#so much so that they become infamous in specific fandom spaces

[magical-girl-coral]

The 2024 version of "Call yourself a 'community organizer' even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates" is "Call yourself a 'anarcho socialist punk even though you never bother to study about antisemitism"

[cantstoptheimagines]

Curador (Death/Muerte/The Wolf | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish)

Series Masterlist 

Summary — Muerte aches at the sight of you whenever he comes home.

Warnings & Other Tags ➳ Soulmate AU; helping a lover with their injuries (includes mentions of blood); established relationship; takes place directly after the movie; writers’ law states that every time an animated wolf comes into existence, I must write a fic; in my opinion, we should be calling him ‘Muerte’, so that’s what I’m going with; a huge thank you to my dear friend, Yoshino, for helping me with the Spanish translations.

Notes ➳ Word Count is 639. ➳ Reader uses feminine pronouns (she/her). ➳ You will receive the same injuries as your soulmate (unless deadly).  ➳ Since Muerte is Death (straight up), why not make Life? I envision the Reader in this to be a spotted deer, who will be referred to as ‘Vida’. And who knows? I might turn this into a one-shot series if people enjoy it enough. Let me know what you think! 

FAQ | Masterlist | Fandoms | Requests | Coming Soon | Schedule  

The slamming of a door made your ears twitch. You paused, eyes narrowing as you listened to the creaking floors within your home. A damp cloth was pressed against the corner of your lip, dotted with small specks of blood. 

Footsteps slowly grew closer to your room. A quiet sigh escaped your lips when you realized who they belonged to. Having a lover with nearly silent movements did nothing but cause you panic sometimes. 

You returned your attention to the small mirror in your grasp. A shadow moved about the room and a cloak was tossed next to you on the bed. Looking up at the towering figure in front of you, your gaze found red eyes staring back at you. More specifically, staring at the cloth against your lip. 

“El gato lives,” he muttered, his deep voice sending shivers along your spine. “I have given him another opportunity to prove himself.” 

A small smile made itself known, “Is that why your attitude seems so foul?”

He hummed quietly, ignoring your teasing remark about the infamous Puss in Boots, whom he had been chasing for some time now. His startling eyes were still zeroed in on the cloth. 

“You really need to stop playing with your food, Muerte.” 

His eyes snapped to yours. They narrowed into slits, shining with irritation. He snapped his jaws to the side, huffing loudly as he looked away from you. You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing quietly.

His claws wrapped around the hilt of one of his sickles. The mirror was quickly tugged away from you and tossed onto the bed. Your head was forced to tilt backwards as the sickle’s sharp blade was placed beneath your chin. 

Anyone else may have had fear coursing through their veins. You, however, weren’t worried at all. 

Muerte stepped closer until his paw could replace the blade. The sickle was quickly returned to its sheath while he looked down at you with a blank expression. You allowed him to tilt your head back even further as he took up the space between your thighs.

“Cállate, Vida,” he ordered.

His claws wrapped around the cloth, finally removing it from your lip. It, much like his cloak and your mirror, quickly disappeared from sight. Your injury reflected his own, signaling to the world that the two of you were a perfect pair. 

“It hurt when you got it,” you said. “I wasn’t expecting it.” 

His expression softened. You leaned into his touch as one of his claws caressed your cheek.

“Lo siento, mi amor,” he muttered.

You gave him a small smile, along with a shrug of the shoulders, in an attempt to make him feel better, “It’s okay. No harm truly done.”

His grip loosened, allowing you to take his paw into your grasp and hold it in your lap instead. He lowered himself to his knees. Due to his tall stature, kneeling allowed his gaze to become even with your own as you sat on the bed.

“Ojalá tuviéramos un vínculo menos doloroso,” he continued. “Por tu bien.” 

“I don’t,” you replied, squeezing his paw tightly. 

His brow furrowed and his eyes searched for any sign that you may have been lying to comfort him, “Mi corazón—” 

“It lets me know you’re still there,” you whispered. “It lets me know you’ll be coming home soon.” 

He tried to hide a smile, looking away from you. That only lasted for mere seconds, however, since he couldn’t resist your gaze for very long. His red eyes explored your features. Unable to hold himself back any longer, he leaned in, pressing a kiss to the cut on your lip. 

“Déjame ser tu curador,” he muttered, and then he kissed you again.

“Always, Muerte,” you whispered, reaching up to stroke his cheek and pressing a gentle kiss against his nose. “Always.” 

Spanish Translations, In Order of Appearance: ➳ Curador (de enfermos) — Meaning “healer (of the sick)”.  ➳ Muerte — Meaning “death”. ➳ Vida — Meaning “life”.

➳ “El gato...” — “The cat...” ➳ “Cállate...” — “Shut up...” ➳ “Lo siento, mi amor.” — “I’m sorry, my love.”  ➳ “Ojalá tuviéramos un vínculo menos doloroso... Por tu bien.” — “I wish we had a less painful bond... For your sake.” ➳ “Mi corazón...” — “My heart...”  ➳ “Déjame ser tu curador.” — “Let me be your healer.” 

[fruity-pontmercy]

Les Mis adaptations and apolitical appropriation

I think it's no secret on this blog that I love the original Les Mis 1980 concept album in French, and that I also love comparing different versions of the stage musical. I've noticed that Les Mis seems to get progressively more vaguely apolitical as time goes on, not only in the way it's viewed in our culture, but in the actual text as well.

It's natural for specifics to be lost in adaptation. It's easier to get people to care about 'the people vs. the king' in a relatively short musical rather than actually facing the audience with the absolute mess that were 19th century french politics (monarchist orleanists vs monarchist legitimists vs imperialist vs bonapartist democrats vs every flavour of republican imaginable). Still, I feel that as time goes on, as more revivals and adaptations of the stage musical come out, the more watered down its politics become. Like, Les Mis at it's core is just meant to be a fancily written, drawn out political essay, right?

In a way I feel that the 1980 concept album almost tried to modernise it with its symbols of progress. Yes, through Enjolras' infamous disco segment (and other similar allusions to the ideals of social change), but perhaps most interestingly to me, through one short line that threw me off when I first heard it, because it seems so insignificant, but might actually be the most explicitly leftist line of all of Les Mis.

"Son coeur vibrait à gauche et il le proclama" (roughly "His heart beat to the left and he proclaimed it" i.e: he was a leftist) Feuilly says, while speaking of the now dead général Lamarque in Les Amis de L'ABC.

What's that? An actual mention of leftism??? in MY vaguely progressive yet apolitical musical??? More seriously, this mention of leftism, clashing with the rest of the musical due to it's seeming anachronism, is interesting not because it's actually more political than anything else in Les Mis, rather, because it's not scared to explicitly name what it's trying to do.

But we've come a long way from the Concept Album days, it's been 43 years, and Les Misérables is now one of the most famous and beloved musicals in the entire world. It's been revived and reimagined and adapted in a million ways, in different mediums, in different languages and countries, and it's clear that it's changed along with it's audience.

On top of pointing out a cool line in my favourite version of the musical, I wanted to write this post to reflect on the perception of the political message of this work. We as a Les Mis fandom on Tumblr are very political, I don't need to tell you that, however, I feel that because this very left leaning space has sprung out of a work we all love so much, we oftentimes forget to revisit it from a more objective point of view.

Les Misérables has a history of being misrepresented, this has been true since it's publication, since american confederate soldiers became entranced with their censored translation Lee's Miserables. However, with it's musical adaptation, this misinterpretation has been made not only more accessible but also easier. As much as I love musical theatre and I think it is at it's best an incredible art form able to communicate complex themes visulally by the masses for the masses, I think it'd be idealistic to ignore the fact that the people who can afford to go see musicals regularly are, usually, not the common folk. Broadway and the West End are industries which, like most, need money to keep them afloat, and are loved people of all political backgrounds (and unfortunately, often older conservatives) not just communists on tumblr. We've seen the way Les Miz UK's social media team constantly misses the mark regarding different social issues, and the way Cameron Makintosh has used the musical to propagate his transphobia, and most of us can agree that these actions are in complete antithesis with the message of Les Misérables as a novel.

But I must ask, how does Les Mis ,as a West End musical in it's current form, actually drive a leftist message, and how are we as a community helping if every time someone relating to the musical messes up if we just claim they "don't get it"?

I'm thinking in particular of incidents like last october, where Just Stop Oil crashed Les Mis at the West End. Whether you think it's good activism or not is not the question I think, this instance is interesting particularly because it shows that, outside of Les Misérables analysis circles and fandom spaces, it is not recognised as an inherently leftist, political or activist work, and instead of just saying they completely missed the point of the musical, I think it'd be interesting to take a step back and look at what the musical as it stands actually represents in our culture today.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, so I won't try to give one, but I do hope we can reflect on this a bit.

[campbyler]

i’m glad you said we could interpret what we like because i must be honest that i have been, but! only bc that’s how a situation like theirs is to me personally, and how i see byler- physical reactions feel natural with the love and eagerness attached 🥹 and i’ll be real i did laugh at when u posted the outline and had a note about “relax puritans” bc its so true. they were just kissing! people need not freak out about it getting heated bc of course they’ll do more kisses than pecks! about time byler fics let them be attracted. and it’s okay if I personally felt like there was more along the way after scene cuts, it didnt need to be implied, it is on me.

and the outline made me happy to see other adults in the fandom be mature, not bending for others like in the past. really. so happy that you guys write how you like and stand your ground, the attraction and intimacy is so palpable and the fic is perfect, it is just a bonus that their connection is so real that my brain finds it easy to see them approach a bit more in that alone time! I think the throwaway about a sock and packet when they first got to the isolation cabin clued me in haha.

love the fic. love how you write the boys. i definitely respect you keeping people comfortable (but hope in turn said people arent trying to police others). keep doing what you do! ^^

hi! this ask has been marinating in our inbox for a quick second because we immediately got flooded with ch08 asks but just know that when we saw this come in we nodded at the screen then at each other and then at the screen again. we know this topic has become kind of infamous in the byler fandom over the past year, and all three of us have tried to avoid engaging with it as much as possible, both here and on our personal blogs, and the last thing we wanted is for the main source of talk around our fic to be centered around discourse that is simply so so so draining and, honestly, super recycled and overdone at this point. from the beginning, our stance on the “kissing discourse” (???) specifically has been that it’s stupid LOL (coming from three adults who have each been inhabiting fandom spaces for a very long time) so given the premise of the fic, we definitely haven’t been afraid to lean into that aspect of their physical attraction and the response we’ve gotten from it has actually been wonderful! as for the rest… we’ve gotten asks from people who are grateful they haven’t explicitly gone further in the fic because that’s out of their comfort zone/more relatable to them as people on the ace spectrum, etc (which is fine, we know a lot of people can be uncomfortable with more mature content!) — and we’ve also gotten some lovely asks like this, saying that people have been interpreting it in their own way or “filling in the blanks” which is also totally fine! our official stance on the fic is that they haven’t done more than a looooot of making out, but referencing a couple of asks we got earlier, some readers (like you!) find it realistic to imagine more happening in that time, and for others, them doing exactly what we’ve written and nothing more is plenty realistic enough!

all that to say, we are super glad you’ve been enjoying the fic and also glad you found the line about the sock and the wrapper funny lol bc it was super intentional thanks so much for the support! one thing about us is that we are all highly motivated by spite so rest assured that we aren’t allowing ourselves to be Policed. this is just the vision we have for the fic and we’re happy that people are resonating with it in different ways :^)

[little-smartass]

tagged by @eleanorfenyxwrites

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

34!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

721,748

What fandoms do you write for?

I pretty much just write for whichever fandom I'm in at that moment - currently it's The Untamed but I've also written for Vampire Chronicles, Les Mis, Star Trek, X-Men and Discworld

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All In - Star Trek AOS: when Spock donates his genetic material for the Vulcan rebuilding program, the fetus created requires further medical assistance that only a human can provide, and things get... complicated. Space Husbands science baby fic that's mostly a Kirk character study.

Where There's A Will, There's A Road - The Untamed: when 3zun go on a night hunt shortly before Jin Ling's 100 day celebration, Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao become separated from Lan Xichen inside a magical temple (or tomb?) and must work together to escape. 3zun fic with a focus on NieYao taking steps towards reconciliation

If It's Me You Need To Turn To, We'll Get By - The Untamed: Jin Guangyao gets sick whilst planning Jin Ling's 100 day celebration and Jin Zixuan, feeling somewhat responsible, decides to take care of him. Jin bros sickfic fixit in which JGY discovers the Mortifying Ordeal Of Being Known and Zixuan discovers the Mortifying Ordeal of Getting To Know Other People

Into The Open Air - Vampire Chronicles: when Claudia is setenced to death by the theatre vampires in Paris, Lestat manages to gather just enough of his wits about him to defend her, and this changes everything. Lestat POV fic exploring the possiblities of what might have happened if Claudia hadn't been killed.

Best of My Love - The Untamed: Meng Yao is struggling with night school, helping raise his troubled little brother, working at a ridiculous diner, and trying to find love whilst asexual - and then Lan Xichen enters his life. XiYao ace romcom that I worked on with @justkeeptrekkin

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Rarely. I used to all the time, when I didn't get very many comments and I knew most of the fandom (when I was writing for Discworld) and then All In became VERY unexpectedly popular, and keeping on top of responding to comments just became impossible and I fell out of the habit. If someone asks a specific question or challenges something I have written I will respond but that's it.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't often write angsty endings, but Soulmate Words and Solemn Promises is a "your soulmates last words to you are written on your skin" AU so. that was pretty much fucking guaranteed to be bleak as all fuck.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I pretty much exclusively write happy endings haha but I think special shoutouts have to go to the ends of All In and Harmony is the Value

Do you get hate on fics?

I have done before - the VC fandom is pretty catastrophically toxic, so I wasn't surprised to get hate on those fics, and I think I got one personal visitation from the infamous Xiyao Troll?

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No, not really... though I am currently working on a secret project with @eleanorfenyxwrites that has changed that 👀

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I think the only direct crossover I've been involved with are the les trekables fics I wrote with @dotsayers

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've had people ask if they can translate my work but I don't think any of the translations ever got posted, that I'm aware of...

What's your all-time favorite ship?

I don't feel like it's fair to say because I love them all equally, my brain just fixates on different ones at different times 😆

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I've actually made a rule for myself where I only post stuff once I've finished writing it to specifically avoid this!

What are your writing strengths?

I'm gonna say... dialogue, and exploring character emotions

What are your writing weaknesses?

I really struggle with action scenes, and with describing backdrops or props further than, like, The Vibes. where are the characters? they're in a room, don't worry about it.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I've done little phrases or words in other languages (french for VC, and honorifics for CQL) but I wouldn't be confident going further than that

First fandom you wrote for?

Beyblade, though Teen Titans and the The Edge Chronicles were the first to get actually posted online 🫣

Favorite fic you've written?

tough one! All In will always have a special place in my heart because it reminds me of @spicyshimmy-blog 💜 the While There Are Green Hills, There Will Be Wood To Burn trilogy took about three full years to write and I am HUGELY proud of it, and Where There's A Will, There's A Road is my first fic to get podfic'd so I like to listen to it all the time, which has definitely made it one of my favourites!

[stormcloudrising]

I agree with you on Jon Dany being a show only thing. There are too many plotlines and too many characters' arc that need to be closed off , that too within the space of 2 books.

The amount of plot that has to be covered to get to a romantic story between the two of them is one of the biggest signs that their romantic relationship was a show only thing. That and the horrible way it was written.

In my opinion, the many clues George has dropped about the future conflict between the Wolf and the Dragon is pretty much totally ignored. Jon is also a Wolf and when he returns from the dead with part of Ghost in him, that will be more obvious than ever before. 

Wolves are pack and unless run off, they always remain pack. George is always true to the symbolism he has laid out. Theon was raised by the wolves but he never allowed himself to become part of the pack. That is why he was able to betray them so easily. There will be no conflict in within Jon over which side he is on, which is why that bit of indecisiveness on the show was pure foolish nonsense.

I’ve suggested on many previous occasions that I think that the blue winter rose in the crack in the wall has been misinterpreted by many in the fandom when it comes to a supposed romantic relationship between Jon and Dany. As with practically everything in his story, GRRM has layered the blue rose in the wall with symbolism.

The blue rose represents Lyanna and is a big clue that she is Jon’s mother. What it does not represent is Jon. The blue rose always and I mean, “always,” represent the daughters of House Stark. It has never represented the men of the House. So while it’s a big clue that points to Lyanna being Jon’s mother, Jon is not the blue winter rose in the Wall.

With the myths and legends he has woven throughout his tale, George has set up the blue rose as one of the most important motifs in the entire story…past and present. Lyanna is dead when the story begins and so we know that she won’t be playing the role in the story proper.  As the only two Stark daughters in the story, the position of the Blue Winter Rose falls on the shoulders of Arya and Sansa. No one else!

Ok, now let’s talk about the infamous crack where the rose is positioned in Dany’s dream. Keep in mind how George writes his foreshadowing via the visions he gives to the characters that have been so far revealed as being connected to magic…this includes Dany, Bran, Aeron, Jojen, GOHH etc. All of their visions are revealed in symbolic terms. It’s never B/W and obvious. It’s only after the event takes place that it becomes clear to the reader what was meant by the visions. 

It’s been foreshadowed throughout the books that the Wall will fall and the Others will invade. There are many fandom theories about the circumstances that will lead to this event but everyone agrees that the Wall will fall. It’s the biggest McGuffin in the entire story. 

One of the obvious events that will have an impact on the fall of the Wall and the invasion of the Others is Jon’s assassination by his fellow brothers of the Night’s Watch. There will be no Lord Commander to lead the Night’s Watch when the wall falls but more importantly, the murder of Jon is sure to split the brotherhood in two. Also keep in mind that the Wall is not just a gigantic, tall piece of ice. The Wall is also the Nights Watch. They are symbolically the wall that’s supposed to stand between the world of men and the Others.

Consider what led to Jon’s Nights Watch brethren decision to murder him. He opened the gates to the Wildings and allowed them to come south of the Wall. Many of Jon’s NW’s brothers disagreed with him allowing this. They were likely even plotting against him but they made no effort to move against him until Jon decided to abandon his post and oath and use the Watch to wage war on one of the Lords of the Realm.

This move by Jon pushed his brothers over the edge and he was killed by them immediately after he made this decision to betray his oath. 

Jon decided to use the Watch to take back Winterfell but what pushed him to this choice? The infamous Pink Letter. The contents of the letter pushed Jon to march south to retake Winterfell but more importantly, he wanted to find and rescue his “sister,” Arya.

“I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …” 

ADWD Jon XIII

As Lyanna’s son, we can see how Jon started the crack that divided the brotherhood and will eventually lead to the fall of the Wall. However, it was to save “Arya,” one of the two Blue Winter Roses in the story, from Ramsay Bolton, which led to Jon’s betrayal of his oath. This action was the immediate cause of his assassination by his NW brothers. So we can see that symbolically in this instance, Arya was the Blue Winter Rose that created the crack in the Wall. This is just one of the many examples of how George uses symbolism to tell his story. 

Yes, Dany saw the blue winter rose in the crack, but it does not specifically have anything to do with her. Symbolically what she saw was Jon’s decision to abandon the Wall to rescue his sister, the Blue Winter Rose. This decision started the crack that will eventually lead to the fall of the Wall. It’s also a decision that will reverberate across the landscape and through the ages. 

Dany’s vision has to do with Jon and the daughters of House Stark. Not every vision she saw in the HOTU specifically relates to her…case in point, the Red Wedding. In my opinion, what Dany’s visions in the HOTU are lynchpin events that will have an impact on the entire story and as such, will tie into her individual arc in some manner but not all will affect her on a visceral/personal level.

Now before someone goes, what do I mean that the vision of the blue winter rose has nothing to do with Dany, let me say that I’m not saying that Jon won’t tie into her storyline or have any impact on it.  That would be kind of silly to suggest. I think that he most certainly will have an effect on her story but just not in the way many imagine. 

By the way, I also think that the blue rose in the crack in the Wall also clues us into events of the ancient past. I’ve proposed that Jonquil was the original Blue Winter Rose and I think that we will eventually find out that she was the Corpse Queen to Florian’s Nights King and was also the original crack in the wall of the brotherhood.  However, that discussion is for the Florian and Jonquil essay series where we will further discuss why Sansa is the most important Blue Rose on the board. 

Thanks for the ask!

[sailormoonandme]

Why I think Sailor Moon lends itself so well to fanfiction

It’s no secret that there is a very active Sailor Moon fanficiton community.*

Whilst every fandom has its fanfic authors in my experience Sailor Moon fanfiction proportionally forms a far larger part of the fandom than in many other fandoms, the only exception I’ve encountered would be say Harry Potter. I do not for example find as many people posting or discussing fanfiction within Power Rangers, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, DC or Doctor Who circles.

Oh, there are plenty of people who talk about ideas and concepts they have. But there seem to be far fewer actually making stories themselves, or at least willing to post/share them, nor even discuss making them.

Why is this?

Well, I’m sure there is a discussion to be had regarding fanfiction, female authors, female audiences and obviously that’d tie into how Sailor Moon is primarily aimed at (and enjoyed by) a female audience.  

But I’ve not really researched that so I don’t feel confident enough to dive into it.

To me though, when we break down the nature of Sailor Moon’s story, I very much feel it practically encourages fanfiction and taps very directly into the sort of things fanfiction writers and readers seem to like.

One stereotype of fanfiction that, in my observations, is absolutely true is that there is A LOT of romantic and/or sexual content. In fact it’s an open secret that professional erotic fiction pales in comparison to the breadth, quantity and quality of fanfiction ‘smut’.**  

One might argue ANY story that features romance in it is therefore ‘encouraging’ such fanfiction. But the situation with Sailor Moon is a little different as romance is utterly baked into its foundation. The first story arc, initially intended as the entire story, revolves around Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask’s relationship. Between the manga and the anime the love life’s of almost every single major character is touched upon one way or the other. Minako’s affections for Allan. Rei’s disdain for men in the manga and romances with Mamoru and Yuichiro in the anime. Makoto’s sempai and her tragic string of men even vaguely similar to him. Ami and Ryo’s relationship in season 1 and her shyness about anything romantic thereafter. Even side characters like Reika, Motoki, Unazuki, Umino, Naru, Nephrite, Zoisite and Kunzite make their love lives at least discussed.  

Then of course you have Haruka and Michiru, who’s relationship also clearly hints that they’ve become physically intimate.  

Often with more sexually explicit fanfiction the authors are diving into parts of the characters’ lives rarely even discussed (if at all) in the original canon. Whilst Sailor Moon’s focus upon romance made sex a logical leap, the show plays a Hell of a lot with innuendo, symbolism and subtle hints to the point where it was giving fic authors plenty of ‘ammo’ to work with already.  

This of course extends into the realm of queer pairings. Another stereotype of fanfiction (and again, I’ve not really researched this so I dunno how true it is) is that they engage in romantic or sexual stories where the characters have a different sexualities from their (apparent) canon ones. Perhaps the most famous (infamous?) example is Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Between Haruka and Michiru, Mamoru and Fiore, Zoisite and Kunzite and implications a plenty in the manga and anime (especially under Ikuhara’s rule) writing the characters as interested in people other  than the opposite sex was a relatively easy and believable leap, hardly even breaking the verisimilitude of the canon.

Speaking of verisimilitude, Sailor Moon…didn’t make sense. I love it and adore it but we all know this is true. Even beyond the mindblowing miraculous magic it employed there was more than several instances where characters did not behave realistically or even consistently. Contradictions in the anime especially were rife.  

Regardless of what that does or doesn’t say about the canon, for the purposes of fanfiction, this is something of a boon. It enables all sorts of wacky riffs and directions that aren’t going to create too large of a cognitive dissonance for the writer nor the reader.  

Want to write a story that wouldn’t be realistic? So what? This was the story where the world almost ends but society is never fundamentally changed.  

Want to write a story with elements that’d be anachronistic So what? Our heroes were named after planets that didn’t get those names until thousands of years later.  

Want to do a story that unfortunately would contradict a canon fact or canon characterization?...Have you watched SuperS…?

The flipside to the messier parts of the canon is that it equally encouraged some authors to engage in fix fics, to address what they felt were problems with the characters and narratives.***

It’s very much a getting your cake and getting to eat it too situation!

Additionally, the ‘monster of the week’ format for the show enables all sorts of wacky riffs and spins to be imposed on the characters and narrative since these monsters each had their own gimmicks. Body swap characters? Make them shrink? Make them evil? Alternate Universe? Space travel?  

Ostensibly anything and everything is on the table for fic authors to work with, just as it was for the official creators of Sailor Moon.

Alongside the ‘monster of the week’ format, the innate concept for Sailor Moon encourages the creation of original characters. There is no end of stories about ‘Sailor Sun’ and ‘Sailor Earth’ of course. But since any planetoid, celestial body or what have you in theory could have a Guardian authors could go nuts, drawing upon real list astrology or simply invent their own planets for whatever story they are doing. So the story is ripe for world building and expansion!

However, things need not go to that scale. Sailor Moon, especially the anime, revolves around the everyday lives of teenaged characters. Their ages means authors have the opportunity to write the characters growing up or having grown up and take them in any direction they like and again not create too much of a cognitive dissonance with the canon. And they can do that by drawing upon their own life experiences fairly easily without having to consider what the first day of college might’ve been like for someone on Middle Earth or whatever.

Furthermore, because romance was baked into the story, there was a greater focus in the stories upon the characters internal thoughts and feelings. This wasn’t strictly about their romantic feelings, but my point is a good 2/3 of your average Sailor Moon episode will be taken up with slice of life stuff before the Senshi go into action.  

Why is this relevant? Because that kind of internal exploration lends itself far better to the prose format than action set pieces, especially action set pieces trying to emulate those of a visual format like a manga or an anime.  

All the above actively encourages the creation of fanfics but there is aso something deeper going on.  

After all, plenty of movies leave room for characters to be expanded. Plenty of manga offer opportunities for world building. Plenty of TV shows make the creation of original characters a synch. Plenty of comic books have contradictory continuity that warrants patching up. And romantic elements are present in the overwhelming majority of fiction, even fiction that isn’t predominantly about that.

What makes Sailor Moon a particular strong candidate for fanfiction though is that it has all those things whilst also having strong concepts, endearing characters and a rich mythology to hook people in the first place.

In other words, the fact that Sailor Moon was good made people love it. And that love I think is the essence of why they wanted to read and produce more  of it.

*For the purposes of this post you should understand that by ‘fanfiction’ I’m specifically referring to prose fanfiction, i.e. the stuff you’d find on FFN and predmonantly on Ao3. Obviously audio plays, comics, art, cosplay performances can all fall under the label of fanfiction to one extent or another. And in some cases these are far more prevalent than prose fanfiction.  

E.g. there is plenty of fan art in the Marvel fandom and there is a frightening amount of audio based Dr. Who fanfiction.

**Even I know that and I do not typically care for that type of stuff myself.  

***Or expand upon characters they felt there was more to do with. I know many people who feel that way about the manga versions of the villains and the Senshi (sans Usagi), the anime version of Mamoru and the supporting cast like Usagi parents.

[mikkeneko]

for the meta meme: 4, 19, 20!

Ooh, these are meaty ones XD Gotta think about this for a little.

I always have problems with questions like these w/r/t scope, so I’m going to be arbitrarily limiting these to Untamed fandom work only.

4 - Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

I was really proud  of this line from Yakety Sax:

The noise of the crowd was quickly growing into an ugly roar, a cacophony of cheers and jeers and shouts of rage, and Wei Wuxian couldn't help but wince at the dark emotion in it.  "Yikes," he said feelingly. "Tough day to be the Yiling Whatever."

Jiang Cheng slapped him upside the head, completely unfair. "That's you, you absolute idiot," he snapped.

I don’t think this one needs much explanation.

19 - Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Ahh, I answered this one in this ask, and couldn’t really think of anything there :< Hmm. One thing that I’ve noticed that turns up a lot is that if two characters are arguing I will have one “fling their hands into the air” even though this is not a thing I have ever literally done or seen done in real life XD

Last spotted in the wild, also in Yakety Sax:

Jiang Cheng threw up his hands and, predictably, his temper. "OH GREAT, HE DOESN'T REMEMBER," he shouted. "HE DUMPED US ALL IN THE SHIT AND HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HE DID!"

20 - Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Gosh. Very open ended. Well, it does specifically say ‘that you want to ramble about’  so I’m gonna go back to my current favorite project, the Untamed In SPACE!!! AU, which takes up a lot of my headspace even though almost none of it has been published yet XD

AUs are some of my favorite kinds of fanfics to write, and the most fun part of an AU setting for me is figuring out how to convert the original setting into the target setting: in this case taking Ancient Magical Fantasy China and trying to convert into Also Magical But Future Sci Fi Space China. 

This can be something as straightforward as taking a quantifiable list like the Six Gentlemanly Arts (rites, music, archery, chariotry, calligraphy and mathematics) and updating them to be applicable to the new setting (cultivation, still music, marksmanship, piloting, still calligraphy, still mathematics.) 

Or it can be something more abstract, like transmuting the society’s values into the new setting.  For instance, in the space AU, the Lan clan are doctors and medical researchers. Their commitment to moral righteousness translates as a commitment to medical ethics, and the infamous slate of rules become safety procedures. So “Do not run within Cloud Recesses” is still a rule, but now it’s about preventing lab accidents rather than practicing self-regulation.  But in both cases the underlying value  is a commitment to prioritizing human life and adhering to strict moral standards, even when other sects don’t bother.

I’m also finding that a lot of Wei Wuxian’s spiral into infamy and the disintegration of his reputation in the later part of the story translates, in this case, less about him being viewed as evil  and more about him being viewed as crazy.  In a society that prides itself on rationality and scientific control of one’s surroundings, it is a much worse thing to be not in control of one’s mental facilities than to act in a way that’s unethical. So, Wei Wuxian must be opposed and stopped by any means necessary, not because he’s wicked and deviates from orthodoxy, but because he’s crazy and dangerous and who knows  what he might do next?

Anyway, you can tell by the last few paragraphs, I really like  spending time figuring out this kind of transmutation! It’s just, like, really satisfying to come up with something that fits neatly into the new setting but still (at least in my view) contains the essence of the original.

Fun meta asks for writers

[withteeths]

Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable. 

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

 I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

 I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again. 

[mochuelovelli]

GAAAAHHH OKAY

Let's talk about the Timephoon Episodes

This is such an old topic of discourse but after reading many fanfics, videos, and some posts on the subject I have found little divergent takes on the whole subject.

While commentators are of the mind that, for the most part, the punishment and execution of said punishment for Louie's actions were partially if not fully justified but how she went about it was wrong.

Some fanfic writers and some subsects of the fandom but they are much more critical and often in a more black and white interpretation. Which is valid for vent art. However, I find both these portrayals to be lacking in some nuance.

Specifically when it it comes to who's to blame for the next 3 episodes, and to me, its more than just Della (and Louie but there really isn't much discourse here).

Let's start with Timephoon:

This pretty much solidifies their relationship throughout the episode[Also sorry for no captions]. Multiple times Della is shown to have a very laissez faire style of parenting as she primarily wants her kids to enjoy being kids and having fun. This is probably in part to her personality in general - which is probably what Beakley assumes here - however it is also her want to be loved by her children and even more critically, she doesn't ever want them to suffer like she did. Above all else, she wants them to be happy and feel confident in themselves. We see this in all the previous episode with her and her kids - From Dewey and reassuring him that he doesn't need to prove himself to her [notably in this episode she only shows concern when Dewey himself is in danger, she doesn't give a shit when he almost kills her] to Huey and helping him to have the most fun he possibly can, to even Webby and making sure that she also feels confident in herself regardless in how she goes about things.

Bringing up all these adventures does raise some pretty damning hypocrisy. Della encourage Dewey's reckless behavior in his episode. The lesson at the end wasn't, okay maybe we shouldn't be going on dangerous adventures, it was its okay to be afraid and you don't need to prove to me that you're great I already know you are. Huey's message was similar, albeit more low stakes. Webby's lesson wasn't even that she shouldn't be trying to take such risks to find adventure in the future, it was just a lesson in not being disappointed when things don't work the way you want.

So why wasn't Louie's adventure treated the same? Well... let's look at some more examples of Beakley V Della this episode before we answer that -

This is right before the kids find Bubba, Beakley's reaction is what most people would consider to be parental as she is concerned for the safety of the kids running out in a hurricane. Again we see Della acting casual.

Once Bubba is inside and Huey geeks out about him, Beakley actually smiles bc she knows that something like this means a lot to Huey [keep this in mind for l8r]. She only gets serious after Della says it's neat without much after thought so she gives the lesson of the episode - "Small problems become big problems later if not prevented early."

Next we have Della's faux attempt at being strict with her kids. Letting the irresponsible thing happen as long as they are "safe". While also harkening back to her previous episodes where she also is shown to have this attitude that "the kids can do anything as long as they are safe with ME or Scrooge or another SAFE adult", it is also good to note SCROOGE'S expression here to her patting herself on the back for her parenting. Now he could just be confused as to why Della is taking this "lesson" as a win, but he could be noticing that she really doesn't know what she is doing but unlike Beakley doesn't make any attempts to correct this.

Another scene that people often forget when reviewing this episode, just like with all her other kids she at first takes LOUIE'S side and decides they should just roll with the punches like always. Which honestly is sort if valid because that's kinda Scrooge's whole MO; though he also had others to there to keep him afloat but we all know someone like Scrooge, Della, and the kids hardly see that. I also want to hammer home that, just like with the other boys, she doesn't shy away from displaying that she loves them ALL. A few seconds later, it's subtle but she is shown smiling and patting Louie on the head because like the other kids she just wants him to feel supported. If I was to be critical, I would say this is possibly because she likes the IDEA of her boys more than them but I mean - this is pretty much everyone's attitude towards kids. It might be amplified bc of her trauma but it's not unusual. But even still I would argue that she mainly does love the boys for who they are as she is excited to get to know them.

After Della figures that they are looking for a "master thief", Scrooge and Beakley immediately know it's one of the kids. Shocking her since she later states she is of the belief that her kids are too "good" to do something like this. I also want to bring attention, again, to Beakley smiling (ik im putting a lot of stock into expressions but animation tends to do stuff like this for a reason). She is smiling at whom she expects is Dewey for messing with time and space. Bc even if she planned to scold him, she knows it's just their normal. Scrooge seems to also be of the same mind. Later Beakley gives a really good line about "Even good kids can do dumb things. We got to make sure those dumb things don't turn into bad things like destroying all of existence!".

Mrs. B exists stage right

All jokes aside, this must have been a nightmare for all of them but especially Della. She had just finally admitted that she was out of her depth and made another mistake in parenting. But now it seems like she lost her chance to rectify that. Because for all she knows, Mrs. B will never come back. This is import-ALLRIGHTWEGETIT

Della is then shown explicitly worried about her family. Emotions, insecurities and fear obviously getting the best of her. We don't know exactly what she is thinking but we know she is terrified of the possibility of losing one of her kids. When she asks about Louie, she probably thinks he must have disappeared without her knowing. That she might have already failed more than she could know, because she wasn't there to protect him. She doesn't know - she is "Della Duck" and she doesn't know how to fix this. She didn't expect everything to go so horribly wrong, but that's her theme isn't it?

She is both relieved and understandably PISSED when finding that Louie was responsible for almost destroying the fabric of reality (let me say this again, nearly destroying the fabric of reality). She goes scold both herself and her son about the danger he put them in. Later we see Della, the last one leave and seeing almost everyone she loves vanish. We don't know how long each of the characters who left were in the past but we can assume it was long enough to have to change clothes. Yeah this was probably more of a visual gag but like, the other past characters didn't change their outfits when they came to the present so - (also Launchpad was specific about knowing how the world ends so he had to be there enough for him to understand it). Side note someones gotta write fanfic of these characters time misadventures. I wonder if Dewey and Webby ran into Agent 22.

[Last picture of the infamous scene, side note did anyone notice Launchpad NODDING his head when Della mentioned his time schemes could've cost them their future? He's the only one who knows what happened so maybe Louie's misadventure has more impact than we think-]

Anyways, yeah we know what was said here. But I think it's important to see the reaction the other adults (sorry LP, and Gryo i GUESS) have here BC this is basically why I made this post. What Della decided to do was unquestionably the wrong decision, at least her way of going about it and I will not absolve her of her many MANY mistakes. However, let's remember she wasn't alone in any of this. She was with other parental figures who KNOW more about her kids than she does.

After Louie leaves, why did they think it was good to encourage this course of action? Why did they think giving full parental control to a PTSD, trauma survivor who barely got back less than a month ago was a good idea? Sure it's one thing to not want to overstep your boundaries but are you telling me they wouldn't want to guide her in the right direction at least? We KNOW both Beakley AND Scrooge have their grievences towards Della's parenting strategy or lack there of. Beakley so far doing the most to try and put her in the right direction (which speaks volumes to the problems Scrooge has).

So why wouldn't they explain that, hey, maybe taking away the one thing your kid thinks he is good at ISNT a great idea? Why didn't either say anything about their two day vacation? Something that came up presumingly on a whim and might of prevented (although i doubt it) Louie from trying to steal w/ time? He might have considered pushing back time schemes at least 3 days later. While Mrs. Beakley might be less aware of Louie's insecurities and ambitions, Scrooge definitely isn't. He should have talked to her, and hey we don't see what happens before they leave so maybe MAYBE they did. But again, I doubt it. Seeing as how they all agreed with her at the end, I don't see them trying to meddle with her.

But they should've. They are both experienced guardians and they have nothing to say to her? Plus Donald (goddamn it i almost finished a post w/o him) have THEM responsibility to take care of the kids NOT Della. So they are obligated to help her. Really, the other option other than just well negligence would be not thinking this punishment was a big deal. I wish this aspect was also scrutinized just as much as Della and Louies role in this arc.

Beakley and Scrooge (more so Scrooge) are just as much to blame in what happens as Della if not MORE since they know of her situation in only a way that an experience adult can. There is no excuse for their negligence.

[shepscapades]

Yogscast Starter Pack/Master Post

Hello!! I’ve had quite a few people express interest in exploring the Yogscast’s content recently! The yogs fandom’s source of content is a little hard to pin down and it’s kind of a lot of information, so I wanted to put together a more thorough compilation of summaries and places to start for anyone who’s not sure or just curious! Below the cut is my Yogscast Start Kit Master PostTM. 

I hope this helps, and don’t hesitate at all if you have any questions :)

Who are the Yogscast?

The Yogscast is a large group of youtubers who have a history of creating largely Minecraft-based content; they create stories, develop characters, and create lore-filled worlds through the many facets of minecraft that’s essentially been modded to hell.

This content isn’t just in one place or with one group of people, but rather a large collection of pairs, individuals, and groups of yogscast (and non-yogscast) members who’ve created a large number of respective series, often featuring a specific modpack, specific characters, a specific storyline, etc.

For example, Simon and Lewis (Honeydew and Xephos are their characters, respectively) are the main two individuals that started the Yogscast youtube channel,  Duncan later joins them, they become the main three yogscast icons, sips and sjin become the secondary two, and it goes on and on as the fanbase and number of creators grew. This means that, collectively, there are a…. STUPID large amount of different minecraft series that can technically be filed under “yogscast minecraft lore/ universe”.

Most of their series are unscripted, but they follow general arcs or set goals (e.g. going to space, building a jaffa cake factory, becoming proficient at a specific mod, etc). This allows hilarity to ensue when everything inevitably doesn’t go anyone’s way lmao

Oh cool, w. where am I supposed to even start, then

Compilations are always a good go-to if you’re interested in getting a feel for personalities, humor, and content style (I recommend looking up Yogscast Ultimate Edition videos!). If you’re just looking for a place to dive in, you’ve got a couple of options! I’ve sorted everything below by creator, as most yogs creators tend to do series within a specific set or group of people.

MAIN CREATORS & THEIR SERIES:

Lewis (Xephos) and Simon (Honeydew): These two are the “main two” figure heads of the yogscast! They started the main Yogscast channel about a decade ago and started their minecraft beginnings with the infamous series “Shadow of Israphel.” Xephos, the Spaceman and the one with the braincell, and Honeydew, the dwarven brawn and charisma of the two, also often team up with Duncan, as the three of them are featured in some of the Yogs’ most well-known minecraft series.

              Shadow of Israphel –  The OG series! Started all the way back when Minecraft was in beta, as soon as multiplayer became available. No mods, eventually scripted when NPCs are introduced. Hilarious interactions between NPCS and our heroes, and the nostalgic series that most every Yogs fan holds close to their heart!

              The Jaffa Factory –  Modpack: “Tekkit.” This was the first big modded minecraft series they did, and the beginning of the trend of hosting huge servers that almost every yog member hosted a different series on. Not scripted. Duncan (Lalna or Lividcoffee) joins them for the first time, and from this point on, they become a trio! unscripted and a mess. Sips and Sjin also eventually join!

              Moonquest –  Modpack: “MoonQuest.” Lewis, Simon, and Duncan attempt reaching the moon! It’s… in more than one way, a tad bit disastrous. This is the era when the Yogs started making songs and animations based off their minecraft series! (Watch this!) unscripted and disastrous.

             Yoglabs – Simon and Lewis. This one was a weekly mod review that developed into some questionable behavior via Lewis (Xephos). Really enjoyable, not chronological (each episode is independent, more or less- you can watch out of order)! It spans most of the entirety of their time on youtube. Various mods, just Simon and Lewis. (Watch this!) Most episodes of this series end up with Simon blowing up Yoglabs tbh

 Duncan (Lividcoffee, or Lalna) and Kim (Nanosounds): Lalna, or lividcoffee, is the well-known mad scientist of the server! His personality tends to change depending on the context and series, but when he’s with kim, he’s a friendly goof! Kim/Nano, his apprentice, starts as a true-to-definition noob at minecraft and eventually becomes a pro with magics and whatever Lalna happens to teach her! These two have their own narrative and call their storyline series “Flux Buddies,” which involves them trying to cure Kim’s infection of a magic substance called “Flux.” Good Duo. Pure. Eventually, drama with clones ensue!

              The Apprentice –  Their first series, in the “Tekkit” Era. It’s worth noting that Duncan has a solo series in the “Tekkit” Era called Duncan’s Laboratory as a precursor to The Apprentice as well. The apprentice is worth checking out just to see what happens to Kim, how she becomes fluxed, and what the aftermath is, but that’s p much it imo. Primarily unscripted, save for when Nano becomes fluxed!

              Flux Buddies –  Flux Buddies is the biggest/longest-running series, with several “seasons”. It begins after the events of The Apprentice, with…

              Flux Buddies –  Panda Labs! Kim explores witchcraft, they explore several different facets of science and magic, and Duncan begins the search on how to unflux kim! It’s kind of his fault, so he feels pretty bad about it,,

              Flux Buddies 2,3, and 4 –  A continuation, with more mods and more hijinks! Becomes more scripted as villain characters Lalnable Hector and Specimen 5 (clones of Lalna and Nano) are introduced!

              Flux Baddies –  A spinoff, featuring Lalnable and Specimen 5 as the main duo! Half scripted; an evil perspective on the Flux Buddies plot! This series is hilarious because half the time Duncan and Kim are trying to get stuff done, and half the time they’re trying (struggling) to stay in character as the mega bad-guys of the series.

Sips and Sjin: Sips and Sjin are the famous, much loved duo of the yogscast! These two are the, er. Magnificent, definitely not gay at all nope,, duo in charge of ‘Sips Co.,’ the Dirt Company! CEO Sips and his lackey Sjin (<also architect and farmer) are an absolute disaster. But like,, in the best way possible. They spend the majority of their time in each series bantering instead of getting anything done, but everyone accepts that its just part of the charm.

              Sipsco. (Sips and Sjin Tekkit) –  Modpack: “Tekkit.” This occurs at the same time as the Jaffa Factory! Sips and Sjin build up their dirt empire whilest also making sure to spy on and keep an eye on those weird Jaffa Factory goons and their girl scout cookies. Unscripted and hilarious! These two eventually go over and join the Jaffa Factory boys (Honeydew, Xeph, and Lalna!)

              (Most of Sips and Sjin’s series follow the same formula: Get started, joke around, never really finish the series. Even still, they’re iconic to watch and enjoyable to listen to C: This goes for):

              Volts –  IMPORTANT NOTE: if you decide not to watch any of sips and sjin, just watch this. somehow this is completely unscripted, but THE BEST

              Sipsco Space Program –  Occurs at the same time as “Moonquest”. These dopes try to get to Mars. Clone hijinks eventually ensue, briefly. Unscripted

              Cheat Police –  A pun on the series “Magic Police” (In which Sjin and Duncan attempt to jail all of the most powerful mages on the server). They try to call out all of the “cheaters” on the server. The dopes fool around in creative mode while trying to call out everyone else who uses creative mode.

 Zoey and Rythian: These two only have one series, but it’s one of the yogscast’s most known! Rythian, the serious, vengeful, loner-type endermage and hater of science, recruits Zoey as his apprentice (goofy, friendly, passive, interested in both science and magic)! These two are complete opposites but a much-loved duo!

              The Blackrock Chronicle –  Three short seasons long, this series follows Rythian as he recruits Zoey (and their sharpshooting, mute dinosaur, Teep,) to get payback and revenge on Sjin and Duncan for nuking and destroying the “old world” (The first tekkit server, unrecorded). He’s also determined to prove to them the superiority of his magic and the flaws of science; conflict arises when Zoey, his mage apprentice, also expresses interest in becoming a scientist. This series’ events are scripted, and includes cameos of many other loveable yogs folks (including Nilesy, Duncan, Ravs, and Zylus n Daltos).

^This one is a must-watch for sure!! A very heart felt and endearing series!

 Strife and Parvis: These two, another well known duo by the fandom, are a fun pair for sure! (They’re my personal favorite, so I’m a tad bit biased,,) William Strife is a no-nonsense, cutthroat business man and CEO of his solutions company, Strife Solutions. Not particularly fond of magic. Alex Parvis, absolutely-all-of-the-nonsense guitarist, chaotic newby who Strife hires? Adopts? Is burdened with? Strife is forced to teach Parv the ways of minecraftia and whatnot, much to Strife’s chagrin. Parv becomes a very chaotic bloodmage.

              Solutions in Chaos –  Their first series, taking place in the Chaosville server. Will, arriving for the first time ever in minecraftia, begins to explore the region before Parvis shows up, exclaiming that lewis sent him to be taught minecraft by strife. Strife now must babysit this child and teach him minecraft. Hilarity and much exasperation ensues.

              Blood and Chaos –  Following Parv’s series with Martyn (Inthelittlewood) ‘Heroes of Mine’ (in which they explore Ars Magica), Parv finds Blood Magic Items and insists that Strife helps him become the most powerful blood mage on the server! Strife does not approve At All n doesn’t really wanna be involved in this whatsoever, but he thinks parv will either destroy himself or destroy the server If someone doesn’t keep an eye on him. So, Mr. Strife must continue to babysit this now dangerous knife-wielding child.

Hat Films: Smith (Alsmiffy), Trott (Trottimus), and Ross (djh3max): These three are a TRIP and have a large fan base of their own. They’re an inseparable gang of swindlers and chaos bringers, and they’re pretty much all sharing the same single braincell. They make everyone else’s business their own business, as their motto is “what’s yours is ours,” and prove themselves to be the havoc-wreaker of whatever server they happen to be on.

              Hat Corp –  This is their first main minecraft series that features them interacting (aka messing) with other people on the server. From “"fairly”” selling land to all of the other groups of people on the server, to starting a dangeorus rivalry with the Flux Buddies, they’re. 100% disaster energy.

Hannah (Lomadia) and Nilesy: Very wholesome good duo! They tend to explore the magic mods, most of the time with Lomadia (powerful witch, owl lady!) teaching Nilesy what’s what. Nilesy is a just a simple cat lad. Likes to sell portable pools, he’s a potion master, he’s a man of the cats.  

              Evicted –  After being evicted from their Tekkit base ‘owl island’ as pirates took over their home, Nilesy and Hannah leave to set up base elsewhere and focus on Witchcraft!

The following series’, Owl Island and Cat Island, are very similar in caliber! Just our wholesome magic animal loving duo doing witch stuff c:

Kirindave, Lyinginbedmon, and Ridgedog: The last extremely notable lore-heavy minecraft characters making appearances on yogscast minecraft servers are regarded as the “demigods” of the yogs minecraft universe. Though they don’t necessarily do a lot of content together, I grouped them together for relevancy sakes. Kirin and Lying, both mod developers and masters at their respective magical crafts, have a bit of a rivalry going on, where as Ridgedog is the kind of “trickster” demigod, doing what he pleases and happily poking fun or messing around with others as he does so. They’re all a lot of fun to listen to and their series are all super interesting, so I’ve listed a few below!

              Ridgedog: Yogscast Complete –  Ridge sets up his base and plays by his own rules to become extremely proficient at a majority of mods in the server. He’s hilarious, plays largely by his own rules, and often does content with BeBopVox, another gaming and songwriting youtuber.

              Kirindave: Chaosville and Minecraft the Hard Way –  Chaosville sees the development of his rivalry with Lying as Kirin masters blood magic and other magics on the server, and Minecraft the Hard Way is the series following that!

              Lyinginbedmon: You can find the opposite perspective of the Chaosville rivalry in Lyings Chaosville S2. As Lying masters witchery, he and Kirin have a dangerous magically fueled ““prank”” war. Lying’s Witch in the Woods follows suit just like Kirin’s Minecraft the Hard Way.

[thequirkdetective]

Investigation 4 (12/6/2020): Explosion - Katsuki Bakugou

This investigation will cover the quirk of the most famous/infamous character in the BNHA fandom: Katsuki Bakugou. His ‘explosion’ quirk allows him to “secrete nitro-glycerine-like sweat”[1] from his skin and detonate it at will, and he uses the resultant explosions for direct close-range attack, movement, and illumination. The main detail to be examined therefore is the synthesis of the substance within Bakugou’s body.

To begin with, we’ll look specifically at the compound Nitro-glycerine. It is described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as “a colourless, oily, somewhat toxic liquid having a sweet, burning taste”. How exactly the taste of nitro-glycerine was discovered is not explained, and neither is the dubious use of the word “slightly”, but the entry does describe the exact stages of the decomposition of the molecule. Its extreme instability lies in its high nitrogen content. Diatomic nitrogen molecules form triple covalent bonds, and are thus very stable. Therefore, the nitrogen in its state within the nitro-glycerine molecule is unstable, as it ‘wants’ to form strong, stable triple-bonds. As the nitrogen is released from the molecule, energy is given off as heat, which allows the carbon and hydrogen atoms to react with the oxygen, releasing yet more heat. It is this second step, facilitated by the high oxygen content of the molecule, that makes nitro-glycerine so powerful as an explosive.

The instability of the compound creates difficulty – since it is in such a high energy state, it takes a lot of energy to synthesise. The commercial synthesis of nitro-glycerine involves heated nitric and sulfuric acids, but can be done at home, in an experiment not for the faint of heart (or perhaps the opposite, but we’ll get to that later). The ridiculousness of such an experiment can be summed up by a forum post by an amateur chemist using the phrase “only 65-70% concentrated HNO3 [nitric acid] and 96-98% concentrated H2SO4 [sulfuric acid]”. It’s safe to say that such a reaction is infeasible within biological environments, and most likely any environment without a few dozen blast shields and fume hoods. However, the main pathway is simply the nitration of glycerol, where each of the three hydroxide (OH) groups are replaced with a nitrate (NO3) group, and the mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid only exists to create protonated nitric acid (nitric acid with an additional H+ ion). It is this that reacts with the glycerol in an endothermic reaction, so if the two can be gathered from food then nitro-glycerine can be synthesised within Bakugou’s body.

Glycerol, referred to in the food industry as glycerine, is used as a preservative and sweetener, and as such can be found in a handful of foods, such as dried fruits, soft drinks, and icing. Despite this, the average intake of glycerol per day is rather low. Additionally, I have yet to come across a food containing nitric acid in both high enough quantities to be used for nitro-glycerine production and low enough quantities to be safe, or indeed containing nitric acid at all. The role of nitric acid in the reaction is rather indirect, though, and a safer way to obtain the nitronium (NO2+) ion could be found, specifically via nitric oxide (NO). This compound can be obtained via the ingestion of many foods, including red meat, beetroot, garlic, and dark chocolate. The compound would then bind to a protonated oxide ion, and become the desired nitronium ion.

It is important to note that when explaining his quirk, Bakugou uses the phrase “nitro-glycerine-like”. The pronunciation is ambiguous in the dub (either “secrete nitro-glycerine-like sweat, or “secrete nitro-glycerine like sweat”), but the subtitles reveal the former to be true, and therefore we know that the substance that is produced is not pure nitro-glycerine. Nitro-glycerine, despite the name, is in fact not a nitro compound, but a nitrate ester. These compounds all have the property of explosive, smokeless decomposition, but are again synthesised using nitric acid. The intake of nitric acid is unlikely to be the ingestion of the compound in solution, due to the acid’s tendency to corrode biological tissues. Bakugou’s internal organs have not yet been shown in the anime, but it is safe to assume that he does not internal chemical burns by drinking acid. The issue is therefore one of acquiring the acid (interestingly, passing electricity through moist air creates small amounts of nitric acid, a technique that could be completed with the help of Denki Kaminari) and somehow ingesting it without causing large amounts of corrosive damage to the digestive system. Therefore, the compound would most likely be synthesized rather than ingested in its native form. The synthesis of nitric acid involves the reaction between nitrogen dioxide and water, releasing nitric oxide and nitric acid. This nitric acid can then be reacted with glycerine to produce nitro-glycerine (although glycerine is relatively rare in the body and diet), or an alcohol to produce a corresponding nitrate ester. These esters are all to a certain degree explosive, especially methyl and ethyl nitrate, created with methanol and ethanol, respectively. Since methanol is incredibly toxic to humans (there’s a reason people don’t drink methylated spirits and tell you about it), it can be assumed the substance secreted by Bakugou’s skin is ethyl nitrate (formula C2H5NO3).

Now the exact compound and method of synthesis is known, we can look at some of the possible side-effects of such a quirk. The first, which has been theorised by a few different fans, is the fact that nitro-glycerine is used to treat high blood pressure. At first it may seem that this problem is irrelevant, since it is expressly stated the compound created is not nitro-glycerine, but the treatment works via nitro-glycerine’s decomposition into nitric oxide, catalysed by the enzyme mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase 2. It is then the nitric oxide which causes vasodilation, not the nitro-glycerine. This is a problem due to nitric oxide’s role as a by-product of Bakugou’s production of ethyl nitrate, and thus any of the compound that enters the blood stream would be absorbed by the blood vessels and cause lowered blood pressure. This could become dangerous, as low blood pressure creates dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and in extreme cases, loss of consciousness. Usually, low blood pressure (also known as hypotension) does not need treatment, but chronic hypotension can be treated via medication to alleviate the symptoms.

Another minor issue is the lack of normal sweating. Sweat lowers body temperature by evaporating, taking energy from the skin and cooling it. Ethyl Nitrate would perform similarly to normal sweat in this scenario, with any slight differences in energy change regulated by the amount of ethyl nitrate which is secreted (just like how the amount of sweat people secrete is based on temperature). However, it would make especially sweaty areas of Bakugou’s body dangerously flammable. It should also be noted that only Bakugou’s hands are every depicted as having explosive potential, so either Bakugou only sweats through his hands, leading to incredibly clammy, flammable and dangerous hands in any slightly warm environment, or sweats normally, leading to the possibility of his explosions spreading across his whole body. If he just sweats from his hands, this also explains the disproportionately large frequency and size of explosions he can release.

It hopefully should be rather evident that sweating explosive compounds and causing them to spontaneously detonate on one’s skin is not good for one’s bodily wellbeing. The immediate worry is one of burns from temperature increase. Ethyl Nitrate burns with 1348922 Joules per mole. I can’t find any measure for the average amount of sweat on someone’s hands, but it’s safe to assume it’s only a few ml and so the explosion of jus the residual sweat on Bakugou’s hands wouldn’t do much damage to the skin, since the heat isn’t very high or prolonged. The frequent detonation of small amounts of sweat would at worst cause hardening and callousing of the skin. But what about large quantities of sweat?

One of the largest (and first) uses of Bakugou’s quirk in combat seen is when the gauntlets integrated into his hero costume are used against Deku. They allow the storage and voluntary detonation of large volumes of Bakugou’s sweat, leading to a large explosion with significant offensive capabilities. But as Newton’s third law of motion states, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, a force of equal magnitude to the one exerted on the opponent, but in the opposite direction (along Bakugou’s arm). The magnitude of such a blast could be calculated by estimating the volume of storage in the gauntlet. The gauntlets stretch across the length of Bakugou’s forearms, and have a similar width. If we approximate them to a cylinder of length 30cm (12 inches), and width 20cm (8 inches), the volume of the gauntlets is ~9500cm3. Of course, some of this space is taken up by Bakugou’s arm, so simplifying his arm to a 10cm wide cylinder (to account for some beefy forearms), the volume reduces to ~7000cm3.

Let’s then estimate that 75% of that volume is sweat storage, so the final value for the volume of sweat each gauntlet comes to approx. 5250cm3, or 5.25 litres (1.2 gallons). This amount of liquid would weigh nearly 6kg (13.2lbs), not an easy feat to swing around with one arm, let alone jump and do acrobatics with (but again, we’re observing that Bakugou has some large muscles). We know the detonation of Ethyl Nitrate releases 1348922 Joules per mole, and 5.25 litres of Ethyl Nitrate is the equivalent of 64 moles. Therefore, the explosion of one full gauntlet releases 86.3 MJ of energy, equivalent to 20kg (44lbs) of TNT.

With proper preparation and placement, 1kg of TNT can be used to destroy a small vehicle. The explosions caused by many amateur bombs are equivalent to around 10kg of TNT. It is safe to say that if the entire gauntlet were detonated at once, the building would suffer catastrophic structural damage, most likely leading to at least partial collapse, and both Deku and Bakugou would be immediately killed (its seems All Might may have been on to something here). Although the damage caused by the use of the gauntlet is severe, it does not equate to the detonation of 20kg of TNT, and therefore we can deduce that only a portion of the total capacity of the gauntlet was detonated. The question is, how much?

After examining the many different controlled explosions usefully uploaded to YouTube, I estimate that the explosion Bakugou unleashed in episode 7 equated to roughly 10kg (22lbs) of TNT, or half of the maximum force of one gauntlet. The exact force exerted by the explosion is near impossible to accurately calculate, since the gauntlets direct the blast in a line, the dimensions and material of the corridor are not fully known, and well as many other factors come into play, not to mention I can’t find an equation that includes all of the terms ,corridor dimensions’, ‘material of corridor’, ‘width of gauntlet barrel’ and ‘weight of Bakugou and Deku’. However, we can turn to Newton again to figure out the damage to Bakugou’s arm. It is here we recall Newton’s third law of motion. It means that the force applied to Bakugou is at least the same magnitude as the force applied to Deku, and almost certainly much more since some of the force that would have hit Deku instead goes into destruction of the building. According to the BNHA wiki, Bakugou is 172cm tall, and we can see he is ~2.5 wall-tile-widths from the floor. This means the tiles in the scene are around 69cm wide and tall. Japan uses the metric system for all but traditional craft, and so it is likely the tiles are some round number of centimetres, let’s say 75cm. After the blast travels past and destroys ~35 tiles, 26m or 85ft (this seems rather far away for ‘close quarters’ combat, but here we are), it hits Deku and blasts him backwards, through the door behind him which sits 20 tiles (15m or 50ft) away. The blast is then immediately shown damaging the outer wall of the building, creating a roughly circular hole three windows wide. Afterwards, we see Deku standing in a new room, with the walls now tiled differently, but the width of each tile is the same 75cm when we compare them with the identical floor tiles. This shows us he is 7 tile-widths (5m or 16ft) from the door, having travelled a grand total of 20m (66ft).

The wind speed required to blow the average person off their feet is 45mph, the speed of a significant tropical storm. To work out the force of such a breeze, and thus the minimum force Deku was hit with, we must multiply the surface area of Deku’s body in m2, the wind speed in m/s, and the density of the air in kg/m3, giving us a final measurement of kgm/s2, or Newtons. Substituting in the numbers gives us approximately 50 Newtons of force as a minimum. Assuming this force was exerted over 1 second, we can see that 1 Deku 1m/s isn’t a realistic way to blow through a solid door. Let’s go bigger.

The magnitude of a force in Newtons can be calculated by multiplying the mass of the object the force acts upon and the resultant acceleration of the object due to the force (this is Newton’s Second Law of Motion). Since Deku starts at rest and acceleration is change in velocity over time, his acceleration is simply half his final velocity. The velocity now needs to be measured, which can be done via the approximate momentum need to break down a door.

The Enforcer is a modern battering ram used by the British Police do just that. It weighs 16 kg, and assuming it can be swung at ~15m/s (lets be conservative, Deku doesn’t need any more broken bones) the momentum it carries is 240kgm/s - this can also be understood as exerting a force of 240 Newtons on the door. For Deku to exert the same force, assuming he has an above average body weight[2] of ~75kg, he would have to be travelling at 3.2m/s. Let’s round up to 5m/s to account for his flight through the air and short trip beyond the door, since going at 2.3m/s would keep one airborne for long. This means that he has a force of 45kg × 5m/s acting upon him when hit by the blast, a force of 225 Newtons. Going back to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, this means Bakugou’s arm recoils under at least ~500 Newtons of force, since the blast originates from the gauntlet, (we’re being conservative and saying around 50% of the force missed Deku). Now we must find out the damage that this force would cause.

500 newtons is a lot of force, but it’s not the only thing to keep in mind. Boxers can punch up to 2500N, but the force doesn’t last long, maybe a tenth of a second. The main thing to focus on is impulse, and we can see that punches have an impulse of only 250kgm/s. The explosion force on Bakugou’s arm is applied over a significant time, giving an impressive impulse of ~1500kgm/s, or 6 boxer’s punches at once. The force required to dislocate a shoulder at the deltoid is around 85 Newtons, which means it’s not looking good for Bakugou’s tendons. However, the human shoulder can support a lot of force. People can dead-hang an excess of 100kg for an impressively long time, the equivalent of 980 Newtons (do note that this is in the opposite direction to our scenario, and does not carry a very high impulse). Even with the sudden shock, it’s doubtful that the 500N of recoil would do anything more than a possible dislocation (again, we’ve got serious muscle to take into account), which whilst being immensely painful would not be fatal or irreparable. But since half the force was enough to fling Deku through the air, even with adequate bracing Bakugou would near certainly be accelerated backwards and into the wall only a meter or two behind him, causing severe damage to his back, ribs, limbs, skull, and gauntlets. The headwear and shoulder guards of his costume may absorb some of the impact, but depending on their structural rigidity would probably do more harm than good, especially the sides of the mask which would be rather dangerous at high velocities.

Either way, Bakugou would be quickly propelled backwards, as if standing right next to an explosion of 10kg of TNT (a rather direct parallel) or being hit by 100 golf clubs simultaneously, if he were to unleash half of the possible blast of one of his gauntlets. Firing eve one, let alone both at full power would rival many modern-day chemical explosives, and would certainly be fatal to Bakugou and anyone within a considerable radius.

To conclude, Bakugou’s body uses nitrogen dioxide and water to create nitric acid, which is reacted with ethanol to produce ethyl nitrate. This is the explosive substance that Bakugou sweats, and it facilitates the explosions he can produce. Small amounts of the compound, as present on Bakugou’s skin, could be detonated, but to little effect. However, the storage of the compound allows significant explosive potential, with half of one gauntlet having the rough explosive power of 10kg of TNT, the equivalent of one small conventional bomb.

[1] Season 1 Episode 7: Deku vs Kaachan

[2] Season 1 Episode 3: Roaring Muscles

If you liked this investigation and want to have a say in the next one, then make sure to send a recommendation for which quirk I should investigate!

[carnoshin]

Slashers With A Magical Girl S/O

Prompt(s) provided by @galaxy-of-pastels, based off of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. I was in the fandom when I was younger, so excuse the length!!! 

((I know the cut won’t work on mobile, yet again, so I’m also gonna tag this as “long post.” soz))

(Also. Side-note that I think is funny: technically, all you need to become a magical “””girl””” is human emotions, so. Technically. These boys could make a wish. Too bad I can’t draw men, this seems like it would be fun to do;;;)

Jason

You probably assume that the famous “Jason Voorhees of Camp Blood” is a witch, so that’s how you end up there. Maybe you still have some hope left in you, maybe you’re trying to claim the territory.

Obviously, you’re surprised when the infamous Jason is... Well, he’s just himself. And he’s surprised when you walk off being gored. It does some serious corruption to your soul gem, but you’ve been through worse-- that’s what being a magical girl is, simple enough: not fun and seriously harming.

((As for the general relationship and the specific questions, lol))

Usually, in the Madoka universe, magical girls do not age unless spurned by their transformation (Godoka seems to be a few years older than usual Madoka, for example. Also, there’s a wish that basically splits someone into two people in the manga: it’s transformative, is what I’m getting at). If you are chronologically an adult and pass for an adult, you probably turned later in your teen years. 

Once you make your wish, your body is essentially dead: you’re a ghost possessing your preserved corpse.

Jason relates to that on a certain level, but he’s also vaguely worried about the fact that he is rotting. It becomes a very “monstrous alien or beautiful corpse” situation, if you’re familiar with that saying-- both are psychologically terrifying, but the one people prefer says something about them. That monstrous aspect is part of what drew you two together.

He’s caught off-guard by the idea that you could just. Disappear forever? Only leaving behind destruction and despair? Given the fact that you’re with him, he’s vaguely terrified what your Labyrinth could be like. He wonders if you would hurt him-- he deeply wants you to be able to come back to him, if you ever reach that point of corruption. (And no, he doesn’t care about the consequences.)

You have to leave fairly often to find grief seeds and he insists you leave when he “has to” commit his occasional massacre, in case it corrupts your gem even more.

Technically, only magical girls or kyubey can enter the witch’s labirynth without assistance. Everyone else is affected by either suicidal thoughts or illness. At first, it doesn’t strike him as odd: it’s just a group of teens coming up in the middle of summer, it’s not rare at all. But he finds himself being a bit more reckless than usual-- he’s practically making himself known at this point, no doubt as to whether or not he’s an urban legend.

(I would sincerely hope you don’t bring him into the labirynth: are you trying to get your mans killed?)

Most magical girls can go beyond their fully corrupted gem. (It’s implied that Homura never uses a grief seed after she gets herself set “right,” simply by supressing her sadness.) So if you come back from a fight and you’re particularly quiet, it can be even more stressing on your end when he tries to comfort you-- that release of emotion is what forms a witch, after all. Giving a matter of fact “I almost died” and leaving it at that is your best bet.

 If you became a witch, he’d feel so... Guilty? He’d probably be there to watch the grief seed “hatch” and might get caught in the resulting chaos-- emotion is a very strong thing with magical girls, so if you have lots of emotions for him... He could get sucked in. Once you are slain he just. Sits there. In the same place you were when he last saw you. The quiet of the house, the fact that all your things are still there... It just wrecks him.

(Lmao, did you think a Madoka post was gonna be happy...? Nah.)

Bubba

Again, you are probably there in the assumption that a witch is in the area. Most magical girls ditch Kyubey after finding out what he did to them, so you’re left trying to find them on your own-- not impossible, but certainly harder than just following the little rabbit-puppy-cat bastard. Witches do spread around violence-prone areas, so it’s not a terrible stretch of the imagination.

There very well might be a witch in the area. Though witches can move around, if you catch one early it’s likely to be in an abandoned place-- where magical girls tend to hang around. And, sure enough, there are lots of abandoned places around the Sawyer property. It’s not the best place to set up a base camp, however.

You probably wouldn’t be terribly friendly with the Sawyer family altogether-- probably just Bubba: his secret friend who comes by at night to talk with him. His “imaginary” girlfriend, if you will-- his brothers certainly call you that, at least.

Bubba doesn’t quite get all of the stuff around witches and rumors and familiars and all that. He thinks the soul gem is quite pretty: he can sort of see the resemblance between you and it.

He’s the most likely to take off with your soul gem on accident. It’s really pretty and, since it’s yours, he very much sees it as something precious-- not in the fact that it’s literally your soul so much as “this belongs to my lover. I keep it on me to remind me of them.” So you can see why that would be an issue.

There are a few events where he finds a grief seed nearby his house-- witch’s gravitate towards violence and death, so the Sawyer house isn’t an unlikely place for them to go. You frequently tell him to make sure his family is healthy and he starts to be a bit more “doting” around his family than usual, though it makes them upset at him.

He knows what your soul gem looks like. So he recognizes your grief seed immediately. And then he just... Loses time. He “wakes up” thirty minutes later, dangerously close to the woodchipper in the backyard. He remembers that you told him if he ever lost time like that, he should make sure he’s safe-- that his family is safe and relatively health. And after he does, just like you told him to, he remembers where he saw the little silver and black trinket that looked like your soul gem. And it’s just gone.

It becomes a regular part of his daily schedule to check over by the place he would meet you-- you on the opposite side of the fence that denoted the Sawyer property. You never come back, but... He’s certainly keeping his hopes up.

:(

Brahms

The Heelshire mansion is a good place for a base. It’s only a twenty minute drive from a major city; being an older magical girl, you have a type of authority that the other girls succeed to, so there’s very few territorial issues; there’s a hospital ten minutes away; no one ever comes by, so you can do as much magical stuff as you like without worry of being exposed. Etcetera.

Since your magic is so very advanced, as an “adult” magical girl, you probably end up making a kind of... Temporal space to disappear into. This is the main thing that interests Brahms about you: you enter a room-- one that he can see into and enter, if he so pleases-- but you’re never in the room. For a while, he considers that he might be going insane. Or perhaps you’re a ghost-- things he never believed in, especially because most assume he is a ghost.

He becomes terribly interested with you-- not even in a romantic sense, because he does have a kind of fear towards you: he truly thinks you’re a demon or a spectre-- perhaps a ghost from the witch hunts way back when, as you occasionally mention witches when you have a visitor outside the house.

He takes note of a type of creature outside the house that you seem to absolutely hate. He assumes it’s some strange toy, as he can just barely hear it speaking. One day, it mentions that someone else is in the house and before he knows how to react, you’re searching through the house with something shiny in hand. You never find him: he’s not a witch or a magical girl or anything of the sort, so he doesn’t show up on your radar.

When you go to sleep at night, he is so very careful about taking that lovely gem you seem to have. He takes it back to his room and leaves it there for further inspection. For the next two days, you don’t move even once. He even gets so bold as to check your pulse, shake your body to try to wake you. And then he hears that strange creature that you seem to hate speaking to him: he hasn’t the slightest clue how it got into the house, but he listens to it and returns your soul gem. He sits by your bedside waiting for you to wake up. Needless to say, you’re quite frightened when you do and see a man you’ve never seen before watching over you.

He listens very intently about your life as a magical girl. He’s seen you do such strange things. It only takes one single transformation-- to him it seems to only take a single blink, though you do go through the whole process-- to convince him. He’s not terribly afraid of you turning to a witch--- if you’re unhappy with him, it serves you right. (He... Sucks...)

The thing is, he won’t let you leave very often to get grief seeds. You’re always just on the verge of becoming a witch. If you’re lucky, you can convince some of the younger girls to give you “extra” grief seeds. They suggest you run from him-- plenty of them are homeless; it’s a norm for magical girls.

If you do become a witch, it probably happens in the manor. He accosts the girls who came to destroy your labirynth as soon as everything is over-- he’s awake and alert immediately after. The girls aren’t so kind as to give him your grief seed-- you were extremely difficult to beat, so they can’t just let the grief seed grow and destroy once again: you’d only get stronger and more dangerous.

He gets so lonely, so depressed. He doesn’t eat. He hardly sleeps. He becomes a husk of a man. He doesn’t die from grief, however, no. He has to go through the process of grief. All alone.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Sword and Shield’s Pokedex culling has become infamous among the fandom to the point where people are still complaining about it long past the point where it would even matter. While I think a culling was inevitable at some point, I think it could have gone about a bit better. I think Gamefreak should have tried to take popularity and usefulness in battle more into account, as some of their choices are rather… baffling. So here, I am going to go through every single Pokemon family I would cut out of the Pokedex if I were designing the games and my reasoning why.

A few rules:

I am not cutting out any starters or mythical Pokemon. They should just be available in the code in general for events or in the former’s case as gifts for certain thresholds in dex completion or something. At any rate, no starter should be left behind. The starters is more definitie, I can live with or without the mythicals, but I’m just not considering them in general as they’re bonus promotional Pokemon.

I am not cutting any Pokemon already in the Galar dex. If they’re there, they stay.

I am not cutting any UBs. You can get Beast Balls in game and it would literally be the easiest thing to have some sort of weird Ultra Space anomalies happen now and again to justify them being in.

I’m just gonna say all non-Galar fossil Pokemon are cut, because frankly it’s more realistic to not have all fossils grouped into one region. In real life you can’t find every single dinosaur in every single country, so might as well keep that.

I am acting as if the slate is wiped clean: No Z-moves, no megas, no G-max. I’m only considering what Pokemon deserve to be in the game, be it for flavor or for competitive purposes.

And now, onto who I would cut:

The Beedrill, Pidgeot, and Fearow lines would all go. They’re all just easily outclassed by options from later generations. Raticate’s line as well, common rats in general are going to be a no-go with this list.

Primeape family can go. I just feel they don’t add much in terms of a Fighting type. There are plenty of better and more interesting options.

Tentacruel and Golem lines can go. Jellicent is far more interesting as a jellyfish, and Golem is just not very impressive nowadays in terms of Rock or Ground types.

Dewgong can go. There’s not really more a specific reason than it is utterly unremarkable.

Sadly, I’m going to say Lickitung has to go; as much as I like it, I really don’t want to have to see Lickilicky.

The first legendaries to be cut – Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. I have no strong opinions on these guys one way or another, but they just don’t feel like they mesh particularly well with the Galar region in general.

Furret, Ledian, and Ariados are the first to go from Johto; frankly, I don’t expect many Pokemon from Johto to make the cut, as they’re generally just extensions of Gen ! Or really gimmicky to a fault, though weirdos like Unown and Dunsparce are definitely staying in.

Jumpluff and Sunflora can go.

Granbull, Magcargo, and Ursaring can go.

Skarmory can stay out. Sorry, Corviknight is just a straight-up improvement.

Donphan and Stantler can go.

Miltank can just stay right out of the series forever for all I care.

Ho-Oh, Lugia, and the three legendary beasts can stay cut.

Mightyena and Wurmple can stay gone.

Masqurain and Exploud can stay cut.

Plusle, Minun, Volbeat, and Illumise really aren’t worth making a fus over, even if they are all cute.

Camerupt and Grumpig can stay gone, the former especially since I’m not accounting for megas.

Altaria can stay gone.

Castform is simply not worth bringing back.

Walrein, Clamperl, and Luvdisc can all stay gone, with the latter especially seeing as its sole reason for existing is gone.

Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza can stay out – the Latis and the Regis at least can have some reasonable way of fitting into Galar naturally. Can’t really justify three physical gods from a Japan-based region chilling in the UK.

Sorry Purguly, but you can stay gone.

Chingling reminded me – Chimecho can just stay gone forever. It’s sad I completely forgot Chimecho until this moment.

Carnivine just doesn’t really fit, honestly, so it can stay gone.

Lumineon can go.

Literally all of the Sinnoh legends save for Heatran and Cresellia can go, for similar reasons to other god-level legends.

Patrat and Herdier can stay gone.

The cutting of the Elemental Monkeys was a blessing, and it’s not one we should sneeze at.

Did anyone care Swanna was gone? Probably, but it should stay that way.

Foongus and Alomomola can stay gone.

Bouffalant can stay gone.

The three weather boys – Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus – can stay cut.

Vivillon, Pyroar, and Talonflame can stay cut.

Dedenne and Carbink are pretty worthless so they can stay gone.

Yveltal and Xerneas can stay gone – Zygarde can stay around, provided there’s a quest to reform it again. Pretty sure Zygarde would be pissed about the environmental damage in Galar, honestly.

Gumshoos just needs to stay gone forever. The Trump jokes aren’t worth it.

Crabominable can stay cut because it is hideous and worthless.

Oricorio and Comfey can stay cut.

Komala and Bruxish can stay cut.

The Tapus definitely need to stay cut, seeing as they’re specifically guardians of Alola.

Altogether this would cut about 161 Pokemon – a little over the entirety of Generation 1.

[sailorsanghelios]

HALO FOR BEGINNERS PART 1: A NOT SO BRIEF INTRO TO HALO

So Microsoft has recently announced that The Master Chief Collection for Halo, is coming to Steam, opening up the Halo universe to many new players who haven’t been able to play before thanks to not owning an Xbox.

So in celebration of this, I’ve decided to put together a little series thats basically a Beginner’s Guide to Halo, for people who only know it for its stereotypes involving its multiplayer play.

This series is mostly aimed at popular video game fandoms on Tumblr, so you might catch me making some comparisons (especially to series like Mass Effect that actually have some tropes in common with Halo)

However a couple of things before I get started for real

1.This guide will only be talking about the original trilogy of games, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. There are three other games in this game bundle, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach and Halo 4. However I haven’t actually finished ODST, and I haven’t played the latter two in over half a decade, so I really don’t feel equipped to talk about them in length.

2. Halo deals with a lot of heavy content. Along with the obvious blood and gore, there’s a lot of body horror involving the Flood (though if you can stomach say… Telltale’s TWD, its probably about at that level of squick). Heavy themes that are core themes of Halo include genocide, religious based trauma and abuse, child soldiers and medical experimentation on humans. I don’t believe Halo CE has much in the way of individual triggers to look out for, but Halo 2 has an extended torture scene that includes stripping someone naked to humiliate them and Halo 3 has several sequences involving a female character being violated mentally. So if anything these things are extreme triggers you can’t engage with, then I say you should listen to your gut.

3.I will not talk about the multiplayer aspects of Halo much (except to discuss stuff involving co-op maybe) as this series is meant to kind of explain more outside of multiplayer stereotypes.

4. Halo 2 and 3 are pretty hard to talk about without mentioning spoilers for the games that come before it. If you’d like a totally spoiler free experience, I’d recommend skipping anything where I mention these games. Also for the sake of my own sanity, I am not treating the Flood as a spoiler, because ...well it hasn’t been for almost 20 years, and Halo has since reached a point where you can’t really talk about it without mentioning them.

----

So I guess I should start at the very beginning?

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE HALO MASTER CHIEF COLLECTION?

The Halo Master Chief Collection is a collection of the first four Halo games, and ODST, and soon Reach will be added too! Its sold at the equivalent price of one retail game, so you’re basically getting six games for the price of one.

It was released for Xbox One in 2014, to coincide with Halo 2’s tenth anniversary. It was infamously buggy at the time, (probably because it was rushed for the aforementioned anniversary) but most of these bugs have been fixed, and they even added in ODST as an apology gift! The PC version should not contain these bugs. (though there’s a decent chance it might contain bugs related to PC porting, especially for Halo 3 and beyond which have never been ported before, but that’s just speculation).

If the PC version is identical to the Xbox version, the Master Chief Collection is essentially a download pass for these games. You download and pick and choose which ones you want! For example on my Xbox I don’t have the ODST from MCC loaded on because I already have the vanilla Xbox 360 version loaded to emulate (which I still haven’t finished but YOU KNOW). This allows you to play the games you want and not waste space and download time on the ones you don’t.

Halo Combat Evolved is ported based on the 2011 10th anniversary version that updated the graphics. Halo 2 received a brand new (and absolutely STUNNING) graphics update specifically for this release. Halo 3 and beyond are straight up ports with the original graphics, though with a much better frame rate.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS HALO?

OH…. umm I guess maybe I should talk about that too.

Halo is as most people know, a sci-fi first person shooter. From 2001-2010 the games were released by Bungie. When Bungie left Microsoft to make the Destiny series, Microsoft kept some employees behind and hired some new ones to create 343 Industries which is their in house team to make Halo. The first game released by 343 Industries is Halo CE: Anniversary in 2011, and the first game released based on original content is Halo 4 in 2012.  This post series though will mostly focus on Bungie content.

So Halo: Combat Evolved came out in 2001 and its...basically the reason the Xbox is a THING. If it weren’t for Halo, or even if Halo had been a multiplatform release, the Xbox probably would have gone the way of the Sega Dreamcast. Halo: CE had many innovations for the first person shooter genre at the time, including a two gun limit where you have to strategize your choice in weapons, a very complex AI system for the time, and basically revolutionized multiplayer for FPS games as we know it.

Halo would have been the best selling game for the original Xbox if it weren’t for Halo 2’s release in 2004, and Halo 3 basically was THE title for the Xbox 360, when it came out in 2007. The later games haven’t been AS successful, but still have a very loyal fanbase.

           ENOUGH WITH THIS HISTORY LESSON, WHY IS HALO ANY DIFFERENT FROM CALL OF DUTY?

First things first.. I know there’s a lot of posts going around rn, talking about how well….overly militaristic many FPS games are. I will say I DON’T believe Halo is on the same level of some of these games. I’ve never heard of it having any military involvement in production, and I’d say its about as militaristic as Mass Effect is, as in the protagonists are in the space military, and the plot revolves around that..  The backstory of Halo if anything, paints the military in a very gray morality light AT BEST. So if you’re worried about this being a game that over-glorifies military stuff, if you’re okay with Mass Effect’s portrayal of a human space military, you’ll probably be fine with Halo.

SO I have not actually played Call of Duty or games like that as surprisingly I actually really don’t like the FPS genre, and Halo is the only FPS game I like. I will say though, Halo is definitely not a totally generic shooter, the way Call of Duty is stereotyped as. It has a very interesting plot with a lot of layers, and very unique lore, that still plays on familiar tropes. (and I’ll get into some of that later.)

At least one selling point I’ll say, is that unlike many modern shooters, Halo is STUNNING. It uses color very well, and has many beautiful maps, and especially in the remastered games you could just look at the environment for days. So the fact it has a color palette outside of gray and brown is definitely enough to set it apart.

I will say if you like Mass Effect for its alien lore and world building, there’s a very good chance you’ll like Halo too. The fandoms have a lot of overlap, and actually have a decent amount in common despite the fact one’s a shooter where you kill aliens and the other is an RPG where you…. you know with the aliens.

SO WHAT IS THIS PLOT YOU SPEAK OF?

I plan to go more in depth into this in my next post, but I figured for this intro post I might as well tell the basic gist of it. There will be some loose spoilers for the sake of the summaries making sense.

Halo Combat Evolved, is about a lone human ship that has escaped the destruction of the planet Reach, which was the last thing between Earth and the Covenant, a race of aliens hell bent on wiping out humanity for religious reasons. The ship makes a “random” jump to what they think would be the middle of nowhere, but in fact brings them to a ringworld that is worshipped as the foundation of the Covenant religion. Both human and Covenant land on this ring and a fierce battle assumes as they try to take control of it. Halfway through you learn that there’s...surprise! Zombies! Called the Flood, a spore like species that turns people into zombies and their only drive is to consume everything in their path. It turns out Halo, is a weapon to destroy them but…. It also destroys every living thing in the galaxy, so it turns into a mad dash to make sure that a) no one activates it and b) the Flood are able to be stopped without it before they leave the ringworld.

Halo 2 takes place about a month later, and is a split campaign between the Master Chief and the Arbiter, who is the disgraced commander of that fleet you were fighting in the first game. The Master Chief side of the story involves the Covenant finally making it to Earth, and the discovery of a second Halo ring, and the fallout of both of those things. The Arbiter side of the story involves him trying to restore his honor within the Covenant, by becoming a suicide soldier fighting for their faith, but as he does missions for his prophets, he learns the amount of lies and hatred his religion and society are built on.

And Halo 3 is basically...the convergence of all these stories. Its very hard to talk about without mentioning spoilers, and without going in depth about world building related stuff, which is the focus of my next post.

The final thing for this intro is….

WHAT IS HALO’S GAMEPLAY LIKE?

Okay so… I’m not going to talk about the controls, because I imagine they’ll be very different from mine, as an Xbox player. And I’m very biased because Halo is the first game I ever played on a controller as a kid, so I don’t really have an objective way of describing them. But the fact the controls were easy for me as a seven year old, probably makes them pretty easy to learn in general.

Because Halo is a linear story, the game is split up into levels. In the vanilla releases of the game, you need to play them in order to unlock them all, but in MCC that is NOT the case, and you can skip levels. I really do not recommend doing this though the first time around for obvious reasons, but once you’ve completed the game, you can just play the segments you like! And trust me there are certain levels you’ll hate (like the Library… I will tell you right now you will hate that level.)

There’s four difficulty levels, Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary. Easy is well..super easy. This is the mode I used as a little kid. However I don’t think there’s any shame in playing at this level, in fact I usually use this difficulty for my first playthrough so I can get through the story with no difficulty. Normal is well...normal. This is the difficulty I usually play at, its probably the most realistic in terms of enemy strength vs player strength. Heroic is basically pretty hard but not like...obscenely hard, but enough to be a big frustrating unless you know the game really well. And Legendary is… well super extra hard. Play Legendary if you enjoy having everything murder you, with no mercy. Also Halo 2 has a significantly harder campaign then Halo CE and Halo 3.

In the vanilla releases of the games, starting with Halo 2, there are items called Skulls you can collect that add difficulty or some extra fun to the game, but you have to collect them in the Legendary difficulties of the levels. This is NOT the case for MCC, and they’re all available for you from the getgo. I really don’t recommend using them for your first playthrough unless you really want a challenge, with the exception of the silly ones like Grunt Birthday Party (which spits confetti for headshots to Grunts) that don’t actually affect gameplay.

A lot of other gameplay stuff is really hard to generalize since Halo is a series where the gameplay tends to be pretty different between games, such as with HUD features and such.  But those are some general miscellaneous game things they all have in common.

So yeah, thats it for my intro to my...intro to Halo. I’ll get started on the next one talking more indepth about the factions and what not, when I recover from...writing this.

[tyrantisterror]

Oh Fuck I’m TV Troping: A Short & Incomplete List of Bad Girls

Since that whole post about Bad Girls and Compassionate Male Heroes kinda blew up and the discussion just... isn’t stopping, I’ve been thinking of this trope a lot and uh, I guess I’m gonna list a bunch of examples of it since I’ve kinda been doing it already and it’d be nice to have them all in one spot I guess.  Gonna put a cut because even though I don’t want to make a huge list, I still think this is gonna be long.

4 Tried and True Bad Girls -  the following fit the archetype as I roughly defined it here pretty much to the letter.  Of course, the thing about archetypes and tropes is that you don’t have to hit every single detail to still “count,” but it’s good to have a baseline.

Jessie

A member of an international crime syndicate, a notorious thief, and a recurring antagonist for the hero, Jessie from Pokemon is an excellent example of the Bad Girl trope because if you remove female pronouns while describing her, she basically fits the stock Bad Boy traits to a T.  Aggressive and arrogant?  Check.  Prone to violent outbursts?  Check.  Intensely jealous of people who seem to have it easier?  Check.  Hidden tender side and tragic backstory?  Check.  Also she’s one half of the greatest romantic couple ever portrayed in fiction - and her counterpart is a compassionate, sweet-natured guy to boot!

Ryoko

I’m not going to fill this up with anime examples (though I probably could - Bad Girls are much more common in Japanese media), but I couldn’t resist including Ryoko, because she’s not just a Bad Girl - she’s a PIRATE, which, if my grandma’s collection of romance novels was anything to go by, is an incredibly popular occupation for a Bad Boy to have!  More than that, she’s a space pirate, the plunderer of countless worlds, wanted by the space police force and considered a villain of legendary power.  More than that, she can wield store brand lightsabers, shoot lasers out of her hands, and even spent a good chunk of time as a mummy!  Ryoko’s personality is pure Dashing Rogue, the Bad Boy Girl who’s definitely a scoundrel but, maybe, just maybe, the kind of scoundrel who’s got a good heart.  She definitely pines for love and an amount of stability, though she doesn’t want to stop traveling the stars as a boozing adventurer who gets into the most ludicrous scrapes.  Everything about Ryoko plays up the ideas of a Bad Boy romance with the flair for drama and fantasy that a space opera can provide, except the Bad Boy is a girl and the sweet ingenue heroine is a boy.

Ryoko is who you wish Jack Sparrow would be.

Faith

Faith was introduced as a second Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was the result of magical shenanigans that suddenly rendered the whole “there can only be one slayer at a time” rule kinda moot.  Ok that’s an extremely abbreviated summary and it’s really more complicated than that but I can already feel the non-Buffy fans falling asleep so let’s stay focused.

Since Buffy is, y’know, the main character, Faith was brought on to be her foil - an example of what Buffy wasn’t, but possibly could become.  And since BtVS was a horror dramedy, Faith wasn’t a GOOD alternative - she was, explicitly, Buffy’s dark counterpart, from her brunette hair to her heavy and darker makeup to her rad leather jacket and, as the show frequently said, “slutty” wardrobe.  Faith was more violent, more sexual, and more apathetic to others than Buffy was, and holy fuck did the show just hate her for it.  Almost every character in it treated her like shit, with her sexuality in particular being a sticking point for many of them.

Faith is particularly interesting because she differs from Buffy (and the female cast at large) in almost the exact same ways that the show’s main Bad Boys, Angel and Spike, differed from its male characters - more violent, more sexual, darker clothes, etc.  But while Angel and Spike get a great deal of sympathy from the narrative, Faith... didn’t.  I mean they kinda sorta gave her some eventually, but most of it played out in the spinoff Angel, and the other characters continued to hold a grudge against her.  Faith isn’t just an good example of the Bad Girl trope - she’s an example of how the reaction to Bad Girls differs from the reaction to Bad Boys, despite them being almost exactly the same.

Vriska Serket

OH FUCK IT’S HOMESTUCK

Ok, everyone still hates Homestuck, so I won’t belabor this point, but Vriska Serket, who is infamously the most divisive character in the entire story, is absolutely a bad girl.  Arrogant, ruthless, abrasive, with a tragic backstory, a desire for both compassion and redemption, and a truly ambitious schemer, she ticks so many boxes and OH SHIT SHE’S ALSO A PIRATE.  Like Faith, Vriska was in a story that had a lot of examples of Bad Boys too, and while the fandom fucking HATES Vriska, her Bad Boy counterparts are nowhere near as divisive, with one of them being extremely popular despite being a clown who murders people.  The other one explicitly wants to commit genocide, literally saying almost exactly that, and is also far more well liked.  WHY IS THIS?

But enough of the homestucks!  Let’s move onto some...

Borderline Bad Girls - these ladies don’t fit the trope quite as neatly, but I still think they capture the jist, or at least used it as a base before experimenting in different directions.  They are, at the very least, closer to the Bad Girl archetype than its sibling tropes, the Badass Heroine and the Femme Fatale.

Jessica Jones

I’m just gonna talk about the Netflix incarnation of this character, as I have not read the comic books featuring Jessica Jones and thus cannot comment on them.

The only real strike against Jessica Jones is that she isn’t a supporting cast member, like pretty much all other Bad Girls are.  She’s the protagonist, the titular main character.  That’s a unique honor for a Bad Girl to have!  Otherwise, she fits - hard drinking, abrasive, rude, surly as hell, but with a tender heart, a tragic backstory, and a desire for redemption.  Hell she’s even wearing the Bad Girl leather jacket.

Morrigan

Ok, we’re straying a bit far here, but I’m going to try to make a case here.  Morrigan’s rudeness and abrasiveness isn’t quite as bombastic as the standard take on the Bad Girl trope - she actually phrases things very politely and speaks very softly most of the time, and is generally cordial to people when they are cordial to her.  It’s the content of what she says, rather than the way she says it, that sets most people off.  There’s also an odd naivety to Morrigan’s interactions that isn’t immediately noticeable because her vocabulary is so, well, verbose.  She doesn’t make the “ill tempered thug” impression most Bad Girls make when they’re first introduced - she instead comes off as very sophisticated yet oddly ignorant of the civilized world, which is a very different starting point for a Bad Girl.

BUT!  Morrigan’s character arc follows the rough path of a Bad Girl.  She verbalizes a lot of callous and cruel ideas about the world when you first meet her, giving the impression that she is some sort of sadistic monster.  It’s done in a very different way than the standard Bad Boy/Bad Girl, but it has the same effect - you are led to think this girl is a Bad Person very early on.  And yes, to some extent she is - but, just like any other Bad Boy/Bad Girl, her actions later on show that’s not all there is to her, that, even if she isn’t aware of it, there is a loving core to Morrigan - she wants to be good.

Like most Bad Boys/Bad Girls, it’s eventually revealed that Morrigan’s childhood situation was NOT GREAT, and that she has been the victim of abuse and some very bad parenting.  A great deal of her wickedness isn’t inherent to her, but something she was indoctrinated into - and, in TRUE Bad Boy/Bad Girl fashion, love, especially romantic love, makes her doubt her view of the world.  It begins to break apart, and she gradually learns, to her confusion, horror, and eventually, hope, that there is another way to live - a better, kinder way.

One might argue that Morrigan doesn’t fit the Bad Girl trope, but another villainous female archetype instead.  For instance, one might say she is instead a Femme Fatale, since she dresses all sexy like and whatnot - but Morrigan doesn’t really seduce people all that often in the narrative.  Early on in the first Dragon Age game you have an option to ask her to seduce a guard, and Morrigan not only reacts in disgust, but instead horrifies the guard into letting you by instead (because Morrigan is great).  The only time she does seduce someone is specifically to keep the main characters from an otherwise inevitable death via a dark magic ritual - and yes it does feel ridiculous to type that out, but 1. it makes more sense in context and 2. I think the ridiculous circumstances of this seduction kinda illustrates why it’s not really a core character trait of hers, which is why she doesn’t fit the Femme Fatale mold.  Likewise, while one could say she fits the idea of a Vain Sorceress... well, other than being pretty and using magic, Morrigian really doesn’t.  She’s not motivated by preserving her youth, and doesn’t really seem to care much for traditional beauty standards at all if her conversation with Leliana is anything to go by (though she does meet them anyway because, well, Video Games).  Morrigan doesn’t really fit any villainous female archetype perfectly, but if we accept her as a Bad Girl, she makes for a particularly interesting example.

Hexadecimal

Straying further!  Like Morrigan, one might be tempted to put Hexadecimal in the Vain Sorceress or Femme Fatale archetypes instead, but again, like Morrigan, she really doesn’t act like either of those two despite being a sexy lady who uses magic for villainous ends.  Instead she’s defined by being the sort of superhero/action adventure cartoon variety of “crazy,” which isn’t based on any real mental illness, but rather an excuse for her to cause a lot of mayhem for no real reason.  Unlike most “crazy” villains, though, Hex’s insanity is treated with sympathy by the narrative and the main hero - while most people would be willing to write Hex off as someone they’d rather live without, Bob, the hero, continually tries to reason with her and help her overcome her madness.

Most people wrote her off as a lost cause, but the hero showed her compassion.  There’s smackings of a Bad Boy in that.

As the show goes on, Bob’s compassion for Hexadecimal is repaid with her own affection, and she slowly turns from villain to hero out of a desire to not only keep Bob safe, but make sure he’s happy - and she comes to realize he can’t be happy without the people he loves.  Hex becomes a truly tragic and noble character towards the end of the show, as she knows Bob will never reciprocate her romantic affections but still remains on his side anyway, even saving the lives of people who argued against saving her.  A villain who seems like a frothing mad dog, only to be turned into a hero after the compassion of a hero makes them realize the value of human life?  That’s is SUCH a Bad Boy arc.  Hexadecimal may not fit some of the aesthetic trappings of the Bad Girl archetype, but her arc fits it perfectly.

Harley Quinn

When she was first introduced, Harley Quinn wasn’t a Bad Girl so much as she was, like, the perky love interest of a bad guy.  She wasn’t given enough focus and agency in the narrative to really fit the Bad Girl archetype.  However, in recent years she’s been retooled a bit to work independently of the character she was designed to orbit, and as a result she may be our second example of a Bad Girl protagonist.  She’s a supervillain, or at least was, and was in league with one of the worst at that.  She’s loud and aggressive in combat, has a big bombastic personality, and revels in living an anarchic lifestyle.  But, as her solo series shows, she does have a good heart deep down, adopting stray dogs and helping out fellow weirdos who have been left behind by a world that doesn’t give a damn about them.  Harley Quinn is and has always been defined by her desire to be loved, which is very much a Bad Girl sort of trait - especially since that desire often leads to her acting out, just as most Bad Boys and Bad Girls act out because, ultimately, they haven’t been shown enough love.

Plus a lot of her modern designs add a leather jacket, and it just seems that once a girl wears a leather jacket she has at least a 70% chance of being a Bad Girl.

Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee

I had no idea where to put these ladies and whether or not they fit this archetype, but I felt they had to be noted because they’re very well known examples of complicated female villains who don’t fit the Femme Fatale archetype at all, which in turn makes them feel like pretty good candidates for Bad Girl-dom.  Azula probably fits the archetype the closest, though you don’t see her desire for compassion until VERY late in the series (where she is, sadly, too far gone to get her redemption).  Mai comes in close second, though her sullen demeanor oddly fits the Badass Heroine a bit better.  And then Ty Lee... Ty Lee... I mean she’s like an even sweeter and kinder Harley Quinn, she hardly even counts as a villain except she works with the bad guys... I don’t know what we do with Ty Lee, guys.  Ty Lee’s just her own thing.