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constellaj · 3 years

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Please talk more about your reboot!

16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

okay so how i would re-do CANON is completely different from how i would talk abt a reboot so im gonna touch on a couple things in both contexts! the reason for the difference is canon rewrites imply i can go back in time and introduce dp fresh and new, before anyone knows what it is; but for a reboot, id be working with an audience that has a better understanding of the source material, so i dont need to spend as much time explaining, but i also need to keep everything recognizable

Valerie

REWRITE: i would def make it more danny's fault that her dad lost his job, like danny was intentionally being reckless and shattered some security stuff, and he has a whole mini lesson about learning to not just run in guns blazing. i would probably remove the dating stuff with her and danny (and tuckers crush) too, I think them wanting to be good friends is good enough for freshman year

REBOOT: the fandom already knows valerie exists, so i would actually skip the whole shades-of-gray introductory episode and have her be present as the huntress from day 1-- probably even before danny got his powers. cujo is also HER dog, and her backstory-- we'd find out in like, season 1, that a natural ghost portal (maybe one wulf opened) ripped open on her dog and killed him, and since then shes had a vendetta against ghosts cause of how reckless they are and their disregard for life-- of course, cujo isnt actually dead. cujo is a halfa. a puby halfa. anyway instead of a hoverboard she actually rides cujo around cause he can fly and its big and epic. valerie has BEEN amity parks ghost-eradicating superhero for at least a year (tho shes been in the shadows abt it) and her hatred towards danny actually just becomes really petty, like them flying next to each other chasing skulker just going "I got this. no I got this. no I got this" and they just get in each others' way and its a mutual grudge.

BOTH: i am NOT keeping in vlad giving her the suit to watch danny under any circumstances. it was only utilized half assedly in canon (when vlad couldve just had an invisible duplicate watching him instead) anyway, and I dont have any reason to keep it in a reboot either. instead i want her tech to be a combination of half-stolen and half-gerryrigged stuff and she slowly slowly learns how to build her own.

I also dont want anyone knowing her secret identity, except maybe her dad, and sam or tucker. i think it works better if danny isnt privy to this magic info

Freakshow

REWRITE: i would honestly just remove him. the episodes hes in arent particularly interesting, theyre just generic "we need a plot about x" filler and he's not compelling enough a character (at least in writing) to carry a better plot that another antagonist couldnt. i'm serious

REBOOT: unfortunately in a reboot he's gonna have to pop up somewhere or else ppl will be like "where IS HE" so I'm going to stick with running some kind of ghost circus, maybe a few occult things, but cut out a lot of the spooky magical knowledge and mcguffin stuff. maybe i could make him like, someone from vlad/jack/maddies college who always felt pushed around by them and so he has a vendetta? and theyd be the only reason he even learned abt ghosts in the first place. idk in either way I want to force him into being irredeemable but also include LYDIA (the tattoo girl ghost) way more-- I want to give her an arc that ends in her tossing freakshow aside and running off to be a ghost vigilante.

BOTH: dear god the infinity gauntlet is stupid that needs to GO AWAY. especially for the reboot cause it would exist in a post-mcu world and way too many people would complain about it

Vlad

REWRITE: amp him up to a far more sinister and villainous character. the crushing on maddie isnt enough, I want to show him on-screen performing experiments on ghosts and himself, dismissing everyone else cause he thinks hes smarter than them. i want him to be actively sabotaging the fentons at every turn. i would also clarify that he doesnt actually want danny as a son, but as a trophy-- a line where danny says something along the lines of "you don't want a son. you want a slave". i want to make him a character who wants to destroy the entire planet and put it in the ghost zone so he can be the true ghost king and i want to make this all evident from day one. if i'm writing a series villain you can bet i'm going to write a GOOD one. less petty drama here and more actual stakes.

REBOOT: it seems silly but sense with reboot we have the benefit of hindsight and recognizing that vlad wasn't a big series villain, theres no way i'd actually go back and write him to be such. for starters, of course, theres the fact that anything he does would really be an exaggerated part of the original, and it would bore an audience to see the same story again-- theres also the fact that it doesnt seem right to take a character who was treated as a joke half the time and suddenly make them big and important. no, instead for my reboot i want to lean into the petty gay uncle vibe. he had a crush on jack and now just casually insults him. he moves mansions every now and again by just haunting the family who lives in the one he wants, and taking over-- i mean, who is gonna believe that an actual ghost haunted you. he dislikes danny not because he has some concept of 'evil' and 'good' but bc danny is just too damn active. of course he actually does care about danny and his safety deep down, it's just on the surface they have very conflicting motivations-- not to mention that danny has been raised on legends from his parents of the villainous Wisconsin Ghost, who has to be stopped at all costs.

BOTH: i want jack and maddie to KNOW he's a half ghost and to actively be hunting him down for it, maybe bc they think hes possessed, or been a ghost tricking them this whole time, or the victim of a tragic lab accident who needs to be put to rest, etc. whatever the case it will give vlad actual tangible reason to despise them and genuinely suspect they dont have dannys best interests at heart. i think it would be neat if vlad was cynical and every time danny hit him with the "I'll expose us both. at least theyll still love ME" vlad could be like in the back of his head "oh god theyre going to kill this child"

Dani

REWRITE: cut her out. we don't need her character at all. maybe replace her with a more ominous shadow duplicate / clone that actually looks like danny himself and doesnt really have a name? you could probably combine her and dark dans characters for their arcs

REBOOT: instead of a clone from vlad, she's a guys in white creation using some of dannys dna after he was captured (and vlad broke him out bc he was like "ugh i guess i have to save this child")

BOTH: vlad actually cares abt her (duh), shes nonbinary (double duh), she gets the funny dissolve into goo powers

i had more i thought i was gonna write but this post is already very long and also im running out of coherency for this LUL

#ask #danny phantom #long post #adpRewrite

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keycrash · 4 years

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im sorry, the more you talk about rp on twitter the more Curious i get about the plot and stuff so. i understand that akane ditched the ab project bc the timeline got diverted, but how exactly did the timeline divert, and how did akane realise it did? and why'd you guys decide to have the timeline divert enough that ab project couldn't happen? thanks!

under cut because. i get embarrassed.

so the timeline in general basically got muddled/diverted the second we started fucking around with the characters. because of The Nature Of Rp we have a lot of different universes interacting & justify that as the construct of a literal multiverse within the plot, and the snowball influence of it changed enough that it could no longer connect with the vlr future

for one, aoi was kind of... hanging out in a different universe when the apocalypse happened, so he doesn’t die in it. (it was most convenient for our plot that we say he was ‘supposed’ to die according to akane’s vision of the future.) a few years later, when junpei shows up, aoi (who, when he could, would help send aid to the ZEverse apocalypse) helped get junpei and carlos placed at a shelter that was just getting founded bc conditions at their old shelter were super crowded and bad (and they got aid to that one as well). at the new shelter junpei met ren, a first nonary game kid, and after they were friends for a while and junpei was aggressively restless at his job at the shelter (radio operator & translator), they volunteered together to be a team for shelter explorations, where teams would go out to check up on shelters that weren’t in their communication network & either get them set up, report them as dead shelters, report them as viable to establish a new shelter, or take supplies if it can’t be salvaged

and due to Shenanigans ztd’s bomb shelter ended up being on the list (i decided that ‘ground zero’ of rad-6 was mistakenly reported as the nearby dcom facility rather than the bomb shelter). junpei and ren went there, junpei didnt remember shit, of course, bc of memory wipe, but if you recall in the apocalypse timeline of ztd, akane, junpei, and carlos are all time clones and didnt originally belong to the timeline— their original selves were executed in the vote.

so while exploring in the pod room running on reserve power the two found the dead bodies of the original junpei carlos and akane. junpei understandably flips his shit, ren contacts aoi to get carlos, who was at a hospital shelter visiting maria. (side note— carlos had been meeting akane during those maria visits bc akane had promises of curing maria, but he had to keep all correspondence with akane completely secret; so he’d seen her alive hours before). so they figure out carlos is fine, junpei’s fine, but carlos cant say that akane’s fine bc akane kind of internalizes in him that if junpei finds out anything the timeline will be fucked and carlos is carrying guilt enough as is from the apocalypse.

anyway junpei has a dramatic mental break later, aoi has a quiet, slow burning decline bc regardless of any of their theories about if akane is alive out there, he feels that the dead akane was His (timeline’s) akane and that hits him hard. he organizes a... not exactly funeral, but some stuff to memorialize her, junpei’s there. junpei leaves the one photo he has of akane. that’s the kicker.

at carlos and akane’s next meeting akane talks about how she never got to ask her brother why he hid the truth abt their parent’s deaths because he’s dead, and carlos is like uhh, i talk to aoi all the time he’s alive. he also mentions the C team bodies and subsequent events, and that’s when akane knows shit’s fucked.

so, two factors in the diversion:

a more passive one; aoi’s death wasn’t ‘necessary,’ it didn’t contribute to the AB project, but it was an indicator of being on the right track, a necessary consequence but not cause of being on the right timeline. without it, she knows something went wrong

a more active one; junpei giving up the photograph, which is minor in and of itself but indicative of larger shifts in junpei’s behavior and development that are setting him on a different path than tenmyouji was meant to follow

anyway at the time akane realized this, diana was due to die in like, 3 months. so she had that much time to come up w a proof of concept for some new way of solving their problems; she did manage to, deciding to utilize newfound knowledge of the multiverse to try to test technology for modifying the transporters to work across universes & become easy access to any timeline you want w/o duplication. with enough confidence in that she saved diana’s life and dragged sigma diana and the pods back down to facilities on earth to begin work at creating and perfecting that technology and figuring out how to utilize it

and as for the question of Why: basically i really wanted to RP akane and phi, but i wanted them interacting with everyone else down the line, which wouldn’t be possible if akane were to continue with the AB project. i also now have the freedom to take junpei off of the strict path of VLR without worrying what ripple effects it’d have later. whatever we end up doing it’s definitely going to be less tightly-woven and thematic than ZE/the AB project, but it’ll be better suited to a rp environment and it’ll give us some more freedom to use characters that were previously occupied for 45 years. also i’m just having fun.

#999 spoilers #vlr spoilers #ztd spoilers #bookworm-2692

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cryptocism · 5 years

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ive been scrolling through ur blog for a while (cuz ur dc opinions are Top Fucking Notch) and i saw what you said abt bart in tt 03 and f:fma and while i totally agree (it killed tt 03 for me lol) im super curious abt how youd do his development if given the opportunity?

I’ve been thinking about this one like A Lot so buckle up this is long:

it would kind of depend? On whether or not he’d be in an ensemble team like Teen Titans or with his own solo series.

I understand metatextually why he became Kid Flash in TT, since they needed him to be more mature and a more recognizable character and having him upgrade costumes/codenames is a good shortcut for both. But I’ve already talked about why it didn’t sit right with me.

So, lets flip the script a little bit - the start of TT would be largely the same. Our boy Bart is on the new Titans team, and things are kind of awkward after YJ disbanded, also Max is gone and Bart’s relationship with Wally is still not doing great. Things are rough, Bart has newfound doubts to deal with, especially now that the world seems to have gotten harsher and everyone seems to have a lot less patience to deal with him. The pressure to be more mature and a recognizable character is coming from other characters now rather than an authorial need: he’s reminded to take things seriously, or that he should know better by now, that he needs to slow down and think more. So Bart decides a change is necessary, and we get the library scene. He reads all the books, he reappears as Kid Flash, saves Tim via bullet catch, disassembles a gun, takes down Slade, etc. etc. Here’s my departure from canon though: it doesn’t work.

Kid Flash is not a solution, or a magical cure for immaturity. Reading a whole library so he’s miraculously smarter and more mature and capable is, at its core, a pretty naive conclusion. And it makes sense he would think that. But it doesn’t work. He’s still impulsive, distractible, hasty. He can’t put a lid on his own sense of humor. People still think he’s annoying or lazy or careless. And he keeps trying - he knows all this stuff now, he read a whole library! - but he’s still apparently too much the same person as he's always been. And even though he’s trying very hard to live up to the Kid Flash name, it still doesn’t feel like him. Wally doesn’t like it, since Bart is literally just imitating him now, which makes things between the two even worse. And Bart keeps worrying about what’s supposed to come afterwards, since “Kid Flash” is inherently temporary, and while Impulse was only peripherally related to the flash legacy, Kid Flash comes with expectations.

Bart is trying very very hard to be ‘grown up’ and ‘mature’, but he hasn’t actually learned anything other than a bunch of facts (which are still useful, but) he’s just trying to be who everyone expects him to be.

And this is what i mean about the ensemble thing, because this arc would be in conversation with the rest of the core four, who are also trying very hard to be people they’re not, but all in different ways. Bart obviously with the codename change, but Cassie, Tim, and Kon all have similar issues, they’re all trying to imitate people.

Tim is doing his Batman jr. routine, reverting back to the persona he had at the start of YJ. He’s cagey and mysterious and does questionable things without telling anybody, because he’s de-facto leader of the team again, and he has to be better than he is. No more kid stuff, the Titans are serious, he has to treat it like a job, not like a sleepover. And this whole act is putting distance between him and his friends.

Cassie is trying her hardest to put herself in a support role. Donna’s gone and she has some big shoes to fill (she and Tim could probably bond about that if he weren’t stubbornly trying to brood at all hours of the day) and she’s doing her best to just Be Donna. Cassie and Tim would work better with their team roles swapped, and they both sort of know this - Cassie is naturally charismatic, thinks on her feet, can maintain good PR, and when she’s confident in herself is great at leading. Tim is partial to planning ahead, secrets, and keeping in the shadows, and is better at being a confidant and emotional problem solver among the team (when he allows himself to be open among friends, that is).

But they’re both trying to fit themselves into what they see as pre-ordained roles: Robin is leader, Wondergirl is a supportive mediator. But Cassie’s got a temper and little patience for people being idiots, and Tim’s not predisposed to spotlights.

Kon on the other hand has a story that’s less about who he should be and more who he shouldn’t be. The Lex Luthor dad storyline is here (minus the mind control shit, although the threat of it is still brought up) and Kon is doing his level best to do nothing that could be interpreted as something Lex might do. While everyone is doing their best to Not be their own person, Kon has no idea if he ever was his own person. He’s questioning everything he does, wondering if it’s some kind of evil gene showing through when he’s angry or petty or selfish. He’s going through lots of clone angst.

So they’re all dealing with expectations and who they are or aren’t supposed to be, trying to fit themselves into boxes that don’t suit them and then convincing themselves that this is how it ought to be. Kon ought to avoid feeling or acting in any negative light because any sign of Luthor is a sign of evil, Cassie ought to tone herself down and act like Donna, Tim ought to step up and lead the team and act like Dick, and Bart ought to listen better and be smarter and slow down and grow up and do his level best to just Be Wally.

Throughout the issues they’d all get a spotlight on their various crises, taking them through complimenting character arcs. Kon would realize through a couple close encounters and chats with ma and pa and talks with his friends and citizens of metropolis that nobody is all good or all bad. Clark can be a real asshole sometimes and Luthor’s actually done a fair bit of good (usually in his own interests, but still we’re gunning for nuance). Turns out he doesn’t have a dark side to be tempted by, he was made from 50% complex person and 50% complex person, just like everyone else. Which means he isn’t destined to be the next Superman, or Superman’s next supervillain. He’s just like, a person. With his own thoughts and feelings that have nothing to do with genetics.

Tim would wear himself out and hide it from everybody until he killed himself, but it’s only when he sees Cassie also wearing herself out too that his ‘somebody needs somebody’ instincts kick in and they’re actually able to talk about how miserable they both are. Through some trial and error they’re able to figure out a good co-leader system for leading the team, having each other’s backs along the way, which allows for them both being able to help out the other members of their team with their own shit i.e. Kon and Bart’s identity issues.

Bart is, like Cassie and Tim, wearing himself out trying to be this perfect version of Wally that never actually existed. He actually hates the recognition the new name gives him, because people have expectations for him now, ones he can never seem to live up to. He’s bad at following orders still, which makes him a pretty shit sidekick for Wally, in fact he’s just pretty shit at being a sidekick in general. But, he reasons, he’s supposed to be grown up and responsible now, and responsibility is all about doing shit you hate until you die, so he’s probably on the right track.

It’s only later, once he gets some support from his friends, who help him deal with things like Max and YJ disbanding and stuff that he’s able to actually sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Wally. Wally confesses that he understands the pressure to live up to a legacy, and how he did his best to just Be Barry when he became the flash. In fact while Bart was trying to live up to Wally and be a good sidekick, Wally was trying to live up to Barry and be a good mentor. Wally’s the one to tell him that Bart’s always done his own thing, and is at his best when he does. They both agree they suck as partners, but maybe they should’ve tried to be family first. And there’s probably a racing metaphor in there somewhere because speedsters love their racing metaphors.

ANyway Bart returns to Impulse, forging a new path, getting along better with Wally now and hanging out with him just as civilians with no pretense. He learns some valuable lessons about how maturity can’t be learned in a book, and that he’ll get it himself the more he lives and learns from experience. The Titans all get along better now that they’re all sure of their places in the group, and they can all go on just being themselves without worrying about expectations or roles to fill or whatever.

...If Bart still had his solo series instead though, id actually want it to go in a sort of different direction? The thing about living up to predecessors and trying to be some ideal version of another person works well for the Titans because they can all deal with a similar issue in different ways, but I think it would also be interesting to do the complete opposite.

Lots of shitty things happened in very quick succession in Bart’s life that he had no control over: Max’s disappearance, having to move in with Jay and Joan (who are nice, but whom he barely knows,) leaving his friends in Alabama, Young Justice breaking up… Basically, things kind of suck for Bart, and all he wants is for them to go back to the way they were. Instead of trying to be grown up or mature or whatever, Bart is resisting every single encroaching thing about coming adulthood. Because all growing up ever seems to mean is that everything changes and either you have to leave the people you love or they have to leave you.

So this series would focus mostly on that, both in his civilian life; going into high school, not knowing anybody, the few friends he does make are less interested in ‘kid stuff’ and more focused on dating and interpersonal drama, high school itself seems to be geared entirely toward the “what are you going to do with your life” question, when he visits his old friends back in manchester, they’ve all kind of grown up without him. And in hero life; everyone from Young Justice is trying to move on and not talking to each other, his father figure and mentor is gone and he's not really jiving well with the rest of the flash family, and people just seem to have less patience for Impulse now that he’s older.

Growing up is hard. It’s hard and no one understands. Especially not when you’re also a superhero and have dealt with some quality trauma like losing loved ones and feeling yourself die. So it makes sense that Bart would resist that in every way possible, do his best to pretend like everything is still how it used to be, for once in his life just trying to make everything stay put. He refuses to get rid of his old stuff, he doesn’t want to treat any villainous threats seriously, people in school keep talking about college and jobs and tuition fees and Bart wants none of that, he acts out, refuses responsibility, gets reckless under the pretense that he never used to have to be cautious.

And this is the part where I’d bring in Inertia, cause Thad was robbed and I want him to have an actual arc that doesn’t end with infant-splosion. Also he can have a good ol companion arc to Bart. Welcome to foils everybody, where two identical boys with opposing life experiences get to thematically compare and contrast with each other as they deal with the trials and tribulations of growing up.

So, I’m ignoring every appearance Thad ever made after Impulse 1995, picking up instead where his story left off where he swore vengeance on his creators and disappeared into the speed force. And he’s off to do exactly what he said; Thad Thawne II is going to kill his namesake/grandfather/creator - the president of Earthgov.

But, turns out assassinating the president of a whole fucking planet is a lot harder than he thought - Thad has planned extensively for every moment of his life, so once he starts going off script things predictably go a little off the fuckin rails. Thad fails, obviously. For one because despite how much President Thawne might deserve to die, Thad at this point hasn’t done anything worse than attempted murder, and making him a killer would put a wrench in any kind of redemption arc he could have. Also he’s acting on rage, in a highly emotional state, basically going up against the entire government. Of course he’s going to get caught by the science police and brought into custody.

Bart, meanwhile is jumping with both feet into any kind of escapism he can find, which involves various time travel shenanigans and lands him in the 30th century. He gets to reunite however briefly with his mom, but the mission he had gets derailed by the appearance of Inertia.

Every time Bart and President Thawne interact, the president always seems to make a bid to sway Bart to the Thawne side. This never works, which is part of the reason Inertia exists in the first place; a version of Bart that the president could control. When Inertia landed in the 30th century, hell bent on assassinating his creator, the President subdued him and eventually coerced him back over to the Thawne side of the family feud. No longer a rogue agent, Inertia is back to his old self, all about destroying Bart and the rest of the Allens.

They have a battle, taking place all over the 30th century city, and Bart does his best but Inertia has the entire Earthgov police force on his side, and Bart eventually gets captured. He gets taken to some kind of holding facility, meets with the President who monologues as him while Inertia stands beside him like a good lackey. Then suddenly the speed-inhibiting cuffs or whatever Inertia had put on Bart to stop his speed malfunctions, and Inertia drops the act, now Impulse and Inertia working together to take down the Earthgov people holding them there.

Turns out as soon as Inertia knew he couldn’t take out the president, what with all the military force President Thawne had on his side, he bided his time until he could. He uses Bart’s help to finally get President Thawne cornered, and the assassination plan is back on track. Except now Bart is the thing stopping him. He makes the argument about how murder bad. Heroes don’t kill, etc. Inertia insists he isn’t a hero. But Bart reminds him that that’s not how Max saw him.

Inertia hesitates just enough that President Thawne is able to get away, and now the two of them have to make an escape attempt back to the past. Bart insists on trying to take Meloni with them, and they try but ultimately fail somehow (maybe someone has to stay behind to make sure they can make the trip safely, idk. At first Thad is willing to stay behind, since there’s nothing really for him in the past. But Meloni knows that President Thawne would destroy him if he did, and she can’t let harm come to either of her sons - and she does consider Thad her son, just like Bart. She’s had far too little time with either of them, but she loves them all the same. She tells them to take care of each other, and is the first to encourage them to be like, actual brothers.)

After yet another tearful goodbye, Bart swearing he’ll find a way for them to all be together again, Bart and Thad go back. And they do end up having to lean on each other, because shit’s tough for the both of them. Thad initially wants to apologize and possibly reunite with Max and Helen, and then finds out Max is gone. And Bart has someone who understands exactly what he’s going through.

Things get a little more lighthearted from here. Bart and Thad don’t get along well at first, since they’re both going through rough times and lots of changes and their first instincts are to lash out at each other. But eventually they form a sort of camaraderie through shared grief, then shared fish-out-of-water experiences. Which evolves into shared inside jokes and video games and comic books and they become slow but steady friends.

They upgrade into brothers when Bart defends Thad against the repeated (and not entirely undeserved) suspicion he receives from the rest of the Flash family. Jay and Joan take him in, but it’s clear they don’t trust him, and neither does Wally. Bart stands up for Thad, arguing that he’s as much of a Thawne as Thad is, and treating Thad like he’s the next Cobalt Blue is just going to ensure that history never changes and stupid family feuds are forever. After this, Thad starts trusting Bart a little more, and kind of solves Bart’s problems regarding encroaching adulthood with his friendship. Neither of them really had a childhood, and Thad hasn’t experienced 21st century life at all, much less the societal expectations to grow up. So Bart gets to have fun again, and Thad won't judge any of his games or his books or his attitude or interests for being childish or lame because he’s fascinated by the experience of anything regardless of the target audience.

And from there it's a series about these two becoming brothers and growing up and the different lessons they learn and wacky characters they meet along the way. Thad ironically also puts Bart in a position where he has to take on more responsibility, since even though Thad can imitate heroic actions and is actually pretty good at it, he doesn’t understand what makes them heroic. Bart has to draw on a lot of the things Max taught him and now has to teach them to Thad.

There’s crossover comics with Superboy, where Bart laments about having to deal with grown up stuff, and Kon gives him a new perspective on the whole “being young forever” thing, since that was a reality Kon actually had to deal with and it sucked.

Through various misadventures they meet new and familiar characters to give them different perspectives on the whole passage of time thing. Villains who despise children or childish things, villains who embrace it but probably too much. People who talk about growing up as the worst time of their lives, others talking about it like it was the best. Kids and adults alike trying to force Bart and Thad to act a certain way while treating them another.

The two of them come to opposing conclusions about this; Thad wants to embrace change completely, partly because he wants to experience firsthand all that life has to offer, but also his worldview depends on believing that anyone can change, and anyone can be better, because he has to believe he can be redeemed for all the shitty stuff he did. Bart, on the other hand, knows his life isn’t perfect but thinks, based on recent events, that it’s all just going to get worse from here, and so resists change as much as possible.

Thad, in his haste to experience everything, sometimes ends up going too far, either burning both of them out, or pushing them into situations that they’re not ready for or are ill-equipped to handle. Bart, on the other hand is so resistant to change or responsibility that he stops them from doing actual necessary things like planning their futures or doing chores or making new friends. This acts as the crux for their main conflict that slowly builds throughout the series, and then in a finale to the arc, they both figure out a way to get Meloni back to the past, and to raise some stakes they have a falling out in the middle of the mission about it.

Bart accuses Thad of trying to leave him behind, or trying to be the better version of him again, and that old insecurity about Thad replacing him crops up. Thad thinks Bart just can’t handle anything outside his personal bubble and wants to force him to live in the real world. Plus he also feels kind of abandoned by Bart, who often would leave Thad to do the scary adult things on his own.

Tensions still high, there's suddenly an external threat to deal with - probably president thawne and the science police - and they attempt to continue arguing even while fighting the president. I’m making this up as I go so lets say yada yada big climactic moment it's looking like the two might fail to get Meloni back and they’re both still angry with each other and Bart just… can’t take it anymore.

He keeps losing people, and the ones he keeps he always seems to screw up with. And at the end of the day he’s just a kid who wants his mom. Is that really so much to ask? So there’s a reversal, a parallel, if you will, of the assassination attempt from the beginning of the series, this time with Bart. Or, because I don’t think many people would buy that Bart would actually ever for real kill someone, maybe he’s finally about to get his mom back, but she doesn’t want to go (since she made that deal with the president that he wouldn’t harm anyone of the Allen family so long as she stayed with him) so he’s trying to force her, risking the lives/well-being of the entire Allen bloodline across all of time.

This time it’s Thad who has to talk him down, who has to remind him about being a hero, who has to remind him that trying to go back to some magical time in the past where things were better is just going to stop him from learning and growing as a person, and that doing anything and everything possible to get there is just going to lead to Bart doing something he Actually Can’t walk back from.

Alright but here’s the thing because having Bart be forced to leave his mom again for like the billionth time is tired and overdone, and personally the whole message about heroics involving extreme and damaging amounts of sacrifice can only go so far. So here; Thad and Bart are both right.

Like on the one hand, yeah, it’s childish and selfish for Bart to want to be with his mom at the expense of literally everyone else in his family. On the other hand, the fact that they can’t be together because some asshole is upholding a stupid grudge is bad and unfair and wrong. The issue needing to be fixed is not the kid who wants his mom, it’s the jackass keeping them apart (and who also wants to kill/imprison people). So Bart convinces Thad that they have to save Meloni, and Thad convinces Bart that there has to be another way - one where they get their mom back and the Allens don’t have to be hunted.

The whole story would be leading up to the two of them coming to this conclusion; the healthy middle between the two extremes. Where they have the maturity to plan ahead and sort through their differences and figure out the best course of action with the least amount of collateral, but they don’t let go of that adolescent need for justice and fairness - that thing that makes you dig in your heels and say “no. That’s not fair, that’s not right.”

SO here’s where I’d put the title card: “Bartholomew and Thaddeus Take Down The Government”. How do they do it? No idea! I’m flyin by the seat of my pants here! Do they run for office? Do they publicize the president’s crimes in such a way he gotta go to jail? Do they somehow turn public opinion against him enough to get him out of office? idk!!! And I don’t remember enough about Earthgov’s political situation to put an accurate read on what exactly they might do to disrupt it.

Either way they don’t kill him, manage to free their mom, and they all go back to the past together. And a new arc would involve the three of them getting settled in the past; Meloni would be a main character now, and hers is a two-pronged fish out of water story where she’s trying to figure out how shit works in the past, with overtones of the struggles of being a single parent.

And... I’m not going to say any more about that because this is long enough already oof.

TL;DR I think a coming of age story would be cool for Bart, and having to deal with growing up when he never really had a childhood. Also the comic itself would be aimed at younger audiences, who can probably relate to having a Bad Time in the Teens and wacky hijinks with friends and siblings.

#soapbox #anonymous #asks

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

Text

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 15 - Candy Page 34

==>

John finally decides to let the relevance of his story end, and enjoy that he’s made at least some of his other friends happy with his choice. Time to read Page 34...

VRISKA: Pfft, yeah, wh8tever. I’m basically Immortal, bitch.

Preeeetty sure you’re confusing yourself with one of your parents.

Pff, actual healthy kismesis with a Tavros? Wow, we’re getting all sorts of redemption by not-really-Vriska proxy here.

HARRY ANDERSON: he’s always getting all weepy whenever i talk to him anyway. HARRY ANDERSON: i don’t think i could have taken another round of him choking back tears while apologizing to me about “what happened with me and your mother, harry.” HARRY ANDERSON: i mean, god. he’s not even fucking DRUNK when he does this. HARRY ANDERSON: that might actually be the most embarrassing part.

.......

Okay, having grown up with a father who suffered from serious depression and would break into tears embarrassingly easily, uh. I can relate? But also fuck you, that’s inconsiderate.

--Dammit, new Vriska is catching wind of old Vriska.

Vriska and (Vriska) both start shrieking at a pitch John’s only ever heard one time before. It was a sound that once accompanied the end of everything. A sound once heard the night he dreamt in anime.

Oh that’s brilliant. If the entire Candy arc ended here it’d be great, though I know it’s not quite over yet.

==>

...Oh shit, we actually get to see what happens immediately next.

Interesting introspective thoughts! Or, trying her best NOT to be introspective and failing.

Oh my god, SHUT UP Gamzee. Vriska, just kill him already??

PFFF HE SENT A PIC OF IT TO KARKAT :D

Pfff. Yeah, Vriska, TRY and ignore what just happened and how it was almost entirely your idea.

(Vriska) is so furious, she has no way of pinpointing the exact moment her intent stopped being intimidating him into silence and started being guaranteeing his silence, forever.

Thank FUCKING goodness, PLEASE kill him.

YAY he’s dead! :D (Even though he’ll probably revive anyway because bullshit.)

Heheh. NOW we get a cross-Vriska heart to heart.

==>

Alright, a bit more John moping. Man... this Candy section is a whole lot easier to swallow AFTER Meat than I imagine it would have been before.

.....heck. EITHER of these epilogue branches are really fucking hard to swallow the first time around without the other’s context.

Oh huh, it’s his house from the Medium then? Relocated and stuff?

Jake, hm. Is Jake going to try and leave his son with John like that failed kidnapping in reverse or?

Jake snaps the elastic on his pair of red underpants. It’s the only thing he’s wearing.

Oooookay then.

JAKE: She had a certain way she liked me kipped out and well, i didnt want to bring anything that belonged to her when i left. Nothing she er, might miss. TAVROS: You took me,

Jake winces.

TAVROS: And,,, you took you,

Jake’s wince deepens.

Oh, so that’s what this is! Jake fleeing with his son from an abusive relationship. About gosh darn time. .....geez, how bad did it get for JAKE to finally muster the gumption to do that himself after all these years???

Jake is one whole wince now

I know THAT feeling. Or at least feel like I do.

John you dedicate your life to keeping this child happy

JOHN: it’s just been kind of a rough forever.

JAKE: Maybe you should blame me? JAKE: Maybe i need someone to blame me. For once. JOHN: ...huh? JAKE: I think im starting to realize that ive been going through life with the mindset that nothing has ever really been within my control.

YES.

This is how Vriska broke Tavros way back in the comic, by constantly denying him agency. Jake’s been battered down the same way too, and it’s not too late to pick up the reins. He’s already DONE that by finally leaving his genocidal wife.

There’s a bit of Page of Hope-yness to this whole disastrous Candy timeline, come to think of it? People fulfilling others’ desires out of obligation constantly, doing what they think others want? Roxy, Jake, Dave and Karkat... all fucked over at the aggressive whims of more active folk, rolling over when they really shouldn’t have? Or in Roxy’s case, her CHARACTER basically SHOULD NOT HAVE IN THE SLIGHTEST?

JAKE: Havent you ever wanted to let someone make the tough choices for you?

Huh.

Or maybe he is doing exactly what Jake has always done. In a certain light, isn’t ascribing all this mess to some unconscious influence he might have had over the metaphysical shape of reality just a way to brush off his simpler failures as a man and a father?

Yes. You can act and change this too, John. You almost did with the kidnapping before! Go and take down the new Batterwitch.

Hm, Hopey thing?

JAKE: John. JOHN: yeah? JAKE: Take my hand. JOHN: what? why?

Oh shit. Are they going to be able to FIX some of this BS with some sort of hopey thing??? :D Probably too much to hope for but still!

Being flung from Jake’s orbit of Hope and Change

Pffff. Had to throw in an Obama didn’t you.

...Oh. Oh wow. Oh we get to figure out what the fuck was up with Roxy all this time. Oh boy.

JAKE: So what if it doesnt change anything? Wont it matter to your family to see you care? JAKE: Wont it make you feel better to try?

Heheh, Hope aspecty stuff. The ability to believe that something matters even when you “know” it doesn’t.

==>

...Yeah, it’s pretty easy to relax on a dead Gamzee.

Oh cool. These Vriskas are alike enough to bond! New Vriska is still in her teenage unbalanced go-for-it stage, and old Vriska has been knocked down a peg by the clown incident, putting them on a close enough level to not want to instantly disown each other, unlike old Vriska and ghost Vriska.

VRISKA: The Mayor’s dead, dude.

HOW did the Mayor die?!?? Did I just FORGET that from the end of Homestuck or something??

(I mean, probably.)

Callback to the clouds in that first Jade dream John had.

(VRISKA): Or may8e the truth just makes me kind of nervous. VRISKA: What “Truth”? (VRISKA): Don’t tell him I said this, 8ut, I think John is just an extremely powerful 8eing. Even when he sucks. (VRISKA): And he certainly does appear to suck in this reality. (VRISKA): And yet, the uneasy feeling is there. (VRISKA): It’s a vague feeling I’ve had in the 8ack of my mind for a long time, 8ut it really hit me when I was talking to him earlier. (VRISKA): It’s distur8ing to think a8out that much power 8ottled up in one stupid nerd who’ll never understand it. VRISKA: What Power are you even talking a8out? VRISKA: Like, lame Wind Powers? (VRISKA): No, I mean... (VRISKA): The power to shape reality. Even without intending to.

FUCK did he really cause all this??? Even the Roxy shit?!??? D: D: D:

It’s being left vague but it IS sounding like John was actually RIGHT about all that stuff. FUCK, if the “villain” who messed up Roxy is actually just John’s subconscious... :C

Even if the epilogue ends right here, though, with John about to call Roxy, I can imagine it working out, though. It’s on a right enough track there.

(VRISKA): I’ve spent so long caring so much a8out what other people thought of me. Mainly that they saw me as important, or making a “difference.”

Mhmm mhmm. Light n stuff.

Yeah, realizing that importance isn’t ALL that’s “important” is really, um. Important. Ahem.

Hm, other Vriska, that smile had seven pairs of dots, not eight. :?

(VRISKA): The POINT is, I was so mad at her. (VRISKA): That happy ghost version of myself, who was free of everything. (VRISKA): I was pro8a8ly mad 8ecause she got to 8e who she really was, without stressing a8out it, which is something I never felt like I was allowed to have.

Indeed.

(VRISKA): I guess I mean there’s someone specifically I fell out of touch with, who it feels like I’ll never see again.

Too bad, only ghost Vriska got her reunite with ‘Rezi. :P

(VRISKA): On some level I knew she was right. She was happy and honest with herself. And that’s what made her... (VRISKA): A version of myself who was actually worthy of someone I cared a8out.

Yyyep. As I said. :)

VRISKA: You’re just talking a8out The Girl You 8linded that one time, aren’t you? (VRISKA): Ummmmmmmm.

Heheh. Yeah, you’re not going to hide that sort of thing from your sharp near-clone.

Oh cool! She gets to see all those messages and feel turboguilt or something.

...oh shit. Is a message going to actually get to her? It-- oh shit. Didn’t Terezi have her phone buzzing in her pocket and ignored it in the end of Meat or something? Or at SOMEONE did and I thought it conspicuous but it didn’t get addressed in that side of the story and-- FFFFuck is she eventually going to see it or??! D:

She’s GOT to have seen it before running all the way off with villain Dirk, right?? D:

==>

Okay. You seem to be thinking clearly, Roxy. What’s going through your head? Give us some answers. Don’t fuck this up too much, John.

but she knows by now that it’s not her job to make him happy. That was something she gave up on years ago. But wanting to? That feeling is still as fresh as it always was.

FUCK was this all just a placid feeling of obligation to make John happy for all he did to ensure victory or something??? D: D: D:

She’s still working through what she feels about distancing herself from Jane

Yesssss

If he’s truly about to be real with her for the first time in forever,

Gosh fucking DARNIT John, you could have fixed all this DECADES AGO if you had a real talk with her ONCE!!!!!

ROXY: the more i thought abt it the more i figured holdin on to that one thing made me lose out on some other shit ROXY: u might relate JOHN: haha, you got me there i guess.

JOHN: i’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how things got to be like they are. JOHN: i guess i’ll just come out and say it. JOHN: i completed fucked up your entire life. JOHN: i’m not going to pretend like there are two sides here. it’s my bad, totally. JOHN: like, not just what happened to our marriage, though it’s also true that that’s completely my fault. JOHN: but even before that... JOHN: i think i fucked up on just this massive, fundamental level, and it’s what i did— JOHN: or, well, what i didn’t do— JOHN: that caused every stupid bullshit thing about the way this world is.

...Huh.

That may not actually be true, and Roxy might be about to prove how self-absorbedly reductive that is.

ROXY: oh nah ill stop u rite there my man

Okay YES. If this wasn’t him, then SET HIM THE FUCK STRAIGHT. :D

She knows more than he does, and she doesn’t need to hear it.

TELL US TELL US TELL US

YES TEAR INTO HIM he’s wanted that for so long stand up for yourself and tell us what the fuck happened and why

He’s been looking at her, really looking at her, and she doesn’t want to blink, just in case that shatters it.

Yes because he was looking for the real Roxy that would call out his BS

JOHN: i used to be so angry that you wouldn’t tell me what you really thought, before. JOHN: not like i wanted to FIGHT fight, but like. JOHN: i’m just not used to this flavor of roxy. ROXY: hm ROXY: sounds to me like u just disproved ur own hotshot theory then genius JOHN: huh? ROXY: you wished i was one way the whole time we were married ROXY: but i wasnt

YES!!! Yes his theory’s disproven! He never WANTED Roxy to just act that way, he wasn’t the cause of this, I was hoping for that! :D

ROXY: i was bad at standin up for myself then and im learnin to be good at it now

That’s....... sad, if that’s the explanation. But it’s better than mind control I guess. :(

JOHN: but... JOHN: you were never like that before i... ROXY: dude ROXY: where tf do u get off trying to decide what is or isnt me being “like me” enuff ROXY: do u think ppl stay the same their whole damn lives or what

Oh wow. Now Andrew’s slamming SLAMMING of fanfics. He’s saying “who are you to know for SURE that they wouldn’t act that way”?? That’s pretty good.

ROXY: i like the way things turned out just fuckin fine ROXY: so maybe u could stop wastin precious eternity thinkin ur so special that its ur fault everyones not perfectly happy

:’)

Mhmm, and they’re free from the heroic design arcs or what have you. Or... were, until Dirk tore them back in again. Tossed aside their fucking victory with his selfish... ugh.

Mhmm, Roxy’s the perfect person to explain that not being in a canon, Light-filled timeline isn’t really a bad thing.

ROXY: i just do things the best way i think to do em and then shrug n hope it works out?

Roxy thinks about time and the spirals of choice that hang just outside her periphery, and the vertigo grows.

Good advice, and hm. Maybe there’s some Void sight kind of playing into this as well, making it easy for her to get paralyzed by indecision and she’s had to learn to work through it.

...Ooh, that was a really cool non-binary gender diatribe in the narrative text. That’s some nice stuff. I felt like that was missing from the Meat side, glad we got it here at least. :D

JOHN: there’s literally nothing to do but keep moving forward. JOHN: i may as well not be a big fucking downer about it if i don’t have to be.

Thank goodness.

YES, JOHN SHOWING HIMSELF STRAIGHT-BACKED FOR HIS SON!!! :D

Man, I wish my dad had done that instead of all the other shit he did. At least he’s dead. :)

(Here’s a hint in case you’re wondering why I was relieved when my Dad offed himself.)

But that’s off topic. Let’s wrap up this epilogue already!!

==>

Page 39... only three or so pages left, right?

Pff, Karkat’s keeping them safe.

Heheh, more shitty Liberty statues.

Heheh, using them for weapons caches.

Gosh I hope they actually love each other and are mostly happy. Jade seems happy, at least. :(

Dammit, there go the doubts. He wouldn’t have had those doubts with Karkat. :C

He’s standing in the Oval Office of the White House.

Oh heck yes. Please tell me...

And over there... is something he doesn’t quite recognize. It doesn’t seem to fit in. He steps closer to investigate, wiping away at the layers of moss and dirt to reveal a surface he most certainly does recognize. It’s a transportalizer.

YES

Dave doesn’t waste any time. You don’t find something like this in the Oval Office and start agonizing over whether or not to use it. He steps on the platform, and in a blink his surroundings are completely different. The centuries of overgrowth are gone, and he appears to be in some sort of crypt, boxed in by walls of smooth, golden stone. At the far side of the room, something is hanging on the wall, encased in a sort of display. It’s a mounted god tier costume, about the size an adult male would wear. He recognizes the symbol. It’s the same one Jake used to wear when they were teens. It is the symbol for Hope.

HELL FUCKING YES

YES OBAMA

OBAMA: Hello, Mr. Strider. OBAMA: I’ve been waiting a long time for you to show up.

Dave’s jaw hangs open. The legends have been confirmed. As well as several key headcanons of his. Without thinking, he drops to one knee and bows his head.

DAVE: m... mr president DAVE: its an honor sir

Man, forget my past stomach clenching. Forget my hesitations, my turbulent emotions, all the ups and downs the various facets of these Epilogue chapters have given me. THIS is the best. THIS makes it all worth it. This is the best thing to have ever happened, and if I ever feel any regrets about ANYTHING that transpired in the Epilogues, I’ll feel infinitely better the moment I remember it gave us THIS.

The most beautiful scene I’ve ever witnessed. All my liberal, economy-ranting hopes and dreams confirmed. It’s glorious.

OBAMA: Come on now, Dave. We can’t be having that. OBAMA: I’m nobody’s king. I’m a democratically elected representative who took an oath to serve his country and his people. People like you, Dave. OBAMA: If anything, I should be the one bowing.

OBAMA. I MISSED YOU OBAMA. I CAN HEAR YOUR VOICE THROUGH YOUR TEXT AND ITS SO COMFORTING AND UPLIFTING

DAVE: mr president what i mean is im a huge fan of yours and i hope this doesnt sound fucked up but on some level i feel like ive been waiting my whole life for this moment?? OBAMA: I know, Dave.

Yes, yes you have. Yes, we can.

OBAMA: Most people thought I was gone. But I was keeping an eye on events. OBAMA: Wouldn’t miss it for anything.

I, too, would like to have the feeling that Obama is still out there, keeping an eye on things. Watching, smiling... providing some last background of Hope as things seem so temporarily sour. That feeling would be amazing.

...I mean he’s still alive IRL, sure, but not Obama watermark smiling lovingly from the sky or anything like it should be.

Yes, back to reading. Back to this glorious, definitely canon moment. The moment we learned that Obama was with us the whole time. :’)

DAVE: sorry if this is nosy but if you didnt die when you disappeared then how did you die OBAMA: Most of that is classified, Dave.

Pfffffff :D

OBAMA: When I was a boy living in Hawaii, on my thirteenth birthday I was visited by a mysterious stranger. OBAMA: He was an older man with a mustache. Kind of a corny, old-fashioned, adventuring type. He tried to convince me we were related. Of course, I thought he was full of shit. OBAMA: To this day, I’m not sure about that. Maybe he was. I didn’t think much of his tall tale at the time, but what did pique my interest was his story. OBAMA: He was voyaging all over the Pacific looking for a mysterious island, which supposedly had all the answers he’d spent his whole life searching for. OBAMA: During his travels, he set up outposts all over the ocean to help with his search. Such as one near where I lived as a boy. The outpost had a laboratory, an archeological dig site, a network of underground tunnels, the works. OBAMA: One time, I snuck in there and did some exploration of my own. Somewhere in the maze of underground ruins, I found a transporter pad, just like the one that brought you here. OBAMA: It sent me to a new realm. A place they called the Medium.

Grandpa Jake of Earth A, thank you SO much for bringing us this gift. The gift of Obama.

OBAMA: Hey, why don’t we take a walk. You’ll have a chance to collect yourself. And there’s something I’d like you to see.

:O :O :O

I am shivering with anticipation.

Ah, leave it to Obama to help Dave with the final steps of his character arc.

OBAMA: Are you sure that’s all he is, Dave?

FIX THINGS OBAMA!!!! :D :D :D

Wait, what if Obama can turn things into an actually legitimate DaveKatJade? That would be a miracle only a god of Hope could pull off.

OBAMA: I’ve had my share of doubts about all that, just like any other man. OBAMA: And I’ve had plenty of the same kind of struggles as you, Dave. DAVE: wait DAVE: you...

Obama nods, smiles wistfully. Dave arches his eyebrows high above his shades. They stare at each other, and in the look they exchange, they seem to say all that needs to be said between two grown men on the matter.

:’)

OBAMA: Believing is the key to understanding the truth underlying the words, the truth underlying the ideas they represent, and the truth underlying who we are as individuals. OBAMA: The power of belief, the power of Hope, that’s what endows that which is intangible, ephemeral, or uncertain with a sense of reality. OBAMA: It brings focus to the insubstantial, the mirages of the mind, the multiplicity of what is possible, of what could be, and isolates it—concentrates it—to turn it into that which is. OBAMA: And the result of that, Dave, is what we call truth.

I didn’t think we’d be learning more about the Hope aspect straight from the mouth of Barack Obama.

OBAMA: He taught me about many things. Combat, philosophy, life, love... DAVE: love??? DAVE: hold on are you saying DAVE: that...

PFFFFFFFF :D :D :D

OBAMA: She’s settled happily into the specific. That’s her path now. OBAMA: All of you have embraced that life, in this safely sequestered version of planet Earth. OBAMA: All of you until now, Dave. OBAMA: This is why you’re here. OBAMA: I believe you’re ready to wake up. DAVE: ...

...this is suddenly possibly going to be getting slightly sad isn’t it. D:

--Oh shit, so THIS is where Davebot came from.

How is he going to break things off with Jade though??? D: D: D:

...Oh my GOSH he’s just going to suddenly vanish and abandon her isn’t he. D:

...alright, merging with his other selves, et cetera...

It defers to its greatest knight, risen anew.

Yeah that’s nice but am I supposed to pretend you’re going to say goodbye to Jade offscreen or

--ah that’s why the bot didn’t have shades, gotta use the genuine Stiller ones

==>

Page 40, and the start of this sounds a lot like the Postscript. But we’re getting more this time, thank god.

ARADIA: when i watched as everything broke apart ARADIA: and got swallowed up by the black hole ARADIA: which is where i ended up too ARADIA: that black hole... ARADIA: thats basically you right JADE: yes. ARADIA: and when you speak of your brother ARADIA: thats lord english JADE: yes. ARADIA: and hes dead JADE: not just yet.

Oh shit. John’s final blow didn’t kill Lord English did it. Alt!Callie is going to strike the very last killing blow herself isn’t she.

JADE: lesser beings have so much trouble perceiving divinity in the uncanny.

Divinity? Like, Lollipop-style divinity? I mean, I guess this IS the Candy branch...? But what made this so “perfect” to begin with?

JADE: this world, unlike the canonical horrors from which it is hermetically insulated, will always fail to meet the combined criteria for truth, relevance, and essentiality that would endow this realm with any real gravity. JADE: its own naturally occurring supply of gravity, rather than the artificial supply i have given it. JADE: as such, what transpires here is characterized by experiential frivolity. JADE: physically, it is cordoned off by the black hole’s event horizon. it is safe. untouchable. JADE: inescapable. ARADIA: that sounds ominous

Oh. So this outside-of-canon timeline-verse whatever that Candy takes place in is like a trap? For Lord English to be trapped in forever, inside not just his OWN story like we thought before but into a place where he’ll be forever irrelevant, while, like... the “Prince” and others following him for pursuit or camaraderie reasons manage to escape somewhere even different? --No wait those people are OUTSIDE this place, in the “real” timeline/universe of Earth C. So Dirk’s destination is somewhere completely different; oh, and alt!Callie is the only one with the power to escape the black hole, to bring Davebot and Aradia with her back to quote-unquote “canon” or the closest thing to it to bring bastard Dirkbro down.

Or... something.

JADE: one could describe it as a phantasmal projection confined within my horizon. JADE: it was created by a choice that made it possible for that horizon to expand infinitely, to consume infinitely. JADE: and since that choice could not coexist with canon events, this place manifested to here to support its consequences. JADE: if this world were capable of anything either essential, relevant, or true in some stable combination, then it would perpetuate a corrosive paradox. JADE: as such, insulation from what is out there, and the inescapable well it rests in, is what protects all it holds inside. JADE: and since i am the embodiment of the black hole in which it rests, JADE: i am the one protecting this world.

Oh huh. So when we saw alt!Callie creating the black hole out of the Sun, she was actually using John’s “choice” and his timeline split to engineer the paradox that drove that singularity’s expansion? And so she’s going to be the lord and safeguard of all that is Non-Canon, and also seek to guide the heroes trying to save what IS Canon?

Hm!

JADE: physical destruction is one thing. JADE: obliteration of the entire canvas for all of reality over a given cosmic span is another. JADE: and yet there are even more insidious forms of destruction and subversion of life to consider. JADE: methods that are difficult to grasp for those on your plane.

Yep, destroying Heart. Destroying Soul. Destroying the uniqueness that drives individual agency and choices, and suborning people completely to your will and ideals without their consent or choice.

Hmm....

JADE: but longer stories have the power to draw consciousness into them. they possess arresting and hypnotic qualities which can be used by their tellers to alter the awareness of the listener.

Yep, like a biased narrator with their claws on the > prompt for characters.

JADE: i brought to your attention that the story you were listening to had a speaker with a specific identity. JADE: and where there is an identity, there can also be an agenda.

Yep yep. And by commandeering the story to his own agenda, Dirk’s been robbing everyone of a fundamental right to their own existences.

JADE: this is the sort of corruption i now must dedicate my existence in this new body to ending once and for all.

Heck Yes; returning the narrative to as objective a speakerless-ness as can be attained or simulated, and divesting the bias from agenda’d narrators that can wrest all control from the participants in a story, enslaving them and making them the author’s puppets instead of true to themselves as characters, people, etc.

--Oh my GOSH, was Dead!Jade eating the remains of Lord English at the end of that Postscript??? She was, wasn’t she? :D :D :D

That’s pretty fucking awesome. And a pretty fucking fair fate for him to get cannibalized by his sister.

JADE: consume his body. JADE: absorb his essence. JADE: and then using this host, i will generate enough power to move beyond the staggering pull of the event horizon encasing this world. JADE: a prison of my own making, which can be escaped only through the supreme unification with my other half. JADE: it is crucial to the cosmos that i succeed. JADE: the prince of heart has to be stopped.

:D :D :D :D :D

Pretty awesome! A decent setup to a story that probably shouldn’t be told, the implied sequel that Meat invites up or whatever. And... oh phew.

Oh PHEW.

OH FUCKING PHEW. HOLD ON.

So. The very last line of the epilogue, the last bit:

The hole leaves behind an absence in the sky so calm that continuing to call it a sky wouldn’t seem to do it justice. It’s a perfectly neutral expanse into which anything one can imagine might be summoned. And for a while, anything was. But not anymore. Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

Okay! :D :D :D

So, when I read that last line, I was INCREDIBLY disheartened. I thought that Andrew was declaring that canon would never interfere with anything again, that this was the FINAL WORD on Homestuck and everything to do with it as far as canon was concerned, and that Dirk’s crimes and such would forever go unresolved and left to the imagination.

But that’s not what the line meant.

What’s INSIDE the singularity, and thus “under” the imaginary line, is everything non-canon, all the possibility and fanfiction and dead ghosts and such who are trapped in this safeguarded realm alt!Callie created to protect them, away from the influence of any future plot danger beyond the mundane issues they create for themselves.

And what’s OUTSIDE the singularity, above the line, is canon. A canon which actually continues, and which this line doesn’t necessarily cut short.

I don’t know if Andrew will ever continue this nonsense, maybe to show me a Rose who’s actually happy as a robot or something? But... er, that’s not the point. The point is that even though the story “isn’t over”, it’s left so it CAN continue, so that the final state of these ISN’T a permanent cliffhanger to be left forever unfulfilled intentionally. I’ll still be traumatized by the state some of these characters are left in, until Andrew maybe possibly chooses to resolve some of this nonsense with later content, which he probably won’t. Heck, this actually might be easier for him to create a new work with, given how much baggage has been left behind on old Earth and in the singularity, so all you have is a much relatively smaller cast of characters on a chase to wherever Dirk is planning to go? But, like. When I read that Postscript, I stopped believing anyone I saw suggesting we’d get anything after this. Any sort of work of... you know... continuing, er, Homestuckiness from Andrew, no matter what it was. But even just... leaving it open even if he isn’t going to DO anything about it, and having that final line NOT be an aggressive cutoff? Is just nice. Nicer, anyway.

And this singularity is kept safe for us to enjoy ALL of the old stuff, the multitude of possibility that the in-singularity version of Roxy glimpses out of the side of her eye. That--

Oh my Gosh. THAT’S also what the final line means.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

Homestuck fanfiction is now COMPLETELY FREE FROM CANON.

Within this singularity, nothing has to stay true to absolutely every underpinning of the earlier comic. Nothing has to make sense. Nothing has to be narratively consistent with anything else, though it’s obviously more enjoyable if it is. Truth, essentiality, and relevance may all be FLEXED as much as any individual fanfic writer needs to! And... and earlier, before this epilogue. When we would get Snapchat stuff of the story on Earth C. And even before that when all we had was the ending flash. There was still a FEAR on many parts that there was more to canon that Andrew wasn’t telling us, that whatever was in our imaginations about what may have happened was “wrong”, that any fanfic you wrote was liable to be disproven formally. But that’s not the case anymore. Because with that line, with alt!Callie sealing off this realm and taking just a last few soon-to-be canon-impactors out of one of its timelines, Andrew has left ALL of the earlier trappings of Homestuck, of Earth, of all these characters and ghosts and fragmented possibilities, permanently free from canon influence from the rest of time. Meaning no Homestuck fanfic that takes place in this singularity-granted realm may EVER be busted by Andrew’s future work. He’s done what he first aspired to do when he declared all fantrolls in existence canon. He’s finally “killed the author”. He’s made the very FACT of an author an enemy, to be pursued in its own canon story outside of all this. He’s set EVERYTHING free.

Wow. So that’s what all the point of all this was, huh? :D

Let me read the last few pages of Candy anyway. Where was I again?

Oh, about to click the last page. ==>

Oh my GOD. This Postscript is about the end of MEAT, where the Meat Postscript showed us the end of CANDY!!! :D

Let’s hear where this shit is all going! I’ve been wondering what realm Dirk is actually heading towards to try and start fucking up. Reading...

...Oh, okay. I thought I glimpsed someone mentioning something about Rose “doing Dirk’s laundry”, and I thought I just missed some narrative comment on laundry made when Dirk took Rose out of the apartment on that final trip out to Jake’s for a spaceship? But I guess this was the scene they were talking about. Fuck you, Dirk.

One of her more reckless shipmates chipped a tooth trying one, despite repeated warnings to stay away from the stuff.

So Terezi IS there? And probably received that final message from Vriska to think about.

It’s a stray ruby slipper. The other is about ten feet away, down the hall. No sign of their owner anywhere.

Yep, that’s definitely Terezi.

...Oh cool, Rose’s body isn’t quite dead? She could be returned to it or a souped-up version of it if she’s ever brought to her senses outside Dirk’s corrosive influence.

A new planet is within sensor range. She studies the millions of statistics all pouring in at once.

They’re heading for a planet? Somewhere else in Universe C?

It’s an M-Class planet. The right size, right age, right distance from the sun. There’s no advanced life yet. It’s exactly what they’ve been looking for all these years.

Shit, a NEW planet? For all this shit to go down on? Maybe I don’t need to see what happens next, that sounds potentially a little boring. The future adventure this story entails COULD just be implied and never followed up on.

Once the new race has established

What race??? Human, hybrid?? It’s not TROLL, y’all would have brought Aradia if that was the case, right? Or is this why there are tons of trolls in Universe C that Caliborn and Calliope’s parent trolls got to incinerate ages later, seeded across planets by these assholes?

The ones who get the chance to play what will arguably be the most important session in the history of Sburb?

Ahhh. Okay. So this may INDEED be something interesting, something worth seeing. A new session, one where Dirk is the villain, Rosebot is enthralled, and old heroes are on their way to help see him thwarted. Along with the mystery participants of a session we’ve yet to see.

Enough time goes by that she begins to wonder if he’s asleep. But no. It’s just the irritated silence of a man who knows he isn’t currently dressed well enough to attend to something important.

DIRK: Are my fucking pantaloons ready yet?

Yeah, fuck you and your anime pantaloons straight in the Yaois, Dirk Smartass.

Okay!

So that’s the end of the epilogue. BOTH epilogues. And... I like it.

I don’t know why. I mean it was all excellent before, and my stomach’s still a BIT clenchy, but I like it now. I misinterpreted things from the Meat ending, and now everything... everything makes a little more sense. Some things seem resolved, others earned...

And... in a way I feel like I could actually oddly accept, even if there’s never anything that touches on this ever again...

It doesn’t seem “over”. :)

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #Upd8 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots #Barack Obama

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bipolyjack · 7 years

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Please tell me more about why you like sheith, I'm very curious to hear the rest of it.

(alright luckily i had the beginning of this saved elsewhere when tumblr just randomly sent it early so imma just begin by pasting. also spoilers for voltron s4 obv)

the original ask was something like “curious why u like sheith? ive thought abt it and i think i prefer klance”

rubs hands 2gether Thank U for Asking

first of all, thats chill! if klance is ur thing, fuckin go for itmy dude, have a great time with that shit. the fandom’s huge andtheres tons of content. im all for ppl shippin what they want and imnot here to tell someone to ship or not ship something. if u do trulywant to know why im a sheith tho, buckle the fuck up cause im awashin sheith feelings at every moment and i got Things 2 say

alright so the main thing with sheith is that it feels realhealthy and good. (well it did. things are weird this season bc shiromay or may not be a clone but up until his disappearance at least.)they’re rly good abt checking in with each other to see how theother one’s doing and feeling, and they lean on each other a lotfor support. they also treat each other as equals and respect each other’s choices (again, with minor exceptions in the current season). they got that good good hidden backstory together. they got that good good star crossed lovers thing goin on where the universe keeps ripping them apart, fucking them over and tossing them back together more fucked up than before and my dude i Eat That Shit UP. also that good good height difference.the show gives them lots of moments where they’re either alone in a room together havin a private moment or havin an equally private moment in front of the whole fuckin team where fuckin everybody can see them (like the first Hug tm). they’re openly physically intimate with each other (which keith is not with anyone else) and they’re not like. ashamed of that. there’s so much canon content i cry daily.

here lemme break it down

we know they knew each other in the garrison, and not just like in passing, like acquaintances, but enough that keith was the only person there to see shiro off when the kerberos mission launched. in s1ep1 lance says of shiro “omg that guys my hero” and of keith “you’re my rival” but neither shiro nor keith know who lance even fuckin is. bc presumably they didnt hang out. everyone in the garrison knows who keith and shiro are but they - keith especially it seems like - dont keep track of the other students. also theres this whole fanon thing where shiro and matt were best friends in the garrison and hung out all the time before kerberos, but in s4 when matt greets shiro hes incredibly stiff and awkward and calls him sir and shiro just goes “pidge never gave up on u buddy” which i guess could be a clone thing but could also be him bein like “i totally did give up on u tho, whatever” (and i can totally buy that considering how pidge’s whole personal arc this whole time has been looking for matt and their dad, and while shiro has been supportive of that, he’s also been like hey dude that’s not our top priority as a team). so from that i infer that matt and shiro werent best buds in the garrison, and that he must have spent a lot more of his time with keith bc in s2ep1 keith makes it clear that shiro made a significant impact on his life and that he still thinks about things shiro said to him before kerberos. which we havent seen. bc theyre hiding the pre-kerberos backstory from us and i cry. also their flashbacks in s1ep2 (i think, i dont exactly remember which ep but i think its that one) when they all put on the headsets and we see their fondest memories, shiro’s is the day they were separated and keith’s is the day they found each other again like jesus.

then there’s keith’s first scene in the show. the first thing we see him doing is kicking the shit out of like three garrison guys to rescue shiro. we get that close up of him touching shiro’s unconscious fuckin face and his first line in the whole show is him saying shiro’s name. like shit dude how am i supposed 2 not ship that. the first time keith and lance interact, its lance butting in on that moment and keith being like “who the fuck are u” and its. uncomfortable. we also know that keith has been livin alone in the desert and obsessing over these lion carvings bc he got kicked out of the garrison for basically insubordination sometime after shiro went missing. we get that scene in the shack where keith talks abt feeling lost until shiro showed up and everyone else in the room looking all confused and uncomfortable as these two dudes who clearly already know each other well and have been separated for like a year just stare into each other’s eyes or what the fuck ever. also the scene outside the shack where keith comes and finds shiro and puts a hand on his shoulder and asks him how hes doing - theyre alone for that part. also worth mentioning is that keith has no hesitation touching shiro’s galra tech arm, whereas lance hesitates before shaking his hand. we see a bunch of times that keith is touch averse with almost everyone except shiro, in a way that indicates a degree of prior familiarity and a good understanding of boundaries that keith hasnt had the time or inclination to set up with lance, hunk, pidge, allura, coran etc. also the one time he holds lance when sendack attacks the castle and lance is unconscious, lance sort of blows it off later and basically goes “no homo” when keith brings it up so that was a bummer

i also love some of the Pauses they put into shiro and keith’s dialogue, some of them are just. so choice. like when keith proposes a crazy plan that puts him in danger and shiro just takes a sec, closes his eyes, then goes “alright i’ll back u up, do what u gotta do” like!!!! boi!!!!!! thats good shit. also in s2ep9 during the blade of marmora trial when keith is basically having this nightmare about shiro rejecting him because of his connection to the galra, (which real actual shiro can see because this whole ep was a fuckin fanfiction) and he does that same thing where hes like “shiro... *pause, close eyes for Just a sec* you’re like a brother to me” which! by the way!! i have said the same thing!! to a friend i had a crush on!!! who was straight!!!! and i was a little baby who didnt know i was into girls yet and we used to say we were like sisters bc i? didnt know i?? was gay???? we shared her bed whenever i stayed over and she really did see me as a sister and i would just lie next to her and daydream about touching her boobs,, anyway keith is so relatable there i could yell forever but continuing on,

can we, real quick, talk abt the first time keith flies the black lion? bc in s2ep1 hes not the black paladin yet. real shiro is still around. and keith legit goes up to black, puts a hand on her big ole nose and goes “ur boi is in trouble, we gotta help him” and she goes “yeah dude hop in” like?????????????? thats some fanfic shit again! black Knows! also dont even talk to me abt how many times keith and shiro yell each others names in that ep its unreal. also the trope (that i eat the fuck up every time) of one member of the otp lying trapped and injured somewhere and talking to the other member of the otp thru a helmet comm or whatever and they cant see each other but they can hear each others voices, so they have to keep talking to like reassure each other they’re both still alive and okay?!!! im such a sucker for that shit!!!! ummmmm the fact that shiro keeps reassuring keith that hes fine when theres a gaping glowing wound in his side and hes like visibly in pain, clenching his teeth, eyes closed, groaning, sweat beading on his forehead, the whole fuckin thing?? and josh knocked it outta the park with shiro’s voice in that ep making him sound like he was trying not to sound hurt and exhausted so that keith wouldn’t worry too much like Fuck me up!! smiling thru the pain when keith talks abt how much shiro changed his life and made him a better person??? boi!!!!!

then there are the times when shiro talks abt something happening to him and keith taking over as voltron’s leader, and keith gets all panicked about it like he cant stand the thought of losing shiro again (this happens a bunch of times but the ones that are coming to mind are s2ep1 and s2ep9 bc. again. those are the fanfic episodes). and then he Does lose him again and he’s so clearly grieving, lashing out at the rest of the team, super obviously feeling shiro’s loss more than the others (and lance is a real dick about it a bunch of times which really rubbed me wrong), going out to look for him over and over bc he wants to believe so bad that shiro’s out there somewhere. omg the “please no” when the black lion accepts him that shit Fucked me right up!! he wants to honor shiro’s wishes!! but some part of him knows that’s like admitting that shiro’s gone and isn’t coming back. and then!!!!!! when they find kuron and its just the red lion and the galra ship floating alone in space just like. gently drifting toward each other. keith’s little tired smile there. fuck me up. and then we find out in the next scene that keith has been the only one in shiro (kuron)’s room while he’s recovering and shiro (kuron) hasnt bothered to shave or cut his hair or get dressed yet and he lets keith see him like that and not the rest of the team. fuck. keith looks Exhausted in that scene. hes got bags under his eyes, hes kinda hunched in on himself, arms crossed, like something in him Knows this isnt his boi but he wants to believe it’s him so bad and its. god. its a lot. and Then when hes turning to leave and kuron is like “how many times will u have to save me before this is over” and keith’s face just relaxes into this legitimately genuine smile when he says “as many times as it takes” like!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fuck me

this is where it starts gettin awkward with them bc kuron isnt shiro and he doesnt treat keith the way shiro would but he Tries, like after keith fucks up that one mission and kuron comes and finds him (again, in private) to touch his shoulder and be like “im proud of u boi” when keith clearly Did Not Do A Good Job and keith just looks bummed like “thats. thats not tru” and it Hurts me bc we know real shiro doesnt do fake praise. also kuron orders keith to put himself in danger more than once and doesnt give a shit that keith and the others get hurt because of it which also real shiro would never do - we’ve seen him react when his teammates take hits before, but especially keith, like during the bom trial. then theres s4ep1 where keith sort of drifts away from team voltron in order to do more stuff with the blade of marmora and everyone’s pissed at him but then as hes walking out kuron’s like “you know we’re here for you if you need us” and keith gets that soft smile again like “i know and i cant tell you how much that means to me” and then they do that good good hand clasp that turns into a hug which by the way is a stark contrast to when other people hug keith and they just kinda grab him and he goes all stiff and it takes him a sec or three to put his arms around them if he even does that at all - with shiro they do the hand clasp first and then walk into the hug together and keith buries his face in shiro’s fuckin shoulder and smiles and closes his eyes and i wanna die. and theyve done this twice now which makes me think they probs did it before kerberos too and that also hurts me.

then theres s4ep6 where keith has gone the whole season feeling like he was a bad leader. it seems like voltron doesnt rly need him and his friends dont need him and shiro doesnt need him and hes been hanging with the bom who have their whole philosophy of not going back to rescue their own guys if it means putting the mission or the rest of the team in danger (which keith already was saying when allura was captured - how very galra of him) and now keith’s having to readjust to that mindset after being part of such a close knit team. so when he sees a way to take that shield down, he just fuckin goes for it. hes started to see himself as expendable. when shiro thinks hes about to die, we get all kinds of flashbacks, the first of which is him and keith alone outside the shack. there are no flashbacks with keith. he just closes his eyes. and shiro (kuron) congratulates him. like obv its before he knows what keith was about to do, but still, thats some fucked up shit.

now this wasnt rly part of ur question, ie u didnt ask me how i felt abt klance, but i feel like i gotta say: lance just grates on me. im sorry i know lots of people who love him but he just. isnt my cup of tea. and i do think the relationship shown in the show between keith and shiro is a lot more mature and healthy than the one shown between lance and keith. lance has some good moments! but canon lance and fanon lance seem like two entirely different people to me a lot of the time and thats all cool and fine if ur lookin for that, again im not here to stop ppl from having fun, but there are so many good sheith moments in the show and im just glad to see the relationship between two dudes depicted that way regardless of whether it becomes canon or not. also lance in the show is only shown being attracted to girls, and in kinda a skeevy way - like ive met guys who treat me like that and been Very off-put by that kind of behavior. and it would put me off if after all that they got him together with keith. like hes just superficially interested in all these hot girls but keith, who he has very few heartfelt intimate moments with onscreen, is his True Love? like thats,, not good bi rep. i Do rly like the bond hes been building with allura since they switched lions, that seems like its going in a direction that could turn out to be very wholesome and sweet. but again, if klance is ur thing, by all means have a ball.

k that was a lot but tl:dr i like 2 cry and sheith provides me with lots of opportunities to do that,, if u read it all then thank u deeply and truly for ur attention, u probs Understand me as a person a bit better than before lol

#long post #voltron spoilers #s4 #sheith #this got Very long im sorry #voltron #shenanigansintime

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tueeeeeee · 5 years

Text

i saw a writing meme abt a ship in various prompts and immediately applied it to shenzed lol some of the scenarios are in the past and entertain a lot of my personal headcanons. like this is basically just a masterpost of my headcanons

wordcount: 4k, not explicit but pretty nsfw

topics: fake dating, bodyswap, sexpollen, secret kinks, first kiss, au, dark fic, and a sick ass crossover with mkx

cw age gap, noncon, yandere zed

Fake dating: as students, shen would try so hard to prioritize the mission, which is good because zed has it running secondary to making sure their relationship is believable as possible. of course that involves throwing himself all over shen and demanding shen make ridiculous sounds in private because they're listening in, shen, give them a show, make it convincing, and shen even knows zed is just taking advantage of the situation but he's too committed to the job to turn him down in public and risk the facade, so he just rolls along with it and smiles lovingly at zed and that's actually worse because zed starts getting the mad dokis

if it's after the fall and they have to work together again, it'd probably be while they're hunting jhin and they actually have to fake that they're NOT dating. they're in disguises but shen the bara giant is pretty hard to not notice, so he's just sitting there trying to be all you know. ah it's just me, a farmer, completely single and alone, my boyfriend is totally not hiding in the shadows ready to fuck u up. or zed gets caught out alone and shen comes to the rescue a la mimi's beautiful amazing comic and "my boyfriend's back and ur gonna get in trouble" is just blasting in the bg

Bodyswap: if this is during their student days, they'd actually probably have a lot of fun with it. zed likes being able to look at himself from different angles and shen secretly likes it too until zed goes in front of a mirror and starts making expressions just to see what shen's face looks like when he's really surprised! or what he looks like when he's picking his nose, or sticking out his tongue, and shen is just desperately covering zed's face and begging him to stop making those faces while he’s in shen’s body and please don't do that in front of other people

zed doesn't do it front of other people because he wants to be the only one who knows what it looks like, of course, and when he's alone, he tries on other expressions. he wants to see what shen looks like when he's happy, and smiling, and laughing, and it feels forced in front of the mirror but seeing it makes his heart flutter anyways. wanting to see what shen looks like when he's happy quickly turns into wanting to see what shen looks like when he's horny and then zed just straight up masturbates in front of the mirror. thanks zed.

anyway shen plays with himself too but he tries not to at first, he's better than that, this is so wrong and zed is going to kill him – until he remembers zed would definitely and has probably already taken advantage of this and then he just touches himself everywhere to see if this area is something he likes or if it's just a particularly sensitive area on zed's body (which is knowledge he's gleaning just for the sake of knowledge, of course, n-not like he's planning on utilizing it or anything...)

while they were students shen almost exclusively topped since "the son of the headmaster shouldn't be on his knees" so later when zed convinces shen into playing around it's an absolute delight for zed to get to be the pitcher for once, even if he's basically fucking his own body. shen agrees just because he doesn't want to have to look at himself, and besides zed's body is already used to it so shen willingly bottoms and being the repressed little sub he is he just fucking loses it and breathlessly asks zed afterwards with tears in his eyes, "are you always that sensitive?" and zed is like ??? not enough to fuckin cry about it and thats how shen discovers he likes taking it up the bum

if it's after the fall of the kinkou they'd probably just try to experiment with each other's abilities, then realize that even though they have access to them they can't really harness the power the same way. like zed's clones are sentient, and when shen finally manages to make one it just stares back at him for a while and then starts laughing uncontrollably, "i thought something was odd. now how did this happen?" and shen is unamused and more than a little flustered at being made to feel incompetent when he can't control the shadow and it just keeps laughing at him in zed's voice.

meanwhile zed is excited to finally be able to see the spirits the way shen does, and he tries to walk the spirit realm and teleport and kind of just ends up concentrating himself into an aneurysm because he can't fucking figure it out and does the Old Man Yells At Cloud thing when he tries to talk to the spirits to get them to help him understand. they don't give a fuck about shen half the time so unsurprisingly, they don't pay any attention to zed either. also, zed would still masturbate in front of a mirror, except he does it furiously in this case

god im sorry that was so long but i just. i love the bodyswap trope so much o(-<

Sexpollen/fuck or die/aliens made them do it: as students, pretty much everything between them has to be a competition so it's a battle of wills to not jump each other and zed tries to goad shen on by playing up but being that close to each other just makes it worse. zed devolves into pretty much just clinging onto shen and begging him to please give in

shen doesn't want any of it, not when they're being made to feel that way, but zed insists that it isn't making him feel anything, not anything different from usual anyway. so shen brings him off with sympathetic intentions at first, and gently pushes zed's hands away whenever he tries to reciprocate, but watching zed come undone affects him more than he expected it to. zed said it isn't any different from usual but it is, zed isn't normally this pliant and desperate, and he doesn't usually call shen's name so sweetly and sometimes zed will outright make shen fight to get zed beneath him, but now, zed yields to him so easily and that should be evidence of how wrong this is but shen is so utterly captivated with this eager zed that he gives in and gives him the good dickin. he's super disappointed with himself later while zed is just smiling dopily, completely satisfied

fuck or die after the fallout would be rough hate-filled sex, zed pushing shen's face into the dirt and forcing him because it's easier that way. shen bitterly spits out that he'd rather die than touch zed, and zed only laughs because they both know that's a lie. if it were anyone else shen would 100% approach this with his usual pragmatism but it's zed and he hates being made to lose control like this, and of course zed won't just get it over with. he takes his pleasure and then leaves shen tied down and makes sure to work shen slowly and coax him with disgusting gentleness into climax, making it good for him and shen hates every second. he doesn't do anything like try to make shen beg because that shit would go nowhere fast, and afterwards zed is just completely smug with himself and shen hates him more than ever

Secret kinks: zed loves body odor which is really fucking unfortunate because shen reeks of it after the hours he spends training, and he probably knows it bc why else would he have his dirty clothes so conveniently left out like that for zed to furiously wank into while grumbling stupid sexy stinky shen

he has a bored and ignored kink too, but he's too fucking needy for it to ever take place out of his control so he has to specifically negotiate with shen to not pay attention to him during a scene, like zed showing off his bod or blowing shen while shen's just trying to read as long as they're 100% clear that shen has to make up for it later

he probably tries to convince shen to pee himself at least once but gets kinkshamed to death and never tries again. he also loves shen's hands/wrists and being praised. like ok, shen likes being praised too right? he'll glow and be intensely pleased and would fit that indulgent kind of "good boy!! you like pleasing me don't you" praise kink but zed's is like a fucking id-tagged collar in which only shen can hold the leash. shen gives him a passing glance and a murmured, "well done" while zed's just like sweeping and zed will somehow always be sweeping somewhere shen can see for the next five days, with a boner. you know what i mean??

anyway shen is the most repressed fucker out there so he THINKS he's vanilla but shen's definition of vanilla is very. i mean. he regularly undergoes resistance training and mindfuckery so you could tie him up and CBT him and he'd still just be like ah good ol vanilla sex. a lot of the kinks he has he isn't really even aware of having. shen doesn't know what he likes a lot of the time, in and out of bed. he spent his entire life being dictated, and it isn't until after zed gets rid of all the people who did that to him that he's forced to consider more deeply about himself

and of course he immediately finds that he likes being dominated and having someone else take control, even if they completely fuck him up in the process. he likes being collared and humiliated but he doesn't like his position as the eye of twilight being brought into it so shit like "look how far the eye has fallen" isn't gonna fly.

even so he's a bit of an exhibitionist. it's probably a carry-over from his student days when being caught was a definite possibility in a household full of ninja, so he likes the rush of doing it outside, especially since it also has the benefits of being rougher and quicker and there being no time for nonsense or softness

the concept of aftercare is a foreign one. the first time zed tries to administer it shen is repulsed and probably tries to escape but he can't get away from zeds sweet sweet embrace. he doesn't ever get used to it, not from zed the two-faced snake, and for good reason honestly. zed's brand of tenderness is kind of saccharine and condescending, and all too often he whispers secrets as if shen cares at all that zed used to love him, or that zed is glad he's here now, or that zed doesn't want to hurt him. really, he doesn't care. at all. not a bit.

also he tries to keep it secret that he loves getting dicked by zed's clones but it's pretty obvious. zed hates it because he gets jealous of himself but he absolutely loves all of shen's other kinks since he thinks shen would never trust someone other than zed to do those things to him

Their first kiss: shen was definitely the one who had to initiate it!! zed would have been fine with just pining after shen his entire life (not really), because he sure as hell wasn't going to give shen another point in his favor by letting him know that zed had F-FEELINGS FOR HIM... regardless it's still obvious as fuck to everybody, including shen, who kind of takes it in stride because let's be real shen was probably the target of numerous an unrequited crush in his life.

shen thinks he's doing a good job handling zeds emotions, letting him down gently without making it obvious he knows zed likes him, and it comes so naturally to him because hes so used to doing it that he doesn't even stop to think that maybe he actually kind of looks forward to zed's not-so-subtle attempts to spend more time together?? maybe he actually kind of wants to hold his hand?? maybe he's actually a raging homosexual?????

so the kiss would happen after a really tough mission that they just barely scraped through together, and shen's just so happy that they're both alive and safe that he gives zed a big ol smooch. obviously zed's not-so-subtle attempts become outright overt now that he knows it's mutual (even if shen keeps embarrassedly trying to convince him it's not)

likewise, their first kiss after they start working together to hunt jhin would also be shen calling it. zed's older now and not as angry and petulant. their history and ties are so intensely and irrevocably woven together that he just kind of dully accepts that a little part of him will always love shen, right next to the part that will always resent him. because of that he doesn't want to ruin this tentative (and probably temporary) truce they've got going on, even though he's unexpectedly thrilled to have shen by his side again and he's dying to ask whether stick-up-his-ass prudish shen has bedded anyone else in the past five years

shen's kind of not really in the same boat bc the power dynamic is mostly in his favor and it's zed who has to watch his footing, but shen has never had an equal like zed before or since. he can see that zed's changed, but he's also remained the same in the ways that matter and not all of them matter in a good way. for one, he still doesn't see reason in balance, and shen argues that zed himself is contributing to the power balance by foiling shen and zed absolutely hates that because he doesn't want to sustain a war between their clans just for the sake of shen's notion of equilibrium.

shen feels duty-bound and obligated to his clan to you know, not consort with the enemy, but he's also aware of the intrinsic connection he has with zed and how they're naturally drawn together. and it could be something as tiny as a bad dream or getting caught in the rain or meeting eyes when they've both just awoken, and shen acknowledges the inevitability of it and just kisses him

anyways when!! will riot give me my jhin lore follow-up!!

A crossover of my choice: the events of ninja gaiden could fit seamlessly right into ionia but there's pretty much no way im picking it over a mortal kombat crossover.... yall know how much my ass loves mkx

anyway quan chi has manipulated pretty much every one and thing in existence so it's not at all surprising that he was the one who brought into existence the scroll of shadows that corrupts zed and instills in him a thirst for power so great it drives him to destroy the kinkou. zed's death animation where he opens a portal? actually just to get back to netherrealm. quan chi sees him and just sighs again, really? and restores him and sends him back up

also ok. i know thematically shen has a lot in common with subzero but think of raiden and shen..... raiden was probably bosom buddies with master kusho, they regularly convened to discuss the state of earthrealm and shen got to inherit that friendship and trust!! raiden guides him and tells him how to purify zed, which leads him into scorpion and subzeros path since at this point they're revenants too. afterwards shen holds the recovery club for "I Was Under Quan Chi's Control" but only hanzo and kuai liang are invited

after all zed still has his entire fucking order of shadows which were forged under quan chi's ideals, and just like how hanzo still resents the massacre of his clan zed still resents the kinkou--that wasn't something that was instilled into him through quan chi's control. so basically everyone hates zed still. bye zed

i had fatalities for shen and zed written out too but....... i dont want to talk abt it here since it's obviously gorey and honestly embarrassing to talk about lmao!!! NEXT

An AU of my choice: i love my bloodborne AU so much but it's too detailed and involves more than just sz so i'll settle for another one about time shenanigans

shen tries to bypass zed's whole crawling into a shadow portal and escaping death thing by sealing him away in a time loop, but when the dust settles something's obviously gone wrong. there's a body laying there and shen picks him up and carries him inside and no one can really believe it, but the old kinkou veterans were raised next to that face and they know what zed looked like in his youth.

he's ten years younger, before the order of shadows and before the golden demon, and he hasn't just been aged down but swapped places entirely because he knows fuck all about what's going on. akali wants to kill him before he can fuck everything up but agrees that'd mess with too much other shit, kennen is so so sad and tries the hardest to make zed feel at home even though he and zed were never particularly close, and shen keeps his distance as best he can manage. he doesn't want to look at this zed when all it makes him think about is how things should have been

young zed feels confused and alone as fuck in this future timeline. so many members of the kinkou are foreign to him and the familiar ones are made of bitter implications and no one tells him outright why he's being ostracized, shen is never at the temple and when he is he's holed away. zed has to practically ambush him just to find out shen's already gone to pay zilean a visit to work out what's gone wrong, and all zilean told him was that he needed to find where the feedback came from that switched the zeds

eventually someone tries to assassinate zed as a preventative measure and shen realizes it's not safe for him at the kinkou monastery, so he takes zed with him on his journey to find the zero point and angst happens as they measure each other up to the versions of themselves they're familiar with--present shen is discomfited by how naive past zed is, past zed can't believe how much bigger the stick up shen's ass got, but after he learns what his future self did he can't imagine ever hating shen enough to do that to him. queue lots of bonding, slow burn, shen waffling and acting under a LOT of pretenses because he doesnt want to take advantage of this younger zed, who sees him as a mentor

meanwhile present zed wakes up in his old room and thinks he's trapped in a memory, and confirms it the only way he knows how. he sneaks into shen's room and is completely delighted upon finding a young shen who's much too interactive to be just a memory, and quickly works out what's happened. the thought of killing shen doesn't even cross his mind, not when shen barely presents a challenge like this. rather, he finds himself appreciating the change in their dynamics now that the power balance is tipped in zed's favor.

he goes on his own trip to find zilean and tells shen to stay here and give master kusho an excuse as to why zed is gone. instead, zed vanishes off away from the monastery and, twenty minutes later, has to make himself detectable just so shen can find him properly from where he's followed zed to.

zed secretly wanted this to happen and gladly takes the young shen under his wing. obviously he doesn't tell him why zed's eyes are red or his hair is white or why sometimes he'll completely disappear in the shadows. eventually he coaxes shen into bed and fucks him, which is something shen never allowed him in his time, and the sensations of it are transmitted to future shen through his dreams and he wakes up feeling phantom sensations of zed holding him and eventually the present sz discover they have a very rudimentary means of communicating through their past selves via sex dreams/strong emotions lol

the juxtaposition between present shen and zed would have been explored, because even though at a glance, shen sticks to his lawfulness and zed immorally takes advantage of the power imbalance, when they each discover that they receive the feelings of their past selves, zed treats past shen tenderly and tries to make him softer.... whispers the things he needs to remember, in the hopes that present shen will hear them and meet him halfway so that they can fix the timeline (and also meet him halfway feelings-wise 83c) whereas shen fights the young past zed and humiliates him, trains him even though logic tells him he shouldn't, treats zed the way the kinkou treated him, and all the feelings conveyed to present zed are ones of bitterness until it reaches a head and past zed snaps at him and almost dies. after that shen realizes that in lieu of master kusho distancing zed from the clan, shen is now the one doing that, when he should be taking this as an opportunity to fix the future and set things right between them.

just like present shen is forced to confront things about himself though, so is present zed. his feelings of "haha past shen was such a puppy" turn into slow realizations of why he loved shen in the first place. he thought, all this time, it was just because he was attracted to power and back then, shen had had it in abundance. but now, he can destroy shen any time he wishes and yet... it just makes him regret even more how things ended up the way they did, and he tries to give vague hints to past shen about things to avoid, and to remember to take care of himself and master kusho.

anyways it turns out the whole thing was engineered by zilean because he sees all timelines and he wants one where there isn't a fucking war between the shadows and the kinkou

ok i put this one at the bottom just bc it's yandere zed and it's pretty fucked and does get pretty graphic

tw mind control, brief ableism, amputation, lobotomy

Dark!fic: all of zed's students knows of his fixation on shen. by now everyone's used to those brief intense moments where he'll waft smog from his body just thinking about shen nd cursing his existence but none of them really know the full extent of it. it's not just zed, but the shadows as well, and they've wanted shen for such a long time, especially after kusho sealed them away. to take control of shen would be the first step to controlling two worlds after all, but instead, after all their pining, it's zed who comes along and they don't care about him but its their first opportunity in years, and they can sense the frustration and mutability in him so with no other option they decide he'll do

but when they take him over, zed's present fixation on shen, a very different sort, warps the shadows' and it becomes this twisted love where zed wants shen solely for himself, shen's mind and body and ambition must all belong to him, and he needs to kill everyone who gets in the way of that. of course, shen's father is first. then, the rest of the kinkou. when he finally has shen, he really doesn't want his hard work to go to waste! shen fights back of course but that's what makes him so cute--no, no, it's why he's a worthy host body, take him now--but all of zed's hard work!--and shen, where do you think you're going?

oh geez. zed REALLY doesn't want to do this but shen's always been so strong and zed can't guarantee he'll always be able to overpower shen or outrun him. well, he will be able to guarantee it if shen has no legs! you complete utter fool you've rendered him useless! he loves shen's hands though so he gets to keep those.

zed was really hoping that would be all it took, he was even being extra nice to shen by not force-feeding him those chi suppressants. but no. a week later shen tries to escape again, by warping out this time, and zed desperately and frantically tears the place apart looking for him. he sends his order out but shen could be anywhere at all, though shen's mind apparently couldn't take him very far because they find him rather quickly. he's lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood. it looks like he was dragging himself towards the edge of that cliff, but the ones who found him don't tell zed that.

zed is heartbroken. he's not even angry, maybe a little, but he's just so sad that shen still wants to leave him after all they've been through. he holds shen and apologizes over and over for taking his legs, he knows shen was--attached to them. zed will definitely make it up to him. he loves shen so much. the shadows agree with that much at least. as gently as he can he straps shen to a chair and takes out an ice pick, positioning it very carefully over shen's prefrontal cortex. shen, please stop squirming and shouting, please, he doesn't want to hurt you. he's going to make it better. he's going to make it so that you never want to leave.

on a lighter note thnks for checkin in!! i dont realistically expect anyone to read the entire thing because the way i type is actually horrendous but thanks for reading even a lil bit. i wrote this like 5 months ago which is thankfully enough time to not care as much about how embarrassing this is :)

i lied im still embarrassed

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