#another variant not like. a final design | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

comicaurora · 6 months ago

Note

Just saw the announcement about Heartwood Coven, and I'm super excited!

I know that when you're exploring a genre, either for the first time, or just the first time in a while, sometimes inspirations for new Trope Talks emerge, and as a fan of spaces adjacent to Magical Girl media (Kamen Rider, mostly, but Ultraman, Super Sentai/Power Rangers, and Garo also exist, just to scratch the surface), I honestly find it kind of difficult to think of any tropes in the space that don't just devolve into little trivia factoids, or a 'Yup, that sure is a thing they do!', despite being in the space for decades. But I also know you have a keener eye for media tropes than I personally do.

So, all that is to ask, are there any tropes in that space that have caught your attention recently? This isn't even specifically asking about a potential future video, just in general.

The ingredients for a Sentai/Magical Girl story are very distinctive, especially when compared to other superhero genres!

Comes As A Set! Everyone in a thematic team has acquired their powers the same way, and the powers are very minor variants off of each other - one character might have The Specialest Version where their powers are strongest and their heart is Most Pure, but everyone else will be running at the same power level with almost no specialization. This sounds obvious, but almost no other superhero team does this. Even the X-Men, whose powers are all Being Mutants, come across as a seriously varied menagerie with wildly disparate power levels. Everyone being The Same Thing In A Different Color is pretty unique to this space!

Monster Of The Week: Not the only genre this appears in, but one of the only spaces where it's straight-up down to a science. The big bad of a series like this will only make a real appearance in the grand season finale. Until then, the team will be fighting their lieutenants' minions at a rate of one per episode. The big bad doesn't even usually deign to make the minions themselves, since they're much too busy standing in their recycled animation evil lair. The minions will have unique gimmicks, but will share similar levels of thematic and structural closeness with one another that the heroes do - they'll all be kaiju, or walking evil spells, or disgruntled citizens gifted thematically inconvenient superpowers. Where are these minions coming from? Sometimes the answer is "they cook em up at home" and sometimes it's "they corrupt innocent people so the heroes have to go nonlethal." It doesn't make much difference in the execution, so it's mostly dealer's choice.

So Many Wonderful Toys! These heroes aren't afraid to accessorize, and the merchandising department also says we have to. When the formula needs mixing up, just give someone a new weapon or vehicle or mech or powerup macguffin. And unless you're only giving the upgrade to the Designated Specialest Pure Of Heart one, make sure to bring enough for the rest of the team, because this is a good way to bring in a round of powerups for everyone and give them some new stock animations to reuse every episode!

There's Only One Way To Win And It's Teamwork. My personal gripe with a lot of these stories is that, by nature of the formula, the characters usually end up becoming largely interchangeable in a fight, because nobody is allowed to win before they do the Big Finisher they always use. And if the Big Finisher is "the most specialest pure of heart character remembers their job and blasts them with the Friendship Laser" that means the rest of the gang is basically on minion-punching duty and repeating "no way! my attack had no effect?!" Every fight has to run through everyone's big canned moves, usually one at a time, and since none of them will do any appreciable damage then they'll combine their giant robots or wait for the leader to bust out the Friendship Cannon and the fight will be over. I think this one's genuinely kind of a weakness of the format; it's pretty rare for a single non-leader character to get a day in the limelight or end up having the exact ability the week's bad guy is allergic to. Nobody gets an individual chance to shine unless the writers intentionally break the formula to make it happen.

The Sixth Ranger! You thought your team of five color-coordinated thematically linked cool guys was complete, but surprise! There are more colors/planets/dinosaurs than just the starting five, and some powerfull badass with unknown morals and a frightening reputation has just turned up wearing your team's matching outfit! Because the team comp is so ironclad compared to other superhero formats, this is always very disruptive and kind of a big shakeup that could restructure the whole status quo, unlike in typical superhero teams where individual attendance is optional and it's not a dealbreaker whether or not Wolverine is in this week.

And Your Friend Steve: someone's will they/won't they significant other is constantly hanging around the fights, in or out of a secret identity of their own, and their main contribution is to get kidnapped by the big bad, brainwashed by the big bad, or kidnapped and then brainwashed by the big bad. Outside of their busy schedule their main narrative role is to reinforce the Secret Identity concept that would otherwise risk slipping out of relevance. It's easier to remember your identity is supposed to be secret when Your Friend Steve keeps turning up at fights.

Bumbling Minions, Serious Boss - this is just an observation on my end, but it's quite common for the villain's crew of lieutenants to be somewhat more comedic than the main Big Bad - whether they're just a couple wacky minions or the comedy comes from how flustered they get when they inevitably lose, comedy is derived from them experiencing the wrath of their evil boss after the good guys win. But all this levity drains away as the lieutenants get whittled down and the finale approaches, and even if the villain has seemed clownish in the safe confines of their lair, when they actually go on the warpath and become the main present threat, they stop being funny entirely. Or, failing that, they get usurped by a new, worse villain, and they become the cartoonish lieutenant to the new guy. Villain chains of command get complicated.

The magical girl equivalent of the shonen anime Super Saiyan transformations is Pretty Dresses. The escalating ornate-ness of a magical girl's Pretty Dress corresponds one-to-one to the Bigness and Glowiness of a Super Saiyan's hair and reflects the reality-warping power contained within. Sailor Moon in a lacey bridal gown with gauzey diaphenous wings and a tiara is the kind of threat Goku would save in his contacts as "new sparring partner"

#asks #not aurora #trope stuff

322 notes · View notes

swiftyangx12 · 6 months ago

Text

Continuity Crossover!

[D/N] = Designation (Your name)

Cybertronian![Reader]

TFA!Optimus Prime: What’s it like working with other me?

TFP![D/N]: He’s someone who carries the weight on his shoulders. A bot who wants to bring not only justice; also wanting peace return back after the war between Autobots and Decepticons. Especially while we’re trying to revive our Cybertron back to life.

TFA!Optimus Prime: “Hm. Hopefully, that’s possible for my universe.” I don’t want to bother you with more questions about your leader, but what was he like before the war?

TFP![D/N]: Well, he was similar like you. He was able to laugh, smile, doing anything before receiving his title and the Matrix. I still remember times we hung out together after finishing the breems of our old jobs. One time, my Optimus was nervous asking me out.

TFA!Optimus Prime: Ask out you? You two courted.

TFP![D/N]: That sounds outdated, but yeah. Then, rest is history.

TFA!Optimus Prime: *Sudden realization* Wait a nano-klik, are you two…

TFP![D/N]: Conjunxed? Yes. Some don’t know but others knew. We try to be discreet with our relationship and still find ways to spend time together (via missions and stuff). Don’t you have someone waiting for you?

TFA!Optimus Prime: Not really. Not since I came to Earth with my team.

TFP![D/N]: Then, if you happen to see another me in your universe, don’t be afraid to connect with them.

“I’m sure they’ll find you charming.”

[Back on TFA Cybertron]

[Finally, TFA!Optimus found TFP![D/N]’s variant.]

TFA!Optimus Prime: *Feeling a little nervous* Hi, I’m Optimus Prime.

TFA![D/N]: Oh! You’re the one who’s been protecting Earth. Heard you kicked some serious aft against the ‘Cons.

TFA!Optimus Prime: Yes, that’s true, but I’m not the only one. I have a team where we help people and stopping the Decepticons.

TFA![D/N]: Hmm…Honest, polite, and you seem to be the rare type of mech I’d like to know more about.

TFA!Optimus Prime: Really? I mean, this seems too fast and I don’t want to make this awkward.

TFA![D/N]: It’s alright. We can take things slow. How about we share comm links, if that’s alright?

TFA!Optimus Prime: Yes, that would be wonderful.

[The two share each other’s links.]

TFA![D/N]: I need to go somewhere. Contact me when you want to hang out.

TFA!Optimus Prime: Yeah, I’ll stay in touch.

[Another pair forming…]

[(A/N)]: I don’t know what I wrote, but I needed it out of my system.

#Transformers #Transformers Prime #TFP #Transformers Animated #TFA #TFP x TFA #Crossover #TFA Optimus Prime #Optimus Prime #Optimus Prime x reader #Cybertronian!Reader #Autobot!Reader #Transformers x reader #TF x reader

167 notes · View notes

thirtysomethingloser92 · 1 month ago

Text

Chapter 1: I Know I’m Not the Only One Who Ever Felt This Way.

Summary: Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter is a shattered man, once again confined to Riviera Psychiatric Institution. Stripped of his badge, his purpose, and anything resembling peace, he spends his days in a numb routine—therapy sessions, meds, silence. The walls close in a little more every day.

Then there’s you.

The chaotic variant who crash-landed into his life with bad coffee, sharp eyes, and a mouth that didn’t know how to shut up. You, who sat across from him like you’d known him for years. You, who didn’t flinch at his name or the weight of his past. You, who on that first day out of his room, made him feel something—for the first time in a long time.

Thrown together in group therapy, shared rec hours, and whispered conversations through thin walls, the two of you form an unlikely alliance. Over time, that threadbare connection deepens—into something volatile, raw, and painfully real. A bond forged in shared fractures and quiet defiance, one that spans across years.

Before the world dragged him back into the darkness, there was this: two broken people in a broken place, finding a strange kind of clarity in each other.

Warnings: Slow-Burn, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Swearing, Violence, Flashbacks, Fluff, Smut. Pairings: Benjamin 'Dex' Poindexter/Reader.

Masterlist:

Chapter 1. “She wasn’t supposed to be there—too calm, too steady for a place built to hold fractured minds like his. But when she sat across from him in that flickering, too-bright rec room and spoke like she actually cared, something in him shifted. For the first time since everything fell apart, he wondered if maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t beyond saving."

The first time Benjamin Poindexter stepped out of his room, the pale yellow walls greeted him like a sickly ghost, their muted hue soaking up what little light seeped through the flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead. The corridor stretched out before him, sterile and uninviting, the air heavy with a cocktail of antiseptic, stale coffee, and something faintly metallic that made his throat tighten. It had been almost two weeks since they’d discharged him from the hospital—a fact he couldn’t forget, though he’d rather have erased it.

Two weeks since they’d broken his spine open like a puzzle and pieced it back together, courtesy of Dr. Kenji Oyama. A miracle worker, they called him. Dex wasn’t so sure. His body worked now, sure. He could stand, walk, move—things he hadn’t been sure he’d ever do again. But something about his movements felt...off. Almost mechanical, like his spine wasn’t really his anymore, but some borrowed thing keeping him upright out of pity.

For those two weeks, he hadn’t left his room. The orderlies came like clockwork, always the same routine. A knock that was more a formality than a courtesy, followed by the grating scrape of the door as it opened. They’d shuffle in, balancing a plastic tray with food he barely touched. The tray was a dull gray, the kind of gray that seemed intent on draining any appetite he might have had. The bright orange fork and spoon they handed him were the final insult—flimsy, rubbery plastic that bent under the slightest pressure. They weren’t utensils; they were mockeries, designed to remind him that he wasn’t trusted not to hurt himself—or anyone else.

Then came the meds. Three tiny, clear plastic cups, set down methodically on the small metal table beside his bed. Four brightly colored pills in one, two plain white ones in another, and two small blue ones in the last. A Styrofoam cup of water was placed beside them, the kind that squeaked unpleasantly when touched. Always the same large orderly watched him, arms crossed over his chest, expression unreadable but tense. Dex hated the way the man’s eyes lingered on him, like he was waiting for something to happen. Something violent.

And Dex hated that he understood why.

He’d swallow the pills, one by one, the bitter taste lingering on his tongue no matter how much water he used to wash them down. And then the orderly would leave, the door snapping shut behind him with a finality that made Dex’s chest tighten. He didn’t know if the sound was worse than the whispers.

The walls weren’t thick enough to keep out the murmurs of the nurses stationed just outside his door. They tried to keep their voices down, but Dex’s hearing had always been sharp—sharper than most people’s, even before everything had gone to hell. He heard every word. He heard how they whispered about the news, the things he had done; the former FBI agent turned serial killer.

Their words weren’t new. He’d heard it all before—in courtrooms, in news reports, in his own head. But here, in this place where the walls felt like they were closing in on him, it hit differently. It burrowed deep, sinking into his skin, into his bones. He wanted to scream at them, to tell them they didn’t know him, not really.

But he didn’t. He stayed silent, staring at the ceiling until the whispers faded into the white noise of his own thoughts. The psychologist’s name was Jane. She introduced herself with a smile that was too kind, too practiced. She sat across from him once a day, clipboard balanced on her lap, her pen poised and ready to scribble down whatever breakthrough she thought she might coax out of him.

“Benjamin,” she’d start, her tone soft but firm. “Can we talk today?”

But Dex wasn’t interested in talking. Not to her. Not to anyone. He barely looked at her, his eyes fixed on the wall behind her as she asked her carefully crafted questions.

“How are you feeling today?” “Have you been sleeping?” “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

He didn’t answer. Not at first. What was the point? Every question felt like a trap, every smile a lie. Jane might have been good at her job, but she was no different from the others. She saw him as a case study, a puzzle to solve. A serial killer with a tragic backstory.

He wasn’t up for it. He wasn’t up for anything, really, except sleeping. Sleeping he could do.

The day he finally stepped out of his room, the corridor felt impossibly long. His legs felt heavy, his steps awkward and unsure. The linoleum floor squeaked under his shoes, each step echoing louder than it should have. The air felt thicker out here, weighed down by the muffled sounds of the rec room at the end of the hall.

He could hear voices—patients talking, laughing, arguing—but it all sounded like it was coming from underwater. Even the colors around him seemed muted, like someone had drained the vibrancy out of the world. His own mind felt dull, like it was wrapped in cotton. He was so tired. He’d barely made it halfway down the hall before he considered turning back. Maybe he should. Maybe the whispers and the psychologist and the flimsy plastic cutlery were better than this.

The rec room was a sensory assault. The smell hit him first—a mix of disinfectant, burnt coffee, and something stale that he couldn’t quite place. The TV in the corner was encased in a thick plastic box, the screen tuned to some mindless game show. A handful of patients sat around it, their expressions vacant as they watched the garish colors and exaggerated laughter flicker across the screen.

Behind a large desk, nurses and an orderly sat, their chatter low but punctuated with occasional bursts of laughter. They barely glanced at him as he entered, too busy typing away at their computers or making notes on patient charts.

The rest of the room was a patchwork of faded colors and tired clichés. A bookshelf stood against one wall, its shelves filled with dusty paperbacks and outdated magazines. Posters hung crookedly on the walls, their edges curling with age. “Do what makes you happy,” one read, the words splashed across an image of a sunset. Dex felt his jaw tighten. Happy? In a place like this, the poster felt more like a joke—or an insult.

He counted seven people in the room. One sat by the window, their lips moving silently as they read from a tattered book. Another was slouched in a chair near the TV, mumbling under their breath. A nurse was locked in a heated argument with a man who gestured wildly, his voice rising as he demanded a cigarette break.

And then there was the one sitting alone at a table near the far corner of the room. Their arms were crossed over their chest, one foot swinging absently as they stared at something only they could see. They didn’t glance up as Dex entered, didn’t seem to notice him at all.

As soon as he stepped inside, he felt the shift. The air grew colder, his skin prickling with goosebumps. He could feel their eyes on him, the way they flicked toward him and then darted away, their curiosity barely masked by fear. They knew who he was. They always knew.

Dex clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. He hated this—the looks, the whispers, the suffocating weight of their judgment. He hated the way they looked at him like he was a bomb waiting to go off. And maybe he was.

But not today .

He lowered himself into a chair by the large window, the metal legs screeching faintly against the linoleum floor. His movements were cautious, deliberate, as if the chair might collapse beneath him. Across from him at the other table, the older man with the dog-eared book didn’t even look up, his lips still moving silently as he read. Dex’s gaze drifted outside, to the courtyard below.

The view wasn’t much to look at—just a patch of tired green grass bordered by concrete, a picnic table, a single tree standing pathetically in the middle. It looked like it was trying to grow leaves, brittle branches reaching skyward, but it couldn’t quite manage. The sun poured over it in soft, golden light, warm against the cool bite of an autumn afternoon. The sight should have been peaceful, but instead, it felt hollow. Like the tree, this place was trying to grow something it couldn’t. Trying, and failing.

This was his life now.

The thought hit him like a punch to the chest, stealing his breath for a moment. This—this sterile room with its curling posters and its whispers, this chair that felt too small, this view of a dying tree—this was it. The sum total of his choices. The end result of his crimes. He’d put himself here. No one else. He could try to blame Fisk, try to pin it on circumstance or bad luck, but deep down he knew better. Every step he’d taken, every bullet he’d fired, had led him to this moment.

He’d tried to be good once. Tried to keep the chaos in his head locked away where it couldn’t hurt anyone. For years, he’d done it. Found routine. Found calm. It was like walking a tightrope every day, but he’d managed. Until Wilson Fisk. Until the prisoner transfer, when he’d pulled the trigger and everything changed.

Fisk had seen him for what he was—broken, dangerous, useful—and he’d sunk his claws in. And Dex had let him. No one had ever looked at him the way Fisk did, like he was indispensable. Like he was needed. And Dex had craved that. Needed it. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew that was where it had all gone wrong. That desperate, gnawing need to feel wanted, to feel like he mattered.

His hands curled into fists on the table, his knuckles white. For the first time, he thought about how good it had felt. Pulling the trigger. Taking those lives. The Albanians. The journalists. The pastor. Nadeem. Each one a bullet, each one a moment of clarity in the storm of his mind. The realization made his stomach twist, but he couldn’t deny it. For once, the chaos had quieted.

His spiraling thoughts were interrupted by a voice.

“So, the coffee’s not great, but in this place? You take what you can get,” a voice said casually from across the table.

Dex’s eyes snapped upward like a reflex, his entire body going taut. The words were unexpected—too clear, too familiar in a place muffled by sedation and static. His gaze locked on the source: you, sitting comfortably with a Styrofoam cup cradled in your hands, steam curling lazily from the rim as you slid another one over in front of him.

He didn’t recognize you. You weren’t one of the ones who muttered to themselves or stared slack-jawed at the linoleum. You weren’t twitchy or glassy-eyed. You looked... disturbingly normal. Calm, even. Like you belonged in a café, not here.

And yet here you were—talking to him.

He said nothing. Just narrowed his eyes a fraction, reading you like a threat.

Unbothered, you kept going. “If you’re really aiming to improve your odds around here, you should befriend the night nurse. Sue. You’ll know her when you see her. She’s got this 'I hate my job but I still bake for group therapy' vibe. Smile at her, and you might score an extra blanket or something. Little things. They help.”

You unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it into your mouth, the crinkle of foil slicing through the heavy quiet of the rec room. A deliberate snap followed, the kind of sound that demanded attention just enough to be annoying.

Dex blinked. Not from surprise—but from the sheer audacity of how normal you were behaving. There was nothing calculated in your movements, nothing rehearsed. Just someone talking. Too easily. Too close.

Who the hell were you?

His stare must’ve tightened, because your lips curled at the edges in something halfway to amusement.

“You’ve got that look,” you said, gesturing vaguely in his direction with your cup. “Like you’re trying to figure out who I am and why the hell I’m talking to you. Am I close?”

Still, he didn’t answer. But the tilt of his head was answer enough.

You took that as permission to keep going, introducing yourself with a name and a shrug, “I’m just a regular weirdo with too much time and not enough sense to shut up. But you looked like you were about five seconds from disappearing into your own head. I figured I'd intercept.”

Dex’s jaw clenched. Company? He didn’t need company. He didn’t need you. He opened his mouth to tell you as much—but the words stopped just short of spilling out. They froze, heavy and foreign in his throat. There was something about your voice. The way you looked at him—not with fear, not even with curiosity. Just presence. Unflinching. Unconcerned.

And that was the unsettling part. You weren’t afraid of him.

Everyone else in here was. They might not say it out loud, but it hung in the air when he entered the room, when the nurses or the orderlies knocked on his door—fear, or worse, pity. Neither ever sat right with him. But you? You just sipped bad coffee and popped your gum like he was any other broken thing in the building.

And still, he didn’t move.

He didn’t get up. Didn’t shut you down. Instead, he found himself staring at the Styrofoam cup in front of him, the thin coffee scent mixing with the sharp tang of disinfectant and fraying nerves.

“You don’t talk much, huh?” you asked. No judgment. Just an observation.

He didn’t answer. You shrugged, “That’s fine. I can talk enough for both of us.”

He glanced back at you, frowning slightly. “Why?”

You raised an eyebrow. “Why what?”

“Why are you talking to me?” His voice was rough—unused, cracked at the edges.

You studied him for a moment, your gaze steady, unbothered by the way he barely looked at you—except you knew he was. Watching. Listening. Assessing.

“Because I can,” you said finally, voice low but even. “Because you look like you’re one more thought away from imploding. And because this place eats people alive if they sit in the corner thinking about every shitty thing they’ve ever done.”

Dex didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Something in him shifted—not softened, not yet—but tilted slightly, like a door left ajar. The silence between you wasn’t cold anymore. It was different. Curious. Almost… tentative.

And then you smiled.

It wasn’t wide or bright or performative like the paper-thin grins plastered on the nurses’ faces. It didn’t sell hope. It didn’t sell anything. It just was.

Dex’s throat worked as he swallowed, eyes flicking to your mouth as you popped another gum bubble between your teeth. Then, without thinking much of it, he picked up his Styrofoam cup and took a small sip. The coffee was bitter, burned, and vaguely metallic. He grimaced—barely—but said nothing. He wasn’t in the habit of complaining anymore. Not when he’d burned through every privilege a man like him could get.

“You’re doing the thing again,” you said suddenly, pointing a lazy finger in his direction.

His brow furrowed. “What thing?”

“The staring-off-into-the-abyss thing,” you said, not unkindly. “Though, I guess in here, that’s half the entertainment.”

Dex let out a short breath—almost a laugh, but not quite. It caught in his chest, unfamiliar. He glanced down at his cup.

“Well,” he muttered, “there’s not really a lot more to do, is there?”

You shrugged like that was fair. “I mean, there’s a courtyard with a sad little tree and a picnic table that clearly hasn’t been replaced since the Bush administration. You can watch mind-numbing television because apparently anything with emotional content is too stimulating for some patients. You can read—though most of the books are so boring they make padded walls look exciting. Or, if you want a real thrill, I’d offer you my puzzle book, but…” you gestured vaguely, “my pencil got confiscated for bad behavior. So you’d have to smuggle your own writing utensil.”

You smiled again, sipping from your cup like the conversation wasn’t straddling that thin line between playful and personal.

Dex tilted his head, mildly intrigued. “Bad behavior?” he echoed.

Your eyes sparkled just enough to be dangerous. “Funnily enough.”

That was all you said. No explanation. No attempt to fill the gap. And for some reason, that made Dex want to know. Not the file version of you—the real one. The gaps, the things you didn’t say. What you’d done. What had earned you the label that now sat on both your shoulders like weighted chains.

He didn’t get the chance to ask. A pair of boots echoed against the floor, and Dex’s gaze shifted just in time to see a male orderly approaching—mid-thirties, buzzed hair, pale skin, and a dark gray uniform that made him look more like security than support staff.

“Harrassing the new patients already, princess?” the orderly drawled as he stopped at your table, hands shoved into his pockets.

Dex stiffened, instinctively taking stock. Tone: casual. Body language: relaxed. History: familiar.

You didn’t even flinch. Just looked up at him with a crooked smirk that spoke of repetition and boredom, not fear. “Just warning him about the asshole with the cheap arm tattoo and the chronic attitude problem,” you said, sipping your coffee. “What, you here to bask in my midday glow?”

Dex’s eyes flicked to the orderly’s arm. Sure enough, a faded ink snake curled around his forearm, badly done. The other man didn’t laugh—he grunted, like someone who'd played this game before.

“I drew the short straw,” the orderly—Josh, apparently—grumbled. “You’ve got Julie today. Two full hours of picking apart your daddy issues. Sound fun?”

You groaned dramatically. “You say that like I don’t already have the script memorized.” Then, after a pause, with a grin: “Admit it, Josh. You just wanted alone time with your favorite headcase.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “You make me want to throw myself down a flight of stairs.”

You stood up, stretching with the casual energy of someone used to being yanked away from whatever passed for peace in this place. “Me first, though, right?” You shot Dex a last glance, draining your cup in one last gulp before setting it down. “If they bring lunch while I’m gone, save me the fruit cups.”

Your eyes lingered on him for half a second longer than they needed to—just enough for Dex to register it. Just enough to feel the brief but undeniable flutter of something warm beneath his ribs. Connection, maybe. Or the ghost of one.

Then you turned, walking off with Josh, your voice fading as the two of you disappeared down the corridor. Josh muttered something under his breath—sarcastic, probably—but Dex couldn’t make it out. His ears were still ringing with your voice.

He watched until you were gone, until the steady rhythm of your steps and that damn bubblegum snap vanished into the white noise of the institution.

His jaw was tight. Not with anger, but tension—wound and unwound in quick succession. It settled deep in the muscle like a cramp he didn’t know how to stretch out. His grip on the Styrofoam cup loosened slightly, the heat still lingering through the thin walls of the cup, grounding him more than it had any right to.

He hated that. That something so small—so insignificant—could feel like an anchor.

His thoughts buzzed, restless. He tried to shove them back into the box he kept for unwanted noise, but they spilled over anyway. Your voice. The way you looked at him without flinching. Like he was human. Like he wasn’t some broken weapon left to rust in the corner.

That was the part that got to him most.

He didn’t trust people. Not the ones in suits. Not the ones with clipboards. Not the ones who told him they could help. Not since the Army, not since the Bureau, definitely not since Fisk. He was done with that illusion.

But you… you hadn’t offered help. You hadn’t asked questions or spoken like you had some professional obligation to fix him. You hadn’t recoiled when he looked at you like a cornered animal. You just were.

Something about that felt wrong. Or maybe worse—dangerously right.

He didn’t know who you were, not really. Just a name, a face, and a mouth that didn’t stop moving. You were unpredictable. A variable. A walking contradiction in a place where everything was muted, regimented, safe.

And yet, he hadn’t walked away.

He’d sat there.

Listened.

Engaged even.

Even now, with you gone, the ripple you left behind hadn’t stilled. His thoughts, normally sharp and cruel-edged, felt... different. Less jagged. Less punishing.

He didn’t want to think about why.

He glanced down at the coffee still cradled in his hands. It was already cooling, but the residual warmth soaked into his fingers, foreign but not unwelcome. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he didn’t want to sink back into the silence. Didn’t want to drift aimlessly in the fog that usually swallowed his days whole.

Not yet.

So he just sat there, hands curled loosely around the cheap cup like it was something more. Something solid. Something real. <><><><><>

When Dex eventually forced himself back to his room, the muted hum of fluorescent lights and the echo of distant, indistinct voices felt louder than usual. He shut the door behind him quietly, barely registering the soft click of the latch engaging. The room was suffocatingly empty, nothing but white walls, a thin mattress, and the sterile scent of soap.

He sank slowly onto the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together in front of him. The thin fabric of his institutional-issued pants did nothing to dull the chill of the metal bedframe beneath. Usually, it bothered him—reminded him constantly of what he was, where he was—but today it barely registered. His mind was somewhere else entirely.

It was with you.

He tried not to let it be, but every attempt at pushing you out of his thoughts was weak at best. Dex pressed his palms into his eyes, frustration bubbling beneath his skin. He shouldn’t be feeling like this. He shouldn’t feel anything at all—not anymore. Emotions were dangerous; attachments, deadly. He knew that better than anyone. He'd learned that lesson in blood and broken bones, in promises made and shattered.

And yet.

He exhaled sharply, dropping his hands and staring blankly at the floor. His thoughts kept circling back to your voice—the casual, fearless way you’d spoken to him, as if the darkness that followed him was no worse than the shadows you both lived in. As if you understood something others couldn’t. As if you’d looked into him, seen the wreckage, and somehow didn’t flinch.

It was infuriating.

Dex's fingers flexed unconsciously, twitching restlessly. He wasn’t used to this uncertainty. People were usually simple: enemies or not. Dangerous or harmless. But you didn’t fit neatly into any category. You felt like something new, something messy. A puzzle he couldn’t figure out and didn’t trust himself to touch.

You’re doing the thing again.

Your words echoed softly in the back of his mind, not mocking—just knowing. He hated how quickly you’d read him, how easily you’d seen through his guarded exterior. He was supposed to be unreadable, locked behind a mask perfected through years of careful practice. But you’d just walked right through it, not even bothering to knock.

He dropped back onto the thin mattress, the old springs groaning under his weight. The ceiling stared back at him, cracked and stained from years of neglect. He tried to refocus—tried to ground himself in reality, cold and bleak as it was—but his mind kept slipping sideways, sliding helplessly back to you.

To your smile.

To your stupid bubblegum—always popping at the wrong time, always louder than it needed to be. A snap here, a bubble there. Irritating as hell, and yet somehow rhythmic. Familiar. Like a heartbeat thudding behind the static of his thoughts. And then there were your eyes—sharp and alive and utterly unwilling to look away from him.

They sparked whenever you spoke. Not with fear. Not even hesitation. Just that raw, maddening boldness, like every word was a dare: Go on. Say something back. I dare you.

He hadn’t. Not really. But God, he’d wanted to.

There was something in the way you sat across from him, spine loose, limbs casually draped like you were lounging at a diner booth instead of a psychiatric ward. He'd seen people pretend before—saw it all the time in the Bureau. But your ease wasn’t a performance. It was too consistent. Too real. And that’s what unnerved him.

Because if you weren’t afraid of him, it meant you were either incredibly dangerous or deeply damaged. Probably both. And for some reason, Dex couldn’t decide which answer unsettled him more.

His chest tightened—not from fear, not exactly. From something murkier. He pressed his palm lightly against his sternum like he could push the sensation back down where it belonged, into that void where he buried everything. But it stayed. A dull pressure. A slow, grinding ache that made it hard to breathe for a moment.

He didn’t know what to call that feeling. He didn’t want to name it. All he knew was that it was uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and almost��almost—painful.

He hated it.

He hated how you’d slipped beneath his skin without permission in such a short conversation. How your voice had taken root somewhere behind his eyes. How you spoke like you had the whole place clocked, like nothing surprised you anymore—and he was the exception. He hated that you didn’t ask for anything, not even understanding, but somehow made him want to offer it anyway.

But what he hated more—more than the discomfort, more than the vulnerability—was the quiet suspicion blooming in his chest like a bruise:

He wanted to see you again.

Wanted to hear that voice cut through the sterile silence. Wanted to catch you watching him when you thought he wasn’t looking. Wanted to know what your deal was, what got you locked up in this place, and whether the way your eyes softened—just slightly—when you looked at him meant anything at all.

He wanted more. Of you.

And he hadn’t wanted anything in a long, long time.

Dex swallowed hard, the motion rough, dry. His jaw clenched like it might hold the thought in place, like grinding his teeth might muffle the echo of your laugh still bouncing around his skull.

The realization sat heavy in his chest, a slow bleed of something terrifying.

You were trouble.

The kind that didn’t look like a knife in the dark—but worse. The kind that made people hope. The kind that made a man forget the darkness he’d made peace with. The kind that made him think—just for a second—that maybe he wasn’t as far gone as they all said.

And Dex?

He wasn’t sure he had the strength to resist it.

Or if he even wanted to.

#benjamin poindexter #dex poindexter #Dex Poindexter x reader #Benjamin Poindexter x reader #daredevil #daredevil born again #DDBA #bullseye x reader

89 notes · View notes

kabr0ztrousers · 3 months ago

Note

Can I get some dubcon ball sucking with a fem reader and a large monster? For the monster I'll let you choose BUT it has to be one you haven't written about yet.

Kabr0z Writes episode 74: Loxodon Warhammer

Find the rest of the Kabr0z Writes anthology here!

CWs: fellatio; dubcon; size difference; alcohol use; intox; anal sex

A/N: Writer's block has been absolutely kicking my ass today, so please enjoy the easiest thing close to the top of the requests queue :D I'm just happy I thought of a loxodon as a potential creature that meets both requirements!

#####################################

Fun fact: elephants have prehensile penises. You discovered this the fun way.

It started as all good nights do: in a smoky nightclub, populated by all sorts of human variants. They wouldn't normally let a baseliner like yourself in, but you knew the bouncer so as long as you didn't get weird with any of the patrons you'd be allowed. Too many issues with so-called monsterfuckers being pushy and putting people off. Just because someone has fur, a wolf head, and hardware to match, doesn't mean they're always down to fuck. So, places like this started up for variants to meet and spend their money on overpriced lager and cocktails. You weren't the only baseliner in the place, sure, but you wouldn't get in without someone vouching for you, be that a guest or a member of staff.

Now, you weren't allowed to hit on anyone, but that didn't mean you weren't allowed to be hit on. Plenty of variants start a night looking to avoid baseliners, but get enough drinks in anyone and they'll start looking to get lucky. As you stood at the bar, short skirt strategically rumpled at the back to give a good view of your pastel-pink thong as it separated your asscheeks, that's precisely what you were counting on.

You'd expected a lupine to make a move on you, maybe an equine, maybe even a felinid though they tend not to frequent places like this. What you hadn't expected was half a tonne of man in a tailored suit and the head of an elephant to step up behind you. Loxodons tend not to be party people, and it's not hard to see why. You're not small, about 5'8 and about 80kg, but this man dwarfed you in every respect. He must have been at least 8 or 9 foot, and was so broad two of you could stand abreast and still hide behind his immense bulk.

He offered you a drink, you accepted. Then another, and another. You got to talking. He was a postdoc from a few cities over, in your neck of the woods for a conference. It seems like it went well enough, he sure wasn't holding back on the drinks. Every fruity cocktail he bought you, he'd get two or three pints of beer, swigging them back with gusto. He was apparently a civil engineer with a speciality in bridge design, he'd been teaching classes for a few years including supervising a PhD student. He'd also been single for several years.

It finally got to kicking-out time: the early hours of the morning, after the band had packed up and left, long past the last train that would get you home safe, clinging to the sleeve of the massive elephant-man steering you towards his hotel. You remember him swiping his keycard to get in, then again in the lift to bring you both up to his room. The double bed was made, the sheets smelling of detergent as you fell onto it. He didn't bother moving your skirt, sliding the thong down your legs and past the six-inch heels on your feet. His trunk brushed your pussy, already wet with drunken anticipation. Your blouse was next, lifting over your spinning head, then your bra, deftly unfastened with one surprisingly nimble hand before being cast aside.

You lay there, barely able to move in your stupor. Feeling the soft sheets on your bare skin as he undressed himself. Two strong hands pulled your face up into his crotch. The musky skin of his ballsack smothered you. Every breath in bore the warm smell of his sweat. You opened your mouth, tasting him as he held you to him. You tried to pull away from him, but he wasn't done. You couldn't get a proper breath, every attempt filling your mouth and nose with the pliant skin pressed against you. Your hands slapped against his thigh. He pulled you away from him as you gasped for air. It was then you noticed it hanging above you, swaying slightly as it did. Your mouth hung open as he held you, transfixed by the huge, thick cock above you.

It curved down, the tip brushing your lips. You opened a little wider, allowing it to press between your lips, stretching your jaw open as he repositioned you. He was barely in you, but already at the back of your mouth, the flare at your tonsils. Your gags only spurred him on, massaging his tip with your mouth. Your eyes watered and he started grunting as precum leaked out, filling your mouth as his balls churned.

The cock popped out of your mouth, moving with a will of its own as it slathered precum and spit over your face, mingling with your tears and streaking your eyeliner down your face. He turned you around, bending you over the bed. One hand spread your asscheeks as his member pressed up against it, the end flexing against the tight hole as he applied his weight behind it, working himself in to you. You cried out into the sheets as he stretched your inexperienced asshole, the girth of it feeling as though he may tear you open. His hands were on your hips, shoving his immense length into you, pushing this way and that. Your hand was on your clit, numbly rubbing yourself, pushing through the pain in pursuit of your release. The sound of your fingers slopping over your wet cunt spurred him on, pushing harder as he picked up speed.

Your cries turned to moans as you gradually became accustomed to the aggressive fucking the loxodon was subjecting you to. You could feel your toes starting to curl as your ass rose up to meet him, even as he was already over a foot inside you. Your body shook around him, your breath catching and heart pounding as your moans turned back to screams of release.

The elephant behind you didn't last long with you crying and clenching. He roared as he rammed another six inches into you, making you cry out in surprise and pain. Cum started to flow from him, and didn't stop. Spurt after spurt, each one pumping two or three ounces of hot, sticky seed into your ass. You could feel it sloshing around, causing you to swell and bloat as over three litres of fluid was shot into you. You thought you could taste it, but maybe that's just your imagination.

He lifted you into his great arms before lying back onto the bed. He was soft, and warm, like a huge waterbed. His cock stayed in you for hours, shrinking so slowly after he fucked the energy out of you. You dozed off on top of him.

You woke without him in the morning, with an aching ass and a note on the pillow next to you. He had an early train, but left his phone number.

Just in case.

#######################################################

Well, this one took me all day, so the promised Sunday Spectacular ain't happening tonight. Maybe I'll start something tonight and finish it tomorrow, maybe not.

I'll catch up, don't worry

By the way, this is what a Loxodon looks like

87 notes · View notes

thelemoncoffee · 3 months ago

Text

hey gang i'm deranged!!

i may not like the idea of kokichi being addicted to Panta, but apparently i am cause i just spent the past several hours of my life designing Panta cans and coming up with Panta lore

for context- it started cause i was watching those "redesigning snack packaging" videos, and it sparked some inspo in me to make my own attempt at knockoff snack packaging. as it turns out i can only make one really obvious knockoff snack before i get too creative and start making stuff that could unironically stand on it's own

after making Pop Pies (knockoff poptarts), Florida Icetea (Arizona knockoff), and Koffi-Kats (coffee kitkat knockoff), i remembered that Panta was a thing and went "hey so what if i redesigned Panta so it wasn't just the Fanta logo with a p?" and everything went down hill from there

i present to you: Kai's hc universe version of Panta!

okay so there's ALOT i did actually so buckle up

first off- i wanted to make it look like something Kokichi would actually pick up, and that resulted in me coming up with the idea that Panta use to be a shameless japanese Fanta knockoff when it was first made, but they decided to get their own identity and started marketing towards the alt community with a non-serious clowning/trickster/delinquent focused branding.

i imagine they ended up being niche but also having a loyal following in whatever juggalo or juggalo-adjacent scene might be in Japan, which is how Kokichi got into it

second off- as you can see i came up with four different drink lines. the idea is they have their fruity soda line with all the base flavors, and then they reuse those flavors and their names for the other three lines. their default flavor is Clownin' Concord, and along with it their og flavor set also had Chucklin’ Cherry, Mischievous Melon, Bozo Blueberry, and Loosey-Goosey Lemon-Lime, from there they added more flavors to their roster over the years and even did some limited edition flavors that come back seasonally (i do have a full list, but i'm not showing it on this post. if you shoot me an ask i'd gladly share it there)

for the actual other lines: -Slap Shtick Sour is what warhead soda should have been- an actually fucking sour soda. i imagine them to be pretty damn tart but like in a good way that you can't get enough of (Kokichi's favorite cause it's strong enough he can actually taste it) -Pie Face! is a cream soda line, plain and simple. i know Japan really likes melon soda floats and calls them cream sodas, so i went "what if Panta did that, but more, and in a can" -Manic Mischief is their energy drink line, i have no further explanation for this they're just fruity energy drinks

i haven't done sugar free cause i think with their branding style they'd take pride in how sugary and in your face they are, so a sugar-free variant would actively go against that

for packaging you may notice they're all cans and no bottles- it wasn't initially intentional but after i noticed i had only been doing cans i decided it'd be a funky gimmick if they only ever made cans, no bottles. what do they do for liter bottles then? mini keg. no i'm not kidding, they do mini kegs instead- it fits the off kilter grungy vibes everything else has so it's not too horribly out of pocket.

i also plan on designing some candy packaging cause i do have ideas for Panta flavored hard candies and soft chews, but i'm not postponing this post another several hours to make them.

finally, just as a bonus- have the logo on it's own plus their slogan i pulled out of my ass

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #ndrv3 #kokichi ouma #headcanons #kai doodles #holy shit my hcs really are becoming a whole ass cinematic universe

79 notes · View notes

dusterbishop · 11 months ago

Text

two thousand years of chasing taking its toll (and it's coming closer)

summary. || three timelines, you have watched remy lebeau die. you didn't believe you would earn a fourth chance to save him until you find a variant with no memory of his past, lost in a void of existence.

pairing. || gambit x f!reader (past relationship with current enemies-to-lovers)

count. || 2.5k

notes. || posted on ao3 here. warning for character death and violence. i have crushed on gambit since the animated series in the nineties so the new movie brought back a lot of feelings.

part one. || part two.

An endless spread of worlds to wander into, and this is the one you choose: Gambit crouches next to you, his breath staggering out of him in pained wheezes, his hand clasping protectively over the nape of your neck.

It is getting harder to see past the blood dripping into your eyes and the sheen of unshed tears. Your abdomen throbs in intermittent waves of little agonies, needling deep in the pit of your stomach. The shots had gone wide, at first, until you had stepped right into them. Gambit had caught you as you stumbled, swearing too fast for your mind to unjumble past the desperate rush of French.

An endless expanse of possibilities, and you are living in this one, dying in his arms. It almost makes you laugh, except it hurts to breathe, and Gambit is supporting more of your weight than he was just a moment ago.

“Now don’ go doing that again,” he manages in English. One hand on your neck, his thumb pressed over your pulse, and the other pressed tight enough against your wound to make the shadows flicker around the edges of your vision. “Mais la, there ain’ gon’ be next time, chér.”

No. There isn’t. You know it as sure as you know how much he’s hiding his own hurt. He had been blown back twenty-five feet and hit the pavement hard enough that he had laid there, stunned, unarmed. His armor had been designed to take the weight of a blow, but he wasn’t dressed for a fight. Neither of you are. So they had aimed at him, and you had made sure it wasn’t him standing there when the guns went off.

Like one breath and the next. In, and you saw his impact, saw the weapons being raised towards him. Out, and you flickered across realities as smooth as Gambit shuffled his cards, every timeline fanning out before you in a sea of possibilities. Endless, countless possibilities.

This is your last Gambit, and you’re killing him just as sure as you’re killing yourself.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp out. Your voice trembles enough to make your lungs seize up. “Remy, I’m sorry.”

“Tant pis pout toi,” he shoots back. “Help Remy get you up, chér, ‘fore they shootin’ us.”

There is no version of you that isn’t broken that still keeps him alive, so you grit your teeth and let him haul you up, steadying yourself in this timeline. It has always been easier to tether yourself to one timeline when you have something to anchor yourself to. He sweeps you up in a bridal carry, and at this angle you can rest your heavy-list head against the warmth of his broad shoulder. He is a solid port of harbor beneath your tethering weight, a rock standing unyielding to the tide around it.

Your second Gambit had been like this, too. That variant had died with a blazing playing card in hand, his mouth twisted in rage, standing before you and the TVA headhunters with all of the bravado and confidence of a hopeless man. A final stand, he had called it. The two of you had gambled and gone all-in only for Gambit to be dead and you to be thrown into another identity.

You had told yourself that you would be better for this Gambit. No vigilante justice or petty crimes. You had gone on your first date to get po' boys and traded familiar barbs while you spun yourself into the web of a narrative that wouldn’t mark you as an oddity in this world. No strange time-skipping mutant here, only a human interested in a man with blackened red eyes and a smooth talking deck of cards.

Playing the odds, raising the bet. Your Remy would have loved that.

This Gambit, though, he dies holding you just like that, cradling you close enough that you feel the breath knocked from his lungs as the bullets find their mark against his unguarded back. You both tumble forward, the impact rattling your bones, your hands lashing out to catch desperately at the sleeve of Gambit’s coat.

Reality warps and trembles around you. You can sense the unfurling of this world’s integrity, like smoothing your hand down the ridge of Oliver or Lucifer’s back and feeling them arch expectantly beneath your touch. Of all your cats, Figaro had always preferred Remy, much to his triumph. This Gambit didn’t have cats; he admitted to being allergic during your third date, and you had to quash the rush of disappointment that rose in you. You had thought to find good foster homes for the boys, at least, in exchange for the sacrifice of loving Gambit. There is some sort of intrinsic symbolism in the fact that they exist just as you two do in every timeline you share.

Not that it matters, now.

“No,” you groan, dragging yourself towards Gambit’s body. Pain lances through your abdomen in arcs of lightning. It’s nearly as debilitating as the sight of him. He’s hunched over on his side, one hand still outstretched limply towards you, the other awkwardly twisted beneath his body. Your voice wretches out of you in a pained wobble. “No, no, no.”

You take his hand and close your eyes at the fading warmth. This is the third time you’ve watched him die. You don’t know what to do anymore. The pain in your abdomen is a vicious throbbing ache in beat with your heart, a clashing crescendo descending upon your head just as disorienting as the footsteps picking their way towards you. They will shoot you in the back and call it a well-fought battle. They will destroy your body with Gambit’s and never speak your names to anyone in this world’s timeline again. As if you are nothing.

As if this version of Gambit, with his purring accent and smooth-striking dealer hands, is nothing more than an obstacle in the way of the true prize of killing you where you lay bleeding.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper to Gambit. You have to let go of his hand so you don’t take his body with you, and then you let reality shift and expand around you, demanding the timeline to come to heel, shuffling the next five minutes into a ribbon-spread of flashing images.

One minute: you come to your feet. This is almost the hardest part. You have to find a version of yourself that is stable enough to handle the staggering weight of the transition. Your body has been operating in survival mode for far too long, especially in this timeline where you met the new Gambit in the throes of angry grief. You hardly recovered before you threw yourself into society with a desperate hope to attract him back into your orbit. This version of your body feels calm and refreshed, which must mean it’s from right after your second date with Gambit, when he escorted you home and wished you goodnight and you fell asleep with a smile on your face.

Two minutes: you see Gambit. His eyes are half-open and glazed with death, staring far into a horizon you can never reach. He would still be alive if you had never crossed timelines to search him out. This world’s version of you had been killed while you were still young and unpracticed in hiding your power. It had been easy to slip into the vacant space and fill it up with a new identity. He had never known your real name, just the mask you wore to allure him closer to you. You see him, laying there, and all you can remember is his shocked laugh when he noticed the way you ate your sandwiches with a fork and knife. Chér, ought’a you honte, non?

Three minutes: you kill them all.

Four minutes: every single one of them. This is the easiest part.

Five minutes: you have to exchange your borrowed body with your current one, and that is the hardest part. You can feel the seams of your borrowed self strain under the weight of your rapid time-skipping, further stretched thin by the pain of your current self. A wounded body decays far faster when you aren’t occupying it. It’s a reluctant exchange, and you stumble beneath the sudden weight of your current self as it wraps around your consciousness. The impact to the ground is faster than your changing, too fast to feel the echo wave of pain. You retch blood and bile, turning your face to avoid choking on it.

You will be nothing more than another corpse beside Gambit’s in a minute. You can feel the timeline of death fogging your mind, muffling your reflexes. You have exacerbated your own death by orchestrating theirs. It’s not a surprise: when Gambit fell, his breath knocked right out from him, you had felt that same jarring finality.

Only this time, only for you, when you close your eyes in death, you open them in another world entirely.

It's a battlefield.

Not surprising. Your hand automatically goes to the small of your back, fingers curling around the cool polished wood of your bo staff. With one fluid flourish, you pull it out from its sheath and extend the length, timelines humming in your hand with the same buzzing tempo of Gambit's kinetic energy. Unlike his power, your staff doesn't glow blazing violet. In one moment and the next, it simply snaps into its full length, the air hissing with displaced energy.

Once, with your Remy, he had settled himself in an armchair in your shared apartment, half-drunk with one of the cats in his lap, and he had demanded to watch you cross timelines. It took small objects, at first. A coffee cup across the room, a pair of your underwear from the bedroom, the cat purring underneath his very touch. You had been a little less drunk from your night out together, but it had been exhilarating to perform for him in a way that affected you far beyond the influences of alcohol. The weight of his black-red eyes lingering over the curve of your figure could take you apart as sure as any timeline.

He had been mystified yet delighted at your display of prowess. Y’a natural Houdini, eh, chér?

That wasn’t quite true, though. You didn’t disappear, you simply… rearranged yourself to exist in a state of your choosing, from a time of your choosing. You had explained it to Remy like this: like choosing the channels on T.V. until you found a show you liked. Except instead of old reruns of some sitcom, you were settling on a state of existence.

Your weapon of choice - the bo staff, much like the one Remy trained you with - comes from another version of yourself. It weighs a perfect balance in your palm because it was made for you, even if you were not the one to personally commission its design. The staff whistles sharply as it cuts through the air, singing its anticipation as you swing into action, adrenaline from the fight with the hunters still raging in your veins. It’s a relief to be distracted from the last image of Gambit, dead.

Instead, you revel in the finesse of an unfair fight.

There seems to be four men surrounding you, their faces a blur of distant familiarity. Some part of you had met them, before, in another time. You could have tried to find the names to their faces if they weren’t fully committed to trying to kill you. Battle comes to you easier, and perhaps you are indulging in the violence when you could have stepped away and gone to another time.

But, perhaps, you are so fucking tired of being anything other than a violent, selfish thing.

It’s all smooth motion, to fight like this. Alone. No need to worry about a Remy LeBeau by your side in case the reckless fool got himself killed trying to protect you. You think to your Remy: I told you nothing was going to happen to me, LeBeau. I exist in so many timelines that it doesn’t matter what happens to me.

It doesn’t matter what happens to you. Not even when one of them strikes you across the face with the sharp bend of their elbow, cutting your cheek against your molars and filling your mouth with blood. You merely shuffle the deck, pull another card, draw a version of yourself with no blood and just as much battle-hardened pain tolerance. So many versions of you can handle the aftershocks of pain that your stride hardly stutters as you swing your staff and sweep his feet out from under him. Another swing, a sickening crack of a wood impact to an unprotected skull, and you keep moving to the next target.

Another hit to your ribs, hard enough to knock the breath from you. Shuffle, pull, draw. Your new borrowed body takes the hit without notice and crushes the faceless attacker’s windpipe, cutting off his shriek of pain in a gurgling wheeze. The next one tries to make a move while your back is turned, and you move to meet him, staff swinging, mouth twisted in a grimace. You can feel the timeline bending to stretch thin around you, taut with the rapid succession of your draw. Your blood thunders in a raging crescendo in your ears. There is a limit to how much you can take before you splinter apart.

You just don’t know if you care to heed that limit, anymore.

Another swing. Shuffle, draw, pull. This version of you switches from the long reach of your bo staff for the more intimate versatility of twin blunt-ended sticks. It works well for close combat. So well that your opponent has to keep to the backstep to avoid your blows, shuffling out of range.

So well, that you forget that there were four.

The pain that cracks across the back of your skull sends you to the ground in an instant. Your hands spasm and release the sticks, but not fast enough to soften the blow of your sudden fall. The timeline whines a high-pitched whir around you, unsteady in the relentless time-skipping.

Too bad, you think distantly. This is a quick life for this timeline of yours. A violent, lonely one. It is grim, but there is a quiet relief in the end beckoning you closer. The quick ones are the easiest. It only really kills you when you have to linger in the shadow of your self’s presence. A living ghost. That’s all you really are. You just haunt the narrative of your own lifetimes.

You, and Gambit.

Blazing purple flashes across your vision, and the timeline whirs again, except it isn’t, because you haven’t used your dealer’s hand. It isn’t your power charging the air with magnetic energy. It is all Gambit’s. Of course it fucking is.

How ironic for you to find him now, in this timeline where he has never known your name, when you are already dead? You close your eyes to silently curse out whatever pathetic higher being found fit to orchestrate your life into this circus sideshow.

“Cherchez la femme,” he says. His accent is lilting in its coyness. “Found ya’, chér.”

#gambit #remy lebeau #gambit imagine #xmen imagine #gambit x reader #remy lebeau x reader #gambit x y/n #gambit fic #remy lebeau x y/n #d&w #dp3

198 notes · View notes

honkbird · 2 months ago

Text

The big art post !! the behind-the-scenes of the tribalhunter PNGtuber stuff ! At least on the art side-- I can talk about the coding mechanics but that's not quite my place to. The high-level overview of that is there's some cool stuff going on with memory wrappers and godot to get stuff shake'n and jamm'n The rest of it is below the cut just so you don't have to scroll tons if you don't care, but take some time and read !! 3 days of work y'know !!

The first sketches were started at 10 pm tuesday the 15th. I tweaked it with some edits until about 1 am

For people working on pngs or long term projects -- make notes !! genuinely !! you can see "ok what was i thinking when i did this" and it made like infinitely easier. You might notice that stage 2 png was not long for this world -- we ended up cutting that one and shifting 3-5 down a stage, and just making a larger final stage. The night ended with: these!

Larger final, we moved where some hands ended up, cleaned some notes, and so on

Wednesday I got to work

on some second pass ones, e.g., cleaner lineart. Mind you, not final! To have proper safespace with the png we had to make actual layered sections to avoid ripped seams on squashing and stretching and rotating and etc.

These also had the first of the talk sprites! I don't do entirely new sprites for the talking ones just because of the pure quantity of images. So, just an arm tilt and head angling. This means we have mute and a talk variants of a few sprites (e.g., the stage 1 is 3 sprites. Body, scarf flappies, and head. We have talk versions of the body and the head). Also, he used to have nips! there was going to be a slightly darker purple but we scrapped it for . well . obvious reasons. We went with classy scarf modesty.

This is how you know you're doing well!

Thursday I started on the finals!

This was the first one sent -- showing off the layers. Tip, I used to layer based on like "back arm" "head" "fore body" etc. It's weirder to get used to when you use numbered layers, but holy shit it made importing easier. You automatically know the layer order to put them in to avoid clipping. Getting these done I got to work on testing 'em too!

this gave us our first working model! Oh, he used to have black robes too! this was to match the custom ingame sprites he got, but the color wasn't quite popping enough. The scarf saturation would later be turned up too, and more color adjusting. But this was workable! A lovely demo. All that was left was design tweaks and the talk sprites!

Friday was dedicated to

figuring out the colors and the talk sprites. For giggles, here's a bunch of variants produced!

We changed the robes, the scarf tone, and his lower gradient. neat Brave fact, his design has a gradient! It's horrible for gif compression! With all that done, then came doing well . all of the sprites!

Note, the talk sprites had some copied mute ones for visual reference. Gotta be consistent! It was at this point the pngtuber was "done", so to speak. Talk sprites worked and everything uh . jiggled right. But I still had a whole weekend! There wasn't as much photo evidence. What WAS changed between then and the final was: 1) the gradient was shifted to be a smooth curve instead of dappling 2) the talk sprite for stage 5's beak was fixed to remove a tangent line 3) the belly for stage 5 was rounded out to be more consistent with the game (less "doughy" to quote) 4) we added another sprite for the arm on stage 5 to layer better. Those changes weren't done until about Saturday, and then the code was tweaked all the way up until adding damage and transition effects on sunday and monday!

P.S., the model still clipped in the end a little! The code did some growth based on the fullness factor and . uh. wow!

twitch_clip

Anway woo !! that was some wip photos and stories, I wish there was more of an intense struggle to tell but it was pretty quickly done. My shoulderblade hurts a bit to tell the truth and I think I overdid it on the pace but hooray!

#honkbirdart #fat birds contained below the dropdown #like REALLY fat birds

59 notes · View notes

baalzebufo · 11 months ago

Text

oh yeah... redrew my older pines designs + also gideon is here because I like him and will inflict him on everyone. probably in their early 20s here, I didnt think too hard about the specifics. also some headcanons

dipper started testosterone finally so he's got the classic 'shitty little puberty stache' and also hes breaking out w acne bit. wears a lot of denim on denim. him and wendy swap hats every summer its their tradition. he has a bomber jacket with lots of alien and cryptid patches. sometimes he has kind of a mullet going on

mabel regularly chops all her hair off in the mirror with some scissors whenever the impulse hits so at any given point of her life it can be either waist-length or a buzzcut. she got into making kandi and has a bunch of themed cuffs. rhinestones. sparkles. thats a tamagotchi necklace

gideon has embraced his inner cowboy and got some riding chaps ostensibly because he has a motorcycle now but also because he thinks he looks cool. his bolo tie is a replica of his old cursed variant because fiddling with it is a comfort to him. hes got a custom leather jacket with his star embroidered on the back

hes also so tall because. well honestly my headcanon is he has an insane growth spurt in his teens. have you SEEN bud gleeful? he's huge. hes got Big Dude Genes. also honestly i just think its funny if he goes from being knee-high to 6 feet tall in the space of like, 6 months.

(i was gonna add other characters to this but i got distracted so thats for another time)

#alloyart #gravity falls #dipper pines #mabel pines #gideon gleeful #if you're wondering about their relationships at this point in the future basically. gideon has been to some. extensive therapy #and is MUCH less of an asshole. i mean hes still a smug dick his personality aint changing much but. hes more amiable now. less murderous #he wrote an apology letter to the pines as part of his process and became pen-pals with dipper. they'd send each other pics of weird stuff #and he'd keep them updated on stuff going on in gravity falls #theyre not exactly 'friends' in a close sense but i think its fun to imagine a less.. intense dynamic going on there now hes older #... also honestly i forget dipper isnt canonically trans because hes so ubiquitously transmasc to me. but yeah he is here.

358 notes · View notes

otterloreart · 1 year ago

Text

MLP-Takara generations: a design experiment

Takara MLPs are considered generation 1 My Little Pony; the original ponies look like little horses and the takaras are obviously very different.

But the standard MLP toyline underwent a lot of changes throughout the years... so, if the takaras had been successful, what would their changes look like?

Generation 1 year 2+ takaras.

Year one MLP was only a few ponies with a single color of body + matching hair... just like the takaras. It was year 2 that they introduced unicorns. pegasus, and seaponies.

You all know I've already been concepting these so it's not surprising at all. As MLP g1 went on, they ended up doing more and more gimmicks throughout the 80s which would also be kind of fun to see the takaras do... (hint hint if you want me to draw those lmk which gimmicks are your favorites)

I also think they should bring in markings like the normal ponies but that could be part of the gimmicks. Maybe on their cheeks, or on their bellies like care bears?

In the later years og MLP also had a lot of variations on the normal pony body type, so maybe you could also see the takaras with that kind of variant, so that might be cute:

Moving on!

Generation 2

If you aren't big into early gen My Little Pony you might not know that generation 2 didn't do very well; it was a reboot of a beloved franchise, it was new, and different, and all that jazz:

Main differences between them and g1: first, you can see they have a very late G1-type body, which is why I pointed out the thinner pony in g1. Their face is less detailed and rounder, but they have a little more expression, very smiley.

Their ears have a more horse-y curled in shape, they have fur around their hooves (in g1 only the boy ponies had hoof floof), and they have a gem in their eye.

Also they had a lot more moving-leg gimmicks where you could push one part of their body and another would move (eg push tail -> bobs head)

So you may ask, how am I could to g2-ify the takaras? After all, they are already much rounder than the g1 ponies. Well, I'm not going to make them just *look like* the g2 ponies, although I'll borrow more elements.

Instead: I am going to take and exaggerate all of the differences that I listed above and see what we come up with.

So! Here is my idea for g2 takara pony. I feel like its the exact balance of very cute and something that would upset collectors familiar with the original takaras, just as g2 upset the g1 fans.

First off, she's thinner, the iconic takara nose is removed in favor of a sculpt with a smiling mouth, the legs are more horse shaped with fluff and human fingers to match the additional foot detail. a lot of people find the g2s a little "uncanny" so I feel like this works.

The sparkley eye gem and ear shape are just straight off the original g2s, just to have extra gimmick to it (also the og takaras basically had the g1 ears)

g2 came out in the late 90s so I like to imagine the pony eyes would be extra shoujo too

Finally, a ball jointed head for more flexibility. (yes the arm would be posed like that in the doll, because its a more dynamic pose, and we can also assume that the larger size allows the doll to have a joint with more flexibility)

g2 had pretty similar gimmicks to g1 but also had some light up ponies, so maybe the takaras could have some with that gimmick too

fun fact, g2 MLP was sold for a longer time in Europe and performed better there.

Generation 3

Generation 3 ponies are a pretty clear return to g1 MLP style, kinda scrapping most of the changes g2 made, other than proportionally thinning out the ponies a bit.

g3 ponies have very similar face sculpts with bigger eyes, nearly the same legs, and their heads just a bit bigger in proportion to their body

They do remind me a lot of the g1 Petite ponies, which were 1 inch sculptures that also had those proportionally bigger eyes and chunkier legs.

I have here included the g1 so you can see the slight changes better! I think the main difference would be the g3 takara would be a lot rounder, smoother, and cutesy-er. While the original has the hello-kitty simple cute look, the g3 version would definitely have like eyelashes and big eyes.

The only other thing to note about the body is some bigger ears, a generally rounder face, and round feet.

There weren't many gimmicks super /unique/ to g3 but one I wanted to highlight was the Breezies. G1 did have the flutter ponys, which were ponies with butterfly/dragonfly type wings, but the breezies are like their own little species AND they have antennae. While the flutter ponies were sort of graceful and thinner than the other ponies, the breezies are like little chibi-er ponies.

A little bit Littlest Pet Shop-core, since its the early 2000s too.

SPEAKING OF

Generation 4 Generation 3.5

Before there was gen4 there was a subset of Gen3 ponies with a different and unique style. They were basically an exaggerated version of the Breezies with even bigger feet and tinier snouts. They are also VERY littlest-pet-shop-core.

So, pretty straightforward changes

Just an even more chibi, kid-ish style pony. I think the g3.5 ponies were even meant to be kids. So this is just an even more child-friendly, littlest pet shop type horsey.

Generation 4

So, obviously generation 4 ushered in a whole new era of My Little Pony with its unique and bright artstyle, which did need to transfer over to the ponies

Personally, while I love g4 in a lot of ways im not a fan of the toys in the same way I am the other generations, their little noses have shrunk to specks, they're skinnier and more big-eyed than ever. Well, g3.5 was pretty big-eyed but at least those ones were like little kids.

This is such a drastic shift from g1/g3 and even g4, I would be unsure about the takaras.

So: eyes, bigger. Snout, so tiny and so smooth. Ears, bigger. Hooves are flatter and parts of the legs are just kinda featureless. a longer neck. They released a decent amount of ponies with plastic hair this gen, too.

I was struggling to come up with a doll for this one, but I finally realized I was doing it backwards. The thing that makes g4 stand out, I think, is the fact it was fundamentally designed opposite from g1. Lauren Faust, an animator, designed the ponies and the toys had to be designed around her art.

So the primary difference was considering what a tv show- a tv show concieved in the 2000s and airing in 2010s- and I did look into some kids properties from that time period as I was designing

I think these Strawberry shortcake dolls are really close to the concept I'd want for a early 2010s mirror of MLP g4. So basically these toys but more anthro.

I ended up making a 3D mockup so I'd be able to plan the different angles and keep them consistent.

The eyes are kind of far apart but I think thats true of the g4 pony toys as well. Again, because of the way the g4 show was stylized as animation, there was sort of cheating with the anatomy, especially on the face.

Generation 4.5

Gen 4.5 was a spinoff of gen4, just like gen3 had 3.5 where the ponies are more chibi. More big eyes with even bigger ears and a face like... a cats? instead of a horse. Hoof fluff again.

I think this nailed the style without being as much of an outright copy. The bendy arms with fingers seem so silly but also I think that matches the vibe/artstyle.

G4.5 don't look like horses to me really at all though, they're like cats with hooves. Out of all of them we've seen so far they're suffering the most from "predator eyes" where they've gone so far as to make their eyes just face forward.

Generation 5

Generation 5 premiered with a CGI movie, so the toys that would be released are fairly on model with their movie selves except for the fact their heads are smack dab in the middle of their neck which i find extremely unsettling and dislike

We've gone full "predator eyes" (no the predator eyes thing doesnt 100% biologically hold up but I find them freaky and I get to say it) AND full human eyebrows stenciled in like a makeup vlogger in the same color as the hair.

The ears are back to cup shaped (more horselike) but again the face is round with a little muzzle (more catlike). The hooves have really detailed feathering on the legs. Otherwise the body is mostly just structured like the g4 body (except a bit longer) just with more specific horse details.

These continued the trend of having a lot more articulated versions with moving legs as well. I think given that most dolls these days have articulated elbows and knees, it is reasonable to expect the takara g5 dolls would too.

Again, I made a 3D model so I could keep it consistent from various angles.

ta-daaaa heres my takara pony generations 1-5 lineup! Tell me which youuuuur favorite are. if you want.

#im sorry for how long this post is #long post #my little pony #takara pony #mlp gen 1 #mlp gen 2 #and so on #generation 1 #doll designs #sketches #i also wanted to do the clothes styles for each gen but this took so long already #and alternate gimmicks #would be fun to explore

348 notes · View notes

bethanythebogwitch · 6 months ago

Text

Digimon 2024 tier list

Like last year, I'm doing a tier list of how much I like each new Digimon released this year. My tiers will be A for Digimon I really like, B for Digimon I like but not as much, and C for Digimon I'm not enthusiastic about. There will also be one S-tier for my favorite of the year and one D-tier for my least favorite of the year. Also I covered Tlalocmon last year, so see that post for my thoughts and I'm not covering the Monster Hunter tie-in mons since they're not in the reference book.

Digimon Liberator has given us a flood of new Digimon so let's start with the mascot's line. Yolkmon, Fluffymon, Pteromon, Galemon, GrandGalemon, and Zephagamon. Yolkmon is my new favorite baby Digimon. A living egg yolk with an eggshell hat is brilliant and adorable. Fluffymon is also a good design. I find it hard to get invested in a lot of the baby Digimon because they're usually just bouncing heads, so having these two stick out of the pack is great. I'll give Yolkmon an A and Fluffymon a B

Pteromon is a great mascot Digimon. It's got that classic mascot look while also looking distinct from all the Agumon expys we tend to get. Archaeopteryx is a great inspiration and we finally get a theropod dinosaur Digimon with feathers, like the real raptors had. A-tier. I'm not as fond of Galemon (B-tier), but GrandGalemon is great. It's a great fusion of the bird/raptor elements and humanoid warrior elements. The armor and weapon look cool and it being one of the vortex warriors (which, as far as I know, were previously only ever mentioned in MedievalGallantmon's reference book entry) is a cool call-back and it even has an indirect connection to Witchelny. An Excellent Digimon deserving an A. Sadly, I can't say the same for Zephagamon. I can't fully explain why I don't really like it. Maybe it's the skinnier design that drops a lot of the bird elements, or its weapons not being as cool as Zephagamon's mace (swords are overdone), or just being tired of Digimon becoming armored humanoid warriors in their final stages, but I can't help but be a bit dissappointed by Zephagamon. The name is also not my favorite. Maybe they went with that to avoid dub name confusion with Zephyrmon/Shutumon. It's gonna be a C-tier.

Debuting alongside Pteromon's line is Shoemon's line. Shoemon is an amazingly adorable Digimon. A patchwork mouse plushy living in a shoe is a cute and very Digimon concept. I love how it uses a sewing needle as a weapon, too. A-tier. Too bad Shoeshoemon isn't as good. A roller-skating plush squirrel should be a fantastic Digimon, but I just don't like the way it looks. It honestly give me Sonic the Hedgehog vibes and I don't care for StH. The name is also really clunky, especially when Skatemon was right there. That being said, it would have been hilarious if each of Shoemon's evolutions just added an extra shoe to the name until we ended up with Shoeshoeshoeshoemon. C-tier.

While I don't care for Shoeshoemon, Chaperomon is another story. A violent little red riding hood doll with a knife, molotov cocktail, and basket-mounted minigun that hunts big bad wolves and turns them into shoes is not only an amazing concept, it is peak Digimon. It may be early in the list, but Chaperomon is my S-tier. Not only is this my favorite Digimon of the year, it is one of my favorite Digimon of all time. Cendrillmon is ok. I do like the design in a vacuum, but I don't really like it as a final form for Shoemon. It loses the patchwork plushy and doll appearance that I like so much and it doesn't really have shoes anymore. I do like the simple yet elegant design and the army of doll familiars. I think if Cendrillmon was introduced as an evolution for a different Digimon, I would like it a lot better. B-tier.

From the web novel side of things comes the new Impmon evolutions: Punkmon, Loudmon, and HeavyMetaldramon. Punk rock variants of the Guilmon line were not something I knew I needed in my life all. They're also a callback to the early planning stage of Digimon Tamers, where Impmon was planned to be the main partner Digimon. I also appreciate the final form being based on Megidramon instead of Gallantmon. Too many Digimon lines end up humanoid at the end. And wings made of electric guitars? Chef's kiss. A for all of them.

Last year, the D-Brigade got an upgrade after years of just being one evolution line, and this year the Royal Base got the same treatment. It was a good choice, too, as cyborg bees is a fantastic concept. ForgeBeemon the construction worker is a great interpretation of worker bees and Vespamon is a much-needed pre-evo to TigerVespamon. It's weird how many times we've gotten an XYmon years before getting a Ymon. Those both get A. QueenBeemon I'm not as fond of. She loses the cyborg elements and just becomes a woman in a bee costume. It's also weird that like half of her reference book entry is dunking on her like she was one of the bad evolution Digimon. The weaponized throne is a cool idea, but I can't give QueenBeemon higher than a B, which I suppose is appropriate.

PolarBearmon and Skadimon are really fun. I like them as a reminder that not all high-level Digimon have to be ferocious monsters, armored warriors, or women in their underwear. Some of them can be cute and friendly. For Frontier fans, am I wrong in thinking that PolarBearmon with its snowball artillery and being a bear looks way more like a proper unified spirit of ice than Daipenmon? Skadimon actually being a mech suit piloted by what looks like a YukimiBotamon is a fantastic design concept. A for both.

Dinomon kicks absolute ass. Dinosaurs are cool, fire is cool, so a dinosaur on fire is extra cool. This thing is the closest we have to a Digimon Godzilla and I love Godzilla. Plus a new mega for Tyrannomon that isn't DinoRexmon or RustTyrannomon is much appreciated. RustTyrannomon leans a bit evil for a heroic Tyrannomon and DinoRexmon looks too silly for my tastes with that giant claw. A-tier.

Elizamon is too cute not to love. A hot pink frilled lizard in a bowtie is adorable, and its contrast with the edgelord Owen Dreadnought is fantastic. Dimetromon is also really cool, being based on one of my favorite Permian animals, but I feel like it loses some of the frilly feminine traits that Elizamon has and the evolutions will have according to the shadowed shots we've seen of them in Liberator. I give Elizamon an A and Dimetromon a B.

MarineBullmon and Ryugumonbeing nudibranchs makes the marine biologist in me happy. I love nudibranchs and more people being exposed to these spectacular sea slugs is a great thing. Of the two, I definitely prefer Ryugumon more. It's elegant design and referencing Japanese mythology is inspired. I'm going to give MarineBullmon a B and Ryugumon an A.

Espimon has needed a full evolution line for a while. It was always weird that it never got an evolution based level 4 given that it technically is a main protagonist partner in Ghost Game. Oblivimon is a fantastic evolution, doubling down on the spaceship design of HoverEspimon and working in UFO stories with how it abducts Digimon to examine them before releasing them with memories modified. The Kuramon drones are also adorable. A-tier. Sadly, after the highs of Oblivimon, it all comes crashing down with Invisimon. Why, why, why did this line of UFO-themed Digimon have to end with a superhero? I am so tired of Digimon lines ending up as humanoids when the rest of the line isn't, and it's especially bad here. Invisimon sticks out like a sore thumb against the amorphous, spaceship-based, stealth and non-combat elements of the rest of the line. The stealth plane thing is neat at least. I get that Invisimon works with the Liberator Espimon's partner being superhero coded, but it fails as an evolution in any other context. If Invisimon wasn't supposed to be the final form of Espimon, it might be a C or B, but as is, this thing is my D-tier.

As for the new Sunarizamon evolutions, I'll admit that I initially didn't like Landramon, but it's grown on me. I really wanted Landramon to be the land counterpart to Airdramon and Seadramon as a serpentine dragon instead of the silly pile of sand. Once I got over that, I came to enjoy the silliness of Landramon and it is a very fitting Sunarizamon evolution. I'll give it a B. Proganomon is not my favorite and it's another case like Invisimon where I'd probably like it more if it was part of a different evolution line. It's just so out of place in the Sunarizamon line having no sand elements and using technology. I think it would work much better as a Tortomon evolution and a pre-evo to ElDoradimon or even JumboGamemon. I think I'll give it a C. I don't hate it, but I'm not all that impressed either. Pyramidimon, on the other hand, is amazing. It looks like a badass Yu-Gi-Oh monster from when the franchise was still themed around ancient Egypt. I can see it being a great fit with other Egyptian Digimon like Pharaohmon and Anubimon. Pyramidimon almost dethroned Chaperomon's place as my S-tier, putting it as an easy A.

The other big source of new Digimon this year was New Century and it's a crime that game hasn't been released outside of China yet. I covered Takutomon last year and wasn't impressed. I found it visually uninteresting and the armored human is an overused design. Takutomon Wrath Mode has a more interesting design, but I'm still not that interested in it. I think that humanoid armored warrior Digimon have to do something really interesting to stand out from the her and this one just doesn't. He also loses his little Appmon pet. Maybe that's why he's so angry. I'm also surprised that the reference book art is somehow better than the New Century art, which is angled so that most of its body is covered by its leg. C.

If a humanoid armored warrior Digimon has to do something interesting to stand out, Erlangmon does that well. The idea of the warrior fighting alongside a flying wolf head is very unique and fun. Plus, spears are underused as weapons, so it's nice to see one here. Erlangmon is also a shapeshifter, which could be a lot of fun to work with in stories. I have a fanfic in mind that I might use Erlangmon in. I give it an A. Unfortunately, while Erlangmon soars, Erlangmon Blast Mode crashes and burns. Turning the wolf head into a part of the armor loses that cool factor and makes it look so much more generic. Down to C with you.

Nezhamon is also fun. There's a lot of references to the original myth, like turning the wind fire wheel into tires on the ankles and having Nezhamon look young. The merging of the mythology with modern machienery makes for a very Digimon design. Plus, he has a spear and I'm a sucker for weapons where one part floats instead of being attached. I'll go A.

The last New Century Digimon is Jougamon and I like how this one is based on the same moon rabbit origins of Dianamon while still having a totally unique look. The gold coloration looks nice and I love the giant crescent moon blade and dancing fighting style. I'll put it as a strong B.

Our last new entry for the year is Cernumon. Well technically Callismon was added to the reference book this year, but that's not a new Digimon, it's an escapee from V-Tamer jail. Cernumon is such a creative design. A musical instrument, foresty deer god is both very fun and very Digimon. Cernumon comes from the horned Celtic god Cernunnos. Digimon had the opportunity to just make Cernumon a deer man and I'm very grad they decided to get more creative. A-tier.

Here's the final tier list. It's heavily weighted toward the A-tier, which is a good thing. I'm glad that the majority of new Digimon are so cool and likable.

S: Chaperomon

A: Yolkmon, GrandGalemon, Shoemon, Punkmon, Loudmon, HeavyMetaldramon, ForgeBeemon, Vespamon, PolarBearmon, Skadimon, Dinomon, Elizamon, Ryugumon, Oblivimon, Pyramidimon, Erlangmon, Nezhamon, Cernumon

B: Fluffymon, Galemon, Cendrillmon, QueenBeemon, Dimetromon, MarineBullmon, Landramon, Jougamon.

C: Zephagamon, Shoeshoemon, Proganomon, Takutomon Wrath Mode, Erlangmon Blast Mode.

D: Invisimon

69 notes · View notes