, it made sense. Though Sokka was fairly sure that she was joking, you could never be too sure.

“Who even are you?!” He exclaimed, exasperated and preparing to whip out his boomerang as he glared at her. He didn’t recognize her, but she’d likely been traveling with Zuko for quite some time now if they were related.

She just shrugged, “you can call me Y/N.” She got onto Appa with ease, Katara on guard a she eyed her, eyes piercing into her soul, Y/N raised a brow upon noticing this, “calm down. I wouldn’t have killed him.”

Katara inhaled deeply, trying to maintain patience as Sokka got into the saddle, “yip, yip.”

Y/N wasn’t really shocked when it turned out Azula was after them. Of course good old Uncle Ozai sent his most valuable asset to bring them back. Though some good at come of it, Zuko cut his ponytail, something Y/N had taken pleasure in bullying him over. Now they were on the run, in the very city that her father had tried to run to the ground all those years ago. 

Irony at its finest.

Tugging at the sleeves of her Earth Kingdom garments, Y/N sighed, walking through the streets of the city. She didn’t know where she was if she was honest, and standing in the beautiful plaza, Y/N wondered if maybe, it would be better if she never returned back to that horrid apartment. Her father was starting over, getting them all jobs at a tea shop, even Zuko had tried to move on, going out on a date with a girl. 

The Earth Kingdom was an odd place, but here, no one knew who she was. It wouldn’t be difficult to restart, alone. Without the expectations she’d been raised with. Fists balling up, Y/N exhaled slowly, turning a corner. There wasn’t graffiti in this part of the city, she realized, staring at the walls. Though there was an odd poster, squinting at it, she moved closer. It was a poorly drawn image of-

A Sky Bison. The same one she’d ridden on back during the Siege of the North, not that any others existed, the Sky Bison were a dying breed. Which could only mean one thing, the Avatar was in Ba Sing Se. 

"Have you seen him?” She heard from behind her. Y/N recognized the voice, it belonged to the boy she’d held at knife point, “the drawing isn’t my best but-”

Turning around she spoke rapidly, “don’t freak out.” This was a problem.

Y/N liked to think she was the least threatening of the Royal Family, aside from her father that is. Though they could both be lethal in their own ways, neither demonstrated the true extents of their power unless it was truly necessary. Maybe that’s why Y/N hoped that the boy, Sokka, she believed his name was, wouldn’t freak out.

Of course, he did. Dropping the posters in his hand, he opened his mouth, likely to scream, only for Y/N to practically tackle him. She slammed his body against the wall, covering his mouth with her hand as she glared at him. Sokka let out a grunt of surprise, immediately beginning to struggle in her hold, “calm down! I don’t have a knife this time around.” Y/N cried out, her voice a hushed whisper. Of course, what she said was a lie, she always had at least three weapons on her. Upon entering the city, she’d knocked that number down to only two weapons, much to her dismay and Iroh’s relief.

She felt him lick her hand, and she quickly removed her hand in disgust, while keeping the other planted on his shoulder, they both exclaimed, “what the hell!”

Sokka’s eyes narrowed at her, “look. I don’t wanna cause a scene, so I’m just gonna go-” He sighed when her hand remained on his shoulder, firmly holding him against the wall as he tried to move away only to be pushed back into the wall. “Or not.” 

“Look, you cannot go back to your little group and tell them that I’m here.” Y/N tried to choose her words carefully, if she didn’t need to, she didn’t want to suggest that her father and Zuko were also in the city. “I’m trying to have a permanent vacation, away from the Fire Nation and my crazy family, in Ba Sing Se.” She explained, slowly removing her hand from his shoulder, “think you can respect that?”

He looked at her wearily, during their last interaction, she’d made no attempts to actually injure them. And when she had the Avatar right in front of her, unlike Zuko, she hadn’t tried to kidnap him. Y/N had been honest last time, and chances were, she was being honest now. That didn’t make him feel any better about trusting her though. 

“How do I know you won’t follow me and kill me in my sleep?”

Y/N looked at him incredulously, “is that a joke?” She’d considered that too though, the possibility that he’d follow her back to her shared apartment and alert his friends of their location. Y/N refused to be the reason that they lost their new lives in Ba Sing Se, and had already decided to check into an inn for the night. 

Raising a brow at her, Sokka gestured for her to give him an answer, and Y/N stared at him momentarily, “well. How do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?” Y/N retorted.

Sokka rolled his eyes at her, “I’m a good person.” Came his response.

“Debatable.” 

Sokka stared at her in disbelief, “I’m trying to save the world here!” He exclaimed, and Y/N wasn’t shocked by his response, her goal had been to fluster him and she had.

Tilting her head at him, Y/N replied, “sure.” Stretching her arms upwards, she waves to him, “don’t tell your friends I was here, and we’re good.” She began to walk further into the alley, towards the other side, “see you around.” If he was here, his friends were probably around the area as well, meaning she had to leave.

His mouth gaped open and he stared at her figure as she stalked off, pausing momentarily before groaning and running after her, ending up at her side. “What do you mean, sure?” Sokka asked, confusion laced in his tone. 

Y/N raised a brow at him. “What are you doing?”  She wanted to laugh at his reaction, though he was now following her liked a lovesick puppy, which could prove problematic. 

Crossing his arms he responded, “making sure you don’t do anything bad.” Sokka eyed her suspiciously, “because I am a good person.” He asserted.

“And I’m a bad person?”

She already knew he was going to say, ‘yes, yes you are.’ After all, she was from the Fire Nation, and Y/N had no doubt she’d done terrible things in her life, especially when she’d fallen into a dark place and taken on... less than favorable coping mechanisms. 

And he’s silent for a moment, leaving Y/N to wonder if he suddenly cares about the feelings of the enemy. Only for him to say, “in my experience... good people can do bad things.” 

That wasn’t what she expected. Y/N found herself stunned, speechless as she looked to Sokka, though he simply continued to walk alongside her nonchalantly. Quickly collecting herself, she looks away from him and to the nearby food stand, “that didn’t answer my question.” And as Sokka opened his mouth to likely continue his statement, Y/N realized she didn’t want to know the answer as she spoke, “you want food? I want food. Let’s get food.”

Sighing, Sokka followed her, “as long as you don’t poison me.”

Y/N’s brows furrowed at his comment, looking back at him, “do you-” A small laugh escaped her, “do you think I just carry around poison?” 

Sokka didn’t know why he swelled with pride when he made her laugh, “in case you run into your enemies, absolutely.” It was probably because she was the enemy, and it took real talent to make someone who hated you laugh. 

“How often do you think I run into my enemies and invite them to get food with me?” She asked, picking up a few things from the stand, before heading over to pay.

Frowning, Sokka watches her pay, “I thought we were bonding over,” he paused to take a meat bun from her and shove it into her face dramatically, “meat! Yet, I’m still your enemy.”

Y/N simply shrugged, “this is a one time thing.”

It was not a one time thing. 

Sokka found himself ‘coincidentally’ running into Y/N, more and more often. She’d be walking through the streets of the upper ring about once a week, though she had started walking through the streets of the inner ring of Ba Sing Se far more frequently than normal in recent weeks. He’d been meaning to ask her why, maybe she’d also grown accustomed to their meetings and started to come around more. During their meetups they’d talk, about things other than the war, which was a conversation difficult to come by with the others. Though he cared for his friends, talking to Y/N felt different, a good different. She wasn’t overbearing like Katara, or mean like Toph, but she also wasn’t as passive as Aang. 

It was odd. Knowing someone who had once held a knife to your neck in a more friendly way. Though, if Sokka was honest, he didn’t trust her, and she likely didn’t trust him either. They’d both taken precautions due to the mistrust between them, not that be blamed her. At the end of the day, they were still on opposing sides, kind of. Y/N had never seemed to care about finding the Avatar, but she was certainly loyal to her family above all else.

She’d demonstrated that in the Northern Water Tribe. 

Sokka was the same, if he had saw an inkling of betrayal as a possibility, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell the others. Their safety was his priority at the end of the day, and Y/N didn’t owe him anything, just like he didn’t owe her anything. Maybe that was the beauty of it all. But for now, everything remained peaceful, calming, and simple.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. 

Katara had oddly disappeared after Aang arrived with news of his vision. And then, as though things couldn’t get any weirder, Iroh arrived, Y/N’s apparent Father Iroh. Toph seemed to know him well, which certainly came as a shock to Sokka and Aang. “I need your help, Prince Zuko has been captured.” He explained, opening his mouth to continue only for Sokka to interrupt. He couldn’t help it when his brows furrowed in both confusion and frustration, Y/N had never suggested that the rest of her family was here.

“Are you crazy? You guys were trying to capture Aang not to long ago!” Sokka pointed out, throwing his arms outwards, “why not get Y/N to help?” She was certainly capable of raiding the palace and retrieving her cousin.

At this comment, Iroh’s face darkened, “we were separated in the palace. I’m unsure if they managed to capture her or if she escaped.” Oh. So that’s what he was going to say. 

Sokka couldn’t help it when his face dropped, looking to Iroh he exclaimed, “well- why didn’t you lead with that!” Pushing past Aang who had been prepared to start giving a speech on why they should assist Iroh, only for his mouth to gape open as Sokka headed for the door.

“Why are you so eager?” Toph asked as they began to follow him out the door.

He faltered, quickly trying to think up a good excuse as he replied, “no reason.” 

Toph’s frowned, “I can tell when you’re lying Sokka.” She reminded him. 

“We can discuss this later!” He exclaimed, flustered. “Let’s go.”

Y/N had contemplated killing Zuko before. 

It had never really been serious, as far as she would’ve gone was maybe injuring him badly enough that she got her point across. But at the end of the day, she protected Zuko to the best of her ability, and tried to keep his mind from being poisoned by the Fire Nation ideals that she’d once lived by unquestionably. 

Now she actually wanted him dead. He stood alongside Azula, who had offered Y/N her spot in her little gang hours ago, though she’d rejected the offer much to Azula’s chagrin. But she seemed sure that Y/N would accept some time soon. Perhaps it was because Zuko had betrayed her father and left him to the Dai Li. 

He had betrayed her father, the man who had practically raised both of them. 

Y/N had a violent past, she wouldn’t deny, and she liked to think that she was past all that. But looking at the situation ahead of them, watching the Waterbender, Sokka’s sister, Katara, cry over the body of the Avatar, she realized that maybe violence was the answer. Just this once. 

So, when she hopped in front of them, she had a plan. A violent one. 

“Pull yourself together.” She snapped at Katara, who looked up at her, bloodshot eyes and tears streaming down her confused face, “he’s getting out of here alive. But first, I need you to soak them.” Y/N gestured towards the troops coming towards them, Zuko and Azula accompanying them. Katara opened her mouth, and Y/N didn’t care what she was going to say as she ordered, “now!” 

Katara’s brows drew together as she released the Avatar’s head onto her lap, raising her hands to use the waterfall behind them to successfully drench the soldiers, who groaned at the discomfort but pausing temporarily before they continued towards them. “What did you think that would accomplish? What a pitiful-” Azula’s taunts were paused when she watched as Y/N drew her hands together, inhaling deeply, and Azula stopped her movement. “That’s not possible.” 

Suddenly, lightning was between Y/N’s fingertips, and she extended her hand into the large puddle of water that Katara had created. Y/N had learnt to bend lightning soon after she’d mastered Firebending, from her father, he’d insisted that she only use it when necessary, so she kept her ability to herself. This was necessary, she decided, hand touching the water and sending a shock throughout everyone with it, successfully putting all of the soldiers out of commission. 

Unfortunately, Azula recognized the signs of lightning bending, and withdrew alongside Zuko, and the two were now coming to attack from above at a rapid rate. Y/N whipped her head around to see Katara, mouth gaped open at all the fallen soldiers. “You two need to leave, I’ll hold them off.” She began to move to create another strike of lightning

“No.” Called out another voice, and Y/N whipped her head over to see it was her father, Dai Li agents likely nearby as he moved in front of Y/N. “You all need to leave. Take Y/N with you, she will help the Avatar reach his destiny.” Y/N wanted to laugh at that, how could he be so sure? If the boy did die, then this would all be for nothing

Y/N scoffed, “are you crazy?” She moved closer to her father, “unlike Zuko, I’m not leaving you.” She exclaimed, exasperated. 

Iroh simply smiled at her as he said, “I’m proud of you, Y/N.” 

Sokka knew he seemed dumb. He knew how others perceived him, as the ‘extra’ member of Team Avatar, the useless one, because he lacked bending. At the end of the day, Sokka was the brains of their operations, he was observant, and this helped him develop plans that most people would never even consider.

Not that anyone else knew, but Sokka was the only one that had actually interacted with Y/N prior to what happened in Ba Sing Se. Sure, they’d all met once or twice in the past, but Sokka had a knife to his throat then, so Y/N probably didn’t seem that appealing to the others. And he doubted they understood how odd it was that she was so... apathetic. Normally she’d tease, and joke alongside him but now? 

It was odd, and nobody else could notice the shift in her personality but him, and he was concerned. Y/N had lost her father, and been betrayed by her cousin, and she had yet to talk about it, at all. Sokka liked to think that they were close enough to discuss such things, and he’d tried to get some sort of emotion out of her, the key word being tried. 

Despite her apathetic personality, the others had warmed up to her for the most part. Apparently Toph had met Y/N in the past, during the time she’d run off and encountered Iroh. So, the two got acquainted fairly fast, Aang was happy to have a Firebender, and insisted that once he was back to full strength, and they’d found a better place for practice, he’d learn Firebending from her. Y/N had agreed but it was clear Aang wasn’t as excited as he was acting, Sokka figured he still associated the time he hurt Katara with Firebending.

Katara had been far less weary of Y/N than Sokka had expected, but given what Katara had told him when she’d first joined, that made sense. Y/N was a powerful Firebender who had betrayed her entire nation to help save Aang’s life, and though Katara didn’t approve of everything she’d done in the past, she tolerated her. Which was better than nothing in Sokka’s book.

They were currently camped out in the woods beside a Fire Nation town, everyone had scattered to prepare for the few nights they’d likely stay in the area. Katara had gone to the town with Toph and Aang, in search of supplies and food, while Sokka and Y/N set up the camp and collected wood to help start a fire. Y/N had insisted that she could maintain the fire without any wood, but Sokka viewed this as an excuse to get her alone and force her to discuss her feelings.

“So...” Sokka mumbled, looking to her as she leaned down to pick up another piece of wood, “lovely weather we’re having.”

Y/N turned to him, raising a brow before nodding, “yeah.” It was clear she wasn’t entirely paying attention the nonsense that was coming out of his mouth as he tried to get her to listen to him. 

Sokka grabbed another piece of wood, “how have you been?”

Tilting her head at him in confusion, Y/N brought another piece of wood into her arms, “fine.” Looking up at the dimming sky she frowned, “we should start heading back to that spot we’d found earlier.” Y/N turned to begin walking, and Sokka struggled to match her pace.

His brows furrowed in frustration as he stared at her, the light of the falling sun filtering in between the trees and onto them. Y/N seemed to glow as she maneuvered between the trees, “how have you been sleeping?” Even Sokka sounded confused at the question he asked, but he didn’t know how to broach the topic with Y/N.

She simply paused her movement, turning to him, he stumbled slightly due to the abrupt stop, and met her eyes. “Just ask what you wanna ask, Sokka. Stop dancing around whatever it is.” Y/N sounded tired, looking to him expectantly as she awaited his question. Sokka scolded himself for being so obvious that she’d noticed something was up. 

He sighed, “are you okay?” And she opened her mouth to respond but he continued, “actually? You can say that you are okay, and not mean it. Y/N you lost your dad and were betrayed by your cousin, and you-” Sokka grimaced as he met her eyes, “you haven’t been the same since you joined us.”

Y/N is silent for a moment, then her eyes were piercing into his, “how would you know that I haven’t been the same?” She asked, turning away to continue walking back to the chosen campsite, “it’s not like you know me.” His statement had set her off it appeared, but her response had easily done the same for him. 

“Are you serious? Not like I know you?” He scoffed, jogging to catch up with her, “I know that you do whatever it takes to protect the people you care about. I know that you really like Earth Kingdom food because most of the food within the Fire Nation is on the spicier side.” Y/N didn’t seem to be listening, and the camp was in sight, but Sokka continued, “I know that you get really cold easily unless you regulate your body temperature with your Firebending. And I know that you can’t pick a favorite color because you are very indecisive.” 

Aggressively, Y/N dropped the sticks into the center of the campsite as they arrived, turning to him, “you can stop now.” Her voice was almost taunting as she spoke, sarcastic in a way. 

Sokka simply followed suit, placing the firewood in the center and facing her head on, “and most importantly, I know what it’s like to lose someone.” He takes her hand, and Y/N practically growls at the contact, attempting to yank her hand out of his grasp, she ends up pulling him closer towards her. Sokka clumsily topples onto her, knocking the both of them down into the dirt with a grunt. His forearms preventing him from crushing Y/N under his body weight as he held himself up, his eyes meet hers.

Y/N finds herself glaring daggers at him, while Sokka finishes his little speech with, “you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

And in that moment, he looks at her, really looks at her. And she’s really pretty.

Y/N opens her mouth to say something to him, only for someone else to begin speaking, “are we interrupting something?” Toph. Looking up, Sokka sees the others as well, Aang looks rather smug as he wiggles his eyebrows at Sokka, and Katara gives him a pointed look, likely disappointed that he’d fraternizing with the former enemy. He can’t help it when he feels his cheeks warm, and before he can move to get off Y/N, she’s launched him off of her, and he’s flat on his back on the ground. Toph laughs at the actions, bending a seat of earth for herself and the others before falling backwards into it, the girl seems to wish she had popcorn as she watched the moment unfold.

“No.” Y/N mumbles, bringing herself to her feet and dusting herself off. “I’ll be in my tent if you need me.” She retreats into one of the tents they’d set up earlier, and Sokka groans as he lets his head fall backwards into the ground and runs his hands over his face.

When he removes them, Aang is standing over him, along with Toph, while Katara organizes the firewood. “So... did we interrupt something?” Toph asked.

Sokka just sighs, his plan failed. This time at least. Next time, his goal would be to make her laugh, to make her smile. At least she had expressed some emotion, anger was better than nothing.

Anger seemed to turn to annoyance, since Y/N doesn’t leave her tent until nightfall and Sokka can’t help but wonder what was entertaining enough to keep her in there for all that time. When she does exit, she uses her Firebending to light a fire, and uses the firewood they’d collected earlier to ensure it stays alight. The rest of the group was seated around the center of the campsite, and Sokka wonders if she’s going to go back to her tent when she realizes the only open seat is next to him. 

She doesn’t return to her tent though and he’s grateful. Though she sits as far as possible from him on the bench that Toph had created, half-heartedly listening to the things that the others are saying. Y/N can feel herself getting cold and can’t help the resent that bubbles up in her chest as she recalls what Sokka send earlier. Exhaling deeply, a puff of blue fire escapes her mouth and Y/N feels nauseous at the small reminder of Azula. 

This catches Sokka’s attention, though the others are too enraptured in the story Aang was telling, Sokka turned to her, “cold?” He asked, leaning to the side to grab a blanket from his small pack, he offers it to her.

Y/N knew she wouldn’t be able to regulate her temperature when she fell asleep, but accepting the blanket from Sokka felt like... it felt like accepting him and everything he had said about her. So, when she doesn’t take the blanket from his hands, Sokka sighs, moving to put it back, only for Y/N to snatch the blanket from his hand and wrap it around herself begrudgingly.

This was her way of apologizing, moving closer to Sokka on the small bench she huffed as she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and turned her attention to Aang. She’d been mean, she wouldn’t deny, but what was she supposed to say? Exhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily, allowing drowsiness to consume her for a moment, before looking back to Aang.

It isn’t until Sokka feels a weight fall onto his shoulder midway through his own story that he realizes Y/N has fallen asleep, his mouth gaping open in shock as he pauses his words. He quickly shakes off the shock, cheeks warming as he turns back to the rest of the group, who all regard him curiously. Aang once again wiggles his eyebrows and Sokka ignores the action, continuing his story. Though he’s more weary of his vivid hand movements in fear of awakening Y/N, and noticeably quiets his voice. Sokka finds himself wishing he was Y/N as he listens to Katara’s Water Tribe horror story intently, after all, this is the most peaceful he’s ever seen her. 

It doesn’t last long, because she’s soon startled awake, hand going to her side where she keeps her dagger as she and Toph speak simultaneously, “someone’s coming.”

As an old woman emerges from the shadows, Sokka practically holds Y/N down to keep her from lunging at her and attacking as the woman speaks. And of course, Y/N’s distaste for the woman doesn’t stop there, even when she invites them into her home, though Sokka doesn’t blame her. She’s a suspicious woman. 

It’s not until he and Aang are attacking each other that Sokka regrets preventing Y/N from attacking the old woman when she had the chance. Katara is struggling to move, and Sokka can only hope that Toph and Y/N return from the cave soon as he yelps upon nearly making contact with Aang, the old woman laughing cynically. Sokka watches as she shifts, hand outstretching behind her, “don’t think I forgot you little Firebender.” 

His eyes widen in both shock and fear as Y/N’s body is suddenly thrown onto the ground in front of him. Her body rising almost mechanically, back to a stand, Sokka realizes there’s lightning at her fingertips, the woman manipulating her body to aim for Sokka. “A shame you’ll be the woman to end your friend’s life isn’t it,” She’s making eye contact with Katara who is crying out and begging for her to stop.

Sokka can see the panic in Y/N’s eyes as the her hands aim towards him, “Y/N. It’s okay.” He calls out her, in an attempt at assurance that he doubts does much to soothe her. “It’s okay.” He repeats, squeezing his eyes shut as he prepares for the lightning to hit him. Except it never does, instead, it goes upwards into the sky as Y/N cries out in pain, having moved her body despite the woman blending her blood. 

She had overpowered Hama’s bloodbending, something that clearly came as a shock to the old woman as Y/N turned around sluggishly, staring at the shocked old woman as blue fire left her mouth once more, chest heaving. Sokka could feel the weight on his bones slowly disappear, leaving behind an ache, the woman likely intended to focus her abilities onto Y/N, who was struggling to walk towards her. 

“Scared?” Y/N asked, looking up at the woman, “you should be.”

The next time that Team Avatar feared Y/N. She was face to face with Zuko.

He’d approached them as they sat in the Air Temple. And Y/N had practically jumped out of her seat, preparing for a fight as lightning seemed to dance at her fingertips. Though Sokka knew better than to allow her to attack her cousin, and grabbed her arm. “Can you guys handle this?” He asks the others, maintaining eye contact with Y/N. The others looked to them understanding what would likely occur if Y/N was allowed to be involved.

Zuko wouldn’t walk away from that fight. 

“We got this Sokka.” Katara assured, pure hate in her eyes as she stared Zuko down, and Sokka couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he should remove both of them from the situation. 

Sokka’s hand found Y/N’s, and it was almost burning hot, a sparks seeming to fly between them, he pulls at her hand. Y/N hesitantly allows him to drag her away, though she turns back momentarily to meet Zuko’s eyes. “I’ll kill you later, cousin.” She promises, and her voice is scarily calm. “For my father.” The condescending tone in her voice and the wince Zuko has in response is enough for Sokka to know that her intent was to hurt him emotionally if she couldn’t do it physically, and it was clear she had been successful.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily as Sokka brings her into one of many abandoned rooms in the temple, sitting her down onto a bed before kneeling down in front of her. “Are you good?” He asks. 

“That’s a stupid question.” Comes her response.

Sokka tilts his head at her, giving her a smile, “well I’m a stupid guy.” 

He’s rubbing gentle circles in her hand as she shakes her head, a small laugh escaping her, “no you’re not.” Her voice cracks and she cringes at the sound so she clears her throat, staring at the wall beside her. Sokka can’t help the way his heart swells at this comment, because for once he doesn’t feel like the comic relief, he doesn’t feel like the side character. Though he appreciates the rest of Team Avatar and loves them all dearly, at times, they didn’t take him seriously. 

Y/N makes him feel important. Though he doesn’t say this as he looks at her, clearly shaken by Zuko’s sudden appearance, she speaks once more, “are you sure I can’t kill him?”

This time Sokka laughs, shaking his head, “I’m sure Katara would love to help you with that, but I doubt Aang would approve.” 

Y/N nods slowly, letting out a shaky breath as a tear escaped her, though she quickly wiped it away and looks to the ground. “You wanna sit with me?” She asks, patting the spot on the bed beside her. 

“Sure.” He replies softly, moving to sit on the bed with her. One he’s situated, Y/N leans her head onto his shoulder, and Sokka finds his hand wrapping around her waist. And they sit like this for several moments. 

Taking a deep breath, Y/N removes her head from his shoulder and looks to him, “thank you.”

Sokka raises a brow, “for what?”

“Being here.” She replies, bringing her hand to move a hair from his face, Sokka watches her actions intently and in awe. “With me.” Her hand remains on his face for longer than necessary, and when she moves to let it fall back into her lap, Sokka’s hand cups hers. 

They’re both silent when Sokka’s hand releases hers, and his other hand leaves her waist, both coming to her face. The look in his eyes tells her enough, and she nods to him. 

The kiss felt like the first breath of fresh air in a while. Maybe it’s because it had been long overdue, but as Y/N brought her hands to his arms to pull him closer, she felt her head empty of all thoughts. 

He pulls away momentarily, their foreheads resting against each others, he can see her eyes are shut, lashes pressed against her cheeks. “I hope,” Sokka pauses, and her eyes flutter open to look at him, he can feel his cheek warm as he continues, “I hope I can always be here, with you.” It’s a confession in its own way, and Sokka understands the weight of his words as he watches her reaction. 

She opens her mouth, likely to reply, be closes it quickly, and Sokka can’t help the panic that floods him. Though this is quickly replaced by the feeling of her lips on his as her hand collides with his chest and pushes him down on the bed, earning a grunt from him. 

“Guys, Zuko is gone-” Y/N throws herself onto the floor as she rolls off Sokka, and he sits up immediately. “Am I interrupting something now?” Aang asked, giving Sokka a look.

Y/N clears her throat, “no.” Sokka couldn’t help it when his brows drew together at this comment, bringing a hand to his temple as he sighed, and Y/N stood, dusting off her thighs as she mumbled, “see you guys later.”

She started avoiding him after that. 

When Zuko joined the group, she’s also made a point to avoid him no matter how hard he tried to apologize to her. And of course, when Sokka first showed him to his room they had a... chat. To put it simply, Sokka had threatened him. 

Just a little. 

“So yeah, here it is, your room.” Gesturing to the room, Sokka gave Zuko a tight lipped smile, watching him wearily. 

Zuko’s back was to him as he placed his stuff down, “thank you.” He said, expecting that to be the end of it, upon hearing the door close he assumed Sokka had left.

When he turned around, Sokka was still very much there. “Let’s have a chat, Prince Zuko.” It didn’t go unnoticed by Sokka how the boy grimaced at the use of his title, though that didn’t stop him from moving forward and placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder a little too tightly. “Y/N does not want to speak with you.”

“I know,” Came his reply. “Thank you for keeping her from... killing me. The other day. I intend to apologize-”

A small laugh escaped Sokka, “next time. I won’t stop her.” This was for multiple reasons, one of which being that Y/N was avoiding him, and the other being that he wished to respect her and her feeling about Zuko. “And you need to respect her wishes. One of those wishes being, avoiding you. Until she approaches you, leave her be.”

Zuko’s brows furrowed at this comment, “she’s my cousin. You can’t expect-”

“Leave. Her. Be.” 

Zuko became silent, nodding slowly as he looked to Sokka curiously. 

And now, to avoid some of his problems and solve some of them, Sokka ended up running away in a hot air balloon with the person he related to the most at the moment, and the person he threatened rather recently. Zuko. Both of them were being avoided by someone important in their lives, and they both had slightly crazy younger sisters. Though their conversations were certainly... odd.

“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”

Zuko looked at him for a moment before saying, “that’s rough, buddy.” There was silence after this, a temporary lapse in conversation that Zuko seemed determined to fill. “So...” Zuko mumbled. “You and my cousin huh.” 

It wasn’t a question, Sokka realized this, but he disregarded it as he responded, “what about us?” Playing dumb would hopefully get him to drop the subject. 

Zuko raised his brows at Sokka, “us?” 

Scolding himself, Sokka realized he’d unintentionally dug a deeper hole for himself when he said this as he tried to avoid Zuko’s gaze. “Not really.” Sokka replied, “she’s avoiding me too.” 

Nodding, Zuko gave him a tight lipped smile, “what did you do?”

“I wish I knew.” Sokka could only make assumptions about why Y/N had begun to avoid him, but at the end of the day was confused over it.

He really needed to talk to her. 

As the day of Sozin’s Comet drew closer, Sokka had started trying to talk to Y/N more and more, she’d keep basic conversation but whenever he tried to address... the kiss, Y/N would shut down the conversation. And now, it was the day of Sozin’s Comet, and they established that Zuko and Katara would take on Azula, Aang would take on Ozai, and the rest of them would go after the army that was heading for the Earth Kingdom. 

It seemed that Sokka intended to try to speak with her once more as he approached her while she strapped a dagger to her thigh. “We need to talk.” He said, plopping down onto a rock beside her.

“About battle strategy?” She asked, looking to him, “I had some ideas.”

Play dumb, play dumb, play dumb.

Sokka’s brows furrowed as he shook his head, “about the kiss, Y/N.” Y/N tried to hide her shock at his forwardness, he’d never been this blunt before, during his previous attempts to discuss this with her. Turning to him, she prepared to speak but he silenced her, “you’re going to listen this time.” Grimacing, he looked away, towards the horizon. “I don’t know what’s going to happen today. And if something goes wrong, I need you to know-”

“Nothing is going wrong.” Y/N stated firmly. “Nothing. So, we can have this conversation after.” 

Sokka sat up from his place on the rock, moving in front of her, “there’s no way to guarantee that Y/N.” 

Squeezing her eyes shot, Y/N took a deep breath, “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you guys.” She promised, “and I swear we can talk about this after.” She grabs onto his hands, holding them in hers as she looks away. Y/N knew why she was avoiding it. He was right, it was totally possible for one of them to die, and a relationship in the midst of a war was the worst possible idea. After would be better, or at least that’s what she’d told herself.

The pleading look in his eyes almost burns through her resolve as he asks, “will we?” It almost hurts that he doesn’t believe her, but Y/N can’t blame him.

“We need to go.” Her voice was almost a whisper as she releases his hands. Even if she wanted to continue discussing the subject, they needed to begin the battle soon. 

Sokka frowned though, “if you don’t want this, just tell me and I’ll-” He sighed, bringing a hand to his temple. “I’ll stop bothering you.”

Y/n began to shake her head, “you are never a bother to me I just-” Sighing, she looked into his eyes, “I want this. I do, I’m just scared, and we’re in the middle of a war Sokka!” She exclaimed, the words spilling out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“You think I don’t know that?” Sokka cried out, exasperated. “Y/N I’m so scared that something is going to go wrong, and I’ll never get to tell you that I-”

“Don’t say it.” She interrupts, fear in her veins as she watches him.

So, he didn’t. 

If she didn’t feel like she had something to come back to, maybe that would make it easier. Sacrifices would have to be made to reach victory, and Y/N wouldn’t hesitate to be the one to make them if it meant the others survived. They deserved to see the new world, the world of peace, prosperity, and freedom, the one that came after all this.

Y/N could feel the power flooding her as the comet drew closer, pure and raw power. Though this accompanied by her skill would likely help her in the upcoming battle, dozens of Firebenders with half her skill and the power of the comet was something she was definitely worried about. Overpowering them all was unlikely, and in the best case scenario, Y/N could slow them down. But she wasn’t a fool. In war, there were always casualties, and she was prepared to become one of many. 

Then there were the thoughts in the back of her mind. Though nobody had discussed it, the throne could potentially go to her after all this, and that wasn’t really something Y/n was looking forward to debating. Perhaps it was selfish, but Y/N didn’t really care. Was it wrong of her to dream of escaping the shackles that bound her to the Fire Nation since birth, to leave behind the politics and the lies and the pain of it all?

Maybe. 

Sokka knew Y/N had a lot going on in her mind right now. And he knew she was scared of what was to come, and no matter how much it hurt him, he respected her wishes to wait until this battle was over to discuss whatever it was between them. He knew where he stood. But now that Suki had left them, he found himself beginning to regret it. On the top of the Air Balloon, Toph was practically blind, and Sokka could do little in terms of long distance, aside from his boomerang. Which left Y/N to do her best to defend them from the Firebenders that had begun to swarm them. 

“Go!” She cried out, knocking one of the Firebenders off the balloon. “Take out the rest of the fleet.” Y/N dodged the oncoming flames, intercepting them with her own to prevent the others from getting burned.

But Sokka wasn’t going to let anyone die today. “You still owe me a conversation,” came his response, looking down at the bridges on the Air Balloon. “Jump!” Sokka cried out as another ball of fire rushed towards them, he took Toph by the hand and hoped that Y/N followed. 

Thankfully, she did, he took notice of her as he fell towards the bridges extending from the giant hot air balloon. They were all screaming as they fell, and Y/N grunted in pain as she hit Sokka, tumbling over him and off the edge, yelping as her hands grasped the bridge, with little leverage. Toph similarly went over the side, her screams filling Sokka ears as Y/N released one of her hands from the bridge and caught Toph’s wrist. 

Panic flooded Sokka as he scrambled to the edge of the bridge, Y/N’s hand slipping, “Sokka! Hurry up-” Another scream rips out of her as she loses her grip on the edge.

Nearly falling as he grabbed her hand, his chest heaved. “It’s gonna be okay.” He promised, looking into Y/N’s panicked eyes. “It’s gonna be fine Toph!” He cried out to her.

“Yeah, right!” She called out into the wind, the fear evident in her voice despite the sarcastic nature of the comment. “Y/N I don’t wanna die.” 

Y/N almost can’t hear her, too focused on maintaining her grip on both Sokka and Toph’s hands. She exhales slowly, eyes falling on the soldiers that are beginning to make their way down to them as she replied, “you’re gonna be fine, I promise. I’m gonna get you to Sokka, okay?” 

Sokka was internally panicking, he wouldn’t be able to fight back against the incoming soldiers if both his hands were occupied, but his grip was faltering and he couldn’t pull them both up. Grimacing as he looked down at the two, he nodded in agreement to Y/N signaling that he was ready. It made sense in his mind, she would be able to use her free hand to Firebend, which was far more useful than anything he could provide at the moment. 

Inhaling deeply, Y/N looks to Toph, “Toph, I need you to climb up my body, and grab Sokka’s free hand, okay?”

Toph’s death grip on her hand seems to grow stronger, tears brimming her eyes, “I- I don’t think I can.” 

Y/N shakes her head at these words, “yes, yes you can. Bring your legs up to grab my lower body, and then make your way up, okay? Like a tree.”

Toph shook her head rapidly, “I’ve never climbed a tree!”

Sokka couldn’t help but grow impatient as he exclaimed, “there are soldiers coming, Toph please!” His hand was growing sweaty as he used his free hand to throw his sword at one of the oncoming soldiers, effectively knocking him down. 

Y/N felt her arm swing slightly, and watched as Toph blindly extended her legs, finally managing to wrap them around her legs. She released Y/N’s hand and wrapped both arms around her lower body, slowly inching upwards until her legs were around Y/N’s waist and her arms were on her shoulders. “Good job, now reach up, as far as you can, and Sokka’s gonna grab your hand.” Y/n instructed using her free hand to pat the hand that Toph had wrapped around her.

Y/N could feel the young girl’s tears fall onto her shirt as she extended her hand upwards, Sokka’s freehand moving as far down as possible. The strain on Y/N’s body slowly becoming too much as tears leaked out of her eyes.

Maybe it would be better to just... let go.

She quickly shook off those thoughts, Toph, Toph, Toph, she couldn’t do anything brash until Toph was safe. Y/N watched as Sokka’s hand narrowly missed Toph’s. “Sokka, please.” Y/N whispered, looking to him with pleading eyes.

Maybe it was the desperation he heard in her voice that moment, or maybe it was pure luck, put his fingers grazed Toph’s and he latched on, extending his arm as far as possible and gripping her hand. “Now let go of me, and Sokka’s gonna pull you up, okay?” Y/N explained, looking to Sokka, his eyes meeting hers. Y/N quickly realized he couldn’t lift either of them up. Just like her, this was straining his muscles, and Sokka was struggling to keep both of them up. 

“Sokka.” She said, demanding his attention, his eyes met hers, filled with fear as Toph relieved Y/N’s body of her weight and evened out the distribution on Sokka’s body. “You can’t fight back with both your hands taken.” More tears were streaming down her face as she spoke, “a-and... you can’t pull us both up.” Sokka was crying too now, shaking his head rapidly as Y/N simply pointed out the facts.

Toph’s grip on his hand tightened, “we’re all going to die.” There was resignation in her voice, and it hurt Y/N to hear it.

“We’ll figure it out. We are all going to be okay.” He stated firmly, a shaky breath leaving him as he made an attempt to pull them both upwards, a failed attempt.

Squeezing her eyes shut momentarily, Y/N allowed herself to imagine it, a life with Sokka and the rest of her friends. A life where they were all happy. Where everyone made it out of this war alive, and they helped bring balance to the world.

To give them that world, they had to end this war. And what was war without death?

Opening her eyes, she looked to Sokka, and he was panicked, noticing that far more soldiers had surrounded them and were preparing to mercilessly throw them off the balloon. “Sokka.” She repeated, and he looked to her with a tear streaked face. 

“I love you.” 

Everything seemed to slow as she spoke this words, and Y/N didn’t see the horror on his face for long as the grip of his hand faltered when she released it, he was screaming, crying, begging for her to stop. Toph clearly didn’t understand what was going on as she began to call out Y/N’s name in a panic. 

And then she was falling. 

It appeared there would be no after.

It felt peaceful, she decided. Falling. The stress on her body had dissipated and she caught one final glimpse of Sokka’s mortified face before going through the clouds. The comet was visible from where she was, the horizon, it was a beautiful way to die. But staring at the comet she realized she wanted to know what would come after, she realized that Toph was practically helpless and all Sokka had was a boomerang against dozens of Firebenders.

They would die. So, what was the point of her sacrifice? What was the point of her dying?

No, she wouldn’t be dying today.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N felt the power course through her veins, and she reminded herself that she was Y/N L/N, a force to be reckoned with. Nobody would forget that as fire tore through the soles of her shoes, and extended from her hands, propelling her upwards. 

She was the daughter of the famed Dragon of the West. And she would take on his mantle, she decided, as she flew upwards and through the clouds. 

She could see Sokka had managed to bring Toph upwards and onto the platform alongside him, and they were surrounded by Firebenders. It was clear that they’d seen her when their mouthes gaped open, and a few of the soldiers began to retreat, much to the chagrin of their commanding officer. Y/N found herself ceasing her Firebending and falling towards the platform, she landed in a roll and rose on one knee before opening her mouth and allowing fire to pour outwards.

The Firebenders fell off the bridges beside them one by one, and those who didn’t retreated back inside along with the others at the sight of the Air Balloon that Suki had evidently comandeered.

Closing her mouth, Y/N’s chest heaved, and she felt Toph tackle her from behind, “you’re alive!” She exclaimed, punching Y/N’s arm roughly, “idiot.” She dug her head into Y/N’s shirt.

“Yeah, I am an idiot.” Y/N replied breathlessly, holding the girl tightly.

When Toph finally released her, she gave her a smug look, “I’ll give you and him a minute.” Though this was partially an excuse to head back inside and into the safety of the balloon, maybe even attack some of the remaining Firebenders, it was also because Toph could read the room.

And there stood Sokka, mouth gaping open, tears streaming down his smiling face as he looked at her, before lunging towards her similar to how Toph had. Except his hands came to her cheeks as he brought their lips together, effectively knocking the two onto the ground of the platform, be pulled apart from her with a smile on his face, “I love you too.”

Yeah, after was looking pretty good right about now. 

A/N: i hope you guys liked this SUPER LONG THING WOW, that was an accident. i was super close to like breaking everyones hearts and killing Y/N but then i felt bad so be grateful i was nice ksaljdlahfkj

anyways take care of yourselves!

taglists:

atla:  @bubblebars @jada-cleo @art-flirt @the-deli-meat

#sokka x reader #sokka x you #sokka x y/n #sokka atla #atla sokka #atla sokka x reader #sokka atla x reader #atla sokka x you #atla #avatar the last airbender #lok #legend of korra #sokka is a bottom change my mind #im sorry ignore this #i hope no one reads tags #anyways have a nice day #drink water

[bitch-for-a-rainbow]

So there's a blanddcheadcanons post that says that "Kara is the mortal avatar of Rao" and I really don't like it, especially in the context of SG 3x04 (The Faithful). At best, as was pointed out to me by a friend with whom I discussed this post, the House of El is likely blessed and somewhat sponsored by Rao, which probably doesn't do much but produce Krypton's greatest heroes, given what the word "El" **means** in Kryptonian. I'm interested in your thoughts on this (pls post your answer).

    I reject the headcannon solely because if it were true it would mean Coville was right and I fucking hate that bitch.

     In all seriousness, though, this is an idea I've seen a lot and I'm not a huge fan of. I don't know much about Raoism beyond what appears in the show and that which can be inferred off of the show. One thing I would point out though is that El in Kryptonian (while obviously being intended to mean God by the original comic writers) can mean Sun or Stars, and since the Kryptonians in the show are, as far as I can tell, monotheistic, and worshipped only one particular star, the El family is not necessarily named God. It would, however, signify their enormous prestige on Krypton and contribute to the famous El pride (or rather, arrogance). I’m not sure it would necessarily have to mean anything more than that-- that the Els are a respected house who have produced a variety of successful politicians, civil servants, and scientists. And (this time reaching a little bit) that they are perhaps so old and respected that their house name was once a title. 

      There is a certain allure to the theory, for sure. Kara is a paragon character. She always, always does what she thinks is right, regardless of the cost, personal or global, and regardless of what other people might think of it. She has a very direct moral compass, and there are only a handful of times when she doesn’t follow it, all of which involve saving Lena. Ship who you want, but it is notable that Kara routinely prioritzes Lena’s life over that of others given the rarity of that happening otherwise. She never even considered breaking Rick Thompson’s father out of prison when he kidnapped Alex, and all he’d committed was bank robbery. Kara has lines she does not cross (though murder is clearly not one of them). She is a character that has seen some of the worst that sentient life is capable of, has seen more death and suffering than most people could imagine, and she came out of it with an all-encompassing desire to protect others. She lives to give people hope. Plus, the humor of having Kara-- the one person most offended by the idea of being an Avatar of Rao-- turn out to be an Avatar of Rao is great.

       But, I would also say that having Kara want to do good because she is the avatar of a benevolent god is reductive and not particularly true to her character. It is true that helping and protecting people is a large part of the core of who Kara is. But there is a difference between altruism and the self-destructive, bordering of suicidal desperation to save absolutely everyone that Kara practices. And to anyone who doubts the suicidal bit, I direct you to the season 1 finale where Kara literally goes on a goodbye tour because she thinks if she goes out to fight Non she’ll die. She still goes because she has hope, but that hope is that she can at least save Earth with her life. She doesn’t fight because she is certain in the ultimate victory of good and justice. She does it because she more afraid to lose another family than she is to die. Kara doesn’t become Supergirl and risk her own life because she believes in good, she does it because she can’t stand to listen to people suffer-- because she has suffered. To use Alex’s words in 1x13 “You fight everyday to keep people from struggling like you have.” Notably also in 1x13, Kara wakes up from the Black Mercy and her first words are “Who did this to me?” and then she goes after Non in what could arguably be described as a homicidal rage-- a rage that is fueled entirely for personal reasons, not the greater good of Earth (though that comes as an added benefit), which is.... not very befitting the avatar of a benevolent god. 

     A major part of season 1 is Kara dealing with grief and rage. She nearly breaks a guy's arm in episode 6 because he screamed at her for damaging his car, to hell with the children he'd almost hit with it. In season 3's Midvale flashbacks we see her first put both hands through a lunch table, then attack Jake when she suspects him for Kenny's death. She gets better at controlling it as the seasons progress, but during Crisis she very nearly melts Lex. Also not particularly godly of her. 

     Then there is the fact that so much of who Kara is is shaped by fear: fear of the government, fear of humanity, fear of abandonment, and fear of herself. In her civilian life, Kara is, for the most part, unnoticeable. She's polite, soft-spoken, doesn't wear a lot of bold colors or styles, and is often a pushover. As shown by her encounter with Red Kryptonite, Kara would not dress or speak the same way to people without the pressure of hiding her identity (though much of her dialogue is purely the loss of her "don't be an asshole" filter, some of it is stuff she had every right to say before and just didn't). I have always found that episode to be very interesting purely for the fact that Kara doesn't actually seem to be seeking harm on others so much as seeking their attention. Her argument with Alex is almost entirely about how much she hates having to hide and pretend to be less than she is. Kara drops Cat off the balcony and then catches her. She attacks the police when they point weapons at her but doesn't kill or even hurt them that badly, instead of destroying the car they're using as shelter. Red-K removed her inhibitions, made her angrier, yes, but if her goal was to actually hurt people, she could have done so-- would have done so, and with great ease. She goes to a public bar and uses super strength to smash bottles by flicking peanuts. Why do that at a crowded bar? Why not just flick potato chips at the windows in her own apartment?

      This is Kara at her absolute worst-- but does she seek out the DEO agents who shot her out of the sky? Does she go after Maxwell Lord or Non? No. She tries to make people pay attention to her. Her most shameful and hideous desire is for people to give her respect. (Admittedly, respect gained through fear, but still.). Kara's a nice person-- much, much nicer than average-- but a lot of that "nice" is just her avoiding conflict to avoid attention.

      Kara is a good person. Kara inspires people. But that is because Kara gets up every day and chooses to be good and to inspire. It's one of the reasons I enjoy Non as a villain so much-- he and Astra are Kara's narrative foils. They also remember Krypton and grieve its loss. They also were trapped in the Phantom Zone. But where Kara had the Danvers to convince her that some good people existed and would risk themselves just to help others, Non and Astra had Alura sentencing them to eternal suffering rather than helping them save their planet (through the means they thought necessary) and then landed on Earth and found it headed on the same path as the planet they'd just lost. Kara had people to help her grieve. Non and Astra were surrounded by misery. They lost hope. Kara discovered it.

     Kara is the Paragon of Hope because she has been hopeless. Because she has suffered so much, seen so much, and because she chooses to believe in a better future. She didn't have hope her first time in the Phantom Zone. She didn't even have hope for a while on earth. From what we can gather, Kara's choice to start actually believing in the future was a gradual shift that occurred sometime after Kenny's death and has lasted her ever since. For Kara, hope is learned. She chose to hope and she won't let it go, and to assign that incredible victory off to her being a God is an insult to her growth and to her character. 

   Now I personally thought “The Faithful” handled this concept very well. 3x04 is one of my favorite episodes of television in general, let alone in Supergirl. Season 3 is my second favorite season, and that says a lot for its good episodes when the bad of season 3 is so, so very bad (To say nothing of the episode to episode production value, we have the waste of Argo, Mon El’s return as obviously he’s grown he has a beard Mon El, and whatever the hell was going on with Kryptonian genetic engineering eclipse causing witches). To this day I don’t know why Kara had magic dreams. The show did nothing to explain it and I can’t imagine up a reason. 

     But “The Faithful” works because it highlights the whole paragon part of who Kara is. When you realize that every person in the room of Coville’s cult is a person she has personally saved-- that hits hard. Especially since only a fraction of the people she’s saved would ever set foot inside that building with the totally not-creepy, entirely wholesome way they deliver the invitations. (“Your daughter is special. She has been chosen. As have you.”) It works because it focuses on how the average human must view Kara, the ones who don’t see her argue with her sister over potstickers and crush her phone when she gets mad. It works because of how desperately hard Kara tries to be a human. It works because the writers know that we, the audience, do not see Kara as anything but a regular person with irregular abilities: a kind and remarkably devoted person, but not a god. 

#I didnt discuss it above. but Kara gets REALLY mad about Covilles whole deal #I really love watching her reaction to kryptonian artifacts #girl goes suspicion first and anger second #and it highlights her humanity #even as it puts her on a pedastal #Kara saved all these people but she will still tear her holy book from your hands #and scream at you for daring to quote it #Supergirl 3x04 #Supergirl 1x13 #Supergirl 1x20 #Supergirl #Kara Danvers #Supergirl meta #Kara Zor el #Raoism

[misstrashchan]

So just as a heads up, this is a continuation of this post about which of Smirke's 14 Fears from the Magnus Archives team RWBY+Pyrrha would be aligned with and @im-the-king-of-the-ocean asking my thoughts on Winter, Ozpin and Oscar (sorry it took so long to get back to this! I've had it sitting in my drafts for a while)

Winter: The Slaughter

Winter as an Avatar of the Slaughter is something I hadn't thought of but it actually fits insanely well. The Slaughter does often bring up the question of whether anger and violence is just senseless and mindless, or following orders followed by rationalisation; or if we're entirely conscious of the choices we're making, and which is worse, which is something that Winter's arc has been dealing with A LOT. In how she follows Ironwood's orders and has to rationalise his actions to justify her own and her "choices", like how she explains to Weiss how she accepts her role as the Winter Maiden being her destiny, though it was something Ironwood groomed her into and how she tries to explain to Penny why they have to internalise however they might feel about abandoning Mantle and trust Ironwood.

There's the element of anger which you bring up, and Winter's relationship with anger is interesting to me to think about, because she seems very much afraid in indulging that emotion, or any emotion, and because of the military industrial complex and her abusive controlling upbringing, leads to a lot of emotional suppression and refusal to think on those feelings or deal with them in any healthy way. Which of course leads to everything boiling over, and there's this. Rage, an passionate fury that's boiling inside her. But I wouldn't say it's something she thinks she needs or enjoys right now, quite the opposite. (the idea of being afraid of being hurt, of needing to have control of her situation and to throw back her hurt of the world fits more with Cinder than Winter in my mind, and I think Melanie's relationship with anger and needing it reminds me a lot more of Yang. It justified her need for it and fed into it, and Melanie liked that, she wanted it, but for Winter her anger is something she's ashamed of, something to be locked away)

But I actually do think with where her arc is headed that thinks she will come to indulge in that feeling more. The one time we see her have an angry outburst expressing her true feelings is at Jaques at his dinner party, and she scolds and shames herself for allowing herself to get angry, that it was childish and immature. To which Penny disagrees, saying she thought she was just speaking from the heart. But Winter believes that to precisely be the problem. She cannot allow herself to think, or feel just for herself,  because that terrifies her. So she only allows herself to follow orders. Again, similar to a lot of the Slaughter statement givers who were soldiers in wars of some kind and become numb to the atrocities they are made to commit, the sensless violence of it all, but her choice to accept her lack of agency and self worth still makes her complicit and is still a conscious decision on her part. This sort of meandered and I'm not sure if it made any sense but yes, I hadn't thought of it but the Slaughter actually fits Winter really well for a lot of reasons. And I think we will see her Go Feral in the near future, the thing she's most afraid of, showing how she really feels, and oh boi all that confusion, emotional repression, the lingering bitterness and jealousy towards Penny being the Winter Maiden, and projected feelings of thinking of leaving or betraying Ironwood she's been having and her conflicted feelings pushed onto Weiss, who betrayed and left first, just a whole over boiling pot that's a mess of emotions manifesting as Big Feral Winter Feelings. 

Ozpin:

The Eye, Ceaseless Watcher, Beholding/The Vast, the Falling Titan, Awful Deep

Ohohohoho Ozpin. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to TMA 151 imagining Ozpin as Simon Fairchild or vice versa. Simon's VA was told that his character had to give off the impression that he might offer you a plate of cookies or fling you off a cliff and when I heard that my mind immediately jumped to Ozpin back in v1. And Ozpin's VA said that if he didn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders, he'd be a lot more chaotic and fun. And that's the thing with Ozpin though, is that he wants to be Simon Fairchild, so so badly. I think he wants people to see him as that kind of person too. But in reality, he's stuck being Jonathan Sims. (The Ceaseless Watcher's/God of Light's Special Little Boy assdkjhkk) Oz is 100% an Eye Avatar. Fair warning, like with Ruby and the End, I have a lot of Big Feelings with this one. 

I see where you're coming from, but the thing with being an Avatar of the Vast is being so overwhelmed by the expanse and eternity of everything that you just accept your own insignificance as well as everyone else's, hence why they rarely form attachments or work with others. It's a very nihilistic perspective that it's Avatars tend to be very hedonistic as a result, we're all insignificant, nothing matters, let's just do whatever we want and try to have a good time, who cares what happens. And I do think Oz is Vast aligned, since he encourages the people around him, and tries himself, to enjoy the little things and have fun when he can, since he knows Salem is unstoppable and everything could go to shit at any given moment. And yknow. Him enjoying flinging students off of cliffs during initiation a bit too much.

 But Ozpin cares so much about humanity. He desperately wants to believe, and tries to, in humanity, and tries for them. He's been fighting so hard for so long, and believes humanity is worth fighting for (even if he has trouble actually having faith and believing in them). Everything matters to him. He agonises over every choice he makes and impact that has, takes on so much responsibility on himself, is so guilt ridden that he admits to making "more mistakes than any man, woman or child on this planet" that he practically paralyses himself with indecision and guilt. He’s also someone who has been shown to be paranoid, (his reluctance to fully trust the people around him out of constant wariness that he may be betrayed) and afraid of being perceived for who he truly is and having his secrets exposed, which are all very Eye related fears. Ozpin’s very much in this position in which he is the one who knows everything, who passively watches and waits and knows, from up high in his tower. “Oh please, your god is nothing! The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, whatever you call it, that’s all it does, it watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge.” (TMA 89) In the Lost Fable, he believed he needed to be the one to know everything (think to how he only trusted himself to hold onto the relic of knowledge, believing it to be “his burden to bear” and was desperate to take it back from Ruby) and as shown in his past lives, sought after Jinn’s knowledge in the belief that knowledge would help him in his cause, only for the ultimatum of the answer in “Salem can’t be killed” to break him and make him lose all hope of doing anything more than maintaining a perpetual stalemate. In the words of his speech in vol1, in which is a very good example of Ozpin desperately needing to practice what he preaches; 

 “I'll...keep this brief. You have travelled here today in search of knowledge--to hone your craft and acquire new skills. And when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people. But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose – direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step”  (RWBY 1x03) 

There’s also like. A lot of Eye statements, particularly those relating to Jonathan, that relate heavily to Ozpin and his character, including this one:

“And at last, the Archivist looks up. At last, he looks into the eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger that tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all, and everything, and forever. It stares into him, and it stares out of him, and he is falling into the devouring eternity of its pupil. He wants to cry out in horror, but he cannot. 

He. Is. Whole. 

And still he does not wake. Wandering his slim collection of gifted nightmares, passing the grey and lifeless remains of severed dreams he can no longer watch, he waits- but not for long- before they can all begin again”

Like if that doesn’t describe Oz’s endless reincarnation and merging, becoming “whole”, and living all these lives is discovering, observing and “experiencing all and forever” then I don’t know what does. And then there’s the last statement we had before the s5 break, also an Eye one, revolving around the “Minister” which also gives off major Oz vibes:

God, the children. They won’t stop looking, won’t stop following him with their piteous, desperate gaze that speaks so loudly his knees feel like they will buckle. ‘Help us.’He will. Of course he will. He wants to. He hasn’t lied to them, he really hasn’t. He used to be one of them, he remembers what it can be like. He is there to speak for them. And if necessary, he will join them again. The minister grips his black leather briefcase closely to his chest, bile rising in his throat at the sudden jolt of fear that races through his veins. Where did that come from? Is he afraid of it, returning, of that sharp stab of hunger, the shivering of a cold you can’t escape? Or is he afraid that should it come to that, they will see him as a deceiver?” 

“On his side of the arena the shouts should be sharper, more angry, but their tone and pitch are such as to merge seamlessly with the others. There are no golden stakes on this side pinning down his would-be comrades. But the minister must be careful not to look too closely, or else he might see how many of his allies are fused to their own chairs, on which they have sat comfortable for so long"

"His eyes drift away, through the walls to the crowd outside. Their baying cries for justice cannot be heard in here. If any whisper should make it through, it is utterly destroyed in the deafening shouting that surrounds him. But he cannot forget their eyes, watching him, piercing him with their wounded humanity.” 

Another thing is that one of Ozpin’s allusions aside from the Wizard of Oz is Odin, and Raven and Qrow are meant to be his Huginn and Muninn, two Ravens that act as his “eyes” spying and gathering information for him. If you look at Raven and Qrow’s emblem, they have a left and right bird’s eye respectively, with Oz’s gear emblem inside the eye. In v4, Salem, upon hearing that Tyrian poisoned Qrow, says “the last eye is blinded” as in,the belief that with Raven having left Oz and Qrow now dying, Oz would have no more eyes to “see” with. You also have Jonah Magnus, whose corpse is missing his eyes, but is able to watch through the eyes of the Archive employees. That and the whole body hopping host thing is a little similar in concept (and Peter Lukas mentions near the end of s4 that if Elias died, Jonah would have chosen Jon as his new host which is just. Terrifying). There's a lot of other little things too, like Oz in the first three volumes is usually shown watching events like the iniitiation, the fight at the docks, and the vytal festival through his cameras in his office, a passive observer rather than someone who is actively involved. And Yang at the end of v6, when Oscar tells them about Oz saving him, says "so he's just been watching is that whole time?" The underlying tone suggesting that he could've come back at any tike but chose to watch them instead, through Oscar, and everyone looking at him like that's pretty weird or creepy (except Ruby tho, because she's Ruby)

I feel like I could go on, but this is probably waaaaay too long, so, in summary, Oz serves the Eye, is basically a perfect candidate for the Archivist, and is also Vast aligned, and in different circumstances would have totally been a great Vast Avatar. 

Oscar: The Spider, the Web, Mother of Puppets

Oscar. Was. HARD.

This lil shit is part of the reason it took so long to make this post. Because see, with other characters the most obvious indicators would be their semblances (which are often manifestations of coping mechanisms for their personal fears or trauma) or songs (which delve deeper into their characters), or have very specific fears that I can focus in on as to how that factors into their arc. But Oscar? He doesn't have a semblance. His whole THING is that he's scared. All the time. His song is called Fear for Pete's sake. Now, he is Oz's reincarnation, and Oscar does also share a fair few things in common with the Archivist and his character arc, (Elias's plan and the whole plot of the first four seasons was that he was trying to align Jon by having him touched by ALL the fears, aka, to fill Jon with fear of everything, so that he became a walking living record of fear) he persistently calls out people's BS and takes issue with people withholding information, also similar to Yang (who I firmly believe is Eye aligned). So like. Eye, right? But that just... doesn't properly fit Oscar. He's not Ozpin. The Stranger, then, becoming a stranger to yourself, perhaps? That is something Oscar's afraid of, right?

"Everything changes when you see a stranger, feel proud or betrayed" (Fear)

But Oscar is growing more confident in his own identity and figuring out who he is. He’s not becoming Oz, he's becoming his own person. And even if he was becoming Oz, Oz is hardly a Stranger to Oscar. The merge, from how it's described in the show, seems more similar to how the Distortion functioned, except Oscar and Oz don't fit into most of the Distortion's themes.

I was sort of uncertain, and I wanted to wait and see till I was more certain of where Oscar's arc was headed this volume, since he's being pushed to his limits and wanted to see how he acted and what choices he made. At the start, because of how he was regretting all the choices he'd made previously, and was telling Oz how badly he didn't want the merge to happen, I was speculating about the possibility of him being manipulated by Salem and Grimm!Oscar happening, which might fall him into the Corruption, but no.

Oscar is the Web.

It fits with his fear of being controlled, of his will not being his own, and like Jonathan, who was marked and scared for life by his encounter with the Web as a child, it is his greatest fear. Only, where Jon was so afraid of the Web he sought the Eye as his refuge, believing it would keep him safe, Oscar realises that can be used to his advantage. (Which actually makes him more like Anabella Cane, which is. Hilarious) He's trying to do what Salem does, focus in on people's weaknesses and fears and dig at them, manipulate and push them, divide them, only like, steering them into the opposite direction than Salem. He's trying to use the fact that people see him as Oz to his advantage and trying to manipulate their impression of him. He's just got this very sneaky, cunning and pragmatic streak in him that people overlook because he's also incredibly kind and just. Good. But those qualities very much scream "Web" to me the more I've dwelled on it.

#rwby #winter schnee #ozpin #oscar pine #tma #smirke's 14 #the entities #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #the web #the slaughter #the vast #the Eye

[rodpupo2]

Research: Storytelling project

JOCK

Mark Simpson, best known as Jock, is a Scottish comic book artist and illustrator. He began his career in 1999 working on the British comic book publisher 2000 AD (where most of the British artists and writers, began their career, before going to the major leagues like DC and Marvel), and started working with characters like the Judge Dredd.

The artist began his career in the USA with The Losers, at Vertigo (a subdivision of DC comics), and some issues of the Green Arrow.

He also have worked with conceptual arts for various films such as Iron man 3, X-men days of the future past, and Star Wars episode VIII.

I have known Jock for a while, I have seen many of his works in the comics, and he is known for working mainly with covers, where he does extremely surreal works, mixing various types of colors, and always uses a lot of shading, not worrying if the characters are in the correct proportion, because that is not his proposal.

But I know he did some works as a sequential artist, like The Losers, for example, where he makes extremely tight pictures, always focusing on the expressions of the characters, and especially on the hands that he most likes to do.

His storyboards or sketches are very different, because his drawings do not follow the traditional way of being centered on the pictures, many of his characters are jumping over the pictures, to show the size of the action scene that Jock wants to do.

It is worth remembering that he mixes his drawings made with pencil and nanquin, with digital, often taking pictures of different landscapes or scenarios, and drawing over them, and mixing with his drawn character to make an interesting composition.

Despite all this, he has a very peculiar style, which many people complain about the lack of movement and poses that his characters does. That his lines are also very dirty and dark. But Jock says, that this is his way of drawing, that he likes to have a not so commercial style, like many other artists. He likes to play with colors and likes to draw his characters, in a little more simple poses, and glorifying the background.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, he’s known for designing movie posters and title sequences.

For 40th years, he worked with Hollywood greatest filmmakers, such as Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Billy Wilder.

Bass was born in New York in 1920, to a Jewish family, he was all ways drawing when he was a child.He graduated from James Monroe High school in the Bronx. He studied part time at art students league in Manhattan, and moved to Brooklyn College, where he had classes with György Kepes, a famous Hungarian painter and photographer.

He began in Hollywood in the 40’s, designing prints for films like champion (1949), death salesman (1951) and the moon is blue (1953).

He became widely known for creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger’s The man with the golden arm (1955), which’s about a jazz musician, addicted to heroin. Bass decided to create a poster which dialogues with the controversial subject, so he chosed the arm as the central object, as is a image which relates with heroin.

For Alfred Hitchcock, he provided memorable posters, like Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest(1959) and Psycho(1960).

For Martin Scorsese he had done the posters of The Goodfellas(1990), Cape Fear (1991), the Age of innocence (1993) and Casino (1995).

For Stanley Kubrick, he designed Spartacus (1960), and probably the best poster in his career, which is the poster from The Shining (1980).Kubrick, however, wasn’t amused. On the sketches themselves (which were later discovered in his personal affects) he wrote “Looks like science fiction.”Title looks small, looks like the ink didn’t take on the part that goes light,” and “Maze too abstract and too much emphasis on maze,” and, the most scathing of all, “Don’t like artwork.”

More discussions followed, and Bass agreed upon an illustrative approach of a large head peering through the title.As Kubrick instructed, the poster evokes both “terror” and the “supernatural.”

Bass once told,that his main goal for his titles sequences is “try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story".

James Cameron

James Cameron is a famous film director, which is for having two of the greatest box office films of all time, which are Avatar and Titanic. In addition, he is always revolutionizing in special effects, always bringing something new and revolutionary, but it all starts on his drawing desk, with his sketches and storyboards.

James Cameron has always been known for creating extremely interesting worlds, and completely out of the ordinary. Starting with the film Aliens, the sequel to Ridely Scott's film, where he expanded this world by creating an ecosystem for the aliens, in addition to showing futuristic equipment, for the space army that faces the aliens.

He also created concepts, for the Terminator films 1 and 2, where it was an idea never before seen of a robot that travels in time to kill a person. Its detailed perfectly drawn storyboards show one of the most interesting scenes in the film, where the terminator does a self surgery, revealing his true form.

And finally, once again creating a whole world, with a fauna and flora never seen before in the movie Avatar.

Cameron always wanted to create worlds, so he putted everything on a piece of paper when he was a child, where later, he took courses of drawings and did art colleges, to get a clearer idea of ​​how his worlds and characters could be.

Before being a director, he wanted to be a writer and an artist, but he never thought his ideals could be just in a book, he wanted to expand these ideas in a way never seen before.

Perhaps what impresses me most about James Cameron, besides being a creative force, is all the care he takes with his works, he said in an interview, which he always preserves all his storyboards, even from those films that he never made or did not work, and said that almost every day, he sits at his drawing desk and tries to come up with possible scenes for any film he is making. And when he creates an interesting scene, he tries to invent a whole story, to get to that specific scene.

 https://issuu.com/dteditore/docs/spidercameron-screen-eng/1?ff

Glen Keane

Glen Keane was born on April 23, 1954, in the city of Philadelphia, United States. Early on, he became interested in art while watching his cartoonist father Bill Keane draw. After finishing high school, he turned down a scholarship to play football and signed up for CalArts- California Institute of Arts.

Keane signed up for the painting program, he wanted to be a visual artist. However, his application was accidentally sent to the animation department, then Film Graphics. The college vetoed him to change course, so he stayed there.

Glen’s passion for painting helped him tremendously in animation, since the first skill an animator must have is knowing how to draw. Do not simply draw, but really know anatomy and how to give the illusion of weight.

His first work was Bernardo and Bianca in the kangaroo land. In the following years Keane worked on other features such as the Hound and the fox, Oliver and his gang , treasure planet, and the list goes on.

But it’s was at the time called the Disney Renaissance that Keane stood out. He animated Ariel the little mermaid, Beast from the beauty and the beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and most recently, was Rapunzel (Tangled).

At the time, Keane and the animators, had to use the traditional animation (by using paper), so him and his crew had to plan, all the scenes and poses, by doing storyboards, and later drawing on the paper frame by frame (the frequency to project a film in the cinema is twenty four frames per second, twenty four drawings in total were needed for each second of animation seen on screen).

There is no professional on the animation field, who does not know the name Glen Keane. He is the reference to all of them. What sets him apart, is his passion for his characters. During the production of the animations, Keane understands them and is thus able to perform better.

[dercolaris]

Among Us

The rogues are playing some Among Us and having fun. 

Please have mercy. It’s my first time writing in English, so... Enjoy!

And if you have some new ideas for me (and like my style of course) just say a word. I will try to work a bit more in English.

________________________________________________

Clearly no one of the famous villains thought about playing Among Us and if someone would've asked them about it they would strongly deny it ever touching this stupid, little game. Still it actually happened on a very calm weekend in Gotham City. Elise smiled widely, started the little program on her own PC. The young woman tried to convince the crew for about seven weeks before she finally succeeded in getting everyone on board. Especially her mentor wasn't delighted by the whole idea, but said yes anyway, after a small tantrum. Jonathan himself was sitting behind her in front of his old laptop and the furiously clicking sound of the mouse was a clear sign that he wasn't really knowing what he was doing at the moment. If not for the noises, his constant sighing and mumbling was explanation enough for his serious troubles in handling a 'modern' computer. The amber haired snickered calmly. She would need to help him sooner or later. Ignoring the desperation parade of Crane, the mistress of fear opened Team Speak and joined the server Edward created particularly for this evening. She hummed a bit while waiting impatiently, played a short game of minesweeper to pass some time. Suddenly the cocky voice of the Riddler rumbled through her earphones: “It's about time. Damn, I waited for about an hour or so. What took you so long, princess? Seriously. I'm wasting my precious time for a silly game like this and you've nothing better to do than let me rot while watching the pointer of the clock moving in slow motion.” Elise couldn't contain an amused laughter. It was always fun to listen to his ranting – even more when he was pissed. Before she could answered the tinkerer a low female voice snarled in the chat: “Eddy, please. Give her a moment and calm down. You're acting like a diva right now.” The addressed man snorted in disbelief, but remained silent after the unexpected backtalk from Selina. The mistress of fear glanced through the party on the server and raised an eyebrow, tapped on her bottom lip repeatedly. Jonathan wasn't on it now, of course not, but she missed a certain polish guy. Mikołaj was fire and flames after she told him her idea, but who knew if he would really join them in the end. He was busy most of the times. Rape, murder, burglary, selling human meat and spreading chaos. The typical Mikołaj stuff. Beside the missing psychopath Victor was ready to give it a try, also a very insecure Jervis and, to her surprise, even Harley. Only Ivy couldn't have make it to the meeting. The bioterrorist was probably occupied with breeding a new plant or cursing at polluters in the subway near by her apartment. “Can we start now?”, asked the lively voice of the former clown lover, “I want to be an imposter! I heard so much about it and from what I understand it sounds like a hell lot of fun.” An unexpected loud grunting noise behind her let Elise giggled in glee. Her mentor was constantly trying to start the game, but failed every single time. The young woman stand up slowly and moved to him, peeked over his shoulder and looked puzzled on his desktop. She blinked two times before she asked gently: “Uhm, professor... Do you want to explain, why you're typing Google in Google.com all over again? I guess you don't know how to use your laptop, right?”

 The brown haired grumbled in frustration, but nodded restrainedly. The mistress of fear smiled and reached over the tall man, setted all the required programs for him. After a while she handed him the clunky headset. The amber haired returned quickly to her computer and sat back on the very comfortable stool, looked again into the chat room. From a far distance Jervis was whispering something, but no one could really understand him because of a terrible internet connection. Finally Jonathan joined the party. He was about to say something as a loud clapping sound left him speechless for a moment. Scarecrow swallowed his anger down his throat and simply muttered into his microphone: “Thank you all. I appreciate the honest enthusiasm.” Everyone in the chat room laughed for nearly a minute before Edward rudely replied: “It's a miracle that your potato is capable of running this game, John. What are you using anyway? A C64? It must be falling apart just by looking at it and you can't prove me wrong on this one. Doctor Jonathan Ichabod Crane isn't using new technology even if his life would depend on it!” Jonathan inhaled sharply, but stayed calm. It was clear that he didn't wanted to start a fight this early on the evening. Suddenly a cheeky, manly voice out of nowhere greeted impolitely: “Hey bitches. Daddy's here with his enormous cock to fuck all of your nice sweet little pussies.” A general groan chimed trough the headphones. Mikołaj. The Pole was causing serious headaches as soon as he entered the game lobby and he was probably enjoying it already. The devilish snicker was an unmistakable indication for this assumption. All of the sudden the cryologist spoke calmly to the crew: “It would be nice if we could behave for at least one round. Is that possible?” Without a warning the Riddler started the game. He himself changed his light green avatar in advance, but everyone else hadn't had a chance to customise the player model. Nevertheless for some strange reason Jonathan's orange crewmate was wearing an egg on his head. No one in the chat room was brave enough to ask for justification. After some seconds Jervis delayed voice blared almost painfully in everyone's ears: “Excuse me, but am I allowed to ask politely how to play this beautiful looking game? I was told on my screen that I'm an imposter. What does this mean?” As soon as the Mad Hatter finished his sentence Edward pressed the button for an emergency meeting in the main room. Nobody said a single word. After the quick and silent vote Jervis yellow player was floating helplessly in space and the information rolled over the screen that an imposter was exposed.

The small man whimpered sadly, but kept his thoughts to himself. Instead of him Harley screamed extremely motivated into her microphone: “Common guys! Let's do it! We can finish our tasks and go back to earth or whatever planet we are originally coming from.” Soon the crew was splitting in different directions. It didn't took long before an alarming red light floated the space ship in an unnerving rhythm. Elise frowned and watched the security cameras closely in order to find a suspicious being that could cause the sabotage. A quiet scream from the harlequin was a trusted clue that she might been murdered by the imposter. The game was suddenly paused by another meeting and Edward announced confident of victory: “I found a dead pink body in the corridor and I can assume you all that I saw Elise close by the corpse just seconds ago.” The young woman groaned in total disbelief. She talked back immediately: “No way, Mr. Nygma! And don't try to distract the other players from your own very suspicious behaviours. Do you want to tell them, why you were jumping out of a vent? I think I spotted a green figure popping up on the cameras when I blinked.” A heated discussion was following. The amber haired chomped on her bottom lip, waiting anxiously for the voting. Her eyes were getting bigger and bigger by the results. Her purple crewmate was flying aimlessly through the black background and slowly the sentence appeared that she wasn't an imposter. The mistress of fear had the strong urge to mutter that she was telling the truth, but this wasn't possible anymore after dying. It was a common rule to stay silent after being killed to not ruin the experience for the other gamers. Besides everyone in the party could probably read what was written on the screen and it wasn't necessary to point it out again. Totally out of context Jonathan was mumbling behind her: “Can you please vote me out or at least murder me next? I don't understand this game.” The remaining players ignored his plead. The young woman was following Victor with her ghost and grabbed her mug to drink from her coffee. It was cold. Such a shame. The irony of this statement would eventually hit her when she was laying in bed and tried to sleep. The game was interrupted again and the tinkerer suspected sceptically: “Okay, listen. I think – no, wait – I KNOW that Mikołaj was acting very strangely in the engine room. He's plotting something. We should vote him out as soon as possible.” The amused voice of the pole blasted through the speakers: “Sure, dickhead. I'm always sus, because I fix all the shit that's going on on this fucking garbage bin alone and not fooling around like you, mistake of evolution. Maybe, just maybe, you're the one who's sabotaging us all the time. Just a quick reminder: the riddle boy was suspecting my little hoe first for no reason. Pretty sus if you ask me.” The black haired hold his breath for a moment, then tried to justify himself: “Don't listen to this imbecile! He's playing dirty tricks on you! You can trust me, seriously! I'm not an imposter!”

Selina purred peacefully. She wasn't believing Edward anymore and Elise got the weird feeling that his short time on the space ship was over. The voting ended. As expected the green guy was levitating in zero gravity, followed by the information that he wasn't an imposter either. Victor sighed a bit and spoke worried: “We need to focus. Some of us is a traitor and if we can't find him within the next minutes we're losing here.” Out of nowhere the message appeared that Jonathan left the game. The mistress of fear looked over her shoulder just to see her mentor carrying the laptop to the window. Scarecrow slowly opened the glass and threw the device with a bit of an approach run out of it. Elise jaw dropped by this sight. The tall man shrugged angrily and walked out of the room without a word, slammed the door behind him. The young woman shook her head. Sometimes the former psychiatrist was very humourless or even allergic to fun. A look on her screen revealed that the imposter won. No one was surprised by the black crewmate cheering on the black background. Also cheering was Mikołaj, who was claiming loudly: “Sluts, you never knew what hit you! I'm the master of disguise! Kneel before the superior race of trickery that lays in my roots. You don't mess with a Pole!” The peaceful mood slowly faded and after a minute of silent resignation of everyone the crew started to blame each other for the lost game. Soon Edward demanded a second round. The orange haired smirked a bit and run around in the main lobby. It was going to be a very long night.

#DC #Batman #ArkhamVerse #Elise #Mikołaj #selina kyle #catwoman #Jonathan Crane #Scarecrow #edward nygma #The Riddler #victor fries #Mr. Freeze #Harleen Quinzel #Harley Quinn #Jervis Tetch #mad hatter #poison ivy #among us #Just for fun #English - pls mercy

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (124/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[15 June, 233 Before Age. Planet Yars.]

The Jindan Cult's war against the Federation was essentially a coordinated series of raids. Small groups of Saiyan cultists would attempt to invade a planet, usually along the Federation's frontier, and the defenders would be forced to respond before they could entrench themselves. The Saiyan Free Company, led by Princess Seltiss, could be counted on to handle one or two Jindan cultists, and the Federation fleet could intercept the cult's ships and destroy them before their crews could bring their powers to bear. But when six or more of the cultists landed on a planet together, it was a job for Luffa. Only the Super Saiyan had the power to cope with so many of the alchemically-enhanced warriors. And even then, they managed to wear her down, battle by battle, to the point where she needed time to recover.

During Luffa's convalescence, the cult managed to conquer Yars and without Luffa available to stop them, they went to work on fortifying the planet to serve as a base of operations. All the Federation and its allies could do was to intercept any Jindan reinforcements before they could reach the occupied planet.

But the cult had other ways to strengthen its position. Later, Yartian witnesses would tell stories of a gruesome ritual they performed, where one of their priestesses vomited red liquid onto the ground, and then an enormous earthen figure emerged from below. Then they worshiped this walking idol with cheers, songs, and sacrifices. The Federation's defenders knew this creature was an avatar of the cult's leader, Trismegistus, also known as the Saiyan King Rehval III. These avatars were immensely powerful, and now that the occupiers had one of them on the planet, there would be no way of removing them without Luffa's help.

"I would have thought she'd have been here by now," the rock-Rehval said. He was seated upon a giant stone throne that his followers had built for him in what used to be the planet's capital city. "Fifteen of my followers would be tempting enough bait by themselves, but I was sure she'd jump at the chance to destroy another one of my bodies."

One of his flock stood on the armrest of his stone chair. His job was officially to oversee construction projects in the area and to see to his master's needs, but the rock creature needed nothing, as the real Rehval was controlling it from many light years away. He was mostly there to let the avatar know when it was time to fight.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Thrice Blessed One," the man said.

"Well, it can't be helped," Rehval said with a mighty shrug. "I'll just go dormant for a while and check in again. It's not like she can get close to the planet without one of you sensing her approach or detecting her ship."

And so the great stone form of Rehval grew still. And just as the attendant turned to consider his other duties, he was decapitated by a beam of red light. Had he survived this, or if his master had not withdrawn his presence from the earthen figure, one of them might have recognized this as Luffa's signature technique, the Vengeance Cannon. Instead, his headless body tumbled to the idol's feet, while the idol itself remained motionless. Luffa approached it a few seconds later, and waited patiently for the other fourteen cultists to sense her power and find her. Civilian witnesses would describe the yellow glow of her hair and tail, and a sense of unease. Most Federation citizens appreciated Luffa as a benevolent protector, but many had seconds thoughts after seeing her in action. The news media tended to edit footage of her battles for the sake of decorum, but those who saw her fight in person had no such filter.

"You fools make it so easy," she gloated when they finally arrived. "You thought I'd rush in on a battleship, full power, give you plenty of warning. It never occurred to you that I'd do it all sneaky-like, did it? Suppress my power, coast my way into the system, reconnoiter for a few days."

"We still should have detected your ship!" one of the cultists protested. They all surrounded her as she floated above their earthen idol, daring them to chase her away from it.

Luffa laughed. "You call yourselves Saiyans?" she scoffed. "You must have forgotten everything you know about warfare when you went for this magical nonsense. You took this planet, sure, but you're still behind enemy lines. All the defense systems are enemy tech, aren't they? Including the early-warning outpost on the twelfth planet in this system. You didn't think those guys were much of a threat, but they've been scrambling your sensors since before I got here. So if you didn't detect my ship, blame those guys. I'm surprised your 'all-knowing' leader didn't mention it to you earlier."

"You're still outmatched, infidel!" one of the cultists cried as she brandished her spear at Luffa. "Even if you could defeat all of us, we only have to touch Trismegistus' form to summon him back to aid us!"

"Yeah," Luffa said. "I'm counting on it. Should make things really interesting. How long would it take for him to get here? A minute? Two minutes? And how many of you will be alive to help him once he's ready? And that's assuming you can get past me long enough to touch this thing. So many variables. I'm getting excited just thinking about it."

Without warning, she suddenly pounced onto one of the Jindan Saiyans and wrapped her legs around his before any of them could react. As she locked in the hold, he cried out in agony.

None of then had expected her to do this. It was folly to use a jointlock on a single opponent during a battle with so many enemies. And yet Luffa had done it anyway, leaving herself wide open for an attack. Only the attack never came, because her foes were too confused to seize their chance.

When one of them finally did react, he got as far as crying "For the Glory of Trismegistus!" before Luffa flew into the air to dodge his blast. Then she slammed into him, dragging her captive behind her as she continued to torture him with her hold.

"She's mad!" one of the Saiyans said in a panicked voice.

Luffa's raucous laughter did little to dissuade them from this opinion. She flew around her enemies like a hornet weaving through a group of frightened picnickers. When they finally gained the sense to try to intercept her and box her in, she used her arms to fire back on them. A Saiyan tried to cone up from behind her, but she flipped around as he approached, and swung her captive into him like a club.

His now constant wailing had taken a severe toll on their morale. Only a short while ago, they had been confident about their mission, but now, they all felt they were in a battle for survival, and they were losing. None of them dared to go for the earthen giant below. As powerful as the avatar could be, they each feared that Luffa would pick them off unless they all fought together.

As Luffa dodged their attacks, one of them stood still, struggling to prepare an energy technique. A ball of light coalesced above his right hand, and he growled and gritted his teeth as he willed it into existence. When the moment was right, he would unleash the power, and then--!

Before he could finish, a plasma bolt struck him on the side of his head, and he collapsed. He was dead before he hit the ground. Six hundred yards away, Zatte smiled as she looked at his dead body in the scope of her rifle, then shifted her aim to pick out a new target.

On the battlefield, the Jindan Saiyans saw one of their own fall, and believed it was Luffa's doing. They began to fear that her attacks could come without warning, and their panic forced them to go on the defensive. Luffa had killed the man she had caught in her leglock, and now she was seeking out a fresh victim. No one wanted to volunteer. In this way, the Jindan Saiyans gave up their sole advantage over Luffa. Their numbers could only overwhelm her if they attacked her together. Now, as thy scattered and kept their distance, they were unable to coordinate anything. One of them went for the avatar on the throne. Luffa fired a ki blast that got there first, reducing Rehval's graven image into a cloud of dust.

Luffa grabbed a Saiyan woman and broke her neck with a single kick. Another Jindan Saiyan tried to fight back, but he was cut down by Zatte's sniper fire before he could act. Luffa spared a backward glance to where the plasma bolt had come from, but quickly turned around in time to block an elbow strike and reverse it into a hammerlock. She used the man as a shield for a moment, then fired a ki blast through his torso, killing him and one of his comrades in the same shot.

That left just six of the original fifteen. With the power of Jindan running through their veins, six Saiyans were more than a match for nearly any force in the galaxy. Against Luffa, six were nothing at all. Under different circumstances, Luffa might have toyed with them, but she felt that they had held this planet long enough, and deemed that their occupation would not last a moment longer than necessary.

Civilian witnesses would later speak of the brutal efficiency of those final moments of the battle, but also that Luffa was laughing with joy the entire time.

*******

[15 June, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

The Federation had managed to thwart or repel every Jindan invasion into their territory. The casualty rate on the cultist's side was 100%. They continued to send warriors anyway. The prevailing attitude among the Federation's military leaders was that if they could easily win this war, if only they could take the fight to the enemy. But the cultists' home base was its most carefully guarded secret. Here, on Nagaoka, if King Rehval knew or cared that Yars had been liberated, his fifteen warriors slaughtered, and his earthen idol destroyed, he did not show it. Instead, he spent his day poring over scrolls he had gathered over the years, choosing which would offer the best education for his new student.

For her part, Treekul had no interest in learning anything from him. She had only come to this planet because three Saiyans wanted to find the Jindan Cult, and she had been intrigued enough by the opportunity to join their quest. She was an archaeologist, one specializing in ancient alchemical texts and artifacts. She joined the Saiyans for the challenge, and because she knew that Saiyans tended to find a handsome profit whenever they wanted to do something. But the Jindan Cult was no ancient puzzle to be excavated and studied. There was no payday at the end of their search. Instead they were stolen away to a secret lair. Her Saiyan partners had been indoctrinated into the cult, while their leader, Rehval, or "Trismegistus" as they called him, decided to make her his apprentice in the alchemical arts.

It could have been much worse, she told herself. The cult only accepted Saiyans, so it stood to reason that an alien like herself would have been executed on the spot. Her only advantage in this predicament was that Rehval seemed to enjoy keeping her around. He often told her that he found her attractive, but he also seemed impressed with her alchemical knowledge, and maybe he found it refreshing to have someone to talk to who wasn't brainwashed into worshiping the ground he walked on.

And so, her best chance of escape lay in exploiting his fancy. He made her a priestess in his mad religion, and commanded her to wear a sort of dress made of torn robes, and so she did. He wanted to teach her his secrets, and so she played the eager student. He flirted with her constantly, and she did everything she could to hide her disgust. Because she knew that if she did this long enough, he would eventually come to trust her, and that would be when her opportunity would present itself.

That was her greatest strength on a planet full of mighty Saiyans. They all spoke highly of their pride, but Treekul didn't have much use for it herself. "Pride" was just another word for "stubborn" in her book, and she knew far too many stubborn, brittle people who broke because they refused to bend. A little flexibility went a long way. For one thing, stubborn, brittle people had a nasty habit of mistaking compromise with surrender, which made them careless. She didn't like wearing red rags, or being forbidden to cut her own hair, or having to listen to Rehval's lectures, but she could tolerate it if she had to, and Rehval would assume she had already submitted to his will.

As she sat in the underground cavern that served as his laboratory, he went on and on about his discoveries and achievements. She knew the type well. He wanted a woman to hang on his every word, to nod in fascination, and tell him how brilliant he was.

"What is Jindan?" he asked aloud. "The word 'jindan' is easily defined. It's simply another name for mercuric sulfide, commonly known as the mineral cinnabar, or the pigment vermilion. Common chemists would say that it's a toxic substance, and they're... mainly correct. Most carbon-based life forms are poisoned by mercury salts. However, alchemical thought sees beyond the mere physical nature of mercuric sulfide, and explores the deeper truth that the salt represents.

"In alchemy, the element mercury is considered an important symbol. Unlike most metals, it is liquid at room temperature. It flows like molten silver, which is how it came to be known as "quicksilver". It is rather slow to react with most chemical reagents, although it has a number of interesting interactions with other metals. Gold is soluble in mercury, which made it very useful for the ancient mining industries of many planets. With enough heat, a gold/mercury amalgam can be separated. The mercury boils away, leaving purified gold behind. Mercury also dissolves aluminum. It almost seems to devour these metals, which may have been what has fascinated ancient alchemists since the dawn of time.

"Then there's cinnabar. The deep scarlet color of mercuric sulfide is also of great importance to alchemical philosophy. Red, the color of blood, the color of fire. The color of change and life itself. The earliest practitioners of alchemy knew that it held the secret of the great mystery, the mystery that governed all changes in nature. Copper and tin could be refined from mineral ores. Nature provides the minerals, but the metals must be taken through artificial means. The process must be sped up to a time scale that is practical for mortals. That is the power of alchemy. To accelerate or manipulate the natural processes. Mercuric sulfide represents that power in its most basic form. Mix metal mercury with hydrogen sulfide, and they form red mercuric sulfide quite readily. Distill the mercuric sulfide, and the elements can be separated, and the mercury recovered once more. Just like with copper and tin and iron, only mercury can be refined much more easily."

Treekul had heard much of this before, as a college freshman. The professor who taught that course only offered one class every other semester, and only on two days a week in the middle of the day, which had been extremely inconvenient to her schedule. What struck her was how passionate Rehval was about it, as though he wanted to make love to a mercury atom. She had to suppress the urge to laugh at that image.

"The dream of alchemy," he said, finally coming to the point, "is to reduce all natural processes to the same simplicity of refining mercury from cinnabar."

That got Treekul's attention. Simplicity. The core tenet of alchemy was that every process was a natural reaction that could be sped up, slowed down, or even reversed. It was just a matter of knowing how, of discovering the "cheat codes" that made such miracles possible. Know the right shortcuts, and one could do the impossible.

Treekul began to wonder if there was an alchemical shortcut for escaping a Saiyan cult.

"Let us consider the other component of cinnabar, which is sulfur," Rehval continued. "It is native to fire, earth, air, and water. Volcanoes spew fire and air and geysers spew water, all rich in sulfur, which eventually deposits as a waxy yellow material resembling earth. From within the earth, sulfur is born, and to earth again it returns. Molten sulfur turns blood red, hinting at its ties to cinnabar. When sulfur is set aflame, it produces a blue color. Colloidal sulfur is white. The colors illustrate sulfur's connection to the sun. It is the principle of the sun.

"Likewise, mercury is the principle of the moon. Take a bottle of mercury and spill it across a surface. It scatters into droplets, both large and small, like the many moons of different sizes throughout the countless worlds of the universe. These droplets can be bound to sulfur, just as the moons of the universe are bound to their respective suns. However, the moons are defined by their connection with the planets they orbit. Just as the planets exist as the intermediaries of the suns and moons, so does life exist as an interface between the Principles of Mercury and Sulfur. Those with wisdom can recognize this sacred relationship, and thus study the nature of cinnabar, or jindan, in the search for the power over life. For what is life but a natural process, no different from the refining of metal from ore, or the burning of wood into smoke and ash? By manipulating the Principles of Mercury and Sulfur, an elixir can be prepared, one that reacts with the reagents of life itself, accelerating some processes, while slowing others. The ideal elixir would grant a being immortality, but the wise know that this is not a thing to be pursued for material gain, or as an escape from death. No, the elixir of life is an end unto itself. Discover that ultimate secret, and all other secrets, the Whole of the Great Mystery, will be laid bare. What is immortality, when weighed against that perfect and total knowledge?

"Though sulfur represents an equal portion of Jindan, we must consider mercury to be the superior portion. Mercury has the greater density, and its atoms are larger and more massive than those of sulfur. Every planet has a sun, but only some are blessed with the moonlight, of which mercury is a symbol. For this reason, the alchemical notation for mercury is depicted as an arc atop a ring atop a cross. The arc is the crescent moon, the ring is the sun, an the cross is the life on the planet sustained by them both. The cross represents the veins that carry blood through the body, sustaining life with the same color as jindan. Mercury is the moon, placed above the sun, which is Sulfur, placed above the planets, which are Life.

He paused here to write the symbol on a handheld electronic tablet: "☿". It was the only modern technology Treekul recognized in this laboratory. Everything else looked either archaic or unfamiliar, or both. She had seen the symbol before, of course, and the one for sulfur as well, which was a triangle atop a cross. But something about Rehval's fervor in describing it made her uneasy. To her it was a piece of trivia, but it was clearly something deep and meaningful to him.

"All of this," Rehval said, "Is a very elaborate way of saying that Jindan, my Jindan, is a way of harnessing planetary energy as a supplement to ones own ki. Cinnabar represents the connection between the Principles and living beings, but it's also just a mineral you dig up from the ground. Ancient scholars would drink potions of cinnabar and die, or go mad from mercury poisoning, because they took the connection too literally, too directly. The truth is more sublime, more complex.

"You see, there are three types of ki in the universe. The ki of living things is what makes the Saiyan race mighty. We Saiyans have more of this energy than most beings, which makes us stronger, better. Then there's the ki of the heavens. The sun and the moon. The stars themselves possess a ki which is inaccessible to us. Oh, the moonlight allows Saiyans to transform into giant apes, but the moonlight is only a catalyst for releasing latent ki we already possess. That's why I cut off my tail a long time ago, because I learned to harness that latent power without transforming. It's why I ask my followers to do the same. We don't need the moon. We don't need tails.

He pointed at the cavern floor. "What we need is the third ki, which is found in the ground beneath our feet. This is the interface where life and the heavens meet. Mercuric sulfide. The moon and the sun combine to form a mineral, which resembles lifeblood but can kill the uninitiated. My Jindan is the ki equivalent of that elixir. My technique is to draw power from within a planet. Done properly, it can magnify your strength many times over. But if the power is harnessed recklessly, it can destroy the user completely. Do you understand, Treekul?"

"Not entirely, but I get the general idea, I think. How'd you figure all of this out?" she asked.

"Alchemy has long been one of my passions," he said. "I wasn't blessed with great ki like other members of my family, and I sought an explanation for that injustice. Alchemy teaches us that the universe is governed by rules, but those rules can be manipulated by those who know how. Thus I was able to become as strong as I wished, as powerful as I wished to become. I turned lead into gold by transforming my base self into the golden King of the Saiyans. Soon to become King of the Universe. There remains only one obstacle, one stubborn impurity to be purged."

"Luffa," Treekul said.

"I've seen enough divinations to know that our destinies are intertwined, hers and mine. She is the Sun, bright and yellow and powerful. I am the Moon, lurking in the shadows, sublime and contemplative. The key is that our genders don't line up to that analogy. In alchemical thought, the Sun-Sulfur Principle is male, while the Moon-Mercury Principle is considered female."

"Cool, but what's that got to do with it?" she asked.

"It means that I must join with her, to complete the intermingling of our essences," Rehval said. "Well, that sounds a bit esoteric, doesn't it? The simpler explanation is that I need her, or some part of her, to complete my legacy. If she won't join me, then I'll have to take from her what I need. The Golden King must have the Super Saiyan power along with everything else. As a Saiyan myself, it stands to reason that if I defeat the Super Saiyan, that would mean I become the Super Saiyan."

"Wait, you think killing her would suddenly cause you to absorb her transformation into yourself?" Treekul asked.

He chuckled at that suggestion. "No, not really, though it is an interesting possibility. Perhaps the Super Saiyan only emerges once every thousand years because there must be one and only one. If the one that emerges were to die, would the power automatically go to another? Another natural process in the universe, one that I can study and master, but only when Luffa has been neutralized once and for all. I don't need to become a Super Saiyan literally, Treekul. Not when I can learn what the power is and how it works. If I find a way to make Super Saiyans at will, then I would be more powerful than any Super Saiyan before or after. That's the power I want. If my descendants can benefit from it, then the Saiyan race will have surely triumphed over all."

Treekul wasn't sure what to say. "You're a hell of a guy, King Rehval," was all she could manage.

"Thank you, my dear," he said. "And I think you'll make an excellent courtesan. It'll be nice to have someone to discuss spagyric theory with."

She made an audible gulp.

*******

[15 June, 233 Before Age. Planet Yars.]

Luffa's star-yacht, the Emerald Eye, had fifty cabins, most of which rarely ever saw use since Luffa took ownership of the vessel. She had occasionally used the extra living space for guests, though the only time it had approached the maximum capacity was when she had hosted strategic conferences between the Wist-Extraliga Wars. Among the many aliens on board during that time, there was once a Solarian monk who had left a letter on the bed during his stay. He had sensed great turmoil in Luffa's spirit, even by the standard of most warriors he had encountered, and his intention was that she would discover the letter at some later date, and perhaps find a measure of comfort in the words he had written. Also on the bed were a pair of the monk's headphones, which had no special significance. He had left those behind purely by accident.

When Luffa finally entered the cabin, she only noticed the letter and headphones long enough to sweep them aside as she laid her wife on the bed. The monk's letter fell to the floor, where it would never be seen again. They were too preoccupied with each other to worry about it.

"You... never... should have... got...gotten... so close to the....mmph... battlefield," Luffa said as she started pulling off whatever articles of clothing she could manage. She had some trouble speaking, as Zatte kept kissing her between each word.

"You're right," Zatte said. "But you were there, so I went in anyway."

"I almost didn't make it," Luffa whispered into her ear. "One of them was all set to blast half the city. The half you were in. He would have killed you--"

"But he hesitated," Zatte replied. She grabbed the front of Luffa's sleeveless shirt and pulled on it until it ripped apart. "They always hesitate, because they don't know who I am or what I'm doing there. More than enough time for my golden girl to come to my rescue."

"I was fighting twelve of them," Luffa panted.

"Eleven, after the one I shot," Zatte said. "Ten, if one of them managed to run off looking for the shooter. And they never find me until I want to be found."

"That's still too close, young lady," Luffa said. "You took a big gamble..."

"It felt like it," Zatte said. "But I wasn't really in any danger. Or are you saying those twelve Saiyans were too much for you?"

"You... ah!... you want the truth?" Luffa asked.

"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't," Zatte asked.

She inhaled sharply and gripped Zatte's shoulders tightly. "I have no idea," she said.

"Say that again," Zatte said.

"I don't know for sure if I could have beaten all twelve of them or not," Luffa said, an octave higher than she usually spoke. "Not if one of them managed to bring that rock creature back to life. Dammit, your hair smells amazing."

"Thanks, but don't... wow... don't change the subject."

"I thought I was in a pinch," Luffa said. Her voice began to tremble as she went on. "I was actually... glad when you shot one of those guys... but then I wasn't sure I could hold them off and help you at the same time."

"But you did," Zatte said. "You won, just like always."

"Thanks to you," Luffa said. "Without your courage I... I..."

For some time after that, they each found they had little else to say, so they used their bodies instead. There was a great deal of theatrics to their intimacy. Luffa alternated between her transformed and normal states depending on the mood. Occasionally, Zatte would become invisible, or alter her own body temperature using her ability to manipulate energy, mostly for the novelty of it. Telepathic communion had proven corrosive to their relationship, though Luffa had recently discovered a way to work around that. Instead of opening their minds to one another completely, she could establish a connection very briefly, allowing only a very small exchange of their thoughts. Mostly these mental quanta were too small and random to be of any meaning. It was for fun, more than anything else. A way for each of them to hear the other's voice in her head, even if it was gibberish like "laundry", "perpendicular", "beloved", or "leftovers".

There was no clock in the room, and neither of them had any interest in asking the computer to tell them the time. The battle of Yars was won, and until there was any word on another attack, there was nothing to do but wait. At some point, Zatte stood by the cabin window and admired the view of the planet's dayside.

"Was this how you thought it would be?" she asked Luffa without looking away from the window.

"What do you mean?" Luffa asked.

"I mean, was this how you wanted your life to turn out?" Zatte asked.

"Well, the last couple of hours have gone great," Luffa said with a satisfied smile.

"I mean, the whole thing, dummy," Zatte said. "When I was a kid, this was pretty much how I thought it would be. I had this old book my uncle gave me before he died. It was all about space battles and all the characters in the illustrations weren't really dressed for it. There was this one picture of a princess staring out a window on a ship. I guess that's why I'm standing here right now."

"Yeah, but you don't really like to fight," Luffa said.

Zatte nodded. "I guess it's not exactly what I had in mind, but most of it worked out for me. You and me, together, roaming the stars in our ship." She turned from the window, and gestured to the ocular implant where her right eye used to be. "I guess I pictured myself having two eyes and a lot fewer scars, but I think it's worth it. I may not like to fight the way you do, but I take a lot of satisfaction in the results. I have a holy cause. Someone to belong to. That's worth a few injuries, I think."

She sat down on the bed and patted Luffa's shoulder. "So was this anything like what you expected?" Zatte asked.

"I don't want this to come out the wrong way," Luffa said. "But when I was a kid, I figured you'd be a Saiyan man, and I'd have six or seven brats underfoot."

"Oh, right," Zatte said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked--"

"No, it's all right, Zattie," Luffa said. "It's just... I had no idea what I'd become. I still don't know what I am. I wasn't kidding before when I said I didn't know if I could beat those Saiyans. It was like, one minute I wasn't strong enough to take them, and the next minute I was. Maybe knowing you might be in trouble was what did it. It pushed me over the edge, like when I first transformed."

"That's wonderful," Zatte said. "If I helped you get stronger, then I'm honored..."

"Before, I would have died before accepting help from anyone in a fight," Luffa went on. "Now... well it doesn't bother me as much. I just sort of shrug and keep going. I've fought battles and won victories that would keep most Saiyans satisfied for a lifetime. But I see all the people who suffer on the sidelines, and that bugs me more than I thought it would."

"You're helping those people," Zatte said. "You should take pride in that."

"Maybe. It's just hard for me to say it's worth it, when I don't really know what 'it' is. Seems like it keeps changing on me. But one thing I do know..."

She took Zatte's hand and drew her closer. "There's a lot I'm not sure about, but hearing you say this is how you hoped it would be... well, that puts my mind at ease. People tell me I'm doing the right thing, and it's hard for me to know if that's true, but at least they're saying it. You guys can't all be wrong."

Zatte lay down beside her and put her head on her shoulder. "You'll see," she said. "One day, you'll understand what you've become. Until then, well, it's kind of cool that you don't get it, but you keep plugging away at it anyway."

*******

[15 June, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

The acolytes waited on her hand and foot, as they always did. Rehval had arranged for Treekul to be a priestess in the cult, which granted her considerable freedom and privilege. Rank-and-file cultists had almost every aspect of their lives micromanaged. Their diet, exercise, sleep patterns, even their sex lives were strictly regulated by Rehval's priests. In turn, the priesthood answered to Rehval, though she had found that they were so thoroughly indoctrinated that they needed little direct guidance from him. Treekul was the only exception. She was mostly exempt from priestly duties, which was fortunate, since she had little understanding of what those duties were. Even so, the cultists treated her with the utmost devotion, if only out of respect for the office.

Rehval had multiple reasons for arranging this. First, it kept his followers off-balance. They had been taught to view outsiders as inferior or even wicked, and yet he had allowed an alien in their midst and given her a place of honor. Contradiction was one of many tools he used to control them all. Second, it suited his ego to work his "apprentice and/or consort" into his private religious order. Third, it kept Treekul off-balance. She was a prisoner here, and the "apprenticeship" made her feel more like a slave than a student. And yet, when she was dismissed from her lessons, she was treated like a queen, and free to do whatever she liked... except leave.

"Is there anything else we can do for you, mistress?" one of her attendants asked. The anxiety in his voice was depressingly typical for this place. It was the sound of a man who was constantly terrified of displeasing his superiors. Like all of the Saiyans here, he had come seeking power, only to find that it would be taken away if he displeased his benefactor.

Treekul finished her meal--a bland stew made with artificial proteins-- and shook her head. "Not unless you know where I can get a haircut," she said. "I could use my ki for that," the other Saiyan volunteered. He raised his hand and the tips of his fingers glowed with blue light.

"S-so could I!" the other man quickly added. Treekul was too tired to look at him, but she could tell from his voice that he was worried that he hadn't thought of the idea himself.

"I may have to take you up on that," Treekul said, "but I'd much rather do it myself. There's something pleasant about using a hair trimmer, you know? Too bad I don't have it..."

She was about to mention that her hair trimmer had been confiscated when she was brought to the planet, but then Treekul had an idea. "I mean... it's too bad that it broke down on me the other day," she said. "I haven't slept well since it stopped working."

She ran her hand over the shallow field of green hair on her scalp. "It relaxes me, is all. I know it's not that long, but there's a certain length where it's just right. Too short, and it's rough, like sandpaper. Too long, and it feels too soft. So I trim it constantly, or I used to, anyway."

"Perhaps the technicians could fix it," one of the Saiyan men suggested.

"Technicians?" Treekul asked. "Oh, I'm sure they're much too busy maintaining Trismegistus's more important equipment. It'd be selfish of me to impose."

"Not at all," he said. "I know one of the technicians, and she would be honored to serve you, mistress. She's my... well, she used to be my wife."

Treekul tried not to react to the barely-repressed emotion in his voice. Rehval had very strange notions about breeding practices. She wasn't entirely sure how he ran things as King of the Saiyans, but as Trismegistus, he dissolved all family ties and commanded his followers to participate in communal sex rituals. And yet, Treekul had never seen any children or pregnant women on this planet. Rehval seemed to want a new generation of Saiyans, but she had no idea where he was keeping them. Maybe he had a second underground facility for that.

"I'd like to meet her," Treekul said. "You know, just to see some of Trismegistus' followers working for his greater glory. Yeah, that kind of thing."

What Treekul really wanted was to get as much sleep as she could before reporting to Rehval for another lesson. But this was too good an opportunity to pass up. It had taken days for her to learn enough about the cult's inner workings to confirm that spaceships were routinely moving to and from whatever planet this was. Ships required regular maintenance, and if Treekul could find the maintenance crews, she could find a docking bay, or perhaps a flight schedule or cargo manifest. Even if all she found was a star chart to tell her where in the universe she was, Treekul believed it was worth losing a few more hours of sleep.

"At once!" he blurted out. Then the other Saiyan nudged him with his elbow, and he thought better of it. "Er, I mean... after we've finished our duty shift, that is," he said.

"With your permission," the other man offered, "we could take the device to her and bring it back once it's repaired."

"Nah, that's all right," Treekul said. "I'd really like to meet her in person, and I'm in no big hurry. We can work something out later."

They exchanged awkward pleasantries, the two men apologizing for any inconvenience, and she halfheartedly assuring them that she wasn't displeased with their work. Then she withdrew to her quarters, a space roughly the size of a studio apartment that had been hewn out of solid rock.

It wasn't a total loss, she thought to herself as she lay in her bed. At least she had learned that the technicians weren't off-limits to her. She just had to wait a little longer before seeing them. And once she knew where to go, she could return whenever she pleased

And there were other possibilities. She had hoped Endive might help her once she learned the truth about Trismegistus being Rehval, but so far nothing had come of that. If anything, her devotion to the man seemed to be even stronger for some reason. But maybe Endive just needed time to let the truth sink in. And there was still Lesseri, and Guwar, although she hardly ever saw him anymore.

And there was always the chance that Rehval's enemies might somehow track him down and invade the planet. Treekul wasn't sure she would survive a battle like that, but at least it was one more chance. She was building quite a collection of chances. One of them was bound to pan out.

An hour later, she fell asleep, in spite of the uncomfortable length of her hair.

NEXT: Fytpall.

#dragon ball #fanfiction #super saiyan #lssjluffafic #luffa #zatte #trismegistus #treekul #nagaoka #yars

[in-tua-deep]

OKAY here’s the weird dream inspired au where five was never supposed to exist and was more of,, a late addition by the Universe to the fun mystery birth line-up

Once upon a time forty-three women gave birth around the world. A fact made only odd because none of these women were pregnant when the day began. Forty-three women gave birth to forty-three children. An eccentric billionaire traveled in an attempt to obtain as many of these odd children as he could.

He got six.

But that’s not quite how the story goes.

Once upon a time, the universe was born. She is beyond human conception, and she left nebulae in her wake and lit up all the stars. Beautiful and wonderful and lonely, and so she had a daughter. A daughter who would grow fond of a particular planet in her mother’s playground.

A daughter who, one day, would meet a man named Klaus Hargreeves and tell him that she didn’t like him.

A daughter who, for the most part, was inordinately fond of the human race. A daughter who was displeased when a group of humans who figured out time travel decreed that the apocalypse must occur and safeguarded it. 

She did her best to fix it. But every time she tried, the group stepped up. No matter what factors she managed to tweak, as she could only interfere indirectly, no matter what changed, the apocalypse was always guaranteed by outside interference.

For all the millennia the Universe’s daughter had been alive, she was still a child. So she did what all children do when they encounter a problem too big to take on alone. She went to her mother.

Neither could interfere directly, and indirect measures were doing nothing. The universe was too vast to take a mortal avatar, and her daughter had barred herself from direct interference long ago to establish free will. There was a group whose free will just continued to get in the way. And so the universe had an idea, and she asked her daughter a simple question: if she wanted a little sibling.

For you see, neither the Universe nor her daughter could interfere directly, but the Universe could create someone who could.

So it goes more like this - once upon a time forty-three women gave birth around the world. A fact made only odd because none of these women were pregnant when the day began. Forty-three women gave birth to forty-four children. 

It was easy, to slip her child in next to another who was also not quite supposed to exist. To choose a mother of a child who was already known to the Universe’s daughter to be adopted by the man who would unknowingly cause the apocalypse.

An eccentric billionaire traveled in an attempt to obtain as many of these odd children as he could.

He got seven.

Little Number Five, as he was dubbed upon arrival at the lavish mansion which was to become his home for the next thirteen years, opened his eyes and saw fractals of light. He brought his little hands up to caress the paths and choices that existed just beyond the fabric of the universe, a language only spoken by now three individuals.

And he grew up with a gentle crooning voice in his ear - the voice of his mother. The voice that taught him how to part the veil and fall into the timeless space between worlds and out the other side. One that was constantly with him.

He grew up knowing he had a mission.

“You are here to prevent the apocalypse!” Reginald Hargreeves told his children severely as they rolled their eyes and scoffed. It was a sentiment he echoed often enough that it had lost all meaning to them. 

Do you love you siblings? The Universe asked her child with unparalleled gentleness.

Yes, Five projected back, because he did. He was aware that he wasn’t quite the same as the others, but he loved them regardless with a kind of fierceness that should be scary but mostly just made him feel warm.

Then prove it. The Universe challenged her child, and so he did. He pulled impossible stunts and stole food and spoke back to his father. He directed all of the attention on himself to spare those he could. 

“Why can’t I kill him?” Five asked the Universe one night when he was eight-years-old and sitting on his bed, inspecting the bruises that were still forming on his skin. “I need to protect them - killing him would solve things, right?”

It wouldn’t stop what is to come, the Universe crooned to her child in sorrow, There is much to be done. What is to come is safeguarded - those that guard it must die, first.

“But, you haven’t told me who causes the apocalypse anyway.” Five complained, a frown upon his face.

No matter what changes, the apocalypse comes. They make sure of it. One person does not cause the apocalypse - it is the symptom of a rot. It must be burned out entirely for the planet to survive.

“For my siblings to survive.” Five said, ever so softly. 

More years passed, until Five turned thirteen years old and the Universe whispered in his ear again and taught him how to part the veil and fall into the timeless place between world and travel in it.

Time travel.

I’m going to ask you to go through a trial. The Universe told her son, In order to save the world, you will have to sacrifice so much. You are so young, I wish I did not have to ask this of you - but it is important.

“It’s okay.” Five soothed his mother, ignorant of what was to come and oh so arrogant in his youth. “I can handle anything you throw at me. I’ll save them - I’ll save them all.”

He does not have quite the same attitude when he jabs at his father with words and runs out the door, fully intending to go back in a few hours before the Universe prods at him and tells him now. 

“But I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” Five protested, thinking of Vanya’s face as he left the table. But there was something exhilarating about falling through and riding the wave of time twisting like a snake under the fabric of reality and emerging in the future and he figured he could always return after whatever the Universe needed him to see in the future anyway.

Again, the Universe whispered.

He fell again.

Again, the Universe whispered.

Again, he rode the wave of time, except this time when he emerged it was different. The sky was filled with ash. All around him was rubble. There was a moment where his emotions were almost in freefall, before the ground caught up to him. Without his permission, his feet were already taking him back - back to the only home he’d ever known. Names tearing from his lips as he called for his siblings.

He found them. He recognized them by the tattoos on their wrists, putting names to faces, seeing the people he knew in the bodies that were left behind. 

He turned, frantic, hands rising to part the fabric of the universe again - 

STOP, the Universe commanded her son. If you go back, you cannot save them. And you will save them. This will not be the hand fate deals them. But I need you here, it is important.

“For how long?” Five rasped.

Do not worry. The Universe soothed, Time is a drop in the bucket for us. I will change you, as is needed to be done to make sure that the bait is taken and that you will be in position. I will restore you, have no fear. You will survive this, for you are my son. I will make sure of this.

And he did survive. He survived for years, growing up at the end of the world. He grew taller. His skin changed under the sun. He ate what he could find. He grew a beard. His hair turned grey. And that’s when they finally came for him.

A woman came, with white blond hair perfectly in place and makeup pristine against the chaos of the apocalypse. She smiled at him and offered him a job - and he took it.

“Can I go back now?” Five whispered, staring down the barrel of a gun waiting for his target - someone who he didn’t want to kill at all.

Not yet. The Universe sounded apologetic, Soon.

It was a question he asked with some frequency. Until one day he was staring down a gun at a road and a president and a car, and the Universe said - Now.

He dropped everything he was doing, and with a grin on his face pressed again the fabric of the universe and pushed. Pushed and pushed, and felt himself falling falling falling and changing changing changing and suddenly he was on the ground. He looked up at his family for the first time in so long and felt his heart swell.

And then he staggered to his feet and realized exactly what the Universe had meant when she said that he would have to sacrifice. Because the siblings that were in front of him were not the ones he left. Not even close.

They were the faces that haunted him, the ones he had found in the rubble. His siblings were thirteen and painfully young and old all at the same time, aged by the horrors that they faced together. These siblings were all wrong and right all at the same time. They weren’t right. He didn’t know them. 

And he tried to stop the apocalypse, he ran around trying to keep his siblings close and push them as far away as possible at the same time. He wanted them next to him right up until they reminded him of how much he missed.

(Klaus spoke about a man and osso bucco, and Five couldn’t bear to stick around. Couldn’t bear to look at a brother he didn’t even know anymore.)

“I need help.” Five howled to the Universe, “Give me a clue, a hint! Anything!”

Make a deal. The Universe told her son, Face the Handler. Accept the job. You need to get into position.

And so he did. He took Luther with him and set up a deal and watched as Klaus and Diego rode in on an ice cream truck blasting music and couldn’t help but feel insanely fond of his idiot siblings. When the Handler showed up and offered him a deal, he didn’t hesitate in taking it.

He had to save them, he had to save them all.

This child went to the Commission with a calm certainty, because his mission was not just to figure out who caused the apocalypse. Because he could part the veil of time itself - his mission was to make sure that those with the same power who wanted to ensure the world died took its place. 

This is a Five who didn’t go snooping into the messaging room with its many tubes, instead he kindly appropriated weapons and set them in strategic places around the Headquarters that he finally, finally had access to.

(The Commission were arrogant - they existed in a place outside the timestream where only those with briefcases and invites could go. Temporal assassins weren’t high enough on the food chain. They had only the one base, because if only they could get there then however could they ever be destroyed?

The Handler should have been more careful when deciding to play a game of cat and mouse with a creature that was neither.)

So he smiles at the Handler who holds a gun trained on him, he holds the grenade that will set off a chain reaction and winks. He doesn’t need the suitcase to get back to his own time, not when he is a child of the Universe. He sets it off and pushed through and feels the Universe ripple with approval around him as the Commission is eradicated off the face of the planet.

Oh, there’s still more to do technically. There are suitcases in the hands of temporal assassins who will never again receive an order. There are ground agents left to take care of. But Five cut off the head of the snake, and the body would be soon to follow.

Five jumps back. 

Klaus mentions seeing their father and mentions dying and Five leans forward eagerly to ask if he met God. Klaus blinks in surprise but nods, mentioning that the little girl hated him.

Five frowns at the thought, but the Universe sends amusement his way. It is not Klaus’s fault he got to be your brother. The Universe tells him fondly, It is simply a matter that he got to be so before she did. She has never been very good at coming in second, your sister.

The mansion is destroyed while Five is gone, and he finds a newspaper and freezes.

“I thought the apocalypse was off?” Five asks loudly, making his siblings look at him oddly. But Five has been in the habit of talking to ‘himself’ for years now.

You killed the guards. You can stop the apocalypse where before it was an impossible task. But you must stop this one first. The Universe tells him gently.

So they go to a bowling alley, and Five is not distracted by a cryptic message inside of a fortune cookie. They go to Vanya’s concert and aren’t interrupted by goons with guns. Allison stands proudly at the front with a smile, and Five is right there alongside her. Together they are a force to be reckoned with, and they bully Luther into standing down. At least for now.

It’s after the concert, when Vanya snaps out of it and they crowd around one another and they think about the ruins of the academy as Vanya cries fury and pain over years of terror and neglect.

They’ve lost so much in this week. Diego lost Eudora Patch. Allison lost her voice. Vanya became a murderer. Klaus lost the love of his life.

So Five holds his hands out to them, “I can take us back.” He tells them all, “I can take us back to the beginning of the week. We can undo the deaths. We can be prepared and handle it better. We can fix it.”

Because the Commission were fools. They existed outside of the timestream, which meant that no matter where Five jumped they simply no longer existed. Time was a funny little thing, and it was already healing from the scars that had been left.

So they take him up on it. They hold hands and Five hauls them through the timestream and they show up the day of their father’s funeral. Five sitting on the ground where he fell out of a portal and the rest spilled out into the courtyard to see the phenomenon.

And they heal from there, but that’s not all Five has to do.

Five watches his siblings find purpose and happiness and figures he has one favor he can call on - even if it’s from family he’s never met.

He slips between the fabric of the world, and ends up in front of a little girl on a bike.

“Brother.” She greets him, tilting her head up at him.

“Sister.” He responds easily, jamming his hands into his pockets.

“I suppose you want something.” She observes with no real judgement, “I’ve heard little brothers were supposed to be demanding little brats.”

“And I heard big sisters were supposed to be protective.” Five teases gently back, shrugging to indicate all the pain and hardship he had gone through at her request for her little pet world to remain intact. Not that Five can fault her for it, he loves the world just as much as she does. Or maybe not, he just loves a select and small group of people who live upon it.

She rolls her eyes, “Yeah, I guess I owe you one. Name your price.”

“There’s a man that you have.” Five says, voice measured and careful like he’s rehearsed this in his head a dozen times. “His name is Dave Katz and he died during the Vietnam war. I was wondering if we could have him back.”

“I’d need your help.” The little girl who isn’t really a little girl at all tells him very seriously. “I can put him back in a body and heal it, I have a few miracles in me. But I need a body to do so. Retrieve it from the way, after your brother has left, and I will do this for you.”

“And - Ben?” Five hesitates. He should have asked for it first, but he’d wanted to make sure it was possible. Which, given the nature of Ben’s death and God’s explanation for Dave’s return very well might not be. 

She sighs deeply. “It could take some time. His body was somewhat scattered among dimensions. In return for the legwork, however, I expect frequent visits.”

After all, Five did deserve some reward for doing exactly what she had wished for him to do.

“Family dinners with God,” Five grins back, already calculating exactly where and when he has to be to succeed at his given tasks, “I think I can just about manage that.”

It’s not exactly all sunshine and roses after that. Apparently producing your brother’s dead time-traveled lover alongside your usually very dead brother and explaining clearly that you ‘made a deal with God’ didn’t exactly cut it as far as excuses went. They all needed therapy. Vanya still had trouble self-regulating her emotions.

And then of course, a few years in, Five had to figure out how to explain the fact that he wasn’t aging.

(He was lucky he managed to convince his mother to let him keep his thirteen-year-old form for now - which considering God looked younger when she’d been alive for billions of years was very generous thank you. But he couldn’t artificially age on his own, and the Universe refused to put him through it a second time so - yeah he was a little bit stuck.)

Five was born with a mission, and it’s one he still had. He had Monday dinners with God, who bestowed upon him the location and time period where he would find yet another surviving briefcase from an agent to track down and destroy. 

But his biggest mission is to make sure his family is happy and healthy and cared for until the end of their days. It’s a mission he takes very seriously.

(And hey, it’s not like he won’t be able to see them again on the other side. Sometimes it pays to have God as a big sister, after all.)

Once upon a time forty-four children were born on a seemingly normal October day. One of them wasn’t supposed to be there.

But aren’t we all glad he was.

#the umbrella academy #tua #tua au #late addition au #universe's son au #five hargreeves #number five #this was exceptionally self indulgent #and yes i did not include the part of the dream where it was revealed the mysterious O.W. boss of the commission was Owen Wilson #that part remains a dream #but god being lowkey jealous that klaus got to be five's sibling before she did gets to stay #five is a very baby immortal and is not happy with this fact #five: i'm 58 i'm older than you #klaus: okay but like in universe years how old is that #five: what the fuck do you mean #klaus: i mean like a 4 year old dog is 28 when you translate so like what's ur translated age #five: ...still older than you shut the fuck up #klaus: well I think that since - you know - GOD was a little girl and presumably she's been around forever #five: shut your face klaus #klaus: that makes you a BABY #five: i WILL kill you and it WILL look like an accident #now i'm just picturing god and klaus teaming up to tease five #but also the hilarity of five threatening to tell god's mother (who is also his mother) when she's being mean to him is also hilarious #god (whispering): snitch #far tua long #almost forgot that tag smh #universe child five au #universe child au

[kentuckywrites]

Imperium: Sylvalum

Scio dolorem tuum. (I know your pain.)

It had taken centuries, long and grueling centuries, but the planet was recovering. They had focused on the three continents affected the most by the war: Obi-liv’isk, Siy’valis-um, and Call’dive-ros. In that time they had never seen one of his people. That single fact was enough to make him miserable, for deep down he missed them. Thankfully the feeling was deep enough to go unnoticed by the planet.

Of the most affected continents, Siy’valis-um was the closest to its former glory. It once possessed a similar ecosystem to Prim’ala-dor’ias, but now harbored unseen creatures, more dangerous and predatory, None of the creatures dared to harm him. The planet made sure to tell them what he was. 

He walked close to the continent’s greatest lake, along where the water met the land. The water was opaque, but he knew it wasn’t deep, wasn’t one of the many harborers of unseen enemies. He stared out at the expanse, at the old cervus that drank from the shallows. He felt nothing and feared nothing. 

The immovable water splashed at his shoes.

“I sense something troubling you, my avatar.”

“We have been together for centuries, and yet we are lonely, and we are tired.” He admitted quietly.

“...Yes, we are. I have neglected you in lieu of rebuilding what was destroyed.”

He turned then, and he faced the gigantic green orb, the mightiest of the continent’s “trees”. However, unlike most its wildlife, the orb housed a planetary parasite, one that had tried to destroy the planet once and for all. 

The planet had no name for it aside from the Everqueen. Its planetary guardian, the Endbringer, had trapped it inside halfway though the rebuilding process. The Everqueen slept within it, trapped, contained. 

It sent chills down his spine. Oh, how the planet had screamed in pain upon its arrival. To think it could’ve killed everything in its wake and not felt satiated.

“We do not blame you, old friend. You have been working hard these past years.”

The ground quivered beneath his feet. 

“But I have neglected your wellbeing. For that, I give my deepest apologies.”

There was silence, and then, a sudden exclamation. 

“What if I created a tangible form for myself? A humanoid, so that I could accompany you across my continents. We would be together, physically and mentally.”

“Are you sure that wouldn’t strain our mind?” He asked, concerned but intrigued.

“Even if it did, I owe this to you. You have been alone, all this time.” The wind came to a stop, and he heard the whispers of the creatures around him, saw the wisps of pollen fall to the sand. “I will need your help, however. I can only accomplish this at the Beacon, and I will require components from the land to create this form. I can supply the miranium, but you are free to choose whatever you feel will create the most beautiful form.”

He grinned. When was the last time he had been truly excited by something? Finally, he would not be alone, the planet would be there in a physical form to walk alongside him. 

“We will need time,” He said, “But we are willing to help you.”

“Excellent,” The planet whispered lovingly, “I will see you at the Beacon, old friend, and together we shall create something beautiful.”

~

Three months had passed since Pongo disappeared.

L bestowed the news to everyone Pongo considered a friend, and word quickly spread that one of Elma’s own trainees had left BLADE for good. Rumors were abundant; some claimed he had been picked off by an indigen, others wondered if the surviving Ganglion had taken him hostage. And some yet saw right through L’s news - some believed he wouldn’t be gone for long. They knew how dedicated he was to the Interceptors and said he just needed time away to destress, and one day he’d come back as chipper as ever.

L abandoned hope early on that Pongo would ever return. But he kept that notion under careful wraps, especially in front of Lin and Elma. 

He was with them both in the commercial district when they got the BLADE-wide emergency notification. Nearly every squad was being sent to Sylvalum to monitor the Noctilucent Sphere. L didn’t need to read the rest of the order to know why.

The flight to Sylvalum was tense. The sky was now crowded with Skells of all shapes and sizes, some carrying large supply crates. When L was close enough to the continent to see the sphere, he saw it shake, he heard a roar loud enough to echo across the ocean. He followed Elma and Lin, who landed near the edge of Lake Ciel. A whole operation had been set up there, with BLADEs going back and forth between tents and small construction points with supplies and information and weapons strapped to their belts. Elma got out quickly, her long sparkling hair catching some of the breeze, and the three of them proceeded towards the largest tent. 

Inside, Secretary Nagi and Commander Vandham were bent over a table with a hologram projection. Both looked concerned at its contents. When the three of them entered, only Nagi looked up to acknowledge them. 

“Elma. Good, let’s get you filled in,” Nagi said, beckoning for all three of them to wrap around the table, get a better look at the hologram. L understood that it was meant to be a replica of the Noctilucent Sphere, its circular dimensions and its hollow inside. Somehow life had come to inhabit the inner sphere, plantlife and a few sparse indigens. 

And of course, there was the Everqueen. But they probably didn’t know how it got inside such a tiny sphere.

Vandham grunted as L passed him to get a better look at the hologram, feigning innocence at its contents. Lin went around with Elma and stayed on Nagi’s side of the table. 

“As you know, the Noctilucent Sphere is home to a very large and very dangerous indigen,” Nagi explained, “We’ve been monitoring it closely since we’ve discovered it, and unless it’s disturbed from inside, it tends not to move. But something in the past few days has awakened it, and it seems determined to escape.”

“Damn thing’s causing such a ruckus in there that it’s hard to say whether or not it’ll actually bust out,” Vandham piped up, rubbing his moustache with the inner part of his thumb. “But we’re betting that it will, and soon. Hence the BLADE-wide operation.”

“And nothing akin to this has happened in the past?” Elma asked, “I find it strange that it chooses now of all time to try and escape. Was there some kind of stimuli that aggravated it from inside?”

“None that we know of,” Nagi replied somberly, “If we knew, that would make things much easier on our end, because at least then we could attempt to reverse its effects.”

“So the entire operation that’s on guard outside...that’s precautionary if Pharsis escapes?” Lin said, tapping her chin with her finger. “It’s a good amount of manpower, but -”

“It isn’t enough?” Nagi cut in, “Yes, that’s our greatest fear going into this. However, Elma, you were on to something before, and that’s why we’re assigning you and Irina’s team to head into the sphere and gather intel.”

L’s eyes widened. That was a suicide mission, going into the cage of the very monster that had almost killed Mira thousands of years ago. And yet he seemed to be the only one there with any semblance of anxiety. Lin almost appeared excited at the prospect of going into the sphere.

“I’m all for the idea of gathering intel on how to stop this, Commander, but if I might pose a concern: who’s to say the Skells landing in the opening won’t trigger Pharsis to destroy the sphere?” Elma said, arms crossed.

Nagi took a deep breath, his shoulders stiff. “This is a risk that we have to take if we are to avoid certain catastrophe. I’m not especially keen on the idea myself, but I knew you and your team would be willing to tackle it, potential consequences and all.”

Elma and Lin both nodded. Lin looked to L, raising an eyebrow when she realized he hadn’t agreed along with them. He cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention towards him.

“We have a pen’s ink as to what is disturbing the Everqueen,” L told them, trying to ignore his voice cracking, “And we may know how to halt its escape efforts.”

“Why didn’t ya pipe up before, then?” Vandham nudged him with his elbow, a stronger gesture than L anticipated, and one that almost knocked him off balance. “Tell us what ya know!”

All eyes were on L as he did his best to provide an explanation while leaving out the private details, skewing truths where he could. “The Everqueen arrived with the intent to devour the planet. We remember the Endbringer creating its prison to halt its advances, and so the Endbringer would have the necessary strength to fortify its bars again.”

“You mean the Telethia,” Nagi confirmed, “That resides primarily in Noctilum, no?”

“It’s a reasonable assumption to make, though I’ll admit to having seen it fly over Sylvalum before,” Elma said, “Is there any way the Telethia knows that Pharsis is trying to escape? And if not, how would we be able to contact it in time?”

“She most certainly has awareness of the problem on our palms, but her strength on her own will not be enough. We know what the Endbringer requires, but...it is a great distance away from our current position.”

Elma paused, pursing her lips. “How much longer until Pharsis breaks out of the sphere?”

“We can’t be sure,” Nagi said, “At this rate, her escape seems likely within the next twenty four hours. But that’s prone to change considering her strength in this endeavor.”

“Is that enough time to get what you need to the Telethia?” Elma turned to L, crossing her arms.

L paused. There was hope in her expression, in everyone’s eyes. The lie was too convincing, perhaps because it came from a Miran native, perhaps because L was a good liar, perhaps because they needed to hear that there was a way to stop this before it killed them all. But L left out the part about not knowing where the Endbringer’s missing puzzle piece was.

After all, how could he know where Pongo had gone?

But he continued to lie, because Lin’s smile was too excited. Because they needed good news.

“That is quite enough and more!” L said, earning nods from everyone in the tent. 

“Then get out there, take whatever and whoever you need,” Vandham ordered, “Just get back here as quick as ya can, huh?”

“Yes, sir!” L rushed out, ducking beneath the tent’s entrance and heading to the outside. Sylvalum’s crisp air greeted him, a sharp presence carrying secrets never heard. L had good memories of this place, having memorized Lake Ciel’s coastline, having befriended many of the indigens around him in the past. They probably knew what was happening just as much as the humans did. L blinked, but kept his eyes closed for a prolonged amount of time, just letting himself go to Sylvalum’s twisted sense of peace.

And that was when he heard it.

The wind changed. Before, it had been playing a gentle song, a whistle barely registered past the screams of the Everqueen. But now there were words mixed in with it, words that L almost didn’t pick up on. Was it even right to call them words? The wind was telling him to turn around, go to the edge of the operation, be quiet. L turned and walked, making sure that his movements were not suspicious. Elma and Lin hadn’t exited the tent with him before, providing the perfect opportunity to go alone, to investigate whatever Sylvalum was trying to hide. It wasn’t a far walk to the edge of the operation, and hardly anyone was there. L ducked away behind a stray tent, looking for what the wind was guiding him towards.

A hand pressed down on his inner arm.

L spun around, mouth open as he was about to ask who, what, why. The wind went silent.

Pongo grinned at him. It was sad, hardened almost, but it was still Pongo’s grin. L barely had time to register the fact that Pongo, the physical Pongo, was standing in front of him before they were hugging each other. Pongo buried his head into L’s chest, and L’s head dangled down, an awkward angle to bend thanks to their height difference. His hair smelled of fresh rain and dampened soil, the water and its earth. They didn’t pull apart when Pongo spoke.

“Are you okay, L’Cirufe?”

What else had L expected him to say? They pulled apart, and L saw Pongo’s tears, a mixture of fear and regret. L kept his hands on Pongo’s shoulder - both for Pongo’s sake, and because L was so scared that he wasn’t real, that if he was he was seconds away from disappearing again.

“We are alright, now that you have returned,” L smiled wide, “We would ask you about your adventures, but time is not to be had.”

“I know. I am not sure I would have come back so soon if it had not been for…”

They both looked up at the sphere, how it shook with the Everqueen’s rage. Nothing needed to be said then. All L knew was the feeling of Pongo’s vest beneath his hands, and the ever increasing tightness in his chest. When Pongo tore his gaze away from the sphere, he wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his sleeve.

“I think we both know how to keep her from escaping,” Pongo said, “But I will need your help to get to Cauldros -”

“No.”

Pongo paused. “L’Cirufe, what other choice do we have? She is going to slaughter everyone here - all of humanity, every indigen, every continent. I cannot let history repeat itself.”

“You will die if you continue down this beaten path,” L argued, his hands tensing on Pongo’s shoulders, “We will not let you do this. You will lose yourself to its power and -”

“I do not care what happens to me,” He interjected, “The planet is not the same as before. It is weak, and if I do not give myself up to it then Mira will never be able to recover. It would never have the time to. This is the most viable option, and I am willing to sacrifice myself for it.”

L took a deep breath, forcing himself to look away. Times were different, that he could understand, but time couldn’t erase the possibility that Pongo would be reduced to what L had become. A living weapon of Mira’s design, out of control and out of touch. Mira could still use Pongo’s body to inflict its will. The Everqueen was not its only target.

“How do you know that it will not use you to carry out any other schemes?” L asked, after the silence had tried to hold them down again. 

“I have no way of knowing that,” Pongo admitted, “All I can do is trust that Mira will use my body to restore the balance. Mira is angry at the human race, yes, but more than anything else right now, it...it just wants to be safe. And the Everqueen is the most direct threat to that.”

“If we cannot convince you of the dangers...then we would have no choice but to accompany you,” L said softly, unable to mask the pain in his voice. 

“Count us both in, too.”

Pongo’s eyes widened and L turned around, realizing that Elma and Lin were now standing behind him. Elma’s arms were crossed over her chest, her crystalline brow furrowed with a deep confusion, a desire to understand something bigger than herself. Lin ran past L and quickly wrapped her arms around Pongo, who reciprocated just as quickly, even picking her up off the ground and swinging her around in a circle. They both laughed like no time had passed between them. 

“How much of the conversation did you drop the evening on?” L asked Elma, saddened that Pongo and Lin’s laughter was doing nothing to improve his mood.

“Most of it,” She said, “Although I’m still trying to piece together what exactly you were talking about. You kept speaking as if Mira - the planet - is some kind of sentient being, one that’s capable of controlling Pongo. Is this true?”

L couldn’t bring himself to answer - it wasn’t a truth he was willing to speak. It was Pongo’s right, and Pongo’s choice. He waited for the raven-haired Interceptor to put Lin down, whispering something quickly before turning to Elma. Traces of his happiness lingered on his lips, but it was too easily tainted by the weight of the situation.

“Yes,” Pongo said, “Mira is a sentient being. I am still trying to figure out what exactly it is, but I can now say with certainty that it created me as a vessel to communicate with humanity. It told me how I can weaken Pharsis and prevent her from escaping.”

“Which is why you have to go to Cauldros,” Elma concluded, “L, I thought you needed to communicate with the Telethia in order to stop Pharsis.”

“We do,” Pongo said, “But...okay, how do I explain this...you know how we have been mining miranium from the planet for the industrial district? Miranium is like the blood of Mira - take too much of it at one time, and the planet will grow incredibly weak. Right now, it is too weak to communicate with the Telethia directly, much less any of the other indigens inhabiting the continents. Hell, Mira only just had the strength to talk to me three months ago, and even those conversations have been few and far between. Since it does not have the strength it needs to command the Endbringer, I will have to go to Mount M’Gando in Cauldros and -”

“And rejoin with the planet,” L mumbled, unable to make eye contact with Pongo. He could feel Pongo’s gaze on him regardless.

“Mira used a lot of miranium to create me. If I were to give my miranium back to Mira, it could use what I have to tell the Telethia to fly to Sylvalum and keep the Everqueen at bay,” Pongo finished.

“Wait, but that would kill you!” Lin cried, “You’re saying you have to sacrifice yourself for this to work!”

“You’re certain that there’s no other solutions?” Elma asked.

Pongo shook his head. “It is too late to tell humanity to stop drilling, and if we were to swap myself for some indigens, it would wipe out an entire continent and then some.”

“You must have a lot of miranium in your body,” She said, a thought spoken out loud, “What about your left arm?”

To L’s surprise, Pongo chuckled at the resurfaced memory. “That is definitely not miranium. A lot of it is in my own bloodstream, especially my heart.”

L finally had the strength to look back up at Pongo, at Elma and Lin. Lin looked as if she were on the brink of tears, and L couldn’t blame her. This was the only way, the only option left to pick. It was no wonder why Mira was mad at humanity - humans had drained it of power, and now they were going to pay the ultimate price. Either the planet’s most beautiful creation would die, or everyone would. Of course the path was clear to Pongo, who would sacrifice himself at every turn to keep friends and strangers alike safe from harm. But to Elma, to Lin, to L…

This was too much.

Elma broke the silence, which L hadn’t noticed was there to begin with. “If this is the only way, we’ll accompany you to Cauldros. Ganglion activity there is still prominent, and we can’t have any distractions.”

“Yeah…” Lin’s response was drawn out, hesitant, “We’ll go with you. There’s no way you’re doing this alone.”

“Thank you both,” Pongo smiled, and suddenly Lin was hugging him again, and he was hugging her back. L could barely hear Lin’s whisper, buried deep in Pongo’s shoulder.

“I only just got you back…”

When they pulled apart, Elma got out her comm device, calling who L assumed to be either Nagi or Vandham. “Change of plans. We’re heading to Cauldros to call the Telethia. Keep us updated if anything changes.”

“Same to you,” Nagi’s voice was scratchy over the intercom, and Elma quickly put her comm device back into a pocket in her armor - which, how did her armor even have pockets? That was the least of L’s concerns, though, and he pushed the thought away.

“Alright then,” Pongo said, facing everyone with a cheerful determination, “To Cauldros.”

#xenoblade x #Imperium: Sylvalum #okay seriously does TF Elma's armor have pockets #also Yay For Sacrifices #I'm gonna have a FIELD DAY with this last chapter #hard to believe we're coming up on Imperium's one year anniversary #I hope this has been a fun ride though! #it's definitely weird for me to be writing a short story

[daturanerium]

finished season two of the magnus archives! here is my s2 livetweet thread and here are my reflections/predictions from season one. 

jon:

you are so fucking stupid. so incomprehensibly dumb. it is absolutely incredible how you lack any brain cells at all.

if jon was a dnd character he’d have a plus three to intelligence and a negative two to wisdom. i’m right.

[jon voice] people care about me? Must Be A Manipulation Tactic!

[jon voice, continued] literally everyone except for me is a) a murderer, b) using me, or c) hiding something. i, however, am totally fine and also sane and if you imply otherwise you are definitely Hiding Something and i need to stalk you.

seriously it’s a goddamn miracle he wasn’t fired or didn’t just like....explode on the spot

that awkward moment when you befriend a cop and get tapes that may lead to your successor’s cold murder case being solved but in the process you learn that you and your place of employment are actually owned by The Great, All-Powerful [REDACTED] 

it’s so interesting listening to a man’s mental health and sanity decline in real time!

martin: do u want some tea? jon: you’re going to kill me huh?

[jon voice] it is a good idea for me to enter these dangerous tunnels alone on multiple occasions. i am fine. 

his fatal flaw is still pursuit of knowledge. love that for him. 

baby please you work for an entity that probably literally thrives off knowledge.......please grow some brain cells in season three before you literally die doing something stupid

i literally can’t say anything more about s2 jon that isn’t me just repeating “stupid dumb paranoid baby” over and over again

martin:

martin [shaking hands emoji] me playing the mediator as our family loses their minds around us

martin blackwell recieves everything he has ever wanted and needed challenge!!!

baby i love you

HE CARES SO MUCH AND NOBODY CARES ABOUT HIM.......

martin’s job this season is literally the concerned husband but we’re not ready to talk about that yet

my dude really stepped up at the end! he was gonna fight michael in hand to hand combat for jon and sasha and i’m so proud of him!

martin went from baby to hold my flower

martin saw some shit in season one and now he’s a badass

his poetry.....i cried i literally love him so much

when he was talking to tim in the tunnels and he just breaks. and yells. and says he wants to get out of here and save jon and help sasha and be happy and you know what if everything DID turn out in the end that would be kind of nice actually!!!!

we didn’t see much of him this season but from what we did, especially at the end......the character development.......he’s so much braver now, so much more ready to confront the horrors of the world around him. martin is one of those special people that runs on love and uses love as a driving force to fight for the things he needs. 

i hope someday martin gets to sit down in a nice little cottage in the middle of nowhere with someone who loves him and just. relax. it’s what he deserves.

tim

you are the only bitch in this house i ever respected

literally just trying his best

so incredibly valid

GIVE HIM A BREAK

as someone who is the least confrontational person on the planet i really respect and admire tim calling jon out on his bullshit

that scene was so cathartic.....god.....

@ THE ELDRICH BEING RUNNING THE ARCHIVES CAN YOU PLEASE LET HIM GO HE JUST WANTS TO LEAVE

tim at the beginning of s2: hey jon you okay? you’re acting weird and it’s kind of freaking us out tim at the end of s2: fuck archivist lives and jon in particular,

and you know what? he’s right

i hope tim gets to go home. it won’t happen but i can dream.

are we just gonna brush over that part in the finale where michael just???? bamfed them to another dimension or something????? because neither tim nor martin seemed the least bit phased

honestly tim/jon has rights. i enjoy it.

he’s just so angry and hurt and done. he’s reached his limit. goodbye

get tim out of the archives s3!!! do it!!!

gertrude

wow i love you

every time i hear gertrude’s voice i just go [one thousand teary-eyes emojis]

there’s a lot we don’t know and there’s a lot that she knows. i wish we could like. raise her from the dead or something. altho honestly with a horror podcast who the hell knows

jon listening to/hyperfixating on gertrude is just a fancy way of him claiming her as his new mother figure

GOD I LOVE HER I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HER CAN WE GET A SPINOFF PLEASE

basira and daisy

the only cops with rights

that part where tim thought basira was jon’s girlfriend and they both dissolved into gay panic.....priceless

daisy step on me challenge. i’ve met her twice and i love her.

honestly basira is such a badass. stealing from the cops while being a cop? that takes guts and i really respect her lack of respect toward cops while being one

not to mention that entire business with that sentient cult darkness shit. she killed it in there (no pun intended). give her like a purple heart or something idk how cops work

daisy.....please tell me your secrets. what have you seen. what do you know.

melanie

please work for the archives i am BEGGING you

my ghost hunter girlfriend

i love her and jon’s relationship. just pure loathing. tension between the hunter and the archivist. i live for that shit.

but under that it’s like Oh Shit I Actually Care A Lot???? like their loathing comes from their businesses being judgemental enemies, but personally they actually have a lot in common and care for each others’ wellbeing.

i really hope melanie sticks around so we can learn more about her and see her friendship with jon grow into....an actual friendship

shes also a total badass and both her research and deducing skills are so good. she’s just a great archive candidate overall.

michael

[REDACTED]

what the fuck are you

what the fuck do you want

why do i like you so much.

okay there’s a lot more going on here but i’m putting my predictions under the cut!

okay lets check out my predictions from last time.

okay this one was partially right! “entities” rule the world apparently, and the archive is run by one of them. sort of got that!

.....yeah that didn’t happen.

hell yeah! i’m proud of myself for this one, even though the time loop part wasn’t true. i thought “time loop” because her voice started echoing when she hit the table, but turns out that was just her crazy long copy taking over. oh well!

nope. gertrude was killed by elias, apparently. fucker.

WELL.........

okay. this one is complicated because i was sort of correct but there’s still a lot of information i don’t know. gonna give myself half credit for this one i think.

REMEMBER IN THE FINALE WHEN MARTIN THOUGHT HE SAW SASHA AND TIM HAD TO STOP HIM FROM RUNNING IN TO SAVE HER? YEAH.

okay, season three predictions. let's go.

(disclaimer: while i haven’t been actively looking up spoilers or engaging in the tma tag, i also haven’t muted the tag or anything associated with it. i have ideas of what’s to come but they’re vague and mostly come from fanart on my dash/timeline).

jon just gives up. he’s having to much of a crisis to do anything other than his job.

jonmartin endgame still

michael becomes a sort of??? constant presence??? at the archive. everyone just kind of accepts it.

the books and the entities make a lot more things make sense. that’s really vague i know but like. 

predictions for the entities:

fire/destruction 

knowledge (jon stans rise up)

empty/alone (these stories always get to me the most. the ones where you’re endlessly falling or trapped in a cave or can’t sleep or stuck in space. shit scares me more than anything else)

chaos (i think michael is with this one. the doors also fit into this category, and maybe that shipping company)

death/id (brings out the bareness of human instinct. the meat, the bloodlust, and the death. maybe even the bugs go here, but they’re confusing. i don’t know where they fit.)

each entity represents a deep-set human fear. they were created to either teach us lessons or keep us in line.

sometimes they have devoted followers. sometimes they have disciples or avatars. you can lose yourself to them if you aren’t careful. jane was probably an avatar, that girl with the heat powers on hilltop road was an avatar, that guy with the lightning powers was an avatar, etc.

the books can teach you how to connect with the entities, but you have to be actually insane to try it. (if you aren’t already, you certainly will by the time you finish the reading/ritual. if you even survive)

anyway back to actual plot.

jon learns more from gertrude’s tapes about elias and the archives. maybe even the entities. he doesn’t want to know, but as we’ve learned, he Just Can’t Not Know. 

jon finally grows a brain cell and lets people (martin) take care of him. a little.

tim is just there. he hates it but he can’t leave. (someone please get him out this is so sad)

melanie and basira join up with the archive, but for different reasons. melanie because jon asks her to, basira because despite her best interest she couldn’t stay away.

at the end of the season we’ll either meet a powerful avatar person of one of the entities themselves. that will be.....interesting. 

elias gets hit by a bus. won’t happen but i can dream.

what ever happened to that one man from season one who had the dreams about death? i loved his statement. is there anyone out there like him? will jon receive a message like gertrude did?

WHAT IS THE LIGHTER FOR. i completely forgot about it until i looked at my last predictions and saw it mentioned.

martin is more active in tapes (again unlikely but i can dream. i love him)

that’s about all i got! i’m going to post this and immediately start season three. wish me luck :)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma season 2 #jonathan sims #i love any cryptic laughter but please no actual spoilers!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Ego

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Years ago, comic book movies were absolutely, totally afraid to be even a little weird. Raimi carried the weirdness torch for a while thanks to the success of the Spider-Man trilogy, but for some reason he was the only person unafraid to be goofy; even Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, a movie about one of the more fun and campy classical hero teams, was completely and utterly afraid to show a big man in purple armor who eats planets and so instead opted to show us an intergalactic fart cloud. The precedent set by franchises like Blade, X-Men, and Nolan’s Batman films lingered for a long time.

Then along came James Gunn.

Gunn is a man unafraid to be weird, and Guardians of the Galaxy really changed the game in 2014. There’s a gun-toting raccoon, a talking tree, a bald blue cyborg woman, and an alcoholic duck, and the movie is a smash hit critically and financially; there is now no excuse not to put the wierdest stuff from the comics faithfully into film. And for the sequel, Gunn apparently saw fit to bring in one of Marvel’s most bonkers bad guys: Ego, the Living Planet.

Ego is the perfect example of how to adapt something utterly bizarre from the comics, changing some major elements while still staying true to the nature of the character himself. Ego here is Peter Quill’s father, something that isn’t true in the comics, as well as a Celestial, something also not true in the comics… but he is still a sentient planet, and he is still completely and utterly evil.

Actor: Kurt Russell, 80s superstar and the reason Solid Snake exists, plays Ego to perfection. Ego is a character with, well, an ego; he’s selfish, self-centered, and lacking in empathy, but he also needs to come off as charming and friendly or we the audience would see through him immediately. Russell is the exact perfect man for that job; this is a guy who managed to play a character who was mildly transphobic and still have them come off as likable. Russell is also able to switch from affable and charming to scary and furious with ease, which is a big help after the reveal when Ego drops all pretense. Russell just kills it, there’s no other way to put it.

Motivation/Goals: Ego has an almost sympathetic goal, one that, from a certain point of view, makes him come off as a bit sympathetic. The guy was drifting alone in the void for eons and had to piece himself together, so is it any wonder he was horrifically lonely when he was finally able to set out to find life? Of course, that loneliness and isolation led to him developing some really nasty personality traits, and so he decided the best course of action after finding out other intelligent life was “boring” was to plant seeds on every planet, sire a child with powers just like him, and then wipe out all life and turn all the planets in the universe into extensions of himself. It is a plan truly befitting a character with the name “Ego,” and while it is true his motivation is at least a little deserving of sympathy, his goals and how he goes about trying to ameliorate his pain is what makes Ego an irredeemable monster.

Personality: Ego is perhaps one of the most aptly named characters in all of fiction, and he’s also one of the few characters one could make the honest claim that his ego is literally the size of a planet. Ego puts forth this identity of a charming, fatherly figure, happy, affable, jokey… just really sweet and charming. But much like the avatar he uses, it’s all just a mask.

Look at how he talks about what he did to Peter’s mom; he says it with such a wistful, resigned melancholy flavored with this “I did what I had to do” smugness that is a twisted reflection of how one might recall their first date, and then follows it up with a horrifically callous response of “I know that sounds bad.” Ego is such a monstrous, unrepentant sociopath with so little regard for life that is beneath his lofty stature that I just don’t think he really comprehends things like empathy. He is the ultimate psychopathic manchild, an arrogant egotist who hides behind this friendly veneer until the moment things don’t go the way he wants, at which point he starts screaming, ranting, and raving. The fact he is completely and utterly taken aback that Peter would unload multiple shots into him after being told Ego gave his mother a brain tumor is really telling of just what kind of person he really is.

Final Fate: The bomb Groot planted on Ego’s brain goes off, and Ego’s avatar crumbles to dust as the planet begins to blow up, seeing as its brain just got obliterated. The beautiful karma of this moment makes it extra delicious; after putting that tumor on Meredith Quill’s brain, is it not fitting he die after having something planted on his brain?

Best Scene: Ego just really dominates every scene he’s in, but I think the big reveal, where he shows just what a sick and depraved villain with a lack of care for life as he reveals what he did to Meredith Quill, is one of the MCU’s finest scenes.

Best Quote: It took only one single line to cement Ego as the most horrible, evil, disgusting monster in the MCU: “It broke my heart to put that tumor in her head.”

Final Thoughts & Score: Ego is fantastic on so many levels, but one level I think should not be overlooked is on a meta level. As I mentioned, for the longest time silliness and weird concepts were out the door when it came to superhero films. One needs only look at the X-Men franchise to see how dour things were, with their dull black costumes and overwhelmingly miserable and unfun atmospheres. More lighthearted or sillier fare did not go over well, as Iron Man 2 and Green Lantern can attest, and magic was totally absent for a while in the MCU probably because of fears audiences wouldn’t take it seriously. But James Gunn changed all that, and I think Ego definitely played a huge role in cementing that audiences will embrace and love in the weirdest stuff out of comics. Thanks to Ego, I think a lot of other creators became unafraid to let that freak flag fly and put things in movies they might have been too worried to put in before, with the ultimate and best example being Mister Mind joining the DCEU in the end of Shazam! It gives me hope that Tawky Tawny might show up there in a sequel.

On a character level, Ego is without a doubt the most punchable scumbag in the entire MCU, with only Mysterio coming close. The fact he casually admits to killing Peter’s mother and expects him to be okay with it… Can you really blame Peter for immediately unloading his guns into his father? I mean, when faced with a man who is utterly unrepentant in killing a loved one that they also claimed they loved and says they had to do it to further their goals, would you not also have a knee-jerk reaction like that? Yes, I am getting at this being a canon moment that shows Peter’s reaction to Thanos in Infinity War was not a stupid moment, it was a moment that was built up by what he did to Ego. And I think that just adds to Ego even more, because he helped cement a character trait of Peter’s that would lead to one of the most horrific gut punches in cinematic history.

Ego is an easy 10/10, and is one of the MCU’s greatest villains. He’s a perfect “love to hate” character, and he’s also a perfect villain for a story about family. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has family as a focal point of the story, with the arcs of every single character revolving around the idea that family doesn’t have to be blood ties, it can be with the people who love you and who you’ve bonded with the most. Yondu’s line of “He may’ve been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy” is what really sells it, honestly; Ego is Peter’s biological father, yes, but Yondu raised him and even if he didn’t always do right by him, in the end he showed himself to be a better man and better dad than Ego ever could have hoped to be. I suppose that’s a bit off topic from Ego himself, but I feel like it’s important to note just how deeply thematic he is as a villain, tying into the core message of the story while also letting loose in utter sociopathic villainy.

I think there is a great irony in Ego’s ultimate plan; for all his claims of being lonely and desiring others like him, what exactly does he think would happen if the entire universe was nothing but himself? Would he truly have been satisfied? Perhaps; he was a narcissistic to the highest degree for sure. But I like that there is some ambiguity to things about Ego, I like how there are some things to think about, I like how a villain who has a plan that is not clearly thought out by them yet that they believe is the proper course of action is something of a setup for what Thanos would be.

And really, out of every other villain in the MCU, Ego is most like Thanos. The obvious part is the plan, though only Endgame Thanos really wanted to reshape the universe in his image; still, as I mentioned, their plans are both something they believe is the true and righteous course of action, though Thanos is far more sympathetic in this regard. They also both felt the need to sacrifice loved ones in pursuit of their goals, and they both have incredibly poor relationships with some of their kids. I think the main difference is that Thanos, for all his faults, does have some empathy, he does have some sympathetic traits even if they don’t redeem how much of an awful person he was. Ego has none of that. Ego squanders any sympathy he could have gained by being utterly unrepentant and casual about his misdeeds, which include slaughtering his other children and killing Peter’s mother despite claiming to have loved her dearly. At least Thanos openly wept at what he did to Gamora, at least he felt sadness,  guilt, and regret. Ego just doesn’t care. He did it because whatever he really felt for Meredith, there was only one person he could ever truly love: Himself.

In short, Yondu was right: that guy was a jackass.

#Psycho Analysis #Ego #Guardians of the Galaxy #Marvel #MCU

[koshofthevorlons]

The Bad, the annoying, and just plain wrong Sailor Moon Fanon

Given Sailor Moon was released back during the early 90s and the ...issues the American dubbing had, a whole lot of fanon has sprung up about the series. Some of it is good and some of it is incredibly bad -- though this most often shows up in crossovers. Years ago, I made up a list of some of the most common misconceptions which I stumbled over and figured it might worth posting here.

--

Crystal Tokyo

The Senshi going out of their way to make sure Crystal Tokyo will come about.

People in the 30th century are obeying Usagi because the alternatives are freezing to death or being exiled into the far reaches of space. The only people “exiled” where criminals, such as the mass murderer who eventually became Wiseman/Death Phantom.

Usagi using mind control to set herself up as Queen of the World. Both sides in the future state she was elected to her position in the future of Crystal Tokyo by the population of the world. Which yes, is unrealistic but it is shojou manga and it is worth considering what Usagi brings to the position: she’s a neigh immortal God-queen who freely gave people millennia long lifespans, access to ancient lunarian supertech, and the knowledge that when the local eldritch abomination appeared, she would be there to kick its butt. Her extremely positive reputation with various galactic powers was merely the cherry on top of all that.

Utopian and dystopia Crystal Tokyo. There is still crime in Crystal Tokyo and people are still capable of being petty and selfish creatures. It's a better world but it isn't perfect. Some of the few examples shown people outside the future versions of the cast in Crystal Tokyo are kids who bullied Chibi-Usa and snobby politicians.

Usagi/Neo-Queen Serenity

Power hungry Usagi. Her stated dream at the start of the series is being a bride and house-wife. She constantly goes on about people’s right to make their own decisions and at the end of the Dark Kingdom arc in the manga, turns down the chance to crown herself.

Usagi being an force of stasis. At the end of the series, Usagi flat-out states the need for there to be change and growth in the universe, no matter how painful that it might be at times. That at times fighting was necessary for a better future. Of how the end of a war would lead to hope for the future and how it was all part of a balance.

Usagi as some type of valley-girl or crybaby post-series. Please, give the girl some credit. She beat back several demonic invasions, saved the world several times and managed to redeem an enemy that had supposedly wiped out all life in the galaxy/universe depending on whether you're using the manga or anime. Not to mention several times going to what was certain death for her, but doing so anyway. Hell in the manga, Usagi is shown through the series growing into a highly charismatic leader and skilled fighter. And even in the anime, she is shown growing at least some.

Usagi as some insensitive clod who's incapable of being charismatic. One of Usagi's strongest traits in both the manga and anime is her incredibly sensitive to people's feeling and ability to sway people’s hearts. This is the same girl who would eventually be elected by the world's population to lead them into a new future and had such a force of presence that she managed to redeem an enemy that had supposedly wiped out all life in the galaxy/universe.

The spamming of the Ginzuishou in a anime inspired story. Manga's understandable since it had no consequences. But in the anime she only used it at full power against Death Phantom and Metallia and once in the R movie. The anime emphasized the Ginzuishou would kill her if she used it. She had three one-time saves saving her life every-time. She had plot armor for the sake of the first arc because they thought the series would end with that episode and she wished to go back to being a normal girl as she lay dying. In R she and Chibi-Usa's wish to protect each other canceled out the effects. The third time, Fiore gave up his life to save her. Each time the senshi warned her she would die from the crystal if she used it. Yet she accepted it anyway.

Senshi

Guns can hurt the senshi. Anime shows the Senshi being bulletproof while the manga!senshi are blatantly superhuman.

The girls lives entire lives being wrapped up in their role as Senshi or the idea of Crystal Tokyo. ALL of girls are shown to have actual lives and dreams completely outside of their duties of being a Senshi.

The senshi all showing up to fight some no-name canon fodder. The senshi have only been together once during a whole fight and that was with Nehellenia. During S, Pluto died before Saturn appeared. The inners and outers are constantly separated and the outers tend to have their own lives to live. 

Minako, Rei or Makoto giving up Usagi for some guy who happens to come by. In the manga, the inners all pledged to each other that no matter what happens Usagi would always come first and that boys would come later because she was so precious to them.

The Senshi betraying Usagi out of their own free will. The girls have repeatedly proven willingness to die for Usagi when the chips are down. Even more importantly in the Dark Kingdom arc, when they all believed that Sailor Venus was actually Princess Serenity, their loyalty was still first and foremost to Usagi.

Haruka being super masculine. In the manga she was androgynous and enjoys both male and female outfits. Following her gender being revealed, she generally wore feminine clothing and has been show to enjoy wearing short skirts. Also, she is is canonically stated to be bisexual.

The Senshi being unwilling to kill human opponents. In the manga, the Senshi usually ended up brutally murdering their enemies. In comparison, the anime has the majority of the enemies being either mind controlled or manipulated by an outside force, but even in the anime, they were willing to kill if necessary.

Mamoru being a pedophile. In the manga, there is only a three years difference, with Mamoru seventeen years old vs Usagi's fourteen years old. In Japan, fourteen years was very much legal as the age of consent was thirteen in the Tokyo region at the time the series was being written. With marriageable age thirteen for girls and sixteen for boys with parental consent.

Mamoru being willing to betray Usagi. They are engaged by the end of the series and happily married by the end of the manga. They are quite content with each other and even in the anime where Mamoru has often acted like an ass too her he's almost always had the reason that his generally being mind control during this time of the week.

Chibiusa's hair color came from nowhere. Ikuko, Usagi's mother and Chibiusa's grandmother in the manga has pink hair.

The Senshi simply being magic users who happen to be able to draw upon a planets mana. They are literal avatar of that planet's spirit made flesh. A Senshi is born when a Sailor Crystal nest inside a newly formed planet. And are the ones affected when something happens to their planet. As long as a Senshi exists in some form their planet, star, moon, asteroid etc has a chance to be reborn at a future date. The only senshi for whom this is not true is Usagi. Instead, her starseed is implied to have been a piece of the starseed represents the universe...

Pluto/Setsuna

Setsuna as some figure of of absolute order and/or stasis. Sailor Pluto is the 'Solider of Change AND Revolution.

Pluto using Space-Time Door as the "TV of Time.” She does not possess the ability to watch events through it. The Space-Time Door’s  purpose is time travel, nothing more.

Setsuna as a some ice princess. In canon, she is a lonely woman who loves her Princess, her closest friend is Chibi-Usa, and she considers the Outers to be her family. She has dreams (to be a fashion designer) and fears (Cockroaches). She is not some manipulative shrew but instead a person who has a job that leaves her distant and with trouble relating to other people.

Pluto manipulating events to create Crystal Tokyo or purposely killing thousands. Her job is to stop time travelers from abusing the time stream. She remained guarding the doors through the fall of the Silver Millennium, the canonical restart of evolution on Earth, and all the way into the 30th century. Pluto only left after she died trying to reach Chibi-Usa while she was Black Lady. The only reason that she was able to have a life outside of her duty is due to Neo-Queen Serenity reincarnating her backwards in time so that there are two versions that currently her existing. Her older self-guarding the Space-Time Door and the younger one living with the Outers.

Chaos, its spawn and various servants

Beryl as a super-important person during the Silver Millennium.  She was a maid and small-time witch/sorceress who made a deal with the local eldritch abomination sealed way in the sun.

Wiseman being anywhere close to that of a good guy or even neutral entity. Death Phantom is a Cosmic Horror born from the root of all evil in SM-Verse.

The Black Moon family being freedom fighters against the tyranny of Crystal Tokyo. Their ancestors are flat-out stated to be religious nuts who thought that the infinite power of the Ginzuishou and its ability to give people eternal youth went against God's will. They  willingly fled to Nemesis after being told by Wiseman they could gain they could power and are implied to be responsible for transforming the planet into the living hell it became. The very first actions that people of Nemesis took when they returned to Earth was to kill countless innocent people without mercy by bombing planet and using poison gases on civilians simply because they believed long life went against god. Both sides also state the Black Moon's goals were only about their hostility toward people’s lifespan and later, to try to take over earth.

Chaos representing “just a little chaos" or serving as a “force of change/growth.”  Chaos in Sailor Moon canon hearkens back to Chaoskampf of older myths. It is a primordial force of nothingness and destruction, which predates the Big Bang and is still salty about the universe existing. Every terrible thing, every planet destroyed, every life lost in the SM-verse all lead back to it. Chaos was behind the corruption of Galaxia, and Metallia, Death Phantom, Tau Ceti were all incarnations of it.

The Dark Kingdom only targeted Tokyo. They mind controlled everyone in China during Sailor V and it was her efforts to stop them got Venus so famous famous as Sailor V.

Misc

Calling the 'Space-Time Door' the Gates of Time.

There is no Juuban ward. Azubu Juuban is a neighborhood in the Azabu district of the Minato ward. It even says they live in Minato is volume one of the manga.  

Anime "purification" is mind control. It is repeatedly shown as the process of outside forces leaving the victim’s body. Whatever that purification is it ISN'T about enslaving people to one monochrome will, something that the Senshi's enemies often did and what they fought against tooth and nail against. It is the realization you can be yourself AND stand strong with others. And if you don't like it you are free to leave or return but not find strength and purpose in hurting others.

#Bishoujo Sailor Moon #fandom salt #bad fanon #the internet exists #not that hard to do the research now #my thoughts #source: koshofthevorlons

[joyful-soul-collector]

About Me

I was tagged by @theswordofpens! I started a new post for this cuz the other one was getting hella long with reblogs lol. Anyway, let’s get on to the questions!

How tall are you?

5′7 or 170.18cm

What color and style is your hair?

That is a debated topic actually. My hair is dyed bright blue, but the natural parts of it people can never decide if it’s black or dark brown. In the summer sun, it’s dark brown, but it’s not always summer and I’m inside 90% of the time, so it looks black very often. So really depends on the lighting of the situation. Though people tend to focus more on the fact that my hair is blue rather than what color the natural parts are lol. My hair is a pretty basic short haircut, short on the sides, little longer on top, a bit of bangs that get in my eyes sometimes. 

What color are your eyes?

Again, debated topic, and for the same reason as my hair. Sometimes dark brown, sometimes black, depends on the light. 

Do you wear glasses?

Yep! They’re red on the inside and black on the outside. 

Do you wear braces?

Yeah, my family was finally able to get me braces a while ago! I guess most kids get them when they’re younger, before their teeth have the chance to get worse, and they only have to have them on for a year or so? But we were only able to get them when I entered sophomore year of high school, so I have to have them for three years since my teeth had gotten so bad. They’re a lot better now, and hopefully I’ll be able to get them off before I go to community college 😅

What’s your fashion sense?

Does fandom nerd count as a category of fashion? I wear a lot of shirts with references to tv shows. All of my shirts have some sort of graphic on it, and I also have a couple zip-up hoodies that are tv show references. I also wear bright red sneakers every day, big bright red headphones that I wear every day, and a wallet chain that I wear every day. So all of that, combined with bright blue hair, seems to make for a... noticeable person haha. 

What is your full name?

Marko Polo

(Nice try, I’m not saying personal stuff on here haha)

Where were you born?

Not gonna say exactly where, but in the more southern part of California. 

Where are you from and where do you live now?

Alright, so technically I’m from a few different places. I was born in southern CA and lived there til I was 8, then we moved to super north-western WA where I lived until I was almost 13, and then we moved to central PA, where we celebrated my 13th birthday like a week after arriving. I’ve lived here in PA ever since, so that’s five years here in a couple months. 

What school do you go to?

A High School

What kind of student are you?

I’m an alright student? I struggle with school, especially with all the moving I’ve had to do. Different schools have different expectations and vary in a lot of ways. I also have ADHD (more inattentive, less hyperactive) and Anxiety, which has not exactly been a help haha. I’ve always needed tutors and extensions and my 504 Plan, but if I have those I can often get good grades!

Do you like school?

School is meh. It’s stressful and exhausting, which is frustrating because I have other stuff I want do outside school, but I can’t do half of it because I have hw and chores and any other random things that need to get done. But my school is very high quality compared to most public schools! We have so many resources and amazing classes, and I love attending there, but unfortunately the people are not my favorite. Most of them are rich kids who have never attended anything other than really fancy schools, so they often take what they have for granted. I’ve heard kids say ��our school is trash” while sitting in our Forensic Science class, in front of a school issued computer that we get to take home every day. It bothers me to NO END how some of these people act, but oh well. 

Favorite subject?

English! English has always been my favorite subject, I love stories. 

Favorite TV shows?

Ohhhhhhh man here we go (in no particular order): Firefly, Dollhouse, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Demon Slayer, Legend of Korra, My Hero Academia, Sense8, Sherlock, Death Note, Lovesick, One Punch Man, Series of Unfortunate Events, The Good Place, Galavant, Parks and Rec, The Office, iZombie, Kill la Kill, Community, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, The Umbrella Academy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Naruto, Batman The Animated Series, Travelers, Sex Education, Cells at Work, Death Parade, The Promised Neverland, RWBY

Tbh there might be more but those are the ones I could find haha. If you haven’t seen these, watch em, pretend this is a rec list, and then come and yell at me about how good they are. 

Favorite movies?

Again, here we go (in no particular order): The Iron Giant, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Cabin in the Woods, any and all MCU movies (but especially Spider-Man), Into The Spider-Verse, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, anything Bo Burnham, anything John Mulaney, James Acaster: Repertoire, The Prestige, The Usual Suspects, Planet of the Apes, Lars and the Real Girl, Her, Newsies, Baby Driver, Serenity, Liar Liar, Crazy Stupid Love, Bandersnatch, ARQ, Cloverfield, A Silent Voice, Klaus, How To Train Your Dragon, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

There are definitely more, I just couldn’t think of them haha. Again, watch these, and then come and freak out with me about how they’re amazing. 

Favorite books?

Let’s do this one last time (in no particular order, of course): Ready Player One, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter, the Gone series, Saga, Sweet Tooth, Chew, Nimona, The Tea Dragon Society, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Lumberjanes, Invincible, Runaways, Calvin and Hobbes, Prince and the Dressmaker, Here, Plutona, Sculptor, Invincible, The Sword, Ultimate Spider-Man, Holes, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, The Giver

There are definitely, 100% more books that I haven’t listed, again, I can’t think of them rn. Also, if you don’t recognize half of these titles, you probably don’t read comics/graphic novels. You should be reading those. Read them and then come and rant about how good they are so I get to tell you I told you so. 

Favorite past time?

Writing! Watching tv! Reading! Spacing out so much people have to say my name ten times before I come hurtling back to earth! Talking to friends!

Do you have any regrets?

Yeah, I wish I’d stood up for myself when I was younger. I was bullied for a really long time, and even though it’s been a couple years since the last I was bullied, it’s still really hard for me to tell people what I want and and don’t want. I think I’m a little better than I used to be though, which is good!

What’s your dream job?

Author definitely, but I doubt I’ll be able to do that for a real job. Tbh I just want a job that I can do in my sleep. Repetitive, pays well, not too exhausting, that way I have energy and time to do my writing and all the things I want to do at home. 

Would you like to be married?

I think so. I want to have a person I can live my life with, who I want to care for and who wants to care for me. If I’m not married I’d like an S.O. or even just a really good friend to live with. I think I’d get sad living by myself haha. 

Do you want kids?

I want to be a foster parent! I’ve loved helping people my whole life, and I think this is one of the best ways that I can help someone going through a rough time. I don’t want biological kids though tbh, not really for any one reason, just for a bunch of little ones. 

How many?

Dunno man. I wanna help as many kids as I can. 

Do you like shopping?

I do! However I don’t do it often because I have no money. I do like walking around stores and looking a cool stuff though, especially nerdy stores like Hot Topic or Boxed Lunch or any book/comic shop. 

What countries have you visited?

Canada, usually to visit family, once to see Niagara Falls! Never been anywhere else though, but I have a whole list of places I wanna see

Scariest nightmare you’ve ever had?

TW: SELF HARM/DEATH

Oof, see my dreams are always nightmares, and my nightmares are always hella terrifying. Often they’re of my worst fears: family telling me they hate me, finding the body of someone in my family, old bullies coming back, but in my worst one I found my little sister cutting herself in an old warehouse. I don’t actually remember much of what happened after I woke up, it was so bad I disassociated for the whole day. But luckily, I don’t dream often. 

Do you have any enemies?

No? Maybe? I have people I hate, my old bullies mainly, but I’m not around them anymore so it’s not like I spend time hating them. 

Do you have any self doubts?

Yeah I have this hilariously fun thing where I think everyone is just pretending to like me because they can’t pick up the courage to stop hanging out with me. Or that if I talk about what’s making me sad/stressed out then I’m being a burden on other people or being dramatic. Slowly working over that but it’s still hard. 

Do you have any significant others?

Nope

Do you believe in miracles?

Depends. I don’t believe in fate or the idea that something higher up is pulling strings. But I think crazy cool stuff can happen. But that’s just luck and coincidence. For me, miracles are the positive ends of luck and coincidence. 

How are you?

Meeeeehhhhh. School sucks, my sisters stress me out, and my parents are breathing down my neck about fifty different things. But I have a couple good friends and my writing and good stories to read and watch, so it’s not all bad :]

Tag ten tumblrs (tag last ten people in my notifications): @tracle0 @humblesavant @holystudenthologramy @federluftmask @phahbiyah @topazastral @dragon-s-bane @cassius-mortemer @saiko-tsuki @writing-another-star

#tag game #about me