#literally I can go on and on about lore and headcanons and the mechanics of each game and why i love them all

[animangalover-writes]

Maybe I am autistic and maybe one of my special interests is the Zelda franchise.

(I literally will not shut up about it once I get going. I've been doing this since I was like 5.)

[knuckleblaster]

On some level I understand the rejection or outright denial of V2's death: it was jarring and brutal, especially for a character who, at least in laws of traditional video game rivals and the rule of thirds, seemed like it'd stick around for longer. This said, inferring from in-game lore as well as dev statements, I believe V2's death, tragic that it is, is not unwarranted; and that it is commonly pigeonholed into a characterization it does not fit into due to its assumed role within the game.

This is long, so it's going under the cut.

Considering its name, it's easy to assume V2 is a new and improved version of its predecessor; but it is more heavily implied that it's simply a version of V1 with thicker plating, and nothing more. [1] V2 was an attempt at salvaging V1's design after war became irrelevant, to capitalize on the resources wasted on a highly advanced war machine by rebranding it as an adaptable worker, for security and (theoretically) other peacetime activities (...not an innuendo). This was a failure; there's no reason to invest in something so refined when a handful of lesser machines could do the same job [2].

If V2 is contextualized within its backstory, it makes a lot more sense why it ate shit so quickly. It is, out of any in-game machine so far, one of the least suited for survival in Hell. Sentries and Streetcleaners were created for war. Swordsmachine(s) and Mindflayers are scrapheads, constantly adapting to create (and protect) their perfect, lethal body. [3] If anything, it's on the same level as a Drone, able to defend itself in a limited capacity, but not intentionally programmed or built for combat. Faced with V1, something built for perfect, swift destruction, a machine made for peace would stand even less of a chance than normal, even with an equal level of mobility and build.

V2 is also doomed, in a very literal sense, by the narrative. In a meta sense, it does not matter to the game story whatsoever [4]. V1 is the butterfly whose wing flaps set Gabriel's story in motion, but V2 has no such connection to his story, and is thus irrelevant. Even its lore entry is overshadowed by information about V1/its connection to V1. A third fight, as well, was never in the running, not necessarily due to anything in the game lore, but because its first and second encounters are all it needs: a third rematch would be repetitive and messy [5]. The reason for its extremely violent death sequence is to ensure there was no question as to its fate [6].

In regards to its personality; it is oft-headcanoned as loud, irritable, and competitive, but this characterization is more likely due to its color as well as its assumed role as a "rival" to V1; rather than based upon its in-game actions. Although its initial intentions are up to interpretation [7], comparing its actions and mechanics to other enemies fully rationalizes its anger. Although it's fairly easy to enrage in-fight, the criteria for its enrage state is much more specific than other enemies, and it's quite easy to not trigger it at all. Cerberi will enrage after one of its kind dies, Malicious Faces and Mindflayers after a certain amount of damage has been dealt (on Violent). Most notably, as the only other character with a rematch, Gabriel begins his second fight enraged after his first defeat [3], which can imply by extension that even though V2 is taking its second fight more seriously [8], it is still not outwardly angry. Its enrage state is only triggered when its patience is depleted (the player avoids it for too long), or in its second fight when it has been punched with the Knuckleblaster. These can be interpreted as indicators that V2 likes it when the fight is "fair": when it's not being avoided and picked at from a distance, or being hit with its own arm; which is frankly pretty fucking mean. A side note: Returning to its creation, it can also potentially be inferred that V2 was intentionally programmed with a rational, controlled, and even marketable personality, easily suppressed or overwritten for ease of use.

In another game, or if V1 was the protagonist, perhaps V2 would not be dead. Instead, V2 is doomed by its creators, both in-game and in reality. It mirrors V1 in action and Gabriel in mind, but unlike them, it has no place in this story beyond a truly fantastic duo of fights. Although its story has any number of potential rewritings or epilogues [9], its doom was always intended. It's easy to mourn lost potential, and its end is intensely tragic; but I believe it is a tragedy that meshes nicely with the rest of the game's story. V2 is dead, and not a second too soon.

Footnotes:

1.

Along with the lore entry for V2:

V1’s planned production was cancelled and an updated model, V2, was developed instead, using the standardized plating, since durability was far more important during times of peace when no bloodshed was necessary.

2.

twitter.com/HakitaDev/status/1538313328715513857

3. in-game lore entries, can be read on ultrakill.miraheze.org or here in one document: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2245904838

4.

5.

twitter.com/HakitaDev/status/1538336055681863680

6. "And then V2 dies as hard as anyone could possibly die to make sure people understand he's fucking dead and is not coming back" - dev commentary, 05:08:09 (youtu.be/kaImho5JioI?si=v4_m90nfLOY-DyEZ&t=18489)

7.

8.

9. Notably, Dream's End Come True / v2isdead.com.

[itsangelicasworld]

*･῾ ⁺ Welcome to My Teen Titans DR 🧨 .*

💥 ˗ˏˋ DESCRIPTION .ᐟ

In 2003 Jump City, a team of six teenagers called the "Teen Titans" fight against supervillains threatening their beloved metropolis. Along the way, they must face issues even worse than superpowered antagonists who want them captured; emotions, romance, and navigating the bumpy road of impending adulthood. My DR follows the plot of the show except with my own headcanons, scenarios, etc.

Like the show, there are no secret identities; so our superhero personas are quite literally just us. WHICH MEANS WE'RE TREATED LIKE CELEBRITIES!! People ask for photos/autographs, we have merch, and there's even an entire Teen Titans fandom with forums and fanarts and theories!! Not super relevant to this reality's lore, but thought it'd be cool to mention🤭.

🔆 ˗ˏˋ ABOUT ME .ᐟ

NAME : Angelica Sterling

NICKNAMES : Quin, Angel

AGE : 16-years-old

PRONOUNS : She/her/hers

ETHNICITY : Black and Mexican

MBTI : INFP-T

PERSONALITY : Optimistic, courageous, charismatic, empathetic, humorous, witty, mature, impatient, cautious, idealistic

HERO ALIAS : Quanta

POWER : Quantum Manipulation (basically the ability to manipulate the very foundation of the universe/matter because I'm the main character actually🤭)

SUB-POWERS : Healing, telekinesis, quantum empowerment, shapeshifting

DRAWBACKS : Using too much of my power at one time can lead to fatigue; symptoms range from mild (grogginess, irritability) to severe (headaches, unconsciousness). Additionally, under incredibly high-stress situations or potent emotions, my powers may become unstable or erratic

COMBAT SKILLS : Hand-to-hand, mixed martial arts, kickboxing, and of course using my powers, which include shooting projectiles and making defense constructs

🍕 ˗ˏˋ RELATIONSHIPS .ᐟ

I made moodboards + added some quotes for all of them here, so check that out if you wanna see their aesthetics🤭

ROBIN : My s/o!! I could write 100 paragraphs about this man but I'll list our tropes instead💪

Tortured hero (on his side, he gets it from Batman ftgyhuhgtfg)

Friends to lovers

Slooowwww burn

Mutual pining

Healing together

STARFIRE : Me and her are SUUCHH girly-girls. Having sleepovers, going to the mall, exploring the city, etc. is literally all we do and I love it. She also really likes ranting about Tamaran to me. Hearing her childhood stories is so sweet🛐

RAVEN : Initially, Raven needed time to warm up to me, but now we have a really close bond. UGGHH I can't wait to meditate with this girl and talk about spirituality. AND I SCRIPTED I'M THE ONLY ONE SHE ALLOWS IN HER ROOM, SO IT'S LIKE HAVING VIP TICKETS FFGHFFG BEAST BOY : This dude is such a jokester but he's so insecure I just NEED TO HUG HIM😭😭. He's like the little brother I never had; super annoying but I couldn't imagine my life without him

CYBORG : Although I'm not as close to Cy as some of the other members, he really means a lot to me!! He's kind of like my big brother. He really likes to teach me about mechanics and I know he's always got my back, and I have his. Even though we can squabble over his attitude sometimes💀

🦇 ˗ˏˋ OUTRO .ᐟ

Feel free to send in asks about this DR (and really any of them if your curious), they'd be greatly appreciated!! Thank you for reading THIS far <333

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 *+:｡.｡ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ. . . . . ╰──╮

Aesthetics inspired by @/shiftingwithjaidyn's fame DR intro | Dividers by @/strangergraphics-archive

[a-oct0]

I was thinking about this while trying to sleep last night and figured I could share my thoughts on this topic- but I should preface this by saying while I love Callie a lot I am in no way a Callie expert and that this is just my personal understanding of the whole hypndoshades ordeal. (And also I just wanted to write/ramble about something honestly lol)

So to begin- Callie 100% went to the Octarians by her own choice, she went to them willingly sometime just before Splat2. After the Squid Sister splatfest she and Marie went on to expand their solo careers and such as said in game, but the pressure of constantly being in the spotlight started to get to Callie, especially after she was publicly declared as being lesser than her cousin. She needed some sense of escape and she went to the only ones who she felt could understand that feeling... The Octarians. It does seem like Callie at least enjoyed her time there, she decorated the canyon, redesigned the soldiers outfits and probably uplifted the overall mood of the Octarians. Be that before or after the shades I don't know- But I think at some point Octavio realised that Callie would leave and go home, leaving them. I think that's what spawned the hypnoshades- he used them not to kidnap her out right but as a way to convince her to stay, not wanting to lose what had basically become a light in the dark for his people. The shades do seem to make Callie act a bit different but I don't think they're programmed to make her personality different, I've always viewed it as if the shades gave her this- sense of freedom, that she can say and act how she wishes just maybe slightly exaggerated by the shades. Now of course Marie was able to hit the shades off Callie's face which "returned her to normal" and tbf by Splat3 it seems like Callie has worked through her issues, slowly making her way back into the public eye solo.

Now this part- is all just complete headcanon and tied to my own Agents/NSS lore but I wanted to share some of it as well lol- While I get the game making Callie put the shades back on because "they look cool" as a way to add her back to the boss fight was well that- literally just a way to add her back to the fight- I personally think she did in fact put those shades back on. She put them back on again and again as an unhealthy coping mechanism, to return to that sense of escape from her very public life. Marie "snapping her out of it" did not fix the issues she had and so Marie (And Agent 4) fought Callie and Octavio again and again- each time Marie hitting Callie in the face with low tide ink. Low tide ink is probably a very dense and generally harmless type of ink but even with that constant exposure would have to leave a mark right? (This is the reason I tend to draw Callie with the green eye scar.) I think gaining this scar over time would snap some sense into Callie- finally realising just how- dangerous and mentally unhealthy her constant use of the shades are, it would be difficult but she realises that she needs to seek proper help or the cycle won't end no matter how hard Marie and Four try.

[soumarhea]

So I watched Disney's Planes: Fire & Rescue some months ago and I found the characters and their dynamics so interesting that I've been thinking about them ever since. (And by "thinking" I mean editing the TvTropes character page for months now.) And then I found a post here about Wings of Fire au and that's my final straw. Two of my favorite things together?? Planes F&R Wings of Fire au had been living rent free in my brain for nearly a month now and I'm blaming @amethyst257 for it.

I'm gonna be honest, I read WoF Arc 1 nearly ten years ago, there's not much I can recall (aside from Clay is an adorkable himbo, Tsunami killed her dad and her mom is a helicopter, Glory is a sass queen of two tribes, Starflight went blind, and Sunny gave herself princess status). I haven't even start with Arc 2 but at least I know those exist, because I only know about Arc 3 this year. And I have not the time to refresh on Arc 1, much less start with Arc 2 and/or 3. But! I have read Wings of Fire: A Guide to the Dragon World to completion. It may not be entirely flawless info, and I still have zero idea about Arc 3, but now I at least understand that Jewel Hive is the best Hive to live in if you're a SilkWing (I confidently claims without actually knowing). So! Zero idea about 66% of the story and a very hazy 33%, this headcanons will have so many lore holes and may not even fly, but I'll be damned if I didn't try. I'm shoving all this headcanons off a cliff, so it better fly. "Planes" and "Wings" are literally in the name, that's double the flight power!

Since I can't draw dragons to save my life, I'll just colors Joy Ang's line arts of the dragon tribes instead. Trying to incorporate elements from the Planes characters (like the three white stripes and chevron patterns that the Air Attack team had going on as their Non-Uniform Uniform) is one hell of a thing. Who knows trying to translate vehicles into dragons would be absurdly hard (evidently, I don't). They wouldn't be using paints, so maybe ink or henna as staining materials? Nail Scale polish?? Iirc tattoo is a thing in WoF right??? Maybe I should just give the dragons some T-shirts instead.

So far I only colored Blade and Windlifter. That would be 2/12 (not counting size comparison pic). Will edit the pictures in as I'm done with them.

Edit [31/07]: Updated Blade and Windlifter's picture, added Cabbie and the smokejumpers' pictures (that'd be 8 out of 12 now, wow). Everything written in green is new added info (except for Windlifter's name, duh).

Edit [05/08]: Updated all existing pictures, removed the "outdated" size comparison pic, and added Nick, Maru, Dipper, and Patch's pictures (12 out of 12!) Everything written in purple is new added info (except for Patch's name, ofc)

Kinda long post ahead.

Air Attack team from Pantala

Blade

Blade would be too self-conscious to look this aggressive tho. I would pinch his mouth shut if I could. At first I tried making his chevron pattern to look natural by the color arrangement of his scales, but then I thought it'd look better if I just said Maru paints it on with scale polish. I changed his chevron pattern again. I am indecisive sue me.

A HiveWing with color mutation; he have white scales and blue eyes. His HiveWing fight/defensive mechanism is the one where he can spray boiling acid from his stinger. I would give him the "horrible stench" one just for shits and giggles, and for the smokejumpers to call him stinky, but nah Upon further revisions I decide to also give him nerve toxin (that he didn't even know about, since he never stab other dragons for shits and giggles), and you can't stop me. So now he can spray boiling acid from his tail stinger and inject nerve toxin from his wrists stingers. (Isn't that overkill? No its not.)

Grew up in Vinegaroon Hive, moves to Jewel Hive later on for a change of pace. This is where he met Nick and Maru. (He didn't know he already saw Nick before, when Nick performs at Vinegaroon Hive.)

Elaborating on the point above, while still living in Vinegaroon Hive, he dabbled in all sorts of professions; he had joined and led successful hunting trips, joined research expeditions as a research assistant and conducting studies on Pantalan wildlife species, and even took up culinary. It was fulfilling for a while… until it wasn't.

He moved to Jewel Hive after he heard about the lavish parties thrown every now and then from one of his acquaintances. ("So you're telling me, everyone partied all night long and woke up the next day, at midday, with a massive hangover? Alright, sign me up.") He just wants some excitement in his life at this point.

Nick and Maru spotted him at one of the parties, actually. Everyone else was ridiculously glamoured up, and Blade… was sorely underdressed. He sticks out like a sore thumb, and Nick wasn't about to let this crime go unpunished. The rest is history.

His entire life he's been taught about how great HiveWings are for winning the Tree Wars, and how the SilkWings should be thankful to them for protecting their "defenseless" tails against those "barbaric" LeafWings. Blade approach that topic very differently. ("Doesn't that just means we should keep protecting them instead of treating them so poorly?") He very much is in the "unpopular opinion" group and bullied by his peers for it.

After Queen Wasp's dethronement, he followed Maru and moves to LeafSilk Village. And later, among those who flew to Pyrrhia. Presumably, for another change of pace.

He just wants to be alone, but Maru have a different plan… And Windlifter have even more of a different plan. He got dragged to school against his will, and his life will never get anywhere near lonely after that.

How did he ended up as chief of Piston Peak Air Attack (PPAA)? (it wouldn't be called Piston Peak, there is no pistons in Pyrrhia and I might not even stationed them at any Peak here. But "Pyrrhia Peak" doesn't sound too bad. hmm...) I haven't come up with anything for that yet, but they're going to build their own Hive in Pyrrhia (its nowhere near as big as the Hives in Pantala). Its somewhere between Jade Mountain and NightWing Village (for reference), and the team calls it the Air Attack Hive, their base of operation.

Nick (I'll just sneak him right here)

Not sure if I manage to live up to the "most beautiful/prettiest SilkWing" description with this, but my reference is literally a helicopter with police livery. Also, Nick wouldn't look this submissive. If I could crammed him full with cheeky confidence and flirtatious charms I would. Also also, WoF canon of SilkWing can't have black scales is dumb. Most if not all butterflies have black in their palette, what do you mean SilkWings can't have black??

A typical SilkWing... and one of the most beautiful around. Even gets himself nominated as the prettiest SilkWing multiple times. And more often than not, wins.

Grew up in Jewel Hive. One of the best artisans, but well-known particularly for his charms and theatrics. Upon revisions;

Grew up in Jewel Hive, he's well-known for his charms and theatrics, which lands him the profession as a performer. He puts on plays and concerts for the HiveWings and travels from Hive to Hive. Nick had performed in every Hive and comes to the conclusion that; he's never going to travel to the other Hives anymore. Like, "damn, those Hives don't deserve me tf". (He's not impressed by how those Hives treated SilkWings.)

When Maru was stationed at Jewel Hive, he decides to work for Nick instead of his employer. The second Nick gave him the opportunity, Maru quits his old job and moved in. (I'm giving these SilkWings too much power, they're going to unionize atp)

Nick caught glimpse of Blade during his short stay at Vinegaroon Hive. They didn't get to interact since Nick was performing on stage and Blade was all the way at the back seating. By the time the play was over, Blade was already gone.

How did Nick manage to notice Blade when they were so far apart? Blue eyes are not only uncommon for HiveWings; they're unusual. Nick had always wanted a closer look, and boy did he get it. When they spotted Blade in one of Jewel Hive's parties, Maru had to practically peel him off of Blade. ("What's the matter with you? SilkWings have blue eyes more often than not." "Yeah. But have you seen his??") Nick thinks they're very pretty.

From Nick's experiences with HiveWings, they're generally rude and condescending towards SilkWings. Even in Jewel Hive, SilkWings would sometimes get objectify to sit around the shops and look pretty to attract customers. He was ready to be disappointed, but when they approached Blade and he treats them no lesser than himself, Nick was pleasantly surprised. They were inseparable since, until... y'know.

Maru

Just imagine his tail is prehensile. Also, Maru wouldn't look this submissive either, if I could give him shit-eating grin I would. Also also, I am still not satisfied with the lifeline pattern, so I might change it to something else. Maybe as part of clothing article or something. Stealth edit is stealthy ;p

SilkWing with major mutation; his tail is prehensile. (Presumably inherited from the RainWings who fled to Pantala along with the BeetleWings, the LeafWings, and the SeaWings all those centuries ago. Don't ask questions! He need this because;) He uses his tail like an extra arm, specifically to hold his coffee while he work.

I would give him flamesilk ability but then he'd be one of Queen Wasp's flamesilk production slaves, locked in a dungeon somewhere, so nah.

Studies in Mantis Hive and moves to Jewel Hive after he graduates. (Heavily assuming Maru even gets to enroll into the universities since, y'know, he's a SilkWing. Probably Definitely not but shut up. I'm keeping this.) He's not only good with works, he went above and beyond. But he was still assigned as web workers (a "lowly SilkWing" profession) despite being one of the best inventors in the Hives. (This is an exaggeration; you can hear him exclaiming "It's better than new!" even if you're in TseTse Hive while he's in Mantis Hive. For reference.)

Despite getting his profession assigned to him, he still do whatever tf he wants, much to the disapproval of his HiveWing employer. They told him to fix the webs, he did… and make them better! And he got yelled at for it. So he ditches them to work for a fellow SilkWing instead (it is, of course, Nick).

Once Blade enters the picture, Maru spends more time trying to get Nick on schedule. Why's that? Nick just wants to spend time with Blade instead of doing his work.

After Queen Wasp's dethronement, he moves to LeafSilk Village together with Blade. And later, among those who flew to Pyrrhia… along with Blade. Personally, he just wants to be there for Blade.

Windlifter dragged them both to Jade Mountain Academy. And by "them both", I mean Blade. Windlifter dragged just Blade specifically. Maru would be eating popcorn or honey drops (if he packed any) watching it all go down.

He built the Air Attack Hive with the team's help and made it even better than the Hives back in Pantala.

Windlifter

I might tweaked his design a little bit more. I'm still not satisfied with this. Alright, I change the white chevron patterns to yellow-ish, hoping it look like it's stained using henna instead of painted on with white paint. Did I changed anything? I did tweaked something, I forgot what.

A LeafWing with leafspeak ability, just like his parents.

Grew up in the SapWing Village. He was just a little dragonet when the Tree Wars starts warring properly. Which means he's around 50 years old. (Dragons live up to over hundreds years old right? So about time Windlifter having mid-life crisis.)

After the Tree Wars conclusions, he moves to LeafSilk Village. And later, among those who flew to Pyrrhia. Personally, he wanted to broadened his worldview and to learn more about all the other tribes at Jade Mountain Academy. It's "life long learning" after all.

Despite being in the same continent, in the same village, and in the same group when they flew to Pyrrhia; Windlifter officially meets Blade and Maru only upon arrival at Pyrrhia. He dragged them along to Jade Mountain Academy, much to Blade's annoyance.

Windlifter's justification for dragging Blade along is due to his own prejudice against HiveWings, he wants to know them better. And Blade was (unfortunately) within his reach at the moment. The two did have a rough start, and Maru is there as the peacemaker with popcorns making sure they don't kill each other.

Windlifter sets out to understand other tribes, especially the HiveWings, better. But ended up understanding Blade, as his own person dragon, better.

Cabbie was an enigma at first, but doable (mainly because they shares some common grounds). And Dipper... took him the longest to understand. By the time he finally gets her, Dipper calls him her best friend, which he agrees.

(This point is entirely inspired by C130's fic on AO3, specifically Q is for Quarantine Chapter 48) By the time Dusty joins Air Attack, Windlifter already found himself a partner and have two dragonets. His partner is named Tulasi, a LeafWing who grew up in PoisonWing Village. They first met at LeafSilk Village when everything on Pantala started to settle down. Their relationship begins on a friendly terms and they maintained that even when Windlifter went to Pyrrhia for studies (only returning home for a short time whenever possible) but they manage to make it work.

Air Attack team from Pyrrhia

Dipper

Dipper wouldn't look exactly like this, this is a typical SeaWing line art. Dipper's dorsal fin would tapered off to a SkyWing's spikes; her tail is slightly narrower than a SeaWing's but still thicker than a SkyWing's; she wouldn't have the barbels on her lower jaw or the webs between her talons; and her wingspan is greater than the typical SeaWing's but are still inferior to the SkyWing's. And as mentioned below, her bioluminescent stripes doesn't function. She put more effort to her chevron patterns than her three white stripes.

A SeaWing/SkyWing hybrid. She looks like a SeaWing… maybe a little funny-looking here and there… and a little too yellows and reds instead of greens and blues (did I say a little? I mean a lot). She have gills, but not the webbed talons. Her bioluminescent stripes are non-functional, and she can breath fire. (not underwater though)

Since she looks too different than the regular SeaWings, she grew up alone in one of the many islands in the Bay of a Thousand Scales. Being all alone by herself made her a bit loony… and socially stunted.

She did try living underwater with fellow SeaWings but since her bioluminescent stripes doesn't functions, she simply can't converse in Aquatic even if she knows a word or two.

So her next best move is to live on one of the islands and hoped fellow SeaWings would surface and socialize with her above water. But after a few attempted socializing, her visitors dwindles out until none for months. She'd be lucky if she even gets a visitor within a year.

By behaviour, you'd think she'd be on the young side… She's older than Windlifter. (Between a few years to a decade older.)

One day, she got word about Jade Mountain Academy, and was interested to see "what's up with that? sounds fun!". She was apprehensive at first, but it's worth a shot. She thought it would just be a short trip; just a little visit and then go back home. "No need to overstay your welcome". The risk she took was calculated, but damn, was she bad at math.

This is where our Pantalan trio just picked up strays whenever they could. Windlifter, Blade, and Maru thought she's a norm, and by the time they realized that she's an outlier, Dipper is already a part of this "not quite, but not so dysfunctional famil—I mean, group".

Cabbie

This is where I took even more creative liberties with the lore. sue me

Cabbie wouldn't look this friendly. Maybe a bit more aloof. Also, this is a typical MudWing line art. Just imagine he have the SkyWing's wings instead. That red thing on his backside isn't a scar (though I should give him some scarring from his wartime) or the blood of his enemies (honestly, he would have some on him just because), it's his red chevron pattern painted on with scale polish by the smokejumpers (its' messy, and they waste bottles of scale polish on it) and so does the three white lines on his hind legs. Gave him some scarring, and the smokejumpers insist on painting the "51" on his face as part of their bonding activity. Someday, Drip and Blackout would paint "PP" on his right wing and Avalanche would (unhelpfully) adds "F" to it. That's how Cabbie got his PPF 51 call sign. A lot of scale polish will be wasted that day.

A MudWing/SkyWing hybrid. Bred for war in the past. He's built like a MudWing with the SkyWing's impressive wingspan. Easily pass off as a MudWing. You know volcanic mud? That's his coloring. (see picture above lol) He can breath fire without the MudWing's "need to be warm enough" rule.

~120 years old. Lived through wars and he didn't want to live through another one so he sits out the SandWing Succession War. One war in a lifetime is more than enough for any dragon really.

He lives in a cave somewhere between the Sky Kingdom and Mud Kingdom's borders, somewhere close to Diamond Spray Delta.

One day he went down to the Mud Kingdom for some mud bath; unintentionally discovered several MudWing nests; and noticed some of them contains blood-red eggs. Long story short, "no thoughts, head empty. ooh shiny!", he took all the red eggs with him and by the time he flew back home, he realized he have five blood-red MudWing eggs to look after now. Why didn't he just leave the eggs? Being a hybrid, he's wired differently than purebred MudWings. And, they're his now so shut up!

Being a single da— I mean uncle to five very loud, very messy, very energetic, young dragons tire him out really fast. So he went to drop them off at Jade Mountain Academy for the weekend. And what an adventure that would become.

The smokejumpers

From top to bottom: Dynamite, Drip, Blackout, Pinecone, and Avalanche. I tried so hard to not make them look related but still maintains their vehicle coloring, and also stick to WoF canon of MudWing coloring, which means Dynamite, Drip, and Avalanche all have eye color mutation. Dynamite and Drip still looks like they're related fml. I'm going to add the smokejumpers' team logo and their call sign numbers later. The logo would be their tattoo and the numbers will just be painted on. So I also added reflective scale polish on their wings' scales to evoke those reflective safety vest. If they could get their way, the jumpers would be painting themselves head to toe with it. Maru made sure they don't waste a single drop of it, that scale polish was costly.

All of them are MudWings, hatched from blood-red eggs, so they have fire resistant scales. And quite the bunch of daring little dragonets. They even make a game out of jumping over bonfires. Cabbie lovingly calls them "smokejumpers".

Since Cabbie egg-napped them from their original nests, they're not actually blood-related. But that doesn't make them any less siblings than the blood-related MudWing siblings.

Dynamite is the big wing. She wouldn't have been the big wing of her original siblings. So in the siblings of smokejumpers, she turns out the smallest. From smallest to biggest; Drip (only slightly larger than Dynamite), Blackout, Pinecone, and Avalanche.

Pinecone and Avalanche would've been the big wings of their respective blood-related siblings.

If you think "Avalanche" doesn't sound like a MudWing name, it was either that or "Mudslide". He picked "Avalanche" because it sounded better and badass.

How did they get their names? Dynamite suddenly sneezed fire once and gave Cabbie a heart attack. Drip always dripping with mud and trailing messes everywhere, and Cabbie clean up after him of course. Blackout accidentally put out their bonfire once. Pinecone collects funny shaped pinecones as a hobby. And Avalanche caused a landslide once, he pleaded not guilty. (Saving these from tag limbo, should've been included in post proper from day one.)

Cabbie sent them to study at Jade Mountain Academy so they'd stop giving him more mess to cleanup. They made messes along the way anyway.

At this point in the story (of them going to Jade Mountain Academy), they're tween to young teen dragonets, so 3-4 years old (6-7 is the dragon age of maturity iirc). By the time Dusty joins Air Attack, they'd be somewhere in their mid-late thirties, still as energetic, playful, and daring as they were.

How did they determined who get what number to paint on their faces? They roll two dice; Dynamite got 22; Drip got 36; Blackout 25; Pinecone rolled 1 and lost the second die, so she got 10; after they search for the lost die, Avalanche rolled 55; and they got Cabbie to roll 51. And then they get to painting the numbers on each other's faces. It's part of their bonding activities.

Patch

WoF canon: NightWing can have dark green eyes, Me: lime. Same as Maru, I might change how I want the lifeline pattern to look, maybe as an arm band (leg band??) instead. xp

A small NightWing, due to genetics but mainly, malnutrition. She have future vision, but she can only see as far as… 2 hours into the future.

Grew up in the volcanic NightWing Kingdom. She's somehow lucky enough to manage to hatched under one full moon… even through all the soot and smokes from the volcanoes, and the clouds. Everything just lines up exactly right for her to be under one full moon when she hatched. How did her egg got out in the open instead of safely in the caves with the other NightWing eggs? Well, some dragon manage to misplaced it somehow idk.

Currently lives in NightWing Village of the Rainforest Kingdom.

One night, she dreamed about going to Jade Mountain Academy… and interesting things happens. So she went. And interesting things did happened. It's a fated assembly.

WoF headcanon; the respect that HiveWings and SilkWings have towards NightWings borders on reverence (all thanks to Clearsight). Therefore neither Blade nor Maru will argue with Patch. If they didn't know any better they'd worship the ground she walks on. The two would eventually grow out of this blind respect to actually respects her for who she is.

Size comparison is its own post now.

I have plans for the Propwash Junction peeps too, they'll have their own post. Dusty won't have his picture here (he's not counted in the 12 pics at the start of this post) but I need to include some info about Dusty here before I forgot anything. So,

Dusty

A small RainWing/MudWing hybrid. (I haven't come up with anything else)

Suffers a serious, near-crippling, wings injury due to Ripslinger (I haven't come up with what the injury is, or whether Ripslinger is responsible for it directly or indirectly) so Dusty needs support equipment to help him fly (I haven't come up with what invention Dottie made to support Dusty yet). So anyway, by the time Planes F&R events happened, that support equipment starts to fail, and they're out of materials to make a new one. And that's how he joined the PPAA team.

[beansmakesthings]

You 🫵

Yes you

Give me your Penny Lamb headcanons (rtc)

Well, if you insist! These are just some random kinda general ones. Some will mention some gore and the accident and some will vaguely reference familial abuse, so be warned!

- Penny had a really rough childhood and was taken from her father indefinitely when she was 10. She's been in the system ever since, as families keep deciding they can't handle the combination of PTSD and autism and gave her back.

- The only biological family she really connected with was her grandmother, who was the one who gave Penny her doll

- Penny wants to be a sheep farmer one day like Gran was before she passed.

- Penny's Metis on her bio mom's side. She doesn't really talk about it much because her mother died shortly after she was born and her father kept her away from that side of her family and Penny never really learned much about her culture. She doesn't really know what all it means.

- This one is kind of a general RTC headcanon, but the way the choir survives the Cyclone after the musical is that Karnak quite literally shifted the timeline. They technically inhabit an alternate universe where the only change is they survive. This means everyone has two conflicting memories of how the accident happened and Penny has very vivid nightmares that constantly switch between losing her head and waking up alive aftermath of the crash with her throat sliced and her neck broken.

- Penny had a sort of identity crisis at 3 am due to these dreams and cut and bleached her hair in Jane Doe fashion. She actually found it strangely comforting to sort of pay homage to the person she was when she found her friends and keeps the look. She didn't like being Jane Doe, but she appreciates what Jane did for her.

- Penny always liked scary movies and stuff like that, but after the accident and the whole Jane Doe debacle she becomes very fascinated with anything morbid and death related as a sort of weird coping mechanism.

- Penny also gets very into the goth, emo, and heavy metal scenes after the accident. She cries listening to Nemo by Nightwish (no I will not shut up about that song)

- Speaking of music, Penny is a life long Marianas Trench fan and when Constance finds out they NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT

- Penny had a big crush on Ocean for a while before they started dating, but it was always kind of soured by Ocean acting SO homophobic and SO ableist all the time. It was a huge internal conflict for Penny until Ocean finally turned around, apologized to all the people she'd hurt, and genuinely changed for the better. Penny is actually quite proud of Ocean's progress.

- Penny's hyposensitive to touch and loves deep pressure, squishy hugs, cuddles, and textures. She's notorious for touching stuff without permission when she thinks no one's looking just because the texture looks ✨️feely✨️ (same girl same)

- Mischa is her favourite person to go to for sensory hugs cause he's taller than her and kinda chubby and kinda muscular and he can just envelop her entirely and squeeze the life out of her which she loves.

- Penny really likes Moutain Dew. Mountain Dew of any flavour. The only things she drinks are water, Mountain Dew, and the occasion double-double from Tims. Ocean got her that Baja Blast t-shirt from Hot Topic and Penny wears it every day as pajamas.

- Penny's new family (the one she was placed with after the other one didn't look for her or report her missing or anything at all after the accident) are very nice, but she's incredibly wary of them because of her history. She prefers to be out of the house so she doesn't have to interact with people who are supposed to be parental figures to her.

- Penny loves going to Ricky's, laying on his floor, and being smothered by all his cats while he tells her about Star Trek lore.

- Penny and Noel are the same height, so often times he comes over asking to try on her skirts and stuff to see if they'll look good on him. She has lost half her wardrobe to him.

[madness-combat-confessions]

Okay idk if this is the most Obvious shit and im just slow or if theres been an ask about this or something but we need to talk about cloning and the AAHW more imo!!

If the thing about sanf and dei being previous members (and i think doc being confirmed?) then that begs many questions. Jeb and tricky were also members and we know their lore as past scientists for nexus and then jeb was "hired" by auditor and tricky too probably but we dont have a direct confirmation afaik but everyone else is just? Vauge?

Like either A) AAHW has people working for it that are not clones like the mass agents and soldats and engineers and they are never mentioned (which would be stupid imo considering how far we are into the story) or B) they are all clones that dissented which for deimos is yk not far fetched considering his poster outright stating it

BUT THEN THAT BEGS THE ISSUE ON HAND. Everyone that ive seen online considers the agents as personality-less fucking creatures and i think even canon says smt like that about them but like.. if a clone can dissent then they probably Arent as bland as they seem. And even that isnt far fetched, i mean they hold birthdays apparently and play games to pass time. How deep does it go? How much will do they have? They seem to be conditioned to never run when Hank aka (almost) certain death is around which is one thing but are they scared of death? Do they have favorite foods and colors? How human (or in this case grunt) are they? Is it just Some of them that have self awareness/personality? Are they coded to have a personality? If yes is it random or set? Would the AAHW bother to code a random persona generator?? Do they perhaps lose more of their indaviduality/humanity as they progress up on the food chain to be soldats or engineers??

Idk i keep seeing agents n shit in fics and stuff be shown as these sometimes mechanical creatures with 0 varying personality and 0 humanity and it makes me heavily wonder about them. Maybe theyre just a bit dumber than average due to being mass cloned? Shrug. I dont know i think theyre more interesting when considered to be actual people than just. Puppets. They are metaphorical and sorta physical puppets yeah but like they held a birthday man. Fuck. They had a birthday.

Agents keep me up at night.

-anon MMS if i can claim that cuz its funny /opt!!

Glad to know that I'm not the only one who also thinks about the AAHW!

I personally think/headcanon that basically everyone in the AAHW is a clone because anyone that could had been an actual real person is dead (lol). And idk how to explain it but from what I've read they lack S-3LFS, but they still are kinda like people? Like they might just appear like mindless clones who only wanna kill Hank, and they are that don't get me wrong, but I think they also still act like people to some extent (or at least some of them)

I mean one of the agents in MC 9.2 had been writing "We are abandoned " on a wall so to me that says they're capable of understanding their situation and feeling sad (?) about it?

Now I'm not sure on the engineers and the soldats, I mean a soldat literally blew a rocket where their team was because they thought their boss had told them to. Which makes me think two things

1: The AAHW is a bit too blindly devoted to the Auditor. Which is probably because they are clones that were made/'programmed' to be that way.

2: I think that the soldats and the engineers have less "free will" than the agents because of the ATP

There's also something else I wanna talk about

This:

Like hello? What the fuck did this guy do?

From my understanding what is considered a dissenter in this series is someone who goes against the Auditor and the agency. So what did this guy even do? Did he try to betray them like Deimos and Doc did?

Or was it perhaps something minor like not doing their job? Like actually make a decision for their own and don't do what the Auditor says for once, like how an actual person would do?

I wanna say that's a stupid reason to kill one if their agents, but it's a possibility: the Auditor is shown to not really take it kindly when people don't do their job, she literally sliced a grunt in half for it. Even though all the grunt did was play cards with some other agents.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case this guy was damned a "dissenter" and killed by the Auditor (or maybe the other members) for that reason.

So taken to account that they are soulless clones but can still 1: celebrate birthdays 2: play games to pass time 3: dislike their shitty ass situation I'd say that they have some personality, it's just that the Auditor is too strict to allow them to show/act like it. Because she doesn't want people with free will in the agency he wants mindless clones who'd do whatever she says.

Does this make sense I swear it does in my head I'm just bad at putting it to words.

[restlesshush]

I know people love the “Cas can hear longing” thing, but the thing is the textual basis for it is actually pretty shaky, and it also just definitely doesn’t serve the purpose re Cas and Dean’s relationship more broadly that people want it to.

Okay so, re the textual basis: literally the only reason this concept exists is because buckleming needed a justification for Cas running into Claire again in 10x10, and her actively praying was too implausible, so they come up with “uhhh okay – her sort of wanting to counts” instead. Obviously that’s not in itself a reason to discard a piece of lore, because it is still in the show (though buckleming do have a tendency towards dropping garbage nonsensical lore, so…), but – more importantly – because of the function it was meant to serve, in context it’s a bit of a leap to take it as Cas hearing longing in general. Specifically, Cas follows up the ‘longing’ mention with asking Claire “perhaps you wanted to tell me something?”, to which she eventually concedes she does. The exchange is kind of clumsily worded – because it’s a buckleming episode –, but it seems like the mechanic is that Cas can tell if someone is perhaps ‘longing’ to pray to him, which is not at all the same as implying he could perceive longing in a romantic or other emotional sense.

Which is good, because if that were true, the implications re destiel are not ones that we want. Basically, if Dean is longing for Cas and Cas can perceive that, he’s not acting on it, so the options are that either this isn’t actually something he can perceive, or there’s nothing there to perceive. We know Cas is in love with Dean the entire time, and we know that he knows this by the 12x12 love confession at the very latest (but presumably much earlier) so even if the 15x18 confession didn’t make explicit that Cas doesn’t think Dean’s in love with him, we’ve got a very significant amount of time where Cas would in theory want to act on Dean’s ‘longing’ if he knew about it, except he not only isn’t, but also seems kind of afraid (“…I love all of you”) of making it too obvious that he’s in love with Dean in the first place. If he can perceive longing, he isn’t perceiving any from Dean directed towards him (which was a crucial part of the mechanic, as laid out “angels are able to find those who pray to them”) which isn’t really what we want to be implying.

And I mean fortunately, I don’t think the text really implies this at all, but I do feel this is worth flagging because people often seem to lean kind of heavily on the longing mechanic / Cas’s angelic senses in general for justifying Cas having an access to / understanding of Dean’s feelings that really isn’t supported by the show. Right up until the end, Cas really doesn’t seem confident at all of his place in Dean’s life, even beyond the question of Dean being in love with him or not, because – as I think is pretty widely acknowledged – the most compelling evidence for Dean being in love with / caring about Cas is how he responds when Cas is dead, which obviously Cas doesn’t see. Cas’s (very significant) insecurities re his and Dean’s relationship often go largely neglected, and using lore explanations to sidestep them is generally just quite lazy, and kind of does Cas a disservice. This isn’t to take away from people’s headcanons or anything, but I think it is worth pointing out that despite it very frequently being treated as fact, Cas hearing/feeling longing in a romantic/emotional sense is just a headcanon, and not really as useful a one as people seem to think.

[mechanical-aristocrat]

What are your thoughts on Screwllums letter to Svarog? I'm open for discusstions.

[OOC:]

My immediate thought upon reading it was "this is super wholesome and cute" and yeah, I still definitely think that, but I've got a lot more to say now that it's been sitting in my brain for few days so buckle up:

First off, this man is so totally autistic /aff (as is literally any robot character in any piece of media, you can't convince me that an allistic robot is a thing that exists). Over explaining to make sure the exact point he's trying to get across does so as accurately as possible and apologizing in advance for accidentally crossing boundaries (considering that at this point in time Svarog is basically a complete stranger), as an autistic person myself it's very relatable to see.

Second, I think it's really funny that he only knows of Svarog's existence because he watched what is essentially an E-Sports tournament, which he only watched because Silver Wolf practically begged him to (because I think we can pretty safely assume that the "Stellaron Hunter friend" he was referring to was her); that just adds onto the relatability for me because I also do not give a flying fuck about E-Sports, he's so real for that. I love Screwllum and Silver Wolf's dynamic with each other, they give off uncle-niece vibes and it's very fun (what I don't understand and will never understand is people shipping them with each other, it makes me really uncomfortable for several reasons, but for the sake of my sanity I'm not going to get into it).

Third, the letter honestly just confirmed some of the headcanons I had once I sat down and read all the lore regarding the Machine Emperor Wars about a month ago (which I highly recommend btw it's super interesting stuff). I guess I sort of had the fear that Hoyo would try to make it so the IPC just completely dropped every last bit of their idea to exterminate all mechanical life the second Screwllum proved to them that robots aren't inherently harmful to humanity, and that everything was just magically okay after that and humans and machines could live in perfect harmony with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. Thank fuck they didn't do that because that would've been both super boring and super unrealistic, Screwllum acknowledges within the letter that there are many places where robots are regarded only as tools, they don't often have the same sort of foot holding in society that humans do, and he hopes that changes someday.

(one of the headcanons that I have regarding this is that there's a secretive group of people within the IPC that are specifically trying to fuck up Screwllum's reputation and the reputations other robots who are also massive public figures that advocate for robot rights, but especially in Screwllum's case they haven't found much success because that man does not have a single problematic line of code in his programming)

Lastly, I would kill to see Screwllum and Svarog properly interact in the future, I think they'd get along so well and their dynamic would be so fun. I don't necessarily ship them, but more power to you if you do, honestly I might eventually be convinced to ship them if more stuff like this shows up, this was super cute (also, before anyone reading gets confused, the "we will come to call each other "brothers"" bit at the end of the letter does not mean anything that would make shipping these two characters quote-on-quote "problematic". The word "brothers" in this context purely refers to a strong bond of friendship and mutual understanding. I honestly should not have to explain that, but considering that the internet is the internet, I figured I ought to).

[oopsalltes]

WHAT THE HELL EVEN ARE BOMBERMEN? (AN IN-DEPTH REIMAGINE AU LOOK INTO BOMBERMAN ANATOMY)

ridiculously long text dump incoming but i figured i'd finally go over some more technical stuff about the au. ive seen other people talk about their headcanons for how the bombermen work in-game and got a bit inspired since ive mostly been going over lore with my comics!

SO, WHAT ARE BOMBERMEN? true to most of the games, they are still robots in the au! entirely mechanical with no organic components. the vast majority of them originate from the former planet earth, now called planet bomber, but some models have been integrated into different planets (planet scrapheap for example) for specific jobs.

all bombermen come from "the original", Shiro, who was built by evil forces lurking underground on planet earth before it was renamed planet bomber. during his tenure as a reluctant minion of evil, his purpose was to create bombs for their efforts of subjugating the remnants of humanity on earth.

prior to his escape from the clutches of the evil forces, he looked very much like how he is depicted in the games!

WHY DO THEY LOOK LIKE HUMANS NOW? in the original NES bomberman game, the plot revolves around bomberman's escape to the surface under the belief that he will become human. the AU follows this premise, but more literally: although Shiro doesn't actually become an organic human, he is rebuilt to resemble their appearance more faithfully! thus, all bombermen that come after him retain that human-like appearance.

this applies to the human experience as well. they can cry, taste food, live like humans even though they are artificial. they're aware of the fact that they aren't human, mind, but the line is very thin for some! Shiro goes so far as to say that he's just as human as any organic one because of his free will and his ability TO desire to be human. but most are pretty normal about it.

BASIC ANATOMY STRUCTURE bombermen possess an internal structure intentionally designed similar to that of humans. their endoskeleton is practically 1:1 of a human skeleton, the only difference being that it's obviously metal. they possess significantly less "organs", with most of their computer components centralized in a single case located where a human heart would be. their central processing unit and memory cards are located inside of the skull, reinforced by pure steel to prevent any potential internalized damage. while ripping off the outer layer of skin takes about as much effort as it would to a human, you'll be hard-pressed to actually penetrate their head/skull. pain receptors are probably the most complex and delicate in terms of structure, essentially microscopic detectors found across the body like nerves. the part of the processing unit that recognizes the feeling of pain can be manually turned off if needed, but is usually left on so that the individual is aware of damage or something malfunctioning.

all bombermen have an antenna attached to their left ear. this is used for communication with others across distance, and is also used to monitor their surroundings! it can pick up movement, energy, and other various things. it's one of their trademark identifiers, and can also be used as a sort of ID for other bombermen, so its very important to them! to remove their atenna is like declawing a cat.

don't.

like most computers, their capability of information storage is limited. although usually equipped with multiple memory cards, many bombermen elect to move data/memories they don't need all of the time onto items like USB drives so they don't need to outright delete things. their sleeping routines are the most effective way for them to undergo defragmentation.

with resources on earth having been very scarce, bombermen are equipped to run on multiple kinds of energy. like most computers, electrical energy is the most common and widely used, but their synthetic skin is capable of taking in solar energy and a furnace "stomach" can transform eaten foods into chemical energy - think of the latter as burning coal to fuel a locomotive. the one thing they DON'T use however is oil. its seen as very volatile source of energy because it's not renewable. this means they don't bleed! there's no need for them to have any liquid circulation, so replacing parts is also easier in that regard since there's no fear of losing any potential lifeforce.

ASIMOV? WHO'S THAT?? they do not follow the three laws. they are completely independent. most bombermen lean towards being good-natured (if not with their own quirks), so murder of organics/destruction of their own kind is HIGHLY taboo. this doesn't mean they're incapable of making that decision, though.

WHO BUILDS THEM? this answer is a little more complex. early in the timeline, the only way to make a bomberman was to build one yourself. this was especially apparent during earth's final years before being renamed, as most of humanity had abandoned the planet after the evil forces were reawakened decades prior. as such, bombermen were short in number because the few remaining humans that were technologically competent were the only ones capable of making them.

however, ALL bombermen are capable of recreating their own kind. this was information originally given to Shiro by the evil forces so that, for whatever reason, it would be instinct for him to prevent the extinction of his own existence. when more bombermen began to populate the planet, they started to do the creation themselves since they knew everything they needed in order to accomplish it. this is where familial relationships become possible! many bombermen who create their own kind view their creation as siblings or children, and this carries over further into the timeline even when a mother computer meant to mass produce models comes into existence.

WHAT'S IN A TITLE? "Bomberman" is both a species and a title. while most common bots will refer to themselves as "a bomberman", very few have the privilege of being called Bomberman. this name is reserved for particularly outstanding individuals who are responsible for the protection of planet bomber, meaning only a few of them exist across the timeline.

so far these include Shiro (the original), Ivory (Shiro's brother and the protagonist for most of the games that take place on Planet Bomber), and White (the sbr iteration - his siblings get privileges by association but since he's the only cracker white bomberman of the group he gets the official title). depending on how development of the timeline goes there might be more...

WHAT THE HELL ARE PSEUDO BOMBERMEN? I actually addressed this question on my twitter with a funny little comic but i'll go a little further in-depth with the discussion here.

as the name implies, these aren't considered to be "real" ones for various kinds of reasons. bombermen become very popular to imitate due to how (in)famous Shiro becomes across space, but building a robot might not exactly be conventional for some people. this is where pseudo bombermen come in. anything from bomber-cyborgs, organically made bombermen, etc are all considered pseudo bombermen. the general rule of thumb is if it isn't a robot, it's a pseudo.

notable pseudo-bombers would be Max (cyborg), Shirobon from Jetters (alien), and the Bomber Shittenou (made from elements).

ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THAT LINE FROM YELLOW IN SBR2 sure they can have cock and balls why not. full human experience or something.

well that was long as fuck!! thanks for reading!!! if there are any questions feel free to leave them in my inbox and ill be sure to respond to them :)

[kanona56]

Do you have any headcanons for Philip or any of the other killers/survivors?

Oh goodness, I have loads. I could go on and on really, but for this ask I'll stick with Philip. Let me know if you'd like to know about some others. ^^

I hc Philip as ethnically Igbo, which is one of the larger tribes of Nigeria and are mostly found in the southeast areas of the country. There's lots of evidence in his lore that points to this being the case, and I've made a Tumblr post about it before detailing how I came to this hc!

Adding onto my first hc, Philip's tome lore hints that he not only was there during the war, but was also a survivor of the Anti-Igbo progrom of 1966, in which a massacre was committed against the Igbo people, presumably from soldiers of the opposing Hausa-Fulani people and/or those native to Northern Nigeria who aligned with the growing hatred of the Igbo people during that time. I therefore like to hc that Philip is also a genocide survior.

His adoptive mother, Funanya, was born Igbo but married Hausa. When war broke out and she lost her husband, she tried to flee to the south with her children when she found Philip. Because it was extremely dangerous for an orphaned Igbo boy to be in the north where the war and killings took place, she taught him everything she could about the Hausa culture, including their muslim-based religion, language, and traditions. It's because of her that Philip was able to survive by pretending to be Hausa.

I'm sure I've made it obvious enough, but Philip has some severe and untreated C-PTSD. C, because his trauma spans over years of his life and cannot be considered one singular event. His symptoms tend to manifest as psychogenic tremors, prone to panic attacks, dissociation, heightened anxiety and vivid nightmares. Daytime flashbacks are rare for him, but if stressed out enough and exposed to a major trigger, they can and will happen to him as well. The smell of blood, the sound of gunfire and fire are his three biggest and most prevalent triggers.

Philip developed alcoholism as an unhealthy coping mechanism. He's an extremely emotional and depressed drunk, the kind of person who's pretty much the opposite of the fun party drinker. He's prone to very quickly losing control of his own emotions and crying instead. Drinking is the only way he knows how to knock himself out enough to avoid vivid, PTSD driven nightmares of Nigeria.

On a way less depressing note, Philip is lactose intolerant! But he'll 100% sacrifice his tummy every now and then for a good bowl of ice cream.

Philip is left-handed, but learned very early on to not use his left hand when interacting with others because it is considered rude and taboo in Nigerian culture (and generally in many other African cultures). His parents understood that his brain is just wired differently so they never forced or trained him into right-handedness, but they both kinda taught him early on to be mindful to use his right hand in public for things other than throwing or writing.

I hc Philip as a demisexual (possibly biromantic as well, but that's not something he's ever bothered to explore). He's the kind of person who definitely strikes me as ace, not ever having a sexual interest because he's such a lonely person and is just not immediately attracted to anyone at all. However, Philip is also a deeply emotional man and relies on them a lot, so it's only when he's developed a bond with someone that he'll start to develop that physical attraction. He quite literally NEEDS that emotional/romantic connection in order to be able to engage in sex, let alone enjoy it. Casual stuff is a total no for him. He tried it only one or two times as a troubled teenager and quickly found that he did NOT enjoy the experience. He just can't do it.

Philip's love language is both touch and undivided attention. He's the kind of person who is deeply devoted to his partner and, once he feels safe and secure in the relationship, will give you his whole heart. He's kind of terrible at speaking because he's such an introverted person, so he expresses his love through physical touch as well as almost always paying attention to his partner and their needs.

In terms of intimacy, Philip as an ace person isn't really all that excited about sex. He'll still definitely enjoy it with his special person, and he'll most definitely initiate it every now and then because he does find his partner physically attractive since he's deeply emotionally connected to them, but to him sex is a bonding experience and less of something to do just for fun. He's extremely romantic in bed - eye contact, kisses, little praises, holding hands, slower pace, you name it. His entire focus will be to please his partner and not himself. He doesn't need or care much about reaching climax, he'll be perfectly fulfilled with the experience knowing his partner feels good and is satisfied.

Since he'd moved to the US, Philip is a bit insecure of his accent because it really makes him stand out. Over time he's managed to tone it down significantly, but it's still there and still very noticeable, just perhaps easier to understand. When he'd first moved, he had a hyperfixation on touching up his English and sounding as well spoken as possible in hopes it would minimize his chances of being picked on as a black immigrant in the country. This was the 1970s, after all.

I'm sure this also goes without saying lol, but Philip is way more attractive than he gives himself credit for. Yes, half his face has been burned, but he'd been lucky enough to put himself out when it happened fairly quickly, so the damage didn't get too far deep into his skin. The burn scars haven't really disfigured his handsome features all that much, just changed the texture and color of his skin. Still, he often feels ugly because of how he looks.

Because Philip had nearly starved to death as a child in Nigeria a number of times, he kinda has an obsession with being as physically healthy as he can be. He runs a lot and does a decent amount of exercise to keep himself lean and in shape, because it feels good having a sense of control over his own body. He never EVER wants to feel malnourished again in his life.

Philip is a very tall man, like 6 feet and some inches and fairly broad in the shoulders. Despite his size, he's developed a natural talent for being extremely silent and light on his feet. When he wants to, Philip can move as quietly as a mouse and is pretty agile on top of that. It's a useful trait to have in the realm (in the context of OIN at least)- you'd think a big guy like him is an easy target to chase, but Philip has the impressive capacity to be deceivingly stealthy and hard to track.

Math (unsurprisingly) is his favorite subject, and Philip is also highly intelligent in this regard. He's a very quick analytical thinker and can do complex math problems in his head fairly well. It comes in handy with his job in Autohaven, to be able to make quick calculations and measurement conversions.

I definitely have more hcs but these are some of the big ones that I can articulate off the top of my head. Thanks for asking!

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Favorite to least favorite schools?

OOOOOO A QUESTION so okay this is an interesting one for me because not only are my faves tied for first place BUT I have such a limited knowledge on the schools I don't play as often so the list is gonna be super wonky HSLABDIRKE BUT HERE, LET'S PUT IT INTO WORDS:

Most favorite school(s): Storm/Death

So we all know I love Storm and it's for No Reason. Like I can't even say it's because of the game mechanics or whatever I just love Storm and there's no reason why. Even as a kid I immediately knew that I wanted to be the Purple Lightning Bolt School before I even took the book of secrets test. Like I swear I kin Storm but like. Kin-lite if that makes sense. Like I'm NOT Storm itself but IDKKKK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT I love everything about Storm; the aesthetics and the color scheme and the lore behind it, it all just SPEAKS TO ME so yeah I never grew up. Sjsldjdi

But like narratively? Lore-wise Death has to be my favorite because not only is there so much that goes into the Magic itself but like so many important and well-lived characters are Necromancers. And in my PERSONAL opinion some of the most compelling tales come from Necromancers alone because OF WHAT THEY GO THROUGH SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE THEY ARE NECROMANCERS. Like yeah I relate to that shit and honestly? The game says that the three Primordial forces are the most powerful magic but I feel like Death (along with Life and Balance of the main schools) is one of, if not the most powerful. Also because dead stuff and goth girls are my two most favorite things in the world so

Next Favorite School: Myth

Actually if I, myself, was the young wizard instead of my homunculus puppet I think I prooobably would be Myth. Like I think that's just literally who I am and even though I don't think my aesthetic lines up with Trolls and Cyclopes that much I just literally feel in my heart I'm just so...... (gestures towards myself) that I'm quite fit to be a Myth wizard. Lore reasons only. Like the "imaginative" Wizards is so mecore. I like Myth a lot but it's definitely below Storm and Death

The school after that: Balance

This time it's a mix between aesthetic and lore a lil bit. I like the fact that Balance doesn't even really seem to be a unique Magic that it's its own thing but rather a bit of each and every existing school (including the Astrals and Shadow) that it just became something entirely new and on its own???? Like it's familiar in the sense that you can see it in other Magic schools but there's still something in the core of Balance that makes it Balance. If that.... even begins to make any sense (I'm sorry my vocabulary is fucking shit. I know no words to describe things well). Also this is just my personal headcanon that Balance is one of the hardest Magic schools to master because it's so complicated. Like Balance in the Spiral is like Physics or Chemistry in our world

So this is where I start to fall out of groove with the other magic schools because I don't know shit about them so I'm gonna have to just rank them off vibes alone at this point:

The next favorite school: Fire

I was a fire wizard like years and years and years ago before I listened to my autism and went with Storm and honestly Fire fucks!!!! It's a cool school and idk how popular it is in terms of game mechanics (I think Ice and Life and Balance is most popular I think? idk I don't play the game) but I've always thought Fire was just super pretty to look at during battle. The color scheme may be a bit basic (red and orange for fire mhm) but it still works and honestly???? Personal headcanons that Fire wizards are actually one of the most mellow-headed wizards out of all the schools (commonly mistaken with Ice wizards; remember kids "Calm" doesn't equal "Aloofness") and that Pyromancers are typically daycare teachers or people who are normally in charge of/care for the youth

Some of y'all are gonna hate me for this but I can't really put Life or Ice above or below each other because I just don't really think about either of them that much HALSEHRKSH: LISTEN I DONT HATE EITHER OF THESE SCHOOLS, they just don't really....... stand out to me that much and my life and ice wizards aren't that far enough along yet where I can spot a significant difference between those schools and the ones I actually do play. Aesthetically wise yeah they're pretty!!! And then that's it DUDJSJSO I APOLOGIZE TO MY LIFE AND ICE MUTUALS/FOLLOWERS

(I assume anon meant like, the schools you start out with and not the schools you learn about later so I left out Shadow and the Astrals but if I had to put them somewhere on this list Shadow would definitely be right under Storm and Death, Moon would be below that, Star would be after Fire and Sun would be just kinda hanging out on the outside somewhere)

THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION ANON I HOPE MY ANSWERS WEREN'T A COMPLETE DISAPPOINTMENT 💖💖💖

[br4inr0tx]

Hello there. Hope you're in good spirits. I was hoping to send in a request if you're accepting them at the moment. It's more of a request/ask, but what would be your personal headcanons about the Wild Biker Boys? Just any headcanons in general that you've thought of about the boys at their worst.

yoo it’s been a hot minute since of got a request. glad to feed yall some wbb content though fr. I will note though, since this is a very obscure media without TOO MUCH to dive into, so if any of these seem ooc, are already established in canon, or I end up my repeating myself for a few headcanons I sincerely apologize. I try to read pela’s lore on there blog as much as I can I swear.

tw - drugs, alcoholism, bugs, body horror, toxic coping mechanisms, and coii being a simp for wbb dice

Dice/Pink…

• I feel like with these new drugs he’s taken, he’s a hell of a lot more jittery. Maybe even more so then Varai sometimes. Sure you could say it’s the type of drugs he taken but honestly? I feel like even if he did try to lay off a little he’d become more and more shaky and restless (like a caffeine rush.).

• Deep down, I don’t think Dice truly likes what happened to himself. Nor does he see himself in any good light, unlike he plays off.

• As for pink dice, that fucker is a nuisance.

• I like to think of him as an eager puppy, always urging Dice into random shit he honestly doesn’t want to do. (Liking buying more drugs, for example.)

• I like to think pink dice is really into the guro art form, and likes to preform the scenarios on anyone who grows close to Dice (which he kinda does, in his Yandere ending.)

• Dice and Pink go back and forth a lot. So much so I believe Dice becomes an insomniac. He definitely doesn’t sleep much with Pink being active. Hell, sometimes when Pink is deactivated he still can’t sleep..it’s just became a long lasting battle at this point.

• not a headcanon but I am so thirsty for wbb dice..he’s so yummy like drive over me with your bike a million times omg. (If you got any pink dice art or headcanons hmu 🤭🖤)

Jeff…

• My guy needs a hug so fucking bad man.. the first time I got his ending with the melted face I genuinely felt unnerved too like holy shit.

• In LBB I feel like Jeff is way more up beat. He’d probably listen to more light, poppy music. However with his shift he’s listening to things more depressing. He guesses it’s because hearing relatable lyrics help him calm down just a little bit.

• He’s way more temperamental then he ever was before. Almost no patience at all. Even if he doesn’t blow up, you can tell he’s still very petty and sarcastically mean.

• Goes on speed rides on his bike to calm him down. Most of the time blasting music. He never goes too far though, since he knows he still has to take care of Jatay.

• He drinks more often then he used to. He shows up at the bar almost every night and ends up coming home slammed to which Jatay consequently leaves him alone.

• Shits been hard..and Jeff simply can’t wait until he care tear Y/N apart in the most brutal way’s possible.

Varai…

• He’s gained new bug friends! All of them are named (for the most part). Sometimes he forgets someone’s name simply due to the fact that there’s so many of them that look so alike. If this happens, he starts going in a panic and feeling bad.

• His ainxety though, has slightly calmed down. He’s more of a walking corpse then he was before, so at this point there’s barely anything he needs to worry about aside from natural everyday worries.

• He’s definitely more clumsy then he ever was before. I guess it’s just because of the whole zombie thing..literally how is this guy alive?

• He hates seeing his boyfriend the way he is. It’s the biggest worry he has right now, and it worries him that they might eventually grow completely distant.

• Varai has the same relationship with Dice, although I think he’s really scared of Pink Dice so he stays away from talking about him as opposed to Jeff or even Jatay.

Jatay…

• Bro is in his own personal retirement home.

• Jeff is his caretaker, ofc

• Jatay often feels bad for Jeff, in a lowkey way. Obviously Jatay is an asshole, so he’d never really say anything outright, but those feelings are still there deep down.

• He feeds his stomach pet thing himself, making up meals for him since he can’t really eat that good. It gives him the joy knowing he can still cook for someone other then himself or Y/N.

• Jatay could give less of a fuck about the state of the world. At this point he’s going with the flow, with which ever way that might lead him.

• Talking to Jeff more has actually..calmed him down a little more. Obviously Jataybis not who he used to be, and with his shape I don’t think he’d want to anyway. Long story short, he appreciates Jeff’s company a lot.

[420thewritersroom]

Team Fortress 2: The World (W.I.P & Preview)

Team Fortress 2 is a game and setting that is wholly unique to me.

When it comes to other games, even those with wacky comedic elements, they at least try to ground themselves in some realm of reality that is established in their setting. Yet, Team Fortress 2 is the one and only game that I know that says, to your face, "fuck reality" and does whatever it wants. And it works. This post sums it up perfectly, but TF2 is the one game where even the GAME MECHANICS are taken into account by the fandom. In what game has the Respawn mechanic ever been considered? There are countless SFMs, fanfics, and drawings that take the Mercs' ability to return from death more seriously than Valve updating their game in the current age.

But if there's one thing I haven't seen done in the fandom, it's fully establishing the setting and expanding on the canon of Team Fortress 2. Now, yes, there are canonical reasons for why the Mercs are shedding blood in the game, and there is a, albeit incomplete, main story comic that further expands upon it. But I haven't seen anyone further examine the lore and try to build upon it. Which, if there are some people who have placed their own personal headcanons about the world of TF2, please send them my way. I'd love to read or hear them (I haven't been in the fandom for a long ass time, so I'm sure I missed a post or two elaborating upon the canon of TF2).

Below the READ MORE will be long lines of text as we go over the origins that lead us to the start of the Mann Wars, What the big corps are & their place in the canon, going over the key players of TF2, the events of Mann VS Machine, and where the Mercs are at now.

In The Beginning, Mann Waged War: The Origins of the Gravel Wars.

Now, while there is a whole comic that goes over the origins of the Gravel Wars and the events that would lead us to MVM, we're going to break this apart, piece by piece.

Zepheniah Mann

The sequence of events would begin with one man, Zepheniah Mann. There's very little detail about Zepheniah, but we know a few things about Zeph. Zepheniah was the original owner of the Mann Co company and sold munitions as far back as 1822. He wasn't alone in running this business as he also has a brother by the name of Silas Mann who assisted with making keys and name tags. At some point, he was associated with Barnabus Hale, Saxton Hale's grandfather (we'll get to the Hale family in a minute), and eventually married a woman by the name of Bette. We don't know much about his wife. The only bit of information we know about Bette is that her maiden name was once Bette née Darling and is the daughter of a man by the name of William Darling esquire.

But from the way Zepheniah spoke of her during the LITERAL BIRTH OF HIS THREE SONS, he was more annoyed and unbothered when she passed after childbirth. He also was just as uncaring about his infant sons as the midwife/nurse that attended Bette expressed confused correction as though Zeph should KNOW that he was expecting 3 sons.

To add to this, Zeph examined his own children as if he were picking livestock from a farm, determining their worth before making the go-ahead to raise them. And the second he saw his third son, who would eventually be known as Gray Mann, he immediately wanted him dead when it was discovered that he not only was the rut of the "litter" but was capable of full speech.

So based on this alone, we can ascertain that Zeph was a complete dick for no reason. We're not given a background check on his personal history, such as how Mann Co. came to be, who was the wife he married, and what could've caused him to be so heartless that he didn't bat an eye when his wife died and became a father. But this is where we can probably fill in some blanks to potentially explain some this.

I'm thinking that perhaps his marriage to Bette was purely professional. Maybe she had money due to her own personal wealth, or she was the daughter to a man with a successful company, and this caught Zeph's eye to marry her so that his affluence would leech off her earnings. And if we're going to bounce off of this theory, then that could explain why Zeph never cared for Bette. He got her riches and had her give birth to his future children, so her usefulness was spent aside from raising his children. The only person Zepheniah had an alright relationship with was Elizabeth, his maidservant. In his Will and the Loose Canon, he calls Elizabeth his "dearest maidservant." And nobody uses such a term, dearest, lightly. Zepheniah valued her very much, their relationship possibly being one of great trust as colleagues, friends, found family, or even lovers. Keep Elizabeth in mind because we'll be coming back to her soon.

Now, considering that Team Fortress 2 is a dark comedy and goes balls to the wall with its humor, I could be looking too deep into this. It could be that Zeph's indifference is played up for laughs. But that's what we're here for, overanalyzing a war dress-up game.

And this is where we'll have to end this section with Zepheniah Mann. Once again, not much we can go off on with Zepheniah other than he's an asshole. His sons, though!

RED VS BLU

From the get-go, these twin brothers HATE each other. In the same comic where we glean a bit of information about their father, Zepheniah Mann, we see both Redmond & Blutarch stink eyeing each other immediately after being conceived. Like their father, we don't know much about what went on before the main events of TF2, but we do know that ever since then, the brothers never got along. But they did love their father. Which I find very interesting.

Once again, Zeph shows utter disinterest in his sons, most likely only seeing them as a means to prolong the family business and nothing else. He quite literally, after assessing them like cattle, says how "They'll do." So, I can imagine how much of a "loving" father Zeph may have been. At best, if we want to throw this man a bone, he was the toughest loving father there could ever be. Or, at worst, he was neglectful and only cared about his sons when it came to teaching them the family business, putting high expectations on both of them.

And considering that children (and people in general) are naturally inclined to be loved, the twins most likely did everything in their power to appeal to their emotionally detached father. This could explain why the Mann brothers were always at each other's neck, wanting to outdo the other in hopes of gaining their father's attention.

In the Catch-Up comic, Saxton Hale describes the brothers as idiots, and he's not too far off with that statement. The Mann brothers convinced their aged father to buy most of all of New Mexico. But what was it that pushed them to make such a move? I neglected to mention this, but the Mann family originally resided in England, and with all their wealth, why move to the U.S.? From the Blood Brothers comic, Redmond confirms that they believe "whoever owns those pits (of gravel) would be a god." That gravel would be able to power steam engines. We're not told WHO or WHERE they got this idea from, but we can assume this is what urged them to convince their father to move to the States and buy up land in New Mexico. Something Zepheniah would never forgive them for doing.

Before we continue, I want to analyze what we know about the brothers individually. Despite Valve favoring the RED team when it comes to backstory, Blutarch is the one that gets the most screen time and info about him. In my opinion, Blutarch is perhaps the more ambitious brother if we're speaking purely of the twins that Zeph chose to not attempt infanticide on.

In Loose Canon, the one who not only approached the Engineers' grandfather, Radigan Conagher, but the Engineer himself (Dell Conagher), is not Redmond, but Blutarch. Blutarch is also the one who initially compiled a group of mercenaries to take the shared gravel-filled land by force from his brother. Blutarch is also the one who proposed a truce so that they could do some old man yaoi mpreg crimes against nature. Hell, the motherfucker even knew where Radigan's blueprints to his life-extender machine were buried (in his grave, mind you). This has me believing that Blutarch was perhaps the second smartest brother of the bunch (Gray Mann being THE smartest of the triplets).

As for Redmond, we don't know what original ideas he came up with to combat his brother. So far, everything that Redmond achieved was because, one, his brother thought it up first, and two, someone else TOLD him about what his brother was planning to do. The only time we see Redmond make any propositions about anything is when he conjures the silly idea to convert gravel into coal and to call his men up to send his brother to hell.

With this in mind, I can imagine if Zepheniah gave a single damn about his kids, Blutarch was perhaps his "preferred" child. At least Blutarch had some minor promise of running his company and preserving the family image. And don't get it twisted, Blutarch is just as much an idiot as Redmond, it was BOTH brothers who convinced their father to purchase land in New Mexico under the impression that the gravel there could be used as a power source. But at least he's ambitious enough to think up wild ideas and find someone to make it a reality.

But despite this, because of the L Zeph took for even listening to his sons, when he was dead & dying, he created a Will. Within this death testimony, he split his profits and heritage among three people. Firstly, his company, Mann Co., would go to his trusted aide, Barnabus Hale. Secondly, his maidservant, Elizabeth, was to inherit all of Zepheniah's wealth that wasn't squandered thanks to his sons' misgivings. But for his sons, they will have to live off the purchased land they convinced their father to buy. Not only that, they would be forced to share the land evenly. Now, reading the Will Zeph left behind, he's exceptionally harsh to his sons, understandably so. And you would think that with such jarring words, this would be their wake-up call to perhaps better themselves and work together. Or, better yet, solemnly accept the reality they're in and grudgingly co-exist across the street from each other in the barren wasteland they now possess.

But, no, the Mann brothers decide this would be a perfect opportunity to fight over useless land. This is where I feel like the brothers are blaming the other for what transpired with their father and family fortune. Once again, both Mann brothers loved their father dearly, perhaps even fighting for Zeph to even acknowledge them in an ok light. So I can imagine their shock and heartbreak when the final words from their father, in his own Will, is how much he despised BOTH Redmond & Blutarch. In Loose Canon, they looked more annoyingly shocked about having to share the purchased land, but who knows what their faces were when the Will was being read in its entirety.

Thus, I believe the war started due to the brothers dealing with the emotional trauma that their father left behind. Neither brother has the guts or brain power to admit that both of them were at fault when it came to the mishandling of their family fortune, nor do they have the capability to accept that their father was an absolute ass. So, they blame the other brother, believing that the land rightfully belongs to them, learning nothing from their own personal experience that their low intelligence and hatred for the other is what got them into this situation to begin with.

With the Gravel Wars finally commencing, Blutarch hires 9 mercenaries to attempt to take his brother's land by force. But, Redmond would get the same idea. Thus, RED VS BLU would become a staple rivalry until the current time in the TF2 universe. As most may remember and know, Blutarch hired famous individuals in history, such as Abe Lincoln, Billy the Kid, Nikola Tesla, John Henry, Davy Crockett, Sigmund Freud, Stonewall Jackson, Alfred Nobel, and Fu Manchu.

I'm NOT going to bother with overanalyzing these characters, considering that most of these characters simply shouldn't exist during the time of the Gravel Wars (1850), and they're clearly placed there for comedic factors. On top of that, we know next to nothing about these mercs (save for Abe Lincoln). If I were to throw myself a bone here, I theorized that the moment they realized that they were fighting a pointless war, the men simply left. I cannot imagine a famous inventor, a president, an infamous outlaw, a general officer, a frontiersman, a chemist, a neurologist, an American folk hero, and a racist stereotype spending more than a year fighting for land that produces nothing in return for 2 idiot men; even if there was money involved.

However, before we get further into the Gravel Wars, there is one person we have to talk about before delving into the situation between BLU VS RED.

Elizabeth, Helen, and TF Industries

It's important to understand where the Administrator and TF Industries come into play when it comes to the lore of TF2. Unfortunately, because the TF2 comics for the main line story haven't been updated since 2017 and the details of TF2 are spotty and vague, there are going to be some questions that we will have to speculate and answer ourselves. To help with this, I highly recommend watching SkyminSlash & Casperr, both of whom did outstanding jobs analyzing what we know about the Administrator and making this section a whole lot easier to write down. I'm also going to drop these two videos from Mister Dispenser & Richter Overtime as they not only go into a bit about the Administrator but also put down possible endings to the mainline TF2 comic (which we'll get into later).

When it came to the Administrator and writing this section, it practically made me go insane. I had a difficult time writing up a coherent theory that sounded right to me and plausible enough that it could be possible. However, I believe we can condense this down to three questions that we have to ask to further understand the possible motives behind the Administrator.

Who is the Administrator?

What is it she craved that she would become indebted to someone for it?

Who is she indebted to?

To start us off, who is the Administrator? Well, based on canon, the earliest we know of the Administrator is that she was a young girl...At some point...Yeah, in terms of personal history BEFORE she became the woman we know today, it's still a massive question mark on who she is. We know that the Administrator is named Helen; she smokes a lot, is a master manipulator, has a loyal assistant named Miss Pauling, watches the TF crew from various monitors, and has a hand in the Gravel War. We are aware that way back when she was placed in an old debt that she'd been trying to settle for all her life. From her wording, it sounds like whomever she was indebted to gave her something she greatly desired since she says this:

And this is where we gotta go into the whole Elizabeth and Helen situation, as many noticed a pattern between the two women. The trademark look of the Administrator is that she's elderly, most likely in her 60s-80s, wears purple, has a smoking habit, constant resting bitch face, and has a white streak of hair. These are the core traits of the Administrator we all know and love.

However, two other women in the comics share a striking similar semblance to the Administrator we know today. The maidservant I mentioned a while ago is shown a few times, mainly relating to the Will that Zepheniah left behind, giving the maidservant, Elizabeth, all of his wealth. There was also another woman by the name of Elizabeth who approached Radigan about making life extender machines for Redmond and showing the precious metal, Australium, to him. Now, initially, back in the Loose Canon comic, this other woman who spoke with Radigan wasn't named. It wasn't until 2014 with the Catch-Up comic that Valve confirmed that this other woman who looked similar to Elizabeth AND Helen also shared the same name as Elizabeth.

Both women have been around in different periods of time, the maidservant being around since 1850 (at the earliest) and the other Elizabeth approaching Radigan since 1890. And it is to be assumed that both Elizabeths are the Administrator, Helen. Now, some theories speculate that perhaps the Elizabeths in the comics could be relatives/ancestors of the Helen we see today. And these speculations can have some merit to them, but I prefer seeing the connection between the Elizabeths' and Helen as being one person instead of a family lineage.

I further believe that the Elizabeth's and Helen are the same person because in the comics, between some banter with Saxton Hale & Charles Darling, he expresses how Helen has been alive for well over 150 years (this slightly contradicts with Gray Mann & Miss Pauling rushing to find the 1850 census records, but give me a second, lemme cook). However, this doesn't really tell us much about the Administrator. So she lived for a very long time, most likely through Australium, but what is it about her that she would put herself in such a debt that she has to prolong her life?

Casperr made the suggestion that Helen may be a blood member of the Mann family. Originally, I didn't vibe with this, but there was one thing that kept nagging at me that I started to entertain this theory: the census record. Census records survey the population of a country to determine its population along with details such as an individual's age and current job description. This is often used to plan or adjust healthcare, employment, and education. But it's also used by those who wish to trace back their family lineage. When you look up census records, you will find either websites providing free information about such information or the records being used by genealogists & family history researchers.

When we focus on Miss Pauling and the merc during Unhappy Returns, she specifically asks for "genealogy records." And we know these are the census records that Gray Mann was looking for because when Gray Mann was asking for the records, the mayor of Teufort stated that Miss Pauling was also looking for records that date back to 1850. But why 1850? We do know that Elizabeth gained Zepheniah's wealth and "miracle gravel" once he died, but why look into the possible circumstances of her birth?

This is where I drop the possible theory of Helen/Elizabeth being a Mann daughter.

It will go without saying that Helen/Elizabeth was NOT born exactly in 1822. If we take the 150-year statement Charles Darling informed us of, 150 years from 1972 takes us back to 1822, the exact date the Mann triplets were born. When we look at the family photo where Elizabeth/Helen sat with the Mann family and Barnabus Hale, she already looked exceptionally old. Old enough to consider the Mann brothers her own children or grandchildren since the brothers were 28 when the Will was read to them. Now, considering that Helen/Elizabeth is always shown smoking, perhaps this may have aged her physically as smoking constantly can make someone appear older than they should be. However, to further pin that Elizabeth/Helen was NOT born in 1822, in the same comic, Blood Brothers, the nurse who aided Bette quite literally states that Zepheniah was father to triplets; Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann.

So if Elizabeth/Helen is a possible blood relative to Zepheniah, then he must've had her much earlier in his life. In Blood Brothers, when we first see a alive and young Zeph, we can possibly estimate that he's probably 30-40 years old. So he probably had her a decade or more before the Mann brothers. Now, whether or not Bette would still be considered her mother can be up for speculation. She could be Bette's first child or Zepheniah could've boinked some random woman.

Perhaps Elizabeth/Helen was Bette's first child, but because she was a girl, and considering the era at that time, Zepheniah did not see Elizabeth/Helen as a viable choice to run his company because he wanted a boy. Or perhaps Elizabeth's mother was someone Zeph coupled with before settling on Bette Darling. Whether or not he loved this woman can also be up for debate since we don't know what he was like outside of being a grouch. He could've loved her or only saw her as a means to "put off steam." But when he discovered Elizabeth/Helen was his daughter, he may have offered to ward her, not officially adopting her into his family despite being related to her. That could explain why she's called his maidservant, just so that he could further muddy the familial ties she has with the Mann family.

Remember that question I posed earlier about why Helen & Gray Mann wanted to look for the census records that date back to 1850? I believe that the Administrator changed her name sometime in 1850 once she inherited the "miracle gravel" from Zepheniah and eventually branched away from Redmond & Blutarch.

So we answered the first question about WHO the Administrator is, a possible member of the Mann family. Then what was it that she craved that she was indebted to someone to have it? Now, this was the issue I had when writing this up. Because we have no hints or clues to point to that could tell us any alternative motives the Administrator may have. Initially, I figured that perhaps she may have craved power & wealth. Which, with the theory of her being a potential Mann child, wouldn't be too far-fetched.

Perhaps due to the social climate at the time, Zepheniah denied Helen/Elizabeth the inheritance of his affluence. Helen/Elizabeth could've felt bitter about being left out of the family fortune and even being demoted to being the "maidservant" of the Mann family. On top of that, when the Mann triplets (Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann) were born, she may have started to truly fear her position in the Mann family. Now that Zeph had 3 (technically 2) "reliable" boys in the family, he had someone he could pass the company off should he desire to keep Man Co. traditionally run by a member of the Mann family. Even worse, 2 of the brothers are incompetent, and the other one was taken by eagles.

Furthermore, the only thing Elizabeth has going for her is that Zepheniah has a lot of respect for Elizabeth. But she still worries about her future with the Mann family. What happens when Zepheniah dies? He could easily give his estate and riches to his sons, and considering that she's a maidservant to not just Zeph but the Mann family as a whole, she could be spending the rest of her life under the servitude of her brain-dead (half) brothers. And even IF she decided to leave, that would mean leaving the safety net of wealth that the Mann family provided her.

Leaving means she has to build up her lifestyle, something that would've been difficult for her to do depending on how good and how willing she was to perform certain labors (she was a maidservant, so her skills were most likely cleaning, shopping, cooking, and potentially caring for the Mann children). And not everyone has Mann Co. money; she would be leaving a comfortable life if she wanted to attempt to make it on her own with the limited possibilities women had at that time.

As I said, I initially figured that this would've been a good enough theory to run on…But then I thought of another possibility that made more sense in my mind. Mortality.

It's a common theme in the TF2 universe of characters defying their temporality and trying to prolong their own lives. We see this with the Mann brothers, the mainline TF2 comics, Merasmus, Medic's medigun, and many other examples of characters who prolonged their lives to avoid dying. So it wouldn't be too far off the table to think that Helen/Elizabeth simply wanted to live. Perhaps someone close to her got horribly sick, and it scarred the Administrator. Maybe she was terminally ill herself and wanted a way to cure herself. Maybe sickness had nothing to do with her motives; Helen/Elizabeth could've seen how easily life could be snuffed out, and she didn't desire to die. This could be watching a loved one die horribly or peacefully, watching them or herself grow old, or hating her own mortality. Furthermore, as we established, Helen/Elizabeth is often shown smoking; she could've started seeing the ramifications of her chain-smoking when she discovered that she was aging faster (visually) and developing lung cancer.

Either of these two speculations could be valid reasons for why the Administrator would put herself in a lifelong debt in exchange for the above-mentioned.

So, the Administrator may have craved power, wealth, longevity, or a combination of the three; then who is she indebted to, and what is she supposed to pay back?

Now, this is where things get a bit crazy. Based on what we know in canon, there's really no one we can point to that can be a possible candidate to serve as the Administrator's creditor. One could possibly turn to Merasmus since he's a wizard and might have the ability to grant or provide her the means to gain what she desired. However, Merasmus is quite literally a Saturday morning cartoon villain and an incompetent wizard who poses no possible threat to the Administrator that she HAS to pay him back anything. To make my point, more often than not, Merasmus is the one seeking out the TF2 crew for help because he got HIMSELF in debt with the mafia, and he's commonly harassed by the RED Soldier. The same man who tapped cardboard to himself to sneak into a robot base.

We can also rule out the Mann brothers, Redmond & Blutarch, because it's highly apparent that she's manipulating them to achieve whatever hidden goal she has going on. And it's been proven time and time again that the brother's agenda is the Gravel war, woefully ignorant to whatever the Administrator is doing. Gray Mann, we can DEFINITELY rule out because he's actively going against her and made no hints that she owed him anything.

Zepheniah Mann could be a possible contestant since he did have Elizabeth/Helen swear to protect his "miracle gravel" and to keep it away from Gray Mann. I also find it interesting that near the end of his written Will, Zepheniah expresses how he does not wish to die and that "God and His angels will have to drag me screaming to Heaven. I do not want to die." If we were to use Zepheniah Mann as the potential creditor, perhaps Helen/Elizabeth would be trying to resurrect her (possible) father after he granted her his remaining estate and riches. However, there is a problem with this theory.

Firstly, Zepheniah technically resolved his own issue by cursing himself to death. We see this firsthand in his testament AND during the month of October when we play on Harvest, and his ghost gives the Mercs a visiting scare. Now, one could argue that perhaps being dead for so long gives him limitations, such as eating, drinking, and other human senses that one would miss. But basic Ghost 101 would remind you that spectral entities are known for possessing people for personal gain. While we don't see Zepheniah perform this ever in the TF2 universe, I'll be damned if it hasn't occurred to the old bastard to try that trick out once in a while. If Zeph ever wanted to re-experience being human, he could just haunt a person for however long before finally being exorcised or leaving on his own free will.

Secondly, what reason would the Administrator have to indebt herself to Zepheniah? Based on the speculations we made earlier, Zeph coldly demoted her from the family to become a maidservant, blocking Helen/Elizabeth from his wealth. If it wasn't for the misgiving of his sons, who knows if Helen/Elizabeth would've gotten his affluence. And the Administrator doesn't give the air as someone who would do anything out of the kindness of her black coffee heart. Even though Zeph considered Elizabeth as his "dear maidservant" and trusted her dearly, that doesn't mean that Helen/Elizabeth shared the same sentiment. In the Loose Canon comic, we see that on the day that they were going to bury Zepheniah, Helen/Elizabeth is shown smoking and not giving a single fuck during the funeral. She could've still harbored some bitterness toward Zepheniah, and she could've just taken the money she got and not feel any obligation to "repay" Zeph for anything.

On top of that, let's say we shove the whole "wanting riches & power" aspect of the Administrator aside, then how the fuck does "paying Zeph back" help with the possibility that the Administrator wants to avoid death? Sure, she was given his stash of miracle gravel (Australium), but Zeph himself didn't grant her this nigh immortality; the mineral does. She can let the bastard rot in his grave and scavenge all of Australia to get what she wants. Matter of fact, she did EXACTLY that in the same Loose Canon comic when she spoke with Radigan Conagher. And it's not like Zepheniah had any secret powers that we know of-he was just a man who sold munitions to the highest buyer.

And lastly, Zeph isn't a threat worthy of a final comic reveal. I'm certain that there's probably someone out there who can prove me wrong on this, and all power to them, but for me, there's very little about Zepheniah Mann where he's a valid contender to be the creditor to the Administrator's debt. When we look at the last comic, Blood in the Water, we see the Administrator in a state of desperation when she's told that all the Australium is gone. And in that desperation (and acceptance), she opts to use up the last of the Australium to settle this debt within an hour. Those last panels in the second-to-last comic would have us believe that whomever she's indebted to is so intimidating that the Administrator would use up the last of her life and finally end this 150-year-long debt "once and for all." You don't typically see that language used if the threat isn't something substantial. Hell, there was that one document where the Administrator was speaking with the UNITED STATES SENATORS and exposed her secret plan to these men. And it scared them so badly that one of them remarked about having to see their family.

To further add to this, the reason why I believe this creditor is such a massive threat is due to the experience Miss Pauling had when she was dead. As some may remember in the Blood in the Water comic, we start off with Miss Pauling in a deserted, dream-like reality, and she enters a door that leads to the Administrator monitoring herself. After a brief conversation, Miss Pauling is shown practically begging Helen to come forward about her massive plan that she's been working on for years. When Miss Pauling asks what is it that the Administrator wants, we get this iconic panel as the Administrator responds:

Now, I know that many would say that this doesn't prove anything about who her creditor may be because this was just a death-induced dream…Or was it? We know that Heaven and Hell exist, then a Purgatory, an in-between realm, should be a possibility, yes? When we see Miss Pauling in this mysterious place, we see vultures surrounding her body. This is typical behavior of vultures since they are carrion birds. However, when we see vultures surround a character, especially one who isn't dead, it's to signify that the character is close to death. One example I can think of is during The Lion King when Simba is discovered by Timon & Pumba. While the little lion appeared dead, we learn quickly that he was close to death. And, mind you, vultures ONLY eat carrion, creatures that have died, not close to death. In Miss Pauling's case, since the RED Medic was in the process of resuscitating her, the vultures could only surround her since she was going to survive anyway. But, all-in-all, the vultures being in this deserted land could be a hint that Miss Pauling was in Purgatory.

Another case of this possibly being the land between life & death, Heaven & Hell, is the location. Now, when trying to get a tangible idea of how others picture Purgatory, I couldn't get a direct answer since many of the sources I skimmed through kept going into the religious symbolism of Purgatory. However, thanks to Dante's Divine Comedy, it's often described as a mountain or a "rocky hill with separate openings into its hollow center." In other pictures (with a quick Google search, mind you), Purgatory is a mountainous region with a sandy beach at the very bottom, surrounded by water. The mountain is often depicted as having a trail that leads up before it becomes a multi-layered platform like a stacked cake.

When we re-examine where Miss Pauling was located there are no mountains or hills, but we do see a rocky formation nearby. Also, Miss Pauling is placed in a desert area, and many would say that being stranded in the desert is a sentence that only leads to death if not appropriately prepared to face the harsh elements. But one thing that does fit the description of Purgatory is the door that Miss Pauling sees upon waking up in this other realm. A "separate opening," if you will. During my research, I also want to add this little tib-bit. So, the first layer of Purgatory is Ante-Purgatory, which has two terraces that make it up. The first being the ex-communicate, in the context of Dante's Divine Comedy, are individuals who were exiled from the church. However, the second terrace I found interesting. The second terrace are the Late-Repentant. These individuals are described as people who were too consumed by "worldly affairs" to repent for their sins, or they didn't receive their final rites before dying. And wouldn't you agree that both Miss Pauling and the Administrator had "worldly affairs" that they desperately wanted to attend to before dying?

Finally, to cement my point that Miss Pauling AND the Administrator were in a Purgatory-like realm, we see that Miss Pauling awakens from her death sleep thanks to the RED Medic. Shenanigans ensue, and she gets a call from the BLU Engineer. They talk for a moment, but we learn that the Administrator is dead. Fast forward after the TF Crew takes care of business at Gray Mann's island, the BLU Engineer greets the Administrator after tinkering with her Life-Extender machine. It is then that we learn that the Administrator was dead for FOUR HOURS. This means that Miss Pauling having that death "dream," coming back to life, the TF2 finding and killing the TFC Mercs, Scout dying then coming back to life, Medic dying and coming back to life, and all the other shenanigans during Blood in the Water happened within 4 hours or maybe a little before that time limit.

Also, if you just simply read the comic, it pretty much spells it out to you that Miss Pauling and the Administrator might be in a Purgatory-Hell-like realm, so…All that speculation was kinda of for nothing.

REGARDLESS! I believe that the Administrator stating that she needs blood and doesn't have enough of it relates to the debt that she's in. If the Administrator requires blood to fulfill her debt, then her creditor must be exceptionally sinister to ask this of the Administrator. And Zepheniah Mann just doesn't cut it as someone who would ask that of the Administrator. So, if not him, then who?

With all of this in mind, one would probably still point a finger at Merasmus. The guy often keeps terrorizing the Mercs, and he does perform rituals of various types. In the Blood Money update comic, he does mention that he obtained the "blood of virgins" by using his own blood, and in Gargoyles and Gravel, the RED Spy details that Merasmus does use blood in his schemes. And while all this would make sense, the TF2 crew are ALWAYS fighting that old man every Halloween. So much so that he's not even a threat to them anymore, as they are just as quick to dismiss him. Hell, in the same comic (Gargoyles and Gravel), the Mercs nearly left Merasmus to his fate if it wasn't for the RED Heavy stepping in because he didn't want to play bootleg D&D. On top of this, despite appearing every Halloween, Miss Pauling, and possibly even the Administrator, didn't even know the guy existed until Gargoyles and Gravel. Which is surprising to me since he comes around EVERY HALLOWEEN. And a person can't be a threat to ya if you don't even acknowledge their existence.

Now, this isn't me saying that it's IMPOSSIBLE for Merasmus to be the reason the Administrator is in debt. Merasmus is 6,000 years old, so it's not implausible for him and Helen/Elizabeth to have met, and the guy knows magic, so if it's riches or immortality she wants, he can provide it. I would probably say that he's the "safest" option. But, with Merasmus' slight incompetence as a wizard and the fact that the Administrator hasn't communicated or even acknowledged the wizard, I'm just gonna put this option in a corner by itself.

But that leaves us stuck with no options. Once again, the Mann brothers are a no-go since the Administrator isn't intimidated by any of them. Zepheniah Mann doesn't qualify due to the above-mentioned. Then, what about Saxton Hale? Well, that's also not an option either. One, it's often shown as a pompous idiot who doesn't give heads or tails about anything but fighting and drinking. He doesn't even respect the Administrator because he has a dedicated barren room with Miss Pauling's name on it. And when informed about the Administrator by Charles Darling, he looks genuinely perplexed when he tells Hale how she lived for 150 years and was planning something big. And I'm not going to bother with his ancestors because Helen/Elizabeth clearly see Australians as, in her words in the Loose Canon comic, "lager-pickled brain."

And at this point, there's really no one else we can look to. There's no one else above the Administrator herself that can pose a possible threat to her in any way. However, I do have a suggestion that might work. I would like to introduce the Unknown Individual. The first time we are even informed that this person exists is when you combine the torn pictures of the Mann family photo. On the left side, we see Redmond Mann, Blutarch Mann, Zepheniah Mann, Elizabeth/Helen, and Barnabus Hale. On the right, we see Silas by his lonesome at a fireplace. When you try to combine the photos, we can see that there's a missing link as a mysterious individual is shown that bridges the photos; preventing it from being 100% complete. All we can ascertain about this individual is that they're wearing some sort of coat. The wiki claims that there might be something being held by the Unknown Individual, but I've analyzed this picture for a while, and I just can't see it. Maybe it's the stylized art, or I'm just dumb.

This is another unfortunate case where we don't know who this person is and what stake they have in the TF2 story as a whole. But, I will bet my ass that this person had something to do with the final comic, and we would've finally gotten confirmation on who they were. We got the same treatment with Gray Mann when they finally revealed the final lines in Zepheniah's Will and showed us the birth certificate, so something similar could've been done for the UI (Unknown Individual). However, because Valve didn't develop this mysterious individual, they are a blank slate for us to do whatever we please. So, who is this Unknown Individual? An eldritch entity, of course.

Now, I'm going to build off this theory from Richter Overtime's video and the possibility that a cosmic entity has the Administrator indebted to it. To give some context, Richter Overtime made a video going over what happened to the final TF2 comic. He briefly goes over the real-life explanations on why we never received the final comic (Because Valve essentially), but he also showcased an anonymous user on 4chan who posted on TF2's V board who "claimed" to have "read the script" for the final comic. Before I continue, let me be the first to say that I am more than skeptical about this individual who supposedly read the script for the final TF2 comic. There's nothing that this anon provides that proves that they have any relation to the game, not even giving us a "I'm a friend to the son of an uncle who works at Valve who also happened to work on the comics for TF2." Now, understandably, if this IS a Valve employee who worked on the comic, revealing company information such as the final comic could be detrimental to their job, so they would want to put as little of themselves out there as possible. HOWEVER, as it stands, we have no concrete credentials that can prove this guy's telling the truth. Also, two, even if this was a "leaked script," I highly doubt it, and, to give it the benefit of the doubt, it's probably a rough draft. But it being a draft doesn't say that it's a finished project. Look no further than GTA 6, a game that was leaked a few years ago, and everybody with no good sense judged the game, even though the game wasn't even in a stage where it was even PLAYABLE.

With that out of the way, let me continue my point. So, in Richter's video, this anonymous person claims that the person whom the Administrator was indebted to was a "cosmic entity or messenger" posing as Abraham Lincoln. And, in my opinion, I vibe with this. Considering that God & Heaven, Satan & Hell, ghosts and aliens exist in this world, I don't think it's too far off to include eldritch horrors in the TF2 universe. I mean, we do have the Bombinomicon, a book that's supposed to be a reference to the Lovecraftian Necronomicon. To add to this, I remember seeing comments on Richter's video that don't like the possible idea of a cosmic entity being the reason why the Administrator is in debt. Here are a few examples that I found in the comment section:

Which, I can understand why most would feel that way. Since TF2 had its world expanded upon, there's been no hint that a higher being is closely watching the Mercs and the TF2 universe as a whole, so throwing in a G-Man-esque character into the mix might seem unoriginal and tacky. However, I don't mind this possible theory; lemme explain why.

Firstly, Valve tends to leave in some of their stories an omnipresent individual who oversees the main protagonist. We all know of the G-Man, an enigmatic and mysterious entity who both helps and hinders the Half-Life characters as they push their own questionable goals. But I think there's a lesser-known "G-Man" type character that some overlook in the Valve games, the Rat Man.

For those who don't remember, back in the first Portal game, there were secret dens that could be found with writings and dioramas on the walls, similar to the rambles and scribbles of a supposed madman. These hidden spaces belonged to an unseeable figure named Doug Rattmann, commonly known as the Rat Man. These images that the Rat Man leaves behind help Chell, and in turn, the player, with piecing together that GLaDOS could not be trusted and figure out what happened in Aperture Science. Now, if your memory is jogged, you might be thinking:

"Well, Rat Man isn't really a G-Man-esque entity. There's a whole comic explaining his whole deal and why he bothers to help Chell in the first place."

In which, you are correct. However, counter-point! Notice I said 'omnipresent.' The word means something that is widely or constantly encountered. Or, when speaking of a godly figure, present everywhere at the same time. Now, the latter wouldn't apply to the Rat Man, but you could agree that he (the Rat Man's Dens) is widely encountered if you know where to look for his dens. The Rat Man may not be an otherworldly entity, but his presence is still felt once you're aware of his existence. The same could be said about the G-Man. I detour this section to say that Valve has a track record of including an always-watching entity in some of their games that provide aid or woes to their main protagonist. That's why I don't mind the idea of a potential "G-Man-esque" character being a possibility in TF2.

Now, the unfortunate thing is that there are not a lot of omnipresent individuals in the TF2 universe. The only definite person who would fit that role is the Administrator, but we're here to explain who's the person SHE'S indebted to. Unless there's some debt that she owes to herself, we can't really count her in this instance. But in terms of omnipresence, the Administrator is the only one who is persistently present in & out of gameplay that assists and hinders the players (reminds us what time the match ends, informs us if someone took our intelligence, and in the Meet the Spy animation, she quite literally informs BLU team that the RED Spy was in the base; hindering the Spy but assisting the BLU team).

And that's why I opted to pick the UI (Unknown Individual) as the omnipresent individual who oversees the TF2 universe. Once again, because the UI hasn't been established at all in the TF2 universe (there is literally one long sentence dedicated to them), so we're free to throw random bullshit at the wall and claim that it sticks. So, if the UI is the creditor to the Administrator and responsible for her blood debt, then who are they? Since we're categorizing them as a Lovecraftian eldritch being, the joys about this is that I don't have to go into a long-winded rant about them :D. Besides, the fun about the Lovecraftian horrors is that they are not explainable by human comprehension, which I think fits the Administrator heavily since we still, to this day, in canon, don't know what her whole deal is.

However, it wouldn't be fun if we just left it as that. I do have an idea I want to present to explain who or what this entity is. The Unknown Individual, in my book, is a Nyarlathotep-type creature, an entity that thrives on chaos & cruelty and is highly deceptive and manipulative. Nyarlathotep-based on the tib-bit of information I scrounge for this-is a highly active Lovecraftian horror who is more "down to earth" than most cosmic entities in that genre. Nyarlathotep takes the guise of humans instead of maintaining an unfathomable shape, they actually communicate through humanoid means, and they even maintain multiple cults, some of them not even being their own cults, and are instead the religious sects of other Outer Gods & Great Old Ones. As stated before, unlike other Lovecraftian creatures, Nyarlathotep prefers causing madness than death & destruction. Then again, in the same breath, based on various wikis I found, they say that Nyarlathotep has the possible intent to destroy the human race and the earth as well, so take that as you will.

Also, a thing I found interesting was the inspiration that brought about Nyarlathotep. Based on his name, it clearly has Egyptian origins, but what I thought was more fascinating was that Nyarlathotep was conceived due to a dream Lovecraft had. There are many interpretations of this dream, but William Murry, as far back as 1991 and as early as 2006, speculated that Nyarlathotep may have been inspired by Nikola Tesla, who was known to have well-attended lectures that involved extraordinary electrical experiments and was surprisingly seen as a sinister figure by some at the time. And guess who plays the Engineer when Blutarch initially hires 9 mercenaries to forcibly take land from his brother…Take that as you will.

So, we determined WHO the Administrator is, WHAT her cravings possibly were, and WHO her debtor is. So, what's the TLDR version of all of this?

Well, in order, Helen, previously known as Elizabeth, was the true first child of Zepheniah Mann. I'm still going to keep who her mother is ambiguous. As for her craving, Helen wanted to live; the why I also want to leave a pseudo-ambiguous, but I would believe it might be related to what happened to her mother or due to an existential crisis. Helen communes with Nyarlathotep by either seeking them out or the reverse, and they both strike a deal. Nyarlathotep is willing to provide her the immortality she craves as long as she can provide blood in return every year or decade that she lives. A life for a life type of deal. In agreeing with this, Nyarlathotep causes coincidences to happen, such as Zepheniah Mann dying from every illness possible and Zeph giving his entire estate to Helen, along with his "miracle gravel." Nyarlathotep doesn't magically give Helen what she wants but provides her the tools to get what she desires. However, the problem presents itself when it comes to obtaining blood. Helen can't just go on a mindless killing spree, and perhaps taking another life is a daunting task. Canonically, we have never seen the Administrator lift a finger against anyone save for a glass window. And each year/decade she doesn't spill any blood, the more her blood debt increases.

However, she knows two idiots who are willingly sending men to their graves due to a petty feud. Thus, the Administrator decides that, with the newfound affluence she acquired, she would fund Redmond & Blutarch to continue paying Mercenaries to die for their silly land disputes as a secret "interested third party." However, Nyarlathotep, while impressed that she would go this route, opts to not accept these offerings because the Administrator isn't the one doing the killing, even though she's funding the men to perform such deeds. She needs to be the one to pull the trigger, to swing the axe, to light the dynamite fuse. Helen needs blood on HER hands. However, to give credit where credit is due, Nyarlathotep was willing to put her in a "payment plan" to help her make up for the loss of blood she didn't provide. But this arrangement is intended to put her deeper into this blood debt. The Administrator is aware of this, but the hanging threat that this all-powerful entity will snatch away the gifts that they provided hangs over her like a loosely strung-up piano. If she doesn't make the "payments," she loses everything. And every time she thinks she's over it, she's done, she will accept the darkness that awaits her; Helen's fear of the unknown, of absolution, of the monitored office that she has to face every time she temporarily dies; it brings her back into the vicious cycle once again.

By 1890 and some decades before, Helen established TF Industries, a company "devoted to the highest level of craftsmanship and personal security" and "providing the latest in military technology, selling all manner of deadly, cutting-edge devices to prospective buyers." However, this is a pseudo front to bring lambs to the slaughter. In selling deadly weapons & devices, Helen hopes this will cause enough bloodshed to be spilled so that she can repay her debt. And, in hiring individuals to TF Industries and, in turn, sending them to RED or BLU, two companies she would end up buying, she hopes the unsafe work environments will also contribute to fulfilling her debt.

And this is where we will leave the Administrator's portion of this analysis for now since the further down the lore and worldbuilding of TF2 we go, the more we can expand upon her and her involvement with the Gravel Wars. But before we move on to the Gravel Wars itself, there's one final thing we gotta talk about.

[crystallizedday]

DID SOMEBODY SAY LORE???

Since I’m still in a major Poptropica hyperfix, of course my first major lore dump (since my accursed Amino days, but we don’t talk about that) is going to be related to my take on the world of Poptropica!

& since I have no word limit on here, I can finally go fricken HAM with this!!

Here we go!

Alright, firstly I wanna tackle my main trio since I had to be VERY vague with their profiles.

Sporty used to be (& technically still is) a dragonborne who left his home island in pursuit of adventure when he was a teenager (which is basically me making sense of when my in-game version of Sporty was grey with horns & bat wings).

Eventually, he meets these demi-god people residing in the skies called the Blitzmanians, & their whole deal is they’re protectors of Poptropica (specifically from Zeus, since that guy tries to take over the planet a LOT behind the scenes). After witnessing Sporty & his adventures in secret, their king was impressed with his caring & passionate spirit & thus bestows upon him the ability to disguise himself as a proper human (which is where the red lightning tattoo comes from) in exchange for Sporty working for them to help even more of Poptropica, giving him updates on what islands need his help & such.

Later down the line, he is confronted by Lone, the son of the king, who felt outplayed by Sporty & desired to be the one to travel Poptropica to help the populous & impress his father. Sporty’s quickly able to convince the jealous prince to tag along with him instead, letting the literal demi god reside with him in his rather humble home.

Soon after, this mysterious woman that Sporty had a few friendly encounters with shows up to give Sporty a proposition to ALSO work with Spy Island HQ to FURTHER allow him to help the entirety of Poptropica. The dork with a golden heart of course agrees to this & now Quick Grape, who Lone did not 100% trust, joined the team, allowing the gang to use all sorts of advances gadgetry & even upgrading Sporty’s house to be far more comfortable. Since Sporty trusts Quick with all his heart, he fails to notice how overly observant Quick can be with Lone & anything related to his clan. Lone notices, however, but has accidentally became too attached to Sporty to do anything about it.

NOW FOR THE BADDIES!!

All the villains know each other pretty well, but they were still rather on their own for the most part. That was, until the Super Villain Quartet regrouped. That totem thing about “removing their evil” thing was complete baloney & practically didn’t do anything other than put powerful evil-fueled energy into physically manifested objects that got destroyed anyway, so the four still-evil villains decided since they were chosen as the most evil villains in Poptropica, they might as well team up to increase their odds of succeeding (even if Bard & Harvey didn’t quite see eye to eye at the time).

Somehow building themselves a huge base of operations, the four work together to aid in each other’s villainous deeds, with the advance defense systems Bard & Harvey co-built keeping all four of them safe from the law & from Sporty’s squad. While their ambitions were rather vast in the beginning, they gradually became more & more demoralized to push for the ultimate goal of ruling Poptropica after so many failed attempts & thus shifted to more smaller acts of villainy, either for legitimate reasons (like Black Widow stealing valuables & riches for money with Crawfish sometimes doing the same) or just because it gets the adrenaline running & it’s fun (literally the other three). This is why Bard is a lot more calm & sarcastic then they were back in Astro Knights.

Speaking of me referring to Bard that way, yes, my guy IS non-binary, pretty much to an extreme extent, & what I mean by that is my guy is like… mostly mechanical, with only their head, chest, & right arm being flesh. Yeah, I took the fandom headcanon & RAN with it! Like I made Bard the ULTIMATE non-binary. Like I made them DESPISE gender, it’s great. They’re rather snarky, almost always aiming their witty remarks at Widow because she’s the most easily angered by their comments (that & Harvey does that cute bunny “thumping” thing when he’s mad & Bard’s mechanical heart can’t take too much of that cuteness). Those two always try to outwit each other & Bard is almost always triumphant.

Bard’s not COMPLETELY chill, however, & when set off, practically will lunge at someone with their own bare hands. They’re the LEAST mentally stable of the four after all, not to mention having… well… issues thanks to a CERTAIN someone throwing them under the bus as Mordred as they were thrown into prison for the first time.

The extent of these issues has led to the very name “Mordred” almost immediately putting them into a fit of rage, same with “Elyana”.

It is also impossible for anyone else to take off the jester hat. Their hair is BEYOND ruined & since Bard is too afraid to shave it all off since they know it won’t grow back in the state it’s in, they just hide it. It is why Bard will go anywhere in a VARIETY of different outfits but will STILL have the hat on no matter how “goofy” they look.

Dr. Hare is a lot more goofy than Bard, & is the one who introduced the idea of petty villainy to Bard (& the first one to fall for the guy & be TERRIBLE at hiding it). He’s the most animated out of the four, doing all sorts of crazy one-off ideas practically every week. This has led to many, MANY “wait a minute, that’s MY idiot!!” moments with him, since while Harvey is a mechanical & bio-engineering genius, he can be rather… short sighted, often acting before thinking.

Oh also, going by another popular Poptropica headcanon, THIS Harvey is also trans, but just like Bard, he’s the ULTIMATE trans, COMPLETELY switching his sex with nothing but his genius & probably some shady methods he will never bring to light. Why? Cause a mad scientist being trans & doing whatever it takes to do what every trans person wishes they could accomplish is just such a brilliant idea & you cannot stop me.

Regarding him ABSOLUTELY having some rabbit-traits to him (cause like… there’s no way those buck teeth are NOT from the lab accident), I firmly believe he has a few rabbit quirks to him like the angry thumping I mentioned earlier as well as the vegetarian diet rabbits have, which is why he is very… VERY skinny.

He also ADORES animals, same with Bard. The two of them would actively save a hamster’s life over another human’s, which has led to some… minor conflicts with Crawfish that I will mention later.

Black Widow is the one to maintain most of her original villainous ways, still stealing paintings & vandalizing famous artworks. Even so, she’s the most social of the group, always going out to hang out with the lady villains of Poptropica to catch a break from the lunatics she practically lives with.

… but she’s not a gay scientists, so my headcanons stop there.

Captain Crawfish! He’s taken up the hobby of wrestling the beasts of the sea & participating in a variety of deadly adventures, which the other three contribute to him trying to trick himself into thinking he’s still young & invincible. He’s quite respectfully strong, but is still adjusting to the different cultures around him & can’t seem to wrap his head around modern technology.

Also, my guy has DEFINITELY broken a few immensely important bones that Bard had to replace. Just sayin.

MKAY I think that’s a good enough rundown of the basics of my AU for now, mainly cause if I go any further, it’ll be increasingly harder to proof read it all. :pppppp

[kaeyapilled]

SAME SAME

I have so many thoughts about the in-universe implications of some things, if not removed for being video game mechanics. Artifacts especially. Also, the personal pocket dimensions. The Traveler definitely, cutscene confirmed, canonically has one they summon from and have since before Teyvat. In order for the field tiller quest to make sense, Dainsleif disappearing the eye has to be literal. There's just - no way for that to work with the entire ruin guard eye tucked under his arm, even if we just couldn't see it. Amber doesn’t have Baron Bunny following her around, and in the manga I believe she literally summons it. But, like, it's a real physical item, not an Oz. I feel we also see some other Vision holders' weapons summoned in cutscenes? Probably? maybe also in the manga, I'm not certain, but they do have weapons they weren't storing on their persons previously. Obviously there's idles but I'm gonna assume Diluc isn't magically summoning a whole live bird. In gameplay, Klee summons bombs, but she canonically keeps them in pack and hides them - why bother if she could just disappear them for safe keeping? Why not have a whole demand to have vision holders transfer bulk shipments for max capacity, and for safe keeping for likely-to-be-stolen items? How do you rob someone who can do that? How long can a non-Traveler vision holder keep something in there? What happens if they die? The visionless NPCs certainly can't - it would be utilized and completely undermine all the many, many quests and problems and inconveniences about carts and transportation and manpower etc they have. What happens if you try to out a non-magic alive thing in there? Lots of writers call it a vision compartment, but as the fandom is always asking on every topic every: what's up with Dainsleif?

Bursts and their names are voice line canon, but character do way many elemental things outside of their skill/burst abilities. ("Dandelion Field" specifically.) Are these just chosen descriptors for specific things you can do with vision, and not limited to them? Do they feel different? Do you make up the names? What's up with that? How many are actually called that in-universe - I'm sure not everyone would be designating fancy alliterative names to all their individual superpowers.

not what you were talking about, but in relation to the idea of Traveler having infinite magic pockets, one of my favorite Traveler-the-Character headcanons is the idea of them having food/resource scarcity trauma because... don't recall how much they strictly do need food or don't besides that they do eat, but they've been implied to be alive for a very long time. Something just tickles me about the idea of (near?) infinite worlds, and how even if 90% of them have things you can eat or are compatible with somehow, a theoretical "10%" of infinity is still the chance to go centuries upon centuries without encountering a world not hostile to you, or that hasn't deteriorated to a horrible state of danger. Even if it's not food, specifically, just... safe stuff. Teapot Nahida points out in-game that they apparently canonically grab all the mint and such they see. It's a joke about video game behavior, but also! We don't know what they had on them before being cast to Teyvat and that they lost when that happened! And if you need to be that prepared for any number of any type of worlds before you come across another one this hospital to you, it's a gamble to have enough no matter how many years prior you spend gathering. On one hand I feel like that kind of takes away from the whimsy-ness their travels are somewhat connotated with? but idk. Also when food comes up they have a reoccurring thing about saving money items etc. gotta level up those talents

idk perhaps something in canon we know about their traveling or the hoyoverse contradictes this, and feel free to disagree, but I like the concept. drop the pre-Teyvat Traveler lore PLEASE

anon i forgot to respond to your ask im so sorry. it's been a few days since the discussion but yes so true i love to think about this