#because it can go ways where Character A is malicious. or Character B is.

[blizzardz]

that one trope where Character A has been missing for years, almost believed to be dead, until suddenly coming back, much to the relief and happiness of all their friends and family. Except for Character B, who is more than terrified about A's return. But for whatever reason, B can't let anyone know why they feel the way they do about A's return

[ironunderstands]

Dr. Ratios predictions, theories and ideas I have for his lore BECAUSE SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED AND I AM INSANE ABOUT HIM AAAAAAA

‼️INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF LEAKS SO BE WARNED‼️

So, I’m sure if you like Dr. Ratio even a little bit or have kept up with what leakers are doing, you have heard of a little something.

That little something being our new planet in coming in 3.0 is Ancient Greece inspired 

Oh boy.

And oh it gets better, thanks Sparkle for playing genderbend Ratio during Cosmoddesy because 

Yup, this is his planet.

I’m well aware it will be like 7 months before we start getting proper leaks about this place, but for now, let’s do some speculation shall we, because if there’s anywhere we are gonna get his backstory/lore/a story centered around him, it will be here.

So let’s begin 

Whatever the hell I think is gonna happen during 3.0

A) He will serve as a guide for the Astral Express in navigating this planet 

I don’t think he will immediately go to them to help, or they will immediately seek out him, but rather coincidentally or through the connivence of circumstance he will end up helping lead us around, at least partially until we really get roped into a conflict.

Or, it’s the other way around, where we kinda are left to our own devices a bit and then something happens and either by his own decision or something that’s forced upon him, Dr. Ratio now has to supervise from now on.

Personally I find the second option way more interesting and I think it has way more potential for angst so I’m going with that one let Ratio be dragged around by a malicious entity or his own experiences I’m so here for it. 

B) Something happens.

Wow, descriptive. 

Ok, what I really mean is that something bad happens like a prophecy comes true or the express breaks something or a stellaron comes to eat people’s grandmas and Ratio is implicated in it. 

And this is where the fun begins, as the nature of what this something is can completely shift the story in very interesting ways.

Perhaps he was prophesied to doom Amphoreous’s civilization with his presence or something, and was abandoned by his parents on another planet?

Perhaps he has connections to the leaders there who desired for him to be their puppet/tool, so he left to find his own path and now they are trying to force him back.

Perhaps he failed at a test of theirs when he was younger, some universal trait on the planet that he couldn’t live up to and was exiled because of it. Now that he’s back, they blame whatever bad thing happens on Ratio. 

I actually really like these particular theories as Ratio has a lot of themes about creating your own destiny, so seeing him resist one forced upon him would be compelling. Moreover, I feel as though an arc demonstrating how exactly he wanted to become a Genius/where he got all his insecurities and motivations from is not only necessary for his character but would flesh out the way we see the path of Erudition in general, even if I already really like the way they have gone with it so far. 

C) Resolution/Self acceptance 

I doubt they will permanently kill him, it just doesn’t suit his character at all.

However, do I think is he gonna get messed up by whatever that “something” is? Yes. 

If the story centers on this remains to be seen, honestly, I doubt it will considering we have the entire cast of the planet and its own lore to meet and learn about, but I do think Ratio will be a major player and I hope how he feels gets some of the plot’s focus as we have quite literally only have 1 full scene of him where we see who he truly is, and it’s all the way back in 1.6 (Ratio-Screwllum conversation my Roman Empire). 

Like guys I needed this man bleeding out screaming dying crying throwing up clutching his wounds looking up at the screen like a kicked puppy losing all hope in himself and others YESTERDAY 

I NEED SOMETHING BAD TO HAPPEN TO HIM FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BECAUSE RATIO IS SO HIGH STRUNG THAT ANY AMOUNT OF PRESSURE WILL CAUSE HIM TO SNAP SO PLEASE HOYO LET HIM BREAK!!!

He needs another scene where he’s being sincere, he needs a scene where he’s being vulnerable, Ratio’s marble facade needs to crumble to reveal the man underneath and I need that man to pick himself back up again knowing he can allow himself to be human as well AAAAAAAAAA

His connections to Acheron 

If you have seen my other posts I have already talked about this at length, however the brainrot for this particular detail is all consuming so let me just demonstrate:

Dr. Ratio has the same philosophy as Acheron, an emanator of Nihility.

Look.

Essentially, they both believe that only in desperate situations will humans reach their full potential and begin to truly live for themselves. Moreover, they also both try and offer the tools to help people save themselves, Ratio with knowledge and Acheron with destroying the dreamscape, and that even if people can only become their true selves through struggle, it is the guidance and love of other people that will allow them to pick themselves up. 

Interestingly, pre-2.2 I also believed Ratio was walking the path of Nihility, due to how he engages with knowledge. That very viewpoint spawned from the 1.6 conversation I just showed you, as Ratio demonstrates to the audience that he does not care about knowledge in of itself, but rather the value it can bring to people.

Now, this sets him apart from the Genius Society members, who believe knowledge is inherently valuable and that it is what brings the universe meaning to them. Every person Nous has acknowledged has expressed this belief, which is why they were acknowledged and Ratio isn’t.

Before you say it, no, it’s not that he isn’t smart enough, quite the opposite actually.

Screwllum himself acknowledges his genius and time and time again are Ratios myriad of accomplishments brought up. In universe plenty of people believe he should have been instated into the society by now as well:

These are just the ones that implicate the society directly, as so many of Ratio’s character stories also mention just how accomplished he is.

Moreover, in 2.3 we are getting a new Sim Uni update made by Ratio himself, centered on humanity because of course it is, therefore he’s even smart enough to do the same things the GS members do, even collaborating with Screwllum to work on their favorite pet project.

So, what does this have to do with his lack of acknowledgment, and the path of Nihility?

I have established Ratio is smart enough and that he doesn’t view knowledge in the same way the other member’s do. Therefore, this difference in mindset is why Nous has never acknowledged him, because as much as Ratio thinks he is walking the path of Erudition, his personal philosophy and behaviors have never aligned with that, even if he thinks they do.

I mean, the man says it himself, even if he doesn’t realize the implications of it:

“The Path of Erudition has neither reason nor logic. While geniuses wander among the stars, the ordinary can’t even trace their footsteps.”

That is the path the Genius Society members walk, the path Ratio is criticizing in this sentence, the path he refuses to travel along himself, because what defines Ratio is that he will never leave the ordinary behind to stumble alone.

That is the path of Erudition.

And Veritas Ratio does not follow it. 

So what does he believe in?

Finding your own path. Forging your own future, in the face of a meaningless universe, that is the only thing we should do, the only thing we CAN do. 

“even a life marked by failure is a life worth living”

That’s what Ratio believes.

It doesn’t matter if the masses cannot escape their mediocrity, if they will never be geniuses, if their efforts will go unacknowledged, because the universe doesn’t care, therefore they shouldn’t either. There is no grand test, no final destination, no perfect goal people must attain.

Destiny is uncertain, and people’s fates are theirs to choose. 

Dr. Ratio believes people can still improve themselves, and that it doesn’t matter if people cannot reach the ceiling of knowledge, as they should still push themselves off the floor and stand up. 

He doesn’t think anything confines people from bettering themselves, and that it’s pointless to deliberate over whether one can achieve perfection or not, they should strive to improve themselves regardless and live their best lives because why not? Sure there’s nothing saying they can, but there’s also nothing saying they can’t, and in the face of a meaningless universe, devoid of purpose, one must create their own, and he dedicates his life to aiding others in realizing this.

Ironically, Ratio does not take his own advice. He can recognize the merits of the masses, but he cannot appreciate his own. Ratio is forever walking forward, but he cannot see the path ahead of him, or appreciate the lengths he has gone, the distance he has traveled, and the lives he has improved. 

Ratio spreads knowledge across the universe, believing that is what Nous desires, what the Erudition means, or rather should be, which is partly why he views himself as mundane, as a failure. 

Not just because he is as ordinary as any other person, but because Ratio thinks he hasn’t succeeded in his goal without Nous’s acknowledgement. I think he believes that he hasn’t done enough, that he isn’t smart enough, that he will never be good enough, therefore no matter what has happened, Ratio is doomed do be as mundane as everyone else, and his accomplishments will never be worth the gaze of the entity who inspired him to help others in the first place, as that’s what Ratio believes they would want.

However, helping others is not something Nous cares about, it’s something Dr. Ratio cares about. Even if he doesn’t understand or acknowledge it, Ratio’s accomplishments are meaningful, and he has walked his path further than most ever have. 

However, that path just isn’t the path of Erudition, it’s the path of Existence. 

Initially I believed it to be the Nihility, and in a way I’m not wrong, considering one must cross underneath the shadow of the Nihility to find the Existence, so in a way he is still approaching them.

However, as always, Acheron clarifies everything.

The Nihility envelops all, therefore it is meaningless. And before our final ending, our predetermined destiny (death), we have so many choices to make, therefore we should make them, as it makes both our life and death develop a completely different meaning.

As I have stated, this is what Ratio believes in, even if he attributes it to the Erudition, rather than the Nihility.

Ratio’s entire goal in life is to help others bring meaning to their lives and guide them in the right direction so they can begin to choose for themselves, using knowledge as his means to do so.

Which is exactly what Acheron does, “on the still waters of oblivion, I guide the wandering souls,” isn’t just a line she says because it sounds cool, rather, that is her goal as well. An emanator of Nihility, whose goal is to help others find their meaning in the universe. 

But Acheron doesn’t just want that. She is looking for the Existence, and to kill the Nihility (meaningless) forever.

Which is significant, because if Ratio believes the same exact thing she does, and is walking the same path as she is, then like Acheron, he is heading towards the Existence, not the Erudition.

And Nous will never acknowledge him, not because he isn’t smart enough, but because he never followed them to begin with.

In fact, we know what Ratio is, or rather, what he might end up becoming.

So far no Doctors of Chaos have succeeded in their goals, but perhaps Dr. Ratio, Dr VERITAS Ratio, will be the one to do so. After all, who else could it be but him?

How fitting that the man named after truth would be the one to find it.

That fuckass owl 

Glaux I want to throw you into a blender 

This is Professor Glaux, one of the figures from the Hanunue-Clockie Era of Penacony who did some things like bring the stellaron there, was a scholar of the Intellgenica Guild, became the first dreamweaver, inspired the paper birds, did some shit with the Nightingale Family and presumably died.

I know, horrible explanation, especially considering I haven’t even done the quest this guy is from, but hopefully that’s all the information you need for now so I can introduce you to this theory (which I did not create, sadly I don’t remember who did but it was someone on twitter somewhere so shoutout to them)

That being… Dr. Ratio is Glaux

I hate it I’m sorry. But I will attempt to explain where it’s coming from.

A) Glaux has very similar references to Ratio, aka they are both associated with Greek culture, wisdom and owls 

Glaux is the Greek word for owl and they are heavily associated with Athena, the god of wisdom.

Now Ratio has extremely obvious owl, Greek and wisdom association if you have looked at him for any longer than 2 seconds so I’m not gonna bother to demonstrate it, they have similar references, moving on.

B) The Intelligencia Guild + their titles 

They are from the same faction, and both are referred to as Professors (ratio gets called that more in the CN version I think), and at least Ratio dedicates his time to spreading knowledge, which I think is something Glaux shared.  

C) This occurrence in Gold and Gears

You know, the one where a student kills themself because Ratio thinks they are an idiot.

Well, it’s complicated because apparently the story told in Gold in Gears takes place a long time ago?? 

How long I don’t know as my brain melted in my skull when trying to piece it together, so please do correct me if I’m wrong, I’ll try to make sense of it later.

Moreover, this is also complicated by the fact that this particular occurrence was used by Herta to teach the trailblazer some mechanics of the sim uni, which makes me thing it’s not a part of the lore/timeline in it in general, and just something funny she added in anyways. Continually, there are also occurrences from characters like Argenti and of the Genius Society members themselves, so I don’t think every event is set in the distant past.

However, I think this idea comes from the other person in that occurrence, Dr. No5, but he also kills himself in it, and I can’t find anymore information on it, so I doubt it. (also apparently in the Chinese version the Ratio they refer to isn’t in the way they refer to Dr. Ratio/the one we know so idk)

Either way, what this means is that if this occurrence did take place a while ago, then Ratio must be super fucking old and he must have been part of the Intellegencia Guild during that time, like a certain owl aka Glaux, who was part of it.

D) Ratio’s weird origins

By weird origins I mean we know jack shit about his past (although we finally know the planet he’s from!) and for all we know the man could have spawned in one day, with some other theories even coming to that conclusion, like the infamous worm theory.

Essentially, if you put this all together, Ratio was once an owl-humanoid named Glaux who was from the Amphoreous, and then became part of the Intelligencia Guild a while back, which is when that occurrence happened. He then went to Penacony, did some stuff, faked his death and like came back as Dr. Ratio on that planet again, which is why we don’t know anything about his origins.

Can you tell why I hate this theory as a concept.

I find it to be dumb, nonsensical, a waste of potential and just straight up random as hell. However it is also objectively valid and could have happened within the plot of the game which is why I hate it so much because please hoyoverse do not go in this direction I will skin you.

However, I do not think Ratio has nothing to do with Glaux.

Rather,

A) The stuff Glaux did on Penacony is meant to parallel how Ratio acted there, as both served as a guiding figure for people on their respective timelines 

B) Ratio is the same species as Glaux/ they are from the same planet (Amphoreous).

Now this I fuck with heavily. Yes, Glaux is way more owl looking than Ratio is, however more human versions of his species could exist, and Ratio could just have the ability to like shift forms or something.

He also looks extremely similar to the owls on Ratios design, which I now deem it appropriate to show to you the metric fuck ton of owls in Ratios design.

(there’s a few more btw I just couldn’t fit them due to the image limit LMAOO)

Why do you have so many, and why is it the same fucking owl, same culture, same goddess referenced, same symbolism???? 

Like even if I hate the 1 : 1 Glaux-Ratio theory, they are clearly connected, and this is no accident on behalf of the developers. 

Therefore, I would keep an eye out for Glaux mentions in the future, especially on the planet coming in 3.0, as I 100% believe that they are from the same planet. There’s no way they can’t be connected in some manner, and if I am right about this I will be annoying about it for the rest of time. 

I can’t believe owl Ratio might actually be a reality. 

So uh, let’s put this all together.

We go to Ratio’s planet in 3.0, problems happen and we learn both his past and his connections to that owl species Glaux is from which likely causes even more problems. Bbg probably gets his ass handed to him in 3.0 and 3.1 and gets to make up for it in 3.2, ending the arc off more fulfilled as a person, and perhaps making some realizations about himself including that he isn’t actually following the path of Erudition. Then we skip all the way to endgame when the trailblazers are fighting Nanook and him and Acheron come in with the steel chair hopped up on Existence juice to give the trailblazer enough of a will to live as to not succumb to the Nihility because oh my god how can you defeat the embodiment of Destruction. We somehow win and Dr. Ratio gets married to Aventurine and they ride off into the sunset roll credits we all cheered. 

So, yeah.

If I’m even a little bit right about this I will be the most insufferable person on this planet. Anyways I hope you enjoyed reading this, and even if these theories don’t end up being true I do still think the speculation gives a lot of insight into his character.

[astraxxei]

thinking about lovesick corrupted yan venti 🤤

he was nice enough to give his darling their own room to “be nice” but they have a chain attached from thier ankle to the bed and its only long enough to go to the four corners of the room

thinkign ab how he doesnt think its noncon because it brings them clsoer together

thinking ab darling who just gor kidnapped and gets their ass punished for biting his dick mid bj

he would punish them by hurting them back lol

u should totally write ab reader biting his dick ( like as a way of attacking him ) and getting punished for it

yes this is a noncon request 😞

gn!reader possibly?

- :3

Hi :3 anon! OF COURSE I'LL DO TS. THE BITING IS SO FUNNY HELP ME.

✧.° - You belong to me, darling...~ ♡

ft VENTI from Genshin Impact.

WARNINGS : NSFW: SEXUAL THEMES. INTERACT AT YOUR OWN RISK. DARK CONTENT. ( :NONCON. Sadism/Masochism. Slight blood. Violence. Yandere themes. Character is a yandere. Reader is a victim. Degradation.)

Yandere! Corrupted! Venti. Reader uses they/them pronouns. Reader is gn. AU where corrupted Venti is the ruler of Mondstadt and reader is an innocent citizen. Oneshot: requested.

This is a dark content post. If you do not wish to see this type of content, please block the corresponding tags. I am not responsible for any person reading this. Reader discretion is advised. Any hate will not be tolerated. By proceeding under the cut, you confirm that you wish to see this type of content and you have FULL responsibility of what you're about to read and interact with.

~ ♡ ~

Even ever since you knew about what Barbatos has become, you did not wish to leave your birth nation. Strange, yet endearing, that you had such a strong connection to your homeland that you didn't want to leave even while you knew that your archon had been corrupted with a mind full of malice and power and then... nothing. Destruction and despair, but you preferred to endure than run away. Scared and stunned, you ran and ran like a chased criminal from the wind. You had went out to buy some apples, but suddenly you felt like the breeze has been after you. You felt like this for a while, every single time you stepped foot out of your home, like something was chasing you, a strong desire to make you it's possession filling in it's blood.

But the wind blew so hard this time, it knocked you on a tree and you passed out. About time, because you've been losing sleep lately, you though before blackening out. You suddenly wake up and... You feel strange. Your head hurts, but you're on a soft bed. But you try to get up and...what is that you feel? Restraints? Chains locked in your ankle on the bed.

You realized you could only move to reach the corners of the small room. The chain attached to your ankle was starting to hurt, but you didn't notice that. More importantly, you were scared. You didn't know what was going on. Who was the one that chained you, restrained you, in a place you've never been before? You hear a faint laugh in the distance. Malicious laugh... sending shivers of terror down your spine.

The one climbing up the stairs to the little room you were currently in was no one other than the Anemo archon himself. Your eyes widen. You can't believe you got into this situation.

"B- Barbatos?!"

"Call me Venti, dear~"

His voice is sweet like sugar cubes, but it's scary and intimidating at the same time. He is average heighted, his glowing, pink eyes are staring into yours. His huge smile is spread across his face, and you swear that even in your weak vision you can see blood staining his delicate clothes.

"Look darling. You're mine from now on~ I gave you your own room~ I should be getting rewarded for being so kind and sweet...to my lover. Come here, and I will teach you how to show me your appreciation all day~"

Terrified, you shake your head as he walks towards you. You were scared, so scared, oh, what a monster...

You almost don't notice how swiftly you're being pulled towards him. You try to protest and squirm but his hand is grabbing your hair so hard it hurts and you almost cry out in pain. A malicious laugh is the response you're getting.

"Ahahaha! Look at you, trying to get away from the Anemo archon! This is a way for both of us to bond, you know...you should want it...You should be good to me...or else... I might do something you won't really like...my lovely dearie~"

You stop protesting as his hand on your hair is hurting you too much to handle. Before you realize it you're lowered down to his crotch and as he throws his clothing to the side you see his erection pent up proudly right in front of your face. Your eyes widen at the sudden realization of his size, but you remember, he's a god, so you're not anymore surprised. He looks down at you mischievously and smiles widely as he runs his hand through your hair.

"See that? Well, you better take care of it. I don't have all day."

You sigh in despair of how you got yourself into this situation. You part your lips and start taking it slowly inside your mouth, sucking slowly and looking up at him with a slightly indifferent look. You see his flushed face as he grabs your hair tighter and pulls your head towards himself roughly, the sounds of pleasure escaping his mouth as soon as he feels yours around him.

"Aaah~ Mmph~ Haah~"

He tastes so good. You don't want to admit it to yourself, but you like it. You really like the sensation. But at the same time...you get slightly annoyed. You've been denied freedom and a good life because of this faulty archon, and now he's forcing you to suck on his dick? You feel absolutely degraded. You decide you can't tolerate this, no, for your nation, and your own sake, you can't.

Without even thinking you bring your teeth to bite down. Not too hard, but enough to cause pain. You see Venti's eyes widen and tear up slightly as he lets out a pained squeal and pulls back from you immediately.

You pant and breathe heavily, looking at him as your saliva is connecting your mouth with his tip. Suddenly he looks down at you with a very angry expression and before you know it a hard, sudden slap makes it's way across your face.

"That hurt, you fucking whore!"

Your vision goes foggy. You whimper and place your trembling hand on your cheek. The chain is still tied to your ankle. You look up at him, shaking. He looks down at you, breathing heavily, but seemingly less angry than before. He kneels down and his hand quickly wraps around your neck. It's really hard, and it hurts. You try to whimper out your words.

"..'m sorry..sor- hnn..."

He lets go of your neck and smiles. "This is what you get for being a disobedient slut. Don't worry, I still love you though~ disobedient or not, you're just my adorable little toy..."

He looks down at you with a wide, mischievous smile and caresses your cheek.

"...and I'm going to do anything in my power to make sure you understand that you're mine and mine only. The feeling of me will be implanted in your brain forever. You belong to me, darling...~ "

~ ♡ ~

A/n: I have never written anything more toe curling in my whole life. Also I managed to not laugh while writting the biting part. I did not expect this to happen.

[some-pers0n]

Medic is a character I feel people agree is often mischaracterized in fanworks, but nobody can really settle on why that is or how people get to that assumption. What makes him mischaracterized? Does he care too much about his team? Too little? What even is his character to begin with? Does he even have one? Why should we even care since he's a comedic character designed to make you laugh first?

In other words, hi! I'm a fanfic writer who is extremely abnormal about Medic TF2. Those two things are going to be pretty central to the topic of this analysis piece of sorts. This right here is an essay that details the characterization of the Medic from Team Fortress 2 from the character's inception in development all the way until the final comic. Yes. The one character.

I'm doing this mostly as a way for a) me to comb through canon material and study this character so I can remind myself over and over again how he acts and b) me not-so-subtly venting about how much of a nightmare it is to find a fanfic that writes Medic in a way that aligns with his characterization in canon. It 100% is because I'm a picky whiny bitch who can't help but constantly read like a writer and overanalyze everything, but I think I'm not that alone when I say that the fandom's perception of Medic is...warped.

But why? Why do people seem to not exactly understand or get him? Why is it hard to find common ground on what aspects of Medic are in-character or not? Why do so many people have wildly different interpretations of it?

Short answer: Medic's character has shifted pretty drastically from his original inception in 2007 to the last released comic in 2017, retconning him from a cold and calculated dominating doctor to a silly and goofy mad scientist to make him more funny. There is no real proper true characterization and everyone can have their own interpertation.

Long answer? Well...let's get to that.

I should probably preface this with a couple main interpretations of Medic's character and how I think it's fascinating to understand where they come from. They also set the groundwork as to how these different characterizations of Medic come from.

There's what I like to call "Game Medic". Game Medic is the most common interpretation amongst players of the game. Redditors and the like point to this interpretation of Medic and hail him as the "true" characterization of him. Honestly? I can't blame them. Have you heard Medic's voice lines?? A lot of them are him barking orders at the others and hissing at his fellow mercenaries about their incompetency. It gives him the aura of a man driven to madness by having to take care of his teammates, reflecting that of what a lot of Medic mains feel.

Game Medic characterizes Medic mostly as a sadistic man who does not care for the other mercenaries. He's dominating and demanding, ordering around the others. He laughs maliciously when there's death and, famously, he believes that healing is not nearly as rewarding as harming others. People generally believe that Medic would experiment on the mercs against their will and torture them for his own amusement. It's not uncommon in these circles who believe in this characterization for theories and suggestions of Medic once being a Nazi to crop up.

I don't believe this is an accurate characterization of him, at least not anymore. I'll get into the details of why later, but the basic summation is that Medic had a rather different personality in 2007 that was later shifted and changed to be more comedic and silly as the years went along.

The next most common is "Fanfiction Medic". It's the Medic you see in those TF2 x Reader stuff, in the sense of Medic being reduced to a caring and compassionate man. It takes more aspects from the comics but does still miss the point of his character in favour of making him easy to sympathize and identify with. He can have aspects of his in-game portrayal, with him being overly critical of the one he loves. He's affectionate, sweet, and generally really caring and loyal, if possessive and easily jealous. In fanfic, he ranges from being dark and intimidating in a sexy and dominating way to a generally nice guy who just loves his partner.

It's the inverse of Game Medic and is often mocked and made fun of. You'll see memes that compare an overexaggerated version of Fanfiction Medic, with him being extremely submissive and soft, to Game Medic, who oftentimes acts in a more dark and violent way, perhaps bringing into his utter disregard for life and his obsession with experimenting using animal organs.

This interpretation should go without saying that it's also not exactly true to his character. Flanderizing him to the point where he doesn't even really identify with any traits or qualities from the game or comics. And for what? To make him more appealing? Or perhaps can people not fathom him acting in a more mean and rude way?

So...how did we get here? Why is Medic and his characterization such a divisive topic? Characters like Scout and Engineer seem to have pretty consistent characterization through and through all subspaces of the fandom. Why Medic? And, even still, why do most people have a hard time replicating his voice? His personality? Anything?

That's what we're going to talk about here today, folks.

Pre-MtM

Let's start with pre-TF2 days: Invasion. The concept art of Medic was very much in line with the whole orderly doctor archetype. Serious expression, clean pristine white clothes. There's a sense of authority and dominance to him. This is a man of reason and science. He is a mercenary. A Medic who heals his team from the brink of death.

This characterization I feel lasted until the style shift, where TF2 became more of a comedic and light-hearted game. This is where I believe the whole "disgruntled angel of death" stuff comes from. Medic retains that order and dignity, which leads into the game.

His voice lines, as previously mentioned, are aggressive and accusatory to his own team. I wouldn't blame you if you assumed he hated his team entirely. He claims that his skill is wasted here, that they're all useless idiots, so on and so forth. It characterizes him as having a grudge towards his fellow workers, only doing this because he enjoys the thrill of bloodshed and violence. It definitely paints him more as being a sadistic madman like the rest of them.

It's a characterization I've already covered, so for the sake of not sounding redundant, let's say that in 2007, the inception of Medic as we know, was predominantly portrayed as a somewhat sane, albeit sadistic and authoritative man of science. He is violent and generally looks down upon his coworkers, viewing them as half-wits who only get him killed over and over again. From his body language, he's a lot more rigid and straight than the others. It gives the impression that he's a proper, well-mannered serious character.

A major moment of characterization that could've happened was the scrapped original Meet the Medic video. I believe this would've come out in 2009 alongside the other Meet the Team videos like Meet the Heavy, Meet the Sniper, Meet the Soldier, etc and etc. While it isn't canon per se, it's still a topic worth mentioning and talking about.

Around this time, TF2 was becoming a lot more comedic than its original inception. Saxton Hale and Mann Co. had been invented, two things that would be a sign of what the game and property would eventually become. It's light-hearted and silly now! In the Classless Update of 2009, there were newspaper clippings showing a saga in which the King of Australia waged a war against a hill. The Spy VS Sniper Update added Jarate, a literal jar of Sniper's piss. Hats!! HATS!! The games were changing quite noticeably from how they originally were.

Which brings us to the scrapped trailer. A basic summary is that Medic is being interviewed on a train and talking about how he invented the medi-gun. It begins with a cold opening of a BLU Sniper bleeding out while a Soldier of the same team calls out for help. They are then promptly run over by a train, the exact one that Medic is on as the next shot is of him putting away luggage as the gore and guts from the run-over Soldier and Sniper splat onto his window. Again, comedic cold open played for laughs. It sets the tone of Medic as being a serious character with a streak of silliness to him. It also helps that there is a chessboard there, further characterizing him as an intellectual.

Medic then begins his story. It's a dark and terrible sight to see. The team is losing and the Heavy is bleeding out. He seems overworked, having to fend off against a Spy all by himself and quickly trying to save the Heavy. The rest of his team are useless, just standing there screaming as they're in pain. Again, further characterizes him as a savior to them. The only competent one.

Then, something quite new happens. Medic slaps Heavy in frustration once he flatlines. He...slaps Heavy. It's on impulse and clearly done in irritation, but that's quite different. Before, we've seen Medic as a somewhat calculated individual. He's not prone to rash choices out of emotions. He loves bloodshed and violence, but he's fairly contained and controlled.

I think the slap is one of the first examples of Medic's character really beginning to shift. It's done for laughs, yes, but it shows him as being emotional and prone to getting physically violent and angry. I can practically hear him saying: "Live damn you! Live!" as he slaps him.

Then, chaos erupts in the room as a stray rocket blasts into the room. It knocks over Medic and he's left to lie on the ground, watching as his teammates do nothing more than scream and flail around. Yet, through a series of events, everything falls into place to create a naturally healing liquid. He watches on in fascination and amazement before then scrambling back to Heavy, pumping more blood into the puddle of Healing Juice. Eventually, the Heavy is revived.

Then the Spy head is resurrected and begins screaming for death. Again, characterizing Medic as being morbidly comedic. Medic screams (startled by the dismembered head coming to life)(reasonable reaction) and begins shooting it. Again, impulsive and acting on instinct.

Once realizing that the Spy's head is invincible, he shoots it one more time, giggling after it. He GIGGLES. Do you understand me when I say that this is important? Look at him as he does that. Tell me he doesn't do a little "hooh!!" after that final shot.

Medic's laughter is a rather large part of his later characterization, as it goes deeper into the whole eccentric mad scientist archetype instead. It's when Medic is beginning to break away from that only characterization and become...silly. He's sadistic, but he enjoys it with whimsy and intrigue. He is fascinated by the Spy head.

Medic then begins work. It furthers his sadistic characterization by him using the Spy head as a means to hold nails and such. Something that we don't see too much later on from this is that Medic builds the medi-gun. Strange since most of the time the one who's characterized as building things is Engie. This is probably done to give a sense of competency to Medic. He's a man of science capable of doing anything.

The video ends on what would later become the scene of Medic walking out with angelic light behind him and doves flying out. Still has that whole angelic feeling to him AND also when his doves first come into play. Him being seen as a holy saviour feeds into his characterization of him having a god complex. He sees himself as a man who makes gods out of men.

So, what have we learned from this video? Well, Medic's commentary is quite proper and professional. In canon lore, he would've been interviewed by the Director. His characterization would be a man of science who views himself as the only really competent person on the team. However, he's prone to fits of impulsive rage and doesn't seem to feel any remorse for his outbursts. He is an inventor of sorts, who experiments and finds it fascinating to work with science.

I also believe this is when it's first shown that Medic likes experiments. Beforehand, he was just a doctor. Now? He tests and experiments and enjoys it. He's still a sadistic madman who loves violence, but all in all, he seems a little more comedic than he did in 2007.

The original idea was scrapped as the team believed that the short didn't exactly show who Medic was. It didn't comply with what players had when they thought of "Medic". Even back then, I think they wanted to have Medic's character be something else. Something more grandiose. Also, it doesn't really touch on Medic's gameplay. It just introduces the medi-gun. 

Medic's characterization would slowly grow more and more comedic as time goes on, moving away from the idea of him being a serious doctor and more of a mad scientist. What with new cosmetics and taunts. 

But...this isn't enough. No, not enough. He's still not as goofy as, say, the Soldier, Scout, or Demoman. Does he need to be? No, but he could be. He could be something more. 

In late June of 2011, the Über Update happened. It was a large-scale content update that not only made TF2 free-to-play, but also added several new cosmetics, weapons, and maps. But that's not what we really care about here, is it?

You already know what it is. The bombshell that changed Medic's character forever.

Meet the Medic

The short opens up with an action scene of Scout and Demo running away. Both are heavily injured and are trying to escape from enemy fire. Scout gets blown away and is then hit with three different rockets, sending him flying into a window where he calls out for Medic before cutting to the title card.

Instantly establishes Medic as a character who the others turn to for help. Good introduction to the character and his general role and premise as well as a neat prelude that catches the attention of the audience. But enough of that. It's time for the man himself.

Immediately we are hit with an iconic line of dialogue that establishes that, no, this is no serious and stoic character. This is a different, more interesting and developed version of Medic. 

"Wait, wait, wait, it gets better! When the patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and the doctor was never heard from again!" [Mad laughter] "Ahh... Anyway, that's how I lost my medical license, heh."

Do you see me here? I am gripping my screen here in some attempt to grab you by the shoulders and shake you. Do you understand what this means in terms of characterization? How different he is? How much sillier he has gotten?!

Okay, let's start off by describing this. Medic is performing surgery on Heavy. Based on the bullet wounds, it's suggested that this impromptu surgery is happening mid-battle. Medic is talking to Heavy incredibly casually-- he's TALKING to Heavy. He should be under anesthesia considering he currently has his entire chest open.

This already characterizes Medic as casual when it comes to surgery. He's doing medical malpractice and, not only is he completely unbothered, but so is Heavy. It could imply that this is regular behaviour and Heavy is not worried.

This surgery is just as normal to Medic as a barber cutting somebody's hair. He's telling stories and generally having fun. He's having fun he'S HAVING FUN-- He's laughing and just generally enjoying himself! Being silly!!

Not to mention the story itself is dark. The punchline is that "the doctor stole a patient's skeleton and ran away". Medic laughs hysterically after this. He finds it hilarious. Not to also mention he follows it up with that little "that's how I lost my medical license :)"

Not only did he steal a man's skeleton, managing to keep him alive as implied with him saying that the patient woke up and noticed his skeleton was missing (so he managed to extract the man's skeleton and leave his nervous system in place), but he finds it funny! It's a comical story he finds enjoyment in telling others. He even seems proud of it and doesn't regret it in the slightest.

He doesn't even seem to really pick up on Heavy's face drop or that maybe he shouldn't be telling this story when he's got somebody on the operating table. Perhaps a little socially unaware? Eh, could just be headcanons bleeding into analysis.

He doesn't have his gloves on either. Just handling Heavy's heart without any gloves or anything. Again, casual medical malpractice that he does not seem bothered by in the slightest. This idea of Medic doing surgery and or experiments with his gloves off while putting them on for literally anything else also pops back up in the comics, but we'll get to that soon.

Let's not also forget that this man laughs. Like straight-up laughs like a mad scientist. Before, we had gotten voice lines of him are evil, malevolent cackles. He's mocking the ones that he kills. Here's?? It's a lot more whimsical and silly. It's something that'll be something he does a lot more later on: laugh when he's just generally happy or nervous.

But enough about that one line of dialogue. We have the rest of the short to watch!

Archimedes pops out of Heavy's chest cavity. Medic scolds him and shoos him away. He glances over back at Heavy. For a frame or two, his eyes are wide and his expression shifts. He realized that, y'know, maybe it's not too great from Heavy's perspective to have Archimedes digging around in there. He shrugs it off with an anxious laugh. Not to also mention he absentmindedly wipes the blood on his clothes. Again, very unprofessional and not very concerned about it.

Quick note about the symbolism of doves. Doves are seen as a sign of peace and whatnot, usually combined with angelic qualities. A dove with blood on it would imply that its original meaning is perverted in some way, especially if the dove is going out of its way for the blood. It's a harbinger of peace, but finds infinite more enjoyment indulging in the bloodshed and violence of the destruction it's meant to oppose. 

Medic grabs what I like to call a über implant. It's what gives the heart the ability to be übercharged. He sticks it into Heavy's heart, saying that, while most hearts cannot withstand the voltage, he believes that Heavy's heart will be able to take it.

He puts it near the beam of the quick-fix and it instantly explodes.

Medic overestimates the abilities of Heavy's heart, thinking it was strong enough. It was not. This characterizes Medic as being somewhat optimistic and believes his own theories based on no previous data or evidence. Throwing caution to the wind and hoping for the best.

However! He adapts. He thinks for a second. This is no setback. He quells Heavy's concerns saying that, no, this is the sound of progress, mein Freund. This shows that he is quick with improvisation and is completely fine with deviating suddenly whenever a new problem arises.

He digs into his mini-fridge, where he gets more characterization. He's got a collection of animal organs in here. He likes experimenting with them, so he keeps them on standby. He does not care if Heavy doesn't want an animal organ in him. This is a life-or-death scenario. Either he goes on out there without a heart or he takes the mega baboon heart.

There's also beer, implying that he likes it enough to keep it nearby. He also keeps one of Heavy's sandwiches, perhaps either for himself or for Heavy.

There's also the head of the BLU Spy, a cute callback to the scrapped Meet the Medic video. It's there with a battery keeping it alive as well as an ashtray. Medic dismisses its request to Die without a second thought. He's got more important business to attend to.

He attaches the über implant and holds it under the quick-fix's beam. Here, again, he laughs maniacally. It makes Heavy uncomfortable, but eh who cares about him this is the Medic essay. Medic is clearly enjoying the beauty of experimentation and playing god here, harking back to the idea of him having a god complex.

Finally, it's done. It glows. "Oh, that looks good," Medic says as he drops it haphazardly into Heavy's chest cavity. He doesn't even really know if this is a good sign or not. It's just glowing and beating in his hands. It's fine. Everything's all good.

Heavy asks the completely reasonable question of whether or not he should be awake. Medic laughs anxiously, a nervous tic it seems, and says, "Well, no, but as long as you are, could you hold your rib cage open a bit?" He's fully aware that Heavy shouldn't be conscious, but because of the continuous healing from his quick-fix, he doesn't really care.

Medic being aloof and generally disregarding the rules of proper medical care is a constant piece of characterization with him. Whatever works best he does. Headcanon territory here, but I believe that he finds the rules and restrictions to hold him down. Prevent him from doing what's best with such nonsense things like "ethics" and "moral codes" and "being a doctor doesn't mean you get to play god".

Heavy moves his hand to open his rib cage a bit, letting Medic push in the heart. However, Medic is too rough and goes too deep, snapping one of Heavy's ribs in the process. Medic's eyes widen, but he quickly recovers. "Don't be such a baby." He grabs it and pinches Heavy's cheek. "Ribs grow back." He tosses the rib aside and turns to Archimedes. "No, they don't."

He lies to make Heavy feel better. It also displays that Medic is physically affectionate of sorts when doing surgery. I personally headcanon that he's a very touchy-feely person who generally doesn't care what other people think as he grabs them by the shoulder or cheek, but, again, headcanons. Also! Ribs do grow back, which implies either a) Medic doesn't know this or b) the TF2 universe works a bit differently.

The surgery is complete. Does he check to see if any of the valves, arteries, or veins line up? Nope! Grabs the quick-fix and heals Heavy back up. He grins wickedly while doing this, still enjoying the art of surgery and experimentation.

He helps Heavy up and smiles, saying the: "Let's go practice medicine" line. He likes those quips.

He suits up (putting his gloves on for once) and comes out of the base. Quick note here about the soundtrack. I neglected to mention how much the three songs attached to Medic perfectly reflect his character, from Archimedes being plucky and a little silly, to A Little Heart to Heart being more sinister and perverting the more light-hearted tune of Archimedes, to Medic! being a full-on jazzy piece of glory (and also the best song). I could go further into all three tracks, but let's just do some basic analysis of the first bit of the song here.

The song begins with an angelic choir, which, again, paints Medic in the light of a holy figure that saves and protects the others. Then, it devolves, getting darker and more menacing before the saxophone, trumpets, bass guitar, and drums kick in, going back to the usual TF2 style.

Medic is a mad mercenary like the rest of them. He puts on a facade of being proper and angelic, but he's no different than the others.

It all comes together with him walking out, a radiant white light behind him as his doves fly out. Combined with his steady expression, he seems like an angel who's come to save them all. At least until the song shifts, where he grins and begins to heal the others.

So on and so forth. The next part isn't as character-defining, mostly just a display of Medic's role in the game because, like healing. It does a better job of showing what his class does than the scrapped version, I'll give it that. He heals Scout and Demo before shifting focus back to Heavy.

An onslaught of BLU Soldiers are closing in on them. Heavy glances back, asking if Medic is sure that this plan will work.

Medic laughs, saying that he has no idea. Again, he doesn't know. He doesn't care. He's having fun and is just experimenting willy-nilly without a clue as to whether it'll actually work. He just hopes.

He flicks the switch and, lo and behold, it works. Heavy is übercharged and they march on to victory. The short ends there, with a small epilogue showing the rest of the mercs getting their own über implant surgery. Again, the final scene shows Medic's lack of care as Archimedes is implied to have crawled into Scout's chest and been sealed up when it was over.

Whew!! Two thousand words of analysis on one four-minute short. But, I assume you can understand why, no? This short is monumental when it comes to characterizing Medic. He's not stoic. Quite the opposite! He's careless when it comes to following proper procedures and order. He is a giggly mess who chuckles and laughs at almost anything, nervously or not. He's concerned when Heavy shows anxiety and uncertainty. He's generally a lot more goofy and silly here, you know?

He now instead mostly mirrors the eccentric mad scientist archetype. Laughing, experimenting without a care, and generally being a couple screws loose. Instead of the cold, calculative bloodthirsty character he once was, he's a lot more close and emotional here.

This characterization becomes the basis of what the following taunts and voice lines would be about. His Halloween voice lines are a lot more silly, with him laughing a lot. His Medimedes cosmetic is him screaming in agony and laughing maniacally about his new predicament.

If I may, I want to quickly talk about the Sec-Op cosmetic lines. Sec-Op I personally interpret as a fabricated evil dark side. I don't think of Sec-Op as "Medic's evil secret thoughts" and more of a force that's attached to him that acts like how a typical normal evil dark side thingymabobber works. The joke with the cosmetic is that Medic is as evil as Sec-Op, but is more casual about it. Of course, other people can see it as something else, I just think of it like that.

What I particularly want to talk about are two curious lines. Sec-Op questions whether or not Medic worries he's going mad. Medic doesn't mind. He doesn't care. Even if he is, it's not the end of the world. However, he gets extremely offended when Sec-Op suggests that the other mercs think that Medic is crazy.

Medic gets insulted when others think of him as mad, yet he himself is fine with it. Why? I think Medic himself cares a lot about how he's perceived. He claims he doesn't. He does. If he's thought of in a way that he doesn't want to be thought about, he gets upset. He doesn't care about what other normal people think of him since any conversation they have will come out as negative, but with the mercs? Nah man. Nah...

The ego of this man is a central part of how I view him. He likes being praised and admired. He likes being lifted up and viewed as a god amongst men. He wants to defy the laws of nature just because he feels like he's better than anybody else. He's a little goofy that way, y'know?

Then, of course, we have Expiration Date. I promise I'll try to be a little less exhaustively wordy here since a lot of his characterization is still the same.

Medic and Engie have been experimenting with the teleporters and bread. When Scout, Soldier, and Heavy return from their own trip to get the intel, the pair break the bad news. Here, Medic exhibits characteristics of his in-game self. It could definitely be because of how dire the situation is (they're all going to die in a matter of days), but it's worthy to note.

They don't entertain Scout and instead get straight to telling them about it. When Engie teleports the bread in, Medic tears it apart, proudly showing off the disgusting insides. He tells them all that these green blobs are tumours with a wide, grin. He seems somewhat amused by it, contrasting with the rest of them being confused or mournful.

When asked about how long it'll be, he quickly calculates in his head that they have roughly three days to live. He says it pretty dramatically too. Prissy drama queen.

Engie and Medic then curiously enough spend the next three days experimenting with the bread. Apparently, they were so busy as to not even attend Spy's bucket list meeting. Curious bit of characterization. Engie and Medic both care enough about the team to spend their last few days trying to find some sort of reason for these tumours and possibly a cure. They care about their team (or at the very least their lives) on some level.

Engie teleports bread. Medic grins as it appears in front of him, still humoured by seeing teleportation in action. Or, perhaps he notices it changing and shifting. Regardless, the bread attacks him. Not much to note here other than he's screaming loudly and dramatically. Again, prissy drama queen. He's only having a big bread monster lunge directly at his jugular. Get a grip.

Engie and Medic return to Spy and the rest of them, telling them that, no, they aren't dying in three days, but rather that it's only bread that gets the tumours. Instead, as Medic puts it: "It's some form of self-aware beauty mark that only metastasizes in an environment of pure wheat" before then shaking around the bloodthirsty monster and showing it off. He's just happy and excited to be alive and show off that, no, this is just a bread problem. Everything is all great.

Until Soldier says that he's been teleporting bread non-stop for three days.

Medic tosses the jar aside and rushes towards Soldier, shaking him around. Again, harking back to that moment of physical frustration in the scrapped Meet the Medic short. Him being impulsive and prone to sudden mood shifts is still a part of his character.

They fight the bread monster, they win, Medic corrects Soldier when he says that they'll live forever, and then he rejoins Engie as the both of them inspect the bread monster. Looks like the two of them will get to keep on experimenting.

And there we are. I could touch on the other shorts, but this is already long enough and those shorts are just repeating the same information. Meet the Medic is vital to the characterization of Medic now. Everything in the comics and shorts with him happens because of what Meet the Medic set up.

And, well, speaking of the comics, why don't we talk about those?

Comics

The comics notably do not feature a lot of Medic, at least the ones previous to the mainline comics. The comics are much more entertained with the stories of Soldier in particular. Understandable, Soldier is an almost entirely comedic character (until the comics decide to randomly throw in ideas of him being repulsed by the idea of being a civilian and can only really function in a war setting). However, it does leave the others lacking in a lot of characterization while we get a bunch of Soldier trivia.

But enough about me quietly complaining about the comics, let's talk about the issues where Medic appears!

He appears in A Fate Worse Than Chess, but doesn't do much other than watch the TV playing Saxton's message and then prepare himself for battle. In Shadow Boxers...also not too much. Just sorta dismisses the meeting and says goodnight (??? it's like midday???) before heading off. Nothing really to write home about.

Gargoyles & Gravel is where he actually gets some proper screen time again. He's experimenting on a jack-o-lantern with Engie. As far as characterization goes, he's repeatedly shown to have connections to Heavy and Engie. I'll get to Medic and Heavy soon enough, but with Engie, Medic seems to enjoy experimenting with him. They collaborate on projects and work together.

This is no different. Medic has implanted a brain into the pumpkin, one that belonged to a criminal who tried mugging him. This also implies that Medic has zero qualms about just incapacitating and experimenting on people. Personally? I like headcanoning that he cares more about his team than he does the average person, so he doesn't really feel any sort of guilt or remorse when just grabbing somebody off the streets for a healthy amount of medical malpractice. If he is performing on the mercs, he cares a little more. A Little.

Regardless, Medic is dressed up as Viktor Frankenstein, a matching costume for Heavy's Frankenstein's Monster costume. Again, comparing him to famous fictional mad scientists. Also quite cute.

Medic is again not wearing his gloves. He also declines Engie's offer for a beer, saying that he doesn't drink during surgery. Well, at least he cares enough to not drink during surgery, but y'know. Curious how this is the only real thing he seems to care about. They revive the person's consciousness, having them possess the pumpkin. Medic then says that the pumpkin could "scare the children straight". Does he not like kids or just find them hooligans? Perhaps he just likes seeing people scared. Or maybe it's just Halloween dialogue.

Anywho, Engie takes the pumpkin away and Medic reappears at the end to hold his bonesaw with a wicked smile.

So, now, time for the actual comics.

For the first couple of comics, Medic is nowhere to be seen. He's one of the characters shrouded in mystery for a while. Pauling wasn't able to track him or Engie down. Where could he be?

Then, we learn that he's still alive and well, but now working with Gray Mann as the new Medic for the TFC BLU team. But wait, those are the bad guys!

Medic's introduction scene in the comics establishes a couple of things. One, he's still the same ol' medical malpractitioner who's been busy sewing baboon uteruses into some of the team members. He's excited to work with them. Literally. He brings up how they're "blank canvases", saying how their previous Medic must not have experimented on them.

Secondly, he's still pretty lax with morals. The comics definitely make it more clear how he's unaware that maybe people don't want animal organs sewn into them, whether they know it or not. If asked about it, he brushes it off and says: "Eh, it's not like it's hurting you in any way that we know of yet" before quickly switching topics. 

Another thing of note is that he explicitly lied to the TFC Scout. Interesting. He told him that he was going to fill a cavity, only to then sew three baboon uteruses into him. He's a lot more careless and reckless with the TFC team. Or maybe he also was with his previous team. Again, personal headcanons bleeding into analysis, but I don't think Medic cares nearly as much about the TFC team as he does with his main team. But, again, disregard that if you will. Medic simply just being a lying little prissy bastard is also equally as valid.

The ending panel of the scene has Medic consider and bask in the glory of his "latest triumphs" going toe-to-toe with his "earliest experiments". The phrasing implies that he doesn't particularly care about his previous team. Again, Medic likes his bloodshed and violence. He doesn't play sides or really care. He just wants to see how his newest cadavers fare against the older ones.

Medic then shows up again in the next comic at the very end, smiling wickedly after Sniper is shot by the TFC Sniper. This is then later explained away cause Joke and Funny, but we'll get to it soon.

In Old Wounds, Medic is shown to work on Sniper's body. By his own accord and will, he decides to bring Sniper back to life. Why? Well, number one this is TF2 and death is ultimately meaningless when it's done to the main cast because they're our main characters. Secondly? Well, we soon find out.

After Sniper has his little moment, he wakes up to find Medic there. Medic is less concerned with Sniper's state (both physical and mental) and is more obsessed with the idea of Sniper not being able to witness his crowning medical achievement. Ego! Look at that right there. He's concerned with how he's perceived, probably for just personal pleasure.

Also, the return of the god complex. "It's like I've always said! There's nothing wrong with playing God, so long as you are good at it!" It implies that he's said it several times before, that he's playing God and it's perfectly fine and okay because it works out in the end. He likes the idea of playing around with the laws of nature and God's will.

However, while he's gloating, Sniper attacks. This surprises Medic. Medic was either caught up in his own personal victory to notice Sniper being upset or he never once considered that Sniper would be upset, but rather congratulate him over it. Both? Yeah, probably both. He says this when Sniper says that he killed him. "It's okay though cause I brought you back to life, ja?" basically. He also then explains why he was smiling: it's just how he normally looks. He just looks like that! Smug and evil! 

Medic then also elaborates on his reasoning for why he joined the TFC team. He was bored mostly. Medic loves his experimentation. He would've felt bored and as though his talents were being wasted if he wasn't able to be a mercenary. The TFC needed a Medic, so what then? Join them! He needs the funding.

Again, when explaining he still brings up how it's his greatest triumph, bringing back another person from the dead. Medic in the comics is quite boastful it seems. However, he does seem to care enough about Sniper's physical state to try and stop him from going straight back to work (killing people) before they're then interrupted by Cheavy. Ohhh Cheavy...

Cheavy is rightfully pissed that Medic revived Sniper. Why wouldn't he be??? Medic just revived the guy they killed. And for what reason? Just to say: "Haha!! I brought a man back from the dead?" Cheavy makes it known how upset he is. In a rage, he kills Archimedes.

Medic flips. Perhaps in the only real time that Medic is deeply affected by death, he screams and rushes over to his feathered little friend. Something I've brushed over until now is that Medic really loves his birds. It's a strong big of characterization that his birds, with Archimedes in particular, being something he loves deeply. He cares more about them than he does with anything else. When Archimedes is in Heavy's chest, Medic cares more about Archimedes getting dirty than he is with Heavy having a bird in his stomach.

As Medic is trying to revive Archimedes, Cheavy barks at him. Medic apparently managed to coax the team into buying him a bunch of animal organs. Guy just has a certain charm to him. Or he's just extremely adamant about it. Regardless, Cheavy isn't too pleased with him.

Even while Cheavy is nagging him, Medic STILL tries to boast about his crowning medical achievement. He seriously does not understand that now is not the time to go all: "Yeah!! I brought him back to life!! Isn't that so cool? Aren't I just the best?"

He gets yelled at, but Medic still seems unphased. Perhaps he's either used to it considering that Cheavy just yells at everyone or he's still riding the high of bringing Sniper back to life. He's excited to go out and help the TFC team, saying that he'll be right behind Cheavy. That mirrors exactly what he says to Heavy.

But Cheavy swipes him away. Cheavy doesn't want anything to do with him (which is quite frankly the most reasonable thing to do right now). Cheavy orders Medic to stay in the infirmary and get out of their way, which Medic doesn't like in the slightest. Another headcanon, but I like the idea of Medic being extremely stubborn and constantly wanting to be in a dominating role. He likes ordering people around as shown with his personality in-game and the idea of him having to submit to another person just pisses him off.

And so, he betrays the TFC fully, rejoining the TF team.

In The Naked and the Dead, we open on Medic scrambling to get Miss Pauling blood. Again, improvisation shows here as he manages to figure out that if he just pours blood back into the bodies they'll live. Who cares if blood clots happen because of contradicting blood types?

He also says a curious line. When Miss Pauling expresses skepticism about this tactic working, he just goes: "I know, ja? Why do people even go to medical school?" Some people interpret this as him never even going to medical school. Personally? I like thinking that he's just mocking the need for a proper education when something as simple as pouring a bunch of blood into a person can bring them back to health.

It's a joke, but he's shown to be dedicated to bringing them back to life. He says that he's been soaking their blood using his own underwear for. some reason. Again, joke, but also like...that's some dedication right there.

The next time we see Medic is when he's tending to Demo's wounds. Again, small talk ala Meet the Medic. Medic is catching Demo up on all of the drama. He STILL BRAGS ABOUT BRINGING SNIPER TO LIFE HERE TOO. I genuinely forgot how many times this man brings up Sniper's revival. Oh my god I know that you're proud of bringing the bushman back to life but it's so comical seeing him constantly bring it up like: "Yeah!! And I was super cool and smart and able to do it, ja?" He's so silly.

More jokes here about Medic being able to replace Demo's eye, but because of Monoculous he can't keep it forever. Not much to comment on other than Medic is still rather dismissive of his procedures perhaps causing others genuine distress. Also, him just doing random things for no reason, like scooping out part of Demo's brain because he just got exhausted of hearing Demo ask for his eye back. Also implanting a brain into his leg because he just wants to see what happens. What a goofball.

Something to note is how Medic isn't really intimidating at all during these comics. Evil? Sure, but he's not exactly a looming figure who makes you quiver in your boots. He's casual, silly, and just kinda does what he likes to do. It makes me think about all the art of him with his hands clasped behind his back and with a creepy and unsettling expression. Looking at how Medic is shown in the MtM video and comics? He's...not really like that.

Then, Cheavy reappears. Something to note is that Cheavy doesn't call Medic by his name (or title I should say), but rather by nicknames (and slurs). Frankenstein is his most common one. Medic wouldn't like that.

Again, headcanons, but I think Medic and Cheavy bumped heads a lot considering how hostile Cheavy is to Medic. Because of this, Medic would despise Cheavy more than anything. What's worse than an annoying nagging beast of a person is one that won't even acknowledge his greatness and sees him as little more than a pest that Gray brought on cause they needed a Medic.

So, Medic attacks Cheavy. He reaches for his bonesaw, slashes him across the face before stabbing him in the abdomen. Revenge for killing Archimedes. But, Cheavy survives, reefing the blade out of him and then going out for blood. They both fight before Heavy interrupts.

Blah blah nothing too notable. Medic is a little bit of a sopping wet cat here. He's scared of Cheavy. By all means, he was previously being choked out by him, but c'mon Medic get your shit together bite his ankles. (/j /lh)

Heavy for?? Some reason throws aside Sasha because Cheavy wanted a "good death"?? I know it's coinvent for the plot since it gets Sasha out of the way so that Cheavy can kill Medic and piss off Heavy even more, but still. Maybe I need to do another analysis piece for Heavy to see if he's the type of guy to care about this, but I doubt I could drag it out nearly as long as this.

Regardless, Medic is shot and killed. He's then sent to hell. YAY!!!

FINALLY back to some interesting new Medic characterization. Medic has made a deal with the devil. What for? We don't know. Whatever works best for your fanfic. It doesn't matter what he sold his soul for in this scene though, as Medic is now damned to hell for everything. Oh no!

Until...a loophole. He reads the fine print and points out that the contract says that his soul is only owed to the devil if they own the majority stake in it. Well, Medic just so happened to have grafted eight more souls into him. 100% from the other mercs as he confirms later on, but again, he's just like that.

So Medic has zero qualms about stealing the souls of his teammates. Pretty much in line with what we know about him thus far.

He convinces the devil to sell another one of his souls so that he can go back to earth. In exchange? One of the pens on his table. He acts all surprised and shocked when the devil accepts, clearly revelling in his victory, before then being brought back to life.

If I may break away from the analysis for a bit and go into rambling: I do think Medic should've been slightly more unhinged here. By slightly I mean feral beast of a man, but y'know. Headcanons that alter and shape the way I see him, so I look at this scene and go: "He would NOT be that normal after tricking the devil and seeing the man who killed him" but it is what it is.

Then, the scene we all know and love. Medic toots his horn a little bit as he monologues about planting the uteruses into Cheavy, having him believe that the pen will activate the birthing process and three baboons will explode out of him. Again, he's enjoying himself. He likes seeing Cheavy being scared and afraid.

But, it's all a ploy, and Heavy tears the life-extending machine out of Cheavy. Heavy and Medic reunite, Medic finds the actual inductor and grabs his new baboon child, and...yeah that's the end of the comics. Uneventful, eh?

Conclusion

So, what a character, huh? I like him a little, can't you tell? Props if you actually managed to sit through this mess of an essay. It's mostly just for personal use and reference anyway. Writing about a character and taking notes helps me learn, and I just wanted to try doing something proper, y'know? I've only been writing about Medic for over a year now.

He's a bit of a mixed bag of traits and characterization. You can probably grab the parts that make up the core of his personality plus a couple other traits and then probably shape it into a rough form of who Medic is. It's how I think I write about him, to be honest.

The way to write Medic I feel is just trying to make sense of all of these little bits of character tossed at you, cause, yeah, you call say all these things, but how do you make it work? How do you make a character out of it? How do you rationalize all of these things being possible all at once?

Honestly? It's through trial and error. Soon enough you'll figure it out. Just keep in mind of what his character is. Look at his dialogue and thought process. Would he fucking say that? Would he fucking say it differently? So on and so forth.

Everyone can interpret him differently. Some may look at the things I say and will rebuttal that I'm giving him too much credit. Perhaps he's lying about certain things and is just manipulating them all. That's fair. It's perfectly valid. 

Medic is a comedic character first and foremost. Everything he says and does is meant to be funny. It's just that diseased fanfic writers like me have to overanalyze everything cause we're writing gay yaoi melodrama about murderers. A character who just constantly lies and manipulates I find isn't one I really want to make a protagonist out of, so I don't do it.

So, how do I write him? Well...

I take the aspects that I find most central to him. There's a lot, but I'll list the ones most imporant. His eccentricity is a core part of my enjoyment of him, so I cram it into him as much as physically possible. He's a giggly madman who unabashedly does what he likes to do. Him being apathetic to ethics as well is vital. He clearly does not give two shits about whether or not any of this is legal or moral. He does what he wants to do.

His ego is another big part. He loves attention and he loves being with people who think of him as some smart, grand guy. He's got a complex and has a constant need for others to validate him. If anybody tries taking him down a couple pegs, he lashes out.

That's another thing as well: his emotions. I think Medic wears his emotions on his sleeve and doesn't care to hide them. He's blunt, says exactly what he means regardless if it's nice or not, and generally could not care less over what is socially appropriate. If he doesn't care about a person, he won't make a single effort to even pretend to be interested in what they're saying. If he's excited, he'll laugh and make it known to everyone just how happy he is. Blah blah blah, you get it.

His mood swings and constantly shifting attitude is another thing too. All six of his emotions (neutral, afraid, happy, irritated, unbridled mania, overwhelming hatred and anger). It's easy for him to shift between them very rapidly and whatnot. All that sorta stuff.

The original characterization and voice lines I believe still hold water. I personally like interpreting them as coming from a place of genuine frustration that he only has when fighting. He's an emotional person who snaps and yells and gets annoyed and agitated very easily. His mood fluctuates between mania and seething hatred when fighting. I think it's as to be expected. He's on a battlefield. If you like respawn machine stuff, then it's implied that he's died numerous times and is completely sick of it, lashing out at his teammates for not protecting him.

There's several more aspects of Medic's character to which I write about in my own works, namely him being neurotic about constantly being in control, him being outwardly hostile to people he doesn't know and more close and caring to ones that he likes, and him generally being a lot more fond of his own team than he'd like to admit, but that's all sorta fanon stuff. Only I really care that much about it.

With that being said, Medic is one of the characters ever. Truth be told, this would've been less infuriating to write than, say, a Soldier analysis piece. Writing about my silly goofy middle-aged murderer is nice sometimes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to my fics.

[pennyblossom-meta]

The hidden loneliness of L, the duplicity of Light

EDIT: 24/05/24 (added: further context)

Harping on from this post by @my-one-true-l.

Feel free to disagree and engage!

This was entirely out of the blue, but while watching the character analysis of Bruno from Encanto by therapist Jonathan Decker and filmmaker Alan Seawright, I was somewhat taken aback by this set of comments on sequence where Bruno opens up to Mirabel about his apparent loneliness:

JD: But he's so into all this entertainment, the acting for himself, all these habits because he's so alone. AS: Yeah. JD: And when we don't have real connection, we sacrifice — you know, we get really into TV shows, we get really into movies. I mean, even more so than normal, we are out of balance because we don't want to have actual relationships, or we want to and we're not.

It was a coincidental throwback to this quote by Fu Takahashi, who plays L in the 2020 JP musical:

There are cartoon, film, animation and musical versions of “DEATH NOTE”; I think that the character is different in each version and has its own charm. A common thing about L among these versions is that, despite his superficial image as a smart guy who hates losing, he actually feels lonely and needs affection, I imagine. Perhaps he is an orphan – his character suggests so. He tries to control his emotions, like the feelings towards his parents, or romantic feelings; that’s why he is sort of dependent on games or battles of the mind. So I want to play L while thinking about the foundations on which his personality has been formed.

And while L and Bruno's situations are obviously incredibly different in both context and personality, I found it interesting that Jonathan talks about the concept of the identified patient right after; where a couple is on the brink of divorce, a group of friends or work colleagues keep arguing and having problems — there's a decision, whether subconscious or not, that a specific someone is the problem, i.e., the black sheep, and that fixing this person will solve the adjacent problems.

It further reminded me of the way that Light's duplicity throughout the first arc made L the black sheep of the Task Force, as no one wanted to believe for a very long time that he could be Kira. Certainly not while L was alive, as he was often accused of pursuing Light because a) he had no other suspects and b) out of sheer stubbornness.

While L also mused whether his suspicion of Light was also, in part, due to a lack of others who could ascend to the level of intellect of the game, the result of this duplicity in the psyche of the Task Force becomes even more malicious if we consider what Jonathan says next:

JD: (...) other times we're just going to let this person hold all of it so that we can believe in our own goodness and perfection.

Extrapolating this a bit: the inherent value to this reasoning is not that the Task Force wants to believe in their own goodness and perfection by focusing on Light's innocent; rather, Light wants to be seen as the good, perfect individual and cast on L an easy light (pun intended) of the outsider who clashes with the ethics of honor and professionalism of police officers, in an already strict culture of rigor and normalized behaviors (the hammer and the nail, the nail gets hammered until it fits in); whereas L sticks out like a sore thumb in both appearance and morals.

[vigilskeep]

More Leandra defense because the anon you got the other day got me thinking and I think a lot of the fandom acts like she's malicious in situations where she's genuinely just being a flawed human who wants the best for her kids and sometimes falls short

While it can be argued that Hawke having to take care of their family after Malcolm dying wasn't fair to them (and in my opinion it wasn't, but I personally view it more as the result of bad circumstances than individual fault), it's not like Leandra just sat back and went "I'm going to put pressure on my oldest because I don't feel like doing anything". She was depressed! Her life was falling apart! That's not her fault, and it makes sense for Hawke to blame her, but there's a difference between a character being mad and the player being mad, you know?

I also think there's this really bad faith reading about her just wanting the estate back and to be noble again to reclaim some lost glory, and that's not at all how I interpreted the situation. To me it always came across as her trying to provide for her kids (possibly to make up for not being able to before) in the only way she knows how. She doesn't want them to feel out of place (and again, Carver's feelings are valid but they're also feelings and he's not a mind reader), she wants them to be safe and cared for

Sorry for the long rant, it's just rare to come across other people who think of Leandra as a person with thoughts and feelings and opinions and not some malicious force trying to ruin Hawke's life

yeah this is super true. of course it wasn’t fair some of the things she said to hawke and the responsibility placed on them, but as someone who deals with depression & whose family members deal with depression, i find it quite uh startling that people are so quick to act like it’s leandra’s fault she’s clearly prone to an illness that she suffers from after a) the death of the love of her life, her husband and partner who she had relied on to build a life with, and b) the death of her child and being forcibly displaced from her home for the second time in her life. i also think that, while there’s definitely implications that there was a fair bit of pressure on hawke as a kid, it’s a little funny to act like hawke grew up as a sole parent in a wet cardboard box with their baby siblings all alone as if malcolm wasn’t fully alive until hawke was 22. and to me it’s very harsh to act like anything prior to that was not also malcolm’s responsibility?? he seems to get away scot free lmao

yeah the estate issue isn’t uncomplicated but like what is wrong with her actual goal here. sorry a woman who was forced to leave for 26 years wants to go home?? sorry it upsets her to see her children forced to do either illegal smuggling or mercenary work. sorry she doesn’t want to live in a dangerous neighbourhood in a small space with her brother who’s constantly mad at her for something that wasn’t her fault. how abnormal of her??? sure the game is a little harsh on gamlen and she is somewhat entitled about the idea of rent and so on, but she doesn’t even hold what gamlen did against him when he literally hid from her that their parents forgave her on their deathbeds in order to avoid consequences for stealing from her

[gengor]

So I like bcs and brb a lot but it’s kind of been bothering me that I haven’t seen much talk about this in regards to either show bcs or brb and I’m not the best person to elaborate on this but I do wanna talk about the way the show writes it’s Latino characters and follows up on them in bcs. 

I’m not gonna get into all the ways breaking bad uses Mexican culture in offensive ways to show Walter’s dissent into dangerous territory bc im hoping that this is obvious to most people. What I am gonna talk about is the way bcs fails to respond to this criticism in a meaningful way. 

So better call saul is a show thats essentially about exploring nature, nurture, and one’s own free will over the person they choose to become. It’s about humanizing Saul into someone we can understand and empathize with. In the time in Jimmy’s life when he was trying to improve as a person he had his brother bait him and manipulate him into committing felonies bc he wanted to feel superior. People in his life drilled it into his brain that he was incapable of being honest so why even bother? The phrase ‘he was born like this’ gets used more than a few times. The show also gives a lot of character work to Mike as well. And although Mike was never painted as malicious he can be incredibly indifferent to the pain of other characters. Bcs let us see emotionally heavy scenes with him where he’s more vulnerable than he ever was in breaking bad. So theres an established pattern of adding more complexity to one of the one-dimensional ‘bad guys’ of breaking bad by making them act differently than how they would in breaking bad. Can you see where I’m going with this?

Rewatching the show after I’d already seen it gave this weird thematic dissonance to way the show reintroduced any Salamanca character. Like as soon as we see Tuco we as the audience are supposed to be in on the joke. Like…Oh, we know that guy already. And of course, the show plays with the audience already knowing Tuco while Saul doesnt to dangle the high stakes of the situation in front of us for drama. Because we as the audience know that Tuco is and probably always was hot-headed and violent to satirical degrees. Other characters even chime in to reiterate that Tuco was always like this. Every single Salamanca family member is treated this way.

 And bc of the way bcs is trying to redeem and humanize it’s previously established white characters just makes this kind of even worse than breaking bad to me. Bc people were vocal about how breaking bad employed a lot of anti-Latino tropes within its writing so you'd think that bcs would try and take this opportunity to amend the writing a bit right? 

You could argue that this is what Ignacio’s character is supposed to do for the show. He’s a Jessie parallel. He’s not really a bad person he’s just incredibly in over his head. And while I do appreciate his presence in the show and like him I feel like it should have been more than just him. 

By far the biggest missed opportunity here to me was the lack of humanization that Lalo got. And I get he’s popular, I feel like that mostly due to how Tony Dalton played him in a very charismatic way. But god he was such a missed opportunity for a thematic follow-through. The way other characters talk about the Salamancas is exactly the kind of predetermination the show is trying to critique with jimmy. When Ignacio is roped into spying on Lalo to aid Gus in killing him he goes in already being incredibly suspicious of Lalo due to his family. He has reason to want this guy to be evil since he’s got to help kill him to save his own skin and his father's. He not only assumes this guy is evil based on his family, he /needs/ Lalo to be irredeemable. Then you're telling me that against all themes and narrative storytelling devices Lalo is just conveniently the guy he assumed he would be. Like, imagine if Lalo got to be a Jimmy parallel, a guy who’s acting out the role people assume he's supposed to fill bc no one thinks he can be anything else. Not humanizing Lalo and ignoring the potential to explore and humanize any other previously established or mentioned latino characters…its like the show is breaking its own thematic statements in order to keep the racism. 

[rabid-mercenary16]

So, I am doing both asking something, and saying how I just think shit in your AU goes in general, bc brain bored and I’m in gym class, not giving a shit. All of it is positive, but, I’m an over thinker so—

Anyways, so, Caine has an alternate personality of sorts, the ‘evil’ or malware version of him, but why exactly hasn’t Caine and Able (C&A) fixed it yet? That is though, a whole other topic to open up as to see why and what is actually happening in the original version with C&A. So, instead I will go off of the assumption that the company purposely trapped people and their souls here.

Any virus of any sort, is human made. For a specific reason and purpose, there’s many ways malware can be spread, and it also depends what kind this is. Say what if, for example instead of just being malware (malicious software), is actually ransomware, where people steal the data and certain others have to pay to get it back. I say this theoretically, because it is a random thought that came to mind, in a way, the players in general are being ransomed, taken over and not let out, but than that would oppose the question of what does the maker/perhaps corrupted Caine, want? Maybe it’s not Caine that wants something. Maybe someone wants something from C&A.

Say if it is this, than, perhaps that would explain the ‘help’ that Pomni and Zooble get, because I have read somewhere that from the corruption AU they sometimes find things around, things that could be helpful, things from past ‘players’. I know it’s probably just normal Caine trying to help whereas he can’t do much against the malware, but what if, instead, it was the company? I don’t know, since we don’t know much about the actual company story in the Og version, but I believe if C&A really wanted to drive people insane and steal their souls or something, they’d just find a way to do it off the bat, immediately, why wait for abstraction? What if this is somehow an attempt from the original company, with the small amount of access it has, trying to help the players in the game? Jax and Ragatha are both sort of on the edge, and I feel like if character data was stolen and held somewhere else, yet bits of it were still with the original people, the scattered code would make an affect like that, and than with others who are completely gone, there is no control over them at all.

…Anyways that was random and I just thought of that all on the spot just now since I got the ball rolling— ANYWAYS.

There is almost an infinite amount of possibilities, yes, Caine is an AI, but he can only go along what has been set for him. Such as how in the character ai app if a character says something that doesn’t Aline with the policy of the developers(ex, gore, NSFW content, etc), it gets rid of the message and notifies the user about it, saying to try again or if this is a big problem, to report it to the developers.

I might just be overthinking the technology, especially since if we go based timeline wise than if we’re still in the era of the technology it looked there was in tadc original pilot, this is probably taking place in the 90’s for the Og thing, from what everyone assumes, so I’ll assume this is the same time period. Caine does seem like a somewhat accurate ai for the time period, he stalls and goes back to the previous thing you said/asked if it’s something he isn’t designed to deal with, whereas an AI in this time might still answer the question and a bit confused. I suppose the overall question is who gave Caine that sentience? As in, the other Caine. It’s probably just me looking at it from my negative point of view, but for some reason the corrupted Caine gives a more humane vibe, in the way of acting, with definite maliciousness to the others. The only thing I can wonder is if this Caine already existed, just needed to be activated, like a prototype that then seemed to go a bit off the deep end while being replaced and left as idle undeleted code.

An ai would only have control of the physical bodies, I believe, so it would make sense, as where the virus starts as a physical part that just acts off of a player’s emotional state. It’s one goal? To corrupt. I have no mouth but I must scream, AM super computer vibes right there, and yes Caine’s original character is based off of that, but he’s a more wacky version. What if, pretty much the exact opposite of what I was theorizing before, C&A did this on purpose? In a way. As in, Caine was originally a malicious entity meant to corrupt those who came there and take them over, put them in eternal suffering like the five last remaining humans in the short horror story that AM the supercomputer originated from. Maybe Corrupted Caine is just more like AM in general, perhaps he was just the base code and than left, only in the end hating humans for the way they are, hence he wants to torture all those in the circus, make what little hope they have, turn into extreme fear, almost turning the tides entirely from what his situation had been? I dunno.

Anyhow, I’m a coding person, per say, a family of cyber people and hence in a way I can almost understand a lot of what’s going on here. Abstractions from before staying the same, since they’ve already become ‘abstract’, unstable code and likely can’t be ‘abstracted’ again. I like how it shows the difference personality wise, the abstractions would stay where they are, where as the ‘abstracted’ or corrupted above the surface, are either fighting, in a constant tug a war, or completely given up. So, what I’m getting at for the cyber part is, would there be any way for them to, in game, have any sort of.. protection? Like a failsafe, or something added recently to the game, because I’m thinking from a cyber security perspective. I can see how the players would get infected, since really all someone has to do to infect or hack into something is find a weak link, like hacking into the weak device in a network and than using that to get through to the others. Is there any type of antivirus things, or is that just not possible with how the circus is right now? The players are people, after all, they can’t just have their minds hacked into, unless that is their overall overwritten by the virus, but that would be for the already infected.

…That’s all the random shit I thought of in the last like three minutes and typed here randomly, sorry for the text wall, lol. Probably like none of this makes sense but I figured maybe as well theory rant for a bit

I love this analysis

C&a are an abandoned company long forgotten until it has opened and that’s when Pomni entered the game-

The virus is a WHOLE separate entity feeding on existing code that describes the characters and every time a character is added that code it added to the system constantly changing and morphing on the characters actions

But the moment they started to abstract that code is broken and allows access to the character for the virus to invade corrupting the characters code into a scramble mess bits where the virus pits it into a new form

But just because the code is broken doesn’t mean it’s completely useless some code is still protected and we see what that looks like with Jax and Ragatha

[attackfish]

@candleslitsnow asked for an AU in which Jet and his freedom fighters ran into Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, disguised as Kyoshi warriors, rather than Zuko and Iroh.

Sometimes I get a prompt that makes me go, "Ah yes, you share the same kind of malicious sense of humor that I have."

1. So the thing about Avatar the Last Airbender is that I can't say that x-character is y-character's foil. I can, but I have to clarify that they are also z, a, b, c, and d's foil, because Avatar: the Last Airbender is an absolute master class in parallel character arcs and thematic cohesiveness. So you can in fact pull out any of those parallel character arcs and compare them to each other, and all of the characters can function as foils to each other, and you can compare and contrast them and it is great writing. But of course some characters are more obviously narrative foils. Jet serves as a foil primarily to Katara and Sokka when he is first introduced, and then in Book Two, he serves as a foil to Zuko. But there is a character that is a whole lot alike in some fundemental ways that he never meets. And Zuko's reaction to him in canon is colored by this fact. Because that character is Azula.

2. But actually the show does go out of its way to draw a strong narrative parallel between Jet and Azula, wherein Jet's approach to Zuko, and attempt to get to go to join him functions as a microcosm of Azula's attempt to do the same thing in the first and last episodes of Book Two, and later when Zuko ultimately comes to reject each of them, they react in very similar ways. There is a solid literary essay to be written on this by somebody who isn't me. All of this is a lot of words to say that Jet and Azula share similar tactics, and are manipulative in very similar ways. And people like that are good at recognizing each other for what they are, and seeing each other as threats.

3. All this means that I can't imagine Jet would approach Azula. He's going to make his manipulative little approach to Mai and/or Ty Lee, before he knows about Azula. He would probably like Ty Lee better, because of how wide eyed and innocent she seems, but really it depends on who he meets first. But Mai and Ty Lee both have a lot of experience with Azula, and they would have no problem recognizing Jet's brand of manipulation, and uh, leadership. And they also would have no trouble figuring out that Azula has him completely outclassed, so they would bring him home for her to eat alive.

4. As I mentioned, Jet is going to cotton onto the fact that Azula is a threat real fast, and the last time he looked at a group of people and picked out one of them as a threat, he tried to separate that one from the group and have him killed. That was Sokka, and it did not work out well for him. It would probably be pretty funny to watch him try and fail to do that with Azula. She might even let him try for a while before closing the trap in around him. But either way she's going to find him very entertaining, and she is going to have him arrested and hauled off to the Fire Nation to cool his heels in a cell at the Boiling Rock, along with Suki. If Longshot and Smellerbee were with him during this whole thing, they're going to the separate prison that the Kyoshi Warriors went to. If not, they're going to have no idea where he disappeared to. Either way, he's going alone.

5. He's going to meet Suki, they're going to hate each other, flash forward a few months, and Zuko and Sokka are going to show up. Zuko will of course have never met Jet before, but Sokka has, and he is not going to be happy to see this particular jerkface again Escaping from the Boiling Rock is going to be fun.

[tokiro07]

Cipher Academy ch.52 thoughts

[Toss a Coin to Your Cipher Soldier]

(Contents: thematic analyses - fairness/friendship, predictions)

"If you let yourself become bound to strange rules, you're basically enslaving yourself." What is this, Undead Unluck?

This was a good showing for Yosaimura, who continues to be easily in my top 5 for this series. I've always been a huge fan of Nisio Isin's mental gymnastics, and this series' running theme of malicious compliance is a particularly fun display of it. Much like Iroha used Anonymity's methods against her by basically saying "well if she got to once, then so do I," Yosaimura literally turns Hakanage's logic on its head by saying "if you're going to say that cheating is fair, then I'm going to play so fair"

Anonymity points out that this is likely only something that Yosaimura even thought to do because she saw Iroha do that during the CLP election, which also reinforces the running theme of growth through interpersonal exposure. Iroha learned how to twist technicalities in his favor from Anonymity, and Yosaimura learned how to do that from Iroha. Everyone's learning something from each other, and apparently that's a quality that only Class A has been able to cultivate

We haven't really learned much about the other classes, but I definitely would believe that everyone else is a lot more...either extremely collectivist to the point of everyone losing their sense of identity (Class E who follow Kubinashi blindly and Class F who are required to hide their faces) or overly individualistic to the point that they can't form connections to each other (Class B's wild sense of expression and Class C's psychic children who have never been depicted interacting). I guess that comes with the territory for the School of Subterfuge, doesn't it?

I'm also always a sucker for character interactions that hinge on trust. Someone trusting their friend to understand a crazy plan, to not hurt them in a wild stunt, or trusting their enemy to behave in a certain way because that's what they've always hated/respected about them; being close enough to someone to rely on them, even if what you're relying on is their unreliability, is so romantic. If you didn't think that Yosaimura and Anonymity were a great ship before, Yosaimura telling her that she trusts her to do something dangerous has to at least help change your mind

For as much of a rapport as they've developed though, it really seems like there's going to be a point where everything falls apart. The fact that everyone's approaching a convergence and we've now completely eliminated Classes D and F suggests that neither of them are going to be the major enemy once we actually reach the bottom of the dungeon, so unless Kubinashi or Yonakiuguisu are bigger threats than they appear, the final conflict is almost assuredly going to be between Class A members. If I had to guess, it's going to come down to the CLP candidates again, but this time it'll be colored by how well everyone has gotten to know each other versus their actions being based on their initial, surface-level impressions of each other

Themes of friendship aside, I feel like the thing that Nisio Isin wants me to take away from this chapter is that cryptocurrency is bad. I don't really get how crypto works (or the economy for that matter), but even I can understand that if a new currency is introduced that is inherently "worth" more than the entire world economy, that's going to cause some issues. Even if we assume that it's worth the exact same amount, doubling the world's money in an instant would theoretically tank the value of all of the world's money, assuming that anyone actually recognizes the value of that currency. I guess the question for me is why anyone would, but again, I don't know how crypto works

If nothing else, it also does raise a good question of how Iroha's plan can actually work - if the value of Morgue is based on the presence of wars, how would he be able to use it to stop wars? If you give someone war-money to stop wars, then the money you paid them is inherently worth less upon receipt because there's less war, right? The best I could see is giving one nation a ton of Morgue and telling everyone else "you know how you can tank that nation's economy? End your wars, their money will become worthless." Honestly, with Nisio at the helm, I won't be too shocked if that's even remotely close

Now that everyone is getting pretty close, I do hope that things will become a bit less episodic soon. Seeing so many different characters in so many different locations is fun, but it's starting to feel kind of..disconnected, I'd say. It's like nothing anyone is doing is having any impact on anyone else, so seeing everyone reunite should help it feel like these stories have consequences outside of floor they occur on

Beyond that, what I'm really looking forward to is seeing how people outside of the dungeon are fairing. Hakanage got knocked out a little too easily; much like Zakuroguchi who I predict is secretly pulling strings from the sidelines, I'm willing to bet that Hakanage is going to do something shady now that no eyes are on her

Until next time

[panlight]

It makes things a little dark and unsettling, but after reading discussion of Alice not taking any blame for not telling anyone about Bella being alive for two days, I had the thought that with her visions powers, Alice has the ability to manipulate people and situations to her benefit. How else were the Cullens so okay with her and Jasper showing up out of nowhere and proclaiming they were all family? (Granted, we don’t see it in canon, but knowing SM, she expects everyone to believe that Alice and Jasper showed up and it was sunshine and rainbows from that moment on because she needed them to be a close knit family.) Alice finding Jasper and saying that they were mates and he just goes along with it. Rosalie gets blamed for Edward trying to kill himself and no one comes to her defense, while Alice seemingly has no blame placed on her. The books make everything so peachy keen, it’s just kind of interesting to think how different things could have been in the hands of a different author. And there’s probably stuff in the books to counter all of this, but it was just a thought I had.

You definitely start to wonder about self-fulfilling prophecies.

Maybe she saw Jasper as a warning when she thought of going to Mexico or Texas or wherever, and she being brand-new to random visions decided "oh he is my future mate" and THAT choice is what led to more visions and she fell in love with him and then she meets him and says "we're mates" and like, whether it's true or not it's going to make someone think, right? Especially in a world where a) mates are a thing and b) so are psychic powers.

(Not saying A/J aren't for realz, just using this as an example of what I mean by maybe Alice even unintentionally shapes the future).

And Alice can smooth things over by looking ahead at a future argument and seeing how she can prevent it or win it, she can see the words she needs to use to calm a situation or win someone over. She probably had seen/practiced the meeting with the Cullens so many times that she knew just the right things to do and say to get them to feel at ease around her and Jasper. Is that manipulative? Maybe! But it's also just how Alice's gift, and thus Alice herself, works. That bit in Midnight Sun where she's running through all the possible futures to find the best way to fake an accident scene at the hotel was fun (and didn't feel canon-breaking at all since we DID know about that happening from the original series vs the car chase).

So, yeah, it doesn't have to be malicious (but if can be if you want it!) but Alice's gift by nature gives her the means to shape reality almost as much as Siobhan. And Alice might not even realize she's doing it sometimes because it's just second nature to her.

But honestly I think the New Moon plot hole of her not bothering to tell anyone Bella was alive and then everyone blaming Rosalie are mostly out-of-universe writing issues more than Alice-as-a-character ones, but you can certainly interpret it that way and run with it and there's some interesting stuff there.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

So I just thought of this comparison, and it's more of a Doylist pov than a Wastonian but bare with me a bit. The way JGY antis (or whatever) hyper fixate on separating JGY's acts of violence from the rest of the characters as specifically different reminds me a lot of how Game of Thrones (show only not novel) fans would separate Daenerys Targaryen's acts of violence from the rest of the chars as well. This is something Lindsey Ellis pointed out in her video essay on the ending of GOT; in the world building of GOT there was an established level of inherent violence to be expected. The world was inherently violent, and the chars acted accordingly to the world they inhabited (which is good worldbuilding). But Dany using dragons was posited by fans critical (or who outright hated her) that her acts of violence were inherently *different*. It ended up becoming a double standard that the chars were kept at and by doing so made the last season of the show especially hollow in terms of narrative. Stripped of all pathos and retroactively holding Dany to this double standard her ending ended up not making sense. Now I'm not going to get into the discourse about whether Dany was a "good person" or not b/c....I don't care lol

My point is, within the world of GOT a certain level of violence was an expectation. Characters killed for all sorts of reasons, some justifiable, others not, some out of malice, others under a "code" of honor. It should be noticed that "code" changed from house to house however.

I can agree that JGY trying to murder the primary chars (including the juniors) for self-preservation is bad, but so is NHS purposely leading the juniors and co into a confrontation with XY where they were all also put in mortal danger. While I don't agree with everything JGY does in the novel (and if I did he'd be a hella boring char lmao) save for a few things it's pretty on par with the rest of the universe built in MDZS.

Why the double standard?

I imagine it's partially bias, the readers working backwards from the standpoint of "well JGY WAS the final bad guy so obviously everything he did now and ever was bad and worse than anything anyone else did". Or the idea that JGY's acts were "sneaky" and therefore inherently malicious and worse than characters who were openly violent, or even proudly violent.

Anyway, yeah some thoughts lmao

this extremely well thought out ask has been sitting in my inbox/drafts folder for way too long while I dither about trying to come up with something useful to say in response to it, which is A Shame because these 👆👆👆 are good words that need to be shared, so I'm just gonna punt them out into the internet aether as is with no additional commentary.

[ot3]

sorry about ppl being weird about the dnd/oc thing I think people are taking it personally because they love their ocs so they don't realise no one is obligated to care or listen to someone speak about something unimportant at length that they never indicated they wanted to hear about

Apparently some people also don't know how to ignore opinions they disagree with without coming to you and being like "oh so you condone cringe culture? You condone bullying? It's my god given right to go up to strangers and start talking about myself and my ocs and if they don't react positively then they hate fun and should not be trusted. Have some basic respect, why do you love bullying???? You're evil. what do you mean "boundaries"????"

here's the thing i really just straight up think people aren't getting the reason why i put ocs/dnd characters specifically on there, instead of just saying 'dont engage people on subjects they're not interested in/don't infodump'. because the thing about ocs and dnd characters specifically is that they are uniquely difficult to respond to. the really key distinction is that someone's oc/dnd character isn't a relatively neutral topic like, say, explaining the history of slide whistles or whatever because i have a slide whistle hyperfocus. people's OCs are their creative projects, and often creative projects that people put a LOT of emotional stock in

it's honestly i think mostly a problem for artists, i don't see a lot of unprompted oc dumping on people that aren't artists, and so i think people who aren't artists or who have never had a large following just don't have a frame of reference for how uncomfortable it is to be Pitched To by someone or don't understand that it's common enough to be worth mentioning. like. the kind of people who try and talk to random internet artists about their ocs are doing this because they want external validation for their creative work and ideas but don't really understand the socially appropriate avenues to go about doing that yet. often times these people are pretty young. they're also extremely likely to be REALLY sensitive.

so basically your choice is

reply with some sort of tepid generic approval/feigned interest, which will almost always result in this type of person believing you have a Rapport now and trying to push further communications with you

ignore them, and hope this isn't the kind of person who will send follow up, or who will get upset at being ignored and assume malicious intent from that. this is probably your safest response

be frank and tell them outright that this isn't something you're interested in discussing. this is probably the worst response, because as you can tell from the discussion being had on this blog, people tend to think it is extremely rude to say this. basically if you outright shoot down someone who is trying to pitch their own creative work that they're both deeply invested in and insecure about, it's not going to go over well.

and when the best possible response to a topic is to ignore it, i think i can safely say that makes it a bad opener. so like it's not just a situation where person A is telling person B about something B is uninterested in. It's a situation where person A is asking for person B to validate the worth of their creative endeavor and B having to essentially decide between sort of 'leading someone on' and shutting them down in a way very likely to upset them.

i know this seems pretty ridiculous to lay it out in these terms when really, it's not super deep, it's just kind of annoying at the end of the day. but like I Have Autism and being put in a situation where I know that if i speak openly/truthfully, almost no matter how politely i do it, someone's feelings are going to get hurt? That's the nightmare scenario. I hate it so much. so yeah this is less about 'dont put people in situations where they need to feign interest on a topic' and more about 'don't put strangers in a position where they need to feign interest to avoid slighting the quality/value of someone's creative work."

[ddarker-dreams]

🥺, 💔, ✅️

[ask game]

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

for my non-yandere fics, it’s those little moments when you can tell how deep the character’s understanding of each other extends. like knowing what the other is thinking without them even having to say it. it paints this rich history that shows how attuned their souls are to each other. ALSO when characters are just frothing at the mouth over the simplest things their partner does. eyeing them up when they stretch and show a sliver of skin, head going blank with affection over how their eyes crinkle when they smile... basically when they’re unapologetically obsessed with one another. infinite honeymoon phase. 

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

most of what i write does that (but in a sexy way). zufriedenheit is what came to mind though, since i accidentally hurting my feelings when writing johan’s dialogue HJEKMGR i ended up roasting myself.

“You, who is average at everything, yet excels in nothing.” ← i think i physically winced while typing this because i was like damn... omg... this is so true... but at what cost. 

the story ended up digging up some ugly memories. there was a time in my life where i really wrestled over the authenticity of my desire to help others. i spent all of my teen years struggling with social anxiety disorder, which constantly made me feel like a bother to others unless i had something to offer. in return, i started to doubt my good intentions when it came to helping others. was i hiding my self-preservation behind good intentions? that thought bothered me a lot.

however, i eventually came to the conclusion that reader expresses in this fic: what's wrong with wanting to be needed? so long as you keep an eye on it and make sure you're not developing some sort of savior complex, feeling fulfilled when you help others isn't uncommon or malicious. so, the story might have broken my heart some, but it also helped mend it as i worked through these sentiments.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

HMM probably dialogue with lots of banter? i banter all the time with people i know. it's just fun. i love it. bickering makes its way into my stories often as well. banter and bickering. the two b's, the backbone of my writing style . for better or for worse.

[clonehub]

thinking about tbb for once in a neutral light and its because i was listening to a podcast where some film buffs/writers analyzed Silence of the Lambs, and I realized I've always had an appreciation where a character is in an interrogation of sorts (without it necessarily explicitly being that) and just watching them squirm. facing uncomfortable truths from a person whom you don't trust and having your understanding of yourself be meticulously torn to shreds by someone who might not even be doing it maliciously.

and in my head whenever these sorts of character interrogations happen, it's always by someone who has like. little to no stake in the interogee (??) changing their minds. for some reason i think of a very calm and calculating woman, one who's curious enough to ask these questions but not enough to be like super? invested in what happens afterwards--only that she's sensing a contradiction and she wants to explore/expose it.

so like w the bad batch. getting tech out of the way first im not gonna focus on him because atm i cant see any flaws in him, uneless he's like really confident to a fault at some point.

with wrecker it'd be rather straight forward and frankly manipulative--does your team respect you? are you the brother or the brawns? you might say "why not both", but what about every time they'd jabbed your intelligence or dismissed your concerns? and some other things

hunter...i think attacking how he views himself as a leader--if he's even a capable leader, if he's even making the right decisions for a child--would help to get under his skin, as well as "why do you keep ignoring the hole in your squad?"

echo wouldn't be so hard to pick apart if only because he already doesn't seem to be enjoying himself w the bad batch. his initial point of conflict is that he doesn't feel theyre doing enough to help others. this new conflict could be about how his skills as an ARC aren't being utilized; how he's often dismissed or ignored or patronized, and wouldn't it be better to both a) leave and be able to help people and b) get the respect he deserves? They dont outright hate him, but they still say "regs", don't they?

Crosshair would be fun, to be honest. He's so reactive to jabs at his pride/ego (like that normie death trooper talking about him being replaced). If he brings up how he's enhanced and he's superior, the lady would ask "how?". He'd give his reason and she would point out that he has one skill--one skill that is not even transferrable. "Jack of all trades, master of none--but better than a master of one". Is being good at one thing really an enhancement? the rest of the batch at least have some other skills/uses that can aid in things like survival. Are you better than anyone else when you can explicitly do less, in some ways, than the people you deride?

And this is something she'd pose to all of the bad batch. Again, roughly one skill each despite the description of "enhancements" and the ego that went with it. Are you really better?

(I wont' do Omega because frankly she's a kid and I don't see the point)

BUT guess what I'm throwing Rex and Ahsoka in here too.

I talk about Rex a lot but what would be great is to really jab his cognitive dissonance. "Is the Republic as good as you say? With the inequality rife on coruscant--let alone the rest of the galaxy?"

and i think she'd really attack his view that he's not a slave, but with a layer of actual concern for him. She wouldn't go about it nicely though--starting out with innocent-sounding questions about his sense of duty, whether or not he's dreamed of a life outside the army. Rex probably has in a neutral-curious way, but I don't think he'd admit that to her.

He'd also pick up on the angle she's getting at and try to preemptively argue, saying things like "we don't get to choose our path in life" and that he has to think beyond himself, outside himself because he has a duty to protect the citizens of coruscant. "Even though they neither protect nor respect you now?" "yes. Regardless. We don't have a choice."

And he doesn't mean it like that, but. She asks him to define a slave. He insists he isn't one. She points out his own words, his own speech--the fact that they're not citizens, they're hardly paid if at all, and they can't leave otherwise they'll be charged as committers of treason against a state that doesn't even register them as citizens. No legal or political protection, surveillance--where is the choice? Who's freedom is he fighting for?

Rex would argue back, especially if this is the younger rex we're talking about. Very much "I'm not a slave" and a Press X to Doubt face from the woman. 'you don't believe me." "I'm not sure you believe you, Rex."

But again, even with the real concern for him, she's not that invested. Her tone and body language throughout all of this is very calm, very chill, like she's asking about the weather.

and ahsoka! Younger ahsoka here, poking at her insecurity over her being too young and padawan to the chosen one. Her inexperience getting more people killed than necessary. I dont think I have much for her outside what was already addressed in the clone wars.

[the-king-andthe-lionheart]

People in this fandom literally going through F&B and trying to whitewash everything Alicent has done and said in the books just because HOTD is currently writing her as sympathetic and as whitewashed as possible.  This tweet was in response to someone pointing out that Alicent’s comments about pregnancy and childbirth being easy for her to Rhaenyra were insensitive considering what happened to Aemma, but not ill intended.  And I agree with this.  Alicent was trying to reassure Rhaenyra and realized her mistake right away as you can tell on her face.  However, this thread went on and started predicting that pretty much everything F&B said about Alicent wasn’t true and basically she was villified, which is fucking ridiculous.  

Yes, F&B is written like a history book, with multiple sources with their own biases, however you have to lay it into context, just like with real historical sources, and not think that everything that is written is wrong.  First we have to look at the sources of this information, which is Grand Maester Runciter, Septon Eustace, and Mushroom.  Mushroom notoriously sides with the Blacks, while Septon Eustace, who is considered the more accurate source, sides with the Greens.  Then we have to look at who is writing this history book, Grand Maester Gyldayn during the reign of Robert Baratheon, a king who has a notorious hatred of Targaryen’s.  And who else has issues with the Targaryen’s from the beginning?  The Faith and the Citadel which both reside in Oldtown where the Hightowers rule.  F&B is obviously written with most of the bias being towards the Greens, as in they clearly favor the Greens.  

Now I’m not saying that things were taken out of context or that Alicent and Rhaenyra both were unfairly villified just because they were women, it’s obvious this was the case due to how almost all of the women were portrayed in F&B, but you can’t justify some of the things Alicent does and says in this book, including the quote above.  How in the hell could that quote be taken in any other kind of context than what is presented, which is obviously full of maliciousness?  How could that quote be whitewashed in any fucking way?  Alicent is the one who constantly calls Rhaenyra a “whore” and calls Rhaenyra’s children “bastards” and says that she hopes “the whore” Rhaenyra dies in childbirth when Viserys dies.  Alicent let Viserys’ body rot for days while she planned to usurp the chosen heir to the throne.  Anyone thinking that Alicent is this pure saint that she was entirely, unfairly attacked and that she’s an amazingly kind and compassionate queen who is a political mastermind has another thing coming.  Is Alicent evil?  No.  Is she a horrible person at times?  Yes.  Is she a gray character?  Absolutely!  Was she obviously a pawn at the beginning of F&B and a victim of the patriarchy?  No doubt.  But being a victim of the patriarchy does not give someone a free pass and does not whitewash a person from the stuff they say, do, and participate in.  And the fact that Alicent, as a woman, condemned Rhaenyra for making her own choices as a woman, and enforced the patriarchy, is no doubt insidious in its own way.  Alicent isn’t perfect, and while she’s being whitewashed in the show so far to make her more sympathetic, I highly doubt this is going to remain true for much longer.  So I look forward to all the Alicent Stans scrambling to try to explain and excuse her upcoming gross behavior and mediocre parenting skills.