#I also really wanna know what happened to the Northern Island!

[instarsandcrimeah]

I love Sif's design-

[turnaboutfix]

Oh yes of course!!!

I meant specifically like her very early concept art (blue haired) and like, one of the first ones where she has short hair (but still with those 2 loose locks at the front)? I hope you know which one I'm talking about lolol

BUT if you wanna speak your thoughts on like. All of them. I want to hear 👂❓️

( @ellivcca asked what I thought about Maya's concept art and I replied in priv if they could be more specific)

Let's talk about Maya's designs! ✨

I will skip the blue-haired art for now, since I have more to say about her other early designs. They're in a few Japanese AA Guidebooks, but "逆転裁判2 ���相解明マニュアル", or "Gyakuten Saiban 2: Fact-Finding Manual" has the most in one place. There are blurbs that discuss the designs, and I'll do my best to summarize them. My Japanese isn't amazing and I had to mostly rely on machine translation + cross referencing dictionaries, so it's possible I may be inaccurate. Also, I'm a novice at Japanese culture, so if I'm misrepresenting anything please bring this to my attention and I'll correct things accordingly!

The book acknowledges that Maya was intended to be of high-school age, hence the the sailor suit artwork. They seem to suggest that the loose socks was a hint at Maya's spunky personality.

When they began to explore her as a spirit medium (1), they wanted her to come from a wealthy, noble family. It looks like a lot of these explorations made it to Franziska's design, with some of the shapes of the shoulders and the jabot-looking neck wear, which is interesting!

As they kept exploring in the second round of sketches (2), they stressed traditional/folk dress as being an important part of her design. They noted they had her carrying something on her back at the time, which I think hints more to her "folksy" feel.

The beaded necklace she's wearing in (2) are drawn from Mala bead necklaces, which are prayer beads rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism and are said to help focus the mind during meditation. They seem present in a lot of spiritual figures in Japan.

Later (3), they explicitly comment drawing inspiration from the Matagi, a group of hunting clans in the northern Japanese mountains (be careful looking them up, they do bear hunting and there's a lot of explicit imagery, even on the wikipedia).

They comment on that this version of her early character might be very athletic. She also seems to be more stoic in these explorations.

Then, for (4) and (5), they evolved the design to make it look appear more feminine, giving her long hair, but making a note that her look isn't typical of modern people. The large orbs in (3), (4) and (5) I think are supposed be drawn from "Yuigesa"(結袈裟), or harnesses decorated with pom-poms worn by Shugendō practitioners, hermits who live in the mountains and practice asceticism.

Then in (6), they added the magatama and committed to her having black hair. They note shortening the hem of her costume from design (5).

The magatama addition is pretty significant! Magatama necklaces are used by noro priestesses of the Ryukyu Kingdom from the islands in the very south of Japan.

Their religion broadly speaking, involves ancestor worship and the relationships between the living and dead, gods and spirits. It seems to me like the culture in Kurain Village draws a lot from the Ryukyuan people--and you can even see this with the beads along with the magatamas.

But there seems to be a lot of generic imagery of Spirit Mediums that I've been able to find in Japanese media which have shared elements of design in Maya's final design. The most interesting of these to me is "ほんとにあった!霊媒先生", or "It Really Happened! Spirit Medium Teacher". The design similarities are striking (and make me wonder if Maya was an inspiration?)

So, to summarize it all up, it seems like the early designers (and there were only two! Kumiko Suekane and Tatsuro Iwamoto) wanted a character who was different, folksy, feminine and spunky that displayed unique spiritual power to aid in the narrative/game mechanics of the games, and they explored the different facets of their own culture--from the northern Matagi clans to the southern Ryukyuan people--Japanese iconography, and tastes into Maya's final design.

And I think that's Real Neat. :)

Thoughts about other designs (Blue-Haired/SoJ Maya) under the cut cuz oh my gosh this post is already huge.

Blue haired Maya!

What's interesting to me is that a lot of the design language on this early Maya art seems to have been carried over to Ema's design (glasses, boots, coat/skirt). She also has similar vibes to Lynne from Ghost Trick.

I definitely enjoy Maya's final design a lot better, but I like the triadic color harmony and spunk here!

And then her design update in Spirit of Justice! These concepts are from "逆転裁判6 公式ビジュアルブック", or "Gyakuten Saiban 6: Official Visual Book". :)

Takuro Fuse (the character designer) comments that he never drew Maya before when he took a stab at updating her, so he wanted to get that down first before tackling the designs. He wondered how she would change over the course of 11 years, and first experimented with a design, thinking about how Mia would look like as a spirit medium. He thought it would be interesting if Phoenix wouldn't be able to tell if Maya channeled Mia. (Me too tbh.)

I feel like this design has a bit too much going on, but I do like the longer cream colored sleeves!

Takuro talks more about how he was exploring all sorts of designs before landing on something more simple. He wanted her to have what he called a "traveling costume" and was very fond of the hat. These designs seem to pull from similar places I've discussed with Maya's early designs, as well as Japanese pilgrims.

As fun as the additions and changes to her design are, I think it was very smart to just add subtle changes: the longer robes, jacket, and the additional beads to her necklace. The shawl is a nice touch, too. This reflects how post-7yg Phoenix and Edgeworth also have subtle changes to their designs as well, which I love and I think were very smart moves from a design-perspective as well as personal taste. Their designs are very iconic and I think it was a service to maintain that iconography.

This was a very fun thing to explore! Thank you kindly @ellivcca for the ask!

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

Whenever I see people call Aang selfish he literally surrendered himself to Zuko in the 2nd episode to protect the Southern Water Tribe (not to mention Katara was close to crying and she didn't even know he was the avatar yet???) yeah i'm having feelings atm

bruhh people who call aang selfish are so deluded i can barely fathom it. like what a sad, desperate existence lmao. aang is pretty much the textbook definition of selfless and caring! he is always willing to help others/put other people before himself (even when sometimes it may be better that he shouldn’t lol). i mean literally let’s look at a few examples just from book one. aang:

surrendered himself to zuko in the second episode to protect the swt, despite having known them for less than a day

puts out the fires on kyoshi island with the unagi (even though katara was right that the safest option would be to just fly away without looking back)

helps katara (and sokka) lead the riot to free haru and the other earthbenders even though by all means they need to keep moving

praises katara’s bending abilities/teaching even when she’s frustrated that he’s picking it up so quickly compared to her

saves zuko in “the blue spirit” and watches over him until he wakes up (and even made a lil bed for him!!)

protects the refugees in the northern air temple (even though by all means he should feel outraged about the desecration of his people’s home and culture; that ep really works my nerves but it does show how aang refuses to hold on to hatred and bitterness which is admittedly very like him)

doesn’t want to learn waterbending from pakku because pakku initially refuses to teach katara, despite that as the avatar it is of the utmost importance that he learns waterbending (which katara reminds him of)

saves zuko again in “the siege of the north pt.2” (even when everyone else wants to leave him for dead)

bonus from book three: in “the southern raiders”, aang lets katara and zuko take appa with them on their ‘life-changing field trip’ - he allows them to take the last living piece of his people and culture with them on what could end up being a quest for revenge. because he trusts them and i’d argue that he wants a piece of himself with his friends even when the rest of him can’t be there. like,, that is such a powerful, selfless, loving action and people tend to overlook it because they wanna argue about ships smh

also people will say things like “oh aang abandoned his people that’s so selfish!!” lol no he was afraid. he felt lost, isolated, alone, ostracized, unprepared, whatever other synonyms you like, and again - terrified. now a hundred years later he feels incredibly guilty about what happened to the airbenders and people have the nerve to call him selfish?? lollll y’all’s arms must hurt from reaching so far!

of course this isn’t to say that aang hasn’t made selfish decisions - obviously he has (like hiding the map in “bato and the water tribe”). aang is an incredibly well-constructed and developed character, so of course he’s made selfish and stupid choices (and he learns and grows from them!! hence why he returns the map in “batwb” after less than a day and is willing to continue his journey without katara and sokka because he recognizes how he hurt them). but to try and characterize aang’s entire existence and arc as selfish? when he is literally the opposite? i mean there’s a great lil compilation here of some (not even all!) of the times that aang has supported his friends throughout the series, yet people still wanna paint him as self-obsessed when he couldn’t be farther from it. some of y’all need to rewatch the series.

anyways anon you’re absolutely right aang is an incredibly selfless, hopeful, and kind character and we should all aspire to be more like him

[semi-sketchy]

Now TGA is all wrapped up, I can say I didn’t see a Raid Shadow Legends ad on a bingo card. But, I’m gonna sum up all my thoughts about Sonic in one big post.

First, the movie trailer. Ben Schwartz came on stage and was just an absolute joy. That man is amazing. The actual trailer though, oh my god it was so good. All the call backs, TAILS!!! THEY WERE WEARING TINY PUFFY COATS!!!

Also, the Master Emerald? Knuckles seemingly working with Eggman implying he might’ve been tricked, as is customary in his early appearances? Yes? Give me more? This movie feels so much more Sonic than the first I am really excited for it. Won’t be seeing it in theaters because I hate theaters, but I wanna see this one even more than the first film.

On to Frontiers. It appears, ironically, the 4chan leaks about Rangers were correct. The “ghost girl” guiding Sonic, it being open world… I am really interested in seeing what they can do with an open world game. The controls and acceleration will have to be fine-tuned or else it’ll be an absolute pain trying to do anything, but hey Sonic himself is already an in-universe explanation for skip travel.

Also, I must say, the environments are beautiful. (This one in particular reminds me of northern Primordia in Xenoblade X)

I am so glad the annoyingly cartoony look from Lost World is gone. Forces was alright, but the art style wasn’t my favorite. This, this is beautiful. I wonder if it’s running on the Hedgehog Engine 2 or something else entirely?

Although, with the open world confirmation, I am seeing folks complaining that it’s a “BotW rip off.” Some people say this in jest which is fine, but others are holding it quite seriously. Firstly, Breath of the Wild isn’t the only open world game and I’d argue not even best, but so few people owned a Wii U and missed out on Xenoblade X so I’ll put that aside. Actually, from the shots we saw it gave me huge Rise of Lyric vibes, like THIS is what that game was supposed to look like before half the content got axed. Either way, they’re trying something new and that’s half of Sonic’s history, so I’m down for it. I don’t think it can beat out Xenoblade X for me, but I’m still interested.

We did get a small story synopsis, found out the area is called Starfall Islands and there’s ancient technology within it that Sonic will be discovering the history of.

SOMEONE TRY AND TELL ME THIS DOESN’T REMIND YOU OF THE ANCIENTS FROM RISE OF OF LYRIC.

But something else interesting is we’re FINALLY getting a new English writer, Ian Flynn is going to be “penning” the story.

I generally like Ian Flynn’s writing, there’s some issues I have with it, but overall I find it enjoyable. Do I think he’s the perfect Sonic writer? Of course not, but I’m interested in seeing what he can actually do with a game. Writing a game is very different from a comic, it’s something entirely new for him and I’m optimistic about the outcome.

It’s also worth noting that we don’t know if he had full creative control over the narrative or if he’s doing translation touch-ups. Let’s not forget SEGA of Japan wrote Forces, Pontaff just did the localization. The narrative was set before they were even brought in. No matter what happens, I’m sure we’ll still see people subbing the Japanese version like “look how much better this is!” when they’re nearly identical.

Maybe I went on a bit of a tangent, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but it’s kinda hard to be excited and optimistic when tons of people are shitting all over something we know very little about. Either way, I can rejoice for a moment because there’s a Steam page for the game and next year, I will definitely be picking it up. I hope my graphics card can handle it.

[bssaz97]

Family Friend

- Patch Island, Kingdom of Vale -

[95 A.G.W.]

[18:55 Hours (6:55 PM)]

10 YO Rowan: Wagon check?

10 YO Summer: Check!

Rowan: Soda?

Summer: Check!

Rowan: Balloons?

Summer: Check!

Rowan: Poppy Rocks?

Summer: Check!

Rowan: All Poppy Rocks accounted for?

Summer: *about to open a bag to eat* Uhhh... Check!

Rowan: Ready to throw some Poppy Rock filled Cola’s at that stupid dentist billboard Sis?

Summer: Heck yeah!

Weapons of choice in hand, the Rose twins stealthily went on their way dragging along twelve bottles of Cola Pops with a box of Poppy Rocks in what would be their best prank yet.

[45 Minutes Later…]

After trekking through the woods, the twin finally arrived at the destination of their latest prank....

A Billboard promoting a local Dentist Office!

Rowan: After two months of saving our allowances and a week’s worth of lunch monies, we finally have the tools to enact today’s plan! For too long we children have to suffer at the hands of those “dental specialists,” so now it’s time to take revenge for children of all ages!

Summer: *fistbumps* Yeah!

Both take a liter of Cola in their hands and begin to use them to fill several balloons. Afterwards they poured a whole sachets worth of the rock candy mixture.

Once they had their weapons ready, they quickly shook a balloon in each hand, took aim and threw them at the billboard with all their might!

When the two balloons had made contact with the billboard, the twins had been pleased to see the sight of two messy and foamy spray on the dental advertisement.

Summer: Woo! That was so cool!

Rowan: Yeah! ...Wanna throw another one?

Summer: Heck yeah!

They prepared more balloons and repeated the action of tossing them in exactly the same way as before.

Soon enough, the billboard was nearly covered with sticky foam and rock candy, all to the twins mischievous glee and amusement.

Sadly their fun was too soon coming to an end, they both stared at the two remaining balloons that they each held.

Summer: Aw... I wish we had bought more balloons.

Rowan: It was fun while it lasted. Come on, let’s make these ones count. Whoever can hit an eye gets to give the other their brussels sprouts for dinner tonight!

Summer: Yuck! Brussels sprouts... you’re on!

The twins held their final individual balloons in one hand, rearing their arms back to throw and are prepared to fling their balloons, but unfortunately for these two, their fun ended when a beam of a flashlight was pointed at them.

“Oi! Hold it right there!”

The twins stopped themselves mid throw, thankfully neither of them let go of their balloons, as they both turned towards the light being pointed at them.

Busted.

A figure walked towards slowly, a female judging by the voice, a northern Valean accent to be accurate. However, neither of the twins could not make out as to who the woman was for the sky had begun to turn dark and the light that she held was exceptionally bright.

The young woman stopped only a meter away from them.

???: Reach for the sky.

The two Rose twins complied, both raiding their hands.

???: Well would ya look at here, I got me some no good troublemakers messin’ around with town property. Don’t try ta deny it either, I caught ya’s red handed.

Rowan: W-We aren’t trouble makers m-mam, we were just playing. Right Sum?

Summer: Y-Yeah, just playing! Honest!

???: Oh? An’ you want to believe that loada crap. Especially when ya’s still got tha proof in ya hands.

Rowan was shaking in place, this was not looking good for either of them, they had been caught and now they were likely in big trouble. Mom would find out and be disappointed, he could get kicked out of the soccer team and they could get this marked on their permanent record.

He was taken away from his thoughts when he faintly heard whimpering, turning his gaze he saw his twin looking on the verge of tears, absolutely terrified at the implication of getting in trouble.

That just solidified Rowan’s decision.

Rowan: I-I …It was my idea! Please if you’re going to take one of us in, just take me and let my sister go! She just went along with my idea!

Summer: Wha-! N-No that’s not true! I threw just as many balloons as he did!

Rowan: *whispering* Summer! I’m trying to save your skin!

Summer: *whispering* Nooo! I don’t want you to go to jail!

Rowan: Please mam, I acted alone! She just watched me do it and I pressured her into it!

???: That a fact? Well that doesn’t mattah, I’m takin’ the two’s of ya in anyway.

Stretching out her empty hand she activated her semblance, causing the tips of her fingers to illuminate a green hue and a symbol of a leaf appeared on her hand. What occurred next shocked the two young Rose twins.

From the ground beneath them, roots emerged and swiftly wrapped around their little wrists, forming makeshift wooden handcuffs. With a pull, the roots brought the two on their knees, making it clear to the two that she meant business.

Rowan: W-Wait! Hold on a minute! Don’t you have to read us our rights or something!?

Summer: Yeah! Tell us we have the right to an attorney!

???: Attorneys are for grownups. Bad kids like the two of ya’s, get sent to juvie. You two already confessed to the crime, so now I’m takin’ ya to tha slammer!

Rowan: B-But!

Summer: I don’t wanna to go to juvie! Please don’t take us!

The two are nearly close to tears when something unexpected happens. The woman in front of them started to …giggle. Soon enough, her laughing grew louder in volume as she started leaning forward, holding onto her abdomen as she was losing herself to her hysterics.

With a wave of her hand the roots receded, returning to the ground albeit the restraints that remained on the twins wrists.

They looked on in bewilderment as the woman who was apprehending them laughed at the two as though she heard the best joke of her life.

???: *inhales* Oh, you shoulda seen the look on the both of ya’s faces! That’s gold! Pure gold!

She turns off her flashlight with a press of a button, no longer hindering the twins vision. When both of their vision became adjusted to natural light, they immediately put together their apprehender’s identity.

Rowan: Rosemary!?

The twin’s apprehender was none other than Rosemary Thornbush, local Huntress and resident of Patch. She also happened to be a friend of their mother and aunt, and they had history. So the redhead was indeed a familiar face to them.

Rosemary: *laughs* Hey Row-Row. I got ya kids good, didn’t I?

Summer: Rosie! That was mean! I actually thought we were in trouble!

Rosemary: I nevah said you ain’t.

A silence fell on both the twins, as they saw

Summer: oh… so we are going to juvie?

Rosemary: Nah. But the two of ya’s are gonna get a mouthful from ya mom.

Rowan: Y-You’re gonna tell Mom?

Rosemary: Yep, and she’ll get to decide the punishment for that. *pointing at the billboard*

Summer: …Can we go to jail instead?

Rosemary: Oh quit you’re whining, get up you two!

Sheathing her flashlight, Rosemary takes both children by the wrist and guides them down the dirt path towards their home.

Rowan: But the wagon.

Rosemary: We’ll get that tomarraw, it ain’t going nowhere.

Rowan: Aw…

[A walk of shame later…]

Ruby Rose gazes down at her two children in front of her, whom she believed were going to a sleepover, but were all actuality caught vandalizing a billboard with the liters of soda and candy that she purchased under the pretense that they were gonna be used by school children to eat and drink. So not only did her naughty children lie to her, but they also committed a crime.

She was not in a good mood.

Ruby: Rowan, Summer, is this true?

Neither of the twin’s answers her and instead avoided her piercing gaze by looking at the floor. Their guilt clearly written on their small faces.

Ruby: *breathes* Well then, for starters, you’re both going to get ready for dinner. Then you both are going help me wash the dishes tonight, which will be spotless, and then you will both get ready for bed and go to your rooms without any TV or games for the rest of the week.

The two winces at the stern tone she used, they only hear it rarely but it’s not one any child enjoys hearing.

Ruby: Then tomorrow morning you both are going to wake up, eat your breakfast …and help clean up the mess you made on that billboard.

Summer: B-But tomorrow’s the weekend.

Ruby: And?

Summer: Nothing Mommy…

Ruby: You have anything to add mister?

Rowan: No Mommy…

Ruby: Good. Now go fresh up, I made dinner and I don’t want it to get cold.

Wordlessly, the twins moved past her and hears them go upstairs to their shared bathroom to wash up for what would undoubtedly be a very awkward meal.

The sound of giggling breaks Ruby’s thoughts as she turns her attention back towards her guest.

Rosemary: Yeesh, I’d hate to make you angry. Especially if I met you as a kid.

Ruby paused then shook her head, laughing a bit herself at the notion. Being only five years her senior and a friend of her older brother at Signal, the young lady has a way of making her seem old.

Ruby: Thank you Rosie for bringing them home, I really appreciate it.

Rosemary: Forget about it Ruby, I’m always happy to help a friend of the family. Your kids certainly did make the highlight of my night.

Ruby: Did you want to stay for dinner?

Rosemary: Thanks for the offa but Ma’s undoubtedly waiting for me to get my butt back home. Maybe another night. Bring the whole family?

Ruby: I think the kids would love that, once they get over you turning them in.

Rosemary: I hate to do it but it’s my job. Also, I plan to keep an eye on them while they clean up their mess tomarrah. I figured you’s gonna ask that.

Ruby: Thank you again, when everything is cleaned up I’ll come to get them. Who knows, maybe you can expect a cheesecake with your name on it?

Rosemary: Yes mam! *has an eager smile on her face*

Ruby: Well then, I hope you get home safely Rosie, let the family know I said hi and that I appreciate their daughter looking out for my children.

Rosemary: Sure thing, Shrub is definitely gonna enjoy hearing about this. Well you have a goodnight, Ruby.

Ruby: You too, Rosie.

With her job seemingly done for the night, the younger red head began on her way, walking down from the Rose residence’s porch and making her way back from the dirt path. But before she could make it there, her attention is taken away when a voice from behind her called out.

Ruby: Rosie!

Rosemary: *looks back* Yea?

Ruby: …Thank you for bringing them back.

Rosemary: *shrugs* Sure thing. What are friends for, am I right?

Without another word, the young huntress resumed on her way. Another normal day on Patch done and the night setting in.

- Fin -

A/N: Thanks again to @tanakaclinkbeard for allowing me to use his OC, Rosemary Thornbush, in my AU. While it is a different version of her and the history is also a variant, I did my best to keep the core traits of the original.

Edit: Also, the reason Rosemary talks differently is because she has what’s referred to as a Northern Valean accent (Boston accent for irl example).

[fatehbaz]

Do you ever just think about oak woodlands and the absolutely insane mycorrhizae stuff they have going on? Occasionally I push the leaf litter aside and see mycelium and it’s like Whoah that’s a whole Society in there (california/western North America specific but I assume other oak woodlands have this too?)

Yea, a whole cosmos. Like, just above the soil but still in contact, beneath decaying logs or under moss beds, there are the crustaceans and molluscs and amphibians. And the soil itself has a teeming community of microorganisms. And then these networks of roots and mycorrhizal structures just reach out, webs, carrying nutrients, transferring messages, pulsating. Communication network. (I don’t wanna insult the mycorrhizal fungus by likening them to “the internet” or “a highway”.) As if a “forest” or “woodland” is just as much about subterranean fungus as it is about trees. Mirrored webs of life stretching out, above and below. Like depictions of Yggdrasil.

Really, I don’t know anything about how the oak roots function east of the Rocky Mountains? Actually, I don’t know much about soil in general. Really, I just look beneath a rotting cedar log and say: “Wow!” But I’m a big fan of the northern stretches of the oak savanna at the southern edge of the Great Lakes. One thing that I like about the oak savanna in the tallgrass prairie region of North America is its “misleading” visual appearance. In the sense that, the landscapes of the Great Plains and Prairie Peninsula get dismissed as “drab” or “boring”, with their many faded shades of brown and olive colors, and what might superficially appear to be “monotonous” landscapes of grasses interspersed occasionally with twisted arms of oak. But in the understory? Many endemic plants. Very deep root systems. Fungus.

In a similar way, maybe the oak woodlands of the Pacific coastline don’t get enough recognition for their vibrancy and uniqueness, in the way that the nearby temperate rainforest is celebrated for its density of lifeforms. And speaking of elaborate subterranean networks of fungus and the intricate interconnectivity of forests creatures, it was work at UBC in Vancouver, involving the rainforest of the Raincoast, which kinda popularized the “Wood Wide Web” concept, at least in North America, I think, probably. And I know that the oak lining the Central Valley’s edges in Mediterranean California are relatively famous, but the oak on the Pacific coastline farther north (Rogue River, Willamette Valley, South Puget Prairies, Salish Sea coast) always intrigued me. It’s a big juxtaposition! Prairie-oak so close to rainforest. The vibrant green colors and mass of above-ground mosses, ferns, etc., visually project the dense life of the rainforest. And the oak woodlands might appear “dry” in comparison. But there’s a lot happening underground.

I know you’ve seen me being enthusiastic about the Sky Islands and “Madrean Archipelago”, where oak woodlands are very important. (Incredible altitudinal zonation, home to thick-billed parrot, imperial woodpecker, jaguar, ocelot, etc.). But again, I don’t know anything about what’s happening underground, there. And I can only imagine what’s happening underground in Oaxaca and Chiapas, where the high-elevation slopes of those tropical mountains are home to the planet’s highest biodiversity of oak, by far (40% of oak species, I think?). There’s a lot of biodiversity, for all non-tree creatures too, in tropical mountains, and especially in what’s called “southern Mexico” (many pit-viper species endemic to small mountain ranges!). Oak are everywhere, in dense high-elevation forests, and I guess you would technically call them “cloud forests.’ But visually, thanks to all the moisture, they visually look like tropical rainforests: tall oak, soaked in mist, their trunks coated in moss. Basically, “oak rainforests.” There is a kinda famous oak (species Quercus bumelioides) at Cerro de la Muerte (Costa Rica) that is 60.4 meters (198 feet) tall. I’m only just starting to get into reading about those creatures, but the concept of a lush, bright-green “oak rainforest” seems so intriguing compared to the more common US-American impression of oak as an iconic representation of the relatively dry and open landscapes of the Mediterranean coast or California.

Anyway, those cloud forests are wet, and have access to tropical climate. What intrigues me about oak woodlands and savanna (as opposed to denser forests) is that oak woodlands can manage to promote life with less moisture and more seasonal fires. And so I imagine the subterranean fungus is extra-important in western North America’s oak landscapes.

Also in western North America: I know that the Pando aspen forest in the Wasatch mountains has been called “the largest (individual) creature on the planet”. Some say, instead, that a colony of honey mushroom in the Blue Mountains of the Inland Pacific Northwest might be “the largest” known creature in the world (by area, at least). The fungus was written about at least as early as 2003, and then again in 2011, and publicized more widely in 2019. Both the aspen forest and the honey mushroom are colonies of clones. Sounds fun, to say “largest individual creature!” But then again, a forest itself kinda functions like a superorganism, though its community members might be distinct entities with individual personalities.

Like, in the soil, the oak and fungus are embracing, hugging each other or something. And then all of these other lifeforms thrive around them, in the vicinity -- the microorganisms, the molluscs, the salamanders.

[365days365movies]

March 15, 2021: Clash of the Titans (Review: Part One)

Please. Let me write a Greek mythology movie. I’m tired.

I am SO TIRED of Greek mythology being so...misused. Do y’all realize how much potential lies in an adaptation, a PROPER adaptation of Greek myths? Because it’d be fantastic if done well. Look, I’m not a writer, let alone a script or screenwriter, but I could write a better adaptation of Greek mythology, I swear I could.

Full warning, you might wanna skip this part. It’s gonna be...REALLY long. 

So, yeah, this “review” is getting broken up into two parts. The first part here is really just a rant/hypothetical Perseus film that Id make if I had any screenwriting ability. Yeah, it’s basically a fanfic, so feel free to, like, not. Check out the Review here. Read ahead at your own peril.

You might be saying, “OK, bet; how would you adapt the story of Perseus?” Fair question, metaphorical yet judgmental person; how would I do it, exactly? Well, I’d mostly do it straight, to be honest. But you need to make this a cinematic adaptation, right? SO story changed need to be made, I get that. And I think that needs to start with the gods.

First up, you need Zeus, if for no other reason than to father Perseus. I do like the fact that he’s a patron for Perseus throughout these movies, but I don’t like Zeus as a straight-up dad. That’s for various reasons, but I’ll get there. Perseus’ main patron, instead, should be his half-sister: Athena.

Seriously, Athena needs to be a big part of this movie. She’s not exactly one of the biggest patrons for heroes, but she does like them. In the case of Perseus, she should sympathize with him. Perseus, after all, is one of the first major Greek heroes. Yeah, he really should be one of the first, and that needs to be fully acknowledged. Athena, in her LITERAL INFINITE WISDOM, should see the young demigod for what he could become: a bonafide hero. And so, she needs to be a part of this movie. One of her key allies should be...

Hermes should be, well, mercurial. Always moving, never truly still, because dude is CONSTANTLY busy. Not only is he a messenger, but he’s also the god of medicine, AND a psychopomp that escorts spirits to the underworld. Yeah, he wears a lot of winged hats. He’s also another extramarital child of Zeus, giving him sympathy for Perseus as well.

While he’s mostly a neutral god, he could also serve as a messenger from Athena to Perseus, delivering to him the gifts from the gods. He could even be the one who gets the Helm of Darkness from Hades, given his relationship to death and the Underworld. So, he’s gotta be in there as an ally of Athena. Hell, he could even be the one who finds Perseus and tells Athena about him in the first place. OK, Athena and Perseus now have an ally, so what about a villain?

Well, this movie had Calibos and technically Thetis, the 2010 had fuckin’ Hades (because of course they did), but no. Both are the wrong choice. The right choice here, in my humble opinion, is one that MAKES FUCKING SENSE.

Hot take: POSEIDON IS AN ASSHOLE. I realize that this statement has doomed me to a death at sea, but that won’t stop me from hiding the truth. Yeah, dude’s the god of the ocean, and of horses, but he’s also the father of countless monsters, nearly as horny as his younger brother Zeus, and the god of earthquakes. He’s a petty, tempestuous god, as angry and ever-changing as the ocean that he rules. And he’s ABSOLUTELY the right choice for a villain of a Perseus movie.

The movie would begin in the ocean, the source of all of the troubles in this movie. 20 years before the main events of the film, we emerge from the ocean and soar over an island, on which is a beautiful temple. Waves wash over the island, enveloping it. A woman’s scream is heard in the background, as we soar over the island, following an owl that is flying away from the island. As we fly over the ocean, narration tells us that this is a world of gods and monsters, and the owl flies over creatures in the ocean, like hippocampi and other such creatures. The owl flies over another island, which on screen text identifies as Argos. Here, a shower of gold dust flies up from a building. Perseus has just been conceived.

Cut to a day not too far afterwards, where King Acrisius is meeting with an unseen trio of women, in a cave on a mountainside. The king tells them that his daughter, Danae, has become pregnant, although he knows not by whom. The women reveal that Zeus is her lover, and that this will bring great ruin onto the kingdom of Argos, especially onto Acrisius himself. This is a big problem, too, as the kingdom of Argos worships Poseidon as their patron god. Acrisius, see, was planning on saving Danae for Poseidon, as a perverse offering to the god. But Zeus beat him to the punch, which has made Poseidon angry. And so, Acrisius sacrifices his daughter to Poseidon...by putting her in a box, which he casts out to sea.

Poseidon is about to destroy the box and Danae, who is still pregnant with her child. However, Zeus won’t have it, and in a battle between the two gods, a storm with golden lightning rages over the sea, and sweeps the box away, to the safety of an island where it washes up on shore, AWAY from Poseidon’s wrath. Zeus’ protection saves Danae, who has given birth to a son: Perseus. Poseidon, spurned of his revenge against his brother, makes a child of his own. But we only see its shadow beneath the waves. He’ll come back later.

Time passes, and a few things happen. The kingdom of Argos falls, and Acrisius is brought to ruin, as the mysterious prophetesses predicted. They are starved of fish, and the king is blamed, for condemning his daughter to death. He is driven into exile, and Argos is destroyed...by Poseidon’s mysterious child, who is only known by the name Cetus. The city still exists afterward, so that Perseus has a place to return to, but it’s wrecked.

Meanwhile, Perseus grows up, into a young man. He’s not particularly strapping, but he’s still surprisingly strong and hardy for his size. All the while, he’s watched over by a little owl, the same one we saw in the beginning of the film, flying over the ocean. Appearing below the owl is a rooster, which flies up next to the owl. Both of them watch the young Perseus, then look up when they hear the screech of a golden eagle, flying high in the sky above them. They look at each other, as the eagle flies up to the tip of a nearby mountain. The owl and rooster fly off, with the rooster flying higher than a rooster should be able to fly.

We follow them as they pass through the clouds, and they turn into their true forms: Athena and Hermes. They watch the golden eagle fly into a separate grand temple, as thunder and lightning appear. We’re not gonna see Zeus until nearly the end of this movie. Athena and Hermes discuss Perseus in Athena’s temple on Olympus. Hermes is a bit busy, so he’s off in a hurry, but Athena sits and ponders Perseus’ situation.

Perseus, meanwhile, has a different problem: surviving. Poseidon’s been particularly dickish lately, and the fish stock around Perseus’ island is low as FUCK. His mother, meanwhile, is older now, and struggling with her health. An old hermit walks into the village one day, and hears Perseus’ troubles. The hermit tells Perseus that the fish market is good near the nearby kingdom of Aethiopia, which includes a large and prosperous city that may also have medicine to help his ailing mother. Perseus decides to go on the journey there. As he leaves the hermit, we see the hermit’s eye color change to a sparkling electric blue.

Perseus heads onto the seas, with a fishing boat leaving for Aethiopia. The second that boat hits the water, Poseidon senses the blood of Zeus on his ocean. Being the petty asshole he is, he sees his chance to finally exact revenge on Zeus for stealing Danae from him. He sends his child, Cetus, after the ship to sink it. We don’t see the  Cetus brings rough water with it. However, Zeus again protects the ship on its journey, and Poseidon’s SUPER butthurt now. He watches Perseus make his way to Aethiopia.

Aethiopia, in this movie, is a city that doesn’t particularly worship any one god. It’s not exactly the least theistic place in the world, though, because its residents will still fear any action that the gods take against them. That’ll come in handy later. Perseus lands there with the boat, and is immediately overwhelmed by the city’s grandeur. Additionally, he stands out here, as the people there are mostly, surprise surprise, black and brown in skin color. BECAUSE IT’S NORTHERN AFRICA!!! YEAH! Andromeda COULD BE BLACK, FUN GODDAMN FACT. Aethiopia was used to describe southern kingdoms below Libya, which was northern Africa! Come on, man!

While wandering blind through the city, Perseus bumps into a young woman, shrouded in plain vestments as she walks through the village. And it’s immediately love at first sight for Perseus, although the young woman seems somewhat nonplussed. This is the beautiful and radiant Andromeda, and YEAH! I’M RIPPING OFF ALADDIN A LITTLE! SUE MEI! See, Andromeda’s trying to explore her kingdom, as she’s been somewhat sheltered throughout her life, protected in the castle by father King Cepheus and shallow mother Queen Cassiopeia.

The two part quickly, but her visage remains in Perseus’ mind, horny Zeus’ kid that he is. He finds out who she is later on, considering what’s about to happen. See, there’s a festival going on, and it’s actually leading up to Andromeda’s 20th birthday. The overly clingy Cepheus honors his daughter unnecessarily, setting up an entire 2-week celebration leading up to her birthday.

During the nightly celebration, which Perseus attends, there’s a great feast. He bumps into Andromeda once again, and the two start talking. Andromeda is kind, if naïve, and wants to be a good queen to her people. However, she feels like a trophy, set aside for any given suitor wanting to win her heart. Perseus sympathizes, and feels a bit guilty, as her beauty was what struck him most at first, but has now begun to appreciate her as a person, over the course of this conversation. Said conversation is watched by Athene, in owl form once again.

The conversation’s interrupted by Queen Cassiopeia, who makes a speech about her daughter, and you know what’s coming here. She says that her daughter is beautiful, moreso than any of the Nereids, or anything that the sea could produce. And everybody laughs, it’s real funny, people agree...and then, we zoom over to a nearby fountain. The water begins to shake, and then, the ground itself begins to shake! Because Poseidon is the GOD OF EARTHQUAKES. COME ON, USE THIS SHIT!

Poseidon, pissed off, manifests from the water of the fountain, and we now see his visage in full for the first time, and it needs to be IMPOSING. He looks at the queen, and at Andromeda herself. He says that for Cassiopeia’s hubris, they are to be punished. Her child will meet one of his, the great Cetus, and then they’ll be able to compare “prowess and beauty”. This is certain death for Andromeda, obviously, and everybody knows it. This is to be done on her 20th birthday, or all of Aethiopia will fall. It’s then that Perseus steps in to defend Andromeda.

Poseidon looks at him, and says something like: “And look! As if to perfect this offering, Zeus’ bastard steps in the save the day! Well, child, do you offer yourself to me, after evading my justice for so long?” Everybody, INCLUDING PERSEUS, if totally shaken by this revelation. See, Perseus had NO IDEA that he was the child of Zeus. But he swallows his surprise, and offers himself in Andromeda’s stead. As Poseidon’s about to kill him there and then, he hears a hoot from the rafters, and sees the visage of Athena overlapping the little owl. Not comfortable with this situation, he offers a deal: if Perseus can complete a task for him, he will spare Andromeda’s life. Perseus accepts IMMEDIATELY, without hearing the task. And that task?

Kill the Gorgon Medusa, and bring her head back to Aethiopia before Andromeda is sacrificed.

Yeah, not good, and definitely unfair. Perseus isn’t exactly a warrior of any prowess, so this won’t end well for him. Poseidon laughs, and disappears into the water of the fountain. Silence befalls the hall, and all eyes turn to Perseus. Athena leaves, and flies up to her temple, angry and frustrated. She then decides that, if Poseidon is going to meddle in the affairs of the mortal world so strongly, then she will do the same. She finds Hermes, and the two start to conspire.

The next morning, Perseus heads out on the journey, although he has no idea what to do. Andromeda begs him not to do it, but he says he has little to lose. King Cepheus, humbled by Perseus’ intentions, promises whatever Perseus wants if he succeeds. Perseus states that he wants little, but will take assistance for his mother and village. It’s done. And Andromeda, to the surprise of her mother, almost offers her hand in marriage to her as well. But she stops short, still hesitant.

Perseus is about to go the distance, when a little owl catches his eye. Something tells him to follow the owl, and he does. Athena reveals herself, and Perseus is struck, not knowing what to do. She tells him to find the Greae, as they will tell him how to get to Medusa. He asks how he will get there, and Athena gives him his first divine item: Hermes’ winged sandals, loaned to him by the messenger god himself. The sandals will guide him to the location of the sisters. And Perseus accepts.

He makes his way to the sisters, the shenanigans with the eye stay about the same (it’s pretty solid in the 1981 film, not gonna lie), and from there, he finds out where to go. In the meantime, Athena’s and Perseus’ deeds are being noticed by the gods, eventually making their way to the three brothers. Poseidon is, of course, enraged at these happenings, considering them dishonorable to him, and also incensed as this is coming from Athena, a long-standing rival of his. Hades seems neutral about it. And Zeus...we’ll come back to him. Hermes, joined by Dionysus, speaks with Athena in Olympus, and delivers something to her to give to Perseus: Hades’ Helm of Darkness. He’s curiously chosen a side, but why isn’t known even to Hermes. Will that reason ever be revealed?

I have my reasons. Dionysus, also inspired by Perseus’ origins (which mirror his own as well), gives to Athena a wine-colored cloak, impervious to harm from all poisons and corrosive items. Inspired by this, Athena thinks on her history with Medusa. And, uh...remember that scream from the beginning? Yeah, Medusa’s “birth” coincides with Perseus’ conception. While Poseidon was...busy...Zeus went for Danae behind his back. And we’re going to sanitize Medusa’s origin...a little. But for Athena’s sake, specifically.

Poseidon raped Medusa. That’s a given. And Medusa was a priestess of Athena, but not a great one. Although Athena was angered at Poseidon’s actions GREATLY, the one who inevitably suffered for it was Medusa. Poisoned by Poseidon’s actions, she was transformed into her current form. And in this case, it’s not made clear whether or not Athena directly caused it...but it’s clear that Athena did nothing to stop it. This can be changed in some ways, but this is how I’m changing it for the movie. If you disagree, entirely understandable, I’m open to suggestions here.

OK, after that flashback, we see that Athena’s kind of ashamed of her actions, but not entirely. I realize that this is a stretch for Athena’s character, but this is a movie for wider audiences, so we’ll go for it. There’s a reason, I promise. Athena delivers the gifts to Perseus, which he finds once he’s left the cave of the Greae. That’s the cloak from Dionysus, the Helm of Darkness from Hades, and Athena’s offering, a mirrored shield. Perseus heads out to slay Medusa.

Poseidon, meanwhile, has his own ideas. He goes to speak with Hera, a shadow antagonist who’ll get her day later on. He persuades her to help take care of Zeus’ bastard son, and she reluctantly gives him permission to use one of her creations. What this is is left a mystery for the time being, but not for long. Perseus is busy flying with the winged sandals, and is thinking on how easy the journey has been. He’s getting a little cocky, in other words. But that’s quickly stopped when he’s blind-sided by something hitting him in the sky. He’s sent flying, and when he focuses up again, he sees what’s hit him.

YUP. HARPIES. Now, at this point, you may be saying: “365, you hypocrite! That never happened in the original story of Perseus! You sonuvabitch!” To that I say:

This is supposed to be a movie, and it’s gotta be a little exciting.

The origin of the harpies is entirely unstated, and Hera loved her some birds, so it makes sense that she would have some. In fact, I kind of want to make them women that Hera punished with this form, possibly for their association with Zeus at some point.

I’m setting something up, just trust me here.

Harpies as a concept are a familiar enemy to most audiences.

They’re cool, and an aerial battle’s even cooler here.

Perseus needs some mortal peril, because of something that’s about to happen.

OK. With that, the Harpies attack Perseus, and Perseus realizes that he doesn’t have a weapon to fight them with. He’s forced aground, on a seemingly desrted island. The Harpies fly off for now, ready to pick Perseus off later. Perseus, now stuck on the island, wanders around. At the same time, Zeus, sees this, and turns into an eagle once again. He flies off to a volcano, as an irritated Hera looks on. At the volcano, he flies into a cave, lined with veins of many metals. This is Hephaestus’ forge.

Hephaestus is another of those gods that I feel like never gets his day in court. There are many reasons for that, to be fair, but I’d like him to have a role in this story. He’s a relatively neutral god, mostly caring about his work at the anvil, moreso than anything else. I also like the idea of having him almost be a running joke in his scenes, in that he always comes up with devices far beyond their time. Like, at a certain point, he offers something for Zeus to give to Perseus, which he calls a “thunderblast”. And it’s a fucking CANNON, YEARS ahead of its time. You also see sketches for smaller versions, which are just straight up guns. But, y’know, eus will refuse that.

Speaking of that, THIS is the first time that we’ll see Zeus’ true face, lit by the light of the forge. And there are a few reasons for this, one of which being that Zeus’ casting should be a big name, and a surprise in marketing. But other than that, Zeus’ really shouldn’t have too much import in the story, outside of Perseus’ creation. However, looking at Hephaestus, who is himself a cast-out and neglected offspring of the gods, Zeus actually manages to eke out a little guilt for his actions for one. He asks Hephaestus to make something for him and Perseus. Hephaestus is hesitant, but agrees upon hearing about Perseus’ origins, because Hephaestus is ALSO HIS HALF-BROTHER...in this movie. Hephaestus’ origin has changed in different tellings, but I want him to be Zeus’ kid. So, yeah, Hephaestus agrees to make something...simple.

Perseus is on the island. There, he’s being watched by YET ANOTHER mysterious figure. Because, yeah, that’s how these people should work. See, there’s another benefactor for him that I want to bring in for various reasons. This island appears to have been inhabited at some point, but was abandoned for unknown reasons. Perseus wanders around, and stumbles upon a ruined Great Hall, open to the sky. He wanders in, nervously. But then, to his surprise, he sees a great feast before him, as a fire roars in the hearth at the end of the hall. He looks at the fire for a moment, and sees a woman tending it. But as the fire bursts, it produces a flash of light, and the woman is gone. Who was she, though?

The LEAST used and talked about goddess in all of pop culture. An unofficial/occasional Olympian, and far less popular than Dionysus, who usually takes her seat. I actually want her to have given Dionysus her seat, as she will be wandering the world, bestowing blessings on the households of those worthy mortals who honor her. To Perseus, she gives this gift, and this hall with maintain this gift in the future. This goddess is Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Home.

AND YES I AM AWARE OF HESTIA IN THE ANIME DANMACHA. Doesn’t goddamn count, because that obviously isn’t Hestia. The Greek goddess deserves some respect, as she’s literally the oldest of all of them, and was VERY respected in Greek culture, by LITERALLY EVERYBODY. So, yeah, Hestia’s going to appear here, ever so briefly.

The other reason for this is...well, the Harpies show up, as Perseus eats. They perch on the roof of the Great Hall, and watch him eat. He notices them, and as he reacts, they come down to take the food and attack him. Perseus realizes that the food has revitalized his weary body, and he runs. However, the Harpies prevent egress, and he still has no weapon. Until...

Thunder clashes, and lightning strikes in the middle of the Great Hall! The fire goes out, but light is coming from something in the center of the table, as Perseus and the Harpies look on. With the lightning bolt, there traveled a harpe, a type of sword, which is embedded in the table. But this is no ordinary sword, as it chines silver, almost blue in hue, as electricity arcs off of it. This is a divine sword, forged by Hephaestus on the order of Zeus himself.

But the sword is nameless...for now. Perseus uses the flashes of the sword to fend off the harpies. When one of them lunges at him, he quickly moves in response to it, and strikes it just, slicing off a wing. The other Harpies fly away in fear, but not too far. Perseus takes the opportunity, and leaves the great Hall, maybe grabbing some food on the way. Now armed, he has a way to kill Medusa, and to take her head. He heads to the island, with new purpose.

Meanwhile, in Aethiopia, the people are starting to panic. Remember when I said the city wasn’t particularly religious before? WELL THEY ARE NOW, since they’ve realized that they’ve profaned Poseidon with their arrogance. The vain Cassiopeia is now terrified, for herself rather than for her daughter. Cepheus is terrified for Andromeda, and Andromeda...well, Andromeda is putting hope in Perseus, but she is also prepared to sacrifice herself if necessary. But deep down, she doesn’t believe it will be, because she oddly believes in Perseus.

However, Cepheus won’t be able to hold off the hordes forever, It’s been nearly a week, and Andromeda is to be sacrificed soon. And if Cepheus won’t do it, the newly religious Cassiopeia and the crowd will.

Poseidon realizes that his plan with Hera’s Harpies didn’t work...perfectly. Damn, he’s still alive. Plus, the Harpies won’t get off of the island now, especially seeing that food seems to be magically appearing every night, due to Hestia’s gift. Maybe and island with magically appearing food beset by Harpies will, I dunno...come backcoughcogchJasoncoughcoughArgonautscoughcough. Nevertheless, Poseidon hatches another plan, a back-up plan to get revenge on Zeus and Perseus. He tells a nymph to “find him”. We’ll get to “him” later.

However, this is a problem for Perseus still, because he’s been thrown WAY off course from the island of Medusa. Even with the sandals, he’d be cutting it close to get back to Joppa with Medusa’s head. And that’s if he gets back with the head. Still a big if, that. In any case, he’s headed there to do what he must. He’s already faced the Greae and the Harpies, so, hey! Not too bad so far, right? Just Medusa next, and then a giant sea monster! Hahaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Well...whatever. For Andromeda, and for something else, he’s going to do it. Perseus looks at the sword, and wonders what’s up with the whole “Zeus is my dad” thing yet again, but shakes it off as he continues flying. Above him, an eagle flies. Said eagle is soon joined by an owl, and the two share a look as they follow Perseus. He’s close to the island, and Medusa’s island is prominent on the horizon, shrouded in a dark eerie fog.

Perseus lands on the island, after hovering above it for perhaps too long. This is, unsurprisingly, the same island from the beginning of the film, now in ruins. He gears up, and this includes the Helm of Darkness this time. He creeps into the temple, and is struck by surprise when he sees a Gorgon slithering next to him. OH SHIT

On first glimpse, the invisible Perseus notes that the creature is indeed monstrous, standing 6-feet tall, with snakes for her short hair and fang-like teeth protruding from her mouth. And while there are some details not actually in Greek mythology, I do like some details given in the films. Firstly, this Gorgon is armed not only with her looks and teeth, but bows and arrows, as seen as she takes an arrow, and coats in in poison dripping from her teeth.

Perseus realizes the danger that he’s in, but also doesn’t realize that this ISN’T Medusa. YUP. This is one of the Gorgons, but not Medusa. He approaches the creature, confident in his invisibility. However, he isn’t careful enough, and accidentally kicks a pebble. The Gorgon looks directly at him, into his EYES, and he’s paralyzed! But...he isn’t turned to stone, curiously. This is how he figures out that this isn’t Medusa, but simply another Gorgon. He also realizes how careless he’s being, and takes care to avert his eyes from the Gorgons and Medusa.

He gets over his paralysis eventually, then carefully makes his way to the main temple. On the way, he encounters another Gorgon, completing the trio of Gorgons present in mythology. He walks into the temple, and as he does, a door slams shut behind him. Now the Gorgons up until now have been monstrous and fairly tall women, with snakes for hair and hideous visages, but also with mostly humanoid bodies, with legs that they can walk upon. Medusa, though...Medusa’s different.

As the door closes, Perseus is clearly unnerved. The temple seems empty in front of him, but he also sees statues littered around it, clearly those of mortal men turned to stone by Medusa’s gaze. He walks carefully, and as he does, he hears a voice call out, asking who’s there. She can smell him, sense him, and he is not completely invisible to her. Perseus says nothing, as not to completely give away him position. But he is TERRIFIED, and the audience should be as well. Because we see glimpses of her throughout the temple. You ever see the new version of Disney’s The Jungle Book? Remember how they first showed Kaa?

In the same way, coils of a snake’s body are seen, slithering around Perseus, who’s looking for Medusa. All the while, a hissing voice speaks to him from the shadows. She recognizes that his patron is Athena, her former priestess. She explains her rage, both at Poseidon for what he did, and for Athena for abandoning her and condemning her to this terrible fate. She asks why he’s come, guessing that it’s to kill her. He confirms this, but upon hearing her story, expresses his doubts.

But Medusa...Medusa doesn’t really care. If this is a favored beneficiary of Athena, as she used to be, she wants him fucking DEAD. And she doesn’t care who he is, or what his mission is, or about his feelings. he’s going to turn him into stone, and display him in her collection, so that Athena can see something she loves turned into a monstrous form. And now, we see Medusa in full. And I gotta say, Harryhausen had it right. So did Warner Brothers in adapting it.

Half snake, half woman, with long, LONG snakes for hair, and a long snake body as well. She’s also surprisingly beautiful, as I actually do like the idea of keeping her beautiful, in a way to remind her of what she used to be. She’s armed not with a bow and arrow, but with a stone spear. And she’s BIG in form. Her head is still human-sized, but she was clearly a tall woman when she was human. She uses her body to rear up to terrifying heights, though, and Perseus can only see glimpses of her as she reveals herself.

She attacks him, and Perseus has to think fast. In the original myths, he gets her in his sleep. In the movies, it’s a combination of luck and mirrors. But here...here, it’s going to be different. See, we’re going with the old fallen pillar gag. Perseus enrages her, and tricks her into knocking over pillars of the temple that they’re in. She attacks with the spear, with statues thrown by her snake body, with her snake body, and also with an addition: spitting venom, like that of a spitting cobra.

But he manages to either dodge it, or block it with the corrosive proof cloak. All the while, he avoids her gaze, but his helmet is knocked off in the process. She can see him now, and that’s bad news. But only one more column needs to fall. Perseus tricks her into knocking the temple down around her, and she’s trapped in the rubble.

Perseus escapes, and the other Gorgons outside are knocked out by the debris. However, Medusa’s definitely not dead. He stumbles across her, under the rubble, and still enraged. She’s trapped now, though, and he can kill her easily. She actually asks him to, and he refuses at first. But Athene, in owl form, lands on a still standing pillar, in Medusa and Perseus’ eyeline. They see it, and they know that it’s a sign of what Perseus needs to do. Perseus closes his eyes. And he swings.

The blood washes over the sword, smoking. Now christened in an act of mercy and strength, the blue-silver turns to gold, and a name appears on the blade: Chrysaor (and yeah, I know Chrysaor was a dude, but I am TAKING CREATIVE LICENSE HERE). But Perseus is upset by this, feeling that he wasn’t a great hero at all. But Athena appears, and notes that mercy is also a quality of heroism. Something even the gods could learn (referring to herself, and her actions in reference to Medusa). He looks at her, unsure of what to think. 

Not that it matters, since he’ll never get back to Aethiopia in time to save Andromeda. And then...the rubble begins to shake. Perseus arms himself, and he points the sword at the rubble, expecting to fight a Gorgon. But instead, an unexpected creature springs up from the rubble: Pegasus.

YUP. I’M STILL DOING IT! I realize that Pegasus is NOT Perseus’ mount, but he is actually linked to the myth via Medusa. So, yeah, Pegasus is born of Medusa. Perseus looks at Athena, who notes that Pegasus looks swift, and seems to be a way back. Pegasus is also pretty grateful to Perseus, as he’s technically responsible for his freedom. So, yeah...he gets ONE ride.

Perseus puts the head of Medusa in the cloak of Dionysus, and gets on Pegasus. As Perseus takes off with Pegasus and Chrysaor, Athena looks at the body of Medusa. Zeus, as the eagle, looks on, and follows Perseus to Aethiopia. Athena stays behind, and then is joined by Hermes. He notes that he’s here for Medusa’s soul, as Hades has been waiting for her soul this whole time. There’s his ulterior motive. But Athena tells Hermes that she’ll be accompanying them. She will speak to Hades.

But enough of that, because Andromeda’s set to be sacrificed! The angry mob has hit a fever pitch, and it’s day before her birthday! Cassiopeia, now fully in the cult of Poseidon with the rest, brings her daughter to the rocks to be chained up. Cepheus tries to stop this, but the mob stops him instead, imprisoning him on the command of Cassiopeia. Andromeda is also taken captive, set to be sacrificed to Poseidon to gain his favor.

Perseus gets to Aethiopia, and lands near Joppa, the capital city. Pegasus takes off, bidding goodbye to Perseus, who thanks him. Pegasus has a date with a kid named Bellerophon. And Perseus is finally feeling confident. Although, he’s not entirely sure what he’ll do when he gets there. But he’s got the head, so what could go wro-BAM!!!

He’s blindsided, with a hit to the face by a rock! And here, we get a bit of an aside from the myth to add something. See, Perseus wakes up, as he’s been out for a WHILE. As he wakes up, he sees an old man, clearly bedraggled and haggard. The man notes that he’s awake after all, and Perseus notes that he has the sword and Medusa’s head in the cloak. This old man introduces himself as an old banished king. He explains that he is there to kill Perseus, on command from Poseidon. You see, he’s been given a chance at absolution, for offending him via inaction many years ago.

The two have a heart-to-heart of sorts, about the expectations of the gods, and Perseus asks why he hasn’t killed him. The king doesn’t reveal his full reasons, those being that Perseus is, of course, his grandson. But Perseus asks him to let him live, in order to save someone with the item in the bag. Curious, the old king looks in the bag...

Stone. And thus, Acrisus’ prophesied downfall is done. Shocked and saddened by this, Perseus nevertheless takes the head, his sword, and his sandals. and takes off to save Andromeda. More time’s been lost, and Andromeda’s lost her hope in Perseus, as has everybody else. By the time he gets there, Poseidon’s released Cetus, who can look however, but I will say I think the incarnation in the 2010 movie was pretty solid. Cetus heads off to kill Andromeda, under the watch of Cassiopeia and her cult of Poseidon.

But then, Perseus shows up to present the head, and sees Cetus having arrived to devour Andromeda. Instinctively, he presents the head to Cetus, and turns him into stone (because I think that’s a cool way for him to go). Andromeda is saved, but Poseidon is PISSED THAT HIS PLAIN FAILED. He rears up from the ocean, complete with earthquake tremors, ready to kill Perseus himself. BUT ZEUS IS FUCKING DONE WITH HIS BULLSHIT.

He steps in the way of Poseidon, and screams that there’s been enough damage done! At the first full appearance of Zeus, EVERYBODY in Aethiopia reacts. While everyone bows in reverence, Cassiopeia’s so freaked out that she runs away. She’ll be leaving the city altogether, and when she does, she’s watched over by a cuckoo (or a peacock). This is Hera, and as a god of women AND OF MOTHERS...she’s going to be punishing Cassiopeia for her deeds.

Zeus and Poseidon speak, and the two come to tentative peace. This is settled in the courts of Olympus, where everybody involved comes together to speak about this affair. They note that, despite Poseidon’s petty bullshit, something unique has happened. A mortal child of a god, spurned on by their actions, has managed to outsmart and defeat countless obstacles. And now, celebrated for saving Andromeda and the city of Joppa, Perseus is celebrated. Zeus predicts that he will be made king, with Andromeda as his queen. And this pleases Zeus greatly. Poseidon, still angry, is not convinced. But Zeus directs his attention away from Perseus’ celebration, and towards one of his children: Pegasus.

A new age is now dawning in the world of man, and in the world of gods. As Pegasus flies over the oceans, he flies over an island, as Zeus narrates on the nature of this new age of heroes. And as Pegasus lands, we see the city of Corinth in the distance. The narration concludes, as we are introduced to a young man, a prince named...Bellerophon.

Cut to black.

Well...almost. There’s a mid-credits scene, where a newly crowned Perseus goes back to his island with a fleet of ships to see his mother, and bring her to Aethiopia to live happily. And then, there’s an after-credits scene, with Athena. She’s looking at the mortal word, and looking forward to this age of heroes. She sees that some divine intervention may be needed in the land of Boeotia. She asks her attendant to fetch her shield. And Medusa, saved from the Underworld by a penitent Athena, brings her the shield, Gorgoneion, now adorned with the image of Medusa’s former self, as a reminder to Athena to be merciful. And off she goes, to help another burgeoning hero: Cadmus

AND SO THE AGE OF HEROES BEGINS

Alongside a theoretical franchise, of course.

If you read this nonsense, then...wow, why? But also, thank you! Mostly for putting up with my mad ravings. I’ll be putting the the straight-up review of this film later today, but...I really needed this off my chest. Any thoughts? Any ideas? Any criticisms? Any petty insults? I’ll take it, whatever it is! THanks again for putting up with this.

See you in the ACTUAL REVIEW!!!

[leliana-sings-mozarts-requiem]

Answer 30 questions and tag 20 mutual

Thanks to @thatmusicgeek22 ❤️

Name/Nickname: I’ve found myself going by Pixel on Tumblr, tho if you look carefully you can find my real name 😉

Gender: Non-binary

Star sign: Virgo

height: like 5’11”?

Birthday: somewhere in the virgo range.

Favorite bands: oof they change so regularly, but I listen to a lot of The Arcadian Wild, Lord Huron, Black Hill & Silent Island, and Kaleo. Most of what I listen to is soundtracks tho.

Favorite Solo Artists: been listening to a lot of Hozier, Ella Fitzgerald, Mark Knopfler, Jacob Collier, and Alexi Murdoch.

Song stuck in my head currently: Dear Fellow Traveler by Sea Wolf.

Last movie I watched: documentary on Jane Elliott’s blue eyes/brown eyes experiment (called “a class divided”)

Last show I watched: heheheh I’ve been watching She-Ra againnnn. Also been watching sense8 which idk where this show has BEEN all my life.

When did I create this blog: ah shit, I think like January 2015?? I was still in high school and had it for most of the time.

What I post about: mostly political shit and dumb memes, occasionally I post about VG things and writing and misc art. Started out as video games and music but I stopped trying to have a set theme years ago. (((Psssst you can follow my music blog @thepixelbard for music stuff if you don’t already)))

Last thing I googled: a map of the world of Earthsea bc 1. I was trying to trace the path of Ged’s travels and 2. Maps are just *sexy* dhdhsjsk

Other blogs: @thepixelbard is my music tumblr! I don’t always post things often but that’s where I focus my music endeavors. Go follow meeee!

Do I get asks: not very often but I love getting them 🥺👉👈

Why I chose my URL: well, my first URL was dumb and had my name in it (bc I was like 16 and stupid) so I changed it to ‘Sibelius-M-D’ for favorite composers of mine and “MD” the title, then to this long monstrosity came about a few years ago for my favorite bastard man Mozart and my best girl Leliana from Dragon Age.

Following: uuuh like 500-something? I used to think it was a lot but yee

Followers: 233 absolutely beautiful bastards ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Average hours of sleep: oof it’s either like 9 hours or 6, not super healthy

Lucky number: don’t really have one but I’d say 7

Instruments: flute and cello are my primaries, but also trombone, piano, guitar, Irish whistle/low whistle, bodhran, and voice.

What am I wearing: PJs bc I just woke up shsjdjfkd

Dream trip: I wanna go back to scotlanddddd I was studying abroad there when COVID happened so I feel cheated out of my spring in the Highlands. Other than that, probably Norway, Germany, or northern Japan. Anywhere with cool music.

Favorite food: I will LITERALLY eat anything so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nationality: Tragically American. Sorry to disappoint.

Last book I read. Most recently, I read A Wizard of Earthsea which is unbelievably good, but I’m also reading The House on Mango Street, The Ranger’s Apprentice, and A Court of Roses and Thorns.

Top three fictional universes I’d like to live in: this might be cheating since they’re by the same creator, but Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle. I’m a simple queer who wants the escapism what can I say

Favorite color: lol well if you’ve seen my blog, various dark shades of blue, but also a nice rich dark green or the color of healthy soil.

Tagging: don’t feel obligated but I’d also love to get to know my mutuals better

@queertrashpotato @ikknowplaces @pastelmercutio @thewholeguacamole @life-not-needed @mahlerlove @declanexgf @spacehamsterthings @great-lake-state-of-mind @butchbatman @heyyitsjayy @plathcamusdostoyevskyjagger @in-the-key-of-f-major @peggyosgood @i-mossy @valeroyeaux @cryptid-god @a-girl-with-dumb-bitch-disease @legendofcutiepies @agenericpianist

[botanyshitposts]

pls explain the news in laymans terms 😭

okay lads buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. the paper is “A phylogenomic analysis of Nepenthes (Nepenthaceae)” from Murphy et al. i’m gonna link it here, and i encourage anyone interested to read it for themselves and draw their own conclusions, but otherwise i’m gonna give an overview as i understand it.

if you do not want to see 394023 words of in-depth carnivorous plant genetics content you should start scrolling now. 

so. Nepenthes is a carnivorous plant family colloquially known as ‘asian pitcher plants’ or ‘monkey cups’. it’s one of the largest carnivorous plant families in the world, and without a doubt one of the most diverse, but we’ll get to that in a minute. these plants have pitchers that fill with fluid and digest bugs alive (important note in terms of nep anatomy 101: unlike venus fly traps or sundews, Nepenthes are passive traps and don’t move or curl up or anything, just sit and watch it all unfold). their range has china and korea on the northern edge, the tip of australia on the southern edge, and most of indonesia, the philippines, and most associated landmasses encompassed between. there are a couple outliers, but for the most part these are jungle plants with a vining growth form that weaves through trees and just….eats. 

now, putting aside the fact that they’re carnivorous, one of the biggest points of Nepenthes is their diversity as a family. if anyone out there remembers the term ‘adaptive radiation’ from an intro bio class, Nepenthes is THE family of adaptive radiation. in addition to common species that grow everywhere in their range, these lads can be so specialized that there are species you can only find on single specific ridges on single specific mountains on single specific islands; as you can imagine, this makes them especially vulnerable to climate change, habitat destruction, and poachers. 

the most obvious point of diversity here is the pitcher traps themselves: there are hundreds of different pitcher morphologies, ranging from special peristome adaptations to bizzare patterns and colorations to the addition of fang-like structures and symbiosis with bats, ants, and rodents. the list goes on. these lads are so specialized it’s unbelievable. one might think that, in terms of figuring out how these different species are related to each other, that it would be pretty obvious, since everything is so distinctive. 

but there is a problem. 

they fuck. 

Nepenthes as a family is established to be one of the oldest carnivorous plant families, but the 200+ species identified over the years are suspected to be the result of very recent (in evolutionary time) modern radiation. one of the most common definitions of what a ‘species’ is that i see circulated is the idea that something is a species when it can no longer breed with another species, but it’s important to realize that this is one definition of what a ‘species’ is. in the case of Nepenthes, the knowledge that a bunch of scientists have decided they are different does not stop them. 

it was hoped, with the advent of DNA testing, that maybe we would be able to assemble a semi-full map of how all these species relate to one another and how they came to be (a phylogenetic tree), but as it turns out the lads fuck so much between themselves and other Nepenthes species that figuring out how they became the species they became, even with DNA, is extremely difficult. ‘breeding complexes’ not too different than what i wrote about in the fern sex triangle post a while back are a very nepenthes-esque thing to have happen.

a quote from the paper: 

“These uncertainties are not unique to Nepenthes but various factors make them important in this group: the frequency of natural hybrids and apparent lack of intrinsic reproductive barriers between taxa, the extent of intraspecific morphological variation and the reliance by taxonomists on the pitchers.”

in short, these plants have no control. they are not practicing safe sex. they are living lavishly in their own tropical jungle paradise with as much hedonism as a plant can muster as botanists try to connect how one pitcher might be the evolutionary origin of another while somehow all the pitchers are either functionally the same or radically different. 

which brings us to this study. when people compare DNA, they’re rarely comparing the entire genome (although that can be done), but rather they identify a set of consistently mutable genes that are present across an entire subsection of life, and look at just those genes at just their locations on various chromosomes. instead of trying to find a couple genes fit to compare plants across the Nepenthes genus, as past studies did, this study took and applied a set of DNA probes developed previously to compare 353 genes present across the entire subkingdom of flowering plants. 

as you can imagine, this provides a significantly larger set of data to work with. sure, it’s not perfect and this take will need more research to confirm (basing the entire Nepenthes phylogenetic tree off of a single study is a dangerous game, especially when things are so saucy in the forest), but it’s significantly better than the results past Nepenthes phylogenetic analyses generated, where researchers were able to see some general outlines and attempted to sort the genus into a few groups, but were ultimately unable to see where species themselves split and what their relations to each other were (you know, because of all the sex). 

so. this paper: 

-obtained samples from 151 different Nepenthes species from different collectors, herbariums, and conservatories. for those familiar with Nepenthes as a hobby, Andreas Wistuba might ring a bell; he contributed some samples from his plants to this study. otherwise, the KEW botanical gardens is more ubiquitously recognized donor.

-for more common species, more samples were taken from different places to account for different populations.

-another quote from the paper that i think is interesting on multiple levels: “We also include two unpublished species, N. sp. Anipahan and N. sp. taminii. The former, from Palawan, is discussed by McPherson (2011) and may be a synonym of N. leonardoi. The latter is an undescribed species from Sumatra that has been circulating amongst Nepenthes growers and resembles N. rhombicaulis but is perhaps distinguished by its leaves. Also sampled here are N. echinostoma Hook. f., a commonly collected plant usually considered a variant of N. mirabilis, and a sample we liken to N. angustifolia Mast., a species usually considered synonymous with N. gracilis.”

i mentioned earlier that previous molecular analyses done by other people were able to see a general outline but weren’t able to see anything more distinct; the results of this paper for the most part confirm these general outlines, which means that if nothing else we have strong support for the relationship the entire Nepenthes family has to other, more closely related plant families, which the paper resolves in this tree: 

note that the above tree describes the family’s relation to various other families, followed by ‘Nepenthes clade 1′ and ‘Nepenthes clade 2′. these two clades contain most of the Nepenthes genus sampled; the six species shown in red, according to the results, are considered sister species to the entire rest of the genus, separate from those two clades.

now, what personally gets me the most excited here is the plant they confirmed as being the sister species to that subsection of sister species, effectively making it the outgroup to like, literally everything else: Nepenthes pervillei, from the republic of seychelles.

yeah. you know back at the beginning of this response when i said there were some exceptions to the Nepenthes habitat range? this would be one of those exceptions. the republic of seychelles is off the coast of africa, closer to madagascar than indonesia. to be fair, there are also Nepenthes along the eastern coast of madagascar, but because Nepenthes is so strongly geographically coordinated (this paper goes on to describe clades literally just named after the countries they’re in) this is pretty goddamn cool. this species got cut off in the middle of the ocean and now looks…….like a Nepenthes, but just off enough to be kind of weird (the biggest thing i realized just…staring at pictures of it is that it doesn’t seem to have wings down the front, which to be fair isn’t required of neps but makes it look super naked as a result). forbidden uncanny valley Nepenthes cast from the fuck zone. i love it.

the other main outgroup species (the sister species to all the ‘typical’ asian species, specifically, aka clades 1 and 2) they identified was Nepenthes danseri, which is native to waigeo island in indonesia (that’s in the fuck zone, for those keeping score at home) and, i would argue, has the same kind of thin-peristomed, simple-ribbed kind of look to it that pervillei has, but it definitely looks more traditionally Nepenthes-like.

now, with that, we really get into the meat of their results here. this is the full phylogenetic tree with all tested species laid out according to their results: 

i….have no idea if tumblr will let you zoom in on this pic so im just gonna write down some notes.

the color-coded names on the tree to the right match their respective habitats down in the map on the bottom left, which is neat, but it’s also interesting to see how some of these species have apparently been fucking between islands. i know this is gonna be low-res but look at this swath at the top, some of what they’ve identified as being ‘clade 1′ (mostly common, widespread lowland species):

- man………. i mean, first of all i wanna point out the lone bicalcarata branches at the top #representing, having somehow maintained their chastity despite being the sexiest of the Nepenthes. 

- hookeriana being the outgroup for ampullaria seems to fit well by adorable chubbiness factor alone. 

- one thing that seems weird but not totally out of character is that halfway down in yellow we see mirabilis in multiple populations in yellow, then down from there a little ways we see different mirabilis populations in green and purple and red, all but N. echinostoma and N. orbiculate, which are both outgroups. i knew it was a common species, but for some reason i wasn’t expecting it to be like………that (there’s an entire second section of them in red just below where this screenshot cuts off). like, good for them.

going down the main tree, we get into clade 2, the more specialized highland species, which are always very exciting. 

there’s my personal favorite, N. villosa: 

not surprised at N. edwardsiana’s relation, because how else would you be able to achieve such absolutely enormous teeth, but N. macrophylla surprises me. it’s got good teeth, but both edwardsiana and villosa are like, TEETH, you know? i guess it makes sense that it split from villosa, though. 

moving from that, VERY glad that the littlest known lad, N. argentii, made it on here. i know i’ve talked about argentii on this blog before, as the Nepenthes species that was so tiny the paper describing it’s discovery warned that population counts could be skewed by the plants ‘hiding under bushes’. their tinyness, which kills me every time i look at an image of them, is somehow weird in terms of being related to N. graciliflora, which is…..pretty normal sized. same with N. armin. makes me wonder how the hell they got so tiny. 

of course we can’t leave out the group with the largest currently known species, N. attenboroughii. the hilarity of the smallest and largest Nepenthes species being a single clade apart, if not very distantly diversified down their respective evolutionary lines, is not lost on me. 

N. palawanensis is a chonker, but i gotta say i wasn’t expecting it to be the sister species to the one and only megachonker, the plant literally famous for its sheer chonk. imagine being that overshadowed by your sibling. 

on a more general note– the paper noted this, too –it’s interesting to see how the lowland species seem to be happier about jumping islands and being promiscuous than the highland species, which seem to clump together by location. i guess it’s not surprising, knowing how specialized some of these highland species can be; villosa, for example, is native to a single side of a single mountain, and is positioned so that the populations are hit by cool wind coming up from the sea. still, lowland species need hot and humid environments, and can be just as picky. it’s gotta be a matter of isolation. 

anyway, there’s probably more i could talk about here but…man there’s a lot of data. the paper goes in-depth with how they constructed the more problematic branches, and trouble they had with some over others, confirming that we shouldn’t take this phylogenetic tree as 100% correct; things will almost certainly change or become clearer as more research is done, and phylogenetic trees in particular are known for being constructed and reconstructed time and time again. 

still though, it’s like…to see these relationships at this resolution for the first time is just really fucking cool, man. this isn’t even all the species. i remember i went to a carnivorous plant conference two years ago now, and there was a lecture by researchers attempting to untangle the phylogeny of Nepenthes and coming up short aside from a low-resolution tree of some of the more major species and the relation of Nepenthes to other families, their science blocked by the sheer feral chadness on display in the tropical jungles encompassing the land between china and australia. like, i really just want to take a moment, as an end note, to appreciate that these plants fucked so much in the past couple million years that it took multiple major advancements in technology and the examination of hundreds of genes just to get an approximate look at the phylogeny. like, that’s an Isoetes level power move and im not over it

[sisoyyoalgunproblema]

Muslim attire in the EU

This is gonna be a guide to the bans (or lack thereof) on muslim attire in the European Union, country by country. Why am I doing this? Well, I’ve seen a discussion between  that you can read here about the ban on hijabs in public institutions in Belgium and France and how that’s done in the name of “secularism” (it was all brought on because of a gift-set of  Yasmina from wtfok, a hijabi muslim girl in a public school from Antwerp, Belgium) .

First of all, a disclaimer. I’m in no way shape or form an expert on this, I just have way too much time on my hands and want to understand the continent I live in and its relationship to Islam a little bit better. The information on here might be inaccurate or just wrong, I’ve spent only a few hours doing research, I know it’s not enough so if you know more be free to add your own info to this. 

I wanted to do a European list in general but there are A LOT of countries in Europe, so I’m limiting myself to 28, I might do the rest of countries another time, this is just to give you (us?) a general view of the continent.

I’m gonna put links to EVERYTHING so that if you wanna read the whole articles you can do so, the info there is gonna be much more specific, for I’m only doing a summary of it. Most of my links are gonna take you to articles in English, but some of them will be in Spanish, French and Italian, for those are the only languages I speak, I’d love to read the articles about Germany in German because they are usually more accurate than those in English, but I don’t speak the language, so I haven’t. 

Also, even though I feel pretty comfortable and confident in English it is not my first language (nor my second), so bear that in mind, there are gonna be some spelling and grammar mistakes, I’m sorry.

First of all, what is “secularism”? There are a couple definitions of the word that change it’s meaning, but I’m gonna use the definition presented by the Cambridge Dictionary, for I think it might be the most “european” one and we are talking secularism in the European Union, so, the Cambridge Dictionary defines “secularism” as:  “the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country”.

Having said this, I’ll tackle each country alphabetically in English (I’m including the UK because they haven’t left the Union yet). A lot of the info is gonna be based in this article. So brace yourselves:

AUSTRIA

Islam in Austria is the first minority religion. 8% of the total population declared themselves muslim in the last census.

In 2017 the Austrian Parliament banned all those items of clothing that covered the face, a law that mainly affects those muslim women who wear hijabs and niqabs.

In 2019 the Austrian Parliament passed a law banning young girls (up to 10 yo) to wear hijabs at school. The fine for going against this law goes up to 440€.

You can read more info about Islam in Austria here and about the hijab ban here.

BELGIUM

Islam is the second religion of this country after Christianity and the muslim population of the country represents the 7% of the total.

(I want to note here that the Wikipedia page in French makes close to no reference to the hijab bans in the country)

I think this is the country who’s hijab ban is making more head-lines as of late because of their last ban on hijabs in Universities (as of 2020) but the first hijab bans in schools in the country were seen in 2005. 

In 2017 the European Court ruled against two niqab-wearing (I couldn’t find the right terminology, if I’m not using this right, please tell me) Belgium muslim women who’d brought their country to court saying that the ban went against Human Rights.

The fines for not upholding this laws can go up to 150€ and can result in incarceration.

You can read about Islam in Belgium in French here and in English here. If you want to know more about the recent protests I’d recommend this article and if you wanna know about the ruling of the EU Court on the face-covering ban in Belgium, you can read this article.

BULGARIA

Islam in Bulgaria is practised by 15% of the population, it’s the second biggest religion in the country after Christianity.

On 2016 the Parliament of Bulgaria passed a law banning Bulgarian citizens from wearing burqas in public spaces, those who choose to oppose it will face fines up to 770€.

I haven’t seen much about Islam and Bulgaria, but the Wikipedia article is fine (you can find it here) and I also loved this article about how the Bulgarian government benefits from this ban (it could be applied to all the countries).

CROATIA

Islam is the second largest faith in the country after Christianity, but according to a 2011 census it only represents 1.47% of the population.

I haven’t been able to find any info about bans on either face-veils (burqas, niqabs) or hijabs, but the Wikipedia article if pretty good.

CYPRUS

Can I just leave it at “Cyprus is complicated af”, pretty please? Okay, the thing with Cyprus, without getting too deep into International politics, is this will vary depending on what you understand by “Cyprus” because if you ask a Turk, they’ll say there are two countries in the Island, but I’m gonna make this from the European POV, so the whole island is one country (please don’t murder me).

Islam makes up 18% of the population of the country (most muslims are in the northern part of the island, the Turkish part). There are no bans on muslim attire in the country that I know of.

If you wanna know more about Islam on the country I’d recommend this article, if you wanna know about the dangers of Imperialism and what the fuck is actually going on in Cyprus, this is nice. Oh! And this article about religions in Cyprus is good as well, but it’s in Spanish.

CZECHIA

So, Czechia (why is it spelled like this? why? I’ve had to check it over and over again!) so… Not much to say about this country (other than the fact that Prague might be my favourite city ever). Muslims only account for 0.1% of the population and I couldn’t find any bans whatsoever.

Oh! And its political leaders have proposed a ban on Islam itself, which isn’t Islamophobic at all!!! (according to their wonderful president refugees are colonizers, I love my continent :))

Okay, if you wanna read more about the whole Islam ban, this is a wonderful article to do so. And if you wanna know about Islam in the country in general, well, this isn’t the best Wikipedia article in the whole world, but it’s nice enough.

(I know my sarcasm is starting to show, I’m tired and I’ve only done 5 out of the 28 countries.)

DENMARK

And we’re finally here! The country with the little island for their muslim migrants!

Okay, joking aside, the muslim population of this country accounts for 5.4% of the total.

In 2005 the Parliament passed a law allowing businesses to ban women from wearing hijabs and on 2009 judges and jurors were forbidden to wear religious symbols. Some schools ban the use of head-scarfs. The fine for refusing to do so is of 1000 konner or 140 €. On 2018 they passed a law banning garments that cover the face.

This article is good for general information. And, if you want to know about the island, this article is good.

ESTONIA

Estonia has a very, very, very small Islamic community (0.1% of the total) and there’s not even one (1) Mosque in the country, although they practice in a Muslim Community centre.

Sorry I couldn’t find more info, you can read this, but it isn’t much.

FINLAND

Finland, 2.7% of the country’s population is Muslim. And… That’s all I could find? I’m sorry, really, if you want more info I can throw in the fact that “The Baltic Tatars” are a thing and they sound super cool.

Here’s the article.

FRANCE

Oh, France, the first country that used secularism to hide islamophobia, the land of Moliere, Champagne, my favourite cheese, Simone de Beauvoire… And the birthplace of the European hijab ban.

Okay, so things didn’t happen over night, in 1989 the French Minister of Education stated that it was up to the educators to accept or refuse the use of head-scarfs in their classrooms. In 2004 the French government banned religious symbols in schools and public places altogether (something that somehow only affects muslim women).

In 2010 dresses that covered ones face were banned (something that, again, mainly affect muslim women).

In 2016 there were very strong attempts to ban burkinis that were overthrown.

Oh! Muslims account for 8.8% of the total population in France.

To read more about Islam in France this article is good. And I’ve loved this article about the hijab in France. If you want something in French you can read this.

GERMANY

Muslims in Germany account for over 11.6% of the total population of the country.

In 2017 the government passed a law banning the covering of the face for soldiers and state-workers during work hours.

This article is great to get a superficial view about Islam in Germany.

GREECE

Muslims in Greece account for 4.7% of the population, I haven’t found much else other than the fact that there are two distinct groups, those who have been there since the Ottoman Empire and those who came in the late 20th century, early 21st.

I really liked this article, it’s not wikipedia.

HUNGARY

Muslims in Hungary make for less than 0.1% of the population. I haven’t found any information on bans on veils, but the country right now is ruled by the far-right and they won’t take any refugees (I know not all refugees identify as muslim but, believe me, in Europe everyone views them as muslim).

I got the info from this article, but I liked this article on Islam in Hungary much better, it just didn’t have the info I was looking for.

IRELAND

Ireland has a muslim population of 0.9% of the total of the country. Ireland is a fun country to do on this list because of the declaration from their Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, in 2018, about weather to ban veils or not, stating: “I don’t like it but I think people are entitled to wear what they want to wear. […] I believe in the freedom of religion. I don’t agree with the doctrine of every religion or necessarily any religion, but I do believe in the freedom of religion.”

You can read more about Ireland and Islam in this article.

ITALY

Muslims in Italy represent 2.3% of the total population, in 2015, Lombardy (a region in northern Italy) banned the use of burqas in hospitals and local governament buildings. Anyway, this article gives you a pretty good overview on Islam in Italy and this one on the Lombardy burqa ban.

LATVIA

Muslims make up around 1% of the population in the country, I couldn’t find anything about bans on veils in the country, or Islam in  general, but this article is an overview and this one talks about the experience of a muslim man in Latvia.

LITHUANIA

The only thing I’ve been able to find is that Lithuanian Tatars make for 0.1% of the population, but I couldn’t find anything about other Islamic families living in the country. You can read more on Islam’s history in the country in this article.

LUXEMBURG

The muslim population in Luxembourg accounts for 0.02% of the total population of the country, as fas as I know, there are no bans on veils, either hijabs or face-veils. So… Yeah, here’s a link, I couldn’t find much info on Islam in the country.

MALTA

Malta’s muslim community represents less than 1% of the country’s population.

In Malta, muslim women have to remove their veil when taking identification photos, but other than that, they can wear whatever they want, even though there was a proposal to ban burqas and niqabs in 2015, it was overthrown.

I couldn’t find much about Islam in Malta, mainly this article and this one about the proposal to ban full face veils. 

NETHERLANDS

5% of the population in the Netherlands practice Islam according to a 2018 census.

In 2019 the Netherlands passed a law banning the use of burqas and niqabs, but not without controversy, Amsterdam’s mayor has opposed the law since the beginning and the actual enforcement of such law is in question.

You can read more about the history of Islam in the Netherlands in this article and about the ban on burqas in this one.

POLAND

Today, less than 0.1% of the population of this country declares themselves as muslim, but it’s one of the most Islamophobic countries in the continent, although I haven’t been able to find any bans on veils, probably because the majority of muslims are Lipka Tatars and the women of that group traditionally don’t wear hijab.

You can read more about this in this article.

PORTUGAL

The muslim population of Portugal represents less than 1% of the total, I haven’t been able to find any info on veil bans, but I got everything from  this article.

ROMANIA

Muslims in Romania make up for the 0.3% of the population. As far as I’ve seen, there are no bans on veils in this country.

You can read more about Islam in Romania here.

SLOVAKIA

Less than 0.1% of the country’s population practice Islam and the country does not have a mosque. I haven’t been able to find anything about veil bans in the country, but they did ban Islam from becoming an official religion on 2016 and mosques in general (people worship in the Islamic Centre of Cordoba).

This is what I’ve been able to find about Islam in the country, this article is about the ban on mosques.

SLOVENIA

Muslims make up about 2.4% of the country’s population. I couldn’t find much else, and nothing on bans on veils. I got my info from this article.

SPAIN

Islam is practised in Spain by 4.5% of the country’s population. 

Some cities in the country (such as Barcelona, Tarragona and Lleida) have banned the use of burqas and niqabs since 2010 and, although the Senat has pressured the government to do so nation-wide, their proposal didn’t pass the Parliament nor the Government itself, no no action has been taken.

(Also, I’ve seen people in both burqas and niqabs in Barcelona, so I don’t know if the law is being applied)

Finding info on Islam in Spain is tricky because most articles talk about the 12th century and things like that, but this one in Spanish is pretty good.

SWEDEN

Sweden’s muslim population makes up for 8.1% of the total. In 2019 a few municipalities banned the use of the hijab in educational institutions.

You can read more about all of this here.

UNITED KINGDOM

Muslims represent 4.4% of the total population in the UK and there’s no law banning islamic dress.

You can read more about this here.

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND ITS VALUES

I know many defend the banning of such items of clothing stating that secularism is a European value, so I took the liberty of going into the EU official site and look up its values (you can find it all here). This are the values of the EU:

Human dignity

Freedom (yeah, freedom of religion and expression are included within the EU’s definition of freedom)

Democracy

Equality

Rule of law

Human Rights (again the right to be free of discrimination because of religion is here)

So, no “secularism” isn’t a European value, freedom of expression and of religion and faith are. So, although the EU has ruled in favour of this bans multiple times, those are not upholding European Values.

Also, I’ve been very careful to put the years all this bans have been approved because, if you look closely, you’ll see that these bans are the outcome of the Islamophobia, xenophobia and radicalism that has taken Europe (and the west) by storm after 9/11 and the Mediterranean Migratory Crisis.

OTHER RANDOM THINGS I’VE SEEN, LIKED BUT DON’T KNOW HOW TO WORK INTO THIS LONG ASS POST

I really liked this article about how Europe banned veils and now face-masks are mandatory in most places.

This article also touches on Turkey, Russia and other European countries.

I love this article about how wearing a hijab in a lot of places of Europe has become a symbol of resistance. 

A LITTLE NOTE FROM ME TO YOU

If you have gotten this far, I’m honestly surprised, I did this more for myself than others, but I really wanted to share it once it was done. Hope you’ve enjoyed it and learned something from it. I love you all 💜

[inspirationdivine]

Blank Space || Todd and Lydia

Timing: Current Parties: @itsyaboytodd @inspirationdivine Summary: Oh Anna, if only there was somebody out there who loved you... Warnings: Emotional abuse, domestic abuse, drug manipulation (leanan sidhe kiss)

There were a dozen reasons why Remmy leaving was devastating, but it made one single task easier. Lydia had spent hours dwelling on the bad, not enough considering the delay it had brought into other parts of her life. Now, it was time.  Lydia reapplied her ruby red lipstick, and pulled on her glamour, although Todd would see through it as he had the last few times they met. At the center of her chest, she was starting to feel him. Like a little bud, showing its first leaves, he would grow inside her from each meal she had from here on out, his emotions fogging up her own. Better than Chloe’s, Lydia hoped. Lydia looked at the text she’d sent him. Can you please cancel your plans for today? I need to see you. Like a good little human, he had. She climbed out of the car with a smile. “Todd! Oh gosh, you have no idea how much this means to me! I’ve just had such a difficult week, I’m so glad you’re here!” She wrapped her arms around him as if she meant it, and immediately took his hand in hers. After today, Lydia wasn’t going to let go. 

 Todd smoothed his hands over his shirt, making sure that it looked nice and neat. He wanted to look his best for Lydia-- he alway did! But, like, she’d been the only thing on his mind lately. After their last date, he’d been up all night, his mind just playing the date over and over again, his entire body practically radiating with excited energy. His mind kept going back to the kiss, to that perfect kiss. He’d been mixing for days after, the beats coming so much smoother, the melody of songs clicking together like effortlessly matched puzzle pieces. The bass, the kick, the build up to the awesome, absolute banger of a drop? His latest song, he wanted to show it to her. When he caught sight of Lydia stepping out of the car,  she looked absolutely… amazing. So fucking amazing. How did he get so lucky? “Of course! I’m glad that I could help, I’m sorry that you’ve had a bad week, that sucks.” As she took his hand, he could feel his pulse speed up, stomach flip flopping with nerves but also excitement. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

 Oh, this sweet innocent pea. Lydia smiled at his carefully chosen attire. He was completely under, wasn’t he? He could see right through her now, which was always a mildly concerning proposition, but apparently even on second viewing he was completely overwhelmed with her. She quickly raised his hand so she could press a quick kiss to the back of his palm, a seemingly casual show of affection, but really a re-enforcement of his good behaviour. “Can we just go for a walk?” Lydia asked. “I just… really want the company. I want to hear about good things. How are you?”

 Todd couldn’t take his eyes off Lydia as she took his hand, a slight shiver running down his spine as she pressed her lips to his hand. She was well, she wasn’t like other ladies he’d dated, for sure. Not only was there the whole, like, luminous skin, pointy ears, all that stuff, but she was the only one who’d ever really… liked him for who he was and supported his dreams. “We can definitely do that.” He said with an enthusiastic nod, holding out his arm for her, because he’d seen a dude do it in a movie once. It was, like, the polite thing to do for a classy lady, right? “Good things-- I posted a new song on soundcloud and it got a LOT of traction. Like, way more than I expected.” He said with a slightly flustered laugh, “And I think I might have a new gig coming up? I sent a guy my tracks and he’s gonna let me know, but I think I’ve got a shot.”

 Lydia smiled brightly as she tucked her hand in his arm, falling in step beside him as they walked seemingly randomly, but Lydia was slowly steering him towards Harris island. She listened attentively, looking up at him as he talked. All his wonderful progress would have to be dismantled, of course, the existence of DJ Dayze carefully erased from the internet over time. Right now, though, she wasn’t about to curb that enthusiasm. Let him feel inspired. It would make everything so much easier, so much more comfortable. “Oh, I’d love to hear it!” Lydia exclaimed, grinning up at him. “I’m so happy for you, you deserve so many good things.”

 Cheeks reddening, Todd walked alongside Lydia, only too happy to follow where she led him. He wasn’t super sure where they were going, but he wasn’t exactly an outdoorsy kinda guy. White Crest was cool because there were parties and bars with sick setups for him to play at, not because of the trees or whatever. “It’s honestly a ba-- really sick song,” Todd said, deciding mid-word that “a banger” wasn’t exactly how he wanted to describe his music to someone like Lydia. “Thanks! I… Yeah, I do.” He said with a sheepish grin. It felt a little weird to say, but Lydia was right. He’d worked hard for what he’d accomplished. And sure, it wasn’t much right now. But it would be.

 “You do,” Lydia agreed. “It’s just such a shame your friends can’t see it.” He would be less likely to disagree with her now, but even if he did, all it would reveal is that she had extra work to do, extra things to fix as she brought him in. His sound studio wasn’t even entirely finished, the fog had caused absurd delays in her construction, but she would figure it out. The sooner she could get him productive, the better. Of course, there was also the issue of getting Chloe back to being productive, and she hoped company and a new soul to talk to would draw her out of her… unfortunate funk. Lydia walked with him along the causeway, looking out to the ocean. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Sometimes I come along here just to enjoy how beautiful and peaceful it all is. Especially at sunset.”

 At Lydia’s words, Todd’s forehead wrinkled in a slight frown. It wasn’t that they didn’t see how hard he worked, right? They were just busy… But, that was kinda the same thing, wasn’t it? They were just, so into their own lives, so busy doing their own cool, awesome real adult stuff that they couldn’t see that he was doing just as serious and awesome stuff too. Swallowing, he shrugged. “I’ll show them once I get my big break.” He said with a grin and a nod. He was going to be the best DJ in Maine, no, in the entire Northeast. And then, he was going to go nationwide. He was gonna show them all that DJ Dayze was the real deal. That he was the real deal. Glancing out at the sea, Todd took in the dark waves. “It really is. I’ve never spent much time out here.” He admitted, “But it’s really really pretty.” 

 “Absolutely,” Lydia agreed with a smile, but he would never get his big break, would he? She would get hers, but oh, he wouldn’t. “Are you more of an indoors, person, then?” That was good news, if so. Lydia still didn’t quite have them exactly where she wanted, but being down to one meal was horrifically monotonous, and frankly unhealthy for both of them. She needed to be back up to a full house, so the rest of the ground work would have to happen later. All the same, outdoorsy humans were a nightmare to keep in the house. They bounced off the walls, itched to go into the garden, which also wasn’t feasible with Remmy there, and were just harder upkeep. “I’m working on a painting at the moment, repairing it, that shows the Irish coast line. When I look at it, I think of home.”

 With a rueful smile, Todd nodded. “Yeah, I’ve always liked chilling at home or like, going to movies or clubs than the outdoors. Like, outdoor sets are fun! But, I’ve never really been a great outdoors kinda dude, you know? I think it’s super pretty though!” He said quickly, just in case Lydia was like, a hiking kind of girl. He didn’t wanna make it sound like he’d hate it if she wanted to go spend the weekend in the outdoors or something. “Oh, that’s really cool.” He said, genuinely interested by that. He didn’t know much about Lydia, where she was from, or how long she’d lived in White Crest. “Have you lived here all your life? Or uh, are you from Ireland?”

 “Oh, I get it. My brother is like that. Rather at a nightclub than a forest. Which I totally understand, I love both, the balance. But in my mind, Nature is the original artist, and we can only ever aspire to be as great as her.” Lydia paused, thinking of Sammy’s blood on the walls, how her first thought when his body had dropped to the floor was that the blood spatters had looked like a bouquet. She smiled, shaking away the thought. He had become irrelevant, Todd was the human that mattered now. “Sorry, I hardly meant to wax lyrical like that.” She wrapped her arm around his waist, holding him close. “I grew up in Argentina,” Lydia said. “And Peru. I’ve lived in Northern America most of my life, but my family has a special connection to Ireland. One way or another, it is always home. Then, I’ve only been here in White Crest for a year….Hey, my place isn’t far from here,” She started, as if it was an errant thought, rather than a carefully planned trap. “Do you want to come over for a bit?”

 At the mention of a brother, Todd realized that he didn’t even realize that Lydia had siblings. He’d talked about his own siblings, with their careers working for his father, their lives as just three more cogs in the corporate machine. But, had he really never asked her about her own family? “For sure, for sure. I kinda think of music the same way? Like, there are so many cool sounds in nature. There’s music all around you, as long as you listen for it.” He said with a nod. As she apologized, he shook his head energetically. “No, no, I like hearing you talk about art.” He said with a grin. She’d always listened to him, he wanted to show her that he cared too. Because he did, even if he didn’t super get it. “Oh forre-- really? My family’s from Brazil, actually! I grew up in Boston, but I’ve been a couple times. Never been to Peru, though.” At her suggestion, Todd blinked, startled. She was inviting her back to hers? She’d never done that before. “Uh… Yeah! Yeah, that’d be really cool.” He said with a grin. 

 “I couldn’t agree more. The most joyous sounds of spring are the birds returning, in autumn, the gentle rustling of leaves underfoot.” Lydia laughed. “But those are perhaps not the noises that inspire your music.” Lydia pressed herself closer against his side, lighting up with a false excitement at his agreement. “Wonderful. You can tell me about your trips to Brazil as you go. I’ve been to Brasilia, but nowhere else, which is a horrific shame considering how much the country has to offer.” Lydia said, slowly ambling them along to her home. “I feel so much better just for having you with me, you know? You’re so… You make my life so much more vibrant. You fulfill part of me.” Specifically, her stomach, but she wasn’t about to mention that, not yet. This was all part of the game. First, she would express something loving, intense, what they wanted to hear, and then… Lydia shook her head, smiling in a self deprecating manner, looking like she might blush. “Sorry. I must sound so silly.” Let them tell you how much they wanted to hear it. Make it all seem more real, like you were as swept up by it all as they were.

 Letting out a small laugh, Todd nodded. “Yeah, not quite the sounds I go after. But, like, you get what I mean.” He grinned as they continued to walk, arm in arm through the woods. The feeling of her body pressed against him sent his heartbeat racing. God, Lydia was… something else. Just being around her, he didn’t even know how to describe how she made him feel. It was like she was really seeing him, for who he was. “Brasilia, I’ve never been there. My family, we’re from São Paolo, so that’s usually where we went. I’ve been to Rio a few times too, mostly for Carnival with my cousins. Carnival is such a cool time.” He said, thinking back to the colorful costumes and amazing, wild nights he’d had. At her words, Todd felt the feeling in his chest swell, warmth washing over him. “No, no, it’s not silly at all. I, uh… I feel the same way. About you.” He said, a touch bashful. 

 “That sounds amazing,” Lydia said, leaning into him as she slowly meandered back to her home. Nearly at the end post. “I can only imagine. I mean, I know you’re the party type, so I can only imagine how much you loved Carnival.” Not that there would be any raves where they were going. He blushed, warming up under her words. Lydia’s smile wasn’t as bashful of his, but rather like someone who had drawn the perfect hand in poker, or someone who wanted you to believe they had. “I’m ever so glad to hear that,” she said, tracing small circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. “We’re here,” she breathed, walking them into the driveway of her mansion. She pulled out her keys, waving to O as she unlocked the door. “Well? What do you think?”

 “It was just so awesome, being in the middle of it all. We were there for a week and it was the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I want to go again someday. It’s just such a cool time, cuz like, the entire city is just one massive party.” Todd said, thinking back to the crazy times he’d had in Rio. It had been so much fun, partying with his cousins, just bouncing from street party to party that spilled across the city. He’d loved every second of it. As they walked up to the massive house, Todd blinked in surprise. Not that he didn’t expect a mansion-- she had a private driver who picked him up whenever they went places, like, he didn’t not expect a mansion. But, seeing it for real? That was a different story. “Wow. This place is huge. It’s uh,” He nodded, still startled by the house. “It’s amazing. Really really pretty.” He said, not really knowing how else to describe the giant home. “You live here all by yourself? That sounds… kinda lonely.”

 Everything was pristine. Lydia wanted it to be. A new start, for him and her both, was just what she needed to get her household under control. A Magritte hung on the wall with a dark wood polished to perfection. There was no evidence in the hall of that dreadful attack, the Bannister and door frame and floor all following and new. Upstairs, she already had new clothes in the dresser, new sheets on the bed. Sammy Metz was all but replaced. "You're ever so kind. I made this place somewhere I wanted to live and show off." She took him by the hand, tugging him into the living room so he could see the large French windows into her small garden. "No, not entirely by myself. Why, are you offering to keep me company?" Lydia murmured, wrapping her arms around his waist, smiling up at him. Even if he wanted to pull away, he couldn't. "You could belong here, you know, here with me. If that's what you want."

 Still taking in the massive house, the art, the wooden banisters, Todd was in absolute awe. There was just something so distinctly Lydia about this place. It was elegant and pretty and polished in all the same ways she was. “Makes sense, it really looks like it. Like, that’s… a really cool painting. I feel like I’ve seen it in a museum somewhere.” He said, nodding to the painting on the wall. At her question, Todd felt his cheeks redden and he waved his hands apologetically, “I, uh, that’s not what I was getting at-- it’s just, it’s like this huge house, you know? It seems like it’d be really lonely to be in, that’s all.” He said, trying not to be too forward about the situation. But, Lydia didn’t seem to mind? At least, that’s not how it seemed, with her holding him tight and staring up at him. Swallowing, he looked at her, “Uh… are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way or anything.”

 “You probably have. I was loaning it out to a museum for an exhibition for the last few years,” Lydia replied, grinning up to him. Why were all humans in their twenties so uncultured? Why couldn’t he name even that it was a Magritte? It was truly appalling that the best company in her home was a cat. He blushed, with every beat of his heart stepping closer into her trap. Without Remmy here, it was lonely, but Todd would hardly alleviate that, would he? “I’m sure. Are you? It has to be your choice. I don’t want to pressure you into anything.” The gesture was symbolic more than anything else, but the rituals of the old ways still needed to be followed. He had to say yes, even if her magic was part of the reason. She had him so thoroughly wrapped around her finger that he would have said yes, even without the kiss, but he still had to say it.

 “Seriously? Wow, that’s ins--” Todd caught himself, he didn’t want to sound like a total loser, “Incredible. Like, really. That’s so cool that you have something like this. But, uh, I guess it makes sense, given your work.” He nodded, trying to hide how just out of his depth he was. He knew that Lydia worked with art, restoring them, but the specifics of it were all a bit of a mystery to him. As she continued to talk, Todd rubbed the back of his neck, trying to hide how her words made him feel. She was sure, she wanted him here. She knew how hard he worked for his music, she appreciated him. And she… wanted him. It felt nice, being wanted. “I, uh… If you’re sure, I’d like that. I’d like to, uh, live here with you. Together.” He said.

 Lydia could not stand this small talk for one second longer. His talents far outweighed how interesting he was. She just smiled appreciatively, tucking her hair behind her should. “I like owning pretty things.” She was so ready to pull away from him to wash the human grime off her skin, and then when he spoke she had to stop herself stamping her feet in annoyance. I’d like and I will were just ever so grammatically too far apart. In spirit, they were the same. She just needed a little more, to ensnare him in her little red promise threads. Lydia pressed herself a little closer, grinning so much it hurt her cheeks, as if he had made her whole week. “Promise me you won’t leave me?” She murmured into his ear, sliding one hand around the back of his neck.

 The way she was looking up at him, the way that she just seemed to see him, all of him, and care? Todd was smitten. He… wow, he really, really liked her. More than any other girl he’d dated, because she wasn’t like the other girls. There was more to her and he wanted to know it all. She cared so much about what he did, had supported him so much, and he wanted to be able to do the same for her. At her question, as she wrapped her hand around him, he could feel the warmth of her pressed against him. “I… I’d never leave you. Never.” He said, shaking his head at the idea. “I promise, I’ll be here for you.” He said, because it was true. In all the ways she’d been there for him, he wanted to be there for Lydia. 

 “Oh Todd…” Lydia smirked, running her fingers through a lock of his hair. “That was far too easy.” She dropped back down to her heels and stepped away, smoothing down her clothes. She chuckled, giddy on a successful hunt. It was almost good enough to heal the ache in her chest. Her face shifted, her affection mask dropped to one of indifference to him and pride in herself. It was a delicious feeling. “But then you never were the brightest spark. Chloe!” She called up the stairs, pursing her lips as Chloe slunk into view, staring at Todd with a sinking look of understanding. “Meet Todd. He’s the one the sound production studio is for.”

 “Easy..?” Todd echoed, not sure what was going even as Lydia pulled away. What did she mean by that? What was going on? His eyebrows pinched together as he watched the way her face shifted, into an expression he’d never seen before. It was a completely different side of her. What? “Brightest spark-- I don’t understand. Who?” Head spinning in confusion, he looked up to where Lydia was speaking and saw a girl emerge from one of the doors, her face falling as she stared at him. It almost looked like she was… sad? Sad for him? What? “Sound production studio? What’s… what’s going on, Lydia?” He asked as he stared back and forth from the two women. “Who’s that?”

 “How can I put this succinctly? Todd, you aren’t my dinner date, you’re my dinner,” Lydia gestured for Chloe to come downstairs. “Come on now, you can see I’m not human.” She gestured at her ears and her wings. “You’ve been able to see that for a while, there’s no denying it.” Since their first kiss, after all. “Chloe will take you through the details, I’m far too busy for all that, but now that you’ve promised to stay here, you won’t get to leave. I’ve already even picked out your new clothes.” She pat his cheek with a bright smile. “Smile, Todd. This is an honour. An honour where your brain and body collapses under my influence until I have consumed every part of your spirit in a few short years, but an honour nonetheless. You were the most talented of all the humans I hunted these last few months.” Lydia wondered what Remmy might have said, had they seen this. Would it have horrified them more or less than the basement, she wondered idly. She shoved the thought away before it could sour her mood further. “Chloe, darling, now.” She glared at the other woman, before looking back at Todd. “Of course, I expect your complete obedience, but don’t worry. I will reward good behaviour with the approval you desperately crave. Chloe! Speaking of, Todd, give me your phone, and any other communication devices you have on you. Now, please.” She held out her hand with an expectant smile.

 Chloe stood frozen at the top of the stairs, staring down at the boy in the hall. He looked even younger than Sammy had, but she didn’t know if that was because he was, or because he looked so lost. No matter how much she willed herself to move, she couldn’t quite do it. Anneliese had done it for her, and for Sammy. She’d done it without flinching, with a soft smile and a kind hand as she explained in her soft voice the hell they had found themselves in. Chloe had resented her for it for months, and Anneliese had just smiled and accepted that as she smiled and accepted everything else. Like Anneliese had been playing the good jailor to Lydia’s bad jailor. Even as their friendship had grown, it had taken Chloe years to realise that that gentle warm flame had to be carefully cultivated and protected from every icy gust and flaring temper. Sammy hadn’t gotten angry at Anneliese at all, but he hadn’t processed anything for a week, until one night he’d collapsed in Anneliese’s arms in roaring sobs. She’d been strong as a willow tree then, and had held him as long as he needed. But now there was no Anneliese. There was no Sammy. Chloe would have to do this for Todd. She didn’t know if she could. Chloe swallowed as Lydia barked her name, and slowly forced herself down the stairs. She didn’t even look at Lydia, watching Todd to work out what he needed. Praying she could provide whatever that would be. 

 Still frozen in place, Todd stared at Lydia, not able to comprehend just what she was saying. Dinner… She was… He-- what? “What do you mean I can’t leave, I can just,” He said, starting to turn towards the door. But, even as he took the first few steps towards the door, he felt his stomach start to twist and turn. It started out as discomfort before shifting into full on pain as he tried to put his hand on the doorknob. His hand felt like needles, burning hot and searing, were being pushed into his skin as he gripped the door and he let out a cry before pulling his hand away. Looking down at his hand, Todd stared. It looked fine, there was nothing wrong with it. But, his stomach continued to writhe and the pain continued to grow and grow until he was dizzy from it all. Shaking his head, he reeled away from the door. “What’s… what did you do to me?” He asked Lydia, not understanding what was going on. “My phone? I… Why?” He asked.

 Lydia rolled her eyes, pursing her lips as he made to move for the door. She didn’t move, she didn’t have to, as the invisible chains tying him to this house made themselves ever so clear. Humans were so repetitive, really. Every hunt was a carefully choreographed dance, and Lydia always knew what her prey’s next step would be. “I made you mine. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Her smile was sharp and icy, lips closed, so that he knew her patience was wearing thin. “Because you won’t need it anymore. God, you are slow. I don’t have all day, you really don’t want to provoke my ire.” Lydia clicked her fingers impatiently, before opening her hand for his phone again. 

 God, she had faced so much of Lydia’s rage and grief recently. Was it terrible to be the tiniest grateful there would be someone else to share it with her? It was, Chloe decided immediately, looking at the confusion and hurt in his eyes. Lydia had been hunting him for so long, now. “Todd, please- please just give it to her.” Chloe hated saying it, the words sickening her mouth. It felt like a betrayal. But Chloe hadn’t insisted the Sammy let go of his plans with Ariana, and- her stomach lurched. “Please.” Her voice cracked. 

 “Made me yours?” Todd shook his head, clutching at his stomach. He felt sick, he felt like his body was going to collapse in on himself as he tried to fight through the feeling. She didn’t, she didn’t control him. He wasn’t hers. Not like that. He cared about her, he-- God, he thought he loved her. But this, it wasn’t love. It was all an act. “You don’t… I thought you cared about me.” He said, bitterness and fear leaking into his voice. “My friends, they’ll know something’s up if you take my phone. They’ll figure it out.” Todd said, pleading. Hoping that it would work. He could only hope that it was true. But, would any of his friends notice? Would any of them care?

 Looking at the other woman, he stared at her with wide eyes. “Chloe-- who are you? Why are you listening her?” He asked, though a creeping feeling grew in his stomach, overwhelming the sense of pain. The feeling was dread, was fear. Fear that she was exactly like him. Trapped. A hostage. A prisoner. 

 How many people had Anneliese done this for? Six, seven humans, who had walked in here looking for love, attention, fame, and had not walked out ever again. Todd looked at her with a slow realisation that cracked open Chloe’s heart and splintered her soul. How Anneliese had done this more than once was beyond her. She tried to smile, but it felt more like a gash across her lips. “It’s o- I’ll help you, okay? I’ll explain everything.” But she didn’t dare go closer, not while Lydia glared daggers at him. When it came to her own instincts and the magical desire to please Lydia, the latter would always win. 

 Lydia’s voice had no such kindness in them. “I think you have excessive faith in your friends. You certainly have excessive faith in my patience. You’ve barely been here five minutes, and you’re already a disappointment. I really expected better of you, Todd.” He’d succumb. They all did, in the end. And once he got a taste of how good obeying could be, she wouldn’t have to deal with this again. Especially once he succumbed to the promises she would ask him to make. 

 Eyes darting between Chloe and Lydia, Todd felt the fear grow and claw in the pit of his stomach. Chloe was going to help him? Could he even trust her? But, he didn’t see how he had any choice in the matter, not anymore. Looking back at the door, the motion sent a fresh wave pain shooting through his body and Todd let out a whimper of pain. He did his best to hide the way it hurt, the way all of this hurt. Not just on a physical level but… he’d thought that Lydia had cared about him. He thought she’d loved him. How had this happened? With a reluctant expression on his face, Todd pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Lydia. “That’s all I have. I don’t… Please. Why are you doing this?” He asked, still trying to wrap his head around it all. 

 “There. Oh, Todd, you’ve made me ever so happy. I knew you would do the right thing.” Lydia pulled a face at his lock screen before turning the phone off altogether. Then she looked up at him and smiled, stretching on her toes to kiss his cheek, knowing with a precise cruelty how much he would crave her acceptance. It was like giving a starving man a Christmas roast. “Because I need to eat. There are worse places to be. Honestly, Todd, you would have inevitably been eaten by a zombie or something in the next few years anyway, torn limb from limb in some terribly disturbing way. Here, you get all your own space, your own sound production studio, you’ll spend the rest of your short life in the lap of luxury, if you behave.” Lydia gestured Chloe over, who paused just short of putting a hand on Todd’s shoulder. “I’m not particularly interested in answering all your questions or dealing with… this, so I am leaving you in Chloe’s hands. I still have to get the singer, and then deal with your social media presences. It is ever such an inconvenience how much all modern artists self-advertise these days.” Lydia looked to Chloe sharply. “Sammy’s old bed is already made up. Show Todd around, and make sure that by the time I’m back, he is ready to make the rest of his promises. I don’t want to deal with this behaviour again, am I understood? You’ll be good for me, won’t you, Todd?”

 The relief, the strange easing sense of calm that washed over him at her words, Todd couldn’t understand it. But, it felt so good, knowing that she was happy with him. He wanted her to be happy, that was… no, it wasn’t all he wanted. He wanted to leave this place, he wanted to run away as fast as he could. But, it felt so good, so right, knowing that he’d done well by Lydia. It just didn’t make sense, it didn’t. He hated this, but he loved her, hated what she’d done, but couldn’t help the way he just wanted to please her. What was happening? Barely able to focus on her words, Todd nodded dumbly, still in a state of shock. What was she talking about? Need to eat? Zombies? What? No, those things were just like… horror movie gimmicks. They weren’t real. But, her question jolted him out of his daze and he blinked. “I… I want to.” He said because, as much as it pained him to admit it, the words were the truth. Even though every inch of him screamed no, he still wanted to be good for her, to make Lydia happy. Why? Why was this happening?

 “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lydia pat his cheek twice, with another rewarding smile. Beyond that, this wasn’t her problem right now. She pulled out her own phone, texting her next treat as she turned away. 

 He looked like someone had wacked the back of his head with a pan. What had Anneliese even said to her, the first time? Had she made her a cup of coffee? Hot cocoa? Had she shown Chloe the shared upstairs bedroom, their own private bathroom and kitchenette area? Chloe remembered learning about these things, but it was all stilted, as torn up as she had been when she’d realised her escape had been impossible. The bed had been good; Chloe had just sank into the mattress and pulled the duvet over her own head until the world had melted away in her own tears. Was that- was that what Todd needed right now? She tried touching his shoulder, as if that might snap him out of his daze, and opened her mouth only to close it, the words dying in her mouth. Lydia seemed unperturbed by her flustered silence, switching out her coat for a more distinguished, autumnal look. Like a whirlwind, Lydia was back out of the door, leaving them both in the synthetic cold of her absence. “We’re not supposed to linger in the hallway.” Even to Chloe, she sounded hollow. 

 The moment Lydia had left, Todd had assumed he would feel some kind of relief. That he would feel glad that she was gone. But, instead, the same kind of aching yearning that had filled him since that date, when she’d pressed her lips to his and everything had changed. Bitterly, he shook his head, running his hands through his hair. “Why’s this happening to me? I... I thought she cared about me.” He muttered, tears starting to prickle at the corner of his eyes. Todd swiped at his face with the back of his hand. He didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to just stand here and cry in front of a total stranger. Sucking in a deep breath, he nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He said, “I’m sorry.” Todd mumbled, miserably. He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing, only that it felt like the right thing to say. After all, she was stuck here too, right? 

 “It’s not your fault. It’s not-” Chloe choked on her own words, because how could she tell him right now that Lydia did? In her own monstrous way, she cared, because she felt what they felt. She would hear their dying thoughts, strip them of all their privacy, and perhaps that was the only reason she cared, but she did. She chose the victims she could most tolerate being around, and that was as much as Lydia could care for any human. But it was no reassurance that the monster in the would destroy them with affection. “Don’t apologise to me. You’re going to be doing it so often anyway.” She was still rooted to the spot. “Uh, shit. Um. I’ll, uh, I can show you the bedroom? We can, uh, talk or you can have some time. We have to talk, before she gets back, but if you need a minute- I-” How had Anneliese done this? Chloe ran her hand through her hair. “Shit. Let’s go upstairs.”

 Feeling numb, Todd nodded at the woman’s words. “I think… I think I need a minute. But, thanks. Chloe, right?” He asked with a weak grin. He didn’t know how she’d wound up in this situation too, or even why he was here. Lydia’s words, they just confused him more and more. But, his mind was too much of a mess for him to process anything else. He needed to be alone and just get a handle on what was going on. If he even could. Following her up the stairs, he entered one of the bedrooms. The room was clean, the bed neatly made, clothes hanging in the closet. It was cold and clean and completely removed of any sort of personality. Sinking onto the bed, Todd dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking as the fear finally overtook him. A strangled cry of anguish worked its way free from his throat and he shook his head violently from side to side. No, no, no, no, no.

 This morning, he’d woken up, thinking that it was just any other ordinary day. And now? He was a prisoner. 

[tuffdwightwest]

You Are My Best Friend Ch. 1

"Snotlout!" Gobbers voice rang out right before a hooked hand smacked a piece of metal. Startling Snotlout back awake as he cried out in fear, forgetting briefly where he was.

Seeing the familiarity of the forge though, his cry quickly turned into a groan as he crossed his arms meeting Gobbers gaze. "What? Can't a viking get a little shut eye around here?" He complained.

"Not when you are working with me, boyo. Perhaps you would like to work on the next shipment of maces needed instead of the meager, sharpen these axes job I have going for ya." Gobber responded. Turning away from the Jorgenson as he went back to what Snotlout assumed was forging some new maces.

For a months now, Snotlout had taken over Hiccups old job in the forge. Working as a second hand to Gobber. He had been promised the 'Official Weapon Tester Position' but that was clearly not the case. In fact the other Riders had a good laugh as even his father piped in and agreed that it would teach him some humility.

If Snotlout's life was a fable this chapter would be called the dark years. Still mumbling he still went back to work as he focused on sharpening the blade. Trying to ignore Gobbers off-key singing as he silently cursed Hiccup's name. As they were nearing being finished however Gobber piped up with something that actually caught his interest.

"-ading off with her cousin Lars to the Northern Markets. With that Zippleback with her, I bet she'll come back with more gold then she could carry!" Gobber boasted with a laugh.

"Uh who? What's going on?" Snotlout cut in having missed the beginning of whatever Gobber was speaking about.

"Ruffnut. She is trying to become a Trader of all things and for a few weeks she'll be training with her Cousin Lars on the business." He explained. Snotlout blinked in surprise at this. Of course he knew that both the twins were planning on trying different avenues for professions, something that their family had been harping on them about, both had been adamant on saying that they were Dragon Riders and that was what they would stay. Although now apparently it seemed that Ruffnut was going to try being a merchant?

"Uh when did she leave?" He asked.

"Just this morning; well done!" Gobber said before quickly switching into something else as he noticed Snotlout for once actually finish his work. Looking down Snotlout hadn't even noticed he was on the last sword. Grinning he set it aside, feeling mighty pleased with himself as he stood.

"This mean I can go?" He questioned.

"Gah, yes! Get more work done without having to deal with your moping anyway." Gobber complained although he still had a small smirk. Excited Snotlout turned to leave as he practically raced out of the Forge.

It wasn't dusk yet and the sun was still decently in the sky which left him a good four hours to actually have some fun for once. Usually he would go straight to Hookfang and the two would go flying together but today he actually veered off course as he remembered the conversation he was just having with Gobber. He was actually kind of curious about why Ruff chose to do that and he figured Tuffnut would be the best one to ask.

After all, he still was gearing for Ruffnuts love and her suddenly up and leaving was quite a shock for him. He thought they were finally getting somewhere!

With those indignant thoughts he found himself in front of the Nuts house. It was further back on the island and looked like it needed its fair share of repairs. With cracks lining the walls and even a few smashed windows. The chicken coop behind the house actually giving a kind of unpleasant odor. Come to think of it. Snotlout had never really visited the twins at their house and at this moment, he kind of wished he still hadn't.

Just as he was about to knock on the door, a squeal sounded from behind him. Turning he came face to what appeared to be a very angry boar. The animal stomping on the ground as it glared at what it deemed an unwelcome trespasser. "Uh... nice boar." Snotlout mumbled trying to calm the animal as he held out his hands, trying to make himself less threatening. The boar however just stomped the ground again, shaking its burly head as it gave a loud snort.

Then with a roar the animal started to rush Snotlout. Screaming out in terror, Snotlout went to move out of the way but before he could he was suddenly pushed to the side as something shot out from behind him. Not suspecting it he fell back on his ass but at least now he could identify Tuff as the twin rode on the Boars back, laughing and giggling as the beast tried to buck him off.

Just as Snotlout was starting to get concerned, the boar finally started to calm as Tuffnut finally jumped off. "Next time. Lets do that in the boar pit okay Bjorn. Also! Good pig telling us when theres strange men at the house." Tuffnuts voice rang out as he petted the boar behind the ears. The once angry animal just snorted as it sniffed at the twins hair, Tuffnut without a helmet, before it started to trot off.

Standing up Tuffnut brushed himself off before crawling up the steps and standing next to Snotlout. His eyes alight with amusement as he looked down at him. Realizing that Snotlout still hadn't gotten back up, he cursed before scrambling to his feet. "Why is there an angry boar guarding your house?" He scoffed already angry at what just happened.

"Why not?" Tuff responded. The retort Snotlout had was lost in the absurdity of that so instead he just threw his hands up, thinking of many reasons why not to have a boar guarding your house. Visitors being maimed being one of them. Before he could though Tuff beat him too it.

"You need something? Not to cut off your imminent rant but none of you have ever come to our house before. Unless its overhead, on dragon and you are yelling at us to get Barf and Belch cause Svens sheep got out again." Tuff explained, "Although still, its not usually you." He added looking at Snotlout warily.

Ignoring it though Snotlout shrugged, "I heard Ruff left and I just came to find out why. I thought you two weren't gonna go through with your tribes demands?" He said jumping right into it. Tuff looked surprised for a moment before he just shrugged, his whole body moving with the effort. Instead of answering though he just gestured Snotlout to follow him inside. Although Snotlout really didn't want to know what the interior looked like, he still followed.

"We weren't initially but Mom convinced Ruff to trail along with Lars. She said she actually enjoyed it so... yeah she's gonna try to be a Merchant or whatever." Tuff said, voice a little detached when he said it. He didn't exactly sound pleased by his sisters decision but it was obvious he was at least trying to be supportive. "They wouldn't let me go with her either." He added at the end.

Glancing around the surprisingly tidy inside, he listened to Tuffs explanation and couldn't help but feel a little bad for him. He was mostly sad that he wouldn't be able to recite his newest poem to her, while Tuff was upset cause he already missed his sister. "Two weeks?"

"Or more. Depends on how it all goes." Tuff responded with a sigh as he went and sat down in the center of the floor. "What am I even gonna do while she's gone? She took Barf and Belch so I don't even have that." He complained.

Snotlout pursed his lips before going and sitting next to him. Whatever he was planning on saying in comfort though was lost as he actually smelt the twin. Now usually they smelt like a mixture of BO, Zippleback gas and cheese. A disgusting scent but they were always proud of it. Today though, today he smelt like, "Why do you smell like freshly baked sugar cookies?" He asked.

Tuffnut looked surprised as he spared a glance at Snotlout. Snotlout was actually surprised to see the twins face redden as he averted his gaze and mumbled something under his breath. "What?" Snotlout shot back leaning in closer to hear.

"My mom made both Ruffnut and me bathe in this special oil she made. She said she didn't want us smelling like a dead rat so she's making Ruff and me bathe more often. Except it has always been me. Ruff always somehow finds a way to avoid it while I walk right into it." Tuffnut huffed crossing his arms.

Snotlout grinned finding Tuffs distress amusing, "I think its an improvement. Might actually want to hang around you more now that I don't gag everytime I'm downwind."

"Haha..." Came Tuffnuts response as he kicked at Snotlouts boat. "Speaking of hanging out though. Do you wanna hang out?" Tuffnut asked offhandedly.

"I really just wanted to know why Ruff left. Was gonna go take Hookfang for a flight. He's been restless." Snotlout responded, moving to get up as he was reminded of his original goal. He was still looking at Tuff however as he caught a flash of hurt cross over his face before the twin quickly covered it up with a half smile.

"Yeah okay, I get it. Maybe later?" He asked.

Snotlout frowned, Tuffnut sounded almost desperate and what was with the hurt look he gave him. It wasn't like they hanged out all the time so why did he suddenly want too today. Feeling wary he just shrugged, "I'm a busy dude." Was his response as he turned to leave.

If Tuff was trying to pull him into a prank he wasn't falling for it. Tuff didn't say anything as he left the house either so Snotlout just assumed he realized that Snotlout was too good to be tricked.

Now to go flying.

[thiswasinevitableid]

You what would be hella? An angsty-ish fic with the ice prompt. Your work is so lovely and well-written, I cant wait to read what ever you next produce!

Thank you so much for that, I’m glad people are excited to read my stuff! Since you didn’t specify a pairing, I went with Sternclay. Angst ahoy (but with a happy ending), along with me playing fast and loose with arctic geography.

He’s one of the lucky ones. 

Joseph Stern, scientist aboard the HMS Erebus, is a fastidious man. He is also, unfortunately, prone to bouts of seasickness meaning his meals have been scant, even before the ships became locked in. 

But it also means he was not eating food tinned in cans laden with lead. And his experimental water system, with which he occupied himself on long days, meant he drank more filtered sea water and ice than he did from the stores tainted with the same blasted material. 

So when he and the remainder of the skeleton crew left the Erebus and her sister the Terror, his mind was much clearer than most. 

And that is why, when the bulk of them turned a direction that likely held only more ice, more death, carrying a writing desk while leading freshwater behind, he refused to follow, insisting their best hope of civilization laid the opposite way. 

They left him and his supplies, unwilling to listen to his case. And so he has walked, then trudged, then barely moved, across the ice.

When he hits water, cursed sea water, he contemplates stepping into it. But drowning would be worse than freezing, or so he’s heard. 

A head surfaces in a hole through the ice. A mans head. 

Stern blinks, confused. Then he laughs.

“Maybe I should take to the sea after all. You look well fed.”

The man frowns, “You look nearly dead.”

“I am.” He sits down, knees hugged to his chest for warmth. 

“I’m, uh, I’m sorry.” The man emerges from the ice, and in place of legs he has a spotted and strong tail, like that of the seals Stern used to watch from his cabin window. 

“Unless you control the weather, I don’t think you need to be.” In any other time, the sight of a legendary creature would send him into a frenzy of delight and curiosity. Now he simply stares. 

“Why are you here?”

“The Northwest Passage.”

“That’s, um, that’s a trade thing, right? Your kind wants to move the things you sell more easily across the waters.”

“You’re well read for a merman.”

“My home isn’t that isolated.” He shrugs.

Stern stares at the water, peeking through cracks in the ice, “So many dead. So many more will die, I’ve no doubt, and all for a quicker route for spices and gold.” He can’t even weep, his body won’t let him use the energy, but he shudders in distress. 

“Hey, hey it’s okay. “ The merman slides to him, cups his cheeks, strokes his beard, and his hands are warm, warm and real, and Stern presses against them, “I mean, it sounds fucking awful, but that, um, that doesn’t sound as comforting.”

“I don’t mind the comfort.” Stern rests his hands on the man’s chest, then his mind gets a moment of true clarity, “wait, your home. You said your home is not that isolated. Is it near?”

“Um, I can reach it in a few hours but” he points to his tail, “that’s the way I can. On foot it’ll take longer. And unless the humans I know have been really wrong about some stuff, I think if you try to swim with me you’ll die, like, right away.”

“I’ve walked lord knows how far. I can manage a little more, if you point the way.”

The merman looks torn, then takes Sterns hands, “I can do one better. I’ll be your guide. If you’re closed off from the water’s edge, look under the ice.”

He slides back the way he came, surfaces a few moments later to Sterns right. So Stern follows him, sometimes no more than shape to his right, other times a ghostly shadow swimming beneath and in front of him. When night falls and Stern manages a paltry fire and shelter with his supplies, Barclay, as the mer calls himself, promises to return at sunrise, and does so without fail for the next two days. 

As he trudges across the icy ground, the best moments are when his path allows Barclay to swim right beside him, head above water so they can converse. It’s worth the effort, the inhaling of cold air, to converse with another being. Better yet, Barclay is bright and friendly, curious about Stern’s research in a way none of his crewmates were. Barclay tells him stories of merfolk and sea monsters, even makes him laugh,  in return for Stern telling him about life in England and his research into undiscovered species. 

“They offered me the chance to study far off lands, discover creatures thought only to be legend. Silly thing to die for.”

“Doesn’t sound like you were the one who got the ships stuck. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn about the world.”

Stern’s rations have run out, and when he stumbles, Barclay doubles back, concerned. 

“I, I need, food, I’ll-”

“Wait right here.” Barclay disappears. Stern counts snowflakes, heartbeats, anything to distract from the pain in his belly. 

A fish hits the ice in front of him. Then it flops and wiggles across the slick surface, back into the water.

“Damn it.” He giggles, near hysterical. 

The fish lands again, head now gone. 

“Sorry, forgot humans aren’t great with live prey.” Barclay says sheepishly. 

Stern eats five more fish Barclay brings him, manages to get to his feet and continue on. 

Night falls, colder than the last few, and Barclay disappears with his usual promise to return.

------------------------------------------

“He’s not going to last the night, Barclay.”

Barclay turns, finds his friend Indrid in his human form at the door of his house on Amnesty Island. The seer gives him a sad smile. 

“No. No he can’t. I won’t let him.”

“Barclay-”

“Indrid” Barclay grabs his shoulders, “do you remember when you found Duck? How frightened he was, how he was certain you were death coming for him?”

“Yes.” Indrid says, pain flashing on his face. He’d found the human, left behind by his research expedition. Duck had volunteered to stay behind and freeze, in hopes of his team having enough rations to make the nearest town if they were a man short. Indrid found him, brought him back to Amnesty, cared for him. Fell in love with him and Duck, after a few weeks, returned the sentiment with gusto. 

“I can’t let that happen to Joseph. I can’t, Indrid, please, the last week, I, he’s unlike any guy I’ve ever met. I can’t let him suffer that way.”

Indrid’s face goes blank. Then he gives Barclay an unusually severe stare, “You have very little time, and you must follow my instructions to the letter.”

---------------------------------------------------

He’s going to die. It’s too cold, his body too weak. He is going to die alone, his family will never know what befell him, and he will never even get the chance to thank Barclay for his kindness, for making his last days bearable, at moments almost enjoyable. 

Lord have mercy on his soul. Let it be painless. 

All for nothing, for trade and money, is this end in the ice. 

Have mercy. 

He can’t see. His heart seems to slow. In the distance, something crunches on the snow. 

Mercy. 

-----------------------------------

“So this is the fella you took my boat and my dogsled for?”

“Yes, Mama, I’m sorry.”

The woman’s voice has a laugh in it, “You always did have a big heart. Guess it was only a matter of time before you brought some hard-luck human in.”

“He’s not just any human.” A warm hand brushes Stern’s hair, “I’ve never felt this way about a human before. A few other mers maybe, when I was younger.”

“Uh, Mama? Indrid says we got a ship comin in soon and we might wanna buy more’n normal.”

Why in the lord’s blessed name is hearing a southern accent?

He tries to ask this question, gets a groan out instead.

“He’s awake!” Barclays’ voice gets closer, and when he manages to open his eyes he finds familiar, deep brown ones looking at him.

“How...where?”

“Amnesty Island. My home.” He supports Stern’s head, helping him drink blessedly clean water.

“That’s...that’s not on any map I’ve seen.”

“And for damn good reason.” A woman with graying hair stands behind Barclay, “only those who need to know can find us, on account of the northern mers wanting some islands that were safe for them. Barclay decided you needed to know.”

“Thank you, Barclay. And thank you Mrs, um?”

“Cobb. But just call me Mama. Now, rest of you get, we need to haul supplies off that boat and Barclay needs some time with his fella.”

When the door of the small cabin closes, Stern reaches out, stroking Barclay’s coppery beard, “Why did you save me?”

“Because you’re a good guy. And, well, I care about you a lot. I like you even more. I couldn’t just leave you to die.”

This time, Stern weeps, with relief and exhaustion and the ghosts of his fear. Shivers even as tears dot his pillow. 

“Shhh, shhhhh it’s okay, I mean it this time. You still cold?”

Stern nods and Barclay tosses another blanket on top of him in bed. When the next wave of tears clear, the larger man is down to long underwear.

“May I?” He points to bed, and Stern weakly lifts the covers. Barclay climbs beneath them, wraps Stern in his arms, body flooding him with warmth and safety. 

“Been wanting to do this since that first day, but mer bodies aren’t great for keeping humans dry and warm. Kinda damp.”

“All-” Stern yawns, “all the same, I would like the chance to explore yours in more detail some day.”

“You got it.” Barclay hesitates, then kisses Stern’s temple, “but right now, time for you to rest. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. Raw, decapitated fish aside, I’m a damn good cook. Any requests?”

“Eggs. Good lord I’ve missed eggs.”

“Think I can rustle something up. Heh, that tickles.” He chuckles when  Stern rubs his cheek against the exposed patch of dark-haired chest. 

“It won’t for long. I’ll be clean shaven as soon as I can hold a razor without shaking. You think I’m handsome now, just wait til you see me well fed and groomed.”

“Looking forward to it.” A kiss on the cheek, then snowflake-light on his lips, “ goodnight Joseph. You’re safe here, I’ll see to it. And I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”

“Just like old times.” Stern says, only half-joking.

Another, tender kiss, “Yep, just like old times.”

[faunahudson]

a walk to remember - faury

WHO: Rory Flanagan and Fauna Hudson - @switch-it-up-rory

WHEN: 26th December 2020

WHERE: Belfast, Northern Ireland

WHAT: Rory and Fauna go for a little walk and chat about their lives.

WARNINGS: Vague addiction mentions

Fauna tapped her brother on the shoulder as her mother cornered Sawyer to look at more pictures of her as a kid. “You wanna hit the road for a second Cub.” She asked, gesturing towards the door and hoping that Percy wouldn’t notice them getting them up. Truthfully she just wanted to spend a little bit of time with her twin on their own.

Rory had been zoned out for most of the evening but he smiled widely at Fauna when she tapped him for attention. "Yeah, let's fuck this ice pop stand or whatever those shitty Yanks say," He answered, slowly standing from where he had sat crossed legged on the floor. Walking to the door, he grabbed his coat from where he hung it on the bannister, its home due to how annoyed Percy got, but never moved it himself to 'teach the shite a lesson' which Rory hadn't learned his entire life. "Think we need scarves?" He asked, thinking to the lumpy knitted item Grandma had knitted him.

Fauna laughed when Rory messed up the expression, grabbing Sawyers coat from the bannister because it was a much better protection against the cold than her own little pink think. “Probably... but we’ll look more fashionable without them!” She chattered and then looped his arm through her own. “Let’s go and see what we can find Dora.” The brunette declared and then opened the door and slipped out into the cold. “You happy to be home Cub?” She asked as the cold night air hit them.

Rory just stared her down. "Fairy, you look like you lose the other two tiny children to stack on top of each other to sneak into the cinema in a coat," He said, shaking the oversized material of Yankeedoodle's coat on her. He shivered a bit when Fauna swung open the door, and he let her drag him down the drive and onto the street. "I am," He said, "I mean, like,  I wasn't expecting to be working for scraps -- literal scraps, Fairy, that's all Glen got me from the Chippy and he said that with the chocolate Santa is more than enough, kids in Derry crying over getting shite all for Chrimbo -- but it's been nice, chill. Percy can suck a dick but what else is new?" He laughed, before a twinge of guilt hit him, the reminder of him always being honest to Fauna hitting him as hard as the bitter wind. "I did, uh, I did get tempted a couple of times, but I didn't...I almost sipped someone's lager, but I stopped myself and locked myself in the basement and cried." He admitted, softly, "But I just wanted you to know, because I told you I'd tell you everything."

The little brunette giggled, and shrugged. “I like wearing it, it’s warm and it feels like I’m getting a giant hug.” She explained with a little shrug, using her sleeves to give herself a little hug. “Look it’s not like Glen ever paid you properly for the hard work that you do. Honestly you probably should have started like straight robbing him years ago.” The submissive responded with a shrug. “It was really nice to see you behind the bar again though, very homey.” Fauna responded and then her face dropped a little bit when he spoke next. She was very grateful he was being honest with her but she hated to hear about him suffering. “I’m really proud of you for not.. you know slipping up. Though I wish you hadn’t been crying. Thank you, for telling me. Would it make it easier for you if we didn’t go to anymore bars? Me and you could just chill at home and drink milkshakes?” She suggested wanting to do something to help her brother if she possibly could.

Rory wrinkled his nose. "Aye, you've gone soft," He declared, flicking her forehead, "But you're right, a giant hug is nice and tha'," He shook his head at the suggestion of robbing Glen, because as many times as he considered it, he couldn't do it to the weirdo. "Nah, he means no harm. Let's save the robbing to the Monopoly Man and Daddy Warbucks, eh?" He suggested. There was an air of awkwardness when discussing his shortcomings, but he was glad to not be told off. "Sometimes the tap to the waterworks doesn't turn off properly." He teased, "Nah, I like bars. But I'll never say no to some milkshakes and chill. I just need...time, patience. A new outlook on life. It's why I like Charlie so much." He mentioned, a faint blush dusting his cheeks at bringing up the blonde.

Fauna giggled. “I haven’t gone soft, I was always soft I was just playing at being a heartless temptress.” She teased, flicking him back almost as quickly. Fauna admired Rorys loyalty to Glen no matter how badly the other man had treated him. Not because wanted Rory to be treated badly but because she saw it as something soft inside her brother. “You’re right there, we’ll leave the robbin to the capitalist pigs and then vive la revolution another day.” The brunette agreed easily, squeezing Rorys arm just a little. “You just tell me what you want or need and I’ll make it happen.” She promised him. “You wanna go home. We go home.” Fauna wanted Rory to know that there was nothing wrong with having limits and that she beyond respected his. “Ah yes Charlie and the Chocolate factory is very perky isn’t she?”

"Well you've had demon dad as great inspiration over the years." Rory commented, trying not to grumble too much in response, too petty about Percy to let him win at anything, including his emotions. He patted her shoulder, "Yes, you know the plan. When we're ready to ride at dawn, the rooster will call." He said, mysteriously, as if he knew something others didn't. A part of him felt bad that Fauna felt like she had to change aspects of her social life to fit him, but he didn't want to feel like a burden, not at Christmastime. "Very perky," He agreed, "But it's still my mission to make her a pessimist before she fully turns me optimistic." Rory teased, glad that Fauna hadn't immediately flew off the handle at him mentioning a girl, but she wouldn't would she? She paired them two together, she knew Charlie was a good egg.

“Yes, all of our suffering leads to great art don’t you know.” The brunette said knowingly. “All the candle lit diaries of my torment were just inspiration for the stage of life.” There were few things that felt more comfortable than chattering nonsense with her twin. “Of course Captain, i shall be waiting in the wings for when Dawn finally breaks.” Fauna agreed as they strolled around their hometown. “I don’t know if that’s possible Ror.. maybe you’ll just have to meet in the middle and just become realists.” She suggested with an affectionate squeeze of his arm. Hoping to quietly show her support for him and Charlie, so he felt comfortable talking about it.

"I did know that, it's all we talked about in Philosophy." Rory joked, laughing at how much Fauna sounded like that ghost from the Deverex campus, but decided against making comparisons because Yankeedoodle was friends with her, and he didn't want Fauna telling him off for his apparent bullying. "Meeting in the middle, becoming realists, sounds like a very angsty song-lyric, Fairy." He commented, a skip in his step. "I'm glad you like Charlie, you know. I was worried about bringing her up, because you're protective of me, which I like, but I also really like Charlie."

Fauna laughed easily. “Well I’m glad that all that money went on something that’s still applicable in your real life.” She teased, it was always easy to be around Rory. “Maybe so, but I think it’s a better goal than trying to make poor old Charlie a pessimist.” Fauna replied with a laugh. “You don’t have to worry about bringing her up Cub.. I know that you really like her and I want you to be happy. I’m only protective fo keep you safe and make sure that nobody is mistreating you.. and Charlie.. I think she’s good for you.” The Irishwoman admitted with a little shrug, as she dug one hand deep into Sawyers coat pocket.

Rory laughed. "And who said medicine was more important than philosophy?" He teased, elbowing his twin playfully. He felt a strange warmth surge through him when Fauna expressed her approval of Charlie, he hadn't really met anyone since Aoife he had clicked with that well, and he would have been torn if, for some reason, his sister didn't like her. "You do? She's a good egg, though admittedly another part of me is waiting for like the other, psychotic shoe to drop." He expressed his fears lightly, as if he were simply talking about the weather. Rory glanced down to where the coat had consumed Fauna's hand. "Anything interesting in Yankeedoodle's pocket?"

Fauna laughed along with him. “Some idiot who thought saving lives was more important than like.. contemplating why we were put here in the first place.” She countered easily, and nodded in agreement with his assessment. “I like to think that some of that fades over time.. though I’ll admit every once in a while I expect Sawyer to stand up and be like.. haha gotcha Slutty you didn’t really think I was into you did you?” She admitted with a huffed laugh. “Not that I think that’s actually going to happen or that Charlie would do anything even remotely like that. She is.. as you say a very good egg.” She confirmed, though her cheeks flushed slightly at the mention of Sawyers pocket. “No... there’s likely spare change that will be useless here or a mini paperback.”

Rory's grin faded a little at Fauna admitting her fear, but at the same time he felt touched, as he knew she didn't like to share things sometimes, always more focused on looking after him. "Oh Fairy...not even Yankeedoole is that unimaginative to call you just Slutty," He assured, jokingly. "But seriously, if he ever changed his mind it probably mean the suddenly had a stronk," He laughed, thinking of the old tweet he was referencing, "And really at that point you can take his yankeedoodle life insurance and fuck off to like...the Virgin Islands or some shite." He shrugged, "Aye, perfect items to chuck at pigeons?" He suggested.

The little brunette nodded, blowing out a breath that lingered in the air as though she were smoking. Fauna rarely verbalised her fears in front of Rory, it simply wasn’t the way they worked. But for some reason in their home town she felt comfortable enough to say. “It’s irrational and yet.. you’ve met him he’s a morally upstanding, handsome, book nerd. He’s got to be an MTV host in disguise.” Her nose crinkled in a true laugh when he mentioned a stronk. “I know it’s not what you want to hear because he’s an American. But I actually want to hold onto him.. and definitely not live on an Island of Virgins.” She teased. “Ah no, we don’t chuck Sawyers things at pigeons.. Do you wanna get some chips?”

Rory nodded, reaching over to squeeze Fauna's arm in a comforting way. "There's a law that MTV hosts can't be that tall so you're good," He assured her. He felt like serious words could never acually help, and he knew Fauna would appreciate him trying to find humour wherever he could. "Silly Fauna, it's not an island of Virgins, it's where all the Virgin Media signals come from. What's his face owns it, Richard Branson. Looks like a burnt version of the Deal or No Deal bloke." He mocked pouted when she told him they didn't chuck the belongings of the Yank but the mention of chips lifted his spirits. "Chips would be fab, Fairy. Onwards, to our next great, greasy adventure."

[ckret2]

Godzilla Recycles

It’s been more than a month since the reawakening of the titans. In that time, they’ve been a constant fixture in the world’s news headlines. But... generally not for the expected reasons. More for things like starring in YouTube language lessons, stealing cars, and recycling their plastic.

This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. It’s not ABOUT Rodorah but mentions of the ship are made. If you don’t wanna read the others... tbh this sorta sums up a lot of the stuff that’s been going on in them, just from the perspective of the humans who have no idea what’s going on. All you really need to know going in is that Ghidorah (grudgingly) yielded the fight before he otherwise would have killed Mothra. Half of the fic is a sum up of the bizarre crap the titans have been up to; the other half, is, indeed, the promised Godzilla recycling. Fic hasn’t been proofed yet because this sonuva took me almost two months to write and I want to get it out already. EDIT: now proofed!! Links to the other fics are in the source at the bottom of this post.

###

HEART OF MONARCH FOUND ALIVE

Throughout the titans' mass awakening, every news station, site, and paper in the world was filled with towering headlines screaming about the monsters crawling and careening across Earth's vast landscapes. Each and every individual titan had hundreds of live streams in both video and text, constantly updating the terrified world on the latest actions of the monsters storming through their cities.

The greatest number of cameras stalked Ghidorah and Godzilla's every dread-inspiring move, not just because anything that happened to the United States east coast always seemed to get disproportionate coverage, but also because someone had leaked intel revealing that Ghidorah had awakened the rest of the titans and appeared to be commanding them. Anyone dealing directly with a titan attack tracked their own beast's news, of course; but for the parts of the world situated between the attacks, watching clouds roiling far too fast overhead and listening to their homes rattle from earthquakes hundreds of miles away—their eyes darted between news about whatever nearest creature might menace them and news coming out of Boston about the titans’ supposed ringleader, waiting to see what was going to happen next.

In the aftermath of the fighting, for days there wasn’t a major paper or station that had a story that didn’t somehow feature titans, whether directly or tangentially. Every eye in the world was gazing fearfully into the distance, waiting fearfully for some several-hundred-foot-tall beast to lumber over the horizon.

And so it was somehow both amazing and completely understandable that the news totally ignored that Serizawa Ishiro had been found alive in Boston.

He was located the second morning after the fight. He was unconscious on the northern shore of Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor, within easy sight of the spot where the final titan battle had been fought. He was evacuated to the nearest operational hospital to receive treatment for exposure, dehydration, and what a week earlier might have been misdiagnosed as one bitch of a sunburn but which by then the doctors could unfortunately easily identify as radiation burns. It was another day before he was identified, and from there only a few hours before the room was full of balloons and flowers sent by dozens of Monarch employees. He hadn't woken up yet, but he was stable and expected to recover, and when he did wake up he was going to know he was appreciated.

Monarch had no idea how he'd survived. Godzilla must have saved him, everyone agreed; the leading theory was that Godzilla had stuck Serizawa in his mouth moments before the bomb exploded, driven some unknown godzillish instinct, to release him somewhere safe when he arrived in Boston just before attacking Ghidorah—and that was only the leading theory because nobody could come up with any others. (Rick Stanton's proposal that the explosion had opened up a vacuum-powered tunnel between Godzilla's lair and Boston was rejected out of hand.) Serizawa couldn't explain as long as he was unconscious, and Godzilla himself certainly wasn't going to tell them anything. But whatever had happened, they were grateful it had.

Serizawa's survival didn't make headlines; who was Serizawa to the world but another one of the many talking heads that sometimes spoke for Monarch, and not even the most frequently seen one at that? Only a few articles were devoted to his miraculous discovery, and most of them were in more specialized publications geared toward biologists, environmentalists, or titanologists. In most places, he was a two-sentence comment near the end of a longer article about Monarch's response to the tragedies or Boston's clean up efforts.

But the world was still reeling from the damage, struggling to sift through the rubble for any little signs to reassure them that this could have been a lot worse and that from now on, things could start to get better.

For Monarch, finding Serizawa alive was their sign.

GHIDORAH ROOSTS OFF EAST COAST OF MEXICO, AVOIDS FURTHER DESTRUCTION

For many others, their sign was Isla de Mara.

After the battle in Boston, when Rodan and Ghidorah began their slow flight south, Monarch was sure that they were going to head to Isla de Mara. Monarch operatives were surrounding the island when they arrived. The titans’ trajectory had been calculated, their arrival anticipated, and—although Monarch had no idea what they could actually do when the titans arrived—Monarch was sure to be there, all the same. If for no other reason than to document.

The town was still all but empty—under quarantine by the Mexican government. Rescuers were working their way through town, looking for bodies or survivors that hadn't joined the initial evacuation, in toppled buildings or buried by pyroclastic flow; but nearly everyone who could be removed from the island had been.

All the same, there was a perceptible tension over the quiet radio lines as the two titans descended into view through the clouds of volcanic ash. Just their arrival stirred tumult, kicking up clouds of previously-settled ash and rubble. Monarch and the few rescuers in the town braced themselves for hurricane-force winds to blow through what was left of the town, knocking over already-damaged buildings.

They didn't.

Although the ash on the volcano churned in the air around the two titans, not so much as a breeze stirred in the town below.

Then the titans were settled, Rodan sinking into his crater as comfortably as a vacationer into a jacuzzi, Ghidorah clinging to the side of the volcano like a bat.

And when the news got out, the world let out a tense sigh of relief. That was the sign everyone had been waiting for: the sign that, at least for now, this was really over.

PRELIMINARY FLUID DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF AIR CURRENTS IN JOINT LANDING BETWEEN TITANUS RODAN AND MONSTER ZERO

It took days of analyzing Monarch's footage of Rodan and Ghidorah landing before a pack of fascinated aerodynamicists with expertise in computational fluid dynamics could run a proper simulation demonstrating how their wings affected the air. What the simulation revealed was that Rodan's landing should have blown devastating wind into the town below. However, Ghidorah's landing, facing directly across from Rodan and wings tilted at just the right angle, had pushed the air currents back the other way—effectively turning the force of Rodan's flaps out to sea.

And furthermore, they said it wasn't accidental. They had abundant footage now from the first time Ghidorah had landed on Isla de Mara, from his various takeoffs and landings in Boston, and from the few times he'd left and returned to Isla de Mara without being accompanied by Rodan. That wasn't how Ghidorah usually landed.

It was, however, what he had done when Rodan landed; and it was what he did in subsequent days every time Rodan returned to his volcano, until Rodan began habitually landing on the north side of the volcano instead.

The paper was released as a messy rough draft directly online, bypassing journalistic publication entirely to make it as easy as possible for everyone who might be concerned to get to the findings; in the aftermath of the titan attacks, the authors had the patience neither for peer review nor for the slow publication process and paywalls blocking off most of their usual journals. To everyone who read the preliminary paper—mainly titanologists and other aerodynamicists—the thought of a flying creature so consciously and precisely manipulating air currents like that was absolutely mind-boggling.

Even more mind-boggling was the thought that Ghidorah had bothered to do it.

Why?

TITANS EXPLORE LANDSCAPE: MOST HUMAN INTERACTIONS PEACEFUL

Over and over, they were discovering just how alarmingly clever the titans were. More than once, Kraken had camouflaged itself as a capsized ship, tentacles pressed together in the shape of a hull, just to splash any boats that came close to investigate and disappear beneath the sea, like it was playing a game with humans. Behemoth, on his way back down from Boston to Rio de Janeiro, had stopped in Guatemala to observe a construction site, waited there until the panicked workers decided he wasn't going to attack and returned to work, and then, after watching them a bit, had started doing the crane's job by picking up steel beams and putting them in place.

As articles about the damage, the deaths, and the global response to the tragedies began to receive smaller and less dire headlines, the articles about the titans' frightening and fascinating intelligence began popping up—usually not making front page news, but popping up regularly on page 2. Cell phone videos racked up millions of views.

Scylla had etched deep grooves in strange shapes in Death Valley before heading north; a few days later, the MUTO passed through, stopped and studied the grooves, before turning north as well. Which meant they were, what, a map? Instructions? It at least indicated that titans were capable of communicating with abstract symbols—that was ninety percent of the way to writing. It further suggested that the titans had language, mutually intelligible language.

Many of Monarch's employees already suspected as much; the titans vocalized at each other so much, it was completely plausible that they'd developed the capacity for speech.

They didn't expect the theory to be confirmed so blatantly.

"LANGUAGE OF THE BIG BIRDS"? MONARCH RELEASES TITAN LANGUAGE LESSONS STARRING RODAN, GHIDORAH

Outpost 56-B, which had been cobbled together within hours of Ghidorah's landing on Isla de Mara, consisted of five permanent employees, three trailers, two porta-potties, eleven (and decreasing) drones, forty cameras, one satellite, and one big red button to radio the Armada de México in case of dragon-shaped emergency. Along with the full-time employees, they had fifteen part-timers they'd hired from among the people slowly returning to town: fourteen to help monitor the titans through the cameras 24/7, and one to bike in from town with lunch each day. The outpost was stationed just north of the still-standing portions of the town of Isla de Mara, near the very edge of the volcanic rock that had been spilled when Rodan emerged. (They used to have four trailers, but the one that had been standing on volcanic rock had been kicked into town by Ghidorah. They took that to mean they weren't allowed to step on the rock.)

Outpost 56-B was surpassed for Monarch's most pathetic outpost only by Outpost 75-B, which consisted of two motorboats, a pair of walkie-talkies, a generous Airbnb stipend, and a rechargeable flashlight with a cord that, they'd discovered too late, wasn't compatible with Sudanese power outlets.

And yet, for what a ramshackle little operation Outpost 56-B was, it had been the one to provide proof of titan language. And god, what proof! They had recorded evidence of a giant pteranodon giving language lessons to a three-headed alien dragon. Slowly, and carefully; gesturing to each object or performing each action before giving the word; saying each word clearly, several times; using them in simple sentences based on previous vocabulary, each word kept separate and distinct. 

Consequently, Monarch was learning Rodan's language alongside Ghidorah. So far, they had eighteen nouns, seven verbs, five adjectives, a catch-all question word that seemed to mean "who," "what," "when," and "where" all together, the words for "yes" and "no," and one interjection that seemed to mean "look at me" or "pay attention." They knew that Rodan had words for compass directions—two of them, anyway—and that his language conflated the concept of "west" with "up" and of "east" with "down" into only two words. They had Rodan's name for Ghidorah—and Rodan's name for himself, a three-part carrying "Rrrr-DAAA-nnn" cry that they immediately identified as the probable source of the remarkably consistent name that cultures around the world assigned members of Titanus Rodan. Had this one Rodan been spotted in so many locations? Or had he given Ghidorah his species name rather than his personal name? Did members of Rodan's species have personal names?

Very soon, they might be able to ask him.

Outpost 56-B started a YouTube channel, titled it "lenguaje de los pájaros titánicos (para principiantes)" and started uploading videos with both Spanish and English subtitles for anyone who couldn't work out the translations just by watching Rodan. (When Monarch HQ emailed to complain that 56-B had to ask before declassifying that kind of material, they kept posting videos, blurred out the extremely easily identifiable titans' faces, and emailed back to request a third porta-potty.) There were human beings, alive today, all over the planet, learning alongside a literal alien how to understand a titan's language.

Over the next couple of weeks, while every titan's face battled for screen time on every major news station, Godzilla's and Ghidorah's gradually appeared less and less on North American stations as the recently-averted apocalypse became old news and full-blown sapient speaking life found off the coast of the Mexico-U.S. border became the new hot story. Between his face flashing on every major news station over headlines about titan language as talking heads speculated about the possibility of complex titan civilizations, and a wave of Tamaulipeco defenders eager to claim Rodan as a state symbol who were ready to point out that most of the damage on and around Isla de Mara had actually been caused by the U.S. military, Rodan was now the most popular titan on Earth.

And then he made a trip to Infant Island.

INDONESIAN INFANT ISLANDERS VINDICATED: "GODDESS" MOTHRA COMES HOME

Many articles mentioned the fact that after the battle, Mothra had retreated to a small island in the Indonesian archipelago. Some of them even mentioned the name Infant Island.

Very few outside of local and specialist publications discussed that the Infant Islanders were reveling in the fact that their previously derided "local folkloric" claim to having been the home of a goddess had been very recently validated when Godzilla ferried Mothra straight to their island, where she settled down into a well-worn groove in the middle of town square as though she'd never left it. One reason this news was under-reported probably had to do with the fact that they refused to let reporters on the island, fearful that it would become trampled as a new tourist destination; and the threatening psychic weight of Mothra's mind pressing down on any presumptuous reporters approaching in boats hoping to be the exception deterred those who tried to defy the ban. Instead, they arranged for interviews off island or online, and provided any requested pictures of Mothra—when she agreed, of course.

The only outsiders who had been allowed on the island had been the Chen twins, accepted as valid representatives for Mothra. Although their island still had descendants from the line of twin sisters that Mothra had gifted them, they had no living twins from that line. Mothra had already promised them that their next generation of children would have twin daughters. In the meantime, visiting twins from another of Mothra's nests were... well... acceptable, the Islanders supposed. They hastily established rules about how much the Chen twins could report to outsiders about the island and its people and culture, which they faithfully followed. (Even as much as it killed legend collector Ilene to not immediately ask a million questions about what stories they'd passed down about Mothra.)

They were, however, allowed to transcribe any of Mothra's telepathic conversations with visiting titans into Mandarin as long as she herself permitted it—and she did continue to permit it—and so it was when Rodan arrived to have a long, apparently one-sided conversation with Mothra.

TITANIC ROSETTA STONE? MONARCH TRANSLATES RODAN, MOTHRA CONVERSATION

It wasn't quite as cut-and-dry as Rodan's accidental language lessons; especially since there were parts of the conversation where Mothra had sought out information straight from Rodan's mind that the Chen twins couldn't make any sense of—except that Rodan’s thoughts had something to do with a very interesting hug-like display on Isla de Mara from the day before, and that they were rotten with fear.

(The “hug” from Ghidorah to Rodan—if that was what it was—was already infamous in Monarch. The 56-B team had eagerly circulated it throughout Monarch yesterday in the form of a several-second video that was set to the cheesiest pop song they could find and covered in heart emojis. Shortly before they’d uploaded the same video—without authorization—to their official Twitter and TikTok accounts. Stories about Rodan were beginning to pop up not just under news sites' World sections, but also under Entertainment. It was a jarring sight, considering how many of those stories also featured an alien dragon that had recently tried to destroy the world.)

But despite not having a word-for-word translation, Rodan's conversation with Mothra and its Mandarin translation did offer the possibility of a rosetta stone with which they could decipher far more about his language. Comparing his language lessons with Ghidorah to his conversation with Mothra was like comparing day one of a college Spanish 1 class to Don Quixote. It was a huge leap forward toward the day—which now seemed not like a possibility but an inevitability—when they would be able to pipe sentences in Rodan's language  through a speaker and have a real conversation with him.

Rodan's trip to Infant Island should have been the most noteworthy titan news of the day.

But noteworthy news was nearly impossible to predict.

GHIDORAH RETURNS TO BOSTON, LIVE UPDATES: ONE INJURED. EXPLORES RUBBLE, INTERACTS WITH HUMANS.

Two hours before Rodan's conversation with Mothra,  the eyes of half the planet had been glued to a constant live news stream coming out of the United States, as one local station after another trained its cameras toward the skies, following Ghidorah as he headed north. The world dreaded that the moment Rodan left him unsupervised, he'd decided to pick up exactly where he'd left off. It seemed that he’d even returned to Boston specifically to continue his apocalypse.

Instead, he stole a speaker and a car, made fun of the U.S. Army, complied with some demolitionists' request to help them take down a building, and went home.

After that, the far more academic matter of a new jump forward in titan linguistics was relegated to a small article on Monarch's official titan tracking website.

MONARCH ISSUES RED ALERT: GHIDORAH AND RODAN MOVING SOUTH OVER ATLANTIC

Another example of the unpredictability of newsworthy items:

Rodan—along with Ghidorah—was back in the news later that evening for what the 56-B crew was insistently calling a "lovers' spat," a brief skirmish that ended with Ghidorah literally storming off to Antarctica and Rodan charging into the hurricane after him.

For several hours, the world was braced, yet again, for the potential end of the world.

But before the next morning, it was clear that the skirmish was going to end with no further loss of human life—even the four Monarch employees stationed in what was left of Outpost 32 had evacuated long before Ghidorah had arrived to sweep the ruins into the very hole he'd emerged from. Coasts in the southern hemisphere on both sides of the Atlantic were hit with vicious waves as Ghidorah's hurricane passed by, but nothing that threatened seaside homes, and the worst they got in the way of weather was strong drizzles and stiff breezes. Satellite monitoring, a few absurdly far-off jets, and the evacuated Antarctic Monarch employees squinting through the blizzard caught fuzzy lightning-lit glimpses of another terrible titanic battle; but by the time anyone was close enough to record the fighting properly, it had ended with the two titans sitting on the coast of Antarctica together, having another language lesson.

(Outpost 56-B demanded that HQ send them the footage so that they could update their YouTube channel. HQ refused to do so until they'd reviewed the footage themselves. A traitor within the ranks sent 56-B the footage anyway, and the world was graced with the knowledge of Rodan's word for "snow.")

But despite the fact that the turbulence from Isla de Mara ultimately ended up having all of the newsworthy appeal of celebrity relationship drama, it still received far more coverage than the real breaking news happening halfway around the world:

GODZILLA RECYCLES

In the town of Kuta, on the island of Bali, in Indonesia, was the Ngurah Rai International Airport.

Godzilla had been harassing it for the last two weeks.

The airport crossed nearly the entire length of a peninsula, its runway jutting out into the sea to the west and to the east only separated from water by a strip of trees hardly a fifth of a mile wide. Kuta Beach stretched out along the coast both north and south of the runway. Located an equal distance away from the outposts that had contained titans "Typhon" and "Bunyip," Kuta was untouched by the recent attacks; but the beaches were still oddly barren, as the tourism that would usually be ramping up this time of year was reduced due to the vast swathes of the human population that had to instead turn their resources to recovering from the recent attacks. Still, there were some tourists out on Kuta Beach—enough that, when Godzilla's dorsal plates rose out of the ocean to the west, the wave of people running east to avoid him could be veritably classified as a stampede.

As Godzilla approached the Ngurah Rai International Airport, every airplane that hadn't taken off was grounded and those coming in were frantically redirected to nearby islands. He lumbered straight up to the side of the runway, feet still in the water of the beach as he leaned over the runway, dropped a massive pile of nets, and promptly turned around and returned to the ocean.

The airport shut down all operations and called Monarch.

As Serizawa, the world's only true Godzilla expert, was still in a coma, Monarch had to guess at what he'd say about Godzilla's strange behavior. They decided that Serizawa would probably say he was trying to restore Earth's natural order, which probably included dealing with its pollution; so Godzilla was returning human detritus to whom it belonged—the humans—so that they could properly clean up their own mess.

So the airport waited a day, removed the nets with a hazmat crew, and the next day was cautiously back in business.

And a day later, Godzilla was back with another delivery of nets. When he reached the spot where he'd dropped his first pile, he paused, looked around, and then climbed onto the runway and stormed along the length of it, apparently looking for his original stash. He pushed aside airplanes and bent over to peer into hangars and terminals, where terrified travelers who thought they'd be safer inside stared back at him. Eventually he gave up and, with a roar of frustration, sank back underwater.

This time, Monarch decided they were pretty terrible at roleplaying as Serizawa and advised the airport to leave the nets be.

They pushed the nets to the very corner of the airport grounds, near where Godzilla had left them and still out in the open but off of the runway itself. They stank. Apology signs were posted on the nearby beach and the tourists moved further south.

The third time Godzilla visited, he graciously accepted their relocation, added his new nets, and left in peace.

After several more such trips, he showed up in the middle of the night with a new piece of cargo: Mothra, riding on his back, her wings—one whole, one tattered since the battle in Boston—raised high.

A monarch ship, with the Chen twins on board, followed close behind, ready and eager to find out from Mothra just what in the hell Godzilla was doing with the nets.

Whatever the titans talked about on their way to Bali, Monarch had been too far away to hear. But now that they were on land and speaking to each other, in roars and in telepathy, the Chen twins began translating and transcribing their conversation:

"It's ugly," Godzilla said, "But I think it will work."

Mothra had climbed off of his back and onto the airport grounds, and was prodding at the pile of nets with one leg. I'm not so sure.

"We can try it! It'll be fine."

Why are we so close to humans? Mothra turned toward the airport, which was one again closed. At least at this time of night there were far fewer travelers. They're nervous.

"This is the only place with flat enough ground." He jerked his head toward the runway. "Lay down with your wing on the flat strip. I'll trace it."

Someone had produced some spotlights—Monarch didn't know who, they weren't working with them—and pointed it at the titans. Mothra had gestured for them to point the light down at the runway instead. Although whoever was behind the lights apparently didn't have enough sense to not shine a giant flashlight in a couple of city-destroying monsters' faces, they did at least have enough sense to listen when the less destructive one made a request, and pointed the light down. It shined off of Mothra's good wing as she maneuvered herself onto her back and lay it flat on the runway.

Godzilla knelt next to her and very carefully traced around the wing with a claw, scraping a gouge into the concrete. "I've melted the humans' floating weeds before," he said, and Mothra silently clarified to the Chen twins that he was referring to the nets. He did have a word for nets, but the word didn't convey his disdain for them the way "floating weeds" did. "If you get enough of it together, when it cools, it makes a solid layer. We just have to make a barrier around the outline and melt the weeds in it. The hard part is making a barrier that won't melt or catch fire. I still don't know what to use, but we can probably find something nearby. Maybe we can make glass on the beach."

Why don't you make a flat layer from the floating weeds without a barrier and then cut a wing shape out of it?

Godzilla stopped halfway through tracing Mothra's wing, looked at the gouge he'd already carved into the runway, and said, "I guess that would be easier."

As they dragged the nets onto the runway, Mothra said, Rodan visited today.

Godzilla's head jerked up. "Has the freak tried to kill him yet?"

No.

"Is he being mind controlled?"

I'm not sure. I don't think so—he doesn't think so—but I don't know.

Godzilla let out a low, displeased grumble. "What's going on over there?"

And Mothra didn't know—not for sure—so, for a moment, they were both silent. They finished piling the nets together in the middle of the runway. Godzilla's dorsal plates began glowing—not their usual piercingly bright blue, but a very dull glow that flickered near the bases of his plates like he was trying unsteadily to keep his power low. The light traveled far slower than usual up his back. He opened his mouth halfway as the light neared his head.

Finally, uncertainly, Mothra said, I think they might like Rodan.

Godzilla's plates flashed nearly white. He hacked out a ball of blue light, then let out a cough that rattled windows.

Sorry.

"Timing!" Godzilla looked at the bit at the edge of the nets that had been incinerated, whined, and started gearing up for another, more controlled burst. To the Chen twins' surprise, the conversation continued; apparently either Godzilla was also telepathic, or could simply think thoughts that Mothra could translate as easily as his usual speech. What do you mean, "like"? As a mate? As a meal? As something to beat up?

(Someone on the Monarch ship made a mental note to call up Mark and tell him that Godzilla also wasn't sure whether Ghidorah was looking to Rodan for food, a fight, or a fuck.)

As a mate, Mothra said. Or a friend? Something positive. Something social. Either they like him, or they're trying to trick Rodan into liking them—and if it's the latter, I don't know what they're after.

If it's not the latter? This time, Godzilla got it right. His atomic breath looked more like the flame of an oversized bunsen burner: translucent blue, mostly steady, faintly flickering. He began slowly melting down the massive pile of fishing nets.

If they really do like him... then I still don't know what they're after. I have no idea what someone from another world thinks mating is for.

You'll have a better idea than any of us. You're the only one that's been to other planets.

(Ling Chen clapped both hands over her mouth and let out a long, quiet, high-pitched noise. The Monarch employees, watching an automatic google-translated English copy of the conversation going up on the ship's main screen as Ilene and Ling typed it up in Mandarin, each silently flipped their shit in their own personal ways. One shouted "No!" Someone else just slid out of her chair to the floor, quietly repeating, "Oh my god." Another kicked over a waste bin, laced his hands in his hair, and stared at the ceiling, overcome with emotion. )

I've never been to their planet, Mothra said. I don't know what to expect. But, I think that it means that we're safe. For now.

For now. The nets were now a massive greyish-orange-teal ooze stretching out along the runway. Godzilla shut his mouth and straightened up. The grass sizzled where the nets ran over the side of the runway. "For now—as long as the freak stays interested in Rodan. And as long as Rodan doesn't turn him down. And as long as another Rodan doesn't hatch and try to mate him. And as long as Rodan remains alive."

(Ling made notes differentiating between the two different words Godzilla was using that she and her sister were both putting down as "Rodan" in their transcriptions: "Rodan (personal name; untranslatable?)" versus "Rodan (species name; 'volcano bird/pteranodon')." Ilene came back and changed "volcano bird/pteranodon," with a tiny smirk, to the English "volcanic roc.")

More or less, Mothra said.

"Then we should kill him while he's got his guard down."

Rodan will defend them.

"Then we get backup before we go."

You don't want to have to kill Rodan.

"No! I don't! But if it's between him dying or our whole world, I'll rip his head off!" Trees trembled with the force of Godzilla's roar. "If it's only a matter of time before the freak wants to destroy the world again, then we shouldn't wait around until he decides to. We can't let him make the first attack. It only takes him a few seconds to seize every mind on the planet. What if he gets me next time?"

I'd save you, Godzilla.

(Although Ilene wrote "Godzilla" in her transcription, she almost absent-mindedly included a parenthetical translation for the name that Mothra was really calling him. The watching Monarch employees were once again thrown into paroxysms of shocked disbelief.)

Godzilla was silent for a moment. "I know you would," he said. "That's not the point. The point is, we lost to him last time. We might not be able to beat him unless we take him by surprise. But you don't want to, do you? Why?"

Mothra didn't reply immediately. Instead, she lay back down, laying her wing along the length of the solid sheet of nylon on the runway. Godzilla started tracing around it with a claw tip again. What if they can change? she finally asked. Maybe we don't have to fight them again. Maybe this is a chance to get them to integrate into this world. Maybe they'll have a chance to heal.

(Underneath the word "heal" was this sense of massive, dark wounds, damage that felt as deep and ancient as Earth's very tectonic plates—something broken in Ghidorah's psyche that still ground together painfully inside him, spawning earthquakes and jagged mountains and chasmic trenches and volcanic explosions in his soul. The feeling was so strong and so dark that Ilene briefly had to stop typing, pressing a hand over her aching heart. Ling did her best to transcribe it, but ended up with only a string of characters that translated vaguely like "pain break scar wound darkness psychic hurt trauma?")

"Healing is the exact opposite of the thing I want to help him do."

I know. But if we can—wouldn't that be safer for the world? If we fight again, even if we win, people will die.

"Only small people."

Mothra ignored him. And that's if we win. They probably would have won last time if they hadn't gone to Rodan. If we don't have to fight them at all, wouldn't that be better for keeping the world safe?

Godzilla made a low growl that the Chens couldn't figure out how to translate any way other than "Noise of grudging resignation." He straightened up. "Okay, your new wing's cut out."

Mothra rolled over, Godzilla pried the wing off of the runway with a creaking cracking sound, and turned it around to hold it up to the remains of her injured wing.

How are you going to attach it?

Godzilla broke off another piece of plastic from the runway, held it on the other side of her damaged wing, and said, "I'm going to melt it a little bit to seal around your wing."

For a creature without anything in the way of human facial muscles, Mothra pulled off a very convincing look of utter disbelief.

"It might burn a little," he told her.

Okay, she said, resigned. Fine. I guess it can't make it worse. Do it.

She let out a long, shrill hissing noise as he melted the end of the new wing and the opposite piece of plastic together around the remains of her damaged wing, and both Chens' faces screwed up in pain. When it was done, Godzilla held her wing until it had completely cooled, and then stepped back. "Okay," he said. "Try it out."

She moved her new wing up and down slowly. It's light, she said. She attempted to flap it.

On the second flap, it snapped in half. Mothra and Godzilla both watched as the tip arced high in the air, flew off into the distance, and landed half a mile away standing up in the sand of Kuta Beach.

They looked at each other.

"We'll figure out how to fix it tomorrow," Godzilla said.

Mothra climbed onto his back. He trudged over to the broken wing, handed it to her to hold, and sank back into the ocean to swim Mothra back to Infant Island.

Although Godzilla's plastic-recycling jump into the brave new future of environmental conservationism was all but ignored by the media, in several days, one tiny detail out of the Chen twins' transcription of their conversation caught the fickle eye of mass media. A new headline dominated countless news sites' front pages:

GODZILLA'S REAL NAME: "SWEET FISH"?

Most of the articles were accompanied by an image of Godzilla photoshopped next to a pile of red Swedish Fish candy.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome & encouraged! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of KOTM fics and Rodorah fics in this verse, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

[petersshirts]

What Happens in Hawaii, Stays in Hawaii | tom holland

pairing: tom holland x reader

summary: it’s your first time alone for you to go surfing and when something goes wrong, there’s a handsome guy with a dashing smile who comes to your rescue…

warnings: none just pure floof

words: 2,3 k

A/N: everyone knows why I’m writing this, these pictures fucked me up… so here I am, trying to bring a bit of sun to the northern hemisphere, I haven’t seen the sun in five days… this is also my first moodboard ever so I hope you like it, please let me know what you think!!

„What am I even doing?“ you muttered under your breath while staring at the waves and the surfers that were riding along like it was no big deal. Your surfing teacher had told you that you were ready to take on the waves alone but you still felt not completely sure. You had been surfing for two weeks non-stop on nearly every beach on Kauai other than the wild North Shore, trying to learn the skill you always dreamed of having.

And now here you were, all on your own for the first time to take on the waves. You sighed, knowing that the waves would only get bigger if you didn’t go now so you grabbed your board tighter and walked into the water, the warm ocean loosening your tense muscles. You jumped on your board and started paddling towards the waves that were a few metres off the shore. You had been on this beach a few times with the trainer you booked so you knew where you had to start.

There were a lot of surfers around and you already felt embarrassed, an amateur under all these professionals. But as soon as you took the first wave and floated with it, a happy feeling settled in your heart. It felt so good to just go surfing every day, far away from that job of yours in New York City. Here in Kauai, everything was fine. No phone calls, no yelling, no people you needed to talk to.

For nearly an hour you surfed all the waves you could catch, a happy smile never leaving your lips. You felt so free, without a care and you wished that you could stay here forever. The waves started to get bigger as the day went on and even though you knew that you weren’t ready to take any big ones yet, you just couldn’t get out of the water. It was just too much fun and there were only a few more days left in this paradise before you had to fly home back into reality. So you wanted to enjoy every single second. You could still get the waves but when one got extremely big, you just stared at it, completely forgetting to paddle and in the next second, it crashed right over you, pulling you under the water and pressing all the air out of your lungs. Your surfboard hit your head and you panicked, ignoring the ache to find the surface again. The water was going crazy and you felt like giving up, when there was a hand on your arm, pulling you up and back to air. You gasped and breathed in sharply, blinking to find out what happened. You were a few feet in front of the shore, approximately ten metres from where you just were.

The water was much calmer here and you could stand, a few coughs leaving your lung full of salt water. Your surfboard swam quietly next to you like it didn’t just fully hit you in the head.

„Hey, are you alright?“ A mans’ voice spoke up and you turned around to see a boy right next to you, his brown wet hair flopping over his forehead. You just nodded but winced at the movement, clearly stating that you were not okay. „D - did you pull me up?“ Your mouth was dry and it felt like the world was still spinning. Gladly, you were standing and not floating in the water. The guy just nodded and moved closer, eyeing you up and down for any wounds.

„Come on let’s get you out of the water and see if something hurts, yeah?“ His voice was soft and caring and you just nodded slowly again, glad that he was willing to help you. The two of you slowly walked out of the water, the two surfboards trailing behind you. Your head was throbbing and all you wanted was to lay down and rest your aching limbs for a while. When you got out of the water, the boy helped you unclasp your board and took both of them in his arms, nodding with his head to follow him.

You just trailed after him when he walked to the car park towards a big van. It was full of stickers and looked like it belonged to a real surfer. The boy set the boards down and opened the car to get you a bottle of water. You thanked him and emptied the bottle quickly, feeling like you were about to dry out. When you put the bottle down, the boy outstretched his hand with a smile.

„I’m Tom, by the way.“ „I’m Y/N. Thanks for saving me out there. The wave was just too big.“ Tom smiled for the first time at your words, knowing that you would be fine. „I think it was quite an elegant fall.“ You nudged his shoulder and let out a laugh, that caused your head to throb in pain again. You cursed and held your forehead, touching your head everywhere if there were any wounds. But gladly, everything was still where it was - you only found a bump at the back of your head where the board hit you.

„Wait, I got some painkillers.“ Tom opened the back of the car and rummaged through his things while you sat down on the passenger seat to let your sore muscles rest. Finally, Tom came back with a little tablet in his hand and another bottle of water. You swallowed it quickly and thanked him, hoping that the pain would fade away soon.

„What happened in Hawaii, stays in Hawaii, okay?“ you mumbled to the boy, referring to your fall. He laughed out loud and you wished you could hear it more often. He put his hand on his chest and grinned at you. „I swear not to tell anybody, Ma’am.“ You shook your head affectionally, loving that he was such an easy person to talk to. You had only known him for a few minutes and you liked him a lot more than all the people from back home. He was so laid back and not such a tight ass like literally everyone you knew.

„Are you from around here? Your accent tells me that you’re from a place far far away.“ You raised an eyebrow at him and he just shook his head, the grin never leaving his face. „Nah, I took some time off from work but sadly, that time is over in a week and I have to go back to the UK.“ You nodded, your eyes watching him while he pulled the wet shirt off his body, revealing an Adonis-like body. Holy Shit. But your aching head distracted from his form, causing you to hiss. Why did it always take so long for painkillers to work?

Tom looked up at you with a worried glance, but you just smiled, trying to hide the pain. „It’s the same with me. I’m not ready to go back home to work and see my friends.“ Tom put a hoodie over his chest and you nearly sighed, sad that he hid his abs. Maybe you really had a concussion and that’s why you so shamelessly thought about his body. But what else could you do? He was handsome and really nice. „Where do you come from that is so hard to return to?“ He raised an eyebrow in interest and you slowly shook your head, not really wanting to talk about it.

„NYC. My work is a pain in the ass and not what I really wanna do, but I have to work there for a few years to get the qualification.“ It felt like a cloud started raining above you, coating you in sadness. Tom sensed that you didn’t like talking about it, so he nudged your shoulder to get your attention.

„Come on, I know a place where they serve the best Acai Bowls on the whole island. Jump in“ He gestured to the car and you just sat on the passenger seat while he put both of your surfboards on top of the car, making sure that they were secure before hopping into the driver seat. He started the motor and started driving through the wonderful nature of Kauai.

„Where did you get this car? It must cost a fortune!!“ You wondered, knowing that this was definitely not rented because it looked more like a little home from the inside with a bed, fairy lights and a lot of pictures of surfing. „Actually, it’s the car of a mate that lives here and I lend it for a few weeks. I just wanted a more adventurous trip, you know?“ His eyes were glowing and you just grinned, loving that he was as passionate about this island as you. For the rest of the ride, you asked him about all the places he’s been to while he was on Kauai and it felt like you had known each other for ages. The pain in your head was slowly but surely fading, and you used it to listen to every word carefully. After twenty minutes, Tom stopped right by the street and jumped out of the car and chuckled because of your confused expression. But when you saw the little yellow hut on the other side of the road, your stomach churned and you slowly got out of the car and followed Tom who was already at the little Hut, looking through the menu. The both of you got an Acai Bowl that was indeed, very good. You sat there for a long time until you noticed that how late it was. „Oh my god, it’s already 4!“ „What, you got any more plans for tonight?“ Tom smirked and you just giggled, loving his teasing. „Actually no, that’s why I’m here.“

„But what would you say if I got something else planned?“ And with that he grabbed your hand and led you back to the car, not answering your curious questions about where you were going. You knew Kauai but when Tom drove on a small carpark in-between palms, you were confused. You could hear the waves crashing on the shore and the air was salty, causing you to close your eyes. Why couldn’t you just stay here forever?

„You coming?“ Toms’ voice brought you back into reality and you just nodded and took his awaiting hand, not even thinking about it. Soon, your feet were touching the sand and you were standing on a beautiful small beach, the sun setting on the horizon. You just stared at the sun and the pink sky, not believing how beautiful the world was.

„Wow,“ you whispered and Tom turned to you, his words stuck in his throat when he saw you. Your hair was finally dry and all over the place, your eyes reflecting the orange lights and it seemed to him that your sun-kissed skin was glowing. „Yeah, indeed,“ Tom moved a bit closer to you, his hand softly touching yours. Your skin tingled where his fingertips touched the palm of your hand and you let out a shaky breath, aware that he was getting closer and closer.

Slowly, you moved your head from the sunset to his warm chocolate brown eyes, feeling like this was not such a bad view either. Tom moved his hand up to your face and put a strand of hair behind your ear, carefully watching how you reacted. But there was nothing much to say - you were so happy that you had met him, even though it had been quite painful. And in the next moment, his soft lips were on yours, your bodies pulling closer, wanting more.

While your hands snaked behind his neck, Tom pulled you closer by the waist, tasting the smoothie you had earlier from your tongue. The kiss wasn’t rushed, it was slow and loving, like the two of you had known each other for a long time. You were so close that you could feel the heat radiating off from his body, you weren’t sure where you ended and he started. But when oxygen started to run low, you slowly pulled away, completely in bliss.

But you didn’t lose the embrace - the two of you just stood there while the sun completely disappeared behind the horizon, only leaving a faint glow behind. You couldn’t hide the smile from your lips and neither could Tom. Your heart was beating fast, feeling like Kauai just made a few more good memories for you to take back home.

„What happens in Hawaii, stays in Hawaii right?“ Your words were quiet but Tom could hear them clearly, branding them into his brain.

„Hm, and what if I don’t want this to stay here?“ And with that, your feelings were clear and your lips fell back together in a kiss, the two of you pulling the other one even closer to show them that this was more. More than just a silly crush. More to come, more to do together for the last few days. But until that, you only had the two of you and all because you were just not that good at surfing.

Permanent Taglist and my lovely mutuals: 

@smexylemony // @ive-got-more-wit // @lou-la-lou // @loxbbg // @seanna313 // @underoos-shield // @hollandfieldblurbs // @supernatural-strangerthings-1980 // @ixchel-9275 // @thejourneyneverendsx // @sideeffectsofyou // @teenwolfbitches2 // @mywinterwolf // @alex--awesome--22 // @wronglanemendes // @keithseabrook27 // @tomshufflepuff

@peterpumpkinparker // @mr-delmar // @twilightparker // @h-osterfield // @revengingbarnes // @moonkissedtom // @curlytoms // @holland-peters // @fratboievans // @rainbow-marvel // @spiderrrling // @hufflebucky // @hollandroos // @naturallytom