#madness: ascend

[zepumpkineater]

I want to talk about my personal favorite fanon interpretation of Hank.

It all begins with Hank driving through a ruined Nevada, not an uncommon scene at all in Madness Combat. This cartoon begins with the typical expectation, in classic Hank fashion he's on his way to cause untold violence unto those who wish him harm.

And in no time flat, Hank does exactly that. One by one, the bodies of AAHW begin to rack up, incorrectly colored blood Engineers and all. All in all, it's a pretty good action scene. Not the smoothest animation the Madness animation scene has provided, but pretty impressive for 12 years ago.

But here's where this cartoon changes pace, and begins to divert from your traditional Madness animation. We see Jeb and Sheriff, characters that we're used to seeing in an antagonistic role, promising a better Nevada with their brand new Factory. Kind of wild how this parallels Jeb's misguided attempts at saving Nevada in the main series, when this one aired in 2011, before we even had Nexus Classic to give us Jeb's backstory. It's clear this factory is doing Nevada no good, and the story changes from here.

Here we see a looming, massive tower, not at all unfamiliar to the sight of the Nexus Tower looming in the distance, a symbol of Nevada's destruction. This tower is no different, Hank looks over it and his goals are immediately recontextualized. Hank's violence suddenly seems a lot less meaningless, less fueled by the pure desire to cause chaos and to kill. Instead, the goal is clear. Get to the top. Destroy the factory. Save Nevada.

A familiar foe stands in his way. Is he up to his old tricks, to play with his old pal Hank, or is there something darker hiding beneath that metal mask? I always got the vibe that Tricky wasn't fighting for himself here, but rather because he had to.

After a prolonged battle with the Clown, we are greeted with a most unique sight in a Madness cartoon. Blue skies, green grass, flowing water. Serene music as the birds fly through the air. Hank looks alien here, like he doesn't belong, a product of a ruined world in a small bastion of perfection.

This is one of my favorite shots in the whole cartoon. Hank, this bloodthirsty killer we've come to know and love, doing something so very vulnerable and human. Reaching for the sun, basking in its warmth. Something he probably hasn't felt in a very long time. Something worth killing for, something worth dying for.

And die he does. With the last of his conscious self, Hank fruitlessly reaches for a flower next to him as he dies. Hank doesn't look any less like a foreign invader here, an entity from a world that doesn't belong here, and I really appreciate that contrast. This small gesture of him reaching for the flower speaks volumes on the kind of Hank this is, one who has some love for the world he so effortlessly murders his way through. Someone who, somewhere deep inside, wants that killing to stop. One who wants to appreciate life, instead of living in death.

Jeb doesn't look any less alien here, a savior twisted and corrupted by the doomed world he promised to save. Again I'm extremely impressed in how Pegosho managed to capture Jeb's moral ambiguity here, in spite of it being somewhat nonexistent in the cartoons at the time. I think it also says something that his halo appears to be more in line stylistically to the world around him, as he sticks out like a sore thumb.

Jeb's last moments are spent looking in awe at the corpse of his fallen adversary, with his own factory's slogan taped onto the bomb that's about to spell his doom. Say what you want about Mr. Wimbleton, but you can't say he doesn't have a flair for irony. Maybe it's spite, one last spit in the face of Jebus, or maybe it's because he really does believe in that slogan. He wants the world to be alive, and maybe he has to die to accomplish that.

My personal favorite shot in the entire cartoon. A massive tree, perfectly contrasting the intimidating tower producing a cloud of suffocating smog, now breathing life into this ruined world. Hank's sacrifice was not in vain, and though he didn't live to see it, he bought back a piece of life into the cruel and merciless Nevada. It's hopeful, it's beautiful, it's everything Madness normally isn't.

As we all know, Hank is acting very out of character in this cartoon outside of his murderous pursuits, but I enjoy and love it all the same. Again, this is a favorite fanon interpretation. This Hank has so many layers of depth to his morality, his goals, his violence, and he never speaks a single word in the entire cartoon. He simply acts. Through small gestures and actions we can glean his personality and how it contradicts his canon counterpart. It's really great.

I love this cartoon. It's called Madness: Ascend. Please consider watching it, in spite of its age, it's one of my favorites.

[gamchawizzy]

An Unblinking Of Trees.

There is no room for softened hearts, when in search for Greatness...

[beenc0]

my jedi chiss oc i’m currently obsessed with

[deimcs]

Mystra has dictated the terms of my potential for long enough. The Crown would grant me control of my own destiny at last.

[vulpine-spectacle]

Screaming into my pillow because if TikTok had been around when Crimson Peak came out, I guarantee it would've gotten the same attention as Nosferatu

[thranduel]

i wish there was an option to give astarion a forehead kiss or a cheek kiss or a nose kiss or a hand kiss or unlimited cuddles. literally any soft or gentle little action to make him feel safe, loved and happy

[roopnavarro]

Behind the scenes photo from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[maeriquitecontrary]

Now I've waited... As it's fated... Yes, pure hatred... I. Ask. Thee.

Chang'e, are you watching me?

[monster-gender]

Can I just say that I love the unintentional equality of having Anastasius treat Rozemyne as a threat equivalent to a man. He is unironically worried that this tiny gremlin girl is going to steal his wife. And the thing is, his worries are entirely founded.

*Pepe Silvia voice*. My Theory™ is that the entire Ferdinand-blackmail thing was carefully planned by Anastasius to make Rozemyne lose interest in Eglantine /s.

[stardustizuku]

Sometimes I see people compare AoB to Shonen Anime and I get this urge to scream.

Because it’s, you know, stupid.

It’s comparing apples to oranges.

Shonen Anime gets usually conceived as Shonen Manga.

AoB got conceived as a Shoujo Webnovel.

Which is two completely different, mediums, target demographics and context.

AoB got extremely popular, partly due to how it deconstructed the genre it was born into.

So trying to compare it to shonen manga, specifically those who were bred in the Wild West of shonen jump - it’s ludicrous.

I think people think genre and medium are decorations - not part of the language used by authors to delay a message. So people who blatantly ignore it, because it’s more convenient and fits their idea of what AoB should be - don’t actually understand how to read text.

[vaguely-concerned]

bringing lucanis to emmrich's loyalty quest when you're an ingellvar romancing him has such energy of like... 'okay this is starting to feel really serious so I guess it's time to mutually show off some of the familial skeletons in the closet (as it were. ahaha haha....). we've already seen what one of your family parties look like when they go a bit awry, so it's only fair you get to see what happens when my folks go off the rails. there's -- admittedly a bit more unhinged mage hubris and plans for world domination and threatening the fabric of existence than would perhaps be ideal, no two ways about it, can't get away from that. but on the other hand I have to deal with illario. so *anxious🥺 rook face* wouldn't you agree we're kind of even in the grand scheme of things'

lucanis voice: well yeah okay when you put it like that fair point actually. (from his comments through this quest I think his main complaint would probably be that it feels a lot like just another work trip fhadskj)

[chasingthewesternsun]

Whoops! Keep on meaning to post this! As you can see by my date, I drew it awhile ago!

Here’s another Vurawn because I love my blue baby boy 🥺 He’s a little ruffled or indignant, I guess. I imagine Vurawn was probably always a little worked up about something that his peers or the adults in his life did but he couldn’t really speak out or do anything about it, so he’s just quietly frustrated instead.

[dandelion-wings]

Hi! I might be a bit late to the party, but for the kiss snippet ask game: 💜 for Fredrica x Seamus? I thought it could be Jean related enough to fall under your area of interest, but if it doesn't, Jean x Lisa instead please?

You were in fact the only one who came to the party, which is the unsurprising result of having thrown that up during a Saturday afternoon. XD But you are well within the statute of limitations for the meme, and I am delighted to write you those two! (I do in fact write characters that aren't Jean now and then! :P Though I won't pretend she isn't my favorite.) I in fact have a complex and completely baseless headcanon about young Fredrica and Seamus, and this let me delve into that, so it's kind of packed with ~extras~ since I don't know if or when I'll ever get to do that again, but thank you for giving me the chance. :>

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ETA: Now on AO3!

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The Ruin Grader wouldn't be such a problem if the goddamn adventurers weren't in her goddamn *way*.

"Get him out of here!" Fredrica snarls, for the third time, at the cowering girl who should never have been out on this job and the blond healer who, to his credit, is calmly weaving Anemo around his injured comrade despite the Ruin Grader stomping closer and the score-mark its eye-beam had left in the rock just above his head. Seamus is the only one qualified to be here, and she's going to tear him a new one for not tearing the Guild a new one for letting these other two take the job--just as soon as they're all safe.

It's a chokepoint for all of them. Short of climbing the sheer walls, which the injured adventurer can't do and his friends don't seem willing to do without him, the only way out is through the Ruin Grader who had pinned them into this narrow space in the first place. It's narrow enough between them and the Grader that it, in turn, is progressing only slowly, grinding its heavy feet against the narrow gap and shaking more stone off with every stomp. And she could get at and under it to disable those stomping feet if there weren't *three fucking bodies* in between her and said feet.

"Sir Fredrica, the eye beam,"  Seamus calls out, looking up from his work. He's right; it's charging up again, and this time it's carved enough obscuring stone off that it won't miss.

"Pull him back, *then* heal him!"

Seamus only shakes his head at her. Fredrica grits her teeth. The man drives her insane.

This is the third time she's run into him in the field in as many months, and it's always in situations like this--shepherding younger, more inexperienced adventurers who signed up for more than they could handle and, all three times, would have died without him there. He's calm and clever and tactically-minded and obstinate, respectfully thanking her for her help when the battle's over despite the fact that he acts as if her instructions are mere suggestions while it's on.

She's lost count of how often she's run into him out of the field, cheerful and friendly, always waving her over for a drink and introducing her to his adventurer friends as 'the best knight in the Ordo' as if Varka isn't winning every honor she's ever tried for and Seamus himself isn't so world-reknowned in the Adventurer's Guild that Fredrica herself recognized his name on first meeting. Cheerful and friendly and just as obstinate out of the field as in it. Fredrica doesn't think she's ever escaped without being talked into at least one drink. Only Varka has ever been able to do that to her before. She doesn't like it. A virtual stranger shouldn't have the same magnetic pull as her childhood friend.

"Go up," he suggests, as if a Ruin Grader isn't about to burn a hole in his stupid heroic back.

Fredrica clenches her teeth harder on a most unknightly thing to say, because he's right. Normally it would take an archer to get a Grader in the eye, but by grinding itself up against the cliff it's put itself at just the right level for her blade.

She scrambles upward, flinging herself over the edge of the cliff and then spinning about, Pyro beginning to limn her blade as she plunges it towards the glowing eye. It flares bright as elemental energy touches whatever it is that makes Ruin Graders run, and then its head sags, temporarily disabled.

It hasn't stopped moving, though, and Fredrica isn't done.

She dashes past the Grader, then plunges back down into the little canyon, a perfect three-point landing from which she rises, pivots, and stabs the point of her blade into the glowing ankle joint in one smooth motion. A step in, swinging savagely into the other leg, and it totters and starts to fall. Fredrica steps backwards, out of its way-

Her heel catches on a rock. She falls, too, tumbling backward, unable to stop herself in time, and watches the massive weight of ancient metal and petrified wood tumbling down on top of her.

Something else hits her first. *Someone* else. Wind rushes around them, deafening her, slowing the Grader's descent, and she and Seamus roll sideways, together, out from under the Grader's shadow just as it hits the ground.

"Thank Barbatos," Seamus breathes as they come to a stop, wide-eyed and more alarmed-looking than she's ever seen him. "I thought-"

Fredrica can feel his weight on top of her--she's always known he had broad shoulders for a man who uses a catalyst, but there must be even more muscle than she'd thought under that green uniform--and the heat that rushes through her has nothing to do with her own Pyro. He's still looking down at her in alarm and concern, breathing hard. She's never been so embarrassed, and she's never before noticed the blue of his eyes, the same color as the sky overhead.

She *has* noticed before this the long, straight, golden fall of his hair, of which he's famously and righteously vain. She's pricked him before, when he's cajoled her into a drink together, about how impractical and dangerous it is in combat, how he should at least wind it into a braid like her own. In this, as in everything else, he remains obstinate. Which means that his hair is falling now around them both, gleaming bright in the sun and shielding her, for a second, from the battlefield.

"You idiot," she tells him, reaches up to wind her fingers into that foolishly loose hair, and pulls him down into a fierce kiss. He makes a startled noise, but after a breathless second, kisses back with equal passion.

Then he abruptly pulls back and rolls off of her, up onto his knees, reaching for his catalyst. A noise from the twitching Grader suggests that it was the first twitch that roused him, so Fredrica tries not to feel rejected, nor frustrated, by that sudden loss of his weight and his touch. She scrambles to her own feet and draws her sword, looking his way.

"Can you Swirl my Pyro for me without hitting the feckless fools over there?"

"They aren't," he starts to say, mildly, then stops and smiles at her and nods. "Of course."

Good enough. She's still shouting at both him and the Guild for this later, but for now, Fredrica leaps back into the fight as the Grader starts shakily to stand, flames flaring around her, a wind at her back, the memory of his lips on hers lingering even as the battle consumes her thoughts.

[multiversal-pudding]

How does it feel knowing that you predicted Uzi would become the new Solver host after making the Cthuzi AU

Ngl, I feel kinda like the cat that actually caught the red dot like

I won? I WON?!

[maskedtwilight]

My exchange partner is @olyollyoxenfree!

I noticed Benno in the fav characters list, who I immediately chose for being one of the OG father figures and Myne's support. That and he hasn't had much screen time towards the end of the novel.

It's a parody of the "Y dis X look so mad" meme. Benno's the angry face of the team, but Mark is the one who will ruin your business from the shadows if you get in Benno's way.

Wish I could have spent more time on this, but lots of events happened towards the middle of July until now

[lagomorphiclobotomite]

ppl are STILL salty about the aa kiss change and it makes me laugh every fucking time