#I'm also thinking of changing to a different screenshot of him for the icon!

[brown-little-robin]

would it be incredibly jarring and make me seem less like me to change my blog color? temporarily? to fit the Tōya icon?

[abbysimsfun]

24 25 Favourite Screenshots of 2024 (Part One)

Only two parts, nothing major, but I got as far as New Year's Day in game, counted 50 total, and decided to do two posts. Part 2 will post on New Year's Eve, but thank you for the tags @hashimasims, @itmeansiris, @rosienthe, @finchfin, @lostinsixam, @matchalovertrait (your post was different but I'm counting it!), @changingplumbob, and @simscici!

All in chronological order, and all from Sims In Bloom since I have no other gameplay!

Above, (1) young Heather meets Sophie the Snail in her Henford hometown without her front tooth, and (2) Heather was the photographer for this adorable shot of her parents, expecting her sister Hazel and cuddling at the Finchwick Fair.

(3) The save's first tragic death was Eliza Pancakes, mother of three and wife of Bob, and I love this picture of them for the starry sky alone, honestly.

(4) Master botanist Daisy with one of many oversized crops she grew in her garden over the years.

(5) Loved this shot of Daisy taking off in a rocket at GeekCon so much I used it to represent her changing careers to full-time astrobotanist with the Sims Aeronautical Space Agency (SpaceY).

(6) Golden hour in Henford in springtime.

(7) Uptown San Myshuno and the San Myshuno Bridge.

(8) Winter in Henford-on-Bagley, with pink sunsets in the sky and wild fox Pawbin Hood in his Sherwood Forest getup in the foreground.

(9) Mortimer Goth married his soulmate, Karl Nesbitt, at their penthouse in San Myshuno. Their guests arrived and had to comply with a new ordinance declaring 'We Wear Bags!' much to my disdain.

But I look back now and consider it one of the more iconic screenshots of the series so far.

(10) Heather checks out the view from Malcolm Landgraab's penthouse in San Myshuno while balancing a plate of midnight French Toast.

(11) The ferry dock from Cavalier Cove to Deadgrass Isle on an overcast day in Brindleton Bay.

(12) A pink sunset backdrop added perfection to this shot of romantic Holly Nesbitt dropping her new hubby, Kris Bell, for a passionate first kiss (totally autonomously).

(13) A wild love interest and his perfect dog appear from the Gallery and enter the game, and everyone rejoices. Especially Heather!

(14) Malcolm Landgraab finally steps up and takes an interest in his son while tired working mom Heather naps in her living room.

It's hard to remember this house before I added the stairs and the second floor, but there it is!

(15) Even with the clipping and the shabby apartment decor, I love this pose. Just feels like they're truly hungering for each other and that was my goal!

(16) I think the lighting is great, but something about seeing Everett so content and proud inside a Gallery build made me love this one even more!

(17) This one's the banner on my tumblr page. It's Heather's house with the second story addition from across Sable Square and the fall colours really do it.

(18) Conrad takes Gord to work with the magic of MCCC and the brilliance of deardiaryts4 💖

(19) Conrad comforting a guilt-stricken Heather after Ash's near-death accident/mod vs update glitch. I just love them.

(20) Alexander Goth nonchalantly walks in on Heather channeling spirits on his mother Bella's seance table, while Conrad worries like mad about his soulmate.

(21) Toddler Ash cuddling one of Queen Cupcake's kittens (who were soon rehomed because five cats was so many. I couldn't keep it up!) Also, King Tut's ghost makes an appearance by the patio door.

(22) Teenage Conrad posing with his parents near the midway in Copperdale - the last trip the Gordons took before his mother's death.

(23) Gord smells the Grim Reaper before Heather and Conrad, who called him on a Grimophone borrowed from Bella Goth, realize he's there.

I've always loved watching him wander up to people unprompted because he's a friendly dog, but sensing the Reaper was a whole new level of amazing.

(24) This Spooky Day photo of Ash with his dad, Malcolm, and stepmom, Miko, was too cute not to include.

Bonus (25) Heather learned she was expecting again after a miscarriage and I love the ultrasound machine cc.

Tomorrow we find out whether Marcus' lead will pan out for Conrad (please, he is tired!), and the second half of my favourite screenshots go up Tuesday!

Part 2 ->

Hope you're having a great end to 2024, and I'm trying to think of whose Top 24/favourite screenies I haven't seen yet for the tag... @matchalovertrait I know you've been tagged a lot but if you want to do this one, too! @dreamyyesenia with your gorgeous screenies, and @purplesimmer455, too!

And anyone else who hasn't done it and wants to, tag you're it. I really enjoyed strolling down memory lane with this one!

[thistlerock]

Hmmm okay I sat on it for half a day and have decided that the things I DONT like abt fantasy high webtoon so far aren't just me being a bitter fan of the og highly critical of an adaptation. It's still a little bit that though, so take this with a grain of salt.

- I have no problem with Riz being the main focus so far (I do think it makes a continuous plot easier to follow) but I really do hope we get more on the others. And I REALLY hope that the girls get actual attention on their backgrounds and characters? Idk, Gorgug and Fabian didn't get as much as Riz either but they got way more than the girls, especially Fig, and I will always be a little annoyed when male characters get more attention in action and/or fantasy stories. This is my biggest issue and the only one that I genuinely think could turn into an "okay no this is where the adaption is bad". Like, I'm gonna assume they either get flashbacks or new moments in the next few chapters (again I only read the free ones so far) but still. Arghfj.

- Kristen coins their party name by telling Daybreak she wants to hang with the Bad Kids. Since they'll all end up in detention eventually I'm sure we'll still get there and I'm not completely opposed to change but that is a pretty iconic line to leave out. I think if they get the name by someone else referring to them as such or if Kristen says it later that still works but y'know.

- I understand that a comic has to spoon feed the reader lore because Brennan can't just do it, lmao, but it does feel slightly out of character for the Riz we know to need explanations on how Agueford operates. Like, he would have done extensive research on it. This is very much an alternate universe/parallel timeline with minor differences situation and in this version Penny's only been missing for a week so he had less time to do research, yeah, but still. I don't think this is an inherent flaw and I do expect these Bad Kids to be slightly different than their counterparts, but yeah that bothered me a little bit.

- Riz's whole deal visually. I both love it because he's so cute and it's working on me exactly as intended and I'm also kinda mad that it's working. And I'm kind of mad at the fact it's a thing. He's a creature, he's a gross little guy. Yes the fanon portrayals of him are way more creature-ish than canon ones, but he is NOT cute even in canon. Look at his freshman year art and then look at this guy, insane difference. I get why they did that. And it works. It works SO well. Penelope's reaction to him suddenly makes perfect sense to me. This makes me so conflicted lmao. I understand that this an alternate version of him and not SUPPOSED to be the exact same but I don't think I'm gonna get over it, which is fine. Doesn't mean I'm not collecting screenshots of cute Riz. He really is squishable.

- Unless I misunderstood Fabian wasn't present when Ragh threw Riz! How will he The Ball him now? It's pretty easy to establish it either way (other people could call him that, especially on the Bloodrush team which Fabian will presumably try out for) but if it ends up not being Fabian that fully establishes Riz as The Ball (because let's be real, regardless of how persistent Ragh is, if Fabian didn't repeatedly call him that it would not have become his thing.) then I genuinely think that takes away from why their dynamic is fun! I am waiting with baited breath

- this is a minor thing but I wish Kristen wore shorts,,,like short overalls,,,,,,I FULLY understand why they didn't put her in tie dye I wouldn't wish repeatedly drawing that upon my worst enemy, and the corn coding IS pretty fun, and they DID keep her awful sandals. But shorts,,,,,my girl needs shorts for her summer camp fit,,,,

I do still find the webtoon enjoyable so far. I think liking adaptations of media you love is actually really hard because it'll almost never do it "right", but you kinda have to distance them from each other and go "okay this is the thing I like but from a different angle and that's okay, and I might be bothered by a lot of changes but that doesn't inherently make it bad". (Extreme example of this for me is death note. As an adaptation of the anime/manga the live action movie sucked ass, if you forget all about that it's a pretty good movie?? Obviously in the case of fantasy high the two are a LOT closer and this isn't a good comparison, but death note has taught me to at least try to view adaptations positively even if my first instinct is to be upset.) Idk, if they're the exact same then what's the point of adapting it.

So far I think it's a competent work, if flawed in some ways; the art is cute and some of the jokes (even the new ones) made me chuckle. The first 3 chapters were nice, I think this can be a fun thing to relive freshman year through and if it brings in even one fan that doesn't wanna watch two hour recordings of people sitting at a table rolling dice (fair) then that's really great! I'm curious to see the rest, but if they continue like this and give the girls their spotlight then I think it'll be pretty cool even if I'll always prefer the original

[0nlyhere4phil]

Rating All of The Howlters New Outfits (except the randomized ones)

Some of you actually asked for this, so here's my review of the Howlters new outfits!

Starting with Dils Formal:

I honestly don't know how to feel about this. It's just not Dil. It doesn't go with his nerdy dad vibe at all. It makes him look older, it doesn't fit him right, and the color is really weird. If they had gone with the blue and some different shoes I think I would have liked it more, but since they didn't put much effort into it it's just bad. Objectively it's an okay suit, but for Dil it just doesn't work. So yeah overall just a no 4/10.

Next His Sleepwear:

Why did they like this so much? What is actually wrong with them? If it was just the pants and the slippers it would have been fine, but the pants, the slippers, AND socks...it's just too much. No no no bad. 2/10.

Next His Party Wear:

What are they doing to him?? Who is this? I'm kind of just staring at this not knowing what to say, because I think if, minus that UGLY HAT, this was on a different and younger sim it would look okay. This looks like Dil is going through a midlife crisis. I like that the shoes match the shirt, thats nice, and I like the overall color pallet, BUT NOT ON DIL! So I'm weirdly torn, but since this look is on Dil I don't like it. Again it's not that bad but on Dil it's just horrible 4.5/10. I hate that fucking hat.

Next His Swimwear:

You don't get how relieved I am that they didn't put him in a fucking speedo. I like this a lot. This looks like a father, which is perfect for Dil. It's cute, it's simple, and I like the colors they chose. 9/10

Next His Hot Weather:

Meh. They didn't change much, they just made it worse. I prefered the original because I feel like the green looked better. Also wearing slippers on a hot day sounds absolutely HORRIBLE! 3/10

Next His Cold Weather:

I absolutely LOVE THIS! It's so fun! Dil in the horrible 80s dad aesthetic works perfectly! It's still nerdy as well! I feel like this is perfect. If they had made his whole wardrobe this over the top ugly neon nerdy look I would have loved it! 10/10

That's it for Dil. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I feel like they should have gone for nerdy Dad than whatever the hell they actually did. Next up is Tabitha.

Tabitha's Everyday:

This is just an upgraded version of her original outfit. I like the new hair color, though I wish they looked through different hairstyles cause the one they chose is not giving what it needed to give. I LOVE her new tattoo, I think it's fun that they gave her it. I also do like the shoes matching the hair. This is cute! 8.5/10

Next Her Formal:

I like the dress, but the outfit looks unfinished. They should have changed her makeup into something more dramatic to match the dress, and they also should have put some bracelets and necklaces on her. They did good on picking the main part of the outfit now they need to go back and finish it. 6/10 (I couldn't get a good screenshot with the tattoo sorry)

Next Her Sleepwear:

Slay queen. I love this honestly. I like how lavender has become her color. The sunglasses are iconic. The only thing I hate is SOCKS WITH SLIPPERS! THAT LOOKS LIKE IT FEELS HORRIBLE! Other than the sock and slipper combo this eats. 9.5/10

Next Her Party:

I beg your pardon? What is THIS and WHY was Dan so obsessed with it? This is horrible. I'm glad they remembered that necklaces and nails exist but I'm upset they exist on this monstrosity. Nothing about this goes together. THIS. IS. THEIR. WORST. LOOK. 1/10.

Next Her Swimwear:

It's kind of a mess but I kind of love it. I feel like it suits this new Tabitha. I don't have much to say other than it strangely works. 7/10.

Next Her Hot Weather:

Fuck right off. Daniel you know NOTHING about goths. This is horrible. This poor woman is going to feel so sticky and sweaty, and it wont even be worth it because this outfit is trash. Just no. 1.5/10.

Next Her Cold Weather:

I really like this. I love how throughout the outfit pink pops up, and I like that it makes sense for the category it's in. Good job Dan and Phil 9/10

That's it for Tabitha! For the most part her new outfits aren't bad. I like that they (unintentionally) gave her a pastel goth sort of vibe, I like that she does look like a streamer now, and I think the new tattoo is really cool. I will never forgive them for her party wear though. Moving on to Dalien.

Daliens Everyday:

This is fine. I wish the pants were the skinny jeans because those were more emo, and I wish he had black eyeliner. Overall it's not bad, but I prefer the original. Also they should have stuck with the purple highlights instead of changing them to red. 7.5/10

Next His Sportswear:

Ew ew ew. This is rancid. The hoodie makes him look bald, and I despise the ripped socks they gave him. I actually like the shorts though they remind me of something Phil would have had back in 2010, but even then working out in those shorts sounds like a nightmare. Other than the shorts this whole look is a wreck. 1.5/10

Next His Party Wear:

The outfit itself is okay but this is NOT Dalien. This looks like Dalien stole from a skater boy. They had the opportunity to go absolutely insane with this outfit. They could have given him crazy black makeup, a sheer shirt, some fishnets, and platforms, but instead they did this. It's lazy. It's not emo or goth or whatever they want him to be. 4/10

Next His Swimwear:

Jesus Christ. NO. Just NO. 1.5/10

Next His Hot Weather:

Why didn't they give him FISHNETS? Why did they choose those grandpa socks??? Why is EVERYTHING GREY BUT THE DRESS?? I think the idea of Dalien wearing a dress is cunty, but not like this. I feel like he would be a long skirt kind of guy. Also the cuff like glove things in the summer sounds horrible. 4.5/10.

Next His Cold Weather:

Again this is just a no. Nothing about this is emo or goth or whatever they want him to be. I like the jacket and the boots a lot; if they had put Dalien in some skinny jeans and removed that fucking hat this would have been okay. I mean this in a derogatory way, this is something Dan would wear. 5.5/10

That's it for Dalien. Overall it's just not good. Most of it makes no sense, and they also should have given him black eyeliner.

In conclusion, they really did the Howlters dirty. This is probably the ugliest dressed family I've ever seen. None of these outfits gave what they needed to give. Also this family is a sensory NIGHTMARE!

I hope whoever is reading this enjoyed this or atleast agrees with some of my points. Have a wonderful rest of your day, evening, or morning.

[the-gayest-show]

Operation Birthday Takeover Review/Analysis

I wanted to include this in the review bomb but decided against it because the episode would take too much yap compared to the others to summarize properly, let's go!

(sorry if these screenshots have the player on them I couldn't find a better way bare with me this is better than the easier route i'd have taken)

HAHAHAHAHAHA SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT HERE!

First of all, PERI! YOU'RE BACK BABY HBUIEBRBFEIBFWiuB

Second of all and most important, this was a MAJOR Dev episode. Well, obviously, since it's his birthday, but we got to see more of him being nice while it lasted anyways, and we also got to see more of Dale's neglect and it's affects on Dev.

You can see he's clearly disappointed about his dad paying no attention to Dev at all, preferring to work on "Project H" instead of his own son. Will throw hands on this man fr.

Throughout the episode we see more hints of this disappointment, like when Vicky gets invited to the party (Dev doesn't even like princesses! DUDE!)

Now that I'm really rewatching as I go, Hazel seems to be very aware of it and very empathetic towards Dev, I like that about her. She's looking out for her friend! Good on her!

On the other hand (to move the plot forward and thus this review), I love seeing the fairy family back in action again!

I love their dynamic even more! Also I swear to God half of the iconic lines come from these interactions I swear to God.

"Time to see what's so secret about this room!....... On second thought never mind" SOBBING LAUGHING

Having the three of them slowly find out that project H is actually Project Hazel is so wild. THEY LITERALLY WROTE DOWN IMPORTANT INFO ON THE BOARD LIKE THE FAIRIES THING. COSMO! WANDA! WHYYYYYYYYY

The sad part of the matter is, Dale was fixated on Dev's friend of all people simply because she was... content? With fairy godparents? It's so sad actually for Dev... he REALLY needs someone to care about him

I wanna get into Vicky though now, and the surprising amounts of references to the OG series that were made in less than 2 minutes apart from each other? Crazy!

First of all, she's back! An interesting character to return for sure, considering she mostly acted as Timmy's babysitter in the OG series, but the continuity of this show never ceases to surprise me!

She's somehow similar looking? Like, correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't she be older now? Significant enough to be changed visually for sure. AJ was 10 in the original series and now he's like 30 something. By that logic shouldn't Vicky be closer to her 40s? Does that age a person significantly from 16? That's what I thought anyways... She's still into the "conning little children for money" thing. She's literally 30+ at least, did she not try to up her game somehow? IMHO she totally could have extreme power like that over adults if she got gullible enough ones, could've been worse, but I guess people of Vicky's personality don't truly change unless there's a major life breakthrough that happens. You know what they say about peaking in high school...

Icky Vicky the song (and thus the episode it was in) is canon to the FOP A New Wish universe. I could swear the song sounded slightly different than it did when it was sung in this episode, but I'll blame that on the song coming out 10+ years ago and voice actors being too specific to nail down (I think the guy from one direction played the Icky Vicky singer? No wonder they couldn't invite him back). The song being referred to as "old" got me cringing a bit. I didn't grow up with the show but I get the feeling people who did felt themselves aging in real time with Jasmine's comment...

TIMMY MENTION! TIMMY HAS BEEN MENTIONED BY NAME IN THE A NEW WISH UNIVERSE AGAIN!

Poor fairy trio though, they're all traumatized by Vicky, even Peri (who thought she was some weird ass dream, dawg I wish 😭) and immediately they're cowering with fear at the sound of her name. They got PTSD or something from all those years in original FOP...

What's funnier is them being able to stand up to Vicky by just. transforming into humans, which works bc that's always worked in FOP canon (when parental figures showed up in the OG), but somehow Wanda and Cosmo didn't fucking know that? Truly, Wanda, it would've been nice for y'all to know that some decades ago.

"That's Vicky for ya! Making Kids Miserable Since 2001!"

Actually it would be 1998 if we count the Oh Yeah Cartoon Pilot and subsequent episodes, but I guess we're only counting actual FOP as canon 😔

-

I wanna really talk about the last scene though, where Dev finds out that Project H was Project Hazel. It REALLY tears him up inside to see just HOW bad his father doesn't give a shit about him.

LOOK. LOOK AT THAT FACE AND TELL ME THAT ISN'T DEVASTATION! Even as he's recounting all the times that his father talked about Project H

The emotional neglect really runs deep with this one.

He lashes out at both Peri and Hazel (her especially since he's under the impression that she faked being his friend or something) and even wishes for Peri to leave him alone. So basically he's closing himself off from the 2 people who cared about him the most, likely as an emotional response. And then he goes and crosses off everything on the board in anger and leaves.

I've noticed Peri's behaviour towards Dev has changed a bit again since the Dimmsonian episode. I think in that episode initially he seemed more tired, and he's probably still tired, but if he is, it's not shown as much here. I think personally Peri seeing more of Dev's life might've changed his attitude towards the child, but he still remains semi optimistic. He cares about this kid. It's shown even in just those few seconds of hesitation before he leaves that Peri was kind of heartbroken/sad at the request to leave Dev's side, but was willing to do so since he asked/wished. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really do enjoy their dynamic and really wish to see more of it, especially after this.

This is all 100% driven from his dad's actions affecting his emotional state, and I think this is actually a perfect setup for the episode where Dev and Irep take over Fairy World. Especially if Irep finds Dev like not even seconds after this scene, he's more vulnerable now than he's been throughout the whole series thus far, so a manipulator like Irep (if he is a good one, but heck even if he was dogshit at it) could defo make him change his thoughts on things.

Overall this episode was great and there's lots to love about it!

[vancilocs]

1-10 for both frost and hart pioneers?

messica and mallet.....

what’s the last screenshot you’ve taken for your story?

Tumblr won't let me post them

describe your story in three words or less

Test Of Endurance

Continuous Family Chaos or alternatively God Damnit Wrench

describe (insert character here) in three words or less

Messica: Goodnatured Housemom

Mallet: Oopsie Daisy Astronaut

how did you choose the name of your story?

I started calling them Frosts around the middle of the legacy (they're named after Father Winter bc one of my heirs around that time was his kid) because the previous combined surname horrors started to become too much. Messica started as O'Ren which is a direct reference to O-Ren Ishii for absolutely no reason other than I happened to think of her when creating Messica

Hart is a lovely surname

how do you choose your characters’ names?

I have a fondness for names that aren't quite names, and I'm p sure Jessica from Love is blind was a relevant topic back then, her nickname was Messica and I just liked it. Heirs and sometimes their siblings tend to get pun names based on their parent's aspiration

I needed something to match his aspiration, I'm so sure he used to have a different name but I changed it to Mallet pretty early

how long have you been working on your story for?

Frost family tree was created on 22.3.2020 and last edited on 26.3.2023

I created the Hart family tree 15.4.2023 and Crescent died on 8.3.2025

whats the biggest risk you’ve taken with your story? did it pay off?

Maybe for the Frosts it was downloading the mod that allows accidental pregnancies, has sims react to them negatively sometimes, allows teen pregnancy etc. Added some zest

Killing Wrench maybe (but I knew I would bring him back eventually). Also maybe throwing Andromeda into the mix

what about your story are you proud of?

I still miss Kitty, Max and Lucis

The vampires! Wrench, Demön, Mirage and their little covens and companions were all icons and I liked how Wrench, Demön and Andromeda kept popping up throughout the years

what about your story are you looking to improve on?

I improved a lot during both of these, but its just screenshot skills that always need honing

is your story fully planned or are you still working things out? is there a definitive end?

I just floated through the first half of the Frost legacy, and never had an ending thought out, it just ended when Rooster finished his aspiration

I knew from pretty early on that there would be two final heirs and one would be abducted, later on I figured the final heir would die, but only when Crescent moved to Sulani to the same plot Mallet lived and died at I knew he would die by meteorite the same way his ancestor did

[superfluouskeys]

X'rhun Tia for the headcanons meme!

need you to know i saw this and said "MY BOYYYYYYYYYYYYY" out loud ty for indulging the neverending brainrot!!!!

realistic

I think this is pretty much supported by canon, but he was a completely different person before he lost basically everyone important to him.  His personality has changed pretty noticeably, in some good ways and some bad ways.

On the good side, he used to be a lot more hot-headed and a bit self-righteous.  Now, while he still holds strong ideals, it’s easier for him to live and let live and see others’ perspectives, and he’s not one to pick needless fights.

On the bad side, he’s completely terrified of getting close with anyone, like way more than he consciously realizes, which is why he just kind of walks off into the mist whenever he starts feeling an emotion.  He has the trauma disease of like, getting caught up in how friendships/relationships will inevitably end, and so keeps his distance without even realizing that’s what he’s doing.

He has the potential to self-reflect and learn to move past this, but it just feels too big and too painful to even begin to acknowledge, so he mostly tries to keep himself too busy to think about it.

unrealistic but amusing

Uhmmm the only thing I can think of is that one time I put him in the bunny suit for screenshots bc I thought it was funny but he frankly rocked it, what a fashion icon!

painful and fun to inflict

Has terrible nightmares that come and go, where he basically just relives losing everyone close to him. Just when he thinks he's starting to get better and move on from what happened, he gets hit with a somehow worse version.

realistic TO ME!!!!!!! (unrealistic but I will die on this hill)

In my own personal and objectively correct world, X'rhun still comes to visit Adrienne sometimes, and also uhm he showed up to see her off in Endwalker so jot that down. Things are maybe a touch weird between them sometimes because of the Unresolved Feelings, but ultimately there's just a lot of love and care between them so they make being friends work.

I'm getting emotional just thinking about this lol!!!!!!!!!!!

[lotus-tower]

hi hi i hope you are still doing essay commentary because WOAG this latest oboro visual poem meta thing. messed me UP. predictably your mention of third person perspective is my favourite part of the whole post. im wondering why you chose those specific oboro and gintoki Eye Moments for example. but anything else or anything more on the rainbow body segment that you want to talk about would be wonderful! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

(— groupofcrows main)

yesss thank you for the question! i love talking about this stuff.

So the rainbow body is a phenomenon and concept from Dzogchen, a tradition within Tibetan Buddhism. Essentially, when a master attains full knowledge, their body changes. I'm not going to go into the details here because it's not too relevant, but upon death the master's body will dissolve into light instead of leaving a corpse behind, and then their spirit can go wherever in the world to aid others. (Very much like how I think of Shouyou's final death in the final arc where he The World arcana's himself into sublimation.)

I was originally going to go in a different direction with the collage, but it didn't work with the flow as well, and it was difficult to get suitable quotes. You haven't seen the end of the rainbow body quotes though, I have a bunch more I'm saving for another collage. lol.

Anyway, what's meant by "third person perspective" in the actual definition of the rainbow body is just that this is what's observable to the people around the master. Buddhism is largely concerned with the internal, which is probably why it's phrased this way. I took it and ran though! The first screenshot in that section is of Gintoki's iconic PTSD moment when he sees Utsuro's face for the first time, perfectly coincidentally in the arc where Utsuro is depicted with a LGBT pride aura as he moves for no reason (except, I presume, hilarity). What more significant moment of "knowledge" attainment is there for him? For Oboro, though, that moment of horrified realization is when he "realizes" he's been replaced, that Shouyou getting to live means that he will actually, you know, live his life and move on.

I juxtaposed these moments because, in a way, Gintoki and Oboro are already "third person perspectives" of each other. I've already talked about how Oboro is a retroactively created echo of Gintoki. What's fun in the wording of the quote is that it's the third-person perspective of someone else attaining knowledge, right? Oboro and Gintoki are "at the scene" of their respective deepest horror, with Oboro's image being second because it implicitly frames him as potentially looking at Gintoki. Because that's indeed what happened. Oboro is also always looking at Gintoki, but not at all in the same way as Takasugi.

In the execution pic, he's simply watching the execution--Gintoki is just the guillotine, and despite how terrible this moment is for everyone involved, Oboro isn't haunted by this. Some part of him knows that the worst is yet to come--that Gintoki will survive because of this choice, so one day he may come to the truly horrible realization, Utsuro. And so the images also imply that Oboro is looking at Gintoki's realization with horror. Oboro in the present had already come to this realization long ago, and so he's become empty of all (or almost all...) desires, attachments, resentments and lets himself be dressed by the narrative in priestly attire without protest.

What about Gintoki? He's not watching anything in this moment except his own memories flying past, but we, the viewer, are watching him have this realization. Just as we watch Oboro have his realization, and understand the catalyst for the entire underlying tragedy of Gintama. Which was Gintoki, or rather Oboro seeing Gintoki. In this situation we are also literally the third person. Gintoki finding out about Utsuro is just the sound of a pebble hitting water a very, very long time after Oboro first dropped it into a well over 10 years ago.

But also, Gintoki meeting Utsuro is quite literally why Utsuro has that LGBT pride aura going on. Because Utsuro needs a very dramatic entrance scene, because this is a very tense moment the narrative can't not gas up. So that we can enjoy it as viewers.

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase - The Hacker's Most Humiliating Defeat

I wanted to draw attention to what may well be The Hacker's most humiliating defeat. Yes, I am aware that he has gone through his villain decay during the show's long run. However, my go-to example is from way back in the early days, specifically April 14, 2003. This was when they released "Numberless Poddles", an official webcomic made for the pbskids.org website.

The basic plot is that The Hacker stole the numbers off the Poddles of Poddleville. He also stole their record book containing all of their numbers. Finally, he made them forget everything. We learn from the comic that, in Poddle society, the number a Poddle is given dicatates what they are supposed to do. Without their numbers, nobody knows what to do, and Poddle society screeches to a halt. That is a much more dystopic description than we ever got in the show.

This comic is weird. They made the backgrounds using screenshots from Season 1 Episode 7, "The Poddleville Case". This was a tweaked version of the original 1999 pilot, which was known for a wonkier art-syle than what became the final show. Then, they sort of stuck their own drawn images over the backgrounds. Their drawings are in a completely different style, which clashes with the backgrounds. Still, I recommend any fans of the show to read all of the official Cyberchase web comics. They were taken off the site years ago, and the Wayback Machine Archives are missing pieces. However, they have been restored in full as part of Blue Maxima's Flashpoint Archive Project. Anyway, before we get to The Hacker's humiliating defeat, here is one example of the disconnect between the original pilot screenshot and the art. There is a scene in the comic where Motherboard gives instructions to the kids. For the background, they used a screenshot of the pilot where Motherboard gave instructions to the kids. That's about the easiest way they could have assembled a comic panel with Motherboard an the kids. However, Digit is also in this comic. Recall that he wasn't in the original pilot. How did they add him in?

It's like they put a sticker on top of some grainy VHS footage. Would you like to see The Hacker's double chin? No. Too bad.

Yeah, they wanted a shot of The Hacker, Buzz, and delete with The Hacker in this pose. But they didn't like his face, so they drew another face. You can see his iconic chin from the pilot sticking out, though they covered up most of it. The face from the background shot would have worked though, so I'm not sure why they changed it. Oh, and don't mind the Poddle eggs. They aren't part of this story. They're only here because the webcomic uses screenshots from the pilot.

But the main point of this post was to talk about The Hacker's humiliating defeat. Skipping ahead, the kids find the stolen book in the Poddleville Vault on Mount Poddle. I don't know if this is supposed to be the Poddle Power Vault from the show or not.

I'm sorry, I have to include two more bizarre comic panels. Remind me, how big is The Hacker?

The answer is very small.

Okay, okay, the kids have found the Poddleville Record Book, and now they have to get past Hacker. Is there anything nearby that they could use?

This was back in the day, when The Hacker was still physically intimidating. He could easily pick up the kids, and they usually just ran away from him. This was back in the day when Delete had stretchy arms and used them to capture the kids. And yet, in this official web comic, the kids defeat The hacker, Buzz, and Delete with giant "Happy Birthday" hats.

And then they lock him in the vault and leave him to die, I guess.

How long do you think it took him to figure out the vault code?

Okay, I have to include one more wacky image from the web comic. Here we are at the end. Motherboard is on a flat-screen TV on the stage congratulating the kids for stopping The Hacker. Matt even gets to insult The Hacker.

Wait, why is the Poddle known as "Triangle 2" panicking? Didn't the kids just save the day? Let's look at the background after the new drawings have been removed.

Wait, is this the scene from the pilot where the mayor is holding a press conference to talk about the stolen Poddle Eggs?

Yeah, they just took this shot from where the tent is about to collapse and erased the mayor.

[toxic-potions-productions]

They took over a year off (Probably more than that) & cut you bitches some slack. Tell a friend to tell a friend........

THEY'RE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!

Surprise!! The main cast of my own timeline has been rebranded! They are no longer part of the timeline, but they do still exist in the Cape West world Some had larger glow-up's, some did not. But, they're all anthro animals now being addressed by their human names

Justin is now a comedian (Obviously being inspired by Randy Feltface himself, come on), Tammy is a streamer on Twitch, William is a college student, & David is still a bunno dad in an awesome relationship with Alissa, just on the goth side now Their old names (Yiffer, Chikeisha, Bloobear, 75, & 39) aren't completely abandoned, though. Since they're still there as nicknames/inside jokes with each other

Ohh, & uhh, these two are here, as well

Nice seeing you, too, Robert ^^ & I still hate Lilith. Cool

Robert hasn't changed a bit personality wise (Cuz look at that smile 🥺), but Lilith is now a model in a bunch of magazines in that area, with a boss that spoils her alot, but not so much with his other employees

They are all still Dev's characters, except Alissa, Lilith, & Robert, I'm just bringing these icons back for fun in Mothic & I's own little "spinoff" of the story with their ocs on their end & the revamps on my end

For now, it's great to see them again FTR, Justin's hair is gonna be different next time you see him compared to this. Not everything is gonna be the same with them compared to this post, & I also changed these screenshots too many times, so take it or leave it. It's only like this for nostalgic reasons, but it still gives me Vietnam flashbacks, so that's why it's there- Any post with Justin after this, his old hairstyle will officially be retired just to salvage what little sanity I have left after this. I think you'll be surprised by his new look

& also, the entire canon storyline of the first FNW39 game is ENTIRELY un-canon in this version to also salvage what little sanity I have left. So, unfortunately, alot of things won't be canon anymore, including a few characters. But, half of those characters have been re-purposed into different fandoms, so don't worry!

But just for fun, I'll bring back the FNW39 tags this one time. But, only on this specific post. After this, any posts with these guys will be tagged under "Residents of Cape West", which is actually the title of something Mothic has in the works over on Archive of your own, so go hit him up

FTR, don't expect me to use them as often as I did, since this is still a Demon slayer centered blog. I do, in fact, have a few dumb ideas to do with them, as well as a flawless segway into an oc debut, but you're in the wrong place if you think I'm going back to that old timeline

Once you like FNW39, you're basically stuck there TwT

@dorkycreature-89 There, I finally did it. Happy?

[indefinitelyjaded]

Whew. (Super Sim Update)

SO. MUCH. PROGRESS.

I am officially DONE with all Base Game Skills, Aspirations*, AND Careers!

(*Not the Family ones that require children to age up into Young Adults/have children... but soon!)

I'm also done with the Outdoor Retreat Aspirations and Skills! (That's far less of an accomplishment, considering there's only one of each, and you (almost) have to max the Herbalism skill to complete the Aspiration.)

So, now it's time to Get to Work. (Ha! I'm hilarious.) Stella already mastered the Baking and Photography skills a loooong time ago, so that's already done. I started her in the Detective career first, since that's the only active career I've never played before. Like I mentioned in my last Super Sim Update post, Stella went back to University to get a couple more relevant degrees, to make these careers go by more quickly. So thanks to her Distinguished Degree in Psychology, she started at Level 8 and just maxed the career. I haven't decided if we'll do the Doctor or Scientist career next; I've played both before, and are the Scientist career animations still bugged? I'm leaning toward Doctor, because I think I've only played through that one once before, whereas I know I've done the Scientist career a couple times.

The biggest changes/most progress has been with the family.

The twins are still living with Cousin India, who had a baby with some rando... once it ages up into an infant, I can go into their household and check the family tree to see what's up with that. ANYWAY, the twins aged up into teens, so I'm considering bringing them back to my household, since they can take care of themselves now.

Tinsley looks a lot like Stella, and Tate looks pretty similar to Cade -- like, to the point that it was difficult to do Tate's CAS and make him look like a different person than Cade.

Speaking of Cade, he's coming along nicely with his Minor-Super Sim goals. Obviously, since he's now a teen also, he completed all the Childhood skills and aspirations, as well as Scouts. (He did as much of the Drama Club activity as he could as a kid, but you can't max that until you're a Teen.) As a Teen, he has maxed the Drama Club, Cheer Team, Chess Team, and Football Team activities; he's currently on the Computer Team, and is Level 2, so almost done. I'm not having him do the Simfluencer or Video Game Streamer "side hustle" careers, since those can also be done by Adults. As far as Aspirations go, Cade has finished the Drama Llama and Goal Oriented ones, and is currently working on Admired Icon and Live Fast -- I think he will probably finish the latter one first, but I'm kind of going back and forth at the same time, to try to get them done more quickly.

I'm also pleased to report that Prom seems to be actually working in this save! Which I'm really excited about, because I literally never got to see it until now. At Cade's first prom, his half-sister, Emma (Dexter's daughter), was crowned Prom Royalty!

(I wish the photobooth pictures saved to the Screenshots or somewhere, because they took a really cute/funny pic together in the booth!)

At Cade's second prom, he exchanged promise rings with his girlfriend, Luna Villareal:

(Should Luna be (at least) a Young Adult by now, given that she was a Teen when I started this save file? Yes. Did I age her down in CAS, because she and Cade met once and hit it off, then she aged up the next day? Also yes. Look, I told you in post one that I was playing a little fast and loose with the rules.)

Cade also made a new bff at this prom: Orange Bailey-Moon, who is (a) still famous and (b) now literally (prom) royalty:

I do want to get Cade crowned prom royalty before he graduates, which is all the more reason to bring his siblings home -- votes that I can control! (Besides, India has her own kid to take care of now.)

My plan is for Cade and Luna to get engaged and married pretty much immediately upon Cade's aging up into a Young Adult. (Even though I aged Luna down in CAS, she's still significantly older than Cade, according to MC Command Center.) The sooner they get married, the sooner they can create the requisite grandchildren for Stella's aspiration.

Speaking of Stella's aspiration, I don't currently have her working on one. Since there are none with Get to Work, the next one will be the ones added to Spa Day in the refresh... except those Aspirations are the whole gameplay of the pack. So it feels wrong to work on those before finishing the Get to Work careers.

And speaking of the Get to Work careers: since there's no tutorial-type aspiration tied to Retail, and it doesn't have levels like a traditional career... I haven't decide how I'm going to handle that. I may not bother with it at all, because I've played with Retail stores before (and they're a PITA). Still deciding for sure, though.

[leo-regulus]

Aight, here's the majority of it. The horrid awful part is that we actually set this aside for a few years because we got really into Ace Attorney (which spawned uh, somewhere between four and six novels' worth of writing) so a lot of these spreadsheets are fairly old - think about three or four years old now?

Right now I'm in a very middle period of "need to clean up spreadsheets and documents and figure out what writing has been done, what hasn't, where the hell documents got put, and refamiliarize myself with the spreadsheets". Because in the fourth screenshot you can see on the left I have a rough timeline of the garrison between what side they're all on, who died when, and who went Spectre when and in what order. Beside that, all those names w/ colours? Yeah, no clue what the hell that's for.

What I actually need to do is a full reread of TLC, taking notes as I go along of every canon plot point, battle, and emotional story beat. When you change canon as much as we do, the important part isn't necessarily keeping X versus Y, but making sure that all the iconic emotional moments are kept in the right places.

So I may not have the really fuckin fun Albafica versus Minos fight, where the primary motivation is "Minos is on a schedule but can't resist playing, and Albafica is trying to protect Rodorio more than anything else". That got cut because 1) hard to do if they're lovers beforehand and 2) Albafica's body being carried by Shion really pissed me off because Shion so blatantly refuses to acknowledge how deeply uncomfortable he makes Albafica.

But what I can do instead is have Albafica face off against a brainwashed Sisyphus. Albafica's primary motivation is to get Jesse out of Sanctuary, because he blames himself for their injuries being so bad. And the real opponent isn't Sisyphus but Asmita, who is absolutely convinced he's right and that using Sisyphus as a weapon is a good way to do this. This also has Sisyphus caught in the middle, like Shion, but unlike Shion's utter lack of guilt over mistreating Albafica, Sisyphus has to deal with the guilt of being involved and killing both of his nephews, and that fits much better.

So while the details themselves don't stay, the emotions and motivations behind the characters involved are almost identical, save for taking the parts We Don't Like, and then Fixing Them.

Sisyphus' arc, as you've seen slowly be revealed through his backstory and through what little you've seen of his time in the Holy War, is very much about his guilt, and his love for his family. We just take it further by kicking him in the pants. Regulus, on the other hand, becomes a recurring powerhouse villain: canonical Regulus doesn't have major survivor's guilt, but that's because most of Ilias' characterization was done in the Gaidens, which make him a wildly different person to what Regulus and Sisyphus seem to think he is. Integrating that Gaiden characterization makes it blatantly clear everyone is 1) treating Regulus like he's baby Ilias and 2) literally no one actually knows what Ilias was like.

So his arc was built originally from that seed of "and what if Regulus knew they were fuckin lying out of their own hero worship, and what if he reasonably took issue with them thinking he's someone he's not". (Which is also something we brought to the table of our own accord, because guess who got slapped with our late grandmother's legal name and look like her twin despite the fact she died like 40 years ago? Me! So that rage is very much inspired by my own life as well.)

Every single character has their own arc, and that means interweaving them, which means we have to do a lot of timeline work. For example, some very careful work was done to make sure things lined up given that 1) Aspros died before Regulus became a Spectre, but 2) Regulus was the reason he got a Surplice, because Regulus asked Alone nicely to hear him out, and 3) Aspros told Alone the secret of Athena's cloth. And other fun things like that.

The interesting thing is that basically no character is ever really wrong for the actions they take, insofar as nothing is excused as "well they just suck lmao". You can see the internal logic! Regulus is very much a good example of this because if you take a few steps back the decisions he made are wildly questionable, but if you swim beside him a while, you are very much the boiling frog because by the time he's done you're nodding along going "yeah of course that's what you're gonna do about it".

Kardia and Asmita, both antagonists in their own right, fall into this: they're both vicious and do anything to win the war. But Kardia is a man who everyone else has forsaken and overlooked due to his health and simplicity, who would like to be taken fucking seriously for once; and Asmita is someone who has completely written off the world as a decent thing because he's so traumatized he's numb, and just wants to fulfill the mission his mother gave him, who hopes maybe someone will be able to show him that there is an essential goodness to humanity because he sure as shit doesn't see it.

Interweaving all the stories into one coherent thing is very much a difficult line to walk. I'm not even sure how to really put it into one thing without circling back or repeating. But you know, that's the fun of it. It wouldn't be nearly as fun if it were easy, now would it?

Alright, I'll bite. What's Regulus' story? (Is this the South I've seen mentioned?)

Aight let's GO. This is indeed the South you've seen mentioned, and who occasionally posts on this blog. (Mostly when bothering his personal blorbo, Tsuki, but anything fishy and bloody tends to get his attention.) South is short for Southern Star, which is the public alias he's chosen, to separate him from the canon Leo Regulus, who in his words is "a sunshiny little bitch without the sense to bite the hand that poisons him".

He's pretty canon divergent, is what I'm saying here. Now, you've already seen Jesse's story, or the broad strokes thereof, so you know that the version of events our partner system and we write is pretty different than you'd expect. Reggie's story is a lot harsher than Jesse's, and so thus, I do need to give a content warning before we begin.

I can promise you that this story has a happy ending, insofar as anything can. But this is a story about war. In order to understand Regulus as a person, you have to swim a little while beside him. Did he make perfect choices? No. But you don't, in war. You can't. In a war, all you can do is try to survive, and try to win. No matter the cost. I'm gonna give this story a hard R18 rating: there will be non-explicit but described sexual content, incest, pretty questionable power dynamics, dubcon, lots of death, and lots more violence. If you note that Regulus was a maximum of fifteen when this story concludes, well, the hypocrisy there is the point. Welcome to war.

Below the cut, shall we?

-----

There are three things every Spectre learns by the time they call a Surplice and swallow a demon star. One, to stay as you are is to kill everyone you could have become. Two, to change is to kill the person you are. And three, most important, is that Athena always lies.

The Meikai is alive, more than any realm a living human has cause to walk. It is Hades, and it is Persephone, and it is their children. It is also itself. The Meikai's children, the Spectres, are shapeshifters. They move from human to the animal of their Surplice and back. Some can do it voluntarily, most find that their body knows what form it should be better than they do. The children of the Spectres, thus, must also be shapeshifters. They will shapeshift into the same species as their parent's surplice, and should they have two Spectre parents, then the children of those Spectres will be a mixture of both.

But it is the Meikai that decides this. If three Spectres gather, and one says "both of these Spectres will be the father of my children," the Meikai will consider this and agree. The children will be a combination. Who is their biological father, then? All of the Spectres involved who are not the mother, and the children will be a new species, a clean crossbreed of every Surplice involved.

A wolf who allows a mandrake to sire her children will birth a wolf of roses. A wyvern and a minotaur will create what very much looks like if a bearded dragon tried to become a mountain goat and succeeded. A griffon and two fish will create a sea-griffon, able to dive to the depths of the abyssal zone, and fly to the thermosphere.

So when two shark-sirens, a dryad, a lion-drake, and a witch have children, the Meikai does its best. The four seirína ichthýon, the Pisces sirens, are lionfish who bleed the poisons of roses, for whom depth is but a desire; and for whom a drop of human blood a mile or more away is a song of delicious carnage awaiting their arrival.

Albafica was the first. True to his word, Lugonis chose to offer him the Red Bond, fully believing that this would protect him. True as well to his word, Ilias cut down the one who he believed would demand humanity from a child more fish than anything else, believing as well that this would protect him.

The Pisces Cloth had tolerated Lugonis' dual duties as a Spectre and Saint only because they did not have a replacement on hand. With the Holy War drawing nearer, that replacement had come. Albafica was eight years old when Lugonis fell, believing himself to be the reason, unaware that he was little more than the weapon a calculating Gold Cloth was using against a man they did not believe would serve Athena when the time came.

Aquarius Krest and Cancer Sage, who were familiar with the Specters and with the unnatural, inhuman grace of their children, knew better than to let Albafica escape. But Athena is a goddess of war, and more than once a Saint has managed to bottle a technique for another Saint to use. It is not difficult, between a loyal Virgo and a long-dead Gemini, to wipe the memory of a child, so that he might never know who and what he was. So that he would be loyal, and believe himself both human and orphaned, and they could control the one Saint who could kill everyone just by bleeding into the water supply.

But ah, he was, as I said, the eldest of four. The Witch had just borne a second child, barely a month old, when Lugonis fell and Albafica was lost. Where Albafica was striped in blue and white, Regulus was striped in orange and white, more lionfish than shark. Even among siblings, there is always variation. As he was not a Pisces, the Dryad chose not to offer him the Red Bond.

He might have grown up protected and cosseted by all those around him: his parents as well as their siblings and coworkers. As it was, the Judges could see their failure to save his elder brother. Rhadamanthys, new to his role as a Judge all over again, and younger brother to the Lion, tended to hover.

It would not be long until the third and fourth children arrived: two girls, one striped in the soft yellow-orange of dawn, and the other striped in a reddish violet like an early blackberry. Pefko stayed nearer to her brother, being older and understanding in some way that she should have two elder brothers. Content to let the two play in the garden, the Witch and the Dryad kept a closer eye on Rioghnach.

It didn't save them. If it had, this would be a very different story. On a quiet day, Ilias opted to take both a then-five-year-old Regulus and a seventeen-year-old Rhadamanthys out into the surface world for reconnaissance. Nothing was supposed to happen. Between a Gold Spectre and a Judge, nothing was supposed to go wrong.

Neither had been expecting an Aquarius Saint on five hundred years of borrowed time, with orders to eliminate them both. He had fought Rhadamanthys before, and shot him down before either knew he was there. Ilias hid Regulus in the bracken of a tree, and fought.

Krest, for whom lightning was nothing but an inconvenience and who had nothing to lose, came out the victor. He took Ilias' body away, understanding that Rhadamanthys would just get up and thus wasn't worth the effort of finishing off.

Taurus Rasgado, who had been instructed to survey the area by one Gemini Tobias, did not find Ilias. He found Rhadamanthys, who he did not recognize and who he helped get back to town, and in the bracken of a tree, found a five-year-old who wouldn't say a word and who had Ilias' uncanny blue eyes.

When he returned to Sanctuary with Regulus in tow, Ilias' death had already been reported. His description of Rhadamanthys was enough to set the blame of Ilias' death on the Wyvern, and Regulus was given to the care of Sagittarius Sisyphus. He saw Albafica, the serving Pisces Saint, only from a distance. He knew who his brother was, noted the oddness of the single colour of his hair, the lack of recognition in his eyes.

They told him, later, that it was a Judge of Hell who had taken his father away. That they were his family, and that they would take care of him, and when he was old enough, he could fight with them, and avenge his father.

He thought of his two sisters. He had no way of knowing - would not know for years to come - that Rioghnach had vanished in the night, that no one knew what had happened to her. He had no way of knowing that Pefko believed herself alone among her siblings, her brothers lost to Athena and her sister surely dead.

The Dryad and the Pisces both had faerie blood in them, enough that neither could speak an untruth into the air. Neither could he. He could not - would not - repeat the lie of Rhadamanthys killing his father. No one would believe him regardless. And so he kept it to himself. They said they were his family. This he knew to be mostly a lie, as well, and so he did not dissuade them.

He trained. They spoke often of his father, the great Leo Ilias who could speak to the trees and the earth, best of Sanctuary's best. He thought of what little he remembered of his father, hissing in some old draconic language to the Meikai itself, cutting down intruders who thought they could steal from death itself. They told him proudly how much like his father he was. He wondered, to himself, if they knew anything at all about him.

But ah, he was a child yet, and children are inclined to believe the adults around them, especially if those adults truly believe their own words, especially if no one refuses those words. Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps he was wrong.

He trained. He trained, until seven years later, at twelve, he found himself the youngest Gold Saint in the garrison. Not a few months later, he would be called to Ireland for his first solo mission.

(It wasn't as though they could send Albafica and Aspros again. They had sealed Albafica's memory away, but they had forgotten to keep the truth from him that his father was Irish, and so was he. Amnesia or not, compelled loyalty or not, few Irishmen indeed with the strength to stand up to the English will refuse to do so. Aspros correctly understood that it was easier to join a fish on a rampage to free his homeland than it was to dissuade him. Regardless, neither was being sent to Ireland again anytime soon.)

The Greek shapeshifters, the children of Spectres, are wanderers. They must be, for their homeland burns every quarter millennium, for their homeland is a glorified prison for the titans and humanity's dead. They linger so rarely in one spot. They are known everywhere, for their multitude of shapes and sizes and colours, recognizable best by the too-smooth way they move, the grace that never leaves them.

Failinis knew the moment she set eyes upon this young, golden-haired child, that Sanctuary had sent her not a saviour but a child who needed to learn to control his cosmos or he was going to burn Sanctuary to the ground in his sleep. Regulus asked her for training, for anything he could use to keep from losing his grasp on his cosmos.

He never told her that he had felt like his body was little more than jelly for years. That his bones were liquid if nothing was pressing against them. That he feared water, believing as sure as any sailor that if he submerged himself, he would dissolve into nothing more than seafoam. He never had to. She saw the way he molded himself into something solid by shattering it against the force of his blows, how truly he believed that if he dropped his guard down, he would fall so surely apart that he would never be whole again.

Balor of the Evil Eye, he of the darkness who lurks against the sun, could see as clearly as Failinis could that this was a Spectre's child, on his own, with no knowledge of the shadows in his heart. He told the child how similar they were. That the only way forward was to plunge into the darkness, and see if he might glow.

Connor watched her father die, and she told him she was okay, that she would be just fine. She lied, and he could hear the lies ringing in his ears, and he said nothing. Had he not danced around the same question for years? In the silence between their mutual lies, the lies they knew they would believe until those lies too would dissolve against the river that is truth and time, they found recognition. In that recognition, he saw their differences, and he walked away.

He returned to find Sanctuary in chaos. Aspros, who grew bolder and smarter and stronger with every day that passed, had attacked the Pope, believing that he could claim the crown by right of strength. His brother - his damned brother, cursed and bedeviled and kinder to Regulus than anyone else had been - had aided him, until Virgo Asmita shattered the hold Aspros had cast over Defteros, until Defteros had both killed Aspros and absconded with his body.

Albafica, who Regulus would have expected to be at Aspros' heel for this, who had always vocally supported Aspros over Sisyphus for the crown, had disappeared into his temple. He refused all travellers passing through his temple, forcing Aries Shion to teleport anyone who needed to speak to the Pope.

He chose not to say anything of his experience in Ireland. He chose not to ask anyone if they could see the growing darkness within him, the darkness Balor had not planted but only watered. He chose not to ask why no one could see Aspros' betrayal coming, how he was so unsurprised by it. He took to leaving his temple when at all possible, spending his off-duty hours and nights wandering the forests around Sanctuary instead.

Defteros had left him a note on his way out: the Genro Mai Ken, the technique that pushed the human brain to its limits. It was Gemini-locked, but possible to bottle if an Aquarius froze it before it locked into a target. When the ice shattered, the technique would release. It could capture an unsuspecting target. It could wipe the memory of whoever it hit. The twins had found the truth in darkness, and they had been destroyed for it.

Sanctuary would not have noticed, in the chaos following Aspros' demise and Defteros' desertion, if he dissolved into foam. But there was darkness in the sea, darkness that would not be lit by anything but the denizens of the abyss, and Regulus was fairly certain he could beat up any fish that bothered him. The only fish he would want to see would never have followed him under the waves.

No one kept track of him now, not if he was off-duty. They trusted he was like his father, wandering and listening to the trees. The trees had never spoken to him before. The power had been something to do with dragons, and if he thought of dragons, he thought of Rhadamanthys, the scream of his techniques dying in his throat as he froze from the demon star out.

He climbed as high as he dared to go, hidden by the cover of midnight. Albafica didn't guard his garden: no one could survive but himself, and anyone who died there could be used to fertilize his roses. But the garden ended at the cliff, and it was from there, surrounded by pale gray roses that seemed to capture the lightning sparking from his skin, that he dove.

No one noted his disappearance. No one noted that he didn't make a splash.

He hit the water and it wrapped itself around him like an overjoyed partner, and he did not dissolve into foam. Well, mostly. When his vision cleared, he could feel the foam around his wrists, his spine, his ears, and everything from his hips down.

He turned a cartwheel in the water. The orange and white of his lionfish tail answered him, the spines at his wrists and back dripping with a poison that reminded him painfully of Albafica's cologne.

He felt more solid than he had in years, and there was a song in the fins that had been his ears, faint but sweet on the current. The true lionfish of the sea approached him, small and curious. They could speak to him. They asked his name - Regulus, he said, like the star in the sky - and he asked where the shadows were. He had to find the shadows. He was thirteen years old, and if he had learned one thing from his time in Sanctuary, it was that no truth could be found in the light.

The lionfish told him that if he was willing to grant them a blessing of the depths, so they could dive with him, they could lead him to the shadows. He who didn't know the dangers of pressure under the waves, waved his hands, trusting his cosmos to allow them to stay at his side. He had been so lonely, for so long. He who was foam pretending to be a person, shadow pretending to be a star, worlds away from those he called his siblings-in-arms. The lionfish were as they were. They had come to him.

They lead him into the deeps. Filtering through the currents, cold against warm, westbound versus skybound, until the Calypso Deep opened up below them.

There, said the lionfish. We can't go with you any further. But sometimes we see fish like you, part land and part shadow and part foam. The jellyfish say that's where your nesting grounds are. Not to approach, unless something is terribly wrong. Regulus, who had spent hours by their side, who had learned the tale of the immortal jellyfish and half the fairy tales of the sea, understood. And indeed, something was terribly wrong, and had been such, for years. He dove, ever deeper.

Deep enough into the ocean, direction becomes meaningless. Land is a distant story, the sky unreal, the surface nothing but a daydream. The only way of telling that you're diving deeper is the thermocline, and after so long, even that becomes meaningless. Close your eyes, and even the warmth of ascent can be nothing more than an approaching hydrothermal vent, sweet with metal and kelp.

He didn't open his eyes until he broke the surface, the sky red with stars, an endless night and the open sea. A civilization, on the nearby shore. Their ships tall and proud, their sails black and violet and silver. He swam in that direction. Perhaps they would tell him where he was.

The docks were well-kept and clean, and atop a nearby empty boardwalk was a girl in a wheelchair, tossing small fish to the birds. She had flowers in her orange-blonde hair and a pretty green dress, and fins where her ears should have been that were striped just like his own.

He swam up to her. "Hi," he said, awkward as any thirteen-year-old boy. She looked down at him, surprised.

"Oh, hello," she said, and her voice was a song, and he never wanted her to stop talking. "I don't think I've seen you around before. If you're new, I bet Mom and Mama could make you some chowder."

He climbed up onto the boardwalk, and found that his tail had returned to legs as he left the water. Even better, his trousers had returned as well, leaving him finned even at the ankles but capable of walking without embarrassing himself in front of a pretty girl.

She lead him through the docks and down a forest path, a forest that seemed to compress itself just for them. He would have guessed the walk by eyesight at several hours. It took them twenty minutes, before they were walking into a grove of lilies surrounding a herb garden and a clean-looking building. They talked as they walked, and she told him that she lived in this kingdom, that recently they had found their prince, that they were preparing for war. He hoped she wouldn't have to fight, but by the tone of her voice, he knew as well as she did that she wouldn't have a choice.

Just as he didn't. But she opened the door, and the man who greeted them was only a little taller than Regulus, with blue-gray hair and the gills that marked him as a freshwater fish. The freshwater fish took one look at Regulus and backed away, eyes wide, before turning on his heel and bolting, calling for someone named Luco in the tone of a man who really, really didn't want this happening in his living room.

Luco, a tall woman with long, curly brown hair and a shining green surplice, stepped into the room, and Regulus knew her on sight. She locked eyes with him, and he was sure she knew him equally well.

It had been eight years since he had been lost to Sanctuary. It was Aiacos' future sight that had proven his survival. The girl at his side had never asked his name, and he had never asked hers. He had no idea where he was. But he'd been right. The truth, after all, had been found in the darkness.

The girl at his side - Pefko, yes, his sweet sister who he had lost, who had lost him, who was never going to lose him again - brought him next to see the prince. Her smile was sweet and nefarious and she was a Spectre's daughter as much as he was a Spectre's son, and he knew she was tricking him just like Sanctuary once had, but she wasn't bothering to hide it. Why should she? He was home, and he was never going to leave again, and that meant making sure he wouldn't.

She really didn't need to worry. Regulus stepped into the room to see Hades Alone, blond-haired and filling the room with divinity enough that Regulus didn't even notice his knees hitting the floor. He had met Athena Sasha before, could see the family resemblance in their faces. But unlike her, Regulus knew as sure as he had known that he would dissolve into seafoam, that he would follow Alone anywhere he wanted to go, and he would never falter, never trip, and never turn away.

He called the Leo Surplice to his skin as easy as breathing. He hadn't even noticed that he'd done it. Alone set down his paintbrush, and stepped over to him. He caressed Regulus' cheek with one paint-stained hand, and his smile was sweet, and Regulus could not look away. "You have had a hard time, haven't you?" Alone asked, and it needed no answer. "We were less without you, and we missed you so terribly. But you're home, now. I'm so glad."

Introductions had to be made, of course. Regulus needed to learn the rules of the Meikai, all over again. He would need lessons for his shapeshifting, lessons Pefko was happy to teach. The other apprentices and Spectres were delighted to have a new sparring partner, one who knew all of Sanctuary's current tactics.

The Judges argued over who should get to claim him. Rhadamanthys argued that since Ilias was his brother, he should get him. Aiacos argued that by that logic, Lugonis and Luco were both his siblings, and so he should get him, and his eyes betrayed he knew more than he was saying. Minos slammed her gavel down, and argued that since Albafica, her one true love, had been stolen from her, she was the only one who was equipped to help Regulus understand how to be a proper fish.

Honestly, Minos made a pretty good argument. Aiacos had never sounded like he cared enough, and Rhadamanthys... No. He knew now that Rhadamanthys had failed to save him from Sanctuary. He would not trust him with that a second time, even if Valentine's sandwiches were a strong reason to go to Wyvern.

He chose Griffon, in the end. Witch Arkhes, the woman who was his mother, was far too smug about this, and he conceded she had every right to be. The Lady Minos, who had clarified to him later that Albafica had been her best friend before Sanctuary had stolen him, and would do right by her brother-in-law, was even more so.

Regulus was gone from Sanctuary for two weeks, by the time he remembered he should probably tell Sisyphus he wasn't dead. Luco and Arkhes were able to confirm that yes, Sisyphus was also his uncle, so Sanctuary hadn't lied about everything. His testimony was enough to tell them that Albafica was okay, but lost to them, possibly forever.

Alone, at whose side Regulus was if he wasn't called to do something as a Spectre, noted that it was possible to break the spell. Alone kissed him, and in that kiss was divinity, and the promise that they would find a way to bring his elder brother home. Of Rioghnach, there had been no sign: Aiacos said they would be waiting a while, and because Aiacos always told true when he spoke of the future, they were willing to believe him. (It did not stop Regulus from looking. After all, Aiacos had predicted that he would return, too.)

He returned to Sanctuary with lies on his lips that he couldn't quite say. He had needed some time on his own, you see, his father could speak to the earth but he could hear the sea. He hadn't realized how long he'd been gone, of course, but he had always heard the pain of Sanctuary's grief and it had been too much for such a young mind. But he was back now, and stronger, and could help.

They believed him. The rush at their belief in his lies - they had always lied to him, and now he could lie to them and there was nothing they could do - might have been a sign. It could have been a warning, if he'd heeded it. But he had been betrayed, he had been forced to confront Sanctuary's lies and how they had torn his family apart. He could see the rage in Alone's eyes, the one time he asked of his sister. He could see the vicious protectiveness over Pefko, how neither of them were willing to let anything happen to her. She was a powerful fighter with her cosmos, able to win without rising from her wheelchair. She was still theirs, and they wanted her safe, as neither of them had been, as Sasha wasn't, either.

But Sasha had chosen her own path, she had gone into Sanctuary with her eyes wide open and no one's blood splattered across her face. She couldn't be saved. Albafica... All Regulus had to do, theoretically, was shove him into the sea. His shapeshifting would do the rest, and Regulus could drag him home.

Luco had already tried to bring him home. The spell holding his brother's memories away from him was too strong. They could tell him the truth. He simply wouldn't be able to believe them. All he would hear is lies.

It's hard to believe lies when you don't have legs, though. Regulus bided his time, and waited, inching closer to his brother until he could speak to him. Albafica was pleasant, but distant, keeping him at arms-length. No one had recovered from Aspros' death, not really. No one trusted each other any more: if they could, they would have seen the betrayal coming. No one knew how to bridge that chasm. No one knew who would be next.

Regulus knew. Regulus, unlike Aspros, held no love for this place. Regulus, just like Aspros, had a brother he needed to save, and darkness was the only way he was going to do it. Not terribly long into his duties as a Spectre, though, he passed through Caina, and noticed a familiar cosmos.

Aspros, hair as black as night, tending to the flowers. Regulus stopped, blinking. Yes, that made sense, he was dead, and the Meikai was an afterlife. But it also did not: Ilias and Lugonis were not to be found here.

"Er, hi?" he said, only slightly less awkwardly than his first words to his sister. Aspros jumped, clearly not having expected him. As it turned out, he'd died and showed up here, and Aiacos had refused him a proper afterlife until the end of the Holy War. He'd told Aspros to go bother his brother, apparently, "until there's some real blood in the water and the fish's a-hunting." So he'd been laying low, unsure how to begin dealing with everything that had happened the night he died.

Regulus, who had always found Aspros to be less difficult to deal with than Sisyphus and who currently wasn't being called a traitor to everything Athena stood for, smiled and told him not to worry about it. It didn't take much to convince Hades Alone to allow Aspros to resurrect with the power of the Gemini Surplice. And it would be nice to have some backup when the Holy War broke out. It worked exactly as planned, and Gemini Mavros rose from the ashes, his old prideful determination beginning to show once more. He'd missed that. He wouldn't admit it, but he did.

Not six months later, as he learned to be a Saint by day and a Spectre by night, whenever he could sneak away, something teleported into Sanctuary. Some form of metal, horseless carriage, with sturdy black wheels and belching foul smoke into the air.

It had crashed just outside Sisyphus' temple, and Regulus watched his uncle pull only one person out from the wreckage. Aries Shion, there a moment later, was able to verify that the teleport had bypassed all of their security likely by accident, and had fragmented when it hit ground. There were likely more survivors.

Sisyphus tended to the woman he'd pulled from the wreckage. Regulus hung back, sure that if he stayed away, no one would notice his disappearance. But he also wasn't stupid, and he had tasted the divinity of both Athena and Hades, as well as that of the twin gods. He would have been a fool not to notice the presence of Khronos in the Libra temple, and how Dohko seemed ever so secretive about it.

Careful reconnaissance allowed him to learn that the survivors had all landed in the Twelve Temples: Dohko had found Khronos Ivy, Manigoldo had found a man named Vivian, Sisyphus had found Miss Sam, and Albafica had found someone by the name of Jesse who was somehow surviving the roses.

Some battle strategies require deep thought and complex plans. Some are so obvious they scream, and Regulus has always been a good liar without ever saying anything untrue. He smiled and he brought medical supplies and food and made himself apparent to Jesse. They were an academic sort, so he took full pleasure in raiding the Gemini temple for all of Aspros' academic correspondence.

It wasn't hard to prove his own immunity to the roses, either, and the moment he had managed that where both Jesse and Albafica could see, both were willing to tolerate having him over for dinner. As it also turned out, Regulus was a better cook than Albafica was. Now with an established place with them both, he could try convincing his brother to see the truth.

Easier said than done, but it was also... nice, in a way, to spend time with his brother and with Jesse. Albafica was a practical, blunt man, who had little interest in social pleasantries but who was perfectly happy to exchange mission stories and battle tactics all night over a few glasses of whiskey. Jesse was viciously academic, had all the social graces of someone who generally only socialized to exchange information about some niche topic or another, but who also approached battle strategy with a viciousness Regulus was more than growing to appreciate.

Sure, Lady Minos wouldn't appreciate that Albafica had fallen for Jesse and not her. Regulus also wasn't worried, because he had come to know his Judge well, and had a pretty good idea of how she was going to take to Jesse.

His own romantic life was nonexistent in Sanctuary - although he'd have to be blind not to notice the way Unicorn Yato seemed to think siding with Regulus would earn him a breather from Pegasus Tenma - and busier than he expected in the Meikai. Pefko, of course, was his one true love: she had been the first to see him, to truly see him, and there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. Master Alone, or 'dear heart', as Regulus had started to call him, was ever intoxicating and ever safe, the only one who could calm him from the rage that tended to overtake him whenever he thought too hard about Sanctuary's crimes.

There were others, too: Master Alone had never restricted his love from any of his Spectres, copying off Rhadamanthys who regarded his lovers like a dragon regards its hoard; and so Regulus came to learn them, too. Fenghuang Sui, Kagaho's younger brother, sweet and sometimes childish and sometimes burning brighter than the sun. Tarantula Vanessa, mad and sharp and always a surprise. Centaur Viermer, relaxed and bookish and steady. Hanuman Tokusa, who understood the scars Sanctuary left. Wyvern-tektos Maria, who would take over for Rhadamanthys if she survived the Holy War, quiet and detailed and brutal. Ghost Janice, lackadaisical and grumpy and unforgiving. Sylph Edward, always good for a game, focused and witty.

The months passed, and it became clearer, ever so much clearer, that his home had not once been Sanctuary. He had nothing in common with the apprentices and Saints, he found the guards in charge of training unnecessarily difficult to get along with, and every bit of camaraderie the garrison once carried had been destroyed with Aspros' death.

Albafica had told Jesse of the fateful mission where he had met Luco, and where she had tried to break his amnesia, and the safeguards had stopped her. Jesse, suspecting that Regulus might know something, asked him about it. He told them. Not everything, of course, they didn't know he was a Spectre, they didn't know what happened to Ilias, they didn't know the full truth. But he verified what Luco had said, and not long after, Jesse and Albafica went on a mission to France.

They came back... different. Regulus stepped out that night, knowing they'd be stuck all evening writing the mission report, and went to ask Lady Minos for the gossip. It hadn't been the first time she'd seen him since his disappearance - apparently there had been a mission several years ago? - but she'd duelled him for fun and for practice anyway, and he'd been pleased by how much they had both improved, and she was sure she could make a Spectre of Jesse. Regulus laughed, and laughed some more when she let him have a glass of whiskey she'd stolen from Rhadamanthys, and figured it wouldn't be long now.

He wasn't wrong. He was sent out on recon with Albafica twice. The first time, he hadn't needed a reason to shove his brother into the sea, a pair of Berserkers did it for them. Albafica finally admitted he'd been practicing his shapeshifting when no one was looking, able to accept he was a fish if not a Spectre's child. Regulus hit him with his tail, and they swam on. The second time, it took ten seconds of deliberation before they chose to take the route by sea instead of walking all the way to the mission point. They met the immortal jellyfish, on that mission, and there he was able to begin to believe that Albafica understood that they were brothers, that they should have grown up together, that it wasn't too late to grow up together now.

But, in order to do that, they would have to get Albafica to the Meikai. Master Alone was sure that he could break the spell - "I'm not Hades' chosen for nothing, my lovely fish." - and all they would have to do was get that far. Thanks to the Marinas suspecting the appearance of two unkillable fishmen in Sanctuary's waters, the seaward route to the Meikai was blocked. They'd have to run over land.

The plan was made. They prepared. Aspros swore he would help once they got close enough to the Meikai, even as it betrayed his resurrection to the garrison. If they ran by cover of darkness, they'd be able to do it. Regulus had one job: delay the garrison for as long as possible, so that they didn't know Albafica and Jesse were gone.

In hindsight, he should have hit Asmita upside the head with a rock a few times first, and then challenged him to a drinking contest the night before the plan was put into action.

He hadn't done that. He had grown confident with his time in the Meikai, grown resentful with his time in Sanctuary, and he was on the cusp of getting everything he wanted. Once Albafica was home, he could stay a Spectre for good. Sisyphus would be heartbroken, but Sisyphus had never seen Regulus, only Ilias in miniature form, and the more Regulus learned of Ilias' time as the Leo Spectre before him, the more he was sure Sisyphus had never seen Ilias, either.

He was far too confident when Albafica and Jesse left. He was far too confident when Asmita saw right through him, already aware of the plan, and told him flatly to tell him where they went or Asmita was going to kill him.

Regulus, who had cemented his place as the strongest of the garrison by trouncing Aspros in a few practice duels in the Meikai, did not see this as a concern. But there are rules to practice duels, and there are not such rules to Gold Saints fighting for what they believe is right. Asmita had no interest in fighting Regulus himself. He snapped his fingers, and Sisyphus stepped forward, his bow drawn, his eyes blank and unseeing.

He raised the bow. Regulus, faster with his body than with his mind, whose only thought was "shit, didn't the Basilisk say Altar Hakurei tortured him to death for info last time?", shot sideways. If he could take Asmita out...

The arrow caught him in the back of the neck, through his throat. The last thing he saw as he fell was Asmita's face, unreadable as always, and the rage bubbling through his blood that made him wish he could call roses to his fingers, and ruin everyone else's day the way they ruined his.

When he wakes up, again, it is with a new moon in the indigo sky above him, Leo shining brighter than the rest. He takes his first few breaths of dew-strained air, heaving as he sits up. His throat hurts. His gills hurt. Hells, his everything hurts. There is a figure beside him, clad in a surplice, and it takes him a moment to place her.

Pefko, carrying Dryad, standing through the aid of her surplice and holding a shovel. Dryad clings to her curves and holds her steady. She's never looked so beautiful before. He looks around, and he recognizes the graveyard around the edge of Sanctuary. His own grave only notes 'Regulus - Gold'. There are flowers at the headstone, daffodils, the kind he knows grow in Sisyphus' temple, and nothing else.

He stares up at his sister. "It's been six months," she says, quietly, and he can hear the rage in her tone that she's holding back. "Albafica died getting Jesse to the Meikai. They're Fracture Jesse now. Lady Minos is furious."

He nods. "And Master Alone?"

Pefko bites her lip. "Pandora did something to him. Sealed him away in Persephone's atelier. She says it's because his mortal heart is holding Lord Hades back."

The snarl that escapes Regulus' throat is more like a lion than a fish. To imply that Master Alone is stopping Lord Hades is an insult. To defile Queen Persephone's spaces, sealed after her death, is injury grave enough to slaughter Pandora himself for.

He rises on unsteady, finned feet, and calls the Leo surplice to heel. Pefko holds out a silvery cape: the signature of any Gold Spectre. He takes it and clips it under his pauldrons, standing in both moonlight and darkness. It seems fitting. "We have work to do, my love," he says, and we will leave them unspoken there, in a graveyard where they know both of their fathers are buried somewhere, and there is so little time.

Breaking Hades Alone out of Persephone's atelier is a mission for several Spectres, and involved less hitting Pandora with a rock than Regulus would have appreciated, but it is done nonetheless. He ascends to the Planetary Temples, and sets them guardians. Tokusa and Mavros both go. Pefko chooses to guard the Meikai, distrusting that the Saints will take the bait, that they'll spare his kingdom. Regulus...

Alone cups his cheeks in his hands and kisses him. "I have a mission for you, and you alone," he says, softly, and whatever he is about to ask of him, Regulus will do it. He doesn't have a choice in the matter. Not because Alone is compelling him, only that he does not think he could both refuse Master Alone this and survive his own traitorous heart in a single night.

Alone loves his Spectres, and he loves his family, and the two are the same. But his time in his lost queen's atelier has shown him one thing: that he, Alone, is as equally important as Hades, who is an altogether different person. This is not widely regarded as true: Pandora and the twins both seem to think Alone is only a stepping stone, that his voice matters not. Hades disagrees with this, believes Alone matters as much as he does.

He believes that the Saints have fallen prey to the same idea. He believes that his sister Sasha is not a willing captive of Athena. He believes that since Regulus escaped, that since Regulus was able to help Albafica escape, that perhaps Regulus can convince Sasha to leave Sanctuary.

If she does, if they have no goddess to command them and no godvessel to use as a pawn, the Saints will not be able to win the Holy War. If that happens, the Meikai will claim victory, and the world will be safe. Regulus, who understands wanting to do everything in his power to keep his sister safe, thinks of Pefko being captured by Sanctuary, and his path is set.

Yes, he can exorcise Athena from Sasha's body. Just like he once had to with his brother, he just has to get close enough to her that she'll let him do it. Besides. They're about the same age, and Sasha had always been friendly to him when he was off-duty. He's been at the Pisces temple when she slipped down to see Albafica, who was the closest Gold Saint at hand and also not an out-of-touch old man, who has snacks on hand for a teenage girl who wants cake.

He's been able to charm Alone, and that should have been impossible. "I will bring her home, for you," is what he says, and Alone's smile is brighter than the sun, and his kiss equally as sweet.

Regulus brings the plan to his lovers, the survivors thereof, in hopes of some ideas. He has a few, but he no longer needs to do everything on his own. He can trust those around him, like the Gold Saints no longer can. Pefko makes a face, and tells him he'll need to find some way of making sure she doesn't recognize him. Vanessa, who has snuck in and out of Sanctuary multiple times, offers to come with him: Sasha has handmaidens, and they might be faster if they work together. Viermer remarks that if they can get onto Star Hill, they can give Aiacos a birthday present.

It's Janice who slams down her mug of ale and flatly goes, "You, fish? You're better off playing the Wyvern and seducing her into it. She's only get the Pegasus" - this word she spits out like the poison that it is - "looking at her, and you're a damn sight finer. If it breaks him too, all the better."

Regulus nearly chokes on his drink. He opens his gills to the air, wheezing a moment. "What, you figure if I get her out of it enough, she won't notice a damn exorcism?!"

Janice nods. Sui looks annoyed, then frustrated, then canny. "I've been reading," he says. "All the reports say the Bloodstained Goddess takes advantage of people by seeing the intentions behind the darkness, and convince them to follow her light instead. You could exploit that. Let her think she can make a Saint out of you. It won't work, but she doesn't know that."

Regulus makes a face. "Now that I think of it, I distinctly remember at least one Golden Round where the others got into a screaming match over whether or not she was human enough for them to be worried about boys."

Maria bursts out laughing. "Human enough? Probably. Stupid enough? With the way you lot got sheltered there, almost certainly."

It's a bad plan. It's a terrible plan, really. It's also a viable plan, because he knows Sasha well enough to know that she's torn between her duty and the fact she'll never, ever be a normal girl. She asked him about that, once, if it bothered him that he wouldn't get to be a normal boy, that they were defending a world full of things they could only dream of themselves.

He lied to her then. This time, though... He makes his preparations with Vanessa and Viermer both at his side, one to aid him in getting Sasha's guard down and the other to spy; ready to head back into the place that ruined his life.

This time, to burn it down from the inside out. Just like a good poisoned rose. Albafica would be proud of his viciousness. Of course, they can't know who he was, but his parents thought of that, some long ago time before he was born. His name is Regulus. His middle name, though, is Raitis, after his grandfather. So then, Raitis he would be.

He makes his way to Sanctuary under the cover of night, feeling oddly as though it should never have been this way. But he does it all the same. It isn't hard to pass through the twelve temples: so many are dead, or gravely injured, or missing, and he knows the way. He climbs up on a rooftop on Athena's temple to watch, comfortable with his position.

It doesn't take long for him to be spotted. The pair of Bronzes - Saro, and one he doesn't recognize - try to get him off the rooftop while he jeers at them. He can kill them both without even trying, and they know that, and he knows that.

Sasha must have heard the commotion. She steps out, and he 'falls' off the rooftop, landing neatly on his shoulder, his legs taking out one of the two guards. He makes some stupid comment about not knowing if the rumours that Athena's light shone from her very skin are true or not, and he'll be out of her hair now, he just wanted to know.

She's surprised and taken aback, but she smiles. Score. He rises to his feet, remarks that maybe he should spar the two guards properly one day, and turns to jump off the pavilion into the night.

"Wait," says Sasha. "What's your name?"

He turns to give her one look, one smile, full of mischief. She doesn't know how much he wants her dead, for all that's done in her name. She doesn't know how much he's holding himself back, because Master Alone asked him to. "You can call me Raitis," he answers. "Celestial Midnight Star Rusalka Raitis."

He jumps off the pavilion, and the guards can't chase him, and he can feel the mirth in Sasha's cosmos. She hasn't recognized him. It's hard to, at this point: his hair has grown out a bit, the stripes of his fins extending over his hair and his face. As a human-looking fish, his hair had been brown, unassuming and ordinary. Now, it's orange striped with white, and his eyes are such an intense teal no one would take him for his former self.

Rest in peace, Leo Regulus. No one knows you're not dead, and they won't find out until you stand over the ruins of this mountain as a victor.

It takes months to convince her. Months of fighting Saints, months of missions with Jesse and Janice, months of the Saints trying to find out the entrance to the Planetary Temples. Months of facing off against Pegasus Tenma, who seems obsessed with Master Alone despite having abandoned him to a cruel world that never loved him as he deserved.

Sasha believes with her whole heart that she can make a Saint of him, loyal and true, because Sui was right: she can see that his viciousness is only a desire to protect his family, twisted by war. She thinks the Spectres promised him that if he fights for them. She has no idea that her own army killed both of his fathers and his brother, and he is going to kill them all if he can get away with it.

She also seems to think he's stupid enough not to notice this, and so he plays along, seeming to let his guard down more and more. So she rewards him for it, letting her own guard down, asking him about his day when he visits and complains about how much she can't stand the handmaiden that teaches her mathematics. Seeing his opportunity, he remarks how he knows a Spectre who might really enjoy being one of her handmaidens, a Spectre who might really need a change in environment.

Vanessa laughs when he tells her, laughs hard enough she doesn't notice that she's accidentally woven his arms to his chair in spider-lace. Sasha takes her in immediately, believing that she can fix Vanessa's fae-madness if given enough time. She seems to believe that this is an act of great trust from 'Raitis', who might set down his surplice if it's proven Vanessa can do it and survive.

It isn't so long after that that Sasha flirts with him, asks him to tie up her corset because she can't reach it and the handmaidens would be upset to find him in her quarters. He plays the gentleman - regardless of what Lune says, he is capable of basic social graces, he isn't that much a hedonistic beast - and politely averts his eyes, lets her grow blatant with it.

He lets her think this is her idea, and maybe it is, maybe there's more to it for her than playing directly into his hands. He lets her think this is something fragile, something gentle, like she might scare him off if she sharpens too fast. She's the one who encourages him, who eventually tells him point blank that he's a Spectre, he doesn't have to treat her like she's made of glass.

Later on, all he will remark is that she's lucky she never had his loyalty, because it would have probably been easier to kill her than it was to hold back only as much as she told him to, and he's only holding back because Master Alone wants her to come home.

Later on, he returns to the Meikai and refuses to see anyone until he's scrubbed himself down. The light doesn't burn, but it's filthy on his skin, and he hates it. Master Alone calls for him anyway, fusses and feeds him cake and holds him until he feels he can stop crying.

It's another three months before he thinks he can get away with an exorcism. She trusts him, now. She thinks she has him. She mentioned once, to Vanessa, that she thinks if she can draw her brother out of the Planetary Temples, she can tear 'Raitis' from him, and maybe seeing Raitis' joy at the light will force Alone to do the same.

She's a fool. He hears this and he laughs himself hoarse, finishes his drink and accidentally shatters the mug with his rage. He'd be happier slitting her throat. He's cut down enough Saints that he knows he could take his time with it.

He and Jesse, in one of those missions, tagteam Virgo Asmita, and finally bring him down. In this he feels he's avenged his brother, and dear Vanessa, who died to slow Asmita down, only partially: Asmita did this on Sasha's orders. He's not finished yet. He wants to be. He isn't.

Sisyphus is gone, Khronos Ivy sent him to the future with Miss Sam because her friend begged, and he has seen her powers enough times he thinks he knows what happened to Rioghnach.

Ivy doesn't have control enough to do it again. The only way out of this war is through it. The only way to stop dealing with Sanctuary, the only way to save the Meikai, is to end this war.

He kisses Pefko, tells Luco and Arkhes that he'll be home by sundown, and goes back to Sanctuary alone.

He goes to Sasha and says he cannot become a Saint, because her brother has too great a hold on him. That there is a way to break the connection between mortal and divine. He chooses his words carefully, so carefully, so she does not realize what he means. He sees the rage in her eyes when he says her brother has him more than she does. He knows there is a fire inside this girl, he has seen it, she has asked him to stoke the inferno. He knows, on some level, that she is a prisoner and she truly believes her brother has been stolen from her, that she truly believes if she wins, he'll come home.

Regulus knows he is never going to convince her. He could see the conviction in Sisyphus' eyes, he can see it in Sasha's now. He tells her that maybe there is a way, that maybe if the connection between mortal and divine is broken...

She agrees, and lays down on her bed, allows him to draw sigils and runes in her own blood. He has this ritual memorized. She has to be as mortal as she can, keep Athena from her mind as long as possible, until he can sever the connection.

It takes him over an hour to draw out all the runes and sigils, all the reagents he needs. He isn't watching the time: they've never been caught before. He's thinking of how much this will hurt her, how much he wants to go home and sleep for six months with Pefko's hand in his hair and Sui humming a lullaby and Alone's presence soothing his every breath.

Confidence, it seems, has always been his downfall. Aries Shion notices, stops for backup long enough to gather Pegasus Tenma, Unicorn Yato, and Tokusa's damn sister who keeps showing up on missions specifically to ruin Regulus' day. (He won't kill her. She's still Tokusa's sister. Tokusa keeps telling him to, but he won't. That is Tokusa's job, not Regulus'.)

Shion, unlike Sasha, is trained in magical ritual. Shion isn't an idiot, and he recognizes the Leo Surplice. Shion, who has seen Albafica in fins and scales because Shion was always weird about Albafica, knows what he's looking at.

The ritual is far enough along that Sasha probably doesn't know what's going on around her. It's not so far enough along that he can stop. He doesn't have a choice: it's dodge, or take a Stardust Revolution to the face.

He jumps out the window. Swings around and back up on a railing, bites down at his wrist where he keeps a spare vial of Alone's blood. It hits him like a Galaxian Explosion to the gut, and he feels the wings of his surplice burn as they rise from his back. He's not the first Spectre to take a shot of godly ichor and transform, but he's never done this before, and if he's going to finish this off he's going to need to kill all four of them.

Maybe five. But it's possible Lord Hades can just resurrect Sasha, and now that he has the thought, he feels like an idiot for not just doing that in the first place. Maybe she can't be. She's Athena, after all.

Shion keeps Regulus distracted enough for his little Bronzes to help Sasha up, wipe away the blood and destroy the reagents. Seeing what Regulus did, all four of them take some blood from the bowl Regulus had drained from Sasha. One of them stays behind with Sasha, he isn't sure which.

Three-on-one is never good odds. Regulus, fighting in broad daylight and with all of them knowing exactly what he can do, does not have good odds. No one is coming as his backup, and he knows that.

Fine. If he's going to die today - and he is, he knows it just as much as he knows he damn near had this - he's going to bring them all down with him, and open the way for one of his fellow Spectres to finish this war.

He fights. He fights, unrestrained and vicious, three-on-one, keeping them all in his sights so they can't hit him from behind. The wings help. It's almost like he's fighting underwater, and he can use height to his advantage.

It isn't enough. The Pegasus - the fucking Pegasus - is a Sagittarius. He calls Sisyphus' bow. Shion shields him and Sasha powers the arrow, and Regulus isn't able to dodge in time.

He lands, and staggers, and falls. Sasha stares down at him, clothed again now, and he's glad for that. He can feel seafoam at his fingertips, knows without looking that his hair is fading to brown, that they'll finally be able to recognize him. Knows that this is it. He hopes they'll send his body out to sea, because he knows they're not going to bury him a second time where Pefko can reach him.

"Regulus...?" Shion asks, hoarse.

"Got it in one," Regulus hisses. "You killed my family. Almost got you back." He smiles, and closes his eyes. "Almost. Alone loves me anyway."

He can feel Sasha's rage at his supposed betrayal. He doesn't care. The last thing he can feel is oddly enough, Vanessa, her cosmos full of mirth. She'd never made it out of Sanctuary. Her surplice had never returned, but she had fought Asmita and he had come out of his temple alone. She's there for a moment, and then she, like Regulus, is gone.

When he awakens, it is centuries later. It is Albafica, standing over him. His hair is crimson, he has facial hair now, and his fins are black, streaked with white. His eyes are still as blue. There is a woman beside him, in the surplice of the Bean Sidhe, with hair as red as the portraits of Lugonis. They are unmistakably siblings. He can see, faintly, the traces of Ivy's magic around her.

"Hi, Rioghnach," he croaks. "Hi, Albafica. Where's... Pefko?"

"Still a tree," Albafica replies. "She turned herself into one. The Meikai was falling apart, and you were dead, and she figured this way she'd be around when you got back. We figured we'd get you first."

"We won the latest Holy War," Rioghnach answers, and she sounds just like Luco, and she's chipper enough that she brightens Regulus' mood just by breathing. "It's annoyingly all the Garudas' fault, so I guess they're good for somethin'."

Regulus makes a face. "Well, at least we won. Help me up...?"

And they do. With all three of them, it's not that difficult to wake up Pefko - or rather, find the right place and ask Persephone Liadan to do all the actual work because Regulus is too unsteady to stand, let alone stop holding onto Rioghnach.

Pefko throws herself at her siblings, who catch her. And for once - for the first time - all four of them are finally together.

[yukidragon]

Heeeey YukiDragon!

Big fan; been low-key tearing through your SDJ headcanons and making notes for a fic that I'm somehow 25K deep in after only a few days....

Anyway, wanted to ask: what do YOU think the sun in the corner of the screen when you play SJD indicates? Because *I* have thoughts...but I also wanted to pick your brain 👀

Apologies if you've already been asked this! 😅

I’m really glad you like my headcanons and that I could be helpful for your fic!

I haven’t been asked about this actually, and I happen to have a few thoughts and screenshots I’d like to share!

This took me a couple tries to capture the full title screen before the “start” button appears. I did it to get see more of the children’s drawing of the ‘84 incident where Jack died. The crying of Jack, the children, and the X eyes make it pretty clear that’s what’s being depicted.

You’ll notice in the corner that the sun with the red, yellow, and blue swirls is obscured by a crinkled cloud, and three primary colors are awash in a layer of bloody red. This affects the border around the game as well.

We get to see this cloudy sun more clearly once we start the game... while Jack is talking to his sunshine for the first time.

There’s a cloud obscuring the sun, and all the colors are washed out in an unpleasant shade of gray. The border similarly is washed out. Curiously the text box is normal and vividly colored.

Then, when we jump ahead to MC’s monologue that takes place after they’ve started living with Jack and accepted him as a part of everyday life, the colors are vibrant all around. There’s no cloud blocking the sun. The corner icon remains like this for the rest of the game regardless of choices, including in the mini story with Ian at the end.

I want to show all three versions of this icon up close and side by side so you can see the difference better for yourselves.

I think the symbolism is pretty obvious here. The cloud and unpleasant colors muting the bright and cheerful colors that represent Sunny Day Jack... I imagine this is going to be an indication of when the relationship with Jack is deteriorating... or perhaps his mind.

I honestly hadn’t noticed this detail until someone pointed it out in this post, then I searched for every instance where this might change. I would’ve assumed that we might see it cloudy again in the “no” route, but it was still the sunny version there too.

What I suspect is that the user interface we see during the game is going to be affected by the route we’re on and the choices we make, specifically when it comes to our relationship with Jack and how it affects his state of mind. When everything is positive and MC’s feelings towards Jack are favorable, it’ll be sunny and colorful. When it’s negative... that’s when the cloud comes in and the colors are muted.

I suspect that when things start going this negative route, the interface in the text box is going to change as well. We might see dingier colors, stains, or even tears in the paper. After all, we’re given crinkly paper textures and folded up stickers in the regular interface. The cloud over the sun is especially crinkly. We might get more font changes as well besides just red text.

In this way, the game user interface is doing some storytelling here, likely giving us a hint of Jack’s state of mind. He is solidly in the mindset of Sunny Day Jack, who is all colorful, cheerful, and even child friendly.

Starting to lose his sunshine... that’s going to make Jack start to degrade, I think. His grasp on reality and his sunshine’s love is slipping. He is at risk of being forgotten in that cold, sleepless static hell where God had abandoned him...

I think that as Jack’s sanity starts slipping, that’s when the framing is going to be darker, more unsettling. Jack has the potential to be our foe after all, and he’s certainly a yandere considering what he does to Nick no matter what choices we make in the demo...

If I was to make a guess about what these mean currently... The red version with the cloud is the harshest of them all. It could, in a very real sense, represent Jack while he’s trapped in hell, reliving his gruesome death over and over again. He can’t leave it until MC plays the tape... or we start the game.

Then things change for Jack. He’s not reliving his death, he’s interacting with someone. He’s still wounded, as evidenced by the dimmed colors and the cloud obscuring his sun. MC doesn’t care for him yet because they don’t know him yet. However, by contrast the text interface is colored cheerfully, almost welcoming. The presence of someone interrupting his hell and reaching out to him gives him hope.

Then finally... everything is bright. MC wants Jack around no matter the route. They want him in their life to be their friend, or maybe more. They make him feel love, which of course makes him feel happy. He loves them. He’s free. He’s warm and basking in their happy light. Everything will be wonderfully sunny... as long as no one takes his sunshine away.

What’s interesting too is that by showing that the game’s interface is malleable in this way... it might hint that Jack could be a character who breaks the 4th wall and addresses the player directly at some point. After all, we’re the ones that start the game and let him live again. We’re supporting him and the game being made in the first place. It could even be more confusing to him why we would pick the “no” option when we’re literally playing the game for his company and love.

Personally, I think this is just a meta touch for us as players. It’s much too soon to jump to the conclusion that Jack is a 4th wall breaking entity like Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club, Flowey from Undertale, or other games like that where the characters address the player directly. We haven’t gotten any real hints that he’s interested in us, the player, rather than the MC we’re guiding through the story. MC does have their own personality after all, and a pretty strong one.

Still... it would make sense why Jack can read MC’s thoughts if he was a 4th wall breaker. After all... he could just be reading their narration right alongside us.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur  

[hepalien]

Ao3 Tips and Tricks

So I thought I would make a post about some cool stuff you can do with Ao3 and userscripts, and some tips I’ve learned from setting them up for myself! I promise it's not hard, though this is a lot of info. I'm happy to help if I can.

What You’ll Need:

First, you will need the Tampermonkey extension for your browser (depending on what browser you use, Greasemonkey is the equivalent). On Android, you can even run Chrome extensions on mobile with Kiwi Browser! It is easiest to configure the scripts on your desktop and then sync to mobile with Tampermonkey’s cloud sync feature or by exporting the configured scripts and importing in your mobile browser (I will explain how to do this later in the post). If you use any of the tweaks I outline below, be sure to backup your scripts in case your settings are lost.

Once you have Tampermonkey installed, you can get scripts from GreasyFork. The inimitable @flamebyrd also has some great scripts and bookmarklets and has been incredibly helpful while I figured all this out.

Find a script that looks interesting, click on it, and then click “install this script.” Pretty straightforward. Once you have it installed, you can go to Tampermonkey to configure it (only necessary for some scripts) by clicking on the Tampermonkey extension icon in your browser (under the three dot menu in Kiwi) and clicking “dashboard”, then clicking the edit icon next to the script you want to configure. When you’re done, click File->Save.

Scripts and instructions under the cut

Some of my favorites:

Flamebyrd’s Incomplete Works script - fades out WIPs on works listings, and displays the work stats (wordcount, chapters, etc) in red on single works to make it more obvious that they’re WIPs as you’re browsing:

Flamebyrd’s Ao3 to Pinboard bookmarklet/script - if you click the bookmarklet while on a work’s page, it opens the Pinboard save screen and prefills the title, tags, description, word count, etc, and adds ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the URL so Pinboard’s archiver will archive the complete work and not the adult content warning screen (note that Pinboard still cannot correctly archive works locked to Ao3 users, so you may want to download them as a backup. I’ve asked him about fixing that.), based on your selections when configuring the bookmarklet on the linked page. If you use the userscript, it adds a button to the works listings page so you don’t even have to open the work to save it:

I tweaked this script so that it only grabs the first pairing tag, since I don’t typically care about secondary pairings and they were clogging up my Pinboard tags. It’s a simple fix (though I know nothing about coding so I had to do some googling and inspect-sourcing; kinda proud of myself tbh):

Just change this part of the script

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag", $work).each(function () {

To this

if ( options.relationship_include ) {

- $(".relationships a.tag:first", $work).each(function () {

I also found this cool mobile-optimized Pinboard bookmarklet called Pincushion and combined it with Flamebyrd’s script. Everything works except the auto-tagging, but I’ve reached out on GitHub to see if he can help (according to Flamebyrd, there’s no tag field ID attribute to map to). However, this bookmarklet has tagging autocomplete features that make it easy to tag manually. For example, if you type “steve 21st” it will suggest “steverogersvsthe21stcentury” rather than having to type out “steverogersvs…” in order for it to autocomplete like it does on the regular Pinboard bookmarklet. I actually have two buttons set up (which you can see in the next screenshot) - Flamebyrd's to quickly grab the tags and close without me having to do anything, and then the Pincushion one to quickly edit the tags. If anyone's interested, I can explain how to do that.

To combine Pincushion with Flamebyrd’s script (so it works from the Ao3 works listings page as mentioned above), simply change this part of Flamebyrd’s script:

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://pinboard.in/add?url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=no,width=700,height=350"));

To this

t = t.split(" ").join( options.space_replacement );

var pb_url = "https://rossshannon.github.io/pincushion/?user=YOURUSERNAME&token=YOURAPITOKEN&url=" + encodeURIComponent(q) + "&description=" + encodeURIComponent(d) + "&title=" + encodeURIComponent(p) + "&tags=" + encodeURIComponent(t);

void(open(pb_url, "Pinboard", "toolbar=yes,width=600,height=700,left=50,top=50"));

You’ll need to get your API Token from your Pinboard account and plug it in where it says YOURUSERNAME and YOURAPITOKEN (number part only) above.

FanFictionNavigator - mark fics as Like/Dislike/Mark/InLibrary, highlight with colors based on which option you select, hide/show based on category, like/dislike author and highlight with color. Only you will see how you've marked things.

You can tweak the colors for the highlighting by configuring the script (I find the default colors make the text hard to read because I use the Reversi skin on Ao3 for white-ish text on a gray background). I also changed it so that when I click “hide likes” it only hides liked fics and not liked authors (i.e. hides fics I’ve read, but not unread fics by authors I like), changed the color of the like/dislike/etc links to match the highlighting color and to show up better, and changed the way it highlights authors (I think the default is bold/strikethrough which doesn't really catch my eye. I changed it to highlight the author name in red/green):

Here are my configured scripts if you’d like to use them instead of tweaking yourself (you need to install both):

FanFictionNavigator

FanFictionNavigator - Colors

Note: Your settings for this script will sync via Tampermonkey but not your data (i.e. fics you’ve liked/marked/etc). If you ever switch between browsers, you’ll need to go to your Ao3 Dashboard and click FFNOptions, export your data, then go through the same process to import it into the new browser.

AO3: Kudosed and seen history - highlight or hide works you kudosed/bookmarked/marked as seen. If you want to use this with FanFictionNavigator, you’ll need to turn off “highlight bookmarks” from the settings under the “Seen Works” dropdown that gets added to your Ao3 navbar or FFN’s colors won’t show. Again, data doesn’t sync between browsers but you can copy it from the dropdown settings. However, it pulls your kudosed and bookmarked fics from Ao3 itself, so that will always show. It's just seen/skipped that doesn't sync:

Ao3 download buttons - adds a download button to the works listings page so you don’t have to open the fic to download it. However, it also doesn’t play nicely with FFN’s colors, so I’m using AO3 Review + Last Chapter Shortcut + Kudos-sortable Bookmarks script which also has a download button that works with FFN (a small down arrow next to the author name). The download button doesn’t work as-is from that link, so here’s my tweaked version based off of this comment. You can configure what format you want it to download by default in the script. There’s also a tweak in the comments to fix kudos-sorting, but it overloads Ao3 and you get a “retry later” error for a few minutes when you try to open Ao3, so I don’t recommend it. I don’t know if any of the other functionalities of the script work because I don’t use them, but it looks like there are tweak suggestions in other comments you can try:

I was using Ao3 Replace Words to replace words in fics that bug me but I realized it wasn’t working on mobile, so I’m using zensurf instead which is not Ao3-specific but works basically the same way. If you want to limit it to just Ao3 (so it doesn’t change words on non-fic sites), just add this

// @include http://archiveofourown.org/*

// @include https://archiveofourown.org/*

Above this line

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

You can // @include other fic sites like ffnet that way too.

AO3: Links to Last Chapter and Entire Works does what it says on the tin, but the creator was kind enough to give me a code snippet to add that makes the “E” (for Entire Work) appear next to all works and add ?view_full_work=true&view_adult=true to the work URL so that I can easily right-click and share to Instapaper and have it be saved correctly (not just the first chapter but the whole work + not the content warning screen for NR/M/E works). Here is the script with this tweak applied:

I think those are the only ones that I’ve done special tweaks for. Here are some others that I find useful that either don’t require any configuration, or should be pretty straightforward to configure and are explained on the script page.

AO3 author+tags quick-search - doesn’t require configuration

Generates quick links from AO3 fics to more by the same author in the same fandom (or character/pairing/any other tag):

Remove leading spaces in AO3 - doesn’t require config

Removes the leading indents for paragraphs in AO3 works.

Ao3 Only Show Primary Pairing - you have to enter the pairings you want in the script, and you can change how early in the sequence they must appear before the work is hidden. Also works with character tags.

Hides works where specified pairing isn't the first listed. Hidden works show a placeholder that you can click to unhide:

AO3: highlight tags - have to enter the tags you want highlighted, as well as the color you want. It matches case so you may have to enter both “Dog” and “dog”, for example.

Configure tags to be highlighted with different colors. This makes a tag more obvious to your eye when browsing. I use it to highlight things I’m wary of in red so I don’t miss them and start reading a fic I might not want.

AO3: Tag Hider - configure how many tags you want to see before it hides them

Hide tags automatically when there are too many tags. Add hide/show tags button to browsing page and reading page.

AO3 Remove Double-Spacing - no config

Removes awkward double spaces between paragraphs on AO3. Doesn’t smush together paragraphs that have a single line break - it leaves those alone.

ao3 series collapser - no config

Collapse works that are later than part 1 of a series. Leaves a placeholder so you can uncollapse if you want to see it.

AO3 Blocker - no config, but you enter what you want to block from the added navbar dropdown in Ao3

Fork of ao3 savior; blocks works based on certain conditions. I find this simpler to use than Ao3 savior.

FYI there are also style scripts for Pinboard on greasyfork and userstyles.org (this site is slow af for some reason, so be patient while it loads). I use show unread bookmarks more clearly and Modern Pinboard Style (basically a dark mode). Neither require config unless you just want to tweak the settings to your liking. To install to Tampermonkey from userstyles, scroll down to “Install style as userscript”.

I also use these extensions in Kiwi:

Ao3rdr - Adds a star rating system (pictured in some of the screenshots above) to Ao3 works that only you can see. This one will sync your data between devices if you use the cloud sync option, which I recommend so you don’t lose your data if something happens to your device or browser.

Dark Reader - not really necessary for Ao3 if you use Reversi skin, but does make all browser pages dark mode if you want it on sites other than Ao3.

Speaking of Ao3 skins, I have another one set up in conjunction with Reversi that shows all the fandoms on a user’s profile, rather than having to click “expand”:

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found this. To set it up yourself, go to your Ao3 -> Dashboard -> Skins -> Create Site Skin, fill in the Title (has to be unique), and paste the code below in the CSS box:

#user-fandoms ol.index {

padding-bottom: 0;

text-align: center;

}

#user-fandoms ol.index li {

display: inline;

margin-right: .5em;

line-height: 2.15em;

}

#user-fandoms ol#fandom_full_list {

padding-top: 0;

padding-bottom: 1.5em;

display: block !important;

}

#user-fandoms p.actions {

display: none;

}

Then hit Submit -> Use. There are ways to hide or highlight various elements (ships, characters, blurbs, work stats, etc) on a works listing page using skins on Ao3. This is getting long so I’m not going to go into that, but I’m happy to help if you want to try it. It’s very easy.

Once you have everything configured on Tampermonkey on your desktop, you can migrate it to your mobile device in one of two ways:

Option 1: Go to Tampermonkey settings and change Config Mode to Advanced

Go down to Script Sync and select your preferred cloud service and save

It will ask you to log in to said cloud service

Install Tampermonkey in Kiwi and do the same thing

Wait for it to sync (this can be slow)

It should sync any changes you make moving forward, but again, it’s slow

Option 2: go to Utilities and check all 3 checkboxes under general (include script storage, include Tampermonkey settings, include external script resources)

Either export to your preferred cloud service or

Export as a zip file, move it to your mobile device, go to this same screen and import

I would recommend exporting as a zip for a backup even if you don’t use it to migrate your scripts

You can unzip and upload individual script files (.js) on this page if you ever need to reinstall a single script with your settings instead of all of them

Let me know if you run into any issues and I can try to help! The script writers are also super nice and helpful if you reach out to them. Yay fandom!

[tattooyeol]

Presenting to you, Exo looks: Live in technicolor

This time I wasn't allowed to include any styles with black hair, so these are my favourite colorful looks for each member.

I'm adding commentary this time bc i feel like just presenting photos without an explanation isnt very fun and doesnt lead to much discussion

(Some of the pictures are better than others but bare with me lol, sometimes i even had to just screenshot straight from mvs)

Without further ado

Imo Junmyeon is the only one to have done the pink hair RIGHT. Look how his skin is glowing! The off-center part looks great, this look is just overall a 10/10

Continuing my "long hair Sehun supremacy" agenda lmao. Sehun has had SO many styles and I just think this would be super interesting and i would love to see it on him. The messy style also gives him a less polished looks than he usually has and it adds some masculinity Also this color makes his skin glow <3

Redhair-yeol and Peach-yeol were a close second, but I would be going against everything I've been preaching on this blog and I would be lying to myself if I didnt stick to Silveryeol. This specific look with the fluffy curls, the jewelry and tattoos is probably my favourite look of his ever!! It makes me so soft!!!!! Theres a reason i go back to this look every time i change my icon <3 Its breathtaking

Im not sure if it was simply the novelty of seeing Ksoo with something other than black hair, but this almost reddish/auburn brown hair w the freckles was such a fresh look on ksoo and it looks super cute! The dreamlike/nostalgic vibe of this photoshoot probably adds to the effect of it all.

I KNOW i came for the Hey Mama looks in my last ranking for Minseok and Jongdae but its ok bc the mv actually has my favourite Baekhyun look! The wavy sidepart with the bright red is super fun and just gives him this very charming vibe. I cant explain it - it adds to the cheekiness that Baekhyun is so known for and it elevates his look!

This was a surprise to me - Yixing hasn't had a ton of different haircolors and I really honestly believe that he is just perfect with the black hair, so i was surprised by how much i like this. I like the dark undercut and the curls - its super different on him and its interesting!

I'm pretty sure we all lost our minds when Jongdae had blonde hair for their The War comeback? He hadn't ever had this kind of look before and its GORGEOUS. This is jongdae done exactly right

I was super torn between this and the chocolate-brown curly look he had when he played Ato. In practice, I will say Jongin looks his absolute best with the chocolate-brown. However, I had to choose this look because it lives absolutely rent-free in my mind. yall cant even SPELL disneyprince

OK HEAR ME OUT i know this is like the exact same color i said was his worst look on the last one. This is a good example on how styling is SO important. Because THIS look? pure sex. you look amazing sweetie.

[hiimsociallyawkward]

a servant of two masters

hi friends welcome back to me aimlessly ranting about merlin. up today we have 4.06 and this episode. wow. literally just the title gives me everything i need and i'm absolutley here for the chaos that will ensue. hi bestie @lady-ofmagic-andstars

i love them in their capes

i want a cloak

dude the 'oh it's not gonna happen' and then it happens trope is so dumb but i laugh every time

notice how the knights ripped off their capes

dude people are falling off of horses and out

MERLIN

ok ok but how is he injured. ik this is rated for kids but i really dk how badly merlin is injured. it looks like just his shoulder but he shouldn't be almost dying like his yk?

:,) arthru making jokes

ok but i love arthur taking care of merlin

alskdjflsadk them trying to make jokes to make each other feel better :,)

stop arthur. stop telling the truth merlin's not dying here 😭

bestie vibes only deadass

HAHA

a s s

side note, the site i get my screenshots from- this picture has 61 views while others average maybe like 10-15?? perverts HAHA just kidding

sok i'm actually really curious as to what merlin's injury is

alsdjf;lasdfjsaldfjsaldf merlin making the rocks fall

idk if it's jut the angling but i felt like the enemies were way too close for merlin to create an entire rock barrier. i don't have any screen shot evidence but so you're just going to have to take my word for it

ok but like who even are these men. they were working for morgana trying to capture arthur?

and what's morgana going to do once she has arthur? kill him and take his place on the throne? remember how well that turned out last time she tried that? no one wanted her. idk idk morgana is just confusing as to what she wants

pls die agravaine

haha strangely fond of the boy? there's nothing strange about it

ok i laughed but i also felt bad when morgana splashed merlin awake and flailed around like a fish

dude merlin is so snarky here and i'm HERE for it

ok i like the knights being competent. thank you thank you

and now they're riding back into camelot with their capes on? you're telling me they traced back their steps to find their capes, dusted them off to make sure that they weren't too dirty and didn't have any leaves or branches still sticking to it before riding back to camelot? iconic

poor gaius. ok he's the worst but he does think of merlin as his son and this makes me sad

ok i have a dumb question. do you think merlin understands whenever other magic users are casting spells? ok i feel like this is a dumb question now. but like, is magic a language? are all incantations in a different language, so when other person who knows magic is watching you- they know what you're trying to do and such? i feel like "of course they'd know" but i'm basing that assumption on hp where everyone knows that alohomora is alohomora and where everyone knows that lumos is lumos. but what about here? does merlin know what she's incanting? can he slightly understand it even if he's never seen/done it before? is magic a language like latin, and even if you aren't completely fluent, you and parse together things and make an assumptions?

arthur is just so sad here

i just, i have to have these here

yes bby figure out that we have a traitor

gaius is not slick in the slightest. yes. look at the traitor king

wow morgana being able to bond with the snake? i wonder how

ok question, does the fomorroh have some sort of loyalty to whoever calls them?

✨kill arthur pendragon✨

ok that snake going in his neck is actually scary

pretty castle counter: 5

btw this is actually my zoom background sometimes. it depends from call to call but it changes between this pretty castle and peeta mellark

G E O R G E

ok i've seen all the tumblr posts but it doesn't get less funny. the 'merlin's missing and we can't find him so we're going to replace him with another manservent dressed EXACTLY like merlin so arthur feels better' makes me chuckle every time

i would like to have that for breakfast

i like the loyalty arthur thank you. i love the loyalty pls. i love that they're friends. like, i love the romance but i love just people being friends too

ok this whole scene. arthur wanting to look for merlin because he has to at least try, gwen just wanting arthur to be careful and to come back to her, gwaine being buds. i love all the friendships in this and just yes thank you

ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok i'm not at the hug scene yet but i know it's coming and i'm beyond excited

ok this sound track is so cute.

saldkfj;asldkfjasldkfsd

matching icons for you and your best friends

deadass if someone wants to change their tumblr icons so we can match hmu bc i'm 100% down with that

another pretty castle scene

SASSY MERLIN PLS

ok ik this is dumb to comment on because i feel like it's not tremendously hard to execute but i love the differences that colin made in regular merlin and fomorroh merlin. it's the best

they say it later in the episode but i find it hilarious how bad of an assassin merlin is

dude pls you're pouring poison in front of EVERYONE else?

BOG MAN. ok guys i'm calling you guys bog mans now.

ASLDJFALSDFJS THE JEALOUSY SCENE

i am cringey but laughing at the same time you don't understand why am i this childish

ok but arthur is being so sweet right here. i feel like he's not trying to be showy in front of gwen, i feel like he wants merlin to rest and that's so sweet. he's so patient right here and i love him

i miss the gwen and merlin friendship actually

dude merlin is roasting gaius so hard today

leon geeking out over weapons is so cute. omg he's such a tiny nerd i love him

laskjflasdfj THIS SCENE. this makes up for the stew jokes that i may or may not still be mad about

i love that the knights LITERALLY turn a blind eye it's actually hilarious

LOOK AT MERLIN BEING COMPETENT?? HE'S SO SMART WITH THE ARROW RIGGING THING

it's literally treason leon pls and you're laughing you're the best 😭😭

i wish we had a pervical back story arc

ok i think it's dumb that i laughed when merlin ducked but i stand by that

ok why do i feel bad for arthur a little. he's talking abt some semi-deep stuff. not deep deep but like, he's trying to ask for advice from his friend, his close advisor. he would've never talked to merlin like this is season 1-2 but here he is, talking about trust. and MERLIN is trying to MURDER HIM. yes. i admit it's a little funny when i'm just watching merlin trip over things and such, but when i listen to arthur talking i feel slightly sad

literallly. merlin's passed out on the floor and arthur doesn't even think anything is wrong

gwen's face when she knocked merlin out is so cute

oop. why is arthur standing in agravaine's door way like an absolute robot

cyes arthur. figure him out

i hate agravaine. i just want arthur to be happy. he's only trusting agravaine because agravaine is family.

stfu agravaine 'you're all that's left of my dear sister' SHUT THE FRONT DOOR

ok there's a repeat of the castle from earlier but i'll spare you

pls this bath scene is so awkward. tt not being able to trust anyone anymore and we're laughing at merlin but arthur's talking so sad and deep

pls this bath scene is so awkward. that's all the notes i have

again, i miss gwen and merlin

merlin is MONCHING on those berries. i'm craving berries now

ok but like. yk that pouch that gaius is using to make the forromoh dormant? what if merlin tucked it in his neckerchief as a precaution. i'm just saying.

aslfkjasdaskdjf the tavern

yall why did merlin have to stop his horse to drink the potion

i want the knights to have a cool band name or smth yk what i mean?

i like that merlin is still a little in the camelot red. it's not the same shade but yk what i mean

HAHA LEON AND PERCIVAL BEING PUSHED TOGETHER. I JUST KEPT ON SCREAMING SUBTEXT SUBTEXT

damn morgana wants RESUKTS. i dont blame her

the frist interaction with merlin and morgana in the hut is so awkward. pls.idek how to comment on it

deadass morgana's dress is so pretty.

magic fight! magic fight!

stfu 'rightfully mine' pls

hehe there's a leaf in his hair

ok i feel like i should've commented more on the magic fight but idk bro

so ik that colin was in this whole episode but it really only just now feels like merlin is here and i think that's fun

arthur is the cutest. i'm loving this dynamic you have no idea. i live live live live LIVE off banter. pls

guys i'm sad apparently i can only put 10 pics in a post but pls enjoy this one pic of arthur right here 😭

ok idk abt you but i'd love to hear jokes abt brass

agaragvaine pls die already

YOU'RE SUCH A PERV LITERALLY

GO

AWAY

NOW

dude that last scene was actually really pretty and i'm sad that i can't attach it now

anyways thanks for reading my long ass rambles. but i'll be back next week to the secret sharer i'll catch you on the flip side