#Oracle ARCS Support Job

[bispsolutions]

Oracle ARCS Support Activities

[plounce]

made this chart because i think the role/class assignments are such fun pieces of characterization for story NPCs! information pulled from here.

footnotes under the cut:

many NPCs have fancy titles instead of job names - for example, ysayle is referred to as "oracle of ice", and pre-edw alphinaud is an "academician". the jobs i marked them as are pulled from the icons of their classes + the movesets they use.

i didn't include the nameless fill-in NPCs like "temple chirurgeon" or "scion lancer". i am aware that the ARR duty support npcs have dialogue and mini-arcs, but that isn't relevant to my interest in making this chart. and sorry to j'moldva and any fans she has, but she also does not meet the threshold of character significance to be included in the chart.

thancred, urianger, and alphinaud can only dps in specific duty support instances: thancred in the antitower (if he tanks, this is the only time he can GLD - without a shield equipped! uh oh), alphinaud during hvw & stb, and urianger in the mothercrystal (if the player heals, alphinaud is your other healer). y'shtola will only heal in the burn and edw patch dungeons (funny, since her introductory epithet is "cultured conjurer"). all of these can only be used in duty support and not in trust, so they are on the cusps of their overlaps, not properly in them, as i feel this more accurately reflects their actual roles.

alphinaud functions as a scholar with his special massive carby. urianger also pulls out an even bigger carby to somehow be a summoner ("lithomancer") who can use bahamut and phoenix, but not the other three egis! due to his involvement in the bahamut coils raids?

there are no pure healers, outside of the fill-in NPCs!

DPS is a girl job, tanking is a boy job, and healer is equality. ysayle and venat are the only women who can tank, and both use a sword & shield, which makes me want to eat drywall, also i'm also kissing them both on the mouth.

apparently samurais can tank (🔄Third Eye🔄) and apparently gladiators are DPS.

g'raha is notable outside of being an all-rounder in that all of his jobs are, well, jobs. the majority of characters use class icons, while he gets to be full-fledged versions of all of these things. something something soul crystals / the crystal tower / the exarch / etc etc. frankly i'm a little fuzzy on soul crystal lore. i just think this is an interesting distinction.

if you're interested in this kind of stuff, @trustinsighters is a great resource for character dialogue, actions, and many more interesting details in the characters' programming in duty support and trust dungeons! they have great infographics and videos, including localization differences. one of my favorite accounts. their twitter has charts for every trust dungeon from shb onwards, and high-res versions are available on their kofi!

now look at my wol's adorable starlight RDM fit. isn't she so cute. she's my angel. i think about her lore and i weep. her heart is so Good. tomte peregrin on maduin ♥

that is all.

[roipecheur]

After reading Stephanie's (very short) Robin arc (free my girl), the broad strokes of my perfect Robin Steph arc would be:

Spoiler runs into Batman during the time Tim had to quit being Robin because his dad found out

After Steph materially helps with whatever Batman's working on tonight, he invites her back to the cave

She's suspicious, but accepts

He breaks out the 'Batman needs a Robin' speech on her, and Steph is actually reluctant to accept because 1) she cares about how Tim would feel, 2) she doesn't know if she wants to voluntarily put herself under Batman's control as his sidekick after the way he treated her, and 3) she thinks he's probably just using her to lure Tim back like he did before (he is)

Jealously over Tim and another girl doesn't factor into it because 1) Steph could have just talked to him which makes that stupid and frustrating, and 2) Tim and Steph already had the 'jealously over another girl' arc. Do something else

The Robin Steph arc lasts a whole year, a full 12 issues plus some crossovers--let her meet the Titans etc. If the Ric Grayson arc could last 20 fuckin issues and Knightfall could last however long, Robin Steph can last 12.

Her run includes a 2-3 issue arc where Dick trains and patrols with her and gives her his seal of approval. He was Robin first, and the mantle is incredibly meaningful to him on both a textual and meta-textual level; he should get to meet and assess each new Robin

While Steph shouldn't be perfect (no one is or should be just starting out), she was Spoiler with no special gear on training for a fucking while, and she's both managed not to die and had some prior training from Batman and the Birds of Prey. She should at least do a decent job and should have learned from Tim how to take it seriously

Her relationship with Tim should continue throughout with him providing support / advice and acting as her Oracle if Babs can't do it, or maybe taking on that primary role for her if Babs is too busy with the Birds of Prey and Tim still wants to feel involved without breaking his word to his dad

I can believe Steph disobeying orders to save Bruce's life....just not the stupid way she did it in canon and the way she acted like nothing was wrong after. Reading about the decision to kill her in the War Games arc, it honestly did feel like they had to shoehorn the narrative in a particular way

So, Steph should save Bruce from 99% certain death and instead of being apologetic about disobeying orders like Tim was, they get into a screaming match back at the cave, and Bruce says he can't trust her and fires her

(Is he actually worried about losing another Robin and emotionally constipated about it? That's anyone's guess)

War Games happens, and it's both of their faults.

[bored-trans-orchidsexual]

We'd all die to protect that smile.

I adore Adine so much, she's easily one of my top 10 Bad Kids. Despite her frequent panic attacks prior to being properly medicated, she is often the level head and moral compass for the party, which in most cases results in a more boring or supportive character, but Adine's *need* to be in control and get things done makes her a compelling leader, with some really compelling flaws.

Her breakdown to Jawbone about feeling alone and not knowing where her family went will always melt my heart, she's so fragile at times, while other times she's so strong willed and determined. She's the most mature of this party of teenagers, and it shows. From her willingness to reach out and help, instantly picking up on Ayda's vibe and working with her, to constantly doing whatever she can to help her sister, despite what a true *bitch* she was her entire life. She even has the strongest resistance to peer pressure, all without coming off like a wet blanket.

Junior Year looks like it's gonna really give us a fun new arc for her, as a rich kid who grew up relatively meek, all things considered. Her entering the work force, the stress of working for a living, is gonna have some extra oomph not only because she gave up a *fortune* last year to undo a curse, but also because it's her choice. She could *always* head over to her homeland, be welcomed in with open arms as the Elven Oracle, and never have to work a day in her life, not in the high schooler job kind of way. She'd never do it but you know it impacts her, something she thinks about as she takes the harder path.

[dominafamiliar]

DC universe story arc idea (may have been done, but I'm not aware of this particular setup)

Batman is still goth Sherlock Stark. He is reviled by society, with the police actively hunting him or feeding him false tips to lure him into mob ambushes. In-universe Superman reacts to big, flashy crises when they arise, and he's loved for his quick response times. By contrast, Batman roots out the causes of crime, seeking to scrape out the cancer and sluice out the corruption, until every last dreg, every ounce of bribery and lies, is laid bare to the public... A rogue's gallery of inmates from Arkham asylum keep getting let out to keep Batman busy, off the mob, and off the state officers who want him gone.

Arkham is a city-funded asylum, and there's local ordinances and state laws that prohibit the asylum from receiving funding from charities or charitable persons, barring Bruce Wayne from having an impact on the asylum on that front. He's actively sponsoring various legislators who aim to tear down those restrictions, but they've all got other priorities too, and the opposition is still stronger.

The Night Wing is an organization of Robinsonas and Batsonas who are largely orphans and the homeless. Some of them wear costumes. Most of them don't. Informants, smugglers, and a few combat-trained veterans make up the bulk of their organization, but there's a few others with specialized skills. One Batgirl is a hacker who calls herself Oracle. Her dad was on track for commissioner of the Gotham police before he walked into an ambush during a drug bust. Gordon never got to see his daughter grow up. Barbara lost her mom to racketeers a few years after. At 16, she was living on couches, bouncing around, trying to finish school. Her computer lab teacher caught on and decided to teach her the ins and outs of coding, hacking, troubleshooting, etc. So she could support herself by getting a job fixing broken code for health insurance companies, or something.

Instead, she became a tech vigilante, and uses her know-how to jailbreak tech, hack software, and erase her own footprint with a forged footprint that leads investigators somewhere else.

Joker has it out for Batman, knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne, but won't tell a soul because that would spoil the fun.

Harvey Dent knows who Bruce Wayne became, because he saw what losing Thomas and Martha did to the child, saw what Bruce became when his parents' killer was finally found, and saw how when Bruce returned from abroad, the Batman started to show up. NOBODY else knows it's Bruce in the Bat Suit until Bane shows up and rips the bat mask off.

In this version, Bane isn't a Luchador, or quite Tom Hardy's version. Rather, he's a former wrestling federation Heel who got into the drug trade, and eventually became a cartel boss. He's not a member of the League of Assassins, but Talia al Ghul is his primary problem-solver, and she is one of the few surviving members of the League.

Riddler:

Poison Ivy is a chemist who concocts several toxic plant compounds into serums and cosmetics that she uses to keep herself inoculated to their effects. She's at a high enough dose she'll eventually develop hepatic and renal failure, but in the interim, she's so deadly that any kind of bodily fluid exchange with someone else is likely to kill them.

Sometimes that's a kiss. Sometimes she spits in someone's eye. Sometimes, well... you get the idea. Skin-to-skin contact can cause anything from mild euphoria, discomfort, pain, etc. But direct fluid exchange is almost guaranteed fatal. Harleen Quinzel has a natural immunity to nearly every poison Pamela Isley uses, as do Selena Kyle and Richard Grayson.

Selena Kyle is a bast-worshipping vigilante who survived a near-fatal fall when she found evidence of corporate malfeasance. Together with Dr. Pamela Isley and Dr. Harleen Quinzel, the three of them are probably the most villainous of the vigilantes, but they only go after demonstrably evil people. Abusers, torturers, people who litter...

Joker is usually the most deadly of rogues' gallery villains, as he kills to seal the punchline of his jokes. But the most murderous and evil villains are government employees. Officers in Gotham police, judges, attorneys. Not all. Not even most. But the few who are evil shield themselves under the cloak and pretext of righteousness by rule of law.

The stories revolve around Bruce Wayne growing from a boy who lost his parents to a rich man bent on saving the world, to recognizing just how small a part he plays in real world solutions to the ongoing problems.

The series would run for approximately 4 books or 4 season's worth of material, where Bruce would grow less and less the focus of the story, and by the end of season 3, full blown revolution is underway with certain members of society's elite pitching their support for the common folk, or digging in their heels about it.

One poignant scene in Season 2 has Bruce getting it in his head that he should fire Alfred, dissolve Wayne Enterprises, and give up his vast sums of fortune to the poor, and while Alfred affirms that giving money to help the poor would be a good start, he doesn't think dissolving Wayne Enterprises would be a good idea. When Bruce inquires about Alfred's opinion on leaving the business, he just shrugs and says he loved Thomas ever since they served together. Carried each other to the med tent, survived ambushes and mines together. Had Thomas had a mind for it, he would have gone AWOL just to be with him. Had it been legal, he would have married the man.

But Thomas Wayne was as straight as they come, and while he respected Alfred and loved him as a brother, did not reciprocate romantic interest. So Alfred had prepared to move on with his life when Thomas hired him on as a butler. It was only after their deployment that Alfred realized that his beloved friend was extremely rich. Of course, he accepted the job. He was there to help Martha throughout the pregnancy. He was there to help Thomas calm down when she went into labor prematurely with hypertension. He held both of their hands throughout the process, and he'd always seen Bruce as a surrogate son. He just... didn't dare say so until now.

What had he to lose? His "job"? So Alfred suggests Bruce take a different track. Build charitable organizations that provide employment to the under-employed, but also serve as watchtowers throughout the city. Nerve centers for the Night Wing. And in so doing, Bruce ingratiates himself to the public, gradually spending down his own wealth into an organization whose end-goal objective by the final season, is to have broken the corruption of the mob, shaken the police departments down to spare parts and built up new community support structures. Not perfect, but better.

Decriminalization of drugs, sex work, and other poverty-survival tools, while increasing penalties for embezzlement, bribery, and other crimes of power. Arkham gets closed, demolished, and turned into a memorial park to the victims of the Joker and the other villains. Arkham's patients get permanent residencies in much more modernized hospitals. Therapists with adequate training, minimal use of meds, except where absolutely necessary. The last episode shows Bruce stopping in to walk with Jack, the man who went as Joker for so many years.

The show ends on a hopeful note, leaving room for a better future without promising perfection.

[maizethecorn]

Harley Quinn season 4 review/spoilers and links/trivia for people

I finished season 4 of Harley Quinn which began in 2019 developed by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker and Dean Lorey. The plot revolves around Harley voiced by Kaley Cuoco who has broken up with the Joker setting off to become the new queenpin in Gotham City. Eventually, Harley dates Poison Ivy voiced by Lake Bell. Harley also gains friends such as Clayface voiced by Tudyk, King Shark voiced by Ron Funches, Doctor Psycho voiced by Tony Hale and Sy Borgman voiced by Jason Alexander. So it took me two days to finish season 4 and watch the Valentines Day Special. Here's what I thought was good about season 4:

Harley and Ivy learned they needed to communicate better as a couple after their future daughter tells them they were bad parents who never listened to her.

Seeing how Harley and Ivy attempted to balance their separate jobs as villains and heroes and make their romantic relationship work. Couples getting different jobs can affect an intimate relationship in real life.

The bat family not accepting Harley was good. Batgirl liked Harley due to hanging out with her but Nightwing and Damian didn't have much of a reason to like Harley.

Harley hanging out and training with Alfred was sweet.

King Shark having to be a new dad was comical. He thought being a single dad would be easy like what he had seen on television. For better or worse, Jim Gordon gives King Shark some advice such as giving the new shark babies liquor to calm down and allowing them to see violence on security cameras as a form of entertainment.

Nora Fries becoming Ivy's personal assistant was great. She is voiced by Rachel Dratch and has charm and wit. She's filling the spot that Ivy's talking plant Frank used to have.

Bane was wonderful as always. He's so sweet and I hope he can get back with Betty from the Valentines Day Special since Nora just seems to be using Bane was a lackey.

Lex Luther being the final villain for season 4 was well done. His obsession with Superman was his drive for blocking out the sun. There were little moments highlighting his Superman fetish such as when he demanded a man whom he was watching have intercourse put a Superman cape back on.

The final episode set Talia Al Ghul up to be the big villain for season 5. She brought Nightwing back to life in the Lazarus Pit who is now a creepy zombie of sorts out to get revenge on Harley.

Batgirl or Barbara Gordon getting shot by the Joker like in the comics. She's now exercising her computer skills and on her way to becoming the Oracle.

Things I didn't like about season 4:

Clayface didn't show up as much as I would have liked. He is in two episodes. He is now a celebrity and doesn't hang out with Harley and Ivy anymore.

Dr. Psycho-This was my favorite character and I was bummed about how he was demoted to being an extra after season two. I wanted to see him get a redemption arc but that doesn't happen. Still, his character does make appearances in season three and four which is nice.

Harley lying to Batgirl about Nightwing's death. She claims her potato clone killed Nightwing instead of admitting she was the one who killed Nightwing. Harley lying will no doubt lead to conflict between the two girls in season 5.

What was Batman doing in jail? I would have liked to have seen a whole episode focused on what he was doing but all we see is him being a DJ for two seconds.

The Joker's girlfriend Bethany and her kids turning evil. I didn't mind the Joker becoming evil again. I figured he would get tired of being mayor and go back to being a villain. Since Bethany was a nurse, I thought she would break up with the Joker after learning he was evil. Instead, she and her kids laugh, deciding to support the Joker in killing people. Season 3 showed Bethany and her kids to be good, decent civilians with no reason to become villains so the writing seemed a little weak with them in season 4.

I loved the Valentines Day Special. I was glad to see Bane find a special someone for him and for Harley/Ivy to enjoy their first Valentines Day together.

Extra Harley Quinn trivia if you go to the batman wiki link below :

Harley Quinn and Bruce Wayne got married in the White Knight comic series. The White Knight comics are about Joker becoming sane, adopting the name Jack Napier and protecting Gotham City, Jack marrying Harley Quinn and he becomes insane again unfortunately. Bruce reveals his identity as Batman to the public and has to adjust to life not being Batman. Joker dies eventually and Harley becomes a single mom to her two twins: a boy and a girl. Bruce helps support Harley and the two of them get married which you can read about in these links:

Batman/Harley in the White Knight comic universe is the only place this pairing has happened. Unfortunately, they don't look to be a happy couple. Harley grew attached to Bruce after the Joker died. She married Bruce so she wouldn't have to testify against him in court. Bruce tells Harley the main thing that has them bounded together is the trauma the Joker caused both of them. Upset, Harley insists there are mutual feelings between them which Bruce denies. Angry, Harley walks off and leaves Bruce to brood. I like this pairing but this comic series may not let Harley/Batman have a happy ending.

Harley is a wonderful character created in the DC universe. She needs to have someone who will treat her better than the Joker ever did. So far, she seems to be happiest with Poison Ivy from what I have seen in the Harley Quinn cartoon.

[dailycass-cain]

Batgirls #12 Review

Batgirls #12 capped off the series' third arc. Did it actually stick to its landing, did it fumble the ball like the first, or botch it completely like the second?

The answer is, yeah this series actually delivered its first arc when it focuses on Cass/Steph than the spotlight fully on Babs. That's not to say this issue has a few flaws.

For me, the biggest was something felt off with the coloring this issue than say the prior ones. I mean Oompa Loompa Maps notwithstanding. The Cass stuff by Neil Googe feels different than the prior issues.

Rico Renzi is the colorist for this issue like the last. But something of his Cass (along with Officer Brooks) just feels different than the last two.

The stuff with Stephanie vs. the Riddler is flawless by them. Yes, Steph has a pinkish tone to her skin again but I'm chalking it up whenever we see it as her flustered or in rage mode (which she is in both during this fight).

Speaking of Steph vs. Riddler, I loved it. Even if this series didn't tip the full hat to their prior encounter waaaaaaaaay back in Robin #93-94.

Steph isn't the only one having her own renewed rivalry as the main focus for Cass this issue is fighting the slasher they've been searching (or hearing about) since #1. Said obscure Batvillain Mr. Fun.

Cass encountered him in Batman: Family #7 and was one of those rare times she lost due to well, his calmness. It's also a loss she never really got back. In Batman: Family it's Black Canary who takes down Fun.

Likewise, Fun never really popped up as much with Family, I know Robin later had him and Tim easily took him out. One of those usual cases of a new character being introduced and then tossed to be a mere jobber.

Mr. Fun's old profession of being a mob assassin/enforcer is mentioned in this issue. Though as well this issue doesn't go into detail that these two have crossed paths prior. I'll give the narration allusions to this encounter with how the fight is described.

It's kind of surprising in one of those rare instants of the past (compared to now) of Cass (and Dick) being Worfed to Mr. Fun.

I fully confess it is a highlight more than her prior fight in #10 with KGBeast to see Cass fully unleashed here. The series finally does a better job of showcasing the past Batgirls' lives and what forged them to be who they are now.

Again, that's another strength this issue holds than the prior earlier stuff. At long last, the series is digging into both Cass/Steph's origins. But on the other hand, this does reveal a few things.

#1 Bendis's Young Justice seems to have been tossed into a lockbox and discarded. As Stephanie found out her father was alive in that and spent that entire series hunting for him. Here, it's teased to her that he's alive. Along with teasing what will come in January.

Overall, this arc was the series' strongest yet. It still had flaws, but it felt like Cass/Steph story without Babs (or Dick) taking away from them or their villains in the arc (#7-8 I'm looking at you for spending WAAAAY too much time on Babs/Dick than on Seer or the Saints).

I highly enjoyed this arc and loved the twists this story took. I love the "SURPRISE!" Riddler inclusion (nice job on hiding this) and a bit shaken when rereading stuff I didn't pick up on prior (namely Eddie out of costume with it being nearby).

Plus after One Bad Day: Riddler #1 with Eddie's monologue in that, this felt like satisfaction watching JUST Stephanie hand Eddie his ass.

Further, this arc did a better job juggling it's guest stars and supporting cast than prior. I still am not fond of Babs being Batgirl and feel like they should tone that down for more Oracle moments instead here.

Save the Babs as Batgirl moments to be more epic here and leave that stuff for the Nightwing ongoing. Really Babs is the weakest link of this series. I'm glad that Cass/Steph cracked the case here, and Babs didn't deus ex machina her way into the plot like in the first arc.

Likewise, the appearances of Maps, Kyle, and Alysia were pretty good.  They each served their purpose. Truthfully though the other highlight of this arc besides Cass/Steph? Was this goof:

Was this goof. I just found Killer Moth to be kind of refreshing a villain. He wasn't an assassin or edgy for edge's sake. He was just a minion doing stuff cause his boss asked. Plus Googe gave him a good design.

Add that to the way Conrad and Cloonan portrayed him. He was the unsung guy you were rooting to survive and sure enough he did. Like Tutor before him. I enjoyed him just being different than the main bads.

I hope they return to pester the Batgirls further because the idea of Moth flying around with a goo gun is fun fight idea. Even though I kind of dig Cass getting upgraded batwings now to fly.

Only because I kind want a criminal to be criminaling and suddenly Cass flies in they're all like this now.

So yeah. This series FINALLY delivered an arc that was fun from start to finish. It feels like they're only gonna get stronger with the next one having Mad Hatter, Cluemaster, and-- wait... does someone hear Wu-Tang Clan? .... Oh no. OH NO!!

Mom is coming to Batgirls annual coming out at the end of the month! I am terrified yet excited to see Cass/Shiva actually together and hope this doesn't de-evolve but continues the threads established prior.

[twitchesandstitches]

Goddess Terezi’s Avatar Day

(Commission for @alt-hammer of an AU where Terezi is a dragon goddess in a fantasy-themed setting and Karkat is her destined lover, perpetually reincarnating to be by her side; on a special day, she takes on a form able to be in the mortal world and goes on to live with him, as a 8ft tall hyper curvy MILF of a dragon-troll lady!)

-------

The old temple took up a good portion of the mountainside, but it did not look like a built thing, but a grown thing; stone polished and plated with a process to create something like luminous gemstones made the elegant curves dominating its design mirror the teal forest growing right around it, all the way around the fertile lower slopes of the mountain down to the ground below, over the ancient pathways and roads that now led to ruins and strongholds.

It was old. The towns and villages, in a patchwork of alliances that were slowly building into a true nation, lay in the shadow of giants and echoes of power. The means to construct something like that had been long forgotten; the towering walls were hundreds of feet high, supporting spires that rose higher than that, and the means to create such wonders were long forgotten.

The temple glistened and shone, and it was easy to see it even through the trees. And through the forests, along the old road that was still visible beneath the undergrowth and tangling tree roots that made up so much of the forest floor, a stout troll walked.

His name was Karkat Vantas; today, in deference to the warm weather, he wore a thin cloak trimmed in fur from beasts he had likely taken down himself. His walk was awkward, staggering upwards, like a crab forcing itself to walk forwards.

The cloak was gray, but the trim was a bright red. The same red as his unique mutant blood, with nary a hint of the lime-green shades the rest of his family shared. And that color was significant.

(There was a tradition, among the people who lived in the shadow of the temple and remembered who it honored, and who worshipped the teal dragon goddess.

Rarely was a child born with blood as red as a human or the clattering, playing-piece people of ivory and jet. And such children, individually only arising a few hundred years or so, were bound to this task.

Upon reaching age, they were to travel to the temple alone, and commune with the goddess. From the moment they were born, the oracles spoke and the scriptures read, they belonged to the goddess. Blood, soul and heart.

And they came back, changed, and claimed.

Karkat had been no different.)

If someone watching him had been a flying creature, able to watch him through the trees, they might have seen him walk through the forest with confidence, to the stairway leading to the temple and where the forest shied away, as if in respect to the goddess it represented.

And then, to watch him walk up those steps as though he had every right to it. He walked with the assurance and automatic knowledge of someone who had lived there for years, though his visits had been infrequent.

(Karkat Vantas had dreams.

(In some, Karkat was a woman; other times, subscribed to no binary gender identity. In some, he was a priest to the dragon goddess, or a tinkerer, or an alchemist, or every job known to trollkind. There were lifetimes beyond measure, as many as there were stars in the sky. And in the dreams, a great ocean of memory rolled onwards, gently flowing into him.

(And so intimately familiar. As though he was not learning, but remembering something he had forgotten.

Something from a lifetime ago.

And the shape of something might change, over the ages, and remain what it was; a ship could have all its parts replaced but remain the same ship. And so it was with him. He had been there, in some way, for a long, long time, across so many lifetimes.

He would keep coming back, as many times as needed, to stay with her.

His goddess.)

The hypothetical viewer would have then seen Karkat approach the doors, over a hundred feet high and elaborately engraved with ancient murals, beautiful but their meaning lost to time. There were many figures there, dragons and blindfolded figures. At the center was a vast shape, broadly troll-shaped with the wings and tail of a great dragon, of impossibly curvaceous frame that spoke of an ancient culture’s idea of fertility and motherly awe. All the mural surrounded her, and over her heart was a small figure, its horns nubby and shaped like a crab’s claws.

No tool, magic (though truly powerful magic in these days was a rare thing) or skill of troll or any of the thinking people of the world had been able to pierce that doorway, or force it open. Not even the sharpest tool, strongest siege engine or mightiest spell could so much as mar its surface. But as Karkat approached, the door silently opened.

Not very much, it must be said. The great doorway mural split apart, dividing the image of the dragon goddess into two; in a nice bit of artistic inspiration, one half held a sword, blade pointed upwards to be employed against the unjust. And in the other, she carried a pair of scales, and they were heavy with many books and scrolls: these symbolized the laws she had bequarted to mortalkind, in antiquity. The gap was just large enough to allow him in; it seemed to him that a great wall had parted, just for him. He looked up, feeling faintly dizzy at how large it was. He couldn't even see the mural past a certain point, not from this angle. It just kept rising up, into the mountainside.

For a moment, it was dark, but at his approach (and his approach in particular), teal lights shone from within, invitingly.  He walked inside, once more getting into the groove of things, and the door quietly closed behind him.

And there, the hypothetical viewer from above would see no more of him, or the insides of the temple. For it was a secret place, once home to mystery cults. Perhaps it still had a single such cult; a mystery cult of just one person, bound and dedicated to the goddess across many lifetimes, needing only age to remember that this was so.

Karkat saw, now, what an outsider never would, for this temple would open to him alone now.

The inside of the temple was, largely, an enormous and open space. Oh, it wasn’t plain; many doorways, some almost as big as the big doorway outside and others small enough for him, led to side chambers, ritual places to attend to other rites or personal preparations, or dwelling places for the priesthood and acolytes in ancient times. The vast space arced slightly up in a massive dome, maintaining structural integrity with secret methods of architecture, though perhaps the massive tree-like pillars (set to look as though they were growing, and carved of solid teal crystal) helped support the weight. There were many ancient treasures spilled across the ground in great piles, like a dragon’s hoard or a troll junk-pile, and Karkat walked past them, strolling past gleaming masses of precious metals and priceless relics (swords, books, statues, anything that might be of worth, all richly decorated to shameless excess), the contents of which could have allowed him to purchase entire cities and live like an emperor for the rest of his life, with complete indifference.

The biggest treasure pile was at the end of the hallway, so massive that the hills of golden coins and other gilded relics were as individually big as buildings, massing together into riches out of a miser’s most desperate dreams. It was massive beyond measure, large enough to build a city upon, and the whole of the chamber seemed to center around it, the architecture gently fanning out to emphasize it:

And upon that pile, dwarfing it, was the goddess herself, or at least an avatar of her. Either way, she was so big that she was a landscape unto herself, a beautiful mass of teal hillsides and rising plains, impossibly gigantic, and radiating so much power that it drew the mind directly to her.

Karkat stopped a few hundred steps from her, halting in mid-step with a slow ponderousness, perhaps stunned by the sight of her. As he always was, in fact; his red eyes widened, his grim expression softened into a genuine smile, and a hand went to his chest, over his heart, his claws toying with a little necklace he’d been given on their first meeting.

(“You made this, back when we first knew each other,” she had told him then, her voice booming and soft all at once, as she slid it from a claw tip onto his body. He’d looked at it then; the double shackles of his own sign, and the Omega sign of her worship, intertwined together.)

His claws ran along it. Not furtively, like he was embarrassed or scared. His fingers moved slow, with a calm that seemed quite atypical of him. All the more surprising, with the power and intensity rising from her.

Easily hundreds of feet tall, terrifyingly enormous even though she was laying down, the goddess shifted position. In the tangled mass of wings, arms and tail, a large hand appeared, scales glistening against the gray-green of her body, and it slid against the back of her head. Horns longer than a street tilted backwards as she raised her head.

Lips thick enough for him to lay upon or even slide into parted; a vast maw opened to the world, glowing faintly from within, and a massive yawn pealed out like the ringing of a bell. The goddess blinked once, though she had no need of sight, so perhaps it was just for the look of the thing, and she adjusted herself slightly. The treasure pile was compressed beneath her massive body, and as a huge belly slid forwards, and one gargantuan breast flopped sideways, displacing thousands of tons of gold; a flood of gold came raining down, stopping a short distance from Karkat.

He barely noticed, and just kept staring adoringly up at the massive teal wall that was her body.

Again, the goddess yawned, making a show of pretending she hadn’t noticed him there. But in truth, she had known he was there ever since he’d stepped foot into the forest; since he had woken up, she had felt him, even as she had sent the call. She cracked an eye open teasingly, and her eyes were red; not like his eyes, which were simply the color of his mutant blood. Her eyes were blinded by some unknowable injury in the ancient past, or her eyesight traded in a bargain for the wisdom that had led to giving mortals the first laws.

Now, she leaned forwards, her snout sniffing in his general direction. At that moment, she looked very much like a dragon, and she grinned widely. Her jaws were very broad, and it ought to have been frightening seeing all those teeth, some longer than he was tall, but he felt a sudden thrill of heat instead.

With a grunt, she sat upwards. Her shoulders, fairly broad by troll standards and relative to her gigantic size, looked narrow compared to how massive her lower body was, entire lakes of gold moved aside as a butt large enough to be two entire hills shifted upwards, her thighs digging into the gold to prop her up. They flexed, their enormous sides touching despite being fairly far apart, and she dug her knees into the ground to prop her up, and up she went: taller and taller she seemed to become, rising to her true height.

Scales glimmered across her entire body; they sparkled, glistening in shades of green and blue and true teal, so that she shone like the stars on a clear night. Those were dragon scales, overlapping together and smooth enough that it was easy to mistake them for skin, but for some large outcroppings of barbs and spikes running along her elbows and knees,

Now she was kneeling, and her backside loomed high and far out; an enormously plush backside, projecting out perhaps nearly as much as the whole of her arm, and as high as her waist, deep as her mid-thighs. Her gigantic butt moved faintly with only the most minor movements of her legs, and then another dragonish element of her body made itself plain: a thick tail lashed out, nearly as thick as Terezi’s entire body, neatly sliding over her immense buttocks and rising up behind her, and beyond her. It went on, and on, longer than she was tall, until finally it’s tapered tip flickered down, a wall of teal tail curling around Karkat’s body, as close to him as she could presently manage. Red spikes jutted out, mirroring the shape of her horns.

Her upper body arched upwards, with her tail to counter balance her. A massive pair of wings, sprouting from her back, flared out so that a shadow fell over Karkat and the whole of the inner temple. Leathery membranes shone like polished glass, wider across than she was tall, and they flapped once, twice: it helped her straighten up, and then Karkat saw her upper body loom up high, a landscape onto itself!

Her breasts moved; faintly, softly. They bounced briefly, though nothing so brief or whimsical as that word suggested. Their movement was a ponderous thing, like the movement of world-plates in motion, rising up and then down with grand importance and a sense of impact that nearly knocked him off his feet. Oh, they were big: they dipped down to her navel (or what would have been a navel, if trolls had been born live), the bottom slopes reaching out further still.

There, they arched somewhere around her waist, so that regardless of the direction your sight approached, there was amplitude to be spared: either breast or backside, she was enormous in every conceivable way. Outwards her divine breasts swung, just as voluminous as her backside, heavy with something like godly milk: ambrosia, perhaps.

A huge belly propped them up. Not merely the plump figure the murals outside suggested, her belly dipped heavily, projecting out even farther than her breasts did, wider even than her body except for her singularly massive hips, which were simply far too big to be easily equaled. It was clearly a pregnant belly, its shape a distinctive gravid shape, and from the way Karkat’s eyes glanced at the curving walls of its shape, he was clearly the father.

Now she posed, her arms stretching up above her, spikes clicking together, her claws sliding against each other, and she yawned once more, wings flaring out again. She arched her back to him in such a way as to show her massive bustline for best effect, her whole body jiggling and wobbling faintly.

He grooved faintly in place. She was so big, and so beautiful, the reality of her so wonderful and immense that it defied conscious comprehension. She slowly turned, her eyes blind, but she grinned impishly, the frill-like structures as the side of her head flapping against her short hair. The light caught her scales: deep teal across most of her body, darkening to a much darker green along her limbs, the bottoms of her breasts (like her own glittering bra), her body below the waist, and the outermost length of her tail, and the effect the light produced as it moved down the transition from one shade to the next was a mesmerizing sight, all against her magnificent frame, and the barely concealed pleasure at seeing him.

She was, technically, clothed. In another manner of speaking, she looked naked, but covered head to toe in elaborate golden decorations; thousands of pieces of spirals and interlocking meshes of metal webs encircled her breasts and belly, around her arms and a complexity of rings, all over her entire body. Even her face was covered, with a thin veil adorned in thousands of jewels, their sparkling facets catching the light like her scales did.

Now, she grinned at him. “‘About time you got here,” she said, her voice booming in the confined space, and purring too, all at once. Then, her hand moved out, incredibly fast, and her claws closed around all he could see, around him, and then he was being lifted up. He had a sensation of movement, rising high into the air, and then-

Wetness, warmth. A gentle sucking pressure around his entire body, and then a mental pressure that was much the same, her mind pressing against his own, filling him with the same love and affection she felt, propelling it through his entire body; it meshed with the sensation of her mouth engulfing his entire body, and he was helpless before it, euphoria and peaceful submission all blending together inside him.

It felt like bliss.

She ended the kiss, holding him in her hands still. Karkat, rather soaked but content with that, looked up.

He called her Terezi. Terezi Pyrope. The name had welled up, from an old memory, and that itself was odd; it was from a lifetime so long ago that he couldn’t even recall it properly. If it was long enough ago, his past lives grew harder to hold onto and examine, or to relive.

(“It's like straining leaves for tea,” he’d told her, once. It had been a dream, but that didn’t matter; when he slept, she stepped into his mind, shaping his dreams into a space for them to be together, in lieu of this day’s possibilities for more direct physical interaction. “The memories I can get, its water flowing through. But there’s a lot that just doesn’t filter through.”

She’d made a thoughtful noise at that. “Languages change. Cultures live and die,” she’d said quietly. “It’s still you, but past you is WAY different.”

“I think I hate past me.”

“Why.”

“Whoever they were, they’re a real pain in the ass to deal with.”

She’d laughed, then. “You know something? Past you said the exact same thing, about an even older you.”

“Shit, that’s another reason to be mad. They stole my bit!” She’d laughed at that; he had no idea why. He’d been completely serious, then.)

So, he didn’t understand the context, or the person he’d been then, or even what the words meant. Terezi wasn’t even the right word; it was the closest he could get to pronouncing it, but she didn’t seem to mind.

He minded, though. That was close to her secret name, her true name, and the true name of a goddess was no small matter, especially one as important and powerful as her.

Now, Terezi leaned close. The jewelry adoring her ear-fins jangled as her ears flopped, her eyes seemed to reflect him, and her breath was strangely cool as it came whistling out, like the wind from a cave filled with secrets and treasure. Some legends said her guts were the birthplace of thought itself…

“Hold that thought, I might show you in person later,” she cooed. It wasn’t a threat; she was fully capable of ‘escorting’ him inside her without harm, if she was so inclined.

They were married. It had been a private ceremony, but as she put it, not so much making a bond as resuming one; Karkat had always given the vibe of being truly spoken for, and until she’d revealed this to him, he’d understood why people got that impression.

Now, the world began to dip low. They were getting closer to the ground, Karkat realized. Terezi’s body shuddered, and she lowered herself, the ceiling above them not simply framing Terezi’s body or making a space for her to occupy, but moving away from them. The realization struck him:

Terezi was shrinking.

“What’s this?” He asked, crowding towards her palms for safety. The ground was getting closer, and the ceiling was getting further away.

Terezi chuckled. “Trying to fit in.” She smirked. “A hundred foot dragon-troll sticks out. I don’t think I like being as teeny-tiny as you, but I can manage being a little bit close to you, so long as you can still sleep on me.”

In moments, she had dwindled below fifty feet. Now they were getting even smaller than that; Karkat thought of something to say (“How are you doing this!?” “You could do this the whole time?!” and of course “OH GOD WHY IS THE GROUND COMING SO FAST LIKE THAT.”)

But by the time he could have thought to say any of that, they were almost to ground level.

Thirty feet; she was, and then twenty five feet. Twenty feet, and Karkat realized that the ‘surface’ below him, her palms and fingers, was gone; she held him still, gently adjusting herself so that he descended into her arms, his body snugly fitting there. She continued to shrink, and held him closer still, pressing him deep into her voluminous bustline and gravid belly, holding him very tightly, and at last, she reached the height she desired.

Karkat stayed in place, feeling her coolness, his arms instinctively wrapping around her shoulders and meeting behind her, and he was barely aware of the appealing softness of her body still engulfing him. Eventually, he cracked an eye open and saw the ground below him; further below than he was used to, but not so much as when he was with Terezi.

He blinked and looked into her eyes; to her face.

He blinked. She bent forwards and kissed him on the snout, and it was one way for him to realize that she was hugging him to her body, suspending him off the ground, and he was sunk deep into her cleavage.

He was beginning to have a full body blush. Which is a funny thing considering that he had been intimate enough with her to be fully pregnant, but some people are just naturally bashful.

“You like seeing me at fun size?” She said dryly, her lips pushing into a mock kissy face.

“You’ve been this size before!” He blurted out.

“Technically speaking,” she said. “Not in the physical sense.”

“What do you call the times we’ve been together, then?”

“A complex bit of magic involving mashing up the divine realms with the physical one so we could be together.” Terezi hugged him tighter, more sincerely. “Whereas this is me going to a lot of effort to make a body that can actually live among mortals.”

Karkat blinked. A shocking possibility came to him, in a rush of wild excitement. “You mean…?!”

“Yep.” Terezi gently put him down. She was, even shrunk down, incredibly huge, bigger than any troll or human could ever be, and when he reached the ground and looked up, the outward curve of her pregnant belly was over his head; if she walked forwards, his horns could have been used as a dock for her belly. “I’m gonna get to see how you explain to everyone you’ve been married to,” and she gestured to herself, “All THIS.”

“Eh, some of my friends know. Kind of. Sort of.”

“Oh, that’ll be a FUN conversation,” she cackled. She turned, her tail lashing around him, impishly smacking him on the butt; he peered up at her grumpily, and her butt seemed to fill his whole world, diminishing his annoyance instantly. He reflected that her frame was somehow even more imposing at this size; it was one thing when she was big enough to be a landscape, and was too big to really fit into his framework in some ways, but her being just large enough that doorways would prove to be a serious problem was more… grounded. It was easier to understand, and the size of her kept drawing his attention.

She still glittered, the revealing things she wore having changed size with her. “You brought the clothes I asked, right?” she asked, grabbing one of the spiraling ornaments that ‘clothed’ her left breast, gently yanking it off. He turned around in a hurry.

“Yeah. Oh, oh. That’s why you wanted the clothes; to change into them.”

“Yeah, what did you THINK I wanted them for?”

“Honestly I don’t even ask questions anymore; I figured you just liked collecting random stuff.”

Terezi held up a finger to make a dramatic counterpoint. She paused. She thought it over. “Screw it, that does sound cool. Objection withdrawn.”

He grabbed a bag he had brought, and his eyes averted, dropped it in front of her. She took it and, removing the garb that represented sacrifices made to her, changed into the clothing.

------

Dave Strider yawned, half-sitting in a large bin filled with soft, square objects that were pretty generic looking, the results of his mother’s experiments with magic; conjuring up physical objects was a tricky matter, but at least these were soft and made for good bedding, or something to sit on.

He lay in front of an entrance to the town, wearing the uniform of the guard and a short, single-edged blade presently sheathed. He didn’t give off the look of a stern guard, and instead gave the impression of a discarded puppet, his legs hanging slackly out of the bin. He didn’t mind; if it was an opportunity to take a nap, he’d take it.

Dave’s eyes flickered, behind a mirrored visor. It was earlier than he expected, he thought, noticing the sun’s position. He followed its position to the forest, which the town had expanded out of, clearing out bits at a time as it slowly had grown over the years. In the distance, he saw the mountain, and the temple upon it.

Vaguely, he wondered when Karkat would be back.

His thoughts drifted from a friend to his fiance, Jade, and his calm expression flickered into a more genuine smile as he thought of her. Getting off work couldn’t come soon enough.

He lay back into the pile of moderately generic objects, and stayed there for a while. This part of the world was wild; few cities and towns were left, those that remained supplying their own agriculture and making everything on hand. The occasional call to adventure was the main of distant treasures and weapons, or the precious scrap of knowledge that came now and then; Dave had done it in his youth, until he’d proposed to Jade, and knew something about it, and that their town had abit of fame as the last place where the dragon goddess was actively worshiped.

Something to be proud of, he supposed.

He noticed some motion approaching their way, and soon they were two figures, coming out from the forest, from the general direction of the temple. Pilgrims, perhaps? He didn’t see the point, since the temple was sealed off to everyone…

They came closer, and soon he recognized one of them as Karkat, looking more cheerful than he’d ever seen him. It was a little unsettling, actually. Any greeting was far from his mind, because there was the other person walking with him. Dave’s mouth dropped as they approached, and he quickly closed it, trying to regain his composure.

There was a lot of wobbling involved. And… jiggling… and massive hips, barely confined by a sporty robe, swaying heavily from side to side with the kind of heavy force that you got when something was so big that just moving one way or another was like shoving your way around.

Dave’s mouth stayed open. The brain processes stopped. Big, he thought numbly. Jiggly… bouncy… oh WOW she is big…

This thought remained stubbornly present as the pair came close. Karkat stopped, with an aura of fierce pride. Beside him was a troll woman, the most outrageously curvy person Dave had ever met, and with the likes of Jade, that was some stiff competition; she was at least ten feet tall, so big that his head was forced to tilt up to meet her eyes, and there wasn’t much point. Her breasts jutted out with an intimidating heft, so far out that he could barely see her face at all.

She grinned, standing proudly, her hips almost four feet across and aggressively tilted as if to show off how massive they were. Her robes were short, cut at the knee and short pants beneath them, for maximum range of movement. She had a few other requirements, too; a massive pair of wings flapped behind her, apparently big enough to lift her off the ground, and a large tail moved behind her, its length moving around Karkat and its tip sliding into his hand for him to squeeze. Given that she was roughly twice his size, it was a convenient way for them to come close to holding hands.

Mutations like this weren’t unknown, especially in places of high magic. Still, these dragon-like traits, and such enormous size, were distinctive, and so where the glittering scales over her teal body. She stood out brilliantly against the dull red of Karkat’s visible body. Dave was strikingly reminded of the way Jade’s preference for greens contrasted against the reds he liked to wear, and perhaps also because his buxom fiance’s figure was perhaps a less extreme version of this giant woman.

The troll woman grinned, showing sharp teeth beneath thick black lips. “‘Sup,” she said. Her belly hung out, so big and heavy that she had to have been pregnant. Perhaps a few months along, from the size.

“Uh, hi.” Dave glanced at Karkat, finding some of his normal cool. “She, uh, a friend of yours? From out of town or something?” Granted, that was unusual, but maybe someone so big had the strength to just bowl over anything threatening her.

“You could say that, yes,” Karkat said.

“I’m kind of famous, actually,” the troll woman said, grinning even wider. The way she grinned was a little worrying; she half looked like she was trying to unhinge her jaws to swallow him whole, if it seemed pressing. Dave gulped. “You might not be able to place me, though.”

“Really,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say. He shook his head and tried to focus. Okay, she was big… she was fucking humongous, actually, but he knew big girls. He knew super busty girls. Okay. He was going to be mature and think smart, now. “What’s your name?”

“Terezi Pyrope.”

“Hrm. I know some Pyropes in town. You a relative?”

“I might be,” she said, with a vaguely evasive air that suggested there was a lot more to it than what she was saying. He filed that under ‘kinda suspicious’.

“Hrm.” He gave Karkat a sidelong look, as if to say ‘where’d you find THIS big lady?’. He shrugged. “Well, hope your journey down here went okay. The way here’s pretty dangerous. Karkat run into you and guide you to town or something?”

A faint suspicion struck him. His gaze drifted to Karkat’s hand, on that thick tail, squeezing so warmly, so familiarly. That did… not look platonic. Or like something with someone you’d just met.

“We, uh.” Karkat glanced at her, and said the most extreme understatement in the history of their entire world: “We kinda already know each other?”

Dave tilted his head. “Oh?”

“You know how I told you that I was, in fact, married to someone that you’d never met and couldn’t come to town for important reasons I wasn’t allowed to talk about?”

Dave snorted as Terezi raised an eyebrow. “Man, are you STILL doing that old joke? It stopped being funny years ago.”

“It’s not a joke!” Karkat snapped, bristling so much even his hair stood on end like quills.

Terezi glanced at Karkat and quietly said, “Really, you couldn’t have made it sound less like you making something up?”

“It’s not my fault they hear the literal truth and won’t take it at face value.”

Dave shrugged. “So what are you guys getting at-” He paused. “Oh. Ohhh. No way, NO WAY.”

“Karkat was telling the truth,” Terezi said.

Karkat radiated smugness.

“You two are married,” Dave said, disbelief in every word.

Karkat’s eyes narrowed. “...Why’s that so hard to believe?”

Dave was famously unflappable, even stern when he was affecting his Big Time Hero persona. He prided himself on keeping his cool. He’d faced down the legendary Rapmaster Hydra, spitting rhymes and spitting poison almost as toxic as those rhymes; he’d played a pool of dice with gangster sirens in the reality-traveling Casino of the Damned and didn’t blink when they tried to make him wager his soul; he’d even spent about five minutes in the dreaded Crypt of Terrors. The less said about that, the better.

Through all of it, he’d never so much as blinked.

Now he was genuinely lost for words.

Terezi saw a moment, and grinned while her tail curled Karkat closer to a massive thigh. The impact made her leg jiggle as he sank slightly into her with a goofy grin, and she clapped a hand against her gravid belly. “And we’re expecting, too~!”

Dave stared, desperately trying to process all this. Karkat’s married. Karkat has a girlfriend that’s a smoking hot giantess. Karkat’s MARRIED to her. She’s pregnant. Karkat married a super curvy mutant girl. Okay wow her thighs are bigger than ME, kind of called Kark’s tastes right there.

Karkat is MARRIED. And they’re expecting kids, already?

When the hell did all that happen?

“Wow,” He said eventually. “You work fast.”

Terezi laughed and Karkat scowled again.

“Try and act cool in front of her, I beg you,” Karkat hissed.

Terezi reached forward, her massive breasts swinging forward and nearly smacking right into Dave’s face. The sight of bountiful cleavage about to swallow him was a familiar one, but not scaled and blue-green, and then her knuckles found the top of his head, pushing aside his helmet, and rubbed friendly noogies onto him. “I like this guy!” Terezi said cheerfully, giving him a parting bonk on the noggin for good measure.

She heard a thump and a muddy splatter. She sniffed downwards, and sensed that he had fallen down into the mud; her breast had smacked right into him, so hard he’d been propelled right off his seat.

“Sorry?” She said, surprised to feel embarrassed. She never had to deal with THAT in the ethereal planes…

-------

About an hour later, the sun was getting slightly higher into the sky and in the market, there was a decent crowd milling around, traders and customers and both at the same time, mixing together with a potent smell. Their calls to passerbys, verbal advertisements, occasional arguments or loud haggling, it all mixed together into a loud noise, as good as a crying caw-bird to remind you that noon was nearly there.

Jade Harley’s ears, more canine than human, flickered at the noise; she ambled from the storeroom, her broad hips so wide that she had to walk very carefully through the door frame. “‘Scuze me!” She said reflexively to the doorway, even though it was inanimate, moving in the careful way she’d learned to move through a doorway with hips like hers.

She carried a box; it clattered with flasks, tubes, glasses and other containers of different sizes (some only a few ounces, others in the gallons). It was hard to make it out; Jade quite liked to experiment on herself, as indicated by the dog-like ears poking through her thick black hair and the long tail wagging behind her, and some subtle adjustments to her body, but her potions had also given her a bustline so massive that it completely covered the potions. She walked forwards and her breasts preceded her by several feet, slung out nearly to her waist, bouncing and jiggling as her powerful thighs smacked against her endowments.

It all felt very nice; her tail wagged harder, her mouth set in a faint smile, and she came to a work desk in her shop, laden with all the instruments of the alchemists art: complicated machines of glasswork, distillers, purification burners, solvents assembled by intensity, and a small pedestal for the infusion of magic and special ingredients. She put down the box of containers, instinctively taking care to avoid smashing anything with her massive breasts (it wouldn’t be the first time!) and poured some liquids at the ready into the set, readying today’s first potion. One was already ready to be tested, and Jade studied it carefully. After some thought, she poured it into a tube and stuffed that into a pouch at her side. She’d have to test that one herself later!

Eventually, she heard Dave’s voice. Her tail wagged extra hard! She swung out, passing by her assistant (a living construct named Sawtooth, one of Dirk Strider’s artificial sons and she suspected was working for his brother’s fiance to judge her for himself), and making sure not to smash anything over, came into the waiting room.

Dave was there; Karkat too, and what she initially mistook for several other people. She focused on Dave first, and he barely had time to acknowledge her presence before she swept him up into her arms, hugging the shorter man into her mountainous cleavage so deeply that his upper body vanished from sight. “Hi, Dave!” She said cheerfully.

“Hey, Jade,” He said, remaining outwardly calm, only a swooning tension in his face betraying the intense feelings within. He leaned up from her boobs and kissed the side of her face; she giggled and kissed him back, her tail wagging even harder.

She kissed him a few more times, in the manner of love grown mature and comfortable, though rather giggly. It felt familiar to the other pair present there, as yet unnoticed by Jade. She corrected that partly, then, letting Dave slide out from her bustline, and turning her attention to Karkat with a winning smile.

He studiously kept his gaze to her eyes. She smirked. “We don’t usually see you about at this time,” she said playfully, clapping him on the shoulder. “How’s it been?”

“Good enough,” Karkat said guardedly. “I, uh, have someone for you to meet-”

Dave said, “Babe, Karkat got married and never even told us.”

Jade’s eyes widened. “He WHAT!?”

“I told you all the time and you wouldn’t believe me!” Karkat snapped.

Beside Karkat, there was a giggle, rumbling and… dragon-like. Now Jade turned up and, it must be said that she was very tall (enough to tower over most people, even trolls) and so busty that they were almost their own body mass. But then and there, suddenly she felt small.

Which was rather funny, all things considered. She was actually more buxom than the giantess currently filling available space from a good portion of the wall all the way to the ceiling; more buxom in terms of proportion. Whereas Jade was now looking at a legs broader than her, a belly curving outwards above her and big enough for her to lay on, and yes, breasts that she could have fit between with ease, massive potion-enhanced bustline and all… and hardly a sight of the face at all.

The massive troll, glittered with scales and her great wings flapping (and Jade goggled at those features; how intriguing! How cool! She burned with questions; had she been born like that, did she do it to herself on purpose?), leaned over. Her cleavage descended, and Jade found it hard to resist the impulse to admire the view. Now, though, she saw the troll woman’s face; pretty and impish at the same time, though it was objectively the kind of face that got put on grand statues. Some sense of mischief pervaded it anyway. Then Jade saw her eyes; red, and blind.

The troll woman grinned, so widely Jade automatically smiled right back. “Karkat says the best translation for my name is Terezi. So you must be the super-smart alchemist he’s always talking about!”

Jade slowly turned towards Karkat. “Oh? Talking about me, huh? Hope you’re saying good things!”

“Things like you’re the smartest person there ever was and if he ever had to take transformation potions or empowerment tonics, you're the ONLY person he trusts with his body like that.”

Jade grinned, her teeth wolfish and long. It was surprisingly a match for Terezi’s huge fangs. “Ohh, I like her already!” She looked her up and down, still smiling, and brimming with curiosity. “So. You’re married, huh?” She pouted. “And I wasn’t invited?”

“We had to make special preparations for her to come visit like this; it was hard for her to come at all,” he said hurriedly. “Not exactly a traditional ceremony; we didn’t have a regular wedding, you know?”

“Hmm. Well, you get off on that one.” Jade turned around, wiggling her very big and plush butt as she walked towards the door, tail moving thoughtfully. “Sawtooth!”

The tall and thin construct made a buzzing noise in acknowledgement.

“Think you can deal with the shop for today? This is a special occasion! I think it calls for showing Karkat’s love around town!”

He nodded in confirmation. Terezi grinned and said, “Sweet!”

-----

The group of four left not long afterwards, and went to wind their way through the market, though this wasn’t without its own complications.

Karkat had grown up with Jade and Dave, and both of them were used to the problems Jade had developed when it came to confined spaces conflicting with her girthy breasts. Her spatial awareness was not exactly the best, and knocking over carts, stalls, unattended packages or bouncing especially unwary shoppers into the street was a frequent occurrence. It had its own rhythm; a bright impact noise, then something falling away or bouncing away from her bustline (wood splintering when stalls got pushed down and smashed; people falling down into the muddy streets, clattering sounds of glass or other containers going everywhere, the squawking or snorting of miniature livestock dropping) and outraged cries swiftly dying away at the reality of Jade’s breasts came to dominate their whole world, and finally Jade’s frantic apologizing and halting to help them up.

It had been a routine, for a while.

Now, the markets, living so close to her, had learned to work around her. The stalls were further apart than was custo, to allow for the passage of women that were unusually buxom or curvaceous enough for it to be a problem. People had learned to walk not clustered together or keep their things at a level where a hyper-sized breasts might knock it down, and there was a wide lane clear for Jade to walk through.

As they passed through, though, for Terezi to see the town for herself, it became clear that these measures were… Karkat sought for a word. He settled on insufficient.

Terezi trailed behind Jade and Dave, her tail and wings lifted high to show her butt off better. This was probably to show off a little to the dumbstruck townsfolk, with the sound of things crashing or breaking in her wake as people dropped what they were holding or fumbled in their shock at her, but it was probably for Karkat’s benefit as well. She’d insisted on him walking a little behind her (“So you don’t get knocked around by us big girls being all big,” she’d said, while Jade had giggled at ‘us big girls’), and most of what he could see was just Terezi, and mostly her huge butt at that.

Her walk was a massive stride that should have made the whole street shake. An enormous thigh, wider than two of any troll you might name, flexed her butt heavily, so much that it had a ponderous weight as it bounced back the other way when she walked.

Her enormous belly, stuffed with her developing offspring-to-be, jutted outwards, and gurgling faintly, so big that it's teal surface shoved its way through crowds that moved around Dave and even Jade, but didn’t process Terezi fast enough before she kept coming, and gently bowled them over. Her tail would then dip down, lift them back up and drop them to their feet, before going the other way and doing it again with perhaps four people at once, all in a smooth swishing motion.

Their procession moved by one side of the street, and Karkat couldn’t actually see her boobs moving, but he felt the impact of their bounces, not confined particularly well by her robes. He felt bad that he couldn’t find something that fitted better, or displayed less cleavage, but getting tailors to go along with it had been enough of a challenge before her boobs had ripped a plunging neckline into it. He wondered what the view was like for the traders that saw her coming.

He reflected, watching edges of her bustline wobble from behind her (such was their size , of course), that it would probably like watching the world’s most beautiful statue, made in the grand size of old sculptures and colossi meant to inspire, come to life and start advancing on you. A wall walking at you might have a similar effect, but not as inspiring.

Dave walked around others; Jade simply moved forwards, people getting out of the range of her destructive and wobbly bustline but not quite as lucky with Terezi’s belly. Even though she picked them up afterwards without breaking stride, they still looked terribly dazed, and Karkat wondered how heavy that big, maternal belly actually was. They were lucky they weren’t big enough to be in danger of her breast hitting them, he thought.

Terezi stopped, halting that line of observation, and turned aside. Her tail swished, and someone who was too close to her got hip-checked and dropped clear to the ground. Jade and Dave had the same fate, and the wobbling globes of Terezi’s backside innocently swung right into them, knocking them both over. Terezi leaned down, possibly unaware of this. Dave hit the ground backfirst, while Jade fell down upon him, her breasts smothering him completely, to a chorus of their respective cries.

“Oh, hey, this smells fancy,” Terezi said, inspecting a bit of red jewelry, sniffing at the air; she ‘saw’ not through sight, but through a more transcendent awareness of the idea of things, but she persisted in framing it as scent-based perception.

The tradestroll, a mesmerized bronzeblood clearly hoping this would end without him getting smashed about, swallowed. Terezi was bent over enough that her breasts had dipped down, her eyes still on roughly the same level as the tradestroll’s head. Her butt stuck out far and high into the air and even thicker than her thighs, tail arching up like an arc, and her breasts nearly hit the ground now.

The outer swells of Terezi’s breasts pressed against the cart, threatening to turn it over. Her cleavage was big enough, and deep enough, for a troll to slide between. It was very much an intimidating sight, and the tradestroll wavered as Terezi asked about the history of that particular piece. “Ah, well-” she started to say, and went into an explanation of it.

Jade, with some effort and help from Karkat, eventually got up. “Oh, don’t be bashful,” She muttered to Dave. “Not like it's the first time this has happened to you!”

“Gonna have to follow my heart,” Dave said, his expression completely neutral and face totally red. “Gotta follow my muse. If I’m gonna be mortified about my fiance boob-smashing me, well that’s the way it’s gotta be.”

She gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder. “You’re such a dork!”

“Yep. You got a type.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

Terezi left the tradestroll, who’d told her a fair bit about the town’s history. Probably not intentionally; for a short conversation, Terezi’s divine domain allowed her to pick up on associations and the ramifications of decisions, so by simply being told minor things, she would then know what led to those things happening. It gave her more of a sense of how the town had changed since she’d last incarnated.

That was a constant in her life, she supposed sadly. Karkat came back to her, and the world she had helped make constantly. Now it was changing without her.

Her belly rumbled, interrupting that kind of thinking. Jade gave her an appraising look. “You guys hungry?”

Terezi had her own particular dietary needs, and shrugged. “Mm, maybe later, when you finish showing me around.”

“Nonsense, we can pick up something quick!” Jade snapped her fingers. “Ooh, I have an idea. We have a friend on the way from a scenic route. Come this way, please!” She led the way, Dave nonchalantly following her.

Terezi shrugged, and followed them, Karkat in tow.

They progressed out of the market, by a number of homes, wherein Terezi saw other friends and families of Karkat’s circle of friends:

She saw Jade’s half-brother, John, playing with his older cousins Jude and Joey, as their mother (a towering and imposing fuchsia troll) was baking a cake, the smell of which was incredible. And Terezi normally didn’t even like sweets. A small black chess-person, apparently the mayor of the town, was having some kind of very one-sided argument with her before goggling very openly and kind of rudely at her, and Karkat and Dave were quite cross with him for it. He didn’t seem to be bothered.

Dave’s brother Dirk, a very serious man who was apparently in the process of making himself into some kind of clockwork machine-man, waved amiably to them as he did some blacksmithing work on a bar of hot metal, smashing it into shape. For some reason, he insisted on wearing an incredibly ugly hat to set the mood. (“It’s gonna be a shitty piece, so I gotta set the mood,” he said. Terezi was impressed on how he didn’t seem to react at all to her unique look. Maybe Jade’s example had desensitized him.)

They met others, as they wandered through the town, attracting fascinated stares and glances, and more than a little envy at her outrageous frame. More than a few people asked to touch her belly, and she allowed them to do it with a smug grin, relishing the awe radiating from them as they felt her huge belly, and the pressure of the life growing inside her.

Karkat was going to be a father. For some reason, this really shocked a lot of people.

“You moved fast,” Jade said, and it sounded like a joke, but it was strangely thoughtful as they walked up a hill.

Karkat frowned. “I told you guys, we’ve been meeting for years. This isn’t new.”

“Yeah, but. You’re married. You’re gonna be a dad.” Jade’s tone grew softer. “Before me and Dave, even.”

“It’s a lot to take in, is that right?” Terezi asked.

Jade nodded glumly at her. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Soon, they came to a high point within the town, walking up a hillside, where the remnants of the old forest had been entirely cleared away.

Their path was a narrow space between the pens of oink-beasts, and Terezi normally got hungry around livestock, but she was forbidden from consuming the meat of creatures like them specifically, and so she ignored them pulling away from her. She focused instead of trying to move her body through the space between the pens, her big butt and boobs and gut all pinched by the space. Jade was having just as much trouble, wiggling her hips to slide through and her breasts pushed together by the pen’s sides.

Finally, though, they made it free of that impediment and came to the top of the hill.

And there, the town spread out beneath them, towards the horizon. Disorganized neighborhoods, making homes and small businesses apparently at random, with smaller pockets of completely abandoned buildings waiting for someone to take up residence. The offices of the mayor, sawmills and foundries quietly powering away, an ancient library that had been there before the first inhabitants had arrived.

Further away, the buildings thinned out, until there were only open meadows, at the very edge of where the town ended. And past that point, up rose the forest again, encircling the whole town, an alien but somehow friendly presence.

From here, they showed Terezi the lay of the land, and pointed out parts of town to her, so that she built up a rough idea of how it was laid out, and she followed the trail of thoughts and history they didn’t realize pooled in what they said.

They also pointed out what would be her home; it was Karkat’s home, in fact. It sat just outside of town, squatting with a grouchiness apparently passed on from its owner, the teal and red colors still bright. He’d inherited the place when he’d come of age, Dave had said, apparently that every so often a troll was born with his blood color and was sent to live there. They didn’t actually know why, it was just part of an ancient tradition.

Terezi smiled. She couldn’t actually see it, but she perceived it anyway.

Jade smiled up at her. “Come on,” she said. “A friend of ours doesn’t live far from here.”

------

The smell of baking bread was a familiar scent to Jane Peixes, and she’d grown used to it, and still liked it.

She was a thick and broad woman, powerfully built, and she displayed it thoroughly as she pulled loaves of bread out of the oven; her broad arms heavy with muscle, nearly as tall as an ordinary man even bent nearly double over. She was built on lines surprisingly similar to Terezi, in fact; her hips were so big that doorways could be a serious problem, and her hefty gut pressed hard against her apron. Her breasts, though supported by her clothing, still swept out nearly to her knees now, and when she stood up, carrying the loaves with her, she had to hold the pan quite a way out to prevent burns to her chest: her breasts projected out by more than a foot, the lower slopes meet the top of her belly, and it necessitated some careful movement in her line of work.

Jane moved away from the oven, not so much walking or strutting (though she certainly had the hips for it, her butt pressing against her pants with the kind of heavy weight that forces pants to mold to their shape), as apologetically shuffling from place to place. Jane was big, Jane was strong, and Jane was a child of the Peixes matriarch who’d married into the Egbert after a wild marriage with the Harley elder, and thus had a lot to live up to. The pressure had really gotten to her, and she spent most of her life involuntarily cringing back from the world, afraid of taking too much space.

When it came to cooking (and surprisingly enough, economic acumen), though, she really blossomed. She placed the fresh loaves to cool, and felt a surge of satisfied pride at them. As she did, she heard a familiar and much loved voice call out, “Jane! I have someone to introduce to you!”

Jane smiled. “Jade! Just a moment!” She removed her oven gloves and hurried out.

Jade was waiting for her just outside her shop, and Jane faltered as she saw her; well, not just her, or Dave, or Karkat (so unusual to see him around, lately!), but the massive dragon-like troll woman, waving to her.

“Hey,” the teal troll said.

Jane smiled nervously. “Ah, hello, miss! I don’t believe we’ve met?”

She introduced herself as Terezi, and gave Karkat a significant look. Her eyes, Jane realized, were blinded. “Are you okay?!” Jane asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Don’t you worry about it, I can handle myself fine.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Jane’s hands wriggled. “Um… you’re a friend of Jade’s?”

“We just met!” Jade said. “She’s a… ‘friend’ of Kakrat’s, apparently.”

“We’re married,” Karkat said flatly.

Jane blinked. She looked from the grouchy troll she knew, to the towering, incredibly beautiful, and intimidating giantess in the room.

She was grinning like a drawerful of swords.

“I thought you had a type,” she said meekly. “How come I never heard you got married?”

“It was hush-hush, apparently,” Dave said. “Karkat got MEAN, you know. He didn’t invite me, his best bro, to his wedding. What a FIEND.”

“Hey…” Karkat said warningly.

“Or me!” Jade teased, putting an arm around Karkat’s shoulder and mashing him into a massive breast, to his obvious annoyance and embarrassment. “His best bro-ette! He’s so mean!”

“Dastardly,” Jane agreed.

“Hey!” Karkat said.

“An absolute cad,” Dave said, shaking his head.

“We’ll have to cast him out to keep our honor as a township,” Jade said sadly. “It’s the only reasonable thing.”

“I can’t believe you married me with such a stain on your soul,” Terezi said, grinning.

“Oh GODDAMMIT YOU’RE AS BAD AS THEM,” Karkat groused.

Jane giggled. Jade did too, and released Karkat.

The joke passed, and Jade leaned forwards. Or at least shoved her boobs onto a table to steady herself. “I think we’re all kind of hungry. Think you could help us out?”

“Sure,” Jane said, smiling timidly. “I have some loaves that just finished up. That’ll make a fine breakfast.”

“Sure, just a moment.” Jade reached for her purse, and Jane’s eyes widened, and she rushed forwards.

“No, no, I couldn’t!” She said. “Go on, this is on the house! Please!” She disappeared into the bakery.

“Hang on a minute, you can’t-” Jade gave up. “Oh, not again… this is terrible for her profit margin.”

“She does this a lot?” Terezi asked.

“When it’s us? Yeah. Jane’s sweet and she’s kind of a pushover… she’s always giving us stuff, but it's not like the dough is super easy to come by…”

Terezi felt a little bad, honestly.

Jane came back, with several loaves of bread. “On the house!”

Terezi took them. “Aw, but I can’t-”

Jane put a finger to her plump lips. “Shush! You take them!”

Terezi looked at the loaves. One of them had a smiley face on it. Now she felt incredibly bad. “I don’t know…”

“Shush, you! Eat up!” Jane brought up a table, big enough even for Terezi (provided she moved the chair away and just sat down).

All four of them assembled at the table, and took a seat. Jade with her breasts overflowing, Dave next to her, and Karkat sitting on the floor next to Terezi in a show of silent solidarity. She tried to persuade him otherwise, but he persisted; she compromised, just picking him up and plopping him into her lap, and with his back against her belly and growing family, and her breasts over his head, he accepted that.

Terezi swallowed a loave whole, her jaws widening for it as she slid the bread down her throat, its surface pushing against her skin. Jane watched, in scandalized fascination. The others began to eat, and told stories about what they’d been up to; apparently they hadn’t caught up in a while.

“So the guard thing is going pretty okay,” Dave said. “It’s regular work. It’s not FUN, or exciting, but a guy’s gotta do regular stuff, you know?”

Jane nodded at that. “Yeah; I wanted to make artisanal cakes, but there’s not exactly a lot of people wanting to buy those.”

“I would,” Terezi said, devouring another loaf.

Jane smiled. “I thought there was something I liked about you.”

Jade in turn, chewing through her bread and indifferent to the avalanche of crumbs sliding into her cleavage to be lost forevermore (or until the next shower), said “I think we’re probably gonna do a small ceremony, when WE get married. Nothing big or fancy. What’d you do, Karkat?”

From below the table, Karkat’s voice sounded. “Yeah, we went for the small and private thing, as you guys won’t STOP going on about.”

“Next time, make your life sound a little more believable,” Dave said. “Next you’ll be telling us she ascended from the heavens.”

“Yeah, that’d be SUPER weird,” Terezi said, with a teasing grin. “But then, I WAS inside the old temple, you know. Wouldn’t be too far fetched.”

Dave snorted. “Pfft. No way.”

“Temple?” Jane repeated. “Oh, that place Karkat is always traveling to! How’d you get inside that temple?!”

Jade chimed in, “I always thought it was sealed shut!”

Terezi thought very carefully for a moment. But she’d gone through this, many times, and she knew what to say to content them without telling them the quite unbelievable truth. “I guess there’s some kind of magic in me the temple responds to; supposedly, from what I’ve heard, I’m descended from the people that once worshiped there.”

Jade tilted her head. “That makes sense; don’t suppose you could show us in, sometime?”

“Sure,” Terezi said brightly, wondering vaguely if they were ready to see her in her true glory. Ah well. She’d get to that when she needed to.

They ate together, a while longer; sharing interesting stuff that had happened to them lately, or providing her with fun details about their lives. An hour or two, free to be spent like this, dawned. Terezi was still hungry, even after eating her fill; bread was not exactly what a dragon needed.

The opportunity came not long after Jade, a mischievous look in her green eyes (Glowing faintly, a consequence of magical empowerment experiments) tugged out a potion from her satchel. “Hey, guys, check this out.” She wiggled it before them, for everyone to see. “Know what this here is?”

Terezi tilted her head. “It smells good.”

“Oh, it does taste nice, but that’s not the whole thing~!”

Dave gave it a look. “Hey, isn’t that the potion that you used to…” he fumbled in front of him, in such a way as to indicate inflation from the chest.

“Oh my,” Jane said, realizing what it was. “Your… embiggening potion.”

Karkat raised an eyebrow. “Working on improving the formula?”

“Yep!” Jade said proudly. “I get a lot of requests for my kind of… uh.” She indicated her chest with an impish shrug. “‘Enhancement’. So I’ve been trying to make the potions more dependable. They’re kind of all over the place in how much you get out of them; I got this big from a single drop, but other people that volunteered only go up a few cup sizes, if that!”

“Okay that does sound like a problem,” Terezi said, swallowing another mouthful. She gesticulated vaguely, talking with her gestures. “Like… if you wanna market that, or give them out, you’d want something consistent, right?”

“Yeah! But so far, it’s completely dependent on the magic already inside people… how powerful they are, for example,” Jade said. She noticed Terezi’s interest in the potion suddenly spiking, but didn’t realize why. (Namely, Terezi being a living goddess, she was intrigued by what such a potion would do to her, with all the power she held.) “I’m hoping to find something that is a bit more controlled.”

“So, is that one dependable yet?” Terezi asked. Jane nodded hurriedly, looking longing for it. She glanced at herself, Terezi and then Jade, all with genuine longing. Perhaps it was envy, or attraction. Possibly both.

“I dunno!” Jade said, breaking the seal on it.

“Wait a second,” Dave said. “You don’t know what it’ll do!”

“And this is how I find out!” Jade said, a sudden desire to impress Karkat’s super cool wife overwhelming her, and she tipped the bottle’s contents down her mouth.

Her throat glowed green as the potion went down, and then so did her belly. Soon, the glow faded.

They waited.

Jade looked down. She frowned.

She patted her stomach thoughtfully, looking worried.

She started to say, “Something usually should happen by now-”

And Jade stopped, her voice tangling up into a startled squeak, her back arching up and her breasts glowing bright green. They wobbled while remaining completely still, wildly shifting in place and shaking, slowly swelling outwards. They did so silently, flesh not normally making much of a sound, but the same could not be said of her clothing.

The fabric began to tear. She required special clothing, and it was already stressed by the demands of her body, the local tailors not quite up to speed with making things for such extreme bodies; they didn’t know how to make support for breasts that weighed more than oink-beast livestock, or tailor fitting clothing that worked around them. The plunging necklines Jade liked was a necessity as much as a deliberate fashion trend.

They reached a limit; her breasts grew bigger, fluxing outwards by the span of a finger in every direction: outwards, below, forwards, the teardrop shape growing more extreme as the base of her breasts didn’t expand any, so it looked like they were swelling from a relatively small connection point; the contrast made them look even more ludicrously big.

At the sides, her top tore, the stitches popping loo and flapping open as her breasts swelled another handspan out with a wobbling surge of growth. Her top had to be stitched special, following the diameter of her breasts, and these popped multiple stitches, threatening to have Jade experience a very embarrassing wardrobe failure. Now her breasts piled up, over her face and blocking out her vision, bulging from her top, the fabric still struggling to contain her body.

“Okay oh WOW this is a success!” Jade tugged at her fabric, trying to keep it from coming apart. “Does anyone have a spare… anything, to borrow!? I’m gonna have a moment, here!”

Karkat, blushing red at the side of so much of Jade where the front of her top had popped open to show even more of herself, wordlessly removed her cape and tossed it at her. She caught it and covered herself from the front. “Ah, nice! Thanks, Karkat.” He grunted in response.

Dave got up awkwardly. “I’ll… uh. I’ll take you back to the shop, okay?” He checked a time piece. “And my break is almost up. I can drop in a tailor, tell them to give you a hand.”

“Sure, that’d be good!” Jade said, calming down. She squeezed herself, giggling. “Ooh. even bouncier.”

“Jade, please focus, hon.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” She tightened the cloak. “I’m sorry, Jane, Karkat, Terezi! I’ll, uh, try to polish that.”

Terezi was still gaping. She remembered eras when mortalkind had reshaped their bodies with as much ease as changing their clothing but still… that was something! “That’s okay… I’d definitely like a sample of that, sometime.”

“Same here,” Jane said meekly.

“We’ll be keeping the tailors in business, that’s for sure,” karkat said dryly, and it hit them so unexpectedly, they burst into nervous laughter for a moment. “Calm down guys… it wasn’t that funny…”

Jade and Dave got up; for Jade, with a lot of outward jiggling that seriously strained the remaining fabric of her worker’s smock. She staggered out, trying to adjust to her new body, Dave at her side the whole time. She then peeked back in, people outside making murmuring comments, and waved at Karkat and Terezi, her massive body-framing hair swishing as much as Terezi’s tail. “Buh-bye, you guys!” She ducked out, back to her duties.

Jane scooted back. “Um. I gotta get back to it, too. See you guys later, maybe?” She smiled awkwardly, blushing faintly and behind her spectacles, her gaze suggested a hint of what might become infatuation for Terezi. “Feel free to come back any time, the both of you…!”

“Sure thing,” Terezi said, scooting back. Karkat stood up off her, and Terezi rose to her full towering height.

The both of them left not long after, and Terezi explained what she needed right now; he was prepared for it, but wasn’t particularly happy about that.

The two of them headed off, and she followed Karkat as he led her back up the hill they’d come from, towards the outlying regions of the town.

Where the big livestock was kept.

-----

Eventually, this led to the pair of them walking nearer to the forest than most of the town normally went.

Here, the pens rose high and thick, heavily reinforced to prevent the livestock from smashing through or jumping over, or an occasional rustler from making off with the livestock. There WAS a collection box on the paddocks, though; for an informal purchase, someone could take the livestock as long as they paid the price, without repercussions. Terezi was counting on that, too.

Karkat seemed to have something on his mind, too.

As Terezi sniffed the air, looking for the right scent of meat, Karkat frowned speculatively. Shep wicked up on that, and turned towards him. “Something on your mind?”

“Mm, I don’t know.” He mulled it over, and finally said, “Why’d you tell them that thing back in town? That you’re a descendant of priests or whatever?”

“I didn’t say that, specifically.” She raised a claw, thoughtfully. “Just that I have a magic the temple reacts to, and that I’ve HEARD that I’m a descendant of the people worshipping there. I never said anything for sure, and I didn’t lie.” Karkat frowned. “It’s true; sometimes I’ve incarnated as a member of the families that used to maintain it, so we could keep up. Wasn’t an option this time.” She frowned. For a moment, she mourned. For her cult, now seemingly lost to antiquity. For all the things lost, seemingly never to be remembered. For the way time seemed to just flow on, swallowing up even things that a goddess thought should endure indefinitely.

Karkat reached up, hesitantly, and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, warmly.

“It’s okay,” She said quietly. “I don’t like lying, or something close to it. But I can’t just tell them the truth yet. Maybe someday.”

Karkat sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

She started to say more, and then the words caught in her mouth, her thoughts froze up, and the hunger in her gut, unsatisfied with bread (not that she could bear to tell Jane, who seemed so very vulnerable), demanded to be filled.

Meat.

Terezi followed the scent, and Karkat, blurting indignant sounds to himself, hurried after her.

The trail sooned stopped at a pen, occupied by a breed of animal carefully bred by the Nitram family over the years, and the walls of the pen were especially high, but this wasn’t necessary as the beasts in question so docile, and dense, that the thought of moving further than it took to get to the nearest bit of swill wouldn’t occur to them.

Karkat got a glimpse of one, as Terezi flapped her wings and flew right into the pen and walked through it, striding towards the very one he was looking at. The creatures in question were generally called meat-beasts; variants of cow-beasts with chimerical elements of other creatures wrapped up into a very productive, powerful and dull-witted package.

They were also, in a word, fucking huge. Almost sixteen feet long, the whole creature was, basically, round; a huge mass of succulent meat, so bulky that it curved in a rough sphere, with short but very thick legs to support its mass. It’s head was effectively a tub, with short and nubby horns mostly used as steering for anyone who had to ride and wrangle one of them. Nearly twice as high as a troll, and close to being as big as Terezi herself, it was simply too large for most local predators to be a genuine threat. The creature looked slightly up at her with a calm absence of thought, its eyes staring blankly into nothing as it chewed on a mouthful.

It had to weigh several tons, at the very least, of raw muscle and flesh. Nevertheless, Terezi easily lifted it up with a single hand, raising it high into the air, steadying it with another hand. Her mouth watered, and her belly gurgled, crying out for fresh meat.

Her mouth opened. Her jaws widened. At first, noticeably wider than a normal troll might, and then gaping out wider still.

Karkat, aware that this would be a trend and resigned to it, went off to the relevant paddock and stuffed some money into it. Terezi’s breakfast wouldn’t be free, after all.

And all the while, Terezi’s jaws kept widening, so far that it was absolutely impossible by any normal measure of biology, even glowing faintly as her divine powers allowed her to mold her shape as she pleased. Her throat glowed from within, a teal light shining like a volcano.

The meat-beast made a clucking sound (for reasons no one was especially clear on, besides one Nitram stating ‘somehow, a chicken got into the gestation mix’) as Terezi lowered its head into the impossibly distended, gaping chasm below. She judged her mouth to be big enough to capture her meal, and slowly, savoring the moment, she pulled its head into her mouth.

Now it mooed, the sound muffled and distorted by her throat. The shape of its head appeared, pressing against the skin of her throat.

More of its body slid in as she slowly pressed it down, murmuring deep and savoring noises as her tongue slid along its underside, and she experienced every aspect of its existence, lending it a unique and special flavor.

Her meal slid downwards, her throat greasing the way with copious amounts of saliva that was probably cold, and now it bleated in something approaching, if not alarm, at least awareness that this was a new experience. Down it began to slide, her throat swelling with its body mass and the muscles within her slackening and pulling in turn, its greased path aided by the power of her body. Karkat’s eyes widened, impressed and disturbed at the same time: it was so big! How was she fitting it down!?

Her throat swelled out. By about a foot, and then several feet, and then more. There was seemingly no limit to the give of her body.

The beast began to slide down its inexorable path into the certain doom of her gut. So much meat! Terezi softly cried out, against it, with how good it was tasting already!

God she’d missed real meat. Twitching and thick and solid, already good to dissolve inside her belly, it was almost as good as reverent sacrifice.

Her tongue slid out, growing impossibly long and thick. It doubled back, rolling inside her mouth and pushing it’s hindquarters deeper in, and with that, the beast was being swallowed faster, now its entire front half a big, solid lump in her throat. Her skin bulged out with his weight, by nearly six feet of roundness and tangled forelimbs, giving the strange appearance of a frog.

More and more of it slid in. The massive lump in her throat, trapped by her ravenous body, grew even bigger. Eight feet out… then ten… then twelve… and still more, sliding inwards.

And then, it was just a pair of legs sticking out of her mouth. Now she tilted her head up and, relishing every moment of the heady taste, the pulse against the inside of her mouth, the feeling of something inside her about to become part of her, she gently slurped it down.

The lump in her neck traveling downwards. The front of the beast, which gave no indication that it was bothered by its situation, and then a smaller lumb as its hind legs moved against the inside of her throat. The lump kept moving downwards, disappearing above her breasts…

Karkat thought he heard a splash as her belly surged out, doubling, no, tripling in size, and then getting even bigger as the whole creature settled into her gut. Her belly hit the ground and rolled forwards, skin tight around the image of her meal, a fleshy log extending away from her and nearly sixteen feet out,and above it (her breasts propped up by this last bit) was her pregnancy, a more defined shape compared to her digesting gut.

One to create life, one to consume it. There was poetry, in that.

Now Terezi raised her head again, and produced a small, soft sound that might have been a dignified belch, but even as loud as she could be, it was hard to hear.

Her gigantic belly squirmed, and shifted, not with struggles but her captive prey getting comfortable inside her, even as the digestion process began. The outline softened as fluids began to pour in, not yet dissolving the beast (that would take several hours, at least) but giving it more room to float inside her. Her gut seemed to get slightly bigger, too, and it was already larger than she was.

Terezi slapped her gut happily. Her eyes flickered as her food started to get… pickled, he supposed, for that very digestion to take place. “Ohhh, YEAH, that feels good…!” Her wings flapped, and she flew upwards, over the paddock. She grabbed Karkat, ignoring his angry shouts, and flew off a short distance away.

She alighted near a tree, near the forest, in a secluded place, and sat against the ground.

She held Karkat to her belly; against her pregnancy, and the gurgling lump where her food was being processed, turning it into nutritious mush over the next few hours.

“Hey!” Karkat said. “What’s with the man-handling!?”

“Shush…” she cooed. “I thought you liked being man-handled by me~”

“Okay. Well, yes. Maybe.” He didn’t fight or argue, this time, as she again pulled him close.

He could feel her heart beating.

A calm, deep thudding, and it beat in sync with his own.

Her belly was firm, and the movement of her belly muscles around the massive animal beneath him was strangely… calming. The gurgling sounds from beneath felt so loud that they might have come from all around him. Her arms pulled him closer, squishing him into the upper slope of her stomach, and his head sliding into between her breasts.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Just you and me. Just for a bit.”

He closed his eyes, and held her, letting himself be pulled against her. “Yeah, yeah. Okay.”

She held him to her body, against her stomach and what would one day be her family. The sounds of her digestion soothed them both, and her wings flared as Karkat calmed down completely, and her wings swept forward to wrap over him, embracing them.

It was like cuddling inside a blanket. But the mattress was Terezi, and so was the blanket itself; it was all her, embracing him so completely. And for her, someone who would stay with her always, loyal to the very end… and coming back from that end, no matter how long it took.

She closed her eyes, in relief. Again, to this precious moment they had returned. As they would again and again, like the turning of seasons. Winter had passed, and now the relief of spring was here. As she’d always wanted. As what she hoped it would one day stay.

She held him tighter. She didn’t want to let him go. And then, the particulars of their reunion didn’t seem to matter so much; not the time or place, not the way the world had forgotten her. He was still her Vantas, however the world changed.

And then her belly gurgled again, juices flooding in, making her gut swell a bit. It made Karkat’s body rise up, sliding even more between her breasts. He didn’t mind; the beat of her heart was even louder now.

And the both of them just held one another, peacefully in the forest.

----

Much later, night came, and with it, he brought her to what would be her home.

“Sorry,” He muttered sheepishly, holding onto the tip of her tail. “Not as good as, eh. Whatever you’re used to.”

Terezi impishly gave him a gentle smack with her tail, laughing. Her stomach was smaller now, though still rounder than it had been, padded more with fat. The beast had been digested, meat and bone and every single inch of it melted away. Terezi’s breasts looked a bit larger, as did her hips, her thighs and butt, all more padded than usual. “Well, I don’t remember what that was actually like too well, at this level of existence, so me neither! Guess I’ll have to make do.”

Karkat’s house, looming high over them, was a humble building and not at all a luxurious home; almost as old as the temple and constructed in a very similar style (though simpler, and without the opulence of the temple), and the thing that stood out about it to the both of them, to any passerby, was that the doorway was alarmingly high, well over a few feet higher than Terezi herself.

It even cleared her long horns; she could walk right through it with ease. The whole home was built to her specifications, in fact; looking from the outside, it was reasonable to think that every room would be just as grand, for such a large troll as her to have without any issues at all.

This explained the furniture, Karkat realized. The chairs, the tables; it was all strictly divided into being the right size for him and being far too large for a normal troll… or at least ones, it dawned on him, if they weren’t Terezi-sized.

He opened the door, leading her in. “Well,” he said, his grouchy exterior faltering to show a genuine smile. He extended a hand. “Welcome home. Again.”

She took his hand warmly. “Glad to be back.”

[aion-rsa]

10 Injustice Characters the DC Animated Movie Needs to Get Right

https://ift.tt/3fCncB7

As we wait an announcement pertaining to the existence of NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice 3, we at least know that Warner Bros. is set to adapt the games into a DC animated movie.

Ever since its release in 2013, the Injustice franchise has not only become a staple of NetherRealm’s roster, but the comic spinoffs have made it a beloved part of the DC multiverse. The plot revolves around a reality where the Joker was able to mess with Superman so badly that the Man of Steel gradually became a mass-murdering dictator, with the support of several members of the Justice League. Left without any other option, Batman brought in counterparts of the Justice League from the “mainstream” universe to help him fight a civil war against his former friend. It was a story that merged the Justice Lords two-parter from the Justice League cartoon with Marvel’s original Squadron Supreme comic series.

A popular prequel series was released, mostly written by Tom Taylor, that explained the five years in-between Superman killing the Joker in cold blood and Batman’s last stand. Sometime later, the game’s story was adapted into the comic Injustice: Ground Zero. And the Injustice universe has only continued to grow since then.

As snazzy as NetherRealm’s story modes are, they are going to have to make some changes to the narrative for the animated movie. It’s not like every character is going to stumble into exactly four best-two-out-of-three fights in a row before someone else is the focus. Knowing that there will be alterations, some characters are really going to need some tender love and care.

Superman (Both of Them)

Injustice: Gods Among Us didn’t invent the idea of an evil Superman, but things are a bit over-saturated these days. Face it, “Dark Superman” has been done to death, what with Brightburn, The Boys, Invincible, and everything Zack Snyder intended with his Justice League movies.

It’s important that the animated movie really get into the WHY of what turned Superman evil instead of the Joker just getting a tragic win over him. The Injustice comic nudged him over and over again with multiple betrayals and manipulations before he finally snapped and angrily broke every bone in Green Arrow’s body. Hit all that, or at least enough of it.

More importantly, Injustice is a story of two different Supermen. The mainstream Superman has to ring true. He has to be the beacon of hope and positivity that pop culture has been missing for the past decade.

Ultimately, as long as they don’t do that minigame where Superman blows up cars and the people in them with his eye-lasers, we’re cool.

Batman

In this DC take of Marvel’s Civil War, Batman is by default the better person when compared to Superman. He has a line he won’t cross and that means no murder and no tyranny. That said, he still needs to be portrayed as a flawed hero. He may be competent, but he still behaves like a total douche at times and deserves to take one to the chin every now and then.

Being a paranoid futurist who buries himself in contingency plans means alienating allies, friends, and even family members. There’s a great moment in the Injustice comic where he reveals that he infected Cyborg with a virus within a week of meeting (you know, just in case), which Killer Croc says is outright sinister. It’s this kind of behavior that led to Superman’s fall to darkness, because even if Bruce wasn’t behind any of the horrors, he still chose coldness and paranoia over being there for a friend who was going through some serious shit.

Harley Quinn

A hype trailer for Harley painted her as a major protagonist in the first game but the game’s story mode just didn’t measure up. The comics did a better job and the Ground Zero volume was specifically about telling the game’s story from Harley’s perspective. I’m not saying that she should be joined by her team of BFF henchmen from Ground Zero, but she should definitely be a prominent hero.

Similar to the Mark Waid comic series Irredeemable and Incorruptible (also about an evil take on Superman), Harley’s turn to heroism is the universe’s response to Superman’s actions. She’s done some horrible things and may never make up for her actions under the Joker’s thumb, but she’ll keep fighting to stop Superman’s atrocities.

Wonder Woman

While Batman did a bad job trying to pull Superman from the darkness, Wonder Woman succeeded in pushing him in. It’s noted here and there, but this Wonder Woman was also altered by tragedy. In this timeline, Steve Trevor turned out to be a Nazi traitor. His betrayal left Diana feeling much less optimistic and hopeful than her mainstream self.

Wonder Woman’s villainy isn’t as pronounced as Superman’s, but she’s definitely the friendly face who eggs him on and wants him to stand over all mankind. As Superman uses her to fill the void left from Lois Lane’s death, the power couple become very good at bringing out the worst in each other.

Damian Wayne

The Injustice game did Damian a little dirty, revealing deep into the story that the Nightwing fighting on Superman’s side was not Dick Grayson, but Damian. According to Batman, Damian murdered Dick. The comics dove deeper into that and made it more of a freak accident brought on by Damian being an impulsive and angry child. Still, Bruce and his son were unable to make amends due to their shared lack of warmth.

Later stories, and even Injustice 2, added more depth to Damian. It always made sense that he’d join Superman’s Regime, but there was a soul in there who would eventually see that this wasn’t the right path. In the comic Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe, which was treated as a sequel to Injustice 2’s dark ending, Damian took up the mantle of Batman to oppose Superman and even grew a long-missing sense of humor in the process.

Lex Luthor

The great tragedy of the DC multiverse is that Superman and Lex Luthor just can’t get along. They will always be at odds no matter what Earth they come from. The Injustice universe was the one exception, as Luthor was portrayed as fairly warm and altruistic. Much like Batman, he has contingency plans up the wazoo, but they don’t come off as creepy.

Seeing him there as Superman’s longtime friend who sadly has to stab him in the back brings back that multiversal truth about the duo. Just because this is a world where Superman kills and things get very bleak doesn’t mean it’s the worst world and that it isn’t worth saving. The mainstream Cyborg is reluctant to come to terms with this heroic Luthor, but he ultimately accepts the miracle that this universe created a Luthor worth befriending and even looking up to.

Hal Jordan

Maybe it’s just me, but I was never a fan of how Geoff Johns retconned Hal’s past and gave him deniability for everything he did as Parallax. I liked that a boring hero dude like Hal snapped, did some bad stuff, and then had to accept his failures in an attempt to be better. With Injustice, they gave us that exact Hal.

Read more

Games

Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch

By Matthew Byrd

Comics

Injustice: Year Zero Brings the Justice Society to DC Alternate Universe

By Jim Dandy

Overflowing with willpower and being an otherwise competent space cop, Hal is still something of a dunce at times, and he’s susceptible to manipulation in the right situation. He’s already following Superman’s lead, but having Sinestro pop in to indoctrinate him into the Sinestro Corps makes him actually interesting. Let Hal be the worst version of himself here so he can double back on it in the sequel and beg Guy Gardner’s ghost for forgiveness.

Shazam

Injustice may be the B-side to Mortal Kombat, but the game itself is fairly tame on the violence. Joker’s death isn’t actually shown on screen, Luthor’s end is fairly clean, and Grodd taking a trident to the torso is relatively tame.

But what we absolutely, positively have to see in the animated movie is Shazam’s death scene to really give an idea of how far gone Superman is. It’s bloodless from our point of view, but it’s grisly as hell and made worse when you remember that Shazam is a literal child under all the mystical power.

Batgirl

The Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl was one of the first DLC characters added to Injustice, but it’s unfortunate that she’s not in the main story mode — something the animated movie could fix by giving her a more prominent role in the fight against the Regime. Her ending gives her a kickass backstory where she returns to the cowl after her father dies at Superman’s hands. The comics go deeper into this, even making it so that Superman doesn’t directly kill Commissioner Gordon.

In this continuity, she was already wheelchair-bound as Oracle. She had to go under a very dangerous procedure under Luthor’s care in order to walk again. This is one of the storylines that could make for a captivating arc in the movie.

Alfred Pennyworth

Alfred isn’t in either Injustice game. He’s already dead by the start of the first game. But I don’t care. Alfred needs to be in the animated movie because he is the heart and soul of the Injustice comics. While others bow to Superman, follow him, or even try to reason with him, Alfred Pennyworth doesn’t play those games. He will straight-up verbally clown Superman for his actions without flinching. He is not afraid of the Kryptonian, no matter how red his glowing eyes get.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

This comes to a head in the comics when Alfred takes a pill that gives him Kryptonian strength and he kicks the absolute shit out of Superman for ruining his family. I know I’m asking for a lot, but I simply need to see Alfred stomp a mudhole in Superman so hard that his own shoe explodes from the impact.

The post 10 Injustice Characters the DC Animated Movie Needs to Get Right appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3hIQH7h

[waystobuild-blog]

Who REALLY Deserves a Miraculous

First off, please understand that these are my personal opinions and all. I’d love to have conversations about whether you agree or not. So these days there’s a lot of hate on Miraculous and honestly, that’s fair. This was a show that started out with so much potential, but they kinda really dropped the ball on it. I’ve got a lot of different opinions on the show and maybe I’ll talk about them at a later date, but for now… Let’s talk about how I think the Miraculouses should be handled because oh boy.

So… Miraculouses in the show are handled in the worst way. Everybody gets one. You sit next to Marinette in class, congratulations? You qualify to be a superhero. Awesome, right? So many people get these things to the point that new holders are arguably not even all that special anymore because it doesn’t really feel earned it’s just there.

First off, let’s talk about who has Miraculouses and whether or not I feel they should actually have one or not.

Marinette and Adrien are givens. Main characters and both have a lot to gain. Sure. Alya. She’s definitely earned it. Nino. Honestly, I stand by that he really shouldn’t have one as the current show stands. He’s definitely come his own as a hero, but he doesn’t really have much to gain when it comes to being a hero or having a Kwami. The only thing I can really think of is that maybe if they used Wayzz as way for him to learn to be a little more serious with his life and for Wayzz to mellow out a little. That’s really the only direction I can see it being valid, but otherwise, nah. Chloe is an amazing pick and I’ll get more into why later on. Luka barely has a character to begin with and now he gets to be a superhero too? Wonderful. Max really shouldn’t have one and I’ll get into why later on. Kagami is an amazing pick. Alix is great, but she’s another later. Kim is a pretty good pick and we’ll talk about why, later. Now a lot of the characters that are holders are because Marinette is the one giving out Miraculouses and I think the easiest way for the show to have avoided this is to have continued to have Fu do his job as Guardian and continue to pick who gets a Miraculous. Maybe he can ask Marinette and Adrien who they think would be neat but allow the ultimate decision to come down to him. This would also solve a little bit of the problem that Chat doesn’t get to know who anybody is but Marinette getting to know everybody.

But now comes my criteria of what should qualify a character to get a Kwami and why? Well, this can be summed up into four different categories and of course, I’ll be giving examples as to who I think does or does not fit some of them.

1. If their character arc seems to lead towards them getting a Miraculous and being a hero. Pretty plain and simple. If a character has really shown to kinda be inching their way towards the world of Miraculouses then yeah, they should be one. Alya is the best example of this and is honestly the most deserving character. Not only was she Marinette’s biggest supporter but she was also Ladybug’s. She was constantly throwing herself into the fray and had even helped out times where she could. Doesn’t help that she was Marinette’s first choice to be Ladybug in Origins. Alya earned it. Nino on the other hand is the opposite of this to me and I maintain that he should’ve stayed a civilian. He’s great with Adrien but has zero connection to Chat Noir and very few times has been involved with Akuma attacks outside of being one. He hasn’t really earned it as a hero, nor does his character or arc seem to be leading him towards one. I offered the idea for maybe the whole learning from Wayzz thing but I dunno. But hey, that leads me into my next one.

2. They can somehow benefit from getting a Miraculous or Kwami. Some characters show that they need a Miraculous or a Kwami for different reasons or another. This is more of the idea, if they can learn something or need a friend in their life or can become stronger because of being a hero and having a Kwami, then yeah give them one. Enter Chloe. Chloe is a terrible person, but as Queen Bee you thrust a lot of power that she doesn’t really know what to do with in front of her. Getting a Miraculous forces her to try and be a better person. Kagami on the other hand, is someone who can gain a lot from having a Kwami. We’ve seen how strict her mother is and understand that she doesn’t have many real friends because of this. She can’t relax or kick back because of that. But with a Kwami in her life, she has a sort of special friend that her mother wouldn’t be able to take away from her and I honestly think that’s great. It would also allow her to grow and change and maybe even begin to start to get some of her own real friends with the help of her Kwami. Category 2 can even be shown in the main characters of the show. Marinette becomes braver and far more confident as Ladybug and as such, this begins to bleed into her average life as Marinette and Tikki has been shown to be a great moral compass. Adrien on the other hand is allowed to have the freedom he desires as Chat Noir just like Kagami. Now as someone who doesn’t match this category, let’s talk about Max. Max getting a Miraculous is cool. But aside from that, I genuinely don’t think he needs one in his life. He’s got Markov for one and since the series has started he’s become more and more sure of himself on his own save for the occasional depressive moment. I think he’d honestly be better off as a sort of Oracle character if you wanted to get him involved, but otherwise he’s pretty good as is. I maintain that even though I love this character to death, he doesn’t need a Miraculous or a Kwami.

3. If they somehow have a tie to a Miraculous. If a character has come into contact with a Miraculous or if something is later revealed to be a Miraculous in disguise, I think it’s earned. The only one that fits here is Alix. But I thought it was clear that her watch was somehow special and the reveal that it was a Miraculous was great. I think she earned it. Plus, she also fits into the next category.

4. Admittedly, if they seem capable and it suits them. Pretty much, if a character just has the qualities that make it seem like they’d be a good superhero or at the very least a fun one. This is kinda the reason I’m okay with Kim. Kim is pretty warmhearted, a fun guy and all around good fun. A Miraculous suits him.

Ivan Ivan is an easy category 2. He’s got his anger issues, but he’s also really shy. Give him a Miraculous to help him work on both his confidence and maybe keeping his anger under control. Match him up with something that makes it where looking at things calmly that can make him learn a little more about himself and the world around him.

Marc Marc’s got a lot of shyness that can be worked out like Ivan. Give him a little more self confidence with a Miraculous. It’d be neat to see that translated for him.

Sabrina Sabrina is the one I think deserves it the most and like the others falls into category 2, but on an even greater scale. Being a superhero would give her some self reliance from an emotional standpoint. Skills that she could begin to apply to her real life that could get her away from Chloe or at the very least change their relationship, where they can actually become equals. But seeing Sabrina become stronger and stand on her own would be wonderful.

Nathaniel As for Nathaniel, he falls more in line with category 1. It’s true that he doesn’t have much of a character arc. But what he does have is constant interest in Ladybug and very clearly wants to be a hero of some kind. If they wanted to, they could build upon that and have it lead up to him becoming a hero. I think he’d make a great pick. Plus, a little bravery like the others putting him a bit in category 2. But that’s all I’ve got. Now of course, I don’t think that having a Miraculous should be a fix to all character development nor do I think that it should be the only way characters can develop. It’s just that I think when you have this focal point of your universe, it should not be thrown around like it’s nothing. Miraculouses in canon, just don’t feel special to me anymore and I think that more thought and consideration should be put into it over what’s cool and I think following this guideline would help.

But these are just my silly opinions at the end of the day and maybe I’m just overthinking a kid’s show. Haha.

[lizzibennet]

Rachel Elizabeth Dare :)

How I feel about this character love her LOADS (hello, she’s been my icon for literal years). i talked about how i projected hard onto annabeth and it’s true lol but when i was younger (like when i first read the books) i related SO hard to her. she was this quirky outcast who didn’t really care if people thought she was strange but also just wanted a friend. like could she be MORE middle school me? the heck not. i think rick did such a good job with her character arc and building, like i know exactly what kind of person he wanted to portray with rachel and i can see her so perfectly, i’ve met rachels before you know? gosh i adore her sm.

All the people I ship romantically with this character ok so i’m captain of ss reychel all abord wee woo wee woo. but seriously for a while there i thought rick would actually maybe go there (because of the whole you won’t find love where you expect thing for reyna... i thought they’d be like, platonic soulmates or something lol sweet summer child, how innocent was i) i love them sm... i do sincerely think they would’ve worked great in canon :/ other than that i do like rachabeth like pls when they go to college and Experiment they totally hook up that’s all. also i like perachel too but since i wouldn’t Actually want to be canon over percabeth

My non-romantic OTP for this character perachel!! i talked about it before in my percy ask but goooOoOosh they’re so good. rachel stands for normalcy in percy’s life and percy stands for the godly part of herself she can’t really understand and they don’t even realize why they’re so attracted to each other or why they make each other so happy because they’re too busy laughing and slapping each other. omg i love them (also romantically but since i wouldn’t want it to be canon i tend to go for non-romantic so i can have the beeest of both worlds. but percy/rachel/annabeth is A Ship thank you goodbye)

My unpopular opinion about this character the fact she’s a totally normal human other than when she’s possessed by the oracle makes me really worried for her mental health?? she’s listening to/seeing really serious shit go down but she can’t really Do anything bc she’s not a fighter??? i get that she has to be around bc if a prophecy comes to her she doesn’t remember it afterwards but it’s like :// also the fact in tlo she convinces her dad to let her go back to ny by saying she’d go to the school she hates... the fact she’s implied to be read as schizophrenic via the mist so she either has to lie to everyone that isn’t a demigod in her life or be seen as a crazy person... i am Worried about baby’s mental health!!! i hope she’s going to therapy and keeping up with a strong support group of friends because hoo boy

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. i would love to read more about her former encounters with monsters/godly related Stuff before she met percy. i feel like we know a lot about her but so little about her general life!!! i’d read a short story of her going to the market so like maybe i am biased lol but i would just like to hear about her again. maybe even get her pov eventually? that’d be neato

send me characters!!

[hellyeahheroes]

Orphaned: How The New 10s Have FAILED Cassandra Cain

As we approach the end of “the New 10s”, how we came to call this decade (a term I will be using in the common usage, referring to all years with 201X number, not the proper one which ends with 2020), I took a look at one of the characters who I really feel got the short end of the stick through all of it  - Cassandra Cain.

There were some good things for the character in the decade. Writers like James Tynion IV, Bryan Edward Hill actually gave her as much respect as they could in given circumstances and she even made her first-ever appearance in animation. However, looking back I cannot say that it has been actually kind time for her . The bad just outweighs the good. I have isolated five reasons why I believe that to be the case.

1. The Erasure

This room is full of New 52 Cassandra Cain stories.

As always, everything boils down to New 52, the reboot that defined the New 10s for DC Comics. A reboot that asked us to assume Cassandra no longer exists and never existed, even if this did not mesh with the supposedly intact, just compressed, Batman continuity. The only writer who seems to have ignored it was Grant Morrison, whose Batman Inc. was caught by the reboot in the middle and seems to exist in a Schrödinger's relationship with two continuities - both part of the old and new DC Universe.

What is worse is that DC editorial has been silently stonewalling writers who wanted to use the character with vague excuses of her supposedly being toxic and little explanation beyond that. Scott Snyder was denied the use of her in Batman and had to create Harper Row as a replacement. Gail Simone’s pitch for a Batgirls book featuring Cassandra, Stephanie Brown and Barbara Gordon was rejected in favor of a solo Barbara book. In which both characters have been banned from appearing. The only exception was the Future’s Ends special, which was literally Simone’s final issue. It feels that this was done due to higher-ups' desire to push Barbara as the One True Batgirl. Which manifested in some of the editorial changes made to the book, like an artist being told, behind Simone’s back, to make a new villain look like Stephanie. Or Batman flat out calling Barbara “Only Good Batgirl” despite this making no sense in a continuity where she is literally the only one to ever use the name. The fact this ended up doing more harm than good to Barbara is a topic for another list like this altogether. The crux of it is, DC did their worst to make people forget Cassandra ever exists and alienate her fans for years, hoping to get rid of them entirely.  As the very existence of this article proves, their attempts were less than successful.

2. The Alienation

Once DC actually gave in and allowed Snyder to bring Cassandra back, other problems arose. The first one has come in the form of her new codename - Orphan. That name was supposed to allow her establishing her own identity instead of being defined by Bruce and Barbara. However, this argument seems dishonest when it is an identity previously used by her villainous father. The idea of Cassandra redeeming it has some merit, I admit. But this decision does send a message of her being defined solely by her abuser. It also serves to separate her from the rest of the Batfamily. Originally Cassandra has been portrayed as a member of the group and an adoptive sister to all of Bruce Wayne’s fellow sidekicks. Now it feels like her very name serves to single her out, an orphan among orphans.

This problem is not limited to the title. In general, Cassandra is now written as more isolated from the rest of the Batfamily, excluded from as many things as possible or having her role limited to nothing but a cameo. It has been 5 years and DC did as little as possible to reestablish her relationships with any people she was close with previously. In fact, with characters like Stephanie or Tim Drake, they seem to be betting on fans remembering their bonds from the previous continuity and act like they do not need to put in the work to rebuild them. Even if such measures have been taken for things like the reveal of her mother again. Her relationship with Barbara is as quickly cut as it was reestablished, without giving us anything but one or two scenes that work mostly as a reminder of what the two have lost from old continuity. She is not allowed to form new bonds with major characters either, her interactions with Jason Todd and Damian Wayne being kept to a bare minimum even more than before New 52. 

What’s worse is that new connections that she does form end quickly broken and undermined. After a big buildup of her friendship with Harper that girl gets completely written out of Batman comics altogether. Her relationships with Clayface and Batwoman were shattered with the former’s death. Not only that but DC seems entirely unwilling to follow on plot threads like this. It has been over a year by now since Kate was forced to kill Basil to save Cassandra’s life and not a single interaction between the characters seems to be allowed to ever bring that up, despite the effect it should have on both of them. I’ve gotten an impression they aren’t allowed to interact at all anymore, just stand awkwardly next to each other in group shots. Even Cassandra’s currently established bond with Duke Thomas feels constantly undermined by a looming threat he will end the story broken and turned into a villain. All of this sends a message that Cassandra is not a real part of the Batfamily, more a hired muscle than a real member of the group. 

Even the relationships with her villains have been taken away from her by simply erasing said villains. The same goes for many characters who once were her supporting cast, like Brenda or Onyx. Even her father had to be killed despite how many great scenes past writers could work out of confronting the two and exploring both how twisted his view of her is and what extent of the damage he has done to her. It gives an impression of outright spite, as if DC only agreed to bring her back at the cost of stripping her away from all interesting story threads.

3. The Jobbing

The less is said about Thomas Wayne vs Entire Batfamily, the better.

One of the problems with Cassandra’s portrayal is jobbing. For those who do not know, jobbing is a term in wrestling where a wrestler is made to lose a fight to put their opponent over with the audience. The bigger the reputation of a certified badass the jobber has, the more likely people are to buy the other guy as a genuine threat. A quote attributed to veteran wrestler Christian goes “If you can make the other guy look good you will always find a job, but you will have to do the job”.

Sadly, since her return, Cassandra has been reduced to a jobber. A character who is known as the best martial arts fighter in the Batfamily, if not in the DC Universe as a whole, is constantly made to lose to make someone else look good. In fact, between 2015 and 2019 the character had literally a single clean victory. By “clean” I mean a fair one on one fight. Every single one of her other victories was immediately being retconned as her opponent holding back (Dick Grayson) or undermined by her having the help of other characters (Lady Shiva, Azrael). Even the one opponent she was allowed to beat, Ismael, was a new character introduced just a few issues prior and his only show of skill to speak of was beating her in a previous fight. Meanwhile, she is constantly made to lose against opponents who have never been shown to possess skills or abilities that could make it believable, like Jason Todd, Helena Bertinelli or Karma. Thomas Wayne, a character whose use of guns was justified as compensation for his horrible hand-to-hand skills, is likely the worst example of them all. Cassandra is allowed to beat unnamed minions, be it Colony soldiers or League of Shadows ninjas. However, these do little to establish her as a force to be reckoned with she once was. After all, every single hero takes down hordes of minions constantly. Overall her status as a great fighter is at this point nothing more but an informed ability and DC has killed all credibility she once had.

There are painful and insulting implications that come along with Cassandra’s jobbing. This is because her skills as a martial artist have always been something she took great pride in and formed a lot of her self-esteem around. She finds comfort and relief from living with her disability in them. Her story is not one of a person “overcoming” their disability or have it nullified by superpowers that comic books are sadly full of. It is a story of a disabled person learning to live with their disability by finding solace in other skills she has and proving herself a true master despite said disability. By making her be beaten by everyone and their mother, DC turned that character arc into a cruel joke. Cassandra who is losing every fight is Cassandra that DC wants you to laugh at. Mock her for being delusional to think disabled people can be heroes and not just helpless victims. An ableist position very in line with a company that erased Barbara Gordon’s disability and history as Oracle, and to this day has editorial personally offended by the idea she could be anything but helpless in a wheelchair. As a result all Cassandra stories since her return just feel mean-spirited.

4. Shiva

Since Cassandra's return, the only two stories to focus on her have been about her mother, Lady Shiva. This has been a larger problem that has existed since Dan DiDio started meddling with the characters. We could see it in a classic story Destruction Daughter as well. There seems to be a desire on an editorial level to repeat and outdo the classic fan-favorite fight between them from Batgirl #25. Which is by many considered the best Cassandra story and the pinnacle of Kelley Puckett's run. But the editorial does not want to simply “top” that fight. They also want to somehow integrate it into a bigger story that ties Shiva with League of Assassins. I mean no disrespect to James Tynion or Bryan Hill or Anderson Gabrych, but none of them managed to truly make it work. The stories, while still well-written, seem to be inherently contrived. And I believe the future attempts will never truly work no matter who is writing them. The whole premise is nonsensical. Shiva that works with Ras Al’Ghul and his League is by definition out of character as the two have no aligning goals to speak of. There is nothing he can offer her and she doesn’t care for his goals. And the idea of sticking with him to fight challenging opponents is undermined by a fact she could get a good fight by simply slaughtering his entire organization. I started comparing this to Street Fighter to easily explain my issue with this. For Shiva to work with Ras makes as little sense as for Akuma to be M. Bison’s lackey.  DC is constantly trying to sell to us a story that does not work and then angrily try again when it is not hailed as better than Batgirl #25. It seems that Cassandra has become a means to an end in all of it. That she exists solely to get Shiva over as a minion to a bigger villain she has no good reason to follow in the first place.

This does nothing to make Cassandra less of a jobber either, as Shiva has been stuck in the same position for the entire decade herself and at this point is no more threatening than a Teletubby. Especially if the same stories that are supposed to reestablish Shiva as a threat are the stories where she fights her daughter. It feels like the two characters are trying to each regain their credibility by beating the other one because DC did such a good job of undermining them they wouldn’t be allowed to defeat anyone else.

While I want Shiva to be an antagonistic force in Cassandra’s life and she is a great villain, the way it is done does nothing for either character. Their complex relationship and clashing philosophies don't need to be violent or even physical at all to be compelling. It effectively squanders all potential the two have, seemingly for no other reason than to put Ras Al’Ghul over.

5. No Focus

Some of you may have caught on the prevailing theme of these points. Cassandra is no longer being written as a character in her own right. She is erased or pushed in the background to not overshadow Barbara. Her relationships are not being built upon and her plotlines are being dropped in favor of focusing on other characters. She is isolated from her new family and her membership is undermined even by her own codename. She keeps losing so that villains can look strong and cannot score a victory to not make someone “more important” look weak. She keeps being dragged into fights with Shiva to push Ras Al’Ghul as a bigger deal. She is constantly on team books that are always about other people first. 

This pattern speaks for itself. Despite an ever-increasing number of her fans and even writers who adore her, DC does not care about Cassandra Cain. This whole decade the company has shown the only role they see for her is someone used to push characters the editorial wants people to like instead. DC’s treatment of her betrays their arrogance, the belief the editors know better what the fans want than the fans themselves. Sadly it seems to have spilled onto other media as well. From what we know about her appearance in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie, Cassandra is the only character the creators did not care to get right, just somebody to make others look good. This is also why I am not holding my breath for her upcoming appearances in DCeased and Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey books. At the end of the day these are still not her stories, just someone else’s books she was allowed to be in. Do not get me wrong, I hope we really get this “Cass Renaissance” the fandom is getting excited about. But outside of Shadow of the Batgirl, which will actually be a story about her, I do not trust DC to treat her as more than a glorified prop for other characters. If there is one thing I learned is that you can never expect good things from the Big 2. You can hope for the best and prepare for the worst. But they will very rarely offer you a surprise that is actually pleasant.

- Admin

[m00nslippers]

In a dream world where we are getting a Red Hood live action trilogy, how would you want the three movies to be? Like what plotlines, characters, villians, what arc to develop, how to present his character to appeal to the general audience and such :D

Oh man, this is an interesting question.

Well first of all, this might sound strange, but I absolutely do not think that Under the Red Hood should be adapted to Live Action. I believe this because it already exists in animated form and is perfect. No live-action remake is going to compare unless they recreate it scene by scene and they never will. The dialogue is too good, it cannot be made better, only worse. So, that being said, RH1 should not be a retelling of UtRH, rather that movie/storyline should exist as backstory for the first Red Hood movie. They should communicate the events of that story without retelling it wholesale as the plot in the movie. They should also go ahead and go with the Lazarus Pit explanation of Jason’s resurrection because the superboy-smashing-the-universe thing is too vague and requires more context than a standalone movie can really provide. I would amend it though so that it’s actually more like Arkham Knight games, in that Joker had Jason for over six months torturing him before he finally killed Jason and sent the tape to Bruce. At that point, Ra’s and Talia got a hold of Jason’s body and resurrected him.

I have a really solid idea for the first movie, a more vague idea for the second one and a really vague idea for the last one. I’ll write you guys the synopsis of the first one up here.

Red Hood Movie 1

So, the movie opens on some brief scenes of a seemingly ordinary guy as he goes through his day. He wears blue collar clothes with a leather jacket thrown over the top, rides his motorcycle to work and stops to give money to a homeless guy on the street. He works construction or something, shows himself to be really smart and maybe a little over-competent for his job, he can jump down from high beams like he’s an acrobat, he does complex math in his head, but when colleagues ask how he knows so much he just plays it off. He seems friendly but he’s secretive, keeps to himself. He goes home from work, he’s the only one there, he works out, punches a punching bag, he checks a secret compartment in his house to make sure no one has tampered with it, but we don’t see what’s inside. He eats alone and when it gets dark he walks a ways to a local dive and sits in the corner until a red-headed friend comes in.

He and the friend bullshit together, clearly they’re close. His friend asks if he’ll babysit his daughter so he can work on a case, he says sure. They’re in the middle of talking about the daughter when something on one of the televisions playing in the bar catches his eye. It’s a breaking news feed of an Arkham breakout in Gotham City, with the building on fire, lead by the Joker. He flinches and you see this snarl of twisted fear and rage and his friend reaches out to grab his arm. “Jason, don’t. He doesn’t have to be your problem. You don’t owe Gotham anything.” And Jason looks Roy in the face and says, “Gotham owes me everything. And I’m going to get my payback.”

Jason leaves the bar, goes home, opens the secret compartment–it’s full of guns and all of his Red Hood gear. He packs it up and leaves on his motorcycle bound for Gotham.

Switch over to Bruce being Brucie at a WE function for a charity. He’s called up to give a speech and he talks about how his second son was a boy from Gotham’s streets who’d been exceptional but just didn’t have the opportunities because of his poor background. Unfortunately he was dead in a tragic accident, but Bruce had dedicated this charity in his name for underprivileged youth to fund scholarships and community support, etc. He steps down and has to glad-hand some people until his phone vibrates and he looks at the screen. It’s Oracle telling him there’s a Gotham break out.

Bruce slips away and he’s in the Batcave putting on his Batman gear as Alfred and Barbara–over the computer–fills him in on what’s going on and talks about how most everyone is out of Gotham at the moment, it’s just Bruce and Oracle, and asks Bruce if he wants Alfred to call in Nightwing or someone else for help. Bruce says no he wants them to stay out of it as he’s looking at the Memorial case of Jason’s Robin costume that’s still damaged. Alfred reminds him that since it’s the Joker, Jason is bound to appear, Bruce just grunts and says he’ll deal with that problem as it comes and has Oracle on the look out for any activity from either of them.

Bruce shows up at Arkham and talks to Gordon briefly, who tells him there’s a riot going on inside and they’ve already confirmed the warden had been murdered. Bruce busts in and starts kicking butt and capturing everyone, getting various people to safety that he finds as he makes his way through the building. All the while Oracle is giving him tech support. Bruce finds Joker’s cell but it’s been broken open. Suddenly he thinks he sees joker and and chases him down, capturing him but it turns out it’s just another inmate dressed like him–there’s a whole bunch of fake Jokers running around the building. Oracle tells him they’ll never be able to confirm if it’s really him from cameras alone like this and Bruce has to admit that’s true. But also says the Joker is probably already long gone, and they need to stop worrying about containment and start searching the city for him.

Cut to Jason riding into Gotham. He opens up a derelict safehouse with yet more guns and suits up and hits the streets. Everywhere he goes, he sees flashes of memories–of him as a kid on the streets, of Bruce catching him stealing the tires from the batmobile, him as Robin, him fighting Bruce as Red Hood. He questions homeless people and hookers and roughs up some dealers. They all know him, they’re all afraid, he’s the King of Crime Alley and remember when he ran out Black Mask. After some investigating, someone tells him a certain crime family’s men were hired to riot outside of Arkham and sow even more chaos.

Jason attacks the guy in his big mansion, mowing down hoards of mobsters with guns, all to get to the head guy and question him. He says Joker put out the word he wanted some grunts to help with the breakout and Black Mask had done a deal with him to provide men. The head mobster is Black mask’s man outside of Blackgate prison. The meeting was held in Gotham’s abandoned Amusement Mile between Joker and Roman’s proxies. Jason kills the mobster and leaves for the place he mentioned.

As Jason is on his way, someone hacks into the comms on his helmet–it’s Barbara, she found him after the attack on the mobsters–and she’s trying to get Jason to stop and leave Gotham. He and Bruce had a truce, that Jason would say out of Gotham and stop being Red Hood. Jason says that truce ended when he let Joker escape and now he’s going to kill him. Barbara says he’s not the only person Joker hurt, we see her in the Clocktower in her wheel chair with a picture of her and Gordon. Jason says he’ll kill Joker for both of them. Barbara says she’d rather the Joker be alive than Jason dead at his hands, and Jason says, well that’s where they differ.

Jason investigates the place, an empty funhouse or something. Down a hallway he thinks he sees the Joker and he runs after him but there’s no one there. He keeps seeing images of when he got captured by the Joker in the mirror, sees his younger self bloodied and dead. He’s getting increasingly unhinged. Then Bruce appears as Batman, tells Jason he broke their truce, he came back to Gotham and he killed people, but Bruce is willing to overlook it if he just leaves. Jason goes into his issues with Bruce, about how that’s his problem, he’s unwilling to go as far as necessary to really protect people. About how if Bruce had killed Joker from the beginning, Jason wouldn’t have died or become what he is, and Barbara wouldn’t be in a wheelchair, and all the people who died in the Arkham break out would still be alive.

Jason attacks Bruce, they have a huge badass fight. They are mostly fighting to a draw but they are both getting heavily injured. In the middle of their fight they think they see joker and Jason cuts off Bruce’s path and goes after him alone–only to get clocked with a crowbar from behind and dragged off.

Bruce finally makes it around to where Jason ran off only to a smear of blood on the ground that he runs through the computer and is told belongs to Jason by Alfred. Spray painted next to it is a Joker smile and the location where Jason first tried to get Bruce to murder the Joker.

Bruce goes to the location and finds the Joker there with Jason completely beat up and tied down. “Remember this Batsy? It was a fun little game, wasn’t it? It really had potential.” He’s missed his broken bird in Arkham and getting out has made him feel nostalgic, but alas he has better things to do, so it’s time to tie up this loose end for once and for all. He doesn’t need Red Hood getting between batman and his games, so he’s going to play one final round, winner takes all. “I think we should play again, but this time with a twist,” he says. Joker has set up Bruce to kill him or he’s going to kill Jason again–he’s like you can’t do it can you? Not even for your little robin. So he’s going to die–again.

The confrontation ends exactly like it did in Under the Red hood. Bruce throws a batarang that slits Joker’s throat but doesn’t outright kill him. Joker runs away laughing as Bruce goes to Jason, with Jason weeping and telling him to go after the Joker. Bruce refuses and says Jason’s injuries are more important. He tries to take him to the manor and Jason says no, he refuses to go there, to take him to a hospital. Bruce says if he goes there Red Hood will be arrested for killing the gangster. Jason doesn’t care, he refuses to have anything to do with a father who chooses the joker over his own son twice, he doesn’t get to treat his wounds and act like not going after the Joker was him saving Jason. it was just him betraying Jason yet again.

The last scene is Roy visiting Jason in Blackgate prison. He shows him home videos of Lian and brings him crayon pictures from her. He tells Jason if he ever wants out, just to say, but Jay says no, he’s got some unfinished business to handle. We see Black Mask, also there in the prison…

The End.

—

So pretty much the first movie has the Joker as the main villain in a re-working of the UtRH story, pretty typical Jason stuff.

The second one is where things are a lot less typical and almost brand new and not from the comics because let’s face it–Jason doesn’t have a lot of good stories that don’t involve the Joker. In the second movie Jason is in prison for most of the plot. And the villain? Astrid Arkham, who is the Arkham Knight. How does that work, you may wonder. Oh I have ideas and it’s twisty~ If you guys want to know how I think that one would go, I’ll write it up later.

The third one I’m thinking a League of Assassins thing. Basically Talia comes to Jason to try to get him to lead the league and we find out a lot about the circumstances of Jason’s death and resurrection and training. I’m much less sure about the exact plot for this one, but I think by the end of it Jason should finally forgive Bruce enough to go home and stop killing.

[draw-you-coward]

Hi! How is everyone? I wanted to talk about the Scions. Specifically, the Archons. Major spoilers for Shadowbringers!

I think what really helped me come to these conclusions was seeing all of them actively work together. specifically, seeing urianger in a context where he’s an actual character and not a deus ex machina! (side note: he’s honestly amazing in this expansion and i. love him??) I hope they keep this dynamic whenever it’s realistically possible!

So mostly, I want to talk about how the scions individually react to possibly groundbreaking events that have the possibility of changing their worldview. im speaking mostly about emet-selch’s “hydaelyn and zodiark were the first beings akin to primals” revelation. or more specifically, their separate reactions to that revelation. i think it’s very telling on how they each individually digest information. we, the players, may arrive to our own conclusions at our own pace, but we have to remember that for these characters, this is their world. their world view, being shattered. they all, to some degree, react negatively. they just show it differently, even if it’s not all that obvious.

i think that shadowbringers overall did a very good job of establishing their individual character dynamics, or more importantly, the idea that their major strength is also their major weakness.

let’s start with thancred. right away, his major flaw is apparent. in fact, a lot of people have gotten (rightfully) mad at him for it, although i think when he gets over himself and turns it around, it’s a lot more subtle. but i digress. with thancred, what he does with information he doesnt like is look at it, says “okay, i dont like that,” shoves it to the back of his mind to not think about, and tries to focus on whatever he wants to focus on in the immediate present. of course, it manages to bleed through regardless, and that’s where his doubts come from. and because he refuses to confront them head-on to deal with them, he has a very difficult time letting them go.

the actual first time when this comes to mind for me isn’t with ryne, it’s with the word of the mother in 3.X. (yes, it’s there with lahabrea too, but executed in a less clean manner, and people have already talked about that to death.) what he first sees is minfilia, the girl he’s attempted to look after primarily because of a sense of guilt, the girl who means the world to him, and whom he feels like, we know now, that he has never been sufficient enough for. (that theme of him feeling like he isn’t good enough is repeated multiple times with him, and it makes me wonder if it’s because of his manner of thinking.) but minfilia’s different now, in a strange and new and maybe not altogether comfortable way, and she’s drifting away from him now, and he can’t catch up to her to make up for all his regrets. he realizes this, realizes what’s going on, very, very quickly. in fact, i’d say that out of all of them, thancred is the one who is the quickest on the uptake. but he shoves his logical side away, and reacts emotionally, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge what he knows is true. in shadowbringers he does the same thing; he acknowledges minfilia’s words, and it is clear that he dwells on them despite himself, but he wants to react emotionally, in the moment. he is a very, despite his apparent distance, emotional person.

when he finally begins to get over himself accept the situation, it is in the tone of someone who is moving on from the loss of a loved one. he talks about how they met, how she grew up, what she liked. this is because he’s finally coming to terms with what he knew this entire time: that the real minfilia, his minfilia, died in that tunnel. the version of her that he is clinging onto in heavensward, in shadowbringers, is not her and all she used to be. it is not the “word of the mother” or the “oracle of light” or whatever she has turned into. it is but “minfilia,” but a memory, and he’s finally let it go enough to see it as such.

woo! okay. so moving on to how this works out for him in the best. honestly i dont think people acknowledge this enough, but he displays it time and time again? thancred is the one that is best equipped to deal with the present. to confront problems head-on without worrying about what may or may not happen, and without getting lost in the possibility of failure. he is by far the scion with the best ability to keep a level head. this is most apparent, to me, in aumarot. everyone one else is confused and lowkey freaking out or what have you, and thancred is the only one who has decided that no, what they really need at the moment is not to panic. what they need is calm, and confidence. and he is that. and you know what? he was right. and i think for me at least, he’s the biggest reason why I calmed down some at that point in the story.

next: y’shtola! I have less to say about the other scions, mostly because i wasn’t following their character arcs as closely or at all, but I do love them still!

y’shtola is the one who most visibly is struggling to handle emet-selch’s revelation. (you can talk to her now, at the time of the quest, or check your quest journal for confirmation of this). where thancred realizes things in a far more round-about manner--that is to say, figures them out, shoves them to the back of his mind, and tries not to think about them--she takes them by the horns and tries to confront them head-on. this gives her, in a way, tunnel vision. she is the loudest about her opinion, and the most direct. when emet-selch makes them by association question hydaelyn, she is the one who speaks up to defend her and their belief system. she is stubborn. it takes her a while to eat through something enough to 100% accept it.

but because of this, her conviction and belief in anything is strong. when she truly believes in something, she believes in it the most. she is the strength when the storm is finally over and she’s had time to build herself up. she isn’t afraid to force other characters to see the flaws in the way they are viewing things, or confront them when she knows she is in the right. yes, she can be harsh sometimes, but she is sorely needed. someone has to be sure of something here! in this way, she too is comforting. when thancred is calm, you know something is bad. when yshtola is calm, you know that whatever you have to worry about is surmountable.

urianger! my poor often-shafted elf giraffe man. he’s the one i had the most trouble puzzling out, so i may be completely wrong! but i’ll try my best :>

urianger is the one who has had this constant theme of showing up at the last moment to present something that he has thoroughly and completely thought about so he can be entirely certain of it. urianger’s way of dealing with things is to listen, listen some more, maybe go digging, and finally, only come to a conclusion when he knows every bit of information he can. he’s willing to work with ascians, he’s willing to go double-dipping in terms of sides, he’s willing to risk his friends’ trust. he is willing to take a long, long time to achieve a goal and know things only in full, and he has the patience to do so. he has the patience to deal with thancred in shadowbringers, to listen to what the exarch tells him to do, to bear with the whole plan, even as he sees things objectively keep getting worse. he’s not easy to rile up, he sees things as a whole instead of in parts... all of this really makes him a good teacher! it makes him a kind man. but.

he waits a little too long. what happens when you finally kill vauthry and emet-selch ruins everything? urianger’s carefully-laid plans go awry. suddenly, everything has gone wrong and he has no backup, because he never thought to make one. he has such conviction that his passivity is for the best that he stands by, barely intervenes, and decides to let things run their course even when warning signs are flashing in front of him. when things go wrong he fumbles, and doesn’t know what to do, because he isn’t used to that happening. up until shb, he’s taught himself that the path of inaction and support is the best one to take, and i am glad that he is finally being confronted with the realities of that. even with thancred and ryne; he can clearly see that their initial dynamic isn’t healthy, but he does absolutely nothing active about it. in the end, it is his very opposite force--entropy, chance--that fixes things with them. it’s interesting he became an astrologian, i think, because divination is something so abstract and vague that it allows him to stay in his comfort zone of not doing much to change things. fate is a fickle mistress, yes, but he leans a little too heavily on how things should be that he fails to see that everything in the present is in flux; that it is, in fact, dependent on the uncertain.

okay, that’s it! i think the three of them complement each other nicely with their respective strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why i hope they’ll keep that dynamic in the future! of course, if you disagree or want to correct me, please feel free; this is purely my own opinion, and i am very much putting myself in a position to be (respectfully) disagreed with by posting this. on the other hand, if you want to elaborate on something or add something, please also feel free! i’d love to hear your thoughts.

<3

nae

[sebeth]

Young Justice: A Bat Family And The House Of Al Ghul

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

 Seriously, turn away if you aren’t up to date with Young Justice: Outsiders – particularly episode 6.

You have been warned…

  The current Young Justice season has shown the following members of the Bat-Family:

Batman (Bruce Wayne)

Nightwing (Dick Grayson)

Oracle (Barbara Gordon)

Robin (Tim Drake)

Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)

Batwoman (Kate Kane)

Jason Todd

Damian Wayne

 The House of Al Ghul has the following representation:

Ra’s Al Ghul

Talia

Sensei

Damian Wayne

 “Rescue Op”, the latest episode of Young Justice: Outsiders, dropped a few bombshells on the Wayne Family and the League of Shadows. Now is a perfect time for a recap and speculation post.

 Batman: Has grown tired of the limitations imposed on the Justice League by the United Nations and Lex Luthor in particular. Bruce resigned from the League and formed Batman Inc. Green Arrow, Batwoman, Katana, Hardware, and Plastic Man have also resigned from the League and joined Batman Inc. Robin, Spoiler, and Arrowette resigned from Young Justice in support of their mentors.

We haven’t seen Batman since the mass resignation so we are unaware of his future plans.

Batwoman: Has made one brief non-speaking appearance. I’m assuming Kate’s origin is similar to her comic book version. She should re-appear when Batman returns on the scene.

Nightwing: Left Young Justice at the end of season two. The death of Wally West, his best friend, laid a heavy burden on his shoulders. We have no idea what Dick has been up to during the two-year time gap between season two and three. The use of hypnos in an early episode hints as adventures with Spyral, a spy organization.

The season opened with Dick breaking up meta-human trafficking rings.  He’s in a relationship with Barbara Gordon.  It appears Dick will/has formed the Outsiders as of the latest episode – Brion and Halo stated they’d work best “outside” the Young Justice team.

Oracle: Has been paralyzed for less than a year. The prequel comic had Babs active as Batgirl in year six. We aren’t aware of the circumstances of her paralysis but it’s most likely due to the Joker. The only question is if we will receive a “Killing Joke” flashback or if it’s only referenced in a comment. Babs is strictly working with Nightwing at this point but will she organize the Birds of Prey in the future? I would love to see Huntress and Lady Blackhawk in the YJ-verse!

Dick and Babs were both aware of Bruce’s “Batman Inc” plan but are not actively participating in it.

Robin: We’re not sure when Tim became Robin. I’ve always felt it was shortly before season two started due to the anxious protectiveness Dick had of Tim in the first episode. Tim should be around 16-17 years old in the current season. He resigned along with Batman in the first episode. Tim’s romance with Wonder Girl is on the rocks due to the resignation.

Spoiler (Stephanie Brown) – Like Kate, she has only been featured in a non-speaking role. Steph was part of the mass resignation of episode one. I’m assuming Steph’s origin is true to her comic book roots: daughter of Cluemaster, adopts the Spoiler identity to foil his crimes. A significant difference is her early adoption into the Bat family. Trust me, Steph wouldn’t have been able to join the team without Batman’s approval. Steph’s resignation suggests she has a much smoother relationship with Bruce in the YJ-verse. Another difference – Steph isn’t romantically involved with Tim. Is Cassie doomed to be the “Ariana” of Tim and Steph’s future romance? Or will Tim and Steph simply be BFFs?

Finally, Jason Todd!

Jason was seen briefly in season two as a memorial hologram. He had died sometime during years two and four of Young Justice.  We’re not sure of the exact time or circumstances.

I would set Jason’s death in year four. Dick would be approximately 17 years old during the fourth year of the team. Dick, traditionally, is around 17 to 19 years old when he breaks off from Bruce and forms the Nightwing identity. Jason would have a brief tenure as Robin and a member of Young Justice before his death- allowing a very new to the role Tim to join the team in year 5.

We’ve never been told the circumstances of Jason’s death. It’s a safe bet the Joker was involved in some way.

Let’s recap the various versions:

Post-Crisis: Jason searches to find his birth mother. Sheila Haywood, said birth mother, betrays Jason to the Joker. The Joker beats Jason with a crowbar and leaves him to die in an exploding warehouse.

New 52: Very similar to the Post-Crisis death.

Under The Red Hood movie: Similar to the traditional death minus the mom.

Batman: Arkham Knight: The Joker kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured Jason for many months. Joker appeared to murder Jason in a video, causing Bruce to stop searching for him.

Now let’s discuss the various resurrections…

Post-Crisis: Superboy Prime punched the walls of reality causing alterations of the timeline. One alteration was Jason’s resurrection. A massively brain-damaged and physically injured Jason awoke in his coffin. He dug himself out of his grave and wandered the streets of Gotham in a semi-catonic state. Talia discovers Jason and brings him to the League of Assassins. Jason has muscle memory but no intellectual capabilities. In other words, Jason can fight but not communicate. After months of no progress, Ra’s orders Jason to be sent to a home. Ra’s orders Jason will be taken care of out of respect for the Detective. A desperate Talia throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit. Jason emerges with full mental capabilities but an insane amount of rage. Talia furthers Jason’s training but also amps Jason’s rage – she sends him like an exploding bomb into Gotham. Prime targets: Bruce, the Joker, and Tim. Jason and Talia have a brief, icky, sexual relationship.

New 52: No Superboy involved – Talia straight up throws Jason into the Lazaurs Pit. She still serves as Jason’s mentor but no sex was involved.  Jason’s return as the Red Hood and his roaring rampage of revenge happened before the New 52 began. We never receive the full details of Jason’s revenge but Jason comments about his rough treatment of Tim and Roy jokes about a “duffel bag of severed heads” so we’ll assume it was similar to the ‘Under The Red Hood” arc.

Under The Red Hood movie: Ra’s resurrects Jason due to his guilt over unleashing the Joker. Jason’s death was never intended and Ra’s resurrected him to make amends. Unfortunately, Ra’s couldn’t contain Jason’s rage and banished him from the stronghold.

Batman: Arkham Knight: Never died but still full of rage and bitterness due to Batman’s “abandonment” of him.

Jason is seen briefly in “Rescue Op”. He’s masked and wearing a red hood. He fights Nightwing. After Dick’s team leaves, he mutters “Grayson”.

Ra’s comments: “Oh, your memory is finally returning. Excellent.”

Let’s speculate:

We can safely assume Jason died at the hands of the Joker. It’s a universal constant. I feel it was a true death as the “faked” death of Arkham Knight doesn’t work well in universe with a Superman and a Martian Manhunter. If Batman didn’t have Jason’s actual corpse in his arms, he would have called in his entire Justice League team to find his son. And if he didn’t, Dick would have.

More questions: Was Dick in space when Jason died? Did Dick and Jason work together in Young Justice? Did the brothers have a better bond in the Young Justice universe or was it the more typical “overshadowed by Dick’s greatness” combined with Dick’s bitterness over being replaced route?

As for Jason’s resurrection…

We can rule out Superboy Prime and timeline alterations.

The Lazarus Pit is the obvious solution. However, Jason is very much in his post-grave but pre-Lazarus dip state.  Has Jason been immersed in the Pit? If not, what caused his resurrection?

If Jason has been immersed in the Pit, why such a half-assed job? And where’s the rage?

The Young Justice comic book had Robin (Dick) accidentally drop Ra’s – causing the man to fall to his death. Talia and Ubu threw Ra’s into the pit and he emerged fully intact with no memory loss.

If Jason still has memory loss after the Lazarus pit – is it due to the massive head trauma caused by the Joker’s crowbar?  But, again, Ra’s had died in the Young Justice-verse and been resurrected in prime condition. Talia and Ubu had to travel back to the Lazarus Pit – meaning Ra’s was dead for hours – that would also cause brain damage and he came back in perfect health.

My theory is an outside force caused Jason’s resurrection. Talia discovered Jason wondering the streets and brought him back to the League’s stronghold.

It would explain Jason’s current state. I have no idea what the “outside force” would be though.

Jason has been healing and training with the League but has not been immersed in the Pit.

Ra’s al Ghul stated in “Recue Op” that he is no longer the head of the League of Shadows or a member of the Light.

A power struggle occurred and Ra’s lost.  Ra’s only has his own family – Talia, Damian, and Sensei – along with a few loyal operatives on the island. Who has assumed control of the League of Shadows?

I listed a few suspects when I covered “Rescue Op” – Cheshire and Lady Shiva. I even theorized over the introduction of Cassandra Cain. I completely forgot the most obvious suspect – Nyssa al Ghul.

Nyssa is the older sister of Talia. Nyssa lost most of her family in concentration camps during World War II – mainly because of Ra’s outright refusal to help her.

“Batman: Death and the Maidens” is Nyssa’s origin and revenge against Ra’s. She murders Ra’s al Ghul and Talia and assumes control of the League.

The trio of Nyssa, Lady Shiva, and Cheshire would be a terrifying triple threat. And if Shiva has coerced Cassandra to help? Very bad times ahead for Ra’s and Talia.

Let’s talk Talia. She only has a brief appearance in the cartoon but received a two-issue spotlight in the comic book series.

Talia is a more multi-faceted and likable character in the Young Justice-verse than she is in the mainstream DC universe.

Talia wants Bruce to love her but realizes he doesn’t/can’t – at least not the way she wants him to. She’s frustrated that her father doesn’t understand or accept this. She wants someone to see her as something other than Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter or Batman’s lover. Talia is very tired of the endless conflict between Batman and her father.

I believe Talia discovered the resurrected Jason. She brought Jason home with her so he could heal. Talia has been patiently waiting for Jason’s full recovery. In the comics, Talia didn’t push Jason into the Pit until Ra’s threatened to send Jason away. Clearly, this isn’t a worry in the YJ-verse so Talia would have no reason to immerse Jason in the Pit and risk the resulting insanity/rage.

Initially, Talia rescued Jason in the comics so Bruce would be grateful to her. Cartoon-verse Talia likely has a similar motivation.

What would cause Talia to throw Jason into the Pit – restoring his full mental capacity even at the risk of rage and insanity?

Two words: Damian Wayne.

Talia was holding baby Damian in her arms during the episode. Why introduce both Jason and Damian together unless their storylines intertwine?

I feel Ra’s successors in the League are going to pursue the remaining Al Ghuls. The League, by its various nature, is a bloodthirsty affair – predecessors aren’t allowed to live out their lives in peace. And Ra’s isn’t a “chilling on the beach” type of guy.

Damian is a newborn and I’m assuming he was conceived the old-fashioned way. None of this Talia drugged Bruce or stole his genetic material stuff. It wouldn’t be true to the Young Justice version of Talia.

Talia has a newborn and a price on all the Al-Ghul heads. Talia realizes Damian needs to be with his father for his own safety. Talia is unable – or unwilling – to leave Ra’s side. It’s possible an ambush goes very badly. A desperate Talia throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit. She orders the now fully restored Jason to bring Damian to Bruce.

Jason may not even engage in a “roaring rampage of revenge” against Bruce. Mainstream-Talia’s manipulations helped cause Jason’s revenge (“You remain unavenged”). Talia has no reason to amp Jason’s revenge in the YJ-verse – she needs Jason to get Damian and himself to Gotham asap.

Jason’s rage may not even kick in until after he hands Damian over – it could be days or weeks later when Jason discovers the Joker is still alive. Enter the Red Hood.

If Jason does go all revenge-driven Red Hood, I am going to be seriously annoyed if he focuses his anger on Dick and not Tim.

Bad enough Dick stole the founding of Young Justice and the Kon friendship from Tim, if he takes the “replacement feud” I’m going to have a fit.

Dick is the original Bat-Family thief – first Barbara has multiple accomplishments stolen from her history in order to make her Dick’s “true love”, and then Dick steals the founding of Young Justice and Superboy from Tim!

I love you, Dick, but stop stealing your sibling’s stuff. They are allowed to have accomplishments and storylines without you hogging the action!

[quintessence-sentimentalist]

Caleb, Peter, the Oracle/Himerish and Yan Lin for the ask game.

Alright, after a VERY unexpected hiatus (for which I wholeheartedly apologize), I’m finally back with responses to the ask game I reblogged with the expectation of answering much sooner.

Answers below the cut, with the exception of favorite photo (I just didn’t have the time to search through both comics and cartoon to find the best ones).

Caleb

• favorite thing about them: 

I guess the fact that he pulls off Badass Normal pretty well, surrounded by all of these powerful women. He can still hold his own in a fight, and managed to coordinate a successful rebellion in a world long under tyrannical rule. Also, can’t forget the literal dream-guy aspect of his initial comics characterization.

• least favorite thing about them: 

On the animated series side, I really dislike the toxic masculinity and sexism fueling his characterization, which was especially prominent in season 1 (and thankfully waned as the series went on). Which I guess is also my problem with him in the comics, except that trait came out of the blue well into his time in the series and served the sole purpose of breaking up his relationship.

• favorite line: 

I do like the first romantic scene between Caleb and Cornelia, so I’ll go with his speech there. 

• brOTP: 

Listen, “D is for Dangerous” is one of my favorite episodes of the animated series, so Caleb and Matt is always a favorite relationship. He also has a fun relationship with the girls in season 1 (when he’s not being all “Ugh, girls”), and I do like his comic partnership with Vathek.

• OTP:

I don’t really ship them actively, but Cornelia and Caleb have a fun dynamic in the animated series, and the initial concept of them in the comics is really sweet.

• nOTP:

I’m not a fan of Elyon/Caleb for a number of reasons, and with the way CxC ended in the comics, I just don’t see there being a good way for them to get back together later on, so I really don’t ship Caleb with anyone after about issue #20. 

• random headcanon: 

Well, my knee-jerk reaction here is that cartoon-verse Caleb would find one unusual—by his peer group and personal characterization’s standards—hobby and be amazing at it and honestly enjoy it. Like in “Divide and Conquer” we got natural snowboarder Caleb because the sport had a Meridian counterpart, for a hot second he played a guitar on the school roof, and then “D is for Dangerous” was rife with his inability to understand Earth teenager things. So based on all of that, I’m thinking he’d somehow latch onto some activity that’s quiet and leisurely—because the guy needs it, he’s basically been raised in and for battle since conception—but still involves some skill and concentration. Something that can help him take his mind off things but also be productive, allowing him to create something fun and useful.

Basically, this is my roundabout way of saying that I had the mental image of Caleb taking up knitting and being great at it, maybe making the girls shawls and scarves for Guardian business in colder climates (because Kandrakar knows that the uniforms don’t offer optimal coverage). There’s just something comforting about the repetition to stitching, where he can either tune out to everything or focus on something else while his hands still work the needles without interruption. It makes even war rooms for the latest universal threat less of a stressor for him, and oh no I think I’m attached to this concept that started as a stray thought based on one of my own hobbies.

• unpopular opinion: 

Mm, maybe just the fact that he’s not my favorite love interest in either media, even when on his best behavior? In terms of ship-related stuff, I most frequently see CxC as the popular canon pairing, and while I’m glad to see the love for them (means that this series overall is getting the love it deserves!), I’m personally just neutral and can’t really muster up any strong feelings. I pretty sure that’s just a ME thing, because many a time I’ve just been chill with major canon pairings, not really caring either way, while I’ll positively be clutching my heart and wanting to cry over my tiny canoe of a minor or even wildly non-canon pairing. So I’m totally down with and supportive of Caleb/CxC fans, even if I don’t feel what they do as potently.

• song i associate with them:

I feel like I use this song for every “enduring fight against evil” situation, but I’m still going to go with “The Good Guys” by the Elms (and of course, I can’t find a YouTube link for it…). I just feel like it captures the weariness of leading a rebellion against an oppressive superpower—especially in the days before the Guardians’ involvement—and the fact that Caleb is just a guy fighting without any powers. “When all you got is a single shot/You do the best job that you can/’Cause it’s a long road for a simple man.”

Peter

• favorite thing about them:

Look, he’s just a really great guy all-around. Best older brother, caring boyfriend, good friend, and the coolest dude who’s simultaneously a complete dork.

• least favorite thing about them:

I’m just going to go with the fact that he really doesn’t have any character in his short time in the animated series except to be a) Taranee’s brother (without really seeing anything with their relationship) and b) Caleb’s short-lived romantic foil for Cornelia.

• favorite line:

Not so much a line as a particular scene that sticks in my head as an iconic Peter moment, and it’s just this one comic image of him balancing on a kitchen chair like it’s a surfboard, excited that Taranee got accepted for the Redstone exchange program because it’s a “surfer’s paradise.” Like he’s super proud of his little sister for her achievements, but he’s also very much a surfer dude dork who’s going to geek out over some choice waves and get yelled at by his mom for standing on the furniture.

• brOTP:

He is the BEST big brother to Taranee, so of course that has to be my top choice.

• OTP:

Peter/Cornelia deserve so much more love than what I’ve given them in the past, they’re precious.

• nOTP:

I don’t really have one, at least not a specific one? PxC is the only thing I know in terms of Peter shipping.

• random headcanon:

In the instance where he finds out about the Guardians, I imagine he’d be like the Team Mom (or Best Boyfriend, in Cornelia’s case). Much like his sister, he’s not going to be pleased with the Council and what they put the Guardians through—really, if you throw Judge Cook in here too the three of them would probably put the entire establishment on trial and win. But in the meantime, until definitive change can be made, Peter devotes his time to making sure the girls are taken care of and maintaining a proper balance between their two lives. He’s probably there with cookies and hot chocolate and fuzzy blankets after every rough mission, letting the Guardians finish the initial debrief before ushering them to a mandatory movie night or something to decompress. Date nights with Cornelia invoke a firm no-Guardian-business clause, where all conversation is on everything but and any lingering concerns are checked at the door, where they can remain for a few hours.

It’s just… this is Peter’s sister and girlfriend and their best friends, and it’s in his nature to be a very chill, caring dude. If pre-New Power Matt was ecstatic about providing support by running interference while the girls are away on mission, then I imagine Peter would be the go-to guy for emotional support after a battle.

• unpopular opinion: 

Mmm, just as a stray thought, I guess I’d have liked to see more of him in the animated series? Not sure if that’d be unpopular, but given the fact that CxC have something of a better relationship there than in the comics and Peter was pretty much introduced into that canon for the sole purpose of a love triangle, I thought it might be. So yeah, I’d have liked to see cartoon Peter some more—give me the good brotherly moments with Taranee, and I’d be curious to see a platonic friendship with Cornelia (and maybe even Caleb) assuming endgame CxC.

• song i associate with them: 

Because I’m such a cheeseball, we’re going with an era-appropriate selection in “Catch Your Wave” by the Click Five, a song I still unabashedly love nearly 15 years later (and consider criminally underrated compared to the popularity of “Just the Girl”). Chosen partly because of the ‘00s feel and partly because Peter is a surfer, and frankly I think he’d be enough of a cheeseball to sing this one for Cornelia.

The Oracle/Himerish

• favorite thing about them: 

I do enjoy that the “Trial of the Oracle” arc humanized him a bit. I feel like it’s not often that you get to see such a higher-power character be brought down a bit and not only reveal their more normal past, but have them return to it for a time. It was an interesting change of perspective, both as a reader and for Himerish himself. 

• least favorite thing about them: 

Probably everything related to the “these are young teenagers fighting your battles and enduring what will almost certainly be lasting psychological trauma (given the prior generation, where, FYI, one of them killed another and you just kind of locked her away and let two of the distraught survivors be banned from your sky fortress for eternity because they dared question your judgement in expression of their trauma from losing two best friends to this madness), and you’re still going with this, huh, Himerish?” situation. We’re not going to delve into that any more because we will be here for a while.

• favorite line: 

Oh, I can’t remember which arc it’s from (the end of Book of Elements, maybe?), but there’s this one sequence where Himerish and Yan Lin are simultaneously (yet separately) getting ready for a celebration and having a bit of fun with it, and Himerish jokingly looks at his reflection and says, “Maybe I’ll get a haircut!” I’m just laughing thinking about it, so we’re going with it.

• brOTP: 

I mean, Himerish and Tibor (and Yan Lin) is the ultimate Kandrakar BROTP. Himerish also had a much more human relationship with the Guardians and Orube with the fourth arc, which I appreciated.

• OTP: 

Uh, frankly not something I’ve thought of for him, so we’re going to pass.

• nOTP: 

Again, not something I’ve considered, but I guess I’d say Oracle ships with the Guardians are not my thing? 

• random headcanon: 

Oh, he definitely kept that outfit with the baseball hat and the Cupid t-shirt. Both Tibor and Endarno almost had an aneurysm the first time he wore it to a Council meeting.

• unpopular opinion: 

Ehn, well I guess I’ll go with the fact that even after Trial of the Oracle he’s still not one of my favorites. The arc definitely humanized him, a fact for which I’m grateful, but I’m still not huge into Kandrakar overall.

• song i associate with them: 

You know, for someone who massively associates songs with characters and/or stories, this one was a really tough one. But I was trawling my music library and stumbled on Rascal Flatts’s “I’m Movin’ On” and it just slammed into me.

Now I know I largely don’t recognize the arcs post-Ragorlang, partially because I don’t know them well (having only read them once) and partially because what I do remember was bad, but I still have this lingering image of Himerish’s final page in the series, where he just quietly walks away and disappears from Kandrakar. I don’t remember the context of this in the slightest—like I can’t remember if it was his choice to leave (unlike during Trial of the Oracle) or if he was being called into question again—but I do just remember this silent sendoff, and seeing this song made me think of this scene. From the title alone, it’s very much a bittersweet goodbye kind of song and I’ve loved it for that purpose, which I think it serves perfectly here. Particularly the line “I never dreamed home would end up where I don’t belong”—for so long, Himerish had been synonymous with the position of Oracle and Kandrakar itself, yet as Trial of the Oracle showed us, he led a very different life prior to taking the title. The fact that he’s leaving (presumably by choice, because that’s the way my memory is leaning at the moment) just reads to me as him no longer feeling like he fits within the infinity of Kandrakar—the place that once encompassed the whole of his being—and knowing that it’s time to be moving on.

Yan Lin

• favorite thing about them: 

She’s just the ultimate grandma. So very sweet and supportive to her granddaughter and her friends, and always the one to dispense wisdom. Also, she’s one of the few characters—if not the only—where I honestly can’t decide if I love her comic or animated counterpart more. They’re very different characters—comics Yan Lin is traditionally wise and kindhearted, while cartoon Yannie is the kind that will teach you an important lesson and then make some sort of witty comment and/or break out her old tennis racket that she found in the attic—but still so great.

• least favorite thing about them:

Hmm, maybe just how she had to watch one friend go power-mad, another get murdered by the first, and two get exiled forever from Kandrakar for saying this isn’t right, and yet she has no apparent fears or concerns about her granddaughter serving as a Guardian and running the same risks, amongst others? I get that Yan Lin would be proud at the very beginning because by the time the Nerissa arc happens everything was well out of the creators’ hands and thus nothing could be foreshadowed, but you’d still think that there’d be some level of terror once Nerissa awakens. 

• favorite line: 

Just because it’s in my head, I’m going with the aforementioned tennis racket bit from the cartoon. After she gives Hay Lin the map and Hay Lin questions if it’s because they’ve matured enough in their powers to handle the burden: “Nah, it was in the attic. I couldn’t find it. Found my old tennis racket too. [swings racket] FORE!!!”

• brOTP: 

Honestly, I love Yan Lin as the honorary grandma for all of the girls. I’ll also say BROTP to C.h.y.k.n. (pre-everything awful, obviously), and Caleb and Yan Lin’s cartoon relationship, especially in season 1, is pretty fun too.

• OTP: 

Well the animated series paired Yan Lin (or at least her Altermere) with Zacharias Lyndon, so I guess I’ll go with that. 

• nOTP: 

Don’t really have anything specific in mind?

• random headcanon: 

Not really a headcanon, but I have to wonder what younger Yan Lin—particularly the animated one—was like with her (presumed) late husband. I mean, the woman was a literal force of nature in her youth and is uniquely wise in her prime, so what was the love story between her and Grandpa Lin? Was it more of an opposites-attract sort of thing—solid bedrock to her whirlwind—or was it more like-to-like?

Given Chen’s overprotectiveness in the animated series, my thought is he was the rational child of two eccentric spirits.

• unpopular opinion: 

Granted, I don’t remember these arcs well at all to judge the execution, so this is based more on the concept: I’m not super into the Oracle Yan Lin idea. Not as a testament to her ability to do the job or anything, but it just doesn’t work for me with her character. While she’s had apparent faith in the Council and Himerish all along—even after Nerissa’s betrayal and Cassidy’s murder, the breaking point for both Kadma and Halinor—Yan Lin will always put her granddaughter’s safety first and foremost, as much as she can given the dangers of Guardianship. She’s gone out of her way and behind the Council’s back to get crucial messages to Hay Lin, and even smuggled the key to the Crown of Light to Will while Elyon was being held prisoner under Phobos-as-Endarno’s—AKA the new Oracle—rule. For as much as she outwardly believes in the laws of Kandrakar and the power of the Oracle, Yan Lin is not afraid to quietly go rogue and do what she knows is right.

That last point could arguably be a positive to Oracle Yan Lin—Kandrakar knows that plenty of modifications could be made to Kandrakar’s policies (i.e. the dangers of Guardianship)—except for the fact that Yan Lin’s stealth aid almost always comes as a last-minute, dire situation save. It’s not a preemptive way to diffuse the situation (which you’d think she’d want to do, given how maybe both Nerissa and Cassidy could have been saved if the Council had intervened sooner and with a better plan) when she comes to Hay Lin with the analogy about the oak and the rush, but a survival tip for when Will attacks the girls. Similarly, Yan Lin only gets the fragment of Elyon’s power to Will when she knows Phobos is hot on her tail and will take her out of the picture in mere moments. The fact that she only interferes when desperate times call could speak to her trust in the girls to handle things on their own, but it doesn’t bode as well for future change to the burdens of Guardianship that she could viably make as Oracle. Plus, the fact that her granddaughter is a serving Guardian almost certainly clouds Yan Lin’s actions—would she take similar actions even if it wasn’t Hay Lin’s life on the line?

And we’re going to stop there because that’s getting into different territory than I intended, but the short of it is I’m not into the concept of Oracle Yan Lin and much prefer her as the devoted Council member who’ll still sneak behind the laws of Kandrakar to protect her girls.

• song i associate with them: 

First thing that came to mind was “Cassiopeia” by Sara Bareilles. Normally I’d say this is more of a Hay Lin song, just in terms of the star imagery and whimsical sound, but what sold me is the first line: “Come in close now, it’s time to tell a story.” And isn’t that the epitome of Yan Lin’s character! The revelation of the girls’ Guardianship, the Four Dragons—all of them start as stories that Yan Lin tells. So I guess it could still work as a Hay Lin song too, just within the frame of it as a story told by her grandmother.