#same shit with wrangling everyone socially

[die-tenebris]

Time to be poisoned by bitterness again! makes me beyond enraged that the burden of ensuring the people around me know to vote falls on me. I'd like to be mad that the info isn't very in your face, but also, it's pretty dang accessible (if you think ahead to look). Idk. Government do better. But also wish I wasn't the only person even vaguely engaged. I'm really sick of having to get everyone on the same page. It's exhausting.

[kaidatheghostdragon]

That trope where danny and jason meet during jason's six months dead? That, but with good fenton parents.

Jason is either the same age or a year or two younger than danny (between danny'and ellie's age). The fentons know danny is a ghost and have already adopted ellie. Team phantom includes the entire fenton family and valerie (and obv sam and tucker), maybe even valerie's dad.

Vlad is either reformed (post agit with teen dan?), blackmailed into submission, ran out of town, or "dealt with." The giw have been run out of town, and may or may not still exist somewhere licking their wounds. Peaceful ghosts are openly welcomed in the town, which is phantom's haunt, the fentons plus red huntress deal with the troublemakers, and the phantom siblings handle the biggest threats. May or may not be an everyone knows au.

Anyways, danny runs into the ghost of robin and is all, holy shit, a teen vigilante died, and immediately drags robin home to get all the overbearing comfort and love the fenton family can provide.

Somehow, that transformed into the fentons adopting the ghost of robin as one of their own. Jason even starts going to caspar high. Everyone knows that jason is a ghost of a kid who died too young and may be considered an honorary phantom, only team phantom knows that he's robin, and may have learned a concerning amount about batman from jason, depending on how open he is.

The joker disappears a month after jason joins the fentons and the fenton parents have solid alibis to prove they werent involved (having access to phantom's ghost allies is a large boon).

After six months of living (excuse the term) with the fentons, its as if jason has always been part of the family. So his sudden disappearance is a shock. Its treated as a ghostnapping, and the fentons are quick to use the boomerang to track him down.

They find a near-catatonic, but very much living, jason either wandering gotham, or just as he's being carted off by talia. If the latter, wrecking the league of assassins probably becomes an entire team phantom affair.

Jason is brought back home, and between the fentons and frostbite, they find a way to treat jason, learning that his living body is developing into a halfa in a similar slow manner that vlad did, but with jason's ghost core already fully developed.

That's four different halfas created in four different ways (five for five if teen dan exists), plus the increasingly liminal population of amity park, and the human members of team phantom so strongly liminal that they all have protocores and will probably become halfas when they die.

At this point, the story can go multiple directions.

If the fentons wrecked the league of assassins, either they discovered damian or talia dropped him off with bruce a few years early, when tim is just starting out as robin. If the fentons have damian, serious discussions about informing bruce of his biokid ensue, and the fact that theyve also adopted his undead son will inevitably come up and whether jason wants to deal with that mess of emotions.

If damian is dropped off with bruce, bruce is gonna hear stories of an orange man that can bust through walls, his teal assassin wife, their fiery daughter, and pair/trio of loyal white haired pit demons (assuming jason's ghost is white haired, and whether or not he's well enough to join), that wrecked ra's shit and sealed away the pits. He *will* investigate. Also, damian and tim will probably have to be kept separated, probably by having tim patrol with dick while bruce wrangles the feral child. This is smack dab in the middle of the worst period of the batfams social dynamics, but otoh, damian being younger will ultimately be better for him as he'll probably be deprogrammed a lot easier.

If the fentons never cross paths with the loa, another avenue is still open with the giw. If they've been run out of amity, but the anti ecto acts still exist, the justice league still have a chance to encounter them. Perhaps after amity ran the giw out, a formal complaint was filed to the justice league (they finally broke through the giw's blackout), but it was labelled a non-emergency (because the complaint described how the town couldnt get the message out until *after* they dealt with the problem) and was never investigated for being labelled a low priority. Baby robin tim found the file while exploring the bat computer and asked bruce about it, kicking off an investigation.

On the flipside, the giw try to convince the justice league that hostile entities have taken control of a small midwestern city, maybe the league is convinced right up until batman comes face to face with jason and is willing to hear him out.

If none of the above, jason could start talking about how he wants to return home to help crime alley, and the fentons support him all the way. You could even have jason still become red hood the crime lord, minus the family drama and joker ultimatum, and the training he would have gotten from the league is covered by ghost hunting, halfa powers, and the fenton parents' ecclectic skillset. Cue gotham being slowly invaded by team phantom as each child in turn goes to gotham U for college to be near and support jason.

Or jason is perfectly happy to stay in amity forever, but jazz goes to gotham U for its psychology program. She tries to keep her head low, but batman at this point runs a background check on every psychology major in gotham U (maybe bruce wayne funded a reform of the program - the reason why its now lauded as one of the best in the nation - to try to prevent more rogues being created.) Jazz pings a few warning criteria because her parents match a handful of mad scientist traits, so batman is now doing a full investigation on her family and finds a picture of jason.

Ignoring all of that, maybe jason keeps tabs on batman and is extremely upset that he's taken on another robin after the last one died. He's emotionally stable enough, and the fentons emotionally competent enough, to get him to talk and work through his emotions, but everyone agrees a wellness check for the new robin is in order. They go to gotham and confront batman, realize he's an emotional mess and that tim forced his way into the role and decide that the bats are all fentons now, no batman, you cannot escape. Assimilation is inevitable. We *will* get you to work through your grief and make you a better vigilante because of it. And tim has been abandoned by his parents and is living alone? That wont do. We're going to assume for your benefit that you were too grief-stricken to notice bruce, but you will not be making any more oversights like that under our watch.

There are probably a dozen other directions this could go, but mostly i just wanted to provide some prompts/ideas with ghost/halfa jason as a fenton. I need more fluffy fenton dynamics and jason fluff.

[kkangkkangie]

Professor Headcanons

Albus Dumbledore

he’s very accomplished in terms of wizarding academics, having won nearly every accolade there is. but—but, he’s also not averse in using like “muggle” techniques. the reason he even matched up against Voldemort is (cause I guarantee you) this person pulled out some muggle warfare tactic that caught him off-guard.

✨weaponized ignorance✨ (like seriously everyone knows he’s a genius, but like gets away with saying stuff like “nitwit” and “blubber”) he feels like a Luna kinnie at times

he switched out the smart three piece suit when (1) he no longer needed to impress Grindewald & (2) realized wizard robes were like blanket hoodies

“to be a wizen is a right, but to use magic is a privilege” 

Minerva McGonagall

this lady has the wizen equivalent of a physics PhD & she did it all with grace and sophistication. do not mess with her—there’s a reason she was chosen to wrangle a bunch of kids who think rules are like glowsticks (i.e. meant to be broken).

this is that one professor who grades your exams in one day & posts grades immediately. Alternatively, she somehow never misses a question. either she has the world’s greatest spell for grading or she’s just that good. 

she’s the de-facto leader of the faculty (other than Dumbledore, but even he defers to her at times) + the stern parent that makes sure that the emo child (snape) gets social interactions or botany hyperfixater (sprout) doesn’t create a breed of plants that eats the students, etc. 

“words are meaningless if there is no willpower driving it—conversely, one should not speak unless one wants to will something to reality”

Severus Snape

that asocial genius trope. he hated eating at the faculty table in front of students so he didn’t. until came Celaena and Harry Co., then for the sake of keeping his sanity intact, he did (he even does a little headcount of his students & panics if one of them is missing)

he wears the same robes for a reason. they keep him cool in the heat of summer & somehow provides insulation for the cold dungeon winters. it works. he wears.

he learned that simply not requiring textbooks in his class (or at least one pertaining to brewing) was better than losing his shit everytime he saw the terrible instructions. in his first few years of teaching, he set 4 textbooks on fire. 

“there is nothing worse than incompetency masquerading as confidence” 

Pomona Sprout

acts like she’s on five coffees a day even though she doesn’t drink any. this lady has the strength and energy of a whole farm—she could plant all day & be the happiest person on the planet. she’s the strongest faculty member (stronger than Hooch, which allows for some fun challenges when inebriated) 

she experiments a lot! like she has several notebooks dedicated to recording the minute changes in the properties of plants—with the aid of Snape’s potion skills. the two singlehandedly came up with a new set of ingredients for seasonal potions for the Hospital Wing.

loves to talk with students outside of classes (oftentimes, dragging them to the greenhouses) & it really didn’t matter what house you were in. most students found her the easiest to approach from all houses and years.

“plants are like miniature humans! but I do think they listen much better than you lot”

Aurora Sinistra

she’s that one teacher that’s super hard at the beginning, but as you get used to her teaching methods—best teacher ever. the reason that students in arithmancy usually get a minimum of an A? it’s her. she taught them well.

best tea brewer ever. periodt. Snape’s a close close second, but there’s something about the infusion of moonlight that makes hers legendary. the two often share recipes together—a habit from their years at Hogwarts (although, back then, it was mostly recipes for their friends b/c wow were they bad at taking care of themselves)

she tries to keep homework as small as possible b/c it’s not possible to wait until the stars are out to do them sometimes, but it means that classes are more often. she’s the first teacher to adjust the schedule based on the seasons—less classes, more hw in winter & vice versa in summer season)

“every myths and legends can be ascribed to the beauty of outer universe—we must not forget”

Filius Flitwick

just to start, big aristotle kinnie. he has the aristotelian physics PhD equivalent in the wizarding world (definite big brain). he’s the only other person who can really get technical with McGonagall—both of them are menaces at faculty gatherings.

he has the best manners—not just like table manners, but like how to engage in socialite behavior expertise in multiple customs. he’s practically eligible to be a proper diplomat, but he chose to teach charms because he practically becomes like a little child again, wide-eyed and excited.

he has a very structured manner of teaching b/c he realized how often he’d go on tangents. his older students have the privilege to listen to his rabbit holes before descending down into their own rabbit holes too. 

“brilliance is subjective! every idea is brilliant if you are so enamored by it”

Cuthbert Binns

ghosty man who continued to teach even after death. he became a true icon of living history cause not only did he teach Riddle, McGonagall, Moriarty, and even Harry Potter—he lived through them & he did it all half-asleep. respect.

has no respect for wizen legend and myths—he’s much more rather interested in wizen fact that align with Muggle mythology and legends. there’s an element that he is able to prove and extrapolate—it gets too much with wizen technicalities. 

this man has two office hours. you can either go ask for help and gain a whole lecture on your topic or you can join a group sleepfest. some students with insomnia noticed being able to sleep with his voice as white noise. truly a cure for them.

“we [historians] are not seers; wizen merely have an unfortunate habit of making mistakes and forgetting about them”

[nichiperi]

MWAHAHAHAHAHA I DID IT!! Look at my terrible fail-children! (⁠✷⁠‿⁠✷⁠)

An aggregious amount of MORE information about them under the cut lol.

Here's everyone's basic timelines. But keep in mind, I'm still reworking them so they could change.

BEK

• Grows up in the smeetery at the same time as Chara and former Tallest Spork. All three of them end up getting a lot of special privileges upon leaving because they're tall.

• Bek has a super brief stint being an Irken Elite soldier with Chara for some basic training.

• Takes the test to become re-encoded as Invader class and passes with flying colors.

• Meets Teira when getting a custom weapons system for his ship. The two enjoy talking about horrendously destructive weapons and cool explosions together.

• Is responsible for the take-over and/or destruction of several planets. These accomplishments combined with his height make him a prominent figure in Irken high society. He frequently meets with Tallest Miyuki directly, and is always invited to socials, which he always invites Chara and Teira to as his plus ones.

• Miyuki grants Bek the gift of a vacation. He takes the opportunity to discover a new world on the fringes of Irken-observed space: Earth.

• He arrives on Earth in the year 1989. After a having a horrible time and traumatizing a single horrible human, he returns home and reports Earth as being a garbage planet with garbage lifeforms. Upon his return, he discovers that Miyuki is dead, and Spork is now the tallest.

• Spork and Bek proceed to hate each other fervently, but are still forced to interact because the whole of Irken society expects it. It's awkward.

• Bek discovers a planet that reveals some amazing truths about ancient Irken society. Spork blows it up on orders from the Control Brains. Bek is pissed.

• Bek and a mysterious vortian botanist form an unlikely alliance, and begin holding meetings for a secret society that aims to take down Tallest Spork. However, just as their murderous plans come to a head, Spork just happens to die a horrible death due to some energy blob thing I dunno. Weird.

• New Tallests Red and Purple promote Bek to becoming an Irken Special Enforcer (Basically like a 'Secret Police' type of position, but only really tall Irkens can get it. Of course they also have to not suck at their current job.).

• Bek keeps in contact with the anti-Sporkers. They wanna know who killed him. Because of this, Bek gets involved in the trial of Zim by being one of the people to wrangle him back to Irk for the event.

• After watching that shit-show go down, Bek decides he's just sick of the Empire in general and decides to go off on his own. He invites Chara and Teira, but they refuse.

CHARA

• Raised in the smeetery with Bek and Spork. She gets along with both of them equally, and often breaks up their fights. Usually by being a violent turd and knocking them both out.

• What was supposed to be brief stint as an Irken Elite soldier turns into a decades long career when she fails the Invader-class test. She ends up really enjoying her work as a soldier, however.

• She tends to meet up with Bek a lot after he's conquered another planet for the Empire, as her squad of soldiers is often sent to do "clean-up duty" and law enforcement after a planet's been taken over.

• Chara is promoted to being a Fleet Commander.

• She meets Teira through Bek, and while she is not impressed by Teira's height, she does enjoy getting intel on the latest weapons. The two begin a lifelong, flimsy fake semblance of a friendship.

• When Bek leaves on his vacation, Chara is given a chance to re-take the Invader-class test, and passes. Teira follows suit. Chara almost begins to respect her. But not quite.

• Chara gets sent to planets which need to be subdued by force and taken over.

• After Miyuki is killed, Spork becomes the Tallest. He gives Chara everything she asks for, so of course she thinks he's a fantastic leader.

• Chara becomes enraged when Spork is killed, vowing to kill whoever was responsible.

• She is present at Zim' trial, and nearly leaps down from her seat to maim him after hearing that his blob killed Tallest Spork. Teira and Bek keep her in check.

• Chara hopes to grow taller and become a Tallest like Spork someday, but she's stopped growing decades ago. She never lets go of her anger over his death.

TEIRA

• Raised in the smeetery about 10 years after Bek and Chara, Teira is small and keeps to herself. She's extremely intelligent, and immediately becomes a scientist upon leaving.

• Teira chooses to work in weapons development because she adores the sight of explosions. It's the only thing that brings her a genuine sense of joy.

• Bek and Chara are the first Irkens that Teira almost enjoys spending time with, though she would likely rather expire than admit that.

• Teira is probably the least species-ist of the trio at this point, as she frequently worked with Vortians and other capable scientists during her time as a weapons developer.

• When Bek leaves for his vacation, Teira is inspired to try to pass the Invader-class test after Chara brags about it. She very easily passes. As an Invader, Teira is usually sent to planets that don't have much in the way of sentient life in order to blow everything up and create a clean slate.

• When Spork becomes the Tallest, Chara begins hanging around him more often, leaving Teira and their rivalry/almost friendship begins to deteriorate somewhat. When Bek returns, the two spend more time together without Chara for a while.

• After the death of Spork, the trio begins to hang out frequently again, though the dynamic is significantly different. Both Bek and Chara have drastically changed as a result of Spork's time as Tallest for vastly different reasons. Teira is the only one to notice this, but does nothing.

• Teira opts to stay with Chara out of the hope that they'll one day rekindle the horrible fake friendship they once had....but the excuse she ACTUALLY gives is that she'd prefer the stay on Irk for the time being as flying around didn't suit her well.

[unhingedselfships]

7 and 8 for everyone

Can do!

7. Do you ever end up in danger because of them?

Short answer is yes, for assorted reasons.

Longest answer, is several specific scenarios I've come up with, that are entire posts on their own, and will require not-insignificant tagging. I enjoy horror/crime drama and it shows XD

The medium answer, I'll give you now.

Daigo, Chairman, unfortunately it comes with the territory. He does his best to mitigate but you can't really account for everything all the time.

Akiyama having money makes on a target no matter how good of a person they try to be. His attitude doesn't endear him to everyone either. This one is probably the least high level of danger, but it's there.

Majima is. Majima. People are afraid of him, but he also pisses a lot of people off. His position doesn't help.

Kiryu also pisses a lot of people off and manages to get involved in everything. One is bound to get caught in the crossfire at some point.

(the arguably worst thing that happens because of being connected to Kiryu, is straight up his actions and his fault. he didn't intend what happened to happen, but it did, and it takes a long time to forgive or move forward)

8. What does the average day look like for you and your ship?

Trying to stay busy while I languish about the house awaiting my love to return? I kid I kid.

With Daigo it's usually a quiet morning routine, before he vanishes into his office. He might go out, if needed. I take him lunch and then chill with him for the afternoon-evening. Reading, sketching, whatever. I just like being in the same space and he doesn't mind it either. Evenings-nights are usually either winding down and chilling, or handling various social obligations.

Akiyama gets to deal with me and Hana ganging up on him to actually do his job. I don't actually care that much if I'm honest, but it's fun to give him shit. Otherwise I'll lurk around the office, doing my own thing or tidying/helping with the filing etc to lighten Hana's load. Evenings we either curl up together and watch TV or something, or if there was somewhere I really wanted to go eat, then we'll make an evening of it.

Majima is all over the place any given day. The man struggles to be sedentary. We might catch each other in passing in the mornings if we're lucky. I'll ambush him at the office if I haven't been warned off for the day. Nishida does an excellent job of keeping me updated. If he's not doing anything overly dangerous, there's a decent chance Maji will drag me around town with him on whatever hijinks he's getting up to. Evenings tend to be dedicated to any social obligations Maji has to field. Whether I tag along depends entirely on my mood. I can usually coax him home with dinner though. He's a sucker for home cooking.

With Kiryu, most of the day is spent wrangling kids. Luckily the orphanage kids are all great. Mornings are getting lunches together and maybe prep work for dinner if I feel up to it. Getting everyone shuffled off where they need to be. Kir inevitably gets drug off to somewhere for something, and that works because I hate cleaning when there are other people existing. Having everyone out gives me a chance to tackle the house work. If I have the spoons. On especially bad days I make it clear he's staying and helping me, and everyone else can wait. He means well but tends to spread himself to thin. He's gotten pretty good about it though. Evenings are getting everyone settled back in, clean up routines, dinner, etc. Once everyone is settled we try to squeak out a little us time before we crash. It can get chaotic but we make it work.

[redscullyrevival]

Vid Notes: You Stupid B****

When first planning to make this vid I was hesitant to use girl in red's "You Stupid Bitch" but after test running a few other songs I eventually convinced myself it was the best option for what I wanted to focus on.

To me, Our Flag Means Death is a series that uses it's setting along with it's varied LGBTQ+ characters to explore messy queerness without coming off as "poor representation".

Everyone is already complicit in social, sexual, moral, whatever ambiguity - they're friggin' pirates. They are all, quite literally, in the same boat with no one singled out by the production as being worse than or more righteous than any others under their flag, ya feel me? Like… Come on, you get it right? Yeaaaah, you get it. *finger guns*

I edit fan vids because I can use the images and narratives of shared stories to create my own dialogues of interest. I make things with the intent of being seen and understood as a person, not just for the sake of presenting a show and going, "Remember when that happened? Yeah, that was cool…" I use media and music to re-direct focus on to what I want to say; and this video is a discussion on how raising our own standard together is what defines love and community, not a series of boxes we need to make sure we're checking - or avoiding.

As such, I really enjoyed the notion that even though we can all recognize calling someone you claim to be perfect for and love a stupid bitch isn't exactly a nice thing to do it is still immensely relatable. I wanted the raw and slightly mean sting of the chorus to aid me in playing with the show's emotionality and humor.

Since fan vids typically operate the same way normal music videos do it is always easier to edit to a song as though it is representing a particular character; by either being about them or insinuating through the edit they're in 'possession' of the singing voice.

Desperate to avoid accidentally presenting the show's messy queerness as something one sided I have tried my best to edit in a way that express a mutually held voice between the two main characters.

Quickly establishing and then maintain throughout the vid that Blackbeard and Bonnet are both calling the other a stupid bitch (that both are 'singing' the song to each other) required imagery consistency on a level I have rarely aimed for. I couldn't show Blackbeard more or less than I did Bonnet and most importantly I couldn't arrange footage in a way that would emotionally direct one as being more present than the other within the lyrical rhythm.

Our Flag Means Death is an incredibly tight production which is a blessing in that shots are composed with great consistency and the editing holds an even pace across both seasons, making it a series that is easy to pluck clips from. It is not however a series with a lot of fat and with 18 episodes total I found myself running into footage spacing issues by the time I had finished laying down the first minute of the song.

Blah blah no one gives a shit - all I'm sayin' is that this wasn't easy to make, yeah?

This vid required a lot of footage wrangling and trying out 20 something combos of clips for 7 seconds of song over and over and over. Which, ya know, I suppose that's the hobby at the end of the day but this particular project was wrought with microscopic footage management that got me lost in the sauce. I'm happy to have pulled through with the help of my beta viewer Lee who may not have had any choice in the matter but I would still like to thank all the same.

On top of all that (lmfao) I also REALLY wanted the majority of this vid to fall in line with how I've had to edit for my non-cannon same sex ships in the past, culminating in a sort of switcharoo gotcha for no real reason other than my own amusement.

Boring bits for posterity:

About five days planning

Week and a half of editing

Probably like half a bottle of Dry Eyes

Only spent two days coming to terms with the indifference for which my work will be met (most of my stuff has not cleared this hurtle in recent years)!

Deepest point is five layers

[taxfraudhousewife]

hey toga

getting a job didn’t cure the depression

the new kind of depression

at least it’s not personal anymore

at least everyone doesn’t hate me for reasons no one can place but everyone can see

i don’t know what to do now

i have so many questions

i wish it didn’t take me so long to think of them

i’m sorry i took so long

i really wish you were here

my friends don’t want to do illegal shit

my mom thinks i’m brainwashed

maybe you are too

i can’t decide if it’s better or worse than regular brainwashing

what the fuck did you do

i haven’t even internalized your actual death how am i supposed to internalize the fucking concept of socialism without tearing myself inside out

how did you hold your outsides out

what kind of outside did you even have to grow

i think mine is bad

i know yours is worse

how did you just sit inside your own outside

i can’t keep it separate

maybe we’re not supposed to

but everyone else can

i can’t tell if you did

i assume not if you were abusing that many substances

but you weren’t as insufferable as i am

that extremely likeable disposition

i know it’s wrong to be jealous of you

it’ll never stop until i am you

i wouldn’t have to be become you if you were still here

if you took me with you or not i could’ve been something else

someone whose muslim jesus is alive and well

im so desperate to be the person you might’ve turned me into

but there is no one to do the turning

except for me

who still really misses you

me who can’t just let you go

maybe i’m just a woman who needs a man to follow and serve

so ready to throw the second brick that the first no longer crosses my mind

and boy have i seen my beloved men be strong and brave

but maybe that’s why i put too much faith in them

it could’ve been you

i will never get over that

a god i would fight to my death for

isn’t that dramatic from me of all people

id probably get you killed a lot sooner

you’d never let me come in the first place

you’d talk me out of it and i’d obey because that’s what religious freaks do

who knows how long i’d spend believing im meant to follow the rules

because you’d say what you need to say to keep me from becoming you

i’m not anything like you tho

i’m too scared to do anything alone

and jesus louisis i am so alone without you

and i’m so fuckin lost and i miss you

my friends say let it eat itself

but that would make you an accelerationist

and i have that same accelerationist demon inside

but he’s just as afraid to act alone as i am

it’s so lonely

that’s the point

and i could get over myself for the sake of actual human connection

i could let the world eat itself

maybe even be happy

and you wouldn’t blame me

you’d probably encourage it

i know you wouldn’t want me to throw away my undeserved place in the machine for ideologies and promises

i know you wouldn’t want me under the fireworks and orchestras

it must’ve been hard

the balance between keeping the teenagers safe and radicalizing them too far

teaching revolution without violence

when you know it’s not possible

i assume they weren’t as hardcore loyalist as me

i assume they know better than me that nothing is possible without violence

i imagine you desperately wrangling angry nineteen year olds

your incantations are only half as effective on them

i keep wondering if you were afraid that you’d set them up for death so young

wish you’d wrangle me

or choose not to

but an active choice rather than dead omission is all i really want

i could hate myself less if you carved away what you deemed excess

if i could keep everything in me that i learned from you

if the reactionary anger slathered over the grief could melt away in your light

if everything in me had your seal of approval

come on muslim jesus

you’re the closest thing i’ll have to a real prophet

i’m sorry i thought you were too smart for your religion

i get it now (in a way)

you showed me where to find fundamental truths about the universe

maybe in a way you were too smart for your religion

but your golden light didn’t come from your smarts

your light was fever hot and smelled like ketosis breath

damp like my gong gongs jungle and dehydrated like my grandmas sand storms

scaled like a dragon and sweetly sung like a bird

i felt like a cat laid in the sun

is it crazy how bad i wish i could curl up with you again

i used to fantasize about your angry nineteen year olds busting you out and sending you here

sometimes i still do

they were strong and able to pull it off because of what you gave them

sent you here swollen and bruised but with your organs intact

and you just needed to rest for a week and you voluntarily rested

because you believed those angry nineteen year olds had east turkistan in the bag

and i doted on you like you did me when we were both younger and more functional

and between the doting i curled up beside you and watched you write and after every word i’d ask

what’s that say

you’d respond in perfect russian

and i would say naxui and roll my eyes at you

and you would roll your eyes at me

and i would press my brow to yours and try not to cry

cause at this point in the maladaptive daydream i’ve remembered it’s not real

if i could cradle that giant asian head and just hold on for five more seconds

i don’t need enough time to confess my undying religious devotion

but enough for you to know that even tho i can’t say it to anybody i love you

and i believe you

[artificial-ascension]

Assorted Slender Mansion HCs

(Warning, long as shit because I have lots to say)

Non of the proxies are ever there

Sometimes you find them wondering the halls doing things or locked away in some room but they mostly do their own thing and rarely socialize

The exceptions are Ticci Toby, who goes on a lot less missions than everyone else on virtue of being very specialized in his craft and being the youngest, Hoodie and Masky who both don't really like slenderman and are mostly tasked with looking after the house

Toby is also the favorite proxy on virtue of him being so loyal without Slender even having to do anything (plus he is REALLY good with those hatchets)

Slenderman founded the mansion originally as a home for him, his family and his proxies but after awhile a bunch of failed proxies they forgot to get rid of or proxie attempts that didn't work out that they forgot to get rid of and various non proxie people kept as grounds keepers showed uo and never left. Slenderman kinda wanted all the randoms gone but the proxies and his brothers seemed to be cool with the extras running around and alot of them DID actually do things for Slender when he asked nicely so he let them stay

So long story short people just kept showing up for one reason or another and at one point they stopped kicking them out and that's how we're here

General opinion of Slenderman ranges from "He's awful but at least I'm not homeless" to "Slenderman seems cool but I've talked to him like three times"

Slenderman himself just kinda wants to do his thing (whatever that is) and is happy to provide for the people living with him. He makes sure everyone has adequate space in their rooms and keeps the mansion normal enough for no one to loose their mind (the halls are still a bit weird, sometimes super long sometimes super short and rooms are generally in the same spot but doors kinda slide up and down the hall. Moral of the story you never know how far you'll have to walk to your room and you should mark what door is yours)

It's also become sort of a flex to decorate your door better than other people. Some people have really pretty painted doors and then there's EJ who just has "EJ" clawed into the door, the flex being how deep the claw marks are

The general house keeping is up to Tim, Brian, Liu and EJ mostly. They try and keep the place clean and try to wrangle some of the more wild members. They also cook meals for the whole house, mostly because half the people there can't cook and if left to there own devices wouldn't eat anything other than chips, toast and granola bars *cough cough* Jeff

EJ never eats human dinner but still remembers how to cook from being a person. Sometimes EJ will sit at the table with a plate of organs and eat with everone else but it depends who's at the table

Most Slender Mansion inhabitants are very desensitized and don't care about a human eating demon munching on some guys lung at the table but some feel... weird watching a guy eat raw human meat at the dinner table

Examples include Toby, Clickwork, Nurse Ann and Candypop, for some reason

Smile Dog also eats dinner but on the floor. They don't like trying to sit in a chair and eat from a bowl off the table. Also they refuse to eat dog food

Smile dog themselves is actually as intelligent as a human and has the same level of awareness as a person they just... are also a dog... like they understand what an ambulance siren is but they'll still howl at one

Also they can't howl. Or bark. They can only speak in dog onomonopia, meaning they ACTUALLY SAY 'bark' instead of barking. They also speak this weird demon language no one can understand. EJ can sort of understand it but not really

EJ, as a guy possessed by a demon, also somewhat knows a weird demon language. EJs demon is something similar to a hell hound but not quite so his language is actually the same as Smile Dog's (who is a hell hound) they just don't understand eachother because, to make a comparison, Smile is speaking modern English and EJ is speaking old English (not to be confused with Shakespearian English, old English is way older and harder to understand)

Smile Dog has a modified typewriter (the keys are just biger and easier for a dog to press) they type on to communicate

Smile Dog is also Jeff's dog because they just decided Jeff will be their owner

Smile and Jeff also share a room amd have shared a room since Jeff arived at the mansion when he was 13

Slenderman brought Jeff to the mansion to be a proxy but Jeff doesn't listen and can't really be controlled by Slenderman so he was going to kill Jeff but Smile, BEN, Sally and Toby got very attached to him so he let Jeff stay even if he was annoying

Mostly for Toby, Slenderman dose alot to keep Toby happy because Toby stays completely loyal so long as he's happy. Toby also keeps a complete memory of what happened in his childhood because the knowledge that he'd still be in a shitty situation is Slender had made him kill his dad keeps him somewhat greatful

BEN and Sally also both showed up (at different times) and no one could get rid of them because they're ghosts and also Smile Dog really likes kids so they let them stay too

Smile Dog got an invite to the mansion because Splendorman saw the Smile.jpeg image and thought "That’s such a cute hell hound I want them", willingly let Smile Dog haunt his dreams and then asked them if they wanted to live with him

Smile Dog was like "Uhh... sure..." and after living with Splendorman for a while Splendor realized "I don't know how to take care of a dog" and gave Smile to Slenderman to "boost moral at his little house party"

Slenderman isn't a demon or anything close but he likes them because his step mom is one and she's very nice

Speaking of which Slender's step mom is the same kind of demon as the one possessing EJ and the child she had with Slender's dad was The Rake and that's why they live at the Slender Mansion. Because they're Slender's half brother

The Rake's cognitive and Slender powers are severely reduced when compared to their relatives, however they're still very smart. They just kinda live in the woods and like running around on all fours on account of basically being half Slender Entity half man eating tar hell hound

Similar to Smile Dog, they're still a person they're just like, a hard core furry or whatever

Pretty much the only thing The Rake thinks about though is killing people (they don't eat people though, they don't really have to eat) and running around in the woods

The Rake lives in the woods around the mansion and if you go camping they'll almost certainly show up because they fucking love hotdogs, if you bring hotdogs into those woods you better be prepared to give some to The Rake

The Rake goes in sometimes, usually when it's raining bad and they have their own room/cage in the basement (they live in a cage for the aesthetic)

Movie nights are every Saturday, they very often end up watching kids movies because Sally is there

But sometimes she makes them watch old vlack and white stop motion horror films because she thinks they're cool

When she's not they watch whatever, usually horror movies which always end in at least one person looking at the villain killing people and going "oh my god me"

One month they had a Jurrasic Park movie every weekend and everytime EJ was kin with the velociraptors

Tim and Brian are like the useless dads of the mansion. They sometimes do household chores and cook dinner but they mostly sit around and watch TV

Liu and EJ are the tired moms of the mansion. They do everything, mostly corral the kids but that’s really hard because one of those kids is Jeff, who in the year 2022 should be like 23-24 but he hasn't matured since he was like 16

Jeff was kinda like the weird cousin who sits in the corner at family gatherings and stares at everyone menacingly but not really doing anything and grew up to be the weird uncle who only shows up to have a good time and be a nuisance

Toby is like the cool cousin who's way older and everyone thinks is cool because he can drive and has Pokemon cards

BEN is a 12 year old on Xbox live claiming he fucks your mom. Ipad kid. You got any games on your phone kid. He's the annoying one you're forced to play with but it's kinda ok because you can make him do dumb shit, "I'll give you an oreo if you put this caprisun in the fire and then drink out of it" (yes I've seen a kid do this) kind of dumb shit

Nina is the cringe furry obsessed with whatever guy (Jeff in this case) the general consensus is that no one wants to play with her because she's weird but she's actually really cool

Jane likes to hang out with Nina though, it sounds weird but yeah she dose like hanging out with her because she finds Nina's eccentricities interesting

Toby will also hang out with Nina but Toby's just happy to have friends

Sally LOVES playing with Nina and Jane. They have girls night. They drag Clockwork (not enjoying herself) and Smile Dog (definitely enjoying themselves) into it

Sally thinks Nina's scene look is super cool and loves when Nina dose her nails and make up. Jane is lowkey just here because she wants to make Sally happy and because she has a slight crush on Nina

She does also kinda like to hang out and do make overs and talk about whatever like she's a normal teen again

The boys may or may not have boys night. Mostly it’s just BEN, Toby and Liu playing video games while Jeff and EJ watch because neither of them like video games very much. Clockwork also joins sometimes because she prefers the video games and boys night isn't actually boys exclusive it’s just really boring unless you like video games and swearing

One time Tim and Brian joined in because Jeff started complaining that he was bored and he'd take nail painting over this where Brian over heard and dropped the bit of lore that he used to be a nail tech

Brian also dose EJ's nails (claws?) Because they get very long and dirty and EJ dosen't know how to clean them

Brian also sometimes trims Smile Dog's claws because the ones on the side of their legs (forget what they're called, it's the toe dogs have that's not touching the ground) curve around and and jab into their paw pads

Brian and Tim aren't married but they always refer to eachother as their husband/wife (Brian calls Tim his wife as a joke, little reference to when Tim used to do drag)

Liu is a furry. When Liu’s notebook (full of furry art) was discovered, Jeff took the bullet and said it was his. The only person who knows Liu is actually the furry is Smile Dog

EJ has a thermos full of human blood he drinks out of. He says it's kool-aid. He keeps trying to get new commers to drink it but it never works (because a 6'4 demon shoving a cup in your face and demanding you have some kool-aid is... suspicious...)

Liu enrolled BEN is online school. He pretends he hates it but he dose actually think the stuff he learns is interesting

There's a mansion discord. It's awful. Only half the mansion uses it but still

Seed Eater's job is to gaurd the forest around the masnion, along with the Rake and EJ. However EJ doesn't really do that considering he's not as animalistic as Slender originally thought when recruiting him so EJ mostly works inside. He'll still eat people who wonder on the grounds if he sees someone while out on a walk or hanging out with Seed Eater

EJ and Seed Eater get along really well on virtue of both being very intelligent man eating demons. Seed Eater isn't really EJ's pet he's more... like a pack member to EJ. His demon is very social and tries to bond with pretty much anyone willing to join him in a hunt. Seed Eater is a solitary demon that mostly eats plants and mushrooms but he still hangs out and hunts with EJ because EJ is effectively the 'alpha demon' in the woods

There's alot of people who come into the woods to research cryptozoology and or criminal activity. The super dangerous part of the woods in fenced with barbed wire and covered in signs warning people not to enter at all but of course, people always do

Pretty much no one ever comes out alive. There's only ever been about five isolated cases of people surviving, mostly because they saw weird shit and immediately ran as fast as they could to the exit

Most of those people were being chased by EJ because EJ's probably the easiest to survive so long as you're fast and can outsmart him. EJ values the hunt mire than the kill because to him, meals are the best after a nice chase. This means you do actually have a chance of escaping, it's just very low because EJ is good at what he dose

There are a shit ton of video cameras littering the forest from people coming in teying to film them and either dropping them running away or just being killed. For a while everyone would just ignore them when they killed someone or found one in the woods but Tim, Brian and Liu all decided to go pick them up and use the film to try and make a real life found footage movie/documentary with them

There was debate in the mansion over weather or not to release their movie to the public, eventually Slender let them after heavily editing out alot of the parts featuring not publicly known information along with alot of the actual violent murders featured on tape

It still got taken down from YouTube after like a week

Public relation from the film was 20% this is why we don't go into the monster infested serial killer woods 30% why doesn't anyone do something about the monster infested serial killer woods 15% insane crypotozoology videos trying to pick apart EJ in the footage (there was alot of EJ on tape, same with Seed Eater and Toby) 5% Liu thirst because Liu was the chosen to be narrator and I guess the take away from the autodocumentry on the Slender woods for some was Liu Woods is hot, 30% guys lets go into the woods again and maybe we will also have our gruesome death recorded for the whole world

After the video got taken down the whole area got extra security, no going in no coming out for like six months until the hype died down

(I'm so sorry it's so long, I have lots of thoughts. I'm honestly hoping none of this is super out of character for any of them.)

[devilsskettle]

i am thinking about the way annihilation doesn’t value certain kinds of knowledge over others and shows how, to fully try to understand the world, different areas of study are needed - and areas of study that are important in certain ways fall short of understanding in others. at the beginning of the expedition, the linguist drops out, and the others feel a sense of relief, believing that a linguist’s skills were the most expendable. but as soon as they get to the tower, they realize, oh shit, maybe we do need a linguist. maybe there’s something about what we’re trying to understand that requires a base of knowledge we don’t have, even though it seemed irrelevant before. when the biologist is trying to make sense of the crawler’s behavior, she realizes that she has only been thinking of its actions as a biological imperative, and that she is not equipped to understand how theories of social behavior might help her understand what’s going on. she considers the possibility that the writing on the wall might be ritualistic rather than ecological, and wishes that she could get some insight from the anthropologist. she also acknowledges the usefulness of the surveyor’s military background compared to everyone else’s lack of experience with weapons and tactical thinking, and it’s the surveyor who first points out the ways the maps and all their documents emphasize the importance of the lighthouse to the exclusion of everything else in area x. 

but also, at the same time, it also acknowledges how any definition imposed on the natural world is limited at best, any methodology or perspective is going to fall short in trying to encompass reality. there’s an emphasis in the novel on how the biologist is an unreliable narrator and knows she’s an unreliable narrator, but also the information that the expeditions are given in the first place is skewed in a way that emphasizes certain details and conceals others (the whole trouble with the maps of area x in the first place - that any map has an inherent bias, based on the agenda of its creator). but also no one person can have a wide or deep enough base of knowledge to truly wrangle “reality” into a perfectly logical, understandable, defined concept for us to understand. all anyone can ever have is an approximation of the world that’s heavily reliant on what they’ve been taught and what lenses they’re able to see the world through. anyway i’m not really saying anything new but this shit makes me insane, i don’t think i’ve ever read a book that does more in less than 200 pages than this one does. and i do appreciate a story told by a scientist that rejects the idea that “objective” scientific data is the epitome of knowledge, which i think is a rarity in modern writing because of our culture’s hierarchical understanding of rational thought. there’s a wider scope to consider 

[olderthannetfic]

on a totally unrelated discourse note: i've been coming across more of these on ao3 at a worrying rate. ppl are posting works with nothing but a request to help the poster find a specific fic. disclaimer: even tho i was a tag wrangler for a while, that doesn't mean i speak for all tag wranglers. That said, those 'fics' drive me up the wall. i'll sometimes politely comment to kindly remind the poster that ao3 is an archive for transformative works and if they would like to engage with the fandom, they have plenty of other avenues-like tumblr-to make the same request. posting this sort request as a fic, unnecessarily adds to tag wranglers workloads who are already struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of work being posted. i'm not smart enough to explain why this is problematic beyond saying it's work and time and volunteers have enough on their plate. so even if it is only one fic with a few tags, more and more ppl doing it: they build up. basically, i think it's inconsiderate behaviour-to other readers searching the tags and to the wranglers who have to sort them. if you're looking for a fic and want to ask people: please do not post a work on ao3 tagging all your relevant ships, characters etc, to try and find it. please try to search through the extensive, functional and innovative tagging system and search function. there's tutorials on how to do it. try googling. try researching. and if you absolutely cannot find it: please go on fandom socials like tumblr etc to ask the community. ao3 is not built for this kind of interaction yet. i might be wrong and i trust you to correct me if i am.

-

RAGESCREAM

Yeah, I see more of them these days too... though they do get reported pretty fast. I don't think the rate is so high that it really endangers most people's AO3 browsing experience, and ficsearches often use already-wrangled tags, but I do want to finish my personal 2021 AO3 Guide with some power user stuff but also more pointed tips for n00bs from Wattpad.

Some people when confronted are like "Oh shit. I knew it wasn't preferred, but I didn't know it was directly against the rules" and I think they're operating in the paradigm of sites with shitty search still. Like... on Wattpad, there's no index of everything, so you're not as in people's faces with your off topic spam crap. It's also more common to post "discussion books" and to take shit down quickly after it has served its purpose.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would not assume malice. Some people may just need some pointers and context. And while official FAQs and the ToS exist, I don't think that's the format most people absorb the info from best--not to mention the fact that official rules do ban fic searches as works (in that they are not fanworks), but official policy is "tag how you want" without many tips for what your options are.

As for why fic searches are rude to post, AO3 is not a big corporate site with a bajillion paid staff. It has a narrow and specific mission and is paid for by your fellow fandom members out of their own pockets. Posting cruft that is not the target content of fanworks potentially drains resources from your fellow fans due to limited staff time for tag wrangling, for looking at abuse reports on rule-breaking works, etc. It's also rude because AO3's 'show everything in this tag by date' format means your non-fanwork is shoved under everyone's eyeballs constantly. You're being way more intrusive than on sites where things are harder to find and already more ephemeral.

[aiyexayen]

The ChengXian/WangXian parallel gifsets about the sad boat rides with Wen Ning made me think, once again, about how Wei Ying was worried about being the Jiang Cheng in his relationship with Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying just had so few models of relationship, and only two real models of a serious relationship involving himself--Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. He saw himself as a caretaker in each of them.

Even Jiang Yanli, ultimately, though there was certainly more give and take there. He only accepted a very specific kind of caretaking from her, though, and we see how fraught that was in the way Yu-furen shamed Jiang Yanli for it.

But Jiang Cheng was the most complicated. He and Wei Ying were the Yunmeng Shuangjie. Twin Heroes. Both of them strong male cultivators. Their relationship was such a carefully orchestrated imbalance. Wei Ying had to take care of Jiang Cheng even to the point of making sure Jiang Cheng didn’t feel taken care of. He was stronger, but he had to make sure Jiang Cheng didn’t feel weaker.

And at the same time, he had to be able to have his best friend and brother and navigate the lines of teasing and boasting that came with those dynamics and also with his natural brash and outgoing and free-spirited personality. It’s not something that weighed particularly heavy on him until later on, of course; it’s just How Things Were.

But Lan Zhan being Wei Ying's true equal was a heady taste of something new, something he was desperate for.

Someone he didn’t have to take care of in all those tricky, sticky ways. Someone who could understand him from the outside. That equality between them--of swords and strength and wit--formed so much of their early relationship. The ways Wei Ying and Lan Zhan excelled differently weren’t seen as anything but surface-level differences, cultivation styles. They could choose to take care of each other on their own (like in the Xuanwu cave) but there were no expectations except that which they set for themselves.

The best cohesive example I can think of is the situation at Dafan Mountain. Jiang Cheng has taken off after Wei Ying, to come and find his troublemaking brother and bring him home, ostensibly being the one to wrangle and care for his brother and best friend and someday-second. But as soon as he finds them, Wei Ying is clearly the one in charge. Jiang Cheng gets locked into a shield barrier, given a verbal half-teasing pat on the head, and left behind. Wei Ying goes off with Lan Zhan to find the source of the problems and their new level of partnership is beautifully put on display through their fight (other things happen in that fight, too, but that’s another post).

Jiang Cheng was never allowed to truly take care of Wei Ying. His parents never let him. Wei Ying never let him. He tried, all the time, most of all when he gave himself up to the Wen soldiers. But even that was immediately undone, turned back around on him.

Wei Ying never figured out how to attain any semblance of true equilibrium in his relationship with Jiang Cheng, even after everything at Lotus Pier, especially after everything at Lotus Pier, either before or after the core transfer. Maybe if he had, things would have been different. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have sacrificed his core to begin with.

It’s debatable how much Wei Ying expected to keep living after his core was gone. It’s even more debatable how much he really thought about anything past his own desperation in the moment, about all the promises broken with that single act, about how that would affect his relationship with anyone else. That doesn’t seem like a very Wei Ying thing to sit and think about.

Regardless, once the core was gone, he and Lan Zhan weren't equals. It messed up his relationship with Jiang Cheng, too, of course. The resentful energy was its own kind of strength but it couldn’t make up the difference in any way that counted. It just complicated everything by a thousand times and added in all kinds of new problems.

Even though Jiang Cheng had his core and Wei Ying had nothing but the tortured screams of the lost and vengeful echoing in his head, Wei Ying was still the caretaker there.

Don’t let Jiang Cheng find out the secret. Don’t let Lan Zhan become embroiled in it or expose the secret. Make sure Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli and Lotus Pier are okay. Lift Jiang Cheng up as a leader. Win the war. Apparently still be alive welp didn’t see that coming. Protect them all. Even if it means leaving.

But as much as he scrambled for strengths and leaned on his demonic cultivation he was still weak. Able to wipe out entire outposts of Wen agents yet repeatedly brought to a point where Lan Zhan could kill him easily and we know that the only way he could hope to match him would be to use this dangerous thing that's eating his soul, so shit could really get out of hand. Which wasn't really winning in the end. Demonic cultivation for him in general wasn’t strength so much as carefully-applied weakness.

Not to mention his reputation. They got so far off-balance where reputation and social standing was concerned.

Wei Ying’s merits had been contentious throughout his life--on the one hand, they're all he had to elevate himself beyond the need for the Jiangs' charity, or anyone's charity, as his status as family was so fraught and inconsistent. Being the best made all of that a moot point as much as it could be. And it also made him able to take care of said family, fulfilling all manner of "repay debt" vibes and "I'm obsessed with justice and protection" vibes.

On the other hand, they were definitely part of what made things so difficult with Jiang Cheng. Wei Ying’s reputation outclassing Jiang Cheng’s as a prodigy, a swordsman, a hero, even as he balanced it out by getting a simultaneous reputation for goofing off and being irresponsible. He did his best to make them complementary even though they were never really allowed to be.

But Jiang Cheng said it himself when he visited Wei Ying at the Burial Mounds--as soon as he started walking a different path, all of his merits and his skills and his reputation were turned upside down and used to make him a more effective villain.

So suddenly he didn’t even have any good social standing. He was mistrusted and then hated and reviled. On a number of levels, he could handle that, because it was more important to him that everyone who wasn’t him was okay. But it put him at complete odds with the great Hanguang-Jun, which was definitely something he made a point of noting more than once so we know it really, really mattered to him.

And that knowledge crept further and further in, between the war ending, things going back to some semblance of normal when he...couldn’t, and eventually him ending up in the Burial Mounds.

It was inevitable. He was the weaker one between himself and Lan Zhan, in every possible way. He knew of only one way that could go down.

It's a fear that got tangled up along with the rest of his paranoias, insecurities, traumas, resolutions, and twisted certainties pre-timeskip. On top of that, he lost a central piece of his identity and had no idea how to replace it.

If he isn't himself, who else can he be? Who else might he turn into? Someone who needs to be taken care of? Someone who might have his agency circumvented by a stronger person who thinks he knows better?

He sure did that to Jiang Cheng, and he never really had to own up to that piece of it. He never really regretted it either but he also sure didn't want to be on the other end of it.

Aside from that, Wei Ying just didn't know how to not be the strongest person. Being equal is the closest he’d ever come. He's never been allowed to be weak and taken care of unless he's play-acting and isn't that fucking heartbreaking? Fuck.

So who is he without that?

He still fought with the strengths he had and pretended to have the rest of them. And in one last great act of being the protector and caretaker, ran off to the Burial Mounds.

We do get to see Wei Ying and Lan Zhan working in tandem to bring back Wen Ning, and even though Wei Ying stumbles at the end (for the first time ever, I think, into Lan Zhan’s arms?), he does it successfully. They’re still able to work together, in spite of everything that’s happened, especially when Wei Ying is leaning into his actual talents. Even if Wei Ying’s weakness is still looming over his shoulder, as we see later.

Being with the Wens, living a simple life, leaning into his strengths, being part of a community and family, taking time to work on his scholarly/inventor hobbies, all this served to calm a lot of those fears and also conveniently take Wei Ying out of the scenarios and away from the relationships that caused them. It offered him tentative new pieces of identity to grab.

But then, of course, he lost that, too.

Post-timeskip, Wei Ying is thrust right back into a world where he has to finally face those issues. Whether you take it as he still has no core, or he has Mo Xuanyu’s really weak core, he’s not doing so great where that’s concerned.

He still has strengths. We’re not actually shown any indications that this man is weak at any point, not truly. He has a better grasp on the situation at Mo Manor than all of those precious Lan babies put together.

But we are shown that he uses a bunch of hands-on crafty tricks, talismans and spells and such. And, interestingly, in counterpoint we’re shown Lan Zhan descending from the heavens with his qin. Wei Ying doesn’t use a dizi here yet (let alone sword), and Lan Zhan doesn’t use Bichen. I do think that’s lovely.

However, Lan Zhan is still incredibly strong, in more ways than just physically: his reputation is strong, his presence is strong, his confidence is high, his mastery of the qin is unparalleled, he’s had sixteen more years to grow up and develop his golden core.

From the framing, and Wei Ying’s reactions, and the Lan juniors’ reactions, it’s pretty clear that’s the impression Wei Ying has. There’s an imbalance between them (along with alllll the other reasons he might have to want to stay away from/keep Lan Zhan out of things). He doesn’t see them as complementary, just as not-the-same.

He meets Jiang Cheng next and, hey, Jiang Cheng is actually really strong now, too (also he always was but meh). Again, Wei Ying uses his tricks to outwit and outmaneuver the situation at hand. Again, he’s struck by the impressive image of someone entering the scene like a badass.

And what a deliciously awful carousel of conflicting feelings. Pride? Despair? Longing? Love? Annoyance? Delight? Relief? Pain? Fear?

But as far as strength goes, clearly Jiang Cheng has it in buckets, now. Which means even if they still had a relationship, Jiang Cheng surely wouldn't even be the Jiang Cheng in it anymore. What a horrible realisation.

It can’t be helped much by the fact that Wei Ying almost lets himself get run through and Lan Zhan enters the scene to fucking save him. Even if it’s from the kid we know he just bested.

And that’s the back and forth we see at first. Wei Ying proving his strength and his character but the framing and his reactions proving that he’s still caught in the idea that Lan Zhan is stronger and better than him.

Lan Zhan is beloved. Lan Zhan is strong. Lan Zhan would never accidentally murder people he loved more than life itself. (OKay I won’t get into that but tell me he didn’t think that at any point I dare you)

He accepts it and plays it off as not a big deal, but it clearly is. In his rare serious moments, we see that.

So post-timeskip, Wei Ying has to figure out who he is and then how he can be said person. A significant part of the character and relationship development post-timeskip is about that.

He once again finds himself exploring uncharted territory of building relationship dynamics he’s never experienced with Lan Zhan. It started because he realised they were equals. It can’t develop further until he acknowledges that they still are.

He figures out how to be weak with Lan Zhan first, that it's safe and allowed and okay. There’s nothing wrong with being taken care of. It doesn’t have to define him and it doesn’t have to be about agency or about all the twisty psychological junk that was all wrapped up in his familial relationships at all.

Then he figures out that he still has the capacity to take care of someone like Lan Zhan back, that he’s still able to be needed, and not just someone to follow around and protect.

Wei Ying has strengths, strengths that were always there and always part of him as well as new ways he's grown and changed. He’s an inventor, he’s a genius, he’s a prodigy, he has his talismans and his music and his people skills and his teaching ability and his empathy and his heart.

All this definitely comes to a head on the steps of Jinlintai, by which point it feels like one of the only remaining imbalances that Wei Ying feels so keenly is their status, which of course Lan Zhan snuffs out utterly romantically.

It’s even more poignant that that moment comes right after Wei Ying gets Suibian back. And he's not nearly as good with it--Lan Zhan has to protect him multiple times in that fight and then of course he gets stabbed. But the point is still made, that he was still able to fight, and even his failures with the sword just drive home that this isn't who he is now. And that's okay.

By the time they're at the Burial Mounds again, Wei Ying has accepted the way they work as a team and that they can be complementary. And they fight flawlessly.

I love that growth for him.

He absolutely ends up being the Jiang Cheng, in a number of ways. He runs after Lan Zhan when he’s drunk to keep him out of trouble. He ends up left behind to take care of defenseless people while Lan Zhan runs off and has an epic sword fight in an evil fog bank.

He has to be taken from Lotus Pier, unconscious, in a boat, and is held so preciously in Lan Zhan’s arms.

But. Turns out it’s not so bad when the person you’re being Jiang Cheng for isn’t Wei Ying.

I swear this is not throwing shade at Wei Ying.

But he figures out, slowly, how to actually have a relationship built on even ground, as equals, in spite of being unequal in all the ways he used to think mattered. And he only manages it with someone once he’s on the weaker side of it.

I just think that’s super interesting.

And I think it sets a precedent for Wei Ying to understand the flaws in his old dynamic with Jiang Cheng. Especially once there aren’t secrets between them.

Everything has to change, anyway. Everything has already changed, almost two decades ago, and it isn’t going back. It can’t ever go back. Everything they were to each other was bound up in Jiang Yanli’s presence, in promises long broken, in dreams long dead, in a future that has already proved to not be real. In the old Lotus Pier, a lot of it, since they never really moved on from that, either, even back then.

Jiang Cheng has grown up. He’s raised a kid. He’s raised and trained disciples. He’s been a sect leader for over a decade and a half. He’s been to other people what he never could be to Wei Ying.

He’s also proven that he still wants his brother to fix things, still expects him to be able to. Still wants to fight, still knows how to cry. Still acknowledges fragmented pieces of their lost dynamic. Probably more of the healthy ones than Wei Ying ever has, too.

Jiang Cheng still, even in the wake of learning about the golden core, even after everything he’s built and has become, acknowledges Wei Ying as a strong person. As someone as strong as he is, if not stronger in many ways. As having the capacity of an older brother.

But then, Jiang Cheng was always able to conceptualise a world where he and Wei Ying were equals, complementary if not evenly matched, just as much as Lan Zhan was.

It wasn’t a fantasy that Wei Ying indulged him in. It was a reality that Wei Ying himself didn’t know how to accept and kept at a distance, carefully juggling too many separate parts of a whole he couldn’t allow to come together until they all crashed down.

But he’s been on the other side of it now and maybe it’s enough. Maybe he can take what he’s learned in building/rebuilding his relationship with Lan Zhan and apply it to other people. Especially Jiang Cheng.

And maybe Jiang Cheng has been a sect leader and an uncle long enough to not let Wei Ying get away with shit.

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #31 - Ammo and the Anti-Glowup

So, the Lost Light disappeared, stranding all the crew in space in their little escape pods. 200-some robots just lost their homes and worldly possessions. That’s absolutely horrible. What a devastating thing to happen.

Anyway, here’s Drift with a flashback sequence.

No hips, fingers all the exact same length, hockey pucks embedded in his forearms- Rojo, this is a crime you’ve committed. When will the long arm of the law stop your sinful, pancake-shaped hands?

About two years prior to current events, Drift, Riptide, and Pipes- yes, Pipes!- were wandering around trying to find a ship for the space yacht trip. The gang’s here to see who owns the big honkin’ ship outside. Problem is, Drift is unintentionally terrifying because he has a great deal of swords.

Now, you may say to yourself “isn’t it a bit odd that the species that has members who literally turn into guns would be nervous around a guy with swords?” This is a valid critique, until you remember that at least some of the folks who turn into guns were born that way, and Drift was very much NOT born bladed the fuck out. There’s an entire miniseries devoted to explaining this, it’s called Drift. The swords are a choice, one that he makes every day.

Drift is willing to pay an honestly absurd amount of money for the ship, if he can just find the dude with the paperwork- don’t ask where he got the money. Pipes isn’t being terribly helpful in finding them, so Riptide decides that now is the time to start practicing being proactive and pulls a Coyote Ugly.

No, no, he doesn’t.

He does climb up on a table and start yelling for the ship’s owners to reveal themselves, though. Which they do.

Now it’s time for the world-building portion of our comic issue. Let’s learn about chirolinguistics.

Drift, staying true to his Mary Sue nature, uses his near-perfect Hand skills to strike up a deal with the owners of the ship. This would be impressive, if it didn’t just look like the most convoluted hand-holding session in the friggin’ universe.

Still, Drift is rich enough to make Jeff Bezos weep with envy, so the arrangements are made and the lads go on their way, talking some mad shit about the original name of the ship as they do.

So it is revealed to us that the Lost Light is named after a festival for honoring the dead and disappeared, which makes the fact that Rewind and Chromedome were there all the more sad.

Back in the present, Megatron tells Riptide to shut up so they can figure out what the hell they’re going to do about this whole “our home and also ride has ceased to exist” situation. He’s putting an awful lot of distance between himself and the rest of the Autobots as he does it, something that isn’t lost on the more bitter people of the crowd.

But why were we even talking about the Lost Light in the first place? Not to reminisce, believe it or not. See, it’s time for Nautica to get a little panel time, and she’s going to use it to be a massive fucking nerd and explain how the quantum engines work. As she does, Ratchet notes that his hands feel funny. Must be the weight of his hand-stealing sins manifesting itself in his joints.

Nautica explains that the engines run off of improbability- it is highly unlikely, but not impossible, that the ship can reach light speed, and riding the fine line between what can happen and what can’t, results in the creation of power for the engines. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Brainstorm gave us a watered down version of this explanation back in issue #2. If it sounds familiar for a different reason, it’s because this is how the Heart of Gold runs in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Again, I’m not sure why it is that the British love this concept so much, but there you are.

Oh, it appears someone has a question. Let’s see what they want to know about, shall we?

…Rojo, what the fuck is this.

Our muppety friend here isn’t too keen on how much of a smarmy asshole Nightbeat is being right now, though I’d assume it actually has something to do with the fact that Nightbeat got smacked around with the pretty-boy stick while Getaway very much did not. While the two bicker- there’s a lot of bickering in Season Two- Nautica presents a theory on what happened to the ship; it went too far in the direction of “can’t” and made itself cease to be.

Megatron gives not a shit about quantum improbability, though. He only cares about how they’re going to get out of this mess. Which, y’know. Valid.

Blaster picks up a radio from Rodimus, who tells the gang that they’re to meet up on a nearby planet to regroup and figure out their next move. The call drops before he can get more than a couple Megatron-directed insults in, however. Megatron, in response, tries to be the bigger person, and almost immediately fails. We do get a headcount though, which is good, logistically speaking. This information is communicated to us by way of a splash page full of character head shots. We’ve got 20 ‘bots on board this ship.

Yep. 20. No more, no less.

As our friends approach the planet, we’re informed that it’s actually a Lectureworld- a planet devoted to the study of a single field. Except it’s actually a Smartplanet now, and it’s been privatized by the Galactic Council, so you’ve got to pay to go there. Cyclonus thinks that that’s bullshit, and I can’t help but agree. Crosscut tries to network with they guy about his play, probably because word got around that Cyclonus is rich as hell, when the lights cut out. When they come back on, Crosscut is nowhere to be found.

It’s time for a Whodunnit.

Tailgate immediately pegs Megatron as the culprit in this disappearance, and breaks out a gun over the matter. Megatron thinks that this is absolutely adorable, which only serves to further infuriate our marshmallow friend. I guess he’s still mad about the whole “I was a Decepticon for five minutes and got brainwashed over it” thing, and wants someone to pin the anger on who’s socially acceptable to hate.

Cyclonus and Ratchet both think that Tailgate’s not going about this the right way, but the guy is simply too het up to listen to them. Tailgate suggests that they lock Megatron in the engine room for the time being and-

OKAY WHO LET HIM HAVE THAT

Riptide breaks out his gun, and soon we’ve got a standoff going between the three of them. Cyclonus tries to deescalate, which makes Gears and Huffer break out their guns. Then Hound breaks out his gun, though he seems to be doing his own thing, by pointing it in Nautica’s direction.

Broski, I think that might be animal cruelty.

Megatron manages to shoot Ravage “unconscious” and catches him by the friggin’ throat, stating that he has zero idea how this guy got here. With the heat off the two of them for a moment, Megatron communicates to Ravage to play ‘possum for the time being. Ravage responds, and I wonder exactly how he’s doing that, considering I don’t think he has enough fingers to effectively utilize Hand as a language. Or fingers at all, really.

While this is going on, Cyclonus snatches the gun out of Tailgate’s hand, admonishing him for being reckless about picking his fights. Generally speaking, you don’t want to try to go toe-to-toe with a guy who’s responsible for the deaths of literal billions. Getaway swoops in to comfort Tailgate, calling him gutsy. I wonder if this will become a trend.

Swerve says a thing, as he is wont to do, and it’s made known that multiple folks have disappeared during this incredibly brief standoff.

Wow, Chromedome just fucked off, huh? He wasn’t even in that sequence, just left.

Everyone’s positively baffled by the current happenings. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who’s being taken. I guess we’ve got a mystery on our hands.

And who better to solve a mystery than a detective?

Nightbeat wrangles all the leftover folks into a corner of the room, so they can figure out what the common denominator is with all the disappearees. He starts with the easy stuff.

And by “easy”, I mean the super-special racism Tyrest subscribed to.

If you’ve read Eugenesis, you know that Nightbeat was also part of the first wave of cold-constructed bodies there. However, the general populace wasn’t nearly as chill about it as they were in IDW. Also, Wheeljack was his dad. No word on if that particular tidbit made it into IDW lore.

It’s at this point that we learn about M.T.O.s- made to order soldiers. They were cold-constructed ‘bots created en masse during the war in order to keep up with the demands for troops. Pretty fucked up, if you think about it, being born to die like that.

Now where have we heard that name before…

Chromedome, can your love life not be part of the plot for five minutes, my guy?

Nautica makes the honestly horrific claim that a lot of folks owe their existence to Megatron being a warmongering fuck, and even Megatron himself seems rather uncomfortable with the idea. Some thoughts we keep to ourselves, Nautica, even if they might be technically true. And even if Ammo wants to tack on his two cents on the matter.

What did they DO to you, Ammo? You’re supposed to be hot! Where are my three-paragraphs of description as Hound stares slack jawed the entire time? I miss Polyhex Wars.

Anyway, it’s Megatron’s turn to get poked with the questioning stick, and he’s not having it. He claims that by revealing his mode of creation, he’s risking a repeat of Functionist ideology. This would be valid, if people weren’t literally disappearing without any sort of explanation as to why. As it is, he’s being a stubborn asshole, but I guess he didn’t get his reputation by being a decent person who knew when to back down, now did he?

It’s at this point that Ratchet remembers he knows all the info Nightbeat’s looking for, and the conversation on Megatron’s birth is shelved for another day. I’m sure it won’t be a major plot point later, not in the slightest.

As it turns out, Nightbeat’s theory doesn’t hold water, and folks are still popping out of existence. We get another splash page, this time with everyone’s mode of creation listed under their names, and we move on to other theories about what the fuck is going on. While Nightbeat has a minor crisis over what the answer could possibly be, the MTOs in the group reminisce on the Ten-Step Program, a series of tests they were put through to make sure they worked well enough to get handed a gun and shoved out the door. Riptide wasn’t a fan.

Riptide has more wood panelling than a 70’s-style ranch house, and I think that’s very brave of him.

It’s at this point that Ratchet remembers it’s been quite a bit since he last shat on religion, and takes the time to do so while informing the reader about Information Creep. This is a concept we’ve seen mentioned previously, during Chromedome’s runaround in Overlord’s brain, but it’s here where we get the juicy implications.

Because memories can become corrupted in the brain due to extreme age, what ought to be objective fact has to be reinterpreted due to missing pieces. This is why nobody knows what the Knights of Cybertron got up to, or if they’re even actually real at all.

The lights go out again, and when they cut back on, Cyclonus is missing, leaving only his sword behind. Tailgate is extremely distraught by this, but Nightbeat gives not a fuck about Tailgate’s impending breakdown. He only cares about the truth!

And then a giant eyeball shows up.

It’s Ultra Magnus, coming to us live from his shuttle, via holomatter avatar! He shrinks down to a far more reasonable size, in a panel reminiscent of the first time IDW readers saw Megatron.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a neat parallel, I’m just… not terribly sure why it’s happening. One could say it reflects a reversal in power dynamics, but that theory gets tossed out the window when you remember that this isn’t actually Verity. I suppose it’s just a cool little thing.

Because the comms aren’t working, Ultra Magnus has been forced to use this avatar to communicate with the folks in the Rod Pod. Megatron asks just what the hell is going on, but unfortunately Magnus isn’t sure either. Then his shuttle disappears, and it’s bye-bye grunge girl Magnus.

It’s at this point that Nightbeat decides it’s time to stop pussyfooting around and get serious. He tells Ratchet to throw HIPPA directly in the garbage and write down everything he knows about the Autobots who crewed the Lost Light. And he does mean everything, as we get the splash page again, this time with lots of neat info on our friends, including spark type.

Spark types will become plot-relevant in the storyline after this, but for now let’s focus on some weird gender essentialism that got slapped into the first print of this issue.

As we know very well by this point, Transformers as a franchise has a tumultuous relationship with the idea of women existing. You would think that the awkward introduction of other genders we got in “Dark Cybertron” would have been the end of things being weird in IDW. However, you would be wrong.

In an effort to explain why genders exist, Roberts had the idea to make it spark-based. Nautica, in the solo print of this issue, has an estriol-positive spark. Estriol is a type of estrogen, which is the hormone that develops and maintains feminine secondary sex characteristics, when present in certain levels, in conjunction with other hormones. Biology

This “spark = gender” idea is, generally speaking, not a great idea to be presenting us with, especially when the writer is a cishet male, because it implies biological essentialism- the idea that a personality trait/quality of a person is innate and predetermined by their biology, as opposed to social, cultural, or individual experiences. Because this story doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s irresponsible to reduce the experience of being a woman to a single, physical, unchangable asset, especially when all other assets of the same class have zero effect on one’s gender identity. You don’t exactly see many nonbinary robots running around, now do you? And there are definitely more than two spark types, despite the Transformers as a species being... very binary.

It also makes female Transformers into an “other”, which is a problem that has existed from the very start of the franchise, in some form or fashion, and really doesn’t need to be perpetrated anymore than it already is.

The estriol spark type was removed in the trade edition, and Roberts has expressed regrets over its inclusion, having realized that it was potentially offensive.

Getting back to the story, Swerve, Tailgate, and Ratchet have disappeared, though Ratchet seems to have left his hands behind. His stolen, Pharma-original hands.

That’s still fucked up to me. I don’t think it’ll ever not be fucked up.

Riptide reveals the reason that he wasn’t in Season One of MTMTE was because when he went back to grab a receipt for the ship two years prior, he’d discovered that the original owners were worshipers of Mortilus, Cybertronian god of death, and knew about the nasty little problem that was the sparkeater from the first storyline. When Riptide went to confront them about it, they beat him up so bad he was unconscious for two solid days.

Which is a long-ass time to be unconscious. That might have been a coma, Riptide. Jesus, I hope someone got him to a hospital after this beatdown happened, or at least scraped him off the floor.

With this last piece of the puzzle, we finally have the common denominator in this big ol’ mystery. Everyone who disappeared was on the Lost Light when it took off from Cybertron in issue #1, and everyone left behind- Skids, Getaway, Nightbeat, Nautica, Megatron, and Ravage- didn’t join until afterwords.

Of course, having the answer doesn’t do us much good when everyone is still missing, and Megatron seems to agree with me, because he’s about to throw hands, when Nautica lets them know that they’ve arrived at the rendezvous. Problem is, so has something else.

...

I’m sure it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiine!

[do-you-have-a-flag]

saw a video commentating on how toxic (buzzword, i know, but i want to capture the general sense of the term before it got overused) twitter is and while it was 100% correct in it’s points (addictive design, harmful culture, negative impact on mental health, encouragement of harassment, lack of control over how things spread ect) hearing this sort of stuff discussed over and over again is kind of repetitive to me and really reminds me that not everyone had the same internet experience i do

i have a moderately addictive tendency with entertainment, i know it so i am extra careful to moderate my use of online spaces so i don’t fall down hate motivated engagement too often (e.g: i will watch a carefully worded essay about an internet weirdo for the sake of curiosity, i won’t view or engage with direct bullying of that person) 

i spent a chunk of my teens in the 2000s looking at memes on one of the most extreme online forums and while it was definitely less consumed by actual hate groups then it still contained a LOT of horrible content so i quickly 1: got desensitised to shock images 2: got to see the risks of being a victim of online targeting 3: learned the syntax or tone of edgy internet humour/trolling. So I learnt how to spot certain patterns and be wary of certain types of people

the result of all of this is that even when encountering tumblr’s brand of harmful content (the sheer amount of E//D and S//H in the early to mid 2010s on here was atrocious) things like dogpiling and sock puppet accounts and drama provocation didn’t really phase me i learnt how to curate it and the same goes for twitter (although i have less control there of how much shit is promoted BY twitter trending)

so like i sympathise with criticisms of tumblr or twitter or tiktok or any other social platform because the attention driven infrastructure of these types of websites really accelerate the WORST messages and behaviours. but at the same time i kind of despair what i consider to be web literacy. 

Web literacy, for lack of a better term, is the kind of learned practicality in using online spaces similar to how people should ideally be taught to evaluate the news and media and social interaction ect. i’ve said it before but when computers became more household standard in the 90s there was a push for child and adult education that was primarily hard/software based, in the 2000s there was SOME online safety stuff introduced but it’s really not until now that the actual impact of the internet as a social space is discussed in how it effects culture. I feel like there’s a gap where older adults have little frame of reference to cope with the web, children lack the critical skills to deal with it on their own, and teens and young adults grew up having to figure a lot of this out on their own so there are gaps.

I wish there were more standards and oversight for how people are taught to interact online and what large web companies were allowed to do with their platforms. i wish other than grouping everything in with “bullying” cyber safety was paired with lessons in curation and restraint and critical thinking. i wish that the predatory and gambling-esque practices of bigger online companies in their infrastructure was restricted and penalised. I wish that the internet was treated as a utility and people’s information and attention weren’t bought and sold as products to companies. I wish a lot of things about how people behave and react online.

i spend too many hours online and not all of it is constructive or engaging with positive topics. but i’m careful about malicious content and negativity bingeing. i make sure that the online spaces i do frequent are wrangled either via algorithm or organised exploration into environments i find fun and engaging. mainstream media like tv and radio didn’t allow for the level of customisation we have now and i like to take advantage of that fact, i acknowledge that the way i engage with the internet creates a bubble.

but just because i am under-informed about the darker aspects of web culture at the moment doesn’t mean i take for granted the existence BECAUSE i spent my teens and early 20s seeing the worst of it. the last several years has been an eye opener in just how much online behaviour is not just an extreme version of real world behaviour but it also feeds back into irl spaces creating new and complex problems. the kinds of problems that MIGHT be less pervasive if we had more social structures to support digital literacy and critical media engagement. 

sorry about the essay but tumblr was originally intended as a blogging platform so consider this a semiformal blog post of my thoughts idk. internet’s fucked but no more than the rest of reality. I wish more people actively worked to make their online spaces pleasant for their own sakes at the least. 

[rayveewrites]

Ray Hijacks the Team ZIT Ghostbuster AU Again

So @shadeswift99 made a few posts a while ago about a Team ZIT(S) ghostbuster AU, And then I may or may not have hijacked the post to add in ideas for most of the other hermits because why not.

Now, back then I was spitballing ideas and making them up on the spot, which is admittedly my usual writing process, but hey.

That said, I've had more time to think about it, and then last night I blacked out for a few hours and came to with a Google Doc filled with short bios for all of the hermits and a handful of hermit-adjacents. Now, this rapidly turned into an urban fantasy AU in my hands, but hey. It's fun.

This is in alphabetical order, with alternate personas (EX, Helsknight, Beetlejhost) beneath their original counterparts when applicable:

Bdubs

Lives in an old mansion in the woods alongside Doc for reasons known only to them. Bdubs works as an interior designer, with a side gig as a freelance hairdresser. His eyes are unnaturally large, similar to Keralis’, and he is at least partially a plant. Completely feral and frequently gets in trouble for having knives on him at all times. He and Cleo have a thing called Knife Club which makes everyone else nervous. Nobody messes with Knife Club. It’s not worth it. Sunbathes frequently.

Beef

Is a perfectly normal human being. He works as a butcher with a side gig as a graphic designer specializing in album covers and spends his free time playing pokemon and dragging Etho along to social events. He was the first person to spot the cryptid, and the first person who Etho approached of his own accord.

Biffa

Is a ghost possessing a robotic shell. Biffa is from the future. While initially his main goal was to get back home to his own time, Biffa has since made friends and settled down into a new life running a cafe specializing in a wide range of teas. He’s quite content with this, and has actually found himself far happier than he was in his own time. While his nature means he can see, hear and touch ghosts, his body was built specifically for a disembodied soul to be in the driver’s seat, and he doesn’t want to risk another taking control. Also, he has more important things to do than have fistfights with ghosts.

Cleo

Is a ghost possessing her own dead corpse. Her nature allows her to see, hear and touch ghosts. Can and will fistfight spirits. She works as a teacher, so she’s usually busy, but occasionally in really nasty situations the Beetlejhost will drag her in to break a ghost’s legs. Does sculpture in her free time, and is actually really good. The only one who can wrangle Beetle to any real capacity, and she’s learned to keep him on a fairly short leash. Housemates with Joe, and Keralis also pops in pretty frequently. Has Knife Club with Bdubs. Has an enchanted flower crown that prevents her from decaying further; a gift from Beetle. Recently started learning magic in the form of necromancy and illusions. Has an ongoing ‘feud’ with Zloy, in which she temporarily traps his soul in random inanimate objects every now and then.

Cub

A bit of a ‘mad scientist’ archetype, Cub’s experiments are not exactly the most ethical, though they’re at least more professional than Doc’s. Responsible for the creation of Jevin. Cub gets possessed stupidly easily- sometimes willingly- and can usually handle it himself but sometimes has to call for help. Has a magical method of communication with Scar for exactly this reason. Has a day job as co-owner of a business called ConCorp, which he started with Scar. Has probably broken the Geneva Convention.

Doc

Was presumably human at one point. Now an abomination. Repeated experiments on himself have resulted in a massively changed facial and foot structure, a body covered in mottled green scales, claws, and goat horns. He lost half his face in one of his experiments, and constructed a new cybernetic one. He lost his right arm fighting God. Killed said god and would do it again. Lives in a mansion in the woods with Bdubs, though nobody’s really sure why. Owns a casino because of course he does. Also a living crime against fashion, because the man refuses to wear anything other than his tattered lab coat, torn jeans, and crocs.

Ely

Runs the local radio station. Nobody’s ever seen him in person, and nobody knows where he gets people’s voice clips for his remixes. Probably a cryptid. Maybe a ghost. Seems pretty chill, despite the blatant invasions of privacy.

Etho

Is a cryptid. Lives out in the woods in an abomination that can barely be called a house. Has never been seen in anything other than full Kakashi cosplay. Tends to keep to himself, but occasionally lets Beef drag him along to social events, often with Doc and Bdubs. Nobody really knows what his deal is. Probably not human. Probably.

False

Used to be part of an illegal underground cage fighting ring, until she earned enough to buy her way out. Having grown up in said ring, she struggles to adjust to normal life, but living in a town where the barista is a robot and the local tailor has wings makes it easier. She now has a job as security at Doc’s casino, alongside Iskall.

Grian

Is either an angel or a demigod, but nobody knows which. Has wings. Is both a tailor and an architect. A complete gremlin who has elaborate masks of various birds and will wear them to commit crimes. Eats seeds. Messes with everyone else’s plants. Lives in Jungle Wood Flats. Volunteers at the local theatre.

Hypno

Has three eyes, but hides the third one under a bandanna at all times. Can see ghosts with it. Had problems with sections of plumbing randomly getting clogged and also making very weird noises, and eventually called Team ZIT when the plumbers couldn’t find the source. Was prepared for ghosts, but wound up with a slime creature instead. Works in a $2 store for some reason.

Impulse

Is fully human. The most sensible member of Team ZIT (which admittedly isn’t saying much), Impulse has a day job as a freelancer building custom PCs and fixing broken tech. Agreed to the whole ghostbusting deal because he was bored, mostly. Was the first one to meet Skizz face-to-face, and is the one to own that particular place outright. Gets possessed every now and then, usually by larger spirits. Used to run solely on caffeine and chronic anxiety until Zedaph started getting on his case about his sleep schedule. Now he runs on less caffeine, more sleep, and the same amount of chronic anxiety.

Iskall

Was part of a cloning experiment to create the ultimate hitman, and was the only known one to both survive and escape before the whole thing was shut down by the authorities. Their eye and arm were replaced with cybernetics in order to increase their already enhanced abilities, and they were chased by said authorities, eventually winding up on Mumbo’s doorstep and becoming Mumbo’s problem. Now works as security at Doc’s casino, alongside False. Lives at Jungle Wood flats. Occasionally volunteers at the local theatre. Does bonsai as a hobby.

Jevin

Is the slime creature in the pipes. Hypno lets him live with him under the condition he stops blocking the plumbing and making weird noises at 3 AM (Jevin still blocks the plumbing and makes weird noises at 3 AM, just not as much as he was). Has taught himself to take a humanoid shape, and likes having fingers. Sleeps in the bathtub because he can. Was created from a vat of chemicals in a secret lab underneath the house, which used to be owned by Cub. Doesn’t really talk to the man in question that much, but will occasionally refer to Cub as his father for the sole reason of watching him go through eight existential crises in three minutes. Has a glock.

Joe

Head librarian at the local public library, and has read a lot of books on Supernatural Things. Is a veritable fountain of exposition if you can figure out what he’s saying or have Cleo along with you to threaten the integrity of his shins. Has never been seen in the same place as the Beetlejhost. Are they the same person? Are they entirely separate beings? Is there a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-type situation going on? Who knows!

Beetlejhost

Literally nobody really knows what his deal is. Nobody. Team ZIT ran into him on a call that they expected to be a false alarm and then he decided to follow them home. Spends most of his time being a minor nuisance in the most bizarre ways possible. Is implied to be responsible for the Ever Given getting lodged in the Suez Canal, but never confirmed. When he’s not bothering Team ZIT or getting them out of tight spots, he’s usually pestering Cleo, the only one who can keep him in line. It’s not really known if he and Cleo have a history or if they’re just Like That.

Keralis

Is a ghost haunting an architecture firm, and is mostly bound to the building, though he can travel to other buildings the firm has built, which is, uh, most of them. Initially only able to do small things- mostly writing notes or drawing diagrams- he eventually meets the Beetlejhost when the latter follows Mumbo to work one day for shits and giggles (he wanted to see how long he could mess with Mumbo before the man noticed. As it turned out, about a week, and by the end it was Iskall who noticed). After a couple of days in which Beetle teaches Keralis Ghost Things™, he scares half the office when he finally manifests for the first time. Has unnaturally large eyes and nicknames for most of the workers. Has no idea how he died or what his unfinished business might be. Very knowledgeable about architecture, and his input is usually very much appreciated.

Mumbo

Is a perfectly normal human being who does IT at Keralis’ architecture firm. Lives at Jungle Wood flats and spends most of his free time tinkering with tech and trying to keep Grian and Iskall out of trouble, which is a losing battle. Has a large, beating golden heart in his flat. He’s not really sure what its deal is, but if he feeds it apples it produces enough power for the entire building. Oh, and if he forgets to feed it for an extended period of time it starts draining his bank account. It’s really weird.

Pixlriffs

Was a perfectly normal human being until he died protecting a certain Russian zombie and became a perfectly normal ghost. Was a reporter in life and is a reporter in death. Runs a blog alongside Zloy about the local goings-on, supernatural or not. The blog’s the type where unless you live in/near the town you most likely won’t stumble across it, but they do have a small following of outsiders who assume the blog’s just a work of fiction. His unfinished business is to prevent Zloy from doing anything particularly stupid, a constant battle. Is able to go more places than Zloy due to being incorporeal, but respects people’s privacy. He’s bound to Zloy to a certain degree, not being able to go beyond a certain range of his friend. The range is pretty big, though, and he has plenty freedom of movement.

Python

Had a run-in with the fae as a kid, in which he accidentally pissed one off. In retribution, the faerie challenged him to answer a riddle or he’d be turned into a snake. Python’s answer was partially correct, so the faerie only transformed him partially. Python is fairly chill, though he strongly dislikes the cold and starts hissing if anyone disturbs him during Sun Time™. Sometimes Bdubs, being partially flora, joins Python for Sun Time™. He’s not venomous, because, you know...python. Also, he has a mildly disturbing habit of strangling rats and mice and then eating them whole, but he can’t help it and just tries not to do so when he has company.

Ren

Is a werewolf. He’s pretty chill regardless of form, though it’s only been recently he’s been comfortable enough leaving his ears and tail visible. He works as a lumberjack. One time Pixl introduced him to Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song and it quickly became his favourite thing. He spends most of his free time volunteering at the local theatre because Ren is absolutely a theatre kid and nobody can convince me otherwise. Gets possessed every now and then. Lives in Jungle Wood flats.

Scar

Works as a landscape developer. Gets possessed absurdly easily, though not quite as frequently as Cub. Has a magical method of communication with him. Technically co-owns ConCorp, but isn’t as involved. His cat, Jellie, is very obviously an eldritch abomination in feline form and he is comedically unaware of this. Lives in Jungle Wood Flats with Grian, Iskall, Mumbo, Stress, and Ren.

Skizz

Is the ghost haunting Team ZIT’s office. He was murdered by someone he’d thought was a friend who was trying to use his place to hide from the cops, and he’s stuck around, haunting the building. His unfinished business is to make sure nobody else uses the building for anyone shady, but the ghost rumours tended to chase most people off. Eventually he gets used to having Team ZIT around, and when Tango admits he doesn’t really have anywhere to go one day, Skizz eventually makes the decision to finally unlock the still-furnished upper floor for him. He’s bound to the building, but Impulse learns that carrying Skizz’s old vest with them allows him to leave. After that, Skizz sometimes accompanies them on missions and occasionally just hanging out. He’s usually more helpful than the Beetlejhost is.

Stress

Is a witch. Stress lives in Jungle Wood Flats and works as a doctor who specializes in supernaturally caused injuries- Team ZIT are some of her best customers. She also sells magic potions of various kinds, and has a side gig as a florist. She’s 90% of the Jungle inhabitants’ impulse control. Also has cryokinesis.

Tango

The Team ZIT member with a car. He gets possessed with frankly ridiculous frequency, but claims not to believe in ghosts for a long time (and keeps up the bit for even longer). Has developed various signals to indicate when he’s being possessed again. The strongest one, a rather nasty demon Cleo and the Beetlejhost had to team up on, left him with his glowing red eyes. He didn’t really have anywhere to go before Impulse bought the office, and tended to sleep on the couch or in his car until Skizz decided to let him into the upper floor, where he now lives alongside Zedaph and Impulse.

TFC

A now-retired ghostbuster, TFC calls in Team ZIT one night when he finds himself in over his head against a ghost with a grudge. He winds up becoming a bit of a mentor figure to the trio, usually coaching them over the phone if they’re not sure how to deal with one of the stranger spirits. Lost his leg years ago in a fight with a poltergeist that could have gone better, and now has a robotic prosthetic made by Doc.

Wels

While Team ZIT was out investigating some rumour or another in the woods, they came across a large stone box. Following video game logic, I guess, they then decided opening this large stone box sounded like a fun idea. Well, Tango and Zedaph did. Impulse was a bit more hesitant. The box actually held a medieval knight who’d been put in an enchanted sleep for centuries by his demonic doppelgänger, and was very much not prepared for modern life. Team ZIT took him to Xisuma, who happened to live closest, and Wels is currently helping out on the farm and trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. He can understand and speak modern English just fine because magic. Volunteers at the local theatre quite a lot.

Hels

Is Wels’ doppelgänger. Technically a minor demon. Won a fight with Wels and sealed him away for centuries as a result. A recurring problem. His real motivation is that he really desperately doesn’t want to go back to Hell, but he’s too proud to admit it. Lives in the woods with EX, who’s basically his only friend, though the weirdo with the brown cardigan keeps pestering him about his backstory and feelings for some reason. Has minor pyrokinesis.

XB

Like Biffa, XB is also a ghost from the future, though it seems to be a different timeline than Biffa’s. His unfinished business is preventing the apocalypse, but he has no idea how to do that, no idea if he’s in the right timeline, and is pretty sure he’s gone back a lot farther than he probably should’ve. Also, there’s the whole paradox issue, where if he prevents the apocalypse he never has a reason to go back and prevent the apocalypse, so he doesn’t prevent the apocalypse, so he has to go back and- he tries not to think about it too much. He mostly just hangs out in an abandoned house on the edge of town and vibes.

Xisuma

Is a beekeeper. Nobody’s ever seen his face; when he’s not in his beekeeping outfit, he’s either wearing a helmet, or (more recently) an extremely lifelike and detailed animal mask (is it a mask?). Actually a shapeshifting alien, he crashed down to Earth after a scuffle with his evil clone and was stranded because Earth doesn’t have the right tools or resources to repair a spaceship. These days he’s actually found he’s happier tending to his bees, selling honey, and helping his friends out, and probably wouldn’t leave Earth even if he could. It’s a simpler life, but a pleasant one. He bonds with Biffa over a shared love of tea and being stranded in a technologically inferior world and finding a home.

Evil Xisuma

Is Xisuma’s clone. Feels that if everyone’s going to call him ‘Evil’ he may as well own it. Shot his original’s spaceship down in a scuffle but wound up being brought down with him. Currently hides in the woods. Generally more of a minor nuisance than an actual danger. Used to spend his free time bothering X but has gotten put off by Wels, who has a problem when it comes to evil clones. His friends consist of Hels, who is a terrible role model, and Zedaph, who’s trying to help him work through his problems behind everyone’s backs. Can summon lightning because he deserves it.

Zedaph

Is the reason Team ZIT is ghostbusting in the first place. He’s a sheep shearer by trade, but that’s a fairly seasonal thing and ghostbusting is more fun anyway. Has somehow never been possessed, and claims it’s because he’s always standing next to Tango. He makes sure the other two gets enough sleep Because we all know they can’t be trusted to do it. Probably has some sort of really bizarre and situational magical powers he is thoroughly unaware of. Qualified to be a licensed therapist. Made friends with Evil X at one point, somehow.

Zloy

Like Cleo, he’s a ghost possessing a corpse. Unlike Cleo, there’s a good chance it’s not his corpse. Eh, it’s not like anyone else was using it. Runs a blog with Pixl, because why not. Was already a zombie when he met Pixl, who was still alive at the time. His body is a bit more decayed than Cleo’s, but it’s fine. His goggles are enchanted with the same preservation spell; it’s not really ever explained where he got them from. Has no regard for privacy but is fortunately unable to turn invisible or phase through walls due to inhabiting a physical body. Both can theoretically physically fight ghosts and has enough time to physically fight ghosts, meaning he would be a valuable ally if he could be bothered. Lives in a graveyard. Has an ongoing ‘feud’ with Cleo, in which he puts jabs at her on the blog. Once spent a week as a (very sarcastic) floating potato.

Hermiton

Is the name of the place they all live in/near. Located in an ambiguous location in an ambiguous country, Hermiton is technically large enough to be considered a city but has Town VibesTM. Supernatural going-ons are a fairly normal part of life, and a good number of inhabitants aren’t humans. Despite this, the wider world seems mostly ignorant of the existence of ghosts, magic, etc. I’m not too sure about geography, but it’s surrounded by forest in most directions and in a warm enough climate to not have snow in the winter (so Python doesn’t, you know, freeze to death). Most people don’t tend to bat an eyelid at strange-looking people walking down the street or serving them at the store; they’re used to it by now. There are several theories as to why Hermiton specifically has so much going on when it comes to the supernatural- ley lines, secretly the resting place of some long-forgotten god, et cetera- but it’s actually more of a case of ‘people who have supernatural traits hear rumours of a place where a lot of people have supernatural traits and go there in search of answers/a place to belong’. This doesn’t exactly explain where all the ghosts came from, but hey. Nothing’s perfect.

[lassieposting]

Ok...u got my attention...💘 for skuldugery and cassandra

OH BOY I GOT ONE

send me 💘 + A SHIP and i’ll tell you—

where they first met and how

Okay so when they first meet, it's way back before he met Skugwife, when he was on-again-off-again with China and Ghastly and making his way up the ranks in the Sanctuary army.

A dashing young officer with an impressive inheritance and a string of victories under his belt would've been prime 1600s marriage real estate. They meet at some Sanctuary party, dance together a bit, get along very well. Skug was already arrogant and vain, but he was also charming and funny, which was a bonus, and they were social equals - she's from a wealthy, landed family herself. She was interested in him and they were in each other's social circle from around his mid-20s to when he met Wifey and fell disgustingly in love, at which point she conceded defeat and let him go.

It's actually Gordon who brings them back into each other's lives in the 1980s. They've both changed a lot since they last saw one another and she's not really sure what to make of him. He's colder, more serious, and she knows he's lost...pretty much everyone. When she tells him to come by anytime, he's polite but detached and basically says that's not a good idea, so she doesn't expect to see much of him in the future. But he comes back some months later with a difficult case to ask if she's seen anything, and from that point on they work together sporadically, if she has any visions that might be useful to him.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved

They rekindle their flirtation after he comes back in Dark Days. He's not okay, not in the slightest, and she can see it. He's faking being okay, but he's overselling it. She knew him through the period where his mother was killed, and he tried to play that off the same way. He ends up driving out to her cottage at some ungodly hour of the early morning because he's falling apart and he doesn't really have anywhere else to go. she takes him in, sits with him until long after the sun comes up and lets him talk it out until he's dozing off where he's sitting.

By the War of the Sanctuaries, they're Together.

who fell for who first ( if applicable )

She was rather taken with him when they first met. She liked to think of herself as the future Mrs Captain Pleasant. He was attracted to her, but also otherwise entangled and considerably less invested.

When they get back together, it's more. Falling in love at the same time.

where their first date was and what it was like

They've spent a lot of time together, usually at her cottage, already. But he gets it into his head he wants to take her on an actual date, and she's a homebody, so he decides to make her dinner. It's kind of a disaster because he hasn't had to cook anything in hundreds of years - he follows a recipe, but he still manages to burn it and get food absolutely everywhere with the electric whisk. He's pretty frustrated and upset that he ruined it, but she finds it hilarious, and they end up cuddling on the couch with takeout and a movie.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? )

She gives him a key. She prefaces it with a big speech about how it doesn't have to mean anything, he just spends so much time there that he might as well be able to let himself in, and she wants him to have somewhere he really feels safe and comfortable and her place can be that for him if he wants, and -

He kisses her mid-speech, so she never gets to finish it.

who proposes first

He does. She'd never bring up marriage to him, when she knows how his first one ended. She can't be completely sure he's done grieving his first love, and she doesn't want to hurt him, so it's better not to bring it up.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away

It's not a secret at all. Valkyrie still goes nearly a decade without noticing.

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? )

They're in bed together first thing in the morning. He doesn't remember the last time he was this relaxed and happy. He watches her wake up and she cuddles closer into him with the squinty morning-sun-in-your-face look and he never thought he'd love this much again and it just. Comes out.

who’s more dominant

Neither, really. They're very much a team. She tempers his recklessness, and he gives her a nudge out of her comfort zone. She has the same ability Wifey had, though, to wrangle him without ever letting on that she's doing it.

where their first kiss was and what it was like

He was totally drained after unloading a year's worth of torture on her post-Dark Days, and she was trying to comfort him. It doesn't lead anywhere - she puts him to bed on her couch and stays with him so he feels safe enough to switch off and sleep.

if they have any matching couples stuff ( mugs? sweaters? pillowcases? )

She buys him a hideous Christmas sweater the first year they're officially together, but has yet to successfully bully him into wearing it.

how into pda they are

They're your average couple. If she drops in on him at the Sanctuary, she'll kiss him goodbye. He'll put his arm around her when they're walking, or let her hold his hand. But neither of them is an exhibitionist.

who holds the umbrella when it rains

He does. He could easily just redirect the rain, but she likes nature stuff and that includes getting soaked through on occasion, kissing him in the rain, and splashing through puddles.

where their usual ‘date spot’ is ( if applicable )

Her cottage, more often than not. He'll happily take her out whenever she wants to, but she's a homebody at heart and she's more fond of going for long walks in the countryside near her home or cooking together, watching old movies, that sort of thing.

who’s more protective

Him, by a million miles. She doesn't necessarily like the amount of violence in his life, but to her he's very much the capable soldier who can look after himself. But she is a pacifist and very into the hippie ideology, so especially after the Night of Knives, she relies on him to protect her. He knows damn well that the only reason he didn't lose her the same night Finbar died is because he just happened to be sleeping over and the would-be assassin got more than he bargained for.

how long it is before they sleep together ( can be as in ‘had sex’ or as in ‘shared a bed’ )

Probably circa KOTW? It can't have been Death Bringer, or he'd have asked her to the Requiem Ball.

if they argue about anything

Not often. She's one of the most emotionally healthy people in this series, and she's the closest Skulduggery Pleasant has ever gotten to therapy. She's all about communication and talking it out.

who leaves more marks ( lipstick, hickeys, scratchmarks etc. )

Skug.

who steals whose clothes and how often

She steals his jackets and coats. She'll wear something just a little too light for the weather, so that he'll inevitably offer her his suit jacket. It's an old way of courting that she finds very endearing.

how they cuddle ( spooning? facing each other? )

what their favourite nonsexual activity is

They bring out the Old Person in each other. They like to go for long walks, and picnics, and dancing to old gramophone records. They read books and bicker about how much they did or didn't enjoy them. She likes to garden and paint, and he's not half bad at art either, so they'll paint each other and laugh about it.

how long they stay mad at each other

They don't. They argue very little in the first place, but Cassie is very communicative, so she usually manages to head off any potential arguments before they even start.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are

She has hot chocolate, and he has his black.

if they ever have any children together

No - but if he was ever going to have children with anyone else, it should probably be Cassie. She's sensible, level-headed and emotionally healthy, so he could be the same loving-but-irresponsible dad he was with Skugbab.

if they have any special pet names for each other

She's "Cassie" and he's usually "sweetheart" or "lovey".

what their shared living space is like ( messy? clean? what kind of decor? )

He "moves into"/spends most of his time at her little hippie hobbit hole, so nothing matches, tapestries everywhere, Interesting™ colour schemes, fuckin...crystals and tarot cards and witchy shit everywhere. They both have to make some compromises ("You don't bug me about making the bed and I won't play the banjo in the shower")

what their first christmas / hanukkah / etc as a couple was like

Very inappropriate to talk about at parties.

He's a Christmas grouch, but he did get two days off work, so they basically spent the entire time eating, fucking or fast asleep.

what their names are in each other’s phones

She's just "Cassie" but that makes her one of the few people in his phone not to be "Firstname Lastname". He's "SP".

if they have any ‘couple traditions’ ( buying a new mug for their collection every year? baking every friday evening? )

They can never really make plans for set days or times because of his incredibly erratic work schedule, but they make time every week to just spend time together. Unless the world is ending, which it usually does at least once a year.

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first

She falls asleep first at a sensible hour, and wakes up when he gets in. If she sleeps through him coming home, he'll stay up for an hour or two to work on a case, but if he wakes her, he'll go straight to bed and she'll go back to sleep with him holding her.

After the Night of Knives, she gets very anxious and stressed about being alone, especially when she hears the door open. So he'll call and wake her when he's leaving the Sanctuary, so that she knows to expect him home, and he's at the end of the phone any time she wants to get hold of him.

who’s the big spoon / little spoon

He's the big spoon like 70% of the time, but she's not opposed to letting him be the little spoon at all. Even the strongest general sometimes needs a good snuggle.

who hogs the bathroom

Cassie likes to take a book into the bath and spend hours in there. He'll come in and out as he pleases and sometimes do her hair for her or swipe bubbles on her nose.

who kills the spiders / takes them outside

Skug. This is, apparently, one of the greatest benefits to having him around all the time. He's glad she's comfortable enough with him to be honest that she's using him for his spider removal skills.

[wherearemyglassesbro]

could you do those feral headcanon things for the face family? i feel like you've done something similar but not just headcanons. if you have and i just missed it, i apologize!

Sure thing pal!

Arthur:

Artie was naturally feral. When he popped out of the ground, he wandered aimlessly until his mother found him

“There you are” and she dragged him back to her camp where his brothers were

He didn’t know them so he bit them

His only socialization for awhile was his mom and brothers so he didn’t exactly get to meet humans right off the bat the way other nations did as kids!

He often had chipped teeth from biting rocks or bones. His mom thought it was cute

Arthur didn’t get along with the village kids cause he was...rabid and they were not. They had traditions and a langauge and stuff like that and Art (along with his brothers) didn’t understand it...aw

He grew up pretty wild too, his pirate years were definitely some of his craziest cause he got to pretty much do whatever without consequences

Sometimes he’d cut off a finger or toe of someone he fought and wear it on a necklace. It fucking REEKED and his crew would be like dude that’s nasty but he didn’t care

He also did a lot of drugs. As a treat. He often looks back on his actions and cringes but he had a lot of fun lmao

Alfred:

When Alfred first popped out of the ground the first thing he learned to do was run

He just...ran around, sprinting like a bat outta hell through the woods. Rocks and sticks stabbed into his feet and twigs slapped him him the face

And when he got hungry he tackled a squirrel and bit it oh god uhhhh

He popped up about 5 miles from a tribe of Natives who were like...scared of him at first. Cause when a bloody child emerges from the forest at 4am, that’s not exactly a good thing

They thought he was a monster or something but after they gave him some clothes and food, he settled down by the fire and calmed down a considerable amount so...they didn’t have the heart to kick him out

He got along great with everyone! He was naturally curious, always wandering between people to check out what they were doing. He helped with tasks here and there from skinning deer to braiding hair

They were surprised by how quick he picked up on things. After only two days of teaching, he could expertly braid hair. After living with them for a week, he could skin a deer the way they showed him

He knocked his teeth out a lot cause he’d fall out of trees or get kicked in the face by animals so he’d make beads out of his own teeth. Awesome :)

Francis:

Fran popped up in the woods so he has a very similar experience to Arthur where he tuned into his instincts, made animal sounds, hunted with his bare hands, that kind of stuff

His mother found him after awhile and took him to the village where she lived on the west coast, thats a key difference between him and Arthur: his early exposure to people

He became very social very early on though he was still a brat. He would fight other kids who were physically his age knowing damn well that he’d beat them I to the dirt

He spent his teenage years killing Arthur over and over again so he developed insane assassin skills. Swords, poison, darts, knives, he knows how to use it all literally because he and his bestie just wanted to keep killing eachother

When fighting humans he’d stab them in the neck and watch them bleed out while making fun of them ‘aww! Poor thing!’...bitch...wtf

He realizes that was messed up but he was a teen then so he didn’t really know better

He has always been tame in the drug field. He tends to shy away only because he was worried about his self image...but then he’d get obscenely drunk and run around paris at 3am...the duality of man

In the 80s though he was a mess. He’d do 6 lines of coke and show up to world meetings in a fur coat sweating profusely. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles babey

He’s fallen off the Eiffel Tower before. He also pushed Arthur off of it a year later

Matthew:

Mattie is a woods child but like Alfred, he was taken in kinda quick

Mattie is a brutal fighter, as I mentioned in an earlier post. He cuts off his opponents arms and legs and punts them away. He only did that to nation oponnents though

Matt is more subtle tbh

But he does have his moments. He’ll drink a bottle of whiskey and go outside and the next morning he’ll wake up with a new bench. He doesn’t remember making a bench. Or cutting down the tree to make the bench. But he made it.

He’s eaten nails, paper clips, magnets, bolts, lots of small metal things just to see what his body does to them cause even as a nation, he doesn’t know how his body works. Turns out he just has to painfully shit it out lmao

He has also fought a bear. Did he win? No. Did he enjoy it? Also no

He has wrangled a wild moose before and rode it. I wouldn’t reccomend it and neither would he.

Michelle:

Michelle is a younger nation when compared to the other guys so she doesn’t have the same ‘I lived in the woods for months’ background

But she did pop out of the sand one day in front of a bunch of people which was startling to say the least

She was still born with her ‘animal instincts’ where she wanted to bite off fish heads and roll in mud, which she did

Her people took her in very quick though and taught her their ways so she is more ‘domesticated’ but I don’t enjoy using that term for people...but that’s kinda how it was