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fanartfunart · 3 years

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Fly Away

Episode 2: The Collector

Ao3 - First

(Féline Sombre & Paon Lilas designs)

Summery: An AU where Adrien never went to in-person school, not getting the cat miraculous, and found the peacock miraculous. -Gabriel Agreste sets out his plan to protect his identity as Hawkmoth. (and try to get some miraculous)

(this is like... twice as long as the first one...whoops)

Adrien felt like a ragdoll. Chloé squeezed him around his shoulders and shook him; squealing the entire time. He just went limp. Resigned to being dragged around from the doorway.

“Hi Chloé. Hi... Sabrina? Er…" Adrien stared at the comically tall stack of luggage, only identifiable as Sabrina by their favored shorts over tights style on the legs behind the luggage. "Is this… a sleepover?” His father barely let them over anymore, how did Chloé convince his father to let them stay overnight?

“Hi,” Sabrina said, muffled from under the piles of luggage.

“It is Adrikins! Your father finally stopped being a stick in the mud for once! I have sooo much for us to do. It simply can not be all done in a measly hour. Sabrina, the guest room is over there, we’ll be sleeping there.” Chloé pointed, and Sabrina grunted in effort before they made their way towards the room.

“Do you need help, Sabrina?” Adrien asked, watching her fumble with the tower of luggage.

“Oh she’s fine, aren’t you Sabrina?”

“Uhhh, yep! Just fine!” They kicked open the door before Adrien could escape Chloé’s hug to help. She stumbled, and the luggage fell into the room. Sabrina rebalanced themself with the skill of a gymnast, avoiding the fate of the luggage. They looked at the mess and sighed, shoulders sagging.

“See? Now!” Chloé grabbed Adrien’s arm and pulled him towards his own room, “I need to tell you everything about this new hero I met!”

“Oh. Okay?” Chloé had been most of his first-hand information on the superheroes of Paris. Obviously he’d seen the newscasts, and, despite Chloé’s insistence that the “Ladyblog” was unreliable, he followed that too. But Chloé was who he got the details from. He’s been reconsidering some of the stories from Chloé’s hand in causing the last akuma.

While listening to Chloé embellish her own role in a story he was in, Sabrina eventually returned. She smiled and sat, listening to the last of Chloé’s tale. “After the fight I did get a good look at Paon Lilas. He was kinda cute. Not as cute as you, though, my Adrikins!”

Adrien chuckled and shook his head. “I’m sure he’d look just as cute with a team of people doing his makeup, hair, and wardrobe for him.”

“Shh, you’re not giving yourself enough credit.” She rolled her eyes, waving a hand dismissively.

"Well, I don't know about him..." Sabrina said cautiously, "When I came in at the end there... Ladybug seemed pretty suspicious of him. Maybe there's something we don't know?"

"He did seem sorta new, but he gave me a real Mr Cuddles! No strings attached like with Hawkmoth. Really, he can't be that bad."

Adrien nodded, "I'm sure he did what he thought was right…"

Sabrina hummed, "Probably..."

Chloé shook her head and waved a hand "Anyway, Sabrina show Adrien our surprise!"

"Oh! I'll go get it!" They stood up and raced off to collect whatever it was.

Sabrina stared up at the stack of suitcases and sighed "This… may take longer than intended."

Plagg zipped out of her purse and propped himself on top of one. "Ugh why go through the effort? Just tell her you broke it when you tripped."

"Chloé is my best friend Plagg, and Adrien is a good friend too. He's been pretty upset since he couldn't go to school. Least I can do is find the gift."

"Blegh, what kid wants to go to school. If I lived in this fancy place I'd be eating camembert all day long!"

Sabrina chuckled and shook her head "You do that anyway. Come on you lazy kitty, at least help me look." They hefted the first suitcase and started carefully looking through it.

Plagg groaned. Then dramatically huffed. Then sighed twice as dramatically and zipped away to find something more interesting. Like cheese, perhaps.

Sabrina looked up and frowned at the lack of kwami. "Plagg!" She whisper-yelled. Abandoning their task, they ran after their kwami.

"Oooo, what's this?" Plagg disappeared into a room, and Sabrina followed. He glanced around the room then shrugged, "Boring, next?"

"What's that?" She gestured at the ajar painting. A… door? She stepped over to find a safe.

Plagg hummed. "Okay, interest spiked. Let's see what they're hiding in there."

"Oh I don't think we should. We should get back to finding Adrien's gift-"

Plagg already disappeared into the safe. The door opened and Plagg riffled through the contents, muttering about what was there. Sabrina tilted their head, and Plagg handed her a book. "Pretty mundane if you ask me. I was hoping for a secret food stash, maybe the World's Finest Camembert."

Sabrina shook her head and flipped through a few of the pages. "Miraculous? Why do the Agrestes have this in a safe?" They glanced at the portrait. "Behind a painting…"

"Sabrinaaaaaaa what's taking so long? And fetch my nail kit! My nail chipped!" Chloé called.

"I'll go down and help her-" Adrien responded. Sabrina gasped and closed the safe, and ran back to the guest room…. And they still had the book! Ohnoohno. She scrambled for a place to put it before shoving it under a pile of clothes in Chloé’s suitcase.

Adrien walked in with Chloé trailing behind. "Adrikins it's a surprise, don't you know the meaning of surprise?"

He chuckled "I do but Sabrina, don't you want some help?"

They stared a bit at him, "It might be nice? There's… a lot of suitcases here…"

Adrien gave Chloé a 'See?' look, and picked up a suitcase to look through. "What am I looking for?"

"It's a surpriseeeee," Chloé huffed.

Adrien smirked, and picked up a shirt, showing it to Chloé "This it?" He picked up a lipstick "This it? Oh what about this?" He picked up a set of earrings, placing them against his ears. Sabrina giggled as he continued, shaking her head.

Chloé groaned and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her nails with a pout. Sabrina quietly handed her a nail kit from their own purse, earning a smile.

Adrien found it. He pulled out the DVD and tilted his head "What's this?"

"I uh, convinced the class to do a virtual hello- since you couldn't- uh, I also have something else if you don't like it."

His eyes got shiny, and he rubbed his cheeks, smiling, "Thank you. Really." He pulled Chloé and Sabrina into a hug.

Chloé looked a little startled. She likely was used to having to start the hugs, but softened into the hug.

He pulled back with an awkward giggle, "Sorry, uh, I'll watch this later. Really, thank you."

"Yeah, no trouble at all. Apparently one of the kids is like, all about film making. He kinda took over, actually."

Adrien giggled and nodded, "Well, I'm sure you have other plans too-"

Chloé fluffed her hair, "But of course! I have the whole day planned!"

Adrien gave Sabrina a look, clearly looking for comradery in the exhaustion of Chloé’s day-long itinerary. She smiled and shook her head, ready to help Chloé make her plans reality.

Chloé had the book. Sabrina stared at it. Why did Chloé have the book? Chloé did not waste a minute to dramatically show off the book.

"Can you believe there's tons of other superheroes that aren't active?" Chloé called, almost immediately summoning the class to surround her and the book.

Sabrina was going to die of mortification. How were they going to get that back to the Agreste house? Chloé wasn't going to just let her put it back now that it was her newest attention magnet.

Marinette wasn't late for once. Although, she did feel late. She hopped up and down trying to get a look at what was at the center of the small crowd.

"Is there a horse superhero?"

"I wonder if Ladybug and Féline Sombre have powers we don't know about."

"Do you know what language that is?"

Tiki gasped. Marinette’s eyes widened as Tiki weaved in and out of the group of teens’ legs.

Marinette stared anxiously. Tiki returned quickly. “We need to get that book, Marinette!”

“What?” Marinette cried, but thankfully the only weird look she got was from Ms. Bustier.

Ms. Bustier clapped and the group dispersed disjointedly. “Alright class, that’s enough. We do have more to learn about than superheroes.”

Marinette anxiously watched Chloé’s new book the entire class period. The book was mocking her, sitting on the desk like it was innocent.

Marinette eventually got her chance at the end of the school day. Chloé was once again showing off, as Sabrina tugged on her arm, apparently trying to get her to come with her.

Lila was on her other side, with her head tilted in curiosity. "Where did you get this?" Lila asked.

"It's one of a kind and totally a secret~" She fluffed her hair.

"Come onnn Chloé." Sabrina tugged on her arm again. Hard. Chloé stumbled backwards, and Sabrina caught her, face flushed with embarrassment. "Ohmygosh I'm so sorry!" The book was on the floor.

Chloé gaped. She pulled herself from Sabrina and walked away without a word. Sabrina immediately followed after, abundant with apologies.

Marinette dove for the book. And hit her head against Lila's.

She grinned uneasily at her. "Hi Lila." She tugged on the book, with resistance from Lila.

"Hello Marinette, I've got it don't worry." She tugged back, and Marinette's grip hardened on it.

"I can go to return this to Chloé, they look like they're going my direction anyway. No need for you to go out of your way!" She smiled broadly.

"Oh no, it's fine, I wanted to ask her more about it anyway."

Marinette's smile strained, "Funny, so was I."

Lila yellped. She jumped up and twirled, as if she was stung. Marinette only just barely noticed a red blur return to her purse. She raised a brow. Tiki sure was going to great lengths to make sure Marinette had this book.

Marinette pressed the book against her chest and ran in Chloé’s direction. "I'll tell Chloé you said hi!"

Lila huffed and crossed her arms with a frown, watching the girl run off.

"Chloé could be Hawkmoth!?" Marinette cried, dragging her hands over her face as Master Fu gave her a confused look. "Bah-wha? I need a plan of attack! Paon Lilas did immediately try to protect her so they must be in cahoots. That must be why she torments so many people! She's not waiting for people to have bad days, she's causing them! How do I confront my own classmate? Do I-"

"Marinette! Chloé isn't Hawkmoth." Tiki said, hands on her hips.

"No?"

"Chloé is a teenage girl, Hawkmoth seems to be an adult man."

Marinette blinked repeatedly. She giggled awkwardly, "Right, right I knew that."

Master Fu shook his head, "But.. Find out where Chloé got the book, and we may find Hawkmoth. I will start translating the book. I am glad you found it, it should be useful."

Marinette gave a firm nod and set out to find Chloé.

Adrien stared at the video of Sabrina taking the book and was suddenly very grateful he had thought about cameras when he finally took that brooch…

"Did you know about this?" His father demanded coldly.

He shook his head "No, no. I- didn't know you had that back there!"

"Your friends will not be allowed back here again. Ever."

"What?" Adrien felt like he was sinking, falling, "But father I-"

"They stole the source of my inspiration and betrayed my and your trust. That is not the sort of people I want you associating with. That is all."

Adrien slumped into his chair as Natalie and his father left the room. He stared out the window as a numbness settled into his chest. He didn't know how long he sat there until he noticed Duusu was curled against his chest. A bird flew past outside.

"... Paon Lilas can fly free."

"Huh?" Duusu tilted his head. "Adrien you know what will happen if you transform too often-"

"I just need to get out of this house. Duusu, spread my feathers." Transformed, he leapt out the window and ran.

"Not quite what I expected but the result is the same. Kids, so nosy, taking what does not belong to them. It is time I got my 'book of inspiration' back, and perhaps a few miraculous while I'm at it." Gabriel Agreste picked up the empty book. "Come my Akuma, and evilize me."

The Collector grinned. "Surely they won't mind becoming part of my permanent collection."

Natalie and Adrien’s bodyguard were all too willing for their likeness to be captured, but the bump in the road came with his son. Adrien seemed to have run away. He growled under his breath. But, as long as he was out of the way of the fight, it didn’t matter. He huffed and made his way out to cause as much of a show as possible. Eventually the superheroes would show their faces.

“Chloé, I didn’t mean to! But really we should return the book as soon as possible! I don’t want Adrien to get in trouble.” Sabrina pleaded.

“Ugh, but I finally had something that Lila didn’t!”

Sabrina tilted her head “I- Why would that matter?” Chloé just pouted. They sighed, “Can we please return the book now? Uh… Where is it?”

Chloé looked up. “Oh nooo, you made me drop it!”

“Sabrina Raincomprix and Chloé Bourgeois,” an ominous voice called. Sabrina spun on her heel. It only took them a glance at the akuma to fall into a fighting stance in front of Chloé. “I am the Collector. You stole my book of inspiration, and for that you shall help me build a new one!” The Collector threw his book like a boomerang towards the teens.

Sabrina pushed Chloé onto the ground before it could touch them. Sabrina got up, and taking the opportunity of distraction, ran.

“Sabrina! You- ” Chloé looked around, finding her friend had already left. “….Sabrina?”

“Looks like your friend left you,” The Collector grinned, “She seems to be all around unreliable, hm?”

Chloé took a page out of Sabrina’s book and ran.

“I knewwww I should’ve just put that book back! Now Adrien’s father is akumatized,” Sabrina turned a corner as Plagg zipped out of her purse.

He shrugged, “Eh, not your fault the door was open.”

They shook their head. “Plagg, claws out!”

They vaulted up and returned to the spot they’d left Chloé and the Collector, only to find both of them gone. “Sorry Chloé…” She gritted her teeth and began to search for the Collector.

They found Paon Lilas before they found the Collector. He was sitting on the roof of a building, legs dangling over the edge, eyes distant. Féline Sombre vaulted onto the roof and walked up next to him. “What are you doing up here, tweety bird?”

He chuckled and looked up at them. “Just enjoying the fresh air. Did you and Ladybug reserve this spot?”

“No, but we do have an Akuma to deal with.”

Paon stood up, “Where?”

“No idea, he disappeared before I could catch him. I already know it’s Gabriel Agreste.”

Paon stumbled. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, he’s aiming to add to his ‘collection’ whatever that means.” She gives the boy a glance over, frowning, “Can I trust you to help find and keep him busy until Ladybug shows?”

He nodded firmly. “I’ll follow your lead, kitty-cat.”

Féline Sombre blinked a little then nodded, “Okay, you go to the left, see if you can find him. We’ll meet up at the Eiffel if we can’t find him. Otherwise, call me.”

“I can call you?”

They blinked “Er- There’s a phone in both mine and Ladybug’s weapons so I’m sure there’s one in your fan?... Good luck. I’ll avoid crossing your path.” She smiled a little then they vaulted off.

He watched her go, the numbness sinking deeper into his bones. He took a deep breath in and headed to the left, watching for someone who would look like an akumatized version of his own father… He let the tides of emotions lead his way more so than his vision, looking for some sense of an exaggerated version of familiar cold anger or disappointment.

He found his father, and the expected feelings were there, but it didn’t seem to fit in with the severity he’d noticed from the last akuma. He didn’t know what that meant. He glanced at the fan, fumbling for whatever would activate a phone. He blinked as the fan created a pop out screen. He found a contact for Féline Sombre, but no Ladybug. He raised a brow, and shrugged, tapping the contact icon. She picked up quickly. “Féline Sombre, I found him. He’s just outside the Louvre.”

“Okay, try to keep him busy and away from the civilians. I’ll call Ladybug.” They hung up, and Paon Lilas dropped off the roof down towards his father.

“Looks like someone got trapped in a race car paint booth,” Paon taunted. His father turned around and smiled at him. He did not like that smile. Was it bad that he was unnerved by his father smiling?

“Hello to you too, little peacock. You’ll do lovely in my new collection,” He lifted his book and aimed, “But before I do, allow me to seize your Miraculous for Hawkmoth.” He threw the book at Paon Lilas.

He ducked and the book hit the guardrail causing it to disappear. He blinked and his father showcased the guardrail's place in his book before swiping it away, erasing it from the page.

"Just stand still, pretty feathers like those need to be immortalized!"

"I'm allergic to paper, actually." Paon Lilas joked. He circled the Collector, getting a sense of his surroundings and how to keep him there. He really didn’t want to hit his father, even if it was an akumatized version of him...

"How unfortunate." The Collector said coolly. He threw the book at him again and Paon leaped out of the way.

"Really, I'm not much of a by-the-books person!"

The Collector growled and caught his book, glaring at Paon Lilas. “I’m starting to see that. You’re all just troublemaking children.”

Féline Sombre did not seem to have the same reservations as Paon Lilas about hitting his father. She vaulted in and kicked him from behind. “Whoops, cat’s out of the bag.”

Marinette was definitely glad for the Ladyblog. Having notifications on for Alya’s obsessive tracking of Akumas and the superheroes movements has certainly allowed her to find the Akumas that didn’t show up right in front of her. She turned down an alley, and double checked for onlookers before transforming. She found Féline Sombre’s message, and listened to their briefing while she set out to the Louvre.

Féline was already there keeping the Collector at bay. ...And working with: “Paon Lilas?!”

“Oh! Hello m’lady!” Paon grinned. The book flew at his head and his eyes widened as he leaped into the air to avoid it. “Don’t let the book touch you, it will trap you in its pages!”

“M’lady? I love that!” Féline Sombre giggled, “Can I use that too?”

“But of course, Mittens. I’ve got plenty more where that came from!”

Ladybug landed next to Féline, giving Paon a glare “Oh hush Feathers.”

Paon Lilas gave her an uneasy grin which was quickly erased as the Collector threw a kick at him while throwing his book towards Ladybug. Féline Sombre moved in front of her, blocking with her staff. The staff disappeared from their hands.

“I think we need some luck right now Ladybug!” Féline said, shifting into a hand-combat pose.

Ladybug nodded, calling “Lucky Charm!” The magic provided a miniature trampoline. She looked around with a frown.

The Collector meanwhile, threw his book at the entrance pyramid. He kicked Féline Sombre into the resulting hole in the ground, jumping down after them.

Ladybug and Paon Lilas immediately leapt after. Ladybug caught Féline, swinging in from her yoyo. Paon tumbled onto the ground, and looked over to the Collector. The Collector grinned, throwing his book towards where Ladybug had hooked her yoyo.

“Ladybug!” Paon called. It only earned him a frown and a sharp spike of suspicion rather than her following his gesture toward the book. She and Féline tumbled onto the ground as the yoyo was sucked into the pages of the book.

The Collector caught his book in the other hand, tapping the page with the yoyo, “My collection really isn’t complete with some superheroes in it, but, I promised Hawkmoth your Miraculous first.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not much of an option!” Paon Lilas went for a punch, only to get blocked with one hand. He ducked the swipe with the open book.

Ladybug looked around, glancing at Paon Lilas’ fan and the book. “Of course! Bird Brain, I need a friend who likes to play ball!” Ladybug raised her trampoline.

Paon jumped back away from the Collector and plucked a feather from the fan. He tried to focus on Ladybug’s determination and imbued the feather with power, sending it Ladybug’s way, “Fly away, little amok.” The feather fluttered into the trampoline. “Got a plan? I assume?”

Ladybug tilted her head at the presence of Paon’s voice sounding much closer than it should be. The mask of light had surrounded his face, and assumedly hers. She nodded. “We’re going to try to see if we can fill up his collection.”

Paon nodded and a bouncy ball dropped onto the ground, and multiplied on the impact. “Meet Doubounce!” Paon winked and caught one in his hand, “Hey, wanna play ball?” He threw it towards the Collector who caught it with his book, frowning. Ah, yes, that looked like the usual response to that question.

Ladybug rolled her eyes and used the trampoline to rebound the multiplying bouncy ball sentimonster towards the Collector “We need Dou and the Collector a little more contained- Féline?”

“On it! Cataclysm!” They touched the stairwell, causing it to crumble, blocking everyone against the ruin and a wall.

Paon started using his fan like a tennis racket, while Ladybug redirected the senti-bouncy balls towards the Collector. He walked towards her, catching the ones that got too close to him. The Collector pressed the book against Ladybug’s lucky charm trampoline, but it didn’t disappear.

“What? Full already?” He flipped through the pages and made a move to erase a page, but Féline kicked it out of his hands. They grabbed the book and tore it in half.

“Miraculous Ladybug!” The swarm of ladybugs returned Ladybug’s yoyo, allowing her to catch and purify the butterfly. Féline Sombre meanwhile, hugged their baton against their cheek.

Paon Lilas snapped Doubounce out of existence and raced to his father’s side. “Fa- Sir? Are you okay?”

He looked up with confusion, but he didn’t… feel confused. Which only made Paon confused. Gabriel looked at the hero, frowning. “What happened? Where am I?”

“Er, the Louvre. You were akumatized by Hawkmoth.” Paon offered his father a hand up, which he accepted. “Don’t worry, it’s over now.”

“You’re… The new one, on the news.”

“Oh uh, Paon Lilas.” He smiled uneasily, and glanced at Ladybug. Who was suspicious again. What was so suspicious about talking to people?

His father nodded, and then gasped, “Adrien! I must find him.”

“I’m sure he is safe. If he was caught by your book, the miracle cure should’ve returned him to wherever he was last,” Ladybug explained.

“Nothing must happen to him. He’s too precious to me.” Gabriel said, placing his hands on Paon’s shoulders (daringly close to the miraculous clipped to his chest). Paon smiled softly, hearing his miraculous beep, as well as Ladybug’s and Féline Sombre’s.

“I’m sure he’s fine sir!” Féline said, “But we’re about to transform back… Goodbye!” Féline waved and vaulted up to the entryway of the Louvre.

“Paon Lilas. We need to talk.” Ladybug said.

“Oh…” He stepped away from his father and placed a hand over his miraculous protectively. “Er… Get back to you on that, M’lady…. Goodbye!” He ran.

Ladybug gave a glance towards Gabriel and smiled, “Sorry sir, goodbye!” She zipped up and away.

Gabriel huffed and called up Natalie. “I’m going to need a ride… I have found a few interesting bits of information about this ramshackle team.”

Paon Lilas stumbled into his room. "Fall my feathers."

Duusu appeared with a whoop and giggled. "That was awesome!"

Adrien closed his eyes, standing still as he tried to let the dizziness fade. "Yeah…" He braced a hand against his temple and huffed, "But… Do you know how we can fix the miraculous?"

"Oh no, you're hurt?" Duusu cried.

"I'm fine…" He sighed and sat on his bed, "But it's probably a good idea to fix it if I'm gonna keep using it…"

"It should be in the spell book!" Duusu said, collecting some seeds from a drawer.

"There's a spell book? Where?"

Duusu tilted his head, munching on his snack, considering. "I remember it somewhere!"

Adrien sighed and dropped himself against the bed. "Alright. Guess we gotta find a spell book." He yawned and closed his eyes, quickly succumbing to sleep.

#fanarts fanfic #fly away fic #peacock!adrien #adrien agreste #marinette dupen chang #sabrina raincomprix #black cat!sabrina #hawkmoth #ml ladybug #ml duusu #ml plagg #ml tiki #gabriel agreste #chloe burgeois #miraculous swap #miraculous ladybug

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sheliesshattered · 4 years

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This Isn’t A Ghost Story - Chapter 3

Whouffaldi non-canon AU. 8 chapters, will be about 32,000 words when complete. Rated Mature for heavier themes starting in this chapter, please contact me privately if you’re worried about triggering topics. Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor. Mystery, pining and angst with a happy ending. Available on AO3 under the same username and title. Updates every Friday.

This Isn’t A Ghost Story

Chapter 3: The Journal

Clara couldn’t sleep that night. Alone in her flat, she tossed and turned in bed, the day’s events replaying on a loop in her mind. The revelation of the identity of her ghost, the family secret he had spent almost a century protecting, her uncanny resemblance to her great-grandmother, it all felt like a complicated knot she needed to untangle. Beyond everything she’d learned, there was still more her ghost refused to tell her, and the thought nagged at her, keeping her awake.

Shortly after midnight she gave up on sleep, getting up and padding down the hall to her small sitting room. Given that it was early Sunday morning, she wouldn’t have to be up for work in a scant few hours, so if she was awake anyway she might as well do something useful. She flicked on the lamp closest to the sofa and pulled over the ancient box she’d brought from her Gran’s house, positioning it at the near end of the coffee table.

Before she left, she’d managed to extract a promise from her ghost that he wouldn’t burn down the house while she was away. But she still hadn’t completely trusted him alone with the box that had caused so much upset, so she’d loaded it into her car and brought it home with her, uncertain of exactly what she intended to do with it.

It’d been obvious that he was no more comfortable with the idea of her in sole possession of the box than she was with the thought of leaving it with him. You won’t stop digging until you’ve uncovered all the gory details, he had said to her, and she knew herself well enough to admit that he was probably right. Now that she knew of the existence of this box, she could hardly just let it be.

But it was more than simply feeling entitled to her family history. There was something there, some hidden edge of the mystery that called to her, something she felt like she should know. It wasn’t just her resemblance to her great-grandmother, or her attachment to her ghost, or his unwillingness to explain the situation to her. It’s more than that, and you know it, he’d told her. Deep down, you know it. And now it’s only a matter of time until you realise...

Clara shivered a little, remembering his words, more unnerved in the silence of her flat than she’d been when he’d first said them. Whatever this was, wherever this led, she had to know.

Glancing into the box, she picked up the wedding photograph from the top of the pile of papers and leaned towards the lamplight to examine it again. It was less disconcerting than it had been earlier, now that she knew some of the context behind it, but it was still odd to see her own face in a photo taken more than ninety years ago, in the spring of 1923. Staring at it, she was struck again by the feeling of what should have been, of how fiercely she wished it was her in that photo, marrying the man she loved.

But it wasn’t her in the photo. It couldn’t possibly be her, no matter how much it looked like her and no matter how much she wished it was. Perhaps getting to know the woman depicted there, her great-grandmother and namesake, would help her shake the feeling that somewhere along the line, fate had gone horribly awry. With that thought firmly in mind, she reached into the box and began pulling items from it.

There was no sense of order to the box, but as she dug through it, Clara began to suspect that it was the contents of her great-grandmother’s writing desk, quickly and haphazardly transferred to the box, however long ago. It was a mix of correspondence and shopping lists, photographs and small pieces of memorabilia, all jumbled together, fragile with age. She took each item out one by one, sorting them into piles as she went — a stack for photos, another for letters, a third for keepsakes, and a smaller pile for the ephemera of everyday life, things she probably didn’t need to keep. She could spend tomorrow going through them in more detail, reading the letters and looking at the photos in the light of day.

At the bottom of the box she found what appeared to be a well-loved brown leather travel journal, thick with envelopes and postcards and loose leafs of paper fitted between the pages. The front was emblazoned with a globe and the words 101 Places To See. She smiled softly, running her fingertips over its dips and ridges, and thought of her own brief travels after university. When her Dad had balked at the idea of her travelling on her own, her Gran had declared it a family tradition for the women in their family to travel. Apparently it was one that went back further than Clara realised.

Curious about the sorts of travels her namesake had chosen, she leaned closer to the lamp and opened the journal to the first entry, written in the same small, looping handwriting as on the back of the wedding photo:

1 March 1921, London

I purchased this journal for my upcoming holiday, but I fear the title may be more aspirational than factual. Mother and Father have agreed to allow me a solo European tour, perhaps under the mistaken belief that giving me that much freedom will quench my thirst for more far-flung adventures. If they knew of my ambitions, they would certainly forbid me from leaving home at all. We shall see how far I can get on the stipend they have gifted me, before their disapproval catches up with me.

A family tradition indeed, Clara thought, smiling wider, and flipped ahead a few pages.

16 March 1921, Paris

Paris is lovely, if not so very different from London. It is, however, an excellent hub from which to book further travel...

The next several pages were devoted to cataloguing life in Paris in the early ‘20s, an era that had fascinated Clara during her literature studies at university. She scanned through the entries on the off-chance that her great-grandmother might have crossed paths with a famous name during her time there. Seeing none, she ran her thumb along the outer edge of the pages to jump further ahead and get an idea of where she had gone after Paris.

Of its own accord, the journal opened to a place where a small sepia photograph had been wedged between the pages, and Clara carefully prised it free to examine it closer. Though it wasn’t nearly as crisp as the wedding photo, the two figures in it were instantly identifiable as her ghost and her great-grandmother. They stood side by side, her arm slung around his back and his draped over her shoulders, smiling at the camera and squinting in bright sunlight, a desert landscape rolling away behind them. Surprised, she turned it over to find her great-grandmother’s handwriting on the back had labeled it Doctor John Smith, Thebes Egypt, 19 May 1921.

Egypt? Her curiosity piqued, Clara backtracked a few pages to try to find the context of the photo, and when exactly her ghost had first entered her great-grandmother’s life.

2 May 1921, Cairo

Egypt is enthralling, everything I had dreamed it would be. Thankfully I find I am able to stretch my budget further here than I could on the continent. I sent my last letter home from Athens, and carefully did not mention my future plans — my hope is that I can spend a few weeks here before returning to Europe via Malta and then on to Italy, and Mother and Father will never be the wiser. To that end (and to ensure I don’t run out of funds and thus be forced to resort to begging parental assistance), I have already booked passage aboard a ship departing in three weeks.

The next few days detailed her sightseeing in and around Cairo, and Clara scanned ahead until her eyes caught on an entry almost two weeks later:

14 May 1921, Cairo

I met the most fantastic and intriguing man at the museum party last night! We spoke like old friends for near an hour and a half before he was pulled away by his compatriots, and it was only after he was gone that I realised we did not so much as exchange names. At the time, names felt superfluous, secondary to my desire to know him, but this morning I find myself wishing I could put a name to the face that hasn’t left my mind these last twelve hours.

He is Scottish, an academic of some description, though his interests and expertise seem so wide ranging, I can hardly guess at what his specialty might be. His has the nose of a Roman emperor, more regal than the bust of Marcus Aurelius that lives on the shelf in my bedroom back home, but recently burnt to peeling by the hot desert sun in a way I found entirely too endearing. There is no question that he is significantly older than myself, but he carries none of the condescension I typically associate with such an age difference. He showed more than polite interest in hearing of my travels and my thoughts on all that I have seen, and in exchange told me stories of his many adventures.

He is exactly the sort of kindred spirit I have for so long dreamed of knowing, and yet I know no hard facts about him at all. I don’t suppose we will ever meet again — and isn’t that sad? To have met someone as singular as him, spent an hour and a half in one another’s company, only to be forever lost to each other in the shuffle of humanity. At least he will be a fond memory of my time in Cairo.

Gripped by this introduction to the ghost she had known all her life and the man she had never had the chance to meet, Clara turned the page and read on.

15 May 1921, Cairo

I wrote yesterday that I know no hard facts about the man I met at the museum party, but on reflection I find that isn’t entirely true. His friends called him only ‘Doctor’, though that hardly narrows down his identity, with so many educated men roaming about the country. He has lived in Egypt for several years, can read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and mentioned he was in Cairo on a brief respite from some activity in Thebes, on which he did not go into detail.

But a ‘brief respite’, by definition, should mean that he will return to Thebes, shouldn’t it? And then there is the matter of his sunburnt nose...

The on-going archaeological work at Thebes is widely known in Cairo, especially amongst those who frequent the museum. Could it be that this ‘Doctor’, this man who has not left my thoughts since Friday evening, could now be found in Thebes? I so wish to see him again, even if only to exchange our names and other such information, so that I might send him a postcard from time to time. And perhaps more, if he is agreeable.

And if he is not to be found in Thebes, at least I will have tried. I will be able to board the ship to Malta knowing that at least I tried to find him.

Despite knowing that her great-grandmother would, inevitably, cross paths again with the man who would become her husband, Clara read on without pause, enthralled by the unfolding drama.

17 May 1921, en route

I have left Cairo for Thebes, though it may well mean I will miss my ship to Malta. He has not been out of my thoughts, and I find I cannot wait any longer. I cannot talk myself out of this. And if there were anyone in a position in my life to talk me out of it, I would not let them, either. My mind is made up.

An adventure, then. To see the archaeological work at Thebes, and perhaps recognise a friendly face. I do hope his sunburn has not got any worse.

The next entry, adjacent to where the photograph had been tucked away, read simply:

19 May 1921, Thebes

His name is John, and I am besotted. I fear I may never recover.

Clara set the journal down in her lap and picked up the photo, looking again at their smiling faces. She tried to imagine it, meeting an interesting stranger and then striking out into the unknown, alone, on the hope of finding him again. Studying the picture, she could almost feel the desert sun on her face, and the giddy joy of new love. In just under two years, they would be married, but it had begun there, with a conversation in the Cairo museum and her great-grandmother’s bold decision to follow him to Thebes.

In the spring of 1921, she would have been just barely twenty-two years old, and Clara couldn’t help but wonder about the age of her ghost. He looked so unchanged in the photographs she had seen, the length of his salt and pepper hair the only thing that indicated any passage of time. He had always been ageless to her, but her namesake had commented on the age difference, and as she neared twenty-eight herself, Clara had to admit that he still looked significantly older than her. In his forties, easily, perhaps fifties. He’d told her that if she dug into the paperwork she would find him there, and she decided to look into it in the morning, see what information could be gleaned from genealogical websites and the like, since he’d always shown such unwillingness to answer any sort of personal question.

She turned back to the journal, curious where their story had gone in the two years between meeting and marrying. The next section was filled to bulging with postcards and envelopes tucked between the pages — a period of extensive correspondence, clearly. Clara hesitated. Reading her great-grandmother’s travel journal was one thing, but in the current moment, alone in the post-midnight silence of her flat, she wasn’t sure she could bear to read the letters her ghost had written to his future wife as they fell in love. Instead, she flipped through quickly until she reached the last of the postcards, and then read the first journal entry that followed it.

4 March 1923, London

He is in Glasgow! After all these months of correspondence, of knowing my true feelings but being unwilling to divulge them via the impersonal medium of paper, the Doctor is no more than a train ride away. And yet after the fiasco of my extended stay in Egypt in ‘21, I cannot imagine that Mother and Father will react well to my desire to go to Scotland to see him.

His postcard did not say how long he plans to be in Glasgow, only that letters sent to the university there might reach him faster than if sent via the normal address. I worry that he will be this close by for only a short time. With all the news out of the Valley of the Kings these last few months, I don’t expect he will stay in dreary old Scotland for long.

I’m afraid that if I don’t seize this opportunity, I will never get another chance to tell him of my feelings for him in person. I worry that if I ask to go, Mother and Father will not permit it, and that if I take the initiative and go without asking, they will never forgive me.

And I am afraid that the Doctor does not love me as I love him, that he won’t be able to see past the differences in our ages to all that we could be, the life that we could build together. I worry that in running off to see him, I will destroy not only my relationship with my parents, but also my friendship with him.

What fear should I let rule me? Which worry is the most likely to be true?

No.

Instead, better questions: How will I live with myself if I let myself be ruled by fear? If I do not live by the truth of my heart, how can I live at all?

I will follow him to Glasgow, as I followed him to Thebes. Let me be brave. Let the fates do as they will.

The next entry was written a few days later, detailing her clandestine departure from home and the long train journey from London to Glasgow, peppered with her simmering fears at how her unannounced arrival would be greeted by the Doctor. Her worry and her longing were palpable, and Clara felt an odd sort of kinship with this woman, her great-grandmother and namesake, as she abandoned everything in her life on the chance to be with the man she loved. She had never done anything like it herself — she had never felt that strongly about anyone, besides her ghost — but somehow it felt like something she would do.

She turned the page, looking for their reunion, but found that the next entry was dated weeks later.

28 March 1923, Glasgow

The days have been too full and too happy to find a scrap of time to add my thoughts here, so in short: one of my fears was unfounded, the other not.

The Doctor loves me as I love him. It is the truth that will chart the course of our lives together, from now until the stars all burn from the sky.

And Mother and Father will never forgive me.

The pages that followed were filled with hastily jotted down notes, interspersed with little keepsakes: a visitor’s guide to the Kelvingrove art museum, a program from an orchestral performance, a short love letter scrawled on university stationary in handwriting Clara had to assume belonged to her ghost. She folded that one back up without reading it, then skipped ahead to the date on the back of the wedding photo and found that her great-grandmother had written:

12 May 1923, Glasgow

Tomorrow we will make our farewells to Scotland and start the long journey south to Egypt, but today marks the beginning of a different and far greater adventure: marriage!

It will be a very small wedding, with only a few of the Doctor’s friends and cousins in attendance, but I find I do not care. I get to keep him, and any other concerns fade out of existence in the blinding light of that fact.

Tomorrow will also be two years since our first meeting in Cairo, and I am looking forward to revisiting the scene of that fateful interaction, this time as a married woman. How wonderful it is to have not lost that intriguing stranger to the shuffle of humanity, after all.

The journal shifted in tone after that, chronicling their journey from Glasgow to Cairo and the beginnings of their life together in Egypt, as the Doctor returned to his archaeological work in the field. In the summer of ‘23, her great-grandmother decided to take up drawing, and many of the pages that followed were filled with pencil sketches of the monuments of Egypt, the series of small homes they lived in, and the familiar face of her ghost, growing ever more accurate as her skill improved.

Clara thought of her own childhood habit of sketching his face on any blank corner of paper she could find, and wondered how they might compare. Her great-grandmother’s drawings were occasionally dated, and by the spring of 1925, the journal shifted back to being more of a travelogue again, though the entries were more sparse than they had been before, and sketches continued to fill the margins.

15 June 1925, London

Even in the height of summer, London feels grim and drab after two years in Egypt. When I said as much, the Doctor merely laughed and pointed out that it could be worse: it could be Glasgow. He has spent so many years now, off and on, living in Egypt, moving from dig site to dig site as the work demands, and I think he is ready for a more settled existence for a while. The position at the British Museum suits him well, and will provide us with a more stable foundation on which to build our life — and as much as I enjoyed our transient circumstances in Egypt, there is a certain allure to building something lasting together. A new sort of adventure.

I had hoped that with our return to London, and after two years of marriage, Mother and Father might have found a way to forgive me, but it seems that door is forever closed. I am determined to focus on the future instead, and on the family the Doctor and I mean to create together.

Reading that, Clara felt a pang of heartsickness for this woman she had never known. She had been close with both of her parents before their deaths, and was grateful to have had that time with them. She couldn’t imagine her parents being so angry with her that they would shut her out of their lives, but scanning ahead, she didn’t see any indication that her namesake’s parents had ever relented. Instead, the journal dealt with the process of settling back into life in London, and her great-grandmother’s dreams for the future, with small sketches peppering the edges of each page.

As she turned the pages, Clara’s eyes caught on the rare use of colour in one of her drawings, and with a surprised blink she realised she recognised it as the stained glass window over the front door of her Gran’s house. The journal entry beside the drawing read:

1 August 1925, London

The House, as I have determined it must always be called, is a ridiculous rambling Victorian thing, all gabled roofs and ornate woodwork and stained glass windows, such as the one I have drawn here. It is entirely too large for the two of us, but it was love at first sight for both the Doctor and myself, and no house we have considered since has compared. At least there will be enough room for our ever-growing legion of books. And there are several bedrooms — perhaps it is too ambitious of me to imagine them someday filled, but despite all our failed efforts, I remain hopeful.

Having dealt so closely with her Gran’s personal details the last few weeks, Clara knew that she would be born barely three years later, in late August of 1928. Her great-grandmother died only a few months after that, and it felt strange to read of her hopes for a large family, knowing it didn’t happen in the end. Through reading her journal, it had become clear to Clara that they were alike in many ways, but on that one point they couldn’t be more different. She enjoyed children, she wouldn’t have become a teacher if she didn’t, but she’d never felt drawn to motherhood. She was almost the same age as her namesake had been when her Gran was born, and she couldn’t imagine having a baby now, much less hoping for multiple children.

Of course, she wondered if she might feel differently if she’d had the sort of fairy tale romance her great-grandmother had had. Starting a family with someone she loved felt a lot less abstract than the vague idea of having a baby. Maybe that was the difference. She could certainly understand her great-grandmother wanting children with the Doctor—

At that thought, it all came back to her in a rush, everything her ghost had revealed that afternoon, the truth of her Gran’s parentage — and with it, one of the few facts about him that she’d managed to wring out of him as a child. With dread turning her stomach, Clara quickly flipped ahead to the autumn of 1927, scanning the journal entries for any indication, any clue. There was a brief note in early November about plans for Christmas, but then nothing until:

1 December 1927

He is gone. He is gone, and I will never, ever recover.

The bruises may heal, but I will not.

Tears sprung to Clara’s eyes, but she blinked them away, reading on.

8 December 1927

Is it the House that is haunted, or me?

She stared at the words, knowing that almost eighty-seven years later, the house was very much haunted. She turned the page, feeling the tears begin to roll down her face.

12 December 1927

Perhaps it is only my mind playing tricks on me, but perhaps it is something more. Perhaps there is some magic that ties us together even now. I live in hope — for what other way is there to live, now?

The following pages were full of nothing but undated sketches of the Doctor, looking exactly as Clara knew him. I made that promise to the only person I’ve spoken to since my death. The only one who could ever see me, her ghost had told her, not twelve hours earlier. Gripped with the need to know, she turned the journal pages quickly, looking for her great-grandmother’s familiar handwriting amongst all the drawings of her ghost, until finally:

3 February 1928

I have counted out the days and counted them again. My memory of last November is far from clear, but there is no mistake in this: I am with child. And this is no parting gift, no consolation prize from the universe, only one more tragedy to heap onto the pile. This baby will not have the Doctor’s eyes or his smile or his laugh. This baby—

How am I to endure this? Alone in the House we had hoped to fill, how can I possibly find the strength to face what is to come?

I continue to dream of him, to have visions, even. Some days I fear I have gone mad with the grief, but other days, those visions are my only comfort, those dreams my only reprieve from the nightmares that plague me. Something in my heart refuses to believe that the Doctor is truly gone. Something compels me to speak to him, and hope that he will, somehow, impossible though it may be, hear me and respond.

And then:

8 February 1928

They are not visions, and I am not mad.

But more importantly — I am no longer alone.

Clara set down the journal, taking a moment to swipe at the tears on her face. She had known, deep down she had known that she would find only pain at the end of this story, and yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself. I know you won’t stop digging until you’ve uncovered all the gory details, he’d said to her, and he’d been right, of course he’d been right. Her ghost had tried to protect her from this, but she had charged ahead anyway, disregarding his warnings.

And that edge of the mystery still called to her, the unanswered questions still nagged at her. However much it hurt, she had to know. Picking up the journal again, she skipped ahead, flipping pages until she reached her Gran’s birthday.

21 August 1928

It is a girl. I have named her Margaret Eleanor, as we so long discussed. Our little Margot. None of this is her fault, and I do not love her less for it. I only wish I could love her more. I wish my heart were still capable of it. I wish I could have greeted her arrival with the joy she deserves. I wish I didn’t have to welcome her into the world alone.

The more days pass, the more I am convinced the Doctor meant what he said as a final goodbye. The last six months with him have revived me in a way I didn’t think possible, and to have that ripped away, to once again be facing the prospect of a future without him—

‘You are stronger than you know,’ he told me, and I wish I could believe it.

Even more, I wish he was still here. In whatever form, I wish he was here. Perhaps in time I will see him again. I must hold to that hope, for it is the last one I have.

The journal entries stopped after that, and again the pages were filled with sketches: a round-faced newborn with wispy hair, bits of the house that Clara recognised easily, and the Doctor, always the Doctor.

Turning the pages quickly, she came across one last entry in the journal, the following pages all blank. Her great-grandmother’s familiar handwriting was no longer small, neat loops, but instead scrawled wide with anguish, and Clara felt her heart skip a beat at the date at the top of the page.

23 November 1928

Where have you gone, my love? Why have you left me?

I suppose I cannot fault the dead for not keeping their promises. You did not choose this fate for us, and I do not blame you for it. I only wish it could have been different. I wish that we had a second chance at life, a second chance to build for ourselves everything we dreamed our life together could be.

I cannot live like this. I will not.

I will follow you, my love, wherever it is that you have gone. Wherever you are now, I will find you. As I followed you to Thebes and to Glasgow, I will follow you now.

I will see you again.

Wait for me.

Clara stared in horror at the final words on the page. Seized with a sudden nauseous dread, she dropped the journal on the coffee table and bolted up from the sofa, lurching towards her laptop on the desk across the room. Her hands trembled as she pulled up a search page, pouring out every scrap of relevant family information she could think of, ending with 23 November 1928 suicide.

The internet, that modern wonder, took only moments to confirm her fears. Tears filled her eyes again, blurring the screen in front of her, but she fumbled her way through printing the eighty-six year old coroner's report. She snatched up the paper still warm, jammed her feet into her trainers and pulled on a coat, grabbed her keys and her purse, and was out the door before she could change her mind.

Chapter 4: The Past

#Whouffaldi #Twelve/Clara #Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor #Twelfth Doctor #Clara Oswald #Clara and the Doctor #Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #This Isn't A Ghost Story #This Isn't A Ghost Story chapters #my writing #available on AO3 under the same title and username #please comment and reblog!

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incarnateirony · 6 years

Text

An apology, but a story.

Okay guys, sorry for uh, talking so much about Pillowfort lately. I do mean it when I say I’m still here to stay until Tumblr totally dies, and I know I’ve been posting a LOT of PF content, but I’m also trying to help tailor an environment over there where this fandom can thrive. Add in momma’s heart attack and coma and my dash has been a hot mess and bare bones of my usual content, and I apologize.

But at the same time I’d like to sort of tell a bit of a flashback story of social media, fandom, and why I really do hope the best for Pillowfort. Some people are too young to remember the slow death of Livejournal, and I’m having like, flashbacks from that. I wasn’t in SPN fandom itself at the time but I was on LJ, so if you’re

worried about your friends leaving

intent on sticking to tumblr hell or high water

kind of upset at some friends trying to manage both

Let me give a little bit of history to explain what people are doing right now and why.

Long long ago, in a digital world far away when the internet still screamed at you when you connected to it, fandom wasn’t really globalized like it is. Twitter didn’t exist. Eventually Facebook was a hot new commodity not everybody adopted immediately. Tumblr wasn’t a sparkle in anybody’s eye.

Fandom was mostly relegated to php forums and places like Livejournal. Livejournal proved to be -- at the time -- one of the best methods to engage in fandom. You could have your own journal, but you could also join communities with your account and comment on long discussions.

There were weaknesses of this to be sure. Notifications were pretty raw to nonexistent compared to how we know of them modernly. You had to basically manually check the comm to stay on top of things, and what was said in that comm was choked to that comm. Now, that had its strengths: you could control the community and posts, ergo minimizing flame wars, but it made fandom a bunch of pigeonhole wings and, to be honest, echo chambers. Lots of things got missed, overlooked, and what have you. And god help you if you pissed off a big name fan in your wing that owned one or most of the communities you went to. Replies and the ilk were pretty limited on what you could do, too. But it was something. It was more than just a standard forum. You could still try to cross-engage.

Then came the LJ Purge, which... is pretty much identical to the Tumblr purge. New rules banishing NSFW to the depths of the internet, some out of control censorship, targeting all LGBT content no matter how pure as NSFW and explicit -- you name it. They didn’t really have wildly out of control filterbots, that’s a new modern invention just to shit in our bin a little better, but you get the idea. What happened -- and is still, more quietly, now that the shock has passed -- to Tumblr is what happened to LJ. People lost mountains of work.

Now, LJ didn’t die overnight. It died over the course of a few years. Some people left fairly quickly, others tried to stay aboard. For example, Destiel fandom was fairly young at the point the LJ Purge kicked off, and were already sort of outsiders among the fandom newsletters that were more Gen or Wincest doused at that point because -- well, duh -- they had a several year running start on that platform. The communities, as above, were really regulated. There just wasn’t room to breathe. Sure, they had their own comms, but once material started vanishing, they were much more eager to, en masse, migrate to a new platform. And yes, some stayed behind longer, because people, even in shipland, aren’t a borg.

Other communities, like gen or Wincest, stayed behind longer. They had years of built up work and huge communities they were attached to there and it was a lot harder for them to let that all go. But it didn’t get better. More quietly, once the hysteria ended, people just lost their will to continue to use livejournal and they more dribbled across.

Some went to Dreamwidth back then. Some went to tumblr. Long term, tumblr worked for everybody until now. Dreamwidth was pretty much Livejournal, minus censorship, plus a few bells and whistles but it worked for a few people, but let’s face it -- that’s not where central fandom ended up.

Now, people are talking alternatives. Some are saying to go back to Dreamwidth. I refuse.

Because there’s a reason it wasn’t the most successful platform in the past and we’ll go back to completely segregated fandom like before and

because certain aspects of fandom that DID go to Dreamwidth and stay there, have still been there, and are a huge thorn in the side to almost anyone with their head screwed on straight, Destiel fandom or not. J2 tinhats are the eternal asscramps of the fandom and they’ve squatted on dreamwidth for their crazy ass tinhat page for years, god knows they probably went to adjacent communities, god knows how ingrained they are into it, and I am NOT willing to deal with that level of horse shit again.

Pornhub tried a grab, that didn’t work, as it shouldn’t, for a list of reasons as long as my arm; Mastodon was suggested, but has a huge issue in some of its other channels that people don’t want to float in the vicinity of.

And then there’s Pillowfort.

So look, Pillowfort is young, it is a smolbabe. In a few months it went from 4K users to 25K users and is growing innumerably by the day. Its servers are struggling. That turns some people off. I get that. But that isn’t permanent.

So first of all, early pioneers are what make migrations work. Just like LJ had its initial members, and then tumblr had its early migrators, places like Pillowfort can be the same. Dreamwidth already has its foundations. That’s redundant, and foundations I’m not even going to touch, much less the regressive, divisive form of communities that will segregate all of us again. It’s fine if you aren’t one of the first people to take up the platform. The people ahead of you will start laying down content and communities and, if it works out, you can join in when you’re ready.

So what makes Pillowfort so fucking special?

Okay, so check it out. On tumblr, we’re used to reblogging shit into the bowels of the internet. As Pillowfort grows it, too, has that capability with some differences.

The boldest difference is that when you reblog, your opinion doesn’t get attached to the end of the post. It just reblogs the base post. Some people initially complained and thought that was the loss of a feature but came to realize it’s a blessing.

You see, that means someone can’t kidnap your post with a shitty opinion to reblog it to their friends with a shitty opinion that all attach their heckling shitty opinions. Like, let’s say it’s someone that’s Destiel fandom reading this. Ever had an anti shit reblog your post and it run wild? Well, now, if they try to reblog it, all they reblog is... your Destiel post. Thanks for that.

So how do we actually say what we need to?

Well, fam, it incorporated elements from LJ/DW, in having threaded replies. Multiple threads if so needed. The threaded replies are capable of housing just about anything an OP has. So a blog post has, alongside Like/Reblog notifications, comments. Open the post, read the comments, start an actual conversation with some merit. Did some douchebag come to spam your comments since they can’t reblog? No problem, delete their shitty comments and block them, problem solved.

But it doesn’t end there.

See, like LJ, PF has communities. While your post can reblog just about anywhere just like on tumblr, you can blog or reblog them into the communities you follow. Anyone following that community, whether they follow you directly or not, gets that turning up in their feed, maximizing your spread. So sure, it’s a young platform and you only have 20 followers or whatever, but if you make a general Supernatural style post and blog it to the SPN com, 300 people (at current) see it. If you post something to the Destiel comm, over 200 people see it. It’s a way to even find new accounts and friends.

If you don’t like something that’s turning up in a community, you can blacklist shit. And/or find a more appropriate community if it gets out of hand to you.

When you make your own communities you can have internal discussions or blog in/out posts, you can set rules, promote moderators, remove or ban problem users, and generally control the flow of your community to keep out shitlords. But, if for example, you subscribed to a community that turns out to be secretly run BY a shitlord because, IDK, maybe they don’t like that you think Sam is bi or something, most of these communities are large and blog in/out/engageable enough that you won’t lose your contacts, you WILL find your people over time, and you won’t be completely choked off to a singular abyss.

So the base beat is

PF treats every single post like any root post on an LJ/DW comm, but is able to be reblogged from/to communities or your own blog page as freely as tumblr. PF takes the best concepts of current and previous fandom platforms in its base application and lays a groundwork that literally all of us can prosper on if it survives and continues.

But that’s the catch.

And it’s cool if you aren’t ready to completely take that leap yet. I get that.

“I kinda like PF but it doesn’t have X feature-”

Okay look, PF is a smolbabe, like I said. It’s in beta. The thing is, they’re adding things every day. They have a dev list like 2 pages long for goals and things are getting crossed off and added like, biweekly. It might already be on their list to add. And if it’s not, guess what?

The staff actually give a shit and react to questions and concerns. There’s entire beta groups to talk about features with bugs, and/or features that should be added or adjusted. There’s a comm to talk directly to the staff about things.

A small, young platform needs people willing to be out there saying what would improve the experience. So if you go there, you’re not just fandom pioneers, you’re social media pioneers if you so choose to be. It’s not mandatory. You can just fan in your space how you want. Or you can go to the beta groups and staff groups and tell them what you think would improve the experience.

And again, it’s okay if you aren’t willing to move right now.

I’m not moving entirely. I’m double blogging, and will return to my regularly scheduled blogging on tumblr here soon, now that my life is calming down and I got most of my PF heavy lifting out of the way. But I want to make a nest in case this does pan out to be the next forward horizon, rather than taking a step back to something like Dreamwidth that segregates us all again. I want to help them build that platform.

But I’ll still be here with you guys.

But if you’ve felt like friends are abandoning you

Please try to understand the history, please understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, and just try to encourage them to cross blog where you can/will engage. And if you’re feeling daring one day? Try to poke your head into PF.

I have one remaining key that I’m willing to give a really good fandom creator. I gave one to a meta-mind and I’d like this to go to a heavy, inclusive gif creator, because that’s still a sparse art on PF. You’d be the belle of the ball just for crossposting your work, in a place that DOESN’T have a threat of it getting deleted when tumblr throws a hissyfit. Just post on both. Tada. Suddenly you’re the popular kid.

If you’re interested, if you poke your head in, check my recent post listing communities that are growing rapidly and the ilk to know where to get your feet wet. Or send me a DM. I’ll help.

We good? Cool.

#supernatural #fandom #fandom history #pillowfort #tumblr exodus #livejournal apocalypse

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reesewestonarchive · 6 years

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EASTHALLOW | Masterpost | Project Page | Project Preview | ko-fi, if you like my work :p

tag list - ask to be added or removed || @forlornraven @infinitelyblankpage @writingmyassoff @theforgottencoolkid @indecentpause @moonlesbi4n @wordsbyagremlin @reining-in-the-fire-writing @chaos-reign @maximillianvalentine @kly-writes

The car trunk sounds too final to Elijah's ears as he closes it, the last of his bags tucked in haphazard amongst his books, music. Sean stands nearby, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He's followed Elijah around like a lost puppy all night, and now that Elijah's packed, seems at a loss.

"I'm sorry--"

Elijah holds up a hand, shakes his head. "Spare me the bullshit, all right? Just..." He looks around the parking lot, at the apartment he couldn't've afforded if it weren't for Sean's income, anywhere but at Sean. "You had plenty of chances to show you gave a shit about me."

A time in the past, Elijah doesn't doubt Sean did care; you don't spend this long with someone, six years of your life, without getting a little attached. Just... he has a shitty way of showing it, and Elijah's really not interested in hearing scripted apologies from a guy that's been cheating on him for the better part of a year.

"I'll be in touch for the rest of my things."

And that's that. Sean doesn't look upset; just... resigned. Like he's been waiting for this.

Fucker. Rage boils under his skin, and Elijah grips his keys in hand. Steps to the driver's door, wrenches it open, and, as Sean says, "Elijah--", his voice edged with desperation, slams the door behind him.

The drive home is a good fifteen hours, but Elijah straight shots it, running on iced coffee and espresso shots from gas stations. His bank account's barely prepared for the trip, and for the last stretch of a hundred miles he watches his gas gauge with anxiety gnawing at a pot in his stomach, but when Elijah sees the rusted EASTHALLOW, POPULATION: 203 sign swinging from it's pole off the road, tension ebbs from his every nerve.

Fog, thick and mystical, covers the entire town, and the chill to the air has him turning up his heat for the first time all trip. Trees have already shed their leaves for the season, and the place looks entirely too fucking barren. He thinks about the bustling city he just came from, the constant chatter and noise, but if he opened his window right now, he's certain the engine of his car would be the only sound for miles.

Peaceful. Fuck, Elijah didn't know he'd missed it this much. His chest feels tight, his throat dry, as he drives through the city towards his parent's home.

The farm hasn't changed, besides a fresh coat of off-white paint and a few new shrubs lining the wrap around porch. The roof needs work, some of the shutters flap in the wind, but it's home. Sturdy and stable and standing, and Elijah, suddenly exhausted, shuts his car off, rubs his hands against his face, and just... is.

Thoughts and memories of the last six years surface in Elijah's head. How many times did he call his parents to tell them he couldn't come home for the holidays? How many times did he put Sean before his family, and for what? For Sean to bring some twink home and throw it all away, proving everyone in Elijah's life right that Sean never was going to settle down.

He pounds his fist on the wheel, honking the horn in passing, and sighs when he sees his mother standing out on the porch, no hesitation.

She waves, tugs her robe tighter around her, and rushes out across the muddied grass to his car. She bounces on her heels while he unbuckles, and launches herself into his arms, her embrace tight and loving, once he stands.

The air crushed from his lungs makes him grunt, but he says nothing, just reaches around his mother's shoulders for a hug, resting his head on top of hers.

He'd missed her. So much. "Hi, Mama," he says.

Amanda's voice is tight when she says, "Don't 'Hi, Mama,' me, Elijah Andrew. You haven't been home in five years, and you show up out of the blue like this..." She pulls back. Her eyes water as she takes him in. "Oh, you're too thin. Have you even been eating? What's city life done to you?"

Elijah offers a tight smile. "Been busy. I'm sorry I haven't been home sooner."

With a smack to his arm, she says, "That's right. You're gonna make it up to me, too." Then, she peers around him, into the car, and raises an eyebrow. Elijah's heart speeds up in his chest. "And the boy?"

He knew he'd have to tell her when he got here, but... shit, he'd rather not. The longer he can avoid the pity, the better. "About that..."

But before he can continue, movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He grips his mother's arm in hand and tugs her close, starts to say, "Someone's over there," because he doesn't recognize them--not his father, not one of the farmhands--when his mother gives a little wave to the figure limping around the side of the house.

"Josh," she says, calling to the figure, and Elijah's not sure if he feels too hot with rage or too cold with dread, "come say hello!"

"Mama," he says, under his breath as Josh makes his way across the yard, "you didn't tell me Josh was here."

Raising an eyebrow, Amanda says, "And you didn't tell me you were coming home. Don't play games with me. I'm your mother. I'll always win."

While the rest of the town stayed the same, Josh is nothing like Elijah remembers. He's changed his hair, a bright, platinum blond so unlike the black hair of his parents. His eyes are bruised, his face gaunt. His jacket looks like it went twelve rounds with a box cutter, and Josh is, inexplicably, taller. How is he taller?

Still, he steps forward, into Elijah's space, and rests a hand on Elijah's shoulder, grips him tight, and Elijah wants nothing more than to jerk out of his grasp and punch him.

A crow caws in the distance, and Josh offers a smile--not enough and too late and Elijah shakes under the weight, the expectation of it--and Josh says, "Welcome home, bro."

///

“Is it broken?” Josh asks, his voice thick and nasally, as Amanda pokes and prods at his nose. Blood oozes down the front of his shirt.

Behind them, Elijah opens the freezer, digs out a bag of peas, and rests it against his knuckles. Amanda scowls at him.

“What a nice fucking way to greet your brother,” Josh says. “Haven’t seen you in ten years. Least you could do is not punch me in the face.”

Still, Elijah says nothing. Flexes his fingers under the peas, shaking, and exhales with relief. Not broken. It’s been a while since he last decked someone. He definitely made some fucking mistakes. “Rich, coming from you.”

“Will you two stop it?”

Josh points Elijah’s way, then says, his voice taking on an amusing whine as he says, “He started it!”

Opening his mouth to retort, Elijah pauses as he hears the back screen door creak open. “Thought I heard yelling,” someone says, and—

Oh. Elijah drops his gaze to the floor, because—he’d meant to call his father. Text him, something. But the farther west he got, the more anxiety that pooled in his stomach at the idea of his father’s disappointed gaze.

Elijah’s not good with disappointment.

“Get into another fight with a bull, Josh?” his father asks; he still hasn’t noticed Elijah, leaning against the counter next to the fridge, shrinking in on himself. Amanda, at least, called. Elijah hasn’t spoken to his father since the day he left.

Josh scoffs. “Yeah fucking right,” and silence falls over the room. Elijah’s heart thumps in his throat, his ears, and he lifts his gaze, looks right into his father’s eyes.

“I’ll be damned,” Allan says, his voice soft as he shrugs his jacket off at the dining table. “Elijah."

His mouth opens on an apology, but Allan steps forward, with such intensity that Elijah'd back up, if he had anywhere to go. His tongue trips on words he should've said years ago, his fingers twitch, and he can see Josh and Amanda watching with wide eyes. Allan isn't scary, and there's no reason to be, but Elijah still shakes in his sneakers like he's bracing for impact.

But when Allan touches him, it's not with a fist, how Elijah had greeted his estranged brother, but with arms around his shoulders. Allan holds him tighter than Amanda had, and the bag of peas clatter to the floor as Elijah reaches up to grab at his father's overshirt.

Behind them, Josh mutters, "You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Dad welcomes him home with open arms?"

"You came home sick with withdrawal, Joshua," Amanda says, finally stepping back from her son. Quiet, Allan pulls away, wipes his eyes with the careful practice of a man who cries, and tries not to show it, and claps a hand on Elijah's shoulder before stepping back to the entry way to take his boots off.

He can't know, but Elijah's not convinced he doesn't know, somehow. Why he's here. Why he didn't call.

While Amanda and Josh argue, Elijah pocks the peas up and sets them back in the freezer, and heads upstairs.

His room sits at the end of the hall--or it did, when he left for the city. The floorboards creak under his feet, and the joints in his hand protest as he carries his bag, but he goes through, admiring the photographs on the wall as he goes. The year his soccer team made it to semi-finals. The year he and Josh were in boy scouts. Josh and his junior prom date.

They still looked identical, then, before Josh hit heroin hard, before he got his girlfriend pregnant and skipped town. Before he started bleaching his hair, before the piercings and the scars from tattoos and laser removal. Before rehab, and relapse.

The years have been kinder to Elijah that they've been to Josh. Elijah might've worked ten hour shifts on his feet four nights a week, but stress found ways to gain weight where being a druggie turned Josh into skin and bones.

He rubs his forehead. Things used to be so much fucking easier.

"Walk down memory lane?" Josh says, grinning, as he meets Elijah at the end of the hallway. A nice, purple bruise grows on the bridge of his nose. Pride swells in Elijah's chest, seeing his handiwork. Another punch might break it. Elijah's got the muscle memory for it fresh in his mind, now.

"Fuck off," Elijah says, his voice more tired than he'd intended. If luck sides with him, Allan will save grilling him for tomorrow morning, and Elijah can spend the night tossing and turning, anxious about it.

"You don't have to be so mean," Josh says.

Elijah pushes past him, into his bedroom, and...

It's different. Not entirely, but his once overly-large room has been crammed to one side, his twin bed sitting against one wall, his desk at the end of it. Across the room, under the window, there's another bed. Messy, clothes piled on it from the closet, and--

"No." Elijah's voice goes hard, edged with anger. He just wants to sleep, and if Josh is doing fuck all across the room, there's no way he'll get any rest. He'd rather sleep in his car. "No fucking way."

"Come on, bro," Josh says, but his eyes are twinkling. Bastard knows just how to get under Elijah's skin. "It'll be just like old times. We can stay up all night watching horror movies and eating junk food!"

Elijah rubs his free hand over his face. Contemplates actually sleeping in his car, just for a second, before his neck starts to ache. Sharing his childhood room with his twin--honestly. "I'll sleep on the couch."

"You wanna explain that to mom?"

"Mom already knows we hate each other," Elijah says, surprised to see the quick flinch that passes Josh's face. "Would she really be so surprised to hear I can't stand to look at you, much less sleep in the same room?"

A beat passes, and Elijah knows he should apologize, but Josh shrugs and backs into his room. "Fine, little brother," he says, and oh, fuck him. "Sleep well."

The lock clicks into place as he shuts the door, and Elijah means to make his way back downstairs when a chill runs down his arms, either side. A quick glance at the window shows it's open, but--

There's... something out there. Elijah squints down at it, opens his mouth and takes a deep breath. He means to call for his father, let him know one of the cattle got loose, when he looks closer, and--

It's not cattle. It's not--hell, Elijah doesn't know what it is. He blinks his eyes a few times, watching the black figure make its way across the yard, slow, slow step by slow step. It pauses, about halfway to the treeline, and peers around the yard, but Elijah ducks back into the shadows to watch, and it continues on its way in short, jerky, inhuman movements towards the trees. Twice the size of a human, hunched over, and Elijah can't make out features, not well, but...

What the fuck? He blinks, once, twice, three times. Closes his eyes tight and opens them and--oh.

It's gone. No trace of it. Elijah turns the crank on the window, presses his ear to the screen, but... not a sound. Just the wind rustling leaves across the ground.

A chill spreads across Elijah's back. He's exhausted. He's got seventeen hours of car on him, and ten hours of packing before then, interspersed with arguing with Sean, and..

"Shut the window, Elijah, what're you thinking?"

Amanda stands at the top of the stairs, her head cocked to the side. Elijah closes and locks the crank, clearing his throat.

"Sorry, just..." He makes a vague gesture. How does he even begin to explain what he saw? "Thought I saw one of the cows wandering the yard."

Scowling, Amanda starts to head back downstairs. "I told your father he needed to repair that fence. We'll go out and check on it, make sure. You just get some rest."

Elijah's arm shoots out, though, and grabs her wrist. She raises her eyebrows and says, "Elijah, what has gotten into you?"

"Sorry, Mama," he says, and turns back to the window. Still clear. "Just... my eyes playing tricks on me, is all."

"You sure you don't want Dad to check?"

Elijah shakes his head. No. Fuck no. Assuming, for a second, that thing was real, Elijah doesn't want his father anywhere near it.

His mother's gaze is piercing, right through his soul, and for the first time, Elijah's relief at being home turns sour. "No. Look, Mama, I'm sure it's the drive. I'm just tired, is all." He presses a quick kiss to the side of her head. Ice crawls down his neck, with his back to the window, but he can't do much about it. He says, "Josh has my room?"

"Oh, right. Sorry, sweetie. We turned the other into a craft room." She at least looks a little ashamed. "You're welcome to the air mattress."

It sounds pretty good, but the idea of a couch, ready to go, sounds even better. So much for sleeping in his car--he'd rather not awaken with nightmares of that... thing scraping at his window.

His car. That's what he should've done. Hit the panic button on his keys, scare the thing. Elijah could've really found out if he was just making shit up.

"Can I sleep on the couch?" He shrugs, tries not to crumple under his mother's gaze. "Just... prefer sleeping alone."

The moment Amanda finally rolls her eyes seems to come too slow, and Elijah exhales a shaky breath. "Fine. Don't come crying to me when Josh wakes you up at five in the morning to go running, though." Her expression softens, and she reaches out to brush her fingers against Elijah's cheek. "I'm so glad you're home."

He smiles, small and sad, and grabs her wrist in hand. "Me too, Mama."

"How long will you be staying?"

With a laugh, Elijah says, "How long will you have me?"

"You weren't laid off, were you?"

Ouch. It shouldn't hurt, but it does. "No, no, I just had to cash in on some PTO before year end." The lie burns his tongue, a sharp spark against his teeth. If Amanda catches him, she doesn't show it.

"Hm. Maybe through the holidays, then."

He nods. "Yeah, 'course."

She stands on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on the top of his head. "I missed you so much, Elijah. It's just not the same without you here." Her voice is sad, but when she pulls back, she's smiling. "Farmer's market in the morning. Eight thirty."

He grimaces. Knows he should agree, but what comes out of his mouth is, "Mom, I hate farmer's markets. Isn't there--"

"No buts about it, Elijah. You owe your mother how many years of day trips and quality time?" She turns on her heel. "Eight thirty. Good night."

His father's asleep in the front room, downstairs, the television blaring late night talk shows. A low rumble sounds from the chair, probably the massage function, and there are ice packs on Allan's shoulder. Still, he looks comfortable, so Elijah only turns down the television a few notches, drapes a blanket over his father's lap, and makes his way toward the family room.

The family room houses the biggest window in the house, too. Elijah makes up the couch with blankets from the storage trunk, one eye on the window, but all he can see are dog slobbers on the outside. No dog, either, no bed, no bowl.

The neighbor's then, or his father's insistence on no animals in the house still applies to man's best friend.

His joints crack as he crawls onto the couch and buries his head into the pillows. Exhaustion burrows into his bones and he sighs, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders. His clothes smell like the fried food he'd picked up on his trip home, like gasoline from when he'd spilled it, and Amanda had been kind enough not to mention it.

Twenty four hours ago, he was sleeping curled up under Sean's arm, stressed but happy, and look at him now. Homeless, unemployed.

Hell. If that thing out there wanted to eat him, Elijah'd welcome it with open arms.

#easthallow #my writing #excited vibrating #sorry mobile

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shcotingstar · 6 years

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what’s up, i’m blossom, i go by any pronouns, and am currently in the est timezone ! i got benched for a week today, but at least soon i get to get a little bit closer to my goal of taking a shot in every country, so there’s that ! i’m really not that interesting or funny, but sometimes i say dumb things & people think i’m joking ! that’s all there’s to know about me. FIND HER PINTEREST HERE.

moving to the main attraction: andy ! the world’s piss poor job of a psychic. i’m extremely excited for her, and hope you come to be, too ! check under the cut for a short bio & some wanted connections.

( LANA CONDOR, GENDERFLUID, SHE/HE/THEY ) — ✧ that looks like ANDROMEDA ISLEY-QUINZEL! they’re the TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD CHILD of PAMELA ISLEY & HARLEEN QUINZEL (ADOPTED). [ they are also an UNDERGRAD at paragon. ] i hear they’re DEBONAIR & GREGARIOUS, but tend to be CALLOUS & RANCOROUS. their file says that their power is PRECOGNITION.

tw : ( parental ) death, ( family ) abuse, blood ment, teen pregnancy, dissociation ( sort of ), mentions of depression

born on a blistering gotham day, andromeda was the child of a sixteen-year-old heiress with a long string of bad choices behind her. she was seen as an inconvenience, a stain on their family’s spotless reputation.

she was very barely tolerated in her own home. any fraction of disobedience or insolence was seen as ungratefulness. she was constantly having her mother’s actions thrown against her, even at such a young age.

but andy didn’t let it break her spirit. she worked harder, trying to reach a goal she couldn’t even see. she was put into ballet when she was only four-years-old, a sort of penance.

she was not good at it — she excelled. by the time she was seven, ballet was the only thing she did that got her the attention she so desperately craved. but between practices, when she knew she wasn’t going to get caught ( because andromeda was armed with the knowledge that it would definitely get torn from her perfectly painted nails ), she would draw.

pencils and markers and anything that she could get her hands on. she’d create collages sometimes, or flowers, men made of hearts & women made of smoke. she made universes with strokes of a brush.

it’s then it happens. she’s seven & has a rehearsal in a few days and that’s all that matters in her life. not school, nor health, nor sleep. just practice. a part of her knows this is wrong. that she’s a kid, that she’s not supposed to be working this hard for a dream that’s starting to seem unreal, but she ignores it. thoughts like that go nowhere in her life.

it’s almost like a dream. one moment she is sitting, eating dinner with her grandparents, her mother gone ( as she frequently is these days ), and she looks up to her grandmother for a flit of an eye, then away. suddenly, she is gasping, filled with mental images that aren’t fitting to what she knows the bands of her imagination to be.

❝ blood, ❞ she says, reeling, the word coming out before she even means it to, ❝ why are your hands covered in blood ? bà, why are your hands covered in blood ? ❞ her grandmother, of course, demands to know what she means, and when andy tells her she does not know, sends her away, back to her room without finishing dinner on the promise she gets some rest.

two nights later, in the middle of the night, her grandparents get an urgent call from the hospital with words of andy’s mother and an accident. she’d be in a passenger in the car of a drunk driver, and upon impact into another vehicle, had been thrown from the car and through the windshield.

by the time they get there, it is too late. they barge into the room, doctor’s standing all around, grim eyes set to the floor. a moment of silence one sees only in movies.

andy can’t take her eyes off her mother’s, glazed and empty. she’s rooted in the stop. her grandmother, however, has no such qualms. she lunges forward, grabs onto her only daughter and yells for the doctor’s to do something, uselessly pressing to a wound that had caused her to bleed out.

it is only after the fact, hours later, after the bui family leaves the emergency room, goes home, that the night’s second tragedy occurs.

the door shuts, and andy walks on numb feet towards the stairs. her eyes hurt from crying. she wasn’t close with her. her mother had not been much of a mother at all, never showing her interest or even bare minimum affection. but she was a kind, sensitive person, and the thought of her being gone hurt so badly.

( and though andy refuses to admit it to herself. there’s a nagging part of her head that knew this was going to happen. that saw it coming in a way she does not understand. )

her grandmother turns on her, looking so tired, but there’s something behind her eyes that scares the younger of the two. it looks like hatred. like fear. ❝ what are you ? ❞ she hisses. ❝ what have you done with my cháu ? meant to lead us astray ? how did you know ? ❞

andromeda has been so upset, she hadn’t noticed, but now she does. her grandmother’s hands are covered in blood, just like she had said. it doesn’t feel like some sort of coincidence.

vile is spewed at her. accusations she cannot begin to wrap her head around. there’s only so many times one can deny something without sounding uncertain, and the truth is that andy has no idea either how she knew that. she tries to explain, but all she does is further prove how much of an outsider she is. something evil. something to pray against.

they put her up for adoption the day after, and andy never gets to go to the funeral. she bounces around after that, and by a fated chance, lands in the arms of the isley-quinzels when she’s only nine.

they meet her as andromeda rosalie, the kid with the 100-watt smile with pockets of sunshine to hand out. maybe a bit sad in the eyes, and a bit too willing to speak her mind, but it all adds to the endearing qualities.

andy instantaneously grows attached with the smallest bit of preference towards harley, though she’s eternally grateful for them both. she’s adopted only a few months after that, but it isn’t until she’s eleven does she tell her family about that thing in her head.

she sits them all down, laying it all down as it as, and as she knows it. she calls it her ‘ khùng ‘ ( vietnamese for crazy ). she doesn’t think of it like it is but hopes they can understand. and she tells them even more, things she never admitted out loud.

about how she gets dreams and flashes of pictures and sometimes she sees people she knows aren’t real, but none of it ever makes sense until it’s too late. andy shows them pictures in her sketchbook, the nice one harley & pamela bought her, the kind she drew in that state. she tells them the meaning behind the ones she can.

the thorns she drew before an upsettingly ended friendship. the mirrors in the practice room of her new dance academy before she even stepped inside. the long tidal wave she drew in such a hurried frevor the day before being overcome with an overpowering cold.

andromeda is expecting the worst. but she knows she can never live here with these amazing people who help her and don’t push her in bad ways if she can’t tell them her secret. she understands they will want to see her gone, too, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

but. they aren’t angry. happy, rather, that she felt comfortable enough to tell them. and entirely willing to help andy understand herself better, and what’s going on better. her mutation. the one thing she had never considered.

without the weight of it so pressing, now knowing she has her family’s support, andromeda is a new person. she is finally given time to grow up, at her pace, and does it in every way she can. tries thousands of things she wasn’t allowed back when she was younger. she never quite realized how much of the world she was kept from.

she gets enrolled into dance academy and learns to enjoy ballet without having to constantly focus on the idea of being the best. she takes art classes on the side, grows a collection of brushes and paints and pencils.

she always paints and draws in color, but when her visions come over her, it’s in black and white. she doesn’t like to think about it, though.

she’s widely surrounded by the sort of degenerates you grow used to living in gotham, but it’s not a lifestyle that she’s ever given much thought to. she rather enjoys focusing on her hobbies, more so than causing trouble.

when andromeda gets into her teenage years, she’s attracted all kinds of attention. an overachiever & a generally beautiful person, especially with such an interesting power ― that’s what they all think of precognition. the bags under her eyes, the days of worry, the chronic migraines do not speak for themself.

along the line, she’s dubbed shooting star. affectionate, at heart, but she hears this: one day she’s going to burn up in the atmosphere. andromeda chooses to take it, run with it, wears it like a brand. she calls it her secret identity.

she’s told that in a week, it won’t matter anymore. she’ll get over it. she doesn’t.

after graduating from the academy, she takes a gap year. she calls it her forgotten year, but only to herself. she makes up elaborate stories of a string of parisian lovers and rowboating in bangladesh and a beautiful mountain in ireland.

the truth: she doesn’t remember half of it. she remembers taking a plane to europe. backpacking towards north. for months at a time, it fades out. she remembers waking up in spain in a room covered in finished canvas. zoning back in at a cafe in the netherlands with pages of her calendar missing. this is the year she learns to fear her powers.

she forces herself to go home, or at least the next best thing. paragon, double majoring in art and dance, trying to keep herself busy. andy isn’t interested in slacking, is just trying to stay awake.

soon after that, she meets them. her first real relationship. to this day, she calls them her first love in her head. it burns fast and bright, and after they end it, she’s heartbroken. rejection isn’t something she can deal with without an entire relapse in personality.

she’s told she’ll get over it in a week. it’s been five years.

andy starts looking for love in places it’s not. she wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, the perfect place for the thieves of gotham to pick it off. she falls in love with a new face every day. she’s never interested longer than a week.

it’s the kind of activity that gains a reputation. it only cheers her on.

when her brother dies, things change. andromeda’s convinced she should have known. if she could only understand her powers, maybe she would have been able to do something. if she could try harder, she’d be able to figure it out, before it’s too late.

she’s so tired of it always being too late.

but she’s spent years covering her sadness, so much so her friends become worried for her mental state even during such clear tough times, and it’s ugly and it’s terrifying, but it’s the only thing she had. during it, she took more time away.

a part of her wanted to be gone again. she went the latin america this time. brazil, then venezuela, and then colombia. but she doesn’t stay gone long. she doesn’t make peace with it, either, but she can’t let herself fall any deeper. it feels like it’s been years since she’s felt like herself.

by the time she gets back to paragon, so is quin. she doesn’t believe it at first, but soon realizes it makes sense. she’s been drawing amorphophallus titanums for days. corpse plants.

she gets back into the swing of things. starts painting in color again, for her, not whatever has been eating at her that day. she’s starting to feel a bit more human again. a lit less like something being controlled.

widely known as ‘ the dramatic one, ‘ andromeda is overly friendly with her same old love fever attitude. she makes friends of all types, as well as enemies, and even does a few palm readings on the side.

wanted connections :

best friend ! someone who she gets along with more than complacent fakeness. someone who gets her a bit more than she’d probably like. someone who gets it.

exes ! she has literal LITERAL hundreds. a new one each week, she’s the type to string someone on, but when she’s doing it she devotes the passion of a thousand suns to every molecule of their being.

gotham kid ! a person who knew that interesting little human with the sense of naivety that only creeps up on her sometimes these days. whether she enjoyed their presence or not, or even knew them before becoming an isley-quinzel, there’s plenty to work with.

something precog-y ! maybe, for once, she got it right, or at the very least tried to forewarn. or maybe she played it for kicks and gave them a fake as hell psychic reading for shits and giggles. dealer's choice.

anything else ! i’m always done for plotting, and you can message me here or at discord @ 2857.

#sidekick.intro #* ━━ ◤ ᵀᴿᴱᴹᴮᴸᴵᴺᴳ ᴮᴱᶠᴼᴿᴱ ʸᴼᵁᴿ ᴼᵂᴺ ᴳᴿᴱᴬᵀᴺᴱˢˢ / isms . ◢

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paranoidsbible · 7 years

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Uncle-Daddy’s Big Book of Deception 2.0

===Uncle-Daddy’s Big Book of Deception 2.0=== Non-profit and free for redistribution Written on July 3rd | 2017 Published on July 3rd | 2017 Extra (RED) Herring Edition For entertainment and research purposes only

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCLAIMER The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others. The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only. Please visit our blog for more PDFs and information: https://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Preface=== When I shot the PB team a PM on their blog I didn’t expect my critique to become a quick gig of helping them hammer out a guide on deception. After much consideration and a few shots of cheap tequila, I agreed to help them out. Because why not? They have a decent idea and are trying to help the pitiful users of today’s internet. So here you guys & gals go: a guide on being a deceptive bastard on the internet and preventing people from getting a good grasp on your information. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===SEO and Privacy=== So Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of those magical things everyone has to learn, to an extent, for anything they do online to be successful, especially websites and blogs. It’s also one of those things that no one would think can be applied to INFOSEC but it can. To an extent, SEO tactics can be used to further rank and quickly index red herrings and canaries. Now, one thing to remember is there are such things as Black Hat SEO, which is aimed more toward search engines than organic traffic (White SEO). The truth is, regardless what tactics you plan to use, they all have a place when it comes to preventing people finding your information. You should really give it a search and checkout the various articles, blogs and forums on SEO. Who knows, you might actually find something of use that I didn’t make mention of here. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Clone Wars=== If you’re reading this, then I’ll assume you’ve read The Paranoid’s Bible guide and the guide on OPSEC. You should have a grasp on the DOs and DON’Ts of the internet. However this will break those rules just a teensy bit in order to help you create garbage data and digital noise to obscure your real identity and information. The PB tells you that you should always use a unique username for each account and never repeat this username elsewhere, yet there is an exception to this rule: Cloning. While cloning has several names, I’m partial to the term cloning because it gets the message across—make multiple accounts across the internet using the same username but with different information concerning the basic image of its creator. When you create an account you always end up adding just a tiny bit of yourself to it. Using the ‘About Me’ or ‘Description’ or those pesky bios… you’re going to use these and differentiate each account by giving it its own persona. So while you’re following the advice of the PB team and their various guides, these cloned accounts will be vastly different. Go nuts and use your imagination but remember some simple facts. Globally, European names aren’t all that common. Look at the current global makeup of the Earth’s population. Islamic-like names of Muhammad are quite popular, as are Asian names and East Indian names. While the majority of Western sites are heavily European and Americentric, it doesn’t hurt to mix it up with a Vash or Aiko. Of course, you can then flesh it out a bit more by giving them a European or American-sounding last name and background. You want these accounts to be completely different from your own. Everything about the personas being made for these accounts are not to be related to you or your ‘main account’. You don’t want them to ever communicate with each other or touch in any way. You must keep them completely separated, which is why you’ll be making them on various forums, social media sites and chats. The more ground you cover, and the more varied the accounts are the less likely people can make a cohesive argument as why this piece of information or that data is supposed to be related to you. For example, you make an account on deviantART. They’ve a little bio app that you can adhere to your profile. So, if you made yourself a Tumblr account, then the deviantART account is to not only be different in description but also look. If you hate Undertale, then the deviantART persona loves it. You like yellow, they love blue. So on and so forth until you’ve suddenly a teenage female artist with an Asian background who moved to the U.S. and knows very little about their own Asian heritage, ergo they cling to their last name which sounds Japnese-ish. By doing this, if someone were to ever look for information to use against you or to grab your dox, they end up on a wild goose chase where they’re looking for someone who doesn’t exist. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Dirty SEO Tactics==== There are numerous ways to pollute a search engine’s results with “dirty pages”. Their page rank might not be all that existent, however they do tend to clutter around specific search terms like a username or a piece of common information laced into profiles or bios in order to throw someone off a trail. Now, to do this you need to have clean and organic looking back links. However one good way to populate an account with seemingly organic back links is to use one of the numerous “generators” that usually end up hurting your SEO in the long run. We don’t care about the long run, though. This is a short game tactic that translates into, in the long run, a small, albeit affective little trail duster meant to help cover some of your tracks. These three links are a good start; however there exist numerous “generators” that can be used. Using these three for all of your clone accounts should help you spark a little bit of a boost in their appearance on Google and Bing. With enough accounts under a similar or the same username, you can basically pollute the search results to help cover your main account with the clone accounts. https://www.freebacklinkbuilder.net/ https://sitowebinfo.com/back/ https://www.indexkings.com/ Ensure you read the PB’s “Internet Primer” to help you reduce Ads and pop-ups when using these websites. While not intentionally malicious, numerous sites, like these, can have malicious Ads or pop-ups. They also will only give you a small boost in your garbage collecting on search engines, so always ensure you stagger what accounts get hit with these and always aim to use the smallest amount of available or offered links. A handful, like 10 or 20, will look less suspicious than, say, 2500. You should also checkout forums, which can be found easily be searching for things like “Black Hat SEO” and “SEO”. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Get a Friend Involved=== Let’s say you’ve a friend that you really trust and they’re interested in privacy and security just like you. ==Here’s a suggestion:== Get them involved. Have your friend help you by using one of their own persona/clone accounts to accuse one of yours of being something that currently upsets the moral majority. From there, work in some fake dox and a handful of other pieces of information. Work those bits and pieces into a believable “dox” and have your clone/persona take it a bit too personally and start acting like you’re panicked. Delete the blog after a few days of the drama, let your friend’s persona/clone do some victory posting and move on. People will believe that that information belongs to you and follow that trail instead of looking for your real information. And, if you followed the PB’s namesake you should have very little information out there. You can even be lazy and just make your own callout blog to attack your own persona/clones. In the end, though, you just want to create enough tension and static to misdirect people. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Mean Girling=== One of the best things you can do is to create a clique of totally separate and unique accounts whenever you sign up for any account you plan to use for a period of time. This clique will be referred to as the Mean Girls as they’ll ultimately be the opposite of whatever account you create and be controlled opposition. So, the purposes of these accounts are to spread some pseudo-dox and act as controlled opposition. This means if you create a political blog that’s semi-conservative, then you create (with a VPN or proxy or TOR) 1 to 4 accounts that’ll act as the clique of Mean Girls. They’ll work their way into being legit by simply following several people or accounts or whatever and have simple responses or posts that seem to fit the opposition of whatever your (main) account is about. If you can queue posts, then do so on those accounts VIA reblogs or whatever’s popular, be it fandom junk or miscellaneous images. You won’t have to spend so much time on these accounts and they can simply run off the queues, appearing to be active. Whenever the mood strikes or you want to lay down some herrings, bring up one or more of the mean girls and have them attack you, making outrageous claims and posting (obvious to you) false information, like state, location or whatever. Ignore them, don’t respond or tell them they’re blocked. This will then cause that information to be picked up by search engines and attached to the searches for your account/username, thus giving you even more ground coverage of false information in search results. Do this enough; staggering it by months or years, and you’ll have polluted your search results while not actively doing anything bad or obvious. Then, if someone does try to dox you, they’ll have to sort through all sorts of garbage data. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Midwestern Theory=== The PB team had a guide for this one however you don’t need an entire guide for what can fit in a chapter. I won’t bore you with the excessive details but some time ago when Newgrounds was the in-thing, someone got upset at people for making the claim that there were a lot of Californians online. This led to the Midwestern netizen forced meme that quickly died out. The claim of being Midwestern is actually a good ploy when covering up your tracks. The Midwestern accent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_accent) is easy to mimic and if you watch some Youtube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DlxCDlIfh0), you should find yourself being able to pick it up and force it when need be. Ideally you should never let anyone see your face or hear your voice, yet it does come in handy just in case. Mix the various “Midwestern quirks” with setting all your accounts’ time zones to “Central” and keeping tabs of the time (https://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wtzresult.php?CiID=32119) (Always pick a random city or state in the Midwest) and mix in some research on “College towns” (https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-rankings/best-colleges-in-the-midwest/)… you should be able to spice up your bios and descriptions with something akin to a specific college team or name dropping a college or university that you go to and study at. So when you log off or leave your account, stating something like “OMFG! It’s 12:30 am! I have to go and sleep! I have a compsci class @ 9!” Keep this up with several accounts, adding in the oddball California town or Florida town, and you’ll have created enough static to keep people scoping out the wrong area for information. Though keep in mind that a lot of plant life in the Midwest tends to spread out into non-Midwestern areas. Take a picture or two of common plants around the US that appear in the Midwest, too. Figure out what’s a common park or nature preserve in the area of your false town/city and look at the common trees or plants in the area. Take a picture of something that is in your area that is in that area, too, and tag it with #Yellowstone park or whatever is popular in that area. And suddenly… you’re a Midwestern grilling in sub-zero temperatures because you want your burger. Don’t forget to show your almost zealous obsession and support for that area’s sports teams and no one is going to suspect a thing. Maybe spice in some local news from the area and make a comment on the weather (It isn’t that hard to look up a weather report through Google) and you’re good as Gold. You’re a real Midwesterner now, bro. ==Note:== You can literally apply all of the above to any state or location in the US. Get creative, spread the trash. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Positivity Feeds=== When creating clone accounts and applying the above, it’s best to leave a few accounts aside for picture or quote spam. These accounts, if they have queue functions, can serve as a means to wipe out image and search results with positive trash. This means you could create a flickr and photobucket account with nothing but .gifs of cats playing or images of literal plants. Apply this to several accounts, applying very little in the way of black hat seo, and you may be able to create what we call a positive feed. These are neutral or positive results when people do a search query on you, your accounts or usernames. They’re literally nothing but junk data yet they’re not bad either simply due to the fact it’s kittens or puppies or plants or images of cute girls doing cute things or even smug anime girls. Working through enough accounts and mixing in positivity feeds can ultimately help hide information but is also a good way to drain out any call out posts or so called dox drops. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Be a Good Person, Share=== The PB team has in their namesake guide way to opt out of Google maps, among others. Take the information for getting out of Google maps (and others) and make a flyer. Print it out, take it to Kinkos or some other print shop, or go to your local library and print some copies there. Make some wheat paste (shown below) and paste them all over your town (Put paste on wall and smooth, then put your poster up and slather on paste and smooth it on it too.). Soon a whole mess of people will be blurring out their houses on the online maps, and this in turn messes with the real estate sites to the point of anyone trying to look up your information finds a mass of blurred out houses. This causes a mix of the “Streisand effect” and reasonable deniability. ==WHEAT PASTE HOW-TO== Flour (wheat works best) Sugar 1 Cup of Water Container with a lid • Boil a cup of water. • Put 3 tablespoons of flour into a bowl • Add 10 teaspoons of cool water until it forms a runny mix • Once the water has boiled, add the runny mix to the boiling water. Stir well! • Keep stirring. The mixture will foam up while it boils, so the constant stirring is essential to keep it from bubbling over and to keep it from getting chunky. • Keep the mixture boiling for 2 minutes. • Take the boiled mix off the heat. Add 2 tablespoons or more of sugar (added strength) • Let it cool. Pour into an appropriate container for carrying with you. It will keep well for about a week. • Learn more @ https://destructables.org/destructable/wheatpaste-recipe-putting-postersbillboard-alterations • Spray with a clear sealant or hairspray to help weatherize and make the poster last longer. Police, military members, and their families can opt-out of a wealth of databases. Some take it to the extreme and have their houses blurred out. If enough people in your area begin to blur out their houses and look into other means of removing their information, you’ll soon see a bit of a trend that can affect several blocks when it comes to viewing houses on any online map. This means that you can not only safely blur out yours but it’d be near impossible to guess whose house is whose. It’s only defeated if they have an address, and that’s if it’s actually your address to begin with. Let these people rant and rave as they knock or send a malicious package to the wrong house. If anything happens, since it broke into the realm of reality, they’ll end up being arrested and charged with several crimes. ==Fun fact:== Not many places care about doxing, especially the police. Most modern “dox” is openly available information. This is why you must work toward suppressing it through opting out of websites and databases. If someone takes it from the internet to the realm of reality, lawsuits and arrests can happen. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Don’t Neglect Reality=== No one’s denying the PB’s effectiveness when it comes to lessening the overall data of yours online, however until they discuss ways to limit information bleeding offline you’ll need to take a few extra precautions outside of creating noise and lessening your data. They do have a PDF on how your privacy’s invaded, yet that only covers so much. Be a little bit nihilistic and apathetic. Don’t care as much and don’t react if you are doxed or some gets a bit too close. Ignore them; work on lessening your information. In the offline realm however you should work on creating some good for yourself. This means work on cleaning up your neighborhood, keeping your property clean and being nice to your neighbors. Look into doing some volunteering and charity work. Create some good will toward yourself and lessen the general impact in case anything comes toward you and your life. By doing this you can create a large support focus toward you and what good you’ve done. People will be in disbelief and outright call the claims made against you false. Ever wonder why politicians and famous people, even the internet famous, never get much crap and have an unusually large support behind them? What they do is quite simple: Act like a good person. With bit of charity under your belt and by observing social protocols enough by simply greeting people and saying your “Please” and “Thank yous” you’ll create an air of being someone half way decent. People will see this and any accusations made against you will result in either demand for blood or death of someone who dares attack you. Now you shouldn’t encourage the bloodlust or wanting of death, however simply using your time wisely and helping your community can act as a good cover. Someone comes around and harasses you; someone who might have power will come to your aide possibly. It also doesn’t hurt to remove your information and have it replace with falsified information. Checkout https://reddit.com/r/freebies and keep an eye out for free magazine subscriptions. Fill out a few, regardless what they are, with your home address and a burner cell’s number. The name can be made up, possibly made to match the cultural and ethnic makeup of your area. Think about it. What are the most common people in your immediate area? White? Black? Hispanic? It doesn’t matter as long as you pick the majority and follow suit with their name. It’ll help further push that static to help cover your tracks. So if you’ve a large number of Hispanic families in your area, using a Hispanic sounding first and last name on your free magazine subscriptions can help you replace all your removed database records with falsified ones. Go the extra step, load up on other freebies. Anything you don’t need or want can be donated to a number of homeless shelters or shelters for women and/or children. Gives you an extra push in being a good person too! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Afterword=== Outside of following the PB’s advice, using a VPN, a non-propriety OS and not touching social media there’s not much else you can do. While being deceptive and sprinkling lies and half truths into your conversations and online shenanigans helps, most of us who were born in the 80s and 90s have screwed up royally and will never truly be un-doxable or secure. Work toward anonymity and spread the PB’s information to as many people as you can. I should note however that your text and how you type can give you away too. Look into using a text editor and use Basic English spelling and grammar. Mix in some chat speak and some texting quirks and you should be able to keep the personas even more separated and unique.

#security #dox #privacy #infosec #cybersec

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terryblount · 6 years

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Crackdown 3 – Campaign Review

The past four months paint a bleak picture of the big-budget gaming scene as players had to endure a long series of major disappointments. Games that have been overstimulating our salivary glands for months – or even years – since their announcement only seemed to drive the wedge between publishers and us as consumers deeper and deeper. It was also no secret that long-time fans of Microsoft’s classic, Crackdown IP branded the third instalment as yet another game that missed the bar in terms of fan expectations.

It was therefore with a sense of wariness that I installed my review copy of Crackdown 3 since the current state of the AAA scene has been likened to a dumpster fire by many. Adding to my reluctance was the fact that I never played the previous games, which ruled out any sentimental attachment I might have had to the series as a whole. Ironically, Crackdown 3 turned out to be a game that I think was lambasted due to being a product of its context rather than a lack of quality.

“Quack, quack motherducker!” Apparently it is some sort of long-running gag in the series. Don’t ask me.

I am not saying that fans of this series have no reason to be upset; it has been nearly nine years since the previous game after all. However, as a player experiencing Crackdown 3 in isolation from its roots (and with curbed enthusiasm), I really had fun with it. It has no ambition to be original, nor does try to convey a compelling narrative, but what it can offer to players is a hearty sandbox experience that never tries to overreach itself.

Join the crew, Terry’s crew!

The game plays out in a world where super criminals have given rise to super mercenaries for hire thanks to an organisation simply called ‘The Agency.’ With the power of cybernetic and genetic enhancements, The Agency has ushered in a new age of peace keepers where a single ‘Agent’ can represent the military advantage of a one man army. As in the previous two games, The Agency has once again been summoned into a metropolis (called ‘New Providence’ this time round) where the power of corrupt bureaucrats has grown beyond the reach of the law.

This time the focal point of corruption lies within a super corporation named ‘Terra Nova,’ and it is up to Terry Crews… I mean Commander Jaxon and his squad to overthrow the establishment from within. In a style that is virtually identical to Middle Eath: Shadow or Mordor/War, the aim is not to kick down the front door and open fire on the person sitting behind the desk. Instead, Terra Nova must be destroyed using the one, true antidote for tyrants: Anarchy.

The leader of Terra Nova, Elizabeth Niemand. The final boss.

As such, the player will spend their time unleashing all kinds of hell on processing facilities, freeing the local resistance militia, and recapturing outposts all while mowing down masses of hired thugs. You do this until the commanders of each division get mad enough to face you head-on, at which point the opportunity presents itself to strike at the head of the snake. Once all of the lessor bosses have been blasted to kingdom come, the time will come to move against the leader of Terra Nova itself.

That weird feeling of Déjà vu

Shadow of Mordor/War is not the only book that Crackdown 3 has borrowed a few pages from. In fact, virtually all of the gameplay mechanics will feel extremely familiar to anyone that has so much as touched a sandbox or open-world game in the last ten years. Fans from Saint’s Row, Grand Theft Auto, Infamous and even Far Cry will all find something they instantly recognise within Crackdown 3’s gameplay mechanics.

Much like Shadow of War/Mordor you can even gather bits of intel on the bosses, and defeating one makes a path up to those in the higher hierarchies.

Still, the most obvious pedigree would have to be Just Cause 3 both in terms of how the game plays, and equally within the structure of the objectives. Crackdown 3 similarly puts you at the edge of the game’s world, and lets you tackle goals and activities in any order of your choosing. The player can spend an hour blowing up chemical plants manufacturing a green goop called Chimera, and then switch freely to liberating resistance soldiers who could offer additional support against the pesky local militia.

All that matters is results, and I never felt pressured to focus on one particular path. Yet, the thing is, I can list so many other games off the top of my head doing the very same thing, and this is perhaps Crackdown 3’s biggest weakness. Instead of being the stylish, next-gen, sci-fi epic that would be a more authentic continuation of 2010’s Crackdown 2, this game’s identity faces a real risk of disappearing beneath all of its more generic elements.

Why would you NOT want to play as Terry Crews!?!?!?

As I mentioned, there is not a whole lot going on in terms of the story which might make many of the tasks seem superficial, if not somewhat repetitive. The city of New Providence is small when compared to some of the dizzying, colossal sandboxes from modern entries in this genre. As such, you don’t exactly pick out an objective, stock up, and take a long trip to where you carry out your tactically-planned mission. You blow up one stronghold, before literally walking to the next one where you just rinse and repeat.

I can likewise agree with the haters that this game never fully realises its visual potential (without digressing into whether or not Crackdown 3 was visually downgraded). The world is characterised by that sterile feeling of a game engine more interested in keeping the frame rate up as opposed to depicting a lush, full environment. The developers, Sumo Digital, even removed those iconic, cel-shaded aesthetics that have always defined the visual identity of this series. This all adds up to a game that just does not have the eye-candy worthy of a nine-year wait.

I thought you said you liked it?

In spite of all this, Crackdown 3 really began to grow on me once I noticed several small, yet significant ways in which the game made an effort to keep things tight and polished. Even if the narrative fades into the background, and the gameplay never innovates beyond what is familiar to the genre, Crackdown 3 is still really good at what it does. The action is slick, volatile and it just works for a AAA title that you expect to have Terry Crews in the lead.

Good for crushing enemies or blowing up pumps!

Take the gun play for example. Here Crackdown 3 lays emphasis on the thrill of momentum and agility, so there is the option of an auto-lock on mechanic. Just bring anything into the gun’s sights, and the designated target will automatically remain locked on while you are free to jump and dash around the battlefield like a kangaroo on opioids.

It is not just purely for style though, since movement is a crucial defensive manoeuvre against the ruthless, hit-scanning AI. The game eagerly throws large numbers at the player once the fight begins, so those moves serve the purpose of making you an impossibly lively target to hit. Moreover, just one strike from the later bosses is enough to take a meaty chunk off your health bar, so getting good at dodging projectiles is anything but a wasted skill.

Agent + mining facility = flames.

The guns are also really fun even if the arsenal at the player’s disposal is not exactly vast. Each gun has been tailored for maximum efficiency towards a specific enemy type which prevents the player from just going in guns blazing. Chemical weapons are virtually useless against refinery workers in hazmat suits, but once you start bringing out the incendiary charges and explosive weapons, the fight suddenly shifts in your favour. This forms a welcome aspect of sub-strategy in addition to the already frenzy combat lighting up your screen.

On top of all this, just because I think Sumo Digital did not fully replicate the visual potential of this series does not mean the game is ugly. On the contrary, the environment is still unmistakably colourful and vibrant, and Crackdown 3’s physics engine is anything but shy when it comes to flashy, thunderous explosions. A distinctive visual style has also been worked into the vehicles and the architecture so, overall, the game is rather easy on the eyes.

Not much in the way of draw distance, but the game can be beautiful when it wants to.

Everything is more fun with friends… or not

Regrettably, I never got a chance to play the multiplayer so my apologies for not being able to comment on that. This is because, firstly, the upload speed of my shoddy internet will only end with me hurling my controller and, secondly, you need an Xbox Gold membership. Besides, in between Anthem and Apex Legends coming out within the same month, will anybody even be playing this?

It behooves me to mention that the multiplayer aspect of Crackdown 3 is called “Wrecking Zone” due to the physics-heavy gameplay mechanics. Much like Warmonger, which came out way back when PhysX cards were still a thing, the player is able to use super realistic, environmental destruction as an active advantage during gameplay. Feel like raising an entire building to the ground to flush your opponent out from hiding? Go for it. Feel like blasting a hole in the wall for a quick getaway? Sure!

Microsoft, however, does the physics calculations for you on the cloud, so you don’t have to stress about bringing the frame rate of your PC or Xbox One to its knees. Let me know how it is if you get a chance to play the multiplayer (or if you would REALLY like a review of it).

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate

So the dissatisfaction of fans is not entirely misplaced, and I had a blast playing through the relatively short campaign, but where does that leave you making your way through this review? Well, my final opinion is that Crackdown 3 cannot be called a bad game in spite of a few superficial flaws. I am truly disappointed that they did not squeeze more of the sweet visual juices from the Unreal Engine 4, and Terry Crews was hopelessly underused as a leading character.

The agency car you can summon at any time. Once you earn some additional driving skill points it turns into a buggy.

Yet, I just ended up having so much fun because, again, this game just focuses on a near flawless execution of its core gameplay. The action and movement are based on an intuitive control scheme that will have you feeling like a total juggernaut in no time, and the environments make up for their lack in visual fidelity through the level of thought that has been put into their design. The more skilled I became at running and gunning, the more rewarding the overall experience became because the game had no trouble making me look like such a badass.

Crackdown 3 therefore makes for the perfect game to play over weekends when you just want to blow stuff up without having to sift through intricate narrative webs or plot twists. If you already have a Game Pass subscription, or you have a sweet tooth for the more anarchic flavour of sandbox games, play this as soon as possible. For avid fans of the first two entries and newcomers alike, perhaps waiting a bit until the price comes down would be best, but you might just end up liking it lot.

Fast and furious combat

Easy to master

Rewarding exploration

Collectable hunting

Voice acting and sound

Somewhat bland world

Limited story depth

Repetitive in moments

Mediocre graphics

Playtime: 10 hours total. For the single player campaign

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One Controller

Crackdown 3 – Campaign Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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