#HOO BOY this was a long one!

[regionalpancake]

🌈 for the fic ask meme!

🌈is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

YES! It was Out of the Game, my entry for last year's Merry Month of Cohen. I was writing for the fest while Season 2 was airing. I really struggled with losing the Motley Crew, as well as making sense of a lot of the character choices. Every week I would try to write something... and every week the canon made me metaphorically crumple my work up and toss it in the bin.

When the Agnes and Borg Queen plot was developing I started writing a fic called Shadows - 'As the Borg Queen seeks control over Agnes, she walks through Agnes’ memories of the last year. Of La Sirena, of found family, and of Rios.' Which I stopped working on when the canon got too sad for me.

Then I started writing Raffi breaking the news to the holos (or at this point holo, singular) that Rios wasn't coming back:

“You’ve looked better.” Raffi startled at the familiar voice, and looked round to catch the last prismatic shiver of a hologram activating. “Emmet?” “Roughly,” The holo shrugged, looking instead at the open crate, at the books, at the mementos, then at Raffi’s sad eyes.

But I couldn't get my head round Seven's canon choice to merge the holos, so that one cos scrapped.

So then I started Night Sky With Exit Wounds, a Seven/Raffi fic where Seven is struggling with the sensory impact of losing her implants:

“Y’know you’re pretty quiet,” Raffi trailed off and followed Seven’s gaze up through the glass of the roof. The night sky glittered in the dark of the French countryside at night.  “The stars look beautiful out here, huh?” “Where, exactly?” Seven’s head moved slowly, eyes scanning the sky above. “You’re kidding me? Right there, y’know those twinkly things,” Raffi wiggled her fingers playfully. There was no response from the xB and Raffi let the gesture fade, “you might have heard of them since you wrote the books on astrometrics.” Seven squinted at the night sky through the glass. Cold points of light burned back. Like light through cheap fabric. Like dead pixels. “That’s just communication satellites.” Seven said, uncertainty creeping into her voice, as she struggled to remember constellations. “They’re not,” The realisation weighed cold and heavy in her chest. “I didn’t even recognise them.”

And then THAT got scrapped, or indefinitely put on the back burner.

Then there was the confrontation with the Borg Queen on La Sirena and I started writing Traveling Light, a fic from Seven's POV while she's bleeding out:

The thing that isn’t Agnes is talking to itself.  It’s voice flitting in and out of bargaining tones. You try to listen closer but blood rushes in your ears instead.

After all those half finished attempts, I finally settled on a theme; Raffi recording a message to Rios, about his choices, that she'll never deliver.

It's a fic I'm proud of, but it took some getting there! Maybe I'll get back to finishing and posting some of the stories I started for that fest. But your ask really reminded me that although I submitted about 1000 for my entry... the behind the scenes word count (and fic count!) was a lot higher!

Ask meme

[edwinisms]

seriously wondering why WW1 was never brought up at all throughout the show in regards to edwin and the life he was living before hell. I mean fuck we get a WW1 ghost in the FIRST EPISODE but edwin doesn’t say a single thing about his familiarity with the soldier’s garments and circumstances. you’d think that would come in handy in some way, or at least be an interesting thing to reference to emphasize edwin’s age (for lack of a better word) considering this was all during the expository section of the first episode.

1916 is directly in the middle of the Great War, and depending on how long edwin had been 16 by the time he died, he would’ve been somewhere between 1-2 years off from being conscripted and sent off to the trenches– ie; really not far, so it inevitably would be a huge weight on his mind at the time. since it was the middle of the war, he would’ve known decently well the horrors being faced out there– the mustard gas, the widespread illness, the shellshock– from newspapers and such, and I have to think that he’d feel like there was a clock ticking, counting down the days until he’d be sent to his inevitable death (considering he’s not the most athletic and physically resilient boy to say the least). and if he was exempted from conscription? it could very well be for “mental illness” and/or “moral indecency” if he didn’t hide his “effeminate” behavior well enough. all-around, it’d have to be an incredibly stressful time period for more reasons than just being bullied, alienated, and repressed at school– and yet we never hear about the elephant in the room. will they do something with it later? will it play into his family background in some way? for gods sake I need to KNOW

[astral-schools]

do you remember when we felt like the only two alive?

[connortheconceded]

You dreamed that a tall figure with a golden mask spoke to you, but you understood not a word. He smiled, and seemed pleasant, but when he reached to touch you, it terrified you.

[98chao]

valentines day is best spent with family!

[thedevilscarnival]

metaposting about narrative voices in the brothers cabal, in the form of discord screenshots because i couldn't be assed to make a proper post

[shmothman]

Stuck Like Glue

Pairing: Vash the Stampede/Reader Rating: Explicit (18+ only) Words: 8057 Read on AO3

Summary: Vash has always been a little bit more than you bargained for… but that’s just part of his charm.

Excerpt:

He loves you. The thought strikes you anew, and tears prick at your eyes as he mouths at your feverish skin, desire pooling stronger and stronger in your gut. He loves you, and the way he’s holding you, kissing you, shows it; the way his voice trembles, eager and terrified and hopeful and lust-stricken. How can you prove just how much you love him in return? How can you tell him how long you’ve wanted this, wanted him?

A shaky sigh falls past your lips as he leans you back and buries his face in your chest, teeth brushing your skin, hands clutching you tight around the middle like he’ll never get this chance again—and you know him well enough to know that’s truly how he feels; grieving you even with his tongue against your heaving chest. He’s grieved you since the day he met you.

You don’t want him to grieve tonight.

[renabe4life]

No. Not again.

Don’t just watch her walk away. Don’t-

"I'm sorry!" The words leap out, louder than intended. Desperate. Sharp. Afraid, to fumble any longer to find the right words. If there are any.

Yang nearly loses hold of the doorknob, having jumped at the sudden outburst. She adjusts, grips it tightly. A lifeline should she need it.

"I'm," Qrow tries again, softer this time, "so sorry. For so many things that I. I’m not sure where to start."

Metal digits loosen, release their hold. Yang inhales a shuddering breath. Lets it out more steadily. And turns around. "For starters, you can apologise for being a coward."

~~

Chapter 17 of Take Root is out. Hoo boy it's finally happening, I'm not readyyyyyyyy. Hope y'all are >w>

[papple]

*slides in and bites lip* hayy....

so irl stuff happened but we've been cooking up some stuff here and there and we figured you guys might wanna see them :D

so we're gonna talk about the second dreamtale concept we have which is a variant of the swap!osd au by @calcium-cat,,,, and basically! nm has a harsher personality, but at the same time holds a much softer spot for dream. He fights back against his bullies and believes that dream is too kind and tells him so often using scathing comments, but dream understands that nm is just a little tsun tsun. Nm is also proud of all the knowledge he has cultivated and makes sure to rub it in peoples faces by delivering sick burns and insulting bullies left and right

For the apple incident, the apples blacken when nm and the villagers fight over the tree and he accidentally touches one of the fruits. Dream arrives in time to see the villagers dealing the fatal blow to nm as well as the tree

Desperate, dream feeds a black apple to nm hoping that it would still be able to heal him but instead intensifies nm's negativity. This later on will be the biggest factor behind dream's guilt

Nm is still dying so his negativity powers him to continue consuming the apples but he keeps going and the power eventually corrupts him

Now nm wants to get revenge so dream takes the last golden apple (this one fell from the tree while the tree was being cut, before the negativity got to it) to have more of a fighting chance and to better protect the people against nm, but he still gets petrified like in canon (or maybe we'll just put him in a coma induced by the intense negativity... i dont really understand the logic behind him turning to stone so we might toss out that idea) (we're open to suggestions though!)

Nm's adrenaline powered mind sees dream's petrified/knocked out self and goes mad, going on a rampage and destroying the entire village.

Of course, 500 years later, dream wakes up and joins ink's group. Ink actually asked sci to make something up that could weaken nightmare's gang but forgets about it, so the formula somehow ends up in dream's hands as the unofficial second in command. Dream, ever the guilt-ridden but hope-filled person, tests it out first on nm. Maybe, this could buy him just enough time to hold a civil conversation with him... imagine everyone's surprise when the lofty scholar-type king turns into a filthy mouthed baby gremlin

[wintry--mix]

So I thought it’d be a fun idea to draw my 6 most iconic DnD characters with Pokemon they’d have :>

These took a while but I’m happy with how they turned out! (Mostly. Don’t look too closely at some of em) Plus, it was fun drawing some pokemon lol

Character names under the cut:

In order from top left to bottom right:

Odyssey (she/her)

Acantha (she/her)

Roman (he/him)

Pallas (he/him)

Tyche (she/her)

Hyacinth (he/they)

[beansterpie]

rewatching LoK, i'm being reminded how much I dislike the.... the brothers, mako and bolin, yanno? they're such underwhelming characters on basically every level. it'd almost be impressive if they weren't in every episode and didn't annoy me so much ugh

[yes-asil]

During a trip in search of insects, Martin gets swept away by a stormy river current, leaving a guilt-ridden Chris to comb through the forest for him.

Have fun with this 8 year old plot bunny I took out of a dusty folder

[millionsknives]

yes, the plans that i could not share with you (because the haters would sabotage me) were that i was taking on LACC in my vash getup :)

i have so few pictures of myself but i got so many compliments (especially on my arm) and plenty of other people took pictures of me. and normally i don't like attention but i will be honest with u. under these circumstances i loved it. my arm held up really well through 8 hours on the convention floor and i have never been prouder of anything i've made. it's articulated incredibly well, no part of it gave out or required repair, it's never uncomfortable or a nuisance to wear, and i have enough range of motion to do relatively complex things like tying my shoes.

originally i was not planning to try to meet anyone famous because 1) it's expensive and 2) the lines are long and 3) i feel weird and annoying approaching literally anyone for any reason BUT. the spot where i met up with my sister just happened to be right next to johnny yong bosch's table. right when he started signing things. so i said LOL ok i'll do it.

it was super chill, i asked him how it felt to get the call that they wanted him to come back 20 years later for a trigun reboot and he said it almost didn't happen -- that since they recast everyone else for stampede they considered recasting vash as well (and i said WOW i'm so glad they didn't) and he said he really enjoyed getting to come back and explore a darker take (i forget if what he said was a darker take on vash's character, or just a darker trigun in general) but it was briefly surprising 2 me that he considered stampede to be a darker version but i get it, especially when u consider that there is not a lot of comedy in those 12 episodes to balance out the grief.

ANYWAY he was impressed with my arm and i asked him if he would sign my coat :) so he signed the lining but he was also like u know what, i'm gonna give you a second autograph just because. so he signed a print for me as well (free of charge!!) and the print with the blue signature matches my famous paintings that i always film in front of (that's providence baybee)

other stuff from the con under the cut

cosplay notes:

i saw 3 other vash cosplayers (a 98 vash, a stampede vash, and a purple coat vash) and no shade but i definitely had the best arm build. peace and love to all of them though

i saw 1 1/2 wolfwoods. 1 was the aforementioned mullet wolfwood from yesterday's post (ww if you’re out there ww) and the 1/2 was the 98 vash cosplayer’s gf in some kind of goth-ish dress and she was carrying a punisher

mullet wolfwood if you're out there i regret not getting a picture with you so much. i am deeply ashamed and i have no excuse because i ran into you twice and both times i was too embarrassed to ask for a picture. i just want you to know that your punisher was swag and your earrings were yolo and we would look very good together

i expected to see a lot more trigun tbh. los angeles where u at. 4 vashies at a convention of 120,000+ people is nothing. one guy even walked up to me like wow i love ur vash, i haven't seen a lot of trigun at this con and i was like I KNOW i thought i'd see a lot more

theeeee costume of all time award goes to the cad bane cosplayer i saw on the balcony. spare hand in marriage dude (gn) you looked so good

second place for costume of all time goes to the other mother cosplayer who had button eyes and these crazy finger appendages and never once broke character even while waiting in lines

i took 100 points of psychic damage from this one guy who (and im not kidding) was at least 6’4’’ and wearing platform boots and was dressed as the mfing onceler. with the stupid top hat he was fr 7+ feet tall (i saw him duck to get through a doorway).

someone was there as the brawny paper towel guy?? just walking around in a beard and flannel carrying a pack of paper towel rolls?? go off king

i saw 5 nightwing cosplayers but only 2 were biblically accurate (had ass)

the nanami sweep at this convention was so real u all SHOWED UP. and everybody ate. i saw at least 12 nanamis and not one of them was a flop.

i have never seen so many spider-mans in my life

other things:

fig. 1: this extremely hot captain america on a very large poster was about 2 make me act unwise. hi gorjus................................. nice eyebrows

fig 2: i saw this sign a couple blocks away from the con and i did a triple take. 🔥🔥🔥TRIMAX MENTIONED🔥🔥🔥

fig. 3: i saw all 4 hobbits in panel and can confirm elijah wood’s laugh is ten times more infectious in real life. before they were even done sitting down, dominic monaghan switched around all of their name cards so that none of them were seated behind the right name. as u might imagine much of the panel's content was reminiscing about LOTR, but i heard some stories that i hadn't heard before. they also talked about video games, other projects they are working/have worked on, how their kids feel about their dads' LOTR roles, how much they love ian mckellen, and how they would love to see something happen for the 20th anniversary of ROTK this year. sean astin (the legend) took shots at the stranger things writers (basically said joyce could never be happy with hopper) AND EVERYONE CLAPPED LOL. billy and dom talked about the best food in NZ, their show billy and dom eat the world, and the unfortunate events that led to the friendship onion's hiatus. it was a ton of fun to just watch them be themselves with each other, you can tell that these guys are all so fond of each other and love each other so much.

and finally, fig. 4: i bought these beautiful prints from @/batinyourbelfry and the skeletal washi tape from @/skeletalacademia (both on IG)

[curiosityschild]

Amphibiuary Days 11 + 15: Painted and 3D

A holdable friend

[autism-disco]

the most normal trinity of apocalypse stories: zombie saga, omniscient reader’s viewpoint and gakkou gurashi

[yakool-foolio]

Idk if anyone actually talked about this but this has been on my mind lately

Lets recap for a bit: Yakou died back in chapter 4 because his soul was reaped in the Mystery Labyrinth, being revealed as Doctor Huesca's killer.

In Yakou's DLC, we see his wife's ghost give him the badge with the cell regenerating pill, right? But what really bothered me is how Yakou's gonna come back IF he took the pill.

Let's say the pill ends up working and Yakou comes back. But his soul was reaped in the Mystery Labyrinth, Wouldn't there be nothing of him? Would his Homunculus soul get resurrected? Would it create a new soul with the memories of his human self as its base? Or would Homunculus Yakou's body just be an undead being living without a soul?

There's a lot left unanswered with how the homunculi would be revived. However, there is some groundwork that can be laid out to at least form some paths that could be explored.

I think I have a pretty confident answer to your first query about the reaped souls. The reaping doesn't meant that the soul, and therefore the person, ceases to exist. I believe it's just a fancier way of dying 'naturally.' If the soul of a human were to be reaped, the soul would separate from the physical body, but wouldn't be completely destroyed. Shinigami actually chooses careful wording by saying that while the Mystery Labyrinth may be destroyed, the soul isn't. The body 'perishes.' She mentions nothing about the soul being erased.

As ya might have noticed, I specified that this is what would happen for humans, not homunculi. However, the reaping of a homunculus' soul may not be as complicated as it looks. This is entering speculation territory, but I have a bite of evidence to sink your teeth into! I theorize that when the soul of a homunculus is reaped, the body goes through the normal process of death. The soul is separated, and the body is now empty. However, when the imperfect revival state begins after several hours, the soul of the homunculus boomerangs right back into the now-zombified body. If the soul were to be destroyed, and the zombies were simply empty husks, then how would the zombies have any of their memories? A soul should most likely contain all memories. Hitman Zilch is able to recall his work with Yomi, although spotty due to the deterioration of the brain that the soul is reconnected to. Yakou gets flashes of photographic memories of his detectives, can recite Yuma's name, and recognizes his wife. They still have souls in them, but the decayed body and mind burns through some or many of those memories.

So now we arrive at the question of what would happen if a zombified homunculus were to be revived with the finished creation of the work-in-progress regenerative pill Yakou's wife worked on. This could go in several directions, but I'll stick to discussing the most notable ideas.

The least painful road to walk on is that if a zombie is revived, their brains are fully healed, and they are able to keep all their memories up to their death, so nothing is lost. That's pretty much the happiest ending. The narrative decision to write that would mean it needs some serious right to earn that ending, and I think I could at least provide a start to that in order to get Yakou back in perfect condition. Yakou loves and protects Kanai Ward, so he's selfless toward his fellow citizens. It'd be very in-character if the zombified Yakou made sure that all the other zombies were revived before himself. Their lives are more important than his. So in the end, once everyone else is revived, Yakou is rightfully rewarded for this selflessness by regaining all his memories.

The more bittersweet route is that the revived homunculi's memories are reset back to when they were first created, so they still have their human counterparts' memories, but nothing that belongs to them. In Yakou's case, that means he'd have no memories of the NDA detectives or the truth behind his wife's death. It's sad, but it's a very plausible outcome.

A somewhat similar, but possibly not as upsetting choice is that Yakou has a bunch of holes in his memories. He can remember some things perfectly, and some things he can't recall no matter how hard he tries. So there's a chance he could remember the detectives, but not remember anything about going through his Huesca murder scheme. Could have humorous results. I'll take a silly ending any day!