#so I don’t know a lot of canon except what I read on wiki so I’d need a lot of criticism if I POSSIBLY wrote a fic

[weadapt]

If I POSSIBLY (no promises) wrote a story of Cal having severe echos at a very, very young age and his parent(s) struggling to find a way to help him, what would you ultimately want out of the story?

[181patheticpaperclips]

having thoughts about marlene mckinnon for way too many words

In honour of breaking up the fanon characterisation of Marlene a little, here’s every bit of information I could find about Marlene from canon, and variants of Marlene that aren't a Marauders' year Gryffindor that I think could be really fun to write! As a fandom we all seem to stick to the same few traits for the characters like Marlene, to the point where it almost creates a kind of ‘canon’ which kind of defeats the creative freedom which makes writing in the Marauders era so interesting.

And please note that this is not a criticism of fanon at all, headcanon what you want to headcanon, there are so many talented writers and artists who do amazing Marlene work within her fanon characterisation as a Gryffindor classmate in the Marauders’ year. I just had a lot of thoughts.

So anyway, here’s the three quotes we have that mention her:

“No one lived after he decided ter kill ‘em, no one except you, an’ he killed some o’ the best witches an’ wizards of the age - the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts - an’ you was only a baby, an’ you lived,” - Hagrid, The Philosopher's Stone

“That’s Marlene McKinnon, she was killed two weeks after this was taken, they got her whole family,” - Moody, Order of the Phoenix

“Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard,” - Lily, The Deathly Hallows

Let’s get into it. Alright, so to get an indication of what Hagrid means when he’s talking about “the best witches an’ wizards of the age,” we can look at the Bones and the Prewetts.

“That’s Edgar Bones… brother of Amelia Bones, they got him and his family, too, he was a great wizard” from Order of the Phoenix. Apparently, his mother and father were also murdered by Voldemort (fandom wiki). It’s unclear whether “great” refers to magical skill or strength of character; however, we know Amelia Bones, his sister, was a fair and principled woman, so it probably includes elements of both. 

“Gideon Prewett, it took five Death Eaters to kill him and his brother Fabian, they fought like heroes.” Combining this with the Hagrid quote, we can gather that the “best witches an’ wizards” likely refers to prodigal magical skill, as well as strength of character - generally acting like a hero. 

So from these quotes, we can gather that Marlene was either a great witch herself, or at the very least, most of her family was skilled at magic, and that they all had great strength of character. By strength of character, I guess, from looking at the type of people the Prewetts and the Bones were, I mean that she valued stuff like justice, compassion and courage, and also, to put it simply, had a backbone and could stand up for what she believed in. 

I don’t think this necessarily makes her a Gryffindor, although it does make it more likely. The Bones family was known to be affiliated with Hufflepuff (Susan Bones), and people of every house can exhibit these traits. Although still very much possible, I find Slytherin to be the most unlikely house for her, as Hagrid does tend to harbour certain biases towards Slytherins (i.e. he tells Harry that there wasn’t a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin) so would be less likely to describe a Slytherin-affiliated family in such a positive manner. However, realistically, all four houses are open options for Marlene. 

Now, onto her relationship with Lily Evans. Lily does not refer to her by name, only as part of a collective “the McKinnons,” implying that to the extent Lily knew Marlene, she was also associated with more than one member of the McKinnon family. Her death is also mentioned in a throwaway sort of line, as an explanation of Peter’s sadness, meaning she had to be somewhat close to Peter for it to be reasonable that he’s at least as sad as Lily about her death. This also reads like it’s the first time Lily has discussed her death with Sirius, and it’s been about a week. This, to me, seems to indicate a relationship that isn’t necessarily very close, more like coworkers than anything - if they were closer, I think we could expect more of a specific comment about Marlene rather than a generalised one about her family. As this letter is addressed to Sirius, it’s also likely that Sirius wasn’t particularly close with Marlene either, as Lily offers no attempt to comfort him about her death, which occurred sometime close to “last weekend.” Given Lily is often shown as quite a caring character, if either Lily or Sirius were extremely close to her, I think you’d expect more from Lily. However, Lily still does “[cry] all evening” when she hears, so it isn’t completely detached news of something happening to a stranger. Casual friends or acquaintances, maybe, but probably not a deep friendship.

We’re looking at a relationship close enough to warrant an initial shock reaction from Lily, but not close enough to warrant continual intense grief for more than a week, with a connection that was to the whole McKinnon family, not simply Marlene. In my personal view, while being Gryffindor classmates fits this model (allows Lily, Peter and Sirius to all be familiar with her, and could have a similar level of detachment as Harry has from Dean or Seamus), I’d think sharing a dormitory for seven years and also fighting in a war together would form a deeper connection between Marlene and Lily (think of Harry’s connection with Neville by the end of Deathly Hallows), or at least warrant a mention of Marlene in particular rather than “the McKinnons” in her letter. 

Moody also doesn’t point out additional members of the McKinnon family in the photo, implying that they were absent when the photograph was taken or were not members of the Order. I think it likely that more McKinnons than Marlene were in the Order, as this would allow Lily, Sirius and Peter to be connected to the family. There are three scenarios: the McKinnons are in the Order photograph and are simply not mentioned by Moody, the McKinnons are in the Order but not the photograph, and the McKinnons are not in the Order. In the first scenario, Marlene is singled out as the most significant member of the McKinnons, as she is the only one named and the others are referred to as “her family” - she could be more involved in the Order than the others, or she acts as some kind of leading figure for the household, or she was simply better known to Moody than the others. In the second scenario, she is mentioned as the only one present, while the others are absent - they could be in hiding, although Lily and James were in hiding and were still present for the photograph, or are on some kind of Order activity (like Lupin, who is also not mentioned as being in this photograph). In the third scenario, Marlene is the only Order member in her family. The way Moody describes her death as “got her whole family” also suggests an element of being caught, as if the whole family was wanted to some extent by the Death Eaters. Hagrid also says that Voldemort had “decided ter kill ‘em,” further implying that the whole family were targets, not just collateral damage from targeting Marlene. For these reasons, I find it more likely that she is not the only member of the Order in her family.

Lily, James, Sirius and Peter are seated in the same row of the photograph - from this, we can gather that there likely wasn’t arranged seating and people sat with those they were friendly with. Marlene is standing nearby to Dedalus Diggle, Frank and Alice Longbottom and Moody, implying these were the Order members she was closest to, not the Marauders. For this reason, I think it’s reasonable to interpret Marlene as older than she often is portrayed. Frank and Alice’s ages are unknown, but they are well-accomplished Aurors, repeatedly stated throughout the series to be an extremely challenging career with training for at least three years after graduation to even enter the position, although they are not too old to have Neville (the average age of first-time mothers in 1981 was about 25, but given that Alice was a well-established Auror by the time Neville was born, she was probably a bit older), likely placing them somewhere in the mid twenties to thirties range. Dedalus Diggle could be any age, but he is quite an eccentric and cheerful character, wearing a purple top hat, known for enthusiastic displays like summoning shooting stars in Kent upon Voldemort’s downfall, bowing to Harry in a shop, and attempting to be friendly to Vernon Dursley (a monumental task). Her association with Dedalus Diggle implies she isn’t bothered by this kind of behaviour - or maybe she is, and she’s unfortunately stuck standing near him. Moody is described as having grey hair, and just generally comes across as an older man (grizzled appearance, gruff, battle-hardened cynic). Given Moody is also nearby, Marlene is now associated with at least three Aurors, so she could reasonably be interpreted as an Auror, or Auror-in-training.

So, in conclusion:

Marlene is a member of the Order, likely at least a few years older than Lily and James. Her family members, whether that be her children or parents or siblings, are also in the order, and she is probably fairly close with them, given they were all murdered together. The McKinnons are highly skilled wizards and have strength of character, standing up for their beliefs, to the extent that they become a specific target for Death Eaters. Her closest associates in the Order are probably the Longbottoms and Dedalus Diggle, as well as Mad-Eye Moody. 

Marlene Variants!!

I think being described as one of the best of the age, not her age, but the age, might imply that she was either a younger member of a well-known magical family like the Potters (James Potter’s parents), or was an older, well-accomplished witch in her own right. 

Marlene, part of a large family affiliated with the Order, who knew Sirius, Lily and Peter through having been the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor one year. We know that, in Harry’s time, Dumbledore asked at least two former Order members to teach DADA in a six year time span (Moody and Lupin, from Harry’s first to sixth year), so it isn’t unlikely that Order members could be asked to fill in the role for a year. Professor McKinnon, who puts her students through almost military paces, but who sits on her desk while teaching, who knows which students are friends, who arranges her seating plans accordingly to make sure everyone has someone they can ask for help nearby. Marlene, who teaches the first years how to duel and goes tramping through the forbidden forest searching for Hinkypunks and takes her third years to the lake with Gillyweed to hunt for Grindylows, because doing is the best way to learn.

Marlene McKinnon and Dedalus Diggle as friends; whether Marlene is similar to him in being enthusiastic and just generally kind of extra, or whether she’s a kind of down to earth character foil for him, just… I think those two would be very interesting to see interacting. Marlene and Dedalus as old schoolmates, who love magic for the wild and the untameable, who charm rain into shooting stars and charm autumn leaves to fly in dizzying dances.

Marlene as an Auror. Marlene as Moody’s colleague, as around his age, as Frank and Alice’s colleague. Marlene who can hold her own against any given Death Eater, even when caught by surprise. Marlene, who can cast spells so powerful they make the floor crack under her feet and sear the walls with energy. Marlene McKinnon, who makes Death Eaters flee when she appears in the doorway, who can never be ambushed and can never be beaten, who decimates the ranks of every opposing force. Marlene, who isn’t afraid to kill where Moody spares, who can snap from kind to deadly in an instant. 

Marlene who is delighted when Alice tells her she’s having a baby, who comes around for lunch on Saturdays, who helps design the wards, and patches loopholes in the magic until it's impenetrable, and who makes Neville a quilt that is never finished. Marlene, who would have been an incredible aunt figure to Neville Longbottom. 

Marlene as an Auror in training, with parents who are already Aurors, potentially siblings too. Marlene who goofs around with Moody, who Tonks reminds him of years later, Marlene who dies despite her training. Maybe Evan Rosier is the one who kills her; maybe Moody remembers this when Rosier refuses to come quietly; maybe Marlene McKinnon is half the reason Rosier ends up dead that day.

There’s my brainrot analysis! This turned out a bit longer than I intended it to be. Feel free to use any of this in anything you make (maybe I’ll cough up some art eventually… tag me if you do, I’d love to see). And a friendly reminder that if you do headcanon Marlene differently, in the end, it’s all for fun, and you’re free to view her any way you’d like. And who knows, maybe I’ll get around to doing this for the other characters one day.

[alangdorf]

Welp, the ref lineup still isn’t done cause I haven’t drawn Shion yet, and the belated valentines I’ve been working on are gonna be like at least a month late cause I just planned three more, but what I did do these past couple weeks is start writing a fanfic and then immediately abandon it to go draw a bunch of only tangentially-related suzutsubas (except for that first pic; that’s a scene from it, albeit one I haven’t written yet), only half of which are fit for public posting (one of ‘em I could make a few edits and feel ok about posting sometime; it’s not that out there, it’s just, y’know. Hamal Cine Bad End Hyperbolic Torture Chamber. I’m usually very “whatever happens happens” about my art but if I don’t show some restraint I know I’ll end up stuck in there forever), but hey, since I’ve been teasing them for ages and finally have some finished stuff with them, take a couple Suzumii! Also gonna ramble abt headcanons under the cut (and it will be LONG)

To begin, a note abt my Len’en gender/pronoun headcanons: as a they/them preferrer myself, I’m thrilled that most people just stick with those for everyone, but I’ve developed some more detailed headcanons as I go through working on designs and I’ll generally be using those. Don’t worry though, most of them are still nonbinary and basically all of them are trans/gq. Relevant ones for this post are Tsubakura: they/them nonbinary (transmasc to some degree) and Suzumi: cis female, question mark?? (to be elaborated on); for clarity’s sake I usually use she/her for Arde and Hamal Cine individually and plural they for the system collectively (also I don’t usually use their nicknames, dunno why), but singular they for Benet (the wiki says Benny is probably short for Benetnasch so I’m assuming that’s their actual name) for reasons which will also be elaborated on (sort of).

Aaalso this clearly isn’t autobiographical or anything but I think I’m subconsciously putting a lot of myself into Suzumi because 1) we do look pretty similar (brown wavy bob + blue eyes) and 2) given their current status as both the main antagonist and the most well-known plural Len’en character (I get the impression that Hooaka also being plural isn’t super common knowledge; I mean it took me several read-throughs of their wiki page and their dialogue with BPoHC Secret Team to get what they were getting at lol) I am probably way too anxious about doing a bad stereotype. Just an observation and also probably partially why I’ve even ended up with so much headcanon for them in the first place

And before I get into the thick of it, notes on derivations from canon: I’m running with the assumption that Suzumi being a system is a relatively recent development tied to whatever incident it was that caused the falling-out, since Tsubakura is like the only person who seems at all familiar with Hamal (including Mitori/Chouki/Fumikado, but they’re more easily explained away as just having met with one of the other alters the few times they’ve interacted) even though she’s supposedly usually the one fronting. They don’t seem to know the mechanics of it though, judging by their confusion when Arde implied that she and Hamal are different people. So basically, I’ll be referring to pre-incident Suzumi as a different character from any of the other three. (Ngl I am very influenced by Dissociation Constant on that and just in general [when will my wife The One and Only Suzutsuba Fic return from the war…..]) I was also debating whether to have Suzumi have any history with the gang before starting to work at the lab/whether stuff would happen around high school or college age, cause they keep referring to everything happening “a long time ago” and I know I, a 24-year-old, feel like stuff that happened five years ago was like yesterday, but I do have the pandemic and not really doing much of anything for most of that time to reckon with so like, eh. College age makes more sense in my head and so does the dynamic of like, Suzumi was only introduced into the friend group (she was acquainted w Hoojiro and Yabu already though bc lab) because she was dating Tsubakura and since that ended, and badly (understatement of the century), they have extremely little reason to be civil with each other and also interacting at all is really awkward.

Ok now on with it! Either end of high school or beginning of college, Suzumi ends up interning at Tsubakura’s lab for college credit (Tsuba’s already practically a department head despite being like 17 or something because. Idk. Who even knows what’s up with them) and she’s like. Only wears t-shirts and jeans (bought a bunch of khakis for this job though), [reading] glasses from the men’s section, hates leaving her hair down (it’s lab safety anyways). Repressed queer in denial, you know the type. Starts interacting a lot with Mx. Tsubakura “wears short shorts that everybody thinks are actually a skirt and also uses ore and omae almost exclusively” Enraku who seems to have everything all figured out and is immediately starstruck (GIRL WHY?? they are such a mess). Lots of “do I want to date them or do I want to be them” confusion (this will be relevant later); eventually evolves into the “am I trans or just a lesbian” question (not that they would need to be attracted to women to be into Tsubakura but you get the picture), which never quite gets answered.

In any case, they do eventually start dating (Tsubakura thinks she’s cute and smart so they reciprocate), and they’re not like super great together cause Tsubakura is emotionally constipated at the best of times (Suzumi’s into that though) and neither of them are the most mentally/emotionally healthy people even back then and also Tsubakura is more or less Suzumi’s boss which is weird, but they’re kind of ok??? Tsubakura’s mom dies at some point, also they move in together (college housing is expensive), the rest of the crew at the very least tolerate Suzumi, etcetera.

And then…! [insert catastrophic event here]!! I don’t have a shot to call on this yet cause I have no idea what it could’ve been (and I’m sure it’ll get revealed at some point anyways); I’m just banking on it being something extremely not mundane and something where you could reasonably set the blame on either (or neither) party cause they sure both seem convinced the other is way worse, huh! In Tsubakura’s case at least, blaming Suzumi is partially a defense mechanism so their self-loathing doesn’t get the better of them over it (guess what the fic was supposed to be about, lol).

The worst part of all this business though is that they DON’T break up over it immediately and it just makes everything orders of magnitude worse for everyone involved. Tsubakura and Arde have hate sex MORE THAN ONCE………… they would both really rather forget about it. Hamal thinks it’s hilarious, ofc, but the less said about her, the better. And Benet… exists??? The only idea that I’m running off of for them atm is the observation that I think they’re the only character with flat black eyes other than Tsubakura/Tsurubami and the subsequent idle thought, “hey if someone malded so hard about a breakup that they ended up with an introject of their ex would that be messed up or what?” So make of that what you will. (Oh and it may have been obvious that this is what I was going for but Hamal is femme and Arde is butch and they’re constantly squabbling abt aesthetic presentation. Having Arde be straight-up male would’ve been too straightforward of an interpretation and I think it’s funnier this way)

The canonically mentioned murder attempts start taking place and I’m leaning towards Tsubakura eventually being convinced to move out even though it was originally their apartment, albeit mostly just because the wikipedia page for house sparrows mentions that they’re known to take over swallows’ nests, usually after they’ve been abandoned, but they will sometimes drive away or kill the current occupants, and that was a very fun fact to come across when specifically doing research for Len’en but idk how else to incorporate it lol. And so on and so forth up until the present time.

Uhhh is that all I have atm? I think so! Anyway, I think I finally shook out all my suzutsuba doodles (and rambling, though I do still have that fic to work on. idk whether I’ll be able to finish it though; I started strong with an extended metaphor in the middle but Iiiii’m not sure if I can successfully write my way up to it while making it make sense. Also I may draw pretty slow but I write even slower!! Eh I’m sure I’ll post some of it sometime) for the time being so I should theoretically be able to finish up my bigger projects now. Maybe I’ll have the valentines ready in time for white day? We’ll see!

[lizhly-writes]

here you go more normal orv fan knw.  you could probably view it as an extension of this, if you like.

Kim Namwoon does not have a copy of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint at his disposal.

He does, however, have the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint fandom at his disposal, which feels like the weirdest fucking flex ever.  It’s a statement by an author who really wants to piss him off: here, you can have everything except what you actually really need.

You can look at the fanart on twitter.  Postype and tumblr too.  Hey, did you want to read the fanfic on ao3?  Covered.  Oh, look, there’s a wiki too.  That was a major win, having a source of information more canonical than fanfic, but it’s not like it has every detail he needs.  Not like actually being able to read the novel himself.

Better than nothing.  Kim Namwoon has assigned himself homework, and that homework is to go through the fucking wiki in the hopes he won’t run headfirst into a horrible death because of something he forgot about.  

Of course, the moment he has to do something is the moment he loses interest in actually doing it.  Procrastination!  Ha.  And this weird bastard skill he has offers lots of methods of procrastination.

He types out a message –

 [so in scenario 1 if person 1 pushed person 2 into the path of a car person 3 was driving, and person 2 dies, who officially gets the credit for killing person 2? ] 

– and sends it out.

It takes a minute.  Maybe two.  And then –

[ Several people are typing…]

[ i mean they both do take part in killing person 2.  maybe it’s like split credit?]

[ person 1 because person 1 has the intent to kill.  person 3 is just a vessel ]

[ ok but what if person 3 sees what person 1 is trying to do and slams on gas to more effectively murder person 2 ]

[ well then ]

Apparently Kim Namwoon’s got access to the fandom Discord server, too.  

That’s what’s fucking him up.  Kim Namwoon missed it the first time he opened Twitter, but looking on Discord, it’s patently obvious that for some reason, he’s got an active connection to the real world.  Sure, it’s limited.  Any social media accounts with his actual name?  No.  Phone numbers?  No good.

But if he wants to ask Discord people how the fuck Yoo Joonghyuk got his shiny magical coat or what happened to Ricardo von Kaixenix’s consciousness or hey, how did everyone end up in Dark Castle to begin with?  Fine, sure, what-the-fuck-ever.

Kim Namwoon doesn’t understand.  That’s his own Discord account he’s using.  The people he’s talking to, they’re people he actually knows, even if he’s never met them in real life.  The timestamps on the messages don’t match his current date and time, but he bets anything that that’s how time’s passing in the real world.

What does this mean for him?

[crazylittlejester]

TW FOR *MENTIONS* OF S/A

I don’t want to ask stupid questions or anything but is there SA/RP/NCON stuff between ur wars and ur cia? Ik its a popular LU headcannon for wars, and it feels very implied in some of your fics (one of the FH9 spin offs, I think) but I also don’t wanna read too deep into this or say something’s there when it isn’t. If this is a major plot point or smth you can’t answer bcuz if spoilers just don’t reply and I’ll figure it out :p

It’s not a stupid question at all, and the short answer is yes.

The severity of the situation and also like, the circumstances are very different depending on which series it is. For example in FH9 Wars and Cia were actually together as a couple for a bit where in some of the other things I’ve written they do not even know each other and have met like twice. For the most part I try to keep it as more of an implied thing because, with the exception of FH9, the interactions between them are never super relevant to the plot, but it is there, and that’s how I meant it to be read.

I know it’s a bit of a sensitive topic for a lot of people, so even though it’s only been implied and not outright stated, I try to post trigger warnings at the start of the chapters/fics that imply it, and also (unless it’s super plot relevant) I try to write it in a way where if you don’t want to read into that, you can kinda skip over it or imagine they’re talking about something else. I know a good portion of this fandom is on the younger side and because most of my fics are rated T, I feel like if I wrote anything more than just heavily implying what happened I should move the rating up, if that makes sense…?

One thing really important to me is representation in writing, being able to read a book or watch a show and see someone who’s gone through something similar to you and be able to feel seen through that character. Male SA survivors are something I rarely see in media, and without talking too much about my private life, I personally would’ve loved to have seen more characters healing from traumas growing up, I think it would’ve really helped me when I was younger. I tend to write a lot about my own experiences and traumas, it’s really helpful actually- And this is just another thing I’ve kinda thrown unto Wars, although this one has a lot more canon ‘backing’ than a lot of my other headcanons and I know this is a headcanon a lot of other people have as well

The whole canon situation between those two was honestly a bit insane for a nintendo game, like just the wiki thing about her that shows up on google is kinda crazy. Like I’m not sure what the hell nintendo meant their whole dynamic to be but playing the game it made me uncomfortable as hell

So yeah, I have this headcanon too, I’m not sure if I’ll ever write a detailed fic about it, that would be a lot for me mentally I think. The most I’ll ever get into it is probably having him say the words ‘I was assaulted’, but nothing more than that.

Full disclosure I wrote this out in my car twenty minutes before class starts so sorry if parts of this make no sense but TL;DR: Yes in my fics Wars was assaulted, I don’t wanna trigger people because I know that’s a bit of a darker headcanon, I think Male SA survivor rep is important, and yeah I think that summarizes everything 👍

(sorry for spelling errors or oddly autocorrected words i am dyslexic-)

[question-why-not]

i really hate how the DC writers and some fans are so obsessed with “which batfamily can beat which” and with just seeing “cool fight scenes” and stuff

This awful obsession keeps taking precedence over and destroying any semblance of actual good creative stories

Jason Todd is probably one of the most common victim of this BS, see RHATO 25 and all of those stupid fights between Jason & the batfamily in Task Force Z, the writers making the characters fight in situations they absolutely don’t have to, at least not without trying to talk it out first (there was absolutely no reason for Jason & the batfamily not to communicate about what’s going on with the task force, it was literally only engineered to be a total failure of communications to have a batfamily VS Jason fight that looks cool)

i don’t actually read a lot of comics, i read task force z just to get context on that panel where Cassandra spooks Jason, but i’m sure other people here can tell examples where it happens to other characters too, but i do think Jason is a more common victim of this simply due to DC not having any real direction to take his character to because they won’t let go of the Joker, and even without that simply because they won’t let go of the conflict between Jason & Bruce, because “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” and these people are concerned with making money not with telling a compelling story

Also, like, fighting isn’t all the members of the batfamily can do????? They have a wider skillet than that, with each of them also having their own unique specialization??????

Dick is one of the best acrobats in the world, and extremely capable & experienced vigilante, he’s the oldest of the batkids and has the most experience as a result, and he’s also a leader in the vigilante community

Barbara is Oracle, a legendary hacker and leader+coordinator of multiple superhero teams, top notch computer skills second to none as well as multitasking and crisis management

Jason is a master tactician, he can toy with people and factions in extremely long term plans to achieve the results he wants

Tim is the shoe-in to being the world’s greatest detective, he’s a very capable vigilante overall, and his computer skills are top notch, not that far behind Barbara

i don’t know if Stephanie is considered “the best” of any batfamily skill in particular, i suspect this may be due to writers’ sexism treating her more like an emotional support character to others rather than as her own character most of the time, i don’t actually read the comics that much and my information is what i decided should be canon based on what i learned from the fandom and in my opinion makes for the most compelling story, please do tell me if Steph has been written to be exceptional even in the batfamily in any particular skill, she deserves to be

Cassandra is the world’s best combatant, hands down, she stopped and restarted a man’s heart to make a point using just a palm strike, in a front-on battle she can literally take anyone down before they can really perceive that she’s there, and her combat skills also happen to allow her to read people like an open book

Damian was trained by the league of assassins from birth, he’s extremely capable in everything in a similar manner to how Bruce is, his character arc is even not really about him learning how to be a badass vigilante and more about him learning how to express himself and connect with others

Duke is literally a superpowered hypergenius, i don’t think i can do justice to his abilities here so go look at his wiki page

Stop constantly making these people fight each other!!! There’s more to them than that, and it just makes for shitty stories!!!!

[sineala]

Intertextuality in Steve/Tony Comics

Hi, Tumblr! I wanted to talk about intertextuality in comics. Actually, I mostly just wanted to talk about this 616 Steve/Tony fact I found that I had no idea existed until the other day but I didn't want to spoil what it was in the title, so this post just sounds way classier than it actually is.

So if you're a comics fan to any degree you've probably figured out that comics are big into intertextuality. Superhero comics are probably the biggest stories that exist -- Marvel's been going with zero linewide reboots since the 1940s, so barring retcons, any comic you pick up from the past eighty years is going to be basically "true" in canon. And comics take a lot of opportunities to play with that fact, using recurring villains, recurring lines, and of course lots of panel redraws of iconic moments but now with other characters. It's a genre that often rewards knowing what has come before, although of course usually you don't have to know in order to follow the plot because if it's something you need to know, it will be filled in.

(An example of this in recent comics that I thought was really clever was Secret Invasion #1, the new miniseries by Ryan North. It is completely readable if you know nothing about Skrulls (although you should probably know that they are shapeshifters) because by the end of it you will know everything you need to know to understand, but the more you know, the more you will understand what the comic is doing as it's happening. The issue opens with Nick Fury visiting a family because a woman wants to show him the body of her dead husband. She explains that she is thrilled that he is dead because she believes that he was replaced by a Skrull and now the Skrull is dead and her real husband must still be out there. We then get a panel of Fury swearing in dismay and frustration. The thing the book hasn't told you at this point is that Skrulls revert to their real forms upon death -- so when you see a dead human, as Fury has, you know for sure that it's a dead human. So if you already know this about Skrulls you know exactly why Fury is upset: he has to break this woman's heart because he knows for a fact that the guy wasn't a Skrull. The book itself fills you in about this fact a couple pages later, but the scene totally works if you just think Fury strongly suspects this guy isn't a Skrull. You just get to feel real smart if you already know why.)

Anyway. That wasn't the kind of intertextuality I wanted to talk about. Just wanted to rec the Secret Invasion mini.

I wanted to talk about the thing that happens where you think you know every detail about a comics event and you later find yourself reading a comic book from the same era that as far as you know has absolutely nothing to do with that event, except, surprise, it does! And there's just some random detail there that wasn't anywhere else in any other comic and it really changes how you think about the whole thing. Because that's the thing that happened to me the other day.

Okay, so. For Reasons, I needed to know about the circumstances surrounding John Walker joining the West Coast Avengers. I'd already been reading Cap from that era, so I knew that in Cap #355, Steve gets a call from the government informing him that Walker is alive and can they borrow that black uniform if Steve isn't using it because they're going to force the WCA to take him. So the thing I started wondering was, hey, what did Tony think of Walker joining the WCA? Because Tony was on the WCA a lot in that era, so he was probably there. Except I checked, and... he wasn't. Walker joins the WCA in WCA #44. Tony is not on the team then.

I haven't read a whole lot of WCA, so naturally that meant I now had a new question, which was "when did Tony leave the WCA, and when did he come back?" So I poked around the appearances list on the Marvel Wiki and found that he left the team in WCA #31 and came back a whole twenty issues later, in WCA #51. I just want to say that Tony has picked some terrifically awful times to leave and rejoin the team, because #31 is the middle of the plot where Bobbi gets raped, and #51 is the BABY ARMS. But that's neither here nor there.

So now I was wondering why Tony left the WCA. I figured I'd go read the issue where he left and it would tell me why. I figured it was probably one of those standard superhero things where he makes a standard goodbye speech, whatever, he's got stuff to do.

That is definitely not how any of this goes down.

So Tony enters the plot in WCA #31 when he's walking around and happens upon Tigra and Moon Knight making out. Like you do, I guess.

Tony, who is rather uncharacteristically angry, tells the two of them to leave. He'd like to sit there by himself because he has some important stuff to think about. Scram. Tigra and Moon Knight, quite reasonably, tell him that this is their romantic scenic overlook and he can go get his own.

(Yes, Tigra knows Tony is Iron Man; she was there in the Molecule Man issue (Avengers #216), so she found out at approximately the same time Steve did. Most but not all of the rest of the WCA knows. Clint and Bobbi specifically do also know because Tony told them in IM #193, which was the recovery phase of the second drinking arc. We will see a few more people who know in this issue.)

Clint, whose attitude to team leadership at this point appears to be, "oh my God, why do I have to be the responsible adult now? thanks, I hate it," shows up to tell Tony to knock it off. He'd like to know what Tony's problem is. Tony says he can't tell him.

Tony says, essentially, that he has to think about some things. Clint really wants to know what's going on because, after all, the WCA is his team. And Tony asks Clint to trust him. Clint says he trusts him. And then Tony's like "okay, thanks, bye," and zooms off.

So at this point, as you can imagine, Clint is wondering what the hell is going on with Tony, and he laments to Bobbi that Tony won't just tell him what's going on.

At this point I too am wondering what's going on with Tony. Because, like I said, I haven't read a lot of WCA, so my assumption at this point is that whatever is going on with Tony is some ongoing development that has been happening in the pages of WCA and that I just don't know what it is because I haven't been reading WCA. I feel this is generally a reasonable assumption. Also, I'm wrong.

We are then interrupted by Clint getting a call from the East Coast team. And this is when we find out what's been going on with Tony.

You may have already figured it out. I didn't.

Spoilers: it's Armor Wars.

The East Coast team is calling to tell the WCA about Armor Wars.

And the framing of this is really, really interesting. I am speaking here as a Steve/Tony fan.

So you might think that the thing everyone's going to be upset about is that Tony is running around stealing his technology back from people because that seems like kind of a bad look for a superhero who is supposed to be a good guy.

They are upset about all that stuff later, yes. But that's not the part of it they're upset about now.

The issue that just happened is Iron Man #228, which as we all know is the issue where Tony breaks into the Vault to steal his technology from the Guardsmen. That's still not the part they're upset about.

They're upset that Tony fought Steve. That's why they're calling.

As far as I know, every other canon recounting of this issue that isn't specifically by Steve or Tony doesn't mention Steve and Tony fighting at the Vault. For example, the Vault thing is part of Ty's smear campaign against Tony in IM v3 #39, but it only mentions Tony fighting the Guardsmen. Nothing about Steve.

We do get other retellings of the fight and scenes that discuss the impact of the fight but they're all Steve and/or Tony, with no one else even present: Steve's POV on the fight in Cap #340, the discussion in IM #238, the famous apology scene in Cap #401, and even Civil War: Casualties of War. Like, as far as I can tell from the rest of canon, it might as well be the case that no one but Steve and Tony knows anything about the fight.

But that's not actually true, because here we see that their fellow Avengers know they've fought. They know, and they're horrified.

You have to remember, this right here is pretty much the first time Steve and Tony have ever seriously fought. Steve took a swing at Tony way back in the Korvac Saga, but I don't think either of them really treated that very seriously. Steve was upset about Tony drinking in Denny O'Neil's run. But those  fights they have where they're seriously trying to beat the shit out of each other and then they stop talking to each other or one or both of them die or there are big dramatic apologies? They haven't had any of those yet. This is the first one.

So their teammates -- and note that Steve is not even a current Avenger at this point, but the Avengers obviously still care about him -- instead of being like, meh, whatever, sometimes Steve and Tony beat each other up, are visibly shaken, because Steve and Tony are friends. This has never happened before. This is really wrong. It's a very emotional reaction. So that, I definitely wasn't expecting.

And the other thing I wasn't expecting was that the way this news is delivered is basically as if it is Tony And Steve's Abusive Relationship.

I'm absolutely not kidding about this.

So here's Monica Rambeau calling the WCA up and being like, I'm sorry I have to tell you this, but I just found out that a few days ago Tony attacked Steve at the Vault. Steve didn't want to tell us, and no one would have known if he hadn't been able to conceal it.

The WCA expresses their disbelief, and Monica insists that she's not kidding -- "Steve's got the bruises to prove it!"

Yeah, so, uh. Marvel's really not being subtle about this. I was just sitting here staring at my computer like OH MY GOD, THEY ACTUALLY WENT THERE. They really are framing this like it’s an act of domestic violence and not garden-variety superhero punching.

So, understandably, Clint is freaking out. He's like, holy shit, both these guys are my friends, I've known them for so long, I told Tony I trusted him, oh no.

Tony then does not appear in WCA for twenty more issues.

So you might be wondering whether they just leave this plotline hanging and they in fact do not. They catch up on it in the very next issue of the mainline Armor Wars story, which is IM #229.

So at some point Tony comes back to the WCA compound and the WCA want to know what the hell is going on:

Somehow by this point the team knows about the thefts that are the actual plot of Armor Wars, but Simon does mention the part where Tony beat up Captain America:

So Tony gives a big summary of all of Armor Wars (yes, including mentioning losing Steve’s friendship):

I enjoy the fact that Clint's response is instantly "you could have told us." Given the way the next page goes I'm pretty sure this is general sympathy and not "you know how much I love committing crimes, Tony, why didn't you think of me?" but I like to pretend it's the second one.

Anyway, what Clint actually says is that he understands where Tony is coming from but that Tony can't do this and be an Avenger. So Tony is off the team.

And once again, Tony zooms away.

So that's the WCA, the Armor Wars, and Tony And Steve's Abusive Relationship.

But after all that, I am left with one question: where did the bruises come from?

Monica says Steve has bruises. From the way she says it, it doesn't sound like it's any kind of metaphor -- it sounds like they're actual bruises. It sounds like the reason the team got the Armor Wars story out of Steve is because they saw that he had actual bruises.

But we all know how the fight in IM #228 goes: Steve and Tony have a brief angsty conversation, Tony claps a negator on Steve's shoulder, and Steve falls to the ground, temporarily paralyzed, while we all learn that a bond has now been broken.

What Tony did was very bad, yes. But also, what he did shouldn't have left bruises. No one punched Steve during this fight. No one punches Steve on his way in or out of the Vault. So Steve shouldn't look like he's been in a fistfight with Tony. But Monica is describing Steve as if he looks like Tony has been hitting him and apparently Steve confirmed that to her.

So they can't be talking about the fight at the Vault. Except they said they were. So what's going on?

As far as I can tell, what they're actually talking about is the confrontation in Cap #341, which happens as a result of the IM #228 fight. This is the one where Steve breaks into Tony's place to wait for him to get home so he can angrily return the shield that Tony made for him earlier in IM #228, like a normal person who has totally normal feelings about another person.

Steve actually returns the shield by throwing it directly into Tony's unarmored stomach, so I feel like (a) there is a sense in which Steve actually picked this fight that is being blamed on Tony (although, yes, obviously the initial conflict was Tony's fault) and (b) this is not really a good look, Steve.

Tony does eventually armor up and fight back, and there are blows exchanged.

I assume this could have bruised Steve up. There’s my explanation.

So that is, as far as I can determine, the only event at all related to Armor Wars in which Steve probably has bruises from being attacked by Tony, although it seems to have been conflated with the Vault attack itself, which if Steve let the Avengers assume this (when Steve actually started this particular fight) is frankly kind of shitty of Steve, but, y'know, Armor Wars is not an event where anyone comes out of it looking good.

(Yes, I know the Doylist explanation is most likely the fact that Armor Wars was by Michelinie & Layton, and West Coast Avengers was by Steve Englehart, and that Englehart was probably working with some kind of rough plot summary of Armor Wars and ended up fleshing it out with details that ended up not existing. It's definitely not the worst plot hole in Marvel Comics.)

Anyway, so there's some information about Armor Wars I didn't have before a few days ago that definitely ups the Steve/Tony angst of Armor Wars even more.

[kaphyr]

Making Shigaraki Make Sense

Is anyone else confused by the “character” Shigaraki not his disjointed philosophy or whatever? I literally don’t get what’s going on as a writer. He’s confusing and I have no idea how to write him into a fic - and honestly, there are barely any Shigaraki-centric fics I like out there. 

(If you have any thoughts on Shigaraki’s character or recs for Shigaraki-centric fics (preferably ShigarakixIzuku) do leave them in the comments/DM me :D )

However! I found a solution - basically, I stopped being lazy and actually did the thing I normally do when writing a book: a Character Sheet!

Essentially, the way that I understand Shigaraki (by which I mean I don’t) didn’t gel with the story I was making or the relationships I was building, so, I figured I would build him from the ground up!

Which meant research. Ew.

First things first, I kept his physical description though I gave him scars where he got shot during the USJ arc. But since I don’t know what exactly he’s got going on with his skin, I thought I might explain it as a mixture of conditions: being extra dry (Catching UFOs by mrjengablock - which I just started reading - talks about how that might be helping him have direct contact with objects without oils/sweat getting in the way), stress-induced eczema, and a very mild dust allergy (lol). Also, I’m not leaving him like that just because! I’m doing that to show how little he cares for appearances (based on societal expectations) as well as not caring about the pain or even thinking that’s just how his life has to be for him.

Enter Izuku!

Izuku helps him take care of himself, buying him eczema cream, washing and styling his hair, and getting him petroleum jelly (which I assume would be the least painful and least likely to react badly with his cuts). This is how I can show that Shigaraki can compromise and does consider Izuku’s opinion and shit. 

Second: Shigaraki’s personality.

I basically used what was on the BNHA wiki but added that he cares about Izuku and that he gets less irritable as time goes on. He also feels proud when Izuku says/does things that go against the hero status quo. He also changes from believing in chaos for the sake of chaos and being directionless under AFO (seeing as in my fic AFO is dead).

Third: Shigaraki’s relationships

I did a lot of changes here, the most notable one being his relationship with Izuku. As Izuku didn’t go to UA, they didn’t meet until Izuku was 20 and they had a couple of one-night-stands that devolved into the mess of a labelless thing they have rn. Think open relationship with someone you’re constantly arguing with but would die for. 

Since LoV isn’t exactly a thing, rn, Shigaraki only has close contact with Dabi and Kurogiri. He still has a master/servant relationship with Kurogiri - actually, it is more pronounced here than in canon because AFO is dead so Shigaraki is his only boss. Dabi hangs around the bar and still works with him as muscle, tech guy, and a friend. He split up with Toga on good terms (this will become relevant later in my fic). He’ll meet Spinner online and they’ll bond over gaming. I think I’ll have him radicalize Spinner. We’ll see. As for AFO, he slowly realizes how AFO was just using him, moulding him.

Fourth: Shigaraki’s past.

It’s the same, lol. Except I’m pushing the USJ and training in the mountains arc to Katsuki’s last year in UA. Additionally, AFO and OFA die after his kidnapping.

Fifth: Shigaraki’s political ideology.

BNHA is inherently highly political and I don’t know why I’m surprised it’s such a letdown when it tries not to be. Honestly, some of my biggest gripes are right here. It’s trying to make Shigaraki an “anarchist” the way that the West colloquially understands them to be. (He wants to end society as it is and believes “the strong should live, the weak should die, and I am strong”.) Which. I can’t explain how much I find that annoying. In canon, he’s just an annoying manchild who can’t even take his thoughts to their logical conclusion. Dude, if you hate the fact that you were overlooked in a world where there are heroes and you suffered greatly, what do you think will happen to all the children in the world if you destroy it!?!!?!!

Anyways.

I’m not saying it’s unrealistic to make him this destructive while also making his grievances and actions clash - but it does make him stupid. Or willfully ignorant. And I don’t think he should be. He’s strong, he’s charismatic (in his own ways) and he already has a bunch of negative qualities (stubbornness, bad temper, etc.); he doesn’t need this.

So, instead, I’m making him start off with the same ideology except it’s going to get refined with AFO no longer controlling him and Izuku being in his life. I don’t wanna spoil too much but I’m thinking terrorism/stochastic terrorisim, using social media, (political) tailing (i.e. using other political movements to build your own), espionage, etc. All of it to expose how the hero system is corrupt, corrupted, and unnecessary and to find other ways for people to live the life they want to live no matter their quirk. Basically telling a story where you can imagine that he sees himself as the hero of his own story instead of an unthinking villain.

Would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. BTW, I found Lots of Thoughts about MHA by  sarehptar (Tumblr post version) to be a great resource when I was just staring to think about my BNHA fic: The Long Defeat.

[blacksurvivalnostalgichanges]

Black Survival characters as mythological/supernatural creatures

Adela:vampire adela is convincing but you know she could be fae with that sort of “you have already lost” thing she has

Adriana:i want to say fire elemental, but that’s too obvious. it’d be poetic if she were instead something that’s constantly cold like an ice elemental or something

Aiden:he is canonically pretty much a supernatural creature. all i can do is nudge towards son of zeus or suggest he’s that one thing i saw somewhere of a being that turns into electricity and travels in power cords (this parenthesis is of me sending this out. what the fuck is this last bit. i have zero clue)

Alex:i think all secret agents would be shapeshifters or changelings. he does have a lot of This Man Is Unfindable vibes, so he’d probably be a shapeshifter

Arda:so tempted to say he’s the human in the story. but ok i’ll name something. i think he has elf-y vibes. at least immortal. like, he’s the type to have lived through a lot of things to me

Aya:maybe it’s because i think she’s kinda similar to kujou sara genshin impact, but i’m thinking tengu

Barbara:human with tons of metal prosthesis (this is me from the future/present. boy that’s a cyborg. pretty sure i described a cyborg)

Bernice:werewolf. hunter of the night, sad about hurting people, that’s werewolf baby

Camilo:either a siren or a sexy vampire

Cathy:necromancer. god i picture someone being like “h... he’s dead.....” and she cracks her knucles like “i didn’t get my medical license revoked for nothing”

Celine:mage or witch vibes to me. all her spells are fireball

Chiara:the nun enemy in horror games. whether she’d be a ghost, or a demon, or a whatever-the-hell is ambiguous, but that’s what i’m seeing. maybe a fallen angel too. good omens au with emma, see my vision

Chloe:witch. like, wears-a-hat, potion-making, cat-having witch is what i’m picturing except instead of a cat she has a small child

Daniel:i’ve compared him to alucard and dracula and vampires too many times for me to say anything but vampire

Echion:hes kind of a cyborg right. i don’t need to try

Eleven:whatever flutterina from she-ra had going on (me from the present/future again. that’s a forest elf. she-ra has a wiki page)

Eva:yeah this one’s obvious. just. magical girl. there ain’t much to work with

Emma:magical girl skin is compelling but. again. good omens au

Fiora:so much medieval knight slayer of dragon vibes coming out of her

Hart:i got nothing. muse? elf? she’s too Normal Person to read

Hyejin:if she were chinese she’d slay in a danmei so hard. she’d cultivate so hard. so when it comes to korea it’s something akin, i guess. don’t know if i want to deep-dive into korean culture for this

Hyunwoo:i never watched teen wolf but he’d be a werewolf in there. source:dude trust me. but with all his stuff going on i wouldn’t be surprised if he was cursed

Isol:ehehe werewolf isol

Jackie:there’s this one episode of grimm where they reveal jack the ripper is a ghost/demon that just comes back every 100 years and possesses someone to go to murders. i think that’s what she’d be

Jan:too much of a normal human being for me to read as well. he’s maybe the character with the least skins too so no clue. not even a halloween costume, i feel like he’d just wear one of those skeleton full-body costumes and call it a day

Jenny:i think it’d be neat if she were a ghost possessing a theater, or something akin to walpurgisnacht from puella magi madoka magica. but she also has elf vibes since she’s full of herself and pretty and stuff

Johann:cleric. what do you want from me

JP: he’s got to be some sort of trickster spirit. if he’s chinese then there’s definitely a few to pick from there

Laura: her whole character is a sort of fetish so if you append “sexy” to it she could be anything

Lenox:dryad. why? she’s afraid of fire. checkmate

Leon:merman

Li Dailin:she’s so regretful and bitter and self destructive. that’s a wraith baby

Luke:he seems like the sort of shapeshifter to turn into a horse to be inconspicuous

Magnus:dude in greek stories who learns not to dare the gods

Mai:that one pokemon that makes fabric. but well. elf. sure. all skinny vaguely pretty people could be elves

Nadine:werwolf is too obvious. but it’s obvious because it fits too perfectly

Nathapon:my guy is beatrice portinari from ordem paranormal, he can’t remember the rituals they did on him

Nicky:is it cruel of me to name dwarf because she’s short. do i get a short joke pass. if i can laugh at my friend when he says the wind

Rio:elf, i think. archery, general appearance. i think it’d be cute if she wore the Elf Outfit Thing but it included a hood with cat ears. something to consider

Rosalio:soul eater weapon thing but he’s a baseball bat with nails that nobody wants to meister

Rozzi:brazilian legend of the iara is what i’m going with, because honestly there’s enough aspects that work well imo. the summary is that it’s a siren but with ~lore~

Shoichi:man i got nothin. his vampire skin is cool and there’s some symbolism there that works since vampires are either rich aristocrats, gay, or both (me from the future again. he’s also ashamed of himself and wouldn’t want to show his body to his child. that is so vampiristic!!!)

Silvia:whatever quicksilver from the avengers had going on for sure

Sissela:Ghost. It makes too much sense, but I briefly considered jiangshi ig

Sua:i think it’d be cool if she was a library ghost. maybe a dryad that lives on as a book idk, but i think it’d be cool if people entered a library and tried to find a book and this sweet disembodied voice goes “it’s on the top shelf”

Tia:she’s already fuckin marina from monica’s gang, what can i say on this one

William:soul eater weapon thing but he’s a boomerang that also no one wants to meister because william is a strange oddly bitter man

Xiukai:ok i need you guys to stay with me through this one, i’m going somewhere. there’s this one urban legend show that ran years and years ago in brazil, and this one episode is about this big boy house that these girls are staying in for a vacay that one of their boyfriends let them stay in. they dirty the floor and stuff because people be like that, and then they start disappearing. that aforementioned boyfriend explains he lived in this house as a kid, and he was a shitheel as a kid who deliberately made a mess for his maid to clean up, but one day she tripped and died. now her ghost (who isn’t sure she’s dead and just cleans up the house as usual) turns people into framed photos. WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT STORY IS, is what i think xiukai would be

Yuki:that one ghost hunter skin is too good for me to be able to imagine him as anything else. i am sorry. i’d love to be like “ah he’d do a good kitsune” or whatever but my mind drifts instantly to him cutting a ghost with a katana

Zahir:i’m like 60% sure he’s already based on a hindu legend so can’t talk too much on that tbh. can’t say for sure since i know very little on that subject but i’m pretty sure they’re basing his backstory off of something

[bride-of-dracaenca]

A Brief, Totally Incoherent History of the OG Animaniacs Fandom (1993 - ???), Part 0.001

(Early - Mid 1990s Animaniacs/PatB Fandom History that Exactly Nobody Cares About!)

@@@hhh…wow. Oh hey, tumblr!

So! OG Animaniacs Fandom seems to be a mostly forgotten chapter in Internet fandom history. Arguably, it was one of the very first Internet/Online fandoms with a unique, discernable “culture.” These fan cultures had existed before – but Animaniacs, arguably one of the first “Megafandoms” - that is to say, one of the first with its genesis (as opposed to merely its continuation) on the Internet - just happened to premiere during September, 1993. Also known on the early Internet as the ETERNAL SEPTEMBER (no, I am not making this up! See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September).

Therefore, it had stuff like this:

A! JW21 YK++i WK++ DT+++!^ P&B+ S&S+ HIP--- S!D--- P+++ Dpfdd{s} Tow2 $++++dmvac Vr+++++j+++t+++m++{s} IV! T419/65Years E5/73 H53 PonYiddish XBRomp A35 M

(That’s not my A! Geek Code, it’s the A! Code of a guy who is really, really cool and smart and was created by a guy who’s really, really cool and smart, FYI.)

Meh, I keep putting this off. Is it because of the collapse of our ecosystem and civilization in this horrible, dystopian “future” that we all find ourselves collectively in? Is it because the very idea of being one of the youngest contributing members of a fandom and, three decades later, maaaaybe, being one of the very oldest, again just maybe (I dunno) is like…one of the saddest things I can even imagine right now? Well, except for the collapse of our ecosystem, civilization, etc. etc.? Gee, okay. That part’s much worse.

I want to go back and eat Dunkaroos and watch Fox Kids. Take me back NOW. Please? ALSO I HATE THE RICH TEXT EDITOR I HATE BEING CAGED I WANT TO BE FREE AND MARKUP AND CODE AS I PLEASE WITH NO LOGIC OR REASON IN ANGELFIRE AND GEOCITIES AND TO FTP TO MY HEART’S CONTENT WITH DANCING CAT .GIFS AND MIDI FILES AND BLUE LINKS ON GREY BACKGROUNDS THAT TURN PURPLE WHEN YOU CLICK THEM AT THE VERY DAWN OF THE WWW 235273^$*&%$!23532 CURSE YOU!

@@@H. Aaanyway. I’ll just come out and say it: I was in the original Animaniacs (A!)/Pinky and the Brain (PatB) fandom starting in…in some form, at least as a lurker, September 1993, when the show first started airing on our local affiliate Fox Kids before it jumped the shark by jumping to the Kids’ WB.

Oh, haha, I kid about that last part. Please just read everything here as kidding/sarcastic, because it is. What is it that you kids do these days? Tone indicators? Read all of this as /j /lh /s or whatevertheheck. You know what I mean. Anyway, possibly earlier, because a.t.a (alt.tv.animaniacs on usenet) was preceded by alt.tv.tiny-toon. And I was a cagey, anxious, fringe-s kid who was really way, way, way too young to be there.

Oh, yes! “Kids” in early Internet fandom! Funny story about that.

So I had started posting some of the first fan works/meta, or whatever the heck it’s called now, for this A!/PatB...stuff, online, by 1994, and…just give me a sec here to chug some, um, “grape juice.” Boy am I super proud of this and this short series of “fandom history” I am about to share throughout this summer, and not ashamed at all. Oh, boy. From back then, when we all had “Warnersonas” on irc and this one total weirdo had a PatB-sona unlike the normal fans.

Also, though: there are lots of legit opinions about who the very best Animaniacs character is, but if you say it’s not Slappy Squirrel, then you’re objectively wrong. And Pinky/Brain, which totally normal people all shipped back then and was a totally normal mundane expected thing, was called Pinky/Brain or maybe Pinky x Brain but smushnames weren’t a thing yet you kids so that’s just what the ship is called, also they are married. My gay mouse uncles were married back then and it was canon. Sorry, I don’t make the A! rules. /j /s /lh. (JOKES ASIDE THE PINKY/BRAIN SHIPPING LITERALLY HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY LIKE THE FIRST MINUTE IN SEPT A! AIRED SO STOP REWRITING HISTORY TO MAKE THE GAY MICE STRAIGHT YOU ARE LITERALLY RUINING MY QUEER CHILDHOOD.)

Side Note: I see a few of you from the og usenet/IRC #watertower days around here sometimes. I know who you are, I know where you live, I – wait, no. I, quite seriously do, kid, guys, although I met some of you irl a very, very long time ago.

og A! fandom peeps - I want you to know that I had a ball back then. You’re still some of the best people I’ve ever known, you and the rest of early Internet fandom, when we were just some weirdos and nerds before the Internet was “cool” or even a thing that most people understood or even recognized! I seriously love you guys. I hope that life has been awesome to you all, and to your loved ones at every turn, treated you well, and you’ve had a blast every minute. I know stuff is tough sometimes. Hang in there. I am rooting for you all every day, seriously. Thank you so much. I can never pay you all back, and I will always love and care. <3 <3

...To everyone else – I’ll continue this series soon, once I can swallow my pride a little bit harder. I’ll be around a bit spottily this summer due to travel, but more so this fall, and hope to post a bit more this week about this fandom history “stage.” And also share some other stuff I keep putting off posting.

Thanks for reading! See you very soon, for the next installment.

What about the PPPGALF, NERD?!?…

That was an Animania IV thing, I’ll get to that very soon. Give me a minute.

Also shut up, Yakko Warner. Shut up. Yes, I heard you, nearly 30 years ago. And you know what, I did! That’s why I have no time to write or post any of this, I am WAY too freaking busy. Now lay off, willya?

Until next time, AIE!, bleugh, Goddess Grapes and harfy QORN.

slappy is gay. i have proof

[mxanigel]

Cut to the Feeling

an Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) fanfic

[Read on AO3]

What if they lived?

An in-progress longfic that follows Levi Ackerman and Hange Zoë starting in the wake of Eren Yeager's first Titan transformation. It features OC Shion Miller, a soldier in Hange's squad who attempts to seek joy in their crapsack world. How will the journey these three take together improve their chances of survival?

Trio art by @/lilithkb!

-----

Rating: M

Relationships: Levi Ackerman/OC, Levi Ackerman & Hange Zoë, Hange Zoë & OC, eventual Levi/Hange/OC

Additional Tags: They/Them Pronouns for Hange Zoë, Hange Zoë Being Hange Zoë, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Friendship, Banter, Swearing, Lots of Cursing, Angst, Love and Loss, Asexuality Spectrum, Levi Ackerman Is Obsessed With Cleaning, Falling In Love, Literal Sleeping Together, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Canon Divergence, Nightmares, Torture, Blood and Injury, Demisexual Levi Ackerman, Bisexual Hange Zoë, I'm writing this because it's taken over my brain, I have spent so many hours on the wiki lol, Eventual Romance

Snippet from the 57th Expedition's aftermath below the cut:

-----

Shion skids to a halt at the sight of Levi hunched over, woodenly going through the motions of tuning his ODM gear. He stares intently at his equipment, eyebrows drawn together, eyes sunken, mouth flattened into a thin line.

Her heart shatters into pieces. What should she say? What can she say?

Then he looks up. “Shion.” The smallest spark of life flickers into his eyes. “You survived.”

“I… I did.”

“I’m glad.” His voice is barely louder than a whisper, gravelly with the weight of what he’s lost. 

“I’m glad you’re alive, too.” She hangs her head. “I’m… I’m sorry about your squad.”

He flinches. “Soldiers die.”

She instinctively begins to reach for his arm before deciding against the gesture. “And we remember them.”

“Yes… we do.”

The barely-controlled emotion in his tone prevents her from saying anything else. Unable to move away from the crushing silence, she leans against the side of the wagon, desperate to sort her thoughts.

She knows next to nothing of what happened. She still can’t believe they suffered this many casualties. Whoever the spy is must have far better control of their Titan form than Eren does. The one deadly glimpse she caught of the so-called Female Titan was terrifying enough: incredibly agile, quick to adapt to new information, utterly unafraid of Survey Corps soldiers. Perhaps because of the additional tricks at their— at her disposal. Hardening abilities? A scream that affects other Titans? Is that why so many abnormal Titans appeared today? How can a human become a Titan? What makes those Titans different? How much do we still not know about these monsters?!

“I expected you to ask me what I saw.”

Startled, she whips her head toward him. “It sounds like you saw hell. If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen, but I won’t ask.”

“… Thank you.” Levi turns his gear in his hands and then sets it aside. He slowly slides off the wagon, carefully and deliberately placing his weight onto his right leg.

“Are you injured?” she blurts out.

“I’ll heal. In time.”

She won’t ask how his squad died, why he got hurt, but she desperately wishes to know. She longs to offer a hand, but his demeanor screams at her not to. The burden of the words she can’t say squeezes air from her lungs.

His gaze bores into her forehead. “You’re injured, too.”

“It could’ve been worse.”

“Mm.” He glances over his shoulder. “If you haven’t yet seen them, your squad’s keeping watch to our east.”

They aren’t my squad. Except she can’t say that now. Not to him. “Th-Thanks.”

“You sent them ahead without you. They were worried.”

How does he know that? “I should go apologize.”

“Don’t fucking apologize. Your survival will tell them that leaving you behind was the right choice.”

His words may be harsh, but he wouldn’t say them if he didn’t care. Warmth unexpectedly trickles into her heart, a familiar yet jarring emotion when juxtaposed against sorrow and bewilderment and horror. “I’ll go see them,” she promises.

“Good.” It feels like a dismissal.

Without another word, Shion trudges toward her surviving squadmates. Along the way, she realizes the name of the warmth her heart carries. Something it hasn’t held in years. Something she never thought she’d feel again.

This is a particularly shitty moment to fall in love.

[bcbdrums]

my dude, you’ve been getting harrassed about kigo so hard i’m so sorry 😭🤚

so going based on a quick wiki search (drop bar on google) and a little on ambiguity and the fact that it’s a cartoon with no clear cut continuity and consistency for the most part, shego at least starts off in her EARLY 20’s and Kim is just… in high school. could be 14, could be 18. yes, at some point as the show goes on and with some plots, there’s allegedly a rough time stamp of a more precise time in Kim and Shego’s age (for example in the movie when she goes to prom if i remember correctly)

but again. regardless, it’s a cartoon and back DURING and even like up until maybe Disney+ when Kim Possible was put on there and the release of the live action, it wasn’t that deep because people had the decency to just acknowledge that kim’s aged up in the fics and to either not read if the concept bothers you or just… don’t imagine kim as a child?? like don’t sit there and be like “i know that in this fic kim is 20 but in the tv show she’s only 16 or whatever.

idk man, like i just don’t understand why it’s that deep when it’s just a cartoon where two characters have such unwavering chemistry that reads so explicitly romantic, like i’m not watching a child actor and a grown woman exude such chemistry, even the voice actors are both grown women

kigo’s not problematic, only the shippers who intentionally want/enjoy kigo being an age gapped couple (if not both adults) are the issue.

kim is 15 years old when the show starts.  this is canon.  shego’s age is less certain (and i have made many posts about shego’s age, but i’ll refer you to just this however:  essay:  how old is shego?) but it’s heavily implied given all evidence, that she’s late twenties at series start.  in any case...

i'll always be a proponent of "don't like, don't read" for anyone and for whatever. i'll also always think people should ship what they want and not be harassed about it.

the overall issue is IF fans of ANY ship decide:

---your ship is invalid ---my ship is the only ship ---you must like and validate my ship (and the extreme case but far too common) ---your ship (and you) must die

sadly, in the KP fandom, too many people have had too many encounters with kigo shippers who fall into these categories. entire forums have been abandoned in the past due to fandom toxicity. those who were there and driven out have not forgotten. the tales are frightening.

while it only represents just some fans of the ship and not all, the ship itself has pretty much been colored by the experience of those who were the recipients of the toxic behavior. and the fear of any repetition is still strong and motivates...a lot of choices in the fandom...  kinda sucks that people are afraid to live their fandom life because of fear of being attacked by shippers in one corner.  but when i say this historic toxicity (again, just a handful of shippers) impacts a lot people and a lot of things to this day...  well, that’s all i’ll say about it publicly.

and i can't mention kigo without still acknowledging that i personally cannot approve shipping a minor with an adult. and i know for some people, kim turning a legal age magically means it's all okay. that also doesn't sit well in my mind. i can't see her as not a teen, probably due to a lack of character development for kim in my opinion... like, let me be clear. i won't read M-rated stuff of kim/ron either. they're still the goofy teens in my mind and i can't make aging up work for me. but that's just me.

as i said. if i don't like, i don't read, and i don't go out of my way to share opinions on not-my-ship (except in the case of answering these asks). y'all ship your ships in freedom. let everyone ship their ships. leave toxicity out of the KP fandom for good.

[oftomorrow]

Rules Update

It’s a fairly small addition, but I did want to make a post about it. With very few exceptions, I will no longer follow people who don’t have any kind of about page or provided information for their characters. This was already the case for OCs, but now I’m applying it to canons as well.

For current mutuals -- if we’ve already been writing together, this will not affect you. But if we haven’t written anything yet, and if you don’t have an about page, there is a chance I will softblock you in the near future. I promise you that it’s nothing personal, and if you later add an about page, you are welcome to refollow.

That’s all you really need to know, but I do have an explanation (maybe more of a rant) why I’m being more strict about this under the cut.

I am not a DC expert. Not even close. I’ve only read a handful of comics. I’ve only watched the few shows that struck my interest. I haven’t even seen the majority of the Arrowverse! I know my way around Superman reasonably well, but outside of that, I really only know the basics of a few other major characters. I’m gradually expanding out to more DC media, largely because I want to know more about all these cool characters I’m getting glimpses of, but I am a mere mortal tackling an enormous multiverse. It’s gonna take me a while.

And I’m more than willing to learn! I am happy to learn the basics of your character in order to facilitate interactions. But if someone doesn’t have a straightforward page of information for their muse, I am left at the mercy of various wikis, which usually just leave me more confused than when I started.

On top of that, there are a lot of DC continuities in the comics alone, not to mention the many film and TV adaptations. A lot of people pick and choose bits of different canons that they want to incorporate (myself included), so if someone doesn’t have a basic outline of what canon they do and don’t follow for their muse, than I just won’t know what their basic backstory is. I may have a general idea of the gist of the character, but I can’t know what yours is like unless you tell me.

I’ve hit a point where constantly dealing with that uncertainty about people’s muses is becoming a tad stressful. So I need to draw a line in the sand. Please have some info for your character. A few paragraphs for a biography, or a list of stats plus verse descriptions -- something to help me out so I’m not left completely in the dark.

(Exceptions will be pretty rare, most likely if I’m very familiar with both your character and their continuity. So if you’re playing Kara from Supergirl or Lois from Superman & Lois, for example, I wouldn’t feel completely lost just trying to begin an interaction. However I’d still really prefer to read an about page first, just to see what your take on the character is like.)

[volkswagonblues]

a lil guide to the Fire Nation for the ATLA fic writers out there

(aka. a no means exhaustive primer on east asia by an asian person)

This is a guide for fic writers want to write a canon-era story set in the Fire Nation, or featuring Fire Nation characters. A quick little primer on the tiny details of everyday life that you might not think about, but certainly stuff that would make me, an asian person, wince if I were to encounter it. BRUSHES, not quills. CHOPSTICKS, not forks. 

(note #1: this was partly inspired by a chat with @elilim​) 

(note: #2:  I originally intended it for zukka fic writers before realizing that other writers might find it useful. so apologies for a slight Zuko-bias for that reason)

(note #3: this is all stuff i was thinking about when writing firebender’s guide, in case anyone was wondering)

1. CLOTHING

Okay, I think the most straightforward way to describe what everyone’s wearing most of the time is “tunic”. They’re all just...tunics of different colours and varieties. Later when Zuko’s the Fire Lord he wears robes. The show provides a better visual guide than I could, here are a few notes to keep in mind:

a) Japanese people wear their collars LEFT crossed over RIGHT

I don’t think this would come up in writing as much as it would in art, but it’s considered bad luck to do it the wrong way because that’s only for dead people. Let my boy Zuko demonstrate:

b) There are no buttons

This is picky, but Wikipedia says “Functional buttons with buttonholes for fastening or closing clothes appeared first in Germany in the 13th century.[6] They soon became widespread with the rise of snug-fitting garments in 13th- and 14th-century Europe.” I kinda believe it. If you look closely, characters’ clothes are always tied together or wrapped in some way with a belt. If there are fasteners, they’re braided frog closures that go into a little loop, like the qipao-style dresses women wear in Ba Sing Se, or Zuko’s casual prince’s clothes in the topmost image. Anyways, I don’t think Zuko or Azula or the Gaang would technically button or unbutton anything when they’re changing clothes. Clothing is designed to be tied, not buttoned.

[so much more under cut]

c) This isn’t a real rule, but there’s something called koromogae, or the seasonal changing of clothing in Japan.

This is something I learned when I was writing firebender’s guide, and I just liked the fun detail about there being a strict calendar for when to wear something. I liked the idea of someone like Zuko, who actually spent most of his formative years outside of the Fire Nation, coming home and just suffering mutely through the summer heat because upper class etiquette says no changing into cooler clothes until August 15. 

From My Asakusa: 

And this website:

Generally, people change from thick, heavy, dark-coloured clothes for winter to thin, lighter, bright-coloured clothes for spring and summer. In traditional Japanese culture, particularly in formal settings such as tea ceremony, it is important to acknowledge the changes of seasons—in such circumstances, not only the patterns and colours of the kimono that are worn but also the utensils and furniture that are used are required to change. By changing their clothing, people notice and appreciate the change of seasons. [Japan Foundation]

Here are some visual guides from the official creators for clothes: (notice how it’s pretty much always left over right)

2.FOOD AND EATING

a) Traditional cuisine

It seems like the most common foods in canon are Fire Flakes and meat, to the point where poor Aang had to eat lettuce out of the garbage at some point.

HOWEVER, the Fire Nation seems to basically a big subtropical archipelago, so I would guess that seafood and rice are common. If you want to write about characters eating, a. quick google for “traditional japanese cuisine” would help you come up with a menu really quickly.

Wikipedia says:

The traditional cuisine of Japan, washoku (和食), lit. "Japanese eating" (or kappō (ja:割烹)), is based on rice with miso soup and other dishes; there is an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. Side dishes often consist of fish, pickled vegetables, and vegetables cooked in broth. Seafood is common, often grilled, but also served raw as sashimi or in sushi.

But before we get too serious, at one point the Gaang eats a “smoked sea slug” (Sokka’s Master) 

Oh ATLA, never stop being you.

b) Utensils

One thing to keep in mind is chopstick etiquette. Someone like Zuko or Toph, for instance, would have completely internalized all of these.

Another thing is that there are no glasses. Cups and bowls are made of ceramic or clay. Let the Gaang show you:

And another note: characters won’t eat “bread” in the European sense, ie. a baked lump of dough. Steamed buns, yes. Fried pancakes made from batter, yes. Flatbreads, okay I’ll give it a pass. Rice or noodles should be the most common carbs of choice.

3.ETIQUETTE

“In the homeland, we bow to our elders” - angry schoolmistress in The Headband.

Japan Guide has a list of etiquette rules for visiting Japan, which is interesting but not too necessary to read. In general, based on what The Headband tells us, Fire Nation characters would have been raised with a strong nationalist curriculum that values communal contribution over individualist expression. Even someone like Zuko, who openly rebels against that, probably couldn’t help but be affected by it. In general the Fire Nation seems to have an East Asian-ish set of values. It’s patriarchal, all the positions of authority are filled by men; there seems to be a strong emphasis on patriotism; there’s a sense of diffidence and respect towards one’s elders; and finally, there’s an emphasis on “knowing” one’s place in society and fitting into what’s expected of oneself.

I don’t really know how to describe it, but in China and Japan I sometimes feel like there’s rules for everything, and even people born and raised there acknowledge it could be stifling at times. You could go down a rabbit hole researching points of etiquette (for instance, rules on who has to sit where in group dinners...), but to me the most important thing is acknowledging that Fire Nation has a rigid system of etiquette, and also, they’re an imperialist power who’s pretty prejudiced against foreigners. Poor Aang/Kuzon gets called “mannerless colony slob” just for being slow on the bowing action (!!!)

(in firebender’s guide I had a lot of fun imagining the stupid microaggressions Ambassador Sokka has to face in the Fire Nation, so obviously I’m just biased)

4.WRITING AND DESKS

Characters would probably write on paper, with a calligraphy brush. Not quills or pens -- a brush. Technically, old Japanese and Chinese texts should be written top to bottom, right to left, but the show itself doesn’t do this, so I think you’re fine. 

One fun thing about traditional calligraphy is that you don’t use bottled ink. You have something called an ink stone, and then you grind your ink yourself by rubbing the ink stone in a special little dish with a bit of water. In my (very few) encounters with this stuff in the calligraphy lessons of my youth, the ink stones can be plain or have beautiful designs on the side. It looks something like this: 

ATLA is an East Asian-ish universe, so characters are likely to be kneeling at a table, not sitting. To demonstrate, here’s my boy Sokka doing his famous rainbow at Piandao’s:

and here’s the war chamber meeting when Zuko speaks out against a general’s plans to sacrifice some soldiers:

THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS: This is Zuko’s cute little setup when he’s writing his goodbye letter to Mai. In this case he’s writing in a chair and table. It’s possible that some furniture items, like a sitting desk and a bed in a bedframe (not a bedroll or futon) are special royal palace features. Normally in a private setting we see characters sitting on the ground or on a slightly elevated platform with a low table. Maybe Caldera is just different? Or rich people are just different: the Bei Fongs also have a sit-down dining table + chair setup.

(That little rectangular box is his ink dish!!)

5.A NOTE ON GENERAL CULTURE

It’s worth talking about a few general points of East Asian culture. I can’t claim to speak for ALL of Asia, and I don’t think I should. But I do think ATLA fic writers who want to set something in the Fire Nation should take a few moments to at least skim the wiki pages for filial piety and Nihonjinron (literally, "theories/discussions about the Japanese"). There’s a certain...vibe to...asianness... that I’m not sure I can explain without like, a doctorate degree in sociology. 

It’s a bit like gender, I guess. There’s no definitive checklist to what is a woman and what is a man, and we can argue that gender is performative, that it’s a construct, but at the end of the day gender is still (tragically) real in the sense that it still shapes people and affects how we walk and talk and dress and think. Nationality is the same. Obviously, the Fire Nation is a made up place in a made up show, but out of respect to the cultures that inspired it, I do think it’s worth familiarizing yourself with some of these cultures’ codes and values.

Also, ahem, if I can direct you to war crimes in the Japan’s colonial empire. Again, worth remembering that the Fire Nation was an imperalist colonizer too.

I might do a continuation of this post and talk through my more abstract takes about Fire Nation culture - Is Zuko an example of filial piety gone right or filial piety gone wrong? Why I think Zuko’s flashbacks are like, at least part teenage melodrama bullshit (the reason is son preference), how someone like Sokka might be treated once he’s openly Water Tribe in the Fire Nation (probably with racism...), specific aspects of asian homophobia and racism, etc. We’ll see.

This is not a definitive guide. Comments and critique welcome.

If you think there’s a factual mistake, PLEASE hop in my asks and let me know. I also think there’s a huge blind spot in ATLA for South and Southeast Asian representation, so I acknowledge that I can’t speak for all Asians, and there is no such thing as a “pan-asian” identity.

If there’s something else you’re curious about, I’m not a historian or anything, but I like research. Ask me and I’ll try to answer the best I can.

And oh, one last thing, this is how I do research when I wrote firebender’s guide, in case anyone’s interested in learning more (LINK)

[starlightshore]

barring the no mercy route being an influence in this case, how would you describe chara's personality? I cannot describe them well at all despite them being my favorite character. they're too complex lol. all of the meta i can find at this time as them described at both extremes of innocent & evil but i don't think that's accurate

TW: discussions of canon dark topics such as abuse , death and suicide

i love talking about chara, i've talked about them at length before lmao. thank u for giving me a chance to talk about my beloved child.

you can actually read a character exploration i'm doing in a mini-arc for Askfallenroyalty. actually, if you want one condensed post, this comic sums up chara's motives

My interpretation:

chara is an abused kid and suicidal kid*(1) who ran to mount ebott to die.*(2) upon learning that monsters are made of love and humans aren't*(3), chara began to hate humanity. the deltarune prophecy*(4) makes them to be The Angel despite being a human. Feeling undeserving of this title and obligated to fulfill it, Chara wanted to be a good kid more than anything.

But then the buttercup pie incident happened. They've accidentally*(5) poisoned asgore and came up with a plan to ensure the prophecy could be fulfilled and take a hit against humanity. Two birds with one stone -who cares if it's also a personal win too? then obviously the plan goes up in flames and they and asriel are murdered. then asgore wants to kill of all humanity.

your influence*(6) gets Chara onto a path of redemption or a path of destruction, mirroring the deltarune prophecy's two main interpretations.*(7)

in summery: chara is a scared kid trying to fit into a world that demands violence by the past actions of the previous generations. The war massacred monsters and locked them up with a kill-solution -ensuring that further violence would be needed to be free, thus continuing the cycle of violence.

chara is just a kid. they knit, they make macaroni art, they loved their family and had a best friend forever.* (8) but they're also vengeful, they cared so deeply for monsterkind they were ready to die and had no idea they'd be awake as a soul, they were prepared for death. they're complicated, you can't have one side without the other. while i’ve never wanted to murder anyone, i can still relate deeply to chara and see myself in them a lot. the tragedy of them -the fact they never really got a “happy ending” like everyone else just haunts me and it’s why I spend so much time making AFR. I just... love this character so much, i want this kid to be happy. (not that it could ever be easy to get there, happy endings aren’t free.)

And frankly, seeing this hurt kid get demonized just rubs me the wrong way, and it feels completely against the morals Undertale tries to tell with it’s story. I see it as a cautionary tale against violence and dehumanizing others for the sake of hate and violence. how kids can be influenced by the violence -or kindness around them. you don’t need to forgive the ones who hurt you, but killing them is not always the solution -though sometimes necessary as framed in the Undyne the Undying fight.

People get both Undertale’s themes and chara wrong the most, and for the game that’s meant the world to me it bothers me more than it should lol. It’s a Good Story, and I don’t mean to frame my interpretation of the character or themes as 100% canon and I know Mr.Fox’s brain to confirm it kinda deal, but with all the time I’ve spent analyzing and thinking it over I do think it’s not off in the general direction of it lol. And besides the author’s intent isn’t really the end-all-to-be-all. It’s what you get out of the story and the themes that matter and stick with you. No one can take that away from you.

Sources and evidence:

"* If you're cuter, monsters won't hit you as hard." -faded ribbion flavor text * "The ends of the tools have been filed down to make them safer." -gardening tools in New Home (and iirc Toriel's home as well, too lazy to double check rn) * Where are the knives. -no mercy chara (this and paired with the previous imply there are no sharp objects in reach of chara's home because chara can't be trusted with sharp objects out of self harm. This doesn't necessarily mean abuse but paired with them hating humanity so deeply, being suicidal and a child it paints a picture of abuse.

"* I know why (chara) climbed the mountain.* It wasn't for a very happy reason." -asriel post pacifist epilogue dialogue

"* Love, hope, compassion... * This is what people say monster SOULs are made of. * But the absolute nature of "SOUL" is unknown. * After all, humans have proven their SOULs don't need these things to exist." -Library book on monster souls)

* Legend has it, an 'angel' who has seen the surface will descend from above and bring us freedom. - gerson

"* It takes at least a human soul... * And a monster soul. * ...* If you want to go home... * You'll have to take his soul. * You'll have to kill ASGORE." -Alphys. Because boss monster souls are the exception and can persist after death for a short period of time, Chara could of killed any of the family members to escape the underground. this implies escaping wasn't the goal -it was to die (considering they already attempted suicide to fall underground the first time, this is explicitly suicide.) the plaque doesn't mention or speak like monster/human fusion's consumed soul would be aware. chara had no way of knowing they'd be awake. also the whole thing with the pie is a prank. cups of butter. -> buttercups. putting flowers in a pie is a joke to do, we see Chara is similar to Toriel (they mimic her speech in the no mercy monologue, they say “greetings” as she does like how Asriel says “howdy” like Flowey does. Chara makes puns and jokes in the flavor text all the time.

https://imgur.com/a/zP18P -dog food bag at different LV. "When the protagonist first encounters Mad Dummy, they are given the option to beat it up. Choosing to beat it up prompts one of three responses depending on the protagonist's LOVE." (source: undertale wiki)

If the protagonist’s LV is 1, the response becomes "(You tap the dummy with your fist.) (You feel bad.)"

If the protagonist's LV is between 2 and 4, the response becomes "(You hit the dummy lightly.) (You don't feel like you learned anything.)"

If the protagonist’s LV is between 5 and 7, the response becomes "(You sock the dummy.) (Who cares?)"

If the protagonist’s LV is 8 or higher, the response becomes "(You punch the dummy at full force.) (Feels good.)"" This implies Chara (who is the narrator) will feel different about the dog food -which references the classic phrase of "glass half empty/full" showing your out look in life. Then hitting the dummy show's Frisk's out look on violence depending on LV. Note that by the end of it, it's no longer "you feel..." but "feels good" This is Chara.

      7. “* Lately, the people have been  taking a bleaker outlook...* Callin' that winged circle the  'Angel of Death.' “ -gerson “* Only the fearless may proceed. * Brave ones, foolish ones. * Both walk not the middle road. “ -the first plaque in the first puzzle room with Toriel. The idea is to walk on both the left and right sides -you can’t go half way in the middle. this mirrors the “true” endings are only accomplished if you stick to no mercy or pacifist only.

     8. literally their home in New Home is a treasure trove of pre-game chara characterization.

[traincat]

Disregard my last ask because the latest issue raised a troubling question that I, as a black man, feel the need to clarify with you, a woman. That whole whole Ned Leeds/Betty Brant business is sexual assault via deception right? Like you know more about Clones and Spider-Man 616 than I but I feel like that’s besides the point because it happened to Betty. She is carrying the child of whom she thought was her dead ex-husband. And Ned clone has to know he is a clone. He has to know. Unlike Ben and Kaine, he has the awareness and information of the Jackal and the awareness of his progenitor’s death.

Or am I reaching too far and reading too far into things?

I'm glad you came back and asked this specific question because it's definitely something I have a lot of thoughts on, and I’m glad you asked my thoughts on it as a woman because I think this is one of those comic book storylines that’s hard for me to divorce that fact from -- the fact that I’m a woman definitely plays into how I view this storyline specifically and how it effects me, in ways I don’t think were necessarily intended by some of the writers involved in its ongoing arc who were not looking at things from the same perspective I’m coming at them from. I definitely don't think you're reaching or reading too far into things -- I think that is what's being presented on the page, albeit likely without authorial intent. Just as like a general disclaimer, I'm not closely following Spencer's run for the sheer reason that I'm not enjoying it very much, although I'm aware of the general directions it's taking through friends and social media. But I actually think this Betty/Ned issue goes back pretty far.

First things first, I think Clone Conspiracy really wreaked havoc on how Spider-Man as a series has always handled clones. Pre-Clone Conspiracy, there was a very clear clone narrative going on: clones are their own person, they are not direct copies or replacements of the original. You see this with Ben Reilly and you see it with the Gwen Stacy clones. Clones are treated as their own individuals, even if they have to struggle to get to that point -- there's even an issue of Spider-Man Unlimited where Ben and Betty go on a date. Betty doesn't know that Ben is Peter's clone -- he's introduced as his cousin -- and they both reflect on how you can't go back to the way things were. So even though Ben has all of Peter's memories regarding his initial romance with Betty, the narrative makes it clear that Ben and Betty cannot recapture that connection or that exact relationship.

Here's where Clone Conspiracy changed everything, in my opinion for the worse: Clone Conspiracy's clone narrative is that these clones are, essentially, the original person. I believe the Marvel wiki still actually lists the end of Clone Conspiracy as 616 Gwen Stacy's issue of death instead of Amazing Spider-Man #121, because Clone Conspiracy treated that Gwen not simply as a clone with all of the same memories, but as essentially Gwen resurrected through a cloning process. The Billy Connors who was cloned is treated as the same Billy Connors who was killed by his father in Shed (Amazing Spider-Man #630-633). And the clone Ned is treated as the same as 616 Ned. This is a mess, to put it simply, because it goes against all the previous Spider-Man cloning narratives and, honestly, most popular sci-fi clone narratives, and it's seriously undermining decades of good Spider-Man storytelling in ways that Slott didn't address and that Spencer seems unwilling to. It probably wouldn't have been a very big deal -- a frustrating one, but not a big one -- if all of the clones had perished at the end of Clone Conspiracy, but they didn't. Billy Connors escaped, and it's immensely frustrating to me to see Peter treating the Connors family reunion as something he can tolerate when Curt Connors ate his kid, and the Ned clone slithered away in the gutters to, I assume, spite me personally.

Which brings us to the current Betty Brant storyline in Amazing Spider-Man, where Betty has showed up heavily pregnant and informed Peter that the child is Ned's.

Yeah, I would say this is in fact the worst possible part. (ASM (2018) #67) Just speaking for myself, I'm generally not anti-pregnancy or baby storylines in comics, but this one is making me very uncomfortable for reasons beside Spencer being apparently unable to find any way to fit Betty into his stories without her showing pregnant.

So I'm actually going to take this back way, way to when Betty and Ned first got married, with some explanation of who Ned Leeds is for the uninformed, because, especially with the MCU's Ned Leeds in the mix, he's not exactly the world's most well known Spider-Man character. (I’m sure @ubernegro, who is much more well read on Miles Morales’ canon than I am, has thoughts on how the MCU’s Ned borrowed heavily off the character of Ganke Lee with a 616 Peter Parker character’s name pasted over him.) Ned was initially introduced as Peter's competition for Betty's affections -- Ned was older than both Peter and Betty, a working reporter, and presented as the more "stable" option compared to Peter, who of course Betty vastly preferred before circumstances tore them apart. Ned and Betty married in Amazing Spider-Man #156 and jetsetted off to Europe for Ned's job. This is where the cracks in the marriage began. Betty later reveals that she felt abandoned by Ned in Europe, to the point where she was able to come back to New York without his immediate notice -- as a woman, it's very easy to read their relationship at this point as being one filled with, if not abuse, then emotional neglect. Betty and Peter have a quick extramarital affair at this point -- Peter has just broken up with Mary Jane and Betty claims she and Ned are separating -- that persists until Ned returns and punches Peter over it.

(ASM #193)

(ASM #229) Betty and Ned reconcile off panel shortly thereafter, but that's pretty far from the end of the story. It's implied that the problems Betty and Ned previously had start to develop again, namely that Betty feels abandoned by Ned, that he is inattentive and, again, as a woman, it's hard not to read it as emotional neglect, if not abuse -- yet. Betty does start another affair at this point, this time with Flash Thompson, and Ned starts acting strangely. It would later be retconned that he was suffering the effects of hypnotism by the Hobgoblin, but like I said, that's a retcon, and what was happening at the time was that Ned was acting erratically in part because he was the villainous Hobgoblin. Ned becomes controlling, threatening, and verbally and physically abusive towards Betty.

(ASM #284)

(ASM #283) "I suppose you think it's all right for a wife to cheat on her husband!" "No -- but I won't let you hurt her, either." Leaving aside that Peter also had an affair with Betty, something he's conveniently forgetting in the above panels, I've always really liked this exchange, because the narrative makes it clear through Peter's response to Ned that, whatever the audience may think of Betty for cheating on Ned, it is reprehensible for Ned to publicly humiliate her and/or physically abuse her as a response.

Then Ned Leeds dies in Spider-Man vs Wolverine and he's revealed as the Hobgoblin posthumously shortly thereafter and that remains canon for years and years until it's later retconned out, as comics are wont to do. But that's not really that important for this conversation -- my point being, at one point in Spider-Man canon, it's made fairly clear to the reader that Ned is an abusive husband. He emotionally neglected and abused Betty several times over and physically hurt her at least once on panel, with the clear intent that the reader should realize that he is physically hurting her. So for me as a reader and as a woman, this has always been a really uncomfortable relationship. I have a problem with later Spider-Man comics claiming that it's "not Ned's fault" that he abused Betty because of the retcon that he was hypnotized, and I have a problem with the MCU making Betty and Ned into a cute summer fling in Spider-Man: Far From Home, because I feel like Ned's clear abuse of Betty either gets excused or entirely glossed over. And I don’t think the initial abuse storyline is bad -- I think there’s some amount of value in portraying Betty as a woman who marries too young, who experiences a terrible marriage, and who then spends years recovering from that marriage, which was the case up until they retconned Ned’s abuse of her as a side effect of him being controlled by the real Hobgoblin. What I’m specifically uncomfortable with is the post-retcon attitude that since Ned didn’t really mean to abuse Betty, it’s perfectly fine to portray the relationship in a positive light when even before Ned’s abuse became physical that wasn’t the case. I think that’s ultimately really irresponsible storytelling.  As a reader, I’m not against soap opera style storylines -- someone getting impregnated by a cone of their ex-husband seems pretty par for the course. But there’s so much additional context here that I still haven’t entirely processed how I feel about this Betty storyline, except that what I feel isn’t positive.

So yes, I would agree with you when I say I think there’s quite a lot of deception involved in Betty’s pregnancy storyline -- the Ned clone didn’t tell her he was a clone, even though he had full knowledge of that fact, just as he had full knowledge of how badly the original Ned treated Betty over the course of their relationship -- that renders their sexual encounter and Betty’s pregnancy uncomfortable for me as a reader, to put it mildly. I don’t think it’s out of character for the Ned clone, given that he acts much like the original Ned: he’s selfish and controlling, withholding information from Betty to suit his own needs. The tragedy of Ned and Betty isn’t that Ned died, as more recent Spider-Man stories like to portray it -- including this one, where Betty doesn’t have the knowledge that a) the Ned she reunited with was a clone and not the original and b) that that clone later died. (ASM #816.) The tragedy is that writers continue to force Betty Brant into Ned Leeds storylines instead of letting her as a character grow past him, and that the only way Spencer thought to include her, one of the longest running Spider-Man characters, back in the story was to have her appear starry-eyed over carrying the child of (the clone of) her abusive ex-husband, and the tragedy is that nobody writing more recent Betty and Ned interactions seems to realize that Ned was a villain not because he was briefly the Hobgoblin but because of how he treated Betty.