#I will be adding more Titans shortly

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

In The Gloomy Depths [Chapter 2: Tiger's Eye]

Series summary: Five years ago, jewel mining tycoon Daemon Targaryen made a promise in order to win your hand in marriage. Now he has broken it and forced you into a voyage across the Atlantic, betraying you in increasingly horrifying ways and using your son as leverage to ensure your cooperation. You have no friends and no allies, except a destitute viola player you can’t seem to get away from…

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), parenthood, dolphins, death and peril, violence (including domestic violence), drinking, smoking, freezing temperatures, murder, if you don’t like Titanic you won’t like this fic!!! 😉

Word count: 5.7k

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Tagging: @arcielee @nightvyre @mrs-starkgaryen @gemini-mama @ecstaticactus, more in comments 🥰

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The taxidermied tiger head hangs above the fireplace in the sitting room, its jaws agape in a perpetual roar and its eyes polished spheres of metamorphic rock the color of dusk. Daemon shot it in Burma years ago—valleys of saturated green earth, mountain ranges like a crooked spine—shortly after opening his third black opal mine in Australia. You stare at the disembodied creature and she stares back, a silent scream, a doomed eternal terror in her tiger’s eye gaze: Help! A man is killing me. A man is taking me from where I belong. A man is nailing me to a wall so all the world knows he is the one whose bullet severed my aorta, filled me with hemorrhaging blood until I sank down, down, down.

You say, still looking at the slayed beast: “Did we really have to bring that with us?”

Daemon glances over as he fastens his cufflinks, onyx with red beryl in the shape of a three-headed dragon, the Targaryen family crest. “I’m sure you’d prefer a finger painting from that Italian tosspot you’re so enamored with. What’s his name, Pizarro?”

“Picasso. And he’s Spanish.”

“Even worse.”

You turn to Daemon, and you can feel yourself wilting, becoming pitiful, vulnerable, needy. “Where are you going?”

He smirks as he stalks past you. “Wherever I want.” Then he passes through the doorway and out into the hall, flanked by the ever-grim Edward Rushton, black suits and polished leather shoes.

It’s midday on April 12th, and you and Fern are now alone in the Targaryen staterooms. Laenor is down on F-Deck enjoying the Squash Racquet Court with his new Parisian companions, Rhaenyra is in the Reading and Writing Room with a group of ladies led by the Countess of Rothes, and Dagmar has taken Draco…somewhere. Meanwhile, your sweet-tempered maid is flitting around making beds and collecting empty cups and soiled linens. “Fern?” you call.

She peeks out of Draco’s bedroom. “Yes, ma’am? Do you need something?”

To leap overboard and swim back to Ireland. “Would you like to take a stroll around the Promenade Deck with me? Breathe some fresh air, look for dolphins and whales, have lunch at the Verandah Cafe?”

Fern is apologetic in that soft, skittish way that she has. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I have to finish cleaning the rooms before Dagmar comes back.”

She doesn’t say why—that would be insubordinate—but you know. Just like on the family crest, the dragon has three heads: Daemon, Draco, Dagmar. All must be appeased lest their fire turn you to ash. And Fern lives in terror of the gaunt Scandinavian tyrant. “Right. I understand.”

“I should be done in an hour or two. When you return from your walk, I’ll make you tea.”

“You’re too kind.”

She is confused. “It’s my job, ma’am.”

“Still, I’m glad you’re the one doing it.”

Fern smiles, small and hesitant. “Thank you, ma’am. Enjoy your walk.”

Outside on the Promenade Deck, the sun is bright and the wind brisk, just warm enough to forego a coat, black mink or white ermine or grey rabbit or reddish fox, pelts harvested, creatures butchered. Your dress is a cheerful yellow, as if attempting to conjure the golden-haired magic of the Targaryens, their willfulness, their invincibility, their habit of bending the world’s truth in their hands until it snaps. Yet none of them are here with you; you are alone, you are unnecessary. As you walk, you pass women reading novels on teak deckchairs, children playing with spinning tops and dominoes under the watchful eyes of fathers and governesses, men smoking cigars as they debate business and politics and which gemstones they should purchase for their sweethearts. You have to get away from them.

You take the Grand Staircase up to the Boat Deck, the highest level of the ship, and to distract yourself you count the covered lifeboats that are stowed there. This does not assuage your anxiety; you see only twenty, and while you have made a practice of avoiding sailing and therefore are no expert on the issue, this does not seem like enough. You go to the railing—about as tall as your waist—and lean over it as you stare, thoughts troubled and brow furrowed, into the wild, uninterrupted blue of the North Atlantic, five hundred miles from the coast of Ireland. To your left is a man painting a sheet of paper clipped to an easel, a palette held in his hand, viscous globs of color from small silvery tubes. Seventy feet below where you stand is the sea, thrashing against Titanic, a wood-and-steel intruder. You lean a little farther over the side of the ship. The water is cold, you imagine; cold, deep, dark, silent.

If I fell in, this would all be over, you think. No more Daemon. No more anyone. The only people who would miss me are my parents, and they’ll never see me again anyway.

But no; you cannot abandon Draco. He’s a piece of you, even if he doesn’t know it. You cannot allow him to become a monster.

The viola player peeks out from behind his easel. “Not thinking about jumping, are you?”

You gasp, startled, and then cover your face as you groan. “Why are you always out here?!”

“Aw, fancy rock lady needs a member of the perpetual underclass to malign,” he says as he adds brushstrokes to his painting. He has procured a suit somehow—black, slightly too big for him, likely stolen—to better masquerade as a first-class passenger. “What’s the matter, rock lady? Did your servants not put enough sugar in your tea this morning? Did they tug a little too hard as they brushed your hair?”

“You’re not well mentally. You need a straightjacket.”

“I’m not the one about to throw myself into the Atlantic Ocean.”

You glare at him, bitter, defensive. “I wasn’t going to jump.”

“Then what were you doing?”

You can’t answer; you wring your hands and press your lips together so tightly they ache, watch dark smoke billow from the nearest funnel, coal shoveled into blazing furnaces, treasures of the earth extracted like teeth and consumed.

“Hey, I didn’t, um…” The viola player lowers his paintbrush, repentant. “It wasn’t my intention to upset you.”

You ask to change the subject: “What are you painting?”

“People,” he says, grinning, then turns his easel to show you. It’s a father holding his daughter so she can look over the railing and pointing to show her something out in the waves, dolphins, perhaps. His work is excellent, you are surprised to see: wispy curls of hair, irises alight with emotion, shadows and wrinkles and cheeks ruddy from gusts of wind, imperfections of reality.

“It’s good,” you manage once you’ve gotten your bearings.

“And of course you’re shocked.” He points to a scuffed brown leather portfolio resting against one leg of the easel. “I have plenty more, if you’re interested.”

You open the portfolio. There are men worriedly counting coins, women waiting on park benches, children beaming as they feed ducks or tend to their dolls, people giggling and scowling and burning up with clandestine longing, people sipping drinks in smoky pubs. In the bottom right corner of each painting is a moniker for the subject: Crystal, Big Red, Sunshine, Baron, Carnation, Tiny, Mars, Archer, Harpist, Pennies, Henry VIII, Belfast Belle. Unwittingly, you smile to yourself. “You give them names.”

“I watch people, but I don’t usually talk to them,” the viola player explains as he dabs thick oil paint on the paper clipped to the easel, treated to resemble the texture of linen. “I like to catch them unawares. Keeps the moment genuine, truthful. Otherwise they start acting for me.”

“Why paper instead of canvas?”

“Easier to travel with. Lighter and less bulky.”

You recall what he told Daemon at O’Connell’s Bar back in Galway: Well I’ve played all over Ireland, sir. All over Europe, in fact. You gingerly slide his paintings back into the portfolio and tease: “Who do you think you are, Picasso?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. His sand-colored hair trashes in the wind that blows off the ocean, salt and mist. “I am under no such delusion. I’ve met him, though.”

You gawk at the viola player. “You’ve…you’ve met Pablo Picasso?”

“Yeah,” he says casually. “In Barcelona. I love his Blue and Rose Period stuff. Now he’s doing some weird cubism bullshit.” The viola player shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s his art, he can paint what he wants. But I prefer something a little more…real.”

“I do too,” you confess. “I went to Paris once with my parents. I saw some of Picasso’s work in a gallery, but he wasn’t there at the time. I bought a few paintings.”

“Which ones?”

“Mother and Child from 1905. Flowers from 1901.” You hesitate. It’s a bit scandalous. “Blue Nude.”

But the viola player neither cringes nor makes a joke. “I remember that one,” he says softly, watching you. After a moment he asks: “Are they hanging in your rooms?”

“They’re in a trunk. Daemon doesn’t like them.” And the animosity in your voice is an act of treason, however small. You glance around for Daemon, Rush, Dagmar, Rhaenyra, Laenor, and thankfully find none of them. You avert your eyes, ashamed. A husband you hate, and fear, and obey, and lie awake at night conspiring how to please.

There is something that ripples across the viola player’s face—sympathy, distress—and then he resumes putting the final touches on his portrait of two unnamed passengers. “Do you paint?”

You laugh. “Very badly.”

He offers you the paintbrush, saturated with a reddish-gold color like dusk. “You can help me fill in the man’s scarf. That’s hard to fuck up.”

Your jaw falls open.

“That’s hard to mess up,” he amends.

Smiling shyly, you take the paintbrush and add a few tentative strokes to the scarf. The viola player accepts the paintbrush when you forfeit it.

“So besides making awful paintings, how did you spend your time back in Galway?”

Reminding my father who he is. Taking long walks through the fields with my mother. Sitting in the garden wondering how my life went so wrong. Trying to stop my only child from becoming a demon like his father. “I read a lot. Mostly Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, and Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?” he echoes, amused. “Recite some for me.”

You take a moment to decide on a passage.

“Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own,

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,

The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.”

“The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” the viola player says, much to your amazement. He’s a thief holding a third-class ticket, and yet he’s learned. This is rare outside the blue-blooded aristocrats and the titans of industry. Fern can barely read and write.

“Where were you educated?”

“The world,” he replies, grinning.

“And the world included lessons on Shakespeare?”

“Sure, sometimes.”

“Alright then, let’s hear an excerpt.”

He considers this, tapping the handle of his paintbrush against his lips. Then he says:

“My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.”

“King Henry VI,” you say, admittedly impressed. “I didn’t know poor people read Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare’s plays were written for everyone, fancy rock lady. Standing tickets at the Globe cost pennies.”

You study the viola player as he paints, feeling a bewildering combination of curiosity, amusement, fondness. “What’s your name?”

He pauses as if he’s not sure what to say, then gives you a sly, crooked grin as he replies: “Picasso.”

Now a steward is approaching, and the viola player is alarmed, perhaps anticipating being revealed as a fraud and dragged back to the third-class accommodations; but the steward is only passing by with a tray full of champagne flutes, offering them to illustrious passengers as they stroll the decks. You take two glasses and he continues on his way. You down one flute in just a few gulps and offer the other to the viola player. He smiles politely but does not reach for it.

“Thank you, but I don’t drink.”

“Really?” Have you ever met a man who doesn’t? You can’t think of one. And you are suddenly aware of how quickly you finished your champagne—unladylike, improper, but surely no great disgrace in front of this audience—and how yearningly you’re already glancing at the second glass, carbonated amber, fool’s gold.

“I’m not someone who can stop at just one or two,” the viola player says. “I’ve learned that about myself. Tried to fight it for a while, turns out acceptance is easier. I hardly even miss booze anymore.”

“How long did you fight it?”

“Ten years.”

You are caught off-guard. “What? How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Since he was thirteen? Can that be right? “We’re about the same age,” you say instead, taking a distracted swig from the glass that would have been his.

“Yeah,” the viola player agrees thoughtfully.

You finish the champagne and hand both glasses to a passing steward. “I should go,” you tell the viola player. “I don’t know where Daemon is on the ship, and…” I don’t want him to see us. I don’t want him to hurt me.

“Sure. I get it.”

“Good luck with your painting.”

“I’ll make one of you next,” he promises, and you’re certain he’s joking.

You smile and turn to leave. “Whatever you say, Picasso.”

You walk towards the Grand Staircase that leads back down to the Promenade Deck. As you pass the Gymnasium, you steal a glimpse through one of the windows and see them inside: Draco giggling as he rides the electric horse and yanks gleefully on the reins, Dagmar beaming as her gnarled, arthritic hands hold him by the waist so he doesn’t slide off.

You lay your palm against the cold glass, separated by a few steps that might as well be miles, wreckage peering up through the darkness from the bottom of the sea.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fern helps you dress for dinner: a glittering gold gown, a tiger’s eye amulet from Burma. Laenor has brought a companion, one of the Parisians he’s become so well-acquainted with, a count’s son named Hugo. As Laenor is preoccupied, Daemon escorts Rhaenyra to the First-Class Dining Saloon down in D-Deck. They meander together, her arm linked through his, murmuring gossip about the other passengers and snickering contemptuously. You trail behind them, feeling invisible, a sun that casts no warmth.

All around you are other first-class passengers descending the Grand Staircase: Benjamin Guggenheim and his mistress two decades his junior, John Jacob Astor and his pregnant eighteen-year-old wife, railroad tycoons Charles M. Hays and John B. Thayer, steel industrialist George Dennick Wick, the glamorous Countess of Rothes, the newly-wealthy Margaret Brown, the eminent journalist W.T. Stead, the White Star Line’s managing director J. Bruce Ismay. But your gaze keeps drifting to Macy’s department store owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, neither young, neither beautiful, and yet so evidently devoted to each other. You wonder how that feels; surely nothing like a bruise, a reproach, a back turned to you in the marriage bed.

On the A-Deck landing of the Grand Staircase is the viola player, his horsehair bow gliding over four thick strings to loose an energetic, jubilant song, standing there in his suit that no one else notices is too big for him because they don’t really see him at all. He is less than a fixture of the ship; the first-class passengers marvel at the glass-and-wrought-iron dome overhead and the Neoclassical clock on the wall and even the bronze cherub statue at the base of the steps, but the flesh-and-blood machinery of Titanic wears a sort of camouflage, unremarkable and interchangeable, uncomfortably human. The viola player gives you a wink and a quick, subtle smile as you pass by him, and you smile back. And for a moment, it is like you have a friend aboard the ship, a groundswell of fleeting joy, gratefulness, peace.

Dinner is oysters, salmon with hollandaise, corned ox tongue, chateau potatoes, asparagus soup, Waldorf pudding, other things that you pick at without much interest. You miss Lough Cutra Castle, you miss your parents, you miss Ireland, you miss your life before Daemon Targaryen stalked into it with his ever-glinting green eyes and his talent for making you so desperate to satisfy him. Instead of eating, you mostly drink champagne, draining glasses of it until your cheeks are warm and your thoughts hazy. You look around for the viola player, but he never appears in the First-Class Dining Saloon. Instead, the five-piece string ensemble that welcomed you aboard Titanic yesterday is playing Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

Daemon has invited a guest to share your table, chief designer of the ship Mr. Thomas Andrews. He is gracious and even-tempered, exactly the sort of man Daemon likes to entrap and enchant and have his way with. As you drown in champagne, Daemon tells Mr. Andrews about surviving a hurricane while mining Larimar in the Dominican Republic, domesticating a ring-tailed lemur in Madagascar (Daemon had named it Aegon and kept it on a leash), getting lost for three days in the Australian Outback and resorting to eating snakes and dingoes, bludgeoned to death with rocks and roasted over campfires. Rhaenyra observes all of this with a proud, radiant smile, encouraging Daemon with nods and oddly girlish giggles. Laenor, meanwhile, is chatting with Hugo and paying little attention to anything else. He and Rhaenyra have three young sons back in England, though they resemble Laenor Velaryon far less than they do Harwin Strong, Viserys the Duke of Beaufort’s former Master of the Horse and Rhaenyra’s rumored lover. The virile, dark-haired Harwin Strong was killed last year in an unfortunate riding accident, whereupon Daemon rekindled his previously strained relationship with Rhaenyra in the interests of helping her cope with the loss. As it turned out, Daemon’s niece had grown up to be much the same as he is—daring, sarcastic, charismatic, incorrigible—and as if you didn’t have enough difficulty winning his affection before, now you must compete with his kindred spirit, a golden-haired wildfire only a few years older than you and who Daemon can delightedly torment his estranged brother with by capturing her in his orbit.

Daemon is saying, his elbows on the table and miming clutching a massive gemstone in his palm: “As a famed French fashion critic once wrote, The jewel, which is so well adapted to a woman’s adornment, is a combination of the riches of nature and art.”

“Not just any fashion critic,” you say without thinking, the champagne parting your lips before you can reconsider. “Charles Blanc. And I’m the one who gave you his book, remember? It was one of my wedding presents to you.”

Everyone turns to stare at you, as if abruptly being made aware of your existence. Laenor and Hugo appear puzzled. Rhaenyra is frowning with disapproval. Mr. Andrews nods politely. Daemon, after a moment, chuckles in that low, rolling, sardonic way that he does.

“Yes, dear, you certainly did. Clearly it made an impression.” He looks to Mr. Andrews. “You’ll have to forgive my wife, good sir. I’m afraid she has a weakness for champagne.”

“Don’t we all?” Mr. Andrews replies diplomatically.

“The truth is,” Dameon says as if he’s confiding in the shipbuilder; and yet there’s an exhilaration he can’t entirely disguise, a malicious triumph, proof of the power he has over you. “She’s petrified of sailing, has been for years. And this journey…well…it’s been quite an ordeal for her. But under no uncertain terms was I leaving Ireland without my family. Where I go, we all go.”

“I’m so sorry to hear about your rattled nerves, Lady Targaryen.” Mr. Andrews’ eyes are soft with pity for you, a neurotic and illogical woman, tortured by her own nature. “Is there anything I can say to alleviate your fears? Have you been on a ship that’s run into trouble before?”

“No, no sir, I just…” You push through the warm, amber-gold fog of the champagne to explain. “I’ve never been able to stop thinking of all the water beneath us, and a ship…even one as large and luxurious as Titanic…it seems too vulnerable to me. One puncture and we all go straight to the seafloor.”

“That’s why I built Titanic with watertight bulkheads that go up to E-Deck,” Mr. Andrews says, smiling reassuringly. “There are sixteen total, and the ship can stay afloat with several of them flooded. This is meant to contain any possible breach in the hull.”

“Oh, how ingenious!” Laenor exclaims. “Hugo, isn’t that extraordinary?”

Mr. Andrews continues: “Truly, Lady Targaryen, I have built you an unsinkable ship. You have nothing to worry about here on Titanic.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Daemon agrees.

“And there are lifeboats, I suppose,” you say. “Although…I didn’t see very many up on the Boat Deck. What is their total capacity, I wonder…?”

“Over 1,000 souls, ma’am,” Mr. Andrews replies.

You are horrified. “That’s half the people onboard.”

“Yes,” he concedes. “But as I said, Titanic cannot sink.” Again, he smiles blithely. “Besides, in the event of an evacuation—engine failure or damaged propellers or some such thing—the lifeboats would only be needed to ferry passengers from Titanic to the vessel we’d hail to rescue us with the wireless telegraph machine. The lifeboats were never intended to be able to hold all the passengers at once, that would be absurd.”

“Impossible,” Daemon concurs. “What on earth would necessitate a swift and total evacuation?”

“What about an iceberg?” Hugo says as he eats a heaping spoonful of Waldorf pudding, vanilla custard mixed with nutmeg, apples, walnuts, and raisins.

Mr. Andrews titters patiently, as if this is the most ludicrous thing he’s ever heard. “No iceberg could damage Titanic enough to flood more than three bulkheads. And we have lookouts employed to spot them and sound the alarm so we can turn in time. Icebergs are not a concern whatsoever.”

“Très bien!” Hugo declares, redirecting his full attention back to his Waldorf pudding.

Mr. Andrews looks to you, his voice kind but patronizing. “Do you feel better now, Lady Targaryen?”

“Much better,” you lie.

“Good. Then no more worrying. And no need to drink yourself under the table either.”

Daemon says with a derisive snort: “Well, she is Irish.”

Everyone laughs; everyone but you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Back at the Targaryen staterooms, Rush is waiting by the door to take your coats. Laenor and Hugo bid everyone goodnight, then depart; Rhaenyra, seemingly reluctantly, takes her leave as well. She and Laenor have separate accommodations as they always do while travelling, not unheard of among first-class passengers but also not helping to dispel the rumors concerning her sons’ parentage.

Dagmar is perched on one of the sofas like a falcon on a branch, her talonlike fingers knitting a forest green blanket for Draco. Your son, meanwhile, is sprawled on the sitting room floor and at war with Fern, who is trying to coax him out of his shoes and day clothes and into his pajamas.

“Draco, please, my love, it’s time to get ready for bed now—”

“I want to go back to the Gymnasium!” he screeches, wriggling out of her grasp. From the sofa, Dagmar chuckles as if this is charming behavior, a portent of superb athletic fitness, perhaps. “I want to ride the horsey!”

Fern is exasperated. “Darling, the Gymnasium is closed, no one is allowed to use it any more tonight. But I promise you’ll be able to go back tomorrow—”

“No!” Draco shrieks. “Now! Right now!”

Fern finally manages to slip off one of his shoes, and faster than anyone can stop him, Draco draws back his hand and slaps her across the face, open palm, a sharp crack in the air, and of course he’s too young and too weak to do anything but stun her, but he won’t be four years old forever.

One day he’ll be able to hurt people. He’ll be able to break them, bruise them, ruin their lives.

“No!” you shout, then bolt to Draco and drop to the floor to hold him by his frail little shoulders, firm yet careful not to harm him, no scratches, no bruises, no pools of trapped blood that will ache with violent memory. “You never do that! You don’t hurt people! You don’t hit women!”

“Mam?” Draco whimpers, his lips quivering and tears shimmering in his eyes; and he almost never calls you that, he almost never acknowledges you as his mother at all. But he knows, he must, this proves it. “I’m sorry…I won’t do it again…please don’t yell at me…”

Immediately remorseful, you embrace him, and Draco clings to you as he sobs. Fern is watching you with huge, frightened eyes; then they flick to someone standing behind you.

Rush grabs you by both arms and wrenches you away. You yelp in shock and pain; Dagmar swoops in to take Draco and vanishes into his bedroom, glaring at you over her shoulder, frigid lethal fury. Fern is covering her mouth with her hands so she won’t scream.

Rush hurls you to the carpet and backs away. When you look up, Daemon is standing in the doorway of your bedroom, orange dusk-like light spilling out from behind him.

“Come here,” Daemon says, beckoning you with his right hand.

You are terrified; you are shaking. “No.”

“The longer you wait, the worse it will be.”

“No,” you say again. You glance at Fern, but she can’t help you; she turns away, stifling a cry with her palms. The room is spinning, your thoughts are slow, your skull aches with rhythmic pulses like blows from a hammer. You peer up at Rush, blinking blearily. “Do you like working for a man who beats his wife?”

Rush doesn’t reply; his face is grave but otherwise unreadable. Fern curls up on the floor, shaking her head. The taxidermied tiger head roars silently from above the crackling fireplace.

Daemon says from the doorway: “Dear, I’m losing my patience.”

There’s nowhere else to go. You crawl towards him, then at the halfway point stagger to your feet. Daemons steps aside so you can cross through the threshold. He closes the door and locks it. You stare at him, swaying a bit, your hands hovering in front of you. You’re trying to figure out where he’s going to hit you, but he’s good at not letting on, and you’re drunk. You guess stomach, but it’s your face, just like Draco struck Fern; his open palm sets your cheek on fire and rocks your head back. You lunge for him, fingers clawing and knuckles jabbing at his ribs. Sometimes you fight back and sometimes you don’t—occasionally he finds it endearing and leaves you alone, more often it exacerbates the situation—but tonight you are overwhelmed with wrath for this man who has taken everything from you, your home, your parents, your son, your future.

You shove Daemon into his writing desk, then he pins you to the wall, slides open a drawer of the desk with his free hand, pulls out his gemstone-studded dagger and lays the blade against your windpipe. And you scream, because for all his roughness and his threats Daemon has never done this before. No one appears to rescue you; no one would dare.

“You will not correct Draco,” Daemon says. “He is my son, and I will deal with him.”

You seethe, teeth bared: “I don’t want him to be like you.”

“Think about it, dear,” Daemon hisses, the blade cold against your throat. You can feel it stinging, a thin slice like a papercut you’ll have to cover with makeup tomorrow. “We’re on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. If you were to take a tumble over the railing, who could say if it was an accident or a suicide or a crime of opportunity committed by some third-class scoundrel? There would be nothing to investigate. You would be gone, and that would be the end of it. Draco is past the fragile years of infancy, he is healthy and he is fierce. Your father’s quarry is already under the control of my managers. What do I need you for now? Why the fuck would I tolerate any further obstinance from you? Your usefulness has come and gone. You stand on the thinnest of ice. One wrong step, and you’ll find it splintering beneath your feet.”

He lifts the dagger away and strides out of the bedroom. You stand there in the tawny lamplight like a sunset, trembling all over, gasping for air, your hands flying up to your neck. When you check your fingers, they are sticky and copper-smelling with a small amount of blood.

He could have killed me. I think he wanted to.

There is a tall oval mirror by the bed, its frame gilded and glowing in the ochre lamplight. You stare at yourself, tears flooding down your cheeks, a gold dress worth more than you are. Everything you own is Daemon’s. That will be true for as long as he lives.

You flee out onto the small private deck attached to your rooms, through the back exit, and into the labyrinthian hallways of B-Deck. You run towards the stern of the ship, dodging stewards who ask if you need assistance and men sauntering back from the First-Class Smoking Room after dinner, puffing on their pipes and their cigars, nursing stout glasses of brandy to keep them warm. When you break out into the open air, it is bitterly cold. The ocean is a vast lightless void; you could mistake it for nothingness if it wasn’t for the thunderous rumble and salt spray of the waves. Your gleaming gold dress billows around you as you sprint to the metal railing that encloses the stern, grip the top rung with shaking hands, stare down into the roiling depths churned by the propellers.

Where can I go? There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere else to run to.

“Hey,” the viola player says; you recognize his voice immediately.

You turn away, not wanting him to see the swelling on your face, the traces of blood at your throat. You are heartbroken, you are humiliated. You agreed to marry a man and now he’s ruined your life. You wrap your bare arms around yourself and sniffle, shivering, swiping tears from your eyes.

After a while, the viola player says cautiously, realizing you aren’t in the mood for disclosures: “It’s cold tonight.”

“Obviously.”

He takes off his black wool coat, presumably stolen like the suit he wears underneath, and offers it to you. “I have more layers on.”

“I don’t want you to be cold.”

“Please shut up and take the coat, okay?” You accept it and put it on, and instantly you begin to feel better. The viola player asks gently: “Does he hit you?”

You shrug, petulant like a child. “Sometimes I hit him back.”

The viola player sighs, but he’s not just disappointed; he’s saddened, he’s pained. “Look, I know what it’s like to get knocked around. That’s why I left home.”

You remember what he told you when you first realized he’d followed you onto Titanic: I have family in New York City. I left home and haven’t been back in years, and I think now’s a good time for a visit. “Why would you ever want to see them again?”

“Things are different now. I’m older, I’m not afraid to walk out and be on my own, I’m confident that I can advocate for myself better than before. And they aren’t all bad. I have…” He hesitates. “I have two brothers and a sister in New York, and I miss them.”

“What are their names?”

“Um,” he stops to think. Clearly he’s making them up. “Arnold, Henrietta, and Dean.”

“Do you actually have siblings or is this some sort of metaphor?”

He laughs. “No, they’re real. The names might not be, but the people are. Want to see your painting?”

“You were serious?”

He carefully pulls it out of the brown leather portfolio he’s carrying under one arm. And if it’s supposed to be you, he’s failed, but still the image is mesmerizing: a young woman—too beautiful, far too beautiful—glancing over at him from where she was pondering the waves under a clear midday sky, her hair in disarray from the wind and her eyes fearful, an oil-paint snapshot of desperation, defenselessness, wonder, hope.

“It’s very nice,” you say at last. “But I don’t look like that.”

“Yeah you do.”

You examine the bottom right corner of the painting to see what he’s named you. You skim your thumbprint feather-lightly over black cursive letters, drawn with the smallest of brushes. “Petra,” you murmur.

The viola player says self-consciously, as if hoping you’ll approve: “It’s Greek for rock.”

You smile faintly. “I know what it means.”

“Oh, fancy rock lady took Greek lessons in school.”

“Of course I did.”Greek, Latin, French, Irish Gaelic. You muse softly, still studying the painting: “Petra and Picasso.”

You don’t have to look at him; you can hear the grin in his voice. “Guess we’re friends now, huh?”

“I’ve never had a poor friend before.”

“Well, firstly, you can’t call me your poor friend. That’s offensive.”

With great unwillingness, you surrender the painting and give it back to the viola player. “I can’t keep this. I’m sorry, I want to. But Daemon might find it.” And then he’ll push me overboard and I’ll be dinner for the sharks.

He tucks the painting safely into his portfolio. “I’ll hold onto it for now.”

“Forever, you mean.”

“You might not always have to worry about Daemon.”

You share a dark, horrible truth: “I’ll never be free of him.”

“We’ll see,” the viola player replies, undaunted.

We’ll see.

[moonmeg]

"Goodbye" (one-shot)

Silvia adjusted her husband's cravat and straightened out the collar of his black coat.

She looked up to his face. Andrew's head hung low. His eyes looked almost closed as he stared holes into the wooden floor. In all their years together, Silvia had never seen her usually so upbeat and joyful husband in such genuine sorrow. She frowned, as she brushed a strand of loose grey hair out of his face. The last time he wore his hair braided was almost three years ago. That was for a much happier occasion though: Catherine and Caleb's wedding.

Silvia cupped her husband's face in reassurance. He finally met her eyes.

Hers were in just as much pain as his were though. Pain he had never seen in them before. He placed his hand on her's before his eyes and face fell again.

"It's not fair.", he managed to finally break the silence.

"I know it isn't."

He fastened his grip on her hand.

"He was still so young. Had his life before him. He'll never get to live it now."

Silvia tightened her lips and furrowed her brows more than already, sharing the pain Andrew felt.

In just about an hour they would bury him. They'd see the coffin lowered down into the soil. They'd cover it with soil and fill the hole in the earth again. They'd never see him again. Only his tombstone.

Caleb's death had put a halt on the Clawthorne household. That the young blond man was dead, hasn't truly settled in yet. It seemed it never would.

"Andy", Silvia whispered when she noticed tears forming in his eyes.

"A part of me was taken from me. Unnecessarily and senselessly taken from me. From us.", his voice got louder. A little anger shimmering through it.

"I know he was not mine. Not of my blood.", he paused and brushed his thumb over the back of Silvia's hand, trembling a little, "But Titan damn it I loved him like a son!"

Andrew let out a sob. He felt her thumb catching and wiping the tears that he was no longer able to hold back shortly after.

"I know you did. He was part of our family. Not by blood but by heart. He was our son by heart.".

Silvia brought Andrew's hands to her chest, just above her heart. She pressed a kiss to his knuckles and tried her best to comfort her husband.

"And Cathy...", his voice started trembling now, "my poor little girl.".

"She loved him so much.", Silvia softly whispered.

"He made her happy. That's what matters to me most. She was happy. So happy.", he tightly smiled but was still unable to look Silvia in the eyes. His hurt smile disappeared again quickly. "She'll never be this happy again. Never."

Silence. For a short while there was nothing but silence as the couple stood in the room, held hands and desperately tried to find comfort in the other. However four cold hands could give warmth and comfort.

This was pain they never thought to go through. And how do you handle a death so sudden? Nobody prepares you for it. There's no words for it. Nothing to say, nothing to do. It's emptiness. Nothing more and nothing less.

"We should get going.", Silvia said.

Andrew slowly nodded. He let go of her hands and sniffed as he dried his eyes.

"I'll let Cathy know.", she added before she stepped out of the room and walked across the floor to Catherine's room.

The carvings Cathy decorated her door with many years ago, as always, caught Silvia's attention. Those were carefree days.

Carefree days Silvia wished to have again.

She inhaled deeply and knocked on the door.

"Cathy?", she opened the door to peek inside. Her daughter was lying in bed, with her back to the door. It broke Silvia's heart that Catherine couldn't come along to say her final goodbyes to Caleb. The healers had recommended she rather stay in bed and best not be introduced to a trigger of grief such as a burial. Catherine was weakened. That was the side effect of a pregnancy anyway, but since Catherine was in such a state of mind and heart after Caleb's death, she was even weaker.

"Sweet pea, we're going now.", Silvia informed. Without a response.

A bit worried about her daughter and her well being she asked if everything was alright?

"Fine. The baby's just making a fuss.", Cathy mumbled, shifting her legs a little. With soft strokes over her round belly, she tried to calm the overly active baby down.

"I see. Do you need anything else before we go?"

"No."

"If there is anything send off Opal, Agnes or Beryl for us and we'll be right back.", Silvia urged. The baby wasn't due for another few weeks but the fear it may be born any day now after everything that has happened was there. It gave Silvia at least a little peace of mind to know their palismen are with Catherine.

"Mhm."

Silvia wanted to say something more but didn't know what words she could share to change anything about Cathy being this apathetic. Instead, she just let her know that they won't be gone for long and added a reminder that Catherine is loved.

Catherine heard the door close with a tap. She stared outside the window, into the cloudy blue-grey sky. Emotionless and without much thought. The bubbles in her stomach didn't calm. The baby had been constantly moving around and kicking these past days but tonight it was worse than ever. It cost her sleep.

As the clouds slowly passed by and the baby restlessly kicked, she fiddled with the ring she wore around her neck. She was tired. She was hurt. She was numb. But she had no more tears left to cry.

Friends of the Clawthornes expressed their condolences, gave words of comfort, wished them strength and threw certain mourning flowers into the pit. Over time the crowd of people dressed in black grew smaller and smaller until only Silvia and Andrew remained.

They stood there. Stoic and silent, staring at the flower-covered coffin in the soil.

Andrew reached into his pocket with a shaking hand, pulling out the small wooden Lunaris Cathy had carved as a symbol of love and admiration for Caleb.

He looked at it for a while. He hesitated to do what his daughter had asked of him but slowly gathered his strength for it. And so, he stretched his arm out, above the grave, and let go.

"Goodbye, my son.", he managed before falling to his knees and letting out a cry in agony. Silvia lowered herself to the ground to embrace Andrew, holding him tightly. Mourning with him.

[your-resident-boat-person]

hi boat mutual you are in my fav mutuals circle. why is the RMS olympic ur fav ocean liner?

OOOOoooooh thank you SO much for asking. So, I measure ocean liners by a few criteria. External Appearance, Internal Appearance, Career, Speed (relative to the fastest liner of her time), etc.

In terms of External Appearance, I like the Olympic. She’s not my favorite, I think I might prefer the SS United States or the Queen Mary, MAYBE even the Mauretania too, but that's tough. Anyway, I love the shape of the Olympics forward superstructure. I think she pulls off the relatively square/flat superstructure much better than ships like the Aquitania. I think Aquitania's superstructure might just be ever so slightly too tall, but I’m not quite sure. I’ve also never been a fan of the split superstructure near the bow like on the RMS Oceanic and the Big Four. Anyway, The ratio of superstructure to hull to funnels is just fantastic. The shape/proportions of Olympics funnels are excellent. I also think the White Star livery suits her very well. Especially in the 20’s when her sheer line was lowered.

In terms of interiors, I absolutely adore the Olympics wood paneled Edwardian decor. I might be a BIT biased, because I have a much better understanding of the Olympics interior and decor thanks to Titanic: Honor and Glory. If I were to go back in time and sail on the Lusitania or Mauretania, I might prefer them, but the pictures can only convey so much to me now. I’ve also always preferred the Edwardian decor to the Art Deco decor on ships like the Normandie. Don’t get me wrong, the Normandie was gorgeous, but her interiors almost give me the vibe of an art museum. Cold, imposing, almost sterile. Not exactly a place I’d like to live for a week. The Queen Mary is much better in this regard, feeling much more warm and inviting, but I still just overall prefer the pre war decor of ocean liners. Olympic just happens to be my favorite.

In terms of speed, everyone makes a very big deal about how the Olympic class was just too slow to take the blue riband from the Lusitania class, but the Olympic wasn’t exactly slow either. With an initial service speed of 21 knots, and a maximum recorded speed of 24 knots, she was still very fast compared to most liners of her day, especially compared to the Big Four, which could only go between 16 and 18 knots.

However, standing above all else is the Olympics career, which for me, is what makes her stand above the rest.

When the Lusitania was launched, she beat the previous ship in terms of size by 6,969 gross registered tons. When the Olympic was launched, she beat the Lusitania by nearly twice that, being 13,774 gross registered tons larger. (For reference, The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria was 24,581 GRT, The Lusitania was 31,550 GRT, and the Olympic was 45,324 GRT). At the time of her launch, she was the largest man made moving object ever built, by far. Shortly thereafter she suffered a collision with the HMS Hawke, but survived easily thanks to her watertight compartments. After the sinking of her sister, the Titanic, she was withdrawn from service and refit, introducing safety features that made her by far the safest ship afloat. She already was the safest before the refit, but the refit fixed some critical flaws and oversights by adding lifeboats, raising bulkheads, adding an interior second skin to absorb damage (remember this one) and plenty more.

World War I began in 1914, and the Olympic was once again withdrawn from service. This time, she was refit as a troop ship. During the war, Olympic is reported to have carried up to 201,000 troops and other personnel, burning 347,000 tons of coal and traveling about 184,000 miles. She survived TWO encounters with German U-boats. Most ships don't survive one, and in one of these two encounters, the U-Boat didn't survive! The crew of the Olympic spotted the U-Boat and managed to ram and sink it. The Olympic was the only merchant ship to have sunk enemy tonnage during World War 1. Can't say definitively for other wars, but none come to mind. A plaque was placed in one of Olympics first class spaces to commemorate the event. The second encounter went a bit differently. The second U-Boat actually managed to hit Olympic with a torpedo. Luckily it was a dud, and didn't detonate. The torpedo did make a small hole in her hull, but the double hull contained the flooding. The crew of the Olympic didn't know she was hit until she was put in dry dock after the war and they found the hole.

After the war, she repatriated Canadian troops and earned the nickname "Old Reliable". A dance hall was even named after her. She was once again refit, giving her oil fired boilers. This significantly reduced the amount of crew necessary, from (approximately) 350 men to only 50. Also, this change increased her average speed by a 10th of a knot, and significantly reduced the amount of smoke and pollution she created. She could also be completely refueled in a day, rather than a week. Because oil is a liquid, they were actually able to store it in unconventional places like the space between the double hull. This gave Olympic incredible range and fuel capacity compared to her rivals. Throughout the 1920s, she became extremely popular with the rich and famous. This was despite the fact that Olympic was no longer White Star Line's flagship. That title went to the Majestic, originally a German liner, but ceded to the brits as a war reparation. But as I was saying, her popularity with celebrities of the time earned her the nickname of "The Movie Star Liner". By 1934, the effects of the great depression had taken hold. Very few people were traveling. Cunard and White Star were in pretty serious trouble (White Star wasn't just suffering from the great depression, but that's a story for another day). Cunard didn't have enough money to complete the RMS Queen Mary and made an appeal to the government for help. They agreed, but only under the condition that the Cunard line and White Star Line merge. At this point, many Cunard and White Star ships were sold or scrapped to get as much money as possible for the Queen Mary. This includes the 3 remaining ships of the Big Four, and even the Mauretania. The thing that doomed the Olympic was her lack of private bathrooms. Standards for travel and comfort had simply changed too much since 1911, and the Olympic no longer made enough of a profit for Cunard White Star to keep her in service. She was sold for scrap, and by 1936, she was gone.

Anyway, sorry for the huge info dump. Tl;dr - The Olympic is my favorite because of her interesting career. I'm very passionate about the topic. Also, apologies for any inaccuracies. Most of this was from memory, but I made sure to fact-check all the big stuff and the numbers.

[tzigone]

What age first comes to mind when you think of each of the original NTT?

I've asked this previously with the JLI. It's not about how canonically old they are or you think they should be (absent de-agings, universe reboots, etc.). But when you first think of each of these characters, how old do you think of them as? So much depends on the eras you read with them, and what of that sticks with you, and which eras and aspects and relationships you most value. Not to mention how fast in-universe time was moving in your favorite eras.

Wally, of course, got married and had kids. They never let Dick do so in main timeline, but he has associations with younger Batfam members that make me think of him as older. Poor Raven and Gar were deaged and kept on younger teams even before the universe reboot. And we have Vic and Kory after.

For me, so much depends on the era I read them in. All have eras I just don't read them in, either because I don't like what's going on with them or because of general disinterest in what's going on with DC at the time (that especially covers recent times, as I kept waiting for continuity to settle, then the constant Events, which aren't my thing).

Speed-aging Wally's kids throws him off to me, too, as I'm not fond of speed-aging kids at all (or skip-timing as with Jon Kent). So in my head he ends up a new dad in his mid twenties.

Dick ends up late 20s in my head. Relative ages of other Bats play in, but I sort of cut off for him before New 52 (and I honestly never think of him as Batman) because I've never really gotten into anything of his after that (hate the de-aging). He should be older, of course, but I don't first think of him that way, again probably due to not reading later stuff much.

The others haven't had the same degree of solo work after the team, and I abandoned NTT shortly after Titans Hunt. I've read stuff with them here and there since, but never consistently read a Titans title since.

Raven and Kory pretty much stop for me then. It's hugely important from a storytelling perspective, but I simply dislike the whole concept of Dark Raven or Rachel Roth or the goth-y influences from the cartoon (which I liked when I watched it, but didn't want to influence the comics I didn't read comics then and now resent character being largely remade from it), and even though I know they exist, they don't enter my headspace. So Raven ends up in her early twenties.

Kory, as I said, is in a similar headspace to me. I know other storylines happened, but I'm even vaguer on those than Raven's. Another dead husband, more pain for Tamaran - sounds like basically story on repeat to me, though I didn't read it, so can't speak authoritatively. Don't get me started on having her and Jason (or Roy as Jason) as a team or even worse on putting her on Damian's Teen Titans. Anyway, I always think of her as early twenties, too.

Gar, interestingly enough, I tend to think of in his slightly older, more mature fashion. Not making his obnoxious jokes and sexually harassing female teammates. And operating in a time when Dayton simply isn't around (and Rita is dead). I'm not at all sure it isn't some not just amalgamated, but constructed version of him built out from what I wanted him to grow up to be. Anyway, he sits in his early twenties for me.

Now Vic - I kinda feel in some aspects like I do with Gar and in some aspects like Raven and Kory. Certainly the post Titans Hunt events don't factor in at all (I didn't like storyline even a bit before like, quit reading a few issues after, and forget a lot of what happened after that era with Vic even happened). More like Raven and Kory and less like like Gar, he was older and more mature. I think of him early or mid twenties and having found peace with himself and belief in his own humanity (which happened a couple times before he'd reset on it), but don't think of that as having just happened, so ending up adding a couple years.

Donna is the wonky one. I tend to stick her in two categories - recently married early twenties or recently separated mid twenties. While I think motherhood and her son were extremely important to her in-universe, I didn't read that era, so it doesn't stick with me. I have the before, when I was reading NTT. And I have some of the time during the separation (when she showed up in other comics I was reading) and cutoff before Robert dying, as that was really part of a soft reboot of the character/origins that didn't work for me. I mean, her origin has always been a mess, and moreso since COIE, but another changeup was not the solution.

[samthetrekkie]

I thought this finale was not as great as they could've made it. the plot was pretty predictable and I think there were a little too many plotholes for my taste (e.g. why are there two borg queens suddenly and what happened to agnes?). I'm also confused to what happened to the borg since nemesis in general. I generally loved the borg episodes on voyager, also because the jump scares and the atmosphere in the cubes were always so well done - so I was pretty disappointed when there were barely any real drones around. and the the whole thing was king of rushed, the resolution of the situation came way too quickly and easily. the whole finale plot could've easily be expanded into two episodes which would've added so much depth. it reminded me a lot of the tng movies (I have seen like 3 of them), which are usually based on good plot ideas, but then the actual execution is way to simple and mostly focuses on the characters instead (which I like and get why, but still). the episode just wasn't as full circle as it could've gone story-wise imo.

I guess I was expecting a bit more since the last couple of episodes were really good - but maybe that was mostly my binge watching brain speaking. it also probably had something to do with the fact my dad had watched the episode without me already and was kind of distracted (and distracting)...

at any rate, I think this season really brought the star trek spirit back to this show even though I actually enjoyed the urban scifi style in season 2. it simply was another soft reboot. and it made me excited about what's to come. seven as captain <3 has the taste of a very possible new show. I do think they tried to tie in the voyager references, but I'm a bit scared they will go to great lengths to avoid talking about chakotay (since raffi is right there) and generally her time shortly after voyager's return, as well as the rest of the crew, just because some actors don't want to come onto the show. also, the tuvok scene was a bit too distant for my taste - they were really close towards the end of voyager.

so while the idea of a seven-centered show or at least one with seven as a clear main character sounds great, I would love to see a borg prequel. why hasn't anyone come up with that? maybe it's not enough for a whole show, but a larger plot line within a show would be great. let me talk to cbs real quick-

p.s.: am I the only one who thought they were gonna name the refitted titan u.s.s. picard and not enterprise-g? Idk but g is such a ridiculously high letter in the alphabet at this point.

[asoulofatlantis]

Look I know for a fact that nothing that big happens in this update in between the start and the end and I am actually really tired so I decided to jump to the end and see if there is anything worth mentioning there.

I know that in between the beginning and the final there are A LOT of useless conversations and only a few good ones with Sage and Eggman but I feel like we can still skip them. All in all this was just added because people wanted to play the other characters and I am not keen on watching this as it adds more to a players experience not to the experience of someone who just watches it.

So Sonics Friends have trouble with their corrupted state but still managed to get the Chaos Emeralds for him. But going by their expressions and Body-Language, I think they have reached their limit. Which is interesting given how Sonic lasted 4 and a half Islands, collected the Emerald 3 times and fought 3 Titans before he corruption ate him alive. And his Friends barely managed one island and like two Emeralds, minus any Titans ^^' Speaks for Sonic once again that he lasted that freaking long.

Sage made a shield to protect Eggman from the Bosses attacks that this time are hitting much harder it seems...

Knuckles, Amy and Tales come to help her... which is nice and all but... uh... weren't they barely able to stand the last time we saw them? Now they can suddenly fly and use their "strength" to help with the shield? O.o

So there is a cutscene triggered shortly after that and if you have less than 100 rings left at this point you die. The new Horizont update is a nightmare in terms of difficulty, I tell you XD

Super Sonic is absolutely cool in those scenes during the fight!

Looks like for his big attack Sonic actually embraces his corruption. Bold!

He did it! This time he beat the End. But... damn! Don't pull a Shadow on us, Sonic!

Nope! We're good. Sonic survived.

Guys! Guys! Look! Look! This time, she is standing next to him! She is there! She is fine! AHHHHH!

Much better ending! Much, much, much better!

Isn't it wonderful? *sniff* *sniff* Shut up! These are happy tears this time!

Okay now I feel like I am still a bit entitled to some sort of review for this game as I've played though half of it (and I saw some footage of the Final Horizont Update previously so its not like I really only saw the ending of it...) and I've watched Charriii play though it and heard his comments and I believe I still can voice my thoughts and feelings on it.

So...

The story was great. Amazing and interesting and entertaining and even for me, who has seen most of the cutscenes before and knew the overall Plot beforehand, it was still something I loved to experience myself (as long as I could) and also see someone else experience it on YouTube. I feel like this game was made for longtime-Fans of the series. With lots of references to other characters and previous games. They even managed to include their hiccups with Tails character in Forces in a way that shows the players that they know and acknowledge their mistakes but the way Tails character develops shows that they are working on it. All characters have an amazing character-development in this game. I admit... I have a bit of... uh... a hard time getting used to an Amy that is not constantly suffocating Sonic, but the hug in the end was worth it all XD I do love me some soft Eggmann. I do remember people whining in Sonic X about Egmann actually only working with the Metarex to eventually beat them, or him preventing Sonic from turning dark or him not wanting to kill Tails at the end of the first season. But I loved it so much that this man is not just evil and that sometimes he shows that he has respect for Sonic and then we got his relationship with Sage and... it was so freaking good! It gave his character so much more depth. I know many people prefer their villains purely evil, but I love my villians with a heart and a soul and people they love and care about. It was great! I loved how the executed the Arcs for each character. I loved how Sonic was more understanding and empathic and less impulsiv in this game. I love how this game shows you how much he truly cares about his friends and also how different the dynamics are. The soft way he handles Amy, the rather rough way he deals with Knuckles and the brotherly way he handles Tails. It is really and truly wonderful. And I would have loved to experience all that myself, but it wasn't meant to be...

(Mind you there are a few plotholes and questionmarks in the plot as well... especially regarding Sonics movements when climbing the 6 Towers even tho in those cutscenes you saw how he could Barely stand, let alone really move... but there are minor and the rest of it is too good to even bother making a huge deal out of it!)

Because the gameplay is a totally different story for me! Now... my only issue with the game that has nothing to do with my Skill-Issues is the fact that the Camera is sometimes a freaking nightmare. Charriii too complained about it a lot. Especially some of the 2D-Parts in the open world were a nightmare to Manöver. It makes the Platforming harder than it has to be.

Now... about the rest of the game and why it wasn't for me. I've talked about my issues before, so I try to make this one short for once.

The jump in difficulty between the worlds was HUGE. Not to talk about how much harder the DLC was - and I could see and feel that just by watching someone else play it! The thing with the perfect parry is ridiculous! I've played that on easy and I feel like the only thing it did make easier was the bossfights. Maybe the requirements for the puzzles and stuff were also easier but if that was the case, I hardly could feel that after Amys Island ^^' The fact that most of the monsters couldn't be killed just by simply attacking them was also something that the easier difficulty did nothing about. Charriii didn't fight much either, so it wasn't really necessary but it was certainly still a problem especially as those monsters sometimes give you certain Items you might need or find rather useful. The rquierments for the optional scenes with the characters were sometimes really hard. In Knukkles World I gave up collecting them for two reasons: The first was, I just was so tired of collecting the Tokens for them AND I had no idea how to get to the place were Knukkles was. The immens amount of running around was overall a true nightmare, especially on the bigger Islands. There should have been more fast-traveling options available and from the start no less.

In any case... most of the reason I could not finish this game were my skill-Issues, as I've said before. But I feel like, they could have made sure that even players like me can get through the game, when they play on easy. That is probably too much to ask tho.

Plot and character-development aside, for me personally it was... not a bad game. That is the thing. Most of the times when I can not finish a game, its because the game sucks! And I should say that here too, what kind of game is so hard to finish even when you cheat? But as I was saying multiple times before, the game wasn't the issue, I was the issue. I was the one who couldn't finish it even with cheats. I think for the average Sonic player, the difficulty was fine. You did not have to get all the optional scenes, you did not have to find and finish all the Vault-Missions, you did not have to reveal the whole card to get through the plot (although it was increasingly harder on Chaos-Island to find your way to were you have to be to get what you need without the map...) and while there were some missions and puzzles and ways to certain places that were way too hard to figure out, most of them were easy enough or - once again - optional and thus you could have skipped most of them or not explore certain parts of the map.

I honestly am almost feeling like I should give this game a 9 out of 10 which is really high praise from me. HOWEVER... considering that there were things you needed to do or places you needed to go where the solution wasn't easy to find by yourself and the fact that the difference in difficulty from Island to Island was far too huge, I think I give it a 8 out of 10 instead. The final Horizont Ending was basically what Player wanted but it still kind of ruined a bit of the emotional impact of the actual ending and the impression the final boss fight left on the player. So I think 8 is fair. It certainly was a 10 among the Sonic Games tho. Sega got his Baby back on track with this game and they deserve applause for that. Very well done!

[ozzyscollectiblehub]

The Clash of Titans: Cassius Clay vs. Sonny Liston

The boxing world has witnessed countless legendary matchups, but few have captured the imagination of the public like the epic encounters between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. These two fights, held in the mid-1960s, were not just battles for the world heavyweight championship; they were pivotal moments in sports history, marked by dramatic shifts in public perception, racial tensions, and the rise of an enduring icon. This blog delves into the electrifying story of these iconic bouts and their lasting impact.

The Background: A Young Challenger and a Dominant Champion

In the early 1960s, Sonny Liston was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. With a fearsome reputation and a knockout punch that could flatten any opponent, Liston was considered unbeatable. He had demolished former champion Floyd Patterson twice in the first round, cementing his status as the most intimidating force in boxing.

On the other side was Cassius Clay, a brash and confident young fighter from Louisville, Kentucky. Known for his poetic trash talk and dazzling speed, Clay was a stark contrast to the menacing Liston. Many in the boxing community and the public viewed Clay as more of a loudmouth than a serious contender. But Clay's self-belief was unshakeable; he boldly proclaimed himself "The Greatest" and predicted he would dethrone Liston.

The First Fight: February 25, 1964

The first bout between Liston and Clay took place in Miami Beach, Florida, on February 25, 1964. It was a classic David vs. Goliath scenario, with most experts and fans expecting Liston to make quick work of the upstart Clay. However, the young challenger had other plans.

From the opening bell, Clay employed a strategy that baffled Liston. Utilizing his speed, footwork, and unorthodox style, Clay danced around the ring, peppering Liston with jabs and avoiding his powerful punches. As the rounds progressed, it became evident that Liston was struggling to keep up with Clay's pace and accuracy. The seemingly invincible champion was being outboxed.

In a shocking turn of events, Liston failed to answer the bell for the seventh round, citing a shoulder injury. Cassius Clay was declared the winner, becoming the new heavyweight champion of the world. The result stunned the boxing world and the general public. At the post-fight press conference, Clay famously exclaimed, "I shook up the world! I shook up the world!" Shortly after, he announced his conversion to Islam and adopted the name Muhammad Ali, signaling a new chapter in his life and career.

The Rematch: May 25, 1965

The second fight between Liston and Ali, held on May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine, was shrouded in controversy and mystery. The bout was originally scheduled for Boston but was moved due to Ali's recent surgery and concerns about Liston's ties to organized crime.

The rematch was over almost as soon as it began. In the first round, Ali landed a punch later dubbed the "Phantom Punch," a quick right hand that appeared to barely graze Liston. To the astonishment of everyone watching, Liston went down and struggled to get up. The referee, Jersey Joe Walcott, appeared confused and delayed the count, adding to the chaos. After some confusion, Ali was declared the winner by knockout, retaining his heavyweight title.

The outcome of the fight sparked widespread speculation and conspiracy theories. Some believed that Liston had taken a dive, possibly due to threats or pressure from the mob. Others thought the punch had indeed been powerful enough to knock out Liston. To this day, the true nature of the "Phantom Punch" remains a topic of debate among boxing historians and fans.

The Legacy

The two fights between Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston were pivotal moments in sports and cultural history. Ali's victory in the first fight marked the arrival of a new kind of athlete—one who was not only a master of his craft but also a polarizing and influential public figure. His brashness, charisma, and outspoken views on race, religion, and politics made him a global icon.

Liston, once the feared and dominant champion, saw his career decline after the losses to Ali. He remains a tragic figure in boxing lore, a man whose talents were overshadowed by his connections to crime and a mysterious end to his career and life.

Ali vs. Liston was more than just a clash of two great boxers; it was a symbolic battle between the old guard and the new era. Ali's victories not only reshaped the heavyweight division but also heralded a new age of athletes who transcended their sports to become cultural icons.

[the-firebird69]

Pennywise Scenes (1080p)

Trump goes back there at some point and says I lost something here and I started to do real bad and it's your fault to these people these particular people so he's up there again being this a****** clown. They more or less force him into his bunker to leave and he leaves Earth that comes here and can't get out so he goes to the pyramid it's not very big and then say it's a mile

Zues Hera

And they park it up there and the devil's hole nearby this is a lot of dumb things tries to grab my son and can't those people get slaughtered and he is sought here and where he is for a lot of crimes and attempted to kidnap and is badly mutated and a lot of people are gunning for him by the time this happens just wanted to be the most ridiculous Satanist ever. And people hate him for his works of evil against them. It goes along like that for a while and he is asked to leave every post on Earth well prior to that by the time he reaches that pennywise state he's lost most of his power and most of his stashes and cashes and decides to make a run for Titan and run his real plan and gets up there and he only has a small area with the lasers and they're threatening the lasers and to blow the whole thing and he's trying to get it going and dies permanently. He became a skull in a different movie Star wars and went to Concord after. So it all sorts of weird things happened leading up to this and their movies and videos ads and clips and all sorts of strange things are repeating and he says it it's way too weird for me and what we say is that's too bad and it's Peter it's paydirt and we like it that's what you're supposed to think finally doing something right so he's all pissed off that's a shame and it's ruining himself I'm going to make sure it happens and that's what happens to him shortly and the whole point of it is he's on his way out and it's the path and it goes up to New Hampshire and knows that they ruined his plan to kidnap our son to try and do what he's doing now so he sounds terribly arrogant and he goes around those weird stuff attaches to antlers and things like that and says he's the devil and makes up a character then he says he's Jesus and he's a freakishly stupid person who doesn't have that much at that time and his goals are pretty much kind of lame in the first place so we have to take care of him because he is an end of Earth and it needs to be killed and more shortly

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues Hera

[govindhtech]

Introducing Google Axion Processors: A New Era for Cloud

Google Axion Processors

Arm Based CPU

At Google, they continuously push the limits of computers to investigate what can be done for big problems like global video distribution, information retrieval, and, of course, generative AI. Rethinking systems design in close cooperation with service developers is necessary to achieve this. Their large investment in bespoke silicon is the outcome of this rethinking. Google is excited to present the most recent iteration of this effort today: Google Axion Processors, Google’s first specially made Arm-based CPUs intended for data centers. Later this year, Axion which offers performance and energy efficiency that leads the industry will be made accessible to Google Cloud users.

Axion is only the most recent model of customised silicon from Google. Google’s first Video Coding Unit (VCU) increased video transcoding efficiency by 33x in 2018. Five generations of Tensor Processing Units have been launched since 2015. Google invested in “system on a chip” (SoC) designs and released the first of three generations of mobile Tensor processors in 2021 to boost bespoke computing.

General-purpose computing is and will continue to be a vital component of their customers’ workloads, even if Google investments in compute accelerators have revolutionised their capabilities. Extensive computation power is needed for analytics, information retrieval, and machine learning training and providing. The pace at which CPUs are being improved has slowed lately, which has affected customers and users who want to satisfy sustainability objectives, save infrastructure costs, and maximise performance. According to Amdahl’s Law, unless Google make the corresponding expenditures to stay up, general purpose compute will dominate the cost and restrict the capabilities of their infrastructure as accelerators continue to advance.

Google BigTable

In order to deliver instances with up to 30% better performance than the fastest general-purpose Arm-based instances currently available in the cloud, as well as up to 50% better performance and up to 60% better energy-efficiency than comparable current-generation x86-based instances, Axion processors combine Google’s silicon expertise with Arm’s highest performing CPU cores. For this reason, on current generation Arm-based servers, Google have already begun implementing Google services such as BigTable, Google Spanner, BigQuery, Blobstore, Pub/Sub, Google Earth Engine, and the YouTube Ads platform. Google also have plans to deploy and expand these services, along with others, on Axion shortly.

Superior effectiveness and performance, supported by Titanium

Axion processors, which are constructed around the Arm Neoverse V2 CPU, offer massive performance gains for a variety of general-purpose workloads, including media processing, web and app servers, containerised microservices, open-source databases, in-memory caches, data analytics engines, and more.

Titanium, a system of specially designed silicon microcontrollers and tiered scale-out offloads, provides the foundation for Axion. Platform functions like networking and security are handled by titanium offloads, giving Axion processors more capacity and enhanced performance for workloads from customers. Titanium also transfers I/O processing for storage to Hyperdisk, Google’s recently launched block storage solution that can be dynamically supplied in real time and decouples performance from instance size.

Titanium

A system of specially designed silicon security microcontrollers and tiered scale-out offloads that enhances the dependability, security, life cycle management, and performance of infrastructure.

Google-powered Titanium

Titanium is a free platform that supports Hyperdisk block storage, networking, the newest compute instance types (C3, A3, and H3), and more on Google Cloud.

Included in the system are:

Titan security microcontrollers are specially designed to provide Google Cloud’s infrastructure a hardware root of trust.

Titanium adaptor: specialised offload card that offers hardware acceleration for virtualization services; frees up resources for workloads by offloading processing from the host CPU

Titanium offload processors (TOPs) are silicon devices placed across the data centre that are used as a scalable and adaptable method of offloading network and I/O operations from the host CPU.

Enhanced functionality of the infrastructure

Titanium offloads computation from the host hardware to provide additional compute and memory resources for your applications.

Hyperdisk Extreme block storage allows for up to 500k IOPS per instance, which is the greatest among top hyperscalers.

200 Gbps or more of network bandwidth

Full line rate network encryption that offers security without compromising speed

Consistent performance comparable to bare metal for the most delicate workloads

Smooth management of the infrastructure life cycle

Infrastructure changes are made easier by Titanium’s modular hardware and software, which also provide offloading capabilities and workload continuity and security.

Advanced maintenance controls for the most critical workloads and seamless upgrades for the majority of workloads

It is possible to start remote infrastructure upgrades from any location.

The Titanium adaptor’s dedicated domains for networking and storage enable for the autonomous upkeep and upgrades of individual services, keeping them apart from the host’s burden.

“Building on Google’s high-performance Arm Neoverse V2 platform, Google’s announcement of the new Axion CPU represents a significant milestone in the delivery of custom silicon optimised for Google’s infrastructure.” The greatest experience for consumers using Arm is guaranteed by decades of ecosystem investment, Google’s continuous innovation, and its contributions to open-source software.”

Customers want to accomplish their sustainability objectives and operate more effectively, not only perform better. In comparison to five years ago, Google Cloud data centres are now 1.5 times more efficient than the industry average and provide 3 times more processing power with the same amount of electrical power. Google lofty objectives include running their campuses, offices, and data centres entirely on carbon-free energy sources around-the-clock and providing resources to assist with carbon emission reporting. Customers may optimise for even greater energy efficiency using Axion processors.

Axion: Interoperability and compatibility with out-of-the-box applications

Additionally, Google has a long history of supporting the Arm ecosystem. They worked closely with Arm and industry partners to optimize Android, Kubernetes, Tensorflow, and the Go language for the Arm architecture. Google also constructed and made them open-sourced.

Armv9 architecture

The standard Armv9 architecture and instruction set serve as the foundation for Axion. Google have made contributions to the SystemReady Virtual Environment (VE) standard, which is designed to ensure that Arm-based servers and virtual machines (VMs) can run common operating systems and software packages. This standard makes it easier for customers to deploy Arm workloads on Google Cloud with minimal to no code rewrites. Google is gaining access to an ecosystem of tens of thousands of cloud users that are already using Arm-native software from hundreds of ISVs and open-source projects and deploying workloads thanks to Google’s partnership.

Axion will be available to users across a variety of Google Cloud services, such as Cloud Batch, Dataproc, Dataflow, Google Compute Engine, and Google Kubernetes Engine. The Google Cloud Marketplace now offers Arm-compatible apps and solutions, and Google just released preview support for the Migrate to Virtual Machines service, which allows you to migrate Arm-based instances.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[garudabluffs]

Titanic Sub Tourism Expedition - Exclusive Footage (My Personal Experience)

A YouTube star rode in the Titan sub days before it went missing. His footage shows OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush discussing control issues with the 'brains' of the sub.

The video chronicles Koehler's journey to St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada, where he joined the Titan submersible for its third mission. The submersible went missing during its fifth mission on June 18. The US Navy later confirmed that the sub imploded shortly after it started its descent.

A YouTube star rode in the Titan sub days before it went missing. His footage shows OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush discussing control issues with the 'brains' of the sub. (msn.com)

‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Questions Why Search for Titan Sub Didn’t Start Directly Below Where Last Signal Was Sent

“Cameron was reacting to news of debris from the vessel being discovered on Thursday. Since making Titanic in 1997, Cameron has made over 33 dives to the ship site.

“I didn’t hear about it until I woke up Monday morning. I immediately got on the phone to some of my other contacts in the deep submersible community,” Cameron said.

Within about an hour, I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3,500 meters heading for the bottom at 3,800 meters. The comms were lost and navigation was lost. And I said, instantly, you can’t lose comms and navigation together without an extreme catastrophic event. A highly energetic, catastrophic event,” he added.

Cameron suggested that the week long search that ensued was a “charade.”

READ MORE ‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Questions Why Search for Titan Sub Didn’t Start Directly Below Where Last Signal Was Sent (msn.com)

A friend said he warned Stockton Rush about possible defects on the Titan in 2019 after hearing 'cracking' noises (msn.com)

[seizethecringeofproduction]

These two look like they would be in a bromance.

And I love it.

If only they met....

[justauthoring]

the bond - chapter four.

*bond: a relationship between people or groups based on shared feelings, interests, or experiences.

word count: 6,796

based off of: 1x09 - halfway through 1x16

a/n: reason why I cut off in the middle of 1x16 was because I felt like the y/n and the rest reuniting with eren was something i wanted to start off with in the next part. this, to me, felt like the right way to end this chapter :)

tag list: @ernyaeger - @luvelyxp​ ​let me know if you’d like to be added!

Eren.

Titan.

Eren a titan.

Eren came out of a titan...

Eren had been that titan...

How was that even possible?

You’d seen it and you still couldn’t believe it. The steam that had flowed around him, evaporated into thin air, and the way he’d been... connected-- attached to the titan... Mikasa had run towards him without hesitation, the second she’d seen Eren she’d raced towards him, Armin following at her heels shortly behind her.

But you’d been too stunned to move.

Too in disbelief.

What did this even mean? Had Eren... always had that ability? Had he always been able to do that? If so, why hadn’t he told anybody?

Not even Mikasa and Armin...

And if not them, why not you? Maybe it was selfish of you to think that, think that he’d tell you anything he wouldn’t tell Mikasa or Armin. But... the two of you had always gotten along, right from the moment you’d seen him you’d known you’d get along with him. And the two of you had spent hours talking about joining the Survey Corps together, and your ambitions to free the world of titans. The two of you had spent more time talking then you’re sure you’d talked to anyone else within the cadets.

Yeah, you weren’t as close to him as Mikasa and Armin were; you hadn’t been childhood best friends with him, didn’t grow up in the same household as him. The only thing you two shared was the fact that you’d both been from Shiganshina and you’d both suffered terrible losses the day the wall had fallen, which had thus inspired the both of you greatly towards joining the Survey Corps.

But that had been enough. At least, it had to you.

“--Jean, don’t tell me Mikasa was injured!”

Pulled from your thoughts at the sound of Ymir’s voice, you glance at her from the corner of your eye. She’s stood beside Krista, and Connie’s sat before them; they’d been talking amongst themselves not a few seconds ago. You hadn’t been paying attention really, and everything had felt like a blur since you’d seen Eren emerge from that titan.

Him, Mikasa and Armin had been separate from you and the rest, and left you, Jean, Reiner, Annie and Bertholdt to rejoin with the rest of the cadets who’d made it.

No one replies to Ymir. Silence follows her question. You don’t even have the heart to look at her.

“Hey,” Connie mumbles, “what’s wrong?”

Jean leans back, tilting his head back to take a sip from his water bottle, before wiping at his mouth. “We’ve been sworn to secrecy,” he huffs, shaking his head. “I can’t discuss it.”

“Keep it a secret?”

“What?”

“Of course,” Jean laughs, “it won’t stay secret for long... Before long, all humanity will know about it.” Then, with a foreboding look upon his face, Jean stares ahead of himself. “Assuming humanity lasts that long...”

“Jean,” you hiss out, sending him a narrowed look.

Meeting your gaze, Jean scoffs; “I’m not wrong, and you know it.”

And when your lips part to argue, you realize that you can’t because maybe... maybe Jean is right.

-

“Did you hear that?”

“Given the circumstances, I don’t blame him...”

Lips parting, you swallow thickly as more and more conversation passes and everybody’s panic begins to spread amongst the crowd wildly. Everyone was losing it, you could see it happening right before your eyes -- panic was setting in and the fear was taking over and rational thought was disappearing from their minds at the thought of dying.

Not only dying, but being eaten alive by titans...

You couldn’t blame them. Everyone was afraid, you were afraid; beyond so. Your hands hadn’t stopped shaking since you’d regroup with the rest of the cadets and had been given a moment of reprieve. It had been short lived, and you were well aware the moment you’d sat down that you’d have to go back out there. You’d expected it to be an order of practical suicide - to fight off every last titan that you could so that civilians could live.

You hadn’t expected it to be a plan to take back Trost.

Was that even possible?

Could Trost even be reclaimed?

It was swarming with titans, just like Shiganshina had been - just like it still was...

How would you even block the hole in the gate?

“Hey...” The woman in front of calls out, voice a mere whisper, voice shaky. “I hope someone rebels over here, too.”

“I’d at least like to choose how I die,” the woman beside her agrees, gaze held forwards.

But, while you were scared, you weren’t so ready to give up like everyone else...

“Hey!” A voice calls out, booming and sharp and even though it’s not directed at you, it still manages to startle you. Jean whose stood beside you glances at you from the corner of his eye, before his gaze falls on the man just like you. You watch as he steps towards the two girls, no other expression but absolute terror in his eyes.

“I-It was a joke!”

“Do it...”

The girl gasps, leaning back; “huh?”

“Be loud... and get others to go along!”

Lips parting, you’re stunned silent in disbelief.

“In the Garrison, plenty of us aren’t happy, either.” He continues, “we’ll take advantage of the chaos and leave!”

“Leave and go where?” Jean speaks up, pulling your eyes on him.

“To see my daughter!” He cries out, and your breath halts at his words. “Eventually, this wall will also fall.”

Swallowing thickly, an uncomfortable tightness floods your chest.

You didn’t have anyone to see. You didn’t have anyone waiting for you.

There was no one--

--Find your father.

Find him… Find Ken–…

That’s right. You had your father...

Was he here? In this crowd? Was he risking his life same as you to protect the citizens? Or was he a citizen himself? Did he own a shop, you wondered, or maybe he was well off, maybe he lived in the interior and was safe, far, far away from all of this chaos.

Your mother never talked about your father. She refused to. But in her dying moments, she’d felt it important enough to tell you to find him - despite refusing to ever tell you anything about him when you were younger. She’d spent her last words to you trying to tell you his name.

You’d gotten distracted, put your whole being into training and joining the Survey Corps that you hadn’t even bothered to try to find out anything about him. You hadn’t done any researching, any digging, you’d put your whole entire being into simply surviving and training...

You didn’t want to die never finding your father.

You didn’t care that he hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen you grow up or raised you. You didn’t care that he hadn’t been there to support your mom, or helped her and you when she’d gotten sick. You didn’t care that he hadn’t ever helped you with money or food or anything of the like. You didn’t care that he hadn’t been apart of your life whatsoever and that, by rights, you should be angry at him. Beyond so.

You had been. When you were younger. You still were, you guessed, it’s just...

You just didn’t want to die never knowing who he was.

Did he ever think of you as much as you’d thought of him growing up?

Did he even know you were alive?

You couldn’t die without knowing the truth.

“There’s people I want to see too!” You cry out, unable to stop yourself as you turn to the man with narrowed eyes. “And I’m scared! But I refuse to give up hope.”

His eyes fall on you as Jean softly whispers your name.

“You’re just as crazy as the rest of them!” The man argues indigently, shaking his head at you. “You’re just a kid, you don’t understand--”

“No, you’re just a coward,” you argue, stepping towards him with a finger shoved at his chest. Silence echoes from your words as he stares down at you in disbelief, as if not quite believing his own ears, as his eyes flicker from your finger at his chest to your face.

“Y/N,” Jean calls, moving to grab you and pull you back. You shrug off his hands.

“When you chose to join the Garrison, you pledged your life to the salute. You’re scared, I get that, but so is everyone else! You have family you want to see? So does everybody else!”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, kid,” the man growls at you, gesturing around himself. “But nobody wants to fight anymore.”

Your lips part as your eyes flicker around, now noticing just how much the panic and terror has grown. It hadn’t just been a few people wanting to leave, there was arguing everywhere, everybody was screaming and pleading for their own lives and seemed to forgotten everything they’d been taught...

They’d all rather be shot for disserting their mission, then be eaten by titans.

“You don’t know a single thing.”

Turning to the man, your lips part, but no words leave.

“Come on, Y/N,” Jean calls after a moment, a hand falling on your shoulder as he pulls you back. You don’t fight him this time, letting yourself follow his lead with a frown now marring your lips.

Maybe people weren’t as brave as you’d thought.

“Maybe you really are right, Jean,” you whisper, glancing down at your feet. “Maybe humanity really will fall...”

Jean’s lips purse and his eyes soften at your words, guilt flooding his system. His lips part to argue, moving to shake his head, “Y/N, I...” before a booming voice that feels as if it raddles the very ground beneath your feet echoes across the crowd.

“Attention!”

It’s said from up above. Your eyes squint as your lips part, and you try to make out who’d spoken but he’s too far away for you to clearly see. You do see someone else stood beside him, and he looks distantly familiar, but you can’t quite place it...

“I shall now explain the plan to retake Trost.”

-

“What’s taking Eren so long!”

“Something happened,” Connie calls back to you, voice screeching, “Armin went to check it out!”

“He always has liked taking his time hasn’t he?” You glance back at Connie, distantly making sure Jean is following behind him as well. You didn’t want to lose sight of either of them, didn’t want either of them to die on your watch, and so even though you were leading the two of them through the grounds, you tried to make the path as clear as possible for the both of them.

Jean could handle himself, that you knew, and whilst you knew Connie was skilled, it was him you were more worried about. He had a habit of making smaller, little mistakes, that could get him in more trouble sometimes.

Your plan was to avoid that.

Turning to the right, a yelp from Connie and a quick glance behind you tells you that a titan had slipped into the slot between Connie and Jean and was pursuing Connie and by default you. Looking to your left and then your right, you nod to yourself quickly, calling back; “we scale up, attack it from behind!” You call out, angling your body to the right and aiming your hooks up on the wall of the house next to you.

It attaches no problem, and with a single click, you’re soaring upwards, landing on your feet easily the next second.

The sound of metal smacking catches your attention, and your eyes widen, glancing behind yourself. You curse to yourself when you see Connie shoot out his hooks, only for them to fail to click onto anything, simply falling to a thud on the ground. When you glance behind him, you realize just how close the titans gotten to him, and panic strikes you.

“Connie!”

He spins around, stumbling over his own feet as the titan grows closer, and you rush forward, running towards the titan along the roof, trying to get behind it. Your movement catches it’s attention distantly, it’s eyes moving to follow you as you huff, picking up the speed in your step.

You needed to get behind it.

That was the most important thing.

“Y/N!”

It’s Connie, you realize distantly.

“Go!” You call out to him, “go, I’ll hold it off!”

But one single glance back at him is your own single mistake. When your gaze falls back ahead of yourself, a shadow is looming over you and there’s a large hand moving directly towards you. The titans eyes are widening in excitement and you can see it parting it’s lips with the anticipation of eating you. 

Terror floods you, and you hesitate just a second, glancing to your right and shooting your hooks forward. They hook onto the wall adjacent to you, and you only manage to turn your body in time at the last second, zooming across. Except, you don’t make it all the way as the titan hits the zipline with it’s other hand, knocking it out of it’s lodged place in the roof. It zips back in response, returning to you, whipping up in a manner that has it slicing you across the arm. 

You let out a hiss in response, time slowing for just a brief moment as you press a hand to your arm, pulling back to see blood, before everything blurs back into realization.

“Y/N!”

You’re soaring to the ground before you even realize it, hitting the concrete with a thud that knocks the wind out from under you.

A heaving gasps parts from your lips and distantly you hear your name being called, before hands are falling in your arms, trying to yank you back. Through a blurred vision, you glance up to see Connie above you, stumbling backwards while dragging you along with him as the titan looms above the both of you.

Just then, something catches it’s attention.

Connie, taking the moment of reprieve, stops stumbling backwards and heaves you closer against him, pulling you up slightly as the both of you glance from Jean on the other side of the titan.

“Go! Now!”

He sounds muffled to you, but you can tell it’s Jean.

He couldn’t possibly mean...

But then Connie is yanking you to your feet with strength you didn’t know he possessed and pulling you with him before you can even properly think. And when you glance back, the titan is none the wiser to both you and Connie, completely focused on Jean who continues to lure it along with him.

“No, wait, Jean--”

“We have to go, Y/N!”

“We can’t just leave him--”

“We’ll circle back for him,” Connie cuts in, sending you a sharp look; one that surprises you as you’ve never seen Connie so serious before. “You’re hurt. We’ll bandage you up, and then find him.”

“But...”

“You’re no help to him if you’re hurt!”

Your words fall silent at the realization that Connie’s right. With a simple glance back in the direction Jean had run, you let your eyes fall shut, before pulling from Connie’s grasp and nodding at him.

He was right.

You needed to regroup with the others, then you could find Jean.

He was strong, skilled and smart.

He’d be okay.

-

“Jean!”

Eyes widening, your heart falls to pit of his stomach as he falls to a skidding stomach before a body, hands working quickly but shakily to take it’s omni gear off.

“His maneuver gear really is busted!”

Leaning forward, you swallow thickly, watching as the titan grows closer.

“Y/N, stop moving, I need to finish bandaging--”

“We need to help him,” you cut Annie off, shaking your head at her. “He’s going to get eaten by that titan!”

“Calm down,” Annie scolds you, pulling tightly on your bandages so that you let out a light hiss in response. “Nothing good will happen from you panicking,” she reminds, quickly finishing off with tying your bandage. You meet her eyes as she pulls back, feeling guilty for the way you’d snapped at her and with a quick nod, she lets you step past her.

When you make it to the edge of the roof, Marco’s already rushed forward to help Jean, pulling the attention of the titan that had been gaining on him towards himself. You’re quick to follow after Marco, Annie and Connie beside you as well, with one final glance back of assurance that Jean’s able to get the omni gear. 

Leaping from one roof to another, you keep your eyes trained around yourself, focusing in on what Annie had told you - nothing good will come from panicking. You needed to stay calm, focus on what needed to be done and how it needed to be done. As long as you stayed focused, nobody would die.

You’re sure of that.

“Something’s wrong with his gear,” you call out a moment after, having noticed Jean’s body lurch forward before he spins over himself, soaring to the ground. “He can’t get it to work.”

“I know!” Connie calls back to you, “here, follow me.”

You nod at him as he races forward, picking up the speed in his step as the two of you get closer to Jean. There’s a titan right before him again, but Connie’s quick to swing forward, Jean’s name leaving his lips in a cry before he delivers a nasty kick to the titans head. It halts in reaction, hand pressing to the offended spot as you leap forward, not wasting a second before following after Connie.

With a movement you hadn’t thought possible but felt like nothing more than pure instinct, you shoot your hook into the neck of the titan, swinging yourself around it’s arm so that it can’t get a clear grasp of you.

“What are you doing, Y/N! You’re going to get yourself killed!”

Ignoring Jean’s words, you then move to shoot your hooks at the roof adjacent to you, perfectly positioned behind the neck of the titan. Angling your body in the right direction, you soar forward, slashing through the nape of the titan in two clean swipes that has it teetering on it’s feet before falling backwards in a last ditch attempt at grabbing you.

“Are you crazy?” Jean calls out to both you and Connie.

“Speak for yourself,” Connie calls back, “hurry up and get out of here!”

He doesn’t hesitate to listen, rushing forward and managing to get in the air just as another titan leaps at him from behind.

You notice out of the corner of your eye, a titan appear right before him, and your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach at the thought that despite everything, that was it. Jean was going to be eaten. But then a blur of yellow appears, and suddenly the titan is falling to the ground with a loud, resounding thud, Annie swinging past it seconds later.

Letting out a breath of relief, you turn your attention back forwards.

After maneuvering your way across roofs and avoiding any more contact with titans, you land on the top of the wall with a huff, your landing cause you to roll forward in response before you find your footing. You don’t focus on the pain in your arm, or the exhaustion screaming at you, and instead instantly glance around to make sure everyone had made it.

Jean’s to your right, Connie, Annie and Marco are all to your left.

A smile falls on your lips. Good, everyone made it.

“You’re insane!” Jean bellows out the second everyone lands.

“You’re the one whose insane,” Connie retorts, “can’t believe I survived that... and Y/N.” You blink as Connie turns to look at you, eyes wide. “What was that? I’ve never seen you move like that.”

You pause, thinking back to the way you’d killed that titan. It wasn’t like it was the first titan you’d killed, but... even you had to admit that that was something you hadn’t even thought possible for you.

“I don’t know,” you shrug, “all I know is that I just didn’t want Jean to get eaten.”

It doesn’t escape you that by instinct you’d mentioned Jean specifically, rather than everyone, and your cheeks burn slightly in response as you actively avoid his gaze on you.

“Look at that,” Annie calls, pulling the attention, thankfully, away from you as she points before herself.

Your eyes widen.

It was Eren, or at least, his titan carrying a boulder basically the size of himself, and he was making his way to the gate. 

He was really doing it.

Commander Pyxis’ plan was working, Eren was actually going to be able to do it.

Your heart wells with hope and pride and disbelief, a mixture of all three as you rush forward. “It’s Eren,” you breathe, words a mere whisper though everyone around you can clearly hear you. “He’s doing it, he’s actually doing it. He’s going to seal the hole.”

Jean meets your gaze, before nodding; “don’t let them interfere!” He calls aloud, voice bellowing as he points before himself. “Protect Eren!”

And without even a second of hesitation, the five of you leap forward, determination clear in your gaze.

This was it. It was all up to you guys now. 

You’d protect Eren even if it cost you your life.

-

“Jean?”

Your voice is light, muffled behind the mask you’re wearing. You’re careful to keep your hands held before yourself, steps slow as you approach Jean. His back is turned towards you, and you see a pair of legs sticking out past him, so that obviously meant it was another dead body.

Your heart clenched in fear for who it was.

“Jean, who is--”

Your words die on the tip of your tongue, disbelief coursing through your veins as you stare down at Marco. Marco who has half of his face torn off, Marco who looks almost unrecognizable. Marco who you hadn’t known was dead, Marco who you’d been sure was alive and made it out okay because you’d been with him right until the end--

But no, that’s not true is it? You’d been with him until you’d all seen Eren as his titan making his way towards the gate. And then you’d jumped off, moved to protect Eren, and you hadn’t seen him since...

“Marco...”

His name leaves your lips in a mere whisper, an echo that you barely recognize or realize came from you. You’re heartbroken at the sight, something uncomfortable settling deep in your stomach at the sight of him... half of him gone...

But when your eyes turn back to Jean, and you see the look in his eyes you’re reminded of yourself. You’re reminded of that day, when your mother had died and been crushed before your eyes, when Ms. Schneider had sacrificed herself for you and you’d been defenseless to help either one of them.

He looks distraught, confused and hurt, and you have no idea how to comfort him.

“Jean, I...”

He turns, stunning you silent as you blink up at him. He blankly turns to look at you before moving to walk off.

“We should get back to work.”

And he leaves before you can say anything more, doesn’t even give you the chance to say words of comfort. :Jean...” And your hand is outstretched towards him, but he continues walking. You watch his retreating back, before turning back to Marco, a deep set frown marring your lips.

How had it even happened?

How had you not noticed him gone?

You’d sworn you’d never let someone you care about die ever again, and yet, here you were, stood before him.

-

Swallowing thickly, you hesitate, hand held before the door.

You want to knock, you should knock, but what would you even say? You didn’t know what to say - you’d spent the past few days trying to find the right words to say to Jean on how to comfort him. You’d think about what Marco would say in this moment, because it seemed like he always knew how to speak to Jean best, or what Jean would like to hear if it was Mikasa maybe coming to comfort him...

But none of it helped and when you’d think you had the right words, you’d second guess yourself.

This was getting to be ridiculous. Why were you so nervous anyways?

It was just Jean.

The same Jean you’d argued with consistently back in the day. The same Jean you’d teased relentlessly when training together. The same Jean you’d just fought side by side with despite the ever impending threat of death that loomed over the both of your shoulders...

This was just same old Jean.

Except it wasn’t. Not anymore. You don’t know how and you can’t exactly explain when, but something had changed. Jean felt different to you know. He didn’t feel like the same old cocky, annoying Jean like before and you felt nervous at the thought of talking to him now. Your chest would grow tight and your stomach would erupt in nerves and you’d second guess everything you said worrying that it was the wrong thing or a stupid thing to say.

You don’t know why but everything for you had changed.

And you didn’t know how to comfort him. You didn’t know how to console him at the fact that Marco was dead. He was your friend, true, but you knew how much Marco had meant to Jean. How close the two had been. What were you supposed to say to that?

That you understood?

How presumptuous of you.

Huffing, your hand falls to your side, shoulder slumping as you move to turn.

Just then, the door opens, and Jean appears on the other side.

“Y/N?”

Freezing, your eyes slowly flicker up to meet his own.

“What are you doing here?”

“I, uh... I wanted to talk to you.”

No, why’d you say that? You could’ve made up some excuse, some lie and--

“Is everything okay?”

Blinking, you frown, meeting his eyes. “I should be asking you that.”

His brows furrow and he tilts his head in confusion, but it’s plain as day that he understands by the look that crosses his eyes.

“Can we, uh, talk inside?” You gesture past him, back in the room.

With a simple glance over his shoulder, Jean only hesitates a brief second before nodding. He steps back, giving you room to walk past him, and you fiddle with your hands as you do, biting your lip as you turn to face him just as he shuts the door gently behind him.

“So, what’s up?”

Swallowing thickly, you meet his eyes, before lowering your gaze down to your feet. “I wanted to... well, I wanted to say I’m sorry about Marco.”

His shoulders fall and you can see the way his eyes grow distant at the mention of his friend. Your nerves double at his reaction, rethinking everything in that moment as you bite your lip.

“It’s okay,” he says gently, “I actually don’t really want to talk about it--”

“I understand perfectly how you feel.”

The words burst from your lips before you can stop them, eyes widening the second they do as Jean blinks over at you. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting it either, which you honestly can’t blame him. You hadn’t even expected yourself to say the words, but you’ve already said them at this point, and you’re not willing to back down anymore.

There’s no point.

“I understand that’s what everyone says,” you continue after a moment, “but it’s true.”

“Y/N--”

“I understand you don’t want to talk about it, but burying it inside and isolating yourself doesn’t help anyone.” You shake your head, stressing the words as you feel your eyes water. You’re not sure why you’re getting so emotional, only that you can’t really control it, it feels needed. You feel desperate in that moment to get your feelings across to Jean.

You want him to understand he can come to you.

“I know. I do really know,” you cry out, “it’s what I did after I lost my mom and a woman I’d felt was like a second parent to me... the day those walls fell, I lost everything I ever had and I was so upset and hurt and angry that I didn’t have anyone. So I just isolated myself. I focused only on surviving and getting stronger, so I could join the Survey Corps. And when I joined the cadets three years ago, I had every intention of not making any friends.

“But I don’t regret not listening to myself. Not even a little bit. Being with everyone has brought me more joy and happiness in my life than I thought I could ever experience again.” Taking a sharp inhale, you shake your head. “I know we’re not that close, hell, you might even hate me, I don’t know, but... but I want you to know that I’m... I’m here for you.”

You finish your words with a final huff of air, chest heaving as silence echoes.

The longer the silence follows, the more your anxiety builds up. Had that been completely inappropriate? Did Jean actually really hate you?

God, had you just completely embarrassed yourself?

What if he was insulted by your words? What if you were the exact last person he wanted--

A pair of arms wound around you, and before you know it you’re being pressed against a firm chest. Jean’s grip on you is tight, and while the hug is somewhat awkward, he doesn’t let go or loosen the hug at all.

Instead, you feel his hand fall on the back of your head and a deep blush warms your cheeks as he whispers the words; “thank you...”

Everything calms, and the only thing you can really focus is the way he’d said the words so softly and the way you feel your cheeks growing warmer and warmer by the second by how close the two of you are.

Little do you know, Jean’s cheeks are just as red, if not more.

-

The fire reflects in your eyes.

Silence surrounds you and the rest, the only three missing being Mikasa, Armin and Eren. But... it feels like days since you’ve last seen Eren really. You remember when your days had been filled with talking to Eren on and on about joining the Survey Corps, about how the two of you would work hard to change history together.

Times seemed simple then. Planning with Eren, joking around with Sasha and Connie, teasing Jean... and, Marco.

You remember Marco.

Sweet, kind Marco who hadn’t a mean bone in his body and definitely deserve this. Didn’t deserve to die. No one did. Your mother didn’t, Ms. Schneider hadn’t and neither did Marco - it just always felt like the innocent were the ones who paid the most. The innocent were always the one dying.

You would gladly take any of their spots any day if it meant they got to see the sun, laugh with those they cared for, and live just one more time.

You didn’t regret becoming a soldier. You don’t regret still wanting to join the Survey Corps. Not a single part of you regretted any of it. The only thing you regretted was not being there to save them.

You and Eren had spent your days talking about about saving humanity, and yet, you’d never felt further away from that goal then you did now.

“Do you ever... question it?”

Eren pauses, eyes flickering over to you with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“Joining the Survey Corps,” you breathe, shoulders falling as the words leave your lips. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, but sometimes I sit there and I think about how much anger and hatred I have inside me and it’s scares me. When we’d left Shiganshina that day, I didn’t think about anything else. And now I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself I’ll never get back.”

The words come with a weight, and honestly, you’re not sure how Eren will respond. Even though you asked it, you don’t think he’s ever questioned or doubted himself once.

No one seemed as sure as him.

No one seemed as determined as him.

But when you’d become a soldier and you’d met everyone, not just him; but Sasha, Connie, Mikasa, Armin, Marco, Ymir, Krista, Annie, Reiner, Bertholdt and Jean... You realized you’d had so much anger inside you, that you let it envelope you so deeply and so strongly that all you ever thought about was revenge and nothing else.

You still wanted revenge.

But you didn’t want it to consume you.

“I don’t,” Eren shrugs, and your eyes flicker over to him as he turns to face you. There’s really no expression clear on his face, he just seems... sure. “The anger doesn’t scare me. Nor does the hatred. If anything, it just makes me more determined.” Then, pausing, Eren nods at you. “I don’t think you should fear it. I think you should embrace it.”

You’re pulled from your thoughts when Jean leaves your side. You blink, swallowing thickly as he walks forward, kneeling on the ground. You watch him carefully as he picks up some of the ashes that had fallen from the fire into the palm of his hand.

His voice is low and he’s speaking to himself, but you can hear him loud and clear.

Everyone else is dead silent.

“Hey, Marco... I can’t even tell which are your bones anymore.”

You couldn’t even recognize your mothers body.

Letting your eyes fall shut, your fists clench, nails digging into the palms of your hands.

“Hey, guys.”

Eyes flickering open, you frown as Jean turns. “Have you decided which one you’re joining?”

All that he gets in response is silence.

“I have,” he continues, and then his eyes meet yours, and his face turns to an expression of distress as he clutches his hands before himself, shaking. “I... I... I’m joining the Survey Corps!”

And your lips part, eyes widening in disbelief as sobs wrack from his body. No one moves. No one says anything. You’re all stunned silent and you can’t believe the words that had just left his lips.

Jean. Cocky, overconfident Jean who had been so determined, so sure of going to the Interior so that he’d never have to see a titan in his life and could live peacefully, safely...

joining the Survey Corps...

The way he says it, the way he shakes, the fear in his voice and the sobs that spill from his lips is exactly how you feel now about your own decision. You’re still joining, nothing will ever change that, but you can’t be so sure it’s the only decision worth choosing now...

Stepping forward, Jean’s name leaves your lips in a soft whisper and you set your hand on his shoulder. Your touch startles him and his eyes fall on you, but the panic sets in and the tears well and he’s curling into himself once again, this time falling against you.

Wrapping your arms around him, you hold him tightly.

Never saying a single word.

-

“Jean...” 

Looking up from where you’d been stood with Reiner and Krista and the rest, your head turns to right, eyes falling on the back of Jean. He’s come to face Annie, Armin, Sasha and Connie, but you and the rest fall silent to listen in on what he has to say.

“You’re really joining the Survey Corps?”

“Yeah,” he says simply.

“Why, all of a sudden?” Sasha frowns, leaning forward. “I mean... aren’t you scared?”

“Huh?” He tilts his head, hand falling on his hip. “Of course I don’t want to join the Survey Corps.”

“T-Then why...?”

“It isn’t that I decided the titans don’t scare me,” Jean explains, and you’re careful to listen. Jean might have let his walls down around you and let you in a little bit more, but honestly, even you were at a loss on why he’d changed his mind when he’d been so sure. “And I won’t say something like, ‘the best should join the Survey Corps.’ I’m not as eager to die as some.”

Eyes fall on you and you huff.

“No offence, Y/N,” Connie mumbles after a moment. “It’s just you and Eren... and I mean, he’s already joined the Survey Corps.”

“Trainees, line up!” A voice from behind bellows. “Line up before the stage.”

Licking your lips, you swallow thick; it was almost time.

“I’m not risking my life because someone convinced me,” Jean calls out, pulling your eyes on him as your brows furrow. “This is a job you can’t do unless you decide for yourself.”

He turns to walk off at that, letting that be his final word and with a simple glance towards the four, before back at Jean, you rush to follow after him. Falling next to him, he glances at you from the corner of his eyes, but silence echoes between the two of you at first.

Before, after a moment, you can’t help but comment.

“You’re sure I didn’t convince you, even a little?”

He glances at you, and you let a small grin curl on your lips as you meet his eyes. Scoffing, Jean shakes his head, but otherwise remains silent.

You don’t add anything more, turning your gaze back ahead with a small, gentle smile on your face.

-

“--Are you willing to offer your beating heart for humanity?”

Frowning, you swallow thickly, trying to ignore the tightness of your chest.

That... hadn’t been the motivating speech you expected. If anything, and you’re positive you’re right as you glance around, Commander Erwin’s speech had done nothing but scare people even more than they probably already were.

“That is all,” he says simply. “Anyone who wishes to join another branch is dismissed.”

Your breath halts, and there’s a moment of brief nothing, before the sound of footsteps echo. You glance around, watching as cadets alike all turn and walk away without ever offering a glance back. You frown when you see a familiar head of blonde hair, shoulders falling when you realize it’s Annie.

But as you glance around, she’s the only one out of your friends that leaves.

Bertholdt and Reiner are there, the former watching Annie’s retreating back with wide eyes and Reiner simply staring ahead, headstrong and determined as always. When you see Armin and Mikasa, they both seem as calm as you expected them to be; you’d always expected them to join for Eren. Sasha and Connie look scared, watching those around them leave, but yet, their feet don’t move. And Krista and Ymir....

Swallowing thickly, you glance at Jean to your right. His feet have shifted and his body is angled and he looks ready to leave.

Honestly, you wouldn’t blame a single one of them if they did.

But you’ve been waiting for this a long time, and yeah, you’re scared, more scared than you’ve ever been, but you simply turn back ahead, eyes trained on that of Erwin Smith, the Commander of the Survey Corps, and cross your hands behind your back.

You’ve been waiting for this a long time. It’s not how you imagined it’d feel, you don’t feel as glorious or as brave as you’d thought you would... but you’re here, and you’re not leaving.

Jean doesn’t leave. Sasha, Connie, the rest... none of them leave.

Then, it’s just you guys and a few other cadets left.

“Can you die if you’re ordered to?”

“I don’t want to die!” Someone calls out from the crowd.

His words bring a smile to Erwin’s face, “I see,” he calls out, shifting. “I like the looks on your faces. Then I welcome everyone here to the Survey Corps! This is a true salute!” His right fist falls over his heart, and the left falls behind his back, before he bellows out; “offer up your hearts!”

You don’t hesitate, mimicking the salute as you call out with the rest of the crowd.

“This is terrible,” Jean mumbles from your left, “the Survey Corps...”

“I’m scared,” Sasha cries out, tears pouring from her eyes. “I want to go home...”

Head bowing, Connie echoes out; “I don’t even care.”

“You have done well to endure your fear,” Erwin finishes, “you are brave soldiers. You have my heartfelt respect.”

And, with a small smile curling onto your lips, you glance up.

This is it, mama, I’m finally here...

[silvermoon424]

Sailor Moon Astronomy Symbols and Their Meanings

Each planet (and several minor planets and asteroids) in the Solar System has their own symbol. Many of these have been used since antiquity, and most of them evoke emblems and signs associated with the gods the planets are named after. In this post I will be explaining what each symbol represents!

Moon Symbol

The Moon’s symbol is rather straightforward, being a crescent. The symbol is is used to represent the lunar phase in the first quarter, or by extension is a symbol representing the Moon itself. This is probably the oldest symbol used, as people have identified the crescent phase of the moon for thousands of years. 

Interestingly, in Sailor Moon, the crescent symbol is usually flipped so that it points upwards rather than sideways. This is most prominent for Princess/Neo-Queen Serenity’s lunar forehead marking.  

Mercury Symbol

This symbol is the god Mercury's winged helmet and caduceus. In antiquity, Mercury was almost always depicted wearing a winged helmet. It’s thought to have represented his speed, as he was the swiftest of the gods. A caduceus is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes pictured with wings atop it. Hermes (the Greek version of Mercury) and later Mercury were always depicted carrying it, and it represented their roles as the messengers of the gods. 

It was associated with trade, eloquence, wisdom, and negotiation. Many centuries later, the caduceus also came to represent medicine and healthcare (although the correct symbol is actually the similar-looking Rod of Asclepius). These symbolic meanings are very suitable for Sailor Mercury, as she is associated with wisdom and wishes to become a doctor.

Mars Symbol

This symbol represents the god Mars’s shield and spear. Mars is the god of war, so it is fitting that the planet that bears his name has a symbol that features emblems of battle. Mars himself was also frequently depicted with a shield and a spear, spears being popular weapons in the Roman army. In modern times, this symbol has become associated with the male sex (opposite of Venus’s symbol, which will be discussed shortly). 

Jupiter Symbol

Jupiter’s emblem is meant to symbolize a thunderbolt and/or an eagle. These are both symbols associated with the god Jupiter, king of the gods and the god of the sky and thunder. Jupiter’s thunderbolts were crafted by the Cyclopes and given to him as a gift, and he used them to create the lightning we see during storms. As for the eagle, ancient Greeks and Romans praised it as divine and the most sacred of all birds; they also associated it with power and supernatural forces. It’s no wonder, then, why they associated with the king of the gods.  

Venus Symbol

Venus’s symbol is a circle with a cross underneath it. It is meant to represent the goddess Venus’s (aka Aphrodite’s) hand mirror. Mirrors are often associated with femininity and beauty. This representation for Venus’s symbol makes sense considering Venus was the goddess of love and beauty. The symbol is also the chemical sign for copper, which again makes sense because copper was used to make mirrors in ancient times.

Aside from these meanings, the Venus symbol is used to represent the female sex (much like Mars is used to represent the male sex). It’s rather fitting, because Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus have a rather close relationship in the manga and live action Sailor Moon series (which itself may be a reference to mythology, where Mars and Venus were lovers and often associated with each other).

Uranus Symbol

Now we’re getting to the more modern symbols. Because Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were only discovered a couple of centuries ago (or decades ago, in Pluto’s case) rather than being known since antiquity, their symbols are more modern and only created recently.

Anyway, Uranus’s symbol is rather straightforward. It is a stylized H, which is taken from discoverer's last name, Herschel (full name: William Herschel). The circle and middle line might have been added to make the symbol look more “astronomical” and more in-line with the older symbols. It’s also interesting to note that, aside from Pluto, Uranus is the only symbol to have been stylized after its discoverer rather than its mythological namesake. This could be because Uranus, the primordial god of the sky, didn’t really have symbols associated with him in mythology. Also, there actually is another symbol for Uranus (derived from a combination of the Mars and Sun symbols), but Naoko Takeuchi chose to use this symbol instead. 

Neptune Symbol

Neptune’s symbol is a trident. Tridents were heavily associated with Neptune/Poseidon, god of the sea. Poseidon's trident was crafted by the Cyclopes (who, if you may recall, also crafted Jupiter’s thunderbolts). This trident appears in many myths about Neptune/Poseidon and symbolizes his status as king/god of the seas. Also, according to scholars of Classical Mythology, Neptune's trident symbolizes the three properties of water: liquidity, fecundity and drinkability. 

Pluto Symbol

Pluto’s symbol is again rather straightforward, being a P and an L combined. This represents the first two letters in Pluto’s name. It could also represent the name of one of the men who spearheaded Pluto’s discovery, Percival Lowell. Although this is the symbol commonly associated with Pluto and the one Naoko Takeuchi chose to use, like Uranus there are other symbols that are sometimes used to represent Pluto instead. One of these is a circle on top of a bident; a bident is a pitchfork associated with Hades (Pluto), the ruler of the underworld. 

Also, Pluto is one of the few dwarf planets to have a symbol. This is because, at the time of its discovery and for decades afterwards, it was considered to be the 9th planet of the Solar System.

Saturn Symbol

Saturn’s symbol is meant to represent the mythological Saturn’s scythe or sickle. Saturn, or Cronus in Greek mythology, was a Titan and the father of the first generation of Olympian gods. He was the god of agriculture, which is why his symbol was a scythe; scythes were used to harvest crops. 

Before the discovery of Uranus in the 18th century, Saturn was the last of the seven planets known to ancient astronomers. Being the furthest out and the slowest in movement, the planet was feared and came to represent a number of archetypes, such as the Grim Reaper and Father Time. Although Sailor Pluto represents time, Sailor Saturn definitely leans heavily into the “Grim Reaper” archetype. She wields the Silence Glaive, which harkens back to both the mythological Saturn’s scythe and the scythe of the Grim Reaper. 

[d-criss-news]

Illustration by João Fazenda

What Do Shakespeare and Mamet Have in Common?

Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell, and Darren Criss, who star in the Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” at Circle in the Square, and Neil Pepe, who directs it, met up the other day at a West Side thrift shop called No Particular Hours (“Vintage Goods / Industrial Artifacts / Dead People’s Things”). The play, from 1975, is about three desperate characters in a junk shop; the group had planned to visit one in March, 2020, shortly before the show’s opening; two years later, there they were. The proprietor, Jerry Lerner—tall, grizzled, fisherman’s cap—let them wander, offering occasional commentary. (Of a carved statue: “I used to call that Bali Parton.”) The shop, a chockablock riot of curiosities—wagon-wheel chandelier here, helmeted mannequin head there—was a bit more festive than the “Buffalo” set, and the actors were a bit snazzier than their onstage counterparts. Fishburne (Donny, the junk-shop owner) wore an African-print-inspired combo from Moshood, of Brooklyn (“I modelled for them in the eighties”), with a drawstring waist. Criss (Bobby, Donny’s slow-witted gofer) gestured at his own plaid pants, and said, “I’m also rocking the drawstring.” Rockwell (Teach, their ne’er-do-well friend) looked mischievous—rascally mustache, sweater with “high end” in colorful letters. “It’s just a sweater I got because I’m a Hollywood phony,” he said, smirking. Criss and Fishburne laughed. “I’m a dickhead, and I wore a dickish sweater,” he said. They laughed more.

“American Buffalo,” a blunt, staccato symphony of F-bombs, haplessness, and simmering rage, centers on a scheme to steal a valuable nickel and culminates in mayhem. Pepe, a prolific director of Mamet with the presence of a director of much gentler fare, leafed through a bin of old wrenches. “We’ve been talking about what makes a lot of noise,” he said. “There’s stuff that happens physically—it will all be choreographed, hopefully, so that all is safe.” Fishburne got intrigued by an old brass fire extinguisher; earthenware jugs (“Jugs, baby! Now, that’s country”), one of which he blew into, jug-band style; and an early-twentieth-century toaster, which he picked up and carried around.

“Our shop is not as nice as this,” Rockwell said. “We don’t have a ‘Clash of the Titans’ poster. Boy, I would buy that.” He crossed to a wall of old posters. “Or ‘Carmen Jones,’ ” Fishburne said. “I have the one from ‘Black Orpheus.’ ”

“Dude, that Harry Belafonte–Danny Kaye video you sent me was awesome,” Rockwell said. They fist-bumped. Which video? Criss asked.

“It’s called ‘Mama Look a Boo-Boo,’ ” Fishburne said.

“Belafonte was a real sex symbol,” Rockwell said. A feed bag caught his eye. “ ‘Purina Goat Chow,’ ” he read. “I had that for breakfast.”

In 2020, they had rehearsed for three weeks before everything shut down, then continued for several more weeks via FaceTime. “This is the longest I’ve prepared for any show in my entire life,” Criss said. Pepe said that he hoped it would feel “lived in.” Fishburne said, “I’ve wanted to do this play since I was a kid.” When “Buffalo” first made waves, he added, “I was in the Philippines, doing ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ”—but “the talk of it . . . this play changed shit for the American theatre. Nobody had used language like this before.” Pepe said, “All of a sudden, Mamet’s doing iambic with the stuff of the streets.”

Mamet wrote “American Buffalo” while living in Chicago and hanging around with poker players in a junk shop. “Some of the guys were ex-cons, and in the business of thievery,” Pepe said. “He would hear their stories. The play has this idea of wanting a bigger piece of the pie.”

“ ‘Gatsby’s Tennis Nets,’ ” Fishburne said, reading a tag aloud.

On a counter in front, a wooden box displayed a mysterious object: ivory-like, rounded, and carved with dancing skeletons. The visitors leaned in. “I was cleaning out an apartment, and I said, ‘Oh, nice bowl,’ right?” Lerner said. “Then I turned it over and said, ‘Holy crap.’ ”

“It’s a turtle shell,” Fishburne said.

“It’s the top of somebody’s skull,” Lerner said.

“Holy shit!” Criss said. “That is intense! ”

“It’s a real kapala, from Tibet,” Lerner said. “They drank blood out of that thing.” Fishburne picked up the kapala and put it on his head. Actors, skull: Had anybody done “Hamlet”?

“I did the famous speech at my high-school graduation,” Fishburne said.

“To be or not to be, that is the question,” Criss said.

“I like ‘O, what a rogue,’ I like ‘O, that this too, too solid flesh,’ ” Rockwell said. “I think those are funner.”

“Shakespeare and Mamet, to me, are extremely similar,” Criss said. He compared the musicality to a Coltrane riff.

“Even though it’s a bunch of dudes saying dirty words, they’re actually extremely vulnerable,” Rockwell said.

“The junk shop is a fence, it’s a front, it’s a clubhouse,” Pepe said.

“It’s their home,” Fishburne said. “When you start digging, you realize, Oh, yeah—this is very sweet.” ♦

[mrfandomwars]

I wish to hear about your Titan's Sprit AU 👀

BASICALLY the boiling islands titan comes back as a spirit like, 10 years before the show starts (aka before Luz arrives)

Tw death mention and implied torture (nothing specific)

His name/the name I gave is Khelos, and he used to be the King of Titans

He is also King's dad btw, he died after a fatal blow from the Collector but had enough strength to walk farther away from the battlefield to make sure that King's egg was safe because well, it was near the battlefield and there was an attempt of titan Slayers to kidnap it (thankfully the group of titan Slayers wasn't able to share the news of where the island was with the others before they were killed)

Khelos died near the castle because he wanted to make sure that King was safe one last time,,,,,,,,,,,,

(the collector mirror thing was sent all over the planet, so it was by pure chance that when Khelos fell down as he died that his head hid one of them)

Also I say spirit I mean like, a version of a ghost who can be hurt and follow the rules of physics and shit (can open doors without having to use his powers and can eat, for example) but can also be a typical ghost (floating, passing through stuff) but he doesn't follow that part often

More under the cut

He spent the first year back on the living world with King and Jean-Luc fixing up the palace/castle/island

(yes, this means that it's way better in the future)

He manages to get some of the other guards back

The second year he leaves but is more often than not in the island, only leaving to check the witches world

He meets Eda at the start of his third year back because one day he went out to get food and found his son missing and Jean-Luc telling him that a witch came and took him

He easily tracks down Eda because well, he still can kinda feel his body (heart beating) and everything in it thanks to the magic so if he focus beyond the feeling of ants in his body-

She is easily tracked down and they get into a fight because she doesn't know who this demon is but she won't let him take away the random animal/kid that she found and rescued

(Khelos was too pissed and scared to properly tell her that yo, that's his kids that just happens to look more like his other parent than Khelos himself.

Other than the eyes that is, King looks like his other parent but his eyes are from Khelos)

A part of the owl house needs desperate fixing

At one point they are fighting in the air and King falls and Khelos nose dives (with Eda hot on his heels) to save him, curling around him as they touch the ground and roll on it until they stop

The fight ends shortly after that with Eda standing over them with her staff pointed at Khelos (who is still on the ground) and with Khelos' wings curled around King while the older titan has his sword pointed at Eda's throat

It's tense afterwards but they finally, finally Talk

They agreed that King would visit and stay sometimes and in contact in general so that Eda would be less worried over King's safety

Also the whole rebuilding the house thing

(Khelos is powerful enough compared to witches to fix it up in less than an hour but at the time Eda doesn't really trust him so she does the spells and he carries things)

No one can pin point the exact moment that Khelos and King officially moved in and simply had trips on the weekends once in a while to the castle

At the end of Khelos third year he is dating Eda

(Raeda is still a thing, don't worry, except instead of being just Raine and Eda together, Khelos is added to the mix and the relationship becomes a poly relationship

Raine at one point has a "are you kidding me" moment because even though their relationship with Khelos was never given a label, they think they had really bad luck because both both people they loved ended up dating each other

They end up invited to their (Eda and Khelos) relationship before Day of Unity happens)

They live together for a while, Khelos at one point becomes a teacher at Hexside (he teaches magic fundamental basics, Hexside never had a better teacher on the subject and the kids and teachers agree full heartedly)

Bump is more annoyed at the fact that he discovered a feew weeks into Khelos employment that he is dating Eda than the fact that Khelos is dating someone who technically is a wanted criminal

[Bump later on gives a discount on Luz's school expenses on the fact that she is "a teacher's ward" even though (redacted)

Also at one point he stops and has to take a few hours off at least because he hired a Titan and almost didn't do it]

Everything is fine, Eda and Khelos also get on the Emperor's Coven business because both can tell that they need to investigate it after they snuck in to prank them because Khelos took offense at Belos saying that he could talk to the giant

Also Eda doesn't know about Khelos being a Titan until Khelos fourth-fifth year after she confronts him about things that started piling up and she needed answers

She is taken to the Castle with Hooty next weekend, where Jean-Luc, who had become a stylist wm because I said so, gave Eda some new pieces for her to wear because of her "high status as the King's lover)

Hooty also some hats and scarfs too!

(also Hooty was created by Khelos Ex-wife, who he had married for political reasons. Hooty was under the rubble when Khelos went to get his Ex-Wife body after the Collector had killed her

Hooty over time ended up on the Boiling Islands and was taken in by the Clawthorne and given a new life so to say and barely remembers his past, although Khelos did look familiar to him but he didn't know why)

Him and Eda get engaged around mid, maybe more, maybe less, of the fifth year

That doesn't last long because 3 months later Khelos says that he is just going to snoop around Belos castle and that he should be back in a few hours, Eda can go back the house really, she doesn't need to wait for him

She doesn't care and waits

And he doesn't reappear, not in a few hours, not in a few days, not in months

Oh don't worry, he is alive, on a nother note, natural magic on the Boiling Islands has become weaker and for the first time ever earthquakes have started happening

[rabbitindisguise]

I pulled all the quotes I could find on heroism from the locked tomb books (including NTN) so let me know what you all think ^^

"Duck," called Camilla.

Camilla had somehow propped herself on the arm with the mangled shoulder wound, which was in no condition for propping. Her good arm was up behind her head, holding the blade of her knife. Gideon ducked. The knife whistled over the top of Gideon's head in a flashing blur and buried itself in Cytherea's upper back.

This time Cytherea screamed. She went stumbling away from Ianthe's prone form, [cut for length].

The Lyctor turned her head and coughed miserably into the crook of her elbow. Then she looked at the knife, wondering at it. She turned her head to look at Camilla and Harrow and Gideon. She sighed pensively and ran one hand through her curls again.

"Oh no," she said, "heroics."

[Cut for length].

"An inadequate Lyctor," said Cytherea, as thought giving Gideon and Camilla a hot tip on stain removal, "still makes a perfect power source . . . an everlasting battery."

She stood back up and wiped her mouth with the lack of her hand. Then she began walking toward Gideon: calm, almost insolent in her lack of aggression. This was somehow much scarier than if she'd talked forward with a hateful glare and rill of mad laughter.

Gideon planted herself before Camilla and the unconscious body of her adept and held her sword aloft. They were alone in the back area of the courtyard: a little area not yet buried in rubble or tilled up by the titanic light between two immortal sorcerers. Dead trees bowed overhead. Gideon stood behind the iron fence that had once protected some herbaceous border, as though its bent, bowed spikes would be good for anything other than throwing herself down on as one last fuck-you salute.

Camilla was huddled in a corner, now standing upright—that was probably her own last fuck-you salute—but her wounded arm hung uselessly. She had lost a lot of blood. Her face was now pallid olive.

"Ninth," said the Sixth impatiently. "Get out of here. Take your necromancer. Go."

- Gideon the Ninth, 422-423

"Lady," said Ortus, and, sorrowfully: "Forgive me. Nonius has heroic standing among the priests and anchorites of our House," he added to the others. "Perhaps I do him wrong by making a poesy of the sacred mysteries."

"I never realized that Nonius had passed into cult worship," Said Pent.

"He has not," said Harrowhark shortly, and then was forced to admit: "Or, at least, the idea is passé."

"Heroes are passé, you see," explained Ortus with heavy sadness.

She did not murder him. It was a very near thing.

- Harrow the Ninth

From the end of the table, his white-ringed eyes still bent down upon his papers, the Emperor said quietly: "His was the action of a hero."

"Oh, but the problem is heroes always die," said Augustine, who was worrying an edge of tablecloth between long and elegant fingers. "You can't even really pronounce one a hero until they die heroically. I thought the downward assault was a good wheeze when you two first came up with it, [Gideon], but we know now that the last push against a Beast has to be sudden and conclusive. I'd rather have fought nine more hours and have Ulysses sitting here right now, inciting a sexy party, than have watched him wrestle that thing out of sight."

- Harrow the Ninth, page 336

[Gideon] pierced her heart on a railing because she thought I would use her to become a Lyctor. I will spit in the face of the first person who tells me she committed suicide; she was in an impossible situation, and she died trying to escape it. She was murdered, but she maneuvered her murder to let me live."

His face was very sad: a wistful, light sadness, not the ponderous sadness that he wore like his sacramental paint.

"What is better?" he asked. "An ignoble death by someone else's hands, or a heroic death by one's own? How should it be written? If the first—that she was cut down by an enemy—I would feel such hate for the enemy . . . If the second—an ugly death at her own devising—who, then, would be left for me to hate? Who does the poet judge? The eternal problem."

"Ortus, this is not a poem," she said.

"I think you must hate her," he said, and she thought she knew what he meant, until he said: "Don't. If there is anything I know about young Gideon . . . if there was anything in her that I too understood . . . it is that she did everything deliberately."

Very little in Harrowhark's life had embarrassed her up until that moment. She had been caught naked in front of a stranger. She had been kissed by a half-drunk Ianthe the First. She had admitted to God her apocalyptic transgressions, and been gently told that she did not know herself. She had been outplayed by Palamedes Sextus, outgunned by Cytherea the First, undone by Gideon Nav.

None of that humiliated her so viscerally as her strangled, bellowing, unchecked shriek now, a child's cry that whipped every head in that busied room round in her direction: "She died because I let her! You don't understand!"

Ortus dropped his book. He rose from the chair. He put his arms around her. The dead cavalier held her with a quiet, unassuming firmness; he petting her hair like a brother, and he said, "I am so sorry, Harrowhark. I am so sorry for everything . . . I am sorry for what they did . . . I am sorry that I was no kind of cavalier to you."

- Harrow the Ninth, page 400

The page fell over her thumb. On the second page—much fresher—Harrow read:

THE ONLY THING OUT CIVILIZATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN WE WE RARELY BECOME HEROS.

She opened her mouth to ask her dead second cavalier a question about her dead first cavalier—a pattern that was starting to look less like tragedy and more like carelessness—but downstairs, Abigail was saying:

"Harrowhark? Ortus? If you are reading, we might want to move."

- Harrow the Ninth, page 403

Pyrrha said, "Keep Camilla home tonight. I'll call it quits for the cigs."

Palamedes said, "Do you know she has a half sister? Did she tell you? It's not my secret to tell. They're quite fond of each other. Camilla's ten years younger. Kiki's a member of the Oversight Body, junior fellow. She was one of the group that came to negotiate with Ctesiphon Wing."

"I didn't know that, no," said Pyrrha.

"Alongside fifteen other of the finest minds of my House," said Palamedes. "Led here by conviction and Camilla's hand. My colleagues, my friends. My family . . . The people they put in cages will be someone's family, someone's friends."

"Keep—Camilla—home—tonight," said Pyrrha. "That is all I am saying. Keep her home. No heroics. I'm not moved by sentiment. Whatever it takes. Don't feel. Just do."

"Tonight I hate almost all of the human race," said Palamedes wearily.

"That's a feeling," said Pyrrha brutally. "Kill it."

- Nona the Ninth

Some thoughts:

there are so many em dashes omg

the most of the content on heroics is in Harrow the Ninth, and relates to Nonius and Gideon's sacrifice

Camilla's second heroic sacrifice was intercepted by Gideon and ultimately fulfilled by Gideon- and according to Augustine, heroes can only be pronounced heroes on their death (which echoes the homestuck principal of godtier deaths to be "just or heroic" and might foreshadow John's "just" death)

After defeating Wake, Nonius went to fight the resurrection beast and was (on the account of third parties) successful and it's unclear if he died (again) or if he's still a ghost

Augustine says that he would have preferred "a sexy party" and fighting a resurrection beast for nine more hours over watching him "wrestle that thing out of sight" even though it gave them more information- which implies heroics is fundamentally self sacrificing and not worth the death of the person in question

Harrow deems Gideon's death a murder, possibly even at her own hand, and Ortus is undecided if a death at someone else's hands or a heroic one is better (especially in a storytelling sense)