#Two worlds one story

[schemelin]

Palmer and Altairus

[quiddie]

Missive From Camp

Y'all. Arc 3 was...

damn.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

cosplay of main character li huowang 李火旺 from next big chinese IP 道诡异仙dao gui yi xian/Dao of the Bizarre Immortal (chinese fantacy-thriller-suspense fiction based on dao culture) and the last part is the trailer of anime unreleased yet

[eternalnat]

I rarely make tumblr posts, but I am so infuriated by this situation I need to say something about it.

Five Hargreeves, who spent 45 years alone in a post-apocalyptic world, and every single moment of his life since was spent trying to get back to his family. The Five who ran himself dry for 2 weeks straight trying to stop the end of the world, and reunite his family. The Five who slaughtered an entire board of directors just to ensure him family's safety. Who turned back time himself, while bleeding out on the floor, just to save his siblings. You're telling me, that the Five whose entire motivation for living was once saving his family, is the same Five, who in s4 has entirely given up, and in the Subway is the one trying to convince Lila to stop looking after 6 and a half years? The Five who never once stopped trying to return to his family in all 45 years of surviving alone, decides to settle down in a greenhouse and live out a cottagecore life?

Furthermore, the same Five who told Lila that Diego loved her, who reassured his brother that his wife wasn't cheating on him and loved him dearly, the same Five who got on with Lila only due to the fact that they both cared for and loved Diego, the person they had in common, is the same Five who stole his brother's wife, whom he had three children with, just because the writers were excited that Aidan Gallagher was finally legal?

Five who hated authority, who despised when people gave him commands, who wanted nothing more than to retire in s3, is now working for the CIA and willingly calling his boss, 'sir'?

Five who used to be so paranoid and suspicious of everyone and everything, who used to solve problems alone and came to epiphanies that saved the world, who didn't even trust a past version of himself, also didn't realise that his boss of many years had an umbrella tattooed on his wrist?

Everything that once stood out about his character is now gone, as if the writers themselves entirely forgot about his existence until the last moment, and added him in as an afterthought, without thinking of the effect he would have on the story.

[yuwuta]

PLS PLS PLSSSSS keep talking about kids with olympic athletes! gojo and nanami pls pls pls i have to Know. everything u wrote about yuuta was already so so cute

(prev olympics au here)

the gojo twins are hilarious because your baby boy looks exactly like satoru, but has very little of his personality—it seems like the only things he inherited was satoru’s love for sweets and love for you. still, even though he’s a strong swimmer, he much prefers to relax in his floaties alongside you if you’re also in the pool, or chill by your side on a lounge chair, glasses too big for his face keeping the sun out of his eyes as he shares his smoothie with you, and asks to borrow your phone to take pictures of his sister and daddy in the pool. 

your baby girl on the other hand… she might have your face but she’s got satoru’s everything else—his competitive streak, his confidence, and definitely his mischievous nature. she’s the one who tiptoes into your bedroom at five in the morning, tapping at her daddy’s shoulders, and putting her little finger over his lip to shush him before he can wake you up; she’s always the one to convince satoru to take her swimming the backyard at the crack of dawn, and why by the time you and your baby boy wake up, she and satoru are already past warm up laps and swimming lessons and onto who can make the splashiest canonball competitions (she always wins because while her tiny body can endure a belly flop, satoru’s years of training physically doesn’t allow him to do it… and maybe because he’s not so competitive when it comes to his baby girl, he’ll always let her win). 

kento’s professional judo career honestly doesn’t last very long. after his first olympic games, you two start dating and he proposes just after he wins gold the second time he’s in the olympics; he does maybe two more years of national competitions while you’re pregnant, and decides that the intense training for the next two years in preparation of a third olympic competition isn’t worth missing time he could spend with you or your baby girl—plus, with all the money he’s made from competitions, winning gold medals, brand ambassadorships, commercials, and collaborations, he had enough money to provide for all of your for the rest of your lives. so, that’s what he does (his dream has always been to be a househusband, anyway...) his previous salaryman career comes in handy when deciding how to invest his money, how to buy a house, how to take care of his friends, how to set up a fund for your daughter, and an extra account or two… just incase more babies come along… 

by the time your baby girl is four, she’s already kento’s biggest fan. she loudly and proudly proclaims to everybody that her daddy was basically superman and won all the shiny trophies and medals in the house from when he was being a superhero. if anyone recognizes kento when they’re out together, she always confirms their suspicions, proudly boasting, “yeah kento is my daddy! he’s a winner!” it always makes kento’s heart swell to hear her praise. he doesn’t compete professionally anymore, but he does train from time to time, and has taken on a few mentees, and your daughter LOVES to watch him coach/train. she’s got her own uniform that she always puts on whenever they go to the gym together, and gets so excited when kento or ino or yuuji pretend to spar with her. 

she’s honestly kento’s mini figure. she’s respectful and reserved, but strong and knows when to fight and how to use her voice. there’s a time when he gets a call from her school saying that she got in a fight, the principal frames it as your daughter needlessly pushing around an older kid, but your daughter is certain in her words when she tells her dad that it was because the kid was being mean to the younger kids, and to her. kento doesn’t say a word to the teachers—doesn’t even fight them sending her home early for the day, because he’s happy to scoop her up and take her out for ice cream and tell her that he’s proud of her.

[legionofpotatoes]

puss in boots 2 is the real deal. this cat isn't just passionately voiced by antonio banderas and rendered in a stunning new style that pushes 3d further out of the generic wax museum; he also has anxiety

[wszczebrzyszynie]

czechserwis (czeski fanserwis) + moja bardzo artystyczna interpretacja beboków (lubię kózki)

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[luxaofhesperides]

For ghost lights prompts: eldritch/creepy/weird Danny + shy/flustered Duke + hand holding

Your ghostlights fics are giving me so much joy RN I cannot express how much, if this prompt doesn't spark a brain worm for it I get it but I'm excited to read all the others you may wind up posting

There’s a new kid at West Robinson High School. 

This normally wouldn’t be a big deal. They get plenty of new students, being an average high school; not prestigious like Gotham Academy, but not terrible like some of the schools in the lower South Side. New kids are hardly anything to make note of, but something about this student has everyone paying attention to him.

It’s not charisma. The guy doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not attractiveness, because no one really knows what he looks like under the tattered hoodie he wears all the time. It’s not curiosity, not really, because the student body moves around him like he’s dangerous, not like they want to pry all his secrets out into the open. 

It doesn’t help that Duke sees things around him. 

He considers briefly telling someone about it, but then remembers having to argue for returning to West Robinson High School instead of being put in Gotham Academy and decides that Bruce can continue to mind his own business. It’s not like this new kid has done anything bad (yet) and Duke can handle investigating this on his own.

So he watches, catching glimpses of the new kid—Danny Fenton—in hallways during passing period, hiding away at lunch, disappearing into the streets as soon as the school day is over. They even share a class together, French Language and Culture, but Danny is always in the back corner, ignored and made invisible by everyone else. 

Well. That’s not quite true. 

There are shadowy figures that surround Danny and they never leave him alone. Even when he’s got his arms folded on his desk, head down, looking as if he’s asleep, these figures pull at the hood covering his head or reach semi-transparent hands down to pet his hair. And Danny reacts to them, lightly batting their hands away or turning his head away from them.

Duke has no idea what they are. Ghosts are his best guess, but he can’t confirm it. As far as he knows, ghosts are magic and can only be seen by magic users, which Duke very much is not. They do lead to cold spots, keeping the temperatures noticeably colder around Danny, and make the shadows darker, which only makes other students more nervous about being near Danny. 

Through his week of observing Danny, beyond the ghostly figures and visible unease he causes in everyone, what Duke learns is that Danny is lonely. 

No one talks to him. People barely look at him. Teachers avoid calling on him when they can. 

And Danny accepts it. He fades into the background, keeps out of the way, shrinks in on himself. 

No one else sees it. No one else wants to see him.

It’s breaking Duke’s heart, just a little bit.

He’s lucky that he’s not an outcast at school. With his meta gene awakening and his free hours taken up by Bats and fighting crime, it’s hard to have much of a social life, but he still has a few friends during the school hours he can hang out with. Danny doesn’t have anyone, and the more Duke sees how isolated he is, the more upset he becomes.

Which brings him to step two of his investigation: befriend Danny.

So what if he has some ulterior motives! He also just wants to give this guy someone to hang out with! What little glimpses of Danny’s face he’s able to get show him a tired teenager, worn down the way Alley kids are when they’re at the end of their rope and have nothing left to give.

Duke’s first attempts at befriending Danny fail so fast it’s almost funny. It’s as if Danny knows when someone is seeking him out, because every time Duke goes to where he is, Danny up and disappears, hurrying away and vanishing in the crowded hallways, or in the alley a few buildings past the school, or into the fucking restroom, which is always empty when Duke goes in after him. Trying to use his powers to see where Danny goes next doesn’t help either; all he sees is some glowing figure resembling Danny walk through walls, which is either due to Danny being a meta or from Duke’s powers deciding to be unhelpful.

He’s about to resort to Tim level stalking to finally have a conversation with Danny when his French teacher blessedly (and unknowingly) aids him on his mission.

“Find a partner, everyone!” she instructs with a clap of her hands near the end of class. “This is a translation project, and you’ll be doing them in pairs to check each other’s work and decide how to best interpret something into English. If you don’t have a partner in the next minute, tell me and I’ll assign you someone.”

The class is a flurry of movement just as the last word leaves her mouth, friends turning to each other or running across the room to make sure they’re partnered up before anyone else can butt in. 

No one looks at Danny. Which means Duke can just skirt along the wall of the classroom until he’s next to Danny, gently knocking on his desk to get his attention.

Danny looks up, and Duke sees a flash of blue before Danny averts his gaze, tilting his head down again. “Yeah?” he says, and his voice is much softer than what Duke imagined. He expected something hoarse and rough, a little deep, intimidating. Instead, it’s gentle and quiet and smooth. 

It’s a nice voice. It’s a shame that no one else has really heard it.

“Wanna be partners?” he asks, as if he’s offering a choice. They both know no one else is going to ask Danny, and if he wants to avoid talking to the teacher, then he has to work with Duke.

Danny sighs. “Sure.” 

And then he puts his head back down on the desk. 

Duke backs off. This is the best he’s going to get right now. Now that he’s got an excuse to spend time with Danny, he can take his time breaking down his walls and getting to know him. He watches as a figure from the usual group that hangs around Danny breaks away and gently brushes a hand against Danny’s arm. Then they turn to Duke and reach for him.

He moves without thinking, stepping out of the way. The shadowy figure fades back, almost invisible even to his eyes, and Danny’s turned his head to lay his piercing gaze on Duke.

…There’s no way that blew his cover, right? 

He didn’t just reveal one of his meta abilities from taking a single step to the side. No way. 

But Danny’s eyes are a deep blue that seem almost endless as he keeps his attention on Duke. It feels as if he’s staring into Duke, seeing more than what he wants to reveal. 

“Alright, looks like everyone’s found a partner! As you head out, be sure to grab a practice packet from my desk to work on some translation. There are due the next time we meet, and I will be handing out your individual passages once these have all been turned in.” Their teacher sets a large stack of papers onto the corner of her desk, then gets to work erasing the whiteboard just as the bell rings. 

Students grab their bags and rush to take one of the packets before heading out to their final class of the day. Duke stays behind with Danny, waiting for most of the class to leave before swinging his backpack onto his shoulder and grabbing a packet for both of them.

He hands one to Danny, who takes it with some hesitancy and a quiet, “Thanks.”

He leaves before Duke does, and though it’s only a second between his leaving and Duke stepping out the door, Danny’s already vanished from sight.

As soon as school ends, Duke heads for the Hatch, hoping a quick evening patrol will help clear his mind. It’s a quiet evening, though, so he’s left with his thoughts more often than not, staring out over the city long enough that Oracle asks him if he’s alright.

Against his better judgment, he says, “I’ve been looking into something, but I’m not finding much. Can you do some research on Danny Fenton?”

Oracle is already typing before he finishes asking. “What am I looking for?”

“Anything. He’s… strange. I don’t know if he’s a meta or just lightly haunted. But there’s something up with him.”

“Do we need to be keeping a closer eye on him?”

Duke considers. None of them ask Oracle to look into specific people unless they’re dangerous. But danger is not the sense Duke gets from Danny. It’s more like he’s hiding, shying away from the world, constantly on edge. “No. If anything, he might be in danger. Something happened to him, because no one ends up like that by living an average life.”

“I’ll let you know what I find. Turn in for the night, it’s quiet out and you’re too distracted to patrol properly.”

“You got it, O.” He salutes the nearest camera, knowing she’ll see it, and makes his way back to the Hatch to change back into civies and get started on his homework.

When he next goes into his French classroom, all the desk has been rearranged so they’re all in pairs, side by side. Already, patterns are filling up the desks, so Duke heads for the back and sits down where Danny usually hides away. He’s not here yet, which is making Duke realize that he’s never actually seen Danny walk into the classroom and head to his seat.

Did he just never pay attention? Has Danny always just slipped in unnoticed until attendance was taken? How did Duke miss that?

There’s movement in the desk next to him. Duke goes to say that he’s waiting for his partner, so please sit somewhere else, when he realizes that it’s Danny who managed to sneak in yet again.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, hoping his surprise is hidden.

There’s a pause, and then Danny returns, “Hey, Duke.”

That’s all they have time for before class is starting and their teacher goes around to collect homework. She then hands out new packets, each one a different section of L’Ecume des Jours, and gives them the rest of class to begin working on translating it. 

Duke is already dreading it as he flips through the three pages they were given to translate, stapled to each other beneath the two page instructions of how to format the final translation, how to document their previous translation drafts, and what to include in the reflection essay. 

There’s no way he can get all of this done in a week. 

On the other hand, it gives him a week to learn more about Danny. He needs to make the most of it.

“This is a lot,” he comments, hoping to prod Danny into conversation.

Danny shrugs.

“Can we work on this together after school today? Or do you have plans?”

“We can work on it today,” Danny says, voice barely louder than a whisper. He’s already scanning the pages, underlining certain words and phrases. 

Duke hurries to get to work as well, trying to parse out meaning from the text through single words scattered on the page. 

Qu’est-ce que vous faites dans la vie, vous? 

J’apprends des choses, dit Colin. Et j’aime Chloé. 

Duke nods to himself. He definitely doesn’t know French. Well, he knows qu’est-ce que. He knows vous. He know j’apprends and j’aime Chloé. Also dit Colin. Fairly simple, but with the missing pieces to the rest of those sentences, he really doesn’t know what’s going on beyond the fact that it’s a conversation and Colin loves Chloé.

When he glances at Danny’s desk, he’s shocked to see that his partner is already translating the first few lines into something that reads like normal English.

“Oh, wow,” he says, leaning over to get a better look, “You’re definitely better at this than I am.”

“I just like languages,” Danny replies, turning his paper so Duke can read it more easily.

“Have you been hiding your French skills this entire time? I could have definitely used your help before this.”

Danny goes still for a moment, eyes flicking towards his right where a shadowy figure has placed a hand on his shoulder. Then he turns to fully face Duke and says, “Better late than never. What do you need help with?”

“Everything.”

His immediate answer makes Danny smile, and he begins talking in that soft, soothing voice of his. He talks about not trying to translate everything into English immediately, but to understand the French and take it in as a whole language itself. He talks about getting the idea of the text first, the feeling of it, before trying to fit it into English. He talks about splitting up the text into sections to make it easier.

And then he reads the text, entirely in French, and Duke did not have a thing for voices or multilingualism before this, but he sure does now.

“Qu’est-ce que vous faites dans la vie, vous?” Danny reads, reaching the end of the first page. The syllables come to his easily, his French smooth and steady. “J’apprends des choses, dit Colin.” His eyes dart up, off the page, and fix Duke in place. “Et j’aime Chloé.”

Duke has never been happier that he doesn’t blush so visibly with his dark skin because he feels downright romanced. It’s a mix of the French, of Danny’s addictive voice, of their closeness, of how intimate this dark corner of the room feels, tucked away from the rest of the class.

“We can work on the other pages after we finish translating this one,” Danny says, leaning back at bit. 

Duke nods, swallowing to chase away the dryness of his throat. “Sounds like a plan!” 

They work in silence for the rest of the class period, and once the bell rings, Danny says, “I’ll wait for you by the bus stop down the street,” before he slips out of reach and disappears into the throng of students heading to their last class. 

He’s beginning to think that he’s in way over his head. Duke can handle being in the middle of all the action, risking his life, fighting for others. He can handle staring down rogues and criminals and Gnomon. He can’t handle feelings and romance and other such things. Those are much scarier than a criminal shooting at him. At least with the criminal, he knows what to do and doesn’t just freeze up like he did with Danny.

The school day ends faster than he’s prepared for. As promised, Danny waits for him by the bus stop down the street, where other students are also waiting. 

They don’t wait for a bus, though. Danny just meets his eyes and begins walking away, leaving Duke to follow after him, matching his pace so they can walk side by side.

The shadows in the alleyway seem to reach towards them as they walk down it. Something about it doesn’t feel right, so Duke tries to quietly use his powers and force them back. 

He only has time to think, Oh, that was a bad idea, before Danny is shoving him against the wall, getting them both out of the way as a shadow solidifies and lashes out at them. He’s kept in place by strong hands on his chest, and Danny’s eyes are glowing lightly as he hisses at the shadows, making them rear back and settle down once more. 

As if given permission to reveal themselves, more shadowy figures and strange movements in the shadows emerge, surrounding them. 

“Danny, I don’t mean to alarm you, but—”

“I know,” Danny says. “I thought you might be able to see them too. Which is not good.”

“Sorry, man, it’s not like I can turn it off.”

“It’s fine. Just be more careful. They like me because I’m like them, but you just register as a threat. Either that, or prey.”

“Great,” Duke replies weakly, “Those are my favorite things to be. Are we… are we safe to move?”

Slowly, Danny steps back, no longer pressed right against Duke. Nothing moves to attack him, but it might be due to the glare fixed on Danny’s face, eyes still glowing.

“They’ll leave me alone, so…” He reaches a hand out, looking away. The hoodie isn’t able to hide the way his cheeks go red. “Don’t let go and we’ll be fine.”

“I hope this isn’t to lead me to my doom,” Duke jokes nervously as he accepts Danny’s hand, holding it tightly. 

Danny wiggles his fingers, making him loosen his grip, and then their fingers are lacing together. Duke stares down at their hands, wide eyed, and hopes he doesn’t look as flustered as he feels. 

“Not to your doom,” Danny reassures. “Just a coffee shop I thought you’d like.”

“Well, then, lead the way!”

“Allons-y,” Danny replies. 

Stealing glances at him as they walk, ghostly figure and shadow shrinking away from them, all Duke can think is that he doesn’t need to worry about Danny being evil. His immediate instinct to protect Duke has proved that. He’ll keep the investigation going, though, to make sure Danny is safe from others that could hurt him. 

Strange and unsettling as he may be, Danny’s also a smart, kind person who deserves more.

Duke is determined to make sure he gets it.

And if he gets a crush along the way, that’s his business and his business only. 

It looks like Step Two: Befriend Danny is finally complete. He’ll figure out the other steps later. For now, he has an evening of French in a coffee shop to look forward to.

[thedeadhead]

Sometimes when I’m watching/listening ti Brennan create stuff or he deliver a sick line —

I feel a like small pin in a massive storytelling puzzle cube in my brain shift an I go

“oh” and I feel like I have been trained (?) in like a small mini lesson and now I can do a trick that’s going to be sick as fuck

not to directly say I steal from the good man mulligan but more of the way you see someone cast a spell and you’re like OH Thats How That Spell Is Supposed To Go and you suddenly realize why yours sputters for some reason bc you’ve been fuk en up the hand gesture

Btw this happens with a lot of others especially Aabria bc I do need lessons on how to properly inflict pain without being “and now here is a shotgun blast to the face now go eat breakfast” and hit those consequences baby (for ill AND GOOD)

[feroluce]

For reasons to be expanded upon at a later date (because I love the little bits about Boothill and possible paranoia/betrayal canon gives us so very dearly HNGH) I think Boothill like... He won't let himself fall into disrepair or anything of course, but he reeeeeeeeeeally does not like letting other people poke around at his body. It's a necessary evil to him. He does whatever maintenance and repairs he can himself. He started out with a massive knowledge deficit, simply because he didn't really have any exposure to that kind of technology until he left Aeragan-Epharshal, but he's taught himself a lot since then, he worked really hard at it!

Anyway, the point being, Boothill generally isn't super trusting of people.

But I think he would come to make an exception for Himeko, since he trusts Dan Heng a lot, and Himeko is one of Dan Heng's once-in-a-lifetime dearly beloved companions.

Himeko is so unflappable, I don't think she would even bat an eye about anything he throws at her, either. Like she enters the Parlor Car one morning (she's always the first one up) and Boothill is already there, waiting for her.

"Mornin', Madam Navigator."

"Good morning, Mr. Boothill."

And despite the fact that he blatantly broke into the Express (Pom-Pom is NOT happy about this JDKSAJDSKL), Boothill tips his hat, greets her politely, and is nothing but respectful when he says he has a favor to ask of her. Except it won't stay a favor long, of course- he has every intention of paying it back.

Himeko never agrees to things blindly, but she does bring up that all the knowledge Boothill contributed during the Charmony Festival was essential to preventing the universe from being pulled into Ena's Dream. And they were able to hold onto the Jade Abacus because Boothill used Tiernan's burial relic to summon the Galaxy Rangers instead. The Astral Express owes him a debt of gratitude, and besides, he's a friend of Dan Heng's. Of course she'll try to help him.

Boothill fidgets a bit, quickly brushes off the thanks, and tells Himeko he's having a problem with error codes. He keeps getting the same one, seemingly at random times, but the darn thing has no obvious cause. Dan Heng mentioned Himeko had been the one to rebuild the Astral Express. He knows it ain't the same, but it's not like he's askin' for any major repairs or nothin'. He was wonderin' if she could just take a look, maybe offer him some insight, since she seems to be somethin' of a mechanical wonder.

So Himeko walks him back to a another car, where she goes to tinker with machines without them crowding her bedroom. It's all neatly laid out and organized, and it only takes a second for Himeko to locate some specific device with a long cord. Instead of plugging it in herself, she holds the end of it out to him, like an offer rather than a demand, and Boothill visibly relaxes a bit. He still eyes it just a little warily for a second, but he accepts and plugs it into the port on his side.

Himeko pulls up the list of all recent errors, and they really are all the same. Boothill has had multiple temperature alarms over the past couple of weeks since the Charmony Festival, and they know it's not the environment, because Penacony is mostly dreamscape and kept mild year-round. The long-forgotten natural deserts are too far away.

Boothill is staring from the corner of his one good eye, so Himeko turns the hologram to let him see what she's doing easier. They don't appear to be false alarms. His internal temperature spikes and then slowly lowers again, high enough that if it lasted it would eventually cause damage.

One option is for her to start rooting through personal data, figuring out what he was doing at the time of each code, and tracing cause and correlation.

Instead, Himeko reads out the timestamps, and asks Boothill if he minds sharing what was happening around him when it occured.

Two weeks ago: He and Dan Heng went to explore Dreamflux Reef and found a bar- nice place, good atmosphere. Woman runnin’ it was a doll. Boothill left fer not even two minutes to get them drinks (Dan Heng knows like nothin’ about liquor, Madam Navigator, can you believe this guy) and when he came back, someone had already stolen his seat and was hittin’ on Dan Heng! Dan Heng didn't even care, just shooed ‘em off. Boothill laughed and said not to let him get in his way if he wanted to meet someone. Dan Heng looked at him like he'd grown a second head. Why would he want to leave with someone else, when he came here to be with Boothill?

Twelve days ago: While laying low- er, just rustlin’ up some grub- in the Moment of Blue, Boothill passed Dan Heng with March and Caelus playin’ on the beach, buildin’ sandcastles and the like. When he passed by again almost two hours later, they were still out there, with Dan Heng pullin’ March through the water on her inner tube and Caelus hangin’ off the back of it. He swam so fast! You'd think he was part water snake or somethin’. He looked happier ‘n a cat in a sunbeam… He has a nice smile, doesn't he?

Eleven days ago: Boothill was killin’ time in Dreamflux Reef when he turned the corner down a shady alley and saw Dan Heng, surrounded by three men demandin’ “protection money.” None of ‘em stood a chance, they were all on the ground before Boothill even blinked! So cool! Boothill wants to see that spear of his closeup- Anyway, Dan Heng stepped on one of ‘em on his way out, hahaha! Boothill stepped on the same guy a second time as he hurried to catch up.

Eight days ago: Here on the Express, actually. Boothill had mentioned bein’ curious about the archives, and Dan Heng personally invited him.

(“I remember that day, I saw you in the hall.” “Was there any problem with the heating that day?” “No, none. I don't think the temperature has anything to do with these error codes. I have a different theory, keep going.” “If ya say so.”)

Boothill was fascinated by an entry on aeons, and from a single question he asked about Lan, the two of ‘em ended up talkin’ fer hours. About aeons and Paths and Emanators, Acheron and Self-Annihilators, the Sea of Nihility, Tiernan, the Nameless and the Galaxy Rangers, their burial relics and their customs. Dan Heng finally just started writin’ and editin’ the entries in real time, with Boothill pointin’ things out and tellin’ him what to add in. They were at it so late that Boothill ended up sleepin' on a couch in one of the cars.

He'd figured there had to be something to make Dan Heng chatty- he'd caught just a glimpse of it that first night they met, sittin’ at the bar in the Reverie together. He'll have to ask about the archives more often, if it gets him all revved up like that.

One week ago: After that night of energetic discussion, Dan Heng was apparently hyped up, because after he'd downed some of Himeko's coffee (“You had some too, right? What did you think of it?” “It was great, even better'n chewin’ bullets!” "Thank you! That was my newest brew, I can't wait for everyone else to try it.") he actually asked Boothill to go hunting with him. Boothill asked who their target was, and was surprised when Dan Heng pulled out photos that looked like they were from March's camera, of all things, instead of a bounty or wanted poster.

And as he sat there, studying these pictures, Dan Heng explained that he wanted to hunt down these specific memory zone memes to record them into the archives. Planets with so much memoria are a rarity, especially with the Stellaron's activity thrown into the mix, which has surely affected the local “wildlife.” He might not get another opportunity like this for a long time. And Boothill had talked last night about his extensive expertise in tracking and hunting, so he should have plenty to offer here, Dan Heng would like to learn from his experience and see how he does things!

And oh, Madam Navigator, by the time Dan Heng was done speakin', his eyes were practically sparklin'! Just lit up like the sun! Boothill could scarcely believe it! The two of them couldn't even wait another day, they set out that very morning. It had been a long, long while since Boothill had tracked someone- er, somethin’- without the intent to capture or kill. It was…actually really nice. Nostalgic, but in a good way. It might even have been his favorite day on Penacony…so…far…

Boothill trails off as a couple of realizations crash into him. All the temperature alarms he's spoken about thus far- they've all happened in the company of Dan Heng. And now that he's thinking about it, he's pretty sure even the ones he hasn't yet talked about were with him, too. Dan Heng has been responsible for all of his error codes, every. single. one.

The screen in front of Himeko suddenly refreshes to the top of the list, displaying a new notification for the current time. Alert! Core temperature above normal range.

Himeko's knowing smile is sly as a snake.

Wwwwwelp, would ya look at the time, Boothill has some errands to meet, people to run, y’know how it is, he should really get goin'-

“Oh, Mr. Boothill? About that favor.” And Boothill jolts to a stop in the doorway because fudge, he can't just leave without hearing her out. He'd given his word. He has no problem running out on someone he thinks deserves it, but Himeko really had been kind to him to try and help him out. Her voice is just as knowing as her smile, Boothill can't turn around to look at her, or else he knows he won't be able to disguise the sound of his cooling fans kicking on.

“Don't make Dan Heng wait too long, ok~?”

“Y-Yes, ma'am.”

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[i-bring-crack]

A–Aventio TGCF idea?? Wherein Civil God Veritas Ratio meets the infamous Ghost King Aventurine during his first mission cuz cuz like— The "live for me" paralels?!? The one who has all the luck partner as well?!? The villain who was actually not the Villain this whole time!?!? The loving humanity a little too much it causes their downfall !?!?!?

Rant AU in the tags proceed with caution

[katabay]

unofficially, a follow up to this!

after all, what's the point of doing a story that's as much about the actors and the stage as the story that they're acting out if you can't draw up alternative castings and explore messier different dynamics!!!

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost

[aromanticasterisms]

no but actually. the parallels to other Twins in different nations of teyvat in relation to the traveler and their desire to reunite with their own sibling makes me a little bit bonkers. like.

diluc and kaeya as what the traveler has and fears, after we will be reunited [separation born from conflict that seemingly cannot be mended; they both care for each other but ultimately their opposing ideals mean they cannot be at each other's side in the same way that they used to, and no longer have the close bond they once did]

ei and makoto as what the abyss sibling experienced [a crushing loss not just of one's twin but the last remaining friend they had and the safety and security of their nation, coming out the other side traumatized, cold and jaded and making decisions that will ultimately hurt the people they claim to want to protect for the sake of an unattainable goal]

and lyney and lynette as what the traveler and the abyss twin used to have before they were separated [never apart for long, home is wherever we are together], what the traveler wants [their separation brief and quickly amended, continuing to be inseparable after they reunite], and also the choice they'll have to make [the twins being together in an organization the traveler inherently doesn't trust - does the traveler want to be by their sibling's side badly enough to throw their lot in with the abyss, and turn their back on everyone else they've met on their journey so far?]

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

question!

what's an example of a loving relationship between two female characters (platonic, romantic, familial, whatever) that's a central part of a big tv or movie franchise that's not targeted more toward female audiences?