#one look at it and then you look back at the way fanon massacres your boy(and or girl) and you're like. so that's what that was

[carlyraejepsans]

fandoms love to go ooooo you have to read this fic it's the most popular fic in the famdom it's a fandom classic and then you read it and it's bad

[weiwuxianismybae]

My fandom pet peeves

Lan Wangji’s dislike of Jiang Wanyin

So, I dived back into the world of fanfiction and was quickly reminded of all the fanon things I hate. Starting with Lan Wangji’s unreasonable dislike of Jiang Cheng. In order to promote "Wei Wuxian's little brother Jiang Cheng", Lan Wangji's very good reasons to hate Jiang Cheng are reduced to some petty, stupid bs like "He [LWJ] didn't like how often Jiang Cheng hit Wei Wuxian." And later on we get this gem: "After some time LWJ understood that violence is JC's way of showing affection." Like, wtf? If my younger sibling (and I have one) showed their affection through violence, I wouldn't see it as love, but as abuse, 'cause that's what it is. And I'm not talking about the normal sibling fighting because that's not what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship is. I mean, just reread the Cloud Recesses Study arc. The only thing Jiang Cheng seems to know is how to belittle and criticise Wei Wuxian. I'm not gonna lie, I found some of the remarks quite funny (I'm a passive aggressive bitch myself), but when that's the only thing that comes out of Jiang Cheng's mouth, it really starts to eat at you. I deeply respect Wei Wuxian's ability to not take it seriously. And when Lan Wangji’s actual grievances with Jiang Cheng are stated, we get the "but he [JC] still loved his brother" nonsense. Lan Wangji’s real reasons to dislike Jiang Cheng are as follows: abandoning Wei Wuxian, being the prime reason and catalyst of Wei Wuxian's death, spreading hateful rumours about Wei Wuxian (who else could have been the source of "WWX is responsible for Jiang Clan's massacre" if not the only surviver, besides Wei Wuxian, of the said massacre?), and hunting down the so-called demonic cultivators because "what if that's actually Wei Wuxian." I commend Lan Wangji’s restraint, because if it had been me, I would have long since punched that guy in the nose. And I absolutely love Lan Wangji’s attitude of "I won't look at you; I won't speak to you. Sizhui, you may speak on my behave."

"Lans only love once"

Please tell me I'm not the only one who gets toothache whenever I read this. When I came across it for the first time, I didn’t think much of it. Like, at first, I thought it was cute, but then it started grinding on my nerves. Why? Because it diminishes Lan Wangji’s love, trust and devotion to Wei Wuxian to a mere fate thing that is beyond your control. He is already being reduced to some block of ice (by the mob in mdzs and the fandom), and now you also simplify such an important part to his character. Like, where did this even come from? Yes, we have the famous Lan "I will leave this world, because my love is no longer in it" An and Lan Wangji, but that's it when it comes to die-hard romantics in the Lan Clan. The story of Qingheng-jun and Madam Lan is not really romantic (I'm not gonna speculate on what there was and wasn't between them because Lan Xichen telling Wei Wuxian about his parents had a different purpose, namely, to esteblish Lan Wangji as someone who doesn't just listen to what his elders have to say, but as someone who seeks to understand and then judge the reasoning by his own moral beliefs). And that's it. So where is "Lans only love once" coming from??

So why did I write all of this? Well, I'm just tired of seeing this over and over again. Aren't we all so creative? Come up with new head-canons (so that I have more things to criticise /jk) or stick to canon characteristics. Please.

[bookoftheironfist]

Hi! I was thinking offhand about the IF Netflix show this morning and figured I ought to get the opinion of an expert — the fanon Danny characterization that I’ve seen in people’s fics (basically a goofy and oblivious golden retriever) seems a bit different from what I saw in the show, but I also know next to nothing about the personality of the character in the comics. Are the three of them distinct (comics, show, fanon) or would you say there’s similarities between them? Is there anywhere in particular that the fanon characterization seems to come from, in your opinion?

Hi, it's great to hear from you! I love this question.

First of all, I am contractually obligated to gesture in the direction of my big ol' Iron Fist reading guide, if you do happen to have an interest in checking out some comics...

I don't read fan fiction myself, so I can't really comment in an informed or specific way on how he tends to be written or conceptualized by the MCU fan community at large, but I have heard MCU Danny described as a "golden retriever" before and I think I have the general gist. I don't have any problems with that-- Danny is very sweet and endearing and kind, and this is true in the comics as well. There is also a whole lot more going on with him, though, at the heart of which is the fact that he has been shouldering massive amounts of trauma in most of his MCU appearances so far, some of it (if we look, for instance, at Danny in The Defenders) very recent. (In this regard, the treatment of his character in The Defenders drove me a bit nuts. Yeah, okay, let's repeatedly tease and belittle the guy who's just had his home destroyed and his people massacred by the villains and then physically prevent him from getting any closure. Aren't team-ups fun?)

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't see much of a difference in personality between comics Danny and MCU Danny. This is a situation in which context is key, and one of the things I've always found so compelling about Danny as a character is the fact that while he is capable of great kindness, positivity, generosity, and affection-- and is, to me, one of the least emotionally constipated male superheroes out there-- he is also capable of immense darkness, hatred, and violence. Danny has an exceptionally horrific origin story in the comics: at the age of nine, he gets dragged high into the mountains on his father's desperate bid to return to K'un-Lun, where his father is then murdered and his mother eaten alive by wolves. Having barely escaped with his own life, Danny finds a new home and family in K'un-Lun, but he has been transformed by his experiences and becomes razor-focused on the one goal that matters most to him now: killing Harold Meachum, the man responsible for his parents' deaths. When ten years pass and the portal to Earth reopens, Danny is faced with a painful choice: to remain in his beloved K'un-Lun and put aside his desire for vengeance, or to leave in pursuit of Meachum and be locked out of the city for a decade. As much as he wants to stay, and as much as his mentors insist that this revenge quest will destroy him, the rage and trauma that have been festering in him all this time are too much for him to ignore. Nineteen-year-old Danny storms back to New York City, haunted and out for blood.

His personality in these first issues is rigidly serious, emotionally locked off, driven, bitter, and quick to anger. Even when his revenge quest fails and he decides to let his parents' killer live, he comes out of it lost and broken, homesick for K'un-Lun and unsure of who he even is on Earth and what kind of life he could possibly build there. His answer comes through the friends he makes-- Colleen Wing and her father, Misty Knight, Rafael Scarfe, Luke Cage, the Sons of the Tiger, and so on-- who extend kindness and love to him and give him a place to belong. As this happens, Danny's personality softens. There's a key moment that I think beautifully illustrates the beginning of this shift. Danny gets invited to play some casual softball with Rafael Scarfe and his team, and ends up getting knocked on his butt. His first reaction is to feel angry and humiliated. But then he does something nobody expects. He laughs:

"You hear laughter as you hit the ground, and for a moment, it angers you...after all, you have been made to look the fool... So what? It won't kill a man to look foolish among friends. And you do look...funny." Scarfe: "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. The great stone face finally cracks up. I dunno, Daniel Rand. After all Lee* told me about you, I didn't think you had a giggle in you. Nice to see I was wrong." Marvel Premiere #24 by Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick, Phil Rache, Vinnie Colletta, and Karen Mantlo *(Lee is Colleen Wing's father, who was employing and keeping an eye on Danny at this point.)

The reason I've been focusing specifically on early 616 Danny here is because this is largely the context in which we have seen MCU Danny so far. He is, relatively speaking, barely out of his origin story, and while many of the details differ, MCU Danny and 616 Danny still have similar origins and similar emotional responses to them. (In the years since the show first aired, I've seen people try to claim that MCU Danny was out-of-character in the first season, and while out-of-character-ness is, of course, up to interpretation, I tend to take this opinion as an indication that someone has only read modern Iron Fist comics. To me, season 1 was very obviously drawing from the original Marvel Premiere issues in its tone, themes, and approach to Danny's personality.) What's very neat to me about MCU Danny is that due to the changing of one small detail, the structure of his origin story was completely flipped. In the comics, he watches Harold Meachum kick his dad off a cliff and abandon him and his mother in the mountains. He knows exactly what happened to his parents, and he knows exactly who is responsible, and so his trauma response has drive and a target. For this reason, the very first version of Danny we meet in the comics is angry and serious, battle-hardened and focused on his mission to the exclusion of all else. It's only afterward that his character, over time, morphs into the lighter, more relaxed Danny with whom modern readers are most familiar. He still has that darkness and rage inside of him-- the 2014 Living Weapon series, for instance, was all about revisiting that aspect of his character-- but modern Danny is, on the whole, in a place that reflects the tremendous character arc he has traveled over the past 50 years.

The show, though, changes a key detail of the story: Danny's parents die in a plane crash, murdered by Harold from a distance. I wasn't too disappointed or even really surprised by this change (when that first teaser trailer dropped, my co-blogger and I went, "yeah, makes sense"). Live action tends to highlight concept weaknesses that are more readily allowed suspension of disbelief in the comics, and a plane crash feels a bit more rational than Wendell Rand taking his young child for a fun jaunt through some of the harshest terrain on the planet. Of course, all of the Netflix shows made all kinds of origin story changes, some of them for no apparent reason and to what I'd consider to be the detriment of the stories (here's my co-blogger and I griping about some of the strangest changes made to MCU Matt Murdock's origin, for instance, if you're interested). But what impressed me so much about this change to Danny's backstory is that they didn't then just carry on as if the change hadn't been made. The showrunner/writing team actually thought through what it would mean for the rest of the story, and what it meant was this: With Harold not obviously involved, Danny does not know that his parents were murdered. He is burdened with the same degree of grief and trauma, but without anyone to blame, with no outlet for his emotions, no goal to strive toward for closure. It means that he initially has no revenge quest. When we first meet MCU Danny, he is suppressing a lot of harmful emotions (I mean, a lot a lot), but he is also hopeful, because he comes to Earth not to murder a guy, but looking for healing and seeking to reconnect with the Meachums: beloved extended family that he has not seen in fifteen years, welcome remnants of a life he can barely remember. He is in an optimistic frame of mind, thus allowing us to see that trademark happy, dorky Danny who we don't meet until much later in the comics (that first link offers a direct contrast between Danny walking into the Meachum building in the comics versus the MCU, so it's worth checking out).

And then! Things immediately go horribly wrong. Danny is naive, out of his element, and easily manipulated. He gets psychologically brutalized by the Meachums, by Madame Gao and the Hand, eventually by Davos, he discovers more and more of the details surrounding the crash, he begins to spiral, his suppressed emotions break free, that darkness and rage come forth, and the story of Iron Fist season 1 climaxes with the realization of the revenge quest that was always bubbling beneath the surface. That glimpse of happy, well-adjusted Danny is gone, consumed by the grim, dangerous, extremely unhealthy Danny more familiar to Marvel Premiere readers. One major difference to note is that there's something uncontrolled, almost feral about MCU Danny at his absolute worst, symptomatic of the fact that he has been actively repressing these emotions, while 616 Danny spent ten years honing and focusing them. I find that distinction really interesting.

Having defeated Harold Meachum and found closure for his parents' deaths and peace for his identity struggles (I haven't talked much about those, but I've written a lot about them in my coverage of Iron Fist season 1, so feel free to go check that out), we see that default happier, hopeful, peaceful Danny return. This moment always brings me immense joy:

(I can't overstate my love for this tiny scene. Here's Danny at his most carefree, finally returning home, ready to plunge back into his training, accompanied by someone he loves. That's my guy: distilled.)

However, Danny barely has time to heal before he is shattered again by the...whatever the heck happened to K'un-Lun (this plot point was never, ever clarified, and I'm sad about it! Augh! Marvel!!). In the post about The Defenders that I linked waaay back at the beginning of this post, I point out that Danny's traumatic flashbacks to his parents' deaths get replaced by nightmares of K'un-Lun's destruction, a new source of trauma overlaying the old. In The Defenders, Danny's personality is perhaps closer to that of his Marvel Premiere counterpart. He is no longer out-of-control berserker raging; now, his grief and anger are focused. He knows his enemy. He knows what they did (maybe? Augh...). He knows what he must do to them to avenge his people and correct his perceived mistakes. But at the same time, he is still open to building friendships and connections, even longs for it (he has lost so many of the people in his life, he has been betrayed so many times...He and Colleen are alone at this point). He forms a bond with Luke (of course), once they are able to put aside their own demons enough to listen to each other. His interactions with Luke are very reminiscent of his first interactions with Colleen in IF season 1, in which he sees someone he thinks is cool and interesting and goes "Friend. Friend, yes? Friend?" (This isn't really a thing in the comics, but it's a cute feature of MCU Danny that also underlines how desperately he needs human connection. In the comics, his Found Family(ies) just kind of happens organically. In the MCU, Danny seeks out those bonds.) Something else that pops out strongly in Danny's personality in The Defenders is an admiration for his teammates, carrying on from his open admiration for Colleen's skills in his solo show. Danny in the comics is a kung fu mega nerd. He's a perfectionist when it comes to combat and will openly criticize his enemies for sloppiness or lack of skill, but the flip side of this is that he also has tremendous respect for and interest in the skills of others and is just as quick to offer complements. I love this about him and was delighted to see it show up in the MCU.

Luke Cage season 2 and Iron Fist season 2 see MCU Danny move toward that more modern sensibility for his character; they feel very much like the Iron Fist/Power Man and Iron Fist volume 1 era in the comics, in terms of both his personality and the direction of his life (apart from the end of IF season 2, which I don't feel I can cover properly here because it still just makes me go "???!?!"). With more stability, we get to see more sides of Danny that we haven't seen since the very beginning of his solo show, before his life went to hell-- the side that is open and friendly, that gifts Misty Knight her bionic arm, that is eager to spar with Luke, the side that is settled enough in himself to offer advice to others. We see Danny enjoying having a job-- not as a Hero for Hire in this universe, sadly, but working for a moving company, earning an honest living. We get to revel more in one of my favorite things about early Danny: his naïveté and unfamiliarity with Earth. This Danny is smiley, a little bit mischievous, open and caring to a fault. We see him reveling in what he does best: using his skills, kicking some butt, being the best there is at what he does (sorry, Wolverine). In Iron Fist season 2, we also see Danny connecting with his Iron Fist identity, really connecting with the chi of Shou-Lao for the first time in a way that makes him feel empowered. Danny's relationship with his role as Iron Fist, and with the city of K'un-Lun, is rocky and tumultuous in the show and even moreso in the comics, but it also means everything to him and brings him comfort and pride and a sense of grounding. With Iron Fist season 2 existing alongside the Luke Cage team-up episode, we also get a great example of something that is notable in the comics as well, which is a distinction between the way Danny is written in his solo series versus in team books, particularly in the modern era. In team-ups and cameo appearances, he tends to be comic relief, a bit more lighthearted, a bit goofier, while in his solo stories, faced with problems that are personal and strike deep, and where we are closer to his POV, he tends toward being more introspective, serious, troubled. This is to be expected, but is still worth noting in all discussions of Danny's personality. He exists on a spectrum, just like any other character.

This post is so long, and it feels like there are still a million more things to say. But I will, I think, end it by emphasizing that one of my favorite things about Danny is the breadth and depth of his personality, and one of my greatest joys regarding the Netflix shows was seeing a character I adore explored further, in a new medium and a different context, while still aligning with the same basic set of recognizable personality traits. Danny Rand is a hardcore, deadly martial artist who wields immense power and a soft, kind sweetheart who loves his friends and would do anything for them, or for anyone else for that matter. He killed a dragon with his bare hands, and he's so, so bad at business. He's straightforward and confident-- he's one of the best fighters in the entire Marvel Universe and he knows it, not as a boast but simply as a fact. He's a tangled, self-questioning mess, trying to find his way as an Immortal Weapon in the Capital Cities of Heaven and as a superhero on Earth and frequently failing. He's honest and sincere. He's a bit awkward. He's curious, a lifelong student (as all the best martial artists are). He's fearless. He's a huge dork. He transformed a skyscraper into a giant chi-powered mech to punch a god one time. He got his identity stolen by a sentient plant one time. He teaches little kids kung fu, and is an eager mentor to his protégé Pei and a kickass uncle to Luke and Jessica's daughter, who they named after him. He's a philanthropist and a Hero for Hire, and Rolling Stone named him the 77th Hottest Avenger. And while we were unfairly robbed of the time to explore every facet of MCU Danny's character, we were nevertheless gifted a wonderful range of stories and a powerful character arc (Shou-Lao willing, someday the MCU decision-makers will take their eyes off Charlie Cox long enough to remember that the other Netflix Marvel shows also exist and we'll get to see more of this version of Danny). And my hope for people writing Danny into their fan fics is just to remember his complexity, to keep in mind the forces that shaped him, and to have fun with how multifaceted and strange and unique a character he is. And if you or anyone else is ever looking for an Iron Fist nut to chat with, I'm always up for, um...writing extremely long posts about my guy.

Thank you for the question!

[tariah23]

im back to say after reading your tags/ramblings on this new jjk chapter yeah everyone shitting on shoko and yuta for this are like? how.

especially with shoko (as you know i think about her a lot) i'm not surprised she reacted this way considering she has seen all of her friends die basically and she definitely deals with dead sorcerers on the daily that she probably knew in life considering she's the main healer. in my headcanons she recognizes a lot of the people who eventually end up dead on her exam table.

plus as you mentioned her reaction to geto's mass murder is super chill. she was never going to have a breakdown over fucked up shit? at least not outwardly, unfortunately we don't really get a look in her head. also god forbid a woman have interest in dead/macabre things and/or not give 110% emotionally at all times.

personally i enjoy satosugu (insert multishipper nuance here) but the fandom surrounding the ship is very...... can you think about any other character? please??? can you also see satoru and suguru as individuals???? PLEASE?

the manga is not your satosugu fanfiction there are other characters here that matter...

IT’S SO BAD!!! THEY ARE ACTING LIKE HIS STUDENTS AND FRIENDS WANTED THIS!?!! And are refusing to look at the story from a narrative standpoint outside of shipper/fanon shit… They do this literally every time something huge and awful happens. They always end up making it about a damn ship, completely glossing over the characters themselves and their intentions. It’s so frustrating. The Gojo and Getou they talk about is barely even them… those are OC’s!!!

And the only reason why they’re talking so negatively about Shoko is because they hate women 🗣️🗣️🗣️!!! It’s crazy, she’s literally a doctor who specializes in the dead. She’s a mortician!!! Like, you’ve stated, she’s been burying her colleagues and friends since she was a teenager. I’m sure she’s used to the business now. Even if it’s hard, if you’re in this line of work, people who work with the dead tend to not find it as torturous and haunting as any normal person would because death is an extension of life. They don’t view death as this big, scary, horrible thing they way people who don’t work with the dead/aren’t used to dealing with death, are. That’s why in rl, morticians and doctors might come off as extremely fickle and end uncomfortably nonchalant regarding death. They don’t view dying and the dead in the same way we would. They find comfort in knowing that they can help the grieving pass on the best way that they can by taking care of their bodies in their most vulnerable moments on earth. It would’ve been nice to see more of Shoko’s reactions and knowing about more of her feelings regarding Gojo’s passing because like I’ve stated before, Gege really fumbled her character and because of the way he wrote her, it makes it easier for fans who already don’t care about her, to mischaracterize and misunderstand her intentions, labeling them as “callous,” and “inconsiderate,” despite her having always been this way since the very beginning. She didn’t even so much as flinch when Getou had confirmed to her that he’d committed a massacre, killing over 100 people in the process. They were talking so casually as if they were talking about the weather. She had to fix up Haibara, probably one of their very first friends who she’d most likely ever had to work on… it’s just, I hate how the people bashing her really DON’T understand her character at all and have never once tried to and they’re constantly proving my point. They expected her to be sobbing in every panel, grabbing onto Gojo’s tight…, Sexy ass, black t-shirt, holding on for dear life and screaming at him to wake up and they absolutely HATE that a female character wouldn’t give that to them 🚶🏾‍♀️. I’m so sorry Shoko… they’re acting like Getou would’ve been the only one to feel bad about all of this simply because they ship them and forgot all about canon.

As for Yuuta… oh brother. The fact that all of Gojo’s students do care about him and have always admired him… Yuuta didn’t want this at all… but he knew that he HAD to do it in the end and so did the others. Knowing the kind of trauma that he’d suffered himself. The pain and isolation that he had to deal with because he was too afraid of hurting people so he pushed them away and purposely isolated himself. He’s canonically tried to take his own life on multiple occasions. After meeting Gojo, he learned that he had just as much as a right to live as anyone else and that he mattered. He chose life. Gojo, alongside the friends he’d made, made a huge impression on him and it makes me happy whenever I think about it. He used his strength to protect others and learned to see his strength as a good thing instead of a curse that separated him from society. Gojo already knows what it’s like to be lonely and lived with that till the very end. But he made sure to let his students know that they all were worth living. This is literally why he wanted to become a teacher in the first place!!! Have the fans forgotten just how much he adores his students!?!! Yuuta knew exactly how Gojo must’ve felt… even taking over his body, he didn’t need to view his memories to find out.

Even if it is, from a narrative standpoint, incredibly disgusting, Gojo gave them permission because he values the lives of the people he cares about, especially the kids (ppl always forget that he loves children 😭… he’s do anything for them), above his own. When it comes to the kids, he knows that he’s the adult in the situation. Just like Nanami, it’s the adults duty to protect the children and he feels the same way. His corpse gave them a way to fight back and he gladly gave it to them as sad as this might sound… He’s always been this way and we all know why. Come on. He’d always seen it as his duty to protect and shield them from the horrors of the real world that would soon hurt them back. I hate that he’s still being used as a weapon in his death so much, it really makes me want to cry, I could barely sleep 😭… but man…, whenever stuff like this happens, it just goes to show that not everyone was reading the story with their eyes open. Blame it on shipper brainrot.

[butmakeitgayblog]

So I'm relatively new to the fandom, and during my stay in this rabbit hole, that is, Clexa, I've got a few questions that I'm hoping you could answer :)

Why is everyone here pro-Lexa? Like don't get me wrong I absolutely love Lexa as a character and Alycia is a queen, but why all the hate towards some of the other characters, like Bellamy? I've never watched The 100 the whole way through (literally exited outta the show the second Lexa died), even then, it's been years since I watched it. Did I miss something while I was binge-watching, or was my teenage brain at the time just too immature to realize he was a total jackass..? Also, it's not just Bellamy, I've also seen hate for Bob, the actor who plays him. Which brings me to another question: does this fandom not like Eliza? I always see so much support when Alycia has an upcoming project or is posting Instagram updates but nothing for Eliza? Again, no judgment for the Alycia love because I completely understand why everyone here is head over heels in love with that girl but I just wanted to know, has Eliza ever done anything wrong? Or have I just conveniently only stumbled upon Alycia stans on this app?

Anyway, a totally unrelated note but since I'm here… may I just say ma'am, your writing is the bomb diggity. Like the perfect blend of humor, sexiness, angst, and fluff, THE GODDAMN FLUFF. Genius, you're a genius, like a mad scientist of Clexa fanfic. Hope you keep doing what you're doing, my friend. Take your time though, and don't listen to those ignorant anons that are crawling around yelling "wHy ArE yOu TaKiNg So LoNg To UpDaTe?" Thank you for writing for the Clexa fandom! ❤️

First I wanna say thank you for the sweet words and reading, that means so much to me 🥹💕 not to be a nerd but I screenshot that for one of my worse imposter syndrome days lol

Long post so you can read under the cut. Long time clexas you can just skip if you want because honestly I got annoyed all over again just typing it and you know it all already 🥴

Now right off the top, you don't have to hate Bellamy if you don't want to. It's not like that's a prereq for being a clexa, so if you like him, like him and don't worry about what anyone says. He's a fictional character so anyone who gets intense over someone liking him I think needs to take a walk.

But the reason why a lot of Clexas, myself included, hate him is somewhat of a two part answer. The main reason being is that his character is trash 😅. I mean I'm not gonna dissect every little bit of canon but the main points for me at least, since I can't speak for anyone else, are that he was constantly fucking up literally everything. He gets to earth, proclaims "tHeRe aRe nO RuLeS" and then,,, immediately declares himself the leader and starts forcing people to follow what he says. He literally almost let Clarke fall into a pit of spikes, tried to handcuff her and keep her hostage "for her own good", he spearheaded the whole thing with taking off their wristbands, HE BACKED PIKE, participated in the massacre of a peaceful army sent to protect skaikru, he constantly shamed and blamed Clarke for everything that ever went wrong even when a lot of that stuff was either the best solution in a bad situation OR was an indirect fallout from something fucked up that skaikru had done. The sweaty little fucker was always trying to control/manipulate Clarke and skaikru and his own damn sister despite the fact that everything he ever planned himself turning out to be: A Terrible Idea. Basically the dude sucked but was held up on spindles of glorification as being this heroic uwu soft boy that wasn't actually supported by any one damn thing in canon when you actually look at it objectively. And I'm sure I'm even forgetting stuff. The dude just sucked.

Agian, that's my own two cents.

The other reason being, it's rollover from having to deal with blarks. Their constant harassment and shoving their fanon, non-existent ship down everyone's throat, while being entitled little brats throwing tantrums about them not happening at every turn has led from what probably would've been just a mild distaste for a character for most into loathing even the name. Understand I'm not saying the word harassment lightly. They were awful for years. Death threats and homophobia, spamming inboxes with hateful messages and sending awful pictures/memes etc. One even sent EJT a dick pic with Blark written on their penis. They sent memes non-stop about Lexa dying when people were still reeling from it. I'm not saying all Blarks are bad because they're not, but there was enough harassment and viciousness from a large enough and loud enough faction that at a certain point it becomes a blanket feeling of animosity toward the entire ship and everything that follows it.

As for disliking EJT. In reality, she used to be the fandom favorite. I mean she was our girl because she used to champion us and was hilarious about it. Go look up old cons and interviews with her. She was funny and great. Once upon a time E was our biggest cheerleader and dealt with A Lot of abuse and harassment from The Other fandom for it. I'm talking body shaming, slut shaming, comments about her intelligence, sexual harassment and trolling her about her boyfriends and very descriptive messages about how they wanted her to harm herself. The list goes on. And no one, especially not Bob who was the golden boy for The Other fandom, ever said a word in her defense. Never told his fans to stop or that he condemned it. Ever. Not once. That never sat well with clexas, but you can't control what other people do.

We had her back anyway. So, it was whatever. Gross, but whatever.

And then she married Bob. Which, and Blarks cannot seem to wrap their heads around this fact, literally no cared about. She could've just married him and kept being the same person and no one would've cared. In fact, the way this fandom loved her, at first everyone was like hmmm weird and sudden but good for her I guess! Be happy!

But then Bob's ex came forward with very serious allegations about her past relationship with him. She released a statement that you can easily find online and from that it painted a very dark picture of things that involved both him and EJT. As I'm someone who believes victims, I have no reason not to believe her, and since the very bizarre (non) rebuttal that EJT posted in reply made zero sense, that was that. It changed the lens of how a lot of people started looking at her.

Which leads me to the charities.

Hear a collective Clexa sigh.

They're a saga in themselves, but to sum it up as short as possible, EJT had been a part of a children's organization for YEARS that she herself helped set up. Clexas raised a lot of money for this charity through fundraising and selling fanart and we really cared about it. And literally within months of them being married, he became involved in it, and then shortly thereafter, magically they both had to "step away from it" for dubiously explained reasons. (Which, if you read his ex's statement, logical deduction of what probably actually happened will make more sense than what they claimed, and not in a good way.) Sensibly, they started recieving backlash from supporters because, again a lot of people had been helping this charity for years and all of a sudden she was just gone from it and all the projects were halted. I'm not blaming solely her for anything but to just cut and run like she did was sus to say the least.

So to steer away from that shitshow, they started another charity. With a bunch of right-wing MAGA nuts. Yeah. They weren't open or transparent about anything, no records of where any of the money was going, iirc no real legitimate charity registration/tax documentation that anyone could find (and in the US that's all public info sooooooo). It was a total clusterfuck that people started calling them out on from the start. At first they tried to ignore it and just keep collecting money by doing these ridiculous cameos as cash grabs, but just like the first charity, after a while (and a lot of initially unaccounted for money being raised) the poor little darlings just had to "step away for mental health reasons."

Which I would accept and support wholeheartedly because mental health is extremely serious... except funnily, they didn't stop doing the cameos. They kept doing those and charging their fans money to listen to them blather on about made up ~behind the scenes info~ about Blark stuff and it being super secretly canon but for a million reasons that they don't know and can't name, stopped it from happening. Claims of love scenes and kisses that have never been backed up by evidence (like a script) or corroborated by a single person involved in the show. But it's totally true guys, just trust them bro. So yeah, they've kept doing all that. Just... not giving the money they're charging for the cameos to their "charity."

So that's the meat of it, I might be forgetting things and smudging some finer details because it's been a long while ago, but I think you can get the gist. People don't like Bob because he was an ass to fans and EJT herself before them even getting married. He's said ableist things and quoted racists trying to sound smart and never once apologized for anything. He's been accused of abuse in his personal life and has never addressed it, only made his wife write a terrible fanfiction-esque response to appease his ardent followers. And frankly, she pissed off her fans. Once she married him, she completely flipped her personality from a funny charity doing, body positivity leading, cheerleading about "Clexa are soulmates" and "Lexa is the love of Clarke's life" girl, to doing personal cash grabs constantly while spewing all this made up Blark garbage that directly contradicts things they've both said in the past to please her faithful paying cameo fans (read his fans).

It's all left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth, to say the least.

And ya best believe if Alycia does some crazy shit, I'll turn on her too 🤷‍♀️ but honestly I'm not too worried about that cuz the girl is a cryptid who you literally can't pay to go to cons or do cameos

[balillee]

my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

[sepublic]

Kraid!

KKKKKRRRRAAAAAIIIIIIDDDDD

I was trying to avoid as much of Metroid Dread as possible to be surprised... But then I learned KRAID is back, in glorious HD as part of a mainline game and...

Oh, he’s beautiful!

Seriously, I’ve always wanted to see more of Kraid! Dude was one of the OG Space Pirates alongside Mother Brain and Ridley, who are present throughout the series; And as someone who is apparently Ridley’s Brother-in-Arms, I’m just really curious on what he could be like?

I doubt we’ll get much if anything in terms of personality, but that’s how Metroid games work anyway! Hopefully we get more lore on Kraid, how is he still alive? Does he have regenerative abilities, is he just really incredibly durable? An X-parasite imitation? Fake Kraid has grown up and this is Sclayd? Did the Chozo clone him, maybe even somehow resurrect him from a dead body, or even the afterlife considering their borderline mystical abilities???

Either way, that’s clever of the designers to have Kraid be restrained, as a meta explanation as to why he doesn’t just charge forward- Thus allowing the developers to start off with a traditional take on the Kraid fight... But since he manages to break an arm free in the trailer, the fight might progress and get more deadly, as Kraid becomes more free.

His neck brace will probably be the last to go, to show a sort of natural transition from the traditional style of Kraid fights, to a more modernized take and I am all FOR it! Everyone’s wondering if Ridley will return, but Kraid alone would MORE than make up for his absence, especially since Ridley is already so prevalent while Kraid has only gotten bread crumbs and the Brinstar Depths stage in recent years!

This is like a dream come true... And obviously Kraid is set up to fight Samus, but it’d be kind of neat to see an arc where him and Samus recognize a mutual enemy in the Chozo, and work with each other over it? Probably not, but I feel this would be more plausible than Samus and Ridley working together; A fun thought exercise I’d always entertained, but there really isn’t that personal vitriol between Samus and Kraid.

...I mean, there COULD be if Kraid takes Ridley’s death personally, but who knows, he might hold off on revenge just long enough for a practical escape! Regardless, I utterly adore just how gnarly and twisted this guy looks, it reminds me of Ridley’s Smash Ultimate renders that really modernize his look, breathe a new and alien life to it while still being the same! And the added, slimy body horror, borderline insectoid, like Smash Ridley!

But yes, I appreciate Metroid Dread taking the opportunity to be new, instead of trying to cater to the mainstream audience as an official return to pull them back, especially since we already had Samus Returns do that, especially with Proteus Ridley being thrown in! And with how Proteus was by far the best Ridley fight in the series, I can’t WAIT to see how Mercury Steam gives a new action to a Kraid boss battle!

And it looks like there might be a passageway behind Kraid that he’s guarding... Kind of like his previous appearances, I love Kraid being a giant guard dog- His girth and weight alone makes him an impenetrable wall! Plus he gives immovable object vibes, VS Ridley as an Unstoppable Force.

Ridley moves fast and aggressively leads the charge, while Kraid is less mobile, can’t even fit through most passageways; But holds down the fort and line of defense, tanking damage and shrugging it off compared to someone who heals from it!

Seriously, this is great seeing this under appreciated Space Pirate represented! I’ve always been salty about Meta Kraid being left out of Metroid Prime... And Kraid’s got a distinct identity of his own as one of the biggest bosses in the entire series by a long shot!

His big, colossal, green and chunky frame, that brutishness to Kraid, the size and brawn- It’s a nice contrast and foil to Ridley’ who is memetically huge in general, but from a relative standpoint averagely-sized as a boss, and MUCH scrawnier than the Awakened Behemoth; But he makes up for it wit speed and agility, flight, etc.!

Plus the concept of taking on a full-on Kaiju of the series, Metroid’s Godzilla... I always felt like there was a wasted potential to Kraid and how he stood out as a counterpart to Ridley’ more of the lumbering mountain to scale compared to the acrobatic Cunning God of Death! His Kaiju size, the way the ground could easily tremble from each footstep like Jurassic Park...

If Ridley is a Xenomorph, make Kraid into Godzilla and Rexy and every giant monster whose sheer scale inspires a horror based in awe, one that is huge and grandiose and demands attention and seizes all of it, gloriously basking in full view, in contrast to the more stealthy and subtle Ridley!

They’re both reptilian Space Pirates who debuted with the franchise, serve Mother Brain alongside one another as the two guardians to Tourian. And just like Ridley taking one of the recurring boss themes from Super Metroid and adopting it as HIS theme, Kraid seems to have done the same by Zero Mission!

Plus, Brinstar Depths, AKA Kraid’s Lair, is SUCH a metal soundtrack! It doesn’t necessarily apply to Kraid himself, but I feel like there’s an enigmatic personality hinted with the eerie, melodic tune of this theme... So as someone who’s tried to write him, mostly in my head;

What kind of person is Kraid? What archetypes and roles would he fit? As a more casual type of arch-nemesis, compared to the personal intensity of Ridley? A dumb brute, or smart in his own way? What personality and vibes would make Kraid’s Lair fit as a theme for him?

At the very least, I wonder if we’ll get Space Pirate lore, maybe even origins as to Kraid and Ridley’s species? They’re both huge dragons who took over Zebes... Could there be a connection between Ridley’s species and the Chozo? Will we get a bit of sympathy for Kraid, seeing him captured like an animal by the Chozo, perhaps to test experiments upon and clone?

Will Dread encapsulate the realization of just how much of a bigger scope villain the True Chozo are, experimenting on Kraid the way the Galactic Federation did with Ridley’s clone, another parallel between them? Will we explore the dark past of the Chozo, and a potential tragic look into Kraid’s species- So Samus has a better understanding of how her people have been terrible in many ways, even if that doesn’t at all justify Kraid the person’s actions?

Just... Imagine a storyline where Samus realizes that Kraid was made by the Chozo, or his species was, or they were genetically augmented or massacred, or something like that. Just a twisted moment of realization that explains but doesn’t justify. Which could lead to Samus and Kraid teaming up for a prison breakout at a pivotal moment, Kraid’s girth would make him a helpful ally.

Perhaps Samus could weaponize Kraid in the background to take the brunt of the True Chozo’s attacks, while she takes on the leader? Could he help with environmental terrain, blind to the background as a colossal feature of the environment, a kaiju briefly on your side?

Could we get a Kraid fight where he attacks from the background, instead of to the right? Will he ultimately die helping Samus- More for his own gain and revenge, but still? Maybe even leading to a reluctant salute from Samus as she recognizes them both as people captured, as experimented upon by the Chozo? Apologies for all of the fanon conjecture, my mind is racing...!

I think there’s SO much potential with Kraid and seeing him full, unadulterated HD glory... It’s glorious. It’s magnificent! This is a dream come true, and I hope Kraid finally starts to get the recognition he deserves! Even if he’s just A boss fight, I’m already sated and content here- And I can only imagine the new wave of fan content that will spawn for Kraid, as he’s recognized a defining moment of Dread!

Plus, I’d love to see people characterize and give lore to Kraid... All in all I am LIVING and in triumph here!!! I know I keep using this meme but

Literally this alone, just these shots... Are ALL I really want and need, in the end! Bless you Mercury Steam for this food, for breathing new life into this franchise while renovating what really needs it! I don’t even care if Kraid’s return is never really explained, I’m incredibly happy here!

This new design... It just FITS and works as a new, evergreen design for Kraid honestly! Compared to Ridley who is a lot more varied and arguably inconsistent, even with his Smash render... THIS is the new and definitive Kraid for me, now! I am having the time of my LIFE here!

Ridley the Cunning God has cheated death... is Kraid the Behemoth has reawakened!

(With the idea of Prime Kraid being reused for Metroid Prime 4... I’m wondering if we’ll begin to see an all new Kraid renaissance? 👀 More frequent content as Nintendo starts giving him and more appearances and attention, including in other media and advertising, alongside Ridley???)

[songofclarity]

Im curious. Do you think much or anything at all would have changed if dad-nie had not died? Ramble to your heart content, this is not a topic i often see discused, if ar all.

I'm going to answer this one on the assumption that the saber incident just does not happen. And I accidentally first read the question as would anything have changed for Nie MingJue if dad-nie had not died? Which shows I just have Da-ge on the brain all day, every day.

The big change, of course, is that Nie MingJue wouldn't become a Sect Leader as a teenager!

I think a large part of Nie MingJue's character, how reserved he is at times and how dedicated he is to his job, is because he becomes a leader at a young age to an angry sect when he, too, is angry. Tensions are high and the chance for vengeance to relieve that tension are low. Everyone is upset, including him, and yet he's the one who is in charge of making decisions and handling all of this. This helps Nie MingJue learn to set aside his own feelings, in that he can put his saber down when filled with fury at being betrayed and focus on making goal-oriented decisions, but the cost for that lesson is high. There is no more time for play and he has to get straight to business. So goodbye hobbies and friendship and hello office hours!

That's stressful! I know popular fanon is Da-ge To All, but I actually think Nie MingJue makes (sadly) a very pitiful if well-meaning Da-ge even to those who called him Da-ge. He is not having an easy time of things and it shows. Lan XiChen and Meng Yao are both the closest people to him by the time he's at Hejian because they are kind, mild-mannered, and eager to help. He needs help whether he asks for it or not. That's why he accepts Lan XiChen's help during the war without question, not even realizing the information Lan XiChen provided meant there was a spy. That's why he accepts Jin GuangYao playing music for him even though he hates the kind of person Jin GuangYao has revealed himself to be. Nie MingJue is just trying to do his best and keep himself and everyone else alive--something his father failed to do when he let his rage destroy him and left his family and sect picking up the pieces.

So keeping Nie Dad alive would arguably mean Nie MingJue is spared all that. He could have hobbies! He could have casual friends! He wouldn't feel responsible for Nie HuaiSang's education or protecting Nie HuaiSang from the hard truth of their saber cultivation. There are adults, adults who aren't angry about a dead Nie Dad, who can handle all that and provide the needed discipline. So ideally his relationship with Nie HuaiSang would improve as well. They could be proper brothers. If Nie HuaiSang doesn't want to practice his saber, Nie MingJue could weigh in why he thinks Nie HuaiSang should, but it's not on him now to force it. Nie HuaiSang will not have to wait until Nie MingJue dies to realize that his brother cares for him.

Another change, then, is that Nie HuaiSang might not be as spoiled or be able to run off to do as he pleases with dad around and the sect functioning normally lol

Although much of this depends on what kind of man Nie Dad was, and what that would mean for Nie MingJue and the Nie Sect if he were still alive. Was he as arrogant and prideful as the guest cultivator said? Would his behavior have created a stressful environment at home? What if Nie Dad truly did prize and prioritize his saber and he was the one who made Nie MingJue throw his hobbies away and focus only on saber practice in the first place?

Nie HuaiSang could have turned out very differently in that case.

There's also the possibility that Nie MingJue was just always being a dutiful son to his father's wishes, whether his father lived or died. Maybe Nie MingJue never though about having hobbies in the first place because of this. Him becoming sect leader in the canon timeline could have been him simply copying Nie Dad.

Maybe Nie MingJue would still be the exact same person in that case.

And then there is the maybe that Lan XiChen and Nie MingJue never become friends, or have to become friends much later in life, because the Qinghe Nie are stable and don't need help from outsiders this time around.

Maybe Nie Dad staying alive would have made things worse.

Maybe Nie Dad was obedient and subservient to the Qishan Wen already. After all, he went when summoned and handed over his saber when asked and was only annoyed by Wen RuoHan's attitude rather than alarmed or insulted by it. Perhaps he was not unlike Jin GuangShan, trying to warm up to a higher power by being helpful and obedient. Without Wen RuoHan's trick, the Qinghe Nie remain at the side of the Qishan Wen, who now become unstoppable.

Which is an interesting contrast to the canon where the Nie Sect under Nie MingJue bow to no one. Out of all the Sects, the Qinghe Nie after the death of Nie Dad were the ones who seemed to have escaped the bullying of the Qishan Wen. Nie HuaiSang isn't mentioned as being at the indoctrination camp and any supervisory office should have been in Qinghe or the Unclean Realm, not way off in Hejian if it was even there at all. Wen RuoHan notes that Nie MingJue does not bend and likely he means Nie MingJue will not bend to the will of the Qishan Wen. After Nie Dad dies, the Qishan Wen appear to have just ignored the Qinghe Nie, who had gone feral against them and might have not been worth the effort to subdue lol

Because consider the canon set-up: Cloud Recesses was destroyed, Lotus Pier was massacred, and the Lanling Jin were expected to go crawling back to hug the leg of the Qishan Wen for protection... But the Qinghe Nie stood on their own. With Nie MingJue's leadership, they were the first out the door and they fought the hardest and the longest compared to everyone else. They were ready to fight to protect themselves and others. Under Nie MingJue's leadership, it was the Qinghe Nie, not the Lanling Jin, that were set to take the place of power of the Qishan Wen post-Sunshot Campaign.

Nie MingJue made the Qinghe Nie powerful! The only reason the Lanling Jin came out on top was because Meng Yao dealt Nie MingJue a critical blow and Nie MingJue never wanted power in the first place.

Could Nie Dad have done the same or better?

in which case I propose a BIG change: a Qishan Wen and Qinghe Nie alliance where everyone lives/nobody dies.

Before the guest cultivator spoke up, the Wen Sect and Nie Sect appear to have had a good relationship. Remember how Wang LingJiao at Lotus Pier was like, the boy shot down a kite that looked like the sun and the Qishan Wen are represented by the sun so the boy was shooting down the sun? Now we apply it to the gifted saber Wen RuoHan received. Wen RuoHan likes this gifted saber and the Qinghe Nie are a sect that prize sabers so Wen RuoHan likes the Qinghe Nie.

Truly, the only possible outcome from what the guest cultivator was saying was to destroy Wen-Nie relations. Nie Dad can no longer be trusted to speak the truth, Wen RuoHan is offended and wants to punish, and if Nie Dad ends up injured or dead, the guest cultivator isn't going to cry about it when he's sitting at his second fancy Wen banquet. So when the Qishan Wen and Qinghe Nie are getting too cozy with each other, the guest cultivator speaks up and ruins it.

But now we have Nie Dad still alive and relations are still good with Wen RuoHan, who is either just a powerful sect leader or the most powerful sect leader. We know that all the other sect leaders failed to make Wen RuoHan respect them, but what if Nie Dad was the exception all along? Considering how powerful Nie MingJue was at 25 that Wei WuXian ranked him in the top three cultivators, Nie Dad at 40/50/60+ has a reason to feel prideful towards his saber and his position in life!

If what the guest cultivator was saying, then Nie Dad bows to no one and he met Wen RuoHan face-on as equals.

Nie MingJue said before at Koi Tower that if the right person, such as Wen Qing, just spoke in Wen RuoHan's ear, all that disaster and chaos might not have happened. Just one person.

And maybe that was Nie Dad.

Nie Dad, dad to all...

[indigosprite]

Chrome Callout post.

relax this is just my love hate relationship with chromes writing and potential. spoiler, it ends with all the love... hate is only in the middle. 

My absolute favorite thing in fanfics is Chromes characterization. Like we all know Chrome is completely aware that Mukuro and co need a reoccurring dose of Valium and a therapist willing to do illegal things in order to lower their sadistic points to ”kind of disturbing but tolerable”. Or at least we hope she does even though she proves to us again and again that she’s not phased by it in the slightest and might actually be just as bad. TYL and she’s still running around helping them do god knows what. She follows them on this massacre pridefully, she “believes in” them ( its sweet actually. They’re what she thinks of when Mukuro asks what she believes in and makes a young kokuyo gang.)

In fanfics when people write her to be a double edge sword it’s hilarious, and it should’ve been the character depicted in the Anime and manga instead. But I guess if she hadn’t been the quiet, breathy & compliant 14 year old people wouldn’t have morphed her into the fanon I enjoy now. Here’s some stuff i love and HC abt Chrome  and the things I absolutely hated.  

1. When she actually speaks not just when spoken to. She voices her concerns although she has no intent of not doing what’s asked of her. Who knew she could speak and still be the obedient gang member Mukuro trusts her to be. And when she does this it’s funny. She is the conscience he buries underneath disgust and amusement for chaos, but that’s not her entire character. She’s not reduced to the mom friend either because of this, she’s too passive on the matter. She indulges/Enables it just the same as Chikusa or Ken, although she knows better meanwhile the thought never occurs to them. To summarize :

she’s Brian

2. She’s unhinged and the best part is nobody knows even though it’s blatantly obvious. She may not have the same bloodlust or violent disposition as her peers but there are other ways to showcase this. To Allow Mukuro the leader of this little fearsome Five-some to possess you whenever he feels like and witness whatever horrors he decides to inflict upon someone that day means she’s accepting of literally everything he does. She never resists or expresses distaste/fear for him or anything he does. We assume she would in some capacity because she was depicted as this wide eyed innocent girl trying her best to repay the man that got her to join a gang under the guise of a found family. She quite literally signed up for guts n glory. She knew this and never had second thoughts. Mind you she doesn’t share the same hatred for the mafia as the boys, theirs is blind hatred regardless of who you are. Hers is through them, they are her looking glass rightfully so, so if they say it then their word is law. I’m not sure about you but I would definitely be mindful of the girl who was raised semi normal and willingly turned into a killer for Mukuro of all people. They’re killing adults not shaking them up, they aren’t Tsuna and his friends they finish the job when necessary. The body count is unimaginable. She is just as loyal as Ken and Chikusa and would probably strike you where you stand for speaking ill of him. (She wouldn’t but would definitely be opposed to whatever you’re saying, unless it’s name calling. He takes no offense to that and welcomes it in fact.)

3. The fact that she’s a person apart from Mukuro (physically speaking.) and the Vongola team at all is a blessing in few fics. Although she was made to stand in for Mukuro, when he is released it’s not necessary hence him pushing her to be apart from him and his duties. He did this in the future as well when he possessed Guidio Greco no longer using chrome which lets us know she was successful in becoming a useful comrade and not just a vessel and vongola stand in. She had to otherwise he would’ve left her alone whether she was keeping his Vongola ring warm or not. She is just as aloof as Hibari, always off with her own people only engaging when it’s asked of her. I adore when people keep that in mind and don’t lump her with following behind the vongola as if she were one of them. She shows up for them when asked but her main focus is ultimately committing felonies with Ken and Chikusa per Mukuro’s orders. let her be with the kokuyo gang and let her contribute in the way she’s meant to as a fighter. figure her out give her something cool 

 ik that’s hard considering what we got in the manga. warning things i hate ahead 

what we got in the Anime and Manga: 

so we know Chromes entire purpose was to be Rokudo Mukuro’s stand in, while holding the Vongola ring he soon takes back she is just the girl that is able to get him to come fight their battles when necessary. The Anime and Manga rarely let Chrome fend for herself. We all knew he was coming the second it got serious. By giving chrome that ring she ended up being the one thing to keep him loyal to his contract with being their guardian. If she’s in danger he comes and saves her, the Vongola put her in danger because he will show up and do his job it’s like a rat trap. She is not meant to be a Vongola guardian but more like a Mukuro whistle. They never openly admit it but in the show they will expect/ask her to do things that her track record doesn’t imply she can do and just silently expect Mukuro to show up like always. SKSJDWDN they’ll be like “oh yeah call the girl who passed out and all her organs disappeared I believe in her to do this job even though i’ve never seen her make it to the end of a fight ever not worried at all” sksksjjd They never actually expect chrome to do a job they expect her to go there and manage to get Mukuro to come out and play and we should acknowledge it was just an unspoken thing.  Now I know that despite what I just implied about her not being that great a fighter but just good enough there are two comments made in all 400 chapters that are supposed to negate this.  

Mammon says her illusions are powerful just not enough to fool him , and reborn says she could turn the tide if she were to fight against Mukuro but with confidence, these mean nothing to me because amano throws in so many useless comments like this and then fails to develop it further to make it believable.  and she made powerful characters make note of this so it would be non negotiable and we would just take it at face value because its them but hello ?? ofc we want to see it just like we had to see Tsuna grow before we even considered taking him seriously. hell Dino got a quicker rise to his title than chrome bc its that easy to say oh he can come into his own when needed they just never meant to do it for chrome. 

it’s so irritating when they try to say she’s powerful or could be but give no actual footing for anyone to take those comments seriously when they make her pass out for thirty chapters after doing the bare minimum.

let chrome win on her own not just start strong then step out of the way then have some character say “no really she could be powerful we aren’t going to show you though” .  

when she helped them sneak in the base on her own and even makes those illusions of them fighting we should have gotten more of that!!! 

literally every character is fighting the funeral wreaths and chrome is running in the woods out of breath...even Lambo got to fight. 

you made her sit out of the rep battle to focus on making organs like that wasn’t something she already accomplished in the future and suddenly can’t do anymore ?.....

Chrome finally makes one fighting decision and its to make a mist forcefield that’s dangerous but hell yeah we think she will finally pull through with something powerful and prove herself and then they have mukuro come in a panel later saying “your flames are far too weak to do that I will make it better and help you not die” BYE  that was a perfect time to have her come in to her own seeing as she was powerful and confident enough to initiate it in the first place. 

breaking the barrier daemon spade makes * chefs kiss * give me more 

 when they’re not blindly robbing chrome of character development  she’s just getting kidnapped, passing out  or helping them with small things like making a fake Yamamoto for a party or sneaking in the base with illusions to disguise them. Hello she’s training under mukuro right ??? why did we ever get to see her get stronger each fight and have them say ‘she’s learning quick” instead. 

enough abt what we got, back to what I’ve managed to make out of the scraps we were given..

4. Mukuro is the only one who reassures that she actually is a fighter and she eventually grows to be a good one bc of this and you should write about that dynamic and why it exists more. this one is long.

 the whole dynamic I was referring to exploring is the one where Mukuro and chrome are meant to be equals. He meets this girl whose been neglected and left for dead, another kid messed up by adults neglectful selfish behavior. she willingly follows the boy who is plagued by the same demons and made a small group dedicated to getting revenge for it.  Mukuro & Chrome know they’re two sides of the same coin. he is anger and she is acceptance. He probably finds it amusing she isn’t as angry as them wants to draw it out of her  where as chrome wants to pull out the peace that comes with moving on once you’re in a better place. the girl is so happy to not be near her mom and grateful for this little family while the boys are quite literally holding a grudge against the world.  and like none of them even see it the way she does but she wants them to.  Mukuro and chrome didn’t go through the same things but it doesn’t matter to either of them because its the same story, nobody loved or valued them enough to protect them. In the end chrome will learn to be angry abt things that happen and use that to find a will to fight for something and Mukuro will learn to be at peace because they’re not in that lab anymore and those people are gone from their life. as fighters they’re so important to each others balance Mukuro’s rage cannot be left to be so blind and hers unattended and i know it’s supposed to be Tsuna that cleans his soul but i think chrome definitely plays a more active role in that.  I think he sees a better him in her, he makes her his second gives her his name because she’s the good he knows he can never fully be. she posses a peace he’s not hopeful enough to believe he can achieve or want and ultimately it will make her far more capable of the change he wants. in believing this it means he also believes she will be just as powerful as him with the right training. he’s literally training his demise and her name is Chrome. he wont take over a (mafia) world he wants her to save.  we all know he’s like annoyingly stupid when it comes to showing his emotions, he rather pretend he’s sending you to die when he’s quite literally ushering you to what he thinks is safe and sacrificing himself. so I can totally see him being like  “okay Tsuna might really change the mafia and I want to see that but I've already dug my own grave here's a better newer me that will be way easier to accept than me turning over a new leaf 40 dead families later.” 

5. in the future Hibari is much more happy to help and be around because he knows what a powerful fighter Tsuna turns out to be, i think this is the exact same reason why he goes and helps chrome save herself. Kyoya knows and possibly even respects future chrome enough to save her when she’s at her weakest which he usually detests. Chrome grows to be much more in the future and that’s exactly why he even gives this sick chrome a push. everyone likes to think it’s a Mukuro thing for him but what if it actually is a chrome thing. in the show he’s never been present to witness her show any kind of power so we can only assume that at some point he saw her in action. 

  6. it’s implied in the future that Mukuro fights alongside her, he views her as more than just a vessel and doesn’t baby her in the slightest when he pushes her to become her own being. I won’t call it respect per say but he doesn’t look at her as a doll even though that’s the part she played for him. He still trains her the way he eventually does Fran. We all know he just wants Mini Mukuros to aid him in his endeavors but the fact that he chooses her says a lot about how she’s meant to be viewed. He also chooses a nine year old brat with an apple hat but hey he must see something everyone else doesn’t until he’s done with them seeing as Fran was kidnapped by the freaking Varia once Mukuro’s teachings were for the most part implemented. “Oh you learned under Mukuro ? We can’t have Mukuro you need to join us immediately” (I’ve just realized Mukuro gave the vongola their strongest mist guardians all while claiming to hate them. Funny man). imagine how powerful Chrome gets, even better when Mukuro is actually there in the flesh to teach her where as Fran got some illusionary version of him. WRITE ABOUT IT. 

7. for the love of god give that girl her own fighting style. yamamoto has his sword gokudera is literally baby genius ryohei is a boxer and hibari has like the most random weapon ever. go crazy. i love it when chrome isn’t pulling a trident from her bag. because she’s not mukuro anymore. she’s a reticent mist guardian, compliment that.  Mukuros trident has his own history with him. give her some history of her own.    

in my fic Chrome uses a scythe and tears through reality with it. 

reason:  because she is a grim reaper in her own right. she rose from the dead and is showing up to collect the souls of the wicked. a silent but fearsome person. 

her style ? :  personally I like to believe chrome dabbles in profiling, hear me out. Her parents were neglectful and in turn she really has little experience with relationships in general, i think her curiosity would lead her to constantly study peoples relationships and behaviors and see how they affect her target. aka she fights by showing up getting in your head and haunting you with your own past because even if they see through it damn what a nasty wound or insecurity to bring up in the form of a hell loop illusion. this also ties into her being Mukuro 2.0 he’s known to just be eerily in the know of everything going on even when he’s not there. this would be a great way of her matching that aspect of him and possibly surpassing it.  

[star-wars-scribbles-ff]

Clone Log Series | 1 | Trapper

(click for better quality 👀)

Note: This is the beginning of a new series I want to write that was inspired by a short scene from Star Wars: Tales from The Clone Wars Webcomic Collection Season 1 - Prelude: Cold Snap, you can find more about that HERE. 

The first Clone I’ve chosen for this series is Trapper! For those who aren’t familiar with this fellow, Trapper is an ARF Trooper with the 212th Recon Division and served at the Second Battle of Geonosis. He was the only survivor alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi when their LAAT/i crashed on Geonosis, en-route to RV Point Rain. 

Taglist: @divergent-llamas-03​ @remadster​ @tallyquark​ @thisistheendtimes​ (There was an update to the taglist options, so please feel free to revisit it HERE if you’d like to make changes to your form 💗 )

Note/Disclaimer: This fic contains both canon and fanon material. Trapper doesn’t have a canon CT number, so the one listed is entirely fanon and not official by any means. Lance is a clone OC of mine.

I’d heard stories about the Battle of Geonosis from veterans. It was the first time the Grand Army had seen combat, and apparently despite simulations training, nothing could quite prepare them for the hell that was Geonosis. I wasn’t there - wasn’t even a year out from graduating - but my former CO, Commander Ponds… he was there. Every clone knew- you didn’t inquire about previous campaigns unless it was logistically necessary, especially from a Commander, but on occasion he’d share bits and pieces. 

Following the GAR’s first sight of war, countless changes were made to the training that clones received on Kamino. Apparently there were things we just weren’t thoroughly being prepared for, but despite that fact, they were rushing us off the assembly line so fast most of us never really finished out training anyhow. Not completely at least. 

I still remember when we graduated, Lance. It all happened so quickly. We were on a cruiser heading for Coruscant before any of us really got to process the first accomplishment of our lives. 

I don’t know why I’m addressing this to you, Lance. I guess… It’s just been a while since we got to catch up. Before we even landed on Coruscant we all got word of our placement in the GAR. You were off to the 212th Attack Battalion, I was transferred to the 91st Reconnaissance Corps, and the rest of the squad stayed together under the 327th Star Corps. I never thought I’d hear from the others again, and I thought the same about you.

As long as I’m writing this to you, I might as well fill you in. Things were pretty slow in the 91st Recon Corps for the first month or two, that is, until we got deployed to Malastare. That was my first time seeing combat. I still remember staring down the Separatist line. They outnumbered us ten to one. I lost a lot of brothers in that massacre, despite not knowing any of them for very long.

Somewhere along the line, whispers began to spread. It was no secret we were losing the battle. The Separatists had launched a hefty operation to drain the Republic of its fuel supplies that were made available by the current treaty with the Dugs, and they were doing a hell of a job pushing us back to the Capital. 

I wasn’t in the know, but I’d overheard from a Sergeant that the Republic was issuing the use of a prototype bomb to be used as a last ditch effort to push the Separatist line back. Sounded like a long shot. Word spread fast and eventually all military forces on Malastare were debriefed on what was to happen. Commander Ponds issued a statement to the 91st Recon Corps forces, that we were to hold the line until the bomb’s drop. The bomb was said to produce an electro-magnetic field that would expand from the impact zone. It had to be a hell of a bomb to match the diameter of the Separatist line. 

When the bomb hit, the electro-magnetic pulse emitted from it knocked out the clankers, but did hell to the sound dampeners in our buckets. Few boys had their eardrums burst. I guess that wasn’t something they accounted for. 

Despite that fact though, the bomb did do its intended job, and wiped out ninety percent of the Separatist forces; I have to admit I was impressed and would have remained so… If not for what came after. While the electro-magnetic field resulted in the deactivation of all Separatist forces, the detonation of the bomb created a sinkhole bigger than the underworld portals on Coruscant. It swallowed what was left of the clankers along with countless men… too many to count. I was close to the sinkhole and managed to outrun its increasing diameter as it swallowed everything in its path… I can still hear the screams of those who weren’t so lucky.

Victory wasn’t a word any of us were able to consider. Not after that. For those few seconds before the crater began, a rush of relief washed over all of us; you could almost see it in the way our postures relaxed, and some of us even let out relieved chuckles or held breath. The Dugs were already celebrating the victory in the following seconds before it happened. It sounded like a crack of lightning coursed through my body; the ground jolted so hard some of us lost our footing. Seconds. It wasn’t more than thirty seconds between the bomb’s detonation and the crater’s formation, although it felt like so much longer.

For almost thirty minutes the crater was surrounded by a massive cloud of dust too thick to breathe. Most of us couldn’t speak in the time following the proton bomb’s encore. Talk about a slap in the face, Lance. Most of us thought it was a sick joke. Price of victory, eh?

Well apparently that wasn’t one of the outcomes the Republic accounted for either. Following the settling of the new geographic monument, I was chosen alongside a couple other troopers to investigate the crater. Word was that high command had lost contact with the rescue team, and General Windu accompanied us, as did Commander Ponds to look for the lost search party. 

Its all a bit blurry from there. We ended up finding the rescue party but… We didn’t end up getting any of those men out of there. It became apparent rather quickly that we were trespassing on a certain creature’s territory. It all happened so fast; the General had a few men stay behind with what was left of the rescue party while we searched the area. By the time it became evident of what we were dealing with, we were running towards the extraction point, and General Skywalker was distracting the creature with his starfighter… We left all those men behind. Granted it would have been close to impossible to extract them all without losing men, but… We didn’t even try. Aside from the General and the Commander, Hawkeye and I were the only ones to make it out. 

We all have those moments, when that guilt always rears its ugly head. I just wonder if the officers ever feel the same, or if its just us foot soldiers who feel it.

The creature we encountered was called a Zillo Beast. I’ve sure as hell never heard of it. No one else seemed to have prior to its unexpected appearance. We ended up taking the damn thing too; back to Coruscant no less. I’ll tell ya, Lance… Sometimes I question the sanity behind some of these decisions. It isn’t my place, but you can’t help but consider it. 

I don’t know where you were, but I was on Coruscant when the Beast got loose. I wish I could describe or explain the chaos that ensued, but we felt like a bunch of loth cats trying to wrangle a rancor; it just wasn’t plausible. 

Cleanup after the Zillo Beast incident was thankfully, not our job. It was within the week following that event that I got news of my transfer. Apparently something big was going down somewhere, and troopers were being shifted around to handle a coming campaign. 

While I wish I could say I felt something when I got the news, I’d lost so many comrades that there were few left that I was truly acquainted with in my company. Ninety percent of the company was made up of new batches coming in, so when i left, I admit I wasn’t completely against it. 

I was transferred to the 212th Attack Battalion’s Recon Division, under General Kenobi and Marshal Commander Cody. Gotta admit… I felt a bit hypocritical joining this Battalion. Everyone talked trash about other battalions, especially the 212th and even the 501st Legion. It was all in good fun, but they were pretty photogenic. They were the face of the Republic Military on the HoloNet news and saw some of the biggest battles of the war. 

Joining their ranks, I don’t know how I felt. Out of place was one word for it. Everyone was welcoming enough. Transfers happened all the time, it wasn’t customary to alienate other troopers just arriving, but it was always awkward. Every Battalion had its own way of doing things. 

I was on the Venator-class cruiser, The Negotiator, as soon as my transfer was put in and we were off to… somewhere. Arriving at the barracks, the last thing I honestly expected was seeing you across from my bunk, Lance. 

I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but I liked it better not knowing where you were and whether or not you were alive. Now I knew I’d either see you go down or you’d see me. You probably noticed my hesitation to be content to see you. Thankfully the arrival of the new armor sets prevented anything awkward, although now I would give anything to go back and have interaction, awkward or not. 

ARF armor… That was one way to tell someone they were receiving a promotion of sorts. Although I assume they just needed to outfit the foot soldiers in something that resembled the terrain we would encounter. Whispers were saying Geonosis, but I was one of the few that didn’t believe it. We’d conquered Geonosis, there was no reason to go back, right?

Heh, wrong. Commander Cody debriefed everyone in the hanger. We were heading to Geonosis. There we were briefed on the plan, and our teams. At the time, I was thankful we were both on a gunship together. I’d give anything to go back and have you put on a different transport. If we crash I’ll need someone to drag my body out of the mud. You have a really sick sense of humor y’know; always have, even during cadet training. I remember when you joked about getting a ninety-five percent on one of our firearms performance tests: Guess I’m getting terminated, you had joked. You di’kut… Can’t believe you made it to graduation considering how often you talked smack. 

Oh, di’kut… It means fool. Yeah, I learned that from this uh… Girl - a retired mercenary - working with the GAR. Apparently she’s held up with the 212th more often than not, so maybe you know who I’m talking about. 

Loading onto that gunship, I remember feeling surprised when General Obi-Wan Kenobi headed for our LAAT/i with Commander Cody at his side. You’d knocked my arm to get my attention, like I wasn’t already looking. 

When we’re on the ground you better watch my six, you’d said. I’d rolled my eyes. First time we’d seen each other in months and you were already back to your old games. I’m warning ya, Trapper, my aim has improved since cadet training. 

So I only have to carry half of your weight now- I’d countered.

When the General had climbed aboard the gunship, most chatter quieted but continued. After taking off, it got quiet. We knew the landing zone would be hot, and there was no doubt many of the shuttles would be downed on the initial assault. 

Despite the odds, you never think its going to be you. You can’t afford to think like that, so you don’t. That is, until your LAAT/i is hit, and you find yourself holding onto whatever you can as your gunship hurtles uncontrollably towards the ground. 

I remember hearing the General yelling out over the comms, getting word to the Marshal Commander.

We’re hit- We’re going down! It felt like an eternity as our shuttle crashed. It was probably the first time I was truly terrified. Everything was out of my control. At least when a creature the size of a large-class freighter is coming after you, you can run out of its way. This was different. I’d heard a horror story or two of troopers crashing in gunships. Details I couldn’t stop replaying in my head as we hurtled towards the ground.

You were next to me, I think. Somewhere along the line the stabilizers gave out, and the gunship went into a sort of barrel roll. I don’t remember the impact. 

The holovids always depict death, or even near-death experiences like this peaceful, dreamlike state. I thought that was bantha fodder, but it almost makes me laugh - because it actually was, Lance. It was just like that. 

I remember it only in simple terms, but for some reason, before waking up, I remember hearing General Shaak Ti’s graduation speech. Her words, as brief as they were, inspired us. We all felt like we were going out to make a difference, restore peace… be the good guys. 

The naivety of it makes me chuckle. 

Canon fire landing in the dirt a few meters from our downed LAAT/i was what interrupted that dream-like state. The pressure on my chest was the first prominent thing that invaded my mind; it was sharp and intense. Broken ribs most likely. It took a few struggling moments before I could recover a breath, and even longer before I was able to get my vision to focus. Concussion most likely. The Medic had told me my half-conscious state most likely kept me from going into shock, if I had, my broken ribs may have punctured a lung. 

When my eyes had finally focused, and I was able to loosely make out what was around me, it was dark. Slivers of light illuminated the space enough for me to know we were on the ground, but something wasn’t right because it was too quiet. My first thought was that they’d mistaken me as dead and moved out… I wish that was the reality of the situation. Maker knows I would give anything for that to have been the case.

By the time my HUD came back online, I was coming to terms with reality. I could see the troopers scattered about the gunship. With the blast doors closed, there weren’t many places to go. One trooper was draped partially over my legs, and others covered the ground of the ship. What startled me most was when I turned and saw General Kenobi seated next to me, head hung over. He was unconscious. 

At that point I was just surprised to be alive, and maybe even relieved… Then my HUD began reading vital signs. One by one all of the troopers came back negative. At first I couldn’t find you, Lance. Part of me didn’t want to, why would I? The odds weren’t great, so I may have avoided looking towards the other side of the LAAT/i for a while.

With a series of blinks, I accessed the Officer's frequency channel for communications. I don’t know how long I spent trying to contact someone, anyone. Priority was to inform the next in command that the General was incapacitated.

From the sounds of cannon fire, it seemed we were right in the thick of it. I could distinctly hear our AT-Te cannons, but I could also hear enemy munitions from behind us. We weren’t in a great spot, that was for sure. 

As the minutes passed, the pain became more prominent. My neck hurt, and the rest of my body was sluggish to respond. I could move my legs, thankfully, but a trooper pinning them prevented me from doing much. 

With little to do about the fact, I had no choice but to hold tight and keep trying to contact command. It felt like auto-pilot. Maybe it was just me trying to ignore the fact that I was surrounded by dead men… maybe something else. At that point I just couldn’t… I couldn’t consider you being dead too. I knew there was a good chance you were, but part of me continued to hold out hope that you went for help; maybe woke up before I did, realized comms were down before going to get the Commander for support.

By the time the General awoke, I had given up trying to get word out. He had begun to stir and I’d spoken up, inquiring if he was alright before his eyes had opened. 

A slight twitch in his expression and crinkle around one eye revealed he was in some sort of pain. Later it was obvious he had sustained similar injuries to myself, but in the moment I had no way of knowing how far off he was.

His gaze was alert rather quickly however, and he cleared his throat before confirming my question. I suppose I could be better, he had let out a strained chuckle. He craned his neck to look around before he looked at me. 

I have to admit it was odd, to have a General’s attention on me and me alone. Are you alright? He’d asked. I hadn’t spoken one-on-one with a General before. The most I could throw together was a nod before I finally got a hold of myself and confirmed I was fine. 

A cannon blast struck nearby, and the rumble of the ground shook the gunship, causing dust and sand to fall from nooks in the ceiling. 

It appears I’ve had a late start, The General had surveyed the area before he turned his attention towards me, and I prepared to tell him we were the only survivors.

Trapper isn’t it? The question had caught me off guard. I’d been a part of the battalion no longer than one standard rotation, and the General knew my name… Almost made me chuckle on the spot.

Yes sir, I’d said. Comms are down; something’s interfering. Sir, I can’t get word out to the Commander of our status. 

Well if I know Cody, he’ll be keeping an eye out for us. Not to worry. He was trying to reassure me, that was evident. We’re the only ones. It’d been a statement, and observation. The Jedi always had a way of knowing it seemed.

...Yes sir, I’d responded. 

I’ve yet to experience something quite like my time in that crashed LAAT/i; knowing the fight was raging around me, I had to be on my guard incase the fight came to the crashed gunship, but in the majority of those moments, the eerie silence of the enclosed space far surpassed that of the sounds of blaster and cannon fire outside. 

At that moment I’d tested moving my legs. I was able to, but I didn’t want to disturb the body of the soldier, my comrade and brother, just yet. Now that the General was awake however, the reality of the situation suddenly dawned on me in a different light.

With some effort, I sat forward and proceeded to move him to the side so he was lying on the ground near my legs. After making sure his body was settled, I rested back against the wall, letting out a controlled breath. I didn’t know his name. Part of me was glad that I didn’t.

Cannon fire continued to rage on both sides of the transport as the minutes passed, and one thing that was becoming clear, was that the enemy fire seemed to be coming closer. 

Sounds like the enemy is making headway, I tried to break the silence in the most respectful way possible. The General didn’t look to be in the best shape. The only plea I had was that the General not die before I do. I’d hoped the universe would spare me that much. The number one rule amongst us clones is to never let the General go down on your watch, I know you know that much, Lance. If you did leave to get help I sure as hell was hoping you’d get back before then. With how the General was looking, he was having difficulty remaining completely aware.

It appears so, Trapper, The General had responded, craning to listen for a time before he turned his gaze towards me. He looked weak. It was hard to witness a General, a Jedi, in such a position.

I knew I needed to get up and go get help. I knew no one had gone and I was the only remaining trooper from the transport capable of bringing help, as much as I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that I was alone. It was just a matter of being able to support my own weight long enough to get the blast doors open.

I admire your determination, Trapper. The General’s words yet again caught me off guard. But you are in no condition to take such chances, just as I am. I believe our best chance is to wait a bit longer. 

I didn’t know if the General was right in the head, but Jedi had their ways. And safe to say- as much as I wanted to, I wasn’t going anywhere. Not on my own power alone at least.

If you say so, sir. I appeased him, but quietly questioned his clarity. He probably knew I was too, but he didn’t go to speak about it thankfully. 

I admit I was hesitantly surprised when the doors to our down gunship were pried open minutes later. Two troopers I didn’t recognize were responsible, not that I was complaining. 

Waxer, Boil, The General didn’t seem to need more than a moment to identify them. Another thing Jedi were good at. General Windu once told Hawkeye that our- what was the word- aura? Or maybe an impression? Yeah. Like all living things, we left an impression in the force that made it relatively easy for the Jedi to identify us. I guess that has a ring of bittersweet irony to it; we may all have the same face, but our Jedi generals don’t need physically distinguishable markings to identify us, because as he put it, through the force, we’re all rather different. 

Am I glad to see you. Trapper and I are the only ones still alive.

Good to see you, sir. 

I wish I could say I was paying attention when my two comrades hauled us up to our feet. But I knew in that moment that I was about to break my promise to you. Is it cliché to say I felt completely helpless? If not for my condition you know I’d have dragged whatever was left of you back to the RV point. 

Before we left that gunship, I saw you… Hunched over at the head of the transport space. I knew you were there the whole time; knew my HUD had identified you… I’d just hoped I wasn’t right in the head. But I knew I was the only trooper leaving the gunship alive. I just wish I had known when I got on that gunship, what was coming. 

Waxer was the trooper who got me back to Point Rain in one piece. I don’t know how we did it, but it felt like it took an hour to get back to the square. Thankfully we still had a hell of a fight ahead, and I didn’t have time to mull over my situation. When the reinforcements finally arrived at the last possible second, there was still a lot to do. It wasn’t until the Separatist energy shield was destroyed that they started rotating out spots of leave to us troopers, and I finally got the break I was dreading. 

I’m starting to feel stupid writing to you, Lance, I gotta admit. Its not like you missed much in that gunship but… Turns out the company I was assigned to was completely wiped out on Geonosis. Another gunship transporting a portion of the company crashed, killing everyone, and the rest died defending RV Point Rain. I had to report to the Marshal Commander for instruction on who to report to. I don’t wanna brag, but you know I’m gonna - he kept me pretty close for the remainder of the campaign; even brought me along on a lovely rescue mission of General Unduli that I’d rather not talk about. That’s a whole ‘nother story. 

Sitting alone in the mess on the cruiser after the battle came to a close, Commander Cody approached me… told me he was going to reassign me soon. Before leaving he told me writing is apparently a good way to speak what we can’t verbally put into words. I guess he knew I was… on my own. So you’re stuck listening to me ramble I guess. Serves you right for leaving me here along, mate. I know you’d hit me for feeling guilty about leaving you there… You know I’d have dragged you outta there if I had been able to hold my own weight, let alone yours… 

I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll keep you updated on things going forward. Commander Cody assigned me to Ghost Company, so I imagine I’ll be seeing some action. You’d be jealous beyond words, I know, so don’t worry - I’ll keep you posted.

CT-4473, Trapper 212th Attack Battalion, Ghost Company

Feel free to request a trooper via ask or message (either to this blog or my main: @horseluvr00-ff​), just make sure to mention its for the Clone Log series and give me enough information: 

Trooper’s name

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I’ll review the trooper and answer the ask with whether I’ll write something for them. 😊

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[secret-engima]

1) I'm liking the Nyx!Sasuke idea because yeeting a Galahdian into the Uchiha Clan (and Konoha in general) and a soldier into shinobi life sounds like FANTASTIC culture Shenanigans. Because, look - Nyx waking up in the aftermath of the Massacre, to find out his brother is a Kinslayer (oh the RAGE), finding out that Konoha is employing children as shinobi (look, he knows the Kingsglaive recruits were young at sixteen, but these are KIDS, six, seven, thirteen year old kids being taught to murder)

a-world-in-grey

said:

2) And then Nyx adjusting to the sheer COLOR of the Naruto-verse. The wacky hair colors (and it takes Nyx YEARS to stop instinctively reaching for a knife everytime he sees Sakura out of his peripheral) and clothing would drive Nyx's Galahdian color associations up. the. wall. And then he stumbles one day across Naruto, sees the abuse he deals with, and the part of him that was a refugee, the part of him that is Galahdian screams that Naruto is a child, HOW DARE YOU- and... like, adopts him.

a-world-in-grey

said:

3) And no matter how many people try to tell him that he's only a child himself he can't adopt Naruto, Nyx!Sasuke is as bullheaded as they come. Naruto is baffled, wary, but then overjoyed to have such a stalwart friend because Nyx uses all his pull as the Last Uchiha to take care of Naruto and train Naruto because Naruto isn't the most academically inclined, sure, but he's bright and he CARES and Nyx... could see Naruto maybe being a good Hokage. After a bit- okay a LOT of training.

4) Just like, feral Galahdian plopped into the middle of Konoha please.

Me: Okay THIS. THIS YES. SO MUCH YES. This was what I was thinking of when I said Nyx as Sasuke. The utter confusion, the culture clash, the utter INDIGNATION because excuse you those are KIDS?????? What are you THINKING?????

Also Nyx and Itachi. Oh boy Nyx and Itachi is gonna be- such a fun thing. And by fun I mean utterly angsty and heartbreaking.

Nyx would like the turn down the saturation on the world’s color slider pls. Why so many wacky hair colors. Why so many clothing options. He has no one to rant about now over PINK CLOTHES (or Sakura’s outfits in the early show, red with WHITE EDGING? Nyx is a Scream). Also just- Nyx *sees a pack of Hyuga walk by with their WHITE clothes and WHITE eyes*: !!!!!!!!!!!

Nyx 100% adopts Naruto. This is his kid now. Come forth kiddo and be fed. Nyx is just like- you wanna be Hokage? Awesome. You’ll be an awesome hokage. Naruto: *holding back tears* Thank you new best friend.

Also ... Nyx and Kakashi. Oh. Boy. Nyx and Kakashi are ... *evil laughter* Kakashi you are in for an Experience™.

Also Nyx 100% is gonna be best friends with Tenten. Just- Tenten finds this Smol Angry Uchiha bby wandering her family weapon’s shop with an angry look, quietly critiquing all the weapons and mutter about how he “misses his kukri ^*@&*” and she’s insulted at first until Nyx manages to somehow sweet-talk his way into the blacksmith area and just- he’s so GOOD with steel (Nyx does, I think canonically, know how to forge. I’m pretty sure I read a lore blurb that he made his second kukri in Insomnia, either way it’s my fanon).

....Braincell!Tenten. She gets some early practice Braincelling via knowing Nyx!Sasuke.

....Nyx meeting Might Guy and Rock Lee is gonna be an Experience. >:DDD.

Also RIP Iruka. You have a Smol Bby ULRIC in your class. You are doomed.

I’m ... I’m also seeing Nyx adopting Hinata. Just- a part of him is a Scream around any Hyuga but like- she Smol and Sad and he KNOWS the marks of abuse and is just like- this is mine now. Here bby wear purple and green those are good colors for you. You are my new bby now. You stay in my compound and have all the pretty things and quiet time and Actual Training you want.

Hiashi Hyuga: I’m soRRY WAT-

[a-student-out-of-time]

Twisted Sister Arc Review Part 1

Hi guys I’m the Anon who does the reviews around here…guess you could call me the Review Anon? Wonder what the lore behind me would be…anyway that doesn’t matter! Point is, I have an Arc to review and Jesus is this a big one. So big that A) I’m doing submissions (with permission from the Mod of course) and B) I’m splitting the review into 3 parts. Heavy Arcs are Heavy and a LOT of stuff happens here so let’s get right into it!

So, the parts of the Twisted Sister Arc are first the Massacre, second is the Mindwipe and third is the Prison Break. Last one doesn’t start with M but I’m not doing rhyming here, but that’s enough time wasting let’s get right into it~

Massacre

Easily the darkest part of the Arc but given the Arc is basically Kanade being a Slasher Killer here, what do you expect? While Danganronpa is a franchise about murder, and we had serial killers in it both canon and fanon the nature of the Killing Game means that a full-blooded mass killing akin to many slasher films hasn’t really occurred in the franchise before. This makes Kanade’s bloody rampage here even more disturbing, as while we have had mass killings before, see Mukuro’s rampage through Giboua Middle School in Killer Killer, those are established as backstory drops for the characters, we never actually see one being carried out in action. And going back to that massacre, Mukuro only did it because Junko thought her sister’s killer intent might have slipped and it’s to prove to her she is still a killer, but here Kanade is killing for cold blooded revenge. And she doesn’t just kill a bunch of randoms as she brutally murders Iroha, Peko, Akane, Nekomaru, Sonia and Kokoro very brutally and very effectively. I knew something was up given that the entire school went into lockdown and all the fighters from Class 77-B were geared to fight Kanade to the death, and Kanade is such a pansy of a fighter that Sonia beat the living shit out of here, and Syo was taken down by the QC, and we all know how terrifying Syo is. But once the bodies started to drop, I knew that the first time that Hajime would reset on purpose was coming up and there were so many questions. Who set Kanade up for this? Someone had to be helping her…. but who and why? Juu could have let her out but he couldn’t have supplied Kanade with her tools and intel (more on that later) so it has to be someone else.

Within the darkness of this timeline there is of course your heroes. There are those like Peko who got a lucky shot on Kanade which set a chain line of events leading to Kanade’s death, Mikako who made Kanade’s injuries worse and Kokoro who stabbed Kanade in the eye. But those small victories led to total loses as even if Peko didn’t die, she would be crippled for life and moreover she failed to protect her classmates from Kanade’s wrath, and Mikako lost her mother, just as she started to finally connect with her. You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned two names yet, and that’s because they deserve their own paragraphs, I am of course referring to Nikei and Hibiki.

I’m gonna start with the next person who attacks Kanade and that is of course our Journalist boy here. To say this day has been terrible to him would be a massive understatement as one minute he is suffering an energy crash from downing one too many Red Bulls and having lewd thoughts, to running faster than if he happened to be in Mexico (Seriously, if you happen to be a journalist just don’t go to Mexico) to Hope’s Peak and thanks to Ankle Effects, arriving alongside Hajime to a bloodbath. There’s his constant refusal to accept that Iroha is killed, even though we as the audience knew that given Iroha tried to stop Kanade as soon as she arrived at Hope’s Peak and that Kanade was seen by Sonia and co chopping up security guards, the likelihood of her survival was next to none. This carries on from the conversation Nikei had with Yoruko in the previous Arc where he still believes he is dangerous and that he doesn’t see the other Voids as friends or equals, but rather he took the role as leader because he wanted to have power for once in his life, something he alluded to in the Void Theatre during Chapter 5. However, his reaction to Iroha’s unknown safety, and eventually the truth that Kanade really did butcher the poor painter, proves otherwise. While Nikei’s relationship with his fellow Voids canonically won’t get revealed until LINIQ decides to get around to doing the Onmake mode, in which one of the stories in that is going to be about Void pre Mikado- with someone, most likely Nikei, being the POV character, here the fact his first thoughts upon finding out his ‘little sister’ is dead is to disregard the no-killing rule and just beat Kanade to death, proves that he does care about his fellow Voids, but is in several layers of denial. Out of all the Voids, Nikei is easily the most guarded and paranoid of the lot, and while the others have loosened up around Hajime and co, Nikei still has a lot of inner demons he has to deal with before he could truly open up to the rest of the QC. And Kanade chopping his right hand off, doesn’t help matters though I do give Nikei credit that unlike in the OG timeline, where upon his right hand been blown up by his exploding gun, he just broke down crying, here, he tries to carry on the fight regardless, or he would have had the other person I need to talk about didn’t show up. This is pretty important to establish that while most of the Voids now are pretty far removed from their canon selves and are unlikely to regress back in that, Nikei is still closely tied with his bastard canon self and more work needs to be done for him to detach from that.

But moving on from someone who needs to get some work done, let’s move onto someone who has seen the natural conclusion of their character development, Hibiki! Ever since Hajime and Chiaki rescued Hibiki from her twisted sister (*rim shot*) back in July, she has been making a ton of progress, firstly coming to terms with what Kanade did and her true nature, developing friendly healthy relationships with Class 77-B, the QC and of course a romantic relationship with Hajime. It seemed kind of cliché for Hibiki to fall for Hajime but then again a) Danganronpa can be cliché at times and B) As a Danganronpa Protagonist Hajime cannot turn off his swag. Then there is her officially joining the QC, learning how to fight and being a complete and utter badarse and a caring lover when needed as she confronted Hajime back when he died the second time. We all knew it was only a matter of time when Hibiki had to confront her sister and when Kanade broke into the school, we saw fully, how much Hibiki has grown in the past 3 months. The old Hibiki would have curled up in a corner terrified, crying and probably going into the Puppet State. Here though, Hibiki’s FIRST THOUGHTS upon finding out that Kanade is more dangerous now is to done some armour and get some weapons, and face her sister head on with no hesitation. All without going into the Puppet State at least once, which probably means that its more or less gone now. Kanade tried to talk her sister out of fighting her, but Hikibi isn’t buying Kanade’s insurance anymore and a fight breaks out. If this ever gets animated or becomes a visual novel, I would love to see the Hibiki vs Kanade fight animated as its brilliant, its epic and it’s just so satisfying to see Kanade getting the living snot beaten out of her. You could argue that Nikei’s mauling of Kanade was like that but there, Nikei was more or less in grief due to Iroha’s death and the whole thing was as painful to watch as the final fight in Captain America: Civil War, not saying what because spoilers ahoy. Here though is a glorious battle, as Hibiki gets to deliver justice onto her demonic sister and it is SO SO satisfying, given that a reset happens shortly afterwards.

And sadly, with that, we come to easily the weakest part of not only this part of the arc, but the arc overall, Yasuke’s multiverse theory. It could be written better, and even the Mod agrees that the way it was presented shouldn’t have been the way it worse, that having Umeko throw some ideas at Hajime and him coming to the conclusion that they might have been living in a multiverse be better narrative then Yasuke be like ‘Oh hey I am suddenly an expert on Time Travel now’. It would make Hajime breaking his no kill rule that much more impactful as he doesn’t have the excuses of not only Nikei’s who was currently going through a mental breakdown, and in the current plot where Yasuke more or less planted the seed of doubt in Hajime’s mind. Yasuke still has a role to play in this arc but during the Massacre timeline, I feel like he could have been removed entirely from the plot and not only would it have made no difference, but then most readers wouldn’t be complaining about it as much as Yasuke being a general A-hole wouldn’t tick them off. I’m not saying ‘THIS IS AS BAD AS ONCOMING STORM’ as that Arc was just a giant clusterfuck of a mess, and aside from this one part, the arc is very strong overall, but I will give criticism when due. I’m not mentioning my thoughts on Yasuke as a whole here because he’s more relevant in other parts of the Arc. However, Hajime killing Kanade and himself at the same time is brilliant and seeing Kanade begging for her life as Hajime throws her out of the window is so satisfying given not only all the crap she has been dealing up until that point, but also because in SDAR2, she was 100% fulfilled with the events at that point and given it was HIBIKI who was begging for her life then, let’s just say karma is a bigger bitch then Kanade is.

And that concludes the Massacre part of the Arc as Hajime kills himself and Kanade at the same time and he goes back to just before Nikei started to have indecent thoughts. No time to look at the 3rd page of the national newspapers’ boy, we got a serial killer to stop! And with that I’m stopping here as the Massacre part is finished. But this review is far from over, this is just here because otherwise my, the Mod’s and everyone else’s brains won’t be able to process all of this. Stay tuned for part 2 when we cover Kanade’s capture, a scrum debate among the QC and a bold move by the Mod which I do wish will come up more! Until then, Adios! - Review Anon

//Part 1 of 3

//Finally get to submit these

[goldenkamuyhunting]

The fanon wiki lists Tsukishima's first appearance to be chapter 13, with Capt. Wada. The anime also shows this as well. The man resembles Tsukishima, but is it really him? In the manga version I'm reading (I'm reading it online so the volume versions might be different), he just looks like a generic soldier. The first truly recognizable Tsukishima can be found in chapter 70, so shouldn't that be his first appearance? (I'm sorry it's hard to understand, I have no idea what I'm talking about.)

It’s a good question.

So let’s clear up some things. The online version uses the volume scans for the first 10 volumes, in short up to chap 100.

They then moved to a scanned version of the magazine version up till chap 152.

From chap 153 onward (if I’m not wrong) they used the digital version of the magazine version.

So scanlations come from the magazine version from chap 101, but quality increases from chap 153 due to them using the digital version of it.

So basically yes, for chap 13 you were reading the volume version.

Now... when do Tsukishima truly appear for the first time?

In chap 70 which is the first time in which we hear someone (Tsurumi in our case) say the name ‘Tsukishima’?

We know for a fact Tsukishima was around earlier than that.

A Japanese fan managed to ask if soldiers that were looking like Tsukishima were his relatives and Noda replied they’re all Tsukishima... even though his name was never mentioned back then.

Question number 5 (30 March 2018)

Q: I’m curious to see a soldier that looks like Sergeant Tsukishima in book 4 chapter 31

& book 5 chapter 46.

Is he a brother of the sergeant?

A: They’re all Tsukishima. [Translation from Golden Kamuy Central]

Sadly he didn’t ask about the guy in chap 13 but the fact that those guys are all Tsukishima though, confirms that Tsukishima was around prior to chap 70 but the character design for Tsukishima wasn’t established right from the start.

The beard changes shape, the clothes vary.

This lead fans to assume that since Tsukishima was around PRIOR to his official apparition, Tsukishima was meant to be the identity of the following soldiers:

- The guy murdering Wada in chap 13 (same eyes, beard, similar nose although a bit more marked than Tsukishima)

- The soldier with Tsurumi in chap 34 (same face but missing beard)

- and this guy who also appear in chap 46 (same face and same clothes Tsukishima wears in chap 46 but beard missing)

It’s also worth to say that as Noda draws characters in very different ways the fact that those characters are instead VERY SIMILAR seems to support the idea they were meant to be all the same character.

The anime seems to side with fans as it confirmed all the above speculations using Tsukishima instead than a random stock soldier.

Ep 3 (chap 13 scene)

Ep 8 chap 34 scene

Ep 10 chap 46 scene

Tsukishima’s voice seems the one to be used in Ep 2 to tell Tsurumi Ogata has regained consciousness (chap 7 in the manga) but, same as in the manga, we don’t see the speaker.

If the anime confirmed the fan speculation in accordance with Noda or on his own it’s up to speculation as we’ve no idea. What we know is that they had stock soldiers they could have used instead of Tsukishima who, in the first series, didn’t really need to be used as the anime had no idea there would be a second series for quite a while as this is tied with the success of the first series.

Anyway, how common it is for a character design not to be established right from the start?

Common enough although the changes can be small or relevant...

...though I dug into this more in another ask, in which I also analyzed Tsukishima’s character design changes.

Character design changes are sometimes fixed soon, Tsurumi’s design was immediately corrected for the volume version so that in the following chapters he appeared with the right design, Henmi and Usami’s design were fixed the chapter after the one he appeared, but sometimes not to sooon.

Ogata’s character design was changed at his second apparition but there was no way to fix it on the volume version and Noda didn’t even try to do it with the flashbacks showing Ogata in vol 1, Vasily’s character design was fixed only when the chapters were transposed in the volume version in short months after he appeared on the magazine.

It changes from case to case.

But yes, you might argue, who says we should accept, as the anime did, that the guy who drew Wada out and shoot him is Tsukishima? Can’t he be a stock character?

As long as Noda doesn’t confirm it, everything it’s possible and, even if he confirms it, actually everything remains possible, after all Noda even retconned the time in whcih Wilk was jailed and wrote out of the story one of the fake skins so let’s keep in mind this is his story, retcons are an uncomfortable but valid way to fix things in a story and he’s human and can forget details.

Honestly, unless Noda has a better plot in mind for him, I believe it would be detrimental to Tsukishima if that guy were to be a stock character.

Tsukishima is basically Tsurumi’s right-hand man and, since Kikuta is in Noboribetsu and Koito in Abashiri, the higher in rank. It makes sense to send him to Captain Wada, to draw him there, and it makes sense Tsukishima, the higher in rank after Tsurumi, would do that work so as to set an example for the other soldiers.

We know Tsurumi made clear to Tsukishima he would have to do dirty things and Tsukishima agreed.

We know he did dirty things, like taking part to the massacre of all the guards in Abashiri. We know he chased Tanigaki, planning to kill him and, while I like to think he wouldn’t have sunk killing Inkarmat, her unborn baby and Huci, he might have been forced to do it if things were to take the wrong turn. He threatened to kill Koito, he was aware the three Russians would be killed so as they could be considered the culprits of the kidnapping he took part in and he even commented on how they let Ogata kill Hanazawa, clearly aware that the guy would be killed and which consequences this would have for the 7th.

And let’s not forget that Tsukishima knows that Tsurumi wants to go at war with Japan for the ownership of Hokkaido because there’s no way the emperor will let him take Hokkaido without fight.

So it’s not like killing Wada, which for Tsukishima was likely just another pet of the central governement, to protect Tsurumi, is this big of a thing in terms of actions.

However it’s meaningful for us, for the story and for the character that Tsukishima is.

We’ve this guy, this guy who does, as his first thing, something terrible like killing a superior officer, this guy who’s generally around Tsurumi... but we don’t think much of him beyond that he should just be a minion among other minions so we shouldn’t feel concerned about him.

In whatever work no one cares about the soldiers of the ‘bad guy’, they’re just minions whose duty is to do evil and be killed off by the hero... but this applies, in a way also to the soldiers in an enemy army.

Sugimoto himself will say he persuaded himself the Russians were just ‘bad guys without a soul’. We don’t bother thinking at what each soldier in a army felt, which sort of person he was, if he sided with his commander or was forced to take part to that war. They’re all just ‘enemy soldiers’ without a real identity and representing minions as just ‘enemies’ without a real identity is, undoubtedly a narrative expedient but also something that mimicks how humans see the enemy armies.

Only in this story, in Tsukishima’s case, it turns out that minion that killed Wada is not just a minion we shouldn’t care about and could easily forget.

He has a name, he’s a person, a likable person, with feelings, a guy who loves long baths and who feels bad when Edogai dies. A guy who believes Tsurumi’s victory will bring benefits for everyone, a guy who’s capable. And the more the story goes the more this random minion is fleshed out more and more.

In a way Tsukishima stands in for all the minions in Tsurumi’s army.

While the other characters are quickly introduced, we get a name, we get some characteristics, they immediately rise out of the ranks of minions to become characters, Tsukishima doesn’t do it that fast.

It’s impossible for Noda to introduce us to all the 100 minions Tsurumi has, but, Tsukishima’s story in a way reminds us that they are all like him in truth, people with a name, people with feelings who could have a deep backstory behind themselves, who might have noble goals.

Many of us will feel really sad if the minion that Tsukishima is will die.

Plus, showing Tsukishima around, doing tasks and being effectively Tsurumi’s right hand man is a good idea in itself so as to establish Tsukishima as an existing character in the universe and not something Noda pulled out of his hat only at chap 70. Tsukishima existed, did things, was around, Noda showed him around, we were the ones who hadn’t given him the right importance in the beginning.

So yes, not only I believe the one killing Wada is meant to be Tsukishima but I also think it’s a great idea plotwise, one of which the character that’s Tsukishima benefits.

However, unless you consider the anime an official source, so far we’re still without an official confirmation. It might come in the future, it’s possible that Wada was another piece of the Ogata’s rebel group plot or that Wada was actually tied to Kikuta in some form or that Kikuta will just investigate on his fate.

Or maybe Noda will never tell us.

So ultimately it’s up to you decide for yourself.

If you ask me that guy is Tsukishima... but that’s just me.

I hope this will help. Thank you for your ask!

[pumpkin-lith]

Clone Wars Saved...ish

What the hell did I just watch ?

Let’s start by saying that 1) spoilers alert, not necessarily coherent but definitely there, I’ll put on a read more, but unspoiled mobile users, just in case it fails, scroll by and 2) @norcumii had warned me. And yet I didn’t quite expect that because, how could more clones ever be bad !

Oh boy.

Thanks to @shadow-spires for being my emotional support watchbuddy. I needed it more than I thought I would and we’re only three episodes in.

Some context : I’ve watched... only a few episodes of the show before, despite probably being able to give you the plot of all 6 seasons and quote lines and scenes, thanks tumblr and my own love for clones. And I hadn’t really looked at the bad batch half-rendered episodes because I still had trouble with the graphics of the actually finished show, so...

But I was ready for this, for feels, for finding Echo again and, finally, get 66 and murdered by Dave Filoni. Set up a meeting time to watch some eps with shadowspires, fun when there is a twelve hours diff between us and here we go.

Let me tell you, there was a lot of yelling in all caps in the chat side bar...

Trying to keep mostly in order of the episodes :

- WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO KIX’S HAIR ? Why ? Why hair and no more tattoo ??? Is this supposed to be red corsair continuity ? But then WHY IS HE HERE AND NOT ALREADY ABDUCTED ? Is this merch reasons ?

- Two seconds in and WOW I hate the Bad Batch. And this does NOT get better. I’m really tired of the Muscle is Dumb trope, Tech is like a human C3PO which urgh but fine but then KEEP CONSTANT (this is going to be a major point of my yelling), if Hunter says you chatter all the time THEN DO but no, we won’t here a single random fact ever again for three episodes, and Crosshairs chats and snarks a LOT for someone ‘not talkative’. 

- Regs. FUCKING REGS, urgh, I hated that word the INSTANT it was said. Canon isn’t as heavily into the Vode An fanon loves, but WOW fuck that. Strike team or not, you’re not supermen, you have to rely on intel, be supplied, you’re not a bunch of mercenaries, you’re a MILITARY STRIKE TEAM, you must interact with regs a lot so it means you’re a bunch of condescending assholes ALL THE TIME.

-Also fuck 1) that team’s dynamics and 2) the “two teams do not get along” trope, fuck it with a SHOVEL.  1) You’re a Commando Team. In an army three years deep into war. You’re comrades and probably have save each other asses hundred of times. So why can’t you behave ? And I know people do not always get along, or even best friends sometimes irk each other, but, look, consistency, if you think you’re with lesser people because regs (can you tell I’m not over that either), you present a united front and you don’t bitch at your teammates in front of them. 2) YOU ARE MILITARY. Trained for 10+ years, there’s DISCIPLINE there, even a maverick strike team, when Cody is down, you OBEY THE SECOND IN COMMAND. I don’t care if you have a better plan, you TELL the officer, you don’t just tell him to shut up and watch. AND YOU DON’T GET AT EACH OTHER’S THROATS.

-Did I mention I hate everything about Dumb Violent Muscles unable to control himself or follow a plan ?

-Of course the one time we could see Cody in charge, he’s hurt and useless.

-WHY. IS. THE MEDIC. GOSSIPING. INSTEAD OF KEEPING WATCH OVER THE WOUNDED BROTHER ???

AND WHY DOES HE HAVE HAIR DAMMIT

-The tactics Mess out of order :  Why is nobody blowing stuff up, a group able to single handedly take on 100+ droids is getting pushed back by thirty later on, why not trap the outpost to blow up the incoming droids, the analytical droid cannot comprehend why the clones would leave the outpost while in full view of the cyber center and it has to be pointed out to him, WHY DID NOBODY TRAP THE FUCKING OUTPOST TO BLOW, why does the tech guy LITERALLY NAMED TECH doesn’t hide/erase what they did to the computer, why if he didn’t have time DIDN’T HE BLOW UP THE COMPUTER. 

-And for a plot point being “droids analyzes our tactics so we always have to change them”, it means that no one ever attacked a front door and drew all the droids there for a second team to sneak by the back door. Somehow.

Ep2 & 3 :

- Why is “this may or may not be Echo” matters on a tactical PoV ? I get the emotional one, of course, but having the Bad Batch question it at the beginning and later on starting a fight over it has no other reason than to go for another round of We Do Not Get Along Trope. The Seps have either a PoW or an Algorhythm allowing them to win battle, no matter what it is, you have to go and rescue/take it. WHY ARE YOU ARGUING.

- I know this is the funny part of ‘Anakin and Padmé are the less subtle ever’ and it was funny (I didn’t hate ALL of the episodes, see ?), but why is she explaining to Anakin why he fights three years into the war other than reminding the public, this is the LEAST EFFECTIVE PLAN ever to hide from Obi-Wan with Rex obviously standing guard.

-Not a critic, just fucking amused : if someone isn’t aware that Padmé and Anakin are a thing, there is a lot of subtext to thing Anakin and Rex have a hidden fling. I don’t even ship it and I could see it x)

- Tell Padmé I say hello. TELL PADME I SAY HELLO. Obi-Wan fucking KNOWS, maybe not the whole “married and pregnant” but hellooooo that was blantant cue that he’s aware they’re together, at the very least so very close friends that they sneak private calls during a siege if Anakin is really dense, we have ONSCREEN PROOF that Obi-Wan SAID OUT LOUD something about it and it makes Anakin thinking Obi-Wan doesn’t know and couldn’t understand in RotS even STUPIDER. Good job Anakin.

- This Galaxy has the most efficient Google Translate ever. Either it’s a known language of the planet you’re going to, and then by doing research amidst the prep to go to the planet everyone or at least Rex as Captain would put the translator to the spoken languages there on his helmet, or it’s an unknown one and yet with two sentences, Tech’s tech (urgh) is able to translate and analyses it well enough to speak it back to them. Wow. 

- WHY. IS. THE. JEDI. NOT. USING. THE. FORCE. You’ve worked with Echo before but there’s no mention or even trying to feel him, fine, better have another fight of whether or not he’s truly here, two droids manage to get the drop on you, two droids manage to get the drop on you AND SOMEHOW AREN’T IMMEDIATELY BISECTED, Two droids manage to get the drop on you, survive, AND GIVE YOU ENOUGH TROUBLE YOU NEED SOMEONE TO SHOOT ONE TO GET OUT OF IT. 

- Echo, my poor baby TnT I knew this was going to hurt, and it does, it does so much. 

-And we’re RIGHT BACK to full on rage rather fast. We go from “he’s so weak he can’t walk, he doesn’t remember anything after the Citadel, he’s so out of it he doesn’t know where he is and ‘notices’ Rex being here two or three times” to “He can walk, he can be yeeted into a vent, he can tightpole walk, he can shoot while standing, he knows the whole base’s blueprints and also all the Separatist’s database.” in like. Five minutes. CONSITENCY FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Why is no one carrying him, why don’t we even get a fucking HUG ?

-Why was everyone yeeted by Dumb Muscles WHEN WE HAVE A JEDI HERE. WHY STILL NO FORCE ??? Clone-yeeting is like Anakin’s favorite pastime, he should have thought of it FIRST, My Moment Has Come.

- Oh FUCK NO. WHY did you even GO BACK TO THE NATIVES’ VILLAGE ? You got dragons, you fly back to your ship that wasn’t damaged in anyway, you evac fast and clean, DONE ! Why go back ? Anakin even says that the Techno Union will strike for helping them BUT UNTIL YOU WENT BACK THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE NATIVES HELPED YOU ! They had no problems until now ! DON’T INVOLVE CIVILIANS ! If they had gone with the plot point of having the natives pick a side and be the ones to save them from that pole by flying to get them, then yes, totally, stay and help and defend them against the retaliation massacre ! But since they didin’t, do NOT go there and draw to them a retaliation massacre.

-FUCK that speech. Sorry Rex, but FUCK THAT. Again, civilians. You are supposed to be the GOOD GUYS trying to STOP THE WAR, not draw innocents into it when it could be avoided. AND THEN LEAVE WHEN YOU JUST TOOK DOWN ONE ATTACK AND THE TECHNO UNION WILL SURELY COME WIPE OUT THAT VILLAGE FOR HELPING YOU AND THERE’LL BE NO JEDI TO SAVE THE DAY.

-Why is everyone suddenly dumb.

-Fuck that “good old days” bullshit. I’m sure there were good times, but your good old days are three years of war and losses. Gimme “now everything will be alright”, because for once someone survived, for once the future is looking hopeful, give me them hoping that it’ll be okay and then gut me with the sheer irony of it all because I know 66 is looming. AND FUCKING HUG HIM DAMMIT, he was almost catatonic thirty minutes ago, at least HELP HIM into the ship rather than leave him standing here alone.

-And no mention of Fives, of course. Idk it may be in episode 4, it BETTER be in Episode 4, otherwise this is “it be like the good old days, yay, btw Fives’ dead”.

I am SO ready for the damn Bad Batch arc to be over and hoping the actual original content is way better. I wished they had scrapped that disaster of an idea full of bad clichés. You want a strike team to go with Rex ? I’ve got a strike team for you : Jesse is an ARC, Kix is both a medic and seen many times with a rifle (AND THE COOLEST HAIRCUT, get us Bly there and give him a tracking speciality with the many ‘primitive’ planets he was on, and we have Aayla for the muscle. That would be badass.

[ganymedesclock]

I think one of my biggest issues with a certain amount of fanon around Lotor is that even if you count Lotor as an antagonist- which you can make a good argument for- he’s clearly measured with a different standard than other antagonists.

For example people really like to use the term “murderer” when they’re trying to shut down any insinuation that Lotor could be a good person. In my experience this often involves ascribing kills to Lotor that he didn’t actually do or that are very shaky.

For example? Zethrid’s comment that they tried to send ships into the rift, and the vessels exploded, which was “fun for me, not fun for your pilots.” I’ve seen this interpreted as “Lotor sent people into the rift to their deaths.”

We have to consider with very rare exceptions, the smaller fighter ships that both the empire and Lotor uses? Are piloted by robots. And what we see of Lotor’s subordinates in s4e3 shows us mostly drones- maybe a handful of actual flesh-and-blood galra. And it’s fair to assume it’s not those galra who are being sent out in fighter ships by Lotor- otherwise in s3e2 the paladins committed a massacre and they are our Y7 show heroes so that’s not a thing.

And even if I was a fan of your conclusion, you have to recognize that “these ships that we have a single line of reference to definitely contained real people when it’s very likely in this setting they didn’t, and Lotor definitely sent a large number of those people to their death when he’s not known to attempt the same thing futilely over and over and he doesn’t appear to have that many followers to sacrifice.”

You could make a much better argument for the two fleets that Acxa called in at the end of s3e3 to cover Lotor’s escape, which we know were manned by living people, but even then, given Voltron was the killing weapon, I’d hesitate to make that your triumphant stand of “this proves that Acxa’s a rotten person and by connection, Lotor”.

Yes, Lotor has killed. Raht, Narti, and Zarkon. (it’s also possible that he killed his first opponent in the gladiatorial ring in s3e1) All three individuals, to his understanding, posed an immediate threat to his own life.

The most ambiguous and nasty case in this one is definitely Narti- there are other ways Lotor could have handled that situation. Narti was not a willing spy- Haggar set her up and Lotor cut her down. S5e6 analyzes this thinking, however, and frames it as:

Lotor tends to self-sabotage...

...Via his incredible difficulty trusting others and tendency to assume that anything opposing him at the moment must hate him and want him to die...

...Which is almost definitely rooted in the trauma he disclosed to Allura that would mean he doesn’t have healthy emotional connections to draw from the idea that people don’t all inevitably hate him.

As an audience, a certain amount of us do have a reflex of “C’mon dude, Narti is your friend. She wouldn’t do that to you. Can’t you see that she needs help, not your sword in her chest?” because we’re detached, we have more information than he does, and we have an emotional investment in seeing Narti get that help.

And the white lion is used narratively to show us that it’s not an isolated incident and it had nothing to do with Narti personally- it’s Lotor’s problem. When the point of the lion trial is you have to realize the attacking beast won’t hurt you and isn’t your enemy, Lotor literally can’t win because everything he has ever known has taught him that he doesn’t have friends. At best, he has people who he’s useful to, and as soon as he’s not useful, they will turn on him.

And I feel like this is about the point people’s eyes glaze over because “come on Clockie I don’t care about Lotor’s sad backstory I care about the fact that he killed someone” but my point is these things are relevant.

Because otherwise it sure looks weird and inconsistent how after Narti and Zarkon both, Lotor goes really quiet, nearly unresponsive, and in the case of Narti, spends a long time genuinely not planning for his future at all that we can tell.

For me, the entirety of s4e5 and s4e6 is a huge red flag that Lotor didn’t want to do that. He did it, yes, because see the three points that are clarified for us in s5e6- but there’s a lot of difference between Lotor killing Narti and the way that Zarkon has Prorok disposed of in s2e1.

Lotor versus Narti, the team is in danger, he has seconds to make up his mind because if he’s wrong they’ll never shake their pursuers and any safe haven they seek out is going to be compromised, they’re on a ship under attack and everybody is panicking.

Zarkon versus Prorok, nothing is going on, it’s an ordinary Tuesday at the office, there is no pressure besides the vague, if he doesn’t catch a spy it might happen again, and there’s also no misunderstanding- Prorok immediately and clearly protests, and by the time Haggar’s carrying out his execution in s2e3, they know that Prorok isn’t even the guilty party. And Haggar makes it clear she just really doesn’t care.

And I mean there’s also the fact that we can list three people that Lotor killed (or had killed, in Raht’s case, the torn edge on his severed prosthetic suggest to me that Zethrid was at least involved) by name.

It’s flat-out disingenuous to insist Lotor’s three-man kill count is directly comparable to, oh, say, the two different inhabited planets Zarkon has been attributed with razing and conducting genocide on the inhabitants of (Altea in s1e1, the unnamed colony in s5e6) and his policies of torture, imprisonment in awful conditions, extended slavery, and carelessly disposing of his subordinates for, again, crimes they didn’t commit, would tell us that there are a huge number of other deaths on Zarkon’s head.

When, surprise surprise, all of those systems are things that Lotor would either have no need of the way he operates, or is shown to actively dislike. Taking new planets? He’d rather talk to them and even if he’s taking what he wants at swordpoint, he genuinely didn’t want to hurt the Puigians any more than bare minimum necessary and his soldiers went in under orders to kill no one. They didn’t even cause any property damage.

The system imperialism which relies on the galra owning everybody else? Lotor wants to dismantle it by giving power back to the occupied people (s3e1 and s3e2). 

(I have. seen too many people call Lotor an unapologetic imperialist when the one time he confesses he was interested in keeping a colony, he was put in charge of it by Zarkon and did everything he could to familiarize himself with the local culture and create good diplomatic rapport and not hurt their planet for his own exploitation. 

And Zarkon said “no” and burnt it down and didn’t put Lotor in power again, in which case it doesn’t matter how sincere Lotor is, the reason why Lotor hasn’t made progress dismantling the empire in the last ten thousand years was because Zarkon was using his much greater influence and power to make sure Lotor had nothing to show for his work)

Even the racism at the heart of the empire’s destructive policies, a point is made time and time again that Lotor very strongly lives and perceives himself as a mixed-race galra first. Most of his public appearances to the empire’s elite (s3e1 and s5e4) come with people hurling slurs, racist rhetoric, and death threats at him.

Even Lotor’s interest in the rift has a very different context than Zarkon and Honerva’s fascination with it if you consider the latter were experimenting with it in the heart of a populated planet that withered and died because of their work, they not only left it wide open but worked to make it bigger, and ignored the dangerous creatures living in there as well as the averse effect that it was having on, again, the heartland of the galra empire.

Lotor’s interest in the rift is as a way to decisively break the imperial system once and for all by basically flooding the market with so much quintessence nobody will ever need to forcibly take it from other planets and Zarkon’s system will be financially worthless. Which might sound callous unless you consider Lotor is going to need a callous argument since you can’t take someone like Throk and sit them down through the annotated power point of “Today, I will explain to you why you should care if other people are suffering.”

And the first thing Lotor does with the rift is basically put such a dense mechanical lock on it that he can’t actually figure out how to get in there himself. He’s building countermeasures for things that he quite possibly doesn’t even know about (the rift creature) with this.

But not only does Zarkon have a massive kill count, if you look at Zarkon killing Alfor, Trigel, Gyrgan and Blaytz, and compare that to Lotor killing Narti...

Lotor struck Narti down quickly under duress, and when it became clear the other generals were also betraying him, Lotor specifically chose not to kill them as well even though that left him in a very bad place tactically- it ended up meaning that now Haggar has one of the two Sincline ships, the one that had tested and proven itself as able to hold off Voltron in single combat, and the generals know about the rift gate, and they’re all devastatingly powerful fighters.

Sure, Acxa and Ezor might have been able to fight him off, but Lotor could have at least shot Zethrid off the hull of the first Sincline ship and they wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop him. But Lotor even basically tells them to take care of themselves before he leaves and has shown no interest hunting them down afterwards.

Because “hunting them down” is exactly what Zarkon did to his old team. Even when the only threat Alfor posed to him was that if he insisted on continuing to selfishly chase the rift that he didn’t need (Honerva was alive again, so even his initial reason wasn’t there)- and Zarkon’s basic first act of reanimation was to declare war on Altea.

Which is contrasted by this shot, which would sure seem to suggest that the reason why his people were still alive and there to hear him was because Altea took them in as refugees after the destruction of Daibazaal.

Zarkon planned, carefully, and made up his mind and went and hunted down all four paladins and killed them. If there’s barely a handful of living Alteans left after the destruction of its home planet, even though they were advanced spacefaring people, it’d suggest that Zarkon deliberately hunted down the survivors, and both his attitudes towards Allura in s1e1 and the way he talks about being able to wipe Lotor out in s5e2 would sure line up with that.

So like... can we not suggest that the three people Lotor killed when two of the three of them he’s shown to be unhappy about are somehow analogous to Zarkon’s multiple counts of systematic genocide?

Even if you think Lotor’s an antagonist, he’s not as bad as Zarkon and he’s definitely not worse than Zarkon. And when most of our main antagonists in the setting are much closer to Zarkon’s level (Haggar’s also a planet-killer via the Komar and her plan at Naxzela would have wiped out a large number of inhabited planets, Sendak makes a comment about invading Earth specifically because of the paladins’ resistance against him) Lotor stands out as a guy who’s moral enough that the paladins, including Shiro- a man of very potent personal morals- find him palatable company.

[awed-frog]

hi there! i dont tend to trust sdcc interviews but i figure i'd ask this so i could get your opinion! a big thing they were talking about was the aftermath of michael on dean.. if they do this right it could be SO good and SO interesting for his character.. so i was gonna ask what you think this means for his character? after he is done being possessed by michael?

Hi! I haven’t heard the spoilers, and to be honest my enthusiasm about the show is pretty much in free fall - under a cut and sort of bitter, okay?

So, the obvious parallels that come to mind are Dean coming back from Hell and Dean being freed from the Mark, and I think the time and energy the show spent of those aftermaths is very telling of what the narrative priorities are. 

If you look at the post-Hell period - was intense. I haven’t rewatched that season in a while, but I seem to remember they spent a lot of time on how broken and not himself Dean was? And the whole thing, of course, was revealed to be even more tragic than what fans expected when Dean decided to tell Sam about how he’d chosen to torture others. Ouch. That was some truly powerful stuff, especially because in the pre-Hell period Dean had mostly pretended to be carefree - scarfing down burgers for breakfast, having threesomes, and generally trying to convince himself (and others) that since he never had much of a lifespan anyway, this death made complete sense. All of that, of course, was masterfully contrasted with how Dean actually died - he never got the hero death I’m sure many were expecting, the beautiful and sexy death main characters and pretty people are mostly gifted (or burdened) with. Instead, it was terrifying, base, humiliating affair - Dean was literally torn apart by dogs as his baby brother watched (not to mention he regretted his righteous decision as soon as he landed in Hell, and found himself calling for Sam like a frightened child instead of suffering his fate in manly silence). Jesus Sycamore Christ. That was beyond sobering, as was the whole post-Hell period - and especially how Dean wasn’t, in the end, all that happy to be alive again. Again: ouch.

What happened in S11 was rather different. On the whole, I enjoyed that season a lot, but while there were some tense and emotional moments for Dean (like his conversation with God), I found it very odd - and somewhat disappointing - that nobody ever mentioned the Mark again. After all, it was implied (or stated outright? I honestly don’t remember) that the Mark didn’t exactly change Dean; its power was preying on people, and taking their worst instincts to horrifying extremes. For instance, Dean kept hunting, but where he would normally give people a second chance, or find a solution that didn’t involve a full-out massacre, MoC!Dean never cared about that at all. However necessary it was for Dean to choose this burden (and even that is debatable), it led very directly to the death of a bunch of innocent people - Charlie, of course, but also the NoHomo hunter, knockoff Draco Malfoy and Rowena’s godchild (you’d think she’d mention him again at some point, or that Sam and Cas would bring him up in a kind of ‘Hey, remember when we slaughtered an innocent teen on the off chance his beating and bloodied heart could cure Dean? Good times’, but nope). To make matters worse, those four deaths happened in the space of a couple of days? And I get that Dean had other things on his mind soon after he was cured, but I still found it bizarre that they never came up at all. I mean - sure, there were subtextual clues and all that - when are there not, amirite - but to me, it was too weak. Honestly, it looked like Dean (and Sam, and Cas) just didn’t give a damn about the trail of destruction they’d left behind. Because this is what’s never acknowledged in S11: that those deaths were on them. Whoever got killed when Dean had the Mark: on them. And, more directly and unequivocally, all those people Amara killed: on them. That’s some powerful stuff, and yet it’s never explored at all, because it’s not what the current showrunner is interested in.

All this to say: in theory, post-Michael!Dean should be huge. The fact Dean took the decision so quickly was already a narrative blunder, considering how he’d been in exactly the same situation (and worse) in earlier seasons but had decided to say no to Michael. I mean - Dean’s free will and how it clashes with his need to help others - that’s the core of the character, and yet it took one line of dialogue to erase it into nothingness. Now, heading into S14 it looks pretty likely that Dean will rid himself of Michael very early - we’re talking two or three episodes, max, and apparently that’s our fault or something (don’t even get me started), which means this Very Meaningful and Earth-Shattering thing is already losing importance in favour of - I don’t know.

(More KFC demons? Lucifer’s cousin Throckmorton? Bobby and Mary’s budding romance and how that is finally the thing that turns Mary into a Tupperware wife and removes her from the boys’ lives in a believable way? I guess we’ll see.)

Will it have an effect on Dean? Obviously I can’t say for sure, but I doubt it. 

Like, for one, Michael has no beef with Dean, and vice versa. These two characters are not connected in any emotional way. To Michael, Dean is just a random and contemptible human; to Dean, Michael is just another over-ambitious freak in need of a good beheading. As for archangel possession - that’s tricky. Some guys are left empty shells; Sam wasn’t, and Cas wasn’t (and Dean is another main character, so he can’t be hurt too badly). Sam suffered a lot, but that’s because Lucifer hated him and had a personal vendetta against him. As a comparison, when Lucifer possessed Cas, he basically gave Cas a nice TV and never bothered him again, and I think that’s a more accurate description of the connection between AU!Michael and Dean. Neither of them cares enough for this thing to escalate. So whatever happens between them (Michael dies; Michael is kicked back to the AU!world; Michael finds another suitable vessel; Michael is forced into an unsuitable vessel), I don’t think there’ll be a lot of focus on how that changes Dean.

On the plus side, there are solid narrative reasons for that lack of focus to make sense. For instance, Dean’s never been the emotionally stunted troll fanon keeps pretending he is, but over the last two seasons he’s really made an effort to make his feelings crystal clear, and he’s been berated and ignored every single time. So if I were him, I don’t think I’d be very eager to confide in Sam ‘What about MY feelings?’ Winchester, Mary ‘Ew, I don’t want to be your mom’ Winchester or Cas ‘You humans make everything so needlessly complicated’ Winchester (he’s a brother now, right? even if for some reason we’re seeing him less than Jack). No, Dean is likely to keep his feelings private - despite the fact this experience should, logically, be a turning point for him. We know Dean has big issues when it comes to giving up control, and possession is - inevitably - also a metaphor for rape, which is - canonically? - a part of Dean’s past (look at Alastair’s unnecessary queering, for God’s sake). So a post!Michael Dean - he could have less confidence in himself, especially if his decision ends up doing more harm than good for some reason, or he could develop PTSD and decide to retire because he’s got nothing left to give (narratively sound, but not a place the show can afford to go to) or he could become nihilistic and even more determined to get his blaze of glory ending, and sooner rather than later (after all, we know he gets suicidal when he feels he needs to atone, so).

From a RL perspective, I don’t know how much of that we’ll see. Considering how little they used post-MoC!Dean, I think maybe we can expect some new crisis which will keep the focus off Dean’s feelings and opinions. On the other hand, S13 was basically a ‘best of’ of the Kripke era, so it’s possible that S14 will revisit the post-Hell!Dean theme in some way. I don’t know. Lately, the show seems determined to prove our heroes are Good People Who’ve Done Nothing Wrong Ever, so from that perspective Dean saying yes to Michael should turned out to be a Big Mistake, because Dean saying no to Michael is basically half of what saved the world the first time around. Then again, I’m not seeing a lot of coherence on that front (I’m on team ‘Why was the AU!world even about Mary’, sorry about that), so, really - everything is anyone’s guess. At this point, the one thing we can predict about Supernatural is that if you’re interested in the characters’ inner lives and in them actually evolving in some healthy way, you’re better off with fanfiction.

I apologize. I know that was depressing and bitter. Here is a baby owl.