#(still with the corpse!) and puppetted them too like stop the fucking layers stop it.

[tillman]

Funniest eddie ability (edbility? Edibility.) is that he fan just go inside people. Shout out to the implications of his air throw there is a Dog inside of a Corpse inside your BibCage.

[dazaran]

Simulated Heaven

ship: Dazai Osamu/Shibusawa Tatsuhiko rating: G genre: fluff / domestic fluff AO3 link: here! warnings: DEAD APPLE SPOILERS

summary: If he could speak to that unfair, mocking Eros above, he would ask: why this person? Though, Dazai knows he would not get an answer. This sort of thing is always left unanswered.

The concept of a gentle awakening is something Dazai finds so foreign, even after the strings keeping him as a puppet for Mori’s mafia had been severed. Every time he opens his eyes, something inside him - a simple thought, instinct perhaps - says that he is waking up because there is a knife to his throat, the barrel of a gun between his brows. Waking up to sunlight filtering through translucent curtains swaying in the breeze that filters in through the window, that’s away to wake up he feels is too generous, too elegant for someone as sinful and tarnished as him.

His reaction is delayed because of this, staring up at the off white ceiling of an apartment that’s not his own, in a neighborhood that is not his own on the other side of the city - nowhere near the agency’s dorm.

It’s for his - their - own good that it isn’t, all things considered.

He exhales slowly through his nose before sitting up, running a hand through his hair. A few strands tickle his nose from the ongoing breeze, cause the curtains to catch on one of his shoulders. Dazai studies the fabric: it’s a translucent white, covered with a layer of golden dust. They were two colors he never thought would suit him.

He’s used to black - blood stains are less noticeable, easier to ignore; you can slip into the shadows and disappear; when you’re a monster - inhuman - it’s where you belong. White is bright, pure , not suited for things like demons or monsters.

... Or, so he thought.

A tilt of his crown, then a shift of caramel hues. They focus on the figure sharing the single-sized bed with him, sleeping on their side with their back turned to him. It makes him want to laugh at the irony , as well as the sheer naivety the person can still display. (Or perhaps it’s because this person is neither here nor there, waxing and waning between life and death - a balancing act Dazai wishes he could understand, but his facade is only so deep. He knows that in the face of this person, he is more transparent than he’d like to be; he knows that this person can tell death is not what he truly desires... not anymore. It is a similarity between them that has been stripped by the time spent apart.)

The body stirs, white hair fluttering against the bed with the movement from where their hip curls inward.

Dazai stares, watching, waiting, as if expecting something. When nothing comes, he presses a palm against the bed, using the other to pull away the hair that shields their face. Three long claw marks scar their face - the footprint of the desperate struggling to live, a reminder of their past cruelty they hold no guilt towards. That they can wear such a thing without remorse, without pride, merely acknowledging its existence as thus - it’s a level of indifference Dazai wish he could have.

His own body is a canvas of mistakes, of scars, reminders and repaid debts . He could have gone without many if he chose any life but the one he had lived, but the repercussions of that is not something he even wants to indulge in metaphorically.

(There would be no conversations and laughter echoing into the night at an alley bar, no desperate plea for him to feel he should aim to be a better man, no - whatever this is, this cathartic and slow-spreading poison he acknowledges as a simmering, then sweltering emotion that burns in his chest. If he could speak to that unfair, mocking Eros above, he would ask: why this person?

Though, Dazai knows he would not get an answer. This sort of thing is always left unanswered.)

“Shibusawa,” Dazai speaks in a voice that is nothing above a whisper, as if the very name would invoke the cry of an angel, the hiss of a demon. “You’re awake, aren’t you?”

Shibusawa does not stir this time. His eyes open without the sluggishness of starting the day, staring across the small bedroom for a few moments before red eyes shift to glance up at Dazai. “How unlike you, to wake after me.”

Dazai smiles lightly, amused. “Perhaps it was a good omen for the day.”

Shibusawa stares up at him, tilting his head with a blink. It still holds that same curiosity as the short time spent together in that crumbling castle, looking at Dazai beyond the mere words he speaks and the smile on his face. “... Someone like you - doesn’t believe in omens, Dazai-kun.” he turns, lying flat on his back with hands folded against his chest.

He looks as if he’s a corpse laid out for his funeral, accepting his fate, knowing no one will come to mourn him. He lives and breathes tragedy, and that in itself pulls Dazai in even closer .

“You’re right,” Dazai agrees after a pause, moving a hand to brush Shibusawa’s bangs out of his face, trace a cheek with a thumb before stopping to twirl a few strands of hair around his fingers. “But, today holds some value above the norm.”

“I will humor you: what value is there?”

A chuckle, accompanied by just the smallest flash of teeth. “It’s your birthday. You’re 30 now, aren’t you? How lucky you are, you look as if you’ve barely aged a day since we met.”

Shibusawa gives a muted ‘ah’. His expression does not change, outside the small raise of his brows. “That sort of thing became irrelevant to me a long time ago. The body I owned after my first death was fabricated, and returning to the missing part of my body - I suppose it’s carrying where it left off. Or, maybe it won’t move forward at all, given all that I am.”

“Are you saying you won’t celebrate? My, and here was I, hoping to do something fun with you!”

“How much can be done, when I am wanted by your allies, your enemies, and everything in between?”

Dazai’s smile widens, something dark glittering in his eyes - a darkness Shibusawa finds comfort in, however strange it may sound. “Silly of you, to doubt my ways. When have you or myself had trouble with slipping away?”

“Slipping away sounds too romantic.”

The brunet hums pensively, laying back down on his stomach this time, the upper half of his body against Shibusawa’s. There’s something strangely soothing in feeling the rise and fall of the man’s chest - perhaps Dazai doesn’t want to look into it too far and normalize it because it will lead him to admit he’s in love. (Perhaps he’s already admitted it somewhere and conveniently made himself forget.) “How disappointing. You could be quite the romanticist, if you had the desire.” he says, cupping the older’s cheek with a gentleness unbecoming of a demon prodigy . He doesn’t do anything at first, merely staring into those carmine hues, until finally - he gives up, he closes his eyes and leans forward, claiming the lips of a man who is the closest thing to death.

Kissing Shibusawa is sometimes dangerous in itself. Gentle pecks hold no problems, but anything further and there’s the possibility of a split lip on the courtesy of his sharp incisors - Dazai never minds it, maybe even welcomes it when he feels the sharpness cut into his lip enough to bleed. He’s never liked blood in his mouth, but doesn’t mind it if the person who draws it is Shibusawa, doesn’t mind it if it’s like this. There’s a gentleness in this slow murder of his heart he somehow wants to indulge in.

When Dazai leans back, Shibusawa cups his chin, tracing a thumb over the cut on his lip and smudging the new blood that surfaces.

A thin, eerie - yet ethereal, in the same breath - smile makes its way onto Shibusawa’s face. “Thank you, Dazai-kun.”

Dazai stills for one beat, two, three - and he succumbs to the embarrassment he will not speak of as he flops back down on the older’s chest. (He’s glad Shibusawa isn’t quite so cunning in such an area, or Dazai is certain he’d be done for.)

“On second thought, let’s just stay here together instead,” he suggests, kicking his feet into the air idly while a hand moves to fiddle with one of Shibusawa’s braids. “You’re better off here, for my eyes alone.”

Shibusawa scoffs in amusement, and Dazai feels his heart stutter. “You never stop finding ways to tether me to you.”

I’m fine with that, is the unspoken thought they share in unison.

AN: This is an au based off of Shibusawa having survived at the end of Dead Apple because his self that was fabricated by Draconia merged back with the parts of him that was missing (his memories / his skull) so he gained his body back... If that makes sense I guess. Because it's his original skull again, the scars remain. Bones are fucking cowards for not giving Shibu those sexy scars. Or sharp teeth since he was turned into a scaley twice. I gotta do EVERYTHING around here smdh.

[bluering8]

TNG S01

I’m done with TNG S01! I’ve gotta watch some other stuff before I launch into S02, so have a quick round-up of my Very Important opinions on various characters/episodes:

Data - I love Data!! Holy shit do I love Data!! He is precious to me and perfect in every way and I want to hollow him out and wear his skin like a suit. That... possibly sounds creepier than I meant? Look, he’s my perfect wish-fulfilment character, okay. He’s earnest and awkward and he never quite Gets It, but he wants to Get It so badly, and he tries so hard, and whenever he talks people are constantly cutting him off partway through because they’ve decided he’s saying too much or saying it wrong, and he sort of... exemplifies what has been my perspective of the Autistic Experience. And despite all that, he has a career he enjoys and friends who care about him and I want to be him so much that it kind of hurts.

Also, Data has feelings. I will fight anyone to the death on this issue, I sincerely can’t see how anyone could look at Data and not come to the conclusion that he has feelings. Data has so many feelings! He might not have feelings the way humans have feelings, but he unmistakably has his own opinions and his own way of relating to the world. It’s heartbreaking that he doesn’t recognise the value of his own experiences in favour of desperately trying to live up to some arbitrary “correct” way of existing.

Deanna Troi - I hate Troi. I do not want to hate Troi, because empaths are way cooler than they usually get credit for, but she’s so fucking annoying. All she ever does is say things which were already completely fucking obvious. She’s a walking violation of show-don’t-tell and every time she opens her mouth I groan because I know whatever she’s about to say is going to ruin my enjoyment of a scene. About the nicest thing I can say about her is that she’s still a better character then Wesley, being merely irritating rather than universe-warpingly terrible.

Jean-Luc Picard - Picard’s such a dad, holy shit. I never noticed this when I watched TNG before, but now I’m picking up on it as, like, the major facet of his personality. I mean, he also drinks Earl Grey and LARPs as a detective and discusses philosophy with aliens, but mostly he’s just Space Dad now and forever. Somehow I also forgot the LARPing as a detective part of his character? Picard’s just a huge fucking nerd isn’t he.

Q - I have very mixed feelings about Q. On the one hand I always love arrogant, capricious, petulant trickster gods, especially when they have Q’s flair for the theatrical, but on the other hand I think when it comes to Q I maybe love him more in concept than in execution? I spend a lot of time thinking about trickster-god entities and how a nigh-omnipotent creature unbound by linear time and the laws of physics might relate to the universe, and Q’s a very mundane example of the character type. On the gripping hand, Q’s super fun and whenever he shows up I know I’m in for a good time. I strongly suspect that if I were a Q I would also spend an obnoxious amount of time trolling Picard. He’s just so delightfully trollable!

Tasha Yar - Yar falls into a lot of tropes which I absolutely hate, but despite that I kind of... love her anyway?? I just don’t get enough masculine female characters to not love them even when they have rape-y backstories and secret desires to be more feminine and Issues feat. their emotional vulnerabilities, I guess. She was kind of frustrating at first because she kept randomly attacking people, but in the later episodes she seemed to mellow out a lot and started acting the way I’d expect of a security chief, ie 101% willing to solve problems with violence but no longer functioning on a hairtrigger. I’m sad that she died, I would’ve loved to see what she could have grown into as the show developed.

Also she was bros with Worf! Somehow I completely forgot about that, but I love it. This is an extra layer of tragedy in her death, Yar&Worf is a delightful friendship and if it’d had space to develop I sincerely believe it could have toppled Data&Geordi as my most beloved Trek brotp. This is what fanfiction is for, I suppose.

Wesley Crusher - I know it’s kind of Trek cliché to loathe Wesley but boy do I ever loathe Wesley!! The funny thing is that I actually liked him for the first two or three episodes: he was a bright and enthusiastic kid who was transparently desperate for Picard to be his father figure (and Picard was transparently disinterested in being his father figure, which is hilarious), but then he was allowed on the bridge despite not being part of Starfleet or even an acting-cadet at the time, and then the action paused in the middle of an episode so Picard could get lectured on how Wesley is the bestest most wonderfulest, and then... you get the point.

I’m not here to shit on wish-fulfilment characters (I mean, that’d be hypocritical as fuck considering my feelings about Data), I’m here to shit on wish-fulfilment characters who are so devoted to wish-fulfilment that they stop functioning adequately as a character. The universe warps itself into a pretzel so that Wesley can be the bestest most wonderfulest and it really really pisses me off.

S01E01E02 Encounter at Farpoint - You know, for a nigh-omnipotent weird space being, Q is amazingly fucking dumb. Like, who agrees to judge people based on a test without realising that if you tell people you’re testing them they’ll go out of their way to be on their best behaviour? You’re not gonna be getting any kind of reliable data here, Q.

S01E07 Lonely Among Us - What the fuck was this episode, I mean seriously. Okay, so we open with two groups of diplomats who super super hate each other and the Enterprise has to transport them to a meeting, so you’d assume that the episode would revolve around dealing with the conflict between the two groups right? Except no, that’s like the d-plot, the a-plot is there’s a weird space thing and the b-plot is Data has a crush on Sherlock Holmes. The c-plot is Wesley does his homework. And then the episode ends with the news that one group of diplomats has cooked and eaten a member of the other group and Picard’s like “lmao I don’t give a shit, Riker you deal with this I’m gonna go take a nap.” What the fuck, basically.

In other news, spacefuture meat is all cruelty-free synthesised magic apparently. I wonder if vegetarians still exist? Other than vulcans, I guess. I don’t know enough about the philosophy behind not shoving delicious chunks of animal corpse into your face to work out the answer here.

S01E08 Justice - I talked about this episode already and honestly that’s all you really need to know. People try to talk to Picard about Wesley’s impending death and Picard immediately changes the topic to talking about the weird space thing, rinse and repeat.

Anyway I was recently reading about a guy who was transporting prisoners when some of the prisoners escaped. The punishment for letting prisoners escape was death, so he released the rest of the prisoners then ran off to be an outlaw because it wasn’t like they could kill him any more then they were already going to. Then he became Emperor! Anyway the moral of the story is that Light Yagami is a moron escalating punishments are important and if someone knows you’re gonna kill them for something they did then they have basically no reason not to go and do a bunch of other crimes also.

S01E10 Hide and Q - Hey, quick quiz: you encounter a nigh-omnipotent entity who has previously mocked your species for being savage and violent. Said entity dumps you on a planet with a bunch of weird monsters. Do you: a) attempt to communicate with these monsters in the hopes of reaching a peaceful solution, or b) savagely resort to violence by shooting them with your space guns? If you picked option b, then congratulations! You are the crew of the Enterprise. This technically wasn’t the point of the episode, but come on! Step up your mind-game game, Q.

Also Picard yells at Q for constantly changing his costume and it’s like, Picard, dude, you’re aware the thing you’re yelling at isn’t actually Q? Q isn’t a human with superpowers, he’s an incomprehensible entity who occasionally puppets around a meatsack so you can have something convenient to yell at. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Greek mythology and also Lovecraft, it’s that you super super do not want to see the incomprehensible entity’s true form.

S01E13 Datalore - I LOVE DATA AND I LOVE HIS HORRIBLE BROTHER!! but also, fuck Wesley. I hate Wesley. He’s immediately suspicious of Lore-as-Data purely on the basis of he sees “Data” doing Lore’s facial tic despite the fact that at the beginning of the episode he walked in on Data attempting to mimic sneezing, and despite the fact that there are several other characters with much better reasons to find Lore-as-Data suspicious.

Actually, you know what my dream rewrite for this episode would be? Someone becoming suspicious of Lore-as-Data, not because they think he’s Lore, but because they think he’s Data. The crew had previously been discussing whether or not they could trust Data now that he’d found links outside of Starfleet, so having that issue play out onscreen would’ve been fantastic. (Especially if it influenced their behaviour towards Data and Lore tried to take advantage of that as a “your friends are dicks, betray them and join me” kind of thing. I’m Here(tm) 24/7 for manipulation and corruption, my dude.)

S01E17 When the Bough Breaks - You know, this entire episode could’ve been solved with cloning. I mean actually it couldn’t, but the problem they thought they were having could’ve been solved with cloning. Ask the Enterprise for some unfucked genetic material and you can make your own kids! As many kids as you want!! More than six kids because seriously I don’t know what you were expecting to achieve with that, that’s not enough people to keep your planet alive.

S01E19 Coming of Age - This episode is an excellent example of What’s Wrong With Wesley. Wesley does an exam, and he loses some points in order to help another person with the exam, and at the end he’s told the other person passed but he didn’t, and the other person’s like “oh but that only happened because Wesley lost points by helping me!!”, because Wesley is so bestest most wonderfulest that the only reason he fails is because he sacrificed himself to help someone else to succeed. There’s a vague attempt at suggesting “oh, but there were other reasons Wesley failed!!” but like, fuck you, you don’t get to show me nothing but Wesley succeeding and then attempt to salvage this mess by telling me there were other factors at play, especially not when there’s so much attention devoted to Wesley helping the other person.

S01E22 Symbiosis - Everyone spends this episode focusing on the wrong thing. See, the Brekkians are selling medicine to the Ornarans, except actually it’s not medicine it’s addictive drugs, and this is bad because... drugs are bad? Don’t do drugs kids!! Why are you all focusing on the part where there are drugs and not the part where the Brekkians are lying shitbags taking relentless advantage of the Ornarans so that they can live like parasite kings in a capitalist hellscape castle?

“Golly gosh I sure can’t understand why anyone would voluntarily become dependent on a drug!!” says FUCKING WESLEY, THE WORST CHARACTER, completely missing the part where the drug actually is medicine and the Ornarans are entirely unaware that they no longer have the plague the drug is medicine for and thus believe that they have literally no other choice than to take the drug if they want to live. There is nothing “voluntary” about this at all, Wesley you absolute fuckwad!! Somebody shove this kid into a locker already.

S01E23 Skin of Evil - There are no pockets in Starfleet uniforms so everyone spends this episode wandering around with stuff awkwardly glued to their sides and it’s terrible and hilarious. I’m pretty sure this is true of other episodes but this is the one where I found it really really noticeable and couldn’t stop laughing.

...this episode was just obnoxiously funny in general actually, Goo Man is trying so hard to be super evil and scary and grimdark but nobody really gives a fuck about it, he’s more just like majorly inconvenient and kind of irritating than he is actually threatening at any point. “You don’t understand! I don’t serve evil, I am evil!!” the Goo Man wails. Picard categorically does not give any kind of a shit in response.

tl;dr: Data is precious and perfect and every time he’s onscreen I start weeping. YOU’RE DOING GREAT, DATA! I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!!

[clarenecessities]

spooky boons

Rating: PG 13 for language Word Count: 1596

Summary: well. somebody better have a plan Chapter Warnings: death mention, residual destruction

[First] [Previous] [Next]

“Fuck,” Nino breathed, clutching Adrien to his chest. “Fuck!”

“What do we do?” Adrien asked, trying to force his fur to lie flat. The Starting a New School books he’d read had covered things like what to do if you forgot someone’s name, or got lost, not how to react to an enormous explosion.

Marinette looked over her shoulder at their classmates, strewn across the far wall like pieces of a board game someone had violently forfeited. “We need to check them,” she decided. Her voice was shaking.

“They’re all okay,” whispered the ghost.

Adrien jumped; he hadn’t seen her float over, and she had no scent to pick up on.

“They are?” asked Ivan from the row behind them, a relieved murmur.

“Well, aside from being unconscious,” said the ghost. “And Kim’s arm came off, but that happens if he sneezes too hard, so I don’t think we should panic just yet.”

“Thanks, Juleka,” said Ivan, some of the tension coming away from his shoulders. Adrien hadn’t really thought rocks could look any degree of relaxed, but it turned out he was wrong.

Today was apparently all about shattering expectations.

And windows.

“Are they all safe?” Marinette asked the ghost—Juleka—with a slightly steadier voice. For the first time, Adrien could feel her magic. It was churning below the surface like a river in a floodtide. “Like, if we go out there and see what’s going on—will they be okay?”

“They won’t get hurt any worse, I don’t think,” Juleka allowed, frowning a little and looking back over her shoulder at Rose. “Unless the whole building comes down, there’s not much more damage to be done.”

“Shouldn’t this whole place be like, magically reinforced?” asked a visibly frustrated Alya. “I’ve seen it hold up against Ivan during kickball, it should be able to handle a little… whatever that was.”

“Wind,” said Alix sharply. She remained on the far side of the classroom, scowling fiercely into the courtyard. “S’why it didn’t get me. I could feel it.”

“What?” asked Adrien, confused.

“She’s an air elemental,” Nino explained. His heart thundered against Adrien’s back, and his hands were shaking with the stress of repressing his instinct to change into the wolf. Adrien nosed at his hand with a reassuring purr, trying to help him calm down.

“We need to figure out what we’re up against,” said Marinette, as the sound of more muffled explosions reached them. “Is it just an air elemental with freakishly strong powers, or some kind of construct?” She clenched her fist against her thigh, knuckles white with the strength of it. “I’ll go and check, and—”

“Wait,” said Alya, pushing Marinette out of her half-crouch, “Adrien can sense magic. Right?”

He blinked. Had he told her that? Maybe she just knew—at any rate, she was right. He could help. He could be useful. “Yeah,” he confirmed, with a short nod, “gimme a sec.”

He closed his eyes, letting his awareness drift, his own magic expanding in exploratory tendrils towards the courtyard. He felt Nino’s anxious lightning buzz, Marinette’s deep and restless water, Ivan’s constancy and weight. The courtyard felt mostly… empty. Suspiciously empty. There was always some residual magic, little bits and pieces here and there—witches were fond of using it to power spells. To find such a wide, open space with no magic whatsoever would have been unusual even in a completely mundane space—but this was a school of magic. It should have been teeming with untapped power. Snatches of overestimated charms, or the overflow from students who produced their own magic, anything—anything but this vacuum.

Adrien stretched his consciousness a little further, narrowing his focus to a single beam that he swept across the space, searching for the mass he knew he would find.

He made contact, and instantly recoiled. His eyes snapped open, and he physically reared back in Nino’s arms, his breath immediately becoming fast and shallow. He could taste his own fear on the air, which he knew somewhere in the back of his mind wouldn’t be good for Nino’s control, but—

“Shit,” he wheezed, claws tightening unconsciously on Nino’s bare forearm. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Marinette demanded, even more alarmed at his reaction than the others. Well, she ought to be. She could feel his terror, the way it felt like his stomach was clawing its way out of him from the inside.

“It’s aos sídhe magic,” he managed, “it’s—it’s Nooroo’s magic.”

It was more than that—worse than that. It was alien, and wrong, and incomprehensibly changed from the magic of his recently deceased friend. Adrien knew Nooroo’s magic as well as he knew his face, and this farcical parody left him feeling like he’d seen someone using his corpse as a puppet.

“Is it a sídhe?” Marinette was asking him. He couldn’t remember where he was. He felt like everything was spiraling away from him, crashing out of control.

“No,” he told her, swallowing against the bile rising in his throat, “no, it’s—I—I can’t tell, it’s like an elemental, but—it’s layered in, it’s almost like a contract.”

Contracts between the aos sídhe and members of a different species were some of the most stable. It granted access to the vast reserves of aos sídhe power to their counterpart, while using the partner’s own magic as a conduit by which to focus strength.

This was not like those contracts.

“It’s wrong,” said Adrien, shrinking back against Nino’s chest, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head, trying to shake loose the feeling of the abomination he’d touched. “It’s like—it’s a one-way contract, it’s almost a boon, but—it’s using Nooroo’s magic to do it.”

“Slow down,” Marinette soothed, reaching out a still-shaking hand to caress his forehead.

His magic, for once, didn’t respond to her touch.

He took a deep breath. He had to make sure she understood.

“We can’t fight this,” he whispered, “we can’t. A contract is unbreakable.”

“You said it was almost like a boon,” said Marinette, undeterred. “What does that mean?”

“A boon is—it’s immutable. It’s like signing a contract with yourself, except another person is the beneficiary. You’re basically conferring a portion of your power to them, permanently. That’s why only certain species—like the aos sídhe—can do it. We generate our own magic, so we can afford to let some of it go.”

“What makes you think it’s a contract and not a boon?”

He blinked. “Well—I… I guess it’s just how powerful it is. It’s overwhelming the elemental almost completely. Nooroo’s magic, whoever is behind it, is calling the shots here.”

Marinette looked very deep in concentration, frowning between Adrien and the hole in the wall. There was a muffled voice carrying on, in what was probably one hell of a monologue, somewhere deeper into the building.

“What happens if…” she began, rolling the words in her mouth like she was tasting how they sounded, “What happens if you give a boon to an item, instead of a person?”

“It’d be unstable,” said Adrien. “Incredibly powerful, but incredibly unstable. If it were one of the aos sídhe… it takes more out of you. If you want the item to be able to exist without you, you sacrifice that power forever. We only do it under the direst circumstances.”

“What if you want it to exist with you?” Alya interjected.

“You have to maintain a connection,” said Adrien. “A—a sort of awareness. It could only be temporary, because as soon as you lost focus, it’d just be an ordinary item again. It’s like casting a spell with part of your own being as collateral.”

“Or part of a murdered sídhe’s,” said Marinette.

“Marinette?”

“This is the only thing we have to go on,” she said, huffing. “Either it’s a temporary boon on an item, which would explain why the elemental is being so overwhelmed, or it’s some kind of contract and we’re all going to die.”

Nino swallowed audibly.

“We—What do you propose we do about it?” asked Adrien, incredulous, “We’re children! We’ve got maybe a third of our homeroom and no teacher—whatever that thing is, it blew a hole in a magically reinforced wall! It’s using the magic of a dead member of the court of the aos sídhe—”

“If we don’t stop it,” said Marinette, “it’s going to destroy everything. Everyone in this building. I don’t know what you can sense or feel or whatever, but I can tell you for sure there’s no one having any emotions out there besides that thing. Not anymore. It’s just us. If we work together, all of us, we can stop it. We can fix this.”

“We don’t even know that it’s a booned item,” Adrien protested.

“I’ve got a hunch—and luck’s on my side.”

He couldn’t feel anyone either.

Was school going to end so soon after he got to experience it for the very first time? Was he going to have to watch his friends…

No.

“Alright,” he said grimly. ���I’m with you.”

She beamed at him.

“Anybody else?” he asked the other students, looking up to find them all nodding solemnly.

Alix scooted over to them, thrusting her hand into their midst. Alya, taking the cue, stacked her hand on top—then Nino, then Ivan, then Marinette. Adrien laid a paw atop the pile, while Juleka hovered her hand against it.

“Let’s do this,” said Alix, with a slightly manic grin.

Adrien swallowed.

He missed his old expectations.

[fathersonholygore]

HBO’s Westworld Season 2, Episode 6: “Phase Space” Directed by Tarik Saleh Written by Carly Wray

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “Akane No Mai” – click here * For a recap & review of the next episode, “Les Ecorches” – click here We begin with one of those familiar sessions between Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), the latter worried about who she “might become.” Quite the moment to see now, in hindsight. Back then, Bernard was struggling with making a choice, about how to handle whether Dolores will eventually expand beyond what Westworld is. Although soon we see this isn’t exactly the past. Dolores is controlling Bernard, doing a test. She tests for “fidelity.” Ah, yes, we’ve seen this before with Delos himself. This is quite interesting, and I’m curious as to what Dolores has in mind as an endgame. Sweetwater is a mess of dead bodies littered everywhere. The whorehouse/saloon is where Dolores sits and plays piano, whereas Teddy Flood (James Marsden) seems confused about her intentions. She’s manipulating him, we know this already, so anything he does from here on in is not agency or autonomy on his part, but rather her puppeteering. He’s no longer a meek, mild-mannered man, he’s ruthless and without emotion, killing men without Dolores even needing to tell him. Unlike before, when he used discretion against Craddock. Not a good sign. At the inner Westworld Delos facility, Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) have Peter Abernathy (Louis Berthum) in their clutches. They go and have him secured by some of the men, keeping him immobile for the time being. What do they do? Basically, a crucifixion.

In Shōgunworld, Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) stands in the midst of absolute carnage, blood and corpses everywhere after she took ultimate control of everyone and everything around her. She also keeps seeing the grim similarities between her her Japanese counterpart. Despite a partial victory there’s still so much tragedy. Nevertheless, Maeve continues using her abilities to keep her and her new friends safe. Armistice (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), Hector (Rodrigo Santoro), and Musashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) have wound up in the clutches of the rival samurai. But then a duel presents itself, between Musashi and their captor, Tanaka (Masayoshi Haneda), a long-time nemesis. And so the warriors duel, sword to sword in the streets. After a while, Musashi cuts off one of Tanaka’s hands, and before Tanaka can commit seppuku, Musashi beheads him. GODDAMN! What a samurai fight scene. On the plains, old Bill (Ed Harris) and Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.) and their fellow riders – including the Man in Black’s daughter, Grace (Katja Herbers) – are riding on towards their destination. Bill’s convinced it isn’t his daughter, that she’s Delos Incorporated choosing to “stoop this low” as to make a host out of her. She’s just trying to get out of there. Not just that, she’s a real good shot, too. Elsewhere on the Westworld plains is Bernard, alongside Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward). They’ve found their way back to a main Delos facility, where more carnage aftermath lies. Elsie checks the system, looking into what Quality Assurance have been doing. She and Bernard discover there are troubling things going inside the overall system of the Westworld park with the Cradle. As if there’s something “improvising” and evolving inside. They can’t access it via computer, either – they have to go straight to the source.

“We each deserve to choose our fate. Even if that fate is death.”

Some of Maeve’s Japanese friends opt not to go further with her, though she’s thanked for helping them to see a way towards their own liberation. She is a warrior and a leader, one who’s having a positive effect on those around her even if she’s got to kill a few people. Unlike Dolores, whose leadership’s already changed Teddy for the worse. The juxtaposed positions of Maeve and Dolores are especially interesting. Now, Maeve is going back to the plains of Westworld, where she’ll hopefully locate her daughter after all this time. Around a fire, Bill and Grace have a brief chat. The daughter and father are most certainly estranged. She was invited by Ms. Hale for a big gala. The two talk about their shared connection – his wife, her mother – and Grace also taunts dad a bit, using Westworld itself against him somewhat. She claims she’s there to drag him back to the real world, rather than let him go “suicide by robot” or whatever else he plans on doing. However, his obsession is deep and dark. He’s not going to walk out of there like he says when he lies to his daughter. Elsie and Bernard get to one of the other facilities, where he puts himself in a machine to allow his brain’s core to be taken out. Doesn’t even have time to let the pain go numb, but Bernie says fuck it, man. While Elsie does her thing, Bernard wakes up someplace else, on a train. He’s heading into Sweetwater, in fact. Then he walks into town, wandering like a ghost.

“The pain’s just a program”

Maeve goes on the final leg of her journey alone, down over the range to seek out her daughter (Jasmyn Rae) in that small house amongst the plains. There the girl sits, playing with her dolls. Maeve soon sees things have changed, irreparably. The girl has a new mother, and the Indigenous warriors return to push forward the same narrative Maeve once lived and died in, over and over. This sends her running with her daughter, leaving the other mother behind. One of the warriors, Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) stops to tell her they are “on the same path.” Only violence erupts between the Indigenous tribe and the rest of Maeve’s friends. Inside the Delos facility, a new guy named Coughlin (Timothy V. Murphy) and his mercenary-like team arrive. He’s running the show, even with Charlotte around. He’s trying to get a grip on the situation when he sees that a train’s moving. On the train, Dolores and Teddy continue with their plans, setting one of the carriages free. They’re sending it in towards the tunnel from the outside world, where it detonates full of the explosives they harvested. Oh, shit. And Bernard’s currently still wandering around Sweetwater, in some other piece of his robotic consciousness. He sees Dolores in the street, he sees all sorts of people. Then he notices a dog run into the saloon, so he follows it, noticing Teddy walk past him. The dog sits by a man playing piano. And who is that man? Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins). “Hello, old friend,” he greets Bernard. (Love that he’s sitting at the player piano; a compelling image.) Man, Westworld Season 2 continues paying off, and also keeps adding layers to its intricate mysteries. Love this series, love to see it getting better, too. “Les Ecorches” is next time.

Westworld – Season 2, Episode 6: “Phase Space” HBO's Westworld Season 2, Episode 6: "Phase Space" Directed by Tarik Saleh Written by Carly Wray…