#they're so surprised. that you remembered that they existed for something other than their awesome flaming bone

[front-facing-pokemon]

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Language Barriers

same anon as like 5 minutes ago, I remembered the fluffy prompt! Could you write a Sanders Sides DLAMPR fic (before they get together) where all of the Sides have different love languages? And they’re all trying to flirt in their own way, but the others keep misinterpreting it? A lot of TSS fic features the Sides having different love languages (and I’d like to think they do, in canon), but I’ve yet to see a fic that specifically focuses on that fact and describes the differences between love languages. Feel free to ignore, and remember to take care of yourself! – anon

hey I love love love love LOVE your writing! If you’re open to prompts rn, I’ve just reread your story "Idiots, Idiots, Everywhere" and it’s awesome, thanks very much, BUT. Are you willing to write a Sanders Sides fic where it focuses more specifically on all the Sides having different love languages? Bonus points if it’s DLAMPR (but platonic PR, this is an incest-free household) and all the Sides are like “…but he’s like this with everyone”. No pressure at ALL, but it’d be cool to see how you approach that. – anon

Read on Ao3

Warnings: none

Pairings: dlampr

Word Count: 3431

Or, five times the Sides misunderstood each other's love languages, and one time Thomas got fed up with it and decided to just...explain it to them with the efficiency they have when they're trying to explain something to him. Which is to say: it takes them a second to get it. The Imagination helps.

Physical Touch

If you were to ask anyone, they would tell you that Patton loves giving people hugs.

It’s the bane of some of their existences, they’d try to claim, and the others might just shrug and say that’s Patton for you. He knows his kiddos love it, at least a little bit. But he won’t lie, he does love a good hug. There’s just something so magical about how, out of all the shapes humans could have possibly been, they’re just perfectly designed to hold one another. Isn’t that just perfect?

Logan would probably say something about evolution and adaptation to the needs of their environment, or something, but he’s not gonna rain on Patton’s parade. Humans are hug-shaped, so they’re gonna hug. Besides, he’s not complaining when he’s working downstairs in the winter and he’s gotten too absorbed in his work and then a Patton-shaped heating pad just comes along and hugs him.

Patton loves hugging all of the Sides. Logan because he’s always so surprised by it, in a good way! He gets this soft little look that is almost on the edge of a smile, like he wasn’t expecting it but it’s the best possible outcome he never could have predicted. Or when he’s trying to comfort Patton and he hugs with undeniable certainty.

Virgil is also fun to hug, because he’s such a pouty-face about it. He snuggles up as much as any of them but he has to put on his mopey show first, just in case anyone’s watching. Virgil also gives the mopey hugs too, but then he makes himself just a bit bigger so he can wrap all the way around Patton. Which is the best.

Speaking of wrapping all the way around, Janus has six arms and he uses every single one of them. They get into competitions sometimes—not serious! It’s all for fun!—about who can surprise-hug each other the worst. Or best. Janus is currently winning from the time he managed to make himself look like the chair in the living room with a blanket over it; Patton sat down and boo!

Remus isn’t allowed to do surprise hugs, not after he accidentally tackled Patton into his Kraken’s pond and they had to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get out of the pond. But Remus’s hugs are the kind that squish his soul right back into his body and ugh, there’s nothing better than that after a long day. Besides, it’s not like expecting Remus’s hugs takes anything away, he’s still going to squeeze him so hard he might not be able to breathe for a few seconds, but that’s Remus!

And then with Roman—Roman hugs the way every single knight from a fairytale should hug. He just makes you feel safe and precious and like nothing in the world could hurt you. It’s why Patton always sits next to Roman during scary movie nights, after all, even if he gets teased about it a little. Roman doesn’t mind.

So yes, Patton does love hugging all of them. But it doesn’t have to be hugging! It can be holding hands, or just leaning against each other, just as long as he can feel them and tell himself yes, they’re okay, they’re right here, I love them.

Because he does. He loves them terribly. Even if they think he’s just a big fan of hugs.

***

2. Quality Time

Virgil has the reputation of being the cat of the Mindscape for good reason. Not because he hisses at things that don’t cooperate—the other Sides are not excluded from this—and not because he spits up hairballs—it was one time, Remus, and it was entirely your fault—but because he has a habit of just appearing in the same room and hanging out for a while.

…alright, it’s not a habit, he does it on purpose.

Companionable silence really is the best way to go about things. You’re both close enough to talk if you want to, but each of them is allowed to do their own thing and hey, there’s another person doing their own thing too. Which is why it’s his favorite way of hanging out with Logan, especially when he needs to make sure that something gets done. He’s always down to affectionately bully Logan into whatever he asks him to make sure he does.

He does that with Remus too, but it’s not exactly the same: Remus needs someone to make sure he doesn’t actually destroy anything, and he’s more than happy to oblige. Especially since he likes to get a bit of a heads-up before a rampaging beast goes barreling through the kitchen at some ungodly hour of the morning.

If he’s never beating the cat allegations, Janus sure as hell isn’t helping. There’s a big window in the Dark Sides’ half of the Mindscape that is perfect for lying in for, oh, a few hours on end. Remus has many—too many, if you ask Virgil—pictures of the two of them just basking in the sun, dozing like they haven’t got a care in the world.

Virgil’s actual favorite place to sleep is with his head in Patton’s lap. Especially after he’s just finished baking, when he’s all warm from the oven and he smells like sugar and spice…Virgil will sit on the counter or the floor and listen to Patton talk about whatever he wants and then while the oven bakes, he’ll fall asleep right in Patton’s lap. He even gets first dibs on whatever just got made.

Roman makes a game of it. He’s the Prince, every good Prince needs a rogue to work with. They trek all over the Imagination, having adventures, defeating monsters, it’s the perfect mix of Roman’s quests and Virgil’s need to be a creepy little shit in every dark corner he can find. Being with Roman even makes boring council meetings fun, because he gets to terrify the idiots that they’re just gonna fight later anyway and he gets to spend time with Roman.

He doesn’t care what he’s doing, not really, just as long as he can spend time with them. He just…wishes they would understand that sometimes.

***

3. Words of Affirmation

Logan is no stranger to impostor syndrome, but that doesn’t mean he has to allow it to plague those he cares for. Understanding something to be true on an intellectual level and feeling the validation that comes from hearing someone else voice it are two very different things. The other Sides are each remarkable in their own right. They deserve to hear it.

Patton is kind. He does not say that lightly: kind people who choose to be kind because they know how difficult it is are not individuals to be trifled with. Patton makes the conscious choice to try and be better every single day. He is earnest and sincere, sometimes painfully so, but he does not allow himself to be dissuaded by obstacles. How could Logan not want to express his admiration?

And Roman…oh, Roman is a wonder. There is so much that goes into his work that often goes unnoticed, or underappreciated, and it is a crime that Logan too often finds himself on the wrong side of that line. Roman is clever and funny and has a work ethic that, truly, rivals Logan’s own. For every slight he makes, however unintentional, he tries his best to make up for it by telling Roman in no uncertain terms how honored Logan is to be part of his creative process.

Remus is an entirely different story, no pun intended. Remus is unabashedly and unapologetically himself, and as such is a marvel to behold. He cares not for the sanitization or reduction of anything in his work, and so Logan does his best to follow suit. Remus is who he is, and it is beautiful.

He tells Janus he’s beautiful too. And not once is he lying. The first time he did it, Janus laughed in his face, at least until he realized Logan was telling the truth. He then didn’t see Janus for an entire week. It ended when a little snake plushie appeared outside of his door in the middle of the night with a tiny note that just said thank you. He tells Janus he’s beautiful every chance he gets now.

Virgil is his little alley cat. Perfectly fine to approach on his terms, but will let him know with no uncertainties when he’s getting a little too close. It doesn’t help that Virgil is quite fun to tease, even if all he’s doing is giving him compliments—true compliments, mind you—and watching in amusement as Virgil curls up into a ball with his hood pulled down over his ears as if that could hide how red they are. He’s not cruel about it, of course; he stops the moment Virgil appears genuinely uncomfortable and there are certain topics he doesn’t go near. But Virgil can’t always hide his little grin and so on it goes.

He’s quite happy to shower them with his words, he just…doesn’t know if they’d believe him if he said I love you.

***

4. Acts of Service

Words are difficult. There is so much ambiguity to be found in even the most basic of sentences, and when it comes to matters like this, Janus prefers to take as few chances as possible. Whoever coined the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words,’ Janus definitely owes a drink for how spot-on it is.

Whenever Patton needs a hand in the kitchen, he’s always the first to volunteer. He can do up to three things in the time it would take another Side to do just one, after all, and he’s had enough experience cooking for the troublemakers (Virgil and Remus) to know how to get around most of their pranks. And how to get them back.

Logan, bless him, has a tendency to overwork himself at the best of times. And in doing so, he gets these terrible knots and cramps in his neck and shoulders from hunching over his desk for hours on end. It might not be the most polite of things to practically blackmail his way into giving Logan a massage, but the poor dear always falls right to sleep so he mustn’t mind too much.

Remus and his delightful menagerie of creatures often need more than their fair share of attention. He had to pester Remus into getting him a raincoat and muck boots that could withstand the acidic slime, but weekend mornings found them strolling cheerfully through pens and cages and paddocks, tending to the bizarre flock. Anything to make the chore more of a fun activity and less of, well, a chore, when Remus really doesn’t suit stressed-out frowns as well as manic grins.

Virgil has a terrible habit of not asking for reassurance when he needs it. Janus regrets the part he played in making it that way. So, no matter how small and stupid Virgil may think it is, whenever he asks for help, Janus gives it. A tug on his cloak or a soft please will have him do anything from turn the light in the hallway on to checking the poor thing over for wounds after a brutal nightmare. It took long enough for Janus to re-earn that trust, he’s not going to lose it if he can damn well help it.

Out of everyone in the Mindscape, only Roman truly appreciates his love of theater. Sure, the others are game to help out here and there, but when it comes to the art of make-believe, Roman is the proud owner of Janus’s ‘yes-and’ partnership. The two of them make all sorts of stories together, from villains and heroes to morally grey adventurers, to simple fairytales and old plays. Roman needs someone else to help him play the roles and Janus is more than happy to play with him.

Perhaps one day, he might be able to reveal that everything he does for them, he does because it’s them, but for now, he’ll happily play the role they expect of him.

***

5. Gifts

Roman and Remus do not, in fact, fight over who gets to give the most presents to the other Sides.

Instead, they fight over whose idea they work on first.

For Logan, Remus’s self-writing pen narrowly won out over Roman’s proposal for a never-ending notebook, if only because said pen squirted ink into Roman’s mouth before he could finish his argument. They ended up giving both to Logan at the same time, but the pen was decidedly on top and did its own little celebratory wriggle when Logan used it for the first time.

Remus nearly challenged Roman to a formal duel when it came to designing a heat lamp for Janus that wouldn’t run the same risk of burning out the electricity in their section of the Mindscape. They managed to agree on everything up to the design on the lampshade. Roman said it should be a yellow snake, curled up and sleeping, and Remus wanted it to be a big leaf that Janus could lay under like he was actually outside. The compromise was eventually reached over many hours of almost bloodshed and now the sleeping snake under a leaf is a staple in the corner of Janus’s room.

Roman cleverly proposed Virgil’s weighted blanket while Remus was being crushed under said blanket, leaving not a lot of wiggle room until he had to agree. Of course, he promptly fell asleep and cuddled Roman into a pile of goo, so technically they made both the blanket and the plushie at around the same time. Virgil still brings the little skeleton to movie nights.

Patton gets their presents one after the other, because you need one to understand the other’s context. A rebreather designed to slip on over the person’s face just like any other face mask, to filter out particulates and allergens. Something that could be worn for up to two consecutive hours before it needed to be recharged.

The other present was a box full of kittens.

”Ro?”

“Yeah?”

Remus pushes his goggles to the top of his head and looks over the desk. “Do you think they’ll ever get it?”

Roman sighs, closing his notebook and leaning back to stretch. “I don’t know, Re. I love them, really, they just…”

”Don’t realize.”

“Yeah. It’s okay, though. We’ll get there eventually.”

“Of course we will. Hand me that wrench, would you?”

“The one that’s covered in guts, or the one that’s made out of foam?”

“The foam one. I need to whack this thing but I don’t wanna hit it too hard.”

“I’m not gonna ask any more questions.”

***

+1: I Love You

”Hey!” Patton rises up first, clapping his hands. “Oh. I’m the only one here.”

“Only by a moment,” Logan says as he joins him. “Is Thomas here?”

“No, I just got summoned by—well, I thought it was Thomas but he’s not here.”

“Whoa, hey!” Virgil appears on the staircase. “What’s going on? I was in the middle of watching someone.”

“Don’t you mean ‘something?’” Remus appears, covered in slime and cackling. “Ah. I see.”

“I’ve got it,” Roman says, rising up and spraying his brother with something that somehow manages to dissolve all the goo without staining or spraying anything else. “There. Now maybe you’ll think twice about surprising Uma when she’s feeding?”

“Oh, I’m gonna do this so many more times!”

”I felt the exasperation from my room,” Janus sighs, appearing, “what’s Remus done now?”

“Why did you assume it was Remus?” Janus just looks at Logan. “Fair enough.”

”Now that we’re all here, what is this about?” He looks around, frowning. “Where’s Thomas?”

“That’s weird, is he not the one who called for a meeting?”

“What’s that?” Virgil reaches out and picks up a piece of paper from the coffee table. “‘Each one of you needs a card, find the matches.’ What cards?”

“Here.” Logan picks up something that fell when Virgil picked up the paper. “There are only five of them, though, and six of us.”

“What do they say?”

“Let me see…one says ‘Physical Touch,’ one says ‘Acts of Service,’ one says…oh, I see.”

“I don’t,” Patton says, “can you share with the class?”

“Wait, wait, I think I know what this is, is one of them ‘Quality Company’ or something?”

“‘Quality Time,’ yes.”

Roman nods. “It’s the Five Love Languages.”

“Thomas doesn’t even speak Spanish!”

“No, no, Padre, not literal languages, it’s…it’s the ways you express your affection for someone. How you tell them you love them. There’s five: physical touch, acts of service, quality time…”

“‘Words of Affirmation,’” Logan continues, reading off the other cards, “and ‘Gifts.’”

Virgil hunches his shoulders. “So what, are we supposed to pick one?”

“I believe the intention of the exercise is to…select which one is our love language.”

Janus huffs. “Why? What does Thomas have to gain from doing something like this? And where is he?”

“Maybe he’s not the one who summoned us.”

“Well then who did?”

“Maybe if we do the thing we can find out.”

Janus sighs, peering over Logan’s shoulder and squinting. “I guess this one’s mine, then.”

“‘Acts of Service?’ Very well. I suppose I’ll take ‘Words of Affirmation.’”

“Can I have the touch one?”

“Certainly.”

“Twins get ‘Gifts,’ obviously,” Virgil mutters, “which means I get the…time one, or whatever.”

Logan hands out the last two cards and they stand there for a moment, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing does.

Patton looks back down at his card. “Wait, did you say these are how we tell people we love them?”

“That is a simple definition of this, why?”

“Because you guys do these with everyone!”

There’s a pause. Logan adjusts his glasses. “Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but…yes, I do indeed give you all words of affirmation, because, well…”

“Aww,” Virgil says, “do you love us, Logan?”

Logan coughs, blushes, and adjusts his tie. “I believe that is a logical conclusion, yes.”

“Aww!” Patton squeals. “I love you guys too!”

”So whoever set this up knew that we were all trying to tell each other that—“ Roman starts.

“—and needed to hammer it into our heads what was happening,” Remus finishes.

“Well,” Janus sniffs, even as a smile threatens the corners of his mouth, “how dramatic.”

Virgil tugs on the strings of his hoodie. “Yeah. How dramatic.”

There’s another pause.

Roman coughs. “Uh, this seems like a good a time as any, um…Remus and I put together a festival thing in the Imagination for everyone, if you want to…if you want to come and see it.”

“It has everyone’s favorite state fair stuff,” Remus sands, “and there’s supposed to be a northern-lights kind of thing after it gets dark.”

“Can we cuddle?”

“Of course.”

“Will there be food?”

“Your favorite, shadow-ling.”

“You two are so thoughtful,” Logan says softly, “I would love to come.”

“I can get the good blankets from the closet,” Janus offers, and everyone grins, “should we meet there in ten?”

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!”

The Imagination is just happy they finally sorted it out. Now, to give the six of them a group date they’ll never forget…

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[duhragonball]

Chainsaw Man ch.91-95

Somewhere along the way I noticed this series was set in 1997, but this is the first panel where it really felt like 1997 to me. For those of you too young to remember, this was pretty much what it was like most of the time.

Last time, Pochita fed a piece of his flesh to Power so that she could get strong enough to rescue Chainsaw Man from Makima. But then she got overwhelmed and appeared to surrender Denji instead.........

..... is what Power wanted you to think, because it was clever ploy to make a clean getaway! Power's awesome.

It's simple. No matter what, Power can't let Denji die because he was her first friend. As time wore on, she got fond of the guy, and despite her pathological lying, she admits the truth as she drags Denji into a dumpster to hide.

Inside, they both seem to turn back to normal and she gives him a hug. I say "appear" because I'm not certain Power can change back into her original fiend form, and it's possible that Denji is seeing this in his mind or something.

The thing is, Denji doesn't want to be saved. He's still riddled with guilt over Power and Aki's deaths, which was exacerbated by Makima. I think this was why Chainsaw Man looked so different over the last ten or so chapters. Denji was still in there, but it was like he had withdrawn from Chainsaw Man's consciousness.

Anyway, he feels like there's no point going on without Power, and she tells him that when the last of her finally dies, she'll be reincarnated as the Blood Devil again, with no memory of her former existence as Power. So she asks Denji to find the Blood Devil, befriend them, and turn them into Power again to renew their friendship. She calls this a contract, and in exchange, she gives him her blood.

And since blood is pretty much all that's left of Power, she vanishes, leaving Denji alone in the dumpster. Well, not quite alone...

Kishibe's been sitting in the alleyway, getting his drink on. I guess he was waiting for Denji to get his shit together. He offers to help Denji, but first he wants to know if he's Denji or just a chainsaw monster. He's got no use for the second thing.

Later, Kishibe brings Denji and Kobeni to some safehouse he must have set up. He says they can speak freely here, and that Makima won't be able to track them down for a while, so I guess it's soundproofed or something. I don't think he has a plan at this point. He just knows Makima's plan depends on Denji, so he's keeping Denji away from her.

Kobeni nervously asks if she'll ever be able to contact her parents again, and Kishibe tells her she probably never hear from them again, and she's more relieved than anything else. Denji's kind of surprised to hear this, because Kobeni seemed like a normal person living a normal life, the kind of life he always wanted.

They commiserate for a bit, and when you get down to it, they're not so different. Kobeni's parents forced her to work for Public Safety in spite of the danger, so that she could raise money to put her brother through school. It's a lot like Denji's life so far, where he's had to do a lot of difficult things just to survive, and other people made all the important decisions for him.

And Kobeni explains to him that adversity is normal. "There's no such thing as a life free of bad things... except in your dreams..." This starts to get the wheels turning in Denji's head. He wanted to be normal, and maybe he already was this whole time.

As Denji ponders this, Kishibe plops down in front of the TV, and a news report comes on about...

...Chainsaw Man. He's a hero now, which we already established earlier, but now Denji's seeing the news reports that Makima was referring to. Also, girls really like Chainsaw Man. Kishibe tells him to keep his voice down, but he doesn't get it. Denji's starting to get the old spark back.

He tells Kishibe he wants to eat steak for breakfast every morning, and he wants five girlfriends-- no, ten! He wants tons of sex! And that's why he wants to be Chainsaw Man.

But Kishibe pours cold water on his aspirations. The second he turns back in to Chainsaw Man, Makima will find him and kill him.

And he's right, so Denji settles down and broods over it. But that's okay. Makima may have fixed it so he can't become Chainsaw Man for the time being, but she can't stop him from wanting it, not anymore. Before, she had broken him, and convinced him that he was a bad person who didn't deserve good things, or to even want good things. But now he's rebuilding, and Makima isn't around to get in his head.

So at last, Denji can apply himself to the problem of the Control Devil. He wants to be Chainsaw Man again, but he has to kill Makima in order to do that. So what's the solution? Denji racks his brain, trying to come up with something from his months of working for Makima, but he draws a blank. All he figures out is that he still likes Makima, even in spite of all the terrible things she's done to him. He feels bad for admitting it, but he knows it's true.

Then we jump ahead a while. Denji has apparently resolved his dilemma, because he's transformed into Chainsaw Man again, and here comes Makima and her goons to finish him off. Does he have a plan? Or is this just a desperation play?

Makima's probably wondering the same thing. He asks her one question: When she's finished using Chainsaw's power to remake the world, will there still be crappy movies in it?

Makima doesn't get this, but she still answers him. Yes, she thinks the world would be better off without bad movies. And that's the problem. Makima thinks in absolutes. There are good things and bad things, and the bad things shouuld be eliminated. Bad dogs get put down. Bad employees are terminated. Bad devils are destroyed. Bad movies should be expunged.

But as Kobeni observed, bad things are part of life. We can dream of a life without bad things, but if real life actually worked that way, then our dreams would have no meaning. There would be nothing to aspire to.

Also, bad movies make good movies better. Denji and Makima went on that date and saw a bunch of bad movies and one good one. Makima noted that the good one made the price of all the tickets worthwhile. She sees the bad movies and the search for the good one as the price you have to pay for living in an imperfect world. She's willing to sit through bad movies to get to a good one, but she's also very interested in finding a shortcut.

Denji on the other hand, enjoyed the entire date. The bad movies made the good one sweeter, and the search itself was worthwhile for him, because he knows what it means to want something and strive to find it. That's what Makima is planning to remove from the world, and that's why Denji has to stop her.

So they fight again, and it's pretty much the same story. The hybrids are all here again, so I'm pretty sure they're immortal too or whatever. The only thing that's changed is that Denji is weaker than he was before, because humanity isn't afraid of him. Makima believes it's just a matter of time before he's finished.

And yeah, that's basically how it goes. Chainsaw Man emerges from that big pile of goons, and puts up a valiant struggle, but then he goes down.

Makima decides to finish him off personally, so she feeds him her blood to revive him, just so she can fight him one on one.

This part of the fight is pretty cool, because it's easier to follow the action, and this is what's it's really been about all along. Chainsaw Man lops off her head, and it just pops back on while one of her goons dies in her place. She punches him in the face and it looks like it hurts like hell, even though his face is a chainsaw motor.

But the outcome is the same. Chainsaw Man can't hold out against her power. She quickly dominates him...

And she rips out his heart. Game over.

From here, Makima seems downright disappointed with this battle. She tells him that he isn't Chainsaw Man, or at least not the Chainsaw Man she admired, the one whose power she craved for herself.

I think this proves that Makima wasn't able to separate Denji from Pochita without it coming to this. She wants the Chainsaw Devil, unburdened from the humanity of Denji, but that isn't working, so she has to tear them apart physically. She wanted Denji to just give up, and maybe that's what he did during that part where he had four arms and couldn't talk. But Pochita managed to reawaken Denji's spirit, with a little help from Power, Kishibe, and Kobeni, so now Makima has to beat him up and rip out his heart.

She doesn't understand why Pochita would join with Denji, since he doesn't seem to "get" Chainsaw at all. It's just like how she doesn't understand the value in bad movies.

Makima doesn't understand, and she doesn't want to understand, so she severs Chainsaw Man's heart from his body and that's it. Makima wins. I guess the next two chapters show her reshaping the world with her newfound power. I'm kind of interested to see how that plays out.

[jorjorlinks]

i haven't seen The Lightning Thief movie since 5th grade when it came out so I'm rewatching it before i listen to the Newest Olympian episodes about it and i'm only 2 minutes in and i don't remember any of this at all so i thought i'd make a post of my reactions throughout the movie.

why is the fisherman surprised by poseidon's giant form??? shouldn't the mist cover it??? also why is poseidon walking out of the ocean in giant form???

ZEUS IS SEAN BEAN???????

reading the credits like, there's so many famous actors in this???? i don't remember them at all. rosario dawson??? who does she even play?

why is ms. dodds an english teacher? what?

isn't yancy academy supposed to be a boarding school?

percy hearing his dad's voice is so wild

pierce brosnan as chiron us not bad tbh

some of the casting is so spot on, if only the writing was better

chiron is revealing too much too fast

god i love this grover so much

HAHAHAAH the minotaur being in a cow pasture is so perfect

where is the minotaur's tighty whiteys

the minotaur didn't dissolve?????

why are so many demigods hurt lmaooo

love how all the other campers are the same age as percy. where are the little ones

there's a middle aged man in the background???? who is he? is he a teacher?

logan lerman and alexandra daddario's blue eyes are SO blue

more than one centaur at camp????

whoa whoa whoa whoa what. what. he's already being put in the poseidon cabin??? he hasn't even been claimed yet

chiron is so upfront in this movie it's wild

so luke just takes percy in for capture the flag but isn't his counselor hmmm

"I'm coming buddy, I'm coming!" jake abel is so perfect

annabeth and percy being on opposite sides of the game is so weird

annabeth is acting like clarisse c'mon now

why can poseidon speak in percy's mind

percy is suddenly good at fighting because he touched water? huh?

luke is so perfect

i don't think chris columbus knows how capture the flag works

a balrog?!?!?!?!

hades??? no. no. no. why would hades look like that. why does he look like lucifer. what is happening?????

"you cannot negotiate with hades. he'll kill you and your mother" why is hades evil

are they just not gonna get a prophecy

why would luke know how to get to the underworld

absolutely LOVE that luke is a gamer

also love that luke just said he broke into olympus and stole things. he literally just told them that he's the lightning thief

map to persephone??? "keeps her prisoner" god, why is hades literally the worst in this

oh they are looking for the pearls, interesting

luke has aegis?!?!?

awesome, no prophecy

annabeth you can't just steal from a wishing fountain

glad they kept uncle ferdinand

medusa SLAYS. that leather jacket is so nice damn

cool ipod product placement. kids today would never get it

he can heal other people with water????

oh none of the gods can see their kids???? is there a great prophecy in this or uhhh not

love grover eating a soda can

okay so the mist doesn't cover anything cool

so far two major rules of the percy jackson world don't exist: the great prophecy and mist. can it even be percy jackson without them?

so their dyslexia just lets them read greek letters?

so video calls on laptops don't attract monsters but cell phones do? i can't believe camp has wifi

also why tf is percy wearing the shoes

i kinda like the idea of the hydra presenting has like 5 people

ah, percy is wearing the shoes so he can fight the hydra while flying, i see.

annabeth has so many random weapons and they just sort of appear. does she have like, a bag of holding or something?

so like so far percy has not controlled water at all but now he just sees a water fountain and thinks, yeah i can use that

they're just toting medusa's head along hmm

oh the lotus casino is a stop they have to purposefully walk into, cool

grover how can you gamble? how can any of you gamble? none of y'all are supposed to look 18 or older

okay this lotus casino is significantly better than the show, i gotta say

time for the most iconic seen

love that the lotus flower is just drugs

they're just letting these kids gamble???

ah poseidon is why percy is able to remember

THE PEARL IS BEING USED FOR ROULETTE LMAOO

i can't believe they decided to replace the st. louis arch with the nashville parthenon

no crusty's??? no DOA records????

ooh catacombs

i think chris columbus confused the underworld with hell

are those supposed to be dogs?

oh there's rosario dawson, it's summer, why is persephone in the underworld

why is grover so sexualized

why is persephone so sexualized

oh the bolt is in the shield

"i am going to be king of the gods" alright chill

also just realized that there is no history between annabeth and luke and she's not upset that he was the lightning thief

sally went with them???

WHAT IS LUKE DOING HERE

luke having his own shoes is very funny

huh?

kronos is just not a factor in this movie

luke, you have the bolt, why are you chasing percy

percy hit luke so hard his shoes fell off

how does sally know how to get into olympus

i love how in the books the gods are 10 feet tall and in this movie they're 50

love that they recast hermes for the second movie

he's so tiny, i cannot take this seriously

i think it is interesting that poseidon would have stayed to raise percy if he could. the movie really said good dad!poseidon

percy doing the politician wave to say bye to his mom

grover is not looking for pan at all, interesting

CHIRON SAYUNG PERCY IS HIS FAVORITE IS SO FUCKING WILD there's literally other campers around you

annabeth wears pink because she's a girl and percy wears blue because he's a boy

whelp

that's about as bad as i remember

[vanadisvalentine]

It's All About the Bees, Baby

Well, now that I'm done crying and laughing and screaming, I can finally take a moment to relax and put all of my thoughts about today's episode in one place. Full disclosure that I'm not going to be talking about fandom drama or anything because I have negative interest in engaging with that sort of discussion. This post is about what the bees mean to me and to others, as well as why the big scene today was so beautiful.

To start off on a personal note, I've been watching RWBY since I was twelve, so coming up on a decade now. I remember seeing a ton of fanart and memes for volume one as it was airing and decided to give it a shot a few weeks before volume two started airing. I dropped it in the first episode because the sound mixing was awful (apparently I've always been an audio snob), but decided to give it another go based on the recommendation of one of my long time friends, and that was when I realized it was basically the perfect show for little twelve year old Valentine. Great character designs, awesome music, I dug the humor, but more than anything, there was a particular character who I could not get out of my head.

Yang Xiao Long.

Yang is still to this day very much my type. Brash, bold, boisterous, blonde, brawler. I have loved this girl since the day I first laid eyes on her and I will love her to the day I die. As you can probably guess, being twelve years old is often a pretty rough period in a baby sapphic's life. I knew I liked girls, but outwardly admitting it to myself was something that took a long time, and Yang sort of galvanized that process, which really kicked off after Burning the Candle aired.

This is the moment that made me go "Oh. Oh, she's like me, isn't she?"

And it was all downhill from there.

I don't think I need to stress how prevalent shipping is in the RWBY fandom. For a show that doesn't focus much on romance (there are romantic relationships in the show that get significant attention and one of those ships was sunk six volumes ago), it might be one of the most notable aspects of the fandom. If two characters exist, even if one of them was dead before the series even started, there's a good chance there's a ship name for them...be they family or not. Looking at you, Enabler. That being said, Bumbleby--great ship name by the way, you guys--has been the most prominent basically since the start, with White Rose/Ice Flower following closely behind. This isn't really surprising. They're half of the main four girls and Blake specifically went out of her way to choose Yang as her partner, so them becoming a popular ship is a no-brainer, but the reasons as to why it's truly something special didn't become clear until the audience had learned more about these two as characters. Their backstories, what they strive towards, what motivates them, what scares them, all of that. They might seem like oil and water at first glance, but really, they're made for each other.

Alright, let's head in another direction before this just turns into a post about what makes their relationship great. Bumbleby is a relationship that is important to people for a lot of reasons, chief among those reasons being that people see themselves in these girls who have been through so much, both together and separately.

Blake Belladonna is, for all intents and purposes, an abuse victim, something that is unfortunately all too common (especially among the queer community). She managed to escape that relationship for a time and found family in her team, but her relationship with Yang has always taken center stage. I don't think it's lost on most Bumbleby fans that on the surface, Yang and Adam are similar. Semblances aside, they're both prone to bouts of anger, but one of the (many) differences between the two is while Adam was attracted to Blake for what he wants her to be--another violent revolutionary to take on the world with him--Yang likes Blake for who she is. She cares about her, truly, evident by the fact that she's the one who knocks Blake out of her self-destructive spiral in volume two. For so many victims of abuse, the notion of finding someone who will love you for you and won't treat you the way your last partner did is almost like a fairy tale, so to see Blake move on from Adam and overcome her trauma with Yang by her side resonates with a lot of people.

On the other side of things, there's Yang. She has abandonment issues, of course, which is something that doesn't really mesh well with Blake "My Problems Can't Hurt Me If I Just Run From Them" Belladonna. Come on, her semblance literally leaves behind copies of herself to take damage for her, but the show spells it out for you during Mountain Glenn, so you don't need my analysis here. The difference between Blake and Raven, though, is that Blake came back. Because she cares, and even if she made a mistake, she tries so hard to make it up to Yang. For a lot of people who have been abandoned or tossed aside in their lives, seeing someone who left a loved one behind not only come back for them but earnestly try and make amends is moving because it's something they think they'll never have, or it's something they've longed for but never got.

Now, onto the big scene from today's episode, Confessions Within Cumulonimbus Clouds. First of all, the fact that the Ever After itself said "You two have been making goo-goo eyes at each other since forever, go and work it out"? Gorgeous. Beautiful. You love to see it. What's nice about the framing of the scene is that Blake and Yang are put into a situation where in order to progress, they have to...well, progress. "Take the next step", which is to, of course, confess already. And how do they take those steps? They have to open up, say how it is they truly feel about each other instead of awkwardly flirting and making Weiss want to pull her hair out. And the more they progress, the more solid the rickety bridge becomes, symbolizing that they're getting closer and closer to finally clicking.

Even then, there's a contrast between the two of them. Blake, while nervous, is ready to take the next step. She's ready to finally say what they've needed to say to each other for ages. Yang, though? She's scared. Scared that she'll mess it up, scared that Blake won't feel the same, scared that she'll fall.

But in the end, even if she's nervous, she knows it's Blake. Her best friend, her partner, her soulmate. And Blake urges her to say it, and it's the push she needs to take that next step.

Part of what makes this scene so special to so many people is that when it comes to fandom and queer shipping, so much of it is implicit. Even for something that is obviously gay, like Madoka Magica, Homura never says that she is romantically in love with Madoka, and the unfortunate reality is that without that, queer relationships are often just written off as bait. Hell, just this last season of anime we were given The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, a show that was commonly called bait even though the main characters makes it clear at several points that she is a lesbian who is attracted to the love interest. If there's no confession, it's bait. If there's no kiss, it's bait. So the fact that today, we were given both? It's so incredibly refreshing, because it is just not something that happens a lot in anime/anime adjacent media, especially not one as widespread as RWBY is, so people who mainly consume that type of art are left scrambling for crumbs, grasping at every glance or touch or smile, sustaining themselves off of fanart and fanfiction. You've got to understand that a lot of queer people--sapphics in particular--just...aren't used to this.

People have been clamoring over these two for a decade now. The hiatus between volumes eight and nine beat our asses, and we've been hyping ourselves up with "Bees kiss, bees kiss, bees kiss" since the trailer for this volume dropped, so to have it? To have it be real, be tangible, be undeniable? It feels good. It feels good to prove the weird ass homophobes who for some reason still watch this show wrong. It feels good to be vindicated. It feels good to be able to feel this joy.

We won, babes. We won. We can celebrate that, we can cherish that, and no one can take that from us.

[bloghyperfixes]

Hello, I hope you don't mind asking you of what you think of each of the angels, what you like or dislike about them or what are your favourites?

Hello!

Looooool, I don't know where I should start. My brain is a flaccid soggy loaf of bread.

To be honest, I'm not sure and I don't remember if I've thought that deeply about the characters' personalities, other than seeing the angel dudes' artwork and all my brain cells getting lost again in yet another "oh god, beautiful ancient alien things, I need to find more fan art on them to feed myself" hyperfixation.

I don't know why I like Daishinkan and his angelic children, and I'm not sure if I can call one of them a "favorite character". Maybe it's the hyperfixation and vibrating in me screaming to find something on the little mystery dude and his kids who don't have enough appearing in front of us (other than Whis) to replenish my endorphins and serotonin stores. Perhaps I like them all equally?

I'm not saying, I joined the fandom just for the artwork with the beautiful angels, maybe I'm not looking hard enough to know anything about them beyond the fact that they are teachers of the gods of destruction and what universes they are in, maybe there is somewhere in the depths of the internet a more detailed description of their character.

I can say that Whis is a cute bright star who (if you forget that he's the attendant of a genocidal god), you want to hug, squeeze his face and call him a good boy. And feed him more food to see his joy. Can tell he'd sell your soul for a corn chip. On second impression, he's a secretive rat who may have plans for you.

Vados is about the same as Whis. (A tall statuesque woman who has no problem communicating with sarcasm and irony. She's cool)

Mojito has been in an emo phase since the beginning of her existence.

Kus is the oldest of all the Angels, her whole little girl appearance screams of her cuteness and harmlessness, though she isn't. I think she uses her huge eyes at some point to get what she wants.

Daishinkan looks mysterious and charismatic? His face is between (:3) and [ >:) ], my attention is drawn to the halo behind his head. I know this guy is dangerous, he's capable of destruction, but my god, he's a cute little kitten, so deceptively adorable. (His baggy blue trousers are funny and ridiculous). HOLY CRAP THIS GUY IS ANCIENT, HELP ME OUT. And he's a father. All the dad jokes and moments belong to him now.

I don't know what to say about Marcarita, other than her face has the waibes of a real high school bitch and I would definitely avoid her, even if Marcarita more or less turns out to be harmless.

Can I call Camparri funny and lively? He has a high emotional bar and it's definitely not brick level, maybe angels are supposed to act neutral, I'm not sure about the neutrality of their face. Camparri looked quite lively and cautious from my memory when he reacted to the robot during the Tournament Arc when his gods were shown robots.

Merus appeared more or less revealed character? (I saw his headphones and thought they were real ears, and then I was just like. "aw :(") He's another Priest child, and he's sent off to be trained and interned to explore the universe. His origin turns out to be a real surprise and trap when you've just finished the anime, and don't know that the manga has a sequel after the Tournament saga at all. I find him interesting too, it's unusual to see an angel in a different element.

Sorry, I don't have any thoughts or ideas what I can say about the rest of the angels. Basically they're all awesome and it's cool that they exist.

[skyhopedango]

Episode 12! The end! Oh no! ;_; )

I hate it so much that it has to end... At least it got a pretty good ending - a surprisingly good one, actually - with most plot lines wrapped up neatly. Also, I may or may not have teared up at some points. Or even right now. Daaamn this stupid franchise making me so emotionally invested. GAH.

Anyway, the rundown... as soon as I find another package of tissues...

Story makes short work of Boss Man courtesy of Kimie, we knew this was coming, no point on wasting time on it. Bye Boss Man. It was funny though that after a huge psychic superpower fight he went out by getting shot in the back. :D

BABY BROTHERS ARE CRYING, HURRY UP AND SAVE THEM!

I suppose this is where knowledge of the original comes in handy, because I think during Naoto & Takuya's journey to their brothers we were supposed to learn about how the Kiriharas ended up where they did, but well, I guess there's a limit of how much you can pack into 23 minutes. So let's just say that even in childhood Naoto & Naoya had it far worse than their counterparts... having had their powers awakened from birth (as opposed to the Kurokis, it seems), and all the shit that came with that. Plus even after being taken away from their parents, the Kurokis grew up having friends and whatnot, while the Kiriharas had like... Mikuriya. In the original at least there were some other people around in the lab, but in 2041 it doesn't seem like there was anyone, really, other than Mikuriya, so all the boys had was him, and each other.

THIS WHOLE SCENE IN THE SPIRITUAL ENERGY BEAM OR WHATEVER. SO PRETTY. ;_; )

And OH DAMN, so the Kurokis are basically the Kiriharas' reincarnations! HOLY SHIT. I'd been expecting like something since Misaki mentioned Akiko having been reincarnated (and at this point I have a pretty good guess who is her reincarnation... ....c'mon it's Kimie, it's got to be Kimie! and why that didn't create a paradox, well, that's because-- LOOK OVER THERE!!!)

Oh, so that was the symbolism with the game they'd been playing. Ooohh. I like that. Also: observe the Ark behind Naoto on that shot. Nice.

AAHH NAOTO IS SMILING, HE'S GENUINELY SMILING!

I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING

AHAHAHA lol Takuya surprise hugging Naoto, and Naoto giving "omg what to do, I'm too emotionally repressed for this" vibes. :D Also, Naoya doesn't get a hug. Takuya may be dumb but he's not that dumb.

Naoto. OH NAOTO. OH MY HEART. Don't feel guilty Naoto, you've done all you could. I mean he's just a guy, really, and especially 2041's Naoto is a lot more sensitive and has way less of an edge than the Naoto in the original. That one was more pragmatic, even if he hated himself being able and willing to do things like killing people even if it was to protect Naoya. This Naoto is different - he's less hardened, more gentle, and also different in how he processes his feelings, he represses them more but I guess angsts over them harder.

And oh poor Naoto, he didn't get a hug. Again. :D;; Doesn't matter, it was such a lovely scene.

Also, who's been cutting onions here for the past ten minutes?! I'm running out of tissues!...

OH NO, the Kurokis' parents?! Oh my god don't do this to me, show...

AAAAAAAH............

Blah blah Kimie, blah blah of course they weren't going to do it, and that didn't happen, and OH DAMN, NAOTO & NAOYA

SO YUUYA'S VISION WAS RIGHT, BUT ALSO NOT CORRECT - THEY BASICALLY WENT BACK AND FIXED EVERYTHING - okay baby Kuroki brothers still had been taken away but that had to be done, and the parents remember and they're reunited, and--

FFS NOT THE ONIONS AGAIN, I'M ALL OUT OF TISSUES ;_; )

Alright, so I guess this is another part where knowing the original puts it all in a slightly different context. Because this whole thing with the parents is exactly the same (minus the Kimie thing) that happens with the Kiriharas in the original, but with a very different outcome. In the original Naoto & Naoya finally manage to track down their parents who run a clock shop, but find that their memories had been meddled with and they don't remember them... and then they can't even get a peaceful farewell, because the villain fucks up the whole thing for the lulz, and it's kind of heartbreaking.

Here, they basically fixed everything - so that the Kurokis don't have to suffer all that shit that they had to go through, from having to live isolated in the lab and growing up suffering from difficult to control powers to having their parents taken away from them forever.

Oh man. Naoto & Naoya are just so awesome. ;_; )

And so they go... to another dimension? to the Awesome Spiritual Place? just disappearing into the spirit universe like Shouko? At least wherever they go now they'll be together...

........please stand by until I finish being overly emotional over the silly woo brocon show........

So anyway, in the end basically Takuya & Yuuya become that world's Naoto & Naoya, doing pretty much the same thing as those two did in the original, being the small change that gets things rolling toward the Awakening - hell, Kimie even called them Saviors, that was Naoya's designation in the original (with Naoto as his protector/knight). Except well, the Kurokis are a ton more well-adjusted, especially at this point in the story. Aside of having a better understanding of everything, better control of their powers and not having the whole world out to get them, at least not seriously at this point- they even have their parents back! Lucky bastards.

The end. *sniffle*

Oh boy. What can I say? The existence of this show has taken me by completely surprise, being a reboot of an old niche franchise I'd fallen in love with and didn't expect seeing anything new for ever again. And y'know, my expectations were loooooooow because the previous anime was, as I'd mentioned a few times before, bad, like, actually really bad.

And then Night Head 2041 turned out to be - actually really good! It had just the right touches, with the animation (surprisingly good and detailed!) and just the visuals in general, and the characters! I love this Naoto and Naoya, from their design to their characterization that is similar but yet still different from the original but in ways that work so well! And I grew to like the Kurokis a lot, too, also Takuya is so pretty it's just not fair! Although the Kiriharas are always going to be the best. Also, I really want Kimie's leggings even though I could never wear them.

And I mean OK, I'm clearly biased, but even with my fangirl glasses off this was a perfectly alright show. And for a fangirl like me, oh... where do I even start. I won't even start, really, it's like half past midnight over here and I'm still running on an emotional high. Will post moe tomorrow because if I tried now I'd just post the whole damn thing.

I know there's still the manga adaptation of 2041 that's going to go on for a while still (and the novelization that I'll read now) but I'm going to miss this show so much. Thank you for everyone involved in it! You made my summer and early autumn, and pretty much my 2021 so far. Bye, Kirihara Naoto & Naoya...

[nerdythebard]

#8: Adrian 'Alucard' Tepes [Castlevania]

Surprise!

Told you I can do any fictional character. Feel free to send me your suggestions!

By the time I'm writing this, season 4 of Netflix's Castlevania shall hit our screens in two days. Because of that, I decided to do something special and build the main trio in D&D. We'll start with everybody's bundle of daddy issues - Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes aka Alucard. This half-vampire swordsman uses his charm and nimbleness to overpower his foes.

Next Time: Never tell this woman beer is better than sex with her, my man... see what happens.

Now, let's see what we need to bring Alucard into our D&D game.

Errr... besides that.

Half-Blood Prince: Alucard is a half-vampire son of Dracula. He's quite an accomplished scholar, orator, and all-around high-class fella. His strength, speed, and intelligence are obviously above that of any mortal, but I'm afraid this is D&D, not anime. We have to balance it out.

Floaty Sword: Alucard's weapon of choice is a longsword he controls telekinetically. We don't see him doing much in terms of magic and spellcasting (besides occasional quick stride akin to teleportation), so we shall focus on this one weapon.

Tough: I mean... my dude fights either shirtless or in a trenchcoat and he still can take more Punchables™ than Mama said. What I mean is, we need some good AC on him.

---

The issue of Alucard's race is pretty much non-existing; he's a half-vampire, there is a half-vampire option in D&D that is about to become official with the upcoming release of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

Alucard is a Dhampir. We get to pick a +2 and +1 to two different stats of our choice, let's get +2 Dexterity and +1 Constitution. We get both walking AND climbing speed of 35 feet, 60 feet of Darkvision, and we get to speak Common and one other language of our choice. Most importantly, we get Vampiric Bite, which lets us use our teeth as natural weapons. We can add our Constitution modifier to both attack and damage rolls of our fangs, and the bite deals 1d4 piercing damage. If we're below 50% health, we have an advantage on the attack roll. We're not ourselves when we're hungry. If the creature we bite is not a construct or an undead, we can choose one of the following benefits:

regain Hit Points equal to the damage of our bite;

gain a bonus to the next ability check or attack roll we make (bonus equals the damage of our bite)

We can use those bite benefits the number of times equal to our proficiency bonus, and we regain all bites after finishing a long rest.

For Alucard's background, I feel like going with Noble is most fitting. We get proficiency with History and Persuasion, proficiency in one gaming set, we learn one language of our choice, and we gain the Position of Privilege feature; much like Shelter of the Faithful or Military Rank from previous builds, this one grants us ability to secure an audience with a noble, or use our status to gain entrance to more secured locations. Nobody tells the son of Dracula what he can or can't do!

ABILITY SCORES

If you ever seen Alucard, you know he's scoring 18 in every single thing right away. That makes him almost anime protagonist-level of awesome. However, once again, this is D&D. We must be fair and adhere to the rules:

We start with Constitution, as we're pretty difficult to hurt (our only weakness seems to be attractive Japanese hunters). Dexterity is next, it is our primary fighting ability, and we need it to be able to go shirtless into battle. We follow that up with Strength, we are nimble but we can still punch a full-on vampire in the face hard enough to make him feel it.

Intelligence is next, we've had Dracula's entire library to kill time, and we're pretty educated. Wisdom is a bit lower than we need it to be, but we did get outsmarted by two Belmont wannabes. We'll work on that. Unfortunately, we have to dump Charisma.

H-hey! For my defence, he's been described as a teenager in an adult's body! He is educated and eloquent, but apart from that, his charm comes from how inept and awkward he is... err... it doesn't work, eh?

YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!

CLASS

Level 1 - Fighter: No big surprise there, we're not a caster or a tank, this is a damage-dealer build. As a Fighter, we get a d10 for our Hit Dice, [10 + Constitution modifier] starting Hit Points, proficiency with light armour, medium armour, heavy armour, shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons. We don't need armour for this build (we've seen Alucard using a shield in S4 trailer), and I think his sword is long and thin enough to count as a rapier. Our saving throws are Strength and Constitution, and we get to pick two class skills: Athletics and Acrobatics seems stereotypical, but they're really useful in this build.

Fighters at 1st level get to pick their Fighting Style, and if you remember Alucard's fight with Trevor, you know we're going with Duelling. This gives us a +2 to damage rolls with our weapon, as long as it's the only one we have in our hands, so we're dropping the shield. We also get Second Wind, letting us heal [1d10 + our Fighter level] once per short or long rest.

Level 2 - Fighter: At this level we get Action Surge, which lets us take one additional Action once per short or long rest.

Level 3 - Fighter: This is the level where we get to pick our subclass, our Martial Archetype. Now, if this build was done earlier, I would've picked Eldritch Knight (as Weapon Bond is especially tempting feature), but thanks once again to Tasha's Cauldron of Everything we have something that fits Alucard much better.

Alucard is a Psi Warrior. He uses much less magic than Sypha, and his main tactic is to use his sword telekinetically. This subclass has everything we need. We start with Psionic Power, which gives us a [our proficiency bonus x2]d6 of Psionic Energy Dice, which can be used to perform special effects. We regain all Psionic Dice after finishing a long rest, but once per short or long rest we can also regain one dice as a bonus action, which is useful in a pinch. We begin with the following psychic effects:

Protective Field: when a creature within 30 feet of us takes damage, we can spend 1 Psionic Die as a reaction to reduce the damage by [the result + our Intelligence modifier].

Psionic Strike: Once on our turn, when we successfully deal damage to a target within 30 feet of us, we can spend 1 Psionic Die to add extra [the result + our Intelligence modifier] force damage.

Telekinetic Movement: As an action, we can select a loose object that is Large or smaller (or one willing creature other than ourselves), and move it up to 30 feet into an unoccupied space. Alternatively, we can summon a Tiny object directly to or from our hand. Our rapier is definitely not Tiny, but moving it as close as 1 foot and using a free action to pick it up is absolutely possible. Once we use this effect, we have to wait a short or long rest, or use a Psionic Die to use it again.

Level 4 - Fighter: It's time for our first Ability Score Improvement! Instead, however, we will pick a feat. Mobile feat along with a Dexterity-based character is truly a DM's bane. Our walking (and climbing) speed increases by 10 feet; when we use the Dash action, we are not affected by difficult terrain; when we make a melee attack against a creature, we do not provoke attacks of opportunity for the rest of the turn, regardless if we hit our target or not.

Level 5 - Fighter: At this level we get Extra Attack. During our turn, as we take our Action, we can now attack twice instead of once. Combining that with Action Surge lets us attack four times on our turn.

It is also here that our Psionic Dice increases from d6 into d8.

Level 6 - Fighter: We get another ASI. Let's raise our Wisdom by 2 points. We need it to multiclass later.

Level 7 - Fighter: Our subclass gets upgraded with Telekinetic Adept. We now get two additional effects to pick for our Psionic Dice:

Psi-Powered Leap: As a bonus action, we gain flying speed of [our walking speed x2] feet until the end of our current turn. Once we take this effect, we cannot do it again until we finish a short or long rest, or spend a Psionic Die to do it again.

Telekinetic Thrust: When we use our Psionic Strike, we can force a Strength saving throw on our target (DC: 8 + our proficiency bonus + our Intelligence modifier). On a failed save, we can either knock the target prone, or move them 10 feet in any horizontal direction.

Level 8 - Fighter: Time for another ASI. Once again, we need to raise our Wisdom, but this time only by a single point. We'll put the other point into Strength, and let's get ready to multiclass into...

Level 9 - Monk: We shall now address Alucard's questionable choice of body protection... and by that I mean lack thereof. As a 1st-level Monk, we get Unarmoured Defence; when we're not wearing any armour, our AC equals [10 + our Dexterity modifier + our Wisdom modifier].

We also get our hand-to-hand combat upgraded with Martial Arts, which is going to be useful if we're somehow separated from our sword. While we're unarmed (or wielding monk weapons) and unarmoured (and with no shield), we gain the following benefits:

We can use Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls of our unarmed strikes and monk weapons;

We can now roll a d4 for attack and damage rolls of our unarmed strikes (instead of our Strength or Dexterity modifier) and monk weapons;

When we Attack using unarmed strikes or monk weapons, we can spend a bonus action to do additional unarmed strike.

Level 10 - Monk: Halfway through the build, and we're getting access to the Monk's most important resource, the Ki energy. We start with 2 Ki Points, which we can spend to fuel some extra Monk abilities. Right from the start, we know three of those:

Flurry of Blows: Immediately after we Attack, we can spend 1 Ki Point to deal two extra unarmed strikes.

Patient Defence: We can burn 1 Ki Point to take a Dodge action as a bonus action.

Step of the Wind: For 1 Ki Point, we can take a Dash or Disengage action as a bonus action. Our jump distance also doubles for the turn.

We also get extra speedy here with Unarmoured Movement. While not wearing armour or a shield, our walking speed increases by 10 feet.

Level 11 - Monk: At this level, we shall learn how to Deflect Missiles. Whenever we're hit by a ranged projectile, we can use our reaction to reduce the damage dealt by [1d10 + our Dexterity modifier + our Monk level]. If we manage to reduce the damage to 0, we can catch the projectile with a free hand and, using the same reaction, make a ranged attack (20/60) with the same projectile.

This is also the time to pick our second subclass, our Monastic Tradition. Now, originally I wanted to do Way of the Shadow to get some more of that vampiric sneak, but then I realize it's not exactly what Alucard does. Instead, we'll go Way of the Open Hand, to enhance our unarmed combat. With the Open Hand Technique feature, we gain a boost to our Flurry of Blows. Every time on of our Flurry strikes hits, we can apply one of the following effects:

Target must make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone;

Target must make a Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 15 feet;

Target cannot take reactions until the end of our next turn.

We also get Wholeness of Body to double-down on our vampiric regeneration. Once per long rest, we can use an action to regain Hit Points equal to [our Monk level x3].

It is also at this level that our Psionic Dice get upgraded to a d10.

Level 12 - Fighter: We return to our Jedi Psi Warrior, just in time to get the Indomitable feature. Once per long rest, we can reroll a saving throw we fail, but we must use the new result.

Level 13 - Fighter: Our subclass gets upgraded with Guarded Mind. We are now resistant to psychic damage. Additionally, we can spend a Psionic Die to shake off the charmed or frightened effects if we start our turn under influence of those.

Level 14 - Fighter: Here, our Extra Attack gets improved; now, we can attack three times when taking the Attack action.

Level 15 - Fighter: We get another ASI. Let's raise our Charisma by 2 point, to get rid of the negative modifier.

Level 16 - Fighter: We now get an improvement to our Indomitable feature. We can use it twice per long rest.

Level 17 - Fighter: For another ASI, we shall raise our Dexterity by 2 points.

Level 18 - Fighter: We get the final upgrade for our subclass in this build. By using Bulwark of Force, we can protect ourselves and others. As a bonus action, we can choose a number of creatures within 30 feet that we can see (ourselves included), equal to our Intelligence modifier. The chosen creatures gain the benefit of half-cover for 1 minute, or until we're incapacitated. Once again, we can use it once per long rest, unless we spend a Psionic Die to use it again.

Level 19 - Fighter: For our final ASI we shall raise our Wisdom and Intelligence.

Level 20 - Fighter: Our capstone is Fighter 17. We get three uses of Indomitable per long rest, and two uses of Action Surge, which effectively gives us ability to perform nine attacks on a single target.

---

And that is my take on Alucard from Castlevania. Let's see how he presents himself:

First of all, we're a very speedy boi, with basic speed of 55 feet, with Step of the Wind giving us ability to double that movement. We also have a solid Hit Point base, 181 on average. We can make multiple attacks with Action Surge and Extra Attack, and even if we get disarmed, we can handle ourselves with bare hands.

On the other hand, our Charisma makes those particular saving throws a bit difficult. Same thing with our Intelligence, which modifier fuels some of our subclass abilities. We also have a relatively low AC (16 unarmoured), but we do have several skills attributing to avoiding getting hit (the Mobile feat, Patient Defence, etc.)

---

Anyhoo, that's it for Alucard. Next time, it's everybody's favourite tomboy wizard!

- Nerdy out!

[handonhaven]

So I've seen both TVD and TO. But I'm pretty new to the legacies fandom, and I finally caught up on everythin. And let me tell you I've been on some the social medias and I can't go back on them because if I do I feel like I might not like the show anymore. Especially when it comes to the Hosie part of them fandom(but I'm not gonna go there). It's just wow. But I instantly fell in love with Handon and their whole star cross lovers thing. And them always fighting for each other in one way. And doing whatever they can to keep the other safe, stop fate and be together. Oh that last episode and the break up scene it nearly killed me, I don't think I'll ever recover for that. If I'm being honest I watch that scene too many times than I care to admit. But every time I watch it I notice something else I didn't before. To name a few. The moment Landon realized what he had to do to keep Hope safe. When Hope grabbed Landon arm and he looked generally surprised that she would try to stop him(Idk if it was because he know has PTSD or because some part very very very deep down still believe he doesn't desvere her). And the look on Hopes face when Landon says they're doomed. Even though what he's saying hurts, some part of knows that he doesn't believe that and that he's just saying that to push her away. And lastly the part when Landon is leaving we can see him wipe his face. Like maybe he's wiping away a tear because he could've start it to cry as soon as he walked away.

I'm really hoping that when this is all over that they end up together because they've earned it. And if they don't then I hope it ends on a good note and not with one of them dying for good. Because either of them desveres that. Not after the lives they had, they both desvere to have a good and happy life. Especially Landon one way or another his whole has been hell and he had to do all of that alone. I mean he had Raph but he's now gone. And now he's probably scare he won't have Hope anymore. Also Hopes life has been hell too but at least up until she was 15 she had her mom and aunt Freya to lean on if she need it. Even now she still has her aunts and uncle to lean on if she want it. But I'm just really hoping that they end up together and happy with each other(I feel like they will, there's so many signs pointing to that. Them always being drawn to each other. Landon somehow remembering Hope even when he didn't remember her and so many others idk if I'm the only one who's seen them) and to have a good life.

P.S please writers don't do them wrong.

Oh awesome! Yeah, you’ve gotta be careful with social media when it comes to this fandom. It can get really bad and definitely affect your experience with the show, especially with the way so many Hosie fans are.

And I’ve loved Handon since the beginning as well! Yess, their relationship is so beautiful. And same, that breakup was so painful! Haha, I’ve watched the scene multiple times too! And yeah, that’s literally been the case for me as well, I’ve noticed new things the more I’ve watched it. Yes, you can see Landon react when Hope tells him about her having to become a tribrid, his eyes say it all! And I noticed his reaction when Hope grabbed his arm too. It could’ve been from his PTSD, or maybe part of him does feel like he’s not good enough for her so he was surprised she did that. I actually posted some other thoughts I had about that here x. And yeah, when it comes to Landon saying they’re doomed, I’m very curious to know whether he believes it or not. Part of me thinks that he does mean it, but not entirely. I think maybe he does believe that they’re doomed for now, if they don’t do anything to change it. They’re doomed, so he’s going to undoom things. Maybe he believes it and is acknowledging it so that he can fix it, if that makes sense? He didn’t tell Hope that that’s what he’s gonna do, of course. And I noticed his hand on his face too, I can’t really tell exactly what he was doing, but I suppose it’s possible that he was wiping a tear!

I’m hoping they’ll end up together as well, they definitely deserve it!! But yeah, if not, I wouldn’t want it to be from one of them dying either! That would be terrible, I went through too much pain from that happening on TVD and TO, so it better not happen to Handon! Absolutely, they both deserve to live long and happy lives.

And I completely agree about Landon. His entire life has been hell, it’s honestly so heartbreaking. And I wish they would address all that he’s been through more. It’s true, he never had anyone until Raf, but he didn’t even meet him till he was 15, and of course the writers had to take his brother away from him. And yeah, now he’s probably scared to lose Hope too. And I could go on a whole rant about Landon and his trauma, but I won’t haha, they just better let him be happy. And not just at the very end, I want him to at least have a break next season and be happy without going through more pain. And yes Hope’s life has also been hell, but true, she still grew up being loved with a whole family who did everything to protect her. And she does still have her family in New Orleans, if the writers ever choose to acknowledge their existence again.

Those are my hopes for Handon as well! I think there’s a very good possibility of them being together and happy in the end, that’s what I believe and hope will happen. It’s true, there are seriously tons of signs that point to them being endgame, so yes, let’s hope that it happens and that the writers will let them be happy together and not screw anything up!

[dobsmoneylake]

Oxventurers touch an orb and **poof** they're in Elinore's Largely Legal Antiques staring at a surprised crew. What do?

AN: Thank you so much for the prompt! I am so sorry that this took so long, and I hope that it is worth the wait! Thanks to the Historian for beta-ing this. I own nothing.

The atmosphere at Eleanor’s Largely Legal Antiques was the same as it always was these days. It had lost some of its homey nature (as well as the smell of fish) since they had moved into the townhouse, but it retained the level of comfort that the crew had come to associate with their favorite HQ. It had also gained some level of repute, considering that it now functioned as a store-- helped, no doubt, by the removal of the fish smell.

In fact, Edvard, Lilith, and Zillah were currently in said shop, attempting to sell antiques. (Well, Zillah and Lilith were, Edvard was attempting to subtly determine if there was anything that could be of use in his innoventing before it was sold.) It was while they were there, standing behind the counter, that a sudden flash of light went off, starting our adventure.

When the light dimmed, they found that they were joined by a group of rather unusual people. For one thing, they were all dressed in clothes not seen in centuries. For another, they were arguing amongst themselves. Finally, one of them was red and the other was green. And one was Egbert.

The three crew members exchanged glances, debating with their eyes who would take the lead in the conversation. Finally, rolling her eyes, Zillah stepped forward. “Excuse me,” she said politely, “But who are you and how did you get here?”

The figure with the eyepatch scoffed. “What do you mean how did we get here? It’s not like ‘here’ is a particularly daring place to be. And how dare you not recognize the greatest pirate ever!” He struck a pose. “It is I, Corazón De Balleña, at your service,” he ended on a bow.

“Never heard of you, mate.” Lilith told him, “And I hate to break it to you, but we don’t have pirates anymore.”

Corazón scoffed. “That’s obviously because I’ve scared them all off. Honestly, use your head.” He looked around the shop. “So, where is ‘here’?”

“You’re in Volisport,” Zillah told him.

“Never heard of it,” he said dismissively. “Right, well we’ll just teleport ourselves out of your hair.”

The three crew members exchanged concerned looks. “What do you mean, you’ll teleport?” Edvard demanded. “Magic doesn’t exist.”

Corazón snorted, flicking his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, mumbling the incantation for dancing lights.

Nothing happened.

Corazón narrowed his eyes and tried it again with the same result.

“I’m sorry,” Zillah said, “But is something supposed to be happening?”

At the same time, Prudence started laughing. “You’re right,” she said, “It is funny when it isn’t happening to you.”

“I told you,” Edvard said, “There’s no such thing as magic.”

Corazón took a deep breath before turning to the half-orc who was trying to hide behind an elf. “Dob,” he said calmly, “I’m going to kill you.”

*********

When Kas walked in a few minutes later, utter pandemonium had enveloped the shop. Corazón was chasing Dob around Merilwen, yelling about ‘not touching strange orbs, we’ve had this conversation before!’ Meanwhile, Lilith had struck up a conversation with Prudence about demon heritage, and Egbert was not-so-subtly leaving pamphlets for the crew to read.

Kas sighed and rubbed his eyes. At least his majesty wasn’t here. “What seems to be going on?” He asked, causing everyone in the room to freeze (this was especially impressive because he hadn’t even needed to raise his voice).

“Um, sorry,” Merilwen said from where she was sandwiched between Corazón (who was in the process of attempting to strangle Dob) and Dob (who had decided to cling to her back to avoid being strangled). “Oxventurers, can we have a huddle?”

The two groups exchanged glances before in one movement, the Oxventurers moved into a group circle. Speaking at normal volumes but still somehow going unheard, they conversed.

“What is going on? Who are these people?” Merilwen asked.

“Whoever they are, they are clearly not as cool and awesome as us,” Corazón replied, “I think we can take them.”

“We don’t even know if we need to take them,” Merilwen replied.

“Yeah! That one with the snake hair seemed nice,” Prudence said. At their blank stares, she rolled her eyes. “Besides, Corazón, can you even take them without your magic?”

“I don’t need magic to overthrow every enemy I face,” He declared, “Plus, you don’t have yours either!”

Prudence smiled, a sight that sent chills down the backs of more than one member of each group. “Yes, but I do have my rage.”

“Why do we have to fight them?” Egbert asked. “Can’t we just see if they can help us?”

“Do they look like they know how to help us? This is a job only we can solve!” Corazón declared.

“It can’t hurt to ask them,” Dob said.

“Shut up, Dob, this is all your fault!”

“Hey! That seems uncalled for.”

“No, Corazón is right,” Merilwen said, “You’re the one who touched the orb.”

“I told you, the orb wanted me to touch it,” Dob replied.

“Yeah, but now we’re here, Dob,” Egbert said, “And here isn’t the place I want to be.”

“I think we should ask them for help,” Prudence broke up the rekindling argument. “And since I have my rage and you don’t have your magic, I think you should listen to me.”

The rest of the group made eye contact and had a quick nonverbal conversation that resulted in Merilwen stepping forward. “Look, we’re sorry about this,” She said, “But my friend here touched a glowing orb that just screamed ‘do not touch’ and then we were teleported here. And now we just want to go home.”

The crew was silent as they looked at each other.

The awkward silent standoff ended as the door opened and Barnaby walked in. Upon seeing their guests, he did a double take before looking down at the open bottle of bourbon in his hand. “I say chaps,” he said, “I can usually hold my drink, but this stuff might be stronger than I thought.”

Brightening up, Egbert stepped forward. “I know someone who can help with that-- here, take a pamphlet.”

Luckily, they were interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the door.

A few moments later, everyone turned to look at Barnaby, who was standing right next to the door. “Aren’t you going to get that?” Edvard asked.

Barnaby scoffed. “I may have drank enough to hallucinate people in the shop, but I know enough to remember that I don’t open doors.”

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Edvard muttered not-quite-under his breath, opening the door.

Unlike the hammer and vase set up that usually introduced a job for them, there was only a plain box. Upon opening the box, they found that it contained only a black orb-- a black orb that seemed very familiar to the Oxventurers. Along with the box came a note. “Instead of making you work for this one, I figured it would be best if we just got your friends out of here before any unsavory people noticed.”

“Does this seem too easy to anyone else?” Lilith piped up, “A complication has to come from this.”

“Nah, this seems about normal,” Dob said, “Something happens, we argue, a solution comes, everyone goes home nice and safe.” He paused for a second. “Why, does it not happen that way for you?”

“No, usually we try something, then something else goes wrong, then we solve that, then something else happens, then Zillah chokes someone out,” Lilith responded.

“Sometimes with her thighs,” Edvard added admiringly.

“Hey! I told you I’m working on finding a different panic response!” Zillah argued.

“Choking people out with your thighs? Can you teach me how to do that?” Prudence asked.

The other Oxventurers exchanged a concerned glance. “Ok, well it was lovely to meet you guys, goodbye,” Corazón said, quickly touching the orb.

The group disappeared with a flash of light and appeared in their own world where they had left it, with Dob just about to touch the orb.

“Dob, do not touch that,” Merilwen said.

“Oh I see how it is. I touch an orb and it’s all ‘Dob you idiot’, Corazón touches an orb and it’s all ‘well that’s fine!’” Dob threw his hands up in the air and walked off before he could realize that the orb was still glowing.

The rest of them looked at each other. “Motion that we never speak of this again?” Egbert asked.

The others agreed and walked off to join their chaotic bard.

*********

Back in the shop, the others looked at each other suspiciously. “That seemed too easy, didn’t it?” Kas asked, looking at the orb.

Miles away in the Dimmer Mansion, Kelly watched as the long dormant magical artifacts started emitting light hums. “It appears our plan has worked,” she said to Allie and Hallie. “Tell the members around the world to come home-- the Orbpacalypse has begun.”

[jazminetoad]

In My Reality | Chapter 1: Dreams & Wishes

Yo, I finally finished the actual first chapter of this new series! I originally wanted to get this out within a week of the prologue’s release but this turned out to be longer than I imagined. All of my TLC went into this for the past three weeks, I haven’t felt this passionate for a project in a long time. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do! ^-^

(This is a Tatsumi brothers x Reader)

(To read the first part, click -> Prologue)

(To read the next part, click → Chapter 2)

(Click “Keep reading” to read the story)

"Geez [n/n], you look so tired," Kamida pointed out. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Yeah, I did," I told them before a yawn escaped my mouth. "Just not as much as I wanted."

The three of us were standing at one of the local bus stops that took us downtown. It was our usual meeting spot since it crossed paths with the sidewalks that led us to our houses. We were heading to the arcade, our pockets filled with coins and our phones. The two artists were awake and ready but I on the other hand wished I stayed in bed.

"Oh?" Kamida quirked a brow.

"Did you go to sleep when we ended the call?" Meri-chan questioned, narrowing her eyes at me. 'Course in my sleepy state, I wasn't bothered by her laser stare.

"No-"

"[Name]!"

"Look, I wasn't ready to fall asleep at the time. Can you blame me?" I asked only to receive a sigh for an answer. "I didn't stay up too late anyway-"

"When?"

"When what?"

"When do you go to sleep?" Meri-chan inquired, placing her hands on her hips.

'Playing the mom friend, are we now?' I thought to myself. 'At least I don't have to deal with the teasing wingman.'

"Around 2 in the morning," I mumbled.

"[Name]!"

"What did you even do during that time?" Kamida asked, saving me from Meri-chan's lecture.

"I just watched the twins' episodes from Juuni Taisen." I noticed Meri-chan was about to go on again so I added, "Hey, at least I didn't watch the entire series."

"That's not the point," Meri-chan stated. I just shrugged in response.

"You really love those two, don't you," Kamida asked me.

"Yup."

I lost track of how many times I rewatched their episodes long ago. While rewatching the entire Anime is great, I didn't have the patience to go through six other episodes before seeing my favourite twins. I then just kept replaying the twins' episodes, eventually losing track of how many times I did. It's just that every time I watch the two episodes, the more I felt I could understand them. It made them seem as if they were real, but the reality is that they're not and I have to remember that. That doesn't stop my dreams though, speaking of my dreams...

"You know, I had an unusual dream last night," I told my friends. "It wasn't like the rest of my dreams that were strange and went all over the place. This dream it... it was of the Tatsumi Brothers but- but it was alternate ending with them." I left out the description of what happened because it'd spoil the Anime for Kamida, and I didn't want to do that.

"What do you mean by 'alternate ending'?" Meri-chan inquired, raising a brow.

"Like it was the ending of Juuni Taisen but different," I answered. "It just- it looked so real! It felt like I was actually watching the Anime until I woke up. You get what I'm saying?"

"Ummm, no," Meri-chan responded, sounding puzzled.

"Really?" I deadpanned.

"I get what you're saying," Kamida piped, pushing his glasses up for the Anime effect. My brow raised in question as to what his next words would be. "You're saying you're obsessed with the two to the point you dream of them!" He stated, pointing an index finger at me.

"Ack-! No!"

"Relax [n/n]," Kamida laughed. "I'm just messing with ya."

"Ha ha..." I let out before another yawn escapes.

"Man, you really are tired."

"I think the dream took my energy," I theorized, rubbing my eyes to stay open. Just as the words left my mouth, we all caught a glimpse of the approaching city bus. I don't know if it was just me but the thing seemed to be taking its sweet time to get to the bus stop.

"It's okay, [Name]. You can take a nap on the bus," Meri-chan told me as the bus came to a stop. "We'll wake you up when we're at the stop near the arcade."

"Alright."

Following my friends, I stepped onto the bus. It wasn't crowded, which made sense considering most people were still working at 2 in the afternoon. Kamida found a set of seats for all of us and sat down, Meri-chan sat next to him, then I plopped down in the seat next to her. Adjusting my position to try and get comfortable enough to fall asleep, I tilted my head to the side and let my eyes fall shut. Soon enough, I had drifted into sleep.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Is that thing any good?" Nagayuki asked his younger brother, watching him eat the deceased, cooked lizard.

"Yeah, it's awesome!" Takeyasu's sarcasm dripped with venom as his teeth tried to tear the scaled arm. "What do you think?"

The elder twin just blankly stared at his brother. Silence filled the air around them, but the sound of the younger twin eating his dead pet prevented the silence from taking over the scene. That was until the echo of a knock on their door emitted into their ears.

In sync, they both turned their attention to the door wondering who'd come to the door at this hour aside from a delivery man, but it wouldn't make sense for it to be a delivery man. Neither of them had ordered anything. The two gave each other a glance of uncertainty before Nagayuki let out a sigh, pinching the tip of his nose.

"I'll answer it," he stated as he approached the front door.

"Alright." Takeyasu reached over and grabbed his weapon, pulling it close for easy access, just in case.

The feeling around them pulled the twins towards the edge as eerie vines grew in the room. Masking his expression, Nagayuki slowly twisted the knob and partially opened the door. He briefly eyes the person standing on the other side.

It was a man with a top hat, grey hair tied back into a ponytail, facial hair, and the structure of his face made him seem elderly. He wore a black long coat with a grey scarf and white gloves. By this alone, the elder Tatsumi brother was able to tell this man dressed to blend into the shadows and meant business. Something else emitted from the man, it seemed to be supernatural. If it had been a normal person answering the door, they would've brushed the feeling off as if it was nothing because they don't believe in it, but Nagayuki knew the supernatural existed because he was living proof. That said, he grew cautious, thinking carefully of his next actions.

"Can I help you?" Nagayuki asked the man with a stoic face.

"I do believe this is the household of the Tatsumi brothers, Nagayuki and Takeyasu, if my sources are correct," the man spoke with an unreadable smile.

"So what if it is?"

"My name is Duodecuple," the man introduced himself. "I am from the Juuni Taisen organization."

Nagayuki raised a brow, suspicious of this mysterious person. When the head of the dragon and snake household explained how the Juuni Taisen contacted you the instructions of how to get to the location, they sent a letter in a red envelope with gold wax as its seal, and it was delivered through the mail. Why was this man here?

"Are you?" Nagayuki questioned. "Do you have any proof to back up that claim of yours?"

"I figured you would say something like that," Duodecuple said, his gloved-hand reached into his coat and pulled out a red envelope with a golden seal, handing it to Nagayuki.

Taking it from the man, the elder Tsumita twin opened the letter and thoroughly read the message written. Sure enough, this was legit. Glancing back at the man, still with a hint of suspicion, Nagayuki folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope before handing it back to him.

"Alright, so why are you here exactly? Last time I checked, you don't escort the warriors to the Juuni Taisen."

"While that is indeed true, I am here on the behave of a wish someone made. A wish that you and your brother wouldn't partake in the Juuni Taisen."

Takeyasu, who was listening to the conversation nearby, swung the door open and fired his weapon at the man. In his mind, that statement is something said before another person is killed. Not necessarily a threat, but even so it wasn't something to take lightly. He wasn't taking the risk of his brother being killed.

Nagayuki hardly had any time to react before his brother started burning the person in front of them. Part of him wanted to scold his brother for acting impulsively, but gratitude is the feeling that stirred inside him. He became unsettled after what the man said, and if it wasn't for Takeyasu, there was a chance the walls would've been stained with blood. However, he should stop his brother before they burn down the apartment building, he doesn't want to have to move again.

"Alright, that's enough, Takeyasu," Nagayuki told his twin, putting a hand on the younger one's shoulder. As the final remains of ember faded away after Takeyasu had stopped, both twins saw that no evidence was left behind of the man. "You really got him good..." Nagayuki stated, almost in disbelief.

"I do believe it is considered rude to try to kill someone before they finish what they are saying." Duodecuple's voice lurked behind them. The two flinched and spun around to discover the man standing there with no trail of smoke or ash on him as if he never had made contact with the fire. "But since you are warriors, I suppose that is an exception."

"I'd like to see you try and avoid this!"

"Wait-" Nagayuki tried to stop his brother from making any haste moves but his brother slithered quickly and tried to attack the old man with physical combat.

From the way the man never flinched and stood his ground, Nagayuki knew something was up. Sure enough, when Takeyasu struck he phased right through. Surprised by this, Takeyasu barely had time to recover and stumbled to catch himself. Once he steadied himself, he looked back to the elder man with narrowed eyes, growling.

"Now, now, I don't mean to bring any harm," Duodecuple reassured the two, holding up one of his gloved hands to gesture he meant no harm. "I am just here to fulfill a wish..." he paused for a brief moment to lower his hand. "Three wishes actually."

"Huh?" Both Tatsumi brothers spoke in sync, confused. Why would there be three wishes that involved them?

"By your tone, I am sure you are confused. I do not blame you however, even if you remembered your own wish you still would not know where the third one came from."

The twins' eyes glanced at each other before going back to the man. If they had made their wish and Duodecuple was here to grant it then that means they were already in the Juuni Taisen and won. What didn't make sense was how did they both win? Did something change where they could both win? If that was the case, why was Duodecuple here before the Juuni Taisen even started? Then there was still the third wish that didn't fit in the picture.

"Since it is not possible for the two of you to avoid the Juuni Taisen while in this plane of existence, our organizers thought it would be best to move you to another. And since the organizers are generous, they thought to grant another wish that would benefit both you and the wisher."

Once again, the Tatsumi brothers shared a look. Both unsure if there was a catch, and both having a lot of questions running through their minds. This entire situation seemed to be too good to be true then again, it was the Juuni Taisen. From what the twins heard, they made anything possible, the power they have is unimaginable.  Still, better to find out now.

"Is there anything else we should know about?" Nagayuki inquired.

"You will be living with the wisher," Duodecuple informed them. "As I said, it is a win-win situation. You will be informed of the new plane and you will have a new place to stay, it makes things more convenient."

"Alright, so we get our wish granted and a new roommate." Takeyasu turned his gaze to his brother, a smirk on his face. "It doesn't seem all that bad."

"I am glad to hear that. That being said, you have seven hours to pack everything you need before you are escorted to your new home," Duodecuple told them, taking off his hat and bowing. His form began to pixelate away until the air was the only thing that remained where the mysterious hologram once stood.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"[Name], wake up," Meri-chan whispered, nudging me awake. "We're here."

"Huh? Oh, right," I mumbled before a yawn escaped my mouth as I rose to my feet.

Once the three of us had walked off the bus, I stretched my stiff limbs. Satisfaction filled me as the musical sound of my bones cracking played through my ears. I was on that bus for too long, but if that meant I got more sleep, I didn't mind. However, I still wished I had been sleeping, for one I still felt like I needed more rest, and two, I wanted to continue the dream I had. It felt real like the one I dreamt the night before, just as if I was watching Juuni Taisen. I found it rather strange that twice in a row I had a dream like that.

"Feeling more awake now, [n/n]?" Kamida asked me.

"Kinda," I answered honestly before I drew a smirk on my face. "Awake enough to be able to beat you at Street Fighter!" I told him, poking his arm then picked up my feet and dashed towards the building.

"Oh no, you don't!" Kamida shouted, sprinting after me.

"Hey, no fair! You guys got a head start!" Meri-chan complained, following behind, trying to keep up.

'Course, it didn't take long before Kamida was running ahead of me, he had the height advance. Kamida is taller than both me and Meri-chan, and I am taller than Meri-chan which leaves her as the shortest out of our trio. That said, it was the order in which we all arrived at the arcade's main doors. Laughter emerged from us as we stumble at the front entrance.

"You guys are so slow," Kamida jeered.

"Yeah, yeah." I waved it off with a hand before strolling over and opening the door. "After you."

"As the wingman, I insist you go first," he stated holding the door open.

"Fine." I stepped into the world of entertainment and scanned the dark place where black and neon lights hung from. Only a few kids were here today, which means more gameplay for us! "Alright!" I thought out loud.

"Hey [n/n]-chan," Meri-chan addressed me, catching my attention. "Let's play a round of air hockey."

"Yeah- we can do our match later Kamida," I told him, still wanting to do that duel.

"Cool, I'll just be playing Space Invaders over here," he said before walking away.

"Alright, Meri-chan." My hand fished out a dollar from my pocket and inserted it in the coin slot, activating the machine. Taking the puck from the goal and placing it on the table, I put on my game face. "First to ten wins."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Aw man," I groaned, seeing my Pac-man die for 4th time playing this multiplayer game.

"You're off your game today," Kamida commented as his eyes focus on the screen, trying not to get eaten by Meri-chan's red Pac-man.

"Gee, I wonder what makes you think that." I playfully rolled my eyes, chuckling as I saw Kamida's blue Pac-man get eaten.

"Dang it!"

"Haha!" Meri-chan cheered in victory, throwing her hands in the air.

I felt a smile form on my face seeing my friends act the way they did, but my mind couldn't help but focus on the dreams I had earlier. They were stuck bouncing around my loop of thoughts, perhaps that's why I was off my game. Who can blame me though? It's not like I get these dreams every day so the fact they happen was a puzzle itself, maybe if they happened more often I wouldn't be so distracted.

"Well darn, it's 5:10." Meri-chan's statement caused me to get off my train of thought.

"Shoot, I'm supposed to be home by 6," I told them.

"And I'm supposed to be cooking dinner tonight for me and my little brother," Kamida grumbled as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

"Should we leave now and catch the next bus?" Meri-chan asked, her eyes looking at us after her phone was put back in her pocket.

"Yeah, the next bus arrives in 15 minutes," Kamida informed us, checking the bus schedule.

"Let's get going then," I said leading the way out of the arcade. Stepping outside after being inside that dim-lit building burned my eyes. My hands shot up to block the setting sun as I let out a snake-like hiss, taking a few steps back.

"Hhhhh, why couldn't it be night when we left?" Meri-chan complained, getting the same effect.

"I don't know, I don't control time," Kamida replied to her squinting his eyes to try and adjust back to the normal lighting. "Come on guys, we don't have much time before the bus gets to the stop."

"Right," I nodded, setting my hands in my jacket pockets after my eyes were used to the lighting, following the others.

"You guys wanna do this again tomorrow?" Meri-chan asked, starting conversation as we strolled to the bus stop.

"I already have stuff going on tomorrow," I lied. It's not that I didn't want to spend time with them, I just didn't want to go outside until I have to go back to school.

"And I'm going to be at my grandparents for the next three days. That's why I said we should hang out today," Kamida explained.

"Oh, that's alright. We can always voice chat at night," Meri-chan optimized.

"Yeah." A yawn escaped from my mouth once again. 'Man, I really do need sleep.'

"[n/n], you should take a nap when you get home."

"I will, I will," I grumbled. 'After I take a shower.'

I probably won't remember to take a nap when I get home, cause with showering and then dinner practically ready when I'm finished, the thought will be lost in my head. Not to mention my dreams are what have been occupying my mind. Usually, they don't, but I believe I'm still grasping onto them since I don't want them to slip away.

'What do the dreams mean?' It appeared too real to be just a normal dream but to call it a vision would absurd. Visions are stuff that happened, will happen, or a sort of warning, at least that's how it is in movies. The closest thing I ever get to a vision is the random flashes of deja vu I receive. Perhaps I'm overthinking this, maybe I'm just having proper dreams for once. Yeah, that's probably it, I-

"Whoa there, [n/n]!" Kamida grasped my hood to prevent me from walking any further.

"Huh?" I voiced, confused by his actions, I turned my head to him and gave him a "Why did you do that?" expression.

"We're at the bus stop, dummy," Meri-chan informed me.

"Oh, oops." I sweatdropped as I stood beside them.

"We're just in time too," Kamida pointed out as he watched the bus drive towards the stop.

One by one, we stepped onto the bus. I noticed the number of people taking this transportation has grown since it's at an hour where most people get off work, luckily there was still a three-seat row open for us. My legs took haste to snatch the spot before it could be in someone's possession, then I plopped down onto the window seat. By the time I had shifted into a comfortable yet civil sitting position, my friends had joined me. Kamida next to me and Meri-chan sitting on his other side.

Vines of silence grew around us so we didn't disturb anyone lurking in our surroundings. I wasn't phased by the lack of conversation, taking the opportunity to gaze at the modern buildings the bus drove by and dive further into the waters of my mind. Going through the catalogue of my memory, I searched for the recent dream I had and play it once I had found it. Something felt out of place in that dream, and it wasn't just because the scenario differed from the canon result of the flashback in episode 8 of Juuni Taisen. The fact Duodecuple stated he came to fulfill three wishes and not two didn't make sense.

If I connected the dots correctly, the first two wishes were Nagayuki and Takeyasu's wish to not partake in the Juuni Taisen, but then where did the third wish come from? Why would there be a third wish? Did I miss something in my first dream? Is it possible that if I slept a bit longer this morning I would've found out who made the third wish?

Multiple questions danced in my mind but they couldn't find any answers for them to waltz around with. After all, they were left in the mystic unknown, the only way they could return to the known land and find answers is if I returned to the dream realm, but there's no guarantee that it'll give me what I'm looking for. I highly doubt I'd be able to get another dream of the Tatsumi brothers again, my dreams have been generous enough to grant me two normal dreams in a row, I don't think they're going to give me a third. Still, it would be nice-

"[n/n], we're at our stop," Kamida informed me while waving a hand in front of my face.

"Uh-right... right," I responded and arose to my feet, following them out of the bus. Once outside, I brushed myself off, watching the bus drive out of view. Turning my attention to my friends, my hands set themselves in my jacket pockets. "So I guess I'll see you guys at school."

"{Yup|Yeah}," they answered at the same time.

"Alright, see ya then guys." I waved, beginning to stroll backwards in the direction of my house.

"Bye!"  Meri-chan exclaimed, waving.

"See ya." Kamida gave a small wave before turning and heading home.

I faced forward once we had disappeared in our path home, eyeing the slim light that emerged from the sun that is ready to be engulfed by the black night. My hand dug into my pocket and pulled out my phone, I needed to text my mom I was almost home. Turning on the device, I noticed I had two text messages, one from my mom and the other from my brother. I tapped on the notification and bypassed the lock screen to read the message my bro sent me.

"Hey, I'm going to a hangout at my friend's house.

Won't be back till morning"

"Looks like he made plans of his own," I thought out loud. "Guess that means no Code Geass tonight, but that also means I can rewatch Juuni Taisen." Drawing a smirk on my face, I chuckled before sending a response to my brother.

"Aight, cya tomorrow bro"

I waited for the message to load and confirm it was sent before tapping onto the text my mom sent.

"Just wanted to let you know your brother

is going over to his friend's place."

"Good to know."

"I'm almost home"

I turned off my phone once I had replied to her message, storing the device in my pocket. Mom always made sure to inform us whenever something came up, which I am grateful for. It helped me remember and keep track of things, they say "two heads are better than one" for a reason.

"Two heads..." I chuckled to myself when the Tsumita twins popped into my head once more. "Two heads that's been stuck in my mind all day."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I sat down in my office chair once I had finished drying my hair, dressed in a simple t-shirt and cargo pants. Opening my laptop I hopped onto docs and clicked the option open a new document. It had been a while since I had written anything, my search for inspiration had been harder than trying to find water in a desert, but with the two dreams I had, I thought I could use it for the idea of a plot. Fidgeting with my bracelet, I tried to construct a starter for the story in my mind, but I found myself unable to find my way around writer's block.

Glancing down at the accessory hugging my wrist as if I asked for ideas, I didn't have any other options since no one was here beside me. I would call or text Meri-chan or Kamida but I knew I'd be heading down soon for dinner. I found no point in inquiring if they could talk if I had to disappear. Funny enough, the bracelet only reminded me of the Tatsumi brothers. I laughed to myself, wondering what the twins would say if they were here, I found the idea amusing. I became tempted to tear the material on my wrist to make my greatest wish a reality, to see if they could become real once I did, but common sense popped my fantasy bubble. This wasn't some Anime where a game master could grant my wish, such fictional desires weren't possible for me to achieve, but I wish it was.

Something in my gut kicked me, flying my head out of that sad mindset I didn't know I fell into. My eyes went back to the blank doc I had open on my laptop. I felt a spark begin to flicker, attempting to get the fire of creativity going. My hands hovered over the keys, words on the tip of my fingers-

"[Name], dinner is ready," mom told me on the other side of my closed door she knocked on.

"Dah!" Frustrated, my arms flew up and mimicked the action of flipping a table before they slammed down on the edge of my desk. "Just when I had something..." I groaned and hung my head back. My mood shifted quickly, realizing some brain food would be good. "Coming mom."

As I arose from my chair, my bracelet seemed off, but when I checked it, everything appeared to be fine. I shrugged off my instinct, believing I was imagining things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A yawn escaped my mouth after I heard the door to mom's room close, she went to bed since she had to work early. I was just chilling on the couch, my feet reclined up and any plans of writing had gone out the window once I had become one with the couch. I had the house somewhat to myself, considering my mom was now upstairs sleeping I couldn't do much.

I don't do things too exciting anyway, most times I just continued writing, or watch something on the tv which is what I'm doing now. Other times if my friends are available, I'd call them up and we'd discuss the fictional world. Then there was the rare occasion where I'd put on music and dance or vibe. It's relaxing me time.

Currently, Juuni Taisen played on the widescreen tv, already on the 11th episode. I don't know why, but it felt strange to watch it. I've seen these courses of events multiple times, each time understanding it more, why now do I receive this feeling? Perhaps the reason had to do with the dreams I had previously, with them appearing so real I guess coming back to what actually happened felt off to me. At least that was my thought process as I let out another yawn.

The 11th episode now halfway through and my eyes had begun to droop, feeling drowsy like Nezumi. The tv slowly turned into background noise when my tired mind began to pull me into the dream realm, my arms going limp to my sides as my eyes closed. The last audible thing I heard was Nezumi mentioning his 100 paths.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Too bad my lizard died, I think he would've liked meeting a new face," Takeyasu remarked gazing at the empty reptile tank sitting on his shelf, taking a break from packing his duffle bags.

This all seemed surreal for Takeyasu, for months he was on edge and trying to distance himself from his brother so when they were in the Taisen it wouldn't be as painful to see him die, at least that was his thought process. It probably wouldn't have worked anyway, not when Nagayuki started to take the big brother role more seriously ever since they both found out one of them was going to die in the Juuni Taisen if the other were to win. Then this wish thing came along and now they're packing for their new life, it was a miracle this was happening. Part of Takeyasu imagined this is some cruel dream that he's in and reality is about to wake him up to see those red letters for him and his brother. He sure wished it wasn't his mind playing tricks on him.

"Hey, are you done packing?" Nagayuki questioned checking in, changed into his signature blue outfit.

"Almost, just gotta stash the rest of the money in there," the younger Tatsumi brother answered, going back to his task. "Do you think we can bring Hitokage and Yuki-onna?"

"I don't think that's the best idea, we don't know who our new roommate is going to be and what exactly they'll be okay with," Nagayuki stated, his hand grasping his chin as he began thinking out loud. "Normal people would probably freak out upon seeing two guys with a flamethrower and an icethrower. Still, if we have something to do with the third wish they must know who we are."

"Heh, I was just going to bring Hitokage anyway, regardless of your answer. You never know if we may need them."

Nagayuki rolled his eyes, knowing his brother would do something like that. His little bro had a point, however. They might need their weapons in this new place they're going, it'd probably give more use than the currency they were bringing with them. Both were unaware of where they were heading. Walking over, he looked inside one of Takeyasu's bags, small red rectangle boxes caught his eye and he picked one up.

"Really? You're taking your poker cards?"

"You say that like it's a question."

"Do you really need all of them?"

"Yeah, they're collector." Takeyasu stated his reason like it was obvious. The snake then cracked a smile. "At least I can reuse them unlike the bags of snacks you packed."

"Shut up." A faint blush appeared on Nagayuki's albino cheeks. "The flavours might not be available where we go, it's not like I'm going to eat them all in one go."

The little brother playfully snickered until the brief moment died down. A gentle silence sat between them, the only thing heard was Takeyasu stuffing items into the duffle bag. The elder Tatsumi brother glanced outside the room, considering if he should go check to see he had everything he needed and wasn't forgetting anything, but his bro caught his attention before he could decide.

"Hey..." Takeyasu started with a monotone, the mood in the room becoming heavy. That was a rare thing to happen among them, so he had his elder twin's full attention. "Did you ever think this would happen; Us not having to be apart of the Juuni Taisen?"

"I'm going to be honest with you, Takeyasu."

That was a phrase the younger Tsumita twin hadn't heard in a long time.

"I thought the Juuni Taisen was what our whole lives were leading up to, but I also thought the day would never come," Nagayuki spoke truthfully, his eyes gazed down at the floor. "I... just can't believe that it's not actually going to come, and how it never will..."

It grew quiet, the reality of what was happening finally settling in their minds. The reality neither of them was going to die. The reality neither of them had to kill the other. It was gone, the dark road was gone. They were free.

A laugh broke the silence, Nagayuki glance at his brother who had made the joyful sound.

"We don't have to play those bastards' game!" Takeyasu exclaimed, tackling his bro into a hug.

"Oof-" Nagayuki stumbled, not expecting the sudden embrace, but when he steadied himself he wrapped his arms around his baby brother. The burden of death has been lifted from their shoulders and they never felt more relieved. Tears of joy threatened to fall as the two hugged, knowing they wouldn't lose the other.

Before either could cry, an outsider cleared their throat. The moment now passed, the twins pulled away from the sibling hug to see Duodecuple there holding his hands behind his back.

"Are you both ready?" the man asked.

"Yeah, let me just get my bags," Nagayuki responded, moving past the elder man to get to his room.

Entering, the dragon went straight to retrieve the two duffle bags he packed. However, he ceased in his tracks when he turned to exit, spying the icethrower from the corner of his eye. He had originally planned to leave it, thinking it wasn't needed in his new life and unsure how their new roommate would feel about it, but since his little bro was taking his flamethrower what could it hurt to bring his weapon along?

"Besides, I don't I could get something like you out there, Yuki-onna," Nagayuki said, a smirk plastered on his face as he picked up the icethrower and put it on his back. He then grabbed his bags and left his now old room. Joining his brother's side in the main room, both face the mysterious man, holding their belongings.

"I hope you both are aware you are not heading to any warzones," Duodecuple told them, seeing how both Tatsumi brothers were carrying their weapons with them.

"Yeah, we know," Nagayuki stated blankly.

"But there's no way we're leaving these," Takeyasu added with a smug expression.

"I see." Duodecuple nodded, grabbing the rim of his top hat.

"So where are heading?" the elder Tatsumi brother asked.

"And how are we getting-"

Before the younger Tsumita twin could finish his question, Duodecuple had taken off his hat to bow, while doing so the brothers faded out of their reality.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"No!" I cried, reaching out to the two, only to face the actual screen in front of me. "Oh... it was just another dream," I muttered to myself, grasping my forehead with my right hand.

I'm surprised I actually was granted a third dream of the Tatsumi brothers. I expected my brain not to be so generous, not that I'm complaining, I'm grateful for it. I wished I knew what happened to them though, maybe I'll find out in the next dream. I could get used to having them on my mind as I sleep.

Returning to the reality before me, I saw the episode had finished a while ago. My hand went to pick up the phone that laid on the couch beside me to check the time, but when I did I noticed my bracelet had broken beyond repair. I quickly sat up, picking up the remains of the lime bracelet and the few beads that were once on it.

"Shit, how'd it break?" I questioned, examing the pieces. "It was fine an hour ago, wasn't it?" Shaking my head, I knew it had to throw it in the trash, it was useless now.

I reclined my spot on the couch back down and stuffed my phone in my pocket. Holding the bits of my broken bracelet, I strolled over to the trashcan in the kitchen and dropped them in there. I felt disappointed, I actually enjoyed wearing that bracelet. Not only was it a gift from one of my best friends but it was something that reminded me of the Tatsumi brothers.

"Oh well, objects can't last forever," I mumbled to myself, recalling the day our Wii console stopped reading discs, on New Year's Day too no less.

Catching a glimpse of the time set on the oven, I figured I should head upstairs to my room. If I stayed downstairs for too long and went up late in the night, I'd give mom broken sleep. Probably best I'd head there now anyway if I wanted to get any writing done.

Going up the steps silently so I wouldn't disturb mom, headed to the next floor. My mind was in a whirlwind of different thoughts, but they were put to a pause when I heard voices. At first, I concluded it was just mom talking in her sleep again, however, I crossed it off since they sounded male. My next assumption was my brother but that wouldn't make sense since he wasn't home. Before the scary sensation of the situation settled into my mindset, I had reached the floor and the semi-audio voices sounded familiar to me. With that in mind, I crept down the hallway towards the sound and I realized it was coming from my room.

'Why would it be my room of all places?' I questioned in my head. 'I don't have anything worth stealing!' I turned around to go and find something to use to defend myself but I never took another step because that's when their sentences became audible.

"Too bad we didn't have more time to pack, I would've liked to bring my desktop set up with me."

'No way...' I thought to myself, slowly twisting my head towards my door with wide eyes.

"Don't sweat it, bro. You got the USB, that's all that matters."

'No fucking way!'

I didn't even realize I moved down the hall until my hand felt the cool metal of the doorknob that opened the door to my room. My brain hardly processing my actions, I twisted the handle and pushed open the door. The sight before me I could barely believe.

There standing in my room, in their full warrior gear, were the Tatsumi brothers.

In the moment of me just staring at their backs, I forgot how to fucking breathe. Then Takeyasu was the first to turn to me.

"Hey bro, I think our roommate is here," he told his brother, his signature smirk on his face.

"Huh?" Nagayuki turning attention to me, his icy gaze settling on my skin. "I think you're right."

The expression of the younger twin changed to a semi-worried one. "Hey, are you okay?-"

I wasn't able to hear the rest of his words because all the weight that once was in my head disappeared. I saw my surroundings grow taller and tilt horizontally, but then I felt something solid collide with my back and my vision dissolved to black. I realized that I fainted from disbelief.

I mean, this couldn't have been real right? I was sleeping only moments ago and I woke up to this? No, no, this couldn't be real. I'm probably just dreaming, right? Yeah, that's what I'm doing, dreaming. I'm just dreaming. I'll wake up on the couch and see that it was only a dream.

[purplerose244]

Thinking journal for season 12 Prime Empire 😎😎😎 (1/2)

So, I'm keeping this during all of season 12 to put down my thoughts as they appear. It's mostly for not ranting every single time a new episode comes out so please don't mind me too much 😅 I'm following the English release so please no spoilers 😙

I'm gonna split it in two, since apparently the season has 16 episodes. So this is the first part, enjoy my rambling 💜💜

It's the 30th of March and here we go!

IN GENERAL

I'm so, SO HAPPY, we have a theme for this season. For my experience apparently silly themes (tech ninja, ghosts, pirates) had brought very surprising results so I'm SO DOWN FOR THIS 😍😍

It seems that they fixed the mood, there is a specific mystery and a specific mission to follow. I like it too

THE NEW WHIP IS DOPE AS ALWAYS

I'm really glad there are plenty of references to past episodes, comebacks are my jam

The only thing that still kinda bothers me is the length of the episodes. It's not all bad, I just think the 20 minutes format was better. One thing is splitting 20 in 10 minutes, another is putting together 11 minutes of important stuff. Doesn't bother me too much, I just wish there was more time for my favorite show 🤷‍♀️

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ENTER PRIME EMPIRE?

Is it normal for me to feel really old after they made the "what is a VCR?" joke? Like, I'm a uni student so still pretty young, but I lived through the transition from that to the DVD so... eh, I laughed anyway👵

Jay is smart, I really believe he is. Yet I saw him putting a possibly corrupted motherboard into a legendary game randomly found into a villain's lair, and I was like "Of course he did that, I love you you dumb*ss" raising my glass of juice towards him 😎

Okay, I'm down for this Lloyd. I'm down for a season with Lloyd being creeped out just because, being silly, just a ninja helping his friends and- (remembers there's a Harumi avatar in the sets) I'M NOT READY

The ending was actually nicely creepy. Cool nods in approval

DYER ISLAND

THAT INTRO THOUGH, THAT WAS EPIC! Love the techno sounds, love the clear gaming connection, I rate it 10/HECK YEAH LONG LIVE THE FOLD

I was scared about how the shorts were supposed to play along with the season, but it looks fine so far with the mechanic and later for Scott. Good 👍

Ah, Fist to Face, that game came all over from the nostalgic season 1. That's what I'm talking about 😎

So they just associated that Unagami is probably Dyer's avatar like that? Like sure, I thought about it, but it looks a little rushed. Mm, I wonder if there's something more behind it?

LEVEL 13

Cyrus Borg is back and he TALKS!!! Finally, he gets some action! Go tech dad!

I'm so happy he referenced the Digiverse, I would have been very disappointed if he hadn't. Time flies Borg...

Not gonna lie, I thought the next to follow up Jay's spot as best in videigames was going to be Kai or Lloyd. It's not disappointing though, since pretty much all the ninja have been seen playing, and to be honest I like the implication that Cole and Jay probably played a lot together. As bruiseshipping or as BrOTP, I still love them together no matter what 💙🖤💙🖤

Ooooohhhhh, that's why Zane and Pixal are left behind. It makes sense, sure, but I don't understand the implication of the plan: they saw Dyer entering Prime Empire, so why looking for him in real life? Mm, maybe they will investigate about his life and what happened... PIXANE ON THE CASE 😍

Already saw Prime Empire's world in the shorts, of course it looks DOPE, still very happy to finally being there!

SUPERSTAR ROCKIN' JAY

I don't know why, but Kai questioning the double jump made me laugh. Also poor him, he just got his powers back from last season and they're already gone again 😂

And of course. Them. Wow. It must be the most amazing and CURSED thing I've ever seen so far, the League of Jay 🤯 I'm so happy they exist and they freaking use past seasons' suits!!! Awesome!!! Never thought I was going to see Jay's old plain haircut again... yeah, he got better with the curly one, but I'm feeling nostalgic 🤷‍♀️

Their nick are histerical omg, Jaybird, Dee-Jay, Jaywalkin, I'm loving this way more than I should 😂 Also they freaking screamed "JAY-NJA GOO!!!" and I don't know what to do with that, it's too great for me to comprehend 👏👏

And then, THIS happened:

Your Honor, I would like to confirm this as THE MOST SECRET DREAM I'VE EVER HAD FOR THIS SHOW FINALLY COMING TRUE!!! A NINJA FROM NINJAGO DOING THE NARUTO RUN!!! 🤯🤯🤯 Done, I'm done, conclude the season, this is more than enough for me 😍

First Kai gets hit and fall from a building, DYING, then Lloyd gets desperate for his brother (MY BROTP 💚❤💚❤), then Kai respawns and Lloyd looks so relieved and Kai is all panting while slowly realizing it's a game and MY HEART CAN'T HANDLE THIS MUCH OKAY???

As a very passionate Kai fangirl I always expect the cringy moment, it really is inevitable for my favorite hothead. I love that idiot so much it's unbelievable, even if it's an absolute and costant suffering 😅 Holy Garmadon it was painful seeing his VERY slow realization that in this game you only have four lives

... SO HE HAS ONE NOW!?! NINJAGO CREW YOU ALREADY KILLED ZANE, NYA AND LLOYD ONCE AT THE END OF A SEASON, DON'T YOU DARE PLAY WITH ME AGAIN 😱😱😱

Okay, I did not expect to hear about Mr. Cuddly Wamp ever again since Hands of Time and BOY if I'm happy it was actually a password, I love this show 😂

SCOTT FINALLY!!! YESS!!! 😍😍😍

Okay, for as long as it is not debunked, I will hold onto the Scott is Jay's brother/twin theory. I'm sorry but: his jacket has dragons AND lightnings on it, they have very similar skin in avatar mode, he said he was waiting for him in the short, he could very well have his same hair under cap and hoodie and he's a mechanic too. I know, I know, they could have the same skin because Scott helped him for the avatar, and there might be shadier reason behind the 'I was waiting for you' thing, and there are tons of good mechanics in Ninjago... STILL HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE??? 😍

SCOTT HAS ONE LIFE POINT TOO??? NO! NOOO!!! NOOOOOOO!!! Don't you dare appear and steal my heart only to die at the end of the season, come on!! 😭

So for now it seems like he just wants to survive. Can we actually confirm he's an avatar and not an NPC? I mean he could be, but I don't see the point of an NPC self aware of his life points. Idk, maybe I'm overthinking this 🤷‍♀️

Lol, Kai is the only one weirded out by the Jay-con all around him. Probably because he hasn't heard from his fans since Skybound 😅 (I'M STILL HERE MY FLAME BABE, ILY ❤❤❤)

And in all of his glory, freaking Superstar Rockin' Jay!!! 😎😎 Okay, I loved the design since the first time I saw it, but it looks possibly even better in the show 😍😍😍 And Jay looks absolutely adorable in it, and he's got a guitar, and he was waiting for his friends, and he hugs them (I'm weak for LEGO hugs for some reason) and he is so happy and AAAHHH 💙💙💙💙💙

I'm very curious about how Scott will play into the situation, clearly he will provide some kind of insight about Prime Empire. I can't wait to know more about him!! 😍

I AM OKINO

I did not expect this when I saw this Okino guy in the trailer... and I'm so happy I was surprised, I love him 👌

And he's voiced by Alessandro Juliani?? HECK YEAH!!! With all the hype about the DnD 13th season, and consequentially the knight theme, I really miss Nexo Knights and having Aaron's VA around makes me happy... any hope to have Giles Panton as well? I miss Clay the most 💙💙

This is what I'm talking about, the game theme needs this stuff! I was already happy to see life points, double jumps and respawns, but this? The NPC guide? Awesome 👍 It's nice to see the take on the matter, the guide seeing so many players getting killed, first because they did not listen, then because they were actually just unlucky. The touchy matter I always expect watching Ninjago 👏👏

At least I THINK he's an NPC? For now I don't really see a way of knowing, and it doesn't look like it matters. He didn't show life points so maybe? Does this mean he can't die? I have questions people

Which brings me to the cube thingies. That's what happens to the dead players? I mean, I would understand if they just become pixels, but there's also the drone that takes the datas every time. Idk, feels like there's more behind it. And honestly? It looks like great material for angst, like one of the ninja dies but then they discover they just need to get where Unagami stores all of the players! I hope it's something like this!

They designs of the players are really cool, I already saw them in the other episodes, but seeing them this close just confirmed it. Between this and Jay's awesome avatar, I see lots of great cosplay ideas coming 😍 I wonder when will Kai and Lloyd use their avatars, and why would they since I'm guessing Jay did for disguise and to distinguish himself from his fans

PLEASE TELL ME WE'LL SEE SCOTT SOON, I ALREADY MISS HIM!!! 💙💙💙 I have too many theories about that tech dude, I'm so excited about who he might turn out to be!

I was a little skeptical about the new ninja suits, but seeing them in the show convinced me, very cool! Especially on Nya 💕💕💕

THE GLITCH

Alright, Okino is indeed an NPC. Cool the fact that at first he could not understand the fact that he was in a game, but when reality changed he was forced to. Welcome into the crew! 😙

I'm kinda worried about it though, either they will shut down the game and he will stay inside or he will sacrifice for them. He's a very loyal samurai, I can see that happening and I'm SCARED

I WAS SWEATING BULLETS AT THE AMBUSH!!! I 100% saw it coming, we all freaking saw it coming, even the ninja did but where like 'we can walk and die or we can risk and die so might as well'. But still, my babies DYING and respawning so fast was not pretty 😱😱

Nya got the scariest death until now in my opinion, holy Garmadon Dyer DOES have a twisted mind...

Seeing Kai so scared of being in a new situation and with one HP reminds me A LOT of the Digiverse, and that's actually a nice touch. Give him a cellphone, hothead is a social media expert, but put him in a game and... huuhhh... 😅

Have I mentioned I love the ninja's new emoji masks??

BECAUSE I DO!!! 😂😂😂😂

So Unagami knows about them trying to stop him and he sent the rat people because of it. Considering how little we know about this guy, I'm wondering what we are about to discover

Alright, going to the next challenge, very curious about this adventure. So... beware of the rats, ninja? Still not sure what I think about the rats 😅

THE CLIFFS OF HYSTERIA

I would like to say Okino is the edgiest character of the show I've ever seen... but I've seen MORRO. But still poor guy, he got a case of the Matrix

Oooohhhh, the major question in videogames: better go grinding for more money to get the better stuff but while losing lots of time, or get the least expensive just to go on with the story but definitely risking to lose lives?

Ah there we go, so the energy cubes mean something! Also reference to the Sushimi guy of the set (gosh that name, I can't 😂). So do people actually die in Prime Empire or they are just kidnapped kinda? Can the ninja just bring back? ANGST POTENTIAL

Cole please don't die please don't die please don't die for the love of Garmadon please don't die somebody help-

HOLY FSM KAI I MEANT HELP FROM SOMEONE WITH MORE THAN ONE LIFE DON'T DO THAT BE CAREFUL PLEASE I FREAKING LOVE YOU YOU RECKLESS HOTHEAD ❤❤❤

Nya giving Kai a sweet look after seeing her brother is okay, that's what I live for 😍

So apparently Unagami is trying to build some kind of device using the energy cubes of the dead players (sounds kinda creepy like this 😱) to create some kind of portal? To Ninjago? I don't understand, if Unagami is Milton Dyer then why this? Just to bring his army and conquer? I mean I guess, sounds a little simple though. Then again, if it turns out it's not Dyer, it could be Unagami wanting to be real and get into his creator's world? Mm...

I like the message, having the ability to choose your own path. Very fitting for a game themed season, I hope it gets explored even more!

More for the "I love the ninja emoji masks of this season"'s compilation 😂😂😂

THE MAZE OF THE RED DRAGON

Duuuude, Jay being good at mazes comes all the way from Possession, the Tomb of the First Spinjitzu Master! 😍 ... or maybe I just rewatch this show too much... could be both really 😅

Unagami is NASTY!

Confirmed the thing about going into the real world, what scares me is how much powers Unagami seems to actually possess. Like, can he do the block thingy whenever he wants? Just straight up pause and do whatever? Wow...

Jay being extra 😎

I mean, of course he is, he's got better statics! 😂 I like how he seems so focused and in charge, I still hope we see more of him... and Scott... WHERE IS SCOTT???

I love dragons, this metal one is cute 😍

So now we have two ronin: a samurai looking for a path on his own in a digital world... and a shady guy named Ronin 😛 Total respect for Okino, he really showed the values he believes in. No matter he was programmed his way, I hope he finds what he's looking for. Better come back for the final battle!

One Keytana down, two more to go. I know one is the price of the race, while the last one... I don't really know.

More of the masks because I love them 😂 Here we have Vegeta Lloyd and Kawai Cole ✌✌

[dontcallmecarrie]

I just binge read TWiFFON, and its sidefic and almost everything that's here about this universe and sadgkjhakjg you're amazing and this is amazing and I love you and this is one of the best fics (out of MCU fics especially) I've ever read. IM1 is one of my favorite movies ever, I love Tony very much and it hurts to see what they're doing to him in MCU (and what they're doing with all the characters, really), and I love your portrayal of him so much, because that's real Tony. (1/4)

Competent, genius Tony, owner of the huge company, the man, who, without the suit, is still the person who’s built this suit. From scraps. In a cave. In Afghanistan. While being tortured. Revolutionizing science on the way. I’m looking at you, Mr. I-Saw-The-Footage(And-Made-My-Judgment-Before-Actually-Meeting-You-And-Decided-You-Suck). Yeah, you can see how I just -love- Steve in this moment in “Avengers”. (2/4)

I always wondered what footage he saw, btw. From before-Afghanistan? From the IM2 Senate hearing? From the disastrous IM2 b-day party? Even if the scepter amplified their feelings, those feelings had to be there in the first place. And AoU and CW just make me go Hulk, so most of the time I pretend they didn’t happen and don’t exist unless we’re talking about -consequences-. It’s been years and I’m still bitter and salty as the Dead Sea. (¾)

Um. Anyways, I love you and your awesome fic, thank you so much for your writing

Glad you’re liking it so far, and thanks! 

Also: same. [the rest is under the cut because surprise meta’s apparently a thing, as are major spoilers, and I get very rambly, RIP mobile users otherwise.]

I got into the MCU when it first kicked off, and my favorite movie’s a toss-up between IM1 and The Avengers [though, due to recent events, I’m really leaning towards the former nowadays]. I love all the characters, and if I had a heart [because no, I don’t, nope, nothing’s ever made me tear up nope heart of stone right here], it’d be hurting because of the turn the MCU’s taken lately, and the level of character assassination I’ve seen is….the best comparison I can think of include the way Naruto ended [specifically, Sakura], or…well, you get the picture.

Just…the turn canon took, after Phase 1, left a bitter taste in my mouth. Tony’s my favorite character, and seeing how the world’s done its level best to break him when his origin story is literally him forging his armor from the guns that would’ve killed him otherwise is something that I have very strong feelings about. Add to that my spite after seeing the turn the fandom took after Civil War, and I couldn’t not write the fic where he actually [albeit accidentally] took over the world, by taking him back to his roots. 

[aka TWiFFON’s basically me venting passive-aggressively about the issues I have with the MCU]

As for my take on Steve? 

Even if it doesn’t look it, I kinda liked his character, early on. The way his character was mangled by the writers is another thing entirely, however, and after Phase 1 my enthusiasm didn’t wane so much as it tanked, especially after Age of Ultron. [ditto as to Civil War.]

But early on? I actually liked his character. My headcanon/take on his approach during the first Avengers movie was him being adrift in a world that’s moved on without him, so of course he’s clinging to what he remembers. 

That ended up being something that SHIELD/HYDRA took advantage of, though, and while Fury tried to help, the HYDRA guys did their level best to sabotage him, which succeeded in ways that don’t show up until later on. For instance, while Fury’s crew was the one to break the news of ‘so you slept 70 years, welcome to the future’, it was a HYDRA contingent that were the ones to ‘ease’ him into it, and so his briefings on history and whatnot were basically sabotaged. 

As in, they made sure to focus on the shitty parts of the past century, and glossed over the progress, and did their best to be subtle about it so that when Fury came around, he thought it was ‘okay Steve’s still settling in and hurting’ rather than ‘Steve’s hurting and everywhere he looks only makes it worse’. I mean, it wouldn’t even have been hard; breaking the news would’ve been dicey enough as is, but I can guarantee that HYDRA would’ve pulled no punches in painting everything to be as shitty as they could. 

I mean, even if they were trying to help, it would’ve been hard enough: because good luck updating the guy who literally did a suicide run to prevent his home country from being bombed about the Manhattan Project. 

That alone would’ve been messy enough, but also going through Korea and Vietnam and the list just goes on, while also trying to go ‘we’re the good guys’, and I’m pretty sure Steve’s faith in humanity would’ve taken a hit somewhere in there. And that’s if it was SHIELD who was doing it; if it was HYDRA instead? Just…yikes.

And Tony has a lot of fodder that could be used against him. 

He’s a powerhouse, a loose cannon, and is very visibly anti-establishment when it comes to some things, so when Steve’s trying to cling to a vestige of the past, it’s so, very easy for a HYDRA technician to pull some clips of Tony’s messing around and gloss over ‘yeah he’s also a genius and built a suit somewhere along the way’ while doing their level best to make sure that Steve does not like Tony, because if those two got along it would not end well for HYDRA so best nip that in the bud. [I’ve got a fic idea that plays with that premise, actually, but…rambling again, oops.]

Doesn’t help that people’s values have changed, either; nowadays, we’re a lot more cynical as to what’s going down in Congress, for instance, or the military-industrial complex, so just right there’s some culture clash. Iirc, pre-Nixon, people viewed what happened in DC differently than they do now, and I don’t think Clinton helped any, either. And that’s just one example.

tl;dr: I headcanon that HYDRA sabotaged Steve’s possible relationship with Tony, among other things. 

Now, when it comes to the world domination thing…

You can probably tell I’m having a lot of fun with it. It’s part of what helps keep the tone of TWiFFON fun for me to write, and I’m choosing to go the cracky route instead of the grimdark serious one because this fic’s self-indulgence at its finest, and my life is stressful enough as is. 

Because, I mean, for me it’s either laugh or cry, and I can’t afford to cry, when it comes to the tire fire that’s going on. I can laugh or cry, so I’d rather go for deadpan ‘so apparently this shit’s more plausible than some of what I’m seeing in the news’ rather than get even more gray hair stressing out over stuff I have no control over. [Playing with power dynamics in a fictional universe where there’s magic and aliens is very good stress relief, is what I’m saying.] Plus, y’know, it gives me an outlet for whenever I see yet another ‘Tony Stark was the villain!’ post. 

You probably know that originally, TWiFFON was supposed to be way darker [and shorter]. However, thanks to…life, I decided to go for broke and went ‘screw it, this is stress relief so might as well go for broke’, and since I love the Accidental World Domination trope…[getting rambly again, oops] 

Thus, why it’s going to take a literal Destroyer of Worlds to break it to Tony that yes, he took over the world. Oops. 

However, since apparently I can’t help but be pedantic about power dynamics and politics and whatnot: it’s probably more low-key than some of my readers are expecting. Here, it’s not going to really show until we reach the Final Battle arc, but I’m trying my best to avoid imperialistic tones where that part’s concerned. 

Like, yes, the fic’s going to devolve to crack by then, but the world domination part’s going to end up being due to basically [heads up for major fic spoilers]:

The world: so 

The world: you have Skynet in your pocket. A horde of them, even.

Tony: guys, you are so grounded why’d you pull that stunt I told you—

JARVIS: *is unrepentant*

FRIDAY: *is also unrepentant*

JOCASTA: *is shamelessly using her full capabilities to help clean up the battlefield*

Tony: JARVIS, you were supposed to the the role model, not the bad influenc—

Tony: wait what do you mean you want me to take them offline

Tony: okay you know what? Fight me

on top of everything else. But the above being the main motivation for Tony’s not stepping down after the Final Battle, and I intend to go into more detail when the matter comes up. [Hopefully I do it right.]

But for the most part?

It’s not like he can put it on his shelf to collect dust or anything, no way does he want to rule the world! Tony’s got more than enough power as is, and he’s happy enough being the Head of R&D. Hell, he’s got more than enough as his plate as is, why the fuck would he want to add to his workload?! Strange, stop laughin—Rhodey, why are you giving Hope money? Thor, you too—what do you mean ‘you lost a bet’? JARVIS, you are so grounded!

aka his life is s u f f e r i n g because he didn’t sign up for any of this, thank you very much, how is this his life, where did he go wrong in his life choices?

Strange, you can stop laughing any time now. Any time. 

…screw it, might as well roll with it. Anyone mind if they call themselves the Federation if any other aliens come around? Or would that violate some copyright law? 

meanwhile, elsewhere: 

everyone at Stark Industries is scratching their heads and wondering where the miscommunication happened before shrugging and carrying along because business as usual now includes world domination, oops

Pepper’s in Maui finally getting her vacation. 

JARVIS doesn’t really mind, as it simply means he has less variables to control for to help keep Tony safe and happy, so he’s completely and utterly shameless about it all. Even if he’s so, very grounded for pulling the stunts he did during the Final Battle arc. 

Fury is in an unspecified location, laughing at Tony while also feeling very proud of him because this is the opposite of a problem and free entertainment at its finest, yes, this was worth it. Not what he’d expected, but most definitely worth the headache.

[just putting it out there to hopefully give an idea of what I’m aiming for, at the end of the fic.] Hopefully it gets across right. Just…world domination, but with a kinda relaxed take on things.

Kinda sorry for the spoilers, but that moment’s one of the ones I’ve been really looking forward to and it’s been the better part of a year and this fic just keeps growing.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I need your help friend, the fandom is at stake: can you do a quick recap of why shipping isn't activism? And I don't mean just in terms of antis, but also the anti-backlash where people defend their ships by trying to prove they're actually progressive (which would still imply you need to prove your ship is not harmful before shipping it). Fans may have good intentions and mean no harm, but social justice is not achieved through fantasy.

what a good question. let me see if I can do this justice with a good answer.

Why Shipping is Not Activism

(edited on August 6th, 2018, 1 year after initial writing)

First off: let’s define ‘shipping’ as ‘desiring two characters to have romantic and/or sexual interactions and using social media or fanworks to share this desire with others.’  So: specifically looking at shipping as a social activity here, because I hope we can all agree that ‘shipping it’ - simply wishing for two characters to have some kind of interaction in your head - is not activism because it’s thoughts, which on their own nobody else knows about and thus can’t have an impact.

Shipping as activism is mainly talked about in the context of being ‘queer/LGBT representation’, and everything else is treated as secondary.*  So I’ll be talking about this primarily from that POV.

Okay.

shipping is not activism because shipping doesn’t do two important things that activism does: 

shipping does not generate or act as mainstream representation

shipping does not increase awareness or change social values

and that’s okay. Shipping doesn’t need to do these things because shipping takes place in a microcosm. Fandom is but a tiny, tiny fraction of internet and social activity as a whole. No matter how ‘progressive’ we collectively are, only in the rarest cases will we make a meaningful impact on society as a whole.

Shipping serves a different, but no less important purpose, which I’ll get into below.

That’s the short version. the long version is below.

Shipping is not activism because: 

Shipping is a fandom-specific activity and fandom doesn’t make much of a social impact. We get talked about a lot by the creators because we’re the people most likely to have contact with them and provide feedback on their content; we have an impact on creators in that sense.  But apart from coming to cons and talking on social media, when we get mainstream attention it’s almost always to talk about how weird we are. Also, we don’t cause social change. We can fan over something that already exists, but we can’t cause a show with better representation to be created.

Because of this: 

Meaningful, mainstream representation of LGBT/queer relationships come from mainstream media, and fandom is not the main force acting on mainstream media productions.  Remember when korrasami became canon in the last few minutes of the last episode of Korra because the creators knew about the shippers? Congratulations: you’re looking at an outlier that took a lot of very specific circumstances and luck to have happen. And most importantly: it wasn’t done to please the shippers.  Shippers may have given them the idea, but it was done because canon korrasami would create visible bisexual/LGBT representation. It was possible because the show was only airing online, to a smaller audience, and because of the herculean efforts of LGBT/queer activists over the last century to get our collective visibility and acceptability as high as it is (and yes, we have a long way to go, but we’re miles past where we were even 10 years ago.)

Current fandom seems to carry the belief that if we just ship hard enough and loud enough, the creators of an ongoing mainstream media will reward us by making our favorite ship canon.** The reality is we rarely, if ever, make a meaningful impact on the direction that canon takes. We’re a small, small part of the consumer base - a loud one, but small!  We’re often not the aimed-at demographic, either, so pleasing us is the last thing the execs trying to make a buck are thinking about. The material we’re fanning over is already old news to producers; short canons are usually already finished by the time we receive it, and longer ones are at least a season ahead in production time. (If we do make an impact, we won’t see it for at least a year or more.)  Shows must meet decency standards, and LGBT/queer relationships are still seen as higher-rated than their cishet counterparts.  Executives care about what will sell ad space or toys more than what fandom wants.

The fact of the matter is we have the cause and effect backwards.

Ships being ‘good representation’ is a function of increased mainstream media representation of marginalized identities, not the other way around.  When media was entirely full of characters who were white cis men, we shipped white cis men. And as media slowly stops having nothing but white cis men, we’re … still shipping white cis men a lot, because there’s still a lot of them and there’s still a societal bias that tells us that white cis men are the most important/interesting people (and simultaneously, because they are unmarked, we can’t accidentally fall into stereotype pits while fanning them), but we’re shipping more and more non-white, non-cis, non-male characters too. 

Real social activism leads to increased media representation - like the reclaiming of the word ‘queer’ in the late 80′s/early 90′s leading to a TV show called ‘Queer as Folk’ and featuring gay characters. And increased media representation leads to more marginalized characters for fandom to ship.

While transformative fandom does, to an extent, change things from canon to represent ourselves more - or just to suit our fancy! - canon always reigns supreme and is the most widespread version of the characters.  Canon becoming more diverse will always have more of an effect on fandom than fandom being diverse/having diverse content will ever have on canon.

Besides:

The desire to see ships become canon is not primarily motivated by generating healthy representation of marginalized identities.  Fans have been wanting their favorite ships to become canon since the Stone Ages.  The Harry Potter fandom wars were all about what was most canon: Harry/Hermione, Hermione/Ron, or Harry/Ginny.  Notably: Draco/Harry is not one of the pairings I list, because nobody thought there was the remotest chance that Draco/Harry would ever become canon.  It’s only recently that LGBT/queer rep in particular has been making a meaningful appearance in mainstream media, and suddenly slash ships have entered the ‘will it be canon!?’ fray. And some mlm fans feel they have more ‘right’ to canon because mlm ships are LGBT/queer rep.

Here’s the thing: if this was really about representation, then we’d all be celebrating if any mlm pairing became canon. No matter which pairing is ‘more progressive’, any LGBT/queer canon representation is better than none. But (surprise!) it’s not; the ‘queer rep!’ battle cry is just an additional cannonball in the arsenal of ongoing ship wars.*** And I venture to say that most mlm shippers engaged in a ship war would rather see an unrelated het pairing become canon than their rival mlm ship.

And this is because: 

Shipping is not, and never has been, primarily about creating healthy marginalized representation.  

Don’t get me wrong: transformative fandom is heavily LGBT/queer/mentally ill/disabled/otherwise underrepresented, and we often create transformative fanworks that bring our identities into the story. That’s awesome self-fulfillment, and it can really bless and excite fellow fans who see fandom content that makes them feel more welcomed and recognized.  However.

Generating marginalized representation isn’t the primary motive for shipping. We ship out of love. We see the dynamics between two characters and think ‘oh, that’s hot’ or ‘I’d like to see more of that’. We ship for fun. We ship because we think two characters would look good together. We ship because we imagine ourselves as one character and have a crush on the other. We ship things for many, many reasons, many I haven’t mentioned here, maybe as many reasons as there are people in fandom doing shippy things.  And to that end, I’m sure that some people do decide what to ship purely because they believe it represents minority groups that need representation - but it would be too much to say that’s the main reason people ship things.

Shipping doesn’t need to be about creating healthy marginalized representation because:

Fiction is not reality; a person can ship the ‘right’ ships and still be a bigot IRL. and visa versa. Because we interact with fiction and reality in different ways, there are people who really love mlm ships but still think gay marriage is icky. On the other hand, a person can be the loudest activist for LGBT/queer causes in real life and only ship het ships in fandom, just because the dynamics of het ships pings their fancy more.

Shipping as activism preaches to the choir. Shipping being a fandom-specific activity, and many of us being oppressed ourselves, shipping the ‘right’ ship to increase awareness in the microcosm of fandom isn’t really accomplishing anything. Most of us are ourselves LGBT/queer, or friends with people who are LGBT/queer. Most of us are aware of how much pain the lack of representation in mainstream media brings on.  And most of us are sensitive to the fact that we’re not the only oppressed person in fandom space and are willing to learn more about how we can help other oppressed people.

If I could sum up the problems of current fandom, it’s that we assume that nobody else is #woke (even though most of us are sufferers). 

In that sense, shipping the ‘right’ ship doesn’t bring more awareness; it acts as a signal to others that you have awareness, and hopefully protects you from being erased or harassed as an ignorant asshole (’cishet’).

Most importantly:

Shipping isn’t activism, but it does something else great: it lets marginalized fans express and indulge themselves in any way that pleases them.  

- fandom is hugely made of underrepresented minorities, so shipping is a way that we express ourselves and relate to one another - whether those ships are ‘progressive’ or not. So, so many of us deal with social stigma or harassment or hate in our real lives; we consume media to get away from that, and we indulge in fandom to get away from that.  

Most of us are, just by existing and demanding space in the world, activists for the rights of the marginalized and oppressed. 

I’ve had some people disagree with me on this, but I stand by it. many people in fandom have orientations/identities/nd/etc that politicize our existence. When we are ‘out’ - when we are visible - and vocally demanding recognition for our lives by being visible and refusing to compromise, we are activists by existence. And many of us are allies, taking political action on behalf of others. and many of us are both - marginalized this way, allies to people marginalized that way. 

the actions we take as activists in the real world are the ones that matter - not fandom.

Fandom is a space for us to play with each other and connect over something fun and pleasant, and those fun and pleasant things don’t have to be activist things. We’re allowed to take a break.

The importance of activism and representation is to benefit the marginalized and oppressed, letting us be recognized and less stigmatized, and deconstructing the social and political structures that work against us leading fulfilling lives.  When we use shipping the ‘right’ ship as a bludgeon to attack one another, we are literally defeating the purpose of our own causes. We’re stigmatizing each other for our fandom interests. And we’re certainly not deconstructing any social structures that harm us!

In conclusion: The way we can be most activist in transformative fandom is, no joke, to care more about the fact that almost everyone else here is marginalized too than that one another’s ships aren’t marginalized enough.

fandom is different from the way it used to be: it’s more visible, more mixed with non-fandom, and easier to access. certainly, it’s important to make clear where we’re addressing relationship stuff for fandom versus relationship stuff for real life. there’s value in taking steps to counteract the harm done by lack of education about sex, consent, and healthy relationships, particularly as LGBT+/queer people, or people who need access to & information about reproductive health care taking care of one another in a world that doesn’t care enough about us. 

but educating each other doesn’t happen through a ship: it happens through open, friendly communication. shipping can open the door to communication, but it can’t substitute for straightforward honesty. 

Let’s foster healthy interaction and honest communication wherever we can: by celebrating each other and our creative endeavors - instead of creatively locking us down with terror of getting erased or driven out of fandom by demanding everything be treated as a teaching opportunity.

be kind to one another. 

(the rest of the world is not going to do it for us.)

–

*In talking about ships as representation we generally start with ‘this ship is queer/LGBT’ and then use all other axes of oppression to prove which ship is ‘more progressive’, i.e. - F1nnPoe and Ky1ux are both mlm, but F1nnPoe is more pure because it’s a black man and a Latino man as opposed to two white men. (Occasionally race will also be talked of as the primary point of value, depending on the fandom.)

**On a side note, this whole paragraph is also why it’s unlikely that fandom being ugly will ever cause a show to be cancelled or a pairing will get changed in canon because some fans were nastier than others. We’re like bugs with stingers: scary and painful but ultimately not that impactful (unless you’re allergic, I guess, but forget that part of the metaphor). 

***This is part of where the ‘I have to prove my ship is wholesome/their ship is evil’ stuff comes from: ‘proving’ to creators that your ship is the ‘better’ queer representation because it either covers more marginalized bases or is ‘more pure’, making it less objectionable for mainstream representation. (the joke is that bigots don’t care how pure an LGBT/queer ship is: they’re gonna still think it’s awful because it’s LGBT/queer.)

PS - I don’t think this answer really addresses why arguing about purity of ships is a bad plan, but this is already so long that I’ll address that somewhere else I think.

[michelecrispychip]

you are one of the nicest people i've met on here and have helped encourage me to keep creating! also i think it's awesome that you don't mind if people have different opinions than you and still respect them as long as they're being respectful

whaaaaaat?? omg?? this message made me sooo happy. I’m so glad I actually helped to inspire you to keep creating wonderful works. I don’t know what I specifically did, but I’m happy that I decided to do whatever helped encourage you. 

and nice?? in MY me? it’s more likely than you think .  honestly I’m always a little surprised when someone calls me nice, because I always feel like I’m kind of a mean person haahah (I’ve been called mean/heartless a lot) but you know what? it always pays to be nice and I try to remember that whenever I’m in a bad situation, or even when it’s just a random act of kindness. I’m absolutely elated that I come off as a nice person on here. thank you so much. ((though I do get hella fucking salty a lot LMAO)

Hahahah as for the respecting others’ opinions part? that’s just common sense. Respecting that other people think of things differently than you do is something a lot of tumblr users (and many other people in the world) somehow cannot grasp ;’) it’s a simple concept, really. 

((I’m going to use a fictional example here, but please note that this applies to irl things, too. just alter it a bit haha)) 

For example, some people really love Otayuri. Some people hate it. Some people ship Otabek and/or Yuri with other people besides each other (multishipping). but of course, you probably know all that drama. Certain people in the yoi fandom (and most other fandoms) like to get upset when someone doesn’t think that their ship is the best ship-- or they get mad for another reason (it’ll never be canon! it’s inappropriate! ((cough people calling Otayuri pedophilia cough))  etc!)

Well, maybe you do think it’s the best ship! maybe you think it’s the worst ship! maybe you don’t even care. But why does it have to be a fight? LET THE PEOPLE BE. 

Honestly, you’re allowed to ship anything you want. Maybe you’re the only one that likes the ship, but hey, if you like it, good for you. Or maybe you hate a super popular ship. Cool! I understand why you wouldn’t like the ship.

 Like, i really don’t like the seungchuchu ship, BUT, the thing is, I can understand why people do like it! and I’m happy for them! do I have to like something for other people to be able to like it? no! so what do I do? I let them enjoy their ship. I let them have fun. I don’t start fights or say shit things about it to make people not like me or not even like the ship anymore. ((yes, i have had ships ruined for me personally because of people like that)). And you know how many nice seungchuchu shippers there are out there? a ton! I’ve talked to a few, and maybe this is surpsing, but people who don’t like the same stuff as you can actually be NICE, NORMAL PEOPLE WHO ARE ENTITLED TO THEIR OWN OPINION. 

everyone is entitled to their own opinion! But my point is, just because someone doesn’t like the same thing as you doesn’t mean they aren’t a good person! They just have a different view than you. And that’s great- that is why the world is so unique. Because everyone thinks differently. 

It would be boring if everyone liked the same stuff, wouldn’t it? Even if every person on the planet disagrees with you on something, if you see it differently than they do, go you! Do your thing. Just don’t be violent, rude, pushy, etc. about it. Just live your life. When it comes to yoi, the thing is, at the end of the day, they’re all fictional characters. They will never exist, so spending so much time being angry because someone doesn’t like the same character/ship/etc as you is a waste of time. Go live your life while you can. Do something great in the world, I know you can. Just be a good person, okay? 

(sorry, I got a little carried away at the end. i could go on and on, but I should stop lmao. anyways, thank you SO MUCH to whoever sent me this. you made my day. feel free to hmu because I’m very curious as to who you are, but if you wish to stay secret, that’s cool, too! have a great day, and please keep creating. ♥)

[halekingsourwolf]

Oh no, why did you have to go and come up with that idea! Pairing up Cole and Chris would. be. epic. When you put it that way, Cole really did deserve better. What I also loved about Chris, like you kind of mentioned, he really wasn't following the complete, pure good ideal. Like, we saw him interacting civilly with other creatures and having connections with demons. They're just really well thought out characters tbh. And hey, I won't complain about you writing it. Cole + Chris + fic, go

On a different note, does Wyatt and Chris kind of remind you of Scott and Stile’s dynamic. Wyatt the sweet , innocent-like brother and Chris, the clever sarcastic one? Not sure though, talking about it made me think of that. Oh, also, I always believed Chris still remembered his time with the sisters when he tried to save Wyatt. It’s something I firmly believe in but wanted to know what your thoughts on that was. -K

Starting with your last bit first… I seriously hope so. The end of Chris’ arc… and I feel like I don’t want to be too specific in case anyone’s reading who hasn’t watched it yet (in which case, just go to Netflix and watch s6 of Charmed and then come talk to me because it’s awesome). But the end of his arc is so unbelievably tragic and heartbreaking and I know we see him again later but it was always so bittersweet to me because it wasn’t really him, was it?

And now I’m going to go blow all subtlety out of the water so stop reading if you want to watch and be surprised, but it’s like if Derek went back in time to stop the fire and succeeded. And in a way that’s wonderful because we know Derek would want that more than anything, that he would give anything in the world to be able to have his family alive and well… but it’s also tragic because the Derek that got to live happily ever after with his family wouldn’t be our Derek. It’s a sacrifice he’d make willingly, happily, but he and everything he became, everything he struggled through and suffered through and the beautiful, strong, heroic man we all love would die, would cease to exist, in the process.

So I need to believe that Chris remembers. That everything that he was and everything that he went through wasn’t just erased. That maybe when he reached the age he was when he died the alternate memories started filtering back into him (because as much as I want our Chris to live on, the idea of him having those traumatizing memories as a child is not a pleasant one). So now he remembers both lives, but with the grounding perspective from his happy lifetime to keep him from becoming bitter over it.

As for Chris & Wyatt = Stiles & Scott… I’ve been thinking of Chris more as Derek than Stiles. Like, if I was going to write a Charmed TW!AU for that era I’d probably assign Derek Chris’ role (though I don’t know who I’d make Stiles then, don’t ask :P). But a lot of that’s based on the parallels in their situations –– dark past, dead family, evil family member they used to be close to, trying to get the heroes to take the situation seriously while they’re too busy worrying about dating and school/work. But if we’re talking about happy alt!timeline Chris and Wyatt (who I don’t remember as well) then Stiles and Scott might match up pretty well. Wyatt’s also the superpowered “chosen hero” and whatnot, which parallels True Alpha pretty well, with Chris growing up as his slightly overlooked sidekick who has to rely more on his wits.