#Rebirth of Chen An

[kidhellion]

i drew chens armour finally.

never ask me for anything ever again!!

(no one asked me) (i didnt have to draw it at all) (but i did it)

[quiddling]

feel like pure shit just want spoon back x

[fatalcn]

Chen

[bibyvariable]

Nothing much lately just FHR MLB AU

danny and christina new bestie duo just released

[amp404x]

Petable rangers?

And some good ol charge step rough housing

[shortstep-fhr]

The Steel romance is sooooo delicious if you have a high steel clue stat. He knows you're the new villain but he's kissing you anyways. He's openly asking you to stop, to not make him regret falling for you. You can't promise anything. He's pretty sure there's only one way to stop you. He's certain you're going to get yourself killed AGAIN. You're both idiots and you keep kissing.

[localcryptic]

the LD Rangers team is the nightmare blunt rotation. argent is intentionally trying to freak herald out because its funny. herald keeps floating higher and higher because he can't help it. steel's paranoia is through the fucking roof. ortega is the ONLY one having a good time. don't even get me started on sidestep

[uncreativeboxdraws]

Old comic page I did, depicting the beginning of Rebirth. Something in Chen staring back at Sidestep through the crowd always stuck out to me.

[glitchy-npc]

63?

63. Too dark to see. Listening. Feeling. Something hurts.

[Steel, immediately after the Heartbreak incident, stuck under the rubble]

Silence is the scariest thing on the battlefield. Is it the calm before the storm or the desolation afterwards? The latter is always worse, Wei Chen can speak from experience. Is that what this is now? It must be but he can barely think, trying to hold onto consciousness that seems to slip through his mechanical fingers like sand. His head hurts, mind wrung out like an old dish towel, everything feels wrong. Where did the rest of the world go? Here there is only the quiet and claustrophobic darkness. Is this what death feels like?

Get it together, soldier. 

Words spoken by some asshole commander whose name he can’t remember. Only he can remember it's just not important. Focus.

Assess the situation.

Alive. Hurt. Badly. But that's nothing new, little toy soldiers can be put back together again. There's a bitterness in his mouth that's not just blood. He tries to move but the armor is locked in place. Maybe that's a good thing, no way to assess the total damage. There's something wet and coppery in his eyes, not that they do him much good, night vision and thermal must have gone out with the rest of the power. Emergency oxygen should last about an hour, so long as he doesn’t hyperventilate.

What happened?

Remembering feels dangerous in a way he can’t process. Focus on the immediate. The airstrike. His call. He should be dead. Is that what he wanted?

They should all be dead.

Were they?

Anathema might have made it out, they’re invulnerable. Sidestep…Sidestep is dead. Even if they managed to survive the fall there's no way they would have survived the building collapse. His call. That thought sits heavier than he thought it would and something saline joins the copper in his useless vision.

Ortega? 

Focus. He remembers grabbing him, if for no other reason than to stop him following Sidestep out that damned window. He remembers the screaming and the lightning. The smell of smoke and scorched metal. 

Where was Ortega? Wei is not a man to panic but nothing else in the world seems to matter. Not his own life. Or his death. Not anyones. 

A single sound cuts through the oppressive silence, a soft ragged breath. Ortega, underneath him, shielded from the rubble by his armor. Another miracle for the man with nine lives.

Wei’s laugh is a mirthless sound and he thanks the god he doesn't believe in before succumbing to the darkness.

[kidhellion]

fallen hero but its a dating sim/visual novel

[mosartandjunk]

me drawing any fallen hero fanart: what if theyre being silly on a couch

[fatalcn]

很喜欢他，陈伟很可爱，像妈妈一样值得依赖，但是我一开始是真没想到他是同性恋，也没想到把中国人出柜的话题写的还挺贴近现实，挺惊喜的。求更新，我现在就要看启示录❤️

[extreme-neutral]

You brought it on yourself, old man

[currently-evil]

Chen: Thinking of all the times something small and really not dangerous or agresive scared Spoon and how he had to carry him home because he would be too scared to even move

Chen: Yes, sure Rowan, yes

MASTERPOST

[fallenheroreblog]

3, 16 + 32 for the sidestep ask game (if you’re still accepting questions)? c:

Hello and nice to meet you! I do accept questions and submissions and try to respond in a timely manner.

3. What is their villain name? Why did they choose it?

Vivian's villain name is Sidestep, though I don't know if it's accurate to say it is her "villain name". Rather, Vivian doesn't think of villain Sidestep and hero Sidestep as two different personas. It's true that they aren't identical, but villain Sidestep is simply an evolution of hero Sidestep in the same way Vivian is an evolution of her past self.

Continuing to be Sidestep rather than something new was a fairly straight forward choice. Vivian's mission is the same as it ever was, help others to help herself, but the motivations and methods behind that have changed with time. Her perspective shifted when, after HeartBreak, no one came to save her and she had to save herself. She had assumed it was because the Rangers had died in HeartBreak or had died fighting to rescue her, only to return to Los Diablos and find not only are the Rangers alive and active but functionally nothing has changed.

That's what drove her to become a villain: disillusionment with the system she once believed in and was a part of and relied on. At first this was very personal, about how the Rangers failed her in particular, but eventually it developed into a broader idea. And what better way to express that idea than as a fallen hero? Villain Sidestep is effectively a parody of hero Sidestep and she isn't subtle about it.

16. What is their best virtue?

Empathy. Vivian, due to the nature of her powers, is very empathetic, but often views this as an obstacle or a weakness. Her empathy is deeply motivating and has been her primary motivator ever since her first escape from The Farm. She can use it to harm herself or others, but it is why time and time again she is driven to help them instead.

Vivian returns to Los Diablos after HeartBreak not because she has to but because she cares. She didn't have to settle down after her first escape from The Farm and after her second escape she has even more reason to become a vagabond who largely avoids society, but she never even seriously considers doing so. It's a part of herself so evident and yet so repressed she isn't even in denial of it, she just largely doesn't acknowledge it at all.

I think is why Steel is the most likely to discover Vivian is Sidestep. No other character has any inclination of who Sidestep is behind the mask; all of them preoccupied with different surface aspects of Sidestep or Vivian, unable to connect the two. Steel, however, simply looks to the core of things. He understands Sidestep is motivated by empathy and the more he gets to know Vivian as a person the more he sees that she is as well. It's obvious that villain Sidestep is just hero Sidestep and Sidestep has always been Vivian. There are no lies or illusions, people just expect there to be.

32. Do they favor forceful mind control or subtle manipulations?

Vivian is completely specialized in subtle manipulations. Is it any wonder she has the puppetmaster HeartBreak scar? This comes through both in how she uses her powers and how they effect her on a day to day basis.

Vivian alters people's perceptions, what they think changes how they feel which in turn changes how they act. If she can manipulate one part of that cycle she can effectively control it, thus cutting out the need for force itself. However, the constant input of other people's perceptions also alters her own, changing how she thinks and feels and acts at any given moment.

It forms a kind of feedback loop, the deeper she can infiltrate other minds and the more minds she can access at once the more she has to protect her own mind so she does not lose herself.

---

from Sidestep Ask Game

[schlozo]

I like to think Ortega forced Chen to do this at least once

Fallen Hero by @fallenhero-rebirth

Ortega's outfit is based on Duolingo mustache guy