#hero's dawn arc

[storiesofstratos]

Chapter 16: Confronting the Storm

Jack and Nico run into an unexpected face at Cyrus's restaurant..

So this was our culprit. Another superhuman, and the guy who stabbed Daniel. I felt the anger bubbling up just under my skin. I wanted to yell, grab him, do something really. But there was no way I could stand a chance against him, I just had to keep calm, think this through logically, and–

“Hey, asshole.”

God dammit Nico.

The guy turned to look at Nico, a mix of confusion and annoyance on his face. “The fuck you talkin to? Me?”

“Yeah, you! You think you could just get away with stabbin our friend and nobody would do anythin’ about it??”

“Stabbin your..? I didn’t–” The realization seemed to dawn on him slowly, and he gritted his teeth, “Shit, the other guy.” He stood up quickly, “Hey boss, cancel that order! Somethin came up!”

“Where do you think you’re goin??”

“None of your damn business. Don’t even think about followin me girl,” He threatened as he walked out the door, clearly wanting to get away from the situation.

“Oh that’s just great. Nico, why did you have to say anything?? Now he’s– wait, where are you going?? Dammit NIco!”

Of course she was following him. Why wouldn’t she be following him? I got up from my seat, putting money down for our food and following the both of them out the door. Not like I was gonna risk him hurting her too. 

We both followed in hot pursuit, passing through each alleyway that he did, ducking around every corner. He kept peaking over his shoulder, picking up the pace every time he saw we were still following, until eventually we were practically sprinting after him. Was this even worth running for? Probably not, but I had a few questions of my own for him at this point.

It wasn’t until we’d cornered him in a back alley that he finally turned around. “God dammit, you followed me all the way here, of all places?? You fuckin idiots, you’re gonna–”

“Well well well…” A voice came out from the shadows, which made the punk tense up.

“Shit– I told you, you shouldn’t have–”

“Johnny!” A gruff looking man put an arm around the punk’s shoulders, “You did good kid. You brought us a couple of prime marks all on your own. The boss is gonna be real happy with you over this one.”

“Boss??” Nico chimed in, “You bastard, you were setting us up!”

“Wha– I wasn’t!! I told you dumbasses not to follow me!”

“Now now Johnny boy, is that anyway to talk to your new friends? C’mon, let’s just be civil about this! You two, empty your pockets and we might let you walk away.”

I was more than ready to just do what they said to get out of there, but, naturally, Nico had other plans. Sometimes she was worse than Daniel, but at least HE had super strength to back up his big mouth!

“Not a chance in hell! We’re not givin’ you anything!”

The man laughed, pressing the baseball bat he was holding against Johnny’s chest. “Well ain’t that cute? Johnny, why don’t you teach these lil kids why they don’t say no to the Steel Hawks?”

“...No…”

“Huh?” The older man leaned in close, like he was trying to intimidate him, “The fuck did you say to me? You should know better than to talk back to your superiors, you little shit stain!” There was a loud bang, as the man punched Johnny square in the jaw, knocking him off balance and onto his ass.

Johnny grit his teeth as he sat on the ground, looking down. I looked over at Nico, who seemed to be coming to the same conclusion I was. “Johnny, right…?”

Johnny looked up at us, his cheeks red hot, probably embarrassed, his face somewhere between anger and sheer humiliation. I opened my mouth to speak once more, but the older man cut me off.

“Shut the fuck up! Now either you give us your money or I’m gonna–”

“Enough!”

The gangster stopped in his tracks, slowly turning to face Johnny, his knuckles white as he gripped the baseball bat in his hands. “What the fuck did you–”

“I said,” Johnny slammed his fist on the ground, “Shut, the fuck,” He lifted his hand to the sky as he yelled, “up!”

Almost as if it was at his command, a sudden gust picked up… but not from any natural angle. It was coming straight from below. It was almost a spectacle. As if to show it was unnatural, a green wind current burst forth from the cracks in the pavement, strong enough to push the man up off the ground, about ten feet into the air. The man let out a sudden yelp of surprise, and started to scream as he fell.

But Johnny wasn’t done. He clapped his hands together, and another gust pushed the man back, into the wall, strong enough to cause cracks to form in the bricks. “I’m sick and tired of you! Harassin’ me!” Each sentence was accented with another strong gust of wind, pushing and pulling the guy every direction. “Fuck this gang, fuck your boss.. And most of all, fuck, you!” He finally let the man drop, groaning in pain as he finally hit the pavement.

“Shit…” Johnny grumbled, before snapping his head in our direction. “You two. This is all your fuckin’ fault! If you’d just listened, just left me alone! I wouldn’t be in this goddamn mess right now!”

Nico, who seemed so confident and guns blazing before, was shrinking. “S-Sorry man, I didn’t…”

“We didn’t know what was going on. But, can you blame us?? You got into a fight with our friend! What were we supposed to do?”

Johnny turned his attention to me, “I dunno, maybe, not chase after the guy you know has stabbed someone?? Ahh, fuck me, I’m so screwed! When this gets back to the boss, they’re gonna kill–”

“Kill you? Dude, you’ve got wind powers! How are they even gonna touch you?”

“Kill my folks!”

That stopped everything. Nico didn’t even want to approach the subject, but I had to ask… “...They’re gonna kill your parents??”

“Yes! Only reason I’m even working for them is because they’ve got my fam! I didn’t wanna do any of this shit! But this guy, the boss, he’s got powers like me, only they’re… different. He can control metal and shit, even turn himself into metal and do all kinds of crazy shit, I can’t touch him!”

I turned to Nico, and she looked back at me. “...I think I have an idea, Nico. How good do you think you are at de-escalating?”

“Clearly not great but… if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I say it’s worth a shot.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Well… I was worried if it’s a crazy idea, but, if you think it’s a good idea, at least now I know it’s crazy.”

Johnny just looked between us, confused. “What are you to talkin about??”

“Johnny, right?” I looked up at him, he wasn’t that much taller than me. “I’m Jack. This is Nico, and you should come with us. I think we might have a solution to your problem… hopefully.”

Johnny just threw his arms up in the air. “Christ. Why not? Not like this situation could get any worse. Lead the way.”

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Shape of Story

by Christina Wodtke 

Start with Conflicted Characters

The character needs a goal, a motivation and a conflict.

The goal can be alien to your audience,

but the motivation must be shared by them, and

the conflict creates struggles that increase engagement.

Paint a Picture

Details transport you into the story.

The world disappears and you have a story play in your head.

Even though there are no literal pictures.

But be careful—Too many details and the story gets bogged down.

Make the Protagonist Suffer

“Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” (Kurt Vonnegut, How to Write a Great Story)

And when it can’t get any worse, make it worse before it gets better

The two key moments that create the peak of excitement in a story is the darkness before the dawn, and the dawn. 

The climax is the moment when the protagonist is either rescued or rescues themself.

In older tales, we saw a lot of Deux ex Machina (the hand of god) rescuing the hero. A hero could be rescued by luck, a partner, another hero…but modern audiences strongly prefer stories where the protagonist helps themself.

Resolution is Boring, Keep it Short

Interest grows with every additional conflict, but once the hero figures out the solution, our fascination collapses.

Don’t natter on while the audience’s mind is drifting.

Also Consider:

You need a good inciting incident to move your protagonist to action.

A setting is more than a place, it’s a situation and a moment in time. A vivid place has details.

Modern audiences prefer “return home changed” to “return home the same.”

EXAMPLES: ARCHETYPAL PLOTS ALONG THE ARC

Boy Meets Girl

Internal conflict is always satisfactory (e.g., she believes love interferes with his career, he believes love interferes with his beer.)

The crises usually revolves around betrayal — lying, cheating — and the climax shows it was a misunderstanding or we get atonement.

The struggle is always about them being separated.

The resolution is about binding them more tightly together than ever.

The Quest

You seek things, and find yourself.

Return home changed and don’t pass go.

Common elements include companions, a mentor, great losses and extreme character arcs.

The Underdog

Even though they do not have a shot in hell, the underdog wants something. They want it so bad.

Common elements include an enemy who blocks their path, and a coach who helps them forward.

In this case, they do not return home changed but rather move into a new life that fits their changed self.

Coming of Age

Naive person has the world teaches them a hard lesson, and they become a better person for it.

Struggle revolve around life sucking and then sucking more.

The hero grows and becomes better because of it, and via new understandings becomes competent.

In some tragedies, the world breaks them.

They can return home changed, but more often they move to a new life they have earned.

More Examples. Justice & Pursuit:

Weaving Multiple Plots:

Weaving multiple plots together to make subplots can further increase tension.

Multiple plots woven together makes the whole story not only unique but very compelling.

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

[voidsentprinces]

Reminder: A Realm Reborn wasn't particularly about us. It was about the Eorzean Factions, it was about the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and their interactions with and thwarting Gaius and the XIVth Legion. We were just a useful champion slowly growing to fame but not truly a Warrior of Light until literally the prelude to the Castrum raiding mission.

The Parting of Glass wasn't about us either. It was, once again, about the world. And how it had begun changing after Gaius's fall and the brief period of peace away from Garlemald's Shadow. About Alphinaud beginning his arc of growth with hubris and the creation the Crystal Braves and what it might of looked like IF the Scion's good nature was lent to anyone and everyone. And thus opening itself up to the very corruption Minfilia feared to move away from the Waking Sands and to the Rising Stones in the first place.

Heavensward isn't about us. It is about Alphinaud's continue growth, learning of Ishgard's past and history. Hubris, arrogance and narrow viewing lead Alphinaud to steps of the Foundation, it has lead Estinien astray and made Ysayle believe she is a messiah incarnate. And through the journey, each of them grow as they learn the terrible truth about the Dragonsong War. Estinien in particular has his eyes opened and no longer simply seeks revenge on Nidhogg but to get to the bottom of it all. So no other shepherd's son has to live as he has. Ysayle learns she is a shade and a faux Shiva not truly Hraesvelgr's beloved or even in the same category as her. She learns swallow such delusions and embrace what Saint Shiva stood for in its entirety. Which means leaning to lay the road for peace between Ishgard and the Dragons and opening a path to this by sacrificing herself for those she loved so dearly. Alphinaud learns from all of this and more and is humbled by the duty of a knight, the fervor of a dragoon, the sacrifice of a saint, and the courage of his companions and of Sharlayan's arrogance from Master Matoya. To put others before himself and allow others to support him when he falls.

The Far Edge of Fate isn't about us. It was about how Ishgard carries on after Thordan and the Heavens Ward are shown to be the monsters they are. How the remnants of the church, the knights of Ishgard, and the civilian population react to the realization with rejection. How facing off against Nidhogg possessing Estinien, the Warriors of Darkness, and the machinations of Ilberd force Eorzea and Ishgard to look inward and know truly where they should go from there. To ignore the easier road and take the higher path no matter the strife and hardship it provides them. Because when they reach the otherside they would be better for it. Finding that courage, after five years of procrastinating and hemming and hawing, the Eorzean Alliance finally begin to mobilize to free Ala Mhigo from Garlemald and perhaps take on the Empire itself.

Stormblood isn't about us. It is about Doma and Ala Mhigo fighting for the survival of their people and cultures. Facing the parts of their society that were spurned and used as tools of hatred against their principles. That provided the necessary cracks required for Garlemald to break them down and oppress them in the first place. And how reforging under those values and those long histories of violence can make a new path and come to terms to over throw the tyrants who fed on their weakened states and make a strong unity still.

A Requiem of Heroes wasn't about us, it was about the world facing down the barrel of war with Garlemald. And uncovering its origins, its founding father was an Ascian. How Varis is forced to face down the lie as Elidibus wears the skin of his son and the great grandfather he and other Garleans were taught was a walking god in all but name was a sham and a daemon bent on causing more pain and suffering than mankind ever deserved. How the effigies of hate and pain choose to use their fervor to help their people instead of turning against them once more. How every person can change and be given a second chance. How that second chance is what that person requires or if they are pushed the wrong direction, can caused tragedy to unfold. And lastly, it is about our companions, slowly. One by one. Being dragged to the unknown. The story slowly taking away the players on the stage until finally...

Shadowbringers was about us. It was about how we were instrumental to the world so much that it lost nearly all hope in another timeline. How a group of your fondest friends began and how your comrade's furthest decendents acting on the hope of your legend and stories. To provide a plan of action and lead to happier world. How even when everything seems lost and gone and your purpose seems to turned everything around you into twisted monstrosities. That you can bring the night and wait in comfort for a dawn to bring better days. And the tenacity of your aid providing a world on the brink, the love, the compassion, the understanding, the strength, and the will to stand up to a flood of destruction and spit fate in the eye. Even it costs them everything, they keep fighting until they can see a brighter tomorrow.

Death unto Dawn was about what the tomorrow brings. How it could be another fight but to find what is WORTH fighting for. The memories of those you fight and lived amongst, old studies and things of the past being made to provide the answer to the future, making right wrongs even against those you had wronged unfairly, and to gather together and keep each other safe. You are not alone out here. There are those who will help you along to a brighter future.

Endwalker was about you and yours. About how everyone reacts to an uncertain future in different manners. How some would make ready to flee at the approaching storm, while others would fight, and others might even push you further to the edge. But even when all is lost, call upon the memory of happier times to light the way with hearts aligned shining brilliantly against despair and finding your place amongst those memories.

Growing Light was about us teaching another to hear, feel, and think and experience the world seemingly gone. That everything needn't be give or take. It can be a charitable, warmer place if we make it. It can be kinder and even in the face of unrelenting and undying destruction. Hope will spit out a tooth and stand up once more.

I say all of this because, I've seen people mad that Dawntrail is leaning hard about being about Wuk Lamat and others. To which I say so what if Dawntrail is about Wuk Lamat and Koana? So what if its not about us? We've had four story lines about us. Now we must impart what we've learned to the future as they face similar and sometimes overwhelming odds. To stand tall against the onslaught and make their own choices, their own way to bring a smile to all they hold dear. How family needn't be blood related, they can just be a group who sit down at the table at the end of the day. And speak, laugh, cry, and love. Unto this trail to dawn we shall light way for the future of our world and everything this new dawn brings is worth it.

[acertifiedmoron]

"dragons plant no trees" gets thrown around a lot as fact, but i think the veracity of that claim is still up for debate in the books. because dany (like bran and jon and many others) is a narrative symbol of hope and rebirth within the series because of her connection to dragons and fire, not in spite of it. this is because dragons in asoiaf have a much more expansive narrative function than simply 'nuke metaphor'. the 'exclusively weapons of war' image they have acquired breaks down immediately if you recall that the first thing dany does with them is begin dismantling an unjust status quo. she rallies the unsullied at the gates of astapor with cries of dracarys! dracarys! freedom! <- dragons as a symbol of hope and freedom for the persecuted. and obviously they've been built up as an oppositional force against the others. we're told when the last dragon died summers became shorter. in that respect the dragons, or more specifically, fire which is warmth which is passion—very much embodies life against the numbing, deadening threat of eternal winter that the others represent. but fire also consumes, which simultaneously makes dragons agents of destruction, or as adwd shows: the monsters who eat little girls and leave behind their bones. but when dany found herself chained to a false peace which effectively undid her cause in meereen, it was the dragon that rescued her and reignited her fire to fight back—which is to say that dragons represent a wealth of contradictions within the text and this is likely something grrm means to parallel with the others to some extent, by questioning their apparent narrative role as the one true evil. because i doubt the series is gearing up towards a spectacle-esque battle wherein our heroes get to practice righteous, easy violence on a monolithic army of monsters. that feels like it would undo a lot of asoiaf's preoccupation with investigating violence against socially acceptable targets, even if said target is ice sidhe. and this binary between a one true good and a one true evil, i.e. melisandre's philosophy ("if half an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. a man is good or he is evil.") is not something the story takes as given.

instead there's this exchange between bran, jojen, and meera in asos: "but you just said you hated them." / "why can't it be both?" / because they're different. like night and day, or ice and fire." / "if ice can burn. then love and hate can mate."—and i think it's talking about reconciling two conflicting ideas. because the dream of an eternal summer is just as unsustainable as the threat of eternal winter. i think the battle for dawn is more about questions of seasonal harmony. the first line from agot's summary says, "long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance", so it's not totally out of question for the series to end with that seasonal balance restored once more. and that question of balance and how it can be achieved then works as a metaphor for a bunch of other things. because asoiaf at its core is very interested in exploring big contradictions, like love and duty? how do you keep all your oaths without betraying someone you love? how can one hope for a just, rightful ruler in a world where the systems in place can never allow such a thing? how do dragons plant trees?

you cannot frame dany's arc as a binary choice between planting trees or embracing (dragon)fire. because the fire is hers, it is a part of her, that's who she is. and her character has always existed outside of rigid dichotomies. at the end of agot she had two options, resign herself to a life of seclusion as a widow or die with the last of her family in that pyre, instead she performed a miracle. presently, i think grrm means to explore necessary, revolutionary violence with her arc because you cannot deal with institutional slavery by simply negotiating with slavers like she does in adwd. and the consequences thereof because she's also been set up to be more reckless with dragonfire in the future. but i think there will be an eventual reconciliation there, between her dreams "to plant trees and watch them grow." and her role as the mother of dragons, as a revolutionary figure. because if ice can burn, then maybe dragons can plant trees. they'll learn how to.

[linderosse]

Guys.

Super long post; read at your own peril (tl;dr at the end).

But I just had a brilliant possible idea about where Echo (the new Zelda from Echoes of Wisdom) fits in the Wisdomverse, so I’m documenting it in case I decide to use it.

See, merging Echo into Fable would be cool. They seem very similar already (relevant post), and it’s a good option.

Yet there are a few small problems with this. I can get around them, but they’re still something to consider.

Fable’s already in four separate games (Most Zeldas get one game or less). Adding EoW makes a fifth.

Fable is already quite powerful amongst the Zeldas. Adding EoW makes her a bit OP. I’ll have to balance that carefully.

Fable has a planned story arc in the Wisdomverse. This might conflict with EoW (for example, this is why LU decided against adding TotK to Wild)

So while I still think it could be cool to merge Fable and Echo, I’m also looking for other possibilities. I don’t want to introduce a new Zelda between Fable and Dawn unless I have to.

And then I realized:

There is already a canon Zelda between Fable and Dawn.

I’ve literally already introduced her.

I have plans for her that could totally work with what we see in Echoes of Wisdom.

She’s vastly underpowered and could use the abilities from EoW very well

I could totally see myself writing her personality into EoW Zelda— it’s a different take than how I’ve depicted Echo before, but it would work equally well imo

And she’s also the Zelda with the least canon information; the one we know the least about overall— especially since we never meet her in her own time.

Guys, if Fable doesn’t work out, I think it might be awesome to merge Echo with Aurora— Hyrule’s second Zelda.

Imagine this:

Aurora woke up centuries in the future, after the Great Decline. She’s trapped in a vastly different world with Dawn and Hyrule as her only solace. She loves them, but she’s not from here; and she can’t shake the dread that she’s left everything behind: her friends, her realm, her brother, who she still cares about despite everything he did to her— and also, of course, her Link, who she loves, and went on an entire adventure to save.

When she was Echo, she was a hero. But as Aurora, she’s an echo of the past; a mournful ghost of a bygone age

Tl;dr: What if Echoes of Wisdom is the era Aurora came from— and where she desperately longs to return?

Masterpost

(More thoughts on the timeline under the cut.)

So— Echoes of Wisdom seems (so far) to take place around the time of Legend’s era, with enough ambiguity that it could be either before or after Legend’s era of ALttP/Oracles/ALBW/TH.

Currently leaning towards “EoW before Legend” considering the similarities to OoT, but I could very well go with “EoW after Legend,” which would be necessary for the Aurora merge. The Oracle games, after all, have a lot of similarities with OoT in terms of races and characters present (Zoras, the Deku Tree, Zelda’s design, etc), and they come after ALttP, which doesn’t have quite as many. Same thing with FSA, which is canonically after Twilight Princess but obviously resembles Four Swords more, and both Wisdomverse and LU have shifted the timeline to match. So there is precedent for similarities to skip a generation or two, even in canon.

I also doubt EoW is going to include a Prince of Hyrule (the one character we know of from Aurora’s backstory). This is fine, because I’m confident I can come up with a reason the Prince was away during the events of EoW. Perhaps during the events of EoW, the Prince left on a journey of his own and first encountered the Wizard that leads to Aurora’s downfall.

Anyways, these are just tentative plans. We’ll see what happens when the game comes out!

[deusvervewrites]

I’ve been working my way through your stories and your lore posts. I’m also finally catching up to the end of the MHA manga. My thoughts on the endings of various character arcs is something you might vibe with. Sometimes, mercy to the guilty becomes cruelty to the innocent. It’s great writing when the villains are people you can sympathize with, but it’s weird that the heroes are this focused on saving the villains that are causing so much death and destruction. Your thoughts?

The entire point of My Hero Academia is saving people.

From the first page of the first chapter until now that has never changed.

I've seen people criticizing Midoriya for not going out onto the battlefield to personally and deliberately murder Shgiaraki and I wonder if they're the same people who think Aang should have killed Ozai.

The idea of mercy to the guilty leads to cruelty to the innocent is what caused the entire plot. Had the people at the Dawn of Quirks not immediately started murdering children for being born "wrong", All For One wouldn't have had to cope by doubling down on their propaganda to justify his own existence to himself. But those people were "guilty" of being born wrong, and if they showed mercy to them, then what? What if those people turned on them? No, no. Better to not take that chance.

If Kotaro had forgiven his mother, Shigaraki would never have happened.

If the Togas had accepted their daughter, Himiko would never have become a murderer.

Spinner never left the house because he was seen as "guilty" of the sin of being a mutant. People were massacred for that sin.

Civilians nearly murdered Ippan Josei, a civilian herself, because they believed that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to themselves.

The greatest flaw of the Hero System is that it dehumanized everyone under it. The Heroes were flawless paragons who could never live up to their own hype and swiftly abandoned for failing. The Villains were deemed to be inherently bad and punished for it.

Endeavor was allowed to abuse his wife and all four children and faced no repercussions. Because he's a Hero and Heroes are good. Touya wasn't born correctly enough and was punished over a one-sided feud a generation before him.

Nobody was seen as human. That's literally the point of the final battle. Midoriya, Uraraka, Todoroki, they all had to recognize the humanity of the people they were fighting and remind them of it.

The thesis of My Hero Academia, of every single arc of My Hero Academia, is that Heroes are not "good" and Villains are not "evil." That failing to recognize that fact leads to dark places, like a government that doesn't bat an eye at murdering its own citizens to maintain power. Laws that strip you of your own bodily autonomy.

During his battle against All For One at Kamino, All Might states the the reason Heroes never lose is because they have people to save. The chapter titled Bakugou Katsuki: Rising, his origin chapter, is about 300 chapters into the manga and the first time he saves someone.

All For One and the HPSC are both cruel relics of the past doing their best to manipulate their way to power, viewing everyone in their way as disposable pawns. They're the same. You could even make an argument that the laws against Quirk use means the HPSC is literally giving and taking away Quirks via licenses. And they both completely crumble in large part because of their refusal to see people when it is so much easier to see the enemy.

My Hero Academia is a story about extending your hand to those in need.

[sapphicmuppet]

unresolved things still in my brain post fhjy finale

okay hihi this is not me trying to nitpick I just have a lot of unresolved thoughts!! okay here we go

Buckys arc:

I don’t have a ton of stuff to say just generally his arc being unresolved, being counted as a follower of Cassandra but that never being formally gone over, him still living with Mac and Donna, him skipping class, the drama with his adventuring party etc.

Bobby Dawn:

another self explanatory one, Sandra Lynn never finding out he was teaching at school, him escaping scot free, the drama in the sol pantheon, him never finding buddy etc. Just a lot of unanswered questions

Mazey Graduating:

for having a finale that has a lot of emphasis on the Fabian/Mazey relationship I wish they went over that Mazey IS a senior and graduated at the end of the year and is presumably going to college in the fall, and just the logistics of her being a college student still dating someone in highschool, just interesting having them get together when they’re already going in separate paths. I wish they went over it!! because now in my brain I have to justify it as a summer thing because they’re actively going to be doing other stuff the next school year.

Kipperlilly (and Jace):

okay so. Kipperlily was never rage starred or she willing took on the ragestar whatever I NEED TO KNOW MORE. Ik the point is that the ratgrinders suck and are inexperienced heroes but the realization that she essentially took all of The Ratgrinders down with her and gave them up to Porter, wasn’t being controlled by him in the way the rest of them were, had an even more direct hand in Lucy’s death, but also was still being manipulated by Porter for years?? I need it to get gone over. Also Kipperlily staying dead? to be clear it shouldn’t be The Bad Kids’ jobs to have to deal with the moral question on if the ratgrinders deserve being revived but there’s so much unsaid about Kipperlily and so much she didn’t get to do ugh. And in her final moments her absolute hatred towards Riz just being justified? In her eyes. Idk. Lots of thoughts. AND JACE!! Porter ADMITS to killing Jace himself and shatterstarring him and says he will do it again, but also Jace is clearly under Porter’s control to a degree and wasn’t revived too. I wish we knew more about him because as of what we know right now it seems crazy to keep him dead without questioning him and with him being Porters partner in this whole thing he could fully reveal everything Porter and The Ratgrinders had been doing the past three years.

Bakur:

idk just minor stuff with Bakur. He never regained his elf status which was interesting? We never saw the resolution of his fight with Lydia etc

Kalina:

Okay the acknowledgment in the finale that Kalina seems to genuinely have her own free will and moral compass outside of Cassandra is making me crazy because I just assumed she was tied to Cassandra so when she was good Kalina was too by default but there’s so much not cleared up about her. She DID lure Cassandra to the synod where she was weak and fostered the rage in Cassandra about Kristen’s treatment of her. She killed herself and was trying to communicate to Riz about Porter. Ankarna has NEVER trusted her. She had the spies tongue with Porter. She’s escaping with Buddy at the end. WHATS HAPPENING WHAT IS SHE DOING AGGHHHHH

[ponderingmoonlight]

Nanami losing it completely when (y/n) gets severely injured at Shibuya

Shibuya Arc scenarios that live in my head rent-free pt.lll

Part l with Gojo and Geto here Part ll with Toji here

Pairing: Nanami Kento x reader

Word Count: 2,3k

Synopsis: After receiving a message with your location, Nanami rushes to your side, showing no mercy with the man who laid his hands on you.

Warnings: I literally shed a tear while writing this so be prepared, sooo much hurt, comfort at the end, you wanted this and I wanted it too this is one of my favorite fics I have ever written

His gaze is empty as he stares down at the bloody shell of his friend. Severely injured by multiple blade slashes, completely covered in his own blood, his life hanging on a thin thread.

“You have some nerves…”, he mutters.

Nanami clenches his hands into fists. Whoever did this will pay for it with his own life, he will make sure of that. But right now he has to get his friend out of here, provide him with better medical treatment, check on the other assistants, make sure that they are alright, eliminate whatever is responsible for Ijichi’s condition. What if that thing hurt the others too? Fuck, how the hell did all of this happen? And where the hell are you?

“(y/n)”, he breathes out.

His heart sinks when reality starts to hit him.

You.

You were also stationed here. After all, you aren’t a jujutsu sorcerer but a skilled combat fighter with impressive powers. You were right here, right here with Ijichi.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be alright!”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. His strong arms lift Ijichi’s numb body up with ease, thoughts racing. If something happened to you, if these fuckers harm a single hair on you…

He runs as fast as he can, fueled by nothing but thick fear and all the emotions that wash over him like a wave. He might lose it all. His friend, everyone else, you. The love of his life, the only woman who truly fascinates him, his best friend. And he hasn’t even told you all that. No, Nanami never shared his feelings with you, not when his fear of losing you is so great. But right now, with the death of his friend in front of his blank eyes, it dawns on him.

After this night, he might lose you forever.  

“Please be alright, I’m coming for you (y/n).”

-(y/n)'s POV-

Your whole body burns like a thousand fires, blood soaking your black suit. Everything aches, you feel like fainting, your sword lifelessly lays on the crimson floor. Is this really how your life comes to an end? Through the hands of someone like him?

“You fucker”, you spit out along with some blood, fists still ready to hit him again.

“Huh, why so rude? I’m just playing a little”, he replies sweetly before beating you in your guts again, his blade narrowly missing you.

It can’t go on like this, you can’t take any other hit. Your puny figure lands on the floor harshly, body desperately screaming at you with every fiber.

But you can’t stop now. After all, Nitta and all the other assistants are relying on you. Right now, you have to be your own hero.

“Standing up again? I’m starting to get bored to be honest. Why can’t you just die already?”

One moment of inattention. One second of giving in to your pain is enough for him to stab his blade through your shoulder, slicing your flesh open with ease. You see stars, the overwhelming pain that starts to radiate through your entire body simply takes your breath away. All you can do is stare at him with wide eyes while a silent scream escapes your lips.

You’ve had so much planned. Damn, you wanted to finally confess your feelings to him. Nanami Kento, the man you admire more than anyone else on this planet, the man that showed you there’s still class, who gets on his knees when talking to you, who makes sure you feel save whenever he’s around. God, how much you love him.

Your face hardens in determination. No, you can’t die without at least telling him once about your true feelings towards him.

With a swift motion you steady yourself again before kicking him with so much force that he crushes into the wall backwards, laughing hysterically.

“Finally you show me what you’ve got!”, he screams out in please while you pant hard.

It’s obvious that you don’t have much left, hanging on a thin string. The amount of blood you’ve lost due to your countless wounds is critical, you don’t need Shoko to know that. If help doesn’t arrive soon, you’ll die right here.

You could call him. Nanami’s number is just one swipe of your finger away. You could call him and tell him where you are, that you’re in big trouble and that you need him just like he told you.

“(y/n), if anything goes wrong, don’t hesitate and call me. I can’t afford to lose you. Promise me to look after yourself.”

He stared so intensely at you back then, his words made your heart skip a beat. But you can’t call him. After all, Nanami is on a much more important mission with countless life relying on his broad shoulders. It would be selfish to expect him to save you while so many people are dying.

“I’m sorry, Kento”, you mumble to yourself, voice nothing more but a fade away whisper.

No, don’t cry right now, don’t let the enemy see that you suffer. Nanami wouldn’t want you so feel this way. Stand your ground one last time, fight back as hard as you can.

One last distress signal. One last way to warn and protect the rest of the team.

“I’ve told everyone where you are, moron”, you shout at him, a maniac grin plastered on your face.

“Ow, how nice of you! Then I’ll hang your body up uhm…right there so they can see you when they come here!”, he remarks with sparkling eyes.

“I’d love to see you try”, you bark back.

-Nanami's POV-

“It’s (y/n)’s location”, Nitta huffs while Nanami bandages Ijichi up and Nobara is busy contacting help.

His heart stops for a second. This means you’re still alive and able to use your phone. But why would you send your location?

“She must have found something…”, Nanami ponders out loud.

“Do you think she needs help?”

Nitta’s voice echoes through his mind. To be honest, he doesn’t care about why you shared your location. All he wants to do right now is find and save you.

“You both stay here with Ijichi. I’ll go looking after (y/n).”

“Can I-“

“No”, Nanami immediately interrupts Nobara’s request.

“You stay here and wait for aid.”

And with that, he’s gone again, following your location blinking on his phone. Please be safe, please smile at him like you always do when you see him, eyes lighting up and making his heart melt. God, just be save.

His feet carry him to your location with ease but let him stop abruptly at the trail of blood in front of the building you are positioned in. Nanami feels like throwing up, the worst scenarios flooding his mind while he stares at the crimson colored floor. He should have accompanied you. No, he shouldn’t have allowed you to come to Shibuya in the first place.

With his head still spinning, he storms into the building and his world stops.

There you lay, in a puddle of your own blood, completely covered in bruises while a man raises his blade against you, just about to sink it into your precious body.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

That voice. That all too familiar voice that brings tears to your eyes. Is he really here? Did he get the notification? A single droplet rolls down your cheek while your hazy gaze meets his. He looks so different, absolutely threatening.

Nanami rolls up his sleeves and walks towards both of you. Fuck, you’ve never seen him like this, his aura almost suffocates you. It is clear that he’s absolutely furious.

“I’ll tell you one last time. Back off.”

“Or what?”, the man above you challenges.

“Or I’ll make you regret that you were born.”

His voice makes your blood freeze. As if in slow motion, Nanami loosens his tie and wraps it around his hand.

“Huh, you’re not wearing a black suit, but I guess I’m still allowed to ki-“

He isn’t able to finish his sentence. Nanami’s fist rushes forward in god-like speed, slamming the man off you, through the window, into the next building.

“I’ll be right back. Hold on, sweetheart”, he mutters.

With one last glance at you, he steps out into the cold night, only inches away from losing his temper completely. Who does this man think he is to lay is hands on you and his friends? This is unacceptable, this is unforgivable. Nanami will make him pay for every minor wound conflicted on your striking body, he will make him regret his whole life before ending it.

“What’s the number and locations of your allies?”

It isn’t enough to only kill him. No, every single one of these fuckers will pay for what they did today. For killing countless assistants, for almost ending the life of his friend.

But most importantly, for hurting the love of his life.

“I don’t know!”, the man hollers at him, trying to slice him open unsuccessfully.

Nanami stares at him with dead calm eyes while he tries to hit him another time, his patience slowly starting to fail him.

“What’s the number and locations of your allies?!”

His hands are clenches into tight fists. One more word. One more word of nonsense coming out of his mouth and he’ll kill him.

“I don’t k-“

Enough. One punch is enough to send that fucker through the next window.

You can’t help but admire the way Nanami walks up to him, his forearms flexed in a way you have never seen before while his broad shoulders seem to crush you with his confidence. He looks absolutely threatening, like a menace.

The blond-haired man tries to escape, but in the matter of seconds, Nanami grabs his ponytail and lifts him up.

“What’s the number and locations of your allies?”

You hold your breath, eyes wide open by the sound of his voice. This isn’t the Nanami Kento you know, the tender man with cool temper that never loses it. But oh, at the moment you feel like he’s possessed with the way his muscles flex underneath his shirt, the look on his face so furious that you have to swallow.

“I told you, I don’t kn-“

Another hit and the blonde lands on the ground, a dumb smile plastered on his face. You know that look all too well, he has planned something…Where is his blade?

There it is, on its way to slash Nanami open. You don’t hesitate. Despite the way your shoulder screams at you and begs you to stop, you grab your sword and throw it, deflecting his blade deftly just before it reaches Nanami while crying out in pain.

“You little bitch, stay out!”, he screams at you.

Nanami snaps. He grabs his throat roughly, chocking him without any mercy.

“You have some nerves, calling her a bitch when I’m standing in front of you. How dare you to even talk to her, to lay your hands on her body? On my way here, I found several of our assistant supervisors dead. That was you, wasn’t it? And now you dare to raise your voice against my girl?”

“I-I’m sorry”, the blonde stutters.

It happens faster than your tired eyes can follow. One last blow of Nanami’s fist sends the man out of the building, out of sight. This killed him without any doubt. Your eyes begin to water uncontrollably when a wave of relief washes over you. Despite all the blood you’ve lost, you’re alive. Nanami is here, he saved you.

“Don’t stand up, (y/n). You’re losing a severe amount of blood”, Nanami’s calm voice instructs before he kneels down in front of you.

“Kento”, you whisper his name like a prayer, tears rolling down your cheeks as the pain becomes unbearable.

“I know, sweetheart. You did really well, I’m so proud of you. Without your selfless efforts, he would probably have claimed even more victims. I still don’t call it good that you didn’t inform me about this situation.”

His hand caresses your bruised cheek gently, making you lose it completely.

“I didn’t want other people to get killed because you were busy with me”, you cough out.

“(y/n), no matter how critical the situation is, I will always look after you. You are the greatest treasure of my life and I…”

“I love you!”, you cry out, pressing your head against his head.

All these countless nights of dreaming about him holding you, all the stolen glances, the pondering. You just can’t take it anymore. Maybe it’s the blood loss or the immense pain that seems to speak out of you, but you’ve had enough. Fuck getting rejected or losing him because of your dumb feelings, you need him to know.

“I love you too, sweetheart. When I saw you laying here in your own blood I felt like dying myself.”

All you can do is stare at him through glossy eyes. Did this words really just leave his mouth? Of all the possible answers you imagined for this moment, “I love you too”, definitely wasn’t one of them.

“Let’s talk about this later, shall we? I need to get you out of here, you need medical attention”, he continues.

“I will pick you up now, okay?”

His hands glide under your knees and back, lifting your aching body up with ease and pressing your frame against his chest.

You groan out, hand cramping around his shirt.

“Thank you for saving me. And for loving me.”

His heart skips a beat, the lovely look on your distressed face almost making him forget how to breathe. How is it possible that a perfect human being like you loves someone like him? His arms wrap themselves tighter around your body.

“Don’t thank me for that, sweetheart.”

He will never let you go again. Not at Shibuya, not anywhere else.

[mr-jack-letterman]

HELLO HI

God I love the Submas fandom, all of you are so nice <3

In any case, I have a silly Au for y'all to munch on.

Allow me to introduce you all to Covalent Twins :]

Covalent

Adjective

- Relating to or denoting chemical bonds formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms.

Or in this case, the sharing of Emmet between 2 Ingos from different timelines NSNDNNDDD.

This Au is essentially the answer to the question: "doesn't being sent to the distant past inherently mean you are also now long dead in the future you just left?"

The answer is yes and no btw

The explanation for this involves a lot of time nonsense that I'm very bad at explaining but the Tldr is basically this:

When Ingo gets sent to the past, this creates a connection between the past and the future. This makes time get all fucky and split into two separate timelines (Timeline A and Timeline B)

Timeline A:

Time in this timeline runs parallel to the future as long as Ingo stays within it (essentially, if Ingo stays in the past for 2 years, then 2 years pass in the present).

Due to this connection, Akari (aka Dawn) gets sent to this timeline (But not Timeline B) and the game events of PLA play out (+ a lot more Ingo bonding because uncle Ingo supremacy)

Akari manages to get her and Ingo sent back home with the power of Arceus, causing both timelines to merge back together again into one cohesive line with only the events of Timeline B being remembered by history.

Ingo and Emmet get their happy ending.

This Ingo got sent to Hisui when he was 29, stayed there for 2 years, and went home when he was 31.

And Timeline B:

This timeline was created as a cannon fodder timeline so Akari and Ingo can keep doing time shenanigans in Timeline A without disturbing the space time continuum even more.

This timeline is therefore not connected to the future the same way Timeline A is.

The Ingo of this timeline (Nicknamed "War" or "Warden" for simplicity.) lives through the PLA game events but with Rei taking the place of Akari.

War doesn't bond with him the same way Ingo does with Akari because Rei isn't a faller.

The events of the game are the exact same (minus the Arc phone, Rei taking the place of Akari, and catching Arceus).

Despite Rei calming the nobles and catching Palkia and Dialga, he is still not the chosen hero. Warden is unable to go home or regain his memories.

Warden lives in Hisui and serves as a warden for the Pearl Clan for a total of 7 years before dying alongside his partner pokemon, Gliscor (nicknamed Nimbasa), while protecting Lady Sneasler from a Zoroark attack at the age of 36.

Warden drifts as a ghost for many years, with only Nimbasa the Gliscor as company. He watches his friends grow old, and eventually die. They pass on to the afterlife, but Warden stays on earth, wandering the Alabaster Icelands and Mount Coronet, searching for people from a life he can't remember even in death.

Warden watches as Hisui changes into Sinnoh. Jubilife Village becomes Jubilife City. Pokemon species die out and new ones are born.

As the world slowly becomes more and more familiar, the great Sinnohs, Palkia and Dialga, take pity on the lost warden, and decide together to lead him home.

It may take 150 years, and many miles of travel, but Warden is pulled by an unknown force towards the Unova region. Though he is unable to touch anything or speak to anyone, it's all so painfully familiar.

He is pulled towards Nimbasa city, (ah! That's where he got the name from!) and eventually to an apartment.

There, he is greeted by a young girl, barely 17. A man in black, who looks exactly like him, give or take a few years and a few scars.

And a smiling man in white. The man he has been searching for for over 150 years...

And they're staring at him, truly staring at him, not through him.

Why is the man in white crying?

*evil laughter.mp3*

So yeah! The twins have an older brother now :D

I mean he's dead and also Ingo just 5 years older and from a different timeline but still!!!

If you've made it this far I believe you deserve a gold star ⭐ and also some art for your troubles.

So here's War and Nimbasa ↓

And some fluffy interaction between War and Emmet as a bandaid.

If you guys have any questions regarding how this Au works, or are interested in seeing more of it, don't hesitate to shoot me an ask :D

I hope I enjoyed reading about my silly Au, even if it was a bit long lol.

*fades back into the void of Submas fics.*

[juniperhillpatient]

I have talked about this a lot before but it’s on my mind & also it’s something that really should be discussed more in Buffy fandom -

People are constantly talking about how Spike defies all the rules Buffy was taught about demons & vampires & rightfully so. A vampire falling in love with a slayer & fighting for his soul for her is such a romantic notion & I do love it but the nuance of Spike’s arc is even more interesting than that! He does love Buffy but not only that he befriends the Scoobies too. He brings flowers for Joyce after she dies. He helps prove that Tara is not a demon when her family tries to gaslight her & isolate her. He becomes a pseudo big brother to Dawn.

And yet none of that is even what I’m here to talk about! Spike IS a hero & he does have a long spanning redemption arc before the soul (& we’re NOT here to talk about Seeing Red right now, as usual that topic is too expansive & requires its own post) that should be acknowledged & his character is rightfully praised but he is NOT the only exception to vampires having nuance & it drives me crazy that we act like he is. The Judge isn’t just talking to Spike when he says this:

“You TWO.” He’s talking about Drusilla too! He says that they share affection & jealousy. That Angelus in his total sociopathic lack of human emotion is the odd one here.

Then you have things like this -

Conversations with Dead People has Buffy sharing a very long & deep conversation with an old acquaintance turned vampire. And it’s far from the only example in universe of a vampire retaining some sense of camaraderie with people from their life!

That’s right this entire rant has been a lead up to talk about my best girly Harmony Kendall. You’ve fallen for my ruse if you’ve read this far muahaha! Admittedly Harmony’s strongest moments are mostly unfortunately on Angel but even in season four of Buffy when she dates Spike she is clearly intended at times to be sympathetic. Season 4 is also interesting because we see a lot interactions between various gangs of vampires like Harmony’s so-called minions & even Sundays gang where they’re very much evil but also sharing in living (existing?) space & acting like bickering roommates or siblings. Like creatures with bonds & personalities & intricacies.

The point I’m trying to make is that the show never truly wants to grapple with the existence of Spike in all his nuance but it’s also not just about him! In general there is so much to grapple with in the idea that vampires can change & be redeemed & I’m not saying I’m anti scary evil vampires I’m just saying the universe gave us these hints of nuance & then the characters never grappled with it & that’s lame. For Buffy killing things that have a shot at redemption however small would be a major emotional blow if she ever addressed it! Especially in her season 5 “am I just a killer 🥺” arc. Let’s deal with the implications!

Let’s deal with Xander’s trauma about killing Jessie & just how much it would/should hurt for him to see Spike increasingly choose good & work with the Scoobies. I would LOVE to know Xander’s reaction to Harmony’s arc on Angel or Cordelia befriending her & letting her go ina world where the writing acknowledges that he drove a stake through his best friends heart!

It’s just that the writers accidentally complicated their own lore & then totally refused to ever let their characters address what the cracks in the stories they tell themselves mean. Giles says that a vampire is no longer the person but instead the thing that killed them. What’s scarier: the idea that your loved one was killed & something wears their face like a mask OR much more insane (to me) the idea that your loved one came back very wrong but it’s still them? Your brother eats people now but he still remembers how you like your eggs & can quote every episode of the cartoon you watched as kids. Your mom murdered that woman from the PTA who always talked too much in cold blood but she still remembers the recipe for your favorite pancakes. The show wanted scary vampires but it got so caught up in never addressing the infinitely more complex & scarier vampires it accidentally created & sticking to the more simplistic initial idea that it did both the characters & lore very dirty. And I’ll never shut up about it!!!

[storiesofstratos]

Chapter 15: Detective Work

Jack and Nico head into the city to gather intel on their new foe, only to run into something they never expected...

The bustling underground of our city was always loud, but today, it seemed even more so. It was abnormally hot for an October day, which occupied the majority of conversations on the subway around us. Sure, Daniel could jump from rooftop to rooftop, but me and Nico? We resigned to take the subway. Not like we had much of a choice. Nico was occupying herself with a game, but I couldn’t stop my mind from racing.

What were this guy’s abilities? Who even was this guy? Villain? Probably, based on the accounts Daniel had told us… but why was he terrorizing the streets? Trying to send a message? It just seemed like random acts of violence. Like a kid lashing out…

“Jack!” Nico’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Dude, I’ve been trying to get your attention for like, five minutes, what’s up with you?”

“Ah. Sorry, I was just thinking… I always wanted to be a detective when I was a kid, but never thought I’d be doing it to find some supervillain. If you can even call this guy that.”

“He was shakin’ down some random guy in the streets! Sounds pretty darn heinous t’ me!”

“Right, but that’s my point. Is he just robbing people? Is there some sort of bigger goal here? Either way, he needs to be stopped, sure, but… what if there’s no rhyme or reason to it? Maybe he’s just lashing out?”

The train came to a stop near the business district, and as we made our way up the stairs to the main streets, a familiar sign came into view. La Casetta, the restaurant run by Cyrus and Emma, was just ahead of us. “Hey Nico, let’s start there. Maybe Cyrus has seen something.”

“Ohh, good idea. Plus, I’m kinda hungry, let’s go!”

The restaurant itself wasn’t very big, it was just a small diner, off the main roads just enough that it wasn’t too surprising that there were only a few customers at the time we entered. Nico and I took a seat at the bar, where Emma was gently rocking Freya in her arms as she spotted us. “Oh! Hey, you two! What brings you in here today?”

“My craving for a good burger, mostly,” was Nico’s immediate response.

“That, and we were hoping to ask a few questions while we were here,” I made sure to clarify.

“Ohhh, doing a little detective work?” Emma flashed a grin. “Hang on, lemme take your orders and have Cyrus start on those, then I’ll answer whatever questions you guys have… well, as best as I can, anyway.”

With our orders put in, I pulled the notepad from my backpack. “So, we were hoping to get some insight into some events going on in the business district. We’re uh… doing a report, on events going on in Stratos, for school. Have you noticed anything going on lately?”

Emma tapped her chin in thought, “Well… I guess there’s been reports of muggings going on recently…” Bingo, “You guys should stay safe, by the way. Don’t go alone and don’t go down any dark alleys, okay?”

Before I could ask my next question, she blurted out, “Oh, I meant to ask.. Where’s Daniel? You three are usually inseparable, you didn’t come out here with him, what’s the deal?”

“Oh, uh…,” Nico hesitated as if she wasn’t sure if she should say anything, “He’s sick…?”

Emma and Cyrus, who’d just brought out our food, shared a look of concern. “Is that right?” Cyrus was the first between them to speak. “Em, why don’t you take some of that soup in the fridge to him?” He turned to us, “I’ll answer your questions for now.”

“You got it. I’ll take Freya with me.” She smiled as she walked away to quickly gather her things, baby included, and head for the door, but as she reached the exit…

“Babe, aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Huh? Oh, right!” Emma dashed across the restaurant floor over to Cyrus, pressing a kiss to his lips, “Love you, bye,” She said as she dashed off once more.

“Emma!”

“What??”

Cyrus raised an eyebrow as he raised a set of car keys into view, a teasing smirk forming on his face, which caused Emma’s face to turn red. “Oh…” She said sheepishly as she walked over, taking the keys from him, “Thanks. I love you, bye!” And back out the door she was, little Freya waving from her place in Emma’s arms.

“Bah bye!!”

“I love you too. Bye bye, Freya.” Cyrus waved to them before turning back to us, “So, you’re looking into stuff around here?”

“Right, we were hoping you might know some things about-” The bell on the door rang, signaling a customer walking in. Shit. Maybe our questioning would have to wait.

“Hang on a sec, I’ll get this customer then I can help.” He turned to the customer. “Welcome in! Need a menu?”

“Nah, I’ll just have my usual. Those chocolate chip pancakes and some coffee, cream and sugar please.” We watched as the customer sat down not too far from us at the bar.

Leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders, and a head full of dyed neon green hair. His septum was pierced, and he carried himself with an air of someone who wasn’t to be messed with, or, at least, that’s how people wanted to perceive him.

“Got it, comin right up.” Cyrus left to go prep his food, leaving us alone with the guy who left our best friend injured.

And to think he had no idea who we were.

[majorproblems77]

Another day another LU analysis with me!

Dawn 9 is here and with it the end of the next arc of the LU comic is done!

This update did a lot and is also a full 10 pages long! So there's a bunch to unpack!

As always linked universe belongs to @linkeduniverse and Jojo, I own none of the pictures I'm using and please give the original post some love. It's very well done and I love this comic so much.

You can find the comic here!

Oh, and obviously spoilers for the most recent LU update if you've not looked at it!

Now, checklist. Popcorn, water and time to read half an hour worth of rambling.

Without further ado!

The letters!

So, Twilight, four and Time all appeared to get letters, with Time getting multiple (More on that later)

Twilights reaction to the super sale was my reaction while playing TP (I recently finished it for the first time! :D) when they opend the store in castle town. Every time i couldnt get there to get potions i was low key gutted.

And Four. Four's grandpa is a mood and i hope we get to meet him.

HE

blorbo blorbo blorbo

The master of standing 🧍

Beloved blorbo i love him

Okay im done

(Im not done)

Poor Sky He's so sad about it D:

But... I, as a part of the The team is heading to Skyloft next, team. Believe that Sun has done this on purpose. (Or that the Skyloftians dont have the mail system for him to retrieve anything) but i like to think its the first one.

Hmmm.... Time got multiple letters. (That takes care of the letter discrepancy)

Twi asking about the ranch, Time looking to one of the letters. This tells me one of two things.

The letter he's looking to could be from Malon, and he's genuenly not concerned.

or The letter he's looking at isnt from malon. Infact, by the way he's looking at it i think its from his Zelda. Possibly a report about black bloods in his time period. (As last time we see them in Time's era. They dont actually fight anything)

Twilight being cheeky and Time's dad face are giving me life.

But... as we know, Time is Twilights direct decendant only by a few generations at most. With the infomation we have from Twilight princess with Shade. And from jojo with Time and Twilight. I'm seeing this conversation as more of a father and son conversation over brothers.

And the rest of this conversation follows this same pattern. Twilight is very much being scolded. He's biting back with what he see's as Time's own words. (not that time know's as such)

Twilight looks genuenly shocked to hear this.

From the hero's shade (Time) in twilight princess.

"You may be destined to become the hero of legend...but your current power would disgrace the proud green of the hero's tunic you wear. "

I am screaming

And now im screaming more. Twilight nooooooooooooo

The we care about Twilight's well being gang. Spoiling us with the full body shots againnnnnnn.

Give me more of these three i love them all together.

And I'm convinced that theres going to be something bad happens to time directly after the end of the LU timeline.

Time is missing an eye. So we know that Shade and Time are closer together than the hero of time (In game). SO.... If time dosent Die on the adventure with the chain. I'm almost convinced he does almost right after he returns back to his time.

The armour is almost identical. He has most of the scaring which lines up....

If the helmet turns up, then i think Time dies during this adventure. It's the only thing i can see as missing.

Twilight.... Now i think Twilight thinks that the gods are giving him an opportunity to save the hero of time from dying to become the heros shade. but thats the funky thing about timetravel.

(Depending on how Jojo and LU time travels works.)

I believe that the timetravel in LU solidifies the adventures of the other links. And that nothign that occours in this adventure impacts their adventures. Even if something was changed it wouldnt change the past.

IE - Twilight breaking his shadow crystal wouldnt mean that wild didnt remember having the wolf on his adventure - as its already happened.

(I hope that makes sense. - time travel is confusing i see it as an alternative timeline type thing)

Moving on!

Wild is best brother 101

Also twilight getting flustered about a girl oh bless this man i low key love him okay

Her!

Also

Smiley man

Epona is a wonderful girl and i love her so much okay

Also Warriors!

HE LOOKS SO HAPPY AGAIN

Man got his emotional support scarf and is no longer stressed (Atleast not visably)

HE!

BELOVED AGAIN HE IS SO HAPPY I AM NORMAL ABOUT THIS MAN

okay

Please understand how much i am cackling at the shenanigans of these three.

Wind rolling around because it is clearly faster mode of travel

Go zoomies wind go zoomies!

Wind rolled down the stairs you cant convince me otherwise. Look at his little superhero pose as hes moving around the corner.

Older brother alert, dont ruin the kids fun warriors they are just getting excited about being on the road again.

Also Warriors, This is normal link behaviour. Just ask Time. He would eailsy tell you that he rolled around hyrule field.

I LOVE HIS LITTLE FACE OKAY

MY BELOVED BLORBO 🧍

(if i run out of pictures i swear to hylia)

There's so much brotherly energy in these panels i love them all so much okay.

Also Sky offering to Pay Time back for the Inn Fee this is why i love the wonderful blorbo okay

Guys im sorry, he's their dad. You cant change my mind.

Thats a dad walk, with a dad sentence.

'Okay guys i need to make sure you are not gonna get killed please have swords.'

The blacksmithing gang getting the love they deserve.

Sky leading the charge! (I know its cause he knows the way and stuff But...)

It also makes a lot of sense. If Sky is the slowest of the group(Again not confirmed but we have had jokes about his stamina), it makes sense to put him at the front to maintain pace of the group. Stops people going too fast and prevents people from being left behind.

Which i might add has already happened. (Warriors and Hyrule im looking at you.)

We just need to read the boss partterns for a bit so we can then decide how to fight it. You know, like we did when we were in our adventures and had to figure out boss mechanics.

Important that hyrule is saying this as his game is arguably one of the hardest. He probably spent a long time on each boss learning attack patterns.

Oh this arc was fun! So much fun i love it so much okay

Thank you so much again for hanging out with me while i write these. I love making them and i really appreciate all the support on them. (If you could share it around i'd really appreciate it :) )

Have a wonderful day! :D

[creative-type]

The Romanticism of One Piece

I’m always amazed by how Oda has managed to stay thematically consistent for more than two decades while writing a thousand plus chapter epic about silly pirates having fun chasing their dreams. One Piece, at its core, is about the dawn of a romantic adventure, and its been that way since volume one, chapter one.

But romance is one of those terms whose meaning as shifted over the years and is drastically misunderstood. So what is literary romance, and how does One Piece fit within its framework?

Well buckle up, folks. This is gonna be a long one.

Romanticism as a movement started in the late 18th century, and is described by Isaiah Berlin as the “the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West”. The modern ideas of childhood, imagination,  and sentimentality were born here. It’s a rejection of society’s constraints in favor of impossible yearning for impossible goals. Romantics were restless and passionate, and embraced the magnitude of their feeling over the scientific rigors of the Age of Reason.

Sound familiar?

Romanticism gets its name from the old medieval ballads (themselves written in the Romantic languages) that became popular with the growing movement. The 19th century was a period of incredible change. Industrialization, urbanization, and the development of the middle class were all new. Revolution, both industrial and political, was changing the course of the world forever. The Romantics worshiped heroes of the past (in fact, the term hero worship was coined during this time) and sought a return to nature. William Wordsworth famously lobbied against the building of railways in his beloved Lake District, and much of the art of the time, whether it be painting or poetry, focused heavily on man’s relation with nature

In addition to rebelling against traditional political structures, the Romantics also broke away from the traditional religious teaching, many believing that man found enlightenment not through theology or the bible, but by study and attunement with nature. One of proto-Romantic writer Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s most influential works Emile, or On Education was banned in parts of Europe and even publicly burned due to its ideas on natural religion.

All of this leads to the Romantic pursuit of the sublime. While Enlightenment thinkers would often attempt to remove themselves emotionally from what they were experiencing in order to understand said experience through objective, immutable fact, the Romantics sought emotion, awe, and reverence that transcended rational thought. They celebrated and marveled at the wonders of creation, allowing themselves to be consumed by emotion and experience. These were not stoic people, and its here where One Piece truly begins to shine as a work of Romantic art

The world of One Piece, particularly once the story gets to the Grand Line, is chalk full of impossible wonder and whimsy. Each island visited along the journey is a feast for the eyes, and Oda’s art does each distinct and incredible location every justice. Luffy has no desire to see the boring or everyday, and he has no qualm in expressing his excitement everywhere he goes. Oda has made the conscious decision never to let the reader look into Luffy’s thoughts via thought bubbles, but the audience is still able to connect with him because they are always aware of what he he is feeling. Every smile takes up half his face, every sadness drawn as a sniveling wreck. Logical ideas are routinely rejected in favor of desired experiences, and Luffy himself rejects the opportunity to hear the answer to the series’s biggest questions because to him, the journey is more important.

It’s important that Luffy’s mindset isn’t all that common, even a world as wild and wacky as One Piece. As the Jaya arc proves, Roger’s execution initially inspired a generation of pirates to go out and follow their dreams, but in the twenty years since his death that ideaolgy has crumbled under the weight of a new wave of dreamless pragmaticism, the same way the Romantic movement gave way to the Realists who followed. 

Luffy’s Romantic spirit stands out, even amongst the Straw Hat Pirates. Many of the Straw Hat’s character arcs involve Luffy helping to remove the blocks that prevent them from living out their Romantic ideals. As the series progresses, the crew inches towards embodying that freedom of spirit that Luffy exemplifies. What that looks like for each crewmate is different (Romanticism is highly individualistic, after all) but they’re given the opportunity to live out that ideal because of their association with Luffy.

This theme of freedom of expression and pursuit of dreams follows the Straw Hats wherever they go on both the micro and macro level. The Romantic pursuit of self-determination bleeds over nearly every arc with Luffy at its epicenter, until it comes to a crescendo during the Wano arc, when the true nature of Luffy’s fruit comes to light for the first time.

Luffy is the beating heart of One Piece’s Romanticism. He specifically imbues many of the Romantic ideals of childhood, such as innocence, joy, and being unprejudiced by a corrupting society. He’s uncomplicated yet passionate, without a care in the world for what anyone else thinks about him, and because of that disregard for authority he comes off as equal parts wise and naive.

In Emile, Rousseau lays out his idea of childhood education, which doesn’t include a classroom so much as the child’s interaction with the world, emphasizing the senses and building on the child’s own observations and inferences. The Romantic child was instinctual and in tune with nature, and a character like Luffy growing up on the fringes of society while spending most of his time romping around in the woods would not be out of place (see Mary Robinson’s The Savage of Aveyron, based on the real story of a feral boy that had been found in France).

What makes Luffy different is that he never loses that simplicity of character even as he interacts with an increasingly complex world. Yes, he matures both as a person and a captain, bearing the weight of terrible loss and difficult decisions, but he does it still while maintaining that curious mix of selfish desire to do whatever he wants and selfless sacrifice towards the people he cares about. Luffy doesn’t want to be a hero, but remains uncorrupted by the malevolent social hierarchies that rule One Piece’s world.

But for all the ways One Piece is a Romantic story, the philosophy of the series departs in several key places. The Romantics of the late 18th and 19th centuries were reacting to the anxieties brought around by the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent urbanization that came along with it, while One Piece belongs squarely to the post-modern era of the 21st. While both glorify a long-gone past, what that past looks like is very different. One Piece fully embraces technology and progress, as best seen during the conflict between Noland and Calgura in the Skypia flashback. While industrialization is sometimes portrayed negatively (see Wano) it’s just as likely to be seen in a positive light (Water 7), and the mysterious civilization of the Void Century was more technologically advanced than the present day manga, not less.

What’s more important than modernization and technological advance is the ways people use said technology. The beautifully rendered locations along the Straw Hat’s journey are just as likely to be vast stretches of wilderness as bustling metropolises, and that search of wonder and the sublime is equally likely to be found in both.

More importantly, I think, is that the Romantics of old were solitary creatures, brooding and isolated from the people around them. There was a preoccupation of creating art devoid of outside influence. The sublime was a deeply personal experience that by its very nature could not be shared with others. Melancholy, loss, solitude, and death were preoccupations of the Romantic mind, the price of visionary genius being social isolation.

One of the most famous Romantic heroes of the 19th century was Thomas Chatterton, a young genius of a poet who, in the midst of poverty and depression killed himself at the age of 17. He was immortalized in paintings and poems, and his influence can be felt to this day by the persistence of the trope of the suffering artist that he, and countless others, helped codify.

One Piece is the story of a boy who rejects the confines of society in search of his own freedom, but he does not do so alone. Luffy is driven as much by the desire to be with his friends as he is by his desire to find the One Piece. The series agrees that risking death is an acceptable part of chasing ones dream, but rejects the notion that it should be sought out or celebrated. It’s better to live an undignified life in the hope of a better tomorrow than to give into an easy death.

And that’s the fascinating part about how philosophies evolve over time, because as much as One Piece borrows from the Romantic era of the 18 and 19th centuries, it isn’t a Romantic story, just as how no amount of research and copying of style could ever turn a historical novel written today into a product of the era its trying to emulate. Oda has taken an old idea and made it into something new, using that idea as the guide for the entire series. Like sun, guiding to the dawn of a new era.

A Romance dawn, if you will. 

[jeldacat]

More LU update commentary wahoo :D

Dawn pt. 9

Twi apparently loves shopping sales! If that’s the case, I bet he would he would love thrift stores too (I love thrift stores). And Four has chores to do, uh oh 😆

Poor little Sky, I’m so sorry. He misses his Zelda so much 🥺😭 I wonder if that line was just for laughs or hinting at anything more specific. There’s no actual line in LU canon (that I’m aware of) that confirms they’re dating or anything. I hope we get some more backstory with him soon.

There’s a common theory going around about what Time’s letter is about… If it turns out to be true, awesome. If not, hmmm…

Twilight’s face here is precious! He goes from surprised and smitten to absolute joy right away. Even Epona has a big “!” showing that she’s just as happy to see him too. 🥰

“You see how quick he turned?” Gotta love the brotherly teasing. Wars and Wild knew the “special lady” line would grab his attention right away XD. I do wonder, though, did a particular person come to mind when Twi heard that? Ilia perhaps? Hmm…

Parkour!!!

“Guys… come on, be normal” My man, Warriors, they are teenage boys with boundless energy, they don’t know the meaning of “normal”

Legend STILL refuses to believe that Warriors has money 😆 Bro, he’s a royal knight, a recognized hero in his time, and the max amount of rupees you can get in HW:DE is like ten million or something. If anyone has money, it’s him. Though I wonder if this has any significance for the future. Is Wars’ career/ salary going to have some importance later on? Or is this just meant to be a running gag?

Love a good group picture

I like this little conversation between Wind and Hyrule… they may have been goofballs just a few pages ago, but they know their mission, and they’re not dumb. They also never interacted much in the past from what I can remember, so it’s nice to see them talking together.

I also like this final panel of seeing the town from a distance. It feels like… when you finish the last page of a book and close it, being satisfied with the ending but still knowing there’s a sequel on the way.

Another great update and a fantastic conclusion to the Dawn arc. My utmost respect goes to Jojo on continuing this series for as long as she has been and at the amazing quality that it is. The story is only just beginning, and I look forward to the next chapter of this adventure ❤️

[bokettochild]

Okay, so, working on a fic here, but does anyone remember when JoJo posted Shady Escape Part 4? The arc where the shadow first smushed Wind and opened a portal in front of them?

Well JoJo posted this with the comic

This would mean that prior to this point the Links have been in the same world the whole time (and the portals are apparently not portals, but "gates"!) and since Shady Escape, they've only traveled to one other era, the one we're still in in the Dawn arc.

Jojo originally never meant this story to be an actual story, just quick AU comics and sketches

So I understand that things are still a bit unclear as she shifts from having random ideas to having to create a cohesive plot, and honestly she's been doing a fantastic job of setting the stage for us and slowly introducing concepts, characters and other important pieces of the story, but it does leave us with one major question: do the original doodles count as cannon?

The Malon Arc, the Chain meeting Ravio, these things would have required the boys to shift worlds previously, or be in either Time or Legend's eras in order for them to have happened. They haven't been to both though. Thus far, they've been to two different eras, the second being one where none of them knew where they are, and it's only the conversation between Twilight and Four in Divine Dark Reflections that tells us they are even aware of the fact that they're traveling through time!

So, this would mean that anything that has to do with them being in any hero specific era until now has not yet happened! Other than perhaps Time's era, which is only supported by this panel from Deep Shadows part 2

Time knows the woods they're in, so his recognition would indicate that this is most likely his era. So, maybe they've met Malon at this point in the story, but that means anything else (Linkle, Ravio, anything fro the others' eras) hasn't yet happened, and considering the fact that the Malon arc isn't included with the rest of the official story, but instead with the early doodles, we can't even be certain that it has happened yet.

All this to say, fic writers technically have free reign with what they want to boys to know about the other eras, and who they want the to know about (other than the Ordonian people, who Twilight apparently can't shut up about lol). That, and, we have no clue whether JoJo is going to rehash old comics or cut them entirely from the story cannon.