#i am sorry if I promote my original comic too much;;

[abstract-moth]

Questions come from here

6 - Which character do you relate to the most?

13 - Are there any themes in Nimona that you especially like?

16 - Do you have any headcanons about how Ballister and Ambrosius met?

19 - How much time do you think passed between the cannon scene and the last scene of the movie?

22 - Do you have any headcanons that you'd like to share?

28 - What other media do you recommend for people who enjoyed Nimona?

44 - Is there anything about the movie that you liked better than the comic?

45 - Is there anything about the comic that you liked better than the movie?

51 - What are your favorite Nimona fanfic tropes to read and/or write?

57 - Have you made any fanworks for Nimona (fanfic, fanart, meta analysis, etc.)? Please self-promote and share your work!

Sorry if that's too many! Skip if you need to, and of course you could always answer more too.

Thank you so much for the ask! I love participating in these games so I appreciate all the questions

6 - Which character do you relate to the most?

In theory, it should be Ballister. He's my favorite character and I relate to being betrayed by loved ones. But in actuality, it is absolutely Ambrosius. The model minority and perfectionism themes just hit a bit too close to home.

13 - Are there any themes in Nimona that you especially like?

I really really liked how the movie approached classism and systematic injustice. These are usually very complex topics, so I was genuinely surprised at how well the managed to portray them.

16 - Do you have any headcanons about how Ballister and Ambrosius met?

My headcanon is that they met very boringly when Ballister joined and was introduced to Ambrosius’ class. This originates from a personal hot take where I think fiction (and thus fandom) puts too much weight on first meetings. Sometimes you meet the love of your life on a random Tuesday and you don't even realize it. There are things to cherish in the mundane, and sometimes you can only truly appreciate it years afterwards.

However, I will say that I think they had a slowburn friendship that gradually built over the years. I also see Ambrosius as the first one to develop a crush. He didn't say anything to Ballister tho, instead waiting for him to realize it on his own. This caused years of pining.

19 - How much time do you think passed between the cannon scene and the last scene of the movie?

It’s hard to say. I would guess anywhere between a month and a year. Todd’s broken arm makes it seem to be about a month. However, the finished infrastructure and increased travel makes me say minimum six months. If I were forced to write a post-cannon scene (heh), I would put it at about 3-4 months in. It gives enough time for the kingdom to recover a bit, but still leaves the politics in a bit of a shaky place, allowing for interesting stories. It also a gives a little time to learn about the outside and just starting to interact with the other civilizations out there.

22 - Do you have any headcanons that you'd like to share?

I mentioned a few previously. I will link a few below bc some people added some interesting discussions in the notes.

The Director intended for Ballister to die in the arena

All the knights are terrible detectives

Ambrosius and Ballister's class were little terrors

The Queen had a child and the Director was acting as regent

28 - What other media do you recommend for people who enjoyed Nimona?

oh dear I am very bad at recommending media.

well first of all, read the comic. It is very good and examines the story and themes in a different way.

also check out ND Stevenson’s other works. She-ra is also a favorite of mine

As another post pointed out, the Broken Earth Trilogy hits similar themes of social injustice, being othered by society, and tearing down broken systems. Fair warning tho, it is very much sadder and more violent.

44 - Is there anything about the movie that you liked better than the comic?

I already mentioned the themes of classism and systematic injustice, so I will add that I think Queen Valerin is awesome. Plus, I find it interesting to analyze her. Was she a perfect paragon who was trying to promote change until the system tore her down? What exactly was the nature of her relationship with Ballister? Did she see him as a son or more like a means to an end? Did she ever try to protect him from the media or better integrate him into the knights?

45 - Is there anything about the comic that you liked better than the movie?

I liked the general vibe of mystery and intrigue, especially around the myth of Gloreth. In the comic everything just feels a lot more mythical, which makes the reader more contemplative.

Not necessarily liked better (bc they are functionally two different tellings), but the dynamic between comic Ballister and Ambrosius is definitely more bitter and angsty. It's a nice contrast to the movie.

51 - What are your favorite Nimona fanfic tropes to read and/or write?

I actually have not read or written a lot of fanfic for the fandom. Though I would absolutely love to see Ballister and Queen Valerin’s relationship explored in more detail. There's the inherit tragedy of that story.

I also like seeing interesting takes on Ballister, Ambrosius, and Nimona's dynamic. The fandom is kinda sold on them being a family, but I think they all have a really complicated and chaotic dynamic with each other. So it's nice to see works that explore how weird they are together (but still nonetheless care about one another).

57 - Have you made any fanworks for Nimona (fanfic, fanart, meta analysis, etc.)? Please self-promote and share your work!

So far I only have this one drabble.

I am also working on a longer one shot. Now that finals are over, I am really excited to start working on it again. I am also thinking of writing another one shot that mirror it thematically

That's all I have for now. Thanks again for the ask!

[bvannn]

Weekly Update January 5, 2024

I’m still recovering slowly. I never mentioned this because I want to be as vague as I can about my big congenital medical issue, but the surgery last week removed some tissue that affects my endocrine system, and now that it’s gone I’m having some problems with my mood. I have a medicine that corrects it, but I need to wait another week and a half to get my dosage adjusted, so all next week I’m going to be volatile which sucks. Stomach has seemingly gotten better though so hopefully that pain was just caused by those cysts and nothing else was wrong. Sorry if I ramble on a bit too much tonight, I am loopy because of the endocrine stuff so I might go on too long. Anyway artstuffs.

I got a music project done. It was for Mav, and it was pretty small but I stayed up all night working on it. Working on it I discovered a big set of plugins that I got somewhere that look to be automatically doing some of that balancing I was worried about. I still need to double check what exactly it can do, since I’d like a widener plugin, but I don’t want to stack my brain over it if I already have one. I have a few ideas floating around for the next song thing, I’m a bit hesitant on continuing that vocal one I haven’t finished because I watched a bunch of videos today in the bad lyrics of the Wish soundtrack, and the lady kept bringing up cadence and pentameter which are concepts I know about but can’t hear. Like, pentameter is supposed to be the natural inflection a syllable has, but like whenever I hear it, I just hear the inflection of the vocalist. I think I’m overthinking it, since she used a writing scheme to explain it and I think the vocaloid software uses that same writing scheme so maybe I can learn through practice? Or I can just write lyrics that match the melody and call it good as long as the flow sounds natural because of subconscious understanding, like how I figured out how to do harmonies. Whatever. Music theory is hard but my stupid will and brute force is harder.

Other instrumental things I’ve been kinda thinking about include a little Zelda medley that I already recorded the melodies and stuff for, instrumental themes for my OCs because of course. And then I kinda want to just do a big fat medley that goes on for like an hour-ish because I love those kinds of medleys they’re great for car rides and stuff. And the final two I’m thinking about would be for animation memes: either an arcade beat-em-up style boss fight sounding theme, or a cover of a 90s pop-punk-rock (idk what genre) song. I think that one would be cool because I could use it as promotional stuff for a comic.

Oh yeah that O’Malley comic! I actually did good thumbnail work on that this week! I was going to do more today but mood and sleep schedule were wonky, plus I had a meeting this morning, so good chance I’ll put it off until tomorrow. But either way, chipping away at it, trying to watch more movies so I can get better at understanding shot comp, watched Kill Bill part 1 last night and wasn’t expecting it to be like, the best fucking movie ever? Like why does everyone talk about it like ‘eh it’s pretty good’ like no that shit was *Phenomenal*! Hoping part 2 lives up to the first, planning to watch it maybe tomorrow night? Definitely before I go back to uni. Anyway pitch comic is coming along nice, after it’s drawn I can either work on the rest of that story or a pitch for the secondary story I’ve been working on, depending on demand. Right now leaning towards series, since I have general synopsies for a couple more general ‘episodes’.

Also only done like one general drawing for comsheet practice hehehe it’s fine I can try others as time comes and is appropriate. Also did epithet stuff but not as much as I’d like. My original plan tonight was to work on TTRPG stuff but maybe I’ll do writing or thumbnailing instead. Or maybe both.

TRGA: got shot 1-4 done enough. Also got Jon tweened for 1-5. I need to clean him up and do his face and stuff. Tonight maybe if I’m having trouble focusing on the other stuff I’ll clean him up, I think I want to go back to that ‘one significant development a day’ schedule I was on for a bit, but pushed a bit further since I have better strategies now. I’ve also started the ‘every time I sit down and open clip studio I’m going to draw one (1) prop’ strategy so hopefully props won’t be as bad in the future either (even the ones I can’t just recycle). Tomorrow if I’m doing better I’ll try to get 1-5 Jon’s face done (and clean him up too if I don’t tonight) and maybe do another drawing. Maybe more epithet TTRPG stuff maybe not.

I’m trying to get my priorities back in order. 1) TRGA 2) Comic work 3) fix your commissions 4) other projects. Inspiration is fickle though so I’m really all over the place. My mood being volatilized is also not helping but I’ll keep going until my brain explodes. For now I’m able to plan out enough with time for sleep and stuff. I don’t know what’s exactly going to happen when classes start but I am taking *fewer* credits than normal so theoretically that means more time.

[kiwi-tai]

9 favorite shows as gifs

Thank you for tagging me @willkimurashat @eva-neill-green @fujihime-litg @mrs-youcef

This is once again in no specific order because they’re all very different shows and all top tier imo.

1. Parks and Recreation

My favorite sitcom I have rewatched it soo many times and was so sad when it got moved to streaming on Peacock but then my cousin got Peacock and now I leech onto their account to watch it.

2. Schitts Creek

Elite sitcom! So funny, so heartfelt, Dan Levy you are my fav nepo baby and I accuse nepotism for this show. And Miora Rose iconic.

3. Space Force

Another tragic betrayal from Netflix by canceling this show. I love Ben Schwartz and space.

4. The Get Down

This was the first betrayal I ever experience from Netflix and you may be saying hey I’ve never heard of The Get Down before we’ll it’s because it featured a fully poc cast and told a beautiful story of the start of hip hop and fall of disco from the perspective of young teens from the Bronx in the 70s and Netflix didn’t promote it at all. It was directed by Baz Luhrmann ya know the guy that did Romeo and Juliet with Leo DiCaprio. This show was beautiful and amazing and I cried when I found out they canceled it. Still the story ends pretty well with only a slight cliffhanger that Baz later clarified what would actually happen so if your looking for a show to watch I very highly recommend this one . It’s incredible, the soundtrack is amazing, there are lgbt characters, I mean I can’t ever say enough.

5. Once Upon a Time

The chokehold this show had me on since I was 11. Unparalleled. I love everyone in this show like family, each character means so much to me it’s insane. Last season was eh they were trying too hard to keep it alive but that’s shows now a days. Gif of the queen herself.

6. Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

Speaking of shows that had me in a chokehold the orginal pretty little liars was one of them. I was obsessed and they lost me the last few season after trying to hard to keep the show alive. A good show has an ending you don’t have to keep adding more to it. That being said I did not think this reboot/spin-off would be good but oh boy is it. I mean there is a slasher killer, it’s beautifully shot, and the cast is great.

7. Derry Girls

I absolutely love this show! I love everything about it. I pretend I have an Irish accent every time I watch it (sorry to any Irish followers but I think it’s a pretty decent attempt). This show is hilarious and I can’t wait to watch the final season.

8. Shadow and Bone

This show led to a downward spiral into the Grishaverse series and I am perfectly okay with it. I am still read every book in the series I’m on the final six of crow book rn. This show is soooo good I cried first episode for some reason. The cast is so hot. The characters and storylines are everything.

9. New Girl

Last but not least, this show is iconic. The friendships, the jokes, everything. Love it.

Omg I’m editing and adding a tenth because I can’t believe I forgot it

10. DEADLY CLASS

This!!! this show is one of the greatest shows to ever exist and I’m sooooo mad it got canceled. It’s based on a comic it’s one season I highly recommend despite the cliff hanger (because technically no cliff hanger if you jsut look up what happens in the comics). I love this show so much I did write a fan fic about it on Wattpad it’s called Medusa if you want to check it out. Literally Marcus (pictured above) the most incredible and stupid character ever I love him; the sass he has amazing. You will love all the characters as much as you hate them sometimes it’s great. Lana Condor is in it and so is Benedict Wong. If you like marvel movies the Russo brothers are producers.

Tagging whoever wants to join!

[defudefu]

GUYS I AM ASKING FOR HELP !! SIGNAL BOOST IS HIGHLY APPRECIATED THANK YOU !!

Please subs, like, rate, and comment on my webtoon series !! 

It won’t cost you money and you just help giving me more chance of my work to be notice and maybe, just maybe, be listed as the finalist (which is good enough to cover my Mom medical expenses.

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/determinism/list?title_no=191552

I am lacking in audience engagement part and so I wish at least 10 percent from 2K of you guys who follow me in this tumblr account can help me with this !! 

It wont take a lot of time and you are just helping an artist out !! (灬ºωº灬) 

I would love you guys forever aaaaaaaa If I ever reach at least 500 subs I will make art request poll open and the I will draw the most voted character for you guys ( • ̀ω•́ )

[charnelhouse]

@shitty-judgemental-anon plz be more obviously jealous of other people's insane talent.

If we really wanna get technical:

- Star Wars is a Dune/Flash Gordon AU fanfic with some Hero with a Thousand Faces thrown in.

- Lord of the Flies was the author's own version of another novel called Coral Island.

- Most of Shakespeare's plays are versions of already existing stories.

- Paradise Lost by Milton and Inferno by Dante are both basically Bible fanfic.

- Ulysses by James Joyce is a retelling of The Odyssey.

- The Once and Future King by T.H White? Le Morte d'Arthur.

- Wicked is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz from the villain's POV.

- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is straight up classic lit fanfic.

- How many retellings of myths are there out there? Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

- The Star Wars Expanded Universe anyone??? Pretty much any big intellectual property has legit licensed 'fanfic'. Star Trek. Comic books. Warhammer. Etc.

Fiction is never written/created in a vacuum. To quote Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahuniak (one of my all time favorite novels): 'Nothing of me is original. I am the combined efforts of everyone I've ever known.'

If anon doesn't believe me? Check out Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

Sorry Charnie... I get real up in my feels when people try to invalidate and get shitty with fanfic authors. Just because your jumping off point was something that already existed doesn't mean you aren't telling your own unique story. It doesn't mean you aren't insanely talented. Other than the faces we associate with the four main guys and the names/general vibes that you took from Triple Frontier, your story is original to you. You are amazing and talented and don't deserve the stupid comments you get from some people.

Omg what a list!! Also you quoted one of my favorite fucking boooooks. Chuck P is IT. I’m rereading Haunted rn.

Honestly - not trying to answer too many messages about like ONE annoying anon, but this message rings true and is good to promote

Also - some of the best writing I have ever read, and I’ve read a lot, has been off of Ao3 or fanfic.net

[cupcakeshakesnake]

I rate different versions of two POTC characters

Recently I found out that Pirates of the Caribbean has a manga series of its own. And some comic books. And a LEGO game, though that wasn’t as big a surprise and was honestly more pleasant than not.

ANYWAY here I will rate the different Cutler Becketts because it was quite a ride for me.

I will also rate the different Norringtons if I end up feeling like it while writing the post. (Note: I did end up doing this.)

Movie Beckett

The original. 2/10.

Might be a good character story-wise but overall very hateable. Smug asshole.  Everyone loves to hate him. (Which means the actor did a great job.)

If he existed IRL I'd want to be 50000 miles away from him. Apparently his past is really messed up but you don't find out about any of that through the movies. Might have been a better person if he had a better childhood, but then again the same goes for a lot of villains.

On the list of characters I consider interesting, he is right down there in the burning trash dump with Cave Johnson. Maybe even lower. At least he accepted defeat when the time came and went out with some dignity.

Manga Beckett

AbSoLuTe fUcKiNg CyCLe pATh.  0.5/10.

Might as well be the reason I started this post.

Why is he like that. Why does he have eyeliner. Why is he so... anime villain-y.

He's supposed to be someone who keeps his face straight. Why does he seem to be constantly expressing with every single facial muscle that he is batshit insane.

Movie Beckett at least drinks tea like a normal person. This guy looks like he'd shove the entire teacup into his mouth and just munch it whole while staring directly into your eyes. Also his version of Mercer lacks eyebrows for some reason.

He gets half a point because there are some characters who were, unfortunately, butchered even more than him.

Lego Beckett

Gremlin. 5/10.

He's kinda goofy compared to the other three and also absolutely tiny. He literally strains just to see the camera half the time. You cannot help but laugh at this man. He is also considerably less harmful, given the... nature of the Lego world... and that the worst he can do is order that a bunch of fruit (plus the occasional livestock) be thrown at people.

The only regret - quoting @nebbychan - is that they didn't make his wig taller to compensate for height.

That one comic book Beckett 

The not-Beckett. -10/10. Note the minus sign.

That's just not him. There's no way you can convince me that's him.

It feels a bit like the artist went out of their way to emphasize the characters' appearances but this here is not how caricature works. Maybe they were looking at a different person.

That's not him. That's Pirate Extra #23 in a wig.

That being said, Norrington looks pretty horrible in here too - more on that later.

Alright, now for Norrington.

Movie Norrington

The original. 10/10.

An honorable man. People love to love him. Did not deserve what he got.

Not much to say.

Manga Norrington

Evil Twin Nottington (quoting @dirgeofcerberus111). 3/10.

Why does he look like a one-off side villain from the Hobbit movies. He deadass has that evil grin stuck on his face throughout most of the book. And that up top is NOT what he said in the movie.

Instead of anger stemming from the sense of being wronged and losing everything, this man right here is fueled by bloodlust. Dude looks like he'd murder Will Turner in cold blood without the slightest quiver in that manic grin. Set this guy up on the Dutchman and he could throw Davy Jones overboard.

Losing his ship didn’t just make him a wasted drunk; it turned him into an entirely different man on a molecular level.

What is this man.

Lego Norrington

Carrot man. 6/10.

Sorry my dude, it might not be your fault that you were mistakenly delivered a carrot on your promotion day, but I am going to remember you as 'carrot man' because of that nevertheless.

For some reason, he lacks hair save for when he is not wearing a hat. Unlike Beckett’s, his wig is a magic wig that disappears when placed under a hat.

He looks unnecessarily mean-spirited in Dead Man’s Chest. When he gives Davy Jone's heart (which, by the way, wears a miniature hat. Yes, the heart wears a hat) to Beckett, he's not a wrecked man trying to regain some honor and a smidge of his past life. He's like 'Oh yeah give me that admiral sword, hand it right over.'

But he also slaps Davy Jones with a fish and kind of almost survives if it can be called that, so he gets some points.

That one comic book Norrington

Tames Jorringnon. 0/10.

Barely recognizable. Makes me wonder if they kept the wig because otherwise it would be nearly impossible for readers to understand that this is indeed James Norrington, the wig man.

They did somehow remember to take his prominent nose into consideration, but said fuck it to everything else.

Who is this.

No.

-

I tag those who suffered with me: @dirgeofcerberus111, @casual-dark​ @directorhachi​ and @nebbychan​.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

A Little LOKI Theory Post

*SPOILERS FOR LOKI E1-3 BELOW CUT*

I am loathe to admit that I love the new LOKI TV series, mainly because of the Mobius/Loki dynamic, the interesting sci-fi plot, and just... I so far surprisingly like every episode. This was the show I had such low expectations for, because I didn’t really like LOKI – I felt he was the Moriarty of the MCU, overused when they didn’t need him, and making me annoyed by an actor I love.

EXCEPT I’m also a sucker for character-driven, psychoanalysis stories, like all these D+ Marvel shows are, and it’s leaving me super shocked about me liking characters I didn’t before. I’m fully invested in all these characters now.

I think the only reasom I really wanted to see this show for was because it ties directly into the next Dr. Strange movie, so YEAH, I’m in love multiverse and time travel things, so it was inevitable that I would enjoy this show, I think.

AND of course, I’ve theories and speculations because there’s a lot to work with, and I LOVE stories like these, so I decided I would take some time out and stretch out my meta-writing grey cells. And I wanted somewhere to have my theories/ideas written out before they come to fruition, because DAMNIT I have headcanons and hopes and dreams.

So here we go, spoilers below cut. Please note I know nothing about the comics aside from what other theorists and reviewers have mentioned:

The TVA are “the bad guys” but I think it goes deeper than that... Like the whole Timekeeper thing is really sus. I think it’s only one Timekeeper, who is Kang the Conqueror, who maintains the Sacred Timeline to ensure that he stays in power to PREVENT the Multiverse War which I think he knows happened to stop him. I also think Renslayer is behind all of this suspicious thing; I learned that in the comics Renslayer is a love interest for Kang, so like........... SUS.

AND I think Multiverse War they talked about in the beginning of the show IS the Multiverse War they’re ABOUT TO HAVE. This is a show about non-linear time, and there’s hints about multiverses in the next Spiderman, and Dr Strange is LITERALLY called “Multiverse of Madness”. Wild Theory: Maybe Doctor Strange IS one of the Time Keepers following the Multiverse War.

Loki initially wants to learn the enchanting that Sylvie does for his own selfish gain, and I think he was lying about breaking the TempPad so he would force her to open up. HOWEVER, I think he had a sudden change of heart after learning about the TVA’s Variant Staff; we already see him sort of fond of both Mobius and remembers Casey’s name, so I feel like that he will end up using this knowledge he gained very differently.

Further on this point, they established in Ep 3 that TVA agents / staff need actual real memories to “manipulate” them. So, I think Loki will use this power he learned from Sylvie (I mean, she explained to him how to do it, and this show is really good at using the “Chekov’s guns” given to us) to bring Mobius to “his side”, and TOGETHER they take down the TVA and make it what it should be. Mobius is very dedicated to the TVA, so I really do forsee that it will be Loki “freeing” Mobius as the catalyst to swaying to siding with Loki until the end. He’s a good man with a big heart for humanity, so I think he will totally side with freeing everyone else.

On that note, I think the reason Mobius is fascinated with the nineties is because he’s a variant jetskiier pulled from the nineties. I suspect in his original timeline he probably had a jetski accident and died, but in the Variant timeline, he survived, and out of pity I think Renslayer “saved” him and recruited him. The TVA wiped his memories after he couldn’t cope with the fact that he was SUPPOSED to die.

ALSO still on Mobius, I think every time he keeps questioning too much, he gets his memory wiped, which would explain why he never remembers leaving the cup stains on Renslayer’s table.

I think there’s more to Miss Minutes than meets the eye. Another theory I had was that she was similar to VIKI in iRobot, essentially running the company to her programmed “laws” after the TimeKeepers passed on. So like there’s no TimeKeepers at all, but there was at one time, and Miss Minutes was left to her own devices.

Another theory similar to this, is the Doctor Who episode, The Long Game, where everyone wants to be promoted to “Floor 500″ because it’s rumoured to be a paradise and is the top floor no one has ever returned from; It turns out it’s run by an alien that feeds on the human or something similar, and the people who went to the top floor ended up frozen husks of who they were. Not saying it’s this exact thing, but more the idea that everyone thinks what’s upstairs is a magical wonderful benevolent corporation looking out for what’s best for everyone, but instead it’s one evil thing doing stuff for their own purpose. Eh.

Another rogue theory: Mobius IS a Loki variant, which is why he’s obsessed with Loki himself, knows Loki better than Loki knows himself, and either knows and omitted it, or DOESN’T know but naturally is intrigued by the Loki Variant and him always finding out the truth is WHY his memory keeps getting wiped, and why everyone is always squeamish about having a Loki around. Mobius mentioned that Loki is the one Variant they have stopped more Lokis than any other Variant....

On that thought: IF Lokis are the most common Variant they capture, I think a LOT of the TVA are Loki Variants, trapped in the forms they were presenting as when they were brought in, and because magic doesn’t work in the TVA, they CAN’T turn off the glamour, had their memories wiped, and in turn could now be Codenamed Casey, or Mobius, or B15........ An abstract theory, but I think it’s interesting.

And another, since I learned that it is in the comics: Mobius is a clone drone. This one saddens me and I really hope he’s not. Because I love Mobius.

I think Sylvie was a Variant who worked for the TVA, but somehow had an awakening and wants to free everyone else... the only thing against this theory is her seeming surprised that her magic stopped working when she arrived at the TVA. If she was an agent, she would know that magic doesn’t work within the TVA.

And I think this series will inevitably – if the rumours of a Season 2 are true – have the Mobius / Loki dynamic solving Time Crimes... a.... Holmes and Watson if you will. :D HAHHA.

So yeah. This list will change obviously for the next 3 weeks, and I had a lot of fun with this so I will probably keep it up.

Some things I hope happen by the end:

A giant “probably not going to happen because this is Disney”: I hope they pay-off the “bisexual” confirmation by the end of this... highkey with Mobius (damn it I ship them okay), but lowkey just even a passing remark about anyone LOL. I really ship Lokius, okay. I need this dynamic in the MCU

PLEASE DON’T KILL CASEY, we love Casey. #FREECASEY

I’ll be really honest here, I will effing GROAN and be a not-happy Steph if they do the ship that I think they’re gonna do: Sylvie x Loki. Which is weird to me that Disney would be okay with self-love, but the OBVIOUS initial dynamic of Loki x Mobius is too much, “look we gave you bisexual Loki, aren’t you happy enough??” Just. I dunno. It’s weird / a pet peeve of mine that a lot of online reviewers are bitching about “woke” Disney the one time they ACTUALLY FINALLY let a title character say they’re queer, but are all “UWU SYLVIE AND LOKI ARE GONNA GET TOGETHER BECAUSE LOKI LOVES HIMSELF UWU”. Even though Loki spent legit more screen time with Mobius, and literally did everything he told Sylvie that he wouldn’t do around people he doesn’t trust around Mobius ALREADY?? It’s like they already forgot about the first two eps. LEGIT the whole dagger=love metaphor LITERALLY happened in the previous two episodes, but alright chiefs. Anyway. Sorry, it’s stupid to be bothered by it. 

We’re gonna get that heart wrench moment that the other two shows had, and I TRULY BELIEVE it’s gonna be between Loki and Mobius when Loki tells / shows Mobius the truth. LOOK I JUST WANT MORE OF THEM OKAY. And I need my heart ripping moment in this show within the next two eps LOL. We got one in WandaVision. We got one in FATWS. GIVE ME ONE IN LOKI. MAKE ME LIKE LOKI.

Anyway, so that’s my rambling. Thanks for taking time out to read all this. I miss theorizing, and this show is perfect for me to do it. I’m not AS good at these shows as I was with Sherlock, but it’s still fun, because it’s new and my brain is full of headcanons and idea things. I’ll write again after Ep 4, I think. <3 Thank you lovelies for letting me do this!

[kintatsujo]

LoZ AU- The Courage of Running Away Part FOURTEEN

You’ll see why this one took a while in just a second, I did that thing where I drew a whole ass scene again

Content warning for fantasy religions based loosely on Christian schisms

#AU August

#LoZ AU: The Courage of Running Away

So while Link is getting acclimated to Castle life and getting hugs from Marla and Tonbo (and also getting unofficially adopted by the royal family) Astramorus flies back to the Sky Temple with his loftwing. 

And he has a lot of time to think while he’s doing it; I don’t know how fast a loftwing flies but even so it would have taken some hours on Hera’s back and you don’t have anything to do up there but think about why you got blasted through a wall by a god-queen.  So he gets back and he’s feeling pretty fucking subdued when he hands Hera off to the Sky Temple commune’s gardener/bird caretaker, Maurice.

[Image description:  Astramorus, looking tired and still missing his hat, his hair a mess, is standing opposite a short and round mustached man with bushy eyebrows dressed in the same priestly robes, except that this man has his sleeves shortened to his elbows and is wearing thick gloves.  This man is holding Hera the loftwing by a lead, while she makes a particularly vacant happy face.  “NAYRU’S EYES, man, WHAT HAPPENED?”  Astramorus gives a very small smile, and after a pause, answers, “TURBULENCE.”  The man harrumphs skeptically, then says, “Well, LORD SERENUMBRA from the LORULEAN ORTHODOXY showed up three days ago and he’s been giving me ADVICE ON MY TOMATOES, so turbulence or OTHERWISE I’d appreciate you DISTRACTING HIM before I commit some WEEDING.”  Astramorus smiles.  “Ah,” he says in understanding.  “Yes, thank you for your PATIENCE, Maurice.”  End ID.] 

A note on Maurice, originally I was going to make him look like Gaepora OR Rauru and then Ice suggested basing him on Maurice-Belle’s-Dad and I liked that, so I blended the ideas a bit.  

I think I’ve mentioned that Lorule and Hyrule have different takes on the Hylia religion, haven’t I?

Basically since this Lorule is just the country south of Hyrule instead of a dark-mirror-universe world, Invid suggested that part of the idea might be that Lorule insists that Hyrule is wrong about which country the Golden Goddesses left the world from, and that the Triforce belongs there instead.  I kind of played with that a little further, and so now part of the thing is that their royal line is actually also descended from Hylia directly, except that at some point a sister broke off from (one or the other of) the royal family, founding the Hilda line versus the Zelda line.

And real quick here’s the Hilda of this story, which I promise is relevant:

[Image Description: Sketches of a tall, black haired woman with pale skin and blue eyes and extremely long pointed ears, dressed in a cape and dress of purple, dark blue, red and gold.  She wears a blue and green belt trimmed with gold and black gloves, and a diadem featuring a red gemstone and golden spread wings.  There is an inverted Triforce symbol on her sash.  She is also wearing black lipstick and red blush and eyeshadow.  A sketch to the side shows her making a decidedly less dignified expression with the note “All the finery and rouge is a desperate attempt to fool you into thinking Hilda is in her twenties but she’s only actually seventeen, same as Link.”  Another sketch shows her next to an old man with round glasses and priestly robes different to the Hyrulean priests, who only comes up to her chest.  She has her hands on her hips and is ranting at him.  A note reads, “Hilda TOL.”  End ID.]

Anyway the thing is that currently, the two churches are relatively peaceable with one another, they have joint gatherings to quibble about tradition and who should be allowed to have what sacred treasures and who has to bring the roast boar next time, and that is how a very young novice Astramorus ended up as friends with the man he would eventually match in equivalent rank, Lord Serenumbra.  Who gets a nice picture equivalent piece to Astra’s introduction because of symmetry: 

[Image Description: The same short priest from the picture with Hilda.  He has white loosely curly hair, circular gold glasses, a hat similar to Astramorus’s but in red, a dark red robe over a black underdress, both trimmed in gold, and is wearing a heavy golden neck piece with an inverted Triforce and golden wings framing a blue disc.  To the side are various comic panels; in the first, he has taken an extremely young Astramorus’s hand and is saying, “Let me be the first to CONGRATULATE you, my friend!”  In the second, he’s spread his arms wide while approaching Astramorus and Catena, Link’s mother.  “Let me be the first to CONGRATULATE YOU, my friends!” he’s saying, and Catena laughs, giving Astramorus a rough side hug that lifts him off his feet despite her only coming to his chest, while Astramorus gives her a gooey smile.  “TOO LATE,” she says, “I told my mum first,” and laughs.  In the last panel, Astramorus has collapsed limp into a chair at a dining room table, his hair in his eyes, his face wet with tears, propping his head on one arm as Serenumbra pats his shoulder from behind the chair.  “Let me be the first to say,” Serenumbra says, “How DEEPLY SORRY I am, my friend.”  End ID.]

This is awful but that’s currently my favorite picture of Astramorus.  

Serenumbra’s design is based on the priest and philosopher from ALttP and Link Between Worlds; the philosopher’s robes were red so I sorta priestified them.  The blue disc in the center of his neck piece represents the Moon Pearl from ALttP, which was actually red in the game but blue in some of the promotional materiel, and the blue was a nicer contrast.  The Moon Pearl was mostly important because it let Link run around in his human form in the Dark World but I always liked it because it was sort of weird and mysterious.  In Four Swords Adventures there’s actually a LOT of moon pearls and they let you make portals between the worlds.  There isn’t going to be a lot of world hopping in this AU, I just thought it was interesting context. 

Anyway here’s two old friends having a conversation, image description and a little more commentary plus some bonus poking at Astramorus at the end:

[Image Descriptions: Astramorus is entering a room with a rounded door and a coat rack on the wall.  “Seren?” he calls.  “ASTRAMORUS, are you QUITE all right?” Serenumbra answers.  He is sitting at a round table in the center of the room; there are two dining chairs, one of which he is sitting in, and opposite of him is a comfortable looking rocking chair.  “I came because I heard about your SON, have you still not found him?”  Astramorus, looking deeply pained, straightens some of his hair with one hand.  “I found him,” he says.  He settles into the rocking chair with a long creak.  Serenumbra is clearly shocked by his demeanor.  “Astra,” he says, concern clear in his face, “What HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling while looking like death warmed over.  There is a panel fading from light to dark to indicate the passage of time, then we see that Serenumbra has a hand to his mouth in thought.  “So the queen refuses to see the DANGER here,” he says.  Astramorus has folded his hands together.  “She’s right about my SON, though,” he answers.  Serenumbra is quick to defend Astramorus to himself: “Well- he’s such a SOFT BOY, you wanted him PREPARED,” he begins, but Astramorus stops him.  “I pushed him too hard, too SOON, and with too little CARE.”  Astramorus lifts his hands and grins painfully, continuing, “WHAT was I DOING, trying to teach him how to FIGHT when all I knew was an ADULT’S routine?”  He puts a hand to his chin, still smiling.  “I must be the STUPIDEST MAN ALIVE.”  “Astra,” Serenumbra begins again, and Astramorus interrupts again.  “My wife used to tell me I WORRIED too much, did I ever mention that?”  He asks.  His face turns solemn.  “It was even one of the LAST THINGS she said to me,” he says.  We get a glimpse of young Astramorus and Catena together backlit by the sun; she’s wearing a blue version of the classical Link costume with a sword strapped to her back and plate armor on her shoulders, he’s wearing his priestly robes and hat.  She’s reached up to grab his face, grinning, while he’s put his hands on hers.  “And then she died,” Astramorus says.  He sits up, animate once more.  “What else could I DO but worry?!” he demands.  “You’ve studied the legends, same as I-” he subsides again- “That mark on Link’s hand may as well be a DEATH SENTENCE.”  He puts a hand on his face.  “And I’ve so THOROUGHLY FAILED him that now I’ve put the Royal Family in danger TOO.”  Serenumbra puts a hand to his chin, thoughtfully.  “WELL, you never KNOW,” he says, “Princess HILDA is more of an age with Link, maybe the Triforce of Wisdom will arise in the LORULEAN line this time.”  Astramorus laughs.  “That doesn’t change the SITUATION, Seren,” quietly adding “But also KEEP DREAMING.”  He then puts his hand to his mouth.  “How do I even BEGIN to atone?” Astramorus asks.  “Ahh, old friend,” Serenumbra answers, soothingly.  “If only Catena were still WITH us, she’d know how to ease the boy’s burden.  Why-she’d face down GANON HIMSELF if it came to that!”  Astramorus makes an intense face, as if he’s been suddenly burdened.  Serenumbra stands and puts a hand on his shoulder.  “Get some REST, dear friend, you still look TERRIBLE,” he says with a smile.  Astramorus is wringing his hands, staring forward.  End ID.]

DUMBASS BRAINCELLS ENGAGED.

I didn’t expect “Got pegged by his wife so hard that the mere invocation of her name knocked him back to his senses after over eleven years of fucking shitty behavior towards their son” to be on the bingo card for this character when I started this project either, but this is Draft 0.5 so anything can happen XD

Astramorus is so layered now what the fuck!  

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND.”  End ID.]

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “WELL FIRST OF ALL I FUCKING DIED.”  End ID.]

[Image Description: Serenumbra, face full of concern, asks, “Astra, what HAPPENED?”  Astramorus stares at the ceiling like death warmed over.  Behind him are the words “...my wife made this chair.”  End ID.]

Catena got into carving as a hobby during long trips but she started making furniture while dealing with nesting urges while pregnant, so imagine this little tank of a woman assembling a rocking chair for her tol noodle husband while ranting about her weird cravings.  

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

Mission Hill (originally aired on WB, 1999-2000)

Mission Hill was a perfectly good animated series from former Simpsons show-runners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. It was a sitcom about cool young people in a cool young people city. Andy French is an aspiring cartoonist, intended to be a Matt Groening type who would (over the course of many many seasons) eventually find success and get his own super-successful animated series called THE SIMPSONS: SEASONS 1-8.

The premise of the show was that Andy’s parents retire and sell the childhood home, displacing his nerdy high-school aged younger brother Kevin. Kevin moves in with Andy and learns how to be a cool city style guy, you know, the kind that’s always “walkin here!” and sucking off Bob Balaban in the men’s room and whatnot.

The show is at least better than the bad seasons of the Simpsons, and has a cool alt-comics style that suits the show really well. Not to damn it with faint praise, it’s a good show. There are a handful of GREAT episodes and plenty of strong jokes. There's news of a revival in the works focusing on Gus and Wally, the older gay couple in the show. It's supposed to take place in the same era the show originally aired in, which is just great.

Like Baby Blues and Home Movies before it, I did catch this show randomly on it's network of origin. I saw one or two of the final episodes to air on WB. I liked it! I was glad to see it get revived for a run on Adult Swim. I've wanted more episodes ever since.

I don't think the show is available for streaming anywhere, which is too bad. It came out on DVD with special features. That DVD set was reissued on DVD-R without special features, so... buyer? be wary. There's also a number of music replacements that ruin some of the scenes. At one point I had a bootleg set where somebody took the DVD video and replaced the audio with the as-broadcast version of of the show. Good luck finding it.

Here's an episode guide showing their debuts on Adult Swim. Bold episodes were originally unaired, making their debut on the channel. Also note: episodes had an innocuous title and a spicier in-house title in parentheses. It’s real Police Squad! shit.

12AM Monday Morning:

May 20: Pilot (or The Douchebag Aspect) May 27: Andy Joins the PTA (or Great Sexpectations) June 3: Kevin's Problem (or Porno for Pyro) June 10: Andy vs. The Real World (or The Big-Ass Viacom Lawsuit) June 17: Andy and Kevin Make a Friend (or One Bang for Two Brothers) June 24: Andy Gets a Promotion (or How to Get Head in Business Without Really Trying) July 1: Kevin vs. the SAT (or Nocturnal Admissions) July 8: Unemployment Part 1 (or Brother's Big Boner) July 15: Unemployment Part 2 (or Theory of the Leisure Ass) July 22: Kevin Finds Love (or Hot for Weirdie) July 29: Stories of Hope and Forgiveness (or Day of the Jackass)

11PM Sunday Night:

August 4: Happy Birthday, Kevin (or Happy Birthday, Douchebag) August 11: Plan 9 from Mission Hill (or I Married a Gay Man from Outer Space)

ALSO NOTE: There are about five episodes that were in early-stages of production and if you poke around you can find scripts for these episodes ( here as of this writing). A full animatic and table read for “Crap Gets In Your Eyes” exists if you search for it. 

MAIL BAG

London Arbuckle ASKS! or, states! sorry I’m writing this lead-in without having read the whole message yet.

Another confusing Baffler Meal thing: the deleted cold open that's on the DVD. It gets called back to in the actual episode ("Between two steamed buns", "Nine dollars!? For what?") and provides crucial context, BUT it also gets contradicted in the actual episode (SG sells out for "one serious speaker" instead of owing a restaurant money). Also I remember all the ads for this episode used a clip from the cold open! It always kinda bothered me that they cut it but boys (matt & dave) will be boys!

I do think the cold open is nice and I always make a point to watch it with the episode. In my mind they are as essential as watching that boring Terry Gilliam short before Meaning of Life. The next step is pointlessly editing them together using Nero. Yeah, that’s the ticket

Here’s ANONYMOUS, baby!

It's summertime and we are talking about Adult Swim and I gotta ask when's the last time you've been to a pool. Have you ever in your adult life enjoyed the benefits of an adult swim. Tell us just how much you like splash around. Yes, that would be quite illuminating I'm sure (rolleyes).

Man, when was the last time I went into a pool? It’s been literally years. I think the last time I swam I did a bad job. I am definitely am getting “bad job” vibes off my hazy memories. Man, my memories used to be precious. Damn!

do you think theyll ever work with george lowe again in any major capacity or do you think he's just bad news.

I was about to say “isn’t he on American Dad” based on him name-checking American Dad as one of his many credits but I just looked it up and he was only in one episode. Damn. Somebody give George work he seems nice.

beakman's world, anyone? The wild and wacky world of Paul Zaloom? Hmm? Anyone?

lol you wish...

Baby Blues really was my everything back in the early 2000s, it may not have head the punk rock cred you clearly seem to crave it was a soothing balm for myself as a new father in a scary world (9/11 and all that, terrible stuff).

you raise a good point, that you’re a huge dork “with child” and I’m cool and laughed at 9/11 because it was funny to me, actually

Just read your Baby Blues "take down" and I gotta say: In the immortal words of Mike Francesca, "You're a fool. ho-kay? A total fool."

Uh huh. Yeah okay. Mike Francesca hordes pot bellied pigs in his apartment and lives in filth. He stinks, and so do youd

Baby Blue is like every animation nerd's wet dream. What if they made the rugrats with only the parents part. And here it is. Be careful what you wish for, chunky.

Yeah and it’s too bad because judging from the previous mail bags my audience is primarily made up of BABIES.

[ectonurites]

Conner Kent in Suicide Squad/the Infinite Frontier era: wtf is going on

Alright lads hello I just need to type out some theories/thoughts about what’s going on with my boy Kon right now. This is more for myself than anything else (just trying to organize my thoughts) but since some of y’all like to hear me talk about comics (and some of this discussion has already been happenin in my inbox) I figured i’d format it and put it on here too! its like 4k words and written over the last few days mostly at 3am. sorry <3 

this is basically just me going like

Also fair warning that like, I can be wrong and misinterpret things just as much as anyone else can, like I use panels to support why I think what I do but a lot of this stuff is subjective/complicated to understand so like... in general somethings should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because exactly what changes to the universe were made by Death Metal/Infinite Frontier haven’t been super super clearly defined yet. Also sometimes comic writers make the most random nonsensical shit happen, so I as a fan am also allowed to theorize about random nonsensical shit.

But to start: let’s backtrack!

Many months ago when Infinite Frontier was first announced they dropped some promotional art, and I remember being a little confused because. Well:

(Variant Cover spread for Justice League (2018) #59)

(Variant Cover spread for Superman (2018) #29)

Notice how Conner is back to his Teen Titans 2003 look up top, but in his YJ 2019 look at the bottom? This seemed weird to me! But then they announced that Conner would be part of the Suicide Squad ongoing title, in the T-shirt look, so I wrote this discrepancy off in my brain as ‘oh I guess that cover was just the last hurrah for punk Kon’ and moved on with life.

In Suicide Squad right away we learn he’s very much so there against his will:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #1)

Which corroborates more or less what we were also shown in Future State: Suicide Squad, although admittedly it tells... a slightly different version of the events. When I first saw both of these together I just chalked it up to being a bit inaccurate as it’s shown as a memory in Future State:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Issue 2 we saw him in action with the Squad, trying to do his best to still be a hero despite the team, but things get a little more interesting in the following issue. It starts off with an account of his history

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

This page gave me a few immediate red flags, mostly minor things that had to do with coloring, so more irl problems than things to take seriously in-universe (Kon’s pants are the wrong color in the first Superboy shot, and Bart’s Impulse costume is in Kid Flash colors instead of the correct Impulse ones) but then also it just bugged me the phrasing “he joined Young Justice” when he was a founder of the team, he didn’t join it he made it with Tim and Bart.

But again, chalked that stuff up to just.... writers/artists being inconsistent/unaware of things that they should be aware of, or even Nocturna just not being specific with details. But it did still strike me as a little odd considering the very accurate use of villains in those same shots, Scavenger who was a reoccurring bad guy from Kon’s solo days and showed up basically nowhere else (even holding the Spear of Lono and everything!) and Billy/Harm (Greta’s brother) from Young Justice.

But then a few pages later we got this:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

Which is interesting. My first instinct was to think he’s being drugged w kryptonite or something thats leaving him hazy/out of it, but my thoughts on that have kinda changed, we’ll get there in a bit. But in general the context of ‘something’s wrong’ made the slight discrepancies on some details of his own history make more sense.

I also want to then bring up the next part to this story, the crossover issue in Teen Titans Academy.

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

So a few things. Does it feel weird to anyone else that Conner Kent, a known previous Titan who literally has a framed picture of himself in a case there, would set off alarm sensors like that? Wouldn’t he be... recognized as a Titan not an intruder by their sensors? Interesting! Anyways.

He looks really pained looking at that picture, and sad, and almost frustrated, which ya know makes sense and hurts my heart because he misses them! He misses his friends and being happy. 

But, importantly for a criticism I wanna make thats less theory related and more just me bein annoyed at Tim Sheridan, that’s a picture of Conner. Right there. That’s Superboy, on display at Teen Titans Academy, so the people who frequent this building would know who he is and what he looks like and be able to recognize him, he’s even in the same outfit and everything. Alinta recognized him at the end of Suicide Squad #3. 

So why does only one person during this big fight then comment on his presence?? Why doesn’t it get a bigger reaction???

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

And after the fight we don’t see any on panel moment of Wallace going up to the staff Titans (who weren’t present for the fight) and saying like “HEY NIGHTWING UHHH SUPERBOY WAS WITH THE SUICIDE SQUAD?” we just see him talking with his friends upset about Crush leaving. We see Alinta talking to them but we don’t see the exact dialogue. So I do just wanna take the writer by the shoulders and shake him a little bit and ask WHY because that just feels like... something you’d wanna address on panel! This is like the first time since joining the squad that Kon’s at all in contact with people from his life before Waller got involved, I feel like not addressing those people’s reactions to it/not discussing it at least a little bit on panel (especially when Conner CAME UP in the previous TTA issue, Dick brought him up and everything!!!) is a really odd choice. Maybe it’ll happen next issue and i’m just impatient, but who knows. Anyways, gripes with Sheridan aside, lets move on.

I wanna bring up how Conner... doesn’t really respond to Wallace’s question? At all? Except to just fight him off, not even an attempt at a ‘Sorry’ or anything? (the ‘Ha! That all you got?!’ seems to be coming from Culebra not Conner, although the placement of the bubble is vague enough it could be that it was supposed to be Conner? but it seems more like what she’d say, especially as she’s grabbing Emiko like that) That just feels weird. It feels off. In general he speaks so little in Suicide Squad #3 and this issue. Tbh it almost feels like he doesn’t really recognize Wallace which I mean I suppose they never exactly met (they would have theoretically during Death Metal, basically all past/present Titans were together for a while during that), but Kon’s been back in existing long enough he’d have a sense of who current heroes are anyways.

But right, so, lots of little things that feel weird... that gets us caught up to the most recently released comics... but in this household we look at solicits as they drop. Which gives us some info on what’s coming up a few months ahead of time, albeit without full context obviously. Issues #4 and #5 don’t mention Conner in their descriptions or show him on the covers at all, because there’s just other plot things going on, so ya know seems things will be quiet for him for a bit.

But then we got the August solicitations and oh BOY it’s a doozey for him! And some things start to kinda connect perhaps!

I want to just take a moment to look at that specific wording. “The teen calling himself Conner Kent” I’m probably reading too much into it but that feels deliberate, like why wouldn’t you just say ‘Conner Kent’? Usually these kinds of descriptions are trying to keep a low word count, not add in extra words that don’t need to be there. It makes it feel like that’s a name he’s using that... doesn’t actually belong to him.

So the theory I want to propose (that has been floating around already) is that based on these covers and the description, and how the Conner we’ve been seeing in Suicide Squad apparently talks about his own personal history like he’s ‘reading a wikipedia entry’ and had little response to people he should be aware of like Wallace and apparently isn’t recognized as a Titan through a bio-scan and also bearing in mind those initial promo arts with two separate looks at the same time for him... I think we're looking at a situation where the Conner in Suicide Squad so far has actually been a clone of original Conner (like... like he’s Match 2.0 or somethin) the whole time, that’s just not aware he’s not the original. 

Now that’s the base theory I wanna work with and build off of, but there’s MANY different directions that could go in/ways that could work.

For example, one idea is that the Conner we saw in #1 who was chained up is the original Conner, and he’s been being cloned and held captive, so everything else with Conner in Suicide Squad so far has been this Match 2.0 

Another idea could be the original Conner in #1 is also the Conner in #2 who Waller had then commented wasn’t ready during the mission in Arkham and had zapped with a lil Kryptonite, and after that moment she took him off the field because his spirit hadn’t been broken enough to be obedient (as he was a lot quieter in Issue #3 & the TTA crossover compared to #2, and #3 is when the Nocturna thing with the history happened)

Or it could even be original Conner in #1, then in #2 was one clone that wasn’t ‘ready’ that after that point she stopped using him, and switched to a diff clone for #3, because like that first cover did show a LOT of clones. That could be more just ‘artistic interpretation’ or something, covers sometimes do exaggerate/mislead, but it also could indicate we’re looking at a lot of clones.

(Suicide Squad (2021) #2)

With all of those in mind I also wanna bring up this little bit from Future State Suicide Squad:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Again Future State is a ‘possible future’ so stuff from it isn’t set in stone, but the idea of ‘she still has his YJ 2019 outfit somewhere’ makes me think it could be something along the lines of like, Clone!Conner finds original Conner and frees him and he gets back his YJ outfit, which could lead to like the imagery on that variant cover/the idea from my very first part of this post where I was talking about Kon being shown in both outfits in different places.

Alternatively entirely from all that, another option is that she maybe got ahold of what was needed to clone Kon, but doesn’t even have the original Kon in her possession. (again with the Future State thing, she could be lying since elsewhere in Future State we did also see a copy of YJ 2019 Kon’s costume in one of the Jon-focused Future State comics in a display case 🤷‍♂️) Which could also lead to that confrontation on the variant cover & the promo art thing... and could also explain why we have seen nothing about anyone looking for him, because in that sort of scenario he wouldn’t have even been missing in the first place.

There’s a lot of possibilities! It’s still too early to solidly know anything, but I feel pretty confident we’re entering another cloning related plot with our Clone Boy so it’s... ya know. Clone time. On the one hand it’s annoying because god we have done clone/multiple Kons plots before. We’ve done them so much.

BUT on the other hand, I think it could be interesting to use this situation to tie into some older stuff from pre-reboot that I can see some connections to, because due to Infinite Frontier altering the world and people’s memories it’s all technically fair game storytelling-wise again (and like, the use of Scavenger specifically in that flashback way above, who’s not a super well known villain in general, makes me think maaaaybe the writer did do some of their Kon homework)

Something also just dawned on me that i’m not quite sure what it means but still is worth mentioning: The Conner here in Suicide Squad is back in his Teen Titans Vol. 3 outfit, and his history as he tells it stops during Teen Titans Vol. 3. And doesn’t... mention when he died? It feels like it... stopped before that, because like I feel if he was telling his life history (even the wiki version LMAO) the part where he died and came back would be pretty important to bring up?? And Nocturna specifically says that he didn’t explain how that stuff from TT Vol. 3 then led to him in his current situation. That’s a pretty big gap (like uhhh everything from resurrection until he got lost on Gemworld + all the rest of the Young Justice 2019 stuff?) So like.. there could be something funky going on here that has to do with that. 

Similarly when he flashes back in Future State: Suicide Squad to his past it also goes right from Teen Titans Vol. 3 to the current Suicide Squad run? Like I get it’s one page so they can’t show that much, but the fact that there’s now two places that flash back to that same specific time period and nothing past it until the Suicide Squad feels just... noticeable! Not concretely indicative of something, but noteworthy.

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Like...this almost has me thinking maybe it could be something where like, they tampered with his dead body and cloned from that? BECAUSE, for those of you who may not be familiar with how Kon’s resurrection (during Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds) worked, when he came back there was time travel involved! He was brought back to life in the future (like. Legion of Superheroes era) because it was a process that took that thousand or so years to work/heal him (essentially because of his hybrid dna the process that healed Clark when he had died back in Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen in the 90s just took a lot longer, but its the same Kryptonian healing chamber thing) meaning when he came back to the present alive again, his dead body was still also in the present just in it’s process of healing. Meaning especially if we’re bringing back stuff from before the reboot, Kon likely has his dead body just vibing out there while he’s goin around living life 🤷‍♂️

SO them doing something related to that could explain the choice to put him back in the T-shirt (since thats what he wore in the era his brain would be caught up to if we’re relating this to when he died) and why he’d recognize himself in a group photo with Bart, Cassie and Tim but maybe not someone like Wallace who didn’t exist back then. I don’t know, this branch of thought is still half baked. Will maybe come back and elaborate on this later. But I’m now really thinking there might be a connection to the early Teen Titans Vol. 3 era specifically because of it being referenced twice in stuff with this Suicide Squad.

ANYWAYS moving on, this is probably a shot in the dark and I only thought of it because I just was reading 90′s Superboy, but right away when thinking about ‘Amanda Waller’ and ‘Cloning Kon’ I was reminded of some stuff about the circumstances around the first clone that was made of Conner: Match.

(Superboy (1994) #35)

Match was created by an organization called ‘The Agenda’, that was after a while primarily under the control of The Contessa, Lex Luthor’s ex-wife, aided by Amanda Spence who had a personal grudge against Kon bc her dad was Paul Westfield the guy Kon was originally cloned from (before the Lex/Clark retcon). They were the big bad guys of an arc called The Evil Factory in Superboy (where Cadmus personnel got replaced with clones) which also then tied into the Sins of Youth event over in Young Justice (Remember how Match was posing as Superboy for a while there? yeah). After those plot lines finished the Agenda was pretty defeated (Amanda Spence was still out there and came back later but still) and... who got their hands on the remaining Agenda tech?

(Superboy (1994) #87)

Why none other than Amanda Waller herself!

If they re-canonized pieces of this (which also tied into Young Justice which ya know, YJ 2019 was all about re-establishing stuff from YJ even before Death Metal happened soooo) it would totally make sense for Waller to have complete access to the exact technology used to clone Conner before. 

Now, a thing to consider here though is what happened to Kon after he’d been cloned that first time, where his DNA got all destabilized by the process (and he needed to go through a procedure with Roxy as a genetic template to keep him together, which was how he got stuck at age 16 for a while). This was something where he was fine for a period of time before the side effects began to kick in. Now, I think it’s worth mentioning that was also back in the days where he was not yet Lex & Clark’s clone, but still Paul Westfield’s. So there could easily be a ‘now that certain Kryptonian genes have kicked in as he got his newer powers it doesn’t destabilize him the same way’ reasoning or something along those lines to avoid this problem. Alternatively, it could be an interesting thing to embrace rather than retcon away, especially if we’ve been seeing Clone Conner in action and Original Conner hasn’t been in our focus, things could be wrong with him that we just don’t know about.

Another branch of thinking that I think is even MORE a shot in the dark but could be interesting (or again even related to what I just said, could be a combo of things) is if this somehow ended up related to those clones that were reverse engineered from the remains of Match from the very end of Teen Titans Vol. 3

(Teen Titans (2003) #99)

All of them were then taken down with Kryptonite and killed in battle (by Rose & Damian) 

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

But like... idk man if Waller got her hands on those corpses or even just the data from Dr. Caligan that he extracted from Match to make them... that could also be a potential way to make some new Conner clones, and that could be why the bio-scan thing at Titans Tower wouldn’t work properly because of the thing he says above about it not being a “complete match’

One thing I don’t think is the case, but has been brought up to me, is stuff with New 52 Kon. I’ve talked extensively about New 52 Kon in recent weeks because I read through all his stuff, but the thing that makes me shy away from him being part of this situation is the fact that... he’s not interchangeable with Kon the way I think some people think he is. He wouldn’t visually be recognized as Original Kon because he is literally on a genetic level a separate person. They’d prob look related, sure, like they’d pass for brothers because they both have Clark’s DNA, but New 52 Kon has Lois’ DNA and Original Kon has Lex’s. New 52 Kon would likely look more like Jon, rather than Kon. Lois specifically commented in an Action Comics issue that Kon had some resemblance to Lex, even. So like, things like Wallace recognizing him or him looking at his own matching reflection alongside the group picture at the Tower... those wouldn’t happen the same way if this was New 52 Kon.

Now I think it coooould theoretically be possible for Waller to have gotten her hands on that future N.O.W.H.E.R.E. cloning tech that had been used to make New 52 Kon, like I wouldn’t rule that out. Because she knows where the remains of their bases are as shown in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #16-17, and like, Harvest is dead so she could easily just send teams out there to gather shit if she wanted. 

Onto some other things I don’t think are actually related but that I was reminded of/wanted to address:

I feel i’d be a bad timkon fan if during all of this discussion of past stories with cloning Kon I didn’t even bring up Tim’s cloning attempt stuff, but I think it would ultimately be unrelated. His tech was stolen from Luthor, and his attempts didn’t succeed because he was trying to build from scratch without Cadmus’ the data about how they altered the DNA from the original process. 

(Teen Titans Vol. 3 #34)

Then that initial cover for the annual really reminded me of part of the Hollow Men story from Superboy Vol. 5 just with like... Kon in a room full of copies of himself. I don’t think this story would be related either because it was more magic Tannarak stuff rather than regular cloning, but ya know. It’s the imagery.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #9)

It also really reminded me of the stuff from Hyper-Tension which was hypertime stuff not cloning but again just... visually.

(Superboy Vol. 4 #62)

In general I don’t think we’re EVER gonna see Black Zero or any of these multiverse Superboys again LMAO.

To try to sum up all of this in a way that might make sense here’s kinda a... flowchart of some of my main ideas for what the cloning situation could be/how the logic could work. Again this is borrowing stuff from across continuities because Infinite Frontier means theoretically anything’s fair game. (Also I don’t think I mentioned this earlier but I do mention it in the chart, but I think it’s also reasonable that Waller could get her hands on Cadmus tech if Cadmus is like properly made canon again. She just has funky government connections!)

Also I just now thought of this now several hours after I already made the chart and I don’t wanna remake it so sorry not incorporating it there but I remembered there was also that bit during House of Kent where Clark took Kon to the Hall of Justice and they were running some tests on him, so I’m thinking it’s also possible Waller got ahold of that data/that might be how she found out about Kon in the first place for this timeline. And they indicated that there was something wrong with him there, where he might eventually lose his powers or something, so maybe she tried to do cloning stuff to be able to have a copy of Superboy in his prime or something??? before that started kicking in. I don’t know, just more things to consider:

(Action Comics (2016) #1028)

ANYWAYS in conclusion: there is clone fuckery of some sort happening, I’m curious where it’s gonna go, and I just want Kon to be okay.

If you actually read this uhm. props to you bc this probably makes no sense to anyone but me its just word vomit <3 

[noddytheornithopod]

Before I get to writing about the actual Bad Batch premiere, time to write another weird ranty post. This time... about overwriting canon. If you know what I mean, click the readmore to see what I have to say. If you don’t... well, don’t click, duh.

Yes, I’m talking about Caleb Dume’s inclusion.

Is canon something we hold too sacred? Yes. Am I still going to ask why they change things and wonder if it’s justified or not? Also yes.

I’m not super attached to the Kanan comic like some people are, but even as the episode played, I still took issue with the decisions they made? The reason ended up being surprisingly simple: I just preferred the story that was told in the comic than what we got on screen.

I definitely get why Filoni and co decided to feature this moment. Having a major character from one of your other shows get one of the most formative moments of his life portrayed is an opportunity too tempting to pass up. Honestly, when they made that Caleb model for the Siege of Mandalore opening, they were probably already thinking to themselves they should use it for something else.

As a scene in general, I do like what we got. I do like that we got to see Depa and Caleb together, and that we then saw everything go down, and how Caleb was already panicking and reacting to any clone with intense fear. Only real issues I have are that Freddie Prinze Jr (as great as it is to hear him again), as much as he tries to pitch up his voice clearly isn’t a 12 year old so it’s kinda distracting and even unintentionally hilarious (does anyone else think he even sounds a bit like Ezra at points?). That and, uh, the fact that Caleb’s design is whitewashed for some reason, but I talked about that before. The reason I’m not too into the scene and prefer the comic version though? Well, to put it simply, this isn’t Caleb’s story here.

Kanan: The Last Padawan is a story about Kanan Jarrus, back when he was still Caleb Dume. It’s focused on him and his relationship with Depa Billaba, what he’s like as a padawan, how he got along with clones like Grey and Styles, and of course how all of that comes together to impact him during Order 66. It’s a story about him.

Aftermath on the other hand isn’t a story about Caleb. It’s a story about the Bad Batch. This could’ve been any Jedi padawan escaping, any master that could’ve died, and it would’ve been the same story because it’s about how the Bad Batch react to Order 66 and what decisions they choose to make. They just chose to feature Caleb escaping Order 66 because they wanted to show that scene for Rebels fans. As a result, I was more focused on Hunter and Crosshair’s feelings and motives than what Caleb was going through.

Like, it’s not that it’s wrong to not feature Caleb here (...whitewashing aside, yeah sorry I’m gonna be salty for a while), it’s just that the more personal and impactful version of the story is I feel the comic for the reasons I stated, and now the more “official” version of the story is the one that’s less focused and personal for Caleb.

Oh yeah, there’s another thing that bothers me, but I find it more hilarious than anything: so much is changed from the comic, like yes putting the scene in new context is one thing, but changing things that wouldn’t even impact the story is another. Allow me to explain:

Captain Grey? He’s a commander in the comic, and there’s no Styles. I guess this was to be more efficient but you couldn’t be bothered to paint one more clone in some re... wait, green?

Yes, Grey’s armour is green, but in the comic it’s red. I’ve seen people suggest that it could be to avoid confusion with the shock troopers or even the Bad Batch themselves, but like... is it really that hard to discern? The red is a different shade and pattern. The shock troopers have WAY more red. Eh, what do I know.

On the topic of colours... why is Depa’s lightsabre now blue? It was not only green in the comics, but in freaking live action too (well, at least for promotional photos, IDK if they count as full canon). Let me guess, it’s something like Grey’s armour now being green means we can’t tell the difference now. Is there something I’m missing here? Something as small as a lightsabre colour feels like it’s changed for the sake of it.

Kaller is completely different: much snowier, and we see everything happen at daytime.

Like, stuff like this I just don’t get? Why make such insignificant changes when they don’t really impact the story? Did Kanan talk about how snowy it was when he watched his master die or something? :v I am aware this stuff that doesn’t matter, but that’s EXACTLY why I’m confused as to why they’re changing this stuff.

I think a lot of my confusion at this also comes from the fact that Lucasfilm promised when they rebooted canon under Disney, they would make a more unified and cohesive one to follow, one where everything would feel connected and that any errors would just be that, small mistakes that can be corrected or overlooked. But like, Filoni is clearly doing his own thing. The Siege of Mandalore is different to the Ahsoka novel (and implies some retcons to Son of Dathomir for that matter, an actual TCW story adapted lol). There’s differences with Cobb Vanth in The Mandalorian to his story in the Aftermath books.

The reason I wasn’t as concerned there was because well for one, Cobb Vanth’s written material is something I haven’t read, so I can’t really compare. But for the stuff in the final Clone Wars season, it’s either small things, but even for bigger stuff like how events play out it’s because they told a better story, I felt. That, and all the changes I felt made sense or were at least justified (for example, Ahsoka now having blue lightsabres adds character to her and Anakin). I also felt I was able to reconcile what didn’t fit through unreliable narrators - something I’ve seen suggested for the Kanan comics because those ARE his flashbacks, but again, the issue I have with Kanan is I prefer the story in those comics to here. If it is how they justify things then fair enough, but that’s still gonna make me wonder about things.

Something I also find kinda weird was that the comic was written by Greg Weisman, who was a writer on the first season of Rebels, and for that matter the story editor (a position that in some cases is equivalent to head writer, even if I don’t know if that’s the case here) on said season. So not just some random comic writer, one of the main writers who helped get the show off the ground wrote it. I just feel like it’s really weird that you’d have one of your main writers write this origin story, only to then go and overwrite it yourself like it never existed? IDK what Greg Weisman feels on the subject, but it’s an odd situation. It’s basically taking your co-worker’s work and going “okay but we’re gonna do it MY way instead just to serve my new story because I’m in charge even though you worked with me and you have insights and discussions with me that make your contributions not that of just any writer”).

So yeah, even if canon is something we fixate too much on in fandom, I don’t blame people for sometimes feeling like they’re told the stories they like matter less, especially when you’re being told things are SUPPOSED to be more connected now. Even not being strongly attached to this story as much as others, I feel like making this version more prominent can’t help but bum me out because I feel the story in the comic was more in-depth and impactful.

[x-wing-junkie]

Onward & Upward

Rating:  Teen

Warnings:  None

Tags: Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios, Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios, Alexsandr Kallus, Airen Cracken, Hera Syndulla, Original Rebel Alliance Characters

Established Relationship, Kallus gets his own ship, based on a Star Wars Adventures story, probably going to be jossed soon,

Summary:  As the Rebels search for a new home following the assault on Mako-Ta base, Kallus is given a new assignment.

Notes:  Sequel to A Safe Haven!

I fully expect this to be proven wrong as soon as we get more Star Wars Adventures comics with Kallus and his crew in them, but damn it if I didn’t already come up with my own ideas before finding out there would be further stories.

The Lasana, as always, comes from Anath_Tsurugi’s brilliant mind.

Cross posted from AO3 to celebrate 200 followers!

Home One was a busy ship in the days after the Rebellion fled Mako-Ta base.  Their retreat plans had been thrown into disarray by the arrival of Darth Vader.  

Stormtroopers, even Death Troopers, could be handled.  But how could regular Rebel troops hope to last against a Sith Lord?

They hadn’t been able to and they’d lost a lot of men in the trying, General Draven among them.

The Rebellion was in space, all crammed into Fleet ships while the Council debated a new base.

Kallus hoped it was news of such a base that made General Cracken, head of Intelligence, call him to his office, but he couldn’t be sure.

When Kallus entered the tiny office, Cracken – a middle-aged human with graying hair – was poring over a datapad, so Kallus stood by the door until he was acknowledged.

After a few minutes, Cracken looked up.  Kallus saluted and then sat in the chair Cracken indicated.

“Captain Kallus, you’ll forgive me for running late,” Cracken said.  “We’re just waiting for General Syndulla.”

Suddenly, Kallus felt like a child about to be chastised.  He ran through his behavior for the last few months and couldn’t think of any way he’d offended someone.  Ever since the battle of Scarif, he’d been serving as part of the Ghost’s crew, going on raids and scouting locations and other ‘in-the-field’ missions.  It’d been an ideal setup, allowing him the freedom to leave the base frequently and feel like he was making a significant contribution to the Alliance while being able to share a bed and a life with Zeb.

He wouldn’t change anything.

Well, that wasn’t quite true.  He chafed a little under Hera’s leadership – nothing to do with Hera herself, but Kallus had always been in command as an Imperial and he missed having the sort of authority an ISB agent wielded.  He missed being in control of his own actions, his own missions, his own destiny.

A soft knock sounded and Hera slipped into the room.  Kallus returned her smile, covering his nerves easily.

Hera nodded at Cracken and the general cleared his throat.  “Captain, I assume you’re familiar with the Imperial Freighter we captured over Kile II?”

Kallus was indeed familiar with the ship.  Zaarin’s commandos had taken control of it almost bloodlessly.  “Gozanti-class,” he said.  “Looks to be pre-Empire but modified for Imperial service.”

“You’re familiar with that class of ship, I understand.”

Kallus glanced at Hera, but her face betrayed nothing.  “Yes, sir. I often flew or commanded one during my ISB days.”

“That’s what General Syndulla told me.”  Cracken leaned forward on his desk.  “Captain, you’re being reassigned.”

Reassigned?  No!  “Where am I needed, sir?”

“I’m granting you command of our new ship.  You’ll need a crew.  I’ll give you some leeway in selecting them, but you’re being assigned a protocol droid.” Cracken glanced up at Hera, who gave Kallus a soft smile.

“I’m keeping Zeb and Rex,” she said,  “but you can pick almost anyone else.”

Kallus had known, in his gut, that Zeb wouldn’t leave Hera and Jacen anyway, but it hurt to hear he was being separated, even if it did mean his own command again.

“This assignment comes with a promotion,” said Cracken, pulling out a new rank tab.  “Congratulations, Commander Kallus.”

Still trying to digest all the information being thrown at him, Kallus picked up the rank tab and nodded. “Thank you, sir.  What sort of assignments can I expect?”

“You’ll be Fleet command, but most of your missions will come from Intelligence.  I presume you don’t mind picking up the mantle of Fulcrum again?”

“I didn’t ever put it down,” Kallus said.

“Good.  Then you’re dismissed, Commander.  I’ll expect your crew transfer requests by the end of tomorrow.”

Kallus nodded and left in a bit of a daze.  He wandered down to Home One’s main docking bay, where the newly-captured Transport 478 sat.  Mechanics swarmed over it, removing carbon scoring and repainting the yellow and gray accents.

“Nice lookin’ ship, isn’t she?”

“Garazeb,” Kallus said, relief flooding his chest.  “Did Hera tell you?”

“That you’re getting a promotion and a transfer?  Yeah.” Zeb sounded just as enthused as Kallus was.  He turned the conversation back to the ship, obviously a safer topic.  “You know, she needs a new name.  Something Rebellion-y.”

Kallus leaned into Zeb’s side.  “You know what she kind of looks like?”

“Huh?”  Zeb’s eyes narrowed as he peered at the ship. “She’s bigger ‘n the Ghost, that’s for sure.  I dunno what else.”

“The paint job,” Kallus pointed out.  “Yellow on top, gray on bottom.  She looks like that meteorite from Bahryn.  The one that kept us warm.”

“Mostly warm,” Zeb corrected.  He cocked his head.  “You’re right, she does.  So what? Gonna name her the Meteorite?”

“Maybe.  Maybe she needs a different name.  Something the meteorite represented.”  Kallus crossed his arms and thought.  “Something to do with hope, maybe.  Or warmth.”

“Ollirahnd Kasmera,” Zeb said after a few moments’ contemplation.  “Means ‘Glimmer of Hope’.”

“‘Glimmer of Hope’,” Kallus repeated.  He turned it over in his head a few times.  “The Rebellion could use hope right now, I think.”

Zeb wrapped an arm around Kallus’s shoulder.  “You think you can pilot this thing?”

Kallus scowled. “Garazeb, I’ll have you know I’m quite a good pilot.  You just haven’t seen me fly much.”

“Oh?  Better than me, are you?”  Zeb grinned, pressing a kiss to Kallus’s temple.  “I think we should test that.”

Huffing a laugh, Kallus replied, “In the simulators.  I don’t want you crashing my new ship.”

Zeb gasped in feigned offense.  “Alexsandr Kallus, are you implying I can’t fly a ship?”

“I know you’re a decent pilot,” Kallus said.  “But you’re not a really good one.  There’s a reason Hera doesn’t let you fly the Ghost, just the Phantom II.”

Zeb laughed.  “Okay, good point.”

Kallus smiled, but said nothing.  Slowly, his grin fell, becoming something sad and miserable.  “I don’t want this,” he said.  “I want to stay on the Ghost with you.”

“And I’d come with you if Hera’d let me, “ Zeb said.  “But you’re a victim of your own abilities.  You’re too good at this stuff.  They saw you lead the commandos, they know you fly well.”

“I could refuse the promotion and position,” Kallus said.  “Stay with you.”

Zeb stood there for a moment, obviously considering the idea.  “No,” he said finally.  “It’s where you’re needed.  They were gonna split us up sooner or later.”

Kallus felt a jolt. “You’re not saying–”

“No!” Zeb said quickly. “No, I’m not saying we should split up.  I’m just saying it was silly to believe we’d get to stay together the whole time.”

It wasn’t silly, Kallus wanted to argue.  It was everything I was fighting for.  “I suppose you’re right.”

“‘Course I’m right,” Zeb said, giving Kallus’s shoulders a squeeze.  “Come on, it’s dinnertime.”

Zeb slid his arm down Kallus’s back and caught his hand so they could walk together to the mess.

The fare on Home One was not quite as varied as the food on Yavin IV had been, but it was edible and, most importantly, not a nutrient paste, so Kallus was happy with it. He picked out a few spoonfuls of promising-looking dishes and followed Zeb to an empty table.

Their table didn’t stay empty for long.  Hera joined them, as did Zaarin, Kallus’s former roommate.  The talk, of course, was all of Kallus’s promotion.

Hera seemed apologetic. “I’m sorry to see you two split up, but General Cracken was insistent.”

Kallus gave her a small, reassuring smile.  “It’s really okay,” he said, even though it wasn’t.  “It was bound to happen at some point.”

“So who’re you picking for your crew?” Zaarin asked, raking back his shaggy hair from his face.  “You need a commando, right?”

“You want to give up command?” Kallus asked.  “What will Orenth-2 do without you?”

“They’re planning on merging us with Major Lissiri’s unit,” Zaarin said.  “So I’m history either way.  Might as well go out and see the galaxy, not just battlefields.”

Kallus chewed his food, thinking.  Did he really want to work with Zaarin?  The man was a friend and they’d survived living together, but… well, Zaarin could be a bit grating.  “Fine,” he said after a minute.  “I’ll submit your name.”

“Great!”  Zaarin leaned forward.  “Now, if you really want to make me happy, you’ll ask that new elomin in Intelligence, too.  I hear she’s killer with a Kyuzo petar.”

Everyone else at the table sighed.  Zaarin’s penchant for aliens – especially aliens with horns, such as elomin – was well-known.

“Tell you what,” Kallus said.  “If you can tell me her name, right now, I’ll ask her.  But if she’s just ‘the new elomin…’”

“Mikal,” Zaarin answered quickly.  “I do pay attention to that sort of thing, you know.”

“No, we don’t know that,” Zeb laughed.  “Gotta say, I’m surprised.”

Hera grinned, too. “Looks like you’ve got two crew members already, Kallus.”

“Only if Cracken approves all the transfers,” Kallus said.  “So Zaarin, you’re good with explosives and apparently this Mikal is good with melee weapons.  I’m a good ranged shot.  We have a droid.  What are we missing?”

“You want a mechanic,” Hera said.  “Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found myself wishing we had one.”

“Hey!” Zeb protested. “I do that sort of work!”

Hera smiled.  “You do and you do it well.  But it’d be nice to have you in a turret while someone else works on the shields when they fail.  I don’t want to have to choose where you go.”

Zeb leaned back in his chair.  “Fair enough,” he said.  He turned to Kallus.  “Grab a verpine if you can.  If not, grab Jaci.”

Kallus nodded.  Jaci had never quite bounced back after losing her cousin and both her lovers so close together back on Yavin IV.  Instead she’d thrown herself into her work, quickly becoming the most sought-after of the human mechanics.  Kallus had a fond spot for her; she’d been one of the first people on Yavin to show him kindness.  Perhaps a change would do her well.  “If Daine lets her go,” he agreed.  “Anyone else?”

Hera shrugged.  “We got along with a group of five for a good while before Ezra joined us and I’m sure between you and Zaarin, you can smooth-talk your way out of bad situations one way or another.”

Kallus wasn’t sure if he should be offended or not.  He’d use diplomacy if he could but Zaarin would probably flirt his way out of trouble.

And, knowing the bastard, it would work.

“All right.  I’ll get those names to Cracken.”  Under the table, Kallus reached out for Zeb’s hand, giving it a soft squeeze.

“So does this make us all Fulcrum agents, too?” Zaarin asked.  “‘Cause that’s really good for–”

Hera cleared her throat and Zaarin stopped mid-sentence.  Continuing as if Zaarin hadn’t been about to make a lewd comment, she said, “I think Kallus will be the only Fulcrum agent, although you can talk to General Cracken if you’re truly interested.”

Zaarin laughed.  “No, I’ll let K handle that one.  I was just curious.”

Kallus and Zeb shared a glance and the lasat rolled his eyes.  “I think Kal and I need to go,” Zeb said.  “Got stuff for him to do.”

Cheeks warm with embarrassment, Kallus let himself be dragged off back to the Ghost.

“Garazeb,” Kallus said, casting about for the right words.  “Are you sure you’re all right with me taking this position?  We’ll both be gone so often.”

“But you’re not gone yet,” Zeb reasoned.  “We’ll worry about that when it happens.”  He reached out and pulled Kallus close, into a deep kiss.

Kallus closed his eyes and focused on the kiss: the taste and tang of Zeb, the feel of lips and sharp fangs against his.  They’d gone through so much to get to the point where Zeb felt comfortable kissing him, Kallus hated to do anything to mess that up.

Reaching behind him, he hit the door controls and pulled Zeb back into their cabin.  “Ollirahnd Kasmera,” he murmured, between kisses. “You realize Glimmer of Hope is a terribly sentimental name?”

“So call it the Glimmer.  Or the Kasmera.”  Zeb shrugged. “Better ‘n Glowy Rock That Kept Me Warm.”

Kallus laughed and cupped Zeb’s jaw, running his thumb through the lasat’s bristly beard.  “I do love you, Garazeb,” he said.

Zeb arched his brows. “Now who’s the sentimental one, Alex?”

“Only because you made me so.”

Zeb pushed Kallus back on the bed.  “Guess I rubbed off on you the right way.”

“Something like that,” Kallus laughed again.  

“Tomorrow we’ll get you moved into your new quarters and then break ‘em in properly,” Zeb said.  “But you’re not leaving on that ship yet. We’re still together for tonight. And I have plans for you.”

“Plans?”  Kallus grinned.  “Show me.”

And Zeb did.

Kallus lay there after, wrapped in Zeb’s arms, running his fingers idly through thick purple fur.

Glimmer of Hope, he thought.  The Glimmer.  I can work with that.

He used to think there wasn’t the slightest bit of hope for both of them to make it through the war together, but Zeb’s steady belief in something better had wormed its way into Kallus’s heart.

Thanks to Zeb, he had more than just a glimmer of hope that there was something for them on the other side of this long war.

And that something was worth fighting for.  

Worth living for.

[nalufever]

do you have any more nalu fic recs?

Sorry, not sorry - you’ve unleashed more than you could’ve guessed. ^^ Always happy to Recommend a List of Fics ~ And thank you for asking! Admittedly there’s a few Recs that aren’t Nalu - I got excited to share my favs. ;)

A Girl Worth Fighting For: Natsu navigates unspeakable horrors to win Lucy’s love or Natsu goes shopping, looking for the perfect white day gift. 

A Lesson: Natsu and Lucy can’t keep themselves from expressing their passions - and the results are bed breaking. Short but smutty - smexy in fact. ;P 

A Solidly Constructed Kiss: Erza strong-arms Lucy and Natsu into working the Kissing Booth to raise funds for a school trip. Lucy’s never been kissed and Natsu acts like he’s never entertained even the idea of kissing another person. Things naturally come to a head when Lucy and Natsu are given the task to build the actual booth; will they fight over construction or build themselves some kind of relationship? 

Fairy Tail Week: A collection of drabbles from tumblr prompts to celebrate Fairy Tail. Fairy, Ladies, Lads, Magic, Guild, Ultimate Team, Stronger, Mashima, Tail. Only rated teen to err on the side of caution, family friendly content featuring most of the Fairy Tail Guild! 

Feathers and Scales: Angel/Demon AU. Devils are more than they seem and Angels no less. Pitted against each other in a never-ending battle for souls, a single Angel and Devil trade mercies and fall in love. Warning: major character death(s). 

Full Moon Secret: Natsu had wanted to tell Lucy his secrets, to share his family history with the fey…it had just never been the right time. Tonight the truth was going to be revealed, one way or another. 

Okay, I could just keep hyping all of my own fics individually - but I won’t - other than to just put in a link to ALL OF THEM. ;) Fair warning, I have a few other fandoms works in all the Fairy Tail stories - from Brooklyn 99 to The Flash, Snow White with the Red Hair, RWBY, Blue Exorcist, Teen Titans and some Hakuouki. Yes, I’m a shameless self-promoter. Speaking of that - one more I need to rec!  Natsu’s Stars in Lucy’s Sky. I swear Imma finish this. 

I also have more than a few favourite authors who write for Fairy Tail (and other fandoms) ~ some have not contributed lately to Fairy Tail or chosen to concentrate on other fandoms - but I like them and their excellent writing. 

ObsessedwithNalu: One of my first fandom friends and pretty much any of her FT stories is gold. @obsessedwithnalu  

Christmas Treats: Admittedly a gift to me and very cherished for that fact - and - it’s frigging awesome. Lucy does a little holiday baking at home before Fairy Tail’s Christmas party. Natsu, as always, is there. One thing leads to another… 

Thanks, Krov: When Krov decided to relax at his favorite bar after work, he never imagined that he’d be seeing some of his old guild members, especially since he thought they had died long ago. Nalu fluff. 

Edo-Nalu love fest: Submissions for the Nalu love fest week of 2014. But instead of regular Nalu, these ones feature Edo-Nalu. Smut-tastic and delightfully mature. 

ImpracticalDemon: Another early fandom friend who’s still writing this, that and the other thing - and she’s just GREAT. Again, a link to all her works and a few that are special to me follow. XOXOX @impracticaldemon  

May the Best Man Survive: “Gray would never have in a million years thought he’d host Natsu’s bachelor party (Nalu pairing). Why is it his job to herd the bunch of rowdy mages from bar to bar, ending up at the guild where the real surprise party is? Oh yeah, the idiot had asked him to be the best man at his wedding. Hijinks, chaos and hilarity ensue.” ^^ A prompt supplied by me and I’m smirking so wide because the fic Imp came up with delivered more awesomeness than I could have hoped for! 

A Star At His Side: “Accidentally Fall Asleep Together” for Endragoneel on tumblr. Natsu and Lucy spend the day together at a festival in Magnolia. Natsu ends up watching more than just the stars when the festival is over… 

Christmas Gifts: When Erza walks Wendy home from the Guild’s Christmas Party, Wendy realizes how alone her friend and mentor is feeling. She sets out to recruit Lucy, Natsu and the rest to break Jellal out of prison for just one night, as a Christmas gift for Erza. Meanwhile, Natsu has accidentally burned some of Lucy’s writing. Will she forgive him? 

Dark Shining Light: One of the best and most welcoming writers I have ever interacted with! I’m still gobsmacked she’s a friend! She’s a legend and I don’t know what else I could add to any discourse about her writing - but the classics are classic for a reason, yeah? Here’s a few of my personal favourites of her works and just know there’s too many to list them all! AKA @ff-darkshininglight 

Mischievous Cat: Let’s just say there have been a few incidents where Happy has come in at a bad time. 

What Belongs to a Demon: Everyone knew she belonged to the great demon lord and she would prove that she deserved to stand by his side. 

The Truth Revealing Cards: Lucy should have known if there was a card that would reveal her secrets, Natsu would want it. 

Eliz1369: Got introduced to her for her Hakuoki fics but she’d dipped her toes into FT as well ~ and this is a great fic. ^^ @eliz1369 

The Light of Fairy Tail: The members of Fairy Tail may be their own brand of crazy, but their hearts are always in the right place. 

rougescribe: Shame on me for not reading more of this author’s works! @rougescribe  

Fire Sprite No 5: For him, Heaven wasn’t a place or a single moment in time. It was a feeling built on memories upon memories, past and present and a hope for future ones all tied down together. All sharing one common denominator: Her. Nalu. Tumblr Valentine’s Event. 

Fallen Ark Angel: Admittedly I only have interacted from afar with this writer. I mainly read Nalu fics but I love her take on Mira and Laxus and her next gen offspring characters. She’s got a lot to offer and it’s all superb. @fallen029

Loving Satan: Loving Satan is never easy. But when she loves you back, its twice as bad. 

Madartiste: Another one-sided love affair with someone else’s writing. And her stories are all wonderful and prolly appear on hundreds of Fic Rec Lists - but here’s one of my Favs! @madartiste  

Hoarding: Getting interrupted gets old fast. 

UranoMetria: I added her to my stable of fav authors 05-03-2014. Wow. Eons ago and even if I’m not sure she’s still active in the fandom, I salute her. Kudos. 

The Goddess Gate: With six years of partnership, Natsu and Lucy are torn apart by a mysterious visit from a secret magic council. Lucy is kidnapped and her memories suppressed. She fights her way back home to regain her life - with a startling secret revealed as she begins to remember. The lives of all Earthland hang in the balance. **Okay, this is a wicked old fic - but amazingly written and fuelled my own desires for writing. Last updated in 2018 but who knows? Some current attention may slay any demons on her back in regards to writing - and even if not - the hours of enjoyment reading this is worth giving a comment just to say, ‘thank you for writing.‘ 

Wild Rhov: Do I even need to say anything about this author? Famous, famous, famous. Excellent. Writes a lot of pairings and fleshes every relationship into something REAL. I Can’t Even. @wildrhov  

Beastly Possession: Something is murdering people in Magnolia. When Lucy is attacked, Natsu goes on a rampage to find the culprit, and everyone in Fairy Tail wants revenge. But could this bloodthirsty attacker be someone they know? Warning: High octane nightmare fuel! Do not read while eating, and beware of red eyes in the dark! 

Shell1331: Introduced via Imp. This writer is in a few fandoms and is worth reading. @shell-senji  

Juicy: Impulsivity and poorly chosen words get Natsu into more trouble than he’d expected, which is saying something for him. 

AbsentAngel: Everyone should know this writer. Been stalking her since 2014 so that says something. Tho, it’s prolly just that I’m creepy. ;) My suggested fic here is being re-written/has been? into something original and worth being purchased when it becomes available and re-read over and over. No, I am not being paid to shill but I am open to having senpai notice me. @absent-angel  

To the Flame: She stares, transfixed, as the blood runs down his fingers and begins to pool in his palm. He holds his hand up to her lips in offering, and she tears her eyes away from the blood to study his face. He is smiling softly. “Go on Luce, I didn’t cut them for nothing.” [Vamp AU] 

HawkofNavarre: Loved for awesome and delightful Gruvia content. Looks like there’s a tumblr but I can’t manage to link it. :(

You Stole the Rain: He just wanted to be friends; fine, she just needed to change his mind. Gray x Juvia 

Ricardian Scholar Clark-Weasley: Not sure I spelled that right even after checking three times! I usually short hand that to RS-CW in my head. And she’s prolific - has a tonne of fandoms and is a tower of talent. Is anyone reading all my fangirl gushing? 'Cause she follows one of my fics and comments (sorry I haven’t updated that fic in a while) and it’s a source of happiness that someone who writes so well happens to enjoy some of my content. Okay, bragging over - back to the Recs! 

Tales of Fairies: A collection of oneshots exploring different friendships, ideas, sad themes, comical scenarios, and lots and lots of pairings…but mainly Nalu. 

snogfairy: Another giant in the FT fandom. Impressive talent. @lineffability  

naughty nalus: smutty nalu oneshots B) ***Mature content!*** 

Rivendell101: Another giant in FT and other fandoms. This author would be considered required reading if I ran a fandom course in a University setting. Just sayin’ @rivendell101  

Crave: /krāv/ Verb. To feel a powerful desire for (something). They crave each other. And satiation doesn’t come easily. He growls against her again. “Beg for it,” he demands, lips ghosting against her. 

Lakerae aka @hidetheremote : Did you think I’d forgotten you? Ha! Gotcha good! You’re an inspiration to me because you’re working so hard to publish your children’s books. Kudos to you li'l sis! You’re busy but still make it a point to talk to me and I love you for that and everything.

The Gift of the Magi: A Gajevy Twist: A retelling of the classic Christmas story “The Gift of the Magi,” with your favorite Fairy Tail couple Gajeel and Levy! It’s Christmas time and Gajeel and Levy exchange gifts. They both are surprised what they receive and learn a lesson of the true meaning of Christmas. 

I could add more and more as I search my saved favs on FF.net ~ and I’m sorry to not include all of them - but this is crazy long as it is. If you read and like any of the recommended fics, please be sure to let the author know. To the authors of these and all fanfics, Thanks for everything.

[ko-chan-the-blueberry-donut]

Im alive and slowly coming back. Also I have an art insta for oldie fanart and producing new stuff slowly and a  John/Seraphina smut fanfiction on ao3 for any unordinary fans of the pairing if they wanna read

Okay so FINALLY i am in the right place for treatment, am getting all my medical stuff in order, have my parents’ support, a good boyfriend and not that horrible ex i posted about last year, and FINALLY can make stuff like the Kallura mermaid fanart and tons of original mixed media stuff I am doing into prints as well as drafting my original webtoon to publish. I am ALSO currently drafting an adult coloring book to take to a publisher. Basically my art has massively improved and I can now start hopefully a shop for both fan art AND original works. 

As for fanfictions and fanart, slowly getting back into it. I am trying to get to a baseline first and with wanting to focus on the art stuff, I kinda haven’t had a moment to really sit down and read fanficiton or get inspired for fan content because i’ve been doing tons of original concepts (I have 15 original pages for the coloring book so far and a whole word doc of 10 concepts of original works for prints and 7 more original concepts for the coloring book as well as a custom character art for a friend being drafted). I still have to finish the giant John/Seraphina comic I made months ago, which I am slowly finishing the current pages and inking and coloring before making new ones. I am trying to be realistic with my work goals as if I over load myself too much, I’m going to not be successful. 

I realize I have been away very very long and probably no one really cares for my content anymore and I built my following more so on my writing--I had basically declined so bad mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually i can not even perform daily tasks. my memory is still very bad and my focus is very hard to maintain. I am trying to find a way to finally have restorative sleep since I’ve had nightmares and poor sleep quality from PTSD and other mental health issues that are intense for seven straight years and still is happening today. Basically I am in treatment for both immense trauma I have and also for tons of physical issues that may be from neurological stuff where the ongoing trauma affected me neurologically as well as psychologically.

I always would make promises I’d get things done but every time something would make my health worse and I couldn’t do it so I’m not going to make promises you all will get updates for things soon, but I haven’t forgotten about my fan content and i still check my ao3 every other day. I am just trying right now to get to a baseline and take things really slow to not overload myself on both my original stuff and my fan content, and create a whole new portfolio as well as do scripting for my webtoon and complete 25 coloring book page drafts with original works. When I finally am in a better state to handle a lot more, I want to get back into fanfiction--especially my stories “Always Led back to you”, “Persephone”, “Fate’s Divergence” and “Everybody Loves Marinette” as well as watch the rest of carmen sandiego to write more for my “Thoughs of a Father” series. I hate how I have gotten so bad I cannot just surround myself with fan content like my fanfictions or the fandoms or my fan art and be thriving like before. I haven’t read a fanfiction in months and my Jeraphina comic was the last fan art I made besides starting a disney princess series for fun art since you cannot sell disney fanart so i am doing it to promote my mixed media skills. I thank everyone for being so patient and I’m sorry I will have to keep you waiting as I focus on my original art projects to produce money, but I actually have an insta for my old fanart and some slightly newer stuff for the webtoon with Cassandra and Eris. Yes, I am aware all the stuff currently on my insta is mediocre--I am working on a lot of projects to produce art where I improved a lot but if you wanna check out my older stuff--like way older from over the years as a content creator in fandoms and my poor color pencil skills back then, my insta is https://www.instagram.com/moonbear_and_sunbee/  and all the drawings above the unordinary fanart is how much i upgraded in drawing skills. My markers skills are also improving a lot too. 

Edit: just changed the link for my account. 

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #474

Top Ten Characters Who Came Back from the Dead

I am stunned – stunned! – that I’ve not done this one before. I mean, come on! It’s right there.

So there’s obviously a thematic resonance going on here. This weekend – the weekend you’re meant to be reading this – is famous where I come from because of a story where someone came back from the dead. Unlike other holidays – Christmas, Halloween, the release of a Star War – I’ve actually been a little slow off the mark in making lists that celebrate Easter. I’ve done eggs and bunnies, but incredibly I’ve never done resurrections, which really is the day’s whole deal. I mean, if you get down to brass tacks, it’s kinda the big selling point of the entire religion really. I hesitate to say “USP” because, well, it’s been done elsewhere, but it’s still supposed to be one of the big Christian takeaways (there’s definitely a chain of Christian takeaways in the States, isn’t there?).

Anyway, resurrection. It’s actually more common than you might think. Certainly in terms of comics there are probably more characters who’ve “died and come back” than have never “died” at all. But! And this is where I get pernickety. Most characters who “die” don’t actually die. Take Batman for instance: he’s shot in the face by Darkseid, and then Superman ups and finds his charred corpse, but – shocker! – he’s not actually dead, he was just sent back in time, where he Quantum Leaps his way back to the present day, accumulating enough Omega Energy with each leap that by the time he reaches the present day he’s blow a hole in reality. Or something, I’ve not read that story for quite a few years. Anyway: he wasn’t dead. Neither was Sherlock Holmes, or for that matter Dirty Den. Generally speaking, if someone dies in a story and then reappears, they’re not dead. Not really.

So this list here is supposed to be people who actually died. Now, even here, it’s debatable; I mean, is E.T. dead, or does his body just go into some kind of hibernation? If Optimus Prime’s brainwaves survive, does he ever really die? Is a clone someone coming back to life or not? It’s all a bit wishy-washy really, which kind of makes sense when you’re talking about resurrection. And let’s not get onto the chief resurrector, the Doctor; do they die every time they regenerate? Or is the regeneration itself a way of staving off death? When David Tennant turned into Matt Smith, did the Tennant-Doctor die? “I don’t want to go,” and all that; there’s always a subtle (or not-so-subtle) change in personality. Does that count? Well, for the purposes of this list, I’ve kinda decided it doesn’t. But it’s an interesting discussion to have, if you’re a big old nerd like me.

So yeah: people who have died – properly, I suppose – and then come back to life. That’s the list. No fakery, to mistaken identity, no alternate universe shenanigans; they were dead but they got better (no Chev Chelios either; sorry, Stath stans). No zombies either! Or vampires! They’re not undead; they were dead, and now they’re alive again. That’s the rule. Also I’ve seriously tried to limit comic book characters. And I’m sure there are some big omissions (like, I know there’s one from Game of Thrones that’s not on here, but that’s because I’ve not seen that far into the show yet; I know, I know). But I reckon these are the best at being back.

Optimus Prime (Transformers franchise, from about 1987): OP is the OG when it comes to coming back to life. Dying and then stopping being dead is pretty much his thing. Technically the first time he came back from the dead was in the original animation; famously being offed by Megatron in The Transformers: The Movie (1986), he came back to life a year later. Subsequent media have frequently killed him and brought him back, even in the live-action movies, but I want to talk about the comics. Because the original Marvel run killed off Optimus at a similar time as the cartoon; he’s blown up in slightly contrived circumstances, but his brain is saved on a floppy disk. Two years later he has his body rebuilt and his brain restored and he’s off to the races once more. Then in 1991, when facing down planet-eating mega-bastard Unicron, he sacrifices himself again, but this time his personality has begun to merge with that of his ostensibly-human companion Hi-Q. Hi-Q/Prime is converted/rebuilt into a new body, and he wins the war. So there you go: even in this one sliver of continued continuity – not including off-shoots or spin-offs, let alone other iterations of the overall franchise – Optimus Prime died and came back to life twice. Beat that, Easter.

E.T. (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982): not much to say here that we don’t already know from the Book of Spielberg. E.T., doddery little alien magic-man, grows sicker and sicker as he’s stuck on Earth, until in a thrillingly-edited set-piece he seems to expire, human doctors unable to help him. “I know you’re gone,” says best bud Elliot, “because I don’t know what to feel.” But then! His heart glows! His colour returns! And he positively yells, “E.T. phone hooooooome!” – and Elliot’s euphoric laugh is just devastating. The whole sequence – what is it, ten minutes? Fifteen? – is masterful in every way, from the technical to the performative to the emotional. Bloody magic is what it is.

Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 1954): Gandalf the Grey famously leads the Fellowship of the Ring across the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, where he faces off against a Balrog. After a bit of “you shall not pass” and all that, they both fall from the bridge, battling each other on the way down, before both perishing at the bottom. Gandalf, though, is not really Gandalf, but Olórin, one of the Maiar – basically a kind of angel, I guess. He is returned to Earth by the powers-that-be to complete his mission, and is promoted to Gandalf the White, supplanting the corrupt wizard Saruman. This new iteration of Gandalf is a bit more serious and steadfast, although he does retain his fascination with hobbits. Regardless, he gets a terrific death scene and a triumphant resurrection, and how it ties into Tolkien’s wider mythology is interesting.

Superman (DC Comics, 1993): comic book characters die and come back all the time; it’s pretty much a staple of the medium. I guess Jean Grey/Phoenix is probably the most famous, but they’ve all done at some point (even if, like in my Batman example earlier, sometimes they don’t actually die). Anyway, Superman died, very famously, after getting into a tremendous barney with genetically-engineered super-git Doomsday (as famously, and atrociously, depicted in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). The whole “Death of Superman” arc is interesting and entertaining as an example of mid-nineties big-panel EXTREME storytelling: as the issues tick down to the fateful scrap in Metropolis, the number of panels-per-page is reduced until the final issue is basically just full of splash pages. It’s a terrific, exhilarating rumble, really selling the heft of the confrontation. Interestingly, the comic spends a lot of time afterwards dealing with life without Superman, as a raft of imitators/wannabe successors emerge from the woodwork; these include the best-ever Superboy, Conner Kent, and Steel, who’s basically Superman meets Iron Man. Eventually, of course, Superman comes back, his body essentially having been sent to a Kryptonian day spa to recuperate; he emerges clad in black and with a mullet, so death obviously has some lasting repercussions. Overall, it’s a whopping arc with long-term consequences, and whilst it’s easy to make Christ parallels when discussing Superman, this story doesn’t really hew that way (unlike the Snyder-verse which really goes all-in on that plot point, much to the films’ detriment). One of the better aspects is how, even in death, Superman is an inspiration, which in itself has a long trail; leading, eventually, to Batman’s famous withering diss, “the last time you inspired someone was when you where dead.” Anyway, I’ve gone on about this far too long.

Spock (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984): let’s start by acknowledging just how great Spock’s death is in Wrath of Khan. As a plot point within the film, as a piece of staging and performance, and as a landmark moment in this franchise, it was seminal; a death for the ages (as an aside, it’s crazy to think Star Trek as a whole was only sixteen years old when Spock died; the MCU was eleven when Tony Stark clicked the bucket). Anyway, they built an entire film around how to bring him back, and Spock as we know him is absent for much of it; a presence looming over everything as he rapidly ages, going through his Vulcan super-puberty and everything. It’s actually a rather sombre film as Kirk’s son is killed and the Enterprise blows up; bringing back Spock comes with a very real cost. Trek III is not one of the top-tier films – in the loose trilogy that comprises Khan, Spock, and The Voyage Home it’s certainly the weakest – but it’s still pretty good, often underrated. And, of course, it brings back Spock, which is nice.

Agent Coulson (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 2013): Coulson’s death in Avengers comes as a huge shock, one of the fan-favourite characters being brutally offed in surprising fashion. In a film chock full of super-people, it’s the ordinary guy who buys it tragically. However, did any of us really think he was dead-dead? And so barely a year later he pops back up in the TV series Agents of SHIELD. However, his reincarnation became a recurring plot point; his references to spending time in Tahiti (“It’s a magical place”) becoming increasingly sinister as we come to understand even he doesn’t know how he’s back up and running. The eventual truth – Nick Fury using painful and transformative alien tech to basically bring Coulson back to life – may be a bit underwhelming, but it gave Clark Gregg a lot of meat to chew on dramatically speaking, and it underscored a lot of his character development going forward (especially when he, yes, died again, and then sort-of came back, twice).

Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001): full disclosure: I never watched Buffy religiously. I think I just missed it at the start and it was only when all my friends were talking about how great it was that I started tuning in more regularly. Weirdly, I think the most I watched it was around the time Buffy died and came back. It’s fascinating, really, and full credit to the show for the way they explored it; in a series full of magic, the afterlife, and the undead, bringing a character back to life isn’t too shocking. Willow, Buffy’s witchy mate, resurrects her with magic; but in an excellent twist, it turns out that she was in Heaven, and is super pissed off to be pulled out of paradise and stuck back on Earth, leading to her feeling depressed and alienated all season. That’s a great hook for bringing a character back, and leads to some meaty stuff for Sarah Michelle Geller to do.

Agent Smith (The Matrix Reloaded, 2003): do you ever feel that The Matrix has slipped from popular culture a little bit? Twenty years ago it was ascendent, rivalling Lord of the Rings for the title of “the new Star Wars”. Everyone was copying it. but now hardly anyone talks about it. probably because it hasn’t had a multimedia shelf-life comprising dozens of games and spin-off shows. Maybe the new film will change that. But I digress; Hugo Weaving is tremendous as Agent Smith in the first film, and is exploded at the end (spoilers) by Keanu Reeves’ Neo. Unsurprisingly – especially as he’s, well, just bits of code – he’s back in the sequel. However, he’s now been corrupted; he becomes, basically, a virus, self-replicating and threatening not just our heroes but the Matrix itself. This builds across two films, as Neo has to fight dozens of Smiths in the famous “Burly Brawl”, before the final conflict in The Matrix Revolutions when it seems everyone in the program has been Smithed. It offers Weaving a lot of scenery to chew on and makes for some great set-piece battles, even if the films themselves are a little disappointing.

Olaf (Frozen II, 2019): let’s not beat around the bush here – Olaf carks it in Frozen II. Okay, maybe Elsa dies; maybe Anna dies in the first film. They’re frozen, right, but I feel like it’s “magic ice” and there’s something going on there. Do they come back to life or were they ever really dead? Anyway, Elsa is effectively “gone” but we get a protracted death scene for the comic relief talking snowman. He literally fades away, slowly dying in Anna’s arms, and melts into a flurry of snow that blows away. People talk about Bambi’s mum all the time, but mark my words; “Olaf’s death” is going to be cited as a major traumatic incident for twenty-year-olds in 2030. His resurrection, truth be told, is slightly less great, Elsa just straight-up bringing him back to life, reminding us that “water has memory” to let us know that it’s the same Olaf and he remembers everything (including, presumably, dying? That’s creepy). And that, to be honest, is where I draw the line; sentient wind and rock monsters I can handle, but we all know homeopathy is bollocks.

Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 2019): look, I hate this. But let’s deal with it anyway, because I have a funny feeling it’s going to lead to some quite interesting stories being told in spin-off Star Wars fiction. I personally feel quite strongly that Palpatine should have stayed dead. And maybe he did? We are led to believe that the Palpatine we see in Rise is a clone; there are jars of stilted Snokes floating in the background. He’s all knackered and broken, eyes blackened and fingers dropping off; clearly he’s not well. So is he really the same character at all? Is his Sith essence somehow fed into this new body, the way Prime’s mind is downloaded from a floppy disk (“run prime.exe”)? Let’s say it counts, let’s say he’s the same slimy Palps we know and love. He is, at least, a sinister presence, and like I say, the whys and wherefores of how he came to be back is quite interesting. There’s a fascinating story to be told about the rise of Snoke and the seduction of Ben Solo – a more interesting story than anything told in The Rise of Skywalker, for starters. Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian seems to be researching cloning and seeks to extract midichlorians from a Force-sensitive being; are we to conclude that this in service of making a new body for the Emperor? All this – stuff hinted at but not explored in the film itself – is, like I say, interesting if not outright fascinating. And I agree, there is a certain degree of circularity in bringing back the series’ Big Bad for the final instalment. But I still feel, hand on heart, that it undoes a lot of the victory of Return of the Jedi (as did The Force Awakens, if I’m honest), as well as throwing away all the development of Rey and Kylo in The Last Jedi. So: Palpatine is cool, his presence and backstory in Rise of Skywalker is suitably creepy and interesting, but on the whole it’s crap and they shouldn’t have brought him back. The end.

Ten people who definitely died and definitely un-died! What could be more Easter-y? Honourable mention goes to the episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer changes history and ends up not being a hologram, only to accidentally blow himself up in the final seconds.

[fandommomhater]

pspspspspspps 68, 62, 21, 6, 93 :}

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

i once as a joke with my friends ordered this like 7 espresso shot Frappuccino with like 7 pumps of caramel and vanilla flavor from Starbucks (first and last time I’ve ever gotten Starbucks) and I drank that entire thing myself (no one else would) . I used to put shots of strawberry protein shake into my black coffee which my friends also hated. they were both terrible but also so good so

62. seven characters you relate to?

WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME DROP THE KINLISTTTT. WHY.

hollyleaf (look i was 7 years old. leaf me alone.)

sam alexander (nova comics)

scott summers (specifically in his origin comic and also with the champions)

carol danvers (THE COMICS not the mcu im not a little freak at least)

jadzia dax (women 🥰 have not seen season 7 ds9 yet but i think ezri is also going on my kinlist)

wesley crusher (i refuse to speak on this matter. die)

donut (red vs blue IM SO SORRY FOR MY BAD TASTE)

to be on the list you have to either be a pilot, have daddy issues, or have ambiguous disorder. if you have all three you get a instant promotion.

21. obsession from childhood?

i was very much a weird space kid. i once straight up left my group on a field trip in like, 6th grade so i could sneak off to space exhibit (i got caught). it went away for a few years in middle school and now it’s back except im now mean and cynical and everytime i hear news about spacex or blue origin i am so close to snapping 😌

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

very formal to the point where it’s a joke. i have like 17 thrifted sweatervests and sweaters and button up and i wear them all the time. i literally dress like a college professor. the only exception is i have two very fun leather jackets that are my signature because im a trashy lesbian

93. nicknames?

hmm have not thought much about this ‘sam’ is my usual internet moniker, I’ve thought about ‘samuel’ too, and also considered ‘Jay’ or ‘j’ but have not used them sooo.