#fangirlneverlie

Hi! Of course I can!

I felt like this one had endless possibilities but this is what I ended up with, plus a little bonus in the end ;)

#9: "Don't ever do that again!"

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“Deku!” The agonizing scream ripped out of Katsuki’s throat as he watched in horror how the building collapsed above Izuku.

There was nothing he could’ve done, he’d been too far away and Katsuki hated himself for ever leaving the nerd’s side. He dashed forward and with a few well aimed blasts from his hands, he arrived at the pile of rubble that imprisoned Izuku. Yes, imprisoned, he wasn’t going to think he was crushed under there. No. The shitty nerd was too resilient for that, like a little cockroach. He wouldn’t die so easily. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

With a flood of curses leaving his mouth, Katsuki started to blast the pieces of the broken building away, still being mindful of the direction of his attacks not to hurt Izuku. Something was burning in his eyes but Katsuki didn’t realize it was tears until they started streaming down his cheeks.

“Fuck,” he quickly rubbed at his eyes to clear his vision and that’s when he heard it. 

When he wasn’t bombing things left and right he heard a faint sound, a small voice and a coughing.

“Deku!” 

”K-Kacchan?” came a weak voice followed by another cough.

“Fuck, Deku, I’m coming!”

It was with newfound vigor that Katsuki returned to blasting the rubble away until he finally spotted a familiar head of green.

“Kacchan!” Izuku looked up with a faint smile and face full of dust.

Izuku had somehow created a sort of shield using his black whip and sat seemingly unharmed underneath the blocks of concrete. Katsuki quickly removed the last pieces before reaching out a hand which Izuku immediately grabbed. Katsuki pulled him up and straight into a tight hug.

“Don’t ever do that again!”

Izuku just laughed but there was relief in his voice as he said, “I’m fine, Kacchan. I’m fine.” 

Izuku wrapped his arms around Katsuki, leaning into the hug.

Katsuki took a deep breath, to calm his raging nerves and to inhale the familiar scent of Izuku as he buried his face in the crook of his neck. 

“Don’t ever do that again,” he whispered, realizing just how frightened he had been of losing him.

Bonus:

Katsuki found himself nodding off in the common room after a long day of training and studying. Had it been any other day he wouldn’t show such weakness in public, but with the drowsing sound of the tv, it had just been so tempting to close his eyes for a while. 

He didn’t even notice how he fell asleep until he felt something touch his shoulder, and in one swift movement he had the perpetrator in headlock and pushed into the couch.

“K-Kacchan?!” Squeaked the green haired nerd, now trapped in his lap.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” Katsuki growled, tightening his hold around his neck to prove his point.

“I-I was just asking if you wanted dinner,” Izuku stammered. “But you didn’t seem to hear me…”

He looked so happy 😊 omg🥺💗💖 (it's one of my favorite scenes from tdp)

the hand hold screencap is from 2x04 and it’s one of my favourite little moments between them, it’s just so sweet!

Yes, dark magic is bad. 

The way dark magic functions or even what it can do isn’t inherently bad. As we’ve seen in the show, dark magic can be used to heal injuries and revive the land for harvest, and like you pointed out, ward off starvation and sickness. Nor is every ingredient used in dark magic from a magical creature; plants connected to the primal can be used. What, then, is the problem?

This is going to be a very slippery slope.

Sarai absolutely hit the nail on the head of everything wrong with dark magic in a single line, and what’s wrong is a fundamental lack of sustainability, both physically and in the mindset dark magic encourages of its users (most notably Claudia and Viren). I’m not going to talk about the harm it does to a dark mage’s body, because what someone takes into their own body is ultimately their choice (like drugs or cigarettes) so I don’t think that’s a useful argument. 

However

We don’t know how sentient the magma titan was. It could’ve been as sentient as Bait, or Zym, or an elf. But picture if it had been any other sort of creature, like an elven child. Elves are connected to a primal source — their body parts can be used for dark magic, same as a dragon’s. So human kingdoms marching into another land and murdering an elven child to revive their lands is a lot more uncomfortable a proposition than killing a magma titan where it’s hard to tell where its face is. But the rationale and reasoning behind either of these murders would be exactly the same and made possible and encouraged by dark magic.

Even for plants and animals, it can be a slippery slope. What if you take too many magical plants out of an ecosystem and the forest dies? What if you kill too many prey or predator animals and throw another ecosystem off balance? We’ve seen humans both in TDP and in our own world hunt animals to extinction, poach, and kill animals (for them, killing all unicorns according to the s1 novelization; for us, elephants and sharks come to mind) for the sake of profit, which is what a market for dark magic would ultimately be. From what we’ve seen of TDP so far, there are no rules or regulations about what dark mages can use or how much. It’s a personal free for all for each individual mage purely based on what sorts of materials they can get their hands on and what they’re willing (or not willing) to do.

As the show goes on, it shows that ordinary human bodies (like the soldier Claudia murdered to resurrect Viren) can be used for dark magic. And since dark magic is repeatedly turned to when people are desperate, imagine what that black market would look like. Human children, mostly easily distracted and mostly easily snatched, then murdered and sliced up for parts? Elves, young and old, stolen and murdered similar purposes? Other sentient creatures like the dragons, who have homes and families and languages, being murdered as well?

In the earlier years of humanity, dark magic was still an easier solution than primal magic. It is unknown if they had rules and regulations. If dark magic did have sustainable laws in place about what can and cannot be used, and proper punishments for things that obviously cross the line (like murder and usage of humans/elves/dragons) it would still be incredibly complicated. Who counts as sentient and why? Would all the kingdoms have to follow the same laws? What if they didn’t? How could these laws be overruled or changed over time, leaving more vulnerable (even human) populations to be preyed upon after having their rights stripped away?

And we see this in Claudia and Viren. Viren values his life and plans over the lives of other servants just because he has more status, shown when he’s willing to sacrifice any of them for Harrow but not himself, or when he leads hundreds of people to their deaths to be used as distractions in his invasion plan in 3x09. We see this in how he’s willing to murder his best friend’s kids. We see this in how even when Sarai is actively dying in his arms, rather than comfort her, Viren sees an opportunity to assuage his own guilt and takes her last breath. We see this in Claudia in how she repeatedly dehumanizes Rayla and has no problem with murdering her — a known friend of the boys who she also thought Callum might even have feelings for — in cold blood. Or that she’s the one who comes up with the soul switching spell in the first place and sees zero moral problems with it (“But I don’t understand, the switching spell would save his life, why would he say no?” vs Viren’s “[Harrow’s] discomfort is understandable, you don’t feel right trading your life for another’s”) even as a possibility. Which all culminates in her going along with her father’s plan and then murdering an innocent person to bring her father back from the dead when the plan doesn’t work out. Because each of them fundamentally value some peoples’ lives more than others based on those peoples’ birthplace (our kingdom - Katolis - or Not our kingdom - Duren) or race (elf or human).

And your analysis are amazing

Viren was almost crowned king in 1x04, and although the people weren’t happy about it, they were willing to go along with it. Then Viren does assume a leadership position during S2 and him being captured for treason likely wouldn’t have been common knowledge among well, the common people. Opeli and the council had still then been working out a verdict. So the council would perhaps know his crimes, but wouldn’t know about Aararvos’ involvement. All they would know was Viren illegally called a summit meeting with the king’s seal and then killed a handful of guards while resisting arrest; they don’t know anything else. Not how deep into dark magic, not him sending his children to kill the princes, not the dragon egg, etc. 

Then the prince returns after a two week, unexplained absence, is crowned king... and immediately “sides” with Xadia even though his father was like, just murdered by elven assassins. While the council in S2 didn’t want to go to war with Xadia, they were quoted as saying, “No, we should wait. Xadia sent assassins and they took the king’s life [...] there hasn’t even been the slightest skirmish since then. Maybe that was it? They’ve had their revenge and everything will settle down now.”

Then Viren’s batch of shadowy assassins attack the other four monarchs of the Pentarchy, killing two of them and seriously wounding another to the point that his son needs to step up. That’s three murdered rulers and another on the verge. And because no one but Viren knows where the assassins came from, the blame easily falls on Xadia’s shoulders.

Suddenly, there’s far more than a skirmish. Suddenly, over half the pentarchy’s leadership has been struck down or incapacitated, and it’s clear that the elves have majorly escalated things rather than “settling down.” Suddenly, you have a child king who came home without his brother (aka no heir) and says that a Moonshadow — the very creatures who killed the late king less than a month ago! — are travelling to restore peace... on the slim chance the dragon queen’s heart will change? 

Viren had warned everyone that more attacks would be coming and suddenly it looks like he was right. His paranoia has been vindicated, as far as the people of Katolis & the council know he was like Harrow’s brother (his words at the funeral in 1x04; no one’s around to dispute them after all), the current king is a child and hovering over a decision that will either lead to vengeance for the human kingdoms and their fallen rulers, or... lead to civil war between them. 

And then the common people see the council rallying around Lord Viren, who is giving a plan of action that makes them feel in control — be invaders rather than defenders, get justice for their fallen king, prove that humanity will not be intimated — and has the backing of three of the four other kingdoms. That was nearly enough, after all, to convince the Pentarchy rulers to go to war after Harrow’s death in S2, narrowly avoided by Aanya, and I can’t imagine they would do anything they thought their people would actively revolt against, either.

I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THEY WERE THERE UNTIL RIGHT NOW AND NOW I’M 

gonna put my thoughts under the cut bc. barely spoilers but also know that people probs weren’t expecting this. the like, 5ish pages here for anyone who wants to look

rayla’s jammies are so cute and comfy looking!!

rayla having nightmares about viren, including three of her parents, but also losing callum as a fear. he really is just family to her at this point

they also might be back in katolis and it seems like they share a room!! it looks like there’s two beds rayla’s grabbing her clothes and is in her jammies, so it would track. 

also callum being an attentive boyfriend with “up late again?” and rayla not bothering to deny it

just like i hoped/predicted post-s3, rayla is staring to open up to him more unquestionably, even if she’s not always happy about it, but she’s not bottling things up anymore, either

callum sitting with her and listening. they’re so cute!!

even if he (of course) doesn’t like seeing her worried/in pain: “i just... hate seeing you like this.”

i predicted that “through the moon” would pit rayla’s determination to find out what’s happened with people she’s already lost vs the safety of the people she still has (ez and callum) and with callum being included in her nightmare... excited to see that come to a head

i also predicted that “through the moon” would ultimately end with rayla learning sometimes you, unfortunately, have to move on from things without closure. so it is worth noting that she’s exhibiting some textbook symptoms of PTSD: nightmares (similar to flashbacks as well) and hyper vigilance / an inability to believe that she and others are safe

aaravos’ backstory (as well as for ezran’s ancestor, the orphan queen), ezran’s possible connection to animals being related to it. i’ve been wanting to know all the details of xadian politics since season one but season three just made me even more curious. those are probably my biggest things lore wise.

story wise i’m really interested to see where claudia, ezran, aaravos, and janai’s brother go, arc wise. i’m also super excited to see where callum might go in his mage arc (connecting to the moon arcanum maybe). 

I made my main predictions for TDP here and I also have a wishlist tag here. I also have a specific s4 wishlist tag here.

I think the questions I’m most interested in is why/how Ezran can communicate with animals, why Aaravos was imprisoned and where, and what exactly happened to King Harrow. Other sort of “mysteries” like Callum’s dad are things I’m not super invested in (I’m currently headcanoning him as a Dark Mage and enjoying it immensely) but I would be fine if the show expanded upon him in a small or big way. I’m sure I’ll like whatever they decide. I’m very curious as to humans’ migration west as well, and whether the western side of the continent no longer has magic in nature like Xadia because of extreme hunting and unsustainable practices, or if the elves and dragons removed the magic similarly to how they dismantled a place like the Moon Nexus (and presumably two others, with three on each side of the continent). 

What I hope to see in future seasons:

a Janaya kiss

Soren and Claudia reconciling

Rayla reuniting with all three of her parents

Internal conflict and drama (briefly) between the trio

Callum initiating a hug with Rayla

Runaan and Ethari reuniting

Janai laughing

Ezran pulling rank as king

A rayllum cheek kiss

returning to lux aurea

the trio in formal wear

More magic and dragons

any exchange of “take care of her / him” to callum and/or rayla in regards to the other

ezran & aanya friendship

i love the ambler so much please let her come back to me

A rayllum reunion hug

Flashbacks to Rayla’s childhood

More info perhaps on Soren and Claudia’s mom?

“five questions” and “hey [insert emotion here] prince” call backs

Seeing Ellis (and Ava) again!

any characters having matching scars