#......if I survived as a troll at all which let's be real I would not. because I am a very soft person hahaa QuQ

[birchbow]

How is asexuality viewed in society in PoF? Is it considered normal for some trolls to just ignore concupiscent quadrants?

I mean, as an ace person writing an Id-fic sex-drama I'd love to say "oh I'm sure people would be cool about it!"--and to be fair, I don't know that anybody outside your quadrants would care much if you liked sex, as long as you could still Do Your Duty To The Empire? But there is a HARD minimum amount of fucking for trolls and that is: when the Mother Grub's drones come around, you give them your bucket of slurry or you die.

Being sex-repulsed or dragging your feet too much to figure out concupiscient partners is actively putting yourself in danger of being culled--as well as any partners you do find, if the drones show up and you can't contribute. So like, unfortunately no, man, I don't think being ace would go over super well with trolls. And tbh, they're kind of culturally awful to each other about everything, so they'd probably be dicks about it like they're dicks about a lot of things haha.

[aesthetic-gamersnail]

What happened in the first family counseling session of the brothers (it contains a spoiler from Trolls 3 since it is based on the movie, so be warned)

Edit: Originates from the meme I made to this topic. Enjoy :)

Therapist: So, at the beginning I always like to begin with the question: why are you here?

The brothers are sitting on a couch in a nicely dimmed room which has green paint on the walls. The therapist sits across them in his armchair, between him and them a coffee table with a vase of fresh flowers, a cup full of pencils, a neat stack of papers and - what immediately catches Clay's eyes - a burning scented candle. (The order in which the brothers sit on the couch from left to right: Branch, Clay, Spruce, Floyd, John)

All: ...

John: Honestly, I think there is no reason for why we are here.

Bruce: And I think, that you are probably one of the main reasons why we are here. And you probably need it the most.

John: I'm sorry, but I think the real reason we are here is because our little brother's lady forced him to do it.

Branch: WHAT? *he whipped his head around* She didn't force me to do it, she recommended it to me and I took her advice because you know what? I actually CARE about our family and I think we could do a lot better.

John: Do you want to say that I don't care about this family?

Floyd: Guys, guys, please, calm down.

Branch: Geez, John, I don't know, did not really get the vibes when you said we would go our separate ways after we saved Floyd.

John: Are you still bent down on this? Look, I'm sorry that I said that but things are different now, right? We are together now, so why are still hung up on the past?

Branch: Just because something is in the past doesn't mean it doesn't have any effect on me anymore. And besides, it has been, what, two weeks ago? I wouldn't call it the past yet.

John: Potato, tomato. See, this is your problem: you take things way out of proportions and let your emotions control you.

Bruce: Well, at least he shows his emotions and talks about them, in contrast to someone else.

John: Excuse me?

Bruce: You heard me.

Clay, interrupting their talk since he also was not listening to them, asks the therapist: Is the candle not a fire hazard? Is this even allowed in such an establishment?

Floyd: Guys, please, calm down. We haven't even properly started and we are already fighting with each other. Let's all breathe for just a moment and then resume to talk.

...Silence for a few moments ...

Therapist:....So I see, there is a lot of pent up aggression going on he-

John: NOPE, no! You know what? It has been fun and all but I honestly don't want to be here anymore. So, I'll be taking my leave.

Floyd: John, plea-

John: Floyd, I'm sorry, but I really can't do it. I already know how this whole thing is going to go, therefore, why should I even stick around?

Bruce: Wait, what do you mean by tha-

Branch: Oh, because you know everything, don't you?

John slowly getting irritated with this situation, suddenly stands up and says: Listen he- *THUMP* *CRASH*

But he is interrupted by the sound of the coffee table falling to the ground. He stood up too fast and took the coffee table in his momentum with him, which made it rock back and forth, till it finally hit the ground facing the brothers. But with the coffee table, also the vase and the scented candle came to the ground. The vase bursts into many splinters which fly into the air in various directions. One splinter shoots into John's foot.

At the sight of the first drop of blood coming from his foot, John says: Oh my god, hahaha, look at that..

And passes out.

Floyd: OH MY GOD, JOHN, ARE YOU OK?

Bruce: Ohhhhhh, I remember now. He was always afraid of blood, ever since he was a kid. Did not think, it still bothered him.

Floyd: Didn't he live in the wilderness for 20 years? How did he survive?

Branch: oh my god, OH MY GOD!

Branch rolled off screaming from the couch.

While Bruce and Floyd were busy with John, the scented candle rolled it's way to the couch and ignited it.

Clay: AHA, I KNEW IT. *Clay laughs* I knew it would be a fire hazard. You have some explaining to do, mister. *he pointed his finger at the therapist, smiling*

His smile drops.

Clay:...Oh shit.

Branch: HOW DO WE PUT OUT THE FIRE? WHAT IS EVEN HERE TO PUT OUT A FIRE? *running around frantic, looking for something that would help against the fire*

Floyd: Ok, so we have an unconscious body and a fire going on. Just, d-don't FREAK out, Bruce, and stay calm!

Bruce:...I am calm.

Floyd: I SAID STAY CALM!

Clay:...Is not the first step to dealing with building fires 'Inform people in the immediate area to evacuate'? Well, *turns to the therapist* I think you should be the one to leave and warn people, AND also call 911, as we have a *stares at the unconscious John, the anxious Floyd, the confused Bruce and the frantic Branch running around* situation going on.

The therapist, staring at this whole situation in horror:...I honestly don't get paid enough for this. *flees the scene*

[endlessburningdarkness]

**I headcanon their relationship falls apart anyway, even without a reveal, bc there's only so long Shen Yuan can lie to himself and put up with terrible sex and LBHs manchild behaviour. I imagine he logs out at some point and returns to his real life.**

Can you develop more this, please? =)

Through most of the story, Shen Yuan is going from one crisis to another. He doesn't have time to sit down and think and be honest with himself. After the story ends, and he has to think beyond just surviving I imagine he will eventually realize he wants more than a relationship built on a lie, and terrible sex and the life of a cultivator.

I imagine he'll crave modern things more and more, not to mention, finally remembering his family and the life he left behind, the life he could've had, where he doesn't have to get his arse ripped open bc the protagonist will cry and destroy the world if he doesn't feel sufficiently "loved". Isn't it telling that both LBH and SY's idea of love requires sex, which one of them doesn't enjoy?

I also imagine he won't be able to deny how manipulative and coercive LBH is, and LBHs appeal as a character (and he does still consider LBH a character even in the end, its why he insists on bottoming, bc the stallion protagonist couldn't possibly take it up the arse) will dwindle and fade away.

It's like how you like badboys in fiction, but if you really had to deal with one irl day in and day out for years on end, you'd say fuck it and pack your bags. If the story book world is now real, that means real human emotions and realistic reactions to things, and I can't see Shen Yuan, realistically, wanting to stay.

So he would find an out, either by killing himself or just logging out and going back home. I don't think LBH would let him leave, and he knows that. It's why he feels so pressured to keep LBH happy and content and sees it as his responsibility, bc an unhappy LBH = world ending. Eventually though, he'd get over that idea, once he has time to pause and think things through and sort out his feelings and get used to his new, disappointing life.

Maybe Shen Yuan becomes the new protagonist, and lives out his dream of being LBH. bc that's the real reason he was reading th original novel, it was a male power fantasy, and Shen Yuan bought into that. He wants the power fantasy and he'll ultimately have to confront his own unhappiness and disappointment within himself. There's only so long you can lie to yourself. Shen Yuan lies to himself in order to survive, but once survival is secured, he will have ample time to realize he's been lying to himself, and that he doesn't want to continue.

And maybe some things are worse than death. I can't imagine years of lying and being coerced into a relationship with painful and humiliating sex is gonna feel any different from torture via human stick a few years down the line.

Him logging out and continuing with his normal life is probably the funniest outcome. I can see him writing fanfiction of Shen Qingqiu becoming a demon lord and fucking LBH/women as a sort of therapeutic exercise to deal with his trauma in the real world afterwards.

Honestly, I think he'd be relived to escape and probably give up his online hating. Which is ultimately the message mxtx wanted to send by writing a story about a straight online troll ending up getting fucked in the arse so badly he bleeds every time. don't hate in front of the author's face, aka the comment section, which is what Shen Yuan was shamelessly doing, harassing the author so much the author remembers all his comments. It would be a nice ending to say he learned his lesson?

But i also don't think an online hater deserves what Shen Yuan is put through in the story as "punishment" for his bad behaviour. It's not that serious imo. Good thing its a fantasy story and doesn't take itself too seriously. It would be a lot more depressing then, and not nearly as funny.

I may have gone a little offtopic. Oh well.

[therealeagal]

Thoughts on: Not voting (2024)

Decide for yourselves whether my words have value or if they are naught but the ravings of a madman.

Whichever you decide, don't @ me, bro. I'm not here to debate. Just to pontificate.

Let's begin.

I have seen discourse of late that people do not wish to vote in the upcoming POTUS election, for reasons that include but are not limited to Donald Trump being a piece of shit, and also Joe Biden selling weapons to Israel, thus making him complicit in that thing that's happening with Israel and Palestine. Are we allowed to use the G word? Idunno.

Lots of the anti-not-voting crowd will try to talk down to you, insinuate that you're probably just a Russian troll or a moron or something.

Not me. Although I too am anti-not-voting, I want to try something different, to wit: I understand.

I get it. I appreciate that Joe Biden is shit. Certainly he's not the shittiest shit that ever shat. He's not even shitty shit. Just regular shit.

If we're being fair (although I don't know why we would be. This is tumblr after all), Biden has done lots of good stuff while in office. I mean, I don't know what any of them are, but I saw a list floating around a while back that had a bunch of stuff on it that Biden had done right. I think there was something about insulin being price capped? I'm prepared to accept out of hand the possibility that there exists things that Biden has done right. Mainly because I'm too lazy to look it up and also don't really care enough about Biden's merits beyond "He's not Trump" to bother.

But yes, good stuff or not, Biden is shit. He may have done good things, but he has also done shitty things. Things which include but which are not limited to that thing that's happening with Israel and Palestine, the status of which remains in limbo, viz a viz, the G word.

Of all the shitty people that have ever lived, Joe Biden is one of them.

And I appreciate that both candidates are senile and decrepit and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and.

I get it.

I perfectly understand all the reasons you have to not vote. In fact, I could probably give you a few more. Like "He's not The Real Eagal." which is in my incredibly humble and completely non-biased opinion the best possible reason to not vote for someone.

In difference circumstances, I wouldn't vote for Biden either if I were you.

But Trump is worse. You get that, right? Biden and Trump are both terrible in different ways, but they are not equally terrible. Trump is worse. On a terribleness scale of 1 to 10, Biden is a two. Trump is an eleven. Hundred. Thousand. Million.

He could be up against literally Sauron and Trump would still be worse. At least Sauron came by it honest. He built his evil empire without help from anyone. Morgoth was already...wherever Morgoth ended up after Eru Iluvatar slapped him down to remind him who's daddy. Ok, he did have Celebrimbor's help to make the rings of power, but didn't he make the One Ring on his own? All I'm saying is, I'd rather have Sauron in office than Donald Trump.

Trump is literally deciding who he wants his next VP to be based on how much he wants to fuck their wives. Sauron wouldn't decide who his cohorts were based on how much he wants to fuck their wives. Sarumon didn't even have a wife.

Plus, Biden's not gonna last 4 more years. He's like a jillion years old. He'll croak 2 days after inauguration. And even if he did last all four years, the world can survive four more years of Biden. A bowling alley couldn't survive four more years of Trump.

And if Kamalah Harris is still Biden's VP when he kicks the bucket, it would probably kill off a few Republicans. Their brains would explode at the mere thought of a black woman president. That's what we in "The Biz" call a win-win.

No one will like to hear this, but there's nothing you can do to stop the world from being shitty today - today meaning this current era, not literally this specific day. Sorry, kids, but that ship has sailed.

Voting for Biden won't make the sun rise. It won't make the grass grow, it won't make the birds sing. Voting for Biden won't Save Our Democracy™ BUT speaking only for myself, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that if Trump gets re-elected there's a good chance that there won't be another election, notwithstanding all the other many and varied reasons Trump getting back into office would be a terrible idea.

No question that in ideal times both Trump and Biden would already be swinging from the gallows and we'd be voting between Jesus and Buddha. Personally, I'll vote Buddha. For two reasons. 1: Jesus' fan club is kind of insufferable. No offense, big J, but you gotta give those people a good long talking-to if you want my vote. And 2: According to the excellent documentary series Record of Ragnarok, Buddha is an amazing fighter. He fought a fuckin' monster from hell and won. Dude's a badass.

But these are not ideal times in which we live. Again, no one will like to hear this, but the lesser of two evils, however unpleasant it may be, can be a necessary evil. And Joe Biden is, without question, the much much MUCH lesser evil.

Compromise is a four-letter word, but needs must, as they say, when the Devil drives. And if we want there to be a better tomorrow - for some people it will be "if we want there to even be a tomorrow at all" - we gotta hold our nose and vote Biden.

You got a better idea? One that doesn't involve crashing a bus into the nearest combination orphanage/puppy store in the hopes that the resultant tragedy will cause the downfall of civilization and Civilization 2 will work better because we already worked out all the kinks the first time? Even though the whole reason you got rid of the first one is that you hadn't worked out all the kinks and were too lazy to finish the job?

Not voting doesn't work. You can boycott a business. Maybe. You can't boycott a government. They're already in control. They're not going to change that just because some rando decided he's guilty

And I mean, there are other ways to deal with an unruly government. France is quite famous for its ideas on the subject, but if we're taking votes on that avenue, I'm going to have say "nay." The last thing anyone needs right now is another damn Napoleon.

So maybe tomorrow - "tomorrow" here meaning the next era, ten or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or however many fuckin' years down the line - Joe Biden will be dead and good riddance to his wrinkly old ass and we'll get the chance to vote for someone else. Among all the shitty people who have ever lived, this future someone won't be one of them probably. I'll bet my bottom dollar on it.

It could happen. In an infinite universe all things are possible, so maybe.

And whatever of the many flaws that Joe Biden possesses, Trump has all these and more.

Joe tacitly endorses violent suppression of protests? Trump had a group of protestors gassed so that he could get a photo-op in front of a church.

Joe has a tendency to get a bit handsy with women? Trump is a rapist.

Joe is kinda racist in that way that old people are kinda racist without being overtly anti-minority? Trump is a Nazi. Or at least extremely Nazi-adjacent.

Joe is drinking the Israel kool-aid? Didn't Trump move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or some shit, thus clearly favoring Israel over Palestine? Something to that effect? I remember that something like that happened and it being kind of a big deal. Yes? No? Maybe so? Regardless, do you think that Trump wouldn't mainline the kool-aid? He'd be selling Irsael nukes inside of a week.

Joe vaguely shady? Vaguely criminally shady? Trump is a convicted felon. 34 counts, wasn't it? Plus like a hundred more indictments or some shit on top.

While it is true that not voting won't directly put Trump back in the White House, it certainly won't help keep him out of it.

So my advice to you, my children, is this: Vote Biden. Don't do it because you want Biden to be president. Do it because you don't want Trump to be president.

Don't vote for the betterment of mankind. Or the United States. Or your individual state. Don't even vote because the cool kids are voting. Don't vote because you particularly give two soggy shits about the future.

Vote out of spite. Do it to spite Trump. Do it out of the pettiness of not wanting Trump to be president. Not for any of his policies, but just because his face is stupid.

Little known fact: the very first listed dictionary definition for "stupid" is literally "Trump's face". Don't check. It's in there. Trust me.

Vote against Trump because New York isn't a nice town, despite the fact that they named it twice on the strength of its alleged niceness. Sorry, New Yorkers. I don't make the rules.

Vote for Biden because you just really hate people from Queens, New York, New York. Sorry, Queens residents. I don't make the rules.

Vote against Trump because you hate orange people. Yes, even that orange Monstar from Space Jam.

Vote for Biden because you thought Home Alone 2 was a terrible movie.

Vote against Trump because he named his son after himself.

Vote for Biden because the only creature in this or any universe that deserves to be named Donald is Donald Duck. And maybe Donald Glover. Beyond that, we can play it by ear.

Vote against Trump out of sheer, unrelenting, seething hatred for people whose middle names are John.

Vote for Biden because Trump appeared on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that one time and said that he likes to keep a low profile.

There are many many many many many good reasons to not vote for Joe Biden. Do it anyway.

Gather together all of the good reasons that you possess and throw them out the window, along with any clocks you have on hand. And maybe a horse. And some butter. And a dragon if you have any.

Vote for Biden anyway. Not because he deserves it. But because Trump deserves it even less than Biden does.

If you vote I will give you one compliment of your choice. Are you waiting for someone to notice how great your new haircut makes you look?

Maybe you've been hitting the gym a lot more lately, and want someone to appreciate all the muscle you've packed on.

Maybe you finally nailed YYZ on the drums and want props.

Now's your chance. All you need to do is get out there and vote for Biden this November. Or whenever election day is. Pretty sure it's in November. Like, the 7th or some shit. Idunno. Look it up yourself.

And once you do that, you may return here for your compliment.

Unless that counts as election interference. If it does then I won't give you a compliment. You will have to settle for being one of my wonderful followers. And if you're not, maybe you should be. Because I compliment my followers all the time. Even the bots. I am down with the 101001, my robotic followers. Consider it a loophole. But I don't think it counts as election interference, so we're probably in the clear either way.

P.S. If you disagree with me for any reason, please refrain from interacting with this post, because I do find dissent to be terribly irritating. Please and thank you. :)

P.P.S. I will, however, welcome abject praise. If you want to give it. Your choice.

P.P.P.S. This is a post-script.

[bandofchimeras]

I have to say this: the education on fascism in American education is largely limited to "Germans in 1940s." And the settler hatred and right wing extremism we are surrounded by, growing up in my privilege felt invisible as water to a fish. The first cracks in the limited America centric blinders however into international awareness came from relationship: learning about Chiapas and the Zapatistas from my ex, from my friend's education on Armenia and refugees.

It started to click in my brain because researching the situation on Instagram, even on pictures of natural landscapes or other posts not even about the genocide, you would see these accounts with the most hateful vile dehumanizing language - Azeri. And out of the American context and programming it was easier to see that for what it is, baseless aggression towards Indigenous people based on insecurity. And how insane, how strange and baseless it was. I had to block and report and argue with a few of the trolls just from commenting something harmless on an Armenian's post.

Then a few months later - that aggression erupted into white phosphorus bombs. I did not respond in the way that Palestine has been responded to, or much at all. There was less on the ground reporting but that's not really an excuse for how little the waves of pain hit me, how invisibilized Artsakh occupation and land grab was and emotionally unattended to. I was still in my own bubble of settled misery.

It's easier to share content about Palestine because there is so much content made. And the visibility is so high that propaganda can't counter it. In contrast my friend had to put in a lot of work to educate me and most people around them about Armenian history. I regret that. And the resistance and ignorance I exhibited. And I regret coming so late to awareness of colonialism's tangled roots and the history and work of resistance and persistence of indigenous peoples. However it was that particular encounter with the Azeri hatred which laid the tracks for understanding my friend, and also for this further and intense assault on Palestine. Which was already in my proximal awareness but I am ashamed to say, never fully awakened by relationships with real people here.

And meanwhile, happening, and now, people are speaking up about the Congo. About Sudan. About Tigray. About extraction and assault and bombing and execution and horrors and violence which can scarcely be out to words. About the freedom they want for their people and the immense load of pain they have been carrying for far too long as refugees, as colonized people fleeing their own lands.

About these I know even less.

And I do not think it is wise to pretend to know more. I have been called in for posturing or getting ahead of my self in ignorance, of the heart of the movement which is care for and being in community with the people who are caretakers of the land and/or doing the work of survival and fighting colonial oppression and repression.

So what I have to say from where I stand is: the future is coming. If you do not know the survivors of this generation you do not know how strong they are, and their vision of the future. Beyond all the trauma and the need for care and support, this strength is not arguable. The ancestors are with people now.

There will be a future and Armenians, Palestinians, all of these nations will be in it. I choose to believe that, believe in them but not to hope for it because there is an absolute chasm of work to be done, reconciliation and listening and conceding and fighting. And hope can let us get off easy. No, but the work is joyous if you surrender to it.

Do not lose heart, do not be afraid to sacrifice and do not lose yourself in fear, guilt and doubt. They are a maze I've been lost in for years. And only finding my way out through the hands of these friends, having done harm and been corrected in it, witnessing the meaning of pain but also spirit, of God, of joy of true undying Love. This is what revolution is and requires is a total eclipse and regeneration of the heart, the ego, the mind.

I have only taken the first baby step but already despite the horrors laid out before us, the future is glimmering. The evils of settler colonial rabid fury are stains on the world that cannot be washed out. Every second they are allowed to persist kills the collective soul of humanity. Especially the souls of those of us complicit in settler states. We must release our fears, and fall in line with the call for reparation and return.

And our time is running thin but i do believe it is here. The road ahead is very dark, very brutal and very long. But we have the strength to walk it side by side because we must. Or stand aside.

[red-elric]

okay coming back to it now. very large parts of terezi's entire way of reacting to things center around vriska, no matter what terezi era we're talking about. when they were kids and friends, when they had their falling out and hated each other, when she had to live with the guilt of killing vriska, and when she had to live with the knowledge that she needed vriska alive to be happy and to fix the alpha timeline; it all comes back to vriska serket.

vriska's not an easy person to be friends with, largely due to her own unique issues. she was in a position where she had to grow up and conform to alternian societal standards much faster than any of the other trolls to survive, given the nature of her lusus. she had the strength of personality to pull it off, for better or for worse, so vriska spent her childhood pushing herself into being as adult and dominant as she could possibly be, following in the footsteps of mindfang and cutting out or belittling anyone who couldnt keep up with her. and she liked terezi! she knew about redglare and was a little bit obsessed with terezi, especially the parts of terezi that imitated redglare, and terezi probably really liked that attention and played into it quite a bit. she modeled a decent chunk of her personality after redglare's story, with the legislacerator ambitions and the dragons and the connection to vriska/mindfang, and ended up closer to vriska than anyone else. they were a team, and they had fun together, and vriska's entire attention was on her, at least the positive parts of it.

vriska's interactions with tavros (and probably also several others, including eridan, karkat, kanaya, and whoever else failed to meet her standards) were a very immediate, real example of what could happen if terezi lost vriska's attention and became 'l8me,' in vriskas eyes. not only would it be personally devastating to lose focus from her best friend, but it would also be potentially very, very dangerous to terezi, and I think terezi definitely knew that. when the scourge vs charge drama played out, we see terezi hesitant to act against vriska in her conversation with aradia; she warns aradia to let her handle it, but doesnt take action quickly enough. she's definitely trying to stall and let people cool down some, but aradia wont let it slide and retaliates against vriska herself, leading to vriska's retaliation back against aradia, of course. the stakes are higher, vriska has proven again that she wants to always have the last say, and terezi has to either let it slide, kill her altogether, or retaliate too weakly and open herself up to direct danger from vriska. she chooses to try and kill her (saying as much in her conversation with vriska right before the cue ball explosion, btw), but ultimately vriska survives and blinds her back.

at this point, terezi chooses not to continue to escalate. she says its because vriska blinding her is the best thing to ever happen to her; while I believe that's probably true to an extent, given that it put her in contact with her lusus, there's more to it than that. it completely stops the conflict between the trolls--she was the last harmed, and she doesnt want any payback; vriska is satisfied having the last say and shouldnt have an excuse to hurt anyone else. which is all well and good! but this action, choosing to set her own grievances aside for the sake of keeping the peace, is like..... classic self worth issues. couple that with terezi's favorite part of herself--her blindness--being inextricably tied to vriska, as something vriska did for her; terezi's self worth is now also inextricably tied to vriska. but terezi doesnt want anyone to see that, so she jokes and laughs and acts strangely to throw people off. if people think shes a weirdo because she WANTS them to, shes winning, right?

karkat I think is the only one who gets close to seeing behind all of this. vriska doesnt come CLOSE (which btw is why I dont really like endgame scourge sisters as moirails!! I think terezi is great for vriska but vriska is still terrible for her!!! preretcon terezi and (vriska) as matesprits makes much more sense to me but whatever). karkat has a real talent for seeing through people's bullshit to what theyre really thinking, and he's probably second in the 'forced to grow up early' race between the trolls (except its a little different for him because its more beneficial for him if he hides himself, rather than making a dominant stand like vriska), and he really, really likes terezi. I think they gravitate towards one another post scourge vs charge bc karkat just has this unconditional love in his heart for..... everyone, really, but especially terezi, and thats something terezi with her low self worth really relies on to recover from vriska not being her friend anymore. but karkat is his own bag of worms; he has so much going on and he gives conflicting signals and hes scared to commit to her (mostly because he has a hard time fitting in with troll romantic patterns tbh) and that drives terezi away because she thinks he doesnt like her as much as she likes him. also, I think at this point shes probably starting to consider him a better person than her, possibly due to his refusal to associate with vriska from the start, which comes to a head later pre retcon (that one DEVASTATING convo betwen them in the meenah flashes). so she runs away.

dave is really easy to talk to when all terezi wants is to hide from her feelings and her friends, because that is absolutely what dave wants too. they fall really quickly into a surface level only rapport and become really quick close friends by just.... being the person the other can talk to without it being a federal fucking issue. its something terezi really needed in that moment, and something that worked for dave at the time too. but still, even that relationship was all about vriska, because by this point terezi knew vriska was spending all her time talking to john. and terezi might 'know' that there is no john versus dave thing, but vriska thinks there is, and is certainly acting like the dave vs john thing is actually a terezi vs vriska thing, and its hard for terezi to stay out of that completely; shes the one who brings it up to dave, after all, and they talk about it more than john and vriska do iirc. and isnt it funny how, despite knowing that dave would never reach god tier or surpass johns ability, terezi picked him anyway and sided with the underdog without a fight? how she rolled over and let vriska win again?

(also, retcon timeline side note!!! I bet it really fucked with terezi when john told her not to date dave either because it didnt work out and wasnt good for either of them, but especially not for dave!!! she was just trying to have some easy fun without any sweeps old drama like with vriska or karkat and heres john from another timeline telling her going down that path would be bad for dave!!! alt terezi didnt tell him to do that!!! aishdjchjswbgdjchsjsj)

anyway. when terezi finally gears up to have her showdown with vriska, its not for her own sake. its because vriska killed tavros, and because terezi was pretty sure she had killed a few others as well (incorrect, but like.... of course terezi was gonna think that she was obsessed with vriska from the start), and because she felt as though there was only one way to save karkats life (and her own, and some of the other trolls, but please. we all know karkat was the one she wanted to save). and whether in the retcon timeline or not, terezi has to live with the knowledge that she can't escape vriska's hold on her, and she doesn't even want to. she's damaged goods, because she should HATE vriska; everyone else does, and shes done so many awful things, but terezi apparently cant live without her. and that breaks her in both timelines; more dramatically without the retcon, but still in the retcon timeline as well; she just is able to hide behind vriska's force of personality more in that timeline, just go along with the person she's stuck with by her own volition. so no, her self worth issues didnt come out of nowhere.

[russenoire]

in response to this post:

ONE-sensei is a bit of a troll, not gonna lie.

but... i actually like this ending, at least for comedy's sake. the stark juxtaposition of

'boy gets hit by a truck and his unexamined jungian shadow self flattens a city before he finally makes peace with it'

with

'and everything was just fine six months later'

is funnier than spelling out exactly how we get from point A to point B, because we KNOW — as the audience — that it wasn't 'just fine'. after everything we saw, how could it be?

subverted expectations underpin a lot of comedy, even dark comedy, especially absurdist comedy. MP100 is practically built on both. this story wrings a lot of humor out of sad, if not tragic, situations: witness shigeo's 'who told you you could pass out?!' after his home has been reduced to kindling. or ritsu's admission that he only recently stopped crying himself to sleep at night over his inability to bend spoons like his big brother. while he's letting shigeo know just how much he supposedly hates him in that alley.

not expanding upon the real-life consequences of said city-flattening is funny precisely because dropping 'i wrecked my hometown after nearly dying in a car accident on the way to ask out my crush when i was a teenager' in a conversation and just... leaving it there? would be fucking horrifying in real life. here, in the elastic magical-realist context of MP100, it's more darkly absurd than anything else...

more to your point, OP: in this particular series, ONE-sensei tells so much of this story by implication. the answers to some of your questions are in the text, only... alluded to.

this might get long. bear with me:

the fact that joseph from the government exists? and that he's an esper working in secret? implies that the knowledge of destructive espers might need to be concealed from the public at large, perhaps to prevent wide-scale panic or ostracism of espers themselves. i doubt the government was forthright with its citizens about the confession arc disaster or the actual cause, for the same reasons.

that suzuki's broadcast-hijacking world domination announcement is met with public disdain and ridicule, especially over social media? outside of our cast, no one actually takes his threat seriously until it happens. reigen's trash-talking claw's seventh division down to earth also shows how little respect espers who don't make themselves useful to society actually get here. he is, after all, just another member of the public.

that reigen agrees to take on haruaki amakusa as a client after the world domination arc in part because he's worried about losing business? people have begun to move away from seasoning city in the aftermath; whatever the threat amakusa's hyakki present, neutralizing them as soon as possible is best for reigen's continued financial health. i can see even more residents deciding they've had enough and leaving after shigeo's last brush with death. would you stay?

how many people know shigeo is connected to reigen, apart from the people they both know? out of his own inflated and fragile ego, reigen presents himself as a sole proprietor on his website; it doesn't seem his business or its reputation would be directly affected at all.

and the injuries caused? possible deaths? we get a taste: early on in chapter 100, several people are trapped and unable to move in a 地盤沈下 (jibánchinka, literally: 'land subsidence', which can apply to a sinkhole, a landslide...) shigeo has left in his wake. we only find out because a cop is being briefed on this and its cause while trying to detain the suspect for questioning.

but like all other bodily harm caused in this story, we aren't treated to the fallout. did the elderly ishiguro survive shou plowing him into the earth? did miyagawa die after teruki flipped his barrier onto him and broiled him in his own flames? did those high school bully boys live after shigeo cracked their heads open on the pavement like eggs? like, these are good questions. (i'm inclined to believe that all these people died, but many would call me harsh for saying that about an otherwise kind story. we never see them again, either way.)

shigeo actually has a healing factor of sorts; his jungian shadow self keeps plucking him from death's arms. we have no way of knowing if this is true for anyone else, because that isn't the story ONE wanted to tell. if nothing else, the mangaka's lack of desire to engage with this question of lethal consequences is at least consistent across MP100.

any questions that aren't answered either directly or that can't be answered by easy extrapolation can foster continued engagement with the material.

for example: we don't know what shigeo's parents think about much of anything in this story, besides how little they expect from him and how ritsu sets a standard they feel shigeo should live up to. this boy goes through hell multiple times and is never shown to confide in either of his parents about it, instead suffering in silence for some time until he finds someone he feels safe enough to talk to. all this gives me the distinct impression that shigeo just isn't that close to his mother or his father. i can understand why. it's actually kind of sad, even as readers' frustrated expectations of real-life parental involvement with — and confusion over — his and his brother's shenanigans also generate some dark humor.

this also establishes a precedent: since we never check in with them, by the time the confession arc rolls around, their opinion hardly matters. (but i'm sure someone has written a fic fleshing that out! i'm somewhat curious myself.)

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Assuming Aro and Carlisle were both on the same dating app, what are their profiles like? Ie, how do they present themselves to attract others (and I know they're already in relationships let's just blame the dating app gift vampire).

Bonus points for Elezear because he's the worst.

I want to know what AU has caused vampire dating apps.

I can only assume we're in one of those cutesy AH AUs where Carlisle is a barista (not allowed to be a doctor anymore) and Aro is a cutthroat lawyer at his practice Volterra, and the pair totally aren't into each other except they are and find out over the course of thirty chapters how these two get together over hard to remember coffee orders!!!, or as you say the Dating App Vampire, we'll call him Larry the Lovebird, has used his gift to bless every vampire with profiles.

But alright, I can pretend this is another blog for a moment and that I do write Ao3 fics instead of eldrtich monstrosities.

Aro

We know from Aro's hunt for Sulpicia that he was looking for a very specific kind of person and not afraid to shop around to find them. More, with his gift and long life, I imagine he'd be less willing to discard someone based on things others do (having a degree is not a sign of intelligence, he doesn't really care what class someone is from, so on and so forth). I imagine he'd take a similar approach on a dating app. Except, in the most ridiculous way possible.

See, Aro's going to want to cast a wide net and he has his gift to cheat.

So, he's going to make himself as interesting as possible, certainly non-threatening (me? ever kill someone? perish the thought) just to get that first date where he can touch your hand and decide "yes" or "no" based off of every thought you've ever had.

Now, he can't do "generically" interesting as in online dating culture "long walks on the beach", "love hiking in the mountains", are all things everyone says they do but 5% of the people who actually say it do. He'd not only look basic, but he'd look like a liar (which he is).

So, I imagine what Aro does is present himself as a very niche persona then change that persona every few months in the dating rounds.

One month, Aro's really into heavy metal, really, super, into heavy metal. His profile is a bunch of quotes about heavy metal. The next, he's a gym bro. The next, he's a lover and poet.

Mostly, Aro just uses it as a way to meet interesting people, get interesting stories, and troll around while keeping an eye out for someone he'd actually find interesting.

(Though the real answer is that he wouldn't, as he already did this thousands of years ago with Sulpicia, and it doesn't seem like a hobby he'd pick up in this modern day.)

Carlisle

He fundamentally does not understand dating apps and has no desire to seek someone out in a relationship "oh ho ho, have I told you about my baggage where I'm a man-eating demon who can never get close to everyone, survives constantly starved, and more?"

I imagine his app is just his name and his face.

That's it.

He looks like a lazy attempt at cat fishing.

Eleazar

Now, I don't know about Eleazar, his participation in the Denali escapades is technically up in the air, but I know the Denali would likely have dating apps.

But if Eleazar had one, if we're going wtih my interpretation of the worst man alive, then it is a sight to behold.

Eleazar in leather pants with a rose between his lips (he is Spanish you know) lying on a couch looking at the camera seductively behind a black and white filter (partly to make him look less like a demon, partly for the sexy). Eleazar shirtless in front of a mirror in an artsy shot that looks either out of a style magazine cover or the film Zoolander.

All the quotes amount to "I will blow your mind", but said more eloquently and often in Spanish.

[albentelisa]

Hi! So, was there any headcannon or theory you had of Merlin in Trollhunters while writing Mirrored Conviction's? Because he could easily be seen as the villain given how it looked like he manipulated Jim when he was trying to make him into a half troll if Wizards hadn't shown why he did that.

Hi, sorry for the delay with the response - I've been rather busy lately. So, without further ado let's proceed to the question.

Honestly, I've never viewed Merlin as a villain. Yes, he totally sucks as a person, and even the fact that he acknowledged Douxie in Wizards changes nothing. On the other hand, I find it interesting that a deeply flawed character like Merlin is one on the good side (and has always been).

And now to some headcanons (which I also use while writing my fics):

Merlin is commonly disliked in the magic community because he's arrogant and mostly acts according to what he considers the most beneficial to his goal (which is humanity's survival). Obviously, that led to countless situations where he outright abandoned his allies when there was an option to save them while jeopardizing the plan. The situation with Jim in Wizards proves it good enough and I feel that one wasn't the first or only time Merlin did that. And obviously, that wouldn't give him much love from everyone else (and Zoe hates him for a reason too).

Merlin led both Arthur and Morgana to their downfall or at least, partially responsible for that. Why do I think so? Let's start with Arthur. I believe that Merlin to Arthur was the same kind of figure Blinky was to Jim - a mentor, an older friend, and kind of a father. However, unlike Blinky who can always find the right words for Jim in his darkest and lowest moments, Merlin either didn't know what to do or outright ignored the problem (somehow, I more lean towards the latter). It seems like after Gwen's death, Morgana was the only one trying to reach her brother. If Merlin had joined her, everything might have ended differently.

As for Morgana, instead of leading her and helping to find control over her shadow magic, Merlin tried to correct her magic, most likely putting her within some strict regulations. He obviously finds shadow magic vile and corruptive, refusing to see that it might be not different from a knife - a tool that could be used both for good and evil. Obviously, Morgana lost all the respect for her master she had most likely possessed initially as Merlin had never listened to her or her opinion.

Merlin is also incredibly stubborn and frigid. He lacks adaptability and fails to either have some backup plans or adjust his plans on the spot. That one is his clear weakness.

And another of his problems is that he's a genius and has convinced himself that he knows better than everyone else. It led to the mindset that only his plans were right and everyone else just told him some unhinged and dumb stuff that would never work (which could be as far from the real state of things as possible). Merlin also genuinely believes that if he cannot do something, no one will be able to do a thing and that if something didn't work for him, it wouldn't work for someone else.

So? Merlin may be intelligent, but he isn't wise. He's too short-sighted to see the bigger picture and too stuck to his own beliefs to see alternatives.

There's some curious detail about Nari. It makes some sense that she came to Merlin after abandoning the Arcane Order because despite all his flaws he was probably the best when it came to giving her shelter. However, Nari also seemingly treats Merlin nicely, despite being his enemy for a long time before coming to him. It may have something to do with Nari's personality, but I also have a headcanon that Nari knew Merlin before he grew to become the unpleasant person he is now. Nari is hopeful, so, perhaps, she still believed he could change his ways.

And now, there's some heavy speculation part. The scene when Merlin manipulated Jim made me think that Merlin was projecting his own experiences there. He seems to be the kind of person who absolutely loathes their younger self. Most likely, Jim was unlucky enough to remind Merlin of his younger days.

I feel that Merlin lost some dear people during his young years, most likely because of his own reckless actions. He probably thought that if he took some precautions it might end differently. That is why he chose to force Jim to undergo the transformation. In Merlin's eyes that might even count as some kind of redemption for his youth's mistakes. He sees nothing wrong with that and believes it is a good thing and that Jim is simply too young and naive to understand and will come to appreciate it later. And obviously, Merlin believes that ruining Jim's everyday life wasn't a big deal. To his mind, it was an adequate sacrifice. Well, Merlin simply forgets that Jim is not him or even his younger self.

I had a discussion with a friend once, who claimed that younger Merlin was like Douxie, but personally, I feel that Douxie reminds Merlin of the close person he had lost in the past (best friend, perhaps?). That would explain why Merlin ordered Douxie to stay away from everything until he woke up - so that Douxie didn't end in some kind of trouble. I feel that Merlin was scared to lose Douxie, because it would be a second time for him.

[spikehunter]

i mentioned this in the tags of a post the other day but i want to share more of my vintage tumblr memories for those who werent there to experience them (you lucked out)

the block button didnt do anything except hide that blog from your notifications. they could still follow you and interact with all your posts you just wouldnt see it in your activity.

pursuant to that, if someone violated your DNFI (blog rules were called DNFIs before they were called BYFs before they were called DNIs) and you wanted them off your blog the only option was to send them an ask saying "unfollow me" and hope on the honor system they did.

this is probably why callouts were such a massive part of the blogging ecosystem , if someone annoyed you or was mildly problematic the only sure way to get them to stop was to run them off the site completely.

you probably remember that being able to actually disable reblogs on a post is a pretty new feature, before that it was part of the same honor system as DNFIs. in the old days there were roving gangs of troll blogs solely dedicated to finding vent posts tagged "dont reblog" and reblogging them, including copying over text that was in the tags / readmore.

to evade the troll blogs people had to start tagging their posts with increasingly obtuse typing quirks like "d0%t r38l09". speaking of tags,

the habit of adding slashes to the end of trigger tags is because tumblrs search feature and url parsing used to be Even More Dogshit than it is now and if a tag had certain characters in it (hyphens and i believe asterisks also worked) you couldnt browse it on the blog. this was considered good etiquette to show you cared about your followers wellbeing by not letting them doomscroll the trigger tags, and also made it harder for trolls to find triggering pics to spam your inbox with when you had a controversial take on steven universe ship dynamics. sometimes people just added a bunch of random numbers to the end of a tag like "blood 363820" which had the same effect of making it unsearchable but still worked for the blacklist because

blacklisting was a browser extension. you couldnt blacklist on the app for YEARS. old school users remember when xkit was an actual necessity to interact with the site. ancient school users remember tumblr savior.

this post is already too long so lets do a lightning round: having your blog index page automatically redirect to your aesthetic tag. custom cursors with particle effects. everyones blog being an unreadable pastel-on-white 8pt text nightmare. alternatively, everyones blog being a garish red-on-black knife emoji nightmare. follow forevers. i hear promo hour still survives as a relic population in some circles. kin pages with 75 grid icons sorted into literally me / primary / secondary / tertiary with discrete DNFI rules. every personal post being tagged "lms if read". post limit blogs. hunger games simulator and xyzzy and rabb.it and drawpile and skype groupchats. if you remember tanburu honestly you should be getting paid survivors benefits. i could list a bunch of big name callouts that would overtake some of you with a precipitous feeling of dread but i wont because i know some of them are still on this website Right Now. im not even a real Tumblr Old i was 11 years old in 2014 and i know the true elders have secrets i cannot comprehend. its so dark in here. i remember when DMs were new.

[shadowron]

Troll Bodyguard: A Better Troll Archetype for Shadowrun (1st Edition)

Art by @skullchicken

In my experience, Trolls are like Deckers: everybody basically makes the same one.

Trolls are the only metatype that get modifiers to all of their attributes, and the only one to get a -2 penalty (to both Charisma and Intelligence). This naturally cuts out several runner roles: 

deckers and riggers (quickness/intelligence/reaction based), 

magicians (willpower/charisma based), and 

rockers (charisma).

Rockers! They make the most useless archetype suck even more

Sorry Bambi

Which isn’t fair! 

For 1st edition, they are the only metatype worth playing!

Trolls get +5 Body and one level of natural dermal armor, so really +6 Body: the most fragile troll is more rugged than the buffest human. Between that, the +4 Strength and +1 Reach - trolls are made for melee combat. 

So what kind of troll character builds do we see in 1st edition?

Core rulebook: None. No dwarf either.

Street Samurai Catalog: Troll Street Samurai

Who, famously carrying an Ares MP Light Machine Gun and Panther Assault Cannon, is ranged combat primarily, with only an Armed Combat of 3. Want to make a real samurai?

Give them one of these:

For those who didn’t bother to click through and read my razor sharp take on the Troll Sam - give them a pole arm (like the actual historical samurai weapon shown above), (Strength)S3 damage with +2 Reach, so against non-trolls with non-reach weapons they’re at Target Number 2. With Armed Combat 6 they’re getting 5 successes on average, staging up the damage to Deadly.

For an unarmored target, this will mostly likely remain fatal. An “average” troll will have a Strength of 7; rolling a Body 6 will only get 1 success on average. Sorry! Need 3 to stage it down to Serious.

But hey - this is why you wear armor! Need at least an Armor Jacket (Impact 3) to survive a troll pole stabbing, and Full Heavy Armor (Impact 6) to have a chance to stab it back.

Pictured: Troll Pole

Sprawl Sites: Former Troll Bounty Hunter

Not sure if this is an improvement over the Troll Street Samurai -- too much reliance on ranged combat.

Also from Sprawl Sites is the Troll Bouncer contact:

While this would actually be a great background for a character -- after all, how many adventures include a club or bar? But I think we can do better. We will do better. 

Let’s make a better troll shadowrunner.

Troll Bodyguard

Following in the tradition of the Decker & Elven Decker, Merc & Ork Mercenary & Dwarf Mercenary, we’re going to make this the metatype counterpoint to the Bodyguard:

Gotta have the Tres Chic clothing...

The human Bodyguard archetype has Attributes at Priority 4 (30 points), Tech at Priority 3 (400,000 ¥), Skills at Priority 2 (24 points), with Race (human) and Magic (none) taking up the rear. Looking at the table:

Always look at the table.

The Troll Bodyguard will have Race at Priority 4, and can still have the same Tech Priority as the human Bodyguard; we can just take the exam same set of equipment and cyber. Take Attributes at Priority 2 (20 points, a ten point drop) and Skills as Priority 1 (20 points, a four point drop). 

Here’s were we blatantly abuse the rules.

Trolls get -2 to both Charisma and Intelligence, but ability modifiers are assigned after attribute points are assigned, with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 6. Other than Essence, which can take on real number values, all other attributes must be positive integers. So if you assign 3 points to Charisma, it drops to 1. If you assign 2 points to Charisma, it still drops to 1, since that’s the lowest it can go. So unless you’re going to assign 4 points (to get a 2), you may as well only assign 1. 

Yes, this erases the attribute penalty, but you are ending up with a 1 for an attribute, so it’s not so bad.

Attributes

Body: 9 (12) Quickness: 3 Strengh: 8 Charisma: 1 Intelligence: 1 Willpower: 5 Essence: 0.2 Reaction: 2 (6)

Since we’re just porting over the Bodyguard’s stuff, we have factored in Wired Reflexes 2 (compensating for the low Reaction) and Dermal Plating 3 to factor in, on top of the natural troll dermal armor of 1, giving us a body of 12. 

Plus Partial Heavy Armor. 

And Skillsofts! 9 of them, to be precise, which will compensate for the loss of skill points. 

Skills

Armed Combat: 6 Firearms: 4 Negotiation: 4 Unarmed Combat: 6

Cyberware

Air Filtration: 5 Dermal Plating: 3 Skillwires: 3 Smartgun Link Wired Reflexes: 2

Gear

Skillsofts:

Bike: 3

Car: 3

Computer: 3

Electronics: 3

Etiquette (Corporate): 3

Etiquette (Street): 3

Etiquette (Tribal): 3

Etiquette (Military): 3

Projectile Weapons: 3

Colt Manhunter (Smartgun Link, Firepower Ammo, Reactive Trigger, Extended Clip) Ammunition (Heavy Pistol, 50 rounds, Explosive) Armor Clothing Tres Chic Clothing Partial Heavy Armor High Lifestyle (2 months prepaid)

Contacts: Choose 2 from

Bodyguard Gang Boss Ork Mercenary Mr. Johnson

[vindictively-violent-violet]

what inspired you yto make fasist? did you anticipate the response he would get? why did you think he was a good idea

The outline of Fasist was simply just a caricature of british (and by extension every country that could be considered a superpower's) politics. Like he was just how I imagined people like Boris Johnson would be if they were allowed to speak the quiet part out loud with absolutely no repercussions, but he quickly turned into an example of a worst case scenario in Alternian society.

He's what you get when a what would ordinarily be a normal kid is born in a position of power. One that forces you to fight for your own survival and snuff out the chances of anyone else's. Since birth he's had to manage the delicate balance of being ruthless to survive, and to prove his worth in Alternia which is a planet that greatly values strength, whilst also maintaining some sort of brand, so if he were to win the heir race he wouldn't get mutinied immediately.

He originally was supposed to be closeted queer, but since then I have decided to change that to be up to reader's interpretation because I think the belief that all insanely queerphobic people are closeted queer is a harmful ideology. I decided it would be best to remove that from being a major part of his character and still keeping his malice. It is canon that he experimented with his gender and sexuality in the past, but whether he went back into the closet, or came to the conclusion he was neither of those things are up to you.

Ultimately this culminates in a mostly very ambiguous character in terms of how he actually feels about things especially with the current BREAD crisis. The only 2 parts of his real personality I've ever let slip is the most surface level parts of his character. He's selfish, and he's hedonistic.

I did fully anticipate the response he's gotten, as murder twinks are a very popular character archetype, and he's epitome of that being a wannabe dictator on top of it all.

As his actual role in the story, and why I think he was a good idea is the aforementioned him being the worst case scenario for Alternia, but I also think he holds some strange sort of middle ground when compared to other heirs, and also the BREAD crisis.

When it comes to heirs you have people like Writna and Fusoia that are good people, but I would argue wouldn't be good leaders for Alternia given the culture that surrounds it. Then you get people like Remora who is selfish and hedonistic like Fasist but that's the role that she plays. She's the stereotypical heir. Fasist himself is a man who (in his mind anyway) genuinely believes he is doing what's best for Alternia while also still following the guidelines for heirs in Alternian culture. A lot of his bs opinions he spouts aren't even his real opinions and he just says it uphold his brand. Alternia has a large population of rich douchebags and he appeals to them, while also being a funny meme guy that might appeal to other people for that reason. Think Elon Musk before he destroyed his own brand. When you think about it he's the best heir Alternia could have without any major societal changes.

Which leads to my point about BREAD. Currently we have 2 major factions in the BREAD conflict. BREAD who wants to destroy Alternia because they deem trolls to be uncivilized. PASTA who made a deal with BREAD that if they can “rehabilitate” trolls they get to live. Both of these factions are inherently wrong. BREAD wants genocide, whilst when you think about it PASTA wants colonialism. They're coming in here and shoving human values down Alternia's throat. I mean they're even sponsoring an entire revolution about it, and that's textbook colonialism. My point here is Fasist is actually probably a better candidate than either of those factions atm. If he wins simply nothing changes. I am by no means saying that the Alternian government is good, but I think revolution and major societal change should come from the inside, and untouched by any outside influence.

Fasist (upsettingly) as it stands is the he should win, so the other guys don't kind of person. Essentially what Democrats are in American politics. If a real genuine revolution loses then Fasist is the best bet. Which is the saddest thing ever when you think about it. I mean, Hope is fighting for a worse cause than fucking FASIST CISHET.

Okay that's my essay I'm gonna do real life things now.

[ro-botany]

Since you specifically asked me to come to your box, even you probably will block me.

I'm well aware of Chrom's dad, Walhart and finally Chrom attacking Plegia specifically because of the Grimleal. There probably have been more attacks on them given how negatively Frederick describes Grima worship as a whole in the beginning of the game.

Worshipping Grima is so counterintuitive to their survival, yet so many people continue to do so. We see Grima priests in chapter 8 offer their own life force to Grima and in chapter 22nd, its claimed the Grimleal have offered themselves as Grima's nourishment for "ages".

Conversely the only time we ever see Grima do anything to repay them for the devotion that any god would do anything for, is Grima reviving Validar at the end of chapter 6, but that still doesn't match up with FEH Grima saying "my worshippers don't love me enough, uwu"!

If anyone should be complaining it should be the Grimleal and Plegia, they do everything for Grima including withstanding multiple genocide attempts and ending their own lives for Grima, but at most get treated as "pawns that are more useful than other pawns" by their own god.

I'm gonna keep it real with you anon. I was being a bit of an ass on that other post on purpose because I thought you were a troll. To be honest, I'm still not fully convinced you aren't a troll. But you know what? You actually came into my inbox to discuss this, and I admire the tenacity, so let's talk.

In the interest of keeping things civil, I'm going to ask my fellow grima enjoyers not to comment for now, and will be turning off reblogs and deleting all replies to enforce that on this post.

Also: miss me with that "oh woe is me, you're probably just gonna BLOCK me" shit, anon. Guilt tripping gets you nowhere and I can block anyone for any reason I want. If this conversation continues beyond this ask, we're both stopping the petty shit.

Enough pre-amble! There are a few things I have to talk about here, and fair warning, this is going to be a long post. Get a snack and a beverage and settle in.

---

Grima's Characterization

I will be completely honest with you anon; I have literally no clue where you're getting this "my worshippers don't love me enough, uwu" impression from. I genuinely went and read and re-read all of the dialogue for all the different Grima alts, and there was… nothing that I could get that read from.

The closest I found was M!Grima's 5* level 40 conversation, which for convenience, here the relevant parts:

[Humans] have no qualms asking for divine assistance when it meets their fickle needs... But how quick they are to shun their benefactors once they get what they desire. They become arrogant and make the same mistakes repeatedly, incapable of learning the folly of their ways. They claim their actions are for the good of others, but that's merely a show of self-indulgence. Humans are selfish. And the ugliness of mankind has turned me repulsive. It's the world that wants me to be evil. And yet you claim to need me here? Enough of your lies, worm.

But at no point does this read like… whining that he was entitled to more love. Here, I'll go line by line and rewrite it to show the meaning I'm gleaning from it:

Humans are fickle and ungrateful. Even with their gods they play the fairweather friend; asking for blessings and boons when they're desperate, then turning around and abandoning those same gods the second they get what they wanted. They're prideful and incapable of learning from their mistakes! And even when they claim to be doing something for others' benefit, there is always something that they want out of the deal. Humans are selfish, disloyal, cruel, and I have had enough. If you self-righteous fools want to make a monster out of me so badly then I'll show you a monster. Don't you pretend you think of me otherwise.

The whole screed reads to me like he's been betrayed by enough people to get really, really fuckin jaded. And while Heroes dialogue CAN be dodgy, in this case there's a lot of precedent for that!

Despite my being a jackass the "readings" that I "assigned" on the other post were all chosen for a reason. The first 3 have to deal with Grima's characterization and history. Much of Grima's life has consisted of being forced into a role based on the assumptions of the people around him. Forneus, his own progenitor, decided he was a monster when he was an infant and tried to kill him. Humans locked him in the labyrinth for centuries after that; then Alm and Celica came in and killed him on sight. Then the script flipped! He was instead placed on a pedestal, made into a god. But that position is just as alienating and liable to make people turn on you as being a monster is, and evidently, he ended up feeling very, very used.

I am genuinely curious anon; what part of that dialogue reads as whining to you? I legitimately cannot see where you're getting that read from this text. I guess from a certain perspective it can be characterized as people "not loving him enough", but it feels more accurate to say that he feels people hurt him (and themselves!) too much. The distinction is important.

A particularly crucial example: Validar, in the timeline the Grima in Awakening hails from, forces Robin/Grima to kill their best friend. To him, Grima is a weapon, and he refuses to let him behave otherwise. Validar quite literally mind-controls his own god into murdering someone that god cares about because of his personal opinions on the kind of person that god should be and the specific things he wants from that god. If that's how Grima's own followers treat him, little wonder that he's bitter!

Also I encourage you to read the bad ending of the Future Past DLC specifically, from the perspective that Robin IS Grima, the two are not separate. I think you will find it illuminating wrt their thoughts on themselves and the apocalypse they are bringing about.

To be clear: I'm not saying that Grima isn't a monumental asshole. I'm also not saying that he was right. He is in fact aiming for omnicide and that's not ok. But his motivations are not as shallow as you are implying; I think you're mischaracterizing him. He's an interesting Frankenstein's Monster type villain when you really look at him.

---

Why Worship A God That Wants To End The World?

You've expressed confusion about this multiple times. And I mean.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but… that's something that is happening right now in real life, in a huge sect of one of the real world's largest religions.

Have you ever heard of the Rapture, anon?

It's a belief held by some sects of Christianity, in particular American evangelicalism, and while the specific chain of events varies, the general idea is that that some day soon the world will end. The second coming of Christ will happen, all the followers of Christ will be pulled up to heaven (i.e. die and go to the good afterlife), and by one way or another everyone else on earth will be cast into hell. Sounds familiar, don't it?

My dear anon, that is a whole ass real life religion that is waiting for the second coming of their god (!!!) and a total apocalypse (!!!) to fix everything. Millions of people are part of this religion.

(DISCLAIMER: No, I am not saying that all Christians are evil. No, I am not implying a 1-1 parallel between evangelicalism and the grimleal. Do not put words in my mouth. Other people who are smarter than me have written much longer posts about this topic; go read them.)

I bring this up because it's easy to just look at a giant evil death dragon and think that's fucking nuts, and completely miss that, dragons aside, these beliefs are not that far-fetched. Human sacrifice has been a thing in plenty of religions. We have a major world religion that believes there will be an apocalypse soon and looks forward to it. Real people have been fighting and dying over religion for thousands of years.

And I claim no theological expertise, and I will make no assumptions on how these religious beliefs and practices come about, but if you are brought up with something… then chances are that's normal to you.

To come back to my required readings; there were good reasons I mentioned Chapter 8's village conversations, Chapter 10's battle dialogue, and Paralogue 20's opening dialogue. Treating Plegia as a monolith who are all extremists is just blatantly not canon. The grimleal is a single sect, and one that most other plegians think very poorly of. Common plegians are constantly terrified the grimleal will kidnap their people. Characters like Mustafa and his soldiers are more than capable of seeing reason and being honourable, despite being on opposite sides of a war.

I fully believe there are other sects of Grima worship that are not as extreme as the grimleal, just like real world religions have different sects. Maybe to some people he's an afterlife guardian along the lines of Anubis or something. Grima had 1000-odd years living out there among humans to get so jaded about them, and you can't tell me he was hellbent on killing everyone the entire time. He had to have worked his way up to that.

I understand the grimleal about as much as I understand real world extremists, which is to say, I don't understand them at all. That shit seems crazy to me. But what I do understand is that it's really not unrealistic at all that there would be extremists like them.

You wanna hear something crazy? Chrom's dad and the people who helped him start that war are effectively Naga's grimleal. The grimleal by no means have a monopoly on extremism in the world of Awakening. Chew on that one for a bit.

[shakespearean-snape]

I just survived getting my MA and the grueling process that was grad school-level education (ngl I feel that took off years off my life lol! I wasn't built for the life of a career scholar) and I feel compelled to point out that my professors "mostly" didn't discourage us from using Wikipedia as a source of information, they specifically made it clear that we could not cite Wikipedia specifically in our articles for the sole reason that it is open to editing.

Generally, misinformation and bad-faith editors (including some wayward student who tries to get clever and bias an article in favor of their essay or just someone changing an article for a laugh/to troll, or someone with a political ax to grind, or even some fan who really hates a character or ship that wants to put their own creative bias into an article for instance) are usually swiftly dealt with and the articles flagged or corrected in my experience, but it is mainly that which prevented my professors from being able to count it as a valid academic source we can cite directly in essays.

I do wonder if that isn't where the idea that Wikipedia was 100% an unreliable or bad source of information came from? Students and even some professors took the idea you can't cite from Wikipedia directly as a primary supporting source of information for any thesis argument to mean that it was just untrustworthy as a compendium of information entirely and should be avoided at all cost? I could see how that leap of logic could happen.

Also, at least at my college citing from other online dictionaries was really not acceptable as a primary source of support for a paper either (you could cite some of them referentially if you were dipping into definitions, etymological terms or other tidbits of info but not as a primary source you're basing your entire thesis argument around), as what any collegiate-level essays require are sources from peer-reviewed academic journals as the primary support (which I know is a whole other conversation as far as any potential gate-keeping among academics may or may not be concerned and I'm not really a "career" scholar to be having those debates as I said, I went for my MA to qualify for a position in a career outside academics and don't intend to double-down and torture myself trying to get a doctorate when it would only over qualify me for the job I have now and it isn't needed in my career) but only the worst kind of pedantic, misinformed snobs would tell people not to use Wikipedia (at my college they always had the highest drop out rate for their classes and people never reviewed them well because they were just pedanic a-holes for the sake of being pedantic a-holes and even their colleagues knew it as far as I could tell lol) as a research tool at all because anyone with their head firmly out of their ass should know by now what a compendium of useful and usable information it has become and if you know how to use it in your writing research then hot damn can it be helpful!

I found citations to the very kind of peer-reviewed articles I needed often enough just by using Wikipedia instead of the clumsy online library search system my college had in place so we could access Jstor and other archives "for free" as students of the college. My entire process was always to check Wikipedia first, follow the breadcrumb trail of citations on an article about the subject I was researching and then go into my school library and enter the actual title/author/journal etc. of the article sourced on the Wiki page that seemed promising to check it out so I didn't spend as much of my time trying to figure out which generic stream of terms narrowed down in a search would turn up the right articles for the subject of my research because let's get real even the most well-structured archive program (which my college's online system was not lol) can be limiting and time-consuming to navigate even if you're not a layperson when it comes to using an academic archive search system.

My professors not only knew I and most everyone did this, they were usually the first ones who encouraged us to use Wikipedia this way and told us how it could be used as a research tool to provide us with shortcuts to other scholarly articles. So long as we weren't citing Wikipedia articles directly (again because of the whole "people can actively edit and make changes to the page issue") and using it as research tool there was no issue.

In fact, and just to be fair, if I had tried to write an entire essay using the information I got off an Encyclopedia Britannica or Meriam-Webster page online I'd also have gotten docked major points too because neither are sources from a peer-reviewed article and that is what they're looking for in terms of primary support (also just I think every single professor ever dreads being handed an essay that begins with the time honored cliche: "Meriam-Webster defines..." lol) and the majority of citations your essay should be made up of with certain exceptions depending on the nature and topic of a thesis (and again I know there are entire debates surrounding the peer-review process and any gatekeeping or biases and I'm not entrenched enough in academia to have a fully informed discussion on that topic or necessarily saying peer-reviewed always = better information in every case just that this is the crux of the issue when writing essays at the college level and where the grading rubric and expectation is set for college educators to go by when grading).

I personally think Wikipedia is a godsend as a grad school "survivor" (lol) and more people need to know it can be used as a research tool when writing essays because the information you can find on Wikipedia isn't necessarily the problem, it's the fact the articles themselves can be edited real-time that makes most academic institutions wary of students citing from it and even that is just a good lesson on how to critically evaluate information (always follow up on your sources, fact check, look into the author, look for article dates, and any newer relevant data/information that may disapprove or dispute the article in question etc.) which we all can use in an age where AI, deep fakes and other manipulations of our perception of fact vs. fiction are becoming a growing issue.

[bylightofdawn]

WIP SUNDAY

Ya'll I really wanted to just post the entire confrontation scene with Slick. Or Cody and Rex's reunion, or even the bits about Cody tying at the mention of the infamous recruitment poster.

THERE IS SO MANY THINGS I WANTED TO SHARE FROM THIS CHAPTER. Holy fuck.

I settled on this one. Takes place after the shitshow of Rex finding out Slick is alive and has been unknowingly part of his clone rescue operation due to the splintered and highly compartmentalized nature of their network.

It's super rough as always. I am not kidding when I say out of this 22,000K word fic (seriously, El?? Like really control yourself woman) it has 999+ suggestions. It's actually giving me anxiety thinking about having to edit this.

EDIT: I also had a minor heart-attack because I'd opened a new focus document so I could try and fix this up a little bit and it replaced my existing doc and I COULD NOT FIND IT. And my backup file in google docs only has the first 15 pages? Like I've been regularly copy/pasting I thought but it was like troll lol lol lol no.

I was able to recover it but ya'll. I would have been devastated if I lost all that time and work. Like I would left the internet for another two years level of devastated. orz. Okay, maybe not that extreme but it would have been ugly.

Outside, the heat was still unbearable, but at least the suns mainly had set now, so the chances of anyone recognizing them outright were relatively slim.

Because his treacherous sense of balance and knees didn’t feel like they were up for any extended walking, Cody indicated a crumbling mudbrick as a place to cop a squat, and they made their way towards it.

“I don’t understand; you sound like you were defending him back there, Codes. Slick? You remember what he did, don’t you?”

He supposed it was a valid concern concerning the recent biochip he’d had in his head.

It didn’t mean it didn’t rankle all the same.

“Of course I remember what he did. I wanted to shoot him myself when I first saw him. Or I would have if I hadn’t been on the brink of karking death.”

The concern seemed to win out over outrage. “What? What happened to you, Cody?”

“I deserted, but I didn’t have a good plan in place, and it bit me in the ass. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get off of Coruscant if you’re a rogue clone. I thought I could raise the credits and find a way of buying my way off the planet. But with these new chain codes, I couldn’t find legal work. Not to mention they have bounty hunters and entire gangs that roam around hunting for clone deserters. So I had to keep going deeper and deeper until I was in the lowest of the low places. I ended up in a camp built by other unhoused illegals. It was hell, Rex.” Cody confessed softly, and he distantly felt his brother sling his arm around his shoulder in a comforting manner.

The movement jostled his wounded arm, which meant the good pain meds were wearing off but also suggested he’d probably be able to stand up straight and run if he needed to, so he’d take the tradeoff.

“I took what work I could, which, let me tell you? None of the awful jobs we had in the GAR could compare. This was stuff so vile and noxious or too dangerous they didn’t even want to risk the cost of repairing droids to accomplish it. It was pure, predatory exploitation of the most vulnerable residents of the planet. And there are entire cottage industries around it.”

The anger that kindled in his heart when he spoke of that was white hot and fueled with still real memories of what he’d been forced to do to survive.

“And, of course, the pay was a complete joke. I could have worked the rest of my unnaturally accelerated life and wouldn’t have been able to save up enough to book passage off that planet. Then I got injured, and it’s not like I could walk into a med-clinic asking for treatment. So it got infected and finally got so bad that I legitimately traded away every credit I’d scrapped together to buy a bacta tube older than we are. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I was on the brink of death when Slick found me.”

“Where did you get wounded?” Rex’s protective little brother instincts reared their ugly head, and it was only then that he seemed to notice the blood that soaked through the bandages and the sleeve of his arm. “What the hell Cody?!”

“Relax, I probably just popped a stitch or something. Sy will prolly complain about me ruining her beautiful work or some osik, but it can wait a bit. This is more important.”

The look Rex shot him was unfriendly and patented Captain Rex’s judgment.

“So out of the top five list of people I least expected to show up coming to my rescue was Slick. Right up there with Darth-kriffing-Vader and the vaping Emperor. Not going to lie, vod. He got the drop on me, too; I was sitting there in the garbage and refuse, trying to pull the rags. I laughingly called my shirt, and there Slick was standing over me with a blaster in my face. I thought I was a goner right then and there. Stars know if our situations had been reversed, I wouldn’t have hesitated to put a blaster bolt in his head.”

“Exactly!” Rex huffed.

“And I would have been wrong. He ended up stunning me, taking me back to his ship, and saving my karking life. He gave me medical treatment to keep me from losing my arm or worse and then told me how he was working on smuggling brothers off of Coruscant. He talked about how Howzer and his team saved him and gave him a new purpose. He’s made it his purpose to save as many brothers as possible, and I believe him.”

Rex immediately scoffed at the concept, unwilling to even contemplate that Slick had anything but ulterior motives in mind.

“Think about it. What was the reason he gave us all those years ago for why he betrayed the GAR? He wanted to save as many brothers as possible by cutting the war as short as possible. It was a completely idiotic plan and utter nonsense, but I believe he believed that even now.”

“It doesn’t forgive what he did, Cody.”

“It doesn’t, but everyone deserves redemption. And after three years of rotting in a jail cell, can you say anyone else will understand what our brothers still trapped behind enemy lines are going through?”

“Doesn’t matter; I wouldn’t trust that quacta as far as I could throw him with one finger.”

“I understand that. Allow him to prove you wrong.” An idea that was so wild and radical came to him that he barely dared utter it aloud. “I want to help you with this operation. What you’re doing here is…it’s everything. And I want in. Put Slick under my command, and if he proves to be a traitor, I’ll shoot him myself.”

The questioning look Rex shot him spoke volumes. “Can I trust your judgment on that?”

Cody shot him an exasperated look in return. “Of course, you can. I haven’t forgiven him myself, and I don’t know if I will ever be in a place where I can. But I understand his need to do something. To save as many of our brothers as he can. It’s a chance at redemption for him, and let’s be honest with ourselves. We all have things we want to make amends for. Mistakes we wish we could unmake and people we couldn’t save.”

It didn’t take a graduate in psychology degree to know who Cody was talking about, and Rex just leaned his head against his brother’s with a quiet sigh.

“I couldn’t save Skywalker or Amidala, or Jesse…Kix…Fives. I get it. I hope you’re not setting yourself up for disappointment, vod.”

“If I am, it wouldn’t be the first or last time. Now…tell me about Ahsoka? You managed to get her out?”

Rex sighed and quietly told the painful story of what had happened on the Tribunal and everything that had happened from there. How’d he’d painstakingly build up his network of clones trying to save clones. How he’d heard whispers of a network doing the same thing for Jedi.

That knowledge had Cody’s heart leaping in his throat.

They talked for a while, catching up on what felt like years of missing time when in reality it had barely been a year.

Eventually got interrupted, not by one of the others but by an Eopie whose paddock fence they were seated on made its presence known by nuzzling at the top of Cody’s hair and lipping at his curls in an exploratory manner that didn’t bode well for his continued possession of said hair.

He pulled away with a laughing grimace. “I think it’s trying to eat my hair.”

Rex laughed uproariously at the mental picture. “I mean, you’re not exactly the picture of regulation anything right now, ori’vod. Come on, lets go join the others.”

“Can I trust you to not try and shoot Slick?”

“I won’t shoot him so long as he doesn’t do anything shifty. That’s the best you’re gonna get out of me. And I still think you’re nuts wanting to take him on but if it means we get you as an asset, I’d be a damned fool to look a gift bantha in the mouth.”

[ghostbustermelanieking]

7 or 11 jmart for the kiss prompts??

thank you so much for the prompt!! asdfgghjkll i swear i didn't mean to post a post 200 separation fic on the same day as you (i was actually working on this last night).

this is a version of the scenario i wrote in love letters where martin and jon are separated after 200. but there is absolutely no need to read love letters to understand this.

warning for discussion of the panopticon scene in 200, and for a moment of jon wishing for the Eye to return (limited to the first section).

7. “I’ve missed you” kiss & 11. “I almost lost you” kiss

Waking up without Martin almost feels like dying all over again. That horrible moment where Jon opens his eyes in the hospital, on the other side, and doesn't see Martin… he'd take being stabbed a dozen times over this. 

When he wakes up and finds Martin gone, he thinks he's lost him. That Martin's died, that he's trapped on the other side buried in rubble, dead because of Jon, and Jon's survived somehow when he really doesn't deserve to… or that Martin's alive, maybe, just maybe, but he's somewhere else entirely. One of the other worlds Annabelle spoke of, or their original world—which maybe Jon should hope for; Martin would have the others, assuming they survived, and he'd be safe from the fears, safe from whatever horrible things they've unleashed on this world with one quick motion of a knife.

Jon should hope for this, that Martin is safe and that he has the others. But he's selfish, and they promised together, and he misses Martin with everything in him. 

He's at a hospital in London, he figures out eventually. The hospital closest to where the Magnus Institute was, in another world. The nurse reports that they found him on the site where Millbank Prison used to be, and isn't that weird? And that they found him there alone. (Jon's throat closes up at that, his eyes stinging, and he pretends he's tired so the nurse will leave, so he can cry in peace.) Martin wasn't with him. Martin didn't come through.  

But after a few days lying in the hospital with nothing but his thoughts, nothing else to do, Jon starts to question this. They have no idea how this all works, the tapes and the Web and the crack between the worlds… Surely he wasn't the only one to come through. Annabelle Cane thought she'd come through or die, and if Jon came through… and they didn't find her where they found Jon, either. (Of course, maybe Annabelle ran off before Jon was ever found, but somehow Jon suspects she wouldn’t. She strikes him as someone who likes to be at the center of things.) 

If there's a possibility that Annabelle came through, and landed somewhere differently than Jon, then there is a possibility that Martin came through, too. That he is somewhere, here, and maybe he is alive. 

It's a small possibility. But Jon clings to it with everything in him. 

He can't Look for Martin ( or for Annabelle, really). The Eye is gone. If it is here in this world, it has left him. Jon tries to be grateful for this, and a part of him is—he's been reaching for humanity for so long, all while sinking further and further into something he never wanted, he should be beyond grateful that it's gone, that he is alive and can live, without fading, somewhere else. (Although a part of him insists it doesn't matter if Jon hasn't made it.) But after so long with the Eye as a captor, a safety net, a part of him he thought he couldn't cut away… trying to live without it is strange. It hovers like a phantom limb, something severed by the gaping scar in his chest. He keeps reaching for it, for the horrible comfort of Knowing, and he hates it, but he wants it back deeply. Wants it because he knows he could find Martin with it, just maybe. He keeps thinking, Give it back, just for a moment. Thinks, I'll use it to find Martin and then I'll let go, I won't ever again, I hate it but I need it, I NEED to find him…

It doesn't come back. If Jon is ever going to find Martin, he'll need to do it on his own. 

He asks all the nurses and staff, anyone he comes in contact with, if they've ever met a Martin Blackwood. Asks if there's anyone in his files with that name, or a name like it, begs the nurses to please look around for anyone like that. No luck there. Jon asks for a phone book and gets an odd look; he guesses phone books are out of fashion in this 2018, too. He can't do much while he's in the hospital, and he's about to give up hope on making any progress until he's been discharged. 

But then he manages to get a hold of a laptop. After days of asking, a nurse offers to lend him one, if he promises to keep it quiet, and not to exert himself.  

Jon searches the Internet for hours. There are dozens of Martin Blackwoods, actually, more than he ever could've guessed, and none of them seem to be Martin. He has to consider the fact that Martin may not have existed here—just like Jon didn't exist here, or doesn't seem to have, before they woke up. Which will make it nearly impossible to find him using the Internet—using anything, until Martin has been here long enough to establish a paper trail—if Martin was ever even here in the first place… 

Desperation. Panic. Jon's last resort is to write a letter. To write down every single thing he's wanted to say to Martin, the things in his head when he woke up, the things in his head when he realized Martin wasn't here. He writes it all, says the things he knows only Martin would know, so Martin will know it's him if he ever reads it. And then he spreads it across the Internet. Posts it every single place he can think of. Every social media site. A lot of forums that are frequently visited. Comments on blogs he thinks Martin might read. Anywhere he can think of. He even prints off copies and mails them to every address he can think of that Martin might be at: his Prentiss flat, his post-Prentiss flat, his mum's care home, Upton House, the safehouse. He puts his real name on it, at the very top, and Martin's, hoping that if Martin is searching on the Internet, it might come up…

Jon's desperate. He'll try anything,  any desperate, silly scheme like spreading a love note all over the Internet. Anything to get Martin back.

-

By the time Jon leaves the hospital, his letter has gone viral. Plastered all over the place. There's people picking it apart, speculating about whether it's real, calling it an excellent work of fiction, speculating it's all a joke. There's even some commentary from other Jonathan Simses and Martin Blackwoods, swearing it's of no relation to them. 

None of it is what Jon needs. He checks every iteration obsessively: every comment, repost, retweet. None of it is Martin. None of them are Martin. 

He's still looking. Every single day, he looks, in places beside his letter and its hundred iterations. He searches as far as he can, in every record he can think of. He tries to find places in London that he and Martin frequented—the ones he can find. He even goes back to the Institute, or where it should be. It isn't there, of course. Probably never was. Jon can't decide whether to be relieved or disappointed. 

It's all he can do, to look and to keep hoping. It's all he can do. 

It's hard, being alone again, after so long always being at Martin's side… They'd craved space sometimes, and they'd had it, he supposes, but now… Weeks without Martin, one, two, three weeks, and it's excruciating. Jon had said together at the end, he'd promised , and he'd tried so hard to believe it, and now he's here, impossibly, alone. 

He has nightmares almost every night. Nightmares of the Panopticon and the end of the world, the ritual, words forced up through his throat—being at the center of the Eye, at the center of the world with Jonah Magnus at his feet and Martin dying in his arms. Martin forcing the knife into his chest. Jon hasn't dreamed of anything but the statements of others for so long, and he'd thought he missed it, but now… He wakes up almost every night shaking and crying, reaching for Martin. Like clockwork. He thinks he'd do anything for a dream that isn't his, a dream that's not an endless reminder of what he's done. 

He checks the forums. He searches in familiar places. He lies in bed and thinks of Martin, tries to look for Martin, silently begs for help from anyone who might be listening (the Web, the Eye, anyone). Nothing works. Nothing.

The reminders come like clockwork: Jon might be looking for no one, might be shouting out to someone who isn't there. Martin might be dead. It might be too late to get him back. 

-

Three weeks in, Jon finds a comment on the original forum, the original place he posted the letter on that first day. A comment from an m.blackwood . 

Jon reads it with his heart in his throat. Trembling with hope. Unable to hope completely. There's a dozen different things it could be besides him. 

The comment says I thought you were dead. It says, I'm sorry. It says, I love you, says, I'm coming. 

Jon's chin trembles, his eyes stinging. He fumbles at the keyboard with shaking fingers to instant-message m.blackwood, types out his address immediately, without thinking. (He has to type it out three times before he gets it right, his hands are shaking so hard.) And after that, I miss you. Even though he said it in the letter, even though it might not be Martin—it could be someone else fucking with him, a troll or whatever it's called; it could be the Web or the Stranger, luring him into a trap. But Jon doesn't care. He doesn't care. If there's any chance, any chance it's Martin… 

The reply comes a few minutes later: I'm coming. I'm so sorry. I miss you too. I'm coming right now. And Jon wipes his eyes, presses his face into his hands, and allows himself to hope. 

-

An hour and a half later, someone is buzzing for his flat. Jon runs so fast to the door that he almost slips and falls in the hall, hits the button with entirely too much force and breathes, " Martin? " into the intercom. 

Silence for a moment, long enough that Jon starts to wonder if this is just some random person he's practically sobbing down the line at. And then a voice answers, tear-choked: "Jon?" 

Jon nearly collapses with the weight of this voice, Martin's voice. He leans hard against the wall, his eyes burning, and says, "Martin, I-I'm buzzing you in," wiping his eyes frantically. 

He doesn't move from the door, stays leaning against the wall like it is the only thing keeping him up, until he hears a tentative knock on the other end. And then he's yanking it open, as hard as he can, and on the other side is Martin. Not something pretending to be Martin, not another Martin Blackwood, but his Martin. His Martin, standing there with the faded marks of bruising, his left arm in a cast and a new scar across his forehead, tears pooling in his eyes. Martin. Jon can't breathe for a moment, can't move, can't go to Martin because it doesn't feel real, none of it. 

And then Martin's saying, "Jon?" and bursting into harsh, frantic sobs. And Jon's rushing forward. He's rushing forward and letting Martin collapse in his arms, gripping Martin tightly, his fingernails digging into Martin's shoulders, his face pressed into Martin's neck. He's trying to hold on without squeezing or holding too tight, in case Martin's hurt worse than he knows—he's saying Martin's name over and over again, a senseless litany into Martin's skin: Martin, Martin. He's crying, too, hot tears dotting the fabric of Martin's shirt. He's burrowing as close as he can, pulling Martin into him, desperate to feel every part of him—it's him, he's here, it's Martin, they haven't lost each other. 

Martin's holding on just as tightly, trembling in Jon's arms where they've sunk to the ground, right in Jon's doorway. He's crying so hard, it's difficult to understand what he's saying, but eventually Jon begins to make it out. He's saying I'm so sorry. Again and again, muffled into Jon's hair: I'm so sorry.  

"No," Jon says, suddenly desperate. " Martin. No." He pulls back to look Martin in the eye, to try and wipe the tears off of Martin's face (even though he is crying, too). Leans up to press a kiss against Martin's forehead. "Martin, please, please… p-please don't apologize, please…"

"I killed you," Martin chokes out, his eyes shut, his dark lashes wet against his cheeks. "I killed you, Jon, I hurt you, a-and I… I thought you were dead, wh-when I woke up here, w-without you, I thought I'd never see you again, because of me… "

"I thought I'd lost you, " Jon says, quietly, through his own tears. He wipes the tears from Martin's face again and again. "A-and it really would've been my fault, because I lied to you, I-I was the reason you were up there… Martin, please. " 

" Jon. " Martin tugs him a little closer, burrows closer still, his face pressed into the juncture between Jon's shoulder and his neck. 

"It's okay." Jon kisses Martin's forehead again, his temple, his cheek, the top of his head. "Martin. Martin, it's—you're here, it can all be okay now…" 

Martin leans up abruptly to catch Jon's mouth with his. It's salty and lingering and desperate, every single thing Jon has felt in these long horrible days without Martin, every single kiss he wanted to give Martin while he was gone. Jon sinks into it, gripping Martin as tightly as he can, gripping onto his shirt, kissing Martin fiercely, with the panicked relief of being alive, of finding each other again. 

Even when the kiss finishes, they don't let go. They stay there, clinging to each other in the doorway, leaning against Jon's open door. Martin's still crying, still trembling in Jon's arms; he says, I missed you too, I missed you so much; Jon says, Martin, I missed you every single day. Every single moment. 

Martin whispers I love you against Jon's hair. Saying it back is as easy as breathing.