#very normal and regular

[hollis-art]

au idea... tng but it's set in the 80s and the enterprise is an apartment building rather than a ship

other tenants of the building include: -Picard (the head of the college that Data attends) and Q (no one really knows what he does, he just pops in and out whenever he pleases) -Troi (high school guidance counselor) and Riker (personal trainer) and Worf used to live here too but he moved out -Beverly (still a doctor) and Wesley (burnt out college freshman) -Barclay (works at Blockbusters w/ Data and Geordi) -Guinan (bartender of a secretly gay bar)

the ds9 apartment is a whole other story

[asexual-shelly]

whatever. go, my dandlers...

FINALLY SOME ART FOR AN AU IVE BEEN WORKING ON!!!!! YIPEEEEEE!!!!!!!! So tl;dr Twisted Modes like an alternate game mode designed to be a form of 'hard mode', where the play styles for each toon have been muddied or completely changed to offer a completely different experience for players. The premise is that the toons are like a remnant of previous games, its based upon the clone theory so each individual toon has their own story and lore separate from the others (though there are exceptions for a few characters!). Also the AU is written in a way that's meant to semi-emulate the game itself which is why the stats and alternate abilities are listed, expect more gameplay aspects to be given in the future bc i love coming up with gameplay mechanics 😈

The chars here aren't all of the ones planned btw I wanna make another sheet when I can, feel free to ask questions tho ill be happy to answer ^^ pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea

[chaos-bringer-13]

I've seen a lot of people writing Danny as a space ancient and Dan and Dani as ghosts with moon and sun cores, being sort of parts, versions of Danny and therefore weaker. Now, consider: Dan and Dani are both powerful ghosts with really cool cores and stuff but Danny is just some guy™

Dan, who came from an alternate timeline and is kind of from the future but also not, is Clockwork's apprentice and will eventually become an ancient of time. He probably only agreed to have some lessons with Clockwork to understand better what happened to him, but he enjoys his apprenticeship now.

Dani, with her love of travelling, loves seeing all the different places the world offers to her, and that includes space and different planets and maybe even parallel universes, and she accidentally ends up being an apprentice of the space ancient. For now she's probably a baby ancient of freedom or something like that, but she might become an ancient of space in the future.

We can also have something like Dan having a core of destruction or Dani being the Speed Force if you want it to be dcxdp, or any headcanon of yours about their cool powers.

And then there's Danny. And yeah, everyone knows that he's super powerful, but also he's just some guy.

It can go different routes. Does everyone know that Danny is just Danny? Or do they think that with siblings (well, technically a clone and an alternate version, but whatever) so powerful, he must be even stronger? Is Danny actually something terrifyingly eldritch and ancient and strong, almost a god, but he just doesn't know himself? Or is he just really some guy?

Now, because it's obvious that I have a dcxdp brainrot, have a regular "JL summons/meets a powerful ghost" but its Dan and Dani, and they keep mentioning their original/brother who won a fight against them at some point. The JL is very concerned about Dan and Dani's godlike powers, and they can't imagine what Danny is like. And then they meet him (in his human form), and it's just a young adult in casual clothes, very friendly and helpful, with no evident powers. Imagine the confusion. Imagine Dan and Dani, radiating power, in their eldritch ghost forms, admitting that fighting Danny for real is the dumbest thing to do and not even they would succeed... And then there's Danny is jeans and silly t-shirt, waving shyly.

[captainkirkk]

Another favourite angst trope: When a character is so used to being treated badly that they don't see anything wrong with it and talk and think about it very matter-of-factly

Until they meet the other characters and see how HORRIFIED they are every time they reveal another detail from their past

[masterwords]

10x04 - The Itch

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[marcelthestar]

giggling to yourself while daydreaming about someone you've never met should be the 8th deadly sin

[exsaltedd]

self destructive beast of destruction or whateverrrr

[invinciblerodent]

who wants a slightly larger, sharpened version of this shot that I have been staring at for the last 15-20 minutes with absolute hearts in my eyes

(it made the clothing a tiny bit janky but there's only so much photoshop can do for me at this point, i want to be staring into his pores)

[lightgamble]

DAREDEVIL | 1.01

Our practice is relatively young, Miss Page, and we are aggressively pursing new clientele.

[shallowseeker]

I'm breaking this one out by itself because it's a little funny.

*Dean's phone rings*

*Dean answers without looking*

*Dean proceeds to yell at Cas*

Ah, right. What could possible be so important?

/////

Sam goes on to tell Dean that *drumroll* Sam is Lucifer's true vessel.

WOW! Scary!

DEAN: *sarcastically* Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in, huh Sammy? SAM: That's it? That's your response?

It's... completely lost on Sam, though… the REASON for Dean's sarcasm here.

See. It's this: now that Sam's found out that HE'S a vessel, he's in his car with an absolute FIRE lit under his goddamned tail, EAGER to get back in and fight.

Sam.

SAMMY.

🤦🤦🤦🤦

Dean throws a hint.

DEAN: *sarcastically again* I guess I'm a little numb to the earth-shattering revelations at this point. SAM: Well what are we gonna do about it?

And Sam... still doesn't get it.

Sigh.

Here's the thing. Sam wasn't panicking when they learned that Dean was a vessel. (Only Cas and Bobby were panicked and stressed. They were mean, but they were at least aware of the reality of things.)

But Sam.

Yes, Sam was going through things, struggling with things, and sure, taking time to go through things is okay. But on the other hand, it definitely still hurts that Sam wasn't insisting on staying in the fight on Dean's behalf, to protect Dean from becoming a vessel.

But now that Sam's learned that he's a vessel too?

Boom.

It's not even that, though. It's this whole conversation.

Because what's missing here? Empathy for Dean's plight.

Sam doesn't realize that this is why he's perpetually at... the kids' table. This right here.

In this whole conversation, Sam is eaten up with ranting about his own feelings, about how he's sick of being a puppet, and how he's going to hunt Lucifer down and gain redemption.

Sam's all about "how he can do this," how he's "gonna prove it to you."

It makes him seem a lot younger than he is.

....

There's no acknowledgment of how helpless Dean must have been feeling all this time, knowing that he's been targeted by an archangel, about how scary this whole thing is.

Hell, even Cas acknowledged Dean's fears re: Michael.

I mean: He did it in his Cas way, but it still acknowledged the enormity of the fear.

Cas:

///

Meanwhile, Sam back in 5x01, right after DEAN learned about being Michael's vessel was pretty much: Geez, why is everyone so cranky and stressed?

🥺 Dean, what do you mean that you didn't mean your pep talk to Bobby? Whaaaat? Why not? 🥺

///

....

And the thing is. Not "getting it"? That's understandable. But this conversation is just... devoid of support for Dean.

“We’re not stronger when we’re together, Sam.”

And they're not. (Not here, anyway.)

Sam's zapping all the strength for himself.

When they've been together lately, Dean is the big brother who lends support, and Sam isn't giving anything back. Sam's out to prove himself, not to support others.

And they tell older siblings and parents to be patient, to let them learn, to step back and forgive, to be "a soft place to land."

That's hard to do. And it's exhausting.

And aside// Sam's apology to (demon) Bobby was SO MUCH NICER. Sam, where is this humility and energy for other people????

SAM: No, actually. Bobby, this is all my fault. I'm sorry. Lilith did not break the final seal. Lilith was the final seal. I killed her, and I set Lucifer free. You guys warned me about Ruby, the demon blood, but I didn't listen. I brought this on. I'm sorry.

[maybebitterxox]

The pitch for Buffy The Vampire Slayer was probably just “What if there was a girl who could kill vampires. And she can Never Catch A Fucking Break”

[kacievvbbbb]

While I think Garp would be soley responsible for Mihawk’s hair falling out in clumps if they spent any amount of time together

I do think garp and Zoro would get on splendidly. As they are after all the same flavor of person.

any attempt to put all three of them in the same room will give Mihawk ulcers.

Mihawk would comment on their stupidity

Garp would respond “ain’t got to be smart to be a marine” and zoro would raise his glass in salute “ here, here”

And Mihawk’s blood pressure would reach levels previously inaccessible by man.

[smeemos]

i was wondering how long it'd b til someone was like "concerned for smeemo's health" because their eyes look funny from flash photography, but also like. if you are so concerned perhaps you could not misgender them the entire time, random anon....

[zanukavat]

gonna be a bit mentally ill here for a second

[wolves-in-the-world]

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.