#tfw you see an alternate version of yourself

[sourmilkinthefridge]

What Could've Been...

I just love the concept of Dick as a talon so much and this was a great way to try out Clip Studio Paint while I still have the free trial for it

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

For once, Jonah didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

A shotgun was pointed at his face by a Seth that looked more well kept than he remembered seeing him previously, and the alternate suppressed a wince when the barrel was shoved into his chin. “Who the fuck are you? What are you?”

Ignoring the man for now, Jonah looked to see a sight that made his eyelids open more in surprise, brow furrowing in confusion.

Sarah, Cesar, human Adam, and another Jonah. Before the call, before the fate he had inevitably met. He stared at the past personified, a fearful face full of panic looking back at him. 

Turning to a person he never thought he’d truly see ever again, curious blue eyes seemed to be trying to pick him apart, internally begging to have various questions answered. The semi familiar sight made Jonah relax the slightest bit, turning back to the man threatening him.

“...my …title… is the Preacher…”

Seth’s eyes narrowed as his finger on the trigger twitched. “What are you, then?” 

“...An alternate…” He refused to let confusion seep into his tone, staring Seth dead in the eyes to convey his honesty.

“And what is that?”

“...Something I’d much rather.. not have been turned into..” Was all he answered with. It was the honest truth, after all.

“...Why do you look and sound like Jonah?” Adam suddenly blurted out, making all the attention snap to him. Cesar and Sarah shushed him while the other Jonah began to swear under his breath, and all of it made Jonah chuckle.

They all turned to the puppet, and he smiled a grin with no happiness found inside as he answered. 

“...Because I used... to be called.. Jonah Marshall…"

[introduction. might write more for this timeline but idk]

Ohhhhhh shit /pos

TFW you meet an alternate universe version of yourself and your friends where no bad shit happened.

[ghostypetrainer]

Oh no oh no no remember that one au were Ingo is very small and has the worst memory of all time and has to write down literally everything down. I think it was Role swap Lord Zoroark? Can you put thim in Masters before he got any like brain help?

that quite literally has to be the most upsetting thing to look at version of your brother/yourself so sad and so small and so lost so very confused. kid has no idea what's going on.

Love how you phrased this. Yes, I can personally put him in Masters. I've been the head of the dev team all along. Nevermind the fact that I can't even remember the most basic of HTML and I have to copypaste how to hyperlink every time I make a new one on AO3. I can definitely code. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

But oof, yeah. Putting him in Masters would be... interesting. The nameless warden boy getting thrown into a new world, presumably without Lady Zoroark anywhere in sight. It's just him and Dusknoir!! I'm not even sure if anyone outside of the Nimbasa Trio would even recognize him as Ingo at first, but the three of them definitely would. He would be very distressed!! It took him a long time to start recognizing people in Hisui, and now he has to start all over again?

I can just picture him wandering the streets of Pasio. It's not as dangerous as Hisui is, and Nurse Joy can always coax him inside the Pokecenter to rest at night. The first time he meets canon!Ingo he probably would not even recognize him as an older version of himself, but Ingo would definitely recognize him. He asks for the boy's name, and he can't even give it to him. He doesn't know it.

The next time they meet, the boy doesn't even recognize him.

[mittensmorgul]

Since the finale aired, I’ve been yammering on about how it would’ve only worked as a finale to s2, and now that I’m actually rewatching s2, I stand by that even more staunchly. The finale doesn’t work in a post-s2 supernatural universe.

This is the version of Dean we saw in the finale-- the one whose only mission in life was to Save Sammy, to help him get his revenge and allow him to go out and live a Normal Safe Life pretending that hunting and monsters don’t exist. The one who just wanted some pie, to drive his car, and had no real connections beyond Sam in the world outside of Bobby. Even Dean’s characterization in the finale is this far younger Dean who’d never allowed himself to crack open and truly understand love. It would take me years to plow through everything I’ve ever written about him as a character and his long struggle to emotional maturity we saw evolve over the next 13 years beyond this episode, but the tl;dr will always be “this s2 Dean is the same as the Dean in the finale.”

The goal of s2 was saving SAM from his “destiny,” too. In this era of the show, Dean didn’t have a “destiny” the same way Sam did. The ONLY thing that mattered was freeing Sam from “becoming evil,” and being manipulated into terrible things. What Dean wanted, what he was “destined” for by the narrative was irrelevant, because all of his choices and emotional burdens were tied only to saving Sam. To freeing Sam so he could safely return to his “normal life.” Go back to college, have a family and the white picket fence life.

This was before Dean truly began fighting for HIMSELF. Which only really and truly began after he sells his soul to resurrect Sam. That’s when Dean truly begins fighting for himself. Sure, he’s angry with John during s2 for trading his own life for Dean’s, for putting the burden of “if you can’t save Sam, you’ll have to kill him” on his shoulders with his dying breath, but Dean is still fighting against John’s authority and the complicated tangle of feelings of his own childhood and not actually coming to terms with his own wants and needs and wishes out beyond that yet. He’s still unwittingly confronting the “destiny” John had set up for him, and hasn’t moved beyond that yet. It’s only trading his soul for Sam’s that finally brings Dean into the cosmic narrative that will fuel his introspection and personal growth for the rest of the series.

And out beyond that point, his entire character arc explodes into orbit.

Dean’s entire character arc in s3 is confronting this very basic fact: he doesn’t deserve to have been sacrificed just to save Sam. He doesn’t deserve that burden, and he does deserve to live. This is the realization he comes to before eventually being dragged to Hell and then rescued by an angel, who literally tells him, “you don’t think you deserve to be saved” in the aftermath of that. From that point on, we have TWELVE SEASONS of Dean struggling with what he “deserves” versus what is “fate” and “destiny” and eventually confronting what he WANTS if he truly could choose his own destiny.

Plus, out beyond that point, he has Cas. And nothing changes Dean, pushes him to grow and understand himself, and accept himself-- all of himself, from the good to the horrific-- than the pure and unflinching acceptance of Castiel. Cas never looked at him and said “you are evil,” or “you are worthless.” (well, they’ve both said some pretty awful stuff to each other over the years, but there was either brainwashing or other deeper issues pushing those things on them, and they have ALWAYS eventually come back to one another, and the awful stuff was dealt with). Point is, Dean and Cas both began running these parallel arcs of duty versus desire, and for Dean, the duty was always framed around “taking care of Sam” versus pursuing any sort of ambition or goals for himself. They would fight for this for most of the rest of the series, until eventually the goal for ALL of them would be about discovering what they would want for themselves.

The show explicitly dealt with this, repeatedly, over later seasons, asking all of the characters the big questions: is this what you would choose for yourself? What WOULD you choose for yourself if you could?

And then they made the narrative of the final season, of the final Big Bad, the fact that they had NEVER had real freedom, and that their entire lives (and the entire history of not only this universe but every parallel universe) had been Chuck’s Puppet Theater, and true free will had been a lie all this time. Pushing all of the characters to confront their own choices and understand what about who they were as people was separate from what Chuck pushed them into choosing and doing all these years. The main thing that Dean (and also Cas, and to the extent she was included in the narrative this was Eileen’s issue as well) were being pushed to come to terms with what really was real, and were their feelings and choices their own or imposed on them for the furtherance of Chuck’s story.

At the end of the road, finally free and out from under Chuck’s control, they knew what was real. For Sam and Eileen, they had chosen each other. Cas had chosen Dean, but Dean hadn’t yet had a chance to reply, but anyone with two eyes and a brain knows what he would’ve said in return. It’s what Cas stopped him from saying even back in Purgatory in 15.09. And yet, for some reason Sam and Dean forgot all of that, as if none of it had ever even really happened at all, and we went right back to who they were right after they finally defeated the YED, before we even knew Azazel had a name, let alone the fact that the ultimate boogeyman of their entire lives to that point had been nothing more than a fanatic pawn in a much larger destiny for both of them.

The end of s2 was the last time Dean sacrificing himself so Sam could have a normal life, where Dean really felt there was nothing more for himself than fulfilling his father’s orders to save Sammy, even feels remotely plausible. It’s the last time we can feel like Dean might find peace and contentment in a Heaven where John is nearby to be proud of him, and where Dean would actually feel like that validation was even relevant to his own life.

And that finally brings me back to s2, where that was actually addressed through John’s self-sacrifice to save Dean, to serve Dean up to the narrative and provide a stage for this self-transformative journey INTO being a version of John himself. Only... Dean DOESN’T choose that. He fights to save Sam at all costs, even when it seems clear that the right answer would probably be to KILL Sam instead. When not only the ghost of John Winchester plaguing Dean’s mind would make him doubt his own drive to save his brother, but the John Winchester Insert Character of s2-- Gordon Walker-- basically put Dean’s own doubts out there in plain words in 2.10:

GORDON: I'm surprised at you, Dean. Getting all emotional. I'd heard you were more of a professional than this. Look, let's say you were cruising around in that car of yours and, uh, you had little Hitler riding shotgun, right? Back when he was just some goofy, crappy artist. But you knew what he was going to turn into someday. You'd take him out, no questions, am I right?

DEAN: That's not Sam.

GORDON: Yes it is. You just can't see it yet. Dean, it's his destiny. Look, I'm sympathetic. He's your brother, you love the guy. This has got to hurt like hell for you. But here's the thing. It would wreck him. But your dad? If it really came right down to it, he would have had the stones to do the right thing here. But you're telling me you're not the man he is?

This, the episode where Dean finally confesses John’s final orders to Sam, where Dean has decided that saving Sam is all that matters, even when circumstance and everyone else is practically screaming at him that this could all be over if only he gave in-- be it his own self-sacrifice OR killing Sam. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, the universe doesn’t care (and neither does Chuck... especially at this point... and the proof of that is Sam’s s15 nightmares where one of Chuck’s alternate universe endings for Sam and Dean was Sam actually going Darkside on demon blood and killing Dean... any iteration of the old drama, Chuck has explored all potential endings-- oh, except the ending where TFW gets to just be happy and live... that’s the one ending they never get and the only one they deserved in the end).

also from 2.10... loads of chat about “destiny” and one of Dean’s first “we should just lay all this shit down and take a vacation” moments when he suggests they go to Amsterdam and enjoy some of the not-coffee-coffee-shops, which Sam counters by doubling down on the fact that Dean has a destiny in all this as much as Sam does:

SAM: Well, come on, dude, you're a hunter. I mean, it's what you were meant to do.

DEAN: Ah, I wasn't meant to do anything, I don't believe in that destiny crap.

SAM: You mean you don't believe in my destiny.

DEAN: Yeah, whatever.

SAM: Look, Dean, I've tried running before. I mean, I ran all the way to California and look what happened. You can't run from this. And you can't protect me.

DEAN: I can try.

And that’s it, right there. This is the “neither of you can try for a normal life outside of the other while the other is still alive.” This is Sam pinning a destiny to Dean that’s just as inescapable within Chuck’s narrative as Sam’s demon blood and psychic powers. 

This is the core essence of Chuck’s story about them. The sibling dynamic that Chuck failed to free himself from, and that Sam and Dean failed to free themselves from after Chuck’s demise in 15.19.

Destiny. One must die so the other can live.

And considering the next 13 seasons of the show and the long and emotionally grueling character arcs Sam and Dean proceed through where they truly confront the core of who they are as people-- as individuals outside of their duty and destiny-- the finale ceases to make any sense outside of Chuck’s narrative for them. If 15.20 really happened exactly as we saw it on screen, then Chuck still won.

And they had to loop Sam and Dean all the way back to where they were emotionally at the end of s2 in order to make it seem plausible. Which, for those of us who actually care about what they endured after s2, makes the finale entirely implausible as a whole.

[bindingties]

(( Obv I’ve been thinking abt a p.ersona 5 AU bc that’s who i am so im just gonna dump all the ideas i got in here & futz and add later or something idk i make aus via the ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks’ method

also just bc this has been a problem lately & i lack the energy to deal w things after the fact rn: pls personals do NOT reblog my posts ^^ ))

Manfred

Manfred absolutely has a Palace.  Look at him.

The detention center / prison, courthouse, and prosecutor’s office all appear distorted, but I’m gonna go with the courthouse being the kinda ‘center’ and being where his Treasure actually is.

The detention center / prison looks like an extensive trophy room commemorating all of his won cases.  The trophies tend to have design elements that hint at the damning evidence and crime in question while also having the name of the defendant in question somewhere.  All of them are gold, except for the one representing the IS-7 case.  That one is a bronze and notably smaller in size.

Both the courthouse and the prosecutor’s office appear as temples that worship him as a god.  The office is a bit more like a bustling hub of priests that are incredibly incompetent.  The courthouse is grand and opulent with perfectly sculpted marble statues and busts of him.

There’s a slight infestation of insects which all have a pattern similar to the defense attorney badge.  They mostly scurry and run away from just about everything.  The Shadows take the form of judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, and detectives.

Safe Rooms correspond to defense lobbies.

There is a depiction of the DL-6 Incident actively showing Manfred shooting Gregory, but the style frames it more as a heretic being righteously smote than the reality of an unconscious man being shot by a petty fossilized man child.

There are cognitive versions of both Miles and Franziska and neither of them are great.  Cognitive Franziska actually still appears as child and would fight any intruders but, due to Manfred’s low opinion of her and her capabilities, she actually cannot win.  Cognitive Miles is dressed in that horrid Manfred-style red suit but like resembles Gregory to a much higher degree than Miles actually does.

The Treasure is held in a large, central courtroom.  In the Metaverse, it is a golden, weighed scale and, once brought out, is a prosecutor’s badge.

Also you bet him as a boss utilizes a lot of Electricity skills.  Also some Gun skills.  What can I say, I’m not that subtle. 

KAY

Kay vc: i can steal shit AND have superpowers?????? hell yeah!!!!

100% agree with @flairer Kay would be Sun Arcana with Yatagarasu P.ersona absolutely no doubt let’s go

Have nothing firm on how they actually.... get there???? Maybe during the Quercus Alba nonsense.

tfw an ambassador keeps flaunting diplomatic immunity so u just gotta come into incredible power to force the bastard to admit to murder himself

also just Akechi: my codename is Crow Kay: absolutely not u Mask☆DeMasque lookin motherfucker

not that im really trying to super integrate w the existing team, but kay was extremely offended by akechi’s codename choice & i have to share that

KLAVIER

Tragically started thinking that after Turnabout Succession, Klavier would develop a Palace due to worsening paranoia and lack of healthy coping. 

The distortion does cover the entire city... kinda? The thing is that Klav is very ‘the whole world’s a stage’ in an absolutely unhealthy way.  The layout and buildings are retained but it has the vibe of a music festival or other celebration?

Everything leads toward the courthouse though, which is 100% a very large and elaborate stage.  It’s hard to notice from the ground, but a tightrope is suspended way, way above it.  There is no safety net below it.  Just the cold, hard stage.

Shadow Klavier is always in the middle of a concert on that stage and the crowd oddly alternates between vicious heckling and overwhelming praise.  It turns on a dime and seems to have nothing to do with the actual performance.

Various cognitive versions of familiar faces exist in the Palace and perfectly match the mannerisms / personalities of the real counterparts... when talking to any Thieves.  If the subject of Klavier comes up, though, they tend to grow more harsh and disparaging toward him.

Cognitive Miles has the role of a manager and at first attempts to discourage any interaction with Shadow Klav because it might distract him and ruin the show.  He immediately relents, however, with the thought that he’s always wanted to fire Klavier and so any mishaps with the show would be the perfect excuse.

Shadow Klav isn’t that overly aggressive, but there are still traps and Shadows swarming the area.  While he is certainly civil, he does not hide his mistrust at all and can be surprisingly gloomy, though is somewhat like Shadow Futaba in that he’ll drop cryptic hints or express support for the Thieves’ actions.  

I love the idea of Klavier getting pulled into his own Palace due to Shenanigans™ and Cognitive Nick sees him and tells him he’s almost late for walking the tightrope and forces him toward it

Meanwhile Klav is just ‘wow idk what the hap is fuckening but my overwhelming sense of guilt compels me to do whatever Wright(?) says so i guess im abt to do a very dangerous stunt that will most certainly end in my death’

Shadow Klav does a very aggressive intervention because he does contain Klavier’s wish to help people.  He insists that Klavier cannot survive living solely like he’s a product to be consumed and destroyed.  A ticking time bomb of contradictory desires based on unknowable perceptions.

Meanwhile, Cognitive Nick grows more twisted and manipulative and begins to viciously antagonize and guilt-trip the hesitating Klavier.  The crowd likewise grows more and more restless and demanding of a spectacle.  Still, whether the crowd wants Klavier to succeed or fail is hard to determine.

Also like Manfred having a Palace kinda implies Nick as a Thief too and the idea of Nick also being there and seeing that this is how Klavier sees him is... oof ouch.

But yeah Shadow Klav is like “Are you going to continue to let yourself be chained to expectations?  Even when it will kill you?”

Obv Klav’s like “yeah, you know what? I will live for my own damn self.”  And comes into his P.ersona which is like... halfway unnecessary.  Cognitive Nick is just an asshole... not exactly a giant fucking sphinx

Can’t decide whether Klav’s Arcana is Death or Moon, though.  I like Death’s message of metamorphosis and change for him.  But also Moon’s got fun bits about facades and fear.

Nick afterward: hey um... i just wanna say that im so- Klav: i finally have some capacity to be mad at you without feeling like the scum of the earth for doing so so im gonna be 100% unashamedly pissed for a while just... give me some time. also im abt to sleep for 1000 years because holy shit

And yeah it’s not a 100% fix and Klav still has paranoia and the unhealthy perspective of being a product for consumption but like... he’s got somewhat better footing to seek and accept help.  And, likewise, does not have the subconscious desire to be hated so that he may self-destruct without guilt.  So, like, that’s a plus.