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words-writ-in-starlight · 4 years

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where's the essay op

Okay so bayonets. I don't know why I ever pretend that I want to talk about anything but military history and battlefield medicine. I checked all my sources in the waiting room of a doctor's office so you're just going to have to trust me because they are Gone. I’m pretty sure this can all be found on a few Wiki dives, though.

First of all, to recap, let me clarify a common misconception. The triangular bayonet was NOT outlawed in the 1949 Geneva Convention, nor any future revisions—as it was originally a musket weapon, it was fading out of use by World War II and the subsequent Convention. However, you'll notice that I opted to use to word "violates" rather than "were banned by," which is a fine semantical hair to split and, I suppose, debatable. Most bayonets were not explicitly banned in the GC, in that there is not an article in the GC saying you can't use them. However there IS an article in the GC, adopted from the earlier 1899 Hague Regulations, stating that it is prohibited to "employ weapons...of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering" (originally part of Article 23 of the HR, now Article 35 of the GC, expanded in 1977). Personally, as someone who knows a lot about how a lot of weapons impact the human body, I think that is a more expansive statement than most people would expect, and should be treated accordingly. Regrettably I do not work for the UN.

Point is, triangular blades specifically are known to cause wounds that are difficult to heal, highly prone to infection, and extremely likely to never fully recover, while also having a relatively low mortality rate. This is because the axes of a triangular wound, which is shaped sort of like a Y, make it very hard to stitch closed, and very easy for any "twisting" of the blade to create a large hole with ragged edges that's functionally impossible to stitch closed. As an added bonus, because of the way scar tissue forms, it's possible for one "line" of a triangular wound to pull open other parts of the puncture while the scar tissue forms and pulls on the skin. Even by standards in the 1700s, triangular bayonet wounds were phenomenally likely to infect and consistently difficult to repair, and modern medicine has made only limited improvements on that situation. As such, cases have been made that certain types of bayonet/triangular blades in general are therefore in violation of this article, despite not being explicitly banned.

(Side note: yes, the American military violates the GC on the regular. The American police violate the GC. I am excruciatingly aware. The GC is interesting reading generally, but especially if you're an American and you ever feel like being appalled for a few hours.)

Anyway, with that covered again, let's actually talk about the development of triangular bayonets, which might've been out of use by the time of the GC but DEFINITELY violated that article in a big way for a good two centuries prior and are also a fascinating insight into the fact that humanity, as a whole, is really determined to do things in the dumbest way possible.

The first thing you have to understand about bayonets is that they were originally invented as a way to integrate pikes with guns, not knives or even swords. When arquebuses and muskets were first invented, you were lucky to get a rate of fire around one round per minute, and you still had to protect your army while they were reloading their clunky black powder guns. Therefore, most infantries between like...the invention of the gun and the late 1600s were comprised of soldiers equipped with muskets, and also soldiers equipped with pikes (a type of spear). The idea of a bayonet was "what if we put a pike and a musket TOGETHER and then we could give everyone THAT and have way more guns in our army because we don't need pikemen anymore." Which makes sense when you think about it.

What makes less sense is that the initial effort at bayonets was something called a plug bayonet. You'll never fucking guess what these geniuses (first record is Chinese infantry around-abouts 1600, popular use of plug bayonets recorded in Europe around the 1630s) figured out for their first try at a bayonet. Here's a hint! There's not a lot of places on a gun where you can "plug in" a sword.

Obviously plug bayonets did not exactly catch on as a fantastic solution, because these guns were either a gun OR a short spear and neither was especially good at their jobs. A bunch of battles hinged on this problem. Which brings us to the end of the 1600s, when English forces in Scotland got absolutely obliterated by a bunch of Highlanders in 1689 because the English were so busy trying to fix their bayonets that the Highlanders literally just charged them, fired one volley, and cut them down with swords and axes. The English took that one very personally (which, you know what, fair, it was a humiliating defeat, especially since the Highlanders had been using that tactic very successfully for a while) and started developing better bayonets.

This is where we get to socket bayonets, AKA what you would probably recognize as a bayonet from a period TV series or a museum. Socket bayonets have a metal sleeve that gets attached around the barrel of a gun (in this case a musket), so that you can still theoretically use the damn gun while it's attached. There were problems with the development of socket bayonets (notably, it took a while to figure out how to keep them from falling off the gun during battle), but overall they worked much better and armies started getting rid of pikemen. This was also when bayonets were shortened to a little over a foot, which isn't really important but made them much easier to maneuver. Socket bayonets were the European order of the day by the early 1700s, and mostly came in three flavors: single edge (like a knife), double edge (like a sword), and spike (like a...spike). There were pros and cons to all of these (single edge wasn't great for stabbing, spike was ONLY good for stabbing, and double edge was kind of okay at stabbing and kind of okay at slashing), but most importantly, both single and double edged bayonets were fragile. The heads of polearms were shaped on patterns other than "sword on a stick" for a reason, and it's because "sword on a stick" is not very sturdy.

Triangular bayonets were the solution to this problem. Triangular bayonets are basically a single piece of metal creased long-ways, with both edges sharpened and the top fluted to form a third edge at the crease. This makes a much more resilient weapon than a flat blade, because a twisting motion doesn’t risk snapping the blade in the middle. It also means that now you have three edges, and human nature is to figure “more knife better.”

And don’t get me wrong, as a weapon of war, the triangular bayonet was a great one. It was introduced in the 1710s and then got used regularly to maim and terrify through the start of the 1900s. In fact, the triangular bayonet worked so well that it only began to get phased out of use when the style of war itself started to change dramatically during the World Wars. When warfare was focused on pitched battle (your old school “two armies enter, one army leaves” kind of warfare), the emphasis of a bayonet was on extending the reach of a gun. A bayonet lets a soldier have a weapon for closer range combat, where a gun—especially a long gun like a musket—is not as effective. So when you had two armies on the field and a bayonet was first and foremost a way to keep the enemy at least gun-length away, longer bayonets were better.

But World War I was the advent of trench warfare, which was a terrible idea and also meant that a long weapon, like a gun with an extra foot and a half of sword on top, was much, MUCH harder to work with. Either fighting took place in no man’s land, where you probably weren’t going to get close enough to use a bayonet anyway, or in a trench, where a weapon as long as you were tall was just impossible to work with.

(If you know anything about WWI, you’re probably asking me about bayonet charges right now, specifically the concept of “going over the top.” Contrary to every media representation of WWI ever, “going over the top” of a trench faded out of use pretty quickly. It was a type of bayonet charge where the soldiers in ONE trench fixed their bayonets and tried to charge no man’s land in an effort to reach the OTHER trench, but it was basically never effective because no man’s land was often heavily trapped and strafed with gunfire and mortar shells. Also, it was the kind of battle tactic that military history books talk about with phrases like “total annihilation of whole attacking battalions,” so that’s the kind of mortality rate we’re talking about here. The Battle of the Somme featured a good number of bayonet charges by the British, for context, so people learned and started using other tactics.)

So, since bayonets were only useful in trenches, suddenly everyone was scrambling to shorten bayonets and guns so that their soldiers could get ANYTHING DONE. And THEN soldiers started admitting that they were literally taking their bayonets off their guns and using them as knives instead, because for trench fighting that was way more useful, and so everyone just decided fuck it, let’s just make bayonet-knives, which is why WWI weapons with bayonets usually look, very literally, like someone duct taped a short knife to the front of a gun. This was the start of the decline of the triangular bayonet, a full two hundred years after it hit the battlefield, which is a frankly spectacular run for any weapon since the invention of the gun. Triangular bayonets held on, here and there, through part of WWII, but they were almost entirely gone by the time of the Geneva Convention being ratified in 1949. However, spike or knife bayonets are still issued to many armies as a weapon of last resort to this day, although they aren’t often used in actual attacks. Now we have bigger, worse weapons for actual attacks.

TL;DR, the development of bayonets went like this:

“What if we put a pike ON a gun? …oh wait, you still want to use the gun? Sucks to be you, I guess.”

“What if we put a sword on the gun instead? Then we could put it somewhere where we can still use the gun! Good luck keeping it on there, though.”

“What if we actually made something designed to get put on a gun and stab people effectively? Like, what if we designed something with that purpose in mind? Perhaps?” SMASH CUT TWO CENTURIES

“Well if you’re just gonna take your bayonet off and stab someone with it anyway, can we just go back to giving you knives, then?”

And now you’re caught up on all the dubiously successful ways we’ve tried to mutilate people with a knife-gun.

#military history #medical history #sort of...?#bayonets #honestly i have no idea what this would be classified as. i just had a really good time reading about bayonets in a waiting room.#Y'ALL WANTED TO KNOW SO HERE IS MY ESSAY #IT IS VERY LONG YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELVES I'M NOT SORRY #incidentally i HATE the fact that plug bayonets were a thing. what a terrible solution to a problem. what the hell.#'we went to all this trouble to make a gun that won't blow us up (much) so now we're gonna put a knife in the end'#i would love to talk to the guy who came up with that and ask politely what the hell decided them on this #as opposed to SAY FOR EXAMPLE A SOCKET BAYONET #WHICH IS NOT THAT MUCH MORE ADVANCED A CONCEPT #it does bear mentioning that bayonets weren't often major killers in war!#...because you were much more likely to be maimed and/or die later of infection than die outright on the field from a bayonet wound #so take from that what you will #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #anonymous #asked and answered

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Cass wouldn’t even begrudingly tolerate [the Black Bat], because she’s even less lenient than Bruce on killing and far more willing to throw down.' - THANK YOU for remembering that.

Cass is my favorite Batfam member, the only one really that I have an active interest in reading about. I'd be incredibly ignorant to not bring bring up such a crucial aspect of her characterization. And even if I didn't personally care for her, well, last thing I'd want is to be another source of frustration for Cass fans. Lord knows there's enough of those to go around.

mousebrass also asked: On that note, how do you imagine a meeting between Cass and the Shadow going?

Fair warning: This one took me 6 hours to write, and it became a hell of a lot longer than I imagined. I liked Cass a lot, but I never quite realized I had this many feelings regarding her until I was tasked with writing this, and a lot of things clicked for me regarding my plans for The Shadow thanks to this ask. @mousebrass, thank you. I mean it. I think I may have found something here I've spent years looking for. Hope you enjoy the post.

I'm thankful that this scenario is only really taking place in a hypothetical fanon where both characters can get a fair shot, because I wouldn't trust DC with this premise. I don't trust DC with either of them as is.

There's a lot of ways that this crossover could go on about taking place naturally, initially because Cass is already connected to some of Batman's pulpier elements, due to her connections to Lady Shiva and the League of Assassins, and one could connect Cass to Myra Reldon (who really should just be race swapped if ever brought back so she can stand out as the cool character she is, without the yellowface gimmick holding her back). There's two things I think are crucial to making the most of this idea, and the first of which has to do with the subject of killing. I usually don't like to come up with hypothetical team-ups for The Shadow that focus too much on the fact that he kills, because it's far from the most significant aspect of his character to focus on, much of it is written from a wrong understanding of the character, and it never amounts to anything other than perfunctory. But here, not only is it completely unavoidable to discuss, here there is actually a very, very substantial grounding as to why this has to be such a big part of the story.

The first and foremost thing that's gotta be established to everyone reading that doesn't know already is this: Cassandra Cain, more so than Batman, more so than any other DCU hero, has a tolerance towards murder lower than zero, and this is completely non-negotiable. She will throw herself on the path of an assault rifle to stop men trying to kill her from accidentally killing each other. The defining moment of her incredibly grim backstory is that she was trained from birth to be the world's greatest murderer, and her first kill traumatized her so badly that she has pivoted as far away from that as possible. I stress a lot that the Shadow should not be written as the trigger-happy maniac comics made him into and that the pulp version killed mostly to defend himself and others, generally left criminals to the police if possible, offered plenty of second-chances, had stories dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals and so on, but none of this would matter to Cass.

Cass has literally chosen suicide over the prospect of living with murder on her hands time and time again, and The Shadow kills. When he kills, he does so without remorse, with unshakeable certainty. He hates death, he doesn't want lives to be at risk in the first place. But people will die if he doesn't do anything, and what he can do, what he exists to do, is turn the tools of evil against evil, and murder is the oldest tool of evil there is. He doesn't kill because a war scarred him, he doesn't kill because he's got a demon in his soul, he doesn't kill because he's mentally off balance, he doesn't kill because he's evil or sadistic or arrogant or anything of the sort. He kills because the men he fights chose death when they sought to harm innocents and fire guns at him. He kills because he is Death itself.

Regardless of how compassionate he is or can be, regardless of the fact that he's motivated by a desire to protect people, regardless of how justified he is, he is still dropping corpses and laughing maniacally doing so. Cass's real arch-enemy isn't Shiva or David Cain, it's Death, it's the thing that she's fundamentally most opposed to. And guess what The Shadow gets compared to often enough? Literally the very first line of the very first book where we get to see him, this is how we are introduced to him:

So the premise here is that we are taking a character who is defined by her fundamental opposition to death with every fiber of her being, who understands death on a level no other human being does, who is traumatized and hard-wired to detest death at all costs and to choose suicide over it, and asking her to team up with The Grim Reaper.

Even if he received the most abject lesson conceivable on the sheer wrongness of murder, even if he does put down the guns around Cass out of respect for her, he cannot protect his agents and others if he cannot shoot or kill those who try to harm them, and the protection of the agents is absolutely non-negotiable and not at all something he's willing to fuck around with by trying out gadget kung fu superhero alternatives. The Shadow has chosen to throw his life away for their sake time and time again, and no matter how appaling or disgusting Cass finds his deeds, even if he concedes that she's right and should be right on all accounts and that he is fundamentally a monster who has no right to judge others, he would not concede on his mission and he would make it very clear she would have to put him down violently to stop him from protecting others this way, and death has not stopped him before.

And to be upfront in case there's anyone who doubts it, Cass would kick The Shadow's ass, if they had to fight. She is the strongest fighter in the DCU, she lives and breathes fighting and combat in a way no one else does. And The Shadow's not one of those characters who is supposed to be invincible and the best at everything all the time always, he can and does lose fights and scrapes to people far less adept at it than Cass. He's a great fighter, obviously, he hauls bigger men than him through doors and was disabling people with Vulcan neck pinches decades before Spock, and he would definitely have an edge in other areas, but he's out of his league here. Frankly, I don't see The Shadow raising a finger against Cass unless she's been brainwashed into killing people by bad writing. Not because she's a woman, that doesn't really stop him from dealing with evil. But because, for one, she's practically a child compared to him age-wise. Two, he'd obviously know beforehand of her capabilities and how futile it would be to fight or even provoke her. And three, the Shadow's whole thing is knowing. The Shadow Knows and all that. Knowing comes with understanding.

He'd understand very quickly that there is no way someone this young could grow so quickly into the world's greatest fighter without horrific treatment that no one should ever be subjected to. He'd see the movements too practiced and quick, the self-control, the strength and speed far beyond even the trained warriors he's seen, the places where she's been scarred and is good at covering it up. Assuming he doesn't already know about her life story, any meeting between the two would lead to him very quickly figuring out that there's something much deeper about her opposition to killing than just moral reservations, something deeper than Bruce's own gun trauma.

Denny O'Neil's 2nd Batman and Shadow story was about The Shadow secretly helping Bruce overcome gun trauma, and Bruce rejecting The Shadow's intentions to hand him a gun. And to make it clear, people tend to assume that The Shadow only helps people for utilitarian reasons, which is not true as I've tried to demonstrate many times now. I don't want to convey that he would want to help Cass overcome her trauma just so she could be more efficient or something, absolutely no, he'd help her because he helps people in any way he can. I think a story with The Shadow and Cass might involve a similar premise, The Shadow understanding that she has been traumatized very deeply by death and refuses to accept it on any terms, trying to help her overcome it, only to learn that she does not want to "learn" anything she doesn't already know, that she has weaponized her trauma into a source of strength, and wishes nothing more than to help others with it.

And here's where we get to the part that allows the two to be on less antagonistic terms, because one thing that also very strongly defines Cass, at least the Cass I like reading most, is her stubborn, almost desperate need to believe in the best of people, that people can and will change for the better. Like The Shadow, her strength too is knowing, it's perception, the things that she knows about people that words cannot convey. Just as there are many things The Shadow would grow to understand about her that others would not, there would be many things that The Shadow would not be able to conceal from her. Things that no one but her would figure out. Things that, despite her age and lack of experience compared to him, he would have to defer to her knowledge on, which reverses the usual dynamic The Shadow has with people. And perhaps one aspect of that reversal, it's that maybe it's she who winds up secretly manipulating The Shadow into overcoming a deeper issue.

Cass's perspective on killing is shaped not just through trauma, but from a painfully intimate understanding of not just what happens to someone at the time of death, but the cost of murder upon the human soul, the ways it warps people into things they never should have been. Killing is a deeply, deeply serious matter, much more so than fiction seems ever willing to go into. Of course we suspend disbelief for fiction, there's nothing wrong with that, but if a story starts asking questions, starts poking holes into fantasies, they should not be disregarded.

And so it begs a question: How has it affected The Shadow? Is he really as remorseless as he appears to be? Is the fact that he's only killing evil people really of that much use? What's the cost of living as someone who has to know so much about so much evil in so many hearts? Knowledge never comes without price, and knowing evil is his tagline. When he enlists Harry Vincent, he makes it very clear that he has lost lives as he has saved them. From when is that regret coming from? What lives did he lose then? Is he saving people by damning his soul or merely prolonging the inevitable by piling corpses on another end of the scale?

If there's a character that could meaningfully start bringing these questions forth, who could ever truly get The Shadow to stop and reveal things to the audience he never would otherwise, maybe Cass could be that character. A girl who was raised to be a monster, who is treated as a monster and an aberration in-universe (and even outside of it), and turned that into a strength she uses to help others, who cares about everyone and refuses to let others be dehumanized as she was. Who better to know what lurks in the Shadow's heart?

Sometimes when I get an ask, I bullshit my way through infodump walls of text until I can structure it into something vaguely resembling a point. And sometimes, and I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I get a very, very clear word on my mind related to it before I start writing, that almost seems to be a beacon pointing where I need to get to, and I work my way into getting there. Once you sent me an ask about crossing over The Shadow with Cassandra Cain, the word that came to mind the very second was Language.

It's an interesting relation the two have with language. Language is of course a very substantial part of Cass's character, who does not process language and linguistic development the way most people do, and instead reads body language to the point of superpower. Many stories revolve around Cass's relation to the concept of language, the help she may require from others in getting around things beyond her upbringing, and ways in which she has mastered beyond anyone's scope. Though she is mute, language is her power, what makes her what she is, and she is someone that Batman freely admits could kick his ass if she ever felt like it.

For The Shadow, language is also his power. He speaks all languages and connects allies all over the world, he is an expert ventriloquist, he is able to project his voice beyond what's physically possible, he can imitate voices perfectly to the point of being able to conduct group conversations single-handedly well enough to fool even the people whose voices he's imitating, much of his presence and terror and manipulation are done through his voice, arguably the very reason he exists in the first place is entirely because a radio actor's voice performance was so good and captivating that it tricked people into thinking the character was a real star and not just a glorified narrator. The man you cannot see, but only hear, the perfect hero for radio. And then of course the laugh, which I have a whole separate post on and which, in many ways, acts as a substitute for language in the novels. He uses the laugh so often as a substitute for statements or words, even to himself, that it's pretty much his own personal language. And language is at the core of how he deals with people, as he knows the right language to use to manipulate and move and help them. He knows what to promise, what to reveal, what to omit. He knows what to say, how to say it, when to say it. Language is the strings by which he puppeteers the world around him (and he can talk to animals, at least of one kind).

The Shadow and Cassandra Cain have mastered two different types of Language as throughly as anyone can possibly master them. The Shadow can talk a group of hardened criminals into killing themselves, Cassandra can punch a heart into stopping without killing it. The Shadow echoes his voice "through everywhere and nowhere at once" to whip crowds of thugs into frenzies, Cassandra outraces missiles and was tanking bullets as a child. The Shadow can lie and usurp lives so masterfully to fool even the families of those he's passing off as, Cassandra is a living lie detector who gleams inner conversations from miniscule reactions. The Shadow can speak every language known, Cassandra is the greatest master of the world's most universal language other than music. The two are supposedly human, but every now and then, something comes along to call that into question because of the things they can achieve. They cannot hide secrets from each other the way they do to everyone else. They are driven by a deep desire to help others, to make something out of the circumstances of their lives. To weaponize that which dictates they should be evil and monstrous into a relentless force of good.

Language is the root of understanding. And if nothing else, as impossible as a conciliation of their approaches to crimefighting may be, I think there could be an unique understanding between the two. Perhaps, and this is a bit crazier a concept but one that seems to be where I might have been heading towards all along, even Cassandra Cain finding a calling away from the frayed dynamics of the Batfamily, away from the Bat's looming presence, to become The Shadow's successor, swearing to uphold a mission of justice through non-lethal tactics while he stays on the backseat guiding her. If The Shadow could trust the safety of his agents and the protection of the innocent at the hands of someone as capable and selfless and good-natured as Cassandra, I think he'd be all too happy to be able to trust someone in such a manner, to no longer be the Master of Darkness, but instead to serve the next generation that's weaponized darkness without submerging in it. To achieve, and perhaps return, to his strongest, highest self: A disembodied voice heard, but not seen. Once again the narrator, not the star.

It's a concept I've thought about very extensively for the years I've been a Shadow fan, but now it occurs to me that, if I had to appoint a successor of The Shadow, someone who could take up the mission but shine on their own right, even improve it with the right guidance and circumstances, it would be Cassandra Cain. The Orphan, The Shadow of the Batgirl. Daughter of the greatest assassins, meant to be the world's most lethal murderer, instead pivoted to being one of it's greatest heroes, but never allowed to shine as she should. But in the darker, less restrictive and wilder world of pulp heroes, in The Shadow's world, a beacon would shine all the harder. Perfect strengths attached to perfect opposites, joined together for a greater good, unstoppable after together having weaponized that which most take for granted: the power of language to move worlds.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #comic books #the shadow #cassandra cain #batgirl #i always had a feeling that a successor to the shadow should not be modeled on batman but someone within that range #i never quite found a character i would be happy with taking that role or a similar role #aw shit i just talked myself into a new favorite character #that just so happens to be another character brimming with potential that's denied them by corporate overlords #who could have seen that coming

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battlinghurricanes · 3 years

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DEIPHOBUS TIME!

I'm honestly not entirely sure how I got such a deeply involved concept for his character and motivations, but I definitely did. I just feel like he fits into an especially interesting place in everything and that there's a lot of great potential with him.

Shout out to @petalveinedwarrior for enabling me and also I'm very sorry for being incredibly long winded. My bad.

Also DISCLAIMER! I am NOT an expert on the Trojan War and all its surrounding mythology lol. This is just for fun, based on my own fairly limited knowledge of the myths (though I think I pretty much cover everything that’s relevant to this). These are just my headcanons woven with some details from various myths. Sorry if anything’s missing or inaccurate!

SO!

First and foremost, I headcanon Deiphobus as the oldest of Priam and Hecuba’s children after Hektor.

Hektor calls Deiphobus the dearest of his brothers, and to me, this is why. They are the closest in age and they were the closest growing up, best friends when they were young. They also get the closest to being on equal footing which means a lot to Hektor, who often feels distance between him and his other siblings because of being heir to Troy.

Despite the relatively equal ground and Deiphobus treating Hektor with a very casual familiarity, deep down, he idolizes him. Deiphobus adores and admires Hektor, ever a younger brother in how he looks up to his strength and intelligence and reliability but close enough in age to not feel the same envy as so many of their younger siblings.

Deiphobus is aware that he is next in line to inherit the throne of Troy after Hektor, and the possibility of that is more real to him than to the rest. He doesn’t envy or want the responsibilities Hektor has to bear being the first son and admires him for it rather than resenting him. He never wants the weight of Troy on his shoulders.

Additionally, as close as they are, Hektor confides more openly in Deiphobus than the rest of their siblings. Consequently, he has a more realistic idea of both the burden he bears and also the ways he struggles to manage it like any human would.

Deiphobus holds Hektor in the highest regard- he means the world to him. It is a strange and unique combination of relating to and understanding Hektor exactly as he is and then loving him so dearly for how remarkably he seems to do in all of it, all that Deiphobus adores and strives to be like.

Hektor calls Deiphobus the dearest of his brothers, but Deiphobus would never need to say the same of Hektor, that much has always been obvious.

Deiphobus himself is ferociously loyal, boastful and fiery proud, wild and energetic, and always quick to smile and laugh with a sharp sense of humor. He’ll defend his own with tooth and nail, Hektor first and foremost, and they make a well balanced pair. Hektor’s level headed sense of responsibility softens many of Deiphobus’s rough edges, and Deiphobus’s enthusiasm breaks through many of Hektor’s more anxiously formed reservations.

Deiphobus would do near anything for Hektor, to a concerning degree in the eyes of some, but Hektor, by his nature, isn't overly controlling. He doesn't want Deiphobus to change how he is. Mostly, the only place Hektor truly pushes him is on moral grounds, for better rather than for worse.

Deiphobus hates to spend time overthinking anything, which benefits him in some ways, but also frequently has him following the example of those around him without considering what might lean towards cruelty. Hektor never tolerates hurtful and needless rudeness or otherwise, and their friendship doesn’t spare Deiphobus his reprimands.

Hektor's needling, though, has him step back and reexamine his actions and the second look is generally what he needs to correct his missteps. Admittedly, he’ll sometimes act better in some way solely to please Hektor, but far more often than not, he’ll come to recognize why it’s best with time and continue that way from his own compulsion.

(He grows and his conscience sounds irritatingly like Hektor.)

Deiphobus is actually one of the best of his siblings at not holding a grudge. He might for drama or humor’s sake, but once a squabble is past, he’ll easily set it aside in favor of having fun with whoever he fought with.

Regardless of his flaws, Deiphobus is amiable and of the opinion that it’s never worth passing up a good time over some pettiness. He’s never one to ignore the value of little joys, no matter how fleeting they are.

Before the war, when he is still younger, there is Antheus. He’s the pretty son of Antenor, and both Deiphobus and Paris are quite taken with him. Paris’s involvement rubs him the wrong way, but he elects to ignore it as best he can. It doesn’t sit right to consider policing Antheus’s actions. He can hardly demand he stop seeing Paris while still insisting on his company, after all.

Besides, he can’t really complain. Antheus favors him with his presence often, laughing at his jokes, stealing off his plate when they share meals, tumbling with him when they wrestle. And when Antheus lifts his hand to idly toy with his lower lip as he smiles slyly at him, Paris is the last thing on Deiphobus’s mind.

Hektor teases him sometimes when he turns up ruffled from some exchange turned overzealous, but his flustered frustration pales in comparison to his excitement, so Hektor gets away with it. Oh, he loves Antheus and the feeling is so heady, better than the most potent wine.

Then it all shatters when some men rush into the palace with Antheus’s limp body carried between them. He was in the gymnasium with Paris, they learn. One throw from Paris with a warped discus and Antheus was gone. Deiphobus stares at the blood soaked in his lovely hair.

Deiphobus is ready to rip Paris apart, but when his brother is guided in after, there’s just no room for it. He’s in complete hysterics, shaking all over as he hyperventilates, and screaming would have gotten through to him no more than their family’s vain attempts to calm him down.

Paris is inconsolable afterwards. He retreats in on himself, though without any attempt to defend himself, first to give himself the blame. He makes for a pitiful sight, and at first, Deiphobus can’t stand being in his presence at all, to take his anger and grief out on him or otherwise.

It doesn’t take that long for Deiphobus’s anger to grow more painful than cathartic anyway and, well, it is hard to lash out at someone acting exactly how he feels. He feels the same heartbreak and pain he sees in Paris and he can’t find it in himself to rage against him when he’d rather just sit and cry himself.

Paris does take it upon himself to face Deiphobus after a time and claim responsibility for what happened that day. Deiphobus doesn’t forgive him, doing that feels... off, but he manages to convey that he won’t turn on him for the accident with Antheus. He thinks that might make Paris feel better but he can’t truly tell.

It all still hurts then, even as they try to get things to settle. Nothing but more time can do anything more to heal those wounds.

And time passes and then Paris returns from Sparta with Helen, and, well.

The brewing war doesn’t drive a rift between Deiphobus and Hektor, but it does force a new distance between them. The pressure on Hektor spikes and never eases, and the time he has to spare becomes exceedingly rare.

Much of the time the two would have spent for themselves together now shifts to working together to manage the complications that come with this new conflict; Deiphobus has new responsibilities to shoulder himself. More work, less play, but the mutual affection and respect between them remains just as strong as before.

Deiphobus can’t help but feel a certain bitterness over having the casual companionship of his brother taken away from him, but he does all he can to set it aside. He refuses to let it be another source of stress for Hektor, so often too caring for his own good, and he doesn’t hold it against him anyway.

As always, Deiphobus remains aware that these tasks could easily have been his and, privately, he feels woefully inadequate in the face of that possibility. And truly, it just serves to make Hektor even greater in his eyes, handling it all with grace he can’t imagine. He knows he’s not perfect, yet still, it’s hard to imagine that anything could ever truly bring Hektor down.

And so, Deiphobus helps his brother in the ways he can and loves him as ever, always ready and eager to fight at his side.

Deiphobus leads a contingent himself, and does it well. It comes easier to him to manage a smaller group like that. He does as directed and guides his men through the fighting. One can say what they will about his ability to lead, but his capability as a warrior is undeniable.

Things shift between Deiphobus and Paris as well. Much of Troy turns on Paris, some faster than others. Deiphobus ignores the greater dramatics which, in his opinion, help nothing. Still, it is often tempting to berate him for his flippant disregard of the battles so he does, which is, admittedly, not entirely unwarranted.

However, Deiphobus and Paris share a mutual, unspoken understanding that they simply cannot focus on the war at all times. Sometimes it must be set aside. This is more often true to Paris than to Deiphobus, but that invites Deiphobus to keep Paris’s company when he can no longer bear all the stress.

In turn, when Deiphobus approaches him like that, Paris can trust not to be reprimanded as he so often is, as that gets ignored along with the rest of it. So there are times during the war where the two can be found together affably, chatting about nothing important. Their personalities can still mesh in such moments.

And, well, it’s shocking how steady things can stay over nine years of war, but they do. Death and loss become far too familiar companions, but they can do nothing but keep fighting through that, and things proceed much as they have been.

Until, of course, Achilles.

With all the cruelty of fate, it of course follows after they get the closest to driving away the Achaeans as they ever have. Such a brief, amazing hope. In his unmatched fury, Achilles slaughters their soldiers, butchers many of his brothers, escapes Scamander’s rage through the grace of the gods, and drives the army behind Troy’s wall with his advance, except for-

Then-

Hektor is dead.

Deiphobus tastes blood in his throat screaming at the sight behind the chariot.

In a way, it’s a blessing that it takes twelve days to get Hektor’s body and another twelve to bury it. With his death, command of Troy and her allies has passed to Deiphobus, and he could barely lead his own horse after losing Hektor, much less an army.

Deiphobus falls to pieces. He can barely process it, losing the one he held in the highest regard, held every confidence in, believed in to his core. Hektor was the best of all of them and now he’s dead, leaving him shattered. Deiphobus is hysterical, wildly heartbroken.

In this time is when Priam first turns on his remaining sons. He lashes out at them as he prepares to ransom Hektor’s corpse, degrading them as the most worthless of his sons. Still half blind with tears of grief he can’t hold back, he thinks that it’s true in the same moment he thinks of how he will now have to take Hektor’s place, worthless ruin though he is.

Most often, Priam refrains from speaking of his remaining sons after that, and in rare, fleeting heartbeats he almost seems contrite over cursing them. Neither is enough though to keep him from savagely reproaching them in unpredictable instances as Troy continues to spiral towards its doom. Deiphobus shakily chokes down his father’s abuse without a word.

Of course, he returns to the battlefield once Hektor is buried, coming to truly learn the crushing weight of his new role. How did his brother bear this? Every day feels like one failure after another; he’s not strong enough, not smart enough to do this. He tries anyway, each day more taxing than the last.

Deiphobus can hardly bear Paris after Hektor’s death. A large part of him hates him for it, desperate to pin the blame on someone despite knowing deep down that he’s not responsible. Though, even then, part of him is drawn to Paris, broken same as him, shaped by a sort of desperation to grieve for their brother with him. Misery loves company.

His anger burns hotter, but now he can’t bring himself to berate him even in the way he did sometimes before all this. He never confronts him with his hatred, such that it is. He simply avoids Paris entirely, knowing that if he indulges in the impulse to curse him for what happened to Hektor, he would fall apart at the seams.

Even now he can’t face the truth of what happened and keep going. It is all he can do to try never to think about it.

And then, with the aid of Lord Apollo, Paris kills Achilles.

The undecided limbo of Deiphobus’s feelings towards Paris topples into something like affection the moment he hears of it, connecting them once more. Paris has destroyed Hektor’s murderer, avenging him, and that matters to Deiphobus more than anything else.

That night, the two of them drink together until it half kills them, close enough to keep knocking shoulders as they revile Achilles with the worst profanities they know. It’s the only celebration they can muster after everything, but they’re both laughing for the first time since they lost him.

(When the night grows damnably late, Deiphobus’s attempt to laugh turns into retching and Paris collapses to the ground when he tries to get up to help. They suffer the agonizing morning together.)

They make a strange pair from then on. Friendship would be a generous word given the still unavoidable tension between them, but they somehow manage to maneuver around that and share a certain closeness. They maintain it despite differences that grind against each other. Sad as it is, it’s one of the only things either of them have left.

Paris and Deiphobus also weather Priam’s spontaneous tirades together. Usually wordlessly, but there is something to be said for the company of someone enduring the same pain you are. It is a quiet solidarity, but a significant one.

They talk of the war far more often now. Every day it devours more and more of their lives, always harder and harder to ignore or set aside. On rare occasions, they do still manage it. Those conversations make for a breath of fresh air, though that does little to stave off the feeling of drowning.

And then Paris takes a poisoned arrow and dies.

Deiphobus doesn’t wail and sob in the same way he did for Hektor. He’s too numb for it now. It hurts in an unnatural, distant sort of way. All he can muster is a ugly, stilted feeling of shame for letting himself come to care for him in the first place. Of course he would die like the rest, he should know this by now. He crumbles further.

After Paris’s loss, there's only two reasonable options for what to do with Helen. Either they need to return her to Menelaus or arrange a new marriage and keep her in Troy.

Helen pleads to be returned to her first husband but Deiphobus competes with Helenus to be the one who weds her. Troy does not stop them. There is a quiet but tangible tension to the city and he doesn’t think their people would tolerate Helen departing. He competes with everything he has left and he wins. And they marry.

That first night, Helen stares at his back while sitting in her new place on his bed. She expected to be treated like a piece of meat, a feeling she's grown well used to through living her life under the eyes of men, but he's barely even looking at her. He fought for her hand with an undeniable, feral sort of desperation. What was it for if he doesn't even want her?

"Why?" she asks him. "Why bother going through every effort to marry me only to be so cold now? What do you want?" Her voice would cut razor sharp if only she wasn't so tired.

He turns to face her with bloodshot eyes narrowed in a glare, riddled with barely restrained anger and grief. "I'm not letting you leave," he forces out and Helen pushes down the urge to scoff because that much is obvious.

"It has to be worth something," he continues. "There has to be something we fought for. If we just let you go back, then it won't have been worth jack shit." He paces, not looking at her again. "I won't allow that. Don't think you can avoid all this so easily now that Paris is gone. There has to be a point. My brother is dead because of this shit! If you're gone, then what would be the fucking point?!"

His brother. He means Hektor. He means Paris. He means every last one of them, so many dead. He means Hektor.

Helen doesn't reply. There is nothing she can say to that. For all that it doesn't make a difference, what he's laid before her is something she knows well. She's spent so long now berating herself and blaming herself for all that's come to pass and she understands. She hates this, all she wants is to go home, but she understands him.

She knows that they both hate each other and themselves all in equal measure. What a wretched pair they make, Helen thinks.

Not that they make much of a pair at all. They're rarely ever together. Deiphobus camps outside whenever he can, and when he can’t, he goes out of his way to avoid her. Helen accepts it as the best she can expect from the truly miserable situation this has become. The war drags on, but the truth hangs in the air that Troy is losing.

Then the horse.

The people, starving so desperately for peace, bring it inside the walls. Deiphobus tries to be cautious. He tries to think of what Hektor would have done. He commands Helen to walk around the horse, calling out in the voices of the Achaeans' wives. If there's some wretched spy or invader, let them show themselves. He'll kill them.

No one answers. Deep down just as desperate for peace as them all, he breathes a sigh of relief and leaves the damn horse.

He hopes the Achaeans filled their mouths with blood, biting their tongues as hard as they must have.

Troy is burning. The Achaeans fill the streets with slaughter; they are everywhere. Reunited with her husband after so, so long, Helen tells Menelaus where Deiphobus is. And so, Deiphobus dies alongside Troy.

(Deiphobus and Hektor meet again in the Underworld and Deiphobus tries to apologize for his failure to keep Troy safe. Hektor will hear none of it, refusing any of the anger he has every right to put on him. Still, a long time passes where Deiphobus silently and anxiously wonders if that was a lie, if Hektor truly does hate him for what happened.

Hektor keeps throwing him tense, unsettled glances sometimes when he thinks he’s not looking, even though he never says a thing. Each one worms further and further underneath his skin and he starts to squirm under the conviction that he’s done something wrong. Something Hektor holds against him.

When it finally grows so unbearable that Deiphobus confronts him about it at last, Hektor flinches and doesn’t disguise his fear and upset. Deiphobus braces himself. But then, mangled in with confusing, ashamed apologies, Hektor recounts for the first time how he died.

Athena luring him to his death in Deiphobus’s shape, speaking in his voice. How he turned to face Achilles believing he had support. When he called for a spear from his brother, he was alone.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I think of it at all, I’m so sorry I let you believe I was angry with you because of it. I’m not, it had nothing to do with you, you shouldn’t have to know of it at all. I just- remember it sometimes. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Deiphobus feels nauseous. Hektor looks even more so.

“If I had actually been there-”

“No! Don’t do this. Achilles would have just killed you too.”

“We wouldn’t have died alone, then.”

They clutch at each other, these battered remnants of their souls, carrying with them the wounds of their lives.)

#the iliad #deiphobus #hektor #hector of troy #paris of troy #and misc others i wont tag lol #trojan war #greek mythology #my writing #goal: make everyone else have thoughts and feelings about deiphobus too #hes my randomly selected emotional support child of priam #and hes perfect for my favorite thing #weird little character studies #hopefully this was at least somewhat interesting to read #its been a long time since ive done a post like this #an unsurprisingly it is way too long lol #sometimes it really is just all or nothing with my headcanons #i also think about the version where achilles is going to marry polyxena and deiphobus grabs him while paris stabs him in the back #inchresting

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blu-eh · 3 years

Text

after school summons

[AO3]

or: Danny gets summoned. He doesn’t like it.

It starts with a tugging feeling in his very core.

Danny Fenton pauses. If there’s one thing he’s learned in the last year, it is not to ignore random things that are definitely ghostly in origin. He has just enough time to place his pencil on the desk from where he had dutifully been doing his homework—for the first time in two weeks, mind you—before his vision goes white, he hears a snap, and suddenly he’s not in his room anymore.

For a moment he’s weightless, lost in the feeling of falling. Then, his body jerks and he has just enough time to think, oh fuck—before he’s slammed to the ground hard. His knees buckle under the unexpected weight and he goes down, clumsily, and trying not to throw up what little he’d managed to eat between homework packets.

“Ow,” Danny says.

He lies there, just for a moment, taking in the cool concrete underneath him. He tries to steady his breathing just enough so his mind can process what the hell just happened in the last thirty seconds. He’s still blinking stars from his eyes when he hears the hushed whispers echo around him and a heavy pair of footsteps approaching him. All in all, very bad signs when mysterious (and somewhat painful) things happen to you suddenly.

A gruff, questioning voice asks, “A child?”

“Oh, man,” Danny says, because that definitely does not sound good. Then he forces himself to his knees and looks up.

The first and foremost thing Danny notices is that he’s not alone. He’s on some sort of altar or platform, elevated a foot or so above the ground. A couple feet away, a group of no more than a dozen people surround him in a semi-circle, faces all covered by tattered cloaks. Another cloaked figure, dressed in much more formal robes with gold trimming, stands on the platform a mere couple feet from where Danny is. They all seem to be staring at him, waiting.

Danny hastily gets to his feet. He shifts a little into a sloppy fighting stance, just in case things were to get messy.

The dimly-lit warehouse room and the head covers don’t give him much to work with in the facial feature department, but he’s pretty confident that none of them are ghosts. Mostly from the fact that none of them are glowing and/or ranting about how much of a pain in the ass he is, but it still pays to be wary. Especially when Danny’s situations tend to quickly dissolve from bad to oh my god there are ghosts lose in Amity Park and also he maybe-sort of-possibly died in the process.

Which brings him back to his next brilliant deduction; he’s definitely in ghost form. He definitely was not in ghost form before this. His ghost form is rather obvious considering he sticks out like a glow stick in darkness of the warehouse. He doesn’t even feel the need to check his hair color, this time, but that’s more due to the fact that he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the weird people who managed to summon him from his bedroom and forced him to change into his ghost form.

(He desperately hopes that they hadn’t seen him change—weird warehouse people are not people that Danny generally associates with secret keeping.)

“Is this a cult thing?” Danny asks before any of them can speak. He takes in white line that surrounds him, and the red liquid (which he very much hopes is not blood) used to paint runes and symbols that circle him, and their weird cloak-like robes, and says, “This is definitely a cult thing. Oh my god, did you summon me? Seriously—”

Before this, he hadn't even known he could be summoned. It's just the little ghostly things learned via accident, sometimes, that truly take the icing on the cake.

There’s a tiny spark of anxiety in his gut, but honestly there’s a large difference between humans threatening him and ghosts threatening him. On one hand, he’d take weird cultist over Skulker’s lair any day. On the other hand, pure white walls and experimentation tables aren’t super high on his to visit list either. Worst comes to worst—before they sacrifice him to some ancient gods, more likely—he puts on his scary face (and maybe adds a couple of explosions) and slips out before they even notice he’s missing.

“Silence, creature,” the robed man snaps. Danny zeros in on him and immediately deduces him to be leader from vibes alone. Also the gold trimming on his robe, which very much screams leader of weird cult that summons ghost kids.

“I—okay, you know what? That was just rude,” Danny says. He points to the white line that surrounds him, “Is that cocaine?”

Danny has a feeling he doesn’t want to know the answer to the mysterious red liquid and painted symbols, so he doesn’t ask.

“It’s salt,” one of the other cloaked figures answers, like it should be obvious.

(It’s not actually obvious, and actually leaves Danny with more questions than he started with. Mostly in the realm of how did a group of cultists summon him with salt. He knows salt is supposedly an anti-ghost measure, but Danny is pretty convinced it has little to no effect on him considering the amount of Nasty Burger fries he’s consumed haven’t taken him out yet.)

“Salt,” Danny repeats. He pauses, then awkwardly tags on, “That’s good, I guess, because drugs are bad. Uh, don’t do drugs.”

A cultist quietly, and a little slowly, answers back, “We, uh, don’t.”

“Right,” Danny says. His eyes catch another section of weird in this already weird, cultist warehouse. At the base of the platform sits a variety of bones, so fresh that some of the muscle still clings to them. “Are those bones? Oh my god, did you sacrifice someone? That’s not cool! Murder isn’t cool!”

“Those are goat bones,” another follower says.

“Oh,” Danny says. “Well, I mean, that’s still fucked up on a variety of levels, but I guess that’s better than murder. Unless it's considered goat murder? Uh.”

For a second, there’s silence. The nature of the interaction is so awkward and oppressing that he almost goes invisible just to save himself the scrutiny of these random people and get the hell out of dodge. His curiosity is the only thing that holds him back—that, and the fact that he’s not quite sure if any of these people are secretly hiding ecto-weapons.

Danny very much does not want to be shot tonight.

He looks around the room, eyes taking in every inch of the sparsely decorated warehouse. There’s nothing that immediately grabs his attention, nor anything that really screams danger but it pays to be suspicious of his surroundings in his line of work. A few of the cultists notice this, and start shifting awkwardly as Danny looks over them as well.

Then, Danny’s eyes flicks back to the lead cultist and he says, “I’m going to be real honest here and say that I have no idea what the heck is going on.”

The leader makes no inclination that he acknowledges any word that comes from Danny’s mouth. Instead, he brings an old, wrinkled hand up to his face, like he’s thinking about some complex problem. The leader circles Danny once, then again, and Danny feels something inside him defensively coil like a spring.

He tries not to be bothered when people treat him as something lesser—it’s not, exactly, uncommon for him to encounter. He dealt with being shoved into lockers long before he died, anyways. It doesn’t stop his shoulders from tensing just the barest amount.

Instead of showing this, he brings his feet up to his chest and crosses them mid-air, and fakes a yawn for good measure. A few of the other cultists gasp in wonder and fear. The leader simply stops his prowling and turns to face Danny.

“So this is the fabled Ghost King,” the man says, like he expected better.

Danny feels he should almost be offended if it isn’t for the tiny detail that these cultists—who summoned him by using salt and goat bones—assume he is the ghost king. “…Did you seriously confuse me with Pariah Dark?”

The man pauses, and asks, “Pariah Dark?”

“Yes! He’s like fifteen feet tall, has a huge sword, is a pain in the ass, and has, like, an entire ghost army. I have, I dunno, pre-calc homework in my bag. We are not the same.”

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. Danny bares his teeth in their direction, just to see them squirm. A couple take worried steps back and Danny fights off a satisfied grin.

Hey, poke a bull and get the horns. In this case, summon a ghost-teenager and get the ecto-powers.

(He’s slowly becoming more and more aware that these people have no idea what they’re doing.)

“I see,” the leader says. From his tone, he definitely does not see. “It doesn’t matter. Our book summoned the King of Ghosts and that is you, so you will do as we tell you and your pain will be lessened.”

“I am still not the Ghost King,” Danny tells him. “And no thanks. I’ve already used my yearly cult sign up and I can’t say I’m thrilled to join another. If you’re going to hold an initiation ceremony, at least decorate a bit first. Uh, not counting the goat bones and salt, of course.”

“You have no choice,” the leader snaps and steps a bit closer to him. Danny merely raises an eyebrow. “We are the Followers of Infernal. We have summoned you to serve us. You are bound to our will and bound to our grace, as the book foretold. Now bow, demon, for we are your new masters.”

There’s a very large portion of Danny Fenton that is convinced any good karma he held in life did not pass with him during his death a mere year ago. An even larger portion of him is convinced that these guys are no more serious than the GIW is. Danny does not tell the cultists this.

Instead, he squints and says, “Alright. I definitely failed US Government, but I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. Don’t you guys need like, a permit to summon undead beings of mass power?”

“It thinks it’s funny.” The leader’s face is mostly hidden by his robe, but Danny can imagine the sneer there from his tone alone.

“Trust me, I’m not the one who’s a joke right now,” Danny says. He looks back over at the dozen or so followers and grins at them. They don’t seem too keen that he’s not following their master’s orders and bending to their will. He turns back to the leader. “What’s in it for me?”

“What?”

“If I follow you and stuff, what’s in it for me?”

The leader pauses, then says, “You will be spared of punishment.”

“Hmm, that’s not good enough,” Danny says. He angles his body so he's once again looking at the followers and points at one in the middle. “Hey, you! With the cloak. No, not you, the other dude. To the left. Yeah! You. What do you have to offer me?”

The follower looks so startled that he cowers for a second. Then, seeing as he hadn’t been reduced to a pile of ashes from Danny’s gaze alone, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and silver. “Uh, I have a paper clip, your ghostliness.”

“A paper clip,” Danny repeats. “Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever. That sounds neat.”

“You’ll submit to us?” the man sounds so hopeful that Danny almost feels bad for being a jerk. Then, he remembers that they summoned him out of his nice, warm bedroom at ass-o’clock in the night and feels significantly less amounts of pity.

“No, dude, I’m not being your sack of potatoes for a paper clip. Man, you guys are stupid.” Danny rolls his eyes and floats just a bit higher. The other followers shuffle around again, uncomfortable. In front of him, the leader remains impassive as ever. “Where even am I?”

“The lair which you will spend the rest of your afterlife,” the leader says.

“Okay, this is definitely a warehouse, firstly. And secondly, dude, I meant what state.”

“…Wisconsin,” the man allows because of course everything terrible happens in Wisconsin.

“You chose the worst state to have your crappy lair,” Danny tells them. Now he has to fly a couple hundred miles home and hope he gets there by morning, all the while avoiding his creepy, obsessed arch-nemesis. He wonders if Vlad is even aware there’s a ghost-obsessed cult in his home state. Probably not. “Nothing good ever comes from Wisconsin. You can take that as, like, ghostly wisdom or something.”

“Hey,” one of the cultists says, offended. “The Packers are in Wisconsin.”

“Nothing good,” Danny repeats, firmly.

“Enough of this nonsense,” the leader says. “It’s trying to distract you because it fears control. Briar, bring me the orb.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them says.

The followers mutter to themselves and teeter around in their positions. The woman who spoke, on the end, bows and scurries off. Danny watches as she runs through the darkness of the warehouse, footsteps echoing around them, until he can no longer see her among the darkness.

“Hey, if they already listen to you then why do you need me?” Danny asks. The leader doesn’t answer, so Danny floats a bit on his side and puts his arms behind his head. “What kind of orb are we talking about, anyways? Like one of those Spirit Halloween ones? Or is it more like orbeeze? I can’t saw I’m super excited from your ominous it fears control statement, but—"

“Silence, beast,” the leader says.

Danny huffs. “I’m just asking. No need to be so snippy.”

The man ignores him which, rude. Danny’s just about to see how far he can test this guy’s patience when Briar comes back, just as quickly as she had disappeared. She jogs through the warehouse and up the steps of the platform. Danny can’t see her face, but from the way her hood moves to glace at him every so often, he figures that she’s probably nervous. Specifically about him lounging around in a circle full of salt.

“Father Johnathan,” Briar says and bows. In her hands is a glowing, silver orb. It really did look like a generic orb one would find in a Spirit Halloween. “The orb.”

“Your name is Father Johnathan?” Danny asks. He eyes the orb for a second, but doesn’t feel the tingle of ghostly energy from it, so he ignores it. He turns right back to the leader, not able to keep the grin off his face. “Your name is really Father Johnathan?”

Father Johnathan gently takes the orb in his hands as Briar scurries off towards the rest of the followers. Then, he sighs and says, “Yes, creature, my name is Father Johnathan and I shall be your new master.”

“Oh my god,” Danny says, positively gleeful. “I meet real life Papa John and he summons me with salt and threatens me with a Spirit Halloween orb.”

“Laugh all you want,” Papa John says. The nervous air shifts into something a bit more predatory. “You will not be laughing much longer.”

The cultists break into applause and talk amongst themselves loudly. They shift forward, eagerly, as if they want to watch the spectacle up close. They’re only a foot or so away from the platform when Papa John waves at them to halt.

Papa John holds up the orb. It swirls, the silver fog inside consolidating and then dissipating. Something inside it starts to glow the barest amount.

Danny pauses, just for a second, and watches it. There's still no tingle of ghostly energy coming from it. If he hadn’t already thought these guys are a joke, he definitely would’ve been a tad more nervous. As it stands, he thinks nothing of it—no ghostly energy means no control over ghosts.

(Unfortunately, he knows the feeling of ghost-controlling objects quite well. It’s not an experience he’s eager to repeat.)

The orb glows brighter, and brighter, swirling more furiously. The chatter of the cultists picks up to the point where they’re almost shouting, jeering at him. Papa John draws closer and closer, orb outstretched. He holds it through the salt line and touches it to Danny’s chest. The shouting from his followers almost becomes unbearable.

And then….nothing. The orb stops glowing. The fog inside stops swirling. It simply dies in Papa John’s hand.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Danny asks.

Papa John touches him with the orb again, a tad more forceful, so Danny assumes it was supposed to do something. From the panicked whispers around him, it definitely was supposed to do something to him. Danny’s honestly not sure if the outcome is due to him being a halfa or these guys being a joke.

(He’s willing to bet it’s the latter.)

“I think your LED batteries died,” Danny tells him. “Or maybe you mixed up your Spirit Halloween orbs. Better luck next time.”

Papa John stops furiously pressing the orb to his chest and if Danny could see his face, he has no doubts that Papa John’s expression would be livid.

“You will obey us,” Papa John says.

“No,” Danny says. “I won’t.”

“You will—”

Danny swings his feet down so hard that he cracks the very ground he now stands on. Dust kicks up around him as he stands tall, even though Danny’s at least two feet shorter than the leader in front of him. His eyes burn a brilliant green and he crosses his hands over his chest in an effort to look intimidating. The cult thing is interesting and all, but it's late, he still has homework to do, and Jazz has definitely noticed him missing by now so it's probably better to end this before they can get another object from a Spirit Halloween and try that instead.

It works, if the half-step back from Papa John is anything to go by.

“Listen,” Danny says, flatly. “Get a hobby and leave me alone or else you won’t like what I’m going to do.”

He makes his form flicker and the temperature drop in the room, just for dramatic effect.

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. A couple take panicked steps back. More than a few look ready to bolt for the door and leave this cult business behind forever.

Danny takes notice and stares at them, smiling wide enough that they could see his slightly-toothy grin. He makes sure his eyes flare, just a touch, and says loudly, “Boo.”

To say the cultists are startled would be an understatement. More than a few stumble back, a couple falling onto their asses. One trips on their robe and is sent tumbling. Another one yells and cowers. Papa John has no time to reign in the situation before two scatter completely.

“Peace!” Papa John shouts over the chaos of a dozen panicking followers. Those that remain do settle down enough to hear his words. “Stand down, there is nothing to fear. It is only trying to scare you into letting it free. It is trapped whilst it remains in the circle.”

Danny snorts. “I can leave any time I want.”

“You cannot leave here, demon—”

Danny raises one single eyebrow and dutifully steps out of the summoning circle.

The warehouse erupts into chaos.

The cultists are yelling now, but this time there’s only because of fear. They scatter over each other, running and tripping over their obnoxiously long cloaks. A couple trample the goat bones to the point where several loud snaps are heard over the pandemonium. It only adds more fuel to the fire as less than a dozen people scramble to get as far away from the platform—and subsequently the ghost-kid—as possible.

“Do better than a paperclip, next time!” Danny calls out to them. They only seem to run faster at the sound of his voice.

Papa John is the only one who doesn’t run. He had stumbled off the platform and away from Danny the second that Danny made it over the salt line. However, in the disarray, he had been knocked to the ground, his orb lay broken at his feet, and his robe’s hood had been yanked off and left on the ground beside him. He sits, frozen, but Danny doesn’t know if it’s from shock or from fear.

Danny takes a step closer to him.

“How…?” Papa John whispers. He’s not looking at Danny—only his old, wrinkled hands. He’s bald, with brown eyes. He looks like nothing more than any generic old man that Danny would see at a grocery store on Sunday afternoon. “We followed the book. We…we took every precaution the book said. We were supposed to have the perfect slave, bound to our every word. We…”

“That didn’t work out too well for you, huh?” Danny says and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s ‘cause you forgot the dunce cap when you decided to be the class clown.”

“Please,” Papa John says. “Spare me.”

There’s something wrong about this—seeing a human beg for his life at Danny’s feet. Danny doesn’t want to be feared. He never has wanted to be feared.

He presses his lips together and takes a single step back. Some part of him, though, knows that he desperately needs to make his point clear to avoid another situation like this (likely with more weapons, next time).

“I warned you,” Danny says softly. His voice echoes around the warehouse. The man below him shivers in terror. “Do not summon me again, or I won’t be so nice next time.” He pauses, just for a second and can't help but tag on, "Papa John."

He lets his threat linger and hopes the man takes it seriously enough that he won’t get summoned again. Then, the cool strings of invisibility wrap around his body and he disappears from sight. Danny takes one look at the man left on the floor before he shakes his head and shoots up into the Wisconsin night sky. He doesn't hear the shouted response of it's Father Johnathan from several hundred feet below him on the warehouse floor.

Danny waits about all of thirty seconds before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

"Jazz? Hey, yeah, I'm fine. Yes, seriously, I'm fine but you are not going to believe what I just went through—"

#me mentioning my love for spirit halloween no less than five separate occasions #anyways #my fics #danny phantom #i Attempted to mention every single ectober week 2020 in this fic so like. lmao #ectober #ectober 2020 #ectober week #ectober week 2020 #phan phic #phic #tw drug mention #there are no actual drugs but i do reference a drug by name so this warning applies

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marisol993 · 3 years

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For some time now I've seen, over and over again, that the Qunari in the Dragon Age Universe are apparently some kind of racist caricature of black people, muslims and other types of poc's, bipoc's, minorities, ....

From a personal perspective I never saw them as such, but since a personal view of things isn't very objective and can be skewed by ones life-experiances I was completely willing to admit, that I might have been wrong about that and had an opportunity to learn something new here.

The more I thought about it and critically examined this statement though, the less I agreed with any of it. Especially since a lot of arguments in favor of this view seemed to boil down to "this person of [insert relevant minority here] said so". I.e. another "personal viewpoint".

So let's get into a critical analysis of the Qunari and why I think that they are so very far removed from any kind of "minorty" (from a western point of view) coding that you couldn't even see it with the power of the Hubble and James Webb space-telescopes combined:

First of all, who are the Qunari? The Qunari are tall, medium to heavily built, horned (or unhorned, if you only played Origins) humanoids, that come in varying shades of grey skin, with whiteish hair. They are more intensly sexually dimorphic than the Dwarves, Elves and Humans of Thedas, with the males being sometimes nearly twice as wide (especially in the shoulders) and much more muscled than the females. They call themselves the Qunari as they are followers of the Qun (their guide to life and society), though the word is more of an umbrella-term, since anybody of any race is called a Qunari if they "convert" to the teachings of the Qun.

Here's a picture:

At this point some people might already remark, that the Qunari are very obviously "black-coded" since apparently nowadays any deviation from natural, real-life human skintones automatically has to mean, that the fantasy-race in question is meant to reflect black or brown people (even if they are green or bright purple), unless you literally give them a complete and utterly snow-white skintone. If that is the argument you want to go with, I would like to redirect your eyes to the picture above, as it already disproves this. As it is shown there (and in the DA:I Character-Creator), the Qunari can come in a complete spectrum of skintones (from very light grey to nearly ebony), just like all the different races of Thedas (even the dwarves for some reason, which doesn't make much sense for a race that lived underground for most of their history, but what can you do..). This basically means, that yes there are dark-skinned (or "black") Qunari, but there are also those that could be better described as "light-skinned", so the coding-qualifier goes away.

Then there are the people, who might want to say, that because they are tall and "burly", together with the unnatural skintone makes them "black-coded" which is something I never really understood, since the tallest people in the world by ethnicity are the Dutch and if you look at heights in correlation with body-weight the Russians take first place. Both countries not really know for their large populations of darkskinned-humanoids. Another coding-qualifier that goes away.

And then there are the people (who I would seriously suggest should maybe review their own "racial" views, if "black and brown people" is the first thing they think about when it comes to this), who say, that they are a stereotype of the "savages and natives", which is something that is actively contradicted in canon. One of the most prominent traits of the Qunari is that they are efficiant to a T, use every resorce at the disposal to it's maximum (including their people) and that they are more technically and scientifically advanced than many other race in Thedas (except maybe the dwarves) . This is shown through their mastery of gunpowder (which they call gaatlok) and the fact that they can use chemicals and drugs to literally warp the mind of people without needing magic. They are in no way presented as "savage" and if they are named such, it's usually by people who they are actively at war with, who want to insult them. They are also not "natives" of Thedas. Even their so called "homeland" in Thedas, which is called Par Vollen, was colonised by them, when they landed at it's shores in 6:30 Steel-Age and started converting the original population of Tevinter humans and elves, with whom they have been at war with ever since. Let me say that again: The Qunari are active colonisers and at war with the Tevinter-Imperium, who's people are the original population of the land. Not exactly a typical "native or black" stereotype in western media.

So who do I think the Qunari are actually modeled after?

Well let's summarise:

The Qunari came from across the ocean in their ships filled with cannons and guns, to colonise the land and convert the native population towards their beliefs. They are currently fighting a war against the Tevinter-Imperium, an old and powerful empire, that engages in widespread slavery and practices blood-magic by sacrificing said slaves, sometimes also to one of their many gods.

(If you can't guess who I think they are supposed to be modeled after by now, I would recommend to maybe picking up a 7th-grade history textbook again)

Yes, you can make a very strong case for the Qunari actually being these guys:

The Conquistadors (heck, if you cross out a few letters you can even anagram the word "Qunari" out of the word Conquistador). Who also came from across the sea with ships, cannons and guns to colonise the land (south- and middle-america) and convert the native population (to christianity) and fought an ancient and powerful empire with slaves and blood-sacrifices (the Aztec-Kingdoms).

So after pissing of one half of tumblr with that, let's start with the other half by talking about the apparent "muslim-coding" and how I disagree with that too.

Let's start with a rough definition of what a muslim is and how I think that that alone shows how the Qunari are in no way coded to be them:

I would define a muslim as somebody who is an active member of the religion of Islam. Islam is defined by it's holybook (the Qur'An), which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by an all-knowing and omnipresent abrahamic god.

This in and of itself basically already disqualifies the Qunari from being "muslim-coded" since first and foremost the Qunari are not a religion. They do not have a god and they don't pray to any, the Qun is not a "holy-book" and Ashkaari Koslun (the guy who wrote it) was not a prophet, who wrote down the word of god, but a philosopher who basically crafted a "guide to life and society" with his works.

If you really wanted to find something that is slightly "muslim-coded" in the world of Thedas, you might actually have more luck with the chantry-stuff, since they do have a prophet (Andraste) who could talk to god (the Maker), they have a holy book based of her teachings (the Chant of Light) and they believe that the whole world should follow those teachings, so god will return to them (singing the Chant from all four corners of the world). They even have their own flavour of jihadist religious warfare with the Exhalted Marches (though all in all I do think that the Chantry can be better viewed as a take on christian religions since the split between the Imperial Chantry and the original one is similar to the split of the (western) christian church into catholics and protestants).

So what do I think is a better representation for the Qun in the real world?

Well lets look at it in the simplest way possible that the canon gives us:

The Qun is a guide for the life of the Qunari (the people of the Qun) that ecompasses everything from laws, legislative guides, too how society should be struktured and how everyone has to fit into and function in that society, from the most mundane and simplest tasks and jobs to it's highest administrative bodies. Everyone in this society is evaluated, so that they can be put into a position that is best suited to them and their skill-sets. There they will then each work according to their abilities and each be provided for according to their needs (see what I did there). Yes, the Qun can in my opinion be best described as a take on an authoritarian-socialist guide to life, written by somebody with a similar philosophie as Karl Marx.

So all in all, I don't think that the Qunari are in any way black-, brown-, bipoc- or muslim-coded, but a fantasy take on the Conquistadors, if instead of a bible they had all carried around "A Guide to Life, Luck and Community, written by Karl Marx (during one of his more productive weekends)", visually represented by giant Minotaur-People of many colours.

Also I find this obsession with finding every and any kind of reflexion of our real world in some random fantasy setting, by people who are most of the time actively looking to get offended by at least something and mostly every- and anything, quite contrived most of the time and that the day people on tumblr learned the word "codeing" a significant part of the internets critical-thinking skills and will just shrivelled up and died.

Thank you for coming to my TED-talk.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #qunari #the qun #thedas #tevinter imperium

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tigerkirby215 · 3 years

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5e Hank J. Wimbleton, the Protagonist build (Madness Combat)

(Artwork by AndrewKO on Newgrounds.)

Friday Night Funkin’ Tricky Mod reminded me of the Madness Combat series... man it’s a trip in the best possible way. I honestly miss the old days on Newgrounds where stuff like Madness Combat could get extremely popular just off fan reception alone.

Anyways I think the fantasy of playing a bloodthirsty expert killer is something that most people can identify with in D&D, and Hank is certainly a badass in his own right. So while this was mostly a spur-of-the-moment sort of build here’s Hank J. Wimbleton with as many of his abilities I could reasonably put into a build at once, from Madness Combat 1 all the way to Madness Combat 11: Expurgation.

Also I finally get to use artwork from a website other than DeviantArt which is pretty awesome.

GOALS

Avenger - Hank shoots guns good and Madness is a series of guns first and foremost.

Aggregation - Hank is also more than capable in melee combat, being able to use all sorts of weapons including his fists!

Redeemer - Spoilers for Madness Combat 9 I guess.

RACE

The characters in Madness don’t really look like anything in reality, but it’s fairly safe to say that they are meant to be some sort of human. So we’re going to be going for Variant Human: yup not even an Eberron race since we do need everything that Variant Human provides. Increase your Constitution and Dexterity both by 1 and grab Acrobatics proficiency to dodge incoming knife swings and gunfire. And as per standard take whatever language suits your campaign.

Now you’re probably expecting Crossbow Expert as our level 1 feat, right? Or perhaps even Gunner? That’s where you’re wrong! Hank throws punches far earlier than he starts using guns, and he also uses a lot or improvised weapons throughout the mainline Madness Combat series. So grab Tavern Brawler for a +1 to Strength, a d4 unarmed strike (it’s not earth-shattering but it gets the job done), and proficiency with improvised weapons. And the grappling part which honestly doesn’t impact us much, but it’s nice to grab a human shield.

ON THE GUNNER FEAT: Going to make a quick mention now that this build is made under the assumption that your DM will not allow firearms in their campaign, and as a result we will be reflavoring crossbows as firearms. In short we’re not taking the Gunner feat, but if your DM allows it go ahead and take it.

Honestly if your DM allows firearms it would probably be a good idea to play whatever firearm-based class they added to play as Hank, instead of the build I made here. This build however is meant for the average D&D campaign.

ABILITY SCORES

Hank is MAD, rather fittingly. So MAD in fact that I can’t contain the madness within Standard Array. So rejoice we’re actually going to be using Point Buy!

STRENGTH; 9 - The vast majority of Hank’s weapons are either firearms or weapons that I would constitute as finesse based. With the +1 from Tavern Brawler this is still enough for your punches and improvised Strength weapons to pack a punch at least.

DEXTERITY; 15 - As mentioned above we will primarily be using firearms (crossbows) and finesse weapons.

CONSTITUTION; 11 - Mostly to round out the build, which along with the +1 from our race gives us a bit of bulk which will help with all the killing.

INTELLIGENCE; 14 - There’s many ways I can justify this but the easiest way is to say “it’s a multiclassing requirement.”

WISDOM; 14 - Wisdom is tied to perception as well as survival instinct, and is a multiclassing requirement.

CHARISMA; 8 - Hank is of the quiet sort and doesn’t talk much between all the killing. Yes he can intimidate info out of people but you try keeping your cool with a gun pointed to your head.

BACKGROUND

There was a man who sought the sheriff, and to slay the sheriff you’re automatically made a Criminal. I am however going to suggest swapping your skills out for Intimidation and Slight of Hand (IE Gun Tricks.) Feel free to take whatever Gaming Set you want, but thankfully as a Criminal you can choose Land Vehicles as your tool proficiency, because Hank does run over some guys in part 4!

Criminal Contact will let you get in contact with Sanford and Deimos in case you... you know, die? You can always get your message across when needed: D&D doesn’t have computers but you can still find some shady merchants or corrupt guards to get into contact with your crew.

(Artwork by redemer19 on Newgrounds.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ARTIFICER 1

Starting off as an Artificer because CON saving throw proficiency is nice. So is proficiency in Investigation, Perception, and a tool of your choice.

Tinkerer’s Tools technically counts as gunsmith tools if we go with Matt Mercer’s homebrew, but you already get those for free (along with Thieves’ Tools) as an Artificer. I personally opted for Smith’s Tools as the next best option which will also double for taking care of swords and knives.

You can also get a Boombox to dance to thanks to Magical Tinkering. You can infuse magic into a Tiny object to give it a variety of effects: make it glow, have it display a message, or most importantly have it play the Chicken Dance song. You can have a number of these equal to your Intelligence modifier, which is to say not many.

You do also get Spellcasting: You get two cantrips from the Artificer list: Mage Hand will let you grab a weapon for yourself that’s out of reach, and Acid Splash will serve as a starter shotgun for some buckshot against multiple enemies. As for your leveled spells you can prepare a number of spells equal to your Intelligence modifier plus half your Artificer level, which is to say... not many. Feather Fall can be useful when up in high places, and Detect Magic is universally useful for finding any anomalies created by the Improbability Drive.

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 2

The main reason we went for Artificer first is Infusions, gear you can bring at the start of the fight for an upper hand. Of course the main weapon we’ll be grabbing is the Repeating Shot Weapon which will be how you make basically all your guns. Not having to reload is nice and not having to worry about ammo is better!

ON YOUR WEAPONS: For now the only weapon you can reasonably use is a Light Crossbow, however soon you’ll be able to put Repeating Shot on either a Heavy Crossbow (rifle) or Hand Crossbow (pistol) depending on your preference.

Other than that you can borrow from Sanford’s book and make a Returning Weapon to throw a hook and pull it back, create Sending Stones to keep in touch with your crew, and have a Rope of Climbing to sneak into the sheriff’s office. Or you can choose your own tools for the job as I am merely suggesting what makes the most sense for Hank, but the Repeating Shot Weapon is the only one you truly need.

You can also prepare another spell like Identify, to know what weapon you’re picking up.

LEVEL 3 - RANGER 1

This is a bit out of left field isn’t it? Well Ranger gives a number of things, the first of which being Stealth proficiency for your initial entrance. You also get Deft Explorer (instead of Natural Explorer) for Canny, giving you two languages (pick your poison) and Expertise in one skill of your choice (go for Acrobatics to evade attacks and stay alive.)

You also get Favored Foe (instead of Favored Enemy), letting you concentrate on an enemy’s weak points to kill them quickly. When you hit an enemy you can choose to mark them so they take an extra d4 of damage once per turn from your attacks. You do have to concentrate on this effect (like a spell) but aiming for the head is a good way to end someone quickly.

LEVEL 4 - RANGER 2

Second level Rangers get to choose their Fighting Style and you’re probably expecting me to tell you to take Archery, right? Well even if you’re mostly going to be using guns you do have proficiency with melee weapons too, and since our Strength is kinda bad I’d suggest taking Druidic Warrior for some simple boosts to your combat proficiency.

Shillelagh will be a good place to start by letting you swing a blunt object with your Wisdom instead of your Strength. The main weapons Hank uses in the Madness series other than shortswords is clubs, bats, and pipes which I’d all consider as viable targets for Shillelagh if your DM’s cool.

Mending will be useful to keep your outfit in check after taking a bad hit.

Feel free to take Archery if you want as it’s likely more useful for this build. Again I am opting for what’s the most accurate for Hank, not for what’s the most optimal to build.

But if you want to keep yourself in check after taking a bad hit you can grab some Ranger Spellcasting. Cure Wounds will let you bandage yourself (or an ally) up in the thick of a fight, and Zephyr Strike will let you rush in while avoiding danger to deliver a deadly strike on a key foe.

LEVEL 5 - RANGER 3

There’s quite a few reasons we didn’t go for Rogue levels in this build (spoilers btw): Hank does most of his fighting solo, doesn’t really opt for stealth except for at the start of missions, and because the Gloom Stalker is far better for how Hank operates. For a start you get Umbral Sight for 60 feet of Darkvision with your dumb human eyes, but you can also hide in the dark so well that even creatures with darkvision can’t see you! Which is good because Dread Ambusher gives you a bonus to initiative rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier along, but more importantly lets you move 10 feet faster on the first round of combat. And you can also attack one extra time on the first round of combat, and if you hit with that extra attack you’ll deal an extra d8 damage to down a foe quick and give yourself more options.

You can learn a new spell at this level like Hail of Thorns for some buckshot, and you also get Gloom Stalker Magic, adding Disguise Self to your spell list so you can look like a regular dude who isn’t covered with bandages. You also get Primal Awareness, because even if Speak With Animals makes no sense for Hank it’s still better than Primeval Awareness.

(Artwork by LegendaryPanettone on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 6 - RANGER 4

4th level Rangers get an Ability Score Improvement: Dexterity controls everything we do currently so increase that by 2 for better AC, shooting, sword-swinging, and DEX saves.

LEVEL 7 - RANGER 5

5th level Rangers get an Extra Attack, allowing them to shoot twice and even allowing you specifically to shoot 3 times on your first turn!

You can also learn second level Ranger spells now: Primal Awareness gives you Beast Sense and Gloom Stalker Magic gives you Rope Trick for a place to hide and ambush from. And Enhance Ability (ty Tasha’s) will let you push yourself when violence is needed.

LEVEL 8 - RANGER 6

6th level Rangers see Favored Foe turn into a d6 to be somewhat on-par with Hunter’s Mark. You also get Roving from Deft Explorer for 5 extra feet of movement, as well as a swimming and climbing speed.

But now that you’ve gotten all your killing done it’s time to die. Because you do not kill clown; clown kills you!

(Artwork by Jinxsaw on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 9 - ARTIFICER 3

You can’t kill the protagonist! We’re at 9th level which translates perfectly to Madness Combat 9, which means you can be revived as an Armorer Artificer! Your consciousness will be placed inside of a suit of Arcane Armor, replacing any missing limbs you may have and genuinely account for all your injuries. The armor also doesn’t have a Strength requirement and can be used as a focus for your Artificer spells.

There’s two different Armor Models to choose from but for now I’d suggest keeping to guns and going for the Infiltrator model (mostly because your Intelligence is bad so it would be better to opt for Dexterity to fire your guns.) The Lightning Launcher is like a handgun except it has very good range (90/300) and does Lightning Damage, and even lets you do an extra d6 damage once per turn! You also get Powered Steps for an extra 5 feet of movement speed (adding up to 40 total thanks to Ranger!) and a Dampening Field will give you Advantage on Stealth due to your black outfit.

You also get some Armorer Spells: Magic Missile for some unavoidable gunfire and Thunderwave to give yourself some space. You can also choose a different set of Artisan’s Tools from Tools of the Trade since you likely already have Smith’s Tools proficiency. You can pick whatever you think will be useful, but it’s worth mentioning that you can make a tool with 1 hour of work thanks to The Right Tool for the Job. And no Hank; weapons are not tools. At least not by this definition.

LEVEL 10 - ARTIFICER 4

4th level Artificers get an Ability Score Improvement. Wouldn’t it make sense to increase your Intelligence as an Artificer now that you can use your Armorer weapons with INT? Yes. Anyways increase your Dexterity by 2.

WOULD IT HAVE MADE MORE SENSE TO MAX OUT INTELLIGENCE FOR THIS BUILD? Yes. Now that you have Armorer levels you’re basically never going to be using crossbows again realistically. Oops. Having good INT instead of good DEX would mean that you could start using the Guardian armor to punch some stuff, and 14 in DEX would still allow you to wear Medium armor. You could’ve easily taken 3 (or more realistically 5) levels in Artificer at the start of this build and then gone for Ranger to not have to deal with bad ranged weapons while having good stats for an Artificer.

There’s still strengths to having high DEX obviously (good initiative, good Stealth and Acrobatics checks, good DEX saves, and you get Mirror Image as an Armorer Artificer) but it’s really not that important for this build. But I’m still maxing it out first as it’s accurate to Hank. In the average D&D campaign you’re not going to be picking up weapons from enemies you kill to use them when you run out of ammo. There’s many things I took in this build that are impractical for anything other than a combat heavily inspired by Madness Combat.

Basically feel free to min-max this build if you so desire; it’s quite viable in its own right when you do so. Again I’m trying for accuracy over viability. Also P.S. After this build comes out I’m going to release a “pre-MC9″ Hank build if you want more of the traditional Hank who isn’t in power armor.

You can also prepare another spell at this level but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 11 - ARTIFICER 5

5th level Artificers get an Extra Attack... which you already have. Oops.

Well at least you get access to second level spells! As an Armorer you get Mirror Image to dodge gunfire, and Shatter! For a grenade! But to continue dodging attacks Blur works well as long as the enemy doesn’t have Truesight, which the AAHW may have by total level 11.

LEVEL 12 - ARTIFICER 6

6th level Artificers can prepare more Infusions! A Spell-Refueling Ring will let you restock on spell slot bullets mid-fight, and Boots of the Winding Path will let you jump back after getting into melee combat.

You also get Tool Expertise which is exactly what it says on the tin. You double your proficiency bonus when making checks with tools.

To top it off you can prepare another spell like Catapult. Why are we preparing a first level spell? Because Hank throws big rocks at Tricky in Madness 11. Told you I did research.

(Artwork by ramblinshroom on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 13 - ARTIFICER 7

7th level Artificers get to feel the pain of my choice to max out Dexterity instead of Intelligence as Flash of Genius scales heavily off Intelligence. When you or an ally within 30 feet makes an ability check or a saving throw you can use your reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

LEVEL 14 - ARTIFICER 8

8th level Artificers get another Ability Score Improvement and now that your Dexterity is maxed out... more Wisdom lol? Look we’ll deal with your Intelligence in a bit but Wisdom gives you better initiative among other things.

You can also prepare another spell but next level will get us third level spells, so...

LEVEL 15 - ARTIFICER 9

9th level Artificers can get used to their new revived bodies thanks to Armor Modifications. The chest, boots, helmet, and weapons of your armor all count as individual items for the sake of infusions, and you can have two more infusions active! (As long as they’re on your armor anyways.)

You also get Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt as an Armorer, for a flashbang and some purgatory powers. And you can prepare a spell like Haste, to move so fast it’s like the world is in slow motion.

LEVEL 16 - ARTIFICER 10

So you know how we just got two more infusions for your armor? Well 10th level Artificers can make Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a Headband of Intellect to finally get your Strength and Intelligence to a reasonable level. Again probably a bit late to do so but it does mean that you can finally use melee weapons well, or your Guardian Armor to do some punching! (I’m not going to cover the Guardian Armor now but know that you can punch people and give them disadvantage to hit your allies, and also give yourself Temporary hitpoints.)

And the best part is that you can still keep attuned to other useful items as Magic Item Adept gives you one more attunement slot, meaning that you can be attuned to 4 items total!

And to top it off more Intelligence means more spells and holy shit another cantrip! For your cantrip you can finally take Message to keep in contact with your party, and for your leveled spells...

People die a lot in Nevada: Revivify can help if one of those people are a friend.

See Invisibility will help you avoid ambushes.

Lesser Restoration can help you in a pinch if you’re pinned down.

But again I seriously can not stress enough that you are more than welcome to pick spells that you feel are stronger, as I am merely picking spells for a simple guy who really likes killing.

(Artwork by marcipancakes on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 17 - RANGER 7

Very quickly going back to Ranger to grab the last few abilities we missed: 7th level Gloom Stalkers have an Iron Mind for proficiency with Wisdom saves. Yup that’s it. Well at least you can add () to your Ranger spell list.

LEVEL 18 - RANGER 8

8th level Rangers get Land Stride to not be slowed down by the difficult terrain during Expurgation, and even giving yourself advantage against magical terrain made to harm you in purgatory.

But more importantly you get an Ability Score Improvement to pump your Wisdom up a little more. But really I only waited this long to get Ranger 8 to talk about Martial Versatility from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything: talk to your DM about it but I’d actually suggest grabbing Archery proper now instead of Druidic Warrior because you’ve got the Strength to use weapons.

Oh yeah you could also totally like... use the Guardian armor and carry a repeating crossbow for ranged combat.

LEVEL 19 - ARTIFICER 11

11th level Artificers can bring out the heavy artillery with a Spell-Storing Item. You can store a first or second level spell from the Artificer spell list in one simple or martial weapon (or a spellcasting focus) that requires 1 action to cast.

While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier. If the spell requires concentration, the creature must concentrate. The spell stays in the object until it’s been used a number of times equal to twice your Intelligence modifier (minimum of twice) or until you use this feature again to store a spell in an object.

There are plenty of good spells you can choose from but I’m going to just say this: put Shatter in the item. There are perhaps more useful choices, but isn’t a grenade belt the embodiment of Madness?

LEVEL 20 - ARTIFICER 12

12th level Artificers get our last Ability Score Improvement which means hey: maxed out Wisdom! Yes there are perhaps feats you could get (some ideas I’d suggest would be either the Dual Wielder feat [carry a Repeating Hand Crossbow in one hand and your magical fist in the other] or the Sharpshooter feat) but I simply opted for maxing out stats.

And you can prepare one more spell like... I don’t know? Blink for more dodging?

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Abrogation - I came into this build with the intent of making you capable with all weapons regardless of type and well... I certainly accomplished that. You have good Dexterity for any finesse and ranged weapons and your Strength is strong enough to swing a bat around.

Antipathy - You are also damn capable in combat with an insane opening turn and very good DPS regardless of if you choose to fight with fists or guns, not to mention a good supply of spells and class abilities to truly slaughter your foes.

Apotheosis - It wasn’t my intent but... 20 in two stats and 19 in two others? Excluding your Charisma and Constitution you’re a superhuman of a man.

CONS

Depredation - You have to be level 16 to finally get a decent Strength and Intelligence score, and while low STR doesn’t matter much low INT really hurts as an Artificer.

Consternation - “High stats except Constitution” is a problem. Honestly going 15 in Artificer and 5 in Ranger would’ve gotten you level 15 infusions for a Hill Giant’s Belt for 21 STR and an Amulet of Health for 19 CON.

Inundation - There’s a lot of little tweaks worth changing in this build, notably the focus on Dexterity versus Intelligence. Realistically having 20 INT and 14 DEX is more useful for you as an Artificer than having 19 INT and 20 DEX.

But who cares if it’s messy; as long as it’s effective. Killing everyone somewhere in Nevada will give you plenty of experience to reach your maximum Madness level. You are the Protagonist and they are the Victims... but don’t go into any D&D campaigns with that mentality, or else you may be the Clown.

(Artwork by Teknodice on Newgrounds.)

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd build #dnd guide #Newgrounds #Madness Combat #madness hank #Hank J. Wimbleton #dnd ranger #dnd artificer

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faelapis · 4 years

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so. while this was confirmed a year ago, new tweets by ian jq have reawakened the discourse about humans being the first intelligent life gems encountered. note intelligent life, not organic life. alien animals still died from previous invasions, but humans are the first intelligent creatures gems encountered.

apparently, the party line on twitter (where nuance goes to die) is that it’s too “convenient” that humans are the first other intelligent species gems met.

i take a few issues with that assessment:

a) “it was pink’s first colony, isn’t it convenient the diamond concerned with organic life owns the first planet populated by intelligent organics? wouldn’t they have died if any other diamond got them? isn’t that super lucky?”

no. we know rose/pink was very interested in organic life from before earth. she always thought aliens were cool, interesting, fun, and liked learning about them and keeping some as pets - such as the rainbow worms. we know she visited the others’ colonies, even if she doesn’t own them. she’s the only diamond who is simultaneously “selfish” enough to visit colonies up-close on a whim because it’s fun AND doesn’t see herself as too good to play with local organics.

so, then, why on earth (hah) wouldn’t she care if there had been intelligent life on any of the other planets? she didn’t fight for earth just because she “owned” it. she cared because she was able to form connections to humans... which she would have done regardless of which diamond’s colony it was. if anything, ownership is a hindrance to her usual romps, because blue & yellow expected her to stay put in her moon base. smile and wave. be a “leader”.

b) “how is it realistic that humans are the first intelligent life gems have met?”

the SU universe as a whole is not a universe filled with life. it has been framed as cold, animalistic, overall lifeless, purposeless, and one in which you gaze at an empty sky and beg for an authority figure to give your life meaning. this works much, much better if life, especially intelligent life, is incredibly sparse. they are small flickers in a cold void. it adds to the feeling that both humans and gems feel of loneliness and pointlessness, where you create these intricate structures of organized almost-religion to feel devoted to a purpose. this existentialism, which we will explore further below, is a huge part of SU’s themes.

c) another theme - and this one is important - is that gems and humans have been treated as this mirror parallel of life, people, and society (tm) for the entire runtime of the show. hence, steven as the bridge. a bridge, usually, connects two sides, not five. they are more similar than they are different - to the point where you can use gemkind to comment on how humans are like, and see some of the horrors and tragedy of what humanity looks like “from the outside”. not once has there ever been implied to be any other intelligent species to disrupt this elegant, thematic dichotomy. ever.

d) unlike fanon speculation, the show has always been very careful about never implying there were any previous rebellions. SU is not a star wars-esque universe populated with a million different intelligent species and cyclical rebellions + alliances between them. it is a big, cold, empty void, with tiny pockets of fragile life. which is part of why the connection between two alien species is so remarkable. it is the exception, not the rule.

e) many of us who looked at homeworld in a not-badfaith light already came to the conclusion that humans are probably the only intelligent life they’ve met. (based on what we know about the universe, its logic, the themes, the implications of other colonies, pink diamond’s personality, no other species ever bonded with enough to fight for, etc etc,)... and those of us who did, including myself, have (lovingly!!) compared the crystal gems to hippies or eco-terrorists. this 100% holds up to how homeworld gems generally, and the diamonds specifically, see them.

this is why blue thinks a “solution” to pink being sad about the invasion is to create the zoo. it’s a petty conflict, from her perspective, of environmentalism vs conservationism. like how, if a capitalist is kinda sad about a rainforest being bulldozed, you might as well just take some pretty toucans and panthers and stick them in a zoo. they’re preserved for humans to enjoy. problem “solved”. it worked with the kyanite colony & rainbow worms, why not here?

this is part of why lapis accuses the CGs of not caring about gemkind. they put this silly little dirtball above gemkind, starting a war that hurt (”real”) people?

this is also why pink, mocking the other diamonds, says “you wish to save these life-forms at the expense of our own? ha! don't be absurd!”. gemkind needs resources to create more gems. so, to the diamonds, of course that’s more important than Making The Bees and Monkeys Sad. they’re not even directly killing them, they’re just taking resources. it’s not “””their fault””” they need ‘em too, gems are more important. the same way, to us, humans are always the most important. many of us don’t give a damn about how we hurt animals.

f) it galls me that anything but the darkest possible interpretation, even when it makes perfect sense with what we know, is always seen as “convenient” by people who watched nostalgia critic once and think they’re now great media critics. i saw similar comments to jasper being brought back to life, even though it made perfect sense with what’s implied about the powers of the diamonds. most of that, too, was woven together by paying close attention to implication, not outright stated in a lore dump - but that doesn’t make it “convenient” in the bad way. it makes it the logical outcome of this world, if you paid attention.

like jasper coming back to life, it also told us something thematic about the diamonds’ absolute power over life & death. steven is kinda horrified, even if it’s a good thing, that things can ever be fixed. he still feels like he needs to be “punished”. he holds this toxic mindset that punishment is more important than healing, because of the pit of self-harm he’s fallen into... which is kind of how some people see the diamonds, and the world as a whole.

even if things can get better, it doesn’t matter. at least not as much as punishing and distancing ourselves from the “bad people”. even though, actually, things CAN get better, and that’s more dependent on systemic change than it is on punishing “bad” individuals... that doesn’t fascinate them. it’s a fucked-up idea of “consequences” that is sadly prevalent in fandoms: they’d rather the world be doomed if they get to kill the bad people for it, than the world being slowly healed in this bittersweet way that includes everyone.

and i’m tired of that. on the whole, fiction is a reflection of this very dour, justice-oriented view of the world where we can only gain satisfaction from punishing the bad guys responsible. SU’s response to that is, that actually, just this once... no! the world gets better, and the “how” doesn’t revolve around individual punishment. it’s trying to heal everyone.

g) it seems to me that for a substantial amount of people, “convenience” has less to do with the themes and logic of the world than it does with wanting canon to live up to their fanon image of homeworld and the diamonds. even if that means a ton of offscreen intelligent life dying Just for the sake of a 1-v-1 earth-vs-gems conflict, with no agency in the story. i don’t understand how that would make it better. all other life we’ve seen have been animals. pink was around for other colonies - even if she didn’t personally “own” them - yet didn’t care deeply enough to fight for them. because she couldn’t bond with worms the same way as humans. (yknow, unfortunately, for the worms :’<)

also, you don’t NEED other species of intelligent life to have been made extinct to still have a somewhat cynical interpretation of the diamonds’ intentions here. even if it makes the world less grimdark in praxis. it’s not enough to be aware of humans in the abstract, blue and yellow still won’t listen. you need to actually interact with humans in order to learn about / care for organics that don’t serve a purpose in your system. this was just the first chance gemkind had to do so. it makes sense that some would be curious, while others more jaded and dismissive, after encountering a universe mostly made of the lifeless & animals.

to give the other diamonds some credit, they’ve probably encountered plenty organic life, and thus have built up a bias that everyone but gemkind are aimless, animalistic life forms, and its up to them to give themselves purpose. why should humans be any different? oh wow, they live in groups? big whoop. so do ants. they build nests? so do birds. they babble? so do parrots and rainbow worms. they still serve no purpose. they still die if you breathe on them.

it’s only when blue meets greg - thousands of years later - that we see even the tiniest of cracks, in which blue is made aware of some level of emotional intelligence, but is still firmly entrenched in the view that he’s just a Slightly more advanced organic than others. like... puppies comforting you. she was surprised he could even do that much. this was a slow process for rose as well!

but anyway, at the point of the war, to many gems, they are concerned first and foremost with gemkind. life matters because of your singular, gem-oriented “purpose”... but some gems, like pink, who never saw herself as a justified goddess, take the opposite approach. they don’t see themselves as “above” other life out of either lack of awareness of the capabilities of intelligent life forms or a self-appointed Higher Purpose. they’re curious, and then, willing to fight for life they can bond with, once they learn to love.

which brings me to...

h) how a big theme of the show as a whole is selflessness vs selfishness.

here, the crystal gems as a whole have actually been on the side of selfishness, from homeworld’s perspective. the end of gathering resources would mean they would no longer create more gems. which, to HW, is selfish. which... of course it is, if you think you’re the only intelligent life out there.

the way homeworld gems express themselves is through an elaborate system of self-perpetuation and creation, in which the emergence of more gems is a higher purpose for the collective. the individual doesn’t matter. to them, the random creatures they find on other planets do not matter. they’re just organics.

humans matter to pink because she’s, like i said, curious about alien life, and less convinced about her own purpose... but also more personal, relationship-driven, and cares about what happens the specific individuals she subjectively bonds with, rather than prioritizing the overall “needs” of her species, like a good queen bee is “supposed” to do.

homeworld thinks that no individual feelings - even a diamond’s - is more important than perpetuating of the system that gives their species meaning. most gems are happy to be shattered for that cause, because they’ve never formed those “selfish” relationships that makes life worth living without purpose. so actually, yes, this works with pink’s motivation, and blue and yellow not being as easily swayed works with theirs.

(all of this is extremely relevant to the arc steven has in “future”, btw. he needs a reason to be needed, purpose. and pearl’s arc, white diamond’s arc, jasper’s arc, etc etc - living for purpose vs living for relationships and selfish exploration of the self is a massive theme of the whole show!! at leaast if you pay attention to anything more subtle than merely “here’s a lore dump!”, which the show has always avoided. it’s more sublime than that. you, too, are supposed to only have a small, subjective understanding of the world, like steven does, which teaches you to value subjective perspectives. your purpose is not higher than the agency of others, and you shouldn’t control the world.)

i) it makes dramatic sense, actually, to center the conflict around the first time gems have met another species that stand a chance of understanding them! hence steven is a bridge. that’s a good basis for mirroring two species, a conflict that raises interesting questions about how we, too, see non-human life, the premium we place on emotional connection vs “purpose”, and how even when we learn to value humans that are different from us, we might still fuck around and bulldoze a rainforest, if it’s convenient and we can justify it internally.

and again, it’s more logical. as we know it, the story went “long ago, gems took resources all over the universe, until pink found a species intelligent enough some of them learned to bond with on a deeper level than Cool Pet Worm”, NOT “long ago, gems zapped a bunch of intelligent species - which we will not mention ever, or give any agency in the story - and pink just ignored that, until she randomly decided humans were more important than all those, for no reason, even though she’d met countless intelligent species before”.

the former makes more sense in ~every reading of canon, be it thematic, logical, personal, character-driven, etc~... except the one most favored by SU’s most badfaith of critics, which is that the only “logical” way for the story to go is one in which we can safely label the diamonds as inhumanly, unchangably bad, rather than having base assumptions, motivations and logics that aren’t so different from many non-dictator humans.

i think for some, they protest not because that makes more sense on a thematic, logical or character level, but simply because they want to. they’re USED to being fed that narrative satisfaction has to do with seeing the bad guys face comeuppance, in place of inclusive, welfare-oriented healing. faced with storytelling that rejects their view of justice while also openly being subjective, sublime, and loving of all of its characters, not just the “nice” ones, they see it as a “failure” to be what they’re used to.

if the world CAN systemically heal in a way that includes people you personally don’t forgive, that must be a “flaw”. if those “bad guys” haven’t actually killed hundreds of intelligent species offscreen who have no chance to heal, that doesn’t fuel your justification for the most cynical interpretation of justice possible, so that, too, “must” be a “flaw”. if it’s framed as possible for them to work towards undoing their harm, that deprives you of the satisfaction of edgy punishment for unhealable hurt, so that, too, is of course a “flaw”. any world where healing is possible for everyone, and the perpetrators can contribute, must be a “flaw”, to a mind only concerned with the validity of vengeance.

even when the story is perfectly candid that you’re personally allowed to be hurt and traumatized (like steven - and most characters, really), you’re still allowed to feel... you just can’t expect society as a whole to abandon its “inclusive healing” model and function on your logic; that your pain is solved by vengeance. it isn’t.

in short, cry about it.

#steven universe #homeworld #the diamonds #rose quartz #pink diamond #rose diamond #jasper #su theory #su future #su analysis #and by 'a few issues' i mean 'let me write you a novel about why this was always canon'#i know it must be a big blow if you've decided you're morally superior for hating SU based on fanon assumptions #but that's kinda on you fam. stop listening to bad youtubers. and do indeed cry about it - it's healthy

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lilydalexf · 4 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Syntax6

Syntax6 has 17 stories at Gossamer, but you should visit her website for the complete collection of her fics and to see the cover art that comes with many of the stories (and to find her pro writing!). She's written some of the most beloved casefiles in the fandom. I've recced literally all of them here before. Twice. Big thanks to Syntax6 for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m delighted but not surprised because I’ve written and read fanfic for shows even older than XF. Also, I joined the XF fandom relatively late, at the end of 1999, so there were already hundreds of “classic” fics out there, stories that were theoretically superseded or dated by canon developments that came after them, but which nonetheless remained compelling in their own right. That is the beauty of fanfic: it is inspired by its original creators but not bound by them. It’s a world of “what if” and each story gets to run in a new direction, irrespective of the canon and all the other stories spinning off in their own universes. In this way, fanfic becomes almost timeless.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

(I feel these are similar, at least for me, so I will combine them here.)

First and foremost, I found friends. There was a table full of XF fanfic writers at my wedding. Bugs was my maid of honor. I still talk to someone from XF fandom pretty much every day. Lysandra, Maybe Amanda, Michelle Kiefer, bugs…these are just some of the people who’ve been part of my life for half my existence now. Sometimes I get to have dinner with Audrey Roget or Anjou or MCA. Deb Wells and Sarah Ellen Parsons are part of my pro fic beta team. I have a similar list from the Hunter fandom, terrific people who have enriched my life in numerous ways and I am honored to count as friends.

Second, I learned a lot about writing during my years in XF fandom. I grew up there. Part of this growth experience was simply due to practice. I wrote about 1.2 million words of XF fanfic, which is the equivalent of 15 novels. I made mistakes and learned from them. But another essential part of learning is absorbing different kinds of well-told tales, and XF had these in spades. Some stories were funny. Others were lyrical. Some were short pieces with nary a word wasted while others were sprawling epics that took you on an adventure. The neat thing about XF is that it has space for many different kinds of stories, from hard-core sci-fi to historical romance. You can watch other authors executing these varied pieces and learn from them. You can form critique groups and ask for betas and get direct feedback on how to improve. It’s collaborative and fun, and this can’t be underestimated, generally supportive. The underlying shared love of the original product means that everyone comes into your work predisposed to enjoy it. I am grateful for all the encouragement and the critiques I received over my years in fandom.

Finally, I think a valuable lesson for writers that you can find in fandom, but not in your local author critique group, is how to handle yourself when your work goes public. Not everyone is going to like your work and they will make sure you know it. Some people will like it maybe too much, to the point where they cross boundaries. Learning to disengage yourself from public reaction to your work is a difficult but crucial aspect of being a writer. You control the story. You can’t control reaction to it. It’s frustrating at first, perhaps, but in the end, it’s freeing.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I participated in ATXC, the Haven message boards, and the Scullyfic mailing list/news group. For a number of years, I also ran a fic discussion group with bugs called The Why Incision.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I started reading XF fanfic before I began watching the show. I had watched one season two episode (Soft Light) and then seen bits and pieces of a few others from season four. I’d seen Fight the Future. Basically, I’d seen enough to know which one was Mulder and which one was Scully, and which one believed in aliens. An acquaintance linked me to a rec site for XF fanfic (Gertie’s, maybe?) so that I could see how fic was formatted for the web. I clicked a fic, I think it was one by Lydia Bower dealing with Scully’s cancer arc, and basically did not stop reading. Soon I was printing off 300K of fic to take home with me each night. I could not believe the level of talent in the fandom, and that there were so many excellent writers just giving away their works for free. I wanted to play in this sandbox, too, so I started renting the VHS tapes to catch up on old episodes (see, I am An Old). After a few months, I began writing my own stuff.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to The X-Files. I’m not a sci-fi person by nature. I think my main objection is that, when done poorly, it feels lazy to me. Who did the thing? A ghost! Maybe an alien? I guess we’ll never know. You can always just shrug and play some spooky music and the “truth will always be out there…” somewhere beyond the story in front of you. You never have to commit to any kind of truth because you can invent some magical power or new kind of alien to change the story. I think, by the bitter end, the XF had devolved into this kind of storytelling. The mytharc made no kind of sense even in its own universe. But for years the XF achieved the best aspects of sci-fi storytelling—narrative flexibility and an apotheosis of our current fears dressed up as a super entertaining yarn.

What eventually sold me on the XF as a show is all of the smart storytelling and the sheer amount of ideas contained within its run. At its best, it’s a brilliant show. You have mediations on good versus evil, the role of government in a free society, is there a God, are we alone in the universe, and what are the elements that make us who we are? If Mulder and Morris Fletcher switch bodies, how do we know it’s really “them”? The tonal shifts from week to week were clever and engaging. For Vince Gilligan, truth was always found in fellow human beings. For Darin Morgan, humans were the biggest monster of all. The show was big enough to contain both these premises, and indeed, was stronger for it. The deep questions, the character quirks, the unsolved mysteries and all that went unsaid in the Mulder-Scully relationship left so much room for fanfic writers to do their own work. As such, the fandom attracted and continues to attract both dabbling writers and those who are serious craftspeople. People who like the mystery and those who like the sci-fi angle. Scientists and true believers. Like the show, it’s big enough for all.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I look at it like an old friend I catch up with once in a while. We’ve been close for so long that there’s no awkwardness—we just get each other! I love seeing people post screen shots and commentary, and I think it’s wonderful that so many writers are still inventing new adventures for Mulder and Scully. That is how the characters live on, and indeed how any of us lives on, through the stories that others tell about us.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I ran the Hunter fandom for about five years, mostly because when I poked my head back in, I found the person in change was a bully who’d shut down everything due to her own waning interest. A person would try to start a topic for discussion, and she’d say, “We’ve already covered that.” Well, yes, in a 30-year-old show, there’s not a lot of new ground…

Most other shows, Hunter included, have smaller fandoms and thus don’t attract the depth of fan talent. I don’t just mean fanfic writers. I mean those who do visual art, fan vids, critiques, etc. The XF fandom has all these in droves, which makes it a rare and special place. But all fandoms have the particular joy of geeking out over favorite scenes and reveling in the meeting of shared minds. It will always look odd to those not contained within it, which brings me to the part of modern fandom I find somewhat uncomfortable…the creators are often in fan-space.

In Hunter, the female lead joins fan groups and participates. This is more common now in the age of social media, where writers, producers, actors, etc., are on the same platforms as the rest of us. Fan and creator interaction used to be highly circumscribed: fans wrote letters and maybe received a signed headshot in return. There were cons where show runners gave panels and took questions from the audience. You could stand in line to meet your favorite star. Now, you can @ your favorite star on Twitter, message her on Facebook or follow him on Instagram. In some ways, this is so fun! In other ways, it blurs in the lines in ways that make me uncomfortable. I think it’s rude, for example, if a fan were to go on a star’s social media and post fanfic there or say, “I thought the episode you wrote was terrible.” But what if it’s fan space and the actor is sitting right there, watching you? Is it rude to post fanfic in front of her, especially if she says it makes her uncomfortable? Is it mean to tell a writer his episode sucked right to his face?

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I own the first seven seasons on DVD and will pull them out from time to time to rewatch old faves. I’ve shown a few episodes over the spring and summer to my ten-year-old daughter, and it’s been fun to see the series through her eyes. We’ve mostly opted for the comedic episodes because there’s enough going on in the real world to give her nightmares. Her favorite so far is Je Souhaite.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t have much bandwidth to read fanfic these days. My job as a mystery/thriller author means I have to keep up with the market so I do most of my reading there right now. I also beta read for some pro-fic friends and betaing a novel will keep you busy.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I read so much back in the day that this answer could go on for pages. Alas, it also hasn’t changed much over the past fifteen years because I haven’t read much since then. But, as we’re talking Golden Oldies today, here are a bunch:

All the Mulders, by Alloway I find this short story both hilarious and haunting. Scully embraces her power in the upside down post-apocalyptic world.

Strangers and the Strange Dead, by Kipler Taut prose and an intriguing 3rd party POV make this story a winner, and that’s before the kicker of an ending, which presaged 1013’s.

Cellphone, by Marasmus Talk about your killer twists! Also one of the cleverest titles coming or going.

Arizona Highways, by Fialka I think this is one of the best-crafted stories to come out of the XF. It’s majestic in scope, full of complex literary structure and theme, and yet the plot moves like a runaway freight train. Both the Mulder and Scully characterizations are handled with tender care.

So, We Kissed, by Alelou What I love about this one is how it grounds Mulder and Scully in the ordinary. Mulder’s terrible secret doesn’t involve a UFO or some CSM-conspiracy. Scully goes to therapy that actually looks like therapy. I guess what I’m saying is that I utterly believe this version of M & S in addition to just enjoying reading about them.

Sore Luck at the Luxor, by Anubis Hot, funny, atmospheric. What’s not to love?

Black Hole Season, by Penumbra Nobody does wordsmithing like Penumbra. I use her in arguments with professional writers when they try to tell me that adverbs and adjectives MUST GO. Just gorgeous, sly, insightful prose.

The Dreaming Sea, by Revely This one reads like a fairytale in all the best ways. Revely creates such loving, beautiful worlds for M & S to live in, and I wish they could stay there always.

Malus Genius, by Plausible Deniability and MaybeAmanda Funny and fun, with great original characters, a sly casefile and some clear-eyed musings on the perils of getting older. This one resonates more and more the older I get. ;)

Riding the Whirlpool, by Pufferdeux I look this one up periodically to prove to people that it exists. Scully gets off on a washing machine while Mulder helps. Yet it’s in character? And kinda works? This one has to be read to be believed.

Bone of Contention (part 1, part 2), by Michelle Kiefer and Kel People used to tell me all the time that casefiles are super easy to write while the poetic vignette is hard. Well, I can’t say which is harder but there much fewer well-done casefiles in the fandom than there are poetic vignettes. This is one of the great ones.

Antidote, by Rachel Howard A fic that manages to be both hot and cold as it imagines Mulder and Scully trying to stay alive in the frosty wilderness while a deadly virus is on the loose. This is an ooooold fic that holds up impressively well given everything that followed it!

Falling Down in Four Acts, by Anubis Anubis was actually a bunch of different writers sharing a single author name. This particular one paints an angry, vivid world for Our Heroes and their compatriots. There is no happy ending here, but I read this once and it stayed with me forever.

The Opposite of Impulse, by Maria Nicole A sweet slice of life on a sunny day. When I imagine a gentler universe for Mulder and Scully, this is the kind of place I’d put them.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Bait and Switch is probably the most sophisticated and tightly plotted. It was late in my fanfic “career” and so it shows the benefits to all that learning. My favorite varies a lot, but I’ll say Universal Invariants because that one was nothing but fun.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I never say never! I don’t have any oldies sitting around, though. Everything I wrote, I posted.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I write casefiles…er, I mean mysteries, under my own name now, Joanna Schaffhausen. My main series with Reed and Ellery consists of a male-female crime solving team, so I get a little bit of my XF kick that way. Their first book, The Vanishing Season, started its life as an XF fanfic back in the day. I had to rewrite it from the ground up to get it published, but if you know both stories, you can spot the similarities.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

The answer any writer will tell you is “everywhere.” Ideas are cheap and they’re all around us—on the news, on the subway, in conversations with friends, from Twitter memes, on a walk through the woods. My mysteries are often rooted in true crime, often more than one of them.

Each idea is like a strand of colored thread, and you have to braid them together into a coherent story. This is the tricky part, determining which threads belong in which story. If the ideas enhance one another or if they just create an ugly tangent.

Mostly, though, stories begin by asking “what if?” What if Scully’s boyfriend Ethan had never been cut from the pilot? What if Scully had moved to Utah after Fight the Future? What if the Lone Gunmen financed their toys by writing a successful comic book starring a thinly veiled Mulder and Scully?

Growing up, I had a sweet old lady for a neighbor. Her name was Doris and she gave me coffee ice cream while we watched Wheel of Fortune together. Every time there was a snow storm, the snow melted in her backyard in a such way that suggested she had numerous bodies buried out there. How’s that for a “what if?”

What's the story behind your pen name?

I’ve had a few of them and honestly can’t tell you where they came from, it’s been so long ago. The “6” part of syntax6 is because I joke that 6 is my lucky number. In eighth grade, my algebra teacher would go around the room in order, asking each student their answer to the previous night’s homework problems. I realized quickly that I didn’t have to do all the problems, just the fifteenth one because my desk was 15th on her list. This worked well until the day she decided to call on kids in random order. When she got to me and asked me the answer to the problem I had not done, I just invented something on the spot. “Uh…six?”

Her: “You mean 0.6, don’t you?”

Me, nodding vigorously: “YES, I DO.”

Her: “Very good. Moving on…”

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My close friends and family have always known, and reactions have varied from mild befuddlement to enthusiastic support. My father voted in the Spookies one year, and you can believe he read the nominated stories before casting his vote. I think the most common reaction was: Why are you doing this for free? Why aren’t you trying to be a paid writer?

Well, having done both now, I can tell you that each kind of writing brings its own rewards. Fanfic is freeing because there is no pressure to make money from it. You can take risks and try new things and not have to worry if it fits into your business plan.

(Posted by Lilydale on September 15, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #syntax6

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shadowhunterspolycule · 3 years

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the first major snowfall in ages finally hit nyc recently and all im imaging is the Polycule attaching snowboards and the such to the back of simons van and them just being happy with snow day activities

oof, this ask is from so many months ago, i'm so sorry. i was very busy. i'm also not sure how great my answer will be because i'm a whole ass brazilian so i have no idea what snow day activies are, but i will try anyway

so, major advantages: meliorn has magic and maia is a werewolf and if i'm not mistaken it's said or implied that werewolves have a higher core body temperature than humans. or maybe i made that up, but it's canon for me

major disadvantages: raphael and simon are vampires, which means that technically they are kind of "cold-blooded" creatures? i mean they would still have other important temperature regulating mechanisms such as mitochrondrial heat production and muscle contraction, but they basically don't have a heartbeat/blood flow/arguably blood at all, which is a major way of regulating core temperature, and canonically their skin feels pretty cold, so like. they probably are more suscetible to temperature changes is what i'm saying (i'm mostly going off this source [link] for this. i'm already overthinking this answer good job me)

plus i am once again saying that raphael is from guadalajara which means that like me he is used to Worm Temperchoores, like, WAY warmer than NYC's, and he grew up without pretty much any kind of snow at all. and sure he's lived in NYC for years so he's SOMEWHAT used to the cold but he still spent his formative years in guadalajara, so like. he fucking hates the cold, is my point

but back to major advantages: meliorn and magic! which means they can do something about it. don't ask me what, but i'm sure they can do Something. i mean i'm sure to some extent the downworld has already figured out a solution to this problem cuz while it might not kill them (since they're immortal) it is very uncomfortable and probably makes them slower, which is a disadvantage to say the least. plus raphael has magnus who knows that raphael is a grumpy ass in the cold. also i think java is similarly hot so magnus Gets It, but idk what the temperatures usually are in jakarta

anyway my point is that magnus probably got some coats/vests/blankets spelled for his boy so they can keep him toasty (since they are otherwise kinda useless for vampires since they rely on trapping body heat and vampires don't have any) and vampires in general probably have access to that kinda stuff, but still, rapha gets grumpy and his face is still cold and everything is just awful and he doesn't understand how gringos do it. his complaints fly for about 2 days before the New Yorker Squad™ (particularly simon and maia, who drag clary and inevitably everyone else is there) decides that they've had enough of this and that raphael will learn how to enjoy the snow

he is like "i am not willingly going into the snow! you don't understand, i'm a vampire, i won't get back my body heat the way you do". simon: "i literally am also a vampire". raphael: "you're just a fledgeling, you wouldn't understand" "i've been a vampire for like, ten years!" "seven" "same thing" "it's so not the-" "i have gone through enough winters to be able to understand, and you, sir, are going to learn to enjoy the snow. have you EVER even made a snow angel?" "no" "well this changes today"

he literally has no excuse because meliorn has this super sweet spell that keeps him from losing heat so like. he doesn't even need a coat (he's still wearing it and preferably also a scarf and gloves because he is, first and foremost, dramatic) so he is forced to have a day off and go play in the snow, woe is him

(he tells the clan that should they need anything they should ring him, but they're like "nah simon has promised us pictures of you in the snow, we can handle ourselves" and it's not like raphael is too busy these days, really)

anyway! they have fun. simon strikes me as the winter lover kind of person altho really i think he enjoys all seasons in their own way, but like... hot chocolate and scarves and snow fights, yes? and while i think maia might prefer warmer temperatures she can double enjoy herself in the snow now that she's a werewolf because she gets less cold and like, damn, tell me that being a wolf and jumping headfirst into a pile of snow wouldn't be fun. you can't, unless you're a bad taste bitch

i also think maia is the building snow forts kind of gal because, idk, she just looks that way. and sure she's excited about kicking everyone's asses during snowball fight but FIRST she needs to have a full fort complete with towers and windows for her to throw snowballs from and shit

rapha is the one that helps her build it the most cuz he likes the motions and besides it is a little less energetic than whatever it is that the rest of these wackos are doing. again izzy didn't get any chances to play in the snow either so naturally clary is dragging her around from snow activity to snow activity and running around everywhere and holy shit they have so much energy. simon is there as well naturally and eventually they make it their goal in life to ruin maia's and rapha's fort, which ends up kickstarting the mandatory snowball fight. even tho maia only has a half complete fort

(eventually when everyone has left maia and rapha will come back and finish the fort. it's the principle of the thing. raphael also wants to build an igloo or some shit and maia rolls her eyes but actually i can see him being into building snow things? it's just soothing and nice and quiet and he can pretend there's Elegance and Finesse to it)

and meliorn is just watching them curiously the whole time because of course they know snow but they dont really know about Snow Activities these funky little non-seelies dedicate themselves too. i feel like the seelies have their own snow activities, maybe like, festivals? dances with the snowfall and games to welcome the change in the environment, that sort of thing. but they are nothing like snow angels ("it doesn't look like an angel in the slightest, just like you kept moving your legs and arms in the snow" "thats what it is" "right, so...?") or snowmen ("also doesn't look like a man" "meliorn we aren't exactly artists") or snow fights (altho that one they can appreciate) and they're really interested in like participating even though they dont understand and everyone has to keep telling them that it's Not That Deep and izzy is so amused she just kisses them one billion times

eventually they start doing it just to get more of those laugh-filled kisses of hers

also at least one of them, probably izzy of rapha or meliorn since they are the snow ignorant ones of the group, is absolutely horrible at making snowmen. probably izzy tbh because shadowhunters dont exactly have a knack for these things. like clary's snowman is all artistic and simon's is fun and creative, maia's is pretty, raphael's and meliorn's look like the Platonic Ideal Of A Snowman, and izzy's looks like A Pile Of Dirt. clary giggles at it for an embarrassing amount of time, which inevitably leads to izzy taking the snow from her snowman to throw snowballs at clary and triggering a new snowfight

and then they have some soup inside and cuddle under a blanket as they fight over what they should watch and all is well with the world

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rohad93 · 3 years

Text

Worth the Fight: Ch8

For the first time in a long time, Amity is excited.

More than excited, but she isn’t sure how else to describe it, even with her quite extended vocabulary. To finally have a chance at something she’d wanted to do all her life and had never had a chance to do until now? There are few words to describe the elation she feels.

She and Luz had spent a little longer than they should have at the market a few days ago picking out some clothes that Luz deemed suitable for her to train in, but then they had to hurry back to the manor because it was getting late and if they didn’t Bump would certainly stop her and there was no way to explain the clothes she’d bought. She liked Bump, he was a good teacher, wise, and knowledgeable. That being said, his loyalties were first and foremost to her parents and Amity could not trust him with her secrets, not like she could Lilith, which made it hard to navigate her situation at home at times.

It had been Lilith that had inspired her desire to learn to fight, well, her and ‘Azura, the good knight’ the heroine of her favorite book.

When Amity had gone to her asking to learn the art of sword fighting Lilith had been more than amenable to the idea, but her parents refused, insisting that she do what they had hired her to do, teach her enchantment magic, and as much as Lilith had wanted to teach her, she had acquiesced to her parent’s wishes, much to Amity’s disappointment.

She felt a twinge at the thought of her teacher. Lilith had been gone for over a year now, sent across the sea to fight at the Emperor’s order. There had been no word from her in months and some days Amity wondered if the raven-haired knight was even still alive; she missed her.

Amity shook her head, today wasn’t the day for this, she needed to stay focussed. That was what Lilith would want her to do.

Luz was going to start her training today. They would have started already, but Bump had pulled Luz to help oversee some deliveries being made from the estate and she’d been away all day for the last two days, but she was back now and they could begin.

She carefully concealed her training clothes in her dress, the only useful thing about one of the puffy, ugly, hunter green monstrosities her mother had given her, and one she never wore if she could help it, before leaving the room.

She hurried down the hall, Luz said she would be on gate duty whenever she was ready.

Just as she was about to hit the first stair, a pair of synced voices called out to her.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry today, Mittens?”

Amity groaned to herself before she glanced over her shoulder where her brother and sister were standing, grinning at her from the doorways of their bedrooms.

“It’s a nice day, I’m going out for a walk,” she grunted.

“Well, that sounds like a lovely idea!” Emira grinned.

“Indeed it does, dear sister, we’ll join you.” Edric’s grin matched his twins’.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Amity grumbled as the twins came to stand on either side of her.

“Aw, come on, Mittens, we haven’t done anything together in so long,” Emira lamented as she leaned her head on Amity’s.

“No,” Amity scowled.

“Oh, please, we just want to spend some time with our little sister,” Edric baby talked to her as he leaned on her shoulder, making her growl and elbow him in the stomach. He grunted and backed off.

Amity was steaming inside, there was no way she was going to be able to shake the two now, she’d been waiting for days already!

She took a deep breath, she could wait another day, Luz wasn’t going anywhere.

“Fine,” she bit out and the twins grinned as they walked down the steps.

When they approached, Luz looked up and the confusion that broke out across her face as Amity came walking out of the house with two slightly older people that bore a striking resemblance to Amity, as well as each other, was apparent.

“Luz, would you escort us on a walk down to the coast?” she turned to the human guard as they passed through the gate, she tried to send Luz some kind of look with her eyes, trying to convey to her not to mention their training.

“Of course, Lady Blight.” Luz nodded, glancing between the three.

She’d heard of the Blight twins, of course, Edric and Emira, but this was the first time Luz had actually seen them in person. She hadn’t been in the manor since the first day when she’d met Bump.

“Oh, I’ve never seen you before,” Emira said, eyeing Luz up and down and the young knight’s face turned pink at the suggestive smile that had slid onto the older Blight’s face.

“Uhh…” Luz blinked.

“Luz is new,” Amity grumbled, rolling her eyes at her sister's flirtatiousness. She did this every time they got a new guard around their age, which wasn’t often, but it had still happened several times. Once, a young man had to be released from their employ because Emira had flirted with him and he had been convinced she was in love with him and begun following her around and serenading her at her window at night.

Luz just looked embarrassed, thankfully.

“Edric, Emira!” They all turned as Bump stood on the front steps of the manor, looking quite annoyed and the twins grimaced. “A word if you’d please…,” the old witch practically growled, arms folded behind his back and eyes narrowed at the two of them.

“Well, shit…,” Edric mumbled under his breath as they two moved back toward the doors.

Amity caught Luz’s eye and jerked her head in a very clear message.

‘Let’s go’

Luz nodded and gave a brief wave to Jerbo as they hurried down the road away from Blight manor before Bump finished reaming out the twins for whatever they had done.

They walked quickly until they were out of sight of the manor and Amity sighed in relief. She loved her siblings, annoying as they could be the majority of the time, but she was not in the mood for them, not today.

“So, those were the infamous twins the other guards talked about,” Luz hummed as they walked and Amity rolled her eyes.

“Yes, my brother and sister, Edric and Emira,” she sniffed.

“So I heard,” Luz chuckled. “What did they do to get Sir Bump all riled up?” she asked.

“I couldn’t begin to guess, the twins like to play ‘jokes’, which sometimes come back to bite them.” She shook her head. Last week they were confined to their rooms when they poured an elixir into the stew being made for dinner that made it congeal into an abomination, which the house staff had to chase down,” Amity said and Luz snorted. “The halls still vaguely smell like stewed lamb,” she sighed. “I’m just glad Bump showed up when he did, they were insisting on joining me for my ‘walk’,” she grumbled.

“You don't want to include them in your training?” Luz chuckled at the sour face Amity made. “Why not?” she asked.

Amity opened her mouth to speak but stopped short, jaw snapping back shut with a quiet click. She had just been about to explain her often strained relationship with her siblings when she remembered just who she was speaking to. Luz, who was still all but a stranger to her, an acquaintance, really. Why was she telling her any of this?

She just shrugged in response.

“We have a tenuous relationship at times,” is all she said and Luz waited for more but it seems that’s all she was going to say on the matter.

Luz frowned, she could feel the sudden shift in the atmosphere. They had been having a rather pleasant conversation when Amity had suddenly clammed up and Luz wondered if she had said something to offend her, but after quickly thinking over the conversation she couldn’t find fault in anything she said. She tried a different tack.

“So, are you ready?” Luz asked her as she led them to a secluded spot she had scouted out for them to train at, and Amity’s mood seemed to do another complete one-eighty as she smiled up at her, almost giddy, and Luz couldn’t help but think how pretty the noblewoman was when she smiled as opposed to scowling, as was so often the case.

“I’m more than ready,” Amity asserted, which made Luz grin.

They walked for a good fifteen minutes before they reached the spot.

A clearing, situated on a low ridge by the shore that hung out over the sand on one side and was mostly surrounded by large rocks on the other that would hide them from view as if the woods weren’t already doing so.

“We’ll train here, it’s away from everything and secluded so no one should see us.” She swept an arm around at the space and Amity nodded as she took it all in.

“Alright, I’m going to change…” Amity pulled the folded up clothes they had bought in the market out of her skirts and looked up to find Luz still standing there, looking at her curiously and her face flared hot. “Do you mind?” she asked, though it certainly didn’t sound like a question.

“No...” Luz shook her head innocently and Amity gave her a long look that made realization flash across her face. “Oh! Uh, right!” she spun around to face the woods and hide her red face. “Sorry! I just… with traveling on the road with my mentor the last five years… there was never much privacy to be had so we kinda just did our own things, ya know?” Luz scratched the back of her head sheepishly as she listened to the sound of rustling fabric.

“It’s fine…,” Amity’s voice is low and obviously embarrassed.

Luz anxiously tapped a booted foot in the dirt before Amity finally called out that she was ready and the human turned around to appraise her new student.

Amity was fidgeting with her clothes, she wasn’t used to such attire.

The snug, gray pants and leather boots Luz had insisted on felt strange on her person, but especially the double-breasted black jacket with the dark green piping and high collar that fit snugly around her neck and chest. When she moved the jacket's tails hit the back of her thighs with every step. She adjusted the magenta armband she had added around her left bicep, a small pop of her own.

Everything was new and strange, snug, but nothing was uncomfortable, just different.

“Well, you look ready to train,” Luz appraised. “For the most part…” Luz reached down to her waist and untied the second sword hanging at her waist and tossed the sheathed blade to Amity. “That’s my old training sword, it’s what you’ll be using for the foreseeable future,” she explained as Amity wrapped a hand around the blade’s hilt and pulled it free of its sheath, testing its weight in her hand.

“Training blade, hmm?” she mumbled, running a finger over the edge. “It’s dull.” Amity frowned

“Hey, it took me two years of training before Eda even gave me that,” Luz chuckled. “There's no jumping straight to the front of the line here, Lady Blight.”

Amity blinked at that. A knight named Eda, she’d heard that name before, but from where escapes her at the moment, there’s a nagging little twinge of familiarity in the back of her mind, but she doesn’t have time for that right now, they have training to do, she can puzzle it out later.

“What’s first?” Amity blinked up at her, as she tied the sheath to her belt and took hold of the blade again, ready.

“Well, first of all, that’s not how you hold it.” Luz walked over and wrapped her hands around Amity’s adjusting them on the hilt, warm, rough fingers moving her own hands into the correct places and once she was done Amity realized how much more natural her new grip felt.

“There…” Luz took a step back. Her stance was still wonky, but it wasn’t important at the moment. “Now try to hit me,” she ordered.

“What?!” Amity’s head shot up at that to look at Luz’s grinning face.

“Try to hit me,” she repeated.

“I’m not going to hit you with a sword!” She lowered the blade tip to the ground.

“I need to see where you're at and where we need to work, you won’t hurt me, I promise, now swing at me!” Luz again commanded.

“No!” Amity frowned. Even if the blade was dull, swinging it at her could still cause harm.

Luz frowned, tapping her foot before she got an idea, Amity had proven from the moment they met that she had a bit of a temper, and she was about to receive a first-hand lesson in one of the first lessons Eda had ever given her; how to exploit your opponent's obvious weaknesses’.

Luz walked a few steps over to the trees and scanned the ground before picking up a stick about the same length of her sword and walking back over, brandishing the stick like a weapon.

“Hit. Me.” she punctuated each statement with a poke of the stick to Amity’s stomach.

“Stop, I’m not going to hit you!” Amity grumbled, trying to swat the stick away, but Luz was much faster.

“Hit me,” she repeated stabbing harder still at Amity, who winced as the stick stuck her in the ribs.

“Luz!” she snarled, batting at the stick and missing every time as Luz circled around her poking her mercilessly harder and harder as she repeated her command to strike her.

Amity could feel her temper rising by a few more degrees every time Luz jabbed her with her stick. Her jaw clenched and her grip on the hilt of the training blade tightened. She knew what Luz was doing and she was not going to fall for it, there had to be a safer way to do this than what Luz was suggesting.

Luz could see it in her face, Amity was breaking, her temper was just about to boil over in a frothing rage with a little more prodding.

On the one hand, she was rather touched that Amity didn’t want to hurt her, but on the other, she found it laughable that she thought she could.

“Hit me, Blight!” Luz jabbed her particularly hard in the back with the tip of her stick and knew immediately that she had broken through Amity's patience.

With a strangled, rage-filled noise, Amity spun around, swinging the blade as though it were a bat.

Luz hopped back out of range, a grin pulling at her lips as Amity rushed after her, swinging haphazardly and snarling at her.

Luz could only grin to herself as she danced in and out of range, avoiding every one of Amity’s wild swings and intermittently poking her with the stick, just to add fuel to the fire when it looked like it was starting to dwindle. This was a test of stamina after all.

After a good five minutes of leading Amity around the clearing with her taunting grin and quick pokes with a stick, the noble stood panting, the sword resting against the ground as she tried to get her breath back and looking pissed off.

“Well, I can tell you that stamina is definitely going to need to be worked on,” Luz chuckled as she walked over to her.

“That’s not going to be a quick process is it?" Amity huffed, looking up at Luz as sweat dripped down her brow. Black might have been a poor choice in attire for training outside at the height of summer. The human crossed her arms and shook her head.

“No, you’ll just have to build it up as we go, but it means that our sessions won’t be very long until you start building up your endurance, if you overwork you’ll end up hurt,” Luz warned as she came to a stop in front of Amity, stick resting on her shoulder. “There are ways to help it along. We need to run.” she grinned.

“Run?” Amity grimaced at that and Luz hummed an affirmative.

“Yup, let’s go!” she whooped and took off, sliding down the ridge to the sandy beach below and tossing her stick aside.

“W-wait, Luz!” She sheathed her sword and quickly followed after her as she jogged down the beach with Amity trailing behind as they kicked up a cloud of sand with their boots. Luz was wearing a chainmail shirt beneath her tunic and still outrunning the noble by a longshot.

Her lungs burned as she tried to keep up with Luz as they dashed across the hot beach beneath the blazing sun, she was sure she was sweating to death inside the jacket.

So maybe there was more to learning how to use a sword than she initially thought, but Amity was nothing if not tenacious and resolved to all tasks she set herself to, and this one would be no different.

She wasn’t sure how long Luz made her chase her up and down the beach but it had to be at least an hour judging from the position of the sun overhead.

Luz turned around, running backward now to face Amity who was dragging through the sand at a slow trot rather than a run. Luz was exhausted herself but she did her best not to let it show, she had to put on a good face for her new student after all!

“Come on, Lady Blight!” Luz called, stressing the title. “Is that all you have?” She grinned and Amity scowled at her opening her mouth to deliver a scathing retort when the heel of Luz’s boot caught on a piece of driftwood and she went tumbling backward in the sand

“Ay, meirda!” she yelped as she rolled backward flinging up a wave of sand before rolling to a stop on her stomach.

Amity didn’t have the energy or breath to laugh, but that didn’t stop her from grinning wickedly as the woman rolled through the sand before finally landing face-down, flat on her stomach.

Luz grumbled as she pushed herself up onto her elbows and sputtered, spitting out sand as Amity came to a stop in front of her.

“Well, that was embarrassing…,” she mumbled, face pink as she looked up at Amity, who was panting, red-faced, but grinning at her. “Uh, let’s take a break!” she offered with a huff, getting her own breath back as she pushed herself up to stand, brushing off as much sand as she could as she walked over to the water and washed the remaining granules off her face and hands before plopping herself back down onto her butt in the hot sand, facing the sea.

Amity flopped down next to her bonelessly, cupping her hands in the water and washing the sweat from her face. The salty taste of the ocean water was indistinguishable from the sweat that had been dripping down her face for the past hour, but it was cool on her flushed skin and she sighed in relief. When it didn’t feel like she was going to pass out from the heat she looked up at the waves and the clear blue sky, it really was a beautiful day today.

Luz was contenting herself with digging through the sand till her fingers brushed something hard hidden among the granules and dug her fingers harder into the ground before lifting a whole shell free from its sandy prison. She brushed the remaining grains of sand off as she admired the shiny pink, and white surface, it’s soft spirals were perfectly smooth under her fingers.

“I love the ocean,” Luz said aloud as she turned the shell over in her hand.

“Hm, why’s that, seashells?” Amity cocked a brow at the human as she leaned back on her hands.

“Well, that’s one reason, yeah,” she chuckled. “It’s just so different from anywhere else, like a whole ‘nother world, with things you can’t find anywhere else.” She held the shell out to Amity who took it between her fingers. “I grew up isolated deep in the woods, I never saw the ocean till I started traveling with Eda five years ago.

“That’s your mentor, right?” Amity asked, turning the smooth shell over in her fingers. Luz nodded.

“Yup!” Luz smiled and Amity hummed but they said nothing more for a while.

“Alright!” Luz slapped her knees before she hauled herself to her feet and offered a hand to Amity, who took it and yelped as Luz practically jerked her off the ground effortlessly. “Ah, sorry!” she smiled apologetically. “I’m going to teach you some basic strikes.” she declared and Amity’s exhaustion vanished at that.

Luz pulled her own blade from its sheath, it made a quiet scraping sound as she pulled the blade free and demonstrated a few basic strikes. Which they practiced for a few hours, Luz using her own sword to block Amity’s strikes but nothing more. She corrected her footwork and form several times and Amity realized for all the books she had read over the years about the subject, and the knights she had watched compete in tourney’s, it was nothing compared to doing it herself.

They practiced till Amity’s hands were sore and her exhaustion returned with a vengeance. All she wanted to do was lay down and sleep. Luz seemed to pick up on her ever more sluggish movements before she called for an end to training, she was getting tired herself, though she blamed that on the chainmail she was still becoming accustomed to beneath her tunic.

“Let’s call it a day," she finally declared and Amity almost cried in relief, but she didn’t, though only just. She wanted to sit but feared she wouldn't be able to get back up if she did.

“When I get a chance I’ll set up some training dummies for you to practice on.” Luz scratched her chin as she looked around the clearing thoughtfully.

“Will we train here again tomorrow?” Amity asked her after a moment, sheathing the training blade.

“Oh, after how today went, we won’t be training tomorrow,” Luz said, looking at her.

Amity straightened, feeling indignation well up within her. Did Luz think because of her poor running performance today that she couldn’t do it, was she already rescinding her offer to teach her?

“No, I can do it!” Amity insisted. “Perhaps today had a bit of a rough start, but I can do this!” she insisted. Luz blinked wide, brown eyes at her.

“No, Amity, you don’t…”

“Just let me prove it!” Amity cut her off and Luz frowned. Amity obviously didn’t understand what Luz was trying to say to her. Now she understood why Eda had taught her with a ‘show’, rather than ‘tell’, style. Some things were just easier learned by experience, and though Luz didn’t really want to do that per se, it wasn’t going to stop what was going to happen tomorrow, regardless of whether or not she turned it into a teachable moment, so she might as well.

“Okay, we train tomorrow; no matter what,” she finished and it had a slightly ominous tone to it, but Amity got what she wanted and was pleased, so she nodded. Luz just shook her head knowingly.

When they returned to the manor she and Luz parted ways at the front gate and Amity hurried upstairs to her room, hand on the knob when a voice made her stop.

“Well, look who finally came home.”

“I can’t believe you ditched us.”

She glanced over her shoulder at her siblings, standing there looking at her from their own bedrooms, annoyed.

“You two seemed to have your hands full with Sir Bump,” she smirked and Edric snorted.

“He has no sense of humor,” The only blight son grumbled, crossing his arms and leaning on the doorframe.

“What happened to you, I thought you were going for a walk?” Emira cocked her head as she looked at her sister's disheveled appearance. Her mint green hair was slightly matted and damp while her dress was wrinkled with bits of grass stuck to it, but she looked overall pleased before the two of them had gotten her attention.

“I… fell,” she finally said and the twins glanced at each other.

“You fell,” Emira repeated, crossing her arms and giving her sister a long look.

“Yes, down a hill…” Was that really the best she could come up with? She scolded herself. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired.” With that she disappeared into her room, leaving her sibling standing in the hall in silence.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Edric asked, turning to his twin.

“That Mittens is shagging the cute new guard?” Emira asked and Edric blinked wide eyes at her.

“Actually, I was gonna say I think she’s getting more clumsy, but that makes way more sense!” He laughed. “Didn’t think she had it in her… no wonder she didn’t want us to come along…”

“Too bad… I thought she was cute…,” Emira pouted.

“You could always try anyway?” Edric suggested, looking at her from across the hall. “I mean, I’m not saying you should and it would certainly be a shit thing to do, but you could.” He shrugged. Emira scoffed.

“What kind of sister do you take me for, to try and steal a woman from my own baby sister?” She shot him a scandalized look that made him laugh.

“I was just saying!”

~ ~

Amity quickly pulled off her dress, training pants still on beneath. The jacket would have been visible beneath the dress, so it had to come off.

Just as she went to pull them off and she felt something in the pocket and dug her hand in to wrap around something smooth and warm before she pulled out the pink and white shell Luz had given her. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface. The pinks are bright against the off white and she admired it for a long moment before setting it on the table near her bed and finished changing out of the dirty clothes.

#Lumity #eventually #Luz Noceda #Amity Blight #Edric Blight #Emira Blight #fic #toh #the owl house

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class1akids · 4 years

Note

I know that this is probably a complicated question to ask, but what do you think Bakugou realised during the work study with Endeavor? I agree that Baku figured out his hero name during this arc. Since he told Endeavor at the beggining that he came here to find out what he can't do, I think this goal is related to his hero name since BJ told him that a hero name is what you want to become. And what he wants to become is someone who can surpass no1, atleast that's how I see it.

I’ve been thinking so much about this, and I’m still not sure that I fully get it (I think we’ll know more once this arc gets to the Origin Trio), but here is my latest thinking. So there were a couple of themes going on:

1. Bakugou wanting to learn what he’s missing

It starts with him remembering Best Jeanist who told him that his hero name is his personal wish, an expression of the type of hero he wants to be. Best Jeanist also told him that he wanted to show him the outside world.

All Might pointing out Bakugou’s similarities with Endeavor and telling him that seeing the current (read: post-redemption) Endeavor would be good for him.

As the internship starts though, we don’t get any special revelation about what Bakugou’s missing - even Endeavor admits that he has great mobility, still, he the assignment he gives him is to improve the ability to draw his maximum power in an instant. Endeavor also keeps saying that being out in the real world is different than a classroom because it’s not about points and scores

but human lives.

2. The Todoroki family drama

Bakugou gets to watch up close the entire Todoroki drama unfold, where he gets to see Endeavor not as the No. 1. Hero with the top agency and the respect that it gives him, but as a private person, despised by his own family, scrambling to make up for past mistakes. He’s a hero who got to the top and it cost him absolutely everything in terms of human connections.

There is also a whole lot of talk about past sins and forgiveness and it all visibly rubs Bakugou the wrong way.

3. Saving

It all comes together when Natsuo gets kidnapped right in front of their noses. It’s not the first time Bakugou saves someone (after all he learns during DvK2 that saving is as important as winning), but saving Jirou was for points (her life was never in danger), and in the case of the soda pop incident, Bakugou seems mostly inconvenienced by some dumb civilian and is worried about All Might.

This is different though. Natsuo is the perfect conduit for Bakugou to really understand the meaning of saving. He’s almost a stranger, but he’s important to someone Bakugou cares about a lot (as made clear by the we are friends/we are not friends recurring banter), now he knows the entire family - Endeavor who better or worse spent a week teaching him, Fuyumi, who cared enough to make something spicy just for him - he heard how the loss of a child affected them. Natsuo is not a faceless extra. He’s someone’s brother, someone’s son,

So yeah, when Bakugou goes after him, this is the face he makes.

I knew it reminded me of something, and then I found it.

That whole body moved before thinking bit?

I think saving Natsuo, Bakugou experienced for the first time the kind of emotion Deku feels when he saves someone. He spent the week chasing Endeavor’s back, not being able to surpass his own limits in order to beat the No. 1., but here, with the clear motivation of saving he was able to go beyond.

He’s completely lost in the moment, without keeping scores, trying to go for win or any other thing he usually does.

I think it neatly fits into the theme of BNHA of this idea of Plus Ultra. The story tells us again and again, that people can jump over their own limits when they figure out not the how, but the why? Why get stronger, faster? And points, rankings at the end of the day are poor motivators.

Endeavor took two decades not being able to surpass his own limits for a rank he coveted so much, but once he found the clarity what he’s fighting for, suddenly he could beat someone stronger and faster than himself.

So I think this is what Bakugou learnt - that taste of being able to save life and how that’s more meaningful than scoring better in class.

4. Forgiveness and atonement

OK, so Bakugou experiences the high of saving someone. Someone he doesn’t look down on as an extra or a weakling, because Natsuo even without a powerful quirk is someone who survived through some pretty bad family drama, someone who stands up to the No. 1. hero, someone strong. That’s a good thing, right?

Yes, but… it also means that all that narrative he built about Deku all his life, how he was trying to save Kacchan to look down on him is exposed for the bullshit it is.

And if Deku was not looking down on him, and was truly just trying to save him out of this pure desire to save, than everything Bakugou did to him, the ways he tried to push him down were all very, very wrong.

Throughout Endeavor’s speech to Natsuo, Bakugou’s reaction are hidden. We don’t see his face. We see Shouto and Deku watching Endeavor tell Natsuo that he’s kind, that he doesn’t have to forgive, that all he’s looking for is atonement (aka trying not to fix the unfixable, but to be better here onwards). Bakugou’s pose, him turning away is very deliberate. He’s seeing something different than the other two. He’s not on the victim’s side of this story.

Bakugou is only revealed when Natsuo asks Endeavor what he could do at this stage and Endeavor says that he has an idea, and they are interrupted by the arrival of the police. And this is what we get.

Bakugou is not watching Endeavor or the police. He’s looking at Deku. We don’t see his face very well, because Horikoshi is hiding his reactions for a later time, but it gives you a hint where his mind’s at.

And he comes away with some clarity, because by the end of all this, he knows what kind of a hero he wants to be.

TL; DR So to sum up, I think the things Bakugou learnt during the internship:

He finally understood that being a hero is not about self-serving competition, but foremost about saving lives.

He experienced a pure “saving high”.

Your true strength and ability to surpass your limits comes from the internal motivation of why? Why do you want to be better?

Being No. 1. doesn’t necessary bring personal happiness and fulfillment. You can get to the top and lose everything on the way.

The interplay between atonement and forgiveness. Only you can decide to try to be better from here onwards. Forgiveness belongs to the victims - it is their power.

He was really, really wrong about Deku’s motivation and was absolutely no justification for the way he bullied him.

#bnha #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #endeavor internship arc #endeavor #todoroki shouto #todoroki natsuo #bnha meta #bakugou character arc

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darks-ink · 4 years

Text

Self-Perception

A ghost's appearance is based on their self-image. How they see themselves. So when you've been told your entire life that ghosts are monsters, well... That does things to one's appearance, that's for sure.

Prompt: I think it would be interesting to see Danny’s phantom form either more monstrous from the get go, or become monstrous in some way, and people's reactions to that Prompt by: @sylph-feather Word count: 5,392

[AO3] [FFN] [more Phic Phight fics]

---

Danny was hu— no… Yes! He’s— Or maybe he just…

His heart was still in his chest, replaced by an alien whirring. His body glowed, a white aura surrounding him, flickering wildly.

Danny was…

His reflection stared at him with wide unblinking eyes. Vivid green. Unnatural green, the color of ectoplasm spilled on the kitchen table.

Danny couldn’t be a ghost. He was human. He couldn’t be dead, couldn’t be a ghost.

His breath caught in his throat. He felt like he was choking.

Ghosts didn’t choke. Ghosts didn’t breathe. He wasn’t a ghost.

Danny closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the mirror. The surface was pleasantly cool.

Just… breathe, Danny. It will all be okay when you open your eyes.

He opened his eyes.

His own face looked back at him, although the eyes were still vibrant green, his hair still white. It was still, undeniably, his own.

But he could feel his heart thudding in his chest. Felt his lungs greedily suck in air as he tried to stop himself from hyperventilating.

“This is fine,” he told the off-colored reflection in the mirror. “I’m not dead. I’m— I’m human.”

Something stirred in his core. Light flashed, suddenly, washing the entire room away with brightness.

When Danny finally blinked the spots out of his sight again, he saw—

Black hair. Blue eyes.

“Human,” he whispered, watching his lips curl into a hesitant smile. “See? I knew it.”

He nodded to himself. It was just— just something weird! That kinda stuff happened all the time in FentonWorks. Nothing to be concerned about!

Danny ran a hand through his hair, watching the heavy locks muss up in the mirror. No matter what, he was human. This was just…

Nothing. It was nothing.

He turned to leave the bathroom, smiling at Sam and Tucker when they saw him.

He was perfectly human.

---

Ghosts were an inevitability if you were raised as a Fenton. Whether you personally believed in them or not didn’t matter. They were a fact of life. It was impossible to not know anything about them.

One of the many things Danny had learned, forgotten, and learned again, was what ghosts looked like. They were monsters. You could tell, his parents always told him, because they looked like monsters. Because a ghost’s appearance reflected the way they saw themselves.

A ghost’s self-image was literal, really.

Danny stared down at the hands in his lap. They were pink, and fleshy, and warm. Detailed to an extent that he couldn’t imagine.

Human.

In a flash of light, it could all be gone. Or, not gone, but hidden. Covered up by skintight white gloves.

It wasn’t voluntary, not really, but he could control it a little. Could stop himself from shifting around his parents, around Jazz. And thank goodness, because he hadn’t… hadn’t really figured out if he wanted them to know.

They—he, and Sam and Tucker—had thought it was temporary. But it had been more than a week, and the cold-hot-cold in his chest still hadn’t gone away. No, it felt stronger by the day. More present, if hidden behind the sound of his heartbeat.

Not quite as human anymore. But human enough. He was… a little ghostly, maybe, but human first and foremost.

He let the cold in his chest wash over him. Walked over to the full-body mirror he had in his room.

A ghost looked back. But not— not a proper one. Because Danny wasn’t really a ghost, no matter what. He was mostly human.

And so was the ghost that looked at him.

It looked like Danny, really. The messed up hair, even if it was white instead of black, pressed down by gravity. The bright eyes, even if they were a little too bright, an unnatural glow emitting from them. And, y’know. Vivid green.

The jumpsuit was just like his parents’, but at least it was deep black instead of eye-searing orange. With the white gloves, boots, and belt, it almost looked… well, not decent, but okay. Kinda superhero-y, he supposed.

Not that there was anything superhero-esque about dying in your parents’ basement, but…

No! No thinking about that! He wasn’t—

Wasn’t dead.

A flicker of light drew his eye back to the mirror. To the undoubtedly human ghost. Its glow had brightened, but settled down, now. Almost like… an expression of emotion? Odd. According to his parents, ghosts didn’t feel emotions.

But then, he wasn’t really a ghost, was he?

He let the cold withdraw into his chest. Watched his hair turn black and his eyes blue. Watched his jumpsuit make way for normal clothes.

Nothing else changed. Because, even as a ghost, he was still human.

He was human.

---

“Are you sure that keeping this a secret is a good idea, Danny?”

Sam perched on the edge of his bed, and Danny dropped his eyes from the Thermos in his hand to her. “Weren’t you against telling my parents?”

“Yeah, but…” She shrugged, throwing a look at Tucker. “It could be dangerous.”

“Telling them could be dangerous as well,” he pointed out, pointedly shaking the Thermos. “I don’t know if my parents could’ve stopped the Lunch Lady without me. And…” And he might end up in a Thermos as well.

She sighed, then nodded. “As long as you’re sure, Danny.”

“Well, I thought it was pretty cool!” Tucker leaned back against Danny’s desk, grinning at him. “You were like a hero! A half-ghost hero!”

“Half-ghost?” Danny echoed, dubiously. Tasted the word in his mouth. It was… It almost resounded in the ball of energy in his chest. Like it had a physical feel to it, except not physical.

Tucker nodded energetically. “Yeah! You’re not a ghost, but you’re not fully human either. So a split between the two— half ghost, and half human. Half-ghost!”

“I don’t know, Tuck.” Danny let his arm fall down, ignoring the way his… the thing in his chest itched, churned, purred, at the concept. “I think that you might be overplaying it a little. Half ghost?”

“Hm. Maybe not, then.” Tucker clicked his tongue. “Just a human with ghost powers, maybe?”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, toying with the Thermos in his hand. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Because he was human, first and foremost.

“So…” Tucker started again, slowly. “If you’re gonna be doing that sort of thing more often, you should probably come up with a name to use for your alter ego.”

Danny huffed out a laugh. “You’re just using me as a dumping ground for all your superhero fantasies.”

“Guilty as charged!” Tucker chuckled, and Sam did, too.

“He’s right, though,” Sam admitted, prodding Danny a little. “What if someone sees you as a ghost, and asks who you are? Knowing you, you’ll just panic and blurt out your actual name.”

“Ugh.” Danny pressed himself deeper into his bed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll think about it.”

---

Phantom was the name he ended up settling on. Phantom was… just a ghost. That was the one thing he had going for him. Phantom was just a ghost, a ghostly form of Danny.

And it was Phantom who took down the attacking ghosts. The mindless feral animals, bad caricatures of real creatures.

The occasional intelligent ghost, too. Like the hulking metal Skulker, who was weak and pathetic on closer inspection. Like Sidney Poindexter, who looked like a regular human being except in monochrome. Like Desiree and Ember and many, many others.

It was Phantom who became known as Amity Park’s protector. The one ghost they could rely on to fight off the others.

Danny was human, but Phantom was a ghost. Even if they were the same person, no one but Sam and Tucker knew this.

Phantom was a ghost. Danny was too, at least a little, no matter how much he’d tried to deny it.

But that was okay. They were two sides of the same coin. Danny was the human side, and Phantom was the ghost side.

And because Phantom was a ghost, because Danny saw him as a ghost, he looked like one, too.

The changes weren’t sudden, of course, not spontaneous. They crept in, slowly. He hadn’t realized he was changing Phantom, not until he overheard his parents talking about it.

About how Phantom was becoming more monstrous, a clear display of his inner nature.

Danny… stopped. Almost dropped his bag onto the floor.

Then promptly rushed up, to his room, and locked the door. Tugged on his core, like he’d done so many times, and shifted into Phantom.

A ghost met his eyes.

Its glow was strong, flickering like a candle, in sync with his racing heartbeat. Bright green eyes, like the eyes of a jack-o-lantern, met his gaze. They were the color of ectoplasm. Only the color of ectoplasm. Green from end to end.

He grimaced, and jerked as his reflection did the same. Fangs. Large, sharp, pointed.

Danny carefully ran his tongue over the offending tooth. Yeah, definitely sharp, yikes. And since when was his tongue as Phantom green?

He lifted a hand with the intention to pull his lips up, to look at the rest of his teeth. But his eye caught on his fingers—or, more accurately, the ends of his fingers. The white gloves no longer ended at his fingertips. No, instead they continued into hooked claws that extended from the tips of his fingers.

Carefully, he grabbed one of the claws between the fingers of another hand. Definitely hard, and, ouch, definitely sharp as well.

Looking back at the mirror, Danny met his blank gaze again. One of his ears flicked like an animals, and only now did Danny realize that they were misshapen as well. Overlong and pointed. He grimaced, and watched the ears drop as well. Great! Just what he needed! Ears that responded to his emotional state!

Aggravated, he ran his hands through his hair. Felt the claws scratch along the skin of his head, not once catching on the tangles of his hair.

“Fuck,” he told his reflection, and it hissed back. He scratched his cheek, careful not to claw himself. “I should’ve— Man, I guess I should’ve fucking expected this.”

And that was the worst thing about this, wasn’t it? Because he really should’ve expected this. He’d known for how long that a ghost’s appearance was based on their self-perception?

Phantom had looked human because that’s what Danny was. And Phantom was Danny.

But over the last few months, he had stopped being Danny. Phantom had become, well, Phantom. The ghostly protector of Amity Park.

Danny rolled his neck, flexed his fingers. Tried to flick his ear, but failed. Tried snarling at his reflection.

This was certainly a ghost, yes, but not much of a protector. Maybe he’d been more stuck on his parents’ tales of ghosts than he thought. Ghosts were monsters, he’d always been told, but… but were they really?

The Dairy King hadn’t been. Cujo hadn’t meant ill, either. Sidney had been hurt, and Johnny and Kitty had just wanted some fun, and Wulf hadn’t even done anything wrong!

He shook his head, watched the locks linger in the air for just a touch too long to be natural. Well… So be it. He was a ghost, he was allowed to be a bit ghostly. It would make it harder for people to connect Phantom with Danny, wouldn’t it?

Phantom was a ghost, but he was no monster. That would have to be enough.

If Sam and Tucker hadn’t noticed yet… Well, it couldn’t be all that important, could it? He could hold off on telling them about all this until they asked.

Danny turned away from the mirror again, shifting back to his human form.

And if his skin seemed just a little pinker, just a little healthier, after shifting… Well, that just a trick of the mind, wasn’t it?

---

Phantom was a monster.

It was all Danny could think of. The sight of Phantom, massive and entirely ghost, surrounded by flames. Surrounded by destruction the ghost had caused.

Phantom was a monster, and Danny’s humanity was the only thing holding it back. Because Phantom was him. Because, as long as he was still him, Phantom was human enough.

Danny let his transformation wash over him, not looking at himself in the mirror. Not yet.

Instead he started peeling off his gloves. Carefully unbuckled his boots. Dropped the belt. Unzipped his jumpsuit until it hung slack around his hips.

Only then did he look at himself in the mirror.

Empty green eyes, emotion almost impossible to read. White hair. Long pointed ears that drooped downwards, upset. A scowl on his face, lips curled far enough to reveal the fangs underneath.

A massive injury—scar—something scrawled over his chest, his arm, his side. It was, somehow, simultaneously dulled and healed, and vivid green like a fresh injury.

He flexed his left hand, a mess of green scars and blackened flesh, only broken up by the white claws. Twisted his arm to see the injury branch its way up his arm, jagged and spiked like lightning. It lessened the closer to his body it got, before leading into the massive scar on his chest.

It looked so fresh, so brand new, that Danny could feel the phantom pains emanate from it. Could feel— lightning, cold-hot-cold-hot, like every nerve was on fire and frozen solid.

At its very center, the injury was slick, shimmering almost like liquid. Green like freshly spilled ectoplasm. So soft, so transparent, that Danny could see the glow of his core through it.

Other branches from the lightning-like scar sprawled down over his side, over his shoulders onto his back, and even onto his neck. Danny made a face as he inspected that branch, which stopped just low enough for his jumpsuit to cover it.

At least the more scar-like parts of it faded away against his skin. The injuries were dull green, yes, but his skin had definitely changed tone. No longer was it pink and warm, but it wasn’t… wasn’t teal like Dan’s, either. Just… pale, and cool.

Danny watched his reflection, holding still. Watched his core pulse in his chest, and realized…

Realized that he couldn’t feel his heart pounding. His reflection didn’t blink— Danny didn’t blink.

His breath caught in his chest, and he held it. Held it almost indefinitely.

Phantom was a monster, only held back by Danny’s humanity, and… and he was losing it. Losing said humanity.

A knock on the door. Danny startled, flinching so hard that he lifted off of the ground. He had—

He hadn’t locked the door, apparently, because it swung open.

“Danny?” Sam asked, blinking wide eyes at him. “Wow, uh, you’re… shirtless.”

“Oh my god,” he whispered, dropping limply onto the ground. His core churned so loudly he was sure Sam could hear it. “You scared me to death.”

“I think it was too late for that already, dude.” Tucker shoved Sam further into the room, also coming in. “Wow, what’s up with those scars? And, uh…”

Tucker trailed off, then fell silent.

“Yeah,” Danny agreed, voice muffled by the floor. “That.”

“What happened?” Sam asked, wandering closer. She paused. “This is… This looks like it was caused by the accident…”

Danny hummed wordlessly.

“But you didn’t have these scars before,” Tucker pointed out, also walking up to Danny. “And your skin… Danny, what’s happening?”

He laughed. It wasn’t a good kind of laughter. “Don’t you know that a ghost’s appearance is based on self-perception? So if you think that all ghosts are monsters…”

“Dan,” Sam gasped. “But you don’t look like…”

“It’s been happening for longer.” Danny braced himself on an arm, pushing himself up slightly to look at her. To meet her eyes. “Slowly but surely. Ever since I started seeing Phantom as a ghost…”

“Wow.” Tucker flicked Danny’s ear, laughing when it twitched in response. “Dude, how did we not notice this? I mean, I know you do a lot of solo patrols, but…”

He shrugged slightly. “I didn’t want to mention it, not until either of you said anything about it. It’s… not a big deal.”

“You’re literally seeing yourself as a monster to the extent where you’re starting to look like one, too,” Sam pointed out and, ouch. No need to be so vicious about it. “Danny, that’s a huge deal.”

“Nah,” he denied, shaking his head. His hair fluttered freely, the locks continuing to shift unnaturally. His claws dug into the floor as his fingers twitched. “It’s… fine. Just part of being a ghost.”

“Yeah, but most ghosts aren’t told 24/7 that all ghosts are monsters.” Sam crouched next to him, one hand cautiously batting a lock of floating hair. “Danny, you don’t have to pretend that this isn’t upsetting you.”

He sighed, pushing himself up into a sitting position. His feet were unscarred but off-colored, the nails just a little too pointed. Why had he even taken off his boots if he wasn’t planning on taking his pants off?

“It’s just… It wasn’t all that big of a deal, before. If Phantom was a little more ghostly than before, well… that was right, wasn’t it? Phantom was supposed to be a ghost.” He shrugged. “And it would make him more different from me. From human me. But then…”

“But then Dan happened,” Tucker finished, sitting down next to him. He was a comforting warmth against Danny’s side. “And now it’s all messed up.”

“Yeah,” he agreed gustily. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. I didn’t mind Phantom being a ghost, but now… now I know that all that’s holding him back is my humanity.”

Sam continued to play with his hair, flicking locks of his hair until they all floated freely. “It’s not all on you, Danny. That wasn’t just Phantom, was it? It was Plasmius too.”

“But Phantom was the one who ripped Plasmius out, who fused with him.”

“According to Vlad.” Tucker nudged him. “According to Vlad, that’s what happened. No offense, dude, but I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, and that’s not very far. How can you be sure that he told you the truth?”

“I…” He swallowed. His throat felt dry and constricted all of a sudden. He was glad that he didn’t need to breathe as a ghost anymore. “I guess I can’t know.”

“So stop worrying about it.” Sam crowded up next to him as well, warm against his other side. “You’re Danny Fenton, and you’re Phantom. Half human, and half ghost. Protector of Amity Park.”

“But what if—”

“If you ever go too far,” Tucker interrupted. “If you ever become too much of a ghost, we’ll be there. We’re a team, Danny. We’re your friends.”

His core hiccuped in his chest, the light visible through his chest. “I—”

“If that’s not an agreement I don’t want to hear it,” Sam said, sharply, but not unkindly. “Seriously, Danny. You’re allowed to not be okay, and you’re allowed to accept help. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Yeah, I…” He looked up at the mirror. A ghost looked back, bright and lively green eyes and white hair which flickered like a flame, a vivid scar running over its arm and chest. On either side were humans crowded against it, their skin tones so warm compared to the ghost’s.

“I’m a ghost,” he said, slowly but resolutely. “And… that’s okay. Ghosts aren’t… aren’t inherently bad. And if Dora isn’t automatically bad, and Cujo, and all those others… neither am I.”

He grinned, and his reflection grinned back. Sharp fangs and all.

“There you go, dude!” Tucker smiled as well, nudging him again. “Now self-percept yourself some muscles because this is just sad, Danny.”

“Wow!” He gasped dramatically, planting his right hand against his chest, fingers splayed wide enough to curve the claws away from the injury. “At least I’m actually physically active!”

Tucker clicked his tongue, shook his head. “Now that’s just hurtful, man.”

“You started it, Tuck,” Sam pointed out, reached past Danny to swat at Tucker. “Now, Danny, any other serious things we need to know about?”

He opened his mouth to tell her no, but paused. Listened to the quiet whirring in his chest.

“Actually…” He licked his lips, a quick flash of green. “I guess I kind of… might also influence my bodily functions with my self-image?”

She stared at him, incredulous.

“Are you telling me that you’ve barely been blinking because you’re too ghostly to do that?” Tucker demanded from Danny’s other side. “Dude!”

“My heart also kind of stopped beating?” Danny grinned, awkwardly. “And I don’t think I’ve been breathing, either.”

Tucker laughed, startled, then pressed his head against Danny’s shoulder. “Why are you like this?”

“I blame my parents.” Danny shrugged his free shoulder. “They’ve been going on and on about Phantom’s changing appearance, and, y’know, the workings of ghosts. They don’t have any organs, or bodily functions or anything, so I guess I just… automatically stopped with all that, too.”

“Well, I guess that that’s fair.” Sam made a thoughtful noise. “That’s not gonna carry over to your human form, will it?”

“Uh…” He blinked, frowned. “I mean, maybe? It hasn’t before, but I’ve also been trying very hard to keep human and ghost separate, so…”

“That can’t be good for you.” She pressed closer against him, too. “Danny, you’re allowed to be half-ghost, you know? You’re not entirely human, and not entirely ghost, and that’s okay.”

He sighed, gustily, and nodded. “Yeah, I… I should stop doing that.” If he let his ghost be more human, that’d be… Phantom would be more human. He wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—Dan.

“We’ll be keeping an eye out, now, so don’t think about trying to not do it.” Tucker rolled his head around so he could meet Danny’s eye without lifting his head. “And, dude? I’m serious, you should conjure up some more muscle for yourself.”

“Tucker.”

---

“Don’t you get it?!” Valerie ranted, her arms waving wildly as Danny picked away at his lunch. “Phantom is getting more and more monster-like in appearance! That’s a direct link to personality!”

He rolled his eyes, lifting up his sandwich to take a bite. “Valerie, my parents are talking about that stuff all. The. Time. Trust me, I know.”

“But he’s…” she trailed off, falling silent. “Danny?”

Why. He had literally just taken a bite. “Hm?”

“You—” She huffed, suddenly, dropping down on the bench attached to their lunch table. She stared at him. Didn’t say a word as he slowly chewed on the bite in his mouth.

He swallowed it. “What?”

“Are you aware of the fact that your teeth are, you know.” She gestured vaguely. “Enormous fangs?”

Well, fuck. “Ha, well. Ecto-contamination, am I right?”

“Your eyes are glowing.”

“Ecto—”

“Your ears are large, pointed, and just flattened down.”

“No they didn’t!” he countered, because he knew they wouldn’t have. Maybe in his ghost form, but he tried very hard to repress that in human form!

“Ha! You didn’t deny the oversize ears even though you don’t have them!” She grinned victoriously, but the smile dropped almost instantly as she leaned over the table. Valerie’s fist closed around his shirt, dragging him closer until their faces were almost touching. “You fucking idiot.”

“What?” he blurted out. “What did I even do?”

She stared at him, incredulously. Let go of his shirt and dropped back onto her seat. “How on Earth have you kept the fact that you’re Phantom a secret for so long?”

“Well, you know.” He shrugged, vaguely. Scratched his cheek with his too-long, too-sharp nails. His heart rate had spiked, almost up to a healthy human speed. “Most people don’t think a ghost can be a human too, and definitely not the ghost hunters’ son.”

“But you’re…”

“Danny,” he finished for her, before she could come to the wrong conclusion. “I’m Danny Fenton. I’ve always been Danny Fenton. I just… had an accident. Became half-ghost.” He grinned sheepishly. “Started calling my ghost half Phantom, and then kind of accidentally shaped its appearance based on how I saw ghosts.”

“Like a monster,” Valerie realized, eyes wide. “God, Danny, that’s…”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

“Yeah,” he agreed anyway. “I know right?”

“Does anyone else know, at least?” She ran a hand through her hair, looking like all wind had gone from her sails. “Or have you been going through this all alone? I mean, your parents—”

“They definitely don’t know.” He huffed. His heart slowed down again, and he blinked, deliberately. “Sam and Tucker know. Knew from the start, they were there when it happened. Jazz knows, but she only told me recently.”

He fell silent. Valerie waited for a long moment. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he confirmed.

“Well. That’s some shit, Danny.”

He laughed, startled. “You don’t know the half of it!”

“You— Was that a pun?” She groaned, loud and exaggerated. “I should’ve known. No one else in this town loves puns like you and Phantom. Should’ve figured that you were one and the same.”

His core chirped, whirring up into a pleased purr. “That’s all on you, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll get you for this, Fenton,” she warned him. The grin on her face didn’t fall. Stayed joyous and hopeful and teasing. “Keep your ghostly unblinking eyes peeled, or you’ll never see it coming.”

---

Danny took a deep breath of air, deliberate and slow. He was in his ghost form, so it wasn’t exactly necessary. Hell, even in his human form breathing was of debatable importance.

Sometimes it scared him, how ghostly he had become.

He sighed out the air, dropping his eyes down. There, in front of him, laid a vast expanse of water.

Or, well. It really wasn’t all that vast. It was just a small lake in the park. But let him be dramatic sometimes, dammit!

The surface was still, reflective like a mirror. It was dark, yes, but Danny’s eyesight was crazy good these days, even in the dark.

He smiled at his reflection, waved a hand. White-gloved and tipped with fearsome claws, a smaller curve covered with jagged but clear ice. The light of the moon caught in its many reflective surfaces, shining onto his black jumpsuit, his white flickering hair, his horns.

Danny combed a hand through his hair, carefully avoiding the horns. They were growing quickly, curving blades of ice. They reminded him of Frostbite.

Actually… He bit his lip. That was probably what had caused them, wasn’t it? Frostbite and his people?

Phantom was a ghostly protector, but for most of Phantom’s existence, Danny hadn’t known what that looked like. He’d shaped his form based on… on hatred, on visions of monsters, on nightmares.

But Frostbite… Frostbite was a guardian. He and his people, they protected their domain, their artifacts. They were ghostly protectors long before Danny had been.

They had taught him about his powers, too. About their shared power over ice.

It wasn’t all that surprising, then, that Danny had automatically copied traits from them for his own ghost form. And, all things considered, claws and horns of ice weren’t the worst thing he could’ve gone with.

Hell, he could’ve gone all hairy! Or a tail! His spectral tail was enough for him, thank you very much!

He shifted until he laid flat on his belly, floating a little above the water. Gently swirled one finger through the water, breaking his makeshift mirror. Despite their appearance, his claws weren’t cold like ice; the water barely cooled, and remained unfrozen.

That, at least, had been deliberate. Danny, even in his ghost form, touched people surprisingly often. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, hell, even Valerie hung out with him in his ghost form regularly. And he grabbed onto random people all the time during ghost fights, to drag them out of the way of an attack or to free them from debris they’d gotten trapped in.

It was the one thing about his ghost form that didn’t quite match up with proper ghosts. Despite his ice powers, Danny remained warm. Not human warm, but not disturbingly cold, either.

The last thing he wanted was for someone to flinch into the danger he was trying to get them away from.

He smiled, weakly, letting just the slightest bit of cold energy leak from his finger. Ice trailed after his finger, now, forming swirling patterns on the water. Curls and twirls and elegant curves, paper thin.

Grass rustled, and Danny’s eyes snapped up to the lake’s coast. There, clear as day, were the Fentons. Both had their goggles down—had they integrated night-vision into those? They must’ve, to be out here at this time of night.

“Phantom,” Jack growled—because he was Jack, now, not Dad—raising an ecto-gun. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Danny replied, rolling his eyes. He waved his hand through the water, breaking up the ice, letting it melt away again. “Looking at my reflection, creating art, y’know?”

Maddie snorted disbelievingly. “Worried about people figuring you out, Phantom?”

“Figuring out what?” He huffed, righting his position so he floated upright. “That I have ice powers? That I’m strong, and a competent ghost hunter?”

“That you’re not human,” she sneered back. “That you’re losing that little humanity you might’ve had. That you’re finally showing your true side.”

“Oh, please.” He shook his head, flapping a dismissive hand. “I’m no less human than I was when I first appeared. But you’re clearly not going to listen to me, and I’ve got better things to do, so.”

He turned himself invisible, lifting up. Their eyes tracked him, confirming his suspicions that they had some sort of infrared in their goggles, too.

Well, no point in sticking around. He probably should’ve gone to bed instead of coming to the park, anyway.

As he left, he could hear the sound of a gun discharging. But not, like, fire a shot discharging. No, like someone had stopped charging it altogether.

Danny strained his ears towards his parents, even as he flew away. And it was just, just enough, to overhear their quiet muttering.

“He’s getting too cocky,” his mom said.

“He knows how strong he’s getting, yeah,” his dad agreed. “He’s dangerous, and he knows it.”

“And nobody realizes. They all see his continued good behavior, and no one sees the literal proof of him becoming a monster.”

Danny bit his lip, swiveling his ears away. Whatever else they were going to say, he didn’t want to hear.

He wasn’t becoming a monster.

He had been one for years.

---

Phantom was… Danny.

And Danny was…

People cheered as he dove low over the crowd. As he fired blast after blast into the chimeric animal ghost that attacked them, its heads snapping at bystanders.

Danny pushed for just a little bit more speed, his legs blending together into a spectral tail. Slammed into the ghost, dug his claws into its side, and dragged it up—up, and away from the people.

He released it, the ghost disoriented for a brief moment. Brief, but just long enough.

The blue vortex of the Thermos trapped it, warped it, caught it.

Danny capped the Thermos again, floating above the crowd of Amity Park’s citizens. Clicked the Thermos back onto his belt, his claws clicking against the metal. His tail curled, almost anxiously, as he looked over the gathered people.

And they—

They cheered for him, still. Despite everything that had changed, despite the—claws, fangs, eyes, skin, scars, horns, inhuman inhuman inHUMAN—they still celebrated him. Celebrated his victories, yelled positive reinforcement and thanks and love at him.

He felt it deep inside him, in his very core. It rumbled, powerful and loud, purring like a cat. He glowed, pleased, bright as the sun.

And Amity Park still yelled for him, still cheered for him. They called him their ghostly protector, their— their ghostly angel.

It felt like— like pure power. Coursing through his core, through his body. From his horns through his twisted scars all the way to his claws. Through his fangs and his green flesh and his inhumanly pale skin.

It was like drowning. Like drowning in positivity, in goodness, in… in love.

He was their ghostly protector, and they called him their ghostly angel. And that… That was…

Angels weren’t human. And neither was he.

And that was okay.

#phic phight #phic phight 2020 #phic phight 20 #danny phantom #dp fanfic #phanfic #dp fanfiction #phanfiction #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #valerie gray #dark writes #i mean... being a ghost after growing up being told theyre monsters has gotta do something to your self-image right?

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ambidextrousarcher · 4 years

Text

Meta-1: Dispelling the myth that Karna was unheard by others as he was a Suta...

Okay. *Takes a deep breath*

Since all opinions are welcome here, and I do not wish to ruffle people’s sensibilities (too much, at least, lest anyone think that I am attacking them), I’d like to calmly state that, outside of the realm of TV shows and revisionist retellings, the whole ‘Karna is always dismissed as he was a Suta’ is but a fancy.

I have seen a number of posts, both here and in other sites, recently, claiming that Karna nearly always not listened to because he was a Suta.

I would like to corroborate this claim of mine with quotes from canon. BORI mostly) This is under a cut. Trigger warning: Sexual assault.

This meta is TOO long as it is, so I am deleting/shortening some canon citations. Feel free to comment if you want the longer versions, I’ll try to DM you.

This is intended for @hindumythologyevent Day 5: Character analysis.

In light of certain events that happened yesterday, I would like to clarify that this meta was planned for over a month, it has been sitting in my drafts for that long, as @medhasree (my beta/co-writer), @ambitiousandcunning (my beta), @jigyask and @shaonharryandpannisim can attest to. This is not a pre-mediated attack, nor is it meant to be overtly hostile, except perhaps to Karna/Draupadi shippers, as per my own subjective opinion.

This is, as all my posts are, canonically based. I have included many canon citations from BORI and also stated my own subjective opinion. It is not intended to hurt anyone, merely to set some facts in front of everyone who is interested in them.

As usual, I will tag all the mods of the event: @1nsaankahanhai-bkr, @allegoriesinmediasres and @soniaoutloud.

Also tagging some of my mutuals: @chaanv @mayavanavihariniharini @phalgunaa @snaagin @vishnupada. Apologies for the short tag list.

The first misconception is that Karn was not Dron’s student. He was.

‘Then the valorous Drona taught Pandu’s sons the use of many weapons, human and divine. O bull among the Bharata lineage! Other princes also came to Drona, supreme among Brahmanas, to learn the use of arms—the Vrishnis, the Andhakas, kings from many countries and Radheya, the son of the suta. They made Drona their preceptor. The suta’s son was envious of Partha and always competed with him. With Duryodhana’s support, he showed his contempt for the Pandavas.

(Page 734, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition)

Here, Radheya, the son of the suta, refers to none other than Karna.

The second instance is the Rangabhoomi exhibition, which is basically the one instance in canon where he IS insulted by someone in the Pandava side, which is Bheem, and not Arjun. However, it makes sense in context.

The first thing to remember here is that the Rangabhoomi is a family exhibition, no one outside family is welcome.

“O Partha! Before the eyes of these people, I will perform feats that will surpass everything that you have done. Don’t be too amazed at what you have done.” O supreme among those who are eloquent! No sooner had he uttered these words, than the spectators quickly stood up all at once, as if raised up by a single machine. O tiger among men! Duryodhana was greatly delighted. Bibhatsu was suddenly filled with anger and a sense of disgrace. ‘With Drona’s permission, Karna, always eager to do battle and immensely strong, exhibited all that Partha had displayed before. O descendant of the Bharata lineage! Duryodhana and his brothers delightedly embraced Karna and said, “O mighty-armed hero! Welcome. Good fortune has brought you here.

(Page 744, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition)

Clearly, here, it is obvious that Duryodhana and Karna are old friends. Nor has anyone brought his lineage forward yet, until he asks for a duel with Arjun, who, angry, agrees, threatening to kill him.

Another thing to remember here is that Karna is about a decade older than Arjun. In too many modern adaptations, that is washed off. I would like to bring notice to the fact.

Once they are ready, Kripa introduces Arjun, just as Drona had introduced Arjun before, and asks Karna to do the same, introduce himself, proving himself equal to Arjun’s lineage. This might be taken as a slur, but it seems he is just following protocol, since Dron does not object, he actually gives Karn implicit permission as he nods his head and allows Karn in when Karn challenges Arjun.

After Karna has been crowned to establish him as Arjun’s equal, a crown that he was neither born to, nor earned for himself by either his or his students’ valor, then Adiratha walks in. Karna treats him as a father. That is when Bheem, incensed, insults Karna. (Bheem is very protective of Arjun, so much so that his loyal protectiveness, not only of Arjun, throughout the epic, is his most defining trait) and while it does not excuse what he did, it does give an explanation to why he said what he did.

When Pandava Bhimasena saw him, he deduced that he was a charioteer’s son and jeeringly said, “O son of a charioteer! You don’t have the right to be killed by Partha in battle. You had better take up a whip, more befitting of your lineage.

(Page 747, the Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

This is, by far, the one time Karna is insulted for his caste. Kindly observe that such “caste”-based insults are not at all new throughout Mahabharata, or specific to Karna either. And no, I am not speaking of the “low” castes, you will be surprised to know. To state an example - the likes of Bheem and Drupad insult Drona for his caste, and he was a Brahmin, unanimously an “upper” caste man. Note the context and timing of such “casteist” insults. War. It is always during war and battle. Psychological warfare is something most of you must have heard of. Insults related to but not limited to caste are spread throughout the epic.

What does he do next? Support Duryodhana in killing the Pandavas.

‘On seeing that Bhimasena had become extremely strong and Dhananjaya extremely skilled, the evil Duryodhana was tormented. Then, Vaikartana Karna and Subala’s son, Shakuni, tried to kill the Pandavas through various means. However, the Pandavas, slayers of enemies, discovered all of them.

(Page 749, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Note that Karna does not challenge Arjun to a duel again. Arjun, in the text, was clearly willing to go for it. Karna could easily have challenged and killed him (if he really could) out of the public eye. Or, considering the text states that they tried to kill the Pandavas through “various means” (undefined ones), one can speculate if some sort of duel did happen, and if it did, well, the result seems to be conclusive enough for the average heedful reader.

Another incident that is commonly cited is Draupadi refusing him. Something that did not happen. [Only 3-4 manuscripts, including the one KMG used, out of the 1200+ manuscripts, mention the refusal of Draupadi, and go on to contradict themselves again. As such, we can easily junk this interpolation.]

“O Brahmanas! If Kshatriyas like Karna and Shalya, who are famous in the world, have great strength and are well versed in Dhanur Veda, could not string the bow, how can this weakling Brahmana, with no knowledge of weapons, succeed?

(Page 832, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

This paragraph is said when Arjun stands with the intent of stringing the bow. Karna’s name is explicitly mentioned as ‘could not string the bow.’ Draupadi is documented to say not a word.

For those who say that Arjun is able to fight Karn only with Krishn’s help, I have this sound piece of evidence, (apart from the sound defeat Karna and the rest of the Kuru army faced at Arjun’s hands, without the presence of Krishna), said by Karn himself in Draupadi’s swayamvara, when he is fighting the Brahmana who has won Draupadi. In canon, Arjun and Krishn do not meet until after the Swayamvara.

Have you assumed the form of a Brahmana to disguise yourself and are now fighting strongly with me for self-preservation, mustering the strength of your arms? When I am angry in the field of battle, no one except Shachi’s husband and Pandava Kiriti can withstand me.”

(Page 836, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Here, Shachi’s Husband is Indra, and Pandava Kriti is Arjun. Karna himself admits that Arjun can withstand him.

Note that Karna himself admits that Arjun can easily withstand him, even when he is, self-admittedly “angry in battle”. Karna is quite clearly not holding back when he fights Arjun “just because he is a Brahmin" (which is used by many people to indicate that it was actually Karna who won this “round”). Karna himself seems to think otherwise, friends.

Duryodhana listens to Karna most of the time, instead of the other way round. Karna has a lot of weightage in his councils. In the Dyuta Sabha, after Duryodhana considers Draupadi won, he wants her to come in front of the elders as a slave, as far as I can interpret the text. His ideas explicitly does not include the vastraharan...until. Karna instigates the idea.

“O Duhshasana! This son of a suta has limited intelligence. He is frightened of Vrikodara. Go and bring Yajnaseni here yourself. Our rivals are now under our control. They can do nothing.” Having heard his brother, the prince arose. His eyes were red with anger. He entered the house of those maharathas and told Princess Droupadi, “O Panchali! O Krishna! You have been won by us. Look upon Duryodhana without any shame. O one with eyes like long lotus petals! You will now love the Kurus. You have been won in accordance with dharma.

(Page 1058, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Note that Duryodhana seems to have no intent to disrobe Draupadi. He says nothing about dragging Draupadi to court in the vile manner Duhshassan does either. He tells Duhshassan to “bring” her. Probably use harsher words than the “frightened” messenger did, be more authoritative.

This is what Dusshasan says to Draupadi before dragging her (which seems to be completely his own idea, not Duryodhana’s, as portrayed by many).

Swiftly the angry Duhshasana rushed at her, letting out a great roar. The long, blue and flowing hair belonged to the wife of a lord of men and was now grabbed by him. At the time of the great rajasuya sacrifice, the hair had been sprinkled with auspicious waters. The valour of the Pandavas was vanquished and Dhritarashtra’s son grabbed it with force. She had protectors, but was without a protector. Grabbing her by her long hair, Duhshasana pulled and dragged her to the sabha, like a plantain tree buffeted by the wind.

(Page 1059, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Dusshasan drags Draupadi to the hall, her hair and dress becomes loose, but she is still clad in loose, half-length clothes, befitting her menstruating state, as given above. This scene is bad enough as it is, it is going to get worse.

She is dragged to the Sabha, she asks if Yudhisthir was truly her lord when he lost her, Dushassan keeps dragging her and calling her a slave. Vikarna defends her, asking Dhritrashtra to answer her question. Then enters Karna into the conversation.

Vikarna again spoke to all those lords of the earth. He rubbed his hands against each other, sighed and said, “O lords of the earth! O Kouravas! Whether you say anything or not, I will tell you what I think is right. O best of men! It has been said that addiction to hunting, drinking, gambling and sexual intercourse are the four vices of kings. The man who is addicted to these deviates from dharma and the world does not approve of these improper deeds. This son of Pandu was addicted to vice and challenged by deceitful gamblers, staked Droupadi. The unblemished one is common to all the Pandavas. Having first lost himself, the Pandava offered her as stake. Soubala, desirous of a stake, suggested Krishna. Reflecting on all these, I do not think she has been won.” On hearing these words, a great roar arose from all those who were in the sabha. They approved of Vikarna and censured Soubala.

(Page 1062, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

The above is about the latter half of what Vikarna speaks. The Sabha turns to support Draupadi and Vikarna after this.

When the noise died down, Radheya, who was almost senseless with anger, gripped his lustrous arms and uttered these words, “I have witnessed many distortions in Vikarna. O Dhritarashtra’s son! How can you think that Krishna has not been won? In this sabha, the eldest Pandava staked everything he possessed. O bull among the Bharata lineage! Droupadi is included in all his possessions. When Krishna has been won in accordance with dharma, how can you think she has not been won? Droupadi was mentioned in the speech and the Pandava approved. According to what reason do you then think that she has not been won? If you think that bringing her into the sabha when she is clad in only a single garment is against dharma, listen to the words I have to say in response. O descendant of the Kuru lineage! It has been ordained by the gods that a woman should only have one husband. However, she submits to many and it is therefore certain that she is a courtesan. It is my view that there is nothing surprising in her being brought into the sabha in a single garment, or even if she is naked. In accordance with dharma, Soubala has won all the riches the Pandavas possessed, including her and themselves. O Duhshasana! This Vikarna is only a child, though he speaks words of wisdom. Strip away the garments from the Pandavas and Droupadi.”

(Page 1063, the Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

If you read the passage above, it is extremely clear that it is neither Duryodhan, nor any other Kaurava, who is initiating Vastraharana, either of Draupadi, or her husbands, instead, it is Karna. The Kauravas, including Duryodhana and Dusshasana, follow Karna’s instructions. In fact, Karna outright commands Dusshansana, and he obeys without a murmur.

There are many people who call this ‘justified retribution’ to the ‘insult’ Draupadi gave Karna, and I have seen that many of them are women. It has already been cited above that Draupadi did not refuse Karna.

Even if she had, I am sure that such disproportionate retribution can be justified only in the eyes of people who have no idea what justice is. Vastraharan is a scene that is nearly rape. It is sexual assault of a very high degree. Would you say that every girl who refuses a boy on grounds that she is not pleased with him deserves something like this? Would you?

If you would, I am sorry, I would not consider your opinion worthy of consideration, especially if you are a girl/woman yourself.

After Vastraharan, comes the exile. Here, too, Karna plays an active part (until it comes to the thick of battle, in which, most of the time, if not all the time, he runs away. I will prove this, too.)

First comes the Ghoshayatra. Karna plans on humiliating the Pandavas and kill them. Note that I said ‘Karna plans’.

Karna opened his radiant eyes wide. In great anger, he aroused himself, and spoke to Duhshasana and Soubala in wrath, “O lords of men! Listen to my true views. With servile hands, we are trying to do everything that pleases the king. But while remaining stationary, we cannot always bring him pleasure. Let us now grasp our armour and weapons and mounting our chariots, go together and kill the Pandavas, who are roaming in the forest. When they have all been pacified and have left for the unknown journey, we and Dhritarashtra’s sons will be unchallenged. As long as they are distressed and as long as they are immersed in grief, as long as they are without allies, till then, we can do this. This is my view.” Having heard these words, they applauded them repeatedly. All of them then praised the suta’s son, saying that his words were excellent. Having said this, all those angry ones separately mounted their chariots. They then set out in a body, having made up their minds to kill the Pandavas.

(Page 1110-1111,The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

It is Karna who thinks up of this plan. All along, as in the Vastraharan, Duryodhana and his brothers follow Karna. What happens next? Duryodhan gets cursed by a Rishi, it seems, according to canon, that if he doesn’t make peace with the Pandavas, Bheem will kill him.

Something that strikes me is that, Karna, who asks Arjun to be fair to him at the end, clearly doesn’t care about fairness when it comes to his own actions at all. He never challenged the Pandavas when they were in an equal position to him. No, he waits till they are cheated and exiled to do that.

After that comes the Parva in which Bheem kills Baka’s brother, then comes Kirata Parva, in which Arjun gets celestial weapons, then Arjun goes to heaven, a lot of other things happen, but those are for another day.

For now, we shall go to the Ghosha-yatra parva.

In which, after hearing Dhritrashtra praise the Pandavas, Karna suggests showing off their cattle and wealth to the Pandavas.

Karna heard these words of Dhritarasthra. At an appropriate time, he spoke thus to Duryodhana. “O descendant of the Bharata lineage! You have exiled the brave Pandavas through your own valour. You now enjoy the earth alone, like the killer of Shambara in heaven. O lord of men! O king! All the kings of the east, south, west and north pay tribute to you. The blazing Lakshmi used to serve the Pandavas earlier. O king! But with your brothers, you have now won her. O king! The blazing prosperity that we earlier saw, for a short time, with Yudhishthira in Indraprastha, is now with you and he is oppressed by sorrow.

(Page 1636, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

He continues in such a vein for some time, then comes to the point.

You have wealth and they are deprived of wealth. They are without prosperity and you are full of prosperity. O king! Go and see the sons of Pandu. Let the Pandavas behold you like Nahusha’s son Yayati, with great splendour and established in great fortune. O lord of the earth! This prosperity, that well-wishers and ill-wishers see in a radiant man, is considered to be real power. Like a man who stands on a mountain and looks down on earth, what happiness can there be that is greater than being on plain ground while one’s foes are on uneven terrain? O tiger among kings! The birth of a son or the obtaining of a kingdom does not bring as much bliss as seeing one’s enemies in misery. What happiness will there not be, on being successful oneself, and on seeing Dhananjaya attired in bark and skins? Let your wives, attired in excellent garments, see the miserable Krishna, attired in bark and skins, and thereby increase her grief.

(Page 1637, the Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Here, Karna is the one who comes up with the idea of the Ghoshayatra. He specifically speaks of seeing the grief of Krishna (Draupadi) and Dhananjaya (Arjun), not of any other Pandava, even Duryodhana’s bitterest enemy, Bheema. It is clear that he is in this for his own motivations.

(Also, Karna/Draupadi shippers, including published authors, have NO respect in my eyes, after Vastraharan, and then this clear indication that he just wants her grief and pain.)

‘When King Duryodhana heard Karna’s words, he was extremely delighted. But he again became sad and spoke these words. “O Karna! What you have told me has always been in my mind. But I will not obtain permission to go to where the Pandavas are. Dhritarashtra, lord of the earth, always mourns for those brave ones. Because of the power of their austerities, he considers the Pandavas to be superior. I will obtain great pleasure if I see Bhima and Phalguna, together with Krishna, miserable in the forest. The pleasure that I will get from winning the earth is less than that from seeing the sons of Pandu, clad in bark and skins. O Karna! What joy can be greater than the sight of Drupada’s daughter Droupadi, clad in red garments in the forest? If Dharmaraja, Bhimasena and Pandava see me united with this supreme prosperity, it is worth living.

(Page 1638, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

It is Duryodhana who mentions Bheema, his own prime enemy, along with the other Pandavas. (This is more of a personal interpretation, but Draupadi seems like an afterthought to me, here.) This addition is credited to my beta/co-writer @medhasree

This is what happens next.

Having reached Lake Dvaitavana, the vanguard of the army of Dhritrarashtra’s son was about to enter the forest, but was restrained at the gate by the gandharvas. O lord of the earth! O king! Surrounded by his masses, the king of the gandharvas had already arrived there from Kubera’s abode. He was in the habit of sporting with masses of apsaras and the sons of the thirty gods and had therefore barred entry to the lake. O king! When the king’s servants found that the lake had been barred, they returned to King Duryodhana. On hearing their words, Kouravya dispatched his war-crazy soldiers to evict the others. On hearing the words of the king, the soldiers in the vanguard went to Lake Dvaitavana and spoke to the gandharvas. “King Duryodhana, Dhritarashtra’s strong son, has come here to sport. Leave this place.” O lord of the earth! Having been thus addressed, the gandharvas laughed. They replied to those men in harsh words. “Your king Suyodhana is evil in his intelligence. How can he command us, as if we are his servants? We are inhabitants of heaven. There is no doubt that you are evil in wisdom, since you are heading towards death. You have lost your senses if you repeat his orders to us.

(Page 1642, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Basically, Duryodhana’s armies are attacked by Gandharvas. At first, Karna fights.

‘On seeing the gandharvas swiftly descend on them with raised weapons, the sons of Dhritarashtra could be seen to flee in all the directions. On seeing that the sons of Dhritarashtra were fleeing from the field of battle, the brave Vaikartana was the only one who wasn’t reluctant to do battle. On seeing the great army of gandharvas descend on him, Radheya repulsed them with a mighty shower of arrows.

(Page 1643, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Then, when the Gandharvas attack him with renewed strength, this happens.

‘O king! Being thus oppressed by a great army, they were frightened. They fled the field of battle and went to where King Yudhishthira was, seeking refuge with him. Everywhere, the soldiers of the sons of Dhritarashtra were being destroyed. O king! Vaikartana Karna was the only one who stood immobile like a mountain. Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni Soubala were severely wounded in the field of battle, but kept fighting the gandharvas. With a desire to kill Karna in battle, hundreds and thousands of gandharvas rushed collectively towards him. Holding a sword and a shield in his hand, the son of the suta jumped down from the chariot. He leapt onto Vikarna’s chariot and whipped the horses, so that he might escape.’(Page 1645, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

When the army of Gandharvas begins to attack Karna in earnest, he runs away, taking Vikarna’s chariot. What about his loyalty to Duryodhana, who is still fighting? In the end, it is ironic that Karna wanted to gloat to the Pandavas, yet his men and Duryodhan’s go grovelling to the Pandavas for the sake of saving Duryodhana. Of course, Karna needs no saving. He has already run away.

What happens next? Yudhisthir dispatches Bheem and Arjun for that purpose. (He is forever ready to dispatch his brothers to do things, not so ready to do things himself.)

A lengthy battle occurs. I would have given citations, but this is already too long, just comment if you want them, I’ll either DM or reblog. ).

Along with Bheem and the twins, Arjun fights the Gandharvas, defeats them, finds out that he knew the Gandharva King from his trip to heaven after a lengthy battle in which he injures the said Gandharva King, lets his friend go, they talk, and Arjun leaves with Duryodhana.

Where was the vauntingly loyal Karna then? Seeing to his own safety, something that gets him scathingly scolded by Bhishma.

But Duryodhana still believes in his friend, still defends him, even when he is suicidal, he allows Karna to talk him out of it.

The last citation I would like to show is of Virata Parva.

This has two parts.

First, it is Karna who asks Duryodhan to attack Matsya, not because they have found that the Pandavas are there, but because it is ‘ripe for the taking after Keechak’s death’. Keechak, by the way, is a Suta. Where did the ‘breaking caste-barrier hero’ Karn go then, if not to defend the Kingdom deprived of the general who was a Suta? Oh, he went to rob their cows.

The idea is put forward by King Susharma of Trigarta, yeah, the King of those guys who become the army of Sampatakas later and swear a vow of either killing Arjun or dying themselves. Arjun being who he is, of course, they die, but they do manage to keep him away from the Chakravyuh.

‘King Susharma of Trigata, the leader of a large number of chariots, had been repeatedly defeated earlier by Kichaka, the suta of the Matsyas, accompanied by the Salveyakas. When the time was right, that lord swiftly spoke these words of grave import. O lord! His forces, together with those of his relatives, had earlier been defeated by that powerful one. He now looked at Karna and spoke to Duryodhana. “In earlier times, using his greater powers, the king of Matsya oppressed my kingdom. The powerful Kichaka was his general. The evil-souled one was terrible and invincible and was famous on earth because of his valour. That wicked and cruel one has now been killed by the gandharvas. O king! On his being killed, it is my view that Virata has lost his insolence and is without endeavour and without refuge. O unblemished one! If it pleases you, let me, all the Kouravas and the great-souled Karna go there.

(Page 1849, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Immediately after Susharma’s dialogue, Karna says this:

‘On hearing these words, Karna told the king, “Susharma has spoken words that are appropriate to the occasion and they are for our welfare. Let our forces yoke their mounts and swiftly march out. O unblemished one! Let us arrange our forces, or whatever else that you desire. Consult with the wise elders among the Kurus, our grandfather, the preceptor Drona and Sharadvan’s son, Kripa. Do what all of them think and let us advance. We should advance quickly and overpower that lord of the earth. What do we have to do with the Pandavas? They are weak in riches, forces and manliness. They have either been destroyed, or have reached Yama’s abode. O king! Let us attack Virata’s kingdom without any anxiety. Let us grab his cattle and his many other riches.”

(Page 1850, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Here, Karna explicitly says “What do we have to do with the Pandavas?” So he has ceased caring about them, he assumes they are dead. Still, Matsya, which is no enemy Kingdom of the Kurus, he is open to attacking, as they have lost their general. The Pandavas have nothing to do with this.

This is what happens right after Karna’s words.

Duryodhana swiftly accepted Vaikartana Karna’s words. He himself instructed Duhshasana, who was always devoted to his commands. “Consult with the elders and swiftly yoke the army. As instructed, we will go there, with all the Kouravas. As instructed, let maharatha King Susharma also go there, with all his forces and vehicles. Let him go to Matysa first, but concealing his intentions. We will follow him, but a day later. Preparing ourselves well, we will advance towards Matsya’s territory. Suddenly arriving in Virata’s city, we will swiftly subdue the cowherds and take away their great riches. There are hundreds of thousands of handsome cattle, with all the qualities. We will divide our forces into two and rob him of these.” O lord of the earth! As commanded, Susharma marched in a south-eastern direction. He began to rob the cattle on the seventh lunar day of dharmapaksha. O king! On the following day, the eighth day, all the Kouravas joined forces and robbed thousands of cowsheds.’

(Page 1850, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

Again, it explicitly says “Duryodhana swiftly accepted Vaikartana Karna’s words” not Susharma’s. It is Duryodhana and Duhshasana who obey Karna and not the other way round.

So, they go to Virat. Susharma robs the cattle, the herder goes to the King. The King assembles his army, including four Pandava brothers (except Arjun, who is in Brihannala disguise) and goes to confront them. Matsya manages to retrieve their cattle, but at that time, Duryodhana’s men invade the citadel of Matsya.

Uttar boasts that, with an able charioteer, he will defeat everyone, like Arjun himself (it is Arjun mentioned here as a great warrior, none else), in front of Panchali, who, feathers ruffled, tells him that Brihannala was Arjun’s charioteer. Uttaraa goes to get him. Uttar praises him and Arjun. (I am seriously laughing at this by now, I mean, imagine what Arjun would be thinking) Arjun pretends he has no idea how to wear armor, Uttar helps him, Uttara asks him to bring the defeated men’s garments, Arjun nods assent, they go to the army, Uttar freaks, Arjun pursues him, goads him, motivates him, asks him to withdraw Arjun’s weapons from a Shami tree. Uttar asks who he is, Arjun gives his detailed introduction, detailing some of his exploits, (explicitly because Uttar asks), they go back.

(This meta is already getting too long, but if anyone wants those citations, comment, I’ll give them as a reblog)

By this time, the Kurus, especially Dron and Bhishm, are advising Duryodhana to retreat as Arjun is here. Karna, characteristically, pooh-poohs at it.

This is what he says:

“I see that all you honourable ones are frightened and terrified. All of you do not wish to fight and are standing idly. Whether it is the king of Matsya or Bibhatsu who has come, I will restrain him, the way the shoreline holds back the abode of makaras. Arrows with straight feathers will be shot from my bow and they will not be repulsed, like gliding snakes. They have golden tufts and are extremely sharp at the tip. Released from my hand, these arrows will cover Partha, like locusts covering a tree. These winged shafts will firmly strike against the string of the bow, and the sound of the slapping of palms will be like that of a kettledrum. Bibhatsu has concentrated for eight and five years and is fondly looking forward to a battle in which he will strike me. Kounteya, with the qualities of a brahmana, is the right receptacle to receive thousands of arrows shot by me. This great archer is famous in the worlds. O best of the Kurus! But in no way am I inferior to Arjuna. I will release these golden arrows, shafted with the feathers of vultures, and the sky will seem to be covered with fireflies. I gave my word to Dhritarashtra’s son earlier and I will repay that debt today. I will kill Arjuna today.

(Page 1875, The Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

This is nearly half of his long-winded praise of his own self. Note the words “In no way am I inferior to Arjuna.” Does that hold true? Let us see.

This is what he does when the battle starts.

Vaikartana, the suta’s son, exhibited his valour, like a king of elephants displaying his tusks, or like a tiger attacking a large buffalo. Vaikartana attacked Pandava with twelve arrows. He pierced the bodies of all the horses and that of Virata’s son with those arrows. It was like a king among elephants being struck by an elephant. He took out sharp arrows from his quiver and stretching the string of the bow right up to his ear, pierced the body of the suta’s son with his arrows. With arrows unleashed like lightning from his bow, the destroyer of enemies pierced him in battle, in the arms, the thighs, the head, the forehead, the neck and in all the parts of the chariot. Thus wounded by the arrows shot by Partha, and scorched by Pandava’s arrows, like a swift elephant that has been defeated by another elephant, Vaikartana fled from the forefront of the battle.’

(Page 1885, the Mahabharata, Kindle Edition).

He flees. And this is just the abridged version. If anyone wants the detailed one, again, comment or DM.

For all those who credit Krishn with all of Arjun’s victories with Karna, note that canonically, Krishn is not even in a 100-mile radius of Arjun right now. Yet, Arjun wins. Karna runs, along with a division of his infantry. From one (1) man on a chariot.

That brings me almost to the end of the meta.

I’d like to end by stating that, even after this, Duryodhan stuck to Karna. Even when Karna does not fight for 10 days in Kurukshetra, Duryodhan fights. Even when Karna, repeatedly, abandons Duryodhana and his army, either against Arjun or to be saved by Arjun, Duryodhana believes in him. Above all, Duryodhana obeys Karna, not the other way around.

The virtues of generosity (Duryodhana gifts Karna Anga, a gift for which he got precious little, Anga was canonically turned into a hotbed of debauchery), loyalty (Duryodhana believes in Karna, no matter what, in spite of his repeated failures and fleeing from his greatest enemy, Arjun and by extension, the Pandavas) and obedience (It has been demonstrated amply that after Lakshagriha, nearly every plan to dispose of the Pandavas that goes awry is Karna’s brainchild and not Duryodhana’s) belongs to Duryodhan, not the much vaunted and glorified Karna.

Finis.

#mahabharata #meta #karna #duryodhana #arjuna #the catalogue of karna's misdeeds #by no means full #anti-karna #always #nila rants #nila writes #arjun

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jackals-ships · 3 years

Text

In Which We Explore Scenes Of The Emotions Of A Human Forced To Work With A Troll They Cannot Stand

contains: 2nd person pov, exploring pitch-pale emotions, they're stupid your honor, semi explicit injury towards the end of the fic, pre relationship+relationship set up

2282 whole words mostly written at 3am. no betta we die like men

Your name is Jackal Glass, you work for Her Imperious Condescension as a great many things: spy and assassin being first and foremost. You are in her words "one of the funniest lil humans [she's] met". It's often accompanied by a smile with too many teeth and a laugh bordering on cruel. (But that is simply how she is you have learned. She was born of the Deeps, of the cruel dark sea, she was not made to be soft and gentle.)

In other words: she likes you. She values what you can do for her empire and because of this she has elevated you to a status that very few humans, trolls or carapacians are capable of reaching.

It is this status that has you gritting your teeth as you wonder for the hundredth time if it's worth it.

Because Her Imperious Condescension has given you a mission, not unusual in and of itself, but that mission is to accompany one Orphaner Dualscar, Captain of the ISS Calamity to crush a small insurrection before it can grow to catastrophic proportions.

You know from the documents his hatchname is Cronus Ampora, he is the Empresses matesprit, and you now know he is a rat fucking bastard.

Not even a minute into the conversation and he has somehow managed to insult you multiple times. Implying that you must be filling one of Her quadrants to have the position you do, outright stating that if it wasn't for Her orders he would throw you off the ship at the first given opportunity.

You are filled with the urge to pull him down by his stupid bejeweled fins and bite him. By the end of the conversation you are vibrating with a barely contained rage. Later Kurloz will laugh at you, tell you how "wicked mother fuckin funny it is that you've up an gotten your pitch on for the fish bastard" and it will leave you flushed from ear to collarbone. The hatred you feel is the most purely platonic, nothing more or less.

(this is of course ignoring your daydreams about throwing him to the floor and kissing him senseless with a knife to his stomach, maybe that will shut him up for more than thirty seconds.)

----

Your first week passes calmly enough. You stay out of the Orphaners way as well as you can, treat your job with the Utmost Respect you show everything you do, and begin to bond with some of the crew. They don't trust you, not yet, because you're human, because you're a part of the Church and that makes people uncomfortable. (you choose not to get into the hours long ramble of the church is more your moirails than yours. you don't find safety in it's cold embrace but you do find it in his.)

And you learn things about the Orphaner. Little things here and there, because no matter where you go people will always love to gossip.

He's always tired, but he'll never admit to it. Not even when he's swaying on his feet and clutching at the rails til his knuckles then ashen. Doesn't have a moirail to speak of apparently. Only quadrant that's filled is his flushed and even that is tenuous at best and often tinged in shades of pitch.

He's as old as Kurlz apparently. Been on the same ship for as long as anyone can remember and been through more crew members than you can count. (It must be lonely you think. There's not many other violets on board and purples often cluster to the Church. hell even ceruleans don't live as long as the others and...maybe that's why he's so tired all the time.)

He's got more scars and tattoos and piercings than he does clear flesh. That one you learn by observation. Sometimes he'll lean over the side of the ship, get a far away look on his face, and strip his outerwear before jumping overboard. Your heart stopped the first time before you reminded yourself he was born of the sea.

(when if you kiss him will you taste it on him? will he taste like brine and blood?)

----

Your name is Jackal Glass and you have decided you will not be telling the Orphaner that.

He calls you dog when he deigns to address you again, venom dripping so sharp from that single word you're surprised you haven't keeled over dead from it. The crew gives you side long glances, expecting it to bother you and send you into a shouting rage but. But you can't help it.

You laugh at him.

The look of shock on his face is enough to make you break down into further giggles, teeth bared up at him in a mockery of a grin as his fins press further against his face. That will do then Captain. Since you're apparently lacking the braincells to recall my name proper.

You have never run so fast in your life, furious seadweller on your heels and still cackling up a storm.

(he will not catch you, you will jump onto the mast of the ship, swing yourself up like the ropes are the silks your Siblings use for practice. you will mock him, affectionately sharp, and inform him if he cannot catch a simple human perhaps he is getting far too old to be the captain.)

(you will both refuse to think on the fact he could have caught up to you in two strides and thrown you overboard.)

----

Orphaner Dualscar is an old troll, older than some stars and old enough that his skin has gone so dark oftentimes you lose him up against the night sky. But when he fights he moves like a troll a tenth his age.

You've always enjoyed watching others. But your Siblings….well. There is an unfortunate truth to the Church and it's brutality you have to admit. Dualscar? He moves like a dancer.

He fights with fancy flourishes that other trolls couldn't get away with. He fights like he's putting on a show. Look at me, look at me. Am I not powerful? Am I not worthy of adoration? I could destroy you with a flick of my wrist and I wouldn't even care.

It is...enthralling. He sends his opponents sword flying before knocking them sharply down, his sword to their throat and a half feral grin on his face. (you do not think about how you want to be under him like that. you do not.)

You also, do not see the look on his face as he watches you flee with your tail between your legs. It is the look of a man who is beginning to realize certain emotions within himself. (he does not under any circumstances think about wanting you under him instead of them. and if he does it's because you're human and it is only natural as a violetblood that he is better than you and. and. fuck)

---

there is blood on your face and on your hands and half of it is yours and. that is. not ideal. things had been going swimmingly until now, heh, swimmingly. oh….. right. you're busy bleeding out aren't you?

the insurrection was easily crushed. it was naught more than a small group of lowbloods, half of them honestly couldn't have been more than ten sweeps old. later you will think on it with a grimace, pressing your palms into your eyes and think once again: is it worth it. should you flee into the wilderness.

but for now you are holding your stomach with one hand, holding yourself up against a wall with the other and gritting your teeth. you will not die today. not here, not now.

you know you only have a few more moments before you succumb to the bloodloss and lose consciousness (you have seen your moirail perform inquisition more times than you can count, and you have seen even the strongest of your siblings drop in battle) so you push yourself forwards, saying a prayer to the Messiah's for good measure. ive payed my way in flesh and blood brothers mine. now let me get the fuck out of here back to my diamond.

Dualscar is the one who finds you. he rounds the corner and almost bowls you over in his haste. vwhere the fuck have you- DOG. he sounds...scared?

oh. what's up asshole. you give him the quickest of finger guns before slumping against him. he's always so cold but….this time you hardly feel it against you. that's..not good is it?

but he's holding you with more care than he ever has, cradled against his chest like a newly hatched wriggler while everything goes fuzzy around the edges. it's...it's nice. in it's own way.

the last thing you think about is the impulse to bite his dumb, stupid dumb bejeweled fins.

---

When you wake again you feel as if you've just been run over by a truck. Which...all things considered you suppose that's better than not waking up at all.

You are in a hospital room apparently, there are bandages covering your hands, a cast on your left wrist and even more bandages around your waist. There is also a very large, very old troll currently draped over your legs. He looks like shit.

His hair is splayed out around him, face scrunched up like he's in the middle of a particularly vicious daymare and the bags under his eyes are far deeper than normal. He has several cuts on his face and neck that you're certain will only add to the mass of scars.

Right now too he's close enough you could just...his face relaxes as you lay your palm on his cheek. Fuck but seadwellers are cold. He's worse than the bloody ocean he spends most of his time in. It doesn't stop you however, from running your hand across his face, tracing the parallel scars that mar his cheeks and eye. (he won't tell anyone how he got that one. he freezes, looks around the room at everywhere but the person asking before telling em it's none of ya fuckin business don't ask me again vwriggler.)

(in this moment you don't know that he will tell you one day. face pressed against your collarbone as he whispers it like a confessional. you don't know that you will mark down a name in your mind with a newfound rage. for now you just know that you hate this man and you also don't want to stop touching his face.)

When he wakes it's slow, shoves his face further into your palm like an overgrown cat before yawning wide. It shows off the double row of fangs and you just. Hm. Well that is your finger on the Orphaner's golden canine and he's fixin you with just such the most bewildered look. Eventually of course you retract your hand and he sits up all proper like the Fine Captain he pretends to be. "So. Ya ain't dead."

"..not for lack of trying." It takes a moment for your mouth to remember how words work. "How long I been out?"

"Boat a vweek now. Medicullers. They vwerent sure... if ya vwould vwake up." His accent comes out stronger when he's stressed you've noticed. It makes you feel such emotions inside.

Your hands find his to give them a gentle pat, his rings are almost as cool against your skin as he is. (what do you feel like to him? does it hurt? you are hotter than even a rustblood you know. does it feel like he's holding a dying star in his hands when he touches you?) "Eh don't worry bout it Captain, we both know I'm too stupid to die."

His smile looks almost fond as he takes your hands proper, dwarfing them in his larger more scared up ones. "Aye that vwe both knoww ya are huh. At any rate, I'll be stayin here til ya fully get back on ya feet. Don't vwant you tryin tae sneak awway from your job." It is the weakest excuse you have ever heard but you nod nonetheless, sink back into your bed and allow him to tell you how things went with Her Imperiousness.

The sound of his voice lulls you to sleep, or maybe it's the heavy painkillers still in your system. Whatever the cause you are soon unconscious again and Captain Cronus Ampora hesitates for a long moment before pulling the blankets up around you and pressing a cool kiss to your forehead.

He doesn't know what he's doing. He knows in his bones he will outlive you, he will outlive your whole species. But you make him feel things. Pitch and pale in equal measure. Fuck.

(it will still be a few sweeps before you get together proper. the crew will place bets on how long it'll take before you get your heads out of your asses and realize you're both swinging the most hate filled rivalry for each other so you just need to fucking kiss already. you will dance around the subject, throw barbs at each other, throw each other to the deck of the ship and swear curses that no one should repeat. you will leave each other bruised and battered but better. pushed mutually to be better.)

(but for now? For now he crawls into the bed next to you, curls up around you like he's not gonna let anyone lay a finger on what's rightfully his.)

(and you will curl up into him, press your face into the hollow of his neck and feel the most relaxed you've felt in a good long while.)

#jackals barks #ship: space pirates <3<#okay 2 rb #non homestucks what is ur winsdom an onions- /lh

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