#(at least not for another decade)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[trensu]

Have an itty bitty tiny piece of stasis in darkness, just so you all have an idea of where the story is going after the godly reveal. and also have proof that i am, in fact, still toiling away at this (as well as hawkins halfway house.)

A week and a half later, Steve entered a town he’d never seen before. He wore simple traveling clothes and carried no weapons aside from a couple of carefully hidden knives. He’d left his armor and shield behind. His satchel held only the essentials one needed for travel and a single stone as large as his fist. The stone was wrapped in layers of cloth to keep it safe during the journey. 

I need you to find someone. 

He felt very bare but he hadn’t been given much of a choice. Speed was of the essence for his quest, and little no-name towns tended to be wary of strangers in plain clothes, even more so around strangers decked out for battle. Steve wasn’t sure this place could be called a town. It was so small it hadn’t been on any official map. It didn’t even have an inn. Hopefully, Steve wouldn’t be needing an inn once he found who he was looking for.

He’s too far from me to reach.

He asked around, laying on the charm generously. He explained he had been a friend of a friend and had been trusted to deliver something. Eventually, he was told where to go. The house he found far beyond the village’s boundary was small. It looked like it had once been well cared for but it was old and had fallen to disrepair. Steve took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

A sallow old man opened the door. He was bald but had some scruff on his face still. His shoulders, stooped from age, trembled. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked so tired.

He’s my very last worshiper in all the world.

“Wayne Munson?” Steve asked.

“Who wants to know?” The man’s voice was phlegmy and rough. He coughed into the crook of his elbow almost before he could finish speaking. 

“I’m Steve. Ser Steve Harrington, pledged to the Lord of Night.”

Wayne’s eyes widened. His grip on the open door weakened and slipped. Steve caught the door before it could hit Wayne.

“He sent me to you,” Steve explained. “May I come in?”

yep, that's it for now. i told you it was small. i'm not even gonna bother with a read-more here.

[thylionheart]

Your 20s are like the Iliad, an endless, seemingly pointless war you were reluctantly forced into

Your 30s are like the Odyssey, every single thing is going to go wrong, but you are actively fighting towards the place you want to be

[goldkirk]

.

[itstimeforstarwars]

I love that Dooku raised Rael and Qui-Gon back to back and then after Qui-Gon became a knight Dooku had to take like a 30 year break before deciding to raise Komari.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

hii 📓

Okay so the thing is that I wanted a “the Zenin raised Megumi instead of Gojo” fic but the thing is that I’m absolutely convinced that if the Zenin were the ones that took Megumi they wouldn’t actually take tsumiki too. The fandom consensus I’ve personally seen has been that she would have been taken and mistreated by zenin for being a female non sorcerer but I personally think they would have just straight up left her behind.

They only bought Megumi. They keep non sorcerers and women as servants in their compound but all of them are Zenin themselves. Tsumiki isn’t related and I couldn’t really see any reason why they’d want her. Which turned this into a fic where Tsumiki loses her brother, but she’s trying to find him again, she swears. I think of it as my “siblings doomed by the narrative desperately try to write a new one where they can be together” fic.

The thing is that Tsumikis mom was one of those people who thought love and consumption were synonymous. She had a habit of getting caught up with assholes and just… having both of them chew on each other for a while until it turns into this horrible fucking bloodbath.

Tojis just another loser her mom got caught up in, but he’s Tsumiki’s favorite out of all the losers, because he gave her her brother. Her mom marries this random guy she barley knows and Tsumikis pretty sure she does it so they can both ditch their kids twice as much, secure in the knowledge that there’s supposedly another person checking in. It works out great for them, because they both stop coming entirely. It’s fine, because Tsumiki has Megumi and Megumi has Tsumiki and they don’t need anything else.

It’s one of those things where they were in really unhealthy circumstances and it made their relationship a little bit unhealthy but not necessarily bad. They both had to grow up way too fast and deal with way too much too soon and become codependent on each other because they are, in the most literal way possible, dependent on one another. Neither of them know how to love in a way that doesn’t involve sacrificing themselves for their sibling, mostly because they don’t have a way that doesn’t involve that.

They’re in a sinking ship and tsumiki knows it. Their parents aren’t coming back. The money is going to run out sooner or later. Their problems are stacking up.

Megumi has confessed to her that he sees things that no one else does. When she asks him how he knows no one else sees them, he explains that they’d say something if they did and won’t say anything else. And she doesn’t know what to believe but she refuses to call him crazy. He tells her that monsters cling to her back and he fights them off for her. She patches up his bruises and cuts and tells him he’s brave and tries to figure out if she’s just imagining that her back feels lighter after. He tells her that there are dogs that only he can see that have started following him around, and she tells him she believes him and can never remember, later, if she meant it or was just saying it.

The last time Toji came by, he left them more money than tsumikis ever seen in her life, took them to ice cream, told them that he was sorry he was so shit at this and that the money was Megumi’s share in a payment. It was for something he was going to help daddy with later. Tsumiki and him were to use it to take care of themselves and be healthy, because Megumi couldn’t help him later if he wasn’t. And tsumiki was always afraid of what he meant by that, but in the end, she let it slip her mind. After all, Toji hadn’t been by in ages. He probably wouldn’t come by at all.

And he didn’t. But others did. Two men she’s never met before are waiting outside their building one day, and when they see Megumi, they laugh. But the thing that Tsumiki can never get out of her mind later is that she swears they weren’t looking at Megumi directly. They were looking at his dogs.

Tsumiki basically tries to get Megumi and powerwalk past them, but they’re a lot bigger and a lot stronger and there’s nothing she can do, really. They have a brief conversation about whether they should take her too, before one decides that Toji only sold him his kid and to leave the other behind. This makes both of them try to run, but there’s nothing either of them can do to overpower the men, and the men say that “Naobito would go ballistic if they left the ten shadows behind” so they take Megumi and leave her.

They put Megumi in a car and shove Tsumiki to the curb outside of it, and she tried to hold onto his hand, she swears. She grabbed at the car door even when the car started moving, and she banged on the windows, and she watched as Megumi kicked and punched and screamed inside, until one of them hit him and he went still. She ends up falling and hitting her head when the car picks up speed, and when she wakes up again, the cars gone and she has no idea where it went.

And it becomes a foundational moment for who she is. I think she was just intensely lonely before Megumi and poured a lot of herself into this idea of a family together. Tsumikis never able to shake the moment of her being outside the car and Megumi being on the inside, and not being able to get into him. She can never again get what she felt in that moment out of her head.

She goes to the police and tells them that it’s her little brother, his dad sold him but she wants him back, and they’re like “…”. The issue is that apparently her mom can pick up the damn phone if the police call and she shows up, spins some lie about how her and the stepdad split up and he took the kid with him, they never adopted each others kids so it was within his rights, Tsumiki was taking the separation hard and acting out. She lies, basically, because toji hadn’t kept up his end of the deal and dropped in to check in (neither had she) and his kid wasn’t her responsibility, he could do what he wanted with him. She doesn’t want the police poking around the way she lives. Just let the kid go because he’s probably dead and not her real brother anyway.

Tsumiki refuses to give up on him. They were both kids who no one cared about but they cared about each other and that had to be enough. But she’s seven with no support and zero idea on how to find him. She starts skipping school to look for him in random streets, puts up flyers, can’t go outside without looking for him. She gets held back a year in school because of how much she skips and she can’t bring herself to care. She buys him gifts on every birthday and writes him letters she can’t post because she’s going to find her brother and she’s going to prove to him that she never once stopped looking for him. She just. She needs him to know that she never stopped looking for him. She needs to find him and be able to honestly tell him she never stopped trying.

One day her mom comes back in clothes she can’t afford and comes with movers they shouldn’t be able to afford and announces a move they definitely can’t afford. Tsumikis absolutely opposed to going because if her brother comes to look for her, she needs to be in their old apartment so he can find her. She doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter. They have mysterious new benefactors who are setting up a trust to take care of tsumiki with a very generous stipend for her mom but they have to move to Sendai as a stipulation of getting the money.

It’s not until the attorney who’s managing her trust hands her a set of glittery blue butterfly hairpins that tsumiki realizes her mom sold her brother a second time.

The thing is that tsumiki had this one cheap set of butterfly hairpins she’d always stopped to look at in the store when she took Megumi to go grocery shopping. Shed never buy them, because they couldn’t afford it, but it was the thing she wanted most openly in front of him. She was always secretly really insecure about her hair, because they were the kind of poor where bar soap was a luxury they could only sometimes afford and kids at school made fun of how her hair was dirty and frayed. Megumi was the only one who ever saw how badly she wanted those stupid hair clips. If they had to give her a set of butterfly hair clips, it’s because he demanded that they did.

It’s basically implied that the Zenin are the ones paying for her care and upkeep due to an unspecified deal they cut with Megumi, but when they approached her mom with it, they added the caveat that Tsumiki had to be moved to a new city entirely and there could be no forwarding address left anywhere.

The zenins stance on tsumiki is, effectively, that she’s a weakness Megumi needs to be weaned off of. They honestly assumed he’d just like, forget she ever existed and he. Did not do that. He actually pitched a total bitch fit. Tried to scale the compound walls. Bit multiple people including the clan leader. But he’s got the ten shadows, he’s heir to the clan, and he can’t be caught up on some random non sorcerer who isn’t even a Zenin. They end up agreeing to pay for her to live very comfortably if he starts cooperating more but they want to make sure that he can’t ever find her again if he does ever succeed in running away.

Tsumiki is at once full of hope and hopeless, because on one hand, the butterfly clips prove that Megumi still loves her and remembers her, at least in her mind. But at the same time, she’s being moved to Sendai and doesn’t know how they’ll ever find each other again. She doesn’t honestly know if they’d recognize each other if they saw each other again. She wears the butterfly clips every day, even when she gets too old for the style, because she’s more confident about her brother recognizing them than her.

The thing about tsumiki is that she doesn’t understand hate. She just doesn’t. Her mom and toji always got caught up in these perceived slights and revenge and never once let go of the past. They’d destroy themselves if it meant taking down the people they hated with them. She never wanted that. She wanted to live with the people she loved and she’d happily turn around and forget everything, all the pain, all the searching, if it just meant she could go back to being megumis sister.

This isn’t about hate. This is about that moment outside the car, where her brother was inside and she couldn’t get in to him. This is about how helpless and small she felt when they shoved her to the curb and ripped megumis hand out of hers. She needs to make sure that when she finds Megumi, she can take him home again. So she decides she needs to learn how to fight.

Itadori Yuuji has the constitution of an ox and the strength to match it, and he is known for getting in fights with bullies and trouncing them so thoroughly that it’s never a question of who wins when the fight starts. He’s insanely physically capable and can hold his own in a fight with ease. He’s also nice and kind and Tsumiki’s comfortable enough asking him to teach her how to throw a punch or two.

She is bad at it.

So fucking bad at it.

But she never gives up, and Itadori is nice enough to keep teaching her despite how embarrassingly horrible she is at it all. He always asks her why she wants to learn so bad, she doesn’t seem to like it all, and she never answers his question honestly.

In their last year of middle school, their class has a trip to Kyoto. She, Itadori, and the rest of their group walk into some random restaurant in the city and have barely sat down when someone comes inside, starts searching every booth in the restaurant while shouting Tsumikis name.

And oh. They could recognize each other after all.

She looked for Megumi in every crowd she was ever in, but she didn’t consider that he was doing the same. Or that he would see her first.

Her brother grew up without her seeing it. Hes older, dressed in strange, expensive clothes, has a slightly bruised up face and split lip, but his eyes are the same, and he looks like the brother she remembered.

But a lot more nervous than Megumi ever was. He was a tiny, stoic child who didn’t take any shit and never showed fear, even when there were monsters that only he could see. But he’s nervous when he tells her that she probably doesn’t recognize him or remember him, but when she was a lot younger, he—

Megumi. He’s her little brother. Of course she remembers him. She’s been looking for him everywhere.

Megumi didn’t smile much as a child, but he smiles at her then. He tells her he doesn’t have a lot of time and she tells him that they can leave out the back, and he never let her hold his hand as a child but he takes her hand so easily in that second. And just for a second, she’s his sister again, and it’s everything she wanted.

They never make it out the back.

Two men come in. Megumi calls one of them uncle, and he goes stiff and flat the second he sees him. His uncle apologizes for his nephew, tells everyone that he always makes scenes when they’re out in public, tells him to apologize to the nice people and leave. Megumi was mistaken.

Tsumiki tríes to keep ahold of his hand. Really, she does. She tries to tell people to call the police. But megumis “uncle” steps towards her and Megumi slams him into a table, and then suddenly Megumi’s the one insisting that they leave immediately. They can go. It’s fine. They’re leaving. She loses ahold of his hand.

She tries to follow, but the other man restrains her. She learns that she’s better at slamming plates into peoples heads than she is at punching, and at this point itadoris Friend In Danger Override has been triggered and he fucking tackles the dude, which gives tsumiki the clearing that she needs to chase outside after her brother. She gets out just in time to see him be pushed into a car, and she’s had years to think about the last time this happened and figure out what to do differently. She throws herself in front of the car and refuses to move.

See her entire stance is that she’ll sooner get run over and killed in the street than let them do this a second time, but she also can see Megumi trying to fucking punch the drivers head in from behind because he’s about to hit his sister. His uncles trying to restrain him, and just for a second, she sees his hands make the shape of the shadow puppets he used to show her as children. Something invisible slams her out of the way just as his uncle knocks him out.

She picks up a rock and tries to smash in the fucking window with it, and itadori has to pull her out of the way to keep her from getting her feet run over when the car finally tears out of the parking lot. She goes ballistic on him for stopping her because her brother was right there and she lost him again and she didn’t even get the license plate. He was right there.

The police basically do jack all again. There’s no license plate, no names they can follow up on, and they’re still half convinced this is a settled custody issue even though tsumiki insists her brother was sold by his dad and is very plainly getting hurt wherever he is. Itadori is now a devoted advocate of finding tsumikis brother and reuniting them, and both basically kind of end up becoming really close to the other? He’s taking care of himself and his grandpa alone, she’s alone while her moms awol again, and they both become the others support system.

At one point, there’s this random girl and boy who doesn’t speak who shows up to their school for indeterminate reasons. The girl is bored and twirling her glasses in one hand while the person in a suit that they’re with asks the principal questions, and when tsumikis eyes catch at the right angle, she sees an invisible monster clinging to a classmates back through them. She realizes it’s exactly what Megumi always talked about and still remembers that the people who took him could see his dogs. She corners the two others in a room and tries to demand information about the invisible monsters or see if they know her brother or the people who took him, and immediately gets blown off. The fight escalates until the girl tells him that actually, yeah. She knows tsumikis brother. He is a very special person to some very powerful people, and the only way she can ever help him is to tell him that she’s let go of him and that he needs to do the same to her. That’s the only message that the people who have him would ever let get through, and his life would get a lot better as soon as he got it.

The people who have him would give him anything in the world, except for her. He could be a lot happier and healthier than he is right now if he just agreed to stop trying to find tsumiki. If she really wants to help her brother, then she needs to let him go.

Tsumiki nails her in the back of the head with a milk carton when she tries to walk away. It sloshes out on her. Tsumiki did not intend this. She cannot admit that fact. There are some actions you just have to own when you do them. She tells the girl that he’s her brother and she’s never letting go of him. She’s going to find him. They can’t keep him from her forever. She doesn’t care how long it takes her.

For a second, tsumiki really thinks this girl is going to kick her ass, but she doesn’t. She wishes her luck and tells her she’ll need it, and it’s only later that tsumiki realizes she slipped the eyeglasses into her pocket.

And as it turns out, her brothers monsters were real all along.

There was a knife that toji left in the frame of his bed. Tsumiki confiscated it from Megumi as soon as he found it, and it was odd and strange and gave her bad feelings when she held it, and it can kill the things that gather on her back. When she follows Itadori to their local high school and joins the occult club in an attempt to find more people involved in this world of invisible monsters, she wears the eyeglasses and keeps the knife hidden in her bag.

It comes in handy when her senpais are trying to open this thing and suddenly there’s like a fucking portal opening and Actually Let’s Not Oh Too Late Let’s Run Let’s Fucking Run.

They run.

Meanwhile at the hospital Megumi found out in very quick succession that his sister has fucking sukunas finger and also that there’s a very over enthusiastic himbo who is the self appointed vice president of the Find Fushiguro Megumi And Bring Him Home Club who absolutely fucking refuses to leave his side. Sorry who are you. Why are you so enthusiastic about finding him. Megumi sort of was the one doing the finding there was a whole tracking situation and him waiting dramatically in the shadows like they just did it.

Anyway they run very very quickly to tsumikis school where she is dodging she is serpentining this is a fuckton of monsters oh holy fuck is that her brother?

The fight goes bad.

Tsumiki manages to follow itadori and her brother out at a much slower pace because she’s not a freak of nature like itadori and shows up just in time to see her brother shouting at itadori to not eat the fucking finger while itadori is absolutely trying to eat the fucking finger.

She chucks her shoe at him. The finger goes flying.

Then the monster eats it instead.

Tsumiki: :o

Yuuji: :o

Megumi: fuck

Now there’s a bigger monster and the fight goes even worse. There’s a lot of shouting. Itadori ends up with her knife. Then he ends up getting eaten and they’re down both a knife and itadori, who’s probably fucking dead. Then megumis insisting she run and she’s insisting he shut the fuck up because it’s sort of taken a decade to get this close to him again and she’s not fumbling the bag now because of a monster on the rampage. Have a sense of fucking priorities here.

Then itadori bursts out of the monsters stomach with the knife like the fucking Kool Aid Man and the fight is suddenly very over. Good job, team.

Gojo rolls up to his most stoic and eternally pissed off student having a dramatic and emotional reunion with his sister.

Yuuji, in a very bad whisper: no no so like she’s been looking for him for years but he saw her in the restaurant

Gojo: :o go on

Yuuji: and then he got caught by like, I don’t know, he said he was his uncle or something but the dude acted so weird and creepy and they put him in a car and Tsumiki tried to stop the car but they got away

Gojo: *gasp* what no

Yuuji: I know! Anyway then I start helping her look for him but we can’t find him anywhere until I’m at the hospital and he just walks up to me right?? And I’m like “dude I have been looking everywhere for you” and he’s like “I have no idea who you are, I’m here about that fucked up demon finger” and I’m like—

Megumi, really trying to have a moment here: we can both hear you

And megumis like “this is uh. My new teacher. I guess. I am his only student. And he is uh. Enthusiastic. Do not linger in conversation with him.”

Tsumiki is lingering. She needs fucking intel so he can’t disappear again. Where does he go to school and can she transfer there. It’s fucking wizard school? Will they take her even though she’s not a wizard? She cannot emphasize enough that she will study any fucking subject they want so that way she can be close with her brother again she does not care if it’s applicable to her education or life. She can throw things at people itadori tell the man tell him how enthusiastically she will throw things at monsters for their weird fucking wizard school.

Itadori: she hit me in the face with her shoe like five minutes ago

Tsumiki: see???

Megumi keeps trying to forbid her from wizard school but she’s technically the older sister so she has override rights. She will go to wizard school. How does she get wizard school to accept her.

And Gojos just really weird and off and keeps looking at Megumi and saying that he “didn’t know he had a sister.”

He really didn’t know that Megumi had a sister he wanted to stay with.

And then suddenly it’s like a switch is flipped and he’s back to his normal self telling them to leave everything to him, because he’ll make sure tsumiki can come back with them. And uh? Itadori? Weirdly physically capable kid who will apparently eat anything? Is he going to be good getting home after all this?

Itadori: actually if it’s not too much trouble can I go to wizard school too my grandpa sort of died half an hour ago and I don’t have plans for the rest of my life. Tsumikis kind of my best friend and I’d like to make sure she’s all good at wizard school. I’m a really good fighter and I stabbed the last monster so like can I come too because you know. Dead grandpa. No family or future to speak of. Haha.

Gojo:

Megumi:

Tsumiki, softly: dude

There’s more after they make it to jujutsu high but this is already really long so we leave it here

[transingthoseformers]

Got idea for a fic to release into the wild

Instead of immediately exiling himself Megatron remembers that Djd is a thing and gets an idea:

Megs calls up Tarn and gives him mission of guarding Unicron container so no idiot can get the bright idea to release the Unmaker

Ooooo???? That's gotta have fun results, especially considering I've been thinking a fuck ton about Tarn on earth

So

It would be immensely funny to elect these fuckers as the new protectors of earth

[hamsterwalled]

I like Serizawa a normal amount (lie) I don't think about him and his backstory and his development all the time (lie) I don't think about how he's one of the first people to truly understand what Mob went through after getting all of Mob's emotions and memories blasted at him in the Culture Tower (lie) I don't think about how he might be the only person besides Dimple that knows everything about Mogamiland (and he actually knows more than Dimple because he saw EVERYTHING) (lie) I don't ever think about how he would have ended up being so different if he'd had a good support system growing up (this is not to say that I hate his mom she was trying her damnedest and the claw thing isn't really her fault she just wanted the best for him) (lie) I never ever think about serizawa and his mom reconnecting and how emotional that must have been (lie) I don't think about him growing his confidence while working at S&S and finally growing to be more independent after relying on Toichirou and Claw and his umbrella for so long (lie) I don't think about how he still uses an umbrella as a shield in the last/second to last episode (THE PARALLELS BETWEEN HIM DEFENDING REIGEN WHEN SERIZAWA FIRST MEETS HIM AND HIM DEFENDING HIM IN THE LAST FEW EPISODES. ALSO I WISH SERIZAWA HAD HAD A MOMENT WITH MOB LIKE EVERYONE ELSE UGH THAT WOULD HAVE MADE ME BAWL SO MUCH HARDER THAN I DID) (lie) Yeah I'm so normal about him I don't think about him that much (lie)

[britcision]

Tbh wild that everyone kept assuming Marcille would want to use magic to be able to bear children like she doesn’t have “Useless Lesbian” tattooed on her forehead

[aflawedfashion]

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva | Russian Nationals 2022/23

[ptsdangeldust]

i'm thinking about this moment here. where alastor was visibly annoyed already and did NOT want to talk to husk and husk just had like an honest question to ask about why alastor is being so shady. and alastor is just like haha shut up. shut up stop talking about it. and the little ear pet comes off as cute aggression but it really feels like just straight up aggression-aggression.

[luke-shywalker]

there are little moments

“Hold still,” she said, and Ben complied as his wife carefully adhered the new bacta patch over his eye. He flinched as her fingers gently pressed down to seal the sides.

“Why don’t you use your Jedi magic to just give me a new eye?” he asked dryly.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Fannie replied. She turned and went to dispose of the old patch, her lekku swaying behind her.

Ben groaned and massaged his right browbone. He couldn’t use his right eye to see—not yet, anyway—but it still moved in tandem with his left, and smarted whenever it did.

“Funny,” he remarked. “Anyone who sees me is gonna think I had some kinda heroic encounter against the First Order. When really, my eye just decided to stop working. Like…for fun, or something.”

“I’m glad we got it taken care of,” said Fannie. “You need your vision. You’re one of the best pilots in the Resistance.”

“One of ‘em. Mom seems to like Poe Dameron better.”

“Oh, hush.”

“At least this didn’t happen to you,” Ben said. “One of Skywalker’s Jedi. Though, you’d probably be able to use the Force to see, right?”

“Well, it’s not unheard of, but Force vision is not completely the same as natural vision,” said Fannie as she made her way to the kitchenette and pulled a canister of rice from the lower compartment. “You really don’t know how the Force works.”

“Sorry,” Ben shrugged. “Jedi school dropout over here.”

“I’m sure Luke much preferred training your sister,” Fannie teased. She began setting a pot of water to boil.

Ben shrugged again. Rey had confided in him recently that, without Luke to guide her, she had been struggling with the seductive pull of the dark…just like he had. But, that wasn’t for him to share.

“I can help make dinner,” he said, changing the subject and getting up from the foldout bed.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Fannie. “Sit back down.”

“C’mon, Fan. I haven’t been able to do anything for like, two days. For the Resistance, or for you. I feel bad.”

“You took care of me after the Battle of Takodana. Call us even.”

A sudden ache behind his eye made Ben start to feel nauseous at the thought of food anyway, so he sat back down with a huff. “Fine.”

“We’re nearly out of protein rations,” Fannie noted. “We’ll have to get more soon.”

“Let’s just run out. I hate that stuff.”

Fannie flashed him a small, bittersweet smile. “Welcome to wartime, Ben Solo.”

“I’m sick of living through major historical events,” Ben said. “Though—I probably wouldn’t have ever proposed, if the war hadn’t happened.”

“Hm. So that’s what it finally took.”

“Aw, Fan. Don’t be like that. I just mean…life seemed to get way more real all of a sudden. And everything seemed to be moving way faster. Especially after Hosnian Prime was destroyed. I just…y’know…realized there wasn’t a whole lot of time left.”

“Well, I hope there’s some time left,” said Fannie. “I hope we get to see our children, someday.”

Ben squinted. “You have so been talking with my mom, haven’t you.”

Fannie smiled, placing the protein strips in the pot with the rice. “Your dad, actually.”

“Oh.” Ben scratched the back of his neck. “Well. Let’s work on making the galaxy somewhere we want our kids to be, first.”

“Yes,” Fannie agreed. She covered the boiling pot with its lid, then turned to look at him, leaning on the counter thoughtfully. “Is this what you thought it would be like, Ben?”

“What what would be like?”

“Being married.”

“Oh, well.” Ben shrugged. “I dunno. I never really thought about it much. I just like being with you, and I think we make a damn good team. And we do—at least—I sure think so. D’you think so?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But…you used to think about it a lot, huh?” A teasing look crept onto his face. “Yeah, you always wanted the cute little house and the white duraplast fence and the two-point-five children—”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, waving a spoon at him. “But…yes, I did want that. The beginnings of a war would not normally be my ideal timeframe for a honeymoon—”

“—but we made it work.”

“Yes, we made it work.” She paused, thoughtfully.

“Well, I suppose it’s not at all like I imagined,” she said at last. “But, then…there are little moments, rather like this one, where it’s exactly as I’d hoped. Where we eat dinner together—”

“If you can call it that—”

“—and we talk about having kids—”

“—someday waaaay down the line—”

“—and reminisce about our life together so far, and I nurse my ailing husband back to health—”

“—not because something cool happened to him, but because his eye randomly stopped working…”

Fannie sighed, exasperated. “You just can’t let me speak, can you, Ben?”

Ben grinned from where he sat on the foldout bed—that roguish lopsided smirk he’d inherited from his father. “Hey, it’s my eye that’s busted, lady. Not my mouth.”

She rolled her eyes, but he was too difficult to stay mad at when he looked like that.

Even with the silly-looking eyepatch.

She smiled good-naturedly. “Well, I’ll soon fix that,” she said, and came over to give him a kiss.

[101flavoursofweird]

I have Vergier family feels again…

Inspector Vergier started working on the ‘Mystere Incident’ (or at least, he started writing about it in his file) three years prior to the game’s present time. The ‘incident’ has something to do with a string thefts of artworks and antiques, all baring the same mark. 

Constable Loic mentions that Vergier has been working on this case since Emma died, implying that Emma’s death had something to do with the ‘Mystere Incident’. This is never confirmed and as we don’t have a sequel, it probably never will be confirmed, but it’s cool to speculate. 

Who do we know who stole a load of artworks with the mark and disappeared three years ago—? Oh, hi, ISAAC!

The timing here just seems too coincidental. The fact that Charlie’s mother could have died around the same time Raphael’s dad left… hurts my heart. 

What if Emma’s death was what drove Isaac away? Maybe Isaac could handle moonlighting as an art thief while he was still living with Raphael, but being involved in someone’s death was too much for him. Either Isaac wanted to escape or he became even more embroiled with the Chevaliers because “There’s blood on your hands now, Isaac, old chap! You might as well rise through the ranks of the Chevaliers!” (My flawless Jean-François impression!)

Wouldn’t it be so bitterly ironic if Inspector Vergier lost Emma because he started looking into the Mystere Incident, but then after her death, he just dedicated his entire life to the case— pushing away the one family member he had left?

During Chapter 8, when the Chevaliers start terrorising Paris, Vergier muses about how those involved in the Mystere incident have been up to something. By ‘those involved’, he must mean Graf… who Vergier later realizes is Jean-François (not the teenage rhythm thief Vergier has been chasing with the Paris Roller Skate Brigade)…

If Emma did die three or so years before the game, this might beg the question of why Vergier carries around a family photo from years ago, when Charlie was a baby. It’s not impossible that Emma died while Charlie was very young, but then again, maybe Vergier just keeps the photo with him for sentimental reasons… and so he would always have the message Emma left him: 

‘I will keep our family safe while you keep our city safe. I know you will not let us down, my brave, noble constable.’

Vergier promised Emma he would protect Paris, while she promised to protect their family. But then, Emma died because he was trying to protect Paris… but how can Vergier continue to protect Paris if he needs to protect what remains of their family? How can he keep his promise to Emma and keep Charlie safe, while he’s grieving? This isn’t helped at all by the fact that Charlie’s pink school dress and cardigan looks so much like what Emma wears in their family photo…

As it turns out, Charlie can protect Vegier, while Vergier protects Charlie, and they can work together to protect Paris. 

Charlie didn’t understand why their father was so obsessed with saving Paris until they saw Emma’s message on the photo. In Charlie’s words, they didn’t know that was how their mother felt about their father. Upon returning the photo to Vergier, Charlie remarks, “You owe her, non?”, echoing how Charlie feels like they owe Phantom R for him saving Charlie. 

It’s not actually about owing anyone— Charlie just uses this as an excuse to keep helping Phantom R…

It’s about helping the people you care about and trusting that they will help you in return.

Both Vergier and Charlie seem to have realised this by the end of the game. They team up with Phantom R to storm the Hanging Gardens and take down the Chevaliers. In the game’s final scene, Vergier yells at Charlie that it’s the Constabulary’s job to catch the Rhythm Thief, but he’s actually smiling, so you know this is all just a game to them and Phantom R now…

During the Vergiers’ bonus episode, Family Ties, Vergier and Charlie team up to defeat some leftover Chevaliers in Les Invalides. (Chasing the harmless Rhythm Thief is fine, but not the chevaliers!)

In the opening narration to the episode, Charlie mentions that their father still refuses to discuss everything that happened with them… and later, Vergier tells Charlie that the case on the Mystere Incident is officially closed. (‘Officially…?’) Vergier tells Charlie to stop interfering… but, realising that Charlie will never listen, he just asks Charlie to stay within his sights.

Vergier then walks out, leaving Charlie alone at Les Invalides…

Inspector Vergier got some good character development… but he’s still not the best parent :’D (Still, leagues better than Isaac and Jean-François!)

[inaris-mage-of-storms]

There are a few posts floating around with lots of love and encouragement for artists and writers, but can we take a moment to say thank you to all the beta readers and editors out there? Y'all are incredible. Your services are invaluable and I love you so very much. 💙

[quixoticanarchy]

It’s kind of interesting to observe my mother as like,, a fallible and flawed creature but who does act on some sort of internal logic like. she’s not Like This for no reason. I get the sense she is completely out of touch w how things affect both her and others and so she lives by rules like ‘do everything all of the time even if it’s awful do it anyway’ and ‘anyone who tells me im wrong is wrong’ and never seems to perceive the consequences. Like I think part of why she is so high strung and brittle and prone to suddenly hit walls with great force and explode into shrapnel is just that it does not occur to her that she could not do those things. And at this point she’s been driving herself into walls so hard for so long all the shock absorbers are completely busted. Thinking abt all this does not necessarily make it easier to engage with her but I can see the tendencies in myself and map her path out so I can like. try real hard to not follow it

[north-wilkesboro-moonshine-cave]

another weekend, another job rejection!