#But now the remnants can be used to create “new life”

[profounddefendorcrusade-blog]

More on Clover's personality/mbti

this one's shorter don't worry

So, I mentioned before how Clover's creative when it comes to a lot of stuff (more than they are grounded), but there's also the fact they can sing (that's how they spare Insomnitot), dance (not as much into it as Bailador, but they CAN dance), make puns (Gun-hat and how they wanted to make puns in the stable in Wild East; idk the exact line) are into drawing (in Axis' office, you'll get a text saying "You wish you could draw that well..."), video games (with Mew Mew) and they even know how to play the harmonica (from the teaser trailer), plus tend to zone out ↓

They constantly kept choosing kindness over what's right.

Those are PERSONAL values they have, that these monsters deserve forgiveness. I really think the inferior Te clashes with dominant Fi in their case. Clover wants to do what's objectively right and just, but at same time their heart is just too pure. They were able to empathise with everyone and get in everyone's shoes (also affectionate but that's a bonus) ↓

there's no change in their kindness from the beginning to end

Like if they were actually in court I don't think they'd act like a "typical" judge and deliver 100% fair consequences. No, that Fi kindness would ALWAYS win, like it did with Star and Ceroba.

Clover's Fi was always there, but differentiates depending on the route. In pacifist, they decided that everyone, in spite of what they objectively did wrong, should be forgiven and understood. In neutral, they decide whose actions were moral enough to get spared, and whose weren't. In geno, instead of killing five monsters, they wipe out anyone THEY think is in their way.

If they were Ti dominant they'd naturally be a lot more rigid and have/show a lot less empathy, imo. The Te inferior is present in geno bc they think they are dealing with the events in the outside world objectively, but the Fi is still there, that's why they don't stop killing: THEY are the one who thinks it should be this way. Clover wants to influence/control the outer world (Te; they don't spend a lot of time dwelling on their actions, unlike Ti users, Clover's a lot more forceful) based on how they subjectively think things should be (still that Fi except that it manifests differently than in pacifist). Clover as a thinker would naturally be more detached from emotions, but they're... they're not. Even in the beginning.

Inferior Te present their Fi opinions like they are objective Te facts - I found this line and it instantly reminded me of geno Clover. "Yeah, I'm right for killing everyone, even though I'm really not"

Clover becomes like a "manager of justice" when in their dark side. You step outta line, you're dead - that's kinda the "structure" I think we're talking about here. Still values over how logically to assess a situation, though. Ceroba calls them naive.

This means that Clover WANTS.... no, ALWAYS WANTED to approach the "missing children" situation like they're in control, but in reality, they were without a clear plan of what to do and how to do it. That's inferior Te.

On the contrary, in the vengance route, they step into their inferior function and take control... but at what cost.

As for their Si, we have the fact Clover remembers their past home life, remembers cramped living conditions, their responsibilities at home, the TV channel they "watched"...

All this stuff from the past contributed to them leaving for the Underground (aka affected their future). I really really don't think Clover has auxiliary Se. That would mean they're usually present-focused. But no, this kid's thought process feels more complex to me. As explained, Se mostly focuses on what's in front of them; Clover, while in the present, can think of the past (their home life), which then influences their future (jumping down Mt. Ebott). And when in the present, they can think of the far future (dying during their mission and therefore never coming back home or becoming an adult, and in the end the potential freedom of monsterkind) and recall the past vividly (all those things their friends told them throughout their journey)

They don't suspect Flowey's malicious, either. And even if some part of them didnt trust Ceroba, Clover never showed it or said anything out loud (not that i remember), and even if they did, they still chose to spare Axis since he is the only thing left of Chujin. That's naive, maybe. But Clover's REALLY REALLY REALLY sweet.

Speaking of Flowey... remember how he would often encourage Clover and tell them to have more confidence and that they "don't have to be scared" and "lean on him for emotional support" and that they should "have some faith in themselves too"? Yeah, that's the aspect of their personality that they had to work on; becoming the leader they were always meant to be.

Their arc feels like going from a scared kid to a great hero. Aka stepping into that inferior Te... the right way.

[bonesofapoet]

ruination [ lucanis dellamorte x rook ] author's note: i am sleepy and threw this together, but I wanted to share lucanis reacting Badly to rook being reckless in battle so! yeehaw kids let's goooo word count: 839

Everything disintegrated upon your return to camp. 

The copse of trees sheltering the clearing sighed with your weary bones, welcoming you back to this makeshift home after a mission gone so magnificently, catastrophically sideways. Your tent beckoned you into it's sweet embrace, in which you were seconds away from answering it's call - yet a body grazed past, a mere breath away from clipping your shoulder.

A tightness began to slip around your ribcage, burrowing deep and harsh and stubborn into your unsuspecting heart.

Lucanis veered off towards his tent, soundless in voice, yet lacking stealth in his execution. Twigs snapped under boots, metal twanged as gear unclipped and fell to the ground. 

It was obvious how he felt by the way his brows fell together, eyes narrowed so their corners crinkled. Arms were crossed over leather armor upon your approach, half discarded with a grip tight enough to bunch up fabric exposed and straps hanging loose. Angry, would be an understatement, you decide. Livid, however, seemed to be a more accurate description.

"You could have - you almost died."

He sees the rise and fall of your chest as your breath deepens. The audible sigh of an exhale being the prelude to something he knows is going to rile him even more, knowing you. And he does - know you, that is - more than he'd like to dwell on. He knows you and that, apparently, seems to be the trouble.

"Yes," you nod once. Hold yourself a step back, giving him his space. "But I had an opening, and you were busy, if you recall-"

"I was there, yes -"

"I'm sorry." The harshness of his tone was enough  prompting for the words to come spilling through your lips. They still tasted faintly of blood and sweat and magic. You wished he would come near and kiss it away.

Your words sounded scratchy, rough almost. Sincere, for sure. Lucanis wishes he could reach for you and -

"You're sorry."

"I -" you hesitate, unsure how to navigate what you may have just broken. It's new, this version of your Crow. You haven't met him yet, not directly, and now balking in the face of such an occurrence seemed like the thing to do, when caught so off guard.

Truth be told, you hadn't been expecting a confrontation. At least not one so. . .personal.

"I reacted," you mend. "And I suppose in hindsight, I see how it - how I miscalculated. Obviously." the hand not wrapped in bandages raises, gestures to the remnants of the fight marring your skin. It all aches, but you're not going to let him see that. 

Lucanis stares, and stares, and stares. The grip on his elbows lessen, and he shakes his head, stepping back to create more distance. He sees you watching him, eyes wide and clouding with something like hurt, when he backs away from you.

His response is quick, sudden in the way he tears off his gloves and finishes unlatching the buckles of his leathers. They don't fall to the ground so much as they are aggressively dropped, a pile of bloody gear laying at his feet. He needs to take a minute. To breathe, to think, anything - because he's not sure he can hone this kind of anger into anything useful at this very moment. Except -

Except.

You catch the way Lucanis hides the tremors of his hands by busying them with his blades. The way his response time is longer when he removes the bandolier across his chest. How they shake when reaching down to unearth hidden knives in boots and daggers secured in hidden sheaths. He says nothing, yet doesn't turn you away, doesn't walk away, either.

Because Lucanis had come face to face with a possibility he had not allowed himself to foresee. You could have died, and he would be here, in camp, mourning over your pyre instead of hiding how impossibly, magnificently, gut-wrenchingly unprepared he is to lead a life void of - well, you.

A few paces away, your boot toes the ground. You can't look at him either, right now.

"Right. Well. I'll leave you to it then."

Lucanis stops. Slips his gaze to where you stand, a picture of valiant failure to appear nonchalant. He sees the regret tainting your expression, coloring your vibrant heart into melancholy shades of mountain greys. The way you hold yourself back from anything remotely resembling yourself in the wake of a mistake, yes, but - don't you care you almost died?

The blades in his hands fall to the ground, their CLANK clattering loud in the mutual silence. The way your eyes shine as you turn and walk away - 

He lets you go, this time, a hand ripping through hair, an exhale tearing up his lungs. He knows he's hurt you, but until he calms the hell down - it's something he can live with, even if it reopens wounds he thought he'd burned shut.

This dance is tearing both of you into a million pieces, because neither of you will take the goddamn lead.

[nerdyenby]

Going insane about how the world of Minecraft keeps growing. Taller, wider, deeper, older than we the player will ever truly know. We are tiny in the grand scheme of things, yet we have been given this world — this universe — as a blank canvas.

We have the power to shape the world to our will, to literally move the mountains, yet we could never explore it all. There is no end for us to find, there is no beginning we can make any sense of, there only is the now and the remnants of the past buried beneath our feet.

The world is coming back to life around us, but with it emerges reminders of the immense loss this universe has suffered.

We find plants thriving without sunlight; we find darkness unfathomable with creatures who cannot comprehend the light and kill without mercy, alone for who knows how long. We discover a new mineral only now beginning to form again, presumably after being harvested nearly out of existence, but we find no trace of where it all went - of what it was used for. We find otherworldly new crops that have been in the soil below us all along; unable to reemerge on their own and us ignorant to their existence.

We find a way to bring back a species long extinct, but how many of them died first? We find ruins and remnants of structures created by intelligent creatures, but these people are gone. We don’t know what happened to them, who they were, or what knowledge they may have had to pass down to us.

We know nothing of the people who came before us. Their structures are submerged under the ocean and beneath the earth. Any language they may have left behind has long since been lost to time. All we know is that someone used to be here, that this world was lived in and loved, and now it is ours alone.

We are the sole inhabitants of a world we used to be able to believe was fresh and new and untouched by man, but as the game progresses we realize that was never the case. We were never the first ones here. This world has a history, one of love and life and pain and death we will never get the full story of. We’re starting to develop the tools to uncover some of the pieces, but we will never be able to grasp what came before.

Maybe we were never meant to find out. Knowing we aren’t alone in the universe changes everything, but does it really? So we are not the first to build our homes and live our lives here. This is still our home and this is still our life.

This world knows loss unfathomable, but she found us and took us in. This world has seen far more destruction than we will ever know, yet she entrusts herself to us, allowing us to create. This world has a past, but we are her present, and we get to help shape her future.

[strangegutz]

Not sure if this is a thing your struggle with, but how do you develop enough confidence in your ideas to actually commit them to materials? Especially with sculpture and 3d stuff I'm so afraid of actually starting because I do not have the money to replace stuff if I mess up or don't like the results

I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that there's never a net 0 gain from making art, especially when youre just learning something- yes, it might feel like youre wasting money if you mess something up, but you DID learn, and are less likely to make the same mistake next time, or now know a different angle to tackle it from.

You're building that art skill, right? But there's another skill you're building as you create that a lot of people don't think about- the ability to salvage a piece of shit! You now know your material, and you know how you constructed your piece, you know how you put it together, so you can take it apart again. never forget that you CAN walk things back- Even if you're completely finished and it's been sitting on the shelf for a while and you hate it, you can take that thing back down off the shelf, tear it apart, and give it some kind of new life. The name of the game with multimedia art is "juryrigging"

I understand though, I'm broke, I'm constantly worried about money, and I'll be honest, using something expensive that doesn't work the way I wanted can send me on a bit of a spiral, so I get it, but you must remember that you are building that skill no matter what!

Even more honesty: there's been a couple dolls that I've thought were god awful. I hate em. Don't like looking at em. They did really, really well. Still getting notes, sold right away, etc- sometimes we're the only ones that notice that we messed up. I still finished those pieces, people still loved em, and I know better for next time, lol

As an added note, there's a place here in my city that's kinda like a craft supply thrift store- see if theres anything like that near you, along with raiding fabric store remnant bins, couponing, etc, craft stores can have some great sales sometimes!

in summary: unfortunately the best way to gain confidence is by doing, but you'll always come out more knowledgeable than before!

[torturedtypewritersdept]

of canyons + wildflowers - pt. one

✯ pairing:

ex!cowboy!rafe cameron x fem!reader

✯ summary:

it's time to head home to Montana

✯ warnings:

mature themes, mentions of anxiety, mentions of Montana, nostalgia, heartbreak, injury, ghosting, fluff and fear, mentions of gunshot wounds (not rafe), etc.

✯ a/n:

nothing!! please don't engage if you have a hard time with any of these topics <3 this was origianlly posted on my old blog @/illicitfixations, @/lovelornanonymity and i have rewritten + reshared it here :) trying out a new format with this post, hope you like it!

This isn’t your scene – well, it was at one point in time. But, it’s not now. Not anymore. The barstool you are perched on is rickety. It compliments the aged wood floors beneath you well. You’re shocked really, because you were sure all traces of life outside of the city were left behind when you packed up your car and fled from Montana. It’s been so long since you’ve been in a situation like this, remnants of home littered around you. It feels foreign, like a life you were meant to live but didn’t. You were almost positive that New York didn’t have dive bars, yet, here you were; in one. You cursed Danica, thinking about how she practically threatened to kill you if you wasted one more minute on your hometown sweetheart, whose name you’d never reveal to her. This version of you is what she knew; an act on your part that was purposeful in an attempt to erase the girl you used to be – the girl that only he could know. She’d never know the girl that he knew or the pain that was left in his wake. You’re not sure why she’d been so obsessed with finding you someone to have casual sex with. But she was. So, she did what she does best – she held her metaphorical loaded gun to your head and forced you onto Tinder; somewhere you swore you’d never be because it was fucking beneath you. You take a sip of the apple flavored beer in your hands, waiting for prince charming, hoping he wasn’t going to be a raging cunt. You’d had enough of that, you didn’t need more exposure to it. You almost don’t hear his voice over the music, but when you do, you turn quickly away with wide eyes and furrowed brows. Tall, dark, and handsome – that’s what he is, drenched in work clothes and a cowboy hat. For someone who didn’t know you pre-city, pre-business meetings, pre-college, she sure pulled this nightmarish trick out of her magician’s hat. For the normal broad, it’s a dream come true. But, for you, it’s quite frankly the worst scenario you could’ve possibly dreamed up. Because Patrick from New York isn’t your Rafe from Montana. He never could be because no one can mimic that kind of charisma – the kind that emulates blowing wind that knocks you off your horse, yet, somehow keeps you coming back for more. Nope, no one could ever be him and even if they could, you’re not interested. But, Patrick is easy on the eyes, that doesn’t get past you. Nor, does his sickly sweet southern drawl or attempt to have one. You can’t tell if he’s a real cowboy or not, or if he’s trying to emulate being a big fish in the small pond of New York – pretending to be something he’s not in an attempt to create an edge for himself. That’s what you’re trying to convince yourself of when he grabs your elbow and speaks again. 

“Well, howdy darlin’ – are you with me?” 

He questions, wondering if you are the girl that he’d been speaking with on the other end of the phone. That girl, she seemed to be pretty gungho to meet him, but as he approaches you and drinks you in, he’s not so sure that you’re her. 

“I’m y/n.” 

You smile warmly, though a bit dejected. 

“Patrick.” 

He replied, his smile assaulting you like molasses on your tongue. It’s not fair how smooth he feels against your skin when he speaks. It should create butterflies in your tummy, but it doesn’t. Instead, all you can think of is blue eyes and the purple hues of a Montana skyline and a horse named bronco. It makes you miss home, miss him; to have a stranger this eerily similar to him in your vicinity. You know Patrick can’t win the great war between your heart and Rafe mother fucking Cameron – no one can. Many have tried and no one has ever succeeded. 

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think I need to go home.” 

You said, kindly. 

“Am I that bad looking?” 

He replies with a smirk and a deep chuckle. It’s something Rafe would say, you notate on the invisible pen pad in your brain. You almost smile, but you don’t, your face instead sporting a furrowed brow at his insinuation that you need to find him cheeky. 

“Patrick – it’s Patrick right?” 

You ask and his smile lines seem to retreat back toward his lips, the fullness of his cheeks that are adorned with a five o’clock shadow is dissipating before your very eyes. He nods at your question after pondering on it for a moment. 

“I’ll spare you the ‘it’s not you, it’s me' speech. It’ll save us both some embarrassment, just know that it really is me and no matter how inviting and warm you seem, nothing will change that.” 

He smiles at you again. This time it’s confusing – the way he wears his smirk almost earnestly. 

“So, what’s his name then?” 

He asks, tucking a stray hair away from your eyes that were now cast down toward the beer in your hands. Your eyes almost pop out of your skull as your gaze shot up toward his chiseled jaw. Shock littered your features as this total stranger saw right through you. 

“What?” 

You asked, mouth agape. 

“You heard me darlin’ – what’s his name?” 

He asks again and you chuckle dryly. 

“Rafe. Rafe Cameron.” 

You whisper in what you think is a voice only loud enough for you to hear. But, you’re wrong. Patrick hears you and he nods, his hand coming to the small of your back. 

“I hope it works out with Rafe, sweet girl. But, he’s a loser for letting you go.” 

You chuckle at his remark, brought out of the conversation you’re in as your phone rings – Dad littering your screen. 

“Excuse me, I’ve gotta take this. It’s my dad.” 

You mutter, pushing through the crowd and answering the phone as you exit the doors, the crisp autumn new york air hitting your skin. 

“Hey, daddy. What’s up?” 

You ask, as the ringing stops. 

“Hey, sweetheart. How’s your night?” 

He asks with a quiver in his voice. 

“You saved me from a bad date, actually. What’s wrong? You sound funny.” 

You ask, unsure why you’re so unnerved by his tone.

“listen, baby — you need to come home.” 

He states and immediately you know that something has gone morbidly wrong. The hair on the back of your neck stands up as you wait for the blow of his news. 

“What is it? Is it mom? O-or the horses? Does the ranch need money? What’s wrong daddy?” 

You can’t see it, but he’s smiling tearfully at your incessant questioning. You – always the worrier; his sweet girl. It guts him to tell you the truth.  

“It’s your brother, baby. He was shot. It’s touch and go right now. We don’t know if he’s going to make it. Just – just come home, baby.” 

You're gutted by the revelation. Yet, somehow you knew, like only a twin can. You weren’t aware of the home you were referring to when you had previously spoken to Patrick about leaving. But, now you are. 

Montana is no longer in the rearview mirror. That’s the last thing you think about before you frantically hail a cab to the airport with no thoughts of retrieving any of your belongings from your apartment. Getting to your brother, the only thing driving you.

TAGLIST:

@maybankslover @inthelibrarybtw @luvrcndy @silkylovey @yagirlwrites @obxbabygirl @rafeecameronsbitch @klutzy-kay24 @roseczbalt

[nikkalick]

Veilguard Spoilers below the cut. About the Blight, the current state of Southern Thedas, and the Veil…I’ve never made a rant like this so bear with my ramblings, please

I’ve seen so many people say, “We should’ve been able to tear down the Veil” and I feel like I’m going insane every time I see that take like…

MAMA A BLIGHT IS BEHIND IT??!

You think what happened to Southern Thedas was bad this game? You have no idea what’s in store for you if you open up the fucking Veil and let that trickle of Blight become a flood.

Point of Order just to set the scene with how bad the literal Blight is

“They (the writers/devs/Bioware/EA) nuked Southern Thedas so they don’t have to deal with the lore the past content set up there going forward”

Maybe. But also the only other Blight we’ve seen in game was the Fifth Blight. By all accounts a statistical anomaly in how it acted when compared to Blights 1-4. I don’t wanna delve too deep into this because it is so not the point I’m trying to make with this post, but the Architect very much had a hand in waking up Blight numero 5 and very likely impacted it in a way that made it less volatile. Past Blights saw Darkspawn hitting big populations hard and fast. The 5th started slow, in the wilds, at Ostagar. Away from large amounts of people. It is mentioned in DA:O that this Blight “feels different”.

The Blight we see in Veilguard is more in line with the Blights that came before the 5th. Something something the Inquisitor writing “worse than we have seen in living memory” because the only living memory anyone has of a Blight was the one from 20 years ago. Which was bad, but not as bad as they usually are. Veilguard’s is bad the way Blights are meant to be (if not worse because, ya know, the Gods), and it was still ONLY A TRICKLE OF WHAT THE BLIGHT IS BEHIND THE VEIL. If the full force of the Blight escapes the prison/the Fade that’s it. Goodnight to everyone in this world both within and without all of Thedas.

Moving on.

“Solas can move the Blight into the new prison that was meant for the Gods and then tear down the Veil. That was his plan.”

Sorry, did we play the same game? We know what the Blight is now. It’s the last remnants of the Titans. Twisted, broken, angry, nightmarish. It’s all that’s left. All that’s left are the plagued dreams of ancient beings that are so devastated because of what Mythal, Solas, and the rest of the Evanuris did to them with the very dagger we now hold.

I want to take a moment to address that what I’m about to say is said as someone who’s been trapped in Solavellen hell for years. I love Solas and his character, and I believe that yes, he had a plan that would have both moved (or killed) the remaining Evanuris and the Blight to a new prison while simultaneously tearing down the Fade. But if you, like me, wanted to redeem this idiot despite everything, then pray tell how does Solas locking up the Blight offer him said redemption?

How does locking away the only thing that remains of the Titans into a prison and throwing away the key redeem him? The Evanuris fucked up when using the Titan’s, idk…life blood? To take form. Solas fucked up when he, upon Mythal’s behest, created a weapon that sundered the Titan’s (and the Dwarves as whole) from their magic, from their dreams, from their very being. And they did it because they thought they had a right to. They put themselves above the dwarves and as a result they caused the Blight. And then they hid the Blight away. Yes, they hid it away to keep people safe, and yes, locking it and the Evanuris away when they tried to use what was essentially a bio weapon to maintain their position of power was a call that kept people safe for a long time. But the Veil was a consequence of that call. And while the Blight was trapped in its prison, behind the Veil, it got angrier and angrier with every passing generation.

Removing the Veil and shoving it into yet another prison will not only piss it off even more, but it doesn’t allow for Solas to actually atone for the part he played in its creation and the part he played in destroying what the dwarves used to have. He has to uphold the current prison. He has to go to it to try to soothe it. To heal it as best he can. Locking it away elsewhere, and then trying to offer it salvation after the fact? It’s not gonna cut it.

He has to go to the Black City, he has to face what he did, and he has to put aside his favorable bias towards giving the Elves “back what they lost” (a world current day Elves don’t remember and have never known) to instead put the safety and wellbeing of every being in the current world at a higher priority. That’s part of his redemption arc by the way; learning to value the lives of the people that walk this new world he had a hand in creating. Because when he wakes up before the start of DA:I he doesn’t value anyone. Shit, when Felassan declines to help him destroy the Veil and suggests he learns to appreciate the world that has been in place for centuries, Solas kills him for it.

All that said, he can’t fully put things right. He can’t reconnect the Blight with the dormant remains of the Titans. Because, as the game tells us, we’d then be faced with a bunch of Titans the size of mountains rampaging, rightfully so, because of the wrongs that were committed against them. But Solas can put in the work to find a way to ease its agony. And maybe, if given the time and the patience, one day the Veil could come down because the Blight will have had the opportunity and been given the help it needed to actually heal from the trauma that created it. And maybe taking the time to do that will have, in some small way, allowed him to make up for the shitty hand he played in destroying the Dwarves. A race he (finally) sees as his equal. Because that’s a big part of his fucking redemption arc.

[zutarasbuff]

I watched the Netflix adaptation of ATLA today and being a hardcore fan of the OG series who knows every nook and cranny of the ATLA world, here’s my unbiased and truly honest review (It contains both the negatives and positives of the series, so dear reader please enter to read at your own risk).

Firstly, let’s talk about the wonderful additions to the already magical world of ATLA.

1. The depth of the genocide

Well, I always wanted to know how the air nomads were suddenly wiped out and how it would have been for them? Why didn’t they resist? I got my answers in the first episode where we explore how the unhinged power of the comet was “actually” used to create a genocide on a massive level. Before that, I had only heard about it in the OG series. Those few scenes were so powerful that they had left me sobbing uncontrollably and Gyatso’s concern regarding Aang had me bawling.

2. Suki’s Characterization

In the OG series, we do find our Suki the fiercest warrior, but here in the live action, she’s an absolute goddess. She is perfect in every sense. She understands the responsibilities she has being a non-bender and is fearless. Her character is what I believe to be was the strongest one of all.

3. Graphics & Music

We never talk about a film by M.Night (that didn’t happen), but this one is really a visual treat for you can readily set yourself up for some mind-blowing bending scenes, plus the fight scenes are quite impressive. It seems that the VFX team had really done their homework this time. Plus, both Momo and Appa are so freaking cute. I loved the fluffy Appa. Good work over there. The revival of the OG theme is also a highlight plus the sun warriors’ chanting in the end is given a new but intriguing twist. The background music especially in scenes where Aang unravels his Avatar powers is mystical in every aspect.

4. Life in motion

I don’t know about others, but I have always been a sucker for animation as well as live-action where characters are operating even in the direst of the circumstances. Life is there and even after they know what happened a hundred years ago, they are still trying to believe and regain their past confidence. This is beautifully portrayed and I was very much impressed by the way people are continuing their day-to-day activities even in the middle of a crisis.

Overall, the series serves the purpose of an adaptation carrying its unique colors (at least better than the previous live-action disaster that didn’t happen).

Now let’s move to the bad side, and when I say it’s honestly what I felt, you need to take my word on it being a hardcore Atla fan.

1. Weak writing & lots of exposition

ATLA remains at a 9.2 IMDB rating even after years because of its writing, strong plot, and very few plot holes. This time, the writers are the real amateur ones. Despite adding more to the already flourishing universe of ATLA, sadly, they killed the quest of the viewer to find answers. There is too much exposition. It seems that every character just wants to see the end of the war and keeps on revealing things after things. Plus, some of the OG moments that were the soul of the series are not even included. The way Aang finds Momo and then decides to keep it with him as a last remnant of their bygone air nomad civilization is nowhere to be found. In fact, the replacement of Roku with Kyoshi is the biggest disappointment. I love Kyoshi like no one else but that was unnecessary as per the cycle.

2. Bland acting

Even the worst writing shots can be digested only if the acting appears real good. Sadly, this is another issue that I found with the NETFLIXED version. No doubt the characters must have done a lot of hard work for this, yet, they lack the expressive power. Gordon as Aang is super cute but the goofiness is not even there. Katara seems a nerd who doesn’t like to talk much even when it’s necessary and Sokka’s jokes are forced. Meanwhile, Dallas seems to save the day at one point, but again his over-the-top angry young man attitude ruins it for me. Maybe the actors will learn from the criticism in the upcoming season (if Netflix plans to go with it).

3. Major changes

Yes, it’s okay to change the narrative while you are working on an adaptation, but targeting the loyal viewers who are OG fans of ATLA means that you have to be very careful when you are trying to implement your changes in scenes that are the real soul of the OG. You can’t change the Omashu myth as if it’s nothing when we actually see even the cute animated version of the folklore. You cannot portray Roku more as a perpetrator of the genocide and Bumi as the evil king when in truth he’s the mad king who’s known for his genius ways of teaching. I hated that. Plus, reducing Zhao’s authority and taking Uncle Iroh’s sarcastic attitude is just meh. Mai again doesn’t even seem perfect as a cast. Jet is good as far as the aesthetics are concerned but Jet being in Omashu doesn’t even sit right with me. The amalgamation of multiple storylines creates so much confusion and this persists till the end.

4. Bending at convenience

We all know how Katara’s bending progressed throughout the first season and it’s little effort each day. However, in series, one day she’s unable to bend even a droplet of water and the next day she is capable of producing ice crystals. This was unacceptable for me because I was anticipating her learning strategies. Besides, Aang doesn’t learn much water bending throughout this season and in the end, it’s him being the savior in Avatar state. Thoughtless bending sucks despite the great VFX and that’s one thing at which you can’t convince me otherwise.

5. Forced friendships

We all know how it took some time for Sokka to embrace Aang as a chum. However, here Sokka keeps on calling him “the kid” and remains mostly alienated from Aang. Talking to Katara, then she also seems more interested in helping Avatar fulfill his goal than being with a friend. I hated the scene where Aang comes into the Avatar state and instead of hugging him just like in the OG series, Katara runs along Sokka and keeps on calling his name. How is that going to build any organic friendship? I think the first mistake began right from the very moment when Aang was taken back to Wolf Cove on a boat in his unconscious state. Upon opening his eyes, the first person he finds near him is neither Katara nor Sokka but a tribesman who’s playing guessing games. Writers were really high when they wrote that.

6. Lack of the four nations’ biodiversity

Maybe in live action, it’s difficult to create all the marvels of the four nations when we talk about their natural biodiversity. In the OG series, it is indicated by Aang that even after 112 years, he has still not forgotten the animals that define different regions in the four kingdoms and that’s exactly why he wants to finish those “important tasks” alongside saving the world. His important tasks included keeping a check on the natural biodiversity of the lands and exploring whether the Hundred Years’ War had not damaged the majestic animals. Actually, his first dialogue right after regaining consciousness is to go for an otter penguin’s ride with Katara. When I thought about that I felt that somewhere in Aang’s mind he was always connected to nature and that’s why he wanted to regain that connection by being an avatar. Sadly we never see much of the biodiversity but I hoped that maybe they will.

Also, how come Aang had that silent whistle for one hundred years when in the series he only discovers that accidentally? I missed the OG Yip Yip for our Appa. There are lots and lots of problems with the Netflix version, and no I am not being a nitpicker. I appreciate how the current creators credited the original ones, but now I know why Bryan and Michael bade farewell to this project. On a scale of 10, it’s a 4 for me or 4.5 if I am being too generous.

If I am asked to review the live action in a single line, I would only say this:

“The Netflixed ATLA makes you go back to the OG series and you end up watching the animation to give your mind a much-needed respite from a carefully crafted artistic disaster aimed at the sensationalized generation.”

[ninten-draw]

The Tundra Era

In the beginning of the world, there was nothing but cold tundra. Unlike most planets who have a warm magma filled core, the planet of rainworld has a cold void fluid core, with the only natural heat coming from the sun. The world is a freezing tundra with almost nightly blizzards, but not without life, as some creatures have adapted to its freezing ways.

The Ancients Era

Soon, an intelligent species forms form the barren wastelands, known simply as the ancients. The ancients in their form resembled closely to aquatic fishes and insects of our world. They too adapted to their frozen environment, living in caves and underwater homes at first, and then building their own homes and citadels. At this time, they were unaware of their eternal life.

The Karmic Era

The great problem has now been made aware to the ancients, and thus the karmic religion is born. At this time only the first five karma symbols are made known to the ancients, and they do everything in their power to rid themselves of these urges, with very limiting success. It’s around this time that the ancients don their signature masks and adorned clothing as well.

Void Fluid Discovery

While drilling and constructing a train system, the ancients come across stranger structures, indicating a civilization before them. Engineers are soon replaced with paleontologists to dig and study these stranger remnants. As they continue to dig, some start having strange dreams and hallucinations of moving stars, strange worms, an empty void, until they come across the depths, and subsequently the void fluid is discovered

Void Fluid Revolution

With the introduction of the void fluid, ancient society flourishes, now they have a proper way to die. Time is spent expanding the depths, building statues and making sacrifices to the void. Their technology also expands exponentially, now able to make large factories and farms to provide for themselves. The next several karma symbols are also made known to the ancients. However echos are soon discovered in the world, fearful that the void may not have been the perfect solution they were looking for, the ancients seek another solution. This leads to the creation of the iterator, whose purpose is to find a solution to the great problem without the void. During this time, a new boom in the ancients is found, more iterators are made because of their many uses. During this time purposed creatures are brought to life to assist the ancients and iterators. It is also known during this time, that the ancients created the shelters and pathways, a place for creatures to rest in and navigate across the world that had become habituated with urban development. The world is now warmer, with the memories of a cold tundra seeming more like a dream than anything. However despite all the good times, the void is not stupid, and it certainly is displeased that the ancients who once worshipped it were now seeking another solution

The Mass Ascension Event

The great ascension was an interesting, and frightening time. Iterators noticed how more and more ancients were going to ascend, and noted how their reasonings were barely understandable. Other ancients noted how the ones going to ascend seemed almost robotic. The more frightening thing, ancients who previously had no desire in ascension, would find themselves seeking, almost yearning it, the next cycle. More and more ancients were going to ascend, and less were born. The remaining ancients during the last few years of their kind were terrified, it seemed as though every one of their kind was infected with an invisible ailment forcing them to ascend, wether they were ready or not. Some stuck by the iterators begging them to prevent them from leaving to ascend. Others traveled outside of the iterators can, to the corners of the world away from any depths entrances. Any efforts were for naught however, as the remaining ancients went to ascend as well, leaving none behind.

Post Ancient Era

Many years passed after the ancients disappeared, and the world had adapted to the structures that they had left behind. The animals were now used to the unnatural shelters and pathways that the ancients had originally constructed for them, and the iterators who were once tasked with finding a solution to the great problem now mostly did their own thing, including helping lesser creatures on their way to ascension. The slugcat campaigns also take place in this era.

Shelter Destruction

Not everything lasts forever, and this includes the ancients’ constructions. The iterators collapse due to entropy, the world losing its main heat source and being plunged into an icey torrent of blizzards. The shelters that the ancients once made to shield creatures from precipitation, also fell from the constant blizzards and entropy, leaving the creatures who once depended on them alone to brave the elements. A mass extinction follows these events, causing creature, both inorganic and natural, to die out or seek ascension to escape their miserable circumstance.

Everything Must Go

Soon, the void itself releases from its previous underground home, to pull the remaining memories and remnants of this civilization down to the depths and rubicon.

The Tundra Era again

Thus, with the remainder of the ancients gone, the world is left an endless tundra once more, but soon life will start to evolve to this cold wasteland, and soon, an intelligent species of aquatic descent will walk upon the ground, and perhaps, like the civilization before them, seek a way out of this world

[luchibelle-throughthecosmere]

W&T

REVIEW WITH SPOILERS

Kal.- Such a beatiful journey for my boy. Ever since leaving his hometown he unwittingly became a legend. Only a few actually got to see the mortal (Kaladin) behind that inmortal mask of determination (Stormblessed). His journey resounds in so many of us because beyond his inhuman abbilities he is a human just like us. The ultimate protector. The last remnant of Honor. Kaladin. Herald. Herald of Kings. Herald of the Wind. Herald of Second Chances.

Shallan.- Always wanted her to be a worldhopper but couldn't really see how that might happen once she married Adolin. Now she is trapped in Shadesmar among other worldhoppers. Yay. Also, she got on well with Thaidakar (whose motivations and needs don't disturbe Shallan's unlike Mraize and Iyatil's did). And- CHARANACH IS HER MOM.

Taln did NOT break. Ever. It was Shallan who triggered it all (poor thing has no fault really). Love the fact that Taln never broke, it always felt wrong. Reminds me of Dabbid a little -although his lack of words is trully caused by trauma not pretended-. Gotta make him tells us why he tried to kill Cultivation.

Jasnah.- Never liked her morality. It always felt wrong. Never liked her character because of it. That night at Karbranth, the assassins she hired, considering the extermination of the singers, stabbing a highprince... And then Brandon used the reverse card and actually confronted her about her actions and intentions. That is exactly what she needed. She will grow so much in the coming books! We still don't know why exactly she was confined as a kid but she kind of hinted that her mother was not okay with it, rescued her as soon as she got back from her travels. Hopefully, she will be the one to take Navani out of her self-induced coma.

Lift will finally let herself grow up and Vasher will help her about it! Will Cultivation's absence affect her powers? Since she never used Stormlight (or Towerlight) creating Lifelight out of food instead, will anything change for her now that Cultivation flee? Maybe Lift's presence lures her back to Roshar someday.

Sezth.- Never liked the idea of him becoming an Herald, even if it thematically worked since he won Jezrien's Shardblade. Glad how it turned out, he deserves a quiet life with the sheeps. Also, him being a Skybreaker finally clicked for me, it was about gainning agency and deciding for yourself. And we got to learn Aux's backstory as well!

Adolin not becoming a surgebinder was perfect. After how disappointing Wayne holding up a gun was, it was refreshing how Adolin stood by his decision not to become a Radiant. Really beautiful to see how despite the unoathed not being broken they can form an attachment to the spren. Now he is learning how to read which is fulfilling in itself, just like he was okay with women holding weapons he needs to be okay with men reading. Times are changing and they have to change as well, otherwise they will be left behind. Change can be good, both Lift and Adolin got to learn that finally.

Dalinar.- He understood Honor but didn't fit in. There was always something about him becoming the vessel of Honor that didn't work out for me. Now we have another vessel having trouble with the two Shards and their conflicting interests. Wished we could have seen a little bit more of what it meant to be the Stormfather's Bondsmith, now we will never get a chance unless we get new flashbacks. Syl, as the Ancient Daughter, is currently the oldest honorspren we have. Will she eventually take his place? The storm in her eyes... Also, really liked how Dalinar didn't have to fight Gav and found the answers where he always did, in Nohadon's pressence.

Rlain and Renarin paralleling Windrunner Garith and the Regal femalen singer was genius. Proof that both races can coexist and any conflict between them is each individual's fault, not the race they belong to. Both of them grow up a lot in this book and grow away from what their people want them to be, they become who THEY want to be. Agency. Individuality. Self-worth.

[windvexer]

Hello chicken! First off, love your beautiful blog. Thanks for all the help and advice you offer.

So, I'd consider myself somewhat of a novice witch practicing in the broom closet for several years, but now I finally have my own home that I own!

However, when I was first starting off, I created lots of spell jars. Too many spell jars in fact, since most of them did not end up working anyways.

So, my question is, what are some more effective and perhaps easier-to-clean spell methods you know? And what would you recommend I do with the old failed spell jars?

Thanks for your time! 😸

Congratulations on being a homeowner!

By easier-to-clean do you mean, easier to disassemble and clean up? As jars are relatively easy to dust!

If you're very sure the old spell jars are no longer ticking, you can just take them apart without pomp or circumstance.

If you'd like to play it safe, you can do something streamlined: speak with intent over each jar that you are opening it to dissipate the magic. Disassemble all the jars and sort things into piles, so that nothing is sitting with its old family, so to speak.

Enchant a single bit of incense or salt water or something unto the purpose of desecrating magic; or to dissolve and nullify any magic therein.

Water and Earth Where you are cast Let no spell or enchantment last Hear my will addressed to thee As my word so mote it be

And of course its cousin for incense, wherein the first two lines are replaced with 'Fire and Air/Where you flare'. At this point, do anything you like with the old remnants, including recycling them to new spells.

If it's the clutter you're aiming to tackle, here is a solution I like:

Instead of making container spells for any tiny little purpose, make larger ones that can cover multiple purposes.

So suppose you made wards for several friends. You might have the Friend Ward Jar, which contains protective virtues and seeks to shield a number of people who would benefit from those virtues.

Then, when that area of life needs special focus - say a friend is in a tight spot - you can perform one-off spells such as a candle spell, empowered prayers, and so forth, using the Friend Ward Jar as a point of focus.

I believe in a sort of concept where the first spell in any area is like an outpost there, that establishes your magical presence and builds a road. So having an ongoing container spell may truly make a difference when you then do the one-off candle spell for special protection, like sending a knight to fortify an outpost that's already established.

Then, as soon as the one-off spell has been completed, you can clean it right up and still leave only the original jar (or whatever) behind.

[classicanalyzer]

The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire - Introduction Analysis

"...People so often misunderstand the purpose of historians. They think that we are just here to recount past events. To provide details without analysis. Facts without insight. Data without argument. This is wrong. The role of a historian—my role as a historian—is to try to tell you not just how but why these things happened. To try to make you understand the importance of these past events and what they mean for us today and tomorrow. This study is not just a work of history but of necessity. The galaxy needs to understand exactly what the Galactic Empire was and how it brought us to our latest brush with disaster. I can think of no more important undertaking than this one and no more required moment." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page xvii).

The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire is one of the best Star Wars novels I've read. The novel is an in-universe annotated history book written by Beaumont Kin ("Secrets only the Sith knew"), a historian with an interest in the lore of the Jedi and Sith, who reflects on the terrifying origins, reign, and legacy of the Galactic Empire. We also get a brief glimpse of what the post-TROS galaxy looks like but that isn’t the main point.

It is a part of several in-universe reference books being published post-TROS, which is a nice touch.

This study was published on the Holonet a few months post-TROS as Kin is excavating the Sith Temple on Exegol.

Introduction

History is a cycle, we wish to avoid it but it always finds a way to start the wheel again. The cycle certainly reflects the history of Star Wars.

Kin sadly laments that despite the Empire's evils being known and seemingly easy to understand, it seems easy to teach future generations and prevent the cycle from repeating itself, he considers himself a fool for being naive. As history has shown us and Kin, it has a tendency to repeat itself in various forms.

"It seemed to be an easy message to explain something that was now safely behind us. My colleagues and I congratulated ourselves on the ways we'd been able to take the realities of the Empire and convert them into lessons in schools and universities, which would then further ripple across the galaxy. We were so sure that we had created the perfect way of preventing future conflicts and a return to Imperialism. We were fools. I was a fool. As much as we might have wished that the remnants of the Empire could have been left to rot beneath the sands of Jakku, it seems that we could not be free of it so easily." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page ix).

One element that is simply merch in real life but in-universe is the source of shock to Kin: Palpatine busts being sold at the Black Spire Outpost, among other Imperial objects. How could the galaxy reach the point that a being who murdered trillions of beings has busts being sold?

Despite the Resistance's and the galaxy's victory at Exegol, Kin can't help but wonder if the celebrations on Endor and Ajan Kloss are very similar. Both generations have celebrated the defeat of the Emperor, won their wars, and are driven to create a better galaxy, in the case of the last generation, including the current one who followed to preserve the hard-won peace, they were not successful.

However, this failure to maintain peace has very understandable origins. The leaders and soldiers of the Rebel Alliance wanted to look towards the sunrise of the New Republic after a brutal and horrifying war against the Galactic Empire. They focused on their desire to move forward with hope and optimism and for this to never happen again, they were not careful in taking the necessary steps to prevent Imperialism from rising. A failure to understand how the Empire operated, ruled over, and why its personnel committed so horrific war crimes over and over. It would be a nice thought to think with the Emperor dead, so would his Empire die with him. And in a way it did, but gave birth to a new form of Empire as the First Order. While the First Order likes to fashion itself differently from the Empire with a new name and outfits, their origins intrinsically tie back to the Empire which the New Republic and the new generation failed to see. They cannot risk another situation like this happening again.

Stories like The Mandalorian and its spin-offs, Bloodlines, Before the Awakening, Resistance, and the Poe Dameron comic show us how the New Republic fails to recognize the threat of the Imperial Remnants and the First Order, even when they're violating New Republic treaties. Complacency and appeasement became the new policy for the New Republic. They think the threat of the Empire is long behind them, and whoever is left is just simply ill-equipped warlords. They fail to understand why Neo-Imperialism grew as it did and why people want the return of a regime that killed so many sentient beings. It was left to those in the New Republic who saw the emerging threat, the Resistance, and those affected by these Remnants and the FO to act.

While discussing the Jedi and the Sith, Kin acknowledges how, despite his attempts to understand it, he still doesn't know everything about the Force, along with the galaxy not being clear on what the Forse is and if it exists. He then talks about how Palpatine managed to seize control of the entire galaxy as a Sith Lord, Kin made it clear Palpatine's desire for power and control was all him and not by anything else. Palpatine was a man. It is the most terrifying aspect of this Sith Lord. Much more terrifying is how Palpatine wasn't the Empire, he may be the linchpin of the Empire but there were plenty of people who believed in his Empire and maintained it.

There are four parts to the Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire:

Part 1: Rise and Consolidation - Palpatine's rise to power and how the Empire consolidated itself.

Part 2: Expansion and Oppression - The methods of the Empire's dominance across the entire galaxy, the Imperial hierarchy, and the many horrific things (such as prejudice and genocide) the Empire did with that domination.

Part 3: The Galactic Civil War - The war and why the Empire collapsed.

Part 4: Fall and Continuation - The last year of the GCW and, with it, the fall of the Empire. But alas, the Empire continues to survive in its remnants and the rise of its most infamous of these remnants, the First Order. There are also the NR's successes and failures.

Kin went for the BBY/ABY (Before/After the Battle of Yavin) calendar system because the Empire's modus operandi significantly shifted after the destruction of the first Death Star with clear distinctions between pre- and post-Battle of Yavin. He also acknowledges how there are some debates over which dating system is the best among them being set after the Empire formed and the "before" and "after" periods at Endor rather than Yavin. In this, he also points out how the Empire was never at peace, and that the GCW greatly showcased and increased its brutality towards its own people.

While this work isn't the first one to study and analyze the Empire, it is perhaps the most relevant to discuss right now. There are beliefs and understandings of the Empire that are built on flawed information and shaky foundations. Some of what they understand is possibly wrong. Therefore, they must reexamine the Empire again and understand and therefore deconstruct the Empire beyond Palpatine.

"Furthermore, the very reasons for its eventual fall and collapse do not appear to have been adequately researched and analyzed at all. We know why the Rebel Alliance believed they won the war. Do we know why the Empire lost it? Because the Galactic Empire was so misunderstood, it is necessary to begin the process again. That is the point of this study. To deconstruct the entirety of the Galactic Empire beyond just notions of Palpatine himself. To see how it actually worked, the ideas and ideology that drove it, the ways it waged war, and the motivations behind its most awful crimes." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, pages xv-xvi).

Of course, researching the Empire is not easy. The history of the Empire is spread out across the entire galaxy. With the fall of the NR, there is now access to classified material such as interrogations of Imperial officers. It would've been impossible for Kin to find and compile this while excavating on Exegol. We see the galaxy coming together as researchers and other academics from across the galaxy pitch in to provide sources and information for Kin to scour through. Kin thanks all of them for realizing the importance of this analysis and is sure to acknowledge their work throughout his study. There is also lost information. After all, the Empire loves to burn and destroy the various records of their crimes and how they operate. Other sources are just lost during the fighting. With the excavation of Exegol and access to FO ships, new sources of information have allowed Kin to cross-reference and provide new understandings of the Empire.

He does acknowledge and welcomes the risk of his work becoming outdated and replaced with new studies containing new, undiscovered, and decrypted information. New studies can further elaborate on their understandings and help prevent the rise of Imperialism once again if they can at least find one new area they missed or have the chance to further understand. He points historians aren't just about telling the how but the why things in history occur. The galaxy needs examinations of the Galactic Empire and the history of its reign which allows them to better understand how they narrowly avoided the First Order's brief reign and Final Order's apocalyptic plot.

There is a nice nod to the Battle that Changed the Galaxy and Skywalker: A Family at War reference books as Kin notes how other historians like him are also noticing the need to reexamine history after Exegol, with the latter getting its author namedropped with a Star Wars-like name (the author was Kristin Baver, but in the Star Wars universe, her name is Kitrin Braves). Kin thanks Kitrin for sharing her information on the Skywalker family for him to talk about in Rise and Fall and notes it's been a long time coming for people to know the history of the Skywalkers in Kitrin's book.

The Empire's war crimes and cruelty are beyond horrifying and applied to anyone they come across, their cruelty is not equally felt. The Core Worlds often did not suffer as much as those outside of the Core. While some humans, such as the Alderaanians, have indeed lost everything to the Empire, the Empire's inherent prejudice is frequently focused on non-humans (a term admittedly imperfect and problematic in its own ways but much better one in-universe than the term "alien" which the Empire uses to showcase their racism towards non-humans). The Empire has made no attempt to hide their discontent and hatred for non-humans. Kin acknowledges he is a human, and he never felt the experience of the Empire's prejudice by the Empire just for being not human. He has tried his best to highlight those species and voices who have been silenced and suffered under the Empire's prejudice and genocides. He understands and apologizes for the criticisms that might come with any shortcomings that he and his studies may provide. Recognizing and analyzing both the sources and himself within this study are necessary parts of this analysis.

As the introduction concludes, we must ponder how despite the victories throughout the saga, we take a look at the horrifying and monstrous regime that is the Empire and its legacy. Our reality is filled with people who continue to follow Fascism and other far right-wing beliefs despite its clear evils, a look into the Galactic Empire is insight to why.

"The survivors of the Battle of Crait have become fond of saying, in moments of sorrow and loss, that ‘no one's ever really gone.’ It seems to bring them solace and I respect that. But I do not feel it. I have immersed myself in the existing records and writings and sources that relate to the Galactic Empire. And all I feel is the absence of lives that it brought. The multitudes who suffered and died. The further into this dark history I have gone the more horrified and haunted I have become. That is why this study now exists and why it is so important that you read it. Others in the Resistance will now lead and shape the galaxy. I cannot do that. I can only try and explain where we have come from. Why we have ended up here. But I need you to come with me. I cannot do this alone." (Kin, Beaumont, "Introduction", The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, 35 ABY, page xix).

[deadboyfriendd]

I Hope This Letter Finds You Well.

Summary: It is already so hot that it burns. The sheriff had faced many things. He had killed men with his bare hands, he had been covered in so much blood that he couldn't decipher theirs from his own. He had known starvation, heatstroke, and tragedy. Though, he had never known this.

A culmination of letters shared between family and new friends turns into a stand-off at the tarmac of Tucson, Arizona.

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Sheriff/Wyatt Earp!Steve Harrington x Reader, wild west/Tombstone AU!, Sherrif!Steve (he has a mustache), guns and gun violence, death of minor original characters, death of a spouse, period-appropriate death, drug use, angst, fluff, save a horse, ride a cowboy, feminine rage embodied (I couldn't give her a gun this time because, if I did, everyone would be dead), eventual discussion of The Civil War and the politics that came from it.

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

Word Count: 4.5k

Author's Note: This is it. Bisbee is here and it feels like I'm breathing life back into my cowboys through my sheriff. This is so, so special to me and @dr-aculaaa, and I cannot wait to tell you all their stories.

Find the series masterlist here!

“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Nellie, 

I believe that the face of death is a woman, and that she is beautiful. 

I believe that she may have loved my betrothed, at least as long as there was breath in his lungs and a thrum in his chest. I believe that William looked into her dark eyes and followed her into that unknown place, and I know, there, he might finally find something to still his mind. 

I believe that she kissed him good and hard, Nellie, in a way that I could not have done– that she danced her spindly dance clear across the desert, through the plains of the midlands, and splashed in the bayou of Louisiana until she found him. 

I believe that death is a friend to our family, that her sinewy arms loom over our men in an embrace that we can not provide, and I believe that she is warm. Much warmer than you or I have been created to be. I believe she walks alongside us, whispers into the ear of our husbands, and laughs as they dance their troublesome dances. 

I believe she is kind, much kinder than us, for why else would our men leave the safety of us for her? I cannot fathom it, Nellie. 

I no longer believe that death is cold and harsh, for I know that no man could be as cruel as she. 

We were always cut from the same cloth, in life, and now in death. 

Signed, your cousin. 

+

He could have said that he never wanted any trouble, and he could have said he didn’t go around picking fights, yet both seemed to find him with speed and vigor. He sought them out, begged for the metallic heat to seep from behind his teeth and drip down his lips like ambrosia. The boy could not read nor write, yet also harbored a taste for mindless violence– his gangly teenage frame a harbinger of death. 

The monsoon was fast approaching, dark clouds filling the sky in an apocalyptic haze, though the Lord knew this land needed it. The rain came down in heavy sheets, droplets weighing deep against the flesh and warm in strides. The powder dust beneath it stirred and settled in waves, and he prayed for no wind, for the wall of dust that would overtake them in the future just might suffocate him. He cried out in thirst, having mistaken this anguish for freedom. All he could do was turn his mouth towards the sky and hope it would wash away the rawness in his throat.

This heaviness did not go away with time nor age. The boy-now-man sifted through the powder silt of the remnants of his life the same way he sifted through these crises as a child, though with more sure steps and a heavier hand for subtlety. He no longer craved ambrose violence gilded in the candied sheen of shed blood, though it did not stop searching for him. 

He was out with lanterns, in search of himself. 

There used to be nothing here but a broad expanse of mirage, the heat rising from the sand and warping the distance into a false lake like a sick joke. He remembered the settlement. The miners came first, then the saloons, and dance halls. The cattle drovers and thieves would follow suit to reap their fortunes, but the plume of the mines came first. 

Still there is hope, an old miner had said to him, for I know of two Bibles in town. 

Though men of God and men of war both have strange affinities, it would seem. 

War, much like God, was here long before man. It crouched its ugly pose and waited for his arrival. The ultimate trade awaits the ultimate practitioner. 

Today, the oak planks, rotted from years in the sun, groan in the same anguish beneath his boots and he ignores it as much as the God he prayed to ignored his own cries. The bright orange of globe mallow presses its way between the planks, soft resilience even in this heat. When he reaches down to touch it, it crumbles between hardened finger pads. 

This township felt like a tunnel, a vignette blurring the Gaussian edges of its structures that settled like graves. His boots sunk a lowly sulk through the banks of the roads where wagon wheels had pushed them from their packing. He still felt the nothingness here, vast openness in which he awaited a tomahawk crowning, sinking into the same sand on his knees, candy-coated in that gilded red gloss. 

Through the nothingness there was a stirring, his eyes fixated on the microburst brewing along the mountain's edge in the distance. 

Thunder fades to wheels along tracks.

You’d watched the land turn from green to brown and back again. You’d watch the sun wick the water from the soil and feel it warm your skin. There’s a certain disdain that fills your chest like liquid when you picture Nellie on this trail. There was no train west to take. There was no railway. 

Did Nellie still look like her mother? Had her mouth begun to crease with a perpetual smile? Was her hair still long and did she still let it fall in ringlets down her back? Surely, she had not sounded the same in her letters, though, this sullen stranger had still signed the letters with the same swooping motions. 

As the trees became sparse and turned into gangly, reaching boojums, you realized just how far from home you had been. You had never left the great state of Louisiana but, had run those riverbeds and marshes ragged with bare feet, had run heels hard against the hollow tomb of that old paddle boat. Could you be as wild as the West? Would it love you in the same way the marshes had? Wrap you in its mossy embrace and let you sink beneath stagnant water in wait?

But for what? 

The sharecropping had been a logical by-product of everything your father had fought for in the war, rock salt and nails and hand over first for years under the lead of General Benjamin F. Butler, though no one could foresee the way the plantation had hemorrhaged money after he took on nearly ten hired men, or the way the land had would have dwindled to nothing had you not taken that ghastly, ugly burden against your back, one heavy enough to spur you west. One heavy enough that even the sting of the sunburn did nothing to quell the ache that you still felt in your chest against it. 

You watched the life drain from this land, music and the lush green of the coming summer turning to sweltering, daguerreotype daydreams. You pressed your palm against the glass and sighed. 

It was already warm enough to burn. 

When you pressed your face against the glass, you could feel the rumble of the hardened earth beneath the sodden tracks. The dried parchment of letters scraped against themselves where they pooled in the makeshift reservoir of your dresses ruched into your lap– just high enough so that your ankles could feel any movement within the waning stagnation of air in the train car. 

You tore the one on top open with your thumb– the last one to remain unopened. Its straight edge was too sharp and angled perfectly as you pulled at it, the edge of your thumb already pooling cherry beads of blood where it rippled. 

“Shit.” you cursed.

Gilded eyes peered towards you, slicing through the silence of this welling heat like ice. Had it been dark, they would have glowed. Ladies in Parisian hats tailing the woeful gazes of their well-tailored merchant husbands turning towards the spectacle that was you. Young. Unmarried. Unaccompanied and profane in your lack of grace aboard the train to the lawless lands. Maybe, by God’s hand, you had been cut from the same cloth as this lawless place– the rumble of the tracks a song to the listlessness that stirred in your chest like silt in distant waters. 

You dismissed the judgment, the venom of it all sliding off of you like that same water against a duck’s back, turning your attention back towards the product of your own disdain: Nellie’s letter, signed, sealed, and delivered to your last known location. 

Cousin, 

Your father has sent word about your arrival in Tucson, and I will meet you at the train depot in due time. I do hope that, in time, the heat of this land may dry your tears in the same way it has mine. 

I fear that you may not recognize me upon your arrival to Tucson, my face has grown harder and my body less soft. You will become this way, too. I am tough. I am afraid this place has weathered me like old leather. 

I have asked the sheriff to accompany me to the train depot in Tucson, and he has happily obliged. I didn’t think you would mind much, either. 

The sheriff is a nice man, as I am sure you have come to find, however, this land has hardened him in the same way it has hardened Edward and I. In the same way, it took Wilhelm as payment for some grander, more horrendous scheme.  I do not ask you to excuse his shortcomings– or mine– but I do ask that you try to understand us. 

Though it is better now than it has ever been, this place is still not like Louisiana. This land is lawless. This land is tough. This land does not make promises or send prayers. It exists as it is, rough and unbinding– blistering for all it is worth. 

We are the law, here. 

If we lose our morality, we lose everything. 

I will see you soon. I love you. 

Nellie. 

It was an unspoken truth that there was something broken much deeper within them that they had shared some form of solidarity within. Somehow, in some way, Nellie and Steve had shared something they never wanted you to see, but, even now, something was different about her in more recent letters that you couldn’t quite differentiate. 

Perhaps it was the way she told you she loved you. She hadn’t written those three words since writing of Wilhelm’s death. Maybe she said it then in search of the love she had lost, had looked for shreds of it to mend herself back together. Maybe Edward had done that for her, and maybe now she had some left to give. You hoped that much for her.

Edward was an entity unknown to you– a phantom in his own respects. He reaped his own form of morosity in the way he loved Nellie. He did so in a way that was devouring, in a way that encompassed her in every respect. You had been well past the persuasion of beautiful faces, for a face much like his was the face that launched a thousand ships. Another puppet wielded by The Devil, he was. That holy shape becomes a devil, best. 

It was an unholy thing, to resurrect the dead. And, you supposed, Edward had done just that. Nellie’s letters came to an abrupt halt after the announcement of the Death of Wilhelm. Your family, the only remaining kinship to her lineage, had not received a letter from her in over a year. 

You’d thought of all of the ways she could have died, but the most plausible cause was a broken heart. Even now, as rolling hills turned to planes and back again, as you watched the horrors that this land reaped, you could not see any of them taking your cousin. No, she was a force to be reckoned with. Not even this land could break her will. No, if she were to die here, now, it would have been by her hand. 

And then, by some unforsaken force beyond even your father’s control, Nellie breathed once more. Her letters were flowery, her writing curling into crashing waves of stories told. You watched as this solemn stranger breathed life back into Nellie, something as cruel and unusual as beauty in this place unseen and unheard of for years, beauty unseen to Nellie since Wilhem was killed. 

You knew of only unholy things that fed upon the dead– that breathed an ugly, hot breath back into their lungs and pulled them from the sodden earth in which they lay. Edward was not entirely truthful, that much you could tell. 

You supposed you and Edward had shared that sentiment, in some way. 

+

The Whispering Sands was still not the ritzy bar. That was still located in the lobby of The Grand Hotel, just footsteps from where The Sheriff stood now, planks still singing their groaning songs of protest beneath his legs, still stiff with sleep or nerves or years of failed prayer. 

His footfall fell heavy against the hollow floors, the weight of him reverberating against the early hum of the bar. The dealer was still as straight as a Christmastime wreath, though, now, he knew that this one could at least shoot in the right direction. You no longer needed to carry when you walked through, your spare now confined to below the counter out of sheer caution and the guiding hands of ghosts alone. The doors didn’t hang crooked anymore, the dealer making fast work of fixing all of the things Nellie had pushed to the back burner in relentless disembowelment of her own self-preservation that she so readily gave to him in the form of softened twine and spoken promises tightened around ring fingers. 

The Sheriff would not be so easy. His self-preservation ran deeper than that. 

Nellie knew it, knew that his roots were wrapped around something vital within him, something deeper than hers– something from a time before her, before this town, and before the West was wild.  

The echo of him reverberated off of the walls of the bar, bounced off of the piano, and rattled the windows. It demanded her attention long before the brass bell of the front door rang and the heavy oak clattered against the frame. 

8:50. Like clockwork. 

In the times before, just after Wilhelm, he would stop in and buy a cigar, though, to this day, she had never seen him smoke. She never inquired it, and he never inquired her. 

There was a solidarity in their grief, and it never quite, even now that she felt happy more times than not. She had a sneaking suspicion he was there for something other than a cigar every morning, but she pulled one from the humidor and took his money anyway. There had been a time where she insisted it was on the house. It wasn’t worth the fight, now. 

He looked different today. Still sullen is his strange, tortured way, but there was almost something beautiful about it, about the way he ruminated in this state of torture. Even in the way his stagnation had turned into just that with time, something seemed to still sit there in wait, leaden in the pit of his chest. 

He looked like the face of a handbill like this, enveloped in all black. Square-toed boots with black trousers that made him look ganglier than he was, made him loom over Nellie more than he already did. His black frock coat dusted his calves at a three-quarter length, and a black bolo tie covered as much of the stark white high-collar as possible. On the hat rack by the door sat his usual wide-brimmed Stetson, and, from just behind the plain silver of his belt buckle, the Colt Burtline Special shone in the light. 

He looked fit for a funeral.

He walked like he beckoned the apocalypse in clouds of rolling thunder behind him. When his heels pressed into the softened sand, the earth quaked beneath it. The weight of him made the stagecoach groan on its hinges– leaden and heavy with the weight of something bigger than settled silt within his chest, kicked up like the sand behind horse hooves and stagecoach wheels. 

Parchment sat like lead in his lap, curdling there and souring something that had sat too long. Cracking fingers curled around your words like poison, sweetened with sasparilla whiskey, golden ambergris letters seeping into him and warming his throat like bile and molten gold. He opened the first one with a nimbleness unlike one he had ever known, and read it once more:

25 April, 1894

To the Sheriff that this letter finds, 

I am afraid your letter has found me in a state of disrepair. I have never been one for niceties and I am afraid I do not have it in me to start now. 

My betrothed had never known peace in life, and I am afraid that he may not ever know it in death, wherever that plane Hell may be. 

Maybe it is I that has died, and maybe it is I that walks across this Hell. Maybe it is my own doing that brought me to this. Maybe I am the creature of my own undoing. I am not a nice girl, Steve. Not the nice girl you think I might be. 

We were raised like leather, stretched and scraped to be tough in the way that our mothers were, unbending and unbreaking as they had been. They were not forgiving, nor were they kind. Nellie was once that way, too. Though, I fear that your desert sun has softened her. That it changed something deeper within her in a way that she may be someone I no longer recognize. 

I plan to arrive in Tucson by train on the first of October. Maybe this sun will soften me in the same way it has softened my cousin. Maybe I don’t want it to. 

Though I hope for my tomorrow to be kind, I have an inkling that it never will be, for this life had never had a kindness to offer. 

I’ll be the one in white. 

I will see you then, Sheriff. 

He pictures the way you will step off the train, white linens spilling over the threshold of it by some sickened grace of the hand of an unkind God. He both relished in it and could not bear the thought. He thought of linens hiked over knees and rucked up under the fabric of itself, a  depiction of the implosion of his world. 

He had already lived this, soft hair against soft legs and white linens shed in a dustbowl around shared space and soft, breathlessness passed between lips. He had felt this kind of softness before– had known this tender touch of a woman outside of the mother he never had. 

It was the first time he had ever been touched gently. 

Even Nellie’s hand seemed gruff as it gripped his shoulders in a grounding movement, his eyes slowing with the movement of reading and dissipating into blankness an indicator that he had gone somewhere that even she would never be allowed to see. It was a look she had known all too well.

“I’m afraid she might not like me much.” He whispered, low enough for Eddie to not be able to hear– or, at least, low enough so he could pretend not to. She knew what he meant by this, another feeling chased after her own reanimated heart. 

Nevertheless, she avoided the philosophical nature of it all, answering him with the only thought she had: “I’m afraid she might not like anyone much, Steve.” She starts, and the questioning gaze he gives her urges her to continue. 

“It wasn’t easy for her, either, Steve.” She starts with another sigh, now more like the weight was being pressed out of her lungs from the weight that she felt, “Most of the time, it was out right hard.” 

“We’ve all had it hard, Nellie. Nothing about this life has been particularly easy.” Steve says back. He didn’t mean it to be as harsh as it was. She knew that, though it didn’t stop that initial sting of his dismissiveness.  

“William wasn’t a nice man, no matter how much she loved him.” She tells him, louder this time and too fast. Eddie couldn’t help the the way his eyes are drawn to her from where they are fixed to the periscope of landscape before them, “Forgive her if she isn’t welcoming.” 

+ 

To the Lady that may find this letter, I hope it finds her well

Tucson still radiates heat at this time of year, the mirage at the end of town makes the expanse of land between here and the mountains feel both endless and right in front of you at the same time. It warps like the heat is melting space and time itself. Nevertheless, the first blooms of orange mallow have begun to open in a patch where the stagecoach stopped. 

He doesn’t know what comes over him, but he was inclined to plock them from the ground and brush the dirt from their roots. 

It seems the desert knew you would board the train in New Orleans and set west for us, and wanted to welcome you with its kindest hello. The desert is not kind, but she would make an exception for someone like you, I would suppose. 

The wheels screech along the wrought iron of the track as they slow to a halt– and he swears, just for a single, fleeting moment, his heart stops with them. There is a stream of people that step down. Ladies with large hats and square-shouldered men in frock coats not unlike his. He wonders if you will know your face before Nellie does– wonders if he knows who you are just from the curls of your letters. 

And then, you were there. 

You were unremarkable in every way possible, though, at a closer glance, you had chosen to forego a bustle and corset. Instead, the pliant lines of your body undefined against a white buttoned shirt and a long dark skirt. A plain, flat-brimmed stetson sat against the crown of your head, just enough to obscure your face from his view. 

Your cousin is very kind. I like to think that you are kind like her, though, I also hope that you are tough in the same way that she is.

He steps forward, his hands sticky with sweat or the sap of the stems of the orange mallow crushed beneath a pressing grip, he isn’t sure. As he steps on to the tarmac, he remembers his manners– remembers that he isn’t an animal and you are not inherently dangerous, and pulls off his hat, pressing it to his chest as he holds an arm out stiffly towards you without any further introduction. 

You see the star against his chest, pressed silver pinned there like a placard on the spectacle of the man before you, and know that this is him– that this is the entity whom has spilled his heart to you over parchment and ink and blood, “Well, now, those are awfully pretty, sheriff.” You say to him, looking down at the crushed orange matter in his hands. They have already begun to wilt. 

“I have an affinity for pretty things.” 

He flirts shamelessly with you, and something deep within you stirrs. It is not the schoolgirl crush you harbored with William. It isn’t even akin to love, but something worse and something ugly. His letters and flowery words and then his backtracking and condolences meddle into one ugly mass of insult. No, this thing that rose in you was not love, nor was it even a cousin. It was hate. Blinding, furious hate.

“And I have an affinity for men who can make up their minds.” You nod towards him, reaching towards the tarmac for the cracking handle of your green steamer trunk, especially now that the gangly, lean man you presume is Edward reaches for it. 

There is a moment in time where everyone freezes. Both Nellie and her husband, as well as the sheriff before you. They are walking a thin line, one akin to the silver thread between life and death. The tension is palpable, and Nellie shatters the thing you cling to for resolve like glass:

“Now you’re being outright childish–”

She sucks in a breath when you snap, the wild dogs that live within your chest writhing and pulling against chains as you release whatever hurt and pain you held in your heart towards her. Everything you had wanted to say, everything you wanted to scream back at her once she had resurrected. You weilded them now as weapons against her. 

“You sure are one to talk about childish, Nellie. You ran in the other direction when things got hard, and then you up and died on us.” 

“I’m not dead. I was never dead.”

“Well, I have a hard time believing that.”

The Sheriff and the tall man take a step back behind Nellie, shrink away from your thunderous roar as if you might actually bite. The leather of your handle and the steamer dropping from your hand with had resonant patriarchal basso against the tarmac. Time has frozen in place, but people continue to swirl around you in a flurry of haste and posthaste annoyance. Silver tears well against the pink line of her eyes, and you are acutely aware that yours are a mirror image.

Steve had faced many things. He had killed men with his bare hands, he had been covered in so much blood that he couldn’t decipher theirs from his own. He had known starvation, heartstroke, and tragedy. Though, he had never known this– his wife was only ever tender. 

He can see the rage drip from your mouth like hot, molten tar, can see the tears well in your eyes like casted silver against the mold of your face– the way a single one cools and leaves a residual streak against the ashen skin of your cheek. You want to love Nellie, in the same way she wanted to love Edward, and in the way he loved his wife. He can see it, that burning want so bad that it becomes hatred. That kind of love whose flame burns blue. 

He knows Nellie loves you, too, but also knows how dangerous it is to speak it aloud– lest that vile maiden Death may hear it. 

Your eyes stare holes into him, burn against his abdomen from where you fix them. He had heard of women becoming alight with lust born from rage before, but had not though of you to be insane enough to eye him in a familiar way right here on the tarmac. That blue flame affixed to him and warming him from the inside, as well. 

“That’s an awfully ugly belt buckle, sheriff.” You speak, finally, breaking the silence and restoring some semblance of order to this congregation. 

This place is not forgiving, nor is it kind. I hope that your heart is not faint, and I hope that this place is kinder to you than it has been to us. 

With warmest regards, 

Steven Harrington

[codenamesazanka]

AFO+Shigaraki Tomura/Shimura Tenko Role Reversal AU

*

Terrorist Shimura Tenko, age 26, has been sentenced to death for his heinous crimes. Morning before he goes though, he's carted over to Central Hospital.

Little AFO, age 12, is brought before Shimura to give him five quirks - this will surely overload Shimura’s brain, but since he's about to be executed anyways, it doesn't really matter.

But right before the procedure starts, Central Hospital is attacked. It's the League of Villains, here to rescue their boss. As he marbles Shimura, Mr. Compress also ends up marbling AFO and taking him along.

Hours later, in a secret hideout, the League congrats themselves on a successful rescue mission, but wonders what to do about this weird kid they've kidnapped. They’ll have to act quick - Heroes and HPSC will come for them soon. The HPSC have to come for the kidnapped kid, because, the moment the League realized who the kid is, they know AFO as the central piece of HPSC's new direction for society.

*

Four years ago, the government made a paradigm changing announcement - they've gained the ability to take away quirks and will start doing so as part of criminal justice.

This is a great thing, as it solves the century-old question about what to do with Villains. Really Bad Villains will have their quirks taken away, and put into regular security prison. Mild Villains can exchange their quirks for a shorter sentence. Dangerous quirks can now be eliminated. Human rights will be improved. Society will be safer.

—At least, it will be, once the chaos the announcement created settles down. Because the remnants of the Meta Liberation Army straight up revolted, along with other groups and other people.

The League of Villains did not start with this upheaval - they were already active two years before the announcement, led by Shimura Tenko, as just particularly notorious Villains doing whatever they wanted, whether it was heists or killing heroes or feuding with other villain groups - but they have become embroiled into the fight through a loose alliance with the MLA, and due to the HPSC holding members of the League up as the reason why the new law was enacted in the first place.

The HPSC have kept very, very top secret the exact method they’re using to take away quirks. No one knows for sure whether it was a drug or surgery or implant. There was a rumor that it was a quirk that was doing this, but it was just a rumor—until now.

Though, the League didn’t expect that it would be a kid. So what will they do with him now?

*

For all nearly all twelve years of his life, AFO (and his younger twin brother) has been in care of the HPSC. This is the first time he's ever been kidnapped, is in real danger, but he knows exactly what to do:

Nothing.

In all honesty, AFO would rather destroy this 'League of Villains' - just a bunch of insignificant insects running around causes messes and ruining everything (like his day!) - and just go home using his own power. He doesn’t like being away from Yoichi; he still has schoolwork to finish; the new chapter of Captain Hero: New Ultra is out Monday; he’s got his life to get back to.

But AFO has been relentlessly counseled and drilled by the HPSC for this exact scenario: He is NOT allowed to use his quirk. No matter what happens, he is only to wait for rescue.

Not that using his quirks might help much. AFO has never been taught to fight, and besides his own ‘Give-and-Take’ quirk, he’s got only five other low-tier quirks he had only taken this morning that he’s never used. The HPSC won’t risk letting him keep the quirks, see, so the system they’ve come up with is this: the quirks taken from criminals are transferred immediately to a Villain scheduled for execution. (Given the explosion in criminal activity and revolt over the past four years, death row has just the right and regular numbers to supply.) They’ve even got a machine just for him, just for tracking his quirk(s), invented by the famous American scientists David Shield and Toshinori Yagi, so they know exactly what he takes in and lets out.

When AFO has just his own original quirk, it’s as good as no quirk.

The HPSC has to do this, because AFO is a born villain. They know it; he knows it, everyone who’s ever met him knows it. It’s just hard to describe otherwise a child who came into this world stealing everything within reach: his mother’s life, his twin brother’s health, and every person’s quirk he ever had come into physical contact with even as an infant - the homeless woman who rescued the twins from a decaying corpse, the police who later found them while investigating a dead body that was registered in the system with a quirk but autopsy had revealed zero quirk factors left, the doctors that examined the twin babies.

AFO has heard this story many times. He’s got a too-strong quirk that’s made him clinically diagnosed kleptomaniac with a Cluster B personality disorder. Quirk counseling, behavioral counseling, regular counseling, art therapy... He’s been handled extremely delicately and thoroughly his entire life.

And that’s…fine. That’s how the world works. That’s the price of power. It’s better than being dead in the grave with the mom he killed, or out there in the chaos, if the HSPC had never found them. AFO’s on the side that’s calling the shots and set to dictate the final reality of a post-Advent world - he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. One day, he’ll grow up and he’ll become part of the HPSC and he’ll get his rightful piece of the cake - really, they’ve let him have some of it already, when he first started taking quirks away for them five years ago (first year was trial year, before they went public).

His itch to use his quirk is scratched regularly. He got to keep Yoichi, who had once almost been adopted away. Being on his best behavior means he gets most of what he asks for. The worst AFO can say is that he’s bored - which is expected, his brain is wired differently after all.

All he has to do is stay calm, play nice with the League, and wait for Heroes to arrive. Someone will come save him soon enough.

Everything is in order.

*

But of course, this encounter with Shimura and the League will be the catalyst that will destroy that very order.

(In one universe, AFO tells Tenko he'll teach him how to take his rage and give it purpose.

In this universe, Shimura tells little AFO he'll teach him how to find his rage.)

[bestworstcase]

oh. hm. i wonder if dark made grimm by himself because light refused to participate in creating anything destructive again after the jabberwalker—certainly it seems telling that in the myth, light creates a vast monoculture lawn and then declares that dark’s contribution of a moon and new biomes and plate tectonics is “spoiling” it; the myth flows from light’s presentation of himself to ancient humans and if he saw any value in these things he would surely have claimed them as his own—and then there’s the brother-cult framing that humans were given the capacity for evil (destruction) and good (creation) and the free will to choose which path to walk, always with the underlying premise that if humankind chooses wrong then they will “destroy themselves” (by earning annihilation at the final judgment)

this is in stark contrast to the narrative treatment of destruction as hunger and as an agent of change, and creation-without-destruction as, well, a vast monoculture lawn. sterile, stagnant, artificial, unalive.

(<- not a euphemism for “dead” and i resent that the word has those connotations now.)

to create is to destroy; paint, for example, is destroyed by the act of painting. you can’t ever use it as paint again. eating a meal is destructive—both in the sense that something living has to be killed, whether plant or animal, and in the sense that the food itself is destroyed. but this is the basis of all life. one eats to stay alive, to grow.

so in light’s view grimm are evil abominations because his brother made them to be destructive; to dark the grimm are embodiments of natural forces whose churnings keep the world forever in motion and therefore alive. jabber came out wrong—brutal, but effective, the blacksmith says—because light’s misapprehension of destruction influenced his nature. the grimm, created by dark alone, turned out right.

are they good? are they bad? they just are. the tides, the mountains, the deserts, the storms, earthquakes and volcanoes, the grimm.

meanwhile humans were given destruction by darkness and creation by light—the separation and recombination into one being was probably necessary to avoid a repeat of what happened with jabber—and then taught, by light, to understand their natures as a moral conflict and a moral challenge to rise above ‘evil’, i.e. destruction.

this is, of course, why light is so set on the necessity of permanent death: in his afterlife the dead are unaware and unalive, existing in everlasting stasis, and so nothing can ever be destroyed. darkness, who has never feared destruction, allows salem to glimpse the truth that life and death are a circle. and then he burns it all down and leaves her alive in the ashes, the wellspring of primordial destruction there for her to do with it as she will. and she does, and that is how mankind returns to life and how the faunus come to be.

which is the whole point. the grimm represent and embody pure destruction, hunger and change, which the brothers’ humans were taught to abhor as unnatural, evil abominations. salem becomes grimm and in doing so stakes humanity’s claim on destruction as darkness understood it, rejecting the false moral dichotomy light imposed on her generation. remnant is set free, and humanity rises phoenix-like from the ashes, unbound by death.

the brothers’ humans rebelled in order to claim the powers of their creators and perfect their own design. and she did.

[himiko-yumehellno]

Kodaka very obviously wants to make Danganronpa 4, but as many people have pointed out already, this would conflict with the ending of V3. I thought I would make things easier on our resident murder mystery writer who appears to really like making mascots that remind me of Whisper from Yo-Kai Watch, and come up with some solutions to this problem! Organized in approximate order of increasing silliness and grasping at straws, with some additional director's notes from ✨me✨!!

So, how can Kodaka make a new Danganronpa game that works with the ending of Danganronpa V3?:

Danganronpa isn't actually a killing game franchise loved around the world; Tsumugi either lied or was lied to herself (probably with the use of a Flashback Light to make her believe she was a willing ringleader). Allows for some interesting angst if it's the second option.

Despair made a sudden comeback and took over a good portion of the world. Tsumugi fudged some details, but it's true that a lot of the world now enjoys killing games, because normal life is just boring to them (a life without despair and death?! Ugh! Who'd want that, am I right?). We find out in a later installment that the survivors joined with other forces fighting against despair. Danganronpa 4 explores a separate killing game also put on in the name of this new global wave of despair.

Danganronpa 4 turns out to be a prequel (possibly featuring a killing game that the in-game franchise was inspired by, possibly just being one of the numerous previous installments Tsumugi threw out there in her exposition monologue, possibly some secret third option), and ends up with some ridiculous name so fans don't get confused on the sequence of events. Personally, I hope the name is Danganronpa Negative Four.

As so many postgame fics have taken to declaring, the entire game was a simulation. Except to make this work, it probably wouldn't be a simulation designed by Team Danganronpa – no, no, no! Perhaps this killing game was put on by Remnants of Despair or – *exaggerated gasp* – the Future Foundation themselves, hm?

Danganronpa V3 was a really fucked up social experiment and none of the "reality TV" backstory was real. No one knows how it got past the ethics committee, so don't ask.

It was all an alternate dimension/timeline. ... Look, if all it takes to brainwash someone into mass murder is forcing them to come to anime night, they can throw in a little time or dimension travel!

To piggyback on that last idea, the "reality TV" backstory was true; Danganronpa V3 and all the previous installments in this series were fiction... in the Rain Code universe. Or some other video game setting made by Kodaka. Nothing of the sort happened in the actual Danganronpa continuity, however.

Danganronpa V3 was Junko Enoshima's idea of heaven. Of course, it wouldn't have been complete without the despair of her ideal world being destroyed, hence the survivor trio shutting down her killing game show. Danganronpa 4, therefore, takes place in the living world, continuing off vaguely where the Danganronpa 3 anime left off. Notably, all questions about how Junko's heaven works and why she even got to go to heaven in the first place are not solved until a separate anime series, where we find out it was originally supposed to be her hell until she made the demon in charge of looking after her quit and give her full range of the place. It's never answered whether the participants of the killing game were other dead souls or just beings she created.

The entire thing was just the Monokuma Children playing with dolls. ... Or, knowing them, dead bodies.

Before V3 came out my brother had this whole theory that all of the characters were in a pseudo time loop where every time a killing game concluded, they'd just roll out a set of clones of everyone and start all over again, presumably killing off the survivors of the last game. I have no idea how this would solve Kodaka's issue but I want to see if they could find a way to make it work.

I'm excited to see what becomes of Kodaka's newest works, but apparently by his own admission he's interested in returning to Danganronpa at some point, so I thought I'd do the hard part for him. Feel free to take any of these ideas and run with them, Kodaka!

(feel free to add your own suggestions on how to make the ending of V3 work with a new Danganronpa game!)

[fantasblog]

CHAPTER 1: riffle between us (scibill au/shift falls)

In the dim light of a lab scattered with arcane artifacts and scientific instruments, a peculiar figure adjusted his glasses. Bill Cipher, an enigmatic triangle demon known for his chaos and destruction, had shed his usual chaotic demeanor for the role of a scientist. His black necktie, neatly tied around his neck, and his tailored scientist's cloak created a sharp contrast to the turmoil that had once defined him.

Years had passed since the Euclidean massacre, a cataclysmic event that left its mark on the very fabric of existence. Bill had been a survivor of that disaster, though he was not the only one affected. His parents, once benevolent beings, had turned to darkness in the aftermath, driven mad by the carnage that had unfolded. They had embraced chaos, leaving Bill to flee and start anew. The rift between them was as vast as the void itself, and Bill had not seen them since.

Now, he occupied himself with research and invention, trying to piece together the shattered remnants of his once-promising life. The chaos that had been his birthright seemed like a distant memory as he worked tirelessly to understand the mysteries of the universe from a scientific perspective. His new life was a strange blend of old-world knowledge and modern scientific theory, and his laboratory was a testament to this synthesis.

The lab was quiet, save for the occasional hum of machinery and the scratch of Bill's pen on a notepad. He was deep in thought when the lab's door creaked open, and a familiar figure stepped in. It was Stanford Pines, the renowned scientist whose reputation for unraveling the mysteries of the universe preceded him.

"Dr. Pines," Bill greeted, setting down his pen and adjusting his glasses. "I wasn’t expecting a visit."

Stanford, dressed in his usual attire of a tweed jacket and glasses, glanced around the lab with curiosity. "I heard you had made some impressive breakthroughs in your research, Bill. I wanted to see for myself."

Bill's eyes, usually alight with mischief, softened with a hint of pride. "I’m glad to hear that. I’ve been working on a theory about interdimensional stability. It’s quite complex."

As the two scientists delved into discussion, Bill couldn't help but notice the irony of his situation. Here he was, once a being of pure chaos, now engaging in conversations of quantum mechanics and dimensional rifts with one of the foremost minds in the field. The juxtaposition was not lost on him.

Stanford, absorbed in the conversation, remarked, "You know, it's impressive how far you’ve come from your... previous endeavors. Your work here could have significant implications for understanding the boundaries between dimensions."

Bill shrugged, a wry smile playing at his lips. "I suppose it's my way of compensating for the past. If I can contribute something positive, maybe it will make up for the chaos I once caused."

As the hours passed, the discussion between Bill and Stanford flowed seamlessly. Their shared passion for discovery bridged the gap between their respective pasts, creating a new partnership founded on mutual respect and curiosity. In that moment, Bill realized that perhaps he could forge a new path, one where he could reconcile his past with his present.

Outside the lab, the night sky was clear, and the stars shone brightly. For the first time in a long while, Bill felt a glimmer of hope. The darkness of his past seemed to recede, if only slightly, as he looked forward to the possibilities that lay ahead.

As the evening wore on, the conversation between Bill Cipher and Stanford Pines grew more animated, filled with complex theories and mutual admiration. The two scientists were so engrossed in their discussion that neither noticed the soft knock on the lab door.

The door creaked open, and a burly figure with wild, silver hair and a pair of thick, round glasses entered the room. He was dressed in an old-fashioned lab coat that looked as though it had seen better days, its pockets stuffed with various tools and gadgets. The man’s eyes sparkled with a mix of curiosity and excitement as he took in the sight of the advanced equipment around him.

“Howdy there!” he called out, his voice rich with a Southern drawl. “I heard some mighty interesting talk and thought I’d come see what’s cookin’ in this here lab.”

Stanford glanced over and smiled. “Ah, Fiddleford! Just in time. This is Bill Cipher, a colleague of mine whose work has been truly remarkable. Bill, this is Fiddleford McGucket, another brilliant mind in the field of scientific research.”

Bill’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of the newcomer. Fiddleford McGucket was a name he had heard in passing, a scientist known for his unconventional theories and inventions. Though their paths had never crossed, Bill had always respected McGucket’s reputation.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. McGucket,” Bill said, extending a hand in greeting. “I’ve heard quite a bit about your work. It’s an honor.”

Fiddleford shook Bill’s hand enthusiastically, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “Well, the pleasure’s all mine! I’ve been followin’ your research from afar and I gotta say, I’m impressed. You’ve got quite the knack for makin’ sense of things that most folks wouldn’t even dream of.”

Bill chuckled, slightly taken aback by Fiddleford’s friendly demeanor. “Thank you. I suppose we’re all just trying to make sense of a universe that often defies understanding.”

Fiddleford’s gaze shifted to the array of gadgets and devices in the lab. “I can see you’ve been busy. What’s the latest project you’re workin’ on?”

Stanford, sensing the enthusiasm in the room, took a step back to let the two scientists converse freely. “Bill was just explaining his theory on interdimensional stability. It’s a groundbreaking approach, and I think Fiddleford’s expertise could offer valuable insights.”

Fiddleford’s eyes lit up as he examined the blueprints and notes scattered across the lab table. “Interdimensional stability, you say? That’s right up my alley! I’ve been tinkerin’ with some ideas on dimensional harmonics myself. Maybe we could collaborate on this?”

Bill’s interest was piqued. “Collaboration? That could be very beneficial. I’d be open to exploring new ideas with you.”

As the evening continued, the three scientists delved into discussions that spanned multiple disciplines. The exchange of ideas was invigorating, and the synergy between them was palpable. Bill found himself more inspired than he had been in years, his past struggles momentarily forgotten as he focused on the exciting possibilities of the present.

Outside, the night deepened, but inside the lab, the spirit of discovery burned brightly. Bill Cipher, once a figure of chaos, was now part of a new chapter—one where his talents could be harnessed for creation and understanding. With Stanford Pines and Fiddleford McGucket by his side, the future seemed filled with endless potential.

---

As the evening advanced, the lab’s atmosphere was charged with excitement and new possibilities. The sound of lively discussion and the clinking of tools filled the air. Just then, the lab’s door swung open once more, and in walked another Pines sibling—Stanley Pines. His presence was marked by a rugged charm and a slightly disheveled appearance, a stark contrast to the polished looks of his brother and their colleague.

“Hey, Stanford! I thought I’d find you here,” Stanley greeted, his voice carrying a mix of warmth and weariness. He spotted Bill and Fiddleford, giving them a friendly nod. “I see you’ve got company. Nice to meet you both.”

Stanford looked up, his eyes lighting up with recognition and a touch of concern. “Stanley, it’s good to see you. I didn’t expect you to come by tonight.”

Stanley’s gaze shifted to the room’s various gadgets and blueprints. “I figured I’d drop in and see what you’ve been up to. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to catch up.”

Bill, sensing the tension between the brothers, gave a polite nod. “I’m Bill Cipher, and this is Fiddleford McGucket. We were just discussing some intriguing theories on dimensional stability.”

Stanley raised an eyebrow but didn’t pursue the matter further. “Sounds like you’re in good company. I’m here to—well, let’s just say I’ve got some unfinished business with my brother.”

Stanford’s expression grew serious. “Stanley, I hope this isn’t about—”

Stanley cut him off with a wave of his hand. “We’ll talk about it later. Right now, I want to know what’s really going on. I’ve heard some troubling things, and I need answers.”

Fiddleford, sensing the undercurrent of tension, attempted to lighten the mood. “Why don’t we all sit down and have a chat? There’s plenty of room in the lab for discussions.”

As they settled around the table, the conversation turned to less contentious topics, though the air remained thick with unspoken concerns. Bill observed the dynamics between the Pines brothers with a mixture of curiosity and unease. He had heard about the rift between them—Stanford’s mysterious disappearance and the subsequent discord between him and Stanley—but witnessing it firsthand added a new layer of complexity.

After a while, the conversation naturally shifted back to the topic of Stanford’s research. Stanley’s curiosity was piqued, but it was clear he was still preoccupied with his own issues. The talk was cut short when an unexpected commotion was heard from outside the lab.

Stanley’s eyes narrowed, and he stood abruptly. “That doesn’t sound good. I need to check something.”

Stanford followed, clearly concerned. “Wait, Stanley—”

Before Stanford could finish his sentence, Stanley was already out the door. Bill and Fiddleford exchanged puzzled looks as they followed at a more measured pace.

Outside, the night sky was illuminated by strange, flickering lights that seemed to pulse with an otherworldly energy. Stanley stood by a swirling portal that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The portal crackled with unstable energy, casting eerie shadows on the surrounding landscape.

Stanford arrived breathless, his face pale. “Stanley, what have you done?”

Stanley’s face was set with determination. “I didn’t do this. But it’s connected to the problems we’ve been having. I need to get to the bottom of it.”

Stanford’s eyes widened in realization. “This portal—it’s unstable. It could lead to anywhere—or nowhere. It might even be linked to the dimensional rifts I’ve been studying.”

The portal began to pulse more violently, and before anyone could react, a sudden burst of energy erupted from it, drawing Stanford toward its swirling vortex. His eyes locked with Stanley’s, a mixture of regret and determination flashing across his face.

“Stanley, I—” Stanford’s voice was cut off as he was pulled into the portal, which closed with a blinding flash of light.

Stanley staggered back, shock and anger warring on his face. Bill and Fiddleford rushed to his side, their own concerns mirrored in their expressions.

“What just happened?” Bill asked, his voice tinged with urgency.

Stanley’s face was grim. “That portal—it’s taken Stanford. And we don’t know where he’s gone. I’ve got to find him.”

As the night settled into an uneasy silence, the gravity of the situation became clear. The portal had not only separated the Pines brothers but had also opened a new chapter of uncertainty and danger. Bill and Fiddleford knew that their work was far from over and that the coming days would demand their utmost resolve.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4