#I should probably be writing my Master's...

[stuckwith-harry]

i am handing in my b.a. thesis (on motherhood in gothic fiction) in a few short days and though i have been complaining about having to write it for six months straight, right now i am actually feeling bereft of future opportunities to write academic papers about my silly little interests. for instance right now i really want to research & write about dracula daily & genre & the impacts of the newsletter format on the narrative (the addition of a timeloop)

i think about format and the specifics of narration a lot when i'm writing my own little things and i loooove when the narration - not just the narrator, but the act of telling the story - is part of the narrative. love when the narration is diegetic! love an epistolary novel (like dracula!) for this reason. should read more of them

inventory by carmen maria machado (short story! read it immediately!) is a GREAT example of this. the format of the narration is so integral to the story. does more than elevate it imo, i would argue the story genuinely wouldn't work any other way

g*d. i'm gonna have to become a video essayist

[ryuki-draws]

Sorry, the academy issues only one giant sword per year. It goes to the honors student. Yeah, no, Fighbird gets the sword. Exkaiser himself will hand it over to him at the graduation ceremony, sorry.

Bonus version without my boy not having a good time :'D

[birgittesilverbae]

“You look like hell." "I feel like it." meathshieldshotgun mayhaps 👀

spideytorch-but-not-this-spideytorch au again

//

Spider-Man's apartment is a piece of shit. It's a single main room, barely larger than the hospital room Ava finally got to call her own the year she turned thirteen, when Jillian's staff had moved Diego to the newly-emptied room next to Michael's. No, she can't get caught up on that now, on them, on the lab, on the burst of blue light that had– Spider-Man's apartment is a piece of shit, a sheet tacked up to separate what Ava assumes is a bed from the rest of the area, where a battered couch and coffee table and cloth-shrouded easel vie for space in the scant few feet between front door and fire escape.

Spider-Man watches her with a knowing glint in her eye. "It's not much," she agrees to Ava's unstated opinion, "but it's home. You have one of those to go back to, kid?"

Ava shrugs, tugging her knees up to her chest as she settles against the scratched-up couch arm. She wraps her arms about her legs, hugs them close, and it feels almost alien, the press of legs against arms and arms against legs and the pressure of the rough couch cover against her flesh. It makes her skin crawl, but she tamps herself down against the shudder that tries to break free, finds herself unable to speak.

"If you don't wanna tell me, that's fair enough. You have a name, at least?"

"Ava," she replies softly, rubbing her thumb against the weathered span of denim stretched across her knee. "I'm Ava."

"Nice to meet you, Ava. I'm–" Spider-Man pauses, eyes darting to the side, then shrugs. "In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. My name's Shannon, and I'll be your waitress tonight." She produces a sheaf of glossy pamphlets from behind her back like a magic trick and leans down to fan them out across the coffee table, heedless of the open textbooks she disturbs with the motion. "Anything you want, just give me a head's up so I can call in the order."

"Anything I–" Ava sways forward, gaze caught by the bright shine of the pamphlets. She reaches out her hand, uses her palm to drag one of them halfway off the edge of the coffee table so she can pinch it between thumb and forefinger. 

"Oh, Ollie's is great, they always give me an extra serving of rice. Do you like Sichuan?"

"I don't know," she says quietly, stroking the smooth page with her thumb, awed by how easily her skin slides across the sheet.

"You don't know as in you have no preference, or you don't know as in–"

"As in I haven't eaten solid food in a decade," she admits, and her voice is almost steady. 

Shannon's grin is easy, as so much about her seems to be. "Let's remedy that, then," she says, and Ava could kiss her for not pushing the topic. "Anything there that looks interesting? Or I could get a selection of things, maybe help you figure out what you like?"

Ava looks from the takeout menu in her hand down toward the mess on the coffee table and back again, the options almost overwhelming in their vastness. "Whatever you want to do," she manages, tossing the pamphlet in the direction of the table and pulling her arm back around her knee.

The pamphlet skids across the table, off the far edge, plunges over towards the floor. A thwip, and it's in Shannon's hand, translucent strands connecting it to her wrist. 

She stares. She hadn't been able to make out the mechanism by which Shannon had pulled them from building to building in those long, floating arcs, but she's listened to enough of Diego's excited recountings of news stories to know the consensus was that the webbing came from a gauntlet, perhaps, or a canister. Ava suspects there must be an aspect of costume design built specifically to fuel those rumours, because a puncture in Shannon's skin itself extrudes the strands of web.

She doesn't mean to, but her eyes stay glued to Shannon's forearm long enough that she's caught in the act. Shannon watches Ava watching her and heat floods into Ava's cheeks. She knows better, should know better, can remember how every too long stare had made her feel small, inconsequential, other. "I'm sorry," she starts, but the cloud has already shifted from Shannon's eyes, leaving them bright and clear again.

"It's alright, it's just been a while since anyone new has seen that. I'd forgotten how it must look from the outside." 

"No," Ava repeats, because it's important, because she's waved off lingering eyes in just the same way for so long, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't stare."

"It's okay," and there's a hint of a laugh to it now. She gestures towards the second door, the one Ava figures hides a bathroom, with the takeout menu. "I'm gonna go call in the order and then we can talk about it, if you want?"

"Okay. Thank you." 

She watches Shannon until the door shuts behind her, then turns her attention back to the apartment. She knows she shouldn't pry, especially not here, not now, not with the kindness and grace Shannon has already shown her in rescuing her from– Don't, she chastises herself. Don't think about Jillian thrusting her arm into the device, don't think about the electric blue energy emanating throughout the room, don't–

A sweet, smoky scent drifts up into her nostrils and she snaps her gaze down to her hand, flat on the couch arm. What had been her hand. A mass of roiling flame attached to her arm, eating at the cuff of her sleeve, crisping the fabric of the couch. "What the fuck," she mutters reflexively, her stomach sinking. She pulls her hand back, waves it through the air, but the fire clings to her skin– Is her skin? "Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop."

She focuses on her breathing as she had in that warehouse beneath Shannon's careful gaze, drags the sleeve up her arm with her other hand to protect what remains of it. The flames wax and wane as she glares at them, and she sets her mind towards her hand, towards what she thinks it's meant to feel like. 

"As if I know what it's meant to feel like," she says, hysterical. But she tries gamely to picture cool flesh, like all those hands on her forehead for years and years, caretakers too rushed to take a moment to scrub their palms together to imbue them with some fleeting kind of warmth. Cool skin, and whole, and definitely not on fire. 

The flames retreat back beneath her skin in the blink of an eye and she presses the back of her hand to her forehead, just to check. Cool against the fever flush of her face. Great. Outstanding. And all it took was torching half of Shannon's apartment.

The fabric covering the arm of the couch has turned black-beaded and stiff, and the sweater sleeve now ends halfway up her forearm, and there's nothing she'd like more right now than to vanish before Shannon slips back into the room with her easy smile and easy gait and easy wave of a hand in response to apologies. 

She's not given a chance to make an escape, though, because Shannon's emerging back into the room, shoving her phone into the side pocket of her tights and grinning at Ava before she can even begin to form an explanation. "I'm moving out at the end of the month anyway," she says with a laugh, "feel free to burn the rest of it so I don't have to figure out when our bulk item collection day is scheduled."

"I didn't mean–" Ava starts, stops. There's something painful in her chest, constricting her ribs, and she scrubs a shaking hand over her eyes, draws it away wet. "I don't know–"

"It's okay." Shannon drags the coffee table back from the couch, as far as she can in the cramped space, and takes a seat on it in front of Ava. There's a bare inch of space between her knees and Ava's booted feet, toes sticking over the edge of the couch cushion. The navy fabric plastered tight to Shannon's thighs is decorated with that same reflective web pattern as the boots, picked out in infinitesimally small stitches, and Ava's fingertips itch to brush across it, to feel every twist and turn and bump of the embroidery. "It's okay," Shannon repeats, and there's a barefaced truth in her voice that makes Ava lift her head to meet her gaze. 

"I don't know what happened, I don't know what I'm supposed to do–"

Shannon smiles softly, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "That's alright, Ava. It will come in time."

"How are you so calm about this?"

"Well, one of us has to be," she says, flat as anything. 

Ava's throat tightens around a sob. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just–"

Shannon cuts her off with a grimace, a touch to her foot. "I didn't mean it like that. No wonder everyone tells me I've an abhorrent sense of humour. Powers are a burden, especially newfound ones, but not one I'm going to make you bear alone. I'm calm about this because when I was in your shoes" – her eyes flick down to Ava's feet in her own costume boots and there's a quick twist to her mouth like she's biting back another joke – "when I was in your shoes I felt alone, was alone. But I managed to survive that, and I have complete faith that you will too."

"You don't even know me."

"I know you didn't blow me off when I tried to help you calm down. I know you internalised those instructions and used them to get your powers under control just now. I know you went an hour without setting anything on fire, and then only small patches." Her gaze finds the takeout menus wedged beneath her hip before working back up to Ava's face. "And I think it's fair to assume you've survived much more difficult trials than this."

Ava looks at her hand, splayed across light-washed denim, presses her fingertips into the fabric just to see the way it makes the tendons across the back of her hand press up hard against pale skin. A joy, to move them, to be moved by them. "That's… that's accurate," she allows, digging her thumbnail into the fold of the seam. 

Shannon reaches towards her, hand stalling between them, and then she's gone, a blur, sliding smoothly to the front door and opening it, bracing her hands over her head against the frame. Ava hadn't even heard the knock, if there'd been one, and she rocks to the side to try and get a glimpse past Shannon's outstretched shield of a body. 

"I didn't think you were coming over today," Shannon says, half on the edge of hearing. "Are you okay? You look like hell."

"I feel like it," a woman mutters. She's standing in Shannon's shadow, the light in the hallway buzzing and blinking and too near dead to properly illuminate her, but then she rocks onto her toes to dart a kiss to Shannon's cheek and there's something familiar in the movement, the careful trajectory of her mouth, the spark in her eyes. "Remind me to get you to vet my next employer," she continues, slipping around Shannon with ease, "so I can have a heads-up on the fledgling supervillain thing. 'Cause you'll never believe the bullshit Salv–"

She spots Ava at the same time as Ava clocks the all-too-familiar shade of scrub pants and stitches together a last few fragmentary memories of those last moments. Eyes widening, breath catching in two chests in unison before the release, the movement, Mary's hand reaching behind her back, a charged thrill shooting up Ava's fingers.

"Mary, this is Ava," Shannon says, sliding between them, a hand pressed to Mary's chest. Her voice is light, in sharp contrast to the tension in her shoulders. "She's not having a great day either."

That's all it takes to defuse Mary, pressing forward into Shannon's palm as though there's nothing else in the universe tethering to this room. "I'll say," she manages to choke out around a hitch in her throat, "seeing how she should be dead. The rest of them are," she continues, shifting to lock eyes with Ava over Shannon's shoulder, "and I saw the hole that you–"

"Jillian Salvius did this?" Shannon interrupts.

"She fucking did something, Shan. With Ava over there, with another kid, with her own son. They didn't tell us shit beyond that, other than 'here's another mess to sweep up, careful, it might be radioactive this time'." Mary pauses, reaches a hand up to touch Shannon's cheek. "How'd you stumble over her? On the way back from the library?" It's clumsy, even to the yawning sound of Ava's ears, you should be dead the rest of them are, like an actor stumbling over their lines. 

"She knows," Shannon says dryly.

"Why do I even bother," Mary sighs, "when you just keep dragging in strays and telling them everything and expecting me to help you rehome them. I only have the one couch, and it's already been spoken for."

"They're… They're dead?" Ava interjects, hard, soft, reaching. Diego's grin peeking around the doorframe, Michael's careful strength, Jillian– She doesn't want to think about Jillian. 

"They are," Mary says, something raw and aching in her expression, "I'm sorry."

"Okay," she says, "okay." The flame filters into her lungs her heart, ripples hot beneath her skin. She tugs the hoodie over her head in a rush, gasping for air, half-blind with panic.

"Ava–" Shannon starts, shifting towards her, but Mary takes her by the shoulder, holds her back.

"Let her make her choice, Shan." The words are barely audible over the inferno in Ava's chest. 

She rises from the couch, keeps rising, midair before them as her fingers turn to flame, her wrist, her forearm. The hospital gown clings tight even as the jeans scorch, burn, flake away in ashen clumps. "I'm sorry," she says, breath scalding in her mouth, and flings herself towards the window, through the rails of the fire escape, spins upwards into the night sky. "I'm so sorry."

[bereft-of-frogs]

it is kind of funny writing commentary in fics about the differences between Cal and Cere's fighting styles when Cal's fighting style is....technically dependent on how good of a gamer you are and I am a Bad gamer XD 'Cal over-relies on a few key practiced moves, while Cere is more fluid, natural' yeah because there was actual fight choreography involved in Cere's fight in Fallen Order, and not just me button-mashing and doing the same thing over and over in the hopes it actually works this time XD

like I think it works thematically and idk this paragraph might end up getting cut, but it is just kind of funny to be like, trying to reflect on canon and how to describe it and then having to be like 'well…that might be on me...'

[teecupangel]

Submitted by @saberamane

Just watched Roanoke Gaming (on youtube) video’s on the Spartan’s of Halo and how, realistically, their augmentation could be done/what would need to be done for the ‘super serum’ to work. And just…the angst and hurt/comfort of that would be so good if, say…Desmond were to go through that and then be magically poof'ed to AC??

Each of the ancestor’s would surely see different uses and advantages of such strength and enhancement’s…but also the pain of them? Both physical and mental? Desmond would need a lot of loving and comfort.

Some notes taken from the video’s and lore, so everyone is on the same page without necessarily needing to watch the videos-(though you should, they are very good.)

Skeletal Augmentations:

At 14, the Spartans were already over 6 foot tall due to overhauling the pituitary gland to induce puberty immediately to ‘flash grow’ them, making them grow taller than normal at an accelerated rate, which had the side effect of weakening the bones as they grew too rapidly for proficient calcium to be placed applied to the growing bones.

This lead to a surgery to 'correct’ the fragility. Basically the bone is 'shaved’ before a carbide ceramic coating was manually fused to the bones, giving them support. This was described as feeling like the bones were made of glass and then shattering inside the body. No more than 3% of the bone could be replaced or the surgery would fail.

Surviving the initial surgery did not mean it was successful. While healing the body was under extreme stress, and could lead to shock, cardiac or respiratory arrest, leading to death. With the bone 'shaved’ it would encourage your body to begin rebuilding the bone, making the bone grow around the new ceramic coating.

The bones, after healing, are nearly unbreakable, withstanding hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure before breaking.

If the surgery fails because more than 3% of the bone was lost and you don’t die, you will become paralyzed or debilitated because your white blood cells will necroes, leading to septic shock that will eventually lead to the rest of the body being infected with the sepsis.

This surgery makes Spartan’s very heavy and leaves a lot of scarring, as the surgery is highly invasive.

Muscle Augmentation:

More and denser muscle fibers, leading to faster stamina recovery as well as more overall strength, from some sort of injection.

A side effect of this injection could lead to an enlarged heart in 5% of subjects.

The injection feels as though the veins have been injected with napalm and are being torn out of the skin.

The muscle augmentation without the bone augmentation would allow the subject to contract their muscle with so much force they’d shatter their own bones.

Neurological Augmentation:

Quicker and more efficient communication between neurons, leading to faster reaction times.

Subjects can nearly see things in 'slow motion’.

Reaction time is 20 milliseconds, movements seeming nothing but a blur to other unenhanced individuals.

Running 38 mph is an easy feat.

Migraines can be a recurring issue.

TL:DR

Desmond is basically super human, but he got that way with a lot of invasive surgery and trauma against his will.

=============================

teccup additions:

Roanoke Gaming has an entire playlist of Halo Lore and other videos if you’re curious.

For those not that familiar with Halo lore (which is understandable as Halo is a series that likes to put a lot of lore in the novels), the most famous of the Spartans, Master Chief, is a Spartan II. The games mostly focus on either Spartans from Spartan II (like Master Chief) or Spartan III (most members of Noble Team from Halo Reach are from SPARTAN III so if anyone wants to create a Halo x AC crossover that has Desmond be part of the Halo Universe first, you can put him as part of Spartan II or III training.

Either way, there are many ways to kick him to the AC verse but, on the top of my head, if you wish for Desmond to be part of the Halo verse before getting kicked into the AC verse:

The Isus could have been part of the Forerunners (an ancient species of extremely technologically advanced beings that had ruled over the milky way) and the Solar Flare hadn’t just hit the earth, it had hit EVERY part of the milky way by being the start of a chain reaction of every sun in the solar systems in the milky way.

Of course, we can keep the whole AC timeline intact with one caveat: the next Solar Flare would not happen in December 2012, it would happen in August of 2552 (if you want it to be a reference: August 12 would be Altaïr’s death day). This is an important month in Halo lore because this is the month when the Battle of Reach ended (which was one of the bloodiest campaigns during the Human-Covenant Wars (Covenants are the baddies who worship the Forerunners as gods so they’re kinda like alien-inclusive version of Juno’s Instruments of the First Bitch))

By setting it on the Battle of Reach, we will have the choice of letting Desmond be part of Master Chief’s storyline or of Noble Team’s storyline.

If we consider that the Calculations knew that Desmond would be in Reach during the time of the next Solar Flare, the device would be in Reach as well and the main point is to ensure Desmond gets to the Grand Temple there.

We can wave it off as there being Grand Temples all around the Milky Way, all connected to one another and Desmond has to activate one of them to activate all of them. Once all have been activated, the field will surround all planets with the Grand Temple (fertile planets filled with life) and will be spared from the chain reaction of Solar Flares.

Of course, this is not taking into consideration the possibility that the species in Halo lore haven’t noticed the incoming Solar Flare. To combat this and make Desmond have no choice, perhaps it’s something that only builds up towards the last few months (around maybe Feb or March?), not enough time to fully study it and combat it with confidence.

Anyway, the main point is that Desmond would come into contact with the Grand Temple in Reach and activate it.

From there, he will save the planets with a Grand Temple (but this does mean not all of the planets will be saved and any ships in space will not be saved as well) and he’ll be transported to whichever timeline you’d like him to be in AC.

Now, if you want a purely AC fic with the Spartan Augmentation added into the lore, we can go down this route:

The Great Purge happened when Desmond was 13 and the Farm will be hit

(Bonus drama: make Desmond have a fight with Bill who is trying to get them out and it ends with him running away but getting captured by Abstergo, hearing his mother screaming his name before the sounds of gunfire silenced her, replaced by screams all over the Farm)

Spartan II ‘subjects’ were 5 to 6 years old when they started their augmentation but Desmond was included in Abstergo’s own version of Spartan ‘training’ (either keep the name and make it something sort of an insult to Kassandra or make it a reference to Deimos who was technically Spartan or change the training name to something more ‘Templar-ish’) as an ‘experiment’.

He and the other Assassin children would be part of a special experiment to check if age is truly a factor in a subject’s surviving the augmentations.

Cross would have been a Spartan from an earlier iteration and he’s the first true success. He was augmented early (like around 5ish years old) and that’s how Abstergo decided they needed to experiment on different ages.

Assassin prisoners are free guinea pigs.

Of course, this means that Lucy is also part of the program as an innocent 12-year-old child. Perhaps even make her something like a sister to Desmond during their horrific augmentation, indoctrination, and training life together.

This would add more angst to the story if Lucy either dies during training or she is one of the successful Spartans who becomes loyal to Abstergo in the process, giving a more or less Cain and Abel setup between her and Desmond.

Either way, Desmond survives the training thanks to his higher-than-normal Isu genes and it’s because of his ‘abnormal’ gene makeup that Warren Vidic noticed him, taking him out of Spartan Training and making him become part of the Animus Project.

Same setup where Desmond relives his ancestors’ memories. AC1 plot ends with Bill being the one to rescue Desmond. From there, we go for the rest of Desmond Saga’s plotline which will end with Desmond using the device to save the world in 2012.

Lucy’s subplot, if we go for her living through the Spartan training, will end in Rome when she replaces Cross in the final showdown. Desmond will be the one to kill her and she dies in his arms. Whether they reconcile while she’s dying or she dies telling him that she hates him for leaving her will be up to you.

Either way, Desmond gets transported into his ancestor’s timeline after he uses the device.

Whichever setup you use, I believe that Desmond and his ancestors’ relationship would be similar in the sense that:

Altaïr would be the quickest to understand him because they have the most similar upbringing: children raised to be soldiers. Desmond would also recognize the Levantine Brotherhood’s rigid ranking system as familiar and would consider Altaïr as his team leader even if it’s only the two of them (Malik would be more or less his commanding officer)

Altaïr and Desmond’s relationship would be more akin to two puppets trying to be more than what their ‘masters’ expect them to be with Altaïr taking the lead as he’s more independent than Desmond who just accepts any orders given to him.

Ezio, on the other hand, would be the most awkward around him as he’s unsure of how to ‘handle’ Desmond. On the other hand, Desmond would totally be unsure of what to do when he’s around the Auditores and it would be easy for them to push him to stay and just… try to relax.

Ezio and Desmond’s relationship would be more akin to a ‘normal’ boy trying to befriend and understand a military kid. Ezio would most definitely spend his time trying to teach Desmond how to relax and have fun. (If this is an Ezio who knows who Desmond is thanks to Minerva’s recording, he’d also be the most protective)

Ratonhnhaké:ton would try to communicate to Desmond like he’s a wild animal at first because of how Desmond’s first solution to any problem they face is to kill the source but he’ll soon realize that Desmond isn’t acting like a wild animal but an abused one.

Ratonhnhaké:ton and Desmond’s relationship would be more akin to someone trying to help another person but not sure of how to do it. He also doesn’t have a similar support system as Ezio does and Achilles may do more harm than good thanks to his personality and how he handles his charges (ex: Ratonhnhaké:ton and Shay for different reason). Haytham is also a big red flag when it concerns Desmond as Haytham is a Templar.

[nekoprankster218]

The experience when writing 25 Years: Hehe what a situation

The experience writing the new trope remix: Oh fuck what a situation

[hoardlikegoldenirises]

thinking about Mac's scars for the AU and what his face ends up like. two different kinds of fucked up. Aesthetically I prefer the one on the right and might go for that one... I think it's a little more accurate to how i describe him grabbing his face when he bonds with Red anyway. Left is gnarly fun though.

bonus carnorpion sketch:

tfw you get your ass kicked by a guy with metal octopus arms and then accidentally give life to and bond with a symbiote clone bud and also your jaw has been destroyed and the symbiotic being you've bonded with is not in a state to properly heal you, et cetera.

suffice to say, symbiosis goes differently for mac than it did for peter or trish. lmao.

[maulfucker]

Ok so. OC thoughts about Order 66.

Verred and Kuru are with Latros on Coruscant when the order comes out. Verred leaves Kuru with Latros and runs to the Jedi Temple to see what's going on and help people escape. She doesn't come back.

Latros takes Kuru and escapes Coruscant before ships start to get pulled over and checked for hidden jedi

Master Apos was with the younglings, and that's another reason for Verred to go to the temple: to try to help her master one last time

Dji survives by letting its ship get blown up and hiding in the debris until the clones got tired of searching for a corpse. No one ever remembers givins can survive in vacuum.

When he's sure the clones have left he sends a distress signal and hopes for the best. It gets rescued by the Da'ali twins, and asks to stay with them until it can find one of its people

(It doesn't know yet what happened to master Apos and Verred and pretty much every other member of their lineage. He suspects, but he doesn't know.)

The three of them eventually track down and find Kuru (and Latros) so Dji can reunite with the only other survivor of their little family.

Latros and the twins are both bounty hunters, and Dji is a great pilot, so they're like. hey why go our separate ways. why not become a crew.

So in my mind they become something kinda like the Ghost crew from Rebels but with two ships, three pilots, and a decade earlier

bonus thought. Latros is a kinda acquaintance of Maul (he worked for him on occasion before the Siege of Mandalore) and I think it would be very funny for them to meet him, considering the crew is composed of two jedi (bad thoughts on Maul) two mandalorians (complex thoughts on Maul) and Latros (no thoughts whatsoever)

[fridayyy-13th]

y'all i'm like. so tired and overwhelmed right now. dare i even say sad.

[aropride]

i remember a lot of my lore but not all the time so i dont get overwhelmed (like literally i have a disorder about it) which is fun until it's 7:45pm on a sunday and i get hit with a Memory

[super-ion]

Undine

Chapter 8

Read from the beginning

Undine hadn't realized how constraining the walls of the palace were until she found herself touring the city. There were still far too many people, far too many noises, the buildings too numerous and too large.

But at least out here, she could see the sky and feel the breeze on her skin.

It seemed to Undine that she wasn't alone in such sentiments. The princess Alda seemed, if not completely at ease, then less tense. She even cracked a small smile at some of Gerda’s jokes as they rode through the city.

The central plaza was magnificent, lined with great stone buildings that reminded Undine of dazzling white cliffs. Stone masons were still busy at work tending to the storm damage. Alda and Gerda were drawn into a discussion with an important looking foreman, leaving Undine to stand awkwardly on her own.

The open space was not as terrible as the rest of the city, but she still felt herself longing for home, for the sea breeze and the sound of…

Her ears pricked. Over the bustle of crowds, she did hear running water like the low murmur of a stream. It tugged at her and she was inexorably drawn towards a fountain that stood before one of the marble edifices.

The water was clear and sparkling in the morning sunshine but the sight and sound was quickly forgotten as attention focused entirely upon a statue that occupied the center of the fountain. It was a woman, tall and generously curved, standing proudly as she rode crashing waves.

“The Spirit of the Ocean” a plaque read.

"They'll never be able to capture her true splendor," murmured a voice in Undine's ear.

She flinched away from the intrusion, clapping a hand defensively over her ear. Spinning, she found a familiar figure next to her, also gazing at the statue.

Kuhleborn had traded his monk's attire and any pretense of humility for fine cut clothes and an expression of open disdain.

He gestured towards the fountain.

"How could they?" he asked bemusedly. "They are tiny little things, desperate to understand things beyond their comprehension."

Just as in her parents' house, for a brief moment, the edges of him blurred. She had an impression in her mind of howling winds and snapping trees and raging thunder.

Her head began to throb and she tore her eyes away from him.

"What do you want?" she mumbled as she squeezed her eyes shut.

He scoffed.

"Now, now," he said. "Your dear mother is worried sick about you. I'm simply checking in on you for her sake."

Her eyes snapped open.

"My m-"

The question died in her throat as her eyes fell once more on the statue at the center of the fountain… a personification of the spirit of the ocean.

The pain in her head flared. The sights and sounds of the square built to an intense cacophony. The sound of the water in the fountain, the voices of the people milling about, the sunlight streaming between the clouds… it was all suddenly too much. Another horrible, dizzying moment and she imagined she could hear the wordless whispers of the earth and the trees and the wind.

She wasn't ready. Stop.

She clenched her eyes shut once more.

"Breathe," she told herself, "breathe…"

Slowly, mercifully, the world resolved itself back to something she could make sense of.

"I don't…" she managed. "I don't know you. My mother lives in a house by the sea. I never met you before in my life."

His laughter boomed.

"Oh we have met, little one. I'm certain you don't remember yet, but we have met before even in this life. When you were just a babe, ever so fragile and helpless, it was I who delivered you to your home."

Her heart skipped a beat.

She cracked open an eye and he was just a man once more. She could almost believe that.

"Wh-what did you say?"

He made a dismissive wave with his hand.

"It was nothing," he said. "I merely acted on the behest of my sibling, to whom I owed a favor."

She didn't want to hear any more. She needed not to know.

He grinned wickedly and leaned in conspiratorially with a crooked finger.

"Would you like to know a secret?" he purred. "You weren't the only child I carried away from worried parents that night."

Her parents' daughter, their real daughter, the one whose place are had taken.

"Is she alive? Where is she?"

His grin widened.

"I wouldn't want to spoil that surprise. You've always been too clever for your own good. I'm sure you'll solve the mystery sooner than later."

She blinked and he was gone, the only sign he had ever been there an uncanny chill in the air.

A drop of rain splashed on her cheek and she was surprised to see the clear sky had grown grey with clouds.

“Undine?”

A hand gently touched her shoulder, seeming to send a jolt through her. Undine whirled to find Alda. The other girl pulled her hand back in shock at the suddenness of Undine’s movement.

“Are you alright?” the princess asked.

Undine raised her eyes briefly to meet Alda’s hazel green eyes. The color was lovely, reminding Undine of the soft grassy hills by the coast, reminding her of home. The princess's face was filled with genuine concern, any prickly defenses momentarily forgotten.

Raindrops began to patter around them in the plaza.

“I… I don't know.”

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[fingertipsmp3]

Trying to sign up to this freelance website as a ghostwriter/essay writer/etc & realising that truly the only thing I don’t like writing is bios

[hyacinthmonster]

Name ideas:

ReplacedEcho

UnderEcho

UnderIdentity

ReplaceTale 

EchoedReality

EchoedIdentityTale

EchoedIdentity

EchoIdentity  

Might make a poll for the name later

Apologies I didn't really proof read this Prologue.

Like to note this goes from summary to the story kinda abruptly so bare with it at first please. (OOC at first does have an actual reason behind it. Then It all, well just read if your curious.)

(This is a bit of a mess but I think it's good/fun.)

_________________________________________

Premise is that Frisk stole Sans's place after getting bored of playing the hero and wishing to have what he had. They pretty much just messed with the coding and inner workings of their univers with no clue what they where doing in order to achieve this.

 -----

By doing this it would have killed sans, Frisk wanted him to be erased in order for them to cleanly change the world. Chara was who Frisk wanted to take their place. 

Chara used what strength they had to save sans, but it wasn't enough. Gaster (in this world a father figure of sorts bur sans is not his biological son, Papyrus and Sans were taken in by him due to them being the last of their kind.) decided to help, however things didn't go completely to plan fusing the two together. In the end Sans was saved by them, taking the human's place, as a result his body is kinda a mix of a skeleton and a human. His soul now coated in a thin layer of glass like determination keeping him safe and giving him the "save and load" abilities for their world. 

At first he is in disbelief not fully getting what's going on, then he gets to snowdin (no encounter with Frisk or Papyrus like Chara thought.). He sees his brother with Frisk and then slowly things start to sink in as he talks to him, Papyrus not recognizing him and not remembering him at all claiming Frisk is his sibling and always has been. He begs for his brother to believe him, then anyone to believe him. Alphys seems to take note but nothing more, after all they've all known Frisk for years. Undying only got more aggressive the more he tried to convince her. Asgore apologised to him but he could believe him after all Frisk had been his keeper of the judgement hall for a long time. Flowy was nowhere to be seen throughout everything at first. His first time through the underground was a horrible experience. 

Somehow his soul appeared to work as a makeshift human one now Alphys being the one to learn this through her magic camera in the bush and telling undying about it not thinking due to her fascination with a monster having a soul similar to a human's. Alphys may not believe Sans but she does root for him like she did Frisk when Frisk was the "MC". He doesn't kill Asgore however flowey shows up and does it telling sans he needed to play Frisk's game if he ever hoped to have his life back again, telling him it's just a phase their going through, they'd give his life back after they had their fill, "They'll never get their fill if you don't play the game. You have to adapt to this, whether you like it or not, nothing will move forward properly if you don't! Just ask Chara!". Chaster(Chara/Gaster) tells him that Flowey isn't really wrong, requesting he plays along with Frisk's fun so they can figure something out. That they're determined to figure it out for him to get back home and back to normal.

He learned through them that time would restart no matter the outcome, that was why Frisk always came back, an unknown magic is at play against everyone until it decides to go away on its own whenever that will be.

His second time he didn't do much for a while, he just went through the same beginning only experiencing what Frisk did, with Flowey doing his act this time. He stayed with Toriel for a while. She treated him like he was her own son. He was weirded out at first since he did have a crush on her before the mess, but now he could only look at her with the wish he had known his own mother. He wondered if his own mother would have been like this, all he remembers is a music box that he lost in Waterfall when he was younger. He stayed with her for a long time before deciding to leave. He was ready to face this head on, at least that's what he told himself. He tried to be okay and not attack Frisk when they said his lines, he tried to be okay when talking to Papyrus as he friendly treated him like a stranger. He broke down quite a few times hiding from everyone. Sometimes he'd refuse to move for hours as he slowly accepted the harsh truth of everything. As he went through he experienced things similar to what Frisk had and eventually made it to Asgore again and after a fight he was killed by Flowey. Sans continued and played the game as the pacifist route.

 However the fourth turned out different when the reset happened, the colours were much more saturated and gold accents were everywhere. Not to mention the flowers he fell on were echo flowers. Frisk taking his place altered their world and after three resets in his place, the roles had finally solidified.

He noticed his clothes were darker, his jacket was shorter even at his sleeves, his undershirt was a dark grey woven turtleneck, his shorts replaced by black leggings with silver chains, and mucky brown fluffy boots, the fluff being the same off white as his old slippers. He had a bandage on his right cheek and woven dark grey gloves. He also took note his left hand had the number "3" on its back. He worried Frisk had broken the timeline more than they meant, he became horrified the more questions went through his mind. "What if things can't be fixed now?" "What if this means the world will be like this forever?" "What if this means I can never have my old life back?" "What will happen to Papyrus?, To Toriel? To Alphys? Undying? Asgore?" "What will happen to everyone?" "Does it even matter anymore?" "If Frisk gets bored of being in my place then what?! What will happen to my brother! my friends…" Vigorously shaking his head he unexpectedly made himself light headed almost falling over had he not been standing by the wall. "Well I guess that's one way to quiet my mind…" Vision spinning, the small space in the cave was silent, not even a sound of a bird overhead. Sans looked back to where he had "fell". His eyes softly glowed trailing each shade of blue, noticing a small amount of dewdrops on each petel up to the silver light that gave away the amount of dust in the area it graced. His eyes dulled as he leered upon the gaping aperture in the ceiling. Small bits of rock and debris like dirt trailed down the walls, the sounds echoing in the room chasing down as they fell to the flowers bouncing on some of the leaves onto the gravel floor. The outside looked as though it was coated in crystals, the glittering darkness framed by the dashes of green leaves that seemed just as dewy as the flowers down below. It seemed almost hazed like a scene from a fairytale, Sans couldn't help but smile upon the surface's appearance, mist was trying to seep down into the cave disappearing before it got even halfway. The world felt bleak and dark yet the blazing light from the moon seemed to be enough to almost mock the sun. Sans couldn't help but feel determined to at least see what had changed in his old home. He felt himself beginning to move forward despite his mess. It had been a few minutes just him staring at the stars he longed to reach before he realised he heard a soft melody, a metallic bell, a chime from a thin strip of metal hitting an assortment of spinning bumps. The echo flowers played a tune he thought he had lost. Closing his glimmering eyes and taking in as much air as he could into his nonexistent lungs he softly brushed his finger tips off the rough jagged wall and dragged his hand down his face. He started to where his first encounter was destined to take place. 

"This is the first chapter of something new, I wish I could say that as a good and beautiful thing but I don't have the heart to make this seem better than it actually is." Sans glanced at Chara's hovering form as they approached the room Flowey was presumably waiting for them. "Hey…?" His footsteps halted as he chose to be patient, hesitant on continuing before hearing a reply. "Something wrong? I thought you had a burst of determination back there." He let out a soft airy grunt. His gaze dulled, rolling up and away from them afterwards he fully turned to them giving all his focus to Chara who was watching him with big vibrant blood red eyes intensely staring into his. "Be honest with me. Do you actually think there's a way to turn things back to normal?" They turned their head to the shadowed room just forward of their path. "I mean, there's always a possibility."Air gently whistled through his nose. The light that made his eyes clear almost completely faded, a lowered brow causing his eyes to appear sharper than they were. His mouth pressed into a subtle but firm frown.  "Okay okay… I get it…" Chara waved their hands in front of them eyes going everywhere but his. "I uh, hate to say it but it's probably not possible to fix it now." They crossed their arms looking down. "Maybe before but… things changed last reset, our world's become something new and… I don't know… I, I don't even know if Flowey will recognize us this time around." His gaze softened light slightly returning upon hearing them beginning to tremble and crack. Frown turning into a more relaxed shape and his brow tilting more outwards once seeing their glossed over eyes. "Hey bud, even if he does forget ya we can always try to jog his memories. I mean, we're most likely going to have plenty of thyme to help him forget-you-not." The corners of their mouth twitched, a muffled sound kicking their throat. "Thistle all end up fine… somehow. So just be-leaf me and try to have some of that poppy determination your soul's bleeding with." Chara leaned forward, slightly shaking as serotonin filled hiccups left them. "Your ranunculus sans…" Pushing onto their left knee they lift their torso up, wiping their eyes and looking with a large smile across their face. "I dread the day you lose that jokester side of you." Turning their upper body to the path ahead of them. "Though I'm sure you'd at least keep doing silly shiz like letting people balance hotcats on your head." With a quick dry chuckle Sans slid his foot across the rocky path creating a scraping sound before he pushed down upon it, lifting his other foot to steadily and silently place down. The two went back to their new journey. 

[Messy Prologue: end]

[pitzer]

I love this person

“Occasionally I’ll have a beer after work and break out the sketchbook. But I had wanted to be this great painter. I wanted to do these grand things: big, huge oil paintings. But those days of painting all the time were such a roller coaster. There were these periods of extreme depression, followed by manic states of trying to put myself out there. I couldn’t do it anymore. I mainly felt sorry for my dad. I know it was rough for him. My mom hadn’t wanted me to go to art school. She wanted me to do something more practical, but my dad said: ‘No. This is what he wants to do, and I want to support his dream.’ And then I abandoned it. That was the first time I had to deal with real failure. A lot of times when you’re an artist, it’s your job, it’s your lifestyle, it’s your entire fucking identity. It wasn’t like I failed to do a thing. It was like: I failed to be something, you know? It was a failure to live up to what I thought was my destiny. But then on the other side of that, there was this figuring out that there was nothing wrong with me the entire time. I didn’t need to be something else to have meaningful friendships, or a good relationship. I didn’t need to be something else to be loved and cared about. After work tonight I’m going to meet up with a person who’s in love with me, and I can’t wait. And that person met me long after I gave up on being a full-time artist. They met me when I wasn’t even a chef yet. I was a piss-poor, part-time line cook. But even then, they decided I was worth it. So you know, there’s something there. There’s something there that’s enough.”

[exopelagic]

supervisor was met. god help our souls