#(and also serve as proof that river is. so so bad at knowing when she is loved. because maybe amy didn't choose to have her but she named

[quietwingsinthesky]

Hiiiii! So, a few days ago you were talking about the whole thing with Amy, Rory, and River. And when I saw those posts a thought arose in my head and I wish to share it with you.

Since River grew up with Amy and Rory as Mels. And Mels was Amy's best friend do you think that they ever talked about children? Since I know that it can come up when talking with friends, and like... do you think that Amy might've ever expressed whether or not she wanted children?

And if she didn't, that Mels would've had to listen to her mother say that she doesn't want children? The idea is so heartbreaking and sooo interesting.

What do you think about it?

no, no, see, you're so right and this drives me wild.

because, the way i see it, i don't think amy wanted children. she's somewhere on the 'hasn't thought about it' to 'vaguely negative feelings about it happening' range to me, which falls sharply into 'Not Happening Ever Again' post-s6. (specifically, in terms of having a kid herself, even if she could, i really don't think she would. i do love that she and rory end up adopting a kid later, because that does make sense, for amy pond who grew up alone in one universe with her family swallowed by cracks in time before the doctor helped her set it right again, for her to want to make sure another child won't be alone in the world like she was. getting off-track here.)

and that's so. because the first real memory river/mels has of amy is of amy shooting at her. and depending on how well the silence fucked up the rest of her memory, it might be one of the very first memories she has at all. that's how she met her mother, crying for help and getting a bullet instead. her mother tried to kill her, so of course, you have to think. she must have needed to hear that she was wanted, right? even if she was taken away, even if amy shot her, at some point, melody must have been wanted?

river is good at getting people to do what she wants, but she is very, very bad at subtlety. and mels is younger, has less practice, so when she wants to know this, she's just going to ask. blunt and quick, easy enough because amy's used to the way mels will open her mouth and you just have to be ready to roll with what comes out if you want to keep up. it's why they're such good friends (like mother, like daughter.)

they're nine, and mels asks if amy wants kids, and amy wrinkles up her nose and says she won't have time for children, obviously, once her raggedy doctor finally comes back. they're fifteen, and amy and rory dance will they-won't they in a way that makes mels twitchy to watch, and taunting amy about wanting to have rory's babies is a good way to get on her nerves. but amy calls her gross, tells her she's got more life planned than children would leave room for, and besides, imagine her, a mom? it'd be a disaster.

mels does. a lot. she looks at her mother and just sees her best friend instead. she's not even sure what she wishes was there, but. maybe amy's right. and besides. imagine her, a daughter, instead of the ticking time bomb she really is? it'd be a disaster.

they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and on. mels stands on the outside of a love story that births a universe. and her. how do you compete with that? not that she would know, not yet, she hasn't been there. but it doesn't make her feel any less alienated when amy and rory talk in whispers about a half-remembered world that's bled through to this life, about roman soldiers and boxes and the big bang of belief.

all these memories, they never mention children. on amy's wedding day, she's different, not like someone remembering a dream but someone who lived it. rory stands straighter, won't leave her side, and they're both so much older than they were yesterday. maybe now, right? a wedding's as good a time as any to decide you want kids.

mels not being at amy & rory's wedding is such an obvious lazy way of them trying to explain why they totally didn't just throw this plot twist together at the last minute that i'm not even going to acknowledge it. of course she was at their wedding. she's their best friend. there's too many people around the doctor, and she wasn't ready today of all days, so despite this horrible burning need under her skin to strike, she stays her hand. doesn't let him dance with her because she might just tear his throat out if he gets too close. stays with amy and rory as the maid of honor should. she must have been there for the awkward questions that always gets asked, 'so, any plans for a baby?' 'when am i getting grandkids?' 'oh, you two are going to have gorgeous children together.' standing a few feet from amy in her wedding dress and watching her mother tense and grit her teeth and brush off the questions. watching her look nervously at rory but never ask if he means it when his mom asks him if he'd prefer a son or a daughter, and rory answers 'either one, some day, not anytime soon.'

god i'm just going on and on, aren't i. but really, what's it like to know that amy never changed her mind. the next time she sees them, she's already been born and stolen. i don't like let's kill hitler for. so many reasons. but there is something compelling about how recklessly river lashes out at the world, at the doctor. even her sacrifice at the end is almost suicidal, throwing all her regenerations into this man without knowing if that will even work or if it might kill her to do it. but it makes more sense in the context of someone who has reached the end of a long, long wait for some kind of indication, any kind, that her mother wanted to have her. and finally been told, no. she didn't choose melody.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Photos: the cucafera of Tarragona, Tortosa, Montblanc and Reus.

One of the fearsome beasts in Catalan mythology is the Cucafera.

It's more or less a mix of a giant turtle and a dragon, related to the Tarasca from Provence. It's said that female cucaferes lay a large quantity of eggs in the mud of lakes and shores, where the sun keeps them warm until it's time to leave the egg. But many eggs get sucked down the sand, and for this reason very few of these eggs result in a baby cucafera, explaining why there are so few of these animals. They eat sea sturgeons and other big fish and generally avoid humans, but when humans attack them or try to fish them, they defends themselves by fighting the humans with violence, moving incredibly fast. If the fight happens on land, the cucafera moves to hit its enemies with its shell, and if it happens at sea, its hits them until they drown. Sometimes the cucafera is also used to scare children, and is said that every day it eats 13 cats and 13 children alive.

There are different legends in different towns that talk of local fishermen who tried to catch a cucafera or people who have tried to tame one. These legends serve to explain why a cucafera takes part in the processons/parades of the town. The oldest written document that talks of a cucafera figure parading for these festivities is from Montblanc in the 14th century.

If you've followed this blog for a while or are familiar with Catalan culture, you'll know that festivities like festa major and Corpus are celebrated with traditional dances and figures that represent giants, dragons and other animals of the Bestiary. In some towns, a tamed cucafera also walks the parade. Some cucafera figures, like the ones from Tortosa and Reus, open and close their jaw to make a loud sound to scare children.

Children putting their hand in the cucafera's mouth in Tortosa.

Under the "keep reading", I've translated a legend from Tortosa about an adventurer who followed a wizard's words and who, with the help of follets (tiny elfs), fought a cucafera to save a princess. I hope you enjoy it!

A long time ago, a young man arrived to Tortosa. He was handsome and unusually tall, and wore a robe embroidered in gold and a beautiful stoat cape, proof of his status. From his belt hanged a long sword with which he had won a thousand fights, so heavy that only he could use it. His name was Rufolet, and he came from a far-away land in search of a princess called Rubí [Ruby] who had been enchanted by a wizard.

He went to see the city's authorities to ask for directions. The city councillors asked him how did he know that Rubí was in Tortosa. Rufolet explained that the wizard told Rubí's father "do not worry about your daughter; it will take many years until you see her again, as a punishment for your bad deeds and the mistreatment of your vassals, but the day will come when the bravest of your subjects will find the way and will know how to set her free from the spell. This subject will walk always towards the setting sun until he reaches a place where a wide river of clear waters crosses next to a city surrounded by city walls and seven gates, whose inhabitants are brave and hard-working, whose orchards give the most delicate fruits, whose garrigues produce the best oil, and whose temperature is sweet and pleasant all year long; near there Rubí will be found. As the most significant detail: that city has the Holy Ribbon, weaved by the Virgin Mary's own hands and which she used to tie around her waist when she was pregnant." [Relic kept in Tortosa's cathedral.]

And so, Rufolet continued, this city could only be Tortosa. Rufolet asked the directions to their nearest cave, which the councillors gave. The next morning at sunrise, he followed the directions: left the city, crossed the river and forests, slashing with his sword to open a path where the vegetation is the densest. It was already noon when he heard someone shouting "help!!! help me!!!!". He ran following the voice and arrived to a pond, where a follet [small elf] was drowning after trying to drink water. Rufolet quickly grabbed the follet's leg and pulled him out of the water.

"Thank you, noble sir" said the follet as soon as he could talk. "I'm Xaco, the oldest follet of our whole group. I would have died if it were not for you".

"Do not worry, it is not important. You would have done the same for me" answered Rufolet.

"Of course, do not doubt it" continued Xaco vainly, "because even though I am smaller than you, I am much more powerful."

"It is fine, there is no reason to get mad for something like this. I am happy I could help you" replied Rufolet.

"Very well, and I am very thankful. And to prove it, I and all the follets of this mountain range rest at your service to help you with the deed that brought you here. If you are in danger, just shout 'Xaco!' and we will quickly be there."

Rufolet continued walking up the mountain. When he reached the top, he saw the princess Rubí resting under a tree's shade. He stopped a moment to admire her beauty, when he heard a loud sound next to him: "Ggnnyyooff…!! Ggnnyyooff…!!"

He turned around and saw a terrible beast, with fire coming out of its eyes and fog out of its mouth. Rufolet started running downhill as fast as he could while desperately shouting "Xaco! Xaco!!!!" and seven follets came out of a bush, looking terrified because that beast had been scaring them all this time.

"Xaco, please, help me. I would never have thought that the beast would be so terrifying!" pleaded Rufolet.

"What did you expect!" said Xaco, laughing. "When I offered you our help, I did so knowing that you alone would never be able to defeat this beast, which we call a cucafera. You must use more skill than strength, and us follets have the secret to dominate it. Don't rush, for its head is so hard that no sword can slash it."

A second follet named Guarí continued. "First of all, you must know that the cucafera is harmless. Its disgusting body makes everyone believe it's an evil beast, but if you want it to be docile, you must only take your sword and cut off its ears and tail."

"But your sword", added a third follet called Canasta, "needs to be sharpened, because the cucafera's tail is very hard. Give it to us, and Xut and I will fix it."

Since it was already almost sundown, the seven follets and Rufolet had dinner and went to sleep. Right before sunrise, Xut and Canasta brought in Rufolet's sword, shining as the sun.

Rufolet and the follets went to the cave. The fight was short, since Rufolet knew exactly what he had to do. He slashed his left ear, then the right ear, and finally the tail. Suddenly, the terrible cucafera became calm and tamed, and slowly moved towards Rufolet and started licking his feet like a dog.

"Thank God, I'm free at last" said Rubí, still trembling of emotion. "Thank you, Rufolet, for taming the beast. Now we can go back to our country and we will get married."

"Yes, Rubí. And we will live happily ever after," answered Rufolet, "but we must take the cucafera with us so your father can have it in the royal garden as a reminder of this terrible adventure."

"What about us?" said Xaco, standing between them. "We also want to come and see your far-away lands and spend some time there among you. But only a short time, because we must come back here to work in our cave, which from now on will be called Rubí."

And so all the group walked back to Tortosa, with the follets dancing of happiness and Rubí and Rufolet holding hands. Near the city, they found the bagpipe players, who asked them who they are and where they come from. Xaco explained what had happened and asked the bagpipe players the same. "Today is the holiday of Corpus, and every year we play in the procession."

"The Tortosan people will be very happy to know we have caught the cucafera" said Xaco, "and it would be good for it to enter the city with the sound of the bagpipes." And the bagpipe players agreed.

And thus, with the music, the follets dancing, Rubí and Rufolet smiling and the cucafera walking calmly, they entered the city. But when they reached the Cathedral, the square was crowded with people who had gathered to watch the Corpus procession that was about to start. The only way to cross was right there between the crowd, and so they did right at the time when the procession was starting. Since that day, it was decided that the Cucafera, Rubí, Rufolet and the seven follets, followed by the musicians, would be the first ones in the procession. But nowadays they're not flesh and blood, because the real ones all went to Rubí's country and still haven't come back.

This legend is translated and summed up from the version published by Joan Subirats in 1957 (source).

Tortosa's cucafera and the giants, called Rufo and Rubí.

[storyshark2005]

Ohhh I am so intrigued by Triangles, can you tell us a little more about that one? ♡

hahaha yes! I laugh because the initial idea was so funny. So Smallville Season 6 has this hilarious marketing campaign centered around love triangles, with the tagline, "every triangle has three sides""

Which, of course they were thinking 'three sides, three people' BUT I was like... well 'three sides' means 'three relationships' and in each triangle you are forgetting to pair Clark up with some dishy male. So once again the CW is either purposefully or thoughtlessly teasing us with what the 'female gaze' wants to see! *cough*CLEX*cough*WINCEST*cough*DESTIEL*cough* !! Anyway. So that's the title "Triangles". Other than that I've just always wanted to see more Lex/Lois interaction because I think there's be SO MUCH SASS -- DIRECT CANON EVIDENCE HERE

LOOK HOW HOT THEY ARE! Photoshop, yes. Hot, also yes.

Anyway, it's almost done, here's a snippet, and I'll tag you when it's up!! Thank you for the ask @allthatsentimentalcandyfloss ❤���

------------------- EXCERPT from Lois/Clark/Lex fic, "Triangles" (a Lex/Lois scene) 🧖🏻‍♀️👨🏻‍🦲🛁:

Lois Lane is wandering around the penthouse in nothing but Lex’s shirt, and while this titillating prospect might have been intriguing at 9am this morning, now it only served as shocking proof of Lex’s profound stupidity.

Well Lex wasn’t stupid, but he’d clearly made a few bad judgement calls.

Mistakes had been made.

Conner was going to kill him. Well Clark was going to kill him, and then Conner would get that disgustingly familiar look of disappointment on his face that always reminded Lex of being alone in an empty mansion at twenty-one years old.

Lex closes his eyes and waits for the sound of 200 pounds of angry Kryptonian shattering inch-thick glass.

“OH MY GOD,” Lois gasps from somewhere not nearly far enough away. “This BATHROOM!”

Lex slings an arm over his eyes and thinks O happy dagger!

“I’M TAKING A BATH IN YOUR MASSIVE FUCKING TUB!” Lois yells, and the faucets thunder on.

“Have you ever heard of the death of Heracles?”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, COME IN HERE!”

He does, for incomprehensible reasons, slouching on the doorframe in a way he knows makes his abdomen and hips look good. Lois is tip-toeing gingerly into the water, hands braced on the smooth marble lip.

“Heracles--”

“Don’t you mean Hercules?”

“Hercules is the Roman derivation. The original myth is Greek.”

“You’re such a fucking nerd.” Lois snorts, which should be entirely unattractive.

“Heracles was traveling through Aetolia with his third wife, Deianira. When they came to the River Evenus, they met the centaur Nessus, and he agreed to help ferry the couple across the river. Deianira climbed upon the back of the centaur, who carried her across the river. On the way Nessus tried to rape her--”

“Great story.”

“With Heracles still on the far bank, Nessus tried to kidnap Deianira. Heracles took aim with his bow and arrow, and shot the centaur with an arrow dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra monster. Nessus knew he was dying, and with his last breaths, convinced Deianira that his blood stained cloak was a powerful love token. That if she was ever in doubt of her husband’s blood, she could merely drape him in the cloak, and he would be forever hers.”

Lois finds the bath salts, and the room steams with the smell of eucalyptus. The low light makes her skin look bronze, shimmering wet curves. He flips a switch on the wall to start the heated floor tiles.

“So this horse man tries to rape her, and she takes his dating advice?” she wipes her hands down her face. Her mascara runs just enough to look like ink. She looks like Cleopatra, strong and fearless, frighteningly beautiful.

“Years pass,” he ignores her. “Heracles returns home from war with a young princess named Iole. Deianira fears for her husband's affections, and then remembers the Tunic of Nessus tucked away years before. She gives the tunic to one of Heracles’ commanders, tells him to give it to her husband so he might return home in a new shirt.”

“I don’t suppose you have shampoo?” She blinks water out of her eyes, cheeks pink with heat, lips a deep blood rose. He points to an alcove on the wall with a sliding door, and she swims over and says jackpot! and starts picking out bottles.

“When Heracles donned the tunic, the poison of the Hydra began to burn his skin and flay it from his bones.”

“That’s disgusting--” she pours one of the shampoos into her hands. It was brand new, he hadn’t had anyone over in months. Her nose wrinkles, and it shouldn’t be at all cute.

“Heracles knew he was dying, and so, wracked with unbearable pain, he climbed to the top of Mount Oeta and built his own funeral pyre. When it was done, weak and still wrapped in the poison cloak, he laid down and asked his men to light it. But no one would, loathe to see their greatest hero die by their own hand. Finally Zeus took pity on him, and sent down a bolt of lightning to ignite the pyre. His mortal body died, but his soul rose to Olympus to become a new god of the Pantheon.”

Lois laughs into her hands, soapy with shampoo. “So you want me to soak your fancy California King in gasoline so you can lay down and burn yourself alive?”

Lex sighs loud enough for Zeus to hear, but no lightning bolt comes down for him. Pity. “I’d considered it.

“Come here.”

“Why.”

“You’re dirty.”

“I’ll take a shower.”

She pulls her elbows up on the lipped edge, water sluicing down her body. The damp air is hot and heavy, a camphorous burn in his nostrils. She presses her tongue to the edge of her teeth.

“Le-ex,” she draws out the hiss in his name, and crooks her finger come-hither. “Come here.”

To his everlasting shame he does, tugged on a string by the hand of a beautiful woman.

He’s always been weak.

[chrisrainicorn]

Fair Game Week Day 4: Birds/Soulmates

A classic tattoo AU. Qrow realizes almost immediately Clover could be his soulmate because it’s obvious af, Clover isn’t sure right away because people named after birds are relatively common in Remnant so he needs more proof than that. 

One day he rescues a bird from the snow thinking the poor thing is probably lost and freezing after flying so high to Atlas and Qrow is freaking out internally after seeing his mark because it’s totally him!

So... my original plan was to try to write a fic for this. Tho I knew I wouldn’t be able to complete it on time, and I would need more time to just stop and figure how the story was going to go exactly cuz I’m the kind of person that likes to plan a lot before putting stuff on paper.

I still have a little prologue tho, but I decided not to go further until I’m more sure about the plot so it doesn’t end up forced. Hopefully, I can one day I can go back to it and complete it!! Still, you can take a peek at what would probs be the first 2k under the cut:

Qrow was born with a bond mark.

He was still a rascal of a kid, who ran barefoot and chewed with his mouth open, tripped on the ropes that held up the tents of their current campsite, and liked to try to peek at the new shiny items the tribe people had stolen from their most recent raid only to be caught at the same second - though he still didn’t know they were stolen, or understand what a raid was - when someone finally explained to him the weirdly shaped spot on his abdomen he kept scratching wasn’t just a normal birthmark.

They explained to his sister too. He actually was intrigued enough by the story to settle down on the tent’s floor to hear about it, though she brushed all of that talk off with a “yeah, whatever”, rolling her eyes at the existence of magic symbols that would appear on your skin, connecting you to a person who, at some point of you life, you would realize they mean a lot to you.

“It’s like a guaranteed best friend!” He had grinned with a mouth that missed a few teeth as the explanation was concluded. 

The explainer only smiled at him, letting out a pensive hum before shrugging and deciding on “Yeah, you could say that kid.”

He didn’t understand why his sister was so grumpy after that. How the premise of a friend didn’t get her excited - they barely had kids their age to hang with on the camp, the younger ones were annoying and the older boring, he could get behind the idea of some company besides his moody twin. And when he had asked, “Hey, what does your bond mark look like anyway?” She flicked at his direction one of the pebbles they had been throwing at the river to see them skip, and stormed off without a word.

He was still a restless kid, yet now one that had learned to avoid the ropes before he could get his foot caught on them, when he found out a bit more about the marks. How they could appear at any time of your life, or not at all, how you could get a new tattoo before actually meeting the person, or after years of knowing them. How his sister didn’t have one yet, how she didn’t like the idea of her lame brother having something she didn’t. 

How some people would consider lucky he was born with one, how many would give everything to have a mark appear that early.

That would be the last time someone thought of him that way - lucky. Because soon he was tripping over the ropes again and taking tents down with him, and that was just one of the minor consequences of what they later would classify as his semblance.

The people of their tribe had thought it had been a funny inside joke naming the kid born with a mark shaped like that after a bird that was popularly known as a bad omen. Now it was just rightfully fitting. And not even the permanent tattoo on his skin of a four-leafed clover could serve as a good luck charm against the misfortune that now followed him wherever he went.

***

As he grew up as an outcast teen, the novelty of the marks went away together with the childhood wonder. Maybe because at his tribe, there weren’t many bonded people - they also weren’t really open about talking about this mushy stuff, so maybe he never knew about them. Or the ones who talked about it, did that because it came together with an almost-always tragic tale about how they were betrayed, backstabbed or straight-up stabbed by their match, or how they perished in some gruesome way, so he didn’t have a lot of positive examples to work with - perks of growing up around bandits. 

Guaranteed best friend was now just some naive though he scoffed at. He was so stupid as a kid, maybe his sister was wise to just go “whatever” since the beginning - he would never admit that to her in his lifetime, of course. (In the future though, there would be a point his sister wouldn't make a face to the mention of bond marks anymore, and then a good while later he would stop to really think about how her semblance worked. And he would connect the two dots - he still never saw the marks, but they had to be there, right?)

Who decided those things were a good idea? They could pop up on you any second, without a warning, with just a random shape to tell you about this random person you were supposed to meet one random day. People would talk about letting fate run its course until you would meet them, and how there would be a moment when you would just know. It sounded so unreliable, and too much for him to bother worrying about when he needed to survive frequenting - or infiltrating as his people would have put - a Huntsman Academy.

Yeah, they would have some impact on your life. But that could mean anything apparently. You could be bonded to your parents, to your siblings, to any relative, you could be bonded to someone you looked up to or who would look up to you, you could be bonded to someone who you would only interact for a few months, days, minutes, or less. Or, the most coveted of all, you could be bonded to someone you would fall in love with. Those cases even had a specific name - soulmates. How special.

You could even have more than one. If you thought having to worry about a single unknown individual could make someone paranoid, just imagine having multiple marks! Thankfully, he just had one.

That was good. Because it would be just one person that would have to put up with him. He wasn't exactly the person someone would dream to meet, much less be bonded with. Who would want a bad luck magnet connected to them anyway? Just unfortunate, how the unsuspected match would have to deal with it. At least it was no one from the tribe, that would only hinder them down - those were the kind of things people talked about him at the camp, on the rare times they dared to make the cursed kid a conversation topic anyway, and he was just unlucky enough to eavesdrop it.

He also didn’t want more because he despised the one he already had - he would say he had never liked it, but it was just his sour mindset clouding the childhood memories about him happily imagining how his friend would be like. It had to be a sick joke. A small symbol that represented everything he couldn’t have. Years and years went by with it just there, mocking him constantly.

He had met many people he would have said they had influenced his life, yet apparently none of them were the one. Unlikely his sister, he wasn't bonded with anyone from his team - he assumed her semblance only worked on him because they were related. He wasn't bonded to the man who mentored him and gave a purpose in life - though after finding out the truth, he supposed that was a good thing. He wasn't bonded to his nieces, who were more family to him than his own blood, girls he had watched grow up from hyperactive, sweet-toothed brats to strong, independent young warriors - they were still a bit of a brat though.

So, at his age, he assumed that his semblance affected him in such a way he would never have the luck of finding the person. Fine by him. He stopped caring about that long ago anyway.

And that meant that, at his age, at this place, in the middle of what he could only call the beginning of a war, he should have not been thinking about any of this.

But here he was. Halfway through undressing to take a much needed shower to relax and warm him up after the mission at the dust mines. Feet planted in front of the bathroom mirror. The mark still just there, right at the end of the scar he got from a scorpion tail as if, by some stroke of luck, it had barely avoided being slashed in half. He instinctively grimaced at the sight.

Even if he strongly didn’t want to think about it, it felt as if there was a force preventing him from shoving the thoughts to the back of his mind, not allowing him to ignore the signs.

He had seen the pin when they were captured on the first day. Heck, he even did a double-take at the shape that was unfortunately too familiar. But there were other more important things on his mind at the moment - like how they were being arrested.

Later he found out that was literally that guy’s name! And he didn't like how the information made a cold settle on the bottom of his stomach.

And then James partnered them up. He didn't like the idea, it had been too long since he had worked with other huntsmen on the field - and that happened for a reason. The company made him feel weirdly numb. Or that was him not being used to the cold of Atlas anymore, being in a mine with ice-covered walls certainly didn't help - how he just strutted along without sleeves?

Yet, he did his best to focus on the mission. Ignoring how Clover made sure to match his pace and walk by his side as they scanned the tunnels for any sign of the Grimm that had been wrecking the place. The silence would only be broken from time to time with inputs coming from his earpiece, and it had been just a step away from being uncomfortable. So he decided to not make this situation more unbearable for himself, taking a breath, he took a risk at the grueling task that was small talk.

“Gotta say, I’m still not really used to working with other huntsmen in the field.” He was surprised with how casual he made himself sound.

“But you were on a team before, weren’t you?” How Clover seamlessly encouraged the conversation with a question also surprised him for some reason.

“Long time ago.” He sighed, gaze dropping to the floor. “I just found working alone tends to be for the best.” Great. With just a second into their talk, he had managed to bring its mood down. Not an unusual occurrence for any kind of interaction he was involved though. So why this time did he feel so… bothered?

It was just this entire situation bothering him - he rationalized with himself.

"Well, I think that’s a shame." Of course you would.

He didn't know how to respond, yet he didn't even have the chance. One misstep, and his foot left the ground with a slip. What prevented him from making more of a fool of himself by crashing his face on the icy floor was a quick strong grip on his arm, catching him mid-fall and pulling him back up without seemingly any effort whatsoever.

Clover patted his shoulder as he regained his balance and he didn't hold back the frown on his face. He just walked forward as he responded to the voice coming from his communicator, and it took him a second to realize he was glaring at his confident walk on the grounds he had just proved to be extremely slippery. 

Who does this guy think he is?

Of course, they found the Grimm first, of course, it made himself stronger right in front of their eyes, of course, it ran away, and of course, there was now a gigantic hole on their path. One his partner there could have been at the bottom of it if he wasn't used to his semblance playing tricks just at the right time. 

And when he dismissed his thanks for the head ups with a brief explanation about his semblance, his reaction was like no other he experienced before. No weird glances, no steps back, no awkward ‘that sucks’, just a nonchalant "that so?" 

"Well, hey, don’t beat yourself up about it." He continued, and with a swing of his weapon, he made a new path for them to continue down the tunnel. "My Semblance is good fortune. Lucky you, huh?"

He punctuated his sentence with a wink before walking forward, completely unaware of how that revelation had shaken him to his core. He was still frozen on his tracks as if the ice from the floor had risen to his shoes and stuck him in place. 

Good fortune. That guy was a walking luck charm! 

Everything he couldn’t have… 

His eyes were downcast, flickering everywhere as his mind processed the events. Yet now he wasn’t staring down at the icy ground, but the smooth tiles of the bathroom of his room provided by the Atlas academy. Though his expression was the same from when the words had just reached his ears hours ago.

Looking up by a fraction, the ink of his mark seemed more lively than ever against his skin. He hadn’t truly looked at it for a good while, avoiding it like he avoided the eyes of strangers, and doing so now, he found out he was unable to divert his gaze off it as quickly as he used to do before.

A pin. A name. My semblance is good fortune. A wink.

You would just know.

He let out a dry chuckle, the sound devoid of any emotion. That couldn’t be right. He barely knew the guy. And he didn’t need any of that cluttering his mind right now.

Lucky you, huh?

[sevenincubistolemyheart]

Lightened Shadows Chapter 2

AU: Final Fantasy 4

Tag list: @xsunnyhoseokx @otomehideout-indecentconfessions @file-missing​ @risefallrise​

Rating: M

Potential Triggers: Pretty descriptive fantasy violence this time around(boss fights will hopefully always be this well written; I’m real proud with how the scene came out so I hope you like it). 

Pairing: Ever-evolving :)

Genre:  Drama, Romance, Angst, Fluff, Hurt & Comfort

Length: 6.2k+

The air was cool from the little you could feel thanks to your armor but you knew it’d heat up quickly thanks to the sun. Thankfully, it hadn’t risen too much given how early it was. 

“Shall we stop in town first?”

Yoongi stopped you as you turned in the direction towards where the cave you needed to go through waited with a gentle hand on your arm, your armor clanking at the contact.

“Hm? Didn’t you say you already got provisions just this past nightfall?”

He smirked sheepishly and shrugged.

“I may have forgotten in the midst of the men celebrating my victory in our spat. Apologies. Shall we?”

You nodded, barely holding back a sigh. 

‘As if I don’t feel bad enough. Now I have to go get supplies and probably scar a few children in the process with my intimidating appearance. Spectacular.’ 

You entered the quaint little village just diagonal to the castle gates and looked around, trying to go through the brief list of what you needed in your mind. 

‘It should be a short expedition; 2 days at most, 3 if we stop to pitch a tent after delivering the ring to get their explanation once you entered the village.’

 You were sure you wouldn’t be welcome there for long. The town of Mist was known for little else than their reclusive nature and had never been particularly fond of those that hailed from Baron, so perhaps best you purchase one just in case they wouldn’t let you stay at the inn as you feared.

Yoongi led the way to the item shop and offered you a wave as he ran off somewhere; probably to attend to some last-minute errand he’s forgotten about. 

“How can I help you today, my Lady?” 

It was a quick transaction; you luckily had plenty of gil to spare thanks to the 500 gil provisions the King’s guard had insisted you take, along with 5 Potions and a Phoenix Down should the worst come to befall one of you in battle. You bought one more Phoenix Down for good measure in addition to that Tent and exited looking around to see Yoongi’s distinctly teal armor. He’d always hated that ugly green the other Dragoons were forced to wear, so he’d had Jin help him create his own armor once he'd been promoted to Captain.

Having experience building airships was surprisingly helpful in creating armor that could withstand some damn mighty blows apparently. 

You exited the shop looking around for Yoongi carelessly as you walked through the town, trying to not draw any attention to yourself; only to look down in surprise at a sudden banging from your armor being hit repeatedly. A small boy was there, angrily pounding on your armor with tears streaming down his face. 

“You took my Daddy away!! I hate you!”

A wince graced your face behind your mask and for once you lowered it, kneeling to the boys’ height and gently restraining his hands firmly in your own. You had no choice but to take many people to the guards if they happened to be foolish enough to run into you. It had been one of the ways you’d rose in rank so quickly; catching criminals. But...it never made it any easier to see the carnage left in the wake of your actions. 

“...I’m sorry. I know there is naught I can say to soothe your pain, but all I can do is apologize. I had a duty to fulfill, and I did as was necessary.” 

The child sniffled, but the hatred once in his eyes had died down to a mere simmer. 

“You don’t seem so mean. Please miss...I just want my Daddy back. Mommy said he’s served all his time; can’t you get him for me? I promise I’ll work doubly hard to ensure we’re never poor enough to have to steal again!”

He seemed so proud, puffing his chest out, and as you released his hands he placed them on his hips in a show of how strong he could and would be. 

A glance upwards saw his Mother suddenly rushing towards you both and the woman was on the floor on her knees, hands, and head both level to the ground at your feet. 

“Please Lady Captain! Forgive my boy! He means no harm!” 

Your heart clenched as you stood and the boy seemed distressed, seemingly coming to the conclusion that you were leaving as he grabbed onto your arm. 

“Miss, please! His name is Raisoro. Even if it's not today please at least look for him when next you return to the castle!”

You noticed Yoongi waiting as the crowd parted and knew you'd have to make this quick. He'd never been good with this kind of situation. 

You nodded resolutely, meeting the boy’s eyes.

"I swear it on my role as a Dark Knight…"

You met the mother's eyes too as your gaze softened behind your visor and you helped her to her feet. 

"And as someone who also loves another. I will check and return for you once I next visit the castle. I have a mission to do before that so it may take some time but-"

"Thank you Lady Captain! You're so gracious!" 

The mother was barely holding herself together at your words and you squeezed her hand briefly before you pulled away after a ruffle of the boy's hair and made your way to Yoongi who was looking on in solemn understanding. 

"...Dare I ask?"

"The boy's father has been in prison past his sentence, caught stealing food for his family. I promised I'd check once we got back."

Yoongi glanced at you from his place beside you as a chuckle escaped him. 

You felt your cheeks heat and huffed defensively. 

"What's so funny!?"

He shrugged with a fond smile as he shook his head. 

"Still too kind for your own good is all. Could have been a lie, an attempt to steal money, or a ploy to stir up rebellion in the town against the King starting with you by using a young boy but you responded so genuinely that even if that's what it was it backfired miserably."

He snickered a bit more, a rare sound to be sure for most but you enjoyed it nonetheless even as you blushed.

"It's my job as Lady Captain. I may serve the Red Wings but the townspeople are my concern too. I guess it probably seems silly since you're of the Dragoon branch, only responsible for protecting the castle and monster patrol.” 

His laughter died but you caught the amused smirk at his lips.

“All the better for me. People can be complicated whereas fiends are useful for little more than target practice and exercises to bring my jumps to larger heights.” 

You shoved him playfully with a roll of your eyes.

“Alright hotshot; that’s enough bragging. Did you do your little errand? I want to check in with Hoseok’s Mom while we’re here. You know how worried he can get about her when he gets stuck at the castle healing overnight.”

Yoongi seemed to hesitate at that but reluctantly nodded and let you lead him to the small house towards the center of the village where Hoseok’s mom had received her own home after Hoseok had received his white cape as proof he was a Baron White Mage. You knocked on the door and after a moment it swung open to reveal Hoseok’s mother. You smiled kindly, mouth guard already lowered out of respect even as she glared at you disapprovingly. 

“What do you two want!?” 

“I just wanted to check in on you. Hoseok wanted to ensure you were eating enough and healthy.” 

She huffed irritably and leaned against the doorjamb as Yoongi shifted uncomfortably beside you, causing her gaze to briefly shift to him before going back to you. 

“I’m doing just fine; no thanks to you. His Majesty’s recent behavior troubles me. I heard you and your boy there have been doing some just terrible things, under his orders or no. All I want is Hoseok to be safe from such gory acts and that’s your job as his lover.” The glare she gave Yoongi did not go unnoticed by you and you noted the way his whole body tensed and his mouth went in a firm straight line. “And that goes for any kind of hurt. Have I made myself clear?”

You maintained your amicable smile even as it felt like you’d just been speared through the heart. Your voice was unbearably soft as you responded, cursing the way it wavered. 

“O-Of course madam. I will protect him till my very last breath if I must. I would happily absolve any pain he has experienced or will in the future if I was only able, so he wouldn’t have to shoulder an ounce of suffering.”

She nodded and raised her chin in superior pride at your answer before she nodded curtly. 

“Good. Ensure your feelings forever remain so stalwart; as do your ideals or the world may lose one Dark Knight.”

With that, the door slammed shut, and the sting of her obvious distrust bordering on rejection cut deep as you all but stumbled away with Yoongi hot on your heels as you made your way through the little alcove at the back of the village to the river where you knew no-one would be. 

You were barely maintaining the lid on your emotions but at the sight of your glassy gaze, Yoongi couldn’t withhold his ire and hissed through gritted teeth as he clenched his fists.

“Who does she think she is talking down to you like that!? Hoseok and you have been together for how many years now? 3?” 

He snarled as he whirled to grip your shoulders unintentionally being a bit rough, not that it made a difference thanks to the armor guarding your shoulders, careful to avoid the spikes. 

“She even dared to imply you of all people would be unfaithful. After everything you’ve been through with Hoseok and me, it just-” 

He inhaled sharply to try and gather himself and his eyes rushed to yours at your watery giggle. 

“Is something humorous?”

He certainly didn’t find any amusement in this.

You smiled weakly. 

“I just find this all morbidly ironic. I told Hoseok just last night how cowardly I was and it seems even his mother agrees.” 

Yoongi wrenched himself away from you with a hiss, eyes narrowing. 

“You? A coward? That is comical.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand. I obeyed His Majesty’s orders without a second thought. I harmed innocent people-”

“Except they’re not innocent. You seem to be forgetting that. His Majesty explicitly said they knew too much of the Crystal and its secrets-”

“And what gives him the right to decide that!? It’s not our culture or our way of life!! We’ve been focused on technological advancement rather than the power of the crystals for decades...why now does His Majesty seem so intent on them!?”

You covered your mouth in horror at the treasonous words that escaped your lips, and Yoongi had gone eerily still as well before he quickly looked around for any potential eavesdroppers. 

Seeing none, he lowered his voice and frowned seriously at you once again placing his hand on your shoulder. You could see the weight of your words had made their mark from the grim look in his eyes. So it troubled him too. You always knew he was a good actor but his emotionlessness towards this subject, in particular, had admittedly made you feel isolated in your beliefs. Sure, you’d heard the rumors, but they hadn’t been raised by His Majesty as you had. Their opinion simply didn’t hold the same weight as Yoongi or Hoseok’s would. In any case, Yoongi’s low drawl of your name made your eyes lock onto his. 

“They were deceitful and thankfully His Royal Highness caught it in time before they began a rampage against the whole Blue Planet. Let us be grateful for that and move on. Yes?”

Hesitance shown in your eyes but you swallowed back the bitter taste of betrayal on your tongue and nodded. No time to wallow in any case; you had Hoseok to get home to. 

“Enough talk. Let us depart for Mist."

Yoongi finally seemed appeased and he watched as you raised your mouthguard once again though he didn’t comment on it as you both exited the little alcove at the back of the town, only for Yoongi to bump right into a familiar girl. 

“June! How’re things?”

You easily put on a mask of ease, though at the younger girl’s giddy grin you found it wasn’t difficult. 

“Oh, it’s been just peachy! You know Jin...always working! But he came home last night so to reward him I’m baking him his favorite pumpkin pie for when he finally wakes up.”

“He still hasn’t awoken? It’s only a little past dawn but I’ve seen him working well past this just last week…” 

Yoongi mused and you saw the twist of a smirk on his lips when you shot him a knowing glare. 

June huffed at that, shaking her head in disappointment. 

“I’m gonna wring that old man's neck one of these days, mark my words! He works too hard...we’re not that hurting for gil.”

Her last phrase was little more than a mumble but your hand was already reaching for your gil pouch before you could even consciously think. As if anticipating your movements though, Yoongi took a step forward, hand already outstretched with a small pouch, filled to the brim and neatly tied off. 

At June’s wide-eyed hesitance, Yoongi cut her off as she opened her mouth, no doubt to refuse. 

“You’d best take it before a pickpocket does. I’ll remain standing like this until the gil is taken.”

His voice was a low rumble, despite his words as he clearly wanted her to have it, not some thief, and all three of you knew even should he keep his word like you knew he would, he’d merely reclaim his gil and find some other way to give it to the family, perhaps by smuggling it into Jin’s biweekly wages.

June finally took the pouch, and you felt a little misty-eyed as you watched her throw her arms around Yoongi, taking the Dragoon Captain by surprise and making him stumble and fumble to return her gesture of affection with an awkward pat on her back. 

“Y-Yes yes of course, now just release me, will you? People are staring.”

He grumbled, and you were sure without his mask he’d be red as a beet by now. 

Yoongi grew serious, however, and gently caught June’s hand as she went to run off after thanking him profusely. 

“I want you to be sure you go right on home and hide that somewhere nice and secure. Only take what you need and then return to the markets. I don’t want you being targeted for fraternizing with the likes of us. And…” He hesitated but finally handed her something else you couldn’t see as he stepped into her space as he abruptly tugged her into a proper hug. 

“Take that as well. Use it only if you must.” 

He mumbled something else by her ear and then just as quickly pulled away. June looked flustered as well, a little nervous and as Yoongi rejoined you, you side-eyed him with a hint of mirth in your gaze. You were positive he could feel it and eventually after a minute of walking towards the exit he hissed only once you’d both been alone for several minutes.

“What?”

You offered a simple hum. 

“Hm? Oh, I’m just recalling a certain Dragoon mocking me not an hour ago for being too kind. Yet here you are, giving away money I know you’d been saving up for that new lance you wanted. You even gave her a weapon by the looks of it.”

Your voice quieted for that last part as you drew closer to him to whisper and he merely sighed in resignation at that. 

“Of course you noticed. Always so knowing, aren’t you? June deserves to eat. Did you not also happen to notice the flatness of her gil pouch? You know how much they’ve been inflating prices.”

You blinked at that in surprise.

“The item shop charged me the same rate as always. I had no idea…”

Yoongi snorted at that, cool and sarcastic. 

“Of course they would. You’re the King’s guard dog, they know better than to draw your, or my ire. But the townspeople? They are not so lucky. There is a reason people like that family who pleaded with you have had to turn to stealing and they are but one of many.”

“And here I thought I was knowledgeable on the way our people were treated...how do you know all this?” 

Yoongi shrugged. 

“My men have families here; unlike the Red Wings who’re typically born into the military, the Dragoons have always been expected to be enlisters. The practice may have died some with the passage of time but it is still a thing of the present and I asked a few of them to report to me. I pay them a little extra on the side and they know I’m not a turncoat despite being close to His Majesty. You’re the first one I’ve told, actually and I know well enough you’re as good for your silence as I.”

This new information made dread sit heavy in the pit of your stomach. First a degradation of the King’s morality, and now even Baron’s shopkeepers were turning against civilians? You froze for a moment and swallowed nervously. Your King. He was your king still. The just and firm but kind man who’d raised you into the woman you had become. Deep breaths. All would be forgiven and explained when you returned. You were sure of it. Yoongi had said so and he was always right. You just had to have faith. You and Yoongi reached the gate and you looked to him as you ensured your armor was tightened and your sword scabbard ready to give you access to your sword at a moment's notice. 

He too had done his checks and nodded at you, mouth now in a stern frown as he readied himself with grim determination for the journey ahead. 

After a shared nod at one another, you both stepped out into the overworld and began making your way to the Cave of Mist. 

The monsters had been gradually growing more and more feral as the years had gone on. Now they were violently beyond reason, willing to strike at a moment’s notice; including those who didn’t pose a threat. You remembered a simpler time where more docile monsters had been used to train even children, including yourself, Yoongi, and Hoseok. Now, it was a risk of death every time trade happened. Perhaps it was a good thing tensions were so high between the nations nowadays.

In any case, Yoongi and yourself were trained to fight and take out even the most intelligent of monsters thanks to being taught the ways of the sword and lance respectively by your King. Yoongi also had his father for a time to fall back on before he perished. Most monsters seemed to catch onto this and kept their distance from you both, but those either too foolish or too hungry to care still attacked. You remained unscathed, your armor keeping you safe from a particularly volatile Sword rat, the purple beast expelling it’s sharp spines your way. Even bringing up your shield, a few broke through your defenses and you couldn’t help your wince as they made contact with a harsh reverberation as they hit your chest and legs.

Yoongi took a risk and threw his spear at the beast and thankfully it cried out in pain before finally going limp.  He retrieved his weapon and shot a smirk your way, and claimed you’d owe him a drink once you returned to Baron.

That was the only incident you had come across until you reached the cave itself. Since most monsters knew better than to start a fight with you both, you hoped those dwelling within the Cave of Mist would have the same ideas. 

Oh, how wrong you were. 

The larvae and eyewing moths inhabiting the cave were particularly irritating. The moths liked to blind you and the larvae loved to use slow, only prolonging their inevitable deaths. Blind was always a pain to deal with; you both being melee attackers and all. Sure, spell casters and mages were affected as well, but oftentimes they could locate the monsters or other teammates thanks to locking onto their energy if they were fast enough. No such luck here. 

Still, you managed to take them out. However, something strange had occurred, twice now which was not to your liking.

 A voice had called out to you, ghostly and ominous, ordering you both to return whence you came. It had no discernable gender, but the lilt underneath the words made you guess it may have been female. 

Could this be the Eidolon you’d been sent to slay? 

Despite the constant feeling of being watched, the journey through the cave was not a difficult one and you sensed no malice from the entity. Not until you reached the cave’s exit in any case. 

“You are not welcome beyond this point, swine of Baron. Return to your castle and leave this place in peace.”

You frowned at that, ring sitting heavily in its own dedicated pouch at your hip and the image of Hoseok’s worried face in your mind. 

“We can’t do that. Please, I beg you allow us refuge. We have a mission we must see through!”’

“As do I. I take it you mean to refuse my plea then?”

The voice had gained an aggressive but defeated edge and Yoongi stepped forward, all cocky indifference. 

“We have given you your answer.”

“...Very well. Then you leave me with no choice. Forgive me.”

With that, the mist that had not aided your journey in the least began coalescing and you both drew your weapons in preparation. 

A pink scaled dragon had appeared in front of you, and you and Yoongi could both sense the difference in power compared to the weak monsters thus far. You’d used up what little Eye Drops you’d had in stock, and now only had 2 Potions after healing at the slightest injury earlier, thinking you’d had plenty. Luckily you still had both Phoenix Downs should one of you fall unconscious before the other. 

You shared a look with Yoongi and he nodded in understanding, before hopping up and continuing to move from rock to rock, trying to get as much height as possible to come down all the harder on your enemy. Not one to be left out, you turned your attention to the battle, knowing full well you were the only remaining target, and steeled yourself, letting dark energy surround you as you carefully fed just enough of yourself into your attacks to power them up while not causing too much physical damage to yourself. 

It still made you wince and caused an off sensation within your soul whenever you chose to use Darkness but the King always said the payoff would be worth it if the enemy went down. 

Said enemy roared in frustration and swung a large claw at you which you barely managed to dodge before slashing, watching as darkness coated the wound you’d left, seeping in and making it hurt all the more. Your eyes widened in surprise as before you could hop back the creature snarled and jumped, shoving you to the ground with its claws and holding you there as its face lowered towards your vulnerable frame. 

Yoongi couldn’t have chosen a better time to come, slamming down onto the back of the beast, spearing the Eidolon with as much force as he could muster. You watched as blood gushed, ignoring the confusion that hit you at seeing the substance to instead take its momentary preoccupation with Yoongi as it tried to bite him off of its back to get ahold of your sword and stabbing its foot to make it release you. 

It let out a wail of pain, and you knew you were close. Yoongi deftly hopped off and dragged you out from under the creature, tossing you a Potion before he unleashed a flurry of passionate slashes to keep the monster engaged and focused on him. You quickly slammed your mouth guard down and chugged the bitter liquid with a gag and a grimace, feeling the physical aching and the toll on your soul both fade as you regained full lucidity. 

You shook off your daze and felt the power of Darkness fade as fast as it had arrived. Better not to use it twice in one battle and from the way the beast had slowed it seemed the battle was finally coming to an end.

Yoongi was holding his own quite well; he’d always been the more nimble out of the two of you what with having to find the perfect openings to Jump and all and he’d already managed to push the creature back some so you could recover in peace. 

“Shall we finish this?”

He asked gruffly, panting. 

You nodded, but as you went to strike now that it was cornered it suddenly...dissipated into mist? 

Well, that just wasn’t fair. 

“You will pay for that…”

The ominous threat was made good on and you gasped as a snow-like substance slowly fell around you and Yoongi. You fell to your knees at the freezing cold that enveloped you. Damn. This was why you loathed magic attacks. No matter what armor you wore it mattered not. 

You saw Yoongi go down out of the corner of your eye and lunged with a cry of pure, unadulterated fear as the monster came into existence once again and made as if to strike him. 

Claws raked across your back and again, your armor or no, you felt the impact and the pain shortly after, even with the adrenaline coursing through you. You were both going to die entirely if you didn’t do something now. 

You tossed a Phoenix Down over Yoongi, knowing it’d take a moment for the bird of resurrections feathers to revitalize his life force once again, and stood defensively in front of him. A snarl turned your face to something ugly and you hissed at the monster. 

“You want him? Then you’ve got to get through me first!!”

Your cry clearly met its mark as the creature roared in ire at being provoked and you neatly dodge rolled to avoid being hit as it attempted to catch you in its claws, scrambling for your item pouch. You shoved the last Potion’s contents down your throat before you let the power of Darkness surround you one final time, ready to sacrifice whatever was necessary of yourself to ensure Yoongi survived. He wouldn’t have much HP left - that Phoenix Down would only get him conscious and all it would take was one good hit for him to go down permanently. Just as you narrowed your eyes in concentration and went to swing downwards, Yoongi let out an abrupt shout and finished his final Jump; using the last remnants of his own power to finish the battle once and for all before you had the chance. 

The creature roared, in agony this time, and you watched in cold satisfaction as it collapsed to the cave floor in defeat. 

Without so much as a look at the monster that had nearly killed your closest friend you ran over to Yoongi and forced his arm over your shoulder. 

“What are you-?”

“Don’t pretend you aren't barely hanging onto consciousness right now you idiot. I know how Phoenix Downs work. It may revitalize you but it’s only enough to get you off the floor unless you also have a Potion or more on hand.”

You began trudging to the cave’s exit, squinting into the dusk. 

“We’re making a tent for the night, understand? We’ll go to Mist at first light. You’re in no condition to do anything right now besides recover. I’ll take watch after tending to your wounds and you’ll go right to sleep.”

Yoongi chuckled under his breath until he was forced to cough in pain and you frowned in annoyance at him briefly as fresh air greeted you both. It was a welcome change to the musky cave scent you’d both been stuck with for the past many hours you’d been stuck there. That damn mist had definitely cost you time and from how dark it was outside, you’d been there at least half a day. You'd made good time, if nothing else.  

“What’s so funny?”

“You can be such a parent sometimes. I’m fine. Being knocked out happens in fights sometimes. Besides, I managed to save you, didn’t I? I’d say I recovered just fine.”

He muttered cheekily, his voice gruff from being drawn unwillingly out of his unconscious state earlier. 

You grumbled at that. 

“I had it under control. And anyway...it’s dead. That’s all that matters. The only thing left to do now is to give this ring to Mist and see what they make of it. Surely one of them must know, else his Majesty would not have sent us here.”

You gently set Yoongi down onto a grassy hill you’d found, spotting Mist awaiting you both at the bottom. You were a little winded from carrying his weight; like it or not you were smaller and still weaker than him when it came to straight strength. A quick glance around made you relax a little as you sat down as well, taking off your helmet and letting yourself gulp in the fresh air with relief. It really had felt stuffy in that damn cave. Yoongi meanwhile was stripping himself of his armor, and you nodded down towards where a stream flowed steadily into the town. 

“Don’t be afraid to go wash up a little if you’d like once you feel well enough to stand. We can go at dawn as well if you’d prefer, given we’ll be sleeping outside tonight and all.”

Yoongi leveled a glare towards Mist and grumbled as he ran a hand through his messy locks, brushing away the dirt from the cave clinging to his undershirt and pants. 

“It’d be nice if we could just go rest at the inn but I know that’s an impossible venture. Say…” 

He winced as he examined a few of his wounds, mainly scrapes, and bruises but he had a nice long gash on his arm and head bled a bit as well, most likely from when he’d fallen unconscious. 

You could feel your own body aching but tried not to dwell on it, instead rummaging around your item pouch and grabbing a small loaf of bread you'd stashed away and a handkerchief Hoseok always made you carry. A small fond smile twitched onto your lips at the thought of him and you removed your helmet to see better. 

Yoongi had turned his gaze to you curiously, expecting you to stay in your armor in the case of monsters but you sighed at his inquiring gaze as you stood and merely walked over to the log he was sitting on, kneeling in front of him and beginning to dab at his bloody forehead. 

"Silly Dragoon. When will you learn to stop putting yourself at risk huh?"

You pushed the bread into his hands, with your free one continuing to dab at his wound gently. 

"Eat. It'll help you recover faster."

"But what about-" 

"I'm not the one who got knocked out."

You yelped as he suddenly grabbed your face and tilted your head to meet his steely brown gaze. 

"...You'll eat half or I won't so much as touch it."

You groaned as you smacked his hand away, grumbling at him as you uncorked the only Potion you had left and spilled a little onto the cloth to dab onto the cut on his head, the ghost of a smirk tugging at your lips as he let out a hiss of pain and clenched his hand into a fist. 

"You're such a child sometimes. Fine, you big baby. Just eat, will you? Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I should've picked up White Magic as well just to make up for your recklessness."

Yoongi eyed you over the bread as you sat back and sprawled out on the soft grass and nibbled at your half. 

"Don't act like you're the paragon of strategy. I saw how you were going to foolishly put yourself in a critical state to try and take the Eidolon out. Armor off. I know you're injured too and we still have ¾ of this Potion left."

His eyes narrowed with a little playful sadism and you knew he was looking forward to tending to your wounds as well. 

You smiled with a tinge of nervousness and shook your head. 

"No, I'm fine rea-"

"I will come over there and tug it off myself."

"Y-You're too weak to!"

You challenged in disbelief, calling his bluff. 

His eyes sparkled again and a cheeky grin now adorned his lips as he moved to stand, causing you to squeak and scramble away from him as you fumbled with your armor. 

"A-Alright alright! Sheesh!"

His low voice snickered in amusement as you blushed and reluctantly tugged off the heavy armor pieces. They'd been dented something awful in that fight; you’d need to get it fixed at a blacksmith once you got back to Baron. Still, you had to admit having the added weight off of your tired body was a welcome change. 

You were indeed injured as Yoongi and yourself had both noted and you winced at the gash in your side, not having noticed that the Eidolon must’ve managed to graze your side with its claws, fairly deeply. Your black t-shirt was tattered, barely sticking to your body from sweat and a bit from the blood as well. Your head was pounding too, the cool night air alerting you to just how hard you must’ve hit your head as you went down. 

“Come. Shirt off; that looks deep.”

You jumped a bit in surprise at Yoongi’s voice right by your ear, turning to frown at him over your shoulder. 

“I can take care of it myself Yoongi, you should rest.”

He stared you down until you caved with a huff and shucked off the remnants of your shirt. You made a good choice wearing your more flexible undergarments for activity today in anticipation of fighting. Made this all much more bearable, but Yoongi was resolutely focused on your wound in any case even so. You knew he wouldn’t lay down, let alone sleep until he knew you were at least taken care of. It warmed your heart that he cared for you so. 

That warmth faded to a whimper as gentle fingers brushed along the wound assessing the damage. 

“Apologies. Hm...Come. I want to clean this with water first. It’s deeper than it looks. It’s a good thing I brought that extra shirt with me after all.” 

You felt a little woozy truth be told, but you were still trying to keep yourself together. Yoongi had been knocked out after all. He had to be in worse shape than you. You had to be strong for him. 

Yoongi wasn’t buying it though. His gaze locked onto the way you swayed and when he saw you stutter a step as you went to start moving towards the stream nearby, he was quick to grab his shirt and rush to your side where he steadied you with a warm hand on your upper arm. 

“Idiot. How did you not notice you were losing this much blood?”

You laughed weakly, through the dizziness as Yoongi helped to guide you to the water. 

“Adrenaline is a powerful thing, as Hoseok says. I didn’t even feel it until you made me take off my armor.”

Yoongi growled at that, frustrated as he rushed to clean the wound, uncaring as you flinched at the icy water against your skin. 

"Well, we'll have to pray my actions are enough to keep you from meeting an early demise. I know you're strong but even you are Mortal."

The wound now as clean as it could be without magical help, Yoongi reached over for the Potion at his side and poured ¼ of the contents over the wound itself making you yowl in pain. 

He was too focused on his task to pay much attention, however, pouring the other ½ of the bottle onto his shirt which he pressed tightly to your side. He frowned seriously at you. 

"Hold it there, understand? I'll be back in a moment; I have to grab your armor piece. It'll hold the fabric tightly against the wound for the time being."

You meanwhile were trying to cope with the unbearable stinging. The wound had been deep indeed. You could feel the Potions remnants trying to stitch your body together, to slow the bleeding. It was working, however slow, but Ashura above it hurt. 

Yoongi returned after a time and you were surprised to see he was holding another Potion in hand. 

"How-?"

He frowned coldly as he crouched at your side and you registered he was now fully adorned in his teal armor save for his helmet which he'd taken off once he saw you. 

Your suspicion was confirmed when he wordlessly pressed a familiar earring into your hand. 

"You bloody idiot!!!"

Your voice was a poisonous whisper, not wanting to draw any sleeping monsters as you scowled at him and he numbly handed you the Potion. 

"Drink."

You shook your head. 

"I can't believe you went back to loot that Eidolon Yoongi.  What if you'd awoken a monster and-"

Your voice cracked and Yoongi sighed heavily as he saw angry tears make your eyes glassy. You could be so overemotional. You wore facades well around others but he and Hoseok had always been exceptions. You had no need to worry over him. 

"I'm here, alive and well, am I not? My wounds are light enough that a good night's sleep will be enough. But yours are more serious. I’m not risking losing you for the sake of your pride. Now drink or I’ll make you.” 

His voice lowered an octave at his last sentence and you glowered at him one last time before tossing the Potion back, wincing at the disgusting taste, but sighing in relief as your wound knitted itself back together, speeding up your body's cell regeneration a bit. It was no Hi or even X Potion, but it had sped the process up enough to be sure your body would be fully healed by tomorrow, and at least the bleeding had stopped. A touch of your head and you noted the tingling sensation had faded. Hopefully, any injury you had there had ceased to be as well. 

Yoongi had busied himself with attaching just the armor for your side into place so that the Potion soaked fabric would be held against your skin but he turned his gaze to you as he stood and stretched, once again discarding his armor. 

“Well; that’s enough excitement for one night. I’m going to go rest until we have to rise at first light.  Call if any particularly threatening monsters arise.”

You also stood, your own armor halfway back on as you gently called his name. 

“Yoongi!”

He paused, halfway up the hill. His hair was mussed from his rush to loot the Eidolon for your benefit; his long blond ponytail trailing behind him. Long hair has been a part of Dragoon culture for nearly as long as the profession itself had been. It was as characteristic to the culture as the Monks wearing it short, braided, or not at all. Yoongi had mentioned his father had explained that it was a demonstration of the freedom Dragoons symbolized and always fought for. He turned to look at you and his perceptive brown eyes locked onto your own. 

You smiled kindly, gaze sincere. 

“Thank you. I know I can be…” 

You sheepishly rubbed at the back of your neck. 

“A bit difficult sometimes. I appreciate it, and you.”

Yoongi scoffed but you could now clearly see his cheeks turning red in embarrassment before he whirled to finish his journey back towards camp to hide it. You still caught the fondness of his tone though, despite the playful words.

“Always so soft…”

You watched until you could no longer see him and turned back to your armor, finishing putting it on and tugging your darkened helmet over your head once more. Luckily the night was still with the only sounds you could hear being the stream beside you and the chirping of harmless bugs. The twin moons were both full tonight, illuminating the Blue Planet brilliantly. 

Nevertheless, you decided to do a quick perimeter check deciding your newly healed body could use the movement. It was a peaceful night and you heard the faint crackling of torches as you neared the entrance to Mist. You couldn’t help your curiosity as you watched a young girl run to the river, bucket in one hand and a cloth handmade doll in the other haphazardly sewn together. 

She seemed panicked and you faintly heard her voice carry to where you stood just beyond the tree line. 

“Agh I can’t believe I forgot to restock!! Mom’s gonna kill me!!”

She finally managed to get the bucket full but you winced sympathetically as in her rush she tumbled over the bucket and sent water spilling everywhere; soaking her to the bone. Just as you debated emerging to help, an older woman with the same hair and eye color ran out of the town and up to her, a worried frown on her lips. 

“Jenjia just what do you think you’re doing!?”

Her voice was much quieter you noticed thankfully; it would’ve probably been bad if any fiends had been awoken earlier. 

The girl, Jenjia as you now knew her, looked sheepish and beamed nervously up at her mother, clasping her hands behind her back. 

“I’m sorry Mom, I just realized we didn’t have any water to boil! You like to have your tea at night with Daddy and I forgot when playing with Cheryl earlier…” 

She scuffed her worn looking loafers on the ground as her mother shook her head. 

“Well then that’s a day well spent, isn’t it? I’d rather have my daughter home safe and sound than a cup of tea Jia. Your father will feel the same. Leviathan will keep our water flowing clean until tomorrow to refill the stores. Come along now; I’ve already put some beef stew on the stove and I’d rather it didn’t get cold.”

Your heart warmed at the gentle interaction even as a bitter twinge you didn’t want to acknowledge made your chest hurt. You had His Majesty, and that was enough. You never would’ve found Yoongi or Hoseok without him. You turned away as you recalled Yoongi and the girl grabbed her Mother’s hand to be led inside. 

Best you were on your way in any case; it wouldn’t be good if Yoongi woke to find you missing, or if a monster snuck up on your camp.

The rest of the night watch passed uneventfully and Yoongi awoke, as he usually did, at first light. 

You offered him a capful of water from your flask and he drank it gratefully. You’d used up all the food last night; you really should bring more than simple bread next time. Honestly, it had just slipped your mind...this was why Yoongi and Hoseok typically took care of provisions. You always managed to miss something. 

You fiddled absentmindedly with the new earring Yoongi had presented you with last night. It was common practice within Baron to claim trophies from particularly tough monsters and wear them as badges of honor. Typically; you felt pride in a kill and yesterday your mind had been preoccupied with panic and anger but now that it was the next morning you felt no joy, no sense of victory, There had been...no malice or hate that you typically felt from monsters. And it had bled too. It was...odd. 

Still, Yoongi had risked his life to get it for you, and King Odin would surely be pleased with the sight of it upon your return. Best to keep it on for now. 

You jumped as a pair of armored hands abruptly clapped in your face and offered a weak smile to Yoongi as he held out his hand to help you up. 

You grasped it, and he easily pulled you to your feet. 

“How are you feeling?”

You couldn’t help the worry seeping into your tone but Yoongi waved you off. 

“I told you last night I’d be fine and I am. I feel fit as yesterday before we’d even departed. Rest can often be even more healing than a Potion or Cure spell. Now then, shall we go? I’m sure you must be exhausted and the sooner we return home the sooner we can get you some much needed and deserved rest.”

You nodded at that, and after making sure you both had snuffed out the fire and that your weapons and armor were properly set you began your short trek to the gates of Mist. 

It was a tiny village you knew, unlike Damcyan, Fabul, Troia, or Eblan there was no castle, and even Mysidia was more bustling and lively than the few houses dwelling here. It was humble to be sure, but there was a peace and a sense of sincerity here that you doubted you could find anywhere else. 

You fingered the box holding the ring in your pocket, a bit nervous now that you were here. Baron and Mist had never had particularly good relations. You prayed that the King asking for their input would establish a rapport and help you maintain a good relationship. You lowered your face visor, figuring being able to see some part of you that was human behind your demonic looking armor would help put them at ease. 

As Yoongi and you both entered the village you noticed the civilians within already began side-eying you distrustingly and couldn’t help but wonder if word of Mysidia had already spread but quickly reminded yourself that that was impossible. After all; Troia was the only neighboring kingdom and they would’ve had to have taken an airship here just to inform them. A general lack of airships besides Baron aside, Troia was always neutral anyway and pretty much entirely isolated.

Guess tensions with Baron really were high then. 

You suddenly noticed a woman approaching you and recognized her as the mother from last night. Her daughter clutched at her skirt, observing you with curious if shy eyes. You smiled at her while Yoongi offered a respectful nod to the mother. 

“Good day ma’am we were just-”

His words were cut off by your pained yelp as you ripped the now searing box that held the ring out of its pouch. You’d been so preoccupied with calming down the young girl you hadn’t noticed the rising temperature until it was near scorching. 

“The ring!”

The box was rustling wildly of its own accord as it hit the ground, and Yoongi frowned deeply in confusion only to roughly pull you back several feet as he too jumped back. 

The woman too had shoved her daughter behind her and was examining the box before recognition lit her eyes. 

“This is-!”

Boom

The box exploded open and Bomb monsters hidden inside didn’t waste any time as they began setting fire to anything and anyone they could. In seconds the village was burning and the smell of burning flesh was everywhere. You could do little more than watch in horrified shock as smoke already was causing your eyes to burn at the spot the woman had just been. That initial violent opening of the box had scorched the poor woman...and her daughter you noted numbly, where they’d stood. The girl-Jenjia you reminded yourself, she had a name- all that remained of her was her doll, slowly burning away to nothingness in front of your very eyes. Suddenly, an abrupt realization hit you.

The bombs were carefully not targeting Yoongi and yourself.

You shook violently as words escaped your lips in hushed horror, taking in the carnage caused in the wake of your visit. It had to be a mistake, it had to. Yoongi would be truthful with you. You must’ve missed something. This wasn’t happening.

“This is what we were sent to do?”

Yoongi looked around with detached and grim determination.

“He wished this village torched.”

Tears streamed down your face and evaporated just as quickly, whether from the flames and smoke or the horror and disgust coursing through you; who could say? You trembled with rage and clenched your fists so tightly your already dented armor creaked a bit more from the force of it. 

“But why?”

You raised your head to the sky and let out a guttural raw of pure primal agony. 

“Why!?!”

Yoongi remained silent beside you, but you could feel the tenseness coming off of him in waves. This upset him too, you were sure. You numbly looked back down at the ground and it took you a few moments to register a new sound amid the now silent town besides the crackling of the fire and the creaking of buildings as they collapsed in on themselves. Destroyed in mere minutes. 

A young boy sobbing. 

You grimly raised your head and began walking towards the sound hearing Yoongi’s steady footsteps beside you. 

You came across a mint haired boy, hysterically gasping over a woman’s body. Luckily the child was beside the only water source in the town; a small pool which seemed to have kept the Bombs at bay. 

As Yoongi and you approached, he clung all the harder to his mother, not even noticing both of you. You barely managed to make out the words between his heart-wrenching sobs. 

“Mother you can’t die! J-Just because your dragon did!!” 

Yoongi’s eyes suddenly lit with understanding behind his visor and you turned to him in confusion as he nodded to himself. 

“I’ve heard of their lot. Men who can conjure Eidolons...Summoners.”

It suddenly hit you and you mumbled to yourself as it all seemed to come together. 

“Then the dragon we slew...was...his mothers?”

The boy gasped at the sound of your voice and turned to glare fearfully at you and Yoongi making you wince as you met his gaze behind your visor in reluctant admission of your guilt. He stood in an attempt to appear more intimidating even despite the tremor in his voice showing how petrified he was just underneath the facade.

“You...You’re the ones who killed her dragon!?”

You swallowed the bitter taste on your tongue as you pleaded with the boy. Moon above, he couldn’t be more than 10. 

“Forgive us. We’d no idea this would happen to your mother.”

It sounded exactly what it was. Weak and pathetic. There would be no forgiveness. Not for this. Nor for Mysidia. 

You forced your gaze to his deceased Mother and sent up a prayer. As if that would help him now. 

Yoongi looked around and finally spoke up, tone matter of fact. 

“His Majesty sent us to eliminate every last one of these people.”

Your legs finally gave out, unable to take the weight being placed upon you. 

“No…”

Yoongi frowned as he looked down at you, assessing your condition before he began to move towards the boy with grim determination. 

“Foul work to be sure. But we’ll need to kill the boy as well.”

At that you lunged, just before he reached him, hopping to your feet and pushing against his chest plate in horrified desperation. 

“Yoongi!!”

Up close as you were, you could feel his breath on your skin, could hear the hateful sense of begrudging duty in his tone.

“It’s him or us ____!” 

You pushed him with all your might, making him take a step back even with the weakness coursing through your shaky body.

“He’s a child!”

You turned to look down at the still sobbing boy who was too preoccupied with trying to wipe his tears to pay attention to you both. 

“You’d betray your King?”

Yoongi’s voice now held a note of finality,

You turned to fully face him, clenching your hand into a fist and drawing it close to your chest.

“Betray him? Any King who’d wish for this is no King of mine!!” 

You snarled, harshly swinging your arm out in a subconscious show of disgusted frustration. 

Yoongi smirked at you suddenly and you found yourself startled as he scoffed in humor. 

“Hmph. I thought you might say that.”

Your eyes searched for him just behind your visor as you grew hopeful. 

“Then…?”

He looked off into the distance for a moment and then turned to you with sharp determination. 

“I owe his Majesty much but not so much I’d soil the Dragoon’s name in his.”

He planted his spear down with finality.

Your eyes widened and you stepped closer to him in excitement.

“Then you’re with me?”

He made sure to meet your gaze and wordlessly nodded twice in support before he turned, this time towards the destruction, and walked past the boy as he spoke, looking out at it. 

“Baron’s army is the mightiest in the world. Our flight means nothing if we remain alone; we must treat with other nations, share what we’ve seen…”

He hesitated and then turned to look at you once more. 

“And Hoseok, he must share our flight.”

Your tone softened in affection for him and you nodded, stepping closer.

“And he will. Thank you.”

He turned away for a moment and mumbled to himself. 

“...I’m not doing this for you.”

You didn’t hear him and tilted your head. 

“Huh?”

Yoongi ignored you however and turned to nod towards the boy.

“Quickly, we mustn’t linger here! What of the boy?”

You didn’t even hesitate. 

“We take him with us.”

After hesitating a moment you approached him where he was still crouched protectively over his mother’s body as Yoongi watched uneasily but stayed where he was. 

“Come, it’s not safe here! Take my hand.” 

You asked gently, holding out your hand to the boy. 

He hopped away from you with a glower. 

“No!!” 

Yoongi growled low in his throat at that.

“We’ve no time; use force if you must!”

He joined you as he ran over and Jimin cowered away in fear disguised as anger. 

“Stay away!”

You held out your hand as Yoongi and you both froze. 

“Wait!” 

The child began running in earnest and Yoongi and you both followed, hot on his heels when he suddenly curled in on himself with a choked sob.

“Leave me alone!” 

He suddenly screeched as blinding white light surged up from beneath his feet and you could feel the magical energy emanating from him. Yoongi had faltered but you kept running, refusing to be responsible for the death of another child. If he harmed you so be it...you deserved it anyway.

“I HATE YOU!!!”

You felt the earth shake violently and you glanced up to see a massive Titan made of pure earth. The Eidolon raised its hands, your eyes widened and you lunged curling your arms around the boy as you crushed him protectively against your chest as hard as you could just as he fell unconscious from exertion. You felt the Titan’s hands come down onto the Blue Planet’s surface hard and your body flew into the air. 

If you were to die then so be it, but let this child survive at least. 

He need not share the payment for your sins.

You slammed against the ground hard several times, but curled your body inward all the more around his tiny body in spite of the pain, praying your armor would be enough to absorb the impact as you finally, mercifully joined the child in unconsciousness.

A/N:  Welp, I hope those that actually read this series enjoy it; I’ve only gotten one rambly review on AO3 that inspired be to keep posting this so thank them if you enjoy this series and I’m not talking to myself. Anyway! Onto fun notes about this chapter! :) 

I find Yoongi’s characterization and his relationship to Reader to be one of the most fun parts to explore thus far for me this chapter as well as how they fight together in a serious battle. I also delved into status effects some as well as the various uses of Potions! Expect more explained uses of items and such as the series goes on! Yoongi’s look hair wise in Daechwita perfectly fits both the OG character Yoongi is based off of(Kain Highwind). Luckily it hit me as I was going through mvs, trying to decide if there was anything that matched Kain’s lucious locks and there it was! 

Also yay!! Official intro for Jimin! I know he’s never had mint hair before but I just had to include the nod to the OG game after doing Yoongi’s so...please bare with me. These are the ones I felt most fit what I was imagining. 

Hope you all enjoy and please leave feedback it’s a huge motivator for me! Much love hope ya’ll are enjoying the influx of content from me lately! <3

[thetrailofyourbloodinthesnow]

anon requested: Rama Setu as a Symbol of Love

(tagging some mutals that might like this: @incurablescribbler @1nsaankahanhai-bkr @soniaoutloud @panchali @chaanv) (Also in AO3)

Rama had never seen the sea before. He'd grown in faraway Ayodhya, in the kingdom of Kosala, that had no exit to the sea. Later, during their exile, he'd crossed plains, mountains, and jungles, but the largest bodies of water he'd come across had been rivers. As they started making their way southwards, Lakshman had once asked how much farther south were they planning to go. The terms of their exile hadn't been clear in that regard. "As far as we can," Rama replied. "Maybe we'll reach the end of Bharatavarsha and find the sea," Sita added, trying to infuse a sense of adventure to a journey that none of them had wanted. Rama smiled at her fondly, "Maybe."

Back then the prospect seemed nice – to take a walk on a golden beach, leaving footprints in the sand and watching the gentle ebb and flow of the tides – but as with everything else, there was no joy in it without Sita.

The sight of the sea, in all its unimaginable vastness, only filled him with a terrible sense of helplessness. The vanaras, who had also never seen it, trembled in fear and despair when they reached the shore. "We've reached the edge of the world!" they cried. Rama knew from his lessons at Rishi Vasishtha’s gurukula that such thing was ridiculous, the world didn't have an edge. But it could may as well had been true. It seemed they had reached the end of their search, without having found Lanka, and Sita.

Then, an old vulture called Sampati heard them mention his brother - the valiant Jatayu who'd been mortally wounded trying to save Sita, but lived long enough to point the direction she'd been taken - and offered to help. His atrophied wings couldn't lift him up anymore, but with his sharp eyesight, he looked beyond the horizon and at the distance he saw an island, and in that island, a golden city: Lanka. "If I still could, I would go there myself and find her for you," he told Rama. "But as you see, I cannot fly." And neither can bears or monkeys, Rama thought dejected.

He'd been wrong, though. As it turned out, there was one monkey that could. A monkey that could do the impossible, but couldn't remember his greatness until it was needed the most. When everything seemed lost, Hanuman did a miracle. He increased his size, becoming bigger and bigger until he towered like a mountain, his head scraping the clouds. Then, with a great leap that shook the earth, he rose to the sky, casting his large shadow over the entire beach bellow, and flew off towards Lanka, carrying all of Rama's hopes with him.

~•~•~•~•~

A full day passed without Hanuman returning, and Rama was growing more and more anxious. All his life he'd believed himself to be a very patient man, but this ordeal was greatly testing his limits. He sat by the shore, staring into the distant line where the ocean met the sky. He longed for Sampati's vision, to see beyond that limit, and know what had come of his vanara friend.

More than ever, his thoughts kept returning to his wife. He hadn't known - he'd thought he did, but truly he hadn't - just how much he loved her. How much better her presence made his whole existence. In the hardest of times, she'd given him a reason to laugh, to hope, to dream. She turned an exile that should have been the worst years of his life, into some of the best. And now she was gone, and he felt so utterly lost and lonely. And guilty as well, for having failed to protect her, for having brought her with him in the first place. Although he knew that he couldn’t have stopped her from following him.

Not that he hadn't tried, but she was a stubborn one. She rebuked every argument, rejected all reasoning, and stayed firm in her conviction that her place was at his side, no matter where he was. She promised she would take care of herself, not burdening him at all. And when he still argued against it, she reached the heart of the matter: “Is it that you don't want me at your side?”

No. It was exactly the opposite. He desperately wanted her at his side. The harshness and danger of the forest life didn't strike him as bad as the loneliness of it. But that wasn't a good enough reason to drag her along, like a child dragging along his favorite blanket to give him comfort. She wasn't his property, she was his responsibility. At least he knew Lakshman could defend himself, but he didn't know if he could ensure her safety out there.

"What if you get hurt? What if you get lost?" He insisted. "I'm not so delicate. Don't expect me to trip with every pebble on the way. And if I got lost, then I would find my way back to you." She locked eyes with him. "I would go through hell to find you." At that, knew nothing would stop her from follow him, because she wasn't just doing it out of duty. He realized then the deep of her love for him.

Did she know the deep of his love for her? Hard to say, since he wasn't one the show it. He was always keenly aware of their station in life, even in the forest. They were the rightful king and queen of Ayodhya, and he considered the overemotional display of romantic affection to be below their dignity. And in any case, it wasn't in his nature. He'll rather show his love through respect, through service, through protection (although he'd failed miserably at the latter).

But when he lost her, something broke inside of him, shattering his composure. He'd wept and despaired, wandering the forest crying out for his beloved like any forlorn lover. In an ironic reversal of roles, Lakshman had to ask him to remain cool-headed. Falling into desperation wouldn't get him closer to Sita.

He listened to his little brother, and focused instead on the single-minded goal of getting her back – and of slaying the trice-dammed rakshasa that had kidnapped her. He'd taken all that anguish and buried it deep within himself, but with every day that passed without her, it threatened with bursting out. He could feel it eating at his gut now, as he looked at the distant line where the ocean met the sky and waited for a sight of his vanara friend.

And sooner rather than later, he got it. First, it was a tiny spot in the sky that grew larger and larger as it approached, until he could clearly see Hanuman returning.

~•~•~•~•~

Hanuman didn't disappoint him. He'd found his wife and even managed to speak with her. And he brought her hairpin and a story known only to the couple as proof of the meeting. But all the proof Rama needed was the reverence and admiration with which he spoke of her. Nobody who had known his Sita could fail to admire her.

Hanuman told him of his Sita: sited in a garden of Ashoka trees, refusing to enjoy the luxury of her captor's palace, bullied by her guards and harassed by Ravana, but unyielding to any threat. Showing her fortitude while waiting to be rescued, growing sadder by the day, but never letting it show, and never losing hope that her Rama was coming for her. And he was. Now that he was certain that Sita was beyond the sea’s great expanse, nothing was going to stop him from reaching her.

He regretted that he didn't have anything – not even words – to give Hanuman that would demonstrate his gratitude for what he'd done for him. So he simply embraced him, like a brother. For the vanara had become as dear to him as one.

Now it came the matter of how their army would cross the sea to Lanka. Rama sat in council with Lakshman, Sugriva, Jambavan, Angad and Hanuman to discuss it. The most obvious option was to build boats, but doing so would require a lot of time and expertise that they simply didn't have. Other options were proposed – some plausible, other fantastical – but at the end Rama decided that if they couldn't find a way across the sea, then maybe the sea could make way for them. The most fantastical of options, perhaps, but he could try asking.

For several days and nights, he sat upon the beach fasting and reciting mantras, praying to Varuna, the Lord of the Oceans. But the only answer he received was the roaring of the waves. His frustration began to mount. Where before the sea seemed like an endless stretch, now he saw it as an irritating block in his path that only serve to keep him idle when he could have been battling Ravana and his army. A burning rage began to boil inside him, and at last reached the end of his patience.

He commanded Lakshman to bring him his bow and quiver, and began firing burning arrows at the sea. Those terrible ashtras caused the water to steam and boil, filling the surface with the dead carcasses of aquatic creatures. He placed one last arrow on his bow. "Varuna!" He shouted. "This arrow of mine will scorch every drop of you, until the oceans of these earth turn into barren deserts! Unless you come and face me!" He took aim, ready to shoot. "Well?!"

The sea swelled and swirled, spiralling inwards into a whirlwind, and from its midst he appeared. Lord Varuna rose from the waters with a great makara as his vahana; his skin was of a bright cerulean hue, his ornaments were made of seaweeds and pearls and seashells, and in his hands, he carried a noose and a fishing net.

"Lord Ramachandra," his voice boomed over the clashing of the waves. "Don't act rashly. From the ocean comes the salt, the fish, and the rain. If you destroy it, the whole of creation will suffer. "

Rama kept his arrow pointed at the ocean. "If you part the sea for my army to cross, then I'll have no reason to destroy it."

"The fire's nature is to burn, the wind's nature is to blow, and the nature of the ocean is to be deep and expansive and impassable. I cannot change my nature for you." Lord Varuna sounded apologetic enough to compel Rama to lower his bow with a sigh. "There is another way, however. Amidst your army, there is a vanara named Nala, rocks thrown by him into the ocean cannot sink. Have him built a bridge over me and I will hold it afloat. May victory be yours." And with that he disappeared back into the waters.

Rama called on Nala to prove Lord Varuna's words. The monkey picked up a stone and hurled it into the sea, and sure enough it floated. Small ones and big ones, every stone he touched before being thrown stayed on the surface of the water. But another problem soon became clear: although the stones didn't sink, they drifted away from each other. The army began racking their brains for a solution, when Hanuman got an idea.

He carved the name 'Rama' into one stone and handed it over to Nala. The stone stayed put, unmoved by the tide. Another stone with Rama's name was thrown into the water and it stuck to the other like a magnet to metal. Rama was impressed. "How did you know it would work?" he asked Hanuman. "Because your name has become my mantra. It was by chanting your name that I could fly over to Lanka, and overcome every hardship I founded there. It's your name that gives me peace, comfort, and clarity whenever I need it." Rama didn't know what to respond.

So it began the construction of the bridge. The bears and monkeys divided themselves into groups with different jobs assigned to them. Some scoured for stones and boulders from the nearby mountains, others carved Rama's name into them, and others passed those stones in a long chain to Nala, who hurled them into the sea. Jambavan and Sugriva organized the groups, Sampati - perched on a great rock - supervised the works, and Hanuman flew all over, doing the job of a hundred workers all by himself.

Now that they had a clear goal to work for, the troops were full of high spirits, and the sound of happy chatter was almost as loud as the ruckus of the construction. Rama saw Lakshman laugh for the first time in months as he competed with some of the bigger vanaras to see who could lift the bigger rock.

And Rama saw them work amazed by the fact that while he was doing it all for Sita, they were doing it all for him. They spoke eagerly of reaching Lanka and fighting the rakshasas to recover their Lord’s wife, and his honor. And, whenever a particularly big boulder was put in place, or whenever some difficulty in the construction was overcome, the workers would shout in unison "Jai Sri Rama."

And it wasn’t just the bears and monkeys, but also other animals who joined the efforts. Once, Rama spotted a little squirrel scurrying between the feet of the bigger workers. He would wet himself in the sea, and then roll on the sand, sticking the sand grains to his fur. Afterwards, he would run to the bridge and shake the grains off, filling the gaps between the rocks. Rama pick up the little one in his hand, and ran his fingers through his back, saying: “Thank you.”

What he had done to have these animals act so oddly against their nature, and to command such loyalty from them, he couldn’t say, but he felt immensely grateful anyway.

And as the days passed, their labor bore fruit. The great bridge began stretching towards to horizon, glistering in the sunlight like the Milky Way across the night sky. Rama worked strenuously along with the vanaras, knowing every stone, every boulder, every pebble, brought him a step closer to her.

“Bhaiya, look!” Lakshman pointed him to the horizon that he hadn’t glanced at for some time, so fixed was he on his labor. In the distance, faintly visible, was a stretch of land. Rama smiled. I’m coming Sita.

[munsonsduchess]

So. I re watched The Magnificent Seven again because I’m at home self isolating until my housemates covid test comes back in a couple days so I made some notes. Presented below as I watched the film … again

Teddy looks like he wants to say something to encourage Matthew not to speak but like he just can’t find the courage to speak up

Everyone turning to stare at Sam as he rides through the town. Like they aren’t used to seeing a man of colour make something of himself.

The bartender who tells Sam they don’t serve ‘that kind’ as a direct insulation that they don’t serve Sam’s kind. Which could have just been because Sam is a lawman and the barman is an outlaw but could also be more than that

Faraday isn’t as stupid as he looks. He knows exactly who Dan is and what Sam’s purpose was. He could tell something was happening and was ready in seconds with a gun drawn to help Sam.

He sticks around after everyone runs out because he knows Sam’s occupation and seems to want to know more.

Emma has obviously been searching for someone who could help for a long time. Teddy stopping her from talking to Sam and her acceptance seems to imply that they’ve spoken to people before but that no one has taken them seriously. Maybe because Emma is a woman

Emma is clearly ready to offer up anything she can to find ‘righteousness’. It also seems like she’s more than ready for a fight.

Sam had decided upon hearing Bouge’s name that he would take the job and then when Emma shared her convictions he knew he could pass off his intentions as unselfish if anyone asked

Faraday cheats at cards and is scared of the dark confirmed. He’s also clever enough to use his wits to get out of a situation when he’s seemingly at the mercy of two other men

Faraday has issues around killing people. He clearly shows remorse for his actions. He doesn’t seem to like violence but he’ll use it to get what he wants if he needs to

Does Faraday know who Joan of Arc is?

He’s also apparently willing to throw his life away for strangers

Emma is not here for your shit

Teddy is a good boy and he’s here to help his friend on her vengeance quest as all good friends should

Vasquez wants Sam to know that he’s not the type of man who kills in cold blood. He uses Emma as leverage because a white woman’s death will look worse for Sam

Sam offers to tear up the warrant to get Vas on his side but I have the feeling he would have done it anyway

Vas taking a minute to decide and figuring if he works with Sam there’s a possibility of him going free and not having to run anymore

GOODY! That hip swagger

“That’s ok son you just pay me double” Goody is a respected member of the community and his reputation proceeds him so there is a level of fear there at offending him or anyone associated with him

Faraday is clearly interested to see how people react to or behave around Goody. To see how the man stacks up to the story

Goody very interested in who Faraday and Teddy are and what they have to say. Putting them off their game by speaking in the middle of the saloon while he’s getting a shave

“I keep him employed and he keeps me on the level” clearly Billy has been helping Goody with his demons far beyond what we see later

Goody and Sam being friends warms my heart

That good old southern breeding. Goody can’t resist being charming

“Ain’t no such thing as a Texican” that’s one hell of a loaded statement right there

“This is not going to end well” couldn’t have said it better myself Goody

The Famous Pigeon Brothers who weren’t famous for very long

“I believe that bear was wearing peoples clothes” Joshua the man was snuck up on in the dead of night, had a boulder smashed over his head and has been tracking the culprits for two days. I don’t think you’d be in your right mind either

“Don’t call the alligator big mouth till you cross the river” Goody just has all the best advice

IT’S MY BOY!

There’s obviously something Faraday is trying to drown in all that whiskey and Teddy knows it which is obviously why he tells Faraday to keep it

Emma doesn’t trust Farday at all

Goody knows what’s up although he’s not one to talk about the battle behind him

MY SON! HE’S SO PRETTY I WANT TO CRY

Sam giving Vas the gun so he’s less threatening to Red. Same way he left his gun outside when they went after Vas

I love that Martin cut his hair off to be historically accurate but damn what I wouldn’t have given for a long haired Red in this movie

Peace offering or trolling? Both? Both.

“Yeah ok I trust you now”

Can I also say I love how Martin learnt to ride bareback for the historical accuracy? Like historical accuracy is my jam. Now I just wonder how accurate the costumes are

“Oh good it’s a black man and an Asian man quickly call your children inside for who knows what havoc they might bring”

I do love how the racism is never as overt as someone using a slur but it’s always there just under the surface

“Manservant? Really?”

Did they practice how they were going to come into town and look imposing or do they all just instinctively know how to pose? I know Goody does anyway

I cannot keep a straight face when Farday calls himself the worlds greatest lover

Sam has no time for these Blackstone men and I am here for it

Sam’s horse is just called Horse

Goody having PTSD flashbacks before the shooting even starts since he’s clearly triggered by just the situation

A western staple where the bad guys always miss and the good guys never do

At times like this Mal Reynolds comes to me speaking words of wisdom “shoot the man not the horse, a dead horse is cover, a live horse is a whole lot of panic”

Faraday and Vas being very gay and poor confused Red like “tie him up what?”

“Lincoln like the president” and goody just “oh damn”

Someone please give Emma a better shirt. She’s gonna spill out of that one

“Seems I was the only one with balls enough to do so” damn right you were

Emma just breaking down when there’s no one around to see her use she has to be strong

“Fame is a sarcophagus” “what’s a syllable?”

TABLE MANNERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TABLE MANNERS

Goodbye to the working girls the town isn’t the same without them

Emma has a better shirt! She still looks like she’s gonna spill out though

Shooting lessons with Goody and Faraday

“The way of northern aggression”

Billy’s class just running away because he’s way too good

“Make me some eggs”

“GET SOME GRAVEL IN YOUR CRAW!”

Faraday trying to goad Goody into proving himself. Sam’s wariness and Goody turning around and showing Faraday just why he got the title he did despite the reasons why he doesn’t pick up a rifle anymore

Do any of them know what Jack is talking about?

“So far so good”

We’re to assume it’s Goody picking off Bouge’s men at the mine since he’s the only one who could make those sorts of shots which means Sam has talked him into doing it even though he’s seen what happened to Goody during the initial fight

“I’ve always wanted to blow something up”

The look on the faces of the people who live in town as the miners come through. They’ve always lived separately from these men and now they’re forced to look at their faces and see just how they’ve all been living

Sam putting the dynamite in the hotel like it’s no big deal

Poor Peter Skarsgard. He’s the bad guy or the poor Dad in a horror movie while his dad is spooning Colin Firth on a boat in Greece

“I worked for my money. I wasn’t given a million dollar loan. I’m a good guy”

Emma can shoot just fine. She does not need you Faraday

“I had a father thank you” “I didn’t” proceeds to show off as if to prove himself

“They say the nightmares never go away” no they really don’t ask Goody

“Avenge me!” Yeah faraday it’s not that hard

“I am to fight” “it comes to that and we’re all dead” excuse you Sam but Emma is the one who brought you here and she’s the one who’s been raring for the fight since the beginning but sure put her with the women and children

I’m also so mad they cut out of the scene of Vas and the school teachers kid talking

“I have three Maria’s!”

I’m afraid of owls too goody you aren’t alone

TABLE MANNERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

How long had Bouge been in Rose Creek and making the residents live in fear? That it had to be the seven who were able to show them how to live their life again

Those loose white shirts though 👌🏼

Squinting into the sun as the realisation dawns

Sam knows Goody better than Goody knows himself and Goody knows Sam better than Sam knows himself

Sam doing his best to help his friend with his PTSD but Goody just can’t

“It looks like he’s started to drink” that’s because Goody was his friend his best friend and there are untold emotions and god knows what else between them and now that man had left but not just that but left him behind is torturous

“I’m hungry” You little shit!” Red Harvest. Professional Troll

Sam seeking refuge in what’s left of the church. Feeling the proverbial noose tightening as he clutches at his neck

Emma reminding us what this whole endeavour is for. How it all started. How it’s going to end

Bouge sitting back because he’s sure his hired men will be enough. He’s never faced opposition before so he’s confident he still won’t. Or at least that his money will solve all his problems

Also if Red only wears his war paint for special occasions and if he was tracking the group prior to joining them does that mean he put his war paint on specifically to talk to Sam

Another man in Goody’s spot in the bell tower because presumably he’s the second best shot with a rifle or the only other person they could trust up there

A+ use of Fox holes though

Jack reciting his prayers as he goes absolutely feral

Faraday’s happy little smile when he finally gets to blow something up

Jack trying to help as many men as he can, men who are fathers, husbands, good honest men

Bouge who doesn’t seem to care one ounce that the people in the village are being slaughtered and bringing the battling gun out just for extra overkill

“You ok güero?” “So far so good”

“We still have men there sir” proof that Bouge does not care one single ounce for human life that isn’t his own

That rebel yell

“The devils breath” I can only imagine how a Gatling gun got that name especially from a war vet who’s likely seen countless friends allies and enemies alike be blown down by this devil

Faraday being concerned for the children even though he’s injured himself

Jack protecting Teddy at the cost of his own life. Defiant of Denali to the end But accepting his death with a sigh believing in his faith that he’ll be rewarded in heaven and reunited with his family

“I knew you’d be back” Billy has so much faith in Goodnight and I’m gonna cry

Emma with an empty gun putting herself in front of an injured man between the injured man and Denali

Denali ain’t shit!

“You’re a disgrace”

“My daddy used to say a lot of things” these two I cannot cope

“I might need a new vest” Faraday you reckless idiot

“Hit the steeple”

“I got him!” “Oh Goody” I’m not crying you’re crying

I know there’s a lot of talk about Chris Pratt being the worst Chris but he was so good in this movie I swear. Which yeah I know doesn’t change anything but when you see him playing Faraday in that last scene where it’s all down to him. I can’t

“I’ve always been lucky with one eyed jacks”

Nope definitely not crying. Not me

Bouge’s complete disregard for human life as he surveys the town

Bouge V Sam

“If god didn’t want them sheered he wouldn’t have made them sheep” says a man who feels no remorse at all for the blood on his hands

This time it’s Bouge who’s going to feel the noose tighten and I am here for the cinematic drama of it all

God won’t save you now Bouge. Run into the church you like. It’s not going to help

“Ask for forgiveness” The reveal of the rope mark. What Sam has been doing in Rose Creek this whole time. Why he took the job at the mention of Bouge’s name

[cecilspeaks]

162 - “Alpha”

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Fear makes the heart grow louder. And death makes the heart grow flowers. Welcome to Night Vale.

Amelia Anna Alfaro was always the best at everything. On the day she was born, she was named the healthiest baby at Night Vale General Hospital. The doctors had never seen a healthier baby. “What a healthy baby,” they said from behind a bullet proof two-way mirror, as they operated the robotic arms that carefully held the infant aloft. The doctors high-fived each other, missing slightly. The trick, by the way, is to keep your eye on the other person’s elbow. That or glue high-powered magnets to each person’s hand. And all of the nurses cheered from dozens of feet down the hallway, where they were playing with a standard Tarot deck, common in most neonatal units. This cheering was unrelated to Amelia’s birth. The nurses had drawn the ten of swords, which is everyone’s favorite card. It features a relaxed man receiving acupuncture by a river.

Amelia learned to walk at 4 months, and to talk at 6 months. She read Plato’s “Republic” for the first time at age 4. She taught herself German and began to write sonnets in that language at age 7. At age 10, she won her first engineering competition after designing a concrete canoe that could float even on the most turbulent water. There is no body of water in Night Vale, so she had to prove her work using a software she wrote that generated three-dimensional models to corroborate her advanced mechanical physics formulas. She even won the state spelling bee five years in a row, from ages 9 to 13. Her streak was only broken when the spelling bee was canceled, after the sponsors lost their dictionary.

Amelia was always the best, and her mother knew it. Her mother was proud of her daughter, or rather, her mother was proud of herself for producing such a daughter. Or rather, she was proud of both, in a way that was difficult for them to untangle. Amelia’s mother was named Yvette. Yvette could not afford much for her daughter. She worked long hours to earn the respect of her bosses, which (-) [0:04:32] her promotions and larger paychecks, but Yvette had hit the glass ceiling. She did not want this limitation for her daughter. Her daughter would need to be smarter, more talented, and more driven than she. Yvette wanted Amelia’s value to the world to be so great that no one could deny her success.

Yvette recognized Amelia’s specialness and pushed hard to make her even more special, signing Amelia up for athletics and adult learning classes and piano lessons. Amelia sometimes pushed against this. “Mother, I don’t want to” was met with, “But you will, Amelia.” “Why?” was met with, “Because I said so.” “I hate you for this” was met with, “You will love me for it later.”

Begrudgingly, Amelia fulfilled her mother’s wishes. It wasn’t because she understood her mother’s motivation to secure her child a better life, nor was it because Amelia did not have the stomach to fight back. No, Amelia did it because it all came so easy. She was a black belt, a sharp shooter, an academic decathlon champion. She wrote her first novel at age 12, it was called “A Golden Age for Parachuting”, in which an all-Jewish female parachute team wins Olympic gold in 1936 Berlin in front of Adolf Hitler. In the publisher’s rejection letter, the editor said the novel was “immaculately written, however parachuting stories are out of vogue. Do you have anything about magical baseball players?” Amelia did. It was a novel called “One Last Swing for the Tuesday Boys”, but she had written it in German and did not have time to translate the “Dienstag Jungen” manuscript, because she was currently taking a course on bird husbandry.

Yvette enrolled the teenage Amelia in night classes at the community college, where she took English 113, “Sonnets are for lovers”; structural engineering 212, “Buttress is a funny word”; and meteorology 301, “Clouds y’all, amirite?” She earned all As and scores for college credit before she even graduated high school. None of these challenges were difficult for Amelia. She was the best at everything.

But her life was not perfect. Because of the voices. It was the voices that made life hard for Amelia. From birth, she heard the constant chatter of dozens of people. None of the voices spoke directly to  Amelia, they just talked and talked about their lives, and Amelia was afraid of the voices and what the voices might imply about herself. She found solace in puzzles, crosswords, nonograms, acrostics, cryptics, Sudoku, which I think is the one where you have to catch a bunch of marbles with a lever operated hippopotamus. Her mother hated Amelia’s puzzle vice. If she caught Amelia doing puzzles, Yvette would make Amelia go practice archery or write poetry or at least listen to classical music. Amelia’s favorite was Van Cliburn’s masterful 1961 record of Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto nr 13: Knuckles on the Black Keys”. When she was thinking through the solution of a puzzle, the voices did not speak to her. All was silent. It was her only time of peace. It was the only time her body could rest and curl up comfortably into her own thoughts. Anything that took her away from her logic problems including music, no matter how soothing, invited the voices back into Amelia’s thoughts.

Amelia was accepted to several top colleges across the country, including MIT, Stanford, Rice and The University of What It Is, but she wanted to stay near her home town and her family, so she went to State. Hey, that’s where my brother-in-law went! Go State! [chuckles] Ahem. She was elected the youngest president of the student body ever at age 17, and graduated valedictorian two years later. Her friends, her professors, her mother all knew the world was Amelia’s. She could become poet laureate or a senator or a supreme court justice or a quantum physicist. But she became none of those. This is not to say Amelia was not successful or that she amounted to nothing. It is to say, the semantics of success were her own and no one else’s. Amelia became an air traffic controller. The voices never told Amelia to become an air traffic controller, they were never that specific. The voices did not tell her to do anything, they simply talked about first dates, about  apartment hunting, about their grandmothers’ improved health, about a bad movie they sort of loved. None of the voices talked directly to her, it was simply as though she overheard conversations from lives lived somewhere else. Other people and their quotidian hopes and worries and interests. She tried seeing therapists and psychiatrists. She tried medication to stop the voices, but nothing worked. Eventually she decided they were not harmful voices and that she was not dealing with schizophrenia. She simply heard people talking at all hours about all things, having nothing to do with her. And they never told her to become an air traffic controller. Amelia chose her own career, her own path. Others though the reason was that it was the fist job opportunity to present itself for her. Maybe it was her admiration of aircraft, maybe a moral sense of serving humanity through public safety and comfort. In fact, it was none of these reasons. But it should not be surprising to know that Amelia was very good at air traffic control. She was calm, clear, and efficient. The Night Vale international airport, although when Amelia started it was just a commuter hub, has never had a high volume of plane traffic and almost all of those are departures. There are very few arrivals. My husband Carlos, he’s a scientist and he is also very good at his job, tells me that it’s impossible to have far more departures than arrivals, but I told him, not everything has to make sense all the time.

So, in some ways, air traffic control in Night Vale was easier for Amelia than just about any other class or job or task she’d ever attempted. It appeared from the outside to be far below her capabilities. She held that job for 20 years, even taking over as president of the Night Vale chapter of air traffic controllers’ union. In 2004, she was featured in the cover of “Afformative”, a monthly trade magazine for air traffic controllers. The headline of the article was “You’re cleared for success”. In 2006, she was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the annual Roger Con, a conventional for air traffic controllers and fans of air traffic control. It’s a huge deal, held every year in Orlando. People dress like their favorite airline pilots and wait in long lines for autographs from top flight attendants. There are even panel discussions about everything from the best textiles for seat cushions to secret first class meal offerings. Amelia was the best at what she did. She probably would have been the best poet laureate or senator, but this was the path she chose. She chose this path because of the voices, not from what they said, but what they didn’t say. When Amelia was in the control tower, when she was communicating with captains and co-pilots and navigators, her head was clear. All was silent. It was like those many nights, sneaking a copy of the crossword from the newspaper on the kitchenette and solving it by flashlight under her covers. She became an air traffic controller to be by herself, to become her own person. Her mother was disappointed, but loved her in spite of it. Her professors were let down, but still had many fabulous of their greatest student. Her friends were just happy she was happy.

Things changed on June 15, 2012, when Delta flight 18713 made radio contact. In her tall tower, at her tiny airport, in the middle of a vast desert, in the middle of the American Southwest, an airplane appeared on Amelia’s radar. It was carrying 143 passengers and 6 crew members and was flying from Detroit to Albany over the great lakes of the American Northeast. It appeared briefly, the green dot blinking in and out of existence like the sun glinting off a water ripple. It was almost unnoticeable. But everyone noticed it. Later, Amelia was the only one who admitted to noticing it. The radio transmission was equally brief, a surge of static and only one word, difficult to discern but she heard it. “Alpha” was the single word. The letter A in the Nato alphabet. It was garbled, so maybe it wasn’t that word, maybe it was some more adult variation of “Oh fudge”. Alpha. Oh fudge. It was unclear. Amelia requested identification of the aircraft. She requested further communication, but nothing came. As soon as it had squawked, it had gone silent. But while the radio communication was silent, the voices were not. On June 15, 2012, upon hearing a word that sounded like “alpha”, these myriad conversations returned. No one else in the tower could hear them, but Amelia Anna Alfaro could. And for the first time in her life, she began to speak back to them. Everyone else in the tower could hear that. The voices did not cease. The voices continued for days and days and Amelia tried to talk back with them. As one voice said: “I have an interview on Monday,” Amelia would ask “for what job” or if a voice said, “We went to Palm Springs on vacation,” Amelia would say, “Did you also travel out to the Salton Sea?” But over and over, no response. The voices did not affect the quality of Amelia’s work, but it did affect the perceived quality of her work, and her colleagues became uncomfortable with and distrusting of Amelia.

A month later, Amelia heard that word again from one of the voices. “Alpha”. The same voice that radioed in June. But upon hearing it again, she realizes that they didn’t say “alpha” at all. What they said, coming up.

But first The weather.

[“Skinchanger” by Skeptic skepticdeath.bandcamp.com]

The voices said “Alfaro”. The word had been truncated just as the airplane’s appearance in Night Vale had been truncated. The voice saying the word was the captain of the aircraft, and he had been trying to tell Amelia something. The pilot was trying to tell Amelia that he knew her, had always known her since her birth. He didn’t know how he knew her, just that he did, and he wanted to tell her he had found her. And she should find him. “Where are you,” Amelia asked the captain. “No Where,” the voice said. “Did you land?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the voice said. “Were there injuries?” Amelia asked. “Minor,” the voice said. “Do you hear the other voices too?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the captain said. “I’m with them right now. Find us, Amelia.” “Where are you?” Amelia asked again, louder, more scared than before. “No Where,” the voice said, not like the vague concept of in no place but No Where, two words capitalized like the name of a specific place. Amelia felt a tap on her shoulder. It was another air traffic controller. “Uh, boss wants to see you, Amelia,” they said. But Amelia did not go to see the boss. She knew. She knew her time in the tower was done. She grabbed her belongings and walked to the elevator, out across the tarmac to a shuttle to a parking lot and into her car, and no one saw her again. Her friends said she always talked about going back to school to get an advanced degree. Maybe she went to Stanford. Or Rice, or The University of What It Is. Other friends said she had lost all touch with reality, talking to people who were not there, and maybe her mother checked Amelia into the Night Vale asylum.

Yvette says Amelia knew too much, that agents from a vague yet menacing government agency had been to their house and that Amelia must have been taken to a secret location. Representatives from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau in Washington, DC, came to Night Vale two months ago to investigate the disappearance of flight 18713. They are on an undercover mission inside the Night Vale asylum right now, on a tip from Sheriff Sam, to discover more clues into this mystery. Perhaps Amelia is in there too. But I don’t think so. I think she went to find the plane. I think the voices were the passengers on Delta 18713. I think she set out looking for them. Perhaps wandering the desert, the great No Where, to find the people who had been a part of her life since birth.

Amelia. Anna. Alfaro. was always the best at everything. And if anyone will find the plane, she will.

Stay tuned next for our new investment advice show “Billionaire Roulette”.

And as always, Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Love means never having to say “you’re a werewolf”.

[4pondsinabox]

Women of the Waverider: Mona Wu

The Reviews Are In, so guess who’s back to deliver some more of her fandom feminist mantra? What can I say, I serve to please.

For the second installment of my Women of the Waverider series, also known as “the four most hated characters on Legends of Tomorrow who deserve so much more than what they are given by the fans,” I will be discussing Mona Wu. The amount of hate and downright slander against Mona in the fandom has surpassed any I have ever seen for a single character, and that’s coming from someone who uses a River Song icon. Many viewers are already likely aware of this, as this negative response is what resulted in Ramona’s significant role reduction in the latest season, but it’s never too late to thoroughly dig into what really fueled such backlash.

The most interesting part? How much in common she shares with a male fan favorite.

Why Mona Wu deserves MUCH more from you

Of the four characters I have focused on in this series, I will be very direct in saying Mona is my least favorite of them, but I don’t hate her by any means. There’s just a lot of love to live up to when it comes to the other three. I’m pointing this out because I was surprised how easy it was for me to defend her. A character doesn’t have to be one of your favorites or “click” with you to recognize when people are treating them unjustly.

Personal bias aside, Mona was introduced in series 4 as a generous, bright-eyed delivery girl who always wanted to see the best in everyone. Prior to her arrival, only one other character on the show maintained this eternally positive outlook on life (to the occasional annoyance of the rest of the Waverider team), someone whose departure this season angered many fans.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that bright, opportunistic Mona Wu was written in as a potential replacement for bright, opportunistic Ray Palmer. All that was missing was a few science degrees. The team greatly benefited from the presence of such optimism onboard, Nora Darhk is living proof of that, but the fans’ poor reception of Mona’s character meant this plan was cast aside - rather hurriedly. So the question remains, what went wrong?

Much as Ray did with Nora, Mona saw the potential for goodness in all magical creatures. Like Ray, Mona stood firmly beside them even when just about everyone else turned against her. There was even a love story involved in both cases, although their endings were significantly different. Her person of interest being noticeably non-human could have definitely turned some viewers off, as that can be an odd thing to watch, but that’s not an argument that’s generally been used against her and was rarely even mentioned as the series went on. Let’s break down a few of my favorite, hard to believe but real, quotes I’ve seen the past few months and find out, shall we?

- “Why tf does she seem happy all the time?”

Ok, why does Ray seem happy all the time? He’s always cheering people up and excited to experience new things even at the most inconvenient of times, but no one has gotten on his case about it. Is the problem that you can only accept female characters when they’re moody and averse to people? Considering other members of this series, I wouldn’t be surprised. There seems to be a trend in fans hating happy, relaxed women, which is concerning when you consider the real life implications. I believe I may have mentioned this in a previous installment, but tragedy and trauma are not what make women interesting. Maybe you do find Mona annoying, but do not attribute that to her happiness when other characters are loved for it.

- “How dare Mona expose Charlie like that in front of Rebecca Silver’s fans, for all she knew she and Mick were on an undercover mission!”

You ... do know what being a fan is like, right? If one of your friends was imposing as a favorite author or actor, wouldn’t you be offended? Stop holding women to impossibly high emotional standards when white men in the same show are beloved for constant drinking and having angry outbursts. Of COURSE Mona was hurt seeing someone she knows pretend to be one of her favorite icons, it’s an insult to all the writing the real Rebecca has done. Why would she have allowed anyone to get away with that, much less people she thought she could trust?

- “How DARE Mona called herself a legend!”

If Wally West is considered a Legend after one episode, Mona absolutely deserves that title too after her handful of episodes. Just because you don’t personally like her doesn’t mean her contribution to saving the world on a number of occasions matters any less.

- “The writers didn’t know what to do with her storyline”

As previously described, there was a clear progression from helping magical creatures, to loving one, to becoming one. Following that, she needed to learn to control her powers and accept her new self. The writers knew perfectly well where they wanted to take her afterwards but the fans stopped them from doing that, so they brought her in only when needed. If you choose not to see that, then fine, but not liking a storyline doesn’t mean it wasn’t well planned out to begin with - even if plans had to change.

- “The actress can’t act”

Now you’re just being petty. It’s all fine and well to dislike a character, but to focus that frustration on the actor themselves? That is step number 1 to becoming an internet troll. Legends of Tomorrow was not Ramona’s first gig and it hasn’t been her last, so clearly many casting directors with far more experience than any individual fan would have something to say about a “bad acting” claim. Mona does have a very distinctive presence, which clearly isn’t for everyone, but attributing that to acting skills is just a poor attempt to justify one’s negative opinion.

Mona is kind, generous, and overly perky much of the time, all traits she shares with fan-favorite Ray Palmer. On top of that, although very brief, we’ve seen the heavy weight her disapproving parents have on her, which makes Mona’s persistence to help others all the more inspiring. If one of these two characters can be recognized for such positive characteristics, then the other absolutely should as well.

[bramblepatch]

The Magnus Archives cast (or at least everyone I can remember who's still alive at the end of S4) ranked by how likely I think they are to survive season 5:

Jonelias Magnechard: Local Avatar Of The Eye Ruins Everyone Else's Doomsday Plans By Cultivating Super-Archivist Who Hates His Guts. Get Rekt Jonah. 0/10 chance of survival.

Julia Montauk: I don't think Julia remembers what a sense of perspective is. I also don't think she realizes that the easily-kidnapped weirdo she's been after for a while had not fully come into his power as an Avatar last time she tried to stab him. She's not likely to stop until something stops her, and that thing is not going to be a well-reasoned argument. 1/10 chance of survival.

Trevor Herbert: Trevor's chances would be a lot better if he wasn't currently babysitting Julia, honestly. He's proven capable of caution and pacing himself in the past, but that doesn't do him much good when he's backing her up. 2/10 chance of survival.

Daisy Tonner: More than likely, the long arc of her messy relationship with accountability and vulnerability is going to catch up with her. She might take some motherfuckers down with her. She might take some friends down with her. Either way, it's going to be messy. 2/10 chance of survival, and even if she does survive, the thing that walks away is unlikely to be recognizable as Daisy.

Basira Hussein: Arguments that she was right and should have been allowed to just kill Jon aside, Basira's motivations have been growing increasingly counter to the main themes of the show and she started out as a commentary on toxic codependency in positions of authority. I suspect she's on a tragic arc, and it'll end badly for her. Which doesn't necessarily mean she'll die horribly, but it's a strong possibility. 4/10 chance of survival.

Simon Fairchild: On the one hand, he's one of the most formidable Avatars left that has any direct interaction with the cast, and may well come into conflict with them before the show's over. On the other hand, as far as I can tell he's survived since the fifteenth century purely on the strength of being too expansively annoying to die. Could go either way. 5/10 chance of survival.

Helen: The Distortion itself is probably going to be ok; even with all the Entities fully manifest, I doubt something so deeply of the Spiral exists on a level that can be fully stamped out. Helen herself may or may not be the face of the Distortion by the end, but then, it's always been hard to say to what degree the Distortion's humanoid manifestations are independent of the main monster.💫 /10 chance of survival.

Annabelle Cane: She's got her fingers in a few too many pies to be really safe, but she's very good at staying three steps ahead of everyone else. If she dies, it's probably because she gives someone sufficient motivation to beat her at her own game. 6/10 chance of survival.

Jared Hopworth: Assuming he survived when the Distortion dumped him in the river - and I see no reason to assume he didn't - I actually think his chances aren't bad? He's proven self sufficient and very difficult to kill in the past, and while he's not friendly toward the heroes, he doesn't seem to bear them any particular animus, either. The main reason I'm not giving him better odds is that he doesn't seem to have many allies, and practically everyone who interacts with him sees him as a threat, a potentially useful tool, or both. 6/10 chance of survival.

Jude Perry: Might still come into conflict with Team Archives in a way that leads to her destruction, but Jude's mostly just an aimless, freewheeling source of destruction at this point in her life and I don't see any reason that the plot should demand her death. She should be ok as long as she doesn't do something stupid, although to be fair Jude is probably fully capable of doing something stupid. 7/10 chance of survival.

Jonathan Sims: Jon's fate as the protagonist, more than any other character's, is directly tied to the tone of the ultimate resolution of the story - if it's a pure tragedy or a pyrric victory, he might die horribly or might live but lose himself entirely. If the story ends on a hopeful note, he'll either be ok or will have the opportunity to make a productive and dignified self-sacrifice. 7/10 chance of survival, but there's no guarentee he'll be happy about it.

Georgie Barker: Ironically, removing her ability to feel fear seems to have given her room to double up on both common sense and self-preservation instinct. Also arguably one of the characters with the most to live for: a loving girlfriend, a cat, a career in a field that's about as close to apocalypse-proof as you're going to find, the opportunity to rub her ex's incompetence as a sentient being in his face... Georgie could still get herself into trouble, but she's in a pretty strong position. 8/10 chance of survival.

Martin Blackwood: Martin's rounded the curve on his character arc, by which I mean, he seems to have gained enough perspective that his voice actor no longer actively resents his existence. Having survived Peter's machinations and learned to actually communicate with his loved ones occasionally and not volunteer as tribute every five minutes, he's in a solid place going into S5. 8/10 chance of survival.

Melanie King: Melanie has already earned her happy ending and severed her active connections to both Powers that had a claim to her; she may not be totally safe, but it would be hard to kill her off now without making it feel pointless and vaguely spiteful in a way that doesn't serve the story. 9/10 chance of survival.

Oliver Banks: Generally doesn't pick fights. Is probably already dead in pretty much any way that matters, metaphysically speaking. He'd have to work pretty hard to get himself killed off for real at this point. 9/10 chance of survival.

The Admiral: Look, if anyone is getting out of this thing alive, the Admiral will. He's a good boy and he will be fine. We know that this, at least, is something that Jonny holds sacred in his writing: he will not kill the cat for shock value. 100/10 chance of survival.

[ronweasleyisourking]

Next gen headcanons

Edward "Teddy" Remus Lupin

Nonbinary, uses he/him and they/them pronouns

Pansexual, but has mostly dated boys

Hufflepunk

Mixed bag of depression and anxiety

Tattoos and piercings everywhere. Also, a tattoo artist.

Walks with a cane due to chronic back pain

His first kiss was with his best friend, Basil Haywood-Karasu

He dated Victoire for a bit, but it didn't work out. They're better as friends

Lived in between houses for most of his life. His grandmother Andromeda and his godparents, Harry and Ginny share custody

When Andromeda began having a hard time getting around on her own, Harry and Ginny opened up their house to her happily, though this was after Teddy moved out on his own

Winifred "Winnie" Margaret Weasley-Wood

Daughter of Percy and Oliver

Bisexual

Gryffindor but almost Ravenclaw

Named after her late uncle and Grandma Molly, whose full name was Margaret, though she would never admit it

Has read every book in the restricted section, whether she was allowed to or not

Hands are constantly in motion. Does math in the air, taps fingers on surfaces, sometimes just does random stuff with her hands, has to stop herself from doing hand motions when talking, etc. Has no idea what causes it.

The shortest of all her siblings/cousins

Hosts a Qudditch Little League for her siblings/cousins

Victoire "Vic" Apolline Weasley

Bisexual

Ravenclaw

Sort of a preppy punk. Loves faux leather jackets but also loves tiaras :) completely beautiful, let's be honest

Curses in French all the time

Attended Magik N.O.U., a wizarding school in New Orleans in her 7th year, which sparked her love for travel

Learned wandless and non-verbal magic just because people thought she couldn't; the dictionary definition of "girls can be smart AND pretty"

Could totally kick Teddy Lupin's ass

Has to worst temper of anyone in her extended family. And that's really saying something

International Hit Wizard

Georgie Rhyme Jordan

Child of Lee Jordan, honorary Weasley due to his relationship with Fred prior to his Fred's death

Pansexual and Genderqueer; he/him or any pronouns

Feminist AF

Really into street art. May have graffiti-ed a few anti-Brexit and anti-Tory pieces around England, but there's no proof

Not vegetarian but has cut down on meals with meat

Was born with atrial septal defect

Megara "Meg" Rhys Weasley-Wood

Demigirl. Experiences some dysphoria but not a lot

Partially deaf due to an untreated ruptured eardrum.

Has a huge, fluffy, orange cat named Hercules

Blind enough that she has to wear coke bottle glasses.

Animal lover right to the core. Donates to any and all shelters that she knows have good practices and tries to adopt as many animals as possible from the bad ones

Loves divination. Has minor seer powers.

Has a magical disorder where smoke comes out of her hears when she gets mad.

Frederick "Freddie" Gideon Weasley II

Bisexual. In love with Taras Krum, who was in a student exchange program with Durmstrang and Hogwarts.

Suffered severely after getting hit by a bludger in his 6th year; a concussion and head trauma leading to epilepsy

Severe depression and imposter syndrome

Not much of a prankster

Bookworm

James "Jamie" Sirius Potter

Red hair + hazel eyes + freckles everywhere

Got a gold tongue piercing at fourteen and that's how he found out that he was allergic to gold

Smoked pixie dust once

Lover of poorly timed finger guns and funky socks (yes, he is bisexual, why do you ask?)

Not a professional quidditch player or auror

He runs a diner called "Lumos" that serves the best burgers in the wizarding world

Doesn't think he can do anything right

River Lee Jordan

Trans girl; lesbian

Allergic to cinnamon

Loves pranking; Dominique, Lily, Romany, and her prank their cousins all the time. They're terrifying.

Writer but she works as a herbologist assistant, waitress, and cashier at WWW on the side just to support herself

Can hear magic. It's an almost constant buzzing when she's around her family and at Hogwarts. Sometimes just needed to be alone so that she couldn't hear the buzzing.

Gwendolyn "Wendy" Lucille Weasley-Wood

Pansexual

Has a genderfluid s/o, Ari Spinnet-Bell

Very environmentalist. Tries not to be annoying about it.

Founded a Hogwarts theatre club and actually wrote a few, very very gay plays and musicals

Hosts a podcast/blog with her roommates (River, Ari & Susmita) called Witches Unstitched where they talk about anything and everything under the sun

Helped create a bunch of healing potions with all the plants she has in her greenhouse(s)

Dominique "Dom" Gabrielle Weasley

Pansexual and Aromantic

In a QPR with Lorcan Scamander, her best friend

Hates being compared to her older sister

When Lorcan got cancer and got pulled out of school, she took time off school while he was getting treatment

Shaved off all her hair when he lost his

Leader of the Pluto is a Planet society at Hogwarts

Best friend in the family is James, despite the fact that she and Arthur are in the Slytherin! Marauders together

Loves firewhiskey and menthol cigarettes (don't tell Wendy)

Illegal animagus - a white cat. Her nickname is Duchess.

Arthur "Art" Rubeus Potter

Gay + in love with Scorpius Malfoy

Dyed the tips of his hair green and silver when he was 12

Loves leather jackets, chokers, and combat boots

Has too many piercings to count, but his favorite is his deep purple nose ring. Hates the idea of a tongue ring

Trained himself in Legilimency and Occlumency

Learned Parseltongue, Mermish, and several other creature languages because "he was bored"

Knows quite a bit of dark magic, but is not a dark wizard

Had a lot of tattoos. Most were of creatures from the Black Lake, the Giant Squid taking up his entire back, and a merperson takes up his upper left arm

But over his heart is the Scorpius constellation, sketches of the four animagi are on his left hip, and on his ankle are magically fading footsteps that would eerily familiar to anyone who had looked at the Marauder’s Map

Went to a wizarding school located in the Great Barrier Reef, which offered courses for 18 - 21 year olds who had graduated from wizarding schools around the world

Loves puns, boxing, extra greasy pizza, potions, pet names, horror movies that are actually scary, singing in the shower, and his boyfriend, Scorpius Malfoy

Marine Mazoologist

Roxanne "Roxy" Fabian Weasley

Bisexual

Has been known to "experiment" with girls. In the Quidditch locker rooms. Forgets to lock doors. Oops

Her patronus is a coyote. Her happiest memory is of when her and Fred jumped of the roof of Hogwarts with their brooms. They had been trying to recreate the last scene of Pratical Magic, but like, with brooms

Loves cooking and knitting with her Grandma Molly

Studies in the strangest places. Lily once found her studying in the secret passage to Hogsmeade one night. Her brother found her sleeping in the Astronomy tower, with books strewn around her. Scorpius and Arthur once found her studying in a secret alcove (they still won’t admit to her why they had wanted to be in secret alcove in the first place)

Down to fight anyone for any reason

In love with Susmita Patil

Healer

Rosa "Rose" Bud Granger-Weasley

Lesbian

An absolute foodie

Named after a Charles Dickens character

Allergic to cats, which irks her mom and pleases her dad

President of the current Hogwarts chapter of S.P.C.W. (Society for the Promotion of Creature Welfare). Hermione has worked tirelessly in the ministry to get laws passed but even ministers can't change everything in a day

After graduating, her, Arthur, Dominique, Roxanne, Scorpius, Lorcan, and Lysander all went on a camping trip. Harry, Ron, and Hermione got really anxious about it

Loves reading trashy tabloids to call down. Circles all the stories about her family to torture her cousins with (jokingly)

It's a 50/50 shot whether she going to argue with you, and cite her sources, or if she is going to knock your teeth out

Spent her 7th year at The Salem Witches Institute in Massachusetts, a private all-girls school

Historian for wizarding history. Runs a small museum out of Grimmauld Place, which the Potters don't live in but Harry stills owns + has cleaned up a bit

Lily "Lils" Euphemia Luna Potter

Has meniere's disease

Vegetarian for medical reasons

Needs to wear glasses but never does

Gryffindor, but wanted to be in Slytherin

Will help out anyone and everyone if she can

Lived with Teddy for a bit after he moved out on his own

Asexual and Panromantic. In a polyamorous relationship with Frankie Longbottom and Estelle Huang

Had a pet snake named Besa. The snake was nearly longer than she was tall, non-poisonous, and the sweetest thing ever (at least, according to Lily)

Beat up James when he said that she "threw like a girl". She cracked one of his ribs, gave him a black eye, and broke his nose in three places. To this day, he claims that his nose is a little crooked (he was nine. she was five.)

Went to a wizarding school in the Himalayas in her 5th year, on the international student exchange program

Has very long hair that is almost always up in bun(s), braid(s) or ponytails. Has to magically shorten it for Quidditch games

Loves mysteries

Hugo "Go-Go" Cabret Granger-Weasley

Genderfluid [they/them]

Colorblind, dyslexic, and has ADHD

Dragonologist in Sweden, but almost went into wandmaking

In love with Allie Longbottom, who always painted her face Hufflepuff colors for games after Hugo got on the team

Uses medically prescribed pixie dust to help with their extreme anxiety; is careful not to take too much

Has a pet ferret that they named Star Boy

Joshua "Josh" Wilhelm Weasley-Wood

On the autistic spectrum

He takes his emotional support golden retriever, Laurel, to Hogwarts with him to help with the changing enviorment

Loves matchbox cars. Has hundreds of them. Carries one or two around with him at all times to fidget with

Loves hiking through the Forbidden Forest, with supervision from his dad, Professor Percy Weasley, or one of the other teachers, of course. All of them are willing to walk with him when they have time, but he loves hiking with his dad most

Has a hard time focusing when there's a lot of noise around him, so of course he has noise cancelling headphones

Learned how to fix up cars and bikes from his grandfather; opened up his own mechanic shop; loves riding the first motorcycle that he and his grandfather fixed up through the streets of London, especially with his girlfriend Lavi

It took him a while to overcome balance issues, but with training to be a seeker in Quidditch, and a lot of time spent taking practice drives on his bike in the fields around the Burrow, he was able to overcome them and once he did, he was on his motorcycle every chance he got

Has accomandations made for him when it comes to eating at Hogwarts, because the food can bother him sometimes

Hates when different foods on his plate touch

Romany "Romy" Charlotte Weasley-Wood

Lesbian-Oriented aroace; in a qpr with Maisie Greengrass

Is prone to accidental magic and has a bit of an anger issue that she works through with a punching bag, bring a beater on the Quidditch team, and playing drums

Her, Tessa Weasley, and Sariel Goyle formed a band called Bloody Bitchin' Babes that played underground gigs at Hogwarts parties before getting work at parties and bars

Hates all of her classes, except Transfiguration

Her plans look like the walls of detectives in murder mysteries. Photographs, post-it notes, paper ripped out of notebooks, red strings, and everything

Burnt Hufflepuff

Royal "King" Kingsley Jordan

Bigender + Bisexual; xe/xem pronouns

Loves all types of clothing but especially suits, flowery blouses, crop tops, chunky belts, scarves, and Doc Martins

Plays the piano all the time, xe even has a piano in xyr room

Gets chronic migraines, has been known to sit/lay in the dark for hours until the pain subsides. Hates taking meds for it

Never has her phone screen brightness above the lowest setting because xe hates that xyr light sensitivity may take xyr away from xyr phone, which is xyr life

Would love to travel one day

Louis "Louie" Antoine Weasley

Only has a little bit of veela charm, usually enough to get him out of minor trouble, and it isn't always permanent

Started taking in magical creatures when he was seven, when Luna gave him a suitcase like Newt Scamander's and got another one when he started adopting muggle creatures as well. He especially loves his mokes and his chickens.

He loves swimming in the Great Lake with the Giant Squid

Loves carmelized apricots, pumpkin gorgonzola flan, cinnamon roll cheesecake, molasses cookies, Bulgarian candy -specifically chocolate bars, sweet potato pancakes, and homemade butter-maple syrup

Was in a student exchange program with Beauxbatons in his 4th year and again in 6th year with the Canadian wizarding school and he loved both experiences

Tessa "Tess" Rue Weasley

Can see people's auras

An expert at potions. Began working on a cure for lycanthropy at the age of 13 and a long 17 years later, she finally accomplished it. She always says that she would have done it quicker if only she didn't have to sleep to live

Part of the potions club at Hogwarts, which is a much less snobby version of the Slug Club that actually has to so with potions talent and not just fame

With her cousin Louis's help, she was actually able to tame a baby raccoon and named him Meeko after the raccoon in Pochahantas to help her and also trained him to help her nick a few things from her cousins sometimes

Loves classic fantasy lit, especially Narnia. Tried to charm a wardrobe to take her to Narnia, and let's just say that it didn't turn out very well and that it was really hard to reverse

Shaves her head in fourth year, because she was tired of all the work it took to take care of her hair

Penelope "Penny" Elodie Weasley-Wood

Named after Penelope Clearwater, who was her father's best friend and who died in the Battle of Hogwarts

She was adopted from Ukraine and loves everything about the country. The language, the music, the art, the people...

Went on to be a dragon tamer at a Ukranian dragon reserve, which she applied to as soon as she turned 17, and when she got an offer, she took her N.E.W.T.s in her 6th year so that she could take the job immediately

At the dragon reserve, she met Norma Hawryluk, who she fell in love with and a baby Ironbelly whom she named Vera and raised. No one but she had Norma could touch Vera though, because of the dragons' extreme rage issues

Constantly stole her sibling's and cousin's clothing

Gets stuck in her head sometimes

Romulus "Rome" Wolff Jordan

Asexual and Aromantic

Has a fluffy white cat named Marigold (Royal named her)

Loves wearing a ton of rings. Like, one on each finger.

Will only eat rocky road ice cream, and no other flavor ever

Has aphantasia, or the inability to voluntarily visualize images in his mind, but can still dream, because it's involuntary

Loves to sketch a lot. Will sketch everything he sees

Loves turtlenecks; hates crocs to no end

Big windows with amazing views are his favorite thing

Genevieve "Genny" Maribel Weasley

Prone to anxiety attacks

Polyamorous lesbian, in a closed poly relationship with Noa Spinnet-Bell and Lyric Scamander

Best friends with Romulus, her cousin. She is loud and fierce, and he’s quiet and passionate, and together they’re going to take over the world two steps at a time

Figures out that technology works in the Room of Requirement and starts a tech club that meets on Wednesdays, and has movie nights on Fridays

Brought a pet pig named Prince to Hogwarts

Unofficially a freelance curse breaker, but worked as an intern at the dragon reserve in Romania with her Uncle Charlie the summer after Hogwarts. Eventually moves to South America because her girlfriend, Noa Spinnet-Bell, got recruited by their Quidditch team, Tarapoto Tree-Skimmers

They move to a farm where Genny gets her own horses!!!

Elias "Simon" Jacques Weasley

Has fibromyalgia, which makes it difficult for him to stay in Hogwarts. With the chronic joint pain, fatigue, dizziness, and difficulty with memory, it was easier for him to get privately tutored by his dad, who was the Ancient Runes professor

Severe anxiety and depression, which was most likely caused by his fibromyalgia, but there's no telling

Vegetarian for personal reasons, and had James teach him how to make vegetarian burgers and other vegetarian meals

Loves water-based magic and might have gone into the exchange program for underwater schools in the Bermudas or Oceania, but he didn't want to risk his condition

Can beat anyone at any board game. No one knows how he does it. Ron played wizard chess with him for eight hours once, but eventually gave up on ever beating him

Is the publisher of a Hogwarts exclusive magazine. Uses his older sister’s computers to work on it. Works on his novel in his spare time. Occasionally holds poetry slams by the Great Lake. Just loves writing in general

Matilda "Tilly" Honey Granger-Weasley

Has a photographic/eidetic memory

Got expelled from Hogwarts in her sixth year for using an unforgivable curse on another student who was bullying/harassing Elias, but doesn't regret it all.

Finishes up her studies at a small non-boarding wizarding school in Romania, where she lives with her Uncle Charlie and his queerplatonic partner, Barnaby, and their cat, Wick

With the help of Barnaby, dyes her hair platinum white (think Zoe Kravitz when she had white hair)

Moves to America almost as soon as she graduates

Travels the world to write about different wizarding communities for the Quibbler and for her sister's museum

A little too obsessed with Joan Jett

Loves lucid dreaming

Elliott "Ellie" Ryleigh Weasley-Wood

Genderfluid

Has narcolepsy. Tired all the time and been known to dose off during class. And meals. And conversations

Needs to wear glasses but doesn’t, because they don’t want to look like a nerd. Looks like a complete nerd when they run into shit all the time and it doesn't help that their notes are always wrong because they refuse to sit in the front of class

Witnessed a car accident on a street one day and has been able to see thestrals ever since. Hates to think about it

Loves strong tasting food. Spicy, hot, cold, salty, super sugary, bitter... down to eat anything to be honest

Became a therapist for the wizarding community

Amare "Mar" Sabra Weasley

Own a huge shaggy grey and white dog named Ollie who she took to Hogwarts with her and is her best friend

Ellie, her cousin, is her other best friend and they love building huge forts and watching Disney movies together with tons and tons of snacks. Ollie always joins

Didn’t care one bit about school. Hated studying with a passion. Barely ever showed up to class. Was in detention more than all of her siblings and cousins combined

Worked as an intern at Lee Jordan’s radio broadcasting company for a few summers and hosted her own show that was based around old music after her sixth year

Alcoholic. Can't even be around firewhiskey

[starswordartblog]

Super duper late thing for @oc-growth-and-development​ OCtober day 14, Cornered. I was super busy this week.

This can be read on its own but it’s a direct sequel to Day 4′s piece. Because tumblr is tumblr I’ll put a link to that in a reblog.

Also, content warning for religious trauma, I think? I did not base the Cavesong Cult on anything real but I think some warning is necessary for this.

Silvana didn't know why the men of the Cavesong Cult had her cornered. She was a simple village woman in the middle of her daily chores, getting some water from the river through her usual path, one familiar enough for her to navigate in her blindness.

"Miss Silvana, it's an honor to finally be in your divine presence," one of them said, voice trembling with delight.

"Um, excuse me?" She tried her best to hold back the shocked yelp she wanted to give, it would probably be rude around those important men. "I'm sorry but you must be mistaking me for someone else, I'm, I'm no holy woman, I'm but a humble villager under the grace of our God," she explained. No one had been forced to join the cult, but the people all came to accept the Cavesong God in some way. After all, His followers brought prosperity to all the villages in the area in name of their God, and had their magic as proof of His power. The more His influence spread, the more dangerous it seemed to be to invoke His wrath, and some defiant people had already paid the price, having been cursed with bad luck or illness or dried out crops.

"Oh, but you have been chosen to be so much more," the man said, getting close enough to caress her face. She recoiled from the sudden touch, and the man grabbed her by the arm. "There's no need to be afraid. You will finally be saved. You will be the next priestess."

"N-no, I..." the whimper of protest came out before she could stop it. She trembled in his strong grasp, terrified of what could happen if she upset him.

He pressed a finger to her lips. "Now, why would you deny it? God has chosen you to bless all the people in this land. If you reject your duties, surely terrible things will befall the village. You wouldn't do that to your people, would you?"

Why her? The priestess was vital to them. She would seclude herself in the holy grounds and dedicate body and mind to God and magic, securing their holy powers. Even the common people had several prayers to thank her for such an important role.

Why would they chose one this way? How could she shoulder all that? She would fail one way or the other.

But shaken by the man's words, she couldn't find it in herself to voice any more fears. She let herself be dragged away, head low to hide the fearful tears forming in her eyes.

She had never walked that far in her life, so she had no clue where they were anymore, she could only assume she had been taken to the holy grounds in the mountains, where the cult had been born. It was said it was once only a cave, but with magic, they had turned it into a mighty sanctuary, overseeing the passage between the region they oversaw and the rest of the world.

If any of the men had seen her cry, they had thankfully said nothing. She had had time to get used to their voices by then, they were four besides the men who held her, and didn't have the same grave tone as him. In fact, they sounded relaxed, complaining that the priest was getting a bit too paranoid sending so many to escort a single lady, and playfully joking about how special she was. To her humiliation she had also heard they laugh at her tripping countless times along the way, as she struggled to keep up with the hurried man pulling her along.

"Be at ease," he said, to no effect, "there will be no need for you to see or walk. You will only have to listen."

The words hadn't become any clearer or less ominous by the time they finally arrived. At first she heard their fellow holy men greet them, and felt the air change as they came indoors. Then all noise died down. The men behind her no longer cracked jokes or said anything at all, even their footsteps sounded more regular. Were they approaching the priestess' dwelling? She didn't know what to expect. Not for the first time she wondered what had happened to the priestess to start all of that.

She heard someone close a heavy door behind her, and the man who had guided her spoke.

"We have brought her, holy priest."

That actually gave her small relief. She knew the priest. Not only did he often preach in the village and lead the cult's magical effort, he had helped her personally when she needed the most, when she buried her old mother a mere year ago. Maybe with him there things could be cleared up, she was sure it had been only some big mistake.

She was pulled further into the room, her escort having adjusted himself to be at her side instead of in front as he had been so far.

She heard something in front of her move, the scratching noise of rock against rock. It grazed against her mouth, and the man finally let go of her arm to instead grab her head and press her against the stone shape.

"You will not talk," said the voice in front of her. She could barely recognize it as the priest's voice. It had no warmth, no energy, and was followed by a raspy noise.

"You will not run. You will not fight. You will not ask or beg. You will not cry. You will not harm yourself. You will not wish or desire. Should you do that, you and your village will be punished until not even rubble remains. No one will come for you. You will be proclaimed dead tonight, any sighting of you a haunt to be banished."

The stone shifted slightly, scratching her lips. Her arm ached. Her legs trembled. He continued in the same grave, monotonous voice.

"You will kneel in the depths of that cave, until your hear God's voice. You will listen, and the only words that will escape your lips will be His. You will listen to His songs, His magic. You will listen to His every whisper and secret. You will listen until you can tell all of His miracles, His cures to every ailment."

The stone pulled back. Her legs gave in, though her escort caught her by both arms this time, twice as inescapable. Once again she let herself be dragged by him, with no tears this time. She was shocked well past that.

Before walking away without a word, the man set her body to sit against some rocks, but she let it slip and fall to the floor without resistance. Without resistance was her chosen behavior for the day, and possibly her life from there on. It wasn't that part that bothered. She knew she was weak, every peasant should accept that from birth. She didn't mind bowing to higher powers, facing unfair hardships, and being dragged into pointless things. Her entire life was pointless, and it had been peaceful and lovely just like that.

This fate however, was a cruel mockery of her. Thrown into a fancy title, passed around by cruel people who expected so much of her, things she couldn't do. No humbleness, no peace, some futile turmoil where everyone would be doomed. What would happen when she failed, as she was obvious no real priestess? Who would be hurt? How many would be hurt? Why would they hurt the villagers for her mistakes, she had no family anymore and was too shy to have close friends, no one had reason to be involved in this, why not just her? She'd gladly stay with them if they didn't touch anyone else, why make her shoulder so much?

Footsteps approached, and someone wordlessly left a bowl next to her, leaving immediately after that. She recognized the smell of common fruits, freshly peeled. The fruits she grew herself in her small patch of land, the ones she'd eat at breakfast, the ones she'd serve to weary travelers in need of some hospitality.

It was the smell that belonged to a loving home, and the last straw for her. She wailed and wept into her hands, knowing they would disapprove of the noise, they'd warned her, but the guilt only made her cry more. She had worked so hard, no matter how much others looked down on her, all she wanted was an honest life, and now she had no clue what to do, if she'd ever have water to replace all those tears, if she'd ever get to cook again, if she'd ever feel a fresh morning breeze again.

The stale air of that chamber felt like poison. Back in the river they had cornered her. Here they had buried her alive. And that seemed like a long, long death.

Her screams died out into weak sobs, then even those dried out, and she was still alone. Time passed and more time passed, and she was still alone. Her stomach grumbled, and she was still alone, still with no intention of touching any food. Would they force her? Were they even real, had today been just a long nightmare? In that silence, nothing mattered, only the panic inside her mind wouldn't shut up.

"Eat."

She thought she had imagined the whisper, but the wind caught her attention. A weak breeze had blown from somewhere, and her relief was immense. Where did it come from, she assumed she was in a closed off place. She got up to her knees and ran her fingers along the wall, looking for some crack or hole.

It blew again, playing with the curls of her hair around her ear. "Eat," she heard, a little louder.

Silvana took a fruit from the bowl, understanding now the order, even if she didn't know where it came from. She hadn't heard anyone approach, nor did she feel any presence near her.

She felt once more that anguish in the pit of her stomach, that food was now something to be ordered to eat, no love, no care, hosts who didn't even bother to stay around. She clasped the fruit tightly within both her hands and held her head down.

"Please, please," she whispered, "I don't know what to do, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please talk to me, please just tell me what to do." The weakest breeze caressed her face for a little longer and then, defying logic, twisted and picked up strength only around her arm. The pain she felt from her escort's endless grip was soothed. She touched her lips; the scratches there were also gone.

"I am God," the voice said. "Worship me, pray to me. That will be all."

It was only more orders, but Silvana held tight to the brief kindness the healing miracles had shown her.

"Thank you," she said, and murmured a simple prayer before eating. She hoped that would be enough. She hoped God did not leave her in that silence again.

Theodora risked turning on the dimmest of magical lanterns for a moment, to see the sleeping face of the human woman she had taken pity on. For weeks she had sneaked around in that endless maze of caves and tunnels, unable to escape the watch of the Cavesong Cult enough to leave the mountains. The shame of lying and hiding away burned her spirit, but it wouldn't destroy her. She wasn't throwing her pride away; that was all for the sake of surviving as the last Air Elemental left, her father's beloved Sky Gift.

The Cavesong Priest was an utter fool who had killed her father to conquer the hidden power of the mountains. Even now as it consumed his flesh he still wouldn't repent, strengthening his hold on the region and believing himself holy enough to win a miracle cure. Theodora was a miracle cure yet had no intention to serve him, but if he was desperate enough to beg for messages in the wind she'd gladly play along.

What of the new priestess, though? She was a regular human with almost no magic, what did he expect to gain from her? Maybe he just didn't want to expose himself out there in the mountains, but how would a weak woman protect him more than his subordinates? It was pointless cruelty.

Her father always told her it was a duty of Elemental Spirits to protect humans as the weaker creatures they were. Having only seem the greedy, murderous lot of them, she hadn't had the chance. The young priestess however was merely a victim. Maybe she could be just as evil and corrupted if given the right temptation, but Theodora would say the same of herself if she had looked at the weeping human without a sliver of compassion.

She was no real god, but she could hopefully do something to keep that one safe. One day they'd both escape that hell.

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 4, Part 1: Blight of the Paradox Clones

BRIGHT: Act 4 opens on a loading sequence titled ‘GATE 1’, and then there’s a short pan down through firefly-dotted clouds to a dim blue landscape called the Land of Wind and Shade. John manifests at ground-level and it’s time for another walk-around game!

The icon in the upper right corner opens a conversation with Nannasprite, who’s still back in the house. Apparently she can’t accompany John around the Land, but she can certainly give him puzzling half-answers to any questions he might have. John asks her point-blank if she was always cryptic and evasive or if that’s a sprite thing, but she predictably avoids answering.

John wanders around the Land, getting into fights with (oddly non-aggressive) imps for grist. The Land is very atmospheric, with glowing blue mushrooms and odd pipes everywhere. It’s also inhabited by large, excitable, bipedal orange salamanders who blow bubbles and dispense information about the Land. One of them has acquired John’s bedsheets and is now calling itself a wizard.

A salamander standing by one of the pipes explains that it’s called a Parcel Pyxis. If you need something, you can chisel a picture of whatever it is into a stone tablet and drop it into a Parcel Pyxis. If you find a tablet, and you have what’s carved into it, it’s polite to drop it into the Pyxis and the Breeze will take it where it needs to go. (Just what the Breeze is isn’t explained yet, but given the name of the Land, it’s fair to assume an explanation will be forthcoming in due time, and it’s thematically consistent.)

While wandering, John finds a telescope. Looking through it, he sees his house, perched waaaaaay at the top of a very tall, very narrow rocky crag. He also finds a very large pipe sunk into the ground. He can hear something very, very big breathing at the bottom.

There are definite pros and cons to these games, but on the whole I like them. They’re more immersive than the usual comic panels, and it’s nice to do some self-directed wandering. On the other hand, it’s easy to miss something in a walk-around game, which hardly ever happens with comic panels…

FAILURE ARTIST: The Salamanders crack me up. Good parody of NPC chatter.

CHEL: Comic panels of the walkaround are included later on, so if you really hate the games you can read it straightforwardly.

John is confused by now being below his house when he went through a portal above it; Nanna cryptically claims that “To ascend, you must first descend!”

BRIGHT: With the game out of the way (it doesn’t really have a defined end point), we return to normal comic panels — and also to the future. AR is embroiled in a shootout with the snakes from PM’s ship, which are now firing laser beams. A stray blast decapitates the frog temple. AR returns fire with a rocket launcher. His first shot takes out the snake. The second knocks WV flying. WV lands behind a rock, and the carved pumpkin lands on his head. AR lines up his next shot...and pauses.

The carved image of Bec’s head seems to mean something to AR, because he immediately ceases fire and comes down to start yelling at WV. This turns out to be a poor move on his part: PM still has her sword, and she is not pleased.

I really, really like PM as a character. She has no dialogue whatsoever and still projects massive amounts of integrity.

The comic returns to Jade. She’s retrieved Dave’s Sburb discs from the time capsule, which is clearly going to move the plot along...

Looks like the TIME CAPSULE has reset itself. It is sprouting a new bud. Presumably something else will come out when it blooms again in about 400 years. Too bad you won't be around to find out what it is!

...aaaaaaand we go into sylladex shenanigans again.

I will say this for sylladex tomfoolery: It absolutely can break up tension and provide some lighter stretches in the plot. The problem is that these don’t always feel natural. I find them less annoying now and can appreciate the humour, but they really bugged me the first time around.

Still, Jade’s use of her sylladex does at least speak to her character.

Jade eventually settles on Pictionary modus, which means she has to draw a picture of whatever she wants to captchalogue. If she doesn’t have the drawn item to hand, her modus instead captures a “ghost image” of the item on a card, complete with alchemiter code. Handy! Unfortunately the modus has some trouble understanding Jade’s drawings, interpreting her picture of her eclectic bass as a regular electric bass.

Bec then catches up and teleports Jade back to her room. In a demonstration of unusual good sense, Jade promptly gets on with installing the Sburb Beta.

Back in the Land of Wind and Shade, John pesters Rose to ask if she’s here on the other side of the gate, in the “spooky glowy place with oily rivers and stuff”. She doesn’t respond. He does however get pestered by Jade, who is now awake and therefore fully aware of what Sburb is (much to John’s confusion). She tells him to go get his copy of the game so he can be her server player. John is convinced Jade is psychic, but she tells him that he has access to all the information she does, he just doesn’t know it yet.

Meanwhile, Dave is also trying to get in touch with Rose, also to no effect. Jade pesters him and they have a cute conversation in which Jade forgets how a reference goes, but Dave assures her she got it anyway. She tells him she’s setting up as his server player and shows him a picture of the meteor aimed at his house. There are no size comparison points available but Jade assures him that it’s really, really big.

TG: well as if like one the size of a bus wouldnt kill me anyway

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave describes his beating from his Guardian as “i got served like a dude on butler island” and Jade says it’s “(DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA)”. It’s hard to take the abuse seriously when none of the characters do.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 14

BRIGHT: In the Medium, John is getting pestered by carcinoGeneticist again. We now have a picture icon for CG. Look familiar? Yup, it’s the guy from the end of the Intermission.

So I guess this is the first time in the main comic that we get confirmed, visual proof that the trolls are aliens? It’s hard to point to, since the trolls get introduced gradually.

I’ve no idea how this was received in fandom when it first happened, but by the time I got to Homestuck, the fact that the trolls were grey folks with horns was probably the most famous feature of the canon, so...not so much of an impact. Still pretty cool though.

FAILURE ARTIST: I wish I could remember how the fandom took it.

The trolls in these early acts make a big deal all the time about how they are alien and the kids are human. It’s an amusing parody of the way aliens act in fiction but it is weird when the trolls become actual characters and we find out their psychology is surprisingly human most of the time.

CHEL: Hence the WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM count. That’ll spike later.

BRIGHT: CG is unexpectedly friendly this time. Apparently he’s been trolling John backwards through time, which is frustrating as each earlier John knows less and less, so CG keeps having to repeat himself. (Which...doesn’t make much sense? He’d have to explain more obvious stuff, sure, but John would remember things he was told in later-from-CG’s-perspective conversations, so...ugh, time travel!) Despite this frustration, however, John’s relentless friendliness apparently wore the trolls down and now they’re friends. Or at least CG thinks they are. John is less than convinced.

CHEL:

John asks if the trolls are in his land, but CG berates him for self-centredness:

CG: WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR DUMB LITTLE WINDY PLANET OR YOUR PETTY LITTLE QUESTS. CG: OR FOR THAT MATTER YOUR ENTIRE GAME SESSION. CG: YOU AREN'T THE ONLY ONES PLAYING THE GAME. CG: EVERY GROUP OF PLAYERS GETS THEIR OWN DISTINCT, BLANK SLATE SESSION. CG: AS WILL BE EXPLAINED TO YOU MANY TIMES.

He instructs John to relay an apology for the trolling to Jade and to tell her to GET HER GROSS AND TOTALLY UNATTRACTIVE HUMAN BUTT OFF HER UGLY HUMAN HIGH HORSE AND ANSWER MY MESSAGES. John says he’s a bit focused on his own quest right now, and sets off to find his father’s car.

TIER: While that's happening, we cut back to the gaggle of aliens having a grand old time around a campfire with some good food. A familiar pair of squiddles, now old, is visible as well.

FAILURE ARTIST: AR/PM/WV was a popular OT3 back in the day but you never see it anymore.

CHEL: Pity. It’s adorable.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Dave’s place, where Jade is setting things up for the game. The air conditioning unit helps with the process, but the birds everywhere don’t. Dave drops the r-slur.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 16

Rose also talks with Dave as this is going on. She says this to him.

TT: I've done nothing but wait for boys to play this game with me all day. TT: First John lollygagging with the client, and then you with the server, downright filibustering my existence with unending fraternal melee. TT: And yet a girl, one who didn't even own the game, was able to connect with you minutes after you connected with me.

I’ve seen this quoted as Rose/Jade Lesbian Power but I wish we had more scenes where the two actually talked to each other.

CHEL: Being happy that one of your friends is competent means you’re in love with them now? And yet if someone used that as evidence for a het ship they’d be run out of the fandom. Anyway, Jade removes Dave’s bed to make room.

TT: And there she goes. TT: She HAS the karma.

FAILURE ARTIST: Rose has been talking to a troll, but she doesn’t know the gender so uses “he/she/it”. Funny to think there was a time when we didn’t know the trolls’ gender. Particularly the gender of Rose’s favorite troll...

Jade tries to tidy up the apartment using “a woman’s touch” a.k.a. a towel drenched in toilet water. Which begs the question of how her home is spotless.

CHEL: Because Hussie is again not thinking through the implications of the living situations as presented, and/or trying to present things as simultaneously a joke and serious. To be fair, considering the dreambot, she could have a super hi-tech cleaning system, or Bec could teleport the dirt away, but if so, we ought to see that.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 10 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 15

FAILURE ARTIST: In doing so, she accidentally rips the toilet out and drops an F-bomb.

CHEL: We now get a video of Rose’s location, the LAND OF LIGHT AND RAIN. Her house is now perched on a tiny island surrounded by glimmering pastel oil-slick-looking water, a waterfall pouring down out of nowhere beside it, with golden clouds scattered around pouring rain. It’s very pretty!

We again see the carapaces finding things in the ruins, and WV brings PM to see inside the bunker. The blast earlier formed an entry into the third room which had been locked, which contains further devices, this one with more spirographs and a frog picture on it; WV doesn’t know what this one does and the power’s too low to use it anyway. Back in the room with the monitors, PM is impressed by WV’s drawings and he offers her the pack of chalk. AR, meanwhile, cooks food.

PM recognises the monitor as similar to the one in her own station, though hers was watching a girl. Here, we get the static panels of the runaround game, from PM’s point of view.

Back in LoLaR, a mysterious textbox in cursive addresses Rose as Seer, suggesting she explore. Recall that the book mentioned the Heir of Breath, the Seer of Light, the Witch of Space, and the Knight of Time. Since Jade is the one who’s been doing the Seer-ing so far, I’ve seen readers assume she was the Seer and Rose the Witch, but it seems not; further explanations of what those titles really mean are forthcoming.

Sudden cut back to John’s land, where the village is under attack! Huts are aflame, and much bigger and more powerful monsters have arrived.

In Dave’s apartment, Jade opens the cruxtruder by dropping the displaced toilet on it, splashing water everywhere, much to Dave’s aggravation since all that juice was going to come back to haunt me. He’s relieved to see the countdown gives him four hours, but Jade doesn’t know till what, and he realises she’s sleep-messaging him again. He orders her not to watch him pee, and dont put anything weird in the seizure kernel.

TG: the last thing i need is for your weird brain webcam to be snapping shots of my dong TG: your grandpa was a sick fuck why would he build a voyeurbot for a little girl CALL CPA PLEASE: 8

Well, he is kinda right. Anyway, Dave spends a couple of pages elaborately planning misuse of the apple juice bottle and tricking John into drinking from the alchemised bottle, but he dismisses it as too much trouble and goes in the shower, kicking out the puppet. Good thing it was only his bladder that was the problem, if you get my drift. Some fans have speculated that this puppet also had a camera in it, but I can’t see evidence of that; I guess if you squint the eyes might look like a camera lens? I feel if that was the case it would have been shown. Hussie didn’t shy away from the weird shit with Dave’s living situation earlier.

Jade is upset to find the bisected bird from earlier, and decides to help the bird by putting it in the Kernelsprite, angering Dave again. He figures she’ll be more helpful when she’s awake, so he instructs her to slap the air to her side; the dreambot mimics her movements and whacks the real Jade in the face, waking her up.

BRIGHT: I burst out laughing the first time I saw that panel. It’s pretty clever of Dave. (Though obviously not kind, but of a variety that’s in keeping with the story.)

CHEL: Cut to the carapace camp, where they’re burning empty crates for a campfire. AR decides to use the Squiddles to Win over that fine carapace in grey, which seems to distress WV and Serenity. PM takes a Squiddle, but rather than being won over is vaguely reminded of something.

TIER: We then jump back into the past, where we find a totalled car and what looks like AR?

CHEL: Yep, though here he’s going by Authority Regulator instead of Aimless Renegade.

TIER: Whatever the case, this dude is not happy with this traffic violation. Another thing he's not happy with? Unauthorized parcels. Which brings us to the Parcel Mistress, who's been looking for this particular package for a while apparently. Now how to get it?

With that we jump back to John! Who's doing decent enough in his clobbering of game enemies. Just when things ain't looking too hot though, a mysterious stranger shoots and kills them with extreme prejudice. He looks familiar ain't he?

And even if he's not, that gigantic book under his arm can only be the work of the ol’ Colonel Sassacre, which John helpfully points out.

CHEL: Meanwhile in some other time period, PM suddenly remembers she must deliver a message to John. Back in the present, Parcel Mistress, for it is she, finds a tablet carved (badly) by John, depicting the SBurb envelope. The prompt suggests PM ready her sword, but she has none, and claims she would never resort to violence. Instead, she tries asking politely. Despite their lands’ enmity, AR finds her attractive and doffs his hat so furiously you are in danger of starting a HAT FIRE. His civility does not extend to handing over contraband, though. The tablet is sufficient evidence for him to give her the envelope, but to get the green parcel she must ask his bosses. PM puts the envelope in a pyxis, trusting the Breeze to move it, and follows AR.

John plans to follow the man, who he does not yet recognise as Jade’s Grandpa, to get his book back, but first he must help put out the fire in the salamander village. He flings the BARBASOL BOMB he made earlier into the volcano.

The cooling lather should work its magic in no time…

OH GOD HOW CAN SHAVING CREAM BE SO FLAMMABLE

Yeah, that doesn’t work so well. Fortunately, just as all seems lost, A big gust of wind conveniently comes along and blows out all the fire. The salamanders declare John a hero, though he’s just confused.

FAILURE ARTIST: A prompt (PM) asks John if he still has the tablet and if he wants to carve something on it. So, in another time loop, he does that.

Back at LOLAR, a very elegant and mysterious prompt ask Rose to find Jaspersprite. Rose cannot find him, but she does find footprints leading to the mausoleum. The mausoleum isn’t there anymore, but the underground passage is still there. Rose takes it down to a pier where someone has recently taken a boat and left a martini. The mysterious prompt says “A mother will do whatever is best for her children.” Nobody ever said “a brother will do whatever is best for his siblings”.

In the future, WV becomes the Mayor of Exile Town. The peace is disturbed when a “huge eggy looking thing” appears in the sky.

Cut to Jade giving the punch card of an “eggy loking thign (sic)”. Guess someone on the forum had bad spelling?

CHEL: It’s a callback to Rose describing the other unfinished GameFAQs entries, which were typed in haste. One described their entry item that way.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave creates a huge red bird with a huge red egg. When he tries to use the egg, the crow sprite takes it and puts it in a nest made of smuppets, swords, and Lil Cal.

Dave doesn’t have enough grist to do anything. He fusses around building what he can. That done, he goes inside and installs gristTorrent to steal grist from John. Who exactly made that software?

Meanwhile, in LOLAR, Rose has set up shop on the pier. The mysterious prompter tells her to consult with the Heir and in the pesterlog we see she’s chatting with John. They catch up on the trolls and various things. Unfortunately, Rose is harassed by a gallowsCalibrator who tells her in 133t speak that her mother hates her and left her forever. Amazing that GC eventually becomes a beloved character since they are such a little shit right now. GC has synesthesia and jokes about their species communicating through “CLOUDS OF FR4GR4NT G4S3S”. They want to be helpful, but they deny wanting to be friends, though later they say they are becoming something called “H4T3FR13NDS”.

CHEL: Rose asks if I'm being courted or trolled here, which with further reveals about the trolls will become somewhat ironic. Other trolls are jumping around in time but GC is ST4Y1NG L1N34R [...] C4US3 W31RD T1M3 STUFF G1V3S ME A H34D4CHE, though will jump forward in the timeline so they don’t have to wait too long between conversations.

BRIGHT: GC isn’t the only one...

FAILURE ARTIST: GC explains the voices in the players’ heads are from the Exiles on Earth. The ultimate goal is to create a new civilization with them. With that important information, GC bids adieu for now.

TT: So the exiles are on Earth? Does that mean our goal is to get back there too? To resurrect it somehow? GC: NO NO NO GC: S33 1RON1C4LLY TH3Y G3T TO DO TH4T GC: 4FT3R TH3YR3 DON3 H3LP1NG YOU TH4T 1S GC: YOUR JOB 1S OF GR34T3R CONS3QU3NC3 TO S4Y TH3 L34ST GC: BUT P4RT OF TH31R JOB 1S TO R3BU1LD L1F3 4ND C1V1L1Z4T1ON TH3R3 GC: 4ND 1F TH3YR3 SUCC3SSFUL 1N THOUS4NDS OR M1LL1ONS OF Y34RS TH3 T3CHNOLOGY 1S UN34RTH3D 4ND TH3 PL4N3T 1S R1P3 FOR S33D1NG 4LL OV3R 4G41N TT: You never answered the question. Where were they exiled from? GC: FROM TH3 TWO K1NGDOMS 1N TH3 1NC1P1SPH3R3 GC: 3XP4TR14T3D DUR1NG TH3 R3CKON1NG

CHEL: We now know who and what the Exiles are, so let’s lop off a point for that:

WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 8

FAILURE ARTIST: Back in the past, when John went by ghostyTrickster, he tries to have a conversation with Jade but it’s interrupted by CG warning her that her robot will explode. After CG leaves, Jade and John talk about the trolls. Seems blocking does no good. John drops the r-slur.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17

We cut to CG being gray and angry in some mysterious grey room.

Then, back to Jade. Her package from her pen-pal appears again.

Cut to ghostyTrickster John. GC trolls him, outs herself as female and blind, and threatens to cut his throat “4ND L1ST3N TO YOU BL33D WH1L3 1 SM3LL YOU D13”. John is naturally unnerved by this, but he also takes inspiration from her taunt that he’s bad at ectobiology.

CHEL: He takes for his new username a term that the trolls introduced him to, and is surprised when they immediately find him? Maybe we DID need a Too Dumb To Live count.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to a troll like CG, but with red glasses and a Libra sign on her shirt. This is our first look at gallowsCallibrator.

CHEL: Okay, does the death threat qualify for SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER? It’s a bit extreme considering at this point in his timeline John has done nothing to offend her. Then again, maybe not; the narrative doesn’t present this as being the right and proper thing to do.

Back in the present, PM arrives in enemy territory, with the parking citation as a ready excuse for her presence. Imps and agents she passes now have features from Jaspersprite; cat faces, princess hats, and we see a DD-like figure wearing a cat-ear headband. PM follows a red carpet, only to be confronted at the end by this eldritch-looking majesty:

PM is naturally trembling, but is merely instructed to speak to the Archagent, who we’ve met before; Jack Noir. We see a ring with four pearl-like orbs on the monarch’s hand; this will become important later.

Rose’s Exile voice bids her farewell, telling her to Find your sprite. Realise your purpose. No longer guided, Rose decides to start making her own decisions, beginning with a sip of martini.

In the desert, A WINDSWEPT QUESTANT suddenly appears, this being a tall white carapace with a feminine figure and narrow eyes, from the eggy lokin thign, with the unsound effect EGG! WV and AR appear disconcerted, while PM is busy telling John to put the carved tablet in the pyxis.

Back in Jack Noir’s office, PM attempts to grab the green box and leave, but Jack appears suddenly behind her, making her jump, and tells her she’d better have the ticket payment or you are wasting valuable time he could otherwise spend shirking his clerical duties. PM nervously explains she’s actually here for the package, and Jack points out she doesn’t have the right courier forms.

In spite of how he's supposed to be dressed now but isn't, he ain't nobody's fool.

However, instead, she could always do an errand for him. Specifically, following his HIT LIST, which is two pictures of white crowns recognisable as the tops of the king and queen chess pieces. He also gives her the enormous black sword we saw her future self use. PM, terrified, departs, and Jack wonders if she’s actually stupid enough to try it.

You make a policy of handing out a REGISWORD and a HITLIST to just about everyone who enters your office.

Curious, he opens the package, and stares into it in surprise.

At Dave’s apartment, Jade has put the Punch Designix in the hallway, making it rather hard to navigate, but regardless Dave’s busy alchemising. He plays with a few add-ons which temporarily render the machines unusable, but eventually manages to use a jumper shunty thing to consolidate all the machines into one. Jade draws some components, gets the captcha codes of their ghost images, and sends the codes to Dave, who plugs them into the machine. Useful, but could probably be compressed into fewer pages, especially when he follows it up by playing with the new machinery. This is adding to my conviction that the machines should have been simplified severely in the first place.

GET ON WITH IT!: 15

John finds the wrecked car with no dad, package, or game, and gets trolled by GC again. She offers to help him, claiming she wants to H3LP YOU 4DV4NC3 MOR3 QU1CKLY because she’s bored watching his long adventure and wants to help him skip ahead. John points out she could just skip forward on the timeline as she has before, and she admits that she just wants to see if she can change the timeline, as her friends don’t believe they can. She offers him a map, which he accepts.

John complains, naturally, and she relents and offers to guide him directly to the pipe which will help him skip to the next Gate. Honestly, he has reason to complain; her smellovision allows her to read text on a screen, yet not to draw?

Rose, back in LOLAR, battles monsters, doing surprisingly well considering she only has knitting needles for a weapon, culminating in an epic sequence in which she stabs both needles into an ogre’s eyes, flips onto its back, and uses her knitting as reins to ride it down the waterfall. Dave informs her he’s out of grist, but she finds the idea of killing the ogre for supplies when it’s unconscious to be distasteful. He’s interrupted by grimAuxiliatrix, The Troll Who Talks Like This, asking about Rose. The conversation is awkward as GA seems unable to read Dave’s sarcasm.

GA: She Perhaps Even Regards You With Uh GA: Endearment TG: you have no idea dude she is so in my grill TG: like a stray hotdog that rolled down there TG: and now its too much trouble to fish out with the tongs TG: so you just watch it like crack and turn black GA: Um Is This GA: A Common Sort Of Practice In Human Courtship GA: Watching Oblong Meat Products Tumble Into Places They Dont Belong

adiosToreador, meanwhile, does the same to Rose about Dave, with a similar lack of comprehension of Rose’s loquaciousness. GA contacts Rose again, and a confusing conversation about temporal mechanics ensues. Afterwards, we see GA, who proves to be a short-haired troll girl with pronged horns, a Virgo shirt symbol (my troll!), and cute little vampire teeth.

FAILURE ARTIST: It’s been too long for me to remember the fandom reaction, but I feel like the reveal that GA is a girl was framed like a surprise. Surprise! This troll is a lesbian! But I might be mistaken. Still, this isn’t like Dave’s (mock?) offended reaction to AT. Hussie, like many straight men, is more comfortable with lesbians than gay men.

We’ll see more of Rose’s and GA’s relationship as the comic goes on. Some non-Homestucks here might already be spoiled due to the numerous fanart of the two.

CHEL: I wasn’t surprised by her being a girl; maybe I’m stereotyping, but the prissy nature of her dialogue and quirk sounded feminine to me from the start, not to mention the “trix” ending of her username is a feminine one - if she was male, it would be “auxiliator”. Not sure how many people paid attention to that though. I was surprised by the later information that (SPOILER) she actually was interested in Rose, because facetious declarations of romantic intention are kind of a thing for the human kids at this point and her flustered reaction could be taken either way here.

Dave, meanwhile, is trolled by AT, with the most cringe-inducing text-rap I’ve ever seen (and text-rapping is pretty cringy to begin with). I gotta praise Hussie, it takes skill to make something this awful.

AT: oK, lET ME, AT: oRGANIZE MY NOTES HERE, AT: oKAYYY, AT: (tURN ON SOME STRICT BEATS MAYBE, iT WILL HELP TO LISTEN TO THEM WHILE i DESTROY YOU,) AT: wHEN THE POLICE MAN BUSTS ME, aND POPS THE TRUNK, AT: hE'S ALL SUPRISED TO FIND I'M TOTING SICK BILLY, AT: wHOSE, AT: gOAT IS THAT, hE ASKS, wHILE HE STOPS TO THUNK AT: aBOUT IT, aND i'S JUST SAY IT'S DAVE'S, yOU SILLY AT: gOOSE,

Since we’ll later find out trolls don’t have the concept of police in the same way humans do, and nor do they call animals by the same names we do, I think this is worth some WSP points. Did he watch Dave’s life closely enough to pick up those concepts?

BRIGHT: I get the distinct impression none of the trolls watched anything like enough of the kids’ lives to pick up the concept of the police, particularly since as we’ll see later they missed a few things that are rather more obvious -- such as, say, parents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 11

CHEL: He also namedrops Prospit and Derse, which I’m not really spoiling anything by saying are the names of the two warring chess kingdoms, though I don’t think those names have been applied to them yet. I don’t know why, it’s not like keeping them secret makes a big difference - did Hussie only just think of them? The quality of his rhymes aside, AT appears very proud of himself; he’s a troll with enormous bull-like horns, a mohawk, and a Taurus symbol. I thought he was really creepy-looking the first time I saw him, but he rather grew on me.

Back on LOWAS, John is squirted out of a pipe with a gush of oil. Ew. The Con Air bunny goes flying and lands in an oil river, and he catches it with the Ghost Gauntlets. An adult and child pair of salamanders happen to be standing nearby, prompting a movie re-enactment, much to the salamanders’ confusion.

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CG is unimpressed, though he agrees with John that Con Air sounds entertaining. CG claims to have been watching the whole of John’s life and Con Air is supposed to be one of John’s favourite movies; how come CG hasn’t seen any of it before, especially since he says he has seen a movie John hates?

CG: OK I DON'T SEE HOW WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BECOMING FRIENDS IF YOU RECOIL FROM MY OLIVE BRANCH LIKE I'M WIGGLING A GNARLED TREE MONSTER'S DICK IN YOUR DIRECTION.

Lovely. Though I gotta say the dialogue and ridiculous extended metaphors are one of the best parts of Homestuck. Wish I could pull those off. However, one point here; if they’re aliens, it seems odd that they would use human idioms such as “olive branch” with the same meaning we do. There is a possible explanation later on, but since they only ever use American/Western phrases like this and it’s clear from other things they say that they didn’t pick up anything much about human culture from watching the kids, I’m upping the count anyway.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 12

BRIGHT: We also discover that troll movies are titled very differently to human movies, such as the classic

CG: WHEREIN NUMEROUS VIGILANTES CONFRONT PERIL; ONE OF THEM BETRAYS THE OTHERS;(BUT IT TURNS OUT TO BE PART OF THE PLAN ALL ALONG); CG: SEVERAL ATTRACTIVE FEMALE LEADS PROVOKE ROMANTIC TENSION; FOUR MAJOR CHARACTERS WEAR UNUSUAL HATS; ONE HOLDS PLOT-CRITICAL SECRET; CG: 47 ON-SCREEN EXPLOSIONS, ONE RESULTING IN DEMISE OF KEY-ADVERSARY;6 TO 20 LINES THAT COULD BE CONSTRUED AS HUMOROUS; EB: wait... EB: this is the title? CG: IT GOES ON.

Apparently after thousands of years of film history, you start running out of movie titles.

Also, note that despite their being aliens, quite possibly with different gender roles, the romantic tension is explicitly provided by attractive female leads.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 13

CG thinks that Earth civilisation’s lack of maturity might explain why the players are (apparently) doing so badly. John retorts that GC is helping him, so they can’t be doing THAT badly. Apparently this wasn’t in the plan; CG goes to talk to GC about it, and she punches him. Seems she’s talking to a future John at the moment, and he asked her to. CG gives John a message to pass on to GC in reply.

CG: TELL HER TO POLISH MY HEAVING BONE BULGE AND SET A TABLE FOR FUCKING TWO ON IT. CG: IT’S FOR OUR CANDLELIT HATE DATE.

John comments that it’s like they’re trolling each other through him now, and asks if CG has talked to Jade. CG is surprised that he’d want to talk to her. John offers to paste the chatlog; CG refuses, and John heads off to talk to GC.

CHEL: Precisely what a bone bulge is is never explained. Context makes it clear it’s an unsavoury body part, and it sounds like a term for one’s dick, even though the boner does not in fact contain bones in humans. The assumption early in the fandom was that the trolls had primarily human anatomy, which seems odd to me considering Kanaya’s complete obliviousness to her Oblong Meat Products comment - most teenagers familiar with human penises would be on that instantly. Anyway, there soon came a phase of experimentation, and by now we seem to have settled on the “functional-hermaphrodites with tentacle dicks” theory. Which is weird, because a tentacle doesn’t sound like something which would be referred to with the word “bone”, does it?

GC’s laughing mouth is reflected in John’s glasses as they speak in what I desperately hope is a shoutout to the Corinthian. She calls John STUP1DLY 4DOR4BLE (minor typo on the comic’s part as the E in her quirk should be a 3) and laughs at CG’s frustration. John relays an approximation of CG’s message:

EB: he wants you to touch his bone lump or something. GC: WH4T!!! EB: and that he's pretty much basically in love with you.

GC asks him to copy-paste the convo for proof but John refuses, saying it was a private conversation, and informs GC that she’s going to punch CG soon. In other news, referring to these characters with only their handle initials when I know their actual names is hard.

On GC’s instructions, John turns around, to discover this hard-to-miss landmark:

This, according to GC, is the D3N1Z3NS P4L4C3, in which the Denizen sleeps on a grist hoard so big their alchemising could never make a dent in it.

GC: USU4LLY HOW 1TS SUPPOS3D TO GO 1S GC: OV3R TH3 COURS3 OF YOUR QU3ST GC: YOU W1LL W4K3 TH3 D3N1Z3N GC: 4ND TH3N F1N4LLY YOU GO THROUGH TH3 S3V3NTH G4T3 GC: WH1CH 1S TH3 ONLY W4Y 1NTO TH3 P4L4C3 GC: TH3N YOU GO DOWN 4ND F1GHT TH3 D3N1Z3N GC: 4ND K1LL 1T GC: R3L3AS1NG TH3 HO4RD EB: so what's my advantage? GC: YOU WONT BOTH3R W4K1NG 1T GC: W3 W1LL SK1P R1GHT TO TH3 S3V3NTH G4T3 GC: F1ND 1TS L41R GC: 4ND K1LL 1T 1N 1TS SL33P

The grist hoard, GC claims, is for the ULT1M4T3 4LCH3MY, but she won’t explain what this is yet, and she leads John to a R3TURN NOD3 which takes him back to his home to prepare.

In the desert, AR and WV hammer some metal to make a gift for the Windswept Questant, which proves to be a crown. PM is shocked to see this, and emerges from the bunker, sword in hand.

Meanwhile, in a long-discarded memory… A PARCEL MISTRESS seeks audience with royalty.

It seems Windswept Questant is in fact, of course, the White Queen.

PM explains recent events and seeks her queen’s advice, showing her the hit list requesting the white monarchs’ crowns. WQ is wearing a ring similar to that of the monarch we met earlier, the Black Queen. Four orbs are attached to it, two light and two dark. On removing it, WQ loses all her elaborate prototyping accoutrements and becomes the normal-looking carapace we saw in her Windswept Questant identity. WQ seems to have a plan; instead of requiring PM to kill her to finish her fetch quest, she simply hands over her crown and ring, and instructs PM to find the White King on the battlefield. Flashing forward to the desert, WQ places her new crown on PM’s head, much to the astonishment of their companions.

On LOLAR, beneath waterfalls pouring from hovering pink turtle shells, Rose frustratedly consults with Jaspersprite, who will apparently only meow. However, when asked a direct question, Jaspersprite is able to respond. He is attempting to fish with his tentacles, but there are no fish, because her Denizen ate everything in the ocean and got so full that it took a long nap. Being as cryptic as Nannasprite, he won’t, however, explain what the message he gave to young Rose meant, saying she’ll understand when she wakes up.

JASPERSPRITE: Rose im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light. JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song! JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible. JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie is very good at writing the dialogue of a kitten turned into a game NPC, you’ve got to hand it to him.

CHEL: It’s also worth noting that his colours have stopped flashing pink and purple, and he’s settled on pink.

Rose asks Jade for further information, and learns that all four of the kids have a dream self which must awaken; Rose deduces Jade’s has been awake as long as they’ve known each other. Jade is in fact asleep now, and can only message at the moment because of her robot. Rose’s dream self is dreaming troubled dreams, causing the real Rose to suffer nightmares all her life, and to stop this she must discover how to wake her dream self.

GG: maybe the stuff you wrote on your walls can give you a clue? TT: What stuff? GG: the.... GG: er GG: didnt dave tell you?

Utterly heartwarming moment; we see in John’s dream tower, and Jade has drawn over the LAME KID messages and creepy clown faces on John’s walls with a big bright yellow heart and the message wake up john!!! you can do it!!!

Rose wants to know what’s going on, but Dave is unavailable. The meteor is about to land and he’s scrambling his way up the tower to his kernelsprite’s nest to retrieve the entry egg.

Back at John’s house, he finds the useless rocket-pack-combined-with-junk he experimentally alchemised earlier; GC tells him that the trolls’ resident hacker, who we haven’t met yet, can use its code to create a usable jetpack. Said hacker doesn’t want to talk to them but WONT B3 4BL3 TO R3S1ST TH3 CH4LL3NG3.

John sends the mishmash code…

GC: OK B3 B4CK IN L3SS TH4N ON3 S3COND GC: PCHOOOOO EB: hello? GC: WH4T EB: it thought you said you'd be back in less than a second? GC: 1 W4S GC: 1 G4V3 YOU TH3 COD3 GC: 1TS PCHOOOOO

Hee. The misunderstanding leads into a brief argument, GC claiming that 3V3N YOU 4ND YOUR UND3RD3V3LOP3D BON3 NOOK W1LL B3 4BL3 TO F1GUR3 OUT WH4T TO DO. Once again, we don’t know what a bone nook is. Context could imply either an obscene body part or a brain-related one. Common fanon holds that it’s the vagina, others have objected and said it surely must mean anus; neither of those sound like a “bone” anything to me, and in fact bone would be horribly counterproductive for organs which have to perform peristalsis. Someone did point out to me that it could mean a place to put the metaphorical bone, but that wasn’t what I immediately thought.

FAILURE ARTIST: I don’t think the phrase “bone nook” ever comes up again, though the word “nook” by itself does and it can be replaced with the word “ass” in those cases. Basically, trolls aren’t a fictional species crafted with any care. Hussie wanted some annoying alien characters with a visual callback to “Little Monsters” and it somehow got out of control.

CHEL: Actually, I believe it does come up in Hiveswap Act 1! But we’ll get to that.

John answers a message from Dave, who now claims to be in the Medium, saying it took him four hours. He asks for advice, saying his sprite wants him to prototype it again, and Rose is randomly asleep.

TG: ok fine but TG: it seems to be suggesting something here TG: and TG: i guess im kinda weirded out by its suggestion EB: i don't know, just do what it says! EB: it knows stuff about the game, so it probably knows better than i do...

Not a good sign. John decides to Take dear, sweet Casey (the baby salamander) into protective custody by captchaloguing her, and blasts off for the gate.

Cut to an animated sequence in The Land of Heat and Clockwork, a nightmarish lava-scape covered in machinery (convection schmonvection), where Dave is being extremely badass and surprisingly successful for someone with only half a sword. In fact, multiple Daves appear to be present. We also see, unfortunately, exactly what he prototyped:

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Calsprite is even less helpful than the other two, providing a constant soundtrack of creepy laughter while Dave begs him to shut up. According to Dave’s ensuing convo with Rose, this has been going on for four months. That’s… pretty terrifying even before we hear everything that went wrong. John was unsurprisingly instantly slain by his Denizen, and thus couldn’t save Jade from her meteor. Dave, however, has now mastered the art of time travel via the magical turntables he’s created, and intends to go back and prevent all that from happening, now that they’ve spent four months gathering information their past selves can use. Rose is afraid of ceasing to exist; Dave assures her that their dream selves exist outside the standard passage of time, and this will help her dream self wake sooner.

FAILURE ARTIST: The trolls also stopped “trolling” Dave and Rose after John died. This isn’t the end of the trolls, of course.

Dave uses his turntables to go to the past. We cut to a conversation we just saw, where Dave has just entered the Medium and John is about to go pchooooo, except this time from Dave’s roof.

GET ON WITH IT!: 16

Except at the end, Dave tells John not to go. See, Dave from the future just arrived on Dave from the present’s roof. John refuses to believe that this is happening, thinking it’s just a prank. Not even putting future!Dave on the line convinces John. So, future!Dave unloads everything he has in a stack and flips back into the Crowsprite to become a new characters: Davesprite.

CHEL: Note that, instead of Dave’s theme colour of red, Davesprite is orange. I did wonder if this was potentially supposed to show that Bro (whose theme colour is orange) is overwriting/overshadowing Dave’s real self, but since the sprites of the others aren’t the theme colours of their respective kids (Nannasprite is teal to John’s dark blue and Jaspersprite pink to Rose’s purple) I don’t think this is really a reliable sign. Pin in the colours, though, that’ll come up later.

FAILURE ARTIST: Meanwhile, John blasts off with the words “THIS IS STUPID”.

Present!Rose tries to pester Dave, and we get another repeated conversation.

GET ON WITH IT!: 17

Present!Rose decides to nap, and at that moment, Future Dream Rose ceases to exist and becomes absorbed by Present!Rose. I think.

WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9

Davesprite pesters GC to tell her not to talk to John anymore. GC first reacts by saying “YOU SM3LL L1K3 OR4NG3 CR34MS1CL3S” but then finds out she killed John. She had assumed since she could talk to John in the future, he hadn’t died, but she guessed there was a chance he could die. She’s a little put-out and wants to apologize, but she’s not as sad as you’d expect someone who accidentally killed someone to be. Davesprite asks who is in charge of timeline management.

GC: SH3 DO3SNT W4NT TO T4LK TO 4NY OF YOU GC: 4ND H4S M1SG1V1NGS 4BOUT TH1S WHOL3 TH1NG GC: NOT 4LL OF US 4R3 TH4T 3NTHUS1AST1C 4BOUT TROLL1NG YOU GUYS GC: 4ND TH3 ON3S WHO 4R3 SORT OF SUCK 4T 1T >:|

We do get to meet her, but not until the next act when we meet all the trolls.

Davesprite gives GC permission to talk to John if she cuts out her “coy bullshit antics”. GC mocks his threatening tone and points out she’s higher on the echeladder, from the future, and blind. Davesprite says his self-prototyping gave him great powers and GC says that was a bad idea. They then engage in some banter over GC posting screencaps of Wheeler from Captain Planet (which she calls a “soap opera”). Davesprite and GC end the conversation with mutual respect. Which is honestly really weird after all future!Dave had to go through because of GC.

CHEL: Does this count for SLAMMER points? I think it does. Here’s the first of our new count, then!

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1

This will go up whenever a character does something awful and neither the narrative nor the other characters seem to care.

This also brings us into another point. We’ve seen only hints of it, but alternate timelines are a big theme of this comic. Davesprite in particular is a major focus of said theme, specifically the nature of his personhood separately from the focal or “alpha” Dave. However, as we see here, not even the Dave from the dead John’s timeline particularly seems to mind that John just died in an alternate timeline. At the moment, they appear to feel that because there is an alive John, everything is okay. Let’s see how that progresses.

FAILURE ARTIST: Davesprite and present!Dave (who I guess we can just call Dave at this point) talk. Davespite says as a sprite he has lots of knowledge but is obligated to put it in riddles. However, he says he doesn’t feel like it so he’ll answer Dave straight.

DAVE: alright DAVE: here goes DAVE: why are we so fucking awesome DAVESPRITE: thats the best fucking question anybody ever asked

After that best fucking question, Dave asks if John will be alright. Davesprite says that’s up to John, and if John doesn’t listen they’ll just bail him out again. Davesprite says the gear he piled up will help Dave get to the next gate. The two versions of Dave decide to collaborate on a SBaHJ comic and fist “bunp”.

Meanwhile, “hundreds of pages ago”, John gets his bunny from Dave. We see Dave’s note and it’s cool how each of the kids have their own style of handwriting. There’s a very prophetic sentence in this sweet note:

one day your gooberish ways are gonna land you in a jam and i know im going to have to get you off the hook but its cool i got your back bro.

We cut to the present, where John is blasting off. The human emotion of friendship causes him to reconsider his action. John pesters Dave and tells him he’s just flying around and not going to the gate. Crisis averted.

This might seem like a cul de sac, but it created a new character (Davesprite) and introduced many concepts, so it really isn’t.

CHEL: Primarily, it introduced the theme of jumping around in time in the literal sense as well as just hopping between apparently-disconnected scenes. The latter’s not a generally well-advised style of writing, but considering the time travel motif of the comic, I think it actually works fine here. Also, as a webcomic, if one spends too long on one group of characters then by the time you get back to the other ones the readers will probably not remember what happened, so shorter scenes for each group are probably more acceptable than in a novel or movie.

CG trolls John again, and after a discussion of their becoming reverse anti-mutual friends, John complains that CG hasn’t really answered his questions.

CG: SO GO AHEAD, ASK ME ANYTHING. EB: ok... EB: what's the point of the game. CG: ASK SOMETHING ELSE. CG: ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT.

John asks where they are now in their Medium, and CG explains they’re HIDING IN THE VEIL, a meteor belt between the two planets. To clarify the layout for our readers, Skaia the big ball of sky is in the centre, with Prospit the golden planet orbiting it closely enough for its moon to enter Skaia during the “eclipse” where Jade gets her visions. Then there are the players’ Lands, their little adventure planets where the consorts live, the consorts being the little NPC creatures (in John’s case, the salamanders). Every player has a Land of Something and Something. Beyond the Lands is the Veil, and beyond that is the Furthest Ring, the orbit of Derse, the dark planet.

CG: OK, THERE COMES A TIME WHEN BLACK INEVITABLY BEATS WHITE CG: ON THE BATTLEFIELD IN THE CENTER OF SKAIA CG: THE WHITE KING IS CAPTURED OR KILLED OR SOMETHING CG: THAT'S WHEN THE RECKONING STARTS. EB: ok... CG: THE RULERS OF DERSE CG: THE BLACK KING AND QUEEN CG: GET THE POWER TO SEND THE VEIL TOWARD SKAIA CG: TO DESTROY IT CG: THAT KIND OF STARTS YOUR BIG "COUNTDOWN" CG: WHEN SHIT GETS SERIOUS. EB: so then it's up to us to save it? CG: YEAH, YOU HAVE THAT LONG TO KILL THE BLACK QUEEN AND KING CG: AND SKAIA ITSELF SORT OF BUYS YOU SOME TIME CG: BY ACTIVATING ITS DEFENSE PORTALS CG: TO CATCH SOME OF THE METEORS

Ordinarily, the players would have plenty of time before this happens, but something done by the human players has caused things to go wrong, and now they’ve not only ruined their own chance of winning, but somehow affected the trolls’ game too. CG refuses to explain how, because he’s already told him again.

John asks if they’re hiding in a crater or something, but no, CG explains there are buildings in the Veil. It’s considered neutral ground, and both sides have laboratories there where they genetically engineer new soldiers and agents. John asks CG to tell GC “nice try���, but he refuses.

Now comes the mid-point animation of the act, “[S] Jack: Ascend”. I thought it was an ending animation, but no, there’s still more. If you don’t want to or can’t watch video I’ll explain the content, but I do recommend it.

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Pan over the Skaian system, from LOWAS to the Veil to the purple towers of Derse. Four towers are close together, topped by orbs. On three of them, we see the silhouettes of the sprites, while the fourth is dark. Jack Noir sits at his desk, doing paperwork, a pink princess dress on a stand next to it. He doodles on a parking ticket, declaring the Black Queen to be a HUGE BITCH. Closeup on BQ’s hips as she approaches, because we totally needed gratuitous sex appeal. She’s remarkably curvy for a probably-non-mammal. Still, we’ll forgive the standard scifi tropes. Jack watches on the Fenestrated Wall, until BQ appears and hacks it in half. She waves the dress and a pink pointed hat at him; apparently, now that the princess doll has been prototyped, the carapaces must represent it in their clothing as well as the jester. Jack is understandably displeased, and after a quick-fire montage of various outfits representing the sprites’ themes, he tears the final colourful tunic up.

Meanwhile, Rose’s dreamself has awoken, and discovers what she wrote on her walls; the word MEOW and other arrangements of the letters M, E, O, and W, over and over again, over every inch of the walls except the part covered by her bed. She finally remembers what Jaspers said to her, which was, of course, MEOW. This seems like nonsense, but as she looks, the letters switch to G, C, A, and T, the letters used to denote DNA nucleotides. It’s a genetic code.

The guardians, meanwhile, are battling enormous monsters; Mom and Dad respectively punch out a three-eyed spider-like giant and a rock cyclops, Dad pausing afterwards to carve a hat on a pyxis tablet, and Bro swordfights against a lava-dwelling tentacle beast.

Back to Jack, matters have got worse; not only are the carapaces required to dress like the sprites, but Davesprite still has the sword sticking through his torso, so now so must Jack. Considering what else we’ve seen carapaces survive, he’d probably be fine, but he’s still understandably hesitant. BQ offers him a sword, but he slices off her ring-bearing finger, which… causes her to explode? Jack puts on the ring, which causes Derse to glow white and him to sprout the features of the sprites; a sword grows from him without him having to fall on it, and wings and tentacles emerge. End scene.

So, approximately, human children have possibly caused the destruction of an alien civilisation’s last hope by putting a cat in a princess dress. Whatever else you think of Homestuck, you can’t say it’s not inventive.

BRIGHT: It is that, among other things.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 15 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 GET ON WITH IT!: 17 GORE GALORE: 9 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 6 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 13 TOTAL: 111

[passanima]

elemental gelade rewrite

basically a mix between the anime n manga, without the bad taste

main charas

kou - a teenager who was adopted by sky pirates. he’s eager to prove himself but not quite there yet. doesn’t think before he acts.

ren - a teenager who, due to her experiences, have a hard time trusting people. barely talks at first, to the point of misunderstandings.

secondary

the 3 gang - ciska, rowen, and kea. work for an agency who claims to protect people like ren, but doesn’t treat them like people.

the boss - kou’s mother figure. she’s tough but cares for her crew. kou says she never lies.

ep 1

the sky pirates mission of the day is to steal from a rich man’s ship. kou wants in, but is stopped by the boss. since he can barely fly a ship without crashing it, they won’t be needing his help.

kou is still upset when they’re back with the booty, while listening to their retelling of the events. sure, he isn’t the best pilote... but if they gave him a chance, he could show them that’s he can be useful!

he leaves in the middle of the celebration and pass the room where they left the booty. curious, he goes inside to look around. there’s lots of expensive looking stuff... and some weird pieces of art. but what catch his attention is a coffin ornamented with jewels. some of the gems start shining in a pattern. wondering if he saw that right, kou repeat the pattern by pushing each gem. a click is heard and a slit show itself in the coffin. kou open it up.

inside lies a young girl.

kou panic for a second, until he decide she looks too fresh to be a corpse. she must be... a hyper realistic doll. it’s strange, but he already knows that rich people make no sense. there’s a lot of proof of bad taste in this room alone!

there’s one thing he wonders about and it’s the headband she wears. kou didn’t know it was a common doll accessory and as he extend his hand to touch it... she open her eyes and slap his hand away.

this time kou freaks out for real! in front of him, the doll stand up before looking in his direction. he forget how to breath. maybe... it’s a mechanical doll?

she gets out of the coffin and kou finally decide to move. if it goes around and break he’ll get in real trouble! but when he approach her, she makes a face and escape his grip.

“uh. are you... real?” she frowns and kou feels real stupid. he tries to apologize, for treating her like a doll and all, but her only answer is “i hate you”

outch!

kou isn’t given much time to make the situation better when there��s a loud crash, they both fall to the ground by the force of what crashed into their main ship, and the alarm is heard.

something is wrong, and there’s a civilian with him! he takes her hand, ignore how she tries to push him away, and starts running.

on their way to the cockpit he notice the panic and how everyone keeps busy, mostly by passing weapons and orders. then he find the boss, but gets cut before he has the time to ask anything.

a group of 3 present itself and ask for their “edel reid”

the boss makes a face at that but kou has no idea what they’re talking about. they point to the girl behind him. the not-doll.

one (their leader, he presume) propose money in exchange for her. a good sum at that. kou is appalled. they’re talking about buying a human being! he looks at the boss who notice his protective stance. “what do you think?” she ask with a smile. it’s all the approval he needs before refusing their offer.

the group then becomes violent. their leader take out her weapon and... the woman behind her becomes one. kou’s boss explain that’s a “edel reid”, a person who can turn into a weapon.

there’s no time for further explanation. kou starts running again. the boss buys him time but they eventually catch up. he finally let go of the girl hand to attack back. but there’s a limit to how much damage he can afflict, and soon he’s on the ground, no longer able to protect her.

she falls next to him. having said nothing this whole time, there was still a lot going on inside her head. she didn’t understand why... he did all that. taking her side, protecting her... treating her like a person.

kou tells her to run. she doesn’t.

instead she take the time left before the enemies get to them to pose her forehead on his. kou feels strange, like someone is getting in his head. when he open his eyes again, she disappeared. and in her place, there’s a weapon in his hand.

ep 2

the enemy is on him, and kou can only use his new blade as a shield at first. but it doesn’t last long.

it’s strange how light she is. her weapon form work like an arm extension. he feels at ease even though it’s his first time using her. those “edel reid” can’t be made fun of! he can swing her around without effort!

kou is only starting to have fun when the boss gets back to him. because of the crash and the literal missiles the group leader is throwing around, their main ship is crashing down! he needs to take a smaller one and escape with the girl. she takes her human form again and sit behind kou.

out there, they notice the rest of the crew all in mini-ships... and the enemy group following them. the leader of the small gang shooting in their direction. a wing is touched and kou can’t keep them floating.

instead, he takes out his grappling hook and throw it at the enemy ship. keeping the girl close to him, he lets their own ship crash.

problem is that his hook broke something in the other ship who starts crashing down as well. the landing is rough, but less dramatic than expected. thanks to the hook, kou was able to soften it by slowing down their fall into a tree. the enemy group crashing further away.

on the groupthey take time to recover from the shock and to find a river. after a drink and in the relative calm of the forest, he looks in her direction... and finally ask for her name.

it’s ren, he learns.

they talk for a while, kou really curious about her weapon form. she inform him that they bonded earlier. and that, in exchange, she would like his help to go to a place called “edel garden”. he agrees, when they’re found by the 3 gang again.

their leader tries to gain their trust, saying they won’t attack anymore. instead they’ll just accompany them on their journey.

a carriage pass them and the group ask them to stop but it soon becomes clear why they were in a rush: a beast running after them. it crush the carriage, the 2 inside leaving it just in time.

ren and kou bond to defeat it... or to drive it away. while wielding a weapon is a lot of fun, kou doesn’t have experience, and tend to cut everything but the target. when ren takes back her human form, he gets reprimanded by the leader of the 3 gang. if he’s not careful, he can easily hurt the “edel reid”

kou is upset but can’t react to it with ren falling asleep in his arms. the woman from the 3 gang who’s also a weapon explain than transforming takes a lot of energy. so kou turns to the father and daugher they just saved from the beast for a place to stay. they agree to bring them to their house.

there they’re served food and a place to sleep. at dinner the daughter act strange. asking too many questions. well, only ren seems to notice. she doesn’t eat much before going to her room.

in the night, she disappears.

ep 3

kou notice it when he can’t fall asleep and knock on her door to talk. he wakes the 3 gang and they ask for an explanation to the father. he confess having sold their information to the village master. ren was interesting to him as an “edel reid”

all 4 of them go to get her away from her kidnapper. the 3 gang has a radar that detects all  “edel reid” in close distance.

inside the man’s mansion they meet more beasts (like guard dogs), rowen and kea stay behind to fight them off while kou and the leader go find ren.

when they’re close to the place the radar lead them to, they hear a scream. kou doesn’t wait any longer to crash into the door keeping him away from ren. inside he sees her... and a man holding her by her hair. ren’s headband was removed, exposing a green gem on her forehead.

the man ask which of them is the weapon’s master. ciska, the leader, decide to answer for kou, saying she is the one. ren is thrown aside and a woman get out of the shadow when the man ask for her. she turns into his weapon.

he makes a speech about how powerful ren is, and how he’s ready to kill to own her. ciska and him fight. kou runs to ren’s side. she shaking, hiding her gem with her hand. kou hands her the headband that had fallen to the ground. she is still too tired to transform, and apologize for that. kou tells her not to worry about it.

“but this girl” she starts “isn’t like me”

ren explain that you can create weapons like her, or try at least. they’re just never as strong... and do not live as long either.

the kids try to escape while the adults are busy fighting but the man notice them.

[liw-the-melancholic-apple]

How it may have gone - Humble Beginnings

A fic taking place in the marauders era. While the political climate seems to head to a conflict, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter are still just teenagers. Dealing with typical teenage problems.

But this year their little group grows. Who would have known that more prefects would be a good thing?

Masterlist

Ten: Detention III

When I came back to Greenhouse 4 the next day around the same time a new list lay on the first workstation. Next to it I found the lower section of the one I had worked off of yesterday. The little facts about the plants and creatures were apparently mine to keep. I folded that piece of parchment and put it in my bag.

Then I unfolded the new list.

To Do – Day 2

Behind the bumblebush by the desks you’ll find a door. I houses the supplies and tools. It’s not locked, grab whatever you need.

One table over is a stack of books that tells you what you need to know about the various plants and animals.

Feed the Abtu in the river 

Check elderly mandrakes for signs of life (or death)

Water nettles, beets and tea (green, white and black)

Cut eight branches of Dittany 

Wear gloves !!! and collect Streeler slime.

The Chameleon Potion is a very advanced one but it is one of the most powerful ways of disguise. In contrast to polyjuice potion which lets the drinker only turn into one person, of whom a ‘piece’ is required as an ingredient, which poses its own risks and obstacles, the Chameleon potion enables the drinker to practically become a metamorphmagi for at least two hours after consumption.

Nettles, beets and tealeaves (fresh or dried) are basic ingredients in a lot of potions. Nettles are mostly used in healing potions to provide the best starting points for the more magical ingredients. Not a single common healing potion is brewed without nettles! Beets are mostly used for colour in cosmetic applications. White, Green and Black Tea all have different properties that are released when put in hot water. Those properties often react with more magical plants like devil’s snare or moon dew to bring the potion to full potential.

When dittany is boiled and reduced, then combined with liquid silver it becomes a paste that is a very powerful cure against werewolves bites, called Lykoiaomai. This is the full recipe: Boil and reduce dittany leaves, strain the liquid to rid it of all solids and stir it into a liquid but slightly cooled silver. The ratio is one tablespoon of liquid silver to five tablespoons of dittany reduction.

When dried over a moderate flame Streeler slime turns into thin transparent gelatinous sheets, that can be dissolved in hot water. Dissolve the sheets in white tea as a cure for sleep deprivation.

Again, with the factoids… While the last ones seemed random these appeared to be a little more tailored to my situation. Mainly because of the werewolf and sleep deprivation. Full moon would be tomorrow. All of the Gryffindor boys would be completely destroyed on Thursday, if I could find dried sheets of Streeler Slime in Slughorn’s shelves, I might just take them to see whether they worked as well as pepper up potion.

While Sirius was right and there were no side-effects to using the potion it was pretty hard to get a hold of and expensive to buy. If the giant slugs provided an alternative I could see myself nicking  some jars of their slime before detention was over. It would be helpful to the boys and to Crick and me. Just yesterday the next month of nightshifts had been figured out and I was serving at least one a week, not one on the weekends. Crick had had a similar fate while Jonas got way too many Saturdays to his name. Anything that would get me through a day of classes after a nightshift was absolutely worth breaking the rules for.

On the other hand, Sprout had never once said that I wasn’t allowed to take anything from the greenhouse. Obviously I could assume that nothing was to leave the treehouse but nobody had officially forbidden it.

I got to work and finished a bit quicker than the day before. One of the mandrakes didn’t react to anything I did to it, so I assumed it to be dead and put it on the table with a note. I thought it smart to let everybody know that I wasn’t sure what a dead mandrake looked like. Just in case this one was just really old and moved so slowly I didn’t realise it. The last thing I needed was to get in trouble while serving detention.

After I placed the dittany branches on top of the books I walked back into the shed and looked through the Potions section. I found two interesting things: There were a lot of sheets of Streeler slime and there were about 12 glasses of Dittany-Silver-Paste. They were labelled with dates. All of which lay in the future. One of which was tomorrow.

I had thrown myself in a homework marathon yesterday night and written my essay on the significance of Venus in relation to death for the Thursday class. Normally I couldn’t be bribed to research astronomical deteails outside of class or homework. It was one of those subjects whose importance to general magical education I understood – unlike divination – but I really wasn’t all that interested in it. Yesterday however, I had broken out my moon chart for the decade and checked the dates of full moons. I had made a list and pinned it into my wardrobe, just so I was prepared for a weak and sickly looking Remus and a grumpy Potter-posse. Aside from that, I had a feeling that the other boys were stupid enough to hang out with Remus after he had transformed and I wanted to be able to run to their rescue when something happened.

The dates on the glasses of anti-werewolf-bite-cream were all full moon dates. Seeing how Remus didn’t need a specific potion to be healed, even if he bit himself, because he already was a werewolf and didn’t get affected by the poison in his own fangs, the existence of all of these jars seemed to proof my theory that my stupid, stupid friends did regularly lounge with a transformed werewolf. And that the school knew.

While making these observations I found one glass with a December date. The 26th, to be exact. Remus would have been with his parents during the holidays, so this one went unused. Then, again, I doubted that every other jar of this stuff had been used. Did it maybe spoil quickly? Maybe, but not very likely. There were jars labelled for next November. I went back out into the bright garden and checked the special edition book on uncommon healing potions. I had a section Dittany, the recipe for the cream and stated that it was good for roughly ten years.

So, maybe the teachers relabelled the jars after every full moon that went well. I could safely assume that every single one of these jars was good to go in case of an emergency. And that it would be for couple of years. After all Remus had only started school five and a half years ago. And I doubted, that we had more than one werewolf on campus.

I struggled with my conscience and I didn’t feel good about it. But I went back into the shed, ripped the label off the December jar and put it into my bag. Just in case I really needed to run to anybody’s rescue. When I left I felt really guilty but I also reckoned I could talk myself out of the situation if it ever came to light. 

We were all pretty nervous on Wednesday. It was our first full moon. And even though we weren’t going to actually be around Remus during the night, all of us girls were hyper aware of Remus’ bad shape and what would happen at night. I was glad that we went on revising spells in Charms class that morning. That way nobody noticed how little I could concentrate. Transfiguration went fairly well, too, as it was a theoretical class and I only needed to write down notes. I did, however, pull myself together to write them completely, detailed and legible because Milla was an absolute wreck at this point. Yes, her feelings for Remus weren’t influenced by the fact that he was a werewolf but the thought of every bone in his body breaking horrified her for him. Her voice was shaky all day and it sounded like she could start crying any second. Needless to say that she didn’t take any notes at all during McGonnagal’s monologue.

“Please, keep me away from Remus!”, she begged when we crossed the foyer for lunch. “Or at least don’t let me talk to him. He already looks like death and I don’t think my state would help that at all.”

“Sure thing. We’ll distract him.”

We did. Quite successfully. By now the others knew what my detention consisted of exactly and I decided to tell the entire group about my recent venture into thieving.

“Point is, that I have that stuff. I don’t hope you’ll ever need it but in all honesty if you should ever need it, it’s probably better if you have it with you rather than it sitting in my night stand”, I whispered while smoking.

“You stole Slughorn’s supply from a restricted area of the school? You sure you’re still you, Goods?”

“Fairly certain, yeah. Honestly, I’d rather lose my badge and serve detention for the next two years, than live through the nightmare of something happening to any of you.”

“I’m with Jette”, Remus agreed strongly. Well, as strongly as he possibly could. Milla was right, saying he looked like death. His skin was basically see-through and the dark circles under his eyes nearly reached his upper lip.

“I’m not myself. What if I do bite one of you?”, his voice got a little shaky and I had the distinct impression that that had nothing to do with his physical condition.

“You haven’t yet, Remus”, James tried to calm him down, with a pad on the shoulder.

“First time for everything”, Remus half-smiled in response.

“Just take it!”, I shoved the jar in Peter’s hands. “If you never need it, I’ll be heavenly happy, but if you do need it and don’t have access to it I’ll kill myself over it. And so will Remus. So, don’t argue!”

We sent them off to their classes and descended to the dungeons to learn something or other about fever-reducing-potions. Blair took care of her cauldron that she shared with Millla and the one that Chloe and Nica were supposed to brew in, while Joe was absolutely on his own with ours. I’d told him that I wasn’t on my A-game and could barely concentrate and being the wonderful person he was, he took it upon himself to just do the potion on his own, allowing me to lift. I had to promise that I’d help him out in Defence, though. And I was more than willing to pay that price.

When I got to the treehouse that afternoon I was met by Professor Slughorn. Oh. Not good.

“Miss de Witt. How nice. I thought it useful to talk you through some of the ingredients we have you collect and store. While I’m aware that Professor Sprout provided you with the books and some additional information, I’d like for you to know a little more. You up for it?”

“Certainly, Professor.” Maybe he hadn’t noticed that I nicked his December jar.

“Very well. We will get to the Dittany you collected yesterday. First, you should feed the animals. I’ll set up over there.” He pointed at the tables and pulled out a collapsible cauldron. I scanned my list for the day that just told me to feed the fish and lay out some hay for whatever other creature. I did both those things, visited the mandrakes, who were all still alive and returned to the table.

The Dittany branches were already in the cauldron and a shimmery, shiny substance sat atop a different fire. Shimmery, shiny and silver. Maybe he had noticed that I nicked the jar.

“Now, I’m sure you can guess what we’re doing today.”

“The potion – paste – that Professor Sprout wrote about. The one that heals werewolf bites?”

“Excellent. Five points to Hufflepuff.”

“Oh, thank you, Sir.”

“Now, I’m aware you don’t like potionmaking all that much. Contrasting your brother, who is still doing brilliantly.”

“Happy to hear that, Sir.”

“But with your strong suit being Defence against the Dark Arts, I don’t think that it would be crazy to assume you at least think about working in theat field. I would favour you for an auror but obviously you might end up a curse breaker, a member of the department for magical law or a dejinxer at St. Mungo’s. Every single one of these professions is connected to potions and potionmaking in one way or another. And if you’d ever want to apply to the auror training programme you need to have achieved an A at least in your NEWTs. So, I thought we’d try to install some interest in you by meeting here every now and again during your detention to work on interesting and practical potions. Would you be okay with that?”

“Of couse, Sir. Thank you. This is probably the best opportunity anybody has ever gotten by getting detention.”

“Well, I personally don’t agree with your actions, Miss de Witt. But I also don’t agree with those of my own students.” I had fully forgotten that Slughorn was Slytherin Head of House.

“What Messrs Black and Mulciber said and did does not represent my house. I trust you know that. And I don’t want you to miss opportunities over a throw-away nasty comment.”

“Thank you, Professor. I appreciate that. A lot. A whole lot.”

“Let’s get to work then.”

He went through the recipe and one or two tricks that could help me when brewing the thing myself. At the end we had produced four more of the jars. Three of them Slughorn put on his shelves, one he gave to me.

“I’d guess you won’t need it anytime soon. But it keeps nearly forever, so it won’t hurt to keep it for emergencies in whatever field you chose to work. And now that you know how to brew it and should wish to practice again, you can always ask me for the ingredients or supplies. I would have to supervise your use of them. You’ll understand that I don’t want you to take the silver for making jewellery. “

“Completely.” Frankly, I didn’t understand anything that was going on but I ran with it. By this point I was one hundred percent certain that Slughorn had noticed the theft. Otherwise he’d not have said that I could ask him for more of the potion. I thought he’d be mad at me but since he wasn’t I had to conclude that he knew about Remus’ condition and my friendship to him.

When Slughorn dismissed me it was pitchblack outside. I quickly looked up. The moon hadn’t fully risen yet, but it was definitely visible. According to our DADA material the transformation didn’t happen until the moon had done exactly that. Full rise and full moon. I imagined that the boys had already eaten and were on their way to wherever they hid during these nights. They’d gone so far as to tell us that there was a hideout but not where it was.

My steps quickened as I crossed the lawn. Suddenly, the lights from the castle’s windows seemed very far away. How fast did the moon rise? How far away from the castle was the hideout? Did the boys get there in time for the transformation? I quickened my steps. I started jogging. I did not want to run into Remus tonight. Absolutely not. Nope.

“Goods!” I stopped. Turned around.

“Sirius?”

“What are you still doing out here? Moon’s nearly risen.”

“Why d’you think I’m running?” I couldn’t spot any of the other boys.

“Oh… are you scared of the big bad wolf?” Sirius smug smirk appeared on his lips.

“I thought I already told you that I’d rather not run into a transformed werewolf. So, yeah. I love Remus, I do, but …”

“You don’t want to share his fate.”

“Well, no I don’t. And I’d rather not die, either.”

“Fair enough. No need to be scared, he’s already where he’s supposed to be.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Forgot you wonder potion in the dorm… We have a fairly established routine for nights like these. And your stupid jar, is not yet part of it. But Remus insisted I get it.” I swung my backpack from my back to my chest and opened it.

“What are you doing?” I handed him the new jar of dittany and silver.

“Slughorn was at detention. He must have noticed that I stole one of the jars and taught me how to brew it. I got to keep one. Fully legal this time.”

“What kind of detention is that? I only ever get to clean things or write the same sentence over and over again.”

“Haven’t quite worked that out yet. But it seems to have some kind of deeper meaning. Slughorn said that he’d stop by more often during detention to teach me potions. The useful kind that I might enjoy brewing. He said it’s to help me get into the auror programme but I don’t know whether I should believe that.”

“Curious” Sirius looked up at the dark sky. “I gotta run.”

“Right… Hug Remus for me, yeah?” Sirius tilted his head. He didn’t look impressed with that suggestion.

“Or tell him I’m hugging him mentally.”

“Will do.” He was ready to head back to where he had come from.

“And be careful, you hear?”

“You worried about me?”, again he smirked at me.

“Yes, Sirius, I am. About all of you. Including Remus.  So, be careful and not arrogant or heroic or Merlin knows what. Okay?”

Sirius came a little closer and studied my face.

“Nothing will happen, Goods. We’ve done this for a while now. We know what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, right because it’s such a common practice to ru…”

“Nothing”, Sirius interrupted me “will happen to any of us. I promise.” He gave me that look that made one feel like he uncovered the deepest and darkest secrets of one’s soul.

“Fine. Fine, fine. Run off, then.” I pushed him against his shoulders to give him some momentum.

“Get something to eat you worried Goodie-two-shoes”, Sirius grinned as he ran back into the blackness of the grounds.

I continued on my way to dinner, slower than before, but distinctly more concerned. He could promise me that they’d be fine a million times, I would never fully believe that none of them took unnecessary risks. That was in their blood. They were inherently adventurous. To the point of stupidity. This was going to be a long night. I doubted I’d get any sleep at all.

Entering the Great Hall and spotting Milla, Blair, Chloe and Nica I realised that none of us would sleep. We’d all be awake all night assuring one another that the boys would be fine. Although none of us were sure about that.

[bluebellhairpin]

Yellow Flicker Beat [2]

The Almost Introduction  Loki Laufeyson X Pyrokinetic!Reader

- One // In The Beginning There Was One

- Two // You’re Here!

- Three // (Coming Soon?)

A/N: Every story needs a problem. - Nemo

Summary: You had planned to flee New York; the news of your powers had reached the news and painted you a villain. But you never got to even pack your bags properly before your apartment was stormed. That lead you to do the only thing you could think of. 

Masterlist  

Avengers Tower, New York, 2012

“Heat signature has picked up again!” By now everyone had moved to a less battle-tainted room, the agent from before ran in, alerting the group to the newest movement of the suspected villain. 

Loki was with them, having to stay back since Thor felt he couldn’t leave yet, however Sif had been down to collect the tesseract. Both Odin and Thor felt it best to keep it and Loki in separate places until things on earth had been completely dealt with.

Tony had even ordered in shawarma. 

“From where?” Steve asked, already prepared to deal with the seemingly problematic fire-manipulator. 

“Brooklyn Heights!” The agent replied, beaming a pinned map onto the conveniently placed tv at the other end of the room.

“We have agents there, right?” Natasha said, standing and wiping her fingers with one of Clint’s hoarded napkins. “Should probably make sure they haven’t been turned to charcoal.” 

“Unless you’re fire-proof, you ain’t going anywhere.” Tony said, also standing since finishing his food. “Think strategically - Cap should be good at that. Me, Thor, and Mr. Reindeer over here should go. Maybe Banner if he can bear to go green again.”

“Not today Tony.”

“Okay, so Hulk is out of the equation.”

“Why Loki?” 

“You tell me Meatswing. Ain’t he an Ice King?” Tony said, pointing between the two gods.

“I have- Never mind. You mortals won't understand.” Loki grumbled, looking down to the untouched shawarma in front of him. It wasn’t like he could eat it even if he wanted to. His hands were still tied up.

“He can withstand fire, if that’s what you’re alluding to Man of Iron.” Thor said, grabbing Mjolnir and pulling Loki to stand alongside him. “But we should go before anyone else might get hurt.”

(Y/N)’s Apartment, Brooklyn Heights, 2012

You didn’t want to hurt anybody, never to begin with anyway, but eventually you had a breaking point.

Fire always starts out small.

These people weren’t the good guys, and it wasn’t just the movies that told you. You’d done research on societies and groups on earth - cliches almost - and these people were not one of the good cliches. 

They bore the logo of Hydra, and in no way were you going to yield to them. 

It didn’t take long before your kitchen and hallway was in flames, and you figured that the two-story drop from your almost non-existent balcony was a least survivable. 

So you took the exit through the window, glass both shattering and melting if it stayed too close too long. The landing was mediocre, but made your shoulder hurt more compared to what it would’ve if it’d only crashed through a window. 

You stood, groaning, and took a look up to the broken window, seeing someone gesture back into the room so they could get down the stairs. Wimps. You shook the fall off, taking to running further inland. The last thing you needed was your powers getting smothered by the rivers. And ocean.

Not that you got that far either. 

In front of you landed Iron Man, also known as Tony Stark, weapons mobilized and he seemed ready to kill you if he had to. Not a moment later Thor appeared next to him, dumping a mix of leather and green fabric on the ground between him and the metal-clad billionaire. 

You cautiously took a look behind you, seeing the Hydra agents were nowhere to be seen, which made you look even worse.

“What’s with the shoulder?” Tony asked, his voice slightly mechanized from the suit. “Get into a fight?”

“Not exactly.” You shrugged, looking to your right shoulder to see the shirt was torn and stained red more than you first thought. “But I do try not to make it a habit to jump out windows.” You pointed to your apartment, flames now starting to lick through the broken window.

“Me neither.”

“You you midgardians always talk before you apprehend each other, or are you just prolonging the event because I’m here?” The mass of fabric had now pulled itself up and was now standing as tall as Iron Man, revealing the chiseled features of the days actual villain; Loki.

“Apprehend? Do you really think I’m the bad guy?” You almost screeched your words to the two Avengers. “There were people in there trying to kill me!” You looked at Loki too, and you hated to say that it looked like he believed you. It’s not like it’d make a convincing argument against what the others thought for him to say you’re telling the truth.

“What people?” Tony said, seeming to lower his defense at you and raise them at something non-existent existing behind you. 

“Don’t you have a program to hack into the cameras in the building's hallways to do that?” He tilted his head at you, and you figured if the mask wasn’t on he’d be squinting at you with a ‘really?’ look. “Don’t you?” 

Avengers Tower, New York, 2012

“Don’t worry guys, she’s cool now. Literally.” Tony said, striding into the level’s foyer as the Avengers that stayed behind tensed. You followed him out of the elevator, with Thor and Loki behind you. 

Steve was the first to come closer.

“And you brought her back so she could heat up again?” He asked, completely done with the day and wanting to go home. Tony tutted the soldier and shook his head.

“She isn’t a bad girl Rogers. You oughta know how Hydra is.” Steve stiffened, looked you over and noted the bad shoulder and slightly charred clothes. Tony went to the bar. “Drink?” You shook your head, having followed Tony, moving to sit with your back against the bar. 

“So what are you?” Natasha asked, turning in her seat to face and talk to you instead of talking over you like the others were.

“A monster.” You laughed slightly, not noticing Loki turn his attention even more to you. He thought he was a monster. You looked fine. “Or at least a pyromaniac.” You lips quirked up in a sly smirk. 

“Not to sound like I’m prying, but do you usually smoke like that?” Clint asked, nodding to your shoulder, which was now letting off a small tendril of grey smoke. 

“Only when I’m healing. It won’t last long.” you shrugged, rolling your shoulder lightly as small flakes of skin rose up with the smoke like embers off burning wood. 

Needless to say, Loki was infatuated.

When he first saw you, it was from above, and you were running inland towards inner Brooklyn. Flames were still licking up your arms, hair ablaze with the light of a thousand stars, and you were like a beacon of light. He’d guessed then, not on purpose. When he saw you at a more level height, your eyes were losing their glow, but it was almost as if they hadn’t from how much he was captivated by them.

He felt for sure you weren’t a mortal. You were a being like him. A Goddess of Muspelheim. 

But he wasn’t going to let anyone know that. He’d already suffered humiliation at his defeat, and then again when he wasn’t brought back to Asgard. A third time at giving heart-eyes to a hot-headed mortal wouldn’t help. 

The room lulled into silence. Everyone was too tired to talk that much

As the night drew on, the likes of Steve, Bruce, and Clint went right to bed, no questions further asked. Tony also ran off, probably to deal with Pepper, of which had got an early flight back to make sure everything was going to be okay. Natasha stuck around, situating herself next to you on the floor, and would alternate between staring at the wall, asking you questions, and taking sips of her self-served drink. Thor also helped himself to the non-effective drinks Tony had left unsupervised, leaving Loki across the room on a sofa with Mjonir in his lap to make sure he wouldn’t go anywhere. 

Looking at him, you almost felt sorry for him. 

He didn’t seem to be putting up a huge fight to get away from Thor and whatever horrible punishment was waiting for him back in his old home. That was strange to you. If you were in his position, you knew you wouldn’t of made the mistake of getting caught to begin with.

You figured if you both ended up sticking around long enough you have to tell him how.

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