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got-into-worm-by-mistake · 3 months

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Agitation 3.12 Live Reactions

(This is me, writing reactions as I read, because why the fuck not. They're not complete, mature thoughts taken after I sit back and evaluate what I've read. Consider them as such)

“Falsified records,” Tattletale grinned.

I do love just how deep the hypocrisy of "New Wave Means Accountability" actually goes.

“We know this story already,” Glory Girl replied, her tone just a touch testy. Whatever Tattletale was doing, I sensed it was giving us more control over the situation. I commented, “This is new to me. I’m sort of intrigued.”

Character: "I know all this already"

Protagonist: "Well, I don't, and the readers need to know, so why not keep going?"

“It’s not the man that would bother her so much. It’s the knowing. Every hour of every day after hearing me say his name, she would wonder. She’s terrified she’ll start second guessing every part of herself, wondering if she inherited it from him, or if she was that way out of an unconscious desire to not be him. Knowing as much as she does already keeps her awake some nights, but knowing his name, knowing who he is and what he did? For the rest of her life, she would compare herself to him. Isn’t that right, Amy?” “Shut up. Just… shut up,” Panacea retorted, her voice thick with emotion.

Okay, seriously, Tattletale, do you really feel no guilt about this? You aren't actually a soulless monster or anything.

I get I'm just unreasonably partisan towards Amy, but JESUS FUCK I really hate Tattletale for all this. It's just... so fucking cruel.

I saw a flicker of doubt cross Glory Girl’s face.

She's probably thinking about the beating guys into pulp thing.

“Very principled. Very self-involved too, that you think the secret and the consequences have to do with you and your overzealous nature. They don’t. They have to do with her.” Tattletale directed the laser pointer at Panacea’s forehead, “You won’t be tickled pink, either, but the aftermath would be hers to deal with. Humiliation, shame, heartbreak.”

And if Lisa did say it and did ruin Amy's life, she'd just go 'Look What You Made Me Do."

Ugh, I don't think I'm ever gonna like Lisa. It's not really reasonable, but who cares. Yes, villain protagonists and all, but like... just the cavalier willingness to just... destroy people.

Fuck you, Tattle-bitch.

Panacea abruptly tore out of my grip, so violently I had to pull the knife away to keep her from cutting her own throat against it.

I wouldn't be surprised if on a very tiny level Amy was like 'if this gets out my life is ruined so if she does cut my throat who cares?' Because she couldn't know that Taylor was going to pull her knife back.

“Nobody fucks with my family!” she shouted, and her power cranked out full-bore. My knees turned to jelly and my brain just gave up on rational thought.

That aura really is nucking futs.

“I’m going to pull in every favor I’m owed, and put myself in debt with the local D.A. and whoever else I have to, to get you both sent to the Birdcage,”

Okay, so... Vicky? What the ABSOLUTE fuck?

A prison without wardens. No communication with the outside world. No escapes yet, which is pretty amazing considering it houses all of the worst and most powerful villains we’ve been able to capture. We don’t even know for sure if anyone’s alive inside there. It’s just a bucket where we dump scum like you, so we never have to worry about you again.”

oooh! Worldbuilding!

Also, such a wonderful idea for a prison! No issues with a black box like that at all! /s

“And no contact with the outside world means you don’t go fucking talking about whatever Amy wants to keep private. I trust my sister, I trust she has a reason for keeping it to herself.”

I've said it before - Vicky really was Amy's number one fan, the person who trusted and believed in her the most and nope I'm not crying about what happens between them what Amy does to her, to *them* not at all

“Idiots,” Glory Girl’s muffled voice came from the midst of the cloud of insects, “I’m invincible.” Tattletale used her good arm to prop herself up, groaning, “First of all, I warned you about calling me stupid. Second, no, you’re not invincible. Not exactly.”

Does Earth Bet not have an equivalent of the Evil Overlord's List?

Well, probably not, but like - Alexandria Package or not, hero or not, Vicky, Vicky, I love you, but the minute you say 'I'm Invincible' is the minute you get your ass handed to you, you get that right?

“She’s not really invincible. That’s just an idea she likes to put in people’s heads. She has a forcefield around her entire body, but it shorts out whenever she takes a good hit, comes back online a few seconds later. I knew when I saw she had dust on her costume. Dust that her forcefield would keep off her. Fuck, this hurts.”

The illusion of perfection, invincibility, flawlessness. Really is a whole package for her.

Another reason to remember Carol sucks as a mom.

The fight outside the bank was still going our way. Only Aegis was still in action, and he was hemmed in by the three dogs and Regent’s borrowed laser cannon.

What happened in the interval? Because Vicky was implying things were turning the Wards way when she came in. Though that could have just been posturing.

“It was Glory Girl on the roof,”

Glory Girl, on the Roof, With the Aura. That's whodunnit in Clue.

We’d done it. I’d done it. We’d escaped without killing anyone. The only ones who’d really been hurt at all had been the Wards, Glory Girl and Panacea, and that would be fixed when Panacea came to, for sure. Any property damage had largely been the fault of the Wards and Glory Girl.

Alec did fire the laser into the building a couple of times, don't forget that. But overall, a fair point. Reminds me of that Powerpuff Girls episode where they move to Citisville and destroy a multimillion dollar bridge to stop bank robbers who had like, a few ten thousand or something.

And how the fuck did that come back to my mind? I was like 7 when I saw that?!

“No injuries or deaths for us, for the heroes or for the bystanders,” she confirmed. “Then it’s a good day,” I said. “A very good day,” she agreed.

A good way to ease Taylor into all this (had there been a major injury or a death, even on the Wards side, I'm not sure Taylor would have been able to rationalize that yet). And ease the readers. Sure, we were warned what this would be, and yet, people still want to root for their MC, so we've got to be eased into it, into villain Taylor.

#Amy Dallon #Victoria Dallon #Worm #Wormblr #Lisa Wilbourn #Anti-Tattletale #Kylia Reads Worm #Agitation 3.12

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monkeymindscream · 2 months

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Character breakdown: my main girl Krang Two.

How I feel about this character:

If she came and killed me I'd use my dying breath to thank her.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Just two at present, one's a crossover dreamed up while talking to Wig, the other has been slowly gas station-hotdog-rotating in my mind for the last week or so.

First, Ch'rell from the '03 series:

Because listen to me: Two would beat the SHIT outta this guy. Mr. Big-Bad-"I AM THE ONE TRUE SHREDDER" over here talks a huge game (not without merit, mind you! He's very formidable, especially within his own canon. Even more so when you consider that, according to the wiki, he's supposedly only nine inches tall). But nothing I saw in the '03 series would suggest to me that he'd be able to do absolutely anything against a being that could survive getting a hole burned clean through her face. And then impaled with metal support beams. And then getting a wrecking ball dropped on her. Even in his full Shredder get-up, Two could and would take him apart piece by piece if she so chose.

Now: Imagine that she didn't choose to. Imagine she found his attempts to be threatening/attempt to fight her cute. Imagine she decides she's keeping this one. I implore you, imagine this chihuahua of a space-squid realizing he is, in fact, no match for Two, not even in her ballpark, realizing she could wreck his shit if she wanted, and then realizing he kind of likes that.

Can you imagine the emotional fallout on Ch'rell's part. He'd rapidfire through the five stages of grief in five seconds and then blue-screen before he could process "acceptance." The ERROR.exe messages his brain would have to sift through to get up and running again would be insurmountable. It'd be so fun. I'm obsessed.

And then the second that I've basically been microwaving in my head: Ms. April O'Neil.

Obviously, insert a series of events that lets them move past the "hey, we tried to kill each other!" aspect, but just try to tell me it wouldn't be a blast to watch their personalities play off each other. Or - and I'm admittedly getting a little sappy here - how satisfying it would be to see Two's murderous tendencies turn protective? Someone's messing with April (already a bad idea, considering the family she's canonically been adopted into/her own record of kickassery), but then they're quickly made to regret their choices. Even if I doubt they'd be allowed to regret them for long.

(Also, frankly, I can't pass up a good Enemies to Lovers ship. They're basically each others' nemeses throughout the film, or at leas April becomes Two's. April's the one who burns out Two's eye, and the one who basically defeated her. That's the good shit.)

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Her brothers!! They are a SET how dare canon separate them!!

My unpopular opinion about this character:

For as much as Splintz was like "you have no character development!" I'd like to point something out: Her character archetype is the crazy, violent "all I want to do is kill!" villain, right? Think back to every other instance you've seen this type of character. If they're working for another character, who for some reason or another doesn't want them to behave violently (or at least not as violently as they'd like to be), what's their relationship usually look like? Typically pretty vitriolic, right? The Crazy-Violent character usually resents the character holding them back?

Two wanted to rip out Raph's tongue for the insult of speaking to her. She stops and backs down the second Uno enter the room, and instead immediately moves to do a little bow to him. Which, okay, the Krang are the bad guys after all, and Uno's clearly the strongest of the lot. Maybe she just fears him more than she wants to kill, and doesn't press her luck?

Except we have literally zero evidence towards that. Not only does Uno never so much as raise his voice at her (at either of his siblings, actually), but whenever she speaks to him, she's actually incredibly polite. (Again, to both her brothers - "if you two don't mind" as she excuses herself to viciously eviscerate things.)

Anyway, put it all together and I just don't feel that "psycho-killer" really encompasses all Two is. She's got layers! (Even if it's only one layer, and that layer is literally just "she likes/respects these other two guys.")

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

I really just would've like more time with her, y'know? Like I know the movie could only be so long, and it was definitely more important to spend the time they had on our protagonists, but I really really would've liked to just watch her do more of her thing. Interact with her brothers a bit more, y'know?

#muttering about turtles #krangcanons #rottmnt

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secretgamergirl · 1 year

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All the seriously queer stuff in the back half of Sailor Moon

In case it wasn't obvious when I released a little mini-RPG a few months ago where you basically play as the villains, I've been gradually making my way through the entire run of Sailor Moon for the past year or so. Specifically I'm watching the 2014 Viz dub that covers all 200 episodes, trying to be as faithful as they can with it. It's been a really interesting experience, since I absolutely watched the old DiC dub back in the day, saw a fansub of one of the movies around the same time, and heard plenty of things about the missing seasons (particularly the infamous "cousins" thing from the Cloverway dub) over the years, and now I have all the context. And the context gets really shockingly overtly queer, turns out!

So first, let's just all get on the same page with the English language localizations of Sailor Moon over the years. Back in the 90s, Sailor Moon aired… well everywhere, with the English language version being a dub from DiC, which I will go to my grave defending as probably the best dub of anything I can think of. Fantastic casting all around, changes to the soundtrack that were actually for the better (keeping all the melodies but recording new versions that… aren't optimized to sound show-perfect when recreated by the cheapest sound generators one can shove in a toy, plus some original songs shoved into a few episodes). They did make some edits/cuts, but pretty minor ones, especially compared to the complete reworkings most anime of the era went through when coming to American TV, and I'm still not used to Luna not being prissy and British here.

That dub only lasted up through the second season. Past that, there was a dub of seasons 3 and 4 from Cloverway, which had some really questionable performances, and is where the infamous "they're cousins" bit came in. This also aired on TV in some places, but didn't have nearly the same omnipresent distribution as the DiC seasons (… and now I'm feeling old as I ponder whether to explain how local TV affiliates did their own thing back in the broadcast days). Then in the early 2000s there was a DVD release from Pioneer with cut/uncut versions of everything, apparently, which may or may not have recycled those dubs. I don't really have the energy to track that down, specifically. Anyway all the rights expired, gathered dust forever, then Viz picked it up and did this new faithful localization, and it took me about a decade to spot it on a streaming service.

So we've got 5 seasons, 200 episodes total, and a hell of a lot of formulaic structuring here. Every season (or half a season) we've got some main villain with an evil plan we may or may not get any details on, and some small number of underlings who then take their 5-10 episode long turns pursuing their goal in a way that inevitably generates monsters of the week, and meanwhile every season we have another conflict on the good guy side where someone is trying to locate some special person and ignoring the 50 or so obvious signs which main cast member it is while the audience gets frustrated. Oh and each individual episode has the same rigid structure of everyone getting caught up in some wacky teen trend, then there's a monster, they transform and fight a bit to no real end, then Sailor Moon gets around to using a finisher because that's literally the only thing actually capable of ending a fight. Honestly it's less "formulaic TV writing" and more like some sort of daily meditation. No way in hell I'd be able to sit through all of it if I had to look at the screen the whole time. This is background viewing while I work. Oh and I'm assuming everyone has at least enough passing familiarity to understand that if I say the name of a planet I'm talking about a teenage girl who's the reincarnation of some sorta magical girl/sentai squad member.

Season 1 has pretty gay vibes in places, but MOSTLY there's plausible deniability for all of it. We spend about half the season just establishing the characters of Moon Mercury and Mars, then quickly bringing in Jupiter and playing it up like a big shocking reveal for Venus. There's also a bunch of relationship drama between Moon, Tuxedo Mask, and the guy who runs the local arcade that she has a crush on and spends a while thinking is actually Tuxedo Mask instead of his actual identity of uh… a college-aged guy we're saying is the destined love interest of this 14-year old girl he's frankly pretty abusive towards. So, a lot of straight nonsense there. Meanwhile the evil queen's got these 4 generals, two of them are plainly dating, and no matter how you slice it, that's pretty overtly queer, but there's a valid argument to have over how we actually should slice it.

I was aware at the time that the DiC dub just ran with Zoicite here being a woman, making this a straight relationship, and I kinda figured they did a bit of tweaking and editing to hide that this was actually one of those bishonen types who were popular at the time who happened to be gay. Honestly though, watching it through a modern lens, it is REALLY hard to not just see a woman here, even when we're throwing he/him pronouns around. Like, if I'm handling a new dub, I'm just going to say Zoicite is a trans girl, who I'm at least headcanoning as being out for years, on HRT, and at that point where she can put on a suit designed for a man and nah that's a woman wearing a suit. Kinda just wraps around and makes me appreciate the old dub's handling more than the new one.

Season 2 (or R) doesn't really give us anything to work with, if I'm honest. There's probably some gals-being-pals energy amongst the main cast here and there. That's kind of always low-key present, especially with Jupiter, who has the whole big tough girl who wears long skirts thing sorta gay energy, and I want to say she ends up going to a dance with Mercury somewhere early on because one of them can't find a date otherwise.

But, we've got this filler arc with two dark elves in a tree who just kinda both hit on everyone of the opposite gender while the main cast sits in a holding pattern, then we get a proper villain squad not really getting enough spotlight time to have much of anything going on, and this whole weird thing where Moon and Mask's annoying toddler comes back from the future to… brainwash Moon's parents into thinking she's their daughter, and then she gets turned into an evil adult, and there's this whole bit about her having some sort of grim reaper/time guardian as a nanny (this is Pluto, the outer planets really have different things going on)… but again, mostly straight/cis flavored nonsense.

Then suddenly here comes season 3 (or S, pronounced "Super" which makes things real confusing), from a director who would later go on to create Utena, and in addition to just being the single best season of the series for a number of other reasons, everyone is canonically into girls now! It's shockingly overt about establishing that too, and reiterating the point several times.

It all gets started with Uranus and Neptune showing up. We kind of have this three faction conflict this season, where there's a proper main villain and squad of monster making minions, but then there's also this overtly queer power couple whose goal is basically to check out the "pure hearts" monsters of the week keep ripping out of people because they need to check them for these three macguffins they need to… reform the holy grail of all things to give to their leader they're too oblivious to know is actually Moon.

More importantly though, aside from making it abundantly clear that these two are banging every night, they have this very open relationship where Neptune is more than cool with Uranus hooking up with any given girl she's inclined to, and/or grabbing gals for threeways. And like, this isn't me taking a broad interpretation of things, it's weird how directly they just come out and say this. The other thing we have going on is that Uranus is just, like, the butchest of the butch.

Literally everyone just assumes she's a guy when they first meet, and quite a few people go into serious denial when corrected on the matter. And she kinda tends to react to all the misgendering with the sort of bemused nonchalance that makes it pretty easy to read her as actually being nonbinary. I swear there's an episode where she clarifies she's not a guy with that particular sort of emphasis suggesting that doesn't necessarily narrow things down to just "girl," too. And apparently Crystal actually DOES bite the bullet and flat out state she's nonbinary (or at least "both male and female"). That's cool, but there is no way in hell I'm going to sit through Crystal.

Anyway, point is, everybody wants to hook up with Uranus. Everyone. There's a whole episode where the power couple straight up takes Jupiter out on a date, the rest start gossiping about her being out on a date with two girls, everyone starts off shocked, then someone clarifies who it's with and everyone's like "oh, well yeah then I'd take them up on that too," with a little extra push back from Mars before she gets called out as trying to stay in the closet when she's clearly got a stash of photos of hot girls in suits.

This of course really makes me wonder about that Cloverleaf dub and why they went with that whole "cousins" thing to avoid addressing the overt queerness here, instead of taking the same approach DiC did of just making Uranus a guy. This would technically introduce the problem of having a guy in a miniskirt for fight scenes, but, eh, that'd be easier to edit around than you'd think. Uranus generally enters a fight scene pre-transformed firing an attack off from offscreen, arguing with the core cast a little, and leaving. Attacks are stock animation you can drop in anywhere, so that much is easy enough to chop out or replace with Neptune's attack. I don't know how one would even begin to cut around all the overt gay stuff though.

Nothing especially queer going on with the evil side of things. The villains are kind of amazing but too career oriented for relationships. I guess just for the sake of giving full context for the seasons most people haven't seen and fill in the obvious hole in the roster I can mention the eventual deal that the little goth girl Chibi-Usa spends the season hanging out with turns out to be the main villain's daughter, Sailor Saturn, and kind of the antichrist? Like I said, the outer planets aren't just cast expansions, they really have their own stuff going on. She also dies and reincarnates, doing so the long way where she sits the next season out being just a baby, which once again begs the question of whether when everyone dies at the end of the first season they just kinda magically come back to life with missing memories just as a temporary thing for a filler arc to play with or they really dd all reincarnate and have new families a decade and change later. Weird that that never got firmly pinned down.

Anyway though season 4 (AKA Super S, which is pronounced "Supers" and now you see why I prefer just numbers)… sucks and you should skip it. No sense of stakes, no real character work, non-threatening villain, shockingly dull monster designs, no outer planets, an ending that just drags on for what feels like forever and has no payoff. The only things it has in its favor are the inherent absurdity that people are wondering if Chibi-Usa is like full-on dating Pegasus (yes, the horse) and Fish's Eye.

So we have two different miniboss squads this season, the latter of which is a quartet of permanent-child acrobats working for the impressively titled if boring in practice Dead Moon Circus, preceded by three animals-turned-into-humans-by-a-witch with a weird What-you-originally-were's Eye naming scheme. Two of them are just dull slutty guys, but Fish's Eye is plainly and overtly a trans woman, and gets something of an arc about being willing to give up her own humanity for the greater good. It's a shame she's stuck in the practically unwatchable season, but at least she's on the REALLY short list of major villains who gets to have a happy ending. Usually even when someone has a nice redemption arc with the power of love and friendship they still get bumped off by another villain.

Different localizations have done different things with her. Some go "crossdressing gay guy" some just say she's a woman and leave her transness out of it. The 2014 localizaton is pretty unambiguous about though, so, that's really nice. Casting could be better, but still.

Then finally we come to season 5 (Sailor Stars), which I think is even more queer than season 3 was, which is really saying something, and was also directed by someone who would go on to helm another girly show with a serious case of The Genders, Ouran High School Host Club. Structurally it's a bit weird, because the first few episodes are just straight up taking a mulligan on the terrible finale of season 4, this time with the outers in (Saturn hyper-ages back to her standard 10 or whatever and gets a bunch of inexplicable knowledge and memories which is cool but never really paid off), the main villain doing something, and as a shocking rarity for the series, this whole mini-arc where characters are broken into pairs of one inner one outer and get to bounce off each other in a way the series frustratingly usually never does.

More importantly though, at least for this post's purposes, basically the first scene of the season is Uranus and Neptune having a flirty exchange ending with something along the lines of "let's save the pillow talk for when we're actually in bed together later tonight," which sort of sets the tone for just how blatantly these two are talking about their extremely active sex life in no uncertain terms, out in public. Some of the other characters are a bit weirded out by their complete lack of filter, but hey whatever.

The real proper start of the season though has our core cast finally starting high school, once again reminding us that everyone is at LEAST 4 years younger than everything about their designs, interests, and handling of responsibilities would indicate. This also reminds us how deeply creepy the Moon/Tuxedo Mask relationship is, but fortunately he hops a plain to America and is straight up out this season, and as an added bonus Chibi-Moon finally goes back to the future. Before you get too excited she IS shortly replaced with an even younger, barely verbal new mystery gremlin called Chibi-Chibi whose existence nobody can account for, but at least she's actually cute and not akin to the baby from Dinosaurs. More importantly though, as the girls enter high school they end up in a class with the titular Sailor Stars, AKA The Three Lights, AKA Fighter Maker and Healer, a popular boy band who are also a new mysterious set of Sailors with what I assume are intentionally quite confusing gender shenanigans in play.

Normally, they are hot lanky boys, boastful about their masculinity to the point of it bordering on misogyny, but also super super femme, with earings, hair down to their ankles, and very noticeably female VAs in both Japanese and English. Then when there's a fight they're very plainly hot lanky girls in bikinis and one of them has an attack shouting "Star Gentle Uterus!" before hitting a monster with a glob of liquid to a disgusted reaction. And their transformation sequences (and bikinis, and some shirtless scenes) make it absolutely crystal clear that yeah there is some magical reconfiguring of their bodies when making the switch. The show pointedly avoids elaborating on what the deal is past that in terms of which they form they started with/feel more comfortable in/why they switch it up/etc. which would normally frustrate me as one of those Schroedinger's Queer Rep situations, but I very much get the impression that we're going for intentional confusion and ambiguity in service to a general message that if you're into someone you shouldn't have hangups about their gender or what it says about your own sexuality and just kind of accept your feelings and them as a person and I am pretty OK with that.

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The cast is too. Mercury Mars Jupiter Venus and for good measure Luna all kinda spent the entire season fixating on how to hook up with any/all of The Three Lights, meanwhile at basically any moment there isn't a fight scene or some plot exposition happening, Fighter is VERY ACTIVELY pursuing Moon in a sexual fashion, with pretty overtly stated tension before damn near every commercial break over whether this is going to be the scene where Sailor Moon gets absolutely railed by this maybe-genderfluid pop star from another world. And I have to just say as a brief aside that while we obviously never go there, I kinda wish we did? Tuxedo Mask is WAY too old to be dating someone Moon's age, even if we do the thing where we just add 4 to everyone's stated age. Plus he kinda treats her like absolute garbage for the whole show, and even when they're in a more wholesome mode the whole thing feels toxic and messed up. Meanwhile Fighter here is literally the same age, clearly into her, and beyond the one character flaw, an actual decent person. Though again, really damn forward. Still beats the hell out of the guy in college dating a middle schooler, and kinda flirting with his own prepubescent future-daughter.

There's also this huge confrontational thing between Fighter and Uranus, where it's slightly unclear if Uranus is being protective of Moon, violently jealous because Neptune is totally and surprisingly overtly open to hooking up with anyone from this boy band too, or just kinda trying to defend her position as the hot androgynous badass who swept into town with the intent of hooking up with every girl in the zip code eventually. Meanwhile Fighter thinks Uranus is a kind of toxic macho dude and really questions the whole "she's not a guy" thing, which is, you know, interesting. Pluto never really weighs in on this because… Pluto kinda lives outside of time and space and has maybe 8 minutes of real screen time in the entirety of the show.

Past that, we've got a bunch of other gay stuff too! We're back to cranking the general queer energy of the core cast up past the point of plausible deniability with regards to each other and a random girl trying to pass along a love letter with some confusion as to who it's for. It also bears mention that when the full deal of the new characters and their gender flipping comes to light, Jupiter makes an active point of making it clear that she is still 100% down and like, hey, I already knew you were the least conflicted of the bunch about how bi you all are, but I appreciate the active refutation of transphobia is still cool. We've got an honestly adorable pair of villains where one is frankly such a bimbo she's completely incapable of doing the evil general thing on her own or preparing her own food, and her hyper-competent girlfriend helping her out while also having to come up with cover stories because they're supposed to be pitted against each other. They'd definitely get a nice happy ending in one of the even numbered seasons, especially once it's made clear that they're very much being coerced into the evil stuff/taking things down from the inside, but… yeah this season ends up going super dark.

I don't want to totally get into how absolutely pitch dark the big 8-part series finale gets and spoil the hell out of it since if it wasn't clear, the odd numbered seasons are all really good stuff you should watch on your own, plus this one has a bunch of genuine twists, but I have to get into some of it in my mission of explaining how gay it all is. Consider yourself warned.

As happens kind of a lot in Sailor Moon finales, the bulk of the season 1 cast gets killed off once the main villain steps in to start getting her hands dirty, but here it's early enough on in the arc for Moon to really process it and give it the weight that maybe it'll actually stick this time. In particular of course she's worked up about Tuxedo Mask turning out to have died off camera at the start of the season (the impression to that point being that he's too distracted with a trip to America to check his messages or maybe just straight up ghosted her), but then almost as broken up over losing Mars, because yeah, those two in particular actually end up with a surprising amount of low key romantic tension between them by the end of things.

Then once it's time to get the outer planets off the table, all four of them end up in a no-win situation against the villain, who does that villain thing of of offering them a choice of just being killed and having their souls ripped out to be made into new stars (this is kind of her whole thing, see), OR if anyone's up for it, they can switch sides, still get their souls ripped out to be made into stars, but given funky magic bracelets that allow them to stay alive, just, you know, corrupted by evil and acting as her new villain squad. It's actually established right before the last one gets vaporized that all her original henchgals are in fact the Sailors of other planets she forced into the same deal just before the last one gets vaporized for failure, making it that much tragic in retrospect that the cute competence-disparity couple didn't make it.

Anyway, Uranus and Neptune actually take the deal. Like, zero hesitation. Part of it is eventually explained as Uranus having enough faith that she's too into her girlfriend to be fully corrupted and might get a chance to sucker punch the villain with her own soul extractors (which she IS it just doesn't work), and failing that Moon'll probably swing some kinda deus machina (which is an admittedly safe bet, honestly). But another part of it really is just "yeah screw it, if I still get to be with my girlfriend I'll take being evil over being dead" and they really do go through with it and promptly murder their oldest friend and a very young girl. Don't let anyone tell you Sailor Moon is one of those power of love and friendship always triumphs sorta shows. I don't know that the power of love and friendship even ties the scoreboard if we tally things up over the whole series. Oh and the final final final showdown has a nude Sailor Moon with angel wings just trying to hug it out with the main villain, which I guess could also maybe be read as a bit queer.

So yeah. Sailor Moon. When you don't have a puritanical edit, it's queer as hell. Everyone's bi or non-binary-and-sapphic. Several different flavors of trans rep. Goes out on a note of not getting hung up on gender. All of this in a roughly 30 year old series now, aimed at young impressionable girls. … actually for that matter it's also a show aimed at girls with really powerfully horny monster girl designs all over the place. Possibly relevant.

Oh yeah, and maybe consider throwing me some money via Patreon? I can't actually cover next month's rent as things stand.

#sailor moon #queer #gay #lesbian #trans #nonbinary #genderfluid #positive representation #for real though it's really messed up that Sailor Aluminum Siren and Sailor Iron Crow in particular stay dead they deserved better #Youtube

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pacificwaternymph · 2 years

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Alright, I'm back :D

So, I don't really remember what I wanted to ask you about the au, so I may do it later. But, so, I like your superhero au so much! I would consume lots of content of it, really, because when I'm telling you it is good, as in my opinion, it is really good and I would love to see how it goes and the future with Scott and Jimmy living together!

Oh, and btw, remember I said I already send an ask to you before? I don't know if you remember it, but it was about your Kid Xornoth au! I think it had around 13 chapters and I found you by that fanfic, I came to tumblr after seeing the notes and send you an ask. I told you that I was gonna still read it I think, no matter how long it takes, and guess what? Months after I still do and I am still here, checking on the fanfic and reading it. Now, I am not only gonna do that with the Kid Xornoth au, but the Superhero au, since it is on my mental check list of checking every once in awhile to see if it has been updated. It is not very present right now, but soon it will be.

Oh! And just a question and some things that I think would be interesting, just to know if you're ever gonna write in the future? Pacifica (sorry if I said the wrong name, I am not trusting my brain 100% on this one) discovering Scott's Identity because that would be interesting to read. But to be honest, I just think their whole dynamic in this is really, really interesting. Just, maybe like, if you think more about it, they're best friends and then this best friend is just a super villain who may do these things but at the same time... yeah.

And another one I think, would be just life with Scott and Jimmi living together after, there is lots of things interesting in it because there is so many points to point out, like I've seen in the tag with you saying, him and his morality.

And oh, I remembered some questions! :)

Does Lizzie get to know about Scott or see or meet him? And if so, I wonder how maybe she would react to knowing Smajor and Scott are the same person. It is also interesting because Scott is practically in their life now, so Scott and Lizzie meeting whithout the secret identities, if they do ender knowing each other whithout tem, would be. Scott is practically more exposed to others whithout his mask too. And it ends up possibly exposing his life more too. We also can't forget Joel, he is part of all of that too, right? (Scott's reaction to Lizzie would also be interesting, I think)

And then another point I found wich could be really interesting is: Scott's management with anger. You said he deals with emotions more by the side of anger, different of Jimmy who does it by sadness (which I think seeing they show emotions like that is also an interesting thing. Living with someone is very different, and you get to know, see and understand them better. Plus, if they ever end up sharing a bed, I wanna see Jimmy's or Scott experience. Just because Scott has a wing and all of that, so imagine, imagine what it could be if you wanted it to). And then if I record, you also said that he would get angry and maybe go destroy a building? So like, imagine that is the way he would do and go with, it is practically a coping mechanism. So what does he do now after all of that, since he isn't getting out, I suppose? And is living with Jimmy, yeah? I just wonder how he cope or do now. (If you want to have a look into my mind, a sneak peak, if you will, looking through a gap, the things that go in there, it came with the incredible solution of Scott building something like a house, a city or anything like that and proceeding to destroy it. Maybe it is made of ice, my mind came up with Lego, and then he just destroys it and Jimmy sees it, just this feral man beating up cities made of lego) (if it ends up being too cute he can't destroy it. Tbh that's a pretty good way of putting Scott liking to build, but that could also be with ice before. Congratulations, brain!)

Another thing my brain came up with one day, I do not remember much, but is Scott management with ice. Is it good? And just imagine one day he getting overwhelmed and ended up freezing or almost freezing something, like maybe a pillow. He is in there, maybe sleeping, laying, maybe having a nightmare, not doing well, who know, and then boom there it is, at least a little bit coat of ice. Tho I wonder if the ice would work as if like consuming, for example, a pot plant, or just letting ice go around. Maybe the ice just goes getting worse until it is all consumed.

(Other thing, the fights. Like, just the topic of their fights before, practically how Jimmy got hurt in it, too. Scott has hurt him to the point of scars, right? Oh well. Plus, I wonder how Jimmy gets seeing the ice, if he has some trauma. It can also connect to the idea on top at some point, or maybe even just seeing the ice looking kinda threatening, like it looked before. Wonder if he had bad experiences with it too?)

Now to a more fluffy thing, just Jimmy seeing Scott and processing that, yes, this is the boy he liked, and then there was him trying to talk with him in the café, and he is also that Supervillain. (I find it funny how he said Scott is beautiful and how he could see how people would find Smajor pretty)

Plus, did Jimmy ever get to know that Scott knew his identity at some point? And I imagine Jimmy getting visual confirmation of Smajor being Scott. I think the wings..?

And now a last question, do you have any plans for Gem? Just curious if she has anything in this au and etc

Now, this is too long, I think. I got a lot inside of my head, and one thing about me is that I normally come with lots of ideas that just results in more, and I just put them all in here. I probably should maybe then like, not send it on anon, but I don't think I'm gonna do it so I'm gonna come up with a name, at least for now :)

-Moon anon

(Hope it's not taken)

Aww thank you!!!

Moon anon is NOT taken, so welcome!!

I've talked about Pacifica and Scott more in depth here, but long story short she does in fact know his identity, and has for a while! She considered abandoning him, but she's too much of a bleeding heart for that and cares about her friends too much to let him go. I might end up writing a couple pieces more focused on her in the future, such as her scar story (talked about here) and her and Scott's friendship, but that will come after the main story is complete.

I'm glad you like her so much haha. I was hesitant to include her in this AU since the whole OC in "canon" thing, but the feedback has been really positive, which I'm glad for!

I do intend to make a one shot book filled with small scenes from Jimmy and Scott's domestic life together including the first official date, the first wing preen (which I also talked about) and so on. However, that will once again most likely be after the main story is finished. I've got a lot of material to work with haha.

Scott can hide his wings, so he can be big spoon OR little spoon. Jimmy likes being little spoon though because he likes being surrounded by Scott's feathers. They're like a blanket.

Jimmy does introduce Scott to Lizzie. Scott is... incredibly intimidated by her outside of costume because it's no longer an even playing field. Because even without powers she could kick his ass. They hide Scott's identity from her while they're trying to figure out whether Scott is going to continue on with being a super, since being a villain isn't really an option he's willing to consider anymore. But she finds out when Scott shows up as the Elven king for the first time. At that point, she's pretty quick to accept it on the grounds that it makes Jimmy happy.

Yeah, Scott has a tendency of pushing down his emotions to the point where they explode... typically in a very destructive way. Jimmy and Lizzie go away for one weekend to meet up with a hero organization in another city and come back to find the front page news story of Scott blowing up an abandoned warehouse with the help of Faerie.

"WHAT? IT WAS ABANDONED!"

They do have to work on that emotional repression problem, as well as finding healthier outlets for Scott. I like your idea, I think he would enjoy creating things. After spending so long with Xornoth, who encouraged destruction and chaos, being able to just make something new without the fear of having to destroy it would be so healing for his inner child.

He usually has pretty good control over his powers, however, as with most abilities, it is HEAVILY linked to his emotions. So yes, when he gets overwhelmed, or when he has a nightmare, he will sometimes freeze the bedsheets, frost the windows, or make it snow in the room. It's not just negative emotions though. Sometimes, when Jimmy does something to make him particular flustered, he'll freeze whatever he's holding, or ice will start leaking out from his feet like Sapphire from Steven Universe.

Jimmy has more trauma linked to fire than ice, but there are moments that make him flinch ever so slightly. This is usually rectified with a liberal application of cuddles and affection, though, so they're both okay.

Oh yeah. There's just kind of a moment where it hits him that both of his crushes are the same person, and he gets INCREDIBLY flustered. He will learn that Scott knew his identity once the two of them move in, because Scott will ask if he really didn't know who he was.

Jimmy figures it out because... well, without giving too much away, Scott goes missing at the same time Smajor does, and Pacifica completely flips out, confronting Jimmy and demanding to know if he did something to Scott. It is the one and ONLY time she has ever behaved so aggressively and confidently towards someone. Even Scott has never heard her raise her voice before, but when he goes missing... all hell breaks loose.

And I have talked about Gem's part in the superhero role before. I don't know if I'll ever write it out though. Maybe after I'm done with the flower husbands portion of it?

Like I said, there's a lot of material to work with here.

Don't worry! My brain is also kind of all over the place. But I will take any excuse to talk about my AUs, so if anything, you did me a favor with all of your thoughts!!

#moon anon #superhero au

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linkspooky · 3 years

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The Hands that Will Save the League

In chapter 321 we're reminded once again of the reoccurring motif of hands reaching out to save someone in need, especially with the double spread close-up of Iida's hands reaching for Deku's hands. I couldn't help but think how this could apply to the league of villains. Hand symbolism has always been associated with Shigaraki (duh), both in the fact that his hands destroy everything they touched, and also his reason for being a villain stems from the fact that not a single hand reached out to save him that day. However, we've also had another character in the league with hands drawn up close and personal reaching out to save the others: spinner.

1. Just an Empty Cosplayer

I'm not the first one to make this observation. @codenamesazanka pointed this out long before me, especially in regards to Spinner's importance to the league, but basically, Spinner's role is that despite being a teenage mutant ninja turtle he's also the everyman of the league. He's not connected to the main conflict of the story by bloodline or legacy, the way Shigaraki, Dabi, and Compress are. He's not someone with an incredibly powerful or deviant quirk like Twice or Toga. He is a victim, but he doesn't have the elaborate villain backstories of Twice, Shigaraki, Dabi, and Toga.

He literally is just some guy with a lizard quirk. He has the weakest quirk in the league and the weakest reason for why he joined the league. Spinner faces societal abuse because of his quirk, but what spurred him to action was seeing Stain appear on TV, and a desire to be a less empty person than he was before. Spinner was pushed, he was rejected by society, but I would say as an inverse to the league who are driven by extraordinary circumstances, Spinner is basically an every man who drives himself to keep up with the rest of the league despite seemingly lacking everything "special" they have.

And I believe this every man quality, and this drive Spinner has is what's going to be the key to piecing the league back together. It's because Spinner sees himself as so far behind the rest of the league, and so much less special than they are, that he's driven to try to understand them.

Not only is Spinner a member who has tried to understand every member of the league in one way or another, Spinner is also someone who similiar to Sihgaraki foils every single character in the league despite just being an everyman.

2. Spinner and Toga

While Spinner and Toga may not have the same level of development to their interactions as Twice and Toga, Spinner reaches out to her once but not twice, and there are a lot of parallels you can draw between the characters.

Both Spinner and Toga joined the league for the same reason, an empty admiration for Stain, without really caring about Stain's ideals. Toga admires Stain because he's covered in blood and fighting for something and she wants to become more like the people she admires, Spinner because he saw himself as pathetic for hiding in his room all day and when he saw Stain taking a stand trying to change the whole world on his own he wanted to become that way too. Which means both of them have a tendency to want to become more like the people they admire, because their own sense of personal identity is so weak.

Himiko and Spinner both define themselves by the way society has rejected them. Spinner has internalized the idea that he's an empty person who can't accomplish anything on his own, every terrible thing other people said about him due to his heteromorph quirk he accepted it. At the same time, Toga was somebody born with a "dangerous quirk" who was told to repress it and then did that living under a fake identity as a normal school girl that would please her parents and the people around her for as long as she could. Both Toga and Spinner are taught by the society around them to be self-loathing and to repress themselves because of their quirks. They're also characters who are both defined by a desire for release.

When Spinner asks if Toga still wants to be in the league because of Stain and she responds, Now I wanna become everyone I love. Spinner comments, "You're so free."

Spinner and Toga both claim they joined the league because of love for another person, they both loved and admired some aspect of Stain, but their real reason for joining, or at least the reason they stay is that deep down both of them desire the freedom to be themselves. Toga wrapping her desires up in language like love for other people, and wanting to become them, is because deep down she believes because of her quirk there's no one who would accept her for herself, as the normal girl she believes she is, no one will let her live as Toga thus she tries to become other people. It's the same for Spinner, who believes he can't be anything other than the Lizard Freak, so he too tries to dress himself up and become a Stain Cosplayer. It's only through the league's acceptance that Toga and Spinner slowly begin to learn that they are good enough on their own, just as themselves, and their priorities begin to shift.

3. Spinner and Twice

Twice and Spinner have several backstory parallels already. They are both characters affected by poverty, Spinner lived in a backwater town plagued by old views of heteromorph quirks, Twice lost his parents and began working to support himself at a young age before becoming homeless. Spinner and Twice were also both labeled in a way that stuck with them, after Twice got a criminal charge in an accident on his permanent record he couldn't find another job after being labeled deviant. Spinner was labeled as a deviant because of his quirk and the idea that he's a lizard freak has always stuck with him the same way that Twice has internalized the idea that "bad people don't get saved."

They also both chose to isolate themselves because of the circumstances they faced. Twice's first response to homelessness was to decide to never trust anybody but himself, and he became a criminal who pulled off heists with only clones of himself as team members until that stopped working for him. Spinner's response was also to shut himself away in his room and become a NEET. They both cut themselves off to the society that labeled them as unacceptable, but in the process they also cut themselves off from other people and became unable to trust others.

While they have major backstory parallels, I believe the greatest parallel between them is going to be that Spinner will inherit that role that Twice had for the league. While Shigaraki is the leader, Twice more than anybody else believed the League to be a family, and encouraged everyone to be friendly with one another.

It's Twice more than anyone else who emphasizes the bond of the league, that they're all strays, that they need to take care of each other and save each other. It's Twice who urges Shigaraki to save Giran because he's one of them. He makes the unspoken bond of the league as a group of miscreants into a spoken one, because Twice wants those things, he's well aware of the fact that he wants trust and acceptance and came to the league to find those things. This is the greatest thing that ties Spinner and Twice's characters together, because they both view themselves as worthless, they define themselves by how they help the other members of the league.

Twice's death so far isn't something that has been really capitalized on by the plot, Hawks has yet to face consequences, we haven't gotten to see much of the league's reaction because they were scattered soon afterwards. However, if Twice's death is going to cause development eventually I believe it will be in the vacuum in the league created now that Twice is gone. There is no longer someone who is urging all of them to be together. Twice's death causes most of the league to become less stable. Toga goes on a killing spree, Dabi attacks Hawks, Compress tries to kill himself in a heroic sacrifice, Shigaraki hasn't gotten the chance to react yet but he's also gotten worse considering he's currently possessed. You could even say that Twice's death has caused other characters to double down on their worst habits.

Dabi's worst habit is that he acts separately from the league and refuses to participate in the group dynamic, believing himself to be a solo avenger. Dabi not trusting or telling the league what he was planning on doing with Hawks, as a consequence of his decision to play solo avenger, caused Twice to trust Hawks which led to his death. Hawks was the one who killed him but Dabi played a part, and when Twice dies Dabi obviously reacts to it, but also his decision is to double down on his bad habit, insisting he's only using the league and he doesn't care about the rest of the group. Toga also doubles down on her bad habit, she runs away from the rest of the league and insists she's only doing this for the freedom to do whatever she pleases, not because you know Twice got killed right in front of her. Compress's arc is less pronounced, but he also does, in fact, try to kill himself in a grand heroic sacrifice for the rest of the league.

When twice dies the league begins to fall apart and everyone acts on their individual worst flaws, ignoring that they were always stronger together as a group. However, there is still one person who wanted the exact same thing Twice did, to be trusted, to belong to a group. This is most likely the role that Spinner is going to grow to, someone who is trusted by everyone in the group.

Notably, when Toga is about to run away it's Spinner who reminds her that the league is a place for them to come back to. Toga who was probably the closest to Twice and spiraling the worst because of his death, and Toga and Twice's friendship was the first time we really saw how much of a "bond" the league had formed with one another, because in the camp arc they barely cooperated, only begrudgingly. It's Spinner who who emphasizes that even though everyone in the league is doing this for individualism "doing what they want" that they are also together as a group. Spinner is set to inherit Twice's role as the heart, because one he tries to understand other people in the league making the effort to reach out, and two Spinner is aware of what he wants just like Twice he wants to be trusted by the rest of the group.

4. Spinner and Dabi

This one is a little bit harder because Dabi's character arc really hasn't started yet. We have just now gotten to the reveal of who he is and what his motivations are, after it being a mystery for so long. However unlike the rest of the league, we haven't really seen how Dabi has reacted and changed by becoming a part of the group. Even if his motivation isn't "I'm only using them" and deep down he really does care, I don't think he's even realized yet that he does care or that he's not just using them. Dabi still believes himself to be alone, and therefore he's still isolated from the rest of the league and flying his revenge quest solo even though he's really not.

In that case, the biggest parallel between Spinner and Dabi is that they both had to be won over by the league. They both joined because of admiration for Stain, probably because Dabi genuinely believed in Stain's ideals of taking down impure heroes because it fit his own agenda so well, whereas Spinner is a self-proclaimed empty cosplayer.

Spinner, however, has already gone through an arc where he was dissatisfied with his reasons for joining the league and didn't believe he belonged with the rest of the group. He didn't have anything to love like Toga. He didn't know yet he wanted friends he could trust like Twice already did. He doesn't have a strong backstory motivation like Compress, or Dabi or even knows what he wants out of society. However, the entirety of MVA is Spinner letting himself be changed because of his interaction with the group.

Spinner failed at life, his quirk is worthless and only good for sticking to walls. He also internalized the idea that he himself was a failure, and locked himself inside believing he couldn't accomplish anything on his own. Spinner says he has nothing he loves, and nothing he wants to do. Not only that he feels unloved and unwanted. However, Spinner finds something to love in Shigaraki, even if he can't find a strong sense of individualism and still believes himself to be worthless he becomes motivated to help others. Spinner, the most normal person in the group with the most worthless quirk, becomes the greatest help to Shigaraki, basically once he gets over himself and his preconceived notions of himself. Because, you don't actually have to be a special person or have a strong quirk to be a hero, you have to reach out a hand.

The same way Spinner was won over by the League, Dabi has yet to be won over. However, if that does happen, it's probably going to look like Spinner's arc. Dabi antagonizes Spinner a lot, but they actually have more in common than they do differences. They both have failure quirks, while Dabi has an overwhelming fire quirk he wasn't allowed to use, Spinner is literally just a gecko. They both also were labeled as disappointments and given up on, Enji gave up on Touya, Spinner never had any potential from the start and locked himself away in his room. However, their paths so far have been opposites, Spinner let Shigaraki reach him and became a part of the group, Dabi at every possible opportunity insists he's doing this all alone. He takes every chance he can to separate himself from others. If Dabi's arc is going to be a mirror to Shoto's arc eventually, then someone has to reach him and convince him he can't do this all on his own, and Dabi can only truly find himself when he's part of the group once more. After all, so far Dabi is the one most resistant to change. Toga's goal has changed, Shigaraki's changed, Spinner has changed, even Compress now admits that while they're just a gang of thieves that he cares more about everyone else's dreams than his own. Dabi is still nursing a ten-year grudge against Endeavor and doing everything he can to take him down on his own because he hasn't let the group in. And he won't improve or change until he does let others in.

5. Spinner and Shigaraki

I love Compress but I'm skipping over him because his arc hasn't been elaborated on yet. If you want a quick summary though, both Spinner and Compress didn't believe the group to be anything more than a gathering of selfish criminals, however, both of them changed because they wanted to see Shigaraki's dream come true. Not only was Shigaraki the one who inspired both of them to change, but also Compress is the one who first sees how close Spinner is to Shigaraki more than anyone else in the group was.

He also sacrifices himself BECAUSE he's come to realize that what he wants more than his own dreams is to see everyone else's dreams come true. I know Compress's backstory is rushed as all hell, but it almost... almost... works because Compress isn't actually doing this because he's Oji Harima's grandson. His motivation changed a long time ago, he just didn't realize it until he was about to lose the league.

There are a few more parallels, they're both dropouts. It's implied that Compress was literally just a retired and failed stage magician before he decided to become a villain. Hopefully we'll become more on that later because the idea of Compress sucking in showbiz so he decided to follow his grandfather's legacy is really awesome. Spinner was a Neet before he saw Stain on television. They also both have more minor quirks, Compress just shrinks people, Spinner sticks to things. They both also are characters who don't seem important at first, but consistently hover around in the background constantly making sure everyone in the group is okay. Compress calls to check up on people, he talks to Dabi a lot, he tries to keep up with everybody in a melee, it's the little things he does that make Compress same for Spinner. They're both cosplaying as legendary villains who are greater than they are, Stein is cosplaying his grandfather, Spinner is cosplaying Stain, but it's unknown whether Compress really cares that much about his grandfather's ideals, I think he cares about the league more. Compress and Spinner are also people who question and try to understand things, Compress lectures the kids that they had their ideals handed down to them for adult, Compress realizes Spinner's importance to Shigaraki before Spinner even did, Compress and Spinner also both try to understand other people's dreams because they're lacking in their own. Spinner doesn't even have a dream, but he's the one who listened to Shigaraki's dream first.

Now it's been directly said by canon that Spinner and Shigaraki's connection is the most developed, and they are the closest to one another. By developed I mean, it changed over time, when it started out they had almost nothing to do with one another. Spinner was just a rank and file league member that Shigaraki used on the hideout raid. They didn't even get a character introduction scene like Shigarki did with Dabi and Toga.

However, Spinner and Shigaraki's characters are extremely closely tied together. Shigaraki's like the main character of the league, his backstories parallel everyone else's, including the main character of the entire story Deku. He's the one who makes the plans, goes through training arcs, he's the one who the league unites around. However, Spinner actually has all of that too. I just spent a very long time showing how Spinner despite not having an overly complicated backstory has strong parallels to everyone in the league. If Shigaraki is the main character, then Spinner is the everyman / the perspective character, hence why he's the narrator of MVA. Shigaraki is a person of extraordinary circumstance, the symbol of society's oppression who everyone in the league deepy relates to because he's suffered the same way that they have and he accepts them. Whereas, Spinner has suffered because of Hero Society too, he's more like a normal guy who makes an effort to understand everyone around him.

However, Deku wasn't saved by his love interest, or even his childhood friend who is apparently his destined rival, he was saved by Iida trying his best to keep up with him.

Spinner and Shigaraki are both the emotional core of the league in different ways. The league all respects Shigaraki, they rally around his ideas, his dreams are what inspire everybody. However, more and more it's looking like Spinner, ordinary, average, Spinner is working to build emotional connections to everyone in a much more normal way. He talks to Toga and tries to understand her love. He even consoles Toga when twice is gone. He challenges Shigaraki directly to his face. Compress who is always sort of watching the league in the background and checking up on them in little ways notices how hard that Spinner is trying to take care of Shigaraki.

Shigaraki accepts people at their worst and gives them a place to belong, but I think by Spinner's efforts to get to know and understand others, we as an audience are shown how humanizing of a presence that Spinner is on everyone else. Spinner, just being a normal guy, brings out the fact that the rest of the league despite their extraordinary circumstances are deep down just normal people to, who want to be loved normally, and live normally. Spinner literally wakes up Shigaraki, because he remembered the one time that he opened up in front of all of them, and cares enough to try to understand Shigaraki's hurt feelings and what he cares about.

If anything from the last arc in the manga, we're shown at great length, how understanding, reaching out, it all takes effort and it's not as flashy as defeating a villain or rescuing someone from a natural disaster.

Spinner is so important to Shigaraki, because while Shigaraki has given everyone in the group a place where they can be individuals, Shigaraki hasn't realized he himself can be an individual yet. He ultimately, shares the same character flaw as Deku. It's because he's decided that he's going to carry out his dreams for the sake of the league and to create a better future for them, that Shigaraki no longer cares what happens to himself, or about his own future. Everyone talks about Dabi's suicidal nature, but this is something that Shigaraki is challenged on over and over again. What are your motivations. What are your reasons. What do you want to accomplish. He always responds with nothing. There's nothing that he wants, there's nothing worth living for, he only wants to destroy and make a better world for the people who are around him. Shigaraki is the most thoroughly dehumanized character, to the point where he just straight up accepts "god of destruction" because that is at least an identity. Shigaraki needs Spinner and his normalizing influence, because Shigaraki can't see himself as a normal person.

Shigaraki shares the same character flaw as Deku, he does everything for the sake of others, with no regard to himself, which leads to extreme bouts of self-harming and fighting alone. Shigaraki faced off against Endeavor, and basically all the heroes alone even though he did call for backup. However, even before that Shigaraki made the decision to get dangerous risky surgery that would be like hell, because he believed deep down he wasn't good enough alone. Shigaraki just does not care about himself and is unable to see himself as an individual, which is exactly why he needs someone to care for him and see him that way.

Shigaraki's greatest challenge to date is that he's been dehumanized so thoroughly, and lost sight of himself to the point where he's lost even his own body autonomy. When Shigaraki is battling for possession of his body as AFO attempts to take total control and make him into a symbol again, denying him his personhood, we're set up directly with Spinner being the one who reminds us that Shigaraki is just a person, who likes video games, and gets along with his friends. It's Spinner who notices right away that AFO is different from Shigaraki and challenges him the same way that he challenged Shigaraki directly in the My VIllain Academia arc. This is all set up most likely, for Spinner being the one to reach out a hand the same way IIDA did, because what Shigaraki needs the most right now, is not a hero who will save him, but rather a normal person who will understand him and remind him that deep down he was just a normal kid too before all of this happened. What Shigaraki is most in need of is a hand that will reach out to him, and Spinner has already done this once putting Nana's hand back on his face when he couldn't wake up, but what he's failed to realize is that it's his own scaly lizard hands that should be doing the reaching out.

#mha meta #lov meta #league of villains #league of villains meta #spinner #shigaraki #toga himiko #higuchi iguchi #shigaraki tomura #dabi #touya todoroki #twice #jin bubaigawara #compress

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xxisxxisxxis · 5 years

Text

Gateway Drug | Part Thirty-Nine

Table of Content or Part Thirty-Eight

Read here on wattpad

Word count: 4K

Warning(s): Explicit language, Drug abuse

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PMRC DEMANDS CENSORSHIP, DEVELOPES A LIST OF THE "FILTHY 15."

1. Prince, "Darling Nikki", flagged for sex/masturbation

2. Sheena Easton, "Sugar Walls", flagged for sex

3. Judas Priest, "Eat Me Alive", flagged for Sex/Violence

4. Vanity, "Strap On Robbie Baby", flagged for sex

5. Mötley Crüe, "Bastard", flagged for violence/language

6. AC/DC, "Let Me Put My Love Into You", flagged for sex

7. Twisted Sister, "We're Not Gonna Take It", flagged for violence

8. Madonna, "Dress You Up", flagged for sex

9. W.A.S.P., "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)", flagged for sex/language/violence

10. Def Leppard, "High 'n' Dry (Saturday Night)", flagged for drug/alcohol use

11. Mercyful Fate, "Into the Coven", flagged for occult themes

12. Black Sabbath, "Trashed", flagged for drug/alcohol use

13. Mary Jane Girls, "In My House", flagged for sex

14. Venom, "Possessed", flagged for occult themes

15. Cyndi Lauper, "She Bop", flagged for sex/masturbation

Tipper freaking Gore, the wife of the senator at the time, Al Gore, and bunch of other political housewives got their panties in a twist in 1985 and decided to demand artists either censor themselves when creating music, leaving no room for even the slightest hint at sex, drugs, alcohol, satanism, occultism, violence, language, or anything else almost every artist uses one of to express themselves in their music.

When musicians across the board practically told Tipper, the other wives, and everyone else that called themselves a member of the Parents Music Resource Center, to go fuck themselves, they decided to slap censorship stickers on records that contained any of the mentioned offenses.

Even John Denver got hit with censorship for his song "Rocky Mountain High."

It didn't shock me when my mother was photographed with Tipper after attending one of the hearings.

Mötley was invited to a hearing to defend their content and speak their opinions with a handful of others being censored, but they never batted an eye when the news first came out because they knew having an "X" or "XX" or "XXX" rating for violence, language, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. would only make kids buy the record more. And it did.

"It's bullshit." I state, tossing the news paper article aside.

"It's politics." Fred replies taking a bite of his bagel.

"These womens' sex lives must be atrocious or else they'd be spending more time on their husbands' dicks and less time on these people's." I motion to the article with the list on it.

"Babe--"

"If these polotical lunatics spent as much energy taking care of their own damn kids, as they're spending attempting to villainize artists who're expressing themselves, they would realize that it's not Mötley Crüe's or anyone else's job to raise their children. If you're so scared of your kids trying all this stuff, have a conversation with them about it and tell them about it, honestly, instead of relying on the music they listen to, to properly teach them about it. And at the end of the day, they're gonna buy the record whether their parents want them to or not, and they're going to try all kinds of stuff, no matter who talks to them about it, if they really want to try it." I continue my rant, Fred, Doc, Nikki, Vince, Tommy and Mick all looking at me, waiting for me to be done.

"Are you done, Sister Christian?" Vince asks me and I glare at him.

"Viv, it's publicity. Who gives a fuck?" Nikki asks me. "The kids are gonna go for the nastiest rated album anyway. The more 'X's the better."

"Yeah, but the audacity of--" Tommy's teaching his hand around my shoulder and covering my mouth before I can continue and I look at him where he's beside me.

"I've got a headache. I'm hungover, Viv. I love you, but I don't need to hear a Vivian Bitch Fit right now." Tommy explains to me.

I just look at him like he's lost his mind for shutting me up, and he cautiously moves his hand away.

I give him a ten second reprieve before shouting, at the top of my lungs:

"The audacity of these people pisses me off!" I finish what I was going to say and Tommy and Nikki are both jumping out of their seats a little at the sudden shouting, covering their ears, wincing, before Nikki's looking at me, sharply.

I roll my eyes at him and he grabs roughly at my thigh under the table, uncomfortably sinking the tips of his fingers into my flesh.

Ignoring him, I take a sip of my coffee, as he glances around and stands up.

"I gotta piss." He tells us, but I know why he's going to the bathroom.

I wait for him to disappear past the "Men's Room" sign in the Denny's before I get up and follow after him.

I walk in, catching the tail end of him snorting a line, and I cross my arms, waiting outside of the stall he's in.

I hear the familiar "click" of a needle being uncapped.

"Nikki. It's 10:00 in the morning." I tell him.

"Fuck off."

"Nikki."

"Fuck off."

"Nikk--"

"Fuck off."

"Make me."

I wait for him to come out of the stall and do what I dared him to, but I just hear the sound of him sighing out in relief as opiate hits his system, drowning out whatever argument we were about to get into.

When he didn't want to hear me complain or try to talk him out of stuff, he would run to his favorite room in his mind: his heroin den.

If we were at home, he'd lock himself in the closet, with me begging him to come out.

He'd open the door for me right before passing out so he could at least say he tried.

If we were in public or at a hotel, he'd lock himself in the bathroom and do the same thing.

The sound of vomit smattering the floor has me wincing as he mumbles "fuck it" and opens the stall door, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Don't fuckin' give me that hit dog look." He tells me, moving past me to the sink, splashing some water on his face, smearing his already smeared eyeliner that makes him look like a raccoon that's been digging around in a dumpster.

"I'm not giving you any kind of look." I mumble, forcing him to look at me as I wet a paper towel and wipe his black-coated eyelids clean.

The smell of his vomit infiltrates my nostrils and I throw the paper towel away before pulling at his wrist to leave.

Being that he's perfected his magical potion, he isn't too jittery from the coke or nodding off from the heroin.

He's just quiet.

We leave Denny's and head straight to the airport to head back home, being they wrapped up the last show of the U.S. tour last night.

Next is Europe.

Once we land in L.A., Christmas music blares through the speakers of the airport and reminds me that it's already nearing the end of December.

Apparently Vince is reading my mind because he mumbles, "apparently time flies when you're in hell."

Amen, Vince. A-fucking-men.

The second Nikki and I get into the limo to take us to our house, he's busting out a vile of blow that's nearly empty.

"Fuck, I gotta get Jason over, asap." He tells himself and I rub my lips together.

"You know, we haven't even bought a Christmas tree since we've been married." I tell him, trying to distract myself from his previous comment.

"Yeah." He says, basically blowing me off and I reach the toe of my sneaker out and nudge him on the kneecap as he gets the tip of our house key and scoops some from the bindle, snorting a bump.

"Babe." I continue to tap his kneecap until he's got his hand around my ankle, loosely, stopping me.

"What, Viv?"

"What did I just say?" I ask him, crossing my arms.

He just blinks at me, smirking a little.

"I'll gladly tell you when I finish this." He holds the bindle up.

I lean forward and take it from him, holding it hostage when he attempts to take it.

"You'll get it back when I get a Christmas tree." I tell him, raising my brows.

"Are you fucking me right now?" He asks, chuckling, not thinking I'm serious.

"No...but now that you mention it, I want that, too. Then you can get it back." I add and he smirks.

By the time we get to a department store, get my clothes back on and his pants zipped back up, grab an artificial tree, lights and ornaments, and finally get to the house, it's nearly one in the morning.

"Okay, Saint Vivian, gimme my shit back." Nikki states, carrying the boxed up tree while I carry the bags of lights and ornaments.

"Put the tree up so I can decorate it and I will." I reply.

"That wasn't apart of the deal." He argues, his tone still light.

"Well now it is." I reply.

"That's cheating."

"I made the deal. I make the rules." I shrug.

"You're making me work for something that's already mine." His free hand pulls at my waist, turning me to him and I grin mischievously as he shakes his head a little. "That's it, Sixx." He tells me before crouching enough to wrap his arm around my thighs and throw me over his shoulder.

I laugh manically, partially out of fear that he'll drop me, but also because this is the Nikki I fell in love with.

Playful, lighthearted, aggravating but meaning well, Nikki.

He manages to dig his house key out again and unlock the door before stepping in and turning on the lights in the foyer.

"Baby, put the bags down for now." He tells me and I drop them as carefully as I can while he puts the box the tree is in, down.

He's walking us to the living room, laughing when he pretends to trip and I gasp, digging my nails into him like a cat holding onto its owner to avoid a bathtub full of water.

When he flips the next light on, he stops immediately.

My mind is in shambles for a moment as I try to put together why so many people are in my house once Nikki's nearly dropping me out of shock, not even hearing them all scream out, "surprise!"

Steven and Tansy are at the forefront of people as the explosion of glitter, a mixture of neon and pastel decor, an abundance of various alcohol options, scantily clad women, a handful of Nikki's friends he hangs out with outside of Mötley Crüe, and a big ass, two-tier cake with every curse word known to man written in pristine is cursive font on the sides of it is soaked in by mine and Nikki's eyes.

Steven's wearing a beer hat, smiling widely, while Tansy looks like a sallow Barbie doll, but she's still forcing out a grin for the sake of us, and everyone's waiting for mine and Nikki's reactions.

Nikki and I exchange looks, confused as ever.

"Why is it a surprise?" I finally ask, deciding it's best if I ask instead of Nikki, because all he wanted to do was come in, shoot up, have a few lines, fuck around with me some more, and pass out.

But instead he's being forced to socialize in his own house.

His safe place has been infested.

Steven and Tansy seem horrified that we don't understand the reason for the apparent party.

"...Because it's your birthday?" Tansy reminds me.

"And Nikki's was a couple weeks ago, but he wasn't here to celebrate it." Steven adds, his smile is long gone, his eyes focused on Nikki who looks like he could kill someone right now.

"Oh, right!" I pretend that I know that it's my birthday today, and everyone seems to let out a breath of relief. "It's been a long day." I explain, stepping to the two blondes, hugging them both tightly. "Thank you so much."

While everyone else starts going on with the party, music starting to blare throughout the house on the stereo speakers, cracking open beer, whiskey, and vodka, as girls strip down to bikinis to go swimming, Nikki's still standing at the door, the look on his face is a mixture or pissed off, disappointed, and "I need another dose."

"Babe." I say gently to grab his attention, hazel eyes looking to me as a jaw tightens. "C'mon, just for a couple hours."

"I'll be right back." He tells me, shoving through people to get to our bedroom.

I brush off his attitude the second I feel hands on my shoulders, squeezing them a little and I snap around to meet Duff's chest.

"Hey, birthday girl." He greets me cooly, and I'm hugging him before I can stop myself.

Something wet falls on my hand when I pull away, and just as I'm about to look around for whatever it was, his fingers that are sticking out of leather gloves that just cover his palms, are brushing at my face.

"What's up?" He asks me, furrowing his brows a little.

What is up? Why the hell are you crying?

"I-I'm happy." Is all I can say, chuckling, wiping more tears.

He knew it was bullshit. I was happy, sure. Happy to get the fuck off the road. Happy to get a break from Nikki and Tommy harassing Vince. Happy to get away from Doc's constant pressing for more tour dates to milk as much money as possible. Happy to be able to hangout with balls of optimism and sunshine like Duff and Steven and have Slash show me his pet snakes like he'd been meaning to, and for Izzy to tell me what music I should have been listening to, and for Axl to go on and on about Tansy but then completely deny he was interested in her because he was too much of a dork to just ask her out.

"I'll be right back, alright?" I tell Duff, looking around to see Nikki's nowhere to be seen.

"Okay." He tells me, swigging from a bottle of vodka.

I thread through people who tell me "happy birthday" and I thank each of them, genuinely, before opening up the bedroom door, and shutting it behind me, stepping to our bathroom.

"Baby?" I ask, seeing Nikki standing at the mirror, teasing his hair some more. "I had no idea they would do this." I tell him.

"I had no fucking idea it was even your birthday, apparently." He grumbles. "Shows how much I care, right? Husband of the year. Something else to be hung over my head anytime we get into a fight."

"Hey, I didn't even know it was my birthday. The guys didn't either. You've all been busy and working hard and tired. I'm not going to hold this over you, Nikki." I assure him, fixing a piece of his hair for him.

I didn't realize his pride was so hurt by the gesture Steven and Tansy made.

I found out later it was Duff who brought up the idea to Tansy, who recruited the Ken to her Barbie: Steven, to help her orchestrate it.

That was another indication to Nikki that he needed to slow down, forgetting his own wife's birthday, but he didn't listen to it a bit.

"I really don't want to do this shit, Vivian." He tells me, rubbing his eyes.

"And I do?"

"They're your friends." He sighs.

"What's mine is your's." I say as I kiss his cheek and he groans.

"You owe me." He tells me as I step out of the bathroom. "Matter of fact, I want my coke back."

"Um, I can't hear you, babe. I'm sure I will when these people leave." I tell him.

"Viv--"

"I-I think you're breaking up, I'll talk to you later." I keep going, walking to the bedroom door.

"I'll break something up when these people get the fuck outta my house!" He calls back and I shut the door behind me.

The night goes on as people play beer pong on the dining room table, dance on whatever and whoever they can, snort lines off any flat surface available, and chug whatever is in their cups, drowning pain and becoming oblivious.

I hate to break it to Nikki, but I don't want these people driving in their condition, so they'll have to stay here tonight or call cabs.

After a few hours, people are either pairing off or grouping off to go get laid, passed out, or too high to function properly and are just chilling out.

Steven's observing his work, drinking from his beer cans perched in his hat when I approach him, looking for Duff.

"Have you seen Duff?" I say over the music and he nods.

"Yeah, I think he's by the pool." He tells me.

"The pool?"

"Yep."

I furrow my brows, stepping to the French doors leading outside, seeing Duff and Tansy sitting down on the pool deck, talking

"Is he pissed?" She asks me, referring to Nikki, after I sit next to her.

"I would say go see for yourself but I don't want to toss you into the lion's den." I admit. "He hasn't come out all night."

"I'll go talk to him." She says. "If he's mean to me I'll just cry and make him feel bad like I do to Vince."

Duff and I exchange looks at her confident words before she's walking away in her neon pink bikini.

"Everyone calming down?" Duff asks in a slur, and I nod, glancing through the doors to look at the guests for a few seconds. "How does it feel to be twenty-two?" He adds, rubbing his nose and I raise my brows a little, glancing at the bottle of vodka he's been working on all night.

"It's weird." I mumble. "I was a senior in high school five years ago." The reality hits me and he raises his brows. "God, I'm old."

"You were seventeen your senior year?"

"In pre-k my teacher decided I was too smart for the class and vouched for me to be moved up to kindergarten, and it didn't take my kindergarten teacher long to convince the principle of the elementary school to let me start in the first grade since they hadn't really started in on their curriculum for the year." I explain.

"I couldn't even meet the basic requirements of alternative school." He tells me.

"You're a freaking genius, you just didn't apply yourself." I tell him and he shrugs.

"I had more important things to get done.

"I guess you did." I agree, gently scoring the bottle of alcohol away from him.

"I know you're tired of me saying this, but, Viv, you gotta get back to dancing."

"Yeah?" I ask.

"Yeah. I mean, imagine me giving up music for someone I'm in a relationship with so I can hold their hand or fucking babysit them or whatever. I mean, sure it shows I love them a lot, but it would just make who ever I was with look like a fucking bitch. And I've talked to Nikki before and he told me he didn't want you to quit dance and he wanted you to go to school." He explains. "Why didn't you?"

"I had more important things to get done." I repeat him.

"I don't know if you're selfless sometimes, or just not thinking." He says, before his face suddenly falls. "I sound like an asshole right now, I'm sorry." He apologizes and I shake my head.

"I'm not upset, I know what you mean." I assure him.

"Okay." He rubs his eyes again like a sleepy child.

"Do you need me to help you to bed?" I offer and he waves his hand at me a couple times.

"No, no, I got it." He assures me, standing up.

He nearly falls over.

"Yeah, I'm sure you do." I comment, helping him inside as he apologizes.

"I'm sorry I'm being out of hand right now, Viv, I don't get like this every night." He tells me as I open our guest bedroom and thank God nobody's in here, although it's obvious someone has been screwed to oblivion on the bed.

I just throw the blanket on the edge of the bed over the mattress and help him lay down.

"Thank you." He says as I pull his boots off and set them nice and neat on the floor at the foot of his bed.

"You're welcome." I reply, setting the garbage can beside him incase he needs it. "Goodnight."

I'm about to leave, but his hand gently grasps at my hand, stopping me.

"What is it?" I ask him.

"I'm really glad we met and we're friends, Viv." He tells me, grasping my hand in his like I'm going to walk out anyway and not listen to what he's got to say.

"I am, too, Duff." I say back, smiling a little. "Sleep tight, okay?"

"Yeah." He nods his head.

"Alright, goodnight."

I go to kiss him "goodnight" on the cheek, but my entire system and body locks up the second he misreads my intentions, and kisses me.

This sounds so counteractive to who I am now and what I stand for currently, and it was ignorant of me to think such a way back then, when so many people close to me were heavily affected, some of them even dying, by drugs and alcohol...but I use to wish I liked alcohol or drugs, or even felt drawn to them.

By '87 I'd had several miscarriages, my marriage was hanging by a thread after only being married for four years, I was having an identity crisis and my entire world was seeming to fall apart and it became routine to buy a bottle of vodka or whiskey, or pills, or blow and just stare at it--trying to convince myself to go for it--for an hour before pouring it out or flushing it.

The people around me, which by that point was mainly Duff and his band, started to pick up on this struggle I had. And although they knew I had to be in some kind of extreme pain to be considering reaching such lows, they carried an "if you don't laugh about it, you'll cry" method of pulling me out of such spells.

Anytime we would be hanging out and I'd opt to try something they were doing, they would call it the "Golden Question Game" because the "Golden Question" was always "is Vivian actually gonna do it this time?" and they wouldn't argue with me about it or try to stop me because they knew the answer would always be "no" even if I didn't think it would be.

I even made the reckless suggestion to try heroin, and got as far as Izzy getting it in the syringe for me, trying to explain to me how to shoot it, how to angle it, how to know I'd hit a vein, with Steven, Slash and Duff all waiting to see if I was that desperate for an escape.

Like everything else I would think about doing, I just sat on the floor next to Izzy and stared at the golden liquid in the syringe and thought, "who the fuck are you to get pissed and angry at Nikki and Tansy for their addiction to this shit, and how it's destroying them, and then turn around and do it yourself?"

I shot it into the air away from me, handed the empty syringe back Izzy, thanked him for letting me waste his time and dose of smack, went to the bathroom with Duff at my heels, and cried.

I never went through with any of it because I knew I would never, ever, come back from it.

I would've drank myself to death or drugged myself past the point of no return and would have ended up a statistic.

I just needed a new escape because my original high became a heroin addict, and December 23, 1985, had me realizing more about Duff than what I had noticed before: Vodka was a hell of a lot easier to be around than heroin.

#nikki sixx #vince neil #tommy lee #mötley crüe #the dirt #gateway drug

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juicemitio · 5 years

Text

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight)

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window

#taz #taz graduation #taz amnesty #taz balance #taz commitment #taz dust #travis mceloy #clint mcelroy #mbmbam #mcelroys #also i left out the actual worldbuilding tips bc the workshop is something you pay for and it wouldnt be fair if they wanted to do it again

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amethystpath-writes · 5 years

Text

Prompt: Serum Injection

Fandom: Original

@badthingshappenbingo

This is a continuation because I quite liked the last one. Here's part one!

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Danielle groaned as she began to wake up. She didn't remember ever falling asleep the night before. What had happened the night before anyways?

Her eyes fluttered open finally and though the world was still an awakening blur, Danielle could tell this was not her base. The room looked a little odd; it was at an angle. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't standing or sitting down; the angle she was seeing wasn't coming from either of those positions.

She could feel an odd ache and slight sting around her ankles. And wrists. Even her neck felt that way.

Finally she thought to stretch. Maybe she wasn't lying down, or standing up, but whatever she was doing, stretching would take away the ache, yes? But it didn't. What little bit she was able to move her shoulders only hurt her more. It felt as if her skin was being pulled apart at her shoulder.

"Careful," piped a voice. It was a boy's voice certainly, but Danielle could hardly tell where it came from. It was muffled, robotic. "It hasn't healed all the way. We don't want that mark to be ruined; I would have to do it again. You didn't take it well the first time."

Danielle couldn't remember anything, and the more she tried, the more emptiness her mind conjured. It was like her brain was purposefully blocking it out.

She looked down as much as she could; something shined beneath her chin, but she paid no mind to it. She wanted to at least remember what she was wearing, but what she saw didn't help at all. She was in pajamas, but they weren't her own. Where in the hell was she? Why was she wearing someone else's clothes?

She began looking around the room. "Who are you? Where am I? What do you want?" She finally spotted it; a red blinking light on the center of the ceiling. A camera, she knew.

The voice didn't respond. He had to have known she had spoken. There was a camera for the gods' sakes! Maybe it didn't record audio.

"I'm sure you are wondering where you are," the boy's voice explored. "You won't like it very much, however you did make the decision to be here."

She chose to be restrained like this? No, she didn't think so. But then again, maybe she was saving someone. Was she finally sent out on a mission? It must have been an individual mission because none of her other teammates were here. Perhaps they were being held in a different room. Or, perhaps they were smart enough to avoid being caught.

Please tell me I didn't do this all on my own, she prayed. She couldn't have been that stupid, doing a mission all by herself. She had only juts learned to control her powers not all that long ago. She had just joined the team!

There was a sound like paper crunching. Danielle recognized it as the intercom at her school, her old school. She didn't go to school anymore after the accident. She couldn't ever show her face that openly again.

Danielle looked away quickly as more light flooded the room she was in. It was a door opening. When she was finally able to look back, she saw a sillouhette making its way into the room. It turned around, shutting the door and flipping a switch. Light flooded the room once again, causing Danielle to squint and turn her head away. She let her eyes get used to the light beneath her eyelids before she opened them.

The boy was looking down at the floor directly in front of her. She couldn't tell what he was looking at, but she heard him set something hard down at his side. He then began to set up a foldable chair; Danielle could only see the top half of it, just barely if she really strained herself to look.

The boy sat down, clearing out his throat, but he still wasn't looking at Danielle. He reached for something, the hard object, Danielle assumed. She heard a click and whatever thing she was being held captive against began groaning as her head was positioned over her feet. The table, or whatever it was was leaning forward, her face coming closer to the boy's face. He was still concealing it. Was he wearing a mask?

As the table continued to tilt, Danielle found a knot in her throat. The restraints weren't tight enough to keep her back against the wall. No, her body was suspended by the restraints now. The metal, or leather, or rope, or chain, was digging into her skin now.

She finally came face to face with the boy. Rather, she came face to mask. She could see his lios, and she even watched as they worked into a smile. The familiar click sounded and the machine of a sort stopped moving. She was forced to face this- this monster of a boy.

"You are stunning even in my pajamas." He brought a gloved hand up to touch Danielle's cheek. There was nowhere for her head to go where she could avoid his touch so she just accepted it with closed eyes and a skewered, angry face. They're his clothes?

"Why am I here? What do you want? Who are you?"

"Whoa there, Danny. Easy on the questions. You know the answers. You just need a little reminder." He ripped his mask off just as he did before. "If there were a fire in the room, it would be even more appropriate," he hummed. "Ah, well. You remember, yes?"

Of course she remembered, it all came back to her in a flash. She relived it all so quickly that it took her breath away. The masquerade, the speak of the accident, the metal pole, the fire, the strong arms... He branded her. He made her his own. He captured her and she didn't know how she would ever get out, not in this position. "It's you."

"Lucas Banton, in the flesh." He bowed his head. "Known as QuickSpirit in the human world." He held out a hand as an introduction before snatching it back. "Oh, right. I must have forgotten. Anyhow, I already know who you are, my little trophy!"

Danielle's response was to snap her head towards Lucas' hand, flashing her teeth, and trying to bite. His hand disappeared, reappearing at his side. "I. Am. Not. Your. Prize."

"Oh, but you are. You even agreed to it."

"I never agreed to this! I met you at that masquerade to save my friends! I never said you could burn my flesh or kidnap me!" Danielle struggled against the restraints, soon stopping when she realized it was only hurting her more. She sighed, letting herself sag. There was no restraint across her chest or stomach and the arch in her back hurt, but it would be better to conserve her energy.

"You should keep fighting, looks pitiful, almost cute." Lucas grabbed the object beside him. Danielle had forgotten to even look at what it was. She was so distracted by him that it just didn't matter anymore.

He opened up a metal case; the lid flew open. To an unsuspecting victim, the lid would have fwapped them in the face. Lucas knew very well what it was though and opened it with a stretched neck.

"This, Danny, is going to pinch." He pulled out a vial of black liquid. It looked thick by the way it stuck to the sides of the glass when it swoshed around. He pulled out a syringe to go with it. "Would you like to know what it is?"

She knew she had no choice but to listen, so she did just that. She waited, listening. She used what strength she had to straighten her back, holding herself up with her restrained arms.

"It's a serum, as you can probably tell. 'But what does it do? Where did it come from?'" he mocked, "You might know BrainWrecker; he's our most skilled elite. He leads us now, actually. He was blessed with two different powers. He loves chaos. In fact, he stole this serum right here from the guards trying to inject him. They used to only inject him with the fake metal you see in childrens' jewelry. But, you see, humans like to experiment. They created a formula that could strip a superhuman of their powers. BrainWrecker saw it happen to all of his cell neighbors and he would be damned if he let it happen to him. He brought it back to me, a gift to the new recruit. He really is a nice man if you get on his good side."

"Right. BrainWrecker has a good side." She rolled her eyes as best she could. It took more focus than she thought. She almost let her stomach sag in the air again. Her back hurt too much to let that happen. "I presume you're going to tell me you have a good side, too? I should get on your good side?" she guessed.

"Most certainly. I can be kind, Danny. I have been kind. Aren't my jammies so comfy?" He smiled as she scowled. "I'm doing you another favor by taking away your powers. Now you can't get into trouble by killing any of my team, which means you won't be killed in return. I'm saving your life."

"Is that how you see it! My gods, you're sick!" Danielle fought against her restraints again. She had to get out of this place. "And if you think, for one minute," she yelled, spitting onto the villain's pretty face, "That I can't kill you without my powers, you have another thing coming for you!" Her wrists and ankles were becoming bruised as she continued to fight.

"You can't even put up a successful fight with powers, let alone without." The syringe was filled and poised. "Now, this is going to hurt more if you resist. I wouldn't use your powers unless you plan to entertain me. I truly do love to see you squirm."

"You disgust me. I don't know how you see any good in yourself."

"I didn't say there's good in me. I just advised you to get on my good side. I saved you from death, but I know you're going to be miserable here and I can't wait to see it, especially knowing I was the cause of it. However, we can be friends. It's up to you."

Lucas reached up just the tiniest bit, syringe in hand, and plunged it into Danielle's arm. Her teeth gritted. She was suppressing the urge to scream. It was like fire, nothing like being branded by hot metal; it was a different fire. It traveled through every vein, leaving a trail just as hot as the fire ignited.

Danielle did so well hiding the pain. Of course her face was skewered, contorted in pain, but even the expression showing could have been worse if she allowed it. Even Lucas was impressed with how well she was handling it after hearing BrainWrecker's stories. But, Danielle's pride was quickly washed away when the flames tickled her brain. "Stop," she screamed. "Make it stop, make it stop!" She clenched her fists, the pain drawing her power into the palms of her hands. Lucas said not to resist, and she wasn't trying to. The pain was just so intolerable, she couldn't help it. And it made it so much worse. The fire heated up dramatically in her palms, fighting to vanquish Danielle's power.

Lucas scooted his chair back. Her salty tears were falling into his clothes. So the pain really was as bad as BrainWrecker said. Sure, Lucas had heard his trophy scream and beg, but this was oh-so-much better.

When her screams and sobs finally faded into nothing, Lucas broke the atoms of the restraints holding her, the metal turning to nothing. Danielle fell to the floor limply, still sobbing but not out of pain. She just felt so useless without her powers. She knew that her threat was empty. She knew that Lucas was right. She couldn't fight with her powers, so what could she do without them?

#fandom: original #prompt: serum injection #badthingshappenbingo #hero x villain #long post

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