#probably bc she has psionic powers

[antivancrows]

will nvr finish these woe lethe be upon you

[swordmaid]

now the whole ~drows don't see anything when they trance bc they're cut off from the rebirth cycle is so interesting to me in the bg3 context bc shri'iia probably figured out the dream guardian is some sort of mindflayer or person with psionic powers the moment they appeared bc that's the first time she has ever seen anything in her trance - when that shouldn't even be possible for her

funnier that she probably withheld that info from everyone because she's a charlatan and her job is Professional Liar and baby she's clocking in every shift

[baticeer]

From the Tav ask meme: 1, 4, and/or 10 for Vennet! They’re so cool and I love their hat/goggles fashion choice

hehe thanks I'm glad you like her look! A lot of people have complimented her design and I always get so flustered by it bc I am very unconfident with character/clothing design, it's not one of my artistic strengths at all lol, so hearing that ppl like how she looks is like eeeee I managed to make it good yesss

1. What is their backstory and why did you choose it?

Vennet is a noble drow who is the third daughter of House Duskryn, one of the minor drow houses in Menzoberranzan. She attended the wizard academy of Sorcere (which is normally a career for males in drow society, but Sorcere does take a few female students if they're particularly interested in arcane magic rather than becoming a cleric). She doesn't particularly like Lolth but she learned early on in her life that the best way to get by as a drow is to put your head down, go along with it all, and don't try to rebel because you can't do anything to defy the Spider Queen. When she gets picked up by the Nautiloid she's been working as a reclusive alchemist for most of her adult life, and happened to be accompanying a raid to the surface bc she was looking to collect some rare supplies that can't be found in the Underdark.

Fun Fact: I specifically picked House Duskryn because I was going through the list of Menzo drow houses on the FR wiki looking for one that was totally undescribed and generic enough that I could do whatever without contradicting canon lmao, and then I got jumpscared when I was reading one of the most recent Drizzt books because it actually was referenced 😭 but thankfully it didn't contradict any of my story bc the only thing that really came up was the name of the house matron. So I was just like huh I guess that's Vennet's mom and I have a name for her (it's Berni'ith)

4. Is there a reason why your Tav starts out as Level 1?

Not really! I figure it's similar to other characters in the game where being tadpoled debuffed them and they gradually got their abilities back over time, possibly developing new ones along the way. She used to be an alchemist, so she may have focused more on combat magic while leveling and getting her powers back.

After becoming a mind flayer, I imagine that she still has all of her arcane knowledge but that the natural resistance of illithids to the Weave interferes with her ability to cast it somewhat, making what was once intuitive feel unnatural and difficult. So she now focuses more on ritual magic, alchemy, and also on developing her psionic powers.

10. What was your Tav like as a child?

Oh, geez... mostly lonely, I think :( She was a weird little autistic nerd being raised by a distant & cruel matron mother, two sisters that were older enough to not be peers, and three fathers* who weren't meant to spend much time with a daughter.

(* – it's not quite canon, but I like the idea that a noble drow matron would have multiple husbands and the children would be raised to not know who was their bio dad, ostensibly to avoid "favoritism" and infighting btwn the fathers but in practice it's often possible to guess who fathered a child)

Her closest thing to an actual loving parent figure was the house wizard, who was probably her biological father but she never knew for sure, and who was... not kind, exactly, but took a liking to her bc of her natural talent for arcane magic and became a mentor to her. He died when she was pretty young and I won't spoil too much of the backstory bc you have to read my not yet released fanfic for that heehee (it'll happen. I promise) but suffice to say this is what convinced her of that "just get along and don't try to fight against the matriachy/Lolth even if you dont like it" perspective she had.

[givehimthemedicine]

more thoughts on Hawkins Lab / memory alteration / NINA / the rainbow rooms / Kali / Henry / El / Terry

(of possible interest to laozuspo and aemiron-main bc of that other HNL post / possible implications for Henry. no pressure tho you guys are both way ahead of me on this investigation)

Owens implies that he developed the NINA program only since El's power loss in case she ever needed it restored, but I have very strong doubts.

how does Owens know that NINA could bring El's powers back stronger than before unless this technique has already been used? best-case-scenario, tested on someone during recent development to make sure it works for El, but worst-case and more probable scenario, used to psychologically manipulate or bring out powers in the lab kids, maybe even El herself, in the past. maybe even Terry Ives (Becky specifically mentioned Terry doing sensory deprivation tank experiments, which is a component of NINA).

HNL has need to alter potentially all the kids' memories, not just Henry

the lab wants all those kids uniform and tractable, so they'll make good little lab rats / spies / assassins, right?

the lab-born kids like El would be relatively easy to mold, because the lab is all they know. but what about Kali, Henry, and any other kids who were wild-caught old enough to remember their former lives? you'd think even remembering the fact that there IS a world outside the lab would make them harder to control. don't they need to be wiped of their memories of their past lives and stripped of individuality, identity?

you would probably also want to wipe any kid after sending them on psionic spying / assassination missions so they don't retain classified info or gain too much knowledge of the outside world, lest they become an escape risk.

I think there's a strong possibility that NINA or equivalent was already used throughout the HNL program for this purpose.

I don't know how you straight up delete memories, but it's easy to see how NINA could be used to plant fabricated replacement memories. add a dash of brainwashing and presto.

Kali tells a little of her life after the lab, but I don't remember her saying anything about before it. all our knowledge about her kidnapping comes from that newspaper clipping, right? do you think she remembers her former life?

Henry is the only other kid we know is wild-caught, and he still has his pre-lab memories, but maybe that doesn't matter in his case because he's uniquely kept in line with soteria.

Two - Eighteen have to be free to use their powers for experimentation, so the lab can't soteria them, they have to be controlled a different way. the most secure way to keep someone imprisoned isn't with strong locks, it's for them not to fully realize they are imprisoned or that escape is even an option. I doubt any of the kids like the lab, but they probably have a limited awareness that there is any other place.

Henry's pre-lab memories could also have been made safe for him to keep (tampered with). we know Virginia was in cahoots with Brenner before Henry even went to the lab, and I wouldn't put it past her to cooperate with the creation of staged footage of Henry's home life to NINA him with. possibly even Alice, unwittingly. not Victor.

now let's talk about the rainbow room(s)

Kali and El both refer to a "rainbow room" in season 2, but the room we see in Terry's memories bears basically no resemblance to the season 4 one.

the areas Terry is seen searching look reasonably like a 70's hospital, and the rainbow room looks like be a small exam-room type area. but season 4's rainbow room is big, with tiled halls, heavy metal doors, high security, the whole works.

these definitely can't be the same room, but I've always wondered whether we're supposed to just fudge it and consider them to be the same?

did the lab retool and get a high-security makeover after the Terry incident, or did both places exist the whole time?

I haven't scoured every frame of the show so tell me if I'm off, but I think I'm deciding that no, the two rainbow rooms aren't supposed to be the same, and that HNL has always had both a publicly presentable hospital area (where the s2 rainbow room is), and a more intense locked-down lab/prison area (where the s4 rainbow room is). they serve the same purpose, just with different security levels.

the lab isn't the mid-70's hospital area made-over because for one thing, they still have a hospital area when Will is a patient there in 1984. this doesn't look like Terry's exact hallway, but note those wood-veneer doors and square plated handles.

HNL has always been both a "hospital" and a prison.

from the path we see Hopper take in 1x5, it would appear that the tiled hallway familiar to us from s1, El's room, etc, is on the ground floor, just beyond a keycard security access point. we see him get in the elevator and go down to the water tank / mothergate floor. he later describes this to Joyce as "upstairs vs downstairs".

but the lab is at least a handful of stories tall. so I feel like the hospital area must be on the second floor or up.

we aren't shown the path that Terry Ives takes to locate her rainbow room, but we do see her come walking from the direction of what looks like elevators just before she finds it, opposite bright windows, which I'm taking to mean that the Terry rainbow room was on an upper floor. not on the same floor as the s4 rainbow room.

tangent: is the hospital where Sara died supposed to also be Hawkins Lab? I thought that was in New York? this looks like a different landing in the same stairwell. I'm confused about the Hopper lore because I think some of it comes from the novels I haven't read and idk whether we accept that as canon. please advise?

anyway, idea: were the lab kids not numbered, not officially program subjects, from birth?

little Kali and El have long hair and seem allowed to wear fairly normal clothes during their free time. the tattoos go on left wrists and I don't think I see one on baby El, not that we're given a very good look.

the lab kids seem to be roughly a year apart each, but they don't go all the way down to babies. the youngest (Eighteen)'s actor was probably 7 or 8 at the time of filming. so there is such a thing as a minimum age for the program.

It can't be that they didn't start numbering the kids until after the Terry memory, because we saw Henry get tattooed in '59 or '60, very possibly before Two was even born.

I'm now chewing on a scenario where maybe young prospective lab kids were kept in a lesser-security area to be evaluated, and officially made test subjects only once they demonstrated powers.

after all, Brenner took newborn El because he expected Terry's abilities to be passed down, but you can't ask a baby to do telekinesis for you. it'll be a while before you get proof. and the lab can't be handing out number tattoos too hastily and wasting resources on some kids for years only to find they show no promise.

we know that didn't happen because there are no numbers 001-018 unaccounted for. no failed discarded subjects.

if not all people have equal latent potential, you can't pick all winners from the getgo, and if you also don't discard any failed numbers, that means you'd have to evaluate a bunch of kids, keep the best for the program, and discard the others before they ever become numbers. and if you do that (without just killing them), you probably wanna wipe their memories first so they don't go around telling what you're up to. this avenue of thought may be of interest to Will-as-a-lab-kid truthers (doesn't this require Will to be missing from home for a chunk of his childhood? explain to me please).

a program intake system like this could help explain how all the kids can be numbered neatly in order of age despite the ages of wild-caught kids being impossible to anticipate, which has bothered me for a long time. edit: I may have misjudged Kali's age, although if any other kids were wild caught I guess the question still bears asking

I hc this memory to have occurred during that preliminary observation time, unless they just didn't start shaving heads until the mid 70's. electric shock seems overboard for standard kid misbehavior. Kali must have already demonstrated psychic potential in order to be kidnapped in the first place, so I imagine this was probably disciplinary action for refusing to use her powers for them.

now let's look at El's and Kali's memories:

what event is this describing? if Kali escaped before El, how was Kali the one who found El gone?

could this be when El disappeared from rainbow room 1 and taken to rainbow room 2? did Kali ever see rainbow room 2?

or was El just in sick bay or isolation or something, and Kali thought she was gone-gone?

Henry corroborates Kali's escape being prior to El's. this puts Kali's escape after - what, say 73? 74? but before 79.

El apparently has no memory of Kali except for the one she got from Terry. did El lose her Kali memories (along with pre-massacre memories in general) from the coma, or did the lab wipe/brainwash her after Kali's escape, not wanting her to remember her at all?

because it's funny that even during the scene where Henry is jogging El's memory about Terry's visit, that same Kali rainbow room footage all we see. I know the scene was about her remembering Terry, not Kali, but it makes me wonder if she remembered that scene by way of her 1986 knowledge, or if that's also all 1979 El remembered about Kali?

El is struggling with the cognitive dissonance here - she insists that Mama died making her, even though she also does successfully recall the memory Henry is describing, and it upsets her. again, I imagine NINA is a lot better at restoring or implanting memories than at deleting them, so you'd have to rely heavily on old fashioned brainwashing to try to cover up an event like this. until Henry brought it up in 1979, El probably believed she had imagined it.

WHY does Kali pause like that before calling the Terry/rainbow room footage a "memory"? it makes me feel like she questions its veracity. either Kali was given different information about how kids enter the program, or she knows that isn't really how El's situation went down. or something. I'm suspicious of ALL lab related memories, even from the good guys.

flies in my ointment:

if Kali finding El gone is describing a time when El was taken out of my theoretical observation area and locked fully into the program, before Kali, you'd think she would have a lower number

if Kali escaped the observation area before she ever made it into the program proper, how was she already known as Eight? unless they were all numbered unofficially before that and just not tattooed yet, and if you gotta discard a kid you recycle their number

if you don't earn your number/tattoo/spot in the program until you're at least something years old, I wonder if El wasn't called Eleven as a toddler? Kali asks her name, she says Jane, and then Kali checks her wrist for the tattoo. I can't actually recall any proof that Kali remembers El as Eleven.

spinning my propeller hat and honking my clown nose:

HNL has high security and Terry already shot a guy on her way in. she had to have already had some idea of where to look in order to find El before the guards got to her. somebody told her where. hint: Henry somehow

did Henry lie and tell Kali that El was gone to prompt Kali's escape?

did Henry think he was telling the truth when he told Kali that El was gone, but really Brenner fed him that?

Kali seems less empathetic than El, do you think Henry would've had a similar alliance with her? why would he choose her to help escape. or did she not need help escaping?

why don't these people just ask each other the most obvious questions in the world AAAAAAHHH

[m1ndf4ng]

(holds up candy necklace) hand the driving headcanons over

…also ya want the candy necklace

Ok so I sorted them into five categories! There’s:

Good Drivers

Kanaya: obviously

Karkat: he’s so careful, he’s good and he parks perfectly and he never speeds

Jane: the only one of the kids to ACTUALLY have learned how to drive before the game

Can Drive

Dirk: he’s enough of a perfectionist that when they made cars he disappeared with one for like a week and came back able to drive. He’s not perfect though and it bothers him so much.

Vriska: she read one of janes old manuals and she’s been fine ever since. She’s probably using her luck powers though cause she definitely should have gotten a ticket by now

Jake: I just think he’d be fine at it

Jade: ^^^^same

June: jane taught her, janes dad offered but June doesn’t really like being around him since he looks like her dad but isn’t. She really doesn’t drive that often though bc she just does the windy thing

Bad Drivers

Roxy: she’s the kind of driver to be messing with stuff, shes putting on lip gloss, she’s adjusting her mirror, shes eating a snack, uh oh she hit a mailbox lol

Rose: she wants to be good at it so bad but she’s just NOT she tries to get Kanaya to teach her but she’s just hopeless

Equius: white knuckled, sweaty, gritting his teeth, he bends the steering wheel

Feferi: similar to Roxy but also she has road rage, if she’s driving she is also YELLING

Cannot Drive

Dave: Every time someone tries to teach him it ends in tears (if it’s karkat, then karkat cries; if it’s rose, then Dave cries) it’s not his fault, he’s much better at being navigator/DJ anyways

Aradia: she doesn’t really see the point, she likes to fly

Tavros: horn too big for he gotdamn head, when he rides in a car he sits in the middle seat in the back. He does know how to ride a motorcycle though!

Sollux: he just flies and when he’s tried to drive in the past he instinctually messes with other cars with his psionics which sucks if you’re one of those ppl

Nepeta: she’d rather walk anyways and she doesn’t go anywhere she’d need it so she just never learned

Gamzee: doesn’t really like being in cars (fridge trauma) and also even the specially made cars for big trolls feel cramped to him he’s so goddamn tall

Eridan: he’d rather be driven, thank you

Is NOT allowed to drive

Terezi: this is self explanatory, BUT one time vriska took her to a large parking lot and let her go crazy and she surprisingly only hit like one light pole and the only other car that was in the parking lot (it was karkat’s)

Davepeta: is not necessarily a bad driver but they had their license revoked. One time rose had a party at her house and Davepeta told her they were running late and then drove to her house, texted “on my way!” And then immediately ran the car into her living room as a joke

Jasprose: was in the car with Davepeta and also it may have been her idea, rose revoked both of their licenses permanently

I love to make little headcanons like this so if y’all have any thoughts lmk I’ll do more, also I forgot a few characters so I could add em later

[fantrollology]

twirls hair hiii you should give me a list of your trolls with fun and funky psionics. are there any who struggle to control their abilities? re there any that run the risk of harming (or even killing) people if they arent careful?

umm ummm!!!

i only realized this bc of this ask but none of my characters psionics are actually too volatile?? like, even the ones who dont have great control over them, theyre not gonna harm or kill anyone by accident, probably. :,) but here r some of my fav powers on this blog <3

rilakk - astral projection!!! every time they sleep (or become unconscious) they astral project! they had to practice for a while before they were completely lucid and could control it but now theyre comfortable enough doing it to spend most of their time in that form

ionyll - ok so io has a bunch of dark magic abilities (not psionics) but my favorite is her eye!!! she can see out of it wherever its drawn so long as she is aware of its presence.

lauren - he can see and modify thoughts after making eye contact with the person in question. his power additionally manifests with sound; words that are spoken appear in front of him

fledge - so hers are kinda neat cuz she can actually █████ ████████████ ██████. it started out with a sensitivity to it and ███████ ██████ but bc of al█████ ████████████ she can ██ █████ █████ ████ like she can ████ █████████ and ██████████ ███ and shit she will █████████ ██████████ your ass and ████ ███ █████ ██

Iggy, Palaia, Alaise, and Button also have abilities! Gazijo and a couple other charas i plan to introduce uhhh soonish maybe also have some neat abilities but none of them are too dangerous either. at least not without intention.

additionally some of my characters have abilities even they dont know about and/or i havent revealed (and those would be the ones who have trouble controlling them), so i encourage people to bother everyone about stuff <:D

[skips-is-asleep]

I HAD BEEN WAITING FOR SPACE SOLKAT TO FINISH god it’s so good i love this series. what’s your concept about the state of the troll species and the empire post-assassination?? if you had an idea for what would evolve from this!

AHH IM GLAD YOU LIKE IT!!!! :D!!

This is an excellent question!! And I'm gonna use this as a sort of loose epilogue bc I have a lot to say actually

So killing a country's leader would obviously cause anarchy and pandemonium; I think post assassination, Karkat would sort of seize control anonymously at first. I've always thought that fics that cover this subject never address the fact that the mass majority of the population would not listen to Karkat out the get-go, so pulling strings from behind a curtain either by an alias or straight up pretending to be Condy makes the most sense to me. At least until his laws are less controversial and then he can step out, but it sort of begs the question, does he need to step out? Do they need to know that a rebel killed Empress and has been pulling the strings? I'll be honest I kind of completely forgot about Feferi entirely until like....I think it was after Transformation and by then it was too late, I couldn't just shove her in, so I could say that she either was beaten by the Empress in combat (Rip) or maybe hasn't even challenged her yet and maybe her and Karkat take control together. (tangent: i...do not know how trolls age tbh? With their vastly different lifespans? It's sort of accepted by the fandom that highbloods age normally, they just have a longer adult phase, but I can't help but wonder what if their aging was proportional to their lifespan? Like hypothetically, Sollux and Feferi being the same age, but looking like vastly different ages but ehhh that's anime creep shit and I don't like that)

The obvious things that are first to go are no more eugenics (ie. Culling people for genetic inferiority), no more mandatory breeding and no more using psionics as power supplies. I know that friendsim sort of implied that there is at least a tiny fraction of psionics that want to helm (but????? Okay freak). Karkat would try to outlaw this first, but it would basically crash the entire space travel industry, so he'd probably put a lot of resources into developing alternative forms of clean energy first, outlaw slavery second which sounds fucked up. That being said, he would immediately implement this his personal fleets, and making this his top priority, I don't think it would take long

I don't know much about population sciences, so I can't say for certain what it would mean for Alternia's gene pool what banning the the mandatory pails would do. Bc when you think about it, yes the population is increasing inevitably but also many many trolls are dying should they not Contribute, you know? So many less trolls being born, but more trolls staying alive? Would a better society emerge from genes being given freely rather than forcibly? Is that something that changes at all?

I also sort of wonder what this would mean for quadrants, like how many people stay strictly one or another just so they can have someone locked down for pail seasons even though they don't necessarily feel like that? How many people force themselves to vacillate for their kismesis just to survive? Would there be a spike in people taking moirails now that pailing is not mandatory? Would the ashen quadrant fizzle out now that you won't die for not having a kismesis?

Without culling anyone for "genetic inferiority," I think we'd see many many more mutant bloods, like this is just a given, but I'm sort of curious for other types of trolls that might come out that don't serve functions but are just different. Trolls that are only half psionic, having powers that are extremely weak as a result, more trolls hatched with disabilities, maybe we'd see more widespread psychic powers amount the castes or more lowbloods with stronger attributes. It wouldn't surprise me at all if drones were killing lowbloods that showed excellence to keep highbloods high and lowbloods low. Maybe lifespans for lowbloods would get longer as a result of them having access to better qualities of life!

And finally, what of psionics who no longer helm? If their end-all-be-all was to be power sources, and they ultimately are bred to be stronger and stronger, I can't help but wonder if maybe they'd grow weaker as a class? I know that's not as optimistic as the others but I can't help but draw parallels to the unicorns from MLP:FIM where most of them have basic magic skills but only a few study and achieve excellence with their powers through work and practice? Maybe psions become more like that and less like Freshly Born Powerhouses, you know?

[shadowdemon101]

I haven’t drawn anything in literal years, and when I finally do, it’s hiveswap/homestuck based; literally trollsonas and OCs as fantrolls xD;

I must’ve made so many fantrolls over the years, but my darling friend @cornerofthejunkdrawer​ n I played hiveswap together and so I made her do the extended zodiac test and surprise surprise! She gets Skylla’s sign! So yeah, definitely drew ourselves as trolls LOL Literally your fault Love <3

And then old OCs that I play with friends and were WTNV based on here? Doodled them as fantrolls, I don’t know if anyone from the WTNV fandom remembers, it was fun to imagine them as trolls.

Cleo would be a cerulean, prone to stabbing, maiming and everything in between, and probably be friendly with Ardata, which is scary in of itself LOL (Probably has her Sight in some capacity here)

Vithya, my sweet bunbun angel, 100% a jade, adores caring for little grubs and is 100% too shy to say no, but would maybe cover for others bc she gets it, being forced into anything sucks but what can she do but make the most of it?

Basma, my Smiling God, little brat as they are, powerful psionic goldblood who somehow discovered Clown Church very early and fucking loves it b/c omg laughs?? Murder?! 100% their jam and they are so delighted to kill almost anyone for the church

[lowsodiumlevels]

FANTROLL STUFF BC SHRIMP HAS BIG BRAIN RN

Shiken knows how to sew. I mean like hand sew.

Decain is a rich burgundy blood because he literally lives in a goldmine. He digs and dusts off cystals and pieces of gold. He doesn't go on shopping sprees cuz he knows highbloods would cull him for being as rich as them.

Elizon owns a little flower shop and is a florist.

Shiken gets so hyper when playing Friday night funkin. But if he gets carried away his psionics will cause a power surge and possibly shut off power within a 100 mile radius. Including the power in his own hive.

Dorito will sometimes glitch through the ground and get stuck. Charli then has to call Decain to come dig him out.

Xopium, when giving himself a day to relax, he sits down with his cat. "Coraline" she probably looks like a persan cat.

Kelvin is half-blind. He can't see clearly but he can feel a troll's energy. Seeing their core/blood color.

Harlin has a hard time expressing Pale,Black and red feelings.

Orxefo actually was robbed of his childhood at 12. Not being able to control his actions or thoughts. Having trouble with social interaction by himself. Like he needs to be told what to do if TC isn't controlling him. (Think I've said this before but I'll say it again)

Shiken can and will bake you a cake and/or other deserts.

When Shiken was a grub, his fox lusus would put him on their back and run around, thinking shiken was having fun too. Shiken would scream, trying to hold onto his lusus' fur.

Lotheo was interested in the supernatural and mythology.

Tokien knows how to do the Tango.

[scarlet--wiccan]

I want Wanda or billy to (at least try to) teach tommy magic. Especially billy bc he’s so unqualified to teach, I think it’d be a hilarious disaster. At the same time I think tommy is so underutilized because he doesn’t stand out that much from pietro power set wise (and for some reason people want to pretend pietro has his personality) so I think maybe if he learned some basic magic it could set him apart.

I have stated before, on this blog, that I think Tommy and Pietro should practice some form of witchery, with the main reason being that you don’t need a psionic mutation or reality warping powers to be a witch. Billy and Wanda have those things, but that’s not what makes them witches— they’re witches because they do witchcraft, and it’s a skill they’ve developed through research, practice, and instruction (Wanda much more so). 

There are completely mundane humans in Marvel canon who are able to learn magic, but Tommy and Pietro aren’t mundane- they’re mutants (in some fashion) and they have magical ancestry. Tommy’s never gonna be Sorcerer Supreme, but that shouldn’t stop him from learning a few tricks, and I’m really interested in what a writer could do with a character who combines mystical knowledge with a primarily physical power set. Speedsters have altered perception and a unique way of metabolizing/expending energy. I think there are a lot of really cool ways to apply that sort of character in a more fantasy or magical type of narrative. Pietro’s role in Scarlet Witch (2016) and Avengers: No Surrender, followed by the Quicksilver miniseries, is actually a really great example— his powers work in conjunction with Wanda’s spell casting, and even on his own he’s able to engage with metaphysical forces by practicing mindfulness and harnessing the unique energy that his body and mind are a conduit for. That’s a great foundation for building a magical practice. I’d love to see future stories explore it further, and I’d love to see it for Tommy, too. I totally agree that playing Billy and Tommy off of each other in this context would be fun, and it would definitely highlight their dynamic in a way that would set them apart from their predecessors.

Unfortunately, there is a downside that I have to bring up. Scarlet Witch (2016) established that the Maximoffs are descended from a long line of witches, and the text does play pretty close to certain, very frustrating, stereotypes about Romani culture. In the past, Wanda’s witchiness has been explicitly separate from her cultural background. The idea that her magical abilities come specifically from her Roma blood is… a little racist, and the fact is that most Roma characters in Marvel are witches already. Pietro, Tommy, and Luna are probably the only ones who aren’t. (Except for Meggan, but she’s got other problems.) That’s why I’m a little I’m a little hesitant about the idea of bringing Tommy and/or Pietro further into the world of magic. I want the representation of Roma people to reflect the varied and diverse experiences that we have, not to continue centering the harmful narratives that have been baked into popular imagination by antiromany racism. 

Ultimately, my answer to you is that I love your ideas but I have to be cautious about co-signing these types of things. You all know I want more Maximoff family interaction and that I’d pay real good money to read, say, a mother-son-uncle witchy road trip adventure. I just would need it to be written and edited by some authentic voices.

[also, wrt Tommy lacking significant differentiation from Pietro: you might be on to something! From a powers-and-aesthetics perspective, they’re pretty redundant, and there is a lot of overlap in their characterization, mainly because lazy writers give the same personality to, like, every speedster hero ever. To be clear, I like their similarities and would be interested in a story that explores what they have in common. But if Heinberg had come up with some smaller way to set them apart, maybe Tommy would have more staying power in the Marvel zeitgeist. Billy and Wanda are very similar, but Billy has a slightly different color palette an a slightly different method of applying his powers. I know I’ve always said I want him to be more like Wanda, but obviously those differences have paid off in some way.]

[traincat]

I've been ranting to my friends about Johnny being abused and raped recently and one of them said: Lyja has damaged and put an element of distrust into every relationship he may ever have. which is really fucking me up and I wanted to share in part bc I don't wanna be sad alone and also bc I think that's an interesting side effect of Lyja's time in his life that doesn't get talked about enough

Thank you for sharing this because the thing is I do think there is a very definite divide in how Johnny acts particularly in regards to relationships before and after his marriage to “Alicia.” I doubt this was entirely intentional on the parts of the writers who handled the book after, but I’ve said before that I think after a certain amount of time and with enough stories behind them characters tend to take on a life of their own, and even if the writers are hesitant to address it there’s no way an event like his relationship with Lyja couldn’t have deeply effected Johnny.

Simply put: I don’t think “playboy Johnny” exists before Lyja. I don’t buy into “playboy Johnny” much as a general phenomenon, because if you actually look at the canon there’s just not much to actually back it up, but he certainly has at periods played into this public (both in and out universe) perception of himself. What I mean is, pre-Lyja, there is absolutely no proof Johnny had ever engaged in casual sex. (There’s actually no proof he wasn’t a virgin when Lyja began working her way into his life while masquerading as Alicia; this panel from Fantastic Four #275 is the first time Johnny having sex is addressed:

That shirt is Johnny’s – you see him wearing it the issue leading up to this one. To be clear, there’s nothing in the issue that supports this being Johnny’s first time, either – it’s just that he doesn’t have any sex scenes prior. Either way, this is not the reaction of someone who had a good time.)

Pre-the Alilyja incident, Johnny had a grand total of three relationships: Dorrie Evans in high school, Crystal Amaquelin, Frankie Raye. He had a few dates with a girl named Lorrie Melton who called things off with him because he was more serious than she wanted to be, and shared a whole one kiss with a girl named Valeria from the Fifth Dimension (no relationship to his future niece). He also briefly pursued a girl named Julie Angel, who blatantly wasn’t interested in him. When Julie’s friend Sharon came onto him during this period, he reacted with discomfort:

(Fantastic Four #259)

So, playboy Johnny Storm, a womanizer who sleeps around – he doesn’t exist in canon at this point. (If anything, Johnny repeatedly reacts negatively to being kissed suddenly and without his permission leading up to and during the marriage.) Then you have the marriage, which happens fairly quickly – Johnny and Alicia’s relationship is “cemented” in FF #275, they get married in FF #300. I want to note that Johnny’s pretty young when he gets married, especially by modern standards �� you have to do the Spider-Man math with this one, since Johnny’s age at this point in canon isn’t stated, but he and Peter both get married at roughly the same time. We know that they’re roughly the same age, Johnny being 16 when he got his powers and Peter being 15 and these things happening fairly closely together. Peter comments very shortly after he’s married that he’s been out of high school for five years, which would make both him and Johnny roughly 23 when they respectively tied the knot. Alicia is labeled during Byrne’s run as three years older than Johnny, but it should be noted that Byrne has a habit of making women younger and putting them in relationships with much older men – which would track if it’s his opinion Alicia first met Ben when she was 19. (It’s my personal belief that she should be older than that, but that’s neither here nor there.) We have no idea how old Lyja is in comparison to Johnny. So he’s young, and the relationship escalates very quickly, which, looking at it with the retcon in place, makes sense, because Lyja is on a mission to infiltrate the Fantastic Four. So it’s quick. The marriage, the Skrull reveal, and the ensuing melodrama lasts… a while after that. 

Then the big reset button that was Heroes Reborn got hit after Fantastic Four #416 and Johnny and family were shunted off to a pocket universe for a little bit, sans Lyja. Fantastic Four v2 is the first look we get at a more playboy-ish Johnny Storm in line with, say, the Chris Evans version of the character – older when the accident hits instead of being a fresh-faced teen, a bit irresponsible, comes off a little bit like he might be a dog. But this reboot canon can’t really keep it up: it reunites Johnny and Crystal temporarily, and then everyone gets snatched out of their alternate reality bubble and planted back in their regular timeline anyway. 

So let’s look at Johnny’s relationships after his marriage:

1) Alysande “Caledonia” Stuart: A young woman Johnny found and rescued in another dimension who lived with the Fantastic Four for a while. I’m including this even though it isn’t strictly a romantic relationship – Johnny appears to have feelings for Alsyande, but it’s unclear if they’re reciprocated or if she just feels a deep debt of loyalty to him for rescuing her. Either way, I really like how this relationship is handled; they’re both very respectful of each other in a way that’s missing from a lot of Johnny’s actual romantic relationships. They definitely didn’t have sex. 

2) Namorita Prentiss: The first actual romantic relationship Johnny has post-Lyja. This one’s another weird one; Johnny and Namorita first get together after teasing the paparazzi and commiserating about being famous. They then proceed to spend next to no time together. Seriously, like, to the point where the books remarks on it:

(Fantastic Four v3 #55)

Johnny and Namorita do do things like attend celebrity functions together, so I label this as Johnny’s first “publicity” relationship – less about being in love, and more about him and the other party looking really good together for the public eye. (This is also something he never did before his marriage.) Anyway, they break up off panel, although Johnny did apparently ask Nita to move in with him at one point, which she refused.

Kourtney: A second and much more prominent “publicity” relationship. Kourtney is a supermodel who we’re first introduced to when she breaks up with Johnny when the Fantastic Four go broke and he falls out of public favor. They do get back together for the duration of Marvel Knights 4, and then they apparently break up again. Nothing to write home about in this relationship – she and Johnny don’t really appear to actually like each other all that much, especially on her end. 

We enter a relationship deadzone for Johnny as we hit Waid’s run. He starts it off apparently shaking off a bad celebrity breakup, and while he goes a bit moony-eyed over a few pretty girls at the beginning, basically nothing happens. He at one point meets up with a girl from the internet who claims to be a fan of his and things seem like they might get romantic… except his body language really is screaming the opposite:

Fantastic Four #514 – I’m not saying how much of this was intentional or even what the intent was, but if there’s something a comic book artist should be good at conveying, it’s body language. Here Cole’s is aggressive – leaning in, touching his face – and Johnny’s is closed off – hands in his pockets, leaning away from her. It’s just interesting if we’re supposed to believe he’s hot for this girl.

Anyway, Cole turns out to be the Wizard’s daughter, catfishing Johnny to find a solution for her unwanted superpowers. So. That lasts two issues and nothing happens between them.

Psionics: And now we enter Millar’s run. Millar’s run is probably the biggest contributor to Playboy Johnny – not only does he have an ill-advised sexual affair with a superpowered bank robber named Psionics, he also gets walked in on – apparently – about to have a threesome with two girls cosplaying as Storm and the Scarlet Witch. I’ve had a problem with the cosplay scene for a while now, because it just doesn’t fit with Johnny’s 616 personality. Something about it has always felt very off. And while I could just go “well it’s Mark Millar,” it occurred to me on a recent reread what’s wrong with it: it feels staged. Johnny’s in the middle of filming a reality show; the camera crew is who walks in on him. If he was trying to cultivate this playboy image, well, one way to do it is to make sure you’re walked in on in a compromising situation. He and the girls are all still fully clothed, and he actually ditches the scene as soon as they’re discovered – to congratulate Ben on his engagement, but still – while the girls frankly seem more interested in each other. It’s a weird scene still, but there’s nothing in it either way to say he was or wasn’t setting it up to make it look like he was the kind of womanizing carefree celebrity party boy who has threesomes with hot cosplay girls while not actually doing that.

As for Psionics, the hot bank robber he sleeps with? Well, turns out her family from the future kidnaps him and uses him as a giant power battery in a machine that has a good chance of killing him. No bad feelings or anything, though.

Again with the awkward body language. He certainly just stands there while she kisses him. This is the exact opposite of smoldering passion. Also, next time he sees her she tries to kidnap his niece, kills his longtime family friend Alyssa Moy in front of him, and then gets murdered right before his eyes. So. That all happened.

He has one apparent would’ve-been one night stand in Hickman’s run after this, except she turns into a bunch of bug monsters and activates the Negative Zone portal. He also has a highly implied brief sexual relationship with Daken Akihiro at this point, who… uses that connection to make Johnny feel horribly guilty over Daken’s apparent death and then so Daken can steal a weapon from the Fantastic Four. There’s a weird pattern here.

Darla Deering: The last and most recent of Johnny’s publicity relationships – Johnny starts seeing Darla, a major pop star, sometime after his experiences in the Negative Zone. This is another “they’re in a relationship but they don’t spend any time together” fling, too – at the end of the relationship, when Darla’s gotten together with Scott Lang, Johnny actually admits that he liked dating Darla because of Darla’s celebrity lifestyle more than he liked her. 

Here we hit Robinson’s run. Johnny does a lot of partying after he’s lost his powers, and while it’s not explicit, there’s something of an implication during this point that he is sleeping around. However, his most serious relationships in this run are with his family, Wyatt Wingfoot, and Peter Parker, and he has no consistent romantic partner. 

Which brings us to his last serious relationship: Medusa. This one’s a weird one, too, and it’s one where I’m not hesitant to blame the writer’s lack of research at all when Medusa and Johnny were genuinely very close during her stint on the Fantastic Four team. It’s clearly a placeholder relationship – we know Black Bolt/Medusa were going to get back together. If anything, I think here Johnny’s holding onto a piece of his then-missing family the only way he knows how.

So, a couple of relationships post-marriage, but by in large, with the exception of Namorita where we see hardly any of their actual relationship on page and perhaps Medusa, nothing serious. Certainly nothing like his impassioned “head over heels” falls for Crystal and Frankie Raye. So there’s very definitely a change in Johnny after Lyja and in how he behaves in romantic relationships – the implication that he does have casual sex, the uptick in relationships that are clearly for the public eye, a lack of a previously held deep devotion to his partner. I think you could make a really good case for all this coming about as a result of lingering and unaddressed trauma from Lyja. 

There’s also, and this isn’t explicitly romantic, the appearance of this little quizzing game:

(Fantastic Four: Secret Invasion) This actually is Lyja in her only appearance since FF #416, disguised as Sue and trying to convince Johnny that Ben is a Skrull for… well for nothing good, obviously, but the book never actually gets into why she’s attempting to separate Ben from Johnny, except that separating him from his family is exactly what she tried to do before she was discovered to a be a Skrull during their “marriage.” But it’s telling that when Johnny feels like something isn’t right, he immediately starts quizzing “Sue” about things she should know. Definitely seems like the kind of game someone who unwittingly married and was abused by a shapeshifter would invent to make sure that the people in his life are really who they’re supposed to be.

So I definitely think there’s a lot of lingering trauma there that, if a really good writer dug into it, could inform a lot about both the romantic relationships he had after that point and his romantic future, especially if it was paired with a story where he explores his romantic feelings for men. It’d be interesting to see it doubled up with doubts after his relationship with Daken in that regard, since Daken also used him to gain access to the Fantastic Four. I’d love to see it all really gotten into and actually, for the first time, addressed, especially if it was in the context of a romantic relationship with Wyatt Wingfoot, who was present during the early days of Lyja’s seduction of Johnny and is also who Johnny ran to after he discovered the truth about the monster Lyja told him was their child. A lot of history to get into there.

[noxtrolls]

Indigo potion for all of your trolls!!

wOOF AIGHTnot using sprites bc it’d be a looooong post

Indigo potion - their greatest strength, and greatest weakness.

Adlyra Vosett:Her greatest strength is probably her sense of diplomacy. She’s an excellent mediator, and honestly? She’d make a wonderful moirail with how patient and calm she is. However, this is also her downfall. Being kind to the point of naivety on Alternia is a death sentence, especially for a lowblood. The only reason she’s still alive is a combination of her blood caste and the fact that people like her on account of her amicable nature.

Ailidh:Greatest strength is definitely intelligence. She’s keenly observant, and knows a great deal about both nature and certain types of magics that she herself can use. As for her weakness, though, well. She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed socially speaking. She can read someone else’s mood or intent fine, but getting her own across is harder with how unexpressive she can be, and her blunt and to-the-point manner of speaking can be off putting and get her into trouble. Not to mention she’s a mutant.

Luuzia Belova:She doesn’t have a character card yet, but she exists! And she’s a feral purple binch. Her strengths are probably her cunning and of course her knack for violence that comes with being a highblood. Weakness... probably arrogance. No, actually, definitely arrogance. She’d tell the empress off if given the opportunity, but she might actually live to tell the tale, too.

Nykaam Kuspia:Probably his greatest strength is his actual, literal strength? He’s a big man. A buff man. And he lives in what is pretty much Alternia’s arctic region, his survival instincts are to die for (ba dum tsh). He’d be able to live rough pretty much anywhere on the planet I guess, but just like Ailidh, he’s got a problem with being too blunt and living in isolation has made him way too quick to forget his caste [context because he doesn’t ALSO have a character card yet: Nykaam is a bronzeblooded boi!]

Yutahn Rhinco:God, this feral bastard. He’s highly intelligent, physically fit, and a powerful psionic. He’s really good at what he does. He’s emotionally closed off as hell, though, because his line of work requires that he be such, and has a habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth out of sheer mistrust. He’s also got a hell of a defiant streak, and even his quadmates would have to deal with fits of Yuta being just... an absolutely insufferable asshole doing some awful things.

[svblunar]

( * lim dal-hye . )

✧ — * » < kim namjoon, cismale, he/him, twenty-six > welcome to the witching community of chicago, LIM DAL-HYE ! you’re a LUNAR WITCH right ? some of the locals around here have described you as being DELPHIC and A CONTROL FREAK, but others have said you’re CORDIAL and STARRY-EYED. i guess i’ll have to see for myself. now, being a type of witch, i hear you excel at PSIONIC IMAGE PROJECTION. the chicago witching community prides itself on having skilled witches so make sure to keep practicing!

hello :3 this is @jinhien‘s mom with her much softer son~

SORTA BIO THING:

first of all, dalhye’s @ofjunos’ big brother. hence, i’m not going to be a little parrot and repeat everything taylor wrote about their parents in her bio, i’m just going to link it here. 

he’s a 92 liner, born 6 years before his baby brother, as the very first kid of the lim fam

prior to his birth, his dad really wanted a child, while his mother was very wary of it. this is why, when they found out she was carrying a baby, the father was ecstatic, and the mom was super stressed out. of course she was happy, but she’s always had more of an analytical approach to life and she’s always been an overthinker.

the pregnancy was wonderful and the baby boy was born during the total lunar eclipse which happened during the night between the 9th & 10th december of 1992. because of this, and the small crescent moon birthmark he was born with on his right hip, they wanted to incorporate DAL, meaning moon in korean, into his name.

he brought the spring back into their relationship, and somehow they fell for each other even more, watching one another care for their little baby with so much adoration and patience and vrwbkhnwc i love this little family :(

being a tech witch, his mom would always come up with innovative techy toys for him to play with, but he’d become bored with them in two days, toss them away and not care for them anymore, but ever since he could walk & talk, he’d always been interested in his dad’s crystals and would play with his mom’s necklace and rings, crafted by his dad, while sitting on her lap

he was definitely a night child, and his parents had a problem with putting him to bed. when the moon was up, he was up too, no discussion. he’d be all sleepy and lazy during the day, tho. he wasn’t really an outdoorsy kid, or an active kid generally, but he’d insist on looking at the moon n the stars every night, and only fairy tales regarding those two elements would put him to sleep, so it was pretty easy to determine what type of a witch he’d be

growing up, he wouldn’t insist on going to the playground or staying with the other kids more than his parents would allow him, since he’d like to spend some time alone with his thoughts and the nature often. his mood would be so back and forth all the time. he could be bawling one minute, and then fine the next... that has followed him into his adulthood as well

he really insisted on having a bby sibling 💕 and his parents finally DELIVERED six years later. during his mom’s pregnancy, he’d call his bby brother moonie bc his mom’s belly reminded him of the full moon :( iM devastated yaLL

being an empathetic lil lunar witch, he always stayed by his mom’s side, and she was treated like a proper QUEEN by his dad n him, they didn’t let her pick up a spoon, let alone anything larger FIENSJSKMDF

i dont think there was a happier day in his life than the day his lil moonie was born ???? i mEAN J U N O FNSKEJDF

he’d practice his reading by reading his bby brother stories !! he was ALWAYS by his side and always snuggling him and he probably transferred a good chunk of empathy and softness onto him

basically his life revolved around his lil bro n parents, n everything he did, he did it for them, and didn’t really make connections outside of his family bc he was happy the way things were, with only four of them ?? they were his safe haven

he did well in school and was a total teacher’s pet FENCDISK also he wanted to set a good example and be a good role model for juno ( maybe he still calls him moonie sometimes pstT )

the hardest thing in his life was moving out of his HOME ?? his parents got him an apartment near the campus of his witching academy and ... he no longer got to see them 24/7, but their mom forced them to make a group chat for the lim fambam n stay in touch all the time nivrnwicm dal always sent moon & heart emojis and pictures/vids of what he did in his classes and pics of how he decorated his apartment n yea. his lil bro came often to hang out with him there. a proper pest, y’all. jk.

the upside of having that apartment was that dal became a lot more sociable and started inviting pals over, having fun game nights, drinking and all... it was super handy when he was in relationships too, yk :)

when lil baby juno started going to college, he moved in with him too and brought his plants n a cat with him, so he no longer felt as detached in there~ he just squishes his bby brother with softness and makes him nice food n has a cat to cuddle with lots so that’s nice

during his stay at the witching academy he mastered his specialty which is psionic image projection !! it means he can materialize his or someone else’s dreams or thoughts using light particles !! he creates images n projections, but he can actually make them tactile too, tho that takes more power and effort

he has a pet goldfish called lucky #2 ( dont laugh at him, he loves talking about lucky #2 :( )

he had a pet goldfish called lucky but lucky wasnt that lucky n got eaten by juno’s cat :(

sometimes he can still feel lucky’s presence in the apartment

no joke he cried for 3 days straight n called in sick for work ( his dad’s crystal shop KBGNEJGF )

PERSONALITY:

he’s the cutest person you’ll ever meet

v soft and caring, always puts others before himself and his own needs

perhaps a living koala bear ?? he just wants to cuddle 24/7 n he’ll cry if you deny him of your attention

but at times he likes being alone in order to daydream and look at the moon n yk all of that poetic shit

he’s a hopeless romantic and sometimes his cheesy side gets sooo overwhelming ?? like, he can literally ANNOY the hell out of you with how loving he is.

he’s like glue. if he likes you, he’ll stick to your side and want to do EVERYTHING with you, you wont be able to get rid of him

too sappy at times ?? 

easily gets sad NGJESF be careful with your words around him, he’ll think about them and they’ll ring in his head even after 20 years

he gets stressed easily. one (1) thing could go slightly wrong and he’d be like. THATS IT MY WHOLE LIFE IS OVER. so uhm .. you could say he’s slightly dramatic.

spends his time watching romcoms n stupid documentaries

[heroicisms]

INTROS PART 2 LET’S GO LADS

JUNG SUNMI aka TWELVE

she can manipulate and move clocks as well as go back in time, but only twelve hours. while she could go forward in time if she applied herself more, she’s restrained herself, not wanting to see the future before it happens bc she’s kinda superstitious about it

a sweet bab she’s always here to cheer for her classmates or her brother or just anyone tbh

when she first started at saturn she was always visiting her brother’s class so if you’re in the same grade as minnie u probs know her

she isn’t the sTRONGEST hero ever but where others focus on strength she prefers to focus on technique which is how she passed the entrance exams aka using the clocks in the fake buildings as fucking boomerangs

she’s kind and patient but also kinda gullible and naive ?? tell her something and she’ll probably believe it unless you’ve given her a good reason not to trust you

she’s the kind of person to try and talk to a villain after she’s captured them, try and figure out why they are the way they are

CULLEN SHIM

cullen’s parents were in debt when he was born, but they kept holding out against the organisation they owed until around the time cullen’s quirk showed itself. seeing that the son might be useful, the organisation decided that rather than paying the money back, the parents could give them cullen instead

they didn’t quite accept, but with a few... memory alterations, they took the kid anyway and erased his memory of his real home and his parents

he’s allowed to move around freely in the organisation’s base, but he learned the hard way as a kid that if he doesn’t want to dream walk for the others, he’ll be forced to with tranquillisers, so he just does everything sorta... numbly... like he’s surviving but not living

that being said, he hasn’t bothered to change anything about his situation because it’s just reality for him ?? he’s a captive, he can’t move around freely, but it’s all he knows

he can dream walk, but he has to be unconscious to do so. he usually has to try to get into someone’s dreams, but sometimes he just wanders into other people’s, usually because of some pull aka he was thinking about the person or something

give me someone whose dreams he enters and they strike up a friendship and he visits them and tells him that he should do something about all the bad things going on around him, that he can change things

BYUN YUNA aka PSYRA

she was born quirkless but really wanted to become a hero, mainly because she idolised them from a young age

being quirkless in a neighbourhood full of rough kids who were quick to shoot down anyone who thought they could be anything greater than them, and yuna was just an easy target

she hung out with the neighbourhood kids a lot, even though many of them teased her and were mean to her, and she was always the guinea pig in their experiments or when they needed someone to go into a haunted place first the “it’s ok if u die” person

that was how she ended up getting into an accident to the point where the other kids thought she was dead, but she was fine, i still need to think up the exact details bUT

someone from the league of villains found her and took her in, giving her a quirk while the other kids ran home and told everyone that yuna had split from the group and disappeared

her quirk is psionic inundation so she can overload someone’s mind to cause various effects, but she has to see their face first and she can’t do it to too many people at a time for too long

she doesn’t rEALLY want revenge she’s just happy to have a home and be treated well instead of a nuisance, but if she were to run into those people who left her it probs wouldn’t go well

HEO MINWOO

my poor son wanted to be a hero but didn’t pass the entrance exam rip, but i have a headcanon that he has a childhood friend who DID make it in but they lost contact and he’s very sad about it but thinks they’re too busy to do anything so he doesn’t bother them

what he does instead is ?? try and find out what’s going on with villains after he hears that saturn tends to be a target for villains sometimes which is where his powers come in

he has cloaking, which basically means he can become invisible as well as turn others invisible, but ofc he can still be heard, seen, felt, etc. so he has to be careful

he uses this power to spy on villains and anonymously reports things to heroes or the police so he’s not qUITE a vigilante but if he steps over the line then he’s screwed

he studies physics at university but he doesn’t know what he wants to do with it yet

idk how reckless he’ll get with this whole following the villains thing tbh i guess it depends on the childhood friend

that being said someone gimme the childhood friend i have a Need

IM NARI aka MIRA

mira aka mirror u get it bc rEFLECTION MANIPULATION

she can control reflections and sorta turn them into physical objects and the like ?? but ofc this doesn’t work as well when it’s too dark to give a reflection, and it ESPECIALLY doesn’t work when there’s nothing to give a reflection at all

her parents were killed because they were bait and the police and heroes were shady, long story short. they thought they would be saved, not become the evidence that the accused was put away with

this left mira in the foster system, and she hated every last bit of it, aware that if she expressed her real feelings about heroes, she would be treated as a potential threat, and no one would want a potential villain in their house, so she was forced to keep quit until she ran away as a teen

she isn’t part of the league of villains, though she’s probably come across them from time to time and tends to let them do their thing as long as they let her do hers

so far, she’s just committed petty crimes, occasionally sabotaging a hero if she happens to be in the area, biding her time until she can get worthy revenge on the heroes that let her parents die

it IS possible that she can be brought back to the good side, or at least a neutral one, so there’s tHAT at least

she hides her face behind a masquerade-esque mask because she’s paranoid of someone from her past seeing her as a villain

SHAN XIAOLI aka THE WEAPON

yALL KNOW WHO SHE IS YALL KNOW THE STORY

except this time she’s one half of a weapon owned by a crime syndicate aka her father

she can’t speak and uses her sketchbook to communicate, though she does know sign language

since she’s already looked down upon for not being able to speak, xiaoli ensures that she knows what she’s doing elsewhere, proving herself by her combat and her quirk, which she is sure is why her father bothered to keep her around for as long as he has

despite essentially being an assassin, she has a neutral stance towards heroes, more of a “they were born into the life and destiny they were, and i was born into mine”

she avoids bloodshed if she can, but isn’t about to get too upset if she can’t

she has gravity manipulation, though she mainly uses it on herself in combat to make herself lighter, though she’ll use it on others if she has to. she prefers to be an area-based fighter, counting on the environment to incapacitate her opponents

she’s considered leaving the syndicate before, just making a run for it, but she refuses to leave bolin behind, but also didn’t bring it up to him bc she’s an idiot

[vulpixelates]

oh shit i forgot to explain this last night. okay! so short backstory:

venus is an engineer specializing in vehicles and also a psionic (like, biotics in mass effect terms, can throw shit around w her mind, is a pretty powerful one)

venus helped develop a vehicle alongside her adopted mom called the hellcat; it's kinda like the mako, a tank meant for traversing rough terrain, so it has the ability to jump in the air a little to get over big bumps (as well as a bunch of other stuff that's not relevant, but y'know. trying to summarize here.)

the specified hellcat driver on board her new ship, cormac vance, tore out almost all of the shocks on the thing to make space for extra cargo and bc she thinks it's fun to have a bruised tailbone when she drives like a fucking maniac or something idk

the captain of the ship had told venus to make some upgrades to their hellcat to make it more advanced like the latest versions and to make it, uh, more pleasant to ride around in

venus was midway through the upgrades when they started their last mission and had the hellcat on the ground for the first time in a while. vance usually doesn't let other people drive it but venus wanted to get a feel for the handling to see if there was anything else she could fix, so vance agreed (after some persuasion and with lots of pouting) to let her take the wheel on their way back to their base camp after talking to some folks from another faction.

unfortunately for the other faction (🙃😤), they decided that instead of honoring the treaty they have w the commonwealth in this sector, they were going to take a chance at trying to take us down. they intercepted the hellcat on a rickety shuttle and were preparing to fire some big guns at them.

yeah, sure. venus could have just driven off. the hellcat has decent shields and could have probably outrun the shuttle if they gave chase again. but where's the fun in that?

so. with a super high roll, venus shot the hellcat up in the air and using psionics RAMMED the entire thing THROUGH THE BIG GUNS, which happened to be on the front near the engine so she managed to take that out too. did she land the thing on four wheels? ABSOLUTELY NOT OKAY, but she righted it and took off straight towards camp, leaving a stranded shuttle behind them 😌

i don't think she's allowed to complain about how vance drives again but it was bitchin

lfkfjdhdhd i love ttrpgs. just did the most bitchin' move in venus' game 😭 will explain later

[odogaronfang]

do you have any more specific info on that homestuck one :eyes:

man i have not thought about this au in FOREVER. homestuck, in the year of our lord, 2017? but let me see what i remember. i think i’ve forgotten a lot because it was years ago that i made this.

-i think i mentioned this in that au masterlist post, but zelda is the villain. i don’t know how i came to think of that, but i did, and i’m glad. she’s a witch of mind, i believe, a fuscia-blooded troll with a big god(dess) complex.

-vaati is another troll, a violet-blood, and he’s a prince of time. he’s one of zelda’s henchmen, for reasons revealed later down the line; zelda is using her claspect to control people to secure her status, and slowly conquer the planets with intelligent life on them. vaati has a very powerful claspect, as destroyer of inevitability and time, and zelda wants to use that. he and zelda are both derse dreamers.

-erune, a prospit dreamer and also a troll and also a servant to zelda, is a gold-blooded psionic who zelda exploits for her abilities. she’s a rogue of life, but zelda doesn’t let her god tier for fear of her powers, or rather what they might be; one powerful god tier in her service is enough. her claspect is very very endgame-relevant.

-shadow’s a derse dreamer and a prince of space, opposite aspect to vaati but same class, obviously, and for this au, he’s with the links.

-red is an heir of blood, a prospit dreamer, and the one that keeps shadow and vaati from killing one another when they get stuck on the same team. he also helps to counteract blue’s rage aspect, and keeps it from being too much of an interference in what they do.

-blue is a derse dreamer knight of rage and very much a berserker class type. knight is an exploitation class, and rage is the aspect that deals not only with anger but with limitations; therefore, as a knight of rage, blue can exploit the limitations of others, and their emotions as well- he’s got a pretty good claspect.

-vio is a sylph of mind, also a derse dreamer, and his claspect is very plot-relevant, because it’s found that he can counteract zelda’s mind control. as a sylph of mind he’s a healer of mind- and can’t be affected by zelda’s abilities. i considered making him a rogue of mind (ironically, my claspect) because of his whole sabotaging-shadow arc in the manga, but sylph fits better with the plot.

-green is a thief of doom and a prospit dreamer. and as a thief of doom he can just… steal doom and shove it on someone else. but it’s kind of a martyr claspect, just because of the nature of it, and it’s pretty dangerous to handle.

i’m still kinda reworking their chumhandles and planets bcs the old ones were bad, but i do have a rough idea of their sprites. i’ve probably forgotten a lot about it since it’s been so long, but i still hold a lot of love for drawing people in their god tier outfits. and now that the extended zodiac is out i may have to rework things…..