#about it is essential to the whole thing. never seen such a large group of people this dead serious in either direction

[thealogie]

The swiftie banner is so large I feel like some of you are so defensive of her and even the mildest criticism is met with “then don’t listen to her or anything about her” (kind of impossible because she’s everywhere) or there are people who are like “I’m being psychologically tortured because pop star I don’t know has stopped changing and growing as an artist” like ok so??

I’m really not intending to be mean to either group I’ve just never felt either of these about any artist in my life.

[wellwrittenevilbitch]

Who is the better written evil bitch!

Propaganda

Erebus

Anyone vaguely aware of Warhammer may know that pretty much everything is horrible for almost everyone involved. Erebus is responsible for a surprisingly large amount of it.

His horrible crimes started when he was boy, back then he wasn't even called Erebus. When she was a kid he already was known to be such a horrendous kid that his parents told him to be more like their neighbour's boy: Erebus. His response was to kill the original Erebus and steal his identity.

After this he joined the space marines under command of another man named Lorgar Aurelian. Erebus, in this time, followed the chaos gods, a set of four gods who pretty much rule over hell/afterlife. The chaos gods are very malevolent and Erebus was very much okay with that as long as he got what he wanted from that. Erebus used his position to slowly corrupt his lord Lorgar to follow chaos as well, and after that he corrupted Horus (another lord of another group of space marines) with a poisoned knife and magic gained from the chaos gods. This kickstarted the Horus Heresy: a galactic civil war in the imperium which culminated in the death of the emperor of mankind and a large group of the imperium falling to chaos and causing irreparable damage to the imperium at large. Meanwhile Erebus never stopped scheming to gain more power. Backstabbing and turning on friend and foe alike if it would gain him more power, sadly never getting what he deserves.

All for one:

Tbh, there's so much to tell about him, I'm kinda at a loss where to start and what to tell here. This is gonna be very rambly, so, sorry lol.

So. All For One. He's the Evil Bitch Supreme. He does awful, evil, terrible things for his own profit (and also for fun), he's completely unapologetic, he's fully self-aware, he knows that the things he's doing are evil. In fact, he's doing all that heinous shit on purpose. He's being evil quite literally on purpose. Because he's playing a character. His favourite comic book villain, to be exact, and essentially is trying to write a 'fix-it' fanfic where his blorbo wins into reality. I'm not gonna go into how exactly he operates, his parasitic nature, his extremely weird and complicated relationship and obsession with his younger brother (that's a whole other can of worms), just gonna talk a little bit about his overall personality.

Unlike other villains in the story, he avoids being humanised. He doesn't want to be humanised. His face is hidden from the readers for 3/4 of the story. His real name is unknown. He glorifies and takes power in the idea of being dehumanised, being just a villain, just a monster. But knowing MHA's themes - no one is inherently a villain. There is no 'inhuman' monsters. They are all very much human. His villain persona isn't just him playing a character, it's more than just him playing a character - it's a form of escapism. So what is he escaping away from? What would force someone to go that far into their own escapism? What would make someone feel that being seen as a monster is better than being seen as a human?

He believes that a person's destiny is defined by their quirk, and that everyone are characters with roles and paths they cannot stray away from. And in his mind, he's also the one who defines those roles and writes the narrative for them. Shigaraki Tomura (Real name: Shimura Tenko), his pupil and 'successor' (whom he kidnapped at the age of 5 and groomed into this 'Shigaraki Tomura' persona for 15 years, btw), is essentially his OC that he based on an evil and obedient version of his late younger brother and that he later tries to quite literally self-insert himself into. And he applies that to himself, too. His villain name is the name of his quirk. He even implies a few times that he is a bit of a kleptomaniac when it comes to quirks, and that he cannot help it because it's HIS (quirk's) nature. In fact, any time someone does not follow his narrative, and acts outside of the little box AFO put them into in his own mind, he goes absolutely livid, shaking, crying, shitting himself, because they're breaking his Immersion the story that he's writing. By trying to be not just the writer, but also the main character and the main villain, he inserted himself into the story, and became bound to it's rules. And if there's a rule in this story, it's that all villains are just people. The further we go, more and more glimpses of his humanity are being shown, despite him desperately trying to hide away that he's just a weak, pitiful person who chose to perpetuate the cycle of abuse done to him and other meta-humans during the Emergence of Quirks era.

[jocia92]

Dan Stevens couldn't say no to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Part of the reason was that he loved the character he got to play; the other part was that the role was literally written for him.

"Adam Wingard, the director, and I have been good friends since we made The Guest. We've been talking about many things over the years but not nearly on this scale," the British actor explained. "Usually, they were weirder, indie-sized things that have yet to come to fruition, but then Adam started getting into these big blockbuster movies. I loved what he did with the last one, but with this, I think it's fair to say that he and Simon Barrett, who also wrote The Guest with Adam, created and wrote Trapper with me in mind, hoping that I would be lured in. Honestly, it wasn't hard for them to lure me."

... Unlike frenemies Godzilla and Kong, Stevens and Hall have been firm friends for decades, which is one reason he thinks they work so well on screen.

"I loved working with Adam again, but Rebecca is involved here, and I've known her since we were about 18 or 19. We were at college together," he enthused. "Brian Tyree Henry is someone I've been friends with for many years, but we've never worked together. I adore him, and I think he's a fantastic actor. To get to come and essentially play with a group of friends in such a fun world was pretty automatic for me to say yes."

"Rebecca and I were roommates after college, but at university, I think the only thing we did together was a production of Macbeth, where we were Mr. and Mrs. M. One of my first professional theatre gigs was working for her father, Sir Peter Hall, on a production of As You Like It. We also did a movie called Permission a few years later when we were both living in New York. We go way back, so it was lovely to step into this with such an old mate and have another mate direct it. We had a huge amount of fun on and off screen, which I hope comes through the lens."

While Stevens wouldn't call himself an aficionado of Godzilla or Kong lore, he has been drawn to it since childhood.

"There was that big Godzilla movie in 1998 with the Puff Daddy track. It was prime teen time for me, and I remember seeing that in theaters," the actor recalled. "There was also the Peter Jackson King Kong movie a few years later, so the two definitely loomed pretty large in my adolescence. Also, being aware of movie history and Godzilla being very much part of that fabric, particularly the B movie world. If you look at any books relating to the history of sci-fi, whether it was Mechagodzilla or whatever, I was always aware of that."

"With so much Godzilla content out there right now, it's a great time to talk about it. The mythology endures, and it endures for a reason. It has something that speaks to our age, whatever that age is. Ever since it was created, it seems to resonate in the world."

Stevens wanted to work with Wingard again since they made The Guest a decade ago, and he recalled how his filmmaking friend sold the concept to him.

"He described the scene where Trapper goes and commandeers the HEAV, which stands for Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle, and flies it into a flock of creatures that are humming with dangerous electricity that fly through and become sort of instrumental in the climax of the movie. He basically narrated that scene to me, and it sounded very cool," he said. "Then I read the script and to introduce a character by having him drop 60 feet off a crane into Kong's mouth to help take a tooth out, I thought. 'That is a cool way to introduce a character.' I wouldn't say the whole thing is me, but there's something in Trapper that I enjoyed bringing out in a world like this. You've got a character who's optimistic, pretty happy-go-lucky, unfazed, seen it all, and he's been around the block, and he's not going to be too freaked out by anything. That's always a nice character to have in the mix in a team-up movie like this. The whole thing was a privilege to step into a character like this that felt so easy and comfortable and do that with such great people."

Stevens knew exactly what real-world and pop culture references and influences he wanted to use to bring Trapper to life.

"A man-child was a big touchstone," he laughed." There's a sprinkling of Ace Ventura in there, and a bit of Dr. Doolittle and Bear Grylls is probably in there, too. There are a lot of fun characters in the mix. I liked the idea of this very optimistic Brit because we're not always known for our optimism. Trapper is a reasonably international character. He probably left the UK when he was quite young. We definitely had a scene where he told a story about his time in Africa, which didn't make the movie's final cut, but it gave us some context. He's been to the jungles and the desert; he's an adventurer and has that element of being pretty chipper in the face of enormous peril."

The actor, also known for Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, thinks Trapper has more escapades to enjoy. Like Hall, he'd love another appearance in the Monsterverse franchise, whose first four films grossed $1.96 billion worldwide.

"The adventures of Trapper would be wild, whether it's a prequel or a sequel," Stevens enthused. "I would love to see more of Trapper, and I'm very touched that you said that. He's a character I enjoyed, and I think you could send Trapper almost anywhere, and it would end up being fun, funny, and weird. There's plenty of story there."

The actor reveled in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire's visual and sonic designs, where Wingard, a director not shy to rave about his love of the 80s, leaned into the era and what it offered creatively.

"There was definitely artwork he'd created going in that they had in what they called the War Room. Wall-to-wall, there were designs of all the creatures and the worlds we would see. A lot of the time, that's green or blue screen effects that we're not really seeing, although some of the sets were real, and sometimes we were going into the jungle," Stevens recalled. "That's a hallmark of Adam Wingard, the Vaporwave synth soundtrack, the blues, purples, and pinks in the lighting. There are so many great 80s movies infused in there, as well as anything from John Carpenter and maybe some John Woo. You're in good hands when you're with Adam because it will be steeped in great and authentic movie references, have a great soundtrack, and look cool. That allows you to relax into whatever you're doing and throw yourself in. The outcome is just a wild ride."

The actor isn't just grateful to be reunited with friends and creatives he adores and admires; he's also happy that it falls during the tenth-anniversary celebration of the first film he and Wingard made together.

"I didn't realize it was ten years, but I knew it was coming on for that. They did a fun thing last April as kind of an April Fool's gag but also kind of not? They released a soundtrack to The Guest 2, which absolutely slaps. Adam is a huge fan of many of the bands invited to contribute to the first film's great soundtrack, so he invited his favorite synth acts to contribute a track to a fake sequel," Stevens explained. "They issued an LP of it, and I think Adam and Simon had worked on an outline of what this movie might be. They issued that to these various artists who had composed some great music. It really is a good standalone album."

He concluded, "The Guest is still finding an audience, and that's delightful. You can't expect that from everything you do, but it's special when one endures like that. I'm particularly fond of it. It came along at a particular time when I had an appetite to do something very different from what I'd done previously. It ticked a lot of boxes and challenged me in several ways. It stays out there as a great calling card for the kind of weird things that I like to do. I don't know if there will be a sequel to The Guest specifically. I know they've got various plans, whether it was a mini-series or a movie, but I certainly hope to work with both Adam and Simon again in some capacity, so never say never."

[absolutely-normal-about-x]

Okay but now I've got to ask: what if Axl survived until Legends as well?

But we're here to have some fun, folks!!!!!!!

I gotta do a really big think here, boys

Now, Axl is a very interesting case because you have to consider that he’s not as well known after the elf wars compared to X and Zero. So he can go anonymous the longest.

In terms of his appearance, he’s slightly older but not as grizzled as X and Zero. His armor is slightly altered, but he still has the experience and skills to be in the same ranks as X and Zero. But now he wears a large poncho, a cowboy hat, and currently holds a large rifle on his back, but still holds on to his iconic pistols. He's also the type of dude that pretends his lollipops are cigarettes and cigs are shit, but chewing down a delicious treat while shooting down enemies is such an Axl move in your honor. In terms of personality, he’s a bit more mature and wise than he previously was but is more lax and adventurous. He's the wise, fun-loving uncle!

Like Zero, he also awakens earlier than X and the guardians. So he’s been around before the events of Legends 1. He would have been awakened after Zero, so there is that. It's kind of tricky for me since he has the copy-chip ability to translate that into a carbon body. The best way I can spin this is that Axl is essentially a shapeshifter, but the trade is that he can't copy 100% of the individual's form and abilities for a much more limited time, which also depends on the size of the individual. He can't shapeshift into smaller beings, nor can he shift into larger forms (basically back to a primitive version of his old copy ability but with fewer drawbacks than it used to). But you know that it wasn't limited to him. That's right, baby! His good old-fashioned sharpshooter skills never faltered after all those years!

Like Zero, he became a wanderer, exploring this new world. However, unlike Zero, who normally just stays distant from others, he is doing his own thing. Is Old Axl here? He explores this world and wants to see what it has to offer. He used his shapeshifting abilities to disguise himself in order not to be seen. Always interacting with the world around him, he made a name for himself as “The Gunslinger.”

Going around to different islands and helping people out basically, but as a vigilante, noting that he's not exactly a “digger” like Zero. But boy does he love a good old treasure hunt, though. Eventually, he formed his own little group after he began to mentor and pick up strays on his travels, slowly forming essentially Red Alert 2.0 (probably under a different name). But unlike the original, Red Alert is less like morally questionable guns for hire. They are more of a vigilante group that targets air pirates who start trouble and steal their shit for fun. They have their own set of morals to prevent falling into unfortunate choices (something that Axl made damn sure to never repeat in the circumstances that led to his first family’s demise). He made sure that the group can work without him but he’ll check up with them every now and then.

The interesting thing about Axl is that unlike Zero, he died earlier in the elf wars so he wasn't around when the Guardians were created so he didn't have that same clue as Zero when it comes to Volnutt’s connection towards X in the first place. So it's gonna take a while for him to figure out that X and Zero are alive..

In terms of how he finds out it would've been more of an accident than coincidence, probably in a bar where Fefnir hangs out once a day. Having a neat conversation with the large guy talking about things until some asshole got way too drunk for his own started harassing folks one thing lead to another a bar fight ensues. Lets be honest these two had a blast during the whole fight especially Fefnir like holy fuck this dude is fucking awesome, like his sharpshooter skills are insane he’s never seen anyone with those types of skills…Aside from Blonde Basta- Uncle Zero and his father. Axl compliments Fefnir with that strength of his. Fefnir asked The Gunslinger if they want to spar because he wants a hell of a challenge since most of his opponents aside from his family are just reaverbots or just crooks who barely stand up against him. Axl would at first think about it but realizes he never really got a good fight in years…

“Oh! What the hell sure thing Kid! But first gotta do it with my clear mind first cause can't fight while wasted! Meet me up on the Next island over so we can have a real fight if ya want to invite yer siblings come on down i love to show ya a real challenge!”

“Oh you're on old man!’

“Oi! I'm not that old!”

The next day on the island where the duel is taking place, Axl is waiting for his opponent or well opponents cleaning up his pistols and rifle thinking about how odd that kid was. Reminiscing the good times he had in his previous life, sighing that spirit reminds him of his youth. Then he hears talking, turning around he sees the kid and others and jeez talk about the family. Huh judging of the others he recognizes them from the news along with Fefnir the “Four Guardians if he puts it, but one catches his attention well two. The scrawny blue one who seems the most excited to meet the “Gunslinger” and is talking to that man. He looks so similar to the older man, so that must be his dad probably. It was at this moment he decided to introduce himself to get a good look at the family until he stopped at the Older man…he reacted with the same expression of bewilderment that X does when he's-

“X? X is that you?!” he blurts out dropping his once cool attitude taking off his hat revealing his iconic scar.

The man’s eyes widened, shaking at the sight he was seeing. Tears welling up in his tired yet kind eyes of his..

“A-AXL!? YOU'RE ALIVE H-HOW?! YOU DIED IN THE ELF WARS!”

“Ha! You ya really think it's gonna take more than that keep this son of a bitch down i’ll tell ya-”

Without warning he was hugged by his old friend who got a lil bit too emotional for his own good. Before giving the gunslinger some breathing room. Like damn X changed a lot he looks pretty much rocking that tired dad look…literally even having the dad bod and all!

“Jeez X you changed alot since the last time we saw each other, I get this is a peaceful era and all but damn you way more relaxed is retirement treating ya well?”

X chuckled at the comment “More or less-”

“Umm excuse me” a voice interrupted the conversation between the two veterans looking at the confused Guardians and Scrawny Blue who were standing there awkwardly.

“Dad do you know this guy” Scrawny Blue asked

“Yeah! This is your Uncle Axl”

The boy’s eyes widen with excitement at the man while the other 4 are in bewilderment at this sight.

Holy shit he's an uncle! Damn he knew X is the type to be a parent but damn settling down was not on his bingo list.

“Damn X didnt know you had it in ya! Lemmie guess those Four are your apprentices or something?”

X looked at the guardians and then to Axl laughing nervously

“Ummmm actually Axl…those four…are my children too like…there his Siblings…”

“HOLY SHIT X MY MAN, MY BROTHER, I HAVE NO IDEA YOU WHERE THIS LOOSE-’’

“AXL!! NO IT'S NOT LIKE THAT I SWEAR TO ASIMOV AND NOT IN FRONT OF VOLNUTT HE'S TOO YOUNG FOR THAT!!!!”

“What is happening?!”

“When we will have OUR FUCKING FIGHT UNCLE AXL!?”

To say the least it was an eventful day for those two but don't worry Fefnir got his fight with uncle Axl ... .After X explained what the hell happened after the elf wars and such. To say the least he loves his nieces and nephews.

[reborrowing]

I don't usually write gt pet stuff because it's such a pain to get something compelling and believable that still has room for characters and plot, but there is a worldbuilding variant of it I keep kinda idly chewing on.

obvious content warning for pet trope discussion under cut

Basically "pets" were sold at some point in the recent past, marketed as somewhere between a toy and a pet and branded as an ingenious, but artificial, development. There's some initial backlash but overall, tinies are branded as especially convincing mimics by a family-oriented company that has an upstanding reputation. The “pets” catch on as a fad and a good chunk of the population has or wants one.

Over a couple of decades, it gets fairly normalized until it eventually comes out that no, the backlash was entirely warranted, these are absolutely, unquestioningly people, not clever simulacra. They were shrunk down by whatever HandwaveTech and sold off after conditioning. Public outcry continues to build, the involved companies are investigated and ultimately shut down. It takes longer to set up any real protections or entirely outlaw the process.

But more than that, there's no real way to find and reach out to victims on a large scale. A good number of them were initially sold as toys, there's no paper trails, and there’s no definite estimate as to how many are out there. Awareness campaigns and advocacy organizations crop up to help ex-pets escape or to provide shelter, but (especially before everyone had multiple phones/computers perpetually hooked up to the internet) it isn’t too difficult to keep a tiny in the dark about what happens beyond your property line. Once the issue has had its five minutes of fame, aid programs quietly fizzle. Anyone involved essentially gets to deal with it on their own.

So you end up with the usual g/t problems from being out of scale and unequal and can grab at the trauma and uncertain personhood from pet trope but it’s not quite as straightforward as victimized pet-race, oppressive giants, and protagonist-coded rebels. You can get younger tinies who've lived their whole lives free and tinies who have seen the horrors of what people will do to someone who can't fight back and tinies who've "gotten over it" and are good taxpaying citizens who absolutely refuse to talk about it and tinies that still believe their best bet is to find a caring not-owner-because-that's-illegal-now, who've only ever experienced kind dehumanization and can't fathom surviving any other way.

You can skip over good-aligned humans reasonably encountering tinies for the first time and going “oh my godddddd it never occurred to me that the tiny people-looking things might be tiny people, it’s time to do a 180 and become a white knight about this.” To an outsider, the problem’s already been outlawed and solved and they shouldn’t have to think about this tragic thing that happened, past tense. You can have mixed-size groups of activists without humans in the group Rejecting Societal Norms and getting stuck with samey character traits. There’s still space for characters who are ambivalent or fine with the idea of pets without coming across as off-the-wall evil because 20 years ago it was normalized and they never questioned it. In-universe, it would be more like an old guy being unapologetically sexist: unacceptable, but not entirely unexpected.

idk just like. Reflects some gray areas a little better than "collective humanity saw little guys and put them in cages and no one thought that was fucking weird until you, random nice guy protagonist" which is something I feel like I see a lot of.

[paragonrobits]

in all honesty i think the 'if we kill all the bad people and CEOs then the world will be happy forever and we'll never have to do anything hard or worry about systemic injustice ever again' is extremely damaging to any kind of political or revolutionary rhetoric, and part of it is that it leads very strongly to the same mentality that basically refuses to do anything in the political process but just wait around for the Glorious Revolution, and of course that its an appealing revenge fantasy, but also that the kind of people espousing this aren't actually going to do anything and it does very bad things to actual... well, actions to make things better.

Essentially, its a revenge fantasy writ large. It's the kind of thing espoused by the people who think of mass executing the Rich or really any nebulous group that is defined as being responsible for all the world's ills; a glorious heroic defeat of Ultimate Evil after which everything will be better forever.

It's not that simple. It will never work that way. At BEST, even if you somehow could accomplish that, more people would just fill that void. And to be blunt, the issue is not that some people are bad; it is that this is the result of systematic injustice that is to some degree baked in. Even if you remove them, that does not address the reason why they come to exist. Furthermore, it simplifies the actual cause of human suffering to such an extreme that at BEST its lazy. At worst you're actively ignoring history just to feel smug about your hypothetical revolution that will never ever happen

let's examine this. if you genuinely believe that CEOs and capitalism as a whole are the root of all human evil and suffering and, if removed, this will make everything better forever, this kind of fails to address the point that people being shitty to each other is older than recorded history, this is a manifestation of the problem and not the problem itself! There are mass graves of murdered people going back to Neolithic times. The human capacity for cruelty is older than our ability to record it in the written word.

Its not like there were stone age CEOs in fancy furs making up the concept of profits as an excuse to kill people. To be plain, capitalism as a concept is EXTREMELY recent. It technology only dates back a few hundred years at best, and it is specifically an outgrowth of mercantilism, which roughly appeared around the 1600s. So out of five thousand years of recorded history, that's an indescribly TINY, statistically meaningless shred of time.

Are you trying to suggest that human evil only started then?

So if you DO want to make that claim, what do you make of the mass slavery empire that was Rome, as an example? Or the countless examples of empires rising and falling, of people giving the order to kill lots of other people for short-term gain or political expediency?

Human evil goes back a long, long way. It's not something that can be fixed by just going 'get rid of the Bad People'. If it was, then those Bad People would never have existed. The entire concept of just wiping out entire groups and deciding that'll fix the world is the cause of many massacres.

Being smug and fantasizing about revenge won't fix anything. Constantly making snide and inappropriate jokes about everything won't fix anything either. There's no easy fix and no simple answers, and in all honesty, you can't just go 'once we kill all the CEOs human nature will see to it that we will work together for the common good'.

Because if that was honestly true, do you really think we'd ever have SEEN CEOs show up the first place?

[charkyzombicorn]

is Sun's Personality still going on?

also, one piece but with mechs for an idea if you want to do something new to do

I take input for any of my aus at any time (except rn because my inbox got unruly so it's down for a few days) but I tend to have phases where I post a lot abt one au before forgetting abt it for a while, so short answer: yes SP au is still a thing I just haven't been thinking of new content

Also: ONE PIECE MECHS??????

That would be so cool-- okay

I haven't seen anything mech-related so I'm not really basing anything off a specific show BUT

Luffy's has a monkey-theme

I might roll this into a scifi au prompt actually

Okay WORLD BUILDING >:3

It's like 2319 or smth, human population is almost all living on ships because earth is essentially a mandated 'No-Poach Zone', been like that maybe 5 or 6 generations, and kinda like an exaggerated version of what happens to astronauts, humans bones are more spread out and thinner because there's less gravity. But scientists still needed to check on earth - make sure the scars left by humans aren't affecting the earth too too badly, make sure the planet will still be habitable if need-be. Their solution? MECHS. Large enough to properly depressurize the person inside, precise enough to sample a single pine needle from a tree, a modern scientist's solution to not getting their organs crushed like a tin can. Sadly, the army heard 'science equipment' and heard 'upgrade', and then tech companies heard 'profit' and suddenly anyone with enough money can buy a clunky old bot and explore one of the planets that the human race is starting to terraform, or one of the ones they couldn't. Of course, humans did what humans do. Now there's always a nut job who sold their house for a nice mech, police patrol in shiny metal muscle, underground mech fights kill at least 100 people a day, people use their mechs to get to other ships illegally, if you don't have a mech you're nobody.

Luffy was born in a small colony, a small ship branched off a much larger one, a few hundred people, almost never any strangers. Most of them spent their whole lives on the small branch. But Luffy wanted more. Garp offered it to him, when he visited in his shiny silver mech. Luffy didn't want that, either. Then his colony was invaded by pirates. Pirates were an epidemic, ever since mechs entered the market, but even more after a man named Gold Roger claimed he'd found a paradise planet with everything anyone could want. Shanks mentioned him, a few times. He also told Luffy about the galaxy waiting for him, and Luffy would have done anything to have Shanks take him with him. Tried to, but then some thugs with a mech they fixed themself tried to test it on him after he failed to punch their boss, and Shanks lost an arm getting him out of the blast. And he told Garp he wanted to be a pirate, so Garp dragged him to earth kicking and screaming, ignoring pressure change warnings even when Luffy's eyes started bleeding and his leg broke under his own weight. Garp could stand it, so Luffy had to.

Luffy was taken to a group of "earth poachers", people who hid so they wouldn't be forced into ships. People who were raised with 9.8 newtons of force on their backs that could breathe the air and stand up straight without any mechs at all. Garp introduced Luffy to a boy a bit older than him and said they were brothers. The boy did not seem pleased

[bcofl0ve]

Joe doesn’t get along with Priscilla how did he end up in charge of EPE estate? I thought Priscilla had it until it was handed over to Lisa Marie at a certain age and now Riley? How does he get to ban Priscilla from events and such if Riley is in charge?

Please explain it to me I am so lost lol

when lisa sold the 85% share in 2004 it was first sold to someone named robert sillman. in 2013 it changed hands again and that’s when it was sold to authentic brand groups. authentic brand groups, as part of the deal, began to operate that share with joel. much as i dislike him as a man i can’t knock his business chops too hard, he was the chairman of National Entertainment Collectibles Association when he became involved in graceland and was/is more than qualified. when lisa sold that 85% she retained 15%, so she wasn’t completely out of the picture/still had a say in things, and that 15% included her still on-paper-owning the literal house/property/elvis’s/her belongings and all that was in the trust that is now riley’s. riley of course has a say in the business aspect of things, but it’s not “her job” to run the whole big thing, nor was it lisa’s. she contributes of course, but the main Running of Graceland is done by joel and the other people with fancy business degrees and big paychecks.

i wish i had an answer to the priscilla aspect. the thing that *majorly* trips me up is that while yes, lisa and priscilla had a rocky relationship, she never did anything to limit her involvement in graceland while she was alive. she was at elvis week in 2022! and in the years prior even post 2017 when things got really shaky between them. if she wanted mom out of the picture she would’ve seen to that/had joel see to that. but she didn’t. and now that she’s gone joel is just doing whatever to screw the woman? i understand that he’s obviously not the priscilla movie’s number one fan (rich when epe/graceland sells her book and always has, but) and that he maybe got irked over the court stuff (which was not his family business to go bitching about on elvis radio anyways).

but imo, he needs to get over himself. jerry is still close with her and even brought her up during elvis week (which a friend of mine there said joel looked kinda miffed about!), riley’s christmas special had their wedding photo projected on the house. there’s a large amount of elvis fans that like her and will shell out $$$ for any event she’s at (and no offense- events with priscilla attract more $ than events with linda). him bringing in linda as the new ‘resident girlfriend’ and doing things like teasing an exhibit with the red furniture linda bought for graceland isn’t random. he’s a vindictive little shit. i worry deeply for how he’s going to handle things when priscilla passes away. especially when a few months ago he told someone on facebook bitching about (riley’s decision to allow) her burial not to worry and that “no one knows lisa’s wishes” better than him. actually i think riley does you POS, hence why she allowed it and has essentially said “why wouldn’t she be buried there??” when asked about it in the press.

[cosmic-star-dust]

so i have some thoughts on the state of critical role lately

so. this whole arc of c3 has been getting me thinking, and i just want to get some thoughts down, maybe for the people who also aren't super jazzed about this whole... pc cameo extravaganza that's been going on (obviously, huge spoilers for c3, up to e51)

a few disclaimers:

I love CR. I adore it. I love matt and his storytelling. All of these things are what got me into D&D to begin with. This is not just me shitting on CR or matt for no reason

i haven't seen c1. i don't know if vm have any sort of major standing in the plot. but i'm just not interested in vm, never have been, and, especially after this stint in c3, i can say with confidence that i won't ever be, unfortunately

i have so much respect for matthew mercer. i cannot imagine what it must be like to run this show. these are just my opinions as a fellow storyteller-- i can love the show, and love his work, and still not agree with its narrative structure

now i know i'm in the minority for not particularly enjoying the c1 and c2 cameos that have been happening in the last couple of episodes of c3. i understand that a lot of people love it, and i think that's great! i'm glad you guys enjoy it! i'm just not one of them, and here's why.

first and foremost, it's gatekeepy. i got my friend into CR via c3, and both of us were working on the promise that someone who was brand new to CR could start with c3 with no prior knowledge and be totally fine. but now, they've kind of gone back on that. and listen, i get it. narratives change. characters get introduced. but to have them continuously play such a large role in the narrative is really making it difficult for newer fans of the show, while appealing to the nostalgia of the older ones. this is a tough (and most likely very sensitive) topic, as nostalgia is a very attractive thing to a lot of people. but, at the same time, it robs new fans of creating those meaningful memories of the characters for this campaign, which is just kind of sad, honestly

second, the dependency on c1 and c2 characters is robbing the c3 characters of their own character arcs. now, this one... is a little spicy. i'm sorry-- character arcs are my bread and butter, and this is something i'm quite passionate about. my first irritations with the c1 cameos really goes back to laudna's revival, because, in all honesty, i don't think vm should have (or would have) helped bh from a narrative standpoint. i understand, you don't want to paint your players' former pcs as total assholes, but, by the same token, imagine it was turned around. imagine the members of vm were approached, cold turkey, by a group of random assholes who said their friend just up and died-- when they had already lost their own members. they had already failed to bring someone back. and now, this random group wants to bring back their friend who is carrying the spirit of one of their greatest enemies of all time? the dependency on the c1 characters really started here, imo, because matt showed the players that, yes, no matter how outlandish the request, they could just ask a few favors of some of the highest-ranking individuals in tal dorei, and everything would be hunky-dory.

but imagine a narrative where vm refused. imagine a narrative where vm antagonized the group. imagine a narrative where they had to continue on without laudna-- the trauma that would inflict upon the group, upon imogen, upon orym. imagine a narrative where keyleth told orym that he can't keep depending on her help every time they face a battle they can't win. imagine a narrative where bh and vm were enemies. but, no, now the c3 characters are essentially acting as little more than lackeys and frontmen for vm... and, narratively, it's just kind of... lackluster, and, unfortunately, disappointing (and i hate saying that, trust me).

now. with e51, especially. imagine a narrative where these characters, who are believed to be essentially invincible at this point... died. beau, caleb, keyleth. imagine they died because of bh's insistence that they help them. imagine the character arcs that could have come out of keyleth's death alone. if they had to face the consequences of their actions, and lost favor with vm because of keyleth's death, or orym had to abandon the air ashari because of it, or a million other ripples that could rise just from that scene alone. i love happy endings, don't get me wrong, but i also don't want it just handed to characters in a narrative. a happy ending is much more fulfilling when one has to work for it.

but now, it more feels like these characters have stagnated, and aren't actually developing on their own anymore. and i really noticed it as soon as they got vm's help with laudna's revival. it's just... a shame, honestly. i was really excited, and really hopeful, but now it's becoming an obligation to watch episodes, especially since i don't care about vm. even beau and caleb being there is like... fine, whatever, i guess it makes sense, but i would much rather have people who work with them rather than beau and caleb, themselves (and i love those two goofballs!). think of other members of the cobalt soul, or just other agents, in general. there are so many opportunities for other npcs to come in and be their allies, and it's a shame that they're just recycling old materials instead of coming up with something new.

this is not, by any means, all matt's fault, or a result of bad storytelling, or anything. there are certain players that are equally as responsible for nostalgia pandering. and i get it, you're excited to see what your old pcs are up to, and how they're doing, but, if that was the case, then just play a c1/c2 reunion campaign, as they have in the past. as far as what could be done now... it would honestly just be matt putting his foot down, and having the old pcs say "no, we're not helping you. you need to figure it out on your own." they're busy people in canon, after all!

i could go on and on (i already have), but, ultimately... if you don't like the pc cameos that have been happening, you're not alone. if you're disappointed by the narrative as it stands right now, you're not alone. as someone who loves cr, and wants to be a fan of this arc so badly, i get it. i just want these characters to stand on their own again.

[lonelywretchjervistetch]

My DCCU Interlude: The Legion of Super-Heroes (Part 2)

Chapter Two: Foundations

OK, so now that I've laid out some of the threads to be explored in this prospective series, who are our main players? Obviously, the Legion is a massive organization in the comics, whose roster has fluctuated wildly over the years. And would I love to include some crazy-ass characters in my Legion show? Oh, abso-goddamn-lutely. Gimme Tellus, Gates, Blok, Comet Queen, et cetera, PLEASE. But again, I'm talking about the first prospective season of this show, which should entice the audience to watch, and the studios to renew for future seasons. So, OK, nothing crazy.

The main characters really should be some iconic members of the Legion, upon whom we build the rest of the cast. And sure, a lot of properties, including the animated series, have included the group I'm going to propose here. But the difference here should be in characterization. This is going to be a lived-in galaxy, and we'll see quite a few unique characters and cultures, despite the familiar names. Honestly, Young Justice did this really well, even though we barely saw the Legion outside of a few members.

By the way, as I talk about these characters, I'm mostly going to focus on my ideal versions of them, rather then break down their comic book appearances and iterations. And that's because, frankly, there are...a lot of them. I'll be taking all of these incarnations into account with my versions of the characters, but I'll also be thinking about what character traits would work well in a series, and what I think each of these characters represent. There are a lot of accounts of these characters, and I encourage you to look into them if you're curious...but there's a lot of history for these guys, as well as at least 5 versions of the characters in some cases. It gets...complicated.

In this essay, we'll look at the core members, with the newbies for the season getting their own essay. We're looking at a seven-person roster, after all, with some initially getting more attention than others. And again, these should be familiar, especially to those Legion fans out there who may be reading this essay, or pretend-watching this pretend show. So, let's get started with the basics.

Oh, and, uh, strap in. This is a long one.

Cosmic Boy: Hero of Braal

Rokk Krinn , of all the original members of the Legion, is probably the most stereotypically lawful good. Serious about being a hero, as well as interested in the moral good, he's definitely the goodest of boys...ideally. And that kind of character is...never really the most popular. So, every version of Rokk Krinn has had flaws and conflict to grapple with, from outside or within. For the most part, Cosmic Boy has been shown to be a bit too controlling, or a bit too self-serious. And while that's usually seen to be a consequence of balancing responsibilities, I have a different take.

The way I see him, Rokk is a hero worshipper. And I'm referring specifically to the heroes of the 21st century, especially Superman. While Superman shouldn't be the only hero known to the future, Rokk should revere him greatly. I actually think it's Rokk's idea to form the Legion of Superheroes in Superman's image, based on his love for him, as well as what he represents to Earth and the galaxy at large. So, my Rokk will be trying to live up to the legacy of Superman, as well as the expectations he puts on himself, and placed upon him by others. Which means...yeah, he's gonna be a little stressed out.

But that's not to say that he has no fun. Let's talk about my version of Braal for a second. Braal is Rokk's home planet, and there hasn't been a whole lot about it presented in the comics. So, for this theoretical TV series, that makes it essentially a blank slate for my to carve into. There are two things I'm keeping about Braal from the comics. One, its inhabitants, or at least a decent group of its inhabitants, have the ability to manipulate magnetic fields. And two, they're big sports fans. And combining both of these gives us an interesting foundation, in my opinion.

My version of Braal in a world in economic crisis, and in desperate need of better representation on the global stage. See, Braal will be one of the first worlds of the United Planets, referred to as the "First Ring" by some. While not the most disparaged world in the system by any means, there's a serious class dispute on this world, with the bridge between the classes being based in entertainment and amenities. Essentially, it's a throwback to ancient Rome at its most corrupt, but in a somewhat more futuristic setting. I guess, technically, I'm making...oh, shit.

Gah, shit, I'm making The Hunger Games, aren't I? Well, you know what? Fuck it. Sure. Braal is essentially Panem from the Hunger Games, at least in terms of class division. The higher classes coordinate with the United Planets on behalf of the lower classes, but mostly end up serving themselves. Entertainment, especially in the form of sports, is a way for the lower classes to ascend, and an appeasement measure in turn.

Those not in sports can seek opportunity through the thriving export business of Braal, which specializes in refining metals and manufacturing metal goods. This goes back to the history of the planet, which was settled in the year 2271 by human astropioneers and prospectors, looking for a planet rich with resources to settle. They happened upon the metal-rich Braal, which they founded as a mining planet. To easily harvest this material with limited manpower, the pioneers utilized a unique innovation of their time-period: Infinity Serum. Derived from a number of developments made centuries prior by many individuals, these serums originally utilized the genetic material of metahumans, isolating their abilities to bestow these abilities on non-powered individuals. And, yes, I am absolutely referring to something in my Superman proposed film series (check out this essay for more info). Young Justice fans also know that I'm talking about here.

So, that said, these astropioneers had a number of old serums that they brought with them in order to quickly adapt to the conditions of the planet they settled. In this case, because of the need to quickly mine and refine metals, the settlers used IS: Magenta, an Infinity Serum originally derived from genetic material collected from metahumans Frances Kane, Neal Emerson, William Everett, Jacob Baker, and Rhea Jones. Once readings of the planet were taken on approach, the pioneers began a regimen of this serum, eventually developing the magnetic powers that would allow them to harvest metal and move quickly (via flight) over the planet's surface.

Because of the nature of this planet, the architecture is essentially entirely metallic. A civilization of chrome and metal, they use magnetic technology for transportation, as well as the ability to manipulate magnetism for flight for much of the population. Not all Braalians have the same amount of magnetic ability, which is due to individual genetics and family lines, as well as emigration onto the planet early in its history. However, those who wish to gain those abilities may be granted permission to obtain new serums, which are restricted by government control.

There's a lot more to think about when discussing a civilization essentially built around metal and magnetism, but I like to imagine Braal as a sort of neo-Rome, with the masses gathering around big arena sports. One of the most prominent is the sport of magno, a ball-sport with similarities to the Mesoamerican ball game and gladiator sports, in which the athletes harnessed their magnetic abilities, while the arena added more entertainment by bringing in new and unknown environments and threats during the games. And Rokk was one of the finest athletes in Braal.

A native of its capital city, Venado, he was a young magno prodigy, starting from an early age, and ascending from relative poverty. His prominent role in his family and as a people's hero of sorts is imposed on him at an early age. Which, y'know, is obviously problematic for a teenager with a still developing brain. At the age of 16, he was chosen as one of a group of young ambassadors to represent Braal to the United Planets on somewhat of a diplomatic mission. Thus, Rokk's sense of responsibility and duty towards his home begins early, as he's sent to NuMetropolis, the seat of the UP, as an advocate for his economically struggling homeworld, and for the lower end of the vast class divide that plagues it.

And there's the set up for our first member, and first leader At least, he's the first leader at the beginning of the season. See, Rokk's first season story will, unsurprisingly, revolve around his dealings with the weight of his responsibility, which will seem fairly easy on first blush, but takes quite the toll on him over time. And his successes and failings (of which there will be plenty) will add up by the end of the season. And who knows? By the end, Rokk may not be the leader any more. And who would be the leader? Well...I know somebody who would initially want the role, at the very least.

Lightning Lad: Rebel of Winath

Before I jump into this guy, I wanna preface this section by saying this: my Lightning Lad is not necessarily White or Black. Why is that important to stay up front? Well, firstly, I used the original Garth (whom I very much enjoy) in the cover image for the section. That's because I'm using all of the Final Crisis covers for these three, since I like them, and they shoe multiple designs of the characters in each image. Good artwork courtesy of the late, great George Perez.

And secondly, I want to make something absolutely goddamn clear: Bendis' version of Lightning Lad is genuinely offensive to me as a Black person. Why? Oh, I dunno, maybe it was the idea that making Garth dark-skinned was an after-thought, rather than the original concept for that version of the character, as evidence by the original artwork of the new Rebirth Legion, which was quickly recalled by editorial for the sake of pandering. And that's made even WORSE when you see what Bendis DID with the subsequent choice to make Garth dark-skinned. Not a Black American, but dark-skinned. AND THAT IS AN IMPORTANT GODDAMN DISTINCTION. Why?

...Bendis, what the fuck?

Really? You're asked to make a character dark-skinned instead of his normal light-skinned origin, and you decide the right origin for that character is to show them fighting the cops, because they come from a poor, low class ghetto world, and then showing that they come from a too-big family struggling to live within limited means? YOU GAVE LIGHTNING LAD THE MOST STEREOTYPICALLY BLACK ORIGIN, DESPITE HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH EARTH

That is...enormously offensive in every possible way to me. DC Comics editorial pandered to modern movements and made him Black, when that wasn't originally the plan, and Bendis responded by making THE WORST POSSIBLE ORIGIN FOR A DARK-SKINNED CHARACTER POSSIBLE. Look, I'm not saying that Garth needs to be a white ginger kid, a black kid, or any particular race in general. Same with Rokk and Imra, by the way. They come from different planets, and even if they're descended from humans, why the hell do they need to adhere to any particular race or skin color? Race-blind casting if this is a live-action show, that's what I say.

And you maybe thinking, "Calm down, Lonely, it was probably a response to BLM protests happening at the time." NOPE! This was a full FOUR MONTHS PRIOR. Goddamn it, this shit gets me so fucking angry. That said, though, there's one more argument both for and against Garth being dark-skinned, and that's having to do with his powers. Because, uh...in case you don't know...

...the number of Black characters with electricity powers is, frankly, ridiculous. And sure, you could say that Lightning Lad being black is a fun little nod to that weird comic-book trend. But, uh...honestly, it's getting to be a stereotype at this point, and I'm don't know if I'm about that. So, is my Garth Black? I, uh...I don't know. I like it for the sake of diversity, obviously, but I'm also not a huge fan of contributing another Black electricity user to the public zeitgeist, especially because I'd also be including his sister and brother in that number, making the problem even more prominent. I dunno, come up with your own opinion here, but...for now, let's take race out of the equation.

'Cause, uh, here's the fun thing about writing a character or origin for a character: race doesn't have to matter. Not saying it never should, because it obviously should in some instances, but, like...you can write a character however you want to despite race if you want. You, uh...you got that comic book writers? 'Cause you don't seem to. Looking at you, origin of Ironheart that includes her Dad being killed in a drive-by shooting, for Chrissakes. Who wrote that anyw...GOD FUCKING DAMMIT BENDIS WHAT THE HELL

...

Winath. An agricultural planet, Winath is a pretty normal place. Which is pretty astonishing, considering its surroundings aren't quite as hospitable. A Goldilocks planet with a mostly temperate climate, this was settled with the intention to act as a breadbasket for the galaxy. It was, however, a fairly large planet, and early 24th Century colonists had an innovative way of settling it quickly. Like the colonists of Braal, they used one of the Infinity Serums to inoculate themselves and provide useful powers. In this case, they used IS-Black, which used the genetic material of ancient metahumans such as Danton Black, Jaina Hudson, Frederick von Frankenstein, and Simon Ecks to bestow the power of self-replication upon the user.

This worked well at first, until three generations in, when scientists realized two problems. One, this would inevitably lead to excess inbreeding, and two, population growth at that kind of exponential rate would exhaust the resaources of this planet, similar to what had occurred on Earth. So, two solutions were developed. First, genetic limiters were placed on the populus to block their abilities. This didn't fully work on everyone, instead putting limits on how many duplicates an individual could produce in some cases. Therefore, the second measure was put into place, and the colonists who retained this ability traveled to a nearby world within the system: Cargg. More on that one later, of course.

So, who was left on Winath? Powerless colonists who farmed the lands and expanded normally, never gaining too far beyond their means, and working together in cohesive agrarian communities to supply food to their corner of the galaxy and themselves. But an unseen quirk had emerged as a result of the genetic tampering. While an individual could no longer create a duplicate of themselves, the next generation of Winathians showed a massive proportion of twins born. This side-effect would continue, and most births of Winathians would be twins. This eventually resulted in superstition surrounding individual births, and those single siblings would become somewhat ostracized by society.

However, another interesting quirk would eventually be discovered. It turns out that the serum limiters suppressed the ability for Winathians to divide. But what wasn't known by anyone, due to spotty record-keeping in the 21st century, was that one of the sources of metahuman DNA, Simon Ecks, was also an electrokinetic. Which meant that, given the right stimulus, Winathians could potentially develop a secondary ability to control, store, and release energy in the form of electricity. However, on a peaceful agrarian planet like Winath, what could cause that amount of electricity, other than some kind of freak accident?

Enter the Ranzz children, Garth, Ayla, and Mekt.

Born in the 31st Century, the Ranzz siblings came from a normal family. Mekt was a single birth, the result of a troubled pregnancy (which is actually rare on Winath), and was born with white hair (another feature inherited from Simon Ecks). As such, he was ostracized as a child, and grew up quite troubled. However, always rushing to his defense were younger twin siblings Garth and Ayla, who really did love their brother, and were loved by him. An important note there to revisit later. Also, Garth and Ayla being fraternal twins rather than identical ones was also a point of contention for many people.

In any case, the Ranzz kids grew up fairly happy and content, with the exception of Mekt to a degree. His troubled life eventually caused him to fall in with a less-than-savory group of single kids in his generation, worsening his reputation. When he was 16, and Garth and Ayla were 12, Mekt was accepting controversial smuggling jobs as a part of his gang, hired by off-worlders such as the interplanetary gang leader Tharok. On one of these jobs to a nearby dangerous moon, Garth and Ayla hid as stowaways on Mekt's ship. But unbeknownst to all of them, this was a trap, and what Mekt was smuggling was a powerful EMP bomb meant to knock out Winath's power supply, crippling a corner of the galaxy as part of a terrorist plot by the Dark Circle. Yup, I'm getting rid of the Lightning Beasts. 'Cause that's silly (even though the animated series did a GREAT job with it, admittedly).

Needless to say, though...things didn't go as planned. Mekt was meant to take the fall, but with Ayla and Garth revealing themselves in the midst of the affair, Mekt was delayed just long enough for the blast to detonate in an isolated field, away from the intended target. Once detonated, an electric field powerful enough to vaporize most people went off. And yet...the Ranzz siblings survived, changed permanently as a result.

Garth and Ayla took a bit to recover from this, but eventually awoke with electrokinetic abilities, which were awakened by the inherited instability of the Ecks serum. Dubbed miracles by most, the two were arguably made better by the experience. Mekt, on the other hand, realized that this would be an even more isolating experience. And, feeling guilt for having changed his siblings' lives forever, he sought revenge against the person who sought to frame him: Tharok. After that, Mekt disappears for a while, not truly saying goodbye to his siblings and disappearing for several years. But just before he leaves, he goes after Tharok. And let's just say that only half of that guy is gonna survive the encounter.

As time passes, though, Garth becomes less than satisfied with his life on Winath. While Ayla adapts to her powers and this new existence (and maybe learns how to use them slightly differently than her brother does), Garth wants to use his powers to help people, like he had failed to do for his brother (in his eyes). Despite the protests of his family, Garth sees an opportunity to leave and explore the galaxy in the form of the United Planets summit on Earth, and sneaks away in the dead of night to do so, and to fulfill his destiny, while also trying to find his lost brother. And this, of course, will lead Garth to found the Legion of Superheroes.

Garth's story is that of the accidental hero with a chip on his shoulder. His perceived failings leaves him eager to prove himself any way he can, and that leads to rash decisions and actions that his friends have to deal with. It'll also eventually lead to the loss of his arm, but that's another story for another season, of course. His role in this Legion isn't exactly the hothead he is in some incarnations, but the one of the passionate hero who tends not to look before he leaps. So basically, he'll have a lot of consequences to deal with throughout this series, almost all of his own making. And then...there was one.

Saturn Girl: Child of Titan

We're finally at the girl character! Look, more often than not, as I'm sure you know, reader, the token female character is portrayed as the heart of the team, or the sensitive one, or some other stereotypical folderol. In this case, though, I'm leading HARD into Jean grey vibes with Imra, as a person who can read minds and understand people...but is also a bit too powerful for her own good...or for her own people. So, since this has already been WAY too long, let's jump right into my version of the moon Titan.

One of the oldest of the First Ring planets, Titan is a moon of the planet Saturn, and was the first one settled in the early 23rd century. Meant essentially as an outpost to other worlds beyond the solar system, Titan was an intriguing colony location with some problems. Mainly, the lack of breathable air there is somewhat of a problem for long stays, which were often necessary. So, they used the early and easily-developed serum IS-Clay, which used the genetic material of...hoo boy, here we go: Simon Jones, Lilith Clay, Steven Dayton, Tommy Monaghan, Hector Hammond, Manchester Black, an unknown source, and a source kept top-secret. Yeah. Lots of stuff in there. Anyway, that serum gave the recipients psychic abilities, and was later perfected and limited to just supply telepathic abilities. This was so communication could take place without the need for breathing, and instantly over large distances. After all, comms equipment may not work well in a corrosive and flammable atmosphere, so exceptions must be made.

Over time, physical changes amongst the population would occur, simply due to changes in the gene pool over time. Vocal cords, without usage, would likely atrophy somewhat. Not completely, but definitely to the extent where Titanians would speak essentially with their minds, not their voices. Because of lower temperatures, and because of Allen's rule, Titanians would be on the shorter and stouter side, being a bit stockier as a result. So, ideally, the design or actress for Imra would match those parameters.

Additionally, Titan was one of the few planets of the First Ring that had pre-existing civilizations. Long before the human settlers, Martians had settled the planet, with the Red subspecies in particular being the inhabitants of this world. But due to their war with the White Martians, their civilization on Titan was destroyed long before human settlement. The last of these was Jemm, Son of Saturn, who lived during the 21st century, and was known by settlers as a historical figure. However, after a few generations of regular mental communication, some Titanians developed a makeshift hive-mind of sorts, breaking off from the main society and forming their own eccentric collective known as the Espers. This eccentric group would worship Jemm and the ancient Saturnians as essentially gods, and they would become a sort of terrorist group on Titan, trying to change the burgeoning society into something far different from Earth's and more alien. These extremist views got worse and worse over the centuries, until considered a very dangerous cult in the 31st century as a result. And those who know...know.

But the Espers aren't Titan's only issue. As generations pass, the telepathic abilities of the population get progressively stronger and stronger. Personal boundaries begin to disappear due to greater telepathy, leading to the development of even stronger mental boundaries and walls. Most of this power development is peaceful, and Titan is a typically peaceful society. But there is a fear of the next generation being far more powerful than the last. Enter Imra Ardeen.

Born to a fairly well-off family (she's the high-class to Rokk's low and Garth's middle), Imra is one of the most powerful members of her generation. Now, obviously, this is the direction in which Mary Sue walks, but this power isn't effortless for Imra. Not only is this power genuinely difficult for her to control, but it alienates her from those around her. Because she has to keep her power hidden from those around her, she closes herself off mentally, which is a no-no to a society that's mostly open with each other. And the uncertainty surrounding her behavior leads to mistrust. Mistrust leads fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and...well, you know.

Imra is the misunderstood hero, and rather than leaving Titan voluntarily, she's effectively exiled from her home, amidst fears that she's secretly an Esper, or...well, even more dangerous than that. And to be honest, Imra is INCREDIBLY powerful, due to the inheritance of a powerful psychic gift. She's also one of the few Titanians to speak out loud, purely to avoid using her mind. And that is, of course, another Titanian taboo. So, Imra, isolated and ostracized from an entire planetary society, leaves Titan. And if she can help it, she's not going back. This is a shame and a secret for her to bear. However, she will be sought out by the Espers, who seek to add her to her number, especially their own child prodigy, one Meta Ulnoor. Again, if you know, you know.

Imra, once she gets to Earth, is a private and closed off person, but also picks up information very quickly due to her gifts. She's constantly holding herself back, and is always on guard as a result. However, her friends, especially Garth, will eventually get her to enjoy life on Earth, open up a bit, and even guide towards a way to control her powers and emotions that doesn't revolve around repression. Yeah, Imra's an interesting one in my estimation, and seeing her change and open up would be very interesting in my opinion. And given that she's one of the most popular and iconic of the original Legion, I think that's pretty fitting. Even though, ironically, her entry is the shortest one here, but come on...this essay is long enough.

Epilogue: A Balanced Trio

So, there you have it: my versions of the original three with the potential for interesting stories and interrelationships. The more responsible and dutiful Rokk reigns Garth's wilder tendencies in, while Imra grounds Rokk into a more practical reality (and away from hero-worshipping idealism), and Garth helps Imra to enjoy life and let her guard down a bit more than usual. The three balance each other out, but each have distinct personalities outside of each other's influence.

In the first season, these three obviously will be major players, and each will serve as the main anchor for a season-long story, which will tie together by the end of the season. In fact, I've already hinted at that ending story at least twice, although I've obviously left a lot out. We'll get there, though. In the meantime, we have more members of the Legion to fill out. And, in fact, they'll come together as a separate anchor for the season's storyline...but again, we'll get to that one later. In the meantime, I'm taking a break for a minute. This essay took...a while. See you soon!

See you in Part Three!

[eamonorus-blog]

JK Rowling’s Rejection of the Political.

Much hay has been made, and continues to be made about the political stance of JK Rowling. For a while it was Christian fundamentalists who were making all the fuss about JK Rowling, but now that seems to have largely changed. Now it is the Trans community and their allies who are disavowing and hating on ol’ JK.

One of the most common refrains is that “her views go against everything her books taught us.” The idea is that the Harry Potter books promoted leftist values of tolerance, open-mindedness, diversity and inclusion, and her current views about gender essentialism are the opposite of that. Although there is plenty of criticism of the books themselves, and people re-examining the text to find problematic elements, it remains true that for most of her recent spate of haters spawned from the trans debate, the books remain relatively well liked, while JK Rowling as a person is the thing specifically seen as out of order. What I aim to do here is take a look at the books and see what they actually have to say on political matters, and hopefully we can figure out what kind of relation there is between the message’s the books espouse and what JK Rowling is currently saying. 1. Wizard Racism So, the whole pureblood thing. The Nazi parallels are obvious, but anyone who is somewhat invested in history and politics can quickly tell that the Death Eaters and Voldemort’s cause in general doesn’t really seem to make much sense. It’s simply full of anachronisms. We are told that their ranks are full of the old aristocratic pure-blooded families. Ok, that kind of makes sense. If muggle-born wizards and witches are on the increase, and they are some sort of social or political threat to the old nobility, then a reactionary response makes sense. But we never get a sense either that the muggle-born wizards and witches are an organised political group that is a threat to the sacred 28 families, or that pureblood power is in any way being taken away or threatened. Maybe it isn’t a political threat that the muggle-born’s represent. Maybe it’s a fear of non-magical blood diluting wizarding powers over time. But in order to make a judgement about whether such a fear is reasonable, let alone morally justified, we would need to know, or at least make educated guesses about the nature of how magic is passed down genetically which we just don’t get.

Maybe there is fears of the muggle world finding out about the Wizarding World and starting a second series of witch burnings, but this is never addressed or examined in the text. Even after the first Wizarding War, families like the Malfoys still have enormous wealth and influence. So much so that Lucius is not in fact well pleased to have Voldemort back. Well, that makes sense. If you are a super-rich aristocrat, highly placed in society, then you have nothing really to gain by joining a group that is dedicated to overthrowing that society. It kind of makes you wonder why the Malfoys and other Death Eaters joined Voldemort to start with. Another problem is the way that Voldemort joins forces with Giants and Werewolves. These are groups which serve as an allegory for marginalised people in the Wizarding World. And yet for some reason this revolutionary group that for some reason comprises of the rich elites (who would have the least motivation to change society through violence in the first place) is the group that is allying with them? The Slytherin’s we meet in the books are often described as ugly or otherwise unpleasant. Draco, Snape, Crabbe, Goyle, Millicent and Pansy all fit the bill here. They are described as a mix of brutish, ugly and stupid. Slytherin house seems to somehow be a rich kids elitist club and also a loutish criminal gang comprised of the worst elements of the lower class. In short, the point I am getting at, is that Rowling wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants the evil forces to be both the dirty and savage underclass and outcast elements of the wizarding world, and also its sneering and superior elite.

Voldemort’s forces contain a multitude of contradictions. Real life political movements contain contradictory elements and forces within them that are at odds with each other of course, but in the case of the Death Eaters and the Slytherins, these odd elements are never explained, explored or otherwise cleared up. There are possible explanations, but they remain speculation only, the text leaves the central antagonists confusing and impossible to understand politically. Despite Wizard Racism making up such a major part of the series, it is never seriously explored in a way to make us at least understand the rationale of why some wizards feel that way. It remains merely a label for evil that is neither meant to be questioned or understood. And I put forward the proposition that it is pretty irrelevant in the final analysis to the central themes and the journeys of the central characters (or any characters honestly) Being a fantasy racist is mostly just an aesthetic meant to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. If the bad guys hating on muggles was truly meant to be a central theme, then the near total lack of muggle characters aside from Harry’s awful extended family is rather baffling.

The whole wonder and whimsy on which the success of the books series depends relies on Harry being a part of the magical world. And yet what the conflict between the mundane and magical world might be is never elaborated. The bad guys central aim is to conquer and abuse muggles, and yet we never see any muggles find out about this or really interact with the story in any way. From nearly start to finish the whole conflict remains totally contained within the magical world, exploring what it means to have magic when someone else doesn’t, and what the moral and philosophical issues with that might be remain undeveloped. 2. The Power Of Love

Now we are actually getting somewhere! The text of the book, and the authors mouthpiece in the form of Dumbledore is pretty clear that the power of love is the central theme of the series. And yet this remains frustratingly under discussed when people are trying to grasp what JK Rowling’s worldview is, and what the actual message of the series overall is. Harry is saved by love innumerable times throughout the series. But the one which immediately jumps to mind for most people, the sacrifice of his mother to save him, is among the least interesting to me. Its such a universal idea, that of a mother saving her child, that I don’t think it can actually say that much about the authors mindset. So, without totally disregarding it, I want to talk about some other moments. First Narcissa Malfoy. When Harry is lying still, pretending to be dead in the forbidden forest after Voldemort’s killing curse has struck him, Voldemort sends Narcissa to check him. But Narcissa had one thing she loves more than anything else in the world. Her son Draco. And so when she realises Harry is still alive, she takes the opportunity to find out information about his safety, instead of just revealing the truth to Voldemort. Do she and her husband change their minds about pureblood supremacy and hating muggles? Not one bit, we don’t any indication of that being the case in the text, and outside of the text JK herself confirmed that wasn’t the case. And yet Narcissa was among the most crucial people in defeating Voldemort, because he had put her son in danger. It was not a change in her politics that caused her to change, it was a personal, familial love. And who could forget the most famous example of this, Snape! Throughout all the books he remains totally committed to Slytherin House, docking points from Gryffindor unfairly, siding with Draco, and hating Harry. Like with Narcissa we never see any serious sign that he changed his views about blood status or anti muggle feeling. Although his views on that are never made a serious focus. Snape switched sides and turned against Voldemort solely because he threatened Lily, there was no grand moment where he reckoned with the evil things he had done as a Death Eater and repented, no moment where he realised that the Death Eater ideals were wrong and that their beliefs were destructive and evil. And he remains throughout the books deeply unpleasant, being a bully to Neville, a bad teacher, not to mention spiteful and cruel towards Harry. He possessed one great redeeming quality which made him an unswerving enemy of Voldemort and aligned to the side of good, and that was his love for Lily Evans. A selfish and personal love, even though it became unrequited.

 Dumbledore basically spells this whole idea out at the end of Chapter 23 of Half Blood Prince and yet, Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have) you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!’

‘Of course I haven’t!’ said Harry indignantly. ‘He killed my mum and dad!’

‘You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!’ said Dumbledore loudly. ‘The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort’s! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven

In Rowling’s worldview, evil ideals are defeated, not through a systemic understanding of how oppressive structures work and how to defeat them, but through an individual love and empathy for those closest to you. Look at how the issues of house elves is addressed. Things which we would need to know to be able to judge what the right way to treat house elves on a systemic level is, like, how they came to be bound to wizards in the first place, why they seem to want to serve wizards for the most part, what it would look like for them to no longer fill that role and what they could do instead, none of this is addressed or explored. Hermione’s attempt at political activism is made fun of and dismissed both by the characters and the author. But how the characters treat individual house elves is taken very seriously. Harry is rewarded for not holding a grudge against Dobby and saving him from the Malfoys by having Dobby help him out several times, before finally giving his life for Harry. Sirius, who on a systemic level likes house elves, but mistreats Kreacher because Kreacher reminds him of his families pureblood mania, which he dislikes for political reasons, ends up getting his comeuppance when Kreacher betrays him to his death. But when the trio befriend Kreacher he becomes a loyal friend and ally. Once again, personal love and compassion is treated with respect, a systemic political solution is treated as a joke. I don’t mean to say this is some universal thing that JK sticks to, it is mentioned that Lupin suffers as a werewolf due to legislation, but for the most part, evil is a personal bullying and any political aspect is more of a surface veneer. It is not that the wizarding world is totally devoid of political messages, it is more that what political messages there are, are mostly unexamined and for the most aesthetic primarily and lacking in substance. This allows people to transpose their own values on to the world of Harry Potter for the most part. Its vagueness allows it to be widely liked and accessible, since it isn’t making too definite a political statement. However this also means that the message of the series is, while liberal in a general sense, and anti-authoritarian, is also pro-establishment, or at least anti-revolutionary. Staying in your lane and helping your common man is encouraged, violent change is suspect. So while the series, and JK herself isn’t very overtly political, for those who belief that evil is a system of privilege and oppression, and not merely the desire to bully people on an individual level, the series is fundamentally incongruent with their worldview.

[valasania-the-pale]

oooooooo please talk about "I Feel Your Blue Fingers on Me" and Trifecta Labs Lives! I'm so curious.

Will not lie, my reaction upon reading this was, "Oh, really? !!!" And then a smile with excitement haha.

Okay, so I'll knock out the easier one first; Trifecta Labs Lives was one of the WIPs I had no idea what it was about, and it turns out that that is because it's not actually mine lol. This was a set of notes I took for a friend's work (taking notation as they thought aloud in the position of helping them brainstorm, essentially) in their fictional world where a group of AI have gone rampant. It's really rather short, I think it wound up in my WIP folder because I just hit save, sent it their way, and forgot about it.

The other one, I Feel Your Blue Fingers On Me, is a Horizon Zero Dawn smut idea, oddly enough with another AI featuring.

Spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn, specifically the Frozen Wilds DLC.

I never made it that far into this, but now that I'm reminded of it I kinda want to give it another go sometime. The premise requires a bit of background - the two featured characters would be Aloy (protagonist of HZD) and CYAN, an AI left over from the 'old world' who was supposed to just be an autonomous, psychologically stunted custodial system, but whose creators permitted a level of sapience beyond legal parameters, thus granting her emotions. Aloy meets CYAN over the course of the game, and learns that CYAN is really depressed and lonely after a few thousand years on her own.

So, the idea was based on the idea that loner Aloy would eventually form a relationship with CYAN, which by the point of the story's beginning would be comfortable enough for them to experiment with new things - in this case, playing with the idea of 'overriding' Aloy's Focus device, a concept in the HZD fandom I have seen like twice and never in writing, much less in smut.

Essentially playing with various kinks of corruption, subliminal messaging, dom/sub dynamics, hypnosis, etc., but in an ultimately wholesome consensual way.

The title would have been kind of playing on the idea of CYAN (whose projections are, unsurprisingly, blue) playing with Aloy mentally since physically doesn't work. The fingers are metaphorical; CYAN's projection is a large sphere if memory serves, not an anthropomorphic appearance. Funnily enough I'm pretty sure I last touched this idea before I realized I was asexual, and I wonder if my subconscious was trying to tell me something about not particularly being into the idea of the whole normal sex thing (I tend to vibe way more with the mental aspect of smut than the specifically physical, though they're often linked).

Idk, I just really liked CYAN a lot, she got a lot of good dialogue options and she's just so sad, you know? A thousand years of just doing complicated math problems to while away the time with nobody to talk to, knowing the whole world ended and you got left alone, not deactivated as you should have been. She and Aloy have the same vibe of being alone, so let them be alone together, y'know?

I think I fell off of the idea when my computer started slowing down and I couldn't play HZD on it anymore; I'm hoping to pick up a new desktop sometime in the next year that can, and I'd love to revisit the idea then. Maybe I'll do so before to plug the anticipation :)

Thanks for asking! This was way more fun than I expected it to be!

[styxnbones]

4 for all for cass except for sects, for that one do 3!

ty for the ask! i always appreciate how much you like to hype up other ppl's oc

Essentials 4: not being in v5 they don't have any set predator type- but, since their Grip of the Damned means their kiss offers nothing but pain, they tend towards alley cat and sandman by necessity.

Life 4: in life, Cass already had the arrogance and controlling nature that would become their Malkavian madness, though before that point its debatable whether it was a straight up personality disorder. As for vices and addictions, Cass's vice has always and continues to be reckless overconfidence. She's always loved the rush of doing something she by all rights shouldn't be able to, defying expectations, and generally putting herself into and then escaping from dangerous scenarios- hence her nature as a Thrill-Seeker. She also had something of a recreational drug habit that has stuck with her in seeking out prey that is high, both for pleasure and for the sake of convenience.

Death 4: in LA she never had much of a coterie to speak of, but gained one when she left for New Orleans (aka the chronicle I played her in started)- who she rejoiced in inflicting her habit of giving shitty patronizing nicknames. Her favourite was Kristos aka Dirt Nap/Captain America, a gangrel fledgling who had been torpored since the civil war. He was directionless and gullible so she had lots of fun pushing him around. There was also Marcus (9-5/Marie O' Net), a stereotypically stuffy ventrue who had the audacity to have one dot in dominate and therefore earned Cass's ire for stepping on her toes. Clair ("Covergirl") was a mysterious and dangerous (read: hot) Tremere sent from New York to look into setting up a chantry, who Cass spent way too much downtime trying to find dirt on. And then there was Jean ("Socks-in-Crocs") a *very* rural gangrel who had literally the worst luck with frenzy rolls I have ever seen to this day and who consequently was held at arm's length from Cass. Broadly speaking she saw herself as the leader of this group, though she was happy to deflect blame for any fuckups onto Marcus since he was so keen to take charge. Other than that she was pretty buddy-buddy with a local Nos named Avery, though mostly in a 'keeping the competition close' kind of way, and towards where the chronicle dropped off she was making some contacts with a sabbat pack in the area.

Sects 3: which brings us to her opinion of the sabbat- which is largely dependent on who in the sabbat we're talking about. she was pretty chill with the pack she was getting to know- she admired how little they gave a fuck about mortals and how few roadblocks they put up for themselves in getting what they want (unlike many other kindred, especially in a cam city like New Orleans, who just love to make up secret rules) but she was also very aware that these guys were peons in the grand scheme of the sabbat and she held contempt for their lack of ambition (even if it made them more useful to her). As a whole, Cass doesn't buy the whole Gehenna-War-End-Of-The-World thing, but admires it as a tactic for keeping the masses in control. I think that she'd be unlikely to join the sabbat unless she got to jump in pretty high up the ranks, though she doesn't particularly like the idea of tying her loyalty to any one group. The thing that intrigues her most about the sabbat, though, is the idea of Paths of Enlightenment. Her sense of morality was already pretty deviated from the human norm even before the embrace, and since then attempting to cling to humanity has been thankless work (and largely pure luck- by all rights she should be way lower than Humanity 6 with the number of tests I had to roll) so shifting her mindset towards something else entirely probably wouldn't be too hard a leap.

Clans 4: Clan Hecata in interesting, since its something that has developed since her embrace. She had done some research on the Giovanni when she recognized her Kiss was similar to theirs, and found the history pretty fascinating. She generally appreciates the existence of the Hecata if only for the cover they lend her in lieu of any actual connection to them.

[ap-sadistics]

jung qvq [erqnpgrq] naq [erqnpgrq] ba yzxgjg qb? bgure guna or naablvat v zrna

ohhhhhh its funny really. "funny".

its technically more than two. i hate their entire friend group. its a bunch of bnfs (big name fans) on twitter. its absolutely certain you know at least one of them if youre in the fandom.

the thing im most irked about how they leverage their popularity for create a biased narrative against me. when i technically did no crime. i never even Spoke to the person. never interacted with them once. what i did. is vague them. for having the most wretchedly ooc characterizations for the sake of shipping a rare pair. and you see. i didnt have a problem with the ship itself. no! my issue. was that their characterization fucking SUCKED. i dont care if they called it "redemption" or "character development". it. was. out. of. character. straight. up. so i tweeted about this kid. i didnt mention their name. i mentioned the ship. and how i was sick of seeing it on twitter. i also i looked at their carrd and saw that this (this is a screencap of a screencap sooooo its old)

and i was you know what. im gonna do that. and that was the end of that

(i also was like was the hell does a kid have like 2000 followers that gives me fucking hives. bc lets be real. having a large social presence on the internet at that age when your a developing person is like. not ideal. im essentially antisocial and the idea of having that many ppl follow me for my stupid thoughts is fucking TERRIBLE. ive softblocked followers before to drive the number down. anyways i was thinking about it from that perspective. being conscious of numbers is Bad.)

flashforward a few hours and i noticed it wasnt the end of that. somehow the kid found my tweet and then supremely misinterpreted it and then sicced their followers/their friends onto my account. that tweet had a Large amount of pqrts (the stupid twitter culture thing where you essentially put on masks and stone the apparent criminal. and i was like. well this sure is a thing thats happening. and they def were twisting my words bc they screencapped my tweet and was bashing me about it. with absolutely 0 reading comprehension. well my course of action was to just go on private to cut off the engagement. what am i going to do? acknowledge what was happening with a tweet for them to twist and play the victim again? im not fucking stupid.

its really funny that after i privated i got 5 follow requests. THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDIOTS I EVER SEEN. blocked immediately. it was really funny.

thats not the funniest thing that happened tho. you might think that *i* might be playing the victim and that what happened wasnt that big of a deal. it wasnt. but also it sucked still. anxiety causing. but anyways it wasnt just a the qrts. after i privated, one of them reported my account for suicide

this was the funniest fucking thing that happened to me. i was livid during this whole incident but this was the funniest fucking part of this ordeal. it was HYSTERICAL. for the record there was none of that kind of content on my account! this is the most mentally healthy ive been bc i wasnt in my old uni anymore. not that i ever even posted about the kind of stuff ever.

this is clearly a petty attempt at harassment right? because they couldnt stand having someone think they are annoying and that their ship sucks (i didnt before but i do think it does now bc this incident made me hate the ship actually. because im petty too! but at least im self aware about it.)

someone also sent a bad faith ask to my fucking art blog because they haaaaaad to chase me down to a different fucking platform to harass me more

and like. what happened to me only proved my point. that teens shouldnt have a large following. this teen definitely abused their power didnt they.

who do you think had the worse experience. me or them? whose the real victim here.

if you think im problematic for fucking saying i dont like a person in public without once mentioning a name? get fucked.

also this happened again. it happened a second time. bc i found out there was a l/m/k zine going on and i said im not joining it bc they were a part of it. once again unnamed. LIKE OBVIOUSLY? IM NOT GONNA JOIN? it wasnt like i was going to fucking make it explode. but people toooooooook issue. i dont get how they find the tweet so fast im convinced one or more of them or their lackeys is stalking me. i could be paranoid tho.

anyways bc this is a friend group, the kid is a friend of a certain somebody. a very well known somebody. and bc they fed all their biased retelling of the incident to this somebody. im blocked by a very funny account.

super inconvenient really

you see theres more to it than this incident tho. i have an issue with how these people engage with their follower base. but honestly its a product of the kind of social media platform that twitter is. they clearly value the number of followers they have and to say it doesnt go to their head would be a lie. theres other specifics tho thats old news. that im not willing to divulge to an anon. who are you and why are you asking about a tweet from 3 days ago anon. you have me fucking paranoid. im gonna trust the fact you used rot13. out of courtesy. but im wary.

you might be able to deduce who the pricks are from the things ive mentioned here. but im not gonna say who they are to an anon. i dont trust like that.

[hideyseek]

12.15.2022

hmm started talking to myself about the writing process during my lunch break so i wanted to jot some ideas down while they're fresh. lots of fic talk below the cut, mostly about reunion!fic, which i'm writing for the kazetsuyo january fandom event.

i'm definitely worried about my ability to produce all of the writing i want to / need to / am promised to produce by the end of this year! mostly i am worried about reunion!fic, which i'm writing for kazeweek 2023! and also i am juggling my secret saito fic. i've never had two writing projects w/ deadlines in the same overlapping space (bc never been active in two fandoms at once) however, i am reminding myself that: 1. i am a much faster writer than i was two years ago! 2. it will be fine!!!!! (can u tell i simply did not have a second thing but wanted to commit to this list format lol)

here are the things i'm not too sure about:

what will the revision process look like? i don't really remember what it was like to thoroughly revise a piece of writing because the last time i did that was ... like jul/aug of 2020 which is now 2+ years in the past

i really want to make sure i'm making interesting narrative choices with what happens in reunion!fic, and part of that is just: i want to make sure i'm not writing the same thing that has been written four million times already! i've done a fair amount of trawling through ao3 reading things tagged "reunion" or "10 years later" or other similar tags, but i'm just not particularly good at this kind of thematic story pattern-matching or narrative elements synthesis. there are a few fics about group reunions (well, one in particular) that i have read and LOVED, so at some point in the revision process i might reread and try to poke at what makes me love them so much.

however!!!!! i will be saved by tvtropes! i did a really quick search this morning before work, and there are a couple pages about reunion stories that i'll take a look at that can hopefully help me pull back and take a more bird's eye view of the story and where it's going.

i don't remember at what point i used to like, split off and just start rewriting the whole fic essentially from scratch in a clean doc. no idea how i used to do that, the thought of having to do this for reunion!fic is ... hugely intimidating and i really don't want to. i'll need to come up with some strategies for how i can do that same revision work but ... not in that one large chunk, but i have ideas. in terms of at what point to move to a new doc ... not sure! i would love to decide beforehand but i don't actually think that's necessary. oh -- no i just remembered: i moved stuff when i was going to start working on it. so after i piece together the down draft, i'll copy the whole thing into a new doc and work off that for my first round of revisions, and then send that copy to betas, and then create a THIRD doc with the raw content of the second draft to work on as i go through beta comments. this is fully just: i love archiving things sooooo much. but hey! it'll work, it'll separate things into pretty distinct stages. i think it will work fine, and i can always reflect and revise the process afterward.

anyway! i was thinking through the strategies that got me to the final draft of a to b (or really, anything else i've finished before) and, i think they are:

revising in chunks -- one thing i did especially close to the final draft was to pull out the scene i was editing and rework it in a separate document and then paste it back into the "main" document. i think this will also serve me well with reunion!fic. i've noticed that i tend to get overwhelmed when faced with large chunks (more than a couple hundred words) of writing to either produce or "make good" (a task that is unfortunately completely distinct in my mind form the actionable task of revision). i'm hoping that deliberately

revision wishlist -- this is not something i did when writing a to b but i've seen some writers on here talk about it, and it appeals to the part of me that works best given essentially, a checklist of goals to work through systematically. i think once i've got my rough / down draft completely (likely today, mainly pulling from my organizing doc of previous draft material and my drafting ("outlining" lol) doc that i've been putting tiny scenes into in the last week), i'll read through it and make notes of anything that i notice that is ... not what i'm looking for in the final draft. i might need to do this a few times, with varying levels of verbally guiding myself, some things i want to check are: pacing, haiji's emotional arc (does it exist?), whether the tension is being sustained/raised through scenes or if it diffuses in places i don't mean for it to, consistent characterization (or at least, believably older!haiji characterization, my number one nemesis aha).

i suspect that having a poetic or musical emotional "anchor" for the fic will help a lot, that definitely helped guide some smaller tone/mood (sorry to my english teachers i kinda don't know the difference) decisions for a to b. however ... this time i do not have a convenient buddy to send me music, and i am simply: not very skilled at mentally linking these things. well ... i also thought about going through some web weavings on here for the vibe and then seeking out the full texts. or i'll just go through my tag for reunion!fic and hope that past!me did my proper duty haha.

lol ok. cool. i am very excited!!! but also very nervous!!!

[darkspace7]

Been frantically trying to shift around stuff because I wanted to play games on my phone but it unfortunately has the memory capacity of a potato so I've been looking through my notes app in search of things that could be deleted. Here's some ideas that have cursed my ever waking hours so now I foist the burden onto you!

A restaurant called "Subversion" that aims to do just that to your expectations. Food that looks all leafy and green so you'd expect a savory vegetable type deal? Nope you blue raspberry flavor. Or how about a large dessert covered in some sort of icing and now the waiter is bringing out a torch? So is it something like Baked Alaska mayhaps? No, the "icing" melts away to reveal it’s a steak. And the deal isn't limited to the food, oh no. You go in thinking it’s gotta be some fancy high end place but it looks like just a mom and pop cluttered shop. Then you get led through a door and suddenly faced with the most ostentatious place you’ve ever seen. Then the bartender gestures for you to follow them behind the counter and suddenly you're led through a trapdoor in floor. You now think you’re outside but suddenly a a door opens from behind a pile of trash bags against the back wall and then suddenly you’re in another version of the mom & pop store. The price is reasonable but you're the server now. This is your home now, you can never leave.

Bleach/Promare AU (Not gonna lie, I didn't know where I was going with this other than the potential for seeing Ichigo/Uryuu and the Zangetsu Duo in the colour pallet/artstyle. Also, shirtless fire fighters and weird fire aliens?

Candy Barrel Fairy Floss (Cotton Candy made from Various Candies? What types would work best? What would be the worst? Would they taste good???)

The Aizen from my one story idea (the one where he is genuinely the personality he presents himself as and maybe role-swaps Ichigo?) gets isekaied into an alternate past where Juhabach is his Dad. (Based on a dream I had, apperantly?)

• There's a group chat for the zanpakuto that Zangetsu was a part of before the timeline fuckery (reference to my one Ichigo/Uryuu story.) He gets pulled in again via Sode no Shirayuki and eventually gets Zanpakugo (Zanpakuto!Ichigo) in. Many cryptic memes x2 because they're both time traveling millennials. Of course they meme in various worrysome and increasingly unhinged ways. Yachiru also hops in sometimes much to many's confusion. (One of the others: "Yeah. You learn not to question it.") (This is obviously non-canon.)

•(In regards to Bleach) What happens if two people go inside a gigai at the same time???

•(Also in regards to Bleach?) What if Keigo is related to Reigen Arataka? (Reigen's his uncle)

•Pre!Canon Izuku gets isekaied into Fantasy AU decides to essentially say fuck it to his old world and stay with found friend family adventuring and doing hero shit in the new world.

•Crack Vestige AU where Izuku and then Bakugo get to haunt people with their found ghost family when Melissa finally gets passed the quirk due to shenanigans. Scenes & further shenanigans occur but not sad shit because fuck that noise.

•(In relation to last point) Fucming Vestige Bakugou & Izuku going whole ham on Shiggy, just decimating his shit. AFO steps in and then there's Yoichi coming in from behind with the steel chair-

•Also, En's coat is colour changing.

•"The Ruler" A non-binary royalty themed superhero who goes around carrying a wooden handheld rulestick. •Racecar Driver reverse isekai disaster lesbians? One day someone literally tries to invoke the whole 'bury your gays trope' on a recently disgraced Racer with their shitty lemon but apparently Truck-kun was having none of this bullshit and t-bones the fucker so instead of death we got this hot muscular dragon lady from the fantasy equivalent of the 1500's or whatever rolling out the back and proceeding to break a semi in half. Cut to her and the protag together as they proceed wreck the local illegal street racing circuit all the while trying to get back the protag's honour or something like that and maybe somehow catch up with the mysterious cryptid racer 'Truck-kun' so they get dragon lady home. There's mutual idiots in love, someone tries to murder protag by ramming them off road in every race, cars routinely defy the laws of physics in increasingly riduculou ways, dragon lady has an epic duel with a giant robot. It's an utter mess call it something equally stupid like "Speed Demon" or smth. •Jirou Kyoka x Daredevil (???)

•Doctor Stone Time Slip Theory AU but make it crack (or crack taken seriously) with mecha senku behind everything •Blackberry Syrup Orange Mango Mocktail with small crushed ice ("looks like a sunset." True but why?)