writer-room

he/they/it. I post my writing here, plus a bunch of general headcanons on whatever I'm currently stuck on. check me out on ao3 at Drabbles_Of_Writing!

[writer-room]

HEY! I'm not posting here anymore!

I'm moving back to my main account, @drabbles-of-writing! I'm just putting all my non-toh stuff on that blog now too!

This account will still be up, but I'm not posting here anymore!!!! go to the other one!!!!!!! ok have fun gang

[writer-room]

HEY! I'm not posting here anymore!

I'm moving back to my main account, @drabbles-of-writing! I'm just putting all my non-toh stuff on that blog now too!

This account will still be up, but I'm not posting here anymore!!!! go to the other one!!!!!!! ok have fun gang

[writer-room]

HEY! I'm not posting here anymore!

I'm moving back to my main account, @drabbles-of-writing! I'm just putting all my non-toh stuff on that blog now too!

This account will still be up, but I'm not posting here anymore!!!! go to the other one!!!!!!! ok have fun gang

[writer-room]

Back on that one post I made about wanting more sibling content between Jazz and Danny: Let the two of them be absolutely stupid. Chaotic duo at the best of times. Yes, Jazz can be a bit pushy and overbearing and yes, Danny can be annoying and careless, but they’re siblings goddamnit and anyone who has a sibling knows that y’all are ride or die at the flip of a dime.

-Jazz wakes up at an ungodly hour and realizes she totally forgot to eat dinner so she sneaks downstairs for a snack only to find Danny, still as Phantom, raiding the fridge while wearing her robe that he stole 2 days ago and getting ectoplasm stains on it after the ghost attack he dealt with 10 minutes ago. The two stare at each other for a few moments before Danny huffs and goes “why are you awake?” like she’s interfering with his time and Jazz replies with “I got hungry” and Danny nods like he was told the secrets of the universe and throws some yogurt at her. -There was a time, long before the whole disasters with ghosts, when Danny was a cheery (but still bothersome) 9-year-old kid and Jazz was a slightly less-pushy 11-year-old and they would blast the loudest electric guitar music they could and pretend they were playing instruments on random items in their house and singing horribly off-key. They’d do this for hours if their parents didn’t stop them, god help their neighbors. -Danny is struggling at a certain part in a game of his and refuses to admit to Tucker he’s having trouble so he throws caution to the wind and asks Jazz for help. She’s never played a video game like this in her life so of course she can’t do any better than Danny. They spend the next hour shouting over each other and trying to get past the level before finding out they’d been going in the wrong direction the entire time. -Jazz takes 1 look at Cujo and immediately turns to Danny like “as the responsible sister I have to tell you to put that back where you found it. However-” and Danny is already cheering. Danny was given sole responsibility over the ghost dog but Jazz ends up with a lap full of green blob every now and again. -Whenever either of them has a Bad Day™ the other grabs a huge pile of fluffy blankets that could crush an elephant and puts on the stupidest possible movie they can find and they sit on the couch or on one of their beds with a laptop in front of them all wrapped up in a cocoon and spend the whole time bullying it. Jazz has done it to Danny more often because of all the ghost shenanigans so Danny made it a point to slap down the Movie Night when Jazz was even slightly annoyed bc he felt bad and also because he found an absolute bonkers movie and had to watch it with her. 

[writer-room]

Just stumbled upon ur pixal fic!!!!

it was so good! Honestly not sure how we’ve never interacted we have similar likes in the fandom (it’s just so big now!! I seem to stumble upon new ppl everyday) I agree with ur egg kai post I think he wasn’t in there long enough to become a centipede but he was in there long enough for it to have a small effect to some degree.

omg hiiiiii i just saw yr comment on ao3!! i also just kinda pop back into the fandom in random interspersed Waves so i fear it is easy to miss me lol. slightly buggy kai my adored <3333

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Spooky

Wyldfyre wakes up for no reason. 

Heatwave is still healing. His breathing is less strained than before, and his wound is looking much better after Kai’s stupid, begrudgingly-cool rock trick. 

Speaking of Kai, he’s awake, sitting, watching the dragon core glow. It illuminates his face in the dark like a fire, but without the cool flickering. It’s steady and uncomfortable, artificial, not a natural living, breathing thing like fire is. 

“Kai?” She rubs her eyes with her wrist until she sees sparks and colours behind her eyes and then squints when he doesn’t respond. It’s weird that he’s awake. Weirder still that he didn’t respond to her. Maybe she missed it. 

”Kai?” she tries again.

When he doesn’t respond the second time either. She feels a bit grouchy. Offended. Annoyed. She knows he’s awake, she can see the light from the dragon cores reflecting off the eye, almost white. She stands, giving him the courtesy of grunting and grumbling so he knows she’s awake and annoyed. She gives heatwave a pat and he responds with a low grumbling of acknowledgement back. At least someone isn’t ignoring her. 

“Kai.” She says. Nothing still. So she speaks louder and with more growl. “Hey. Kai—“ 

It happens so fast she doesn’t see it.

One second he’s looking at the dragon core and the next his head has snapped to look at her, but it’s not Kai; His eyes are white. 

His name catches in her throat. They’re empty. They’re too-wide. There’s no hint of pupils or anything else. There was no hint of feeling or a dragon—person. The hairs on the back of her arms, her back, her neck all stand on end. 

Then he blinks, and it’s gone. 

“Sorry,” says just Kai.” Were you saying something?” 

Wyldfyre doesn’t know when her arms came up, posed, ready to fight. 

Wylfyre was very awake now. 

“Wyldfyre?” 

“You were just…” She hears herself. Unsure, feeble. Very not-dragon. Kai’s looking at her. He looks like Kai. His eyes are brown with that warmth she’s gotten so used to seeing coming from them. He looks stupid. His hair is fluffy and soft. He looks soft. There’s no sign of what she had been so sure had been staring at her a moment before. It was so brief she couldn’t even be sure she had seen it. 

“Nevermind.” Wyldfyre forces her hands down and clenches them at her side. “I’m probably just sleepy,” is what she tells him, to make sure he knows she’s still more dragon-ish than him. “Why are you awake like a weirdo?” 

“Oh, hah,” Kai says. “Just thinking.” 

She’s squinting at him. “You do that?”

When Kai smiles. And it’s annoying, warm and soft. “Sometimes.” 

“Gross,” she says, crossing her arms. 

“It’s quiet here,” Kai says. It’s out-of-pocket. It’s not really relevant. When he says it, he sounds different.

”Whatever,” Wyldfyre says, turning away. “I’m going back to sleep.” 

“Okay,” Kai says to her back as she goes. “G’night.” 

Heatwave rumbles as Wyldfyre crawls under his arm. She pretends to get comfy and risks a glance back. 

Kai’s back to staring at the dragon core. His hair is over his eyes, blocking them from her view. But Wyldfyre thinks she still sees white between the strands.

[writer-room]

I really wish I was an artist sometimes cause imagine if the possible Kai centipede features didn't manifest the normal, physical way. Instead in the same way Cole's scar lights up when he uses his lava abilities, Kai going all-out on his fire results in flames curling around his head like antennae, coiling down his body like a tail, and erupting from his snarling mouth like mandibles. I am grabbing you by the shoulders. You have to see my vision plea

[destinysbounty]

One thing I find unexpectedly fascinating about Monstrosity is that when you think about it, it'd really only work with Kai as the protagonist. And I don't just mean that because Rusty could only be awakened by a fire elemental, and without Rusty Kai would've died at the spooky death-siren lake - although that's definitely a part of the equation. What I mean is that Kai's specific personality was vital to not only his survival, but also to the retention of his humanity, and that likely wouldn't have been possible if almost any other character was swapped into his position.

Let me elaborate.

Although it's certainly true that not all timeskip scenarios were created equal, and that the Merge treated some people better than others (cough cough Cole), it's also worth noting that each character's experiences are heavily defined by their own unique personalities, strengths, and flaws. If you shuffled everyone around into different post-Merge outcomes, you'd have a vastly different story.

For example, Cole absolutely flourished in the Land of Lost Things, but not everyone would - Pixal in particular would really struggle there. She's normally someone who is always on her A-game so long as she has a goal to accomplish and a clear path towards doing so, and it's rare for her to face a lot of internal conflict over her motivations/ideals. But if you put her in a situation where she has to choose between leaving the Finders to reunite with her friends, or forsaking her friends to protect the Finders...I think that no matter which option she chose, she'd be deeply troubled by it, and would not cope with that conflict of interest nearly as well as Cole has.

Whereas Lloyd, if you placed him in the stasis pod instead of Pixal, would suffer just as greatly. As much as he struggled emotionally in his years of isolation in the monastery, I think it'd almost fuck him up even more to find out he slept through the Merge entirely - and has (in his eyes) failed to keep his team safe and intact. That they've had to fend for themselves without him around to do his job as the leader.

And so on and so forth. You get the general idea. (Honestly, it's kind of a fun thought exercise to explore how everyone would cope if they all got switched around into different scenarios. You should definitely try it!)

Of course, Monstrosity in particular is a fascinating case study of this. If you put any other ninja in this story, you'd get a drastically different one - and in a lot of fundamental ways, it just straight-up wouldn't work.

See, the core theme of the miniseries is about balancing ruthlessness and mercy, knowing when to fight and when to show compassion, and how to fight monsters without becoming a monster yourself. And honestly? Kai is arguably the only person on the team who could effectively navigate that balancing act.

On the one hand you have characters like Pixal, Nya, and Jay - characters who would most likely fall too far onto the ruthlessness side of things and lose themselves.

Pixal is a very determined person - as mentioned above, so long as she has a goal and an action plan, she isn't prone to giving up or losing hope. She will keep trudging along her chosen path until it is accomplished, never stopping to let anything slow her down. Sure, she'd definitely be haunted by her choices after the fact, but in the moment I don't think she'd ever let herself slow down long enough to introspect in that way. She's too busy getting back to her family to think deeply about the moral implications of her actions, or to reflect on who/what she's becoming. She'd definitely be haunted by her choices, sure, but that's not to imply she would ever meaningfully deconstruct or process those feelings at all. She is, of course, an alumni at the Zane Julien School of Processing Trauma.

Nya is similar to Pixal in a lot of ways, but she's also naturally a very ruthless person with a teensy bit of bloodlust to her (affectionate). She also has at least one canon instance of sacrificing her humanity to save her family. This isn't new to her. Daidan would tell her that she can't survive in a land of monsters without becoming a monster herself and she'd go "bet", then proceed to beat the shit out of anything that looks at her wrong. Not to mention that the weird death-siren lake would probably fuck her up in a lot of really complicated Seabound-related ways that I don't think she'll ever be ready or willing to unpack.

My placement of Jay on this side of the spectrum may face some scrutiny, but hear me out first. Although Jay acts very lighthearted and goofy in front of others, it's canon that this persona is a facade he wears to save face and hide how anxious he really feels. On some level, I would argue that Jay subconsciously self-sabotages whenever he's fighting in a group, deferring to the strength of others out of insecurity/codependency rather than trusting his own skill. But when he's on his own and has no audience left to perform for, we see Jay's full potential shine through - we see him be strong, and clever, and even a leader. And on rare occasions, usually when Nya or someone he loves is in danger, he can even be brutal. Jay would absolutely have an awful time in Monstrosity, don't get me wrong - but he'd also exhibit a level of competence and efficiency only ever seen during elimination seasons. And that same efficiency would be his downfall. Jay loves his family, he loves Nya, and he also really hates dying. I don't have a doubt in my mind that he would do whatever it takes to make it back to Nya, even if he's miserable the whole time.

Of course, that's not to say that the rest of the team has it any better. Just because Cole, Zane, and Lloyd tilt pretty far onto the "mercy" side of the spectrum, doesn't mean that's necessarily a good thing in this situation.

Cole is extremely community-oriented, and he is constantly making friends and forming meaningful connections everywhere he goes. With Chen's other prisoners, with Yang, with that not-so-random baby he found, with Krag, with the Upply, and now with the Finders. If Cole cannot find a community, he will create it. On the rare occasions that he is alone, it is usually a dire situation involving extremely poor mental health. When his isolation is self-inflicted, it's usually out of grief. And when circumstances forcibly isolate him....well, go rewatch DotD and MotO, and watch how Cole handles just a few hours of forced isolation from his family. I can't imagine he'd handle several weeks alone in the Land of Monsters without becoming completely unglued. Cole's biggest strength is his social sturdiness - not just as the rock his team relies on, but as the foundation upon which everyone he meets can cultivate a sense of community. But in isolation that strength becomes a double-edged sword, and I believe the brutal emptiness of the Land of Monsters would leave him in an even worse emotional state than Kai.

Zane is no stranger to being stranded in foreign realms, armed with nothing but the singular objective to return home. But I think he would be so paranoid about falling into old routines that he would overcompensate too far in the other direction, rendering him too soft to make it through the Land of Monsters in one piece. That's not to imply he was going to make it out in one piece to begin with, of course. This is Zane we're talking about. I'd be surprised if he goes three days without dying horribly in some way or another. Whether it's out of self-sacrifice or because he pulled punches where he shouldn't have and paid the price, that man is not lasting more than a week.

Lloyd...honestly, he's arguably the closest anyone gets to matching Kai's balance on this issue. The case could certainly be made that Lloyd would effectively replace Kai in Monstrosity...but idk, I personally don't buy it. If you ask me, I think he veers a bit too much into the "too afraid of being like his dad to let himself become a monster" spectrum. This would go one of two ways: 1) he goes the way of Zane and/or Cole, and over-softens himself out of paranoia; 2) he initially tries to over-soften himself, but everything gets to him until he eventually snaps and goes full Oni Mode. Personally, I've got my money on option 2.

The takeaway here isn't that any member of the team is inherently better or worse than the others, just that they all have particular strengths and weaknesses that serve them well in their given scenarios. But those scenarios would only work with them as the main character, and nowhere is that more apparent than with Monstrosity. Zane could never withstand Lloyd's years of isolation in the monastery, just like Jay would become an anxious mess if he had to be responsible for the Kragglings' civil war, just like Kai would absolutely have the worst time if he got stuck in the Administration, just like Nya would go stir-crazy in the Land of Lost Things.

Monstrosity is fundamentally a Kai storyline, down to its DNA. And I think that's part of why he comes across as so beautifully written in this miniseries. There is no aspect of it that you can separate from Kai without changing the fundamental core of the story itself. He's the only one on the team who could do something like this. The only one who could survive in the Land of Monsters without either dying horribly or losing himself along the way.

And idk, I just think that's neat.

[phosphorus-noodles]

Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again

[writer-room]

I have to uphold the ways of the insane girlies

[crimsoncherrie]

Come on in, the water is fine.

[writer-room]

Before we all become sad Kai didn't turn even a LITTLE bit buggy, may I remind that the previous fire elemental clearly hatched from that egg and then turned into the centipede. Kai was also, if you recall, in an egg.

I have no idea what this means. Did he fight through being bugified by escaping the egg? Did it not properly take hold of him through his sheer drive of I Will Find My Friends? Would he have only 'hatched' when the current centipede died, thus allowing him to become the new one? Does this mean he's going to slowly turn into a bug over time? Is he legitimately immune to non-human elements after all this time????? Answer me Doc Wyatt

[writer-room]

Before Monstrosity release tomorrow may I just say that if the series ends with color fading back into Kai's life after he makes it home to his friends I WILL be encouraging all of you to block me to protect yourselves from what I will become

[writer-room]

Not quite what I was picturing but CLOSE ENOUGH! THANK YOU DOC WYATT, KEVIN BURKE, AND BEN MARSAUD!!!

[writer-room]

Before Monstrosity release tomorrow may I just say that if the series ends with color fading back into Kai's life after he makes it home to his friends I WILL be encouraging all of you to block me to protect yourselves from what I will become

[writer-room]

Obsessed with the tiniest detail the animators decided to throw in just to make me suffer specifically

Nya has animated breathing after Jay's reveal in the tournament, not even at her close-up, but from far away, too. She saw Jay and this instantly started.

Look at everyone in the background. They don't have the subtle in-and-out motion. The models practically never do, it's a waste of money and time to animate something so small when even in real life we easily miss it. But they animated Nya. We don't focus on it long enough for most to y'know, notice it, they had zero reason to do this. AND YET. And yet they animated it. I'm so normal right now

[joshuad17]

To celebrate the release of Monstrosity this month (and all the incredible art drawn around it), I did my own poster for it! I've always loved doing the greyscale style and this gave me an excuse to go back to it.

[adeleba]

He's never taking those noodles for granted ever again