#Thus far in the anime though: he does do some me things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sleepyone2three · 10 months

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This has been sitting in in my drafts for forever so I decided to finally finish it up! Thus, may I present:

How the demon bros would react if Lucifer had locked them away instead of Belphie

Can we talk about how lucky Lucifer was that it was Belphie he locked up and not one of his other brothers? Of all the sins, sloth is probably the best suited to being trapped in an attic. He can sleep the entire time and be giving into his vice at the same time. Meanwhile, if it had been any of the other brothers things could've been so much wilder! Just thinking about it has me rolling to be honest, so I decided I had to write this 😂

Mammon

Mammon would go stir crazy so fast. The only reason he hasn't completely lost his mind is the fact that Lucifer didn't bother to take Goldie away when locking him up. He has so many mental lists of the things he'll buy as soon as he's out.

Honestly, Mammon would probably whine a lot the entire time he was there too. He'd be bored out of his mind and unable to spend/get any Grimm. What kind of torture is this???

Lucifer honestly might get so annoyed with it that he'd resort to cursing Mammon so he can't talk. Ah... peace and quiet finally. This probably only leads to Lucifer feeling uneasy though since Mammon being quiet usually means he's thinking up new schemes or causing trouble.

You think Belphie got lucky with how trusting MC is? Mammon is probably one of the worst liars... ever. Mams is doomed, no way MC would be falling for any of his tricks.

This doesn't mean MC still wouldn't help though. They're horrible about sticking their nose in other people's business, even if it is well intentioned. So you know they're still going to get involved in all of this somehow.

I think Mammon would use MC to the point of getting out, but I can't see him planning to kill them. Lucifer already locked him away for being pissy about the exchange program, imagine what he'd do if Mammon killed Diavolo's precious exchange student *shudders*

Even if Mammon did hate humans, he's too soft to stick with that hate after getting to know MC. He'll probably try to rationalize that this one is an exception to the rule, his amazing influence being the reason of course.

The only plus side to all of this is that the witches and debt collectors can't find him.

Levi

Why did Lucifer lock him away in the first place? Dude is already a shut-in so he wasn't actually planning on doing anything. Maybe saying he would sick Lotan on Diavolo before allowing a normi human in their home was taking things too far though...

Honestly, as long as Lucifer at least left him with a gaming console and some anime, he'd probably be fine. Though, he would be very upset about not being able to keep up with the latest releases.

Levi would stress so much over if Mammon had sold his games and merch. The only way to stop him from spiraling with this would be if Lucifer promised to lock Levi's room with an equally powerful barrier.

Also freaks out that nobody will feed Henry 2.0 and his best friend will starve to death. Lucifer isn't totally heartless though, so he promises he will make sure Henry is well cared for until Levi has come to his senses.

Would probably plan to kill MC once out, but after talking about anime/games with them he isn't as sure anymore??? They seem to like the same stuff as him and don't call him gross... no! It must be some sort of ploy to gain his trust! This was just like in an anime he'd watched a while ago, Help! I've Been Locked Away By My Strict Older Brother And Now A Human Is Taking Over The Underworld! Ah, how life immitates art sometimes...

Satan

Oh geez, Satan would be furious if this happened. You think, he hated Lucifer before? Get ready for a whole new level.

Where does Lucifer get off, thinking he can get away with this!? Locking him away like this program isn't utterly delusional from the start anyway! If Satan didn't know better, he'd say that the elder brother had planned this from the beginning of even developing the exchange program. But that would require Lucifer to pull his head out of his own ass, so it's definitely not the case.

I mean... he'd have plenty of reading time at least? He's fuming to the point of having destroyed the entire room already, but he'll still be able to read plenty afterwards.

Lucifer tries to nudge Satan in a more positive direction of thinking, dropping off books that try to exemplify the beauty and potential of humanity. For the first time in his life, Satan refuses to even consider reading multiple books. Would possibly even consider destroying them in front of Lucifer, but I'm not sure he could actually go through with it.

Would 100% plan on and go through with killing MC once out. They'd have to really make an impression and connect with him if there's any chance to have things go otherwise. Even then, it's unlikely to stop this outcome. Consequences be damned, he will have the satisfaction of seeing how delicious Lucifer's expression will be upon seeing Diavolo's little pet project go up in flames.

Would take not getting to see his kitty friends pretty hard. He misses them and sometimes worries there isn't anyone else feeding/giving attention to them with him gone. If MC really wants to get in good with Satan, offering to check in on the feline population of the Devildom might be a solid starting point.

Satan does have to admit though, MC is an interesting human if nothing else. Unafraid to go against Lucifer's orders? Likes reading as much as him? Snuck a cat in to see him??? M-maybe they aren't the worst...

Asmo

I'm pretty sure his online following would form a search party if this happened. Radio silence from Asmo's accounts is unheard of and Lucifer better have an official statement about Asmo being in the exchange program if he doesn't want hordes of lesser demons showing up outside of the House of Lamentation.

Asmo's never really had to "rough it" and living without all his beauty products within reach is going to make him even angrier at Lucifer. This only gets worse the longer he's kept there, every flaking skin cell fueling his rage.

Gets a single zit and somehow finds a way to blame it on a human being in the house. Dramatic sniffles and crying commences as he's trying to sway Lucifer with his theory, though the elder seems less than convinced.

Would probably consider agreeing to the program once he's been without his products long enough, but is also called out on lying by Lucifer.

Baby boy would just be all smug and waiting for Solomon to try summoning him, thinking there'd be no stopping him from leaving at that point. Too bad Lucifer took this into consideration. Solomon is now mildly concerned and very curious what the heck this exchange program actually entails of the participants that could null the effects of a pact. Asmo's just whining about how cruel and unreasonable Lucifer is to do such a thing. And would you look at that? Lucifer's headache just got worse.

MC won't have to do much to begin swaying Asmo if we're being honest. This is especially so if he's feeling like he's become less attractive due to not being able to keep up his hourly daily self care routines and regimens for so long. Just sitting down and treating him like he's worthwhile even when he's "an abomination," will go a long way. Sneaking him some decadent lotion or products he mentioned offhandedly will seal the deal though.

They cared enough to actually listen when he looks like this? Even though they're not affected by his powers?? Maybe he was a little quick to shun the idea of the program... at the very least, they could make an adorable new plaything! Just thinking about all the makeovers and sleepovers had him feeling a little excited!

Beel

He ate his way out.

I don't know what else to say, even Lucifer isn't powerful enough to stop such an appetite. Besides that, no demon in their right mind at RAD would be down with their star Fangol leaving for an exchange program!

But in all seriousness, Beel is a simple demon with simple pleasures. MC just needs to bring him some food and show him that they aren't a monster who's out to hurt his family. Man just doesn't want to lose anymore family and was a lil hangry is all. Lucifer's the one who overreacted to the whole display.

On the plus side, the House of Lamentations food budget actually managed to build up a decent reserve while Beel was locked away. So you can be sure there's going to be the most amazing and decadent feast anyone has ever seen once he's out.

Belphi

Just glad it's not him I suppose 😂

Though he may actually be low-key jealous that it's not him. Just thinking of how much he could sleep without being woken up has him rethinking his stance on the exchange program.

But MC is so sweet and makes a good cuddle buddy/pillow for his naps, so he can't be too upset.

#obey me shall we date #obey me #obey me asmodeus #obey me mammon #obey me belphegor #obey me Leviathan #obey me Satan #obey me Lucifer #obey me Solomon #obey me MC #obey me headcannons #obey me imagine #my writing

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shiro-s2e2-erukinzu · 8 months

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Anime only watchers and people who aren't caught up with the Manga, BEWARE... Cuz I'm about to discuss Spy X Family Mission 88... You have been warned...! 👌

[SPOILERS AHEAD FROM THIS POINT ON]

OMG...!! 😍 THIS WAS SUCH AN ADORABLE CHAPTER FOR THE MANGA TO RETURN WITH...!!! 💗😆💗

We had to wait a month and a half for this chapter, and I think that it DELIVERED!! 😁 So let's talk about it, shall we...? 😊

This chapter begins with a plot line that's been brewing since Mission 61...

THAT'S RIGHT!! 😆 DAMIAN IS FINALLY GONNA GIVE ANYA THE CAKES THAT HE PROMISED HER!! 😁

And it only took 27 chapters for Damian to accomplish this...!! 😌 I honestly just love how Endo does stuff like this, where he brings something back up a bunch of chapters later (even if it's the smallest detail imaginable...!! 😊)

But moving on, we get something that I did not expect to see...:

ANYA DRAWN IN THE FREAKING SHOJO ART STYLE!! I JUST-- I JUST CAN'T...!! 🤣🤣🤣

This is one of the best and funniest things I've ever seen in Spy X Family, and I honestly can't wait until THIS gets animated...!! 😆

After spotting his dream girl from afar, Damian tries to give her the cakes that he promised, but...

There is just too many people around for him to give Anya the goods...! And with Anya overhearing his thoughts about giving her the cakes (but not fully understanding why Damian wants to give them to her in secret), she devises a plan to meet with Damian in the courtyard...!

And after receiving a seemingly bloody message from Anya, Damian agrees to head to the courtyard with her...

But as you can see, Becky, Emile and Ewen decided to follow them...!! 😅 So Damian and Anya decide to BOOK IT, while the others follow suit!!! 😆

After getting chased around for awhile, Damian determines that he's done with this shit and ultimately decides to just throw away the cakes (which Anya hears), and then...:

ANYA, ARE TRYING TO KILL DAMIAN...!? 🤣 HIS LITTLE HEART CAN'T TAKE IT...!! 🤭

Honestly though, this whole page is just so adorable (even if Anya is only doing this for the cakes...!! 💗😄💗)

Anyway, because they were so wrapped up this cake situation, Damian and Anya didn't realize that a wild Henderson has appeared to scold them for missing the the bell...!

Now the two of them have to stay after school, but it isn't all bad...:

After finishing writing their apologies, THE G.O.A.T., Mr. Henderson, offers to have some tea and cakes with Damian and Anya...!! 😁

Then, Mr. Henderson asks Damian about the cakes, and get this little flashback...:

HMMMMMMM..... 🤔

This flashback just makes me continue to be suspicious of Melinda... 😤

But, anyway... To end things off, Damian questions why Anya wanted to meet with him in the first place, and well...:

THESE TWO I SWEAR!!👏🤣👏🤣👏🤣👏🤣

And that was Mission 88, a really fun chapter to get us back into the swing of things...!! 😆

I'm pretty sure a lot of us were expecting something big to happen this chapter (like how I was hoping for Yor's full backstory because season 2 of the anime started), but it didn't, and I'm okay with that...! I'm just glad that we finally got another chapter of this amazing series to talk about...!! 😊 And though that month and a half long break was killing me (I mean, I had Undead Unluck to read in meantime), I just hope that Endo got some well deserved rest!! 💗🤗💗

Also, that flashback with Melinda is just giving me red flags all over the place...!! 😵 I don't know if Donovan is the one telling her to do these things or if she's doing this to get to Anya herself, but everything that Melinda has done thus far has made me feel constantly uneasy... I just hope that she didn't do anything to those cakes that will harm Anya or her powers in any way...!! 😡

Well, that's pretty much all that I wanted say about this chapter, and like always, I can't wait for the next one!! 😆 So, until the next Mission... Take care, be safe out there and be kind to one another...!! LATER!! 👋😄

#spy x family #sxf #spyxfamily #spy x family manga #sxf manga #spyxfamily manga #Mission 88 #anya forger #damian desmond #becky blackbell #emile elman #ewen egeburg #henry henderson #ENDO STRAIGHT UP DREW ANYA IN THE SHOJO ART STYLE...!! 😆#THAT WAS FREAKING HILARIOUS!! 🤣#I am still very suspicious of Melinda...#I am PRAYING AND HOPING that Melinda didn't sneak something into those cakes...!!! 😩#Do not hurt my baby...!! 😡#manga spoilers

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not-wholly-unheroic · 5 months

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A Comparative Analysis of Hook’s Ship and Cabin in Popular Media Portrayals

Part 5: Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)

For the final part in this series, I want to take a look at Disney’s most recent live-action retelling of Peter Pan. While the film itself isn’t perfect, I will say that at least in terms of its external appearance, this is one of my favorite representations of the Jolly Roger because of the intricate details included. They’re subtle—blink and you’ll miss them entirely—but they tell an interesting story.

First, let’s take a look at that figurehead, shall we? Unlike so many other versions of Hook’s ship, this time, it isn’t a menacing skull or claw but a lady. While this wouldn’t be an uncommon sight on a ship, this particular lady is not a saucy mermaid or proud goddess… Instead, she appears to be in mourning, her left arm raised to cover her eyes while her right is extended longingly toward the side of the ship. Zoom in and you’ll see why. Carved into the wood is a row of children. We can see the wooden children again in a brief close-up near the end when the ship is flying and nearly runs into the cliffs. This figurehead is a mother weeping for her lost little ones. And if that doesn’t break your heart and make you seriously think on what this version of Hook’s mindset must be like, I don’t know what will.

There are even children’s faces—or rather, a specific child’s face—carved into the railings on the ship. We can see it in a few scenes but this is one of the clearer images I could find. Does this look eerily like Molony’s Peter to you? Because I think it does. But maybe that’s just me.

Then we get to the outside of Hook’s cabin—which unfortunately is never really clearly shown in the film. However, we DO have some behind-the-scenes images of it and OH MAN…. This part of the ship very clearly depicts Peter chained to a tree while four mermaids reach out to him, attempting to offer comfort and aid.

If you’ve ever seen the original cover art for the novel, this seems to be a nod to it. On it, Peter sits on a rock playing his pipes while a mermaid approaches on either side and the crocodile lays curled up beneath, Hook’s claw poking out of its mouth.

That Hook would have such artwork blatantly referencing his time on the island as a part of his ship tells us a great deal about how effected he was by his time there. This ship seems to be one that Law’s Hook himself designed very intentionally. Despite all his hatred for Pan, he keeps his long-lost friend close at all times and openly bears his grief over the loss of his mother and Peter through the artwork that surrounds him.

In contrast to the ornate decorations on the outside of the ship, the inside of this Hook’s cabin is surprisingly sparse and practical. It is probably more realistic than any other version we have seen thus far, but it feels strangely empty and dark for a Hook’s residence. The bed is—much like in Disney’s animated film—a simple cubby built into the wall with only a thin curtain to separate it off from the rest of the room. There are a few books on the shelves to the right of the bed and some bags of what I assume may be rations stacked to the left.

What’s really interesting, though, is what we see in the brief close-up shots we get of the shelves near the doorway. There are all kinds of things in jars, preserved presumably in alcohol. One jar noticeably contains what looks like an octopus (or part of one)…possibly in passing reference to Hook’s animal antagonist in Disney animated sequel…while at least two others contain human hands. Right hands, to be specific. One of the hands is actually even labeled with a name—Stubby Bartholomew (?). According to an interview, Law seemed to indicate that his Hook was looking to see if he might somehow replace his own missing hand. Regardless, though, I want to know the stories behind these hands. Who were the men they were attached to? Why was Law’s Hook fighting them? Did they know he was going to save their hands, once severed? Did he just take the hand of the person or did he kill them and remove the hand after death as a kind of sick trophy? This is definitely one of the creepier things that we have seen with any Hook.

Speaking of creepy…on another wall, we see a dried fairy corpse pinned up like a butterfly. We don’t often see Hooks being completely ruthless on-screen, but this one definitely gives off a threatening vibe from all the dead things he has collected within his cabin walls.

There’s even a dead crocodile… Not THE crocodile, of course, but there IS a large skull which we can see he keeps underneath his desk. It shows up again later more noticeably and in a comic fashion in the finale when the ship is being turned upside down and the skull becomes stuck on his head…but it’s there even in the first shot we see of his desk. There’s also an hour-glass… Not a clock, of course, but the time theme is still present.

And then there is the gramophone, which once again, clashes with everything else about this Hook (clothing, a more classic wooden ship, etc.), which otherwise suggests someone from the earlier part of the Age of Sail. Unlike the ones in Hoffman Hook’s cabin, though, this gramophone is pretty obvious because Law’s Hook is actively listening to something on it when the kids first enter his cabin. A friend did a great write-up on the significance of exactly what he is listening to that you can read about here. Suffice to say for our purposes here, though, that the opera he is listening to wasn’t written until 1853, and gramophones themselves were not around until even later in the 1800s. Law’s Hook does mention that his mother is long gone by the time he leaves Neverland and goes looking for her, though, so perhaps his ship and belongings are reflective both of the time period of his youth and a later time period when he returned to the “real world.”

Then again, Smee is said to have pulled Hook out of the water as a child, and Smee seems intimately familiar with the older wooden style ship as opposed to steam ships, which would have been becoming pretty common by the mid to late 1800s, so it’s hard to say for sure. (Bonus content not entirely related but just because it’s cool… In a few shots of Mr. Smee, we can see there is a very small tattoo on his right hand. It’s a teapot. Which is just…such a perfectly Mr. Smee thing to have a tattoo of, and I love it.)

While Law’s Hook was disappointing for some fans of the more classic elegant, over-the-top versions of the character, he’s undoubtedly intriguing, particularly when we examine his Roger. This Hook is unlike any other. He wears his heart on his sleeve—or rather, his ship—and surrounds himself with reminders of Death and Time, as if he knows his own symbolic significance as a manifestation of the doomed Old Man going up against Youth. And yet…in this version, he is not quite so doomed, returning in the end, to make peace with Peter and accepting that one can be “old” while maintaining a spirit of youth.

#captain hook #peter pan #disney peter pan and wendy #peter pan and wendy #peter pan & wendy #david lowery #jude law #jude law hook #James hook #captain james hook

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decks-writing-blog · 4 months

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Whatever the Fuck Benrey is: Chapter Seven: Perform Like a Circus Animal

Chapter One

Previous Chapter

“Wake the fuck up already, Gordon!”

It was a far less horrendous wake up call than the wretched blaring of Gordon’s alarm clock, but that didn’t make Benrey happy about it.

“You’re the one who volunteered us to ferry supplies like a bunch of goody two-shoes pack mules,” Bubby continued, just as loud. “So you gotta get up and get a move on already.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.” Gordon’s voice rumbled in his chest where Benrey still lay against it. They’d shifted a bit, Gordon now lying partially on is back with Benrey on top. He was still fully under the blanket though so he was still hidden from Bubby’s view. “How’d you get in here? I locked the front door.”

“I picked it. You know where Benrey is? I’d thought he’d be in here, playing your Xbox or something.”

Gordon’s arms shifted around Benrey, holding him a bit tighter, as he rolled a bit more onto his side, bringing Benrey with him and thus hiding him better under the blanket. “He was last night. I got no clue where he is now. I’m sure he’ll show up again eventually, he always does. Now could you please leave so I can get out of bed?”

“You naked under there?”

“Yeah, so fuck off.”

“Don’t fall back asleep.” A moment later, the bedroom door closed.

Gordon held Benrey to his chest for a couple more seconds before sighing and shifting to lift the blanket so he could look down at Benrey. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Five more minutes?” Benrey didn’t need another five minutes of sleep but he also didn’t want to get up yet.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Unfortunately we can’t lie here for five more minutes because it’ll turn into an hour and we… or at least, I really do have stuff to do today. So move.”

Benrey groaned but obeyed because Gordon would probably push him if he didn’t. Upon sliding off the bed and stretching himself out, he already missed Gordon’s warmth. It was a like a hot shower than never ran cold and without all the wet that cooled too quickly when stepping out. … He could survive without it though. Being needy, clingy, and desperate for cuddles was kind of lame and so he wasn’t. A one time really nice cuddle was all he needed or wanted. He was set for life on that now.

“You weren’t there but last night we talked and agreed to ferry supplies for the rescue attempt that the other guys are putting together to look for people deeper in the facility. We’re also bringing back wounded to Tuefort. Technically since the stuff in the health packs apparently comes from you, you could probably heal them. But we’re trying to keep you secret and no one’s in life threatening danger so it’s fine. I volunteered to drive back all our personal stuff while Dr. Coomer, Bubby, and Tommy deal with the wounded. Meaning you’re riding back with me.” As he talked, Gordon cleaned his glasses before sliding them back on his face.

“Neat. You got a DS or PSP or some other handheld gaming thing I could play during the drive?”

“Uh… yeah, actually. I found my Game Boy Advance in the closet yesterday. There was even half a pack of batteries still with it. I haven’t touched it in a few years though so I can’t say for sure it’ll work but it probably should.”

Well on the off chance it was busted, Benrey could always ask Tommy to lend him a book. OSHA manuals were probably even more boring than normal books but they’d probably still beat staring out the car window at the unchanging desert. Though even that was better than staring at it as he walked it. But if push came to shove, he could just bother Gordon to keep himself entertained. So really, it’d be fine no matter what.

Naturally having no personal possessions left intact to pack up, Benrey was ready to leave first. It helped that he also didn’t have to bother with breakfast. He played the Xbox right up until Gordon forced him off so he could pack it up. Blessedly upon doing so he handed over a large tote bag with a picture of a cat on it that contained his promised Game Boy Advance and batteries for it along with a whole bunch of games and some cables. Apparently he had indeed been hiding the good stuff in his room.

Benrey then moved to sit and wait the car and sort through his new borrowed treasure trove of games while Gordon – with some help from Coomer – packed all of the Science Team’s stuff into trunk and the back seats. Said car was a company car, the Black Mesa logo painted on both sides. Meant for transporting things, it was bigger than Bubby’s but the seats were less comfortable. It had a Christmas tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. An old one based off how little scent still clung to it.

Gordon, in typical Gordon fashion, ended up dawdling more than was necessary before getting into the driver’s seat and finally getting the show on the road. Tempting as it was to tease him for that, Benrey was already too absorbed in, new to him, Superstar Saga – Gordon’s selection of Game Boy games was much better than his paltry Xbox game collection – to think of something good. So he let it go… for now. Next time he dawdled for a long time when Bubby wasn’t around to urge him onward, Benrey would be sure to say something though. Had to keep him on his toes after all.

Other than the radio, playing soft only slightly staticky music, and the sound of the Game Boy, they rolled in silence for maybe a whole five minutes before Gordon broke it.

“So you can purr, huh?”

Before he could stop himself, Benrey flinched. His first instinct was to look at Gordon. A mistake he quickly remedied, setting his gaze back on the Game Boy even though he’d lost his train of thought with it. “What? No. Who told you that?”

“Last night, or I guess more like super early this morning, after the alarm woke us, you fell back asleep first and started purring.”

Damn it! He’d stamped down that urge and thought it defeated. Even after instead of having a funny reaction to Benrey being so close, Gordon had said he could stay which had been nice in an entirely different way, he hadn’t done it. Purring was cute and he may not know what he was beyond being not human but he did know he also wasn’t cute. Apparently whilst asleep his body had betrayed him.

“It was pretty cute,” Gordon continued at Benrey’s failure to respond, proving Benrey’s point.

“I’m not cute.” People in real life or in video games and movies labeled as ‘cute’ were almost never taken seriously. They were the side kick, rarely respected, often cooed at like a baby or dumb animal. Cute things were looked down upon, treated as less than.

“Nah, it was pretty damn cute, dude, adorable even.

“Shut up.”

Gordon chuckled. It wasn’t as nice as his laugh normally was because he was laughing at Benrey’s expense this time. “Does Tommy know?”

“No.” The only other people who knew were the scientists in charge of him. The way they’d treated it as a cute fun thing to show off to everyone like some kind of spectacle had convinced Benrey to never purr again. It had lead to the one and only he’d broken into their lab to destroy recordings of himself once they’d finally given up on trying to force him to do it again in person for everyone who wanted to see and instead had just showed the tapes. Since then, rare were the times he’d even felt tempted to purr, making it rather easy to not do while in front of anyone. Until last night apparently anyway. “Don’t tell him.”

Of course Gordon would tell though. Gordon barely tolerated him so why would he not share Benrey’s secret? It was cute and thus must be shared and shown off. And now not only Gordon but Tommy and the rest of the Science Team would know too and he would never live it down. Heck, maybe he’d already told them and they’d had a good laugh at his expense over breakfast.

“Okay, okay, I won’t tell.”

Pausing his game – he’d been doing nothing but running around in circles anyway – Benrey looked up at Gordon again. His eyes were on the road and his gun hand was pushed through one of the lower parts of the steering wheel, helping steer. His expression wasn’t much of anything other than generally relaxed, making it hard to tell if he was genuine. “Really?”

“Yeah, sure, unlike some people, I try to not be an asshole, so if it really bothers you, I won’t tell Tommy or anyone else.”

“Okay. Better keep that promise though or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Uh… I don’t know yet. Just don’t tell.”

“I won’t.” He was silent for a long moment after that, long enough that Benrey was about to return his attention to his Game Boy before he continued. “Can I ask, um… why you purr though? Like, uh, cats purr most of the time because of positive feelings. But you’re not a cat, obviously, so do you purr because you’re happy or is it something else? Like maybe it’s just something you do when you’re asleep. Or is it because you were having some kind of dream that… made you purr for whatever reason.”

“I don’t know. I just do it sometimes when I’m warm and cozy or whatever. It’s lame so I try avoid stuff that might make me feel like doing it.” Except last night but he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Gordon broke eye contact with the road to look at Benrey, his expression soft now. What exact emotion was behind it was hard to tell though. “Well… I don’t think it’s lame. It’s pretty soothing actually, like it sounds nice. Um, it helped me fall back asleep. So I don’t think you should be ashamed of it so much you avoid it or whatever.”

Benrey scoffed as he turned his attention back onto the Game Boy. What did Gordon even know about it? Nothing, that’s what. He wasn’t the one with the ability to purr and thus didn’t have to live with some people thinking him a cute, adorable thing to show off to everyone when finding out. So Benrey was done talking about it. He had a game to focus on.

***

Driving was quickly proving to not be as much of a distraction as Gordon had hoped it would be. In hindsight not surprising given he was driving through an empty dessert with nothing to look at but dirt. The only other cars were the two Bubby and Dr. Coomer had been lent – no sign of Bubby’s original car which would’ve made three, freeing up room for Tommy to drive as well instead of going with Dr. Coomer, but whatever – and they were both far enough ahead that he’d have to go out of his way to hit them.

So naturally, after only a few minutes, he resumed talking to Benrey. Finding out more about him would be worthwhile, for curiosity's sake but also they had some sort of tenuous friendship going so it’d be good to know more about him on that front too. Also, apparently somewhere along his hellish journey through Black Mesa Gordon had become the kind of person who always needed to be talking or listening to someone else talk. Making him annoying but Benrey was annoying too so he deserved it.

Over the next long while he subtly tried to get as much info out of Benrey about his past as he could. What kind of life had he lead in the lab? How had they treated him? What kind of experiments had they subjected him to and their results?

Trying not to ask any outright invasive questions made it easy for Benrey to slip around them with a lot of non-answers. He was distracted by his game of course but also some of it had to be purposeful avoidance. Gordon pressed for more here and there but never too hard lest it be sensitive. Resulting in him not learning as much as he’d have liked. He did confirm and reconfirm a few things though, such as, Benrey had indeed spent his whole entire life in the lab in the lab, he wasn’t sure if he’d been born, hatched, or made there in a tube or something else, and that when he’d talked about the scientists harvesting his ‘juice’ to turn into medical goo he had indeed meant his blood – they drew it out of him with needles.

“Did you have anyone who uh… you considered to be like a parent?”

“Nope.”

Gordon waited for a bit but of course no further answer came. Benrey was too focused on his game and/or just straight up didn’t want to elaborate. And Gordon couldn’t exactly ask him if he’d been mistreated, especially since that was probably a given, right?

“What about friends? Any of the scientists your friends?”

“You guys.”

“I mean like the scientists uh… assigned to you or whatever. Any of them your friend?”

“Nope.”

And so on and so forth, Gordon never quite daring to ask what he actually wanted to know. Giving up on that line of questioning and bringing up video games finally got a bit more though.

“First console I got was the original Game Boy, the one with like the green screen and no real colour. I stole it from one of my handlers pockets. Only had one game for it but it was fun. I kept in my gamer pad and made it a power thingy but then it got bombed so… it’s busted now.”

“Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

“It really blows. A real bummer.”

Gordon would’ve liked to offer some comfort but how did one comfort someone who hadn’t had much to begin with and then lost it all? Instead… “What do you mean you ‘made it a power thingy’ though?”

“I put some energy in it so it would draw more power for me. Only a little though ‘cause I was doing it mostly to make it easy to find my gamer pad without having to like… walk through the halls and stuff, I could always just go straight to it. Also it was special but… whatever, doesn’t matter now.” The last sentence was a mumble, just barely audible over the radio and sounds coming from his game.

“So… like what you did with the passports on Xen?”

“Yeah but not as much. Oh, uh…” he looked at Gordon, not something he’d done often during this conversation, “I figured out earlier that uh, I’m made from Xen energy… I think. On Xen I was like… the most powerful I’d ever been and before that, after the resonance cascade, I was pretty powerful and always more powerful in Black Mesa. Especially around where they were getting all the Xen stuff to study. But now, with all the portals shut, I’m like the same power level anywhere I go, basically. So I must be made form Xen energy or from something they found on Xen.”

“Or maybe your from Xen?” Making him an alien and thus finally a possible answer to what he was.

“Hmm… don’t know, maybe.”

“Though, uh… maybe not. We saw all sorts of Xen stuff and none of it seemed to exhibit anything like what you can do. Which doesn’t mean much because we didn’t see much of Xen.” Meaning all they’d really done was narrow it down to alien or lab grown monster made when experimenting with stuff taken from Xen.

“I now know something about where I came from though so… you should be happy with that, right? You can stop being weird about me not knowing that kinda stuff.”

Gordon hadn’t thought he’d been being weird about it, just appropriately flabbergasted and a bit saddened that Benrey knew so little about his origins. “Uh… yeah. Knowing you have a connection to Xen is certainly far better than knowing nothing.”

“Good.” Benrey returned his full attention back onto his game.

Gordon turned his gaze back onto the road. Not that there was much to look at, just more desert road stretching in front of him, the sky overhead clear and blue. Tuefort was still awhile away. “It’s not everything though. It’s still sad you don’t know. But uh… I guess since we’re on the topic of what you are, what all can you do?” He’d been wondering that for awhile, since realizing Benrey had powers. Bubby and Dr. Coomer too but it was only Benrey in the car with him right now.

“Lots of stuff.” More of that non-committal dodging the question. Surely this couldn’t be a sensitive topic though, right? He was just being difficult for the sake of it. Gordon wasn’t going to let him get away with it if he could help it.

“Some of it’s basically magic, right?” Once upon a time magic would’ve seemed the opposite of science but Gordon had been working at Black Mesa long enough to see plenty of things that could only be described as magic even before his adventure with Benrey.

“I guess.”

“Right, so, you can imbue objects with power to draw more energy for you, shape shift, heal, including growing back lost limbs and… phase through solid matter. I know I’m missing stuff so… what?”

“Yep, you’re missing stuff.”

“Like what? Tell me.”

“Why you wanna know so bad?”

“I’m curious. From a scientific standpoint you’re fascinating. So I wanna know what you can do. Like starting with your shape shifting, what are the limits of it? How big and small can you get? You said you’re less powerful now than you were on Xen so can you not get as big as you could there? Can you take other forms? Like could you turn into a… grizzly bear or some other drastically different animal if you wanted to? Can you shape shift yourself gills to breath underwater?”

Benrey groaned as he turned his head to look at Gordon again. “So many questions. You’re starting to get kinda annoying.” Seemingly it had taken a while but Gordon had finally gotten under his skin. A win for sure.

“Yeah well, after all the times you annoyed me I don’t feel too bad about that. So like… tell me more or heck, show me if you want. Probably not right now but when we’re back at the hotel show me… I don’t know, all your magic stuff. I wanna see it.” It’d be interesting and something to do.

“You wanna put me in an observation cube so you can poke and prod at me until you figure out everything I can do and how far I can push it? Gonna see how much I can endure before I die or whatever? It’s not like it matters ‘cause I come back. Want me to jump through flaming hoops and do a little dance like a circus animal too?” His tone started his usual monotone neutral but by the end, his annoyance was audible.

That should’ve been even more a win than just getting him to admit to being annoyed but… his exact words made it not exactly feel like one. His upset wasn’t with the endless annoying prodding questions but with being asked to perform ‘like a circus animal’. So Gordon had found a sore point for sure but it wasn’t much of a funny ha-ha one but instead one that made him feel kind of like a bully.

“No, no, of course not. I would never…” Gordon took his eyes off the road to look properly at him. “I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to. I was just asking you to uh… show me.�� So he had been asking Benrey to perform for him. “Um… yeah, not great, sorry.”

Even just a couple days ago he never would’ve believed he’d apologize to Benrey of all people, even less would have believed he meant it. But well… being a little nosy was understandable, even being a little annoying with it was somewhat justifiable with how much of an ass Benrey could be but there was still a limit. Asking him to let Gordon openly study him was probably hitting that limit if not passing it outright.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ll stop prying. I guess, um, I owe you some answers to personal questions too, if you wanna ask them.”

Benrey stared at him in silence, the shadow over his eyes seemingly darker than usual. Gordon had to break eye contact before the urge to ask about it grew too strong. He probably shouldn’t have taken his eyes off the road to begin with. The last thing they needed or wanted was for him to drive them into a ditch and get stuck, stranding them in the dessert.

“All right then,” Benrey finally said just when it was starting to seem like he was done talking period. “What’s your deepest darkest secret?”

The people he’d killed while they’d been making their way through Black Mesa. Benrey already knew about that though and it wasn’t something Gordon wanted to think about. He did have other secrets though that he’d never told anyone and well, Benrey would probably get a kick out of some of them. “In elementary school, when I was like… seven or eight, the teachers would hand out scented markers for the students to use for arts and crafts. We were supposed to put them all back in the box and return them to the front at the end of class. I, uh, put a couple in my backpack instead and took them home. The red, blue, and brown ones because they smelled the best.”

A beat of silence before… “Ha! I knew you were a thief.”

“Yep, I’m, a dirty thief. That was a twenty years ago though so the statute of limitations is up, meaning I can’t be punished for it.”

“Damn. You ever steal anything else?”

Gordon took a breath to say, ‘no’ but… that would be a lie. If he couldn’t in good conscious try to get Benrey to talk any more about himself, he might as well share some of his own past instead. It was only fair after how much he’d prodded at Benrey for his, right? And none of his past crimes were anything he could get in trouble for anymore so there was no harm in sharing. Maybe it would make Benrey more comfortable sharing more about himself in the future too, since it was an exchange of information instead of Gordon just asking him stuff.

By the time they were rolling back into Tuefort, Benrey knew about all of Gordon’s petty crimes. A short list, even counting the stuff that had just been minor family drama like the time he’d removed the head of one of his sister’s dolls in vengeance for some slight he no longer remembered. Gordon might regret telling him one day but it lifted the mood in the car quite a bit so for now it was worth it.

While Bubby and Dr. Coomer brought their wounded cargo to the hospital, Gordon stopped by the Tuefort’s tiny mall to get Benrey a cellphone and add him to his mobile plan. The rest of the Science Team had already exchanged numbers but apparently Benrey had never even had a phone and thus, having somehow wormed his way back into the group, he needed one.

“I want that one,” he said before Gordon could even finish asking the question, pointing to one of the fancy new touch screen phones.

“That whole touch screen thing is an overpriced gimmick, so, no.” There was no way that was going to catch on, right? The phones with the keyboards that slid out of the side were the way of the future.

“But I heard they got games on them and can take pics.”

“I already basically gave you my Game Boy though so you don’t need another handheld thing for games. But uh… you like to take pictures?” Now that Gordon thought about it, he had seen Benrey with a camera a few times. It had never come up in conversation so he hadn’t thought about it much until now.

Benrey shrugged. “It’s cool. Lost my camera on Xen though when… you know, and uh… spare’s broke.”

The smart thing to do would be to just get a him a standard phone – one of the ones without a camera to make it even cheaper – and that’s it. There were a number ways he could cause problems with a camera. But if it was important enough for him to bring it up, maybe it would also help keep him entertained and thus out of trouble. “How ‘bout, I get you a cheap phone for just texting and calling, then separately a decent cheap digital camera? That work?”

“Uh… yeah, that works.”

Gordon took a breath, intending to tell him not be weird with the camera but… bit back on it. Mostly not to give him any evil ideas but also because if this friendship they were forming was going to work, he had to at least try to trust Benrey a little bit sometimes. Also he still felt bad in general for Benrey and specifically for being too nosy in the car and making up for that with a show of good will couldn’t hurt.

From there it blessedly wasn’t long before they were meeting back up as a whole group for lunch. A pizza place that Gordon had never visited before but proved to be quite good. Even Benrey ate some which continued the trend of Gordon not being sure if he actually needed to eat or not. Probably he did, right? Just not as often as humans. Maybe he was like a reptile and only needed to eat like once a week or month, or whatever. After how nosy he’d been in the car, Gordon refrained from asking for now.

Once done, they loaded up on the supplies they promised to bring back and stopped by the hotel for a quick shower, to drop their stuff off, to make sure their rooms were still secured for now, and to drop Benrey off. The best way to continue to keep him secret from the rest of the Black Mesa folk would be to not bring him back there. Leaving him alone and unsupervised for so long seemed liked an awfully bad idea but what other choice was there?

“Here’s the deal,” Gordon said once he had Benrey seated on one of the chairs and paying attention to him. “You’re gonna sit here in this room and play video games for however long I end up staying down there.” Before leaving that morning he’d also been implored to stick around after ferrying supplies back down to help with the start of salvaging whatever they could out of the facility. He’d agreed to it in part to keep himself busy a bit longer but also to ease up on all the back and forth trips. “You can go out occasionally but don’t bother anyone or cause problems. Problems by my definition, not yours. Which means anything that’s gonna harm anyone or be especially disruptive. Just stick to yourself mostly and play your games, you got plenty. If you’re bad, I’m not getting a Play Station to share with you. Understood?”

Benrey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, understood.”

“Good. And just to reiterate and make super clear, no violence of any sort.”

“I just said I understood and you took the gun away. Can’t do violence without a gun.” A lie and he had to know it. “Why so worried?”

“I’m just… a naturally anxious person.” And even if he was maybe starting to like Benrey as a friend, that didn’t mean he trusted him to behave. He liked cats too after all but no matter how well mannered a cat was, he’d never trust it to not make a mess if left alone with a potted plant for too long. There were countless metaphorical potted plants Benrey could decide to play with and/or eat while Gordon wasn’t around to keep a close eye on him. Benrey was of course more intelligent than most cats and was thus perfectly capable of restraining himself. Being able to didn’t mean he would though, hence the worry.

“What ‘bout you? You gonna be good without me keeping an eye on you for so long? Not gonna steal anymore scented markers?”

“I highly doubt I’ll get an opportunity to but even if I do, I promise I won’t. I haven’t stolen even a cookie from a cookie jar in more than ten years so it’s really not even much of a question.”

“’Kay, but you also gonna be okay? You talked an awful lot on the drive down here, almost like someone afraid of silence. So… you gonna be okay in the silence by yourself?” Seems he was far more perceptive than Gordon had thought.

“Uh… yeah. I’m gonna ask Tommy to ride with me and even drive if he wants to. So I think I’ll be okay. I’ll text you later to see how you’re doing or whatever, I guess.” Make sure he hadn’t burned the hotel down.

“’Kay, talk to ya later.”

Next Chapter

#hlvrai #frenrey #benrey #hlvrai gordon

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serial-serializednovelreader · 19 days

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Nova’s Notes - Dracula Daily - June 5

Dr. Seward is back with another exciting podcast update :D

(Also, for clarity’s sake, I’ll probably be calling him Jack/Seward from here on out because first and foremost, I just like that nickname for him and also it’s a little bit easier to differentiate Jonathan vs. John. Since he’s only been referred to as John thus far — that will change later — I just wanted to clear up that when I say “Jack”, I mean Dr. John Seward!)

Looks like he’s studying Renfield again, who is proving to be an “interesting” case.

“He has certain qualities very largely developed; selfishness, secrecy, and purpose. I wish I could get at what is the object of the latter. He seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but what it is I do not yet know.”

Per the last Jack podcast, he talked about selfish vs. unselfish people and their threat level (I talk more about that here, if you’re interested). He seems to have decided upon Renfield being a selfish man — aka his threat level is low — though he does seem to have an unspecified purpose that Seward can’t figure out. I wonder how Jack differentiates between an unselfish person’s duty and a selfish person’s purpose, since they seem to be almost the same thing, per his logic. Then again, they could be very different!

“His redeeming quality is a love of animals, though, indeed, he has such curious turns in it that I sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. His pets are of odd sorts. Just now his hobby is catching flies.”

Jack, buddy, I love you, but you can’t say someone has a love of animals and then in the same sentence think they’re probably also abnormally cruel to them?! Then again, I have to keep in mind, he’s also speaking these words so this is more of an active stream of consciousness than, say, Jonathan’s journal. I suppose it would put it more in line with Lucy’s letters, who impulse writes. Love to see these parallels!

On another note, how did Renfield catch these flies without hurting them and where is he storing them? Did the asylum give him jars or did he have to improvise? I have so many questions, but my bug phobia prevents me from wanting the answers tbh.

“He has at present such a quantity that I have had myself to expostulate.”

Yesh, that begs the question: how many flies did he catch? Again, I actually don’t want the answers, but since I’m analyzing this, I at least needed to ask.

Ok fine, let’s do a little math here. It’s been 11 days since the last time we heard from Seward. He didn’t talk about the fly-catching the last time, but perhaps it was because there was only like 5-6 flies there and he didn’t feel the need to mention it.

So if we give Renfield 5 flies the first day (minimum estimate) and he catches around 10 flies a day (a high guess, yes, but we know Renfield is determined and this is an average so some days he might’ve caught 8 and some days he might’ve caught 15) a day, we can multiply 11 x 10 to give us 110 flies + 5 (from the first day) = about 115 flies!! (I really hope I did this math right or I’m going to look silly)

In the iconic words of Phil Swift, “That’s a lot of damage.”

Again, this is an estimate — I’m not pretending this is actually the number, though it is certainly a possibility. While that seems like a large number for one man to catch and a lot of flies to get into a room, keep in mind this is the 1890s, which means more bugs in the area and Renfield could’ve skewed the numbers by leaving old food around to attract flies.

“To my astonishment, he did not break out into a fury, as I expected, but took the matter in simple seriousness. He thought for a moment, and then said: ‘May I have three days? I shall clear them away.’ Of course, I said that would do. I must watch him.”

Seward, I would suggest watching him very closely because uh…I happen to remember how he’s going to clear the flies and spoiler alert: it’s not just opening up whatever storage container he has them in. So, you can imagine with my bug phobia, I’d rather not analyze this further. Let’s just say it’s interesting he picked three days as the number to clear them away. He’s just built different, I guess.

So that’s it! For the next two weeks, we will be in a Dracula Daily Drought (try saying that five times fast). I am already sad about this!! 😫😭😭

In the meantime, I suppose it is high time I finish my BBC Dracula liveblog, so be on the lookout for that (I am more likely to do it putting it in writing!!).

#dracula daily #dracula #dracula spoilers #dracula daily spoilers #(implied anyway)#renfield #jack seward #dr seward #cw animal cruelty #(mentioned)#cw bugs #novas notes

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doubleddenden · 6 months

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Okay I had a whole thing typed that was my review for the new Pokémon dropped in Indigo Disk, but tumblr ate it, so take 2

Starting with my favorite, Archaludon. It's a dragon, a kaiju, also a stapler remover, also a bridge with power cables inside. This is a really cool design overall and fixes what I dislike about Duraludon, and it's fun to play with. 9/10

Hydrapple fixes what I dislike about Dipplin, but does make Flapple and Appletun a bit obsolete. Regardless, it's a fun idea and concept- I love that 7 Syrpents (which I guess aren't individually pokemon on their own? Slowbro Shelder situation I guess) make up 1 pokemon. It's silly but fun. 8/10

Also these two are neat because the concepts tie into New York/ Unova if we look at it through lense of Archaludon's Sky Arrow Bridge being based on Brooklyn Bridge and Rainbow Bridge, and Hydrapple clearly being a Big Apple reference. Very creative

Onto the paradoxes

Raging Bolt is interesting. I prefer Raikou, and I'll be the first to admit that I do not give a shit about how many cultural or historical references are in a design, if it looks like shit its a shit design. But this design is pretty okay, and because of that I can appreciate ALL of the inspirations that went into its design.

First off, with the Beast Paradoxes drawing inspiration from dinosaurs, we have Raging Bolt as the Thunder Lizard- aka Brontosaurus. That alone is meat, but it's still pretty mammalian compared to Walking Wake- that's because there's references to something called a Questing Beast. In Medieval times, before the age of cameras or fact checking, a description of an animal far far away- such a giraffe- can get twisted abd distorted via several games of telephone until we get to a creature that combines the lower body of a leopard and deer and the neck and head of a snake- aka the Questing Beast. Raging Bolt plays a bit with all of these ideas in a pretty unique and fun way. 8/10

Iron Crown- admittedly the Justice Paradoxes suffer a bit from the same "just make it a robot" mentality that plagues other Violet Paradoxes, but the Swords of Justice got the better end of it, I'd say. Iron Crowns in particular actually fixes what I hate about Cobalion by adding segments to the legs and thus making them feel less like bipedal knees on a quadrupedal animal.

It's signature move, Tachyon Cutter, also looks so cool in action by making the horns HUGE and GLOWING. That's awesome imo. 8/10

And now the new paradoxes we knew were coming

Gouging Fire, Entei's Paradox. I'll say that I like it, although this is the least changed of the Beasts and is basically just Entei in a fancy hat. Hey, that's fine though.

The dinosaur Entei is based on is some kind of ceratopsian blend. I personally thought they'd go in that direction with a triceratops design, so I was close. The head dress piece actually gives me Ho-Oh vibes, in particularly the gold and greens, which could be purposeful and root the Beasts Paradoxes back to the Beast's master, Ho-Oh. Fun design, 8/10

Iron Boulder. This one imo is more of the "robot" angle but done in a very good way. I like Terrakion best out of the Swords to begin with, but only at certain angles in 2d (they murdered him in SV. Murdered. He looks like a cross eyed frog now.) Iron Boulder takes the bulky build of Terrakion and makes it work better in 3d by incorporating spherical and cone builds along its body and head.

It definitely looks the LEAST like a psychic type out if any psychic type I've ever seen, but that's fine. Like Iron Crown with its twin horns and Iron Leaves with its 3 blades, Iron Boulder has a cool looking sword move- his turns his two larger horns into ONE MASSIVE GLOWING BLADE. THAT'S REALLY COOL! 8/10

And now. The Boy

Terapagos is a cute design that becomes more elegant, refined, and Stellar as it becomes stronger. While I'm a bit disappointed at how they handled it in story after a year of build up, I do think the designs after it's base form are incredibly detailed and creative.

The type patterns on its shell actually shift and change smoothly to other types, and the Terastilized form is even more incredible by representing every type plus a hat version of its original form. Beautiful, yet imposing, and a tad silly. The dome is an interesting take that I believe might represent the world or perhaps even a larger turtle- the design could reference one of many World Turtle mythologies and possibly have it represent a planet in space, or maybe a Turtle floating in the ocean, perhaps it's even a reference to the Tale of Urashima Taro. If Terapagos was available in Blueberry Academy- which I think it started out that way in planning- it could even represent the Terarium itself. Perhaps a deeper story was originally planned but dropped- like the castles and gigantic tree of Crown Tundra.

Regardless, base form is a 6/10. Its cute but kinda pointless. The other forms though are 8/10 though for incredible execution, wonderful and pleasing use of color, and overall just being great.

This batch of new Pokémon is way better than Teal Mask's, let's be real. For the paradoxes, I'll say the Future ones got better after Iron Leaves, while Walking Wake was the peak for the Beasts. Ogerpon wins for cutest legendary with the best build up, but Terapagos definitely wins for best design. This batch is an everall 8/10

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon scarlet and violet spoilers #Indigo disk #the indigo disk #indigo disk spoilers #Archaludon #hydrapple #terapagos #iron crown #iron boulder #raging bolt #gouging fire #den reviews stuff

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wishing-stones · 9 months

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Hii,,, hope I'm not bothering you too much. I've been a really big fan of your writing for a couple of months now. You don't have to respond to my ask if it makes you uncomfortable, I understand.

I'm someone who easily falls into paranoia spirals, and constantly second guesses whether my behaviour is socially appropriate since I have such a hard time reading a room. I have a habit of unknowingly stepping over the line when I get excited and thus making people uncomfortable, and only being aware of it if I'm directly confronted about it? Though because I absolutely hate conflict I often distance/isolate myself from the people I'm close to and find myself forming deeper emotional attachments to stuffed animals than people.

Would the guys find this to be a problem? Would they particularly care about someone being more open to an inanimate object than them, or if they need to regularly switch between reminding the person of boundaries and assurance that they aren't a selfish or awful person?

(Again, feel free to ignore this if you don't want to respond, I won't get upset if this ask gets deleted for being too much)

- 🖍 crayanon

Okay first of all Crayanon is adorable

Secondly, sending me asks is in no way bothering me! If I don't have the time or energy to respond to them, I often sit on them until I do (or until I come up with a sufficient answer for some of them). The only ones I wind up deleting are the ones I legitimately don't have an answer to LOL.

Thirdly, I'm seeing some self-deprecation here, and I'd like to remind you that you aren't a selfish or awful person for your neurodivergence. I prefer the company of animals, stuffed or not, to people most of the time as well. It's no shortcoming of yours that you have issues reading social queues-- especially when excited. You're far from alone in that aspect, and honestly? You can't blame yourself for crossing a boundary that you didn't know existed. All you can do is keep that boundary in mind going forward. You're not psychic, so you can't have known, and anyone who gets mad at you for crossing a line you weren't aware of... might be someone you may wish to rethink being around. This is a very annoying thing that happens with Neutotypical people, I feel. They expect you to know the exact social standards of every single setting everywhere you go when they... don't communicate that whatsoever. It isn't your fault, and this is all a very long winded way for me to say: Don't beat yourself up over stupid unspoken societal standards. It doesn't make you a bad person, and neither does wanting to avoid these situations. You aren't selfish, and you aren't awful.

With that out of the way...

Generally speaking, the guys are really good with mental health and neurodivergence in general. It's kind of a monster society thing-- since monsters are all so vastly different from one another, they don't tend to balk at anything that has to do with appearance or mentality. It's just the way you are, and if it happens to cause problems for you or them, they're still very supportive. They might nudge you towards professional help if it becomes a serious problem, but on the whole, these guys are very hard to offend by behavior.

Killer also has issues with boundaries sometimes, and needs to be corrected. With the guys, this usually comes in the form of playful violence, but you can shove him off or tell him to back up or steep off just as easily. His are hard to cross, but if you manage it, he's pretty gracious with letting you know, and if he sees you edging up on that line again, he'll playfully remind you of it. He won't get mad. The most you'll get for your troubles is a noogie.

Dust may snap if his boundaries are crossed in any serious way, but he's kind of a withdrawn person. He doesn't mean to be mean, but he'll be firm. He might get a little short and brisk to get you to back off... but he'll explain why once he's wound down from it. He might get a little rattled, but he won't hold it against you. Learning to be around new people can sometimes have a steep learning curve that can go on for years after you've met and grown close to them.

Axe only snaps if you get near his skull injury. Otherwise, he's pretty chill. If it's a social boundary, he isn't bothered too much, and will remind you that it's there calmly. He'll also warn you off of it if he feels you're creeping toward his or anyone else's boundaries, and praise you with reassurances if you remember these on your own. It'd do you well to remember that one of his biggest boundaries is to not startle him awake, since... that's less one for him and more one for you, so you don't get hurt on accident.

Cross will gently bodily move you if it's a physical boundary and just... say your name correctively if it's a social one. He'll explain his boundaries, but prefers reminding you rather than telling you. He thinks that you'll remember these on your own soon enough if he just... nudges you away from them. He's pretty understanding, even if he looks stern. Baggs takes note of these behaviors and works with you on them. Little memory exercises to remind you of where general boundaries might be, offers different methods of mindfulness, and takes everything in stride. Even if you cross his, he's patient and explains gently. He also likes the subtle sort of nudging you in the right direction-- making your own associations and your own corrections are far preferable than straight directions. It allows you to build your own habits and reminders that are custom-tailored to you.

Nightmare has arguably the hardest time with this because he is not pleasant when a boundary of his has been crossed. He'll get a little sour, but still remind you carefully of what that was and why he didn't like that. It's really not you, it's him. He gets cranky and bitter when bothered, but... he also has to remind himself that no one here is psychic and can't possibly know what he's thinking. He likes to lead you into conclusions yourself ("Do you remember what happened last time?") rather than actively correcting it, and does so as gently as he can. This bothers you deeply, and he can tell. He doesn't want you agonizing over a simple mishap that, in the grand scheme of things, matters very little.

As for being closer to stuffies than to them...

...They might get a little jealous, but the most that nets you is them sitting with the plush so that you have no excuse but to spend time with them. Oh no. Fortunately, they can be pretty still and quiet if you don't feel like people at the moment. Just hanging around quietly is enough.

#k answers #k headcanons #feat. r&r crew #readmore for length as always #give yourself the grace and understanding that you grant to others always

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bloodofgrapes · 2 years

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AA thoughts time

I’m the last person to ever “criticize” Ace Attorney for being unrealistic, because a) it’s a story, and thus designed for entertainment purposes, but b) I believe its wild premise allows it to explore real issues, emotions, etc in a way that winds up being beautifully authentic because reality is often stranger than fiction

However, if there’s any one thing that I could change in AA, it's that nearly everyone would be just a tad older. Don’t get me wrong, I think AA does great with what it has--Phoenix being a rookie attorney fresh out of law school, young and headstrong and still kind of naive while being an accidental genius at what he does, contrasting with the fact the Edgeworth burnt out this hard after only four years of practice. But it has this anime problem, where everyone is clearly written to be established professionals in their field (including characters like Gumshoe) while acting like 30 is old somehow.

I could, and possibly will, make an entirely separate rant about all the “prodigy” characters AA has, and my firm belief that Edgeworth is the only one that should have ever been allowed, but I digress

To get personal with things for a moment, I first played AA when I was a teenager, and I remember how it felt then--Phoenix and Edgeworth did feel so old and mature at the ripe age of 24, worldly with education and experience that seemed far beyond my grasp. However, revisiting the series as a man in his mid thirties has been interesting. They do still retain that feeling of being older and mature, but now I can’t help but feel that their ages ought to reflect that.

@themumblingmouse turned me on to the idea that Phoenix likely worked as Mia’s paralegal through law school, and I could see him sticking with it for some time as he worked as her junior partner, doing all the behind the scenes work outside of the courtroom while she took the lead. More specifically though, I think about Edgeworth’s downward trajectory. As I said earlier, I do think it fits him well enough that it was only four years for him to go from a relatively bright eyed and bushy tailed bratty little asshole to, well... this

But time goes by fast the older you get. Four years is practically nothing. And to be fair to Edgeworth, we could even lend him some leniency and say that his life under Von Karma likely extended that, and we could consider basically all of his time as a teenager to be part of the spiral downward, but again, he was upbeat when he was twenty. It seems far more likely that it didn’t begin until he was working in earnest, slowly forking over little bits and pieces of his soul with every case, racking up that bad (and well deserved) reputation. To my mind, that sort of thing takes time, because you often don’t realize you’ve slipped into a hole until you’ve been in it for some time, especially if you’re the sort of person that’s used to brute forcing your way through life, finding justifications and rationalizations for your actions.

Phoenix was obviously the turning point, but that turning point would hit a lot harder for me if they were both older, I think. This entire post is a little inspired by that request I got about them hugging it out in Trials and Tribulations--the observations in the tags about how desperately Edgeworth needed to just let go are absolutely spot on, and at this point I basically HC that he had at least a decade to spiral down down down until finally hitting rock bottom, with Phoenix to raise both of them from the ashes. Ace Attorney has sincerely brilliant symbolism around death and rebirth, so why not allow them a little time between their lives, so that spiral meant something, instead of being a brief and regrettable footnote from one’s early twenties?

#Ace Attorney #grapes thoughts

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synergysilhouette · 4 months

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Reimagining a Disney musical about "Rapunzel"

I started doing this with "Wish" and continued on with "Frozen," so why not do it for "Tangled"? My rewrites are more important to me, but spitballing these concepts are fun, too! I hope you enjoy what I have cooked up. BTW, I think the setting of "Tangled" was inspired by Germany, so I'd keep that for "Rapunzel"--though I wouldn't be as much of a stickler for the fashion here since the silhouettes and designs don't quite match up with my image for the characters.

Plot

The kingdom of Rampia is home to a witch. No one knows much about her, and no one dares ask. But one day, she disappeared, some say with her arms filled with gold. She vanished to the far reaches of the kingdom to an abandoned tower, coveting whatever she had like a miser. But what would happen when that secret escaped? What havoc would she wreak to get it back?

Principal characters

Rapunzel--Curious, athletic, and hungry for knowledge, she has lived in the tower all her life. Born with beautiful golden hair that is now beyond 100 feet long (and never gets dirty or matted), she was taken by the sorceress Gothel the day she was born. Despite Gothel's attempts to keep her at home, Rapunzel desires to see the world, and does so by escaping with Prince Rudolph, who one day manages to find the tower. While she returns to her family and forms a romance with the prince, the townsfolk do not take to her, seeing her as the daughter of a witch and destined to bring them unhappiness. They treat her similar to Pocahontas in her sequel film, both exotifying and fearing her, seeing her as inferior to them and yet more dangerous. Gothel retaliates to her escape and curses the kingdom with being surrounded by imprisoning the prince inside his own castle, using thistles to encase the area. She invites Rapunzel to come and save him, but warns that the young woman with have a reunion with her "mother" if she does so. The curse quickly turns people against Rapunzel even more, and she must venture into the maze of a castle if she wishes to rescue her love and his family.

Prince Rudolph--A handsome, cunning, sassy, and somewhat vain prince, he accidentally stumbles onto Gothel's tower, which was the last thing he wanted to do. Despite his skillset, he is easily frightened off, and the thought of coming face to face with a witch was enough to frighten him for life. He's actually got a soft spot for kids and animals, and can be quite helpful when the need (for him) arises. When he manages to capture the heart of the "witches' daughter," there is much debate, with concerns that Rapunzel put a spell on him, with whispers of getting rid of her (or even the monarchy itself) beginning to rise.

(Note: Have NOT established whether or not I'd make him Southern European or Middle Eastern in contrast to German. I'm just gonna keep his German name rn.)

Gothel--A woman who has lived long and seen much, she was denied a special herb by a man when she was pregnant, and was unable to save her child. In revenge, when the man needed an herb of hers for his own wife, she gave it to him in exchange for the child in her womb. She raised Rapunzel as her own, but as she began to look like her parents and act of her own accord, any affection Gothel might have felt for her turned to anger and envy for the child she lost, and abused Rapunzel mercilessly. However, she had grown so used to her company that she couldn't imagine life without her, and when she falls in love and escapes from the tower, Gothel vows to take everything from her until she's all she has left.

Music

All For You--A rather long song, dedicated to the heartbreak Gothel goes through to save her child all for it to be for nothing, and for Rapunzel's parents to trade her in order to save her.

Not Today--Similar to "Mother Knows Best" and "Stay With Me," Gothel continually stalls Rapunzel by outwitting her, thus proving she isn't prepared to leave the tower.

Fantasy--Rapunzel daydreaming about traveling, about how different the world is from what she's learned (because reading and experiencing are two different things), as well as Rudolph singing about his own dream of becoming king and how "easy" everything will be.

At Last--Rapunzel is finally free from her tower and able to explore the world that's no longer a fantasy in her mind. As she experiences the world with Rudolph, she realizes how much she's falling for him, and vice versa.

Never--Gothel attempts to bring Rapunzel back to the tower peacefully, but when she refuses, Gothel vows to take everything from her, saying "never say never; it's much longer than forever."

Be Strong--Rudolph sings this to comfort a scared Rapunzel as she works to free him and face Gothel, realizing that the world is just as dangerous as Gothel told her and feeling guilt for bringing Rudolph pain, though he states that with love comes pain, and that he wouldn't trade it for anything.

Tonight--The finale, a powerful ballad where Rapunzel reflects on all she's learned and seen, and how the next day could bring just as much trouble as the past few ones have, but tonight, she has peace, she has love.

Lemme know what you think! I don't hate "Tangled," but I'd have enjoyed some different things from a Disney musical about Rapunzel.

#disney #disney princess #tangled #rapunzel #disney animation #the arcana #lucio #gothel #lady tremaine

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therummesoccupied · 21 days

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FANG THE HUNTER: ISSUE #4 - THOUGHTS

I know! I'm very late! I'm sorry!

It's just... I can't think of a ton to say about this one that I didn't already say about the other three.

The writing is good, there are lots of neat character moments, art is stretchy and fun with plenty of visual inspiration from the games... yeah, it's cool!

Some specific points I'd like to note, though...

I do really love this scene where Fang just straight-up yoinks the Heavy Shinobi's katana and KO's him with it. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't normally think SEGA would allow, since we haven't really seen any character use a sword in canon since Black Knight (if Black Knight is even canon, for that matter).

Perhaps its the anime kid in me, but that was rad as hell.

I've seen a few folks complain about this moment - namely after Fang's proclamation that "Nobody takes what's mine" back in Issue 2, but... I dunno, I think it's fine.

Firstly, the situations are not equivalent. This isn't really a case of somebody "taking" Bark from him as much as him choosing to leave Bark behind.

Secondly, a big part of this comic's story has been the growing strain on the Hooligans' relationship as the story has gone on. His feelings about the other two have certainly changed since then.

Thirdly, I think he pretty clearly... doesn't mean it?? Like, all it takes is Bean looking at him funny and he decides to go help Bark out.

I dunno, this does not seem like a huge deal to me.

I also really like the fight between Bark and the Heavy King.

With the detail they add to Bark accruing damage over the course of their brawl and the little bits of lighting and shadow they add to him, they manage to make Bark look... kinda badass?

Like, I get he was always meant to be a cool fighty guy, but he's also always had that Silly Classic Sonic verneer over him that keeps him from seeming too... I dunno, COOL!

I'm just glad they even went the length to add this little bit of visual intensity.

Speaking of Bean and Bark, though, I must regretfully acknowledge that what I predicted did ultimately come to pass...

The Hooligans have broken up.

(Also I keep seeing Sonic YouTubers refer to them as the "Hoodlums?" That's... not their name? Whatever, it's just weird.)

Anyway, I actually really enjoy this move. It's not often in IDW we get to have a tale end in tragedy, so it's nice to see the conclusion here be so bitter. These are three characters we've been used to seeing together for YEARS, even before IDW Sonic began, and now, they're no more.

Maybe they'll have a heartwarming reunion someday, but thus far, this split has even carried over into the games, as we've seen in Sonic Superstars.

Speaking of Superstars...

That's how our comic ends - with Fang setting off for Northstar Island to begin the plot of Sonic Superstars!

In the time since this issue came out, I've learned this move was fairly controversial, but I dunno, I found it neat! This is the first time I can think of that we've had the plot of IDW play directly into a specific game!

They haven't firmly established if or when stuff like Team Sonic Racing or Sonic Frontiers happens within the comic yet (my personal headcanon is that neither have occured up to this point) so it's cool to see the IDW story so clearly connect itself to the games this way.

It's also neat to see IDW's Classic Era link itself to the Modern Era with Fang ending up in possession of the Warp Topaz, which of course, we will later see appear in the hands of Dr. Starline. I already did my big rant about how much I LOVE the Warp Topaz being here and how it has firmly gotten me onboard the Unified Timeline now, but it's still a very cool note to end on.

It does leave me asking a few questions, though?

Firstly, if Fang has the Warp Topaz at the beginning of Superstars' plot... why doesn't he... use it? I can't think of a single time he teleports or warps around in that game. Heck, his ace in the hole is a big mech of himself that doesn't appear to do anything of the sort.

Then... how does it end up in the cave where Starline finds it? Was there some form of confrontation between Starline and Fang we'll never get to see?

And wouldn't that be SICK??

As weird as the choice to end the story with Fang in possession of the Warp Topaz was, I'm pretty happy with how this miniseries came out! I really hope that, in the future, we get more arcs like this centered around specific members of the games cast.

I like the IDW cast just fine, but... c'mon. You KNOW that's not who we're picking up the comic to see.

The book tells me everything I need to know about them just by the way it puts them in the story.

The reason I love arcs like this and Scrapnik Island is because they take the characters I'm already familiar with from my time with the games - Fang and Mecha Sonic - and tells me things I didn't know about them, puts them in situations I've never seen them in before. Takes stuff I know from the games and EXPANDS upon it!

All in all, this is up there with Scrapnik Island and Chao Races & Badnik Bases as my favorite arcs in the series.

With Fang in the rear view, we head back to the Modern era for the Phantom Riders arc, the first issue of which is already out, and I hope to talk about it before the next one is released this time.

Thanks for reading!

#sonic the hedgehog #sega #idw sonic #fang the hunter #comics #review #issue 4 #mini series #idw publishing

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blackjackkent · 1 month

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Just noticed that the Silvanus's Blessing buff keeps proccing on and off all the NPCs as they wander around the inn. This is because Mol is chilling on a chair nearby playing chess with Raphael and, presumably, still has the idol we stole for her from the Grove. I was wondering why Rakha randomly had proficiency on that Animal Handling check with His Majesty.

Let's go see what she's up to, as one of the lone remaining representatives of the tiefling refugees.

"Your move, Mol."

"You trapped me! I didn't even want to take this one!"

Mol is sitting at a table which is covered in a checkerboard design of some sort, across which is strewn wooden carved pieces of various shapes. A game, Rakha can discern, but she knows no more than that - except that Mol is extremely agitated by a potential loss, and that her opponent is Raphael.

Rakha is not pleased to see him.

"Calimshan rules, dear," the devil says smoothly. "The first piece touched is the first piece moved."

"That's garbage!" Mol grouses. "No matter where the knight goes, I'm gonna lose it!"

"Then make the sacrifice useful," purrs Raphael. "Guard your Mystra or come for my Cyric."

Mol scowls - then brightens abruptly, seeing Rakha approach. "Look who made it!" she says cheerfully. "For once I saved *your* butt out there, didn't I? We're square now, chief." She gestures at the board in front of her. "Say, do you play lanceboard by any chance? It's my first time playing."

Lanceboard. The word is familiar; Rakha has heard Gale use it on occasion. But she has no context other than that. She gathers from the conversation thus far that it has something to do with each player taking the enemy's pieces. One of the pieces is called a knight. A war game, then?

But she shakes her head - not only because she knows nothing of the game, but because Raphael's presence is considerably more of a problem. "You shouldn't be playing games with this man," she says gruffly. "He's a devil."

Mol snorts. "Sure, and I'm Zariel's firstborn. Don't be distracting me." Her visible eye rolls and she turns back to the board and considers it with a squinting expression of concentration before finally making a move.

Raphael's hand snaps forward at once, moving one of his own pieces and knocking hers aside.

"Hells," she mutters. "Thought I had you."

"They always do," Raphael says with a slow smile. "You came close, though. All you needed was a dash more courage. You will remember that, won't you, when you consider my offer?"

Mol's lips purse and she scoots off her chair, pushing past Rakha towards the bar without another word.

Raphael stands up and stretches slowly, looking pleased with himself. "What a lovely specimen she is," he drawls. "A blushing apple, begging to be plucked." He smirks at Rakha. "She might have won, you know, if you hadn't been so hell-bent on exposing my truer nature."

Rakha shrugs. The sound of Mizora's laughter is still in her ears from last night - she has no patience for Raphael's machinations. And, for that matter, while Mizora is off the table as a target, nothing stops her from potentially lashing out at Raphael.

Nothing except the fact that he knows things I do not. Raphael has hinted about answers to both the tadpole problem and Rakha's own past. She does not trust him... but she does want to know what he knows, and that irritates her just as much.

"Is that why you're here?" she growls. "To play games?"

Raphael laughs, seemingly unperturbed by any threat in Rakha's tone. "To play *the* game," he says. "The vast lanceboard of souls." His eyes flick past her towards Mol, who is leaning against the bar in the other room. "But don't you worry about Mol," he adds blithely. "It goes without saying she still has the unconditional freedom to choose... the only option she has left."

He smirks. "Besides, I do enjoy being in this neighborhood again. It has such a rich history of abject tragedy. And tragedy, my friend... well, there's my bread and bloody butter."

His smile is pointed, humorous, as if inviting her to share a joke she does not understand. It grates at her. "Just stay away from Mol," she snaps coldly.

Her own intensity surprises her a little. The girl is a passing figure in her life, no more - certainly not critical to her own party's survival. But Mol did stand up for her to Jaheira. And more importantly... she does not want Raphael to get anything he wants.

He shrugs carelessly. "She lost. She *is* lost. It's only a matter of time before the apple is plucked. But..." He spreads his arms expansively. "Enough about my lesser pursuits. Why bother with trifles when I'm in the illustrious presence of my very favorite client!" He steps closer, close enough that she can feel the heat of his breath. "Tell me, O apple of my eye," he purrs, "how have you been? You don't have any gills to get green around yet. But you do look a bit worse for wear in this light..."

Her eyes narrow and she flinches away from him, highly uncomfortable. Her fist flashes out, grabbing him by the collar, holding him at arm's length.(*) "Leave me alone, hellspawn," she snarls.

"All in good time, my dear," Raphael answers, completely unruffled. "See you soon."

And then he vanishes directly out of her grip, and the lanceboard along with him.

(*) Artistic license, obviously. Sadly there is no actual option to manhandle Raphael.

#bjk plays bg3 durge #rakha the dark urge #sorry astarion you're probably not gonna get a chance to talk to raphael #seeing as rakha wants to shoot him on sight

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piratefishmama · 8 months

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I got tagged in a questions thingy.

by: @w1ll0wtr33 thanks sweets!

1. Are you named after anyone?

Nope, my name was in fact a mistake made by a nurse! It was supposed to be a hyphenated combination of my first and middle name, but the person doing the birth certificate made an error.

2. when was the last time you cried?

Like… fully? Uhm. August? The day before my dad got out of the hospital I had a full blown panic attack cause I knew I’d be alone in taking care of his asshole self and wasn’t prepared to do that. There was crying involved in that.

3. do you have kids?

I would sooner rip my own uterus and womb out, Netflix Witcher style than have children.

Storytime: My mum once bought me a £75 stroller and doll, an this was years ago, like, single digits age range so that was EXPENSIVE for the time (fuck man, it’s expensive now lmao), I… left it out as far away from the house as I, at my age, could... in the rain. An it was all silk and satin material so it was well and truly fucked.

They stopped expecting eventual grandchildren from me very early on in my life.

4. What sports do you/have you play/played?

Does archery count? I feel like archery should count lmao I do archery, and I used to do ju-jitsu, I have medals somewhere for ju-jitsu, god knows where though my medals were never worth keeping track of apparently. My brother's are in his old room.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Fluently.

6. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

That they’ve invaded my carefully curated alone time and thus have become my enemy.

7. what’s your eye colour?

Hazel, with more green than brown.

They're also my favourite eye colour too! there’s so many variations of it, do you have more green or brown in it? is there a ring of darker colour around your iris or not? Hazel has so many variations it’s such a pretty eye colour to have and it changes. Hazel eyes are magic.

8. scary movies or happy endings?

Thanks to my truly stellar vivid imagination and Childhood Trauma™️, I cannot watch scary movies. At least not ones that have plausibility. Like they could happen. Because for some reason, everytime I watch one of those, my brain ever so lovingly decides to recreate the movie in the form of a nightmare where all the starring cast are people I actually care about an I’m just. watching them all die.

It's never fun. And I can never escape it. Even waking up, if I go to sleep, I will go right back into that nightmare, there’s no escape.

9. any talents?

Many! i have ADHD and autism, I have so many random skills. The only one I can reliably do on command though is writing. I can draw, paint, sew, sing, dance, and many others… sometimes, but the only one I can reliably do without fail, is write.

10. where were you born?

Britain. You don’t get closer than that I ain’t about to dox myself.

11. what are your hobbies?

Writing, reading, video games, creating shit.

12. do you have any pets?

Hope and Shadow are my two dogs, you all know them by now I’m sure. I have a shitton of tropical fish in tanks both upstairs and down, I did have a very smol bird but I had to put him up for adoption as unfortunately he and Hope simply did not get along, she made him very anxious and he made her hungry for bird.

13. how tall are you?

I’m tiny, 4’11.

14. favourite subject in school?

English. I had a great teacher. It would have been art but unfortunately I hated my teacher, and my teacher hated me and that made the lessons very uncomfortable.

15. dream job?

I would love to work with animals. Animals are easier than people.

And no, i'm not tagging people.

#tag games #personal

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howlingday · 1 year

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I must say your Jaune is Hades au has peaked my interest to the max. After rereading my favorite manga Record of Ragnarok, which probably has my favorite iteration of Hades, for the 100th time I was wondering, is this jaune based off any kind of iteration of Hades, or does he follow the actual Greek mythology of Hades. If so, how much of the mythology stories does he follow? Like does Jaune ever use a bident, did he ever get married to Persephone in this au, are there other Greek gods? Then there are questions like was he properly born into the Arc family or did he just make up the whole persona. Many questions for a fascinating au looking forward to more.

So, real talk. I LOVE Greek mythology, and Hades is one of, if not my most favorite of the Greek Pantheon. I feel like each iteration I've met has entertained me in some way or the other.

Be it as an antagonist in Hercules

As a vengeful boss in God of War,

Or as a sympathetic final boss in his own titular series,

It's kind of sad how he's always seen as the bad guy when his brothers have done so much worse than he has.

But I digress.

As for Jaune's role as Hades, I wouldn't say I based him on any of the previous iterations, and more just made him into his own god of the dead and the underworld. He's in charge of taking care of souls when they die and guide them to where they need to go. He's a lesser god compared to The Brothers, which is something I headcanoned for The God of Animals.

Thus far the only comparison I can make to Jaune and any Hades is that he sits on a dark throne in a dark cavern, has blue fire, and views his job as the most important and necessary thing in the world.

So far, there's no bident, and he uses, well, a sword that looks similar to Crocea Mors, though I can't say for certain now if it is the one and the same sword and shield of the Arc family.

Also, there's no Persephone. Being a god may make you a heartthrob to all of creation, but unfortunately, any potential love interest he holds won't last forever. He is to be a king without his queen. Forever alone...

Thus far, there are only four gods in this RWBY universe; the major gods, The Brothers, and the lesser gods, Jaune and the God of Animals. I'm thinking of following a Percy Jackson role for the latter, where they're a fading relic that grow weaker with every prayer that isn't made. In other words, there are those who still worship Jaune, but perhaps one day, his power, too, will fade until he is nothing more than ancient history.

And as for the Arc family, I'll just come straight out with it; I don't know. I thought of maybe making his sisters into lesser gods as well, with Saphron making her decision to become a mother with Terra. I thought of Jaune always existing since the Age of Magic and he's just always been there. To be honest, I'm not really sure what to do with his family. Maybe the answer will come to me at a much later time.

#rwby #rwby au #jaune is hades au #hades #jaune arc

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chaosbeetlefrontiers · 11 months

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Intergang: how MAWS can tap into its potential

We’re halfway through My Adventures With Superman and I love this show a lot so far. It’s easily one of my favorite Superman adaptations and I love talking about it with my friends every week. The characters are all charming and understandable, I find the story very interesting so far, its animation is mostly solid and is carried by an art style I absolutely love, I can recommend it to just about anyone.

I will say though, one thing that kinda frustrates me about the show currently is how centered discussion is on Clark and Lois. And I get it, they’re the two main characters of the mythos as well as the show and they’re both very cute and very good characters. That being said, I feel like the other characters deserve their time to shine. Jimmy is my favorite character in the show so far and he’s (ironically) been pretty shafted in terms of discussion. The villains get it the worst though. Imma be honest, even if I can see the complaints for the villains all currently being tech based (even though that’s in favor of the story), it’s the writing on a fundamental level that I’m concerned about. And yes, I think that MAWS handles its villains far better than STAS. While STAS’s villains are very inconsistent, MAWS’s villains are all in the same ballpark in terms of writing and each and every single one of them deserves exploration. And I wanna talk about the villains that I think have the most potential: Intergang.

So let’s get stuff cleared up first since the episode keeps it vague and as such most people and the wikis don’t take this into account.

Silver Banshee is Siobhan McDougal, that’s pretty clear in the episode. Mist in the episode is simply addressed to as Kyle, and a lot assume it’s Nimbus even though the episode never really states that, nor do the credits. However, he refers to Siobhan as his sister more than once, which Albert doesn’t do. And if we look at this promotional material, the article addresses Mist as Kyle McDougal. In MAWS, Siobhan and Kyle are biological siblings. Rough House isn’t biologically related to the two, rather a very good friend. This is another thing the episode doesn’t state but in MAWS, Rough House is Albert Donovan which references how Rough House is a clone working for Intergang in the comics and Dr. Dabney Donovan is a Superman rogue also from the comics who specializes in cloning. In fact, he made Rough House in the comics. So this lays out the dynamic of the group that a lot of people seem to miss: Siobhan and Kyle are biological siblings, Albert is found family. Pretty small potatoes compared to everyone else admittedly. Onto the main point: Intergang have the best dynamic out of any of the villains in the series so far.

I feel like the best way to put it is that Siobhan, Kyle and Albert sorta mirror Lois, Clark and Jimmy in a way. Given a lot of the drama in the later episodes, Intergang acts a reflection of the intern trio: not taken seriously and barely given opportunity to rise up. Main difference is that Intergang has been doing their schtick for a lot longer, and thus their bond is a lot closer. Let’s start with Siobhan:

Siobhan acts as in a leader role not too far off from Lois. Siobhan genuinely cares for both Kyle and Albert but serves as the middle ground for Kyle and Albert’s back and forths instead. She also contrasts well with Livewire from the last episode, as Siobhan is constantly positive with the trio and searches for an opportunity to grab respect. She’s also leans harder into the leadership role than Lois does. Kyle and Albert follow her a lot more than Jimmy and Clark follow Lois (which may also have to do with their different positions) and she doesn’t exclude them from the dynamic because they all have the same end goal. Heck, Kyle and Albert burst into Stryker’s just to free Siobhan. Also, Siobhan in general just has a lot of that same energy that makes Lois so fun, just with some more punkishness to her and her respect for the people she loves is probably above her pursuit for respect itself.

And next up we have Kyle:

This may surprise you but I think Kyle mirrors Clark the most for a few reasons. The biggest of which being caution. Siobhan and Albert share a LOT of the same energy together and Kyle basically acts as the straight man to their more active attitudes. Kyle acts pretty secretively compared to the other two with a big desire to hide their real names and is really critical of Albert especially. Their back and forths are basically that small crack in the trio as Kyle’s tolerance for the slip ups is not very high at all. It’s clear that he works with Albert for Siobhan’s sake but even then their first appearance shows that they’re willing to put aside a lot for the end goal and the trio functions well because of that. I’ve seen people push him aside and him getting cut from the opening does make me a little scared for the future but either way I love Kyle. He helps balance out the trio a lot and he’s very entertaining in general.

And finally, we have Albert:

I definitely see Albert as the Jimmy of the group for… a lot of reasons actually. Rough House is the most consistently enthusiastic in the group, he’s a bit of a goofball, he can come off as frustrating to Kyle especially (while Lois and Clark more so see Jimmy as more of an oddball), and Kyle and Siobhan already have a connection that Albert’s not in, this time being the biological kind. The big difference? Albert is consistently included in the group. He’s clearly Siobhan’s best friend and Kyle brings him along to free Siobhan even while being frustrated with him. It actually makes sense to me that people refer to both Kyle and Albert as Siobhan’s brothers since yeah, Albert’s basically family to them.

Now, Intergang’s only got one episode so far and Superman’s villains are notorious for being underutilized. Whether it be Parasite, Livewire, Toyman or even Silver Banshee, they could always have room for more expansion. My hope is that MAWS will actually expand on its villains this time so how do I think Intergang can be expanded on?

First idea: contrast them with other villains. Livewire and Heat Wave both have gangs much bigger than the trio but Leslie puts her gang down and Heat Wave’s gang ditches her. Intergang functions much better as a unit even if Livewire and Heat Wave have more experience. Plus, compared to those two we haven’t gotten any glimpses on their reactions to Task Force X, mainly because they were the first ones captured after Livewire. Maybe make the trio more interested in what Waller offers compared to the other criminals. Or at least write it in a way where Task Force X, whether they oblige or resist, are their rise to fame.

Second idea: include Jimmy. I love Jimmy’s relationship with Siobhan in the Williamson run. Do I think it can work here? Absolutely! Both of them bring their respective trios together and their personalities would compliment each other well. I see it as with Clark and Lois dealing with relationship stuff, Jimmy ends up forming one with Siobhan and as a result is welcomed into the trio as a friend. Kyle would be suspicious but at the end of the day he just wants what’s best for his sister.

Third idea: SUPERPOWERS!!! Kyle and Albert I think work fine with just their tech but Siobhan’s definitely the odd one out. I feel like a storyline involving her gaining them would be really interesting, especially since we have seen what it would be like is Siobhan didn’t have control over what she ended up being capable of. Plus it could give more of Kyle and Albert working together for Siobhan and I’d be down to see more of that. Or Siobhan going solo for Kyle and Albert’s safety. Or Mist getting powers and Jimmy trying to help him out and both of them gain mutual respect, the possibilities are endless!

I’ll reblog and update this whenever we get more significant appearances from the trio, I feel like it’s pretty guaranteed we’ll see them again before season 1 ends. I made this because I love this trio, I feel like I’m the only one who cares about them and I feel like I’m the only one who’ll care if the show somehow manages to screw their dynamic up. Either way, I’m holding out hope and I also hope this little study got you more interested in the trio. Whether its fanart, fanfics, edits, what have you, show your love for MAWS Intergang if you can! I know I will.

#dc comics #my adventures with superman #superman #silver banshee #siobhan mcdougal #mist #kyle mcdougal #rough house #albert donovan #intergang #character study #task force x #character essay #i love them so much #pleaseeeee don’t do them dirty

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