#and those things include any animal adjacent characters i enjoy

[stinkybrowndogs]

Art block so here are some aurora nebbins sketches

Royal Blue Mastiff: Breed Profile

After a few hundred years of breeding (and a small helping of gene splicing technology), the humans of the Royal Blue Mastiff's planet of origin created the perfect hunting compainion for those who sailed the perilous oceans.

Originally the dogs were to bred to track, catch, and harvest the many edible crustacean-like species found along the shores of the ocean. As the breed developed, hunters began to use them to catch larger game, including giant sea turtles.

In build it is comparable to earth Pinnepeds, with a muscular, torpedo shaped body and flat, paddle-like forelimbs that aid in swimming. Its long, flexible tail offers balance and acts as a rudder in the water.

Originally this breed lacked its characteristic quills, but due to the leviathan sized predators on their home planet, gene splicing was used to add them as a defense mechanism. Made from modified hairs, the quills are flexible and can be flattened against the body while swimming and hunting, and stiffened if threatened.

The RBM can hold its breath for an impressive 60 minutes, and has the strongest bite force of any of the AKC (Americadian Kennel Club) recognized dog breeds. Due to being bred to work almost exclusively in water, these dogs can reach lenths of over 20 feet and weigh over a tonne. Care must be taken to watch for deteriation of the joints in terrestrial or high gravity situations.

Royal Blue Mastiffs possess specialized teeth and claws for gripping, crushing, and prying open the shells of its prey. Their large eyes and long whiskers aid hunting in dark and deep waters, and their thick, water resistant fur helps keep them warm.

As the breed became more popular amoung hobbyists, a hairless variety was developed. While hairless RBM's are accepted in the AKC, it is not recommended to allow your Hairless RBM spend extended periods of time in extreme enviorments. The hairless variety also tends to be jowlier, and more prone to excessive drooling. They often need specialized skin care, such as sun screen or moisturizer, to keep them healthy. Poor dentition is also commonly linked to this gene. Speak to your veterinarian about your pet's individual needs.

Those interested in adding a RBM into their family should consider this breeds large size and drive. Early training is a must, as RBM are incredibly tenacious and can be difficult to control due to their size and energy level. Royal Blue Mastiffs were bred to swim for miles at a time in pursuit of quarry; you must have an outlit for your RBM's instincts. An understimulated RBM may become aggressive or destructive. Lots of excersize, training, and enrichment are reccomended.

Currently the breed only recognizes blue coat colors and their variations; "Red" Royal Blue Mastiffs were bred during early developement of the breed, but since have become a separate breed (due to push back from the breed club and fanciers), the "Royal Red Mastiff".

[aliasrocket]

Re: your Rocket x fox/fox hybrid reader post

I've never written that specifically, so I can't speak for anyone who has, but as someone in the process of writing a fic where Rocket is paired up with an alien that has a mixture of animal characteristics, I personally gave the character those to make them a little more exciting and alien. I still love reading about people's gotg stories and characters/readers portrayed as human or human adjacent, no hate to them, but my personal thought process was, there's a whole galaxy to explore, why not give the character readers are inserting themselves into some inhuman ability or characteristic while keeping their personality as something you could still find in an everyday person.

I mean, as much as I love our collective angsty babygirl, Rocket, a talking cybernetically enhanced raccoon is pretty fantastical. And myself as a Rocket angst enjoyer and having read and loved your therapy fic, I agree that lots of people are probably drawn to the relatability of his mental issues. So, in my opinion, it seems fun to play with a reader character in a similar vein of fantastical yet relatable.

Thanks for sending this ask in and to everyone who responded to that small post asking about the whole fox reader ideal. I got new perspectives that genuinely helped me understand why people enjoy it.

Actually this is something I’ve kinda wanted to talk about fro a while but never really had the means to. And hey, this blog has expressed a wide range of opinions regarding Rocket, so why not?

DISCLAIMER : I will still remind everyone that this is me just sharing MY opinion because I love talking to you guys and sharing our different perspectives. This is not a means to change people’s minds but more so to give a (probably) new perspective to this topic.

I have thought about that for a long time, how complicated reader inserts actually are. They seem like a very simple concept at first but when you’re in fanfic and you have to write a reader insert with a fixed story with a canon character, there important things to consider.

I’m creating headings as I go because I realized my points get rather elaborate and I want you guys to be able to read this post easier.

One. It’s not actually the reader.

The reason they’re called the reader is because you, you reading this, are reading the fic. Nevermind that there are others reading it too. It was made for you, because you came here to imagine being with this character you adore.

And it as much as it may suck, especially for Rocket enjoyers, we aren’t any other species but human. We don’t have wings, we aren’t born with powers or enhanced strength.

But that’s exactly what I love about reader inserts. Even if you are vastly different from the world you’re inserting yourself to, you find a way to insert yourself without having to change what you are. You don’t have to change yourself to be loved by your favorite cast of characters. That, in my opinion, is what fanfic is for.

(But character x nb/trans/male/female/queer/genderqueer/readers or anything of the sort are NOT included in this topic because some of us are actually one of the above, where as none of us are alien/foxes/animals. Probably.)

So, I can’t imagine myself making fox reader fics or even making reader insert fics where the reader is from some other planet because that is no longer me. (I understand that even if the reader is human it technically still isn’t me but we’ll get to that in point two.)

I believe my mindset on this is also influenced by the fact that I want to be a published author later on in my life and I think that if you want to explore other galaxies and other powers and abilities that other lifeforms can have, you can more comfortably do it by making an original character altogether.

my personal alternative : original characters.

Yes, there is stigma around it, but a lot of people have pulled this off well and surprisingly enough, I’m not gonna lie, a lot of the OCs people ship with Rocket are fairly well written. Even the designs are so well put together and blend it perfectly with the gotg universe!

Speaking from experience, it is much easier expanding on those explorations on a character you make rather than an insert because you can make the character your own. Self inserts have to be more general to be able to relate other readers. Yes, you are your own audience. But most of us publish fanfic. To some degree, we do cater to other people as well.

Two. Even then, it is distant.

Even when the reader is human, no amount of generalizing is going to take away the fact that this person probably isn’t like you, even when they are meant to be you.

What I mean by this is that majority of the time, the way the reader acts or thinks or speaks in the fic is probably not the way you would specifically. Some readers in fics are shy, but you could be someone who openly flirts with people you’re interested in. Some readers are sarcastic and blunt but you might prefer to spare people the trouble. You get my point.

This related back to point one in the sense that, writing a reader insert is already in itself distant enough and I think making them a different species is just going to make the reader in the fic even more distant from the actual person reading your fic. The same goes for giving the reader specific abilities or talents and what not.

Conclusion.

In any case, as mentioned previously I still see the appeal in writing readers in a fantastical way because that is also what fiction is for—exploration of the things we cannot normally explore in real life.

And anyway just because I think this way doesn’t mean I don’t read reader inserts like the ones you mentioned because there are a lot of those going around both on ao3 and on tumblr. It’s just a personal preference that I stick to when I write.

[bythepen98]

[Long || Pinned]

I typically draw whatever interests me depending on the day, but I probably should've made a list first to make it clear what those interests are.

Note: I'm very fic reliant. I could like a show but what REALLY gets me into them is the fan content bc they tend to flesh things out more, in a way that I can understand, and make me appreciate characters/events that were not properly explored in canon. Idk if that's gonna be an issue but I'm sure there are elitist people out there who only claim canon content while bashing everyone else for enjoying fan theories and aus.

🚫Oh and some proship warning, I guess? (I've seen other artists include it so..) Excluding my notps, I'd read any story with ships I probably didn't know existed so long as: I already like one or two of the characters in the ship, the thought of them together makes me curious instead of repulsed, and if the story itself looked too interesting for me to ignore.🚫

Shows/Series I'd make or already made FA for:

MHA

Haven't caught up to the manga yet but loosely following the anime. Read quite a bit of lengthy Deku centric fics, and that + what I've gotten so far from the show are what fuels my headcanon aus when I draw them.

Naruto

Tbh I only watched the og kids Naruto when I was young and any shippuden knowledge I have is a mix of posts from other fans, Google, and fics. Already said this before in an older post but I read a lot of time travel/fix its so I just assume that when similar events are included in more than 2 timetravel fics (if it's still set in naruto's timeline and not like, minato's or pre konoha), then that's probably what happened in canon. I also just Google any shippuden powers or characters I'm not familiar with, which is quite a lot but it works for me.

ATLA

Finished it years ago. Memories are vague but posts from other fans and canon adjacent fics help me remember.

HP

Finished the books years ago, probably before or around the same time as ATLA. Only properly watched 5/8 of the movies. Heavily read a lot of fics. Memories of the og content is vague and sometimes I'm not sure if what I know is canon or just widely loved fanon (like the Black library).

SVSS

A MESS.....I loved it. I love the fancontent more though ngl.

Mob Psycho

Haven't seen season 3 yet but I highly enjoyed the previous seasons. I actually first watched Mob and MHA around the same time so I have a soft spot for them.

Demon Slayer

Enjoyed it. Gotta finish season 2 first

JJk

Loved season 1. Planning to watch the movie soon.

FMA

Finished it. GOAT anime.

Basically I just want to draw all my fav shonen boys (eventually). My fav action manhwa boys too. Dk when it'll happen so we'll have to see.

▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎♡▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎

🩷 Ships

Deku ships, though my main ones are:

Bakugo x Deku

Todoroki x Deku

Shinsou x Deku

Shigaraki x Deku

Dabi x Hawks

Todoroki x Bakugo

Kaminari x Jirou

Shinsou x Kaminari

Toga x Ochaco

Unironically, dfo x Inko

Naruto ships

Shikamaru x Naruto

Kakashi x Naruto

Gaara x Naruto

Naruto x Hinata

Sasuke x Naruto

Sakura ships

Sasuke x Sakura

Kakashi x Sakura

....let's just include the important uchiha characters x Sakura

Shikamaru x Sakura

Sasori x Sakura

Ino x Sakura

Kakashi x Obito

Shikamaru x Temari

Sai x Ino

Lee x Gaara

Jiraiya x Oro

Minato x Kushina

Hashirama x Madara

Tobirama x Madara

Zuko x Katara

Sokka x Zuko

Zuko x Mai

Harry Ships

Tom x Harry

Harry x Draco

*insert slytherin here* x Harry

Weasley twins x Harry

Harry x Luna

Harry x Hermione

Hermione Ships

Draco x Hermione

Tom x Hermione

*Insert slytherin here* x Hermione

Weasley twins x Hermione

Harry x Hermione

Unironically, Viktor x Ron, Ron x Pansy, *insert Slytherin here* x Ron

Harry x Pansy

Blaise x Ginny

Ginny x Luna

James x Regulus

James x Snape

Snape x Lily

🚫remember me liking time travel aus? Make of that what you will//Marauders Era🚫

Luo Binghe x Shen Yuan

Luo Bingge x Shen Jiu

Mobei Jun x Shang Qinghua

Teru x Mob

Demon Slayer canon ships

Tanjiro x Inosuke

ot3

Sukuna x Megumi

Maki x Nobara

FMA canon ships

....these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Will just make edits in the future if I want to add more.

[lunelicmoone]

rest in peace technoblade <3 i will miss you forever.

hi! welcome to my blog!

i'm lunelic! (or lune, i dont mind either!)

[I DO NOT support or even remotely like dream or dteam itself. I will not argue with you on this, and I do not want you on my blog. Thanks.]

[You may see some fanwork of characters that Wilbur Soot has created that I've reblogged. Despite this, please know that I have stopped supporting that man completely ever since Shelby has released her statement. Thank you.]

i consider myself to be a multi-fandom account! meaning i post/reblog things that span across different pieces of media! you may catch me mostly posting about/reblogging things from:

qsmp (lore & some content creators)

doki-doki literature club

the arcana (im a lucio hater)

danganronpa (all games, but mostly dr2)

the amazing digital circus

faith: the unholy trinity

the mandela catalogue

percy jackson & the olympians (will be reblogging tv spoilers)

the bear

stardew valley (i am in love with doctor harvey)

sleep deprived podcast & sdmp

criminal case (yes. the facebook mobile game.)

and although rarely:

your turn to die

my hero academia (anime & manga)

marvel cinematic universe

stanley parable

animal crossing (new horizons)

the office (us)

south park

the group chat podcast

telltale's the walking dead (#1 clouis defender)

ace attorney (trilogy)

detroit: become human

aphmau (mcd & mystreet usually)

superliminal

mortal kombat 1

spider-man adjacent media (itsv/atsv, insomniac games, etc)

(i also like to reblog a bunch of posts from specific medias like, the day that i actually get into them. for example, pride and prejudice 2005 and barbie 2023)

[I will absolutely be spreading awareness posts about the acts of genocide happening in the world. This includes what's going on in Palestine. Zionists are free to leave my blog.]

i do enjoy the occasional liveblog (especially for quackity and slimecicle streams, and i've recently done it more for big events such as the 2024 streamer awards), but i'll sometimes forget to tag them. if you notice me forget about the tag and you want to filter it or something, shoot an ask or message my way and i'll happily do it! 🙏

if you see me thirsting on main, mind your business, i'll get over it. /j

i make die/delete your blog jokes with some close mutuals, and i often joke about killing myself over minor inconviences a lot. if you want me to trigger tag those, i gladly will do so!

[do not interact with my blog if you are in 💐blr. i do not want you here, and i will block you.]

any extra personal information like my pronouns are in my blog description!

this is my ao3!

[i'll only really respond to any kind of anon hate if it's funny, so don't bother lol]

— as for tags, i only have a few custom ones:

• lune's drabbles - little drabbles of writting!

• lune's writing - full fics/one-shots!

• lune oc tag - things about my personal ocs!

• lune's random headcanons - random headcanons i have about dsmp characters!

• lune's mandela catalogue au - my tntduo mandela catalogue au!

• lune's snippets - snippets of fics im working on!

• lune's writing again - little shitposts i make about my fics!

• lune cc notices - self explanatory, but just something i made for myself!

[kingofthewilderwest]

I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the dragon designs in TNR, but I actually liked them. (With the exception of Wu and Weiʼs wings, which look awkward). What do you think about the dragon designs?

I have more fun talking in an upbeat way about the latest media myself! I’ll be honest about my opinions of the dragon designs below, including the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I hope you won’t think I descend into complaints, because I have no intention of complaining for a second. And there’s lots I enjoy and will highlight. TNR honestly does give us some great dragon design material.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Feathers and Plowhorn's designs are fantastic, a perfect reflection of the DreamWorks Dragons universe: taking unique inspirations from unexpected creatures and combining them with lovable, whimsical designs. The limitations to their appearance is the animation budget, not the design itself. Imagine how stupendous they’d look with the budget of a movie theatrical release: they’re just that good they’d deserve to be on the big screen!

Feathers is beautiful, long, and lithe, the forms I’ve gravitated to since I was a kid drawing my own serpentine creatures. With Plowhorn, the combination of the gem horn and the beetle wings was a stroke of ingenuity. Give the artists my applause for creating such uniqueness!

Now we’re getting into the polite constructive criticism territory. I don’t think Webmaster is a good design for a rider dragon. For a single episode enemy, that’d be fine. But I don’t think the shape is conceptually graspable enough to imprint on viewers in the way a main character’s dragon should.

I think Wu and Wei looks clunky and unappealing. In theory the colors should work together, but they don’t. And the dragon’s shape does not work. I hope you’re not upset at my personal opinion, but for those interested into what I really think, I admit I find the design ugly. Which is a shame, because I love the notion of expanding HTTYD dragons beyond Vikingdom into other cultures’ understandings, like Chinese dragons.

I’m not a fan of Thunder’s look. It could be worse but it could be improved. The blaze on the face, for whatever reason, doesn’t come off looking appealing. Mostly, though, it’s the proportions with Thunder that feel “off.” I get that they gave him a lanky, young cat sort of look, but the result is his whole body feels “off.” The flatness of his head combined with the skinniness of his neck is the start of the awkwardness.

Granted, I'd prefer he weren’t a Night Light at all, and I have my bias in that I didn’t like the original trio of Night Lights introduced in Homecoming (in that case, it’s because of how they were babyified). So that needs to be taken into account when I say I don’t care for Thunder’s appearance: the whole premise isn’t catering to someone like me. Chances are you’d be hard pressed to make any Fury-adjacent creature appeal to me in a modern show.

As far as the rest of the dragon designs in the show, I want to make a post where I glibly rate everyone! Go through every dragon, old and new, that TNR shows. I appreciate that we see some but not all of the old species and that the high majority of the screen time is on new dragons. Off the top of my head, the vomiting pus bag is the best thing I have seen in my thirty years on earth. I. Love. It. I would buy merchandise of that dude! The Sky Torcher is a cool concept, though needs more budget and a few tweaks, but it certainly stuck with me among the many new dragons we’ve seen. I hate how the Bubblehorn looks with an utter passion. But overall, I have fun seeing how the new dragons look! And I think there are way more positives than negatives when it comes to the designs of background, non-rider dragons! Definitely can’t complain to MORE DRAGONS!

[magioffire]

25 and 13

munday questions ; accepting

if  you  could  tell  your  muse  something ,  what  would  it  be ?

i would tell this little bastard so many things if i could. theres a lot of things he needs to hear, but would likely refuse to listen to. so i think the most important and effective thing to say to him would be just to tell him that its okay not to be in control all the time, its fine to let go a little bit and not hold on so tight, its okay to breathe and just be yourself sometimes.

which is all extremely hard for him because being something hes not is not just a matter of ego or personal taste or a malicious desire to manipulate people, its an attempt to survive. so i know it wouldnt be just that easy for him buuut. i think he would need to hear that. so that you can tell him to go get therapy and to stop being so self destructive AND regular destructive in a desperate plea for attention and help. like please please go see a psychologist fictional bug (what do i give him instead? i give him emotional issues and cock. just what he needs)

who  is  an  author  whose  writing  inspires  your  own ?

hmmm i wouldn’t say any one author has inspired me directly, theres been many different authors in my life that have played a part in developing my interest in writing. and i would actually say, much of my inspiration comes less from fiction and more from non-fiction sources, and i just let my imagination go the rest of the work. but sometimes you gotta read a good old fashioned novel in order to get new ideas on how to structure sentences, or ideas for how these authors structure plots and develop characters, thats mostly what i’m looking for in terms of ‘inspiration’ when it comes to reading for the sake of developing my own writing.

 when i was younger, i read a lot of vampire fiction, so a lot of anne rice (gag i know, but i was reading anne rice’s near incomprehensible purple prose in 5th grade and somehow *mostly* understanding it, so it gave me a taste for understanding very detailed orientated, sometimes very flowery writing and being able to intergrate more details into my writing without (hopefully) falling into the same pitfalls i saw her fall into)

 i read a lot of classic gothic fiction like bram stoker and edgar allen poe, you know, the basic stuff pretty much every edgy wanna be goth but too poor to actually be goth pre-teen reads. i remember reading a lot of c.s lewis work as a kid, mostly because it was ‘christian approved’ fantasy i could read in my private christian school and among my extended family without being judged for it, and that kinda opened up my mind to the world of fantasy. i enjoyed stuff like bridge to terabitha, a wrinkle in time, stuff where fantasy worlds live adjacent to the ‘real’ world.   i also read quite a bit of holly black and her various fae-centered novels, i was a little too old for the spiderwick chronicles by the time i got into her work, but i was there just in time for the tithe/valiant/ironside series which i LOVED and honestly set the seed in me for later on enjoying fae media and honestly. set the seed in me for fantasizing about having a fae boyfriend, or BEING the fae boyfriend.

 i read tolkien because i grew up watching the lotr movies with my mom, and getting through tolkiens material really made me appreciate movies LOL. i LOVED the last unicorn, both the animated move and the book. the specific genre of ‘cute animals killing eachother brutally in the forest’ which included redwall, warrior cats (at least the first few books i enjoyed), and watership down, i think those books instilled in me my joy of writing violence funnily enough.

 the pellinor series by alison croggon was a massive influence on my love of high fantasy and sprawling adventures over vast lands, her books were exactly the escape i needed at that point in time. i highly suggest her work to anyone who likes tolkien-esque high fantasy.

books like city of brass and reading the assorted stories of 1001 nights really got me interested in middle eastern fantasy, as i had not been exposed much to it before being a westerner. i started expanding my horizons beyond the sort of fantasy media that was ‘curated’ to me (as a white american who grew up christian) and branched out to stories that came from other parts of the world, or came from parts of the world that were familiar, but took inspiration from lesser known examples. i cant think of many examples off the top of my head because they were mostly anthology series i read, but it helped me develop a better impression of fantasy beyond the ‘mainstream’. i also started getting back into horror.

nowadays im primarily inspired by the work of terry pratchett, h.p lovecraft, holly black, susanna clarke, margaret rogerson, c. s. e cooney, tolkien, stephen king, mark z. danielewski (house of leaves changed me)  and toni morrison.

[caffeineandsociety]

Speaking of how people use accusations of pedophilia as a thought-terminating cliche, we need to have a conversation about how blatantly fucking racist the internet's current lolicon panic is.

Like - and I DESPISE that I have to include this preface - I don't like that it's a staple of harem and harem-adjacent games and anime to have the token edgelord little sister and looks-like-a-prepubescent-child romance options either. In my personal opinion it's uncomfortable at best and ruins the entire damned piece with its out-of-place bad-kind-of-weirdness at worst, and I think it's at least mildly irresponsible to sell taboo fetishism in the mainstream, as a side element in pieces that are decidedly not about the taboo fetish, to lonely people without caring if some of them are inclined to forget that some taboos exist for DAMNED GOOD REASONS, because "eh, not my problem, they have disposable income."

You know. Just like how it's irresponsible at best for adult-ish, dark-ish high fantasy to insist on having gratuitous sexual assault scenes out the wazoo for "historical accuracy" in a universe with dragons and absolutely no racial diversity despite ample evidence of trade networks that expand beyond these homogeneously white bubbles we focus on.

Yet way too much of the internet is out here, subtly or not, subconsciously or not, acting like this one shitty trope means Japan is just some den of degenerate men and gleefully submissive women, this perverted land that will sexualize anything and everything and in fact takes it as a challenge to cross every line and thinks child molestation is fun for the whole family because their age of consent is 14-

Which is. You know. Hm.

First of all, it can be argued that the age of consent in Japan is 14 in the same sense that the age of consent in the US is 12 or even nonexistent - that is to say, that's the youngest any prefecture is allowed to permit, and the only time it's actually used is in the case of close-in-age cases ("Romeo and Juliet laws") - i.e., the kind of legal codes that make it harder for homophobic parents to have their 15-year old children's same-age same-sex partners arrested and labeled as sex offenders. For no-strings-attached age of consent it's 16-18 depending on prefecture, exactly like it is in the US. The fact that even people who really try not to be racist or xenophobic will end up parroting this myth is...alarming.

Second, again, it's not like anime and Japanese games are the only things that have really uncomfortably sexualized genre staples, or that treat extremely young girls like sex-objects-in-training. It's not an anime-only thing that if we want a female character to have a ~dark~ backstory, it almost always involves sexual violence, as if women can't have any other kind of fear or traumatic experience (or as if men can't have sexual trauma except as an excuse to pay it forward, for that matter). Child actresses are often expected to wear fashionable, form-fitting clothes from damned near the moment they start walking, whereas young boys on screen generally get to just dress like kids. Western kids' media, especially that aimed at girls, is often glutted with obvious creator fetishes meant to fly over the kids' heads - and, okay, some of the breakdowns of this pattern are unfair and themselves the ones doing the sexualizing, the overlap between "things adults semi-often have fetishes for" and "things kids giggle at and/or may enjoy as sensory play" is...A Lot, but it is often framed in a weirdly sexual way, never mind that foot guy at Nickelodeon who got caught fetish mining from his audience of children.

Yet, for some reason, we only care about those cases when they're in the headlines, but when it's anime, we have to be on the lookout for it 24/7 and call it out EVERY time it shows up in ANYTHING we see and complain LOUDLY about it ALL the time or else we're child abuse enablers?

It's. It's xenophobia and racism. Full stop. And I'm sick to death of seeing it.

[xxwritemeastoryxx]

Once Upon a December - Ch. 1

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: No set Parings. Eventual Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 4.7K

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of. However if you find something that should be warned about, please let me know. 

Series’ Note: This fic is a reader insert throughout the majority of the story. It’s not until towards the end, besides the first chapter, that an actual name is placed onto the reader. As always I try to keep all descriptions and such very vague and open to the reader to feel included. None of the physical descriptions of Anastasia will be used in this. Details from both the animated movie and Broadway show were used as reference material to go with the several twists and personal touches that I’ve added.

Author’s Note: I’m so excited for this to be posted! I couldn't wait any longer, so here is my early birthday gift to you guys and I hope that you enjoy my take on this story with these characters. I’ve been stuck with this idea in my head since seeing a tiktok and well, here is the result. I can’t wait for you guys to read all the twist and turns I’ve added. Happy reading!  The beautiful divider is by @firefly-graphics​ ♥

I do not and will not ever give permission for my fics to be copied and posted on other sites. Don’t do it. Don’t be that person that ruins it for me and everyone else.

Feedback gives me life and motivation for future things. While likes are appreciated, reblogs are gold. Seriously, if you enjoyed this in the slightest, please reblog ♥

<< Series Masterlist || Marvel Masterlist || Chapter 2 >>

“Wait for me!” Anastasia called out as she ran down the hall after her older sisters. 

The two girls had been giggling away as they had some plans they wished to go and do without their younger sister’s presence. Hearing Anastasia’s voice only causes them to run a little bit faster to get to their destination. By the time Anastasia had made it half way down the hall, her sisters were no longer in sight. 

A sigh passed her lips as she kicked her shoe against the tile of the halls. It wasn’t always like that between the siblings. Some days all of them would be together enjoying their time. The laughter between them would be contagious as they played games that were both physical or even the imaginary ones. Today just happened to not be one of those days.

Anastasia was about to turn back the way she came when she heard voices coming up the adjacent hall. One of them she recognized right away as her father. It was the way his voice held authority that she could easily pick up on. However it was the other voice that had responded to her father that she didn’t recognize. 

Down that particular hall, Anastasia knew her father’s office had been stationed right there. A place where the family knew her father conducted most of his private business affairs behind those closed doors. Only this time the conversation had begun before they even reached that office. 

Taking careful steps to prevent the sound of her shoes hitting the tile to echo within the hall, Anastasia moved as close to the corner of the hall so she could listen in on the conversation. While she knew she shouldn’t have, she had never heard the second voice before and she was curious as ever to know who it belonged to. 

The way he spoke didn’t bring ease like many of the people Anastasia had heard speak. There was no comfort in the tone of his voice. If anything, it caused a chill to run up the young girl’s spine as she listened to him speak. 

“The L/N family has ruled for a handful of centuries. What difference is it this time around?” Anastasia could hear her father ask as they came to a stop just outside of his office. 

“I believe a deal between the L/N family and Hydra would be beneficial to both parties.” The man said a moment later. “You have the resources I need to find a particular item of interest. In return, I have the numbers of men should the need ever arise.” 

“What is the item in question?” Her father answered as they walked into his office before closing the door behind them. 

Anastasia could still hear the echo of their voices, but nothing being said could be made out completely. Her nose scrunched up slightly as she relaxed her stance against the wall. But even then, there was an unsettling feeling that grew in the pit of her stomach. 

She knew nothing about the deals her father made or how this man currently believed the two would be able to help each other out. She just knew something wasn’t right about it. And she hoped that her father had picked up on the feeling just as she did.

“You know it’s considered rude to eavesdrop on a conversation.”

The voice alone had caused Anastasia to jump as she turned to face whoever had snuck up on her. For as long as she had been standing in that spot, she hadn’t even thought to take in her surroundings. And for someone to sneak up on her like that, she must have really been into listening to the details she heard. 

Her hand rested above her heart as she turned, taking in how fast it had been beating within her ribcage. Her eyes landed on the boy before her. “And it’s rude to sneak up on people and startle them as you have.”

The glare Anastasia had given the boy as she said the words had caused him to chuckle. As he did, he took a few steps back, hoping to give her the space she needed to calm her rapidly beating heart. And as he did, Anastasia had taken who the boy really was for the first time. 

From first appearances, Anastasia knew he must have been the son of someone who worked in the palace or he worked there. Unlike the clothing that had been tailored and pressed for the family, the boy’s clothing were much baggier and in some places, Anastasia could pick up on the tattered ends from wear and tear. Something her clothing never saw. 

Even after the sound of his chuckle had left the air that surrounded them, there was still a hint of a smile on his lips. And the mischievous glint within his blue eyes, that was almost covered by his rather unkempt hair, was something Anastasia had seen within her younger brother’s eyes. 

But even as Anastasia had taken his appearance she realized she had never spoken to him before. A glance here and there from the distance as she watched him and the other workers’ children playing outside while she studied different subjects. How easy it was to allow envy to fill her all those times she used to look out the window, wanting a distraction from whatever her tutor was droning on about. 

“I apologize, Princess.” He said a moment later. “I was on my way out to meet Sam and I couldn’t help myself.”

“Sam?” She questioned. A name that hadn’t held any familiarity to her. Not that she had a chance to mingle with the other children very often. 

“A friend of mine.” His head nodded. The smile that had been on his face earlier had soon been replaced with a slight frown as something crossed his mind. “You don’t know any of our names do you?”

While any other time Anastasia might have felt embarrassed, something told her not to feel that way. She held her head up a bit higher as she shook her head. “I’m afraid not. It’s not like we spend a lot of time in the same common areas.”

A huff of a chuckle passed his lips as he shook his head. While the boy knew he could easily get into plenty of trouble simply speaking with Anastasia as he was, he hadn’t cared. For once he had gotten to see her as a normal person. Someone who could be scared easily and be curious as to what he may be doing.

“My name is James.” He offered. “My friends call me Bucky.”

A smile pulled at Anastasia’s lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, James. My name is -”

“Anastasia.” He finished for her. “I know.” A chuckle passed both their lips at his words. 

Before Anastasia could say anything else, she could hear someone calling her from the opposite end of the hall. Her face fell at the sound of her name. The familiarity in the voice alerting her to her tutor. 

“I have to go.” She said as she moved from her spot and began walking away from Bucky. 

Bucky watched as she turned from him and disappeared around the corner. He waited there for a few moments more before he even began to move in the direction he had been heading earlier. And while part of him told him that was the only time he’d get to speak to her, there was another part that was willing to find ways to speak to her some more. 

_____

Over the next several weeks Bucky had found ways to spend time with Anastasia. While the moments were brief, he managed to find a way. As Anastasia had been walking with her siblings down the hall, he’d make an appearance out of nowhere. A quick conversation was held before Anastasia had to run to catch up with her siblings who were now calling out to her. 

Or there were those brief moments where Anastasia would be sitting with a book in her hand as she walked the palace grounds on a nice day. That had been the day Bucky had introduced her to Sam. And for the first time, Anastasia had friends that weren’t always so focused on the royal status she held. 

And on one stormy day, Anastasia, Bucky and Sam had been standing off in a corner talking about exploring the levels under the palace that not many had gone into. While Anastasia was hesitant at first, Bucky had been trying not to only convince her but Sam as well that this would all be for fun. 

“It’s just for a few minutes.” Bucky tried to convince her. “You’ll be back before they even know you left.”

“Isn’t this considered kidnapping?” Sam asked as he looked over at Bucky. “If they find she’s gone missing before we get back, I’d like to save my skin from the trouble we’d be in.”

“You mean the trouble I’d be in.” Bucky said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Your father is a member of the court. You’ll get a free pass while I’ll get stuck on dish duty for a month.” 

Watching the two bicker back and forth caused a laugh to pass Anastasia’s lips. “The question to be asked is how sure are you that you’d be in trouble?” She watched as their eyebrows raised in confusion. “If you happened to have found a wandering princess and tried to get her to go back to where she needed to be, I’m sure this princess would be in more trouble than the two that helped her. Isn’t that right, Bucky?” 

Sam leaned closer to Bucky. “It’s scary when she does that.”

It wasn’t the first time that Anastasia had given them a plan that worked a hundred times better than the one they had come up with. She would question things before she ever agreed to anything. With her agreement, there was always a better plan in place that ensured she’d get the blame if it ever came down to it. But like many of the times before, Anastasia was always back where she needed to be before anyone noticed she had been gone. 

Bucky shook his head, a grin pulling at his lips. “You have no idea.”

However as it came closer to the three hundred year celebration, they saw less and less of each other. While Bucky was helping with the million chores that needed to be done in preparation of the guests arrival, Anastasia had been getting fitted for her dress along with several more hours of studying that she had fallen behind on. 

Both had grown used to the little moments throughout the day where they’d see each other. Even if it was across the hall or even through the window. But as their schedules had become busy, the time they used to spend together was practically nonexistent. 

When the day of the party arrived, there had been a lot running around on Bucky’s part. From helping to wash dishes, setting up the dinning hall, and even to getting the ball room polished for the guests that would start to pour in at any minute. The detailing leaves the young boy sweating alongside the others that worked within the palace.

And when he finally had a chance to take a break, sneaking away to find Anastasia just wasn’t possible. Not when she had been glued beside her parent’s the whole day. Even in passing, Anastasia’s attention had been on the things her mother had been saying that she hadn’t even had a chance to look around as she normally would have. 

Instead, he simply leaned against the wall to the servant’s hall hidden within the wall and propped open the door in the slightest to give him a view of the ballroom. He could hear the orchestra play as the guests began to dance. While there weren't many in the ballroom at the moment, he knew as the night went on, plenty would be dancing, including Anastasia. 

From his spot, Bucky could barely see the chairs that had been placed out for the royal family. He could see the farthest wall that had been lined with tables and chairs for the guests. And as he pushed the door open a little bit more, he could see the chairs for the royal family in their entirety. He could see the way Anastasia’s hand had been tapping along the armrest as she sat there. 

A light chuckle passed Bucky’s lips as he watched as her head began to bob with the music. Her enjoyment for nights like these was evident in the way she had previously talked about the upcoming party. All the things she was looking forward to being able to do would soon be in the palm of her hands. 

 As Anastasia watched the guests begin to dance, a smile couldn’t help but form on her lips. If there was always one thing that Anastasia looked forward to, it was the beautiful parties that had been thrown in the palace. No matter what party had been thrown, Anastasia would end up talking about it for weeks if she could. 

It wasn’t long after that Anastasia had found herself out on the ballroom floor with her family dancing to the music. The steps to every dance embedded into her memory that the movements came as easy as breathing. Even as she laughed and even made faces at her siblings to add to the enjoyment of the night, her mood was never dampened in any way. 

Some time later, Bucky had found a moment to sneak back into the ballroom. While he stayed close to the back walls, he couldn’t help himself by taking a few steps closer to watch as Anastasia ran up the set of stairs to me with the Dowager Queen. A small smile pulled at his lips as he watched the smile grow on her face. 

The Dowager had been visiting for the last week. And while several things had kept Bucky and Anastasia from being able to spend some time together, it was also because of the elderly woman. Anastasia had mentioned time and time again how much she enjoyed spending time with her grandma. 

“Do you have to leave tomorrow?” Anastasia asked. There was a slight sadness to her voice as she asked the question. 

The Dowager sighed, but allowed a smile to pull at her lips. “I’m afraid I do. And while our goodbyes are always hard, I do believe I have something that will help our time away from each other.”

The older woman reached into the small bag she had with her. Both Anastasia and Bucky watched with curiosity as she did. Anastasia and the Dowager hadn’t noticed Bucky standing nearby as they spoke. And if Anastasia had at any point, she didn’t let Bucky know she had. 

Once the Dowager removed her hand from the bag, she held a small round music box. Beautiful gold and green designs covered the sides and top of it. White and red jewels were embedded into some of the engravings. And as she held it up towards Anastasia, the young girl’s eyes widened as she took it in. 

“This is for me?” She asked as she slowly reached for the item in her grandmother’s hand. “It’s beautiful. Is it a jewelry box?” The moment she had it in her hands, she began taking in all of the details. The more she looked at it, the more she loved it and she didn’t even know what it was just yet. 

The Dowager chuckled and reached for her bag once more, pulling out a necklace with a charm that matched the box in color and design. “Let me show you.” she began as she took the music box from Anastasia and placed the charm of the necklace into a spot on the box before she began winding it up.

Bucky continued to watch the two as the music box began to open within the Dowager’s hands. While from his spot he couldn’t hear the sound that came from it, he could see the way a large grin pulled at Anastasia’s lips. He could tell that Anastasia knew instantly what the small device had been playing. But before the lullaby had been finished, Bucky was literally being dragged back to his work station while being scolded about eavesdropping on royalty. 

“Here,” The dowager placed the necklace into Anastasia’s hand. “Read what it says.”

Quickly picking up the charm, she took in the details of it. On the back of the beautiful design had been an engraving with ‘Together in Paris’. The words had caused a gasp to pass Anastasia’s lips. 

For months Anastasia had been begging and pleading to be able to spend time with her grandmother in Paris. While her parents had told her that once she was old enough, they’d consider it. The adults had spent many times talking about the arrangements to allow Anastasia to spend some time in Paris with the Dowager and an agreement had been made in two year’s time. The gift not only allowed them to make the separation easier, it gave Anastasia the confirmation that soon she’d be able to spend some time with her for longer than a period of a week at a time. The Dowager’s smile grew as she watched as Anastasia took in the words she had read. 

“I really get to go?” Anastasia asked as she looked between the words and her grandmother. 

“Of course.” The Dowager nodded. The simple response caused Anastasia to lunge at her grandmother with a tight hug. The both of them laughed as she had. 

“Thank you!” Anastasia said as she pulled herself back and took the music box in her hand. Taking the charm, she repeated the movements her grandmother had made moments before in order to start up the music box. And as it started, a smile grew on both of their faces, taking in the beginning of the lullaby once more. 

Gasps coming from the crowd caused both Anastasia and her grandmother to turn their attention from the music box and towards the entryway of the ballroom. The guests were quickly creating a pathway for whoever it was that was approaching them. And as they parted, Anastasia could see a man who carried his head held high, followed by several soldiers, make their way closer to her father. 

Out of instinct, the Dowager stood from her seat and pulled Anastasia behind her. For even she knew the possible threat this man could be with how he walked in with armed soldiers. The Queen pulled the children closest to her behind her in almost the exact stance the Dowager had been in before pushing them further back, making them the same distance away as Anastasia and the Dowager. Both of the older women attempting to shield the younger ones from any of the harm that could happen within the next few minutes. 

The sound of their boots echoed within the ballroom. The sound itself was almost deafening as the royal family waited with bated breath as they continued to walk closer to the King. Anastasia’s eyes watched as her father’s head lifted in preparation for the exchange that was about to begin. 

Never once did he shrink as the men came to a stop before him. From where Anastasia stood, she could see the way her father’s fists had clenched by his side. A smirk pulled at the lips of the man before him as he came to a stop, the soldiers doing the same a heartbeat later. 

It was the smirk alone that made the King snap as he took a step towards the man. “You have some nerve returning to the palace, Johann.”

“We had a deal, your Majesty.” The title used had come out as a mocking tone. One that had caused several murmurs from those around them to begin.

“I’ve held my end.” The King took a closer step. “It was you that didn’t heed the terms. Our deal was to find what it was you needed, I’ve never once agreed to my people procuring it and handing it over. Now get out!”

“I take my deals very seriously.” Johann never moved from his spot, even after the King told him to leave. “Breaking this deal won’t end well.”

“I will not feed the flames of the hunger you desire for power.” The King’s hand lifted, pointing a finger at Johann. “You will not only destroy this Kingdom, but others as well. If I knew the potential of the item you sought out, I never would have agreed to speak with you, let alone allow this to go on as long as I have. We are done here, and you will leave.”

A chuckle passed Johann’s lips. The sound of it easily sending a chill up the back of everyone present in the room. He ran his gloved hand along his mouth and chin before he nodded his head. “If that is what you wish, then so be it.” He began to turn before stopping mid turn. His hand moved to the back of his neck before pulling at the material that laid just beneath his collar. “However, if I do not get what I want by midday tomorrow,” As he turned he pulled the material away from his head, revealing a red, and disfigured face. “Your family will die.”

The gasps that followed could easily be heard within the ballroom. It had not only been for the words but also because of how Johann looked as a smirk pulled at his face once more. He no longer looked like a man, but a devil that stood before them. Further proving that he would do as he pleased and if he meant death, he’d gladly send it upon the L/N family. 

The King’s eyes were wide as he tried to take in everything that had just happened. From the threat to what his eyes were still trying to take in.  His eyes moved towards his family before quickly coming back to the man in front of him. 

“Midday, your Majesty.” Johann said before turning to leave. “Your time is running out.”

_____

By the time morning arrived, none of the royals had slept. And if they attempted to, it was only moments later that they’d find themselves tossing and turning until they gave up. Fear had easily spread throughout the palace. The night of celebration now long forgotten as the thought of doom and death lurking in the shadows. 

The word quickly spread throughout the palace of the Red Skull, a name that had been given to Johann by the workers. For those that didn’t witness it had heard the details of the threats and the man’s reveal of his true self. There were even rumors that the mask he used to cover his face had been left on the ballroom floor.  

The Dowager had spent hours trying to convince her son to take his family and leave until the Red Skull had been found and taken into custody. But the argument with her son had proved him to be stubborn and needed to hold his ground to ensure that no one else believed them to be weak or even vulnerable with the threat that had been handed. It ended with the Dowager leaving to go back to Paris with the hopes that her family would soon follow once her son came to his senses well before their time ran out. 

On the opposite end of the palace, inside of Anastasia’s room, the young girl paced the length of the room. The music box played the comforting tune as she did. Her mind filled with worry, the dark images of the Red Skull’s face flashing within her mind as his threat played on repeat in her ears. But in the small breaks of those moments, the lullaby calmed her. 

“Pacing like that is only going to make you dizzy.” Bucky’s voice carried into the room, causing Anastasia to jump and quickly turn and face him.

From the moment she had been sent to her room with a guard at her door, Anastasia didn’t have a chance to see Bucky or Sam. She had expected them to be with their own families as they waited for any kind of news just as she was. And with how high tensions were, she wasn’t sure when she’d see her friends again.

But much like her in that moment, Bucky just couldn’t sit still and with a bit of a distraction from some of the workers arguing, Bucky had been able to slip through a door and make his way into the servants' halls to Anastasia’s room. 

Bucky had been in the ballroom the moment Johann had made his appearance. Much like the others that had witnessed it, fear spiked within Bucky at the threats that had been made. He was afraid for Anastasia and what this could do to her and her family. The thought alone made him wish he had been a few years older to be able to help the guards go looking for him. 

“I’d rather be dizzy than sitting still.” She said as she closed the lid to the music box. “But I am glad to see you.”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He said as he took a few steps away from the wall. “I don’t think I’ve seen my parents as scared as they are now. I overheard them talking about leaving.”

“Everyone wants to leave.” She said with a slight nod. “I heard the guards at the door talking about their families wanting to leave as well. One of them said nothing would come from his threats.”

“We should believe him.” Bucky said hopeful. “Your father has the guards out there looking for him. Along with anyone else that was willing to help. The only thing we can do is wait.”

“I don’t like this.” Anastasia said as she turned and began making her way to the other side of the room. Her grip on the music box tightened slightly as she hand. “I don’t want to be scared of being in my own home. Or counting the time until midday arrives.”

Bucky looked down at the ground as he took in her words. While he had witnessed the same thing she had hours ago, it wasn’t his face that he was seeing, it was hers. It was how afraid she had been and the look on her face that had been embedded into his mind. He had seen the Princess startled, laughing, smiling and the occasional sadness that appeared on her face when any of her family left. But seeing her scared was something he had never seen before. 

“Your father will figure something out.” Bucky said as he took a few steps towards her. “The Guard is out there looking for him. He won't be able to get very far.”

She shook her head slightly as she walked over to the dollhouse. It had been almost an exact replica of the palace they were currently in. Sighing she set the music box in the smaller version of her room and closed the backing of it up. 

“What if they can’t?” Her fingers ran along the top of the dollhouse. Her mind goes back to that day in the hall when she first met Bucky. The conversation her father had been having when she started eavesdropping gave more information now that she understood the threat. “I know I wasn’t the only one eavesdropping.”

Bucky’s face fell as he looked towards the window. She wasn’t wrong. He had heard the conversation her father and the Red Skull had been having just as she had. The deal they had been discussing before it had been closed off to their ears from the end of the hall.

He understood her fear. How much he had been afraid of who was lurking in a rather perfect hiding place that no one could find him. How the slightest noise had made Anastasia jump or scream in fear at the possibility that the soldiers he had spoken about had come for them. 

As Bucky was just about to explain that no one would try anything against their family, several rounds of gunshots echoed through the halls. And the screams that shortly followed told Bucky that everything he had been thinking was completely wrong. 

<< Series Masterlist || Marvel Masterlist || Chapter 2 >>

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Winter Soldier tag(For only and all things Bucky):

@mqravdcrs​

[mspaintmysterydungeon]

HI EVERYONE!!

you can call me cy (they, he, or xey pronouns acceptable) and welcome to ms paint mystery dungeon, the blog where i draw all your faves from pokemon mystery dungeon, but yknow, badly!

important info is under the cut as well as some fun extras. the general tags i use on this blog shall all be tagged on this post (except for individual character tags), so if you want to search through all the art or all the text you can do so at your leisure. enjoy your stay!

🍃-

Important things first!

the mod of this blog supports: pretty much all lgbtq+/queer people (including ace/aro people and those with more specific identities or genders), accessibility (i try to describe images when i can, and if there’s certain things people want tagged i sure can try), and all that. you guys should know the drill by now.

-> i am only one person with a limited amount of patience, so for my own comfort if anyone who goes against these things (or just personally makes me uncomfortable) decides to follow they will likely be blocked. additionally, anyone who supports the shipping of generally Gross things (things like adult/minor, siblings, etc) will also be blocked. i can’t think of everything else rn but i’m sure there’s more, if you wanna clarify something first though just ask!

🌸 -

ok i think that’s most of the important things out the way. now for some fun information about myself!

-> i am 19, and my gender n stuff is Eh but i just call myself a nonbinary wlw/lesbian. my main blog is @ mntcoronet !

-> my first pokemon game ever was in fact gates to infinity! (…technically it was pokedex 3d but shh). i watched the trailers all the time on the eshop when i was younger, and i loved any story with animals or animal-adjacent creatures as the protagonists, so it was the perfect way for me to get my first taste of pokemon. i later got x as soon as it came out, and from there i was unstoppable! i’m now trying to catch up and play some of the older games because i got Just interested enough in dppt at the end of last year.

-> fave pkmn characters: honestly as a whole i cannot decide. however the ones i’m thinking about most right now are the future trio and chatot (i know it surprised me too)

🌒-

my progress through the series:

-> played to completion: gates to infinity, x/y, or/as, sun/moon, sword/shield, legends arceus (well the story content at least)

-> in progress: platinum (up to 8th gym)*, explorers of sky (post game time weeoo), black/white, emerald

* i lost motivation to finish it, but i have read the adventures/pokespe chapters so i have at least some idea of the other stuff.

and that’s it for now! thank you for reading, hope you have a good day :)

[mattzerella-sticks]

hi! i’m new to reading dc, because i hear new 52 and rebirth kinda suck, do you have any batfamily recommendations?

Welcome aboard! I’m gonna say something controversial - new 52 and Rebirth aren’t totally bad. Don’t get me wrong, before Flashpoint Batfamily was GOING PLACES. But I think they started strong with Batman in new 52 (like the Court of Owls wer fantastic and Julia Pennyworth is amazing) but then the aftermath of this Batman v. Joker fight during Scott Snyder’s run kinda fizzled the Batman run. And don’t get me STARTED on the bullshit Tom King has done. Not even James Tynion can save the Rebirth Batman title (but that’s because the powers that be probably had a vision that’s most likely been canned given how a lot of the brass was let go). I digress...

For New 52, I highly recommend: Batman (up until the Batman mantle gets passed, which is 50 or so issues in), Grayson (I enjoyed the spy atmosphere, plus the introduction of Helena Bertinelli, Tiger, and Midnighter - officially), Red Hood and the Outlaws (although the early issues and how they treated Kori are iffy), DEFINITELY Batgirl (especially the Gail Simone run and then the Babs Starr run, Batgirl of Burnside ftw) and - I’m including her into the Batfamily - the Harley Quinn series, because that’s good no matter WHAT. Things I’ve heard good things about but haven’t fully in-depth read were We Are Robin and Catwoman, although the former ends kind of unsatisfyingly. And, again, not Batfamily but adjacent - Gotham Academy. I was SO MAD when it ended because it was one of the best comics DC was producing. Oh and there was a Robin series where he has a giant bat!!! That was really good, too. 

Rebirth they really fucked themselves over for the Batfam. Don’t even look at Batman, the first few issues are okay but then it gets muddled in this Bane plot and ‘War of Jokes and Riddles’ which was the WORST Batman storyline ever. Went on too long imo because you kind of forget this is all Bruce telling Selena about his ‘worst sin’ even though she’d be DTF no matter what. Plus there’s so much emphasis on Kite Man (i think even an issue is dedicated to his POV which makes no sense given the context the story’s being told but again Tom King SUCKS). It’ll make you feel like you read a comic book of How I Met Your Mother. Only Batman issues I recommend are the ones that are Flash crossovers because those are my favs for obvi reasons. What you want to do is get into first year of Rebirth Detective Comics because 1) Cassandra Cain 2) Stephanie Brown 3) Kate Kane 4) Clayface!?!?! 5) Tim Drake 6) Dr. Oktober; Honestly it was such a good ensemble piece (James Tynion is an awesome writer, he’s not a miracle worker unfortunately). That was a good run, although it does change plot at a certain point - which was sad - but it still feels like a Batman book even after the ensemble leaves, better than the actual Batman title. So sticking with that over the Batman main series is good. I think Rebirth Outsiders was trying to capture that magic except the writing isn’t that good plus there were a bunch of creative differences that delayed the first issue and I lost any excitement for it (which was sad because I love all the characters in it - Duke, Black Lightning, and Katana). Batgirl, again, although you’ll come to a point where it stops being amazing - and that is when she ditches her Babs Starr costume for something AWFUL. #BringBackBurnsideBatgirl Once you see the costume change either lower your expectations or move on because it doesn’t recover. I’ve heard good things about the Catwoman series but I haven’t read it. What I have read is Harley Quinn (again unofficial Bat family member) and that has been consistently amazing (even if the last few issues gave Harley questional/straightwashed tastes). DEFINITE reads though that shouldn’t be too long (because DC likes ending good things) are Batwoman and Batgirl & the Birds of Prey. The Batwoman comic was too good for this world, we need more Kate Kane in our lives. And the Birds of Prey series felt like the movie a bit. They definitely seemed like friends (unlike the new 52 version, which was AWFUL) and there’s one story where the men of Gotham get sick that is so good I’m waiting on DC to turn it into an animated feature. Those titles are both like twenty or so issues. There’s a Midnigther and Apollo miniseries that was so great (also unofficial member). Red Hood and the Outlaws I liked, but after Roy leaves it lost the magic. Rebirth Nightwing was good at first, but Tom King ruined it even though he doesn’t write for that title. Best storyline was when he gets involved with this group for reformed criminals while in Bludhaven. The most recent storyline wasn’t bad, in a sense. The characters brought on were interesting. It was just apbrupt and clearly not what the actual writer had in mind, but they had to write around Tom King. And overall the character of Nightwing suffered. Young Justice doesn’t feel too canonical (and Drake is a stupid name); Teen Titans is okay but Damian is an edgelord. 

Moving on from that, outside of Rebirth and New 52, some other titles that I’ve enjoyed featuring the Batfamily were: Cassandra Cain’s Batgirl, Stephanie Brown’s Batgirl, Gotham City Sirens, Batman, Inc., Batman & Robin (with Dick as Batman, Damian as Robin), the Outsiders (the spin-off from Titans, probably in the mid-2000s with Dick Grayson leading)...

There was an interesting Detective Comics arc I read about the GCPD starring Renee Montoya that dealt with her ‘coming out’ (in the loosest of terms given how it happened).

A Batman/Superman arc I love revisiting is when they re-introduce Supergirl (and speaking of Batman/Superman, find the issue(s) where Superman gets affected by silver kryptonite and turns into a stoner because THAT was funny)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention No Man’s Land or Batman Year One because those two kind of establish Gotham and the Batman character... You could read the Killing Joke but you can easily sum the entire story up with one panel (probably one of the first images that pops up when you google The Killing Joke). A better, edgier Batman story - imo - is when he gets addicted to Venom. Or the Death of Jason Todd - which reminds me Under the Red Hood is a good story! (I didn’t read the comic lol but I did watch the movie - Jensen Ackles ftw).

If you’re looking for kooky, anything from the 40s up to before Crisis on Infinite Earths where ANYTHING went. From World’s Finest to the Batman title, they got to some pretty insane shit. Very campy. Although the nineties-early 2000′s were campy in their own way, like so on the other end of the spectrum from ‘camp’ that it became camp again. There’s two different Batman storylines that were VERY anti-drugs (Shadow of the Bat was the running title, I think; one story against weed and the other against LSD) that were so ridiculous and trying to push kids away from doing drugs that you couldn’t help but realize how ridiculous and over-the-top this was.

Finally there are Elseworlds titles. Everyone always raves for Batman: Gotham by Gaslight but I think two very interesting takes on a Batman of a different world are: Batman - Holy Terror, and Batman: Nosferatu. There’s also an Elseworlds with Barbara as Batwoman and a female Joker (Batgirl: Thrillkiller I believe) and one that has Catwoman as the hero of Gotham and Bruce Wayne as a sadistic killer.

Hope at least one of these suggestions helps 😀

[misdre]

i wrote down some art-related thoughts and tips, inspired by people i follow who occasionally say the sort of things that they wish they were better at drawing but don't really know where to go with it, not like i'm much of an authority or anything and nobody's asked my opinion but, if this is helpful for someone out there, then it's worth writing!

- examine other people's art, especially those that you like, and study which things you actually like about it. you shouldn't directly copy someone else's art, but what you can do is take inspiration or study the details that you enjoy and adapt them into your own style. for practice it's fine to copy someone else, but if you post the final piece, you should mention whose art you referenced in it. also, do the same with art that you find yourself not particularly liking! think about the things that don't make it very good in your opinion and see if you can learn something from that. if you don't like your own art, you can even study what makes it disappointing to yourself. process it a little instead of just going "wow i suck at drawing" and moving on, even if it feels difficult.

- also related to the above: widen your view of how art can be done in the first place, and if you find that you're always drawing one and the same thing, maybe try something different every once in a while. and by this i don't really mean the actual subject matter but small things like, do you always use a black lineart brush? try using colours instead. do you reference fanart from official art? try making your own version instead or reference the style of some other series, go a little crazy with it. do you have a particular style of drawing eyes, or faces in general? play around with shapes and see how it turns out, go more realistic or more cartoony. i sometimes draw noses on characters and sometimes i don't, just kind of depending how it looks like to myself, and i don't draw nostrils because i don't really like the look of two holes in the face. you don't have to stick to just one "truth" with art. (of course it's totally fine to want to draw realistic humans and not the kind of anime stuff i personally do, these are just examples from me and you should focus on the things you like yourself)

- pay attention to shapes, and the fact that sometimes simple is better than adding too much detail. or if you like adding tons of details, then it may be better for the base drawing (e.g. the character under all that detail) to be extremely simple in contrast so that it doesn't look too busy for the eye. when i draw faces, i only really put details in the eyes because i like pretty eyes a lot but leave the rest of the face very simple, which makes the eyes stand out more. again, you don’t need to do that, but it’s something to think about when doing art. there are so many details to every single thing ever and it’s generally better to choose which ones you want to emphasise in art.

- a thing i see relatively often is that people draw in black and white, maybe with pencil on paper, and then lament that their art doesn’t get enough attention. the thing is, making b&w art interesting is much harder than giving it personality with colour, because it won't catch people's eye the same way. to me personally, an artist's use of colour is one of the things that draws me into their stuff (actually even the main thing in most cases), so while black&white art can be really beautiful as well and it's totally fine to want to pursue a b&w art style, i'd still encourage people to learn to use colours. it's much easier to give your drawings character with colours, and if you honestly want more attention (which is a valid thing to want), then i'd especially encourage it. it takes more time, so you may need to get used to the fact that finishing a fairly simple drawing can take 8 hours instead of one, though. at least if you're a slow ass person like me

- and as an addition to the former, there are so many different ways to use colour, so don't limit yourself by thinking there's only one way. you can even make art that's primarily black&white but add an accent colour or two in there and it already changes the feeling of the image completely (i do this sometimes and like that style a lot). or you can have a style that only includes flat colours and no shading or anything at all, you don't need to become a master painter with realistic shadows everywhere if you don’t want to. (if you do want to, then my best advice would be to study photos and paint using them as reference.)

- if you find yourself going, "this artist's colours are so good! i wish mine were like this!" -- why not use similar palettes with that artist then? think about what kind of colours you like and what kind of mood you want to convey in your drawing, bright hues will look completely different from darker or duller ones, blues will look cold and reds warm, some colours pop out more when placed next to another. don’t shade with grey or a darker hue of the exact same colour to make it look more interesting. look up palette websites, or study the colour wheel and pick colours from the opposite or adjacent sides for ideas of colours that go well together. this is the stuff that a lot of tutorials mean by colour theory, and it's not rocket science but actually rather simple when you take a look at the colour wheel. if you don't like how the colours turn out, play around with the hue, saturation, brightness and contrast settings all you want. most of the actual magic you see in a lot of digital art is adding layers with a multiply, overlay etc setting on top, so find those in your drawing software and go crazy with it. (they take a while to learn to use, i have plenty of drawings where i've used them badly, but that's just how learning anything is)

- youtube is full of videos of people doing complete drawings from sketch to finish. they can be a bit much for beginners (sometimes for me as well tbh) but give a good idea of the overall process of creating a full-colour illustration and what phases go into it. to me it's crazy that there's artists who put in the colours first and then do a lineart on top but that's just one simple example of how there's not just one way of doing art.

and just one practical thing that goes into doing digital art, you'll find that there are a million different brushes everywhere and every artist seems to have a “brush set” for different things and you’re supposed to know how to pick which to use yourself. if it's any consolation, i use exactly one (1) brush ever on clip studio paint and draw every single thing with just that one brush. because fuck that noise i don't care

[miracle-sham]

Plan D for Dicey.

| {MaribatMarch2020 – Week 1, Day 6: Unconventional Weapon} |

| [Ao3 Link] | | [Masterlist Link] |

| Triggers/Warnings: D&D typical Violence, kidnapping/imprisoning of Player Characters, Explicit Language/Swearing, (Also not so much a Trigger/Warning but this a gen/platonic fic). |

| The Wayne (bat)family attempt to play their first streamed session of Warriors and Warlocks. Unpredictably, things go surprisingly well. |

| Word Count: 4323 |

==–==

| A/N: So firstly, I got really carried away writing this so it's being posted a day late. Sorry! But fun fact, this means I'm posting this on my birthday, so wooh! Also if you can't tell yet, I'm a massive D&D geek (been playing for roughly five years now but I still fell like a complete noob whenever I play or DM :P). And DC has its own version of D&D (W&W/Warriors and Warlocks) and upon reading Day 6's prompt, my immediate thought was the improvised weapons mechanic from D&D. Also also, I originally intended for this fic to be MariTim (hence the tags) but I got caught up in all the platonic fun of the family playing D&D I kinda forgot to write in the shippy bits? |

| A/N cont.: Writing this was actually a massive challenge because at the start of this I had absolutely zero idea on how to write a D&D session as a ficlet. So this might be a bit more clunky and unrefined compared to my normal work (or that could just be my self-doubt talking). As I mentioned earlier, I got really carried away writing this because I love D&D so much. I would have written more but this ficlet is long enough and late enough as is. But if I were to continue this ficlet in additional parts, I definitely can already think of so many ways to improve writing this sort of fic (and maybe next time I won't forget to add in shippy stuff). Anyway, thanks to those who read these A/Ns, and I hope you guys enjoy reading this! |

| If you want to be tagged in future oneshots/fics, or a specific Au, then comment or send me a DM/ask! |

| Also side note, Don't Like? Don't Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

==–==

Marinette, with Tikki on her shoulder, bursts into the Wayne Manor games room, barely able to contain her excitement. As the first in the room, she can't help but glance across the square conference U-table already set up with everyone's character sheets, dice equipment, other equipment, and snacks and drinks. Bounding over to her designated seat (right side, place nearest to the DM's section of the table), she pulls her chair out and sits down.

 The rest of the Wayne (bat)family, including Steph but sans Alfred and Barbara, slowly filter into the room and take their designated seats. Jason takes his seat next to Marinette whilst Dick takes the seat directly opposite. Steph nabs the seat beside Jason, Damian stakes a claim to the seat next to Dick (despite it already being his designated seat), Cass sits down in the seat beside Steph, leaving Bruce to take his seat next to Damian.

 Tim's the last of the family to enter. He slips into his seat, the DM's seat—as he is the most experienced Warriors and Warlocks player at the table—and grins downright ferally at his players.

 He looks up at the cameras and recording equipment that is set up in the middle of the open space in the square U-table. “Hello and welcome to Plan D for Dicey, the first-ever Wayne Family Warriors and Warlocks fifth edition stream. We weren't quite expecting so many people to petition that we stream our sessions after a few people—” Tim fake coughs twice, “—Dick and Marinette—” Tim fake coughs twice again (whilst Marinette and Dick both grin and wave cheerfully at the cameras), “—rambled about their characters and some highlights from previous sessions, on Twitter. So we decided to give this a go and see how the session pans out whilst being streamed. So as a word of warning, prepare yourselves for the Venators, probably one of the most dysfunctional parties in W&W to miraculously band together.”

 As soon as he says this, the rest of the table burst into grins and cheers (excluding Bruce who despite also smiling, looks like he's just aged five years). Marinette's side of the table all high five each other in their excitement.

 Tim pauses for a second. “For anyone unfamiliar with who I am, I'm Tim. And as you can probably tell from the table set up, I'm the Dungeon Master for this campaign. That's because I've been playing W&W for just over five years now and have had experience DMing before. But for the rest of the players here, this is their first campaign and by extension first time playing. So before we begin our session, first let us introduce our players and their characters.” He nods to Marinette's side of the table.

 She immediately slaps her hands on the table, pushes her chair out and stands, she waves at the cameras again. “Hi, I'm Marinette and my character is Nella Septa-Punctata. She's a Protector Aasimar Celestial Pact of the Chain Warlock, and she has a Sprite Familiar called Tikki. Nella's Chaotic Good and a little anxious but she tries her best to be a kind and heroic adventurer.” She then sits back down, scraping her chair back in again.

 Jason raises an eye at Marinette's antics but shrugs. “I'm Jay, I play a Winged Variant Feral Tiefling Gunslinger called Rehodros. He's Chaotic Neutral, verging on Chaotic Evil at times, and he only joined the Venators because they helped save him from backstory related stuff and he ended up getting reluctantly attached to them.”

 Deciding to also stand up from her chair as well as slap the table with both hands, Steph smirks at the cameras. “I'm Stephanie, my character's Speilsol Leyer, and she's a Chaotic Good Variant Human Ancestral Guardian Barbarian with the Tavern Brawler Feat. She lives for beating up bad guys and doing good, even if it goes against the law.”

 Cass decides to take things one step further and moves to sit on the back of the chair, balancing it carefully as to not let herself fall. She waves at the cameras. “Hi, I Cass. Play Balabitara. Neutral Good, Kalashtar Shadow Monk.” She then sits back down on the chair normally.

 With one half of the table introduced, Tim nods towards the other side of the table.

 Dick winks at the cameras, “I'm Dick and I play Niriwyse, a Chaotic Good Eladrin Glamour Bard who's along for the ride and just wants to have a good time.” At that, he wiggles his eyebrows.

 Scoffing, Damian glares at the cameras. “I am Damian and my character is Rokian. He is a Firbolg Circle of the Shepherd Druid and is Lawful Neutral in the sense that he believes the only laws that should be obeyed in the world, are that or the laws of nature. He begrudgingly joined this party of adventurers after they saved an animal friend of his.”

 This leaves Bruce as the only one to have not introduced himself and his character yet. He smiles his Brucie Wayne smile at the cameras. “My name's Brucie and my character is called Chirop. He's a Chaotic Good Bugbear Swashbuckler Rogue. He comes across as very gruff, but he's just a big old teddy bear at heart.”

 Tim coughs under his breath. “Alright, with our introductions over, let's get on with the show.” The lights in the room suddenly dim and turn a dark red shade whilst creepy echoing organ music begins to play from hidden speakers. “Last session, our brave party of seven adventurers were captured by the evil Lich Dreldaz whilst trying to rescue the beautiful princess Theophania—”

 “—Timothea!” Corrects the rest of the table.

 Rolling his eyes, Tim continues. “—from the cursed castle in which she has been trapped in, by Dreldaz.” He pauses, steepling his fingers as the dim red lighting becomes a dark grey shade. “The Venators awaken, only to find themselves shackled to the walls, in individual stone brick cells and stripped of any and all equipment bar the clothes on their backs. From what you all can immediately tell upon waking, these cells are small, cold, dark and dingy. What do you do?”

 The seven players all exchange glances between themselves.

 “I'd like to look around my cell, see if I can find anything or if I can get an idea of what the cellblock we're in looks like?” Jason announces after a few seconds.

 Tim nods. “Roll a perception check, please.”

 Jason narrows his eyes Tim. He reaches towards the red and black dice set beside his character sheet and picks up the D20. He shakes the dice in his hands before rolling it into the dice box. It lands on a 7. “Alright so because I don't have my gear any more, that means I don't have my eyes of the eagle right?”

 “That's right,” Tim responds.

 “Mmk, that's a seven then, plus my perception modifier… Fourteen total.” Jason glances up at Tim once he finishes calculating.

 Humming, Tim glances down at his Mysterious™ DM notes. “With your Darkvision, you manage to make out that there are two small barred windows on the walls adjacent to the wall with the cell door. The door luckily has a barred window in it too, but you're too far away to glean anything from peering at it.”

 Marinette purses her lips and double-checks her character sheet. “Is there anything magical about the darkness in these cells?”

 “Roll an Arcana check to see.” Is Tim's response.

 She reaches over to the pink and gold dice set beside her character sheet and picks up the D20. She shakes the dice in her hands before rolling it into the dice box. The D20 lands on a 16. “Sixteen! Wait, plus my arcana modifier, uh…” She scans her sheet for the relevant modifier, “plus six, so that's uh… oh heck maths, uhh I think that's twenty-two total? Yeah.” She nods to herself at calculating the maths.

 Jason snorts and addresses the cameras. “This is why you should stay in school kids!”

 Huffing, Marinette elbows him in the side. “Fight me!”

 Not evening flinching at the elbowing, Jason pats her on the top of her head. “Friendly fire, Mari! Friendly fire!”

 Tim waits for silence with his best poker face on. “As far as you can tell, there is nothing magical about the darkness!”

 “Really?” She furrows her brows. “Alright then.”

 He smiles in response.

 Dick glances down at his character sheet then up at Tim, he taps his fingers against the table idly as he speaks. “The walls of the cells are stone? So I can use my Cli Lyre to cast Stone Shape and create a hole in the stone where the metal shackles connect, which would free me, right!”

 Clicking his tongue, Tim shakes his head. “Nope, you don't have your Cli Lyre on you right now, so you can't cast any spells from it.”

Cursing under his breath, Dick frantically scans his character sheet for anything. He reaches his spells and freezes and slaps the spell sheet (and by extension, the table). “Ah hah!” He crows, “I will cast Knock on the shackles!”

 Tim raises an eyebrow, then looks down to flip through his spell cheat sheet. “When you cast the spell, it makes a loud knock that's audible for up to three hundred feet. Are you sure you want to cast this?”

 Dick falters and furrows his brow, then glances around the table at the rest of the party. “I think I'll wait and see if anyone else has a way to escape this first? Wait we can all hear each other speaking from our cells, right?”

 “You can indeed.” Tim answers.

 “I got nothin',” Jason admits, putting on his Rehodros voice, which is just his normal voice but deeper and with a raspy—almost hissing—clipped tone.

 Steph, using her Speilsol Leyer voice (which sounds like she's putting on a weak German accent), shrugs. “I could try breaking the shackles? I'm strong enough to do cool things like that?”

  “But that will also be fairly loud.” Bruce points out, speaking with a gruff tone of voice (which is significantly different from his gravelly Batman tone of voice) for Chirop. “If I had my lockpicks, it would be easy to escape stealthily. But without them, I can't see a way for me to get out of these shackles.”

 Damian wrinkles his nose. “I might be able to summon creatures, elementals, or fey but what I get is determined by the DM and may not be entirely helpful. However, I could try wildshaping?”

 Tim smiles cryptically and the lighting behind him changes from dark grey to lime green. “You could.”

 Damian nods. “Alright then, I will use my wildshape ability to transform into a spider.”

The lime green light fades to flickering orange-red light. “As you try to use your druidic abilities to magically assume the shape of a spider, you feel a burning sensation around your wrists, right where the shackles are. You are unable to transform and take…” Tim pauses as he pulls out his black and red dragon dice and rolls a D6 behind the DM screen. “Five points of fire damage.”

 Cursing under his breath in Arabic, Damian glares at Tim. He crosses out his current hp and writes down the new amount.

 Jason taps Marinette on the shoulder. “What about Nells, Mari? She got any tricks up her sleeve to escape?”

 Marinette startles at that, having been chewing her lip and staring intently at her character sheet since her arcana check. She licks her lips then glances up. “I might…”

 She taps a small stat block card with a pencil and turns to Tim with an intense stare. “Is Tikki nearby?”

 At that, Tim grins widely and raises a finger. “That,” He says, flipping through his notes, “is a very good question.”

 “Because on my notes, here it says that last session Tikki was invisible when we all got captured.” Marinette picks up her session notes journal and shows it to him.

 “Would you say Tikki followed after you when you got caught?”

 Marinette tilts her head to the side and Tikki whispers in her ear. Of course, the cameras inability to record kwamis means it just looks like she's thinking instead of listening to a flying red bug deity. “Yep, I would say that. I would also like to telepathically communicate with Tikki and ask if she can come and pick the locks because we gave her a spare Thieves' Tools kit last shopping session in case she needed to pick the locks during an invisible scouting mission!”

 “Indeed you did, so Tikki flies over to your cell and will try to pick the locks on your door first. So roll a d20 and add Tikki's Dex bonus.” He instructs.

 Marinette nods and picks up the dice, cupping her hands underneath it so Tikki can shake then roll it without it looking suspicious on camera. Tikki shakes the dice and drops it as Marinette separates her hands. The dice lands in the box and rolls a 16. “Plus Tikki's Dex mod, that's uh…” She scrambles for the Sprite Familiar statblock card, “Plus four, so dirty twenty!”

 “That's enough to pick the lock. Do you want Tikki to enter the cell and try to pick the lock?” He asks.

 She nods and repeats the roll with Tikki, this time rolling an eleven. “With mods, fifteen.” Tikki then returns to her place on Marinette's shoulder.

 “Tikki barely manages to get the locks open. The shackles open and you land on the cell floor.”

 Marinette punches the air. “Wooh! Freedom!”

 Cass then waves her hand in the air. “Shadowstep out?”

 Tim cocks his head to the side. “As you don't have Darkvision, you can't see outside your cell but you manage to use your shadowstep ability to escape the shackles. Then by peering out the barred window in the door, you manage to shadow step into the cellblock corridor.”

 Marinette and Cass share a high-five.

 “Let's go free everyone else!”

==–==

 It takes them ten minutes to finish freeing everyone else, and start making their way out of the dungeon cell block. The Venators now make their way through the bowels of the castle, searching for the armoury in which all their belongings have been stored.

 “As you push open the grand oak doors, the faint scent of sickly sweet rotting food and fire hits your noses. The doors reveal the next room to be a grand dining room with a long oak table, set as though prepared for a grand feast expecting many a guest. It's adequately lit but the two corners of the room above the door seem to glow with a dim greenish glow.” Tim pauses in his description as lighting changing to a dim greenish light behind him; he rolls a D8 four times (6, 7, 2, 4), behind the DM screen, followed by the rolling of a D20 four times (3, 19, 13, 18).

 “Oh god…” Dick mutters, 

 Jason huffs. “What are you going to torture us with now, oh great DM?”

 Tim smiles cruelly. “Four rays of fire are shot towards the party from somewhere within the dining room. First attack is an eight versus Chirop's AC?”

 Bruce sighs in relief. “That's a miss.”

 Tim continues to smile. “Mmk, the rest of the attacks are, twenty-four versus Balabitara's AC, eighteen versus Niriwyse's AC, and twenty-three verses Rokian's AC. I assume those hit.”

 Damian narrows his eyes at Tim, whilst Dick winces and Cass pouts.

 Tim rolls a D6 nine times, behind the DM screen. “Balabitara takes four points of fire damage, Niriwyse and Rokian both take eight points of fire damage.”

 The three all jot down the damage taken.

 Still smiling, like the truly evil DM that he is, Tim clasps his hands together. “Two skulls, enveloped with green flames, descend from the ceiling. One hovers over the grand table and the other hovers but the top of the opened doors, giving itself cover.” He pauses, then grins. “With the surprise round over, everyone roll initiative!”

 Out of habit, all seven players, and Tikki, roll their D20s in almost perfect sync. Dick rolls an 18, Cass rolls a 9, Jason rolls a 14, Bruce rolls a 16, Steph rolls a 17 with advantage, Damian rolls a 2, Marinette rolls a 10, and Tikki rolls a 14.

 “Twenty or above?” Tim asks.

 “Twenty three,” Bruce announces.

 Jason rolls his eyes. “Twenty-one.”

 Dick grins, “Twenty one as well!”

 Tim scribbles down the rolls on the initiative table. “D'awww, you both rolled twenty-one. Anyway, fifteen or above?”

 “Tikki rolled an eighteen.” Informs Marinette.

 “I got nineteen!” Steph exclaims.

 Jotting down those rolls as well, Tim asks “Alright, anyone ten or above?”

 Cass signs her roll, ‘fourteen.’

 “Thirteen.” Marinette answers.

 Tim glances at the initiative table, then at Damian. “And you Damian?”

 Damian scoffs. “Three.”

 “Okay.” Tim then rolls a D20 twice. “Chirop! You're up first!”

 Bruce looks slightly bewildered. He clears his throat. “Can I grab the nearest sharp pieces of cutlery and sneak behind a chair?”

 Tim nods. “Roll stealth.”

 He rolls an 18. “My stealth modifier is plus thirteen, so thirty-one to stealth.”

 Tim whistles, “To the rest of the Venators, it looks like Chirop just vanishes into thin air.”

“Are any of the enemies close enough that I could move into melee range?” He questions.

 “There's one floating Flameskull hovering five foot in the air, with your Long-Limbed trait, it's well within reach,” Tim informs.

 Bruce narrows his eyes. “I would like to stab the Flameskull with the sharp cutlery, knives are preferable.”

 “Roll to hit. As knives are close enough to daggers, I'll say you can get away with adding your proficiency bonus as well.”

 Bruce rolls, with advantage, a 19. “Plus my modifiers, that's twenty-eight to hit.”

 “That hits.”

 Bruce rolls for damage, 2. “That's two, so seven.” He then rolls for Surprise damage, 8 (5, 3), and Sneak Attack damage, 24 (6, 2, 5, 6, 5). “That's a total of 39 piercing damage. Then I'll use my bonus action to stab it again,” He rolls a 16, “Twenty-one to hit.”

  Tim puts on his best poker face. “That also hits.”

 “Then that'll be…” He rolls a 1. “One damage from the second attack.”

“The Flameskull you hit screeches in fury as it crumbles to bone dust.” Tim then proceeds to make a horrific screeching sound, for immersion of course.

 “What the fuck, Timbo?” Jason asks, wincing.

  Dick cringes. “At least you aren't right beside him! My poor ears!”

 “Rip us closest seats.” Mumbles Marinette, wrinkling her nose.

“Rehodros, you're up next!” Tim announces gleefully, ignoring his suffering players.

 Jason narrows his eyes at Tim, “I want to run over to the table, grab any food on the table that's not rotten, and yeet it at the nearest Flameskull.”

 Tim hums, “Okay, the only non-rotten food you can find, is a block of aged cheese and a bowl of hardened sugar cubes.

 Snorting, Jason cracks his knuckles. “Oh, I have to pick the block of aged cheese.”

 “Roll your attack then. But make sure you only add your Dex modifier to the attack as you're not proficient in improvised weaponry.”

 Jason rolls to attack and also gets a 19. “Twenty four to hit.”

 Tim snorts. “Yeah, that definitely hits, go ahead and roll damage.”

 Jason nods and rolls a 1D4, managing to get max damage. “Four! Wooh! Plus my Dex mod, that's nine damage!”

 “You lob the cheese at the Flameskull, managing to cause a couple of cracks to form on its skull. It turns it's furious gaze to you, intending to intimidate you but the effect is somewhat hindered by the melting cheese covering half of its skull.” Tim flips through his notes and marks down the damage taken.

 “Okay, then I want to grab the bowl of sugar and using my extra attack to throw that at the Flameskull, in the jaw.” Jason smirks and switches to his Rehodros voice, “You look like you've got a sssweet tooth, bonehead!” He rolls to attack and gets a 12. “Seventeen to hit?”

 “That will hit.”

 Jason rolls a 3 on the D4. “That's eight damage total.”

“As the bowl of sugar starts to melt from the heat of the fire, the sickly sweet scent of hot sugar begins to emanate from the Flameskull. The Flameskull does not look happy.” Tim pauses to glance at the initiative table. “Niriwyse! You're up.”

 Dick glances down at his spell list and beams. “I'm going to cast Vicious Mockery. And say,” he puts on his Niriwyse voice, which is just his voice but higher pitch and with a British Estuary accent, “Green is so not your colour!”

 Tim hums, then flips through his notes. “What's the spell Save DC on that again?”

 Quickly checking his spell sheet, Dick answers, “DC 16.”

 “Mmk,” Tim responds non-committally, before rolling a D20 twice from behind the DM screen. “That, unfortunately for you, is a nat 20. Which means it takes no damage and suffers no disadvantage. The Flameskull turns to you briefly, to cackle in your face, before turning its attention back to Rehodros.”

  Dick frowns. “Aww that failed, welp I'll use my bonus action to give Speilsol Leyer inspiration.” He clears his throat and puts on his Niriwyse voice to sing. “Let's get down to business! To defeat, this skull! Did they order heroes, no they asked for none! We're the saddest party you'll ever meet! But you can bet before we're through, Flameskull, we'll make dust out of you!”

 The rest of the table burst into cheers and groans.

 “Beautiful, Speilsol Leyer, you get 1D10 bardic inspiration,” Tim confirms. “And now it's your turn. Show the audience what you've got.”

 Steph giggles. “Okay, okay, I've got a really dumb idea.”

 Tim raises an eyebrow at her.

 “So, firstly, is there anything on the walls, like paintings? Wall sconces? Y'know.” She asks.

 “There's a painting of a naked elven lady on one wall, and a taxidermied fox head on the other,” Tim informs.

 Steph bounces in her seat. “Cool! So I'm gonna rage! Rip the taxidermied fox head off the wall, then run and leap up into the air to bludgeon the Flameskull with the fox head!”

 “Right. Make an athletics roll.”

 Rolling a D20, she gets 13. “Twenty one!”

 “You manage to jump into the air with expert grace. Roll to hit.”

 She rolls a 16. “That's a twenty-four to hit because I've got the Tavern Brawler Feat so I've got proficiency with improvised and-slash-or unconventional weapons!”

 He snorts. “That'll definitely hit, roll damage.”

 Steph picks up her D4 and rolls it, getting a 3. “Do with my strength modifier and Rage damage, that's ten damage! And uh, that's the end of my turn!”

 Tim scribbles down the damage taken, he then checks his notes quickly. “The sugary cheese-covered Flameskull starts to cackle madly. It casts fireball on the party, everyone make dexterity saving throws.”

 On cue, everyone in the party rolls their D20s. Tikki rolls an 18, Damian and Marinette both roll 16s, and Dick rolls a 4.

 Before Bruce rolls his dice, he proclaims, “I'd like to use evasion!” He then rolls and gets a 5. “Fourteen total.”

 “Evasion too!” Cass declares with a smile, she rolls her D20, getting 18. She then signs her result, ‘twenty-seven

 “Shit!” Jason mutters, staring at his roll of 2.

 “Nat one?” Tim questions.

 Jason shakes his head. “Natural two, so seven total.”

 “I also got seven,” Dick adds.

 “Seventeen,” Damian announces.

 “I rolled a nineteen and Tikki rolled a twenty-two.” Marinette pipes up.

 Steph frowns at her roll of nine. “Eleven…” She glances at her character sheet again. “Wait, no! I get advantage on dexterity saving throws!” She shakes the dice in her hands and blows on it for good luck, then rolls it into the dice box. It lands on an 18. Fist pumping the air, she cheers. “Yes! Dirty twenty, fuck yeah!”

 “Alright. Niriwyse and Rehodros both take…” Tim rolls a D6 eight times, behind the DM screen. “Twenty-three fire damage. And everyone else except Chirop and Balabitara take half that, so eleven damage. And of course, Chirop and Balabitara take no damage whatsoever.”

 “Wooh,” Bruce cheers.

 “Wait a second!” Jason interrupts, triple-checking his character sheet, “I've got fire resistance!”

 “Then you also take eleven damage instead of the full twenty-three.” Tim corrects. “And that's the end of the Flameskull's turn. Tikki's up now.”

 Marinette tilts her head to the side as Tikki whispers in her again. “Tikki is going to hold her turn.”

 Tim nods. “Okay then, it's Balabitara's turn.”

 Cass smiles sweetly. “Jump and punch?”

 “Roll an athletics check then, please.”

 She rolls a 13, and signs her results, ‘eighteen.’

 “You barely manage to leap within melee range of the Flameskull,” Tim narrates. “Roll to hit.”

 She rolls her dice again, rolling a flat 17. Again, she signs her result, ‘twenty-six.’

 “That will definitely hit.” He acknowledges.

 Cass then rolls damage, gets a 4, and signs the total, ‘nine.’ She glances down at her character sheet, and then back up at Tim. “Second attack?”

 Tim nods again, still jotting down the damage taken. “Go ahead and roll.”

 Rolling again, she gets a nine, so she signs the result, ‘eighteen.’

 He hums, “That'll also hit, roll damage.”

 She rolls and gets a 3. ‘Eight,’ she signs.

 Tim chuckles, “As you punch the Flameskull twice, the skull shatters and turns into sugary and cheesy skull dust.”

 Cass grins and fist-pumps the air as the rest of the table breaks into cheers.

 “Everyone breathe a sigh of relief! Encounter over.” He comments. “And I think we've reached our halfway mark, so we'll take a quick five minutes break to grab something to eat and drink, and we'll continue on after the break.”

==–==

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little oneshot! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

| @maribat-march2020 | | @vixen-uchiha |

[hallowed-be-thy-username]

If You’re Good At Something, Never Do It For Free Chapter One: In Need Of Some Assistance

I figured I’d post the first chapter of my WIP on here! TDK Joker x Original Female Character. It is currently at 17 out of ? (Where it stops, nobody knows!) chapters on AO3! 

**Warnings for full fic include: Graphic violence, explicit language, blood and gore, smut smut smut, graphic depiction of corpses, murder, aaaand recreational drug use!**

Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think! I might eventually put all of the chapters up on here or check it out on AO3!

Meet Nora Hawthorne. She spent her time like most Gotham residents. Go to work, go home, keep up with the news. That changed one night. Her life becomes even more interesting after Gotham's own Clown Prince of Crime comes crashing in with a life-threatening injury, leaving her questioning her morals as well as her romantic desires

Jesus, it’s been a long day. A woman with brunette hair above her shoulders, wearing a pair of loose teal green scrubs stands from her desk chair to twist her torso until a satisfying *crack* is heard, followed by a deep sigh. The noise of her tired spine popping into alignment is heard only by her as she stands alone in the treatment area of the now empty veterinary hospital. The brick structure sits between an apartment building and a law firm in West Harlow, the Gotham City neighborhood west of downtown, adjacent to The Narrows. This location makes Dr. Nora Hawthorne one busy veterinarian. On a daily basis she tends to anything from impatient businessmen toting in their wives’ teacup Yorkies with a little cough to large Rottweilers with deep neck wounds. To say she’s gained a variety of experience is an understatement.

She doesn’t own the place, though. Two years out of school and 30 years old means she has some hefty bills to pay. Dr. Moore owns the clinic. Taking this job meant long hours and a busy schedule with not much sympathy from David Moore. “Your generation expects everything handed to them, don’t you? I had to work harder than this to get where I am,” as he just loved to remind her of every time she requested time off for a little… what is it called again? Oh right, work-life balance. Sure, Moore. Enjoy your mini mansion in Uptown since it seems you have no problem balancing the weight of your business on a pair of younger shoulders. Even if it means those shoulders are constantly wound up in to deep knots that no amount of morning yoga can seem to unravel. But she can’t quit. Those bills to pay threaten to pile higher and she’s afraid of heights. Plus, job security in Gotham is hard to come by. Especially since the Joker escaped from Arkham two months ago.

That was in May. Everyone in the city has been on edge since then and the Summer heat is not helping. The days go by but not a peep has been heard in regard to the Clown Prince of Crime’s whereabouts. Same for the Batman. The eerie silence has only been making it worse. The traffic congesting the city streets increases in intensity every evening as Gotham’s citizens rush home in an effort to avoid getting caught up in whatever devastating scheme the Joker has been cooking up during his involuntary vacation. But the threat never comes, leaving the city’s inhabitants to nervously watch and wait. Maybe it won’t come. Maybe he left Gotham for good. Left to terrorize a new city. Wishful thinking is what gets us all through the day. But the tension still weighs on everyone’s nerves, making Nora’s day that much harder when she gets an earful from her clients on a regular basis for things that are out of her control. “Sir, you don’t need to speak to me like that. I did not give your cat a urinary tract infection,” is not something she thought she’d ever find herself saying.

It is what it is. All she can do is keep her head on her shoulders and do her job, care for Gotham’s only truly innocent citizens. Animals don’t dwell in the past, they only live in the present. In that regard, they’re smarter than the majority of Gotham’s inhabitants. She made it her job to advocate for their health and well-being, since they can’t do it themselves. Nora was staying late to finish medical records for the sea of patients the clinic took in that day and she wanted it all recorded while it was fresh in her brain. If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. She told her assistant, “You go on home, I’ll just be here finishing notes. Get some rest.” The heavy set women expressed her concern for Dr. Hawthorne being here by herself but the job has gotten her used to being out well after dark. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep the door locked,” was the response her assistant, Jen, would always get in return. She didn’t want to argue so she would leave Nora to her work within the off-white walls of the dimly lit hospital in silence.

Nora stretched once more and shifted a glance to the clock on the wall. 9:58pm. Had it been fourteen hours already? Her stomach responded with a growl as if to answer in the affirmative. The hard-working staff finished cleaning the treatment room a couple of hours ago leaving the two metal tables in the center of the room shiny and ready for whatever tomorrow brings. The room wasn’t very large but the open design left ample room for patient care. The treatment tables against the walls opposite from each other extended toward the center of the room, leaving a four foot space between them, and had ceiling-mounted exam lights above them. Along the walls there were shelves of neatly organized equipment and tools. Essentials. White medical tape, boxes of gloves, bandage scissors, IV catheters in a variety of sizes, thermometers, bottles of isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, jars with gauze soaked in chlorhexidine scrub, sterile lubricant, needles and syringes, and bandage material being among the most heavily utilized items. Along the back wall is a bank of cages and kennels for patients spending the day in the clinic (any patients in need of continued care were transferred to a nearby twenty four-hour hospital) flanked by drawers full of IV fluids and sterilized tools. The back right corner of the room opened into a short hallway leading to the area that housed a small surgical suite, devoid of any light this time of night, where a cart with monitors and a gas anesthesia circuit sat in wait for its next use. Just beyond this suite is a small door marked “Radiology” indicating the digital X-ray equipment kept inside, keeping radiation exposure to the rest of the place at a minimum. Nora’s desk is in the back left corner of the treatment room, a shelf full of medical reference books sitting above her head.  Also that “World’s Greatest Dog-tor” certificate Jen gave her last Spring. Nora didn’t have the heart to tell her she found it kind of insulting.

With the last medical record completed, details of the day’s procedures noted in succinct but thorough language, it was time for the doctor to make her way back to her nearby apartment for some much needed rest. She left her seldom-worn long white lab coat on the back of her chair where it always was and removed the black stethoscope from around her neck to place it on her desk. Walking toward the red-lit exit sign above the side door leading to the alley, she flicked the switch to turn the remaining lights off. She usually had a small can of pepper spray readied in her hand when she left alone at a late hour. But Nora had been practically beaten into the ground with exhaustion at this point and her thoughts were instead centered around a hot shower and her soft bed.

She opened the door to receive a gust of warm night air to her face, intensifying her sleepy feelings. Letting out a rather large yawn, she turned to put her keys in the door to lock it. As she removed the key from the lock, she felt a strange sensation on the back her neck. Like a crawling of her skin, a feeling of dread. Before she could turn around in search of the source of her body’s sudden danger signal, a purple glove slammed onto the door next to her head. Her eyes snapped to the glove and she froze, unable to breathe, while her heart jumped into her throat.

“Evening, doc,” a nasally, raspy voice said. She slowly turned her head to find herself face to face with the Joker himself, leaning with his gloved hand against the door. His makeup was smudged wildly and he was wearing his signature purple overcoat and suit. All color drained from Nora’s face as her breathing quickened to a practically panting rate, the idea of sleep drowned in a surge of adrenaline. Before she could make a sound his other gloved hand clapped over her mouth, a knife tucked between his thumb and index finger, the blade laying flat across the top of his hand.

“Ahh tah tah, no screamin’, doc. Wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors, would we?” he said, his dark eyes staring straight into hers. Nora struggled to regain her composure, it did her no good to panic. She knew begging and crying would get her nowhere with the Joker. Better to have as clear a head as possible. She took a sharp inhale through her nose. The wave of gasoline and extinguished matches that met her nostrils was overwhelming. It almost made her dizzy. But she slowly let the breath back out through her nose. Their gaze into each other’s eyes, hers wide with fear, his black and hooded, had not been broken since his zeroed in on hers. It was like magnets were keeping her eyes on his, no matter how hard she tried to look away, she couldn’t do it.

“Now. I’m going to move my hand and youuu are not gonna scream. Got it?” his voice getting slightly higher as he spoke. Without thinking Nora nodded slowly, still not breaking their stare, as he slid his hand from over her mouth.

She allowed herself to blink. Then, trying not to let her voice crack, she quietly said, “H-How did you know I’m a doctor?” Stupid stupid stupid. You are an idiot Nora Hawthorne.

Joker let out a breathy giggle and Nora’s gaze then fixated on his mouth. His scars. They were even more striking up close. Nora was no stranger to stitching up wounds and these must have been awful. She didn’t want him to see her eyeing them so she shifted her eyes back up to his.

“Who else would be here this la-te, hm?” Nora couldn’t do anything but open her mouth and shake her head, her eyebrows knitted together with anxiety.

Still bracing himself against the building on his left hand planted on top of the door he said, “Enough with the formalities doc. I am in need for some, uh, assistance, you see.” It was then that the doctor noticed the Joker’s breathing. It was shallow and rather fast. Like he couldn’t catch his breath but was trying to. Oh shit, what does he mean by that. She wasn’t sure how she didn’t notice his labored breathing until now. She supposed being paralyzed with fear would do that to a person. Nora watched as the Joker then lifted the flap of his coat from his right side, revealing a two inch wide piece of glass sticking out from between his ribs. There was blood trailing from it, down his green vest. She gasped. He dropped the fabric and grabbed her by the chin, jerking her head so her eyes met his yet again.

“So, my little doctor, youuu are going to provide said assistance-ah,” he growled. Nora’s eyes grew even wider.

“Wait wait, what? No no I’m a veterinarian, I’m not a human doctor,” she said in a panicked voice. Yeah, nice one, Hawthorne.

“I can read, doc,” the Joker said, gesturing to the painted door that read Gotham City Veterinary Urgent Care. “I know you’ve got what I need in that pretty little head of yours.” He tried to stifle a gasping sound from his throat as he attempted to inhale before speaking again. “I am an animal after all aren’t I, hm?” he said, leaning his head forward and bouncing his eyebrows suggestively. Nora was stunned.

“Why me? Why did you come here for help?”

“Can’t quite go to the emergency room, can I doc? Besides, you take care of little doggies and kitties all day. Just think of meee as a lost little, uh, puppy,” he said, shifting his weight to put his knife-wielding right hand against the door on the other side of her head so Nora was trapped beneath him, their noses inches apart.

Fear bubbled its way up into her head again. She couldn’t think straight. How did Gotham’s most notorious criminal end up here, in front of her, with a life-threatening injury? It didn’t matter how, it only mattered that now it was happening. But, how could she justify helping the Joker? He caused so much death and destruction to this city, her city. She could do her best to fight, she might stand a chance against him in this weakened state. But he was the Joker. He’d probably still be able to slit her throat faster than she could get out from under him. He was the Joker but he also was a person. A person in what she was sure was a significant amount of pain. Another gasping sound made its way out of Joker’s mouth.

“Haven’t got all night, doc.”

Nora’s expression softened. What the fuck am I getting myself into?

“Ok,” she said, lifting her keys and turning to unlock the door.

[feitclub]

In The Cards

It all started with James Bond, the arbiter of worldliness and all things cool when I was just a kid stuck in suburbia. The movies were frequently shown on TV and I made it a point to watch them all over and over again. One of my early favorites was Live and Let Die: the theme song kicked ass, it was Roger Moore's first film so he would never look more handsome, and the movie was full of straight-up magic. The bad guys have a fortune teller on their side, and she can seemingly see everything James Bond will do, even from a great distance. The key to her abilities, aside from her being a virgin (which Bond *ahem* takes care of) was her use of tarot cards. Drawing randomly from this special deck of cards, she could literally see the past, the present, and the future.

I had never heard of tarot cards before but I knew I wanted them. I could not have been older than 12.

When I got my hands on a deck, likely from a book store at the mall, there was an instant level of disappointment. The tarot cards in the Live and Let Die had a very specific look to them, and I had presumed that was just how all tarot cards would look. The deck which I bought (received? I don't remember if my parents were in on this) looked different. All the cards were there, but the art I had expected was not. The biggest difference that stood out to me was the "Death" card: in Live and Let Die that card has a super badass drawing of Death-incarnate wearing a suit of armor while riding a Pale Horse as all manner of human beings knelt or simply fell before him. In my deck, Death looked like a cartoon skeleton without clothes or a horse as he literally reaped the grass with a scythe. I am not here to judge aesthetics, but if you see something in a movie and you end up buying something else, especially as a kid, that's not going to sit right.

(I have tried to use modern search engine tools to discover what kind of deck I had: it was easy to figure out that Live and Let Die used a kind of Rider-Waite-Smith deck, but I think I might have ended up with a variant on a Marseilles deck - exactly which variant, I could not say)

Artistically it was a let down but the appeal of the tarot cards only increased as I learned more about them. First, I discovered that the deck was huge with 78 different cards: the big-picture cards that were featured in the film with names like "The Lovers" and "The Fool" were part of the Major Arcana, but there was also a full set of Minor Arcana which resembled playing cards: four suits, lots of numbers, and several face cards. Secondly, every card had two different "readings," depending on which direction the card faced when drawn.

78 cards, all with two different meanings, meant memorization. As a kid, I was all about memorization. In elementary school my friend Sasha and I tried to memorize the Periodic Table and I think we made it to the lanthanides. When I discovered the joy of watching professional sports, I made a point of memorizing all the teams - by division - in all four major sports leagues. Then I started memorizing the championship winners (and the runners-up) of each major sports league for the last ten years...then the last 20. These tarot cards were going to be my new thing, I could feel it.

I started carrying the cards with me wherever I went. As a kid in school this was easy since I always had a backpack on so the size of the cards meant nothing. Sasha and I (we had watched Live and Let Die together, so this became a team obsession) each had our own deck and we both would take turns drawing cards and looking them up in the little booklet that came in the box. I can remember taking them with us on a school trip to Boston and when we weren't in awe of the historical sights (do I need to tell you we were both nerds?) we kept up our tarot studies while walking around town. On one occasion, just as we drew a card and the booklet said it meant "danger," a car honked its horn at us. We were walking in the middle of the street! Clearly, the magic was real.

The tiny booklet also included a recommended layout when "reading" the cards. The lady in the movie just turned them over one at a time and everything made sense to her, but instead these instructions had us laying out ten different cards in a pattern where each card has a different relationship to the reader. Today I can tell you this pattern is called a "celtic cross" and it is only one of many, many shapes and patterns that can be used, but preteen me did not have that information. I had clear directions: to read the cards I had to flip over ten of them and explain them all.

Before I knew it, before either of us were really ready to be doing anything like this, I remember both of us became tarot card readers at our synagogue for a Purim festival. At the time I didn't think anything was weird, but in hindsight I am impressed that no one raised an objection to kids bringing such a thing into the synagogue so we could be fortune tellers. I should say that we were members of a Reform Temple and I cannot recall ever hearing words like "blasphemy" or "occult" used by our rabbi or anyone else in authority; it stood in contrast to all those self-described Christians I would see on TV who were mad about evolution being taught in schools, talking animals existing as characters in children's books, or anything else we might read in a Chick Tract (which come to think of it, we also discovered around this time while riding Metro-North trains into New York City).

My tarot reading habit did not last; Sasha and I had a falling out of sorts and other things just became more important than these strange cards. My deck sat on a shelf in my room for years until I moved out of my childhood home. I cannot say for certain but it more than likely did not leave with me. But my curiosity surrounding the tarot would linger in my mind and resurface soon enough just as my next big obsession would come along and reveal itself to be tarot-adjacent: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

When I discovered JoJo via a fan-subtitled bootleg VHS in the late 1990s, I had no idea the six episodes of anime I just saw covered only one small part of an ongoing (to this day!) manga. The story, as presented on the tape, started in the middle of the action. A lot of it did not make sense, but I latched onto one element right away: every character had superpowers which were embodied - literally - in a spiritual version of themselves on screen and all these alter-egos had tarot-related names: Star Platinum. Hierophant Green. THE WORLD. There wasn't much connection between the card names and the powers they possessed, but it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. If I had still owned a deck I might have started imagining other powers for the other cards not shown on screen (not knowing that they were all represented in some fashion in the original manga).

Leap forward another - gosh, twenty years? - and my tarot fascination never really went away. When I see a Kickstarter or an Etsy page for a new take on tarot cards, I often take a peek at what ideas are on display. A lot of them are just...porn-y. Some are cute. But I'm old(er) now, I don't have the raw enthusiasm I did when I was in 7th grade and the prospect of magic playing cards just made perfect sense. I see daily horoscopes on Japanese TV which I recognize aren't "real," how could I scoff at one kind of fortune telling and then pick up a deck of tarot cards?

Except...who cares if it's "real." What does it matter if these cards are, ultimately, a random assortment of quality art? It's been three entire decades since I first saw them and I'm still deeply intrigued. Part of being old(er) is coming to terms with your own tastes and biases; I no longer need to apologize or feel shame for liking old pop songs or macho action movies and if I've always had a feeling that tarot cards are cool, that feeling is correct.

There's also the feeling that I know so little about tarot cards that I cannot possibly pass judgement on people who use them. I recently started testing a Body Positivity mobile app that uses tarot cards as a means to spark self-reflection and, well, body positivity. The tarot cards in the app are not "real," they're not even physical. They're just drawings on a screen. But the drawings are nice, and if flipping a virtual card over can have a real impact on my own mind, who's to say what flipping real cards over could do?

Even though I felt a need to write all this down, I'm not actually seeking permission here. I already made up my mind and bought a brand-new deck of tarot cards. It's here, next to me. I’ve opened them. I try to draw a few cards whenever I have a chance, but I don't know where this reignited interest will take me. Will I start memorizing them all, again? Will I have another car-honking-its-horn-at-me moment? Maybe I'll just enjoy them aesthetically (they are very nice-looking if I may say so). I don't know what will come next any more than these cards do, but I know I like having them here and I want to know more. At the very least, tarot cards have already taught me an important lesson: I know better than to try and read them while walking in the middle of the road.

---- I shared this story with my Patreon supporters before posting it publicly. Want to help me write more things? Join today: patreon.com/feitclub Ko-fi works too: ko-fi.com/feitclub

[prairiedust]

The Folkloristics of Supernatural

So. Something interesting is happening in Season 14. I suspected that it was coming when they revealed in 12 that Jack’s name would be Jack. Jack as in “the Giant Killer” Jack. Jack like “Jack Tales.” Jack from all of the “Jack and the Devil” stories. This Jack. But Dabb is running a long mytharc, so last season was the set-up for this season-- priming the pump, if you will, for what the writers are doing now, and it came to fruition in the first few episodes.

As I said before, we got a hint of this theme in Jack’s name as well as in the way the season wrapped up with grieving Dean and Dead!Cas mirroring the last scene of despairing Cas and Possessed!Dean. Folklore brings with it the other thematic elements we’ve seen so far-- mirrors (oh my god the mirrors,) recursion and repetition, callbacks, sleep, and sleep-like death.

But why folklore *in particular*? And how is “folklore” as a theme in seasons 13 and 14 any different from the fact that this is a show *based* on folk tales?

This season, the writers are not only telling stories drawn from folklore, they are using folklore and folkloristics (the academic discipline) as a theme.

Andrew Dabb wrote a formulaic tale into the premiere, and I flipped my lid. A formula tale is one that relies on a set structure, such as the tale of Henny Penny, The Little Red Hen, or the Fisherman and his Wife, where challenges or episodes are repeated over and over until all the possibilities are exhausted or something breaks the chain. The story of Michael’s quest is a tale that relies on formula as well as on the structure of a “rule of three,” or two challenges that fail and one that succeeds. He asked a human and an angel what they wanted, before finding a monster whose desires he considered purest. Compare that structure to Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or The Three Little Pigs. I have a much more in-depth analysis of the “rule of three” that I will post later. This and other “folklore” elements in the next three episodes established this as an official “Thing on the Show.”

For now and for those of you new to the idea of the study of folklore, I’ll summarize the history of the academic discipline of folkloristics.

More than six hundred years ago, in post-Renaissance Europe, concerned scholars and bored aristocrats started doing something strange.

They started collecting folk stories from the lower classes.

This was strange because the disdain that the “upper class” (which included not just nobility and gentry but clergy and those squirrely scholars as well) felt for the emerging middle class and the peasantry can not be overstated. But perhaps because they were fascinated with that which they looked down upon, many learned men and women during the Age of Enlightenment began to study folkways and oral tales.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, “fairy tales,” “wonder tales,” “Märchen,” and “Mother Goose” stories lit up courts (and later salons) all over Europe. People recorded them from a handy peasant, wrote them down with a judicious application of upper-class refinements, and later crafted original stories inspired by them. There are works that were preserved from an oral version, like Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia” (which is based on a Neapolitan folk tale but is considered a literary work rather than a transcription and if you read a faithful translation you’d get why that is, he very much polished it with literary allusions and asides) as well as those found in Grimms’ first edition (1812) of collected oral stories which included the bloody version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” then there are folk tales that were cleaned up and sanitized for your comfort, like every Grimm edition since that one, ha ha, and at last there are “literary” fairy tales, or stories that are “original content” but were constructed on a folkish scaffolding like, Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Nightingale and the Rose.” Authors still use fairy tales to inform and inspire-- Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edited several anthologies of contemporary fairy tales or retellings of old tales by modern authors, beginning with Snow White, Rose Red in 1993 and ending in 2000 with Black Heart, Ivory Bones which, if you enjoy trope subversion and walking around for days bearing a lingering sense of disquiet, are seriously worth reading.

While the Grimms’ work in collecting German folk tales is considered the “watershed” moment for European folk studies (the Chinese, in contrast, have been archiving oral poetry and stories for thousands of years and Arab Muslim scholars may have started collecting folk tales as early as the 10th century CE,) it wasn’t until about a hundred years had passed from the Grimms’ first publication that the discipline took a distinctly scientific turn.

In 1910, a Finnish folklorist named Artti Aarne published a work entitled ‘Verzeichnis der Märchentypen,” or “Types of Folktales.” He had analyzed his own extensive collection of Scandinavian folk stories and realized that these tales often shared the same plots and elements—helpful animals, daring rescues, clever wives, and more-- albeit in different configurations. He broke the stories down to their essential components-- decoded their DNA, if you will-- and asserted that these story elements were used like beads on a string to construct a myriad of tales. He called these elements “Motive,” or motifs. In 1960, an American anthropologist named Stith Thompson translated Aarne’s work from the German and expanded upon it to include stories from a broader European sampling as well as Native American traditions. This became known as the Aarne-Thompson Motif Index. It is one cog in a larger academic movement during the 50’s and 60’s wherein researchers of all stripes endeavored to unearth the earliest roots of mankind—from the search for fossils of the earliest hominids, to tracing the very first languages, to reconstituting the ur-myths that shaped human culture. Academics and field researchers were determined to pinpoint the moment in time when we became more than just a bipedal primate (if we ever even have.) The Index revolutionized folkloristics as anthropologists and other scholars realized that they could trace these story motifs through time and across geography the way linguists were already doing with sounds and words to compile Proto-Indo-European, the language of Neolithic humans who settled India and Europe, and how geneticists today can trace human migrations out of Africa by studying human genomes.

The Index is a taxonomic classification system, like meteorology or the Dewey Decimal System. There are twenty-six parent categories, with subcategories and more subcategories. The Motif Index is organized alphabetically from A-Mythological Motifs (like creation myths) to Z-Miscellaneous Motifs (such as “Z210: Brothers as Heroes.”) There is an adjacent Index of Tale Types, as well, which works similarly. In the Tale Types Index, for instance, “Tales of Magic” comprise subcategories 300 to 799; one subcategory in “Tales of Magic” is “Supernatural or Enchanted Relatives,” which covers tale types 400-459. Tale type number AT 410 is “Sleeping Beauty.” The Basile tale “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” “Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” by Charles Perrault, as well as Grimms’ “Little Briar Rose” fall under this category. The two indices operate in tandem-- for instance, the Basile story and the tale collected by the Grimm brothers are the same kind of story, but they have unique motifs. Both Perrault’s princess and the German Briar Rose are the subjects of a dire prophecy-- motif M340-- and fall into a magic sleep, which is motif D1960. Other motifs are not shared among all three stories, like cannibalism. Yeah, that story is buck wild once you go back a few generations.

Anyway, in 2004, the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index was once again revised, this time by German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther, in an attempt to make the index more inclusive of other global folk traditions, and it was renamed the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folktales.

The quest to uncover the proto-stories of our ancestors continues in this very decade in the work of Julien d’Huy, who uses computer modeling to make “phylogenetic maps” of stories from around the globe. He can then create diagrams of a universal story-- for instance the “Cosmic Hunt” (D’Huy 2014).

You can also see the concept of the AT motif index in computer-generated novels and scripts, which are “written” by AIs who have ingested and digested and then assimilated whatever weird-ass shit their creators feed it and from that we get gems like “There is more Italy than necessary” from an AI-scripted Olive-Garden commercial.

The website TV Tropes works very much like the motif index, although in a much less taxonomic fashion—for instance, one trope they describe is “Room Full of Crazy,” a “motif” if you will that tv writers often use as a way of indicating quickly to the audience that a character is off their rocker (or at least obsessive to the point of near-insanity) by showing them writing or drawing something over and over in a notebook, on their bodies, on walls, etc. Supernatural used this recently to let us know how very messed up Gabriel was after his time with Assmodeus in season 13 “Bring ‘Em Back Alive.”

But it is important to remember that Kripke has used this exact trope before, in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” to let us know that Anna was having visions and hearing what would later be known as “Angel Radio.”

To some extent, Room Full of Crazy was also used all the way back in season one in “Dead in the Water” to represent the little boy’s repressed trauma.

The repetition of tropes (or callbacks) that have already been used earlier in the series is another signal that telegraphed this shift into the realm of folk tales and mythology in a thematic sense.

Yes, Supernatural has always been about folk tales and myth. Native American stories like that of the wendigo, urban folklore like the story of the hook man and other perils of “parking,” shtrigas, skinwalkers, etc, have served as both monsters-of-the-week and Big Bads. The premise of the show draws, pishtaco-like, from world stories to survive. But we’re going to dig down and find not just the fairy tales of season 14, but the tale types and the motifs and discover what this kind of focused close-reading can tell us about this season’s values.

Lots of people point out that the Index is dry and strips away so much that you could literally tell a story just by listing the motifs in order (this comment from my folklore prof many, many years ago when we got into the motif index in class.) But that is not at all how the originators intended the index to be used. If anything, as evidenced by the “phenogenetic” tale typing of d’Huy, the presence of a folktale motif is more powerful than any literary allusion or pop-culture reference. If you realize that you’re watching a story that involves a “beat the Devil” premise, and you’ve read some of those tales, they should all light up like a constellation in your memory. You might even mentally replay the electric guitar riff from Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” When we learned that the nephilim was going to be named Jack, and that his mother was hanging all of her hopes on him, you may have subconsciously thought of Jack and the Beanstalk or other Jack tales and made a prediction about the kind of story that we might see Jack feature in*. All the protagonists, all the challenges, all the outcomes of those stories will spread like beacons across a plain-- which is what comparative literature is all about in the first place. It is less about reducing a story to its DNA and more about finding that story’s family tree. And writers like Jane Yolen and the aforementioned Datlow and Windling use these bits of stories to write new ones. Oh and writers like Mr. Andrew Dabb, who used a most familiar formula (to his American audience at least) to start out the season. It’s wild, y’all.

So welcome to the folkloristics of Supernatural. As my favorite professor used to say, are there any thoughts, questions, miscellaneous abuse? My asks are open.

Here’s to a fantastic mideseason.

*allusion is not allegory, meaning you bring in an allusion to another text for depth; if you want to retell the story of Jesus and Christianity you write the Narnia Chronicles. However. Just because Jack was not the one to kill Lucifer does not mean Lucifer’s death was not foretold… the point of retelling these stories in a literary setting is to find the other values that the story can reveal, or to take a trope and twist it to reveal something that had not previously been considered.

Caveat: I’m NOT a prophet. None of us meta writers are. Nothing is stopping anyone involved in the show from making a decision that runs contrary to the story’s architecture, and it’s even been done before. I even have a post about trying to predict from the subtext or even text of a serial publication, like a tv series, that I’ll fit into this series. But anyway, use these posts to “prove” that destiel will be going canon at your own peril. And also I won’t be focusing only on “destiel” subtext. There’s stuff in these episodes for everyone, it’s chock full o’ nuts.

ALSO I have been deliberately staying away from a lot of meta while I compiled this, so if there’s more going on along these lines please feel free to tag me in :)

[secretgamergirl]

Let’s talk about how Ranma is trans, and not as a metaphor.

Yesterday, I had a quick, joking exchange with a friend, riffing off the general premise that the protagonist of the classic manga series Ranma 1/2 is a trans girl.Today I woke up to a slew of hateful, low-effort comments (the C-word is always a weird one to throw at a trans woman), largely objecting to this premise, so, I’m going to sit down now and show my work.

I was actually going to do this either way, honestly. Reading Ranma 1/2 and indignantly shouting “in what sense is this a ‘curse!?’“ is a pretty significant touchstone for damn near every trans girl born after 1970 or so.

For those who haven’t read it, Ranma 1/2 is a manga series by Rumiko Takahashi, which ran from 1987-1996, which also spawned a hit anime series, which itself had a lot of spinoffs, a dozen or so videogames, and a recent live-action special. The original manga itself was one of the first to ever be published in the U.S., and has also seen a recent reprinting (with an effort at colorization which I can’t say looked great). The basic premise is that it’s a long-form comedy series whose title character is A- a super talented martial artist, B- dealing with the fallout of a decade and a half of Ranma’s father making promises on Ranma’s behalf (including multiple arranged marriages), and C- being one of half a dozen or so characters over the course of the series to have fallen into one of hundreds of adjacent springs which each curse whoever falls in to change back and forth between whatever drowned in them and their original form based on exposure to cold and hot water respectively (Ranma gets Hot Girl, everyone else gets some wacky animal, basically).

It’s great. You should read it. Maybe watch the anime too. Also I’m going to spoil the ever loving hell out of a point or two in writing this, but I’m mostly going to do it sequentially, and it’s not really a series about major plot twists and reveals. Except maybe the bit I’m sticking between breaks here:

Spoiler country: I’m literally planning to sit down with the whole series and go through volume by volume here, but the series very much starts in media res, and it’s important to the purpose of my thesis here to look at everything with some backstory context that doesn’t really come out until like volume 30-something.

Specifically, Ranma’s parents are horribly abusive scumbags. Both of them. You don’t have to get terribly far in for the running gag about Ranma’s father Genma being a terrible person, prone to physical abuse, subjecting his own child to intentionally traumatizing experiences, forgoing any sort of normal childhood for her (going with feminine pronouns here, try to keep up) in favor of a world-traveling regimen of martial arts training, and of course, pimping her out with arranged marriage promises to whoever he owes money or favors to.

What comes out later though is that a big motivating factor for Genma’s abusive parenting is that Ranma’s mother, Nodoka, made Genma agree to raise Ranma to be a “man among men,” to be enforced by penalty of both Genma and Ranma committing ritual suicide should he fail.

That is, unfortunately, a very relatable experience for a hell of a lot of trans girls. Personally speaking, my father adopted the philosophy very early on in my life that he would rather have a dead “son” than a living daughter, and starting when he first picked up on my obvious girliness, he also decided on pursuing a sink-or-swim course of turning me into a “manly man” by forcing me into a series of life-threatening situations to “toughen me up” and pushed me to start dating when I was something like 10 years old. My mother was a lot more low-key about it, at least I formally came out to her, but, yeah, I relate. It’s not hard to imagine very-young-Ranma doing something obviously girly to give her parents similar concerns, and her resulting preoccupation with being tough and nominally rejecting femininity as a means of playing along with her parents’ pressuring her isn’t me doing a trans reading, THAT much is directly in the text.

The rest of the backstory mostly comes out in the first few volumes. In order to man Ranma up, Genma takes her on this international training mission, engages her to both a friend, and a food vendor he can’t afford to pay. Eventually this trip takes them to the cursed springs (so they can do the whole spar while balancing on bamboo stalks thing), splash splash, he’s a panda, she’s an ideal-feminine version of herself, basically. And Ranma picks up another couple of rivals/maybe-love-interests on the way home, because Genma picks a weird time to head back to Japan and force Ranma to live with his friend and his 3 daughters and enforce an arranged marriage to one of them.

Now leaving spoiler country.

So, jumping right in from the beginning with all this in mind...

Volume 1, Chapter 1- Ranma and Genma show up at the Tendo’s with Ranma in girl mode. Not really a conscious choice here, since it’s raining that day, and Genma’s not in the mood to wait. What’s notable though is that (aside from obvious annoyance at all the the shocked poking and prodding) Ranma seems to be totally cool meeting these people in girl mode. She’s really relaxed, happy, makes quick friends with Akane, totally comfortable:

Honestly I could probably prove my whole point here just by running through the series and tallying up Ranma’s expressions, this is a pretty consistent thing.You would expect, if Ranma were actually a boy, that the idea of meeting new people while in girl mode like this would be awkward and humiliating, and feature facial expressions and body language more like the ones we see when Ranma has to explain the situation after a hot bath (during which she flat out has the thought “might as well go out like this, they’re going to find out eventually):

V1C2- One quick flashback/exposition later, Soun (Genma’s friend with the daughters), expresses his shock about the true horror. Ranma, irritated- “Whadya mean ‘true horror?’“ ... and then proceeds to actively dodge some hot water, staying in girl mode after both get splashed to demonstrate things live, and there’s a bit here where, Akane having walked in on her in the bathroom while in boy mode and both were naked (comedy manga and all), Ranma notes that it’s “no big deal for her to see a girl naked,” because she’s seen herself plenty of times, and has a quick prideful comment about her appearance in girl mode.

The rest of volume 1 is spent introducing the first of many rival/love interest characters. Nothing that really supports or hurts a trans reading unless you want to focus in on Ranma being a girl in this dream she has after getting groped by a creep, or already having spent enough off camera casual time in girl mode for Nabiki (Akane’s sister whose whole character is basically trying to turn a profit off how sexy Ranma is) to have a bunch of cute candid pictures to sell.

Most of volume 2 is spent introducing Ryoga, another rival/love interest (mainly just the former at first, but relationship webs for this series get weird quick), and a couple of other characters who feel really important but get dropped in a hurry (remember Dr. Tofu? The guy Akane starts the series off with a huge crush on? Because Takahashi forgot all about him after this). V2C9 however starts off with this:

Again, Ranma never looks this happy in boy-mode. This early on, we already see her just, voluntarily going girl mode to hang out all day, because she enjoys herself like this.

V3C10- After a volume spent on the other half of the brother-sister pair of rivals/love interests volume 1 devoted a lot of pages to (the Kunos, ultimately not real prominent characters), wherein Ranma will wear a girly leotard and compete in rhythmic-gymnastics-based combat, just won’t get caught doing so when in boy mode, Akane decides to teach her how to skate, which she insists on being in girl mode for because:

Yeah... there’s a definite pattern here. Stuff she’s too self-conscious about doing in boy mode, she’s comfortable trying when presenting as a girl, and it’s never about embarrassment, really, but not wanting to be seen as some sort of girly boy (for fear of violence). Appearing to be a girly girl is of course just fine, but only if she’s definitely going to pass. Again, very relatable. Later in the series, she doesn’t even bother trying to rationalize it like this, and pretty much just spends almost all her free time in girl mode, and gets a decidedly more feminine wardrobe. Oh and then they have a pairs-figure-skating duel with these two one-off characters, because the guy randomly gives Ranma her first kiss without her consent.

That rolls into the start of volume 4, which throws way more fuel out there for any Ranma/Ryoga shippers than I remembered, and then we get a big stretch of introducing new characters who stick around and are fairly major, including the remaining two characters of note with curses, without a lot of gender stuff coming up beyond Ranma switching modes to try and throw off rival/love interests in various ways. The next thing worth pointing out isn’t until the end of V5C8. Ranma ends up stuck in girl-mode because pressure point manipulation makes her a wimp about hot water. Having a fight scheduled as a guy though, she shows up with a bunch of cheesy magician’s tricks, before throwing off a big bulky robe and:

So... OK we dropped the premise of not wanting her manly image tainted by wearing a girly costume pretty quick. This is her own plan, this is in public, she chose this outfit herself. Again, super self-conscious any time she’s in public in boy mode, but when she’s undeniably a girl, she’s super comfortable with basically anything. Heck, that costume gets shredded like 2 pages later, and the quick bit of public nudity doesn’t even phase her. Oh and the next story arc (V5C10) has her just getting a cute swimsuit and hitting the public pool to relax. Plus some new casual clothes:

And formal wear for V5C11...

Again, there’s no subterfuge or convoluted circumstances behind these. She just had an excuse this volume to present as a girl full-time and dove right the hell in. By V5C12 she’s at the maximum possible level of confidence, wearing a tight swim-suit to the beach that advertises her trans status. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there myself:

Not a double entendre there, for what it’s worth. It’s really about watermelons.

After that there is a long long stretch of development arcs for secondary characters, the introduction of a dirty old man, and a lot of variations of Ranma and Akane’s relationship being tested with jealousy-inducing misunderstandings with the spare dozen or so love interests lying around. There’s a hell of a lot I could analyze here if I wanted to make a point about Ranma’s sexuality, but, I’m only really concerned with her being trans for this, and contrary to popular belief, whether or not she’s into guys at all has no bearing on that whatsoever. For what it’s worth though she’s totally bi and so’s Akane and you have to bend over backwards to argue otherwise for either of them.

That being said, I’m close to a quarter of a way through here, so I might as well keep going through the end of volume 10. Don’t want to make this more than a 4 part series if I go the distance with it. The next noteworthy thing we have is the introduction of Ukyo, the focal point of the more grounded queer content in the series. Let me just say first off that taken out of context this page resembles every conversation I’ve ever seen between two trans girls:

There are a LOT of angles I could come at Ukyo from. First off, she’s got a ton of trans coding. Ranma thought she was a boy when they were friends as kids (while their fathers were trying to hook them up). Everyone else also thinks she is when she’s first introduced, because... she dresses like a guy at school and wears a chest binder. She gets really angry about being misgendered by Ranma while having a revenge-fight with him (she’s the other girl Genma arranged a marriage with, for the sake of free food, which he just kinda stole, you see), plus as seen above, she has major body image issues. So, again, whole lot of trans coding (and that’s before HER rival/love interest shows up).

Regardless of that though, hey, the only actual friend Ranma ever had as a child, and who remains the healthiest relationship in her life is a girl, so, that’s something to note.

Also Ukyo is kind of the only character in the cast who isn’t a huge jerk. She patches things up with Ranma more or less immediately, and proceeds to try and untangle the absurd relationship web that’s already getting pretty damn convoluted. And I mean, good on her for trying, but here’s how that goes:

Yeah, that’s Ranma in a floral sun dress crashing a date between Akane and Ryoga. I believe this is V9C6. She gets way too into character and they end up making out, by the way. I defy anyone to find a way to rationalize this plan if Ranma were a cis dude OR was strictly into girls.

Oh and getting into V10C10, there’s this goofy plot about Akane accidentally swallowing a magic pill that makes her fall in love with the first guy she sees, and uh...

It’s been a while since I’d read this. It gets pretty damn on the nose. Anyway, the last storyline I’m getting to tonight starts with V10C16, which introduces Ukyo’s rival/love interest, Tsubasa:

Tsubasa is unambiguously, exclusively, into girls. Also unambiguously AMAB:

I’m actually not really a fan of Tsubasa. Ranma’s a really relatable trans girl with a well developed backstory, with some serious gender-based hangups that, while totally not cool, are totally rationalized by her traumatic childhood. Ukyo is a very nice girl whose friends are all trans, and it’s less clearcut whether she’s cis or trans. The page after this one it comes out that she previously attended an all-boy’s school though, which supports a trans reading. It makes a hell of a lot of sense to read her as a trans girl with supportive parents who never misgendered her, but only recently started in on HRT after entering high school, so, hey that’d make sense.

Tsubasa though... being unambiguous with all of this, so after the reveal with get a clumsy 1980s Japanese explanation, responding first to Akane shouting “cross-dresser!?” with "I am not! I’m just an ordinary boy who likes to dress up!” Again, very 80s Japan. Also between the into-girls reveal and the AMAB reveal, Ranma’s personal hang-ups lead to a single chapter of her trying to “fix” Tsubasa, encouraging dating guys. So, yeah, kind of an awkward stretch. On the upside, Ukyo already knows Tsubasa’s whole backstory, doesn’t find any of it at all odd or notable, and figured everyone else was also just cool like that. Again, Ukyo is just great. You can do a whole lot worse than using her as a model for realistic queer characters in fiction.

Also to end on a lighter note, when Tsubasa first shows up, the immediate battle for Ukyo’s affections (and yes, this IS immediately after Ranma passed on just dating Ukyo, letting Ryoga and Akane be a couple, and having relatively no drama) which takes this form of a competition to see who can sell more of Ukyo’s okonomiyaki. And, of course, this is Ranma’s strategy:

CONTINUED HERE