#this villain is incredibly resourceful

[grimgrinnr]

Anyways. Unrelated but. I’m consumed by thoughts and ideas I’ve generated.

So uuuuuuuuh...

Never fucking let him near your muses or Hell. He will make everything worse. He will enjoy it. He will exploit it.

It’s horrible.

But I absolutely want to write it eventually-

[starleska]

i think ‘Big’ Jack Horner is Disney, and here’s why

many of us have had the pleasure of seeing the incredible Puss in Boots: The Last Wish by now, and were blown away by its clever writing, enchanting animation and emotional character arcs. yet there is one character who booted the trend of having a reason for his behaviour, and outright refused to experience any growth whatsoever.

let’s talk about ‘Big’ Jack Horner, and why i think he’s supposed to represent Disney:

‘Big’ Jack Horner isn’t just an antagonist in The Last Wish - he’s a villain. a self-obsessed, exploitative, murderous, petty, cruel bastard of a man whose awful behaviour isn’t just motivated by personal slights or childhood trauma: he sincerely enjoys hurting other people. whether it’s cheating his goons (’The Serpent Sisters’) out of a fair payment for their services or being excited about shooting a puppy in the face, there’s no denying that Jack delights in causing others pain and suffering. but what does he have to do with Disney?

let’s answer that question with another question: do you think that Jack, when placed next to the other antagonists - Goldi, The Three Bears, even Death - sticks out like a sore, plum-coloured thumb?

of course he does! but why? well, let’s look at Jack on a surface level. Jack is a monolith of a human being. not only is he physically huge and intimidating, he is the inheritor of an enormous pastry fortune and operates in the manner of a mob boss, with countless resources and a whole variety of powerful magical items at his disposal. indeed, Jack employs a crack team of bakers/assassins called ‘The Baker’s Dozen’ to carry out many of his tasks. although Jack does harm others himself, it is because of these resources - including the people who work for him - that he is able to bypass many of the obstacles faced by our protagonists in an honest and character-developing way (e.g., the Pocket Full O’Posies in The Dark Forest). Jack doesn’t need to have a character arc the way the other characters do, because he is so wealthy and owns so much.

but Jack’s reason for owning so much and being obsessed with magic and magical items isn’t through intellectual curiosity, or a traumatic backstory where he needed to learn how to wield magic. do you know what Jack’s covert motivation for owning all of the magic in the world is?

it’s money.

when we get the flashback of Jack’s childhood, dancing for the entertainment of an audience using his nursery rhyme, we see him becoming jealous of Pinocchio - and we see Gepetto in the back, absolutely raking in the cash. if we consider this flashback as that crucial moment within which Jack decided to become what he is today - and the presence of our off-brand Jiminy Cricket inclines us to think so - then we can understand that Jack decided that from that moment forward, he would own all of the magic. 

let’s go back to The Baker’s Dozen for a moment. this team of highly-competent, multidisciplinary artisans do everything for Jack, whether it’s baking the pies which make him rich, or laying down their lives at his service. we aren’t given an in-universe reason for why they do this. yes, Jack is feared, but he is still the subject of mockery due to his humble beginnings as a nursery rhyme character. it certainly isn’t due to being treated or paid well. however, if we view the Baker’s Dozen as a metaphor for overworked, exploited artists whose views are routinely dismissed by the money-hungry, powerful corporation who owns their craft...things start to add up, don’t they? considering historic allegations of worker abuse at the hands of Disney, having Jack Horner literally step on their spines and encourage them to flex takes on a whole different meaning. 

it doesn’t end there. do you recognise the items that Jack pulls out of his Mary Poppins bag when his Baker’s Dozen are being destroyed by the Pocket Full O’Posies - the items that he calls ‘the big guns’? it’s the broomstick from Fantasia, the spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty, the size snacks from Alice in Wonderland, and a knock-off Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio - all references to some of Disney’s earliest and most famous films.

still don’t believe me? well, let’s recap more of the items Jack has in his repertoire:

a hook-hand (referencing Captain Hook in Peter Pan)

a trident (referencing King Triton in The Little Mermaid)

poison apple bombs (referencing The Evil Queen in Snow White)

a glass slipper (again referencing Cinderella)

remember what happens when the knock-off Jiminy Cricket (interesting that there are so many Pinocchio references specifically, huh?) is horrified that Jack is losing so many men? Jack says he isn’t worried about losing the manpower, because he has a bottomless bag full of magical weapons. Jack literally gets his power off of the backs of his workers. sounds a lot like a big company justifying worker layoffs and exploitation because they have so many properties and are too big to fail, doesn’t it? 

hell, Jack doesn’t even know what half of these items do! when he’s using the unicorn horns as ammo, he is surprised that they cause people to explode in a shower of confetti. viewing Jack through this lens, it’s difficult not to think about enormous corporations gobbling up properties and churning out content with little to no regard for their artists (looking back at The Baker’s Dozen - some of whom do perish in the fight with the unicorn horns) or what the properties are about. we haven’t even touched on Jack coveting the Wishing Star, a recurring motif in countless Disney movies as representing magic, dreams, and boundless creativity. 

now, i hear you saying, ‘but Star! why would DreamWorks bother writing their bad guy as a metaphor for Disney?’ believe it or not, this isn’t the first time that DreamWorks have done this. in case you didn’t know, Lord Farquaad is a caricature of Michael Eisner, former chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. the production of Shrek was actually quite troubled; animators who were perceived as having failed on other projects were ‘Shreked’, or sent to work on Shrek, instead of working on other (presumed to be more lucrative) films. of course, DreamWorks was co-founded by previous Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, hence the animosity towards Disney and its works evident in the Shrek franchise. this is what formed the story of Shrek: an ugly, crude outsider character taking on the clean-cut moralising of a dictator hell-bent on a so-called ‘perfect’ world, all created against the creative backdrop of a painful separation from Disney and a great deal of pent-up rage. 

the irreverent, crass and sometimes adult humour of Shrek was a middle finger to Disney’s high-censorship control on animation. this is why Lord Farquaad (which you may have noticed sounds a bit like ‘Fuckwad’) is so obsessed with Duloc being ‘perfect’, and why he couldn’t stand the freedom of the fairy tale creatures who are the heroes of the first Shrek movie.

in fact, this kind of meta-commentary permeates the Shrek franchise: 

The Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2, despite being a fairy tale creature herself, is highly prejudiced against characters who break out of their perceived social norms: i.e., Shrek marrying Princess Fiona and getting his Happily Ever After. she is an expansion of the control left over by Lord Farquaad, and rich because of her monopolisation of fairy tale creatures and their stories. 

Prince Charming in Shrek the Third fails miserably to capitalise on these themes, but we’ll get back to him! 

Rumpelstiltskin from Shrek Forever After tackles the gluttony of franchise reboots, and how soulless and rooted in corporate greed attempts to reboot often are. whilst not necessarily Disney-specific, Shrek Forever After follows the box office bomb that was Shrek the Third: a movie which noticeably fails to write a compelling narrative approaching any of the themes of the previous two films. the writers learned from their mistakes and wrote a movie which satirised their own selling-out of the franchise, becoming hollow and unnecessary and ‘perfect’ - the very thing they were making fun of in the earlier Shrek films.

there is one more area i’d like to touch on: Jack Horner’s source material. we know that Little Jack Horner is quite obscure: an 18th-century English nursery rhyme involving a boy who pulls a plum out of a pie with his thumb, and congratulates himself for his fortitude. but did you know that from its earliest conception, Little Jack Horner was associated with foolishness and dishonesty?

it’s true: the simple yet inexplicable nature of the poem was lambasted for being infantile, and quickly became the subject of revision, moralisation, and even political satire. it is no mistake that to ‘be under one’s thumb’ (as many of the characters in The Last Wish are to Jack, both literally and figuratively) means to be under one’s decisive control. the choice of Jack Horner for the villain of The Last Wish is a clever one, because we could easily have ended up with a sympathetic Jack, whose ostracisation as ‘not even a fairy tale’ may have led to a justifiable motive, even for his specific brand of cruelty. but instead, the writers of The Last Wish have gone one step further; they’ve transformed a source affiliated with idiocy and deception into a metaphor for a global multimedia conglomerate...all while portraying him as simultaneously terrifying, powerful, and ridiculous. 

it has been over a decade since Shrek Forever After was released, and Disney has changed dramatically in that time. a global giant, Disney now owns more enormous money-making properties than ever thought possible, and consistently capitalises on nostalgia for its early properties to make more money and accumulate power. since breaking out of its exclusive licensing agreement with Disney in 2016, DreamWorks has had no official connection to Disney, making the ground for mockery and satirisation of the company which spawned the studio all the more fertile. ‘Big’ Jack Horner is not just a glamorous return to form for the dreadful, unapologetically evil villain which Disney has eschewed in modern times - he’s a hulking, egocentric monster whose avarice rivals that only of the corporation he’s inspired by. 

and those are my thoughts on ‘Big’ Jack Horner! of course this is by no means the definitive interpretation - we should all just have fun with the movie and come up with whatever theories we like 🥰💖 i’d love to hear your thoughts on him and The Last Wish in general - he’s definitely one of my favourite bad guys to be released in the past few years!

thanks so much for reading, and have yourselves a wonderful day 🥰

[artbyblastweave]

Now one thing I find really stylistically interesting about Batman Beyond, is that a lot of the mechanisms by which the supervillians do their thing come part-and-parcel with the cyberpunk setting, rather than being an aberration resulting purely from the superheroic genre elements. This is the future of a quote-unquote "present-day" DCU, meaning that they've superficially addressed the question of why all the cutting-edge supertech used in the cape scene never seems to see mass adoption by the civilian sector- forty years later, it has. This means that It's never hard to grok where any given villain is getting the resources necessary to execute their gimmick; these people are flashy by our standards, but they live in a world where everyone has access to flying cars and antigravity drones. Half these people are doing the cyberpunk equivalent of going killdozer with repurposed industrial equipment, or kludging together something with off-the-shelf stuff from radio shack, or mounting a machine gun on a technical truck, and literally in the middle of typing this sentence I started the episode where there's mass-market off-the-shelf animal gene-splicing that would have been a whole-ass individualized origin story in the time of Batman: The Animated Series. Even one-off mutants like Inque and Blight are well-understood within the context of the setting, to the extent of Inque being able to make a knockoff of herself on the go.

This is dystopic. Beyond the genre-typical surface-level megacorp domination of society it's dystopic. On the meta-level it's the same dynamic as Superman: The Animated Series, where the reason there's a sudden uptick in weird costumed crime concurrent with the protagonist's debut is purely Doylistic- the hero needs punching bags. But within the logic of the setting, there's nothing special about Willy Watt's decision to go full Carrie using a hijacked construction robot besides the fact that he had somewhat easier access to the thing than the average school-shooter. Spellbinder being able to put together functional illusion-and-mind-control tech on a high-school counselor's salary- when his entire complaint is that he isn't being paid enough- implies that the main barrier to anyone else pulling the same brainwashing stunt is that nobody else thought to. Shriek's sound suit might be more a more roundabout demolition tool than dynamite, but it's still powerful enough to bring down buildings and he created it as a fly-by-night contractor. The consumer tech base is evolved to the point that regardless of when Batman shows up, shit like this should literally never not be happening- they're past an inflection point. I remember Syndrome from The Incredibles having some kind of line about this

[raisedbythetv89]

The writers I think mostly completely by accident with the assistance of James charming his way into becoming a main character created the perfect storm to ensure people who love spike would reach absolute peak levels of being completely obsessively deranged about him forever

Season 2:

He’s a punk rock villain with killer cheekbones, enchanting eyes, and an absolutely DEVILISH smile - who’s an incredibly dedicated and dangerous fighter who specifically seeks out challenging fights he’s not guaranteed to win (brave and reckless - normally traits seen in heroes) hates everyone except his mentally ill physically sick wife (the statistics of men who leave their wives when they get sick in the US is horrifying like nurses literally have to warn married women who get sick it happens so often) who he’s hopelessly devoted to and unbelievably soft with and always listens to her while also exuding a psychotic amount of sex appeal and is just F U N he loves being a vampire and he loves fighting and it makes it so much fun for the audience. While still showing how much he respects and admires his enemy for her skill, strength, resourcefulness, and intelligence - NEVER underestimating her just because she’s a tiny blonde girl - and instead of destroying the world for love he SAVES the world for love - a villain doing good to get the love of his life back who essentially dumped him for her ex????????? D E V O T E D and shockingly extremely trustworthy??? And has amazing chemistry with our heroine and is there for a pivotal moment in her life and is the only one there for her when she has no one else????? *enemies to lovers girlies ENTER THE CHAT*

Season 3:

He shows he fucking MEANS IT when he says Dru is the love of his life when he shows up in Sunnydale because he blames Angel not Buffy or Drusilla but the man actually responsible for all their problems and he is the most pathetic mess we’ve ever SEEN!!!! He’s crying and drunk all the time and he’s so sad he goes to Buffy’s mom TO TALK 💀😭 our pathetic sensitive little self admitted lover boy who KNOWS he’s love’s bitch and he won’t be pretending he’s anything otherwise who shows how clearly he sees and understands other people and the depths of his emotional intelligence so much so Buffy herself admits she can’t fool Spike she can fool her friends BUT NOT SPIKE OR HERSELF EXCUSE ME MA’AM WHAT???????

AND Spike doesn’t just uselessly MOPE forever he gets some perspective and is like I know what I’m gonna do to her back and I’m gonna go do that now! 😁👍🏻 showing he never stays down for long and is always gonna get back up to keep fighting for his love while BOTH he and Buffy still honor the truce even though he’s broken it by coming back??? While Buffy’s all “I violently dislike you” YEAH OK GIRL WHATEVER YOU SAY *enemies to lovers girlies chomping at the bit intensifies*

Season 4:

CLEARLY heartbroken about Drusilla (DEVOTED!!!) but it’s turned into anger and resentment directed at Harmony who how bizarre looks nothing like Drusilla but A LOT like Buffy…… hmmmmmmmmmmmmm HOW INTERESTING *enemies to lovers girlies are vibrating with anticipation that turns into a full blown combustion when something blue happens*

Spike doesn’t pretend to love Harmony in order to get what he wants from her (shown in direct contrast to Parker) he’s ironically very honest despite being a villain - he’s showing he’s STILL loyal to Drusilla in ONLY loving her even after she’s dumped him... again!

We see Spike treat Buffy the EXACT same way he treated Drusilla during something blue reaffirming THIS IS HOW THIS MAN LOVES WHEN HE LOVES YOU. He’s extremely affectionate, helpful, protective, caring - D E V O T E D - and is truly just the most certified lover boy we’ve ever fucking seen

Season 5:

SURPRISE HE’S SECRETLY A LOVESICK MAMA’S BOY POET AT HEART UNDERNEATH THE BAD BOY PERSONA AND A PROTECTIVE BIG BROTHER AND NOW BUFFY AND HER FAMILY’S MOST LOYAL DEFENDER AND IS WILLING TO DIE NOT JUST FOR BUFFY BUT FOR ALL THE SUMMERS WOMEN AND HE KNOWS AND SEES BUFFY SO DEEPLY AND INTIMATELY AND CAN HOLD SPACE FOR HER PAIN LIKE NO ON ELSE CAN AND SHOWS THE DEVOTION THAT ONCE BELONGED TO DRUSILLA NOW BELONGS TO BUFFY AND IT IS GOING NOWHERE EVEN WHEN SHE DIES AND WE'VE SEEN IN HIM CRY BEFORE BUT NEVER HAVE WE SEEN HIM BREAK DOWN LIKE HE DOES AT THE SIGHT OF BUFFY'S BODY!!!!!!!!!!!

*all of us screaming, crying, throwing up, climbing the walls and generally just losing our minds*

Season 6:

No soul, his love is so great for Buffy as is his loyalty and devotion to her, he now helps all of his dead love’s friends fight evil and is raising her sister and dreams of saving her every night for 148 nights 🤚🏻😭 don’t even fucking talk to me I can’t take it

Forgive the absolute 180 in tone change here:

Dick game is FIRE - his touch is the only thing that makes Buffy feel alive AND SHE WAS IN HEAVEN BRO SHE KNOWS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE IN HEAVEN AND SPIKE IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING HER GOING like damn girl yes YOU FUCK THAT HOUSE DOWN!!! Also he is now just naked 50% of the time just to drive us all even FURTHER out of our minds and somehow has just gotten even hotter as the seasons have gone on like this is what’s been hiding under the leather jacket all this time! Enjoy!

And THE MOST unintended consequence of jw’s vindictive writing:

SPITE

He clearly didn’t want us to love Spike and tried to manipulate us into hating him in such a blatant and clumsy ooc attempt all that did was weed out the weakest amongst the Spuffy/Spike fans until all that remained were us:

The most devoted and stubborn fans who REFUSED to have the thing they loved ruined or taken away from us and were smart enough to see through his bullshit manipulation attempt in the first place.

Genuinely they created the equivalent of supersoilder strength level fans with this absolutely lethal combination of events 💀

AND THEN as if all that wasn't enough he goes and gets his soul on purpose for Buffy so he can be the man she deserves and she can love him without hating herself for loving him despite the immense pain it will cause him which is the most selfless thing we have ever seen anyone do for Buffy only to be topped when he sacrifices himself to destroy the hellmouth, save the world and free her from Sunnydale!!! Plus ya know once he gets the soul even though he did it for her he never tries to use that as leverage to get anything from her like he truly expects nothing from her at all but still wants to help her and James delivers the most devastating performances we've ever fucking seen, finally tells her friends off which has needed to happen for 5 seasons, the "you're the one speech" him being a dad to all the potentials with Buffy giving us supernatural parent core who made it through their rough patch with their first kid in season 6 with Dawn and now are just the beautiful team with their found family and Buffy finally has someone who can truly carry her burdens with her and just all the tenderness and devotion they both deserve after so many years of pain and fighting. Basically giving the audience the message that even if you have a metric ton of pain and trauma there are people out there who see you and understand you and there is a chance for you to heal both together and separately to build your own version of a more normal and stable life. It's a message of such hope and I personally know several people, including myself who watched what Spike and Buffy have and it inspired us to look at the relationships we were in and realize we deserved SO MUCH MORE than what we were getting and in my case it turned out I was being emotionally abused and manipulated that entire time!! Much like Buffy was by both Riley and Angel. So it isn't an exaggeration to say Spuffy saved my life in a lot of ways both in being there for me at such a dark time and helping me draw a map of how to get out. Not to mention loving them in fandom spaces has helped me connect with so many people just like me who share very similar experiences and have helped me feel so much less alone and has helped me heal in so many ways 🖤

Spuffies get "hOw cAn yOu liKe sPiKe aFtEr wHaT hE dId" all the fucking time and truly the better question is how can you NOT like Spike???? HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION AT ALL??? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT GOOD RELATIONSHIPS NEED TO WORK?? BECAUSE AT THEIR CORE SPUFFY HAS THEM ALL!

It's jw writing so NOTHING will escape his toxic bullshit but Spike - because he was hated by jw for so long - so much of the time when he tried to make Spike less popular he just kept making him better and more complex and more and more targeted to the female gaze which is exactly why he snapped and made the choices he literally forced everyone else to go along with despite their protests with that scene to make it the most traumatizing scene in all of Buffy history not just for the audience but for the actors as well because yes it is incredibly horrific and upsetting to watch (which is why I skip it on rewatches) but I still am able to see if for what it is which is a narcissist lashing out at people he hates because he hasn't been able to control them and too bad for him I refuse to be manipulated by his bullshit so it failed completely and made so many of us that much more stubbornly protective of Spike and his and Buffy's relationship not just from other fans but from the creator himself 🙃🖕🏻like he basically just trauma bonded us to Spike and Buffy which has led to the creation of one of the most devoted, loyal, intelligent fanbases who is absolutely unhinged (affectionate) with their love of this character and his relationship which is why we are all still creating and writing about this character 25 year later and show absolutely zero signs of slowing down or stopping 💀

[genericpuff]

hey gen p! i was reading a post of yours where you mentioned LO's age rating and briefly mentioned that minthe was verbally abusive during sex which surprised me bc i didnt really remember her being accused of doing so outside of the slap/havent come across any other accusation since, so i've been defending her against abuse allegations, maybe mistakenly, bc i stopped reading the comic at some point. is it too much to ask for some instances where she *was* abusive so i can correct my outlook?? thx! :3

oh so it's really just one scene and it's waaay back in Episode 8-

like i'm gonna assume this isn't a consensual kink play thing LOL but also like. I wanna make it clear also that people don't necessarily defend Minthe as not being abusive, many people who defend her are well aware that she's done abusive shit. They defend Minthe because 1.) she has a lot more potential for well-written character development than Hades and Persephone (as she's actually genuinely flawed as per the narrative vs. Hades and Persephone who are flawed but we're still expected to believe they're perfect, so unlike H x P Minthe actually has potential to do better and grow like characters should!) and 2.) a lot of Minthe's abuse towards Hades isn't necessarily justified but is a lot more understandable when you really analyze Hades and realize that he is, in fact, a piece of shit LOL

like don't get me wrong, I don't think Minthe was in the right by treating Hades like shit and escalating it to the slap, there are FAR better things she should have done... but I and many others defend her on the basis that she doesn't have the self-respect or resources necessary to look out for herself in a more productive way, much of which was facilitated by Hades trapping her in a financially abusive relationship. When you're worried not only about losing your partner, but also your house and your job with it, that's gonna turn into some unhealthy coping mechanisms and responses like physical and verbal abuse as we see in Minthe. She's someone who's not in control of her situation but is trying to maintain her control through unhealthy means.

Hades, on the flipside, has no excuse when he assaults people or acts like an asshole - he's just able to get away with it through the narrative, its characters, and the readers, because he's the rich and powerful main protagonist.

Minthe is an incredibly flawed person who was self-aware enough to understand what she was doing wasn't right but not equipped enough to do better. She's lower class (according to Rachel, all the nymphs are considered lower class compared to the gods) and was originally written as someone with untreated BPD, which Rachel later retconned (note: the episode where Minthe slaps Hades is literally called Splitting, which is a symptom of BPD, like it's not some assumption or misinterpretation, Rachel literally wrote BPD into the script and then tried to quietly backpedal on it later through Discord.) Hades is an incredibly flawed person who is self-aware of what he's doing, but doesn't see it as wrong and therefore doesn't see any reason to do better. But we're expected to root against the former as an irredeemable villain who can't do better and root for the latter who is an actual monster whose actions are justified and excused by the narrative and its creator.

So yeah, that's why a lot of us defend Minthe. She's not perfect, she's done abusive shit, but unlike Hades and Persephone, she has the capacity to grow and change for the better.

[feartoxinjelloshot]

clipsverse SWAP AU! for fun! character elaboration under the cut because it gets kind of wordy:

selina's deal is pretty straightforward: she has the typical “saw parents die as a child" backstory, but she’s obviously not a millionare so she’s operating out of some kind of condemned underground parking lot... somewhere. authentic gotham grunge i guess. she’s a functioning alcoholic and i am obsessed with her. she's a hardboiled detective like batman, but tends to be a bit more cynical - sort of like if rorschach from watchmen was a normal person and also didn't hate sex. firefly is her "guy in the chair" similar to what alfred is to batman in canon, minus the surrogate parent part, obviously. public opinion is pretty split on if the bat is a man or a woman under there. i don't really have swap ideas for the robins ironed out, but i'm thinking that cass and stephanie are her robin and red hood equivalents (cass being dick, stephanie being jason). cass would have an allblack bird theme going on, so she might be "crow" or "blackbird" instead of robin. dunno what stephanie's red hood rendition is like. purple hood? i'll figure it out eventually.

bruce’s parents are alive, but he has a terrible relationship with them and with his own wealth so he mitigates the guilt complex by dressing up as a cat to steal and redistribute resources to people who actually need it. he could probably do that in daylight but there is something very wrong with him. i don't think his dumb slutty playboy persona is entirely genuine even without his parents' deaths, but he does lean into it more and incorporate parts of it into his vigilante persona over time. i think this version of bruce is just generally very lonely under the surface. he tries to be normal in his daytime life and he's very bad at it - theft aside, in a certain sense being the cat(man? woman?) is his own break for freedom; he felt a need to plunge himself far into the deep end of what normal society calls a 'freak'. ...writing it out like this, we're probably lucky he didn't start killing people. fortunately batman isn't really that kind of guy in any universe.

meanwhile on the other side of the rails: ivy! her deal is slightly unformed right now due to the fact that the hatter and the joker also swap places in this au - so the hatter is a dangerous, evil mastermind intent on controlling gotham to suit their whims, and the joker is... just a harmless silly little guy. yeah. i don't have swap-hatter's exact personality ironed out yet, so detailing his and ivy's dynamic would be difficult, but i can say that while she is his loyal second-in-command at his table of advisors, she is also plotting against him. ivy is a consistent loner in both mainline cv and here, and while she doesn't have the same tumultuous, antagonistic, emotional relationship with him as harley does with the joker, she is also frankly not interested in being his number one until the end of time. she wants to do it herself and she wants to do it right. this is an ivy who, in lieu of her own world-altering gift, is scraping tooth and nail to successfully supersede the most powerful entity she can her her hands on. the hatter is blissfully unaware of this - we can't all be perfect.

harley, for her part, is very tame in comparison. she mirrors ivy's canonical backstory pretty closely: an esteemed scientist studying stem cell relations who was denied funding, mocked, and forced to experiment on herself to prove a point, unwittingly connecting herself to a worldwide hive-mind of plantlife. this version of harley, while still dressed as a scientist, is far more surface-level emotionally volatile than mainline ivy, more impulsive and irrational, and probably willing to lean much farther into the classic poison ivy reputation as a villainous seductress, to varying degrees of honesty and success. it takes ivy an incredible degree of patience and control to maintain the mental and physical balance she strikes with the green, and this version of harley has far less of both. she lets it use her body as a conduit of earthly rage and she lets the poison infect her skin and organs until mottled and decaying. she's not unhappy, but she's not exactly stable, either.

jonathan is a mysterious, faux-sleazy lounge singer who lost his left arm to a snake bite infection as a child and thereafter became obsessed with the symbolism of the balance of life via games, tricks and questions - winning and losing, birth and death, etc. the ouroboros is a common symbol in his theatrics. he possesses a certain degree of social confidence that the mainline jonathan has never quite been capable of - while he doesn't have the same fervent need for attention as edward, he takes a compulsory delight in the mental influence he achieves on small crowds and will employ many avenues to get ahold of it. he's certainly not outgoing: he keeps almost entirely to himself offstage, uninterested in fame outside of his show persona. unlike mainline jonathan who views the scarecrow as a genuine self-inflicted diety, this jon sees his persona as more of a mantle or responsibility that he must take on in order to discover new truths about the world. like his canon counterpart he is asexual and uninterested in sex, but i imagine that he has less qualms about leading people on as an act to get what he wants from them. he's not terribly famous in his singing career, but he's become a bit of an underground legend for his resolute 1920s-inspired style and occasional genuine debonair charm.

edward in comparison is not nearly as ritualistically compelled as mainline scarecrow, but he’s far less cagey about his own machinations and his mental relationship to them: he lives in a tricked-out barn somewhere on the far outskirts of gotham, and he spends his time as a propmaster creating elaborate saw-trap-esque haunted houses and escape rooms to invoke panic in his “guests”. he wanders the halls of his own houses along with the guests, repairing and tinkering, or just scaring the shit out of them. he also makes a genuine living by making and selling cosplay props and other related objects online; he's developed a bit of an internet presence through this channel, though he's not as fixated on it as the mainline riddler would be. he still craves spectacle and attention, but he's more of a "quality over quantity" guy according to his own standards and is rarely happy with the work he creates, hence the endless roundabout of creation and reinvention.

[yandere-kokeshi]

Yandere spider verse your pick villain x Deaf reader

Warnings: yandere behavior and talks about people getting beat up.

A/N: I love that you decided to let me pick. I'm not really good at deciding and it picked Miles Morales from Earth-1610.

When he first met you, he was annoyed. Not only did you ignore him, but you constantly pointed at your ears when he did catch your attention - of course, he thought you were making fun of him. But later did he realize that you couldn’t hear, hence the pointing and not hearing him when he approached.

At first, he was rather careless about your deafness. He wasn’t mean or rude, just rather indifferent; you were just something else.

But for some reason, you’d caught his eye. Possibly it was the way you stood up for yourself, not allowing anyone to walk over you, regardless of your condition.

Or how you were incredibly gentle and nice, always saying hello to him. At this point, he starts to get closer to you and ends up falling for you.

He’s a huge help with reminding things and keeping track of time. If you get distracted and forget to look at the time, Miles will tell you what’s up and help you in which way he can.

With reminding, he’s always on top of that - if you have a doctor’s appointment, a quiz needed for school, or even need to get up early to meet with a family member, he always makes sure to get up earlier than you, helping you get ready.

Being deaf can be challenging. Things can overwhelm you quickly, and having problems with society can be mentally and emotionally draining. This said, Miles will often remind you to take it easy and allow him to handle the grocery shopping, the need of getting supplies, and resources that you might want.

Miles has learned to get your attention by using other forms of ‘sounds’ and actions - stomping on the ground, letting you feel the vibrations, or simply using lights as a way to diverse your attention towards him.

It’s possible he already knows sign language as he’s pretty observant. But he’s more than happy to spend time with you, watching how you teach him or fix his mistakes when signing.

God help anyone who dares to disrespect you. Even if they look at you weirdly, the next day, they’re on the news murdered. He’s pretty protective, especially with how you can’t hear and all. With this, he always pesters about coming with you whenever you’re gonna go somewhere.

Uncle Aaron respects you quite a lot, seeing how you treat Miles and how he acts a bit differently near you. He’ll treat you like a family member.

Sure, he’s a bit cold and distant, but the minute you’re in danger, he’ll make sure you’re put into safety as quickly as possible.

—

Masterlist || Please consider reblogging and commenting instead of liking, it helps me as a creator!! Stay well!!

© yandere-kokeshi 2023 — Do not copy, modify, edit, repost, or use my works for ASMR readings, tiktoks, or other content.

[hadesisqueer]

The thing about Asami is that she's a whole unit of a woman. She's incredibly smart. She's the owner of one of the biggest companies in the world and constantly uses its resources to do good and help Team Avatar, whether it is to help rebuild the new Air Nation or fighting whatever villain. She can drive anything: motorcycles, cars, airships, planes, polar bear dogs, anything. She can fight, too. She's 6 feet tall. She's one of the kindest people in the show. And she's also the hottest character in the show too. A whole unit. Korra is so lucky.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hi there! I'm a huge fan of your work, and I was wondering if you could help flesh out a vilain idea I had? I have a basic setup, but no idea how to make him a rounder character.

The gist of it is a fey king whose queen died, so, driven mad with grief and incredibly deep in denial, he reaches out into the Material Plane and kidnaps women who resemble his queen, forcibly altering their minds and bodies through fell magic to transform them into reincarnations of his queen. He keeps failing as the magic instead transforms them into horribly broken and mutated horrors, driving him to more desperate measures.

Other than that, I have no idea how to develop him further or devise an end to his evil :(( so any tips on villain development would be greatly appreciated :))

Adventure: A Covetous Love

Friend, you don't need to make your villain a rounder character, you just need to refocus your narrative onto the genuinely horrific scenario you've created where a series of women have their identities torn away piece by piece. How does it feel to go through it? What must it be like for their friends and family to watch as the woman they knew is replaced by some cruel parody in line with a stranger’s lusts?  Refocusing the story on the current victim likewise gives the story human stakes, and allows the party a good entrypoint into this ongoing tragedy with the chance of possibly preventing it from repeating. 

Before we get into the story itself, here’s a few more ideas I’m going to suggest: 

Rather than kidnapping outright, the fey lord visits his victims in disguise courting them as if he were a wealthy, charming suitor. He offers jewelry and trinkets and other fine things, all infused with the essence of his beloved, and as each of them is accepted the victim becomes a little bit more and more like his queen. A silver comb that turns her hair into HER hair, a cup of wine that fills her dreams with memories of their pramanades through faerie together, makeup that not only wipes out any flaws but transforms the face into a mask of bloodless porcelain perfection. 

Likewise, the transformation process specifically fails because the fey’s expectations are too much. If he were willing to settle for someone who only reminded him of his bride, or gods help him strike out on some new course, he could theoretically be happy… but because he keeps trying to make his victims MORE he ends up with an idea that collapses in on itself, something too perfect to live or even maintain a coherent form. 

To really drive home the tragedy of the horror, I’m going to suggest that the current victim is a woman trapped in either a political marriage or one that’s long gone cold. The fey will exploit her genuine desire for romance and affection, as well as her longing to escape the cage of her life, making the offer of becoming someone else (even if it means dying in the process) all the more tempting. This makes it so that the hinge point of the adventure isn’t just a “rescue the princess” matter of getting her away from the fey, but confronting her as a person and trying to persuade her that there’s some other path to freedom than letting herself be eaten by some otherworldly waifu. 

This setup also gives the party a great secondary antagonist to clash against: the jealous mortal husband, someone who technically WANTS the same thing as the party and has the resources at his back, but will actively drive the victim into the fey’s arms every time he gets involved. He wants to save the victim, but doesn’t care about her happiness, in fact he may be intent on punishing her for her infidelity. He’s there to show why the victim wants to leave. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The party first encounter Lady Melanie Kerridell while out in the wilderness when a stag she’s hunting blunders into their path/camp, on horseback, weapon in hand and her fine clothes streaked with mud. She’ll berate them if they let the beast escape or steal the kill for themselves, but half way through will stagger and lose track of where she is. Just about then a group of her friends and servants will crash through the foliage in a desperate state, as Melanie was out with them having a country luncheon when she spotted the stag, grabbed a weapon from the guards, and took off after it.  This is not the first time this has happened, Lady Kerridell is about half way transformed into the Green-Eyed-Queen and she’s letting herself slip more and more. A concerned friend will invite the party back with them to the estate, and then politely broach the topic about how they might “look in” on Melanie and what might be causing her to act this way. 

The party receive a letter from Lady Kerridell, begging for their help ridding her manor of a haunting, of a monster that has been wandering her home at night wearing her face. When they seek her out however they find her beautiful and cruel and with no idea whatsoever who sent them the letter, despite it bearing her seal.

Lord Edrick Kerridell catches the party snooping around and offers to pay them if they can track down the young dandy he’s seen his wife sneaking off into the gardens to neck with. He wants to know just who the man is before he decides what to do with him, just incase these pricy gifts are from the vault of some other great family. When the party do find the dandy,  he’ll lead them on a merry chase through the town, dragging them all into the feywild if they manage to corner him. 

The local jeweler needs some help investigating a robbery, a few pieces were stolen, but the prize of the take was a staggeringly beautiful necklace of gold and jade, which he was in the middle of repairing. Strangeness surrounds the case: the dandy who delivered the necklace made no secret that it was for a married woman and as the jeweler worked on it he couldn’t shake the feeling of some kind of presence skirting around the edge of his workshop.  When the party find the thief they’ll find her in a bit of a state, having put on the necklace and been influenced by the fey-bride’s mind, she now finds herself driven to heist the home of Lady Berridale. Ostensibly this is for more riches, but the shard of the green eyed queen seeks to complete herself, which will likely result in one of the two womens’ deaths. 

Art

[elvain]

how i make sure the fundraisers i share are legit

i've seen numerous people in the past few weeks talk about how they never know if a fundraiser is legit, so they don't "risk" sharing or donating. while we all know there are villains out there who will take advantage of the genocide for their own gain, we also need to remember to take care of those who are really victims.

we have a humane duty to help every person who needs it, who approaches us for it. there is always a risk involved when you donate to "unofficial" campaigns online in any capacity, but using it as an excuse to avoid taking action for palestine is a moral failure.

that being said, i thought i'd make a small list of things i personally do before i donate/share fundraisers to make sure they are verified.

i check the notes of the reblogs on the fundraiser post. more often than not, i find a link to the verification or an actual verification. for example, 90-ghost, specifically, is one to reblog a post and verify its legitimacy. many tags also indicate where/when/if the campaign is verified.

i check palestinian blogs that have taken up this duty/responsibility/burden. nabulsi, 90-ghost, fallahifag, fairuzfan, el-shab-hussein, and palipunk are just a few off the top of my head.

i check the gaza funds spreadsheet for the family's name, which is an incredible resource. note: the numbers of the spreadsheet aren't always aligned for some reason (ie, #181 on the list can sometimes mean #184 on the spreadsheet). take the time to properly look through this list.

i check my own mutuals' blogs. many of us get the same people in our ask boxes and sometimes my friends have verified campaigns themselves or they have sources to verifications.

my resources/methods are not exhaustive or perfect. i don't even know if what i do is enough/worthy - but the important thing is that i do it.

it'll never be time to give up on palestine. please, let's all make sure we do our part in liberating our fellow humans that we may all one day enjoy the freedom and justice that we deserve.

[tokidokitokyo]

My Favourite Japanese Children's Shows

My son is 3 and I have watched a lot of Japanese children's shows with him (screen time is family time!). Here are some of my faves and why. These shows are all from NHK E-TV. Would I recommend to use these for personal study? I am using them to help teach my son Japanese, and for this it works doubly well as I learn how children's society operates in Japan and how Japanese people learn Japanese as well as social etiquette. If you don't have a child, you might get bored easily from these as they are not designed with an adult audience in mind, and you can find much better resources online. You also need a subscription to NHK somehow to watch them, which could be difficult or costly to obtain overseas. However, I like the stories and the characters, as well as the little things I learn from watching them. If you are thinking of teaching your child Japanese this might be a useful resource.

いないいないばあっ！ Inai inai baa! (Peek-a-boo!) This show is designed for very young children and features the beloved dog Wan Wan, played by the same actor since it first started airing in 1996. Wan Wan is accompanied by a young girl, played by various actresses in a succession over the year, and other fun characters. There is singing and make-believe and crafts, as well as short segments featuring nature (animals, plants) or short animations. It's very slow as it is made for infants and toddlers, but that makes it very cute. A group of specially selected young toddlers appears for the dances and songs. Why I Like It: The animation is fun and visually appealing, the activities are play based and you can do them at home, and you learn some new vocabulary. Age: Infants to young Toddlers Clip: DVD Advertisement

おかあさんといっしょ Okaasan to issho (With Mother) This show is designed to be watched with mom (it comes on in the mornings and evenings on NHK E-TV). There are a male and female singing talent, and a male and female athletic talent, who participate in singing and acting clips. There are also a group of costumed characters that have a short story that is continued each week. It has a variety of songs, short skits, a collection of human and costumed actors, and a predictable flow that changes slightly based on the day of the week (e.g. teeth brushing days, story days, etc.). It also shows real kids doing real activities, which kids like to watch. Why I Like It: The songs are easy and catchy, the stories are easy to follow and the words are spoken clearly and precisely. Age: Infants to Toddlers/Preschoolers Clip: DVD Advertisement

アンパンマン Anpanman (Anpanman) This cartoon is a long running cartoon for children (since 1988!) with an incredible line of every toy imaginable to supplement your love for the red-bean bun man (anpan = red bean bun pastry). The story lines are simple and predictable, there are a variety of "fairy" characters that are composed of different Japanese food items, plants, utensils, and animals; and in the end the villains are just really hungry. Anpanman works to help people who are in trouble or hungry (sometimes even the villains), or being bullied by the hungry villains and the story always ends well. Why I Like It: The plot is easy to follow and you can learn about Japanese food and drink specialties via the endless supply of characters, and the songs are catchy. Age: Infants to Toddlers/Preschoolers Clip: Ending TV Theme Song

ピタゴラスイッチ Pitagora Suicchi (Pythagora Switch) Pythagora Switch is a 15-minute long show involving devices (Pythagora Switch) that are equivalent to the American Rube Goldberg machine and the British Heath Robinson contraption - basically, a sequence of events made from household objects that end with (usually) the words ピタゴラスイッチ being revealed. The idea is to encourage children to augment their way of thinking and to solve or understand what the machine will do before they see the movements happen. There are also other segments in which mechanisms are explained and shown visually. And usually there is rock-paper-scissors via a Pythagora Switch where you work out what the device will throw and try to beat it! The language in this show is more complicated because it is geared to a wider, older audience. Why I Like It: It helps me to think and enthralls my son with the moving parts. It's puzzle solving and sparks interest in the way the world works. Age: Toddlers to Elementary School Students Clip: 4 3 2 1 2 1 そうち

[mangora]

Me: So yeah the thing about the PI girls for me is how they view themselves and treat other people because like, Sky sees herself as a hero and believes that everyone deserves help or a second chance, which becomes actively harmful whenever she has to battle herself about what’s best for her/her team vs what’s best for the feelings of others, often resulting in failure (ex: her refusing to call out teammates like Leonard as team leader) or her own feelings of anger/guilt (ex: the entire Dave situation); meanwhile Ella is truly kind through and through because she sees herself as an innocent fairy tale princess and the level of kindness is born from the naivety and idealism accompanying that label ended up being her downfall (ex: refused to see the bad in Sugar and insisted on being friends even when Sugar clearly hated her); and of course Sammy is kind and wants to help people (ex: volunteers to go berry picking), but has a massively skewed view of confrontation due to her low self esteem and her image of herself as a helpless or worthless proxy to her sister, to the point that she won’t confront people until she blows up in the most inopportune moments; and then Jasmine wants the best for people but believes that they must make this happen themselves (ex: Sammy) and she also believes that individual healing/kindness is second to working together as a team towards a collective goal (ex: again, in the case of the Sammy/Amy situation) because she sees herself as a leader and a survivor above anything else and expects other people to feel the same, which is why it stung extra hard when Shawn, who she likes, worked against her instead of with her for a collective good, and why it was extra impactful to her when he sacrificed his win to save her when they weren’t working together; and then Sugar sees herself both as a bit of a comedian and as a queen who is above other people, and will make fun of people or manipulate them for her own gain or entertainment, but is still willing to work with others and will still treat them as friends (ex: Sky, Leonard) when a goal is within close reach, with the exception of people she believes are out to hurt her (ex: Ella); and then Scarlett sees herself as a villain but has sought out friends before (ex: Max) and can be incredibly helpful in a team and will only turn to cruelty when people have lost her trust (ex: Topher, Max), or when she feels she’s finally in total power with nothing to lose by hurting others (ex: Scarlett Fever), suggesting she likes some people and would be willing to align with or befriend someone who shares her goals but ultimately sees people as resources, perhaps because the people around her never showed an initiative to work with her as friends past the merge as they did when they worked on a team together (see: Jasmine); and finally Amy is the worst of them as she sees herself as the best of the best in a similar way to Sugar (though Sugar will do the work for this title, while Amy feels entitled to it), and she doesn’t like or respect anyone, and is actively cruel to people for little or no reason even when they can help her, though she still wants their praise and adoration despite this. All of the PI girls are victims of circumstance clearly but they’re also all self-fulfilling prophecies in their own ways. Their adherence to their own self image is both what caused them to clash and what caused them to bond. In the end Jasmine and Sky are the only ones who broke out of their moulds which is why they succeeded (Jasmine got part of Shawn’s reward in his ending and Sky got the full million in her’s). Yuri could’ve saved all of them faster though.

Woman Taking My Order At Unspecified Drive Thru Eatery:

[ripeteeth]

Hi! I hope this isn't too random or intrusive, but I discovered your blog recently due to coming across your post about reading Frankenstein when I was searching a book ask meme tag. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about the books you like and I found I shared quite a few of your tastes and opinions as well (eg. I wasn't a big fan of Love in the Time of Cholera or Neil Gaiman's solo writing either, I really love grotesquely interesting and oddly pretty stories like Perfume).

please don't feel any pressure to answer this if you'd rather not, but I was wondering if you had any other books to recommend or talk a bit about that have really stuck with you? I'm also curious about how you usually find more good books for your future reading list – if you have any tips or advice you could share Thank you! ♡

Hi! I’m always down to talk about books I love or loathe! There’s so much out there in terms of grotesque beauty, so to speak!

I worked in a bookstore all throughout college, so I had a ton of resources there in being connected to other book lovers and had the pure luck to spend thousands of hours shelving books and having so many titles pass through my hands. Many of my favorites are here because something about the cover or summary intrigued me while I was reshelving it or finding it for someone (or pulling it during zoning to return to the publisher if it hadn’t sold). If you have a good used bookstore near you, I HIGHLY recommend just taking time to wander through and just look for something weird! Something that catches your attention, even if you can’t put your finger on why. Ask the booksellers there if they have any recommendations - I’ve rarely met a bookseller that didn’t have an opinion or five about good books to share.

I also had the benefit of having a very book-centric family, especially my mom. She’s my best friend and she introduced me to so many incredible titles, like The Stranger, Jane Eyre, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, Lolita, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Anna Karenina, Murder on the Orient Express, and the collected hijinks of Jeeves and Wooster. So many of the books I read are ones she recommends!

Beyond that and recommendations from friends, I tend to pick up books from following publishers. Right now I’m obsessed with reading publications by the New York Review of Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions, both of which publish incredibly high-quality writing from authors I’ve usually never heard of. A lot of these books are either experimental or have never been translated into English before (or haven’t been published in decades). I really tend to just go through their catalogs and grab a book at random and I haven’t had a miss yet. Right now from NYRB, I’m reading Mourning A Breast, a memoir of living with breast cancer by Hong Kong writer Xi Xi, and I have Vasily Grossman’s Leningrad on deck. From Fitzcarraldo, I recently loved Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and am going to start Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor soon.

Right off the top of my head, based on the few you referenced here such as Perfume and Frankenstein, I’d recommend:

Grendel - John Gardner

Along with Frankenstein, this is probably my all-time favorite book. It’s a fascinating retelling of Beowulf, all from Grendel’s point-of-view. It’s lush but in that way of undergrowth and decay, and Gardner leans into Grendel’s wretchedness and monstrosity, letting it sing. He’s not interested in rehabilitating a monster, but in giving this pathetic creature a voice. I have a deep love of retellings that move the viewfinder and give the reins to a side character or villain. (Though I admit I haven’t liked many of the recent releases in this vein. They give me the crawling sensation that they were written because it became popular, not because the author had an interest in the story or characters, which is perfectly valid - hey, it’s a capitalist hellscape we all live in, no shame in getting paid - but those aren’t the books I enjoy.)

Crash - J.G. Ballard

This is a weird one. A wonderfully messy, fucked-up weird one where the heartbeat of the story is about psychosexual car crash fetishes. Cronenberg made it into a film in 1995 and the fact that Cronenberg made a movie about it at all should tell you everything you need to know.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories - Flannery O’Connor

If you like dark and oddly beautiful, nothing fits that criteria more than Flannery O’Connor. Something heavy and somber hovers over her work. A sense of dread. Dry grasses. Revival tents. The dead eyed stare of a preacher. A fire you cannot escape.

[A list of recs below the cut]

A few others that come to mind as titles you may enjoy, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. These are all beautifully written, fascinating, and many are uncomfortable in the precise way I like fiction to leave me feeling.

Cassandra - Christa Wolf

The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist

Hunger - Knut Hamsun

Solenoid - Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu

We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

Rashomon and Other Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson

Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age - Bohumil Hrabal

Voices From Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich (Proof that non-fiction can be poetic and haunting)

Just Kids - Patti Smith

A Map To The Door of No Return - Dionne Brand

This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Tadeusz Borowski

The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz

Lote - Shola von Reinhold

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson

Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino

2666 - Roberto Bolaño

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

The Pearl Diver - Jeff Talarigo

Beyond The Gates - Molly Gloss

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Self-Help and Other Stories - Lorrie Moore

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Get In Trouble: Stories - Kelly Link

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Consent - Vanessa Springora

Medea - Christa Wolf

Simple Passion - Annie Ernaux

[exstasyplague]

UnPopular Jujutsu Kaisen Opinions (with arguments)

manga spoilers

☆ Yuji is the perfect MC

i've seen a lot of people trashing on him. some say gege writes him poorly and doesn't give him enough scenes, some say he's boring because he doesn't have any fancy cursed techniques. first of all, yuji has been aware of the jujutsu world for 6 months in manga; even less in anime. he doesn't have any OP cliche to him (looking at you Ichigo) and that makes him so much more enjoyable! when he loses he loses for good reasons and when he wins you can feel genuinely happy for him because you know he deserves it. he is a teenager and the shift in his mentalities embodies that perfectly; along with him we discover the cruelty and unfairness of the jujutsu world. at first, especially if you're a shonen watcher, you'd tend to believe he will shift to a high white knight borderline annoying mentality yet he doesn't, the jjk verse doesn't work like that. yuji is able to adapt. he has traits that you'd see in your real life friends: silliness, kindness, idiocy, love for jennifer lawrence etc but also traits that make him a perfect mc: empathy, resiliance, convinction, raw anger. + gege have him some of the HARDEST panels.

ㅡif it's just pain... Yuji Itadori won't ever stop

also. his last battle with mahito. hands down. best. panels.

mahito (another well structured villain) RUNNING for his life while yuji walks slowly behind him. if that doesn't show major improvement from the kid he was at the beginning idk what does. that's some MC shit right there man.

☆ Sukuna is not a fraud

the fraudkuna memes are funny. i admit. i'm sure mahoraga kisses him goodnight and tucks his blankey, however, sukuna is a fucking piece of shit, LOL (i mean it in the best way), my man literally became curse. people expect him to not use the weapons he has to his advantage as if he didn't want megumi from the beginning specifically for using his abilities. a good gun doesn't make you a military tier shooter. it's about the resources, it's about the experience, it's about the aim. "why doesn't he use his curse technique wah wah" — because he knows gojo is strong. unless he isn't absolutely sure he will strip him away from all his gimmicks, he has no reason to flaunt his true powers. sukuna wants to win. he wanted to kill gojo since the beginning of the series. i think the fight is balanced well, sukuna uses his resources and takes the consequences for being a tad too cautious. in the heian era when cursed energy had a purer, rawer output even domain expansions were simple in principles: you're in, i kill you. (line from the manga, btw) his CT is probably straightforward as well with a simple principle so having gojo use his infinity against it and figure out how to strip him naked would make him lose faster than todo called yuji his bestie.

☆ Gege doesn't hate women

because the unfortunate thing with nobara and yuki getting xd-d by kenjaku, a popular belief seems to be that gege is fond of trashing the women in his series. argument people have for that? "the only one in the spotlight is maki and she's female toji". first of all, if gege hated women he wouldn't write them as he does— each one of his lady characters is incredibly well structured and way beyond the love interest/ gotta be protected trope. mei mei, shoko, utahime, miwa and many others became non-existent, or what? even tengen is a woman. masashi kishimoto (the creator of naruto) is an author i'd say has 0 regards for women since the way most of his girl characters are built is literal dog shit. sakura is naruto's one sided love and a sasuke dickrider, hinata is a stalker that sharts when she sees naruto, karin is a sasuke dickrider, kurenai is asuma's chick and the only two women somewhat ok as a structure are tsunde and temari. (i am a big fan of the naruto series but i am spitting facts, also an avid sakura lover) plus there is a rumour that gege is a woman too and from the way sato sugu is written i'd agree anw

☆ Kenjaku is the best villain of the series

homie got railed by itadori's papi just for his plan, that's not even aizen level of plotting bro. he got drizzled in jizz and gave birth to yuji 💀

how good that d had to be for him to get impregnated....

ANYWAY jokes aside, he is very calculated and chill. he is not the strongest but his literal essence is to be a technique stealing leech and well, he's just that. with suguru, even in his villain arc you can empathize. sukuna is cool and straightforward: he wants to massacre people, kill gojo and then enjoy his life slashing random ass people who don't kneel is total submission.

kenjaku? bro, kenjaku has plans over plans and he executes all of them. even in geto's sexy body he still gets hated because there is genuinely nothing likeable about him. not because he's a poorly written character, he's written to be a piece of shit that makes you wanna break the screen when he gets a W and idk about y'all but even when he exorcised mahito i was like "aw hell nah bruh, get your hands off asap". may come as a shock, i know but we're like supposed to hate villains (not me being the biggest sukuna simp even in his crusty dusty OG form🤭) and well, nobody fucking roots for kenjaku. so gojo, go take your boyfriend's body or something fr.

☆ Yuta is.... mid

hear me out.

i don't hate him— not in the slightest. i hope he will actually have something going on with maki since apparently nobara is afk. i liked his entire rika situation but... bro.

yes, i will be going into the power system 😭I'M SORRY BUT like all he does is copy shit. wow. sure, he's a good copycat. i am not complaining about him being called so powerful and wtv but i don't find anything exciting about his battles and his personality is dead ass boring. do i get happy when he wins? yes. do i hope he'll come and save goatjo? yes. yes. yes. but people call him the real MC and all that shit... not even that— i... nothing in me likes him. my opinions are not absolute. his story is cool. i liked jjk 0 but the only thing that ruins his story is literally his lack of perosnality. and don't come at me for not grasping his depths or whatever. yuta is best fanfic y/n material because he can be turned into bashful stereotype really easily. "omg, best friend power, precious friends made me wanna live ❤️" very sweet HOWEVER very untouching for me. i only liked him when he made maki go all blushy because my girl deserves happiness.

☆ Toji actually cares about Megumi

is he the good father that would spoil his kid as a ray of sunshine?

no.

but he chose this. to forget about everything, to abandon his pride, to part himself away from the clan that rejected him and live his life on his own. megumi's mom made shit better for him and she died so his life became shit again. he thought that by entrusting megumi to the zenin clan he would actually be able to make something of himself since he had cursed energy.

also, people tend to forget just how conservative and judgemental the 3 big clans are, maki and mai have been shat on their whole life by the zenins, especially maki. toji went through the same shit if not worse. he wasn't always buff max version of himself, he wasn't born with anything. exactly because he gave up on all the things in his life he was able to reach that type of power and live with some purpose since he failed in everything else.

in the manga he has the option of coming back to life as long as he keeps killing sorcerers, which is his speciality, but he meets megumi, recognises him and kills himself in order to not hurt him. be fr. anciet sorcerers sold their booty holes to kenjaku to get a second chance at life.

ANYWAY. SADLY i can't post Toji memes since i reached my pic limits.

let me know what you think:) i may make a part 2. feel free to also ask for my opinions about anything in the verse, lol. if you wanna see my fics check my ao3, i promise i don't write in the same braindead way i type. <33

[theresattrpgforthat]

do you have any recommendations for games with interesting superpower mechanics? bonus points for a clear love of superhero comics as a genre

THEME: Superpowers

Oh gosh do I have some recommendations for you. I have likely spoken about pretty much all of these games before, but I feel very strongly about them and I can’t help myself from talking about them again!

Exceptionals, by Bramble Wolf Games.

Exceptionals is a game inspired by X-Men about and for the spaces and communities marginalized peoples make for themselves. Play as a Geno, one of little less than 0.5% percent of the population that has gone through a mysterious process called Claremont-Simonson mutation, as you try to navigate a world that won’t make room for you. Exceptionals is a game about what the mutant metaphor means to you and the different lenses through which we view it. Punch back and build something of worth together in this narrative tag-driven tabletop role playing game.

What Exceptionals does differently than the other games mentioned here is that it ties all of your character abilities to descriptive words or phrases. You’re not just heavily armoured, you have bone spikes and you’re exceptionally good at resisting extreme temperatures. Your powers can just as easily be things that slow you down and get in your way as they can be handy weapons or powerful resources. Not only that, but your character is also defined by their role in the community. Are you excellent at socializing and often called on to provide a distraction? Or are you good at noticing details, and therefore asked to investigate local mysteries? Each answer gives you a tag you can use to improve your chances of success.

If you have some experience with Fate, you might find Exceptionals to feel pretty familiar, with the biggest difference being in the dice used. The system itself uses 2d10, with modifiers applied through tags, the environment around you, and social bonds. Your bonds are crucial to improving your chances, and that is why Exceptionals champions community. If you want a game that cares deeply about the media it’s drawing from, then I recommend Exceptionals.

Spectaculars, by Scratchpad Publishing.

Spectaculars is a tabletop roleplaying game where players create their own comic book universe, craft heroes and villains to populate that universe, and then play through full-length campaigns to tell incredible stories of heroism and villainy in a world of their own creation.

Spectaculars has different decks of superpowers depending on the kind of genre you’d like to play in, but you can also mix and match if you’d like. Your superpower options are dealt to you randomly, with five basic superpowers always available if you don’t like the options you’ve been given. You get five unique cards, out of which you can choose up to three. I really like this because it prevents analysis paralysis, while still giving you a good number of unique options!

Your superpower ability is usually tied to a percentile - 80 being your best power, 70 being the second best, and 60 being the tertiary (should you choose to take all three). Rolling under that number means you succeed, and you can also roll advantage or disadvantage dice to determine extra details - like whether your move sets up another superhero really well. Each superpower could have up to two different effects, using situational limitations or time tokens to debuff anything that is extraordinarily powerful.

So for example, the Corrosion power gives you the ability to reroll any advantage dice you roll once, as long as you are trying to corrode non-living matter. However for Light Manipulation, you can make whatever light effect you evoke last for longer if you put two time tokens on your card, and you can allow yourself to use your power and do something else at the end of the round by adding four time tokens to the card. At the beginning of your turn every round, you get to remove a time token. This is a great game for folks who love tactile play, as the tokens, dice and power cards give you a lot to handle.

If you want a more in-depth review of Spectaculars, you can check out this summary by Deeper in the Game.

MASKS, by Brendan Conway, at Magpie Games.

Halcyon City has had more than its fair share of superheroes, superteams, supervillains, and everything in between.

Your team of young supers must forge your own path amidst the pressures of a world full of people telling you what to do and who to be, and kick some butt along the way!

Masks: A New Generation is a superhero tabletop roleplaying game full of action, youthful angst, and dazzling bravery. Take on the roles of members of the latest generation of superheroes, young adults trying to figure out who they are and what kind of heroes they want to be.

I am remiss if I don’t talk about MASKS, the first game I would turn to if I wanted to replicate Young Justice, Teen Titans, or anything from the Spiderverse series. This game is often cited as one of the definitive examples of what a Powered by the Apocalypse game can do, and for good reason. The superhero powers are present as picklists tied to each playbook, while what separates the playbooks is the inherent struggle of the character. Are they trying to hide their mundane identity? Are they struggling with feeling like a freak? Do they have a legacy to live up to?

I think these thematic elements show a deep love for the superhero genre, and I also love that the chances of success aren’t tied to what your abilities are, but rather your reasons for using them. If you are trying to protect someone, you’re rolling Savior, but if you’re trying to do damage, you roll Danger. In either situation you could be using your powers, but it’s intent that matters - and then you describe how you want to do it in order to give us an idea of what success or failure would look like.

FASERIP, by Gurbintroll Games.

FASERIP is a neo-clone game of super heroes, based on a classic 1980s role-playing game. The game contains a flexible yet streamlined super power system, and a completely new character generation system which keeps the fun and unpredictability of the original game’s random character generation but tempers it with an emphasis on balance and player choice.

This is a retro-clone from another superhero game that has since gone out of print - I think perhaps Marvel Super Heroes? Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the source material, but I can tell you that this version is free!

FASERIP is pretty granular in your ability level, ranking characters and difficulty levels from Zero to Infinite. Your superpowers in this game have a few important factors - source (how you got the power), rank (how effective it is), and boosts (how flexible your abilities are. Powers are determined randomly in FASERIP, with roll tables used to determine what kinds of powers you get and how many boosts you get. If you’re a fan of older rules systems and random power generation, I recommend checking out FASERIP.

Those of Us Who Know Better, by C.J. Linton.

Those of Us Who Know Better is a tabletop roleplaying game about transgender superheroes whose powers come at a price. Civilians by day, in community every other Thursday evening, and heroes by night, the players use their powers to problem solve and offer protection and support around town. These powers must be used sparingly, however, because every use of a superpower demands a specific and costly remuneration.

For some reason or other, your characters are under a contract that gives them powers. How that contract came to be and how it functions is up to you, but the result is this: every time you activate your superpower, you must pay a price. If you do not pay this price, your character is immediately subjected to intense physical pain.

The book has a short list of some common superpowers, such as flight, fire manipulation, and super senses. It also has a short list of consequences - with options such as get an animal to bite you, run for five minutes, and take a shot of alcohol. The book has some basic guidelines for what to consider when creating your own powers and prices, so I think the world is your oyster with a game like this.

[allwormdiet]

Shell 4.4

Managed to read the rest of Arc 4 at work, I'm gonna focus on getting the rest of my thoughts out

Our first mention of Aisha I believe, and boy Brian's story is a rough one to hear, poor kid.

His protectiveness of her is gonna define a lot of his character, I suspect. He literally got his powers beating the shit out of the man who terrorized and abused her.

I feel like that's close enough to being abusive that you can just call it abusive, or maybe Brian needs to make his dad feel like the lesser of two evils to make it make sense for himself.

I mentioned this offhandedly as I was reading on Discord, I think Brian is fibbing here

So far we've known him as a character who strives for responsibility and authority, who's making a point to be the Responsible Leader even as Lisa is making a lot of calls for the gang and the enigmatic boss is doing whatever the fuck. He projects an air of not-to-be-fucked with, and "projects" is a key word there; we've caught glimpses of him acting less like and adult than he desperately wants to be.

The fact that he's insisting that he was a Stoic Man as he beat the shit out of a man who was fucking with his kid sister makes me believe very firmly that he's ashamed of whatever emotions overtook him in that moment, or even in general.

Given the aspects of his power, I think underneath all the macho attitude is a young, terrified, vulnerable kid who hides himself and his loved ones where they can't be found, because you can't hurt what you can't find and you can't defend against an unseen attacker. I don't love questioning him, but I'm already questioning Victoria's story so.

So here we see how the boss got his hooks in. A few years of service in exchange for the ability to truly protect his sister. It's definitely not something he'll be jerked around on at any point.

The conversation about the spider-silk costumes is pretty great honestly. I like that Taylor's trying to figure out the fine line between "should I let these villains have in on my incredible stash of resources" and "how much of a pain in the as will it be to have that many spiders working"

I think Alec is trying to get the "dork" thing to stick and it's not working, but bless him for making the effort

This is a sweet moment for Brian and Taylor in the meantime, though.

Ruh roh raggy

Current Thoughts

I like Brian, even if I'm pretty sure he's lying about some details in his trigger event and even if he's trying really hard to be a boring person. The text of the narrative means I can always perceive you, buddy

Anyway, Jesus, there goes the good mood from the last three chapters, let's get this over with