#calling it either the legacy arc or ‘Remember’

[that-ari-blogger]

This Is The Owl House (Through The Looking Glass Ruins)

Ruins are what civilisation fossilises into. They are a weird microcosm of time, representing past, present, and future simultaneously. They are the legacy of a world long gone, its lies and the crumbling truth beyond them. A ruin represents a story.

For those who don’t know, a looking glass is another term for a mirror, so if you combine the two into a single title, Through The Looking Glass Ruins, you will end up with a tale of introspection. Who are you? Who do you think you are? What is your legacy? And does that actually match reality?

This is an episode about self image.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (The Owl House)

Discussing Gus is a deceptively difficult task, because there are so many lenses to read him through, and most of them either contradict or are actively incomplete.

The fact that The Owl House’s third season is so short is the main cause of this, and I want to stress that I’m not blaming the team behind the show for that failure. Disney pulled the plug and it is remarkable what was achieved, but there is no denying that Gus got shafted.

So, this post, as usual, will stick primarily to the episode at hand, with nods to the future. Just understand that those nods to the future are more difficult than usual because there is a lot of setup in Gus’ arc for things that never came to pass.

We cool?

So, first up, mental health. Gus has what a professional will probably diagnose differently to me, but I will call self worth issues for the sake of clarity. This episode manifests this as Imposter Syndrome, which is interesting from the illusion stand point.

Speaking as someone who deals with Imposter Syndrome, I think it is important to understand that the syndrome is a lie. Not that it isn’t a real issue, but because it is your brain lying to itself and convincing you that you aren’t good enough and will not be good enough no matter how hard you try. It tells you that your pride in your own work is false, and that you should constantly be trying to emulate others, something that, because it tells you you aren’t good enough, you will never be able to do satisfyingly, which will cause you to spiral.

Once again, this is a lie your brain is telling itself.

But here’s what makes it insidious, and here’s why a tumblr post isn’t going to magically fix it. Hell, here is why I still suffer from it, despite apparently knowing that it is false.

Humans aren’t rational, the brain isn’t rational, and imposter syndrome isn’t rational. You can intellectually understand something, but emotionally be in the dark, and that’s how something like this strikes. You know that the feelings don’t make sense, but you still feel them, and it’s a nightmare.

All of this applies to Gus. He is intelligent, possibly one of the most intelligent people in the cast in terms of the streamlined, reductive view of intelligence that school cares about and pretty much nobody else. So, Gus is clever enough to understand that he is skilled and that illusions are powerful, he has even been told that multiple times over the series, but he is yet to emotionally come to grips with that aspect of his life.

That thing about streamlined, school approved intelligence is also a cog in this machine. Gus is conventionally intelligent, he can remember things, and has the type of charisma that feels at home writing a lengthy essay (the type of charisma that I would kill for). This is the type of intellect that schools praise above all else, and at least where I live, to the detriment of anything else. It is a restrictive view of the world that means people like Luz, who’s brain is much more heavily wired towards problem solving and creativity, are excluded.

In simpler terms, Gus fits the mould, so his ability set being limited to one type of magic is a magic literalism of that. But at the same time, that unique powerset isn’t particularly useful in its basest form. When the Glandis students mock illusion magic, the image that they come up with is fairly useless, but it’s a strawman, and it's a strawman that Gus has confined himself into trying to be.

The Galder Stones have a really neat place in this as amplifiers. They are reflective, something the episode goes out of its way to show multiple times, as characters stare at their own faces in their hands, literally holding their legacy in a crystallised form. But, they are also amplifiers. They make a person’s magic more powerful, and if magic is an expression of individuality, as it usually is in stories, that means the stones exacerbate a person’s identity. Essentially, they turn anyone who uses them into a caricature.

But why can’t illusionists gain power from them? I have a theory. I think that illusionists are already projecting themselves and their minds into reality with their spells. They are creating things that are both real and not real at the same time, so the way they gain power isn’t through amplifying the illusion, but through creativity in application.

Which brings me to a scene I like to call “The camera is alive, and it hates you.”

The Owl House has had fun with animation before, and I am a sucker for the moments where the show gets visually experimental. But those have just been scenes. The Gromethius flashback, for example, is fun and quirky, but it barely exists for a minute.

This, however, is fun and cathartic. It is clear that at least one of the animators on this show has roots in horror (like me), and was having an absolute blast with this entire sequence. Every visual is traumatising in more than the series’ quirky usual. This stuff is genuinely terrifying, and it's shown from Bria’s perspective.

Gus effectively takes the camera and starts calling the shots himself. This is his episode, and he is controlling what the audience sees and how they see it. Don’t push your luck with the Director of Photography, they will mess you up.

It’s also worth noting the contrast between Bria and Gus, because it makes the result of their confrontation that much sweeter. Gus is a trickster who, up until this point, has been playing by the rules. He is wacky, but he’s more lawful than chaotic. Bria is a physically skilled character, who believes in strength and power and… ok I can’t be the only one who ships her and Boscha, right? Right?

Anyway, Bria has a highly regimented worldview, if you are strong, you deserve to be on top. If you are weak, you deserve to be on the bottom. She’s also a construction mage, meaning she actually makes things, while Gus only pretends to, hence why she calls him weak.

There is, however, one flaw in that conflation of weak and illusory. Well, there are a few flaws, but one in particular. How do you fight something that isn’t actually there?

Answer: You don’t. You really don’t. Turns out that Bria’s weakness is a foe she can’t take head on. Bria is literally holding a Galderstone, something that makes her nebulously more powerful, and she gets clowned on.

Bria’s defeat involves the ceremonial disintegration of her hands, and the loss of her magic. Back to that idea of self image that this post was supposed to be about, Bria has built an identity around being powerful. But that persona crumbles when she is confronted with something powerful in a different way to her, and when she loses her own power. Her identity isn’t built on rationality, but on vibes, and illusions are really good at getting into people’s heads.

On a different note, Gavin’s identity revolves around getting his father to pay attention to him, which fits into the theme of self image pretty well, but it’s notable how each of the four Glandis are specifically designed as foils for the Hexsquad. Gav has the parental issues and the ambition, linked to Amity. Bria is the kind and nurturing one, linked to Willow. Mattholomule is the lowest on the ladder, how Gus perceives himself. And Angmar, well Angmar is my sweet blonde boy who is remarkably athletic, hyper fixated on a specific kind of animal, and is a mix between terrified reaction to any threat and immediate willingness to step in front of an out of control animal without hesitation. In my mind, he reflects a fifth member of the Hex Squad who will be introduced in about… one episode’s time.

Although, you will probably have noticed that this is an extremely reductive view of every character I have mentioned, and that is the point. I mentioned in my first post about The Owl House that the series has a thing for introducing characters twice, once as a trope, once as a character. So, each of these characters are introduced as “x character stand in”, but get their identities built up throughout the episode until Bria doesn’t resemble Willow at all. Again, this relates to the idea of self image, and how a character sees themself in contrast to how others see them.

“Keep honing your powers of observation.”

Powers of observation, huh? Not powers of imagination, observation. The guy who knows the most about illusions in the Boiling Isles specifically draws connection between the tradition and the ability to see things. This is a tradition of making things that aren’t there, right? What gives?

Each illusion that Gus conjured to scare away the Glandis students was tailor made to fit them. It didn’t take a genius to point out that Angmar likes butterflies, and Gav straight up told him about his issues with his father. But Bria? Gus worked that out on his own.

Because illusion isn’t about making stuff up, it's about realising things.

Illusion magic is about the balance of understanding the world around you, and turning people’s thoughts into something they can actually interact with.

On the topic of interactions, Lumity.

Often in stories, romantic relationships are made compelling by the characters involved and very little else, and this is a perfectly valid way to write stories. Two characters are slotted into a ship dynamic, and you get something interesting. For example, any action movie ever written, or the entirety of Big Bang Theory.

Lumity isn’t this. The romance between Luz and Amity directly causes conflict and drama in the plot, but also drives character development between the characters, and is related to the themes of the story. Those being identity, freedom, and here specifically, self image.

I’ve mentioned before that Luz’s greatest strength as a character is her ability to act as a catalyst in other people’s arcs. That��s what the light motif is all about, she shows people the way forwards.

Most obviously, Luz has been a majour foil for Amity. She challenged Amity’s ideas of ambition in I Was A Teenage Abomination; She caused Amity to reflect on herself and showed her a way of rekindling her relationship with Willow in Understanding Willow; And she forced Amity to stand up to her mother in Escaping Expulsion. Now, in Through The Looking Glass Ruins, Amity has to reflect on what has happened.

Because this is functionally the B plot of this episode, backing up Gus’ story, the actual plot of this is remarkably simple. Luz and Amity need to find a McGuffin, and they need to do it together. Basic plot, shenaniganry ensues.

But basic doesn’t mean bad. In this case, it facilitates some of the series’ coolest set design, and some brilliant interactions between the two characters.

“Malphas is actually the one who gave me my job and my own study room. He's usually nice, but if we're caught, he'd feed us to the book wyrms.” “I know here that probably means unholy, blood-sucking snake monster, but in the Human Realm, that's just a kid name for nerds” “Huh. The human world sounds odd.” “Maybe it would be less odd if I showed you around someday. But, uh, let's turn back. I don't wanna push you.” “We're getting that diary.”

First up, there is the repeated establishment of stakes. The monster threat is just an excuse for a cute moment. But the real thing that Amity cares about the most is her job and her study room. Symbolically, her ambition and her isolation respectively. But she is willing to risk both of those for Luz.

I think that the speed of Amity’s decision is also important here. She doesn’t have to weigh up the options and the risks. She is doing something for Luz and that is, by default, more important.

However, I want to point out that, at the end of the episode, Luz gets Amity’s job back. That isolation and ambition are valuable to her because they are valuable to Amity. As much as I will complain about not getting to see the trials, it is obvious what Luz has had to do to get there. But that’s weird, right? Luz probably nearly died to get back the symbol of the old Amity, why?

I think at this point, Luz is changing the metaphor. The study room no longer represents isolation, but the connection that she and Amity forged. The job, meanwhile, transitions from ambition to agency, as it's a small microcosm of Amity’s independence from her mother.

Essentially, Amity emotionally let go of her old self to be with Luz, but this doesn’t mean she has to sacrifice everything. This isn’t an exclusionary relationship, Amity can be more than just Luz’s girlfriend. She doesn’t have to define herself by one, specific thing.

That idea of self image is a big thing in Amity’s arc. Although it exists in contrast to Gus. Gus knows who he is, he just can’t work out if he likes that or not. Amity, however, has no idea who she wants to be, and what is important to her.

“Everything's changed since you came here. Being around you, it makes me do stupid things and I wish it didn't.”

Who does Amity think she is? I’m not being incredulous here. It’s a question worth asking because, at this point, I don’t think Amity herself could tell you. The impeccable acting decision to make this line into a flood highlights that conflict within her. She is having thoughts in bursts, then faltering and regretting it.

She wants to move towards Luz, but she can't risk falling off her throne, so she keeps taking big steps in every direction, overcommitting to everything, but then walking it back.

After that, Amity talks through her inner turmoil with her siblings, people who represent both her old life by being her family, and her new life through their rebellion and encouragement.

“Ever since Luz came here, things have just gotten confusing. I'm thinking things I've never thought before. I'm feeling things I never used to feel.”

“Is that so bad? You weren’t happy before.”

Hey Emira, do you… do you want my blog? Because that was the most insightful thing anyone has ever said on or about the Boiling Isles.

But she’s right. Amity is trying to choose between two aspects of herself, and trying to work out who she thinks she is. Emira simply points out that one of the options isn’t at all worth it.

But now, I finally get to talk about hair. The single most iconic visual metaphor of the series, this is the type of good storytelling that means you don’t have to over analyse to know you are looking at something done well.

The green coloration matches Odalia, to parallel Amity’s closeness to becoming the golden child that her mother is trying to shape her into. But this is dyed, it is a decision by either Amity, Odalia, or both. It’s a character beat of a person trying to appear in a specific way. It is Amity communicating to the world that she is Ambitious.

The natural brown hair is linked to Alador, and his creativity. It relates to a trait of Amity’s that I will talk about when I cover Reaching Out, because that is my favourite episode of the series. It represents a desire for connection, an ambition to not perform successfully, but live well and happily.

The purple is Amity’s choice entirely, and it is her decision to be happy. Abomination coloured, something Amity takes pride in for herself. It represents happiness with oneself, and the agency to derive joy from something that previously only inspired anguish. It is also related to Luz, who has been associated with purple throughout the series, although that is a byproduct of her own theming.

Luz is the concept of individuality incarnate. She is unique in every way, and this doesn’t cause her shame, outwardly at least. So, she is represented by the rarest colour in nature, and the most valuable. The history of purple and its association with royalty is too fascinating to condense into a tumblr post, so I will say that it intrinsically symbolises value because of its rarity.

It is a colour that says “I am who I am, I am unique, and I am valuable because of that.”

What I haven’t seen discussed as much, is how the style relates to this. Amity’s hair is usually up, keeping her refined and held together, reminiscent of her mother. Its looseness always coincides with her softer nature being made apparent. In this episode, when we first see her, her hair is down and we see someone who is happy with herself, quietly.

I do like the symbolism of a child taking her accessory, causing her hair to be let loose while at the same time forcing her to bring out her gentle side.

However, at the end of the series (spoilers until the next image), her ages up character design actually walks back a few things. Her hair is now back up, and her brown roots have come back. So what gives with that?

You don’t stop changing when one story in your life comes to a close. Amity probably keeps moving forwards during the timeskip, focusing on that connection, and styling herself in a way she sees fit. Consciously, she has found a balance.

That hair symbolism actually continues into her song. Ok it’s not her song, technically, but the The Owl House fanbase claimed it, so I get to talk about it.

Little Miss Perfect is a song written by Joriah Kwamé as part of an album called TAPES: A Song Cycle. It was then submitted to the 2019 Write Out Loud competition, where it was covered by Taylor Louderman. A competition that it won.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a song about Amity. But the animatic by ThatDorkWhoDraws was incredible and effectively commandeered the song for the ship. I would do some analysis of this animation, but it got taken down by the creator for understandable reasons, and I don’t want to intrude into a space in which I’m not wanted.

I’m talking about the song and the song alone. Because it has entered the fanbase’s public consciousness, and because the song is really interesting for how it relates to the metaphor I am talking about.

The song is about that crisis of identity that I have been going on about. The protagonist is choosing between ambition and love. It is an exploration of that love itself, and despite there being little evidence for Amity’s realisation of her own sexuality being so chaotic, it is a compelling story that brings about some really cool metaphors. Not least of which, is the hair.

Straight hair, straight A's Straight forward, straight girl Little Miss Perfect, that's me

The hair is associated with her perceived perfection, her pride (heh) in her composure and ambition. But when she lets someone in, what happens?

She braids my hair, I sit there Blacking out for the first time

The blacking out thing is a direct callback to an earlier line, in which she lists her ability to stay awake at parties as one of her aspects of perfection. But the braiding of hair is the underrated key part of this. Her hair is no longer straight, she is no longer perfect, and that’s ok.

Final Thoughts

I really wanted to talk about the Zosan ship when I was talking about romantic subplots that drive character development, but I couldn’t make it work. That one is a fan ship, and it works brutally well for similar reasons to Lumity, actually. So, I guess I’ll have to leave that for another post.

Other than that, this episode is awesome, and is The Owl House flexing its muscles. The fact that this is a phenomenal episode of television, and it's still about average for this season is a testament to the skill of the team behind this show.

I will say something controversial though. I don’t particularly see the Matholomule x Gus ship. I think if you squint, it could be read as an asexual, homoromantic ship, but that’s only if you squint. I think these two are genuinely just good friends.

Next week, we get to talk about my precious boy, and maybe even my own crackpot reading of this character. We will see.

Previous - Next

[decepti-thots]

For character ask game—I feel like I always ask you about either rodimus or tarantulas so I’m going in a completely different direction. Tell me about Optimus Prime

we will continue the streak and do IDW Optimus!

one aspect about them i love: I like the way Barber handles Optimus as someone who finds out there is no way to idealize yourself, that is, to make yourself into an ideal, and then go back to being a just a person. There's something really compelling about the way that Optimus post-war tries first to abdicate the legacy he helped create to win the war and then tries to make it into something else that can exist during peacetime and just... fails. He made himself too remote and now he has no way back. He made himself too central and now if he leaves things collapse in his wake because nature abhors a vaccum. It's really interesting.

one aspect i wish more people understood about them: this is kind of in a metatextual sense, but. People who in IDW have mostly read MTMTE/LL often assume that in phase two, Optimus is shown in this uniformly positive light by the narrative. And he's just not by Barber! When he makes very bad decisions in those comics, you are supposed to see the downward spiral. There's an arc called 'All Hail Optimus', it's not even subtle.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character: This is a completely baseless one that I don't even know why I believe so strongly: Optimus guessed- had a suspicion deep down that he tried not to look at- that Prowl, not the Decepticons, bombed Carpessa. Optimus understood how Megatron conducted himself and his army well enough to recognise that doing it would have been an uncharacteristically stupid decision at that point in the war (demoralizing to people on the fence about which side to join, strategically not useful, likely to be useful to the Autobots for propaganda purposes) but. He really needed Prowl not to have gone behind his back and have done it; he needed to not lose a key member of his command at a delicate point in the war. So he persuaded himself he was being ridiculous, and that set off a chain reaction of sunk cost fallacy reasoning which is a part of why Prowl avoided suspicion of wrongdoing outside his remit for so long. Because acknowledging anything else meant admitting that he had always been willing to overlook an obvious, truly egregious crime for the sake of keeping a useful resource he didn't want to give up.

one character i love seeing them interact with: I really, really love all the stuff with him and Shockwave. I still find it amazing how Shadowplay sells me on that relationship so quickly and in so little time, so that everything which comes after is convincingly tragic. And it is! God, it's so tragic. And yet also really. Fucked up? Hey remember when Senator Shockwave had someone perform unknowing surgery on Optimus so he could be a candidate to carry the matrix. WILD. There's this weird power dynamic at play there I find SO fascinating.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more: I wish we'd seen more one-on-one stuff between him and Arcee. She's a character uniquely suited to see through the Prime bullshit as someone from a time before all of that becoming entrenched in their society, and also able to bring a perspective to the ways that Cybertronian society's problems well pre-date his experience. And he's someone trying to work out how to stop the cycle they're all stuck in repeating yet again during peacetime, which mirrors Arcee's personal arc. Also she can mock him for acting like he's sooo old or whatever like. You Are A Baby To Me. I think she would puncture him in a way that he would actually appreciate. She's one of the only people in a position to see him as not much more than just a guy in charge.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character: I don't think Optimus likes Rodimus. And I think a lot of that is that he recognizes he fucked up with Rodimus, at Nyon, in a way he has no real way to... do anything about, or even acknowledge now it's been so long. So he can't even truly get pissed when Rodimus fucks something up, because a little part of him is like. Hm. Well. He is, on the whole, partly my fault, isn't he. Which is frustrating, because he can't fix it, and he can't lash out about it without that niggling thought, and in the meantime Rodimus is just constantly there being kind of weird about him and causing problems. And so all that's left is to translate that situation into a kind of diffuse discomfort he grits his teeth and bears. Also, Rodimus is one of the only people willing to call him out on his weird Megatron hangups, which is infuriating because Optimus tries really hard to ignore that he has any.

[wawawawawawawawawawawawawa]

out of all the izaya alternates, i think my favorite and the most interesting one (tho i Am biased) is hachimenroppi

and like, its just interesting to think how you could take this theoretical character- and what if roppi was the same as izaya on the surface, but also not?

he does the same things but with different motives behind it- rather than izaya, who worries about nonexistence, roppi worries most about legacy and importance, hence he does want to cause the three way gang war and die in it, but as a way to ensure that he's going to be remembered for a long, long time. and unlike izaya, roppi DOES call this act a suicide- he doesnt shy away from the concrpt of death. he finds humans stupid, annoying, and beneath him- which is why he toys with them! he likes to see the silly, irrational ways humans deal with stimuli, as opposed to himself, whos totallly logical and rational all the time. toooooootally.

izaya, i think, embodies anxiety- his whole arc, at its core, stems from thanatophobia. when someone pokes a hole in his armor, he tries to either forget about or rationalize it. his leitmotif is LITERALLY called "he's such a coward that he can laugh." roppi is commonly portrayed as misanthropic and suicidal- so he clearly embodies depression as a contrast to izaya. but that doesnt mean they DONT have traits of the other! izaya is well aware of his own anxiety, but denies his own lonliness and possible suicidality. it would be very interesting if roppi was well aware of his depression, but denied his anxiois traits.

and then itd be super cool if they met somehow- perhaps a suicide pact? who knows!!! idk lmao just some thoughts

[mxttellion]

What do you think about the other eddsworld characters (ex:the neighbors. The now called bullies that replaced the neighbors ect ect)

i LOVE eduardo, (y'all don't know about the Eduardo arc i had in 2014) the others just kinda exist but I'm fine with them honestly (mad with what happened to jon in legacy tho)

I LOVE laurel and would draw more of her, she's SO pretty.

larry and bing and kinda there for me. But i love Larry more for some reasons and I'm blaming a certain alpaca person for this. the clones are there for me too, never got their hype, but they're charming i guess. I will side eye you if you do any weird ableist shit with tomatoredd though.

I like kim and katya but don't have very strong feelings for them, same for honey, they're all cute but it doesn't really go beyond that. Women :]

I don't have strong feelings for a lot of others, like zanta or hillary or whoever you want (fucking. idk. Superguy). By strong feelings i mean I'm not a fan of them and i don't hate them either

who the fuck are the beyond side characters for real. those beach guys are so useless it should've been the neighbors to begin with. the scientist guy is there and chester is a furry? idk why i remember their names to begin with.

do yanov and yuu count in this? Well if they do, I love yanov and yuu so much. They are patryck level of actual lore in the story but they're like blorbos to me.

[youaretwicemine]

Beyond the Sea

What if death is just the beginning of the next adventure?

This short story was loosely inspired by the prompt found here. It's not meant to be super polished, it was a one-shot, but feedback and constructive criticism are welcome! I'm also taking title suggestions. I don't think much of Beyond the Sea, it doesn't sum up the idea like I want, but everything else evades me right now.

In Logres, they say the dead pass into a great valley, sheltered on either side by mountains around a calm lake, set apart from the noise and destruction of this world. There they rest, in the land we call Aros, until their legacy has faded and the living remember them no more. Tall crystal-blue ships sail from that valley, and thus the dead pass out of memory, ti hwnt i’r mor, beyond the sea. The winds of the equinox blow through the forest near Edrych Lake, and I shake out my woolen mantle in preparation for the 106th autumn since I left Logres. My coracle swings softly out to the middle of the smooth water, trees arcing from the banks in golden-green panoply. When I arrived here, poisoned by the grief of leaving my family, I hardly left the lake day or night. Clinging to my old life, gazing down through the frigidly still waters at my home, wishing I could travel as far as my sight did, back from this silence. As winter stretched to spring, and months became decades, missing them became less painful. I visited the lake twice a year, watched my children grow and have children of their own, happy their lives were to be filled with joy longer than mine had been. All there was to learn and do in my new life soothed grief for a time, and I soon began using my interest in farming to improve Aros’ food production. I gathered friends about me, whom I loved as dearly as any family, and this, too, helped drive away the darkness. 

The best and worst in this fulfilling season began one day in high summer, while my friends and I inspected the wheat fields in the agricultural district. I heard my name called from behind and turned. 

“Efa?” A man in a crimson tunic, dark-haired and bearded, ran towards me. Alan. My husband. 

It had been nearly fifty years, but his face in that first glimpse looked just as I remembered it from my last moments alive. Only now, instead of concern and pain filling his eyes with tears, joy lit his face more brightly than the golden sun itself. I ran headlong, knocking both of us over in my haste, so that we were kneeling in the mud as he folded me to him and we wept. Looking up, I recalled the way his eyebrows wrinkled and lips pressed when he cried happy tears, the way he’d looked on our wedding day and at the births of each of our children. I had memorized that look, in the first weeks here, fearing I’d never see it again. He caught me staring at his face and flushed beneath his tan, as we studied one another for a moment in silence. 

“You have sunburn,” I said, touching his nose where the skin was peeling slightly. Then the absurdity of that being my first sentence to him in fifty years struck me, and we burst into laughter as Alan helped me to my feet. 

“And you, m’lady, are more speckled than a sparrow, and lighter-haired than usual. But other than these gifts the sun has left us, we are as of old, you and I.” Alan dipped me dramatically for a kiss as I giggled, my witty remark cut happily short.

We dwelt in bliss for a time, visiting the lake together each spring and fall thereafter. Our children had moved out of Logres to neighboring lands, where still we saw them safe with their families. Alan and I organized our own belongings in a new house on the northeastern shore of the lake while we talked about our children– Ellis, Jenna, and Tarian. 

“This change of homeland will mean they don’t join us here in Aros–each country has a different place between one life and the next. But all go across the sea, ti hwnt i’r mor.” 

“It will be good to see them again,” he replied. “Before my ship went down in that gale, I lost the second game of cards to little Llio and she owes me a rematch for best of three.” 

I batted his arm and rolled my eyes. “You’re telling me you sank your ship because you couldn’t beat your 7-year-old granddaughter at cards? Seems you’ve grown old and senile.”

“No, it was because I couldn’t stay away from you a moment longer, my acerbic bride.” He grinned and kissed my cheek.

 As I resumed unpacking, I saw a keepsake box that held a carved wooden whistle. Seeing my curiosity, Alan took it in his hands and turned it between them before he handed it back to me so I could look at the patterns on it. A sparrow holding a sheaf of grain, and what looked like waves on a shore. 

“Remember Tarian, Efa? I mean, remember from before the lake?” 

My last son, who I never got to know beyond his first beautiful day. “Yes, of course.” 

“He loved you so. I know he never truly…well, I told him stories about you, and how you used to whistle for the wind, back home in Logres. Then when he learned to whittle, he made this for me, and told me if I was ever becalmed all I had to do was think of you and whistle for a wind. I took it with me on all my voyages from then on.” 

My heart clenched at this reminder of all I’d missed, but joy trickled in at the thought of my family’s affection. Alan took the whistle and slipped it into his pocket. 

The day before the autumn equinox, some decades later, Alan and I sat near the newly harvested wheat field, talking as we often did of the sea. “We’ll go together,” I said, as we’d planned a thousand times in our fancy. With both our graves visited less and less, our families’ strong memories of us would likely end with the last grandchild, little Llio. “The crystal ship will slip into the water, and we’ll see…I don’t know what. That’s the adventure, I suppose.” 

His head in your lap, Alan agreed. “Adventure, for certain! A full sail in the sunrise and my dearest love by my side, never again to be parted! Often, I wonder what’s beyond–we have guesses, but none who leave ever return. Will it not be splendid to know?” I woke in the night to an empty bed beside me. Alan, where are you? I didn’t find him inside despite calling out, and hurried to the edge of the lake, still wrapped in my blankets. Alan stood looking down the valley to the harbor. He turned at my approach and smiled, but his eyes were sad as he reached to hug me. 

“Darling, I’ve just received the news– Llio died this evening. The ship is ready.” 

I twisted out of his arms to look at his face. “What’s wrong? There’s more, isn’t there? This should be happy news, we get to sail together…” I trailed off as his hand gripped mine tightly, as though he feared I might vanish any moment. 

“Efa…I am to sail in half an hour. You…have not yet been forgotten. The messenger wouldn’t tell me how, he said that you must inquire yourself, but you can’t sail with me and I—” 

He broke off, and sat on the bench, hands covering his face. I went over, tears dimming my eyes, and took his hands and kissed them. Then I buried my face in his chest and we both wept. Neither of us could speak for a while. We broke apart somewhat and our eyes met, and in that look was all our love, and all our sorrow, too. Never have I felt so understood as in that moment. The sun was rising, and at last I broke the silence. 

“I’ll help you pack.”

I do not know how to set down the parting itself. In it was nothing remarkable to any of the others on the pier, no shouted words of farewell, nor even weeping. We had said our goodbyes in that long moment at the lake, and nothing else was needed. Few words passed between us as Alan packed his belongings and we walked to the harbor. The pale logistics of boarding preparations blurred around me; Alan dealt with them speedily, never leaving my side or letting go of my hand. At last he was standing facing me, holding both my hands now, and I knew the sea was taking him away. 

“Alan,” I said, quietly so that no one nearby could hear. I meant to say more and could not, but he seemed to know. 

“I have something for you, Efa.” He pulled out the carved whistle. “To remind you I love you, always. I’ll see you soon. If you’re ever becalmed, think of me and Tarian and whistle for a wind.” And he was gone.

I feel the whistle in my skirt pocket, a small lump of memory, as I paddle out onto the lake now. I slept fitfully last night, unable to stop wondering why he had gone and I had stayed. At last I gave up trying to rest and flung my dark green mantle around my shoulders, marveling at the beauty of the sunrise and marveling still more that I notice–that beauty still arrests me, even now. I look down through the water. My grave, tucked in a corner of the old cemetery, sits bathed in the sunlight of the other world that’s no longer home. No answers there, it looks the same as always. I turn to leave, but a flash of yellow catches my eye as a gray-eyed teenager with a bright golden tunic and scabby knees walks through the rows of stones, carrying a few small blue flowers. She places them on my headstone and looks thoughtfully around, then leaves. Why? I don’t recognize her as a family member, or even someone who looks related to me. 

“I was at the cemetery again, putting flowers on that lady’s grave.” A friend joined her on the way home, and now the girl begins to tell how she went to the field yesterday and wandered across a random grave–mine. Seemingly, she liked my epitaph (I’ve never thought to read it), wondered who I was, and found some spotty records in the bowels of the local library that mention my marriage to Alan and early death in childbirth. “She died over 100 years ago, and she was only 34,” the girl says, curls bouncing with intensity. “I’ve always thought it’s sad when people get forgotten. I can’t explain it, but when I read the bits of information they had about her, I wished…I wished we could have known each other. And that she could have lived to see her children all grow up.” She pulls out a portrait of me at my wedding, auburn hair cascading around my shoulders. “This was in the records, and the librarian said I could take it, since no one’s asked for it in the while it’s been there. I’m going to keep going there, Mair.” 

And she does. Over the next 70 years, Amser visits my grave regularly. When she lives nearby, it’s every week. Later she moves to the city and comes monthly, always bringing wildflowers, always with a faint smile. I wonder about the rest of her life, but she must really not be blood family–the lake won’t let me see her anywhere but the cemetery. As I always have, I carry on, missing Alan but intrigued by this strange girl’s remembrance. One of my friends on the agricultural team visits often with her children, and I am an honorary aunt for the first time.

It’s the autumn equinox again when a messenger finds me in the fields again, this time working on an irrigation system for growing rice. 

“My lady Efa, your ship has arrived. It is time for you to leave Aros for the sea.” 

Amser! She must be here then! I want to meet her before I go, but swept up in the preparations for sailing, I forget to ask the messenger. Standing on the pier, my thoughts are a tangle as I think about all the people I knew and the adventure still ahead. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see gray eyes and bouncing dark hair. 

“Amser!” We are already friends. I embrace her and ask, “How did you find me so fast?” 

“I didn’t, really,” she says, her voice familiar and yet strangely clearer and deeper than it was through the lake. “I’m sailing, you see, and when I saw you…well, I felt sure it was the same woman in my picture. To think after all these years I get to meet you, Efa!” We laugh with delight, but something she said strikes me as odd. 

“You’re sailing already? But you must have just gotten here!” 

“Yes,” she says, “I am already forgotten. I had no family, you know, and all my friends have already gone. I got to see some of them on the way to the harbor, though. Mair has great-grandchildren now!” She says it without regret or envy in her voice, and I blink back tears. All this time, she’s been making sure I haven’t been forgotten, while she… 

“Why did you do it?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it doesn’t bother Amser. 

“I wanted you to know someone remembered, still. And maybe…oh, I don’t know, it gave me someone to care about, in a way. I wanted to give you what I knew I wouldn’t have– time.” 

I think about the friends I made here after Alan left, the discoveries my team and I worked for, the children who had run screaming around my house playing pirates, and I knew it had been a good gift. 

“Well, may I give you something in return?” I pull out a whistle, whittled to look like the one Tarian made but painted bright yellow, with a carving of wildflowers and rosemary. We board the tall crystal-blue ship, its bows pointed toward the horizon. “If ever you’re becalmed, all you have to do is whistle for a wind.” The high notes rise on the air and the sails billow out, slipping out of Aros Harbor ti hwnt i’r mor, beyond the sea.

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Chapter 6- Part 3

Through this corner and up this hallway we go, aaand here we’ve got some more Grunts!

It’s more likely than you think!

Alright, this isn’t so bad- Riptide can handle Aron pretty easily. Water Gun time, baby!

Heck yeah. Well- not for Budew, both Aron and Zubat have been ganging up on it, very sad. Anyways, back to attacking-

Hm- Riptide’s not doing as much damage to Zubat as I’d like, not to mention he just got a level-up…so you know what? I’ll switch into Whiskers, she’s got Zen Headbutt anyways.

Speaking of switching, uh…

You know what? Sandile’s a much better matchup against the Zubat than Budew. In fact, it’s such a better matchup that Sandile ends up stealing Whiskers’ kill with Bite!

Eh…a victory is a victory I guess, and Whiskers gets the exp. points either way.

Oh- his Sandile’s Ability is Moxie? That’ll be good to remember in the future.

You’re not allowed to do that punchline!! I already did it!!

Alright, so, continuing on up here, we kinda turn these corners, and then…

Hey, there’s an item up there! I don’t think we can go up to the second floor just yet, but when we do, I’ll have to remember to grab whatever that is.

AND THEN X HAD TO LEAVE TO TAKE CARE OF IRL STUFF.

SHE CAME BACK AFTER SEVERAL HOURS.

So, it is currently 9:30 PM as of the time of writing this. I could wait until tomorrow morning to continue on with this escapade, when I’m a little less tired, but I’d actually rather not do that, soooo…

(Future edit: Little did I know, I would have no choice but to put the rest of this play session off until the next day anyways, but I digress-)

Also, through the power of saving the game, I have discovered this location is called Mosswater Industrial! As I said before: YEAH DUDE, IT SURE IS!

Now, despite the fact that Ace told the Grunts to slow us down and we need to stop them from deleting all the data (I’m assuming), I…don’t think there’s an actual time constraint? Like, Fern didn’t say anything like “we need to get up there as soon as possible, we can’t waste time fighting everyone” or something, and there’s no indication of a legit time limit, so like…I don’t think there’s a penalty to fighting all the Grunts we come across.

In other words, despite the fact that we went around these two, we’re gonna beat them up anyways.

Alright, what have we here…I don’t think we have anything that’s specifically good against either of these, but Streak can still hold his own. And we can start that with Tail Whip, which will lower both Rattata and Lillipup’s Defenses at the same time! 

This’ll be useful not just for Streak, but for Fern’s Sandile as well because uuuuuh…well, Budew got knocked out again. RIP, I guess.

So, neither Streak nor Sandile are super great against these two, but they’re still doing…something. I’m having Streak focus on Lillipup for the time being-

Which worked out very well! Now these two can just focus on the Rattata and win the battle, which also works out well enough- ignore Streak’s HP, he’s fine.

Can’t believe Xera and Fern are exterminators now- but given that was a bit of a running gag with a D&D campaign me and some friends did (lest we forget Slap Her Bald Head Sunday), I’m fine with carrying on the legacy in this playthrough.

And I was heading into the menu to check something, and I finally noticed something…

The party gets healed after every battle! I didn’t even notice that in the last few battles, but now that I do- great! That means I’ll have an easier time saving resources (namely those Potions) during this. My cheapskate arc in this game continues on apace!

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[darsynia]

Trust Fall | ch4a سورج کی روشنی

(MCU, Tony/OC 'terrorists made us fall in love,' IM1 timeline)

ARC reactor image by Eury Escodero on Unsplash | gif by @villainelle

Summary: Emory Autumn works as a PA to pop star Rory Fall. While they’re in Afghanistan performing for the troops, Emory is taken prisoner along with billionaire Tony Stark. The terrorists think she’s Rory, and they’re expecting a ransom...

Length: 3,638 ((this chapter is in 2 parts))

Also! All chapter titles translate in some way to 'Sunlight.'

In this chapter... Tony starts building his project out of Stark weaponry, and he and Emory have a heated discussion about attraction dynamics between men and women

I’m shy as hell about saying this but if anyone wants to be tagged or ask me to write something please do! Tags: @starryeyes2000 @raith-way @arrthurpendragon

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter Four: سورج کی روشنی

“We have to get her out of here,” Yinsen says. “Before they figure it out.”

“We can’t even get ourselves out of here,” Tony says, scraping the last of the food from his bowl. He looks down at the spoonful and leaves it, pushing the whole thing away.

“I’m sure they’re looking for you, but they’ll never find you in these mountains.” 

The other man reaches for Tony’s bowl, stacking it with his own. “What you saw out there? That is your legacy, Stark. Your life’s work. In the hands of those murderers.”

For the first time, an emotion other than false politeness shakes the man’s voice, and Tony grabs his arm.

“Who are you? Cook? Interpreter? Conscience?”

He laughs bitterly. “My job description is a little above your pay grade right now, wouldn’t you say? You’re a contractor. Maybe even an engineer. But it seems obvious that you work alone, hmm?” The man looks over to where Boots is lying, still awake, her body curled up in the fetal position and radiating fury.

“Your name. Give me a name. Or I’ll start calling you something ridiculous, like the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide.” Happy Hogan always says Tony’s recklessness comes out best when he combines it with humor, but he’s not coming up with his best material in this environment.

“How about I call you Bruce Wayne?”

Tony lets go with a sound of disgust. “I have way more money than Bruce Wayne’s fictional fortune.”

“You both lost your parents at a young age, inherited a fortune. Maybe even squandered it?”

They’re in the middle of a cave in Afghanistan, and this man knows trivia from his life? For a few seconds Tony has an awful suspicion that he’s a plant, on the side of the terrorists-- but his behavior towards Boots belies that. His behavior towards Tony belies that, too. It’s not deference, and it’s not contempt. Tony hopes that by the time he has a name for it, he’ll have done something to change it, and it won’t matter anymore.

“You’re confused. We met once, if you can believe it. At a technical conference in Bern. My name is Yinsen. Told you my first name in Bern, but I doubt you’d remember.”

“I don’t,” Tony says, brows furrowing, looking at Yinsen with a lot more respect. His conscience pricks him. Why does he respect this man more because he’s been to Switzerland, to a conference that Tony attended? Why is that what did it? Saving his life, albeit in this terrifying, body-altering kind of way, that wasn’t enough?

“If I had been that drunk, I wouldn’t remember me either,” Yinsen laughs.

Tony suddenly wants very much to change whatever it is that’s making Yinsen cover his true feelings with this humor that doesn’t become him. He wants Boots to look at him like someone she respects, too. A lifetime of people kowtowing to him, Tony thinks, and it ends in a cave in the middle of nowhere, with two people who think he’s a murderous piece of shit? Money isn’t going to get him out of this.

“Doesn’t look like I’ll get the chance to get that drunk ever again.”

There’s a sound at the door. Yinsen goes over to see who it is, comes back with a pile of clothes, all men’s. Tony snags a black wife beater, changes into it right away. Even in the short time he’d worn it, the white shirt Boots had given him had been rough on the wiring, kept snagging. He doesn’t want to stop wearing it, though. He likes the way it smells. Does that make him what she said? Tony doesn’t think so, but he does like to see her hair down. He would never force her to do that, and the more he thinks about it, the more he sees her point.

He was framing her looks as a commodity, something she, if she really were Rory Fall, would have already been in the business of selling. But he’s in the business of selling his innovations, his weaponry-- and he’s furious to be told he must build a version of his own designs against his will. Enough to be considering not doing it at all, and risking the consequences.

The parallels are so obvious he should stop calling himself a genius.

“So?” Yinsen says, interrupting Tony’s self reflections.

“So, what?” Tony asks, grabbing a beanie hat from the smaller pile. He wonders where some of the other clothes went, and then looks over to see that Yinsen’s set a small pile of them over by Boots’ cot. “She asleep?”

“Either that or a fury coma.” His condemnation is damning.

“Yeah, I owe her an apology,” Tony allows. “I don’t want them to use me, either.” He sighs, shakes his head, puts on the hat. The fire is dying down, and the cave’s not as warm as it was just a half hour ago.

“So what are you going to do about it? Wear their hat and tell them no?”

If Yinsen had been Obie, Tony would tell him to stop busting his balls about it. That phrase, though applicable, doesn’t seem appropriate at all for this slight, determined linguist/scientist/doctor. He does notice one thing, though. There’s less humor in Yinsen’s tone, now. That feels like somewhat of a victory.

“I can’t build what they’re asking me to. And when I don’t, I’ll be dead in a week, along with you and the girl.” Tony clenches his jaw. The words feel true in a way that makes him want to punch a wall that will collapse under the strength of his arm. That won’t happen here, he knows.

“Well then. This is a very important week for you, isn’t it?” Yinsen says. His expression is challenging, fatherly, man to man, in a way Tony’s never really experienced. Obie doesn’t relate like that, though Tony knows he thinks he does.

A disturbing thought floats through his consciousness, not staying long enough to make much of an impression. Obie’s been awfully jovial lately, too. Tony lets it go, chalks it up to cave fever, or something.

He looks over to where Yinsen was just sitting, but the man is gone. Tony sees him over by his own cot, meticulously setting his suit coat on a hanger protected by some kind of colored cloth, before sliding it into a garment bag.

Was Yinsen at a different conference, when he was kidnapped? He certainly hadn’t packed for this ‘job’ of his, and his attitude toward the terrorists isn’t that of an ally or a contractor. It’s more like that of a useful slave. Tony can be one of those, if it’ll keep them alive long enough to come up with a way to get out. Hell, if he stalls for long enough, maybe Rhodey can find him.

An important week, Yinsen had said. A week isn’t long enough, not at all. Tony knows his products, always has. That part of the business is important to him, and it impresses colleagues and women alike. There are a lot of his products out there in that stockpile. If he has to be building something, does it have to be a Jericho missile? And how long can he realistically take to construct it?

Yinsen wakes Emory up early in the morning the next day.

“Stark’s going to have them bring in all of the materials he needs to build something. It’s going to be a lot,” he predicts. “I brought you this. Sit here, seem busy, even if you don’t wish to read it.”

He hands her a well-worn paperback book with a cover that seems straight out of 1970’s sci fi. Emory doesn’t have time to examine it closely right away, because as soon as she and Yinsen move a second rice bag onto her cot and turn the one that was already there sideways as a bit of a barricade, the door bursts open.

The next three hours are full of activity. Stark’s in his element, it seems, his voice confident and droning, listing off things that he wants for his proposed assignment. She’d heard he and Yinsen speaking about the vast array of weapons with his name on them that had been assembled outside, but now they’re assembled inside their cave. Emory hopes to hell it’s safe, doubts it is, but oddly trusts Stark to be at least smart about how to make the space as safe as it possibly can be. He’s a well-known narcissist, after all, so his safety, she presumes, is paramount.

Yinsen had been clever in his warning. She covers herself with the blanket, leans on the rice bags, and tries to tune out the noise and bustle as best she can. The rice bags break up the shape of her body on the cot, the book gives her an excuse not to look around and make eye contact.

She’d been right about the cover (it was from the 70’s), but the book was published in the 50’s. It’s by Arthur C. Clarke, a name she recognized but had never read anything of. Childhood’s End is solidly science fiction, something she wouldn’t have expected Yinsen to read, though Emory supposes she doesn’t know him that well. The book’s set in the late 20th century, a time period that probably felt distant and exciting to Clarke in the 50’s. At the dawn of the space age, a technologically superior race shows up and halts war and conflict, imposing their will to create a kind of utopia.

When she reads that Earth’s new ‘overlords’ interfere to prevent behavior seen as harsh or barbaric, Emory understands more about why the mild-mannered doctor might have been drawn to the book. It’s hard to pay close attention to reading with all the noise, and she’s just barely gotten to an exciting point when it seems like the terrorist work crew are finally finished carrying things in. In the book, a human has smuggled an object designed to let him see what the physical form of the overlords are onto the ship where he acts as liaison. The character is desperate to see what they look like, why they’re hiding, and he uses the item-- and seems to be so horrified that he agrees with the idea that humanity must wait fifty years to see what he’s seen.

“You like it?” Yinsen asks, startling her. He’s standing beside the cot. She’s spent so much time ignoring the movement of multiple men around the room that she had trained herself not to notice.

“Yeah. Hard not to want to make some sort of strange parallels to our situation, though,” she says. “I guess that makes you Stormgren, the liaison. Have you seen the overlord here? It’s not that bearded guy, is it?”

Yinsen’s expression is pleased, but he shakes his head. “The leader here might be described as a devil, yes, but he would never cease hostilities for the good of anyone, much less humanity’s future.”

Emory sets down the book with a mental note of the page she stopped. She looks around at the cave, which is now covered in Stark-branded weaponry, to a frightening degree. “This seems like it’s proving your point fairly well.”

“Yinsen? Do you know if they gave us pencil sharpeners?” Stark calls out. He’s taken off the black overshirt, the white shirt pushed up to his elbows, and he’s got a clipboard in one hand, and what she assumes is a pencil with a broken tip in the other. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, too, which she’s kind of jealous about, because her hands get really cold at night, here.

“They did. The alternative was a knife, after all,” Yinsen says, with amusement. He leaves to go help Stark, and Emory sits back down on her cot, scratching at her leg bandage yet again.

With a sigh, she unties the leather strap and pulls the white cloth away from one leg. The stitches are dry, and Emory supposes it’s healing, since it’s itchy as hell. After freeing both legs (one had bled a little, probably from the night before, but it is dry and clotted now), she decides to forego asking for a new bandage for a while, rolling the pants down and ‘pegging’ them at her ankles to keep them to stay. 

After going through the clothes Yinsen gave her, she finds a smaller shirt that buttons halfway down. Emory tosses a look over her shoulder, sees that both men are faced away and busy, and swaps shirts as quickly as she can. It’s grey, and she knows if she had a mirror, she’d probably see that it matches her eyes just about perfectly. With the sleeves pushed up, it almost looks like her size, too. There’s something really confidence-building about that, after what she has been wearing.

She puts on her sandals and makes her way around the various piles of actual freaking missiles over to the wide, new table that’s been set up in the middle of the room. 

“Excuse me, Miss, but I’m going to need your name for my records if you’re going to be in proximity of all of this dangerous equipment,” Stark says, from his seat at the table. It’s a cute way to point out that they haven’t really been introduced.

Yinsen has told her that there’s no audio for the terrorist’s cameras, but there’s no reason to take chances. “‘Fall’ has so many negative connotations to it, why don’t you put me down as Autumn?” Emory says carefully. 

Stark must be in a good mood, because this makes him smile. Like before, its effect on her is powerful, and she finger combs her hair over to the right side of her face and basically hides in it, trying to conceal the way her cheeks have to be turning red. Trying to tell herself that she shouldn’t think he’s attractive is like drawing a line in the sand and ordering the tide not to cross it. Even if the water could obey, the permeable, mutable state of the sand would mean the line would move.

“So you associate more with leaves than love, when falling?” he asks, his brown-eyed gaze direct and challenging.

Emory knows this man is way out of her league. “You’re the one who said I’m the hired help, aren’t you? I’m the gardener, not the roses, and definitely not the woman you give them to.”

“Would you agree that I have a certain… reputation, with women?” Tony asks Boot-- Autumn, a name he’s still isn’t sure is hers, but is better than the one he had been using so he’ll take it. Her expression when describing herself as some sort of onlooker to romance makes him feel a sense of responsibility to refute it. As the PA to a known flirty, flighty, fragile celebrity, surely she must know why she had been overlooked?  

She’s backing away, her forehead creased with regret. “Never mind, okay?”

“No,” Tony says, getting up. “No never mind. You say you’re a gardener, well I’m--” he snaps his fingers, pointing. “I’m the florist. I’m all about variety. I don’t worry about roots.” He throws his hands out, picking up his battery and starting toward her. “I’ll come to you for advice on gardening, you come to me for advice on women.”

He can finally see her eyes clearly enough to note that they’re grey. They’re flashing with defiance, and honestly, Tony’s cheering her on, in his head. She’s obviously been under her boss’s influence for far too long, has gotten used to giving in far too often.

“I don’t need advice on women,” Autumn says. She has to stop her retreat, because she’s literally backing up into a box-shaped stack of Stark-branded missiles. Tony quickens his steps, so she’s trapped.

“You clearly do. You don’t have any objectivity about yourself.”

“You think you know better than I do the experience I’ve had being ignored by men for most of my adult life? Just by observing me for a few days?” she asks, voice thick with derision.

Tony puts his free hand into his pocket. “As a man, I can tell you that was almost certainly not about you. As a man who spent time with your boss, I can tell you that the fame chasers were always going to go for her, and so were the guys looking for an easy lay.”

The word ‘lay’ leaves his mouth a split second before he regrets saying it.

“I should slap you, but I don’t want to risk setting anything off,” Autumn says in a low, angry voice. Something about the tone sparks a deep, desperate desire in him to hear it in a different context.

Her new grey shirt fits better than the others, the first he’s seen besides the black blouse which nips in enough to show the curve of her waist. Autumn backs up again and Tony realizes he’d taken another step toward her. They’re barely six inches apart, meaning she has to look up at him. Her full lips are parted, and if Tony could hit pause on the moment, it could easily be mistaken for a sexually charged one, instead of anger. They’re staring at each other, her cheeks flushed, his breathing quickened. 

“I could take it,” Tony says, leaning over to say the words like they’re in confidence.

“Take what?” she asks, brows furrowing, ready for a fight.

“The slap. Hit me.” Then kiss it better, he doesn’t say. It’s a line, one he’s said multiple times before, and it always works. Unfortunately, Autumn would probably be the exception. Power dynamics, again.

“Doesn’t that depend on where I’d slap? You’re not used to having a weakness, are you?” she asks. Her gaze drops from his eyes to where his chest bulges out from the electromagnet housing, then back up. It’s still healing, hurts like hell, and she’s right, it’s a weakness in multiple ways. But the solution to weakness, Tony’s always found, is to project confidence.

“I tell you what,” he challenges. “You don’t have to slap. Just touch me. Anywhere. Do it and I’ll move back.” He can’t wait to find out where.

“How about for once this week I not be at the mercy of a man?” Autumn sighs, rubbing her eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand.

“I’m not a terrorist. I’m on your side. You need to stand up for yourself. Push me out of the way.”

“Honestly, I’m better at doing that verbally,” she says, almost to herself.

“You think you can do that, go ahead.” Tony’s voice is just a little condescending, and for good reason. When he looks at a woman’s lips, verbal sparring isn’t what he has in mind.

Autumn crosses her arms and looks to the side, thinking. She’s sinking her teeth into her full bottom lip, and Tony is completely certain she’s not doing it to up the tension between them, even though that’s exactly what’s happening. Suddenly, she shoots him a bit of a shocked look and sucks her lips in as if telling herself to shush.

“That, right there,” Tony says with a smirk. “Say that.”

“It’s--” she falters, but looks up at him. 

Her grey eyes are impish, teasing almost. Her attitude is slowly laying fuel for a bonfire of desire inside him, one whose strength is surprising. It’s more than proximity, he thinks. Tony’s standards are usually lower, when he’s got less of a choice-- but with every minute he spends with this young woman, the more unexpected respect he has for her. Except where it comes to her devotion to her boss. That’s her weakness.

“It’s none of my business, kind of an… intimate detail,” she confesses.

Tony would be glad to hear her describe something he did with Rory, if he can watch the effect the act of relating it will have on her. He’s already looking forward to it, despite having negative memories of Rory Fall. 

“Tell me and I’ll step back,” he promises.

Autumn closes her eyes, her cheeks dusted pink. “Before the convoy left, Rory made a comment. I remember it because it’s just--” she opens her eyes to roll them, shaking her head. “Rory said you liked kissing too much, as if that can even be possible. But the thing is--” she looks up at him, right into his eyes. Tony is pinned. “It’s better with feelings. Kissing.” Her lips curve up into a secret smile, her whole face lighting up with an inner fire he wants to have been the source of. “A thousand times better. So that’s my ‘gardener’ perspective, to you, the florist. Lay down some roots, if that’s something you really like. You won’t regret it.”

He steps back for her, wordlessly. She’s just made him desperate to kiss her, while simultaneously throwing up a vibranium wall between their lips. He’s not a commitment guy.

Fuck.

Is this what Henry VIII thought, when looking at Anne Boleyn? Somehow inventing a new religion just to get a woman to say yes doesn’t seem so outrageous.

Tony heads back to the table and picks the pencil back up to complete the list of steps to safely access the small amount of palladium in the style of missile he’s going to start with. He takes some deep breaths, focuses on the kind of breathing and thoughts that will ease his arousal back down to a low ebb. There’s only one impossible thing that’s going to be happening in this cave, and that’s building his father’s dream of a miniature ARC reactor.

It seems much more likely than managing to get that earnest young woman’s face to light up picturing a kiss shared with him.

Next chapter, the head terrorist comes in with one of Rory's CD's, demanding that Emory sing something.

[clovrfrost]

Spoilers for River and the Sky Excerpt! (Which can be found here)

It makes literally no sense to me why Squirrelflight, Sparkpelt, and Finchflight disapprove so adamantly of Nightheart changing his name when it was BRAMBLESTAR who CHOSE THE NAME. Yes, Flamepaw asked to have a more fitting name than Flameheart, but it was Bramblestar who let it happen. Nightheart didn’t even suggest the night prefix. Shouldn’t at least some of the ridicule who named him? This book is ridiculous.

And let’s talk about how ridiculous this ridicule is in the first place! I do not remember what Sparkpelt was like in her previous appearances, but in this arc, she has clearly been established with the motivation of trying to develop a good relationship with her son. Considering this, It makes no sense for Sparkpelt to be outraged with Nightheart’s supposed disrespect of his family if what she wants is to become closer with him! Does she not see how backwards of an approach that is?

The only thing I think this could be implying is that Sparkpelt cares more about upholding Firestar’s legacy than her own son, which I just don’t believe, no matter how much of a angsty teenager he is. She even calls him stupid in front of the whole Clan. She didn’t seem like the kind of parent to punish him like this.

It doesn’t make sense for Squirrelflight to be mad either. Her entire portrayal in A Starless Clan has felt sort of off to me. When was she such a hard ass? Check this out.

This passage just reeks of an irrational, emotional woman having to be put in her place by her husband. Her husband being BRAMBLESTAR by the way. One of the most emotional and irrational cats of all time. I know Flamepaw understands why she’s angry, but she’s still in the wrong.

And it makes even less sense for Finchflight considering she SUPPORTED Nightheart’s decision to have a different name. No reason is given for her change in opinion.

I know we are supposed to sympathize with Nightheart, but if the only way the writers can think to make him sympathetic is to make other cats unreasonably illogical, then that is just bad writing. You have a plot beat you need to hit, okay, but could you come up with a better way?

Sorry for the long post, I have a lot of feelings.

[girl4music]

Juliette never turned Theo. His mom’s murderer did as a leader of the Guild.

Okay so here’s my theory regarding Theo’s arc. I’m pretty sure many have thought of this theory already.

Juliette didn’t turn Theo. I think it was the woman that walked in and out of the bathroom that tells them not to go into the last stall because “somebody’s having a serious party in there” that did it. She looks like the woman that murdered Theo’s mother. Maybe she went back to the bathroom after Juliette left to turn him because she probably works for the Guild and they wanted to stop Theo from looking into their secret information and exposing them. My theory is that his turning into a vampire was planned and his discovering of being turned into a vampire was staged. The whole scenario is sketchy. Even the lipstick drop outside is suspicious. It seemed planted. Remember how Cal planted the pure silver bracelet for Juliette to find outside her locker to confirm that she was actually a vampire in the first episode? Maybe this was something similar. The lipstick was planted for Juliette to find where she did so that she didn’t walk too far away from the bar so that she could hear Theo’s heartbeat. Juliette wasn’t even sure she did what she did. She thought she completely drained all of Theo’s blood to mercy kill him. I mean how could she turn him into a vampire by accident? By not intending to do so? I’m calling it. Theo had already been turned by the point Juliette walked back in. And I think it was the woman that originally discovered him. It’s just she couldn’t do it while Apollo was there. She needed a way to get him out of the bathroom and to leave Theo in the stall. And what about that text Juliette got from her mom on her phone that told her Calliope’s mom called her mom and told her she’d been at the Burns’ house? That was convenient wasn’t it? Was it really Talia that called Margot? Maybe she was masquerading as Talia. Maybe not. I don’t know. I just think her getting that text when she did was sus because it made all of them leave without Theo. Believing that he was already dead. No confirmation. She would have had the opportunity to turn him then. And since Juliette was last to leave, she could have used her as the one that turned Theo instead. Leaving no tracing back to herself and the Guild she works for.

There’s the interpretation that at the top of the hierarchy of the Guild there are Legacy vampires. What if one of those head executives was the Legacy vampire that murdered Theo’s mom and because he was researching ways of how to find her, she got to him first? And instead of just killing him, made him the very species of monster he despises to prevent him. Made him now of the undead so that he could be targeted by their trained warriors instead. Effectively distracting them from seeing the true face of the Guild. It’s possible the Guild is either an illegitimate organisation in the first place or compromised by the very monsters they’re supposed to be hunting down.

Perhaps Theo is special to the Guild and they need him to play the pawn on both sides of the chess board. They need him to be both a monster hunter and a monster because that way both sides can carry on with this war that they’ve been fighting in for eons and the ones that control that war can stay in power. Gods there is so much narrative potential with this show. It can be intriguing and exciting in many ways. It doesn’t all just have to be about Calliette but they need to be the common denominator at all times because everything wraps around their star-crossed love story. And I think the whole point of everything else that is going on in the show is to keep them apart because together they’re the hammer that knocks TPTB down. I think Theo is their secret weapon. He is the “accidental” circumstance that forces Calliette to not just be apart but to be on opposing sides of each other. Exactly where they want them. But it’s gonna backfire on them because Theo will find peace by coming to reconcile with both sides of himself. As Phillip Mullings Jr wants for him as well as me too.

[serena-darrin]

So, I went and finished Battle Scars tonight. It's not a long book and honestly, there are times I think it needed to be a bit longer, so it had the space to build up to what it tried to do emotionally - but I have no idea what that would to some already problematic pacing problems.

Biggest takeaways? There were some Good Ideas, and some terrible executions of those ideas. It's not 'I regret reading this.' There are some interesting nuggets of things that I actually have Fic ideas to either explore, or fix.

But, uh, yeah, it's not -good- either. Between the author's habit of telling, not showing, some very weird pacing choices, an almost forgotten and nonsensical secondary plot, and too many things that felt forced merely to create a conflict? Yeah, I wouldn't call it Good, either. I'm glad I didn't pay money for it, and will probably only read it again if I need the reference for writing my own fics. My library now has e-copies, which will make searching for whatever reference I need much much easier. (And I won't have to remember to return a physical book before the due date!)

That said, spoilers under the cut - long post warning too!

So, my biggest reaction is 'what did I just read?' A lot of the things that were there do makes sense as character beats. Merrin trying to figure out who she is after leaving Dathomir, Cere wanting to set up a legacy and step back from the actual fighting, Cal wanting more to take the fight to the Empire, Greez thinking of stepping out of the fight. . . . these are all things that I can see happening.

But the execution of it all, honestly, sucked.

Fret went from 'interesting', to 'huh?' really quickly - I'm honestly not entirely sure what her story arc really was? It's like, she lied about things, but not, but yes she did lie, and now I'm just confused? It felt like too many reveals and too many layers, with both her and Irei; I got to the point of 'oh, look! Another revelation!' /sarcastic eyeroll/ As for the Shroud: I sort of figured the plans for the shroud were in Irei's head the second we met her, and I'm glad that, in the end, the Shroud was deemed as impossible/hypothetical. It was The Very Obvious Plot MacGuffin, to the point of being so obvious it was almost painful.

Greez. While absolutely, I can see him getting in the way of a lightsaber to save Cal (he adores his Kid, regardless of the grumbling!) that entire sequence felt. . . . awkward? Again, it's about execution. I can see Cere trying to save the Fifth Brother - even if it is a mistake. She's still caught up in and trying to deal with what happened to Trilla, and Greez having to be the one to pull her back. But I -cannot- see Cere simply -forgetting- about the inquisitor on the battlefield. It's too rookie a mistake. Also, Greez is -not- going to be able to just laugh this off. It's going to suck, and there are already hints that he blames Cere for it. So, uh. . . .

(tangent, I did adore Cere's ambush of the Fifth Brother, though. "A Padawan is never far from his master", that just gave me chills - even if the author can never figure out if Cal is a Knight or a Padawan; I'll forgive it for that moment).

Oh, and I admit, I was wondering if we'd see Greez return at the end there, and was very very, happy to see him take his spot back as the Pilot of the Mantis. And, given that it's Star Wars, I expect to see him with a prosthetic of some kind come Survivor.

Cere: So, she has Force Slow! Ok, unexpected, but we can work with that. It's a rarer talent, but learnable, so yeah, that works! (I was hoping we'd see Force Barrier, but I'm ok with being disappointed on that). And shattering the Fifth Brother's Lightsaber was rather cool, too! However, her stopping Cal to try and save the Fifth Brother? Weird. I mean, again, I can see her wanting to save an inquisitor - she of all people knows that there were/are people buried somewhere under there - but not at the expense of risking Cal (and later Greez) like that. That. . . was weird. It's like the author went too far down the road of 'Cere sees Trilla in all of the inquisitors'? She might, absolutely, but it was taken too far as a character trait, and now, like a lot of things in this book, feels forced to create a specific situation and a conflict.

Also, where did she get the crystal for her new lightsaber from? I'm wondering if she purified and reclaimed Trilla's crystal? I want to know, because there's such emotional potential in that story!

Merrin: Oh boy, where do I start.

She went from idiot schoolgirl in love to something far darker when she finds out that Fret may have betrayed them, and then again when she finds out that Fret and Irei are/were a couple. Ok. . . . but we, as the reader, have absolutely no attachment to Fret, (or at least I didn't?) so the entire thing was in the blink of an eye and it was very difficult to care? It felt far, far too forced and cliched (I do, however, appreciate the author remembering that Merrin can make zombies and using this!). And it just swung back and forth like a very badly written romance, except one of the characters (Fret) is a paper cutout. /sigh/ I feel like the intent was that Merrin finds herself by allowing herself to have the conversations with Fret that she can't have with the Mantis Crew. Ok, great, really interesting concept! Except we don't see those conversations, and Fret's just a very awkward cardboard cutout for Merrin to drool over, and get jealous about. /sigh/

That said, I feel like the argument between her and Cal, and her refusing to abandon him, well, that fits. And when she's not being stupid about Fret, I do appreciate seeing a bit more of Merrin's character. One of the things I do lament about Fallen Order is that we didn't get a lot of time to really get a handle on Merrin's character, and I do like some of what Battle Scars has given us there -- when the author can step away from Merrin and Fret and actually showcase us a bit of Merrin's character, and not Merrin-in-relation-to-Fret. /sigh/

Also, I'm not sure if there is intended to be something between Merrin and Cal? It's implied there might be at Merrin's end, but the closest we get is her kissing his hands? And he clearly sees what they have together as far more a sibling relationship then anything romantic. So. . . . message unclear?

Cal: One thing I feel the author got right here is that Cal does not know what to do with other people taking risks. It's fine if he's the one risking his life/getting hurt/etc, but others? Especially to protect him? That's really something he struggles with. But honestly, Cal's characterization got weaker as the book went on, I felt? Or maybe I was just less engaged? I'm honestly not sure. That said, Cal and Cere finally do have a much needed heart-to-heart. And Cal admitting openly that he was trained as a weapon and that he has -no- idea how to go about building something up, he only knows how to tear it down? Owch. That hit right in the feels.

And it's a realization that I do think he needed to have. Judging from what we've seen in the Survivor trailers, I wouldn't be surprised if he's embracing his role as that weapon; leaving the building more to Cere - which opens up some interesting ideas.

BD-1: Honestly, not much to say here. He fades into the background a lot, and while Cal clearly cares for him, I see the same struggle I see with a lot of fanfic authors (myself included, don't get me wrong), of "what the hell do we do with BD-1?" I've seen more then one Fic author admit that they totally forgot BD for a scene (I've done it too!) and I think he suffers from that here, too, sometimes. (The phonetic spelling of his name, though,. . . . BeeDee Wun . . . ahhhhh! At least it only comes up a few times!)

Fifth Brother: Honestly, he felt like another cardboard cutout. I really can't say much, because he only existed to be a weird villain of the story, wave his lightsaber around, and not. . . . actually do too much? I've read Fanfiction that did a lot more and better with his character. /sigh/

Other notes.

What the hell was up with the Jedi Circlet? It was an almost non-existent secondary plot. . . why was that even in there? Maybe it's a tie-in for Survivor, but it's just . . . . why? It was utterly and completely unnecessary and I have -no- idea why it wasn't cut by an editor.

[beeindaclouds]

Trigger warning:mentions of things blowing up, engagement being called off ect

Mama how are you? Have you eaten today?

Also some theory time for future lore because quackity seems to be doing something

So on multiple of his twitter accounts he has either stated or made a reference to lesson 1, which i can't remember quite what it was but it has mentions of L'manburg. And recently in a clip C!quackity could be seen standing above Las Nevadas as well he also tweeted 'Final chapter', now the whole standing about las Nevadas thingy reminds me of one thing. Wilbur blowing up L'manburg (in the final control room). Now i may be wrong he but i think Las Nevadas could be destroyed in some sort of way, but at the same time when jailbreak happened, quackity told slime about legacy and when slime wrote it the book it spelled out legacy. But if i remember correctly slime disappeared? Or he could he doing something with Las Nevadas like building something beside it/working with someone else (considering he built Las Nevadas for sapnap and Karl but the whole 'engagement off' arc with karlnapity) /rp

Honestly, I need to catch up on lore, but I have a feeling that something is gonna happen to Las Nevadas.

I feel like everyone is kind of on the same page on this. Idk how or by who, but ye definetly

[opal-owl-flight]

Will susie and magolor ever end up as friends after back to zero? I think she probably needs to work on herself as well, along with realizing that obsessively trying to continue her father's legacy isn't the healthiest mindset

She did so much shit. I dont think Mags would ever forgive her. And I wouldnt, either.

She helped destroy an entire planet — an entire people. An entire culture. An entire history. Wiped away from the charts.

And shes still proud of it. She still thinks that what she was doing was right. It very reasonably makes Magolor upset and angry towards her. No one knew how deep it went until Mags started openly talking more about it.

More under the cut about how much of Halcandra was wiped. its…disturbing stuff about the invasion so be warned. (Tldr its colonization and genocide.)

Isnt it odd that there was literally no Halcandrans left? Youd think, that during the Mechanization war, theyd have sent some of their kind away, make sure the species survives. But no. The Haltmanns chased after them. They saw some sort of value from each and ever single one of them…its probably that sleeping magic power that theyve been suppressing/ignoring for generations. The Haltmanns…harvested that power? And then mechanized them. “Improved” them. (I havent finished Robobot, but isnt that what Susie does to Meta?) Set them back on Halcandra to catch more of their kin, harvest resources, and take important relics back to the Access Arc. Which the Haltmanns keep — obviously not out of respect for the culture that made said relics, but for the powers they hold.

Everyone knows Halcandra for its miraculous technology. Thats all that survived of it, after the Haltmanns were done with their invasion (which Susie calls a failure because a certain magician interfered with the plans and blew the planet to smithereens “before it was ready”). Thats the only thing the Haltmanns told about it. The only items that survived the invasion. The culture itself: the arts, the philosophies, the intimate, every day lives of the people, the language…all those intangible things. Gone.

(Theres more about the Ancients regarding these, than the Halcandrans. Its a near-full cultural wipe. The tech and ruins of other settlements can be found scattered all over the galaxy, but most are from a different age. Far from the culture that used to live on the planet itself. And well…most of the planet’s been blown up, and the mechanization process kind of buried many of the culturally important structures; old and new.)

“A shame that such technology was developed by barbarians. Oh well. Our technology was able to surpass theirs. Perhaps we should be the ones remembered for creating miraculous technology, instead of them.”

Its a sentiment that Susie still believes in. She still thinks that everyone is a lower life-form. Kind of like her father. But while her father saw everything as a means to profit, she (does too, but its second to— ) uses the business to “improve lives”. Improve lives according to her standards. She thinks she knows whats best for these lower life-forms. Shes helping them! If only theyd stop fighting back!

Halcandra’s culture survives on the lone mage. And after him, no one will follow. It causes Magolor great pain to think about how hes at the end of an entire race’s lifetime. (He doesnt want to have his own kits. He admits that hes not father material. What he wants are other Halcandrans to continue living the culture hes preserving/living out.)

He sees Popstar and all the other planets…he wishes that the Halcandrans were still around. Theyd enjoy sights like these. The songs that wouldve been made, the tapestries that wouldve been weaved…

It doesnt mean that a culture was heavily remembered for its tech means that thats all they had.

Mags, probably after Back to Zero, would focus on recording and teaching everyone about Halcandra. After…all those threats to his life, hes thinking of legacy. A way to be remembered — not just for him, but his entire culture.

He does not want everyone to forget about Halcandra the way he knows it.

And Susie?

Shes doing everything she can to stop him. Because its seriously ruining her already shaky reputation. Bad for business.

“So finish the job, bitch. I dare you. Point that gun to my head and end it all, right here, right now, if all Im doing is ruining your precious business.

Oh wait. No. Thats not what you did. Heeheehee!

You want Halcandran power? Youre looking at the biggest reservoir on the planet! The only reason I survived was because I was powerful enough to fight back! Go on. Take it. Take it and mechanize my body for your own ends. Let me join my people. Heartless bitch.”

(Man, going to have to mess with the timeline a bit after this. Make Mags old enough to have remembered things before the fall. Maybe Halcandrans age slowly? Kind of like what Meta’s species does?

Note, legends of Halcandra already existed even before the invasion; of its previous ages. The only things told about the “current” Halcandra are told by the Haltmanns. No one knew how it was destroyed until way, way later, with the appearance of Magolor in Dreamland.

Said it in the tags and saying it here too. Probably not going to write this out bc it touches on some really dark and sensitive topics.)

[hamatoclan76]

Rise Splinter isn´t a very good parent and that´s okay.

Look, before someone starts throwing tomatoes i want to clarify something: I like Splinter from Rottmnt and i really like Rise of the Tmnt. People who have followed me for a while know i enjoy the series and i´m sad about it how was cancelled. I also want to say that i don´t think other Splinters are 100% perfect and they have their own issues too.

What i don´t like is how the Rise of the tmnt fandom often overlooks Rise Splinter´s character flaws and pretends that he is a perfect father figure because this is not something supported by both by the narrative and his character growth.

So, what i´m going to do in this post is to examine his character flaws, his role as parent and character arc in the series. The point of this is to bring up this flaws to light, this is not a ¨character critical¨ or whatever you want to call it. It´s supposed to be character analysis, okay?

Let´s start with the short Turtle Tots short:

Link to the short:

 https://www.facebook.com/teenagemutantninjaturtles/videos/626074331524980/

This short is when the turtle brothers are still very young. We see that Splinter is trying to train them but he keeps watching a show he likes on TV. This short shows Splinter didn´t care about training his sons enough even when they were younger. He also leaves them with very dangerous weapons they don´t know how to use.

Splinter was already quite neglectful and careless since the start. He spend too much time watching TV rather than training his sons. It would more understandable if he was too busy working with something but here he is only watching a TV series. Later in the short he admits he should have paid more attention to the turtles and isn´t a good Sensei.

I have to say i didn´t like this short too much. I didn´t find funny the jokes of how Splinter ignores his sons for the TV series and leaves every 30 seconds. However, it provides some context for the characters and their relationship.

Now let´s talk about his characterization at the start of the series. (Season 1)

Splinter at the start of the series is usually seen watching TV, whatever is his old movies or shows that he likes. He is rarely seen training the turtles or talking to them. Sometimes their interactions are the boys trying to ask him about something while he is watching his series. Splinter either answers them or ignores them.

He is usually so caught up in his own world that he doesn´t seem to be aware of who are the turtles fighting against until it starts biting them back. The boys usually don´t tell him about their adventures on the surface. One could argue that he assumes that they barely get in trouble and they are just playing.

In the episode ¨The Fast and the Furriest¨ Splinter ¨steals¨  Turtle Tank and takes it for a ride without Donatello´s permision. The turtles go through a lot of trouble to get the Turtle Tank back. By the end of the episode its Donatello, his son,is  the one who is putting a punishment on Splinter, who is supposed to be their father, for taking the Tank. 

While Donnie getting angry at Splinter is quite funny,this episode shows that Yoshi can be very inmature at times, if not childish. He doesn´t ask his son to allow him use the tank, puts them in danger and is scolded like a child at the end instead of him being the ¨responsible adult figure¨.

Parents being cocky or careless isn´t something very new. There are parents that act as inmature or worse than Yoshi and would never admit they did something wrong. So, i take this episode as one of the examples that Splinter does this kind of things. He isn´t this selfish and reckless all the time, just sometimes.

Another aspect is that Splinter struggles with remember his sons´ names. He calls them by their color bandana instead of their real names. This sometimes can be funny but on the long run it becomes quite disturing,Imo. There is difference between ¨calling your son with an affectionate nickname¨ and ¨not remembering your sons´ name¨. There is a point that this it becomes sad.

The tmnt wiki describes Rise Splinter´s personality as a ¨Extremely flawed (albeit loved) father figure¨. This means that he has tons of flaws but he cares about his family: One clear example is when he helps Raphael with fighting his fear in ¨Mrs. Cuddles¨. He protects the big turtle a few times from the giant puppet monster and they defeat the monster together.

Splinter cares about April O´Neil like she was part of the family too. In episodes like "Always Be Brownies" he is seen hanging out with her and helping her. He also encourages April to believe more in herself since she has tons of doubts in that episode. (Season 2).

Hamato Yoshi / Splinter´s backstory

Lets say that Yoshi didn´t have the best childhood. His biological father was missing and he is not mentioned in the flashbacks. Splinter´s mother, Atsuko, left Yoshi when he was still a kid so she would be able to perform her family duty as protector in the Hamato family.

This terrible loss made Yoshi grow bitter with his Hamato duties and martial arts. He didn´t want anything to do with his family legacy since it was the reason that his mother was forced to left him. He had an argument with his maternal grandfather and sensei, Sho, and decided to use the skills he learned in during his training to become a superstar.

After many shenanigans involving his crush on Big Mama, a very powerful yokai, and Baron Draxum, Hamato Yoshi mutated into a humanoid rat and adopted the turtles, who were about to be used as soldiers by Draxum, like their own sons.

Splinter´s backstory explains a lot of his behaviour in the series: It´s implied his father died/left him, his own mother also left him to perform her duties and he has a very strained relationship with his grandparent. The reason of why he has so many problems when it comes to being a good father it is because he himself lacked good family support. It makes sense that he doesn´t seem to know what he is doing or why he is messy when he is takeing care of the turtles.

Speaking of that, this explains why he isn´t very involved in his sons´ training. Maybe he just doesn´t want them to carry the same burden that he did as a child or just dislikes the idea of training them because it reminds him of bad memories about his grandfather and his mother.

He also watches his old movies since it reminds him of the time he was living his life at his fullest and was doing something he enjoyed. It implies he has his mind stuck in the past, perhaps wishing he could still be human and live like superstar.

Splinter´s Character growth

Like i mentioned, Yoshi wasn´t very interested in training his sons at the start of the series. He was negletful and spent too much time watching his movies... This aspect of his character isn´t ignored.

When the turtles asked him to train him ¨The Evil League of Mutants" he put Lou-Jitsu films for them to watch, this made their sons think he wasn´t taking them seriously and decided to go out on their own. While Splinter´s intention was to show them the basics by them learning the moves from the movies, he came off as he only cared about watching said films to their sons.

After noticing how his sons lack experience and need his help, he begans training them. Splinter gets more involved with his Hamato destiny and starts being more honest to the boys about his past as human and protector.

One episode that´s really worth of mentioning is ¨Turtle-dega Nights: The Ballad of Rat Man¨: Splinter tricks Donatello and Mikey into going to a demolition center since he missed the old days he used to be a champion in the Battle Nexus. Donnie is very hurt when he finds out about this because he really wanted to spend more time with his father. By seeing this Yoshi realizes how his sons would like to do things together with him like hanging out. He apologizes to Donnie and tellshim that he may have lied but it is truth he wanted to spend time with him.

Along with getting more involved in his sons´s lives by teaching them and spending time with them, he lets Mikey hang out with Draxum because Mikey considers him part of the family too. (Draxum created them). He didn´t trust Draxum due to their mutual past but decides to give him a chance for Mikey´s sake.

In conclusion: In Rise of the tmnt, Splinter starts as somewhat a neglectful parent figure, sometimes acting childish and not being the best role model for their sons. Overtime he begins to understand the consequences of not training his family and gets more involved in their lives. He tries to be a responsible father despite he had tons of issues with his own family growing up. While very flawed, he has good intentions and cares deeply about his sons.

[opalesense]

the last appointment

zhongli & gn!reader

3.4k words • ~25 min. read

summary: as a studious and credible fortune teller in liyue, you discover something about your last client of the week that completely derails your outlook on life.

warnings: liyue arc spoilers, little bit of existential dread, slight mention of family member’s death

notes: might make more parts to this idk?  just kinda wanted to dip my toes into genshin writing for the first time!!

LIFE IN LIYUE HARBOUR seemed to be repetitive and mundane.  For the past few years, you would wake up, open your fortune telling shop, analyze the futures of your clients using your geomancy, possibly take a stroll around Liyue when you needed to run errands, and then call it a day.  You performed the same routine constantly, sometimes travelling beyond the harbor to collect crystals and magical supplies for your shop, but rarely did anything truly change in your routine.  If something was off in the slightest, it was never too exciting to note.

   As anyone would have suspected, you were tired of your state of limbo in life.  Other vision holders seemed to be going on adventures, travelling with companions and exploring the vast mountains and valleys of Teyvat.  Other vision holders seemed to be fighting against evil, helping citizens, and saving the world from imminent dangers.  You could even recall a recent event where the Qixing had evacuated the harbor to defeat a terrifying sea monster.  The Jade Chamber had been sacrificed for the safety of the people of Liyue, and yet here you were, playing with a bunch of rocks for a living.  Despite being able to grasp the glowing Geo vision that held your coat together, you could not grasp why you felt doomed to tend to this shop for the rest of your days.

   You didn’t know where or how to “start” your life.  The small, inherited establishment from your late aunt was located in the small alley of Chihu Rock, practically out of sight from most of the foot traffic in the harbor.  Not many people came to visit, though your name was still decently known.  In fact, most of your appointments were simply previous clients from your aunt, regulars that relied on her readings for years and believed you were the next best thing after she passed.  Especially considering you were the first vision holder in your family, it made your credibility even stronger.

   You still remember how you got your vision.  The morning after your aunt had passed, the elemental gift somehow made its way into your hand as if the timing was meant to be perfect.  You didn’t celebrate such a special and momentous occasion with pride or joy.  Your face stiff with tears, you instead reflected on why you received your vision at that moment in the first place.  With the shop doors closed upstairs, you gripped your vision and did what you felt needed to be done.  With your family’s legacy and tradition on the line, adventuring like other vision wielders was not a priority at the time.

   But after years alone of research, a social life consisting only of interacting with customers, and a constant state of grieving the experiences you could’ve had in your youth, you were now in your late twenties and closing the shop for the day.  Your last appointment was either extremely late or not showing up at all and you were tired of working today, just like every other day. Regret gripped you tightly as you wondered how you managed to get yourself in such a boring, slow burning loop.

   That is until the shop door opened, eliciting a gasp from you at the sudden noise, shattering the previous thought.  You accidentally dropped the basket of cor lapis you were refilling and immediately knelt down to pick up the precious pieces that thankfully hadn’t cracked on the way down.

   “Hello, [Y/N],” the tall figure practically glided through the doorway, “My deepest apologies for being late.”

   He closed the door behind him, “...and for startling you, it seems.”

   You sighed, checking for any scratches on the gems and sighed again with relief based on the good results.  You grinned to hide the fact you had just been in deep thought.  “It’s quite alright, Mr. Zhongli.  It’s kind of you to stop by at the very least, even if you’re late.”

   Mr. Zhongli was one of your aunt’s longtime clients.  Since you were a child, your aunt had always described Mr. Zhongli as a complex yet thoughtful man that had always shown kindness to your family for many years.  When Mr. Zhongli learned of your aunt’s death and began to receive readings from you instead, you quickly realized what your aunt meant by calling him complex.  Mr. Zhongli was truly a tough nut to crack in every single reading, his sessions taking longer than most other cases.  That is why Mr. Zhongli would always offer to take the last spot of the day at the end of every week as to not trouble any of your other clients.

   As you took a few of the best cor lapis from the basket, you could see Mr. Zhongli’s acts of kindness and thoughtfulness unfold in front of you.  He seemed to carry what was now clearly a gift basket at closer inspection.

   “This gift is for you,” Mr. Zhongli took a few steps forward to set the basket on a countertop.  “I brought you your favorites.  Slow cooked bamboo shoot soup, qingxin, glaze lilies, and all the crystals I could find…  needless to say, let this be a token of my appreciation for your patience and hard work from our last few sessions.  I know I am not the easiest to read, but you truly have a talent.”

   You were speechless at the gesture as your eyes sunk into the intricate detail of the handwoven basket and decorated items inside.  No one had ever done something so kind for you in so long.  It was astonishing enough that he remembered your favorite soup that you mentioned only once a few months ago, let alone your favorite flowers and crystals as well.  “Thank you so much, Mr. Zhongli!   I’m at a loss for words – this is so thoughtful of you!”

   “I even brought you that Rex Incognito series you had mentioned, although, I am not sure why you would need to read the series when I am fully capable of educating you on the history of Rex Lapis myself,” he flaunted, taking his seat on the cushioned chair in front of the reading table.

   “Now, Mr. Zhongli...” you picked out some prithiva topaz from another basket, following the usual protocol you had with such a personalized, frequent client like him. The required materials for his readings were imprinted into your memory like carvings in stone. “You know I don’t want to burden you with my curiosity.  And with such an intriguing topic like Rex Lapis... once I start asking questions I’m afraid I will not stop.”

   “I have all the time in the world,” he got comfortable in his seat as you sat yourself across from him, “I truly think it would benefit you to discuss the history of Rex Lapis with a learned scholar such as myself.  We can even have some tea as we discuss.”

   You chuckled at his eagerness.  He seemed more forward than usual. “You are too kind, Mr. Zhongli.  Perhaps I’ll take that offer someday, but at least let me put those books to good use first. Maybe I won’t need to bombard you with questions if I’m already well briefed on the subject.”

   He sighed happily.  “You make a good point. And you will enjoy them, I’m sure.”

   You settled into your seat as you arranged the crystals between the two of you.  “The usual for tonight?”

   “Yes, please.”

   Your hands meticulously placed the last crystal in its spot on the surface.  You closed your eyes and hovered your hands above the rocks, clearing your mind to make way for the usual reading: a reflection on the past, any significant events of the present to focus on, and some insight into the future.  You held this hand gesture for awhile, letting the energy from the rocks lift into the air and envelop your gloved palms.  When you felt there was enough energy to work with, you opened your eyes to reveal the manifestation of his thoughts in front of you, able to take its physical form using the powers from your glowing vision.

   No one had ever taught your this skill, not even your aunt.  If you had to bloat your own ego, one could say you invented this Geo fortune telling process yourself. The process indeed came to you naturally, a true display of pure talent.

   You slowly lifted your hands to allow the visual manifestation to settle on the table among the gems so Mr. Zhongli could watch his reading unfold in front of him as well.

   “Let us analyze the past first,” he spoke, already knowing the routine without you needing to ask him where to start.  You slowly waved your hands as if you were digging a hole in sand on a beach, the manifestation displaying ambiguous patterns that wouldn’t make sense to any commoner’s eyes but could be interpreted easily by yours.

   Two pairs of focused eyes fixated on the picture as you spoke your mind out loud.  “You have recently given up something extremely important to you, it seems.  I see you handing over something…  small, physically, yet unbelievably significant and personal.  I can’t tell what it is exactly, only that it glows like the sun with its energy.  But you have handed this important object over to a very... evil... figure?” you cocked your eyebrow, confused.  “You seem to be brooding over the fact that its aura is dark with malicious intentions.”  You hesitated, “Well, that can’t be right, can it?”

   He sighed.  “Unfortunately, that is indeed what happened recently.  But it had to be done.”

   “Didn’t we talk about a similar situation in a previous reading?  If I remember correctly, I thought I had advised you to not give up whatever that object was.”

   “I am aware of the consequences that will follow.  Especially with your future guidance, I’m sure the events following this one questionable decision will unfold in a better way soon enough.”

   “I will always be here to help you, Mr. Zhongli.  But please be careful in the future with these decisions.  The importance of this object seems to be off the charts.”

   He nodded.  “It is as you say.  Please, have faith in me now. I cannot change what happened in the past, after all.”

   You hovered over this image of the sacrifice.  You couldn’t make out what this object was, no matter how close you tried to inspect it.  It had the likings of a chess piece, but surely this wasn’t simply a chess piece, was it?

   “Let us move on, if that is alright with you,” his low voice cut the silence.

   You wiped the image from your mind and waved your hands again, as if you were slowly putting the sand back into the hole you dug before.  If the last image wasn’t enough bad news, this new one that formed was even more painful to witness.

   “You have been grieving your losses very recently,” you said gently.  “Your mind is currently weighed down by your past.  I see you looking out at the sea in deep thought.  There are flashes of…”

   You stopped as you inspected the graphic images that suddenly appeared beyond your hands.  You gasped at the terrifying horrors.

   “What is it?” the low voice tried to search for understanding of what you were seeing.  Even though the image was clearly laid out in front of him, it was still too ambiguous to tell when he lacked your years of experience.

   “There are flashes of war,” your breath stifled as you watched his thoughts splayed out in images of lifeless bodies and destruction.  “Very graphic details of war and death.  Mr. Zhongli, I believe this image of suffering has been weighing over your mind like an anchor in the sea.”

   He paused to process your comparison.  “That is... a very good way to put it.”

   “Though, I believe that despite the sorrow that emanates in this image, you are in a state of relief and tranquility.  It seems you are grieving, but you are simultaneously at peace,” you hesitated again, “Yet I wonder what these graphic images of war are meant to represent.  Surely we are not in an actual war, are we? Perhaps you are at war with your past, wanting to move on but haunted by your memories?”

  Mr. Zhongli unfortunately knew the images you were seeing were, in fact, real events he had experienced in his life time and the truth was that lately he had been reminiscing on these events.  Mortal life is kind to humans for them to be blissfully unaware and carefree of these harsh realities, he internally commented.

  He still put your analysis into thought, though.

  “I am haunted, indeed.  I have been attempting to come to terms with my troubled past, just as you advised me only a few weeks ago.  I have tried to follow your guidance, and although they resurface what I have been trying to repress, I believe I am coming to peace with what happened.”

  You grinned.  “That is very good to hear, Mr. Zhongli.  I believe you are currently making good progress when it comes to moving on.  Just remember that it is okay to remember your sorrow.  Let your emotions pass through you instead of repressing them or rushing to move on.  It is okay to take your time and let the thoughts bubble inside of you for awhile.”

  He closed his eyes as you continued, letting your advice seep in.  You continued. “Imagine the stillness of the sea.  Many creatures and lost remnants take their place in the depths of the waters, but on the surface we see constantly moving yet serene waves wash over what is hidden below.  Your memories are there to stay, Mr. Zhongli.  But your present self, the surface of the water, can peacefully coexist with whatever is hiding deep within.  Let these thoughts weigh you down momentarily, but rest assured, you will find balance and acceptance in due time.”

  His eyes fluttered open as he reflected over your words.  You always seemed to know what to say.  “Your words have truly resonated with me, [Y/N].  And you are absolutely correct.  I have been fighting these memories to avoid the pain, but it had not dawned on me that sorrow is... what I am meant to feel, not push away.  I suppose your advice has put my mind at a bit more ease, and I suppose I am focusing too much on when I will be able to move on rather than allowing my thoughts to coexist for a moment.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” you grinned with the relief that washed over his face.

  “Shall we move on?” he offered.

  You got to work on the last segment of the reading.  If manifesting the other images didn’t take long enough, reading one’s future always took the longest.  Interpreting an event that hasn’t happened yet always made you a bit nervous with your words.  You never wanted to let a client down with an inaccurate reading.

  On the contrary, this reading, despite taking quite awhile to appear on the surface on the table, was very clear.

  “That is undoubtedly an image of me,” your eyes glazed over the facial features of the person in the manifestation.  “I apologize for the delay, Mr. Zhongli, I must have accidentally let my thoughts seep into yours–“

  “Do not fret, I believe this is accurate,” he interrupted.  “Keep going.”

  Your perplexed expression remained as you continued the reading.  “I am admittedly stumped.  There is nothing left in this image.  I suppose it is simply me standing in what looks like some ruins.  I am holding a staff, or some kind of long object.”  You paused to think out loud.  “Why am I in your reading?  What could this possibly mean?”

  Mr. Zhongli chuckled as you thought out loud.  “Perhaps this is a good time to tell you why you are in my thoughts.”

  “I’d love to hear it, I have never appeared in someone’s reading in my last decade and a half of experience.  This is quite unique.”

  He folded his hands in his lap, “For some reason, I have had this strange vision of training you.  I’m not sure why, since you don’t seem like the fighting type, but there is some voice inside me that is telling me you are destined for something great and i need to take some part in it.  What do you think, now that you see this vision as well?”

  Your eyebrows rose in shock.  “Training me?  I guess this does relate to something I have been pondering as of late.  I do not want to lay out my troubles on you though, my job is to interpret your life, not mine.”

  “Our lives have clearly intertwined in this vision,” he insisted, “Please do not hold back for my sake. I have the time.”

  You thought for a moment.  How could you form the words without seeming too selfish? How could you maintain professionalism by talking about your personal problems?

  “I am not the fighting type, Mr. Zhongli.  Though, lately I have been quite depressed about the fact that I am not doing as much with my vision as other vision holders are.  My life is uninteresting.  The truth is that I am a simple fortune teller that plays with rocks.  I hope you can understand why I am failing to interpret this reading,” you apologized. “It’s because this doesn’t seem characteristic of me at all.  And with all due respect, after giving you readings for years, I would have never guessed you were versed in combat to train me!”

  He chuckled.  “I respectfully disagree.  To tell you the truth, your talents surpass the abilities of many other vision holders.  Not everyone can read thoughts or tell the future.  Now that I mention it, I know of one talented astrologist in Mondstadt, but think about that.  You are one in hundreds of thousands in Teyvat,” he reassured.  “You did not receive your vision for no reason and I truly believe you are destined for something big.  I regret not being able to realize this before.”

  “How are you so sure of this?  I would love to believe you, but I’m afraid I am not destined for much, really.  Again, I am simply a fortune teller.  What could I possibly do for Liyue other than read some rocks?”

  He sighed and connected his palms with yours, interrupting the reading and wiping the manifestation off the table.  The hovering crystals dropped onto the surface, making you gasp at the sudden sound.

  “I am not who you think I am,” his amber eyes finally met yours for the first time this evening, which sent a chill down your spine.  “Promise me you will not fret, for what I am about to show you may shock you.”

  “What do you mean?  What are you doing, Mr. Zhongli?” you slightly panicked as he firmly grasped your hands.

  Suddenly, the room was engulfed in golden light that emitted from the seat across from you.  Scattered, distorted images of a mystical dragon, a devastating war, and seven seats in Celestia flashed across your eyes as you stared at the beams of light.  Death seemed to swallow you, but not take you.  The baskets of crystals around the room shook with the surge of energy.  The world seemed to destroy itself then remake itself over and over again within fleeting moments.  These thousands of years of memories made your body tremble.  It all happened within fleeting moments, and after a few seconds of your senses being overwhelmed, you finally pulled yourself together and connected the dots.

  His expanded knowledge of Liyue’s history.  The sudden gift of your vision immediately after your aunt passed.  Grieving his losses and having flooded thoughts of war and death.  Offering combat training.  Remembering your favorites the same way he would remember Liyue’s customs and traditions.  His glowing amber eyes alone.

  Mr. Zhongli was the God of Contracts and overseer of Liyue.  Rex Lapis, a being that lived for millennia, sat in the seat across from you. He had been posing as a mere mortal for years, taking readings as if he were any normal customer. The realization shook you to your core as you sat there bewildered, grateful, and horrified at the same time.

  He let go of your hands after seeing that the information successfully processed in your mind.  He saw something in you that was yet to be awakened, where the sky was the limit under your own expectations.  This daydream of his was no simple vision – it was a calling.  Internally, whether you agreed to it or not, he vowed that he would not leave your life until your true destiny was fulfilled.

  He would see this vow fulfilled by offering you a contract that would change the course of your life forever.

[sineala]

Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you  would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good. 

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference. 

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

[itsclydebitches]

About Bakugo, I actually think his original characterization is partly why his arc doesn't work for me: it seems like his contempt for others and desire to hurt them is innate, because he was already insulting and humiliating Deku for fun when they were in kindergarden, and at this age I'm not sure it makes sense to blame the adults around him for this behavior. This is also why I don't buy the "childhood friends" narrative, even before the infamous river scene Bakugo was toxic to Deku.

Hard agree, anon. I'm willing to give some wiggle room to the "Bakugo had a messy childhood and that's why he's like this" argument just because I'm not caught up (and thus might be missing some flashbacks/revelations), no one's life is ever perfect, and there's a subjective line between what we read as innocuous tropes vs. realistic traumas (example: is his mom hitting him something we take seriously, or just classic anime "comedy"?), but honestly I'm... not persuaded by that stance. Largely due to what you've said about this contempt being around since the very beginning. Bakugo's cruelty is the introduction to the entire series, the very first thing we see:

First, they're young here. Maybe not kindergarten young, but as we see in the above narration, it's at age four that Bakugo acquired his "I'm the best" thinking (more on that in a second). They're kids. This is not something that developed slowly over the years until Bakugo crossed some kind of line, he's been like this since the very start. Since a kid is capable of forming thoughts, opinions, and making decisions: like attacking another. In what way does this establish them as friends? Izuku literally shaking as he tries to protect another kid Bakugo is has hurt? Bakugo calling him worthless? Gleefully attacking and punching Izuku in the face? They were never friends! Izuku followed Bakugo around because he was paid some kind of attention by him and Bakugo poisoned the well — no one else in class will befriend Izuku. We see this both by the two willing to help beat him up here and, later, when Izuku says he wants to got to U.A. the entire class laughs at both the idea and Bakugo blowing up his desk in response. The bullying is the only kind of "friendship" Izuku has, so he embraces it with a smile and a nickname. Meanwhile, Bakugo allows Izuku to tag along because he makes him feel good in comparison. All Bakugo needs for an ego boost is to look at Izuku. He's the useless, quirkless nobody whose name can be read as "Deku." What's not to like? Izuku makes Bakugo feel good because Bakugo will always come out on top — always win — when pit against him. Did they have a few good moments gushing over All Might? Yeah, but anyone who has been bullied knows that it's not a clear cut "They were consistently awful every second of every day." Sometimes, those moments of pretend or conditional friendship make everything worse.

(As a side note, I keep hearing the more intense fans of Bakugo saying that those who criticize him identify with Izuku "too much" and it's like... yes? He's the protagonist. You're supposed to identify with him. To say nothing of the question of why you'd include such an explicit bullying subplot — arguably at the heart of the narrative in regards to characterization — if you didn't want readers who had experienced bullying to relate to this story. So it's all about victims like Izuku, you're allowed to care, just don't care in a way that holds Bakugo responsible?)

"But Izuku cares about Bakugo. He tried to help him out of the river." Yeah, because Izuku cares about everyone. Overlooking his warped idea of what friendship is due to having no one but Bakugo, Izuku is the kind of person who is going to extend his hand to anyone who needs it, just like All Might would. His extreme compassion and lack of other friends is not good proof that he cares for Bakugo in any true, healthy fashion, let alone that Bakugo cares for him.

As for when this all started, yeah, it was when they were even younger than in the scene above. Toddlers when Bakugo realized he had a strong quirk and Izuku was told he had none. Bakugo's reaction to these events — deciding he's better than everyone else and that justifies harming those "lesser" than him — is instantaneous. That desire was there all along. He just needed an excuse to act on it. After the conversations about the adults' influence on him, I went back to the anime scenes of Bakugo showing his quirk to his class and it's... pretty normal? I mean yes, there's praise, but in what world wouldn't there be praise? A bunch of other kids are going to ooh and ahh over mini explosions and the two teachers, unless they're entirely heartless, are going to tell this kid that he'll indeed make a wonderful hero someday. Those are standard responses for very young kids who aren't going to understand something like, "That is a powerful quirk and you could be a great hero... just don't let that potential go to your head!" There's nothing in those scenes that imply an excess of praise, at least so much that it would totally warp a kid's perspective of others to the extent Bakugo has going on. If I recall correctly, Bakugo's parents are quite disappointed in his behavior, but that never had an impact on him. And as I mentioned previously, we have incredibly talented characters like Momo (getting into U.A. on recommendation), people like Ida who come from families with other heroes they want to impress, Todoroki dealing with a crazy legacy to live up to, tied up in his abuse... yet none of them turned out like Bakugo. All of that didn't kill their compassion, but adults telling Bakugo he has a strong quirk made him into this person? Bakugo wanted to be that person, right from the start.

Honestly, I think a lot of fans latched onto Bakugo — which is awesome! — but didn't want to admit how horrible he actually is. So they took moments largely out of context and repeated them enough until they became fandom staples. Bakugo and Izuku were close childhood friends who just had a falling out they need to come back from. Bakugo was only like this because the adults in his life drove him to that behavior. Izuku loves Bakugo because he can see how good he is, deep down inside, and definitely not because he's been stuck with him since they were toddlers, unable to escape him even at U.A. It's a very sanitized look at their relationship, embraced because fans want them to be friends or lovers. Which is fine! God knows I'm into a ton of "problematic" ships, I just like acknowledging that they're problematic, not trying to sweeten the situation because fandoms have made others feel guilty for liking anything that's not squeaky clean and pure. Bakugo tormented Izuku for their entire childhood. He encouraged him to commit suicide. He tried to keep him from achieving his dream, both by undermining his confidence and outright threatening him (remember burning his shoulder?). He then reworked that obsession when they both got into U.A., trying to prove Izuku's uselessness, failing, and continually struggling with the thought that he's actually a great hero. And it's like... why do I care? This guy is a horrible person, he's been a horrible person since he was a kid, and his greatest challenge for more than half the story is acknowledging that other people aren't worthless trash. His improvement still hasn't gotten him to the standard of an average person, let alone a hero. If Bakugo were a villain, great, or if the story was going to really highlight the corruption of the hero career as a whole (we take anyone with powerful quirks, no matter how awful they are), great, but as a main character hero whose behavior is supposedly just a cover for a fantastic guy, please overlook everything he does and assume he's worthy of your respect anyway? Ehhh. Why do I care about him as a good guy when there are characters like Ida and Uraraka I could stan? To be clear, I'm not saying other fans can't enjoy whatever characters they enjoy, just that from a storytelling perspective I think it's a failure to introduce Bakugo as such an extreme, make him one of the heroes, give him such a selfish struggle, and then expect a lot of the audience to care. Bakugo either needed to be more balanced from the start — regular flaws instead of such an intense adoration for cruelty from the age of four — or the story needed to unpack his behavior in a way it never bothered to.